Thomas Chalmers

But it was in the direct communings of his spirit with God that the depth of his humility and the ardour of his desires for a higher life were most apparent: —

'March 3rd, 1818. – Cannot say much of my walk with God. Do not burn with love to man. 5th. – Cannot yet record a close walk with God. Got impatient with a man who called on me and with – in the evening. O for a humbler and nearer course of devotedness to the will of my Saviour. 6th. – Have not yet attained such a walk with God that in looking to the day that is gone I can see anything like the general complexion of godliness. 7th. – Cannot yet speak to my walk with God. Will a quiet confidence in Christ not bring this about? 8th. – Not yet. O my God, help me. 9th. – Not yet. Trust that I am finding my way to Christ as the Lord my Strength. O guard me against the charms of human praise!'

At a later period he is equally humble and equally fervent.

'Feb. 24th, 1822. – Was greatly impressed with Erskine's talk about realising God every quarter of an hour. O heavenly Father, let me do it, and free me from the sense of guilt towards Thyself, and enable me rightly and rejoicingly to lift up my head, too, in the presence of mine enemies. 25th. – Disturbed, but feel great alleviation in habitual realisings of God, which I have had all this day. 28th. – O my Saviour, I can do nothing for Thee! April 7th. – It is humiliating amid the busy externals of religion to think how little my soul is taking up or making progress therein. 9th. – O my God, cause me to hold thee in constant remembrance. Restore energy to me, but let me never lose sight of my creatureship and my worthlessness. May I be pure in heart, and so see God. Loose all my bonds, and may I serve Thee with delight and thankfulness all my days.'

It is obvious to modern readers, though it was not to him, that when he was most depressed, a share of the depression was due to physical exhaustion. The number, the constancy, and the intensity of his labours could not but dull the faculties that soar highest of all, and call as a remedy for physical rest; while, like so many others in the like circumstances, he was laying all the blame on the wickedness or the earthliness of his heart.

With the members of his family he maintained the closest fellowship. When he heard of his father having had a paralytic stroke, he hurried to his bedside, and was present at the end. His affection and respect for him were unabated. 'My dear father is lovely in death. There is all the mildness of heaven upon his aged countenance.' Writing on the following Sunday to his much-loved sister Jane (Mrs. Morton), he says: 'It is truly affecting when the thought of former Sabbaths in Anster presents itself to my mind, and I think of it as the day he loved, and how the ringing of the bells was ever to him the note of joyful invitation to the house of God; the sight of the people going to and from the church – the interval – the everything connected with the Sabbath, bring the whole of my father's habits in lively recollection before me, and call forth a fresh excitement of tenderness.'

Towards his widowed mother he ever acted with the most tender and respectful affection. His letters to her were both frequent and regular, full of concern for her temporal and spiritual comfort, and manifesting that interest in all the members of the family which is so grateful to a mother's heart.

But the fullest outpourings of his heart, in his correspondence with friends at a distance, were to his sister, Mrs. Morton. Well could he assure 'my ever dearest Jane' – 'one of the purest and most delightful of all my feelings in this world of many distractions is the feeling of tenderness which I ever associate with you and all your concerns'; nor was he less sincere in saying that he could think of 'no more delightful scene of occasional rest and recreation than the neighbourhood where Providence had ordained her habitation, so rich in the beauties of nature, and still richer in the pieties and charities of the excellent people that lived in it.' To her he writes freely of all the events of his life, and still more of the vicissitudes of his Christian experience, and of the ever open refuge alike from domestic sorrows and spiritual infirmities which we have in the grace of our Saviour and in the love of our Father. All the more tenderly did he write when the deep shadow of bereavement fell upon her home; when a heart full of humility and somewhat disposed to despondency was liable to be swallowed up with over much sorrow, and to forget (as he reminded her) that even when the day is overcast and lowering, the sun is shining with undiminished lustre.

