5 
 


 
 MEMOIRS 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. LL.D. 
 
 
 
 BY HIS SON-IN-LAW, 
 
 THE EEV. WILLIAM HANNA, LL.D. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO. 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON. 
 MDCCCLIV.
 
 BDI9BURRB : T. CONSTABLE, PRIKTEB TO DBB MAJESTY.
 
 StacK 
 
 5015610 
 
 v.-i; 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FRONTISPIECE EHGBAVIXG FROM A DAGUBRRBOTTPB OF MB. STEEL'S BUST OP 
 
 DR. CHALMERS. 
 PREPACK, ......... vii. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Birthplace Genealogy Childhood College Life Licence, . . . 1-19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Family History First Sermon Two Sessions at Edinburgh Professors Playfair, 
 Hope, Stewart, and Robison Assistantship at CaTers Mathematical Assistant- 
 ship at St Andrews Visit to Edinburgh, ...... 20-47 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 First Summer at Kilmany A Winter of Conflict and Triumph at St. Andrews, . 48-60 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Chemical Lectures repeated at St. Andrews Presbyterial Interference Candidate 
 for the Natural Philosophy Chair at St. Andrews, and for the Mathematical 
 Chair at Edinburgh First Publication Chemical Lectures at Kilmany and 
 Cupar Double Commission in the Volunteers Incident at Kirkcaldy His 
 Father's Character His Brother George's Death, ..... 61-73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 First Visit to London, . . . . - . . . 74-87 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 Publication of an Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources 
 Death of his Sister Barbara, , . . . . . 88-101 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 Winter at Woodsmuir First Speech In the General Assembly Becomes Contri- 
 butor to the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia Early Religions Opinions Death of Mr. 
 Ballardie Severe Illness, and its Effects, ..... 102-112 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Effort after a Pure and Heavenly Morality, ..... 113-141 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Gas Tubes Garden Beds Hospitality of the Manse Supremacy of the Imagina- 
 tion over the Senses Preparations for the Article Christianity Correspondence 
 with Dr. Andrew Thomson Contributions to the Christian Instructor Journal 
 of 1811, .'"."'. 142-175 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Correspondence with Mr. Jaraes Anderson, . . ..-. . . 176-195
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. PAOR 
 
 Regular and Earnest Study of the Bible Formation of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society Constitution of the Eilmany Bible Association The Accumula- 
 tion of Littles Journal of 1812 His Marriage, ..... 196-235 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Edinburgh Review on Missions in India The Serampore Missionaries Dr. 
 Carey Sermon at Dundee Visit of Andrew Fuller Experiment of Extempore 
 Preaching Journal of 1813, . . . . . . . 236-261 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 Family Correspondence, . ; . ^ . . . . . 262-276 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Publication of " The Evidences and Authority of the Christian Revelation" Pro- 
 gress of Opinion as to the Internal Evidences of Christianity Hume's Essay on 
 Miracles Origin of his Views on Pauperism Pamphlet on "The Influence of 
 Bible Societies on the Temporal Necessities of the Poor" Review of Cuvier's 
 " Theory of the Earth" The Indefinite Antiquity of the Globe reconcilable with 
 the Mosaic Narrative Contribution to the Eclectic Review on the Moravians 
 as Missionaries, ......... 277-296 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Appearances in the Ecclesiastical Courts Presbytery of Cupar Alterations and 
 Repairs upon Manses Synod of Fife Case of Mr. Feme Speech before the 
 General Assembly, . . . . ' . . . . . 297-304 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Ministry at Kilmany Its First Seven Years The Change The Sick-room The 
 Visitation The Examination The Class for the Young The Pulpit The Result, 305-327 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 Seven Lives saved by Mr. Honey His Funeral Sermon at Bendochy Deputation 
 from Glasgow The Canvass Dr. Jonei's Letter The Election Farewell Ser- 
 mon at Kilmany, ......... 328-347 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 First Sermon in Glasgow Appearance and Manner in the Pulpit Extract from 
 Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk His Alarm as to this Visit His Account of it 
 when over Admission and Introduction as Minister of the Tron Church Sor- 
 rowful Remembrances of Kilmany Visit to Burntisland and Kirkcaldy Address 
 to the Inhabitants of Kilmany Effect of Mrs. Chalmers's Return with him to 
 Glasgow Sight of Normanlaw from the Calton Hill Letters to Mr. Edie and to 
 Mrs. Morton Description of Glasgow Annoyances, '. ' . . . 348-366 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Smith Singular Attachment to and Correspondence with him His 
 Illness and Death, . . .* : '',.-* :L :* . . . . 367-394 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 The Degree of Doctor of Divinity conferred Renewed Agitation on the Subject of 
 Pluralities Sermon before the Society of the Sons of the Clergy in Edinburgh 
 Debate in the General Assembly of 1816 on Union of Offices Anecdote of Dr. 
 M'Crie Remark of Lord Jeffrey alter hearing Dr. Chalmers's Speech Sermon 
 before the Lord High Commissioner, . % . . , ' . -. 395-403
 
 CONTENTS. V 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. PAOB 
 
 Excursion in Fifeshire Visit to Mr. Brown at Inverkeithing Walk by the Sea- 
 Beach at Elie Complaints of the Glasgow Weavers Society at Anstruther A 
 Two Hundred Year Ancestor Kilmany Re-visited, . '''. . 404-413 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 First Delivery of the Astronomical Discourses Scene in the Trongate Publication 
 of these Discourses Their Extraordinary Popularity Testimonies of Hazlitt and 
 Canning Foster's Review Visit to London Letter from James Montgomery, 
 Esq., of Sheffield Sermons in the Metropolis London Popularity Anecdotes 
 of Mr. Canning, Mr. Wilberforce, &c. The Journey Home Letter to his Sister 
 Letter from Robert Hall, ........ 414-423 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 First Visitation of his Parish Its Methods and Results Checks and Interruptions 
 The Great Question at the Town Hospital The Christian Ministry Secularized 
 His public Denunciations of the Evils of this System Speech at the Anni- 
 versary of the Bible Society Addition to the Eldership Sabbath-school Society 
 The Question of Punishment Origin of Local Sabbath- schools Dr. Chalmers's 
 Account of their first Institution and Effects His Defence of Sabbath-schools, . 430-446 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 The Vacancy at Stirling The Appointment Offered and Refused Articles on Pau- 
 perism in the Edinburgh Review Excursion to Anstruther Sudden Recall 
 Sermon on the Death of the Princess Charlotte Reason of its Publication 
 Argument on Behalf of Religious Establishments English and Scottish System 
 of Pauper Management Compared Highest Exhibitions of his Power as a Pulpit 
 Orator Singular Scenes in the College Chapel and in the Tron Church Extracts 
 from his Journal Instance of his Usefulness His own Estimate of his Popularity, 447-472 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 His Father's Declining Health Summer Months at Anstruther Daily Life in 
 Glasgow Visit of Professor Pictet and M. Vernot ; of Mr. Noel and Mr. Grey 
 Visitation of his Parish The Rev. Legh Richmond Mr. Cunninghame of 
 Lainshaw Meeting of the Jewish Society Mr. Erskine of Linlathen His 
 Father's last Hlness and Death Kerrey's and Newton's Works The Doctrine 
 of Imputed Righteousness Professors Leslie and Brown Lord Elgin and Party 
 Sermon at Falkirk Kind Attentions at Grangemouth Plum-Jelly Operation 
 Death of Dr. Balfour Panegyric upon his Character Death of the Queen 
 Tribute to her Worth, . . . . . . . . 473-504 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Publication of a Volume of Sermons Translation to the Parish of St. John's 
 Visit to Dunblane Attempts to extricate himself from the exciting System of 
 Pauper Management Proposed as Candidate for the Natural Philosophy Chair 
 in Edinburgh Agitation in Glasgow Anxieties of Dr. Chalmers First Number 
 of the " Civic and Christian Economy of Large Towns" Opening of the Church 
 of St. John's Decision of the Magistrates and Council in his favour Final Ex- 
 trication from Difficulties, and Commencement of Parochial Operations in St. 
 John's, . . . .'.... . . 505-522
 
 Vl CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. PAG* 
 
 Dr. Chalmers's Hereditary Attachment to the Old Parochial Economy of Scotland 
 His Ministry in Glasgow exclusively Parochial Extent and Condition of the 
 Parish of St. John's Its Educational Necessities Mode adopted for Meeting 
 these Necessities Erection of two School Fabrics, and partial Endowment of four 
 Schoolmasters Educational Fruits of the St. John's Ministry Explanatory Ad- 
 dress delivered at the Opening of the Macfarlane Street Schools, . . . 523-536 
 
 CHAPTER XXVHI. 
 
 Correspondence with Mr. Wilberforce during the Winter 1819-20 Description of 
 the State of Glasgow during the period of the Radical Riots Suggestions by Dr. 
 Chalmers as to Political Measures for ameliorating the Condition of the People 
 Influence of the Religious Element, ...... 537-556 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Illness of his Brother Alexander Visits to Blochairn, Strathblane, and Glenn nart 
 Parochial Lodgings Ministerial Activity The Rev. Edward Irving His 
 Agency and their Operations Instances of his Playful Familiarity The Dinner 
 in the Vestry Anecdotes of Mr. Irving and Dr. Bell Address to the Elders, . 557-575 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The St. John's Experiment of Pauper Management Conditions under which it was 
 undertaken Directions to Deacons Mode of Conducting it Illustrative In- 
 stances The Results Alleged Explanations of its Success Testimony of Dr. 
 Macfarlane Report by Mr. Tuffnell Reasons of its Relinquishment, . . 576-592 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Publication of a Volume of Sermons, and of the " Christian and Civic Economy 
 of Large Towns" Address to his Agency in October 1821 Visit of King George 
 IV. to Scotland in August 1822 The Landing at Leith Pier Enthusiastic Loyalty 
 of Dr. Chalmers Tour through England in Search of Information as to the State 
 and Prospects of its Poor-law Administration Intercourse with Lord Calthorpe, 
 Mr. Wiberforce, Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Slalthus, &c. Sudden Death of Mr. Brown 
 Return to Glasgow, . . . . i j.'\ f ..l .-.-... . . 593-630 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Church in Edinburgh Offered and Refused Correspondence with Principal Nicoll 
 as to the Vacant Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews 
 Acceptance of that Chair Letter of Explanation to his Agency Erection of a 
 Chapel of Ease in the Parish of St. John's Appearances before the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts Speech in the General Assembly of 1821 on the Theological Education 
 of Candidates for the Holy Ministry The Table Controversy Case of Plurality 
 of Offices Induction of Principal Macfarlane as one of the Ministers of Glasgow, 631-656 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers in the Bosom of his Family in Correspondence with his Relatives 
 in General Society in Secret before God, . N . . . . . 657-708 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Farewell Discourses in St. John's and the Chapel of Ease Spiritual Fruits of the 
 Ministry in Glasgow Estimate of its General Effects Departure from Glasgow 
 Installation and Introductory Lecture at St. Andrews, .... 709-723
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE reader will be pleased at finding that in so many of the 
 following pages Dr. Chalmers becomes his own biographer. I 
 have done little more than select, arrange, and weave into a 
 continuous narrative those materials which his family already 
 possessed, or which friends and correspondents have kindly pre- 
 sented. In doing so, I was relieved of one difficulty, frequently 
 the greatest with which a relative who undertakes a biography 
 has to contend : there has been no conflict between what was 
 due to truth, and what was due to affection or to relationship. 
 The nearer that Dr. Chalmers was approached, and the more 
 that was seen of him in the retired and most familiar scenes of 
 life, the deeper was the love and veneration which he awakened ; 
 the more minute, exact, and faithful in all respects the narrative 
 of his life can be rendered, it will only excite the more affec- 
 tionate admiration, while more fully accomplishing the still 
 higher object of making his life subservient, in representation, 
 to the high Christian ends to which it was consecrated in act. 
 
 I have to offer my most grateful acknowledgments to DR. 
 IRVING, PROFESSOR DUNCAN, DR. WATSON, MR. BRUCE, PRIN- 
 CIPAL CUNNINGHAM, and all those friends who, by supplying
 
 viii "PREFACE. 
 
 materials or advice, have aided me in a work which, however 
 imperfectly executed, may, it is hoped, confer some benefit on 
 the Church and on the world. 
 
 I cannot refrain, also, from seizing the present opportunity of 
 saying how gratifying it has been to Dr. Chalmers's Trustees 
 that the Copyright of all his Writings, as well as of these 
 Memoirs, should have become the property of one who, beyond 
 the commercial interest which he must necessarily take in them, 
 cherishes so hallowed a remembrance of their Author, and is 
 animated by so strong a desire that those great Christian prin- 
 ciples, which it is their chief object to inculcate and recommend, 
 should have power and prevail. 
 
 W. H.
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., LLD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTHPLACE GENEALOGY CHILDHOOD COLLEGE LIFE LICENCE. 
 
 Two hundred years ago the small borough towns which stud 
 the south-east coast of the county of Fife were flourishing sea- 
 ports, their numerous dyeworks and maltsteeps and saltpans 
 giving token of a busy internal industry, while they carried on 
 a large and profitable trade with Holland, France, and Spain. 
 Anstruther, one of these towns, had not reached its highest point 
 of prosperity when James Melville was its minister ; and yet he 
 tells us, that when, in 1588, a public collection was made for 
 the French Refugee Protestants, 500 merks one-twentieth part 
 of what the whole of Scotland contributed was raised in An- 
 struther and the three small landward parishes which at that 
 time were annexed to it.* The union, first of the two crowns, 
 and afterwards of the two kingdoms, opened up the intercourse 
 with France to Scotland's wealthier neighbour, and cut off that 
 coasting contraband trade, as well as that exporting of malt and 
 salt to England, in which Anstruther and the other Fifeshire 
 seaports were extensively engaged. Under the many depressing 
 influences to which, during the course of last century, they were 
 subjected, their commercial prosperity waned away almost to 
 extinction. They were, however, destined, during that very 
 period, to win a far higher distinction than they lost ; for to 
 
 * See Autobiography and Diary of James Melville, p. 265. 
 VOL. I. * A
 
 2 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 three of them, and these lying within a few miles of each other 
 along the coast, belongs the honour of having given birth to 
 three of the most distinguished of Scotsmen ; Kirkcaldy having 
 been the birthplace of Dr. Adam Smith, Largo of Sir John Leslie, 
 and Anstruther of the subject of this Memoir. 
 
 With the county of Fife Dr. Chalmers's family had for some 
 generations been connected. His great-grandfather, Mr. James 
 Chalmers, son of John Chalmers, laird of Pitmedden, was ordained 
 as minister of the parish of Elie in the year 1701. In the fol- 
 lowing year he married Agnes Merchiston, daughter of the 
 Episcopal clergyman of Kirkpatrick-Juxta, who had been ejected 
 from his living at the period of the Revolution. Undistinguished 
 by any superiority of talent, the simple kindliness of Mr. Chal- 
 mers's disposition endeared him to his parishioners, and there 
 still lingers in the neighbourhood a remembrance of the familiar 
 and affectionate intercourse which was carried on between mini- 
 ster and people. What the minister himself wanted in energy was 
 amply made up by the vigorous activity of his wife. Brought up 
 in the school of adversity, she had learned the lesson of a most 
 thrifty economy. The estate of Radernie, purchased by her sav- 
 ings out of a slender income, which had to bear the burden of 
 twelve children's education, still remains in the possession of one 
 of her descendants, while in the after history of more than one 
 member of her family, the care with which she had watched over 
 their infancy and education brought forth its pleasant fruits. 
 Her eldest daughter married Mr. Thomas Kay, minister of Kil- 
 renny, a parish immediately adjoining to Anstruther. With the 
 family at Kilrenny Manse, the family of Dr. Chalmers's father 
 continued to maintain the closest intimacy. It was to Mrs. Kay's 
 son-in-law, Dr. Adamson of St. Andrews, that Dr. Chalmers was 
 himself indebted for his presentation to the living of Kilmany. 
 
 Mr. Chalmers's eldest son, the Rev. John Chalmers, D.D., suc- 
 ceeded his father as minister at Elie, but was afterwards translated 
 to the parish of Kilconquhar. He inherited his mother's talent, 
 and in his day was distinguished both as an eloquent preacher 
 and an able and zealous advocate of that policy which then 
 predominated within the Churoii of Scotland. Mr. Chalmers's 
 second son, Mr. James Chalmers, having married Barbara An- 
 derson of Easter Anstruther, settled in that town as a dyer, ship- 
 owner, and general merchant. He was succeeded in a prosperous 
 business by his second son, Mr. John Chalmers, who, in 1771, 
 married Elizabeth Hall, the daughter of a wine-merchant at
 
 GENEALOGY. 3 
 
 Crail. They had a very numerous family nine sons and five 
 daughters of whom one only died in childhood. The follow- 
 ing table is extracted from Mr. Chalmers's family record : 
 
 JOHN CHALMERS and ELIZABETH HALL were married cm the 20th August 1771. 
 Children by gaid marriage : 
 
 Born. Baptized. 
 
 1. James, June 11, 1772, June 14. 
 
 2. Lucy, NOT. 9, 1773, Nov. 14. 
 
 3. Barbara, June 21, 1775, June 25. 
 
 4. George, April 1, 1777, April 6. 
 
 5. William, Aug. 31, 1778, Sept 6. 
 
 6. Thomas, Mar. 17, 1780, Mar. 19. 
 
 7. Isabel, Dec. 13, 1781, Dec. 16. 
 
 Born. Baptized. 
 
 8. David, May 31, 1783, June 1. 
 
 9. John, May 19, 1785, May 22. 
 
 10. Helen, Aug. 31, 1786, Sept 3. 
 
 11. Jean, June 29, 1788, same day. 
 
 12. Patrick, June 16, 1790, June 20. 
 
 13. Charles, Jan. 16, 1792, Jan. 22. 
 
 14. Alexander, April 9, 1794, April 13. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers, the sixth child and fourth son in this crowded 
 household, was born at Anstruther on Friday the 17th March 
 1780. His father announced the birth to his brother-in-law, 
 Mr. Hall, then resident in London, in the following terms : 
 
 " ANSTRUTHER, March 21, 1780. 
 
 "DEAR BROTHER, I daresay this will await you in London, 
 and I am happy that by it I can convey to you the agreeable 
 intelligence of my dear Elizabeth being safely delivered of a 
 fine boy on the morning of Friday the 17th. The little fellow 
 is named Tom I wish him as good a man as his name-father.* 
 I can write with more spirit this day than I could have done for 
 two days past. On Friday and Saturday my poor wife seemed 
 very easy and doing well, but having got some cold it was 
 attended with a feverishness on Sabbath which alarmed us a 
 good deal ; but I desire to bless His great name in whose hand 
 is the life of every creature, and of whose mercy we may sing 
 every day, that the fever is quite gone, and though she did not 
 sleep very well last night, I hope the Almighty will recover 
 her to serve Him, and be helpful to bring up her own children 
 to be His servants after we have served our generation according 
 to His will ; which will, may it be the rule of yours and mine, 
 and all belonging to us, to live agreeably thereunto. . . . I 
 conclude with assuring you that I am, dear Brother, yours 
 affectionately, JOHN CHALMERS." 
 
 When two years old Dr. Chalmers was committed to the care 
 of a nurse, whose cruelty and deceitfulness haunted his memory 
 through life. In his latest years, and with a feeling of indig- 
 nation as fresh as if he were describing an event of yesterday, 
 he used to tell how inhumanly she treated him, and how, when 
 
 * Mr. Thomas Ballardie married to Jlr. John Chalmers's sister.
 
 4 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 his roused spirit could bear no more, and he was about to run 
 and reveal his wrongs, she stopped him, and petted him, and 
 poured over him. a "perfect flood of affected tenderness," ex- 
 torting from him a promise that he would not tell, and then, 
 safe behind the extorted promise, treated him worse than ever. 
 The promise was never broken ; yet never could he forget the 
 injustice of its exaction, or the cruelties of its abuse. And it 
 had another effect the treatment to which he was thus exposed 
 besides that of testing his own truthfulness, and enkindling a 
 strong feeling of indignation, it sent him at that early age to 
 school, to which he went of his own accord, when only three years 
 of age ; not drawn by his love of learning, but driven by the fear 
 of domestic persecution. Neither of his parents had much time to 
 devote to the personal instruction of their children. The young 
 scholar was left to imbibe as he would, or as he could the 
 instructions of the schoolroom. These were not of a kind either 
 to engender early habits of industry, or to quicken an early 
 thirst for knowledge. The parish schoolmaster, Mr. Bryce, had 
 a fair enough reputation as a Latin scholar, but his days as an 
 effective teacher were over when Dr. Chalmers became his pupil. 
 His sight, which afterwards he totally lost, was beginning to fail. 
 Not so, however, his thirst for flogging, which grew with the 
 decline, and survived the loss of vision. Eager in the pursuit, 
 the sightless tyrant used to creep stealthily along behind a row 
 of his little victims, listening for each indication given by word 
 or motion of punishable offence, and ready, soon as ever the 
 centre of emanation was settled, to inflict the avenging blow. 
 But the quicksighted urchins were too cunning for him, and soon 
 fell upon a plan to defraud him of his prey. In the row opposite 
 to that behind which the master took his furtive walk, one of the 
 boys was set to watch, and whenever, by sudden stop or uplifted 
 arm, any token of the intention to strike appeared, a preconcerted 
 sign given quickly to the intended victim enabled him to slip at 
 once but noiselessly out of his place, so that, to Mr. Bryce's 
 enraged discomfiture, and to the no small amusement of his 
 scholars, his best-aimed blows fell not unfrequently upon the 
 hard unflinching desk. Though he continued for many years 
 afterwards to preside, Mr. Bryce had furnished himself with an 
 assistant, Mr. Daniel Ramsay, afterwards parochial schoolmaster 
 at Corstorphine, to whose care all the younger children were 
 in the first instance consigned. The assistant was as easy as his 
 superior was harsh. As teachers, they were about equally ineffi-
 
 SCHOOLROOM AT ANSTRUTHER. 5 
 
 cient. Mr. Ramsay sought distinction in his profession by 
 becoming the author of a treatise on "Mixed Schools." His 
 work won for him but little reputation, and an unfortunate act, 
 in which perhaps there was more imprudence than guilt, lost 
 him his situation, and plunged him in poverty. For many years 
 Dr. Chalmers contributed regularly for his support. His latter 
 days were spent in Gillespie's Hospital, where he died about four 
 years ago. The Rev. Dr. Steven, who visited him frequently 
 while upon his deathbed, in a letter with which I have been 
 favoured, says, " On one occasion he spoke to me in a very 
 feeling manner indeed of Dr. Chalmers, and the impression made 
 upon my mind was such that I have not yet forgotten the words 
 which he employed. ' No man,' exclaimed he, ' knows the 
 amount of kindness which I have received from my old pupil. 
 He has often done me good both as respects my soul and my 
 body many a pithy sentence he uttered when he threw himself 
 in my way many a pound-note has the Doctor given me, and 
 he always did the thing as if he were afraid that any person 
 should see him. May God reward him !' The feeble old man 
 was quite overpowered, and wept like a child when he gave 
 utterance to these words."* 
 
 By those of his school-fellows, few now in number, who sur- 
 vive, Dr. Chalmers is remembered as one of the idlest, strongest, 
 merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther school. 
 Little time or attention would have been required from him to 
 prepare his daily lessons, so as to meet the ordinary demands of 
 the schoolroom ; for when he did set himself to learn, not one 
 of all his school-fellows could do it at once so quickly and so 
 well. When the time came, however, for saying them, the 
 lessons were often found scarcely half-learned 'sometimes not 
 learned at all. The punishment inflicted in such cases was to 
 send the culprit into the coal-hole, to remain there in solitude 
 till the neglected duty was discharged. If many of the boys 
 could boast over Thomas Chalmers that they were seldomer in 
 the place of punishment none could say that they got more 
 
 There had been a dash of eccentricity about Ramsay. Some years ago, when the whole 
 powers of the empire lodged for a short time in the single hand of the Duke of Wellington, he 
 wrote to his Grace in the true dominie spirit, but with almost as much wisdom as wit that 
 he could tell him how to do the most difficult thing he had in hand, namely, to cure the ills 
 of Ireland ; he should just take, he told him, " the taws in the tae hand, and the Testament 
 in the tither." Engrossed as he was, the Duke sent an acknowledgment signed by himself, 
 and for some time it was difficult to say which of the two Daniel Ramsay was proudest of 
 having taught Dr. Chalmers, and so laid, as he was always accustomed to beast, the founda- 
 tion of his fame or having instructed the Duke of Wellington as to the best way of 
 governing Ireland, and having got an answer from the Duke himself.
 
 6 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 quickly out of it. Joyous, vigorous, and humorous, he took his 
 part in all the games of the play-ground ever ready to lead or 
 to follow, when school-boy expeditions were planned and exe- 
 cuted ; and wherever for fun or for frolic any little group of the 
 merry-hearted was gathered, his full, rich laugh might be heard 
 rising amid their shouts of glee. But he was altogether unmis- 
 chievous in his mirth. He could not bear that either falsehood 
 or blasphemy should mingle with it. His own greater strength 
 he always used to defend the weak or the injured, who looked 
 to him as their natural protector ; and whenever in its heated 
 overflow play passed into passion, he hastened from the ungenial 
 region, rushing once into a neighbouring house, when a whole 
 storm of mussel-shells was flying to and fro, which the angry 
 little hands that flung them meant to do all the mischief that 
 they could ; and exclaiming, as he sheltered himself in his 
 retreat, " I'm no for powder and ball," a saying which the good 
 old woman, beside -whose ingle he found a refuge, was wont, in 
 these later years, to quote in his favour when less friendly neigh- 
 bours were charging him with being a man of strife, too fond 
 of war. . 
 
 The ability to read, very soon acquired by him, was speedily 
 turned to other than school purposes. Among the books earliest 
 read, the two which took the strongest hold upon his thoughts, 
 filling and swelling out his childish imagination, were Gaudentia 
 di Lucca and the Pilgrim's Progress. He has himself told us of 
 other impressions made at the same period. Writing more than 
 fifty years afterwards, he says : " I feel quite sure that the use 
 of the sacred dialogues as a school-book, and the pictures of 
 Scripture scenes which interested my boyhood, still cleave to me, 
 and impart a peculiar tinge and charm to the same representa- 
 tions when brought within my notice."* Even before he could 
 himself read its stories, or understand thoroughly any of its pic- 
 tured scenes, some of the sayings of the Bible had fallen upon 
 an ear which felt, even in infancy, the charm which dwells in 
 the cadence of choice and tender words. He was but three 
 years old, when one evening, after it had grown dark, missed 
 and sought for, he was found alone in the nursery, pacing up 
 and down, excited and absorbed, repeating to himself as he 
 walked to and fro the words of David " my son Absalom ! 
 Absalom, my son, my son ! " 
 
 Though both parents were decidedly pious his father, all 
 
 * Horae Quot, ToL i. p. 20.
 
 RESOLVES TO BE A MINISTER COLLEGE. 7 
 
 through life, particularly and pre-eminently so yet it does not 
 appear that the Bible had made upon him any deeper impression 
 than that which the beauty of its language and the pathos of its 
 narratives were so well fitted to imprint upon so susceptible a 
 mind and heart. Almost as soon, however, as he could form or 
 announce a purpose, he declared that he would be a minister. 
 He saw and heard too much of ministers not to have early sug- 
 gested to him the idea of becoming one ; and as soon as it was 
 suggested, it was embraced. The sister of one of his school- 
 fellows at Anstruther still remembers breaking in upon her 
 brother and him, in a room to which they had retired together, 
 and finding the future great pulpit orator (then a very little 
 boy) standing upon a chair and preaching most vigorously to his 
 single auditor below. He had not only resolved to be a mini- 
 ster he had fixed upon his first text " Let brotherly love con- 
 tinue." Altogether, though the school did little for him, and 
 his parents' wishes and prayers as to his spiritual estate were as 
 yet ungranted, that free, fresh, unconstrained, social, and happy 
 boyhood spent by him at Anstruther was not without its fruits ; 
 nor can we tell how much, in the building up of his natural 
 character during these earlier years, was due to the silent im- 
 press of parental example, or to that insensible education, more 
 important and influential by far than the education of the school- 
 room, daily carried on by the general spirit and order of a well 
 regulated and very cheerful home. 
 
 In November 1791, whilst not yet twelve years of age, accom- 
 panied by his elder brother William, he enrolled himself as a 
 student in the United College of St. Andrews. He had but one 
 contemporary there who had entered college at an earlier age, 
 John Lord Campbell, and the two youngest students became 
 each, in future life, the most distinguished in his separate sphere. 
 However it may have been in Lord Campbell's case, in Dr. 
 Chalmers extreme youth was not compensated by any prema- 
 tureness or superiority of preparation. A letter written to his 
 eldest brother, James, during the summer which succeeded his 
 first session at college, is still preserved the earliest extant 
 specimen of his writing. It abounds in errors both in ortho- 
 graphy and grammar, and abundantly proves that the work of 
 learning to write his own tongue with ordinary correctness had 
 still to be begun. His knowledge of the Latin language was 
 equally defective unfitting him during his first two sessions to 
 profit as he might otherwise have done from the prelections of
 
 8 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 that distinguished philosophical grammarian, Dr. John Hunter, 
 who was then the chief ornament of St. Andrews University. 
 " My first acquaintance with Dr. Chalmers," writes the Eev. Mr. 
 Miller,* " was in November 1791, when we entered the Univer- 
 sity of St. Andrews together. He was at that time very young, 
 and volatile, and boyish, and idle in his habits, and like the rest 
 of us in those days, but ill prepared by previous education for 
 reaping the full ^benefit of a college course. I think that during 
 the first two sessions a great part of his time must have been 
 occupied (as mine was) in boyish amusements, such as golf, foot- 
 ball, and particularly handball, in which latter he was remark- 
 ably expert, owing to his being left-handed. I remember that 
 he made no distinguished progress in his education during these 
 two sessions. The next year, being the third of our philoso- 
 phical course, he and I lived together in the same room, and 
 commenced in earnest the study of mathematics, under the late 
 Dr. James Brown, who was at that time assistant to Professor 
 Vilant. Our only companion in doing all the exercises of the 
 class was William Mitchell, a farmer's son from Duniface, who 
 was licensed as a preacher, but died not long after. During our 
 mathematical studies, we had occasion almost e% r ery night to be 
 a short time in Dr. Brown's room, for the purpose of correcting 
 our class-notes and exercises before being extended in our books, 
 and there we met with the late Sir John Leslie and Mr. James 
 Mylne, afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, 
 both of whom were considered in those days (like Dr. Brown) as 
 marked men ultra Whigs, keen Reformers, and what would 
 now be called Radicals. ... I have no doubt that Dr. Chalmers 
 at that time gave signs of his more matured character in the 
 earnestness and perseverance with which he prosecuted his 
 favourite study. His character during all my acquaintance 
 with him was that of the strictest integrity and warmest affec- 
 tion. He was enthusiastic and persevering in everything that 
 he undertook giving his whole mind to it, and often pursuing 
 some favourite, or even, as we thought, some foolish idea, whilst 
 we were talking around him, and perhaps laughing at his abs- 
 traction, or breaking in upon his cogitations, and pronouncing 
 him the next thing to mad ; and then he would good-naturedly 
 join in the merriment with his common, affectionate expression, 
 * Very well, my good lad.' I could mention very many in- 
 stances of his particular attachment to myself, and of his affec- 
 
 * In MS. letter, dated Monikie, July 6, 3847.
 
 INTELLECTUAL BIRTH-TIME. 9 
 
 tionate recollections of our early associations, which proved no 
 small cause of amusement to both when we met in after years." 
 His third session at college, that of 1793-94, was Dr. Chal- 
 mers's intellectual birth-time. That intelligence which never 
 afterwards knew a season of slumbering inactivity then awoke. 
 That extreme ardour of impulse, and that strong force of will 
 which had shown themselves from infancy took now a new direc- 
 tion, urging on and upholding him in his mathematical studies. 
 It was better perhaps that a mind so excitable as his had not 
 had an earlier intellectual development that untaxed and un- 
 exhausted in childhood it should have been suffered (growing all 
 the while in strength) to wait till a science, for which it had so 
 strong a natural affinity, took hold of it, upon which its opening 
 energies put themselves forth so spontaneously, so ardently, so 
 undividedly, and so perseveringly. Dr. Chalmers was singularly 
 fortunate in the person who at that time discharged the dirties 
 of the mathematical professorship at St. Andrews. As he has 
 himself told us in his preface to Mr. Coutts's Sermons, "The 
 professor, Mr. Vilant, had long been a retired invalid, and his 
 classes were taught for many years by a series of assistants, 
 several of whom became afterwards more or less known in the 
 world. The first was Mr. Glennie, author of a work on Pro- 
 jectiles. He was followed by West, who spent the greater part 
 of his life as Rector in one of the parishes of Jamaica, and whose 
 Treatise on Geometry has long been admired, both for its struc- 
 ture as a whole, and for the exceeding beauty of many of its 
 demonstrations. He was succeeded by Dr. James Brown, for 
 some time Professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow, a person 
 of singularly varied accomplishments, and gifted with such powers 
 of conversation as to have drawn forth the testimony from Dugald 
 Stewart that he never met with any one who expressed himself 
 with greater elegance, and at the same time with greater pre- 
 cision, on mathematical and metaphysical subjects." Sir James 
 Ivory, Sir John Leslie, and Dr. James Brown, all studied to- 
 gether at St. Andrews, and were all pupils of Mr. West ; and 
 though Dr. Brown has not left behind him a reputation equal to 
 that of his two pre-eminent class-fellows, this would seem to 
 have been due to a constitutional infirmity, which constrained 
 him, after a single year's trial, to relinquish the Chair of Natural 
 Philosophy at Glasgow, and to retire into private life, rather 
 than to any natural inferiority of talent. In common with all 
 who enjoyed the benefit of his instructions, or were admitted to
 
 10 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the privilege of his friendship, Dr. Chalmers retained throughout 
 his after-life the liveliest gratitude and affection towards him. 
 Another of his pupils, Mr. Duncan, the present Professor of 
 Mathematics at St. Andrews, had, in 1833, dedicated to Dr. 
 Brown his " Elements of Plane Geometry." Dr. Brown, while 
 praising the volume in a letter to Dr. Chalmers, had taken ex- 
 ception to the introduction of his own name. He received the 
 following reply : " I agree in all you say on the subject of Mr. 
 Duncan's work, with the single exception of your remark upon 
 its dedication, than which he could have done nothing more 
 rightly and appropriately. It is the common feeling of us both, 
 that whatever of the academic spirit, or of the purely academic 
 enthusiasm either of us may possess, we are far more indebted 
 for it to you than to all our other teachers put together. Of all 
 my living instructors, I have ever reckoned first yourself, then 
 Professor Robison of Edinburgh, and lastly, Dr. Hunter of St. 
 Andrews, as far the most influential both in the formation of my 
 taste and intellectual habits." Nor was this the temporary effu- 
 sion of feeling evoked by having the object of it in presence. 
 Three years afterwards, Dr. Brown was removed by death ; 
 and in writing to his widow on that occasion, the sentiment is 
 reiterated "I cannot adequately express the deep emotion 
 which I felt on receiving the melancholy intelligence of Dr. 
 Brown's death one of my most respected and earliest friends, 
 and of whom I have often said, that of all the professors and 
 instructors with whom I have ever had to do, he is the one who 
 most powerfully impressed me, and to the ascendency of whose 
 mind over me, I owe more in the formation of my tastes and 
 habits, and in the guidance and government of my literary life, 
 than to that of all the other academic men whose classes I ever 
 attended. But i'n addition to his public lessons, I had the 
 privilege of being admitted to a long intimacy with your departed 
 husband, and enjoying the benefit, as well as the charm, of his 
 most rich and eloquent conversation." When such a teacher 
 met with such a pupil, and had as the subject of his instructions 
 such a science as mathematics, it was not wonderful that more 
 than ordinary interest should be excited, and more than ordinary 
 proficiency realized. Dr. Chalmers became excited and absorbed. 
 Pure geometry had especial attractions for him. With the higher 
 powers of the modern analysis he became afterwards familiarly 
 acquainted ; but he never lost his relish for the demonstrations 
 of geometry, nor did he ever cease to think that from the close-
 
 IDEAS OF RELIGION. 11 
 
 ness and consecutiveness of its successive steps, geometry fur- 
 nished one of the very best instruments of intellectual training. 
 
 Other subjects, however, besides those of his favourite science, 
 were pressed upon his notice, not so much by the prelections of 
 the class-room, as by the conversation of Dr. Brown and his 
 accomplished friends. Ethics and politics engaged much of their 
 attention. Yielding to the impulses thus imparted, Dr. Chalmers, 
 at the close of his philosophical studies, became deeply engaged 
 with the study of Godwin's Political Justice, a work for which 
 he entertained at that time a profound, and as he afterwards felt 
 and acknowledged, a misplaced admiration. His father was a 
 strict, unbending Tory, as well as a strict, and as he in his child- 
 hood fancied, a severe religionist. By the men among whom he 
 was now thrown, and to whom he owed the first kindlings of his 
 intellectual sympathies, Calvinism and Toryism were not only 
 repudiated but despised. " St. Andrews " (we have his own 
 testimony for it) " was at this time overrun with Moderatism, 
 under the chilling influences of which we inhaled not a dis- 
 taste only but a positive contempt for all that is properly and 
 peculiarly gospel, insomuch that our confidence was nearly as 
 entire in the sufficiency of natural theology as in the sufficiency 
 of natural science." * It was not unnatural that, recoiling from 
 the uncompromising and unelastic political principles with which 
 he had been familiar at Anstruther, and unfortified by a strong in- 
 dividual faith in the Christian salvation, he should have felt the 
 power of that charm which the high talent of Leslie and Brown 
 and Milne threw around the religious and political principles 
 which they so sincerely and enthusiastically espoused ; that his 
 youthful spirit should have kindled into generous emotion at the 
 glowing prospects which they cherished as to the future progress 
 of our species, springing out of political emancipation ; and that 
 he should have admitted the idea that the religion of his early 
 home was a religion of confinement and intolerance unworthy of 
 entertainment by a mind enlightened and enlarged by liberal 
 studies. From the political deviation into which he was thus 
 temporarily seduced, he soon retreated : from the religious, it 
 needed many years and other than human influences to recall 
 him. 
 
 In November 1795, he was enrolled as a student of Divinity. 
 Theology, however, occupied but little of his thoughts. During 
 the preceding autumn he had learned enough of the French 
 
 * Preface to Mr. Coutts's Sermons.
 
 12 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 language to enable him to read fluently and intelligently the 
 authorship in that tongue upon the higher branches of mathe- 
 matics. His favourite study he prosecuted with undiminished 
 ardour. Not even the powerful spell of one of the ablest of 
 theological lecturers to whose ability he afterwards rendered so 
 full a tribute of praise could win him away from his mathema- 
 tical devoteeism. The present venerable minister of Kilsyth, 
 the Rev. Mr. Burns, who entered the Divinity Hall along with 
 him, writes as follows : " He had got the idea strongly into his 
 mind that the orthodoxy of the lecturer was formed in conformity 
 to the Standards, rather than as the truth most surely believed. 
 The professor had expressed the sentiment that Calvinism should 
 not be too broadly brought forward in pulpit addresses, lest it 
 should be repulsive. Chalmers said to me, ' If it be truth, why 
 not be above board with it ? ' I think he added, ' You are a 
 sincere Calvinist. There is none in St. Andrews that I know. 
 Come down to Anstruther with me on a Saturday, and see my 
 father and Mr. Hodges (a venerable elder with whom I was 
 acquainted). They all agree with you.' I referred to a very 
 able lecture which the Professor had delivered a day or two 
 previously as a really masterly defence of one of the deepest 
 points of Calvinistic doctrine, upon the scheme of Jonathan Ed- 
 wards. I was surprised when he said, ' I was not paying atten- 
 tion to it, but thinking of something else,' probably following out 
 some mathematical problem. ' Why,' I said, ' did you not attend 
 to a disquisition so able?' 'Because,' he answered, ' I question 
 the sincerity of the lecturer.' The exercise of mere intellectual 
 power without heart seemed to have no power to suspend his 
 favourite study. He most certainly passed through that year's 
 curriculum without making entry on the theological field, and 
 there can be no doubt that his system did not go beyond sublime 
 ideas of the Divine Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, 
 and Goodness, and the grandeur, extent, and variety of His 
 works, combined with some lively conceptions of the character, 
 the teaching, and the example of the Author of Christianity." * 
 Though a disquisition by Dr. Hill on the scheme of Jonathan 
 Edwards was thus listened to idly and in vain, very different 
 was the treatment which towards the close of the same session 
 the writings of that great metaphysician and divine received. 
 Speaking of this period, Professor Duncan says, " He studied 
 Edwards on Free Will with such ardour that he seemed to re- 
 
 * 313. Mc-;n</"ar;iia.
 
 TWELVEMONTH OF MENTAL ELYSIUM. 13 
 
 gard nothing else, could scarcely talk of anything else, and one 
 was almost afraid of his mind losing its balance." Edwards's 
 theory of Necessity fell in with the reasonings of his earlier 
 favourite Godwin, and was speedily adopted ; and it was no cold 
 assent of the understanding merely which was given to it. Plant- 
 ing his foot upon the truth demonstrated as it seemed to him 
 so irresistibly by Edwards that fixed unalterable links bind 
 together the whole series of events in the spiritual as well as in 
 the material universe, he rose to the sublime conception of the 
 Godhead, as that eternal, all-pervading energy by which this 
 vast and firmly knit succession was originated and sustained ; 
 and into a very rapture of admiration and delight his spirit was 
 upborne. Looking back to this period, twenty-four years after- 
 wards, he writes : 
 
 "February 26, 1821. that He possessed me with a sense 
 of His holiness and His love, as He at one time possessed me 
 with a sense of His greatness and His power, and His pervading 
 agency. I remember, when a student of divinity, and long ere 
 I could relish evangelical sentiment, I spent nearly a twelve- 
 month in a sort of mental elysium, and the one idea which mi- 
 nistered to my soul all its rapture was the magnificence of the 
 Godhead, and the universal subordination of all things to the one 
 great purpose for which He evolved and was supporting creation. 
 I should like to be so inspired over again, but with such a view 
 of the Deity as coalesced and was in harmony with the doctrine 
 of the New Testament."* 
 
 Alluding to this singular period in his mental history, he has 
 told a member of his family that not a single hour elapsed in 
 which the overpoweringly impressive imagination did not stand 
 out bright before the inward eye; and that his custom was 
 to wander early in the morning into the country, that, amid 
 the quiet scenes -of nature, he might luxuriate in the glorious 
 conception. 
 
 The magnificent vision did, however, after some months, de- 
 part. What helped perhaps to dissipate the intellectual spell 
 under which he had been held was a visit which, in the summer 
 of 1796, he paid to his eldest brother, James, then resident in 
 the neighbourhood of Liverpool. A fragment of the journal 
 which he kept during this visit is still preserved. It is not the 
 journal of a dreaming young philosophical enthusiast. We are 
 struck with the entire absence of all those sentimental and ima- 
 
 * MS. Letter to Mrs. Chalmers.
 
 14 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ginative remarks in which such youthful journalists indulge as 
 happen to be of a poetic temperament. It bears no mark upon 
 it either of the scene or the occupations whence the writer had 
 emerged. No one on reading it could believe that for months 
 before the writer had been rapt up to the very highest heaven 
 of abstract thought, and had been breathing the air which cir- 
 culates round one of the loftiest summits of speculation. Left 
 to his own unaided conjecture, the reader of this journal might 
 rather have imagined the writer to be some honest burgher's son 
 who, going to settle as a merchant in the south, was keeping his 
 eyes quite open to all the new objects which met him by the 
 way, and looking at them with a very shrewd and penetrating 
 glance. That the St. Andrews student, soaring almost intoxi- 
 cated with delight amid the heights of one of the loftiest of 
 human speculations, nearly lost to his wondering companions' 
 vision, should be also the minute and faithful chronicler of every 
 shift the wind made in the Frith of Forth from Anstruther to 
 Grangemouth, and of the exact number of locks in the Forth 
 and Clyde canal, how many ascended from the one river and 
 how many from the other, and of the precise number of steps in 
 the stairs of Dumbarton Castle, and of the rates at which for 
 many preceding years the population and the shipping and the 
 dock-dues of Liverpool had increased, and of the relative propor- 
 tion between the ploughed and the pasture lands in Cheshire, 
 &c. &c., this was but one early illustration of the speculative 
 and the practical, in him so strikingly blended and combined. 
 
 His third session at the University, which had witnessed his 
 first well-sustained intellectual efforts, had witnessed also his 
 earliest attempts in English composition. Here he had to begin 
 at the very beginning. Letters written by him even after his 
 second year at College, exhibit a glaring deficiency in the first 
 and simplest elements of correct writing. And he had to be- 
 come very much his own instructor ; guiding himself by such 
 models as the prelections of Dr. Hunter and Dr. Brown, and 
 the writings of Godwin or other favourite authors presented. A 
 few of his first efforts in this way have been preserved. They 
 exhibit little that is remarkable in style. The earliest compo- 
 sitions of those who have afterwards become distinguished as 
 poets or orators or eloquent writers, have generally displayed a 
 profuse excess of the rhetorical or the imaginative, which it took 
 time and labour to reduce to becoming proportions. In the 
 College exercises of Dr. Chalmers, this order is reversed. The
 
 COLLEGE COMPOSITIONS. 15 
 
 earliest of them are the simplest and plainest, with scarce a 
 gleam of fancy or sentiment ever rising to play over the page. 
 They give token of a very vigorous youthful intellect, disciplin- 
 ing itself at once in exact thinking and correct perspicuous 
 expression ; never allowing itself to travel beyond the bounds 
 of the analysis or argument which it is engaged in prosecuting, 
 never wandering away to pluck a single flower out of the garden 
 of the imagination, by which illustration or adornment might be 
 supplied. Those who, as the result of their analysis, have con- 
 cluded that in Dr. Chalmers's mental constitution the purely 
 intellectual largely predominated that fancy was comparatively 
 feeble, and that imagination, potent as she was, was but a 
 minister of other and higher powers, might find historic verifica- 
 tion of their analysis in the earliest of his College compositions. 
 But his progress here was marvellously rapid. Habits of accu- 
 rate and easy composition, which in many instances it costs half 
 a lifetime to acquire to the same degree, were acquired by him 
 within two years. And the ordinary difficulties of expression 
 once mastered, that burning fervour which glowed with such 
 constant intensity within, got free and natural opportunity of 
 outflow, and shaping spontaneously the language that was em- 
 ployed for the utterance of thought or sentiment, moulded it 
 into forms of beauty and power. 
 
 It was then the practice at St. Andrews, that all the members 
 of the University assembled daily in the public hall for morning 
 and evening prayers, which were conducted by the theological 
 students. The hall was open to the public, but in general the 
 invitation was not largely accepted. In "his first theological 
 session it came by rotation to be Dr. Chalmers's turn to pray. 
 His prayer, an amplification of the Lord's Prayer, clause by clause 
 consecutively, was so originally and yet so eloquently worded, 
 that universal wonder and very general admiration were excited 
 by it. "I remember still," writes one who was himself an 
 auditor,* " after the lapse of fifty-two years, the powerful impres- 
 sion made by his prayers in the Prayer Hall, to which the people 
 of St. Andrews flocked when they knew that Chalmers was tp 
 pray. The wonderful flow of eloquent, vivid, ardent description 
 of the attributes and works of God, and still more perhaps, the 
 astonishing harrowing delineation of the miseries, the horrid 
 cruelties, immoralities, and abominations inseparable from war, 
 which always came in more or less in connexion with the bloody 
 
 * The Rev. Mr. Burns of Kilejrth, in MS. Memoranda.
 
 16 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 warfare in which we were engaged with France, called forth 
 the wonderment of the hearers. He was then only sixteen years 
 of age, yet he showed a taste and capacity for composition of 
 the most glowing and eloquent kind. Even then, his style was 
 very much the same as at the period when he attracted so much 
 notice, and made such powerful impression in the pulpit and by 
 the press." 
 
 For the cultivation of his talent for composition he was largely 
 indebted to debating societies formed among the students. Dur- 
 ing the session 1793-94, he had been admitted as a member of 
 the Political Society, and, on his entering the Divinity Hall in 
 November 1795, he was enrolled in the books of the Theological 
 Society. No records of the Political Society have been pre- 
 served. " I have examined," says Professor Duncan, " the books 
 of the Theological Society, and find that Dr. Chalmers, Lord 
 Campbell, and myself, as also Mr. Walker of Carnwath, Mr. 
 Miller of Monikie, Mr. Melville of Logic, and Mr. Shaw of 
 Langholm, all entered that Society in the same year, viz., in 
 the session 1795-96. This Society was composed entirely of 
 divinity students, and met once a week in a room of the 
 Divinity College, commonly called St. Mary's College. The 
 subjects discussed were of course mostly of a theological nature, 
 or nearly connected with theology. The business of the even- 
 ing commenced with the delivery of a systematic discourse on 
 some subject prescribed to the member in the preceding session, 
 and then succeeded the debate on some subject which had been 
 taken out by some member at the previous meeting, and on 
 which, when he had declared the side he intended to take, an- 
 other member was appointed to assist him, and other two mem- 
 bers to impugn, or sustain the opposite side. A list of questions 
 considered as most proper for discussion was made out at the 
 beginning of the session by a committee appointed for the pur- 
 pose. In session 1796-97, Dr. Chalmers was engaged on the 
 affirmative side of the question, ' Is a Divine Revelation neces- 
 sary?' when he read a speech which to this day Dr. Craik of 
 Libberton remembers as having first impressed him with a high 
 idea of Dr. Chalmers's talents. In 1796-97, he delivered a sys- 
 tematic discourse on predestination, which must have been pre- 
 scribed to him in the previous session. This discourse is remark- 
 able, as I remember that the subject of it occupied him intensely 
 during that session. I remember also, that when he was Pro- 
 fessor of Moral Philosophy here, nearly thirty years afterwards.
 
 SPECIMEN OF COLLEGE COMPOSITIONS. 17 
 
 he was intensely occupied with the same subject, and spent some 
 days in discussing it in his class. I have understood further, 
 that it was among the last subjects which he discussed in the 
 Free Church College. 
 
 " I find that in session 1798-9, Dr. Chalmers took out for the 
 subject of debate, ' Is man a free agent?' and chose the negative 
 side. He appears to have taken his regular turn in the debates, 
 and after the first session of his attendance, to have often volun- 
 teered a speech in aid of the speaker who had been regularly 
 appointed at the previous meeting. I remember that these 
 volunteer speeches were generally delivered, not read, and were 
 made in reply to previous speakers. The other principal speakers 
 in this way were John Campbell, now Lord Campbell, and, 
 during one session, the celebrated Mr. John Leyden. The ses- 
 sion in which Leyden was a member was that of 1797-8. He 
 was far superior to any other speaker in the Society. He had 
 an unlimited command of words, and could speak for any length 
 of time on almost any subject." * 
 
 The following passage, written during one of the sessions of at- 
 tendance at the Divinity Hall, maybe presented here as a speci- 
 men of Dr. Chalmers's College compositions : " How different 
 the languor and degeneracy of the present age from that ardour 
 which animated the exertions of the primitive Christians in the 
 cause of their religion ! That religion had then all the impres- 
 sive effect of novelty. The evidences which supported its divine 
 origin were still open to observation. The miracles of Chris- 
 tianity proclaimed it to be a religion that was supported by the 
 arm of Omnipotence. The violence of a persecuting hostility 
 only served to inflame their attachment to the truth, and to 
 arouse the intrepidity of their characters. Enthusiasm is a 
 virtue rarely produced in a state of calm and tinruffled repose. 
 It flourishes in adversity. It kindles in the hour of danger, 
 
 * Let the reader compare this account with that given by Leyden's biographer, Mr. Mor- 
 ton, of his first appearance in the Literary Society a society formed among the students 
 attending the University of Edinburgh, which Leyden joined at an early period of hi 
 academic studies : " Leyden's first attempts to speak in the society were very unsuccessful, 
 and more than once procured him the mortification of being laughed at by his associates. 
 But his perseverance was not to be overcome. The resolute and manly Fpirit which sup- 
 ported him on this and every similar occasion, may be understood from what he said to one 
 of his friends, a person of great abilities and learning, who belonged to the same society, but 
 who, from an excess of modesty, had never attempted to make a speech. ' I see what will 
 happen,' said Leyden to him one day, after having in vain exhorted him to overcome his 
 timidity, ' I fhall, through constant practice, at last be able to harangue, whilst you, through 
 dread of the ridicule of a few boys, will let slip the opportunity of learning this art, and will 
 continue the same diffident man through life,"* Memoin of Dr. John Leyden, by the Rev. 
 James Morton, pp. xi. xii. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 18 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and rises to deeds of renown. The terrors of persecution only 
 serve to awaken the energy of its purposes. It swells in the 
 pride of integrity, and, great in the purity of its cause, it can 
 scatter defiance amid a host of enemies. The magnanimity of 
 the primitive Christians is beyond example in history. It could 
 withstand the ruin of interests, the desertion of friends, the 
 triumphant joy of enemies, the storms of popular indignation, 
 the fury of a vindictive priesthood, the torments of martyrdom. 
 The faith of immortality emboldened their profession of the 
 gospel, and armed them with contempt of death. The torrent 
 of opposition they had to encounter in asserting the religion of 
 Jesus, was far from repressing their activity in his service. They 
 maintained his cause with sincerity they propagated it with 
 zeal they devoted their time and their fortune to its diffusion. 
 Amid all their discouragements they were sustained by the 
 assurance of a heavenly crown. The love of their Redeemer 
 consecrated their affections to his service, and enthroned in their 
 hearts a pure and disinterested enthusiasm. Hence the rapid 
 and successful extension of Christianity through the civilized 
 world. The grace of God was with them. It blasted all the 
 attempts of opposition. 1^ invigorated the constancy of their 
 purposes. It armed them with fortitude amid the terrors of 
 persecution, and carried them triumphant through the proud 
 career of victory and success." 
 
 In November 1842 more than forty years after the eulogy 
 of enthusiasm contained in this passage was penned at St. An- 
 drews Dr. Chalmers met in solemn convocation with upwards 
 of 400 of the Evangelical ministers of the Church of Scotland, 
 assembled in Edinburgh to deliberate in prospect of the Disrup- 
 tion ; and when, standing in the midst of them, the veteran 
 leader of that noble band sought to stir up all around him to an 
 enthusiasm equal to the great occasion which they were about 
 to face, he took up the very words of this old College exercise, 
 and no passage he ever wrote was uttered with more fervid 
 energy or a more overwhelming effect. 
 
 During these winters of attendance at St. Andrews, the family 
 at Anstruther had been rapidly increasing, till it had reached 
 the goodly number of fourteen. Dr. Chalmers's seventh session 
 was now drawing near its close. During the eighth, a three 
 months' instead of a six months' residence at College might 
 suffice. His time was thus about to fall almost wholly into his 
 own hands. Instead of returning to Anstruther to be a burden
 
 TUTORSHIP. 19 
 
 upon his father, and to live on there in idleness perhaps for 
 years, till through the influence of his friends he obtained a 
 living, Dr. Chalmers resolved to try at least to open for himself 
 one of those channels through which ecclesiastical preferment 
 was at that time not unusually reached. In May 1798, he left 
 home to enter as private tutor* a family where he was destined 
 to find an ungenial residence. He left this family about the 
 end of the year, and reached St. Andrews in the beginning of 
 January 1799. Soon after his return, he applied to the Presby- 
 tery of St. Andrews to be admitted to his examination prepara- 
 tory to his obtaining a license as a preacher of the gospel. Some 
 difficulties were raised against its being received. He had not 
 completed his nineteenth year, whereas presbyteries were not 
 wont to take students upon probationary trials till they had 
 attained the age of twenty-one. It happily occurred that one 
 of his friends in the Presbytery fell upon the old statute of the 
 Church, which ordains, " that none be admitted to the ministry 
 before they be twenty-five years of age, except such as for rare 
 and singular qualities shall be judged by the General and Pro- 
 vincial Assembly to be meet and worthy thereof." Under cover 
 of the last clause of this statute, and translating its more dignified 
 phraseology into terms of commoner use, his friend pleaded for 
 Mr. Chalmers's reception as " a lad o' pregnant pairts." The 
 plea was admitted" ; and after the usual formalities, he was 
 licensed as a preacher of the gospel on the 31st July 1799. It 
 was one of the tales of his earlier life which he was in the habit 
 in later years of playfully repeating, that such a title had been 
 so early given to him, and such a dispensation as to age had 
 been granted. 
 
 * The day of his departure was one of mixed emotion. Having previously despatched 
 his luggage, he was to travel on horseback to the ferry at Dundee. The whole family turned 
 out to bid him farewell. Having taken as he thought his last tender look of them all, he 
 turned to mount the horse which stood waiting for him at the door, but he mounted so that, 
 when fairly on its back, his bead was turned, not to the horse's head, but to the horse's tail 
 This was too much for all parties, and especially for him ; so wheeling round as quickly as 
 he could, amid pursuing peals of laughter, which he most heartily re-echoed, he left AD - 
 Btruther in the rear.
 
 20 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FAMILY H1STOKY FIB8T SERMON TWO SESSIONS AT EDINBURGH PROFESSORS 
 
 PLAYFAIR, HOPE, STEWART, AND ROBISON AS3ISTAXT3H1P AT CAVERS 
 
 MATHEMATICAL ASSISTANTS!!!? AT ST. ANDREWS VISIT TO EDINBURGH. 
 
 No strong desire was shown to exercise the privilege thus con- 
 ferred. Without even waiting to discharge the customary duty 
 of preaching for one of the ministers within the bounds of the 
 Presbytery which had licensed him, Mr. Chalmers set out on a 
 second visit to England. This abrupt departure was due in 
 part to the attractive prospect of a family reunion. It was 
 possible that five and nearly certain that four brothers, who 
 had not seen each other for years, would meet at Liverpool. 
 James, the eldest brother, who was eight years older than 
 Thomas, was now married and established there in business. 
 George, the second brother, who was three years older than 
 Thomas, had gone to sea in his seventeenth year, and bad al- 
 ready visited both the East and West Indies. The unfortunate 
 career and untimely fate of William, the third brother, threw 
 one of the earliest and darkest shadows over the household at 
 Anstruther. He was but a year and a half older than Thomas. 
 Destined for one of the learned professions, he had been two 
 sessions those of 1791-2, 1792-3 at the University of St. 
 Andrews. The two brothers, William and Thomas, lodged to- 
 gether, and helped each other to be idler than perhaps either of 
 them would have been alone. In May 1793, William was ap- 
 prenticed to Mr. Young, a writer to the signet in Edinburgh. 
 Here he was as inattentive to the duties of the desk as at St. 
 Andrews he had been to those of the classroom. Too often 
 when a law-paper should have been completed, he was off to 
 some boating excursion at Leith. Mr. Young was at last ob- 
 liged to inform Mr. Chalmers of the conduct of his son ; and 
 the sad intelligence drew forth the following affectionate remon- 
 strance : 
 
 " ANSTRUTHER, December 30, 1793. 
 
 "My DEAR WILLIAM, I wrote you last week, and have none 
 of yours now to reply to ; but have had a letter to which I am
 
 LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE. 21 
 
 obliged to reply, and a very painful task it was to me to do so. 
 I do not mean either to rail on or to abuse you ; but desire, 
 with soberness and affection, to expostulate with you. The 
 letter I mention was from Mr. John Young, who regrets the 
 necessity he was under of informing me of your inattention to 
 your business ; of your treating his entreaties and orders with 
 neglect and contempt ; of your absenting yourself whole days, 
 even weeks, without any reason or apology ; and that as he can- 
 not trust to your attendance, he can only reckon you as a 
 supernumerary hand ; and as no application is given by you, 
 it is not possible you can reap any benefit. Now, my dear 
 Willie, the remedy is only with yourself; and I really think you 
 may have resolution enough to accomplish it. The considera- 
 tion of your friends, and your own interest, I should think 
 reasons sufficiently strong to urge you to it. You are Mr. 
 Young's legal apprentice. The penalty on your failure I am 
 liable to pay. Every day you absent yourself, you are liable 
 to serve two for it at the end of your apprenticeship. After 
 all that has happened, I still hope you may do well. As you 
 tender the authority and regard of a father, the affection of 
 your mother the peace and comfort of both parents, brothers, 
 sisters, and relations as you regard your future prosperity in 
 life, and the authority of God, who commands obedience and re- 
 spect to earthly masters, I beseech you, my dear son, to leave off 
 levity and negligence, and to attend regularly on your master's 
 business. Your whole time is his during your apprenticeship. 
 Never absent yourself a day or any part of it, and make amends 
 for your former neglect by a constant attendance. Be very 
 careful to study your master's temper. Receive his orders with 
 respect, and execute them with diligence. None come through 
 life without difficulties. I have therefore to beseech you to 
 have courage to bear what you may meet with. The day will 
 come, I hope, that you will consider your present difficulties as 
 having been a blessing. Though you may in some cases think 
 yourself hardly used, it is your duty to submit. Great, very 
 great are the advantages to a young man of being constantly 
 employed. May God be with you and bless you ; and if my 
 counsel to you at this time has His blessing, it will give you and 
 me grounds of thankfulness. I am, your affectionate father, 
 
 JOHN CHALMERS." 
 
 His mother remonstrated in terms of still greater strength
 
 22 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and almost equal tenderness, but in vain. No thought of time 
 lost, and expenditure vainly incurred of the blighting of his 
 parents' hopes, and the inflicting upon them of new anxieties, 
 could stop the career of one who after all was more volatile than 
 vicious. Before the second year of his apprenticeship expired 
 he had sailed for China. In the summer of 1799, the vessel 
 in which he was midshipman was at Portsmouth, and he might 
 have joined his brothers at Liverpool. But they were never to 
 meet again. About twelve months afterwards, an Indiaman, The 
 Queen, lying off Eio Janeiro, was crept round under cloud of 
 night by a boat's crew, who, with deadliest design, at every port 
 and opening they could reach, thrust in lighted matches, and 
 retired. The ignited vessel burnt till she blew up burying 
 numbers in the deep, and amongst them the ill-fated William 
 Chalmers. The sad intelligence reached Anstruther. At the 
 customary hour, the family met for worship ; Mr. Chalmers gave 
 out the psalm ; but as he read the verses, the thought of his lost 
 child came over him his voice faltered, stopped he laid down 
 the book, and burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 David, the fifth son, was three years younger than Thomas. 
 At a very early age, following the example of two elder brothers, 
 he had gone to sea. While only in his fourteenth year, his 
 vessel was taken by the French in the West Indies, and he was 
 thrown into a prison, whose own proper horrors were heightened 
 by a slave's head being pitched occasionally over its walls, as 
 if to terrify its inmates, by showing them what their masters 
 could do. Miserably housed and miserably fed, he was seized 
 with Yellow Fever, from which, however, he recovered. After 
 twelve months' durance, he escaped, and reached Liverpool 
 in the spring of 1799. To his brother William, Thomas had 
 already been of essential service in teaching him navigation 
 during the few weeks he spent at Anstruther before joining his 
 vessel, and one inducement to the present visit was that he 
 might now render the same kind of assistance to David. 
 
 He left Edinburgh in the beginning of August, and having 
 spent about a fortnight on the journey, which was entirely 
 performed on foot, he reached Liverpool on the 20th of that 
 month. 
 
 " LIVERPOOL, Tuesday, August 21. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I arrived at Walton yesternight about 
 six o'clock. The latter part of my journey has been rather un- 
 pleasant, from the great quantity of rain that has fallen. I
 
 FIRST APPEARANCE IN TEE PULPIT. 23 
 
 have been highly gratified with the different scenes of land- 
 scape beauty at the lakes, though I think Mr. West is rather 
 extravagant in his eulogiums. My brother and I intend to go 
 on Saturday to Wigan, where I intend to make my first public 
 exhibition in Mr. Dinwiddie's pulpit. I am, dear Father, yours 
 affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The place of worship a neat plain edifice, called Chapel 
 Lane Chapel, or the Scotch Church still stands in Wigan, in 
 which, on Sabbath, the 25th August 1799, his first sermon was 
 preached. On the following Sabbath he preached for the Rev. 
 Mr. Kirkpatrick in Liverpool. Of these two first appearances 
 in the pulpit, his brother James wrote the following account : 
 
 " LIVERPOOL, September 3, 1799. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, We have been in the expectation of hearing 
 from you in answer to our last, but we presume you have de- 
 layed writing in the expectation of hearing from us immediately 
 after our Wigan journey. It is impossible for me to form an 
 opinion of Thomas as yet ; but the sermon he gave us in Liver- 
 pool, which was the same as we had in Wigan, was in general 
 well liked. His mode of delivery is expressive, his language 
 beautiful, and his arguments very forcible and strong. His 
 sermon contained a due mixture both of the doctrinal and prac- 
 tical parts of religion, but I think it inclined rather more to 
 the latter. The subject, however, required it. It is the opinion 
 >f those who pretend to be judges, that he will shine in the 
 ulpit, but as yet he is rather awkward in his appearance. We, 
 Awever, are at some pains in adjusting his dress, manner, &c., 
 bt he does not seem to pay any great regard to it himself. His 
 nuhematical studies seem to occupy more of his time than 
 th religious. I refer you to the subjoined for other particulars 
 (tfyou can read them}* and am, dear Father, yours most 
 singly, JAMES CHALMERS." 
 
 Ii October, the four brothers had met, and David's naviga- 
 tion >ssons had fairly commenced ; but the lessons were stopped, 
 and ic brotherly intercourse abruptly terminated by a sum- 
 monsequiring Thomas's immediate presence in Edinburgh. A 
 
 * Theparticulars were in Thomas's handwriting, which even then was somewhat difficult 
 to decipt it became much worse afterwards so much so, that his father is reported to 
 have c rHy deposited the unread letters in his desk, saying, that Thomas himself would 
 read theno them when he came next to Anstruther.
 
 24 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 situation bad become vacant, which, if on the spot, he might 
 perhaps procure. He obeyed, but was disappointed. He re- 
 mained, however, in Edinburgh during the whole of the ensuing 
 winter, prosecuting his mathematical studies under Professor 
 Playfair. At the beginning of the session, he had hoped that 
 by taking pupils he might keep himself from pressing upon his 
 father's resources. The failure of this expectation, and the 
 arrangement which followed, he thus communicated to his old 
 college friend, Mr. William Berry Shaw, son of the minister Of 
 Abbotshall : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, November 8, 1799. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have been much disappointed in the article 
 of pupils. A week sooner in Edinburgh would have answered 
 my purpose. I am determined, however, to take up my residence 
 here for the winter, and wait for any little thing that may offer 
 in that way. I am at present in Hyndford Close, Canongate ; 
 but I remove in a few days, when you may direct to me at 
 Chessels 1 Court, Canongate, to the care of Mr. Cowan. He is 
 my mother's uncle, and has kindly offered me a room in his 
 house. This, though highly advantageous in point of economy, 
 is rather a restraint upon my freedom, especially in receiving 
 and entertaining acquaintances. I am, yours sincerely, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " P.S. What think you of the Clerical Review ? There are 
 three critics placed in every church in town who review tlr 
 sermons of the ministers, and publish their observations on tb 
 Saturday following. The first number comes out next Satu- 
 day. T. C." 
 
 
 
 In January 1800 he writes to his father : " I feel quite hapy 
 in Mr. Cowan's family. His conduct is distinguished by all-he 
 regard of a parent. I have never preached since I can- to 
 Edinburgh, except once at Penicuick.* As to my class, Jfind 
 my time so profitably employed that I would be sorry at &y in- 
 terruption for the winter. I hope, however, you do not-hink 
 that I attach an excessive importance to this branch of now- 
 ledge. I have seen and I despise that illiberal igrrance 
 which arrogates to one particular science an exclusive 'tie to 
 attention." 
 
 The kind of interruption which was dreaded was ?call to 
 ministerial employment ! No such interruption distuned his 
 
 * The first sermon preached in Scotland.
 
 WINTER IX EDINBURGH. 25 
 
 winter's progress. But one winter in Edinburgh was not enough. 
 He had come to it hurriedly with indefinite aim without any 
 special preparations. Repairing in haste to its academic inclo- 
 sure, he had plucked hut the fruits of one single plant, and it 
 had whetted his appetite for others. He longed to profit by the 
 eloquent prelections of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Eobison. The 
 opportunity besides was an inviting one, of making himself 
 acquainted with a science new to him and most attractive. He 
 had only been a few weeks in Edinburgh when a profound sen- 
 sation was created by the death of Dr. Black the illustrious 
 Nestor, as Lavoisier called him, of the chemical revolution. 
 The singular manner of that death * the revival thereby of 
 the memory of those brilliant discoveries which had signalized 
 an earlier part of his career the engagement by Dr. Robison 
 to furnish an account of these discoveries, as well as to edit the 
 lectures of his deceased friend all combined to throw a height- 
 ened interest around the science of chemistry, which the fluent 
 ease and graceful experimenting of Dr. Black's successor, Dr. 
 Hope, did nothing, at least, to diminish. It was most fortunate 
 that during the summer no obstacle was thrown in the way of 
 bis accomplishing his desire. In July, we find him writing thus 
 to Mr. Shaw : 
 
 "AXSTRUTHER, July 9, 1800. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I received yours of May 27, and regret my 
 not having been at Edinburgh with so many of my St. Andrews 
 acquaintances. I had a very pleasant excursion yesterday with 
 Mr. Duncan and some others to the Bass and Island of May. I 
 have preached twice in St. Andrews, and consider myself as 
 having discharged my obligations to the ministers. There are 
 applications pouring in from all quarters, but I find there is a 
 necessity of resisting them. I have already exhausted all the 
 different terms of expression which soften or give grace to a 
 refusal, and I must now content myself with using peremptory 
 and decided terms. 
 
 " Dr. Brown's speech f has excited much less criticism in St. 
 Andrews than I expected. They are all very silent about it, 
 
 * " On the 2Gth of November 1 799, he expired without any convulsion, shock, or stupor 
 to announce or retard the approach of death. Being at table with his usual fare some 
 bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk diluted with water, and baring the 
 cup in his hand when the last stroke of the pulse was to be given, he set it down on his 
 knees, which were joined together, and kept it steady with hi* hand in the manner of a 
 person perfectly at his ease ; and in this attitude he expired, without a drop being spilt or 
 a feature in his countenance changed, as if an experiment had been required, to show to his 
 friends the facility with which he dej arted." Em-jt. Brit., Art Black. 
 
 t Tae Rev. Dr. Robert Arnot, Pnfessor of Divinity in St. Mary's College, St. Andrew*,
 
 26 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and I suppose feel galled by its superior excellence. It is read 
 with great avidity in some places, though I think there is a 
 lukewarmness among the people in this country which disposes 
 them to acquiesce with ease in any new measure. Dr. Arnot 
 resides in Kingsharns, and will, I believe, gain over the people 
 by the popularity of his manners. I often go up to St. Andrews, 
 where I reside for a week or a fortnight at a time. I find that 
 the conversation of the few literati there has a sort of refresh- 
 ing effect on my mind, and gives new vigour and alacrity to 
 my exertions. I am, yours sincerely, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 In November 1800, he returned to Edinburgh to pursue his 
 studies during a second session. His attention to the chemical 
 lectures was unremitting. The manuscript volumes in which 
 the lectures delivered by Dr. Hope were extended, still remain 
 to testify his diligence. In the course of the session, he gave in 
 a paper to the professor, which, though wrong in its conclusions, 
 may be taken as an ample enough voucher of the ingenuity of 
 its author. 
 
 Dr. Brown had furnished him with an introduction to Mr. 
 Stewart, who politely called and presented him with a ticket of 
 admission to the class of Moral Philosophy. When more than 
 half of the session was over, after full opportunity of judging 
 had been given at a time when the lecturer's fame was at its 
 height, and when in the face of a nearly unanimous verdict in 
 his favour few would have ventured to challenge his title to be 
 reckoned the very prince of metaphysicians, Mr. Chalmers thus 
 conveyed to Dr. Brown his impressions of the character of Mr. 
 Stewart's prelections : 
 
 "EDIXBUKGH, February 25, 1801. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I gave your respects to Mr. Stewart, and de- 
 livered to him all the essential information you sent me regard- 
 ing Dr. Reid. I was very much pleased with the freedom and 
 openness of his conversation. I attended his lectures regularly. 
 I must confess I have been rather disappointed. I never heard 
 a single discussion of Mr. Stewart's which made up one masterly 
 and comprehensive whole. His lectures seem to be made up of 
 detached hints and incomplete outlines, and he almost uniformly 
 
 haying been presented to the parish of Kingsbarns, his settlement was objected to, nnd the 
 case referred to the General Assembly of 1800, before which Dr. Brown, Principal of 
 Marischal College, Aberdeen, delivered a very able speech, which gave rise to a lengthened 
 correspondence between him and Dr. George Hill, Principal of St. Mary's College, St. 
 Andrews. Both the speech and the correspondence were published.
 
 PROFESSORS STEWART AND ROBISON. 27 
 
 avoids every subject which involves any difficult discussion. I 
 have acquired from him, however, a much clearer idea than 
 I ever had of the distinctive character of Reid's philosophy. I 
 think it tends to a useless multiplication of principles, and shrinks 
 even from an appearance of simplicity. I don't know if this 
 remark will meet your approbation ; but I think that as the love 
 of simplicity is a source of error, so we may proceed too far iu 
 our opposition to it ; that our unreserved submission to experi- 
 ence may be prevented, both by a desire of generalizing and by 
 a previous conviction of its hurtful effects. 1 am, dear Sir, yours 
 with sincerest esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The Edinburgh professor of whom he at once entertained the 
 profoundest admiration, and to whom he was most largely in- 
 debted, was Dr. Robison. In the earliest of his own prepara- 
 tions for the Moral Philosophy Chair at St. Andrews, and in 
 the latest of his writings for the Chair of Theology in the New 
 College of Edinburgh,* evidence appears of his familiar acquaint- 
 ance with, and unqualified approbation of, that mode of mapping 
 out the sciences, and drawing. the boundary line between them, 
 which this great master generalizer adopted. His thorough 
 knowledge his profound admiration of the Baconian method of 
 investigation were derived from the same source, Dr. Robison's 
 exposition of the distinctive characteristics of that method still 
 remaining as one of the very ablest of which our language can 
 boast. Nor would Butler have been so readily hailed, or done 
 such full homage to, as the Bacon of Theology, had he not been 
 at this period so thoroughly indoctrinated into the distinctive 
 characteristics, and so thoroughly imbued with the true spirit of 
 the inductive philosophy. Ever ready, however, as Dr. Chal- 
 mers was, in terms of largest gratitude, to acknowledge his 
 obligations to Dr. Robison, few knew how weighty the debt was 
 which he owed to that pre-eminent philosopher. The nature of 
 that debt, the following letter, written only a year before his 
 death, reveals : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, March I, 1846. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I should have replied sooner to yours of the 
 17th, but my occupations are very urgent, and even yet I can 
 only afford a very brief reply. 
 
 " I sympathize with you all the more in the state of philoso- 
 phical scepticism that you complain of, that I at one time ex- 
 
 * Soc Institutes of Theology, vol. 1. pp. 29 and 80.
 
 28 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. . 
 
 perienced it myself. The book to which I was most indebted 
 for my deliverance was Beattie's Essay on Truth. I owe a great 
 deal too to the introductory lectures of Professor Kobison, whom 
 I attended at the beginning of this century as a student of 
 natural philosophy. The substance of these lectures is to be 
 found in the latter half of the article Philosophy, and also in the 
 article Physics in the supplementary volumes of the Encyclo- 
 paedia Britannica. Whether they have been engrossed into the 
 main work in the last edition, I do not know. 
 
 " The single consideration which has had most effect on my 
 own mind, I have tried to make palpable in vol. ii. of my 
 Natural Theology, in page 169, though I enter upon the subject 
 of that argument some pages before. 
 
 " Under all the difficulties and despondencies of such a state, 
 I would still encourage you to prayer. Cry as you can. With 
 real, moral earnestness, and a perseverance in this habit, light 
 will at length arise out of darkness. Do not indulge these 
 sceptical tendencies ; but under the conviction of their being a 
 great misfortune and evil, struggle against them to the utter- 
 most. I can write no more at present. This is the last month 
 of my college session, and I am very much engrossed and 
 fatigued during the whole of it. I am, dear Sir, yours truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 To understand this letter, let us go back to that period in 
 his philosophical course, when Dr. Chalmers became a student 
 and admirer of the works of Godwin,* and let us trace the history 
 from that time onward of the philosophical scepticism which 
 was then first generated in his mind. Godwin himself used the 
 doctrine of Philosophical Necessity as the basis of a refined but 
 universal Pyrrhonism. Nor was it easy, as he represented it, for 
 the doctrine to be accepted, and the results drawn from it to be 
 refused. Whatever doubts Godwin had injected, Jonathan Ed- 
 wards dispelled showing him how, on the very same basis, the 
 highest form of an adoring piety could be raised. Rejoicing in 
 the discovery, he rose as high, perhaps, as the kind oj faith he 
 cherished could carry him ; and, in his twelvemonth's ecstacy, 
 tested its full power to regale and to satisfy the spirit. Still, 
 however, his was a different kind of faith from that of Edwards. 
 It was but a philosophical faith in the Godhead a faith resting 
 as its main if not only support, on enlarged and sublime con- 
 
 * See la^tituics, vol. ii. p. 294.
 
 MLXTAL HISTORY. 29 
 
 ceptions of a universe throughout the whole of whose immutable 
 successions a sovereign principle of fixed and unvarying order 
 reigns. A faith soaring so high, and leaning only on such sup- 
 port, was liable to be shaken ; and it was so shaken, when 
 towards the close of his attendance at the Divinity Hall of St. 
 Andrews, Mirabaud's* work on the " System of Nature, or the 
 Laws of the Moral and Physical World," came into his hands. 
 In his first course of theological lectures in Edinburgh, he 
 characterized this work as one fitted, " by its gorgeous genera- 
 lizations on nature and truth and the universe, to make tremen- 
 dous impression on the unpractised reader."-{- That very kind of 
 impression it had once made upon his own mind. To it, much 
 more than to Godwin's Political Justice, he attributed his ten- 
 dency to doubt as to the stability of the foundations on which 
 all truth moral and religious rested. It first appeared in 
 English in 1797, and I am inclined to believe that it was first 
 read by Dr. Chalmers during the period when he was acting as 
 a tutor. " After being very uncomfortable for some time in that 
 situation," Mr. Miller tells us, " he left the family abruptly, and 
 came to me at St. Andrews, in a state of great excitement and 
 unhappiness, and lived with me during the rest of the session. 
 His mind was at that time in a most interesting but unhappy 
 condition. He was earnestly searching for the truth saw some 
 things very clearly and satisfactorily, but could not find his way 
 to the understanding and belief of some of the most obvious 
 doctrines of natural and revealed religion. Those who were not 
 particularly acquainted with him, thought him going fast into a 
 state of derangement. One very common expression in his pub- 
 lic prayers, and which showed the state of his mind at that time 
 ' Ob, give us some steady object for our mind to rest upon,' 
 was uttered with all his characteristic earnestness and emphasis. 
 I knew that he was exceedingly earnest in seeking the light of 
 truth at that time in his private devotion, and was often on his 
 knees at my bedside after I had gone to bed."J 
 
 Instead of the great Being the abstract though still personal 
 
 * The Sutteme de la Nature, published under the assumed name of " M. Mirabaud, 
 Secretaire Perp&uel et 1'un des quarante de 1'Acad'mie Francai.se," is sufficiently ascertained 
 to have been the production of Baron d'Holbach. Barbier, Dictionnaire des Ouvrages 
 Anonymes et Pseudonyme, torn. iii. p. 291. Biograpliie Univertellf, torn. n. p 404. 
 
 t See Works, voL i. p. 163. In a lecture delivered at a later period, he raid " On this 
 tiftject 1 have nothing to quote from Mirabaud, whose work on the System of Nature I read 
 when a very young man. Its magniloquence I then mistook for magnificence, and the 
 gorgeousness of its generalizations on nature and the universe made a tremendous impres- 
 sion on me. I had the curiosity to read it again within these few months, and what in my 
 earlier days had the effect of a sublime and a seducing eloquence, excites now a sonaation of 
 utter disgust," J MS. Letter
 
 30 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Deity, into rapturous adoration of whom he had been for a time 
 uplifted Mirabaud placed before him an eternal universe of 
 mere matter and motion, all the goodliest processes of which 
 were but the necessary evolutions of the powers and properties 
 wherewith all its parts had from eternity been endowed. Did 
 the perplexed student point to this or that other wonderful 
 instance of contrivance existing in this universe ? Mirabaud 
 informed him that these were but harmonies which naturally 
 occurred, upon matter's original properties developing themselves 
 according to motion's immutable laws. Did he turn to the spirit 
 within him in proof of something different from and above the 
 material universe? Mirabaud would have him to believe that 
 this mind or spirit was the natural result of that wonderful and 
 organized assemblage of material particles which constitutes the 
 human body. Originally nothing without any innate ideas 
 without any original qualities of its own it had no distinct and 
 independent existence, but was only what that material organi- 
 zation in its different forms and stages made it. Even granting 
 of this mind that it had original beliefs, of which no natural 
 history could be given, what reason was there to think that 
 these beliefs had any actual counterparts in the reality of things? 
 They were true to the mind which entertained them ; but true 
 only because of its individual constitution requiring it so to be- 
 lieve. Let another mind be differently constituted, might not 
 its beliefs be different ? nay, might they not even be reversed ? 
 It was here that the lectures of Dr. Robison it was here that 
 the " single consideration" referred to in the letter quoted above 
 struck in with such appropriateness of application and with 
 such beneficent effect. Take the faith we all have in the uni- 
 formity of nature's sequences what explanation of its origin 
 can be assigned ? To what other common fountain-head of be- 
 lief can it be traced ? What natural history of it can be given ? 
 It is not due to experience ; for before all experience it exists. 
 It owes nothing to after training ; for it is in the very fulness of 
 its strength the first moment that it shows itself. And is it 
 can it be an illusion, having no support but that given it by the 
 form and structure of the mind in which it dwells ? That can- 
 not be. The outward, the independent, the unvarying testimony 
 of the external world responds to and confirms it. An adaptation 
 like this, between what the mind believes and what the material 
 universe through all her bounds exhibits, an adaptation so sin- 
 gular, yet so universal the inward expectation met without a
 
 THE DOOR OF ESCAPE. 31 
 
 single exception by the outward fulfilment can it possibly be 
 the product of the intrinsic properties of matter the blind laws 
 of motion ? Too audibly to be unheard by any but the ear 
 which wilfully closes itself, such adaptation speaks of a Divine 
 and Intelligent Adapter. For the poor wanderer in that doleful 
 region of universal doubt, who was seeking rest but finding none, 
 Beattie and Eobison opened up more than one pathway of escape. 
 But this, as we have now attempted to describe it, this was the 
 special door of egress by which the happy escape was in the first 
 instance made. Nor, considering what service it rendered to 
 himself, is it to be wondered at that he should be heard so often 
 and so earnestly recommending it to others.* 
 
 While Mr. Chalmers was imbibing wholesome lessons from 
 Dr. Kobison, his friend Mr. Shaw was acting as assistant to the 
 Eev. Mr. Elliot, minister of Cavers a parish in Koxburghshire, 
 lying along the southern banks of the Teviot, a few miles below 
 Hawick. Having the prospect of removal by the promise of a 
 presentation to the neighbouring parish of Roberton, Mr. Shaw 
 thought of his college friend as his successor, and endeavoured 
 to interest in his favour Mr. Douglas, the chief resident land- 
 holder in, and patron of, the parish of Cavers. 
 
 " It seems," says Mr. Chalmers in a letter to Mr. Shaw, dated 
 at Edinburgh, June 1, 1801 " It seems that you had mentioned 
 me to Mr. Douglas. He asked Leyden about me, who carried 
 me to his house on Thursday last, where I dined. Not a single 
 word, however, passed upon the subject, and I am quite uncer- 
 tain as to his intentions. You must now see, my dear sir, the 
 impropriety of my taking any step without the knowledge of 
 Mr. Douglas ; and that my business at present is to remain pas- 
 sive till something more transpire upon the subject. I have 
 left my direction with Mr. Leyden, and wait for any proposals 
 from Mr. Douglas that may occur." 
 
 This letter was grounded on a misapprehension. It had not 
 been to Mr. Douglas, as patron of the parish, that Mr. Shaw 
 had applied : the assistantship in this case did not involve the 
 succession ; it was by the minister that the appointment was to 
 be made, and it was from him only that any proposal could 
 emanate. Mr. Shaw suggested that Mr. Chalmers should come 
 without delay and preach at Cavers, that by his becoming 
 favourably known to the parishioners, Mr. Elliot might be in- 
 
 * See Works, voL ii pp. 160-172 ; Ui. 47-61 ; vii. 203-233, and particularly p. 206.
 
 32 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 duced to appoint him as his assistant. To this suggestion, con- 
 veyed by letter to Anstruther, he received the following reply : 
 
 " ANSTKUTHEK, June 13, 1801. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I am very sorry that before receiving yours 
 I had formed the plan of going up with my sister to England, 
 and am afraid it will be absolutely impossible for me to appear 
 at Cavers so soon as you mention. The situation is what I 
 would like above all things, both for its independence and for 
 the opportunities of professional improvement which it affords. 
 You never told me, but I suppose your connexion with Elliot 
 is not dissolved for some months. In that case, if there be no 
 inconvenience in the delay of a few weeks, I may both accom- 
 plish my journey to Liverpool, and be present at Cavers in time 
 to receive the assistantship. Yours sincerely, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Fulfilling the intention expressed in this letter, Mr. Chalmers 
 reached Liverpool on the 17th June. Two days after his arrival, 
 he received and thus answered a second invitation to come im- 
 mediately to Cavers : 
 
 " LIVERPOOL, June 20, 1801. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I received yours of the 13th, transmitted 
 from Anster yesterday, and am truly sorry that your plans have 
 been so much deranged. There is one view of the matter that 
 to me is peculiarly interesting, in as far as it involves Walker* 
 or any other whom you may choose to apply to. I hope the 
 affair is not too late, but that either one or other of us may 
 succeed. What I now propose is to move northward the middle 
 of next week, so as to be with you at Cavers on Saturday the 
 29th June, and, if convenient, preach for you the day after. 
 There is no subject on which I feel more tender, and none in 
 which I am more anxiously interested, than my own conduct in 
 as far as it affects the interests and prosperity of others. I 
 hope to God that Mr. Walker will not suffer from anything dila- 
 tory or undecided in my movements upon this occasion, and that 
 if I be excluded, there will still be a possibility of his succeed- 
 ing in the office. Next to my own success in this affair (and it 
 is a- situation which upon many accounts is very desirable), I 
 sincerely wish that your good intentions with regard to Mr. 
 Walker, or any other of your companions, may be fulfilled. 
 Yours sincerely, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 * The RCT. James Walker, afterwards minister of Carnwath.
 
 A MONTH IN TEVIOTDALE. 33 
 
 The visit to Cavers was paid, the sermon was preached, and 
 the result thus communicated to his father : 
 
 " CAVERS, July 8, 1801. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I left Liverpool on Wednesday the first of 
 this month, reached this place on Friday, and preached on Sun- 
 day ; when having proved acceptable to the people in general, 
 there remains no obstacle to my settlement here as assistant to 
 Mr. Elliot. Mr. Shaw's connexion with him is not dissolved 
 till the end of September, so that I will have time to compose a 
 sufficiency of sermons to render the business abundantly easy. 
 The only remaining uncertainty is respecting the arrival of Mr. 
 Shaw's presentation, in which there has been some little delay 
 from the Duke of Buccleuch's bad health, but we expect it every 
 day. I preached last Sunday upon Mark viii. 15, 'Beware of 
 the leaven of the Pharisees.' I am, yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The month of July was devoted to Teviotdale. Delighted 
 with the beauty of that exquisite neighbourhood, his heart quite 
 won by the frank and intelligent cordiality of its families, he 
 returned to Anstruther to have laid before him what he deemed 
 to be new proofs of the selfishness and ingratitude of a family, 
 which politically had been deeply indebted to his father.* More 
 than once before, instances of their indifference had occurred. 
 Beyond this, he believed that they were now practising on his 
 father's simplicity of character, abusing his gentle patience, and 
 calculating upon a charity which was long ere it failed in be- 
 lieving, or hoping, or enduring. The burning indignation which 
 such conduct excited, breaks out in the following letter addressed 
 to Mr. Shaw shortly after his return from Cavers to Anstruther : 
 " I feel a strong tendency to depression in this stagnant place, 
 and cannot help observing the astonishing contrast between this 
 and Teviotdale. Less society less business less sentiment 
 and information among the different orders. The country here 
 bears about with it every symptom of decay' a languishing 
 trade an oppressed tenantry a rapacious gentry. Excuse my 
 croaking. I love to unburden myself of those unpleasant feel- 
 ings u'hich weigh down my spirit. With what eagerness, with 
 what patriotic ardour would I take up arms in defence of my 
 country would I lend all my efforts to oppose a threatened 
 
 * His father was for many years Provost of Anstrulher, one of five small neighbouring 
 burghs which at that time returned a member to Parliament. 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 34 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 invasion, were I conscious of defending a righteous order of 
 things. With what reluctance and disgust must I concur in 
 what are called the exertions of patriotism, when I observe none 
 interested but a set of insolent oppressors, who display their 
 loyalty, not by rewarding its friends, but by persecuting its 
 enemies not by encouraging the pure virtue of public spirit, 
 but by crushing all attempts at even an innocent freedom of 
 observation and thought. Ah ! my dear sir, if you felt that 
 burden of indignation which oppresses my feelings when I be- 
 hold the triumph of successful villany the contempt which 
 attends the simplicity of virtue the base ingratitude of those 
 who have availed themselves of the influence and exertions of 
 unsuspicious friends. I swear at this moment I feel a sentiment 
 of superiority which I would not forego for all the luxurious 
 pleasures, all the flattering distinctions of wealth. I heave with 
 a sacred aspiration of contempt for the unprincipled deceit the 
 mean hypocrisy of our dignified superiors. But I go too far. 
 The great whom I have had the misfortune to be connected 
 with are not only a disgrace to rank, but a disgrace to humanity. 
 They are by no means a fair specimen ; and I must still con- 
 sider it as my duty to resist the inroads of foreign enemies. It 
 would be well, however, for the great to reflect on their critical 
 and dependent situation to abolish that putrid system of in- 
 terest which threatens to extinguish all the ardours of generous 
 and patriotic sentiment to adopt a more just and liberal con- 
 duct to inferiors. I tremble for my country, and see nothing 
 to save us but individual reformation through the different 
 orders of society. This the experience of human affairs can 
 by no means warrant us to expect. Our profession also has the 
 misfortune to labour, and too deservedly, under general con- 
 tempt. I hope to God we shall rise above the vices and defects 
 to which that profession is exposed. Yours sincerely, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 While Mr. Chalmers was waiting at Anstruther till the period 
 of Mr. Shaw's removal, Dr. Wilson, the Professor of Ecclesias- 
 tical History in St. Andrews, died. It was not improbable that 
 a vacancy might thus be created in one of the parishes which 
 were in the gift of the United College. Mr. Chalmers announced 
 himself as a candidate for any such vacancy. He was the more 
 readily induced to do so from its having been very much the 
 practice in the distribution of College patronage that each pro-
 
 PROBABLE VACANCY. 35 
 
 fessor in his turn, if he had any near relation for whom the pre- 
 ferment might be claimed, should virtually have the living in his 
 gift a privilege which upon this occasion fell into the hands 
 of Dr. Adamson, Professor of Civil History. It might happen, 
 however, as it did, that a year or more might elapse ere any- 
 thing was settled. Mr. Chalmers resolved to accept, in the mean 
 time, the situation which Mr. Shaw's kindness had opened to 
 him. That kindness was increased by the offer made and ac- 
 cepted, that, instead of the manse at Cavers being occupied 
 solitarily by Mr. Chalmers, he should live with Mr. Shaw in his 
 manse at Roberton, which was only about seven miles distant 
 from Cavers Church, to which he could ride over and return 
 each Sabbath day. The offer so kindly made, was thus frankly 
 accepted : 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, October 24, 1801. 
 
 "MY DEAR SIR, I received yours, transmitted to me from 
 Anster, and am much pleased with the very kind proposal you 
 have made me. Though it had never occurred to me before, 
 yet I think it, in the present circumstances, the most eligible 
 which can be adopted. The obstacles which I suspect, are the 
 dispositions of the parish and of Mr. Elliot the one objecting 
 to a non-resident preacher, the other to an assistant, who thus 
 exposes himself to the displeasure of his parish. I would 
 thank you to do all in your power to soften any prejudice which 
 either the one or the other may conceive against such a mea- 
 sure. I insist, however, in case of my living at Roberton, that I 
 share with you in every expense of our household establishment. 
 
 " I don't know if you have heard of the arrangements that 
 have taken place in the New College ^Dr. Trotter to get the 
 Church History Chair, and Mr. Cook of Kilmany the Hebrew. 
 I have been as vigorous in my application for the church as pos- 
 sible, but cannot state with any certainty what will be the issue. 
 
 " Be assured, my dear sir, I feel a sincere impression of your 
 kindness and of your anxiety for my accommodation and com- 
 fort. I cannot soon forget the solicitude you discovered for 
 my success in Cavers, the many efforts you have made on my 
 behalf, and the unwearied assiduity with which you have all 
 along promoted my interests. My future situation in life may 
 be widely different from what we have hitherto proposed ; but 
 I hope I shall ever recollect yoxir conduct with that candour 
 which regards only the pure and disinterested intention, and 
 not the event so often the sport of blind and unmeaning c-
 
 36 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 cident. I cannot help expressing a sentiment of friendship, 
 which I hope neither absence nor length of time will ever 
 efface. Yours sincerely, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 "P.S. My respectful compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Usher, 
 and my sincerest wishes for the happiness of all who inhabit 
 that mansion of hospitality and peace." 
 
 Having secured a majority of votes among the professors at 
 St. Andrews in favour of his presentation to Kilmany, Mr. 
 Chalmers joined Mr. Shaw at Koberton. 
 
 "EOBEETON, January 13, 1802. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, The people in this country are kind and 
 hospitable in the extreme. You cannot conceive the kindness 
 both Mr. Shaw and myself have experienced from the farmers 
 around, in sending us peats, hay, straw, &c. Parochial exami- 
 nations are quite common in this country. I begin that duty 
 on Monday fortnight, and, as the parish is extensive, it will 
 take me upAvards of a fortnight to accomplish it. The mode 
 is to divide the parish into a number of small districts, in each 
 of which you are accommodated with lodgings, &c., in one or 
 other of the farmers' houses. I am now quite free from sore 
 throat, and the people in Cavers have not lost a Sunday since 
 my arrival. They are quite satisfied with my non-residence. 
 I am, yours affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " ROBERTOX, February 19, 1802. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I have accomplished the examination of 
 the parish, which, from its extent and population, occupied 
 a complete fortnight. I was in tolerable luck for weather, and 
 the people kind and hospitable in the extreme. You will be 
 pleased to hear that I am on the best terms with several re- 
 spectable clergymen in the neighbourhood, who have been very 
 kind and attentive to me. Yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Dr. Charters of Wilton, Dr. Hardie of Ashkirk, Mr. Arkle of 
 Hawick, and Mr. Paton of Ettrick, all lived within an easy 
 riding-distance of the manse at Roberton. With all of them 
 Mr. Chalmers became intimate ; while to Dr. Charters he be- 
 came bound by the tie of a very sincere admiration of his 
 character and talents, as well as a lively gratitude for the kind- 
 ness shown to him at this early period of his life.
 
 MATHEMATICAL ASSIST ANTSHI P. 37 
 
 As the winter months rolled on, a new object of interest arose. 
 Dr. Brown having been appointed Professor of Natural Philo- 
 sophy in the University of Glasgow, the charge of the mathe- 
 matical classes at St. Andrews had been committed successively 
 to Mr. Coutts and Mr. Duncan. The latter had been recently 
 appointed to the Rectorship of the Academy of Dundee, and the 
 Mathematical Assistantship was once more to be vacant. It 
 was a situation too congenial to Mr. Chalmers's taste for him not 
 to desire it. Had his aims been purely professional, the cer- 
 tainty of the appointment to Kilmany might have satisfied him ; 
 nay, if anything like the same feeling of ministerial responsibi- 
 lity which he afterwards entertained had been then experienced, 
 he would never have thought of undertaking an office requiring 
 such very laborious preparations, and that on the eve of his en- 
 trance on the Christian ministry. But- as yet unvisited with 
 those profounder sentiments as to the objects and responsibilities 
 of that ministry, science still swayed it over theology. His 
 thirst for literary distinction was intense. To fill the mathe- 
 matical chair in one of our universities was the high object of 
 his ambition. To this the assistantship at St. Andrews might 
 prove a stepping-stone. It would give him at least the oppor- 
 tunity so ardently longed for of proving and exhibiting his 
 capabilities for such an office. In spite, therefore, of the peculiar 
 circumstances in which he was placed, he resolved to make a 
 vigorous effort to obtain the appointment. Informed that his 
 presence at St. Andrews was desirable, he left Roberton in the 
 end of April, to return in a few weeks, not only with the assur- 
 ance reiterated and confirmed of his receiving the presentation 
 to Kilmany, but with the mathematical assistantship secured. 
 It might not be till Whitsuntide of the following year that he 
 would be ordained as a minister ; in November he would enter 
 upon the duties of the mathematical class. Inflamed by the 
 literary ardour which the prospect now before him had kindled, 
 he returned to Teviotdale, resolved to devote the summer months 
 to strenuous study. It aided the carrying out of this intention, 
 that the manse at Roberton required repairs, and that he took 
 temporary lodgings at Hawick. His time was thus more en- 
 tirely at his command, and that time was so well employed that 
 when November came, his preparations for the session were 
 nearly completed. 
 
 " HAWICK, June 8, 1802. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I have at length removed my quarters to
 
 38 MEMOIRS Or DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 this town, and find that my separation from Mr. Shaw is at- 
 tended with the best possible . effects, in enabling me to pay 
 undisturbed attention to my mathematical preparations. Inde- 
 pendently of emolument, of prospects, or of any interested 
 considerations whatever, the offer I have accepted is highly 
 eligible, as it constrains me to exertion, as it increases the force 
 of attention, as it refreshes the memory on subjects of great util- 
 ity and importance, and as it renews habits of industry. I am 
 obliged to keep myself a good deal aloof from intercourse with 
 the people in town, though they seem disposed to pay me every 
 ^attention, such as inviting me to their public entertainment on 
 the King's birthday, &c. I have intimated to Mr. Elliot my 
 intention of leaving Cavers on the first of September. I expect 
 him in the course of a fortnight, as our sacrament is to take 
 place on the fourth Sunday of the month. I go up to Ettrick 
 on Friday, and preach in that parish on the Saturday and Mon- 
 day. On the intervening Sabbath I preach at Eskdalemuir. I 
 am, yours affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " HAWICK, July 23, 1802. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I have been much resorted to of late for 
 my assistance on sacramental occasions. This, in so thinly 
 peopled a country, necessarily subjects me to long journeys, 
 which I find, however, to be a pleasant and healthy relief from 
 the labours of study. I don't think I will ever allow myself to 
 be so carried away with the attractions of science as not to in- 
 termingle a sufficient degree of exercise and amusement. I am, 
 yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 During the three months spent in Hawick, he lodged in the 
 house of Mr. Kedie, a baker in that town ; two of whose daugh- 
 ters, very young at the time, and just learning to read and 
 write, were in the habit of waiting on him. To the whole of 
 the family, and particularly to his two little waiting-maids, he 
 formed an attachment which, to the very close of his life, was 
 ever and anon giving touching illustrations of its liveliness and 
 strength.* 
 
 At the beginning of September, Mr. Chalmers left Hawick, 
 that his preparations for the session might be completed at St. 
 Andrews. Early in October, Mr. Cook resigned the living of 
 
 * See Correspondence of Dr. Chalmers, pp. 49-59.
 
 HIS MANNER OF TEACHING. 39 
 
 Kilmany ; and on the 2d of November, the Principal and pro- 
 fessors cordially and unanimously agreed to elect Mr. Chalmers 
 his successor. His parish being secured, and his preparations 
 completed, he threw himself into the duties of the mathematical 
 classes with all the fervour of an overflowing enthusiasm. He 
 was ready to guide his students steadily and consecutively along 
 a strictly scientific course ; but as they trod that path, he would 
 have all their bosoms to glow with the same philosophic ardours 
 which inflamed his own ; for to him the demonstrations of geo- 
 metry were not mere abstractions to be curiously but unmovedly 
 gazed at by the cold eye of speculation. A beauty and a glory 
 hung over them which kindled the most glowing emotions in 
 his breast. To his eye, his favourite science did not sit aloof 
 and alone, in the pride of her peculiar methods disdaining com- 
 munion with those of her fellows who tread the humbler walks 
 of experience and induction. Links of sympathy bound her to 
 them all while to more than one of them she became the surest 
 ally and closest friend. And all that his beloved science was to 
 himself, he would have her to become to the youths in the class- 
 room around him. Every obstacle that might hinder approach 
 or attachment, he sought to set aside ; every side-light which 
 might render her more attractive to youthful eyes, he threw 
 upon her ; every generous sentiment which could animate to 
 a devoted following, he invoked and stimulated. " Under his 
 extraordinary management," so writes one of his pupils,* " the 
 study of mathematics was felt to be hardly less a play of the 
 fancy than a labour of the intellect the lessons of the day being 
 continually interspersed with applications and illustrations of the 
 most lively nature, so that he secured in a singular manner the 
 confidence and attachment of his pupils." 
 
 He felt at the very outset that there was an initial obstacle 
 to contend with in the imagination that there was a certain 
 mysterious difficulty about mathematical investigations, which 
 only a few intellects, and these singularly constituted, could over- 
 come. And it was thus that in one of his earliest lectures he 
 set himself to remove it : 
 
 " The most elevated doctrines of geometry lie open to the in- 
 quiries of any ordinary mind which can command its faculty of 
 attention ; for in the process of a mathematical discussion there 
 is nothing desultory there occurs no transition which it requires 
 
 * The Rev. Dr. Duff, now minister of Kenmore.
 
 40 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 any uncommon power or rapidity of inference to follow no in- 
 terval which it requires the gigantic stride of a superior genius 
 to cross. Are there any anfong you, gentlemen, who labour 
 under the discouraging impression that nature has unfitted you 
 for an effectual prosecution of this science that she forbids the 
 attempt as hopeless and unavailing ? I lament the impression 
 as unfortunate as an impression than which none is more likely 
 to palsy your exertions and to blast every expectation of success. 
 But what is more, it is an impression which is false. You sus- 
 pect the liberality of nature when you ought to suspect your 
 own habits of application and industry. You impeach nature 
 as being niggardly in her endowments, when you ought to im- 
 peach your own feeble and irresolute efforts the listless indo- 
 lence of a disposition that will not be aroused to activity at the 
 generous call of ambition, or fired to exertion by all the allure- 
 ments and honours of philosophy as she waves you to the sacred 
 temple of renown, and bids you contemplate the fame of the 
 illustrious dead who trod the lofty walks of discovery, and whose 
 remembrance will never die." * 
 
 The very opening of the text-book was suggestive. Euclid's 
 Elements, and the French Eevolution, they lie seemingly remote 
 enough from one another. It was thus, however, that the fire 
 of genius forged the connecting link : 
 
 " These Elements of Euclid, gentlemen, have raised for their 
 author a deathless monument of fame. For two thousand years 
 they have maintained their superiority in the schools, and been 
 received as the most appropriate introduction to geometry. It 
 is one of the few books which elevate our respect for the genius 
 of antiquity. It has survived the wreck of ages. It had its 
 days of adversity and disgrace in the dark period of ignorance 
 and superstition, when everything valuable in the literature of 
 antiquity was buried in the dust and solitude of cloisters, and 
 the still voice of truth was drowned in the jargon of a loud 
 and disputatious theology. But it has been destined to reappear 
 in all its ancient splendour. We ascribe not indeed so high a 
 character to it because of its antiquity ; but why be carried 
 away by the rashness of innovation ? why pour an indiscriminate 
 contempt on systems and opinions because they are old ? Truth 
 is confined to no age and to no country. Its voice has been 
 
 * Eitracted from MS. Lectures.
 
 TRIBUTE TO SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 41 
 
 heard in the Temple of Egypt, as well as in the European Uni- 
 versity. It has darted its light athwart the gloom of antiquity, 
 as well as given a new splendour to the illumination of modern 
 times. We have witnessed the feuds of political innovation 
 the cruelty and murder which have marked the progress of its 
 destructive career. Let us also tremble at the heedless spirit 
 of reform which the confidence of a misguided enthusiasm may 
 attempt in the principles and investigations of philosophy. What 
 would have been the present degradation of science had the 
 spirit of each generation been that of contempt for the labours 
 and investigations of its ancestry ? Science would exist in a 
 state of perpetual infancy. Its abortive tendencies to improve- 
 ment would expire with the short-lived labours of individuals, 
 and the extinction of every new race would again involve the 
 world in the gloom of ignorance. Let us tremble to think that 
 it would require the production of a new miracle to restore the 
 forgotten discoveries of Newton." 
 
 Mr. Chalmers could not mention Newton's name without lay- 
 ing down some tribute at his feet. Years afterwards, when in 
 the full splendour of his fame, we shall find him in Newton's 
 own University of Cambridge, surrounded by her assembled 
 literati, pouring out, in glowing panegyric, one of the finest 
 passages his pen ever produced. But even now, in the small 
 classroom of St. Andrews, with twenty or thirty mere youths 
 around him, it was thus that his passionate admiration burst 
 forth : 
 
 " Mathematics have been condemned as contracting the best 
 affections of the heart chilling the ardours of its benevolence 
 blasting its heavenward aspirations. Dr. Johnson, who pos- 
 sessed the power of genius without its liberality, and who appears 
 to have cherished an immovable contempt for mathematics, has 
 directed all the powers of his ridicule against the ludicrous 
 peculiarities which he is pleased to ascribe to mathematicians. 
 He conceives a fire raging in a neighbourhood, and spreading 
 destruction among many families ; while all the noise and con- 
 sternation is unable to disturb the immovable composure of a 
 mathematician, who sits engrossed with his diagrams, deaf to all 
 the sounds of alarm and of distress. His servants rush into his 
 room, and tell him that the fire is spreading all around the neigh- 
 bourhood. He observes simply, that it is very natural, for fire
 
 42 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 always acts in a circle, and resumes his speculations.* You may 
 be afraid to encounter a study which begets such insensibility. 
 Let me tell you that your apprehensions are groundless, that it 
 is not the effect of this study to divest you of all that is human, 
 or to congeal the fervours of a benevolent or a devout heart. I 
 appeal to the example of our illustrious countryman. Amid the 
 splendours of his discoveries, and the proud elevation of his 
 fame, Newton rejoiced in all the endearments of friendship. In 
 the spirit of a mild and gentle benevolence, he maintained an 
 inviolable serenity. It is said of him that he had the modesty 
 of a child. In the society of his friends, the consciousness of 
 his superiority seemed to desert him. His eye beamed with in- 
 expressible benignity ; he indulged in all the luxury of affection, 
 and could descend to the sportful effusions of familiar inter- 
 course. His fame went abroad through the world ; but he 
 would not confide his happiness to the treacherous breath of 
 applause. He founded it on a more secure foundation. He felt 
 it in the affectionate homage of those friends to whom his worth 
 had endeared him. He felt it in the consciousness of an un- 
 blemished life in the over-powering impressions of an adoring 
 piety. Newton, we invoke thy genius ! May it preside over 
 our labours, and animate to the arduous ascent of philosophy. 
 May it revive the drooping interests of science, and awaken the 
 flame of enthusiasm in the hearts of a degenerate people. May 
 it teach us that science without virtue is an empty parade, and 
 that that philosophy deserves to be extinguished which glances 
 contempt on the sacred majesty of religion." 
 
 Spring came with its inviting call to idleness. But at the 
 same time there came a call to strenuous effort, louder and 
 more imperious than at any preceding period of the session ; 
 for now the last and most arduous ascent was to be made. 
 The judicious and genial- hearted arbiter thus adjusted the rival 
 claims : 
 
 " In the subject that we are now to prosecute, I call for your 
 patient and uninterrupted attention. The course is far ad- 
 vanced. The cheerfulness of the season presents new allure- 
 ments to indolence, and withdraws the mind from the fatigues 
 of painful and solitary reflection. It is difficult to resist the 
 animating gaiety of nature. It is difficult, amid the charms of 
 
 * See Rambler, No. xxiv. June 9, 1750.
 
 RIVAL CLAIMS ADJUSTED. 43 
 
 this her best season, to acquiesce in the restraints of discipline, 
 or to brook the harassing confinement of study. God forbid 
 that I should interrupt the harmless amusements or blast the 
 innocent gaiety of youth. Let the morning of life be conse- 
 crated to enjoyment. May cheerfulness gladden your early 
 years, and may your hearts retain the uncorrupted simplicity 
 of virtue. May you long be preserved from the cares of ad- 
 vancing manhood, and never may your enjoyments be darkened 
 by the horrors of remorse. May you live a life of pleasure, but 
 a pleasure which is the reward of innocence. May you ever 
 resist the enticements of that pleasure which would hurry you 
 along the infatuated career of dissipation which would lure 
 you to destruction which would condemn you to a life of in- 
 famy, and to a deathbed of horror and despair. I have too 
 ardent and sincere an affection for youth to look with an eye 
 of severity on their amusements, or to throw a damp over the 
 sportive gaiety of their dispositions. Let me never interfere 
 with their enjoyments, but to convince them that a life of un- 
 limited indolence will entail upon them all the jniseries of 
 languur and disgust ; to convince them of the necessity of exer- 
 tion ; that industry invigorates the faculties and preserves them 
 from decay ; that activity sustains the energy of character ; that 
 the preparations of youth decide the respectability of manhood, 
 and enrich the mind with the fairest treasures of cultivation and 
 science and morality. 
 
 " Let the supreme importance, then, of the subject that is 
 now to occupy us, animate and sustain your exertions. I again 
 repeat my call to industry and to perseverance. It is uttered 
 with solemnity ; let it be heard with impression. It will indeed 
 be mortifying if that career, which you have hitherto maintained 
 with honour and applause, shall at last terminate in indolence 
 and disgrace. You will excuse, therefore, my ardour in urging 
 the efforts of a patient and persevering attention. They will 
 conduct you in triumph to the termination of your studies they 
 will elevate your respect for science. You will look back with 
 joyous exultation on the many hours you have devoted to the 
 peaceful and improving labours of philosophy, and bless the 
 day when you first attempted the proud career of victory and 
 honour." 
 
 Into no generous breast could such sparks fall without en- 
 kindling a flame. It was a wholly new style of address to issue
 
 44 MEMOIRS OJb' DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 from the Chair claimed by the calmest of the Sciences. It 
 broke in upon the common order ; it might appear to jealous 
 eyes even to infringe upon the dignity of an academic address. 
 It was not unnatural that the old professor should be somewhat 
 startled by the reports of such appeals ; and his doubtfulness 
 about them might be increased on finding that, taking the pre- 
 cedent of former years as his guide, the students were not as 
 far advanced as they had formerly been at the same period of 
 the session. So strong in Mr. Chalmers was the appetite for 
 the full intellectual sympathies of those whom he taught, that 
 he could not move forward till every effort was made to carry 
 the whole class along with him. His employer did not enter 
 into, perhaps was incapable of sympathizing with, the spirit of 
 such a procedure. The very excitement and delight which 
 were awakened among the students may have been displeasing 
 to him. Doubts were expressed jealousies arose interferences 
 took place checks were attempted to be imposed. Such treat- 
 ment could ill be brooked by one so keenly alive to everything 
 which he considered ungenerous or unjust. Nor was Mr. Chal- 
 mers at any pains to conceal what he felt. In closing the ses- 
 sion, he thus addressed his students : 
 
 " In reviewing my labours as your mathematical instructor, 
 I will not assert that I have been infallible, but I will assert 
 that I have been anxious and sincere ; that oppressed as I was 
 by the want of time, I have improved it to the best of my judg- 
 ment, and filled it up with the labours of an active and unre- 
 mitting industry ; that I have discharged my duty with integrity 
 to my employer, and let malignity frown when I say it I 
 have consecrated my best exertions to his service. Supported 
 as I am by these reflections, you will not think that I profess 
 too much when I profess contempt for the suggestions of an 
 envious and unprincipled criticism when I profess that sense 
 of independence to which I feel myself entitled by the testi- 
 mony of an approving conscience. You will not think that I 
 say too much when I say that I have studied your interests 
 with anxiety, if not with success. I have been anxious to 
 maintain the purity of science, and to exercise that inviolable 
 discipline which can alone protect the industrious from noisy 
 interruption, and from the infection of irregular example. Let 
 me now dismiss the authority of a master, and address you in 
 the language of sincere and affectionate friendship. May you
 
 SCENE AT THE CLOSE OF THE SESSION. 45 
 
 ever be preserved from the deceitful allurements of vice. May 
 you walk the proud career of integrity and honour ; and while 
 I live, I have a heart to feel and a voice to plead for your in- 
 terests." 
 
 But it was not enough to unburden himself in his own class- 
 room and in presence of his students ; he was determined to say 
 all, and more than he had said there, in a still more conspicuous 
 place. It was the practice at that time in St. Andrews to have 
 a public examination of all the classes at the end of each session, 
 and in presence of all the professors. The scene in the Public 
 Hall at the close of the session 1802-3, says one who witnessed 
 it,* " was a singular one. When Dr. Kotheram, Professor of 
 Natural Philosophy, had finished the examination of his class, 
 Mr. Chalmers, whose classes were next in course, stepped for- 
 ward to the table, and broke out into a severe invective against 
 Professor Vilant, for having given testimonials to students with- 
 out consulting him, their teacher. The speech was long and 
 sarcastic. It was amusing to see the Academic Board ; old Mr. 
 Cook, irritated and vexed ; Mr. Hill, puffy and fidgetty ; Dr. 
 Playfair, getting up twice or thrice and tugging the speaker by 
 the arm ; Dr. Hunter, with unvarying countenance, his eyes 
 sedately fastened on the floor ; Dr. Rotheram, laughing and in 
 anger by turns.-f- At length Dr. Hill interfered, and with some 
 difficulty silenced Mr. Chalmers, who proceeded with the exa- 
 mination as coolly as if nothing had passed." 
 
 Mr. Chalmers had already intimated to his father that he 
 meant to devote to a visit to Edinburgh the short interval which 
 would occur between the breaking up of the classes at St. An- 
 drews and his settlement in Kilmany. His father disliked the 
 proposition. He knew how engrossed his son had been through- 
 out the winter with mathematics. He looked forward with 
 anxiety to the commencement of his ministry. He feared that 
 science had the hold which he wished so much that the gospel 
 of God's redeeming grace should have ; and thinking that the 
 short season which now remained ere the sacred duties of an 
 ambassador of Christ were entered on might be more fitly and 
 profitably employed, he ventured to remonstrate with his son 
 suggesting that as they had seen so little of him during the 
 
 * The Rev. Dr. Duff. 
 
 t Mr. Cook was Professor of Moral Philosophy ; Mr. Hill of Greek ; Dr. Playfair was 
 Principal of the College ; Dr. Hunter, Professor of Humanity ; and Dr. Hill, Professor of 
 Divinity and Chairman of the Board.
 
 46 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 winter, he might give this interval to Anstruther, where he 
 could find seclusion and repose. He received the following 
 reply : 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, April 28, 1803. 
 
 " DEAK FATHER, I am astonished that the measure proposed 
 in my last should appear in the slightest degree objectionable. 
 I hope that my principles as to the important subject alluded to 
 are already established, and that they do not require any extra- 
 ordinary exercises of reflection at present. I have had sufficient 
 time for reflection, and I do not see how the relaxation of a few 
 days should have any effect in overthrowing those calm and de- 
 cided sentiments which I have already formed. I confess I like 
 not those views of religion which suppose that the business, or 
 even the innocent amusements of the world, have a dangerous 
 tendency to unsettle the mind for serious and elevating exer- 
 cises. It is my decided opinion that the charge of a congre- 
 gation is of the first importance ; and that if the sense of the 
 duties which it imposes is not previously established in the 
 mind by the exercises of a mature and well-digested reflec- 
 tion, it is vain to think that the extraordinary effort of a few 
 days will very essentially contribute to preparation or to im- 
 provement. 
 
 " There is one thing of which you must be sensible the diffi- 
 culty that one man lies under in explaining his motives and 
 justifying his measures to another, whose pursuits and views are 
 totally different. It is impossible, for instance, without entering 
 into a long dissertation about the labours of superintending 
 three classes the comparative difficulty of the subjects that are 
 introduced into each the time necessary for arranging materials 
 for examining old exercises and framing new ones, &c. &c. ; 
 it is impossible to convince my friends that I cannot have a 
 spare moment from my employments either to visit or converse 
 with them. All my resource is, that they take my word for it ; 
 and if they refuse their belief, I must just submit to the imputa- 
 tion of indifference, however unjust I feel it. I must just submit 
 to it, because from the very circumstances of my situation, it is 
 out of my power to make myself intelligible. 
 
 " The same is the case with regard to the object of my jour- 
 ney to Edinburgh. It is impossible to explain to you how im- 
 pressions of a man's character and talent are propagated in the 
 literary public. In my present circumstances, I find it necessary 
 to be in Edinburgh, to spend a day at least with the Edinburgh
 
 HIS FATHER S POSITION. 47 
 
 professors, and to counteract the artifices to which I feel myself 
 exposed, from the attempts of an envious and unprincipled 
 malignity. 
 
 " I beg you will not distress yourself by any suspicions as 
 to my indifference to the parochial duties. From the infinite 
 variety of men's dispositions, there must be different methods 
 of expressing the feelings of their hearts ; and they will employ 
 different instruments for improving the purity of their purposes. 
 I feel that the solitude of a few days would be to me a painful 
 and unmeaning solemnity. Accuse me of indifference when 
 you have observed me deficient in any of the essential duties 
 when you have observed me shrinking from any of those labours 
 which the cares of a parish impose. Yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 How easily might the argument of this letter have been re- 
 torted. Might not the very difficulty of explaining motives and 
 justifying conduct complained of by the son, have been as per- 
 tinently pleaded by the father ? The truth was, that on the 
 greatest and most affecting of all subjects, the ground of a com- 
 mon understanding did not as yet exist between them. The 
 father's suggestion had been set aside. It but remained for him 
 in faith and with prayer to await the time (and he lived to see 
 it, and was glad) when he should not only become intelligible, 
 but secure the completest and profoundest sympathy.
 
 48 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 l^RST SUMMER AT KILMANY A WINTER OF CONFLICT AND TRIUMPH 
 
 AT ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 IN looking from Dundee across the Frith of Tay, a low range 
 of hills is seen to run from east to west along the Fifeshire 
 coast. Immediately behind this ridge lies a sequestered valley, 
 shut in upon the south by a second range of hills, running also 
 nearly parallel to the coast-line. Of this well-watered and 
 fertile valley, the parish of Kilmany forms a part. Its church 
 and village stand at an equal distance about five miles from 
 Cupar, the nearest market-town on the south ; and on the north, 
 from Newport, the principal ferry to Dundee. Of limited ex- 
 tent, its greatest length being not more than six, its greatest 
 width not more than four miles, and with a purely agricultural 
 population, numbering about 150 families, this parish presented 
 a comparatively easy and very attractive sphere of ministerial 
 labour. And there now came to it as its minister, one upon 
 whose fresh and nature-loving spirit its sloping hills and peace- 
 'ful valleys and rustic homesteads made the deepest and liveliest 
 impression an impression deeper indeed and livelier and more 
 lasting than any other of the localities to which, in the course 
 of his varied life, he became attached. 
 
 Mr. Chalmers. was ordained by the Presbytery of Cupar as 
 minister of the parish of Kilmany, on the 12th day of May, 
 1803. The manse was ill-placed, and old enough to warn its 
 occupant not to be too lavish of his attentions, lest he might 
 cut off his hope of getting a new one built upon another and 
 better site. It had, however, to be made habitable fit to re- 
 ceive Mr. Chalmers and two of his sisters who came to live with 
 him. The arrangements of the in-door and out-door economy, 
 in all of which he took the liveliest interest, the needful pre- 
 parations for the pulpit, the visitation and examination of his 
 parish, in the course of which, to use his own favourite phrase, 
 moving " with his affections flying before him," he made him- 
 self acquainted with every family, and familiar at every fireside
 
 ORDINATION AT FERN. 49 
 
 winning back from every household such rich responses of 
 genuine gratitude, as such genuine good-will was so well fitted 
 to draw forth these with a week given to Edinburgh, and a 
 week to Angus, and a week to the meeting of the Synod, filled 
 up the summer months. His visit to Angus was made that he 
 might be present at the ordination, in the parish of Fern, of a 
 college acquaintance, the Eev. David Harris : 
 
 " I rode with him," says the Eev. Mr. Burns, " most part of 
 the way to Brechin. I remember this circumstance. The church 
 at Fern, at that time, was, like most parish churches in the 
 country, very mean, and the pews most inconveniently huddled 
 together. No preparation had been made for the convenient 
 assembling of the members of Presbytery round the brother to 
 be ordained. Mr. Chalmers was not in a situation at all con- 
 venient for joining in the imposition of hands, and in fact did 
 not join in the act. He seemed, however, to feel a good deal 
 after the service was over on account of this unintentional neg- 
 lect. He asked me repeatedly if it was not a great oversight 
 he had fallen into that he wished he had got his hands put on 
 along with the brethren ; but added, ' he supposed it was of no 
 great consequence,' yet wished he had got nearer, so as to have 
 placed his hand upon his friend's head. His kindness of heart 
 thus appeared in his regret at what he felt as an apparent want 
 of attention, and a neglect of the duty of the day." 
 
 Mr. Chalmers had calculated on retaining the mathematical 
 assistantship. His ordination at Kilmauy might not of itself 
 have prevented this : for six out of the eleven years during 
 which his own teacher, Dr. Brown, had occupied that position, 
 he was minister of the parish of Denino ; and Kilmany, being 
 only about nine miles distant, was not so remote from St. An- 
 drews as to render a similar arrangement impracticable. At the 
 close of the session, however and after such a close who can 
 wonder at it ? his employer gave him to understand that his 
 services would not again be required. This summary dismissal 
 not only tore him away from an occupation which he loved, and 
 confined him to one in which he felt as yet but little interest, 
 it seemed also to close up the avenue along which his brightest 
 hopes had been moving. Inefficiency as a teacher had been 
 alleged as the ground of it ; and if that allegation were received, 
 his prospects of academic distinction would be blasted. And was 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 it thus that all his most cherished hopes were to be defeated ? 
 Was that hand, which had shut so sharply against him the way 
 of return even for another winter to the mathematical classroom 
 of St. Andrews, to be permitted to do him the still weightier in- 
 jury of closing every door to university preferment ? Not with- 
 out a vigorous effort to repair this injury to right this wrong ! 
 To clear his impeached reputation from the reproach which 
 had been thrown upon it, he resolved to open next winter in 
 St. Andrews mathematical classes of his own rivals to those 
 of the University. All opposition which might arise elsewhere 
 he was fully prepared to brave ; but there was one quarter in 
 which, by early and kindly application, he fain would soften it 
 down. 
 
 " KILMANY, October 18, 1803. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, You may perhaps by this time have heard 
 of my intention to open mathematical classes next winter. I 
 believe the measure will be opposed by a certain party of the 
 St. Andrews professors ; but I am sure they will not be able to 
 ruin the success of my intended proceedings, except by having 
 recourse to dishonourable practices. These artifices I shall be 
 obliged to expose for my own vindication ; but my chief anxiety 
 is to reconcile you to the idea of not confining my whole atten- 
 tion to my ministerial employment. The fact is that no mini- 
 ster finds that necessary. Even at present I am able to devote 
 as much time and as much attention to other subjects, as I will 
 be under the necessity of doing next winter, and after all I 
 discharge my duties, I hope, in a satisfactory manner. With 
 regard to non-residence, that is only to last for six months. I 
 have never been called to any incidental duty through the week 
 but once, and I have the assurance of my two neighbours that 
 they will attend to every ministerial office that may be neces- 
 sary. Your apprehensions, with regard to the dissatisfaction of 
 the parishioners, are, I can assure you, quite groundless. I feel 
 the footing on which I stand with them, and am certain that 
 no serious or permanent offence will ever be excited. . . 
 Yours affectionately, . THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 St. Andrews lies so much out of the line of the great rolling 
 current of public life, that in general it enjoys a very unbroken 
 rest. The genius of the place is repose a repose, however, 
 which, startled from its slumbers by the step of this bold invader 
 from Kilmany, was now for a season effectually put to flight.
 
 COMMOTION AT ST. ANDREWS. 51 
 
 The professors met in hurried consultation the students were 
 agitated and divided the hearts of many siding with the youth- 
 ful devotee, who came to redeem his injured scientific honour. 
 The general public, dependent either for actual subsistence or 
 for all social fellowship upon the colleges, looked with wonder 
 at the sight of an open and declared rivalry establishing itself 
 within the very shadow of the University. A brief and broken 
 journal of this memorable winter is still preserved, exhibiting in 
 its pages the tossings of the stormy waters : 
 
 " Thursday, Oct. 27. Came to St. Andrews. Called on Mr. 
 Duff, and am told by him that Dr. Hunter mentioned that a 
 paper was to be read at the first meeting of all the classes 
 stating that four winters' attendance, and attendance upon all 
 the University classes, was necessary for admission into the 
 Divinity College. Have pretty decided suspicions that this is 
 an interference with the authority of the Church. Called on 
 
 Mrs. M . She expresses her fears that the attendance of 
 
 her son on my class would hurt him with the professors ; but at 
 the same time says, that if all were left to themselves, I would 
 experience a numerous support. 
 
 " Friday, Oct. 28. Called on Mr. Cook, juiu (Professor of 
 Hebrew) an explanation with him amounting to a dismissal. 
 Mr. Grierson (a tutor*) says he is not warranted to send his 
 pupil to my classes ; but, circumstances being equal, knows 
 what he would do. 
 
 " Tuesday, Nov. 1. Delivered an Introductory Lecture." 
 
 Keferring to his present position as compared with that which 
 he occupied at the beginning of the preceding session, he said 
 " True, I am different from what I was, but the difference is 
 only in external circumstances. I feel not that my energies 
 have expired, though I no longer tread that consecrated ground 
 where the Muses have fixed their residence. I feel not that 
 science has deserted me, though I breathe not the air which 
 ventilates the halls of St. Salvator. ... I have only to 
 lift my eyes and behold the students of a former session. With, 
 them I was wont to indulge in all the intimacies of friendship. 
 A summer spent in the labours of my profession has not effaced 
 them from my memory. I will say more ; it has not effaced 
 them from my affections. I bless the remembrance of that day 
 
 * James Grierson, M.D., afterwards minister of Cockpen.
 
 52 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 when they first attempted the high career of science. It was 
 to me a day of triumph. It is from that day I date the first 
 rising of my literary ambition an ambition which can only 
 expire with the decay of my intellectual faculties. My appear- 
 ance in this place may be ascribed to the worst of passions ; 
 some may be disposed to ascribe it to the violence of a revenge- 
 ful temper some to stigmatize me as a firebrand of turbulence 
 and mischief. These motives I disclaim. I disclaim them with 
 the pride of an indignant heart which feels its integrity. My 
 only motive is, to restore that academical reputation which I 
 conceive to have been violated by the aspersions of envy. It 
 is this which has driven me from the peaceful silence of the 
 country which has forced me to exchange my domestic retire- 
 ment for the whirl of contention." 
 
 " Wednesday, Nov. 2. I have heard no particular animad- 
 versions by the professors, but a lively apprehension on the part 
 of the students of their displeasure. Mr. A. called, and regretted 
 deeply the necessity under which he lay of attending T., from 
 the fear of being stopped next winter. This the subject of an 
 interesting description. Heard that the students are afraid of 
 injustice in the Library from their attendance upon me. Mr. D. 
 risks the loss of a bursary, so must be the object of my parti- 
 cular attention. 
 
 " Monday, Nov. 1. Mr. V. sent for Mr. Kid on Saturday 
 prevailed on him to give his word of honour not to attend my 
 class. T. sent for Mr. D. rated him for soliciting students to 
 attend me, and threatened to carry him before the University 
 Meeting for his conduct. I have certain information of Dr. K. 
 giving the impression that I broke faith with him.* 
 
 " Wednesday, Nov. 9. Wrote yesterday to Dr. K., respect- 
 ing an impression he had given to my prejudice. No answer 
 to-day. 
 
 " Thursday, Nov. 10. Received an evasive answer from Dr. 
 B. My reply sent back in an insulting manner, without an 
 answer, though opened, and with a message that he wished no 
 more lines from me. 
 
 11 Friday, Nov. 11. Went to Dr. E. on the street between 
 ten and eleven, A.M., and said to him that I was sorry, from 
 the proceedings of last night, to be under the necessity of pro- 
 
 * What Dr. E. alleged was, that Mr. Chalmers had promised to him, when he gave b tm 
 his vote for Kilmany, that he would not teach a second session in St. Andrews.
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF CHEMICAL LECTURES. 53 
 
 nouncing him the author of a false and impudent calumny. 
 Called W. V. to witness, and repeated before him the same 
 words. W. V. said that I ought to be prosecuted. Dr. R. left 
 me in great agitation, saying, ' / will prosecute him.' 
 
 " Monday, Nov. 14. Heard James Hunter say that Dr. R. 
 met him at twelve on Friday much agitated. He said that I 
 had called him a notorious liar, both to himself and in W. V.'s 
 hearing. Hear of advice having been sent for to Edinburgh on 
 the subject of me and Dr. R., in consequence of his having con- 
 sulted the Society. 
 
 " Wednesday, Nov. 16. Heard Mr. Duff say that Dr. Hunter 
 was sure that Dr. R. must have given me his vote before he un- 
 derstood I was to be Vilant's assistant. 
 
 " Sunday, Nov. 20. Supped with Dr. Adamson. An awk- 
 wardness, which I think will wear off from him in time. 
 
 " Monday, Nov. 21. Mr. J. Hunter has changed his hour 
 from five to two ; upon which I change my practical class from 
 two to five. 
 
 " Tuesday, Nov. 22. Mrs. Barron expressed to Dr. Brown 
 her disapprobation of the violent opposition I experienced. She 
 was frank to-day when I met her. 
 
 " Wednesday, Nov. 23. Understand that Dr. R.'s account of 
 our quarrel is almost universally believed in town, and has a 
 strong effect to my prejudice. 
 
 " Thursday, Nov. 24. Hear from Dr. Brown that the Barrens 
 discover a strong tendency to reconciliation. 
 
 " Saturday, Nov. 26. Left Mr. Gillespie of Mountquhannie 
 and Dr. Greenlaw with the best impressions of the St. Andrews 
 business. The former I found under prejudices. 
 
 " Tuesday, Dec. 6. Announced this day my intention of teach- 
 ing chemistry, and have got eight enrolments in consequence. 
 
 " Wednesday, Dec. 7. Met Dr. Hunter, who was more than 
 usually civil. 
 
 " Friday, Dec. 9. T. keen-set against the chemistry class 
 says that I must be insufficient, because chemistry is the work 
 of a lifetime. 
 
 " Wednesday, Dec. 14. Drank tea in Mrs. Vilant's. Heard 
 there that a great number of people are highly disposed to favour 
 my intentions of teaching chemistry. 
 
 " Friday, Dec. 18. Heard Dr. Brown say that the Playfairs 
 are very silent and reserved on the subject of my chemistry, and 
 disposed to doubt my habits of experimenting.
 
 54 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Monday, Dec. 19. Delivered my introductory Chemical 
 Lecture to a full and respectable audience. 
 
 " January 24, 1804. A considerable noise and conversation 
 in town to-day on the subject of my numerous and splendid 
 audience, and interesting discussion yesternight in the che- 
 mistry. 
 
 " January 30. Dr. Brown tells me that the Hunters discover 
 strong symptoms of reconciliation. The Doctor expresses sur- 
 prise that I ever should have suspected him of opposition. 
 
 " February 6. Dr. Brown tells me that all over the town 
 the impression is most decidedly in favour of me and of my 
 chemistry." 
 
 He had three classes of mathematics, as well as this class of 
 chemistry to prepare for and conduct ; he had besides the pulpit 
 of Kilmany to supply, going out generally to the manse every 
 Saturday, and returning early every Monday ; yet he wrote to 
 his father as if he had now got into and was breathing the 
 proper element of his being : " March 14. My hands are full 
 of business. I am living just now the life I seem to be formed 
 for a life of constant and unremitting activity. Deprive me 
 of employment, and you condemn me to a life of misery and 
 disgust." 
 
 The impression could scarcely be otherwise than favourable to 
 his chemistry.* The following extract, as we shall find here- 
 
 * His lectures, many of which still exist, were fully written out ; his experiments were 
 carefully selected and prepared ; while with the strictly scientific, which formed the main 
 staple of his instructions, there mingled occasionally such passages as the following : 
 
 " The invention of the new nomenclature must be regarded as a most brilliant era in the 
 history of this science. For this capital improvement the world is principally indebted to 
 the genius of Lavoisier, a gentleman of France, who with a fortune sufficient to secure to him 
 all the gratifications of luxury, all the splendours of a princely establishment, gave his time 
 and his enthusiasm to the science of chemistry. But his chemistry did not rob him of his 
 virtue, nor did it repress the ardours of an enlightened patriotism. He bore a distinguished 
 part in the first scenes of the French Revolution ; but afterwards withdrew from the manage- 
 ment of public affairs, disgusted by the sanguinary and unprincipled excesses of Robespierre. 
 He wrote to a friend in the country, that he had now withdrawn for ever from public em- 
 ployment, and meant to devote the remainder of his days to the sciences. But the malignity 
 of the tyrant pursued him to his retreat, and hurried him to the scaffold whilst pursuing 
 a magnificent train of chemical experiments. Thus ended the days of Lavoisier, and every 
 friend of philosophy wept his fell. 
 
 ***** ** 
 
 " Science is often disgraced by the affectations of pedantry, and a pedantic chemist is to 
 me the mo^t insufferable of all animals a being who rests his pretensions to glory on a row 
 of mineralogical specimens on the shelf of his chimney, and who conceives himself sur- 
 rounded with the dignity of a philosopher, because he sits enthroned amid a formidable 
 array of crucibles and melting-pots a being who has renounced the simplicity of his mother- 
 tongue, and clothes the most familiar occurrences in the cabalistic phraseology of chemistry
 
 COUNT RUMFORD AND PETER PINDAR. 55 
 
 after, lias a higher interest attached to it than any which mere 
 eloquence could bestow. After an enumeration of the earths, 
 allusion was made to the then infant science of Geology : 
 
 " It is the object of geology to lay before you the present 
 arrangement of those materials of which the earth is composed, 
 to conjecture the various changes which may have taken place 
 on the surface of the globe, and to pursue the history of its 
 physical revolutions. This you may say is a daring enterprise ; 
 but what enterprise too daring for the intrepidity of philoso- 
 phical speculation ? who can presume to restrain the flight of 
 human curiosity ? who can control the proud and aspiring 
 energies of the mind ? who can stop the ambitious excursions 
 of philosophy ? I know nothing more calculated to illustrate 
 the triumphs of the human mind than to contrast its gigantic 
 efforts in the walks of speculation with the extreme helplessness 
 and imbecility of our physical constitution. Man is the being 
 of yesterday ; he is a flower which every blast of heaven can 
 wither into decay ; the breath of his life is a thin vapour which 
 every wind can dissipate into nothing ; his inheritance is the 
 
 a being who win theorize at dinner on the analysis of a pudding, while his admiring 
 hearers are far better employed in eating it 
 
 " It is supposed by some that philosophy lets herself down when she employs her attention 
 upon the servile and degrading offices of cookery. We can bear to hear of the philosophy 
 of the mind, of the philosophy of mechanics, of the philosophy of agriculture, of the philo- 
 sophy of medicine ; but it was reserved for this age of wonders to hear a series of grave and 
 didactic lectures on the philosophy of the kitchen. Let it be remembered, however, that 
 philosophy is never more usefully and never more honourably directed than when multiplying 
 the stores of human comfort and subsistence than when enlightening the humblest depart- 
 ments of industry than when she leaves the school of declamation and descends to the 
 walks of business, to the dark and dismal receptacles of misery, to the hospitals of disease, 
 to the putrid houses of our great cities, where poverty sits in lonely and ragged wretchedness, 
 agonized with pain, faint with hunger, and shivering in a frail and unsheltered tenement. 
 Count Rumford deserves the gratitude of mankind; though it must be observed of his 
 philosophy that it is often weak and ostentatious, and gives an air of ridiculous solemnity to 
 the most trivial and insignificant discussions a solemnity that has drawn upon it the severe 
 and successful irony of Dr. Wolcott. The Doctor, in a note to one of his poems addressed 
 to Count Rumford, amuses his reader with a literal extract from one of the Count's econo- 
 mical performances, only reserving to himself the liberty of giving a title to this said extract, 
 which is, ' Count Rumford's method of laying siege to a hasty pudding.' The Count directs 
 that the hasty pudding ' be spread out equally on a plate,' that ' while hot, an excavation is 
 to be made in the middle of it with a spoon, into which excavation a piece of butter as large 
 as a nutmeg is to be put, and upon it a spoonful of brown sugar, or more commonly 
 molasses. The butter being soon melted by the heat of the pudding, mixes with the sugar 
 or molasses, and forms a sauce, which being confined in the excavation made for it, occupies 
 the middle of the plate.' A small portion of the pudding is then to be lifted in a spoon 
 from the circumference of the dish, and dipped into the excavation ; and the Count does 
 not fail to give, us the very necessary information, that each spoonful is to be carried from the 
 plate to the mouth ; ' care being had in taking it up to begin at the outside, or near the 
 brim of the plate, and to approach the centre by regular advances, in order not to demolish 
 too soon the excavation which forms the reservoir of the sauce.' ' Admirable display,' says 
 Peter Pindar, ' of military tactics. Nobler generalship could not have been exhibited by 
 Marlborough or Turenne, or even by the great Bonaparte himself.'" See A Poetical Epittle 
 to Benjamin Count Rumford Work* of Peter Pindar, vol. v. p. 129. London, 1812.
 
