Thomas Chalmers

No man was more sensible than himself of the great difference between his earlier and later ministry. He told his people that earnest though he had been at first in pressing honour, truth, and integrity upon them, he never once heard of any resulting reformation; all his vehemence had not the weight of a feather on their moral habits. It was only after he became acquainted with the true way of approach to God, and the real fountain of divine strength in Christ, that those minor reformations showed themselves as the result of that deeper and more vital process by which the heart was changed. It was his delight to hear masters testifying to the scrupulous honesty and conscientious fidelity of their servants, after they had come under the power of the Gospel. He prayed that such servants, while thus adorning the doctrine of God their Saviour, humble though they were, might reclaim the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith.

Though not much addicted to church courts, Chalmers, during his Kilmany ministry, made a few memorable appearances in them. His maiden speech in the General Assembly was delivered in 1809. The subject was not an inspiring one; it related to a recent act of the legislature on the augmentation of stipends. But his speech was a most logical and brilliant performance. The house was taken by storm. 'Who is he?' was the question on every lip; 'he must be a most extraordinary person.' Later, in 1814, he spoke on a kindred subject – the repairs and alterations of manses. A better chance for his powers occurred in the Assembly of that year in connection with a plurality case, where the 'wonderful display of his talents' contributed much to the passing of an enactment that no professorship in a university should be held in connection with a country charge.

During the latter part of his Kilmany ministry he became a contributor to the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, under the distinguished editorship of Dr. Andrew Thomson. One of his papers dealt with the new-born science of geology, and greatly soothed the anxieties of many good men, by pointing out that the first chapter of Genesis does not fix the antiquity of the globe, but only that of the human race. To the Eclectic Review he contributed an able paper on Moravian missions, in opposition to an ignorant and scandalous misstatement on that subject that had appeared in the Edinburgh Review. An eloquent pamphlet, likewise in refutation of injurious statements, vindicated Bible Societies from the charge of hurting the poor. It was at this time, and in connection with this defence of Bible Societies, that he first published those views of pauperism which he maintained so constantly all his life. At Kilmany there was no assessment for the poor, and very little pauperism. It seemed to him far better to foster a spirit of independence, thrift, and industry on the part of the poor, and a spirit of brotherly consideration on the part of the rich, than to confer a legal claim on the one, and impose a legal obligation on the other. 'What, after all,' asks the author of the pamphlet on Bible Societies, 'is the best method of providing for the secular necessities of the poor? Is it by labouring to meet the necessity after it has occurred, or by labouring to establish a principle and a habit which would go far to prevent its existence? … If you wish to extinguish poverty, combat with it in its first elements… The education and religious principle of Scotland have not annihilated pauperism, but they have restrained it to a degree that is almost incredible to our neighbours of the south. The writer of this paper knows of a parish in Fife, the average maintenance of whose poor is defrayed by £24 sterling a year, and of a parish of the same population in Somersetshire where the annual assessment amounts to £1300 sterling.'

But the most interesting feature in the pastoral development of Chalmers during the latter part of his Kilmany ministry was the new direction given to his power as a pulpit orator. We have seen that, from the beginning, his more careful discourses were marked by great force of argument and beauty of expression, and that there was such a fervour in his manner of delivery as approached to wild uncouthness. Certain it is that from first to last his pronunciation was very broad and his accent intensely provincial. But when he struck into a vein of thought that was full of interest to his own mind and soul, he was wonderfully arrestive and impressive. In his earlier years he evidently took but little trouble with his ordinary discourses; writing shorthand, he could easily throw off a sermon in two or three hours. Yet even then he was at times singularly felicitous; and, for sheer eloquence, no sermon he ever preached was more remarkable than one delivered on occasion of the national fast, on 8th February 1809, when, after a five-mile plodding on foot through a heavy fall of snow, he convened the handful of people who had reached the church in a room in the damp, uninhabited manse. After his change of views, his preparation for the pulpit received much more attention, and a distinction of longhand and shorthand sermons indicated that on some he bestowed peculiar pains. The late Andrew Fuller, attracted by his fame, having paid him a visit, tried to persuade him to give up reading his sermons, believing that a more free delivery would add infinitely to the impression. Chalmers made various attempts to carry out the extemporaneous method, but, instead of his acquiring more freedom, the effect was the reverse. At last he gave up all attempts at the extemporaneous, both in his sermons and speeches, except in the way of parenthetical remarks designed to elucidate some point that had not been made sufficiently clear.