His eldest brother, James, who lived in London, was a hard subject to deal with. He seemed to shut himself up from all his family, and to stand in awe lest they should come to visit him. He had resolutely abstained from hearing his brother preach after he became famous. Hardly any case could have more convincingly verified the remark, how unlike brothers may be to each other. James had a kind of mania for balancing his personal accounts to the minutest fraction, and on one occasion worried himself for months in the endeavour to account for a penny, till a year after, when about to cross a toll-bridge, he remembered that he had crossed it a twelvemonth before, and forgot to enter the penny in his accounts. Yet Thomas bore with him patiently, and dealt with him affectionately but faithfully, evidently in the hope that he might change. And before the end he did become more amiable. In announcing his father's death, Thomas pathetically, and with an obvious practical design, remarked that if their beloved parent looked down upon them, 'nothing could afford his spirit a more delightful spectacle than that of his children seeking the Gospel which they had aforetime despised, praying for grace, and not ceasing to pray, till they had obtained.'

His own children were hardly old enough, while in Glasgow, for more than the ordinary fondness of a father. Yet we find him, in his absences from home, and when driven hither and thither by manifold engagements, writing, in imitation of print, those elaborate letters to his little daughter Anne, of which her future husband, Dr. Hanna, has given us a sample in the second volume of the Life(p. 410). One cannot but admire the extreme neatness and clearness of the printing, a memorable contrast to the hieroglyphics he used to dash off on ordinary occasions, which were so illegible that, in his early days, when a letter came from him, his father suggested that it had better be kept till he should himself arrive to read it for them. Once, in the absence of Mrs. Chalmers, when he had been constituted head nurse, an elder and a deacon, on calling in the evening, found him squatting on the floor and playing at marbles with the children. And nothing would serve him but that they should join in the game.

The ever-warm affection of Dr. Chalmers for all the members of his family was the more remarkable that he was so rapidly extending the circle of his friends, receiving so much notice from the most distinguished men and women of the country, and carrying on so voluminous a correspondence with many of them. Among those whose acquaintance he made in his Glasgow period we may note a few. There was James Montgomery, Moravian and poet, whom he saw at Sheffield; whom he greatly perplexed when he told him that when at the Moravian settlement of Fulneck, near Leeds, he had invited the Scotch lads to the inn, and found there were no fewer than 'saxtain or savantain of them'; but whom he charmed no less by the admiration he expressed for the Moravian missions, and by his undertaking – what he more than fulfilled – to raise £500 for them in the course of the year. Another new friend was Mr. Wilberforce, for whose character, talents, and work he had unbounded respect, but who amazed him by the singularity of his movements – 'he positively danced and whisked about like a squirrel.' He had an important correspondence with him, beseeching him to support the repeal of the Corn Bill, which he held to be the great danger to the country. There was the Gladstone family at Liverpool, with whom he was greatly taken – William could then have been but a boy of six (A.D. 1817). Legh Richmond visited him at Glasgow, and Chalmers says, 'I had most congenial talk with him, and am greatly humbled by the very superior attainments of other Christians.' When Edward Irving, in hopeless disappointment, was about to leave the country, it was Chalmers that arrested him, having formed such an opinion of his pulpit gifts and noble character that he engaged him as his assistant. We have already noticed some of the friends he met when engaged in his poor-law inquiry; to these we may add Robert Hall, the cleverest man in conversation he ever knew, but surpassed by John Foster in the depth and grandeur of his thoughts. With Mr. Malthus, too, he had much congenial converse. About this time he found a close ally in Mr. Douglas, the proprietor of Cavers, where he had been assistant in his youth, who became so well known as a thoughtful Christian writer, and who placed more than one £500 in his hands to assist him in his schemes for St. John's. Among other things that Mr. Douglas owed to Chalmers's example and influence was the habit of systematic working. Mr. Erskine of Linlathen was another Scottish layman for whom he had remarkable regard, his spirituality of mind being to Dr. Chalmers most impressive and stimulating. Mr. Erskine's work on the Freeness of the Gospel, though looked on suspiciously by some very orthodox persons, was to Dr. Chalmers very delightful. Afterwards Mr. Erskine adopted some views with which he could not sympathise. With Lord and Lady Elgin he appears to have been on terms of most intimate friendship. Mr. Colquhoun of Kellermont may be added to the list of distinguished Scottish friends; and, besides these, there were his coadjutors in the St. John's undertaking, the members of his congregation, and nearly all the men of mark and Christian worth in the community of Glasgow.