 56 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 gloom of a silent grave, where he will sleep with the dust of 
 his fathers. He is the poor victim of passion and of infirmity ; 
 from the feeble cry of infancy to the strength and independence 
 of manhood, a thousand ills pursue him a thousand anxieties 
 torment his repose. He at one time labours under the hard- 
 ships of poverty ; at another, pines away in the infirmity of dis- 
 ease ; at another, weeps the treachery of violated friendship ; 
 and at another, mourns the awful desolations which death makes 
 among friends and among families. Yet, amid this wild war 
 of accident and misfortune he has displayed the triumph of his 
 energies ; he has given his few peaceful moments to the labours 
 of philosophy ; he has sent abroad his penetrating eye and caught 
 the finest tokens of magnificence, simplicity, and order ; he has 
 enriched science with a thousand truths, and adorned the walks 
 of literature with a thousand delicacies. There is a prejudice 
 against the speculations of the geologist which I am anxious to 
 remove. It has been said that they nurture infidel propensities. 
 By referring the origin of the globe to a higher antiquity than 
 is assigned to it by the writings of Moses, it has been said that 
 geology undermines our faith in the inspiration of the Bible, and 
 in all the animating prospects of immortality which it unfolds. 
 This is a false alarm. The writings of Moses do not fix the 
 antiquity of the globe. If they fix anything at all, it is only the 
 antiquity of the species. It is not the interest of Christianity to 
 repress liberty of discussion. It has nothing to fear from the 
 attacks of infidelity. It should rather defy her approach, and 
 stand to receive her in the proudest of attitudes the attitude of 
 confidence in its own strength, and animated by the remem- 
 brance of the triumphs which it has already gained in the battles 
 of controversy. God knows we have little to fear on the side of 
 infidelity. It is not here that we are to seek for the point of 
 alarm. What Christianity has most to fear from, is from the en- 
 croachments of an insidious and undermining fanaticism from 
 its false friends from those men who disgrace the cause by their 
 bigotry or their enthusiasm from those who have brought re- 
 ligion into contempt by throwing over it the deformity of ail 
 illiberal and contracted superstition." 
 
 No hostile influences could quench the admiration which 
 kindled around such a lectureship. The tide of opposition was 
 already fast subsiding it was now turned into a tide of ap- 
 plause, bearing the lecturer on its swelling bosom high above all
 
 IT GROWS DARK AT KILMANY. 57 
 
 the difficulties of his position. Even from the beginning there 
 had been much in that position to win favour in the eyes of the 
 independent and the generous-hearted. The impetuous manli- 
 ness the open-hearted honesty the unwavering purpose the 
 indomitable energy displayed these went far to redeem it from 
 the charge of impropriety and imprudence ; whilst in the very 
 act of a single unbefriended youth braving the gathered enmity 
 of a university that he might wipe away a stain from his injured 
 literary honour, there was a scientific chivalry, kindling in many 
 a breast a glow of approving sympathy, which no frown of official 
 authority could extinguish. Even the stern gravity of office was 
 at length relaxed ; for although there was something of rude 
 violence in the onset made by this invader of all university 
 decorum, yet much of the true academic spirit broke out at every 
 stage of the assault. It was not that he loved his alma mater 
 less it was that he loved her all too well, that he was heard 
 now thundering so impetuously at her gates. And although 
 strong personal feeling was at times expressed, such a genial 
 humanity breathed about him who uttered it, that the very pro- 
 fessor upon whom his stroke at first seemed to fall the heaviest, 
 was one of the first to extend to him the forgiving hand of 
 friendship. 
 
 But while all was growing bright before him at St. Andrews, 
 all grew dark behind him at Kilmany. Some of the ministers 
 of his Presbytery resolved to bring his conduct before that court, 
 with the view either to impose a check or inflict a censure. In 
 anticipation of being summoned before them, and in the belief 
 that he would be summarily required to dismiss his classes, he 
 wrote the following explanation and defence : 
 
 " My intention to reside in St. Andrews originated in a motive 
 which I contend is justifiable. ' Is it unjustifiable to extend your 
 literary reputation, or to restore it when you conceive that that 
 reputation is violated ? Can this be denounced as a criminal 
 ambition ? It originated in a desire to acquit myself to the 
 public as a mathematical teacher, with a view to justify my 
 claims to academical preferment. Can this be branded as an 
 unprincipled enormity ? It originated in attachment to my 
 pupils, and in a wish to conduct them to the termination of those 
 studies which they had so successfully begun. Can this be 
 alleged as the evidence of a hardened indifference to the feel- 
 ings or considerations of morality ? Few of you are perhaps
 
 58 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 acquainted with the peculiarities of my situation as assistant 
 teacher in the mathematical classes of St. Andrews University. 
 I felt my business to be agreeable ; I rejoiced in the education 
 of youth as the most important and delightful exercise of a man's 
 powers ; but before one-half of the session had elapsed, I felt 
 myself surrounded with all the cares and perplexities of opposi- 
 tion. Unfortunate misunderstandings arose, which it is neither 
 for you to hear nor for me at present to explain. I shall only 
 say that I was deserted both by my employer and the University, 
 and my career as the mathematical assistant was at last closed 
 by the ignominy of a dismissal from my employment. I was 
 now disposed of. I was consigned to the obscurity of the coun- 
 try. I was compelled to retire in disgrace, and leave the field 
 to my exulting enemies. They had gained their object a name 
 expunged from the list of competition no further disturbance 
 from interlopers no literary upstart to emulate their delicious 
 repose, or to outstrip them in public esteem no ambitious in- 
 truder to dispel our golden dreams of preferment, or to riot along 
 with us in the rich harvest of benefices. I have few friends 
 no patronage to help me forward in the career of an honourable 
 ambition. All that I had to trust in was my academic reputa- 
 tion and the confidence of an enlightened public. But where is 
 the enlightened public .to which a slandered mathematician may 
 appeal ? There is no more such an enlightened public in St. 
 Andrews than there is in the interior of Africa. But I had one 
 consolation : I was supported by the respectful attachment of 
 my students. But even to their progress, my appeal was far 
 from being effectual. I had only taught them one session ; I 
 had only initiated them into the elements of the science. I was 
 proud enough to think that I had succeeded in inspiring a taste 
 and an ardour for mathematical learning. I was proud enough 
 to think that if they persevered as they had begun, they would 
 be to me the most honourable of all testimonies. At the end of 
 last winter, I had no formed mathematicians to whom I could 
 appeal, as the argument of a successful or conscientious teacher. 
 The credit of my more advanced students was divided between me 
 and my predecessor ; the credit of the students whom I initiated, 
 between me and him who had succeeded me. What could I do ? 
 Was I to leave my reputation to the candour of the University, 
 or to the testimony of him who had disgraced me ? I confess I 
 felt no such confidence. I foresaw an end to all my hopes of 
 literary distinction. I had nothing to expect from the spirit of
 
 DEFENCE BEFORE THE PRESBYTERY. 59 
 
 a grasping monopoly. I must either have resigned myself to 
 the silence of despair, or attempted the testimony of an inde- 
 pendent public. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " I am not able to guess at the precise object of the gentle- 
 man in the public appearance he has just made. Does he mean 
 that I should desert my classes, and renounce the interests of 
 those whose friendship has consoled my feelings in the hour of 
 perplexity ? Does he mean that I should surrender those few 
 who remained with me in my worst days, and rallied to support 
 me amid the storms of persecuting violence ? I will say it, in 
 my cause they have evinced a spirit of the most exalted virtue. 
 They have withstood the allurements of interest. They have 
 defied the threats of persecution. They have spurned at the 
 cold and withering suggestions of prudence. They have sacri- 
 ficed all at the shrine of friendship ; and though surrounded 
 with the most corrupting atmosphere to which the manly and 
 independent virtues were exposed, they have maintained the 
 purity of an untainted honour, and the fidelity of an inviolable 
 attachment. And are these the men whom the gentleman 
 would force me to desert ? Is this the painful humiliation he 
 would impose upon me ? Shall I leave them to the ridicule 
 and triumph of those whom their attachment to me has rendered 
 their enemies ? He talks of the religious interests of my parish. 
 I know nothing from which religion has suffered so severely as 
 from the disgrace of its teachers. Compel me to retire from my 
 classes, and you give a blow to the religious interests of my 
 parish which all the punctualities of discipline will never re- 
 store. You render me the laughing-stock of the country ; you 
 cover me with infamy ; you render me the object of public 
 contempt and public execration. Compel me to retire, and I 
 shall be fallen indeed. I would feel myself blighted in the 
 eyes of all my acquaintances. I would never more lift up my 
 face in society. I would bury myself in the oblivion of shame 
 and solitude. I would hide me from the world. I would be 
 overpowered by the feeling of my own disgrace. The torments 
 of self- reflection would pursue me ; they would haunt my dreams; 
 they would lay me on a bed of torture ; they would condemn 
 me to a life of restless and never-ceasing anxiety. Death would 
 be to me the most welcome of all messengers. It would cut 
 short the remainder of my ignominious days. It would lay me 
 in the grave's peaceful retreat. It would withdraw me from the
 
 60 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 agitations of a life that has been persecuted by the injustice 
 of enemies, and still more distracted by the treachery of violated 
 friendship." 
 
 The subject was not brought before the Presbytery so soon 
 as he had expected. On the evening of the day on which 
 this speech was delivered, the following hurried note was de- 
 spatched to Dr. Brown at St. Andrews : 
 
 " CCPAB, May 8, 1804. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, You will be surprised to hear that the long 
 threatened discussion was at last introduced into the Presby- 
 tery this day. It met with the fate it deserved was quashed 
 and reprobated. The discussions were all in public. A numer- 
 ous audience attended, and our argumentation lasted two hours. 
 Yours, with much esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 FURTHER PRESBYTERIAL INTERFERENCE. 61 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 CHEMICAL LECTURES REPEATED AT ST. ANDREWS PRESBYTERIAL INTERFER- 
 ENCE CANDIDATE FOR THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY CHAIR AT ST. ANDREWS, 
 
 AND FOR THE MATHEMATICAL CHAIR AT EDINBURGH FIRST PUBLICATION 
 
 CHEMICAL LECTURES AT KILMANT AND CUPAR DOUBLE COMMISSION IN THE 
 
 VOLUNTEERS INCIDENT AT KIKKCALDY HIS FATHEB's CHARACTER HIS 
 
 BROTHER GEORGF/S DEATH. 
 
 His chemical lectures had been so highly relished, that Mr. 
 Chalmers readily consented to repeat them during the next 
 winter session at St. Andrews. A summer's interval of leisure 
 would enable him to render them more complete and more at- 
 tractive. Their delivery would not call him away from Kil- 
 rnany for more than two or three days in each week ; and as 
 he had relinquished the intention of re-opening mathematical 
 classes, it was his hope that no further Presbyterial interference 
 would be attempted. But he was disappointed. 
 
 At a meeting of the Presbytery of Cupar, held on the 4th 
 September 1804, " Dr. Martin begged the Presbytery to insert 
 in their minutes that, in his opinion, Mr. Chalmers giving lec- 
 tures in chemistry is improper, and ought to be discontinued. 
 To this request the Presbytery acceded. On which Mr. Chal- 
 mers begged it to be inserted in the minutes, that after the 
 punctual discharge of his professional duties, his time was his 
 own ; and he conceived that no man or no court had a right to 
 control him in the distribution of it."* It was only in the morning 
 of the very day on which the Presbytery met that Mr. Chalmers 
 got intelligence of Dr. Martin's intention. -He retired for the 
 brief interval of time which remained, and then started for 
 Cupar, with the following hurriedly written sentences prepared 
 in the way of defence : 
 
 " MODERATOR, In the olden times, ecclesiastical persecution 
 doomed one of its victims to be heavily fined ; it doomed an- 
 other to imprisonment ; another to the loss of his ears ; and an- 
 other to the horrors of execution. Now, I would fain hope that 
 
 * Extracted from the Minutes of Presbytery.
 
 62 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the gentleman's appearance arises rather from an error in judg- 
 ment than from the workings of an unfair and arbitrary disposi- 
 tion. He may perhaps think, that what is perfectly lawful in 
 professors and professors' sons, is great presumption and great 
 vice in a poor literary pedlar, who trudges on to his literary 
 station with a bundle of manuscripts and old wares from the 
 country. Whatever rank, however, my brethren of the Presby- 
 tery may choose to assign to me, I must protest against the 
 unequal distribution of punishment. They know it is not in their 
 power to inflict execution. Such is the happy constitution of 
 our country that my ears are completely protected from their 
 violence. As to imprisonment, I shall resist them with all my 
 might if they attempt to confine me within the boundaries of 
 my parish ; but as to fines, such is my confidence in the equity 
 of our worthy comptroller, that I will pay down with cheerful- 
 ness whatever he shall think my delinquency deserves. 
 
 " I have thought that the fundamental error of this business 
 consists in beginning the inquiry at the wrong end. The gentle- 
 man sees me indulging in an amusement that is certainly foreign 
 to the nature of my profession, but not more so than the amuse- 
 ments of feasting, and playing, and music, and painting in- 
 dulgences which we all enjoy, and from which no absurd scruple 
 of conscience ought to keep us. Suppose that any of my 
 brethren is much given to the dilettante occupation of music, 
 the Presbytery, I should presume, would never think of disturb- 
 ing his enjoyment, unless he was so exclusively devoted to his 
 favourite exercise as to desert his sermons desert his exami- 
 nations desert his attention to the sick. You tolerate him in 
 his indulgence, and why? because you find that the duties 
 which belong to his ministerial office are punctually executed. 
 Should not the same reason apply in equity to the case before 
 us ? I am indulging in a favourite amusement. You have no 
 right to presume that I am therefore deserting the duties of my 
 professional employment. Such presumption at least does not 
 supersede the necessity of inquiry. Now, let the gentleman 
 traverse the boundaries of my parish ; let him begin with the 
 houses of my wealthy proprietors, and descend to the lowest 
 tenements of poverty and disease, I will defy him to find a 
 single individual who can substantiate the charge of culpable 
 negligence against me. I will defy him to find a single indi- 
 vidual who will say that I have been outstripped by any of my 
 predecessors in the regularity of my ministerial attentions, or
 
 CHEMICAL LECTURES RESUMED. 63 
 
 who will say that he has discovered anything in my conduct 
 which betokened a contempt for religion or indifference to its 
 sacred interests. What more will the gentleman require of me ? 
 Has he any right to control me in the distribution of my spare 
 time ? I maintain he has none. I spurn at the attempt as I 
 would at the petty insolence of a tyrant ; I reject it as the in- 
 terference of an officious intermeddler. To the last sigh of my 
 heart I will struggle for independence, and eye with proud dis- 
 dain the man who presumes to invade it." 
 
 In November, the chemical lectures were resumed at St. 
 Andrews. On the 10th of that month, Mr. Chalmers writes to 
 his brother : 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, You allude to the quantity of business I 
 have in hand. This is neither more nor less than teaching a 
 class of chemistry in St. Andrews during the winter. It only 
 withdraws me from my parish two days in the week. It affords 
 a rational and dignified amusement, and it fills up that spare 
 time which I would otherwise fret away in indolence and dis- 
 gust. It did not altogether meet my father's approbation at 
 first, influenced as he was by his scruples about clerical resi- 
 dence ; but he must now be convinced that it trenches upon 
 no essential duly, and that I expend as much effort upon the 
 religious improvement of my people as any minister within the 
 bounds of my Presbytery. Yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The offence taken at the proceedings of the foregoing winter 
 could neither have been ve/y deep nor very lasting. Dr. 
 Rotheram, the Professor of Natural Philosophy, had died. His 
 chair was in the gift of the College, and the election was to 
 take place in December. Along with Mr. Duncan, now Pro- 
 fessor of Mathematics at St. Andrews, then Eector of the Aca- 
 demy at Dundee, and with Mr. Leslie, who had just completed 
 and published his researches on Heat, Mr. Chalmers proposed 
 himself as a candidate. Overlooking the claims of all the three, 
 the electors were divided between Dr. Macdonald, minister of 
 Kemback, and Mr. Jackson, Rector of Ayr Academy, who finally 
 and after a lengthened litigation, terminated only in the 
 House of Lords obtained the chair. 
 
 After the occurrences of the former session, Mr. Chalmers's
 
 64 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 hopes could not have been very sanguine. On the day of elec- 
 tion, he writes to his father : " St. Andrews, Dec. 1, 1804. 
 The meeting is not yet broken up, but I have every reason to 
 think that Dr. Adamson's party have a decided tendency to Mr. 
 Jackson. I confess I am not much affected by the disappoint- 
 ment,- as my University prospects have upon the whole bright- 
 ened up within the last fortnight, as my election would have 
 involved me in the embarrassment of a law process, and above 
 all, as my contempt for the low shuffling artifices of college 
 politics supports and elevates my mind against the vexation of 
 regret." 
 
 In January 1805, the University of Edinburgh was deprived 
 of one of its brightest ornaments by the death of Dr. Kobison. 
 As University patrons, the Town-council offered his chair, 
 that of Natural Philosophy, to Mr. Playfair, by whose accept- 
 ance of it the mathematical professorship became vacant. Mr. 
 Chalmers presented himself to the notice of the patrons as 
 aspiring to be Mr. Playfair's successor ; but although his claims 
 were in many quarters favourably entertained, and the reception 
 given him when he waited personally on the electors was grati- 
 fying, two other candidates had, at the very commencement of 
 the canvass, chiefly attracted and almost engrossed the public 
 regards. The Eev. Mr. Macknight, one of the ministers of Edin- 
 burgh, who had acted as assistant to Dr. Eobison, was at first 
 willing to resign his ministerial charge upon his appointment 
 to the professorship, but was afterwards induced by his clerical 
 friends to advance his claim to the one office on the understood 
 condition that he should retain the other. Professor Stewart, 
 alarmed at the prospect of such, a conjunction, addressed an 
 urgent letter of remonstrance to the Lord Provost, which was 
 followed by one of similar import from Professor Playfair. Ot 
 their fears as to Mr. Macknight's appointment they were soon 
 relieved, his name having been withdrawn, and Mr. Leslie's pre- 
 eminent claims having secured to him the appointment. In the 
 prolonged and painful conflict which his election originated, Mr. 
 Chalmers was not personally engaged, as, differing from both 
 parties in the strife, he could have been the advocate of neither. 
 Its initial stage, however, called forth his earliest publication. 
 
 In his letter to the Lord Provost, Mr. Playfair had not only 
 alleged that there were very few Scottish clergymen eminent in 
 Mathematics or Natural Philosophy, but that the vigorous and
 
 FIRST PUBLICATION. 65 
 
 successful pursuit of these sciences was incompatible with cleri- 
 cal duties and habits. This "cruel and illiberal insinuation" 
 against " the whole order of Churchmen" was not to be suffered, 
 without one effort at least being made to repel it. 
 
 " KILMANY, Sept. 3, 1805. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, The dull and unvaried course of a clergy- 
 man's life offers little new or interesting for a resident in London, 
 though I have attempted to enliven my situation a little by other 
 employments. Among other things, I have lately come forward 
 as a candidate for literary fame in the lists of authorship. My 
 performance is entitled ' Observations on a Passage in Mr. 
 Playfair's Letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, relative to 
 the Mathematical Pretensions of the Scottish Clergy.' I have 
 been flattered by some literary judges into the idea that all 
 that is necessary for the success of my pamphlet is that it be 
 fairly introduced to the notice of the public. Among others, I 
 have sent fifty copies to Longman and Rees, London. Will you 
 find it convenient to call at their shop, and ascertain how the 
 copies are likely to be disposed of? The sale has been beyond 
 my expectation in this neighbourhood. If it takes in London, 
 I may be expecting a demand for a second edition. This you 
 will perhaps be able to ascertain. I am, yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 His brother in London had already received other intimations 
 of the canvass at Edinburgh, and its results. 
 
 "ANSTRUTHEE, Feb. 28, 1805. 
 
 "DEAR JAMES, I am rather concerned about Thomas. He 
 is a candidate for being Professor of Mathematics in the Uni- 
 versity of Edinburgh. He is very clever, and I have no doubt 
 of his fitness for that situation ; biit then his youth, opposed to 
 the greatest ability, experience, and interest in the country 
 makes me doubt of his success, and disappointment rather 
 crushes an aspiring young man. I should feel more comfortable 
 were he to cultivate his present situation. I am, yours affec- 
 tionately, JOHN CHALMERS." 
 
 "ANSTRUTHEK, Oct. 18, 1805. 
 
 "DEAR JAMES, As to Thomas's publication, it is acknow- 
 ledged on all hands to be clever enough ; but as to serving his 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 own ends, whatever these may be, I scarcely think he has taken 
 the mode that now leads to preferment, for he flatters no man. 
 I am, yours affectionately, JOHN CHALMERS." 
 
 The truth was that the writer had no ends of his own to serve 
 beyond unburdening himself of the indignation which Mr. Play- 
 fair's allegations had excited, and repelling what he regarded as 
 an attempt to " wrest from his whole order what he knew to be 
 the pride and consolation of several of its members the hope of 
 literary distinction." Some years afterwards, about the time of 
 Ins removal to Glasgow, Mr. Chalmers did all that he could to 
 suppress this earliest of his publications, and that chiefly on ac- 
 count of its low estimate of the duties and responsibilities of the 
 Christian ministry. " The author of this pamphlet," he had 
 said, " can assert, from what to him is the highest of all authority 
 the authority of his own experience, that after the satisfactory 
 discharge of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days 
 in the week of uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any 
 science in which his taste may dispose him to engage. 
 
 " The author of the foregoing observations keeps back his 
 name from the public as a thing of no consequence. With Mr. 
 Playfair, whose mind seems so enlightened by well-founded 
 associations, it will probably be enough to know that the author 
 Is a clergyman ; a member of the stigmatized caste ; one of those 
 puny antagonists with whom it would be degrading to enter into 
 the lists of controversy ; one of those ill-fated beings whom the 
 malignant touch of ordination has condemned to a life of ignor- 
 ance and obscurity ; a being who must bid adieu, it seems, to 
 every flattering anticipation, and drivel out the remainder of his 
 days in insignificance." 
 
 There were other means besides authorship of enlivening the 
 dulness of ministerial life. The chemical lectureship had not 
 yet exhausted its powers. It had been most favourably received 
 at St. Andrews ; why not repeat it elsewhere ? Acting on the 
 strong faith which he always cherished in the capabilities of the 
 popular understanding, when properly approached and rightly 
 spoken to, Mr. Chalmers delivered a course of chemical lectures 
 to his parishioners at Kilmany.* Cupar, the county town, was 
 
 * Among other experiments, the powers of the bleaching liquids were exhibited. Soon 
 after the exhibition, two of the old wives of Kilmany had the following colloquy : " Our 
 minister," said the one, "is natthing short o' a warlock; he was teaching the folk to clean
 
 BONAPARTE'S THREATENED INVASION. 67 
 
 next favoured with a visit from the itinerant devotee. Nor was 
 it a mere figure of speech which he had employed when he spoke 
 of carrying with him his old wares from the country into the 
 lecturing-place, as was unluckily evidenced in one of his visits 
 at this time to Cupar ; when, moxmted with his chemical appara- 
 tus before him, one of the bottles which he was carrying un- 
 fortunaiely broke, and poured its burning contents down the 
 horse's shoulder, leaving a discoloured belt to tell of the strange 
 catastrophe. 
 
 Devoted though he was to those severer exercises of the in- 
 tellect which are prosecuted in the solitude of the student's 
 chamber, Mr. Chalmers was alive to all the great public move- 
 ments of the stirring period at which he entered public life. 
 The excesses of the French Eevolution had quenched his earlier 
 hopes, which had yielded to exciting alarms. The war with 
 France, in which there had been a temporary respite during the 
 few months which he had spent at Cavers, broke out afresh about 
 the very time of his settlement in Kilmany, its ordinary terrors 
 being heightened by the threat of invasion, which for a few 
 years hung like a lowering thunder-cloud over the land. From 
 the first moment of bis starting on his meteor-like career, Bona- 
 parte had been to Mr. Chalmers an object of the most intense 
 interest. He recognised in him ere long the destroyer of his own 
 country's liberties the disturber of Europe's peace the threat- 
 ener of Britain's independence ; and it was now believed that he 
 was mustering his armies along the French coast, and looking 
 across the channel to this country as his next theatre of war and 
 conquest. Every instrument by which, in the prospect of such 
 an emergency, the generous ardours of the people could be stirred 
 up, was employed. The aid of the ministers of religion was in- 
 voked. From every pulpit of the land there came a voice, varied 
 according to the spirit and character of its occupant. It was a 
 thrillingly martial one which on this occasion issued from the 
 pulpit of Kilmany, finding its climax in the exclamation " May 
 
 that day when Bonaparte ascends the throne of Britain be the 
 
 
 
 claes but (without! soap." " Aye, woman," was the reply, " I wish he wad teach me to mak 
 parritch BUT meal." 
 
 They had been somewhat anticipated by Peter Pindar, who, in the Epistle referred to in a 
 preceding note, thus apostrophizes Count Rumford : 
 
 / " Say, canst thou make, whose brains have not their fellows, 
 
 Fire blow itself without a pair of bellows ? 
 
 Soon shall we see a haunch, with equal wit, 
 
 Turn round and roast itself without a spit ; 
 
 Fish without frying-pans come hot and hot, 
 
 And dumplings boil them-elies without a pot."
 
 58 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 last of my existence ; may I be the first to ascend the scaffold 
 he erects to extinguish the worth and spirit of the country ; 
 may my blood mingle with the blood of patriots ; arid may I die 
 at the foot of that altar on which British independence is to be 
 the victim."* 
 
 The preacher was quite ready to make good his words. Soon 
 after the volunteers were organized, he enrolled himself in the 
 St. Andrews corps, holding a double commission as chaplain and 
 lieutenant. In 1805, he joined the corps at Kirkcaldy, where 
 it was then on permanent duty. In the outskirts of that town, 
 he recognised an old acquaintance, a member of the Secession 
 Church, whose family was sunk in poverty and visited with 
 fever. Anxious to contribute to their relief, Mr. Chalmers re- 
 quested Mr. Fleming, the minister of Kirkcaldy, to give him the 
 use of his pulpit, that he might preach a sermon, and make a 
 collection on behalf of the sufferers. Knowing the applicant 
 only as the author of the recently published pamphlet, and as 
 one addicted more to lectures on chemistry than to purely pro- 
 fessional effort, Mr. Fleming refused. The will, however, was 
 too strong not to find for itself a way. Although Mr. Chalmers 
 could not get a pulpit to preach, he could find a room to lecture 
 in. A suitable apartment was forthwith engaged ; a course ot 
 lectures on chemistry announced. Though the admission ticket 
 was somewhat high in price, goodly audiences crowded nightly 
 around the lecturer ; and at the close, he had the exquisite satis- 
 faction of handing over to a respectable but unfortunate family, 
 what not only relieved them from present distress, but supported 
 them for some time afterwards in comfort. 
 
 The old mansa at Kilmany generally had in it as many of Mr. 
 Chalmers's brothers and sisters as it could conveniently accom- 
 modate. He was now the only one of the family who could be 
 helpful to his parents ; and the obligations which lay upon him 
 as such, it was his delight to discharge. He had for a time 
 undertaken the entire charge of his brother Patrick, and when it 
 was determined that he should not be sent to the University, he 
 transferred his car# to his brother Charles not only personally 
 superintending his education during the summer at Kilmany, 
 but carrying him to St. Andrews during the college session ; for 
 though he had ceased lecturing, he still divided the year between 
 Kilmany and St. Andrews the dilapidated state of the manse 
 furnishing sufficient reasons for a winter residence elsewhere. 
 
 * Posthumous Works, vol. vi. p. 49.
 
 EDUCATION OF HIS BROTHERS. 69 
 
 It was at the close of such a residence that he wrote thus to 
 Anstruther : 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, May 6, 1806. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I am happy to inform you that Charles 
 lias acquitted himself to the great satisfaction of his teachers. 
 The plan of his studies through the summer, I have delivered 
 to himself in writing. You must not speak of his expenses. I 
 have never been accustomed to despise economy, but at the 
 same time think that the whole value of money lies in its use. 
 I can assure you that single and unencumbered as I am, I have 
 a sufficient surplus for every expense I have undertaken. I have 
 never indeed lived under my income, but I find that I am 
 clearing away my embarrassments gradually ; and as to ac- 
 cumulation, it is a thing I have nev^er thought of, and for which, 
 according to my present intentions in life, I foresee no necessity. 
 I am, yours aifectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 James had recently been unfortunate in business ; and hav- 
 ing had a little experience of the risks and treacheries of mer- 
 cantile life during a year (1802) fatal to many merchants in 
 Liverpool, he left that town to settle permanently in London. 
 In his first letter to Thomas from the metropolis, he bad men- 
 tioned his having forsaken the Presbyterian for the Episcopal 
 communion. He afterwards asked his brother to show this letter 
 to his father. " You desired me," was Thomas's reply, " to show 
 my father your first letter. I would not have done so for the 
 world. Your apostasy from the Kirk would have horrified him, 
 and he would have sighed over the degeneracy of that sou who 
 could renounce old mother Presbytery in the face of one of its 
 ministers. But whatever I say, may the vengeance of heaven 
 pursue me, if I feel contempt for that man who has passed 
 through the world unstained by its corruptions who has walked 
 the manly career of independence and honour who has escaped 
 the infection of a degenerate age, and can boast a mind that has 
 preserved its integrity amidst all the seductions of policy and 
 interest. Such is the character of our good father. May the 
 great Spirit bear up the weight of his old age, and blunt the 
 arrow that gives it rest. Yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 This picture was not drawn by the hand of an exaggerating 
 affection. Its fault lies not in excess, but in defect ; for had
 
 70 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the sketch been made by the same hand a few years later, other 
 features should have appeared in it besides that of a pure and 
 high-minded, unstained and incorruptible integrity. In that 
 good father, depth of piety and tenderness of affection equalled 
 the strength of his moral principle. In this year of 1806, at 
 which we have now arrived, that piety was tested and that affec- 
 tion was severely tried. From his childhood, George had been 
 a favourite in the family ; he was so simple-hearted, so confid- 
 ing, so generous, and so manly ; and when he joined his vessel, 
 he became as great a favourite with his master and messmates 
 as he had been at home. When his apprenticeship had expired, 
 he became mate ; and while yet only twenty-three years of age, 
 was promoted to the command of the merchant ship Barton, 
 which sailed from Liverpool, carrying, in the time of war, letters 
 of marque, and cruising generally for six weeks in the Channel 
 arid along the French coast, in the hope of capturing some of 
 our enemies' vessels, before she made her destined voyage to the 
 West Indies. In the course of these voyages, many hairbreadth 
 escapes were made, and many a brave action was fought, un- 
 chronicled in our naval annals. " We sailed from Barbadoes," 
 says George, describing one of them, "on the 17th May, a single 
 ship, with twenty guns and fifty men ; and on the 23d, fell in 
 with a French privateer of ten guns, which rtm on board our 
 quarter and attempted to board us. Two days afterwards, we 
 fell in with the Fairey schooner, a French privateer, of twenty 
 guns and 150 men. She engaged us to leeward, within pistol-shot, 
 for the space of an hour. We received her fire with calmness, 
 and never returned a single shot, firing only our small arms till 
 she came alongside us, and grappled us on our fore and main 
 chains. Then we gave her our broadside. Our guns were all 
 loaded with round and grape shot. They made an attempt to 
 board us, but we picked them down faster than they cut our 
 nettings ; at last they were obliged to shear off with a great 
 loss. I perceived numbers of dead men on their deck, and their 
 scuppers ran with streams of blood." 
 
 Wearied with the fight, George lay down upon the deck and 
 fell asleep a sleep as fatal as any shot of the enemy could have 
 been, lodging in him, as it did, the seeds of that deadly malady 
 which carried him to the grave.* During the spring months 
 
 * Ho indeed made several voyages after this, in one of which he brought home from St 
 Lucie an invalid officer (Colonel Mackay, the husband of the accomplished authoress of 
 "The Family at Heathcrdale"), who came on board so weak that he could not mount the 
 companion-ladder unaided. For six or eight weeks, George watched over him with tho
 
 ACTION AT SEA GEORGE'S ILLNESS. 71 
 
 of 1806, the symptoms of consumption having showed them- 
 selves with alarming distinctness, he resolved to try the effect 
 of his native air. For a short time that air seemed to revive 
 and reinvigorate, Imt the improvement was only temporary. 
 The months of August and September we,re spent at Kilmany, 
 when his mother, his sisters Lucy, Jean, and Helen, and his 
 brothers Thomas and Charles, were all around him. Leaving 
 Thomas and Lucy ill behind him at Kilmany, George returned 
 to Anstruther, where Thomas joined him at the close of the 
 following month not to be separated till the earthly bond was 
 broken by death. 
 
 " AXSTRUTHER, Ocf. 29, 1806. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I arrived here yesterday from Kilmany quite 
 recovered from my sore throat. It confined me about four weeks, 
 and has had the good effect of reducing me to something like 
 a reasonable size. The fact is, that the ease and indolence of 
 a country retirement have induced a tendency to corpulence, 
 which I am anxious to avoid, as the greatest possible bar to 
 action and useful exertion in every department. You perhaps 
 know that I have been in the practice for some time back of 
 dividing the year between Kilmany and St. Andrews, allotting 
 the summer to the former, and the winter to the latter. The 
 wretched state of the manse renders this in some measure ne- 
 cessary, and indeed I can never regard myself as completely 
 settled until I get my heritors prevailed on to grant a new 
 establishment of house, offices, &c. I remember having some 
 directions from you on the subject of gardening, which I neg- 
 lected altogether, having no taste at the time for that occupation. 
 I have lately, however, devoted myself to the study of botany, 
 and am so much fascinated with the pursuit that I mean to lay 
 out one-third of my garden in the cultivation of flowers. I will 
 divide my botanical plot into narrow strips, with intervening 
 walks, and mean to arrange the plants in scientific order. The 
 book I use is Withering's British Flora ; and to give you an 
 idea of the rich botanical tract in which I am situated, two- 
 thirds of his genera are to be found within nine miles of St. 
 Andrews. 
 
 " Poor George is no better. His weakness, his languor, and 
 perspirations have been much increased since he left Kilmany. 
 
 greatest tenderness, carrying him up daily in his arms from bis cabin to the deck. He after- 
 wards recovered, and hearing of George's illness, came from England to Anstruther, to return 
 if possible the kind offices of the voyage. See Correspondence of Dr. Chalmers, p. 490.
 
 72 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 To you it would be an injustice if I held out delusive hopes,. 
 and I state it as my conviction that his lungs are seriously and 
 irrecoverably affected. As to himself, he has all the manly in- 
 difference of his profession, is as cheerful as his bodily sufferings 
 will allow, and perfectly resigned under the confident idea that 
 his death is inevitable. I am, yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 
 
 The rapid progress of the malady was thus communicated by 
 his father to James : " November 25. I sincerely wish I could 
 make my report of my poor George more favourable. He is 
 weaker than when I last wrote you. The doctors, I imagine, 
 have no great hopes of a recovery ; but the Physician above all 
 may otherwise appoint concerning him. I would desire to say 
 with your brother, His holy will be done. He seems to be re- 
 signed to live or die as God shall see meet. I pray that living 
 or dying he may be the Lord's. 
 
 " He was much pleased with your anxious solicitude about 
 him ; and said that a letter from you, so far from putting him 
 into any disorder, would give him great satisfaction. He has 
 nothing of peevishness about him a firm, steady resignation 
 he possesses to a great degree." " December 15. Your letter 
 gave George great satisfaction. I have no great heart to write. 
 He is still alive, but unable to help himself in any manner of 
 way ; but blessed be God that gives him a sweet submission to 
 His holy will, and a satisfying hope of His mercy in Christ." 
 
 Every evening, at George's own request, one of Newton's 
 sermons was read at his bedside by some member of the family 
 in rotation. It was one of the very books which, a short time 
 previously, Thomas had named and denounced from the pulpit. 
 Bending over the pulpit, and putting on the books named the 
 strong emphasis of dislike, he had said "Many books are 
 favourites with you, which I am sorry to say are no favourites 
 of mine. When you are reading Newton's Sermons, and Bax- 
 ter's Saints' Rest, and Doddridge's Eise and Progress, where do 
 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John go to?" As he now read one 
 of these books to his dying brother, and witnessed the support 
 and consolation which its truths conveyed, strange misgivings 
 must have visited him. He was too close, too acute, too affec- 
 tionate an observer not to notice that it was something more 
 than the mere " manly indifference of his profession," something
 
 DEATH OF GEOBGE. ' 73 
 
 more than a mere blind submission to an inevitable fate which 
 imparted such calmness and serene elevation to George's dying 
 hours. He was in his room when those pale and trembling lips 
 were heard to say, " I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven 
 and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and revealed them unto babes." Perhaps as the words 
 were uttered, the thought arose that in his own case, as compared 
 with that of his brother, the words might be verified. In com- 
 pany with a weeping household, he bent over the parting scene, 
 and heard the closing testimony given, " Lord, now lettest thou 
 thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salva- 
 tion." George died on the 16th December 1806. It was the 
 first death of a near relation which Thomas had witnessed ; and 
 the deep impression which it made, was the first step towards 
 his own true and thorough conversion unto God.
 
 74 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 FIRST VISIT TO LONDON". 
 
 A FEW months after George's death, Mr. Chalmers, having 
 occasion to go to Liverpool, received and accepted an invitation 
 to proceed onward, and spend a week or two with his brother 
 James in London. The following extracts from his journal re- 
 veal the ardour with which he availed himself of the opportuni- 
 ties by the way which this journey afforded, and the diligence 
 with which, during his first visit to the great metropolis, the 
 work of sight-seeing was prosecuted. 
 
 " Edinburgh, April 17. Had nearly missed the coach. It 
 broke down at the end of the town, and the accident detained 
 us at least an hour. . . . Arrived in Carlisle at two in the 
 morning. 
 
 " April 18. Found in the coach from Carlisle this morning, 
 a lady and gentleman from Carlisle. The former disposed te be 
 frank and communicative, but apparently under some control 
 from the gentleman, who had probably prepared her to expect a 
 very vulgar company. He had the tone and the confidence of 
 polished life, but I never in my life witnessed such a want of 
 cordiality, such a cold and repulsive deportment, such a stingy 
 and supercilious air, and so much of that confounded spirit too 
 prevalent among the bucks and fine gentlemen of the age. They 
 give no room to the movements of any kindly or natural impulse, 
 but hedge themselves round by sneers, and attempt to awe you 
 into diffidence by a display of their knowledge in the polite 
 world. Give intrepidity to weather them out. I sustained my 
 confidence. I upheld the timidity of the company, and had the 
 satisfaction of reducing him at last to civility and complaisance. 
 
 " April 19. Left Lancaster at seven in the morning, and 
 arrived in Liverpool at six in the evening. . . . 
 
 " April 20. Went with a party from Mr. Maccorquodale's 
 to the Botanic Garden. ... I christened his daughter at 
 three o'clock, and we sat down to dinner at four. Mr. Yates 
 and a son of Dr. Currie's were of the party. The former
 
 LONDON JOURNAL. 75 
 
 assailed me with an application to preach for him, which I have 
 had the simplicity to consent to, a circumstance which I dislike 
 exceedingly, from the extreme awkwardness of my provincial 
 dialect. Mr. Currie is a merchant of this place, combines 
 liberalism and fashion, is an admirer of the Edinburgh school, 
 and carries in his manner a great deal of the chastened amenity 
 of a cultivated temper. They are both warm admirers of Mr. 
 Stewart, a circumstance in which I took the liberty of differing 
 from them. I lament the provincialisms of my tone and con- 
 versation, but must study to get over it by a proper union of 
 confidence and humility. 
 
 " Tuesday, April 21. Accompanied a party to a pottery 
 about a mile and a half up the river. Was delighted with the 
 elegance and simplicity of the process [which is most minutely 
 and graphically described]. . . . Went to the School for 
 the Blind, a truly admirable institution. . . . They have an 
 hour for music the effect was in the highest degree interesting, 
 and the allusion to their own situation most pathetic. Dined 
 in Mr. Maccorquodale's. The only stranger was a Mr. Duncan 
 Maccorquodale, a military gentleman, of an appearance rather 
 unfashionable, but accompanied with a most interesting modesty. 
 To such as these I feel attached by an impulse the most kindly 
 and benevolent, and cannot but spurn at the heartless formality 
 of those who would triumph in the timidity of the inexperienced. 
 Oh, how I like the untrained originality of nature ! Oh, how I 
 dislike the trammels of a cold, lifeless, and insipid formality ! 
 
 " Friday, April 24. Spent the forenoon with Dr. Traill, a 
 chemical lecturer and practitioner, with a great deal of ardour 
 and philosophic simplicity. He showed me his chemical appa- 
 ratus. The most interesting was 1. An apparatus for decom- 
 posing water [minutely described and diagramed^. 2. A glass 
 apparatus for decomposing water by galvanism [the form of two 
 vessels drawn, and the manner of using them detailed], 
 
 " Saturday, April 25. Walked to the Botanic Garden, and 
 spent two hours in it. Found it of this form and dimension, 
 [Here follow plan and measurements, with notices of its rarest 
 plants.*] 
 
 .:,; -; ,rj:^; -Hi-iisx.- ;,ii I :. 
 
 * Besides the Journal from which the extracts given above have been taken, a separate 
 Botanical Journal was kept during this journey. This Journal has been submitted to the 
 inspection of Professor Balfour, who, from the graphic description given of its general appear- 
 ance, even where the cla.^ and order are not given, had little difficulty in detecting what 
 plant or flower was meant. For about a year, indeed, botany appears to have been the 
 science which was in the ascendant. His knowledge of it was very rapidly acquired. Hi*
 
 76 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 "Sunday, April 26. Preached in the forenoon for Mr. 
 Kirkpatrick on the comforts of religion, and in the afternoon on 
 drunkenness the former with far more effect and impression 
 than the latter. In the afternoon we met at three o'clock, after 
 dinner, which has the effect of making both a drowsy preacher 
 and a drowsy audience. Mrs. H. evidently reluctant in her 
 testimony of approbation disposed to overrate the deficiencies 
 of manner and pronunciation, and asleep in the afternoon. 
 
 " Monday, April 27. Drove out in the curricle with Mr. 
 M'C., from six to nine in the morning. After a charming ronnd 
 of sixteen miles, returned with him to breakfast. . . . Went 
 to the Athenaeum. . . . Accompanied Mr. M'C. to dine in 
 the river with Captain Tucker on board the Union Guineaman. 
 We reached the vessel she was going out of dock, where we 
 proceeded to an anchorage about a mile and a half off from 
 Liverpool. We had the music of benevolence to drown all the 
 relentings of nature, and ladies waved their handkerchiefs from 
 the shore to sanctify what was infamous, and deck the splendid 
 villany of the trade. 
 
 " Tuesday, April 28. Left Liverpool at seven in the mom- 
 ing. . . . Reached Birmingham by about ten at night. 
 
 " Wednesday, April 29. [Various manufactures, toy, button, 
 gun, spade, $c., visited, and all the processes particularly noted 
 down.] 
 
 " Thursday, April 30. Left Birmingham for Woodstock at 
 seven in the morning, where I arrived at four in the afternoon. 
 There was only another passenger in the coach, and he was in- 
 side, a sensible, discreet, cultivated man, whom I afterwards 
 learned to be a Fellow of Oxford, and who had evidently a little 
 of the rust and embarrassment of a learned profession. I parted 
 with him at Woodstock. I was immediately conducted by a 
 person from the inn to the gate of Blenheim. For a particular 
 account see Guide, which seems to be written with great taste 
 and power of description. The pleasure I felt was heightened 
 by a variety of circumstances which supplied associations of 
 grandeur. In addition to the stateliness of actual display, I had 
 the recollection* of its origin, the immortality of its first owner r 
 the proud monument of national glory, the prospect not of a 
 house, or scene, or a neighbourhood, but the memorial of those 
 events which had figured on the high theatre of war and of 
 
 attention having been attracted to it at a meeting of Presbytery, he set himself to learn it, 
 and at the Tery next meeting appeared to be quite familiar with its details.
 
 LONDON JOURNAL. 77 
 
 politics, and given a turn to the history of the world. The 
 statue of Louis XIV., placed upon the south front, and taken 
 from the walls of Tournay, gives an air of magnificence far be- 
 yond the mere power of form or of magnitude. It is great not 
 as a visible object, but great as a trophy, great as it serves to 
 illustrate the glory of England, and the prowess of the first of 
 warriors. I spent two hours in the garden. Never spot more 
 lovely never scenes so fair and captivating. I lost myself in 
 an elysium of delight, and wept with perfect rapture. My 
 favourite view was down the river, from the ground above the 
 fountain. The setting sun gleamed on the gilded orbs of Blen- 
 heim ; through the dark verdure of trees were seen peeps of 
 water and spots of grassy sunshine ; the murmurs of the water- 
 fall beneath soothed every anxiety within me, the bell of the 
 village clock sent its music across the lake on my left. I sat 
 motionless, and my mind slumbered in a reverie of enchantment. 
 
 " Friday, May 1. Started from Woodstock at seven, and 
 walked to Oxford. I was rather surprised at the small number 
 of students I met ; but the appearance of one at times, with 
 the garb of his order, had an interesting effect among these 
 ancient solitudes. The Fellows, I was informed by one of my 
 guides, are sometimes very noisy, arid keep it up till two in the 
 morning. It is impossible to carry away anything but a con- 
 fused recollection of the different objects. The mind is over- 
 powered with the dazzling variety that presents itself, and a 
 guide for after-perusal is a most necessary accompaniment to 
 all these various and extensive exhibitions. I returned to dine 
 in my little mansion after a fatiguing walk of five hours, and 
 in the evening took a rambling and irregular walk through the 
 different streets of Oxford. I was delighted with the academic 
 air and costume of the place ; and amid the grossness of a 
 mercantile age, it is the delight of my spirit to recur to the 
 quiet scenes of philosophy, and contemplate what our ancestors 
 have done for learning, and the respect that they once paid to 
 it. Threw myself into bed at ten in the evening. 
 
 " Saturday, May 2. Left Oxford at seven in the morning, 
 . . . and landed in Liidgate Hill about seven in the evening. 
 After waiting about a minute in the coffee-room, met my brother, 
 who conducted me to his house in Walworth. 
 
 " Sunday, May 3. Walked on London Bridge, round the 
 Tower, along Cornhill and Cheapside to St. Paul's, where I 
 heard service. After dinner we sallied out to Westminster
 
 78 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Bridge, St. James's Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, and 
 returned by Oxford Street and Blackfriars Bridge. Astonished 
 at the display ; the dress, the carriages, and company, give a 
 high idea of the wealth and extravagance of London. 
 
 "Monday, May 4. The Tower. . . . St. Paul's the 
 Guildhall and Exchange. 
 
 " Tuesday, May 5. The Bank the Treasury the House 
 of Commons ; looked with veneration at Fox's seat. Went to 
 Westminster Hall saw Lord Eldon presiding in the Court 
 of Chancery, and Lord Ellenborough in the Court of King's 
 Bench. . . . Westminster Abbey. The tout ensemble and 
 general view to me more interesting than the individual curio- 
 sities, which pass before the eye of the spectator in too rapid 
 succession to be either appreciated or remembered. 
 
 " Wednesday, May 6. Crossed London Bridge to the Monu- 
 ment. Had a most gratifying view of London. Saw the ship- 
 ping through the winding of the Thames, till the prospect sunk 
 away into mist and obscurity. In the Strand saw the model 
 of a cotton mill [all the parts and movements of the machinery 
 minutely specified]. . . . Went to the exhibition of pictures 
 at the Royal Academy. An astonishing display of fashionables ; 
 had the satisfaction to observe that Mr. Wilkie's picture* at- 
 tracted particular admiration. 
 
 " Thursday, May 7. The Horse Guards, where I heard a 
 most delightful band of music, and saw the 3d regiment of Foot 
 Guards go through their exercise. Went to St. James's Palace, 
 and was conducted through the State-rooms by Mrs. Macqueen, 
 who, upon recognising me to be Scotch, invited me to return to 
 the drawing-room on Thursday next. . . . Exhibition of 
 models of Eoman antiquities in cork, a most wonderful per- 
 formance. Small bits of cork are put together so as to represent 
 the different stories of the building, and coloured in such a way 
 as to imitate the mould of antiquity. Small tufts of moss are 
 scattered over the walls so as to give more truth and nature to 
 the representation. The imitations are exact, and calculated to 
 give a most interesting idea of these magnificent remains. 
 
 " Friday, May 8. Merlin's Museum a. collection of me- 
 chanical curiosities [numbered, and particularly described], . . . 
 Got a station near the hustings at Westminster, and heard, with 
 great interest, the speeches of the different candidates. 
 
 " Saturday, May 9. Went as far as Upper Shadwell with a 
 
 * " The Blind Fiailer." See Life of Sir D. Wilkie, pp. 144-146.
 
 LONDON JOURNAL. 79 
 
 view to make out the Docks and Greenwich Hospital, but was 
 prevented from proceeding by the rain. Eeturned to West- 
 minster, where I heard the candidates exhibit in their usual 
 style. 
 
 " Sunday, May 10. The badness of the day prevented us 
 from prosecuting any of our schemes. Walked out before dinner 
 to Dulwich village, where we had the full view of a country 
 enriched and adorned by the neighbourhood of the metropolis. 
 After dinner, a round by Oxford Street. We returned by Black- 
 friers, where en passant we had an opportunity of hearing the 
 delightful music in Eowland Hill's, and the roaring enthusiasm 
 of another preacher, whose sect was founded by a female mystic, 
 Joanna Southcote. 
 
 " Monday, May 11. The hustings at Westminster,* and a 
 Zoological Museum. 
 
 " Tuesday, May 12. Breakfasted with the Miss Hunters, and 
 took three of them to the Eoyal Academy, and had great satis- 
 faction in observing the increasing celebrity of Mr. Wilkie's 
 picture. In going along to Somerset House, I met John Camp- 
 bell [now Lord Campbell], On my return, I met Mrs. and Miss 
 
 . By the way, I have no patience for Mrs. ; not a 
 
 particle of cordiality about her ; cold, formal, and repulsive ; a 
 perfect stranger to the essence of politeness, with a most pro- 
 voking pretension to its exterior ; a being who carries in her 
 very eye a hampering and restraining criticism ; who sets her- 
 self forward as a pattern of correct manners while she spreads 
 pain, restraint, and misery around her ; whose example I abo- 
 minate, and whose society I must shun, as it would blast all the 
 joy and independence of London. . . . Met at tea a Mr. M. He 
 seems a smattering pretender to science ; has a great respect 
 for it ; was very courteous and attentive to me. I accompanied 
 both gentlemen to a lecture in Guy's Hospital. It was given 
 that night by a Mr. Allan, a Quaker. The subject was, the 
 Earth considered as a planet with its attendant Moon. It was 
 quite narratory and illustrative, as I believe almost all scientific 
 lecturers are in England. He had about 100 hearers ; and 
 from the rapid and imperfect explanation he gave of his subject, 
 I do not believe -that one of them went away instructed. They 
 still persevere, however, and think that their progress in philo- 
 
 * He used often to tell of a scene which he witnessed at these hustings. An ugly fellow, 
 raised on the shoulders of the mob, said to Sheridan" If you do not alter your ways, I will 
 withdraw my countenance from you." Sheridan replied, " I am very glad to hear it, for an 
 uglier countenance I never saw." The countenance sunk quickly out of sight.
 
 80 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 sophy is to be measured by the progress of the course. Oh, 
 London ! artful as a serpent in the dark and tortuous paths of 
 iniquity, but simple and credulous as a child in the higher fields 
 of intellect. 
 
 " Wednesday, May 13. Breakfasted with John Campbell. 
 Much franker and more manly than in the first years of my ac- 
 quaintance with him. Visited Carlton House ; thence proceeded 
 to St. James's, and stationed myself on the outside of the rail- 
 ing at Buckingham House. One of the royal carriages entered 
 the Court, and went off first with Princess Elizabeth ; then, 
 with Princess Mary and the Duke of Sussex ; then, from the 
 front of the house, with the Queen and Princess Augusta. It 
 took them all successively to St. James's, where they went on a 
 visit to two of the royal dukes at their apartments. I was there 
 in time to have a full view of the royal train. I met them in 
 one of the narrow passages, where I stood with my ha,t off. A 
 condescending notice from her Majesty was the return I got for 
 it. I am charmed with the cordial and affectionate loyalty of 
 the people. An old gentleman from the country laughed with 
 pleasure ; an elderly gentleman .was delighted with the smiling 
 countenances of her Majesty and daughters, and remarked that 
 her Majesty was looking wonderfully well. I saw a glow of 
 reverence and satisfaction on every countenance, and my heart 
 warmed within me. 
 
 " Thursday, May 14. Walked over in a pour of rain to St. 
 James's. Ean up the great stair of the Palace, and found Mrs. 
 Macqueen at the head ready to receive me. She ushered me 
 into the outer passage room. Stopping some time here, I 
 was conducted by the same lady, along with others, to a room 
 through which the royals pass in their way to the drawing- 
 room. I had here the opportunity of seeing the Queen, with 
 her splendid train supported by a page, the five princesses, 
 and an immense procession of attendants. The most distin- 
 guished of these is the Earl of Morton. I then went back to 
 my old place, where I witnessed an astonishing flow going to 
 and returning from the drawing-room. I had the advantage of 
 knowing very few of them. The Duke of Cambridge, Princess 
 Sophia of Gloucester, Duke of Cumberland, and the Princess 
 of Wales, were all pointed out to me. Upon their approach, 
 the halberds are dropt upon the ground, and the attendants 
 put on their hats. A court dress appears to me the most fan- 
 tastic and unnatural, the barbarous remnant of an age when
 
 LOXDOX JOURNAL. 81 
 
 simplicity was unknown, and the most gorgeous affectation of 
 ornament prevailed over every department of fashion. What 
 more ludicrous than the hoops ! The best place for a stranger 
 getting acquainted with the company is at the foot of the stair- 
 case, where the servants and carriages of the different people 
 are called for. 
 
 " Friday, May 15. The India House Deptford the Docks. 
 We proceeded to Drury Lane Theatre, where we heard the comic 
 opera of the Duenna, High Life below Stairs, and the panto- 
 mimic ballet, Don Juan. I am not fond of operas, because I 
 have no taste for that music the merit of which appears to me 
 to lie entirely in the execution. The squalling exertion of the 
 performers is painful to me, and not a word of the song can be 
 collected. Indeed, such is the extent of Drury Lane Theatre, 
 that in many parts of the house, the most audible and distinct 
 enunciation must be lost upon the hearer. The house was quite 
 full, more decorous than the Circus, and exceeds anything I 
 have seen in the splendour of its boxes and rich expensive 
 scenery. None of the performers appeared to me first-rate. 
 The pantomime I did not enter into. We returned to Walworth 
 in the morning. 
 
 " Saturday, May 16. I arrived at Windsor at seven ; ran up 
 to the Castle ; got admittance by the porter (Is.) ; and was shown 
 by the chambermaid (Is. 6d.) through the public rooms. The 
 paintings I did not see to advantage, from the lateness of the 
 hour ; but was particularly struck with the magnificence of St. 
 George's Hall, and the finished elegance of the king's audience 
 chamber. In one of the rooms, I was pointed out the Duke of 
 Marlborough's annual quit-rent for Blenheim, a small flag 
 highly decorated. I went down to the terrace ; and as I walked 
 along the north of the Castle, I swore in the gladness of my 
 heart that there was never scene so sweet or fair. You have an 
 exquisite view, below the eminence, of the Castle, the windings 
 of the Thames, Eton College and Chapel. The vivid green seen 
 in patches through the fringe of luxuriant branches ; the exten- 
 sive lawns below, on which the peaceful cattle were grazing; 
 the hum of the village ; the grand association of Majesty ; his 
 piety and amiable character ; his selection of this quiet retire- 
 ment as a refuge from the cares and the splendour of royalty, 
 threw me into a train of emotions, soothing, tranquil, and ele- 
 vating. I returned to the Hero Inn, where I got a snug room, 
 a substantial supper, and a comfortable bed. 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 MEJIOIKS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Sunday, May 17. Went to the king's private chapel ; 
 where, at half-past eight, I was gratified with the entrance of 
 their Majesties and the Princess Elizabeth. His manner is 
 devotional and unaffected. I heard them all repeat the service 
 most distinctly ; and was much pleased with their frank, easy, 
 and benevolent appearance. The view of Twickenham was most 
 charming. Pope's house was among the delightful residences 
 that we gazed on with rapture from the opposite side. The river 
 was enshrined with pleasure boats ; and the gay London parties r 
 walking and drinking tea on both sides, gave cheerfulness and 
 animation to the prospect. The idea, however, of vicinity to the 
 metropolis pollutes all our rural impressions of this fascinating 
 scene takes off from all that pure interest which the idea of 
 simplicity confers, and mingles with original nature the vices, 
 profligacy, and corruptions of civilized life. We ascended Eich- 
 moud Hill ; eyed with rapture the country before us ; saw in 
 the rich scene that presented itself the wealth of the first city in 
 the world, spreading its embellishment over the neighbourhood. 
 Took a boat to Kew, when we passed Islesworth, and had a 
 charming sail down the river. From Kew, we coached it to 
 town, and reached Walworth by eleven in the evening. 
 
 Monday, May 18. The London Institution Waxworks 
 Cosmorama thence to the hustings, where I heard a most elo- 
 quent eulogium on Fox from the mouth of Sheridan thence 
 to the theatre, Covent Garden. The play was Coriolanus. The 
 chief actors were Mrs. Siddons and Mr. Kemble. She had few 
 opportunities of coming forward, but shewed herself a great and 
 impressive performer, and noble in the expression of heightened 
 heroical sentiment. I was electrified at the drawing out of the 
 dagger, 'to die while Eome was free.' Kemble disgusted me 
 at first ; heavy and formal in the movement of his arms, and 
 not able to drop the stateliness of his manner on trivial and 
 unimportant occasions. He is too formal, artificial, and affected ; 
 but is more than tolerable is great and admirable on those 
 grand occasions when nature overpowers art, and the feelings are 
 carried along by the strong, the vehement, and the resistless. 
 
 " Tuesday, May 19. Started at six o'clock for Woolwich 
 thence to Greenwich. At this time of the year Greenwich fail- 
 is held, and resorted to by an immense concourse of people. 
 The park overflowed ; and I never witnessed a better display of 
 the English character their propensity to amusement their 
 dissipation their love of gambling, shows, and exhibitions.
 
 LONDON JOURNAL. 83 
 
 AVe are more a business people, devoted to the pursuits of self- 
 ishness, and controlling any ungenial propensity in obedience 
 to the call of prudence and interest. I was delighted with the 
 views from the park. Saw the painted hall, chapel wards, and 
 dining-room of Greenwich Hospital ; and after several rounds 
 through the scene of gaiety, I was brought home at five in the 
 afternoon. I am sure 1 met a hundred carriages on their road 
 to the fair, and was informed by my driver that he had carried 
 them down till half-past eight. A horse dead upon the road 
 with over-driving was to me a most impressive display of the 
 dashing, careless, and impetuous spirit of the people, when 
 urged on by some popular and fashionable object. 
 
 " Wednesday, May 20. Breakfasted with Peter Cleghorn, 
 and find him a manly, sensible fellow. Accompanied him to Mr. 
 Wilkie, No. 10, Sol's Court, but missed our object. Attended a 
 lecture and exhibition of gas lights at Pall Mall in the evening. 
 The lecturer, Mr. W., is a mere empiric ; not a particle of 
 science, and even dull and uninteresting in his popular explana- 
 tions. The Londoners listened with delight ; and I pronounce 
 the metropolis to be the best mart of impudence and ignorant 
 folly. It is not worth the attending, though it may be rendered 
 80 with a better lecturer. My own conviction is, that with 
 certain precautions gas will succeed. Eeturned at eleven in the 
 evening. 
 
 " Thursday, May 21. Called on Wilkie ; took Russell Square 
 in my road, and think it the finest in London. Mr. Wilkie is a 
 man of genius and excellent sense, with all the simplicity which 
 accompanies talent, and firmness to resist the corruptions of 
 flattery. After leaving him, I took a round among the streets 
 and squares to the north of Oxford Street. 
 
 " Friday, May 22. Went in the forenoon to a splendid ex- 
 hibition of tulips in Walworth. The tulips and anemones to- 
 gether covered about four acres of ground. There was a green 
 room filled in its whole length by the most beautiful tulips 
 brought to the highest perfection. 
 
 " Saturday, May 23. . . . Repaired to the Albany, and 
 dined with Mr. Sheridan and 150 of his admirers. The dinner 
 was wretched too little of it and the worst conducted I ever 
 saw. Great tumult and confusion among the company. I was 
 disappointed in all the speeches, and much shocked with the 
 extreme incorrectness of feeling discovered by several of the 
 company. When the venerable memory of Fox was announced
 
 84 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 by Mr. Sheridan the toastinaster, it was received with the most 
 ridiculous shouts and huzzas, which were at last drowned by the 
 hisses of the majority. A most offensive degree of vulgarity 
 prevailed among my immediate neighbours. It seemed to be 
 their great entertainment to throw the waiters into trouble and 
 confusion. It was strongly suspected that there were people 
 stationed at one part of the room for the purpose of disturbing 
 the harmony of the electors. I left them at nine, and bent my 
 steps homewards. 
 
 " Monday, May 25. The British Museum ; where I was con- 
 ducted with great rapidity through a collection of curiosities too 
 various and multiplied to appreciate in the course of a month. 
 
 " Tuesday, May 26. Left London. 
 
 " Wednesday, May 27. I was delighted with Cambridge ; a 
 small town deriving its entire support from the University. It 
 smells of learning all over, and I breathe a fragrancy most con- 
 genial to me. The very women have an air of academic mildness 
 and simplicity. I prefer it to Oxford, where you are embarrassed 
 with the multiplicity of objects, and astonished at the glare of 
 decoration and spectacle. In Cambridge, everything wears a 
 simplicity and chasteness allied to the character of philosophy ; 
 and the venerable name of Newton gives it an interest that can 
 never die. Left Cambridge at half-past seven in the morning. 
 Found Huntingdon all astir about an election dinner. Threw 
 myself into the coach from London to Stamford, which passes 
 Huntingdon at fcmr in the afternoon. I was informed at Stilton, 
 that the cheese of that name is not manufactured there, but 
 chiefly in Leicester and Rutlandshire ; that it was first purchased 
 by an innkeeper at Stilton, who was the means of giving it 
 celebrity, and from this circumstance it first got and still retains 
 the name of Stilton cheese. Before reaching Stilton, enclosures 
 are less frequent ; but after leaving that town, the character of 
 beautiful enclosed pasturage is again resumed. Passed a very 
 extensive range of wooden barracks, appropriated for the recep- 
 tion of French prisoners. I am glad to hear that they have the 
 best accommodation, and a spacious court, giving the advantage of 
 air and exercise. In passing through the wild succession of com 
 fields and picturesque cottages, with the evening sun shedding 
 its quiet light over the landscape, I was struck with the figure 
 of a woman reading at a window a sober reflection pictured 
 on her countenance. Sapped and stopped all night at Stamford. 
 
 " Thursday, May 28. Started from Stamford at a quarter
 
 YORK MINSTER. 85 
 
 * 
 
 from four, in the coach from London to Newcastle. Sir Isaac 
 Newton's house I saw most distinctly. I felt a glow and an 
 enthusiasm, for my veneration for the character and talents of 
 Sir Isaac is unbounded. Dined at Doncaster, the approach to 
 which is beautiful ; got to Aberford about ten. 
 
 " Friday, May 29. Started at half-past five, and scrambled 
 through fields for six miles to Tadcaster. I could here perceive 
 the richness of English soil and English cultivation. I was lost 
 among hedges, and had no view of the country which surrounded 
 me. On my arrival at Tadcaster, I found the 29th May cele- 
 brated by the ringing of bells, and the whole town in a stir 
 about the county election. Found it impossible to secure a seat 
 in any of the coaches, so I walked on to Struthouses, where I 
 breakfasted. Half a mile farther on, I fell in with the Leeds 
 coach for York, so I got on the top of it, and reached York about 
 eleven in the forenoon. I spent an hour in contemplating the 
 glories of York Minster. The objects which struck me most 
 were the circular carved work at the top of the south entry the 
 beautiful colonnade at the back of the altar the highly orna- 
 mental screen which supports the organ, and separates the choir 
 from the nave of the cathedral the windows on the north, with 
 five longitudinal divisions, richly painted in the pattern style 
 and above all, the chapter-house, an octagonal room, that 
 displays all the power and elegance of finished workmanship. 
 From the top of the great tower, I surveyed a raised expanse of 
 level scenes thrown into hedge enclosures, bounded at a great 
 distance on the east by a gentle swell, and on the north by two 
 distinct tiers of elevated country. On the west, and particularly 
 the north, the scene loses itself in interminable distance. The 
 two west towers are beset with beautiful pinnacles. Not a horse 
 nor a conveyance was to be had in York, so I walked on to 
 Easingwold. 
 
 " Saturday, May 30. Took an outside place to Durham on 
 the High-Flyer, from London on to Newcastle, passing through 
 Easingwold at nine. The approach to Durham is by no means 
 impressive. The houses, with their red roofs, took away from 
 that venerable air of antiquity which my fancy had led me to 
 associate with the name and situation of Durham. I arrived 
 between six and seven in the evening ; ran up to the cathedral ; 
 tried in vain to get admittance, and was obliged to content my- 
 self with a survey of its exterior. [Here follows minute descrip- 
 tion, with ink sketches.^
 
 86 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 "Sunday, May 31. Started at seven, and walked to Bisbop- 
 Wearmouth. The country possesses no great or decisive features. 
 The bridge over the Wear is an astonishing piece of workman- 
 ship. I got under it in a boat, and made my observations. \_A 
 minute description of the bridge is givenJ] Falling in with a man 
 who drove a post-office gig, rode to South Shields. Crossed over 
 to Xorth Shields for twopence in a skuller. From North Shields 
 I proceeded to Tynemouth, with which I was delighted ; the 
 east fragment of the abbey is particularly beautiful. Sailed up 
 the river to Newcastle. 
 
 " Monday, June 1. I left Newcastle about eleven o'clock in 
 the forenoon, and stopped at the six-mile-house in the expecta- 
 tion of getting a place in the mail. It was quite full, however, 
 so I walked on to Morpeth, where I spent the evening. 
 
 " Tuesday, June 2. Rose at seven in the morning. I took 
 an outside seat to Alnwick. From the inn I proceeded to the 
 castle, and was much delighted with the different rooms of this 
 noble edifice. . . . The chapel has three beautiful painted win- 
 dows ; the window at the extremity the most elegant I had seen. 
 The walls set round with gilded triangles and slender pilasters 
 perhaps too bright and airy for a place of devotion. I was 
 more pleased with the interior of the house than with Blenheim. 
 It is not so rich or various ; but there is a uniformity of charac- 
 ter, and a simplicity that does not fatigue or overpower you. 
 Blenheim is before it in exterior appearance, and the beautiful 
 scenes of its garden and park. I walked from Alnwick to War- 
 renford. The whim struck me that I should make an excursion 
 to Holy Island ; so after passing through Belford, I turned to 
 the right, and after walking for three or four miles along the 
 beach, was fortunate enough to fall in with an oyster boat, which 
 ferried me over the channel. I was here disgusted with the 
 rapacious spirit of the young rascals of boatmen, who, though I 
 overpaid them for their trouble, tried to work out of me every 
 
 little addition they could think of." 
 
 *** 
 
 After a survey of the island, he reached Berwick on the fol- 
 lowing day ; and walking along the banks of the Tweed and 
 the Teviot, found himself, about a week afterwards, in the 
 hospitable manse of Roberton. "I proposed," says Mr. Shaw, 
 " when he left, to accompany him to Dr. Hardie's (about six 
 miles distant), whence he intended to get to Penicuick next day. 
 We set out accordingly on a Monday after breakfast. The next
 
 EXPEDITION WITH MK. SHAW. 87 
 
 morning, I expressed a wish that we should go as far as Gala- 
 shiels, and call on Dr. Douglas ;* to which he consented, OH 
 condition that it must be only a short call. tThere, however, 
 we were induced to spend the day. Next morning we took our 
 departure on the way to Peebles ; but in passing the hospitable 
 residence of a family with whom I was intimately connected, I 
 prevailed on him to call ; and being much delighted with our 
 kind reception, we remained till next morning, when we took 
 our leave after breakfast. On our way up the Tweed, I sug- 
 gested the propriety of our calling on my friend, Nicol of Tra- 
 quair,-!- whose manse was situated only about half-a-mile off the 
 road. ' Well, sir,' was the reply, ' but it must be only for a 
 minute or two, as I must get to Penicuick this night.' There, 
 however, we spent the day most comfortably ; and in the even- 
 ing, were so delighted with the music of the piano, that we could 
 not refrain dancing a few merry reels. At last, Chalmers took 
 hold of my arm, and exclaimed, ' It's out of the question my 
 getting home this week. You have a good horse, so you must 
 just proceed to-morrow morning to Kilmany, and I will go back 
 to Eoberton.' To this proposal I readily agreed. Nicol was 
 amazed, and seemed to think we were both getting deranged. 
 On awakening next morning, and perceiving that it rained, I 
 began to groan a little, when my friend pulled me out of bed, 
 and ordered me to set off with all convenient speed. Off I 
 accordingly rode, and reached Kilmany about eight o'clock at 
 night. Chalmers went from Nicol's to Hardie's on the Friday 
 we parted at Traquair and on Saturday, to Eoberton parish, 
 where he wrote a poetical farewell to Teviotdale, and preached 
 a brilliant sermon on 'Look not on the wine when it is red' 
 (Prov. xxiii. 31). Afterwards, on his way home, he called at Ab- 
 botshall, and gave me a minute and amusing account of all his pro- 
 ceedings, concluding with high glee and emphasis, 'This famous 
 exploit will immortalize us, sir.' I regret that I cannot find his 
 Farewell to Teviotdale, which I must have somehow mislaid." 
 
 * Robert Douglas, D.D., minister of Galashiels, was the author of " A General View of tlie 
 Agriculture in the County of Roxburgh." Edinburgh, 1 798. 8vo. And of " A General View- 
 er the Agriculture in the County of Selkirk." Edinburgh, 1798. 8vo. He was also the writer 
 of an anonymous life of Logan, prefixed to the edition of his poems published at Edinburgh 
 in 1812. lie sold to Sir Walter Scott a farm called Clarty Hole, afterwards dignified by thu 
 name of Abbofctford. Mr. Loekhart tells us, that he was the ''shrewd and UEbigoted" 
 minister of the gospel in Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. Some notices of his character are 
 to be found in the Life of Dr. Balmer, by Dr. Henderson of Galashiels. 
 
 t James Xicol, minister of Traquair, published, in the earlier part of his life, " Poems, chiefly 
 in the Scottish Dialect." Edinburgh, 1805. 2 vols. IGmo. A work of his was published four 
 years after his death, entitled, " An E.-say on the Nature and Design of Scripture Sacrifices, 
 in which the Theory of Archbishop Jlagee is Controverted." London, 1823. 8vo.
 
 88 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PUBLICATION- OF AX INQUIRY INTO THE EXTENT AND STABILITY OF NATIONAL 
 RESOURCES DEATH OF HIS SISTER BARBARA. 
 
 MR. CHALMERS returned to Kilmany in July, and the transi- 
 tion was immediate from the bustle of the metropolis and the 
 varieties of the wayside, to the solitary labours of the desk. 
 
 " KILMAXY, September 9, 1807. 
 
 "DEAR JAMES, I should have written you sooner, but the 
 eternal sameness of the country suggests no subject that can 
 at all interest you. I by no means dislike the country, how- 
 ever ; and much indeed would I regret it, if my jaunt to London 
 had inspired disgust with my situation. The truth is, I have 
 come down to Scotland more of the country parson than I ever 
 was in my life before, quite devoted to the sober work of visiting 
 and examining -scarcely ever without the limits of my parish, 
 and not once at Anster or St. Andrews since I returned from 
 my excursion. 
 
 " You hinted to me, when in London, the propriety of making 
 some effort in the way of publication. To this I am encouraged 
 by the success of my last effort, which, however little known in 
 London, and in spite of the angry opposition it met with, sold 
 unexpectedly well in this part of the country. I have accord- 
 ingly been engaged in some discussions on the subject of the 
 Public Revenue, which I think may excite the attention of 
 politicians. Wilkie, the celebrated painter, spent a day with 
 me lately, and promises to make the thing as extensively known 
 as possible among his literary acquaintances in London. . . . 
 Yours affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 One-half of the projected volume was already written, when 
 his brother was thus told of its being commenced. At a still 
 earlier period of his life, Political Economy had been a favourite 
 study of Mr. Chalmers ; and the state of public affairs at this 
 particular crisis invited him to certain investigations in that
 
 PAMPHLET BY MR. SPENCE. 89 
 
 branch of science, the results of which he longed to pronnilgate, 
 as in the highest degree consolatory and encouraging to the 
 country. With the prospect before her of a protracted and ex- 
 pensive war, the alarm had spread widely that her capabilities 
 to continue it were about to be extensively crippled. In Novem- 
 ber 1806, Bonaparte had issued his famous Berlin Decree, shut- 
 ting the ports of every country on the continent over which his 
 influence extended against all vessels which had cleared from 
 British harbours, and confiscating all cargoes of British goods, 
 however carried. Austria, Prussia, and Kussia, their armies 
 beaten on the field by France, had already been forced into this 
 commercial war with England ; and Portugal and Spain, threat- 
 ened by the same victorious power, appeared to be on the eve 
 of joining a coalition which was to place the British islands in 
 a state of blockade. Our merchants and manufacturers fancied 
 themselves on the brink of ruin ; and the country generally 
 shared their terror, believing that, to whatever extent our trade 
 was curtailed, to the same extent our national resources would 
 suffer loss. In the apprehension of Mr. Chalmers, this alarm 
 was altogether groundless. He could demonstrate, he thought, 
 that the whole loss which the country should suffer, even if the 
 measures of Bonaparte were to succeed, would be the loss of 
 those luxuries which foreign trade supplied not any diminution 
 of that general fund out of which these luxuries were paid for, 
 and by which all our manufactures were upheld ; and, if that 
 fund remained entire, then, with less to do in ministering to 
 personal enjoyment, it would have more than ever to offer to 
 Government for the upholding of national independence. The 
 discussions out of which this cheering conclusion emerged were 
 so vigorously prosecuted, that they should have been completed 
 ere the year had closed, had not a severe illness intervened. 
 
 " AXSTRUTHER, December 4, 1807. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I am here for a change of air, having just 
 recovered from a fever which has thrown me back two months 
 in all my speculations. In your last you seem to intimate 
 something like a suspicion that the subject of my proposed 
 publication is not a popular one. Of all others, I believe it 
 a subject most adapted to the present circumstances of the 
 country. It is entitled an ' Inquiry into the Extent and 
 Stability of National Eesources ; ' and though upon a general 
 subject, and chiefly intended to elucidate some questions in
 
 90 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the science of political economy, yet I cannot forbear inter- 
 spersing a number of allusions to the present aspect of affaire. 
 I got a pamphlet lately from London, entitled ^ Britain Inde- 
 pendent of Commerce,'* which I see has attracted the notice of 
 Cobbett, the author of the Political Register. Several of its 
 discussions coincide with those I had before prepared upon the 
 same subject, though my plan embraces a greater variety of 
 investigation ; and I have the vanity to think that my illustra- 
 tions of the argument are more perspicuous and impressive. 
 
 " The great burden of my argument is, that the manufacturer 
 who prepares an article for home consumption is the servant of 
 the inland consumer, labouring for his gratification, and support- 
 ed by the price which he pays for the article ; that the manu- 
 facturer of an article for exportation is no less the servant of the 
 inland consumer, because, though he does not labour imme- 
 diately for his gratification, he labours for a return from foreign 
 countries. This return comes in articles of luxury, which fetch 
 a price from our inland consumers. Hence it is ultimately 
 from the inland consumer that the manufacturer of the ex- 
 ported article derives his maintenance. Suppose, then, that 
 trade and manufacture were destroyed, this does not affect the 
 ability of the inland consumer. The whole amount of the mis- 
 chief is, that he loses the luxuries which were before provided 
 for him, but he still retains the ability to give the same main- 
 tenance as before to the immense population who are now dis- 
 carded from their former employments. Suppose this ability to 
 be transferred to Government in the form of a tax. Govern- 
 ment takes the discarded population into its service. They 
 follow their subsistence wherever it can be found ; and thus, 
 from the ruin of our trading and manufacturing interest, Go- 
 
 * " Britain Independent of Commerce ; or. Proofs deduced from an Investigation into the 
 true Causes of the Wealth of Nations, that our riches, prosperity, and power, are derived 
 from resources inherent in ourselves, and would not be affected even though our Commerce 
 were annihilated. By William Spence, F.L.S. London: Cadell and Davies, 1807." This 
 pamphlet ran rapidly through three editions, and was reviewed both in the Monthly and 
 Edinburgh Reviews. It was answered by James 31ill in an elaborate pamphlet of 354 pages, 
 entitled, " Commerce Defended ; an Answer to the Arguments by which Mr. Spence, Mr. 
 Cobbett, and others, have attempted to prove that Commerce is not a Source of National 
 Wealth;" and, by R. Ton-en?, in a pamphlet called "The Economists Refuted; or, an 
 Inquiry into the Nature and Extent of the Advantages derived from Trade." In 1808, Mr. 
 Spence published a second pamphlet, entitled, " Agriculture the Source of the Wealth of 
 Britain ; a Reply to the Objections urged by Mr. Mill, the Edinburgh Reviewers, and others, 
 against the doctrine of a pamphlet entitled, ' Britain Independent of Commerce ;' with He-- 
 marks on the Criticism of the Monthly Reviewers upon that work. By W. Spence." Not 
 satisfied with leaving the controversy in this condition, the Edinburgh Reviewers entered 
 the lists a second time, in vol. xiv. p. 50. There can be little doubt that the pro occupation 
 of the public mind with the speculations of Mr. Spence seriously interfered with the success 
 of Mr. Chalmers's publication.
 
 CATALOGUE OF CHAPTERS. 91 
 
 vernment collects the means of adding to the naval and mili- 
 tary establishments of the country. I therefore anticipate that 
 Bonaparte, after he has succeeded in shutting up the markets 
 of the continent agai^t us, will be astonished and that the 
 mercantile politicians of our own country will be no less as- 
 tonished to find Britain as hale and vigorous as ever, and 
 fitter than before for all the purposes of defence and security, 
 and political independence. Yours affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " KILMAXV, January 5, 1808. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I received yours, and feel myself a good 
 deal stimulated by your observations. With all my activity, 
 however, I shall not get my revisal finished before the 1st of 
 February. My fever was a cruel interruption ; and it left a 
 languor behind it which rendered me useless for several weeks. 
 It is perhaps unfortunate for my book, that my two first chap- 
 ters are among the most abstract and uninteresting of the 
 wliole. This was unavoidable, as it was necessary to establish 
 the principles of my reasoning before I could proceed to the 
 more useful or popular applications. The following is a cata- 
 logue of my chapters : 
 
 " Chap. I. The Case of a country secluded from all Foreign 
 Intercourse. 
 
 " I here attempt to prove, that the utility of a manufac- 
 ture lies entirely in working up certain articles for the enjoy- 
 ment of customers. If the manufacture is destroyed, the whole 
 amount of the mischief is the loss of the enjoyment. The 
 maintenance of the manufacturers oiight not to be taken into 
 the account. This maintenance still lies in the hands of their 
 customers, and can be given to them with as much liberality 
 as ever for some new service. If this new service is the ser- 
 vice of the Government in the capacity of soldiers, the whole 
 amount of the change is a change of employment to manu- 
 facturers ; and to the customer it is the exchange of one ad- 
 vantage for another the exchange of luxury for comfort and 
 independence. 
 
 " Chap. II. The Case of a country which carries on Foreign 
 Trade, but is subsisted by its own Agricultural Produce. 
 
 " I here attempt to prove, that the manufacturer of the 
 exported commodity derives his maintenance from the inland 
 consumer, and is therefore as much under his control as the
 
 92 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 home manufacturer. Though his present employment were 
 destroyed, the maintenance still exists to give him the same 
 advantages in some new service, as in the case of the home 
 manufacturer. ^ 
 
 " Chap. III.-^-The Case of a country "which has to import 
 Agricultural Produce. 
 
 " This is in some degree applicable to Britain, thoTigh to a 
 much less extent than is generally imagined. From the most 
 authentic catalogues, it appears that the number subsisted 
 upon foreign grain amounts to about j y of the whole popula- 
 tion. The agricultural resources of England are immense, and 
 far more than sufficient to feed all this redundant population. 
 
 " Chap. IV. On Profit and Capital. 
 
 " What is true of labourers is true of capitalists. The re- 
 venue they derive in the way of profit is from a previous ability 
 existing in the country. Though their trade is annihilated, 
 the ability is still in reserve to give them as good an income 
 as before in some other employment. The army holds out as 
 great a number of good situations, in proportion to the number 
 of which it is composed, as any trading establishment does in 
 proportion to the number of its labourers. The extended 
 branches of the Government service hold out an equal number 
 of openings for our discarded capitalists, as well as for our dis- 
 carded labourers. 
 
 " Chap. V. On the Distinction between Productive and Un- 
 productive Labour. 
 
 " I here attempt to combat the definition of Dr. Adam Smith. 
 
 " Chap. VI. On Taxation. 
 
 " I take up the merits of two systems of taxation a tax xrpon 
 consumption and a tax upon income. The course of my specu- 
 lations leads me to a decided preference for the latter. 
 
 " Chap. VII. On the Effects of Taxation upon the Labour- 
 ing Classes of the Community. 
 
 " Among other topics, I discuss the merits of the compul- 
 sory system by which men are dragged into the service of the 
 country. 
 
 "Chap. VIII. The consideration of some Difficulties and 
 Objections." 
 
 In the chapter on Taxation the following suggestion is made 
 as to the mode of levying an income-tax : " It is the excess of 
 income above that which is laid out in purchasing the neces-
 
 BEST MODE OF LEVYING AN INCOME-TAX. 93 
 
 saries of existence, which contributes the only fund out of which 
 the public revenue is raised. Let a man be taxed then by the 
 portion he possesses of this fund ; let him be exempted for that 
 part of his income which only raises him to an equality with the 
 labourer. We shall suppose the exemption to extend to 50 
 a year. If a sum of 50 a year, then, is exempted, it is unfair 
 to tax a man of 60 by the whole of his income. He should 
 only be taxed by his excess above 50. Let him be exempted 
 for his 50, and let him pay an aliquot part of his excess above 
 50, or an aliquot part of 10. If this aliquot part be one- 
 fifth, let him pay one-fifth of 10, or 2. Extending this rule 
 to higher incomes, let the income of 70 be taxed one-fifth of 
 20, or let it pay 4 ; the income of 80 pay 6 ; the income 
 of 100 pay 10. . . . And so of all incomes whatsoever." 
 Pp. 272, 273. 
 
 The conviction, that this was the best and most equitable 
 way of imposing an income-tax, remained with Dr. Chalmers 
 through life ; and on a late occasion, when this tax was re- 
 imposed by Sir Robert Peel, he earnestly urged its adoption in 
 any influential quarter to which he had access. It is now more 
 than thirty years since the suggestion was first made by the 
 then unknown minister of Kilmany. In one of the latest and 
 ablest treatises on political economy the following passage oc- 
 curs : " The mode of adjusting these inequalities of pressure 
 which seems to be the most equitable, is that recommended by 
 Bentham, of leaving a certain minimum of income sufficient to 
 provide the necessaries of life, untaxed. Suppose 50 a year to 
 be an income ordinarily sufficient to provide a moderately numer- 
 ous labourer's family with the requisites of life and health, and 
 with protection against habitual bodily suffering, but not with 
 any indulgences. This, then, should be made the minimum ; 
 and incomes exceeding it should pay taxes, not upon their whole 
 amount, but upon the surplus. If the tax be ten per cent., 
 an income of 60 should be considered as a net income of 
 10, and charged with 1 a year ; while an income of 1000 
 should be charged as one of 950. Each would then pay a 
 fixed proportion, not of his whole means, but of his super- 
 fluities/' * 
 
 In treating of the compulsory system by which the army and 
 navy were then supplied with men, Mr. Chalmers says " I can 
 
 * Hill's Principles of Political Economy, vol. ii. p. 351.
 
 91 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 never consent to call that a voluntary service into which men 
 are decoyed by artifice, or driven by vice and by misfortune to 
 which they fly as a refuge from infamy, or as the last shift for 
 an existence which is held out as an asylum to acquitted 
 criminals, and a hiding-place to all whom ignominy and mis- 
 conduct have compelled to abandon the neighbourhood of their 
 acquaintances. The army is not a voluntary service unless men 
 are allured into it by rational inducements ; but instead of this, 
 the only possible way of getting men is by tricking them into 
 an imprudence. You beset them in the hour of intoxication ; 
 you try to overset their firmness by holding out the immediate 
 temptation of a bounty ; you avail yourselves of all their little 
 embarrassments, and employ a set of despicable agents, whose 
 business is to wheedle and falsify and betray. . . . The liberal 
 policy of sufficient pay is unknown to you. You grudge every 
 penny that is bestowed on the defenders of the country. Yes, 
 the wealth of the country is otherwise bestowed. It is spent 
 with the most prodigal hand on those labourers who provide 
 their employers with the gewgaws of splendour and fashion and 
 luxury ; while violence and constraint and misery are the in- 
 heritance of those brave men who form the palladium of our 
 nation's glory, and the protection of its dearest interests. . .,/* 
 Let us hasten to redress this crying enormity. Let it be a vo- 
 luntary service. Individuals, when they want servants, go to 
 market and enlist them for a term of months. Let Government 
 imitate their example let it go to market and enlist for a term 
 of years. Let it be no longer a slavery for life ; and let the 
 burning ignominy of corporal punishment be done away. Make 
 the situation of a soldier respectable, and annex to it such 
 advantages as may be sufficient to allure into the army the 
 strength and substance of our most valuable population." Pp. 
 278-290. 
 
 By the Army Service Bill, introduced by the present able and 
 enlightened Secretary-at-War in 1847, the old system of life- 
 enlistment has been abolished, and in its stead a system of 
 limited enlistment introduced, the infantry soldier enlisting now 
 for ten years, the cavalry and artillery for twelve. A large ad- 
 vance has thus been made towards rendering the condition of a, 
 soldier all that Mr. Chalmers in 1808 desired. It may require 
 more than another thirty years to realize the reform pointed to 
 in the following passage :
 
 SUGGESTION AS TO LIMITED ENLISTMENT. 96 
 
 " What is true of soldiers, is true of officers. Their allowance 
 is shamefully little. If you \vish to exalt the military character 
 of the country, you must give eclat to the military service. You 
 must annex to it the most honourable distinctions ; you must 
 reform the vicious system of military preferment ; you must 
 banish all political and pecuniary influence ; you must institute 
 an inviolable order of preferment, and put it beyond the putrefy- 
 ing touch of money or politics. Let it be a fair race in the career 
 of ambition ; and to every office, however humble, let there* be 
 annexed the vision of future glory, and the highest anticipations 
 of future eminence." Pp. 292, 293. 
 
 It was a frequent remark of the author of these suggestions, 
 that if nature had specially fitted him for any one profession 
 above another, it was that of a military engineer. It seems a 
 pity not to preserve here the only specimen which his writings 
 present to us of his abilities in this peculiar walk. In the con- 
 clusion of this volume he says " It is with the utmost diffidence 
 that I hazard an opinion on the detail of military operations. 
 But it must strike the most inattentive observer, that France 
 has established herself in the different countries around her, 
 not because these countries had arrived at the limit of their re- 
 sources, but because, from the rapidity of the invader, they had 
 not time to convert their resources to the purposes of defence 
 they had not time to collect their disposable population, and 
 train it to the business of war. . . . It is too prevailing a maxim 
 in this country, that the question of invasion must be decided 
 in a moment that we must overpower the enemy on the beach 
 that the country must not be exposed to the miseries of a 
 protracted warfare that the whole of our military strength 
 must be brought at once to bear upon the enemy and that we 
 must attempt to anticipate him by some great and decisive stroke 
 at the very outset of his operations. This appears to me to be 
 the most ruinous and mistaken policy. What ! shall we commit 
 the independence of the empire to the issue of a single engage- 
 ment ? Shall we rest our security upon the uncertain fortunes 
 of one army, when, with the advantage of a little time, we could 
 summon np out of the disposable population a succession of 
 armies, which, with the discipline and preparation of a few 
 months, would be fit to repel invasion on a scale of greater mag- 
 nitude than any that all Europe will ever put into execution ? 
 . . . The delusive importance annexed to the metropolis may
 
 96 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 often tempt an invaded country to step beyond that defensive 
 policy which is its true interest at the outset of its military 
 operations. Had Austria abandoned Vienna at the very outset 
 of its unfortunate contest, and Prussia abandoned Berlin, it 
 would have given at this moment a new aspect to the politics of 
 Europe. What is a metropolis, in fact ? It is a great collection 
 of houses, occupied in general by a part of our disposable popu- 
 lation, who supply the country around them with the productions 
 of flieir industry. If an enemy comes there, he may find much 
 wealth that is, he may destroy or take possession of many 
 valuable commodities ; but I venture to say that, with all his 
 power of mischief, he is not able to take from us more than what 
 would supply the luxuries of a few months, and which, if he had 
 not taken away, would at the end of that time have been de- 
 stroyed by the consumption of purchasers. The whole amount 
 of the mischief, then, is the loss of a few months' luxuries ; and 
 though the invader was allowed to take his full swing of depre- 
 dation and violence in every part of the country, all that he 
 could possibly destroy would bear no greater proportion to the 
 whole value of the island than the movables of an estate do to 
 the estate itself. I would not surrender a single military point 
 for the sake of the metropolis ; I would not abandon a single 
 position ; I would not risk a single uncertainty ; I would survey 
 the country with the eye of an officer ; I would look upon the 
 island as if it were a blank surface, and regulate my military 
 
 operations in the same way as if no metropolis existed. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Britain is now called upon to act a brilliant part in the his- 
 tory of the world. She is not able to revolutionize Europe, but 
 she is able to hold out to her the example of an independent 
 country. She is able to perpetuate in the world the only rem- 
 nant of liberty that exists in it, and to present to the weary eye 
 one bright spot on the troubled theatre of political affairs. Were 
 it a total extinction of liberty, its cause might be desperate and 
 irrecoverable ; ages to come might lie buried under the violence 
 of a rude and unsettled despotism, and the better days of man 
 might die away from the memory of the species. But there is 
 some ground for anticipation to build upon when we reflect that 
 there still exists in the world one solitary asylum for the princi- 
 ples of liberty that there remains one animating example for 
 the nations of Europe to appeal to that the time may yet come 
 when this example shall have its influence, when there shall be
 
 PROPOSAL OF A SECOND EDITION. 97 
 
 some new fluctuation in the tide of human affairs, when this 
 awful storm shall blow over, and the sunshine of happier days 
 shall smile upon our children." 
 
 By the end of January, the labour of composition was closed ; 
 in February, Mr. Chalmers went to Edinburgh, where he re- 
 mained while his work was passing through the press ; and on 
 Monday, the 28th March, the volume was published. Of the 
 500 copies which were printed, 150 were despatched to London. 
 The briskness of the sale in Scotland suggested the idea of a 
 second edition ; and the prospect of that edition issuing speedily 
 and with eclat from the London press, prompted the following 
 rapid series of communications to his brother James : 
 
 " KILMANY, April 6, 1808. 
 
 " With regard to my going to London on the business of a 
 second edition, I should find it very inconvenient ; and I have, 
 therefore, a plan to propose, which I hope may meet your appro- 
 bation. Consult with my friend Mr. Wilkie. If a second edition 
 is resolved upon, let it be begun without delay. Find a good 
 printer, and a good bookseller. They have the first edition to 
 copy from ; and, with the trouble of about one hour a day from 
 you, the proof-sheets may be corrected, and the thing completed 
 in a fortnight. I write Mr. Wilkie by this post, so I would 
 thank you to call upon him, and concert matters as speedily as 
 possible." 
 
 "April 13. Fifty copies have been sent to Liverpool, and 
 the sale is going on in this quarter with unexpected rapidity. 
 No advertisement has yet appeared in the London papers. I 
 beg you will attend to this ; and what Longman neglects to do 
 in that way, do yourself." 
 
 "April 15. I have just received yours, and am much mor- 
 tified by the non-arrival of my copies. What, in the name of 
 Heaven, is the meaning of it? The wind has been fair. If 
 Longman and Kees are not active enough, get other publishers. 
 It is selling rapidly in this quarter ; but what I sigh for is to be 
 fairly introduced to the public in London." 
 
 "April 16. The sale goes on briskly here ; but I do not 
 think I am published till I appear in London. Mr. Perceval's* 
 making no observations is of no consequence. He may not have 
 read it ; and even though he has read it, he may not relish it, 
 
 * A presentation copy had been sent to Mr. PercevaL 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Because he and his colleagues are all mercantile. I would even 
 esteem Cobbett's refusing to insert my abstract as by no means 
 a discouraging circumstance ; for Cobbett is an enemy to taxa- 
 tion. Both parties and individuals may condemn it, not because 
 they can refute its principles, but because they dislike them. 
 All this may happen, but I would not be discouraged by it ; for, 
 throwing aside all regard to individuals, and the opinions of in- 
 dividuals, my whole anxiety is to be fairly and speedily intro- 
 duced to the notice of a London public. If you can push off a 
 large second edition, and in this way give me a footing in Lon- 
 don, I shall bethink myself of other plans, and probably come 
 southwards to develop them." 
 
 " April 17. I hear that my book is going well off in Glas- 
 gow ; but London is the grand object of my anxiety. My 
 advertisement has not yet appeared in your papers. I pester 
 you so much with letters that I think you are entitled to insert 
 the postage as an item in the expense of publication." 
 
 " April 20. I understand that my advertisement has appeared 
 in the London papers, and am much pleased to observe my abs- 
 tract in Cobbett's Register. I learn from Edinburgh that the 
 bookseller there is reduced to fifty copies, and from different 
 accounts of the sales in other places, I think you are fairly war- 
 ranted to commence a second edition. The only thing wanted 
 is to impress the public with the idea that it is by no means a 
 fleeting or ephemeral performance that it is a subject of per- 
 manent importance, and, independently of all application to the 
 present circumstances of the country, that it offers some new 
 and original doctrines to political science." 
 
 " May 3. What I have now resolved on is to offer the edi- 
 tion to an Edinburgh bookseller in the first instance. It is 
 likely that their want of enterprise may intimidate them from 
 undertaking it, in which case I go to London, and negotiate the 
 business with some bookseller there. I am astonished at the 
 silence of my friend Wilkie. Have you seen or heard of him ?" 
 
 " May 12. I had a letter some days ago from Wilkie, in 
 which he mentions the favourable impression which my book 
 had made upon some of his literary acquaintances, and that one 
 of them had prepared a letter for Cobbett, but withheld it on 
 seeing the letter which you inserted. This was wrong, as there 
 is nothing like keeping it perpetually in the public eye, and din- 
 ning the public ear with it in all directions. The oftener you 
 write to me the welcomer, even though you have nothing par-
 
 MR. WILKIE S EFF011TS. 99 
 
 ticular to say. I think that one of Wilberforce's late speeches 
 smelled a little of my principles. I wonder if he has read the 
 book." 
 
 " May 13. Edinburgh and Glasgow are each left without a 
 copy. I shall begin a new edition next week. Had the same 
 proportional justice been done in London, a second edition 
 should have been off before this time." 
 
 " May 20. I received your ' Literary Advertiser/ and at 
 the same time a copy of the ' Examiner,' a weekly paper, of 
 Sunday the 8th, which takes notice of me in respectful terms. 
 I beg you will see and ascertain whether the editors of the two 
 Eeviews I before mentioned were each presented with a copy 
 of the work." 
 
 " May 25. I have directed my friend Mr. Wilkie to take in 
 offers. If something considerable is offered I will take it ; but 
 rather than want the co-operation of a London publisher, I will 
 be content with a mere nothing of pecuniary advantage. . . . 
 I have just received yours of the 21st. I feel very averse to 
 going up to London, and if I attempt it at all it will be by sea. 
 Have the reviewers got copies ? " 
 
 " June 28. Wilkie has reversed my plan.* Let an edition 
 of 1000 copies be offered to the booksellers on the most advan- 
 tageous terms that can be procured. If they are backward, I 
 surrender every consideration of emolument, and offer it to them 
 on no terms, only that they take the risk and management, and 
 proceed to the execution of it immediately. If this cannot be 
 accomplished, I take my place in a Dundee smack, and come up 
 to London and attempt to negotiate the thing myself. So much 
 am I convinced of what remains to be done, and of the truth and 
 importance of the discussion, that I will rather undertake the 
 
 * Mr. Wilkie attempted to obtain something for the copyright of the work by effecting an 
 absolute eale ; whereas Mr. Chalmers was chiefly anxious that a second edition should be 
 published on any terms. The following extracts from his diary show what trouble Mr. 
 Wilkie had taken in the matter : 
 
 EXTRACTS FBOM WILKIE'S DIAKY. 
 
 " May 27, 1808. Had a letter from Mr. Chalmers, authorizing me to dispose of the copy- 
 right of his work. 
 
 " June 8. Cailed on Mr. Murray in Fleet Street, who promised to give ne an answer 
 respecting Mr. Chalmers's book in a day or two. 
 
 " June 16. Called at Mr. Murray's, and found that he had made no offer for Chalmers's 
 work. 
 
 "June 23. To Miller's after breakfast, but got little encouragement for Chalmers's work. 
 
 " June 25.7 Went to Longman and Ilecs, and proposed that they should purchase Chal- 
 mers's work, and was told by them, that till it was noticed by the reviews there was little 
 chance of the book selling. 
 
 " June 27. Wrote to Chalmers to tell him of my bad success with his work." Cunning- 
 ham's Life of Wilkie, vol. i. pp. 175-180.
 
 100 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS'. 
 
 journey than not have it settled. The truth is, that the subject 
 of my book is not ephemeral. It contains discussions of perma- 
 nent importance ; and not a person who is profoundly versant in 
 the writings of Dr. Smith who does not see that if my principles 
 are found to be conclusive, they will give a wholly different 
 aspect to the science of political economy. The Farmer's Ma- 
 gazine has belaboured me with twenty pages of abuse.* It is a 
 coarse and ignorant invective." 
 
 ''July 23. I purpose setting off for London about the 
 middle of August. My great object is to get introduced into 
 some of the literary circles. The great success I have met 
 with in Scotland encourages me -to hope that I may meet with 
 proportional success in the greater theatre of the metropolis if 
 I could only get into the way." 
 
 But those days which in anticipation he had devoted to lite- 
 rary adventure in the great theatre of the metropolis were to 
 be spent in the retirements of Anstruther, amid the sorrows 
 of the sick-chamber and under the shadow of death. While 
 waiting to hear of the day on which Thomas was to sail for 
 London, James received the following communication from his 
 father : 
 
 "ANSTRUTHER, August 1, 1808. 
 
 " I only write to prevent any surprise from the intelligence 
 which I fear I must soon communicate to you. My dear Bar- 
 bara has within these few days weakened very fast. Till the 
 27th ult. she went out on horseback every day, and complained 
 of no toil, but was rather refreshed with her ride. On that 
 day she became so weak as since not to have been able to leave 
 her room. There is nothing impossible with God, but to human 
 appearance her dissolution is not far distant. My weakness 
 overcomes me much. I have every comfort that a parent could 
 have in separation from a beloved child. I behold in her a 
 cheerful submission to the will of God, and a humble confidence 
 in the satisfaction of her great Redeemer. Her situation is 
 not known to the Kilmany family, as the turn in her disorder is 
 since we last wrote to them." 
 
 * In the Number for June 1808, p. 221. A still more abusive notice appeared in the July 
 Number of the Eclectic Review, which closes in these terms : " Mr. Chalmers's style is 
 flowing and showy. He is warm and declamatory, but excessively diffuse. Instead of regu- 
 larly pursuing the course of his argument, he sets himself to galloping and frisking round 
 every particular idea of it, till he becomes quite giddy, and wears out the patience of his 
 reader. His command of language is probably a snare to him ; for as he seems to be at no 
 loss for words, he is led to mistake fluency of expression for fertility of thought."
 
 DEATH OF HIS SISTER BARBARA. 101 
 
 The same fatal malady which had carried George to the 
 grave had seized upon Barbara. No earthly hope was left. 
 Through three dreary weeks of great suffering she had still to 
 struggle. But that great Redeemer upon whose satisfaction 
 her confidence had been cast, made clear unto her the path of 
 life ; and while she walked through the dark valley, the light 
 of His presence shone brightly and steadily upon her, and 
 neither doubt nor fear having visited her, she passed into the 
 presence of God. 
 
 "ANSTRUTHEK, August 20, 1808. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, Barbara died last night after a most tedious 
 and severe illness. It was the near prospect of this event that 
 restrained my departure for London, which would have taken 
 place some time ago. At present I have no decided intention 
 upon the subject, but will write you soon. I am, &c., 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 102 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 WINTER AT WOODSMUIR FIRST SPEECH IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY BECOMES 
 
 A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE EDINBURGH ENCYCLOPEDIA EARLY RELIGIOUS OPIN- 
 IONS DEATH OF MR. BALLARDIE SEVERE ILLNESS, AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 " WHAT a severe winter we have had ! another desperate 
 attack of frost and snow within these few days the very beer 
 freezing in the bottles." Mr. Chalmers wrote thus to his bro- 
 ther James from his winter quarters at Woodsmuir, a house to 
 which he had removed in the autumn of 1808, and which 
 lying close npon the Fifeshire coast of the Frith of Tay, had 
 been recommended to him by the enlivening prospect which it 
 commanded of Dundee and the shipping of the river. His 
 letter is dated on Thursday, the 8th of February 1809, the 
 very day set apart as a national fast on account of the recent 
 battle of Corunna, and the loss of one of the greatest of 
 British generals. Like every other minister fa Scotland, Mr. 
 Chalmers had to open his church for public worship, and to 
 preach a sermon suitable to the occasion. To discharge this 
 duty, he had the cold and snow of a five miles' walk to brave. 
 " I made my way," he says, " through the drift from Woods- 
 muir to Kilmany. I had none but the villagers to preach to, 
 and I got them convened in my dining-room." And it was to 
 that small shivering group, convened in the damp dining-room 
 of the old and uninhabited manse, that he preached as elo- 
 quent a sermon as was delivered that day from the best of 
 British pulpits, or as was listened to by the most brilliant 
 audience in the land.* 
 
 A recent act of the legislature 7 had declared that no stipend 
 of any clergyman in Scotland which had been augmented be- 
 fore the passing of t this act should be augmented again till after 
 a period of fifteen years ; and that no stipend augmented after the 
 passing of the act, should be augmented again till after a period 
 
 * The reader will find this sermon in Dr. Chalmers's Posthumous Works, vol. vt p. 62. 
 t 48 Geo. III. ; paused June 30, 1808.
 
 MAIDEN SPEECH IN THE ASSEMBLY.. 10., 
 
 of twenty years. Looking into this statute with an eye made 
 all the keener perhaps in its vision that the time for the aug- 
 mentation of his own living was drawing on, Mr. Chalmers per- 
 ceived that owing to the date fixed as that from which the 
 interval between the two augmentations should be calculated, 
 it might be lengthened out in a manner most vexatious to a 
 minister, and so as to defeat the obvious intention of the legis- 
 lature. This defect in the bill was brought before the Supreme 
 Judicatory of the Church of Scotland by overture from the Pres- 
 bytery of Cupar. It was in support of this overture that on 
 Thursday, the 25th May 1809, Mr. Chalmers made his maiden 
 speech in the General Assembly. The topic was a sufficiently 
 dry and barren one, fit enough for a good legal pleading, but 
 ill calculated, we should have thought, for eloquence or illustra- 
 tion. The speaker besides laboured under the great disadvantage 
 that the bill, the construction of one of whose leading clauses it 
 was his object to impugn, had already been submitted to the law 
 committee, and been approved of by the leaders of the Church. 
 Nevertheless, a few sentences only had been uttered when the 
 singular ingenuity and eloquence of the pleader arrested the 
 whole house. Vigorous reasoning, genial humour, practical 
 sagacity, large and generous sentiment, all broke out in the 
 fervid and rapidly spoken utterance. " Do you know anything 
 of this man?" said Dr. Campbell to a minister who sat near 
 him, " he- is surely a most extraordinary person." The question 
 was on many lips besides Dr. Campbell's as the speaker sat 
 down.* When the house had recovered from its surprise, and 
 the Fifeshire ministers had satisfied the curiosity of inquirers as 
 to this new speaker, Dr. Inglis proceeded to read the report of 
 
 * In closing his speech, he said " It is quite ridiculous to say that the worth of the clergy 
 will suffice to keep them up in the estimation of society. This worth must be combined with 
 importance. Now, it is our part to supply the element of worth, and it is the part of the 
 Court of Session to supply the element of importance. Give both worth and importance 
 to the same individual, and what are the terms employed in describing him ? ' A distin- 
 guished member of society, the ornament of a most respectable profession, the virtuous com- 
 panion of the great, and a generous consolation to all the sickness and poverty around him.' 
 These, Moderator, appear to me to be the terms peculiarly descriptive of the appropriate 
 character of a clergyman, and they serve to mark the place which he ought to occupy ; but 
 take away the importance, and leave only the worth, and what do you make of him ? what 
 is the descriptive term applied to him now ? Precisely the term which I often find applied 
 to many of my brethren, and which galls me to the very bone every moment I hear it ' a 
 fine body ' a bein? whom you may like, but whom I defy you to esteem ; a mere object of 
 endearment ; a being whom the great may at times honour with the condescension of a 
 dinner, but whom they will never admit as a respectable addition to their society. Now, all 
 that I demand of the Court of Tiend?, is to be rai.-ed, and that as speedily as possible, above 
 the imputation of being 'afne body' that they would add importance to my worth, and 
 >rive splendour and efficacy to those exertions which have for their object the most exalted 
 interests of the species."
 
 104 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the committee upon the legal provision of the ministers of the 
 Church. Both Mr. Chalmers and the person who was to have 
 seconded his motion imagined that the way was quite open to 
 them after the report was read. On presenting themselves, 
 however, they were told that through their ignorance of the 
 forms of the house, they had let the opportunity for pressing 
 their motion irrecoverably escape ; that the unseconded motion 
 had already fallen to the ground, and could not be brought for- 
 ward again. Mr. Chalmers breakfasted on the following morn- 
 ing with Dr. Brewster.* One of the party present warmly 
 congratulated him on the well reasoned and brilliant speech of 
 the preceding day. "Yes," said he, breaking out of the silent and 
 contemplative mood in which at the moment he was indulging 
 " Yes ; but what did it signify it had no effect nothing fol- 
 lowed upon it." It had the effect at least of subjecting him to 
 a whole host of applications. " I have been beset," he wrote to 
 his father a few days afterwards, " from all quarters to publish 
 my speech." " Beseech Chalmers of Kilmany," so wrote Mr. 
 Andrew Thomson to, Dr. Brewster, " to publish his speech ; he 
 should and must do it." The speech was at last committed to 
 the press.-}- 
 
 The winter months at Woodsmuir had been devoted to the 
 collecting of materials for different articles which he had un- 
 dertaken to prepare for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. Some 
 months before his sister's death, he had been invited by Dr. 
 Brewster, the editor of that work, to become one of the contri- 
 butors. The invitation was at once gladly and gratefully ac- 
 cepted. Writing to Dr. Brewster on April 23d, 1808, he said 
 " I go into St. Andrews in the course of a week or two to 
 rummage its library, and ascertain whether I shall like the 
 articles you did me the honour to propose. There is one article 
 in Mathematics which I have conceived a fancy for, and which, 
 if it interfere with no other person, I will undertake ' Trigo- 
 nometry.' I am now busy with Cagnoli ;^ and I think it would 
 be doing a service to give a view of the very extensive applica- 
 tion of trigonometrical formulae both to analysis and physics." 
 After his sister Barbara's death, he wrote to Dr. Brewster, 
 
 * Now Sir DaTid Brewster. 
 
 f A second edition of this speech was published in 1813. Dr. Chalmers had intended 
 that it should be comprised in the series of his works published by Mr. Collins ; but haying 
 omitted to indicate his denre, it has not been included. 
 
 t Cagnoli, a native of Zante, was author of the " Trizonometria pinna e sferica," pub- 
 li^hed in 1783, and afterwards translated into French. This work was long considered a 
 standard treatise.
 
 DR. DUFF'S DIARY. 105 
 
 requesting that the article "Christianity"* might be committed 
 to him. He urged the request with earnestness, expressing his 
 extreme anxiety to do the subject justice, and stating his reso- 
 lution to live three or four months in St. Andrews for the ex- 
 press purpose of consulting the necessary authorities. In the 
 absence of definite information as to what had induced him to 
 make this request, and to cherish so strong a desire that it should 
 be complied with, we may be permitted to conjecture that the 
 renewed impressions of the second death-scene at Anstruther had 
 awakened the conviction, that among the subjects that were to 
 engage his thoughts for the winter, it would be well that one at 
 least connected with religion should find a place. In selecting 
 the Christian Evidences, he was neither influenced by any novelty 
 in the subject, nor any change in his convictions regarding it. 
 His faith in the divine origin of Christianity had been early 
 established, and the evidence on which that faith rested had 
 years before been carefully investigated. When his work on 
 the " Evidences of Christianity" was put into the hands of one 
 who had heard him frequently while he was assistant to Mr. 
 Elliot, many of its discussions were recognised as having many 
 years previously been propounded from the pulpit at Cavers. 
 From a Diary kept at the time by Dr. Duff of Kenmore, I ex- 
 tract the following entry : " St. Andreivs, September 12, 1802. 
 Went out to hear Mr. Thomas Chalmers preach at Denino ; 
 spoke in a stream of glowing eloquence, but was much too vio- 
 lent in gesture, and had none of the graces of good delivery. 
 Dined together at the manse ; he talked of the difficulties which 
 students met with in searching after divine truth ; considered 
 the historical evidence of Christianity the most satisfactory, and 
 that little value is to be attached to the internal evidence apart 
 from the external." In a lectiire addressed evidently to a mixed 
 audience, and in all probability delivered to the chemical class 
 at St. Andrews, he said : " There is a line of reading allotted 
 to certain professions, and there is a general line of reading allot- 
 ted to them who, without any professional object, pursue litera- 
 ture as an elegant amusement, or aspire to a moderate degree of 
 literary cultivation. The general course of reading comprehends 
 novels, of which many are excellent, and many are most vitia- 
 ting and seductive ; works in history, to enrich our minds with 
 
 * This subject had been committed, in the first instance, to Dr. Andrew Thomson, then 
 minister of Perth, who consented to give it up when informed of Mr. Cljalmers's strong desire 
 to undertake it.
 
 10G MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the science of human nature and the principles of human so- 
 ciety ; works of taste, to multiply our innocent and delightful en- 
 joyments ; works of morality, to chastise the deficiencies of the 
 heart and temper, and to give to the humbler scenes of life the 
 tone of philosophy and high sentiment. This is all excellent, 
 and there is only one deficiency which I am anxious to supply ; 
 and no one who knows me will ascribe it to the gloom of puri- 
 tanical solemnity, or stigmatize it as the melancholy whimper 
 of a poor and pitiful fanaticism. What I allude to is a few of 
 the best and most elementary treatises on the evidences of Chris- 
 tianity. This is a species of literature in which England, I 
 believe, has taken the lead of all the countries in Christendom. 
 The work of Paley is excellent. It will do more than instruct ; 
 it will interest and delight you ; it will prove an effectual anti- 
 dote against infidel opinions. The truth of Christianity is neither 
 more nor less than the truth of certain facts that have been 
 handed down to us by the testimony of reporters. Let the his- 
 torical evidences on which it rests be made to pass in review, 
 and become the subject of sober inductive examination ; let the 
 question be decided by a fair and patient inquiry ; let the 
 enemies of our faith show the world that their infidelity rests on 
 higher grounds than a stale invective against the jugglery of 
 priests, or the pertness of a flippant witticism ; let them bring 
 along with them the spirit of cool and candid reflection, an anxiety 
 after truth, and a ready submission to evidence. How little do 
 they think, as they strut along in the pride of the infidel philo- 
 sophy, how little of the spirit and temper of true philosophy is 
 in them of that humble cautious spirit which Bacon taught, 
 and on which Newton rests the immortality of his genius. . '. . 
 There is a puppyism in infidelity for which I have no patience. 
 I thought that now-a-days both gentlemen and philosophers 
 would have been ashamed of it. At the commencement of last 
 century one had some credit in sporting the language of unbelief 
 and infidelity for they were supported by the countenance of 
 Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke, who, in addition to their being 
 peers of the realm, had a sufficient acquaintance with their mother 
 tongue. But infidelity, like every other fashion, has had its day ; 
 and since the masterly and triumphant defences of our English 
 divines, it has been generally abandoned by the superior and 
 more enlightened classes of society, and, to use the words of an 
 Oxford professor, is now rarely to be heard but in the language 
 of bakers, and brewers, and bricklayers, and bell-menders, and
 
 EFFECT OF BUTLERS ANALOGY. 107 
 
 bottle -blowers, and blackguards. ... I revere Christianity, not 
 because it is the religion of my fathers I revere it, not because 
 it is the established religion of my country I revere it, not be- 
 cause it brings to me the emoluments of office ; but I revere it 
 because it is built upon the solid foundation of impregnable 
 argument because it has improved the world by the lessons of 
 an ennobling morality, and because, by the animating prospects 
 which it holds out, it alleviates the sorrows of our final departure 
 hence, and cheers the gloomy desolation of the grave." The 
 Eev. Mr. Smith,* who had frequent and close intercourse with 
 Mr. Chalmers during the years 1808-1809, referring to the 
 period which preceded his undertaking the article on Christianity, 
 says : " Of the truth of Christianity he had a firm and unwaver- 
 ing belief. He unhesitatingly believed that the Scriptures are 
 the Word of God, and that the Christian system is divine. In 
 this conviction he had been firmly established at an eai'ly period 
 of life, by reading Bishop Butler's Analogy of Natural and Re- 
 vealed Religion, &c. He told me that it was Butler's Analogy 
 that made him a Christian." He did not need to be made a 
 Christian by being converted from Deism, or what is generally 
 spoken of as infidelity. The scepticism of his student years was 
 one which affected the foundations of all religion, whetber natural 
 or revealed. And when that scepticism was cleared away, But- 
 ler's great work came in to do the signal service of satisfyiig 
 him that there was nothing either in the contents or credentials 
 of Christianity to weaken the force, much less to warrant the 
 setting aside, of its own proper and peculiar proofs. These proofs 
 he had investigated, and found valid. It was but to revive, 
 therefore, the studies, and to re-establish the convictions of 
 earlier years, that, under the impressions of his sister's death, 
 he wished to be employed in drawing up a condensed statement 
 and defence of the argument on behalf of the divine origin of 
 Christianity. 
 
 But although his faith required and underwent no change as 
 to the credentials of the Bible, it was not so with his views and 
 impressions as to its contents. The sermons preached by him 
 during that period sufficiently represent what those views and 
 
 * The Rev. Mr. Smith, minister of the United Presbyterian Church at Dunning, taught 
 the school at Galdry, in the immediate vicinity of Kilmany, from October 1807 till Septem- 
 ber 1 81 0. He acted as amanuensis to Mr. Chalmers while preparing bis work on the " Extent 
 1 Stability of National Resources " for the press, and while writing the earlier part of the 
 
 tide on Christianity. From the familiar intercourse which he enjoyed with Mr. Chalmers 
 darinz all the period of his residence at Galclry, Mr. Smith's testimony becomes particularly 
 
 - :
 
 108 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 impressions were throughout the first six years of his ministry. 
 That single-minded simplicity of character, which had not even 
 to struggle with any tendencies to guile, lent a truthful trans- 
 parency to all his utterances from the pulpit, and made his public 
 ministry a full and faithful transcript of all his opinions and 
 feelings as to religion. He never inculcated upon others what 
 he did not fully and heartily believe himself; he never (as was 
 but too common in those days) kept back from his people any 
 part of his own religious creed ; nor did any fear of unpopularity 
 restrain him from publicly and vehemently decrying that evan- 
 gelism which he then nauseated and despised. I subjoin a 
 summary of his religious creed, in the very words in which he 
 presented it to his hearers at Kilmany : 
 
 " In what particular manner the death of our Eedeemer ef- 
 fected the remission of our sins, or rather, why that death was 
 made a condition of this remission, seems to be an unrevealed 
 point in the Scriptures. Perhaps the God of Nature meant to 
 illustrate the purity of His perfection to the children of men ; 
 perhaps it was efficacious in promoting the improvement and 
 confirming the virtue of other orders of being. The tenets of 
 those whose gloomy and unenlarged minds are apt to imagine 
 that the Author of Nature required the death of Jesus merely 
 fdr the reparation of violated justice, are rejected by all free and 
 rational inquirers. . . . Our Saviour, by the discharge of His 
 priestly office, removed those obstacles to our acceptance with 
 God which would have been otherwise invincible. But the ob- 
 viating of difficulties was not the only part of Christ's niedia- 
 torship. The knowledge of some positive ground of acceptance 
 was absolutely necessary, since the bare possibility of obtaining 
 the Divine favour was not sufficient of itself to effect our salva- 
 tion. The revelation of the means requisite for acceptance was 
 therefore an essential part of Christ's undertaking; and in 
 discharging His office as a prophet, in revealing the will of God 
 for man's salvation, He has communicated a knowledge of these 
 means in a most complete and satisfactory manner. With indig- 
 nation do we see a speculative knowledge of the doctrines of 
 Christianity preferred to the duties of morality and virtue. The 
 cant of enthusiasm the effusion of zeal the unintelligible jar- 
 gon of pretended knowledge are too often considered as the 
 characteristics of a disciple of Jesus ; whilst, amid all these de- 
 ceitful appearances, justice, charity, and mercy, the great topics
 
 EARLY RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 109 
 
 of Christ's admonitions, are entirely overlooked. Consult your 
 Bibles, and you will find that these are the sure indications of 
 the favour of heaven. . . . The rewards of heaven are attached 
 to the exercise of our virtuous affections. The faith of Chris- 
 tianity is praiseworthy and meritorious, only because it is derived 
 from the influence of virtuous sentiments on the mind. Let us 
 tremble to think that anything but virtue can recommend us 
 to the Almighty. ... He who has been rightly trained in his 
 religious sentiments, by carefully perusing the Scriptures of 
 truth, will learn thence, that the law of God is benevolence to 
 man, and an abiding sense of gratitude and piety. He will esti- 
 mate the deficiencies of his obedience by his deviations from the 
 laws of social duty, and the frequent absence of right impressions 
 of reverence and love. Having learned the comfortable doctrines 
 of pardon and salvation, that by the death of Christ there is hope 
 to the sincere and humble penitent who wishes to forsake the evil 
 of his ways, he will go on, in the confidence of such declarations, 
 in his endeavour to promote the glory of God and the welfare of 
 the human race. A sense of the Divine goodness will open his 
 heart to the sentiments of gratitude and love. He will study 
 to approve himself worthy of such condiict by cultivating the 
 graces of charity and piety. Time, his best endeavours fall 
 short of perfection, and after all, he may be called an unprofit- 
 able servant ; true, considering his numberless violations of the 
 divine law, and the small progress he has made in the path of 
 holiness, he may have reason to be discouraged ; but contem- 
 plating the wonders of redeeming love, and finding all the defi- 
 ciencies of his imperfect virtue supplied by the atonement and 
 propitiation of Jesus, he goes on his course rejoicing, assured that, 
 through Christ, his sincere but imperfect obedience is looked 
 upon by Heaven with a propitious eye. But let him allow him- 
 self to be guided by the instructions of our mystical theologians, 
 and all will be involved in gloom and obscurity. . . . Who but 
 laments to see the luminous truths of Christianity invested thus 
 with a veil of mysticism to see the splendour of the Sun of 
 Righteousness obscured in the mists of ignorance and supersti- 
 tion ? Let us, my brethren, beware of such errors. Let us view 
 such fanatical vagaries with the contempt they deserve, and walk 
 in the certain path marked out to us by reason and by Scripture. 
 Thus shall we rise superior to imaginary terrors, and learn to 
 lament the real imperfections of our character. Thus shall we 
 approve ourselves worthy of the Divine goodness, by directing
 
 110 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 our efforts to the cultivation of our pious affections, and to im- 
 provement of our social conduct. Thus shall we exemplify the 
 real nature of the Christian service, which consists in gratefully 
 adoring the Supreme Being, and in diffusing the blessed influ- 
 ences of charity, moderation, and peace." 
 
 The Christianity which thus clearly and confidently expressed 
 itself, and which substantially was the promulgation of a modified, 
 milder, and mitigated law, could scarcely have had a fairer trial 
 made, both of its power of individual consolation and support, 
 and of the possible reach and extent of its influence over others, 
 than was made in the person of that eloquent advocate, in whose 
 own character and conduct those social virtues, which it so 
 strongly enjoined, were so attractively exhibited. We have to 
 wait now but a few months till we see this slight and superficial 
 Christianity fairly and fully put upon its trial till we see it 
 signally and utterly fail. 
 
 Before he went to the Assembly, Mr. Chalmers had removed 
 from Woodsmuir to the farm-house of Fincraigs, to be nearer 
 Kilmany, while his manse, which had already been commenced, 
 was building. He had scarcely reached Fincraigs, on his return 
 from Edinburgh, when sad tidings arrived from Anstruther. His 
 uncle, Mr. Ballardie, who had been a sailing-master in the navy, 
 had long retired from the service, and having no family or near 
 friends of his own, had been a kind of second father to his 
 nephews and nieces.* He had already crossed, and Mr. Chal- 
 mers, senior, was now just touching, the limits of the threescore 
 years and ten, and the bond between them had been growing 
 stronger as they grew older, till now not a day could pass with- 
 out their being an hour or two in each other's company. And 
 they were one in deep piety as well as in strong affection. Mr. 
 Ballardie's wife had been dead for many years, and his house 
 was kept by her sister. On the evening of the 6th June, he had 
 retired to his own room after tea. His sister-in-law, finding 
 that he remained longer away from her than was usual, followed. 
 She found him kneeling on a chair in the very attitude of prayer, 
 
 * Dr. Chalmers used often to tell that, when yet a very little boy, he was summoned to 
 his uncle's side one day to get his first lesson in mathematics a science in which Mr. 
 Ballardie was no mean proficient, and which he put far above all the other branches of 
 human knowledge. " What," said he, making a point upon the slate, " is that ?" "A dot," 
 said the young beginner. " Try again," said the uncle, ignorant of the already enlarged 
 vocabulary of his scholar, and little doubting that the word, whose definition was to be the 
 burden of the first lesson, would now come forth. "Tryagain; whatisit?" " A <i'c*,"v.-as 
 the reply.
 
 LONG AND SEVERE ILLNESS. 11J. 
 
 but the spirit had fled apparently without pain or struggle it 
 had taken its departure ; and from this lowly posture before the 
 throne of grace on earth had passed into the presence of the 
 throne of glory in the heavens. Notice of the sudden and im- 
 pressive death was instantly despatched to Kilmany : it found 
 Mr. Chalmers in such a severe illness, contracted on his way 
 home from the Assembly, that much as he longed to pay the 
 last tokens of respect to the remains of his departed relative, he 
 was prevented by the positive interdict of his medical attendant. 
 " I cannot help," he said, after telling his father by letter of the 
 unwelcome restraint thus laid upon him " I cannot help feel- 
 ing the very severe loss which our family has sustained in a man 
 whose attachment to every one of us, whose great kindness, 
 great worth, and great integrity, shall ever endear his memory 
 to all his acquaintances." The bulk of Mr. Ballardie's property 
 was bequeathed to his brother-in-law's family. He left Thomas, 
 as the bearer of his name, his house and furniture, and, along with 
 his father, constituted him his trustee. The state of his health 
 did not admit of Mr. Chalmers leaving Kilmany till the begin- 
 ning of August. He returned to Anstruther at the close of 
 September, and it was some exposure in coming home from that 
 second visit, which threw him into that long, severe, and most 
 momentous illness, during which the first stage of a great and 
 entire spiritual revolution was accomplished in him. For four 
 months he never left his room ; for upwards of half-a-year he 
 never entered his pulpit ; it was more than a twelvemonth be- 
 fore all the duties of his parish were again regularly discharged 
 by him. His illness, which was an affection of the liver, was 
 such as to require the application of the very strongest medicines. 
 " I visited him," says Professor Duncan, " at Fincraigs, where 
 he was under the medical treatment of Dr. Eamsay of Dundee, 
 and I certainly never saw any person so much altered in the 
 same space of time, being then greatly attenuated, while for- 
 merly he was corpulent. He was scarcely able to walk across 
 the room. It was a year or two before he recovered, and dur- 
 ing that period he had much the appearance of an old man, of 
 one who would never be able again for much exertion." But 
 although the body was thus weakened and reduced, the mind 
 was left in untouched vigour ; and into it, now left to its own 
 profound and solitary musings, there sunk the deepest and most 
 overpowering impression of human mortality. 
 
 For upwards of twenty years death had never entered his
 
 112 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 family circle. Perhaps the first time that he had ever stood 
 face to face in presence of the last enemy, and seen the last 
 stroke given, was when he witnessed the death of his brother 
 George. But death was now to be no stranger : already had 
 he borne away two of the family in his cold embrace ; and two 
 of his sisters were at this time threatened with the same fatal 
 malady. Mr. Ballardie had passed into eternity in a moment. 
 It seemed as if, once begun, the quick succession was to go on 
 unbroken. A panic seized the family, as if one after another 
 they were doomed to fall. Partaking fully of that panic, Mr. 
 Chalmers believed that he was about to die. For days and 
 weeks he gazed upon the death brought thus so near, with eye 
 intent and solemnized. "My confinement," wrote Mr. Chal- 
 mers,* " has fixed on my heart a very strong impression of the 
 insignificance of time an impression which I trust will not 
 abandon me though I again reach the heyday of health and 
 vigour. This should be the first step to another impression still 
 more salutary the magnitude of eternity. Strip human life of 
 its connexion with a higher scene of existence, and it is the 
 illusion of an instant, an unmeaning farce, a series of visions and 
 projects, and convulsive efforts, which terminate in nothing. I 
 have been reading Pascal's Thoughts on Eeligion ; jon know 
 his history a man of the richest endowments, and whose youth 
 was signalized by his profound and original speculations in ma- 
 thematical science, but who could stop short in the brilliant 
 career of discovery, who could resign all the splendours of literary 
 reputation, who could renounce without a sigh all the distinc- 
 tions which are conferred upon genius, and resolve to devote 
 every talent and every hour to the defence and illustration of 
 the Gospel. This, my dear sir, is superior to all Greek and to 
 all Eoman fame." 
 
 * In a letter to his friend the Rv. Mr. Carstairs of Anstruther, dated Fincraigs, Feb- 
 ruary 19, 1809.
 
 NEW PURPOSES. 113 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EFFORT AFTEE A PURE AXD JIEAVEXLY MORALITY. 
 
 CONTEMPLATED from the confines of eternity, his past life 
 looked to Mr. Chalmers like a feverish dream, the fruitless chas- 
 ing of a shadow. Blinded by the fascination of the things seen 
 and temporal, he had neglected the things unseen and eternal. 
 He had left undischarged the highest duties of human life, and 
 he had despised that faith which can alone lend enduring value 
 to its labours, and shed the light of a satisfying hope around its 
 close. How empty had all these bygone years been of God ! 
 True, he had not been wholly forgetful ; many an adoring 
 thought of the Almighty, as the great Creator, Upholder, Gover- 
 nor of the universe, had filled his mind, arid many grateful feel- 
 ings towards his heavenly Benefactor had visited his heart : but 
 that, he now felt, was not enough. The clear unchallenge- 
 able right belonged to God over the full affection of the heart, 
 the unremitting obedience of the life ; but no such affection had 
 been entertained ; and it had been but seldom that a distinct 
 regard to the will of God had given its birth or its direction to 
 any movement of his past history. In name acknowledged, but 
 in their true nature and extent misunderstood, he felt that his 
 Creator's claims over him had been practically disallowed and 
 dishonoured during his whole career. The meagre and super- 
 ficial faith of former years could no longer satisfy him. It could 
 not stand the scrutiny of the sick-room ; it could not bear to be 
 confronted with death ; it gave way under the application of its 
 own chosen test ; for surely, even reason taught that if man have 
 a God to love and serve, and an eternity beyond death to pro- 
 vide for, towards that God a supreme and abiding sense of 
 obligation should be cherished, and to the providing for that 
 eternity the whole efforts of a lifetime should be consecrated. 
 ( 'onvinced of the fatal error upon which the whole scheme of his 
 former life had been constructed, Mr. Chalmers resolved upon a 
 change. He would no longer live here as if here he were to live 
 for ever. Henceforth and habitually he would recognise his im- 
 
 VOL. i. H
 
 1 14 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 mortality ; and remembering that this fleeting pilgrimage was & 
 scene of trial, a place of spiritual probation, he would dedicate 
 himself to the service of God, and live with the high aim and 
 purpose of one who was in training for eternity. It was a kind 
 of life which had already been realized by countless thousands 
 of his fellow-men, and why not by him ? It had been realized 
 by Pascal in making the sublime transition from the highest 
 walks of science to the still higher walk of faith. It had been 
 realized by those early Christians whose lives and testimonies 
 he was now engaged in studying. Surrounded with such a cloud 
 of witnesses, a new ambition, stronger and more absorbing than 
 that which had thirsted so eagerly for literary fame, fired Mr. 
 Chalmers's breast. Every thought of his heart, every word of 
 his lip, every action of his life, he would henceforth strive to 
 regulate under a high presiding sense of his responsibility to 
 God ; his whole life he would turn into a preparation for eternity. 
 With all the ardour of a nature which never could do anything 
 by halves, with all the fervour of an enthusiasm which had at 
 length found an object worthy of its whole energies at their 
 highest pitch of effort, he gave himself to the great work of set- 
 ting himself right with God. The commencement of such an 
 enterprise marks a great and signal epoch in his spiritual history. 
 It sprung out of his profound sense of human mortality ; his 
 vivid realizing of the life that now is in its connexion with the 
 life that is to come ; his recognition of the supremacy which 
 God and the high interests of eternity should wield over the 
 heart and life of man. It did not originate in any change in his 
 speculative belief induced by his studies either of the contents or 
 credentials of the Bible. In the course of that memorable transi- 
 tion-period which elapsed from the beginning of November 1809 
 till the close of December 1810, important modifications in his 
 doctrinal views were undoubtedly effected. His partial discovery 
 of the pervading and defiling element of ungodliness, gave him 
 other notions of human depravity than those he had previously 
 entertained, and prepared him not only to acquiesce in, but to 
 appropriate to himself representations from which a year before 
 he would have turned away with disgust. And with his altered 
 view of human sinfulness, there came also an altered view of the 
 atonement. He was prepared now to go further than he had 
 gone before in recognising the death of Christ as a true and pro- 
 per sacrifice for sin. Still,' however, while looking to that death 
 for the removal of past guilt, he believed that it lay wholly with
 
 TRANSITION PERIOD. 115 
 
 himself after lie bad been forgiven to approve himself to God, to 
 win the Divine favour, to work out the title to the heavenly 
 inheritance. The full and precise effect of Christ's obedience 
 unto death was not as yet discerned. Over that central doctrine 
 of Christianity which tells of the sinner's free justification before 
 God through the merits of His Son, there hung an obscuring 
 mist ; there was a flaw in the motive which prompted the strug- 
 gle in which Mr. Chalmers so devotedly engaged; there was 
 a misconception of the object which it was possible by such a 
 struggle to realize. More than a year of fruitless toil had to be 
 described ere the true ground of a sinner's acceptance with God 
 was reached, and the true principle of all acceptable obedience 
 was implanted in his heart. 
 
 About four months after the beginning of this great struggle, 
 Mr. Chalmers commenced to keep that Journal from which the 
 following extracts are selected. Perhaps it is scarcely necessary 
 to ask the reader of this Journal to remember, that, in the first 
 instance, it was devoted exclusively to the record of felt deficien- 
 cies. This, its primary purpose, it most faithfully performs, 
 exhibiting all the writer's faults, reflected from a mirror bright 
 enough to give back the faintest shades of criminality. But as 
 a full portraiture of the period, it is necessarily incomplete. It 
 gives us most interesting glimpses of Mr. Chalmers in various 
 positions in his manse with his relatives at his desk among 
 bi.s parishioners in the pulpit; but the tunes at which these 
 glimpses are gotten are when some grave fault worthy of formal 
 record has been committed ; and though we cannot say that the 
 deviations chronicled so faithfully are magnified, yet, unless the 
 reader's eye be used to the medium through which he is asked 
 to look, it will require a slight effort on his part to assign the 
 right shade, and to give the right proportions to all the traits of 
 character successively developed before his view. It happens 
 fortunately that, in order to preserve this memorial of his errors, 
 Mr. Chalmers has to give some detail of the occasions on which 
 they were committed ; and so far as these details carry us, the 
 very interior of his Kilmany life is opened up to us. There is 
 much, however, about which this Journal leaves us uninformed. 
 Casting our eye backward from the point at which we are now 
 standing, we should have liked to have seen, a little more dis- 
 tinctly into that chamber to which, while unable or forbidden to 
 speak, Mr. Chalmers was for four months confined. Looking 
 through the dimness, we have been able only to discern a wasted
 
 116 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 invalid, lying with a volume of Lardner or Voltaire or Pascal 
 spread out before him ; rising to pace his room with weak and 
 tottering step ; wearied with the brief effort, reclining again 
 getting one or other of his sisters to read to him, or sending over 
 to Galdry for Mr. Smith to while away an evening hour by parish 
 gossip, or by engaging in a game of cards. But there are hours 
 of stillness and seclusion in that chamber, when the tread of the 
 last enemy is heard as at the door, and when the spirit, stirred 
 up at the sound, revolves and re-revolves its eternal destinies. 
 Into these no light can guide us ; we can but wait and watch 
 for the precious fruits they are afterwards to bear. And, again, 
 we should have liked to have seen him, when, able once more 
 to see and converse with his old friends, the never-failing John 
 Bonthron from the village, or the kind and most welcome Mr. 
 Duncan from Dundee, dropped in to relieve the tedium of the 
 day. There was much to tell such visitors that a change had 
 happened since they had seen him last, for brief but solemn al- 
 lusions, such as they had never heard from him before, dropped 
 occasionally from his lips. And there was much to tell them 
 that he was still unchanged. There were the same cordial 
 greetings, the same kindly questionings about themselves and 
 all their friends, and the same hearty laugh at the racy anecdote 
 or stroke of quiet humour ; for great as was the change effected, 
 neither at the first, nor ever afterwards, did it damp or narrow 
 that genial and most social spirit which carried him into varied 
 intercourse with all classes of his fellow-men, and made the joy 
 of that intercourse to be a very cordial to his heart. But though 
 this Journal does not all for us that we could desire, we are 
 most thankful for what it does. Its service is the greatest where 
 our anxieties for information should be most profound ; for by 
 its light, the instructed and sympathizing reader will be able to 
 trace with distinctness the steps by which, through many anxie- 
 ties and efforts, Mr. Chalmers found his way at last to the peace 
 and holiness of the gospel. 
 
 "March 17, 1810. I have this day completed my thirtieth 
 year ; and Tipon a review of the last fifteen years of my life, I 
 am obliged to acknowledge, that at least two-thirds of that time 
 have been uselessly or idly spent, and that there has all along 
 been a miserable want of system and perseverance in the busi- 
 ness of adding to my intellectual attainments. For by far the 
 greater part of that time, too, there has been a total estrange- 
 ment of my mind from religious principle ; and my whole conduct
 
 JOURNAL. 117 
 
 has been dictated by tbe rambling impulse of the moment, with- 
 out any direction from a sense of duty, or any reference to that 
 eternity which should be the end and the motive of all our ac- 
 tions. My prayer to heaven is, that this record of my errors and 
 deviations may be the happy mean of recalling me from folly 
 and wickedness ; that my temper, and my passions, and my 
 conversation may be brought under the habitual regulation of 
 principle ; that the labours of my mind may be subservient to 
 the interests of the gospel ; that from this moment I may shake 
 off caprice and indolence, and the mischief of ill-regulated pas- 
 sions ; and that, with the blessing of the Divine assistance, I 
 may be enabled to soar above the littleness of time, and give all 
 
 for eternity. 
 
 ******* 
 
 " I find, that before finishing La Grange on Numerical Equa- 
 tions, I would be greatly the better of reading his Theory of 
 Analytic Functions, which I shall try to procure. I mean to 
 suspend my mathematics, and fill up the interval with preparing 
 a review of Charters's Sermons. 
 
 "March 18. Mr. L. preached at Balmerino on my account, 
 and spent the evening with me. Tried to impress some of my 
 peculiar views upon him, and failed of exciting his sympathy to 
 the degree I wished. Must guard against the vanity of display, 
 and let the steadiness of my principles develop itself chiefly in 
 a vigorous and consistent line of conduct. Am much delighted 
 with a sentiment in Dr. Charters's Sermon on Eev. i. 17, 18. 
 It is to this effect : Your lively feeling of the comforts of devo- 
 tion depends on the state of the spirits. The want of this feeling 
 is a misfortune ; but it should not discourage the Christian who 
 persists in his obedience. The truth is, that obedience in this 
 situation, as being more difficult, may be considered as more dis- 
 interested, and pure, and acceptable to God. 
 
 "March 19. I have this day made a rough estimate of my 
 yearly expenditure, and find from the result that my circum- 
 stances impose upon me more arrangement or more economy 
 than I have hitherto observed. It is painful to think how 
 miserably all my plans have been followed up by execution. I 
 must get myself extricated from the oppression of my numerous 
 debts before I feel myself entitled to expatiate in any kind of 
 splendour or luxury. There is a great deal of serious principle 
 involved in this affair ; I hope I shall be able to observe a 
 more serious attention to money matters in future.
 
 118 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " March 20. A day spent without any intercourse with 
 people abroad. But in every situation there is a call for vigi- 
 lance : and what a struggle one must maintain to render himself 
 the agreeable inmate of a family. In this respect I have much 
 to accuse myself of : I have little or no indulgence for the in- 
 firmities of the aged ; and nothing galls me more than to be 
 obliged to repeat the same thing to the deaf or the careless. It 
 is only in the latter case that anger is at all justifiable ; and I 
 should recollect, that if the person be old, the habit of careless- 
 ness may be beyond the possibility of correction. By far the 
 best way is just to accommodate to it : it is the way of duty and 
 of comfort. Let me ever carry about with me that I am in a 
 scene for the trial and the exercise of principle. This would 
 give an object to the rnind : I would feel patient and cheerful 
 acquiescence in the peculiarities of those around me to be my 
 business ; and as in every other business, I would feel pleasure 
 in the successful execution of it. Let it be as much my care to 
 keep down every tendency to irritation when in company, as to 
 keep down every tendency to indolence in solitude. This dis- 
 position, in fact, to get out of humour at what is irksome in 
 others, lies at the bottom of that undutiful conduct which makes 
 my parents unhappy with me at Anster ; and I fear my aunt not 
 altogether satisfied with her visit to myself. I must try to main- 
 tain a vigorous contest with this unfortunate peculiarity of my 
 temper ; and I implore the Divine blessing upon my endeavours. 
 
 " March 21. Had a large company at dinner, consisting of 
 Messrs. T., M., L., S., J., and S. Felt a good deal distressed at 
 the indelicacy with which Mr. T. proposed to Messrs. J. and S. 
 that they should drive coals for me. This was heightened very 
 much by the circumstance of their being at my table at the 
 time. At the same time I must own that I felt a want of single- 
 heartedness in the business ; for though my distress was both 
 real and apparent, yet the very great need I stood in of this 
 piece of civility gave me a leaning to its being done for me. 
 The only two ways to avoid this dilemma of feeling in future 
 are first, to ask nothing in the way of favotir ; or second, when 
 I ask a favour, to do it with simplicity, and at a time when there 
 is no exertion of kindness or hospitality or my part. 
 
