Thomas Chalmers

His popularity in Glasgow was almost surpassed by that which he found in London. In May 1817 he preached in Surrey Chapel for the London Missionary Society. His publisher, Mr. Smith, who accompanied him, wrote home, 'All my expectations were overwhelmed in the triumph. Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever excelled it, nor did he ever more arrest and wonder-work his audience. I had a full view of the whole place. The carrying forward of minds was never so visible to me; a constant assent of the head from the whole people accompanied all his paragraphs; and the breathlessness of expectation permitted not the beating of a heart to agitate the stillness.'

Preaching for the Hibernian Society, he had a beautiful passage on Irish character, which affected Mr. Canning to tears. 'The tartan,' he said, 'beats us all.' Mr. Wilberforce had brought Canning, along with Huskisson and Lord Binning to the chapel, where they found Lord Elgin, Lord Harrowby, and many others. In another chapel, on the same day, the crowd that had gathered in the street was so vast that even the preacher himself had great difficulty in getting admission. We know what a compliment it is, laudari a laudatis. It was about this time that he formed the acquaintance of the greatest pulpit orator of England, Robert Hall, who wrote thus to him, 'It would be difficult not to congratulate you on the unrivalled and unbounded popularity which attended you in the metropolis… The attention which your sermons have excited is probably unequalled in modern literature.'

One might fill a whole volume with notices of his popularity, and of the remarkable triumphs of his eloquence. To many, the wonder was increased when they learned the circumstances in which his sermons were sometimes composed. On one occasion, while enjoying his holiday, word was brought to him of the sudden death of the Princess Charlotte, and of his being looked for in Glasgow to preach on the day of her funeral. This letter reached him on a Sunday, while he was preaching at Kilmany; posting on Monday from Kirkcaldy to Queensferry, he got a seat on the mail to Edinburgh; he arrived in Glasgow, after a night journey, between five and six on Tuesday morning, and next forenoon preached one of his most brilliant discourses. Wherever the coach stopped to change horses, he rushed into the inn, wrote a few sentences, then rushed out to continue his journey. And the sermon was not a mere appeal to feelings. A large part of it consisted of an elaborate plea for a larger provision for the spiritual necessities of great cities, – being the germ of that plan of church extension and parochial cultivation which was to form the great business of his life.

Twice every Sunday he usually filled his pulpit in the Tron Church; and when latterly, in St. John's, he had the Rev. Edward Irving as his assistant, the two supplied two pulpits – the parish church and a chapel of ease – while other engagements were often undertaken in various parts of the country. But the work of the pulpit could hardly be reckoned as the chief of Dr. Chalmers's labours. His regard for the old parochial economy of the Kirk of Scotland was a supreme feeling; he looked on every minister as having charge of the people of the parish, and held that it was his duty to watch over their spiritual condition. It was his sense of the infinite importance of this, if Christianity was to retain any hold on the people of our cities, that had made him such an enemy of pluralities, and that roused his intense opposition to the settlement of Dr. Duncan Macfarlane as minister of the High Church of Glasgow, while he retained the office of Principal of the University. He knew for certain that the result would be the almost total neglect of a parish of upwards of ten thousand souls.

The population of the Tron parish was between eleven and twelve thousand. Dr. Chalmers never devoted himself to the regular visitation of the extra-parochial families that formed, to a large extent, his ordinary congregation; where there was sickness or death, he would visit them, but not in ordinary circumstances. His concern was with the people of the parish. His first object was to ascertain their general condition, and for this purpose he determined on a house-to-house visitation. It was a Herculean task. He could but spend a few minutes in each house, give a kindly greeting, put a few questions, perhaps utter an earnest word of Christian counsel, and then invite the inmates to the place where an evening service would be held for the benefit of all. And on the whole it was a depressing task; for he found that a great proportion of the people had no seats in any place of worship, and were in deep ignorance on the high matters of faith and eternity. He had his plans of reformation in readiness, but these involved the enlistment and training of a large body of helpers. As a first step in this direction, on, 20th December 1816, he ordained a few younger men to the office of the eldership, calling on them very earnestly to eschew the example set by many elders around them, who attended only to things temporal, and to devote themselves, by household visitation and other means, to the superintendence of the spiritual interests of their districts. So earnestly was he devoted to the welfare of his parish, that sometimes, when his family were in the country, he would live in a humble room, at a rent of six shillings a week, in order to be near his work; at other times he would dine in the little vestry-room attached to his church.