But we must not close the record of his Kilmany life without adverting to an important domestic event which took place about two years before he left the place. Till near that time he had, like Dr. Livingstone in Africa at a later period, determined to lead the life of a bachelor. A recent disappointment in connection with an application for augmentation of stipend, confirmed him in that resolve. But neither Chalmers nor Livingstone had taken into reckoning a mysterious influence which can make sport of the firmest resolutions, and prostrate strong men at the feet of Hymen. Chalmers had fallen in love with Miss Grace Pratt, daughter of Captain Pratt of the First Royal Veteran Battalion, who had been living for some time with her uncle, Mr. Simson, at Starbank, in the parish of Kilmany. The marriage took place on 4th August 1812, and the union lasted for thirty-five years of unbroken domestic happiness. His sister Jane, his housekeeper, had been married shortly before to Mr. Morton, a gentleman in Gloucestershire, and in communicating to her what was probably a very unexpected piece of intelligence, he veiled the news under an allegorical form which it may have taken her a little trouble to elucidate. Referring to a recent but somewhat unsuccessful process of his before the Court of Tiends for augmentation of stipend, he said he had been involved in another process before another court. He had been defeated in the one, but he was glad to say he had been triumphant in the other. In the latter case he had had to do the whole business himself. He had had to frame the summons and to conduct the pleadings. There had been replies and duplies, and many a personal appearance at court before the process was settled. At last a decision had been given in his favour. But the law required the decision to be followed by a proclamation – not a single proclamation at the cross, but two proclamations, that had to be made within a quarter of a mile of his own house. The letter concluded: 'I ken, Jane, you always thought me an ill-pratted (mischievous) chiel; but, I can issure you, of all the pratts I ever played, none was ever carried on, or even ended more grace-fully.' And Mrs. Morton congratulated him on his victory.

His fame as a pulpit orator had now travelled from Maidenkirk to John o' Groats, and it could not be expected that he should be left in a secluded country parish. In Glasgow, the Tron parish church had become vacant, and Chalmers was suggested as successor to Dr. Macgill. It was easy for the anti-evangelical party to ridicule the idea of bringing a madman to such a place; but a deputation from the Town Council, who were patrons of the church, went to hear him preach. On the Sunday in question he preached, at Bendochy, a funeral sermon on Mr. Honey, a young minister whose fatal illness had been brought on by his exertions in saving from shipwreck seven exhausted sailors, whom, one by one, he bore from their stranded vessel to the shore. The impression of that sermon was overpowering. In spite of the opposition of the Duke of Montrose, Sir Islay Campbell, the Lord Provost, and the College, Chalmers received from the Town Council a presentation to the Tron, and, after considerable hesitation, accepted it. It was a great wrench to tear himself from Kilmany, which he loved and admired so greatly, and from the people that were dear to him as his own children. All his life, Fife, and especially Kilmany, continued thus dear. On his way to Glasgow he had occasion to climb the Calton Hill in Edinburgh, and the sight of Norman Law, which was visible from the windows of the manse of Kilmany, quite overcame him. 'Oh! with what vivid remembrance can I wander in thought over all its farms and all its families, and dwell on the kind and simple affection of its people, till the contemplation becomes too bitter for my endurance.'

It was no less a trial to leave the work which was now advancing so hopefully in the parish. But he could not be insensible to the claims of such a city as Glasgow, and the boundless field for usefulness it afforded. And so, in great humility, and in great fear lest he should be giving an undue preference to intellect and culture over poverty and obscurity, he accepted the call. He preached a most impressive farewell sermon on 9th July 1815, which concluded with these words: 'Be assured, my brethren, that after the dear and the much-loved scenery of this peaceful vale has disappeared from my eye, the people who live in it shall retain a warm and an ever-enduring place in my memory; and this mortal body must be stretched on the bed of death ere the heart that now animates it can resign its exercise of longing after you, and praying for you that you may so receive Christ Jesus, and so walk in Him, and so hold fast the things you have gotten, and so prove that the labour I have had among you has not been in vain, that when the sound of the last trumpet awakens us, these eyes which are now bathed in tears may open upon a scene of eternal blessedness, and we, my brethren, whom the providence of God has withdrawn for a little time from each other, may on that day be found side by side at the right hand of the everlasting throne.'

When we compare Chalmers as he came to Kilmany and as he left it, we find much that remains the same, and much that has been changed or modified.

Remaining the same, we find his singularly energetic, forceful nature; his high integrity and kindliness of heart, as it constantly streamed out towards his family, his friends, and his flock; his eager desire for the welfare of his people, for their advancement and elevation in all that he counted good, pure, and noble; his indomitable energy of purpose and fearless contending for right and truth; his passionate intensity of conviction, rolling itself out in whirlwinds and tempests of eloquence, that swept all before it. The great change which he has undergone has not destroyed these fundamental elements of character.