 " March 22. No intercourse with people abroad. Nothing 
 like regular and useful employment for rendering one indepen- 
 dent of all foreign amusement, and enabling him to maintain 
 the cheerfulness of his mind through the solitude of whole days.
 
 JOURNAL. 119 
 
 " March 23. Had a call of Miss this forenoon. Her 
 
 behaviour was marked with incivility ; but, while you keep free 
 of all servility of manner on your part, by far the best way is to 
 discover no sense of it, and, above all, to indulge in no angry 
 
 invective upon the subject, Mr. spent the evening with 
 
 me. I felt at times a slight degree of impatience at his mis- 
 apprehensions, and the irrelevancy of his observations. He tells 
 me of the infidelity of the people of Flisk, and, above all, of the 
 dangerous example and conversation of the schoolmaster. This 
 is a business which must not be lost sight of. 
 
 " March 25. I did speak of Miss to my sister Jane. 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better not to have done it. A feel- 
 ing of bitterness is almost unavoidable ; and, besides, there is a 
 dignity in silence, the consciousness of which enables one to 
 maintain a stronger and more decided attitude in your future 
 intercourse than the recollection of any extravagant outcry that 
 
 you may have indulged in. I find that Miss was not so 
 
 culpable. I have always had a strong tendency to communicate 
 my feelings. This may be indulged with a confidential friend ; 
 but there is often a great deal of vanity at the bottom of it. An 
 excellent rule is, to suspect the propriety of every communication 
 where the personal feelings or circumstances of the speaker form 
 part of the subject. 
 
 " March 26. Refused a wandering beggar an alms. It is 
 a good general rule ; and if there be any scruple on the score 
 of conscience, let the money you have thus withheld be given 
 to the unquestionable want that exists in your parish or neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 " Mr. Bonthron drank tea with us. He tells me of the in- 
 cursions that people are making upon my glebe. I must check 
 them with calm and temperate determination. It is a most com- 
 fortable part of moral regimen, when one can at the same time 
 maintain his peace by schooling down every irritable feeling, 
 and his rights by being as active and determined in the asser- 
 tion of them as if under the impulse of resentment. I should 
 entertain Mr. B. with patience and civility. He is tedious, and 
 difficult to converse with ; but he is aged, and though it may 
 be difficult to maintain good humour, I should never forget 
 that it is an exercise of principle. I have another call upon 
 me, on the score of example to Sandy,* who is apt to laugh at 
 his peculiarities. 
 
 * Ilis youngest brother, then living with him,
 
 120 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " March 27. Had Mr. to drink tea. Detected myself 
 
 in a slight tendency to evil-speaking. Got ruffled at Jane for 
 the fretfulness with which she returned my questions about her 
 accounts. I should never laugh in such a way as to irritate the 
 sore. This is often done with the view of transferring the 
 humiliation from yourself to the opposite party. There is a 
 pride and a selfishness in it which are quite unchristian. While 
 I have to record so many deficiencies, let me feel the humility 
 of the gospel, and an entire submission of mind to its spirit and 
 its authority. Heaven grant that my great object through the 
 day may be the honour and felicity of writing a pure register in 
 the evening. 
 
 " April 2. Dined at Mr. Morison's with my father and Mr. 
 Man son. I erred after dinner in telling a story to the prejudice 
 of . Erred in the evening, after I got home, by deliver- 
 ing myself up too openly to my feelings of indignation against 
 
 . I must combine temper with exertion upon this subject 
 
 abstain as much as possible from all irritation, but be steady 
 and determined suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. Heavenly 
 Father, encompassed with error I implore Thy forgiveness for 
 the past, and Thy direction for the future. Keep me in the way 
 everlasting ; and under the feeling of life being but a pilgrimage, 
 may I neither be too much devoted to its pleasures nor too much 
 oppressed by its anxieties. 
 
 " April 3. Had a call from Dr. Eamsay, to whom I spoke 
 with too much contempt of M.'s talents, not that I underrated 
 them, but I should restrain myself from all conversation that 
 borders upon the malicious and the satirical. 
 
 " April 9. I this day gave a most melancholy and alarming 
 proof of the imbecility of my purposes ; I got into a violent 
 passion with Sandy in the morning ; and after I had reasoned 
 myself into a thorough impression of its criminality, repeated 
 the same scene, with high aggravations, in the afternoon. His 
 negligence is undoubted ; and I also find from experience that 
 the most effectual method of curing it for the time, is to correct 
 it with the energy of passion. But let me try the experiment 
 of calm determination, and convince him that his heedlessness 
 is not to be indulged, in a steady and unruffled way. A car- 
 dinal rule is to abstain from all violence in these cases. Gra- 
 cious heaven ! look down with pity on the errors of a poor and 
 benighted wanderer. May principle gain its ascendency over 
 him ; and in the humility of conscious guilt, may he repair to
 
 JOURNAL. 121 
 
 the consolations of the cross, and to the power and practice of 
 its righteousness. 
 
 " April 10. arrived with his acquaintance . He 
 
 lias a great deal of the conceit and impetuosity of a very young 
 man about him. I must be on my guard. Want of temper 
 would be hurtful to the discipline of my own heart ; want of 
 firmness hurtful to him. I must offer a testimony against any 
 thing improper, and maintain all that authority which resolution 
 united with firmness can confer. Father in heaven ! teach me 
 what is right, and enable me to adhere to it. In all my under- 
 takings enable me to sacrifice myself. Give justice to my con- 
 ceptions of propriety, and confidence and effect to my execution 
 of them. May I take heed lest I fall ; and in every triumph of 
 my vigilance, may I give the glory and the gratitude to that 
 mighty Being who reigns supreme in the heart of man, and gives 
 birth to all his purposes. 
 
 "April 12. Am much better to-day. Feel much indigna- 
 tion at the news of the London disturbances ;* but I should keep 
 my patriotic feelings in subordination to the principles of the 
 gospel, abstain from violence of observation, and let the great- 
 ness of eternity moderate the interest which I feel in the affairs 
 of this world. 
 
 " April 13. Sandy has fallen ill to-day, and threatens fever. 
 Now is the time for reflecting on the evils of harshness and 
 severity and intemperate passion ; sooner or later they land in 
 the bitter fruits of repentance. Father of heaven ! teach me 
 the tutorage of myself. May the gentleness of Thy religion 
 shed its influence over me. Teach us the precariousness of all 
 earthly blessings ; and in feeling our entire dependence upon 
 Thee, may we become every day more pious, more spiritual, 
 more heavenly. 
 
 " April 14. Dined at Mr. Morison's [of Naughton]. A ser- 
 vant was insolent, and my old spirit of indignation was up upon 
 the subject. I should not have come over it again in conversa- 
 tion. I erred after dinner in supporting the cause of the clergy 
 in too decided and ostentatious a manner. 
 
 " April 16. Erred egregiously this evening in venting my 
 
 indignation against Mrs. , and before my aunt, too, who 
 
 esteems her. This is a double fault. Oh, how far short both 
 of the elevation and the charity of Christian principles, to be so 
 much disturbed by the little injuries which are offered to our 
 
 * Created by the arrest of Sir Francis Burdett.
 
 122 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 pride. Grant me humiliation and vigilance ; and let it be the 
 ambition of my life to shorten the record of its errors. Sandy 
 continues under fever, and I am all tenderness and anxiety. Let 
 the feeling rise into a principle ; and may I ever, in reference 
 to him, act upon a calm and enlightened view of his substantial 
 interests. 
 
 " April 17. My aunt left me this day for Dundee. Sandy, 
 I fain think, is better to-day, and I here record my gratitude to 
 heaven, and pray that it may be perpetual. 
 
 " April 19. I walked to Kilmany, and viewed the progress 
 of affairs at the manse and glebe. Sandy is greatly better in 
 his general health, but the pain in his side still distresses me. 
 I should not betray too much anxiety to him. 
 
 " April 20. I have at length resolved to suspend my mathe- 
 matics till my health be fairly re-established. 
 
 "April 21. Sandy better to-day, and the doctor represents 
 his complaints as trifling. Let my gratitude be indelible. 
 
 " April 22. I find that principle and reflection afford a feeble 
 support against the visitations of melancholy. It is a physical 
 distemper, and must be counteracted by physical means. It is 
 not the direct application of reason that will school it down, any 
 more that it can cure the discomfort of your physical sensations 
 when placed in an overheated room, for example. But it is our 
 duty to apply whatever experience tells us is a corrective against 
 those unpleasant feelings which agitate, and enfeeble, and render 
 unfit for any useful exertion. It is not my duty to feel cool and 
 comfortable when placed in a confined room ; but it is my duty 
 to rise and open the window if this can restore me to my wonted 
 capacity of exertion. It is perhaps not my duty to summon up 
 a cheerfulness of mind in the hour of unaccountable despondency, 
 for perhaps this is an affair as completely beyond the control of 
 reason as any other of our physical sensations ; but it is my duty 
 to study, and, if possible, to devise expedients for restoring me 
 from this useless and melancholy state. Now, all experience 
 assures me that regular occupation is that expedient ; arid it is 
 my duty, if I find myself unequal to the severity of my usual 
 exercises, to devise slighter subjects of employment which can be 
 resorted to in the time of necessity. This I es.teem to be an im- 
 portant part of moral discipline. Writing a fair copy of an old 
 production which you wish to preserve, setting your books and 
 papers into a state of greater arrangement, writing letters, look- 
 ing over your accounts, and making slight but interesting calcu-
 
 JOURNAL. 123 
 
 lations about your future gains and future expenditure, these, 
 and a number of other subjects of occupation, should occur to be 
 ever ready to offer themselves as correctives to melancholy. Let 
 me cultivate, then, that habit of exertiou which will not shrink 
 from a remedy which I find so effectual. 
 
 " April 23. Walked to Kilmany, and gave directions about 
 my gas tubes. Recurred to my old habit of regular employment. 
 Must guard against every relaxation of moral vigilance. When 
 an hour strikes, let me regularly summon up religion to my 
 thoughts. It may be the means of giving it a more habitual 
 influence. 
 
 " April 26. For these few days past I have enjoyed a calm 
 and pleasurable state of feeling. But let it be remembered, that 
 I have little to plague me. Heaven grant that I may maintain 
 my vigilance that I may not lull myself into a mistaken se- 
 curity that I may lay up principle for the hour of trial. ' Let 
 him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.' 
 
 "Sunday, April 29. Mr. Thomson preached for me. A most 
 brilliant day, and the whole scenery around me full of peaceful- 
 ness, and full of splendour. Had a charming walk in the even- 
 ing, and was much occupied with pleasurable sensations. When 
 I compare this day with the Sunday previous, I learn moderation 
 in my joys, and firmness under the visitations of life. Why elated 
 or depressed beyond measure, when the revolution of a few days 
 brings such changes of feeling and temperament along with it. 
 Heavenly Father, confirm more and more the ascendency of 
 principle over me. 
 
 " April 30. Called at Mountquhannie, and dined. There 
 
 were some strangers, and among the rest , against whose 
 
 manner I had wont to conceive a violent antipathy. Am glad 
 to find that this is subsiding, and that I am less under the in- 
 fluence of that, anxious vanity, which is one great source of 
 awkward and difficult manners. While more indifferent to the 
 opinion of others than before, let me never be less indifferent to 
 their feelings, their comfort, their honour, and every other con- 
 sideration which charity prescribes. 
 
 " May 1 . Dined this day at Mr. Morison's, in company with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Johnson of Rathillet. After dinner felt a tendency 
 to annex ridicule to absent characters. This unchristian prac- 
 tice must be kept down. The temptation is to make yourself 
 agreeable, but let this principle never be indulged at the expense 
 of duty. Aid me, gracious Father, in the hour of trial. May
 
 124 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 this fear be perpetually before me, and may the clear and de- 
 cisive light of religious principle never abandon my soul to the 
 frailties of its weak and corrupted nature. Must be particularly 
 careful as to the quantity of food and wine that I indulge in. 
 Let me be strong and decided on this subject, and adhere inva- 
 riably to the rule of never exceeding three glasses of any intoxi- 
 cating beverage whatever.* 
 
 " May 2. Sandy complains of the recurrence of pain in his 
 breast, and I am all anxiety. Heaven lend an indulgent ear to 
 the prayer of affection ! 
 
 " May 3. Went to Kilmany, where I overhauled the paling, 
 and kept by my purpose of having it done up in a better style, 
 in spite of the tradesmen's opposition. On my return found Mr. 
 Adamson, who dined with me. 
 
 " May 6. I preached this Sunday, after a retirement of thirty- 
 one weeks from all public duty, and have not felt myself the 
 worse of it. I had to make an effort in the way of keeping my- 
 self from being overpowered. Gracious God! reveal to me the 
 importance and extent of my duties, and may the glory and 
 interest of religion be all my exertion and all my joy. 
 
 " William Vertue joined me in the village after sermon, and 
 proceeded with me to Fincraigs, where he dined and drank tea. 
 I was on the point of doing a most improper thing, viz., settle 
 my account with him, but happily checked myself. This might 
 have had the worst effect upon a young mind in point of ex- 
 ample, and have given a general shock to his religious principles. 
 Let me study to maintain the gravity of the ministerial character, 
 and at the same time hold out an endearing view of religion, by 
 a manner cheerful and friendly and affectionate. 
 
 " Mr. S. called and spent the evening. Upon the whole, my 
 feelings this evening are pious and pleasurable. 
 
 ''May 8. Went off in a chaise this morning to Cupar, where 
 I joined the Presbytery, to the proceedings of which I mean to 
 be more attentive in future. Dined with the brethren. I must 
 attempt to school down vain-glory, irritability, and everything 
 that is envious or malignant. I must not be too much elated 
 with attentions, and far less depressed than ever by neglect 
 or displeasure. Let my chief ambition be to please God, to 
 maintain that life that is hid with Him. in Christ, and to 
 
 * " He was cheerful, but very temperate ; and when at a dinner party, while they were 
 drinking, he amused himself, he told me, by contemplating the vivacity and variety of the 
 faces of those who were present." MS. memoranda of this period by Rev. Mr. Smith.
 
 JOURNAL. 125 
 
 secure a quiet, virtuous passage through this the country of my 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 "May 9. Called at the Bank, and suspect Mr. to be 
 
 rather out of humour at the tardiness of my payments. I must 
 make the most strenuous efforts to reduce my accounts in that 
 quarter. I feel acutely the humiliation of debt, and must strug- 
 gle to extricate myself ; at the same time, should not feel so- 
 sorely the displeasure of man. If my grand principle was to 
 please God rather than man, it would be a far better security 
 for doing what was just, and at the same time alleviate all that 
 misery which I am so apt to feel when another betrays oifence 
 or resentment against me. Upon examination, I believe that 
 vanity lies at the bottom of this exquisite susceptibility to the 
 displeasure of an acquaintance. It is only when the displeasure 
 is expressed in such a way as to imply disrespect, that I feel it 
 so exquisitely. In the meantime, let it be my great aim to 
 emancipate myself from the galling dependence of pecuniary 
 embarrassments. 
 
 '' May 10. In my conversations with the clergy, there are 
 two points of jealousy to which I must direct all the vigilance 
 of moral and religious principle : 1. Guard against that vanity 
 which courts a compliment, or is fed by it. 2. Guard against 
 that laxity of sentiment which appears under the disguise of 
 moderation, and if indulged, might land you in a total indiffer- 
 ence to everything serious. 
 
 "May 11. Left Fincraigs in a chaise for St. Andrews. 
 Keached Anster at night. Found Lucy in an alarming way. 
 She goes to Dunkeld with Mr. and Mrs. Carstairs.* 
 
 " Sunday, May 13. Attended church here, and heard Mr. 
 Wilson. I must regard attention and reverence there as a 
 solemn and important part of religious discipline. Ketired to- 
 my room for two hours betwixt tea and supper, and tasted the 
 delights of piety. While I am here, let me read some portion 
 of divinity to my father every Sunday evening. 
 
 " Sandy has made no progress this day ; and poor Lucy's ill- 
 . I fear, will prove fatal. 
 
 "Gracious Father, establish my heart with the duties and 
 the comforts of religion ; and in this interval of suspense and 
 imperfect health, may the wholesome principles of Christianity 
 gain a habitual and confirmed authority over my temper, and 
 feelings, and behaviour. 
 
 * The Rev. Jlr. Carstairs was minister of West Anstruther.
 
 126 
 
 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 15 Settled matters with Mr. Ballardie's legatees, 
 arid have to record, for my encouragement and direction in all 
 future cases, that a steady unyielding determination to carry 
 through what is your right and your justice is far less formidable 
 in the act than in the anticipation. 
 
 " May 16. There is one thing for which I implore the assist- 
 ance of Heaven. I feel movements of impatience with my kind 
 and venerable father. let my manner to him be calculated to 
 soothe him, and render him happy. I am now getting embroiled 
 with business and company. Father in heaven ! be my guide 
 and my guardian ; and in the whole of my conduct may I evince 
 the power and the excellence of Christian principle. ^ I told a 
 story in which the ludicrous was blended with religion. Let 
 this on all occasions be avoided; 
 
 "May 18. Rode to St. Andrews with Lucy. Made a good 
 many calls there, and feel a growing indifference to University 
 preferment. This I regret not. 
 
 " May\% Walked to Pittenweem, and got the sederunt-book 
 on Dr. Reid's affairs. Mean to examine it very particularly, 
 and to maintain an inflexible purpose of doing justice to the 
 concern in spite of all the delicacies and obstructions. 
 
 " May 22. Had a most irksome and fatiguing business with 
 my father in settling the accounts of Mr. Ballardie's trust this 
 forenoon. I thank Heaven for the degree of patience with which 
 I supported it, though at the same time it was far short of that 
 perfection which I never should lose sight of, and which it 
 should be the constant aim of my life to aspire after. May the 
 Father of all mercies enlighten me with His Spirit, and settle in 
 my bosom the perpetual sunshine of faith and a good conscience. 
 
 " May 25. I am alarmed at the small and uncertain progress 
 of religious principle in my mind. God ! may the power of 
 Thy Son's atonement be to me the effectual instrument both of 
 comfort and of righteousness. 
 
 " May 27. Heard Mr. Stewart from Kingsbarns. I still feel 
 a great shortcoming from that reverence and constant attention 
 which should ever accompany me into the house of God. 
 Lord, may this fear be perpetually upon me. Read to my father, 
 and found, in the sense of having accomplished a duty, a restora- 
 tion to cheerfulness and complacency. Spent some hours alone 
 in my apartment, and have to bless God for the holy peaceful- 
 ness which I often feel in the sweetness and solitude of a Sabbath 
 evening.
 
 JOURNAL. 127 
 
 " May 28. Walked with Mr. Duncan of Kilrenny. Miss 
 Anne Taylor and Miss Wilson drank tea with us. Supped iu 
 Mr. Willis's with a small party. In the engagements of the 
 world, let me never lose sight of its vanity ; let eternity be ever 
 present to my feelings, and may I walk through the journey of 
 life with my eye fixed on its end. Called on Mr. Johnston of 
 Eennyhill this afternoon. I drank tea with Mr. Duncan. Had 
 a conversation with my father on religious matters, and must 
 study to impress him with the idea of my soundness and sincerity, 
 of which he is rather sceptical. 
 
 "Sunday, June 3. Preached in the afternoon at Carnbee. 
 
 " June 4. Walked from Carnbee to Anster. Drank the 
 King's health with the town's-people, and on occasion gave way 
 to levity of conversation. Supped in Dr. Goodsir's. In all the 
 bustle of this world's variety, may I never forget communion 
 with God and with my own conscience ; may I carry in my mind 
 a perpetual reference to religion ; may I maintain vigilance, and 
 humility, and self-denial ; may every day witness my rising pro- 
 gress in the virtues and accomplishments of the Gospel ; and 
 may principle maintain its vigour and its ascendency over me. 
 For these purposes, I invoke the aid of that blessed Spirit, to 
 whom I ascribe all power and all righteousness. 
 
 " June 5. Poor in an alarming state this forenoon. 
 
 My father's interference was in the highest degree tender and 
 overpowering. I feel all the heaviness of this dispensation, and 
 implore the kindness of all-good Providence to alleviate and 
 avert it. God, may all this send home to our feelings the 
 vanity of time ; and may the prayers of a broken spirit, for con- 
 solation and acceptance, find grace in Thy sight. Pardon my 
 sins, and guide me by Thy blessed Spirit to comfort and hope, 
 find improvement in righteousness. 
 
 " June 6. a good deal better this day ; yet I feel my- 
 self so enfeebled by the weight of anxiety about her, as to be 
 incapable of going through my regular exercises. The virtue of 
 sufferance a highly necessary accomplishment in this world of 
 affliction. Though I feel a reluctance to effort, yet it is better 
 that I should make the attempt. 
 
 " June 1. Rode in a gig to Crail, Fifeness, and Kiugsbarns. 
 Dined with Mr. Bell, and enjoyed all the luxury of feeling which 
 is inspired by the view of a respectable man at the head of au 
 interesting family. 
 
 " June 8. Let me raise my apprehensions to the grandeur
 
 12 g MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of eternity, and keep aloof from the vortex of earthly passion, 
 and the vanities of an instant. 
 
 " June 9. From the fatigues of yesterday I was unable to go 
 through my usual exercise of composition this forenoon. 
 
 " Sunday, June 10. Heard Mr. Wilson. I this evening fin- 
 ished the poem of Paradise Lost. 
 
 "June 16. In this excursion I learn the unformed and in- 
 efficient state of my religious principles, and in the quietness of 
 retirement I pray for more vigilance, more anxiety about my 
 great and essential interest, more constant and habitual recur- 
 rence of my attention to the grand concerns of eternity, more 
 indifference to the objects of time, and more steady and deter- 
 mined resistance to the danger of its temptations. God, accept 
 my humility, my remorse, my sincere faith in the atonement of 
 the Gospel, and" my anxious supplication that, in my progress 
 through the world, I may evince the power and the excellence 
 of religious principle. 
 
 "Sunday, June 17. This a most important but discouraging 
 day. ... In place of that piety which the Sabbath evening 
 generally brought along with it, I feel a total estrangement of 
 mind from God, and a dread of approaching the offended purity 
 of His nature. 
 
 "Monday, June 18. This morning rose in great disquietude, 
 and with a total incapacity for exertion. . . . Let me feel 
 the littleness of the world's opinion. Let my sole aim be the 
 greatness, and elevation, and purity of gospel principles. Let 
 me possess my spirit in patience, and, by a determined recurrence 
 to useful and regular employment, let me evidence the power and 
 magnanimity of religion. This I write in the middle of the day. 
 I pray God that I may have to report the success of my resolu- 
 tion in the evening. I am in His hands ; I implore the assistance 
 of His Spirit ; and to Him I ascribe all the glory and all the 
 triumph. . . . Must trust to time and repose for the restora- 
 tion of my peace. Am still in great disquietude. Let my 
 motto be 'Faint, yet pursuing.' If, after this day, I soon 
 write a register of a bright complexion, let me never despair 
 afterwards under any visitation of the world's calamity. God, 
 shine on me with Thy grace ; pity and console me. 
 
 "June 19. Still incapable of employment, though the tur- 
 bulence of my feeling begins to subside. Have determined to 
 return to Fincraigs. Find for these few days a grievous relapse 
 from the steadiness of principle. God, give me the spirit of
 
 JOURNAL. 129 
 
 prayer and the spirit of watching. Work in rae to will and to 
 do. Recall me to the delights of piety ; and, both in the con- 
 ception of every good purpose, and in the successful execution of 
 it, may I give Thy blessed Spirit all the praise and all the glory. 
 
 "June 20. I have to thank God that I am getting on in a 
 capacity for exertion, though I have not yet recovered perfect 
 tone and vigour of mind. God, give me the tranquillity of 
 a mind raised above the pettiness of this world's distractions : 
 accept of my sincere gratitude for the measure of comfort which 
 Thou hast given me, and restore me to the vigilance which is so 
 necessary in this state of warfare and temptation. 
 
 "June 21. Coming on in exertion. Upon the whole, have 
 to thank God for restoring me to a firmer nerve of principle, and 
 a better tone of pleasurable feeling than I have experienced for 
 some days past. 
 
 " June 30. Left Anster this morning on horseback. Spent 
 a pious and pleasurable evening at Kinneir, and tasted the com- 
 forts of prayer arid devotion. God, be with me to sustain me 
 in this excursion into a tempting and deceitful world. 
 
 " July 3. Lucy returned from Dunkeld.* 
 
 "July 6. I am sensible that I do not feel the same trembling 
 anxiety on the subject of moral discipline that I did at the out- 
 set of this Journal ; but let me not relax the vigilance of my 
 efforts. what a small share principle has upon our hourly 
 and familiar movements ! 
 
 " July 8. Preached twice to-day. God, may I love Thy 
 Sabbaths, and cultivate the peace and piety of Thy gospel. 
 
 " July 11. The rain disappointed me, and confined me to the 
 house ; but a cheerful and immediate recurrence to useful employ- 
 ment is a noble exercise of independence upon accident. Decision 
 and propriety in the smaller movements of life is a great con- 
 stituent of comfort. I am thankful to God for the coolness and 
 sobriety of my feelings during these few days. Exercise and 
 severe study have a composing effect upon the character ; and 
 let this be the way in which the redundant energy of my tem- 
 perament is expended. 
 
 " July 12. I should maintain a scrupulous and guarded 
 
 * Lucy had gone to Dunkeld for change of air, and on her return remained for two 
 months at Fincraigs. Wishing to persuade his friend, Mr. Carstairs, who had kindly 
 eseorted his sister both to and from Dunkeld, to come and join them at Fincraigs, Mr. 
 Chalmers writes : " Besides, and I plume myself upon this as my most important argu- 
 ment, what think you of the pri-rilege of riding upon an ass ? Lucy mounts it daily, the 
 young colt follows, Jane lead?, and I ca' up the rear, and close the procession." 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 MEMOIRS OF DR. CIIALMERS. 
 
 silence whenever I feel inclined to expatiate to another's pre- 
 judice or another's ridicule. I am not sufficiently attentive in 
 this respect. Oh, the slender influence of religion on the great 
 mass of my conduct ! Let me associate religion with the sound 
 of every hour ; and I pray that this may be a help to its gaming 
 a habitual influence over my practice and sentiments. 
 
 "July 18. Went to Dundee. 
 
 "July 19. Called on James Anderson and Miss Scott this 
 forenoon. Walked with Messrs. Craik, Miller, and Duncan. 
 Was pleased with Dr. H. Scott, and feel how much an earnest 
 devotion of mind to a great object raises you above every petty 
 embarrassment. Religion is such an object, and a sickly anxiety 
 about manner in the presence of strangers I would call a petty 
 embarrassment ; but while indifferent to the gratification of my 
 own vanity, let me never be indifferent to the rights and feelings 
 of others. Crossed, after tea, in the same boat with Dr. M'Dowal 
 and Miss Saunders. Obtruded my botany too much upon them. 
 
 " July 21. Went before breakfast to Kilmany, to consult 
 with Major Horsburgh about certain alterations on the church. 
 Had a delightful reverie from a hill in the neighbourhood. Mr. 
 Bonthron at tea in the evening. 
 
 " July 23. Find Kilmany in one point of view to be a fitter 
 theatre of moral discipline than Anster that I meet with fewer 
 temptations to dereliction of principle, and this is certainly to 
 be preferred in the infancy of your religious course. God, 
 save me from falling. Set me in a sure place, and grant me 
 in Thy good time the joys of the Christian faith and the diligence 
 of the Christian practice. May I not think that the record of 
 my faults is any atonement for them ; but in the strength of the 
 Christian faith, may I be vigilant and determined. 
 
 " July 24. In company with the Misses F., N., and T., had 
 no colloquial firmness, and felt all the awkwardness of my boy- 
 ish days. To escape bashfnlness, I put on a flurried rapidity 
 of manner which is apt to overstep propriety. Should maintain 
 more composure, and not give way so much in mixed company 
 to the idea of the inability to support myself. God, accept 
 my gratitude for Thy mercies, and my earnest prayers for the 
 increase and continuance of Thy gracious Spirit. 
 
 "July 25. Preached twice to a numerous and attentive 
 audience. Read a great deal of divinity in the evening, and 
 thank God for the blessed influence of a holy and peaceful Sab- 
 bath. Gracious Father, give efficacy to my good purposes ; and
 
 JOURNAL. 131 
 
 may the sense of Thy presence and Thy authority never abandon 
 my heart. 
 
 " August 4. Misses F. and H. arrived at Fincraigs. I am 
 happy that I overcame the unmanly delicacy which would have 
 influenced me in other days : I read a sermon to the young 
 ladies, and had prayers in the evening. I must not be deceived 
 by the amount of pure and pleasurable feeling which I have ex- 
 perienced for some days : let me lay in principle for the day of 
 trial, and let my happiness be of that kind which maintains itself 
 when unsupported by external objects. 
 
 "August 19. Preached twice to-day, and must study to 
 make myself impressive and interesting to the bulk of my hearers. 
 At the same time, I should keep up my habits of composition, 
 and if possible gain some to righteousness by an occasional ser- 
 mon addressed to people of literary taste and cultivation. 
 
 "August 21. Have conceived the idea of abandoning severe 
 mathematics, and expending my strength upon theological studies. 
 Eminence in two departments is scarcely attainable. Let me 
 give my main efforts to religion, and fill up my evenings with 
 miscellaneous literature. The sacrifice is painful, but I must 
 not harass and enfeeble my mind with too much anxiety ; and 
 let me leave myself entire for all those discussions which are 
 connected with the defence of Christianity, the exposition of its 
 views, and the maintenance of its interests, as affected by the 
 politics or philosophy of the times. The business of our Courts 
 and the dignity of our Establishment will of course afford a most 
 animating subject for the joint exercise of speculation and activity. 
 my God, prosper me in all my laudable undertakings, and 
 let Thy glory and the good of mankind be the uttermost con- 
 cern of my heart. Political economy touches upon religious 
 establishments, and a successful or original speculation in this 
 department may throw an eclat over my ecclesiastical labours. 
 
 " August 26. Preached as usual ; the people, I thought, were 
 attentive and impressed, particularly in the forenoon. I thank 
 God for being enabled to maintain the regulation of myself, and 
 for the holy Sabbath of peace and improvement which His good- 
 ness has allowed me. 
 
 " August 27. Dined this day with my venerable friend Dr. 
 G. Was shocked at the total loss of recollection and judgment 
 
 evinced by . Went to Flisk in the afternoon, when I drank 
 
 tea with Mr. and the Misses Morton. Was perhaps wrong in 
 speaking of 's failures of memory in such a way as to excite
 
 13 2 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 laughter, and I should shun the vanity of saying odd and ludi- 
 crous things. . 
 
 " Sept. 3. ... A trying subject for the exercise ot patience 
 
 and heroism. Let me feel the importance, nay, even grandeur 
 of the contest with myself. God, may I never forget Thee ; 
 may I never lose sight of eternity, or suffer the anxieties of a 
 jK-tty and perishable world to withdraw me from the duties and 
 the contemplations of religion. 
 
 " Sept. 6. Regaining my tranquillity by degrees. Constant 
 employment. God, I thank Thee for the blessings Thou 
 scatterest along the path of life. Grant me to taste the comforts 
 of religion, and to feel the power of its principles. Have re- 
 sumed, in a moderate degree, my mathematical reading. Have 
 to thank God for supplying me with such abundant resources of 
 study and amusement, the grand materials of independence. 
 Father of heaven ! may Thy good Spirit never abandon me : 
 guard my wandering mind against every relaxation of vigil- 
 .ance. 
 
 " Sept. 8. Walked to Moonzie. At dinner we had Mr. 
 Fleming,* presentee to Flisk, accomplished in some interest- 
 ing branches of science, and promises to be a great acquisition 
 to me, from the congeniality of some of our pursuits. Let me 
 never forget the pre-eminence of religion. 
 
 " Sunday, Sept. 9. Preached twice, as usual. Had a pleasant 
 scientific conversation with Mr. Fleming all evening ; find him 
 a valuable accession in this point of view, but I must keep up 
 with him a tone of seriousness upon religious subjects. Have 
 to thank God for giving me courage to go through the exercise 
 of family worship. 
 
 " Sept. 11. Had a long walk with Mr. Fleming, and am 
 happy to find that he expresses a high sense of duty on the sub- 
 ject of the clerical office. Lucy left Fincraigs this afternoon. 
 
 "Sept. 12. Erred in speaking unfavourably of Mr. S. ; and 
 though zeal for what I conceive the humility of evangelical 
 views entered into my criticism, this only disguises the fault, 
 without justifying it. Read a good deal of mathematics. 
 
 " Sept. 20. Mr. Duncan tells me that Jeffrey, the reviewer, 
 had been speaking highly of my talents, but let me carry a be- 
 coming indifference to the praise of men. 
 
 " Sept. 30. Preached as usual, and found the people parti- 
 
 >w Dr. Flerain' Professor of Natural Science in the New College, Edinburgh for 
 reference to whom, see Pcsthumous Works, vol. ix. pp. 477, 475. 
 
 * No 
 -- ::.
 
 JOURNAL. 133 
 
 cularly attentive in the forenoon. Let me give my strength to 
 the grand business of being useful in my profession. 
 
 " Oct. 2. Had a most agreeable note from Dr. Charters, ac- 
 companied with a present of books, and expressing his entire 
 satisfaction with my review of his sermons. 
 
 " Oct. 6. I had been employing myself in drawing a ludi- 
 crous exposition of the conduct of the St. Andrews Presbytery 
 (in Principal Playfair's case), when in comes Mr. Melvil, who 
 had been dining with a party of clergymen, and reported their 
 general determination to support Play fair. This produced a 
 delirium of joy, which threw me off my guard, and I gave way 
 to the fulness of my emotions. I should not have spoken so 
 
 virulently of ; at the same time, it will be of the utmost 
 
 importance to get him down from his influence in the Church. 
 And I pray God that He would give me grace to employ all my 
 endeavours towards the interest of His religion and the aggran- 
 dizement of His name. 
 
 " Oct. 12. Upon a general review of the last five or six clays, 
 I collect a few points which it may be useful to register. Let 
 me pay a great deal more attention to the details of Church 
 business. Let me respect my elders ; but seeing, as I do, upon 
 what trifling grounds a measure may be suggested and generally 
 concurred in, let me maintain all the obstinacy of principle, and, 
 by a manner removed from everything like impetuosity or con- 
 ceit or contemptuousness, let me try to gain effectual influence 
 over the hearts of my brethren. I have less of the vanity of 
 display, but I have still a strong remainder of the worldly prin- 
 ciple. I behoved to have spoken at the Synod, because a speech 
 was delivered adverse to my cause, and the nod and imploring 
 eye of Dr. Playfair were of themselves sufficient to decide me. 
 But let me never comment upon one's appearance afterwards, 
 let me never fish for compliments, or try in a disguised manner 
 to turn the conversation to the subject. Previous to my ap- 
 pearance I was engrossed with anxiety. This is not heavenly : 
 it is vain even upon worldly principles. It takes so much time 
 from happiness, and it is not justified by the event, which in all 
 cases is greatly less formidable than the anticipation. But the 
 most serious part of it is, that it argues an occupation of the 
 mind with what may be called trifles when compared with the 
 irreat subject of human interest and anxiety the favour of God, 
 the moral discipline of the heart, the faith of the gospel, the 
 promises of immortality. In this interval of time I have not
 
 j-4 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 been regular in my devotions, and not guarded in my conversa- 
 tion God, may I repair with delight to Thy service, and 
 may I employ this short interval of retirement from the world 
 in ffivino- new vigour to my principles and more effect to the 
 lessons of Thy Word. thou Father of mercies, to whom no 
 humble and sincere worshipper addresses himself in vain, uphold 
 me by Thy good Spirit ; make me heavenly-minded. May I 
 walk by faith, and not by sight ; and in the contemplations of 
 eternity may I bury the vanity and the delusions of time. 
 
 " Oct. 26. Crossed to Leith, walked to Edinburgh, and dined 
 in Mr. Cowan's. 
 
 " Oct. 28. Heard sermon in the forenoon at New Greyfriars, 
 and was much pleased with the manly and vigorous orthodoxy 
 of Mr. Andrew Thomson. 
 
 " Oct. 29. Took the Carlisle Diligence for Hawick, and 
 landed at Wilton in the evening, where I repose in the bosom 
 of a pious and cultivated family. 
 
 " Oct. 30. Called at Mr. Arkle's, Thomas Kedie's, and the 
 dear and interesting Ushers of Courthill. 
 
 " Nov. 1. Was spoken to by Dr. Charters about my publica- 
 tion on National Resources not having taken, and of his certainty 
 that my review would not be admitted into the Edinburgh. May 
 I feel the salutary lesson of indifference to the praise of man, 
 and may all my anxiety be directed to the praise of God and the 
 interests of eternity. I disguised some things relative to the 
 fate of my publication; and the only way. in which I could 
 pacify my conscience was by again bringing them forward. May 
 I wrap myself in the armour of principle. 
 
 " Nov. 6. Left Wilton this morning in -the Hawick stage, 
 and got to Yalleyfield (Penicuick) about six in the evening. 
 
 "Nov. 7. Walked with Mrs. J. and her daughter to Sir 
 George Clerk's. The former is Unitarian in her principles ; the 
 latter is under doubt and anxiety. Let me maintain the high 
 tone of principle, if consulted upon this subject. I was consulted, 
 and said, that we perhaps might read the Bible with honesty, 
 and not be convinced of the absolute divinity of our Saviour. I 
 stood up, however, for His high pre-eminence, for unqualified 
 submission to the authority of Scripture, and for the clear, unde- 
 niable revelation of an atoning sacrifice. 
 
 "Nov. 23. Rode from St. Andrews to Cupar, and in the 
 Union coach to Kilmany, when I entered my new manse for the 
 first time. This may be considered as an epoch in the history
 
 JOURNAL. 135 
 
 of my life ; and I pray Heaven that from this epoch I may date 
 new vigour to my principles, greater consistency in my conduct, 
 more effort and more determination in my purposes of obedience. 
 
 "Sunday, Dec. 9. This the day of my sacrament. Mr. 
 Blair and others from Naughton heard me. I felt the restraint 
 of their criticising tendencies ; but let me maintain charity. lu 
 my pulpit exhibitions I am perhaps too anxious to communicate 
 n full impression of what I say, and give an ardour and a rapidity 
 to my utterance which defeats the purpose. I should confide 
 a little more in the sympathy and intelligence of my hearers ; 
 and by a more distinct, and at the same time less fatiguing man- 
 ner of enunciation, I both save myself, and probably come nearer 
 to the object of my anxiety. God, may every approach to 
 Thee leave improvement and growth in grace behind it. 
 
 " Dec. 12. Confined to the house all day by snow and sleet. 
 Spent the whole of it in subduing my confused books into ar- 
 rangement. 
 
 ''Dec. 18. Walked this forenoon from Cupar to Anster. 
 Refused Mr. Pearson's kind offer of a horse ; and am happy to 
 think that the expense of maintaining him was my chief reason. 
 Let me make sacrifices to the grand object of economy, and feel 
 how respectable an object it is, as it will be the means of releas- 
 ing me from embarrassment, and preparing me for the freer 
 exercise of justice and humanity. Reached Anster by four in 
 the afternoon, and found Lucy fast hastening to her grave. 
 
 "Dec. 22. Left Anstrnther this morning in a chaise. Took 
 what, in all probability, will be my final adieu of Lucy on this 
 side of time. She was in great agony, and speechless. My aunt 
 was holding her head ; and the expression of her countenance, 
 which spoke the strong conflict within her, has haunted me all 
 day, and at this moment overpowers me with tenderness.* 
 God, may I feel the importance of religion, and may I cherish 
 and keep alive the salutary impressions of this affecting scene. 
 O God, may I prize Thy religion as the only sure defence against 
 the griefs and the dangers of this earthly pilgrimage. 
 
 " Dec. 23. Went up to Logic, and preached at the kirking 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Melvil. At the first prayer Patrick made his 
 appearance, from which I inferred Lucy's death. 
 
 " Lucy died yesterday morning at five o'clock. It has long been looked for, and the 
 family are bearing it with as much composure as can be expected. My father is almost 
 blind. This decay in his sight came on pretty gradually at first, and has now arrived to such 
 a decree that he can neither write, read, nor recognise any of the family." Letter from Mr. 
 Chalmers, of date December 24, 1810.
 
 j3G MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Dec 24 Went off in a chaise this morning, and reached 
 Anster after four. Have begun to read Wilberforce, and hope 
 to be much the better of it, 
 
 " Dec 25 Spent this day in my room, and with rny rela- 
 tions, f am making head against the soreness of my tempera- 
 ment to what is irksome, though still far and very far from 
 perfection. God, may I feel the authority of Thy law. I 
 am delighted with Wilberforce. 
 
 "Dec. 31. Walked to Pittenweem with Misses Hall and 
 
 Xairne. Returned and dined with Mr. Henderson. ... I 
 pray God that I may contract no taint from my intercourse 
 with the world. As years roll away may I gather wisdom, and 
 learn that it is not on this side of time that my home and my 
 inheritance lie." 
 
 That effort after a pure and heavenly morality which Mr. 
 Chalmers had so long and so unfalteringly sustained, was now 
 on the eve of a change, which was not only to alter, but to re- 
 verse in their relative positions its starting-post and its goal. 
 All the natural elements at work throughout this struggle were 
 elements of signal power. A vigorous and enlightened intelli- 
 gence a conscience strong but very tender most delicately 
 susceptible, yet devoid of all narrowness and weakness a will 
 of almost inflexible determination, become now a yielding ser- 
 vant to the high sense of duty, these all exerting themselves 
 under the profound impression, that God's eye was ever on them 
 as they toiled, and that everlasting interests hung suspended on 
 the issue, present to us such a full and attractive exhibition of 
 mere natural character as might have invited analysis, or fixed 
 for a season the eye of our admiration. But all lesser interest 
 connected with this period loses itself in the light and meaning 
 thrown upon it by its close. As the year expired, and for his 
 evening readings at Anstruther while he remained there after 
 his sister's death, Mr. Chalmers took up Wilberforce's " Practical 
 View" a work specially intended to expose the inadequate 
 conceptions regarding the leading and peculiar doctrines of 
 Christianity which characterized the religious system prevailing 
 among professed Christians. " We are loudly called on," said 
 Mr. Wilberforce, " to examine well our foundations. If any- 
 thing be there unsound and hollow, the superstructure could not 
 be safe though its exterior were lets suspicious. Let the ques- 
 tion, then, be asked, and let the answer be returned with all the
 
 EXTRACT FROM MR. W1LBERFORCE. 137 
 
 consideration and solemnity which a question so important may 
 justly demand, Whether in the grand concern of all the means 
 of a sinner's acceptance with God, there be not reason to appre- 
 hend that nominal Christians too generally entertain very super- 
 ficial and confused, if not highly dangerous notions?" (p. 101.) 
 The summons came from one whose character was otherwise so 
 enthusiastically admired, and it was so wisely and so winningly 
 given, that it would have been listened to even had Mr. Chalmers 
 not been subject at the time to that restless dissatisfaction with 
 the fruits of all his own former efforts, which made him at this 
 conjuncture peculiarly open to instruction. As in this favourable 
 spirit he read this volume, he found his own individual case thus 
 accurately delineated, and thus wisely prescribed for : " There 
 are, it is to be apprehended, not a few who, having thought little 
 or scarcely at all about religion, have become at length, in some 
 degree, impressed with a sense of the infinite importance of re- 
 ligion. A fit of sickness, perhaps, or the loss of some friend or 
 much loved relative, or some other stroke of adverse fortune, 
 damps their spirits, awakens them to a practical conviction of 
 the precariousness of all human things, and turns them to seek 
 for some more stable foundation of happiness than this world can 
 afford. Looking into themselves ever so little, they become 
 sensible that they must have offended God. They resolve ac- 
 cordingly to set about the work of reformation. . . . Again and 
 again they resolve ; again and again they break their resolutions. 
 All their endeavours are foiled, and they become more and more 
 convinced of their own moral weakness and of the strength of 
 their inherent corruption. These men are pursuing the right 
 object, but they mistake the path in which it is to be obtained. 
 The path in which they are now treading is not that which the 
 gospel has provided for conducting them to true holiness, nor will 
 they find in it any solid peace. . . . The Holy Scriptures call 
 upon those who are in the circumstances now stated to lay afresh 
 the whole foundation of their religion* The nature of that holi- 
 ness which the true Christian seeks to possess is no other than 
 the restoration of the image of God to his soul ; and as to the 
 manner of acquiring it, disclaiming with indignation every idea 
 of attaining it by his own strength, he rests altogether on the 
 operation of God's Holy Spirit, which is promised to all who 
 cordially embrace the gospel. He knows therefore that this 
 holiness is not to PRECEDE his reconciliation with God, and be its 
 
 * The italict in all the passages quoted aboTe are Mr. Wilberforcc's.
 
 J38 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 cause, but to follow it and be its effect ; that, in short, it is by 
 faith in Christ only that he is to be justified in the sight of God. 
 (Pp. 271-276, llth edition.) The result of the perusal of the 
 whole volume is best told by Mr. Chalmers himself in two letter?, 
 of a later date, addressed to his brother Alexander.* 
 
 February 14, 1820. 
 
 MY DEAR ALEXANDER, I stated to you that the effect of 
 a very long confinement, about ten years ago, upon myself, was 
 to inspire me with a set of very strenuous resolutions, under 
 which I wrote a Journal, and made many a laborious effort to 
 elevate my practice to the standard of the Divine requirements. 
 During this course, however, I got little satisfaction, and felt no 
 repose. I remember that somewhere about the year 1811, 1 had 
 Wilberforce's View put into my hands, and, as I got on in read- 
 ing it, felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in all my 
 opinions about Christianity. I am now most thoroughly of 
 opinion, and it is an opinion founded on experience, that on the 
 system of Do this and live, no peace, and even no true and 
 worthy obedience, can ever be attained. It is, Believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. When this belief 
 enters the heart, joy and confidence enter along with it. The 
 righteousness which we try to work out for ourselves eludes 
 our impotent grasp, and never can a soul arrive at true or per- 
 manent rest in the pursuit of this object. The righteousness 
 which, by faith, we put on, secures our acceptance with God, 
 and secures our interest in His promises, and gives us a part in 
 those sanctifying influences by which we are enabled to do with 
 jiul from on high what we never can do without it. We look 
 to God in a new light we see Him as a reconciled Father ; that 
 love to Him which terror scares away re-enters the heart, and, 
 with a new principle and a new power, we become new creatures 
 iu Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, June 9, 1825. 
 
 "Mr DEAR ALEXANDER, When I meet with an inquirer 
 (and I have met with many such) who, under the impulse of a 
 new feeling, has set himself in good earnest to the business of his 
 eternity, I have been very much in the habit of recommending 
 Wilberforce. This perhaps is owing to the circumstance, that I 
 myself, now about fifteen years ago, experienced a very great 
 transition of sentiment in consequence of reading his work. The 
 
 * The Sandy of the preceding Journal.
 
 HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT CHANGE. ] 39 
 
 deep views he gives of the depravity of our nature, of our need 
 of an atonement, of the great doctrine of acceptance through that 
 atonement, of the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, these all 
 give a new aspect to a man's religion ; and I am sure that, in 
 as far as they are really and honestly proceeded upon, they will 
 give a new direction to his habits and his history. But there 
 are other books which might be as effectually instrumental in 
 working the desirable change ; and, in defect of them all, there 
 is the Bible, whose doctrines I well remember I then saw in an 
 altogether new light, and could feel a power and a preciousness 
 in passages which I formerly read with heedlessness, and even 
 with disgust. I do think that, without disparagement to human 
 authorship, which in many instances is in the highest degree 
 helpful to the inquirer, still the main road to light and comfort, 
 and a solid establishment in the way that leadeth to life everlast- 
 ing, is the reading of the Scriptures, with prayer." 
 
 The critical condition of the reader lent power to Mr. Wilber- 
 force's volume. A prolonged but abortive effort had prepared 
 Mr. Chalmers to welcome the truth of a gratuitous justification 
 before God through the merits of Christ. For upwards of a 
 year he had striven with all his might to meet the high require- 
 ments of the Divine law ; but that law rose in its demands as he 
 rose in his endeavours, and, continuing our narrative here in his 
 own descriptive words, " it still kept ahead of him with a kind of 
 overmatching superiority to all his efforts. His attempt to scale 
 the heights of perfection, to quell the remonstrances of a challen- 
 ging and not yet appeased commandment, was like the laborious 
 ascent of him who, having so wasted his strength that he can do 
 no more, finds that some precipice still remains to be overcome, 
 some mountain-brow that scorns his enterprise and threatens to 
 overwhelm him." He struggled hard to recover his immeasur- 
 able distance from that high and heavenly morality which the 
 law required, and, after all, he found himself " a helpless de- 
 faulter from the first and greatest of its commandments." He 
 repaired to the atonement to eke out his deficiencies, and as the 
 ground of assurance that God would look upon him with a pro- 
 pitious eye ; but, notwithstanding, an unappeasable disquietude 
 hung heavy upon his heart, and " he walked among the ele- 
 ments of uncertainty and distrust," till at last he came to see 
 that the Saviour had already and completely done for him what, 
 with so much strenuousness, but with so little success, he had
 
 140 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 been striving to do for himself. The felt insecurities of his position 
 he had been in vain endeavouring to strengthen, by mixing up 
 the merits of Christ with the sincerity of his repentance, and the 
 painstaking of his obedience, to form together the ingredients of 
 his hope and security before God. But the conviction was now 
 wrought in him that he had been attempting an impossibility ; 
 that he had been trying to compound elements which would not 
 amalgamate ; that it must be either on his own merits wholly, or 
 on Christ's merits wholly that he must lean ; and that, by intro- 
 ducing to any extent his own righteousness into the ground of 
 his meritorious acceptance with God, " he had been inserting a 
 flaw, he had been importing a falsehood into the very principle 
 of liis justification." In the Journal of the following Chapter T 
 we shall see him stepping from the treacherous ground of Do 
 and live, to place his feet upon the firm foundation of " Believe 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." 
 
 But I cannot close this Chapter without alluding to the com- 
 parison naturally suggested between the spiritual struggle which 
 it records, and that through which, at a like period of their 
 lives, Ignatius Loyola and Martin Luther passed. Loyola's 
 great effort was to tread the world beneath his feet, and to rise 
 into a mystic region of rapt idealism, where high spiritual inter- 
 course with the unseen world might be enjoyed. The main stress 
 of his struggle was to mortify the desires of the flesh and of the 
 mind to spiritualize the carnal nature. Luther's great effort, 
 prompted by an urgent sense of guilt, was to reconcile himself to 
 an offended Deity ; and the main stress of his struggle was to 
 bring into a state of right adjustment his personal and immediate 
 relationship with God. Dr. Chalmers's great effort was to pre- 
 pare for an eternity felt to be at hand, by discharging aright 
 the duties of time ; and the main stress of his struggle was to 
 bring his dispositions and conduct towards all around him up 
 to the requirements of the Divine law. Loyola busied himself 
 mainly with fastening aright the ties, and sustaining the com- 
 munion, which bound him to the spiritual world, as that world 
 was conceived of and believed in. Luther busied himself mainly 
 with his legal standing before the High Judge of all the earth, 
 and was still trying over and over again the question of his ac- 
 ceptance or his condemnation before the bar of eternal justice. 
 Dr. Chalmers busied himself mainly with the state of his affec- 
 tions and behaviour towards his fellow-men, with all of whom 
 he tried to be on terms of perfect and cordial amity ere he passed
 
 LOYOLA, LUTHER, AND DR. CHALMERS. 141 
 
 into eternity. The devotional element predominated with the 
 first, the legal with the second, the moral and social with the 
 third. Out of his severe and prolonged struggle, Loyola found 
 his exit by casting himself into the bosom of his Church, and 
 giving himself up to the devotions which she prescribed, and the 
 services which she demanded. Out of their struggle Luther and 
 Dr. Chalmers alike found their exit by casting themselves into 
 the bosom of their Saviour, and giving themselves up to all the 
 duties of life, spiritual and social, as those who had been freely 
 and fully reconciled unto God through Jesus Christ their Lord.
 
 14 o 3IEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTEB IX. 
 
 OAS TUBES GARDEN BEDS HOSPITALITY OF THE MANSE SUPREMACY OF THE 
 IMAGINATION OVER THE SENSES PREPARATIONS FOR THE ARTICLE CHRJS- 
 TIAXITY-CORRESPONDEN-CE WITH DR. ANDREW THOMSON CONTRIBUTIONS 
 TO THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTOR JOURNAL OF 1811. 
 
 IT was fortunate that during the summers of 1810 and 1811, 
 when so much lost bodily vigour was to be regained, and the 
 hurtful effects of so much mental agitation was to be counter- 
 acted, that there were those healthful walks from Fincraigs to 
 Kilmany to view the "progress of affairs," and afterwards, when 
 the manse was occupied, those forenoons devoted to planting 
 trees, and measuring grass-plots, and laying down garden walks. 
 Over one of the preceding entries in the Journal the reader has 
 perhaps paused a moment "Walked to Kilmany, and gave 
 directions about my gas tubes." The conviction which he felt 
 when he heard the London lecturer,* he had now carried so far 
 as to believe that in a very few years all private dwellings would 
 be lighted by gas, and by now laying these tubes through the 
 manse, he would have it all ready for the new epoch when it 
 arrived. Should the anticipated epoch ever come, these tubes 
 may be there to testify to the prophetic 'sagacity of Mr. Chal- 
 mers ; and whether it come or not, they not only tell us of his 
 own strong scientific faith, but of the persuasive energy which he 
 had exerted aver his heritors, affording, as he himself might have 
 described it, visible and emphatic demonstration how thoroughly 
 he had inspired them with confidence in his chemistry. It was 
 not only on the interior of the manse that the original genius of 
 its first occupant displayed itself. In laying out the garden he 
 found room for his mathematics as well as his botany ; for while 
 the plants and flowers were all arranged in scientific order, every 
 plot and bed was of a regularly constructed geometric figure 
 the conic sections being all accurately laid down so that on 
 either side of the circle or ellipse, a parabolic or hyperbolic -bed 
 flourished conspicuous with its allotted genera and species. 
 The hospitality of Kilmany manse was unbounded. It is 
 
 * See p. 83.
 
 HOSPITALITIES OF THE MANSE. 143 
 
 always a matter worthy of special record in the Journal when 
 Mr. Chalmers spends a whole day alone. The morning's read- 
 ing and forenoon's severe composition over, if he found not 
 society within doors, he either went abroad to seek it, or im- 
 ported it from without. His favourite resort for relaxation was 
 Dundee, where many agreeable families were always ready to 
 welcome him, and above all, where he had his old college friend, 
 Mr. Duncan,* around whose gentle benevolence his own livelier 
 and more imaginative affection loved to disport itself. Nor 
 were ingenious devices wanting, pleasantly diversifying their 
 intercourse. It was about this time that coffee began to be 
 generally introduced. Instead of adopting the new beverage, 
 Mr. Chalmers invented one of his own an infusion of burnt rye 
 which he not only used constantly himself, but urged upon all 
 his guests, strenuously affirming its equality with the best Mocha 
 coffee. Upon one occasion, at Kilmany, Mr. Duncan, who had 
 no great relish for his friend's beverage, so stoutly denied this 
 position, that Mr. Chalmers declared that the next time he came 
 to Dundee, he would subject the matter, in Mr. Duncan's own 
 presence, to an experimentum cruets, and triumphantly vindicate 
 his own invention. The time for the experiment soon arrived. 
 Mr. Chalmers appeared in Dundee, bringing with him a quantity 
 of rye-coffee, as he called it, of his best manufacture. The trial 
 between it and its rival was made in Dr. Ramsay's, to whose 
 sister the performance of the important experiment had been 
 committed. It was agreed that a select company of connoisseurs 
 .should assemble ; that Miss Ramsay should furnish each, first 
 with a cup of her best Mocha coffee, and then with a cup of 
 the "Genuine Kilmany;" that each guest should announce his 
 opinion, and that by the verdict of the majority the question of 
 their respective merit should be decided. In the meantime, 
 however, before the trial commenced, Miss Ramsay received 
 certain private instructions, upon which she, acted. In due time, 
 the company assembled. The coffee being handed round, met 
 with general approbation. The second cup was next presented : 
 by one after another an adverse verdict was pronounced, till 
 it came at last to Mr. Duncan, who emphatically exclaimed, 
 " Much inferior very much inferior ! " Mr. Chalmers burst into 
 laughter as he replied, " It's your own Mocha coffee ; the second 
 cup is just the same article as the first." 
 
 The supremacy of the imagination over the senses which he 
 
 * Now Professor of Mathematics in St. Andrew*.
 
 144 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 had thus tested upon Mr. Duncan and the coffee-connoisseurs of 
 Dundee. Mr. Chalmers used also to illustrate by an incident 
 which occurred in the house of his granduncle, Dr. Chalmers, 
 the minister of Kilconquhar. A party of ministers had met at 
 the manse, where a number of them were to remain all night, 
 and among the rest, Mr. Gray, against whom some slight pique, 
 on account of a real or assumed literary superiority, was enter- 
 tained. The question as to the relative power of the imagina- 
 tion and the senses was raised, and the argument rose high, Mr. 
 Gray alone taking the side of the senses, and all the others the 
 side of the imagination. The combatants parted for the night ; 
 Mr. Gray, by retiring first, giving his adversaries the opportunity 
 of concocting the trick by which they made his own act contra- 
 dict his argument. It was the custom at that time to wear wigs, 
 which were given to a servant at night to be powdered for the 
 next day. When Mr. Gray, with his freshly powdered wig, 
 came down next morning to the breakfast-room, he found it un- 
 occupied. It was not long till one of his brethren joined him, 
 who, on approaching, gave very distinct, but not very agreeable 
 indications that a most offensive odour was issuing from the wig. 
 Trying his own senses, Mr. Gray could detect nothing amiss, 
 and laughed at his friend for his folly. Now, however, a 
 second friend came in, who declared, immediately on entering, 
 that there was a very strong smell of brimstone in the room, 
 and traced it at once and unhesitatingly to the wig. The laugh 
 subsided, but still, after a second trial, Mr. Gray could find 
 nothing amiss. But a third friend came in, and a fourth, and 
 a fifth, all fixing the alleged offence upon the wig, till, his own 
 senses overcome at last, and the victory given to his adversaries, 
 Mr. Gray flung the harmless wig indignantly away, exclaiming, 
 " Why, the fellow has put brimstone on the wig !" 
 
 Throughout that illness which reached its climax about the 
 close of the year 1809, Mr. Chalmers continued his preparations 
 for the article "Christianity" reading when he could not write 
 listening to another when he could not himself read. Mam- 
 volumes of Voltaire's works had been perused, and some pro- 
 gress made in Lardner's " Credibility," before the labour of 
 composition could be resumed. That labour was vigorously 
 prosecuted during the summer of 1810, his broken and feeble 
 health sometimes disabling him from writing, but never inter- 
 fering with that high state of mental excitement to which he 
 bead been raised. " I have seen him," says Mr. Smith, speak-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. ANDREW THOMSON. 145 
 
 ing of those summer months, "almost in an ecstasy when he was 
 speaking of the grandeur and excellence of Christianity, and of 
 the clearness and force of the evidence by which it is supported. 
 His mind was almost overwhelmed by it. One day he called 
 on me and said ' Tell me all that ever you heard against 
 Christianity from its enemies : I am more than able to refute 
 them all. The evidences of our religion are overwhelming.' It 
 is utterly impossible for me to convey in language an idea of the 
 manner in which he uttered these and similar expressions. His 
 whole soul was completely absorbed, and he gave vent to his 
 feelings in language peculiarly his own." It was amid such 
 exciting engagement of his thoughts with Christianity in its 
 wider and more general aspects, that the discovery broke upon 
 him that the gospel presents a distinct and peculiar scheme of 
 mercy providing for the sinner's immediate and complete re- 
 conciliation with God. That discovery bore many fruits ; and 
 this among the rest, that his mathematical readings, which, after 
 his recovery, had been partially resumed, were now finally 
 abandoned. The same principle, however, which induced the 
 relinquishment of all his scientific pursuits, secured his hearty 
 acquiescence in a proposal conveyed to him from Edinburgh. 
 In the spring of 1810, Mr. Andrew Thomson was removed from 
 the East Church of Perth, and ordained minister of New Grey- 
 friars, Edinburgh. A few months after his settlement in the 
 metropolis, he commenced the publication of the " Christian 
 Instructor." The first number of this periodical appeared in 
 August 1810; and in the January of the following year, its 
 editor wrote to Mr. Chalmers requesting him to become a con- 
 tributor. " The Review department," he said, " is that in which 
 I wish you to write. I hope you will have no objections to 
 comply with my request. In this case, let me know what 
 species of works you would like to criticise. There is one on 
 Toleration, lately published in London, which I would wish you 
 to undertake. The subject is very important, and affords great 
 scope for good writing. Do not decline it. Set your mind to 
 it, and we shall have a good article." To this request Mr. Chal- 
 mers at once acceded. He had lying by him the criticism on 
 Dr. Charters's Sermons, prepared some months previously, and 
 originally intended for the Edinburgh Review ; this he for- 
 warded immediately to Mr. Thomson. Its author must have 
 had some slight misgivings as to the reception his critique 
 might meet with, otherwise, in announcing its transmission, he 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 J46 MEMOIUS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 would not have thought it necessary to make the following 
 suggestions : M KILMANT j^^ January 18> 1811 . 
 
 As I wish to be upon the most liberal understanding with 
 you I think it right to say, that I count it the undoubted privi- 
 lege of an editor to express his dissent from any opinion advanced 
 in the contributions which are sent him : only, it occurs to me, 
 that the most palatable method of doing this would be, to insert 
 the contribution entire, and that you would save your responsi- 
 bility with the public, by introducing your exception in the form 
 of a note or appendix at the end of the article. My sole inten- 
 tion in this is, that each of us may feel unshackled, and be per- 
 fectly secure of understanding one another, in spite of any differ- 
 ence of sentiment that you may either feel or think yourself 
 bound in conscience to express. I do not anticipate any differ- 
 ence in things which are essential; for be assured that the manly 
 and vigorous orthodoxy which you patronize is quite according 
 to 'my own heart; and I think a Magazine like yours peculiarly 
 called for, as a barrier against the flippancy of the prevailing 
 taste in theology, which seems to have abandoned altogether 
 the substance of Christianity, and the authority of its peculiar 
 doctrines." 
 
 To this communication Mr. Thomson replied as follows : 
 
 "EDINBURGH, February 18, 1811. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, I have received your criticism on Dr. Charters's 
 Sermons. It is well written, and in many points extremely just 
 and striking. But I fear much we cannot insert it in the In- 
 structor, as a review of our own, without very material altera- 
 tions. These I need not point out at present, as in your letter 
 you object to any such alterations being made. The method by 
 which you propose to reconcile, or at least to express, our differ- 
 ence of opinion, will not do. Our review department is under- 
 stood to express our own sentiments ; and to admit your article 
 as it stands, subjoining notes in contradiction to parts of it, would 
 be actually to tell our readers that we have two different creeds. 
 If you wish it to be published in our Magazine, I shall be happy 
 to put it among the religious communications, and in that case 
 I can make what remarks appear to be proper. From what Mr. 
 Shaw wrote me, I find that it has been shown to Dr. Charters 
 himself, which puts me rather into an awkward predicament. 
 But I cannot help it.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. ANDREW THOMSON. 147 
 
 " I herewith send you the book on Toleration, which I wish 
 you to review. The subject is very important, and I should sup- 
 pose it is one on which we shall not differ much. I am for tolera- 
 tion being enjoyed by all denominations of Christians, including 
 Roman Catholics. But Catholic Emancipation is such a ticklish 
 question, that I should like you, when alluding to that point, to 
 deal in generalities. We must beware of meddling with the 
 party-politics of the day. Be brilliant. Go the length of twelve 
 pages of letterpress, and be ready on or before the 2d day of 
 April if possible. I am, dear Sir, yours truly, 
 
 ANDREW THOMSON." 
 
 The receipt of this letter is marked by the following entry in 
 Mr. Chalmers's Journal : " Feb. 23. I had a parcel from Edin- 
 burgh, with letters. Mr. Andrew Thomson cannot insert my 
 review of Charters without material alterations. This is a proof 
 that he conceives it to be incorrect in point of doctrine ; and, as 
 I feel myself upon the eve of some decisive transformation in 
 point of religious sentiment, I contemplate with interest every- 
 thing that bears upon a subject so important." The reply to 
 Mr. Thomson was not despatched till a few days had been given 
 to consideration. 
 
 MANSE, March 5, 1811. 
 " DEAR SIR, Let us, if agreeable to you, leave the future 
 disposal of my critique on Dr. Charters's Sermons upon this 
 footing. I have no particular wish upon the subject, and let it 
 therefore go among the communications if you wish it. After it 
 has got inserted it becomes fair game, and an author has no title 
 to complain of the observations which he provokes by the pub- 
 lic appearance which he makes of himself, as by the very act of 
 committing his production to print, he surrenders it to the fair 
 criticism of all his readers. At the same time, I should like to 
 get a sight of it again before anything more is done with it ; and 
 you will oblige me much by marking with a pencil all the obnox- 
 ious passages. If you could at the same time favour me with your 
 corrections by letter, I would esteem it an additional kindness ; 
 and to save you the delicacy of saying ' I won't admit this pro- 
 duction of yours into my magazine,' if you keep a dead silence 
 upon that part of the subject, I shall infer that you wish to decline 
 it altogether. I like the perfect freedom with which you have 
 refused it a place in your review department, and I put it down
 
 J48 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 to the firmness and integrity of your principles. At all events, 
 I will thank you to leave it with Messrs. Oliphant and Balfour, 
 to the care of my brother, who will get it transmitted to me. 
 
 " I shall attend to your wishes on the subject of a review of 
 the Hints on Toleration.' I am, dear Sir, yours truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The review of "Hints on Toleration" appeared in the May 
 number of the " Christian Instructor." Less brilliant than Mr. 
 Thomson may have expected or desired, it is a close and conse- 
 cutive argument, devoted to the establishment of two leading 
 propositions the competency of Government, in full consistency 
 with those principles on which all our civil institutions are 
 founded, to make religion the subject of legislative provision ; 
 and the entire -compatibility of the most ample toleration with 
 the existence and the safety of our religious establishments. The 
 question of Catholic Emancipation is dealt with as the editor 
 had desired little ground however being left for doubting that 
 the writer's judgment was in favour of the removal of all civil 
 disabilities from Roman Catholics.* 
 
 The review of Dr. Charters's Sermons appeared in the July 
 number of the "Christian Instructor," the editor satisfying 
 himself with appending an explanatory note of his own to Mr. 
 Chalmers's critique of the volume.f Many years afterwards, 
 
 The strongest point in this paper is its exposure of the delusion, that to grant perfect 
 toleration to Dissenters would be to endanger the religious establishments of the country. 
 " While these establishments," Mr. Chalmers says, " may repose in perfect security upon 
 the independent suffrages of that vast majority which the members of the Church, if they 
 hare worth and piety and veneration for the orthodoxy of their own standards, will be always 
 rore to keep within its pale, all these advantages on the side of the national religion are 
 mot wantonly thrown away when its permanency is made to rest upon a monopoly of poli- 
 tical influence, upon the exclusion of Dissenters from Parliament in a word, upon a system 
 of intolerance which can neither be defended nor endured. . . . Let Dissenters of every 
 kind obtain the fullest admission into all the civil and political offices of the country, but let 
 us not give up an establishment We hail their free and equal participation with us in the 
 politics of the country : but we can never consent that the people of this country shall be 
 thrown loose like the people of America, and that ten thousand churches should be pulled 
 down, and their place left to be supplied by the precarious exertions of separate and in- 
 dividual societies." The " Hints on Toleration" was the work of a dissenter, originated by 
 Lord Sidmouth's project of meddling with the Toleration Act, and imposing additional 
 restrictions upon Dissenters by exacting higher qualifications from their religious teachers, 
 and by interdicting an itinerant ministry. Before Mr. Chalmers's notice of this volume 
 appeared, it had already formed the subject of an article in the Edinburgh Review (see 
 voL xvii. p. 393). 
 
 " NOTIL We certainly could have wished that the peculiar doctrines of the gospel had 
 i>een more explicitly noticed, that we had not merely been able to recognise their influence 
 
 iroughout the practical discussions of the volume, but that they had been more openly 
 
 announced, and more emphatically stated. In our author's pages, indeed, we observe such 
 
 a spirit pervading them as nothing could have infused but a strong and decided impression 
 
 Christian truth. But to give a prominency to that truth, to bring it particularly and 
 
 broadly and frequently into view is attended with great advantages, independently of its
 
 JOURNAL. 149 
 
 when Dr. Chalmers transferred the critique from the pages of 
 the " Instructor" into the series of his works, the original note 
 of Dr. Thomson was retained and appropriated. The following 
 entry in his Journal marks the impression made at the time of 
 its first appearance : " July 22. My review of Charters's Ser- 
 mons has appeared in the ' Christian Instructor,' with such a 
 note from the editor as it certainly required," 
 
 But let us take up now the Journal of 1811, which marks Mr. 
 Chalmers's advancing progress towards a secure establishment 
 in the faith of the gospel, and which records the first efforts of 
 a ministry which now had a new motive and a new end. 
 
 "Jan. 1, 1811. Made a round of new-year calls. Let me 
 lay myself out for the happiness of those around me, and make 
 every sacrifice, whether of vanity or indolence, to the perfect 
 fulfilment of Christian love. Let me give a regular time every 
 night to self-examination. God, make me to live to Thy 
 glory. May I be clothed with the armour of religion ; may I 
 grow more and more in the right principles and practice of Thy 
 Son's gospel j and as years roll over me, may I withdraw my 
 affections from time, and feel that in moving through the world 
 I am moving towards eternity. 
 
 " Sunday*, Jan. 6. Began my course of lectures on St. Mat- 
 thew. A great party from Naughton there, and Miss St. Clair 
 expressed her high satisfaction with my sermon. Let me resist 
 vanity, repose all my complacency on the approbation of God, 
 and convert the agreeable feelings which spring from the favour- 
 able testimony of man into a topic of grateful humility to that 
 Being on whom all is suspended. Spent an evening of entire 
 solitude, and have. to thank God for the peacefulness of His 
 Sabbaths. 
 
 " Jan. 7. A review of this day sends home to my conviction 
 the futility of resting a man's hope of salvation upon mere 
 obedience ; that there is no confidence but in Christ ; that the 
 best security, in fact, for the performance of our duties is that 
 faith which worketh by love, and which, under the blessing of 
 God, will carry us to a height of moral excellence that a mere 
 principle of duty, checked and disappointed as it must often be 
 
 immediate effect on the instructions in which it is exhibited. And though vre entirely dis- 
 approve of that ostentatious way in which some bring forward the characteristic truths of 
 Christianity, we are persuaded that the other extreme of keeping them very much out of 
 sight, is not justifiable on any good ground." See Christian Instructor, vol. iii. p. 52 ; and 
 Dr. Chalmers's Works, rot xii. p. 320. For Dr. Chalmers' ; final estimate of Dr. Charters'i 
 Sermons, see Posthumous Works, vol. ii. p. 383.
 
 150 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 in its efforts after an unattainable perfection, could nevr have 
 
 " Jan 17 Mr. Smith, preacher, and Mr. Edie of Gibliston, 
 came in' upon me at dinner. The latter left me soon, but the 
 former, with Mr. Edie of Kilmany, drank tea, supped, and spent 
 the evening. In the expectation of the first Mr. Edie remain- 
 ing with me all night, I was unmanly enough to look forward 
 with cowardice to family worship. It is very true that the 
 circumstance of having no family makes it appear in rather an 
 awkward light among young men. I believe that upon the 
 principle of not having my good evil spoken of, I may dispense 
 with it on some occasions. On this subject I am not decided. 
 
 " Jan. 20. Preached at Leuchars. Must entermore earnestly 
 and particularly into the peculiar doctrines ; and pray God that 
 He would add to my zeal and usefulness. 
 
 " God, may I grow in grace, and feel more and more the 
 sovereign efficacy of a Christian faith in giving consolation to 
 my heart and purity to my obedience. 
 
 " Jan. 21. My friends from Anster arrived in a chaise to 
 dinner. Thank God for the peaceful and pleasurable state of 
 feeling which I enjoy. May I not be deceived by appearances ; 
 may I take heed lest I fall ; and, God, may the peace and 
 the love and the joy within me be the fruits of Thy Spirit, and 
 always abide with me, 
 
 " Jan. 23. Found Miss M. at my house. She dined with us, 
 and I was sorry to see that she had not the cheerfulness I should 
 have liked to have seen her in. There is a high call on me to 
 give myself up to another's comfort, and I should have struggled 
 to be frank with her in spite of the untuned state of my feelings. 
 How much did the Saviour endure to give that very comfort 
 which she stands in need of 1 In all these cases let me maintain 
 my patience ; let me repose on the greatness of eternity ; and 
 let the grandeur of religious objects absorb the petty vexations 
 of time. 
 
 " Jan. 28. Miss Mary Wood, from Elie, called and spent the 
 day with us. We had much conversation about religion ; and, 
 God, may I grow every day in faith and in charity. Was 
 much distressed by the cutting insinuations of the Edinburgh 
 Review ; and may I henceforth maintain a most strenuous de- 
 votion to ecclesiastical literature, that I may be enabled to repel 
 them. Their observations on prophecy are highly dangerous.* 
 
 * See Edinburgh Review, vol. vii. p. 95.
 
 JOURNAL. 151 
 
 " Jan. 30. I am certainly obliged to Miss Wood. Through 
 her I have enlarged my observations on religious sentiments. I 
 have imbibed a higher respect for the peculiar doctrines. I feel 
 more cordially than ever that my sufficiency is of Christ, and 
 that faith in Him is the most comprehensive principle of practice. 
 
 " Feb. 4. J. M.'s daughter came to my kitchen in my ab- 
 sence, and conducted herself in a rude and impudent style on 
 the score of my inattention to her parents. This is unjust and 
 ungrateful. Let me show my sense of it, but let my benevolence 
 in relieving them be as active as ever. 
 
 "Sunday, Feb. 10. Preached all day. Hear from Mr. Thom- 
 son that Mrs. Bethune is delighted with my orthodoxy. This 
 is so far satisfactory ; but let me rise above the temptation of 
 human praise, and give the whole counsel of God without par- 
 tiality. J. still an invalid ; and I must bring my mind up to all 
 the possibilities. May resignation to the Divine will and the 
 grandeur of eternity never fail to give strength under all the 
 visitations of life. 
 
 "Feb. 14. Rode over to Dairsie, and preached a fast-sermon 
 there. Was much pleased with Dr. Macculloch's edifying and 
 evangelical prayer. The people were most attentive ; and I 
 was gratified with the approbation of Dr. and Mrs. Macculloch, 
 and Mrs. Coutts a kind of testimony that two years ago I 
 would have despised. 
 
 " Feb. 22. Have begun to read Scott's ' Force of Truth ;' 
 and I pray God to beget in me a lively acquiescence in the truth 
 as it is in Jesus. 
 
 " Sunday, Feb. 24. Preached all day. I am not sufficiently 
 intelligible to the lower orders, and must study to be perspicuous 
 and impressive in my addresses to them. Mr. Justice, from 
 Dundee, was one of my hearers, and dined with me. Teach me 
 the act of extracting piety from everything around me. Accept, 
 God, my gratitude for the peacefulness of thy Sabbaths. Give 
 me light and comfort in prayer. Strengthen and settle me in 
 the principles of the knowledge of Christ ; and, well-grounded 
 in the faith, may I feel that instead of making void the law, it 
 establishes it ; and may I go on with comfort and security to 
 the diligent observance of all Thy commandments. He that 
 observes the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, 
 the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 "Feb. 26. The verse, Acts xxvi. 18, has struck me this 
 night as a compendious expression of Christianity the object of
 
 152 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 which is to give forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them 
 which are sanctified, by faith that is in Jesus. 
 
 " March 4. Spent the day in experimenting upon the cutting 
 of my hedge for fuel. This was trifling with a witness, and ex- 
 emplifies one part of my character the entire devotion of my 
 mind to any novelty which interests it, so as to suspend all 
 regular occupation in the pursuit of it. 
 
 " March 6. I have had a complete cessation of all regular 
 study these three days hack, and what has been the mighty 
 avocation ? preparing and experimenting upon wood as a fuel. 
 I have not succeeded in the object ; and, at all events, how pre- 
 posterous to put the main and important business of my life at 
 the mercy of every idle and amusing novelty ! Let me adopt 
 the resolution not to go out of doors till one every day, whatever 
 temptation may offer from the work and improvements which 
 are carrying on around me. Began to plant trees on the north 
 side of my intended garden. This abandonment of idleness on 
 my part is an example, not of the groVth or victory of principle, 
 but is the effect of being tired, and disappointed, and ashamed 
 of my trifling speculation. 
 
 " March 7. Have recurred to systematic employment, and 
 find great comfort in it. Planted trees, and measured out my 
 grass-plot. 
 
 "Sunday, March 10. I have too hurried a manner in the 
 pulpit ; and it would be of importance for me to be more confi- 
 dent of the effect, and not to make too great an effort from my 
 anxiety to produce a full impression. Have to thank God for 
 the peacefulness of His Sabbaths ; and pray that I may prize 
 more and more the excellency of the knowledge of God in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 " March 13. Now that I have got well, let me devote a 
 great part of my time to the business of my parish ; and may it 
 be the main anxiety of my life, Lord, to promote Thy glory, 
 and to testify the gratitude of my heart for the merciful scheme 
 of reconciliation made known and offered to us in the gospel. 
 May I every day feel a growing interest in the covenant of 
 grace ; and let me evince in my own conduct that the doctrine 
 of faith is a doctrine according to godliness. 
 
 "March 15. Called on sick people in the village. I am a 
 good deal weaned from the ardour for scientific pursuits : and 
 t^rne direct my undivided attention to theology. 
 
 "March 16. I have brought one year of the Journal to its
 
 JOURNAL. 153 
 
 close ; and though decidedly more religious in my taste, in my 
 temper, in my views, and in my pursuits, I have still much to 
 aspire after. My hourly movements are still too little under its 
 influence ; and while I give God all the glory for the progress 
 which has been made, let me not think that I have already 
 attained or am already perfect j but forgetting the things which 
 are past, let me look to the things which are before, and press 
 forward to the prize of my high calling in Christ Jesus. 
 
 " There is a defect which I must supply in my Journal. It 
 has hitherto exhibited no record of my studies. I shall still omit 
 my common weekly preparations, but let me mark every day 
 when I begin or finish the perusal of any book ; and I find that 
 a second reading should be bestowed upon every important book 
 before I can be said to finish it. Let me also record the com- 
 mencement and end of every severe composition. 
 
 " The following is a rapid sketch of my last year's labours : 
 
 " Eead a good deal of mathematics, but have finally aban- 
 doned that study, and purpose henceforth an exclusive attention 
 to divinity. 
 
 " Head four volumes of Lardner ; Newton on the Prophecies ; 
 Campbell on the Gospels ; Charters's Sermons ; Young's Night 
 Thoughts ; Paradise Lost ; Hints on- Toleration, by Philagath- 
 arches ; Wilberforce's View of Christianity ; Maltby's Illustra- 
 tions of the Christian Evidence ; Scott's Lady of the Lake ; 
 Lardner on the Canons of the Old and New Testament ; and 
 the Edinburgh Eeview and Christian Instructor as they came 
 out. 
 
 " Wrote a review of Charters's Sermons ; great part of a large 
 performance on the Evidences of Christianity ; a sermon on 
 Psalm xi. 1 ; another on Psalm viii. 1 ; another on Romans iii. 
 10 ; and a lecture on Psalm cxxxvii. 1-6 ; a great many in short- 
 hand for the ordinary supply of my parish, of which I delivered 
 one on 1 Cor. viii. 13,* in the hearing of Dr. Charters, who 
 seemed to be more taken with it than with one that was care- 
 
 * The Sermon on Psalm xi. 1, was preached afterwards in Glasgow (I believe, however, 
 upon an emergency), with no other alteration than the prefix of an additional text, and will 
 be found in Dr. Chalmers's Works, vol. vi. p. 234. Its descriptive introduction bears com- 
 parison with the most eloquent passages in the author's writings ; and the whole sermon has 
 a new interest given to it when it is known that it was written after his illness, but before 
 the decisive change. It i?, in feet, a record of the transition-period : the retrospect of his 
 own life as taken at that time, given under the title of the Restlessness of Human Ambition. 
 The lecture on Psalm cxxxvii. 1-6, and the sermon on Romans iii. 10, will be found in Dr. 
 Chalmers's Posthumous Works, vol. vi. pp. 91, 162. The short-hand sermon on 1 Cor. viii. 
 13, was made the basis of a composition for Glasgow, which will be found in his Works, 
 vol. ix. p. 319.
 
 154 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 fully written ; a speech for Dr. Playfair, which I delivered at 
 the Synod ; and part of a review of Hints on Toleration, in all 
 about thirty-four sheets of closely-written paper. My weekly 
 allowance in this way is one sheet ; but let me allow eighteen 
 weeks for the avocations of duty or amusements. 
 
 " God, may I number my days so as to apply my heart to 
 wisdom. Grant me the guidance of Thy Spirit, and the joys 
 of Thy salvation. May my delight, Lord, be in Thy law, 
 and may eternity be ever present to my recollection and my 
 feelings. Time is short ; and as years revolve over me, may I 
 learn to prize as the truest of all wisdom, the wisdom of the 
 gospel. I am in Thy hand, God. If Thou pleasest to add 
 another year to my pilgrimage below, may it witness my pro- 
 gress in the faith and charity of the New Testament. Make 
 me to feel a clear union with Thee in Christ. May I taste the 
 joys of Thy chosen, and rejoice in the contemplation of that ever- 
 lasting crown which is laid up for all who love the Lord Jesus 
 in sincerity and in truth. May I be faithful in the duties of my 
 calling, and may the care of the souls of my people engross more 
 of my time and prayers and strenuous application. All I ask is 
 for the sake of Him to whom, with Thee and the Holy Spirit, I 
 give all the praise and all the glory. Amen. 
 
 " Sunday, March 17. From this day I have added the 
 reading of a chapter to my family worship. I have also be- 
 gun the New Testament in Greek, and must revive my ac- 
 quaintance with that language by reading a small portion every 
 night. 
 
 " March 18. Went to Murdochcairney at the special desire 
 of Miss Henderson, and dined there. She anticipates death, and 
 complains of her want of confidence in the power of the atone- 
 ment. God, give me judgment and delicacy for the manage- 
 ment of such important cases. May I be the mean of comfort 
 and conversion to sinners; and dissipate, Lord, the cloud 
 which overhangs my own feelings. I understand the signi- 
 ficancy of what the psalmist calls waiting on the Lord ; and 
 this evening I feel a peace, and love, and joy, for which I praise 
 the Giver of every good and perfect gift. On my return from 
 Murdochcairney called at Star Farm, and drank tea with Mr. 
 Johnston. 
 
 " March 21. Preached a fast-day sermon. Had a collection 
 
 the Bible Society, and can perceive a contempt or disinclina- 
 lon for this proceeding on the part of Mr. . Let me carry
 
 JOURNAL. 155 
 
 through what is right and religious in opposition to every dis- 
 couragement. 
 
 " Sunday, March 31. Preached what Mrs. Bethune would call 
 a legal sermon, and be probably offended with. Let me not seek 
 after the approbation of men ; but, at the same time, let me 
 practise every expedient for reconciling the minds of my hearers 
 to what I conceive to be sound and scriptural. By insisting 
 upon holiness as the fruit of the Spirit, I soften down the opposi- 
 tion to practical preaching. 
 
 " April 4. Finished this day my critique of the Hints on 
 Toleration, and sent it off to Edinburgh. Began a speech for the 
 Synod. Wrote some strong severities about Hill, and felt my- 
 self in a divided state of sentiment about their propriety, when 
 in comes a most civil and obliging letter from himself in answer 
 to one sent him about Charles. This disarms me, and I have 
 resolved to soften some expressions and expunge others. This 
 is a highly instructive affair. I had nearly deluded myself into 
 a conviction of the propriety of my invective. The civility from 
 him does not affect this propriety, but it affects my personal 
 feelings, and I perceive how much self carries it over principle. 
 The best rule is in every case to dispense, when possible, with 
 all mixture of rancour or severity against individuals. 
 
 "April 18. A foul stormy day, and no intercourse with 
 people abroad. I this day finished my perusal of Lardner's 
 ' Collection of Jewish and Heathen Testimonies.' . . . Let me 
 not lay my account with much happiness in the world. Let 
 me view the present life as a preparation for heaven, and make 
 an entire dedication of my mind to the faith and righteousness 
 of the gospel. God, I implore Thy Spirit. 
 
 " April 23. I am sensible of a growing acquiescence in the 
 peculiar doctrines of the gospel as a scheme of reconciliation for 
 sinners. 
 
 " April 27. Got a letter from Mr. Kay of St. Andrews this 
 morning, intimating the death of my poor brother David. Sent 
 an express to Anster upon the subject. The ladies very much 
 distressed.* 
 
 " April 29. This has been a day of a very dark complexion. 
 It rained incessantly, and came in in torrents through the east 
 wall. This enough of itself to induce great discomfort ; but 
 when combined with the interior distress of the family, the ex- 
 treme weakness of , the melancholy of , the cheerless 
 
 * David was captain of the ship Neptune, and died at sea, April 19, 1811.
 
 15 fi MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 insipidity and gloom of Miss M.'s temperament, and the high 
 excitement of my own feelings, goaded, as they were, by reflec- 
 tions upon the conduct of the tradesmen, all together formed a 
 fine subject for the exercise and the triumph of Christian prin- 
 ciple I have to record the humiliation of my defeat. I did 
 not act, or think, or express myself, as if I were born to live for 
 others, and give up my own selfishness and my own gratification 
 in the service of the gospel: 
 
 " May 1. Got a present from Mr. Tait of Tealmg of a ser- 
 mon published by him upon the conversion of the Jews, with a 
 complimentary note. This indicates a growing partiality for me 
 on the part of the evangelical clergy. 
 
 "May 15. Looked at Walker's Sermons, and promise my- 
 self a great confirmation of evangelical principles from this 
 publication. 
 
 " May 17. I am much taken with an observation in Walker, 
 that we are commanded to believe on the Son of God, which 
 gives us the high authority of heaven to plead against the charge 
 of presumption in cherishing and maintaining the faith of the 
 gospel. 
 
 "Sunday, May 19. Preached twice this forenoon. Mr. T. 
 rated me on my two sermons in summer, but let me brave the 
 imputation of zeal in the good cause of religion, 
 
 "May 20. Got Hannah More on 'Practical Piety,' and hope, 
 under the blessing of God, that the perusal of this work may be 
 the means of sanctification and growth in grace. 
 
 "May 24. A French prisoner, Mr. Bataille, appeared be- 
 fore my door this forenoon, and conversed with the tradesmen. 
 I brought him in, and he dined and drank tea with us. I would 
 feel exposure to such intrusions to be grievous indeed ; and my 
 vanity aggravates the grievance, by perceiving that he was brought 
 here by the tradesmen, who conceive a minister to be the idlest 
 of men, who can give his whole time to entertainment. A great 
 part of my disquietude lies in the apprehensions of my fancy. 
 Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 
 
 " May 31. Kain without any abatement whatever, and no 
 intercourse whatever with people abroad. Much may be done in 
 solitude by prayer, and thought, and self-control. Examined a 
 Bible Society report, and am strongly impressed with the value 
 of this institution. Finished the perusal of Dr. Bardie's Sermons. 
 
 " June 1. My aunt and Jane returned from Naughton. The 
 experience of the last week convinces me that solitude at home
 
 JOURNAL. 157 
 
 is my element, and supplies a strong argument against matri- 
 mony. In the independence of my resources, in the pleasurable 
 trains of reflection which nothing occurred to interrupt, in the 
 call to exertion to fill up the intervals of my time, and in my 
 entire exemption from all that irksomeness and corrosion to 
 which the offensive peculiarities of others are too apt to expose 
 me, I believe that quietness and solitude at home would add 
 much to my usefulness as a public character. It is my duty to 
 do all for the comfort of those under my roof, and to weather the 
 trial of my patience, now that I am fairly embarked in it. But 
 it may come to be a serious question in after-life, when any new 
 arrangement in my housekeeping is proposed to me, what I 
 should do. If, in point of fact, I feel less consumption of strength 
 and of spirit in solitude, should not I keep it all entire for my 
 professional duties; or should I give way to the wishes of my 
 friends ? I feel the selfishness of consulting my own ease, and 
 the deceit which may mingle with my calculations. But the 
 truth is, they wish me to marry. It is not their own accommo- 
 dation they want; it is their idea of my incapacity for house- 
 keeping that prompts their arrangements. I do not feel this 
 incapacity ; and upon the principle of consulting my own soul in 
 every good work, should not I come to a frank explanation, if 
 ever any new arrangement be proposed to me ? Let me stick by 
 Jane, and in every other way, but in that of fettering myself 
 with a constant housekeeper, let me spare no manifestation of 
 friendship and regard for my other relations. If the offensive 
 peculiarities of others be so apt to distress me, why hazard my 
 future tranquillity upon a wife ? 
 
 " I do not acquit myself of blame in this morbid sensibility, 
 and fear that there may be more of what is unchristian in it 
 than I am aware of. God, enable me to give my whole life to 
 public usefulness. 
 
 " Sunday, June 2. Far more successful to-day, and pray God 
 that I may never remit my vigilance. Preached in the forenoon, 
 and Mr. Thomson in the afternoon. I find that I am too much 
 hurried away by my keenness. Let me prepare less, write more 
 concisely, and deliver myself in a more cool and deliberate man- 
 ner for the future. -Sat out of doors in the afternoon, where I 
 read, and enjoyed the luxury of most delicious weather. 
 
 "June 4. I find that successful exertion is a powerful mean 
 of exhilaration, which discharges itself in good humour upon 
 others. This furnishes a double call upon industry.
 
 158 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " June 6. Am much impressed with Hannah More's chapter 
 
 upon Self-Examination. 
 
 " June 10. I am delighted with the first chapter of Colos- 
 sians. May I grow in grace and in habitual piety. 
 
 " June 14. I am still engaged with Hannah More, and pray 
 that God would perpetuate the good impressions I receive from 
 her. 
 
 "June 17. Mr. Bataille called with another French gentle- 
 man, Mr. Desperet, a medical man, who is far more pleasant and 
 cultivated than the former. I had a long walk with them in 
 the forenoon, and they dined and spent the afternoon. I have 
 been perhaps too cordial in my invitations. I have asked them 
 for next Friday ; but, as the doctor wished to see Janet Grieve, 
 there was a reason for it; and, in the meantime, I have re- 
 stricted them to after one o'clock, and expressed my disinclina- 
 tion to numerous parties, so that I purpose to decline all further 
 extension of my acquaintance with the officers at Cupar. The 
 point of difficulty at present is Mr. Bataille, who drank too freely, 
 and whose principle in coming out, I am afraid, is to secure to 
 himself the mere gratifications of the tippling-house. This is 
 coarse and degrading, and must be discouraged. I had purposed 
 to give him money for purchasing clothes. I must be a little 
 further acquainted with him. Perhaps the same money laid out 
 in maintaining a moderate hospitality may do as much good, and 
 be less hurtful to the feelings of gentlemen. In the meantime, 
 let me not be so unbounded in my speculations while I am in 
 debt. My first duty is not to owe. I may vacillate in my pur- 
 poses, but let me at least adhere to every good purpose recorded 
 in this Journal as fixed and determined upon. I must see 
 further before I record anything as to Mr. Bataille. 
 
 ^ " There is a vast degree of self-conceit in the ecstatic feeling 
 kindled by romantic generosity. The discipline of my hourly 
 feelings is a far more unquestionable evidence of right principle. 
 
 " June 19. When a human being is in sight, let the idea 
 occur to me that he is a subject for the exercise of duty, and put 
 myself on the alert. 
 
 "June 22. Messrs. Thomas and David Duncan and Dr. 
 Ramsay came and dined with us, and left us in the afternoon. 
 Upon the idea that they were to stay all night, I have to record 
 that I was distressed, and had come to no determination about 
 family worship. Had much pleasurable feeling all day ; but, let 
 me never forget that self-denial is the first principle of Christian
 
 JOURNAL. 159 
 
 practice. Mr. Duncan brought a flaming account of my ortho- 
 doxy from Dundee through Mr. Miller, who was, it seems, 
 delighted with it. Gavt Mr. D. my review on Toleration to 
 read. He was languid in his praise ; and I rejoice in my grow- 
 ing indifference to it. 
 
 "June 27. Walked to Dysart, with a view to spend the 
 night at Mr. Brotherstone's. Missed him, and went to the 
 heavenly Muirhead, with whom and his kindred wife I spent a 
 night of elevation and piety. 
 
 ''July 3. I never had a more close, edifying, and satisfying 
 faith in Christ, than I had this day. God, may I hold fast 
 my confidence and the rejoicing of my hope firm unto the end. 
 
 " July 4. Rather better to-day. Looked into the Confession 
 of Faith, and am resolved to give it an attentive perusal. Have 
 begun a course of prayer with Janet Grieve, which I mean to 
 persevere in. God, may I give my whole heart to the work 
 of the ministry ; and enable me to discharge its various duties 
 with zeal and discretion.* 
 
 "July 6. Prayed with young Alexander Paterson. -{ 
 
 " July 8. After some miscellaneous employment in the fore- 
 noon, such as bestowing sessional relief, and visiting Alexander 
 Paterson ministerially, I dined and went off to Dundee. 
 
 " July 10. Mr. James Anderson, Dr. Eamsay, and his mother, 
 dined with us to-day at Mr. Duncan's. Mr. Anderson a most 
 promising subject, and a kindred spirit in matters of theology. 
 Brought forward my Christianity after dinner ; and should let a 
 judicious and enlightened zeal for its interests be the guiding 
 principle of all my conduct and all my conversation. 
 
 " July 17. I went too far in my dissatisfaction with . 
 
 I feel humbled, and ask with tears for pardon and reformation. 
 May I be strengthened, Lord, by Thy glorious might to all 
 patience, with long-suffering and joyfulness. 
 
 "July 18. Began Richard Baxter's 'Body of Practical 
 Divinity,' which I mean to make my devotional reading in the 
 evenings ; and I pray God that I may be ready to submit in all 
 things, and give my whole heart to the business of salvation, 
 both as it respects my own soul and that of those who are com- 
 
 * On the 15th of thb month he wrote thus to his brother James : " The truth is, that a 
 minister, if he gives his whole heart to his business, finds employment for every moment of 
 his existence ; and I am every day getting more in love with my professional duties, and 
 more penetrated with a sense of their importance." 
 
 t See " The Missionary of Kilmany ; being a Memoir of Alexander Paterson, with Notices 
 of Robert Edie." By the Eev. John Baillie. Constable and Co., Edinburgh.
 
 160 
 
 mitted to me. Must be more earnest and more particular in 
 the performance of every part of my duty. Prayed with Janet 
 
 Grieve. 
 
 " July 20. Mr. Anderson came over from Dundee, and spent 
 
 the day with me. Fatigued myself with reading too much to 
 him. He is an excellent subject for peculiar Christianity. 
 
 "Sunday, July 21. Preached all day, and am much fatigued 
 by the exertion. Find that I have still to grcw in faith, and 
 that the exclusive honour and sufficiency of Christ must be a 
 more constant and habitual feeling of my heart. Let the fruit 
 I bear be all from Him as my vine. 
 
 " July 26. After tea, Professor Leslie called and spent the 
 night with me. I thank God for supporting me in my good 
 determination to have family worship. 
 
 " Sunday, July 28. Preached in the afternoon, and am very 
 little fatigued by it. Was under excitement in the morning, 
 but was sweetened and subdued as the day advanced ; and 1 
 feel that much is due to the state of my physical sensations ; 
 but, my God, hear the prayers which I have uttered, and 
 make my repentance of all that is uncharitable within me sincere 
 and effectual. Give me a thorough submission to Thy law and 
 Thy ordinances ; and leaning on Christ as my complete salva- 
 tion, may I look to Him with faith for my deliverance from the 
 punishment of sin through the power of His sacrifice, and for my 
 deliverance from its power through the influences of His Spirit. 
 
 " July 30. . . . The French gentlemen and Mr. Brown of 
 Galdry dined. Mr. Melvil of Newton joined us at tea. Bataille 
 got literally drunk, and presented a spectacle most offensive and 
 degrading. He is sick, and must stay all night. This puts an 
 end to all further attentions towards him! Desperet left me for 
 Cupar, and to him I may be attentive. 
 
 " July 31. Mr. Desperet came back this morning, and took 
 Mr. Bataille to Cupar with him after breakfast. I gave the 
 former a full exposition of my feelings upon the subject. I am 
 much delighted with Baxter's observations about scrupulosity 
 and vows. Let me be most cautious as to the latter ; and with 
 a strong determination to be guided by the law and Spirit of 
 God in all things, let me commit myself to His Providence, and 
 lie regulated by the circumstances which occur. 
 
 " Sunday, August 4. Let me give my whole strength to the 
 conversion and edification of my people. Mr. Duncan from 
 Dundee came and spent the day with us.
 
 JOURNAL. 161 
 
 "August 7. This my fast day. Messrs. Fleming and Melvil 
 preached ; and I have to record that, though more attentive 
 than ever, my conscience was never more tender at the interrup- 
 tions which my mind suffered from the encroachments of worldly 
 calculation. 
 
 " God, may the solemn dedication I made of myself yester- 
 day, when in mind and in prayer I testified my acceptance of 
 Thee as my owner, of Christ as my atonement, of the Spirit as 
 my sanctifier, be ever present to my feelings, and be followed 
 up by my whole life and heart and behaviour. 
 
 " August 8. Re-examined a great many communicants ; and 
 I pray God for the origin and progress of religion in their souls. 
 fit me for the great charge of guiding them to the way of 
 peace. I am much fatigued with my exertions, and with the 
 prospect of duty. 
 
 " Sunday, August 11. This the day of my Sacrament; and 
 though there be great room for future progress, yet I thank God 
 for the progress that has been made, and pray that He would 
 chase all presumption away from my gratitude. Much fatigued 
 with my preparations and exertions together, and let me hence- 
 forth separate them. Let me prepare for my future Sacraments 
 a long time before they come round, and, when they do come 
 round, give my whole strength to the examination of communi- 
 cants, the state of my own heart, and the impressive communica- 
 tion of my feelings at the time of delivery. Let me also be less 
 profuse in my invitations to company. We had twenty-two at 
 dinner ; let me rather bestow my attention upon my parishioners 
 another time. The relief which I now feel is another proof of 
 the extravagance of my anticipations. The thing is far more 
 formidable in foresight than in reality. I might have saved my 
 mind a number of its anxieties, and the experience of every 
 month supports the pri pegi/ju/aTi of Eevelation. my God, 
 bless this sacrament ; and in my own heart, as well as that of 
 my people, may its impression remain to the latest hour of our 
 existence. 
 
 " August 12. Messrs. Kid and Macculloch preached ; and at 
 dinner we had Messrs. Melvil, Macculloch, Kid, Fleming, and 
 Thomson ; Mrs. Melvil and Mrs. Coutts, and Misses Morton, 
 Collyer, and Henderson. I was so fatigued that I did not pay 
 the active attentions I would have been disposed to do. I feel 
 it my duty to be cheerful, and to adorn the doctrine of my 
 Saviour with all that is winning in kindness and enjoyment. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 162 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 "August 13. God, give me the love of my brother, and 
 the charity which enduretb. May I grow in the knowledge of 
 God ; and may His reality and His relation to me be more inti- 
 mately impressed upon my heart. 
 
 "August 14. From a Eeport of the Baptist Missionaries 
 I am much impressed with the worth and utility of these 
 Christians. 
 
 " August 23. I was thrown off my guard by a written appli- 
 cation from Miss Bethune to my sister, requesting that I would 
 take the forenoon of Sunday for the accommodation of her visitors. 
 This I greatly dislike. It was the previous arrangement betwixt 
 me and Mr. T., that I preach in the forenoon, else I should not 
 have done it. God, save me from carrying my antipathies to 
 the length of uncbaritableness. 
 
 "August 26. Kesumed my work on Christianity, after a 
 cessation of five months. Finished the second perusal of Pri- 
 deaux's ' Connexion.' God, fit me for suffering, for taking 
 up my cross, for living a life of faith on the Son of God ; and 
 by submitting to Christ as He is offered in the gospel, may I 
 become a fit subject for the influences of the Spirit. Mr. Craik 
 of Kennoway called in the evening, and spent the night with 
 me. Mr. Eobert Edie supped, Mr. John Patrick and Miss Mary 
 Wood called for a few minutes in a chaise, and took a luncheon 
 with me. A deep sense of God and of eternity is the best pro- 
 lection against embarrassment or fearfulness in the presence of 
 men. When I do what is doubtful, the painful reflection should 
 be a strong and effectual argument against the repetition of it. 
 Pardon my sins, God, and may I never couple faith in the 
 atonement of Christ with a feeling of security in the violation 
 of a single commandment. God, grant Thy Spirit to work 
 in me the work of faith with power. 
 
 "August 27. Had a most agreeable letter from Mr. James 
 Anderson, which, I trust, will be the commencement of a series 
 devoted to intimate improving and confidential interchange of 
 sentiments on the highest of all subjects. Eeceived a box from 
 London containing some relics and memorials of poor David, to 
 be forwarded to Anster. I thank God for the peace and love 
 and joy of this day. 
 
 " August 28. Wrote James Anderson. Began this day to 
 read the ' Life of Henry.' God, whatever I do may I do it 
 to Thy glory, and may I look for acceptance only through the 
 finished obedience of the Mediator.
 
 JOURNAL. 103 
 
 " Sept. 3. Went to the Presbytery ; had a pleasant greeting 
 with Macculloch. Did business with Mr. Kid and others. Mr. 
 Wilkie, the celebrated painter, my old and intimate friend, 
 dined with us, and I supped and spent the evening with him in 
 Low's. 
 
 " Sept. 4. Met Peter Cleghorn, and took leave of him and 
 Mr. Wilkie in the forenoon. I said a little about my author- 
 ship to Mr. Wilkie, but feel that my interest has subsided 
 strongly upon this subject, and may it do so with every earthly 
 object. 
 
 " Sept. 5. I am much impressed with the ' Life of Henry,' 
 and the magnitude of his labours. God, give me grace to put 
 forth all my strength in Thy service.* 
 
 " Sunday, Sept. 8. I am advancing in my conceptions of the 
 mighty importance of my office, and that every minute should 
 be devoted to its labours. God, give me health and firmness 
 to carry my purposes into execution. 
 
 " Sept. 9. Kode to Rathillet, and visited a son of Widow 
 Crichton's, apparently in the last stage of consumption. God, 
 give me discretion and judgment and zeal in the management of 
 these cases. May I pray with faith. I gave her sessional assist- 
 ance. It may be the natural ungraciousness of her manner, but 
 I am not sure that she received it well, and you may carry your 
 offers of money to a degree that is offensive. Better not to be 
 too forward in these offers. It is right to keep alive delicacy ; 
 and an exuberant facility in giving may induce an improper de- 
 pendence among the poor. Presents in kind are not so liable to 
 exception ; and that most substantial of all benevolence, which 
 has for its object the turning of many unto righteousness, is 
 liable to no exception whatever. God, may I devote my 
 entire soul to the good work. 
 
 " Sept. 10. Keceived Bible Reports, and am much impressed 
 with the utility of these institutions. God, may Thy work be 
 my delight. Ground me in the faith, and give me the zeal to 
 devote myself wholly to these things. 
 
 " Sept. 11. I have some conceptions afloat on the subject of 
 making efforts for the Bible Society. I was particularly dull in 
 prayer this evening, and may I struggle to obtain some portion 
 here of what is to be my joy hereafter, the light of the Divine 
 
 * " You may tell my father that I hare at length come into his opinion that the peculiar 
 business of his profession demands all the time, all the talents, and all the energy that any 
 minister is possessed of." Letter to bis mother, dited September 5, 1811. (In connexion 
 with this, see pp. 46, 47.)
 
 164 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 countenance, and an intimate sense of what is godly and 
 
 " Sept. 13. I have begun Baxter's ' Call to the Unconverted,' 
 and intend it for circulation. 
 
 " Sunday, Sept. 15. Let me keep cool and moderate in my 
 pulpit exhibitions. It would be desirable not to throw away 
 my ability for the thoughts and exercises of the Sabbath 
 evening. 
 
 " Sept. 18. I finished my perusal of the New Testament a 
 few days ago, and began it again at the rate of a chapter every 
 week-day, with the particular view of committing the most re- 
 markable passages to memory. 
 
 " Sept. 21. J. H. came and spent the night. I did right in up- 
 holding my views on religion to him, but I did wrong in solacing 
 my appetite for sympathy and justice by my statements about 
 the P.'s. God, give me that indifference to time and that 
 faith to eternity which is satisfied by committing itself to Thee. 
 I feel how deficient I am, how the atonement of Christ is the 
 only foundation ; but oh, give me the evidence of my interest 
 in this atonement by the test and the consequence insisted upon 
 in the Bible ' He that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, 
 even as Christ is pure.' 
 
 " Sept. 28. Fell in with David Wilkie, the eminent painter, 
 at Cupar, and went out with him to Cults, where I spent the 
 day. Lord Leveu, Dr. Martin, and a bevy of ladies called on 
 Mr. Wilkie. 
 
 11 Sunday, Sept. 29. Preached at Cults to an attentive audi- 
 ence. I tried to impress my peculiar views on Mr. D. Wilkie. 
 
 my God, restore me to the light of Thy countenance, and 
 unite me with Christ by faith ! May I see in my own imperfec- 
 tions that there is no dependence on myself. I repair to that 
 fountain which is opened in the house of Judah for sin and for 
 uncleanness, and give me the evidence that I am saved from its 
 punishment by saving me from its power. 
 
 "Sept. 30. Called at Pitlessie on Mr. Lister. A flow of 
 female company at Cults to see Mr. Wilkie's paintings. I left 
 there at one, and walked to Cupar. 
 
 ' Oct. 1. Confined all day with bad weather. Have resolved 
 to take my studies more easily, and not restrict myself so much to 
 stated employments. Composition in the forenoon, and the study 
 of the Bible in the original, are the only two exercises in which 
 
 1 propose to be pointedly regular. The reading of English I
 
 JOURNAL. 165 
 
 leave at large ; and I pray God that as my health improves I 
 may give it to His service. 
 
 " Oct. 4. In addition to my usual employments, I filled up 
 the day with the reading of Marmion, and at evening never 
 wanted warmth and liveliness in prayer to such a degree. 
 My mind was greatly exhausted. Finished some days ago 
 Baxter's Call and Henry's Life, and have begun Macknight's 
 Credibility. 
 
 " Oct. 1. Employed the forenoon in a critique of some verses 
 which Mr. Mudie submitted to me. Erred in disclosing the 
 affair to Charles. It was a breach of confidence. that prin- 
 ciple gave direction to all I did and said and wished ! In this 
 way only will my earthly business be made to have a savour of 
 heaven, and the great bulk of my time have a reference to re- 
 ligion and God and eternity. God, give me the victory. 
 
 " Oct. 9. I am not in my element where work and work- 
 people are concerned. May I sit loose to the interests of the 
 world, and give my heart here to that praise and love and con- 
 templation of God which is to form my employment hereafter. 
 The habitual estrangement of our minds from Him is the decisive 
 evidence of our natural corruption and of our need of redemption 
 by the blood of Jesus, and sanctification by that Spirit which 
 He gives to all who believe on Him. 
 
 " Oct. 14. Called on Janet Grieve. I imagine that my at- 
 tentions had induced the expectation that I would pay their 
 doctor's account. I conceive them able to pay it : I think myself 
 right in not making the offer. The object of my kindness should 
 not be to secure their good opinion by coming up to their ex- 
 pectations, but to do them good. Let the attainment of this 
 object be enough for me, and let me not be discouraged by the 
 want of gratitude or the want of applause. God, refine and 
 elevate and sanctify all my principles. Went to Dundee with 
 Charles, and spent the evening in Mr. Duncan's. 
 
 " Oct. 15. Called on Mr. Anderson, and walked much with 
 him in the forenoon. Dr. Ramsay and Mr. William dined with 
 us. Had much congenial discourse with James Anderson, who, 
 I hope, is in the way of being a decided Christian. Met Mr. 
 Mudie, who feels cold, I think, from the freedom of my critiques 
 upon his poetry. 
 
 " Oct. 17. Left Dundee after breakfast. Visited Janet 
 Grieve.* 
 
 * On the evening of this day he wrote to his mother : " I called and prayed with Janet
 
 166 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Oct. 18. Called on Janet Grieve. God, let me give 
 mf whole life to Thy service, and to the preparation of a people 
 for eternity. 
 
 " Oct. 19. Visited Janet Grieve twice, one died at three 
 
 o'clock. 
 
 " Sunday, Oct. 20. Mr. Gillespie and a number of his friends 
 in church, on which I substituted an elaborate sermon in place 
 of my lecture, and was not supported by the sympathy or intelli- 
 gence of my hearers. Have still too little command of myself, 
 and very much exhausted in the evening. ... I have more 
 of the quiescent spirit about me than I had, but let me cultivate 
 the habit of reposing upon eternity. 
 
 " Oct. 23. Alexander Robertson sopped with us. How little 
 are the thoughts and words employed about the things of eternity 
 in familiar intercourse. Let me make this a distinct object, and 
 mix discretion with zeal. Let me not be ashamed. 
 
 " Oct. 24. I was defective in prayer this evening. I pray 
 for the continued visitation of the Divine Spirit. I feel more 
 than ever that my rest is upon the sacrifice, and my sanctification 
 is the work of Him who, by His obedience, purchased gifts for 
 all who believe on Him. 
 
 " Oct. 25. Charles left me this morning for Flisk. Messrs. 
 Duncan and Mudie called from Dundee, the former of whom 
 spent the day with me. A most brilliant day, and a number of 
 huntsmen in sight. There is a wisdom required of us in conver- 
 sation about religion ; but it is most lamentable that it should 
 be so much excluded from the topics of familiar intercourse. 
 Why should not the things of eternity form the most interesting 
 subject of the converse and sympathy of immortal beings? 
 God, give direction to this part of my conduct. I may at least 
 divest myself of that playful familiarity which takes off from the 
 effect of my principles. Let my manner speak seriousness and 
 elevation, but let it at the same time be kind, and affectionate, 
 and cheerful. This would be a great victory over myself." 
 
 In the course of this autumn, Mr. Chalmers's capacity for 
 housekeeping, of which he was himself so confident, was exten- 
 sively tried. In prospect of her approaching marriage, his sister 
 Jane, who was his favourite housekeeper, had gone to Anstruther, 
 and left him for a month or two in entire solitude at the manse.
 
 JOURNAL. 167 
 
 He was the sole manager of his domestic establishment when 
 Mr. Duncan and Mr. Mudie came in upon him from Dundee. 
 Eetiring, shortly after they made their appearance, in order to 
 hold a private consultation as to the important article of dinner, 
 he found, to his dismay, that there was nothing whatever in the 
 house but two separate parcels of salt fish. Having given par- 
 ticular directions that a portion of each should be boiled apart 
 from the other, he joined his friends, and went out to enjoy the 
 brilliant day, and the pleasant sight of the hunting field. They 
 returned to the manse with racy appetites ; the dinner was 
 served two large and most promising covered dishes flourishing 
 at the head and foot of the table. " And now, gentlemen," 
 said the host, as the covers were removed, " you have variety 
 to choose among : that is hard fish from St. Andrews, and this 
 is hard fish from Dundee." 
 
 Fifteen years afterwards, when preaching in Edinburgh to a 
 vast assemblage, all hanging with breathless attention upon his 
 lips, the autumnal hunting scene was thus reproduced : "There 
 sits a somewhat ancestral dignity and glory on this favourite 
 pastime of joyous old England, when the gallant knighthood, 
 and the hearty yeomen, and the amateurs or virtuosos of the 
 chase, and the full-assembled jockeyship of half a province, 
 fcuster together, in all the pride and pageantry of their great 
 enprise ; and the panorama of some noble landscape, lighted up 
 wth autumnal clearness from an unclouded heaven, pours fresh 
 exHlaration into every blithe and choice spirit of the scene, and 
 eveiy adventurous heart is braced and impatient for the hazards 
 of tie coming enterprise ; and even the high-breathed coursers 
 catch the general sympathy, and seem to fret in all'the restive- 
 ness cf their yet checked and irritated fire till the echoing horn 
 shall fet them at liberty." Lord Elcho's huntsman was among 
 the croyd, and afterwards declared that " he had difficulty in re- 
 straining himself from getting up, and giving a ' Vue-holla I' "* 
 
 " Oct. 26. Walked with Mr. Duncan to Eathillet. Mr. 
 Mudie cane and dined with us; and both gentlemen left me 
 after dinner for Dundee. 
 
 " Sundci/, Oct. 27. The people very attentive to my exposi- 
 tion of theparable of the labourers in the vineyard.-}- Spent the 
 
 * See Dr. ChJmers's Work?, vol. xi. p. 255; and the exquisite Biographical Notice of Dr. 
 Chalmers read bjore the R..yal Society of Edinburgh, by the Very Rev. E. B. Ram- ay, &c. 
 
 t This ezpositia is to be found in the Introductory Essay prefixed to Baxter's Call to the 
 Unconverted. Se Works, voL xiii. p. 117.
 
 163 MEMOIRS OF DB. CHALMERS. 
 
 whole night by myself. Christ could spend a whole night in 
 prayer. Let me not feel intervals of inoccupation, when I have 
 the faith of the gospel, communion with God, and a recurrence 
 of the mind to the sure though invisible objects of eternity as my 
 unfailing resource. that my mind could at all times find 
 satisfaction in the solitude of pious and devotional feelings, and 
 feel enough to occupy it in that life which is hid with Christ in 
 
 " Oct. 28. After dinner Mr. E., M., and two of Mr. E.'s cousins 
 came in, and I entertained them till after supper. The society 
 is not congenial ; and, in general, those hours which you cannot 
 devote to religious conversation may be considered as so many 
 blanks in the existence of an immortal being. Oh, if I could 
 have the right zeal and the right management upon this subject. 
 How few, in your intercourse with the world, can be addressed 
 directly on religion I Give me intrepidity, give me superiority 
 to shame, and give me wisdom in my walk with those that are 
 without. What would I have done had these young men re- 
 mained all night ! I hope in the strength of God what I should 
 have done. Let me at least give such hours to the exercise of 
 the Christian virtues. Give me exemption from vanity, selfish- 
 ness, and display. Give me the manner which conciliates, the 
 kindness which procures affection, the light which shineth ?n 
 edification before men, and which illustrates not myself, but y 
 religion. Let me not press drinking so much. I have long ^ad 
 the vanity of being thought a good fellow. On the other hind, 
 I may disgust by an appearance of parsimony. for discre- 
 tion amid all these possibilities, and for that wisdom whbh is 
 given to all who ask it in faith. 
 
 "Nov. 1. Mr. Matthew supped, and asked the favoir of a 
 horse wintering in my field. As it is only one, and as I have 
 been much obliged to Mr. Matthew, I acceded to the jroposal, 
 though it is perhaps one of those civilities that you are less dis- 
 posed to grant, on account of the benefit received rot being 
 equal to the injury sustained by the poaching of im glebe in 
 that wet season of the year. But let me count anxiey on these 
 points one of those weights which I must throw asice. Had a 
 most superior composition from James Anderson on our mutual 
 subject religion. 
 
 " Sunday, Nov. 3. Rode to Dairsie, where I preached two 
 Bermons for Dr. Macculloch. There is one circunstance which 
 I have to notice. I felt very blank and dissatisfid at the idea
 
 JOURNAL. 169 
 
 that something in my sermon did not accord with the sentiments 
 of the people I had an esteem for ; and when I afterwards dis- 
 covered that there was more congeniality than I had imagined, 
 I felt a recurrence of all those pleasurable trains of feeling in 
 which religion has a share, or seems to have a share. Is there 
 no mixture of earthliness in all this no dependence upon the 
 approbation of men ? Have not I one Master, and is not He 
 enough for me ? God, make me to feel the firmness of the 
 ground I tread upon, and enable me to give all my mind to Thy 
 Word. Above all, may I never recede by a single inch from my 
 Saviour ; and may I have a dependence on that within the veil 
 which will sustain me in every trial of human opposition. 
 
 " Nov. 4. After much conversation with my excellent friend, 
 Dr. Macculloch, Mrs. Coutts, and the Collyers, whom I called 
 upon at Vantage, I left Dairsie at two o'clock. I was much 
 impressed with Maclaurin's sermon on the Cross of Christ, which 
 I read in part to the Doctor. Called at Logie, and saw Mrs. 
 Melvil : I hope in God that her illness will be sanctified by His 
 grace. Had more intimate communion with God in solitary 
 prayer than I had ever felt before ; and my sentiment was a 
 total, an unreserved, and a secure dependence on Christ the Sa- 
 viour. may I enjoy His Cross, and may it be all my glory. 
 May I view every spiritual blessing as the effect of union with 
 Him by faith. He is laid before me as the one and the effectual 
 Mediator. We are not only invited, but commanded to believe. 
 Help our unbelief, God ; dissolve our hardness ; enter into 
 our hearts. May Christ be our all, and, under the influence of 
 that which availeth, ' faith working by love,' grant that He may 
 be to us power, and wisdom, and sanctification, and complete 
 redemption. 
 
 " Nov. 5. Very bad weather, and no intercourse with people 
 abroad. For some time past there was a languor and a vacuity 
 in my religious feelings, and I attribute the comfort and revival 
 of my mind to the firmer apprehensions which I have obtained 
 of Christ as the Head of the body, and the one Mediator, through 
 whom come down all spiritual blessings upon those who take to 
 Him. God, keep me firm in the faith. May I not let it go. 
 May I hold fast my confidence, and the rejoicing of my hope, 
 firm unto the end. Keep me by Thy power through faith unto 
 salvation ; and may I receive the end of my faith, the salva- 
 tion of my soul. what simple, but significant and impressive 
 energy in the Bible ! Give me to examine it with care and
 
 170 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 with success. Read Muirhead's ' Account of William Burnet,' 
 and rejoice that I derive clearness, and comfort, and instruction, 
 from what I would have formerly repudiated as the most drivel- 
 ling fanaticism. 
 
 " Nov. 8. I went on to Naughton, where I dined. A great 
 party there, and I maintained firmness better than usual. Let 
 me be free of anxiety about the honour which is from men, and 
 resign myself to the benevolence of the gospel, and I secure 
 twocapital ingredients of pleasant manners. However the day 
 be spent externally, in heart and in substance let it be spent 
 with God. 
 
 " Sunday, Nov. 10. Preached all day. I pray for the capa- 
 city of earnest, distinct, and consistent addresses to the under- 
 standings of my people. But let me school it all down. I felt 
 my distance from my Redeemer this evening, but was helped 
 in prayer to a livelier apprehension of Him. God, may I 
 feel peace with Thee through Jesus Christ our Lord ; and let 
 every good sentiment which I utter not be in word only, but in 
 power. 
 
 " Nov. 11. Finished this day the perusal of Foster's ' Essays,' 
 which I have read with great relish and excitement. His pro- 
 foundly evangelical views are most congenial to me. my God, 
 give me of the fulness of Christ, and keep me through faith unto 
 salvation. 
 
 " Nov. 12. May I never lose sight of Christ, that hearing 
 His words, and believing in Him by whom He was sent, I may 
 pass from death unto life. I feel more strongly impressed myself 
 with the importance of His Mediatorship. 
 
 "Sunday, Nov. 17. Mr. Thomson has now got into his new 
 church, and the whole office of preaching has devolved upon 
 me.* May I give my most strenuous and unceasing efforts to 
 the great work of preparing a people for eternity. The peo- 
 ple attentive. God, may Thy Sabbaths be my refreshment 
 and my joy. Much delighted with Porteus's ' Lecture on the 
 Transfiguration.' Had too little command of myself in the 
 pulpit. 
 
 " Nov. 19. Left St. Andrews, and breakfasted with Mr. Roger. 
 Got on to Anster to dinner. Found the family in a tolerable 
 
 i* T? 10 ?* V ' ? l r- Thorason was minister of the adjoining parish of Balmerino. While 
 
 was building, the two congregations met in the church of Kilmany, and Mr. 
 
 nson took the half, and during Mr. Chalmer^ illness, the whole of the Sabbath 
 
 B*T !'' -S,
 
 JOURNAL. 171 
 
 way. Let me maintain the temper of a Christian in the peculiar 
 warfare to which I am here exposed." 
 
 The following extracts from two letters of a somewhat later 
 date, addressed to a near relative, may help to give the reader 
 a distinct idea of what this peculiar warfare was : " Anstruther, 
 Friday Evening, quarter past ten. I have sat two hours with 
 niy parents this evening, and I trust have acquitted myself to 
 their satisfaction, having answered their every question, and felt 
 a real pleasure in meeting their observations, and helping for- 
 ward the crack with observations of my own. I trust that God 
 will give me His enabling grace, that I may conduct myself 
 with that temper, patience, and attention which become me." 
 " Saturday, six in the afternoon. I think I am behaving well. 
 I can scarcely force myself to talk when I am inclined to be 
 silent, but I may at least ward off the assaults of anger. Now, 
 this I have done ; and while the Eh's ? and the What's ? reci- 
 procate in full play across the table, and explanations darken 
 rather than clear up the subject, and entanglements of sense 
 thicken and multiply on every side of me, and Aunty Jean tries 
 to help out the matter by the uptakings of her quick and con- 
 fident discernment, and confusion worse confounded is the upshot 
 of one and all of her interferences why, even then, I know 
 that it is my duty, and I shall strive to make it my practice, 
 to stand serene amid this war of significations and of cross pur- 
 poses, and gently to assist the infirmities* which I may be soon 
 called to share in." 
 
 p 
 
 " Sunday, Nov. 24. Preached all day in Anstruther, and 
 exerted myself to a degree that was most hurtful. I really 
 must attempt a habit of self-command in the pulpit ; my health 
 requires it. What I want above all*is delight in God, and an 
 intimate feeling of peace and reconciliation with Him through 
 the blood of Christ. 
 
 " Nov. 25. Mr. Clarke had been receiving a most strange 
 account of my sermons from Mr. Cockburn, who, in terms of 
 admiration very uncongenial to my feelings, gave him a most 
 mistaken and vexatious statement of the matter, as if I had 
 brought forward a formal recantation of all my old errors, had de- 
 clared my conversion from the pulpit, and astonished the people 
 with my own history and my own experiences. The days were 
 
 * All the three father, mother, and aunt Trere deaf, the firat being also blind.
 
 172 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 when all this would have galled me to the quick, and still it is 
 unpleasant. I intended no reference to myself whatever, and 
 the mistake I conceive to be founded upon the vehemence of the 
 delivery, and his literal interpretation of the mere figure of 
 egotism. Cockburn, however, has sent the thing abroad, and 
 I am now fairly exposed to all the contempt which annexes to 
 fanaticism. My business is to brave it all, never to relax a single 
 sentiment founded on Scripture, and to steer myself by the guid- 
 ance of conviction and the Divine Spirit through all that can 
 oppose itself to the interests of the gospel. 
 
 " Nov. 26. Called on Mrs. Smith before breakfast, and went 
 over Cockburn's misstatement. The awkwardness a little allevi- 
 ated from what I gathered in the course of the day ; but let me 
 not be anxious at all about it. Keceived a call from Mr. Car- 
 stairs, who has put down his name for a Bible Society, and the 
 proposal is now fairly afloat. Was still feeble, and have done 
 little or nothing in the way of study since I came to Anster. 
 God, be Thou more present to my thoughts, and be Thou the 
 portion of my heart and my joy for evermore. 
 
 " Nov. 28. Left Anstruther, and dined at Denino, where I 
 spent the night. 
 
 " My business is to suppress my own feelings as selfish, and 
 to allure others to the service of Christ by a winning and amiable 
 and conciliatory manner. 
 
 " Nov. 29. Started from Denino before breakfast. Walked 
 to St. Andrews. I am much struck with the banishment of re- 
 ligion from the thoughts and conversation. What is this, 
 God, but banishment from Thee ? Recall me from this banish- 
 ment ; and whatever I do, may I do it in the name of Jesus. 
 
 "Dec. 1. I am writing a sermon upon Romans v. 1.* Not 
 much satisfied with my performance, but had a livelier glimpse 
 this evening of the propitiation than I had before experienced ; 
 and the peace, and confidence, and delight in prayer which I 
 felt while under it, convince me that this is the object which I 
 must ever strive after and maintain. Give me, God, to hold 
 fast my confidence and the rejoicing of my hope firm unto the 
 end. 
 
 ^"Sunday, Dec. 8. Let all vanity, my God, be crucified 
 within me. Let my sole aim be to win souls ; and though I 
 cannot at all times command a clear and enraptured view of 
 Divine truth, let me fill up every interval with works which 
 
 * See Works, voL x. p. 311.
 
 JOURNAL. 173 
 
 bespeak the Christian. Bring me closer and closer to Him to 
 whom Thou hast given all power, and committed all judgment. 
 Fill me with His fulness ; and may I have peace and joy with 
 Thee through Jesus Christ my Lord. 
 
 " Dec. 10. Let me be peculiarly on my guard against all self- 
 ishness and love of display ; and, my God, let me not satisfy 
 myself with choking up the streams which flow from my vitiated 
 heart. Apply the remedy to the seat and centre of the disease. 
 Kenew this heart ; sanctify it by the faith that is in Jesus ; and 
 form it to Thyself in righteousness and in all holiness. 
 
 "Dec. 11. Left Dairsie after breakfast, and walked to Kil- 
 many. Eead the ' General View of the Baptist Mission,' a most 
 cheering and interesting work. Baxter's observations about the 
 regulation of the thoughts are striking. I pray to be delivered 
 from vain, and idle, and sinful thoughts. God, carry on my 
 sanctification by faith, and may Thy good Spirit never abandon 
 me. 
 
 " Dec. 13. Finished my revisal of the article ' Christianity,' 
 and have begun a series of regular sermons, in which I pray 
 God for help and perseverance. My first is upon Romans x. 1.* 
 Dined at Mountquhannie, and spent the night with them. Spoke 
 about the Bible Society, of which Mrs. Gillespie has a high ad- 
 miration, and other matters connected with theology. God, 
 give me self-government ; crucify all selfishness and vanity 
 within me. May I labour for the interest of Thy kingdom in 
 the world, and may the faith and sanctification of the gospel be 
 making a decided progress over the corruptions of my heart. I 
 offer my prayer for all this family, and may Mrs. Gillespie grow 
 in rectitude of sentiment, and zeal for the good cause of vital 
 religion. 
 
 "Sunday, Dec. 15. Preached as usual. I have not a strong 
 enough sense of the malignity of sin, and therefore an inadequate 
 conception of the greatness of that salvation laid before us in 
 the gospel. God, may He who is exalted on high, give me 
 repentance and the remission of sin. 
 
 " Dec. 17. Let me give more earnestness and application to 
 the secret discipline of the inner man ; and, God, assist me in 
 Christ to regulate my thoughts, and to go on joyfully, without 
 perplexity, harassment, or fatigue. God, I commit the good 
 work to Thy power and Thy faithfulness. Erred this forenoon 
 in taking up two hours in a most fruitless and fatiguing investi- 
 
 * See Works, voL xxr. p. 5.
 
 174 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 gation about annuities. I am much pleased with that part of 
 Macknight's ' Credibility' which is on the prophecies. 
 
 " Dec. 19. Had some very pleasurable processes of sentiment ; 
 
 but the great charm and the great solidity of all comfort lies in 
 that security which is in Christ, God, give me to draw 
 nearer and nearer to Him to cultivate a more habitual inter- 
 course with Him by faith and to learn of Thee through Him, 
 who alone can reveal Thee to us. 
 
 " Dec. 20. Had been apprised by my man of business that 
 my augmentation was to be pleaded on the 18th, and had made 
 a number of provisions for obtaining intelligence of the result. 
 Had attempted to fortify my heart against every species of dis- 
 appointment, and submit to everything as from the hand of a 
 wise and good Heaven. The precise kind of trial was what I 
 did not anticipate an intimation from Sandy that the business 
 did not come on, and that, as the Court of Session rose soon, it 
 must be put off for several weeks. This was the kind of dis- 
 appointment that was fitted to bear hardest upon rny sanguine 
 temperament too impatient under suspense, too much addicted 
 to suspicions, and too prone to indulge in plans and calculations 
 for futurity. my God, may I be grateful to Thee for sustain- 
 ing me. Perfect that which concerns me. May the great ele- 
 ments of my being my soul, my sanctification, my eternity be 
 enough for me. Kaise me, Lord, on the wings of faith, and 
 make me Thine entire workmanship in Christ Jesus my Lord. 
 Read the ' Life of Campbell,' and felt some embarrassment in 
 the want of congeniality with the tone of his sentiments. Let 
 this endear to me Thy law and Thy testimony ; and, God, 
 enlighten me so as to understand Thy Scriptures, and make the 
 word of Christ to dwell in me richly in all wisdom. 
 
 "Sunday, Dec. 22. Was struck with an expression of the 
 Psalmist, ' My soul followeth liard after thee.' God, in so 
 doing, may I not fail or be discouraged ; but may Thy right 
 hand uphold me. Did not receive a letter from my agent to- 
 day as I expected. On everything connected with this subject, 
 give me, God, the victory. 
 
 Dec. 26. Had a call in the evening from A. Paterson, who 
 had been reading ' Baxter on Conversion,' and is much impressed 
 by it. Delighted to hear that it has also been read with impres- 
 sion by others. A. P. finds that he cannot obtain a clear view 
 
 Christ. God, may I grow in experience and capacity for 
 
 s management of these cases. It is altogether a new field to
 
 JOURNAL. 175 
 
 me, but I hope that my observations will give stability to my 
 views and principles on this subject, and that my senses will be 
 exercised to discern good and evil. 
 
 " Dec, 27. I examined about twenty-four people. I should 
 leave the answers more to themselves, and must study to con- 
 struct my questions accordingly. I hope and pray that much 
 good may be done in this way. 
 
 " Dec. 28. Delighted to find the Edinburgh Eeview led to 
 support the Bible Society.* 
 
 "Dec. 31. Examined the west end of the village in church, 
 and a few young people in my own house in the evening. Find 
 that much may be done in this way, and that there is much to 
 do. I find that I should not engage with more than ten or 
 twelve at a time, to do them justice. 
 
 " As years roll away, let the impression grow firmer upon me, 
 that v/hile here I am not at home, but on a journey ; and let me 
 carry about with me the same faith, the same watchfulness, the 
 same nearness of perception as to the things of eternity, as if I 
 knew that in half-an-hour I were to be summoned by the last 
 messenger." 
 
 * In a note to an Article on the Education of the Poor. See Edinburgh Review, vol. xii. 
 p. 39. The purpose expressed in this note of entering afterwards and at large into the 
 Bible Society controversy appears never to have been executed.
 
 176 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDEUSOX. 
 
 " I NEVER encountered a more vigorous intellect than that of 
 James Anderson." Mr. Chalmers pronounced this opinion at a 
 late period of his life, and after he had been brought into con- 
 tact with many of the highest intellects of the age. " I never 
 met with another whose powers in all their dimensions ap- 
 proached nearer to those of Dr. Chalmers." Such was the sen- 
 tence of one well qualified to judge, who knew them both most 
 intimately.* Mr. Anderson was the only son of a banker and 
 opulent merchant in Dundee. Younger by about ten years than 
 Mr. Chalmers, he must have been under eighteen when he was 
 first introduced to the minister of Kilmany, then generally 
 known as Mr. Chalmers the mathematician, about whose intel- 
 lectual devoteeism strange rumours filled his own neighbourhood, 
 and had reached Dundee. Congenial tastes at once linked them 
 together in close friendship. Mr. Anderson was designed for 
 business, and had already entered his father's office. Of a highly 
 enthusiastic temperament, he had been early smitten with the 
 love of science and literature. The pure fire burned in secret, 
 and he delighted to replenish it by fellowship with a kindred 
 spirit which was even more ardent than his own. He was one 
 of the first to whom Mr. Chalmers communicated the great 
 change which had taken place in his religious sentiments. That 
 favourite and confidential communication was one of many means, 
 all gently and judiciously applied, by which he sought to win 
 over his young friend to the Saviour, and to that cause which 
 had now become so dear to him; with what success the following 
 correspondence will in part enable the reader to judge : 
 
 "PLEASANCE, DUNDEE, August 8, 1811. 
 
 "_ MY DEAR SIR, I have not forgotten the more important 
 subject to which you drew my attention, and which was to 
 form the main topic of our letters. Little as I can trust to my 
 own resolutions, I hope that Christianity is a study on which I 
 
 * The Ker. Mr. Bruce of Edinburgh.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 177 
 
 am now to enter in earnest, and that this is the first of a series 
 of letters which will tear the marks of progressive advancement. 
 As it is to you I am indebted for the resolution of making 
 religion an object of direct attention, allow me, my dear sir, at 
 the outset, to return you my thanks, and to congratulate myself 
 on the privilege I enjoy in your friendship. I trust that our 
 connexion is such as to render unnecessary the assurance that 
 I am not speaking the language of common intercourse, when I 
 say, that I ever looked upon your friendship as the greatest boast 
 of my life, and that, now it has taken a higher range, I annex 
 to it a proportionate value. If I shall persevere if I, from this 
 moment, shall date the progress of settled religious principles, I 
 will ever recur with gratitude to that hour when you exhibited 
 these principles in all the attractions of former associations. It 
 is not for want of similar appeals that I have hitherto regarded 
 the subject with indifference ; it is because these appeals were 
 made in a tone of unsympathizing sanctity and unaccommodating 
 rigour, and because there was no personal association to counter- 
 act the false repulsion which attends the first enforcements of 
 religion. I am indebted to you for having made it a subject of 
 familiar discussion, for having thrown around it the attractions 
 of science and of eloquence, for having made your appeals in a 
 spirit of fellowship, good humour, and philosophy. I hope the 
 time will be when religion will stand in no need of auxiliaries, 
 and when I shall love the gospel, how homely soever its attire ; 
 but it is not easy to get the better, all at once, of the squeamish- 
 ness of an overweening refinement. ... I have now got 
 Wilberforce and Hannah More, and I am to begin immediately 
 with the former. I foresee that I shall stand in need of all your 
 assistance and encouragement. I have little strength of resolu- 
 tion, and am much the votary of present impression. I am every 
 day in society, and have an ample relish for all its distractions. 
 I am fired with the desire of literary attainment, and it will re- 
 quire a severe discipline to bring this passion within due limits. 
 I want proper sentiments even in my thinking moments ; even 
 at the moment I am writing you, I want that heart to religion 
 which I have to other pursuits. I acknowledge readily the 
 supreme importance of religion over human science, yet, I must 
 own that, were the paths to lead to the same goal, I would travel 
 in the latter. . . . 
 
 " There is one feeling more which I must notice, because it is 
 one I did not anticipate. I feel a kind of demi- scepticism since 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 178 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 I resolved to make religion an ultimate pursuit. Formerly I felt 
 the most confident security in the truth of Christianity ; I now 
 begin to be alarmed lest it may be false, and feel myself entering 
 on the investigation with a suspicion formerly unknown. I, 
 however, flatter myself that this does not arise from any secret 
 wish to get rid of the subject, I would fain consider the feeling 
 as akin to that of a juryman whose preconceived opinions vanish 
 before the solemnity of an oath, but whose doubts only lead to 
 more secure convictions. I am, my dear Sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 JAMES ANDERSON." 
 
 MANSE, August 28, 1811. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I received your most agreeable letter of 
 the 8th only yesterday, and hasten to convince you of my full 
 sympathy and co-operation in the great objects of our corre- 
 spondence. I am too well aware of its stimulating effect upon 
 myself, not to be most anxious for having it perpetuated. The 
 subject in its naked importance has every claim upon me, and 
 I wish to give it my entire and undivided heart. My tenden- 
 cies in that direction are getting more decided every day ; and 
 I hope that they will soon gather strength enough to maintain 
 their constancy, even though I had nothing but the processes of 
 my own mind and the sympathy of my humble parishioners to 
 support me. But I can assure you, that I feel the prospect of 
 your communications to be a fresh and additional impulse. It is 
 something vastly superior to the enjoyment of an ordinary ac- 
 quaintance. It is like falling in with a fellow-traveller to eternity. 
 I trust that the sublime and imposing termination will fasten our 
 hearts, and give a steadiness to our movements thitherwards. 
 
 " At the outset of such a career we may lay our account with 
 a multitude of anxieties. I am not entitled to talk of my ex- 
 perience, or to address you in the language of admonitory wis- 
 dom. Viewed as an experimental Christian, I am still in my 
 infancy. I have not yet reached that repose of heart which, 
 in the beautiful language of one of our old prophets, is termed 
 quietness and assurance for ever. But I am deceived if I am 
 not feeling my way towards it ; and I have to attest, that the 
 ground is never firmer under my feet than when I rest my con- 
 fidence in Christ, and make Him all my redemption and all my 
 righteousness. 
 
 'But let me forbear any anticipation upon the interesting 
 letails which I trust will come before us in due time, and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. ] 79 
 
 occupy both our conversation and our letters in the prosecution 
 of our common inquiries. Be assured, that by the blessing of 
 heaven, the unsettledness of which you complain will give way 
 to prayer and perseverance. Your demi-scepticism has received 
 from yourself its best explanation ; and I count it a promising 
 symptom of the energy and greatness of your feelings upon the 
 subject. I derive great comfort from Heb. v. 14. When our 
 senses are exercised by use, we shall get the better of that 
 restlessness of principle of which you complain, and which I 
 have often felt. It is not two years since I would have blushed 
 to give the advice which I am now to offer, and would pro- 
 bably have smiled at the man who should have offered it to 
 myself earnest prayer. It is not necessary to philosophize 
 upon the subject. Prayer is the authorized instrument of com- 
 munication betwixt God and man ; and if you think of any 
 better expedient, remember that God is the author of that 
 expedient, and gives it all its efficacy and all its operation. 
 Wisdom calculates upon the expediency of means ; but prayer 
 appears to me to be a higher reach of wisdom, inasmuch as it 
 remounts to the upper principle which gives birth and move- 
 ment and energy to all things. ... I can assure you, that, 
 from the complexion of your letter, I have nothing but encour- 
 agement to offer. Your scruples, your anxieties, your dissatis- 
 faction with yourself, are all, I trust, the happy tokens of an 
 earnest commencement. I do not promise that satisfaction with 
 yourself will be the final result of all those interior movements 
 which now agitate and exercise you. The nothingness of self 
 will in time come to be the favourite and reigning principle. 
 You will place all your sufficiency in the Captain of your 
 salvation ; and you will at last feel that the humility of the 
 Christian faith puts the whole economy of the Divine govern- 
 ment on its only right footing, when God is all in all, and His 
 creatures occupy the place which belongs to them as His sub- 
 jects and His instruments. I am yours, with much regard, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " DUNDEE, October 22, 1811. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I was so unlucky as to call on you on 
 Thursday just as you had left Mr. Duncan's. I am sorry we 
 had so little time together, for the impulse I receive from a 
 single conversation is worth a month's reading. There is some- 
 thing so electric in the contact of one man with another, espe-
 
 IgO MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 cially when tbeir views are congenial, that each is doubly fitted 
 
 for exertion. ... . 
 