Next, to meet the alarming ignorance of spiritual truth, he instituted a Sabbath Evening School Society, and got a few members of his congregation to work it. At the end of two years, upwards of two thousand children were under instruction by this means. 'Our meetings,' says one of the members, 'were very delightful. I never saw any set of men who were so animated by one spirit, and whose zeal was so steadily sustained. The Doctor was the life of the whole. He was ever most ready to receive a hint or suggestion from the youngest or most inexperienced member; and if any useful hint came from such a one, he was careful to give him the full merit of it, generally by his name. Although we had no set forms of teaching, we consulted over all the modes, that we might find the best.'

The outstanding peculiarity of these schools was that they were territorial. They were, in the first instance, at least, for the children of the parish, and for these alone. The children were gathered through the visitation of the Doctor's agents, the result being that, in this way, an immensely larger number got the benefit of Sabbath-school instruction than when a general system of schools prevailed, to which any one might go or not go as he was inclined.

At a later period, he entered on a more costly educational undertaking. In his Sunday schools, he found many children that could read in a way, but with such hesitation and difficulty as showed that reading was no pleasure to them, and that it was sure not to be practised as an ordinary habit. Glasgow was then very deficient in day schools. When he went to St. John's, he determined to remedy this defect, in so far as that parish was concerned. Setting the example himself by a £100 contribution, he soon obtained the necessary funds. 'Within two years from the commencement of his ministry, four efficient teachers, each endowed to the extent of £25 per annum, were educating 419 scholars; and, when he left Glasgow in 1823, other school buildings were in process of erection, capable of accommodating 374 additional pupils; so that the fruit of four years' labour was the leaving behind him the means and facilities for giving, at a very moderate rate, a superior education to no less than 693 children, out of a population of ten thousand souls.'

The management of the poor was, as we have seen, a subject which, even before he came to Glasgow, had begun to occupy his very earnest thoughts, and on which he had formed decided views. To some prevalent notions on the subject, especially in England, he entertained very strong objections, for he held that their tendency was to increase pauperism, so that the more money that was spent, the greater did the evil become. There were two beneficial influences in particular that a system of compulsory poor-rates was fitted to impair – the spirit of independence, and the readiness of friends and relatives to assist the poor. When it came to be understood that the poor had a legal claim to be supported from the rates, they would cease to make any exertion to be thrifty and independent, and their friends and relatives would cease to charge themselves with their maintenance. Dr. Chalmers was persuaded that, so long as these two beneficial influences remained in active operation, the poor might be maintained at a far less cost than would be possible under a scheme of compulsory rates. His plan was to fall back on the New Testament method – to have a body of deacons specially charged with the care of the poor; to assign to each deacon a certain limited proportion of the parish, instruct him to make very full inquiries into the case of every one applying for help, endeavour in every case where destitution was caused by want of work, to find work for the applicant; or where there were friends or relatives able to help, to draw on their resources before application should be made to the public fund. So long as he was minister of the Tron parish, there were insurmountable difficulties to carrying this plan into execution. But the creation of the new parish of St. John's altered the case. Dr. Chalmers was determined not to accept the appointment to that parish unless he should be allowed full liberty to carry out his plans for the maintenance of the poor. After a considerable amount of fighting, he at length got all the liberty he asked. The turmoil and worries to which he was exposed in contending with old opinions, old practices and prejudices of all sorts, were like to prostrate him. But as soon as this battle was over, another remained to be fought. He must prove, by practical demonstration, not only that his scheme was workable, but that in its effects it would be a great improvement on the other. He must undertake the management of all the poor in a parish of ten thousand souls – the poorest parish in the city. With this great undertaking he now proceeded to grapple.