Nevertheless, all things have become new. He has learned that true life, in its every department, must be lived in fellowship with God. He has learned the way to God, to God reconciled, a loving Father, a considerate Master, a gracious Friend and Guide. He has seen the reality of Christ's atonement, and of the work of the Holy Spirit, and found a new value in prayer, and a new use of the sacred Scriptures. He has got new light on the true welfare of the people, and especially on the need for every one of personal contact with Christ; new light, also, on the true dignity of every individual man and woman in view of the capacities of their souls and the immortality that is before them. He has found a nobler theme and a higher inspiration for that eloquence which has moulded his labours in the pulpit. He is not less desirous to see the people prosperous and happy, but he has been convinced that their true welfare is dependent on heavenly grace, and, in the case of the poor, that there is nothing like Christian influence whether for preventing or alleviating the evils of poverty, or, where there are poor, raising them above the depressing conditions of their lot. And this is just the germ of that more comprehensive view of the conditions of social welfare to which he will be drawn when he finds himself side by side with the teeming thousands of Glasgow. He looks forward more ardently than ever to the full development of the parochial system. Nor has his enthusiasm for science abated. He has seen that, much though he loves it, it is not his part to devote to it the time needed for his more immediate duties. But now that he sees it more clearly than ever a department of that great kingdom of God in which all interests are combined in a wonderful unity, his respect for it is greater rather than less. And, as a handmaid to the Gospel, he will soon find a noble use for it in those astronomical discourses which are soon to arrest the attention of the intellectual world.

Thus equipped, and with these aims, Chalmers proceeds to Glasgow. He is inducted into his new charge, 23rd July 1815. His incumbency there is to be shorter even than at Kilmany; but the eight years that are now before him are to witness the commencement of a work and the advocacy of a cause which will not only bring out the greatness of his character, but tell on the welfare of the whole Church and country for generations to come.

CHAPTER III

GLASGOW

1815-1823

It cannot be said that Chalmers took very kindly to Glasgow. He missed the wide expanse, the fresh air, the Arcadian simplicity of his much-loved Kilmany; also, the intimate acquaintance he had with every individual, and the comparative leisure of a country life. He found himself 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' by streets and lanes and 'lands,' and flung upon dense masses of population that baffled every attempt at individual acquaintance and interest. No doubt the people were most kind and hospitable, and if dinners and other entertainments could have satisfied him, he might have had them to his heart's content. But, bent as he was on his especial work, and eager to launch new plans of usefulness, it was irksome beyond endurance to have to devote whole afternoons and evenings to eating and drinking, considering the very trifling amount of good that could be expected to come of such protracted engagements. And another thing that worried him was the trifling matters of purely secular interest to which, as a director of societies, or a member of public boards, he was expected to give attention. Fancy an hour spent in debating whether a certain ditch was to be covered over or not; fancy himself and his brother-directors engaged in a long controversy whether pork soup or ox-tail soup should be served to the inmates of an institution, and finally resorting to a practical test – a portion of each kind being brought to each director to taste! Then there was an expectation that much of his time should be devoted to certain attentions that people liked to be paid to them. Why, a funeral was hardly counted respectable unless there were four clergymen in attendance! Much nervous energy was consumed in resisting these unreasonable expectations, and if Chalmers had not come to be a great man, and possessed of a fame which overbore everything, he would certainly have suffered not a little in reputation from the necessity of so often applying a snub where kindness was meant, and becoming a transgressor where tradition had established its law.

During the eight years of his Glasgow incumbency many things happened, worthy to be noticed even in a short biography like this. First of all, his fame as a pulpit orator reached its climax; a climax never surpassed and seldom equalled in the whole annals of the pulpit. In the next place, his ideas of the advantages of the parochial system, brought from Kilmany, were matured, expanded, and practically applied, with results that demonstrated in a wonderful way their Christian wisdom and excellence. Further, as an author, he rose to a higher platform; his astronomical and commercial discourses, when published, spread his fame far and wide; and a quarterly publication which he issued on the Civic and Christian Economy of Large Townsshowed the zeal and wisdom with which he grappled with his parochial obligations. Meanwhile, in his closet, he was intensely occupied with the great problem of his personal spiritual life; ever and anon placing himself in the immediate presence of God, detecting and deploring his infirmities and deficiencies, striving to walk with God in every undertaking, duty, and recreation; trying hard to resist the subtle influence of human applause; and longing much for that absolute consecration which would efface self, and make God all in all. Still further, he was most assiduous in affectionate duty to his friends and family; correspondence with father, mother, wife, children, and friends went on without ceasing, even in the busiest periods of public life, and always with an eager desire to promote their highest good. And many an important call to other spheres of labour arose from time to time to distract his attention; now he was offered this important charge, now that; at one time he was entreated to become a candidate for the natural philosophy chair at Edinburgh, and at another for that of moral philosophy; now he was called to London to preach a missionary sermon, and at another time he found it necessary to make a long tour through England to acquire information about the working of the poor-law system. That he was able to sustain life under the prodigious pressure of all these varied engagements cannot but surprise us, and cannot but excite our admiration of the remarkable physical and mental energy that was able to endure it. But it had its effects; and one of these was, that feeling himself unable to sustain the pressure of such an accumulation of burdens, and desirous to prosecute more vigorously his work as an author, he accepted, in 1823, the unanimous offer made to him of the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, though the sphere in itself was absolutely insignificant, and the salary not more than £300 a year.