 " To avoid these evils [the evils of AntinomiamsmJ we ought 
 to adhere to the rule, 'Ejiwv&ri ra; yfapAf, for there truth ap- 
 pears in its native colouring. Indeed, I do not know how far 
 it is safe to draw one's belief from didactic summaries, how ^un- 
 exceptionable soever. I should even suspect that a catechism, 
 which gives the result of a profound Christian's researches in 
 the Bible, might be pernicious as a first mover ; it wants the 
 spontaneity and development of the immediate oracles ; like a 
 plant in a hot-house, it may be pruned, and trained, and re- 
 gularly expanded ; but it has lost the hues, and the fragrance, 
 and the habitus, of self-embowered and indigenous luxuriance. 
 So much for Antinomianism. 
 
 " The next subject that occurs to me, and, my dear sir, it is 
 the charm of familiar correspondence to be indulged in the even 
 flow of thought, is the consolations of Christianity. There are 
 several views to which I would wish to familiarize my mind on 
 this subject. There is, first, the eternity of enjoyment which 
 awaits those who adopt the gospel-plan of salvation bliss ever 
 during bliss progressive and unassailable bliss heightened by 
 the recollection of doubt, insecurity, and suffering bliss in con- 
 cert with fellow-beings, who began with you their course on 
 earth, and who are destined to be your companions in the career 
 through unfathomable duration. There is next the good which 
 a Christian may do. He who wins a family to righteousness 
 stands higher in the scale of human benefactors than he who 
 unshackles a continent from thraldom ; for he adds more to the 
 sum of universal happiness, if we estimate the effects in their 
 duration. It is a heart-rending reflection to have lived in vain ; 
 and the success of every plan of mere intellectual exertion is 
 fortuitous ; but he who has for his object the promotion of the 
 Gospel acts with the security of success, for he acts with the 
 assurance of Divine assistance. It is a sentiment of Mr. Clark- 
 son, ' that no virtuous effort is ever lost ; ' and his own bright 
 career is a noble proof that virtuous effort, if steady, is in- 
 vincible. 
 
 "A third view, which I think is fraught with delight, is the 
 stability of the Christian spirit as a leading passion. When we 
 nre deeply interested in any future object, we are little at the 
 mercy of any circumstance, however untoward, that does not 
 endanger the ultimate advantage. Now, if we could always
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 181 
 
 make our thoughts bear upon eternity^ how would it enliven the 
 space between ? Could we, in our journey through life, keep 
 steadily before us, in a kind of intellectual vista, the enjoyments 
 of a future state, how little would we care for the inequalities 
 of the road, intrusion from the side-paths, or eclipses of sun- 
 shine ? . . . 
 
 " These are a few of the suggestions of my better moments : 
 but, alas ! it is seldom I can command the solace of their in- 
 fluence, for I am most frequently plunged in the misery of him 
 whose reason and passions are asunder. But I shall not add 
 to the tediousness of too long a letter by a detail of unpleasant 
 and personal feelings. I conclude with renewed assurance of 
 the happiness I enjoy in your friendship. It is painful to think 
 that, in this wide world, there are so few who care for us ; and 
 a friendship, with the hopes of eternal consummation, is a pos- 
 session past prizing. may the God of all friendship cement 
 our union, and through the merits of Christ Jesus, enable us, 
 when time is exhausted, to look back on these scenes of struggle 
 from the realms of security, where friendship is everlasting, 
 where the only change is in increase of love, and the only rivalry 
 that of benevolence. I am, my dear Sir, yours unfeignedly, 
 
 JAMES ANDERSON." 
 
 " KILMAKT MAKSE, November 2, 1811. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I received yours of the 22d, yesterday, and 
 I can assure you that I felt a very deep and a very pleasing in- 
 terest in its perusal. There is one sentiment in it quite accord- 
 ing to my own heart ; and the felicity with which you have 
 expressed it gives me a closer and more satisfying impression of 
 it than ever the critique which you pass upon catechisms, 
 which, however correct in all their dogmata, may not be correct 
 in their general effect upon the mind, because they want the 
 spontaneity and development of the immediate oracles. My Chris- 
 tianity approaches nearer, I think, to Calvinism than to any of 
 the isms in Church history ; but broadly as it announces the 
 necessity of sanctification, it does not bring it forward in that 
 free and spontaneous manner which I find in the New Testament. 
 It does not urge my affections in the shape of a warm and im- 
 pressive admonition. It is laid before me as part of a system ; 
 and I am somehow restrained from submitting my heart to the 
 fulness of its influence by the severe and authoritative qualifica- 
 tions which are laid upon it. There is so much said about the
 
 182 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 dangers of self-righteousness, that I am afraid to trust myself with 
 any attempt at righteousness at all ; and for the simple obedience 
 of love which the gospel teaches me, I either give up obedience 
 entirely, or I find it prove fatiguing, because in addition to the 
 simple feeling, I have also to give it its proper place in the 
 fabric of orthodoxy, and to wield a most cumbersome machinery 
 of principles and explanations along with it. I feel the influence 
 of these systems to be most unfortunate in the pulpit. Were I 
 to accommodate to the previous state of discipline and education 
 among my hearers, I could not get in a single precept without 
 spending more than double the time necessary for announcing 
 it, in satisfying them of its due subordination to the leading 
 principles of the system. Now I would ask, Is this ever done 
 by Paul or any of the apostles ? Do they feel any restraint or 
 any hesitation in being practical ? Is not this scrupulous defer- 
 ence to the factitious orthodoxy of Calvin a principle altogether 
 foreign and subsequent to the native influence of Divine truth 
 on the heart ? With what perfect freedom from all this parade 
 and all this scrupulosity do Christ and His apostles make their 
 transition from doctrine to practice, and expand with the most 
 warm and earnest and affectionate exhortation ! No, my dear 
 sir, our divinity is not of the right kind unless it be a fair tran- 
 script of that divinity which exists in the New Testament. I 
 admit the doctrine of good works, not because it comes to me in 
 the shape of a corollary to the demonstrations of the schoolmen, 
 but because it comes to me in warm and immediate efficacy from 
 ' If ye love me, keep my commandments.' I do not think I can 
 be wrong in calling no man master but Christ ; and at all events 
 it is making faith in Him my security and my refuge. I sum- 
 mon up the conception of Jesus as my friend, and with such an 
 image in my heart, I feel the intolerance of orthodoxy stript of 
 all its terrors. I repair to the grand principle of faith as my 
 refuge not merely against the anxieties of certain guilt, but 
 against the anxieties of possible ignorance ; and that very doc- 
 trine of the sufficiency of Christ which occupies so high, though 
 not too high, a place in their systems, I convert into my defence 
 and my protection when they frown condemnation upon me. 
 That which availeth is, ' Faith working by love ;' and if the 
 love of Christ be shed abroad upon our hearts by the Holy 
 Spirit, it is to be rejoiced in as the ' pledge and the earnest of 
 oar inheritance.' This is the attainment which we must strive 
 after; and we have the highest authority for believing that
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 183 
 
 prayer and diligence and the exercises of patience and faith, are 
 means which, if strenuously persevered in, are never resorted to 
 in vain. 
 
 " Your sublime views of eternity are most congenial to me ; 
 and I can well understand the regret with which you complain 
 that they are not more habitual to you. Nothing has convinced 
 me more effectually of our fallen state than this habitual estrange- 
 ment of the mind from those high themes of faith and of eternity, 
 which, in its better moments, it acknowledges to be not merely 
 of high but of exclusive importance. The God who gives us 
 every breath, and whose sustaining hand upholds us every mo- 
 ment, should be ever present to our devotion and our thoughts. 
 It is so in heaven ; and if not so on earth, it is precisely because 
 the Bible representation is true, that the moral constitution of 
 our nature is unhinged, and that the banishment of Adam from 
 the paradise of Eden involved in it the banishment of all his 
 posterity from its exercises and its joys. We should love God 
 ' with all our heart and strength and mind,' says the first com- 
 mandment of the law ; and there is not a truth in the whole 
 compass of philosophy which rests more firmly on the Baconian 
 basis of experiment, than that in the heart and life of every in- 
 dividual who comes into the world this commandment is fallen 
 from. The law is for the direction of those who are able to keep 
 it ; but for us it serves another purpose. It instructs us, by its 
 observed violations, in the melancholy but important truth, that 
 all are ' guilty before God.' It compels us to the remedy laid 
 before us in the gospel, and is the ' schoolmaster which brings 
 us to Christ.' When you feel the wretched deficiencies of your 
 own heart, take in a full impression of its unworthiness, and do 
 not seek to protect yourself from the humiliating contemplation. 
 The protection offered us in the gospel is protection against the 
 terrors of the law, and not against the shame and the conscious- 
 ness of having violated it. ' Be not afraid, only believe,' says 
 our Saviour ; and the experience of every day carries home to 
 my heart, that the only applicable expedient for man in the 
 actual state of -his present being, is simply to take to Christ, to 
 unite with Him by faith, to approach God through that Mediator 
 who is able to save to the uttermost, to perfect our union with 
 the Saviour by doing Him the honour of trusting Him, or taking 
 Him at His word, and to look for sanctification, for heavenly 
 mindedness, for conformity to the will and image of Christ, for 
 redemption not merely from the punishment of sin, but also from
 
 ]g4 MEMOIRS OF UR. CHALMERS. 
 
 its power, for 'progressive virtue and approving heaven' to 
 look for these, and for all other spiritual blessings, as the pro- 
 mised effects of that union. If you come to the tranquillity of 
 such final conviction as this, is it possible, I ask, not to view the 
 great agent in the process of reconciliation as your friend ? and 
 can theheart of the Christian refuse the energy of His impres- 
 sive voice ' Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command 
 you ?' Virtue is not exploded ; it is hung upon a new principle 
 (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). 
 
 " I have only room for one thing more. Do not expect a 
 uniform tone of elevation. Let your motto be Though ' faint, 
 yet pursuing.' Persevere in the exercises of patience and prayer, 
 and in His good time, ' God will perfect that which concerns 
 you.' Do write me soon. I can assure you that I prize your 
 correspondence as a very great luxury and refreshment. I had 
 many things more to say to you ; and I can assure you, that the 
 more active and frequent an intercourse by letters, I will esteem 
 it the more. I shall attend to your direction about the mode of 
 conveyance ; and in the meantime receive the full assurance of 
 my regard. Yours truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 "DUNDEE, November 18, 1811. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, When you first seriously opened to me your 
 change of sentiment respecting religion, I was (to express the 
 thing with more force than elegance) neither off" nor on. I pos- 
 sessed a vague reference to its importance, and a tacit conviction 
 that it had not from me the attention it deserved; but its 
 speculative importance sunk before my practical attachment to 
 human pursuits, and my attention to it was always readily di- 
 verted by some of those lucky circumstances which are ever at 
 hand to coincide with our inclinations. ... I was, in fact, a 
 practical Deist, excepting in a kind of tenderness for some tenets, 
 and a reversionary outlook for final happiness. . . . When 
 you engaged me to a serious attention to the subject, and when 
 I promised to read Wilberforce, I consented, from the enthusiasm 
 of the moment, and I continued, more for the sake of consistency 
 than with a determination of heart. My struggles resembled 
 that of a man in sleep, who is conscious of the recurrence of a 
 frightful dream, but who in vain attempts to arouse himself, or 
 even to continue to remember that the dream is not a reality. I 
 have at length launched on the voyage, and have now the com- 
 fort to feel myself afloat. My convictions and resolutions are
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 185 
 
 more decided than they ever were at any former period. I trust 
 to God that they are the earnest of good things to come. My 
 commencement has, however, wanted continuity. I have been 
 resolute by starts, and the intervals have been filled up in the 
 same unprofitable manner as usual. This I believe brings me 
 up to my present situation. I feel the growth of a new principle, 
 but it is yet isolated and uninfluencing. I come at it with dif- 
 ficulty, and lose it with ease. Like the electric spark, it is 
 transient, and requires favourable circumstances for its excite- 
 ment. . . . My temperament of mind is very unfavourable 
 to during advancement. I want equanimity. ... A feverish 
 susceptibility, partly complexional, and partly, I am afraid, from 
 an indulgence in that worst of all dissipation, the romance of 
 feeling, makes me the sport of every flitting excitement. I am 
 of a temper exactly opposite to that which Hamlet assigns 
 Horatio : 
 
 ' A man, who Fortune's buffets and reward? 
 Has ta'en with equal thanks ; and bless'd is he 
 Whose heart and judgment are so well commingled, 
 That he is not a pipe for Fortune's linger 
 To play what stop she pleases.' 
 
 I want that due admixtion of ' heart and judgment' which forms 
 equanimity. I shall trouble you with one instance, which will 
 show you what reason I have for alarm and watchfulness. Last 
 year, about this time, I read Clarkson's 'History of the Abolition 
 of the Slave Trade.' It affected me so much, that I could not 
 venture on it through the day, but always reserved it till after 
 supper ; and often at midnight have I detected myself, with the 
 tears gushing from my eyes, raving through the room at the 
 crimes developed, and driven almost to despair, because the 
 trade did not now exist for me to abolish it ; and yet, since last 
 year, how many opportunities have I neglected when I might 
 have done good with scarcely any sacrifice ? . . . 
 
 " I take Wilberforce slowly, as I read the chapters twice. As 
 I proceed, I feel more and more delighted with his assertion of 
 the supremacy of Scripture ; and the more I can bring my mind 
 to the juxtaposition of my Bible and my duty, the more I feel 
 confidence in my procedure. The media of mixed motives do at 
 best but perplex. I am glad to acquire my rudiments in the 
 school of Wilberforce, especially as the spirit of the times is so 
 much inclined to make human ethics and metaphysics the ushers 
 to religion. Even the best friends of Christianity are often 
 inclined to be too chivalrous in this respect. They are too fond
 
 186 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of hairbreadth triumphs, and manoeuvre too much with a diversity 
 of arms. They, like Hector 
 
 ' Rejoice to shift their ground, remount the car, 
 Turn charge and answer every call of war' 
 
 while they ought rather to imitate Ajax Telamon, who cared not 
 a whit for the graces and attitudes, but firmly planted himself 
 behind his sevenfold buckler, and trusted to the momentum of 
 sinews and of bones. . 
 
 " Our Telamonian home-thrust ought, I think, to be this : 
 Christianity is either false or true ; it has high pretensions, and 
 it deserves a hearing ; for if true, it is tremendously true.' Let 
 us then investigate it, let us here exert all our intellect and all 
 our ingenuities ; but, once convinced of its truth, let us submit 
 implicitly to its decisions ; let the evidences be the fulcrum of 
 our faith, but let us not jostle the scales which the Almighty 
 has suspended. . . . 
 
 " I shall expect to hear from you soon. I shall not be long of 
 again writing you. I am, my dear Sir, yours sincerely, 
 
 JAMES ANDERSON." 
 
 " KILMANT MANSE, December 18, 1811. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have been daily in expectation of a letter 
 from you. It is true that you are not in my debt ; but the cir- 
 cumstance of your last having been written before you received 
 my intervening epistle, together with your kind intimation that 
 you meant to write again soon, have led me to look for some- 
 thing more from you. I am resolved to keep you at it; for I can 
 assure you that I feel my intercourse with you, taken in con- 
 nexion with its peculiar object, to be one of the most interesting 
 of my concerns ; and in the extreme scarcity of people who 
 have an open and decided attachment to the good cause, I feel 
 an impulse and a refreshment in your communications which I 
 cannot find in my immediate neighbourhood. Dr. Maccnlloch of 
 Dairsie is a confirmed veteran in the school of Christ, but then 
 he is at a distance ; though in substantial sentiment I trust we 
 are the same, there is a certain want of congeniality in the modes 
 of expression ; and though this should be deemed a bagatelle by 
 every mind that is purely intellectual and spiritual, yet in this 
 gross and imperfect scene it does operate as an obstruction. I 
 complain of this to the good people of Dairsie, and tell them that 
 I count it one of the obstacles which exist in this earthly taber-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 1ST 
 
 nacle to the communion of the saints. It is doubtless a corporeal 
 infirmity. The disembodied spirit will attach itself to the reality. 
 We are the poor victims of association ; and the disgust which 
 we annex to the sign is part of that relentless dominion which 
 these vile bodies exercise over us. I count it an evidence to be 
 humbly rejoiced in and thankfully acknowledged, that I am 
 getting sensibly above this prejudice that what I formerly 
 nauseated in the flavour and phraseology of Methodism, comes 
 home more graciously to my heart and that the sound faith and 
 piety of many a Christian writer have at length reconciled me to 
 certain performances, which I would within these few years have 
 turned away from as the most low and drivelling fanaticism. 
 
 " Still, however, I want your co-operation, and beg you will not 
 withhold it. In your habits of conception and language I meet 
 with no impediment whatever to the fulness of our sympathy. 
 
 " I am very much interested in the progress of your sentiments. 
 This, in the language of good but despised Christians, is called 
 the communication of your religious experience. There is fana- 
 ticism annexed to the term ; but this is a mere bugbear : and I 
 count it strange that that very evidence which is held in such 
 exclusive respect in every other department of inquiry, should 
 be so despised and laughed at when applied to the progress of 
 a human being in that greatest of all transitions, from a state 
 of estrangement to a state of intimacy with God from the terror 
 of His condemnation to an affecting sense of His favour and 
 friendship and reconciled presence from the influence of earthly 
 and debasing affections, to the influence of those new and' 
 heavenly principles which the Spirit of God establishes in the 
 heart of every believer. This is what our Saviour calls 'passed 
 from death unto life.' My prayer for us both is, that ' it may be 
 made sure,' and that ' hereby we may know that He dwelleth in 
 us, and we in Him, that He bath given us of His Spirit.' 
 
 " By the way, there is one anxiety which is apt to beset us 
 upon this subject. When you read books upon the subject, 
 you see a certain process assigned to a conversion, and in such 
 a confident and authoritative way, too, that you are apt to con- 
 ceive that this is the very process, and that there can be no 
 other. I compare it with my own history, and my own recol- 
 lections, and I am apt to be alarmed at the want of correspond- 
 ence in a good many particulars. Scott's ' Force of Truth' is 
 an example ; Doddridge's ' Rise and Progress of Eeligion in the 
 Soul,' another ; and last, though not least, the ' Pilgrim's Pro-
 
 jgg MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 gress.' I pronounce them all to be excellent, and that there 
 are many exemplifications as they describe. But the process is 
 not authoritative, nor is it universal. The Spirit taketh its own 
 way with each individual, and you know it only by its fruits. 
 I cannot say of myself that I ever felt a state of mind corre- 
 sponding to John Bunyan's Slough of Despond. Indeed I blame 
 myself most sincerely, that I cannot excite in my heart a high 
 enough conception of sin in all its malignity. I hope I have 
 the conviction, but I cannot command the degree of emotion 
 that I should like ; and in the hardness of a heart not so ten- 
 derly alive as it ought to be to the authority of my Lawgiver, 
 and the enormity of trampling upon Him, I feel how far, and 
 very far I am at this moment, from the ' measure of the stature 
 of the perfect man in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Now, what am 
 I to infer from this ? That I have not yet surmounted the im- 
 passable barrier which stands betwixt me and the gate of life ? 
 So one would suppose from John Bunyan ; and so I would sup- 
 pose myself, were it not for the kind assurance of my Saviour, 
 whose every testimony is truth, and every tone is tenderness 
 ' He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.' 
 This is my firm hold, and I will not let it go. I sicken at all 
 my own imperfect preparations. I take one decisive and imme- 
 diate step, and resign my all to the sufficiency of my Saviour. 
 I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively 
 affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient. I try 
 to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed 
 at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger with- 
 out the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation ? 
 ' Come unto me.' Do not think that it is your office to heal 
 one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal up the remainder. 
 He is the Captain of your salvation, and I take Him as such. 
 I plead His own promise, that ' Him that cometh unto me I will 
 in no wise cast out.' I come to Him with my heart such as it 
 it ; and I pray that the operation of His Spirit, and the power 
 of His sanctifying faith, would make it such as it should be. 
 That abhorrence of sin which I now feel to be in a manner 
 dead, I hope, through Him strengthening me, will be made to 
 quicken and revive. Eepentance is the gift of God ; and I look 
 to Him for the fulfilment of His gracious promise, that He who 
 ' hath given us His own Son, will also with Him freely give us 
 all things.' I see that this Son is ' exalted on high, to give 
 repentance and the remission of sins;' and I trust that that
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 189 
 
 Being who has said, ' Without me ye can do nothing,' will en- 
 able me to ' do all things in the name of Jesus.' That very 
 repentance which, in its gloomiest and most despairing form, 
 is represented by some as an indispensable step to Jesus, I now 
 see to be the daily and the growing exercise of the renewed 
 Christian that my abhorrence of sin is quickened by that very 
 faith which protects from its terrors. In the deep and mysteri- 
 ous sufferings of Christ, I see the dreadful testimony of heaven 
 against it, and feel that it should be the daily prayer of Chris- 
 tians that they may be enabled to put out from among them 
 that hateful thing for which our Saviour died. 
 
 " I do not know whether this suits you exactly, nor have I 
 any right more than others to make my process authoritative. 
 There is nothing authoritative but the Bible 1 , and I read, con 
 amore, your well-expressed sentiment upon the exclusive re- 
 verence that is due to it. Your high-toned ambition after the 
 purity of the divine life is the undoubted effect of faith after it 
 is once formed, and the best leader to it before it has taken full 
 and effectual possession of the heart. It will do what the law 
 did formerly it will serve the office of a ' schoolmaster to bring 
 you to Christ.' When a man compares his miserable execution 
 with his high conception of what is right, he is, as the Apostle 
 most significantly expresses it, ' shut up unto the faith ;' he is 
 reduced to it as his only alternative ; he makes the atonement 
 of the cross his resting-place ; he closes with Christ derives 
 all strength and nourishment from Him, as the branch does 
 from the vine. The high tone of rectitude will not be chilled, 
 but exalted at this step of the process. It will derive new energy 
 from sentiments to which it was formerly a stranger the confi- 
 dence of success, the hope of the promised assistance, and the 
 actual operation of that assistance on our hearts, redeeming 
 them from all iniquity. ' He that willeth to do the will of God 
 shall know of this doctrine whether it cometh from God.' A 
 will and an ambition to be perfect, if firmly and consistently 
 proceeded upon, will lead us to the humiliating acknowledgment, 
 that in ourselves we are helpless and irrecoverable sinners. It 
 will bring us to the foot of the cross, and lead us to take to 
 Christ as our power and wisdom and sanctification and complete 
 redemption. Yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " DUNDEE, December 8, 1811. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, . . . My letters to you are not a faithful
 
 190 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 picture of my general situation, for they are naturally the effu- 
 sions of my better moments, and they of course wear an air of 
 peace and of progress to which I cannot as yet lay claim. I 
 have indeed never possessed hours of so unportioned bliss and 
 serenity as some since I began to cleave to Christianity; for 
 I can say, even now, that my most religious hours are my 
 happiest ; but they have hitherto been separated by periods of 
 horrible disquietude and distrust. Sometimes I relapse into 
 coldness and indifference, which, after a few struggles, leave me 
 in a state of stupid torpor a state of rest which arises from the 
 absence of all tendency a state of conscious petrifaction. At 
 other times I am distracted by a thousand doubts, which flit 
 before me in undefined mazes, and obscure all my prospects. 
 Their very want f solidity adds to their terrors ; their change 
 of shape, and their exits and their entrances, only realize more 
 strongly the unseen world of possibilities. And even in my 
 best moments, I am apt to be assailed by doubts distinct in 
 their character from the former, and, if I mistake not, rightly 
 distinguished by the term misgivings. It is a kind of sink- 
 ing at heart from the downward glance of unusual elevation. 
 ... I have been hitherto such a stranger to prolonged quiet 
 and assurance, that, when I experience the quiet and assur- 
 ance of religion, I become alarmed that Christianity is too good 
 to be true, and that its security is the fever of enthusiasm. 
 But there is one awful consideration which peculiarly presses on 
 my mind, and is often like to overwhelm it. It is this : If I 
 am really on the right track, by what a complexity of causes am 
 I so ! . . .If my present determination to make Jesus my 
 guide and my refuge, be the only one which can save me from 
 eternal perdition, what an overwhelming thought, that this de- 
 termination is one of a myriad of as probable contingencies ! If, 
 among the navies that darken the ocean, there be but one ark 
 that shall outlive the storm, with what trembling step do I enter 
 in, with what tremendous ken do I inspect its identity ! Such 
 considerations are often like to overpower me. Oh, my dear sir, 
 unite your prayers with mine, that I may arrive at settled con- 
 victions. I pray to God to lead me to all truth, and all joy and 
 peace in believing ; but my very prayers need forgiveness. Oh, 
 my dear sir, if Christianity be really true, with what profound 
 gratitude ought we to approach Almighty God for having, of 
 His free-will, called us, for having made so many physical and 
 moral causes so unite as to produce our present tendencies ; and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 191 
 
 with what enlarged hearts of sympathy and benevolence ought 
 we to look around us on those who as yet ' care for none of these 
 things ! ' May God continue to be gracious, may He lead us on 
 from strength to strength, and may He render us instrumental 
 in ' winning sons and daughters to righteousness.' . . . 
 
 " Sunday, December 9. 
 
 " The above was written last night, when my mind was in a 
 state of vacillancy and discomfort. I have this morning been 
 reading my Bible, and I feel a reassurance of which I had little 
 expectation. I begin to find the New Testament my best modu- 
 lator ; it alone gives that pitch to my temper which suits my 
 existing capability. Books of devotion are accommodated to a 
 given stage of advancement, perhaps the prevailing one of the 
 author. By perusing them, I can work my mind up to their 
 elevation ; but the state is forced, and of necessity transient. 
 But in my Testament I find everything in its proper bearing. . . 
 
 " I now begin to have a taste for its direct enforcements. I 
 like to converse with it on the spot. I am ashamed to acknow- 
 ledge that this is the most recent step in my progress. At first 
 I used to read the precepts only ; or, if I happened to turn to 
 the doctrines, I found them so confused, and the reasoning so 
 unintelligible, that I soon laid them aside. ... At last, when 
 the doctrines began to command my regard, I still liked to get 
 at them by means of an interpreter, and was still averse from 
 personal colloquy. This repugnance is now extinguished, and I 
 delight in the excitement of naked contact. I now ardently 
 desire to be able to read the original Greek with facility, and to 
 pronounce the doctrines and precepts of Paul and James and 
 Jesus, with the very os rotundum which originally breathed 
 them. 
 
 " So important is the maxim, ' Drink deep, or taste not/ that 
 I now begin to find what I considered the weakest parts of the 
 Bible are the strongest. The obscurity of Paul, upon inspection, 
 I find to arise out of the closeness and concatenation of his 
 reasoning ; and, above all, the want of method and outline in 
 the New Testament, which lately struck me as a formidable ob- 
 jection, I now consider as corroborative of its peculiar character. 
 My objection was this : The Old Testament dispensation was 
 more immediately of Divine origin. The tables of the law were 
 given to Moses graven by the finger of God. The code was 
 complete and regular and sacred. We hear of nothing lost
 
 192 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 nothing surreptitiously added; whereas the expansion of the 
 New Testament scheme is much more fortuitous. No arm of 
 terrors was bared to protect it ; the propagators were exposed to 
 the greatest dangers, and escaped by the greatest hazards ; many 
 of the most important precepts were elicited by chance many 
 more have not come down to us ; many miracles are unrecorded 
 even whole epistles are lost ; while it is by the greatest good 
 luck that many false ones are not obtruded. All this, which I 
 lately considered as a formidable objection, I now think a strong 
 confirmation of the peculiar nature of Christianity. The religion 
 of the Jews was a religion of diplomacy and legal enforcement : 
 everything was decided by an appeal to laws, and accordingly 
 the laws were arranged and numbered. But the religion of Jesus 
 is a religion of principle, suggestive, by its very nature, of a 
 stainless morality. Accordingly, there is not the same anxiety 
 as to its outward ' form and pressure.' The internal principle is 
 the essential, and with this everything harmonizes : e. g., the 
 scheme was not divulged amid thunders and tempests, for per- 
 suasion is the surest appeal to the heart. Its propagators were 
 obnoxious to ordinary mishaps, for by their endurance they en- 
 forced the principle they promulgated. False teachers made 
 their appearance, for their detection put the principle in action 
 (1 John iv. 6). The precepts were not methodized, for they 
 flow as corollaries from the principle. This latter circumstance 
 in Paul's writings is very remarkable. After putting the doc- 
 trine of faith on its proper basis with an elaboration and a copi- 
 ousness which set him before you in all the struggles of intellect, 
 and with an apparent dread of omitting any applicable elucida- 
 tion ; after securing this point, he suddenly relaxes, and, with a 
 great deal of engagement, proceeds to throw off his miscellaneous 
 precepts. ... I shall expect to hear from you soon. I am, my 
 dear Sir, yours, JAMES ANDERSON." 
 
 u KILMANT MANSE, December 23, 1811. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, ... I am charmed to understand the 
 tranquillizing effect of the Bible upon you. Let me therefore 
 recommend a small treatise, entitled 'Clarke's Promises,' in 
 which he lays_ before you a list of all the promises annexed to 
 particular duties, or adapted to particular situations. You have 
 nothing of his own ; it is a mere collection of texts. I lately 
 took it up when under one of those visitations of perplexity and 
 distrust which you describe, and it did what all my own Intel-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE "WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 193 
 
 lectual processes were unable to accomplish it calmed and re- 
 assured me. Among the splendid galaxy of comfort which his 
 page of quotations laid before me, I was particularly charmed 
 with the two following : 
 
 " ' Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall 
 be established.' Prov. xvi. 3. 
 
 " ' It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait 
 for the salvation of the Lord.' Lam. iii. 26. 
 
 " Go on and prosper, my dear sir ; and my fervent prayer is, 
 that you be ' rooted and built up in Christ, and stablished in the 
 faith.' Yours, with much regard, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 "DUNDEE, January 30, 1812. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I feel a lively interest on this subject ; but 
 every day brings me mortifying proofs that even zeal on religious 
 subjects does not imply ultimate Christianity the regulation of 
 the heart and the conduct. My progress here is imperceptible, 
 although, without such progress, I know the Bible to be a dead 
 letter. It is easy to declaim about the cause of Christianity ; 
 but the gfreat concern of the individual is his own soul ; and I 
 am short, far short, of that spirit which delights in the sacrifice 
 of which the world never hears, and which does all things in the 
 simplicity of faith in Jesus. On perusing my Journal, I am dis- 
 countenanced at the vacillation, and the coldness, and the folly 
 it exhibits, and still more that, with this record before me, I still 
 go on to accumulate its accusations. Yours, 
 
 JAMES ANDERSON." 
 
 " KILMANY MANSE, February 5, 1812. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, ... I can well understand what you 
 state to me in your last, that zeal raised by the excitement of a 
 particular object may be found to consist with a faulty or diseased 
 constitution of the inner man. But on the other hand, I have 
 to state to you, that the peace and the joy and the delight 
 attending what you have so aptly denominated the closer inti- 
 macies of the Christian, appear to me to be founded not on the 
 complacency of the heart in its own virtues, but on the confiding 
 repose of an humble and acquiescing spirit when it commits all 
 to the sufficiency of Christ its Saviour. It is peace and joy in 
 believing. Its plea is not that its sins are few, but that the 
 mercies of God in Christ are great. The rejoicing of its hope 
 lies not in its wn attainments, but in the frankness and kind- 
 
 M
 
 ]94 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ness and liberality of the invitation. Where sin abounded, grace 
 much more abounds; and the giving up of all in quiet and 
 thankful confidence to a Mediator and High Priest, forms the 
 starting-point from which I date its only sure and effectual pro- 
 gress in the accomplishments of the Christian. I see all this, 
 though, like yourself, I have not attained to it. I do not yet 
 hold fast my confidence ; but I pray both in your behalf and in 
 my own, that we may, in the good time of an all-wise God, 
 reach this most desirable consummation. In the meantime, ' it 
 is good for a man to hope and quietly to wait for the salvation of 
 the Lord.' 
 
 " I conclude with an extract from Baxter. He is treating of 
 an extreme case, though both of us perhaps may feel in some 
 degree the application to ourselves : 
 
 " ' As we have need to call the thoughts of careless sinners 
 inwards, and turn them from the creature and sin upon them- 
 selves ; so we have need to call the thoughts of self-perplexing 
 melancholy persons outwards, for it is their disease to be still 
 grinding upon themselves. . . . When you are poring on 
 your hearts to search whether the love of God be there or no, it 
 were wiser to be thinking of the infinite amiableriess of God, and 
 that will cause it whether it were there before or not. So, in- 
 stead of poring on your hearts to know whether they are set on 
 heaven, lift up your thoughts to heaven, and think of its glory, 
 and that will raise them thither, and give you and shew you that 
 which you were searching for. Bestow that time in planting 
 holy desires in the garden of your heart which you bestow in 
 routing and puzzling yourselves in searching whether it be there 
 already. We are such dark confused things, that a sight of our- 
 selves is enough to raise a loathing and horror in our minds, and 
 make them melancholy. But in God and glory there is nothing 
 to discourage our thoughts, but all to delight them if Satan do 
 not misrepresent them to us.' 
 
 " So far Baxter. My prayer to God is for your soul's health. 
 I long to see you ; and in the meantime rest assured, that my 
 friendship and correspondence with you fill up a mighty space in 
 the circle of my concerns. Yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 ^ In the course of a few months Mr. Anderson's religious con- 
 victions became so strong, and his zeal so irrepressible, that he 
 resolved to relinquish business, and devote himself to the Chris-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. JAMES ANDERSON. 195 
 
 tian ministry. With the view of preparing for the sacred office, 
 he repaired to Edinburgh, and in the session of 1812-13, enrolled 
 himself as a student of moral philosophy. It was only the third 
 winter after the appointment of Dr. Thomas Brown as Mr. 
 Stewart's successor, and the excitement had not yet subsided 
 which attended the first delivery of that brilliant course of lec- 
 tures, in which the most subtle metaphysical analysis robed 
 itself in the drapery of a most fascinating eloquence. Mr. An- 
 derson's excitable spirit was thrown into the tumults of a new, 
 and, in some respects, conflicting mental agitation. Hushing with 
 eager footstep into the fresh regions of speculation which were 
 open to him, he even pressed beyond the boundaries which his 
 new guide had traced. His genius had earned for him the 
 highest university honours, and raised the brightest expectations 
 both of his eminence in society and usefulness in the Church ; 
 but, although he still survives, it pleased God to disappoint 
 these hopes by one of those sovereign and distressful dispensa- 
 tions of His providence, for the full explanation of which we 
 must wait " till time is exhausted, and we can look back on these 
 scenes of struggle from the realms of security." * 
 
 * The reader will find a continuation of this correspondence with Mr, James Anderson in 
 "A Selection from the Correspondence of the late Thomas Chalmers', D.D., LL.D." C'on- 
 suible & Co., Edinburgh. 1853.
 
 196 MEMOIRS OF Dll. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 K!..;tl. Vi: AXI) EARNEST STUDY OF THE BIBLE FORMATION OP THE BRITISH 
 
 AND FOKEIGX BIBLE SOCIETY CONSTITUTION OF THE K1LMANY BIBLE AS- 
 SOCIATION THE ACCUMULATION OF LITTLES JOURNAL OF 1812 HIS MAR- 
 
 K1AGE. 
 
 RICHARD BAXTER, who at this period was a favourite author 
 with Mr. Chalmers, has left behind him this impressive testi- 
 mony To tell you the truth, while I busily read what other 
 men said in their controversies, my mind was so prepossessed 
 with their notions, that I could not possibly see the truth in its 
 own native and naked evidence; and when I entered into public 
 disputations, though I was truly willing to know the truth, my 
 mind was so forestalled with borrowed notions, that I chiefly 
 studied how to make good the opinions which I had received, 
 and ran further from the truth. Yea, when I read the truth, I 
 did not consider and understand it ; and when I heard it from 
 them whom I opposed in wrangling disputations, or read it in 
 books of controversy, I discerned it least of all ; till at last, being 
 in my sickness cast far from home, where I had no book but my 
 Bible, I set myself to study the truth from thence ; and so, by 
 the blessing of God, discovered more in one week than I had 
 done before in seventeen years' reading, hearing, and wrangling." 
 
 His own intuitive sagacity suggested to Mr. Chalmers what 
 experience had taught Baxter. From the beginning of his re- 
 ligious course, he was most sensitively afraid lest the truth, as 
 God had revealed it, should come to him distorted or mutilated, 
 because coming in the form in which it was presented by human 
 systems or in theological controversies. His primary and most 
 earnest effort was to derive his Christianity immediately from 
 the Divine Oracles to lay his whole being broadly open to 
 take off from the sacred page the exact and the full impression 
 of Divine truth, in the very forms and proportions in which it 
 was there set forth. Early in the year upon which we are now 
 entering, we find him writing to his younger brother Patrick : 
 
 I have been too long of answering your letter, from the per- 
 usal of which I obtained the truest satisfaction; It would give
 
 RIGHT WAY OF READING THE BIBLE. 197 
 
 me great pleasure to hear that you had read the books recom- 
 mended in my last, and how you liked them. I look upon 
 Baxter and Doddridge as two most impressive writers, and from 
 whom you are most likely to carry away the impression that a 
 preparation for eternity should be the main business and anxiety 
 of time. But, after all, the Bible should be the daily exercise 
 of those who have decidedly embarked in this great business, 
 and if read with the earnest sense and feeling of its being 
 God's message if perused with the same awe and veneration 
 and confidence, as if the words were actually coming out of His 
 mouth if, while you read, you read with the desire and the 
 prayer that it might be with understanding and profit, you are 
 in a far more direct road to 'becoming wise unto salvation' than 
 any other that can possibly be recommended to you. There is 
 no subject on which people are readier to form rash opinions 
 than religion. The Bible is the best corrective to these. A 
 man should sit down to it with the determination of taking his 
 lesson just as he finds it of founding his creed upon the sole 
 principle of ' Thus saith the Lord,' and deriving his every idea 
 and his every impression of religious truth from the authentic 
 record of God's will."* 
 
 His regular and earnest study of the Bible was one of the first 
 and most noticeable effects of Mr. Chalmers's conversion. His 
 nearest neighbour and most frequent visitor was old John Bon- 
 thron, who, having once seen better days, was admitted to an 
 easy and privileged familiarity, in the exercise of which one day 
 before the memorable illness, he said to Mr. Chalmers " I find 
 you aye busy, sir, with one thing or another ; but come when I 
 may, I never find you at your studies for the Sabbath." " Oh, 
 an hour or two on the Saturday evening is quite enough for 
 that," was the minister's answer. But now the change had 
 come, and John, on entering the manse, often found Mr. Chal- 
 mers poring eagerly over the pages of the Bible. The difference 
 was too striking to escape notice, and with the freedom given 
 him, which he was ready enough to use, he said, " I never come 
 in now, sir, but I find you aye at your Bible." " All too little, 
 John, all too little," was the significant reply. 
 
 How much time was devoted to this study the earlier jour- 
 nals do not enable us to ascertain. On the 29th September of 
 this year he makes the following entry : " I finished this day 
 my perusal of the New Testament by daily chapters, in which 
 
 * From a Letter dated May 21. 1812.
 
 jgg MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 my object was to commit striking passages to memory. I mean 
 to begin its perusal anew, in which this object shall be revised, 
 and the object of fixing upon one sentiment of the chapter for 
 habitual and recurring contemplation through the day shall be 
 added to the former." 
 
 That he might come into immediate contact with the truth m 
 the very words in which it was first made known, he recom- 
 menced his study of the Greek and Hebrew languages. " I 
 visited him," says his old neighbour, Mr. Smith, " in the year 
 1811. At that time he informed me that he had determined to 
 devote three years to the study of the New Testament in the 
 original language, and he asked me what were the books best 
 adapted to give him assistance, his knowledge of that class of 
 books being then but limited. As his zeal was burning with a 
 pure and ardent flame, I have little doubt that he put into exe- 
 cution the resolution which he had formed." The Journal which 
 follows tells how the purpose was fulfilled. 
 
 At the very time when Mr. Chalmers came to know the power 
 and preciousness of the sacred volume, the enthusiasm on behalf 
 of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which had been insti- 
 tuted a few years before, was at its height. " The men who 
 then lived are now rapidly passing away, but those who yet 
 survive certainly owe it to themselves, in connexion with the 
 generations they are so soon to leave, to inform them fully of 
 the deep sensation then felt, and the joy with which the simple 
 proposal respecting the sacred volume was then hailed through- 
 out the kingdom. . . . The formation of this Society produced 
 an effect altogether unprecedented ; indeed the mere announce- 
 ment ran throughout every denomination in the kingdom, and 
 conveyed an impulse at once the most powerful and the most 
 extensive under which the Christians of this country had ever 
 come."* 
 
 It was the first great Christian enterprise which won the sym- 
 pathies and enlisted the public advocacy of Mr. Chalmers. In 
 design so simple and comprehensive to take the pure and un- 
 mixed seed of the word, and scatter it wide as the human family ; 
 in spirit so catholic offering a common meeting-ground to all 
 Protestant Christendom, the first presented since the days of the 
 Reformation an evangelical alliance of the widest scope, and 
 with a distinct and definite work to do the Bible Society " rose 
 in his estimation as the most magnificent scheme that ever was 
 
 1 " Annalj of the English Bible," by Christopher Anderson, vol. ii. p. 610.
 
 BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY. 199 
 
 instituted for bettering the moral condition of the species." A 
 glow of delighted anticipation was kindled over the pages which 
 described its rapid progress and brightening prospects a glow 
 which he thus sought at once to express and to communicate. 
 " The whole surface of England is in a blaze of enthusiasm ; 
 the Society already enrols among her children the purest, the 
 most enlightened, the most venerable names in our sister Esta- 
 blishment ; she is drawing around her all that is great in the 
 politics, and all that is liberal in the theology of England. The 
 nobles of the land are throwing in their splendid donations, and 
 the poor widow is casting her mite into the treasury of Christian 
 beneficence. The Bible Society of London has given an impulse 
 to the whole population of Christendom ; and the general demand 
 is for the law and for the testimony. Every eye is withdrawing 
 from the paltry modifications of sect and of system, and pointing 
 to that light which beams pure and unvitiated from the original 
 sources of inspiration. To have circulated the book of God in 
 127 languages to have put no less than two millions and a half 
 copies in the hands of the great human family to have origina- 
 ted many new translations, and to have revived or put into fresh 
 circulation many old ones to have sent forth emissaries to every 
 quarter of the globe, and that, too, at the very time when the 
 din of hostility was loud among the nations to have found a 
 way for its peaceful embassies among all the regions which they 
 occupy to have plied its enterprise with so much vigour when 
 war rung its alarms all over Europe to have made its silent 
 progress, and moved on magnificently in the prosecution of its 
 ^reat task, when the panorama of armies, and fleets, and shifting 
 monarchies, was fastening almost every eye, and the general 
 rrind of the world was nearly all taken up with the strife and 
 tae eagerness of its restless politics :**- these are noble doings, 
 
 * It was while England was at war with Holland, Spain. France, and America, that the 
 fint Bible Society was formed : a very limited association, confining itself exclusively to the 
 object of providing our own soldiers and sailors v. ith the word of life. The fiRt ship among 
 whose crew the Scriptures were thus distributed was the Royal George, which had 400 copies 
 of (he Society's Bibles on board "when Kempenfelt went down with twice four hundred 
 mea" The British and Foreign Bible Society was instituted in 1804. At the bombardment 
 of Copenhagen, two shel's entered the buildings which contained many thousand copies of 
 the Scriptures, supplied by the London Society. These buildings were nearly burnt to the 
 ground that part only escaping in which the Bibles were deposited. The Bibles which BO 
 narrowly escaped were destined for Iceland, an island in the strange condition of having 
 50,00t inhabitants, nearly all of whom could read and write, yet almost entirely without 
 printed books, the want being supplied by transcription. When the Britbh Society turned 
 their attention to it, they found that there were not fifty Bibles in the island. " It is a sin- 
 gular circumstance in the history of European literature, that letters highly flourished in 
 Iceland between the 10th and 14th century. At a period when every art and science seemed 
 to be expelled from the Continent, they still continued to exist in no inconsiderable degree ia
 
 200 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and to my eye they constitute one of the finest and most impos- 
 ing spectacles in the moral history of the species." 
 
 And it was not to mere eloquent expressions that his advocacy 
 was confined. While striving in the pulpit and through the 
 press, at county meetings, and before church-courts, to vindicate 
 the cause of the Bible Society, and to raise it above reproach, 
 his chief efforts were directed to the establishment of parochial 
 associations. Impressed both by the principle and the results 
 of a system of penny-a-week subscriptions, which had been re- 
 cently pursued by the " Aberdeen Female Servants' Society for 
 promoting the diffusion of the Scriptures," admiring this system 
 as one which brought in every class of the community as con- 
 tributors, and had already proved itself to be pre-eminently 
 productive, he resolved to apply it to his own parish, and to 
 recommend it in every quarter where his influence could effec- 
 tively be employed. When the Kilmany Bible Association was 
 formed, the subscriptions were strictly limited to a penny a week 
 
 those who desired to*give more doing it, either in the way of 
 donation, or by entering the names of different members of their 
 families as contributors. At the very first proposal of this scheme, 
 it was objected to it, that it was imposing a burden on the poor. 
 In the first sermon which he preached on behalf of the Bible 
 Society, this objection was indignantly repelled. " ' What,' say 
 some, ' will you take from the poor ? ' No : we do not take ; 
 
 it is they who give. It is you who impute to them a gross- 
 ness and a want of generosity which do not belong to them. 
 You have the indelicacy to sit in judgment on their circum- 
 stances and their feelings. It is you who think of them sc 
 unworthily, that you cannot conceive how truth and benevolence 
 should be objects to them ; and that, after they have got tha 
 meat to feed, the housefrto shelter, the raiment to cover then, 
 there is nothing else that they will bestow a penny upon. They 
 may not be able to express their feelings on a suspicion so un- 
 generous, but I shall do it for them. We have souls as well as 
 you, and precious to our hearts is the Saviour who died for them. 
 It is true we have our distresses, but these have bound us more 
 firmly to our Bibles ; and it is the desire of our hearts that a 
 gift so precious should be sent to the poor of other countries. 
 The word of God is our hope and our rejoicing : we desire that 
 
 &nd inho ?P itab1 ''knd. The first edition of the Bible in Icelandic is said to 
 jeen finished in the 15th century; and if so, they enjoyed this precious treasure in 
 tongue previous to any nation in modern Europe." Second Report of the Edin- 
 Durgn Bible Society.
 
 THE ACCUMULATION OF LITTLES. 201 
 
 it may be theirs also ; that the wandering savage may know it 
 and be glad ; and the poor negro, under the lash of his master, 
 may be told of a Master in heaven who is full of pity and full 
 of tenderness. Do you think that sympathy for such as these 
 is your peculiar attribute ? Know that our hearts are made of 
 the same materials with your own, that we can feel as well as 
 you, and out of the earnings of a hard and an honest industry 
 we shall give an offering to the cause ; nor shall we cease our 
 exertions till the message of salvation be carried round the globe, 
 and made known to the countless millions who live in guilt and 
 who die in darkness. Think of the poor widow, my brethren, 
 and learn from her that neither the exercise nor the reward of 
 charity is confined to the higher orders of society : and, to en- 
 courage you still more to the support of the good cause, though 
 your individual offering be small, the number of individuals 
 among you is great, and the accumulation of your littles will 
 form into a mightier sum than all the united gifts that the rich 
 have yet thrown into the treasury. What, do you not know 
 that a penny a week from each householder in Britain amounts 
 to half-a-million of pounds sterling in the year, and that this is 
 a sum larger by sixteen times than any yearly income which 
 the Bible Society has received from its wealthy and numerous 
 subscribers ? Yes, my brethren, though much has been done, 
 there is much to do ; and you, by the steadiness with which you 
 keep up your liberality, by your not being weary in this work 
 of well-doing, by the manly and Christian perseverance with 
 which you hold fast by so righteous a cause, by the example 
 which you maintain of a vigorous and well-conducted system, 
 may not only extend the number of subscribers to your own 
 society, but may encourage the formation of similar institutions 
 in the neighbourhood around you. I long to see the day, nor 
 do I despair of seeing it, when every parish shall have a Chris- 
 tian society, when not a district of the land shall be left un- 
 cultivated, but shall yield a produce to the cause of the Saviour, 
 when these lesser streams shall form into a mighty torrent 
 to carry richness and fertility into the dry and desolate regions 
 of the world, and when Britain, high in arms and in political 
 influence, shall earn a more permanent glory, by being the dis- 
 penser of light and power, and the message of Heaven to the 
 remotest nations." 
 
 To trace his progress, let us return to the Journal of 1812 :
 
 202 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Sunday Jan. 5, 1812. Went over to Balraerino after break- 
 fast and preached. Dined at Naughton ; and gave the evening 
 to Sabbath exercises, though a good deal intermingled with 
 worldly subjects. God, make me wise and useful in conver- 
 sation, and, above all, improve my gift of prayer ; and give me 
 a power and a variety of expression to suit all cases, and corre- 
 spond to all the different sentiments of faith and piety. Must 
 aim at the improvement of this faculty ; and I implore the 
 blessing of heaven upon the endeavour. 
 
 "Jan. 6. I am out of all patience with Macknight, who is 
 really a most tedious and heavy writer. 
 
 " Jan. 7. I mean to give my main strength this year to the 
 composition of sermons. 
 
 "Jan. 8. I am always pleased with Macknight when he 
 assumes the capacity of a Scripture critic in his ' Credibility.' 
 His exposition of some prophecies in the Revelation is highly 
 interesting, though perhaps a little fanciful, and too far pursued 
 in some things. 
 
 " Jan. 9. Understand that a Bible Society has been formed 
 at Rathillet ; and this is in several respects a very interesting 
 trial, on various principles, to myself. I had conferred with 
 Mr. Johnston* previously upon the subject, and there was great 
 apparent frankness and cordiality betwixt us ; there was latterly, 
 however, a falling off from this, and it has terminated in the 
 institution of a separate society, without my knowing, or being 
 at all consulted about it. This want of confidence is unpleasant, 
 and tends to affect my personal feelings of friendship towards 
 Mr. Johnston. At the same time, I must make allowances for 
 the peculiar footing on which he stands with his people ; and 
 the fact that his people were greatly more disposed towards the 
 measure than mine, must form a great abatement to those un- 
 pleasant feelings, which arise from Mr. Johnston's desire to 
 secure a credit and a distinction in the business which he was 
 so far entitled to. So much for the question, as it affects us 
 individually. But let this never be an obstruction in the way 
 of public utility ; and in as far as my future attempts for the 
 Bible Society are concerned, I do think that this separate society 
 gives a sectarian form to the thing, which must operate to its 
 prejudice. What we ought to have done should have been to 
 frame our regulations, and choose our office-bearers in concert. 
 It should have appeared at the very outset as a liberal and catholic 
 
 * The minister of the Secession Church at Rathillet.
 
 JOURNAL. 203 
 
 combination that would have served as an effectual example 
 to other parishes. The members of a meeting-house combining 
 to form such a society, does not form that kind of example. Let 
 me, therefore, wait the progress of events. The great point is 
 to serve the institution in the most effectual manner. If, in 
 point of fact, there is a general disposition to support the society 
 in the present form, good and well ; if not, a parish society may 
 still be formed and a greater fund is raised, I believe, from a 
 number of separate institutions than from a general one. Let 
 me further reflect that I have not been so zealous or active as 
 Mr. Johnston that I have not the title to claim distinction in 
 this business, and that soreness on this ground should be done 
 away. In the meantime, let me be guarded and mild ; and I 
 pray God for grace to help me in the time of need. Finished 
 Macknight's Credibility, and began Paley's Horae Paulinae. 
 
 " Jan. 10. Mr. Johnston 'called. He has chosen all the 
 office-bearers out of his own people ; and I insisted on the sec- 
 tarian complexion which was thus given to the whole affair. It 
 has landed me in some perplexity. 
 
 "Sunday, Jan. 12. Preached as usual. Mr. Morton came 
 upon me before sermon, dined, and left me in the evening. I 
 asked Mr. Bonthron, Mr. Edie, and Robert to dine along with 
 him. I am not altogether satisfied with this ; bad in point of 
 example ; and, oh ! at what a distance from the themes of the 
 eternal Sabbath was the conversation of our company. God, 
 give light and direction from on high. I pray for a continued 
 direction of mind to the things of eternity. 
 
 " Jan. 15. Married my dear Jane to Mr. Morton. Break- 
 fasted in Anster, and rode in cavalcade to Mrs. Morton's, Flisk, 
 where we dined : but I was so overpowered with drowsiness, and 
 had so little sleep last night, that I was in a state of perfect 
 apathy. 
 
 " Jan. 20. Had a numerous marriage-party to dinner ; and 
 kept it up with music and dancing to betwixt one and two in 
 the morning. Was in a divided state of purpose about family 
 worship in the former part of the day, and had it not in the 
 evening. 
 
 " Jan. 23. I took a hurried adieu of my clear Jane, whose de- 
 parture from Kilmany threw me into repeated fits of tenderness." 
 
 The tenderness of this adieu was greatly heightened by the 
 thought of the distance to which his favourite sister was about
 
 204 MEMOIRS OF PR. CHALMERS. 
 
 to be withdrawn. Mr. Morton's family lived in the neighbouring 
 parish of Flisk ; but he had himself resided for some years in 
 England, and had now settled near Dulverton, in Somersetshire. 
 But in Mr. Chalmers's regrets our readers will scarcely share, 
 inasmuch as this separation originated that most familiar and 
 most affectionate correspondence by which our following pages 
 will be largely enriched. For some time before her marriage, his 
 sister had been in very delicate health, and he trembled for the 
 effect of all the visiting which awaited her in Scotland, followed 
 by the fatigue of a tedious journey of three or four days' length. 
 He was especially apprehensive of Edinburgh, where he could 
 reckon up no less than six-and-thirty cousins. To give her the 
 full benefit of the principle, forewarned, forearmed, he wrote 
 to her a few days after her marriage : " Would it not be well 
 that your visit to St. John Street were of as private and domestic 
 a nature as possible ; and could not a previous letter to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Cowan make it be understood by all your friends that as 
 your main object was to get forward with as little fatigue and 
 exhaustion as possible, you would confine yourself to receiving 
 calls, and entreat them to save you the fatigue of having large 
 parties at their house on your account? I beg it to be under- 
 stood all along that everything I advance is in the humble form 
 of a suggestion. 1 have therefore further to state it to you, as 
 my opinion, that there is the greatest call upon you to keep on 
 the defence against the exactions of those who will multiply days 
 and dinners upon you, though your health, and convenience, and 
 substantial enjoyment should perish in this wretched round of 
 insignificance and folly. After Mr. Morton left me, I fell in 
 again with Mr. Gillespie, who said the most civil things of you, 
 apologized for not including you in his invitation to Mr. Morton, 
 asked if I could name a day for you dining at Mountquhannie, 
 and said that Mrs. Gillespie would call, if she knew the when 
 and the where. I took it upon me to evade all their civilities in 
 the most graceful manner possible ; and with that attention to 
 one's real wishes which ever accompanies true politeness, he sur- 
 rendered his proposal to our accommodation, and did not, like 
 people who have nothing of politeness but its heartless exterior, 
 fasten himself upon you like a horse-leech till he had got the 
 thing out of you that he wanted. By the way, you will perceive 
 that it does not lie within the limits of human strength to com- 
 ply with every invitation. Do you your uttermost, you will 
 leave people disappointed, or, to speak more correctly, affecting
 
 A DISAPPOINTMENT. 205 
 
 to be disappointed. Since people then are sure to be disappointed 
 at all events, is it not worth all the difference between taking- 
 things easily and overstraining matters, just to make the number 
 of these people a little greater than you at one time counted on ? 
 Mr. Morton will forgive all this interference. He will put it to 
 the true account my love for you, and my ardent wish to re- 
 move every obstacle to your comfort." 
 
 A few days after this letter was written, the intelligence 
 reached Anstruther and Kilmauy that the Court of Session had 
 granted a much smaller augmentation of his stipend than he had 
 anticipated. Knowing the affectionate interest which Mrs. Mor- 
 ton took in this affair, he wrote to her at Anstruther : " As it 
 is very likely that your disappointment was greater than my 
 own, I hasten to mitigate the pain thereof by assuring you, that 
 though the augmentation granted be considerably less than I ex- 
 pected, I, upon the whole, feel quietly and pleasurably thereanent. 
 It is true I have got ,60 a year less than I asked and had some 
 reason to look for, but then it is 60 a year more than I at pre- 
 sent enjoy. The only effect then of this decreet of the Court of 
 Teinds is, that it has added to my determination not to marry, 
 and in so far I am obliged to them. I never intended to save 
 money, and with my income as it is, I shall be able to live easily, 
 indulge in a good many literary expenses, and command an occa- 
 sional jaunt to London. My agent advises a reclaiming petition 
 a sort of last effort for a greater augmentation, and I believe 
 that I shall make the experiment." The making of the experi- 
 ment carried him to Edinburgh a short time before his sister's 
 arrival. " My object in writing at present," he says in a letter 
 to her, dated 1st February, " is to inform you that the scarlet 
 fever has broken out in Mr. Cowan's of the Canongate. I supped 
 in St. John Street, and the near connexion of the two houses 
 and families did not occur to me ; but it occurs to me now, and 
 I think that you should write to Mr. Alexander Cowan, and take 
 his friendly opinion upon the propriety of your exposing yourself 
 and Helen to infection. It would be the very perfection of false 
 politeness if Mr. Cowan were kindly and hospitably to insist on 
 his dear and much-loved friends to take up their abode with him, 
 and, even though a scarlet fever should be the consequence, to 
 look upon that as a mere bagatelle in the way of those esta- 
 blished gentilities whose claims nothing can be suffered to super- 
 sede. He is too sensible a fellow, however, for that, and I am
 
 006 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 happy to think that parties either within or without doors are not 
 
 particularly wished for in the present instance. I met the , 
 
 and they insist upon your not using the Edinburgh folk ill. I 
 would rather undertake to eat one of Andrew Gray's fat bullocks 
 in a month than be forced to eat my way for a month through the 
 invitations of this multitude whom no man can number. Give 
 my compliments to papa, mamma, brothers, sisters, aunt, and if 
 there be any cousins or second cousins within the reach of your 
 hearing, you may offer the kindest expressions from me. My 
 voice, when tuned to the subject of cousins, is something like 
 Charles's bagpipe, softened by distance." The formidable visit 
 was rendered not only a harmless but most agreeable one, 
 through the kind consideration of his relatives in Edinburgh. 
 Mr. Chalmers accompanied the marriage party as far as Carlisle, 
 and on reaching Kilmany, wrote to Mr. Morton : " I waited in 
 Edinburgh till I learned the fate of my reclaiming petition. It 
 was given against me. ... I left Edinburgh on the Thursday, 
 and, by the way, you may tell Jane that I wrote to Mr. Cowan 
 from Hawick, that I called on the s, that I had two charm- 
 ing tete-d-tete at St. John Street ; and, in a word, that I did not 
 leave Edinburgh till I had succeeded in re-establishing the most 
 entire cordiality of my feelings with every cousin and second 
 cousin that I got within scent of." We have, however, some- 
 what anticipated the Journal, to which we must return. 
 
 " Jan. 24. The decisive information at length came that I 
 had only got three chalders of augmentation where I asked and 
 had some reason to look for six. Let me struggle against the 
 disappointment. God, give me that great gain which lies in 
 godliness with contentment. In waiting for the intelligence, 
 I disappointed a party who expected me at an examination. 
 This must never be repeated. God, save me from dreaming 
 indolence from unproductive reverie from delusive procras- 
 tination from languor, heartlessness, or discouragement in the 
 great work of gaining sons and daughters unto righteousness. 
 
 "Sunday, Feb. 9. Preached for Mr. Thomson this after- 
 noon in the New Greyfriars. Dined at Mr. Thomson's with 
 Dr. Fleming. 
 
 "Feb. 10. Breakfasted in Mr. Cowan's. Went to the Lan- 
 caster School on the Calton Hill with Mr. Andrew Thomson. 
 Left Edinburgh in the coach for Carlisle with the marriage party. 
 Supped at Hawick, and wrote a hurried letter to Dr. Charters. 
 Arrived at Carlisle by six in the morning next day. While I
 
 JOURNAL. 207 
 
 transport myself to this new scene and this new situation, let me 
 carry all my habitual principles along with me, and think that 
 it is the same God who reigns over all, and the same Son of God 
 by whom the worlds were created. God, let me never be 
 thrown off my guard by fatigue, or variety, or anything that 
 threatens to loosen the reign of principle in my heart. 
 
 " Feb. 13. Sauntered all forenoon with Dr. Charters. There 
 is a greater want of congeniality betwixt me and the Doctor 
 than formerly, though still I can perceive that there is a sub- 
 stantial agreement of opinion upon a number of points. We 
 are not called upon to judge, but we are called upon to have 
 the charity which believeth all things. Am reading in the ' Life 
 of Baxter,' by himself. 
 
 " Feb. 14. Dined and spent another congenial evening with 
 Dr. Charters. I would fain hope that vital Christianity has in- 
 fluence and operation on those minds which appear to me under 
 the disguise of a language and mode of conception that differ 
 essentially from my own. 
 
 "Sunday, Feb. 16. Preached at Wilton, and my principles 
 on the incompetency of reason to decide upon the subject of re- 
 velation from previous and independent materials of its own, are 
 evidently most troublesome and offensive to Dr. Charters. I 
 was commented on with passion and severity in the evening; 
 and while this opposition on his part establishes my opinion as 
 to the insecurity of his speculations, let me also convert it into 
 a trial of principle and charity. I feel more and more my de- 
 ficiency considered as a candidate for heaven. God, may my 
 soul and its interest be the uppermost considerations of my heart. 
 Sanctify me by Thy Spirit. Call me effectually. Work in me 
 the work of faith with power. May this faith work by love, and 
 may the love yield obedience. God, perfect in me the faith, 
 the repentance, and the new obedience of the gospel. I am de- 
 lighted with the Doctor's parish library, and have some floating 
 conceptions of a similar institution in my parish. Let me not 
 implicate myself by any vow. Let me wait quietly the progress 
 of events ; and in the meantime, my God, fill me with charity 
 and zeal for good works. 
 
 " Feb. 19. My reclaiming petition thrown out this day, and 
 a final end put to all my hopes of a greater augmentation. Ex- 
 tinguish all covetousness, and let patience and good-will have 
 their perfect work in my heart. 
 
 " Feb. 21. Was powerless all day. Had intended to prepare
 
 208 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 myself for the opening of the Dundee Bible Society on Monday, 
 but was quite incapable. ' You may tell Jane that such has 
 been the effect of James Anderson's communications relative to 
 a Bible Society, that a general meeting of the inhabitants was 
 held in Dundee on Monday last, and a most respectable associa- 
 tion formed. I have done nothing yet in my small way, but I 
 have no doubt that an institution will soon be formed in the 
 parish. I see that they are forming at a prodigious rate in 
 England. I wish you could get Buchanan's ' Christian Re- 
 searches in India' to your library at Dulverton. It is, in the 
 first place, a most entertaining book ; and in point of incident, 
 adventure, variety, and agreeable information, possesses all the 
 attractions of a book of travels of the very first stamp ; and in 
 the second place, it leaves a most decided impression in favour 
 of Bible Societies, and lets you into the entire practicability of 
 throwing in Christianity among the half- civilized nations of 
 Asia. I know not a book better calculated to rescue these 
 societies from all those imputations of fanaticism which have 
 been so plentifully thrown upon them both in this neighbourhood 
 and in other parts of the island. ... I have been left to myself 
 since I came here, and am strongly disposed to persist in this 
 scheme of solitude. I shall be happy to see friends at all times, 
 but what Jane understands me to allude to is, that I am deter- 
 mined that no wife shall break in upon the quietness of my 
 retirement. This is a subject on which she and I have all 
 along differed.' Extract from letter to Mr. Morton, dated 29th 
 February. 
 
 "Sunday, March 1. Preached as usual. Alexander Pater- 
 son, who called on me yesterday, called on me to-night also. 
 He tells me that he has obtained more comfort, and gives me 
 very cheering accounts of the growth of seriousness among his 
 acquaintances. I had a very near and intimate perception of 
 my Saviour this evening, and felt, what I have long been in 
 want of, joyful communion with God. Heavenly Father, 
 keep me alive to Thee through Jesus Christ, and may the love 
 of Thee be shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 "March 11. Had a letter from Dr. Charters full of miscon- 
 ception about my sermon, which is evidently matter of offence 
 to him. 
 
 "March 12. Recurred to vigorous composition. I am read- 
 ing the ' Life of Doddridge,' and am greatly struck with the 
 quantity of business which he put through his hands. God,
 
 JOURNAL. 209 
 
 impress upon me the value of time, and give regulation to all 
 my thoughts and all my movements. I abandon plans, and cast 
 my care on Him who cares for me. May I be strong in faith, 
 instant in prayer, high in my sense of duty, and vigorous in the 
 execution of it. When I detect myself in unprofitable reverie, 
 let me make an instant transition from dreaming to doing. 
 
 " March 13. Started at seven, and composed a great deal 
 both in the morning and forenoon. Felt the tension of perpetual 
 solitude and hard study. 
 
 " March 14. I am much impressed with the reality and im- 
 portant business style of Doddridge's intercourse with God. O 
 Heavenly Father, convert my religion from a name to a principle. 
 Bring all my thoughts and movements into a habitual reference 
 to Thee. May I call on Thy name, in deed and reality, that I 
 may be saved. 
 
 " March 16. Have carried my Journal to the termination of 
 a second year, and from its varying complexion, it appears that 
 there lies a vast and indefinite field before me much to aspire 
 after in love to God, in the steadiness of my faith, in the clear- 
 ness of my views, in the Christian purity of my conduct. 
 God, may I build a right superstructure on a right foundation. 
 May I make mention of that name than which there is none 
 other given under heaven whereby men can be saved. Work in 
 me that which is well-pleasing in Thy sight, and make me alto- 
 gether a new creature in Christ Jesus my Lord. Eecall me from 
 my habitual estrangement ; correct the miserable wanderings of 
 my heart ; form Christ in me, and may He be to me the anchor 
 of hope, and the steady unfailing principle of sanctification. 
 Lord, give me to be cleansed more and more. Seal me as one 
 of Thine own, and naming the name of Jesus, may I depart from 
 iniquity. 
 
 "My health last year was variable. But I fall miserably 
 short of what I might do and ought to do. The following is a 
 list of my performances : 
 
 "Read Lardner's Jewish and Heathen Testimonies; Pri- 
 deaux's Connexion ; Macknight's Credibility of the Gospel ; 
 Baxter's Call to the Unconverted ; Scott's Marmion ; Hannah 
 More's Practical Piety ; Life of Matthew Henry ; Buchanan's 
 Eesearches : Buchanan's Sermons ; Doddridge's Life, by Orion ; 
 and Paley's Horze Paulinae. 
 
 " In addition to my ordinary supplies for the pulpit, wrote last 
 part of my review of Hints on Toleration ; the last part of my 
 
 VOL. i. o
 
 210 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 performance on Christianity ; a speech for Dr. Playfair, part of 
 which I delivered at the Synod ; a sermon on Hebrews vi. 19 ; 
 another on Luke x. 26 ; another on Romans xv. 1 ; and about 
 two sheets of devotional composition. In all about seventeen 
 6 i aee ts a very small proportion indeed. 
 
 " Bead more than the New Testament in English, and the 
 Greek to the end of the Acts, as also a Greek grammar. At 
 family worship read Isaiah, Psalms, Job, and Proverbs. 
 
 " Let me set more value on my time, and let my future Jour- 
 nal be more directed to the particular record of my way of 
 spending it. God, give me a more decided bent of heart to 
 the? service of Thee in Christ Jesus. 
 
 " March 17. Rose at eight. Spent nearly an hour in the 
 Bible and prayer, an exercise in which I experience much wan- 
 dering. Wrote for the Bible Society till half-past eleven. Spent 
 two hours and a half in the great business of renewing my cove- 
 nant with God. Walked to Kinneir : returned at four to dinner. 
 Translated a chapter of the Greek New Testament. Read three 
 tracts for distribution, and had Robert Edie over to spend an 
 hour and sup with me. Then had a little devotional reading 
 over Baxter's ' Practical Directory.' 
 
 " The following is the record of my dedication to God, taken in 
 short-hand after the solemnity was over : 
 
 " Begin with taking a view of my state previous to entering 
 into the covenant. Find it an unsheltered and condemned state. 
 Was convinced, but not lively in my apprehension of it, and was 
 far short of transport or vivacity in any part of this service. 
 Prayed that faith might be wrought in me. Thought of faith in 
 Christ, and had some joyful moments when I thought of the 
 promises annexed to it. Found that it was not by looking to 
 myself, but to Jesus, that I obtained light and direction. I then 
 thought of being sanctified by faith. This turned me to myself. 
 I read with delight the promise of the Spirit to those who be- 
 lieve ; but when turning to myself and to my sanctification, I 
 fc4t a dulness and insipidity, and when I prayed I did it with 
 langour. that I could fix a full and unqualified look upon 
 Christ there lies efficacy and comfort and sanctification. After 
 this I made my dedication. I counted the cost of it, and perhaps 
 underrated the difficulties of the Christian warfare. I concluded 
 with a solemn dedication of myself to God as my Sovereign, to 
 Christ as my Saviour, and to the Holy Ghost as my Sanctifier, 
 and prayed for strength and direction and support from on high
 
 JOURNAL. 211 
 
 that I may be enabled to keep my vows to the Lord. Rose in 
 comfort and peace. Let me bear up, hold fast Christ, even 
 though He should be clouded from me ; confess Him with the 
 mouth to be the only Saviour, feel Him to be my anchor, and 
 never, never let Him go. 
 
 "March 19. Let me not record all my performances through 
 the clay. This leads to repetition. The deviations from the re- 
 gular system do better for being recorded. 
 
 " March 23. Had a most agreeable letter from Mr. Gillespie 
 relative to the Bible Society. Though I feel serene and assured 
 on the subject of reconciliation with God, my mind does not em- 
 ploy itself sufficiently in thinking of Him and rejoicing in Him. 
 
 " March 24. I wrote again for the Bible Society, and have 
 begun Calvin's Institutes in Latin. 
 
 " March 26. Walked to Logic, where I missed Mr. Melvil. 
 Understand from Mrs. Melvil that he has spoken to some of his 
 people about the Bible Society. I have been in some degree of 
 heaviness for some time under the suspicion of coldness and re- 
 sentment on the part of my brethren for my operations in this 
 line. A few days will bring it all out; and let me observe 
 whether in this instance also the reality comes up to, or falls 
 short of the anticipation. There are two verses in the Bible 
 which comprise the whole morale of a man's conduct in these 
 circumstances ' Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like 
 men, be strong ;' ' Let all your things be done with charity.' 
 
 " Sunday, March 29. Preached as usual. Mr. Gray of Dun- 
 dee and Misses Balfour of Dundee in the church. Spent an 
 evening of entire solitude. I perhaps give too much of my Sab- 
 bath evening to reading, and too little in the way of direct inter- 
 course with God. I should have my pulpit preparations in a 
 state of readiness by Saturday night, so that the whole of Sunday 
 morning may be devotionally spent. Have begun to give family 
 prayers on the Sunday morning. 
 
 " April 6. Spent a devotional forenoon, which was in part 
 interrupted, and of which the following is the record : 
 
 " Begun at twelve. Was fatigued and feverish, but my emo- 
 tions pleasurable, and I did obtain a nearness to God. Prayed for 
 my sanctification in general terms. Read the Bible and Clarke's 
 * Promises,' and descended in my next prayer to the particular 
 duties. Mr. C. interrupted me, and I felt that my rnind was 
 wholly in business while he was present. When he left me I 
 felt the infirmity, and recurred, as my next topic of pious and
 
 212 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 aspiring meditation, to my peculiar business as a minister Have 
 not that lively repentance for iny past misconduct and negli- 
 gence that I would like ; but let me press on to the things that 
 are before. Prayed to God that He would make me an able 
 'minister of the New Testament. My physical sensations partook 
 of the pleasurable delirium of an incipient fever, but I trust that 
 mv confidence is building upon God in Christ, and that my de- 
 pendence is upon the Spirit, as the revealed instrument by which 
 I am made to apply the remedy, and to go on in the sanctifica- 
 tion of the gospel. Let me not be high-minded, but fear. Let 
 him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. At two 
 o'clock I went out and visited people in the village. Returned, 
 and offered my intercessions for parish friends, enemies, relations, 
 and the Church of Christ; and I pray that God would not suffer 
 me to be deluded by the formality of an external service, but, oh 
 settle in my heart the faith of Christ working by love. God, 
 give me to rejoice in Thee, and lift my affections from earth to 
 heaven. May Thy law be my delight, and may I never shrink 
 from the cross of discipline and duty. Purify my heart, and may 
 the following passages be my direction and my joy: Phil, 
 iv. 6 ; Luke vi. 35. 
 
 " April 14. Started before eight. Read a chapter of Greek. 
 Left Kilmany on horseback for Kirkcaldy. Was annoyed with 
 the peculiarities of my horse on the road, and gave way to au 
 old habit of vehemence on the subject. This must be carefully 
 guarded against.* Arrived at Kirkcaldy in time to dine with 
 the clergy. After dinner felt a diseased anxiety about my public 
 appearances. This is selfish and unchristian. Let me prefer my 
 brethren ; and the very excellent extempore powers of business 
 and expression manifested by many of them prove how much 
 
 What most provoked him with his horse was the frequency with which it threw him. 
 At first he was much interested by noticing the relative length of the intervals between each 
 fall. Taking the average lenzth, and calculating how far a dozen falls would carry him, he 
 resolved to keep the horse till the twelfth fall was accomplished. Extremely fond of such 
 numerical adjustments, he was most faithful in observing them. In this instance, however, 
 the tenth fall was o bad a one that his resolution gave way, and he told his servant to take 
 the horse to the next market, and sell him forthwith. " But remember," he said, " you 
 must conceal none of its faults ;" and going through the formidable enumeration, he closed 
 by bidding him bs sure to tell that it had ten times thrown its present master. "But who," 
 exclaimed the other, " will ever think of buying the horse if I tell all that beforehand ? " 
 " I cannot help that," said Mr. Chalmers ; " I will have no deception practised, and if no- 
 body will buy the horse, you must just bring him back again." The sale was not attempted; 
 <t, if it was, no purchaser appeared. The horse was finally transferred to his neighbour, 
 Mr. Thomson of Btilmerino, in exchange for one of Baxter's works. It served its new mas- 
 Ur quietly and faithfully for many a year ; and no vicious disposition ever showine itself, it 
 WM plausibly conjectured, that, in the first instance, the peculiarities were not so"much in 
 the horse as in the singularly restless and energetic horsemanship of its rider.
 
 JOURNAL. 213 
 
 preference they are entitled to. Supped in the inn after the 
 Synod. Sat till two in the morning. Let me have a savour of 
 divine things. It was wrong to sing the song which I was re- 
 quested to do. Slept in Mr. Balfour's. 
 
 " April 15. Breakfasted in Mr. Martin's. Dr. Martin spoke 
 to me about the song of yesternight, and I thanked him. Met 
 with forty clergy on the subject of the Bible Society. Things 
 went on harmoniously. I animadverted on the home supplies, 
 and what I said was approved of. I still hanker too much after 
 the praise of men, arid am carried away by the love of distinction. 
 
 " KILMAXY MAXSE, April 21, 1812. 
 
 " I went to Kirkcaldy to the Synod on the 14th, and we had 
 a meeting of forty clergymen on Tuesday the 15th, for the 
 formation of a Fife Bible Society. To render this society as 
 productive as possible, every encouragement is held out to the 
 formation of parish societies, dependent on the county one. 
 There is one formed at Anster, and one at Kilmany, and I be- 
 lieve four more in different parts of the country. We have no 
 less than 160 subscribers, which, at a penny a week, comes to 
 35 a year. If the same proportion were followed all over the 
 county, it would yield a revenue of 3000 from the single dis- 
 trict of Fife a sum as great as all Scotland has yet furnished. 
 ... I mean to be at Anster once a month ; and what enables 
 me to make this out is a horse purchased for me by Mr. E. 
 Martin, the possession of which confers an immense addition 
 upon my locomotive faculties, as I can get to Anster now in four 
 hours. ... In the other column I give you a short poem of 
 James Anderson's, published in the Dundee newspaper An 
 Address to the Members of the Bible Society of London. Write 
 it over yourself on a separate paper. 
 
 Thrice honour'd band ! though poet's lyre 
 
 Have never tuned a lay to thee, 
 Thy silent deeds my soul inspire 
 
 Beyond poetic minstrelsy. 
 Thrice honour'd band ! though Fame decree 
 
 Her clarion blast to triumph's son, 
 Yet are thy sons more dear to me 
 
 Than heroes famed for battles won. 
 
 Far Iceland shall thy love revere 
 
 While Hecla rears her threatening steep ; 
 And, ages hence, thy gift shall cheer 
 
 The gloom of Lapland's winter sleep ; 
 And Russia's slaves, that hourly ween 
 
 Beneath oppression's ceaseless load. 
 Shall, taught by thee, in freedom kee;> 
 
 The hallow'd dav of freedom's God.
 
 214 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 And when yon tribes have ceased to rove, 
 
 And learn'd in letter'd towns to dwell. 
 When, cultured field and blossom 'd grovo 
 
 On Volga's fruitful banks shall swell 
 Then oft the Kalmuck sire may tell, 
 
 As round his knee his children smile, 
 How that dear Book they love so well. 
 
 Was sent them from the Western Ibie.* 
 
 " April 22. I am hesitating about my sermon for Dundee. 
 Kept up till twelve, and awake till two. My frequent cogita- 
 tions about the Dundee exhibition argue, I am Afraid, a de- 
 votion to the praise of men. Force me wholly into Thyself, 
 OGod. 
 
 " April 27. Preached in the Cowgate. Was much fatigued, 
 and feel the vanity of display, I am afraid. Dined with Mr. 
 Thomson. Dr. Duncan of Katho, and Mr. Tait of Tealing, of 
 the party. 
 
 " Sunday, May 3. Is it right to fatigue myself thus, or soar 
 so selfishly and ostentatiously above the capacities of my people ? 
 God, may I make a principle of this ; and preach not myself, 
 but Christ Jesus my Lord. 
 
 " May 5. Took horse at twelve, and rode to Essie to dinner. 
 Was fatigued, and had no interval for prayer. Spent the night 
 
 * These lines close a letter containing an account of the Bible Society's operations in 
 Iceland, Lapland, and Russia ; and suffer lo~s by being disjoined from the narrative to which 
 they refer. Perhaps the following lines which close another of Mr. Anderson's communica- 
 tion?, and which are annexed to a description of the horrors of Juggernaut, can bear the 
 dislocation better. At any rate, they are worthy of being preserved : 
 
 Hark ! hark ! the horrid yell ! Nor pause the rites the while ; 
 
 Methought that loosen'd fiends unfarl'd For now the eager crowds adore 
 
 Their banners o'er the eastern world, Some self-devoted pilgrim's gore, 
 
 And from the tented welkin hurl'd And hastily their god explore, 
 
 The hissing brands of hell ! To catch his seeming smile ! 
 
 Hark ! Coromandel's bays rebound Aside unmoved their British lord 
 
 The swelling, sinking, dying sound ! Surreys the deeds that gain afford. 
 
 Hark ! bark ! it roars again ! 
 
 I mark the mingling crowds appear ,, But whUe ^^ deeds are done ' 
 
 Their thrilling thunders reach mine 'ear ShaH Scotia's darling sons survey 
 
 With accents human-toned and clear Our Dloodless P'-am, our smiling Tay, 
 
 Oh ! 't is the voice of men : And hear our Psa'rns on Sabbath-day, 
 Loud to their wooden god they raise Nor P ity India ' 8 "on ? 
 
 The clamours of polluted praise ! haU von ^ lue mountain summits be 
 
 The bounds of Scottish sympathy '! 
 
 Soon are the rites begun : Or, shall a Scotsman know 
 
 e the throne foul deeds of shame That his, by God's decree, the power 
 
 rhe very human shape defame, To fween from earth fell Moloch's to-.rer, 
 
 TiIlMoloch s Brahmin priests proclaim And in its stead to rear a bower 
 
 The Idol's pleasure won ! Where freshening flowers may blow : 
 
 Tien round their god the nations throng, And, knowing, dare one hour confine 
 
 And drag his cumbrous car along. The treasures of the Book Divine ? 
 
 r,!^; A dcr s n ' 8 letters on the Bible Society were inserted in the Dundee, Perth, and 
 ,i.pr A**V, m the numbers for January 31, February 7, 14, March 6, 20, April 3, 10.
 
 JOURNAL. 215 
 
 with Mr. Miller's family. Let me watch with perseverance for 
 the Spirit, and feel my dependence upon it. 
 
 " May 6. Started at six. Left ifr. Miller at seven. Break- 
 fasted at Forfar with Mr. Brace. Rode on to Brechin, where 
 I visited the tower, and fell in with Mr. Dow, supervisor at 
 Montrose, who rode with me to Fettercairn. Dined by myself; 
 and Mr. Keyden arrived in the evening. Have not yet suc- 
 ceeded in prevailing on Mr. K. to have family worship; and 
 was not vigorous for devotion in the evening. 
 
 " N.B. Where there is no time or opportunity in inns, I can 
 set myself to the great business of intercourse with heaven on 
 the road. 
 
 " May 7. Rode with Mr. K. first to Stonehaven, whence we 
 walked to Dunottar Castle. Rode after dinner to Aberdeen, 
 where we arrived at supper. Commanded an interval of time 
 at Stonehaven ; and I have to thank God for the experience 
 that prayer and meditation have a salutary influence in keeping 
 from gross and presumptuous sins. Let me, amid all this variety, 
 carry along with me that all is referable to God. 
 
 " May 8. Got into bad humour with our barber this morn- 
 ing, and delivered myself up to unchristian peevishness and 
 violence. Visited both colleges, and walked through the streets 
 of Aberdeen. Left it at two, and rode to Stonehaven, where I 
 courted my former opportunities. Dined, and had a most delight- 
 ful walk up the Carron, and along the shore. I met with Mr. 
 Thomson, minister of Fetteresso. I have much before me in the 
 vay of habitual and constant dependence on the Spirit of God, 
 tirough Christ Jesus. for the love of God shed abroad in my 
 hart ! 
 
 " May 9. Left Stonehaven after breakfast. Called on Mr. 
 WJker at Dunottar a pleasant, cultivated man. Rode to 
 Gltnbervie, where we were detained to dinner by Mr. Thorn. 
 Lefi them after dinner, and drank tea at Fordoun. Mr. Leslie, 
 anotier example of pleasant manners and cultivated information, 
 with an apparent want of evangelical sentiment and earnest 
 piety. A lesson to me of the value I should set upon mere 
 unsupported urbanity and polish. Rode to Fettercaira by 
 Drumbchty. 
 
 " Suiday, May 10. Preached all day at Fettercairn. The 
 people rery attentive in the afternoon particularly. My mind is 
 veering tnore to faith in Christ as the foundation and the resting- 
 place, though far, and very far, from that entire devotion to the
 
 216 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 things of eternity which a mind thoroughly renewed by divine 
 grace must experience. Mr. Adamson, the schoolmaster, dined 
 with us ; and it is most difficult to maintain a savour of Chris- 
 tianity with the people I am amongst. Let me love Thy people, 
 
 God, and court their society. Had some earnest and particular 
 conversation with Mr. Keyden, and prevailed upon him to have 
 family worship in the evening. my God, may I be washed, 
 and sanctified, and justified, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by 
 the Spirit of our God. 
 
 " May 11. After breakfast wrote half a sermon for my people. 
 Rode to the Burn with Mr. Keyden, where I was much pleased 
 with the banks of the North Esk. Drank tea with Mr. Adam- 
 son, and resisted their proposal for punch after it with a degree 
 of ill humour. The state of my health was not favourable to 
 complacency ; but, God, may I struggle against all that is 
 physical and earthly. Found myself in an unfavourable state 
 for devotion in the evening; and most unluckily neglected the 
 proper time for urging family worship upon Mr. Keyden. Did 
 not insist till after supper, when he urged that it was too late. 
 
 1 am far, and very far, from watching for the Spirit, with all 
 perseverance. my God, I pray, in the name of that good 
 Saviour whom Thou hast revealed, that Thou wouldest com- 
 plete the sanctification of my heart. 
 
 " May 12. Started at eight. Eode to Castletown to break- 
 fast. Am delighted to find, from the testimony of the Brodies. 
 that Dr. Leslie is a great favourite in his parish, and a subscribe' 
 to the Bible Society. When I came home I composed a littfe 
 of my sermon, and spent the remainder of the forenoon with IVY. 
 Keyden in a little miscellaneous business. After dinner, rede 
 to the top of Cairney Mount ; and was in closer alliance with 
 Christ through the evening than I had been for some tine, 
 though, God, how distant, upon the whole ! may the great 
 end of Christ's dying, the just for the unjust, be speedily accom- 
 plished in me, viz., to bring me unto God. Got family wor- 
 ship performed again at Mr. Keyden's, and am delighted t hear 
 him say that he intends to continue the system. 
 
 " May 13. Started before five. Went on to Montro>e with 
 Mr. Keyden, where we breakfasted. Left Montrose at eleven. 
 Called in at Marytown, from which place Mr. Ferguson walked 
 with us for about half an hour. Took the old road to Dundee, 
 and, with the exception of a blunder which took us aiout four 
 miles out of the way, got on most pleasantly by Carnylie and
 
 JOURNAL. 217 
 
 Monikie. Fed our horses at Monikie, and dined at a house 
 within seven miles of Dundee. We arrived, after a long ride 
 of forty-five miles, about half-past nine. A sense of divine 
 things was not constantly or affectingly present with me all this 
 clay. my God, sanctify, and guide, and uphold me. 
 
 " Sunday, May 24. Intimated my sacrament this day. I am 
 now preaching on the sacrifice, from Romans iii. 24, 25, and have 
 to bless God for the near and confident and satisfying views that 
 I obtained this evening of the great remedy. I feel that a firm 
 prospect of heaven is a sanctifying sentiment ; and let me never 
 cease to pray for the Spirit to make good my sanctification. 
 
 ''May 27. Visited Mrs. D. and R. D. I am deficient in the 
 article of conversation on these occasions. that I could get 
 fairly into contact with the souls of my parishioners ! 
 
 " May 30. How grateful should I be to God for health and 
 activity, and delicious weather. may I not be idle, but may 
 it be my meat and my drink to do the will of God. 
 
 '-June 1. Rose at eight. Spent the forenoon in devotion, 
 of which the following is the record : Invocation for God's 
 blessing and direction upon the exercise. Feel the force of 
 God's entreaty and His command to believe in Christ, and am 
 elevated by a joyful confidence. Read the promises to prayer, 
 and prayed for acceptance through Christ, and general sancti- 
 fication. Not rapturously near, but feel serene and confident. 
 Prayed for knowledge, for the understanding, and impression, 
 and remembrance of God's word for growing in grace, for per- 
 sonal holiness, for that sanctification which the redeemed undergo. 
 Thought of the sins that most easily beset me : confessed them, 
 and prayed for correction and deliverance. They are anxiety 
 -about worldly matters, when any suspicion or uncertainty 
 attaches to them ; a disposition to brood over provocations ; im- 
 patience at the irksome peculiarities of others ; an industrious- 
 ness, from a mere principle of animal activity, without the glory 
 of God and the service of mankind lying at the bottom of it ; 
 and, above all, a taste and an appetite for human applause. My 
 conscience smote me on the subject of pulpit exhibitions. I 
 pray that God may make usefulness the grand principle of my 
 appearances there. Read the promises annexed to faithful 
 ministers ; and prayed for zeal, and diligence, and ability in the 
 discharge of my ministerial office. Prayed for the people indi- 
 vidually for some, and generally for all descriptions of them. 
 Prayed for friends individually and relations. Read the pro-
 
 218 MEMOIRS OF DB. CHALMERS. 
 
 mises relative to the progress of the gospel, and conversion of 
 the Jews. Prayed for those objects. Through the whole of 
 this exercise felt calm, and I hope confident. I have not felt 
 mnch rapture, nor have I that near sense of the presence and 
 glory of God which I aspire after. Let my maxim be, ' Faint, 
 yet pursuing ; ' and let me look up in Christ for all those spiritual 
 blessings, wliich can only be enjoyed in perfection on the other 
 side of* time, and of the grave. Concluded the whole with a 
 prayer for God's blessing upon the exercise. Examined two* 
 intending communicants, and feel more satisfaction in the work 
 than I used to do. 
 
 "June 4. In the evening I examined three intending com- 
 municants, two of whom were so ignorant that I have referred 
 them to another evening, and even at a loss what to do with 
 them. God, give me Thy directing wisdom. Save me from 
 irritation in the work. Let me think how much Christ did to 
 enlighten ignorance ; and let the servant of God be gentle, apt 
 to teach, patient. 
 
 " June 6. God, arm me with wisdom and principle. And, 
 oh how grateful to Thee, my Creator, if a measure, which be- 
 yond all others exemplifies the truth, that it is not in man that 
 walketh to direct his steps, shall, under the direction of the 
 Supreme, be found to terminate in domestic happiness to myself, 
 and in the accession of another's piety and another's enthusiasm 
 to the great work which I am intrusted with. 
 
 " June 16. This is one of my dedication days, and the fol- 
 lowing is the record of it : Prayed for a fixed intentness of 
 thought upon God. Eecurred often to the reigning object of my 
 heart, and gave myself up to the plans and calculations which 
 have this world for their object. Dedicated myself to God, as 
 my Creator and Judge. may I feel the weight of this dedica- 
 tion, and the dreadful sentence that hangs over my falling back 
 from it. Thought of myself as a sinner, and of the alarming 
 nature of an unqualified dedication to God, with the twofold 
 condemnation upon him of sinned and sinning. Prayed again. 
 Made confession with my mouth ; and, from the agitations of 
 penitence, threw myself into the arms of Jesus Christ, to whom 
 I dedicate myself as one of His redeemed, accepting Him as my 
 alone Saviour. Felt the power of the prevailing affection give 
 way to the exhilarating thought of my Saviour. I look up to 
 
 iim, and pray that through Him I may be able to do all things. 
 Suffered an interruption in seeking a concordance for the passage
 
 HIS MARRIAGE. 219 
 
 ' He that will do the will of my Father, shall know of the 
 doctrine whether it be of God.' Thought of Christ as my sacri- 
 fice, and tried to bring up my mind to the doctrine of the Cross, 
 in all its peculiarity. Prayed. Professed to receive Christ as 
 my propitiation, and made a dedication of myself to Him accord- 
 ingly. Thought of the service which this laid me under to Him. 
 Recollected several passages to that effect, and acquiesced in 
 them accordingly. Prayed for a life and a heart worthy of the 
 holy name by which we are called ; and that I should love and 
 obey Christ. Thought of my own insufficiency for this ; repaired 
 to the agency of the Spirit ; dedicated myself to the Holy Ghost 
 as my sanctifier ; and prayed that God would give me His Spirit 
 to reform me, and make me a new creature in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord. During the whole of this last interval was much occupied 
 with that affection which has taken so exclusive a hold of me. 
 I pray that God may moderate and restrain it. Give me self- 
 government ; and may all these things issue to my good, and to 
 His glory. Had much comfort ; but I am afraid that a great 
 deal of that buoyancy was due to the feeling of independence 
 which it inspired iipon the subject that has thrown me into so- 
 much agitation. God, may the fruits of this dedication grow 
 every day, and be more abundant. May I think of the awful- 
 ness of Thy judgments. May I not abuse Thy covenant ; and 
 I pray for the Spirit which Christ purchased by His obedience 
 to be made wholly such as Thou wouldst have me to be. 
 Concluded with a general prayer on the subject of the dedication > 
 and craved the pardon of God for its manifold defects. 
 
 "June 29. my God, pour Thy best blessings on . 
 
 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 prove to be a mere 
 step, a transition in her march to a joyful eternity." 
 
 This impressive prayer was offered iip for her to whom he 
 had been recently engaged in union with whom thirty-five 
 years of unbroken domestic happiness were enjoyed. The career 
 which lay before him was very different from that contemplated 
 at the beginning of this union. In her who should afterwards 
 form a suitable companion to him, it required qualities which 
 are rarely combined. He always recognised it as Heaven's 
 greatest providential gift that he was united to one whose pre- 
 sence graced the society in which he moved, upon whose judg-
 
 220 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ment in the details of life be placed implicit confidence, and 
 whose wisely compliant and affectionate disposition made his 
 home one from which he always went out revived and reinvigo- 
 rated and to which he always returned to find peaceful and 
 pleasurable repose after toil, or most soothing sympathy amid 
 trials. Miss Grace Pratt was the second daughter of Captain 
 Pratt of the 1st Royal Veteran Battalion. She had resided for 
 some time with her uncle, Mr. Simson, at Starbank, in the 
 parish of Kilmany. The expectation of her speedy removal from 
 that neighbourhood may have somewhat accelerated a movement 
 which landed in so happy a result. His sister's marriage, and 
 his disappointment about the extent of his augmentation, had so 
 recently afforded to Mr. Chalmers the opportunity of reiterating 
 his firm resolution never to marry, that he might perhaps have 
 felt the awkwardness of so suddenly announcing, not only that 
 his old purpose was abandoned, but that his new one was both 
 formed and executed. From any awkwardness which an explicit 
 announcement might have created, he thus felicitously saved 
 himself in communicating the intelligence to Mrs. Morton : 
 
 "KiuiAxr MAKSE, July 2, 1812. 
 
 ' MY DEAR JANE, You know that, when you left Edinburgh, 
 I was engaged with a process before the Court of Teinds, and 
 that the issue of that process was not just so favourable as I 
 could have wished ; since which period I have been carrying on 
 another process before another court, and, after the delay of some 
 vexatious forms, and some tedious and unlooked-for evasions, I 
 have the joy to announce to you that the issue has been in the 
 highest degree triumphant. I had really no time for answering 
 your letter. My whole time was occupied with the business of 
 the lawsuit, and with a most constant and fatiguing attend- 
 ance upon the forms of court. I had to draw out the sum- 
 monses ; I had to plead repeatedly in person. When I met 
 with any discouraging appearance on the part of the judge, I 
 had to renew my appeal, and betake myself to another line of 
 argument. I had to frame replies and duplies, and thought at 
 one time that I would be cast upon the necessity of resting the 
 whole merits of the cause upon a reclaiming petition. The me- 
 morials I had to write out and give into court were innumerable. 
 At length appearances began to dawn more favourably upon me. 
 Anxiety brightened into hope, and hope now reposes in all the 
 certainty of the long-wished and well-fought-for decision. No-
 
 JOURNAL. 221 
 
 thing now remains but to carry forward the decision into accom- 
 plishment as speedily as possible. Instruments have already 
 been taken in the clerk's hands; papers have been exchanged 
 between the parties ; and all the formalities of signed, sealed, 
 and delivered, have been duly attended to. When Kings, Lords, 
 and Commons pass an Act of Parliament, they cause it to be 
 proclaimed at the Market-Cross of Edinburgh. The court at 
 which I have been pleading has far more exalted pretensions. 
 Unlike every other court of judicature in the country, it neither 
 imitates the supreme court of the nation, nor does it suffer any 
 appeal to her ; and the deliverance which it has given in my 
 favour must be proclaimed twice, and within less than a quarter 
 of a mile from my own residence. The officer who reads the pro- 
 clamation is bound to proclaim the truth, and nothing but the 
 truth ; and yet it is very strange that no man can look to him 
 who may not say, in the rude impertinence of the Scotch accent, 
 that it lies* Lastly, the two distinct days on which the court re- 
 quires proclamation to be made, are the 26th of July and the 2d 
 of August ; and the day on which it has decreed the full infeft- 
 ment of Mr. Chalmers in the property pleaded for and won, is 
 Tuesday the 4th of August. I ken, Jane, you always thought me 
 an ill-prattedf chiel ; but I can assure you, of all ihepratts I ever 
 played, none was ever carried on or ever ended more gracefully. 
 " I would like to know what you make of the above com- 
 munication, and what you think of it. I shall only say, that 
 it has rejoiced my friends that it has revived the heart of my 
 old and venerated father that Mr. Manson threatens a long 
 screed of poetry on the subject that it has brought up my aunt 
 to Kilmany, where she has been for days exercising her peculiar 
 talent for redding up and lastly, that it has made my mother 
 quite eloquent upon her favourite subject of napery inventories 
 and dredge-boxes. God bless you, my dear Jane. Yours most 
 affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " July 3. Rode before breakfast to Starbank, and got ac- 
 quainted with Captain Pratt, who expresses his own approbation 
 and that of other friends. 
 
 " July 10. Staid all this day at home in Sunday preparations, 
 and visits to people in the village. Sandy arrived in the even- 
 ing, and told me the happiness of my Anster friends in the 
 
 * Lees was the name of the parish -clerk who read the proclamation of marriage, 
 t Scoticc for " mischievous."
 
 22-2 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 prospect of my marriage. The pleasure of this intelligence is 
 greatly qualified by the accounts of my venerable father, who, 
 from my mother's letter, seems to be hasting to the grave. 
 
 " July 15. Reached Anster after nine, and found my father 
 greatly better than I expected. 
 
 "Sunday, July 19. Preached for Dr. Jones at Lady Glen- 
 orchy's in the forenoon, and for Dr. Fleming at Lady Tester's, 
 in the afternoon. Dr. Stuart, -Dunearn, heard me at the latter 
 place ; and, with high compliment, was very free, and, I believe, 
 very just in his criticisms. Went in the evening to hear a 
 George Barclay, a Baptist minister. Got introduced there to 
 Dr. Stuart, and spent an hour with him in the evening. 
 
 " July 30. my God, fit me for the duties of my new situa- 
 tion. Give me patience, and steadiness, and wisdom. May the 
 Christian spirit ever animate me ; and, dismissing all anticipa- 
 tions of heaven upon earth, may I betake myself soberly and 
 determinedly to the duties of the married state. 
 
 " August 3. Spent an hour this forenoon in devotion, of which 
 the following is a very short and general record : Prayed for 
 the blessing of Heaven upon the ensuing devotion. Prayed for 
 my own personal religion, and that of her to whom I have de- 
 voted my affections. Prayed for the special blessing of God upon 
 our union, and for the direction of His wisdom. My thoughts 
 wandering and unsettled ; but had some refreshing and exhilar- 
 ating glimpses of the Saviour, and of His perfect sufficiency. 
 Concluded with a prayer for the blessing of God upon the whole 
 service. Read a little of Baxter. 
 
 " August 4. Married this day at Starbank, and went to Kil- 
 many with our party in the evening. 
 
 " August 5. Let the happiness of those around me be a per- 
 petual and a reigning object. Have now family worship twice 
 a day, and I pray that God would give my dear wife a serious 
 find decided bent of the heart to His service. We read in con- 
 junction after dinner. I have been sadly deficient in useful and 
 regular exertion for a long time back. Let me now recur to it 
 gradually. my God, draw me to Thy love and to Thy service. 
 May I grow in the exercise of the domestic virtues, and may I 
 study peace, and cheerfulness, and kindness. 
 
 " August 6. Have recurred to my English chapter and hour 
 of fair writing. Rode before dinner to Charlton, where I made 
 two visits. my God, save me from all delusion, and may my 
 offering to Thee be sincere and unmingled. The book we read to-
 
 LETTER TO MRS. MORTON. 223 
 
 gether is Brydone's ' Tour.' Let me attend to others while they 
 read a most useful exercise." 
 
 " KILMAKY MANSE, August 7, 1812. 
 
 " MY DEAR JAXE, I offered you a history in my last delivered 
 in enigmatical language for the purpose of giving a little exer- 
 cise to your faculties. I look with eagerness for your explanation 
 of it." " August 13. I have received yours, and I find that I 
 have underrated your capacity. 'You are right both as to the 
 event and the person, and I now proceed to give you a number 
 of particulars. You know that their uncle Mr. Simson's death 
 left the ladies no other alternative than going up to England to 
 live with their father, Captain Pratt, stationed near Harwich. 
 . . . Opportunities, which I felt to be resistless, occurred, and 
 I obtained a final and favourable deliverance on Friday the 26th 
 June. In the meantime, Captain Pratt arrives in Scotland to 
 take up his daughters. Everything was previously arranged 
 for their departure, and you may easily conceive how the change 
 of plan was a fine subject for the gossips, and rather an awkward 
 and difficult matter of explanation to the young ladies. Captain 
 Pratt -and I met at Starbank on Friday the 3d July. Plain, 
 frank, and gentlemanly, he stated his own high satisfaction with 
 the arrangement, and that of the nearest friends. On Monday 
 the 13th, I took the ladies to Edinburgh by the way of Burnt- 
 island, where lives Mr. Young, distiller, married to an aunt of 
 the young ladies,, of a most respectable family, and what is 
 better than all, he keeps up family worship, and countenances 
 religion in its pure and evangelical form. You will observe, all 
 the while, that Sandy was of mighty use to me. He has been 
 at Kilmany for nearly two months. I got him introduced to 
 Starbank immediately after the settlement took place. You 
 may well conceive him to be a prodigious favourite. . . . My 
 great anxiety was that our marriage should be as private as 
 possible, and, for this purpose, my aunt left me after completing 
 the preparations. The event took place before dinner at Star- 
 bank. Dr. Greenlaw was the clergyman, in his 90th year. He 
 made a most laughable mistake, which converted a business that 
 is often accompanied with tears, into a perfect frolic. It made 
 me burst out, and set all the ladies a-tittering. In laying the 
 vows on Grace, what he required of her was that she should be 
 a loving and affectionate husband, to which she courtesied. We 
 dined and drank tea. Sandy left us 'about half-an-hour before 
 our departure, so as to be in readiness to receive us at Kilraany.
 
 224 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 The whole of our chaise party consisted of Grace, her sister, and 
 myself. Sandy broke the bread, presented the tongs, and had 
 supper ready for a small party of four ; and I think that I have 
 managed the matter most philosophically, when, instead of the 
 fuss and noise of company, or the parade of a fashionable jaunt, 
 I have got her translated at the very outset of our connexion 
 into all the quietness and security of domestic retirement. We 
 have had a flow of forenoon callers, but not a single invited 
 party. Miss Pratt lives with us, and makes a most pleasant 
 addition to our small family. I had invited James Meldrum to 
 spend his vacation with me, and, upon my marriage, there was 
 a disposition on the part of Mrs. Meldrum to look upon the en- 
 gagement as dissolved. This I could not submit to, and told 
 her and Grace, that if I had conceived matrimony to be that 
 kind of thing, which was to detach my heart from any of its old 
 feelings or old friendships, I never should have entered into it. 
 James is accordingly with us ; and the perfect cordiality with 
 which all my friends are received and entertained by the lady 
 of the house, has made her dearer to me than ever. I have 
 got a small library for her ; and a public reading in the after- 
 noon, when we take our turns for an hour or so, is looked upon 
 as one of the most essential parts of our family management. 
 It gives me the greatest pleasure to inform you that in my new 
 connexion I have found a coadjutor who holds up her face for 
 all the proprieties of a clergyman's family, and even pleads for 
 their extension beyond what I had originally proposed. We 
 have now family worship twice a day ; and though you are the 
 only being on earth to whom I would unveil the most secret 
 arrangements of our family, I cannot resist the pleasure of tell- 
 ing you, because I know that it will give you the truest pleasure 
 to understand, that in those still more private and united acts 
 of devotion -which are so beautifully described in the 'Cottar's 
 Saturday Night,' I feel a comfort, an elevation, and a peace of 
 which I was never before conscious." 
 
 "August 12. Peace, harmony, and affection reign in my 
 abode ; but, oh let me never cease my anxiety for my own soul 
 and for hers. 
 
 "August 13. Scampered on horseback before dinner. Walked 
 in the afternoon with my dear G. to the top of Forest Hill. I am 
 giving lessons to Grace upon botany. my God, send eternity 
 with impression into our hearts.
 
 JOURNAL. 225 
 
 "Sunday, August 16. It were desirable that Sunday should 
 be spent in devotion arid Scripture, and let me afterwards make 
 this a distinct object. Have recurred, after a long interval, to 
 the Sunday part of my scriptural course. God, make me more 
 present with Thee in thought. Give me to go through my public 
 services with earnestness and intentness of spirit. May my 
 family exercises be kept up with vigour and delight ; and, oh 
 may the dear partner of my heart grow in grace and in sanctifi- 
 cntion. She supports me in all the forms of devotion. God, 
 enter her heart, and make it wholly Thine. 
 
 " August 19. On a review 7 of the day, I was mortified to find 
 how little God was present to the mind. God, let me never 
 think to wipe away the forgetfulness of the day by the prayers 
 and acknowledgments of the evening. Give me to press forward, 
 and to carry it towards Thee with a sincere and perfect heart. 
 Enlighten, convince, and convert me, my Father. 
 
 " Sunday, August 23. Preached twice to-day to a numerous 
 audience. I am reading the ' Marrow of Modern Divinity,' and 
 derive from it much light and satisfaction on the subject of faith. 
 It is a masterly performance, and I feel a greater nearness to 
 God, convincing me that Christ is the way to Him, and an un- 
 conditional surrender of ourselves to Christ the first and most 
 essential step of our recovery. my God, make me every day 
 wiser unto salvation. 
 
 " August 24. Finished the ' Marrow.' I feel a growing de- 
 light in the fulness and sufficiency of Christ. my God, bring 
 me nearer and nearer to Him. 
 
 " August 28. Crossed over to Edinburgh, where I called on 
 Dr. Brewster and others. I am beset with petitions for public 
 sermons, and will probably consent to a few of them. 
 
 " Sunday, August 30. Preached in the forenoon, and heard 
 Dr. Jones in the afternoon. 
 
 " Sept. 3. I have begun a few lectures on chemistry to the 
 people of the house. my God, sustain me in the patience and 
 zeal and activity of the Christian life. 
 
 "Sept. 4. Have recurred to severe reading and my Greek 
 chapter. Composed half a sermon in the forenoon. 
 
 "Sept. 7. This being the first Monday of the month, I gave 
 the forenoon to devotional exercises, of which the following is 
 the record : Prayed for God's blessing upon the service. Felt 
 assured and comfortable. Wandered a good deal after this. Felt 
 a cordial reception of Christ, and had some lively actings and 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 220 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 exercises of faith in Him. Expressed this reception in prayer ; 
 and asked through Him for repentance, for a sense of God's holy 
 law, for sanctification, and all those spiritual blessings which are 
 poured in abundance upon those that believe. Felt a certain 
 degree of gloom and disgust at the withdrawment from the 
 world, and familiarization with heavenly things, which religion 
 implies. Prayed that God would give me grace to help in the 
 time of need ; prayed for heavenly-mindedness, and that God 
 may be the satisfying portion of my heart ; I again prayed for 
 the grace of patience and contentment with my present lot ; that 
 I may endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ Jesus ; that 
 patience may have her perfect work. I then prayed in reference 
 to my peculiar conduct as a husband ; that I may conduct my- 
 self with wisdom ; that I may love my wife ; and that we may 
 encourage and support one another in the great concerns of a 
 Christian family. Prayed for the comfort and salvation of my 
 parents ; for all my relations, acquaintances, and the world at 
 large ; for a more frank, sincere, and single-minded deportment 
 towards all ; and for the extension of the gospel over the earth. 
 I again prayed for the forgiveness of my long-continued neglect 
 and indolence* as a Christian minister ; for a more zealous activity 
 in the time to come ; for a more awful and affecting impression 
 of the importance and responsibility of my situation ; that I may 
 watch for souls as one who is to give account ; and that I may 
 be more constant and more zealous amongst them. Prayed also 
 that the Spirit would be great among the people themselves. 
 I then concluded with a prayer for the Divine blessing upon the 
 whole, and that I may keep the subject of my speculation in 
 habitual remembrance. 
 
 "Sept. 9. A most prosperous day as to study. Got a large 
 parcel of tracts and reports, which occupied a great part of the 
 evening. my God, make the good seed grow and be more 
 abundant. 
 
 " Sept. 10. Have instituted a sale of tracts at JohnLumsdain's 
 in the village. Had Robert Edie to sup with me. how grate- 
 ful should I be to God for the happiness I enjoy ! and how should 
 I improve it to the sanctification of myself and those around me. 
 
 "Sept. 11. After dinner our family walked up to Logic, and 
 drank tea. Finished Brydone's 'Tour' at our public reading, 
 and began Buchanan's ' Christian Researches.' my God, be- 
 gin the good work of sanctification in my heart, and carry it on. 
 
 "Sunday, Sept. 12. Preached as usual, the congregation
 
 JOURNAL. 227 
 
 particularly attentive in the forenoon. my God, give me the 
 right impression of my subject. May I be born again by Thy 
 Spirit, and may I watch thereunto with all perseverance. God, 
 keep me habitually in Thy grace ; and save me from the many 
 relapses of error and forgetfulness which I experience. Started 
 at seven, and was engrossed with preparations ; let me hence- 
 forth give the whole of Saturday to this work, and keep Sunday 
 in reserve for devotional exercises. I am generally so fatigued 
 in the evening as to require indulgence. If I cannot keep up 
 the high tone of the day, let me, after my Bible, give myself to 
 tracts, reports, &c. 
 
 " Sept. 21. I should have had a dedication on the 17th, but 
 forgot it ; had it this day. Prayed God for His blessing ; then 
 made three several dedications of myself to Him, as having a 
 right to all my services to Jesus Christ as my Saviour to the 
 Holy Spirit as my sanctifier. Made these the subject of three 
 separate prayers ; and though not articulate, I hope that God 
 suggested and approved the aspirations, and will do for me ex- 
 ceeding abundantly beyond what I ask or think, according to 
 the power that worketh in me. Prayed for God's blessing upon 
 the whole, and never felt myself so much at home in these con- 
 templations, as when I had a firm faith in Christ, for which the 
 Bible gives me every warrant, and holds out every invitation. 
 God, carry me on in my course heavenwards. 
 
 "Had a letter from Dr. Charles Stuart, to which I must pay 
 attention, respecting the heavy loss incurred by the Serampore 
 missionaries through fire. 
 
 " Sept. 24. I am disposed, from Calvin and my own writing,. 
 t> be more passive to the influences of heaven in the work of 
 saictification. my God, I submit to Thee in all things ; 
 eiable me to walk in the way of Thy commandments. 
 
 " Sept. 29. Was a little mortified at the specimen which the 
 ' Lstructor' has given of my speech for the Bible Society, and 
 fee that vanity and envy are not subdued in my heart. God r 
 intrpose Thy Divine Spirit. 
 
 ' Oct. 5. Gave an hour to my monthly act of devotion, of 
 whih the following is the record : Began with lively actings 
 of f.ith in Christ ; professed that faith, and prayed for the in- 
 creae of it. Prayed for sanctification by it. Confessed my 
 distaice from the complete restoration of the Divine image in 
 my aul, and sent up aspirations, the object of which was, that 
 God vould make Christian sentiment and Christian sanctification
 
 223 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 a real process 'within me. Thought of my personal faults, and 
 made a more detailed confession of them my vanity or love of 
 applause my angry impatience at what is irksome, transporting 
 me to many violations of the Christian temper, and particiilarly 
 to a most habitual violation of the fifth commandment my dis- 
 trustful apprehension as to temporal abundance and, above 
 all, my habitual estrangement from Divine things. Prayed for 
 forgiveness and reformation ; and feel that I do not bring the 
 right elements to bear upon the case of a corrupted soul, without 
 the atonement that saves it from punishment, and the Spirit 
 that cleanses from pollution. Thought of my relation to the 
 people around me as their Christian minister. Confessed my 
 inactivity, my want of zeal and perseverance amongst them. 
 Prayed for forgiveness ; for a high impression of the importance 
 of my charge ; for more constant and unremitting action amongst 
 them ; for the extension of my zeal beyond the limits of my 
 parish ; and for charity, combined with energy, in those more 
 public affairs which have for their object the management of 
 societies, and the propagation of the gospel through the world. 
 Thought of my habits of intellectual perverseness. Prayed for 
 the correction of them ; for a more fixed and undivided attention 
 to the subject I attach myself to ; for a more retentive memory, 
 that my ambition of reading much may give way to the desire 
 of a more complete and digested acquaintance with the objects 
 of my study ; and, above all, for a clearer understanding, a more 
 faithful remembrance, and a readier application of Scripture 
 Thought of those with whom I stood personally related or con 
 nected first, of my wife : prayed for her, and for my dutifulnes 
 to her ; the same for my servants, for my visitors ; that ny 
 conversation may minister grace and useful edification ; for thoe 
 at a distance for my parents, that they may be happy in m- ; 
 for my other relations, and the general circle of my acquai:t- 
 ances. May my conduct to them all bear evidence to the pover 
 of Christianity within me. Concluded with a prayer for he 
 Divine blessing, and that God would make religious "impressbns 
 permanent and habitual to my heart. 
 
 " Oct. 7. Rode to Starbank, thence to Mountquhannie, wiere 
 I gave a lesson on geography. I am meditating the transmision 
 of our penny society produce to Dr. Stuart, Felt at time the 
 application of religious principle to the scene before me 
 God, make this application more habitual and constant. 
 
 " Oct. 14. Have begun a sermon on Psalm xli. 1, fc the
 
 JOURNAL. '2-19 
 
 Destitute Sick Society, Edinburgh, and I am collecting passages 
 out of former discourses for it. 
 
 " Oct. 15. Heard sermon from Mr. , and dined with the 
 
 Presbytery. Was guilty of several tits of impatience, and feel 
 my weakness. God, may I take a firm hold of the Saviour, 
 that He may strengthen me to do all things. Give me the 
 charity that endureth, and banish from my heart suspicion and 
 
 anger. Reproach myself for the praise I gave to Mr. 'u 
 
 sermon, which was entirely destitute of the unction of the gospel. 
 As an exposition of duty it was instructive ; but let me supply 
 the deficiencies of my testimony by taking an early opportunity 
 
 of stating to Mr. the undeniable fact, that out of Christ it 
 
 is never performed, and that it is through Him alone that we 
 can gain strength for the performance. 
 
 " Oct. 20. Was much impressed with a tract, entitled ' The 
 Christian indeed.' Feel the want of discipline of heart, and my 
 estrangement from God ; and pray that He and His love and 
 His law may weigh habitually upon me. Count this one of the 
 most noted days I have spent, as to a great step accomplished 
 by the inner man. God, may I keep my heart with all dili- 
 gence. I look to Thee in the face of Christ, and do Thou give 
 ine more exalted notions of His power and dignity and offices. 
 Give me to maintain nearer and more affecting intercourse with 
 Thee. May I have my conversation in heaven. In company 
 could discover some risings of vanity and self-consequence in my 
 heart. Still feel the power and urgency of yesterday's iinpre? 
 sions. I am disturbed about my want of clearness as to ths, 
 understanding of sin ; but I look unto Jesus, in the hope that 
 through Him all my deficiencies will be made up. Let me every 
 day respect His prayer. Perfect, God, that which concerns 
 me : call me to a right understanding of Thy truth : raise me to 
 the love and enjoyment of Thee ; and may the good seed hasten 
 to maturity, and yield fruit in abundance. 
 
 " Sunday, Oct. 25. Served tables for Mr. Thomson, and 
 preached in the afternoon to a very crowded audience. I am 
 doubtful whether my habit of composition should not be let down 
 to the bulk of the people. I have much to reproach myself for 
 the selfish love of applause. my God, follow with Thy rich 
 blessing all the services of this day, and crucify all that is vain 
 and unchristian within me. 
 
 " Oct. 26. Preached a missionary sermon in the evening. 
 My love of applause broke out again. Disappointed at the
 
 230 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 smallness of the collection. Was fatigued ; but as I am told 
 that I was more than heard in the large Steeple Church of Dun- 
 dee, let me preach with more composure and self-command. 
 ray'God, make this appetite for applause to depart from me. 
 Form me by Thy grace ; and all I ask is for Christ's sake. 
 
 " Nov. 5. Was unwell on Monday, and had my devotional 
 forenoon this day. The following is the record of it : Prayed 
 for a blessing on the whole exercise. Felt my union with Christ ; 
 and prayed that, emptied of self, I might be filled with the ful- 
 ness and the sufficiency of the Saviour. Prayed for the greater 
 elements of my soul's health, for the increase of my faith in 
 Christ, and establishment in Him ; for sanctification, for a grow- 
 ing delight in God, for the perfect love which casteth out fear, 
 for a sense of the obligation of His will, for a more correct and 
 clear view of the evil of sin, for those principles which lead us to 
 shun all that is opposed to the will of God, and dispose us to all 
 obedience. Descended from the greater elements to the more 
 particular applications ; and, with the maintenance of the right 
 attitude for discharging our duties, viz., looking unto Jesus for 
 the promises of the Spirit, prayed for the keeping of my heart 
 with all diligence, for the regulation of my thoughts, for victory 
 over the temptations of actual life, for the charity which main- 
 taineth patience amid all that is irksome and provoking in those 
 around us, for freedom from anxiety about worldly matters, for 
 liberality to the poor, for a perpetual desire and diligence to be 
 useful, for freedom from the love of applause, and, finally, for an 
 example, pure in all its points, and calculated to gain converts 
 in every quarter of society. Prayed for the repentance and re- 
 mission of my sin of negligence in holy things, as a minister of 
 the gospel ; for my parish, and for the more attentive and con- 
 scientious discharge of my engagements amongst them. Prayed 
 for my relations and friends. Prayed for the propagation of the 
 gospel ; and concluded with a prayer for the Divine blessing on 
 the whole exercise." 
 
 " KILMAXY MAXSE, 3m 5, 1812. 
 
 " MY DEAR J AXE, Instead of filling up valuable space with 
 apologies, I shall just say, that it is my wish and purpose to be 
 more punctual in future ; that though my wife engrosses a large 
 pjrrt of my heart, and is worthy of a still larger, she has not dis- 
 possessed you by a single inch out of my affection ; that I have 
 room for you both ; and trust I shall ever look upon correspond- 
 ence with you as a point not merely of duty, but supreme and
 
 JOURNAL. 231 
 
 much-loved enjoyment. I have now had three months' experi- 
 ence of matrimony ; and, as I know you will be anxious for my 
 comfort, I can tell you that all my apprehensions founded on 
 discrepancies of temper or want of congeniality between me and 
 the partner of my fate, have turned out to be so many bugbears ; 
 that my affection is every day receiving new accessions to its 
 strength and its steadiness ; that I meet with nothing but the 
 most cheerful and delighted concurrence ; and what you must 
 know to be of particular importance to me, that she interests 
 herself in the success of my professional exertions ; that I am 
 getting nearer to the state of her soul, by intimate and close 
 conversation on the greatest of all concerns ; and I trust in the 
 Hearer of prayer that she will rise from the first elements of 
 repentance and faith to the joyful hopes and new life of a con- 
 firmed disciple. Poor Mr. Johnston of Kathillet is dying ; I saw 
 him to-day for the first time. Mrs. Johnston was much over- 
 powered. He, poor man, is so low that I am not sure if he 
 recognised me. Plis sou James, from Glasgow, was in the room ; 
 and what with the deep affliction of the wife and son, and the 
 moving spectacle before me, I never was so melted into a sense 
 of the vanity of all that is human." 
 
 " Nov. G. Mr. Johnston died this morning, at eight o'clock." 
 Soon after receiving this intimation, Mr. Chalmers despatched 
 the following letter to Rathillet : 
 
 " KILMAXY MASSE, Nov. 6, 1812. 
 
 " DEAR MKS. JOHNSTON, The mournful intelligence of poor 
 Mr. Johnston's death reached me from the village this morning ; 
 aid, with my warmest sympathy for you all, I offer my prayers 
 tiat you may be supported in this the day of your visitation ; 
 tiat God may sanctify your cup of discipline, and that we may 
 al take warning from an event so deeply affecting to the whole 
 ndghbourhood. 
 
 " I can say for myself that I count myself to have sustained 
 n leavy personal loss in the death of your truly excellent hus- 
 baad, and shall long have to regret the want of that society 
 wlich I loved, and of that conversation which often guided and 
 sii|)orted me in the great and common objects of our faith and 
 minstry. 
 
 ' I would not have obtruded so soon upon the deep and over- 
 powering grief of your family, had it not been for a wish, in
 
 032 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 which Mrs. Chalmers joins me, that you would take all the ac- 
 commodation which our house can afford. Would it not be 
 better that you should be relieved as much as possible of the 
 press of nightly visitors to which the various friends of your 
 family, and the very high and general esteem in which Mr. 
 Johnston was held, must necessarily expose you ? I beg you 
 would make over as many of them to us as possible ; and it 
 occurs to Mrs. Chalmers that if any of your sons or your daugh- 
 ters would take up their abode with us for some time, it may be 
 of some use in diverting their thoughts from the melancholy 
 which oppresses them. 
 
 " I again offer my warmest expressions of friendship and con- 
 dolence, and pray that one and all of us may be strengthened 
 and improved under this dispensation of a good but mysterious 
 Providence. 
 
 " Do not put yourself to the trouble of writing. I shall call 
 to-morrow ; and, in the meantime, should there be any visitors 
 upon you to-night, I beg that you will avail yourself of our 
 b ouse> Yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 This letter is the best voucher for the very great regard in 
 which Mr. Johnston was held by Mr. Chalmers, and the best 
 memorial of the affectionate intercourse which had subsisted 
 between their families. On the Sabbath after his interment, 
 Mr. Chalmers referred from the pulpit to the great loss which 
 the neighbourhood had sustained ; and in alluding to the bene- 
 fit which he had personally derived from his society, he used 
 as was his custom when expressing his obligations to others, 
 language which created a false impression that he attribute! 
 Ins own change to his conversations with Mr. Johnston.* 
 
 " Nov. 10. Have begun to compose prayer in a more scrb- 
 tural style with the assistance of ' Henry on Prayer.' Kesum'd 
 Calvin, but have taken to the English translation. 
 
 I' Nov. 16. Left home with my dear wife this morning or 
 Flisk, where I preached. Dined at the manse with a lage 
 Gupar party, and spent the evening in Mrs. Morton's. Hesitaed 
 betwixt a plain and an elaborate sermon for the people, andle- 
 cided on the former. Pray that I may be strictly conscientbus 
 
 "Mr. Johnston was a man of refined taste and great conversational powei. I 
 
 MtlMM given to understand that his conversations with him on relieious subject had 
 
 ly blessed to Mr. Chalmers, although he never had occasion "to make snh an 
 
 Sv ' vs A? T T ^ that he held him in **& <**<***> ^d greatly valud his 
 oety. MS. Memoranda, by the Rev. Dr. Brown of Brampton.
 
 JOURNAL. 233 
 
 in this department of conduct. Felt long and frequent vacuities 
 of religious sentiment, and feel my need of wisdom among those 
 who are without. my God, do Thou allay my hunger and 
 thirst after righteousness, by filling me. 
 
 " Nov. 17. Left Flisk after breakfast. Feel long and dreary 
 intervals of estrangement from God, with occasional gleams of 
 faith. Felt impatience at Rathillet and other places. my 
 God, establish the operation of Thy whole law in my heart, and 
 let my walk be with Thee. Rose in gratitude to my heavenly 
 Father for the peace and comfort of our home. 
 
 " Nov. 19. Mr. Tait spent the day with me. Had much 
 congenial conversation with him, and pray that I may be sup- 
 ported in exhibiting the same marked and decided testimony. 
 O God, give me to devote more of my zeal for the eternal in- 
 terests of the people in my neighbourhood. 
 
 " Nov. 20. Was provoked with Thomas taking it upon him 
 to ask more corn for my horse. It has got feeble under his 
 administration of corn, and 1 am not without suspicion that he 
 appropriates it ; and his eagerness to have it strengthens the 
 suspicion. Erred in betraying anger to my servant and wife ; 
 and, though I afterwards got my feelings into a state of placid- 
 ity and forbearance upon Christian principles, was moved and 
 agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. Let me take the 
 corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire charity. 
 my God, support me. Had our first invited party this day, 
 and have resolved, from my experience of it, to be more aloof 
 from secular people. Mr. F. was peculiarly offensive with his 
 contempt for the Bible Society. my God, enable me to hold 
 out a firm and consistent testimony. 
 
 " Nov. 26. I have a high call of duty for rising earlier 
 that I am losing acquaintance with God, and must devote more 
 time and more earnestness to the work of intercourse with 
 Him. may this consideration be effectual in overcoming my 
 indolence. 
 
 " Nov. 30. Exercised on the subject of forbearance with Mr. 
 Edie, who prolongs the stay of his two young horses on my 
 glebe before the term. Wrote him a civil intimation on the 
 subject ; and, my God, carry me in triumph through this sore 
 and difficult temptation. Mr. Anderson dined and drank tea. 
 Let me carry it with the meekness of wisdom as to my favourite 
 plans about Bible Societies. A slight tendency to err in con- 
 versation upon this subject.
 
 034 JIEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Dec. 1. The staigs were returned to the glebe after my 
 
 intimation, and gave rise to much internal conflict. my God, 
 discover to me the evil of my heart, and may faith and charity 
 have the rule in it. Called on Mr. Edie, and found that they 
 did not belong to him, but to Mr. Mather. This gave instan- 
 taneous relief, and leaves a lesson behind it, _ Let me always 
 speak in a case of fancied injustice. If thine enemy offend 
 thee, rebuke him ; and if he still hold out, let that be an after 
 consideration. 
 
 " Dec. 3. Yesterday rebuked Mr. Mather, and then granted 
 him the favour he had taken. 
 
 " Dec. 9. My dear wife much better. May my gratitude be 
 indelible. Neglected my monthly forenoon of devotion on the 
 first Monday, and had it to-day. The following is the record : 
 Thought'of God, and endeavoured to possess my mind with 
 the idea of the reality of His power, wisdom, knowledge, truth, 
 and mercy how all these attributes met in the dispensation of 
 the Gospel. Prayed, and sent up adoration to God as the Father 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and invoked His blessing 
 upon the solemn exercise. Thought of the fulness, and ab- 
 soluteness, and certainty, of the promises that are made in Christ. 
 He who believeth in Him shall be saved. Had actings of faith. 
 Prayed for the increase of it, and for the Spirit to give me the 
 love of God, to teach me the evil of sin, and to make me alto- 
 gether such as God would have me to be. Thought of the 
 practical application of the general truth of the Gospel to con- 
 duct. Felt the small operation of religious principle as an 
 element of influence upon my hourly and familiar movements. 
 Prayed for the abiding influences of religious principle upon me, 
 for the glory of God and the will of Christ being the grand prin- 
 ciples of my behaviour, for my sins being subdued, and my duties 
 being performed, and at last gave way to aspirations, which 
 I hope God would receive as the eflusions of a soul hungering 
 and thirsting after righteousness. my heavenly Father, do 
 Thou fill it. Prayed for my wife, relations, friends, acquaint- 
 ances, the parish, and general interests of the Gospel. Con- 
 cluded with a prayer for God's blessing upon the whole exercise. 
 
 " Dec. 15. Went to the Presbytery. Understand that there 
 is to be a motion for a petition against the Catholics. I shall 
 resist it. Eeflected, on my return, how absent I was from God, 
 and pray that His law and His Spirit may be ever present with 
 me. No composition or severe reading this day. Have thought
 
 JOURNAL. 235 
 
 of the subject of the record that God calls us to believe, and 
 which He says we make Him a liar by not believing, namely, 
 that He hath given us eternal life, and that this life is in His 
 Son. So long as we have not the assurance of this eternal life 
 through Christ, are not we short of the belief required ? 
 
 " Dec. 16. Confined to the house with bad weather. Read 
 much at Eeviews. Calvin highly interesting on faith ; and I 
 commit myself to God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 " Dec. 18. Again prevented from riding by the weather. 
 Began a short-hand speech on the subject of the Catholic Claims. 
 God, give me to be wise, and calm, and skilful in this 
 argument. 
 
 " Dec. 22. I had asked John Bouthron to supper yester- 
 night, and told him with emphasis that we supped at nine. He 
 came at eight this night, and all forbearance and civility left 
 me, and with my prayers I mixed the darkness of that heart 
 which hateth its brother. This is most truly lamentable, and 
 reveals to me the exceeding nakedness of my heart. All my 
 works gone through with cheerfulness, because there is nothing 
 in them to thwart a natural feeling, or a constitutional tendency, 
 can never be received as evidence of good, while self-denial is 
 so little practised, while duty is shrunk from the moment it 
 becomes painful, while gentleness is unfelt, and, with my pro- 
 fession of faith that God for Christ's sake hath forgiven me 
 all, I in fact can forgive nothing, and suffer the most trifling 
 incidents of life to hurry me away from all principle and all 
 charity. Ob, why was not this present with me at the time of 
 offence ? my God, enable me to watch for Thy Spirit with 
 all perseverance, and may that Spirit bring all things to my 
 remembrance. 
 
 "Dec. 24. A. Paterson called, and gave me agreeable ac- 
 counts of the growth of seriousness hi the parish. 
 
 " Dec. 31. Left Anstruther by myself after breakfast. Felt 
 outbreakings of impatience at the slow rate of my horse. my 
 God, make me to feel the rapidity of my pilgrimage. As years 
 roll over me, may I find my repose in eternity ; and give me to 
 be more attached to my Saviour, and more acquiescing in the 
 whole of His will concerning me. heavenly Father, carry on 
 my sanctification ; and, though separated at present from the 
 dear partner of my home, I remember her before Thee. Protect 
 and save her, and may she grow in the faith of Christ, and in 
 the experience of its power and of its comforts."
 
 236 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON MISSIONS IN INDIA THE SERAMPORE MISSIONARIES 
 
 DR. CAREY SERMON AT DUNDEE VISIT OF ANDREW FULLER EXPERI- 
 MENT OF EXTEMPORE PREACHING JOURNAL OF 1813. 
 
 " TBB first number of the ' Anabaptist Missions ' informs us that the origin of the Society 
 will be found in the irorkingt of Brother Carry't mind, whose heart appears to have been tct 
 vpon the convertion of the heathen in 1786, before he came to reside at ^foulton. These 
 workings produced a sermon at Northampton, and the sermon a subscription to convert 
 420 millions of Pagans. Of the subscription, we have the following account : ' Information 
 is come from Brother Carey that a gentleman from Northumberland had promised to send 
 him 20 for the Society, and to subscribe four guineas annually. 1 'At this meeting at North- 
 ampton, two other friends subscribed and paid two guineas apiece, two more one guinea 
 each, and another half-a-guinea, making six guineas and a half in all. And such members 
 as were present of the first subscribers, paid their subscriptions into the hands of the trea- 
 surer, who proposed to put the sum now received into the hands of a banker, who will pay 
 interest for the same.' Baptist 3fit*icn Society, No. i. p. 5." 
 
 This passage is taken from an article on Indian Missions 
 which appeared in the "Edinburgh Review" for April 1808. 
 The extracts which it contains form part of that " perilous heap 
 of trash" presented to the reader by the Rev. Sydney Smith, 
 while executing his chosen office of " routing out a nest of con- 
 secrated cobblers ;" the simple exhibition of which was deemed 
 by him "quite decisive both as to the danger of insurrection 
 from the prosecution of the scheme [of Indian Missions], the utter 
 unh'tness of the persons employed in it, and the complete hope- 
 lessness of the attempt while pursued in such circumstances as 
 now exist ;" for " why," in mingled mirth and scorn, he asks, 
 " why are we to send out little detachments of maniacs to spread 
 over the fine regions of the world the most unjust and con- 
 temptible opinion of the Gospel ? . . . Let any man read the 
 * Anabaptist Missions ;' can he do so without deeming such men 
 pernicious and extravagant in their own country, and without 
 feeling that they are benefiting us much more by their absence 
 than the Hindoos by their advice?" When the workings of his 
 mind began, of which the witty reviewer makes such pleasant 
 use, Carey was a journeyman shoemaker in the small hamlet of
 
 " GREAT THINGS ATTEMPTED FOR GOD. 237 
 
 Hackleton, a few miles from Northampton ; and when, as a 
 " consecrated cobbler," he removed to the neighbouring village 
 of Motilton, it was to preach to a small congregation of Baptists 
 for a salary under 20 a year, and to teach a school besides, 
 that he might eke out a scanty livelihood. To Sydney Smith, 
 as to nine -tenths of the British population at that time, it looked 
 ridiculous enough that such a man should not only trouble his 
 own mind, and try for years to trouble the minds of others, 
 about the conversion of 420 millions of Pagans, but that he 
 should actually propose that he himself should be sent out to 
 execute the project. He succeeded at last, however, in obtaining 
 liberty to bring the subject before the small religious community 
 of which he was a member; and on the 2d October 1792, at a 
 meeting of the Baptist Association at Kettering, it was resolved to 
 form a Missionary Society; but Avhen the sermon was preached, 
 and the collection made, it was found to amount to no more than 
 12, 13s. 6d. With such agents as Carey, and collections like 
 this of Kettering to support them, Indian Missions appeared a 
 fit quarry for that shaft which none knew better than our Edin- 
 burgh Reviewer how to use ; and yet, looking somewhat more 
 narrowly at the " consecrated cobbler," there was something 
 about him, even at the beginning, sufficient to disarm ridicule ; 
 for, if we notice him in his little garden, he will be seen motion- 
 less for an hour or more, in the attitude of intense thought ;* or, 
 if we join him in his evening hours, we shall find him reading 
 the Bible in one or other of four different languages with which 
 he has already made himself familiar ; or, if we follow him into 
 his school, we shall discover him with a large leather globe of 
 his own construction, pointing out to the village urchins the dif- 
 ferent kingdoms of the earth, saying, " These are Christians 
 these are Mahommedans and these are Pagans, and these are 
 Pagans !" his voice stopped by strong emotion as he repeats 
 and re-repeats the last mournful utterance. Carey sailed to India 
 in 1793. Driven, by the jealousy of the East India Company, 
 out of an English ship in which he was about to sail, he took 
 his passage in a Danish vessel, and chose a Danish settlement in 
 
 * "Long before any measures were adopted for the establishment of a foreign mission, 
 hi* sifter was witness to the extreme anxiety of Mr. Carey on the subject. Again and 
 :i,';iin has sfte observed him in the attitude of intense thought, the subject of which, as it 
 afterwards appeared, was the state of the heathen world. She has often seen him standing 
 motionless for an hour or more in the middle of a path in his garden, abstracted from out- 
 ward objects by the workings of a mind that had begun to devote itself to a vast and newly 
 contemplated project." Cox'* " History of the Baptist Missionary Society," voL i. p. 5. Sue 
 also " Armc.13 of the English Bible," by Christopher Anderson, vol. ii. p. 591.
 
 238 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 India for his residence ; yet be lived till, from that press which 
 he established at Serampore, there had issued 212,000 copies of 
 the Sacred Scriptures in forty different languages the vernacu- 
 lar tongues of 380 millions of immortal beings, of whom more 
 than 100 millions were British subjects, and till he had seen ex- 
 pended upon that noble object, on behalf of which the first small 
 offering at Kettering was presented, no less a sum than 91,500. 
 
 Even at the period in Mr. Chalmers's history at which we have 
 now arrived, and when his eyes were fixed with intense interest 
 upon Carey and his coadjutors, they were carrying forward nine- 
 teen different translations of the Holy Scriptures, and expending 
 upwards of 10,000 per annum, one-half of which was the fmits 
 of their own personal labour, upon the great work in which they 
 were engaged. On the llth March 1812, that work suffered a 
 disastrous check. A fire broke out in the printing-office at 
 Serampore. In a few hours reams of paper, and printed sheets, 
 and founts of various types, and several complete editions of the 
 Scriptures, were consumed. The intelligence reached England 
 in the course of the summer, and such sympathy and liberality 
 were excited, that in fifty days upwards of 10,000, the esti- 
 mated amount of the loss, was contributed. The feeling of in- 
 terest spread throughout all the churches. It was felt even in the 
 remote parish of Kilmany, whose minister was revolving in his 
 mind whether or not he should propose that some of the funds of 
 his own parish association should be devoted to repair this loss 
 of the Serampore missionaries, when an application came to him 
 from Dundee to preach the annual missionary sermon there, the 
 committee of the Dundee society having resolved that the col- 
 lection should be devoted to that very object upon which Mr. 
 Chalmers's own sympathies were so intently fixed. 
 
 This sermon, the first which was delivered on any public oc- 
 casion after the great change, was preached on the 26th October 
 1812. At the request of the Missionary Society, it was printed 
 and published at Dundee, in January 1813. Its sale was so 
 rapid, that a month or two afterwards it was republished by Mr. 
 Whyte of Edinburgh ; and before the end of the following year 
 four editions of it had been circulated. This, with another ser- 
 mon, and a review of Foster's " Essays," which appeared in the 
 May number of the " Christian Instructor," comprised all that 
 ie published during 1813, a year almost exclusively dedicated 
 to those private and parochial duties, the record of which, sub- 
 jecting it to increased abridgment, we once more resume.
 
 JOURNAL. 239 
 
 11 Jan. 1, 1813. Made a solemn dedication of myself this 
 forenoon, of which the following is a record : Prayed for the 
 spirit of grace and supplication. Dedicated myself to God, and 
 prayed for strength from on high to fulfil my dedication vows. 
 Renewed my dedication to Christ as my Saviour. Prayed for 
 my establishment in Him, for the continuance and increase of 
 faith, for an interest in His redemption ; and, at the conclusion 
 of my prayer, felt a delightful sense of His sufficiency and ful- 
 ness. Having the hope, may I purify myself, even as He 
 is pure. Dedicated myself to the Holy Ghost, my sanctifier. 
 Prayed for a cordial acquiescence in all the duties which such a 
 dedication implies, watching for the Spirit, appealing to Him as 
 my guide and helper at all times, acknowledging Him as the 
 only effectual source of all good and virtuous exertion, and 
 emptying myself of myself, that I may be filled with His fulness, 
 and that His power may rest upon me. Prayed for a closer 
 walk with God, for having His will and authority more con- 
 stantly present with me, for dying unto all sin, and living unto 
 all righteousness. Prayed for a blessing upon the whole, for an 
 entire application of the Gospel remedy to my heart, and that 
 God, who knows what is in me, would accommodate Himself to 
 my necessities, and deliver me entirely from that disease of a 
 ruined nature which Christ came to heal. 
 
 " Jan. 6. Had my monthly exercise of devotion this fore- 
 noon. The following is the record : After many wanderings, 
 composed myself to a prayer for the Divine Spirit accompanying 
 this exercise. Felt nearness to God in Christ Jesus. Acknow- 
 ledged God ; prayed for friendly intercourse with Him ; acknow- 
 ledged Jesus as the only channel by which this intercourse could 
 be carried on ; desired to be in Him, emptied of self, and satisfied 
 with His fulness. Prayed for spiritual blessings through Christ, 
 that I may be enabled to cultivate a habitual dependence on the 
 Spirit, and to watch for it with all perseverance. Felt aspiring 
 desires after that which is good. Thought of my faults, and 
 prayed for forgiveness and reformation, for the more constant 
 operation of religious principle over the whole of my life ; for 
 more patience and forgiveness and forbearance with those around 
 me ; for the love of God, for a freedom from worldly anxieties, 
 for the correction of my intellectual perversities, and, in parti- 
 cular, for a more retentive memory. God, do Thou fill my 
 hungering and my thirsting after righteousness. Thought of my 
 connexions ; prayed for my dear wife, relatives, acquaintances at
 
 240 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 large ; for my conduct to all ; for my parish in general, for some 
 sick in it, for my conduct among them ; for Bible Societies and 
 public courts, and my conduct in them ; and, finally, for the 
 general spread of Christianity in the world. Felt many intervals 
 of wandering through the whole of this exercise. God, give 
 me a more intense direction of mind to divine things. Eepeated 
 my ordinary morning prayer. Concluded with an humble peti- 
 tion for God's forgiveness of what was amiss, and His blessing 
 on the whole exercise. Felt clear and pleasurable. Had a fuller 
 sense of Divine things than usual ; and pray that God would 
 give energy to my practice as well as clearness to my sentiments. 
 