What he undertook was, to relinquish all claim to the fund raised by assessment, and provide for the poor of St. John's parish through the church-door collections alone. It was arranged that the then actual inmates of the town's poorhouse, connected with the parish, would be maintained as before, but that no new cases would be sent there; all the new outdoor cases, and all the other cases of pauperism, were to be defrayed from the congregational fund. Hitherto the cost of the poor in the parish had been at the rate of £1400 per annum, whereas the collections amounted to only £480. Thus, though not at first, yet ultimately, St. John's Church would be responsible for an amount of pauperism that had hitherto cost £1400.

The unwearied visitation of the deacons produced highly beneficial results. Sometimes very appalling cases of distress were found to be wholly fabulous. A poor woman applied to a deacon to bury a grown-up daughter who had died that day. He refused until he had made a personal visit. This he did, but no such person could be found. Next day the woman renewed her application: a young man was sent by the deacon to verify the woman's statement; but she disappeared in the crowd. When the matter was stated to another deacon, he wondered whether the woman's husband, whom he had helped to bury six months before, were still alive. The two went in quest of the family, and found the buried husband and the dead daughter performing all the functions of life.

In other cases, relatives were induced to take charge of destitute children, or older children to take charge of younger. In one case, the father and mother of a family composed of six children both died; three of the six were earning wages, and three were unable to work. The three elder applied to have the three younger admitted to the poorhouse. It was pointed out to them by Dr. Chalmers's agents that this would be a great slur on the family; and a small quarterly allowance was promised if they should keep together. The advice was taken, and the quarterly allowance was but twice required. The family lived together, gaining a character for independence and brotherliness that in itself must have been a considerable help to their success in life. And many other such cases occurred.

The result of these operations, during the three years and nine months when Dr. Chalmers personally presided over them, was instructive and striking. The whole number of new cases admitted on the roll was twenty, and the annual cost of these was £66. The number of cases originally committed to Dr. Chalmers was ninety-eight, of whom twenty-eight had died, and thirteen had been displaced in consequence of a scrutiny, leaving (with the twenty new cases) seventy-seven on the roll, the cost of whose yearly maintenance was £190. In the second year of their operations the church was able to take the whole of the poorhouse inmates connected with the parish off that institution, at an expense to themselves of £90 a year. In this way the pauperism that had cost the town £1400 was now managed at an expenditure of £280. And the pauperism itself became a decreasing quantity. 'The St. John's deacons, mingling as they did familiarly with all the families, and proving themselves by word and deed the true but enlightened friends of all, did far more to prevent pauperism than to provide for it.'