His manner of life in Glasgow was as simple and regular as was possible for one so full of occupation and so eagerly sought after by all sorts of people. As a rule, the forenoon was set apart for reading and composition, and no one was allowed to intrude on him then. But sometimes two or three rooms would be filled with persons waiting for him, and it was remarked that, however overwhelmed, he had a kindly smile and greeting for all. The afternoon was devoted to pastoral work; then, if possible, he had a walk in the Botanic Gardens or elsewhere; dinner was at half-past four, and very often he had some public engagement in the evening. In the course of this busy day he found time to read aloud to his wife Milner's Church History or some other such book. His hospitality was boundless. Breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper, almost every day but Sunday, brought a succession of guests; for, apart from his own large circle, hardly a stranger visited Glasgow who did not bring an introduction, and whom he did not invite to his house. His conversation generally was singularly genial, racy, and lively; whoever was in his society was charmed. Formal dinner-parties he held in great abhorrence as a waste of time and worse, and very seldom did he join them. For occasional recreation, his favourite resort was his native Fifeshire; but in the suburbs of Glasgow and other parts of the country he had dear friends with whom he delighted to spend an occasional day or more. And, though no man had more respect for the poor, or more pleasure in his intercourse with them, he had an especial delight in the society of families of the highest rank, when refinement was blended with Christian worth, and the obligations of high station were conscientiously and gracefully fulfilled.

Most memorable in the history of Glasgow and in the history of Scottish Christianity were the eight years of labour spent by Dr. Chalmers in that city. Of individual cases of conversion the number was beyond reckoning; beginning with his dear friend, Thomas Smith, and ending with a Camlachie weaver – a reckless infidel till Dr. Chalmers came across him, but won by the simplicity and earnest sympathy which he showed in weekly visits during the months when he was dying of consumption. And the circumstances of his various converts were very different. The thoughtless young officer, who entered his church with the crowd as he would have entered the theatre; the fashionable lady, whose curiosity led her to hear the great popular orator; the busy merchant, with no thought nor desire beyond material things; the aspiring student, bent only on literary distinction – each person, arrested and brought to Christ by the force of his appeals, represented the many classes from among which, as Dr. Hanna tells us, it was the privilege of Chalmers to gather recruits for the Kingdom of Heaven.

But more than that: under Chalmers the tide of public sentiment turned decisively to evangelical religion. Before he came, evangelical preaching had been looked on as a combination of sour fanaticism and weak sentimentalism; under his preaching it attained its true rank and glory as the very essence of the Gospel message. Before his time, as the population of the city grew from year to year, thousands had been quietly allowed to fall away from all Christian observances, and to form a community of paganism, leavening the city with carelessness and corruption. It was his powerful voice that roused attention to the evil and the danger, and organised the machinery best fitted to grapple with it. Previous to his time, even the most earnest of the ministers in their week-day ministrations had seldom gone beyond their own congregations, or thought much of the careless and godless families around them; it was Chalmers that, by the emphasis he laid on the territorial method, brought into operation that system of aggression which affords the only hope of arresting and reclaiming the outcast mass. Before his time infidelity was doing its deadly work among the more intellectual and cultivated classes, and the spirit of indifference was widely spread even where a formal profession of religion continued; it was in a large measure the influence of Chalmers that restored a living faith in Christ and in redemption, and aroused concern in that class of society for the life to come.

Still more remarkably, perhaps, had Dr. Chalmers succeeded in inspiring men and women in Glasgow, young men very emphatically, with the spirit of Christian service. His 'agency,' as he called it, resembled the followers of Saul, 'a band of men whose hearts God had touched.' In after years they formed the very élite of the earnest Christian laymen of the West; and to this day, though all of them have passed away, their fervour and devotedness are still found in some of their children and children's children.