 "Jan. 14. My missionary sermon has reached Anster ; and 
 I pray that I may feel an indifference to human praise. God, 
 may Thy approbation be enough for me. 
 
 "7a?z. 15. Began my review of Foster. Extinguish my love 
 of praise, God ; and now that my sermon is afloat on the pub- 
 lic, let me cultivate an indifference to human applause. 
 
 " Jan. 26. Called on Dr. Brown,* who gives a high testi- 
 mony to my article on ' Christianity.' God, let me riot be 
 seduced by the love of praise. 
 
 " Jan. 27. Left Anster with my wife. Called on Dr. Brown, 
 who again gives me praise for my sermon, and is anxious for con- 
 versation on religious subjects. Let me write him a full and a 
 firm testimony. I pray, God, for his peculiar Christianity. 
 
 "Jan. 29. At night received letters giving a good account 
 of the sale of my sermon. my God, may Thy praise and Thy 
 approbation be uppermost in my heart. 
 
 "Feb. 1. Had my monthly devotion this forenoon. The fol- 
 lowing is the record of it : Prayed for the blessing of God upon 
 the exercise, and that He would draw near to me. Had closer fel- 
 lowship with Him than I sometimes have. It is the presence of 
 the Mediator which gives to that fellowship delight and confi- 
 dence. Gave myself to meditation, but took to wandering ; upon 
 which I again prayed for fixedness of thought upon God. When I 
 rose from this prayer, felt how connected the duty of prayer was 
 with the duty of watching. Without formally going over the faith 
 of Christ, I proceeded on it; and made an immediate approach to 
 God through Him for spiritual blessings. Prayed with fervour for 
 the graces and accomplishments of the Christian character, for the 
 increase of faith, for a closer alliance with the Saviour, for hea- 
 venly-mindedness, for the love of God, for the increase of know- 
 
 * Dr. James Broivn, then living in St. Andrews.
 
 JOURNAL. 241 
 
 ledge in divine things, and for a clear understanding and faithful 
 remembrance of the Bible. Thought of my perversities ; but still 
 had my relapses into other trains of thought and speculation. Con- 
 fessed my offences, my forgetfulness and estrangedness from God, 
 my keen sense of what is irksome or injurious, my love of human 
 applause, my want of forgiveness and brotherly forbearance, my 
 worldly calculations and the pleasure I annex to them. Prayed 
 for the forgiveness of all, and the amendment of all. to this 
 prayer may I add watchfulness ; and let it be a constant prin- 
 ciple with me to annihilate self, and to lay myself out for the 
 accommodation of those around me. Made intercession for the 
 usual objects of them. Felt the straining of meditation to be 
 -unsatisfactory without Christ. May my rest be on Him, and 
 may He guide me peacefully iu the right way. Concluded with 
 a prayer for God's blessing on the whole exercise. that I 
 may watch as well as pray. 
 
 " Feb. 11. Calvin's observations on self-denial, on bearing the 
 cross, on sinking and annihilating self in the will of God, are 
 most interesting. 
 
 " Feb. 12. Have my evening family worship at nine, that I 
 may give a clear and vigorous mind to the exercise. Finished 
 Parkhurst's ' Greek Grammar.' 
 
 " Feb. 17. Almost exclusively with my visitors. I lament 
 the secularity of the general run, and feel myself oppressed with 
 scruples on this subject. Prayed for direction ; and, in point of 
 fact, did not get fairly alongside of them in conversation, though 
 I did my best for them at family prayers. Find, however, that 
 my attempts are apt to fail, when I have respect to man in this 
 exercise. Let me address myself to the one Hearer. No chapters 
 nor study of any kind. I find it a main advantage to command 
 some retirement for God on such occasions as the present ; let 
 me make a particular object of this. 
 
 " Sunday, Feb. 21. Preached as usual. Prayed in my morn- 
 ing devotion against the encroachments of worldly feeling and 
 worldly calculation. Succeeded to a degree calculated to awaken 
 gratitude, and failed to a degree calculated to inspire humility. 
 Should feel more in the house of God the awful reality of my 
 business. 
 
 " Feb. 25. There are many topics of anxiety afloat just now. 
 my God, give me the victor)-. May my trust be in the 
 living God ; and grant that I may beware of covetousness. O 
 that I could attain to the quietness of faith. I look to Thy 
 
 VOL. r. Q
 
 242 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Spirit for the endowment. Err in dwelling with pleasure on my 
 future prospects. This is idolatry. Be Thou enough for me. 
 Mr. Fleming reports the applause given at Edinburgh to my 
 article. 
 
 41 Sunday, Feb. 28. Preached as usual. Was more with God 
 to-day than usual. Had no rapture nor overpowering clear- 
 ness. But can these at all times be expected ? Might there 
 not be a calm hold of Christ, and understanding of His promise, 
 and determined abiding by Him, though there is little elevation 
 accompanying it ? 
 
 " March 1. Read Calvin's ' Institutes' before breakfast. Had 
 my monthly devotion, and the following is the record of it : 
 Thought in the general, and prayed in the general. Felt Christ 
 to be my all : prayed in the faith of Him, as a member of His 
 body ; and felt nearness and reconciliation. Prayed for living 
 water, which is God's Spirit. Thought of my vague and im- 
 perfect knowledge of God. Prayed to be rescued from the power 
 of ignorant and superstitious fancies ; that my conceptions may 
 be a fair copy of the information in the Bible ; that I may sub- 
 mit to be taught by it, and stick to it firmly ; that I may grow 
 in the wisdom necessary to salvation, and that all the defects of 
 my memory and understanding may be rectified. Thought of 
 the more detailed and practical application of the greater prin- 
 ciples. Prayed for strength from God through Jesus Christ, 
 for the resting of His power upon me, for the cure of my in- 
 firmities, some of which I enumerated, and for the victory in all 
 things, through Him who is both my Saviour and Sanctifier. 
 Felt that rest in Christ and assurance of justification through 
 Him gave a solidity and a power to my petitions which no other 
 sentiment could confer. Delivered a prayer of intercessions. 
 Concluded with a prayer for a blessing on the whole exercise. 
 Through the whole, I found myself more established on the true 
 foundation, that is Christ Jesus. may I watch as well as 
 Fay, and be of the number of those who worship God in the 
 Spirit, and rejoice in the Lord Jesus, and have no confidence in 
 the flesh. Through the whole of this day felt the inefficiency 
 of mere speculation in religion. Had little joy or spiritual 
 light, had a weight on me ; and without any luminous or satis- 
 fied feeling, entertained a general sense of my own unworthi- 
 iiess, and looked at the Saviour. Though I walk in darkness, 
 let me trust in Him. Let me wait for God; and feeling 
 ihat moods and frames are not at my control, let me feel
 
 JOURNAL. 43 
 
 my dependence on the Spirit. Much impressed with Calvin and 
 Cecil.* 
 
 " March 2. Felt high elevation and joy this day. The de- 
 lightful weather and full health had doubtless a share ; but I 
 trust that Christ is forming in me, and that will explain all, 
 and give birth to all. Much delighted with Calvin on imputed 
 righteousness. Feel this, that there is a power beyond natural 
 reason in the work of bringing home conviction to the heart ; 
 and the feeble grasp which mere inference gives me of a truth 
 tells me the need and the reality of that teaching which the Holy 
 Ghost teacheth. 
 
 " March 4. Eode after breakfast to the westward, where 
 I visited in four places; thence to Cupar, where I transacted 
 all my business. Committed myself to God before entering into 
 it ; let this be a habit, but let me take care that it be a habit 
 of the mind. Found myself withdrawn from God by the cares 
 and calculations of life. Got a parcel from Dr. Stuart, and 
 gave myself to the Baptist Report, to the exclusion of my even- 
 ing devotion. May not even the keen interest I take in the 
 news of the gospel's spread be a principle separate from the love 
 of God? 
 
 " Sunday, March 7. Rode after breakfast to Cults, where 
 I preached. I feel that I do not come close enough to the 
 heart and experience of my hearers, and begin to think that 
 the phraseology of the old writers must be given up for one more 
 
 * Some precious thoughts in Cecil's "Remains," such as " No man will preach the 
 gospel so fully as the Scriptures preach it, unless he will submit to talk like an Antinomian 
 in the estimation of a great body of Christians ; nor will any man preach it so practically 
 as the Scriptures, unless he will submit to be called by as large a body an Anninian. Many 
 think that they find a middle path, which, in fact, is neither one thing nor another, since 
 it is not the incomprehensible but grand plan of the Bible. It is somewhat of human con- 
 trivance ; it savours of human poverty and littleness." " The right way of interpreting 
 Scripture is to take it as we find it, without any attempt to force it into any particular 
 system. Whatever may be fairly inferred from Scripture we need not fear to insist on. 
 Many passages speak the language of what is called Calvinism, and that in almost the 
 strongest terms. I would not have a man clip and curtail these passages to bring them down 
 to some system. Let him go with them in their full and free sense, for otherwise, if he do 
 not absolutely pervert them, he will attenuate their energy. But let him look at as many 
 more which speak the language of Arminianism, and let him go all the way with them also. 
 God has been pleased thus to state and to leave the thing, and all our attempts to distort 
 it one way or the other are puny and contemptible." " We should take care not to dis- 
 courage any one who is searching after God. If a man begins in earnest to seek after Him, 
 if haply he may find Him, let us beware how we stop him by rashly telling him he is not 
 seeking in the right way. This would be like setting fire to the first round of the ladder by 
 which one was attempting to escape. We mast wait for a fit season to communicate light. 
 Had any one told me when I first began to think religiously, that I was not seeking God in 
 the right way, I might have been discouraged from seeking Him at all. I was much in- 
 debted to my mother for her truly wise and judicious conduct toward me when I first turned 
 from my vanity and sin." The above extracts are taken from a Commonplace Book com- 
 menced at this time by Mr, Chalmers, but containing only one more entry, quoted at a 
 subseinient date.
 
 044 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 accommodated to the present age. Dined with Mr. Wilkie, and 
 returned in the evening. Let me never leave secret prayer till 
 I have obtained a state of mind so charged with Divine principle 
 as to fit for going into the world. Instead of which, do I not 
 hurry the conclusion, think that I have discharged a duty, 
 shake myself loose of the business, and go back with a mind 
 emptied and unfurnished of all that I had been before in pos- 
 session of ? 
 
 " March 9. Got a letter of congratulation from Mr. Burder, 
 .secretary to the Missionary Society, on the score of my sermon. 
 
 1 think it likely that it will go to a second edition. 
 
 "March 11. Mr. Brewster spent the evening, and had some 
 conversation with him about my sermon. I fear that the sinful 
 love of distinction still hangs about me. my God, forgive 
 and cleanse. Let me be fearfully vigilant over this and every 
 other part of my conduct. Let me make a point of bringing 
 forward nothing in conversation for the purpose of signalizing 
 myself. 
 
 " March 12. Rode to Charlstone, where I visited three 
 people. One of them, on his deathbed, preferred a complaint 
 against neighbours. I was offended at a reference to such a 
 subject ; felt the fruitlessness of my prayer among a set of en- 
 vious and unbrotherly people ; and flung the reference away 
 from me with characteristic impetuosity. Was this right ? No : 
 
 2 Tim. ii. 24. I should have taken up the case ; I should 
 have entered into the feeling, for it was so far justifiable ; I 
 should have mildly but impressively stated the insignificance 
 of the matter, and particularly to one on the eve of eternity. 
 Above all, I should have pressed home the charity and forgive- 
 ness of the gospel, and insisted on them as necessary evidences of 
 a saving change in the heart. Felt a deadness all day to Divine 
 things ; but, my God, give me to be fervent in spirit. 
 
 " March 13. Went to Rathillet to assist at a meeting for 
 the poor. Mr. L. made a most unjustifiable appearance, and 
 behaved with great personal rudeness to myself. I felt and 
 brooded over it afterwards, and am sorry to say, I suffered it to 
 take entire possession of me. I find that there are moments 
 of helplessness, that I cannot see my way, and I abandon my- 
 self in general confidence to God. I intend rebuking him to- 
 morrow ; but let me keep anger under control, and cultivate 
 forgiveness. 
 
 , "March 14. Preached as usual, and I think to a very at-
 
 JOURNAL. 245 
 
 tentive audience. Was still occupied with vexation about Mr. 
 L., and God was shut out of my heart even on His own day. 
 I mentioned the matter to Mr. Gillespie ; but was not this seek- 
 ing my relief in man, when I should have kept by God ? God 
 was merciful ; He found out a way when I could not. Mr. 
 L. felt the impropriety of his conduct, and came forward with 
 an apology. I was mild, but I told him of his fault. He 
 heard, and, God, grant that I may have gained him. In the 
 whole of this conduct I felt myself under the strong dominion 
 of principles merely human the feeling of an affront the sense 
 of disgrace in the sight of men the anxiety to recover myself 
 in their eyes ; and even when I was mild, were not the fear 
 of man the unpleasantness of an open collision the constitu- 
 tional love of peace, and the instinctive compassion for penitental 
 regret, the main principles of my conduct? my God, how 
 little of Thee and of Thy law in all this ! but in this darkness 
 about my duty and my condition, let me keep by my Saviour, 
 and never cease my dependence upon Him who is the light and 
 the life of men. 
 
 " March 16. On the review of last year, I look back upon 
 a life chequered with frailty and sin, but I trust aspiring after 
 righteousness, and feeling restless and uneasy under relapses. 
 If in anything I have made sensible improvement, it is in feel- 
 ing the more immediate connexion which subsists betwixt the 
 practical virtues and the faith of Christ leading me to culti- 
 vate union with Him, and dependence upon that Spirit which is 
 at His giving. my God, give me to redeem the time ; give 
 me to make an entire business of my sanctification ; and in all 
 the duties of the redeemed Christian may I abound more and 
 more. But above all, establish me thoroughly on Christ, that I 
 may believe on Him to the saving of my soul that I may be 
 grafted in Him as my vine that I may rest in Him as my 
 foundation that I may partake in Him as my righteousness. 
 Believing, may I love loving, may I obey. 
 
 " In addition to my ordinary supplies for the pulpit, wrote a 
 speech for the Bible Society, since published ; a sermon on Gal. 
 iii. 23 ; do. on John iv. 10 ; do. oh Eom. x. 17, since published ; 
 do. on 2 Tim. i. 10 ; do. on 2 Thess. iii. 1 ; a review of Foster's 
 "Essays;"* and a speech on the Catholic question; in all 
 about eighteen sheets. 
 
 * The sermon on Galatians iii. 23, will be found in Works, vol. vii. p. 339 ; the sermon, 
 on John iv. 10, in Posthumous Works, vol. vi. p. 107. Particular attention is invited to thU
 
 246 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " March 17. Made a dedication of myself. The following is 
 a record of my dedication : Prayed for the blessing of God on 
 the whole exercises. Acknowledged the sovereignty of God, and 
 made an entire dedication of myself to His service. Felt the re- 
 lapses of wandering and worldly speculation ; felt much comfort 
 in the command to believe in Christ ; acknowledged Him as my 
 Saviour, and dedicated myself to Him as the alone Rock of my 
 confidence. the fulness and the sufficiency that lie in Him ! 
 Grant, Lord, that we may be made partakers of that fulness. 
 Acknowledged my entire dependence on the Holy Ghost as my 
 sanctifier. Prayed for His controlling influences over my heart, 
 thoughts, and conduct. my God, renew me in the spirit of 
 my mind. Prayed for the application of all this to my conduct ; 
 felt the rapidity of my years ; prayed for the correction of my 
 infirmities, and, above all, for a more close and constant walk 
 with God. Concluded with a prayer for God's blessing on the 
 whole exercise. Felt more confidence in Christ when I thought 
 of His sacrifice in the plain and obvious view of the thing as 
 laid down in the Bible. that I could sit humbly at the feet 
 of Christ, and listen to His sayings with the docility of a child ! 
 O my God, soften and prepare me for a willing subject of Thy 
 kingdom. 
 
 " Sunday, March 21. Was fatigued by exertion ; and in- 
 stead of following after God by hard straining of the mind, I 
 gave myself to quietism, and feel that looking tip for the Spirit 
 through Christ Jesus is the only effectual attitude for obtaining 
 love to God, and filial confidence in Him. My mind relapsed 
 at times to its worldly perplexities ; but, God, may faith over- 
 come, and may Thy Sabbaths be seasons of rest from all that is 
 anxious. Let me withdraw my heart from the creature, and fix 
 it in close and immediate dependence upon the Son of God. 
 Felt the repose and charm of the peculiar doctrines. Stablish 
 me in Christ, and may I lead a life of faith upon Him. 
 
 " March 22. Have finished the three first books of Calvin's 
 * Institutes,' but find the subject of the fourth heavy and un- 
 interesting. 
 
 " March 24. Began Marshall on Sanctification, and promise 
 myself great enlargement and solidity from this performance. 
 
 ' ; April 5. I must give up a number of intended preparations 
 
 wnnon, as unfolding the doctrinal change of sentiment which had been effected in the 
 hor's mind. The sermon on Romans x. 17, will be found in Works TO! xi p 315 The 
 ermon on 2 Tim. i. 10, in Works, roL x. p. 215. The Review of Foster's " Essays," in the 
 Christian Instructor," ToL vi. p. 327, and Works, ToL xii p 223
 
 JOUKNAL. 247 
 
 for the Synod ; and what are these preparations ? uncertain in 
 their object, and having a great share of vanity in their principle. 
 my God, make me more humble. May I count myself little 
 among my brethren, and be satisfied to be so counted ; be con- 
 tent with the want of extempore power, and not suffer my 
 ambition of display to make business and anxiety so thicken 
 iiround me. 
 
 " April 1. Neglected my monthly devotion on Monday, and 
 had it this day. Felt more of my own impotency, and the ne- 
 cessity of quietly waiting in dependence on the Saviour, that I 
 may be filled with His fulness. Prayed to God for a blessing on 
 the exercise. Began at the root of all intercourse with God, 
 through the Mediator. Prayed for establishment in Him, and 
 not being able to articulate, my heart was opened to the view 
 of His sufficiency of excellence. God, do Thou, who knowest 
 the mind of the Spirit, put Thy Spirit in me, that what I pray 
 for, though not expressed in language, may be according to Thy 
 will, and obtain acceptance in Thy sight. This interval wan- 
 dered most shamefully into other subjects. In my next prayer 
 did not articulate. Its subject was a right state of mind in re- 
 ference to God. Felt the Saviour to be the channel through 
 which I was to get this, as well as every other blessing. Prayed 
 for freedom from anxiety about worldly matters, seeing that God 
 was my friend, and for His will being the constant principle of 
 iny conduct. Thought then of my conduct in reference to others, 
 and prayed for the regulation of it by the principles of Christian 
 charity, and, above all, by a supreme regard to the good of souls. 
 Intercessions for my parish, for forgiveness for myself, and ability 
 and judgment as its minister, for our Church ; forgiveness for 
 myself for that vanity and ambition of display which have 
 hitherto actuated my conduct in Church courts, and for this 
 anxiety being entirely swept away, that I may give an humble 
 and a single heart to the good of the Church ; for my friends, 
 and family, and dear wife ; and finally, for the progress of the 
 gospel in all lands. Prayed for a blessing on the whole exercise, 
 and for the forgiveness of what was amiss in it. I have to 
 ament the wanderings of my mind into what is vain and worldly, 
 ud I count it an evidence of my small progress in the tastes of 
 Christian, that even the very hours which I had consecrated 
 t God should be so much invaded by the distractions of the 
 ^rld. my God, pity and forgive me. 
 " April 15. Crossed to Edinburgh.
 
 248 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Sunday. April 18. Heard Drs. Campbell and Fleming. 
 Dined in Dr. Jones's. Preached in the evening for the ' Desti- 
 tute Sick.' Much annoyed by Dr. Stuart having wrested from 
 me the publication of my sermon, and that after I had refused 
 ;i deputation from the Society. 
 
 " April 26. Stole a few intervals for writing a fair copy of 
 my Catholic speech for the Dundee newspaper." Went to church 
 in the evening, and had a meeting of people signing their names 
 to the Indian petition.f 
 
 " April 27. Let me record that I never experience a more 
 sensible improvement in divine things than when I resign my- 
 self in quiet dependence to the Saviour. my God, give me 
 to be more alive through the day to a sense of religion. 
 
 " May 3. I gave an hour in the forenoon to devotion, of 
 which the following is the record : At the commencement felt 
 my heart strongly occupied with my misunderstanding with 
 . Prayed against this, that my main anxiety may be about 
 
 * This speech, intended originally to have been delivered before the Synod of Fife, was 
 broken down into three letters which, under the signature X., appeared in the Dundee, 
 Perth, and Cupar Advertiser, in the numbers for May 7, 14, 21. 1813. Without entering 
 into the political part of the question, these letters were occupied with the injury which it 
 was imagined that the removal of the Catholic disabilities would inflict upon the interests of 
 religion. The arguments adduced are the very same which many years afterwards were em- 
 bodied in the celebrated speech on behalf of "Catholic Emancipation which he delivered in 
 Edinburgh. And when, upon that occasion, he was publicly charged with a change of prin- 
 ciple, the present able editor of the Spectator defended his old friend by referring to these very 
 letters, which had been published while the Dundee newspaper was under his management. 
 I am indebted to Mr. Rintoul for my first information as to the existence of these letters, 
 and to Captain Scott of Dundee for kindly placing at my disposal a file of the newspaper in 
 which they appeared. 
 
 f The charter of the East India Company was at this time being renewed ; and as the 
 House of Commons seemed disposed to commit the power of excluding all missionaries 
 from India for twenty years longer into the hands of the Court of Directors, who had all 
 along shown themselves inimical to the introduction of Christianity into our Eastern pos- 
 sessions, Mr. Wilberforce appealed to the religious feeling of the country. This appeal was 
 answered by nine hundred petitions a number at that period almost unprecedented ; and 
 the result of the parliamentary struggle was the concession that the Board of Control should 
 be authorized and required to grant licences to fit and proper persons to go to India. See 
 " Life of Wilberforce," ch. xxviii. " I remember being much struck with this about some 
 sixteen years ago, (written in 1829,) when the question of Missions to India was discussed in 
 Parliament, and a great deal of evidence was taken on both sides of the controversy. The 
 preponderance of the testimony was altogether on the side of the missionary cause ; and it 
 was found accordingly that its success was not incompatible with the safety of the British 
 interests in that distent region of the globe. Among other witnesses, Warren Hastings was 
 examined, and nothing could exceed the utter incompetence of his evidence, discovering as 
 it did a glaring misapprehension of all the facts of the case, and evincing him to be an utter 
 stranger to transactions which took place in his own vicinity, and throughout the countr; 
 where he both resided and reigned. Yet nothing could be more natural than his total mis 
 information on the matter ; and it was really not to be marvelled at, that in the multiplicit 
 of hU official cares, a matter so fractional as the incipient efforts of a few missionarie 
 among the mighty population who were under him, should altogether have escaped his c 
 serration. The confidence that marked his hostility to the enterprise is not so easily Justine; 
 but it is the very confidence, coupled with the "very ignorance, discovered by many v 
 lii-ing home from India the most hostile representations of the missionary cause, and cl pft 
 the authority of having been residents on the spot." Dr. Chalmers's Posthumous We 9 . 
 
 Tol. IX. p. 111.
 
 JOURNAL. 249 
 
 God, and not man, and that I may be so filled with charity and 
 forgiveness, as to be in a state of preparation for bringing my 
 gift before the altar. Prayed for God's blessing and presence 
 through the whole exercise. Prayed for the correction of my 
 defects, my want of taste for spiritual and divine objects, my 
 distance from God, my want of those impressions of reality and 
 importance which should accompany the whole of my intercourse 
 with Him ; prayed for the correction of my faults in reference 
 to my brethren of mankind, and, in particular, for grieving the 
 Holy Ghost, whose fruits are long-suffering and gentleness, by 
 clamour, and wrath, and bitterness. Prayed for the substitution 
 of right principles in place of those wrong ones which obtained 
 
 in the case of , and that I may be without un charitableness 
 
 to man, on the one hand, and a sinful fear of man, on the other. 
 This led me to a train of feeling and speculation about this affair 
 which I indulged in, even on my knees, and the result was a 
 plan which I think it would be advisable to adopt in reference 
 to , and that is, a full and explanatory letter. God, for- 
 give me what is wrong in this wandering, and, as I prayed for 
 wisdom, am I to take this plan as Thy suggestion, and to pro- 
 ceed upon it accordingly ? My beginning acquaintance with God 
 as He lays Himself before me in the Old Testament is, I hope, 
 putting to flight my metaphysical difficulties about sin. I am 
 proceeding more upon first principles, and not consuming my 
 time and strength so much in speculating about them. Thought 
 of my relative duties. Prayed for a due discharge of them, and 
 for the welfare and prosperity of those who are the objects of 
 them. This carried in it intercession for parish, Church, family, 
 friends, and acquaintances. Thought of the general interests of 
 Christianity : prayed for its extension, for the removal of the ob- 
 structions which now lie in its way, for the prosperity of religious 
 societies. Concluded with a prayer for forgiveness, and for a 
 blessing on the whole exercise. 
 
 " May 5. This day is an epoch in my life. My dear Grace 
 had a daughter, and I have to bless God for an answer to my 
 prayers in giving her a safe and easy delivery. my God, per- 
 fect her restoration to health, and carry her in safety through the 
 remainder of her trials. I dedicate this child to Thee, and pray 
 for wisdom and ability, as well as zeal, in the great work of 
 bringing her up in Thy nurture and admonition. Insert the fol- 
 lowing as a memorandum, which may interest my daughter when 
 she comes to understand it :
 
 250 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Born about five minutes before two in the afternoon, and I 
 was employed at the time in correcting for the press the second 
 paragraph about the contempt incurred by missionaries, in my 
 sermon on Ps. xli. 1. 
 
 "Sunday, May 6. Preached as usual. A number of people 
 from a distance, and my house crowded in the interval. Felt 
 some good visitations upon my soul, and, my God, do Thou 
 continue them. Give me to repose from all that is worldly on 
 Thy Sabbaths. that I could henceforth resolve to forsake all 
 for "Christ, and resigning myself in faith to His guidance, may 
 I obtain strength for the doing of all things. my God, give 
 me to bear usefully upon my dear wife's heart ; and may I main- 
 tarn the uniform tone among all around me of an heir and a 
 candidate for immortality. 
 
 "June 7. This day had my monthly exercise of devotion, of 
 which the following is a record : Prayed for a greater acquaint- 
 ance with God. Have perhaps laid too much stress upon my 
 fancy and my feelings of clearness and comfort. God bids us 
 draw near to Him : simply do it, and He in His good time will 
 give an answer to our prayers. It is by faith that we see God 
 and have a near view of Him. But is it not an exercise of faith, 
 when our minds are beclouded and our vision dark, still to trust 
 and to wait and to look in His good time for an answer to our 
 prayers? Made Christ the object of my next prayer: prayed 
 for a thorough establishment in Him. When I reflect upon the 
 high terms in which the transition is described, from being out 
 of Christ to being in Him, as a passage from death to life, from 
 darkness to light in the Lord, from darkness to marvellous light 
 how much have I to attain to if I do not see this light ; but 
 I wait for it, I pray for it, and I determinedly fix mine eye upon 
 Christ as the alone quarter from which I am to obtain it. Then 
 prayed for the Spirit. that I could ever and anon appeal to 
 the promise of the Holy Ghost, and feel the accomplishment of 
 this promise upon me in all the varieties of my business. Prayed 
 against the sins which do most easily beset me anxiety about 
 worldly matters coldness and reserve to those against whom I 
 conceive prejudice or disgust a want both of the meekness and 
 firmness of wisdom in the management of those whom I con- 
 ceive to have treated me with petulance or ingratitude and, 
 above all, a habitual forgetfuluess of my obligations to a life 
 
 religion. Remembered before God my various connexions 
 wife and family, including servants, relations, acquaintances,
 
 JOURNAL. 251 
 
 parish, Church of Scotland, and the general interests of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 " June 13. Served one table at Dairsie, and preached in the 
 evening on Phil. iv. 13,* with a hurtful degree of violence. 
 
 '"June 14. Dined in Dr. Macculloch's with a party; Drs. 
 Campbell and Macdonald there ; and I, overborne by fatigue and 
 that awkwardness which always clings to a man in the presence 
 of those with whom he was awkward formerly, felt silent and 
 embarrassed. Give me to prefer others, and be content with an 
 humble and inferior place among my brethren. Rode to Logic, 
 and got home in the evening. I should feel grateful for the 
 comfort and affection of home ; but, God, I confess, over the 
 head of the sacrifice, my guilt. 
 
 " June 23. Eode to Moonzie, where I preached. Was weak- 
 ened and chillish. Feel very unspiritual often on these occasions. 
 The landscape in full glory : this is to be burned up, but God 
 remaineth. that I could cleave to Him and to the hope of 
 that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 " June 28. Walked to Moonzie, where I heard sermon, and 
 dined with a large party. Have to record a greater degree of 
 vigilance, and a heart more constantly alive to divine things. 
 It is most apt to abandon me in company. that God were 
 present with me, and that He were the inspiring principle which 
 gave rise to the play of kind affection. Let the second law be 
 ever present with me. Delighted with the tenth chapter of 
 Hebrews ; and pray for a fixed and realizing sense of the sure 
 efficacy of the sacrifice. 
 
 " Sunday, July 11. Preached as usual. Miss Collier ex- 
 pressed her satisfaction, and gave me the testimony of another 
 to the good I had done. I have to record that I felt sweetened 
 and drawn to Miss Collier by this. my God, search me, and 
 root out all that is sinful in the love of praise. 
 
 " July 19. Had a conversation with Mr. K. about missionaries 
 and others whom he has a contempt for. There is wisdom as 
 well as zeal necessary on these occasions. We went, a numerous 
 body, to Fincraigs, where we dined. Mr. F. said that the sup- 
 porters of the Indian petitions were idiots. I of course am one 
 of these idiots. I do not know if he is aware of the fact that I 
 promoted a petition. But I took him up, and argued the cause, 
 I trust, in the meekness of the gospel, and certainly reduced him 
 to silence. I believe my wisdom will be to abstain from all 
 
 * See Posthumous Works vol. ri. p. 143.
 
 252 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 positive advances to him, and should he ask the reason, to tell 
 him frankly of the rudeness and impropriety of his conduct. 
 Save me from all uncharitable brooding, God ; and give me 
 to consider the Author and the Finisher of my faith. 
 
 "July 23. After breakfast, Messrs. Anderson and Bruce* 
 came and spent the forenoon with me. Had much conversation 
 with the former, and have to entreat of God that He would for- 
 give any selfishness, or vanity, or indifference to others that I 
 may have betrayed to him. keep me steadily in Thy truth 
 amid all the varieties of human speculation. 
 
 "Sunday, August 1 (Sacrament). I extemporized two table 
 services at Balmerino, and have to thank God for carrying me 
 through the performance. I am too much given to beAt down 
 error upon these occasions, when the more suitable and appro- 
 priate exercise would be to excite the direct affections of such a 
 solemnity the love of Christ, a woful sense of our relapses from 
 that love in the world, and the gratitude which should be the 
 principle of a habitual love with the Spirit to keep it in opera- 
 tion. Is there not vanity and a regard to men and an appetite 
 for their good opinion in all that paltry anxiety about sermons, 
 and do not these principles require the severest castigation ? 
 
 "August 3. Had my monthly devotion. Waited for God's 
 Spirit. Prayed in the general for being altogether such as He 
 would have me to be. Referred to God's knowledge of my ne- 
 cessities, and prayed for the accommodation of God's grace and 
 Spirit to them. Felt a general confidence that He would lead 
 me by the right way, even though it should be a way that I at 
 present see darkly and know imperfectly. In my next prayer 
 carried a more immediate reference to Christ, and felt the sim- 
 plicity of putting faith in Him. I never feel more sure and 
 satisfied than when my thoughts are that way. God, stablish 
 me in Him thoroughly, and enable me to close with Him, and 
 to embrace Him as He is offered to me in the gospel. The bur- 
 den of my next prayer was, that as I had professed to put faith 
 in Christ, I might henceforth live to Him, and count living to 
 Him my sole business. Prayed for the removal of those weights 
 which hinder the prosecution of this business ; for a more fixed 
 and steady application of mind to the things of God ; for the 
 Spirit to help mine infirmities my irksomeness, my impatience, 
 my suspicion, my selfishness, my idleness. God, may I not be 
 slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. My 
 
 * Mr. James Anderson and the Rev. Mr. Bruce now of Edinburgh.
 
 VISIT OF ANDREW FULLER. 253 
 
 last prayer was an intercessory one, in which I included my dear 
 wife, the other members of my family here, the family at Anster 
 by name, and that at Heelbridge, some of my acquaintances 
 to whom I had promised my prayers, or by whom I had been 
 applied to, my parish, the Church of Scotland, and all other 
 Churches, the general spread of Christianity, the prosperity of 
 the societies for that object ; and finally prayed for my wise and 
 right conduct in reference to all with whom I am connected. 
 
 " August 4. Went to Dundee. Was introduced to Mr. Fuller 
 tind his companions. Heard Mr. Fuller preach in the evening. 
 Returned to Kilmany with Mr. Christopher Anderson. 
 
 "August 5. Mr. Anderson left me for Dairsie and Cupar, 
 where Mr. Fuller preached. The party came out to Kilmany, 
 and spent the evening with me. 
 
 " August 6. Rose early this morning to enjoy the conversa- 
 tion of Mr. Fuller. The party left me for New Inn. I accom- 
 panied them in the chaise, and got out at Letham, and returned 
 to Kilmany in the afternoon. I have much to gather from the 
 three last days: (1.) I am still ashamed of the testimony of 
 Christ, and would have felt this had I walked the streets of 
 upar with the Missionaries. my God, forgive and cleanse. 
 (2.) But still the slave of men, and ambitious of their testimony. 
 Was it incumbent on me to go both to Dundee and Cupar? 
 Why think my presence of so much importance ? Cannot I 
 labour in my own sphere, and leave it to others to labour in 
 theirs? (3.) God was very kind in conducting this affair to so 
 pleasurable a termination ; a most comfortable meeting with 
 these people, and Mr. Fuller's conversation, in particular, has 
 left an impulse behind it. Let me henceforth attempt to ex- 
 temporize from the pulpit; let me decline all extra engagements; 
 let me redeem time, and give a steady and systematic direction 
 to my efforts. my God, may I henceforth maintain a more 
 decided tone of piety to Thee, and of usefulness to Thy cause." 
 
 This visit of Mr. Fuller was one of the incidents in his Kil- 
 many life, to which Mr. Chalmers always looked back with pride 
 and pleasure. He could not refrain from referring to it when 
 introducing a remark of Mr. Fuller's into one of his theological 
 lectures: "It has been exceedfngly well said," he remarked, 
 " by the judicious Andrew Fuller, on whose last visit to Scot- 
 land in 1813, I felt my humble country manse greatly honoured 
 by harbouring him for a clay and two nights within its walls
 
 254 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 it has been exceedingly well said by this able champion and ex- 
 pounder of our common Christianity, that the points on which 
 the disciples of the Saviour agree, greatly outnumber, and in re- 
 spect of importance very greatly outweigh, the points on which 
 they differ."* The candour, the ardour, the simplicity, the 
 originality, the power, the gentleness all of which he found so 
 singularly associated in his new acquaintance, made a profound 
 impression upon Mr. Fuller. Though he did not live to see it, 
 having died before Mr. Chalmers's removal to Glasgow, he was 
 already measuring the width of that sphere of influence which 
 he was fitted and destined to fill. " I never think of my visit 
 to you but with pleasure," he wrote to Mr. Chalmers a few 
 weeks after his return to Kettering. " After parting with you 
 I was struck with the importance that may attach to a single 
 mind receiving an evangelical impression. I knew Carey when 
 he made shoes for the maintenance of his family ; yet even then 
 his mind had received an evangelical stamp, and his heart 
 burned incessantly with desire for the salvation of the heathen ; 
 even then he had acquired a considerable acquaintance with 
 Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French ; and why ? because his mind 
 was filled with the idea of being some day a translator of the 
 Word of God into the languages of those who sit in darkness ; 
 even then he had drawn out a map of the world, with sheets of 
 paper pasted together, besmeared with shoemaker's wax, and the 
 moral state of every nation depicted with his pen ; even then 
 he was constantly talking with his brethren on the practicability 
 of introducing the gospel in all nations. I saw in my dear friend 
 Chalmers a mind susceptible of strong impressions, a capacity of 
 communicating them to others, a thirst for knowledge, an open- 
 ness to conviction, and a zeal for the promotion of the kingdom 
 of Christ. My desire and prayer was that the impress he 
 receives may be that of truth unalloyed with human mixtures, 
 and that the zeal of his heart may have a scriptural direction ! 
 To what innumerable influences are we exposed from friends, 
 from enemies, from conversation, from books, from connexions, 
 from interests ! The Lord direct our hearts into the love of God 
 and the patient waiting for Christ." 
 
 _ It was only in one respect that Mr. Fuller's desires and anti- 
 cipations were to remain unfulfilled. Under the very strong 
 conviction that his use of the manuscript in the pulpit impaired 
 the power of his Sabbath addresses, Mr. Fuller strenuously urged 
 
 * See Posthumous Works, voL ix. p. 425.
 
 EXPERIMENT OF EXTEMPORE PREACHING. 255 
 
 i7pon his friend the practice of extempore preaching, or preaching 
 from notes. " If that man," said he to his companion, Mr. An- 
 derson, after they had taken leave of Kilmany manse " If that 
 man would but throw away his papers in the pulpit, he might be 
 king of Scotland." Mr. Chalmers was perfectly willing to make 
 the experiment, and he gave full time and all diligence to the 
 attempt ; but it failed. He read, reflected, jotted down the out- 
 lines of a discourse, and then went to the pulpit trusting to the 
 suggestions of the moment for the phraseology he should employ ; 
 but he found that the ampler his materials were, the more diffi- 
 cult was the utterance. His experience in this respect he used 
 to compare to the familiar phenomenon of a bottle with water 
 in it turned suddenly upside down : the nearly empty bottle dis- 
 charges itself fluently and at once ; the nearly full one labours 
 in the effort, and lets out its contents with jerks and large ex- 
 plosions and sudden stops, as if choked by its own fulness. So 
 it was with Mr. Chalmers in his first efforts at extempore preach- 
 ing. A twofold impediment lay in the way of his success. It 
 was not easy to light at once upon words or phrases which could 
 give anything like adequate conveyance to convictions so intense 
 as his were ; and he could not be satisfied, and with no comfort 
 could he proceed, while an interval so wide remained between 
 the truth as it was felt and the truth as his words had repre- 
 sented it. Over and over again was the effort made to find 
 powerful enough and expressive enough phraseology. But even 
 had this difficulty not existed even though he had been content 
 with the first-suggested words, he never could be satisfied till he 
 had exhausted every possible way of setting forth the truth, so 
 as to force or to win for it an entrance into the minds of his 
 hearers. So very eager was he at this period of his ministry to 
 communicate the impressions which glowed so fervidly within his 
 own heart, that even when he had a written sermon to deliver, 
 he often, as if dissatisfied with all that he had said, would try at 
 the close to put the matter in simpler words, or present it in 
 other lights, or urge it in more direct and affectionate address. 
 But when the restraints of a written composition were thrown 
 away> when not at the close only, but from the very beginning 
 of his address, this powerful impulse operated, he often found 
 that, instead of getting over the ground marked down in his 
 study to be traversed, the whole allotted time was consumed 
 while yet be was labouring away with the first or second pre- 
 liminary idea. After a succession of efforts, the attempt at
 
 056 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 extempore preaching was relinquished ; but he carried into the 
 study that insatiable desire to effect a secure and effective lodge- 
 ment of the truth in the minds of others, which had so inuch to 
 do with the origin of all that amplification and reiteration with 
 which his writings abound. In preparing _ for the pulpit, he 
 scarcely ever sat down to write without the idea of other minds, 
 whom it was his object to impress, being either more distinctly 
 or more latently present to his thoughts ; and he seldom rose 
 from writing without the feeling that still other modes of influ- 
 ential representation remained untried. 
 
 "Sunday, August 8. Began to extemporize this day, and 
 carried it to the extent of my two lectures and part of my 
 sermon. 
 
 "Sunday, August 15. Threw off a sketch of a sermon this 
 morning, and seldom addressed a more cultivated audience, a. 
 number of gentry, and Professor Hill and his wife. Felt dis- 
 couraged, and did not acquit myself to my satisfaction. This 
 want of freedom prevented even a complete and edifying view 
 of the subject. God, save me from all vanity. Was it right 
 to apologize to Mr. Hill for my exhibition ? No. Let me hence- 
 forth carry a prepared sermon with me, but let me persevere a 
 little more in my extempore efforts. At all events, let me ex- 
 temporize my lectures. There is a rapidity and impatience in 
 all my processes which prevents that complete and connected 
 view of my subject which is favourable to extemporizing. 
 Ood, give me to be more calm and judicious. 
 
 " August 17. Had a party of Johnstons and Balfours at 
 dinner, with the dissenting clergy. Delighted with Ebenezer 
 Brown. I should keep my appetite for praise under severe 
 castigation ; and I let Mr. Brown know that I could not extem- 
 porize. God, keep me humble, and may I not refuse to be 
 among the least of my brethren. 
 
 " Sunday, August 22. Had a double preparation for my ser- 
 mon ; that is, a sketch of one, and the other fully written. Took 
 to the latter on seeing Dr. Jones from Edinburgh make his 
 appearance, who preached for me in the afternoon, and with 
 whom I spent a. very pleasant day; but, God, forgive me. 
 and suffer me not to forget in all time coming that it is Thy 
 day. 
 
 " August 23. Went to Dundee with Dr. Jones, where I made 
 a variety of calls. I hope that his free, and unshackled, and
 
 JOURNAL. 257 
 
 scriptural divinity, will help to overthrow the spiritual tyranny 
 of systems over me. my God, may I count no man master ; 
 but make me a little child, and may I take my lesson as the 
 Bible offers it to me. 
 
 " August 24. Had a walk to Forret-Hill with Dr. Jones ami 
 Sandy. The Doctor left me after breakfast. He teased me to 
 make a separate publication of the article ' Christianity.' 
 
 " August 26. Walked out after breakfast, and studied on my 
 return till dinner-time. This perhaps an improvement, as it 
 throws an interval between the fatigue of severe reading and 
 the fatigue of severe composition. 
 
 " August 27. Have made a further improvement in my daily 
 work, which, when I have no interruptions, stands thus : Start 
 at six o'clock ; dress and devotion till seven ; read English and 
 finish my daily accounts till nine ; family-worship and break- 
 fast ; walk to eleven, twelve, or one ; compose till dinner ; public 
 reading and miscellaneous work till tea ; compose after tea, and 
 family intercourse till bed-time. 
 
 "Sunday, August^. Extemporized in the afternoon an hour 
 and twelve minutes. Felt as if I repeated too much ; but Sandy 
 declares it to be more impressive than the usual way. 
 
 " Sept. 3. Finished my perusal of the English New Testa- 
 ment, and am to begin it in the Greek at the rate of a chapter 
 in the day. 
 
 " Sept. 6. Had my monthly devotion this forenoon, but lost 
 the record of it. I feel a want of the Divine Spirit going along 
 with me in the exercise of my duties. for light and comfort 
 in my daily walk, and for wisdom to those who are without. 
 Let me use hospitality ; but I have to record, that Mr. G.'s 
 destitute situation excited in me apprehensions about giving. 
 What folly is this ! Let me cease from this anxious fearfulness, 
 and give to him who asketh to the extent of what I have. In 
 the meantime, I have little or nothing ;* but why not have more 
 confidence in God ? Let me not be stretching forward to future 
 possibilities, but trust that, when a duty comes round, He will 
 give me strength for the performance of it ; when a temptation 
 comes round, He will find out a way of escape. The anxiety 
 in question would not be felt by one who considered all he had 
 as God's, and that he is not called upon to give what he has 
 
 * A demand having been made upon his generosity, he had met it by giving so much, 
 that, out of his professional income, he had only 10 to present to Mrs. Chalmers for her 
 first year's housekeeping. 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 258 MEMOIRS OF DB. CHALMERS. 
 
 not. He must first owe no man anything, before he can lay out 
 upon works of love. Save me then, my God, from this anxiety, 
 and give me a most cheerful and willing heart to the whole of 
 Thy service. 
 
 "Sept. 10. Let me henceforth keep no record of my charities, 
 Imt put them down among my personal expenses, that my left 
 hand may not know what my right hand doeth. 
 
 " Sept. 14. Sandy returned from . He tells me of Mr. 
 
 F.'s keenness for Ferrie, whom I am against. I felt the fear of 
 man, which I ought not to feel, and both felt and expressed a 
 resentment at the recollection of Mr. F.'s petulance. 
 
 "Sept. 17. This a dedication day. The following is the 
 record of it : A preparation prayer. Dedication in reference 
 to God ; all thoughts, and words, and actions. my God, may 
 I feel the weight of this, and look to the only source from 
 whence I can find strength for so vast and extensive a ful- 
 filment. Dedication in reference to the Son of God, my alone 
 Saviour ; His merit my alone plea for justification ; His re- 
 demption my alone ground for the hope of forgiveness. Dedi- 
 cation in reference to the Holy Ghost ; may my sole dependence 
 be upon the influences of the Spirit for newness of life and 
 acceptable obedience. God, may I watch for Thy Spirit 
 with all perseverance ; and may my application for its assist- 
 ance be as constant as my necessity ; or, in other words, may 
 I pray without ceasing. Prayed for the application of the 
 above to life. Concluded with a prayer for forgiveness, and a 
 blessing on the whole exercise. Lord, I feel the weight of 
 my infirmities ; they taint even our holy things. may God 
 pardon, and cleanse, and renew, and perfect, for Christ's sake. 
 Amen. 
 
 " Sept. 22. Mr. Duncan left us. Brought my pamphlet on 
 the Bible Society to a close. 
 
 " Oct. 4. Successfully employed in writing a speech on Mr. 
 Feme's case. 
 
 " Oct. 6. About finished my speech on Feme's business. 
 
 " Oct. 1. Committed great part of my speech to heart. 
 
 " Oct. 12. A day of mortification. Everything went against 
 us by the through-bearing of the opposite party. I feel myself 
 a weak, timid, vain, and capricious being. Did not come for- 
 ward with my speech. God, extirpate what is- bad, and in 
 the meantime give me Thy direction and counsel. 
 
 " Let me be most cautious of holding out prospects to, or
 
 JOURNAL. 259 
 
 venturing into engagements with anybody as to the affairs of 
 Church coitrts. 
 
 " Let me give myself most strenuously to the acquirement of 
 forms and Church law, that, if possible, I may unravel the in- 
 tricacies which impede the true interests of the Church, and 
 confound men of simplicity and godly sincerity. 
 
 " Oct. 13. Came home jaded, mortified, useless. 
 
 *' Oct. 16. Still under the influence of the disappointment. 
 
 " Mean to pay more attention to the business of Church courts ; 
 but, my God, may I not be absorbed by it, or drawn away 
 from what is more useful. Let me cease my anxiety about ex- 
 pressions. It is my duty to attend to Church business, but let 
 me do everything in subordination to God. 
 
 "Sunday, Oct. 17. Still under the dominion of that worldly 
 sorrow which worketh death. 
 
 " Oct. 18. Made my monthly devotion this day. Prayed for 
 a blessing. Prayed to be rescued from all other influences, and 
 brought under the entire control and sovereignty of Him with 
 whom we have to do. Confessed my love of human praise. 
 Prayed for the extirpation of all that was sinful in it. Felt a 
 constant tendency to other subjects, and especially to the pre- 
 dominating one of Church business. how helpless I am I 
 but let me apply to the Source of all help. An intercessory- 
 prayer. Concluded with a prayer to God for a blessing, and for 
 forgiveness; 
 
 " Oct. 21. My mind runs too much upon Church business. 
 Let me by all means attend to it ; but, God, forgive and re- 
 form the excess of my constitutional anxieties. for habitual 
 love to God, and a constant sense of eternity. 
 
 " Oct. 22. Wrote notes of a sermon, and am to make another 
 trial at the extemporizing. 
 
 " Nov. 8. Went to Cupar, where I did business at the Bible 
 Committee. I. am far too much alarmed in my anticipations of 
 these matters. Let me henceforth take a decided part in public 
 matters ; but while I quit myself like a man, let me maintain, 
 charity in all things. Began to read Halyburton's 'Life 'ou 
 the road. 
 
 " Dec. 6. The following is the record of my monthly act of 
 devotion : Prayed for the quickening and enlightening influences 
 of the Spirit. Prayed for a variety of particulars, and felt a 
 hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Thought of living- 
 unto Christ, and prayed that I may be enabled to do so. Prayed
 
 2CO MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 that I may be purged of secret faults, and enumerated the sins 
 which do most easily beset me. An intercessory prayer. Prayed 
 for a blessing, and for forgiveness. Wandered a good deal ; 
 but I this day have made the experiment of fasting, that is, 
 taking a very small breakfast ; and 1 have to record that I felt 
 more clear and spiritual than I ever recollect. Went over to- 
 Mr. Hobertsou, whom I married and dined with. Alas, alas ! 
 wliat a contrast betwixt the aspirations of the closet, and the 
 realities of the world ! 
 
 "Dec. 8. Looked into Cecil's 'Memoirs of Xewton,'*and 
 was much impressed with that part of the latter's experience 
 which consisted in habitually looking to God for hourly sup- 
 plies of strength and wisdom. my God, give me to realize 
 this. 
 
 " Dec. 17. I am much interested in Halyburton. My ex- 
 perience does not accord with his. I do not feel his distress, 
 his concern, his deep sense of the evil of sin. I know that I 
 um under sin, and that, leave me to myself, I would live without 
 God in the world. The guilt and the danger of this do not 
 impress me ; and I feel as if instead of having suffered the feel- 
 ing to run on, I make a constant application of the remedy to 
 the successive degrees of it. Ay ! but where is the fruit of this 
 faith in the remedy ? God, make me to abound in it. When 
 I go among secular people, make me to retain my sense of Thee. 
 Give me to see sin in its evil give me to be melted by Thy 
 goodness unto repentance, and dissolve the hardness of this 
 sleeping and unaffected heart. Let me be most watchful that r 
 as I do not feel, I may do. And, God, may the fruit of my 
 doing be a farther manifestation of the evil of sin and the joys 
 of Thy reconciled countenance. 
 
 "Dec. 21. Finished Cowper's Poems a long time ago, and 
 began this night Cecil's ' Life of Newton.' Was more diligent ; 
 and I pray that I may have a greater value for time and all its 
 fragments. I am still very far from God, and feel a want of 
 that reconciling sense of Him that view of the evil of sin that 
 constant impression of His authority which are surely all neces- 
 sary to make up the exercise of living unto Him. Let me wait 
 for this revelation in dependence upon Him without whom no 
 jnan can know the Father. My own reasoning does not conduct 
 
 "The two great pillars of a sinner's religion," says Newton, " are what Christ has done 
 or us in the flesh, and what He performs in us by His Spirit" December 8. MS. Com- 
 monplace Book.
 
 JOURNAL. 2GI 
 
 me there. Let me try faith in the Son, and in the meantime 
 give myself to the assiduous discharge of all known duties. For- 
 giveness, long-suffering, a quiet dependence on God for daily 
 bread, a freedom from worldly anxieties, a diligence in op- 
 position to my constitutional sloth, are duties that clearly lie 
 upon me. 
 
 " Dec. 22. Had closer and more confiding views of my all- 
 sufficient Saviour than I ever recollect ; and sure I am that a 
 secure and intimate fellowship with Him will do more for me in 
 the way of universal obedience than all my former exertions, 
 limited as they have hitherto been, with the spirit of indepen- 
 dence and legalism. God, carry me on ; and after I have 
 found the Saviour may I never let Him go. 
 
 " Dec. 23. Felt the spirit of love and peace this day. my 
 God, keep me in the way of resting upon Christ, and give me 
 to experience that it is a way of power and holy obedience. 
 
 " Dec. 28. This is a miscellaneous week. Read Hebrew and 
 Halyburton. I do feel a great barrenness of religious feeling on 
 the familiar occasions of life. how short of doing all things 
 to God's glory ! Let me wait for His manifestations and His 
 power over my heart through Christ. 
 
 "Dec. 31. Another year has rolled over my head, and I find 
 myself in a state of deadness and darkness, which I pray the 
 good Lord to dissipate. I do feel no confidence in myself, and 
 cling to faith as the principle which carries all that is good and 
 desirable along with it. I commit myself to God in Christ, and 
 pray that I may henceforward be more zealous in redeeming: 
 time, more diligent to be found of God without spot and blame- 
 less, more active in my professional employment, more judicious 
 in my applications of Scripture to my own case, and that of 
 others ; and, oh for that highest of all wisdom, the wisdom of 
 winning souls."
 
 262 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 FAMILY CORRESPOXDEXCE. 
 
 THOSE family bereavements which awakened Mr. Chalmers's 
 earliest religious anxieties, exerted a like influence over his sister 
 Jane. She was already a peculiar favourite, and the sympathy 
 thus generated gave her a double claim upon his affections. At 
 the very season of his own solicitude she consulted him as to the 
 true ground of peace and hope towards God, and it was not 
 without benefit to himself that he undertook to guide another. 
 Writing to her husband, Mr. Morton, a year after their marriage, 
 he says : " My prayer is, that you may both go on and prosper 
 in the good cause which you have adopted ; that the Saviour 
 may every day become more precious to you, His atonement 
 more rested in, His law more revered, His Spirit more felt and 
 more depended on. Jane's deep interest in these subjects was an 
 instrument of mighty advantage to myself, and from my con- 
 versation with her I date a most salutary revolution in my sen- 
 timents and views." Well aware that to those who have been 
 finally removed to a great distance from a well-known and much 
 loved neighbourhood, the most trifling information possesses 
 interest, Mr. Chalmers in his correspondence with Mrs. Morton 
 descended to the humblest local intelligence, the minutest inci- 
 dents in the family history of friends and parishioners being 
 faithfully chronicled. The last page, however, of each letter was 
 " devoted to the great concern." Bringing these last pages to- 
 gether, let us present this portion of the correspondence by itself, 
 and for the whole of that brief period during which Mr. Chalmers 
 continued in Kilmany, interposing at their proper dates extracts 
 from letters addressed to his sister Helen, and to his brothers 
 Patrick and Charles. 
 
 " KILMAXY MAXSE, April 21, 1812. 
 
 " MY DEAR JAXE, I have begun a course of sermons lately 
 with my people, in which I follow a certain order of subjects. 
 First, the inflexibility of the Divine justice ; secondly, the sin 
 which renders one and all of us amenable to that justice, and 
 throws every individual of the human race into a dark and uu-
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 263 
 
 sheltered state of condemnation ; then the remedy. It really 
 is a vast improvement to one's-self to write upon a given subject ; 
 it rivets and illuminates one's own conceptions of the point in 
 question ; and I must say, that I never had so close and satis- 
 factory a view of the gospel salvation as when I have been led 
 to contemplate it in the light of a simple offer on the one side, 
 and a simple acceptance on the other. It is just saying to one 
 and all of us, There is forgiveness through the blood of my 
 Son, take it ; and whoever believes the reality of the offer takes 
 it. It is not in any shape the reward of our own services ; for 
 when you let them into the acceptance, you lay the whole open 
 to apprehension and despair. It is the gift of God through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. It is not given because you are worthy to 
 receive it, but because it is a gift worthy of our kind and 
 reconciled Father to bestow. We are apt to stagger at the great- 
 ness of the unmerited offer, and cannot attach faith to it till 
 we have made up some title of our own. This leads to two 
 mischievous consequences. It keeps alive the presumption of 
 one class of Christians, who will still be thinking that it is some- 
 thing in themselves and of themselves which confers upon them 
 a right to salvation ; and it confirms the melancholy of another 
 class, who look into their own hearts and their own lives, and 
 find that they cannot make out a shadow of a title to the Divine 
 favour. The error of both lies in looking to themselves when 
 they should be looking to the Saviour : ' Look unto me, all ye 
 ends of the earth.' The Son of man was so lifted up, that who- 
 soever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life. It is your part simply to lay hold of the offered boon. 
 You are invited to do so, you are entreated to do so nay, what 
 is more, you are commanded to do so. It is true you are un- 
 worthy, and without holiness no man can see God ; but ' be not 
 afraid, only believe.' You cannot get holiness of yourself, but 
 Christ has undertaken to provide it for you. It Is one of those 
 spiritual blessings of which He has the dispensation, and which 
 He has promised to all who believe in Him. God has promised 
 that with His Son He will freely give you all things that He 
 will walk in you and dwell in you that He will purify your 
 heart by faith that He will put His law in your heart and 
 write it in your mind. These are the effects of your believing 
 in Christ, and not the services by which you become entitled to 
 believe in Him. Make a clear outset in the business, and under- 
 stand that your first step is simply a confiding acceptance of an
 
 2 I MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 offer that is most free, most frank, most generous, and most 
 unconditional. 
 
 " My prayer to God is, that He would work the work of faith 
 with power" in your heart, that He would draw you to Christ, 
 that He would open your understanding to understand the 
 Scriptures, and that through the patience and comfort of these 
 Scriptures you may have hope." 
 
 " Kilmany Manse, August 7, 1812. I do not know that a 
 single day has elapsed since seeing you in which I have not re- 
 membered you ; and believing, as I do, that the prayer of faith 
 ascending to heaven, and bringing down from it the things prayed 
 for, is a real process, I ask your prayers, and trust to have 
 the benefit of them. You could certainly, through Sir Thomas 
 Acland, have access to the ' Eighth Report of the Bible Society.' 
 Read it, my dear sister. I would strongly recommend the cheap 
 Repository to you for distribution among your neighbours. You 
 get hundreds of them for a mere trifle. You may inquire for them 
 under the name of ' Religious Tracts,' published by a Society 
 in London. The reading of them would go far to strengthen 
 and stablish your own heart, and the distribution of them 
 would be a work and labour of love worthy of a Christian. After 
 you have encouraged a taste for reading among your servants 
 and neighbours, 'you may restrain the gratuitous distrftmtion of 
 them ; and on the principle of a thing bought being more valued 
 than a thing given, you may get the bookseller of Dulverton 
 interested in the sale of them. This process I mean to follow 
 in my own parish; and, be assured, that no individual is too 
 private or too obscure for the great work of turning sons and 
 daughters unto righteousness." 
 
 " Xovember 6, 1812. You were perfectly right in communi- 
 cating to that part of your family arrangements which 
 
 related to family worship. It has given sincere joy to ; 
 
 nor am I able to express the pleasure and thankfulness with 
 which it has filled me. I have no doubt that family worship is 
 often maintained in houses where vital religion does not exist ; 
 but where it is adopted from the impulse of conviction, I regard 
 it as a symptom to be rejoiced in ; and my prayer is, that you 
 may all have great peace and joy in the better part that you 
 have chosen ; that you may feel how secure a habitation you 
 arrive at by coming unto Christ, and taking shelter under "the
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 265 
 
 ample canopy of His mediatorship ; that your reconciled Father 
 may fulfil in you all the good pleasure of His goodness ; and 
 that looking unto Him for the promised influence of His Spirit, 
 you may die every day unto sin and live unto righteousness. 
 
 " I rejoice to hear of your Sunday school. I once thought of 
 one here ; but it occurs to me, that however salutary in England, 
 it is not so necessary here. I am doubtful of the propriety of de- 
 taching the children from their parents, their natural guardians, 
 who feel that the responsibility lies with them. This does not 
 apply to your attempt at all, and I would rejoice to hear the par- 
 ticulars of your success. The English peasantry have not that 
 respect for the Sabbath, nor that degree of qualification, which 
 we have in this country ; and you do a kind, and I trust an 
 effectual, service to young people, by the labour that you bestow 
 upon them. 
 
 " It delights me to perceive that Miss seems at length to 
 
 have arrived at that rest which the Saviour has pledged Himself 
 to give to all who come unto Him : and with rest He will give 
 all other spiritual blessings. That sanctification which out of 
 Christ none can reach, is only found in close union with Him ; 
 and if we maintain what may be called the gospel attitude of the 
 mind, which is looking unto Jesus, we shall obtain of His Spirit, 
 Tve shall be changed into His image, we shall be strengthened 
 for all duty ; and that noble system of reconciliation with God, 
 beginning with an act of confidence, will at last terminate in all 
 the graces and accomplishments of the Christian character, will 
 have its fruit unto holiness, and in the end everlasting life." 
 
 "Jan. 5, 1813. As to the most urgent subject of your letter 
 I hope that no formal certificate is necessary, and that it will be 
 sustained as a sufficient testimony of my willingness to stand a 
 godfather to my dear nephew, if I simply announce my willing- 
 ness in this way, and request Mr. Morton to be my proxy. I 
 shall, however, subjoin a more formal declaration at the end of 
 the letter, which may be torn off and presented to the clergy- 
 man if necessary. I may say to you, that in accepting this 
 office, I feel the duty and responsibility which attach to it. I feel 
 myself drawn to your dear infant by a relation more tender and 
 more important than that which nature has created ; and pray 
 that, if both of us be preserved, every influence which I may 
 bring to bear upon him in future life may conduce to the great 
 interests of his imperishable soul. I feel the utmost gratitude
 
 266 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 to the kind Father of all for the comforts of your life, and 
 pray for the increase and continuance of His mercies. let 
 us connect every joy with the hand of the Giver; and in 
 the manifold blessings which He scatters around the path of 
 this world's journey, may we never forget that is a journey, 
 and must have a termination. I enter, my dear Jane, into all 
 vour sensations, and figure your domestic comforts ; and whether 
 it be your respectable husband, your smiling infant, your affec- 
 tionate relatives, your secure competency, and, above all, your 
 growing sense of God, and of His merciful and reconciled coun- 
 tenance^ I can see a thousand reasons for gratitude to Him who 
 makes all and who gives all. It is delightful to think of the 
 largeness of His liberality. We give way to dark and narrow 
 suspicions as to the extent of His kindness ; but, to use a Bible 
 phrase, it is not He that is straitened as to us, it is we that are 
 straitened as to Him. He will perfect the good work that is 
 begun in us ; He is not unfaithful. I ask this simple question 
 Did you ever, or do you now, annex a feeling of comfort and 
 security to the idea of Christ and of His salvation ? What is this 
 but having fellowship with Christ? It is holding communion 
 with Him in the most characteristic of all His capacities the 
 capacity of your Saviour. Now, mark the promise that is given 
 to such fellowship : God is not unfaithful who hath called us to 
 the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. For our com- 
 fort He pledges His fidelity ; and as sure as God is true, and 
 His promises are unfailing, all who trust in the Saviour may 
 look up for the fulfilment of this large and liberal assurance : 
 He gave His own Son for us ; how much more shall He not with 
 Him freely give us all things ? I feel that matrimony brings a 
 very large accession of deep and serious and tender feeling along 
 with it. I am sure that I would not have had half the interest 
 in your family without my wife that I now have with one. I 
 have been supremely fortunate in being allied with the mildest 
 and gentlest and most sweetly accommodating of women, who 
 takes a large interest in my professional business, and is, I hope, 
 under those saving and salutary influences which I pray may be 
 imparted to all, and at last bring us all together in perfect bless- 
 edness to the throne of God." 
 
 "Feb. 15, 1813. I know not a more serious drawback to 
 mixed society than the exclusion of all conversation about the 
 one thing needful ; and it comes to be a serious question, How
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 267 
 
 are you to get the better of it ? Are you to lift your testimony 
 against it ? This zeal would prompt ; but we are also called to 
 walk in wisdom towards those that are without. There must be 
 a way of introducing the topic, so as to make a useful impression, 
 so as to conciliate prejudice, so as to win if possible rather than 
 repel. I confess it is to me a thing beset with many difficulties, 
 and I fear that an unmanly shame may have some share in it. 
 It is certainly wrong to disguise it from others that you look upon 
 eternity as your uppermost concern. Disguise this, and you add 
 the sanction of your example to their exclusive indulgence in 
 the frivolities of time you add to the multitude of stumbling- 
 blocks or offences which lie in the way of others. It is delight- 
 ful that there is a promise annexed to the prayer for wisdom ; 
 and I know not a more delicate subject for the application of 
 wisdom than the one I am now insisting on. I look upon the 
 exercise of writing to you as a mighty relief from that unvaried 
 tone of secularity and alienation from God which prevails in the 
 world ; and it would give me the truest pleasure to understand 
 that you are rising in your sense of the importance of eternity, 
 and that peace and joy mingle in your contemplations. For this 
 purpose, let me advise you to look to the Saviour. Some people 
 perplex themselves by looking too much inwards. It is clear 
 that the object to be looked at is out of us, and that it is by 
 fastening our contemplations on Him who was lifted up for the 
 sins of the world that we are saved. I like the determined style 
 of faith which I have found in English writers. One of them 
 says, * If I am to perish, let me perish here ' meaning at the 
 foot of that Cross on which his eyes are fastened. I have heard 
 a fine observation by a divine of our day upon this subject. He 
 says, that those of the children of Israel who looked to the brazen 
 serpent may not all have had a very distinct and positive con- 
 viction that they were to be cured by so doing ; still, however, 
 they lifted up their eyes, and were healed. The very act of lift- 
 ing up their eyes implied a certain degree of expectation, and, 
 slender as it was, it gave rise to an act which landed in their 
 recovery from the serpents' bite. Now, some perplex themselves 
 with inquiring into the degree of their faith, and summon up a 
 number of questions which are very difficult, and sometimes in- 
 soluble. Now, though you cannot look into your own heart, and 
 find there such a degree of faith as satisfies, you may look out of 
 you unto Jesus. The very act of so looking implies some hope, 
 some faith ; and as all who looked unto the brazen serpent were
 
 268 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 healed, so all who look unto Jesus shall be saved. Their faith 
 may not be so lively, so distinct, so intense in degree as they ex- 
 pected, still there is some degree of it implied in the very act of 
 looking. It may be small, but think of the promise annexed to 
 that faith which was so very small that it was compared to a 
 grain of mustard-seed : ' Look unto me,' says He, ' all ye ends 
 of the earth, and be saved.' And the salvation is not put off till 
 the time when you shall go in person to heaven. It is begun on 
 earth ; and as it consisteth in salvation from the power of sin as 
 well as from its punishment, be assured that from the first mo- 
 ment of your looking unto the Saviour, He begins the good 
 work of carrying on your redemption, redeeming you from all 
 your iniquities (Tit. ii. 14). giving you a measure of His Spirit 
 (John vii. 39 ; iv. 14), conforming you to His image (2 Cor. 
 iii. 18), carrying you on from one degree of grace unto another, 
 till you arrive at a complete obedience to the will of God. Cast 
 your care upon Him, and He is pledged to do all this. He is 
 able to do it all, and Christ will be made unto you wisdom, and 
 righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." 
 
 The letter from which the following extract is taken was ad- 
 dressed to his sister Helen, afterwards married to the Kev. Mr. 
 Maclellan, minister of Kelton, who had accompanied her sister 
 to England, and was now living at Heelbridge : 
 
 " KILMAXY MASSE, May 24, 1813. 
 
 " JANE knows the usual appropriation of my last page, and 
 it is a subject of too much importance to be omitted at any 
 time ; nor do I know a happier change that a human soul can 
 undergo than to pass from a state of indifference about religion 
 to the feeling of it as the main concern of existence. There is 
 a text of Scripture highly applicable to the great majority of 
 those who think that, upon the strength of a few established 
 decencies, which bring them to a par with their neighbours 
 around them, all will go well and comfortably enough with them. 
 Jeremiah viii. 11, ' For they have healed the hurt of the daugh- 
 ter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is 
 no peace.' They do not see the necessity of making religion 
 that very earnest and particular thing which every true Christian 
 will make it. They go very slightly to work in the business of 
 lealmg the hurt of their souls, and feel a peace in the superficial 
 remedy of forms, and decency, and a fair average of character
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 269 
 
 and reputation in their neighbourhood ; all the while the heart 
 may remain as alienated from God as ever, the love of Him be 
 as unfelt as before, the high standard of Christian obedience 
 be never thought of or aspired after, and, above all, the great 
 Physician, who alone can heal the hurt to the very bottom, be 
 neither repaired to nor rested on. This is slight work, yet it is 
 all that is done by the vast majority of professing Christians, 
 and it satisfies them. The atonement of the Cross is the only 
 sufficient and authorized remedy for sin, and all are invited to 
 lay hold of it. Some seek for the ground of peace in themselves, 
 and they either take up with a deceitful remedy, or, not finding 
 what they want, give themselves up to the agony of anxious 
 helplessness. The right way is to look unto Jesus as lifted up 
 for sin ; and we have His own authority for saying that whoso- 
 ever so looketh shall be saved saved from sin in all its malig- 
 nity saved not merely from its condemnation, but its power 
 redeemed from its curse (Gal. iii. 13), and redeemed from its 
 dominion (Eom. vi. 14), so that by the operation of this alone 
 remedy, we are washed, and sanctified, and justified in the name 
 of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. vi. 11). 
 This is a decisive remedy. There is no slightness, no feebleness 
 in such an application as this. It goes farther than to the re- 
 formation of a few points ; it is something more than a slight 
 covering of outward decency ; it reaches the very heart, and 
 accomplishes a change so thorough and decisive, that the New 
 Testament represents it by being born again (John iii. 3), by 
 being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Eom. xii. 2) r 
 by putting on the new man (Eph. iv. 24), &c. &c. I can easily 
 conceive that a person to whom all this appears strange and 
 new may be startled at the magnitude of the change, and upon 
 the very natural idea that it was he himself who was to accom- 
 plish it, may give up every attempt under the discouraging sense 
 of its total impracticability. Under this impression, I can con- 
 ceive him reduced to the question of 'What shall I do?' a 
 Scripture question, and for which I have a Scripture answer in 
 readiness, ' Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ ; ' ' Be not afraid, 
 only believe.' You may well suspect your own competency to 
 bring about so decisive and great an alteration upon your own 
 heart, but you have no reason to suspect the competency of the 
 Saviour. It is His business, arid He knows how to go about it ; 
 and, be assured, that from the first moment of your resigning 
 yourself in confidence to the Saviour's hands, there will emerge
 
 070 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the new hope of the redeemed and the new life of the sanctified 
 disciple." 
 
 "August 31, 1813. It will give me the utmost pleasure to 
 understand that the agitations of uncertainty respecting this 
 world's riches have led you to draw closer to that living God 
 who giveth us all things richly to enjoy. It is delightful to 
 think that whatsoever we ask in prayer, believing, we shall re- 
 ceive. The condition upon which you get is that you believe 
 you shall get it (Mark xi. 24). Now, you will observe that 
 this qualifying clause restricts the prayer to certain objects. 
 You cannot pray believingly for riches ; you cannot pray be- 
 lievingly for a continuance in your present situation ; you cannot 
 fasten on another situation, and pray believingly that God would 
 translate you there ; and why ? Because you know not if these 
 things be agreeable to the will of God. This want of know- 
 ledge prevents an absolute belief; and hence, though you do 
 pray for the things above specified, you may not get them. You 
 may pray for them in the following terms : ' Lord, if it be Thy 
 will,' &c. But there are certain other objects which you have 
 a full warrant to pray believingly for, and which believing, you 
 may pray absolutely for, and obtain them. You may rest assured 
 that He will hear if you ask according to His will (1 John v. 
 14). Now there are many such objects made known to us in 
 the Bible, and forming the promises which are yea and amen 
 in Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit is one of these (Gal. iii. 14 ; 
 Luke xi. 13) ; wisdom is another (James i. 5) ; the general 
 object of salvation is a third (1 Tim. ii. 4). Now, what I would 
 like to press upon all who are beset with anxieties about the 
 future days they are to live in this Avorld, is, that daily bread 
 is one of these objects. It is agreeable to the will of God that 
 you ask it, for it is the very petition which the Son of God 
 taught His disciples. You have a full warrant for believing 
 then that you shall get it, and according to the faith of your 
 prayer so will it be done unto you. This harmonizes with the 
 precept, ' Take no thought,' or, as it should have been ren- 
 dered, ' Be not thoughtful,' ' Be not anxious about the things of 
 to-morrow.' I shall only add, that if the most anxious and 
 unhappy men of the world were examined as to the ground of 
 their disquietude, it would' be found in 999 cases out of the 
 1000, that the provision of this day was not the ground of it. 
 They carry forward their imaginations to a distant futurity,
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 271 
 
 and fill it up with the spectres of melancholy and despair. What 
 a world of unhappiness would be saved if the things of the day 
 were to occupy all our hearts the duties, the employments, the 
 services of the day ; and as to the morrow, how delightful to 
 think that we have the sure warrant of God for believing, that 
 by committing its issue in quietness to Him, when the future 
 day comes the provision of that day will come along with it. 
 Feel yourself to be in the hand of God, and you will not be 
 afraid because of evil tidings (Ps. cxii. 7)." 
 
 During the spring and summer of 1813, three topics of family 
 anxiety existed. His brother Patrick's efforts to obtain a per- 
 manent settlement in life proved fruitless ; his brother Charles's 
 health gave way ; while Mr. Morton, obliged to remove from 
 Heelbridge, was plunged amid uncertainties as to his future resi- 
 dence and occupation. To each variety of anxiety Mr. Chalmers 
 sought to apply the only sufficient remedy. 
 
 " KILMAXY MAXSE, May 7, 1813. 
 
 " MY DEAR PATRICK, In the last conversation which I held 
 with you relative to your future prospects, I was quite aware 
 how natural it is to fix our anticipations, and to regret that 
 these should be pushed forward a year or two beyond what we 
 had previously calculated in our own minds. I trust that you 
 will some time or other obtain a comfortable settlement ; but 
 what I am most anxious to press upon you, not merely as a 
 point of prudence, but as a point of Christian principle, is a 
 submissive accommodation to present circumstances. Time 
 elapses sooner than we have any idea of, and it is our wisdom 
 not to throw away our peace by fretful or anxious impatience. 
 I have often heard the phrase, that a man loses so much of his 
 life who suffers so many years of it to pass away without reach- 
 ing an independent establishment. If it be due to his own 
 idleness, the phrase is accurate enough ; if due to the necessity 
 of circumstances, I maintain it is quite an unchristian perversion 
 of language. He does not lose life, he only loses that which 
 our Saviour (the justness of whose computation no Christian will 
 deny) says is less than life : ' Is not the life more than meat, 
 and the body than raiment?' The great purposes of his being 
 may be carrying on ; his soul may be ripening for eternity ; the 
 good work begun in his heart may be prospering ; the salutary 
 lessons of patience and contentment may be practising ; and, in
 
 272 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 short, to say that life or any part of it is losing because you arc 
 not drawing towards an earthly competency so fast as you could 
 wish, is making the ' meat which perisheth ' take the precedency 
 of that which ' endureth unto everlasting life.' It will give me 
 pleasure to understand that these sentiments are not merely ad- 
 mitted by you as true, but actually proceeded upon. Be assured 
 that the wished-for object will not be longer in coming about 
 that the time before it is filled up with contentment and piety/' 
 
 MAXSE, August 3, 1813. 
 
 "DEAR CHARLES, It gives both me and Mrs. Chalmers 
 great concern that you should be in so poor a state of health, 
 and it is our joint wish and invitation that you should come to 
 Kilmany for a change of air. ... In the meantime, I would by 
 all means advise you to keep free of anxiety, as I am persuaded 
 that this has had a powerful influence on your health ; and if 
 ever one receipt was more effectual than another for keeping 
 down anxiety, it is that reach of mind which carries its possessor 
 forward to eternity, and by making him feel that his main in- 
 terest is there, gives their proper size and importance to the little 
 interests which lie between. When the powers of the world to 
 come have full influence, they not only stimulate to all duty, 
 but they mitigate all distress ; and they impart the twofold 
 advantage of giving more activity to the exertion, and less 
 pungency to the disappointment, should the earthly object of 
 the exertion fail." 
 
 " KILMANY MANSE, March 9, 1814. 
 
 " I trust that my dear Jane will bury all her fears in the 
 sufficiency of the Saviour. He is a hiding-place from the storm. 
 He refuses Himself to none who apply to Him ; and if Christ is 
 yours, all things are yours. This promise includes things pre- 
 sent as well as things to come. Depend upon Him for all that 
 is necessary to life, as well as for all that is necessary to god- 
 liness. what a fund of comfort and of fulness to repair to 
 at all times ! None who believe on Him shall be confounded. 
 Heaven and earth may pass away, but the word of this promise 
 shall not pass away." 
 
 "4prz720, 1814. It gives me great pleasure to think that 
 the one thing needful remains with you. Seek it first, and the 
 other things will be added ; and why should we despair of at- 
 taining, in the face of the promise, 'He who seeketh findeth' ? 
 I have sometimes laboured after a clearer view of divine things
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 273 
 
 than I have yet gotten, after a fulfilment of the promise ' I will 
 manifest myself unto you,' and should like vastly to realize what 
 it is to have the light of the Divine countenance upon me. 
 Some despair because they want these manifestations. They are 
 wrong. There may be a stronger exercise of faith with the want 
 of these manifestations than with the presence of them. God 
 gives light when it pleases Him, and it is our exercise of faith 
 to wait for it. The want of light is not incompatible with trust 
 in God (Is. L. 10). "We may not have a clear and exhilarat- 
 ing view of the Saviour at the very time that we are showing 
 faith in and love to Him by keeping His commandments ; and 
 the keeping of these commandments is the very way prescribed 
 by the Saviour for arriving at the manifestations (John xiv. 
 21). Well, then, you do not have a clear apprehension of Christ, 
 but you may have a clear enough apprehension of the common 
 and everyday duties He lays upon you forgiveness, well-doing, 
 patience, freedom from anxiety about worldly matters, &c. &c. 
 Bind yourself firmly and faithfully to what you do clearly know ; 
 and you have the promise of manifestation as to those things 
 which you do not clearly know. In other words, be doing at 
 your plain and intelligible duties, and the fruit of your doings 
 will be the very light and clearness that you aspire after. It is 
 the natural tendency of employment to divert melancholy ; and 
 how delightful to perceive the coincidence between the natural 
 and revealed orders. At the same time, if I have any experience 
 I can speak clearly upon at all it is that I am never more 
 qualified for keeping the commandments than when in fellow- 
 ship with the Saviour, and resting upon His righteousness than 
 when under the influence of gospel hope, and looking upon 
 the salvation of Christ as all a matter of grace and freeness. 
 But the power of obedience is part of this salvation. If you 
 rely on the blood of Christ, you will obtain forgiveness if you 
 rely on the Spirit of Christ, you will obtain sanctification ; and 
 when the spirit of adoption is at length given when you go out 
 and in with filial confidence, and have free access to your recon- 
 ciled Father, then the work of obedience becomes as easy and 
 delightful as the duties of affection to the friend you most love. 
 I feel myself far, and very far, from what I conceive on this sub- 
 ject ; but let us press forward, my dear Jane ; let us support one 
 another ; and in the meanwhile, let us. in reliance upon the 
 Spirit, and in prayerful dependence on the name of Christ, aim 
 at the keeping of His commandments." 
 
 VOL. i. s
 
 274 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " July 20, 1814. I trust that my dear Jane is still placing 
 her confidence on the right ground a ground which never can 
 give way from under us, even the sure and unfailing foundation 
 of Christ Jesus. God is not a man that He should lie. This 
 is an awful consideration to those who are not looking to the 
 Saviour, and put no faith in His sayings ; for the only way in 
 which God can acquit Himself of lying to them the only way in 
 which He can vindicate His truth and justice upon them, is by 
 executing the curse of His violated law. But to those who take 
 refuge, the truth and justice of God would be violated if they 
 were condemned. Christ became a curse for them ; and the 
 solemn assertion that all who call on His name shall be saved, 
 would be falsified, and God be made a liar, were they who be- 
 lieve in Christ to enter into condemnation. Look not unto your- 
 self, but look unto Jesus. Think of His truth, of His willing- 
 ness, of His power, and the truth of God requires your salvation. 
 The very justice, which is a ground of terror to the unbeliever, 
 is a ground of consolation and hope to the believer ; and accord- 
 ingly it is said that God is faithful and just to forgive us our 
 sins, and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness. Oh ! that 
 the last promise were making a sensible accomplishment upon 
 us that we were getting a release from the power of sin as well 
 as from its punishment that we were growing every day in 
 mildness, in patience, in love, and in all the fruits of that blessed 
 Spirit which Christ has at His giving, and which He pours 
 abundantly on all who ask it. It is pleasant to think that the 
 work of sanctification a work the difficulties of which would 
 fill us with terror were it altogether ours is made a work of 
 peaceful and very easy performance by God working in us. The 
 very God of peace sanctify you wholly, enable you to endure 
 trial, and to count it all joy when you fall into it,*and guide you 
 in safety through those many tribulations by which we enter 
 into the kingdom of God." 
 
 " July 22, 1814. It is said of the Captain of our salvation, 
 that He was made perfect by suffering. We have the same dis- 
 cipline to undergo ; and that we could reach such a degree of 
 faith and of conformity to the will of God as to count it all joy 
 when we fall into divers temptations. Christ says, In the world 
 ye shall have tribulation. This is our lot, It is through many 
 such that we shall enter the kingdom of God. He bids us, how- 
 ever, be of good cheer, not because there is to be any change in
 
 FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE. 275 
 
 our lot upon tins side of time, not because He engages to remove 
 the tribulations, but because, says He, ' I have overcome the 
 world.' It is not promised that the ill should be removed, but 
 that we shall be furnished with strength for the endurance of it. 
 He who overcame the world Himself, can enable His followers 
 to do the same. We should be prepared to suffer the will of God 
 concerning us ; and our prayer should be directed not so muck 
 to the removal of the suffering, as to strengthen the inner mail 
 unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. Let us not 
 lay our account with enjoyment here let us not build on this 
 side of time; and when disappointments come, we shall not 
 think that any strange thing hath happened to us. It alleviates 
 a misfortune much when we count upon it, and when it comes 
 to us as a matter of course. God is a very present help in the 
 time of trouble. He has promised daily bread. I feel my affec- 
 tion drawn out to you, my dearest Jane ; and I pray daily that 
 God would release your family from their temporal perplexities ; 
 and, above all, that your sods may be exceeding precious in His 
 sight. God hath the hearts of all men in His hands He can. 
 raise up friends, and He can make a man's enemies be at peace 
 with him." 
 
 "Nov. 30, 1814. Let me know the progress of your views 
 and experiences in the matters of religion. Eepentance is not 
 one act of the mind ; it is a course of acting by which we die 
 daily unto sin. Regeneration is not confined to one great step 
 in the history of the soul ; it is only the commencement of the 
 influence of certain principles, which strengthen by daily exercise. 
 Our inner man is renewed day by day, says the apostle PauL 
 But in all this care about the progress of sanctification, let us 
 not lose hold of Him who is the head of all influence and strength 
 for the work of sanctification. My chief difficulty is to combine 
 n rejoicing dependence upon the Spirit with a personal activity 
 on my part as the result of the Spirit's influence. I can under- 
 stand how it is God who worketh in me ; but I should like such 
 a view of it as may consist with my own diligent working. We 
 may be sure that the effect of His working in us is that we 
 work ourselves (Phil. ii. 12, 13). Now the teaching of the Holy 
 Ghost, which I stand much in need of, is to combine the sim- 
 plicity of faith and dependence upon the promises of strength, 
 with an actual putting forth of that strength, so as at one and 
 the same time to rest and run rest upon God, and run in tha
 
 2TG MEMOIRS OF DE. CHALMERS. 
 
 way of His commandments. God will reveal this unto me if I 
 pray for it, and will not refuse this wisdom if I ask it in faith. 
 Have you met with any of Owen's works? they are all good. I 
 have read him on * Indwelling Sin ' and ' Temptation ' lately, 
 and I am now reading him on 'Mortification.' He is a most 
 skilful discerner into the hitman heart ; and I.am now beginning, 
 since I read him, to he released from that dark and mysterious 
 conception which I wont to annex to the phrase, ' Experimental 
 religion."' 
 
 "May2i, 1815. My thoughts have often been directed of 
 late to the office of God's Spirit as an enlightener. There is a 
 natural darkness which cannot be done away but by God shining 
 on our hearts ; and it is right that we should feel our dependence 
 4)11 Him, not merely for the truths of Scripture, but also for our 
 spiritual discernment of these truths. But it deserves to be well 
 kept in mind, that though the Spirit is a revealer, it reveals 
 nothing to us additional to what we learn in the written record. 
 It does not make us wise above that which is written, but it 
 makes us wise up to that which is written. The word of God is 
 called the sword of the Spirit : it is the instrument by which the 
 Spirit worketh. He does not meet with us on any other ground 
 than on that of the written Eevelation ; and hence our security, 
 4)n the one hand, against the visionary pretences of those who 
 talk of their revelations additional to that which is written ; and 
 our duty on the other, to go diligently and sober-mindedly to our 
 Bibles, but to go with the attitude of dependence on Him who 
 can alone open our understandings to understand them, and show 
 us wondrous things out of His law ; and, without carrying us be- 
 yond the field of the written record, can throw a clearness and a 
 spiritual light over every object within that field."
 
 PUBLICATIONS DURING THE YEAR 1814. 277 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PUBLICATION OP " THE EVIDENCES AND AUTHORITY OF THE CHRISTIAN REVEL- 
 ATION " PROGRESS OF OPINION AS TO THE INTERNAL EVIDENCES OF CHRIS- 
 TIANITY HUME'S ESSAY ON MIRACLES ORIGIN OF HIS VIEWS ON PAUPERISM 
 
 PAMPHLET ON " THE INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES ON THE TEMPORAL 
 
 NECESSITIES OF THE POOR*' REVIEW OF CUVIER's " THEORY OF THE EARTH '" 
 
 THE INDEFINITE ANTIQUITY OF THE GLOP.E RECONCILABLE WITH THE 
 
 MOSAIC NARRATIVE CONTRIBUTION TO THE "ECLECTIC REVIEW " ON TUB 
 
 MORAVIANS AS MISSIONARIES. 
 
 THE volume of the " Edinburgh Encyclopaedia " which con- 
 tained the article "Christianity" was published early in 1813. 
 Although its title was so general, this article was restricted to 
 the illustration and enforcement of the evidence and authority of 
 the Christian Revelation ; and its author narrowed still more the 
 ground which it occupied by confining the evidence of the divtne 
 origin of Christianity to the external or historical proofs, resting 
 his argument chiefly, though not exclusively, iipon the testimony 
 transmitted to \is as to the reality of the gospel miracles. The 
 originality of many of its investigations, and more particularly 
 the new light which it threw upon the relative value of scrip- 
 tural and ex-scriptural, of Christian and heathen testimonies en- 
 hancing the force of the Christian argument beyond all former 
 appreciation, attracted immediate attention, and won just and 
 very general applause. Its author, however, was not permitted 
 to believe that he had altogether rightly or fully acquitted him- 
 self of the great task which he had undertaken. A few weeks 
 after its publication, and before any public notice of it had ap- 
 peared, his friend Dr. Charles Stuart, in an interview at Edin- 
 burgh, had very earnestly remonstrated with him on his rejection 
 and condemnation of that very branch of the Evidences of 
 Christianity on which the faith of the vast majority of its fol- 
 lowers was founded. " I feel greatly interested in the subject of 
 our last conversation," Mr. Chalmers wrote thus to Dr. Stuart on 
 his return to Kilmany ; " and as you may have perceived from 
 what I said, or rather from what I did not say, I have not yet 
 arrived at a right settlement of opinion about it. That many
 
 278 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 reach saving faith without any knowledge of the external evi- 
 dence of religion, is undeniable ; and that external evidence docs 
 not necessarily draw along with it saving faith, is equally so. 
 Still, however, I cannot think that any antecedent knowledge of 
 ours' as to the ways of God entitles us to sit in judgment upon 
 the subject of any message accredited by those external proofs, 
 which are a sign to those who do not believe. There may be 
 something in the subject which may allure me to it, which may 
 lead me to prize it, and to abide by it ; and I do not see that the 
 Spirit of God may not by an immediate work of illumination 
 give me a belief of the truth, without the intervention of any of 
 those links of argument which may be drawn out into a length- 
 ened demonstration."* 
 
 Influenced by the reception which it had experienced from 
 the readers of the Encyclopaedia, the proprietors of that work,. 
 among whom were some of the leading publishers in Edinburgh, 
 not only permitted, but were themselves the first to advise that 
 the article should be reprinted in a separate form. In adopting 
 their suggestion, Mr. Chalmers prefixed a short advertisement 
 to the volume, evidently intended to break in some degree the 
 fonee of those objections which such friends as Dr. Stuart had 
 urged. " This volume," he said, " is confined to the exposition 
 of the historical argument for the truth of Christianity, and the 
 aim of the author is fulfilled if he has succeeded in proving 
 the external testimony to be so sufficient as to leave infidelity 
 without excuse, even though the remaining important branches 
 of the Christian defence had been less strong and satisfactory 
 than they are. The author is far from asserting the study of 
 the historical evidence to be the only channel to a faith in the 
 truth of Christianity. How could he, in the face of the obvious 
 fact that there are thousands and thousands of Christians who 
 bear the most undeniable marks of the truth having come home 
 to their understanding, ' in demonstration of the Spirit and of 
 power?' They have an evidence within themselves which the 
 world knoweth not, even the promised manifestations of the 
 Saviour. This evidence is a ' sign to them that believe,' but 
 the Bible speaks also of a ' sign to them that believe not ; ' and 
 should it be effectual in reclaiming any of these from their in- 
 fidelity, a mighty object is gained by the exhibition of it." 
 Although this explanatory statement was prefixed, the same 
 sweeping condemnations of the internal evidence were, with some 
 
 * Extracted from a letter dated May 24, 1813.
 
 LETTER TO DR. STUART. 270 
 
 slight modifications, retained ; and, as the work gained rapidly 
 in popularity, the solicitude of such friendly critics as Dr. Stuart 
 was stimulated, instead of being allayed. Besides many private 
 communications, the works of some of the ablest writers on the 
 internal evidence were forwarded to Kilmany ; in acknowledg- 
 ing which, Mr. Chalmers wrote thus to Dr. Stuart : " Of the 
 other books which I returned, I read ' Edwards on the Eeligious 
 Affections,' &c. &c. He is to me the most exciting and interest- 
 ing of all theological writers: combining a humility, and a 
 plainness, and a piety which the philosophers of the day would 
 nauseate as low and drivelling, with a degree of sagacity and 
 talent which, even on their own field, places him at the head of 
 them all. Poor Fuller's death affected me much. He filled a 
 great space in public estimation ; and his loss must be severely 
 felt by all the friends of Christianity both at home and in India. 
 I have not yet made out his ' Sermons,' but I read his ' Gospel 
 its own Witness' lately ; and though I have not yet been able 
 to sit formally or deliberately down to the Internal Evidences, 
 yet I feel myself excited to think of them occasionally, and pray 
 that, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, I may be enabled to 
 mature my thoughts on everything connected with the essential 
 elements of faith and practice. Your occasional hints on this 
 subject have been a useful excitement to me ; and I wish you 
 to understand, that, so far from taking offence at your observa- 
 tions, or interpreting them into a wish to involve me in a con- 
 troversy, I feel the xitmost gratitude for the friendly attention 
 and fatherly care I have ever experienced at your hands.* Mr. 
 
 * Charles Stuart, M.D., of Dunearn, to whose character and many Christian and bene- 
 volent efforts Dr. M'Crie has paid a just and beautiful tribute. See " Life of Dr. M'Crie," 
 p. 447. Dr. Stuart was rather fond of controversy. A favourite topic with him was the 
 true nature of Saving Faith, on which subject he regarded Dr. Chalmers as being in error. 
 Among other methods of circulating what he believed to be the only correct view of saving 
 faith, Dr. Stuart had republished two extracts from the works of Samuel Pike, entitling the 
 tract, to which he had prefixed a preface, " Brief Thoughts concerning the Gospel," &c. 
 Without knowing anything about Dr. Stuart's connexion with it, Dr. Chalmers had read one 
 of the London Society's tracts, called " Hindrances to Believing the Gospel," which was in 
 fact the second part of " Brief Thoughts," &c. Shortly afterwards the two friends met on 
 the streets of Edinburgh. A long and eager conversation ensued. Street after street VTP.S 
 paced, and argument after argument on either side was vigorously plied. At last, however, 
 his time or his patience exhausted, Dr. Chalmers broke up the interview ; but as at parting 
 lie shook the hand of the amiable though somewhat pertinacious controversialist, he said, 
 " If you wish to see my views stated clearly and distinctly, read a tract called ' Hindrances 
 to Believing the Gospel' " " Why," said Dr. Stuart, " that's the very tract I published my- 
 self ! " The corner of the street the heat of the argument, gathering additional intensity as 
 it was about to be broken off his own eager, and as he thought most satisfactory closing 
 exclamation the look of wonder, running up into ecstasy, which Dr. Stuart fixed on him as 
 he uttered it all these fixed themselves in Dr. Chalmers's memory ; and he us*>d often to 
 describe the parting scene as a proof how easily it may happen, that men think that they 
 differ, while really they agree.
 
 280 MEMOIRS OF 1)R. CHALMERS. 
 
 Chalmers's removal to Glasgow in 1815, and the blaze of unex- 
 ampled popularity which attended his opening ministry in that 
 city, lent an additional interest to his first theological work; 
 and the periodical press, which in this instance had been content 
 to follow rather than to guide the public voice, began to bestow 
 attention upon the volume.* In the January number of the 
 " Edinburgh Christian Instructor," and in the July number of 
 the "Quarterly Review" for 1817, critiques appeared, which, 
 differing in the measure of general praise awarded, united in 
 condemning the manner in which the Internal Evidences had 
 been set aside. In the following year a very able and elaborate 
 little volume was published, bearing the ominous title, " Prin- 
 ciples of Christian Evidence illustrated, by an examination of 
 arguments subversive of Natural Theology and the Internal 
 Evidence of Christianity, advanced by Dr. T. Chalmers in his 
 ' Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation.' By 
 Duncan Mearns, D.D., Professor of Theology in King's College 
 and University, Aberdeen."-}- Assuming as the basis of its 
 reasonings a few sentences from the article " Christianity," in 
 the Encyclopa;dia, some of which I shall immediately have oc- 
 casion to quote, Dr. Mearns pursues to their ultimate conse- 
 quences the principles which they contain, arriving at the fol- 
 lowing result : " It thus appears that the principles upon which 
 Dr. Chalmers's system of 'Christian Evidences' is constructed, 
 not only subvert the conclusions of natural theology with the 
 internal evidence, but destroy also the external proofs ; and 
 that the various arguments he employs in support of his system 
 are destructive of each other, and of the objects at which he 
 aims. ... If Dr. Chalmers had limited his endeavours to the 
 conversion of the thorough-paced sceptic, . . . his attempt 
 would have been harmless, and might have passed unnoticed. 
 But when he makes common cause with the sceptic, when he 
 adopts his principles, or rather his negation of principles, 
 when, on the part of Christianity, he forms an alliance with 
 Atheism, the basest of her foes, and when, sacrificing the 
 internal evidence as the seal of this monstrous confederacy, he 
 turns the arms of Christianity against natural religion, her an- 
 cient and faithful ally, his proceedings no longer possess the 
 character of harmless inanity. Nor can the imaginary advan- 
 
 * Two favourable notices had already appeared, in the " Christian Herald" of March 1815, 
 and in the " Christian Observer" of April in the same year 
 t Aberdeen, 1818, 12mo.
 
 HIS FINAL OPINIONS. 281 
 
 tage above adverted to an advantage which, even were it 
 real, is too limited in extent to be of any great account, be 
 permitted to screen from exposure principles so extensively 
 destructive as those which are employed to obtain it."* 
 Pp. 182, 184, 185. Shunning all controversy, Dr. Chalmers 
 turned this attack into another stimulus to think more care- 
 fully upon the subject, and to pray more earnestly that, by 
 the teaching of the Spirit, he might be guided into all truth. 
 His original assertions, out of which a severe and unsparing 
 logic wrung such consequences, had respect only to one form of 
 internal evidence, that which was framed on the harmony be- 
 tween the particular scheme of the Divine economy revealed in 
 the Xew Testament, and our preconceived and independent judg- 
 ments of the attributes of God, and the principles and policy of 
 His government. In originally framing his argument for Chris- 
 tianity, he sought to construct it in full accordance with the 
 spirit and methods of the inductive philosophy, and to free it 
 from many incumbrances in which it had been involved, by 
 clem ing the competency of reason to receive or reject an accre- 
 dited revelation, simply because of its accordance or its discrep- 
 ancy with our own original ideas of what God is, or what God 
 ought to do. But comparatively unversed at that time in the 
 literature of the subject, and with his mind only opening to the 
 philosophy of those very spiritual processes which he was him- 
 self describing, he extended to every kind of internal evidence 
 a condemnation which could with propriety be applied to one 
 form of it alone. 
 
 It was not till 1829, soon after his appointment to the Chair 
 of Theology in Edinburgh, that he published anything addi- 
 tional upon the Christian Evidences, or gave public indication of 
 what the fruits had been of those attacks which his first small 
 treatise had provoked. In the preface to a volume entitled 
 " The Christian's Defence against Infidelity," published in that 
 year, he says : " We firmly believe that there is no one position 
 in Theology which can be more strongly and more philosophically 
 sustained than the self-evidencing power of the Bible. And 
 while we award our meed of praise to the writers of the previous 
 treatises in this volume, who have raised such a collective body 
 
 * In the " Christian Instructor" for March 1819, a review of Dr. Mearns's volume was in- 
 serted, the severity of which evoked a bitterly sarcastic pamphlet, entitled " Remarks on the 
 Edinburgh Christian Instructor's Review of Dr. Mearns's ' Principles of Christian Evidence ;' 
 irith a Proposal for publishing and circulating, under the sanction of the General Assembly 
 of the Kirk of Scotland, an improved edition of that Review, humbly submitted to the con- 
 sideration of Dr. Chalmers's friends. By Venusinus. London, 1819."
 
 282 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of evidence to meet and overthrow the no less impotent than 
 impious assaults of infidelity, yet do we hold Dr. Owen to have 
 rendered a more essential service to the cause of Divine revela- 
 tion when, by his clear and irresistible demonstrations, he has 
 proved that the written word itself possesses a self-evidencing 
 light and power for manifesting its own Divine original, superior 
 to the testimony of eye-witnesses, or the evidence of miracles, or 
 those supernatural gifts with which the first teachers of Chris- 
 tianity were endowed for accrediting their Divine mission." In 
 1836, he undertook to add to his original volume what might 
 render it a comprehensive treatise on the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity. The chapter on prophecy, the meagreness of which had 
 been complained of, was greatly enlarged ; the part now occu- 
 pied with the internal equalled that assigned to the external 
 evidence of Christianity ; whilst, in amalgamating the original 
 volume with the new matter with which it was associated, he 
 introduced important alterations, indicative of the growth and 
 enlargement of the author's ideas.* Tracing the whole history 
 
 * I subjoin a few instances of the alterations made upon the article " Christianity," as it 
 originally appeared in the Encyclopaedia : 
 
 " We may sit in judgment upon the subject of the message, or we may sit in judgment 
 upon the credibility of its bearers. The first forms a great part of that argument for the 
 truth of the Christian religion which comes under the head of its internal evidence!. The 
 substance of the mes?a:e is neither more nor less than that particular scheme of the divine 
 economy which is revealed to u. in the New Testament, and the point of inquiry is, whether 
 the scheme be consistent with that knowledge of God and His attributes which we are pre- 
 viously in possession of. It appears to us that no effectual argument can be founded upon 
 this consideration." Ency., voL vi. p. 356. 
 
 In the "Evidence and Authority of the Christian Revelation," the last sentence of this 
 passage was changed into " It appears to many that no effectual argument," &c. See p. 
 15, fifth edition, 1S17. In the "Evidences of Christianity" it stands "It is doubtful to 
 many whether any effectual argument," &c. See Works, vol. iii. p. 150. 
 
 ".But, for our part, we could see her (Christianity) driven from all her defences, and sur- 
 render them without a sigh, so long as the phalanx of her historical evidence remains im- 
 pregnable." Ency., voL vi. p. 381. 
 
 This remains unchanged in the separate volume, but in the " Evidences of Christianity," 
 it stands " For our own part, we could see her driven from all her defences, and surrender 
 them without a sigh, so long as the phalanx of the historical and experimental evidence 
 remains impregnable." Works, voL iii. p. 356. 
 
 " We hold by the total insufficiency of natural religion to pronounce upon the intrinsic 
 merits of any revelation, and think that the authority of every revelation rests exclusively 
 npon its external evidences, and upon such marks of honesty in the composition of itself as 
 would apply to any human performance." Ency., voL vi. p. 389 ; and " The Evidence and 
 Authority of the Christian Revelation," p. 243. 
 
 " We hold by the insufficiency of nature to pronounce upon the intrinsic merits of nr,y 
 revelation, and think that the authority of every revelation rests mainly upon its historical 
 and experimental evidences, and upon such marks of honesty in the composition itself as 
 would apply to any human performance." Works, voL iii. p. 335. 
 
 ' The writer of the present ankle feels that in thus disclaiming all support from what is 
 commonly understood by the internal evidence, he does not follow the general example of 
 those who have written on the Dcistical controversy." Ency., vol. vi p. 384, and " Tte 
 Evidence ar.d Authority," &c., p. 209. 
 
 "We feel that in thus disclaiming support from much of what is commonly understood 
 t>3 the internal evidence," &c. Works, voL iii p. 312.
 
 HUME ON TESTIMONY. 283 
 
 of his conceptions and belief upon this subject, from the first ex- 
 pression of them in the article in the "Encyclopaedia" to the 
 last and most matured expression of them in his " Institutes of 
 Theology," we shall scarcely find a finer instance upon record of 
 a mind attaching itself to the Scriptures, making an entire and 
 unconditional surrender of itself to the Divine authority of the 
 written record, preserving its candour, refusing to be tempted 
 into controversy, keeping itself open throughout to conviction 
 and reaching, as the blessed reward of persevering inquiry and 
 believing prayer, to the most spiritual, enlarged, and profound 
 convictions on this, as on every subject " connected with the 
 essential elements of faith and practice." 
 
 The preliminary question raised by Mr. Hume as to the power 
 of human testimony to accredit a miraculous event was not 
 discussed in the article " Christianity." In one of his earliest 
 letters to Dr. Brewster, Mr. Chalmers had said, " There is one 
 part of the argument which I think it would be much better 
 to postpone the metaphysical difficulty which Hume started 
 on the evidence of testimony. If this is not engaged, I am 
 willing to undertake that argument under the article '.Testi- 
 mony.' I think I could convince you that it is rather out of 
 place in my present attempt, though it must be taken up some- 
 where before the argument for ' Christianity' is completed. I 
 conceive that the system of Christian doctrine falls better under 
 the article ' Theology,' which I hear is in very able hands.* I 
 limit myself entirely to the truth of our religion, a question 
 
 " But reason is not entitled to sit in judgment over those internal evidences which many 
 a presumptuous theologian has attempted to derive from the reason of the thing, or from the 
 agreement of the doctrine with the fancied character and attributes of the Deity." Ency., 
 vol. vi. p. 393; and "The Evidence and Authority," &c., p. 2/6. In the "Evidences of 
 Christianity" this sentence is altogether omitted. 
 
 " Of all the evidence that can be adduced for the truth of Christianity, it (the moral and 
 experimental) is that for which I have the greatest value, both from its being the only 
 evidence which tells on the consciences and understandings of the great mass of the people, 
 and also, I think, that evidence which is the main instrument of conversion, or for work- 
 ing in the minds of your hearers that faith which is unto salvation." Institutes of Theology, 
 Tol. i. p. 251. 
 
 " I may remark, however, that there was one thing which surprised me greatly, viz., that 
 notwithstanding his acute and penetrating mind, he did not for a while perceive that pro- 
 phecy was any part of the evidence of Christianity. On this we had many conversations ; and 
 with all the humility of a child, although I was immeasurably inferior to him, he was pleased 
 to ask what were the books he should read on the subject, and I recommended to him the 
 l)cst which I knew. Some years after, I was much struck in reading the review of the article 
 in the ' Christian Observer,' to find the reviewer stating that the part of it relating to pro- 
 phecy was the weakest. I may add, that after the article was written, and prior to its 
 being published, I was favoured to hear a portion read by himself, and was requested by 
 him to mark with attention if there was any repetition of sentiment in it, as a repeti- 
 tion of sentiment was a fault in his former publication." 313. Memoranda by the Rev. 
 Mr. Smith. 
 
 * This subject was committed to Dr. Andrew Thomson.
 
 284 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 which, in point of curiosity and importance, should occupy a 
 distinguished place in the circle of human knowledge." Dis- 
 satisfied with Dr. Campbell's reply to the " Essay on Miracles," 
 Mr. Chalmers was already ruminating upon some method by 
 which the infidel objection might be more directly met arid more 
 effectively overturned. His refutation of Hume was as yet only 
 in embryo ; but he was pleased when he remembered that the 
 rate at which the past volumes of the " Encyclopaedia" had been 
 issued being maintained sufficient time would be given to 
 mature his thoughts ere the article on " Testimony" would be 
 required. Meanwhile, however, the appearance of a remarkable 
 paper in the forty-sixth number of the " Edinburgh Review," 
 understood to be from the able and influential pen of Professor 
 Playfair, quickened his inquiries into increased earnestness. In 
 a review of La Place's " Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilites," 
 Mr. Playfair had made the following bold and startling asser- 
 tions : " The first author, we believe, who stated fairly the con- 
 nexion between the evidence of testimony and the evidence of 
 experience was Hume, in his ' Essay on Miracles,' a work full of 
 deep thought and enlarged views, and, if we do not stretch the 
 principles so far as to interfere with the truths of religion, abound- 
 ing in maxims of great use in the conduct of life as well as in 
 the speculations of philosophy. . . . We may consider physical 
 phenomena as divided into two classes ; the one comprehending 
 all those of which the course is known from experience to be 
 perfectly uniform ; and the other comprehending those of which 
 the course, though no doubt regulated by general laws, is not 
 perfectly comformable to any law with which we are acquainted, 
 so that the most general rule that we are enabled to give admits 
 of many exceptions. The violation of the order of events among 
 the phenomena of the former class, the suspension of gravity, 
 for example, the deviation of any of the stars from their places 
 or their courses in the heavens, &c., these are facts of which 
 the improbability is so strong that no testimony can prevail 
 against it. It will always be more wonderful that the violation 
 of such order should have taken place, than that any number of 
 witnesses should be deceived themselves, or should be disposed 
 to deceive others. . . . Against the uniformity, therefore, of 
 such laws, it is impossible for testimony to prevail." * Upon 
 
 " Edinburgh Review," vol. xxiii. pp. 329, 330. I cannot insert such numerous refer- 
 
 ;he painful impressions made by that religious F ceptici<m, which tinged so many 
 
 j papers in the earlier numbers of the "Edinburgh Review," without recording at the 
 
 : time the unmixed delight with which Dr. Chalmers read the brilliant literary papers
 
 LETTER FROM DK. JONES. 285 
 
 reading this article, Mr. Chalmers made the following entry in 
 his Journal : " October 19, (1814.) Struck with the Edin- 
 burgh Reviewers' revival of Hume's argument about testimony, 
 and pray that God would guide my speculations upon the sub- 
 ject." His lively correspondent, Dr. Jones, thus informed him 
 of the reception which Mr. Playfair's paper had met with in 
 Edinburgh, and of the expectations which were cherished as to 
 his own future treatment of the question : " I cannot say that 
 Playfair's squib attracted any more notice than any other squib 
 thrown in the dark: it fizzed, and hardly made darkness visible ; 
 but from want of skill in the maker, it had no crack at the end. 
 However, though I think it was hardly worth their while, our 
 friends Dickson, jun., and Andrew Thomson, took it to the pulpit 
 and gave it a toss, which is just what a squib-thrower wishes 
 and intends. I rejoice to hear that you have turned your thoughts 
 to the subject of Testimony, and I should be glad if you could 
 prosecute it immediately. The genial heat that the present 
 moment has given to the subject will be peculiarly propitious to 
 such an undertaking. At any rate, charge your piece ; it is 
 well to be ready, as to be forearmed is oftentimes two-thirds or 
 more of the victory. I suppose before this you have heard from 
 Andrew Thomson what he told me, that he is to have one paper, 
 and George Cook another, on Playfair's squib in the next ' Chris- 
 tian Instructor.' * It gave me much pleasure to find that you 
 were not satisfied with Campbell. Though I think that he has 
 answered David Hume, there is a want of perspicuity and point 
 and nerve and order, that is unpleasant ; and especially on such 
 a subject not only light, but summer's noonday should shine, 
 which disowns not merely the smaller particles of dust, but the 
 motion and undulations of light and air. The whole of Hume's 
 argument hangs on the metaphysical cobweb, that testimony 
 derives its evidence and authority from experience, which I think 
 Campbell has swept away, although he has not done it with 
 neatness and cleanness. It is as if it had been scrubbed off with 
 a birch or broom besom, instead of a new and clean brush, or a 
 
 furnished to that periodical by its distinguished editor, and the peculiarly strong and tender 
 feeling of personal attachment which he cherished towards him a feeling which in later 
 years, and in his domestic circle, broke out into some expression of affectionate admiration 
 whenever Lord Jeffrey's name was mentioned. 
 
 * See " Christian Instructor" for December 1814. Dr. Jones was misinformed as to the 
 author of the second paper in the ' ' Christian Instructor," which was written by the late Dr. 
 Sommerville of Drumelzier, and afterwards republished in a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks 
 on an Article in the ' Edinburgh Review,' in which the doctrine of Hume on Miracles is 
 maintained." For Dr. Chalmers's high tei timony to the merits of this pamphlet, see Works, 
 ToL iii. pp. 110, 117.
 
 285 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 well-washed duster. I think, therefore, that much might be 
 done in this way, and more still in throwing additional light on 
 those magnificent masses of testimony on which the building 
 rests ; and as for this I know no one so well qualified, I wish 
 vou would do it." The excitement of the occasion and the wish 
 if many friends would have prevailed, but another and more 
 urgent demand intervened, and it was not till many years after- 
 wanil that Mr. Chalmers had leisure enough to do justice to a 
 subject upon which he had speculated so long and so anxiously. 
 And when at last, in his preparations for the Theological Chair 
 in Edinburgh, he entered upon the investigation, the result 
 precious in proportion to the time taken in maturing it was 
 a new and triumphant answer to Hume, an original and most 
 valuable contribution to the Evidences of Christianity.* 
 
 About the time at which the article " Christianity " was pre- 
 sented in a separate form to the public, Mr. Chalmers issued his 
 pamphlet entitled " The Influence of Bible Societies upon the 
 Temporal Necessities of the Poor." When he went to reside in 
 Huwick, a legal assessment for the relief of the poor had for 
 many years existed in that parish. The mode and results of its 
 operation were to him a matter of new and most interesting in- 
 vestigation. After his own settlement at Kilmany, where there 
 were no poor-rates, he instituted a comparison between the two 
 parishes. As Hawick embraced a considerable manufacturing 
 population, it was natural to expect that its pauperism should be 
 relatively greater than that of a purely agricultural parish ; but 
 the rapid rate at which the amount of the assessment had in- 
 creased, so much beyond the rate of increase of the population, 7- 
 was incapable of being accounted for by the occupations in 
 which the people were engaged. Taking again the same num- 
 ber of paupers in each parish, the expenditure in Hawick greatly 
 exceeded that in Kilmany ; and yet, when the houses, the food, 
 the clothing, the comforts of each were inspected, the condition 
 of the latter, instead of being much worse, was found to be much 
 better than that of the former. Further inquiry satisfied Mr. 
 Chalmers, that where there were no poor-rates, where the parish 
 bounty was spontaneous, consisting of the offerings at the church- 
 doors, and distributed by members of the kirk-session, who knew 
 
 * See Works, Tol iii. pp. 70-129. 
 
 t In 1727, anterior to the imposition of the assessment, the total expenditure upon the 
 poor m Hawick had been 22, 13s. lOd. In 1839, the assessment had risen to 1009, 9s. 9d. 
 sum forty times greater, bestowed upon a population which had not exhibited so much 
 A' a threefold increase. See "Statistical Account of Scotland" Roxburgh, p. 416.
 
 EFFECT OF A POCK-LAW. 287 
 
 the position and habits of those to whose wants they ministered, 
 the sum contributed by public charity constituted but a small 
 portion of those supplies by which the existing poverty was re- 
 lieved the remaining and larger portion coming from relatives 
 and neighbours. A public fund, raised not by voluntary sub- 
 scription, but by legal enforcement, and which ostensibly charged 
 itself with the full and adequate relief of all the poverty of a 
 neighbourhood, had the direct effect of cutting off that second 
 and more copious current of supply. It was in this way that the 
 Hawick pauper on the whole lost more by the operation of an 
 assessment than he gained by the increase of his allowance. At 
 Kilmany the receiving of parochial aid was felt to be almost a 
 reproach, and it was frequently refused. But Mr. Chalmers 
 noticed, and was much struck with the fact, that when those who, 
 if they had remained in his parish never would have suffered 
 their names to appear in the poor-roll, removed to Dundee, and 
 there became claimants upon the legally-enforced liberality of 
 the public, on their return to Kilmany, exhibited a tone of feel- 
 ing and line of practice altogether changed.* It was common 
 enough for those who received aid from a kirk-session adminis- 
 tering the free alms of the people, when their circumstances 
 improved, voluntarily to relinquish what had thus been allowed ; 
 but such conduct was never exemplified by those who had be- 
 come paupers at Dundee. Pursuing his inquiries into the con- 
 dition of the poor, and into their moral feelings and habits as 
 affected by the way in which their wants were relieved, Mr. 
 Chalmers was prepared, so early as the year 1808, publicly to 
 affirm " It is in the power of charity to corrupt its object ; it 
 may tempt him to indolence it may lead him to renounce all 
 dependence upon himself it may nourish the meanness and de- 
 pravity of his character it may lead him to hate exertion, and 
 resign without a sigh the dignity of independence. It could 
 easily be proved, that if charity were carried to its utmost extent, 
 it would unhinge the constitution of society. It would expel 
 from the land the blessings of industry. Every man would re- 
 pose on the beneficence of another ; every incitement to diligence 
 would be destroyed. The evils of poverty wo\ild multiply to 
 such an extent as to be beyond the power of the most unbounded 
 charity to redress them ; and instead of an elysium of love and 
 
 * In the forty years preceding 1834, the population of Dundee had nearly doubled, the 
 assessment had increased from 400 to 2000 per annum ; and if, as in the case of Hawick, 
 we knew what it had been before there was any assessment, the rate of increase would 
 appear to be much higher. See " Statistical Account" Forfarthire, p. 49.
 
 288 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 'of plenty, the country would present the nauseating spectacle of 
 sloth and beggary and corruption."* 
 
 Mr. Morton's removal to England suggested a still more stnk- 
 ino- and instructive comparison than that which had been insti- 
 tuted between Hawick and Kilmany. Inoculated with Mr. 
 Chalmers's notions as to poor-rates, he settled in a purely agri- 
 cultural district in Somersetshire; and looking with a fresh 
 northern eye upon the new state of things in the midst of which 
 he found himself, he had written to his brother-in-law, expressing 
 his astonishment at the magnitude of the English assessments, 
 and his conviction of their prejudicial operation. " You are quito 
 correct in principle as to the poor-rates," Mr. Chalmers wrote to 
 him in reply. " My own parish, consisting of 750 people, is sup- 
 ported at the rate of twenty-four pounds a year. A farther 
 extension of this small fund to thirty pounds a year, by the 
 introduction of the ladle, will be brought about next year ; and 
 even this I think scarcely desirable not that I could not get 
 poverty enough in the parish to absorb it, but that, let you ex- 
 tend this fund as much as you please, the poverty will extend 
 along with it, so as to press as hard upon the supplies as ever. 
 And if ever they come to be augmented to such a degree as to 
 be counted upon by the lower orders, there is an end to that 
 industry and virtuous independence which have so long formed 
 the honourable distinction of our Scottish peasantry. I spent 
 some months in a parish in Roxburghshire, before I came to Kil- 
 many. The poor-rates had been introduced there from England ; 
 and I saw as much poverty and more depravity of character than 
 I hope I shall ever witness in these northern climes. The same 
 population were supported at about six times a greater rate than 
 they are in this neighbourhood. Mr. Malthus's theory upon this 
 subject would have carried me even without examples. But it 
 seldom happens that a speculation so apparently paradoxical is so 
 well supported by the most triumphant exemplifications." ~ In 
 return for his statistics as to Kilmany, Mr. Morton informed him 
 of the parish of Kingbrompton, in Somersetshire, that its popu- 
 lation was just four above that of Kilmany ; that, like Kilmany r 
 it contained a purely rural population ; but that its poor-rates, 
 instead of ranging between 20 and 30, had then amounted to- 
 1260 per annum. There could not have been a fairer com- 
 parison, or a more instructive contrast : nor was it very long till 
 
 * See Posthumous Works, vol. vi. p. 60. 
 t Letter dated 7th February 1811.
 
 KILMANY AND KINGBROMPTON CONTRASTED. 289 
 
 public and effective use was made of it. During the controversy 
 excited by the formation of the Bible Society, it was objected to 
 those parochial associations which Mr. Chalmers sought so zeal- 
 ously to multiply all over the country, that, by absorbing so 
 much of the liberality of the public, they would curtail the funds 
 out of which poverty was to be relieved. It was an objection 
 which touched the very topics on which for years he had been 
 speculating, all his former opinions on which had been mightily 
 reinforced by the new estimate he had been led to form of the 
 value and virtue of the religious principle. Leaving to others 
 the public vindication f>f Bible Associations on their direct merits, 
 he came forward with a pamphlet especially directed to this 
 .single topic. Not satisfied with effectively repelling the objec- 
 tions taken to them, by showing that Bible Societies, instead of 
 abridging, did much to stimulate public generosity towards the 
 poor, Mr. Chalmers proceeded to demonstrate that those decried 
 institutions were among the most effective of all instruments for 
 checking poverty and diminishing its amount ; whereas many of 
 the institutions for the relief of poverty, which those who cared 
 little for the religious instruction of the people set up in false 
 rivalry, or in misplaced opposition to them, had a tendency to 
 .aggravate the very evil which they were instituted to remove. 
 "For what, after all," asks the author of the pamphlet, " 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 get rid of a 
 noxious stream, you may first try to intercept it by throwing 
 across a barrier, but in this way you only spread the pestilential 
 water over a greater extent of ground; and when the basin is 
 filled, a stream as copious as before is formed out of its overflow. 
 The most effectual method, were it possible to carry it into ac- 
 complishment, would be to dry up the source. The parallel in a 
 great measure holds. If you wish to extinguish poverty, com- 
 bat with it in its first elements. If you confine your beneficence 
 to the relief of actual poverty, you do nothing. Dry up, if pos- 
 sible, the spring of poverty, for any attempt to intercept the 
 running stream has totally failed. The education and religious 
 principle of Scotland have not annihilated paiiperism, but they 
 have restrained it to a degree that is almost incredible to our 
 neighbours of the south. They keep down the mischief in its 
 principle ; they impart a sobriety and a right sentiment of inde- 
 
 TOL. I. T
 
 290 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 pendence to the character of our peasantry ; they operate as a 
 check upon poverty and idleness. The maintenance of parish 
 schools is a burden upon the landed property of Scotland ; but 
 it is a cheap defence against the poor-rates, a burden far heavier, 
 and which is aggravating perpetually. The writer of this paper 
 knows of a parish in Fife, the average maintenance of whose 
 poor is defrayed by twenty-four pounds sterling a year, and of a 
 parish of the* same population in Somersetshire, where the annual 
 assessment amounts to thirteen hundred pounds sterling. . . . 
 The hungry expectations of the poor will ever keep pace with 
 the assessments of the wealthy, and theireye will be averted from 
 the exertion of thejr own industry as the only right source of 
 comfort and independence. It is quite vain to think that positive 
 relief will ever do away the wretchedness of poverty. Carry the 
 relief beyond a certain limit, and you foster the diseased prin- 
 ciple which gives birth to poverty. . . . The remedy against 
 the extension of pauperism does not lie in the liberalities of the 
 rich ; it lies in the hearts and habits of the poor. Plant in their 
 bosoms a principle of independence give a high tone of delicacy 
 to their characters teach them to recoil from pauperism as a 
 degradation. . . . Could we reform the improvident habits 
 of the people, and pour the healthful infusion of Scripture prin- 
 ciples into their hearts, it would reduce the existing poverty of 
 the land to a very humble fraction of its present extent. We 
 make bold to say, that, in ordinary times, there is not one-tenth 
 of the pauperism of England due to unavoidable misfortune. 
 . . . In those districts of Scotland where poor-rates are un- 
 known, the descending avenue which leads to pauperism is 
 powerfully guarded by the stigma which attaches to it. Eemove 
 this stigma, and our cottagers, now rich in the possession of con- 
 tentment and industry, would resign their habits, and crowd into 
 the avenue by thousands. The shame of descending is the power- 
 ful stimulus which urges them to a manly contest with the diffi- 
 culties of their situation, and which bears them through in all 
 the pride of honest independence. Talk of this to the people of 
 the south, and it sounds in their ears like an arcadian story. 
 But there is not a clergyman among us who has not witnessed 
 the operation of the principle in all its fineness and in all its 
 moral delicacy ; and surely a testimony is due to those village 
 heroes who so nobly struggle with the difficulties of pauperism,. 
 that they may shun and surmount its degradation."* 
 
 * See Works, voL xii. pp. 125, 156.
 
 REVIEW OF CUVIER. 291 
 
 The pamphlet on " The Influence of Bible Societies upon the 
 Temporal Necessities of the Poor," was still in the hands of the 
 printer, when Mr. Chalmers was requested by Mr. Andrew Thom- 
 son to prepare a notice of Cuvier's recently translated work. 
 Werner was but beginning to be known, Button's speculations 
 had only recently appeared in the " Transactions of the Eoyal 
 Society of Edinburgh," and Playfair was as yet gathering the 
 materials for his " Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory," when 
 the attention of Mr. Chalmers was first turned to the subject of 
 Geology. This infant science was imagined by theologians 
 generally (even in the confused and conflicting babblings of its 
 childhood) to speak in a tone decidedly infidel, and with a haste 
 and an injustice equal to that which they charged upon their fan- 
 cied adversary, they would have stifled a voice which appeared 
 to conflict with that of the Divine oracles. The merit, I believe, 
 belongs to Mr. Chalmers of having been the first clergyman in 
 this country who, yielding to the evidence in favour of a much 
 higher antiquity being assigned to the earth than had previously 
 been conceived, suggested the manner in which such a scientific 
 faith could be harmonized with the Mosaic narrative, and who, 
 even in the dreaded investigations of the geologist, discerned 
 and indicated fresh "footprints of the Creator."* So early as 
 1804 he had arrived at the conviction that "the writings of 
 Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe. If they fix any- 
 thing at all, it is only the antiquity of the species." -j- In the 
 article on Christianity this general assertion appears in a more 
 distinct and intelligible form, when it is asked, "Does Moses 
 ever say that there was not an interval of many ages betwixt the 
 first act of creation, described in the first verse of the book of 
 Genesis, and said to have been performed at the beginning, and 
 those more detailed operations the account of which commences 
 at the second verse ? . . .or does he ever make us to under- 
 stand that the genealogies of man went any farther than to fix 
 the antiquity of the species, and, of consequence, that they left 
 the antiquity of the globe a free subject for the speculations of 
 philosophers ?" J About the time at which this article first ap- 
 peared, Professor Jameson published his translation of Cuvier's 
 " Essay on the Theory of the Earth." In -a review of this Essay 
 inserted in the Christian Instructor for April 1814, Mr. Chalmers 
 remarks, " Should the phenomena compel us to assign a greater 
 
 * To this topic I shall have occasion to make more particular reference hereafter, 
 t See p. 50. J Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, voL fi. p. 383.
 
 292 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 antiquity to the globe than to that work of days detailed in the 
 book of Genesis, there is still one way of saving the credit of the 
 literal history. The first creation of the earth and the heavens 
 may have formed no part of that work. This took place at the 
 beginning, and is described in the first verse of Genesis. It is not 
 said when the beginning was. We know the general impression 
 to be that it was on the earlier part of the first day, and that 
 the first act of creation formed part of the same day's work with 
 the formation of light. We ask our readers to turn to that chap- 
 ter, and to read the first five verses of it. Is there any forcing 
 in the supposition that the first verse describes the primary act 
 t)f creation, and leaves us at liberty to place it as far back as we 
 may ; that the first half of the second verse describes the state 
 of the earth (which may already have existed for ages, and been 
 the theatre of geological revolutions) at the point of time an- 
 terior to the detailed operations of this chapter, and that the 
 motion of the Spirit of God, described in the second clause of the 
 second verse, was the commencement of these operations ? In 
 this case, the creation of light may have been the great and lead- 
 ing event of the first day, and Moses may be supposed to give us, 
 not a history of the first formation of things, but of the formation 
 of the present system."* 
 
 Cuvier's skill as a comparative anatomist enabled him to con- 
 struct the entire skeleton of an animal out of a small fragment 
 of one of its bones. Applying his method to the fossil remains 
 which are found in the crust of the earth, he was led into inves- 
 tigations, out of which, says Mr. Chalmers, " there is one very 
 precious fruit to be gathered an argument for the exercise of 
 ti creative power, more convincing perhaps, than any that can 
 be drawn from the slender resources of natural theism. If it be 
 true that in the oldest of the strata no animal remains are to be 
 met with, marking out an epoch anterior to the existence of 
 living beings in the field of observation if it be true that all 
 the genera which are found in the first of the peopled strata are 
 destroyed if it be true that no traces of our present genera are 
 to be met with in the early epochs of the globe, how came the 
 present races of animated nature into being ? It is not enough 
 to say that, like man, they may have been confined to narrower 
 regions, and escaped the operation of the former catastrophes, or 
 that their remains may be buried under the present ocean. 
 
 * "Christian Instructor," vol. ix. p. 273; Dr. Chalmers's Works, vol. i. p. 250; xiL p. 369; 
 Posthumous Works, vol. ?ii pp. SC, 24C.
 
 THE MORAVIANS AS MISSIONARIES. 293 
 
 Enough for our purpose that they could not have existed from 
 all eternity. Enough for us the fact that each catastrophe has 
 the chance of destroying, or does, in fact, destroy a certain num- 
 ber of genera. If this annihilating process went on from eternity, 
 the work of annihilation would long ago have been accomplished, 
 and there is not a single species of living creatures that could 
 have survived the multiplicity of chances for its extinction 
 afforded by an indefinite number of catastrophes. If, then, there 
 were no replacement of new genera, the face of the world would 
 at this moment have been one dreary and unpeopled solitude ; 
 and the question recurs, How did this replacement come to be 
 effected ? The doctrine of spontaneous generation we believe 
 to be generally exploded, and there is not a known instance of an 
 animal being brought into existence but by means of a previous 
 animal of the same species. The transition of the genera into 
 one another is most ably and conclusively contended against 
 by the author before us, who proves them to be separated by 
 permanent and invincible barriers. Between the one prin- 
 ciple and the other the commencement of new genera is totally 
 inexplicable on any of the known powers and combinations of 
 matter, and we are carried upwards to the primary link which 
 connects the existence of a created being with the fiat of the 
 Creator."* 
 
 In compliance with a request made by its editor, Mr. Chal- 
 mers gave the autumn of 1814 to the preparation of a contribu- 
 tion to the Eclectic Review.-j- The subject which he selected 
 was suggested by an article which had then recently appeared 
 in the Edinburgh Eeview. In a notice of Lichtenstein's 
 Travels in Southern Africa, \ the reviewer had taken occasion 
 to remark " Both the happiness and the morals of the inhabit- 
 ants and the colonists of this district seem to have been injured 
 not a little by the intrusion of a swarm of missionaries. . . . 
 What is here said of the missionaries is agreeably contrasted 
 with the society of the United Brethren or Herrenhuters, which 
 was soon after visited by Lichtenstein and his friends. ... Of 
 all who have attempted to teach Christianity to barbarous or 
 
 * " Christian Instructor," vol. ix. p. 270 ; Works, voL i. pp. 228-258 ; vol. xii. p. 364 ; 
 Posthumous Works, vol. vii. pp. 85-89. The stringency of the geological proof of creative 
 intervention has originated such attempts as those made by the author of the " Vestiges of 
 Creation," a masterly refutation of which volume will be found in Mr. Hugh Miller's 
 "Footprints of the Creator;" one of the ablest works which the Scottish press has produced, 
 exhibiting as it does the rare combination of most acute and profound metaphysical talent 
 with powers of minute and careful observation, and varied scientific acquirement. 
 t See Eclectic Review, vol. ill. p. 1, in a review of " Journal of a Voyage from Okkuk." 
 I See Edinburgh Review, vol. rxL p. 64, in the Number for February 1813.
 
 294 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 savage nations, the Moravian Brethren may be fairly placed at 
 the head They hegin with civilizing their pupils, educating 
 and instructing them in the useful arts. It is by this kind of 
 practical instruction alone that those in a certain state of ignor- 
 ance and barbarism are to be gained over to the truth ; and till 
 a similar course is followed, our missionaries and our Bible 
 Societies may expend thousands and tens of thousands to no pur- 
 pose but to manifest the goodness of their intentions, and their 
 total ignorance of the means which ought to be pursued."* 
 
 Mr. Chalmers undertook to manifest the reviewer's total ig- 
 norance of the means which had been actually pursued by the 
 Moravians, whose labours were so applauded, and out of those 
 very labours to construct the most convincing of all arguments 
 against the theory which at that period was such a favourite 
 with the opponents of missionary efforts, namely, that you must 
 civilize before you can christianize a barbarous community. 
 " The truth is," he remarks, " that the Moravians have of late 
 become the objects of a sentimental admiration. Their numerous 
 establishments, and the many interesting pictures of peace, and 
 order, and industry which they have reared among the wilds of 
 heathenism, have at length compelled the testimony of travellers. 
 It is delightful to be told of the neat attire and cultivated gar- 
 dens of savages ; and we can easily conceive how a sprig of 
 honeysuckle at the cottage door of a Hottentot may extort some 
 admiring and poetical prettiness from a charmed spectator who 
 would shrink offended from the peculiarities of the gospel. Now 
 they are right as to the fact. It is all very true about the gar- 
 den and the honeysuckle ; but they are most egregiously wrong 
 as to the principle. And when they talk of these Moravians as 
 the most rational of missionaries, because they furnish these 
 
 The review of " Lichtenstein" refers us back to a previous notice of Barrow's " Account 
 of a Journey in Africa" (see Edinburgh Review, voL viiL pp. 434-436*, in which the re- 
 viewer makes the following observations in his own name : " It does not appear from the 
 account of the missionaries themselves that their laudable zeal and pious labours are likely 
 soon to gain an exceeding great reward. They are preaching the most abstruse mysteries 
 of our holy religion to tribes of savages who can scarcely count ten, and inculcating the care 
 of their immortal sonls to miserable creatures, who with all their labour can scarcely find sub- 
 sistence for their bodies. The order of Providence clearly recommends that these children of 
 penury should first get into easier circumstances, and then be made converts to religious 
 tenets." He afterwards quotes approvingly the following sentence from Barrow : " And here 
 tile superior advantages resulting from the system of the Moravians over that of the gospel 
 missionaries are most forcibly demonstrated. Instead of encouraging the natives in their 
 rambling disposition from place to place, they laboured to fix them to one spot instead of 
 preaching to them the mysterious parts of the gospel, they instructed them in useful and 
 industrious habits instead of building a church, they erected a storehouse." How deep 
 the impression was which these articles made upon Mr. Chalmers is evidenced by his refer- 
 ence to them many years afterwards in his theological prelections. See Posthumous Works, 
 voL ix. pp. 156, 157.
 
 THE FIRST CONVERT IN GREENLAND. 295 
 
 converts with the arts and comforts of life before they ever 
 think of pressing upon them the mysteries of their faith, they 
 make a most glaring departure from the truth, and that too in 
 the face of information and testimony afforded by the very men 
 whom they profess to admire. It is not true that Moravians are 
 distinguished from the other missionaries by training their dis- 
 ciples to justice, and morality, and labour, in the first instance, 
 and by refraining to exhort to faith and self-abasement. It is 
 not true, nor does it consist with the practice of the Moravians, 
 that in regard to savages some advance towards civilization is 
 necessary, preparatory to any attempt to christianize them." 
 
 The most impressive incident in the history of Moravian mis- 
 sions had been the trial at their outset of the very method re- 
 commended by Lichtenstein and his reviewers, its signal failure, 
 and subsequent abandonment. For many years the Moravian 
 missionaries in Greenland had laboured to train the natives to 
 habits of industry, and to instruct them in the first and simplest 
 truths of religion, studiously withholding from them the deeper 
 mysteries of the Christian faith ; but no sensible effect followed. 
 One day, however, whilst one of their number was engaged in 
 making a fair copy of a translation of one of the gospels, a crowd 
 of natives gathered round him, curious to know the contents of 
 the book. He read to them the histoiy of our Saviour's suffer- 
 ings and death. " How was that?" said one of the savages, 
 stepping up to the table at which the missionary was sitting, his 
 voice trembling with emotion as he spoke " How was that ? 
 Tell me that once more, for I too would fain be saved ! " " These 
 words," writes the missionary, " the like of which I had never 
 heard from any Greenlander, pierced my very soul, and affected 
 me so much that, with tears in my eyes, I related to them the 
 whole history of the sufferings of Christ, and the counsel of God 
 for our salvation."* The Greenlander who put the question 
 was the first convert to the truth ; and the mode of his conver- 
 sion was so instructive, that ever afterwards the first office of the 
 Moravian missionaries was to proclaim the death of Jesus as the 
 great expiation for human guilt, and only ground of the sinner's 
 hope for eternity. One difference, indeed, existed between them, 
 and others, they had been longer in the field. " They have 
 had time," says Mr. Chalmers, " for the production of more gra- 
 tifying results ; and the finished spectacle of their orderly and 
 peaceful establishments strikes at once upon the eye of many/ 
 
 * See " Historical Records relative to the Moravian Church," by Klinesmith, pp. 128.123L
 
 290 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 an admirer who knows not bow to relish or appreciate the prin- 
 ciple which gives life and perpetuity to the whole exhibition. 
 This may serve to account for the mistaken principle upon which 
 many admirers of the United Brethren gave them the preference 
 over all other missionaries." The Moravians not only led the 
 way in modern missionary effort, but they have given such an 
 exhibition of zeal and devotedness in this work as no other com- 
 munity of Christians has displayed. In 1731, when they first 
 entered on this field of labour, all the Churches of the Reforma- 
 tion were asleep. They formed a small community of poor 
 suffering exiles, numbering about 600 souls ; yet such was the 
 sacred impulse to missionary labour which animated them, that 
 *' within the short period of ten years, missionaries went to St. 
 Thomas, to St. Croix, to Greenland, to Surinam, to the Rio de 
 Berbice, to several Indian tribes in North America, to the 
 negroes in South Carolina, to Lapland, to Tartary, to Algiers,, 
 to Guinea, to the Cape of Good Hope, and to Ceylon."* At 
 present the Moravian Brethren in Europe and America amount 
 to about 10,000, 230 of whom are missionaries, having under 
 their care upwards of 50,000 converts from heathenism. Having 
 given up one-fiftieth of their own number to the work of evan- 
 gelizing the nations, they have gathered in more than five times 
 their own number from the vast field of heathenism. We are 
 pleased when, as the result of a statistical survey of our prin- 
 cipal missionary societies, Dr. Harris presents us with the in- 
 formation, that there are at present about 1500 missionaries r 
 aided by about 5000 native and other teachers, occupying 1200* 
 stations, employing 50 printing-presses, and having about 180,000 
 converts in Christian communion : but it abates the satisfaction 
 when we are reminded, that if the Churches in our own land 
 had done as much as these Moravians have done, instead of there 
 being as now but one missionary to every 400,000, there would 
 be one to every 1800 of the heathen the whole heathen world 
 would be within our reach, under effective Christian instruction^ 
 whilst instead of 180,000, we might have had eighty-five millions 
 of converts to Christianity ! - 
 
 See Hotoes'g " Historical Sketches of the Missions of the United Brethren," p. 3. 
 t ee Harris's " Great Commission," p. 165; and Baptist Noel's "Christian Missions to- 
 Heathen Nations," pp. 311, 312.
 
 REGULATIONS ABOUT MANSES. 297 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 APPEARANCES IN THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS PRESBYTERY OF CtTPAR 
 
 ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS UPON MANSES SYNOD OF FIFE CASE OF MR. 
 
 FERRIE SPEECH BEFORE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 
 
 MR. CHALMERS had hitherto taken no particular or prominent 
 part in the business of the ecclesiastical courts. The records of 
 the Presbytery of Cupar, of which he was a member for more 
 than twelve years, exhibit but a solitary instance in which his 
 name stands connected with any Presbyterial Act. At a meet- 
 ing of that Presbytery, held on the 1st February 1814, he moved 
 the adoption and enforcement of certain regulations which he had 
 prepared relative to the repairs and alterations of manses. In 
 his own case he had experienced the " sweetening and tran- 
 quillizing effect" of the Presbytery's intervention, and he desired 
 to secure, in all time coming, the same benefit to all his brethren. 
 " I am sure," he said, in moving his resolutions, " that the com- 
 fort of the heritors is as much involved in these regulations as 
 the comfort of the clergyman ; for I will venture to say, that a 
 mode of proceeding which carries them to a prompt and imme- 
 diate decision, though it should bring double the expense along 
 with it, will be attended with a less quantity of unpleasurable 
 feelings. I do not think we have to look far into human nature 
 for the explanation of this ; but instead of theorizing, I shall 
 give you an actual example of it. I believe that I am within 
 limits when I say that I had at least sixteen meetings with my 
 heritors on the subject of manse and offices. I am convinced 
 that during that time they did not lay their account with an 
 expenditure of more than 500, even if I got all that I asked. 
 But to reduce this 500 was the mighty object, and in pursuit 
 of it there was a world of harassment and occasional bad humour 
 in both parties. Well, the matters went on and thickened to a 
 crisis, and at the end of a most fatiguing two years, I did what 
 I ought to have done at the commencement of them ; I called 
 in my Presbytery ; and mark the importance of the fact to my 
 arguments when at last the decision came upon them in the 
 shape of a payment, not of 500, but of 1150, it brought not
 
 298 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 merely comfort to my heart, but it brought tranquillity to theirs." 
 Instead of leaving it optional to the minister to apply to the 
 Presbytery, the improvement suggested by Mr. Chalmers in his 
 regulations was, that each minister should be bound to inform 
 the Presbytery of every proposed repair or alteration, leaving 
 it optional to the Presbytery to interfere. Having heard his 
 regulations read, " the Presbytery highly approved of the spirit 
 and object of these regulations, and ordered them to lie on the 
 table till next ordinary meeting." In bringing them again 
 before the notice of the Presbytery at their next meeting, Mr. 
 Chalmers said, " I have not forgotten your unanimous appro- 
 bation of the spirit of these regulations. Now, spirit is a thin, 
 vapoury, aerial kind of thing, ready to fly at every slight im- 
 pulse, and therefore requiring to be fixed down and made to 
 reside in a material substance. You have conceded to me a 
 spirit, give me a body to place it in ; for, be assured, we shall 
 reap no solid advantage till we have embodied the said spirit in 
 an actually adopted resolution. I remember reading of a motion 
 of Mr. Fox's in Parliament, by which he carried it as the reso- 
 lution of the House, ' That the influence of the Crown had in- 
 creased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished.'* But 
 he could not get them to do anything upon this motion. They 
 would come to no specific or operative measure in consequence ; 
 and I was a good deal struck at the time with the charge 
 which he exhibited against them, that they had given their 
 assent to a declaratory proposition, and withheld it from an effec- 
 tive one. Now, I feel that I am speaking on a clearer and a 
 better cause, and I trust, having got your declaratory propo- 
 sition at the last meeting of Presbytery, that I shall obtain 
 your effective one at this." The regulations which, with some 
 slight modifications, were adopted, will be found at the foot of 
 the page, f 
 
 * ThU resolution was moved not by Mr. Fox, but by Mr. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ash- 
 burton. 
 
 t " March 29, 1814. The Regulations relative to Manses, &c., proposed by Mr. Chal- 
 mers, were again read, and being maturely considered, were unanimously adopted, and 
 ordered to be observed by all the members of the Presbytery in future the tenor whereof 
 follows, rir. : 
 
 1. That every minister within the bounds shall henceforth give information to the 
 
 esbytery of the repairs or alterations upon the manse or offices which he wishes to propose 
 to his heritors. 
 