It cannot be said that his theory of pauperism was a hasty scheme, the result of mere benevolent impulse, or that Chalmers did not take sufficient means to acquaint himself with the subject in all its aspects. He had already given expression to his ideas in the Edinburgh Review, and shown that the matter had engaged his most earnest study. Later, he made an elaborate journey through England in order to become personally acquainted with the places and the persons there most conversant with the subject. This visit embraced Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Gloucester, Wells, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth, London, Bury St. Edmunds, Bedford, and Nottingham. The journey occupied seven weeks, and in the course of it he came into contact with many of the public men who were interested in that class of subjects, conspicuous among whom were Lord Calthorpe and Mr. Fowell Buxton. The anti-slavery leaders, such as Mr. Z. Macaulay, Mr. Babington, and Mr. Clarkson, were generally sympathetic, but their energies were too much absorbed in the anti-slavery movement to admit of their throwing them into Dr. Chalmers's scheme. Indeed there were but few men of mark at that time interested in social questions. In his sense of the urgency of these questions, Dr. Chalmers was before his age. The more immediate object he had in view, that of gathering information, was sufficiently accomplished; but there is no indication that he made much progress in indoctrinating public men with his views. If ever he cherished the hope that a party would arise in England who should deal with pauperism on his lines, that hope was never fulfilled. Nor was it the privilege of Dr. Chalmers to find his experiment carried out thoroughly in other places, or even to witness its permanence in his own chosen locality. For several years it continued to prosper; in 1830, ten years after the commencement of the undertaking, he informed a committee of the House of Commons that the whole annual expense of St. John's pauperism for the preceding year had been £384; and in 1833, Mr. Tufnell, an English Poor-Law Commissioner, reported: 'The system has been attended with the most triumphant success; it is now in perfect operation, and not a doubt is expressed by its managers of its continuing to remain so.' Why, then, did the system not extend? Mainly, we believe, because Chalmers stood alone in that unrivalled energy which could not only conceive and plan the scheme and fight down its opponents, but likewise find competent agents, and inspire them with his own spirit in order to carry it into effect. It was a scheme that demanded a strong magnetic power on the part of its head to overcome the vis inertiæ of ordinary men, and send them into the field, and keep them in the field, vigilant, alert, unwearied, and hopeful. No doubt his principles were acted on to a certain extent in many parishes where there was no pressure of poverty;2 but we are not aware of any instance in which his plan was boldly made to do duty in the heart of a large city parish.

And why did the experiment not become permanent? Because two conditions under which it was established were not kept. One was, that a law of residence should be established between the parishes of the city, so that St. John's should not be burdened with a pauperism which it had done nothing to create. The other condition was, that so long as St. John's kept its own poor, it should be exempted from any assessment for the poor generally. Neither of these conditions was kept. Moreover, the expense for lunatics and exposed children grew at a much greater rate than the population, and a chapel of ease, expected to be a great help, turned out a failure. And at no time did the authorities of the city and the other parishes give the countenance that might have been expected to so successful and economical a scheme. The result was that, in 1837, the parish of St. John's lapsed into the general system of Glasgow. And later, after a vehement opposition from Dr. Chalmers, the present law, supporting the poor by assessment, was passed, which virtually put an end to the old paternal method of administration. It was easy to represent the plan of Dr. Chalmers as a niggardly system, which doled out mere driblets of charity, not sufficient to keep soul and body together. But it was forgotten that one of its main objects was to keep those subsidiary streamlets running which the affection of relatives and the compassion of neighbours supplied, as well as to encourage the independence, the industry, the thrift, and the sobriety which would have kept pauperism afar off. The undeniable result of the compulsory system has been an enormous addition to the cost of pauperism, and we fear, it must be added, a serious diminution of those good old Scottish habits which discouraged and prevented its growth. The increase of drinking has tended greatly not only to the growth, but to the unmanageableness of pauperism. If the drink-curse could be effectively dealt with, there would be no need for a poor-assessment; the churches of the country, as in time past, would be quite able, as they would be cordially willing, to support the poor.

In connection with the literary labours of Dr. Chalmers, reference has already been made to the publication of the Astronomical Discourses in 1817 and the Commercial Discourses in 1820. In addition to these, we have to note a volume of Miscellaneous Discourses published in 1819. While this volume was passing through the press, he expressed his belief that it would bring another nest of hornets about him, in the shape of angry critics and reviewers. 'It has been singularly the fate of my publications to be torn to pieces in the journals, but at the same time to be extensively bought and read.' An edition of seven thousand copies of the new volume was printed, but the result was the reverse of what he anticipated; the journals did not cut it up, nor did the public buy it up, with the same avidity as before. But even in this our day of vast editions, seven thousand copies of a volume of sermons would be an unprecedented undertaking.