The first sermon he preached in Glasgow, a few months before his settlement as minister of the Tron parish, was on behalf of the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy. The more intellectual part was an exposition of the principles of Christian charity and his views of pauperism, and the more eloquent part was a touching picture of the family of a deceased clergyman, called to tear themselves from all the beauties of their home, when their hearts were overborne with the far darker melancholy of a father torn from their embrace. Dean Ramsay, who heard this sermon, remarked, in his biographical notice of Chalmers to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that the tears of the father and preacher fell like raindrops on the manuscript, and from many another eye the like tokens of sensibility were seen to flow.

It is of his appearance on this occasion that an elaborate description was given by Mr. J. G. Lockhart in his pseudonymous publication, Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. It has been reproduced in almost every biography, but the picture is too striking to be wholly left out here. After describing other features of the face, he remarks: —

'The eyes are light in colour, and have a strange, dreamy heaviness that conveys any idea rather than that of dulness, but which contrasts in a wonderful manner with the dazzling, watery glare they exhibit when expanded in their sockets, and illuminated into all their flame and fervour in some moment of high entranced enthusiasm. But the shape of the forehead is perhaps the most singular part of the whole visage; … it is without exception the most mathematical forehead I ever met with, being far wider across the eyebrows than either Mr. Playfair's or Mr. Leslie's… Immediately above the extraordinary breadth of this region, in the forehead, there is an arch of imagination carrying out the summit boldly and roundly, in a style to which the heads of very few poets present anything comparable, and over this region again there is a grand apex of high and solemn veneration and love… Never perhaps did the world possess an orator whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says.' [The writer then dilates on his defects in gesture and pronunciation, and the disappointment caused by his first utterances.] 'But then, with what tenfold richness does this dim, preliminary curtain make the glories of his eloquence to shine forth, when the heated spirit at length flings from it its chill, confining fetters, and bursts out elate and rejoicing in the full splendour of its disimprisoned wings… I have heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in regard to argument, and have heard very many deliver sermons far more uniform in elegance both of conception and of style; but most unquestionably I have never heard, whether in England or in Scotland, or in any other country, any preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his.'

It was soon after, that on hearing a speech of Chalmers's Lord Jeffrey remarked, 'I know not what it is, but there is something altogether remarkable about that man. It reminds me more of what one reads of as the effect of the eloquence of Demosthenes than anything I ever heard.'

An extraordinary impression was produced by a sermon preached before the Lord High Commissioner, during the proceedings of the Assembly, from the text, 'When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' There was a reference to the infidel argument that modern astronomy, through the revelation by the telescope of the boundless multitude of worlds existing in the heavens, had shown the earth to be too insignificant a section of God's universe to justify the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God. To refute this objection, Chalmers brought forward the not less wonderful discoveries by the microscope of the minuteness of God's works, and the conclusion was irresistibly established that there is 'not one portion of the universe of God too minute for His notice, nor too humble for the visitations of His care.'

This sermon was one of a series which Chalmers, on whom the degree of D.D. had been conferred by the University of Glasgow (21st February 1816), was now delivering there. It had been an old practice of the ministers of Glasgow, of whom there were then eight, to preach in turn on Thursdays in the Tron Church, and Dr. Chalmers, deeming it fitting that week-day sermons should have a character of their own, selected the discoveries of modern astronomy as the basis of his course. The interest and novelty of the subject, as well as the fame of the preacher, drew extraordinary crowds to the church. In January 1817, the series being completed, the sermons were published in a volume. The demand was marvellous. Nine editions were called for within a year, and nearly 20,000 copies were circulated. And, beyond the ordinary circle of sermon readers, men like Hazlitt and Canning were arrested and impressed. The sermons necessarily bore the marks of a hasty, and in some respects a juvenile production; this Chalmers himself afterwards acknowledged, and his own preference was given to another series – the 'Commercial Discourses,' which bore 'On the Application of Christianity to the Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life,' and were published in 1820.

The Astronomicals had been reviewed, not quite favourably, by John Foster, whose acquaintance Chalmers made about this time. But, so far from showing any chagrin at the freedom of his comments, Chalmers at once took Foster to his heart; and there was no public writer of the day of whom he thought more highly, or whom he more warmly commended in after days to his students. Some of the Reviews treated the sermons severely; but from Christopher North, in Blackwood, they received hearty commendation.