Nor had he failed to secure the esteem and affection of the great community of Glasgow. They honoured him personally, and they were proud of his greatness and fame. They were ready with their purses to support whatever scheme he deemed it necessary to set on foot. A more attached or warm-hearted company could not have been found anywhere than the three hundred and forty friends who, ere he left, sat down together at the largest dinner-party that had ever assembled in the city in honour of a single individual.

Why, then, did he abandon the field where his labours had been so eminently successful?

Simply because these labours had grown to such multiplicity and variety as to demand an expenditure of bodily and mental energy that could not be continued.

His incumbency had lasted during eight years of his prime – from thirty-five to forty-three. Happily he had not been prostrated by any severe illness, and the systematic regularity of his life, with the attention he had given to diet, sleep, and exercise, had kept him from breaking down. But who that thinks of all he was doing, the problems with which he was grappling, the schemes he was working, the constant demands of the pulpit, the incessant labours of the parish, the use he was making of the press, the toil of his correspondence, amounting on an average to fifty letters a week, the perpetual turmoil in which he was living, amid crowds of visitors, and all the other fruits of unrivalled popularity, as well as the demands of an increasing and growing family, and his desire to keep up friendly intercourse with his brothers and sisters – can fail to see that the indefinite continuance of such a mode of life was more than could be thought of? Had it continued much longer, a breakdown was inevitable. Very pathetically he wrote to one of his most intimate friends, Mrs. Coutts, of the constant feeling of exhaustion which at times was like to overbear him altogether. Besides, Chalmers was coming to see that through the press there opened to him a way of spreading his views and extending his usefulness which was as full of promise as it was agreeable to himself. But as a minister of Glasgow he could not do through the press what, with a little more leisure, he could fairly expect to accomplish.

And then the prospect of an academic chair was very congenial. It had been his earliest dream while the world was all before him, and it had not yet lost its charm. The tenacity of his affections was very remarkable. Towards the close of his life we shall have occasion to note the long-continued vitality of a strong but unavowed attachment which had sprung up in his boyhood, and it is no wonder that to such a nature the early vision of an academic chair continued to retain its brightness and its fascination. Once and again he had set it aside when it seemed to be within his grasp, because his Glasgow experiments and arrangements were not ripe enough for the change. Now, when the Glasgow work was fairly consolidated; when the bustle and pressure of Glasgow life had become almost unbearable; when, through the press, the prospect had opened of impregnating not Glasgow only, but the whole empire with his views; and when his own Alma Mater had sent him a unanimous invitation to fill a chair which formed a connecting-link between philosophy and religion, – it is not wonderful that he made up his mind to the wrench that was to sever him from his Glasgow friends, and resolved to accept a chair in the university with which his earliest memories were connected, and in which he could look forward to a career of peace and comfort to himself, and great usefulness to his church and country.

CHAPTER IV

ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY

1823-1828

On the 9th November 1823 Dr. Chalmers preached his farewell sermon at Glasgow, and on Friday the 14th he delivered his introductory lecture at St. Andrews. He had not a single day of rest between the toils of the office he laid down and those of the office he took up. Four of his most esteemed Glasgow friends had accompanied him to St. Andrews in token of gratitude for the past and good-will for the future. At first Dr. Chalmers was alone, and for a time he was the guest of his old friend, Professor Duncan. It was not till the beginning of 1824 that Mrs. Chalmers and his children joined him.