A much more out-of-the-way publication, in the successive numbers, was the Civic and Christian Economy of Large Towns. This was most emphatically a Chalmerian project. It originated about the time of his appointment to St. John's, in his determination to set himself right against a calumnious charge that he was secretly aiming at a vacant chair in the University of Edinburgh, and ready to leave in the lurch the friends who were to aid him in the St. John's undertaking. Nothing could have hurt him more than a charge of underhand scheming. A fugitive pamphlet might have served his purpose; but a wider project took hold of him, of enlightening his congregation and the public generally from time to time on all that concerned the prosperous administration of the parish, and of large towns generally. The first number was published on 24th September 1819, and the succeeding numbers followed quarterly in unbroken succession until his removal to St. Andrews. We see again how far he was in advance of his age in the importance which he attached to a sound Christian economy of large cities. Seventy-eight years ago, large towns were far fewer than they are now, and of course much smaller, and they had scarcely begun to attract attention as a novel and difficult feature of our social condition. Yet Chalmers was all alive to their importance, and keenly pondered the measures necessary for their administration. And the result shows how true his forecast was. Not only had he thought out the problem, and arrived at its solution, but he had set to work practically to carry his plan into execution; and to this he now added the additional function of expounding and defending it in a quarterly publication. And all the while he was carrying on his unrivalled work in the pulpit; he was superintending all the machinery of the parish; he was cultivating most conscientiously the vineyard of his own soul; and he was interesting himself in all that concerned his friends, and in a thousand other objects and projects that were continually pressing upon his attention.

It is not easy to describe the earnest personal dealings with God which he maintained during the whole time of this busy Glasgow ministry. To those who can enter into this high phase of life, no aspect of his character is more remarkable. Sometimes the intensity of his thirst after a high spiritual life appears in his letters, but more directly in his diary. Immediately after the commencement of his Glasgow ministry, he formed an almost romantic friendship with a young man of the name of Smith, whom he looked on as his first convert. Alongside of this youth (as of Mr. Anderson at Kilmany) he placed himself as if they were on the same footing – fellow-learners, fellow-pilgrims, fellow-suppliants, equally in need of the grace and guidance of God. 'O God, do Thou look propitiously on our friendship. Do Thou purify it from all that is base, sordid, and earthly. May it be altogether subordinated to the love of Thee. May it be the instrument of great good to each of our souls. May it sweeten the path of our worldly pilgrimage: and after death has divided us for a season, may it find its final blessedness and consummation at the right hand of Thine everlasting throne.' During Mr. Smith's last illness he wrote to him at least once a day and saw him very often. Sometimes he would carry his manuscript to his room and write his sermon there. It was during an absence of Dr. Chalmers from Glasgow that he died. 'On my return, Thomas Smith was dead. I have been thrown into successive floods of tenderness.' In the prayer offered at his funeral, which has been preserved, he expressed the warmest thanks for all the grace given to this young man, and all the good his example and influence had done; and for himself as well as for others he prayed most fervently that they might all 'retire from the scene with hearts bettered, with minds resolved to forsake all for Christ, with affections weaned from this world and all its lying vanities.'

Very beautiful, too, was the outpouring of his feelings towards her who had become the partner of his life, his best beloved and most longed for on earth. Before she was his wife the prayer had risen, 'O my God, pour Thy best blessings on G. Give her ardent and decided Christianity; may she be the blessing and the joy of all around her; may her light shine while she lives; and when she dies, may it be a mere step – a transition in her march to a joyful eternity.' And afterwards he wrote to her: 'I have to request of my dear G. that she stir herself up to lay hold of God. Do act faith on the great truths of divine revelation. Do cry mightily to God for pardon in the name and for the sake of Christ; and, relying on the power of His blood and of His Spirit, commit yourself to Him in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator.'

How well worthy Mrs. Chalmers was of being the wife of such a man was best known to those who enjoyed the intimate friendship of the family. The late Dr. Smith of St. George's, Glasgow, who knew them intimately, from having been Dr. Chalmers's assistant, held her to be 'in all respects a helpmeet for her distinguished husband. She strengthened his hands and encouraged his heart in every labour of love. As a wife, a mother, a mistress, a friend, a disciple of Him who was meek and lowly in spirit, few are better entitled to affection's warmest tribute.'