 " 2. That the Presbytery shall judge whether, from the extent of the repairs wanted, or 
 other circumstances of the case, it will be right or prudent for them to leave the matter to 
 ^negotiated by the minister, or to interfere in the business themselves. 
 
 3. That if the aflair be committed to the minister, he shall be held bound to inform the 
 Presbytery of Us progress and result.
 
 CASE OF MR. FERRIE. 209 
 
 But within the bounds of his own Synod a question had now 
 arisen in which his interest was too great to suffer him to remain 
 inactive. The junction of a professorship in a university with 
 the charge of a country parish had been rarely known, and had 
 frequently been disallowed in the practice of the Church of Scot- 
 land ; and although the General Assembly of 1800 had decided 
 in favour of the junction of the two offices in the instance of Dr. 
 Arnot's settlement in Kingsbarns, the conviction gained ground 
 that it was a union which violated the constitution of the Scottish 
 Establishment, which had always required constant residence in 
 their parishes on the part of all its ministers. That conviction 
 was very unequivocally expressed when, in the year 1813, the 
 Eev. William Ferrie, Professor of Civil History in the Univer- 
 sity of St. Andrews, was presented to the living of Kilconquhar. 
 At first the Presbytery of St. Andrews refused to admit him 
 to the pastoral charge, unless he gave them the assurance, which 
 he refused to do, that before or at the time of his ordination, 
 he would resign his professorship. Upon appeal to the General 
 Assembly, held at Edinburgh in May 1813, by the narrow and 
 at that time unusually small majority of Jive the decision of 
 the Presbytery of St. Andrews was reversed, and they were ap- 
 pointed to proceed with Mr. Feme's settlement as minister of 
 Kilconquhar, " with all convenient speed, according to the rules 
 of the Church." In compliance with this decision of the supreme 
 Court, a committee of Presbytery met at Kilconquhar for the 
 purpose of moderating in a call, and reported to a subsequent 
 meeting that no signatures whatever had been attached to it. 
 At the same time, however, a letter was laid before the Pres- 
 bytery, in which all the principal landholders of Kilconquhar, 
 three out of four of the elders, and many heads of families, 
 apologized for not having signed the call at the proper time, and 
 expressed their concurrence in Mr. Feme's settlement. At this 
 stage the matter was referred to the Synod, for the meeting of 
 which, on the 12th October, Mr. Chalmers, as his Journal 
 has already informed the reader, made the most anxious and 
 careful preparation. It had been his impression that the want 
 of a call would oppose an effectual barrier against Mr. Feme's 
 ordination, or that an opportunity would at least present itself 
 
 " 4. Provided always, that if the manse shall be in so doubtful a state as to render a 
 report from tradesmen necessary before the specific repairs or alterations can be fixed upon, 
 the Presbytery shall appoint a visitation and inspection of the said manse, with a Tiew to 
 obtain the said report from tradesmen upon oath." Extracted from the Becords of the 
 Presbytery of Cupar.
 
 300 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 for discussing the general question of the propriety of such 
 pluralities. But he was disappointed. Mr. Ferrie's friends 
 yielded the question as to the sustaining of the letter as equivalent 
 to a call, and the Synod, appointing the Presbytery to moderate 
 in a new call, left the decision of the General Assembly to be 
 carried into effect. It was to Mr. Chalmers a " day of mortifi- 
 cation," from which he returned home "jaded, mortified, useless." 
 But although they were obliged to yield to the decision of their su- 
 preme indicatory upon this particular case, the opponents of such 
 pluralities had become too numerous and too zealous through- 
 out the Church to abandon the question in despair. The main 
 ground on which the judgment of the General Assembly had 
 been rested and defended was, that before any presbytery could 
 be warranted to act as the Presbytery of St. Andrews had done r 
 a specific law of the Church forbidding the union of offices was. 
 required. The majority of those who thought and acted with 
 Mr. Chalmers denied the necessity of a specific law ; neverthe- 
 less, that the abuse might be prevented in all time coming, they 
 united in bringing the matter in its general form before the 
 Assembly of 1814. The "day of mortification" in the Synod 
 was now more than compensated by a day of triumph in the 
 Assembly. Mr. Chalmers took a conspicuous part in the debate, 
 which he relieved of its dulness by such passages as the follow- 
 ing : " The worthies of a former age never thought of framing 
 a law against a country minister being at the same time a pro- 
 fessor in a university. They never suspected their competency 
 to repress this combination wherever it was attempted ; nor did 
 they anticipate the new-sprung principle, that every abuse must 
 be tolerated in the first instance, and tolerated in every instance,. 
 till a positive and express statute was devised against it. Why r 
 Moderator, at this rate, the very act by which you interdict me 
 from being a professor in a university carries a principle along 
 with it by which you give me licence to disgrace my profession,, 
 and to abandon my people in a thousand other ways. I run my 
 eye over the catalogue of Church-laws, and I see that, if they 
 are the only instruments by which the controlling power of the 
 Church can be brought to bear upon me, there is indeed an 
 ample range over which I am left at liberty to expatiate. It is 
 true that, by the proposed law, you shut me out from being a 
 professor ; but by the principle of the said law you open up for 
 me a thousand other employments. There is almost nothing 
 which I may not do ; why, I may catch rats if I choose. It is
 
 LAW AGAINST RAT-CATCHING. 301 
 
 not known to me that a law has yet been passed providing 
 against the abuse of a country minister adding to the emolu- 
 ments of his office the gains which may come to him from the 
 calling of a rat-catcher. Well, then, this is the employment 
 which I choose to betake myself to, and in the prosecution of it 
 I may carry it with proud defiance against all my ecclesiastical 
 superiors. It is quite in vain to talk of my time and my duties, 
 and, above all, of the overwhelming ridicule which I have 
 brought upon a dignified profession : I entrench myself behind 
 the principle that there is no law ; and when carried to the bar 
 of 'the General Assembly, I ask my accusers where is their law, 
 for they can do nothing without a law. You may frame a law 
 against rat-catching in all time coming ; but it is not fair that 
 laws should have a retrospective effect, and so I will be a rat- 
 catcher in spite of you. It' is nothing to the purpose, it would 
 appear, that a parish goes to wreck that the clergyman has 
 given his respectability to the winds and that the serious are 
 scandalized, and the profane rejoice in the air of levity which he 
 has thrown around all his ministrations. In deference to the 
 new-formed principle, that we can do nothing without a law, 
 there is no other alternative than to let him alone. We resign 
 all discretionary power, it would appear, from this moment ; and 
 it were well if the one abuse that I have now specified were 
 the only mischief it gave rise to. But the mischiefs will be 
 infinite as the variety of human inventions. Every minister 
 amongst us may find out something beyond the reach of all your 
 written provisions, and the Church thrown loose from the con- 
 trol of a principle which, till lately, was never questioned, from 
 the authority of its courts sitting in judgment, as they have ever 
 done, upon what was becoming the profession of a clergyman, 
 and for the edification of his people will exhibit the deformed 
 spectacle of many sickening abuses, and many unheard-of enor- 
 mities. The maxim of our not being able to do anything with- 
 out law or without precedent, degrades us even below a civil 
 court. A case comes before them, to which neither law nor pre- 
 cedent is applicable ; but, in the meantime, a decision must be 
 had, and as they have no old precedent to follow, they create 
 a new one. A professor comes before us, for the first time, with 
 a presentation to a country living, or conversely ; we happen to 
 have no law upon the subject, and can have no precedent. Upon 
 what principle, then, is it that we are restrained from deciding 
 as we will ? Is it not competent to us, upon the single considers-
 
 302 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 tion, that it is against the interests of religion to permit, such a 
 combination of offices, to refuse our consent to his induction ? 
 Yes, it is ; and the only plea upon which you can deny that com- 
 petency is, that the man has acquired a right of property in a 
 presentation which has been given to him. This brings the two 
 opposing pretensions into contact, and carries us to the naked 
 struggle between the rights of a patron and the functions of the 
 Church. It is right that you should see the whole amount of 
 the surrender you are making by giving way to the clamour 
 about law and about precedent. Why, you are just giving way 
 to a principle which, carried to its full extent, makes the right 
 of the patron absolute and independent ; leaves the Church no 
 more control over its members than over the holders of any 
 secular benefice ; reduces our office as constitutional guardians 
 of religion to the impotent mockery of a form ; and by a set of 
 legal technicals, and fancied analogies, deceives us into a sur- 
 render of our dearest privileges. . . . The absolute right of 
 patrons is altogether a visionary principle. . . . The man who 
 comes to our bar with a presentation to a living has acquired no 
 absolute right of property till he has obtained our consent to his 
 induction. A presentation carries along with it no absolute 
 right of property. It is only a right of property with submission 
 to the judgment of the Church. . . . Every new law is a new 
 limitation of the right of patronage ; it is equivalent to a new 
 tax upon the property conveyed by it. ... Our competency to 
 make new laws is not denied in any one quarter. This subordi- 
 nates the right of the patron to that high function of the Church 
 by which it sits in authority over every question involving in it 
 the interests of religion. . . 'Meditate on these things ; give thy- 
 self wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear unto all.' This 
 is a principle gathered out of the Statute-book of Christians, and 
 it admits of a clear and easy application to the question before 
 us. I know that there are other statute-books books of cases 
 and books of reference at which many of our men of simpli- 
 city and godly sincerity stand aghast and are confounded. Now, 
 what I want them to do, is to feel the sufficiency of the prin- 
 ciples they have already learned to keep by their own Statute- 
 book, and manfully to withstand the darkening and misleading 
 authority of others ; and let them rest assured, that though men 
 of curious arts among us were to bring their books together, and 
 to count the price of them, and to find that in money they were 
 worth fifty thousand pieces of silver, yet, in authority over us,
 
 EFFECT OF HIS SPEECH ON FERRIE S CASE. 303 
 
 they are not worth a straw. Though they were at this moment 
 burned before all men I would lament their loss to other de- 
 partments of jurisprudence ; but enough for the proceedings of 
 our General Assembly if the Word of God grew and prevailed 
 among us. This was enough for the guidance of the Church in 
 her best and purest days, and it should be enough for ours. . . . 
 I have sometimes thought -of the council of the apostles which 
 met at Jerusalem, and tried to conceive how those primitive 
 men would have listened to the kind of argument which is now 
 so current among the law divines of the present day. I should 
 have fastened an attentive eye upon Bartholomew and the rest 
 of them, and been vastly curious to know how the man of point 
 and precedent fared among the other members of the council, as 
 he took up their celebrated decree, and examined how it was- 
 signed, sealed, and delivered. Why, sir, I can conceive him to 
 go so far in his argument about dates and duplicates and regis- 
 trations as to tell the apostles, in so many words, that they knew 
 nothing about the matter that the time at which their decree 
 was executed made that decree not worth a farthing ; and as he 
 went on in that style, which I need not describe, for it is too- 
 familiar to all of us, I figure to myself how Peter would have 
 boiled with impatience, and the more masterly and intellectual 
 Paul would have annihilated the trifler by one single blow of 
 his decisive and manly indignation."* 
 
 * The effect produced by the delivery of this speech is thus pleasingly recorded in a letter 
 from the Rev. Alexander Forrester, minister of Linton, to Mrs. Walker, a daughter of the 
 Rev. Dr. Chalmers of Kilconquhar, dated Linton, 4th June 1814 : " I cannot help express- 
 Ing to you the pleasure which I received last Assembly at the wonderful display of talents 
 which was made by your relation, the minister of Kilmany. My pleasure would have been 
 considerable had his name and family been totally unknown to me ; but entertaining no- 
 ordinary regard for some of his kindred both among the living and the dead, I confess that 
 I had uncommon satisfaction at the appearance which he made. I do not know whether I am 
 singular in my opinion that he bears in some striking features a resemblance to your father; 
 I mean not in looks, but in the qualities of his mind. The resemblance which the members 
 of a family bear to one another, and that even in its remoter branches, and in the particular 
 which I now allude to, has often struck me. I am persuaded that the same affinity may be 
 traced between the two whom I have mentioned, and that in that acuteness and eloquence 
 which are the acknowledged qualities of the minister of Kilmany, he discovers the relation 
 which he bears to his granduncle. On making this remark to one of my brethren from Fife 
 acquainted with both, he seemed to think that the former was superior in point of talent; 
 to which I replied, that in some respects it might be true, as there were some sciences in 
 which the former had made proficiency to which your father had paid no attention, nay, in 
 fact, always treated with contempt I here refer to Chemistry and Political Economy. 
 Besides, I told him that it was only in the decline of life that I was acquainted with your 
 father, but that even in that stage, when, alas ! most of us exhibit nothing but infirmities, I 
 was much disposed to think that he was wrong. I am not sure that your father would have 
 engaged with the ardour with which the minister of Kilmany does in Missionary and Bible 
 Societies. Here, however, I have perhaps rather ascribed to your father my own ideas than 
 his. For my own part, I must own to you that I have never yet seen any proper call to us 
 for engaging in the measures of these Societies, and such is the feeling of this part of the 
 country with a very few exceptions."
 
 304 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 After a lengthened debate a declaratory enactment was 
 passed, prohibiting in future such pluralities as had been per- 
 mitted in the cases of Dr. Arnot and Mr. Ferrie. A succeeding 
 Assembly was persuaded to cancel this enactment on the alleged 
 ground that it was incompetent and unconstitutional to pass 
 such an act without the advice of the presbyteries of the Church. 
 An overture embodying its terms was sent down to the presby- 
 teries by the General Assembly of 1816 ; and a majority of the 
 returns having been in its favour, it passed into a standing law 
 of the Church of Scotland in 1817, that a chair in a universitv 
 cannot be held in conjunction with a country parochial charge."
 
 EARLY PULPIT PREPARATIONS. 305 
 
 CHAPTEK XVI. 
 
 MINISTRY AT K1LMANY ITS FIRST SEVEN YEARS THE CHANGE THE SICK- 
 ROOM THE VISITATION THE EXAMINATION THE CLASS FOR THE YOUNG 
 
 THE PULPIT THE RESULT. 
 
 PAROCHIAL duty pressed lightly upon Mr. Chalmers during 
 the first seven years of his ministry at Kilmany. If he " ex- 
 pended as much effort upon the religious improvement of his 
 people as any minister within the bounds of his presbytery," 
 if he could triumphantly challenge his brethren to prove that 
 he had been " outstripped by any of his predecessors in the re- 
 gularity of his ministerial attentions," * the standards to which 
 he thus appealed must have been miserably low. The sick and 
 the dying among his parishioners had not indeed been neglected 
 during those earlier years. Kindly inquiries were made, tender 
 sympathy was shown, and needful aid was tendered ; but no 
 solicitude was manifested as to their religious condition, no re- 
 ferences occurred in visiting them to their state and prospects 
 for eternity, and it was only when specially requested to do so 
 that he engaged in prayer. Two or three weeks were annually 
 devoted to a visitation of his parish, so rapidly conducted that 
 he scarcely did more than hurriedly enter many a dwelling to 
 summon its inmates to a short address, given in some neigh- 
 bouring apartment, and confined generally to one or other of the 
 more ordinary moralities of domestic life. With the general 
 body of his parishioners he had little intercourse. They might 
 meet him occasionally on the road, and receive the kindliest 
 notice, but the smile of friendly recognition broke over a coim- 
 tenance of dreamy abstraction ; and when the quickly made but 
 cordial salutation was over and he was gone, his wondering 
 parishioners would gaze after him as upon a man wholly addicted 
 lo very strange, and, in the eyes of many of them, very question- 
 able pursuits. Comparatively little time or care was bestowed 
 upon his pulpit preparations. " I have known him," says Mr. 
 Smith, " not to begin them till Sabbath morning. He told me 
 
 * See p. C2. 
 YOL. I. D
 
 306 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 that he wrote in short-hand, and when once he began he kept 
 the pen going till he had finished the discourse. His sermons 
 were in general very short. But they were written in a fervid 
 strain, and delivered with energetic animation. The first effect, 
 indeed, of the great spiritual change, was to chasten rather than 
 to stimulate the vehemence of his delivery in the pulpit. In 
 those earlier days, whether from choice or from necessity, he 
 frequently preached without any written notes. The obstruc- 
 tions afterwards complained of and felt to be invincible, do not 
 then appear to have stood much in his way, for he never used 
 so ardent and so significant an elocution as in those fervid ex- 
 tempore expostulations upon stealing or lying or backbiting, 
 explained according to popular belief by the circumstance, that 
 the minister had come home late on the Saturday evening, and 
 that the indefatigable newsmonger, John Bonthron, had been 
 seen entering the manse shortly after his arrival. When the 
 impulse moved, or the occasion invited, Mr. Chalmers could write 
 as eloquently then as he ever did afterwards. The two fast-day 
 sermons of this period* have been compared with that splendid 
 discourse which the occasion of the first of them elicited from 
 Kobert Hall. Without pressing that comparison to an issue, it 
 may be taken as a very signal proof of the native genius of their 
 author, that two discourses, written off-hand, written in all like- 
 lihood each at a single sitting, prepared for thin audiences of 
 nnsympathizing rustics, and thrown aside as soon as delivered, 
 should be capable of bearing a comparison with an effort which 
 was made, in the first instance, before a crowded and intelligent 
 audience, and upon which all the care and skill of one of the 
 greatest masters in the art of composition had afterwards been 
 lavished. Upon the whole, however, and till the period of his 
 illness at Fincraigs, Mr. Chalmers's ministry was unpopular 
 and ineffective, his church but poorly attended, and his private 
 ministrations followed with but trifling effects. But the great 
 change came, and with it a total alteration in the discharge of 
 all parochial duty. From a place of visible subordination, the 
 spiritual care and cultivation of his parish was elevated to the 
 place of clear and recognised supremacy. To break up the 
 peace of the indifferent and secure by exposing at once the guilt 
 of their ungodliness and its fearful issue in a ruined eternity 
 to spread out an invitation wide as heaven's own all-embracing 
 love, to every awakened sinner to accept of eternal life in Jesus 
 
 * See Posthumous Works, voL ri. pp. 40, 62.
 
 SPIRITUAL INTERCOURSE WITH HIS PEOPLE. SOT 
 
 Christ to plead with all, that instantly and heartily, with all 
 good-will and with full and unreserved STibinission, they should 
 give themselves up in absolute and entire dedication to the 
 Kedeemer these were the objects for which he was now seen 
 to strive with such a " severity of conviction " as implied that 
 he had one thing to do, and " with such a concentration of his 
 forces as to idle spectators looked like insanity."* 
 
 The first use he made of that returning strength which, after 
 so many months' confinement, enabled him to cross again the 
 threshold of Fincraigs, was to visit all the sick, the dying, and 
 the bereaved in his parish ; and when all trace and feeling of 
 his own infirmity had departed, he still delighted to mingle his 
 sympathies with the weak and the sorrowful. There was indeed 
 such a restless activity about his manner, such a physical in- 
 capacity for very soft or gentle movements, that the sick-room 
 seemed an uncongenial place ; yet there was such exquisite 
 tenderness of feeling, such rapid appreciation of the condition of 
 the patient, and such capacity in a few short and weighty sen- 
 tences to minister to his spiritual sorrows or perplexity, that a 
 brief visit from him was often sufficient to shed a flood of light 
 upon the understanding, or to pour a full tide of comfort into the 
 heart. Extreme delicacy of feeling and his own great reserve 
 threw obstacles in his way, which were often very painfully felt 
 by him. But if he could not at once overcome the barriers 
 which lay in the way of an immediate, free, and confidential 
 spiritual intercourse, he could speak of Him whose love to sin- 
 ners had no limits, and lay under no restraints. " No one ever 
 preached the gospel to the dying with greater simplicity or ful- 
 ness, and yet with characteristic simplicity he would often say, 
 * that I could preach to the sick and dying as Mr. Tait of 
 Tealing does !' " -J- His interest in this as in every other part 
 of his ministerial labours, grew with his own advancing light 
 and love. During the years 1813, 1814, the only two years 
 of full ministerial labour at Kilmany, he made a few short- 
 hand memoranda, entitled, " Records of spiritual intercourse 
 with my people." Guided by these, let us follow Mr. Chalmers 
 in one or two of his visits to the sick-chamber or the house ot 
 mourning. 
 
 " Feb. 15, 1813. Visited Mrs. B., who is unwell, and prayed. 
 
 * Foster's character of Howard. 
 
 t MS. Memoranda, by the Rev. Islay Bums.
 
 308 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Let me preach Christ in all simplicity, and let me have a pecu- 
 liar eye on others. I spoke of looking unto Jesus, and deriving 
 thence all our delight and confidence. God, give me wisdom 
 and truth in this household part of my duty. 
 
 "Feb. 21. Visited at Dalyell Lodge. They are in great 
 affliction for the death of a child. I prayed with them. God, 
 make me wise and faithful, and withal affectionate in my man- 
 agement of these cases. I fear that something of the sternness of 
 systematic orthodoxy adheres to me. Let me give up all stern- 
 n'ess ; but let me never give up the only name by which men 
 can be saved, or the necessity of forsaking all to follow Him, 
 whether as a Saviour or a Prince. 
 
 " March 25. Visited a young man in consumption. The call 
 not very pleasant ; but this is of no consequence. my God, 
 direct me how to do him good. 
 
 " June 2. Mr. sent for me in prospect of death ; a man 
 
 of profligate and profane habits, who resents my calling him an 
 unworthy sinner, and who spoke in loud and confident strains 
 of his faith in Christ, and that it would save him. God, give 
 me wisdom in these matters to declare the whole of Thy counsel 
 for the salvation of men. I represented to him the necessity of 
 being born again, of being humbled under a sense of his sins, 
 of repenting and turning from them. may I turn it to my 
 own case. If faith in Christ is so unsuitable from his mouth 
 because he still loves sin, and is unhumbled because of it, 
 should not the conviction be forced upon me that I labour my- 
 self under the same unsuitableness ? my God, give me a 
 walk suitable to my profession, and may the power of Christ 
 rest upon me. 
 
 " June 4. Visited Mr. again. Found him worse, but 
 
 displeased at my method of administering to his spiritual wants. 
 He said that it was most unfortunate that he had sent for me ; 
 talked of my having inspired him with gloomy images, but 
 seemed quite determined to buoy himself up in Antinomian 
 .security. He did not ask me to pray. I said a little to him, 
 and told him that I should be ready to attend him whenever he 
 sent for me. 
 
 "August 9. Miss under religious concern. my God, 
 
 send her help from Thy sanctuary. Give me wisdom for these 
 jases. Let me not heal the wound slightly ; and oh, while I 
 administer comfort in Christ, may it be a comfort according to 
 godliness. She complains of the prevalence of sin. Let me not
 
 VISITATIONS OF THE SICK. 309 
 
 abate her sense of its sinfulness. Let me preach Christ in all 
 His entireness, as one that came to atone for the guilt of sin, and 
 to redeem from its power. 
 
 "March 15, 1814. Poor Mr. Bonthron, I think, is dying. I 
 saw him and prayed, after a good deal of false delicacy. my 
 God, give me to be pure of his blood, and to bear with effect 
 upon his conscience. Work faith in him with power. I have 
 little to record in the way of encouragement. He does not seem 
 alarmed himself about the state of his health, and, I fear, has 
 not a sufficient alarm upon more serious grounds. It is a diffi- 
 cult and heavy task for me ; and when I think of my having to 
 give an account of the souls committed to me, well may I say 
 Who is sufficient for these things ? 
 
 " March 23. Mr. Bonthron was able to be out, and drank tea 
 with us. I broke the subject of eternity with him. He ac- 
 quiesces ; you carry his assent always along with you, but you 
 feel as if you have no point of resistance, and are making no 
 impression. 
 
 " March 26 and 27. Prayed each of these days with Mr. 
 Bonthron. I did not feel that anything like deep or saving im- 
 pression was made. Lord, enable me to be faithful ! 
 
 "April 3. Visited John Bonthron. 
 
 " April 5. Prayed with more enlargement with John than 
 usual. I see no agitations of remorse ; but should this prevent 
 me from preaching Christ in His freeness ? The whole truth is 
 the way to prevent abuses. 
 
 " April 6 and 8. Visited Mr. Bonthron. 
 
 "April 9. Read and commented on a passage of the Bible 
 to John. This I find a very practicable, and I trust effectual 
 way of bringing home the truth to him." 
 
 The next day was the Sabbath, on the morning of which a 
 message was brought to the manse that Mr. Bonthron was worse. 
 While the people were assembling for worship, Mr. Chalmers 
 went to see him once more, and, surrounded by as many as the 
 room could admit, he prayed fervently at his bedside. No trace 
 remains of another visit. 
 
 Prosecuting his earlier practice of visiting and examining in 
 alternate years, he commenced a visitation of his parish in 1813, 
 which, instead of being finished in a fortnight, was spread over 
 the whole year. As many families as could conveniently be 
 assembled in one apartment were in the first instance visited in 
 their own dwellings, where, without any religious exercise, a free
 
 310 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and cordial conversation, longer or shorter as the case required, 
 informed him as to the condition of the different households. 
 When they afterwards met together, he read the Scriptures, 
 prayed, and exhorted, making at times the most familiar remarks, 
 using very simple yet memorable illustrations. " I have a very 
 lively recollection," says Mr. Robert Edie, "of the intense 
 earnestness of his addresses on occasions of visitation in my 
 father's house, when he would unconsciously move forward on 
 his chair to the very margin of it, in his anxiety to impart to 
 the family and servants the impressions of eternal things that so 
 filled his own soul." "It would take a great book," said he, 
 beginning his address to one of these household congregations, 
 "to contain the names of all the individuals that have ever 
 lived, from the days of Adam down to the present hour ; but 
 there is one name that takes in the whole of them that name 
 is sinner : and here is a message from God to every one that bears 
 that name ' The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us 
 from all sin.' " Wishing to tell them what kind of faith God 
 would have them to cherish, and "what kind of fear, and how it 
 was that instead of hindering each other, the right fear and the 
 right faith worked into each other's hands, he said, " It is just 
 as if you threw out a rope to a drowning man. Faith is the hold 
 he takes of it. It is fear which- makes him grasp it with all his 
 might ; and the greater his fear, the firmer his hold." Again, to 
 illustrate what the Spirit did with the Word : " This book, the 
 Bible, is like a wide and beautiful landscape, seen afar off, dim 
 and confused ; but a good telescope will bring it near, and spread 
 out all its rocks, and trees, and flowers, and verdant fields, and 
 winding rivers at one's very feet. That telescope is the Spirit's 
 teaching." 
 
 His own records of one or two of these visitations are instruc- 
 tive : 
 
 ^ Feb. 13, 1813. Visited at Bogtown, Hawkhill, and East 
 Kinneir. No distinct observation of any of them being impressed 
 with what I said. At East Kinneir I gave intimation that if 
 any laboured under difficulties, or were anxious for advice upon 
 spiritual and divine subjects, I am at all times in readiness to 
 help them. Neglected this intimation at Hawkhill, but let me 
 observe this ever after. 
 
 "Feb. 16. A diet of visitation at . Had intimate con- 
 versation only with M. W. I thought the a little impressed 
 
 with my exhortation about family worship, and the care of
 
 PAKOCHIAL EXAMINATIONS. 311 
 
 watching over the souls of their children. I should like to under- 
 stand if has family worship. 
 
 "March 9. Visited at . The children present. This I 
 
 think highly proper, and let me study a suitable and impressive 
 address to them in all time coming. 
 
 " May 19. Visited at . I am not sure if I could perceive 
 
 anything like salutary impression among them ; but I do not 
 know, aud perhaps I am too apt to be discouraged. C. S. and 
 J. P. the most promising. my God, give me to grow in the 
 knowledge and observation of the fruits of the Spirit and of His 
 work upon the hearts of sinners. 
 
 " August 9. Visited at Hill Cairney. Eesigned myself to the 
 suggestions of the moment, at least did not adhere to the plan of 
 discourse that I had hitherto adopted. I perceived an influence 
 go along with it. my God, may this influence increase more 
 and more. I commit the success to Thee." 
 
 i 
 
 In examining his parish he divided it into districts, arranging 
 it so that the inhabitants of each district could be accommodated 
 in some neighbouring barn or school-house. On the preceding 
 Sabbath all were summoned to attend, when it was frequently 
 announced that the lecture then delivered would form the sub- 
 ject of remark and catechizing. Generally, however, the Shorter 
 Catechism was used as the basis of the examination. Old and 
 young, male and female, were required to stand up in their turn, 
 and not only to give the answer as it stood in the Catechism, 
 but to show, by their replies to other questions, whether they 
 fully understood that answer. What in many hands might have 
 been a formidable operation, was made light by the manner of 
 the examiner. When no reply was given, he hastened to take 
 all the blame upon himself. "I am sure," he would say, "I 
 have been most unfortunate in putting the question in that par- 
 ticular way," and then would change its form. He was never 
 satisfied till an answer of some kind or other was obtained. The 
 attendance on these examinations was universal, and the interest 
 taken in them very great. They informed the minister of the 
 amount of religious knowledge possessed by his people, and he 
 could often use them as convenient opportunities of exposing any 
 bad practice which had been introduced, or was prevailing in 
 any particular part of his parish. Examining thus at a farm- 
 house, one of the ploughmen was called up. The question in 
 order was, "Which is the eighth commandment?" "But what
 
 312 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 is stealing?" "Taking what belongs to another, and using it 
 as if it were your own." "Would it be stealing, then, in you 
 to take your 'master's oats or hay, contrary to his orders, and 
 give it to his horses?" This was one of the many ways in which 
 he sought to instil into the minds of his people a high sense of 
 iusticeand truth, even in the minutest transactions of life. 
 
 "Nov. 30, 1813. Examined at . J. W. and R. T. 
 
 both in tears. The former came out to me agitated and under 
 impression. 
 
 "Jan. 20, 1814. Had a day of examination, and felt more 
 of the presence and unction of the Spirit than usual. 
 
 "Jan. 21. Had a day of examination. Made a simple 
 commitment of myself to God in Christ before entering into the 
 house. 
 
 " Feb. 8. Examined, and have to bless God for force and 
 freeness. I), absenting himself from all ordinances. Let me be 
 fearless at least in my general address, and give me prudence 
 and resolution, Lord, in the business of particularly addressing 
 individuals. I pray that God may send home the message with 
 power to the people's hearts. 
 
 11 Feb. 23. Examined . A very general seriousness and 
 
 attention. B. and his wife still, I fear, very much behind. 
 
 " April 5. Examined at P. I can see something like a 
 general seriousness, but no decided marks in any individual. 
 
 "March 8. Examined at S. The man P. B. deficient in 
 knowledge, and even incapable of reading the father of a 
 
 family too. I receive a good account of . that they 
 
 may be added to the number of such as shall be saved. 
 
 "July 2. Examined with more enlargement and seriousness. 
 I feel as if there was an intelligence and good spirit among the 
 people. God, satisfy me with success ; but I commit all to 
 Thee. 
 
 " July 27. Examined at . The family afraid of ex- 
 amination, I think, and they sent me into a room by myself 
 among the servants. This I liked not; but, God, keep me 
 from all personal feeling on the occasion. I brought it on my- 
 self by my own accommodating speeches. I have too much of 
 the fear of man about me. Never felt more dull and barren. I 
 feel my dependence on God. I pray for a more earnest desire 
 after, the Christianity of my parish, and, oh may that desire 
 be accomplished. God, fit a poor, dark, ignorant and wan- 
 dering creature for being a minister of Thy word ! Uphold me
 
 CLASS FOR THE YOUNG. 313 
 
 by Thy free Spirit, and then will I teach transgressors Thy 
 ways." 
 
 The family here referred to was that of a farmer recently 
 settled in the parish, and who, unfamiliar with the practice of 
 examination, felt at the first a not unnatural reluctance to be 
 subjected to it. On his return to the manse, Mr. Chalmers jot- 
 ted down the preceding impressive notice of his reception and 
 its result. In the afternoon of the same day he went back to 
 the family ; told them that, as they had not come to him in the 
 morning, he had just come to them in the evening to go over 
 the exercise with themselves. The frank and open kindness 
 of the act won their instant compliance, and brought its own 
 reward. 
 
 In the autumn of 1813, Mr. Chalmers opened a class in his 
 own house upon the Saturdays, for the religious instruction of 
 the young. At first he intended that it should meet monthly : 
 the numbers, however, who presented themselves for instruction, 
 and the ardour with which they entered upon the tasks pre- 
 scribed, induced a change of purpose. After the first meeting 
 or two, he announced his intention to hold the class each fort- 
 night, and ere long it met weekly at the manse. He drew out 
 a series of simple propositions, which embraced a full s/stem of 
 Christian doctrine ; appending to each a reference to those pas- 
 sages of the Bible in which the truth declared in the proposition 
 was most clearly or fully revealed. These propositions, with 
 their proofs, were printed at Dundee ; and the little volume 
 which they formed has already been circulated in thousands 
 among those who have interested themselves in the religious 
 education of the young.* Besides his exercises upon Scripture 
 doctrine, Mr. Chalmers read and explained portions of the Bible, 
 tind prescribed select passages for committal to memory. He 
 was highly gratified by the whole youth of the parish, even from 
 its remoter districts, coming forward with such willingness ; 
 and he repaid their readiness to receive instruction by making 
 diligent preparation for communicating to them the knowledge 
 of the truth, and fixing religious impressions on their hearts. 
 In no department of his ministerial labours did he take a deeper 
 interest, and upon none, in proportion to the space which it 
 covered, did he bestow more pains. It was only during a year 
 and a half that the class continued, and yet three years after his 
 
 * Scripture References ; designed for the use of Parents, Teachers, and Private Christians. 
 Dundee : printed by K. S. Rintoul for Edward Lesslie, bookseller. 1814.
 
 314 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 removal from Kilmany he could say " I met with a more satis- 
 fying evidence of good done by a school which I taught when at 
 Kilmany, than by all I ever did there besides. A good en- 
 couragement this for the efforts of private Christians in this 
 
 way,"' 
 
 Much, however, as may have been accomplished by the class, 
 the pulpit was, after all, the chief instrument of power; and 
 from the time when profound religious convictions penetrated 
 his spirit, Mr. Chalmers laboured to wield that instrument with 
 effect. There must have been something particularly pathetic 
 in his Sabbath ministrations during the summer months of 1810. 
 The muffled invalid, who had been seen to make his first round 
 of visits to all the houses of mourning in his parish, and of whose 
 altered bearing and impressive prayers village rumour had al- 
 ready begun to speak, appeared once more in the pulpit. His 
 sunk and sallow countenance told of the ravages of disease. He 
 looked like one who had drawn very near to death, and whom a 
 few steps backward would carry again to the very edge of the 
 grave ; and his most frequent topic was human mortality, the 
 shortness of time, the nearness and awfulness of eternity. 
 " Where are the men," he asked, his own voice sounding over 
 the congregation like an echo from the tomb, " who a few years 
 ago gave motion and activity to this busy theatre ? where 
 those husbandmen who lived on the ground that you now oc- 
 cupy ? where those labouring poor who dwelt in your houses 
 and villages ? where those ministers who preached the lessons 
 of piety, and talked of the vanity of this world? where those 
 people who, on the Sabbaths of other times, assembled at the 
 sound of the church-bell, and filled the house in which you are 
 now sitting ? Their habitation is the cold grave the land of 
 forgetfulness. . . . And we are the children of these fathers, 
 and heirs to the same awful and stupendous destiny. Ours is 
 one of the many generations who pass in rapid succession through 
 this region of life and of sensibility. The time in which I live 
 is but a small moment of this world's history. When we rise in 
 contemplation to the roll of ages that are past, the momentary 
 being of an individual shrinks into nothing. It is the flight of 
 a shadow ; it is a dream of vanity ; it is the rapid glance of a 
 meteor ; it is a flower which every breath of heaven can wither 
 into decay ; it is a tale which as a remembrance vanisheth ; it 
 is a day which the silence of a long night will darken and over- 
 
 * In a letter to Mrs. Morton, dated October 13, 1818.
 
 SERMONS AT KILMAXY. 315 
 
 shadow. In a few years our heads will be laid in the cold grave, 
 and the green turf will cover us. The children who come after 
 us will tread upon our graves ; they will weep for us a few days ; 
 they will talk of us a few months ; they will remember us a few 
 years ; when our memory shall disappear from the face of the 
 earth, and not a tongue shall be found to recall it. ... How 
 perishable is human life, yet no man lays it to heart V* 
 
 The opening months of 1811, as they brought tranquillity and 
 establishment to his own heart, so they gave a new character to 
 his Sabbath ministrations. It was not, however, till the close of 
 that year that the complete re-establishment of his health, and 
 the fulfilment of his engagements with Dr. Brewster, enabled 
 him to give full time and strength to his compositions for the 
 pulpit. The result was a series of discourses, a goodly number 
 of which, delivered almost verbally as originally written, were 
 listened to in after years by congregated thousands in Glasgow 
 and Edinburgh and London, with wondering and entranced ad- 
 miration. I have been able to trace to this period so many of 
 the sermons afterwards selected by their author for publication, 
 and have found so few alterations made on the original manu- 
 scripts in preparing them for the press, as to be satisfied that the 
 three final years of his ministry at Kilmany supplied as many, 
 as elaborate, and as eloquent discourses, as any other three years 
 in the whole course of his ministry. It was not the stimulus of 
 cultivated audiences, and an intellectual sphere it was not the 
 effort to win or to sustain a wide-spread popularity it was not 
 the straining after originality of thought or splendour of illus- 
 tration, which gave to these discourses their peculiar form and 
 character. They were, to a great extent, the spontaneous pro- 
 ducts of that new love and zeal which Divine grace had planted 
 in his soul ; the shape and texture of their eloquence springing 
 from the combined operation of all his energies intellectual, 
 moral, and emotional whose native movements were now sti- 
 mulated into a more glowing intensity of action by that control- 
 ling motive which concentrated them all upon one single and 
 sublime accomplishment the salvation of immortal souls. 
 
 Much time and great care were bestowed upon these prepara- 
 tions for the' pulpit. Instead of the two or three hours which 
 had once been sufficient, they now engrossed the leisure of the 
 whole preceding week. And besides that weekly amount of com- 
 
 - Posthumous Works, vol. ri pp. 82, 83.
 
 316 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 position which was necessary to meet the demands of each suc- 
 ceding Sabbath, he had always a discourse in preparation upon 
 which the occasional efforts of a whole month were expended 
 the two sets of sermons, from the different characters in which 
 they were written, being described in his own vocabulary as his 
 short-handers and his long-handers.* Not a few of these more 
 slowly and carefully composed sermons were designedly upon 
 texts from which he had preached in other years, to his former 
 expositions of which he at times pointedly referred, at once to 
 remedy any evil which his earlier teaching might have produced, 
 and to make more vivid by the contrast his present understand- 
 ing of the sacred oracles. Not long after his ordination at Kil- 
 many, preaching from the text " There is none righteous, no, 
 not one," he had referred with great severity of censure to the 
 dark and mystical representations of human depravity given by 
 certain religionists.j In 1811, the same text was again chosen, 
 and the new meaning now attached to it thus explained : " Be 
 not deceived, then, into a rejection of the text by the specimens 
 of moral excellence which are to be met with in society, or by 
 the praise which your own virtue extorts from an applauding 
 neighbourhood. Virtue may exist, and to such a degree, too, 
 as is sufficient to constitute it a lovely object in the eyes of the 
 world ; but if in the cultivation of that virtue there be no refer- 
 ence of the mind to the authority of God, there is no religion. 
 . . . It is well that you act your part aright as a member of 
 society ; and religion, by making it one of its injunctions, gives 
 us the very best security that wherever its influence prevails it 
 will be done in the most perfect manner ; but the point which I 
 labour to impress is, that a man may be what we all understand 
 by a good member of society, without the authority of God as his 
 legislator being either recognised or acted upon. I do not say 
 that his error lies in being a good member of society : this though 
 a circumstance, is a very fortunate one. The error lies in his 
 having discarded the authority of God, or rather in never having 
 admitted the influence of that authority over his principles. I 
 want to guard him against the delusion that the principle which 
 he has, ever can be accepted as a substitute for the principle 
 which he has not ; or that the very highest sense of duty which 
 his situation as a member of society impresses upon his feelings, 
 
 Dr. Chalmers frequently advised young ministers, in addition to their ordinary prepara- 
 tlonsjjo have a monthly and more elaborate sermon always in prozres?. 
 The passage already quoted in pp. 108-110, ia taken from this discourse
 
 NEW SERMON FROM AN OLD TEXT. 3] 7 
 
 will ever be received as an atonement for wanting that sense of 
 duty to God which he ought to feel in the far more exalted 
 capacity of His servant, and candidate for His approbation. I 
 stand upon the high ground that he is the subject of the 
 Almighty, nor will I shrink from revealing the whole extent of 
 my principles. Let his path in society be ever so illustrious by 
 the virtues which adorn it let every word and every perform- 
 ance be as honourable as a proud sense of integrity can make 
 it let the salutations of the market-place mark him out as the 
 most respectable of the citizens, and the gratitude of a thousand 
 families sing the praises of his beneficence to the world, if the 
 actor in this splendid exhibition carry in his mind no reference 
 to the authority of God, I do not hesitate a moment to pronounce 
 him unworthy, nor shall all the execrations of generous but mis- 
 taken principle deter me from putting forth my hand to strip him, 
 of his honours. What ! is the world to gaze in admiration on 
 this fair spectacle of virtue, and am I to be told that the Being 
 who gave such faculties to one of His children, and provides the 
 theatre for their exercise that the Being who called this scene 
 into existence and gave it all its beauties that He may be in- 
 nocently forgotten and neglected? Shall I give a deceitful 
 lustre to the virtues of him who is unmindful of his God ? and 
 with all the grandeur of eternity before me, can I learn to admire 
 these short-lived exertions, which only shed a fleeting brilliancy 
 over a paltry and perishable scene?"* 
 
 The discovery that pardon and full reconciliation with God are 
 offered gratuitously to all men in Christ, had been the turning 
 point in Mr. Chalmers's own spiritual history ; and the most 
 marked characteristic of his pulpit ministrations after his con- 
 version was the frequency and fervour with which he held out to 
 sinners Christ and His salvation as God's free gift, which it was 
 their privilege and their duty at once and most gratefully to 
 accept. Most earnest entreaties that every sinner he spoke to 
 should come to Christ just as he was, and " bury all his fears in 
 the sufficiency of the great atonement," were reiterated on each 
 succeeding Sabbath, presented in all possible forms, and delivered 
 in all different kinds of tones and of attitudes. He would desert 
 for a minute or two his manuscript, that with greater directness 
 and familiarity of phrase, greater pointedness and personality of 
 application, he might urge upon their acceptance the gospel in- 
 
 * Posthumous Works, vol. yi. pp. 175-177.
 
 318 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 vitation. " He would bend over the pulpit," said one of his old 
 hearers, " and press us to take the gift, as if he held it that 
 moment in his hand, and would not be satisfied till every one of 
 us had got possession of it. And often when the sermon was 
 over, and the psalm was sung, and he rose to pronounce the 
 blessing, he would break out afresh with some new entreaty, 
 unwilling to let us go until he had made one more effort to per- 
 suade us to accept of it." 
 
 " It is not," such were the words in which, upon one of these 
 memorable Sabbaths, he addressed his parishioners, " because 
 you are not so great a sinner that I would have you to be com- 
 forted ; but it is because Jesus Christ is so great a Saviour : it 
 is not the smallness of sin, but the greatness of Him who died 
 for it. I would have you to be satisfied, but not with yourself, 
 for this would be to lull you asleep by the administration of a 
 poisoned opiate. I would have you to listen to that loud and 
 widely-sounding call ' Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, 
 and be saved.' I would have you to look unto Jesus ; and if truth 
 and friendship have a power to charm you into tranquillity, you 
 Jiave them here. I would never cease to press the salvation of 
 the gospel upon you as a gift ; and as faith cometh by hearing, 
 and hearing by the word of God, I would call into action these 
 appointed instruments for producing in the heart of the despair- 
 ing sinner the faith which accepts the offer, and which holds it 
 fast. I cannot ascend into heaven to bring down Jesus again 
 upon the world, that you may hear the kindness which fell from 
 His lips, and see the countenance most frankly expressive of it ; 
 but I can bring nigh unto you the word which He left behind 
 Him. I can assure you upon the faith of that word which never 
 lies, that what He was on earth He is still in heaven ; and if in 
 the history of the New Testament He was never found to send 
 a diseased petitioner disappointed away, be assured that when 
 He took up His body to the right hand of the everlasting throne, 
 He took up all His kind and warm and generous sympathies 
 along with Him. I cannot show you Him in person, but I can 
 reveal Him to the eye of your mind as sitting there ; and if 
 you array Him in any other characters than in those of love and 
 mildness and long-suffering, you do Him an injustice. He no 
 longer speaks in His own person, but He speaks in the person 
 of those to whom He has committed the word of reconciliation ; 
 and in the confidence that He will not falsify His own commis- 
 sion, or fall back by a single inch from the terms of it, we stand
 
 THE TRUE REPRESENTATION OF CHRIST. 319 
 
 here as the ambassadors for Christ : as though God did beseech 
 you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to 
 God. I would have you to know the gift of God. I woiild have 
 you to look upon it in the simplicity of an offer, on the one 
 hand, and of a joyful and confiding acceptance on the other. 
 When He was on earth great multitudes followed Him, and He 
 healed them. Come to Him with your disease the disease of 
 a guilty and despairing mind. Do not think that either the will 
 or the power of healing you is wanting. You approach Him in 
 the most peculiar and in the greatest of His capacities, when 
 you approach Him as the physician of souls ; and be assured 
 that the voice which He uttered in the hearing of His country- 
 men is of standing authority and signification to the very latest 
 ages of the world ' Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Yes, if rest is to be 
 found at all, it must be given. It is upon the footing of a gift 
 that I offer it to you. Not that you are worthy to receive the 
 present, but that it is a present worthy of His generosity to 
 bestow. Take it ; there is not a single passage in the Bible 
 to exclude you from this act of confidence. Be not afraid only 
 believe and according to your faith so will it be done unto you. 
 You know not how ready you know not how able you know 
 not how free you know not how perfectly willing nay, how 
 eager and how delighted the Saviour is to receive all who come 
 imto Him to listen to their complaints to heal their diseases 
 to supply their every want, and administer to every necessity. 
 This is the true arid the faithful representation of Christ. Could 
 I give you a real and a living impression of Him could I 
 fix in your hearts the image of Him such as He is could 
 I bring Him before you, offering and inviting, nay, beseeching 
 you to be reconciled could all this be done (and I pray that 
 this work of faith may be wrought in you with power), then 
 the melancholy which oppresses your heart and keeps it dark 
 would be dissolved in an instant the gospel would come to 
 you not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, 
 and in much assurance and the object for which Paul laboured 
 with the Galatians would be accomplished in you : Christ would 
 be formed in you, and He would be made unto you of God 
 wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctitication, and redemption." 
 
 From the very outset of his own religious earnestness, Mr. 
 Chalmers had painfully struggled against all that plainly and
 
 320 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 palpably was wrong, and diligently attempted all that plainly 
 and palpably was right. In his subsequent addresses from the 
 pulpit, he not only enjoined upon those who were in like circum- 
 stances the course which he had himself pursued, but he did 
 this so very often and so very earnestly, that it became another 
 of the peculiar and prominent characteristics of his ministry. 
 Preaching from a favourite text, Hos. v. 4, " They will not frame 
 their doings to turn unto their God," he said, " Well, then, 
 ye hearers who have just begun to think seriously of the matter, 
 know that before ye are meet for the heavenly inheritance there 
 must be a devotedness to God, there must be a spiritual obedi- 
 ence, there must be a conformity of the inner man to His service, 
 there must be a consenting to the whole of His will. All this 
 you must come to before you get to heaven ; and you will come 
 to it if you set yourselves to the acquirement of it in good 
 earnest. But, in the meantime, I have the warrant of my text 
 and the example of my Saviour as a teacher, when I call on you 
 to attend instantly to your outward doings, and to frame them 
 in such a way as to prove that you are turning to the Lord. I 
 call upon the drunkard to give up his intemperance, upon the 
 liar to observe truth, upon the thief to give up stealing, upon 
 the servant to give up all purloining and all disobedience, upon 
 the profane swearer to give up his oaths, upon the Sabbath- 
 breaker to give up the practice of seeking his own pleasure on 
 God's holy day. Let the cunning give up their concealment, 
 let the censorious give up their evil speakings, let the impure 
 give up their unhallowed pleasures. These are obvious and de- 
 clared duties, and I call you to the doing of them. I know that 
 the mere outward performance of these duties may leave you still 
 in the condition of condemned and unsheltered men ; but I can 
 say something far more appalling than this of the neglect of 
 these duties. Their performance may leave you on the wrong 
 side of the line of demarcation between the saved and the damned, 
 but their neglect not only may, but must keep you there not 
 only may leave you in this awful condition, but will and must 
 do it. The man who continues in known sin is not so much as 
 stiiring himself, not so much as setting out, not so much as going 
 about it. You are not to think that your conversion is advanced, 
 or even so much as entered upon, while your outward doings 
 are so clearly in opposition to the Divine will. Give up your 
 presumptuous sins ; for, be assured, that while you persist in 
 them, all your aspirings after spirituality are but the self-deceiv-
 
 HIS ADVICE AND HIS EXPERIENCE. 321 
 
 ings of a hypocrite."* In his own case, the fruit of a sincere, 
 earnest, sustained, and painstaking effort to frame his doing* so 
 AS to turn unto his God, had been a remarkable verification of 
 these declarations of the Divine word : " If any man will do 
 God's will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God" 
 (John vii. 17). " To him that ordereth his conversation aright 
 will I show the salvation of God" (Ps. L. 23). When the reader, 
 conversant with his writings, or personally acquainted with the 
 manner in which his private ministrations were conducted, re- 
 members what special favourites these passages were with him, 
 and how he loved to expatiate on the great principle which they 
 contain and when he connects with this remembrance the re- 
 flection, that in the face of much controversy and under much 
 censure he adhered tenaciously to the habit of giving it as one 
 of his earliest counsels to those who were under religious anxiety, 
 that they should carefully, and from the very first, frame all 
 their outward doings so as to turn unto the Lo'rd, he may be 
 ready perhaps to believe that the intensity of Mr. Chalmers's 
 convictions and his steadfastness in tendering such counsel drew 
 not a little of their strength from the depths of his own spiritual 
 experience. ~ 
 
 " I felt it myself," we quote here from one of his theological 
 prelections, " as the greatest enlightenment and enlargement 
 I ever had experienced when made to understand both the in- 
 dispensable need of morality and the securities that we had for 
 its being realized in the character of Christians, notwithstanding 
 the doctrine that by faith, and by faith alone, we were justified 
 a doctrine which I at one time regarded as Antinomian in its 
 tendencies, and as adverse to tha interests of virtue and practical 
 righteousness in the world. "| At the time to which Mr. Chal- 
 mers here refers, the doctrine of a free justification through faith 
 in an imputed righteousness was not only repudiated, but the 
 character and conduct of its most strenuous supporters as ex- 
 hibiting too often gross departures from some of the most obvious 
 and incumbent moralities of life had proved a stumblingblock 
 and an offence. And when the " enlightenment and enlarge- 
 ment" came, it showed itself in his affirming so constantly as 
 
 * Sermon in Manuscript. 
 
 t See Works, vol. ri. pp. 317-320 ; viii. 71-7G ; viii. 98, 99 ; x. 86-93 ; x. 292-310 : xii. 
 71-120 ; xxii. 28-34 : xxiii. 178-180 ; xxiii. 189-193 : xxiii. 201-207; xxiv. 58 ; xxiv. 71, 72; 
 Eiiv. 156, 157 ; xxv. 309, 310. Posthumous Works, vol. viii. pp. 258, 267, 281 ; ix. 
 389, 390. 
 
 t Posthumous Works, vol. ix. p. 376. 
 VOL. I. X
 
 322 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 he did, that those who believed should be careful to maintain 
 good works. " His ministry then, as afterwards, was eminently 
 practical. He set his face against every form of evil, both in 
 the pulpit and out of it. He particularly pressed upon country 
 people thorough honesty and uprightness, and the practice of 
 the law of love by abstaining from all malice and evil-speaking. 
 The ostentation of flaming orthodoxy, or talk of religious ex- 
 perience when not borne out by the life, was the object of his 
 thorough abhorrence."* The deep and pungent feeling which 
 the conduct of some professing Christians awakened, was in 
 one instance most touchingly displayed in the pulpit of Eil- 
 many. Preaching on a sacramental occasion, he thus closed his 
 discourse : 
 
 " Whatever there may be now in the days of Paul, at least, 
 there were men who turned the grace of God into licentiousness, 
 and who ranked among the privileges of the gospel an immunity 
 for sin. And it is striking to observe the effect of this corrup- 
 tion on the mind of the apostle ; that he who braved all the 
 terrors of persecuting violence, that he who stood undismayed 
 before kings and governors, and could lift his intrepid testimony 
 iu the hearing of an enraged multitude that he who, when 
 bound by a chain between two soldiers, still sustained an in- 
 vincible constancy of spirit, and could live in fearlessness, and 
 triumph, with the dark imagery of an approaching execution in 
 his eye that he who counted not his life dear unto him, and 
 whose manly breast bore him up amidst all the threats of human 
 tyranny, and the grim apparatus of martyrdom that this man 
 so firm and so undaunted, wept like a child when he heard of 
 those disciples that turned the pardon of the cross into an en- 
 couragement for doing evil. The fiercest hostilities of the 
 gospel's open enemies he could brave, but when he heard of 
 the foul dishonour done to the name of his Master by the moral 
 worthlessness of those who were the gospel's professing friends, 
 this he could not bear all that firmness which so upheld him 
 unfaltering and unappalled in the battles of the faith, forsook 
 him then ; and this noblest of champions on the field of conflict 
 and of controversy, when he heard of the profligacy of his own 
 
 * MS. Memoranda by the Rev. Islay Burns of Dundee, grounded upon the information of 
 MMB Collier, one of Dr. Chalmers's earliest and most valued Christian friends. 
 
 Journal, Sept. 7, 1 814. Let me cultivate a more delicate regard to the feelings of others. 
 lear reports of falsehood and censoriousness in some of my professing parishioners. my 
 *od give me the meekness of wisdom in reference to the gossiping which I hate, and the 
 slander which I know to be a work of the fiesh."
 
 PAUL IN TEARS. 325 
 
 converts, was fairly overcome by the tidings, and gave way to- 
 all the softness of womanhood. When every other argument 
 then fails for keeping you on the path of integrity and holiness, 
 think of the argument of Paul in tears ! It may be truly 
 termed a picturesque argument nor are we aware of a more 
 impressive testimony, in the whole compass of Scripture, to the 
 indispensable need of virtue and moral goodness in a believer, 
 than is to be found in that passage where Paul says of these 
 unworthy professors of the faith, ' For many walk, of whom I 
 have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they 
 are the enemies of the cross of Christ ; whose end is destruction, 
 whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, 
 who mind earthly things.'"* Describing thus the Apostle's 
 emotion, a flood of tenderness overwhelmed him, and he himself 
 burst into tears. 
 
 It was not long till the whole aspect of the Sabbath congre- 
 gations in Kilmany church was changed. The stupid wonder 
 which used to sit on the countenances of the few villagers or 
 farm-servants who attended divine service, was turned into a 
 fixed, intelligent, and devout attention. It was not easy for the 
 dullest to remain uninformed ; for, if the preacher sometimes 
 'oared too high for the best trained of his people to follow him, 
 st other times, and much oftener, he put the matter of his 
 message so as to force for it an entrance into the most sluggish 
 understanding. Nor was it easy for the most indifferent to re- 
 nain unmoved, as the first fervours of a new-born faith and love 
 foind such thrilling strains in which to vent themselves. The 
 chirch became crowded. The feeling grew with the numbers 
 wb shared in it. The fame of those wonderful discourses which 
 wee now emanating from the burning lips of this new evangelist 
 spead throughout the neighbourhood, till at last there was not 
 an adjacent parish which did not send its weekly contribution 
 to "Jis ministry. Persons from extreme distances in the county 
 fotv.d themselves side by side in the same crowded pew. Look- 
 ing over the congregation, the inhabitant of Dundee could 
 gen rally count a dozen or two of his fellow-townsmen around 
 him while ministers from Edinburgh or Glasgow were occasiou- 
 allydetected among the crowd. 
 
 Al this told distinctly enough of the popularity of the preacher ; 
 but rithin the parish, and as the effect of such a ministry as has 
 
 * W'rks, Tol. xiii. pp. 253, 254. The Introductory Essay to Booth's " Reign of Grace* 
 was orjinally a sermon preached from the text Jer. i. 5.
 
 24 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 been now described, what were the spiritual results ? Too de- 
 licate a question this for any full or satisfactory reply : but of 
 one Sabbath's service we shall tell the fruits. It was in the 
 spring of 1812, and the preacher's text was John iii. 16 " God 
 w loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life." Two young men heard this sermon, the one the 
 wm of a farmer in the parish, the other the son of one of the vil- 
 lagers. They met as the congregation dispersed. " Did you feel 
 anything particularly in church to-day?" Alexander Paterson 
 said to his acquaintance, Robert Edie, as they found themselves 
 alone upon the road. " I never," he continued, " felt myself to 
 be a lost sinner till to-day, when I was listening to that sermon." 
 " It is very strange," said his companion ; " it was just the same 
 with me." They were near a plantation, into which they wan- 
 dered, as the conversation proceeded. Hidden at last from all 
 human sight, it was proposed that they should join in prayer. 
 Screened by the opening foliage, they knelt on the fresh green 
 sod, and poured out in turn their earnest petitions to the hearer 
 and answerer of prayer. Both dated their conversion from that 
 day. Alexander Paterson went shortly afterwards to reside in 
 the neighbouring parish of Dairsie, but attended regularly on the 
 Sabbath at Kilmany church. His friend, Eobert Edie, generall; 
 convoyed him part of the way home. About one hundred yard; 
 from the road along which they travelled, in the thickly-screenel 
 seclusion of a close plantation, and under the shade of a brand- 
 ing fir-tree, the two friends found a quiet retreat, where, eaJi 
 returning Sabbath evening, the eye that seeth in secret loofcd 
 down upon these two youthful disciples of the Saviour on tbir 
 knees, and for an hour their ardent prayers alternately ascenced 
 to the throne of grace. The practice was continued for yesrs, 
 till a private footpath of their own had been opened to the trst- 
 ing-tree ; and when, a few years ago, after long absence on the 
 part of both, they met at Kilmany, at Mr. Edie's suggesiori 
 they revisited the spot, and renewing the sacred exercise, offred 
 up their joint thanksgivings to that God who had kept then by 
 His grace, and in their separate spheres had honoured ea<h of 
 them with usefulness in the Church. Mr. Paterson labours for 
 twenty-four years as a missionary in the Canongate of Idin- 
 burgh, not without many pleasing evidences that his latours 
 were blessed ;* and by his efforts in behalf of Bible andMis- 
 
 * See " The Missionary of Kilmany," noticed ante, p. 159, note.
 
 EGBERT EDIE AND ALEXANDER PATERSON. 325 
 
 sionary Societies, through means of Sabbath-schools and prayer 
 meetings, and by the light of a guiding and consistent example, 
 Mr. Edie's life, while one of active industry, was also one of de- 
 voted Christian usefulness.* 
 
 Other individual instances of spiritual benefit derived from 
 Mr. Chalmers's ministrations it would have been a pleasant task 
 to record ; and, had he not been so soon removed from Kilmany, 
 the hopeful appearances which were presenting themselves, espe- 
 cially among the young who attended his Saturday classes, 
 might have ripened into a goodly spiritual fruitage.-}- One 
 general testimony, however, as valuable perhaps as ever minister 
 left behind him, and given by Mr. Chalmers himself, as to the 
 separate effects of his ministry during the two periods into which, 
 spiritually contemplated, it divided itself, must not be withheld. 
 
 " And here J I cannot but record the effect of an actual though 
 undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve 
 years among you. For the greater part of that time I could ex- 
 patiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of false- 
 hood, on the despicable arts of calumny ; in a word, upon all 
 those deformities of character which awaken the natural indig- 
 nation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers 
 of human society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these 
 warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing, 
 and the evil-speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his devia- 
 tions from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who 
 had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all 
 this might have been done, and yet the soul of every hearer have 
 remained in full alienation from God; and that even could I 
 have established in the bosom of one who stole, such a principle 
 of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty, that he was pre- 
 vailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart 
 ;vs completely unturned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a 
 principle of love to Him as before. In a word, though I might 
 
 * " Robert Edie is a very fine fellow. He has lately been very eloquent in some mission- 
 ary meetings at Cupar, where I am glad to say that something like an appearance of 
 
 seriousness is becoming visible. Dr. and Mrs. W are really in decided earnest." 
 
 Letter from Dr. Chalmers to Mrs. Morton, dated October 13, 1818. 
 
 t " You recollect my brother David's lengthened illness," writes Mr. Edie to Mr. Paterson, 
 with reference to a brother who died after Dr. Chalmers's removal from Kilmany, " and the 
 great kindness Dr. C. showed him on his deathbed, often conversing and praying with him. 
 <>ne day, after visiting him, I walked out with Dr. C. ; still talking of my brother's spiritual 
 state, he made a sudden halt, and holding up his staff in his hand, said with warmth ' How 
 consoling the thought that your brother will be a monument of Divine grace to all eternity!'" 
 
 { Extracted from an " Address to the Inhabitants of the Parish of Kilmany," published 
 in 1815.
 
 326 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might 
 have left him as destitute of the essence of religious principle as 
 over. But the interesting fact is, that during the whole of that 
 period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity 
 of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which 
 this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, 
 and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salva- 
 tion, while Christ, through whose blood the sinner, who by 
 nature stands afar off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver 
 whom he has offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of 
 in such a way as stripped Him of all the importance of His 
 character and His offices, even at this time I certainly did press 
 the reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among my 
 people : but I never once heard of any such reformations having 
 been effected amongst them. If there was anything at all 
 brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any 
 account of. I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which 
 I urged the virtues arid the proprieties of social life, had the 
 weight of a feather on the moral habits of my parishioners. And 
 it was not till I got impressed by the utter alienation of the heart 
 in all its desires and affections from God ; it was not till recon- 
 ciliation to Him became the distinct and the prominent object of 
 my ministerial exertions ; it was not till I took the scriptural 
 way of laying the method of reconciliation before them ; it was 
 not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ 
 was urged upon their acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given 
 through the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask Him 
 was set before them as the unceasing object of their dependence 
 and their prayers ; in one word, it was not till the contemplations 
 of my people were turned to these great and essential elements 
 in the business of a soul providing for its interest with God and 
 the concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any of those 
 subordinate reformations which I aforetime made the earnest and 
 the zealous, but I am afraid at the same time, the ultimate ob- 
 ject of my earlier ministrations. Ye servants, whose scrupulous 
 fidelity has now attracted the notice, and drawn forth in my 
 hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, what mischief 
 you would have done, had your zeal for doctrines and sacraments 
 been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in 
 the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allowable 
 purloining of your earlier days I But a sense of your Heavenly 
 Master's eye has brought another influence to bear upon you ;
 
 HIS OWX REMARKABLE TESTIMONY. 32T 
 
 and while you are thus striving to adorn the doctrine of God 
 your Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim the 
 great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You 
 jhave at least taught me, that to preach Christ is the only effective 
 way of preaching morality in all its branches ; and out of your 
 humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I 
 may be enabled to carry with all its simplicity into a wider 
 theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy 
 upon the vices of a more crowded population."
 
 328 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SKVF.N LIVES SAVED BY MR. HONEY HIS FUNERAL SERMON AT BENDOCHY 
 
 DEPUTATION FROM GLASGOW THE CANVASS DR. JONES'S LETTER THE 
 
 ELECTION FAREWELL SERMON AT KILMANY. 
 
 ONE fearful winter day the intelligence circulated through St. 
 Andrews that a vessel had been driven upon a sandbank in the 
 bay to the eastward of the town. A crowd of sailors, citizens, 
 and students, soon collected upon the beach ; for the vessel had 
 been cast ashore but a few hundred yards from the houses, and 
 she lay so near, that though the heavy air was darkened by the 
 driving sleet, they could see at intervals the figures of the crew 
 clinging to rope or spar ere each breaker burst upon her side, 
 and shrouded all in surfy mist and darkness. In a calm sea a 
 few vigorous strokes would have carried a good swimmer to the 
 vessel's side ; but now the hardiest fisherman drew back, and 
 dared not face the fearful surge. At last a student of divinity 
 volunteered. Tying a rope round his waist and struggling 
 through the surf, he threw himself among the waves. Forcing 
 his slow way through the raging element, he was nearing the 
 vessel's side, when his friends on shore, alarmed at the length 
 of time and slow rate of recent progress, began to pull him back. 
 Seizing a knife which he carried between his teeth, he cut thif 
 rope away, and reaching at last the stranded sloop, drew a fresl 
 one from her to the shore : but hungry, weak, and wearied, afte* 
 four days' foodless tossing through the tempest, not one of tte 
 crew had strength or courage left to use it. He again rushd 
 into the waves ; he boarded the vessel, he took them man jy 
 man, and bore them to the land. Six men were rescued ths. 
 His seventh charge was a boy, so helpless that twice was -he 
 hold let go, and twice he had to dive after him into the d;ep. 
 Meanwhile, in breathless stillness the crowd had watched ;ach 
 perilous passage, till the double figure was seen tossing landward 
 through the spray. But when the deed was done, and the T hole 
 crew saved, a loud cheer of admiring triumph rose arouni the 
 gallant youth. 
 
 This chivalrous action was performed by Mr. John loney,.
 
 BENDOCHY CHURCHYARD. 329 
 
 one of Mr. Chalmers's early and cherished college friends, after- 
 wards ordained as minister of Bendochy, in Perthshire. Though 
 his great strength and spirit bore him apparently untired through 
 the efforts of that exhausting day, there was reason to believe 
 that in saving the life of others he had sacrificed his own. The 
 seeds of a deceitful malady were sown which afterwards proved 
 fatal. Mr. Chalmers was asked, and consented to preach his 
 funeral sermon on the 30th of October 1814, the Sabbath after 
 his funeral. It was a brilliant autumn day. The number being 
 too great to be accommodated in the church, one of its windows 
 had been taken out, and a few boards thrown across the sill ta 
 form a platform, from which the preacher, while standing but a 
 yard or two from Mr. Honey's grave, might be heard both by 
 those within the building and those seated on the scattered tomb- 
 stones of the churchyard. A hum in the crowd (I now speak on 
 the authority and almost in the words of an eye-witness), and 
 a melancholy tolling of the bell, announced the approach of the 
 preacher, who seated himself for a minute or two in an old 
 elbow-chair, took the psalm-book from a little table before him r 
 turned hastily over a few of the leaves, and then rose in the 
 most awkward and even helpless manner. Before he read the 
 lines which were to be sung, his large and apparently leaden 
 eyes were turned towards the recent grave, with a look wildly 
 pathetic, fraught with intense and indescribable passion. The 
 psalm was read with no very promising elocution ; and while 
 the whole mass of the people were singing it, he sunk into the- 
 chair, turned seemingly into a monumental statue of the coldest 
 stone, so deadly pale was his large broad face and forehead- 
 The text was read : Deut. xxxii. 29 " that they were wise ; 
 that they understood this ; that they would consider their latter 
 end !" The doctrinal truth which he meant to inculcate being 
 established on a basis of reasoning so firm that doubt could not 
 move or sophistry shake it, he bounded at once upon the struc- 
 ture which he had reared ; and by that inborn and unteachable 
 power of the spirit, which nature has reserved for the chosen 
 of her sons, and which shakes off all the disadvantages and en- 
 cumbrances of figure and voice and language as easily as the 
 steed shakes the thistle-clown from his side, carried the hearts- 
 and the passions of all who heard him with irresistible and even 
 tremendous sway. " It strikes me," said the preacher and as- 
 the words were spoken there was a silence among the living al- 
 most as deep as that which reigned among the dead who lay
 
 3:0 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 beneath " It strikes me as the most impressive of all senti- 
 ments, that it will be all the same a hundred years after this. 
 It is often uttered in the form of a proverb, and with the levity 
 of a mind that is not aware of its importance. A hundred years 
 after this! Good heavens! with what speed and with what 
 certainty will those hundred years come to their termination. 
 This day will draw to a close, and a number of days makes up 
 one revolution of the seasons. Year follows year, and a number 
 of years makes up a century. These little intervals of time 
 accumulate and fill up that mighty space which appears to the 
 fancy so big and so immeasurable. The hundred years will 
 come, and they will see out the wreck of whole generations. 
 Every living thing that now moves on the face of the earth 
 will disappear from it. The infant that now hangs on his 
 mother's bosom will only live in the remembrance of his grand- 
 children. The scene of life and of intelligence that is now be- 
 fore me will be changed into the dark and loathsome forms of 
 corruption. The people who now hear me will cease to be spoken 
 of ; their memory will perish from the face of the country ; their 
 flesh will be devoured with worms ; the dark and creeping things 
 that live in the holes of the earth will feed upon their bodies ; 
 their coffins will have mouldered away, and their bones be 
 thrown up in the new-made grave. And is this the consumma- 
 tion of all things ? Is this the final end and issue of man ? Is 
 this the upshot of his busy history ? Is there nothing beyond 
 time and the grave to alleviate the gloomy picture, to chase 
 away these dismal images ? Must we sleep for ever in the dust, 
 and bid an eternal adieu to the light of heaven ?"* 
 
 " I have seen," adds our informant, " many scenes, and I have 
 heard many eloquent men, but this I have never seen equalled, 
 or even imitated. It was not learning, it was not art it was 
 the untaught and the unencumbered incantation of genius, the 
 mightiest engine of which the world can boast." 
 
 One group of auditors, Mr. Eobert Tennent. jun., and four 
 other Glasgow citizens, took a peculiar interest in the services 
 of this Sabbath-day. They came to Bendochy, as members of 
 the Town-council of Glasgow, to hear Mr. Chalmers as one who 
 had been named as a candidate for the Tron Church in that city, 
 vacant at this time in consequence of its former minister, Dr. 
 Macgill, having been appointed to the Chair of Theology. The 
 canvass for this vacancy was at this time at its height, and a 
 
 * Posthumous Works, vol. TL p. 83.
 
 LETTER FROM DR. BALFOUR. 331 
 
 singular and unprecedented interest had been attached to it. 
 Early in September Mr. John Tennent had written to his friend, 
 Mr. David Pitcairn of Leith : " As I know you are a lover 
 of the truth, and wish its influence extended among your fellow- 
 creatures, I have to request that you will aid in a plan which 
 my friends and I have formed of bringing Mr. Chalmers of Kil- 
 many to Glasgow. What I wish is, that you would get Mr. 
 Bonar to write a strong letter to Mr. More in favour of Mr. 
 Chalmers, stating what his character is, which has been much 
 abused, and also requesting him to use his influence among his 
 brother councillors to recommend him to the vacancy. . . . 
 Write us as soon as you have done anything, and have laid the 
 matter before your father and friends. . . . The cry to-day is 
 that Chalmers is mad!" Mr. Pitcairn's father wrote instantly 
 himself to Mr. More. " I have shown your father's letter," Mr. 
 Tennent replied, " to several of our leading people, who are very 
 much satisfied with it. Were a similar letter sent from Dr. 
 Jones and Dr. Fleming, it would be useful. It would be desir- 
 able that Mr. Chalmers should preach some day soon for Dr. 
 Balfour, which might be managed by their exchanging pulpits. 
 I hope that your father or you will write me soon what Mr. 
 Chalmers's own sentiments are as to coming here." Dr. Balfour, 
 who at this time was on a visit to a family in the neighbourhood 
 of St. Andrews, had gone to Kilmany to hear Mr. Chalmers 
 preach, and having made his acquaintance, had already written 
 to Mr. Parker, an influential member of the Town-council : " I 
 am told, too, that Mr. Chalmers of Kilmany is talked of. I 
 would not presume to give my opinion were he not more a 
 stranger than the rest, and, as I am informed, spoken against by 
 many. I never saw nor heard him till I came here, but report 
 made him great and good. I went therefore to his parish-church 
 with very high expectations indeed. They were not disappointed : 
 his talents are of the first order, and now distinguished grace 
 adorns them. He has long been known as a celebrated philo- 
 sopher and scorner of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity ; 
 now, from conviction and with a warm heart, he preaches the 
 faith which once he destroyed. I have had serious conversation 
 with him, and am astonished at a man of such superior powers 
 so modest and humble. He is indeed converted, and like a little 
 child. I beg pardon for the freedom with which I have written, 
 &c. c. I am just quitting Mount Melville, and have not even 
 time to read what I have written."
 
 332 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Dr. Jones of Edinburgh, who was visiting some friends In 
 Fifeshire a week or two after Dr. Balfour had returned to Glas- 
 gow, stole his way unnoticed one Sabbath forenoon into Kilmany 
 church, and having esconced himself in a nook of the gallery 
 stair, would have escaped observation, had not the politeness of 
 an observing farmer dragged him reluctantly from his hiding- 
 place. But his object was gained; he heard Mr. Chalmers 
 preach one of his ordinary discourses* to his parishioners, and 
 spent afterwards a few delightful days with him at the manse. 
 On reaching Burntisland, on his way home, a letter from Mr. 
 Robert Tennent was handed to him, which drew forth a reply, 
 in which we scarcely know whether to admire most the quaint 
 vivacity, the generous affection, or the fine and almost prophetic 
 discrimination : 
 
 " BL-RXTISLAXD, Sept. 27, 1814. 
 
 " DEAR SIR, Your letter of the 20th, requesting my opinion 
 with respect to the character, ability, and fitness of Mr. Chal- 
 mers to supply the vacant church of Glasgow, owing to my 
 haying wandered from place to place for this fortnight past, I 
 have received only yesterday, which will explain the cause of 
 my not having answered it. 
 
 "Of the character of Mr. C. there is and can be but one 
 opinion by all who know him. He possesses a most vigorous 
 understanding, a sound judgment, richly furnished and governed 
 by Divine truth ; his sentiments are those which are usually 
 called orthodox ; his piety is unfeigned and deep ; he has all the 
 zeal of a new convert, directed and restrained by wisdom and 
 prudence ; his integrity is vast and inflexible, which has formed 
 a most delicate sense of honour, awake to every word and action 
 in matters small as well as great ; he is kind, benevolent, gene- 
 rous, candid, and fair as the summer day, and has a hand ever 
 open to every good work ; he is active, industrious, and a great 
 economist of time ; he is clothed with that Christian humility 
 that makes him simple, modest, unobtrusive in word and deed ; 
 but an hour's private conversation with him in retirement is a 
 feast of piety and genius not to be bought, and very rarely to be 
 attained in the commerce of life and friendship by any means. 
 Of the ability of Mr. Chalmers there is little reason to say more 
 than to appeal to his works, which bring forward a man* of no 
 
 ..^ The Remon whicn Dr - Jones heard on this occasion was from the text. Jer. vi. 14 
 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, 
 when there is no peace." See Works, voL viil p. 332.
 
 LETTER FROM DR. JONES. 333 
 
 ordinary stature in literature and science, politics and divinity, 
 which show a giant's mind, able to grasp and manage what is 
 out of ordinary reach. In the pulpit his language is provincial 
 -and his manner unpolished ; but there is a novelty and loftiness 
 of thought, a sublimity of sentiment, a brilliance of imagination, 
 a strength and point of expression, a power of eloquence, that 
 not merely arrests, but lifts up and bears away the attention 
 wheresoever he wills. Of the fitness of Mr. Chalmers to supply 
 the vacant church in Glasgow it is unnecessary to say a word. 
 If the congregation of the Tron Church would wish for a man 
 who would have the most earnest desire to promote their spiritual 
 .and eternal welfare if they would wish for a man whose talents 
 would do them and all Glasgow honour, I know of no man so 
 capable of gratifying their wishes as Mr. Chalmers. 
 
 " I am aware, sir, that you may think what I have written 
 proceeds from the extravagance of friendship and partiality. 
 That I am the friend of Mr. Chalmers is to me a matter of ex- 
 ultation ; that I should be partial to such a man is my undoubted 
 duty ; but that I have said one word more than I believe to be 
 true, or that I have in the least exaggerated in anything I have 
 written, I am not conscious, and can with confidence refer you 
 to any fair man that may know him. I have written what I 
 have written from no very strong desire that he should go to 
 Glasgow, but because I think truth required, when I was re- 
 quested to write, that I should say what I have said. The 
 evidently merited and deservedly growing fame of Mr. Chalmers 
 will undoubtedly make him desirable for every situation where 
 is scope for supereminent talents, for uncommon genius, and 
 solid piety. I am, Sir, T. S. JONES." 
 
 In the meantime, Mr. Pitcairn had written to Mr. Chalmers, 
 suggesting, that as he had never preached in Glasgow, he should 
 make an early appearance in some pulpit, either in that city or 
 in Edinburgh, in order to afford to the members of the Council 
 or of the Tron Church congregation who desired it, an opportu- 
 nity of hearing him. This suggestion was at once and decisively 
 set aside. Nor was Mr. Tennent more successful in his en- 
 deavour to obtain beforehand from Mr. Chalmers some expression 
 of his intention as to the acceptance of the presentation. 
 
 " GLASGOW, Nov. 17, 1814. 
 " MY DEAR SIR, It was my intention to have written you
 
 334 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 before this, but the uncertain state of matters, in relation to our 
 prospects of success, prevented me. Since I had the pleasure of 
 seeing you, we have had a very hard battle to fight ; what with 
 the Duke of Montrose, Sir Islay Campbell, the College Interest, 
 and the late and present Provost against us, we have had our 
 hands quite full, and had to put forth all our might ; but now 
 that a fair prospect of success opens upon us, I think it proper 
 to put you in possession of the information you required, and 
 which I promised to obtain. Dr. Balfour, upon whom I waited 
 for that purpose, and to whom I communicated the substance of 
 your inquiries, desires me to say, that it is his opinion you can 
 easily manage to preserve inviolate four-fifths of your days till 
 one o'clock ; that, as to going into company, it is quite optional, 
 and may be declined by you without giving offence. . . . Your 
 friends among whom the most active are Bailie Newbigging, 
 Mr. Dennistoun, Mr. J. Wood, and the gentlemen* you saw at 
 Perth consider themselves certain of carrying their point, hav- 
 ing eighteen (if no one flinch) out of thirty-one votes, and the 
 only matter about which they are anxious is the state of your 
 mind respecting the acceptance of the presentation. Upon this 
 subject I hope you will enable me to give them that satisfaction 
 they look for, and which (pardon me if the language is too 
 strong) their hard and long-continued exertions merit. If ever 
 there was a call in which the finger of Providence could be more 
 distinctly observed than in another, this is that call. 
 
 " The persons who proposed you were connected neither with 
 you nor your friends ; it was your character which pointed you 
 out to them. Your own relations -J-. did not stir in the business 
 till your friends had acquired both numbers and respectability ; 
 and the only object which animated your supporters was the 
 ardent desire of bringing into Glasgow a minister who would 
 preach the doctrines of the gospel in their native energy and 
 simplicity. The congregation, to the number of 140 heads of 
 families and 70 individuals, have petitioned the Magistrates and 
 Council on your behalf, and eight out of ten who compose the 
 Session, have subscribed that petition-! No undue influence, no- 
 bribery or corruption, has been practised by your friends ; but 
 ... I have only further to remark, that in Glasgow you will 
 
 Messrs. Heywood, Richardson, Roger, and Hood. 
 
 t Mr. John and Mr. Walter Wood, merchants in Glasgow. 
 
 t The most active promoters of this petition, which made a strong impression upon the 
 Kinds of the .Council, were Mr. Michael Muirhead, Mr. William Collins. Mr. John Urquhart, 
 fcnd Mr. John Smith.
 
 LETTER TO MK. ROBERT TENNENT. 335 
 
 have an opportunity of extending your usefulness to its utmost 
 stretch, and have the advantage of ministering among a people 
 whose previous high opinion of your character and talents will 
 dispose them to listen with attention and respect to whatever 
 you may advance. I hope you will excuse this hurried letter. 
 Do me the favour to let me hear from you as early as possible, 
 and believe me, my dear Sir, yours most sincerely, 
 
 EGBERT TENNENT, Jun." 
 
 " KILMANY MANSE, Jfov. 21, 1814. 
 
 "Mv DEAR SIR, Yours of the 17th, I only received yester- 
 day. The gentlemen who have so kindly and so perseveringly 
 supported me in this business merit everything from my hand 
 that is consistent with principle. I am by no means insensible 
 to the weight of discouragement which their uncertainty as to 
 iny acceptance of the call must hang upon their exertions ; and 
 I am sure that they must have looked upon my adherence to the 
 ground which I set out with as a piece of very proud and un- 
 reasonable obstinacy. My situation is a peculiar one. It is 
 new to me ; and I have to crave your indulgence while I bring 
 forward the following remarks upon it : 
 
 " When I first heard of the Glasgow business, I resolved not 
 to help it on by any step or declaration of mine. This much I 
 consider as due to people whom I am attached to. This has a 
 tendency to restrain my supporters in Glasgow ; but so much 
 the better for Kilmany and I am pleased to do this piece of 
 justice to my kind and simple and affectionate neighbours. If 
 in spite of this reserve, the Town-council of Glasgow shall call 
 me, I will take it up, and think of it, and pray over it, and view 
 it in a far more impressive light than if any interference of mine 
 had contributed the weight of a feather to such a result. To 
 fetter myself with a promise previous to my appointment, com- 
 pels me to accept of it ; and upon what principle ? upon a 
 principle of obligation to man. To keep myself uncommitted, 
 is to leave room for the only principle upon which a call should 
 be obeyed the commitment of the cause to God, the openings 
 of whose providence we are bound to pay respect to, and the 
 good of whose Church should be our paramount consideration. 
 But, you may think, cannot this commitment be made now ? 
 No ; I will not consult God about my conduct in a particular 
 situation, till He brings me into that situation. I will not de- 
 cide upon my acceptance of any appointment till the appointment
 
 33G MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 is before me, for then, and not till then, will the reasons for and 
 -against have fully developed themselves. Suppose I had made 
 adeclaration in favour of Glasgow a month ago, I should have 
 done so upon a partial view of the merits of the case ; for I 
 should have done so in the absence of a most earnest and affec- 
 tionate petition presented to me by a parish who have taken the 
 alarm, and who, when they tell me of their fears because they 
 are of so little consequence in comparison of Glasgow, only bring 
 down from me a greater degree of tenderness upon them. Or, 
 suppose I had declared against Glasgow a week ago, I would 
 have done so upon a partial view of the case ; for I would have 
 done so in the absence of your impressive letter, and of all the 
 important information contained in it. Or, finally, should I de- 
 clare either for or against Glasgow at this moment, I should still 
 do it upon a partial view ; for I should do it in the absence of a 
 letter from Dr. Balfour, which you give me reason to expect will 
 be forthcoming upon the official decision of the matter, and in 
 which I look for the advice of a man venerated by me as a 
 Christian father ; and I should do it in the absence of all that 
 information which I look for from a personal visit to Glasgow 
 after my official appointment. 
 
 " You speak of the finger of Providence being observable in 
 this call, and state some circumstances in proof of this ; but the 
 most impressive circumstance of all, I think, is the gaining a 
 majority in the face of that discouragement which my silence 
 and backwardness threw upon you. This gives a peculiar cha- 
 racter of disinterested zeal to the whole proceeding, and I will 
 do nothing at this time to destroy it. Had I said that the ap- 
 pointment would be personally agreeable to me, I would have 
 -conceived the support of my relations to be founded on a far 
 less honourable principle than I am now entitled to ascribe it 
 to. As it is, their support has been more creditable to them, 
 and more gratifying to me. Such are the happy effects of my 
 keeping myself quite aloof and unfettered in this affair ; and 
 I trust you will concede to me the right of bringing a free 
 and uncommitted mind to this matter when it is brought to a 
 final determination. I am quite sensible, at the same time, of 
 what you say respecting the support I have experienced, rest- 
 ing mainly on friends who at the time were utterly unknown 
 to me. 
 
 " I wish to make the question of Glasgow or Kilmany alto- 
 gether a question of duty and usefulness. I am willing to set
 
 LETTER TO MR. ROBERT TENNENT. 337 
 
 it upon this principle ; but in so doing, I must shake myself 
 loose of all the delicacies and of all the tenderness which can 
 be mustered up on either side of the question. Glasgow is a 
 gainer, I believe, by this ; for though I should not suffer my 
 gratitude to my supporters there to restrain me from refusing 
 it, should I see cause this is surely more than made up by my 
 saying, that should I see other causes, I will not be restrained 
 from accepting it by all my affection for a people whom I love, 
 and a neighbourhood I should be glad to grow old in. 
 
 " The secular employment laid upon your clergy to the de- 
 gree mentioned by you, will not restrain me from accepting it. 
 But I will not oblige myself to any portion of such employment, 
 however small. I may find it prudent to take a share ; but in 
 its least degree, I count it a corrupt encroachment on the time 
 and occupations of a minister : see Acts vi. 4. And I shall only 
 add, that I know of instances where a clergyman has been called 
 from the country to town for his talent at preaching ; and when 
 he got there, they so belaboured him with the drudgery of their 
 institutions, that they smothered and extinguished the very 
 talent for which they had adopted him. The purity and in- 
 dependence of the clerical office are not sufficiently respected 
 in great towns. He comes among them a clergyman, and they 
 make a mere churchwarden of him. I have much to say upon 
 this subject ; and I do not despair, if we shall have the felicity 
 of living together, of obtaining your concurrence in this senti- 
 ment. It shall l>e my unceasing endeavour to get all this work 
 shifted tipon the laymen ; and did I not hope to succeed in some 
 measure, I would be induced to set my face against the whole 
 arrangement at this moment. I shall only say of my own dear 
 parishioners, that they have expressed their value for me on 
 no other ground than pure ministerial services ; and it is hard 
 to leave such a people for another, who may not be satisfied 
 unless I add to my own proper work a labour which does not 
 belong to me. 
 
 " Give my friendliest remembrance to Messrs. Heywood, 
 Eichardson, Koger, and Hood. I am truly obliged to you for 
 the great trouble and very important share you have taken in 
 this matter.* I will at all times be happy to hear from you. 
 I pray that God may overrule and direct in this weighty affair. 
 
 * Mr. Chalmers's attachment to Mr. Tennent was peculiarly strong, and he deeply 
 lamented his death, which took place a few years after Mr. Chalmers's settlement in 
 Glasgow. 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 338 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Believe me, with the truest regard and esteem, to be, yours 
 
 very sincerely, THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 " Robert Tennent, junior, Esq." 
 
 " KILMANT MASSE, Nov. 22, 1814. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Since my letter of yesterday (which I fear 
 will not reach you before you get this), I have to inform you 
 that I took the liberty of showing your letter to the most active 
 and intelligent promoter of the petition* taken notice of in my 
 other letter. He had been bethinking himself a good deal of 
 the subject before, and on reading yours he tells me that he 
 cannot think of urging the prayer of that petition any longer, 
 and is much impressed with the manly and disinterested stand 
 which my supporters in Glasgow have made against such power- 
 ful opposition as you have met with. This is to me a very im- 
 portant circumstance, and worthy of being transmitted to you. 
 The longer I wait I am the more satisfied with having been 
 kept free of all engagements upon this subject, and having 
 committed myself to the progress of events. In the one case 
 I would have come in among you on the restraint of a hasty 
 promise in the other I bring a mind at liberty to decide on 
 every circumstance as it occurs ; and how delightful if, up to 
 the final step of this affair, principle shall have been left to free 
 and unfettered operation. Ah ! my dear sir, there is nothing 
 like leaving room to the evolutions of Providence in these matters, 
 and it is wrong to anticipate them. If you do not disapprove 
 of it, I shall show yours, after cutting away the single line about 
 bribery, to some of the chief people in my parish. ... I have to 
 repeat my kindest compliments to your fellow-travellers. I am, 
 my dear Sir, yours with much regard, THOMAS CHALMERS. 
 
 " Robert Tennent, junior, Esq." 
 
 Notwithstanding the disadvantage to which they were thus 
 exposed, and in spite of the most powerful opposition, the un- 
 precedented exertions of those zealous Christian laymen, who 
 desired to secure for themselves and their fellow-citizens an 
 effective evangelical ministry, had prospered so far, that before 
 the day of election arrived, it was known at Kilmany that Mr. 
 Chalmers's appointment was almost certain. In prospect of 
 such an issue, he sat down in the retirement of his study, and, 
 for his own private guidance, thus balanced the arguments on 
 either side : 
 
 * Mr. Robert Edie.
 
 GLASGOW AND KILMANY. 
 
 339 
 
 GLASGOW. 
 
 1. Numbers. Cities had always a prefer- 
 ence in the first ages of the Church. 
 
 2. An unsolicited call. I gave no encour- 
 agement while the thing was going on, on the 
 principle of leaving it to Providence. When 
 Providence has come forward with such a 
 result, am I to be indifferent to it ? 
 
 3. The blow which my refusal would give 
 to the Christian party in Glasgow. 
 
 4. A warm Christian society to revive the 
 deadness and barrenness of my own soul. 
 
 5. Stimulus to exertion and study. 
 
 6. Might do much good to my people here 
 during the interval till my departure. The 
 fact that Mr. Tail's people have gained since 
 his leaving them is an important one. 
 
 7. A more congenial field people more 
 intellectual feel the excitement which lies 
 in the neighbourhood of a university. (But, 
 O my God, keep me from being tempted from 
 the simplicity that is in Christ May I never 
 forget that the gospel is preached to the 
 poor.) The societies which are in operation 
 for the general interests of Christianity afford 
 also a very congenial exercise of usefulness. 
 
 my God, guide by Thy wisdom ; and 
 should I go to Glasgow, may I not forget the 
 earnest petition I now offer for entire de- 
 votedness to the interest of Christ's kingdom. 
 Extinguish all vanity. May neither the praise 
 of man nor the fear of man prove a snare to 
 me. for a thorough establishment in Christ, 
 for more ability as a minister of His testa- 
 ment. May I cultivate every opportunity of 
 usefulness. May I grow in love to souls. 
 May my delight be with the song of men as 
 an instrument in Thy hand for their good. 
 Hear me, hear me. Almighty Father ! and 
 committing this work to Thee, do Thou, O 
 Lord, establish my thoughts, for Christ's 
 gake. Amen, 
 
 KILMANY. 
 
 1. Present situation ; but moving from 
 place to place was the general practice of the 
 first preachers. 
 
 2. Earnest petition. But one argument of 
 the petition was the good I did by my school. 
 Now, previous to that petition the children 
 had very much ceased to come ; and even 
 after, there were only the children of ten 
 families whose heads had signed that petition 
 that attended. 
 
 3. Undivided time for study. But I am 
 told that two hours a day would do the se- 
 cular business of Glasgow. And, in point of 
 fact, I have languished out many hours here 
 for the want of stimulus. Pardon me, O God, 
 and may a sense of Thy glory stimulate me 
 in all time coming. 
 
 4. Should I stay here, the call might give 
 an impulse both to me and my people, though 
 No. 2 militates against the chance of the 
 lu^er impulse. 
 
 my God, be with my people. May love 
 to them and their souls mingle in all my de- 
 liberations. I feel my want of compassion 
 for the souls of men. Give me to grow, O 
 Lord, in the benevolence of faith. May I 
 resemble Christ in His pity for souls. 
 
 Should I go to Glasgow, I desire to give a 
 single and entire energy to my people here 
 while I labour amongst them. Lord, direct 
 me to such plans as Thou wilt bless for the 
 conversion and building up of many souls. 
 May all my things be done with charity. 
 Relieve me from the ignoble feeling of shame 
 because of the testimony of Christ. Thy 
 blessing and Thy Spirit, Lord, be on this 
 parish and neighbourhood. O that a day of 
 power and of refreshing were to come amongst 
 them. May there be no room to receive it ; 
 may it flow over into other parishes. I im- 
 plore Thy Spirit in behalf of this county. 
 O may its ministers be turned to the Lord. 
 send them pastors according to Thine own 
 heart I again pray for the increase of 
 Christ's flock among my own people. Stay 
 not Thine arm, O God ; make it bare. Come 
 forth in the might of Thy all-subduing Spirit, 
 and reveal Christ in many hearts, for His 
 sake. Amen. 
 
 The election took place on the 25th of November. An express 
 from Glasgow, which arrived at Kilmany on the evening of the 
 following day, informed Mr. Chalmers of the result, and the 
 next post from Edinburgh brought the following letter from Dr. 
 Jones : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, Saturday, Nov. 26, 1814. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have this instant received the accounts 
 from Glasgow that the battle, the great battle, has been fought,
 
 340 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and the victory won. For Chalmers, fifteen ; for M'Farlan,* 
 ten ; for Maclean, four, and one non liquet. Heaven and earth, 
 and 'all the principalities and powers in high places, have been 
 moved j from the great officers of State at St. James's, and 
 the Court of aldermen in King Street, and the Crown lawyers 
 in Edinburgh, down to the little female piets, who were taught 
 to squall what they did not understand, ' No fanatics ! No Bal- 
 fourites ! Eationalists for ever !' No small stir, I'll assure you, 
 has been in that city, and no such stir has been there since the 
 days of John Knox, it is said, about the choice of a minister. 
 And, oh ! miserabile dictu, tell it not in St. Andrews ! the 
 fanatics have prevailed, and prevailed against one of the most 
 numerous and well-appointed armie^ which ever took the field 
 on such an occasion. The order of the battle was this : In the 
 centre of the enemy was the Lord Provost, who commanded the 
 main corps, and which being thought rather weak, as the centre 
 of their opponents was very strong, they strengthened it with 
 the London Guildhall allies, headed by Sir James Shaw. On 
 the right was the Duke of Montrose and the heavy horse, and 
 on the left the Lord Advocate and the light horse. In front 
 were some clerical skirmishers, headed by Principal Dolt, who 
 threw rockets and firebrands, and said, ' Much learning and 
 religion has made Chalmers mad.' Much was expected from 
 this weapon, but it was rendered quite useless by the opposing 
 remark, ' That it came well from him, as it was notorious to 
 every one that his head was not in the least danger.' These 
 being driven in, confident in their strength, the main body of the 
 opponents came down in full force, made one charge and went 
 right through the enemy, and so completely defeated them, that 
 in half an hour not two of them were to be seen together ; and 
 no sooner had the news reached the town on the afternoon of 
 Friday the 25th of November, than all the town was in an uproar 
 of joy, says my informant, ' Kirkmen, Burghers, Antiburghers, 
 Independents, and Baptists, all joining in one shout of exulta- 
 tion.' The news has had little less effect, I assure you, in this 
 city. Every one meets or runs to his friend, through a most 
 heavy rain, to say, ' Oh ! have you heard the good news, Mr. 
 Chalmers is elected to the Tron Kirk of Glasgow !* 
 
 " Having indulged in a little levity at the expense of the ad- 
 versary, I will be serious. 
 
 " I sincerely congratulate you, my dear sir, on your election 
 
 * The Rev. Dr. M'Farlan, then of Drymen.
 
 LETTER FROM HIS BROTHER JAMES. 341 
 
 to Glasgow, an event in which you have had no concern, but, as 
 became you, were completely passive. But now matters have 
 taken another shape, and present another front. There is, I think 
 there can be, but one opinion, that the matter is from God, and 
 the call, in course of the progress of the event, shows it to be 
 from Heaven, and therefore you have nothing to do but thank- 
 fully to accept. A great and effectual door is opened to you to 
 publish the glad tidings of peace ; it only remains that you enter 
 in. May you do so in all the fulness of the gospel of our Lord, 
 and long, very long, may you be useful, very useful, and very 
 happy. The only drawback is the little prospect of a good suc- 
 cessor to Kilmany ; but this is completely counterbalanced, or 
 rather, greatly outweighed by the similar circumstances at Glas- 
 gow, should you not accept ; but the not accepting, I think, now 
 ought not once to be thought of. 
 
 " Shall we see you in town this winter ? Will you make me 
 glad by coming to my house and pulpit ? The Glasgow folks 
 want you before their sacrament in April. Sad work went on, it 
 seems, the last week or two, . . . Robert Tennent and his 
 brother have been indefatigable. Best compliments to Mrs. C. 
 and Ann, and I am affectionately and respectfully, your friend 
 and brother, T. S. JONES." 
 
 Both before and after his election, letters regarding his pro- 
 posed translation poured in upon Mr. Chalmers. " I got," he 
 wrote to Anstruther, " about forty letters from various quarters 
 on the subject of Glasgow. I think the perusal of them would 
 afford both entertainment and satisfaction to you and my father. 
 Had I a right opportunity, I would willingly send them to you, 
 on condition of their being safely returned to me. They will 
 lay before my father the reasons which made me conceive it my 
 duty to obey an appointment I had no hand in." The raciest of 
 all these forty letters took a very different view of the matter 
 from that given in the communications of Dr. Love and Dr. 
 Balfour, Dr. Fleming and Dr. Jones. It came from his eldest 
 brother, James, of whom Mr. Chalmers always spoke as the 
 cleverest of his family, and who had long used towards him the 
 privilege which a seniority of many years bestowed. 
 
 " LONDON, November 26, 1814. 
 
 " DEAR THOMAS, I am much concerned to learn that the al- 
 lurements of the perishable mammon are likely soon to have an
 
 342 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 effect upon yon, and make yon resign all your earthly comforts 
 aud domestic quiet ; but I still hope that you will look before 
 you leap, and think better of the business before you accept of 
 any nonsense that may be offered. A situation of an additional 
 100 a year may perhaps be held out to you, but you should 
 take into the account how far that situation may expose you to 
 expenses exceeding the addition of income which it renders, what 
 company and connexions it may lead you into, how far it may 
 encroach upon the time which you have hitherto allotted for 
 study, or devoted to the pleasures and endearments of domestic 
 life, what effect the sudden change from a quiet country life to 
 the din and bustle of the great city is likely to have upon you, and 
 how far you think you can relish the formal and empty cere- 
 monious fal lal of refinement when compared to the honest but 
 humble society to which you have been accustomed at Kilmany. 
 Besides, Kilmany is the place where you began your career. 
 The Rev. Mr. Chalmers of Kilmany is known ; his fame is far 
 spread, his character is respected, his reputation established, and 
 his abilities acknowledged and admired. But the Rev. Mr. Chal- 
 mers of Glasgow is another person ; he has to begin the world 
 afresh ; and there is no doubt but he will be considered in the 
 literary as well as religious world as a very different man from 
 his Reverence of Kilmany. Shining abilities are naturally looked 
 for and expected to be met with at the seat of learning, and of 
 course are not estimated so highly as when they proceed from 
 humble life. Think of all these things, and consider also how 
 greatly it will add to your character, that instance of self-denial 
 which your refusal of the offer will not fail to impress on the 
 minds of all who know you and have heard of you. Keep fast 
 by what you have got, and be contented still to remain the 
 minister of Kilmany, and leave Glasgow to those hunters after 
 the world and vain-glory who may be disposed to throw them- 
 selves in its way. Never you mind the call of the Lord, as it is 
 called, but think of ... Excuse all I have said on this sub- 
 ject. I have no other view than your own happiness ; for I am 
 convinced that if you do accept of this offer, you sacrifice your 
 comfort and happiness for ever. You will have no time for study; 
 you will be deprived of all the comforts of a home, for you will 
 be continually carried down a current of formal visits and com- 
 plementary calls, and invitations, and botherations of all sorts. 
 Let Zachariah Boyd look somewhere else for an interpreter of 
 his works, and not insult Kilmany with any such application. I
 
 LETTER TO HIS BROTHER JAMES. 343 
 
 hope to hear from you before long, and I trust your letter -will 
 inform me that you have declined the offer, both on your own 
 account, and on account of the Anstruther folks, who would be 
 much hurt at your leaving the neighbourhood. I beg you 
 to write soon, and I remain, dear Thomas, your affectionate 
 brother, JAMES CHAI.:.II:RS." 
 
 " KILMANY MANSE, Dec. 21, 1814. 
 
 " MY DEAR JAMES, I had not resolved on an acceptance at 
 the time of your letter's arrival, and yet, in spite of it, I have 
 resolved to go to Glasgow. Your letter, however, will not be 
 without its use. My wife and I have agreed to take it along with 
 us, and to consult it occasionally. We trust we are prepared for 
 all the invasions upon our peace and independence, which you 
 have described with so vigorous a hand ; and which, if submitted 
 to, we are quite sensible would be a source of annoyance and 
 misery to us all our days. Be assured, that my eyes are quite 
 open to this source of vexation, and my feelings quite alive to all 
 the bitterness of it. There is not one sentiment I join with you 
 more cordially in, than an utter detestation of all the heartless 
 splendour and ceremony of fashionable life ; and I trust that my 
 wife will never suffer herself to be so far seduced by the example 
 of female acquaintances and advisers and managers, as to step 
 down from the dignified simplicity of a minister's fireside, and 
 mingle in all the extravagances of parties and second courses, 
 and splendid drawing-rooms, and the whole tribe of similar 
 abominations. 
 
 " Thus far can we go along with one another, but, I am afraid, 
 no further. Glasgow is not a better situation in point of emolu- 
 ment. It is greatly more laborious ; and I will have to maintain 
 a constant struggle with the difficulties you insist upon. Yet I 
 think it my duty to go ; but were I to unfold all the motives to 
 you, I fear, from the strain of your two last letters, that you 
 would positively not understand me. I do not pretend any call 
 of Providence in the shape of a vision or a voice ; yet surely, if 
 Providence overrule all events if the appointment in question 
 is an event I had no band in if, during the whole progress of 
 the steps which led to it, I cautiously abstained from giving any 
 encouragement to the electors would not tell them whether I 
 would take it or turn from it, but left it a question quite unde- 
 cided till Providence brought it to my door ; then, if there is no 
 intimation of the will of Providence here, it must follow either
 
 344 MEMOIRS OF DB. CHALMERS. 
 
 that events afford no interpretation of that will, or (what, I fear, 
 falls in with the practical atheism of many) God has no share in 
 the matter at all ; He is deposed from His sovereignty, and the 
 solemn assertion, that ntft a sparrow falleth to the ground with- 
 out His appointment, is a nullity and a falsehood. I do not say 
 that this argument should supersede others, but it ought to have 
 a place and a reality in every Christian deliberation. 
 
 " Compliments to all. Mrs. C. joins in them. Write me soon. 
 Yours, with much regard, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The two chief obstacles to Mr. Chalmers's removal from Kil- 
 many were his fears as to the amount of extra and unprofessional 
 labour which was laid upon the clergymen of Glasgow, and his 
 regrets at leaving a people and neighbourhood to which he was 
 very tenderly attached. An explanatory letter from Dr. Balfour 
 helped to remove the one ; it cost acute and long-continued suf- 
 fering to remove the other. Looking to the hills which bounded 
 his peaceful valley, and waving his staff to them as if in mourn- 
 ful farewell, he said to a friend who was walking by his side, 
 "Ah, my dear sir, my heart is wedded to these hills!" Coming 
 back to his old parish, more than twenty years after he had left 
 it, he exclaimed, " Oh ! there was more tearing of the heart- 
 strings at leaving the valley of Kilmany than at leaving all my 
 great parish at Glasgow.". But the following brief entries in 
 his Journal tell most impressively what a wrench to his affec- 
 tions this removal gave : 
 
 " Nov. 26. Got this night intimation of my election to Glas- 
 gow, and feel myself established in my ideas respecting it. 
 
 " Nov. 30. Received a most handsome letter from Mr. Gil- 
 lespie, and it has thrown me into a flood of tenderness. 
 
 " Dec. 2. Still confined. My tenderness has risen to all the 
 agony of a passion. 
 
 ".Dec. 3. Mr. Duncan came from Dundee, and was of great 
 use to me.* 
 
 "Sunday, Dec. 4. Preached to my people on my removal. 
 
 " Dec. 5. I have sent off some queries, previous to my final 
 answer. 
 
 " Dec. 6. I am in great heaviness. 
 
 " I can never forget the letter which he wrote me, on one of these occasions, inviting 
 ae over to Kilmany, in orde' that, when he was like to be overcome, he might be 
 iupported by the cold immobility oi my cuuueuaace." Letter from Professor Duncan.
 
 JOURNAL. 345 
 
 " Dec. 8. I am much absorbed. 
 
 ''Dec. 9. In great suspense about not getting my answer 
 from Glasgow. 
 
 "Dec. 10. Got a satisfying answer from Dr. Balfour, and 
 have sent off my letter of concurrence to the Glasgow Magis- 
 trates. 
 
 " Dec. 14. Visited at Rathillet. In great heaviness about 
 leaving my parish. Keceived a very kind letter from Lord Leven. 
 
 "Dec. 15. Visited at . Called at Lochmalony. that 
 
 this disruption from all present attachments could be converted 
 to a lesson of sitting loosely to the things of time. 
 
 "Dec. 30. Have received a most cordial letter from the 
 Session of the Tron Church, Glasgow. God, keep me from 
 vanity. 
 
 "Jan. 1, 1815. Preached as usual to a very crowded audi- 
 tory. I am not sufficiently carried out to a compassion for the 
 souls of men. Teach and enable me, Lord, to minister that 
 which may be to the use of edifying. direct me powerfully to 
 the good of my parish. 
 
 " Sunday, Jan. 8. Preached as usual. Let me henceforth 
 cultivate it as a high point of duty to prepare for Kilmany, and 
 not for Glasgow, and give my time and my prayef to the present 
 occasion. 
 
 "Jan. 13. Had diets of visitation at Hawkhill and East 
 Kinneir. My tenderness opens afresh at this last great parochial 
 exercise of duty. 
 
 "Jan. 15. Began to throw off a supplementary address to 
 my regular sermons a practice which I mean to persevere in 
 every Saturday evening, as I find that upon the urgency of such 
 an occasion I am often more impressive in my calls upon the 
 conscience. 
 
 " May 12. Had a visitation at Starbank and Star. Still in 
 great tenderness, but better and more cheerful at night. God, 
 be Thou my stay and my rest, and my continual habitation. I 
 look at Glasgow as a wilderness. my God, be not Thou a 
 wilderness unto me. 
 
 " May 13. Finished off my girls' school. God supports me 
 wondrously. Wrote at my lecture. A round of visits to the 
 westward. 
 
 "Sunday, May 14. Preached as usual. A great crowd. 
 my God, sustain me against tenderness. Bless my ministrations. 
 Advance the power and life of religion in my own heart.
 
 346 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ''May 27. Have been seized with a most petrifying chill on 
 Mr. M. saying that my duty is to keep off from Kilmany, and 
 give myself entirely to my new parish. This would be an awful 
 surrender indeed of my attachment ; but, God, turn me from 
 self to Thee at all times." 
 
 For some Sabbaths previous to the departure from Kilmany, 
 the attendance at church was so numerous, that one of the large 
 windows beside the pulpit was taken out, that Mr. Chalmers 
 might address at once the in-door and out-door congregation. 
 The great crowd of strangers which had assembled deprived, to 
 some extent, his closing Sabbath (July 9, 1815) of the character 
 which he would have liked it so much to wear that of a part- 
 ing of affectionate friends. There were few, however, even 
 among the strangers, who did not share in the emotions of the 
 occasion, and the hearts of his own people were dissolved in 
 tenderness, as these farewell words fell upon their ear : 
 
 " Choose Christ, then, my brethren, choose Him as the Captain 
 of your salvation. Let Him enter into your hearts by faith, and 
 let Him dwell continually there. Cultivate a daily intercourse 
 and a growing acquaintance with Him. Oh, you are in safe 
 company, indeed, when your fellowship is with Him ! The 
 shield of His protecting mediatorship is ever between you and 
 the justice of God ; and out of His fulness there goeth a constant 
 stream, to nourish, and to animate, and to strengthen every be- 
 liever* Why should the shifting of human instruments so oppress 
 and so discourage you, when He is your willing friend ; when 
 He is ever present, and is at all times in readiness ; when He, 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is to be met with in 
 every place; and while his disciples here, giving way to the power 
 of sight, are sorrowful, and in great heaviness, because they are 
 to move at a distance from one another, He, my brethren, He 
 has His eye upon all neighbourhoods and all countries, and will 
 at length gather His disciples into one eternal family ! With 
 such a Master, let us quit ourselves like men. With the magni- 
 ficence of eternity before us, let time, with all its fluctuations, 
 dwindle into its own littleness. If God is pleased to spare me, 
 I trust I shall often meet with you in person, even on this side 
 of the grave; but if not, let us often meet in prayer at the 
 mercy-seat of God. While we occupy different places on earth, 
 let our mutual intercessions for each other go to one place in
 
 FAREWELL TO KILMANT. 347 
 
 heaven. Let the Saviour put our supplications into one censer ; 
 and 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-during 
 place in my memory ; and this mortal body must be stretched 
 on the bed of death, ere the heart which 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 amongst 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 blessed- 
 ness, and we, my brethren, whom the providence of God has 
 withdrawn for a little while from one another, may on that 
 day be found side by side at the right hand of the everlasting 
 throne."
 
 348 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 FIB8T SERMON IN GLASGOW APPEARANCE AND MANNEB IN THE PULPIT 
 
 EXTRACT FROM PETER'S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK HIS ALARM AS TO THIS 
 
 VISIT HIS ACCOUNT OF IT WHEN OVER ADMISSION AND INTRODUCTION AS 
 
 MINISTER OF THE TRON CHURCH SORROWFUL REMEMBRANCES OF KILMANT 
 
 VISIT TO BURNTI8LAND AND K1RKCALDY ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS 
 
 OF KILMANT EFFECT OF MRS. CHALMERS'S RETURN WITH HIM TO GLAS- 
 GOW SIGHT OF NORMANLAW FROM THE CALTON HILL LETTERS TO MR. 
 
 EDIE AND TO MBS. MORTON DESCRIPTION OF GLASGOW ANNOYANCES. 
 
 THE first sermon which Mr. Chalmers preached in Glasgow 
 was delivered before the Society of the Sons of the Clergy, on 
 Thursday the 30th day of March 1815, a few months after his 
 appointment, and a few months previous to his admission as 
 minister of the Tron Church. The recent excitement of the 
 canvass, the rumours strange and various, which crossing the 
 breadth of Scotland were circulating in all quarters through the 
 city, the qxiickened curiosity of opponents, the large but some- 
 what tremulous expectation of friends, drew together a vast mul- 
 titude to hear him. Among the crowd which filled the Church 
 was a young Oxford student, himself the son of a Scottish 
 minister, who had been surprised by hearing Mr. Chalmers's 
 work on the Evidences of Christianity mentioned with high ap- 
 proval, within the walls of an English University, shortly after 
 the date of its publication. The keen dark eye of the youthful 
 auditor fixed itself in searching scrutiny upon the preacher, and 
 a few years later his graceful and graphic pen drew the following 
 sketch : 
 
 " I was a good deal surprised and perplexed with the first 
 glimpse I obtained of his countenance, for the light that streamed 
 faintly upon it for the moment did not reveal anything like that 
 general outline of feature and visage for which my fancy had, 
 by some strange working of presentiment, prepared me. By 
 and bye, however, the light became stronger, and I was enabled 
 to study the minutiae of his face pretty leisurely, while he leaned 
 forward and read aloud the words of the Psalm, for that is al- 
 ways done in Scotland, not by the clerk, but the clergyman
 
 DESCRIPTION OF HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 349 
 
 himself. At first sight, no doubt, his face is a coarse one, but 
 a mysterious kind of meaning breathes from every part of it, 
 that such as have eyes to see cannot be long without discovering. 
 It is very pale, and the large half-closed eyelids have a certain 
 drooping melancholy weight about them, which interested me 
 very much, I understood not why. The lips, too, are singularly 
 pensive in their mode of falling down at the sides, although 
 there is no want of richness and vigour in their central fulness 
 of curve. The upper lip, from the nose downwards, is separated 
 by a very deep line, which gives a sort of leonine firmness of 
 expression to all the lower part of the face. The cheeks are 
 square and strong, in texture like pieces of marble, with the 
 cheek-bones very broad and prominent. The eyes themselves 
 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 ex- 
 hibit when expanded in their sockets, and illuminated into all 
 their flame and fervour in some moment of high entranced en- 
 thusiasm. But the shape of the forehead is, perhaps, the most 
 singular part of the whole visage ; and, indeed, it presents a 
 mixture s very singular, of forms commonly exhibited only in 
 the widest separation, that it is no wonder I should have required 
 some little time to comprehend the meaning of it. In the first 
 place, it is without exception the most marked mathematical 
 forehead I ever met with being far wider across the eyebrows 
 than either Mr. Playfair's or Mr. Leslie's and having the eye- 
 brows themselves lifted up at their exterior ends quite out of 
 the usual line, a peculiarity which Spurzheim had remarked in 
 the countenances of almost all the great mathematical or cal- 
 culating geniuses such, for example, if I rightly remember, as 
 Sir Isaac Newton himself, Kaestener, Euler, and many others. 
 Immediately above the extraordinary breadth of this region, 
 which, in the heads of most mathematical persons, is surmounted 
 by no fine points of organization whatever, immediately above 
 this, 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, while over this 
 again there is a grand apex of high and solemn veneration and 
 love, such as might have graced the bust of Plato himself, and 
 such as in living men I had never beheld equalled in any but 
 the majestic head of Canova. The whole is edged with a few 
 crisp dark locks, which stand forth boldly, and afford a fine re-
 
 350 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 lief to the deathlike paleness of those massive temples. . . . 
 Of all human compositions there is none surely which loses so 
 much as a sermon does when it is made to address itself to the 
 eye of a solitary student in his closet and not to the thrilling 
 ears of a mighty mingled congregation, through the very voice 
 which nature has enriched with notes more expressive than 
 words can ever be of the meanings and feelings of its author. 
 Neither, perhaps, did the world ever possess any orator whose 
 minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in 
 increasing the effect of what he says whose delivery, in other 
 words, is the first, and the second, and the third excellence of his 
 oratory more truly than is that of Dr. Chalmers. And yet were the 
 spirit of the man less gifted than it is, there is no question these, 
 his lesser peculiarities, would never have been numbered among 
 his points of excellence. His voice is neither strong nor melodious, 
 his gestures are neither easy nor graceful ; but, on the contrary, 
 extremely rude and awkward ; his pronunciation is not only 
 broadly national, but broadly provincial, distorting almost every 
 word he utters into some barbarous novelty, which, had his 
 hearer leisure to think of such things, might be productive of an 
 effect at once ludicrous and offensive in a singular degree. But 
 of a truth, these are things which no listener can attenu to while 
 this great preacher stands before him armed with all the weapons 
 of the most commanding eloquence, and swaying all around him 
 with its imperial rule. At first, indeed, there is nothing to 
 make one suspect what riches are in store. He commences in a 
 low drawling key, which has not even the merit of being solemn, 
 and advances from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to 
 paragraph, while you seek in vain to catch a single echo that 
 gives promise of that which is to come. There is, on the con- 
 trary, an appearance of constraint about him that affects and 
 distresses you. You are afraid that his breast is weak, and that 
 even the slight exertion he makes may be too much for it. But 
 then, with what tenfold richness does this dim preliminary cur- 
 tain make the glories of, his eloquence to shine forth, when the 
 heated spirit at length shakes 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 ser- 
 mons 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, either in England or Scotland, or in any other
 
 THE BREAKING UP OF A MINISTER S FAMILY. 351 
 
 country, any preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing 
 an effect so strong and irresistible as his." * 
 
 Mr. Chalmers's first sermon at Glasgow was chiefly occupied 
 with the enforcement and illustration of principles applicable 
 alike to all forms and varieties of Christian charity .-j- It con- 
 tained in embryo his whole theory as to the proper treatment 
 of pauperism, and is remarkable thus as indicating how firmly 
 established in his mind that theory had become even before his 
 labours as a city clergyman had commenced. But that particu- 
 lar institution whose claims he had undertaken to advocate was 
 not forgotten ; and in making an appeal to his hearers on behalf 
 of the orphan children of clergymen, the following picture of the 
 breaking up of a minister's family was presented : " When the 
 sons and the daughters of clergymen are left to go, they know 
 not whither, from the peacefulness of their father's dwelling, 
 never were poor outcasts less prepared by the education and the 
 habits of former years, for the scowl of an unpitying world ; nor 
 can I figure a drearier and more affecting contrast than that 
 which obtains between the blissful security of their earlier days, 
 and the dark and unshielded condition to which the hand of 
 Providence has now brought them. It is not necessary, for the 
 purpose of awakening your sensibilities on this subject, to dwell 
 upon every one circumstance of distress which enters into the 
 sufferings of this bereaved family ; or to tell you of the many 
 friends they must abandon, and the many charms of that peace- 
 ful neighbourhood which they must quit for ever. But when 
 they look abroad, and survey the innumerable beauties which 
 the God of nature has scattered so profusely around them when 
 they see the sun throwing its unclouded splendours over the 
 whole neighbourhood when, on the fair side of the year, they 
 behold the smiling aspect of the country, and at every footstep 
 they take, some flower appear in its loveliness, or some bird 
 offers its melody to delight them when they see quietness on 
 all the hills, and every field glowing in the pride and luxury of 
 vegetation when they see summer throwing its rich garment 
 over this goodly scene of magnificence and glory, and think, in 
 the bitterness of their souls, that this is the last summer which 
 they shall ever witness, smiling on that scene which all the ties 
 of habit and of affection have endeared to them when this 
 thought, melancholy as it is, is lost and overborne in the far 
 
 * " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," 2d edition, vol. iii. pp. 267-273. 
 t See Works, vol. xi. pp. 389 425.
 
 352 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 darker melancholy of a father torn from their embrace, and a 
 helpless family left to find their way unprotected and alone 
 through the lowering futurity of this earthly pilgrimage, Do you 
 wonder that their feeling hearts should be ready to lose hold of 
 the promise, that He who decks the lily fair in flowery pride, 
 will guide them in safety through the world, and at last raise 
 all who believe in Him to the bloom and the vigour of immor- 
 tality ? The flowers of the field, they toil not, neither do they 
 spin, yet your Heavenly Father careth for them and how much 
 more careth He for you, ye of little faith." One who heard 
 this passage delivered,* has told us, that "the tears of the father 
 and preacher fell like rain-drops on the manuscript." And from 
 many another eye besides that of the preacher the soft waters of 
 sensibility were seen to flow. 
 
 Before leaving Fifeshire to preach in Glasgow upon this occa- 
 sion, Mr. Chalmers had written to his friend Mr. Tennent : " I 
 feel greatly comforted by your assuring me of the friendship of 
 my future people, and their desire to make me happy. In this 
 case, they must not overwhelm me by their attentions. I shrink 
 from the fatiguing intercourse of dinners and large companies. I 
 have got as much of this proposed to me for the four days I am 
 to spend with you as would serve me for four weeks. This is all 
 very natural and very kind ; but you, my dear sir, will know 
 how to explain it if I shall find it necessary to study as gradual 
 a transition as possible from the happy coolness and peacefulness 
 of my present situation." And on returning to Kilmany, Mr. 
 Chalmers wrote to his sister, Mrs. Morton : " Since writing you 
 last, I have been in Glasgow, and preached to them, and spent 
 four days with them, and have been carried through such a 
 round of introductions, and seen such a number of people, that 
 it is impossible for me to remember one-fourth part of them, and 
 far less to have got so near any one of them, as to give you a 
 particular account of him. All I shall say on that subject is, 
 that Dr. Macgill, my predecessor, and now Professor of Divinity, 
 appears to be a very interesting personage. The time of my 
 removal is yet uncertain." The day of his admission to his new 
 charge was at length fixed to be on Friday the 21st day of July. 
 It is the Scottish custom that on the Sabbath which follows his 
 ordination or admission, the new minister should be introduced 
 to his people by a friend, who conducts the forenoon service. It 
 had been suggested to him that the Eev. Sir Henry Moncrieff of 
 
 * The Very Kev. E. B. Kamsay in his " Biographical Notice of Dr. Chalmers."
 
 THE REV. SIR HENRY MONCREIFF. 353 
 
 "Edinburgh should, in this instance, be requested to undertake 
 that duty ; and as his personal acquaintance with that eminent 
 clergyman appeared to Mr. Chalmers too limited to justify a 
 personal application, Dr. Balfour conveyed the request. So. soon 
 as he heard of its being complied with, Mr. Chalmers hastened 
 to express his gratitude : " It is with the utmost pleasure that 
 I am given to understand, by Dr. Balfour, that you have con- 
 sented to introduce me to my new charge in Glasgow. I fear 
 you will think me very impudent and presuming in having ven- 
 tured to propose a favour of such magnitude, nor could I ever 
 have thought of taking such a liberty had it not been suggested 
 to me by a clerical friend, in whose friendship and wisdom and 
 tact I have the utmost confidence, and whose intimacy with 
 yourself gave me the security that there was nothing improper 
 in submitting to you such a proposition. Be assured of my ut- 
 most gratitude for your compliance ; and I have only to regret 
 that, from my state of health, which does not admit of very fre- 
 quent or severe exertions in the way of preaching, I may not be 
 able to repay your kind service to the extent to which I consider 
 it entitled. Your countenance on an occasion so interesting to 
 myself will, I trust, never be forgotten by me, and it goes far to 
 soothe my transition to the new field of labour which Providence 
 has assigned me, when I observe so much done to secure me a 
 respectable outset." On Thursday, the 13th day of July, the 
 manse of Kilmany was finally forsaken. His last days in Fife- 
 shire were given to his parents ; and leaving his family at 
 Anstruther, Mr. Chalmers proceeded, by way of Edinburgh, to 
 Glasgow, where, on the very day of his arrival, the first of those 
 journal-letters was commenced, which afterwards, when sepa- 
 rated for any length of time from Mrs. Chalmers, he so faithfully 
 continued, and out of which our future pages will be so fre- 
 quently and liberally enriched. 
 
 " Glasgow, July 20, 1815. I breakfasted this morning in 
 Edinburgh with Mr. Payne, an Independent clergyman, and 
 got forward in the coach with Mr. Paul, your visitor, and Mr. 
 Fletcher of the London Missionary Society : was conducted to 
 my lodgings almost immediately by Mr. John Wood. They 
 consist of a dining-room and bedroom, perhaps not so stylish as 
 I could have wished, but in a high, airy situation, as fresh and 
 pure as Kilmany itself, with no other substantial drawback than 
 that another room cannot be got in the same house, and that the 
 
 VOL. i. z
 
 354 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 landlady, with every disposition to oblige me and make me com- 
 fortable, has a quantity and volubility of talk upon every subject, 
 which is a little annoying. . . . Friday 2 Is*, eleven o'clock. 
 Breakfasted in my own room, pleasantly and comfortably. I 
 thank God that He makes me feel so tranquil; but, what 
 alienation from Him have I to struggle with in this scene of 
 visible and temporal allurement ! Called on Dr. Balfour, and 
 there met Sir Henry Moncreiff. The town is very thin at pre- 
 sent ; but a number of people have come from the country to be 
 present at this occasion. . . . Four o'clock. I have got the 
 admission over. It was a pretty formidable thing. There were 
 three chairs put in the middle passage before the pulpit. I was 
 placed in the middle one, and Sir Henry Moncreiff and Dr. 
 Adamson on each side of me. I had to stand during a pretty 
 long address. In coming out I stood at the door, and had to 
 shake hands with the people. An immense number I had to do 
 this with and sometimes I got three hands in my loofat once. 
 Mr. Melvil is now with me. We sit down to dinner at five ; 
 and as Mr. Melvil is waiting, and I fear I may not have time to 
 write any for the post after dinner, I shall conclude. May God 
 pour His best blessings upon you and my dear little Anne. Tell 
 Isabel that I am sorry if I hurt her feelings on the morning of 
 my departure, and hope she will mind my wishes and forget the 
 eagerness with which I expressed them. Compliments to all my 
 dear friends at Anster. Do write me soon." 
 
 " Glasgow, July 26, 1815. I beg that you would write me 
 frequently ; for though here I am surrounded with attentions, 
 yet I have met with nothing that can at all replace the objects 
 I have abandoned. ... I have gathered thus much, at least, 
 from the present state of my feelings, that you are my most 
 valuable and necessary companion, and truly a help meet for 
 me. May God spare you and our little one. May He bring us 
 soon together in health and in safety ; and that He would 
 possess our hearts with one principle and one sympathy on the 
 greatest and most deeply interesting of subjects. 
 
 " On Sunday Sir Henry Moncreiff preached an hour and 
 twenty minutes in the forenoon I preached an hour and a 
 quarter. The crowd was immense. Mr. Simeon of Cambridge 
 was one of my hearers, and afterwards met with me. He is a 
 most delightful man. I got twenty-two calls on Monday, eigh- 
 teen on Tuesday, arid to-day I missed a number from being out 
 . . . May the God of all mercy bless you and my dear Anne 
 with all that is precioi 10 "
 
 REMEMBRANCES OF KILMANY. 355 
 
 " Glasgow, August 4, 1815. I have not yet collected suffi- 
 cient materials for filling up a letter, but I now write under the 
 impulse of the recollection that this is our marriage-day. Nor 
 can I refrain from expressing not merely my ardent and unabated 
 affection for you an affection which I can assure you has suf- 
 fered no decay, but is fresher and livelier and more determined 
 than ever ; but I also write to express my gratitude for your 
 unwearied anxiety for all that could conduce to my comfort an 
 anxiety which you have ever kept up under all my perverseness, 
 and all my peculiarities of habit and of temper, and all the 
 annoyances I have given you, and all the wilfulness with which 
 I have adhered to my own taste and my own inclination, un- 
 mindful as I have often been of your feelings, and ever disposed 
 to make my way take the precedence of your way. May God 
 long preserve you a comfort to me. May He touch our hearts 
 with a united sentiment of fear to Him and faith in the Lord 
 Jesus, that we may live as fellow-travellers to one eternal home, 
 and dying unto the world, may feel our affections more and more 
 placed upon eternity. Oh ! my dear G., cherish in your heart 
 the obligation we both owe to her who is the dear pledge of 
 our love to one another. Let us qualify ourselves to be her 
 example and her teachers. Never give up the habit of praying 
 for her and for one another ; and remember that you cannot 
 begin too early to protect her from the mistaken indulgence 
 of friends and the evil influences of a world lying in wicked- 
 ness. ... Do write me immediately. Give my kindest 
 affections to my father, mother, and family, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Mr. Chalmers's eye was too single to be blinded by that blaze 
 of unparalleled popularity which at the very commencement 
 of his ministry broke around him at Glasgow. His earlier 
 affections were too strong and too tender to be overborne or 
 obliterated by the flattering adulations of crowding multitudes 
 of strangers. Often in the midst of the most animating bustle, 
 himself the central object of all kinds of public attention, he 
 stood with drooping eyelid and dreamy look, lost to all around, 
 his imagination wandering over the homesteads of Kilmany, his 
 heart holding intercourse with the dear friends he had left behind 
 in Fifeshire. About a fortnight after his settlement he wrote to 
 Mr. Eobert Edie : 
 
 " Glasgow, August 10, 1815- I have not heard from Kil-
 
 356 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 many since I came here. ... I cannot yet bring myself to 
 think of my old neighbourhood without pain, and the whole 
 parting scene passes before me in the form of a very gloomy and 
 oppressive recollection. I see that it will require great arrange- 
 ment to secure me the right command of time for my studies. 
 I am striving to keep my day from being broken in upon till 
 twelve o'clock, and then callers, and poor, and people of all 
 descriptions, come in upon me at the rate say of twenty per day. 
 I then go out to meetings and visits in the town, and endeavour 
 always to have an hour's walk in the country before dinner. I 
 am sadly teased with invitations, but this too I am striving to 
 reduce to some kind of moderation ; and I hope that in the pro- 
 cess of time I shall be able to accommodate myself pleasantly 
 and serenely to the state of my actual circumstances. 
 
 " I mean to leave Glasgow on Monday the 28th of August, 
 and spend a fortnight between Kirkcaldy and Burntisland at 
 sea-bathing. I would willingly come to Kilmany, but I know 
 the effect would be just another gloomy scene of regret and 
 melancholy at leaving it. This, I trust, will not operate as an 
 objection to the more deliberate visit which I propose to pay 
 next summer ; but at present the wound is too fresh and too 
 recent to admit of being so soon tampered with. 
 
 " It gave me great pleasure to meet Alexander Paterson after 
 I left you, who cheered me with encouraging information re- 
 specting some of his acquaintances in the parish. that it 
 might turn out to be a genuine work of the Spirit of God upon 
 their consciences ! I have earnestly to entreat of you that 
 you hold fast all right and serious impressions : and be assured 
 that there would not have been so much said in the Bible 
 about backsliding, and taking heed lest we fall, and strength- 
 ening the things which remain, had there not been a strong 
 tendency to relapse on our part ; and it is right that we should 
 be aware of this, and that our vigilance should be directed to 
 the point of danger and alarm, and that we should make in 
 faith a daily and an hourly commitment of ourselves to those 
 promises which are in Christ Jesus, of not being tempted be- 
 yond what we are able, and of being strengthened by Him to 
 
 J 11 ,1 O O J 
 
 do all things. 
 
 " I beg of you to offer the expression of my sincere regard to 
 all the members of your family. I sympathize with Mrs. Edie, 
 whose affection for poor David, whom she had so long and so 
 anxiously tended, must have received a deep wound from his
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCES REMEMBERED. 357 
 
 affecting departure. Tell me if Miss Edie is better of her cold ; 
 and I should like also to know about Miss Miles, whom I had 
 visited twice or thrice before leaving the country. Give my 
 kindest remembrance to Thomas Key, Robert Dewar, and Alex- 
 ander Paterson, senior. Remember me to Mr. and Miss Aitkin. 
 When I name these acquaintances, I think of their houses, and 
 a lively image of my old peaceful neighbourhood enters into my 
 mind, and throws me into a flood of tenderness. Let me not 
 forget Mrs. Bonthron. Is the leddel got better ? I beg that 
 Mr. Edie may inform me through your letter of Mary Farmer 
 and John Dandie, as to their circumstances. Tell William 
 Henderson that, though he could not speak when we last saw 
 each other, I had a very deep impression both of his regard 
 for me and his wife's. Speak of me to Effie Nicholson, and 
 though I do not name all the villagers, I love them all, and 
 often think of them all. Give my kind compliments to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Robertson. 
 
 " I consider a letter to you as equivalent to a letter to your 
 father, and I hope he will consider it as such ; and it will give 
 me great pleasure to have immediately a letter either from you 
 or him in return. But let it be long and closely written, and 
 rest assured that it cannot be too particular. Every one piece of 
 information respecting any one either of the parish or village 
 will interest me greatly. Crowd all the intelligence you can 
 think of into the letter, for I have a great appetite to know and 
 to hear respecting you all. Could I know of any rejoicing in the 
 truth and walking in the truth, it would be an exquisite grati- 
 fication. I beg you will write your letter more closely than I 
 have done, and do it on a long sheet, if you have it. With 
 prayers for you and all your relatives, believe to be, my dear Sir, 
 yours with most sincere regard, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Agreeably to the intention expressed in this letter Mr. Chal- 
 mers left Glasgow on Monday the 28th August, to spend a 
 fortnight between Burntisland and Kirkcaldy, and to bring his 
 family back with him on his return. On reaching Burntisland 
 he wrote to his mother, telling her why it was that he asked 
 upon this occasion to be excused from coming to Anstruther. 
 " In spite of all this, however," he adds, " I still may come, but 
 I should like to know if you have any particular reason for 
 wisJiing me, and then I will consider that I must come. I beg you 
 will let me know in the spirit of considerate kindness for there
 
 358 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 is an ordinary style of kindness which drives everything before 
 it, and will not be satisfied unless you dine with us, and take up 
 your abode with us, and pays no regard to one's health, or con- 
 venience, or wishes, and insists upon carrying its own object ; 
 there is a kindness of this sort, I say, which I have been fatigued 
 with since I last saw you, which I feel to be most oppressive, 
 and which, I think, is utterly undeserving of its name. Oh ! 
 when will true kindness come to be understood, and instead of 
 fatiguing its object by its exactions, and souring him by its com- 
 plaints, will give all jealousy to the wind, and delight in minis- 
 tering to his convenience by making him welcome when present, 
 and by cordially giving way to his circumstances when it is more 
 agreeable for him to be absent. 
 
 " One great inducement would be to see Helen ; but I trust 
 that Helen understands how a man may exercise friendship to- 
 wards her in the act of thinking of her, though she is not just 
 within the sphere of his vision. Give her my kindest assurances 
 of affection and good-will. Be as frank in your letter to me as 
 I have been in my letter to you. Tell me what your wish is 
 upon this subject, and I shall cheerfully do it." 
 
 His friends at Anstruther did not urge his coming, and he 
 thus thanked them for the spirit of considerate kindness which 
 they had displayed: ""It is a substantial accommodation to 
 me that I am not under the necessity of going to Anster at pre- 
 sent. I am regularly sea-bathing, and find myself much the 
 better of it. Be not alarmed about me, as I mean to be far 
 more moderate in my exertions ; and I hope that with Mrs. 
 Chalmers interposing her advice, and being quite in earnest 
 that I should not take too much upon me, I shall be enabled to 
 suit my exertions to my strength. My general health is re- 
 markably good ; and after the oppressive crowd in my church 
 has subsided a little, I trust that, by the favour of God, I may 
 be enabled to preserve my health amongst them. . . . 
 
 " Tell Helen how much I think of her toleration in not drag- 
 ging me twenty-five miles for the mere purpose of a mutual look 
 at one another." 
 
 Although unable at this time to visit Kilmany, he had no 
 longer to complain of being left without information regarding 
 it. Writing from Kirkcaldy in the beginning of September, he 
 tells his sister, Mrs. Morton " I continue to get the most affec- 
 tionate and interesting letters from Kilmany. I feel a painful
 
 'ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF KILMANY. 359 
 
 tenderness about my old parish. I am writing an address to 
 them at present, part of which has gone to the press. I cannot 
 venture upon pathos in this composition. I feel too sore when 
 I make this attempt. It is one or two topics of practical instruc- 
 tion that I have taken up ; and I pray God that it may be useful 
 amongst them." 
 
 His chief Kilmany correspondent was Mr. Robert Edie, who 
 having striven in one of his letters to gratify as he could the 
 strong craving for all kind of information about old friends, was, 
 in return, rewarded by receiving the following reply : 
 
 " Kirkcaldy, September 5. I received your most interesting 
 letter, and wept over it. I trust that your family will be taught 
 of God, and be enabled to spread a savour of good things over 
 the neighbourhood around them. You cannot write too often, 
 too minutely, or at too great length. I feel that I shall ever 
 take a great interest in my old parish ; and it is my wish that 
 God would make me more mindful of them all, and more fervent 
 in my daily prayers for them than I have ever yet been. 
 
 " I have a short address to Kilmany in the press. I was ob- 
 liged to confine myself very much to one topic. I hope I may 
 have been well directed in my choice of it ; and it will give me 
 pleasure to hear from you afterwards that it is read with accept- 
 ance and impression by my much loved people. ... I mean, if 
 I can get hold of ' Witherspoon on Eegeneration ' in Edinburgh, 
 to send you a copy. It is a truly important treatise, and I think 
 will be much liked both by you and Mr. Paterson. I hope you 
 are both holding fast your confidence. What a privilege, when 
 we are enabled by faith .to say of God, each for and of himself, 
 that He is my God. Now, all have a warrant for this. God 
 does not refuse us, but how many of us refuse Him ! He is 
 pleased with the faith of a creature saying of Him that He is 
 my God. With such a faith as this how delightful is existence ! 
 How light are all its cares ! How calm and clear that soul 
 which can so rest upon God. Do, my dear sir, dwell much 
 upon the promises, and shut not your eye upon the precepts. 
 They go hand in hand. By the one you are enabled to fulfil 
 the other ; and with the joys of the Christian faith to combine 
 the diligence of the Christian practice. 
 
 " I am obliged to conclude for want of time ; but do you 
 write me soon, and fill up every corner of your letter to me." 
 
 The Address to the Inhabitants of Kilmany referred to in the
 
 360 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 preceding letter, excited on its appearance considerable and un- 
 expected censure. Private remonstrances, letters from friends, 
 pamphlets and reviews, informed its author that he was believed 
 by many to give an unwise and unscriptural advice in urging those 
 who, in the first stages of religious earnestness, feel unsettled 
 and insecure as to the ground of their acceptance with God, to 
 set themselves immediately, and with all diligence, to renounce 
 every obviously wrong thing they had hitherto practised, and to 
 do every obviously right thing which they had neglected. But 
 neither private censure nor public assault could tempt Mr. Chal- 
 mers into controversy. The impression made at the time upon his 
 mind was expressed in the following letter to Mr. Edie. His 
 latest and maturest judgment saw nothing in the Address, as it 
 originally stood, to alter or explain away : 
 
 " Glasgow, Nov. 25. I am glad to observe from you that the 
 printed Address was not unacceptable to many. It has excited 
 a good deal of speculation both in Glasgow and Edinburgh ; and 
 I confess I should have been better pleased had I heard of its 
 practical impression on the consciences and lives of some readers 
 than of all those approvals and objections which imply nothing 
 more than an anxiety to give the truths I have brought forward 
 a right adjustment in their speculative system. It would com- 
 fort me much to know that it told practically on a willing and 
 obedient people in your neighbourhood. If it has no other effect 
 than to set them a doing and be satisfied with themselves, it does 
 mischief; and sorry should I be if, in my attempt to divide the 
 word of truth, I have failed in giving the faith, the humility, the 
 godliness of the New Testament, that high supremacy which 
 belongs to them. Oh! my dear sir, never forget that while 
 called upon to be strong, it is to be strong in the grace that is in 
 the Lord Jesus. Have your eye ever directed to Him as the 
 alone fountain out of whose supplies you obtain strength for 
 doing anything aright. Go to God on the firm ground of His 
 righteousness as your alone plea for acceptance before Him ; and 
 remember that it is only through the channel of His mediator- 
 ship that you get that washing of regeneration and that renewing 
 of the Holy Ghost which lie at the bottom of all right and 
 spiritual obedience. 
 