St. Andrews had been familiar to him from his boyhood, and its historical associations had dawned on him gradually, but with a firm hold, as such things usually impress boys. Its traditions went back to a remote antiquity. Fordun's legend of the Greek saint, Regulus, being ordered by the Lord to carry the bones of St. Andrew into the 'north-west corner of the earth,' was too obviously the offspring of superstition to be much regarded; yet it seemed to indicate that the 'East Nook' was one of the earliest seats of Christianity in Scotland. In pre-Reformation times St. Andrews had been the headquarters of the Roman Church, and, under successive archbishops, Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart had been burnt at the stake for their noble testimony to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Before their day, Peter Craw, a Bohemian, and thus of the same stock as the Moravian Church for which Dr. Chalmers always had a very special regard, and other witnesses for the truth had perished in the flames. It was here that John Knox first opened his mouth as a preacher; hither, too, he retired for a time at the close of his life, and preached in the church when danger threatened him in the metropolis. Here, also, Andrew and James Melville, Robert Rollok, Robert Bruce, Robert Blair, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Halyburton, and many other familiar names in the history of the country, had gathered wisdom as students, or imparted it as professors, or as ministers of the Gospel. The first university in Scotland had been set up at St. Andrews, and men like Buchanan and Melville had made it illustrious by their learning. Nor was it very long since Chalmers himself had found the powers of his intellect awakened as he sat in its mathematical class-room. It must have been with no ordinary feelings that he returned as a professor to his Alma Mater, and girded himself for the duty of influencing its students; not, however, in the spirit or with the aims of his early years, but under the influence of those intense evangelical convictions that, twelve years before, had revolutionised his soul.

During the first session, in preparing his lectures, he was truly from hand to mouth; to be but a few days in advance of the time for their delivery was all that he could achieve. His second session, 1824-25, was regarded as the most brilliant in his academic career. The number of students was more than double what it had ever been in former years, and the enthusiasm was intense. Chalmers was well aware of the fear entertained in some quarters that, amid the blaze of his popular eloquence, he would not be able to attain to an academic level in the more solid qualities of thinking and exposition of thought, appropriate to a university. But in point of fact there was more than enough of solid thought and ingenious speculation in his lectures to do away with any such impression. Eloquent they often were, nor did he scorn the aid of imagination and illustration in handling the topics of his course; but his main object was to exercise the minds of his students, and to set them thinking upon his themes.

At the very outset, he disabused his class of the idea that moral philosophy was the same as mental philosophy. Moral philosophy was the science of ethics, the science of duty, and, in his view, it ought to embrace duty in all its relations, and to make use of all the light that could be brought to bear on that high theme. In particular – and here was the peculiar feature of his course – he desired to make the fullest use of what had been communicated on this subject by supernatural revelation. He justified this method of proceeding by an illustration. If natural philosophy were divided into two courses, and if one of them should relate to terrestrial objects and such parts of astronomy as might be prosecuted without the telescope, it would be strange indeed were the professor to make no allusion to that instrument, and to ignore, or even repudiate, all the light which it threw on the general scheme of things. So also, in investigating the science of ethics, it would be an extraordinary thing if no use were made of the Christian Revelation, supposing that its authenticity could be established as a revelation from heaven. Natural theology would form an important branch of his subject; but, in its very nature, natural theology was an incomplete and inadequate science. Following the light of nature, it proved the insufficiency of that light; it created the thirst and the longing for more light than it could itself supply. This further light revelation brought in. He held moral philosophy to be the study that ought immediately to precede that of theology; without theology it was incomplete. It would be no part of his course to set forth at full length the evidences for the Christian Revelation, but he would give a general view of them; he would show at least that there was a primâ facie presumption in favour of the divine origin of Christianity; and, therefore, that it was consistent with the principles of the Baconian philosophy to make use of its light in dealing with the great questions of moral obligation.

In fact, Chalmers in this matter took ground precisely opposite to that more recently taken by one of his countrymen – the munificent founder of the Gifford Lectures. According to Gifford, it becomes us to investigate the whole subject of natural theology and moral obligation without the slightest reference to any alleged supernatural revelation. This he held to be the sound, impartial, unprejudiced course of true philosophy, and the best way of attaining to simple, absolute truth. In the view of others, this is like the act of a man blindfolding himself before entering on a difficult investigation; or of a man walking in sparks of his own kindling, while, if he chose, he might be at work under the bright influence of electric light.