 " I was in Edinburgh a fortnight ago, giving a little assist- 
 ance at their sacrament. From the top of the Calton Hill I saw 
 Normanlaw, an object visible from the west window of my manse. 
 Dr. Jones was with me, but this did not hinder me from gazing
 
 LETTERS TO MR. WATSON. 361 
 
 on the pinnacle with a most eager direction of my heart to that 
 dear vale which stretches eastward from its base. 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 and contrast the days which now are with 
 the days which once were, when I sat embosomed in tranquillity 
 and friendship, and conld divide the whole time between the pur- 
 suits of sacred literature and the work of dealing out simple and 
 spiritual teaching among my affectionate parishioners. This 
 system is now, I grieve to say it, greatly broken up ; and one 
 must signalize himself by resisting every established practice, or 
 spend a heartless, hard-driving, distracting, and wearing-out life 
 among the bustle of unministerial work, and no less unministerial 
 company. I do not know what it will come to, but I can easily 
 perceive that I shall not be right till I get myself emancipated 
 from the multiplied drudgery of these ever-recurring avocations ; 
 and should I obtain this emancipation, then I grant you that 
 Glasgow is a highly interesting field that much kindness and 
 much principle are to be found in it that the good which is to 
 be done and the good which might be done are incalculable, and 
 that I have already met with individuals in whom I can enjoy 
 all that undisguised sincerity of friendship, and all that sympathy 
 of Christian feeling which so often cheered and refreshed me 
 when I lived in your village, and could obtain at a call the benefit 
 and the pleasure of your evening conversations." 
 
 After a refreshing fortnight in Fifeshire, Mr. Chalmers returned 
 to Glasgow on Saturday the 16th September, and removed from 
 his solitary lodgings in Eotten-row to a family establishment in 
 Charlotte Street. The happy effect of this change is indicated 
 in the contrast between two letters to his old friend and neigh- 
 bour, the Rev. Mr. Watson, minister of Leuchars, the first written 
 at the close of his first week in Glasgow, the second about a 
 month after his settlement in Charlotte Street : 
 
 " Glasgow, July 29, 1815. I seize the opportunity of a half- 
 hour to write you a few words. 1 can give you no satisfaction 
 whatever as to my liking or not liking Glasgow. Were I to judge 
 by my present feelings, I would say that I dislike it most 
 violently; but the present state of my mind is not a fair criterion 
 at a distance from my family, and in a land of strangers ; and 
 though beset with polite attentions, feeling that there is posi-
 
 362 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 tively nothing in them all to replace those warmer and kindlier 
 enjoyments which friendship brings along with it. What is to 
 come out of it I know not ; but I may at least say, that all 
 around me yet carries the aspect of desolation. This, however, 
 I am sensible is due to me and not to them for smarting, as I 
 do, under the agonies of a sore separation, and broken loose, as 
 it were, from the whole world of my former acquaintances, I am 
 not in a state for appreciating or enjoying the undoubted worth 
 and excellence of many who have come under my observation. 
 
 "I have got about one hundred calls in the course of this 
 week, and I foresee a deal of very strange work in the business 
 of a Glasgow minister. What think you of my putting my name 
 to two applications for licences to sell spirits, and two certificates 
 of being qualified to follow out the calling of pedlars, in the 
 course of yesterday ? Glasgow is a great thoroughfare to the 
 religious world. The most remarkable men I have met with in 
 that way since my arrival are Mr. Simeon of Cambridge and 
 Mr. Walker of Dublin. 
 
 " I called at Pilmuir on my way west ; and were anything 
 necessary to revive and perpetuate the friendship I have ever felt 
 for Mrs. Fortune, the kind and benignant reception I received 
 from her, though I had not seen her for about six years, awoke 
 my every sentiment of tenderness and regard. I was in great 
 heaviness, and felt all the bitterness of a man who was going he 
 knew not whither ; and in my whole progress, indeed, from Kil- 
 many to Glasgow, I had the feeling as if all the scenes and all 
 the friendships of my former years were dying away from me, 
 nor have I found a single object to occupy the cheerless blank 
 which the warm associations of other days have left behind them. 
 
 " I would think of your dear and quiet neighbourhood if I 
 could do it without anguish; but I have no pleasure in the 
 roaming of my fancy over the charms of a scenery I have aban- 
 doned. Tell Mrs. Watson that she is the object of my daily 
 prayers, and that I can never think of her without the most 
 grateful sense of all her forbearance with me. May the blessing 
 of God rest on your peaceful habitation. May your hearts be 
 united to fear Him. May you live together as fellow-travellers 
 to eternity ; and may you and your children after you find their 
 final settlement in that unfading home where there is no sadness 
 and no separation." 
 
 " Glasgow, Oct. 27, 1815. It is just as you said. Mrs. Chal- 
 mers has come, and time has had space to operate, and all the
 
 GLASGOW A WONDERFUL PLACE. * 363 
 
 familiarities of a sheltered home and a friendly neighbourhood are 
 gathering around me, and I am every day getting more recon- 
 ciled to my new situation, though I trust 4 that the former home 
 will never lose its place in my memory, and the former friends 
 will never lose their place in my affection. I can think of you 
 all with less pain, but with not less tenderness, and I regale my- 
 self with the hope of a deliberate visit in summer, as one of the 
 most blissful visions of futurity on this side of time. 
 
 " This, sir, is a wonderful place ; and I am half entertained 
 and half provoked by some of the peculiarities of its people. 
 The peculiarity which bears hardest upon me is the incessant 
 demand they have upon all occasions for the personal attend- 
 ance of the ministers. They must have four to every funeral, 
 or they do not think that it has been genteelly gone through. 
 They must have one or more to all the committees of all the 
 societies. They must fall in at every procession. They must 
 attend examinations innumerable, and eat of the dinners con- 
 sequent upon these examinations. They have a niche assigned 
 them in almost every public doing, and that niche must be filled 
 up by them, or the doing loses all its solemnity in the eyes of 
 the public. There seems to be a superstitious charm in the very 
 sight of them, and such is the manifold officiality with which 
 they are covered that they must be paraded among all the meet- 
 ings and all the institutions. I gave in to all this at first, but 
 I am beginning to keep a suspicious eye upon these repeated 
 demands ever since I sat nearly an hour in grave deliberation 
 with a number of others upon a subject connected with the pro- 
 perty of a corporation, and that subject was a gutter, and the 
 question was whether it should be bought and covered up, or 
 let alone and left to lie open. I am gradually separating myself 
 from all this trash, and long to establish it as a doctrine that 
 the life of a town minister should be what the life of a country 
 minister might be, that is, a life of intellectual leisure, with the 
 otium of literary pursuits, and his entire time disposable to the 
 purposes to which the Apostles gave themselves wholly, that is, 
 the ministry of the word and prayer. 
 
 " My sacrament takes place on Sunday-week. I have had a 
 very interesting set of young communicants. Their number is 
 only twenty-two. The truth is, that in large towns, where it 
 is so easy to escape observation, people do not come forward to 
 the sacrament so much from the mere impulse of example. 
 There is more of a real principle in the matter ; and I have met
 
 304 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 with some very delightful exhibitions of the genuine working of 
 humility and conviction in the minds of my visitors. 
 
 " The University is now sitting, and the society of professors 
 and students will add another very agreeable infusion to the 
 general society of the place. 
 
 " Tell Miss Lawson that I was asking for her. I cannot name 
 a person but my imagination summons up the localities of your 
 dear and interesting neighbourhood. May the Lord Jesus see 
 much of the travail of His soul among the people of your parish, 
 and may He grant, that though here at a distance from each 
 other, we may so live and so walk in His faith arid obedience 
 that we shall be found in fellowship together at the side of His 
 everlasting throne. THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The wide forthgoings of his own cordial disposition which in- 
 vited and encouraged approach, and the celebrity which had 
 now gathered round his name, made him the object of attraction 
 to thousands. Modestly blind to all this, he continued to regard 
 and to describe the annoyances to which he was consequently 
 exposed as the ordinary accompaniments of every city ministry. 
 One of the earliest of those details in which he so often after- 
 wards indulged is given in a letter to his sister, who had recently 
 been severely tried in her own family : 
 
 " Glasgow, January 5, 1816. MY EVER DEAREST JANE, 
 We have now fairly settled in Glasgow, and I can speak more 
 confidently as to my taste and liking for my new situation. Our 
 establishment consists at present of my wife, daughter, Charles, 
 two boarders, Messrs. Laird and Scriba, and finally, three ser- 
 vants. Our domestic society is agreeable enough. My great 
 time for it is an hour after supper, being much employed through 
 the day. We live in a house at 75 a year, which is looked 
 upon as cheap in Glasgow, and is a pretty fair specimen of the 
 prices of other things. We have, however, a great deal of ac- 
 commodation, insomuch that Miss Pratt lived some months with 
 us, and Miss Margaret Balfour of Dundee, your favourite, spent 
 a few weeks with us. Her father came for her, and he is almost 
 the only interesting acquaintance we have seen from our old 
 neighbourhood since our arrival in this place. 
 
 " So much for the home department. As to the foreign, my 
 chief annoyance is the quantity of secular work which has been 
 suffered to accumulate on the clergy such as the business of 
 the poor, and of hospitals, and of public institutions. This I
 
 GLASGOW ANNOYANCES. 365 
 
 have set my face against, and though I have a good deal of 
 opposition to encounter, yet I am persuaded that I have the 
 solid countenance and approbation of all who value the pure ob- 
 jects of the Christian ministry, who have reflected well on the 
 separate and spiritual nature of their employments, and formed 
 a right comparative estimate of the benevolence which points to 
 time arid that which points to eternity. 
 
 " My next annoyance is the multitude of calls and invitations. 
 The first I have not nearly returned, and they will not be re- 
 peated ; the second I have accepted only to a limited extent, 
 and of late I have been obliged by my tendency to cold to de- 
 cline them all, which I shall probably continue to do during the 
 winter months. In this I have a few clamours to contend with, 
 but I have a numerous set of friends who value my health and 
 usefulness, and am borne up by their approving testimony in 
 this particular also. 
 
 "My third annoyance is the fatigue of preaching. The 
 church is in a confined situation, and crowded to excess. It 
 is partly my own fault, for I preach louder and longer than I 
 used to do. I am to make the diminution of my fatigue a 
 serious object, and in this I am so heartily sympathized with by 
 my congregation, that they are just now pressing an assistant upon 
 me for half the day. I hope I shall not find this necessary. 
 
 " My fourth annoyance is the want of seasoning to the air 
 and climate of Glasgow. The frost has an opposite effect to 
 what I was counting on. It condenses the smoke of the public 
 works and sends it down in the form of darkness visible through 
 the streets and passages. Here the kindness of the people is 
 unbounded. I spend a great part of my time among the neigh- 
 bouring villas of the town. I am just now writing you from 
 one of those pure country houses. My feelings are not at all 
 peculiar or alarming. Every new comer requires such a season- 
 ing ; and Dr. Lockhart, one of the clergy, told me that he was 
 miserable his first winter here, and has enjoyed uninterrupted 
 health ever since. I have said v so much of the disadvantages 
 that I have left no room for the encouragements ; these I shall 
 postpone to my next letter, for I will not encroach on the space 
 that I have been in the habit of devoting to the first and most 
 valuable of all subjects. 
 
 " I trust that my dear Jane is every day finding the Saviour 
 more precious to her soul, and is receiving such larger supplies 
 of that faith which is not of ourselves, but is the gift of God,
 
 366 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 that she is enabled more and more to rest on Him for the fulfil- 
 ment of all His promises. What I should like to realize is 
 the feeling of being a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth to 
 shake off that obstinate delusion which binds me to the world 
 as my home to take up with eternity as my settled habitation 
 and transfer the wishes and the interests and the hopes which 
 are so apt to grovel among the objects of a perishable scene, to 
 the realities and the glories of Paradise. Let this be our dili- 
 gent aspiring at this season of the year ; and oh how it would 
 elevate and tranquillize us amid the troubles of that intervening 
 period which is so soon to terminate ! How little, my dearest, 
 do all your past afflictions appear now that they have been >en- 
 dured ! Be assured that in a little time all your present and all 
 your future will just bear the same character of lightness and 
 insignificance. Do, then, be of good cheer. Do summon up 
 confidence in God. Do let the pure light of faith disperse those 
 darkening clouds of anxiety which so often beset and bewilder 
 us. By such an exercise as this you do honour to God. The 
 more unstaggering your faith is amid the threatening appear- 
 ances of sense, the more is God well pleased with it. It is a 
 fine description of the faith of Abraham, that he hoped against 
 hope. Do the same, my dear Jane ; and if you fail not in your 
 faith, God will not fail in His faithfulness. Let us walk no 
 longer by sight. Let every trial of faith be to us a trial of pa- 
 tience also. Let the realities of a coming home be more and 
 more familiar to us. Let us walk among them by contemplation, 
 and let them shed a lustre over the daily doings of us who 
 profess to be candidates for eternity. 
 
 " Give my kindest remembrance and the compliments of the 
 season to Mr. Morton. Yours, very affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 FIRST-FRUITS OF HIS MINISTRY IN GLASGOW. 367 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ME. THOMAS SMITII SINGULAR ATTACHMENT TO AND COBKE8PONDENCE WITH 
 HIM HIS ILLNESS AND DEATH. 
 
 THE desolation of heart felt by Mr. Chalmers on first coming 
 to Glasgow was speedily repaired. When the eight years ol his 
 residence in that city closed, he bade farewell to such a band of 
 devoted personal friends and fellow-labourers as seldom if ever 
 have been seen to cluster round any single Christian philanthro- 
 pist. And ere the first month of that residence had gone by, 
 his affections had alighted upon a youthful member of his con- 
 gregation, to whom he speedily became bound by ties of such 
 peculiar strength and tenderness as threw over their brief earthly 
 intercourse all the air of a spiritual romance. Mr. Thomas 
 Smith, the son of a well-known Glasgow publisher, was qualify- 
 ing himself for the profession of a writer or attorney. His 
 family having interested themselves in Mr. Chalmers's appoint- 
 ment, he was early introduced to the notice of his new minister, 
 and occasionally invited to accompany him in his daily walk or 
 ride. His intellectual accomplishments, his refined taste, his gen- 
 tle bearing, his pure and aspiring aims, soon won Mr. Chalmers's 
 heart. But what gave him a still stronger hold upon that heart 
 than any personal endowment, was his being, so far as was 
 known to Mr. Chalmers, the first-fruits spiritually of his ministry 
 in Glasgow. As if all those affections, which wrenched from 
 their old objects were in search of new ones, had suddenly con- 
 centrated on him, he became the object of an attachment which, 
 in the brief entries of a private journal, now reduced to the or- 
 dinary measure of a single line for each succeeding day, vents 
 itself in such expressions as the following: "Called on Mr. 
 Thomas Smith ; God, purify and christianize and give salu- 
 tary effect to my regard for him." " Had long walks and con- 
 versations with T. S. my God, save me from all that is 
 idolatrous in my regard for him." The occasional soon turned 
 into daily intercourse, a trysting-place being appointed on the 
 banks of the Monkland Canal, where each day at a set hour
 
 368 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 they met. And the general conversation of ordinary friendship 
 soon flowed in that new channel into which it was directed by a 
 heart yearning for the spiritual and eternal welfare of its object. 
 Ere long, close and affectionate as it was, the ont-dobr intercourse 
 was not enough. There were meetings besides for reading the 
 Holy Scriptures and for prayer ; and great as were the efforts 
 and fatigues of the Tron Church pulpit, an hour each Sabbath 
 evening was set apart for conjoined devotion. Nothing was 
 suffered to interfere with these daily meetings. " Should these 
 flying showers be the order of this day," so writes Mr. Chalmers 
 one bleak December morning, "it will blow up our proposed 
 arrangement, in which case (and you can judge of this when the 
 time comes) I would propose that you should call on me as soon 
 after two as you find convenient, when we shall go through the 
 regular business of the day ; and if the weather does not admit 
 of exercise out of doors, I should then like to go to Stockwell * 
 and have half an hour at bagatelle." Upon another morning of 
 this same month, and as if unable to wait till a few hours 
 brought round a personal interview, Mr. Chalmers writes " 1 
 am not so well as to go to the Presbytery, but not so unwell as 
 to be confined from walking. At the same time, I should like 
 the walk to be in my garden rather than at the usual rendez- 
 vous ; and if this reach you in time, you will oblige me much 
 by bending your course to Charlotte Street so soon as released 
 from business. 
 
 " May your progress in all that is Christian become every 
 day more sensible in your heart and life. May the grand pe- 
 culiarities of the faith take their firm and effectual hold of you, 
 and a resemblance to that very peculiar example which the 
 Author of this faith set before you be more and more visibly 
 inscribed on every lineament of your character. May you grow 
 in all that is delicate and amiable and honourable and of good 
 report. The semblance of all these may and has been attained 
 out of Christ, but such a semblance as will not bear examina- 
 tion ; and be assured, my dearest of earthly friends, that those 
 things of which Christ cannot say in the day of reckoning that 
 they are done unto me, will, when" sifted to the interior, be found 
 to be not well done. If, on the impulse of natural compassion, I 
 surrender a sum of money to a charitable purpose, verily, I say 
 unto you, that this deed has its reward. It is rewarded by the 
 pleasure of the exercise, or by the gratitude of the object, or by 
 
 The residence of Mr. Smith.
 
 " I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY. 369 
 
 the reputation of a generous character in society, all of which 
 rewards have their accomplishment in life, but reach not to 
 eternity. Suppose I do the very same deed because Christ re- 
 quires it of me, or because I have cultivated the feeling of com- 
 passion at His requirement, He who knows what is in man sees 
 the principle of homage to Him in the performance, and He 
 honours it accordingly with His testimony in the eventful day of 
 our fate ; and thus the same external deed, which in one is of 
 no account on the great scale of immortality, is in another a 
 treasure laid up in heaven, a jewel in that crown of splendour 
 which is to encircle the head of the righteous. I have heard the 
 saying of our Saviour on that clay turned to the purpose of mag- 
 nifying benevolence at the expense of faith. Now, the very 
 reason why these deeds of benevolence are so accounted of is, 
 that they were done in faith ' forasmuch as in doing it to these 
 ye did it xinto me.' 
 
 " Indulge this effusion, and rest assured that it is the effusion 
 of a heart which longs and which rejoices over you. May God 
 spare us for many days a comfort and a means of establishment 
 to each other. May we have much sweet counsel together in 
 this the land of our pilgrimage ; and after our course is finished, 
 and we have passed through the trials and allurements of this 
 deceitful scene, may we be found without spot and blameless 
 before the throne of God's glory. Oh I when I think of the 
 exposures and the dangers of this world, and how the yearly 
 thousands of victims are swelling the sad account of depravity 
 and of its triumphs, when I think of all this and look to the 
 blue serene of yon innocent and peaceful heaven of which oui 
 kind and good Saviour tells us that there is nothing there to 
 offend, I can enter into the sentiment of the patriarch, ' I would 
 not live alway.' " 
 
 " Dec. 8, 1815. This cold of mine is getting a little ob- 
 stinate, and I have determined on the confinement of another 
 day. I leave you to guess the best earthly expedient I have 
 for alleviating the irksomeness of this confinement, and trust the 
 application of it to your much valued friendship. 
 
 " Leave not business on my account ; but as you go through 
 the world, may the fear of God and a watchful and well 
 principled conscience go as your guides and your safeguards 
 along with you. 
 
 " My prayer is, that you may never cease your exertions after 
 
 VOL. I. 2 A
 
 370 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 an unsoiled gracefulness and brilliancy of character. Try and 
 find your way to the sentiment, that this can only be done by 
 the grace that is in the Lord Jesus, and should be done as an 
 offering unto Him. Let all self-complacency be banished from 
 our hearts. Let duty to God be the principle, and His glory, 
 rather than the adornment of self, be the object ; but amid all 
 my distinctions about motives let me not perplex you out of that 
 vigorous career in which I trust you will be always making 
 progress and always abounding." 
 
 When a week at Blochairn or Kilmardinny* broke in upon 
 the accustomed fellowship, an almost daily interchange of letters 
 took place, occasioning a correspondence f in which the questions 
 of election and vows and the propriety of attending public as- 
 semblies for dancing, were discussed. Step by step the Christian 
 minister leads along the yoxithful and beloved disciple thrown 
 once or twice into anxiety, which breaks at last into exulting 
 joy, as he discerns the clear and unmistakable tokens of a true 
 and firm and advancing faith in the Redeemer. With exquisite 
 wisdom, too, is the counsel of the Christian adviser tempered. 
 " I could not," he says in a letter dated Kilmardinny, January 
 6, 1816, " write you my customary note yesterday, and propose 
 to make up for it by a longer communication this day. I have 
 received your different notes, which are every day advancing 
 in interest, and suggest to my own mind most useful topics of 
 consideration. May God grant you a large supply of the spirit 
 of earnestness to be altogether what He would have you to be, 
 and to do altogether what He would have you to do. You have 
 great encouragement in the saying, ' that whosoever willeth to 
 do His will shall know of His doctrine.' I shall not confine 
 myself to one particular topic, but come forward with a few mis- 
 cellaneous points suggested by our whole correspondence. First, 
 Your intercourse with me filled up so much of your time. 
 Leave not this time in a state of exposure to any adverse or 
 questionable influence. Be at no loss how to dispose of it. It 
 is a wise and admirable arrangement of matters when such an 
 employment is laid down for every hour as to beget no wavering, 
 no idleness, no hesitation about what shall I turn to next. And 
 remember that needful amusement is not idleness healthful 
 
 * Blochairn, the country residence of C. S. Parker, Esq., and Kilmardinny, of J. Tennent, 
 Esq., both attached friends, to whose neighbouring villas Dr. Chalmtrs delighted to retire 
 for study from the oppressive bustle of the city. 
 
 t 8e " Correspondence of Dr. Chalmers," pp. 11-48.
 
 PROPER EMPLOYMENT OF TIME. 371 
 
 relaxation is not idleness attention to friends and acquaintances 
 is rot idleness falling in with such arrangements in the way of 
 business or visiting as your natural superiors expect you to con- 
 cuj in, and which are not hostile to principle, however offensive 
 to taste and inclination, is not idleness. All this you may do 
 urto the Lord, for He wills all this ; but may Heaven ever pre- 
 serve you from such idleness as, to escape from the misery of its 
 ovn languor, flies for resources to any one quarter where it may 
 find them. Do study such a filling up of time as will keep you 
 avay from the evil communications of a world in wickedness ; 
 and if, when you look around, you see an unvaried atmosphere 
 of corruption, think that Christ came to make unto Himself a 
 peculiar people, and do nobly signalize yourself; and in daring 
 tc be singular, lift your intrepid front against the tide of general 
 example, and follow serenely the suggestions of principle amid 
 all the ridicule of the world, and all its outcry. 
 
 " Secondly, You complain of the turmoil of business. In as 
 far as it takes you away from the more congenial exercise of 
 study or prayer or religious contemplation, I can conceive, my 
 dear sir, that it might be a matter of violent dislike to you. 
 But remember that this is not of your own voluntary adoption. 
 In your present circumstances business is laid upon you by an- 
 other, and you are acquitting yourself of your duty to Him when 
 you are giving your time and your attention to it. I can con- 
 ceive a man who felt more happiness in the duties of the closet 
 than in those of society, to be making a sacrifice of principle to 
 inclination in the very midst of religious exercises. Do feel that 
 you are religiously employed when you are giving your faithful 
 attention to the matters of the office ; and instead of thinking 
 that religion is a kind of secret indulgence to be snatched by a 
 kind of stealth from the ordinary affairs of life, do make a study 
 of spreading religion over all your daily path, and then will you 
 realize the habit of walking before God all the day long, of doing 
 all things to His glory. 
 
 " Thirdly, On the subject of resolutions I postpone many 
 things to our future conversation ; but sure I am, that there are 
 many things which God desires to be done, and which you could 
 resolve upon the doing of, and actually do, on the inferior prin- 
 ciple of prudence and interest. It delights me to think that 
 on this ground you have already made such progress, and so 
 signalized yourself. But this dejlight would all vanish did I see 
 you stop short and rest satisfied with a victory over the grosser
 
 372 MEMOIRS OF DB. CHALMERS. 
 
 profligacies of vice, and the attainment of obedience in its ex- 
 ternals and its decencies ; and I can scarcely say how mud I 
 feel drawn to you by your last note, when you talk of yoir 
 higher aspirings when you tell me of your attempts to realize 
 the presence of God in the hours of business, and of your dii- 
 satisfaction with yourself at the want of an entire and successftl 
 accomplishment. 
 
 " Fourthly, Do, my dear sir, hearken diligently when I say, 
 that now is the time for casting yourself more than ever on the 
 sufficiency of Christ. Forgetfulness of God is such an act o ? 
 spiritual disobedience, that it is said in the Psalms ' They who 
 forget God shall be turned into hell.' You complain of this 
 forgetfulness. You may be mindful of Him more than others, 
 but you are not mindful of Him up to the extent of His clam 
 on you. You are therefore short of His glory ; you are a debtor 
 to His law to do the whole law, and this debt you are never dis- 
 charging. It is accumulating every hour upon you ; and witi 
 a right sense of this you must be an humbled, and unless you 
 have fled to the refuge set before you, you must be a disquieted 
 and alarmed sinner. Now, you may say that you have taken 
 up with the Saviour already, and that all this is therefore gone 
 by. But, my dear sir, this taking up with Him as the ground 
 of your acceptance with God is not an act of the mind which 
 starts into perfection at once. It is a growing sentiment. It 
 is getting fresh accessions from the experience of every day. 
 Every recollection of your failures and your shortcomings should 
 be giving it new strength should be shutting you more up unto 
 the faith of His atonement should be giving you a livelier and 
 a more affecting sense of your extreme and constant need of Him. 
 And though I meant to expatiate on another topic, which I find 
 I must postpone for want of room, I will barely state to you 
 that as it is affronting Christ not to put immediate faith in His 
 testimony, so it is your duty now to trust Him ; it is lingering 
 about your acceptance of His offer not to accept of it at this 
 moment. He makes you welcome to all the benefits of His 
 mediatorship at this instant of time ; and when there is strength 
 offered along with forgiveness, be assured, my dearest friend, 
 that when what is lacking in your faith is perfected, you will 
 know what it is to rejoice in the Lord, and to combine with 
 great quietness and great confidence a rapid and shining pro- 
 gress in the new obedience of the gospel. 
 
 " I have written the above in a very great hurry, and I fear
 
 MR. SMITH'S ILLNESS. 373 
 
 that it may darken instead of edifying. I fear you may think it 
 written in a tone of reproof. This is so far from intended that 
 I look on your mind as in a more satisfying state by your last 
 than I ever before observed it. I am greatly interested in you. 
 You fill up a large space in my heart. My prayers, I trust, will 
 never cease to ascend daily in your behalf to our common Father. 
 Do, my dear sir, minister more and more comfort to me by your 
 growing decision and steadiness. May light and love and peace 
 take up their firm establishment in your bosom ; and may all 
 the graces of the Spirit form you into one complete image of 
 Him who is set before us as an example. Yours, with warmest 
 affection, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Towards the close of January an illness which did not for some 
 weeks stop the forenoon interviews, occasionally prevented Mr. 
 Smith from going to Charlotte Street on the Sabbath evenings. 
 " My ever dearest sir," so writes Mr. Chalmers on an occasion of 
 this kind, " I have now given up all hope of your coming, and 
 do feel your absence to be a blank to me. I am reading ' Law,' 
 and find him very powerful ; and I have now sat down to the 
 work of having that communion with my dear Christian friend 
 in writing which I expected to have in the still sweeter exercise 
 of talking face to face, and of exchanging animated converse on 
 a theme to which I trust we shall ever be bound by one warm 
 and affectionate sympathy. Our week-day conversation and let- 
 ters will, I trust, have ever much of Sabbath unction pervading 
 them ; but there is one point of distinction I should like to esta- 
 blish between the seventh day and the remaining six. Let all 
 argument if possible be banished from our Sabbath converse, and 
 let us know what it is on that day to fill up an hour not with 
 treating religion so much as an intellectual subject, but as an 
 affair of the heart, a matter of feeling and of devotion, that love 
 to God may be made to burn within us, and the hope of an 
 eternal Sabbath to elevate our hearts, and a refining purity of 
 thought and of purpose to sanctify our every desire, and faith in 
 the great Redeemer to be working all its peaceful influences upon 
 our souls, and the contemplation of His bright example to be 
 likening us to Him more and more, and the whole effect of our 
 happy Sabbath hour to send each of us to his separate employ- 
 ment in that frame and temper of heaven which fills the whole 
 man with superiority to the vanities of the world, and a mild 
 quiet benevolent tenderness for all who live in it.
 
 374 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Agreeably to this I shall not take up the remainder of my 
 time with any topic of observation whatever, but recollecting 
 that Dr. Samuel Johnson often wrote his prayers, and found this 
 a more powerfully devotional exercise than if he had said them, 
 I entreat my dear friend's indulgence if I do the same at present ; 
 and as a blessing on that tender intimacy to which God, who 
 turneth the heart of man withersoever He will, has turned our 
 hearts, is the great burden of my present aspiration to heaven, I 
 send it to you that you may, if you approve, join in it, and that 
 the promise may be realized in us, that if two shall agree touch- 
 ing anything they shall ask, it shall be done unto them." 
 
 " God, do Thou, look propitiously on our friendship. Do 
 Thou purify it from all that is base, and 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 con- 
 summation at the right hand of Thine everlasting throne. 
 
 " We place ourselves before Thee as the children of error. 
 grant that in Thy light 'we may clearly see light: for this pur- 
 pose let our eye be single. Let our intention to please Thee in 
 all things be honest. With the childlike purpose of being alto- 
 gether what Thou wouldst have us to be, may we place ourselves 
 before Thy Bible, that we may draw our every lesson, and our 
 every comfort out of it. that Thy Spirit may preside over 
 our daily reading of Thy word, and that the word of our blessed 
 Saviour may dwell in us richly in all wisdom. 
 
 " save us from the deceitfulness of this world. Forbid that 
 any one of its pleasures should sway us aside from the path of 
 entire devotedness to Thee. Give us to be vigilant, and cautious, 
 and fearful. May we think of Thine eye at all times upon us ; 
 and may the thought make us to tremble at the slightest de- 
 parture from that narrow way of sanctification which leads to the 
 house of our Father who is in heaven. 
 
 " We desire to honour the Son even as we honour the Father. 
 We act in the presumption of our hearts when we think of placing 
 ourselves before Thee in our own righteousness. Draw us to 
 Christ Make Him all our desire and all our salvation. Give 
 remission of sins out of His blood. Give strength out of His 
 fulness ; and crowned with all might may we not only be fellow- 
 helpers to each other, but may the work of turning sons and
 
 FREQUENT CORRESPONDENCE. 375 
 
 daughters unto righteousness prosper in our hands. All we ask 
 is for the sake of Thy Sou and our Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
 Amen." 
 
 By the end of February Mr. Smith's illness had assumed a 
 more alarming aspect not yet confining him entirely to the 
 house, but exciting the darkest apprehensions that consumption 
 had begun its fatal work. Anxiety now fanned affection; and 
 not content with frequent visits, almost daily do such letters as 
 the following pass from Charlotte Street to Stockwell : 
 
 " Feb. 22, 1816. I am so heavy and unwell that I am not to 
 study this forenoon ; but if I can get released from a round of 
 visiting to-day, I mean to try an excursion on horseback, in 
 which case I shall go to Shieldhall, and also pay a visit to my 
 friend Mr. Heywood. I purpose, however, returning before din- 
 ner, and hope, if you cannot come to me, to be in sufficient 
 strength and spirits for enjoying your much loved society in 
 your house in the evening. It is remarkable, that when all 
 taste for other employment has abandoned me, I still find relief 
 in the work of unbosoming myself to you. I can assure you 
 that frequent and friendly conversation with you, ever rising to 
 higher degrees of Christian faith and purity and elevation, is a 
 mighty ingredient with me of this world's happiness. May God 
 turn this taste to such an account as that a happiness so mingled 
 and so imperfect, and lying so open to interruption from the fear- 
 fulnesses of each of the parties in this dark scene of existence, 
 may, after death has suspended it, reappear in a brighter and 
 more enduring scene, and be fed with its immediate supplies 
 from the throne of that God who will stand revealed to the pure 
 in heart, and will dispense a blessedness which knows no alloy 
 and shall experience no termination. I have not yet had heart 
 either for my chapter or my prayer, but I trust that God will be 
 present with me now that I am going to them. I shall pray for 
 you I trust with a Christian tenderness." 
 
 " Feb. 23, 1816. I mean to suspend our ordinary subject, 
 having room for no other theme than that which is suggested by 
 the fulness of a heart that never in the whole period of our short 
 but most interesting acquaintance felt so much tenderness asso- 
 ciated at the same moment with so much tranquillity. 
 
 " My heart is greatly enlarged towards you, and there is not 
 a more congenial exercise for it at this moment than to pour
 
 376 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 it out before my high and my heavenly Witness in the fervency 
 of prayer, that He will cause you to abound more and more 
 that He will keep up and increase the supplies of that purifying 
 influence by which you have hitherto been preserved from falling 
 
 that He will bless the common tenderness which fills each of 
 
 our hearts and knits us together in a friendship far more endear- 
 ing than any I ever before experienced that He will Christian- 
 ize the whole of this friendship, and direct it to the love of 
 Himself, and make it the instrument of a growing knowledge of 
 and attachment to His sacred word, and render us wise unto 
 salvation, reducing us to the lowliness of little children, and 
 making us to derive all our hopes of acceptance from the merits 
 of His Son, and all our progress in sanctification from that kind 
 and free Spirit which will never be refused to our humble, 
 earnest, and persevering prayers. 
 
 " You have eased me and comforted me, and what I now ask 
 is, that you will pray for me. I have great need, my dear sir, 
 of all that your intercessions can do for me. I desire to be more 
 and more humbled into a sense of my own nothingness; and 
 sure I am that until I am so, God will disappoint all my vain 
 expectations, and show me that it is only when He taketh unto 
 Himself His great power that many are turned from sin unto 
 righteousness." 
 
 " Feb. 25, 1816. I fear from your non-appearance this day 
 that in spite of your brother's favourable account of you, you 
 may have felt yourself worse. May God speedily restore you to 
 health, and may we both be spared to see much of His goodness, 
 and to praise His holy name, and to serve His cause, and to war 
 it in our respective spheres against every power of darkness, and 
 to give much energy, derived by prayer from His Spirit, to the 
 great work of turning many from the power of Satan unto God. 
 
 "I pray that you may be more and more shut up into the 
 faith of Christ, that you may know how much strength is given 
 in the mere act of resting upon Him, and how the quietness of a 
 conscious reconciliation with God is the fittest attitude for re- 
 ceiving power to become one of His children. Now, this recon- 
 ciliation is unto all and upon all who believe. The tidings of 
 great joy do not have their right and their intended effect upon 
 you if they do not make you joyful at the first moment of their 
 import being understood. After being told that the blood of 
 Christ cleanseth from all sin, and that this privilege is given to
 
 THE DAY OF MR. SMITH S MAJORITY. 377 
 
 all believers, what is it that you wait for ere you look upon 
 yourself as a justified person in the sight of God ? Must you 
 first qualify for the privilege by obedience, and then believe ? 
 No ; believe, and take the comfort of the thing believed imme- 
 diately ; and believing all the testimony on the same principle 
 that you believe any part of it, to the comfort of the promises 
 add obedience to the precepts, and be assured that this obedience 
 will go on with a vigour and animation after the comfort is 
 established, which it could never reach out of Christ and away 
 from Him. You will then serve God without fear, in righteous- 
 ness and holiness all the days of your life. 
 
 " What should have been devotion I have turned into a disser- 
 tation. I miss our Sabbath prayer this night ; and in lieu of 
 it let me express it as the earnest topic of my supplication, that 
 the Holy Ghost may teach you and guide you unto all truth 
 that you may every day become wiser unto salvation that 
 peace and joy and progressive virtue and approving Heaven may 
 accompany your every footstep in the path of this world and 
 that we, my dearest and best loved friend I have on earth, may 
 walk side by side through the narrowness of that way which 
 leads to the heavenly inheritance." 
 
 " Stirling Road, Feb. 26, 1816. I must again be permitted 
 to deviate from our ordinary topic ; and the occasion of my do- 
 ing so is to me most deeply affecting an occasion which, I trust, 
 will take an effectual hold of your own heart, and be the mean 
 of helping forward your progress to the realms of everlasting 
 peace. 
 
 " I trust, and am sure, that on the day on which my dear 
 Mr. Smith is reading this letter, his views are shooting far be- 
 yond the objects which engross the desires of ordinary men on 
 their attainment of majority; that the world and its interests 
 are not the only, and I hope not the chief or habitual topics of 
 his contemplation ; that he is looking upon that day which many 
 call a step in human life as a step in his eternal history ; and 
 God grant that it may be a memorable epoch in that mighty 
 line which commenced with the infancy of his being, and 
 stretches forward without limit to that blissful futurity which is 
 darkened by no sorrow, and knows no termination. 
 
 " Do, my dearest sir, on this day give yourself anew and un- 
 reservedly to God. Do bring to Him for forgiveness all the sins 
 and infirmities and errors of the life that is past. Do approach
 
 378 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 His throne with the holy purpose of a firm devotedness to His 
 will in all things. Do feel yourself a most worthless and alien- 
 ated creature iip to the hour in which you are reading this, and 
 throw yourself on that grace which, shed upon you through 
 Christ the Mediator, can alone enable you to take your firm and 
 decisive march from this day as the starting-point of a new and 
 heavenly career as the entrance into the new life of the new 
 creature. 
 
 "Will you forgive me, my excellent and aspiring fellow- 
 Christian, if I venture to state one point in which we both are 
 deficient and have much before us. We are not yet sufficiently 
 humbled into the attitude of dependence on the Spirit of God. 
 We do not yet bow with enough of veneration at the name of 
 Christ for sanctification. There is still a very strong mixture of 
 self-sufficiency and self-dependence in our attempts at the service 
 of God. I speak my own intimate experience when I say that, 
 as the result of all this presumption, I feel as if I had yet done 
 nothing. I can talk and be impressed and hold sweet counsel 
 with you ; but in the scene of trial I am humbled by my for- 
 getfulness of God, by my want of delight in the doing of His 
 commandments, by the barrenness of all my affections, by my 
 enslavement to the influences of earth and of time, by my love 
 to the creature, by my darkness and hardness and insensibility 
 as to the great matters of the city that hath foundations, of 'the 
 new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 " In these circumstances, let us flee for refuge to the hope set 
 before us in the gospel. Let us keep closer by Christ than we 
 have ever yet done. Let us live a life of faith on the Son of 
 God. Let us crucify all our earthly affections, and by the Spirit 
 mortify the deeds of the body, that we may live. 
 
 " And oh that this ceaseless current of years and of seasons 
 were teaching us wisdom that we were numbering our days 
 that we were measuring our future by our past that we were 
 looking back on the twinkling rapidity of the months and the 
 weeks which have already gone and so improving the futurity 
 that lies before us, that when death shall lay us in our graves, 
 we may both, on the morning of the resurrection, emerge into 
 a scene of bliss too rapturous for conception, and too magni- 
 ficent for the attempts of the loftiest eloquence." 
 
 March opened with brightening prospects of recovery, but 
 closed amid greater darkness and uncertainty than ever. On
 
 THE SABBATH MORNING NOTE. 379 
 
 Sabbath the 24th, Mr. Chalmers was to preach before the 
 magistrates of the city. Excited groups of expectant auditors 
 were already hurrying along the Trongate, hastening to secure 
 their places in the church ; and it was within half-an-hour of 
 the time when the bell was to summon the preacher into the 
 crowded sanctuary, that he sat down and penned the following 
 lines : 
 
 " I cannot resist the opportunity of Mrs. C., who goes to in- 
 quire about you. May this be a precious Sabbath to you. If 
 languid and weak, and unable to put forth much strength in the 
 work of drawing near to God, may He put forth the strength of 
 His resistless arm, and draw near unto you. May He benig- 
 nantly reveal Himself to you as your gracious God and recon- 
 ciled Father in Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh ! may the consoling 
 truths of the gospel be felt by you, and rejoiced in ; and may 
 you know what it is to have great peace and great joy in be- 
 lieving on Him who poured out His soul unto the death for you. 
 Let Christ be on the foreground of all your religious contem- 
 plations. Feel that *x>u are safely shielded from the wrath of 
 God in the better righteousness of Him who yielded for you a 
 pure and spotless obedience ; and never, never let go your mild 
 and pleasing and tender and confiding impressions of all that 
 love which the kind and willing Saviour bears to you. You 
 may have much pain and weakness : look on it all as coming 
 from God. Feel yourself in His hand, my dearest friend, and this 
 feeling will temper all your sufferings, and sweeten them all. 
 I do God great injustice, for I feel that I do not rise to an ade- 
 quate conception of His loving-kindness and tender mercy. 
 may this sweet assurance of God be more quietly and firmly es- 
 tablished in your heart every day, and on this clay may there be 
 much of the comfort and tranquillity of Heaven's best influences 
 to make you tranquil and happy. Expect me during the in- 
 terval." 
 
 The projected visit was paid during the interval ; the brilliant 
 discourse on the Eestlessness of Human Ambition was delivered 
 before a prodigious multitude in the afternoon ; but over all the 
 excitement and fatigue the haunting anxiety still prevailed, and 
 this evening billet was despatched': 
 
 " Six, P.M. Tell me by the servant verbally how you are. 
 May the everlasting arms be round about and underneath you. 
 May you have much peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. May 
 you, throughout all the varieties of your condition, be enabled
 
 380 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 to display the triumphs of faith ; and however you are, may the 
 blessed assurance of your reconciled God ever be present in your 
 heart to strengthen aiid to sustain you. My very dear Sir, yours, 
 with much regard, THOMAS CHALMEES." 
 
 Not unfrequently Mr. Chalmers took his manuscript over with 
 him to Stockwell, and carried on the composition of his sermon 
 in the sick-room. A friend who one day found him so employed 
 expressed his wonder that he could compose in such a situation. 
 "Ah! my dear sir," said Mr. Chalmers, casting a look of pro- 
 found and inexpressible sympathy towards the sufferer, " there 
 is much in mere juxtaposition with so interesting an object." 
 
 The sacrament was now close at hand, and those evening 
 hours which Mr. Chalmers had been accustomed to spend with 
 his friend, now so weak and apparently dying, had to be de- 
 voted to the examination of intending communicants ; but 
 snatching intervals which few ministers either would or could 
 so use, he sustained the intercourse. 
 
 " March 26. I have seen seven peopft, and am now sitting 
 in expectation of the eighth and last. I am never more cordially 
 exercised than when I turn myself to the work of addressing 
 you. Great is my friendship for you rooted and firm is my 
 regard for you ; and with whatever feelings you may receive 
 these reiterated professions of my unalterable attachment, I feel 
 a very great pleasure in pouring them forth out of the fulness 
 of a heart that is most tenderly and sincerely devoted to you ; 
 and I trust that with all the kindness you have ever shown me, 
 you will also bear with me in my declarations of a love that I 
 cannot disguise, and will never, never dismiss from my bosom. 
 
 " I have had less fatigue this evening than last. The people 
 on the whole not so interesting, though there be three that I 
 think remarkably well of. Oh ! that the kingdom of God were 
 at length to come, and His will to be done on earth as it is done 
 in heaven ! that an effectual barrier were at length raised 
 against the sweeping tide of wickedness that has spread so widely 
 over the face of society ! and that in looking around us, instead 
 of being sickened and distressed at every turn by the report of 
 grievous and multiplied offences, the eye were refreshed by the 
 spectacle of virtuous parents and dutiful children and ingenuous 
 youth, and earnest, aspiring, devoted Christians among all ranks 
 of society. Oh ! that God may manifest Himself more and more 
 to your soul ! Do contemplate Him as God in Christ. Do
 
 THE SAVIOUR'S TENDERNESS. S81 
 
 "lory in nothing but in the Cross of Him who died for you. Do 
 be conversant with the realities of an eternal world ; and rest 
 assured that you cannot be more happy in the prospect of heaven 
 than those who are there now are happy in the prospect of hav- 
 ing you to swell their numbers. Oh ! what benignity and love 
 reign in that place of blessedness ! And how delightful to think, 
 that by taking up with Christ, and cherishing through Him the 
 hope of glory, and holding fast this confidence, and keeping it 
 even unto the end, we shall not only sleep in Him, but be raised 
 by Him to the triumphs of an unfading inheritance. May God, 
 if it be His blessed will, prolong your stay amongst us may He 
 bless your affectionate friends with the continuance of your 
 much loved society may He spare you an example to a world 
 that can ill spare any of the little flock who lie so thinly scat- 
 tered among its wilds ; and above all, may He minister to you 
 in His good time an abundant entrance into His everlasting 
 kingdom. Yours, most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Charlotte Street, March 27, 1816. I am left alone at the 
 interval between my fourth and fifth person, and fondly recur to 
 you. I have had one young man of good promise, and a father 
 of a family, on whom I trust a good work of grace is decidedly 
 going on. Oh ! how humble I should feel when I think of my 
 own extreme deadness and want of spirituality ; and I am well 
 assured that nothing but a leaning on Christ will ever carry me 
 to repose or to any sufficiency of actual attainment. Do, my 
 dearest sir, so lean. He lets Himself down to you for this very 
 use and purpose. He likes you to rest upon Him the whole 
 burden of your dependence. When sickness and languor came 
 upon you, He knows your frame and pities you, and excuses 
 your weakness ; but if even then a faint thought of the Saviour 
 gives one gleam of comfort to your heart, He puts it down to 
 the account of your faith, and He will minister strength to you, 
 and bear you up under all the darknesses and difficulties of a 
 trial which He himself hath experienced. 
 
 " Be not afraid, only believe. Feel yourself encompassed by 
 the everlasting arms of a God who has no pleasure in your 
 death ; and oh ! look upon Him in the face of Jesus Christ, in 
 the face of Him who came not to destroy men's lives but to save 
 them, in the face of Him who lifts a call which He circulates 
 through the world Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth. Oh ! 
 my dearest sir, He is your friend, He is the friend of sinners, He
 
 382 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 speaks to us all from heaven, and looks at us with a tenderness 
 I cannot describe or imitate. He did not shed His blood in vain ; 
 and oh that its cleansing and its peace-speaking power were felt 
 by you in all its preciousness. His pardon is free, His Spirit is 
 free, His purchased immortality is free all preparations for this 
 immortality are His free gifts to those who believe. Do make 
 yourself wholly over to Him, and you shall be wholly His. He 
 will undertake your whole care and provide for the whole cure 
 of that guik and helplessness which you put into His hand. Be 
 assured you are in your best attitude when you are thus rejoicing 
 in Christ, making Him your refuge and your hiding-place, tell- 
 ing Him all you want and all you feel deficient in, giving Him 
 to understand that you are counting on Him as your friend, and 
 trusting that through His powerful mediation all will be for- 
 given, and all will be purified and made meet for the inheritance. 
 
 "It is not necessary that this be pleaded with a fatiguing 
 energy. He knows what is in you. He knows what you need 
 before you ask it. Your feeling of this need, though silent and 
 unexpressed by language, is seen by Him ; and the direction of 
 your wishes to Him, as your all-sufficient helper, will not be lost 
 on that kind Saviour who confounds none who put their trust in 
 Him. 
 
 " I feel the truest satisfaction in ministering any one thing 
 that pleases you. I love to call on you ; I am happy in the act 
 of writing you ; I am ever and anon thinking of you ; and my 
 poor unworthy prayers rise occasionally to heaven in your be- 
 half. But let us not trust in human friendships. Let our re- 
 joicing be this, that the great Intercessor liveth, and that He is 
 able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God through 
 Him." 
 
 "March 28, 1816. I am just now between my second and 
 third visitant, and have been much refreshed by the warm, ear- 
 nest, and apparently resolved tone of the two I have examined. 
 
 " I was interrupted at this point, and have now got over them 
 all. The third one most congenial with myself on some points ; 
 and I trust that on this interesting occasion I have had converse 
 with some whom I shall meet in the realms of peace and of per- 
 fect virtue. This, my dear sir, is the only interest that is worth 
 the striving after, and everything else has the most impressive 
 mockery stamped upon it. I doubt not that you in your sick- 
 chamber have had very near and powerful impressions of the
 
 THE IDEA OF ETERNAL LIFE. 383 
 
 littleness of all that is earthly, and the most fervent earthly wish 
 I have is that you may long be spared to us, and come back to 
 the world with all the freshness of those feelings and lessons you 
 have gathered from the chastening hand of God, and be a burn- 
 ing light and an eminent example of all that is pure and pious 
 and honourable, in the midst of a perverse and crooked genera- 
 tion; and as you have heretofore been my attached friend, I 
 pray God that you may be preserved to me as my kind adviser, 
 and my zealous fellow- worker in the great cause of turning others 
 to righteousness, and the mild, judicious, tranquil composer of all 
 my constitutional violence, the partner of my every thought, the 
 sweetener of my every care, the companion of my familiar hours, 
 and my fellow-worshipper in the closet when we offer to the 
 tKrone of God our united aspirations. 
 
 " But, oh ! it is wise to shoot ahead of all earthly anticipa- 
 tions to pierce the dark barrier which separates time from 
 eternity to possess our whole hearts with the realities of an- 
 other world, and instead of looking on the region beyond the 
 grave as a wilderness or land of darkness, to look on it as peo- 
 pled with all that can delight or interest a mind animated with 
 the best affections and directed to the best objects. 
 
 " The idea of eternal life should ever suggest to us the idea 
 of Him who alone has the Word and the gift of it. I purpose to 
 make Christ Jesus the great burden of all my communications. 
 It is by our honouring Him that the Father is honoured. It is 
 by looking to Him that we receive forgiveness and sanctifica- 
 tion. It is for the excellency of the knowledge of Him that Paul 
 counted all but loss. Without Him you can do nothing. And 
 oh ! my dearest sir, lean upon Him, and then it is impious and 
 unbelieving and distrusting His promises and dishonouring His 
 power, not to feel that you are safe. May God enlighten you 
 more and more. May He minister great comfort to you, and 
 reveal to you more and more every day of the preciousness of 
 the Saviour." 
 
 Although the Thursday on which the last of these notes was 
 written was one of peculiarly severe suffering, Friday not only 
 brought relief, but treacherously raised once more the hope of 
 friends. Upon report of the favourable change Mr. Chalmers 
 writes on the evening of that day : " Could we only lift the veil 
 which hides from our eye of flesh the designs and the doings of 
 the Almighty, what a deep interest it would confer on every
 
 384 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 thing that befalls us ! The minutest turn in the movements of 
 that vast machinery over which He presides takes place by His 
 will and for His purpose. He had a something to accomplish by 
 all the pain of yesternight, and by all the relief which you now 
 experience from it ; and one of the finest results that can happen 
 from events is for us to look on events as His, and on duties as 
 ours to extract a sentiment of piety from every one step and 
 occurrence in our history and be it in the shape of resignation, 
 or thankfulness, or virtuous resolve, or a higher tone of steady 
 and determined abhorrence of all that is evil, it is our part ever 
 to be plying the throne of God with such offerings. 
 
 " Should He be pleased to bring you round again to our 
 wonted opportunities of converse to place us side by side on 
 those walks where we heretofore have held sweet counsel to- 
 gether to surround us with the glories of that magnificent sum- 
 mer which He spreads in rich and varied colouring over His 
 beauteous and innumerable landscapes to give to each of us 
 the vigorous inhalation of health, and restore my dearest friend 
 to the duties and the enjoyments of society should this turn 
 out to be His event, oh ! how weighty and how incumbent will 
 be our duty to praise the name of the Lord for all His goodness 
 to us to magnify His cause, and do all that in us lies to spread 
 His kingdom among men to consecrate our whole lives to the 
 honour of their great Preserver and seeing that it is by receiv- 
 ing the Son that the Father is honoured, to attach ourselves more 
 firmly than ever to our dear Kedeemer, and make Him all our 
 desire and all our salvation. THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 For a few days Mr. Chalmers was now himself an invalid. 
 On the 31st, the Sabbath which preceded his communion, he 
 was unable to officiate. Whilst another was conducting for him 
 the public services of the sanctuary he thus consecrated part of 
 the forenoon hour to the work of instruction and comfort : " I 
 wish to fill this ere the interval, when I expect your brother. 
 My gratitude to God is very strong for the portion of health and 
 of recovery He has been graciously pleased to deal out to you ; 
 and I have to entreat that, on this solemn day of the remem- 
 brance of a risen Saviour, your eye may be often directed to that 
 celestial sanctuary where He sits at His Father's right hand to 
 advocate your cause to plead His own merits for your forgive- 
 ness to pour upon you out of His fulness to give you abun- 
 dantly those two precious privileges for the dispensation of which
 
 "ALL MY SPRINGS ARE IN THEE. 385 
 
 He was exalted a Prince and a Saviour, even repentance and 
 the remission of sins ; and oh ! that this chastisement of a wise 
 God had the effect of drawing you closer than ever to Him, in 
 whom alone you have reconciliation and strength to extinguish 
 in your heart any remains that may have lodged in it of that 
 independent natural religion which disowned Christ, and was 
 blind to the excellency of the knowledge of Him and to sub- 
 ordinate your every feeling and every opinion to the great 
 Mediator, that you may feel all your security to be in the ever- 
 lasting righteousness which He hath brought in, and all your 
 fitness for right and acceptable obedience to be in that washing 
 of regeneration and that renewing of the Holy Ghost which 
 is shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour 
 (Titus iii. 5). There is a text which some of our older divines 
 have turned to very substantial Account (Psalm Ixxxvii. 7) 
 4 All my springs are in Thee.' It is applied by them to Christ ; 
 and sure I am, that so applied, it encloses a sentiment which, if 
 fixed in the heart and proceeded on in the conduct, would cause 
 to emanate from its powerful influence all the grace of a holy 
 walk, all the joys of a heavenly contemplation. Give me a man 
 actuated by such a sentiment as this, and there is not one cloud 
 of despondency between him and God. He draws comfort out 
 of the wells of salvation. His hope is linked with that great 
 work of redemption of which Jesus Christ is the Author and 
 the Finisher, and is as vigorous and clear as is his faith in the 
 entireness and sufficiency of that work. But more than this, his 
 obedience is as much superior to that of a mere natural aspirer 
 after virtue, as the strength dealt out by Him to whom all 
 power is committed both in heaven and in earth is superior to the 
 impotency of corrupt, feeble, fallen, and degenerate man. The 
 believer has all his springs in Christ ; and hence a joy as full 
 as the sufficiency of the Saviour, and a walk as pure as the power 
 of the Sanctifier. Do, my dear sir, have this great and exalted 
 Redeemer full in the eye of your mind. It is He in whom your 
 life is. It is He through whom you stand on clear ground with 
 the God whom you have offended. It is He through whom 
 God will enter with you into peaceable conversation ; and be 
 assured, my dearest friend, that in the act of doing honour to 
 the Son, you please and propitiate the Father by whom He is 
 glorified. . . . 
 
 " I am now getting interrupted by interval callers, and must 
 come to a close. ... I will not say that I shall see you before 
 
 VOL. i. 2 B
 
 386 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Tuesday ; but let us ever feel resigned and thankful in the hands 
 of a God who has His own purpose with us both, and whose 
 counsel respecting each of us must stand amid the multitude 
 of all our desires. My callers have left me, but my bell is ring- 
 ing every half-minute with inquirers. Do, my dear sir, pray 
 for me. It is my earnest prayer that your soul may this day 
 experience much of a Sabbath frame, and that you may know 
 what it is to feel all the tranquil sweetness of Sabbath contem- 
 plations. Do not fatigue yourself. God will answer your wish 
 for the light of His countenance by revealing Himself to you 
 without any violent stirring up of yourself on your part to lay 
 hold of Him. He will delight your heart with the pleasing 
 and comfortable suggestions of His Spirit, and give you great 
 peace and elevation and joy." 
 
 The sacramental week brought its many ministerial visitors 
 and its multiplied ministerial work, but it could not wholly stop 
 this singular correspondence. At five o'clock on the Tuesday 
 evening Mr. Chalmers wrote " My time from one o'clock to 
 this hour has been most completely filled up with callers and 
 miscellaneous work ; but I trust I shall have some leisure now 
 to fill a sheet for you. The most interesting call I have had 
 is from Eev. Mr. Grey, who is one of the mildest and most 
 spiritual men I ever met with a fine unction of Heaven run- 
 ning through all his conversation, and a most enviable tran- 
 quillity of mind under all the annoyances of society a point 
 on which it were better for my frame of spirit that I could re- 
 semble him, though perhaps the violence of my antipathy to 
 the senselessness of an oppressive conformity to fashion may be 
 practically the mean of keeping me at a greater distance from 
 the frivolities and the time-consuming employments of this pre- 
 sent generation. 
 
 " I am better, but there is still a lingering of lumbago. I 
 have got many recipes for it ; and the honest folks of Glasgow 
 have been pouring in such a multitude of specifics, that had I 
 taken the one-half of them I should not have been able to crawl 
 for six weeks. Among the rest my beadle, John, told me of a 
 wright, an acquaintance of his, who had been greatly afflicted 
 with the same complaint, and had a cure to propose. I desired 
 him to call between one and two o'clock, when in he came, a 
 fat, well-conditioned-looking person, and proposed a blister round 
 the whole amplitude of my back, where the disease is situated.
 
 THE FULNESS OF CHRIST. 387 
 
 This I begged leave to decline ; and have since been entertained 
 with the mention of others in the shape of pills, and external 
 applications of hartshorn, and plasters of mustard, and rubbings 
 of turpentine, and triplicate coverings of flannel, and last, though 
 not least, a process of ironing, with as great heat as was con- 
 sistent with the feelings of the patient. I have reason, however, 
 to be thankful that I am greatly better, and earnestly hope that 
 I shall be able to see my dear friend in the course of to-morrow. 
 I augured much good from the slight rains of yesternight and 
 to-day ; but the wind still keeps in the east, and the penetrating 
 cold is unfavourable for us both. I was a good deal damped by 
 the report of your yesternight, and have not yet heard Dr. 
 Cleghorn's account of you. Do, my dearest sir, keep tranquil. 
 I know your constitutional mildness; but I trust you have 
 within you a deeper foundation of peace. I have been reading 
 since I saw you in the Colossians, and have had a more thorough 
 possession of the essential importance of Christ as our foundation 
 than I ever recollect before. Oh ! it is a wondrous statement, 
 that ' in Him dwelletb all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.' 
 Who would ever think, after this, of seeking after God by an- 
 other road, or in another direction ? No man cometh aright 
 unto the Father but by Him ; and in Him we have all that is 
 to be found or sought for in God, for ' in Him dwelletb. all the 
 fulness of God.' Never separate, then, a looking unto Jesus 
 a faith in the sufficiency of His doings for a sinful world a 
 reposing sense of the power of His intercessions with that Being 
 of whom He says, 'I and the Father are one' an unshaken 
 confidence in the honesty of this announcement, ' that whosoever 
 cometh unto me shall in no wise be cast out,' never separate 
 any of them from that act by which you draw near unto God, 
 and then will you draw near with full assurance of heart then 
 will God draw near unto you through the channel of His own 
 appointed Mediator then may you enter into peaceful confer- 
 ence with the Lawgiver whom you had offended then may 
 you cast off all suspicion and all dismay in His holy presence 
 then may you go to Him with the affectionate confidence of a 
 friend and then will He, pouring out upon you the Spirit of 
 adoption, make you feel to your reconciled Father all the love 
 and joy and trust of one of His children. 
 
 " Charles has not been out to-day, and it grieves me that Mrs. 
 Chalmers is too much occupied with sacramental preparations to 
 have it in her power to wait upon you. In this way you will
 
 388 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 have no personal intercourse with our house this day. Do bear 
 up under the solitude of your present circumstances. Oh ! my 
 dear sir, know that God has a purpose and a plan in every one 
 of your concernments. He knows what is best for you ; and how 
 encouraging the declaration that all things work together for 
 good tolhose who love Him. Pray that your heart, by nature 
 dead and alienated and insensible, may be directed to the love of 
 Him more and more. At every little turn of your history let 
 your mind turn itself to God. In the multitude of the thoughts 
 of that spirit which is ever thinking, let His consolations delight 
 you. Know that you are in a Father's hand, a Father who will 
 never leave you nor forsake you ; a Father who, for the sake of 
 Christ, is willing to admit you into the number of His chosen ; 
 a Father who has no pleasure in your death, but whose pleasure 
 it is to rejoice over you that He may do you good, to sustain you 
 under all the sickenings, and faintings, and languishings of your 
 earthly disease, to recruit your spirit amid the visitations which 
 afflict your body, to guide the every footstep, and watch over the 
 every vicissitude of your pilgrimage below, and, be it longer or 
 be it shorter, to have a final purpose of mercy concerning you, a 
 purpose which, though matured and established in the mind of 
 the Deity, will not have its personal consummation upon the ob- 
 ject till you awaken ha the morning of the resurrection, and are 
 satisfied with His likeness, and are placed at His right hand, 
 where there is fulness of joy, and in His presence where there 
 are pleasures for evermore. 
 
 " I have written very fast, and scarcely think I can be legible. 
 If made to understand that I am, I may be as rapid as I like in 
 all time coming. I look for your brother to officiate as the bearer 
 of this communication. My wishes and my prayers and my 
 warmest affections are for you. Greatly have I been interested 
 in you." 
 
 Again, at eight o'clock on Thursday evening the coveted fel- 
 lowship is resumed : " I have never been alone to this moment 
 from one o'clock, and must be ready with this for your servant 
 whom I expect to call. . . . Mr. Hamilton* has at this point 
 come in here to my study from Dr. Scott's sermon. He and my 
 wife are talking while I am writing, and I offer this as my apo- 
 logy for all the incoherency of my future train. Did you ask me 
 what you could say to me within the shortest space of time 
 
 * The Eev. Dr. Hamilton of Stntthblane.
 
 LETTERS FROM F1FESHIRE. 389 
 
 which is of most importance for me to know, I would answer, 
 Look to Jesus. Why, my dear sir, this is the Gospel attitude, 
 and it is an attitude in which He will not fail to meet you, and 
 recognise you as His, and undertake your cause, and represent 
 you to the Father as another guilty and dependent and weak 
 creature, who has thrown himself upon the revealed Mediator, 
 and in the powerful appeal He makes to His merits and His 
 atonement, will He obtain for you at the hand of God acceptance 
 and reconciliation and forgiveness, and all needful grace for the 
 reformation of your heart, and the making you wholly meet for 
 the inheritance of the saints. 
 
 " Now what I want you practically and in plain earnest to do 
 is to look full upon this great agent between God and a guilty 
 world to throw yourself more dependingly upon Him than you 
 have ever yet done to fill and possess your mind more entirely 
 than ever with the completeness and the sufficiency of Christr 
 to do homage to Him as all in all to bow at His name for holi- 
 ness as well as for pardon to draw from Him as your only 
 fountain, and rest on Him as your only foundation. Oh ! what 
 a rich, what a thoroughly furnished provision does a man carry 
 with him to eternity, who goes there thus hoping, thus trusting, 
 thus believing, and, of course, thus obtaining all these promises 
 of grace here and glory hereafter, which are yea and amen in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 " I have just received 's note, and observe with great 
 
 satisfaction that you have had an easy afternoon." 
 
 Shortly after this communion Mr. Chalmers sought relief and 
 recruital in an excursion to Fifeshire. As Mr. Smith was now 
 somewhat better, that it might interest and amuse him, journal 
 letters from which the following extracts are presented, were ad- 
 dressed to him. 
 
 " Kirkcaldy, April 18, 1816. I am not yet thoroughly rested, 
 but am certainly getting on in vigour, though I believe it will 
 require all the intended time of my excursion to recruit me com- 
 pletely. I am much struck with the tranquillity of the streets 
 here, but this is merely comparative. However, I do enjoy the 
 opportunities and the quietness of the place. This has not been 
 so successful a forenoon of composition as yesterday. This is a 
 very capricious matter, depending not merely on the accidental 
 mood of the mind, but on the accidental strain of observation 
 and sentiment on which I may happen to fall. Oh ! it is wise
 
 390 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and pious to look up to God in all our works and in all our ways 
 
 to feel that a man receiveth nothing unless it be given him 
 
 from heaven to sink and absorb self in the glory and sufficiency 
 of God, to be ever looking toward His sanctuary as the quarter 
 out of which all help cometh, and all light is made to emanate 
 in the soul of the believer. I trust I am feeling a greater desire 
 towards Him ; and amid all my imperfections, and all my way- 
 wardness, and all those melancholy blanks of my existence over 
 which there is spread the forgetfulness of God and alienation 
 from God, it is my prayer that He may draw me nearer unto 
 Himself, that He may make the light of His countenance more 
 to shine upon me, that He may recall and rescue me from the 
 banishment of nature, and give me, through grace, all the joys 
 and all the exercises of a near, confiding, and affectionate fel- 
 lowship. 
 
 " I have been much disappointed again in the weather of this 
 day. \Ve had snow over night, and in the morning it was some- 
 what milder, but towards mid-day it got very cold, and for these 
 four or five hours there has been an incessant fall of snow. I 
 pray that this may at length mitigate the weather for you. I 
 speak with an uncertainty about you which I feel to be painful." 
 
 " April 19. I mean to leave the small fragments of the other 
 side to the evening, and in the meantime I trust to bear you in 
 my heart all the day long. Oh ! how delightful to think that 
 this is the very thing which the great Intercessor does with all 
 who love Him in sincerity. He knows our frame. He has a 
 compassion for our infirmities. He is a merciful High -priest, 
 and touched with an earnest sensibility in behalf of us all. He 
 bends in love and benignity over us. He is our advocate with 
 God the Father ; and as His errand on earth was not to destroy 
 men's lives but to save them, so His employment in heaven is 
 to minister to His people all the helps and all the preparations 
 which lead to life everlasting. 
 
 " I have had on the whole a pleasant and a successful day, 
 and am making distinct progress in strength. Oh ! it is bitterly 
 cold ; and my dear friend hangs upon me wherever I go. I am 
 greatly disappointed in not hearing of you." 
 
 " April 20, 1816. I feel the pain of unsated anxiety respect- 
 ing you. The habit of your society, and the feeling of your 
 friendship, have become part of my constitution ; and I shall
 
 MR. FORTUNE'S FAMILY. 391 
 
 ever look back on all the circumstances of the origin and pro- 
 gress of our acquaintance as among the most memorable and 
 interesting events of my history. I trust that there is something 
 more than the mere romance of attachment in all this, that good 
 has and that good will come out of it, that the intimacy begun 
 on earth will be perfected in heaven, and that in that holy and 
 happy place all the joys of friendship will be purified from the 
 alloy of distressing apprehensions, and from the pain of offensive 
 and deadening exposures, and be refined by the mixture of all 
 that is sublime in contemplation and all that is tender and 
 elevated in piety." 
 
 " April 22, 1816. Let Mrs. Chalmers know that I was de- 
 lighted to see the first man from Kilmany parish I had seen for 
 
 nine months, that is, Mr. Anderson of Star that old Mr. C 
 
 of Eathillet is dying that I walked from Kirkcaldy to Duni- 
 face, about eight miles, on Saturday afternoon that I there got 
 a horse, which carried me forward to Pilmuir that I have been 
 enjoying myself on the verge of a most beautiful landscape, and, 
 what is still more exquisite, that in Mr. Fortune's family here I 
 have revived an early friendship, and am delighted with all that 
 heart and kindness, and aspiring piety, in the bosom of which I 
 have been reposing that I did not go to the church at Largo, 
 but that I did what I am not sorry for having done, gave a ser- 
 vice in the house to about twenty-five people ; and she will be 
 much interested to know that Miss Eobina Coutts, who is on a 
 visit to her grandfather, was among my auditors. . . . 
 
 " I did not carry with me here the book I brought from Glas- 
 gow, but trusted my reading to such as I could find when I 
 came, and the one I fell upon was the English Prayer-book, 
 with which I was greatly refreshed and edified all yesterday. It 
 will determine me, I think, when I get a church so cool that I 
 can afford to prolong the service a little, to have a great deal 
 more reading of the Bible introduced into my public ministra- 
 tions. The prayers and with the exception of two flaws, one 
 in the Burial and the other in the Baptismal service all the 
 olhc-r devout compositions lire very admirable, and I do regard 
 the whole composition as an interesting monument of the piety 
 and sound intelligent Christianity of better days. 
 
 " The weather was milder yesterday, and I never felt a more 
 delicious calm than when I walked a little at the front of the 
 house, and my eye rested on the beauteous perspective before
 
 392 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 me, and the whole amplitude of the Forth stretched majestically 
 in front and on each side of me, and the intervening country 
 which lay between the rising ground on which my hospitable 
 lodging stands and the shore, spread itself around me in all the 
 garniture of fields, and spires, and woods, and farms, and vil- 
 lages, and the sun threw its unbounded splendours over the 
 whole of this charming panorama, and the quietness of the Sab- 
 bath lent an association of inexpressible delight to these scenes 
 of my nativity and youthful remembrance. If there be so much 
 beauty on the face of this dark and disordered world, how much 
 may we look for in that earth and those heavens wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness !" 
 
 "April 24, 1816. I have been hindered three-quarters of an 
 hour, and must not be so improvident in future. My history 
 since the date of my last letter has been a very monotonous one, 
 consisting of a few calls in my native town, a good deal of 
 society with my deaf and infirm parents at home, conversation 
 with an aunt and two sisters, and last, though not least, a pretty 
 severe course of application to study, in virtue of which I have 
 this day completed my third astronomical sermon. I have the 
 prospect before me of lighter employment for a fortnight to come, 
 and feel as if I would be much the better of a little mental 
 repose. 
 
 " This day my young friend, Mr. Eobert Edie, has come to 
 me from Kilmany, and discharged on me all the news of that 
 beloved neighbourhood. I told you in my last that I was not 
 just so well. I am now greatly better, and trust, through the 
 kindness of my heavenly Protector, to be restored to your much 
 loved society by Saturday week. I wrote in a tone of impatience 
 about not receiving any letter respecting you on Monday night. 
 Let the people of Charlotte Street know that I got my brother's 
 letter on Tuesday night. . . . 
 
 " I have been reading a sermon of Hervey's this day, and I 
 trust it has done me good. It has given me a more reposing 
 frame of confidence in the all-sufficient Saviour ; it has exalted 
 my every feeling of security in His better righteousness ; and 
 however great a mystery it may appear to an alienated world, I 
 do feel, in point of fact, that the more I feel the faith of forgive- 
 ness through the blood of Jesus the more do my temper, and my 
 principles, and my purposes, and my performances, become ani- 
 mated by the spirit of His mild and holy gospel. Oh ! that I
 
 A DAY OF LETTER-WRITING. 393 
 
 could hold, then, this confidence fast that I were never to let 
 it slip ; but, alas ! I am a poor imbecile wavering creature, and 
 have great reason to be humbled at my many sins and my many 
 shortcomings." 
 
 " April 25, 1816. Twelve o'clock. I take up my pen thus 
 early that I may be enabled to execute my proposed quantity of 
 correspondence in a more regular and complete manner than I 
 have yet done. I have turned this into an entire letter- writing 
 day. Mr. Robert Edie, who spends the whole of this day with 
 me, and is now in the room beside me, gives me a most tempt- 
 ing opportunity of writing to my various acquaintances in the 
 north of Fife, and I do feel the advantage of a little repose from 
 the severe exertions of the understanding. 
 
 " The history of my doings is less diversified, and of course 
 less describable, than at any former period of my excursion ; but 
 I may at least tell you how much I have been satisfied with the 
 full and statistical intelligence I have gotten about my dear old 
 parish. Several of them are thriving in the Christian sense of 
 the word, though all of them, from their agricultural connexion, 
 are declining in the worldly sense of it. Alexander Paterson, 
 whose letter to me you may recollect, is going on prospering, 
 and, I trust, to prosper and to shine as a star for ever and ever, 
 by his having turned many to righteousness. 
 
 " I am much grieved to learn, by Mr. John's letter, that you 
 are not stronger. It is pur duty to cultivate resignation on this 
 subject, so deeply interesting to all of us ; and as to your duty, 
 He to whom the desire of your heart is He in whom there is no 
 condemnation He who suffered all your pains, and has a fellow- 
 feeling for all your infirmities He who is abundantly able to 
 succour and to direct, and to uphold you, He will rule your 
 spirit, and carry all its affections upwards unto Himself He 
 will shed abroad by the Holy Ghost. such a love for God, such a 
 relish for the joys of the coming eternity, such a mild and for- 
 giving spirit towards everything that breathes, such a piety 
 towards the Father of men, and such a benevolence for all His 
 children, as to attune the whole of your inner man to a meetness 
 for the inheritance of the saints. I have been greatly more 
 directed of late to the power that is above me and without me. 
 I have hitherto been too independent in my own strength, and 
 had too much the feeling of a native competency within me to 
 control my own will, and exert an absolute mastery over my
 
 394 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 own doings. I trust I shall be beaten out of this that, like 
 Paul I shall glory in nothing but mine infirmities that I shall 
 be brought to lie low at the feet of Christ, and have His power 
 to rest upon me ; and oh! with what unceasing progress towards 
 perfection should we be enabled to advance did we cast all self- 
 seeking and self-confidence away from us did we lay the whole 
 burden of our helplessness on Him who is able to bear it did 
 we consent to be altogether guided by His strength, and be alto- 
 gether accepted in His pure and unspotted righteousness." 
 
 Mr. Chalmers retunied to Glasgow on Saturday the 4th of 
 May, and on the following Tuesday, after a blank of many days, 
 makes the following entry in his Journal : 
 
 "May 7. Have had a two Sabbaths' excursion to the coun- 
 try. The most interesting event was my visit to Pilmuir, where 
 I preached, and the rising appearance of seriousness in that dear 
 family. On my return Thomas Smith was dead. He died on 
 Thursday the 2d of May at eleven o'clock at night, and was 
 buried this day. I have been thrown into successive floods of 
 tenderness. On Sabbath evening I visited his corpse. God, 
 may this afflicting event detach me from time, and carry my 
 thoughts onward to eternity." 
 
 On receiving a ring with Mr. Smith's hair, Mr. Chalmers 
 wrote " I received with much interest the very touching me- 
 morial you have sent me of one with whom I have held sweet 
 counsel on earth, and to whose society in heaven I look forward 
 with such a confidence as, I trust, the gospel warrants, and for 
 which the influences of the gospel can alone prepare me." The 
 ring thus sent, after being laid aside for many years, was resumed 
 and worn for a month by Dr. Chalmers during the year which 
 preceded his own death.
 
 DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF DIVINITY CONFERRED. 395 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OP DIVINITY CONFERRED RENEWED AGITATION OK 
 
 THE SUBJECT OF PLURALITIES SERMON BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE SONS 
 
 OF THE CLERGY IN EDINBURGH DEBATE IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1816 
 
 ON UNION OF OFFICES ANECDOTE OF DR. M*CRIE REMARK OF LORD JEFFREY 
 
 AFTER HEARING DR. CHALMERS'S SPEECH SERMON BEFORE THE LORD HIGH 
 
 COMMISSIONER. 
 
 THE Directors of the London Missionary Society had requested 
 Mr. Chalmers to preach one of the anniversary sermons on be- 
 half of that institution in May 1815. As his compliance would 
 have removed him for a fortnight from Kilmany, and that at 
 time when his official connexion with the parish was so near its 
 close, this invitation was respectfully declined. It was renewed, 
 however, in the spring of 1816, and relying upon an acceptance, 
 his brother James had written to Mrs. Morton, announcing the 
 expected visit to the Metropolis. " You are mistaken," was the 
 reply of his better -informed correspondent, " as to Thomas being 
 in London this spring. He expects to be a member of the 
 Assembly, and therefore cannot accept of the invitation to preach 
 in London. You will require to change your address in writing 
 to him, and direct no longer to the ' Reverend Mr.,' but to the 
 ' Reverend Doctor Chalmers.' Helen writes me that he was 
 quite astonished, as he had no expectation of it, till one of the 
 professors called and told him that he had been created Doctor 
 by the unanimous voice of the University, which she says is very 
 uncommon, as parties run high there." The degree of Doctor 
 of Divinity was conferred on Mr. Chalmers by the Senate of 
 the University "of Glasgow on Wednesday the 21st February 
 1816. His election soon afterwards by the Presbytery of 
 Glasgow as one of its representatives for the ensuing General 
 Assembly might not perhaps have hindered his going to Lon- 
 don, had it not been for an impending discussion in which he 
 particularly desired to take a part. The General Assembly of 
 1814 had prohibited the holding of a country living in conjunc- 
 tion with a professor's chair. The prohibition was ostensibly 
 grounded on such a union of offices being a violation of that 
 fundamental law of the Scottish Establishment which binds
 
 396 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 every minister to reside within his parish. It took the form, 
 therefore, of a declaratory act, by which the Assembly put a 
 definite construction upon the old law of residence, and applied 
 it to a particular case. The friends of pluralities, defeated in the 
 Assembly of 1815 in the attempt which they made to rescind, 
 by a direct vote, the resolutions of the preceding year, had en- 
 tered upon a new and more hopeful agitation by endeavouring to 
 convince the Church that instead of being merely declaratory, 
 the enactment of 1814 was in reality a piece of altogether new 
 legislation, and that as such it came fairly within the limits of 
 the Act 1697, commonly denominated the Barrier Act, which 
 provides that no new law of permanent obligation shall be made 
 without consulting and obtaining the consent of a majority of 
 Presbyteries. So successful was this agitation, that no fewer 
 than thirty overtures were transmitted to the approaching General 
 Assembly, praying, that because of their not having been sent 
 down to Presbyteries in terms of the Barrier Act, the resolutions 
 of 1814 should be held and declared to be of no force or authority 
 within the Church. While thus the Church was urged to take a 
 decisive step in retreat, Dr. Chalmers's zeal upon this question 
 had been so greatly quickened by his experience of the onerous 
 duties and responsibilities of a city charge, that he longed for 
 the opportunity to urge the Church to take a step in advance, 
 and to abolish not one alone, but all species of pluralities. The 
 General Assembly met in Edinburgh on Friday the 17th May 
 1816. On the forenoon of that day Dr. Chalmers preached in 
 St. Andrew's Church, before the Society of the Sons of the 
 Clergy, the same sermon which he had delivered before a similar 
 institution in Glasgow. " Probably no congregation since the 
 days of Massillon," such was the testimony of an auditor, " ever 
 had their attention more completely fixed, their understandings 
 more enlightened, their passions more agitated, and their hearts 
 more improved. When, at the conclusion of his discourse, Dr. 
 Chalmers drew the picture of a clergyman's family leaving the 
 place of their nativity and long residence, we observed many 
 an eye suffused with tears."* The debate on the question of 
 pluralities was fixed to be on Wednesday the 22d. From so 
 early an hour as eight o'clock in the morning that part of the 
 Assembly Hall allotted to strangers had been occupied, and 
 when the hour approached for the commencement of the dis- 
 cussion, the crowd had become so great, that it was found neces- 
 
 * Extracted from the " Edinburgh Correspondent."
 
 THE DEBATE OF 1816. 397 
 
 sary to dear the lower galleries in order to furnish accommodation 
 to ministers of the Church not members of the Assembly. In 
 one of these galleries the distinguished biographer of Knox, 
 who, as is. well known, was not a member of the Established 
 Church, happened at the time to be sitting. Although advised 
 by many around him to remain, Dr. M'Crie quietly and good- 
 naturedly rose and went out with the others. This fact having 
 been stated to the Assembly, it was at once and unanimously 
 resolved to invite him to return and take his seat along with the 
 members in the body of the house. An officer was instantly 
 despatched in quest of him, and on his return, he was welcomed 
 with feelings of cordiality and respect equally honourable to 
 those who cherished them and to him who was their object. The 
 debate commenced at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and did 
 not close till half-an-hour before midnight. " I got up," says 
 an interested spectator, " to the window opposite the throne, and 
 stood a complete round of the clock, from 11 A.M. till 11 P.M." 
 The argument was conducted by both parties with great spirit 
 and ability ; nor did one unpleasant personality or one unseemly 
 word disturb the lively interest felt by the crowded audience 
 throughout the whole of this twelve hours' debate. Dr. Chal- 
 mers rose to address the House immediately after Lord Succoth. 
 Having stated the grounds of his belief that the act of 1814 had 
 done nothing more than put a simple and obvious interpretation 
 on the old law of residence, and having illustrated at once the 
 advantages which had thus been gained, and the perils that 
 would be encountered should they be relinquished " I would 
 not," he continued, " again, upon this subject, plunge the Church 
 into the fathomless obscurities of law, or commit the fruit of 
 the battles she has already won to the ocean of a thousand un- 
 certainties. Moderator, let us have a care not to bedim the 
 conscience and the honesty and the vigorous but plain under- 
 standing of our brethren, by running into the dark unknown of 
 legal perplexities and legal arguments. Here is an object that 
 has been practically gained. Here is an abuse that has been 
 practically done away. Here is a something which recommends 
 itself to the common sense of every man as an obvious improve- 
 ment in the practice of our Church, and as a no less obvious test 
 of her pure and disinterested principles. I would not, Moderator, 
 I would not let ourselves down from this high vantage-ground 
 on which the hardly contested victories of former times have so 
 honourably placed us. I should feel the most fearful insecurity
 
 398 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 were this question, so clear when brought to the light of common 
 principle and common honesty, and so dark when shrouded hi 
 the mysticism of technicals and forms I should feel my every 
 apprehension awakened were this question to be again encoun- 
 tered, with the risk of floundering its uncertain way through 
 amongst the palaverments of law, and the labyrinth of its inex- 
 tricable reasonings, and the darkness of its bewildering phrase- 
 ology. I would make no such experiment. I would keep a 
 firm hand upon what I had gotten ; and I trust that a third 
 attempt and a third victory over it will give to the law of 
 residence its fixed and conclusive establishment. 
 
 " But though there were no risk whatever of losing what we 
 have already acquired ; though the proposed law on the subject 
 were to find its triumphant way through amongst all our pres- 
 byteries ; though it were welcomed through every step of its 
 progress over the face of our Establishment ; though it was made 
 sure to me at this moment, as by the light of prophecy, that it 
 was to find an unimpeded circulation through the land, and the 
 unanimous Assembly of a future year were to set its conclusive 
 seal on this expression of the public sentiments of the Church 
 against the pluralities in question yet I recur to my former 
 objection, and aver that such a measure as this carries along 
 with it a sanction little short of an express pronouncement in 
 favour of another set of pluralities no less frequent than the 
 former, and far more hurtful to the moral and religious interests 
 of a larger population ; I allude to the population of the towns 
 where the universities are situated. To enact against the union 
 of professorships with country charges, and not to enact against 
 the union of these professorships with town charges, is to leave 
 half the work of reformation unaccomplished. It is true that 
 you raise a barrier against the violation of residence, but this 
 can be as effectually done by an interpretation of the existing 
 laws on the subject of residence. This is already done if you 
 leave the deed of 1814 unrescinded : and to substitute in the 
 place of that deed such a partial enactment as the one that is 
 now specified, while it presents us with no better security for 
 the residence of the clergy in country parishes, it gives in the 
 university towns a strongly implied licence to all the mischief 
 of non-residence. Separate the residence of a clergyman from 
 the duties of a clergyman, and you only present me with the un- 
 substantial mockery of a name. You may immure the man 
 within the geographical limits of his vineyard, but if you suffer
 
 THE SPEECH. 399 
 
 him to be otherwise employed than in the work of it, you have 
 positively done nothing. If he know not his people, if he go 
 not round among his people, if he be not the personal acquaint- 
 ance of his people, then, with all this bodily juxtaposition which 
 residence secures, he is morally and substantially a non-resident 
 amongst them. This is wofully the case in cities where the 
 minister may live out all his existence in the field that is as- 
 signed to him, and multiply his daily rounds through the peopled 
 intricacies which abound in it, and listen to as many calls of 
 duty as time and strength and the other elements of exertion 
 make him able for, and ply his conscientious labours amongst 
 the tenements of the sick and the destitute and the dying, and 
 after many years spent in making his way through the throng 
 of that countless and ever-shifting multitude by whom he is 
 surrounded, be as little known to the vast majority of his 
 people as if separated from them by the whole diameter of 
 the earth he took his station at the antipodes. Give a profes- 
 sorship to such a man, and you widen still further this lament- 
 able distance." 
 
 Our manuscript copy of this speech breaks off here at the 
 very topic on which the speaker proceeded to lavish the whole 
 power and wealth of his oratory ; and we must be content to 
 be informed that " the Eeverend Doctor then contended, that 
 if it was necessary to prevent a country minister from holding 
 a professorship on account of his having enough to do in dis- 
 charging the duties of his office without it, a fortiori was it pro- 
 per to prevent such union in the case of a town minister. This 
 topic was illustrated by the speaker in a torrent of eloquence 
 which seemed to astonish the House, and which has, in the opi- 
 nion of the best critics and judges, perhaps never been exceeded. 
 He contended that there was no other way of preventing the 
 danger arising to the good order of society from the hostile 
 attacks of an illiterate rabble, who were seen in such crowds at 
 certain hours to issue from their workshops and manufactories, 
 than by the kindly and unwearied attentions of their pastor 
 among them. This would reclaim them when the gibbet with 
 all its terrors would have no effect. Who could view without 
 alarm that neglected population who scowled upon you as you 
 passed with an outlandish stare, who had never spoken to a 
 clergyman in their life, and who were perfectly amazed when 
 he began to put a few plain questions to them in the way of 
 his official duty ? There could be no more fitting object than
 
 400 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 these people for the attention of all who wished well both to 
 religion and to the civil Government. Give not, therefore, a 
 town clergyman anything else to do beyond his clerical duties. 
 They will be enough more than enough in most cases. He 
 wished that a petition should be presented to an enlightened 
 and paternal Government (who, he had no doubt, would listen 
 to it when once they knew the fact, which at present they did 
 not) to employ some other persons than clergymen to give cer- 
 tificates for the receiving of prize-money and of money granted 
 to soldiers' wives, and numberless things of this sort, which 
 harassed a clergyman, and cut up his time intolerably, which 
 totally secularized him, and converted him from a dispenser of 
 the bread of life into a mere dispenser of human benefits."* 
 
 " I know not what it is," said the greatest critic -j- of our age, 
 after hearing Dr. Chalmers upon this occasion, "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." When the debate 
 had closed, and the vote was taken, it carried in favour of con- 
 sulting the Presbyteries, by a majority of 118 to 94. It was 
 found, however, in the General Assembly of the following year, 
 that upon being consulted a majority of Presbyteries had de- 
 cided against that species of pluralities then in question, which, 
 accordingly, was permanently abolished in the Church. 
 
 At his Grace's particular desire, Dr. Chalmers had been 
 appointed to preach before the Lord High Commissioner on the 
 Sabbath which immediately succeeded this extraordinary display 
 of eloquence and zeal in the Assembly. At so early an hour as 
 nine o'clock in the morning, a crowd began to gather in front of 
 the High Church, which long ere the doors were opened was 
 manifestly greater than any church could contain, so that when 
 entrance at length was given, in one tremendous rush, hazard- 
 ous to all and hurtful to many, pews and passages were densely 
 filled. It was with the greatest difficulty that the Commissioner, 
 the Judges, and the Magistrates reached their allotted seats. Dr. 
 Chalmers's text on this occasion was (Ps. viii. 3, 4) " When 
 I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon 
 and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that 
 
 r* ??^ ctad from a P am P hlet entitled " Proceedings in the General Assembly on the 22d 
 , LL ' on Orer ture9 for the Repeal of the Enactment of Assembly 1814, anent Union 
 : to which is added, An Account of Dr. Chalmers's Sermon preached before the 
 L.ora High Commissioner at His Grace's particular request." Glasgow 1816. Po 24. 
 T The late Lord Jeffrey.
 
 SERMON BEFORE THE LORD HIGH COMMISSIONER. 401 
 
 Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that Thou visit- 
 esthim?" Having strained every imagination to the utmost, 
 by carrying his audience up to and abroad over those vast fields 
 of space, teeming with unnumbered worlds, which science had 
 brought within the circle of her discoveries, " What," asked 
 the preacher, " is this world that we inhabit, in the immensity 
 above and around it, and what are they who occupy it ? We 
 give you but a feeble image of our comparative insignificance 
 when we say that the glories of an extended forest would suffer 
 no more from the fall of a single leaf than the glories of this ex- 
 tended universe would suffer though the globe we tread upon 
 and all that it inherits should dissolve." The infidel objection, 
 grounded upon the unlikelihood that upon a theatre so narrow 
 and for a race so insignificant such high and distinguishing at- 
 tentions should be lavished as those which Christianity describes, 
 was then stated in its full strength. Argument after argument 
 in refutation of it was advanced. " The attention of the audi- 
 tory," we are informed, " was so upon the stretch, that when the 
 preacher made a pause at the conclusion of an argument, a sort 
 of sigh, as if for breath, was perceptible through the house."* 
 " Thirdly," said Dr. Chalmers, renewing, after one such pause, 
 bis theme, "it was the telescope that, by piercing the obscurity 
 which lies between us and distant worlds, put infidelity in pos- 
 session of the argument against which we are now contending. 
 But about the time of its invention another instrument was 
 formed which laid open a scene no less wonderful, and rewarded 
 the inquisitive spirit of man with a discovery which serves to 
 neutralize the whole of this argument. This was the microscope. 
 The one led me to see a system in every star ; the other leads 
 me to see a world in every atom. The one taught me that this 
 mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people and of its 
 countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field of immensity ; 
 the other teaches me that every grain of sand may harbour 
 within it the tribes and the families of a busy population. The 
 one told me of the insignificance of the world I tread upon ; the 
 other redeems it from all its insignificance, for it tells me that 
 in the leaves of every forest, and in the flowers of every garden, 
 and in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming 
 with life, and numberless as are the glories of the firmament. 
 The one has suggested to me, that beyond and above all that is 
 visible to man, there may lie fields of creation which sweep im- 
 
 * From pamphlet already quoted.
 
 402 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 measurably along, and carry the impress of the Almighty's hand 
 to the remotest scenes of the universe ; the other suggests to me, 
 that within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye 
 of man has been able to explore, there may lie a region of in- 
 visibles ; and that, could we draw aside the mysterious curtain 
 which shrouds it from our senses, we might there see a theatre 
 of as many wonders as astronomy has unfolded, a universe within 
 the compass of a point so small as to elude all the powers of the 
 microscope, but where the wonder-working God finds room for 
 the exercise of all His attributes, where He can raise another 
 mechanism of worlds, and fill and animate them all with the 
 evidences of His glory. . . . They, therefore, who think that 
 God will not put forth such a power and such a goodness and 
 such a condescension in behalf of this world, as are ascribed to 
 Him in the New Testament, because He has so many other 
 worlds to attend to, think of Him as a man. They confine their 
 view to the informations of the telescope, and forget altogether 
 the informations of the other instrument. They only find room 
 in their minds for His one attribute of a large and general 
 superintendence, and keep out of their remembrance the equally 
 impressive proofs we have for His other attribute of a minute 
 and multiplied attention to all that diversity of operations, where 
 it is He that worketh all in all. And when I think, that as one 
 of the instruments of philosophy has heightened our every im- 
 pression of the first of these attributes, so another instrument 
 has no less heightened our impression of the second of them 
 then I can no longer resist the conclusion, that it would be a 
 transgression of sound argument, as well as a daring of impiety, 
 to draw a limit around the doings of this unsearchable God ; 
 and, should a professed revelation from heaven tell me of an act 
 of condescension, in behalf of some separate world, so wonderful 
 that angels desired to look into it, and the eternal Son had to 
 move from His seat of glory to carry it into accomplishment, all 
 I ask is the evidence of such a revelation ; for, let it tell me as 
 much as it may of God letting Himself down for the benefit of 
 one single province of His dominions, this is no more than what 
 I see lying scattered in numberless examples before me, and 
 running through the whole line of my recollections, and meeting 
 me in every walk of observation to which I can betake myself ; 
 and, now that the microscope has unveiled the wonders of an- 
 other region, I see strewed around me, with a profusion which 
 baffles my every attempt to comprehend it, the evidence that
 
 PKOPER ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 403 
 
 there is no one portion of the universe of God too minute for 
 His notice, nor too humble for the visitations of His care." 
 
 " At the end of this passage," one present upon the occasion* 
 has told us, " there ran through the congregation a suppressed 
 but perfectly audible murmur of applause an occurrence un- 
 precedented in the course of the delivery of a sermon, but 
 irresistible, in order to relieve our highly excited feelings." 
 
 The discourse closed with the following manly and noble ut- 
 terance from this great Christian advocate : " Anxious as we 
 are to put everything that bears upon the Christian argument 
 into all its lights, and fearless as we feel for the result of a most 
 thorough sifting of it, and thinking, as we do think it, the foul- 
 est scorn that any pigmy philosopher of the day should mince 
 his ambiguous scepticism to a set of giddy and ignorant admirers, 
 or that a half-learned and superficial public should associate 
 with the Christian priesthood the blindness and the bigotry of a 
 sinking cause with these feelings we are not disposed to shun 
 a single question that may be started on the subject of the 
 Christian evidences. There is not one of its parts or bearings 
 which needs the shelter of a disguise thrown over it. Let the 
 priests of another faith ply their prudential expedients, and look 
 so wise and so wary in the execution of them. But Christianity 
 stands in a higher and a firmer attitude. The defensive armour 
 of a shrinking or timid policy does not suit her. Hers is the 
 naked majesty of truth ; and with all the grandeur of age, but 
 with none of its infirmities, has she come down to us, and 
 gathered new strength from the battles she has won in the many 
 controversies of many generations. With such a religion as this 
 there is nothing to hide. All should be above boards. And the 
 broadest light of day should be made fully and freely to circu- 
 late throughout all her secrecies. But secrets she has none. To 
 her belong the frankness and the simplicity of conscious great- 
 ness ; and whether she has to contend with the pride of philo- 
 sophy, or stand in fronted opposition to the prejudices of the 
 multitude, she does it upon her own strength, and spurns all the 
 props and all the auxiliaries of superstition away from her." 
 
 * John Marshall, Esq., Advocate.
 
 404 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXL 
 
 EXCURSION IS FIFESHIKE YISIT TO ME. BROWX AT IXVERKEITHJXG WALK 
 
 BY THE SEA-BEACH AT ELIE COMPLAINTS OF THE GLASGOW WEAVERS 
 
 SOCIETY AT ANSTRUTHER A TWO HUNDRED YEAR ANCESTOR KILMANY 
 
 RE-VISITED. 
 
 FATIGUED with past labour, but with all the fresh feeling of 
 the schoolboy on the first day of his summer holidays, Dr. Chal- 
 mers left Glasgow on Monday the 15th of July, for a six weeks' 
 visit to Fifeshire. Selecting the route which would carry him 
 most conveniently from house to house of old acquaintance, es- 
 chewing all public conveyances, travelling on foot on horseback 
 or in friendly carriage, with luggage sometimes in advance and 
 sometimes in the rear, his progress was, on the whole, but slow, 
 though very crowded and busy-like does each succeeding day 
 appear, as seen in the pages of that faithfully minute chronicle 
 kept on Mrs. Chalmers's behalf. Between Glasgow and Kirk- 
 caldy an entire week was consumed one happy evening having 
 been spent with the venerable Mr. Brown of Inverkeithing, who 
 put into his hands a very complimentary review of his sermon 
 on Peace,* which had recently appeared in the Christian Eeposi- 
 tory, an Edinburgh periodical. The second week saw him wend- 
 ing along with still slower pace from Kirkcaldy to Anstruther, 
 walking whenever it was possible close by the sea-shore, de- 
 tained, though not unwillingly, one entire "dark scowly" rainy 
 day at Pilmuir, but getting on the day following a " quiet, grey, 
 sober, but steady evening," during which he " skirted it most 
 pleasantly along the delightful beach" at Elie. He reached 
 Anstruther on Friday evening, and was plunged at once into the 
 bosom of that sore conflict of significations and cross purposes, 
 his own description of which has already been presented to the 
 reader. When he had retired to his own room that night, he 
 spread out his folio page of journal-letter, and thus wrote : 
 
 * The sermon entitled " Thoughts on Universal Peace" was preached in the Tron Church 
 on Thursday the 18th January 1816, the day of national thanksgiving. It was first published 
 by John Smith and Son, in a. separate form, on the 8th February 1816, 1000 copies of it 
 selling in four days. A second edition was published on the 5th April. A third edition was 
 issued by Chalmers and Collins some years previous to its embodiment in the 25 volume 
 eric*, where it will be found in yol. 3d. p. 57.
 
 AN ANSTRUTHER SABBATH. 405 
 
 "Friday evening, half-past ten o'clock. I took a turn in the 
 garden before supper. I am in a most pleasurable state of phy- 
 sical sensation, and I trust that God will give me His enabling 
 grace, that I may conduct myself with that temper, patience, 
 and attention which become me. I have sat two hours with my 
 parents this evening, and I trust have acquitted myself to their 
 satisfaction, having answered their every question, and felt a 
 real pleasure in meeting their observations, and helping forward 
 the crack with observations of my own." His father's sight had 
 now so entirely failed that he was led to church on Sunday. 
 This office, on the following Sabbath, Dr. Chalmers personally 
 undertook ; and as he guided the tottering steps of one who, true 
 to the faith he so long had cherished, still loved to go up to the 
 house of God and to worship in the sanctuary, days bygone arose 
 upon his memory, and he recalled the time when an Anstruther 
 Sabbath had been to him an object of aversion and disgust. His 
 feeling was now changed. " I know nothing," he now writes, 
 " that brings back the olden time more forcibly than an An- 
 struther Sabbath. Oh ! that I could improve it more, and enter 
 with greater life and devotion into its peculiar exercises." He 
 staid the following week with his parents ; and many a pleasant 
 walk with one or more "old Anstruther crony" had he to the 
 Billowness. One morning he breakfasted with Mr. Hender- 
 son, an ancient burgh ally of his father, and who, through their 
 grandmother, Barbara Anderson, was in some indistinct and re- 
 mote way connected with his family. " Mr. Henderson was most 
 cordial. He has presented me with what appears to give my 
 father high gratification, a massive gold ring, with a large pebble, 
 and big enough for a seal, having a coat of arms over the initials 
 J. A., which I am informed is John Alexander, my great-great- 
 great-grandfather, or a two hundred year ancestor. N.B. It 
 was customary for the people of other days to wear rings on their 
 thumbs. It is the only way in which I can wear the one I have 
 gotten, for it would nearly let in any two of my fingers." On 
 the evening of the same day a family tea-party assembled at his 
 aunt's. "The party," he writes, "consisted of Dr. and Mrs. 
 Goodsir, Mrs. Ross, aunt of the latter, and Mrs. Carstairs. The 
 Doctor and I were the cooky-handers. In came the papers, and 
 I behoved to read them to my father in the midst of an uninter- 
 ested company. I have stolen away for a moment for the pur- 
 pose of closing this letter, and left the Doctor to read till my 
 return." The forenoon of that day, whose morning and evening
 
 406 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 were devoted to these quiet convivialities, had been partly spent 
 in letter writing. In the reading-room of Kirkcaldy he had 
 found two Numbers of the Glasgow Chronicle for the preceding 
 week, and was " grieved to see so much inflammatory matter 
 about the weavers." He now unburdened his mind upon this 
 topic in the following letter to his friend, Mr. E. Tennent of 
 Glasgow: " Anstruther, July 31, 1816. I long to have your 
 news. There is no pressure here among the lower orders. The 
 country is quiet, and in abundance ; and the population lists tell 
 us that they bear to towns the proportion of two to one. But in 
 towns all is clamour and noise and broad manifestation. Out of 
 a single case a world of alarm and exaggeration is constructed, 
 and a fraction is magnified into a whole. I am convinced, that 
 while the equable distribution of comfort is a little out of order 
 at present, there is a full average of comforts amongst the labour- 
 ing classes of the country at large ; and even in those places 
 where there is a deficiency, it is greatly overrated. At Kirkcaldy, 
 the other day, the export weavers came in a body to the magis- 
 trates, and prayed for public relief. The town was portioned 
 into districts. A weaver and manufacturer went over each of 
 them for the purpose of investigation ; and mark how the reality 
 fell short of the fama : only one loom out of twenty was out of 
 employment, and this because some young women who wrought 
 at looms were out at summer work, and all the rest were getting 
 about as much as the price of a peck of oatmeal in the day. I 
 do not deny the pressure that is in Glasgow, but my every im- 
 pression is that it is more bawled and bustled and belaboured 
 about, both in print and in conversation, than it ought to be. 
 
 " N.B. The foreign trade is below par at present ; but all 
 my inquiries are favourable to the fact that the coasting trade is 
 fully up to par. Now mark, that even in the most prosperous 
 times the showy foreign trade is to the substantial and indestruc- 
 tible home trade as twelve to twenty-eight." 
 
 From Anstruther Dr. Chalmers proceeded to Kilmany. " The 
 first parish hamlet," he says, " I landed at was at the back of 
 Mountquhannie, where I turned out the population, and went 
 through a great deal of speering, and hand-shaking. I did the 
 same among all the houses immediately around Mountquhannie. 
 One of my female scholars wept aloud, and I was much moved 
 myself. I then went down to the mansion-house. Mr. Gillespie 
 was at Cupar, but arrived in about half an hour. I walked with
 
 KILMAXY RE-VISITED. 407 
 
 him in the garden before dinner. We were altogether most 
 cordial. Major Horsburgh came to meet with me after dinner. 
 He was very tender and friendly. I left them about eight o'clock. 
 Mr. Lawson walked to Eathillet with me. I met with several 
 people here, and had a turn out of population from several of the 
 houses. I called on Mr. Lees, and walked along the road with 
 him till we fell in with Mr. Cook, who came out to meet with 
 me, and with whom I proceeded to the manse. We passed the 
 new inn, got over the crazy bridge, fell in ere we reached the 
 gate with Messrs. Robert Edie and George Aitken, who were 
 kindly invited to sup with me. I remarked that the large gate 
 laboured under its wonted difficulty of being opened, and this 
 circumstance, though minute, brought back the olden time with 
 a gush of tenderness. Supped, showed the guests to the door as 
 usual, but felt a coldness and a melancholy at the difference ; 
 presided at family worship; was conducted to the best bedroom, 
 where I indulged for some time in lively recollections which car- 
 ried a monrnfulness along with them, and at length, by a sound 
 and lengthened repose, repaired the whole sleeplessness of the 
 preceding night." Afterrfwo hours' severe composition in the 
 drawing-room, Dr. Chalmers sallied out next forenoon, and com- 
 pleted a walking survey of the village. The long roll of their 
 names, with little descriptive touches as to the diverse modes of 
 the interviews, is here inserted, and the day closes by his saying, 
 " I was happy to see W. S., who had returned to Dairsie the day 
 before, and came back to meet me. He feels a little humbled 
 at being my satellite, and to complete the joke, he calls me the 
 comet that has appeared in their hemisphere, and I call him a 
 little bouncing cracker at my tail. We had a pleasant evening 
 at the manse, and staid up till nearly one o'clock. I complete 
 this day's narrative by saying, that I should have mentioned in 
 that of yesterday how young D. Gr. is turned remarkably stout, 
 talking and walking, with a head as curly as ever I saw on a 
 water-dog, and the hair so grown that his face looks like half- 
 a-crown with a prodigious system of head-dress all round it." 
 
 " After breakfast on Thursday I went to convoy W. S. towards 
 Dairsie, ascended to the top of a romantic height at Airdit along 
 with him, and then took leave ; called on Mr. Anster, who was 
 just mounting his horse with Mr. Heriot of Ramornie. I walked 
 back with them up the hill to Logie, and had there about an 
 hour of severe composition. Reached the manse of Leuchars 
 after eight o'clock." Friday night was spent under the hospi-
 
 408 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 table roof of Mr. Law-son, Pitlethie, and Saturday night with 
 the Balfours at East Kinneir, a family to whom he was peculiarly 
 attached, as one of the few in his own parish which rejoiced 
 aright over the change that had taken place in the character of 
 his ministrations. " I started," he proceeds, "on Sunday morning 
 about eight o'clock, after a sound sleep, walked in the garden to 
 the south of the house, and enjoyed the quietness of the Sabbath 
 morn. But my whole sensations in this place are mixed up with 
 a painful and melancholy tenderness. I have made a great 
 sacrifice of personal comfort by going to Glasgow, and all that 
 I read about the poor and the riots, and the calling upon mini- 
 sters to exert themselves, adds to the repulsion I feel towards 
 that city. Even Mr. Tennent's observations about the impa- 
 tience of my hearers, and that I must preach more than I told 
 him I was to do, give me the feeling that I have a hydra- 
 headed monster to deal with. This is all very wrong perhaps, 
 and I should strengthen myself in God. I breakfasted at Kin- 
 neir, and conducted family worship. I walked with James to 
 Kilmany. The road was lined with crowds of people. Had 
 several hand-shakings on my way tp the manse. Mr. Melvil 
 had proclaimed ' no sermon ' in his own parish, and he and Mrs. 
 Melvil came down to hear me. I had an unpleasant feeling 
 about the crowd, though the groups coming down the short-cut 
 of the Cupar road gave me a lively and interesting recollection 
 of the olden time. Messrs. Melvil and Cook insisted on my 
 preaching at the window of my farewell Sabbath, and I was pre- 
 vailed on. This was unfortunate, for the day was windy, and a 
 great number of the people without did not hear me,* and the 
 
 * The wind Interfered with the preacher's reading, as well as the people's hearing. He 
 had much difficulty with his manuscript ; and I believe that it was upon this occasion that 
 one portion of it escaped from his hands altogether the people making great efforts to re- 
 cover it, and the preacher assuring them that it was of no consequence, as nobody could 
 make any use of it but himself. It had been written, in fact, in short-hand. His power of 
 reading so fluently from this kind of manuscript has often surprised even the most expert 
 stenographers ; but from all kinds of manuscript his mode of reading was unique so 
 entirely peculiar as to prevent his example being turned into an argument or precedent upon 
 the general question as to how sermons should be delivered. He was himself greatly amused 
 by the manner in which this peculiarity of his had once been described. After dinner one 
 day, at his friend Mr. Brace's, the conversation happened to turn on the prevalent intense 
 dislike of our common people to the reading of sermons, or what they call the paper. One 
 of the company remarked, that if ministers who read would but do it with more spirit, the 
 popular prejudice would ere long disappear, adding, that she knew of a country wife who, 
 in spite of her great general abhorrence of the " paper," was much attached to the preaching 
 of a " paper minister," and who, on this strange inconsistency being remarked upon, replied 
 in her own defence " Ay, very true ; but then he has a pith wi' his paper." " That reminds 
 me," said Dr. Chalmers, " of an old anecdote of myself. A friend of mine expressing his 
 surprise to a country woman in Fife, that she who so hated reading should yet be so fond 
 of Mr. Chalmers, she replied, with a serious shake of the head, ' Nae doubt ; but it's fell 
 readin' than.' "
 
 STARBANK AND THE "SENTIMENTAL KNOWE. 409 
 
 effect on myself was very fatiguing, and I have really gotten a 
 most nervous repugnancy to crowds. They are too much for 
 me, and should I preach any more in the country after this 
 jaunt, I shall take care not to make my appearance till Satur- 
 day night or Sunday morning. It was not a preaching to my 
 good old people. Many of them were jostled out, and instead 
 of them I had an immense and most oppressive multitude. Mr. 
 Cook and Mr. Melvil could not make their way to their own seat 
 in the afternoon, and had to return to the manse, losing that way 
 half the day. I went over to Mr. Edie's after tea, and had a pri- 
 vate half hour of very pleasant conversation with Robert and 
 Alexander Paterson in a room up stairs. . . . Monday. Started 
 at eight o'clock ; was much interested in the view of the road 
 before the window. I had two hours of severe composition after 
 breakfast. At one sallied out ; went down the Moutray, and 
 recollected how often I had taken Anne down the bank and 
 entertained her with the ducks of Sandy Robertson I saw sailing 
 in the burn. Dined in Mr. Cook's with a large party. There 
 is a sideboard opposite to the fireplace in the dining-room, and 
 the table is set from the south window to the opposite wall, Mr. 
 Cook sitting at the window as the head. I looked out inces- 
 santly to the brae and upon Michael Matthew's ploughs running 
 in their wonted style. Robie Dewar (the carrier) came from 
 Cupar with a letter to me. I had a sentimental interview with 
 him at the kitchen portico. He told me that he had no phrases, 
 but that there was much in his heart." Escorted at different 
 times by one or more of his old parishioners, and making many 
 a visit by the way, late on the Monday evening he was wel- 
 comed to Starbank by his wife's relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Simson, 
 His earliest visits on the following morning were to those spots 
 made dear to him by the most peculiar recollections. In the 
 midst of scenes so familiar to Mrs. Chalmers, his narrative now 
 becomes, if possible, more minute than ever, and he tells how 
 the shrubbery, in absence of the tending hand, had become a 
 tangled wilderness how Alexander Dun, however, still wrought 
 the garden, and kept it in very good order how half the straw- 
 berries on the bank had been renewed and yielded nothing, and 
 the other half in their old state were not peculiarly productive 
 how, striving to get into the upper park, he had found all the 
 gaps so closed that he had difficulty in penetrating into it how 
 he had tried to find out the place where once they had sat to- 
 gether, but could find no vestige of the seat which they had
 
 410 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 occupied, and how he had taken up his station for some time 
 upon the elevation which, because of some tender remembrance, 
 he denominates " the sentimental knowe." On Tuesday night 
 he supped with Mr. Simson's neighbour, Mr. Lawson. " I left 
 him about ten o'clock, and was conveyed to Starbank. The 
 clearness and beauty of the moonlight resting on a scene so 
 lovely and so dear to me made it a most agreeable walk. On 
 entering Starbank, I found that Mr. S. had gone to bed. Mrs. 
 S. received me in the dining-room, where they keep a good fire, 
 and where I amuse myself tracing the figures on the marble 
 jambs. The fox-tails are still in great preservation. After 
 family worship I retired to bed about eleven." Next day saw 
 
 another gathering of old friends at L . " I got to Starbank 
 
 before nine. Cracked about an hour. Proposed to stay and 
 read a little in the dining-room after they moved up stairs ; but 
 this I should not have done, as Mrs. S.'s anxiety about fire made 
 her sit up till she heard me moving, and then she came down 
 and saw that everything was safe. We met on the stair, and 
 after many apologies, and offers of service, and explanations, 
 and civil sayings, which we scarcely knew how to give over, we 
 at length fairly got quit of one another." Thursday was claimed 
 by Balmeadowside. The family were all at home. " I spent 
 half an hour in the drawing-room, which is just the same as 
 before, with its window transparencies, and mantelpiece gim- 
 cracks, and boarding-school performances. We had music from 
 the three Miss N.'s and Miss E. I was much delighted with it ; 
 and we had three reels. After E. went away we had family 
 worship, and I am now writing you from our wonted bedroom." 
 Saturday evening afforded him his last look of the village of 
 Kiltnany. He had dined at the manse. " Mrs. Cook most kind 
 and civil. After tea took a tender adieu of them all. As I 
 went through the burn on my horse saw the wives of the ' long 
 row' at their doors looking towards me. Passed the manse gate 
 with the weight of feeling upon me that it was my home no 
 more. The evening was beautiful, and sweetly did the declining 
 sun shine upon all the groups of hamlet objects that were before 
 me. The manse in a glow of luxuriance. I took many a look, 
 till it sunk beneath the summit of the road." 
 
 A fortnight more of such delightful cordialities at Cupar, 
 Dundee, and elsewhere, brought him once more to Glasgow, the 
 thought of whose multiplied responsibilities had ever and anon 
 arisen upon him by the way, and forced from him such expres-
 
 REVIEW OF DR. JONES S SERMONS. 411 
 
 sions as the following : " I will not disguise from you that there 
 is much in and about Glasgow which inspires my distaste for it. 
 I should like to get attached to it, but I have not yet succeeded 
 in this, and I fear, I fear, I shall at length be glad to take refuge 
 in the country from the many untoward and discouraging cir- 
 cumstances which surround my present situation. ... I feel 
 an increasing interest as the time draws near for returning to 
 Glasgow. I trust I may in time like it. Do away all secular 
 business, and all blame for my avoiding it, and I think I should 
 like it." These dark thoughts of the future were however but 
 the few and flitting shadows thrown upon a period of almost un- 
 broken sunshine a period, too, as productive as it was pleasant ; 
 for throughout the whole of these six weeks, scarcely a single 
 day was suffered to elapse in which an hour or two was not 
 redeemed from its busiest periods, and consecrated to composi- 
 tion. Between Glasgow and Kirkcaldy the full preparations for 
 a Sabbath's services were completed. At Kirkcaldy, on the 
 Saturday, " Dr. Jones's Sermons," with a copy of a letter from 
 Mr. Josiah Conder, then editor of the Eclectic, accepting his 
 offer to review the volume, were put into his hands ; and though 
 he " never preached with greater fatigue or discomfort" than on 
 the succeeding Sabbath, the Monday's Journal has the following 
 entry : " I yoked to the review of ' Jones ;' have read three of 
 his sermons, and thrown off a tolerable modicum of observations 
 on sermons in general. I trust I shall be able to finish my re- 
 view of him this week." He carried the volume in his pocket, 
 reading it often as he walked, and snatching the readiest hours 
 in the houses of his acquaintances to carry forward his review. 
 " I have this forenoon," is his entry on Wednesday at Pilmuir, 
 " thrown off a full modicum of additional review of ' Jones's 
 Sermons.' I have also written to Dr. Ireland, and offered him 
 a sight of the manuscript on its way to London, lest the friends 
 should be resting too high an expectation on my account of the 
 volume." " After breakfast," such is the note of progress at 
 Elie, " I retired to my bedroom, where I read ' Jones.' His 
 sermons at Glasgow and Kilmany are in the volume, but they 
 look sadly reduced and enfeebled in print. Anstruther, Satur- 
 day, half-past one, I have now finished the review of ' Dr. 
 Jones's Sermons.'* I am heartily tired of this kind of work, 
 and should like henceforward to decline it altogether." 
 
 Tired, however, as he felt on the Saturday of the work of re- 
 
 * See Eclectic Review, voL vi p. 238 ; and Works, roL xii p. 324.
 
 412 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 viewing, another work was taken up on the Monday, and one, 
 we should have thought, as little likely to be undertaken amidst 
 such a life of varied and perpetual motion as he now was living. 
 " I began," he says, " my fourth astronomical sermon to-day." 
 And in a small pocket-book, with borrowed pen and ink, in 
 strange apartments, where he was liable every moment to inter- 
 ruption, that sermon was taken up and carried on to completion. 
 At the manse of Balmerino, disappointed in not finding Mr. 
 Thomson at home, and having a couple of hours to spare at 
 the manse of Kilmany, in the drawing-room, with all the excite- 
 ment before him of meeting for the first time, after a year's 
 absence, many of his former friends and parishioners at the 
 manse of Logic, into which he turned at random by the way 
 and found a vacant hour paragraph after paragraph was penned 
 of a composition which bears upon it as much of the aspect of 
 high and continuous elaboration as almost any piece of writing 
 in our language. 
 
 I believe that literary history presents few parallel instances 
 of such power of immediate and entire concentration of thought, 
 under such ready command of the will, exercised at such broken 
 intervals, amid such unpropitious circumstances, and yet yield- 
 ing a product in which not a single trace either of rupture in 
 argument or variation in style appears. Those ingenious critics, 
 who, on the first appearance of the "Astronomical Sermons" in 
 print, spoke of the midnight oil which must have been consumed, 
 and the vast elaboration which must have been bestowed how 
 much would they have been surprised had they but known the 
 times and modes and places in which one at least of these dis- 
 courses had been prepared ! 
 
 But higher even than the literary interest which attaches to 
 the record of this visit to Fifeshire, are those brief notices given 
 to us of the spiritual condition of the writer. " I am not at- 
 tempting," he in one place says, " any more at present than a 
 a sheet of severe composition in the week ; and as I had nearly 
 completed this, I resolved to abandon myself to the stream of 
 events throughout this day (Saturday), and upon the whole, I 
 hope that the uncomplying severity of system is now giving way 
 with me under a milder and more attractive principle of for- 
 bearance with others. I speak, however, with great humility, 
 and am sure that nothing but Divine grace will uphold me in 
 that which is good and acceptable unto the Lord. I trust, amid 
 all my imperfections, that I may be getting on in earnest, hum-
 
 NOTICES OF HIS SPIRITUAL CONDITION. 413 
 
 ble, and spiritual Christianity. I feel, however, my barrenness, 
 my forgetfulness of God, my miserable distance from the temper 
 and elevation of the New Testament, my proneness to self and 
 its wilful and headlong gratifications, and, above all, a kind of 
 delusive orthodox satisfaction with the mere confession of all 
 this, without a vigorous putting forth of any one revealed ex- 
 pedient for getting the better of it." Again, in reference to a 
 family of whose hospitalities he had been partaking, he says 
 " There has a great tide of prosperity set in upon this family, 
 and they are kind, upright, amiable people. But I am strongly 
 impressed with the fact, that with these many things we may 
 lack one thing and that one thing may be the love of God. I 
 feel the vanity of time ; I feel the insignificance of present 
 things. These meetings and partings speak loudly to the folly 
 of trusting in any worldly enjoyments. I fear that I have not 
 improved sufficiently my opportunities on this journey, and all 
 conversation has been suffered to run into the light, the secular, 
 
 and the trifling. I expatiated upon this with by herself, 
 
 but did not make a better of it at , where there was much 
 
 kind-heartedness, and much cordiality, and much playful remark, 
 but not one distant reference to the main subject of interest and 
 regard to an immortal creature. 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 the Christian 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." . . . 
 " I have much to learn in the way of observing all the kind- 
 nesses and all the facilities of social intercourse ; and I cannot 
 withhold it, as a testimony to the power and importance of gos- 
 pel faith, that the more I feel of peace with God, the more 
 largely and the more freely I take in of those promises which 
 are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, the more I have my eye open 
 to the sufficiency of His atonement and the subduing efficacy of 
 His Spirit in a word, the more I am exercised with all that is 
 direct and peculiar in piety, the more do I feel my heart attuned 
 to the cordialities and the patience and the facilities of benevo- 
 lence and good- will. that I was making more steady and 
 decided progress than I have ever yet done that all the asperi- 
 ties of temper were softening within me that I was becoming 
 better as the member of a company and the member of a family, 
 and growing every day in conformity to the image of my all- 
 pure and all-perfect Saviour!"
 
 414 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXII. 
 
 FIRST DELIVERY OF THE ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES SCENE IN THE TRONGATE 
 
 PUBLICATION OP THESE DISCOURSES THEIR EXTRAORDINARY POPULARITY 
 
 TESTOIONIES OP HAZL1TT AND CANNING FOSTER'S REVIEW VISIT TO 
 
 LONDON LETTER FROM JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ., OF SHEFFIELD SERMONS 
 
 IN THE METROPOLIS LONDON POPULARITY ANECDOTES OF MR. CANNING, 
 
 MB. WILBERFORCE, ETC. THE JOURNEY HOME LETTER TO HIS SISTER 
 
 LETTER FROM ROBERT HALL. 
 
 AT the time of Dr. Chalmers's settlement in Glasgow, it was 
 the custom that the clergymen of the city should preach in rota- 
 tion on Thursday in the Tron Church, a duty which, as their 
 number was then but eight, returned to each within an interval 
 of two months. On Thursday the 23d of November 1815, this 
 week-day service devolved on Dr. Chalmers. The entire novelty 
 of the discourse delivered upon this occasion, and the promise 
 held out by the preacher that a series of similar discourses was 
 to follow, excited the liveliest interest, not in his own congre- 
 gation alone, but throughout the whole community. He had 
 presented to his hearers a sketch of the recent discoveries of 
 astronomy distinct in outline, and drawn with all the ease of 
 one who was himself a master in the science, yet gorgeously 
 magnificent in many of its details, displaying amid " the bril- 
 liant glow of a blazing eloquence,"* the sublime poetry of the 
 heavens. In his subsequent discourses Dr. Chalmers proposed 
 to discuss the argument, or rather prejudice, against the Chris- 
 tian Eevelation which grounds itself on the vastness and variety 
 of those unnumbered worlds which lie scattered over the im- 
 measurable fields of space. This discussion occupied all the 
 Thursday services allotted to him during the year 1816. The 
 spectacle which presented itself in the Trongate upon the day of 
 the delivery of each new astronomical discourse, was a most 
 singular one. Long ere the bell began to toll, a stream of people 
 might be seen pouring through the passage which led into the 
 Tron Church. Across the street, and immediately opposite to 
 this passage, was the old reading-room, where all the Glasgow 
 
 * Foster.
 
 PUBLICATION OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES. 4J5 
 
 merchants met. So soon, however, as the gathering quickening 
 stream upon the opposite side of the street gave the accustomed 
 warning, out flowed the occupants of the coffee-room ; the pages 
 of the Herald or the Courier were for a while forsaken, and dur- 
 ing two of the best business hours of the day the old reading- 
 room wore a strange aspect of desolation. The busiest merchants 
 of the city were wont, indeed, upon those memorable days to 
 leave their desks, and kind masters allowed their clerks and 
 apprentices to follow their example. Out of the very heart of 
 the great tumult an hour or two stood redeemed for the highest 
 exercises of the spirit ; and the low traffic of earth forgotten, 
 heaven and its high economy and its human sympathies and 
 eternal interests, engrossed the mind at least and the fancy of 
 congregated thousands. 
 
 In January 1817, this series of discourses was announced as 
 ready for publication. It had generally been a matter of so 
 much commercial risk to issue a volume of sermons from the 
 press, that recourse had been often had in such cases to publi- 
 cation by subscription. Dr. Chalmers's publisher, Mr. Smith, 
 had hinted that perhaps this method ought in this instance also 
 to be tried. " It is far more agreeable to my feelings," Dr. 
 Chalmers wrote to him a few days before the day of publication, 
 ' that the book should be introduced to the general market, and 
 sell on the public estimation of it, than that the neighbourhood 
 here should be plied in all the shops with subscription papers, 
 and as much as possible wrung out of their partialities for the 
 author." Neither author nor publisher had at this time the 
 least idea of the extraordinary success which was awaiting their 
 forthcoming volume. It was published on the 28th of January 
 1817. In ten weeks 6000 copies had been disposed of, the de- 
 mand showing no symptom of decline. Nine editions were 
 called for within a year, and nearly 20,000 copies were in cir- 
 culation. Never previously, nor ever since, has any volume of 
 sermons met with such immediate and general acceptance. The 
 " Tales of my Landlord" had a month's start in the date of 
 publication, and even with such a competitor it ran an almost 
 equal race. Not a few curious observers were struck with the 
 novel competition, and watched with lively curiosity how the 
 great Scottish preacher and the great Scottish novelist kept for 
 a whole year so nearly abreast of one another. It was, besides, 
 the first volume of Sermons which fairly broke the lines which 
 had separated too long the literary from the religious public.
 
 416 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Its secondary merits won audience for it in quarters where evan- 
 gelical Christianity was nauseated and despised. It disarmed 
 even the keen hostility of Ha/litt, and kept him for a whole fore- 
 noon spell-bound beneath its power. " These sermons," he says, 
 " ran like wildfire through the country, were the darlings of 
 watering-places, were laid in the windows of inns, and were to 
 be met with in all places of public resort. . . . We remember 
 finding the volume in the orchard of the inn at Burford Bridge, 
 near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful morning 
 in reading it without quitting the shade of an apple-tree." The 
 attractive volume stole an hour or two from the occupations of 
 the greatest statesman and orator of the day. " Canning," says 
 Sir James Mackintosh, " told me that he was entirely converted 
 to admiration of Chalmers ; so is Bobus, whose conversion is 
 thought the greatest proof of victory. Canning says there are 
 most magnificent passages in his 'Astronomical Sermons.'"* 
 Four years before this time, through the pages of the " Edin- 
 burgh Christian Instructor," Dr. Chalmers had said, " Men of 
 tasteful and cultivated literature are repelled from theology at 
 the very outset by the unseemly garb in which she is presented 
 to them. If there be room for the display of eloquence in urgent 
 and pathetic exhortation, in masterly discussion, in elevating 
 greatness of conception, does not theology embrace all these, and 
 will not the language that is clearly and appropriately expressive 
 of them possess many of the constituents and varieties of good 
 writing? If theology, then, can command such an advantage, 
 on what principle should it be kept back from her ? .... In 
 the subject itself there is a grandeur which it were vain to look 
 for in the ordinary themes of eloquence or poetry. Let writers 
 arise, then, to do it justice. Let them be all things to all men, 
 that they may gain some ; and if a single proselyte can be there- 
 by drawn from the ranks of literature, let all the embellishments 
 of genius and fancy be thrown around the subject. One man 
 has already done much. Others are rising around him, and 
 with the advantage of a higher subject, they will in time rival 
 the unchristian moralists of the day, and overmatch them." He 
 was one of the first to answer to his own call, to fulfil his own 
 prediction. No single writer of our age has done so much to 
 present the truths of Christianity in new forms, and to invest 
 
 * " Memoirs of the Life of the Rizht Hon. Sir James Mackintosh," TO), ii. p. 343. The 
 person known among his particular friends by the name of "Bobus" was Robert Smith, 
 who had held the office of Advocate-General in Bengal, and who is not to be confounded 
 with his namesake, the brother of the Rev. Sydney Smith.
 
 FOSTER'S REVIEW. 417 
 
 them with all the attractions of a fascinating eloquence ; nor 
 could a single volume be named which has done more than this 
 very volume of " Astronomical Discourses" to soften and sub- 
 due those prejudices which the infidelity of natural science en- 
 genders. 
 
 In his critique of these Discourses, presented in two articles 
 in the Eclectic Review, Foster blamed their author " for drag- 
 ging into notice a stale and impotent objection against the truth 
 of the Christian religion, and giving a wide spread by his dis- 
 courses to an argument which, so far as we can find, is almost 
 unknown." Had Dr. Chalmers's sole aim been to furnish a 
 distinct and original contribution to the deistical controversy 
 had his terminating object been the logical overthrow of an al- 
 leged argument of the infidel philosophy, his volume might not 
 have stood the test to which the profound but severe intellect of 
 Foster subjected it ; but although the argument, or let us rather 
 say the impression, which it was the main object of Dr. Chalmers 
 to set aside and subdue, had never found a place in the pages 
 of the controversialist, it had been felt by many an intellectual 
 and imaginative spirit, elevated to sublime conceptions of the 
 Divinity by the boundless magnificence of the material universe, 
 but over which the chill of an unacknowledged perhaps but most 
 disturbing doubt had crept, when told of the incarnation and 
 death of God's eternal Son, in a world so narrow in its limits, 
 and for a race so obscure as ours. It was Dr. Chalmers's chief 
 merit in these Discourses, that after unfolding the wonders of 
 the starry heavens, so as to make our puny globe shrink into 
 shaded insignificance, and after such representations of the uni- 
 verse and its great Governor in relation to our race, as showed 
 how thoroughly he could understand at least, if not sympathize 
 with, the very prejudice which it was to be his effort to remove, he 
 proceeded so to illustrate and exalt the condescension and kind- 
 ness of the Deity, and so to picture forth the magnitude of those 
 interests which human salvation involved, and so to glorify that 
 act of incalculable grace to which, for the effecting of this salva- 
 tion, He has been pleased to stoop, as to throw around the cha- 
 racter and doings of the God of the New Testament, the God 
 and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a splendour far higher than 
 even that which the sovereignty of the heavens confers. In 
 doing so, another if not a higher service was rendered to the 
 Christian cause than any which the mere force of triumphant 
 reasoning could achieve. 
 
 VOL. i. 2 D
 
 418 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 In many parts of Foster's review of these sermons Dr. Chal- 
 mers himself acquiesced. A year or two before his death, a 
 friend, in whose house he was spending the day, found him 
 deeply engaged with a volume, and giving, as he read, by sig- 
 nificant movements of his head, visible tokens o/ approbation. 
 He told at once, on rising from the book, that it was Foster's 
 review of his " Astronomical Discourses" that he had been read- 
 ing which he had not looked at for many years, but in much of 
 which he entirely and cordially concurred. He had quite the 
 feeling towards these Discourses that they were a juvenile pro- 
 duction, with too rich an exuberance of phraseology to which 
 the pruning-knife might beneficially have been applied. Even 
 among his Sermons he did not think that they stood first, his 
 "Commercial Sermons" being always regarded by him as in 
 every respect superior to them. In this, however, as in so many 
 other instances, the judgments of the author and his readers 
 have been at variance ; for not only do these " Astronomical 
 Discourses" continue to be favourites with the public, but to 
 this day they command a larger sale than any other portion of 
 Dr. Chalmers's writings. 
 
 It was amidst the full burst of that applause which his volume 
 of sermons had elicited that Dr. Chalmers appeared for the first 
 time in a London pulpit. Mrs. Chalmers and he, accompanied 
 by Mr. Smith his publisher, left Glasgow for London on the 
 morning of Monday the 14th April 1817. Their progress was 
 slow and circuitous. Crossing from Cumberland to Yorkshire, 
 visiting the scenery of Eokeby, and pausing to inspect the Mo- 
 ravian establishment of Fulneck, they did not reach Birmingham 
 till the evening of Friday the 23d. From this place Mr. Smith 
 wrote to his friends in Glasgow : " Our utmost expectations of 
 a delightful journey have been more than realized. It is impos- 
 sible to conceive how all should have so contributed to our 
 gratification. I am sure that there has not been a desire ungra- 
 tified in the heart of any one of us. At the outset it was deter- 
 mined that the Doctor should chronicle character, and that I 
 should narrate occurrences and describe scenery. We have 
 already many most interesting memoranda the Fulneckers, 
 Montgomery at Sheffield, Mr. Hall at Leicester, and many other 
 worthy persons, are to emblazon our sketches. I have gleaned 
 some curious historical anecdotes for my department. Carlisle, 
 Harrowgate, Wakefield, Eipon, Leeds, Fulneck, Sheffield, Not- 
 tingham, Leicester, &c., also figure in it. We have been very
 
 LETTER FROM JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ. 419 
 
 merry and very wise, and I am sure three travellers were never 
 happier than we have been." I have not been able to recover 
 the chronicle here referred to, both parts of which were retained 
 by Mr. Smith.* Mr. Montgomery has been kind enough to fur- 
 nish the following interesting details of his first interview with 
 Dr. Chalmers : 
 
 " THE MOUNT, SHEFFIELD, Jan. 23, 1850. 
 
 " REV. AND DEAR SIR, The circumstance which I once men- 
 tioned at Glasgow concerning the late Eev. Dr. Chalmers, was 
 simply this : On a dark evening, about the end of April (I 
 have forgotten the year) two strangers called at my house in 
 Sheffield, where I then resided, one of whom introduced him- 
 self as Mr. Smith, bookseller, of Glasgow, and his companion 
 as the Eev. Dr. Chalmers of the same city, who, being on a 
 journey to London, where he was engaged to preach the annual 
 sermon for the Missionary Society, desired to have a short inter- 
 view with me. Of course I was glad to have the opportunity 
 of becoming personally acquainted with so great and good a man, 
 and we soon were earnestly engaged in conversation on subjects 
 endeared to us both ; for, though at first I found it difficult to 
 take in and decipher his peculiar utterance, yet the thoughts 
 that spoke themselves through the seemingly uncouth words 
 came so quick and thick upon me from his lips, that I could not 
 help understanding them; till, being myself roused into un- 
 wonted volubility of speech, I responded as promptly as they 
 were made ' to his numerous and searching inquiries concerning 
 the United Brethren (commonly called Moravians) among whom 
 I was born, but especially respecting their scriptural method of 
 evangelizing and civilizing barbarian tribes of the rudest classes 
 of heathen. In the outset he told me that he had come directly 
 from Fulneck, near Leeds, one of our principal establishments 
 in England, and where there is an academy open for the educa- 
 tion of children of parents of all Christian denominations, in 
 which I had been myself a pupil about ten years in the last cen- 
 tury. At the time of which I am writing, and for several years 
 in connexion, there were many scholars from the North, as well 
 as Irish and English boarders, there. My visitor said that he had 
 invited all the Scotch lads to meet him at the inn there, and 
 1 How many, think you, there were of them ? ' he asked me. ' In- 
 
 * I have been extremely Indebted to A. Slacdaff, Esq., of Bonhard, the representative 
 of Mr. Smith, who has not only furnished the materials of the nineteenth chapter in this 
 volume, but has made every effort, though in vain, to recover the journal above alluded to.
 
 420 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 deed, I cannot tell,' I replied. He answered, ' There were saxtaln 
 or savantain ' (I cannot pretend to spell the numbers as he 
 pronounced them to my unpractised ear ;) and I was so taken 
 by surprise, that I exclaimed abruptly, ' It is enough to corrupt 
 the English language in the seminary!' In that moment I felt 
 I had uttered an impertinence, though without the slightest 
 consciousness of such an application to my hearer : and, as in- 
 stantly recovering my presence of mind, I added, ' When I was 
 at Fulneck school, I was the only Scotch lad there.' Whether 
 this slip was noticed, or passed off as mere waste of breath in 
 the heat of conversation, I know not ; but on we went together 
 in another vein on a theme which deeply interested my illustrious 
 visitor, and to the discussion of which I was principally indebted 
 for the honour of this sudden and hasty call upon me, as he was 
 to set off for town early the next morning. ' An angel visit, 
 short and bright,'* it was to me, and I do not remember that I 
 ever spent half an hour of more animated and delightful inter- 
 communion with a kindred spirit in my life. As I have noticed 
 already, our discourse turned principally on the subject of the 
 Moravian Missions in pagan lands, and the lamentable inability 
 of our few and small congregations in Christendom to raise 
 among themselves the pecuniary expenses of maintaining their 
 numerous and comparatively large establishments in Greenland, 
 Labrador, North and South America, the West Indies, and South 
 Africa, but that, providentially, they received liberal help from 
 the friends of the gospel of other evangelical denominations; 
 hereupon Dr. Chalmers said evidently not from sudden impulse, 
 but a cherished purpose in his heart ' I mean to raise five 
 hundred pounds for the Brethren's Missions this year ! ' ' Five 
 hundred pounds for our poor missions ! ' I cried ; ' I never heard 
 of such a thing before 1 ' He rejoined, ' I will do it.' But while 
 I heartily thanked him, and implicitly believed in the integrity 
 of his intention, I could only hope that he might be able to ful- 
 fil it, and within myself I said, ' I will watch you, Doctor.' I 
 
 I have borrowed this phraf neither from Blair nor Campbell, but from 'John 
 Norris' of the seventeenth century : 
 
 ' How fading are the joys we dote upon ! 
 
 Like apparitions seen and gone; 
 But those which soonest take their flight. 
 
 Are the most exquisite and strong ; 
 I.i'ce aneels' visit's, short and bright, 
 Mortality "s too weak to bear them long.' 
 
 Can we doubt that these lines were actually inspired by such a visit in the presence of tie 
 neavenly visitant ? Such poetry is not of the earth, earthy."
 
 LETTER TO MISS SMITH. 421 
 
 did so, and traced him through sermons, subscriptions, collections, 
 and donations, till these had realized, to the best of my recol- 
 lection, a sum nearer to six than five hundred pounds. Now, 
 considering in how many comprehensive concerns he was at that 
 very time putting forth all his strength originating, promoting, 
 and accomplishing economical, local, patriotic, and Christian 
 plans for the wellbeing of populous communities in comparison 
 with which this effort in aid of the Brethren was like the putting 
 forth of his little finger only yet, I confess, that ' small thing,' 
 not to be despised, gave me a most magnificent idea of the in- 
 tellectual, moral, and sanctified power for good with which the 
 hitman being who stood before me was endowed from on high. 
 And surely, if ever ten talents were committed by Him who is 
 Lord of all in His kingdom of heaven on earth, Dr. Chalmers 
 was so invested ; and judging by the labours which he did in 
 his day, and the works which remain, as well as have followed 
 him to his account, we may fervently believe that the treasure 
 lent to him was doubled by his faithful occupation of the same, 
 and that his 'joy of the Lord,' which was his ' strength' in life, is 
 now his portion for ever. I must conclude here, or I shall lose 
 another post, and have to beg pardon for not earlier communi- 
 cating the small intelligence which you required; but cold 
 weather in the 78th winter of my age is paralysing and dis- 
 heartening when called upon to do anything in the right time. 
 I am, however, truly and respectfully, your friend and 
 servant, J. MOJJTGOMEKY. 
 
 " P.S. Several years later, being in London when Dr. C. 
 was there, I had the happiness to meet him repeatedly at Ho- 
 merton, and was every time more and more pleased with him, 
 as indeed a good and faithful servant of his Lord." 
 
 At Warwick the travelling party broke up, Mr. Smith pro- 
 ceeding to Paris, Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers going to Gloucester- 
 shire to spend a fortnight with Mr. and Mrs. Morton. From his 
 sister's residence Dr. Chalmers addressed the following letter to 
 Miss Smith : 
 
 " PUDHILL, Mns'CBIXG HAMPTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 
 
 May 2, 1817. 
 
 " MY DEAR Miss SMITH, We reached this a week ago, and 
 propose spending another week here ere we set out for London. 
 We are in full expectation of meeting your brother upon our
 
 422 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 arrival, and of journeying homewards with him by the circuitous 
 route of Portsmouth, Bristol, Wales, and the Lakes. . . . 
 
 " I expect to see the great Foster this evening, author of the 
 profound and eloquent 'Essays' which you may have heard of. 
 We were much delighted with Mr. Hall at Leicester, and have 
 indeed the whole of our journey scattered over with very plea- 
 sant remembrances. 
 
 " Our tendency to forget God is on no occasion more visible 
 than in travelling. We had the Bible in the chaise-pocket, 
 which I think a good habit on a journey ; and yet how often 
 have I looked at the variety and richness of the scene around 
 me in total insensibility to the consideration that it was God 
 who spread it all before me, and filled it with its beauties. 
 There is a helpless enslavement on the part of man to the 
 things of sense and of time, and nothing will rescue him but a 
 habit of leaning upon Christ, a drawing out of His fulness, a con- 
 stant commitment of ourselves to Him as the Lord our strength, 
 who alone can perfect it in our weakness, and make His grace 
 sufficient for us. 
 
 " May He draw you more and more towards Him, and may 
 you grow every day in a more perfect resemblance to all those 
 virtues which adorned His character. 
 
 " With best compliments to Mr. Smith, in which Mrs. Chalmers 
 joins, believe me, my dear Madam, yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The three travellers met again in London on the evening of 
 Tuesday the 13th May. On the following day Dr. Chalmers 
 preached, in Surrey Chapel, the anniversary sermon for the Lon- 
 don Missionary Society. Although the service did not commence 
 till eleven o'clock, "at seven in the morning the chapel was 
 crowded to excess, and many thousands went off for want of 
 room." The two front seats in the gallery were reserved for 
 ministers and students of theology to the number of between two 
 and three hundred. An occupant* of one of these seats informs 
 us, that' " on the termination of the Church service, and after an 
 extempore prayer by Dr. Kollock from America, Dr. Chalmers 
 entered the pulpit in his usual simple and unpretending manner, 
 and sat down, while all eyes were fixed upon him. He rose and 
 gave out his text from 1 Cor. xiv. 22-25. The singularity of 
 
 The Rer. Mr. Lothian of the Independent Church, St. Andre-.vs at that time a student 
 in one of the Dissenting Colleges of the metropolis.
 
 MISSIONARY SERMON IN SURREY CHAPEL. 423 
 
 the text and the originality of the exordium awakened a breath- 
 less attention, which was increased by the northern accent of the 
 preacher, and the apparent weakness or unmanageableness of his 
 voice. The late Dr. Styles of Brighton, and Dr. Henry Burder 
 of London, who were sitting directly before me, looked at each 
 other with anxiety and regret, as if doomed to disappointment ; 
 but he had not proceeded many minutes till his voice gradually 
 expanded in strength and compass, reaching every part of the 
 house, and commanding universal attention. At the close of 
 many of his long and well-turned periods there was a sensible 
 rustling throughout the audience, as if stopping to take breath. 
 Towards the middle of the discourse the preacher became quite 
 exhausted by the violence of his action, and sat down while two 
 verses of a hymn were singing, accompanied as usual by the 
 organ. He then rose and recommenced his sermon, which occu- 
 pied about an hour and a half in the delivery. Old Rowland Hill 
 stood the whole time at the foot of the pulpit, gazing on the 
 ireacher with great earnestness, and whenever any sentiment 
 ras uttered which met his approval, signifying his assent by a 
 gntle nod of the head, and an expressive smile." On returning 
 .frm this exciting scene, Mr. Smith sat down to inform his friends 
 inGlasgow of the result : " I write under the nervousness of 
 ha-ing heard and witnessed the most astonishing display of 
 huaan talent that perhaps ever commanded sight or hearing. 
 Dr.Chalmers has just finished the discourse before the Mission- 
 ary Society. All my expectations were overwhelmed in the 
 triuuph of it. Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever exceeded it, 
 nor id he ever more arrest and wonderwork his auditors. I had 
 a ful view of the whole place. The carrying forward of minds 
 neve, was so visible to me : a constant assent of the head from 
 the wiole people accompanied all his paragraphs, and the breath- 
 lessnes of expectation permitted not the beating of a heart to 
 agitat the stillness." 
 
 On n uesday the 20th, Mr. Smith snatched again a few minutes 
 for hisfriends in the North : " Since I wrote last we have been 
 in gret bustle. On Thursday evening we were introduced at the 
 meetin- of the Royal Society, where we saw all the most dis- 
 tinguised philosophers of the nation. On Friday evening we 
 were it the House of Peers during the debate on the Catholic 
 Questio. The House was very numerously attended. On Satur- 
 day DrJOhalmers and I, with Dr. Mason of New York, went to 
 Cambri^e Mrs. Chalmers remaining at Walworth with Dr.
 
 424 MEMOIRS OF DE. CHALMERS. 
 
 Chalmers's brother's family. Our Cambridge expedition passed 
 over most happily. All honour was showered on the Doctor. In 
 every particular we were highly gratified. The agitation here 
 on account of Dr. Chalmers is quite unprecedented. The Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, Lord Sidmouth, Lord Melville, and 
 others, have desired to be introduced to him. At present he is 
 off to the Chancellor, and we have just had a message from the 
 Lord Mayor, telling us of his intention to call here to-day." 
 
 On Wednesday the 21st, Dr. Chalmers attended the anniver- 
 sary dinner of the London Correspondent Board of the Society 
 in Scotland for propagating Christian knowledge in the High- 
 lands and Islands of Scotland. In reply to a toast given by the 
 Rev. Henry White, Rector of All Hallows, London, in which his 
 own name was coupled with that of the Church of Scotland, Dr. 
 Chalmers, after eulogizing the Scottish system of education 
 which he described as .his country's " cheap defence," referred 
 with admiration and delight to the symptoms then showing 
 themselves of approximation between the Churches of Englanc 
 and Scotland. He closed by proposing as a toast, " The Re^. 
 Sir Robert Pratt and the Church of England." 
 
 On Thursday the 22d, Dr. Chalmers preached again in Surry 
 Chapel on behalf of the Scottish Hospital for the relief of a<ed 
 and destitute natives of Scotland, who, never having acquire) a 
 settlement in England, had no claim for parochial aid. In an- 
 nouncing this discourse in the newspapers, the Committee ofthe 
 Hospital had thought it desirable to make the following intma- 
 tion : " Divine Service begins at eleven o'clock, but the Com- 
 mittee having issued tickets to a part of the church, fo the 
 better securing of accommodation to the friends of the chrity, 
 it is requested that those holding tickets may be at the che>el at 
 the opening of the doors, at half-past nine o'clock, to pevent 
 disappointment." The sermon preached for this Hospitl was 
 the same which Dr. Chalmers had delivered before the Soety of 
 the Sons of the Clergy in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Thfgrow- 
 ing evils of the Poor-laws, as then administered in Egland, 
 were attracting much of the attention of public men ; an while 
 they were only planning methods for mitigating these vils, it 
 must have surprised a London audience not a little to har from 
 the pulpit a bold and uncompromising attack on the rinciple 
 and expediency of all forms of legalized charity. Upon tb Satur- 
 day which followed the delivery of this discourse, M. Smith 
 writes " The Doctor has come off with great eclat. r James
 
 SERMON FOR THE HIBERNIAN SOCIETY. 425 
 
 Mackintosh, Lord Elgin, and all the literati, were at the church 
 on Thursday last. To-morrow will be a day of much expecta- 
 tion." 
 
 On the forenoon of Sabbath the 25th, Dr. Chalmers preached 
 in the Scotch Church, London Wall, for the benefit of the Hi- 
 bernian Society. " The desire," says the Eev. Dr. Manuel, who 
 at that time was minister of this church, " felt by all classes, 
 but particularly by the higher classes of society, to hear him 
 upon this occasion, was extreme, exceeding almost all precedent.* 
 Among his auditors were a number of the most distinguished 
 clergy of the Church of England, several Peers, many members 
 of Parliament, the Lord Mayor of the city, and literary charac- 
 ters of all classes and denominations. Anticipating the pressure, 
 a large chapel in the neighbourhood was engaged to receive 
 the overflow. Not only the Scotch Church, but this chapel also 
 was crammed to suffocation, hundreds seeking admission, but 
 going away without getting into either place of worship. . . . 
 At the close of the sermon, the Lord Mayor went up into the 
 pulpit, and importuned Dr. Chalmers to preach on behalf of some 
 city object, which he was obliged to decline." " All the world," 
 writes Mr. Wilberforce in his Diary, " wild about Dr. Chalmers. 
 He seems truly pious, simple, and unassuming. Sunday, 25th. 
 Off early with Canning, Huskisson, and Lord Binning, to the 
 Scotch Church, London Wall, to hear Dr. Chalmers. Vast 
 crowds. Bobus Smith, Lords Elgin, Harrowby, &c. I was 
 surprised to see how greatly Canning was affected ; at times he 
 was quite melted into tears." The passage which most affected 
 him was at the close of the discourse. } He is reported to have 
 said, that although at first he felt uneasy in consequence of Dr. 
 Chalmers's manner and accent, yet that he had never been so 
 arrested by any oratory. " The tartan," so runs the speech 
 attributed to him, " beats us all." 
 
 On the afternoon of the same Sabbath, Dr. Chalmers preached 
 for the Rev. Dr. Nicol, minister of the Scotch Church, Swallow 
 
 * Amid all this excitement, which, of course, would be greatest among Dr. Chalmers's 
 own countrymen, there was at least one Scotchman in feondon who continued quite un- 
 moved. His own brother James never once went to hear him preach. He could not escape, 
 however, hearing much about him, for the stir created had penetrated even into his daily 
 haunt, the Jerusalem Coffee-house. " Well," said one of his merchant friends to him one 
 day, wholly ignorant of his relationship, " have you heard this wonderful countryman and 
 namesake of yours?" "Yes," said James, somewhat drily, "I have heard him." "And 
 what did you think of him ?" " Very little indeed," was the reply, "Dear me !" said the 
 astonished inquirer; "tchen did you hear him ?" "About half an hour after he was born." 
 
 t " Mr. Canning was present at the sermon preached for the Hibernian Society. The 
 beautiful passage on the Irish character affected him to tears. I saw it myself.' Letter 
 frum the Countess Dowager Elgin.
 
 426 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Street. The crowd here had nearly lost its object by the very 
 vehemence of its pursuit. On approaching the church, Dr. 
 Chalmers and a friend found so dense a mass within and before 
 the building as to give no hope of effecting an entrance by the 
 mere force of ordinary pressure. Lifting his cane and gently 
 tapping the heads of those who were in advance, Dr. Chalmers's 
 friend exclaimed, " Make way there make way for Dr. Chal- 
 mers." Heads indeed were turned at the summons, and looks 
 were given, but with not a few significant tokens of incredulity, 
 and some broad hints that they were not to be taken in by any 
 such device, the sturdy Londoners refused to move. Forced to 
 retire, Dr. Chalmers retreated from the outskirts of the crowd, 
 crossed the street, stood for a few moments gazing on the grow- 
 ing tumult, and had almost resolved altogether to withdraw. 
 Matters were not much better when Mr. Wilberforce and his 
 party approached. Access by any of the ordinary entrances was 
 impossible. In this emergency, and as there was still some 
 unoccupied space around the pulpit which the crowd had not 
 been able to appropriate, a plank was projected from one of the 
 windows till it rested on an iron palisade. By this privileged 
 passage Mr. Wilberforce, and the ladies who were with him, 
 were invited to enter, Lord Elgin waving encouragement and 
 offering aid from within. "I was surveying the breach," says 
 Mr. Wilberforce, " with a cautious and inquiring eye, when 
 Lady D., no shrimp you must observe, entered boldly before me, 
 and proved that it was practicable." The impression produced 
 by the service which followed, when all had at last settled down 
 into stillness, was deeper than that made by any of those which 
 preceded it, and we may hope it was also more salutary, as the 
 preacher dealt throughout with truths bearing directly on the 
 individual salvation of his hearers.* 
 
 * I have not been able to ascertain positively what sermon Tr. Chalmers preached on this 
 occasion. From the brief notice of it by Mr. Wilberforce " Chalmers most awful on carnal 
 and spiritual man," and from the subjoined sketch taken from the Morning Chronicle, 1 am 
 inclined to believe that it was the sermon which stands first in the tenth volume of his 
 Works. 
 
 " tfonday, May 26, 1817. Her. Dr. Chalmers. Yesterday the public bad another oppor- 
 tunity of hearing this eminent divine previous to his leaving town for Glasgow. He preached 
 in the forenoon for the Hibernian Society, in the Rev. Mr Manuel's Church, London Wall, 
 and in the afternoon in Swallow Street. In the forenoon he advocated the cause of the Society 
 with his usual ability, but his sermon in the afternoon, on ' the degeneracy of man,' was one 
 of the finest specimens of eloquence that could possibly be delivered from the pulpit, and 
 displayed the most profound knowledge of the human mind. The progress of vice, its fasci- 
 nating allurements, and its tendency to the eternal ruin of its votaries, were depicted in the 
 most glowing colours. The discourse was concluded by an animated and powerful address to 
 the vicious on the folly and absurdity of their conduct. The pressure at both places of wor- 
 ship was immense, and though every accommodation was made, many thousands went away
 
 THE JOURNEY HOME. 427 
 
 " I pronounce London" so had Dr. Chalmers written to his 
 brother James some months before coming up to the metropolis 
 " I pronounce London to be intolerable. I have had to issue 
 a whole swarm of refusals to your London applications, and 
 though I mean to be there in May, yet I believe that the in- 
 sufferable urgency of the place will drive me away from it so 
 soon as I have liquidated my engagements to- two Societies." 
 The insufferable urgency had its apprehended effect. He did 
 not enter London till the day immediately preceding that on 
 which he preached his first sermon, and he left it on the day 
 immediately succeeding that on which his last discourse was 
 delivered. With Mr. Smith once more as their travelling com- 
 panion, Mrs. Chalmers and he left London on Monday the 26th 
 May. In the much regretted absence of the lost Journal, we 
 must, nevertheless, be grateful to Mr. Smith for the following 
 notices of their homeward route. Visiting Portsmouth, the Isle 
 of Wight, Ryde, East and West Cowes, Gosport, Southampton, 
 Salisbury, Warminster, Bath, and Bristol, the party penetrated 
 into South Wales, whence Mr. Smith thus writes : " Brecon, 
 June 3, 1817. You would hear of the distinguished reception 
 we had at Portsmouth from Sir George Grey, the Commissioner 
 for the Admiralty there. Lady Grey, in point of Christian ex- 
 cellence, is deemed in this country to be Second only to Mr. 
 Wilberforce. At Bath we were quite as fortunate. At Bristol 
 even more so. The Doctor saw Mrs. Hannah More ; but as she 
 had recently lost a sister, Mrs. Chalmers and I did not intrude. 
 We all saw and had much enjoyment in Mr. Foster. Mrs. 
 Chalmers and I heard him preach on Sunday evening. The 
 Doctor could not be present as he had to officiate in Bristol. Mr. 
 Foster was beyond all our expectations marvellous. Yesterday 
 we came to what may truly be denominated the paradise of 
 England Piercefield, the seat of Mr. Wells, on this side the 
 passage. He detained us for the evening in the most gentle- 
 manly and pleasing manner. In Wales we have seen Tintern 
 Abbey, Chepstow Castle, Ragland Castle, &c. The remainder 
 of this week is to be devoted to the Devil's Bridge, Llanidloes, 
 Oswestry, Llangollen, Wrexham, Chester, and Liverpool. Next 
 week we proceed to the Lakes." 
 
 very much disappointed for want of room to stand even at the doors. Mr. Wilberforcs and 
 several Members of Parliament were present in the afternoon. We understand that the 
 collection made after the sermon for the Scottish Hospital, which he preached in Surrey 
 Chapel on Thursday, exceeded 260, which was very great, considering that every day duriug 
 the last three weeks collections have been made in the Metropolis."
 
 428 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Newby Bridge, June 12. The whole of the proposed route 
 has been most successfully accomplished. The scenery around 
 the Devil's Bridge in South Wales, and that of Llangollen in 
 North Wales, most interested us. On Saturday evening we 
 arrived at Liverpool. The interest excited by the Doctor's 
 appearance there was perhaps greater than anywhere else ; of 
 course the number of Scotchmen there must have had some effect. 
 Kindnesses were almost overwhelming. We breakfasted with 
 Mr. Gladstone on Monday, after which he carried us to all the 
 lions. On Tuesday we dined with him. Yesterday morning 
 we got away from them, arrived at Lancaster about four o'clock, 
 crossed the great sands (ten miles) as the tide was out, and got 
 to this place, at the head of Windermere Lake, by nine o'clock. 
 Our detention at Liverpool makes it impossible we can arrive, 
 as I had hoped, on Saturday evening first. I shall make every 
 effort to be in Glasgow on Monday. Mrs. Chalmers will accom- 
 pany me, but as the Doctor could not do any duty till Sunday, 
 and has not had many opportunities for study during this journey, 
 he proposes to remain at some retired place among the moun- 
 tains, for the purpose of composition." 
 
 The place selected for this purpose was Douglas Mill, whence 
 Dr. Chalmers addressed the following letter to Mrs. Morton : 
 "June 18, 1817. I was left here two days ago for the purpose 
 of study, this being a quiet inn, about thirty miles from Glasgow. 
 My elder, Mr. Collins, has come out to spend the time with me, 
 and I am living in great comfort and retirement. At London 
 I had many introductions. Mr. Wilberforce is by far the most 
 valuable acquisition I have made there, though I count Lord 
 Grenville and Mr. Canning to be very splendid acquaintances. 
 Do you know Sir Thomas Ackland spent the evening with us 
 at Mr. Wilberforce's. I should suppose him to have at least 
 strong Christian inclinations, and with the most exquisite gen- 
 tility I think him to have much of the ardour and generosity of 
 an open and susceptible heart. . . . We spent three days at 
 Liverpool. I was greatly delighted with the Gladstones, to 
 whom I got an introduction. I should have mentioned also 
 the pleasure we had at Portsmouth and throughout Wales, but 
 the places and the people we have passed are so manifold that 
 I have but a dazzling and indistinct remembrance of the whole, 
 and can only say that the Pudhill fortnight is the period of our 
 journey to which I look back with the truest satisfaction. I 
 must be more frequent in my letters to you in all time coming.
 
 LETTER FROM ROBERT HALL. 429 
 
 The truth is, that you occupy the second place in my regard of 
 all the people in this world who have attained full stature. 
 Perhaps these constitutional preferences are not easily accounted 
 for ; but I cannot tell you how much my visit to Gloucestershire 
 has refreshed and renewed and deepened all my former attach- 
 ment to you. If God spare me for another English journey I 
 wish it were for Gloucestershire wholly. ... I beg you to dwell 
 much and affectionately on the great peculiarities of the Gospel. 
 Eemember they were given for us to receive, and to rely upon, 
 and to feed upon. Christ our propitiation Christ our Sanctifier 
 Christ in us the hope of glory Christ all in all. Do admit 
 these, and such as these, into your willing and determined faith ; 
 knowing that it is only through faith that we can find our way 
 to love, and only through love that we can find our way to 
 acceptable obedience." 
 
 Some time after his return to Glasgow, Dr. Chalmers received 
 a communication from the Eev. Kobert Hall, in which he says 
 " It would be difficult not to congratulate you on the un- 
 rivalled and unbounded popularity which attended you in the 
 metropolis, but that I am convinced, from the extreme modesty 
 of your nature, such an overwhelming tide of distinction and 
 applause would be quite distressing to you. When you con- 
 sider, however, the thousands who have probably benefited by 
 the unparalleled energy of your public ministrations, you will 
 be the more easily reconciled to the inconvenience inseparable 
 from high celebrity. The attention which your sermons have 
 excited is probably unequalled in modern literature, and it must 
 be a delightful reflection that you are advancing the cause of 
 religion in innumerable multitudes of your fellow-creatures, 
 whose faces you will never behold till the last day. My ardent 
 prayer is, that talents so rich in splendour, and piety so fervent, 
 may long be continued to be faithfully and assiduously devoted 
 to the service of God and of your generation."
 
 430 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 FIRST VISITATION OF HIS PARISH ITS METHODS AND RESULTS CHECKS AND 
 
 INTERRUPTIONS THE GREAT QUESTION AT THE TOWN HOSPITAL THE CHRIS 
 
 TIAN MINISTRY SECULARIZED HIS PUBLIC DENUNCIATIONS OF THE EVILS OF 
 
 THIS SYSTEM SPEECH AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIBLE SOCIETY ADDI- 
 TION TO THE ELDERSHIP SABBATH-SCHOOL SOCIETY THE QUESTION OF 
 
 PUNISHMENT ORIGIN OF LOCAL SABBATH-SCHOOLS DR. CHALMERS'S AC- 
 COUNT OF THEIR FIRST INSTITUTION AXD EFFECTS HIS DEFENCE OF SAB- 
 BATH-SCHOOLS. 
 
 IT is the acknowledged duty, and in rural districts the general 
 practice, of clergymen of the Established Church of Scotland to 
 make an annual visitation of their parishes, when every house is 
 entered, and the general condition of each family as to education 
 and church attendance is ascertained. Even in the earlier days 
 of his more careless ministry this duty had been punctually dis- 
 charged by Dr. Chalmers ; and when new life and spirit were 
 breathed into that ministry, he had been peculiarly impressed by 
 the signal efficacy of these household ministrations. But in the 
 larger towns, even under the most zealous pastoral superinten- 
 dence, parishes had become so populous, and congregational and 
 other public services had become so burdensome, that regular 
 parochial visitations had fallen very much into disuse. Dr. 
 Chalmers was convinced that the degraded condition of large 
 masses of the city population then little understood, though 
 occasionally lamented might mainly be attributed to this eccle- 
 siastical neglect. In his estimation of it, that degradation was 
 neither a necessary nor an irremediable evil. There was no- 
 thing in any town population so essentially different from a rural 
 one as to render the ministrations of a devoted clergyman less 
 efficacious in the one case than in the other. Let but the same 
 kind and the same amount of spiritual appliances, which in every 
 well-served country parish secured such universal education of 
 the young and such regular attendance at church, be brought to 
 bear on the very worst districts of the most crowded city, and he 
 was satisfied that they would accomplish the very same results. 
 He commenced his ministerial labours in Glasgow with the im- 
 movable conviction of the perfect practicability of assimilating
 
 FIRST VISITATION OF HIS PARISH. 431 
 
 the worst-conditioned town to the best-conditioned country parish. 
 As the basis of all after operations, his first object was to ascer- 
 tain by personal inspection the actual condition of that com- 
 munity with whose spiritual oversight he was intrusted. At 
 this time the Tron Church parish comprised that portion of the 
 city which lies to the east of the Saltmarket and to the south of 
 the Gallowgate. Its population was not exactly known, but it 
 was believed to contain somewhere between eleven and twelve 
 thousand souls. To visit every family of such a population 
 within a year or two was a Herculean task, yet Dr. Chalmers 
 resolved to accomplish it. To have a religious service in each 
 house, and yet complete this first survey within the time pro- 
 jected, would have been impossible. His visits, therefore, were 
 generally short. A few questions were asked regarding the state 
 of the family as to education and church attendance, a few kindly 
 observations were made, and Dr. Chalmers then passed quickly 
 into the next house, leaving it to his elder to announce the dis- 
 course which in some neighbouring schoolroom or other con- 
 venient place was to be delivered on an approaching week-day 
 evening for the special benefit of the inhabitants of the district. 
 " Doctor," said an old and pious widow whom he thus visited, 
 " you will surely not leave me without offering up a prayer." 
 The practice, however, must be uniform the established rule 
 must not be broken ; he refused, therefore, saying in his defence 
 " If I were to pray in every house I enter, it would take me 
 ten years to get through the work." That work was hard ; the 
 wynds were often close and filthy, the stairs narrow and steep, 
 the houses vile and ill ventilated, yet cheerfully and resolutely 
 did he carry it through, cheering ever and anon the flagging 
 spirit of his companion as they went along. " Well," said he, 
 looking kindly over his shoulder upon his elder, who, scarcely 
 able to keep pace with him, was toiling up a long and weary 
 stair "Well, what do you think of this kind of visiting?" 
 Engrossed with the toils of the ascent, the elder announced that 
 he had not been thinking much about it. " Oh ! I know quite 
 well," said Dr. Chalmers, " that if you were to speak your mind, 
 you would say that we are putting the butter very thinly upon 
 the bread." The discoveries which broke upon him as he en- 
 tered upon this visitation astonished and distressed him. Writing 
 to Mr. Edie early in February 1816, he says "I have com- 
 menced a very stupendous work lately the visitation of my 
 parish. A very great proportion of the people have no seats in
 
 432 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 .any place of worship whatever, and a very deep and universal 
 ignorance on the high matters of faith arid eternity obtains over 
 the whole extent of a mighty population." 
 
 While such a laborious visitation was prosecuted throughout 
 the week, suggesting at every stage new schemes of usefulness, 
 and while, at the same time, the demands of the Tron Church 
 pulpit and of the thousands now crowding around it had to be 
 satisfied each returning Sabbath, was it wonderful that Dr. 
 Chalmers shoiild be grievously provoked by the distracting in- 
 terruptions to which from every point of the compass he felt 
 himself exposed ? 
 
 He had been not a little alarmed, even before he left Kilmany, 
 by reports of the vast accumulations of unministerial labour 
 which the customs of the place and the requirements of authority 
 had devolved upon the ministers of Glasgow. It was his fear 
 that neither time nor strength would thus be left to him to pro- 
 secute aright the higher objects of the Christian ministry which 
 made him hesitate for a season to accept the offered appointment 
 to the Tron Church. Dr. Balfour succeeded in quieting his 
 alarms, by giving as mitigated a representation as possible of 
 the extra-ministerial work which would be required ; expecting 
 doubtless that when once the movement was made, Dr. Chalmers 
 would yield to the pressure as it came upon him, and, like all 
 the other city ministers, quietly accommodate himself to the 
 demands and necessities of his position. But he was ignorant 
 of the glowing ardour of that intense devotedness with which 
 certain favourite projects were cherished, and of the determined 
 and indomitable energy of that will which was waiting the op- 
 portunity to realize them. Soon after Dr. Chalmers's settlement 
 in Glasgow, the fears which it was imagined had been allayed 
 broke out with redoubled strength. It was sufficiently annoying 
 to sit an hour in grave deliberation as to whether a gutter should 
 be shut up or left open. He might remain, however, a silent 
 auditor at that solemn farce ; but it was worse to be called upon, 
 as he was soon afterwards at a meeting of the Town Hospital, 
 to take a personal share in a similar discussion. Some of the 
 gravest of the city ministers, and some of the wisest of the city 
 merchants, had been summoned to the conclave, when the weighty 
 and perplexing question was propounded, whether pork broth 
 or ox-head broth should be served to the inmates of the Hospital. 
 Opinions differed, the debate waxed warm, and at last it was 
 resolved to subject the matter to actual trial. A quantity of
 
 THE ONE ARTICLE IN WHICH HE DEALT. 433 
 
 both kinds of broth was produced, each sitter tasting it as it 
 made its circuit of .the Board. The judgments were then col- 
 lected and compared, when the sapient decision was given forth 
 that henceforth there should be served sometimes the one 
 kind of broth and sometimes the other. It was but seldom, 
 however, that, as in this case, the ludicrous aspect of the re- 
 quired service relieved the annoyance of its discharge. And a 
 worse evil than the mere waste of time soon showed itself to be 
 connected with that administration of the public charities which 
 had to so large an extent been thrown upon clergymen. When 
 examined some years afterwards before a Committee of the 
 House of Commons, Dr. Chalmers was asked 
 
 " 95. Have you any observations to make to the Committee 
 with respect to the condition of the first parish to which you 
 were appointed, the Tron Church, at the time of your appoint- 
 ment, and during the period of your ministry ? I disliked very 
 much the condition of the parish at the outset of my connexion 
 with it, and withdrew altogether from any share in the manage- 
 ment of its pauperism. I felt it my duty to do so. In the eyes 
 of the population the minister stood connected not merely with 
 the administration of this compulsory fund, but with the ad- 
 ministration of a great many such charities as we call Mortifi- 
 cations in Scotland, which are endowments for indigence, left 
 by benevolent citizens, and who generally constitute the clergy 
 their trustees. Among the earliest movements I made through 
 the families, I was very much surprised at the unexpected cor- 
 diality of my welcome, the people thronging about me, and 
 requesting me to enter their houses. I remember I could scarcely 
 make my way to the bottom of a close in the Saltmarket, I was 
 so exceedingly thronged by the people ; but I soon perceived 
 that this was in consequence of my imagined influence in the 
 distribution of these charities ; and I certainly did feel a very 
 great .recoil, for it was so different from the principle upon which 
 I had been received with cordiality in my country parish, where 
 the topic of their temporal necessities was scarcely ever men- 
 tioned : I therefore resolved to dissever myself from the admini- 
 stration of these charities altogether. I soon made the people 
 understand that I only dealt in one article, that of Christian 
 instruction ; and that if they chose to receive me upon this foot- 
 ing, I should be glad to visit them occasionally. I can vouch 
 for it that the cordiality of the people was not only enhanced 
 but very much refined in its principle after this became the 
 
 VOL. i. 2 E
 
 434 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 general understanding : that of the ten thousand entries which 
 I have made at different times into the houses of the poor in 
 Glasgow, I cannot recollect half-a-dozen instances in which I 
 was not received with welcome."* 
 
 All share in the management of the pauperism of his parish 
 he could and he did decline. The draughts which were con- 
 tinually made for his attendance at this meeting or the other he 
 could and he did dishonour. But he could not protect his study 
 from a thousand invasions ; nor could any private remonstrances 
 turn the tide of that public opinion which asked and expected 01 
 the city ministers a whole host of secular services. Harassed at 
 every point of his progress, and exposed to ignorant and ill ap- 
 plied reproach, he resolved at last, in some more public and 
 effectual manner, to assert the proper and spiritual functions or 
 the Christian ministry, to vindicate its injured prerogatives, and, 
 if the voice of remonstrance and rebuke could do it, to effect a 
 deliverance for himself and for his brethren. He chose the pul- 
 pit as his instrument ; and few congregations ever listened to a 
 minister with greater astonishment than did that to which his 
 two discourses, delivered in the Tron Church on Sabbath the 
 13th October 1816, were addressed. His text was appropriate 
 and ominous : " Then the twelve called the multitude of the dis- 
 ciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave 
 the word of God, and serve tables," Acts vi. 2. The forenoon 
 discourse was devoted to a minute and most singular detail of 
 the multiform exactions and services by which the ministers of 
 the Gospel in Glasgow had been withdrawn from prayer and the 
 ministry of the word. He told his wondering audience of sche- 
 dules, and circulars, and printed forms, with long blank spaces 
 which the minister should have the goodness to fill up, and how of 
 all his doings in this one department the simple achievement of 
 seventy signatures in a day was all that his dizzy recollection 
 had been able to retain. Pursuing the strange narration, in 
 which pathos and satire and burning indignation were all blended, 
 "I have already said much," he continued, "of the interruption 
 and the labour which the public charities of the place bring 
 along with them ; and yet I have not told you one-half the 
 amount of it. I have only insisted on that part of it which 
 takes a minister from bis house, and from which the minister, at 
 the expense of a little odium, can at all times protect himself, by 
 the determined habit of sitting immovable under every call and 
 
 * See Works, vol. rvi. pp. 312, 313.
 
 SERMON ON SECULARITIES. 435 
 
 every application. All that arrangement which takes a minister 
 away from his house may be evaded but how shall he be able to 
 extricate himself from the besetting inconveniences of such an ar- 
 rangement as gives to the whole population of a neighbourhood a 
 constant and ever-moving tendency towards the house of the 
 minister? The patronage with which I think it is his heavy mis- 
 fortune to be encumbered, gives him a share in the disposal of in- 
 numerable vacancies, and each vacancy gives rise to innumerable 
 candidates, and each candidate is sure to strengthen his chance for 
 success by stirring up a whole round of acquaintances, who, in the 
 various forms of written and of personal entreaty, discharge their 
 wishes on the minister in the shape of innumerable applications. 
 It is fair to observe, however, that the turmoil of all this election- 
 eering has its times and its seasons. It does not keep by one in 
 the form of a steady monsoon. It comes upon him more in the 
 resemblance of a hurricane; and like the hurricanes of the atmos- 
 phere, it has its months of violence and its intervals of periodical 
 cessation. I shall only say, that when it does come, the power 
 of contemplation takes to herself wings and flies away. She 
 cannot live and flourish in the whirlwind of all that noise and 
 confusion by which her retreat is so boisterously agitated. She 
 sickens and grows pale at every quivering of the household bell, 
 and at every volley from the household door, by which the loud 
 notes of impatience march along the passages, and force an im- 
 petuous announcement into every chamber of the dwelling-place. 
 She finds all this to be too much for her. These rude and inces- 
 sant visitations fatigue and exhaust her, and at length banisli 
 her entirely ; nor will she suffer either force or flattery to detain 
 her in a mansion invaded by the din of such turbulent and un- 
 congenial elements. 
 
 " But though I talk of cessations and intervals, you are not 
 to suppose that there are ever at any time the intervals of abso- 
 lute repose. There is a daily visitation, though it is only at 
 particular months that it comes upon you with all the vehemence 
 and force of a tornado. There was of late an unceasing stream 
 of people passing every day through the house, and coming under 
 the review of the minister on their road to the supplies of ordin- 
 ary pauperism. This formed part of the prescribed conveyance 
 through which each of them trusted to find their way to the re- 
 lief that they aspired after. This always secured a levee of peti- 
 tioners, and "kept up a perennial flow of applications, varying in 
 rapidity and fulness with the difficulty of the times but never,
 
 436 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 in the whole course of my experience, subsiding into a rill so 
 gentle that it only ministered delight and refreshment to the 
 bosom by the peacefulness of its murmurs. no ! my brethren 
 there is a something here about which our tearful sons and 
 daughters of poesy are most miserably in the wrong. I know 
 that they have got many fine things to say about the minister of 
 a beneficent religion having a ready tear for every suffering, and 
 an open ear for every cry, and room in his house for every corn- 
 plainer, and room in his heart for. a distinct exercise of compas- 
 sion on the needs and the distresses of every afflicted family, and 
 an open door through which the representations of dejected 
 humanity may ever find a welcome admittance, and a free un- 
 occupied day throughout every hour of which it is his part to act 
 the willing friend of his parishioners, and to yield the alacrity of 
 his immediate, attentions in behalf of all the wants and all the 
 wretchedness that is among them. Yes ! all this ought to be 
 done, and agents should be found for the doing of it. But the 
 minister is not the man who can do it. The minister is not the 
 man who should do it. And beset as we are on the one hand by 
 a hard and a secular generation, who, without one sigh of remorse, 
 could see every minister of the city sinking the spiritualities of 
 his office under the weight of engagements which they themselves 
 will not touch with one of their fingers ; and deafened as we 
 are on the other hand by the outcry of puling sentimentalists, 
 who, without thought and without calculation, would realize all 
 the folly an-d all the fondness of their fancy sketches upon us, I 
 utterly refuse the propriety of all these services and yet pro- 
 claiming myself the firm, the ardent, the devoted friend of the 
 poor, do I assert these advocates of theirs to be the blind sup- 
 porters of a system which has aggravated both the moral and the 
 physical wretchedness of a most cruelly neglected population." 
 
 In the afternoon the- subject was resumed, and in demonstra- 
 ting the evils of the system which he denounced, Dr. Chalmers 
 expatiated on the serious losses which the literature of theology 
 and the learning of its ministers had thereby suffered, closing 
 his impassioned oration in these words : 
 
 " But I shall be told by some that all this literature is of no 
 consequence ; that it is an unhallowed innovation upon the 
 simplicity that is in Christ now to plead for it as I have done ; 
 that to lament its decay and its departure as I have done is to 
 take up the Sabbath with a topic of unsuitable contemplation, 
 and to profane the pulpit by an argument which, in the eyes of
 
 SERMON ON SECULAR1T1ES. 437 
 
 many, may wear a complexion so classical and even so heathen- 
 ish as positively to scandalize them. Oh ! my brethren, I am 
 afraid that upon this subject there has been a most unmanly 
 surrender of Christianity and of all that strength and honour 
 which belong to it, that so much authority has been given to 
 the conceptions of a narrow and ignorant bigotry as to have 
 laid open our religion to the scorn of philosophers, and to have 
 brought down upon her the contempt and the disgust of the 
 upper classes of society ; that in this way she has been associ- 
 ated with all that is mean and with all that is ignoble, and has 
 been banished from the circles of literature, and has been looked 
 upon as such a tame vulgar and unworthy thing, as to be totally 
 unfit for a man of eloquence and of liberal illumination ; ay, and 
 when they cast their glance upon her, and see nothing in any of 
 her features but the plain and the coarse and the ordinary, let 
 us not wonder though it should be a glance of hard and infidel 
 disdain. What ! are we to be told that in behalf of Christianity 
 nothing can be summoned up either in the way of argument or 
 of illustration to compel the homage and to school the super- 
 ciliousness of these men ? Are we, in truckling compliance with 
 the humours of a baseless fanaticism, to strip away all learning 
 and cultivation and eloquence, as so many unseemly appendages 
 from the business of the priesthood ? Are we to let down the 
 defences of our faith, and to withdraw from it the labours of the 
 understanding, and to mar any one of its legitimate recommend- 
 ations, and to proclaim in the hearing of the public that instead 
 of being all things to all men, our men of science and of scholar- 
 ship are altogether beyond the range of its artillery, that they 
 may assemble in their halls, and sit in the conscious superiority 
 of reason above all the pretensions of this homely and unlettered 
 superstition that they may bid a proud defiance to all her 
 anathemas, and leave it to the abject credulity of unenlightened 
 minds to be shaken by her terrors that they move in a secure 
 and elevated region, where all the weapons of Christianity and 
 all the remonstrances of her illiterate defenders cannot reach 
 them, and that looking down on a vulgarized priesthood, they 
 may feel how they have nothing to fear from such a tame and 
 feeble host of assailants how the bulwarks of philosophy are 
 safe from all the inroads of this loathsome fanaticism, and that 
 it might be left to do all its slovenly work and to reap all its 
 humble triumphs over the mass of an untaught population. 
 " Now, my brethren, what I strongly contend for is, that in
 
 438 MEMOIRS OF Dll. CHALMERS. 
 
 like manner as the Bible of Christianity should be turned into 
 all languages, so the preaching of Christianity should be turned 
 to meet the every style of conception and the every variety of 
 taste or of prejudice which can be found in all the quarters of 
 society. The proudest of her recorded distinctions is that she 
 is the religion of the poor that she can light up the hope of 
 immortality in their humble habitations that the toil worn 
 mechanic can carry her Sabbath lessons away with him, and en- 
 riching his judgment and his memory with them all, can bear 
 them through the week in one full treasury of comfort and im- 
 provement that on the strength of her great and elevating 
 principles a man in rags may become rich in faith, and looking 
 forward through the vista of his earthly anticipations, can see, 
 on the other side of all the hardship and of all the suffering 
 with which they are associated, the reversion of a splendid eter- 
 nity. Ay, my brethren, such a religion as this should be made 
 to find its way into every cottage and to circulate throughout all 
 the lanes and avenues of a crowded population, and the friend 
 of the species might take it along with him to the tenements 
 of want and of wretchedness, and knocking at every door where 
 there is a human 'voice to bid him enter, he may rest assured that 
 if charged with the message of the gospel, humanity in its rudest 
 forms may hang upon his lips, and rejoice and be moralized by 
 the utterance which flows from them. But, my brethren, while I 
 would thus have the religion of the New Testament to send her 
 penetrating influences through the great mass of the towns and 
 families of the community, I would not have her to skulk in timid 
 and suspicious distance from the proudest haunts either of wealth 
 or of philosophy. I would have her to carry, as she well might, 
 such a front of reason, and to lift such a voice of eloquence, and 
 to fill her mouth with such a power and variety of argument, as 
 should compel the most enlightened of the land to do her reve- 
 rence. I would have her with as firm and assured footstep as 
 Paul ascended the hill of Areopagus, and amid the assembled 
 literature of Athens drew an argument for the gospel from the 
 poetry and the mythology of Athens I would have her even 
 now to make her fearless way through the halls and the univer- 
 sities of modern Europe, and as she stood confronted with the 
 erudition of academic men, I would have her to equal and to 
 outvie them. Oh 1 tell me why it should be otherwise ! Tell 
 me why the majesty of truth should ever want an able advocate 
 to assert and to proclaim it, or why the recorded communication
 
 GLASGOW BIBLE SOCIETY ANNIVERSARY. 439 
 
 from God should ever want a defender of learning to vindicate 
 its evidence and its history ! 
 
 " I shall only say, that if the public, on the one hand, and the 
 advocates for a learned, and a spiritual, and a separated order of 
 clergymen, rich in mental accomplishments, and at liberty to 
 give their ample and their exclusive leisure to the labours of the 
 closet and the strict work of the ministry, on the other if these 
 two parties be at variance, then we do not hesitate for a single 
 moment to assert that the public are most glaringly and most 
 outrageously in the wrong ; that, in this instance, as in many 
 others, the voice of the people is most assuredly not the voice 
 of God ; that be it as loud or as urgent as it may, it is the part 
 of a conscientious man to let it rave idly around him till its own 
 violence shall expend it ; and wishing, as I do, my brethren, to 
 combine the firmness of principle with the mildness of friendship 
 to every one of you, I think it right to say, that after we have 
 fairly emerged out of this contest it will be found that he with 
 whom it originated, while he appeared to many of you to be the 
 advocate of his own selfish accommodation, was, in fact, advoca- 
 ting the best interests of that misguided population who were 
 opposed to him." 
 
 One way in which the clerical emancipation so strongly con- 
 tended for might be at least partially attained, was by the lay 
 members of the Church coming forward to the relief of their 
 ministers, and the platform as well as the pulpit was employed 
 to invoke their aid. Dr. Chalmers was invited to take part in 
 the proceedings of the Anniversary Meeting of the Glasgow 
 Bible Society. It was the first meeting of this kind at which he 
 had spoken in that city. This was, besides, his own favourite 
 Society, for which he had written and laboured so much during 
 the first years of his regenerated ministry at Kilmany. The 
 motion, however, which happened to be assigned to him was a 
 vote of thanks' to one clergyman and two laymen. This con- 
 junction of the two species of agency was irresistible ; and the 
 special objects of the Bible Society being all for the time for- 
 gotten, he launched out upon the engrossing topic, summoning 
 his fellow-citizens to the help of an overburdened ministry, and 
 strenuously urging that the administration not only of the bene- 
 volent but of the religious institutions of the city should be 
 thrown mainly, if not wholly, upon laymen. 
 
 But even that, could it have been gained, was not enough. A
 
 440 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 few weeks among the wynds of the Saltmarket had wrought the 
 conviction in his mind, that if these swarming multitudes were 
 to be reclaimed, who, hidden from the public eye, were living in 
 ignorance and guilt, and dying in darkness, a large band of 
 fellow-labourers must go down and enter with him upon the 
 spiritual cultivation of the neglected territory. As yet, however, 
 but little could be expected from the regular office-bearers of his 
 congregation. " Till Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow," so says a 
 most competent authority,* " parochial Christian influence was 
 a mere name it was not systematic, it was not understood 
 there was not the machinery for the moral elevation of a town 
 population. The people were let alone. Some of the elders of 
 the Tron Church were excellent men, but their chief duty was 
 to stand at the plate, receive the free-will offerings of the con- 
 gregation as they entered, and distribute them to the poor by a 
 monthly allowance. Their spiritual duties and exertions were 
 but small, and almost exclusively confined to a few of the sick." 
 On Friday the 20th December 1816, in the vestry of the Tron 
 Church, a few younger and less prejudiced men, who might be 
 more efficient coadjutors, were ordained to the office of the elder- 
 ship, and we refer such of our readers as desire to enter fully 
 into the spirit of the earlier period of Dr. Chalmers's ministry in 
 Glasgow, to the Charge which he delivered upon this occasion. 
 One thing that address very clearly tells us that the wisdom, 
 caution, and kindness with which he urged forward his contem- 
 plated reformations were equal to the indomitable energy dis- 
 played. His strong hand not only never tried to put new wine 
 into old bottles, but it was with a very gentle motion that even 
 into the new bottles the new wine was poured. 
 
 There was, however, one region of effort open to instant occu- 
 pation, without waiting for any official reformations. It had 
 surprised Dr. Chalmers to observe the lamentable extent of 
 ignorance among the young very few of the children among 
 the lowest class of the community being in attendance upon 
 Sabbath evening schools. Convinced that if more of these 
 schools were opened in various districts of his parish, and vigor- 
 ous means were taken by actual visitation of the families to 
 bring out the children, a very large increase of attendance might 
 be secured, he invited a few members of his congregation to 
 form themselves into a Society for this purpose. At the second 
 meeting of this Society, held on the 10th December 1816, Mr. 
 
 * David Stow, Esq.
 
 THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT IN SCHOOLS. 441 
 
 Collins reported, that on the preceding Sabbath he had opened 
 in Campbell Street the first of the projected schools, with an 
 attendance of thirteen children. The schools rapidly multiplied 
 the attendance in each increased new teachers volunteered, 
 and at the end of two years it was found that upwards of 1200 
 children were under regular religious instruction. No young 
 person was received into these schools who could not read the 
 Bible with considerable distinctness and accuracy. The Bible, 
 the Shorter Catechism, and the Scripture Eeferences were the 
 class-books generally used, but no fixed rules for the manage- 
 ment of the schools were laid down. Subject to the regulation 
 that he should introduce no new class-book without submitting 
 it for the consideration of the Society, each teacher was left 
 to take his own way in the teaching or training of his own 
 class. Monthly meetings afforded regular opportunities of com- 
 munication as to the best and most effective methods of instruc- 
 tion. " Our meetings," says one of the members of the Society, 
 " were very delightful. I never saw any set of men who were 
 so animated by one spirit, and whose zeal was so steadily sus- 
 tained. The Doctor was the life of the whole. There was no 
 assuming of superiority no appearance of the minister directing 
 everything ; every one was free to make remarks or suggestions, 
 Dr. Chalmers ever the most ready to receive a hint or a sugges- 
 tion from the youngest or least experienced member ; and if any 
 useful hint came from such a one he was careful to give him the 
 full merit of it calling it, indeed, generally by his name. Al- 
 though we had no set forms of teaching, yet we conversed over 
 all the modes that we might find out the best. On one point we 
 had much discussion, namely, whether or not punishment should 
 be resorted to in a Sabbath-school. Mr. Stow was very strenu- 
 ous in condemning its introduction I was rather inclined the 
 other way. Among other strong cases, Mr. Stow told us of a 
 boy who had been so restless, idle, and mischievous, that he was 
 afraid he would have to put him away, when the thought oc- 
 curred to him to give the boy an office. He put, accordingly, 
 all the candles of the school under his care. From that hour he 
 was an altered boy, and became a diligent scholar. An oppor- 
 tunity soon occurred of trying my way of it also. A school 
 composed of twenty or thirty boys, situated in the east end of 
 the parish, had become so unruly and unmanageable, that it had 
 beaten off every teacher who had gone to it. The Society did 
 not know what to do with it, and the Doctor asked me if I
 
 442 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 would go out and try to reduce it to order. I was not very fond 
 of the task, but consented. I went out the next Sabbath, and 
 told the boys, whom I found all assembled, that I had heard a 
 very bad account of them, that I had come out for the purpose 
 of doing them good, that I must have peace and attention, that 
 I would submit to no disturbance, and that, in the first place, 
 we must begin with prayer. They all stood up, and I com- 
 menced, and certainly did not forget the injunction Watch and 
 pray. I had not proceeded two sentences, when one little fellow 
 gave his neighbour a tremendous dig in the side ; I instantly 
 stepped forward and gave him a sound cuff on the side of his 
 head. I never spoke a word, but stepped back, concluded the 
 prayer, taught for a month, and never had a more orderly school. 
 The case was reported at one of our own meetings. The Doctor 
 enjoyed it exceedingly, and taking up my instance and compar- 
 ing it with Mr. Stow's, he concluded that the question of pun- 
 ishment or non-punishment stood just where it was, inasmuch as 
 it had been found that the judicious appointment of a candle- 
 snuffer-general and a good cuff on the lug had been about 
 equally efficacious."* 
 
 The first schools of this Society were strictly parochial, that 
 is, none but children residing within the bounds of the Tron 
 Church parish were admitted to them, but they were not strictly 
 or limitedly local. About a year after their institution, a new 
 teacher having been admitted, Dr. Chalmers asked one of his 
 elders to go with him to the Saltmarket, that from a number 
 of contiguous families they might collect as many children as 
 would fill the new school. They secured a room at the entrance 
 of a long close. After going through the families living in this 
 single lane, and summing up the number of children, there were 
 found to be twenty-eight who had promised to attend. " I 
 think," said Mr. Thomson, " that we have got plenty." The 
 idea of a separate school in and for a single close pleased Dr. 
 Chalmers amazingly. " Yes ! " he exclaimed, " this is the true 
 local plan : we will just fix down Mr. K. to this close ; we will 
 make it his parish ; let him visit all the families here, and look 
 after all the children ; that will be an effectual preaching of the 
 gospel from door to door." From this time the plan of marking 
 out a small and definite locality, getting a room for the school 
 within its limits, and charging the teacher with the educational 
 oversight of all its families, was adopted and enforced. The 
 
 * MS. Memoranda by James Thomson, Esq.
 
 THE SCHOOLS IN THE SALTMAKKET. 4.43 
 
 strong additional stimulus imparted to the teachers by having a 
 small and specific locality to work in, and a definite and over- 
 takable work to do ; its increased efficacy in calling out the 
 attendance of the children, who were far readier to go to a 
 schoolroom so near than to one more distant, and upon whom 
 the gregarious principle came thus to operate with much more 
 force ; the bringing of the teacher into closer acquaintance with 
 all the families of his district, and the bringing of those families 
 into something like acquaintance with one another; but, above 
 all, its pervading influence, its power thoroughly to diffuse the 
 leaven of Christian influence through that portion of the mass on 
 which it operated, these all pleaded so many recommendations 
 of this system of local Sabbath-schools. To those schools in the 
 Saltmavket in which it was first adopted a historic interest is 
 attached. At a meeting held in Glasgow twenty years after- 
 wards, and when he was engaged in the still greater work of 
 adding two hundred churches to the equipment of the Establish- 
 ment, Dr. Chalmers " adverted to a letter he had received from 
 Mr. Heggie, a Sabbath-school teacher in the Saltmarket. This 
 gentleman, he said, had been attached to that locality for a long 
 period. And that which conferred the chief importance on this 
 Sabbath-school was, that with it was connected every opinion 
 he had formed of the necessity of the parochial and of the terri- 
 torial system. When he came to Glasgow he was connected 
 with the Tron parish. His first attention was directed to the 
 young. He found that there was a general Sabbath-school 
 Society existing in .Glasgow, by which many Sabbath-schools 
 were established throughout the city. The schools were taught 
 on no particular plan, and scholars were welcome to come to 
 them from all parts of the city to receive religious instruction 
 from the teachers on Sabbath evenings. A survey was taken of 
 the Tron parish the population of which was then 11,000 and 
 he found that the number of children in the parish who attended 
 the Sabbath-schools, on the general Sabbath-school system, did 
 not exceed one hundred. He was satisfied that such a parish 
 might yield a greater number of children capable of receiving 
 Sabbath-school instruction. Accordingly he devised the local 
 Sabbath-school system. In other words, instead of having 
 schools for children coming from all parts of the city, and for 
 those who had a previous will to attend on a particular teacher, 
 he divided the parish into forty different sections, allotting thirty 
 or forty houses to each section. He appointed local teachers for
 
 444 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 each section, and told each of them that his specific business 
 was, instead of taking children from all parts of the city, and 
 those who had a previous inclination to attend, that he should 
 go forth within the limits of his district, and visit every family, 
 telling them he had a Sahbath-school in the neighbourhood, and 
 requesting the parents to send their children to it. Instead of 
 waiting for them to come to him, his part was to go to them, 
 and induce the parents to send their children to the school. 
 What was -the result? His excellent friend, Mr. Heggie, had 
 one or two closes in the Saltmarket attached to his school, and 
 there was not a single family who did not send their children to 
 him to be instructed. He had a goodly attendance of thirty or 
 forty of them. What was true of his district was also true of 
 all the other districts in the Tron parish. In consequence of 
 attaching a territorial district to each Sabbath-school, and mak- 
 ing it the business of the teacher to go to the children to get 
 them to attend it, instead of waiting till they came to him 
 instead of having an attendance of little more than one hundred, 
 as under the old general system, he had the satisfaction of 
 preaching to an assemblage of not less than one thousand two 
 hundred Sabbath scholars. Now, this had convinced him of the 
 great superiority of the local to the general system of Sabbath- 
 school instruction. The first thing that suggested the great 
 argument he employed in support of the territorial system was 
 the difference in the amount of attendance between the local 
 and the general system of Sabbath-school instruction."* 
 
 On Dr. Chalmers's removal from the Tron Church to that of 
 St. John's, four of the teachers in these Saltmarket schools 
 organized themselves into a separate Society. They chose as 
 the field of their operations both sides of the Saltmarket, with 
 the numerous lanes which branch off from them, containing a 
 population of 3624 souls, out of which when they began their 
 labours there were only 128 children attending any Sabbath- 
 school. Instead of extending their operations at once over the 
 whole of the space, each appropriated a small locality, exerting 
 all his influence to induce others to come and help them. In 
 six months their numbers were complete the space was covered 
 twenty-six schools were opened thirty- three teachers, in- 
 cluding visitors, were engaged, and instead of 128 children 732 
 were in attendance. "These schools continue to the present 
 day, and there have flowed from this small local Sabbath-school 
 
 * Extracted from the Scottish Guardian, December 25, 1838.
 
 DEFENCE OF SABBATH SCHOOLS. 445 
 
 Society eight other Societies, in different parts of the city and 
 suburbs, all fairly traceable to the impetus given in the Tron 
 parish by Dr. Chalmers in this branch of parochial economy. I 
 consider had Dr. Chalmers done nothing more than promote the 
 principle of this local system of Sabbath-schools, he would not 
 have lived in vain. You can easily conceive the labour and 
 fatigue he must have undergone, first to convince his agents of 
 the propriety of his plan, and then to keep them from breaking 
 the rules. You also know the difficulty of retaining Sabbath- 
 school teachers for any lengthened period under any system of 
 management, untrained as they are to the art, and over-sanguine 
 of immediate results. The Doctor's Christian simplicity, how- 
 ever, operated powerfully in retaining nearly all."* 
 
 It was not, however, upon a flowing tide of approval or popu- 
 larity that these Sabbath-school operations at the commencement 
 moved. It was very much the reverse. There were indeed a 
 few, who from the very beginning hailed them with delight. 
 But over the general public of Glasgow the spirit of religious 
 indifference as yet strongly prevailed. That spirit looked upon 
 such efforts with cold dislike, and when stirred into quicker life 
 by such energy as was now embarked in their prosecution, it 
 kindled into a disdainful opposition, and tried to fill its mouth 
 with arguments. These Sabbath-schools, it was said, would 
 interfere with the proper domestic training of the young. They 
 were engaging laymen in what was fit and suitable employment 
 for clergymen alone. They would be the means of disseminating 
 a spirit of fanatical piety throughout the land. Not satisfied 
 with the actual doing of the work, Dr. Chalmers desired to be 
 its protector, and to turn, if he could, that tide of public feeling 
 which was running against it. In one of his Tron Church ser- 
 mons, delivered about the end of the year 1816, he entered upon 
 a vigorous and most animated defence of Sabbath- schools, the 
 very tone and manner of which sufficiently testifies as to the 
 state of public feeling at that time in Glasgow. " It is not easy 
 for me," he said in closing this defence, " to describe my general 
 feeling in reference to the population with which I have more 
 immediately to do. I feel as if it were a mighty and impene- 
 trable mass, truly beyond the strength of one individual arm, and 
 before which, after a few furtive and unavailing exertions, no- 
 thing remains but to sit down in the idleness of despair. It is 
 a number, it is a magnitude, it is an endless succession of houses 
 
 * Memoranda by David Stow, Esq.
 
 446 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMKHS. 
 
 and families, it is an extent of field which puts at a distance all 
 hope of a deep or universal impression it is an utter impossi- 
 bility, even with the most active process of visitation, to meet 
 the ever pressing demands of the sick, and the desolate, and the 
 dying, it is all this, I confess, which tempts me to seek for 
 relief in some wise and efficient system of deputation. In these 
 circumstances I do feel greatly obliged by every contribution to 
 the great cause of instructing and of moralizing. I do rejoice 
 particularly in the multiplication of those humble and often 
 despised seminaries. I think, I am certain that they are well 
 suited to the present needs and circumstances of our population, 
 that they may be made to open up a way through a mass that 
 would be otherwise impenetrable, and to circulate a right and a 
 healthy influence through all the untravelled obscurities whicli 
 abound in it that an unction of blessedness may emanate abroad 
 upon every neighbourhood in which they are situated that they 
 occupy a high point of command over the moral destinies of our 
 city,* for the susceptibilities of childhood and of youth are what 
 they have to deal with. It is a tender and flexible plant to 
 which they aim at giving a direction. It is conscience at the 
 most impressible stage of its history which they attempt to touch, 
 and on which they labour to engrave the lessons of conduct and 
 of principle. And I doubt not that when we are mouldering in 
 our coffins, when the present race of men have disappeared and 
 made room for another succession of the species, when parents 
 of every cast and of every character have sunk into oblivion, 
 and sleep together in quietness, the teachers of these institutions 
 will leave behind them a surviving memorial of their labour, in 
 a large portion of that worth and piety which shall adorn the 
 citizens of a future generation." 
 
 " One feet is not an argument, or rather we mnst not draw a general conclusion from 
 
 any one particular fact ; but I may state one which occurred in reference to St. John's 
 
 parish, which is very conclusive in its own department. Sixteen or eighteen of my Sabbath 
 
 scholar*, who had come to the knowledge of the truth, and who had been my pupils for 
 
 ,bout a dozen years, desirous of extending a knowledge of Christ to their perishing brethren, 
 
 r themselves a locality in the Barony parish, which was only 200 yards distant 
 
 rom my district, and in which most of these young men and women resided. I may men- 
 
 i that the two parishes of St. John's and Barony are divided simply by the breadth of 
 
 v street. The opposite side to St. John's, therefore, was fixed upon for establishing 
 
 Jelves as local Sabbath-school teachers, and as particular a note was taken of the 
 
 of each family as Dr. Chalmers recommended in St. John's. The following is the 
 
 f that survey on the subject of education : Out of 123 families on the Barony side 
 
 ound 1.34 children above six years of age who could not read, and were not at 
 
 I ; whereas on the St. John's side of the street, out of ] 06 families, there were only 
 
 at school Of the former scarcely any were in a-vbbath-schools ; in the latter the 
 
 ater proportion were in attendance. These young Sabbath-school teachers were after- 
 
 rds active agents in getting up St. Luke's Church, and getting it formed in a quoad sacra 
 
 parish. MS. Memoranda of David Stow, Esq.
 
 THE VACANCY AT STIRLING. 447 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE VACANCY AT STIRLING THE APPOINTMENT OFFEKED AND REFUSED 
 
 ARTICLES ON PAUPERISM IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW EXCURSION TO AN- 
 
 STRUTHER SUDDEN RECALL SERMON ON THE DEATH OP THE PRINCESS 
 
 CHARLOTTE REASON OF ITS PUBLICATION ARGUMENT ON BEHALF OF RELI- 
 GIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH SYSTEM OF PAUPER MANAGE- 
 MENT COMPARED HIGHEST EXHIBITIONS OF HIS POWER AS A PULPIT ORATOR 
 
 SINGULAR SCENES IN THE COLLEGE CHAPEL AND IN THE TRON CHURCH 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM HIS JOURNAL INSTANCE OF HIS USEFULNESS HIS OWN 
 
 ESTIMATE OP POPULARITY. 
 
 A REPORT of the two memorable sermons of the 13th October 
 1816, and of the circumstances which had occasioned their de- 
 livery, reached the good town of Stirling when the first mini- 
 sterial charge there happened to be vacant. Believing that the 
 discomforts of his existing position might tempt him to leave 
 Glasgow, the Town-council promptly resolved to offer the ap- 
 pointment to Dr. Chalmers. That their application might bear 
 upon him with the greatest possible effect, the Provost, and a 
 select deputation of the citizens, visited Glasgow and invited 
 Dr. Chalmers to dine with them at the Tontine. Everything 
 was done by them to set forth the facilities which the offered 
 situation would present for the furtherance of his cherished de- 
 signs. They guaranteed an entire deliverance from all distracting 
 external annoyances : in the city nothing but purely ministerial 
 work would be required of him, and at home his hours for study 
 would be sacredly guarded from invasion. The manse lay almost 
 within the shadow of the Castle rock, and, if needful, the Castle 
 guns would be turned upon the way' which led to it, to drive 
 back all disturbers of his time or tranquillity. The prospect 01 
 such perfect freedom and security was too tempting to be at once 
 and peremptorily declined. His final decision was communi- 
 cated to Provost Littlejohn in the following terms : 
 
 "'GLASGOW, February 17, 1817. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Be assured I perform a most painful duty 
 in stating to you my resolution of declining the offer of the charge 
 in Stirling with which you have favoured me. You have in- 
 curred much trouble in this matter, and I cannot bear that you
 
 448 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 should incur any further suspense. To yourself personally, and 
 to the good town over which you are called in Providence to 
 preside, I feel the most unbounded gratitude, and shall ever look 
 upon myself as united with them by a tie of no common interest 
 and obligation. My friends in this quarter have, in fact, dis- 
 armed me of every one argument for leaving them. That ex- 
 emption from secular duties which, with a liberality and a correct 
 estimate of the importance of ministerial work you were so will- 
 ing to allow, I consider as most thoroughly and conclusively 
 established for me in this place ; and my congregation have 
 come forward with such an offer of assistance to me in my mini- 
 sterial duties as to give to my present office all the lightness and 
 facility of a collegiate charge. In these circumstances I feel 
 that I have no alternative. There is an extent of field in this 
 quarter which gives a decided preponderance to its claims ; and 
 I can assure you, that upon any other decision than the one I 
 have taken, I could not have felt myself acquitted in the sight 
 of God and of my own conscience. With assurances of the 
 tenderest and most grateful regard, and many prayers that you 
 may be abundantly directed to the choice of a pastor who, after 
 Grod's own heart, shall feed you with words of knowledge and 
 understanding, believe me to be, my dear Sir, yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The same post which brought this letter conveyed also to Mr. 
 Littlejohn the following communication from his friend the late 
 Dr. Chrystal : " MY DEAR SIR, I leave Dr. Chalmers's letter 
 of this date to speak for itself. His answer was only made 
 known to-day, and the moment he made up kis mind he sent 
 me a note of the result. I have been with him since. He is 
 confined to the house in consequence of exerting so much yester- 
 day. The magistrates were in his church, and he is supposed 
 never to have acquitted himself so ably. No sooner was it 
 known that you and your brethren had been here and made him 
 the offer of your first charge than the whole town was astir. He 
 was like to be mobbed by solicitations suggested by friendship, 
 respect, gratitude, arising from clergy, laity, general session, 
 congregation, urging on him duty, religion, and everything I 
 can name or suppose not to move. At first he remained firm, 
 as his objections to certain things he has to do here were well 
 known. Everything however has been done which can be done 
 to relieve him, and he now assures me that he has a moral
 
 JOURNAL LETTER. 449 
 
 certainty of getting these difficulties removed. A congregational 
 meeting was held. They have offered him a regular assistant, 
 to be chosen by him and twenty-one of a committee named by 
 themselves. This assistant is to do half the duty on Sabbath, 
 and to relieve him through the week. They bind themselves 
 to bear this additional burden during Dr. Chalmers's incumbency, 
 and although little time has elapsed since the idea was fixed, 
 they have already subscribed nearly 200, to be continued 
 annually. They are to buy or rent a house for him in any place 
 he wishes, and propose raising his stipend to I know not what. 
 Considering what they have done, and are doing, and probably 
 will do, it was impossible for him to tear himself from people so 
 sincerely attached, and so forward to do everything which they 
 could think agreeable to him. It is supposed that he will not 
 allow them to carry things to the proposed length, but it obliged 
 him to give the refusal to you which was painful to him. I am 
 persuaded that you will see that he could not well do otherwise. 
 I think you had his private wishes, if he could have sacrificed 
 to private ease and emolument the strong claims which his 
 people here have to his labours among them." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers did not allow things to be carried to the proposed 
 length. The offer of a manse and of an increase of income 
 were respectfully declined ; but he gratefully accepted the offer 
 of an assistant. Additional labour would be thereby bestowed 
 upon parochial cultivation, while at the same time additional 
 leisure would be secured to himself for literary engagements. 
 His first article on Pauperism appeared in the March number 
 of the Edinburgh Keview, and he had engaged to follow it up 
 by a comparison of the English and Scottish systems of parochial 
 relief. His visit to England, and the large arrears of minis- 
 terial labour awaiting his return, filled up the summer months ; 
 and there was so little hope of finding time enough in Glasgow, 
 that he resolved on a short excursion to Anstruther, during which 
 his second article was to be drawn up.* His first journal letter 
 upon this occasion was addressed to his eldest daughter. 
 
 " POLMONT, November 10, 1817. 
 
 " MY DEAR ANNE, You want me to stay away only four days, 
 but I must stay away nineteen days. However, by the time you 
 have gotten this letter it will only be fifteen days. After I shook 
 hands with you I went to Mr. Harley's and got my horse. Then 
 
 * For both these articles on Pauperism, see Works, vol. rx. pp. 247-363. 
 VOL. I. 2 F
 
 450 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 I met Dr. Eainy, who wanted me to go and see poor Mr. A., 
 who used sometimes to drink tea with mamma, and who was 
 dying. He was so very ill that he could not see papa, and his 
 sister was lying on a sofa, very sorry and crying because she 
 was going to lose her brother. She was in great distress, inso- 
 much that papa could say nothing to comfort her. Nobody 
 knows when they are to die. I hope Mr. A. was a good man, 
 and will go to heaven. And I should like Anne to be a good 
 girl, so that when she dies God may take her to heaven too. 
 He loves all good people, and Jesus Christ, His Son, will come 
 down to the world and take them up with Him to the place 
 where God dwells, and there they will always be happy and 
 will never die. 
 
 " When papa saw that he could say nothing to relieve poor 
 Mrs. B., he went away and got upon his horse and rode on to 
 Cumbernauld. He has got no rain all this day, but the road was 
 very very bad, and his boots were very dirty. It was after one 
 o'clock when he arrived at Cumbernauld, and his horse was very 
 much tired, and he gave it a feed of corn, and he himself dined, 
 and read a book about the poor ; but what he is very sorry for, 
 he also read some of the small Testament, and forgot to bring it 
 away with him. But he has written to the master of the house 
 to send it by one of his drivers to Glasgow. It was given him 
 by Captain Gordon, and he would not like to lose it ; so if it 
 should come, you must see that it be taken great care of, and be 
 ready to give it to Papa when he comes back again. 
 
 "I rode after dinner to this place, and came here at five 
 o'clock, and have drunk tea, and am spending an hour or two 
 here before supper, and am reading about the poor, and spending 
 part of the time in writing to Anne. The name of the gentle- 
 man who lives in this house is Mr. M'Farlane, and there are four 
 children, three girls and one boy. One of the girls is just as 
 tall and as old as you. The little boy is a good deal burned in 
 the face by an accident that happened yesterday to him. I am 
 now going down to talk with Mr. M'Farlane before supper. You 
 must know that the little children here have no mamma, though 
 they have a papa. Their poor mamma died some time ago, and 
 you should be very thankful to God that He still lets your papa 
 and mamma live, and if you pray that God may spare the life of 
 your parents He perhaps may hear you." 
 
 " I should think," Dr. Chalmers writes, " that the reading of 
 the above may amuse Anne. It is a good thing to keep her mind
 
 AN UNWELCOME SUMMONS. 431 
 
 in exercise, and I beg that you may give her every impression 
 you can of the magnitude and sacredness of this topic." 
 
 " Tuesday. Had about two hours and a half of study in the 
 forenoon. Have begun my review. Took an early dinner at 
 Polmont, and left it at two. There was slight rain so that Mr. 
 M'Farlane could not accompany me in a convoy. I got to 
 Queensferry before five. Am still on this side of the water. 
 Have had a very diligent and successful evening in the inn, 
 wrote above my average quantity of the review. Have written 
 to Sandy about my Kirkcaldy plan, so as to get a secure retreat 
 in his room, and am now going to bed. The inn is quiet. The 
 people do not know me, and I am not treated with very great 
 distinction. I proposed family worship to the landlady, and she 
 declined it, though civilly, and on the score of being very throng. 
 
 "Wednesday. Started at half-past seven, breakfasted between 
 nine and ten. Had some composition before breakfast, and in 
 the forenoon I completed more than my average quantity, though 
 not so satisfactorily as yesterday. Dined at two. Before I left 
 the place I was recognised, and more distinction was awarded to 
 me. I was addressed as Doctor, both by the ostler and in the 
 boat. Crossed between three and four. Had a passage of fifteen 
 minutes. Eode smartly to Burntisland, which I reached at five. 
 Was most cordially received. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Young is very angry with me just now, because I am 
 expressing some polite regrets at the trouble that I am giving 
 him in procuring me a wafer. He insists on my closing this 
 letter, as the post goes off at eight. So we will even keep Mr. 
 Archibald waiting a little. I said to Mr. M'Farlane that I under- 
 stood Thomson was going to give me a dressing in his 'Instruc- 
 tor,' at which he expressed his surprise, for that he knew Mr. 
 Thomson admired the 'Discourses' most enthusiastically. In 
 which case it is probable that his application will not be alto- 
 gether of an unpalatable nature." 
 
 Filling the week up pleasantly, and having made a prosperous 
 outset in his article for the Edinburgh Review, Dr. Chalmers 
 reached Starbank on Saturday evening, and having announced 
 his arrival to Mr. Cook, was requested to preach at Kilmany on 
 the following day. On the way to church a letter was handed 
 to him which broke up all his plans. The recent death of the 
 Princess Charlotte had plunged the nation into a grief wider,
 
 452 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 deeper, and more tender than perhaps any similar event has ever 
 occasioned in this country. Partaking in the general desire to 
 observe it with all due solemnity, the Magistrates of Glasgow 
 had resolved that there should be public and appropriate services 
 in all the churches of the city on Wednesday the 19th the day 
 fixed for the burial at Windsor. The letter which Dr. Chalmers 
 got at Kilmany on the 16th was a summons to return and occupy 
 the pulpit of the Tron on the approaching solemnity. His 
 answer to the unwelcome summons was brief and laconic : 
 
 " Kirkcaldy, Sunday Night. Your letter only reached me as 
 I was going to the church at Kilmany, where I preached this 
 day. I shall try and be with you. But I understand now that 
 the funeral is to be on Wednesday, and I shall find this con- 
 venient. It is a shocking place Glasgow ; and I never knew 
 what it was yet to have an excursion from it without some trash 
 or other being sent after me." On Monday Dr. Chalmers posted 
 from Kirkcaldy to Queensferry, got an outside seat on the Edin- 
 burgh mail, arrived in Glasgow between five and six o'clock on 
 Tuesday morning, and on Wednesday forenoon preached one of 
 his most brilliant discourses, composed during the intervals, and 
 after the exhaustion of this rapid and fatiguing journey. It was 
 at one or other of the inns by the roadside that, escaping from 
 the bustle, and throwing himself into the pathetic incident 
 which had touched the nation's heart so deeply, he penned the 
 following sentences : " A few days ago, all looked so full of life, 
 and promise, and security, when we read of the bustle of the 
 great preparation, and were told of the skill and the talent that 
 were pressed into the service, and heard of the goodly attendance 
 of the most eminent in the nation, and how officers of state, and 
 the titled dignitaries of the land, were charioted in splendour to 
 the scene of expectation, as to the joys of an approaching holi- 
 day yes, and we were told too, that the bells of the surrounding 
 villages were all in readiness for the merry peal of gratulation, 
 and that the expectant metropolis of our empire, on tiptoe for 
 the announcement of her future monarch, had her winged couriers 
 of despatch to speed the welcome message to the ears of her 
 citizens, and that from her an embassy of gladness was to travel 
 over all the provinces of the land ; and the country, forgetful of 
 all that she had suffered, was at length to offer the spectacle of 
 one wide and rejoicing jubilee. death! thou hast indeed 
 chosen the time and the victim, for demonstrating the grim as- 
 cendency of thy power over all the hopes and fortunes of our
 
 DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 453 
 
 species ! Our blooming Princess, whom fancy had decked with 
 the coronet of these realms, and under whose gentle sway all 
 bade so fair for the good and the peace of our nation, has he placed 
 upon her bier ! And, as if to fill up the measure of his triumph, 
 has he laid by her side that babe, who but for him might have 
 been the monarch of a future generation ; and he has done that, 
 which by no single achievement he could otherwise have accom- 
 plished he has sent forth over the whole of our land, the gloom 
 of such a bereavement as cannot be replaced by any living de- 
 scendant of royalty he has broken the direct succession of the 
 monarchy of England by one and the same disaster has he 
 wakened up the public anxieties of the country, and sent a pang 
 as acute as that of the most woful domestic visitation into the 
 heart of each of its families." 
 
 Although so hastily prepared, this sermon on the death of the 
 Princess Charlotte was not to be speedily forgotten. On the day 
 after its delivery an article appeared in one of the Glasgow news- 
 papers, representing a passage in it of broadest and most gene- 
 ral application as specially directed against the supporters of 
 the existing Government. Dr. Chalmers was exceedingly an- 
 noyed that he should be thought capable of abusing so sacred an 
 occasion by making the pulpit a vehicle of political invective. 
 His friends advised him to publish the discourse in self-defence. 
 Unwilling to commit to the press a sermon so hastily prepared, 
 and now once more engrossed with his article on Pauperism, he 
 left Glasgow on Monday the 24th, hoping to escape from the 
 ferment which his sermon had occasioned, and to complete at 
 Anstruther the work which had been so painfully interrupted at 
 Kilmany. At his first resting-place by the way the irritation 
 was renewed: " Dunfermline, Nov. 24. I see," he writes, 
 " the vile article in the Chronicle copied by the Scotsman, the 
 most Whiggish paper in Edinburgh." His unsettled purpose was 
 confirmed on the following day, by the advice of one in whose 
 friendly judgment he reposed much confidence. " Tuesday. 
 Rode with Mr. Chalmers to Broomhall. Lord Elgin had heard 
 of the sermon from Sir John Oswald, who had been on a visit, 
 and received the mischievous impression of it which the paper is 
 calculated to give. He took Mr. Chalmers aside, and had a long 
 confab with him about it, of which Mr. Chalmers told me on 
 leaving us. I had previously read the misrepresented passage to 
 Mr. Chalmers, and he gave his Lordship the true impression of 
 it. At his request I read the whole of it to the family ; and
 
 454 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 liis Lordship insists most strenuously upon its publication, and 
 says that he is greatly obliged to the Chronicle for drawing me 
 out, and that if I will not appear in a few days, I may look for 
 another article from himself still more outrageous, and which he 
 trusts will have the effect," 
 
 The sermon was published on the 13th December; and from 
 all intention of specific political allusion its author at once stood 
 vindicated. A large portion of the discourse had been occupied 
 with a pleading for a more extensive ecclesiastical provision for 
 our large towns. " On this day of national calamity, if ever the 
 subject should be adverted to from the pulpit, we may be allowed 
 to express our riveted convictions on the close alliance that ob- 
 tains between the political interests and the religious character 
 of a country. And I am surely not out of place when, on look- 
 ing at the mighty mass of a city population, I state my appre- 
 hension, that if something be not done to bring this enormous 
 physical strength under the control of Christian and humanized 
 principle, the day may yet come when it may lift against the 
 authorities of the land its brawny vigour, and discharge upon 
 them all the turbulence of its rude and volcanic energy." Per- 
 sonal and local influences conspired to direct his thoughts into 
 this peculiar channel. He had lately finished his own survey of 
 the Tron Church parish, and by personal inquiries within every 
 dwelling, he had found that out of 11,120 souls there were not 
 more than 3500 who had seats or were in the habit of worship- 
 ping in any church. In many districts two-thirds of the adult 
 population had wholly cast off the very form and profession of 
 Christianity. Dissent had done much, twice as much, as, in its 
 hampered and ill -administered condition, the Established Church 
 had done to arrest the evil ; but such, despite of all previous 
 efforts, was the awful magnitude to which that evil had already 
 attained, growing too in a much more rapid ratio than did the 
 general increase of the population. After the most anxious and 
 profound reflection reflection based upon personal and minute 
 observation of the condition and habits of the lowest and poorest 
 of the people, Dr. Chalmers was convinced that the only effec- 
 tive remedy was to purify, remodel, and extend the parochial 
 economy. The extension of that economy was what, perhaps, 
 might be soonest attained, as the want of it could most easily be 
 made apparent. During a period of nearly one hundred years, 
 while the population had more than quadrupled, only two new 
 city churches had been built in Glasgow. Thirty-seven years
 
 WANT OF CHURCHES IN GLASGOW. 455 
 
 had elapsed since the last addition to the number had been made. 
 It had not been the fault of the' clergymen or other friends of 
 the Established Church that the public provision for the religious 
 instruction of a population so largely augmented had been 
 allowed to remain so inadequate. So lately as in the year 1810 
 a vigorous effort had been made to induce the magistrates to 
 erect six additional churches. The opposition, however, raised 
 by those who objected to an assessment being levied from the 
 whole community for the exclusive benefit of any one religious 
 denomination, was so strenuous that they were unable to attain 
 their object. And now, when Dr. Chalmers's parochial labours 
 were laying open to the public eye the fearful spiritual condition 
 of large masses of the people, another similar attempt was made. 
 All, however, that the magistrates had been able to do was to 
 erect a single additional church, the foundations of which had 
 been laid a few months before the sermon on the death of the 
 Princess Charlotte was delivered. This act of theirs was alluded 
 to in that sermon with undissembled satisfaction, but it was 
 characterized at the same time as but the first step of a process 
 which would need to be mightily extended ere the existing desti- 
 tution could be effectively overtaken. Nor did he hesitate, at 
 the very time that they were congratulating themselves on the 
 building of this one church, to declare that twenty more churches 
 and twenty more ministers were still required a proposal 
 which, ignorant as so many of them were of the necessities of 
 this case, looked Utopian and extravagant, startled even the 
 friends of the Establishment, and stirred anew the former oppo- 
 sition. Dr. Chalmers thought it desirable, therefore, to annex 
 to his Discourse a brief Appendix, stating what the actual 
 amount of the destitution was, as ascertained by his own personal 
 inspection, and striving to remove one of the most formidable 
 objections which had been raised against that peculiar instru- 
 ment of relief, the employment and extension of which he 
 advocated. Dr. Adam Smith had argued against religious esta- 
 blishments on the ground, that like any common article of mer- 
 chandise religious instniction should be left to the ordinary 
 operation of demand and supply. Dr. Chalmers came forward 
 with the reply, that in all cases where the want of anything 
 instead of weakening the appetite for it whetted that appetite, 
 it might be best and safest to leave matters to the pure opera- 
 tions of nature. But what made this case of religious destitution 
 peculiar, and prevented any argument grounded on the ordinary
 
 456 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 operations of commerce being legitimately applied to it, was, 
 that not only did the natural and effective demand fall short of 
 the actual necessity, but that the demand lessened as the neces- 
 sity increased, until at last, when the want was greatest, desire 
 for its relief was almost or altogether unfelt. This argument, 
 now so familiar to statesmen as well as theologians of which a 
 few years ago Lord Brougham made effective use in the House 
 of Lords, without however any allusion to its author was first 
 broached by Dr. Chalmers in the appendix to this sermon 
 published in 1817, and it is interesting to notice that it was in 
 connexion with the practical question of reaching and recovering 
 from their low estate an outcast city population that he first 
 publicly alluded to the general or more abstract question of 
 Keligious Establishments. 
 
 The sheets of his sermon, with its preface and appendix, were 
 passing through the press, while Dr. Chalmers, immersed in 
 Parliamentary Reports as to the operation of the Poor-laws in 
 England, was engaged at Anstruther in completing his article 
 for Mr. Jeffrey. As he had not yet made himself extensively or 
 familiarly acquainted with the state of pauperism in England, 
 he reserved to some future occasion the suggestion of the proper 
 remedy for evils which had become so glaring as to be univer- 
 sally acknowledged. He knew enough, however, of the English 
 system of assessment to deprecate its introduction into Scotland, 
 and enough of the state of matters in both countries as to pau- 
 per management to institute such a comparison between them 
 as should vindicate an appeal to his countrymen to resist to the 
 uttermost the threatened invasion from the South. It so hap- 
 pened that at this period our island presented all possible 
 varieties of treatment of the poor. There were all the parishes 
 of England, where for two hundred years a compulsory provi- 
 sion for the poor had been enforced ; there was a number of 
 Scottish parishes, chiefly along the borders, into which, at dif- 
 ferent periods during the preceding half century, the principle 
 of assessment had been introduced ; while to the north of the 
 Forth and Clyde, there were not twenty parishes in Scotland 
 where the old system of parochial management, in which the 
 only fund for the relief of the poor consisted of voluntary contri- 
 butions at the church-doors, did not still prevail.* Most inter- 
 esting and instructive conclusions were furnished by a simple 
 inspection and comparison of these three classes of parishes. 
 
 * Prior to the year 1700, there were only three assessed parishes in Scotland.
 
 EVILS OF A POOR-LAW. 457 
 
 In the Scottish unassessed parishes the sums raised for the sup- 
 port of the poor ranged from 10 to 50 per annum for each 
 thousand of the population. In the English assessed parishes 
 the sums raised for a like purpose ranged from 500 to 1500 
 for each thousand of the population. In the recently assessed 
 border parishes the sums varied, inclining to the English or 
 to the Scottish rates according to the length of time during 
 which the assessment had existed, with this however as a 
 general feature characterizing all of them, that the assessment 
 had almost invariably increased at a much more rapid rate than 
 the_ population. Comparing, then, an English and a Scottish 
 parish of equal population, whose inhabitants were engaged in 
 like employments and possessed the same resources, why was it 
 that in the one case the expenditure for the poor was 1500 and 
 in the other 50 ? Dr. Chalmers sought and found the expla- 
 nation of this difference in the existence in the former case of a 
 public fund raised by legal enforcement and of indefinite amount, 
 upon which the poor were taught or at least universally ima- 
 gined that they had a right to draw whenever, owing to what- 
 ever cause, they were in want. Such a fund necessarily gene- 
 rated a feeling of security as to future maintenance altogether 
 independent of present character or conduct. It destroyed that 
 strongest of all natural incitements to industry and prudence 
 which operates when a man knows that if he do not work, or if 
 he thoughtlessly squander, he and his family must starve ; it 
 relaxed the obligations of relationship, throwing upon the public 
 for support those aged or infirm persons whom it should have 
 been the pride and pleasure of their own children or other near 
 relatives to sustain ; it weakened the force of all those kindly 
 sympathies which want or suffering is sure to awaken in every 
 neighbourhood where nature is left to her own unchecked opera- 
 tions ; thus closing currents of supply far fuller and healthier 
 than any that it opened. It checked the private ministrations 
 of the wealthy, who, the more that they gave upon compulsion, 
 had the less to give upon the impulse of compassion ; stripping 
 of its true character the charity which it enforced, leaving no- 
 thing to spontaneous generosity in the giver, and awakening a 
 sentiment very different from that of gratitude in the receiver. 
 In such Scottish parishes as were yet untainted no such public 
 fund existed, and no such consequences ensued. A spirit of 
 honest and honourable independence there prevailed, which liked 
 far better to trust to its own efforts than depend on others' aid ;
 
 458 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 a thrifty economy which thought of the future, and out of the 
 savings of a well-regulated industry provided for it ; a genial 
 play of kindly feelings among neighbours, and a ready help 
 whenever help was needed and deserved ; a deep sense of what 
 the members of one family owed to each other when age took 
 away the strength for toil, or when disease or death entered the 
 dwelling ; "the aged reposing with comfort and respect in the 
 houses of their children, sitting in their allotted places of dis- 
 tinction by the evening fire, returning the filial piety by such 
 little acts of helpfulness as their feebleness could still administer, 
 and at length carried to their graves by the arms of descendants, 
 who, out of their own hard and honest earnings, shielded the 
 parents who gave them birth from a degradation they would 
 have blushed to endure, and keeping them off the parish to the 
 very last, so bore up the termination of their career as to sustain 
 the dignity of its character throughout, and nobly to close its de- 
 scription as a career of unbroken and unsullied independence." 
 
 When he looked upon this picture and upon that, upon the 
 English and the Scottish poor, we are not surprised that, in 
 terror of the approaching calamity, and with strong desire to 
 ward it off if possible, Dr. Chalmers should have said " We 
 want no such ignominy to come near our Scottish population as 
 that of farming our poor. We want no other asylum for our 
 aged parents than that of their pious and affectionate families. 
 We can neither suffer them, nor do we like the prospect for our- 
 selves, of pining out the cheerless evening of our days away from 
 the endearments of a home. We wish to do as long as we can 
 without the apparatus of English laws and English work-houses ; 
 and should like to ward for ever from our doors the system that 
 would bring an everlasting interdict on the worth, and independ- 
 ence, and genuine enjoyments of our peasantry. We wish to 
 see their venerable sires surrounded, as heretofore, by the com- 
 pany and the playfulness of their own grandchildren ; nor can 
 we bear to think that our high-minded people should sink down 
 and be satisfied with the dreary imprisonment of an almshouse 
 as the closing object in the vista of their earthly anticipations. 
 Yet such is the goodly upshot of a system, which has its friends 
 and advocates in our own country men who could witness 
 without a sigh the departure of all those peculiarities which 
 have both alimented and adorned the character of our be- 
 loved Scotland men who can gild over with the semblance 
 of humanity a poisoned opiate of deepest injury both to its hap-
 
 SPECULATIONS ON GENERAL POLITICS. 459 
 
 piness and to its morals and who, in the very act of flattering 
 the poor, are only forging for them such chains as, soft in feeling 
 as silk, but strong in proof as adamant, will bind them down to 
 a state of permanent degradation." 
 
 Alarmed by the discussions which his sermon had provoked, 
 Mrs. Chalmers had written to Dr. Chalmers from Glasgow, ex- 
 pressing her fears that his papers for the Edinburgh Review 
 would plunge him still deeper into the troubled tide of politics. 
 " I do feel myself," he said in answer, " in such circumstances 
 with the Edinburgh Review, and I do cherish such prospects 
 of usefulness from my speculations on general politics,* that I 
 must make some clear and decided avowal on the subject of 
 party politics. The violent of both parties will be offended, but 
 all that are truly honest and independent in the country will 
 approve such as your Wilberforces and Lord Grenvilles, and 
 the moderate Whigs and the moderate Tories, and the whole 
 of the middle party both in Parliament and in the country. I 
 wish to devote myself to my congregation as much as possible ; 
 but there are general calls upon me besides which I must not 
 altogether resist, and for the sake of which it were perhaps well 
 that I were without a congregation entirely. ... I should, for 
 myself, like a situation where there was less of glare and pub- 
 licity and mobbish exhibition, and more of quiet study, relieved 
 by converse with literary Christians, and by a far greater quan- 
 tity of spiritual and improving converse with the inmates of 
 my own family than I have hitherto held. . . . My mother 
 writes me that my father has been seized with great weakness. 
 that God would spare him and me for one visit more, when, 
 free from the weight of every urgent call, I could devote the 
 time and the strength of a whole fortnight to him ! " 
 
 Hearing of his father's illness, which proved but temporary, 
 while on the way to Edinburgh, where he had engaged to preach 
 for the Hibernian Society, on Wednesday the 24th December, 
 he wrote to his mother "It grieves me very much to hear of 
 my dear father's illness, and I beg you to let me know of him 
 particularly ere I leave Edinburgh. I mean to go to Edinburgh 
 on Monday, and not to leave it till Thursday. A letter ad- 
 dressed to me at the Rev. Henry Grey's, Newington, Edinburgh, 
 will be sure to reach me. It is my earnest prayer that your 
 own mind may obtain strength and support from on high under 
 the visitation of my father's illness, and that his mind ^may find 
 a sure and a solid resting-place on the great Mediator."
 
 460 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Edinburgh, December 25, 1817. I leave this on Saturday 
 for Glasgow. I preached here yesterday. I infer from not 
 hearing of you that my father is no worse ; and I know not one 
 earthly object I have nearer at heart than the preservation of 
 his life, so that I may be enabled, with my whole family, to 
 have intercourse with him in summer. It were well if we 
 could draw away our affections from the world, and set them 
 upon our reconciled Father in Jesus Christ our Lord. There is 
 no want of willingness on His part, nor of freeness in the offer 
 of mercy by Him. Were our faith as large as His faithfulness, 
 what a state of peace and joy and holiness it would translate us 
 into I I pray that in your present situation you may have all 
 the comfort of the Spirit of God working in you the blessed 
 assurances of pardon and salvation through the blood of Jesus. 
 
 " I have just received your letter, and am greatly delighted 
 to understand that my father is not worse. This will prove very 
 acceptable news to our friends in Glasgow, who have been send- 
 ing me letters of inquiry about him." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers returned to Glasgow on Saturday the 27th 
 December, and on the following day found a prodigious crowd 
 awaiting his appearance in the Tron Church pulpit. His popu- 
 larity as a preacher was now at its very highest summit, and 
 judging merely by the amount of physical energy displayed by 
 the preacher, and by the palpable and visible effects produced 
 upon his hearers, we conclude that it was about this period, and 
 within the walls of the Tron Church, that by far the most won- 
 derful exhibitions of his power as a pulpit orator were witnessed. 
 " The Tron Church contains, if I mistake not," says the Rev. 
 Dr. Wardlaw, who, as frequently as he could, was a hearer in it, 
 " about 1400 hearers, according to the ordinary allowance of 
 seat-room ; when crowded, of course proportionally more. And, 
 though I cannot attempt any pictorial sketch of the place, I 
 may, in a sentence or two, present you with a few touches of the 
 scene which I have, more than once or twice, witnessed within 
 its walls ; not that it was at all peculiar, for it resembled every 
 other scene where the Doctor in those days, when his eloquence 
 was in the prime of its vehemence and splendour, was called to 
 preach. There was one particular, indeed, which rendered such 
 a scene, in a city like Glasgow, peculiarly striking. I refer to 
 the time of it. To see a place of worship, of the size mentioned, 
 crammed above and below, on a Thursday forenoon, during the 
 busiest hours of the day, with fifteen or sixteen hundred hearers,
 
 THE TKON CHURCH. 461 
 
 and these of all descriptions of persons, in all descriptions of 
 professional occupation, the busiest as well as those who had 
 most leisure on their hands, those who had least to spare taking 
 care so to arrange their business engagements previously as 
 to make time for the purpose, all pouring in through the wide 
 entrance at the side of the Tron steeple, half an hour before the 
 time of service, to secure a seat, or content, if too late for this, 
 to occupy, as many did, standing-room this was, indeed, a novel 
 and strange sight. Nor was it once merely, or twice, but month 
 after month the day was calculated when his turn to preach 
 again was to come round, and anticipated, with even impatient 
 longing, by multitudes. 
 
 " Suppose the congregation thus assembled pews filled with 
 sitters, and aisles, to a great extent, with slanders. They wait 
 in eager expectation. The preacher appears. The devotional 
 exercises of praise and prayer having been gone through with 
 unaffected simplicity and earnestness, the entire assembly set 
 themselves for the treat, with feelings very diverse in kind, but 
 all eager and intent. There is a hush of dead silence. The 
 text is announced, and he begins. Every countenance is up 
 every eye bent, with fixed intentness, on the speaker. As he 
 kindles the interest grows. Every breath is held every cough 
 is suppressed every fidgety movement is settled every one, 
 riveted himself by the spell of the impassioned and entrancing 
 eloquence, knows how sensitively his neighbour will resent the 
 very slightest disturbance. Then, by and bye, there is a pause. 
 The speaker stops to gather breath to wipe his forehead 
 to adjust his gown, and purposely too, and wisely, to give the 
 audience, as well as himself, a moment or two of relaxation. 
 The moment is embraced there is free breathing suppressed 
 coughs get vent postures are changed there is a universal 
 stir, as of persons who could not have endured the constraint 
 much longer the preacher bends forward his hand is raised 
 all is again hushed. The same stillness and strain of unrelaxed 
 attention is repeated, more intent still, it may be, than before, 
 as the interest of the subject and of the speaker advance. And 
 so, for perhaps four or five times in the course of a sermon, there 
 is the relaxation and the 'at it again 1 till the final winding up. 
 
 " And then, the moment the last word was uttered, and fol- 
 lowed by the ' let us pray,' there was a scene for which no 
 excuse or palliation can be pleaded but the fact of its having 
 been to many a matter of difficulty, in the morning of a week-
 
 462 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 day, to accomplish the abstraction of even so mnch of their time 
 from business the closing prayer completely drowned by the 
 hurried rush of large numbers from the aisles and pews to the 
 door ; an unseemly scene, without doubt, as if so many had come 
 to the house of God not to worship, but simply to enjoy the 
 fascination of human eloquence. Even this much it was a great 
 thing for eloquence to accomplish. And how diversified soever 
 the motives which drew so many together, and the emotions 
 awakened and impressions produced by what was heard though, 
 in the terms of the text of one of his most overpoweringly stir- 
 ring and faithful appeals, he was to not a few ' as one that had 
 a pleasant voice and could play well on an instrument,' yet there 
 is abundant proof that, in the highest sense, ' his labour was not 
 in vain in the Lord ; ' that the truths which, with so much 
 fearless fidelity and impassioned earnestness, he delivered, went 
 in many instances further than the ear, or even the intellect 
 that they reached the heart, and, by the power of the Spirit, 
 turned it to God." 
 
 " On Thursday the 12th February 1818," I now quote from 
 a manuscript of the Eev. Mr. Eraser, minister of Kilchrennan, 
 " Dr. Chalmers preached in the Tron Church before the Directors 
 of the Magdalene Asylum. The sermon delivered on this occasion 
 was that ' On the Dissipation of Large Cities.' Long before the 
 service commenced every seat and passage was crowded to ex- 
 cess, with the exception of the front pew of the gallery, which 
 was reserved for the Magistrates. A vast number of students 
 deserted their classes at the University and were present. This 
 was very particularly the case in regard to the Moral Philosophy 
 Class, which I attended that session, as appeared on the follow- 
 ing day when the list of absentees was given in by the person 
 who had called the catalogue, and at the same time a petition 
 from several of themselves was handed in to the Professor, pray- 
 ing for a remission of the fine for non-attendance, on the ground 
 that they had been hearing Dr. Chalmers. The Doctor's manner 
 during the whole delivery of that magnificent discourse was 
 strikingly animated, while the enthusiasm and energy which he 
 threw into some of its bursts rendered them quite overpowering. 
 One expression which he used, together with his action, his look, 
 and the very tones of his voice when it came forth, made a most 
 vivid and indelible impression upon my memory : ' We, at the 
 same time,' he said, ' have our eye perfectly open to that great 
 external improvement which has taken place, of late years, in
 
 "ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES." 463 
 
 the manners of society. There is not the same grossness of con- 
 versation. There is not the same impatience for the withdraw- 
 ment of him who, asked to grace the outset of an assembled 
 party, is compelled, at a certain step in the process of convivality, 
 by the obligations of professional decency, to retire from it. 
 There is not so frequent an exaction of this as one of the esta- 
 blished proprieties of social or of fashionable life. And if such 
 an exaction was ever laid by the omnipotence of custom on a 
 minister of Christianity, it is such an exaction as ought never, 
 never to be complied with. It is not for him to lend the sanc- 
 tion of his presence to a meeting with which he could not sit to 
 its final termination. It is not for him to stand associated, for 
 a single hour, with an assemblage of men who begin with hypo- 
 crisy, and end with downright blackguardism. It is not for him 
 to watch the progress of the coming ribaldry, and to hit the 
 well-selected moment when talk and turbulence and boisterous 
 merriment are on the eve of bursting forth upon the company, 
 and carrying them forward to the full acme and uproar of their 
 enjoyment. It is quite in vain to say, that he has only sanc- 
 tioned one part of such an entertainment. He has as good as 
 given his connivance to the whole of it, and left behind him a 
 discharge in full of all its abominations ; and, therefore, be they 
 who they may, whether they rank among the proudest aristo- 
 cracy of our land, or are charioted in splendour along, as the 
 wealthiest of our citizens, or flounce in the robes of magistracy, 
 it is his part to keep as purely and indignantly aloof from such 
 society as this, as he would from the vilest and most debasing 
 associations of profligacy.' 
 
 " The words which I have underlined do not appear in the 
 sermon as printed. While uttering them, which he did with 
 peculiar emphasis, accompanying them with a flash from his eye 
 and a stamp of his foot, he threw his right arm with clenched 
 hand right across the book-board, and brandished it full in the 
 face of the Town-council, sitting in array and in state before him. 
 Many eyes were in a moment directed towards the magistrates. 
 The words evidently fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and 
 seemed to startle like an electric shock the whole audience." 
 
 Another interesting memorial of this sermon is supplied by 
 Dr. Wardlaw, who was present at its delivery. " The eloquence 
 of that discourse was absolutely overpowering. The subject 
 was one eminently fitted to awaken and summon to their utmost 
 energy all his extraordinary powers; especially when, after
 
 464 , MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 having cleared his ground by a luminously scriptural exhibition 
 of that supreme authority by which the evils he was about to 
 portray were interdicted, in contradistinction to the prevailing 
 maxims and practices of a worldly morality, he came forward to 
 the announcement and illustration of his main subject ' the 
 origin, the progress, and the effects of a life of dissipation,' His 
 moral portraitures were so graphically and vividly delineated 
 his warnings and entreaties, especially to youth, so impassioned 
 and earnest his admonitions so faithful, and his denunciations 
 so fearless and so fearful and his exhortations to preventive 
 and remedial appliances so pointed and so urgent to all amongst 
 his auditors who had either the charge of youth, or the super- 
 vision of dependants ! It was thrilling, overwhelming. His 
 whole soul seemed in every utterance. Although saying to 
 myself all the while, ' that this were in the hands of every 
 father, and master, and guardian, and young man in the land ! ' 
 I yet could not spare an eye from the preacher to mark how his 
 appeal was telling upon others. The breathless, the appalling 
 silence, told me of that. Any person who reads that discourse, 
 and who had the privilege of listening to Dr. Chalmers during 
 the prime and freshness of his public eloquence, will readily 
 imagine the effect of some passages in it, when delivered with 
 even more than the preacher's characteristic vehemence. 
 
 " The wish that haunted my mind during the discourse went 
 home with me ; and in bed that night the thought came across 
 me, that I might write to him, and respectfully but earnestly 
 suggest the desirableness of having such an appeal put into 
 circulation. I did so, and while I expressed strongly my de- 
 light and my wishes, I ventured at the same time, with all due 
 diffidence, to hint the desirableness, were the discourse to appear 
 thus by itself, of his introducing at the close, in his own style, 
 a statement of that gospel that scheme and message of Divine 
 mercy by which ' the wrath of God which cometh on the 
 children of disobedience,' of which his text had led him to speak, 
 was to be escaped, and His favour and forgiveness to be ob- 
 tained ; a statement which would perfect the fitness of the appeal 
 for the ends to be answered by its circulation. To this note the 
 letter which I now transmit to you is the answer." 
 
 " KENSINGTON PLACE, February 16, 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Believe that it is not without pain that I 
 bring forward a negative to your request for the immediate
 
 HIS REPLY TO DR. WARDLAW*S REQUEST. 465 
 
 publication of my sermon. I have had too much experience of 
 the ephemeral duration of single sermons to think of that as the 
 most effective mode of publication for usefulness. And, besides, I 
 have of late made so many exhibitions of myself in this way be- 
 fore the public, that I am beginning to be heartily ashamed of it. 
 
 ** I am at the same time much gratified with your favourable 
 opinion, and will probably feel encouraged by it to incorporate 
 the substance of what was delivered on Thursday in some future 
 volume, when I can have no objection whatever that the use- 
 fulness, if any, might be multiplied to any degree by the circula- 
 tion of such extracts as might be permitted by the publisher. 
 
 " I perfectly agree with you in thinking, that separately from 
 the great peculiarities of our faith, all the reformations which 
 were urged are of no value for eternity, and, indeed, can scarcely 
 even be accomplished in time. But I am not so sure whether 
 there is not too much of a sensitive alarm about one's orthodoxy, 
 when it is expected that something like a satisfying declaration 
 of it shall be brought forward in every single discourse. Might 
 not a preacher and his hearers so understand each other as that 
 the leading points of doctrine might be tacitly presupposed be- 
 tween them ? At the same time I do feel it a very great and 
 prevailing defect in my own compositions that in many of its 
 separate portions it would be difficult to recognise the presence 
 of Him who ought to be all in all. I am reading Owen just 
 now on the Person of Christ, and am sure that I have greatly 
 erred in not making enough of Him. May the Spirit more and 
 more take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us. 
 
 " Believe me, with many thanks for your kind and friendly 
 communication, yours, most affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " In the afternoon of Sabbath the 22d March 1818," we now 
 resume Mr. Eraser's memoranda, " Dr. Chalmers preached in the 
 College Chapel. It being publicly known a few days previously 
 that he was to do so, the College courts became crowded with 
 students and others not connected with the University about an 
 hour before the commencement of the service. So soon as the 
 doors were opened, the rush towards them was tremendous, 
 was in the stream that was flowing in by the main entrance, and 
 made good progress until I got within the door, when, in conse- 
 quence of the great pressure behind, I was suddenly thrown put 
 of the current as I had almost reached the foot of the hanging 
 
 2a 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 466 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 spiral staircase leading to the chapel, and so compact was the 
 mass that was pouring on, that all my efforts to wedge myself 
 into it were vain. Under these circumstances, I made up my 
 mind to do what might have led to very serious consequences. 
 I ascended sideways on the outside of the rails, holding on with 
 a death-grasp of them at every step, and upon reaching the top, 
 had no little difficulty, even with the assistance I received, in 
 getting over them, so dense was the crowd. The sermon 
 preached by Dr. Chalmers was the one entitled ' The judgment 
 of men compared with the judgment of God.' I had a complete 
 view of the professors' bench directly opposite to the pulpit. It 
 was quite full, and had a very imposing appearance. Every eye 
 in it was intently fixed upon the preacher. But there was one 
 individual who formed a very prominent object in the group 
 Mr. Young, Professor of Greek. The magic of the Doctor's 
 eloquence told most powerfully on him. He was evidently fas- 
 cinated and enraptured. The expression of his fine countenance 
 more than once indicated intense emotion. During the delivery 
 of the peroration he was overpowered and in tears.* 
 
 " On Sabbath evening, in the Tron Church, Dr. Chalmers 
 preached from Proverbs i. 29. The power of the oratory and 
 the force of the delivery were at times extraordinary. At length, 
 when near the close of the sermon, all on a sudden his eloquence 
 gathered triple force, and came down in one mighty whirlwind, 
 sweeping all before it. Never can I forget my feelings at the 
 time, neither can I describe them. ' And what,' he said, warning 
 us against all hope in a deathbed repentance, ' what, vte would 
 ask, is the scene in which you are now purposing to contest it 
 with all this mighty force of opposition you are now so busy in 
 raising up against you ? What is the field of combat to which 
 you are now looking forward as the place where you are to ac- 
 complish a victory over all those formidable enemies whom you 
 are at present arming with such a weight of hostility as, we say, 
 within a single hairbreadth of certainty, you will find to be 
 irresistible ? Oh the folly of such a misleading infatuation ! 
 The proposed scene in which this battle for eternity is to be 
 
 * Professor Young's admiration of eloquence and susceptibility of emotion when under 
 its influence were extreme. He frequently attended in the Tron Church, and scarcely erer 
 heard Dr. Chalmers without weeping like a child. Upon one occasion, he was so electrified 
 that he leaped up from his seat upon the bench near the pulpit, and rtood, breathless and 
 motionless, gazing at the preacher till the burst was over, the tears all the while rolling down 
 his cheeks. Upon another occasion, forgetful of time and place fancying himself perhaps 
 in the theatre he rose and made a loud clapping of his bands in an ecstasy of admiration 
 and delight.
 
 DEATHBED REPENTANCE. 467 
 
 fought, and this victory for the crown of glory is to be won, is a 
 deathbed. It is when the last messenger stands by the couch of 
 the dying man, and shakes at him the terrors of his grisly 
 countenance, that the poor child of infatuation thinks he is to 
 struggle and prevail against all his enemies against the unre- 
 lenting tyranny of habit against the obstinacy of his own heart, 
 which he is now doing so much to harden against the Spirit of 
 God, who perhaps long ere now has pronounced the doom upon 
 him, " He will take his own way, and walk in his own counsel ; 
 I shall cease from striving, and let him alone," against Satan, 
 to whom every day of his life he has given some fresh advantage 
 over him, and who will not be willing to lose the victim on whom 
 he has practised so many wiles, and plied with success so many 
 delusions. And such are the enemies whom you- who wretchedly 
 calculate on the repentance of the eleventh hour are every day 
 mustering up in greater force and formidableness against you ; 
 and how can we think of letting you go with any other repent- 
 ance than the repentance of the precious moment that is now 
 passing over you, when we look forward to the horrors of that 
 impressive scene on which you propose to win the prize of im- 
 mortality, and to contest it single-handed and alone, with all the 
 weight of opposition which you have accumulated against your- 
 selves a deathbed a languid, breathless, tossing, and agitated 
 deathbed ; that scene of feebleness, when the poor man cannot 
 help himself to a single mouthful when he must have attend- 
 ants to sit around him, and watch his every wish, and interpret 
 his evesy signal, and turn him to every posture where he may 
 find a moment's ease, and wipe away the cold sweat that is run- 
 ning over him^ and ply him with cordials for thirst, and sickness, 
 and insufferable languor. And this is the time, when occupied 
 with such feelings and beset with such agonies as these, you pro- 
 pose to crowd within the compass of a few wretched days the 
 work of winding up the concerns of a neglected eternity ! ' 
 
 "It was a transcendently grand a glorious burst. The energy 
 of the Doctor's action corresponded. Intense emotion beamed 
 from his countenance. I cannot describe the appearance of his 
 face better than by saying, as Foster said of Hall's, it was 'lighted 
 up almost into a glare.' The congregation, in so far as the spell 
 under which I was allowed me to observe them, were intern 
 excited, leaning forward in the pews like a forest bending under 
 the power of the hurricane looking steadfastly at the preacher, 
 and listening in breathless wonderment. One young man, ap-
 
 408 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 parently by his dress a sailor, who sat in a pew before me, started 
 to his feet, and stood till it was over. So soon as it was con- 
 cluded, there was (as invariably was the case at the close of the 
 Doctor's bursts) a deep sigh, or rather gasp for breath, accom- 
 panied by a movement through the whole audience. 
 
 " On another Sabbath evening a scene occurred which I shall 
 never forget. About an hour before the service commenced all 
 the seats were occupied. A broad passage runs through the area 
 of the church from the main inner door to the pulpit. This 
 passage it was intended should be kept vacant upon the present 
 occasion for the better ventilation of the house. So soon, there- 
 fore, as the pews which entered from it (in one of which I sat) 
 were filled, the door, consisting of two leaves, was bolted from 
 within. Very soon all the other passages above and below were 
 crowded to overflowing. A dense mass was by this time con- 
 gregated in the lobby, many of whom observed through the win- 
 dows of a partition wall which ran between the lobby and the 
 interior of the church that the middle passage was empty. Those 
 in the background, who could not themselves observe this, were 
 made immediately aware of it. They all became very clamorous 
 for admission, and many a good thump did the door receive. 
 Those in charge of it, however, having got, as was said, positive 
 orders to keep the passage clear, were inexorable. Matters went 
 on in this manner until the bell commenced, which seemed to be 
 the signal for increased clamour and importunity on the part of 
 the crowd without. At length the door began to creak. The 
 bell ceased. The beadle entered the pulpit with the Bible. All 
 was still for a few moments. Every eye within sight of the 
 vestry-door was anxiously fixed upon it to see who would appear, 
 lest it might-not be the Doctor, as he had on more occasions than 
 one sadly disappointed the congregation. No sooner, however, 
 was he observed entering the church, than an expression of in- 
 tense delight rustled very perceptibly through the house. There 
 was actually (I do not exaggerate) a movement of the whole 
 congregation. At this moment a crash at the passage-door was 
 heard ; crash after crash followed in rapid succession, inter- 
 mingled with screams from the outer porch, chiefly from terrified 
 females. Two of the door-keepers who were standing in the pas- 
 sage rushed to the door, which was evidently yielding, to prevent, 
 if possible, its being forced in. They quickly retreated, seeing, 
 as they did at once, that neither door nor door-keepers could 
 withstand the pressure. The door immediately gave way with
 
 , THE DOORS FORCED OPEN. 469 
 
 a thundering noise, one of the leaves torn from its hinges and 
 trampled under foot. The rush was tremendous. In one instant 
 the whole vacant space in front of the pulpit was crammed,* 
 and the torrent flowed on, flowing into and filling to its very end 
 at the vestry-door the passage through which the Doctor had 
 just entered. The occurrence grieved, and for a little while dis- 
 composed him, and upon rising to begin the service, he admini- 
 stered a sharp and impassioned rebuke to the parties involved 
 in it." 
 
 Dr. Wardlaw, who was present on this occasion also, informs 
 us, " I stepped into the vestry at the dismission of the congre- 
 gation, and walked home with him, our dwellings lying in the 
 same direction. On the way home we talked, inter aZia, of this 
 occurrence. He expressed, in his pithy manner, his great an- 
 noyance at such crowds. ' I preached the same sermon,' said 
 he, ' in the morning ; and for the very purpose of preventing the 
 oppressive annoyance of such a densely crowded place, I inti- 
 mated that I should preach it again in the evening ;' and with 
 the most ingenuous guilelessness, he added, 4 Have you ever tried 
 that plan ?' I did not smile I laughed outright. 'No, no,' I 
 replied, ' my good friend, there are but very few of us that are 
 under the necessity of having recourse to the use of means for 
 getting thin audiences.' He enjoyed the joke, and he felt, 
 though he modestly disowned the compliment." 
 
 At the commencement of a ministry which involved him in 
 such perpetual tumult, and lifted him to such unbounded popu- 
 larity, Dr. Chalmers made the following entries in his private 
 Journal : 
 
 " Sunday, March 3df. A general want of devotional feeling 
 this day. Not an adequate sense of God in church. Fear I 
 have still much vanity. my God, enable me from this time 
 forward to make an entire heart-work of my sanctification. 
 
 th. 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 impa- 
 tient with one man who called on me, and with in the 
 
 evening. for a humbler and nearer course of devotedness 
 to the will of my Saviour ! 
 
 * A countryman sitting at the end of the pew occupied by Mr. Fraser while the church 
 was filling fell fast asleep. Wakened by the crash of the doors and the rush throuf 
 passage, he started up, looked stupidly for a moment or two at the crowd, and 
 claimed, so loud as to be heard by all around him, "Gude guide us ! they say the man 
 canna speak when the trance [the passage] u fu'; he'll no speak inuckle the mcht .
 
 470 MEMOIKS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " 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. my God, help me ! Let me do what is 
 obviously right, and God will bless me with the frame and the 
 manifestation I long after. 
 
 " $th. Not yet. Trust that I am finding my way to Christ 
 as the Lord my strength. guard me against the charms of 
 human praise. 
 
 "Sunday, 10th. Preached in the Gorbals in the afternoon, 
 and exceeded. for self-command in the pulpit. I was not 
 satisfied with my sermon ; and I fear, or rather I know and am 
 sure, that personal distinction is one of my idols. that I 
 could bring it out, Lord, and slay it before Thee. 
 
 " lth. Not yet. my God, keep me humble and regular, 
 and mindful of Thee, and diligent in all that is obviously right. 
 
 " ISth. Not yet ; but I trust better. 
 
 " Sunday, 24Jh. Preached to the magistrates. Vanity, violent 
 exertion prompted by vanity a preaching of self a want of 
 singleness of aim after the glory of God. my Heavenly 
 Father, sweep away these corruptions, and enable me to strug- 
 gle with them." 
 
 The Journal from which these impressive extracts are taken 
 was discontinued for some time a few weeks after these entries 
 were made in it. In the absence of such information as it might 
 have supplied as to Dr. Chalmers's private feelings during the 
 remaining period of his Tron Church ministry, we present the 
 narrative of a single but instructive incident, which occurred 
 about two years after his settlement in Glasgow : 
 
 " At the time I allude to," says our informant, J. Wright, 
 Esq., " Dr. Chalmers had been preaching in the Barony Church 
 for the venerable Dr. Burns, on the Monday after the Com- 
 munion, which in the suburban districts was about two months 
 after the time of its celebration in the town churches. As was 
 customary on such occasions, Dr. Burns invited the ministers 
 who had assisted him, and some of his elders and friends, to 
 dinner on the Monday. I was on that day one of the party, and 
 I was exceedingly disappointed to see that Dr. Chalmers, who, 
 in ordinary times, poured a fascinating influence over every 
 company where he was, seemed extremely dull, nay, I may say
 
 INSTANCE OF USEFULNESS. 471 
 
 dejected. When he arose, about nine o'clock, to go away, as 
 our tract homeward lay for some distance in the same direction, 
 I left the company along with him. When we had got together, 
 I said to the Doctor, 'Are you well enough to-day, Doctor? for 
 I have noticed you have not to-day been in your usual trim. 1 
 ' yes,' he said ; ' I am quite in good health, but I am not 
 comfortable. I am grieved in my mind.' Seeing that he so 
 frankly communicated to me the general cause of his unusual 
 appearance, I used the freedom to say, ' Well, Doctor, is this a 
 matter that I may be made acquainted with, as, if it is not, I 
 have no wish to pry into anything of a private nature?" ' 
 yes ! ' he replied, ' you may perfectly know it, for it is a matter 
 that presses very grievously upon me. In short, the truth is,' 
 said he, in his own emphatic manner, ' I have mistaken the way 
 of my duty to God in at all coming to your city. I am doing no 
 good. God has not blessed and is not blessing my ministry 
 here.' On hearing this I replied, ' Well, Doctor, it is a very 
 remarkable circumstance that, in the providence of God, you 
 should have been sent with your complaint to me on this point, 
 because I have it in my power at any rate to mention one in- 
 stance in which your ministry has been made instrumental in 
 bringing a soul from darkness to the marvellous light of the 
 Gospel of salvation.' ' Can you ?' said he ; ' then you will give 
 me the best news I have heard since I came among you.' I then 
 narrated to him the following particulars : 
 
 " At the time this took place I was an elder under the late 
 venerated Dr. Balfour, minister of the Outer High Church, whose 
 practice it was, when he read over the names of those who were 
 applying for admission to the ordinance of the Lord's supper, to 
 give us so much of their history and experience as he had been 
 in conversation with them able to discover, and to request that 
 some of the elders might, as far as possible, scrutinize further, 
 and communicate to him the result. I well remember, at the 
 Sacrament, which in the town churches is always solemnized in 
 the month of April, he mentioned the name of a young man who 
 had applied to be a communicant. After he had read over his 
 name ' By the bye,' said the good servant of the Lord, ' I must 
 tell you something about this young man, for his history is some- 
 what interesting and singular. He sat,' said Dr. Balfour, ' for 
 nearly twenty years under my ministry, but did not appear to 
 derive any good from it ; but when my worthy friend Dr. Chal- 
 mers' (for that was the almost uniform designation he gave
 
 472 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 him when he had occasion to speak of him) ' came to Glas- 
 gow, he was attracted to him by his splendid talents, and sat 
 under his ministry for about two years, and then it pleased the 
 Lord to come to him in the day of His power ; and I have every 
 reason to think him a truly converted young man. And now 
 that he wishes to become a member of the Church, he wishes 
 to return to us. But,' added Dr. Balfour, with a truly sublime 
 humility, ' it was not under my ministry that he was turned to 
 the Lord, though he sat for the greater part of his lifetime in the 
 Outer Church ; but it was under the preaching of Dr. Chalmers.' 
 
 " You know what was Dr. Chalmers's ardent manner when 
 anything that related to the glory of Christ's kingdom, or to the 
 spiritual good of his fellow-creatures, was made known to him ; 
 but you may easily conceive with what exuberant joy he heard 
 this simple annal of the good done through his pastoral super- 
 intendence. * Ah ! ' said he, ' Mr. Wright, what blessed, what 
 comforting news you give me. I knew it not ; but it strengthens 
 me ; for really I was beginning to fail, from an apprehension 
 that I had not been acting according to the will of God in 
 coming to your city.' " 
 
 At a still later period of his Glasgow ministry, and after 
 knowing, by a painful experience, how many bitter ingredients 
 are often mixed in the cup of human applause, urging his 
 agencies to increased activity in that home-walk of private bene- 
 volence, in which " they could earn, if not a proud at least 
 a peaceful popularity the popularity of the heart the only 
 popularity that is worth the aspiring after the popularity that 
 is won in the bosom of families and at the side of deathbeds" 
 he could not help pouring out his own latter experience in these 
 words: "There is another, a high and a far-sounding popularity, 
 which is indeed a most worthless article, felt by all who have it 
 most to be greatly more oppressive than gratifying a popularity 
 of stare, and pressure, and animal heat, and a whole tribe of other 
 annoyances which it brings around the person of its unfortunate 
 victim a popularity which rifles home of its sweets, and by 
 elevating man above his fellows places him in a region of deso- 
 lation, where the intimacies of human fellowship are unfelt, and 
 where he stands a conspicuous mark for the shafts of malice, and 
 envy, and detraction a popularity which, with its head among 
 storms and its feet on the treacherous quicksands, has nothing 
 to lull the agonies of its tottering existence but the hosannahs 
 of a drivelling generation."
 
 LETTER TO HIS MOTHER. 473 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 EJS FATHER'S DECLINING HEALTH SUMMER MONTHS AT ANSTRUTHER DAILT 
 
 LIFE IN GLASGOW VISIT OF PROFESSOR P1CTET AND M. VERNOT ; OF MR. 
 
 NOEL AND MR. GREY VISITATION OF HIS PARISH THE REV. LEGH RICHMOND 
 MR. CUNNINGHAMS OF LA1NSHAW MEETING OF THE JEWISH SOCIETY- 
 MR. ERSKINE OF LINLATHEN HIS FATHER'S LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH 
 
 HERVEY'S AND NEWTON'S WORKS THE DOCTRINE OF IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 PROFESSORS LESLIE AND BROWN LORD ELGIN AND PARTY SERMON AT 
 
 FALK1RK KIND ATTENTIONS AT GRANGEMOUTH PLUM-JELLY OPERATION 
 
 DEATH OF I>R. BALFOUR PANEGYRIC UPON HIS CHARACTER DEATH OF THE 
 
 QUEEN TRIBUTE TO HER WORTH. 
 
 IN the beginning of December, a few days after leaving his 
 mother, Dr. Chalmers wrote to her as follows : " I was greatly 
 occupied when at Anster with some very laborious preparations, 
 and I always find that this has a bad effect upon me, not merely 
 in taking up that time which I should give to you and to my 
 father, but in so filling my mind with anxiety and thought as to 
 make me, I am afraid, behave to you both in a way that looks 
 very ungracious and undutifnl. I really do reproach myself most 
 heartily for my silence in the presence of my father. I know 
 what my duty is in this respect, and yet I have not done it. 
 To will is present with me, but to do that which is good I have 
 found not. My mind approves of it as a most excellent thing 
 to minister every attention to one who has ever been the kindest 
 and the best and the most indulgent of parents ; but my natural 
 infirmities of temper and constitution have not hitherto allowed 
 me freedom and power for this. And therefore it is, that while 
 I look back to the past I have much cause for uneasiness ; it is 
 my sincere purpose, in looking forward to the future, that when 
 I come to Anster I shall come disembarrassed of every severe 
 and oppressive study, and at liberty to give more of my time 
 and strength to the performance of a most incumbent obligation. 
 
 " I left you in bed with much feeling, and I left him in the 
 back-shop, greatly impressed with his mildness and my own 
 unworthiness. It is my earnest prayer that we may still be 
 all spared to see much of each other in peace and comfort on 
 this side of time, and that we may meet again in that country
 
 474 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 where trials have ceased and every root of bitterness is un- 
 known." 
 
 The intelligence received during the winter of his father's 
 declining health made Dr. Chalmers doubly anxious that Mrs. 
 Chalmers and his family should spend the summer months of 
 1818 at Anstruther. While affording to himself occasional op- 
 portunities of personal intercourse with his parents, this arrange- 
 ment would secure frequent and regular intelligence regarding 
 them. It might also be a benefit and comfort to his mother, 
 should any sudden emergency occur, to have Mrs. Chalmers's 
 presence and aid ; and he knew how peculiarly gratifying it 
 would be to his father to listen to the infant prattle of his grand- 
 children. This cherished project was executed in the end of 
 May, Dr. Chalmers going to Anstruther a few days earlier than 
 the others, and enjoying, let us hope, the period of unbroken 
 and unembarrassed society with his parents which he had so 
 ardently desired. Leaving his family at Anstruther he returned 
 to Glasgow early in June, commencing a series of Journal 
 letters, from which, as they afford a vivid description of his 
 daily life at this period, the following extracts are presented. 
 In reading them, however, we must remember not only that the 
 summer months saw Glasgow comparatively deserted, but that 
 his own solitary position made his house very different from what 
 it was when Mrs. Chalmers presided there, and when scarcely a 
 single day passed without a varied succession of visitors. 
 
 " Glasgow, Thursday, June 11, 1818. I preached at eleven. 
 The body of the church was decently filled, and the galleries 
 about half full. Whether this decline of attendance is due to 
 the ignorance of my preaching, or to the extreme heat of the 
 weather, or to the number of people out of town, or, finally, 
 to a decreasing interest in my pulpit services, I know not, and 
 I trust that I shall be enabled, excepting on the principle of 
 Christian usefulness, to care not. It is right, my dear G., that 
 the idol of human applause should be renounced, and we should 
 prepare to make a willing sacrifice of all that this world can 
 offer, and we should be clothed in humility, and simplify our 
 aim, and cease from the disquietudes of human vanity, and 
 count it enough that we have peace with God, and the blessed- 
 ness of that hope which the gospel inspires. 
 
 " Friday. Started at seven. Wrote part of my lecture be- 
 fore breakfast. Studied all forenoon. Completed my lecture,
 
 JOURNAL LETTERS. 475 
 
 and am now writing to you. Read the Quarterly Review, and 
 did miscellaneous things till dinner-time. I am dividing my 
 time now differently, and I think more conveniently staying 
 in the house till dinner-time, and expatiating in the town from 
 dinner-time to the evening. Sallied out, and went to the bottom 
 of the Saltmarket, where I expatiated amongst the sick and the 
 dying till seven. Took an ice-cream in Baxter's. Went to Dr. 
 Ranken, who proposed a walk to the Botanic Garden, which is 
 now in great beauty. Left the garden before nine. Came back 
 to my house and reposed on the sofa till bed-time. 
 
 " Saturday. Studied at a careful Sermon. Left the house at 
 two. Visited one sick person. On my return to dinner found 
 that Professor Pictet of Geneva had been calling upon me with 
 his grandson. He left a flattering note, and a letter of introduc- 
 tion from Mr. Macaulay of London. After dinner read my lecture 
 and sermon, and about six o'clock M. Pictet with his grandson 
 M. Vernot called. He is a very learned man of the same kind 
 of eminence with Biot. They left me about ten, having taken 
 up their lodgings at the Black Bull, to which place indeed I 
 convoyed them. 
 
 " Sunday. Professor Pictet and M. Vernot breakfasted with 
 me, and went to church with me. I lectured, and gave for the 
 evening sermon the one I preached at Kirkcaldy. Professor 
 Pictet and grandson were among my hearers. There was a 
 very great crowd. I took leave of Pictet after sermon. He 
 goes to Edinburgh by the track and steam-boat. He is a most 
 interesting person, the editor of a periodical work at Geneva. 
 He received from me a number of my separate sermons, and re- 
 quested that I would send him all my publications in future. 
 
 " Monday. Had a breakfast party, consisting of my Sabbath- 
 school agents performed several visits returned to dinner at 
 four began my lecture for next Sunday. 
 
 " Tuesday. Studied all forenoon. After dinner, in company 
 with Mr. C., commenced the visitation of that part of my pre- 
 sent parish which is to be attached to St. John's. It promises 
 favourably." 
 
 " Glasgow, Wednesday, June 17, 1818. Had my forenoon 
 study. About three o'clock in came Captain Sands from Kin- 
 cardine, to go off in the track -boat at five. Just as I was order- 
 ing wine and cold roast beef for him, with the intention to dim 
 along with him, in came Mr. Francis Noel and Mr. Grey, el
 
 476 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 son of Sir George Grey. I told them my situation, that I would 
 dine with them in the Black Bull, and give them all their other 
 accommodation in my own house. They were, however, on the 
 wing for Loch Lomond and the West Highlands, but say they 
 will be back in three or four weeks. I went down to the Black 
 Bull with them, and saw them on board of the steam-boat at 
 four. Mr. Grey is very a fine-like young man. On my return 
 I expected to find Captain Sands where I last left him, but I 
 found him just gone. 
 
 " Thursday. Wrote letters, and studied till one. I visited 
 sick ; and dined in F. A.'s. I find general company a most 
 unprofitable thing. Went between eight and nine to the Botanic 
 Garden. Walked with Mr. Deakin about half an hour. I love 
 him ; and trust the charm I feel in Christian society is a good 
 indication. I want .to grow in the faith in all its simplicity and 
 self-abasement. I want self to be crucified, and the Saviour to 
 be all in all with me. Do, my dear G., give earnest heed to 
 the things which are spoken. Be frequent with your Bible and 
 your prayers, and suffer not time, with any of its vanities, how- 
 ever interesting, to lead you to lose your hold of the one thing 
 needful. Went to bed at eleven. 
 
 " Friday. Studied till two. Have marvellously few calls, 
 but am in great comfort and quietness. Oh that Christ were 
 more formed in me I Dined at three. Took a step to my 
 worthy friend, and along with Mr. C. had another visitation. 
 Addressed two roomfuls of people at a door which opened to 
 each of them. I have a great satisfaction in this part of my 
 duty. 
 
 " Saturday. Wrote at my lecture and read till about three. 
 Dined with Mr. K. I find that dinners away from vital Chris- 
 tians are indeed very blank and unprofitable concerns. 
 
 " Sunday. Mr. and Mrs. Parker have returned from Harrow- 
 gate, and were my hearers. After the baptisms of the session- 
 house I walked home and dined, and spent a quiet, pleasurable, 
 and completely retired Sabbath evening, and heard Janet read, 
 and had a good deal of very interesting conversation with her. 
 She is not at rest in spiritual matters. that we could be 
 ever in earnest, and not faithless, but believing ! 
 
 " Monday. Had a breakfast party as usual. I had a hurried 
 call in the evening of Mr. J. W., with Frederick Adamson and 
 his ladies, who remained till eleven o'clock. I had a most con- 
 genial conversation with them, enlivened, at the same time, with
 
 GRATIFYING WORK. 477 
 
 the most ecstatic peals of laughter. ... I conducted family 
 worship before the gentlemen left me, and went to bed at eleven. 
 
 " Tuesday. Studied till two. Quarter-decked along the south' 
 front of Mr. Harley's grounds. Came back to my beefsteak, 
 and after it I had another round of visitation at the head of the 
 Green ; and after going amongst the houses drank tea with a 
 Mr. M'Levey, and assembled the people in a weaver's, who 
 came to the amount of a hundred and twenty-five hearers. This 
 is truly gratifying work, and I feel that if unmolested I shall 
 have great pleasure in it. The cordialities of the people are 
 quite unbounded ; and I am particularly pleased that Mr. C. 
 has consented to take a superintendence here, which will keep 
 me at ease in reference to at least six hundred people of my new 
 parish. This is what I would call good progress. 
 
 " Wednesday. Went out to Blochairn before breakfast. I 
 am here by invitation, and mean to return to-morrow. I have 
 taken my forenoon's study ; and at this point do I close my 
 narrative for the present. I find that it is a good arrangement 
 to stay within doors till nearly dinner-time, and just to make 
 one long visit to town every day, which I am doing at present 
 after dinner. Write me particularly in your next about the 
 children and the parentage. May God work in you effectually. 
 May He raise you from spiritual death. May He give you the 
 grace of faith. Oh ! cease not, cease not, my dear G., to seek 
 His face and His favour. Do give up all for eternity, and ven- 
 ture all on that foundation which God hath laid in Zion. It is 
 my earnest prayer that we and our little ones may be saved by 
 the sanctification of the Spirit and the belief of the truth. 
 
 .THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Friday. After the usual routine of breakfasting and study- 
 ing and dining, I had a visitation along with Mr. C. Went 
 through Norris's Land. Drank a hurried tea in the parish with 
 Mr. Ure, and went back to Norris's Land at eight, where I held 
 forth to a motley assemblage of a hundred people at least. I 
 had great freedom and satisfaction in this work, and after it was 
 over received many polite attentions from the genteeler of the 
 auditory, in the shape of a greatcoat, a glass of spirits and 
 water, &c. &c. 
 
 " Saturday. Nearly finished the preparation of my lecture 
 this forenoon, and went out to make a series of visits, on my 
 wa y to , where I dined. After dinner Mr. Legh Richmond,
 
 478 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 author of the ' Dairyman's Daughter/ and Mr. Jackson, clergy- 
 man in Leeds, came as we expected. They are on a mission here 
 for the Jewish Society. We drank tea and made some arrange- 
 ments for their object. I was delighted with Mr. Jackson, and 
 told him that I could supper him, bed him, and breakfast him, 
 though I could not in my present circumstances dinner him. 
 He came with me. I had most congenial talk with him, and 
 am indeed greatly humbled by the very superior attainments of 
 other Christians. God, may I be a follower of those who 
 through faith and patience inherit the promises. 
 
 " Sunday. Preached in the afternoon, and having baptized 
 fourteen children, took leave of Mr. Jackson. 
 
 " Monday. Mr. A.'s chaise brought Mr. Kichmond to my 
 door at half-past five this morning, and took away Mr. Jackson 
 to the steam-boat. I was unconscious of this movement at the 
 time, though I knew beforehand that it was to happen, having a 
 great deal too much of good sense to surrender a single fraction 
 of my natural rest for the sake of a ceremonial that does no good 
 to one party, and is at least very unpleasant if not injurious to 
 another. Started at seven. Had a marriage to perform this 
 morning at eight in Anderston, and came back at half-past eight 
 o'clock. Had a Monday breakfast, consisting of Mr. Cunning- 
 hame of Lainshaw, Mr. Giltillan, Mr. Blyth, Mr. Jamieson of 
 Scoone, and five others, preachers, students, or teachers. Greatly 
 delighted with Mr. Cunninghame, who staid behind. You know 
 him to be the author of a book on the prophecies. We walked 
 to the Botanic Gardens together. I had much of interesting 
 conversation with him. 
 
 " Tuesday. Finished a preparation for the Jewish Society 
 meeting, which is to take place on Friday. Dined with Mr. 
 Montgomery. Met Mr. John Brown, elder, and took him and Mr. 
 Montgomery to a visitation in the proportion of the latter. Went 
 through 230 people,* and drank tea at Mr. Brown's, then at eight 
 delivered an address in one of the houses to an assemblage con- 
 sisting of eighty-five people. Have great comfort in this work. 
 
 * These visits, though short, were often strikingly impressive. Passing through one house 
 in which he saw an old man reclining, he stepped aside, bent over him, lifted up his right 
 hand, and said, simply, but with emphatic solemnity, " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 and thou shalt be saved." Entering another house in which was an old bed-rid woman, of 
 whom he had been told beforehand, that, of a hard and ^evere character herself, she cherished 
 the darkest and most severe conceptions of the Deity, he went up hastily to her bedside, and 
 fixing her attention by the very vehemence of his utterance, he said, "Now I have just come 
 to tell you that God Almighty has no ill-will at you I want you to understand that He has 
 a perfect good-will to you ;" leaving her more startled, perhaps more convinced, than she 
 would have been by any lengthened argument.
 
 MEETING OF THE JEWISH SOCIETY. 479 
 
 " Seek God. Eead His word attentively. Pray, and do not 
 rest till you have found rest in Christ Jesus the Savionr. Sin 
 is indeed a thousand times more hateful than we feel it to be, 
 and the Saviour is just as much more precious than we prize 
 Him to be. Oh ! seek to believe in Him, that to you He may 
 be precious. You are without light or strength or sufficiency 
 of any kind in yourself. Go to the fulness of the Redeemer, 
 and desire by faith all things necessary to a life of godliness. 
 Watch over our dear little ones. Tell them of me, and be 
 assured of my warmest love to them and to you. Nothing but 
 the complete filling up of my time by useful employment could 
 render our separation tolerable. I think I shall get my parish 
 stored with agency enough for its cultivation, and I hope I may 
 be allowed to prosecute my own measures amongst them. 
 " Compliments to all, and write about them particularly. 
 " Wednesday. I went out to Mr. Falconer's country place, 
 where I dined and staid all evening. I partook of his straw- 
 berries and cream, and in the evening had a most delicious 
 walk through a highly ornamented scenery, and under the 
 canopy of a most mild and beauteous sky. Mr. F. is among 
 the most eminently spiritual men I have met with. He spends 
 two hours in his proportion every day among his people. Went 
 to bed at eleven. 
 
 " Thursday. Walked by appointment to Mr. Brown's, and 
 then sallied out to a diet of visitation. I drank tea in Mr. 
 Brown's, and delivered my address to an assemblage of about 
 eighty after it. I got homewards by ten, and went to bed 
 thankful that God had so sustained me, though the day was 
 altogether lost to study. 
 
 " Friday. Slept most refreshingly. Had to attend the Jewish 
 Society about twelve, so that this Society in fact has lost me 
 two complete days, one in preparing for it, and another exhi- 
 biting for it. You will see how utterly this distraction is at 
 variance with my best and dearest and, I think, most valuable 
 objects. My determination against any personal share in their 
 proceedings has been strengthened by this new instance of 
 mischief of such an interruption. 
 
 " Saturday. Tried to finish a lecture, but in fact have I 
 this week to study, and shall be happy never from t 
 forward to attend societies. 
 
 " Sunday. Preached in the forenoon. 
 
 "Monday. Breakfasted with Mr. Wilson. He took me m
 
 480 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 his gig to Paisley, where I preached for the Moravians, and got 
 a collection of 96, 10s. 6d. 
 
 " Tuesday. I attended this day a committee, where my 
 parochial plan of management was broached laughed at by one 
 set, vehemently supported by another, and at length regularly 
 deposited as the subject of a motion. It is growing in popularity 
 amongst the official people, though some of the old stagers have 
 the very greatest contempt for it. 
 
 " Wednesday. Finished a lecture. Kirkman Finlay, M.P., 
 called in his carnage, and took me out, along with Mr. Haddow, 
 chief magistrate, to an official dinner, given to the magistrates 
 at Jordanhill. Mr. Finlay is to give all his influence and appro- 
 bation to my arrangements, and I have no doubt of the matter 
 succeeding. The dinner was one of splendour, and the party 
 was a very pleasant one. Mr. Finlay drove me in about ten 
 o'clock. 
 
 " Thursday. Wrote at a careful sermon. Mr. Birt, one of 
 the Baptist ministers now in town, called, and I invited him to 
 take a bed with me during his stay, which will be about a week. 
 We shall have no dinners nor parties, and indeed he is taken 
 out abundantly to both. He is a great intimate of Mr. Hall's, 
 and a very pleasant well-informed person. I took an early 
 dinner, and had a round of visitation with Mr. Brown. I drank 
 tea at his house, and addressed a party of above one hundred 
 after tea in the evening. 
 
 " Friday. Mr. Birt breakfasts with me every morning. I 
 took to the composition in the forenoon. Mr. Kinghorn and 
 Dr. Steadman, other Baptist ministers, called upon me at one. 
 I took them to the Observatory, and felt the pressure of a little 
 confusion by the Miss B.'s, Mr. F., and Miss S. being also thrown 
 upon me. However, I made off from them all at three ; had 
 an early dinner, and went to the Saltmarket, where I spent four 
 or five hours among my old people. I did the thing in a quiet 
 and leisurely style, and drank tea in a family there during the 
 evening. I came home in great comfort, and met Mr. Birt on 
 my return. 
 
 " Saturday. Was annoyed this forenoon with a good deal of 
 breaking up of my retirement. I finished off my preparation 
 as I could ; took my cold bath (which I do three times a week) 
 in Mr. Smith's ; had an early dinner ; went down to Mr. Hun- 
 ter's proportion, and made a number of visits to sick and dying 
 people ; drank tea with a parish family there ; came up about
 
 MR. BIRT. 4gj 
 
 eight, had several calls ; had an egg and cold beef with Mr 
 Birt, and went to bed about eleven o'clock. 
 
 " Sunday. I preached all day. Spent my interval with Mr 
 Allan Buchannan, who, I trust, will be an elder to me. He is 
 a very fine fellow. 
 
 " Monday, July 6. Had a party of twelve at breakfast : Mr 
 Walker, Mr. Charles Hutcheson, Messrs. Robert and Francis 
 Brown, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Birt, and a number of Sabbath- 
 school teachers. Compliments to all. Write about my father. 
 Strive to enter in at the strait gate it is the gate of a blessed 
 eternity. my dear G., do make it a matter of prayer and of 
 earnestness ; feel as if there was nothing else worth the seeking 
 for ; never rest satisfied with a conscience telling you that your 
 present state is not a state which it would do to die in ; pray 
 that you may be converted and your sins be blotted out. Offer 
 my fondest love to each of the dear children ; and do let it be 
 our joint care and our joint supplication that they be devoted 
 to the Lord. Oh that we should so long after their temporal 
 and so neglect their spiritual and everlasting interests ! " 
 
 " GLASGOW, July 8, 1818. 
 
 " MY VERY DEAREST GRACE, I had just filled one page of my 
 Journal this morning when I got your letter ; and I suspend it 
 for the purpose of requesting your more frequent and particular 
 accounts of my father. Your notice of him has indeed thrown 
 me into very great tenderness ; and I want to know if you think 
 I should come, and that soon, to see him if I were only to be 
 away one Sunday. If he does enjoy your society much, I should 
 rather like you to remain in Anster ; and I cannot express the 
 longing anxiety I feel towards him now that his earthly career 
 appears to be drawing towards its termination. . . . Give a 
 kiss to each of my dear girls. train them in the fear of the 
 Lord. Let the vanity of earthly things sink deep into your 
 own heart. Do say the kindest things to my dear father ; I 
 cannot express the feelings I have about him. my dearest, 
 let us devote ourselves more than we have ever yet done to the 
 one thing needful. Pray for light and enlargement and decided 
 seriousness. Flee to Christ, and let it be your heart's desire to 
 trust Him and to walk in Him. Yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Glasgow, July 13, 1818. I finished my last in Mr. Smith's 
 
 VOL. I. 2 II
 
 482 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 shop, and went from it to Mrs. G., who exhibited such a picture 
 of dying agony as I hope I shall not soon forget, and it has 
 hung upon me with a deep but I hope salutary weight all day. 
 I have felt the littleness of the world and the littleness of human 
 praise. that God would extirpate from my heart every re- 
 mainder of earthliness ! that He would indeed raise my desires 
 to Himself, and make me seek my own salvation and that of 
 others more earnestly and simply and devotedly than ever ! 
 Her daughters are in an ecstasy of grief; and altogether I felt 
 that it was well to go to the house of mourning. I then went 
 to Dr. Eanken, where I dined in company with Drs. Taylor, 
 Lockhart, and M'Gill. There is a certain want of congeniality ; 
 hut on the whole I got on pretty well. I fear that their taste 
 for general and extended management will not always be at one 
 with my parochial plans of education. 
 
 " Tuesday. I prepared at my lecture in the forenoon. 
 
 " Wednesday. Finished my lecture. I went to visit the sick 
 of Norris's Land, and found it a very pleasant excursion. 
 
 "Thursday. I generally perform the round of Harley's grounds 
 every morning before breakfast. Had a forenoon of careful com- 
 position. May God save me from all vanity and dependence 
 upon myself. Sauntered out in the cool of the evening, and fell 
 in with Mr. Harley, who introduced me to two Bristol gentlemen, 
 one of whom is intimate with Hannah More, and had a message 
 to me from her. 
 
 " Friday. Studied as usual in the forenoon. Mr. Erskine of 
 Linlathen called between one and two, and spent the day with 
 me. ... I have had a great treat in Mr. Erskine a holy, 
 spiritual, enlightened, and affectionate Christian, who is also a 
 man of great property and of great literature." 
 
 On Friday, the 17th July, Mr. Chalmers, senior, had an attack 
 of paralysis, which threatened a speedy removal by death. In- 
 telligence was despatched immediately to Dr. Chalmers, who left 
 Glasgow on Monday the 20th, and arrived at Anstruther at three 
 o'clock on Tuesday. On Thursday he wrote to Mrs. Morton 
 " My father has been quite inarticulate since Friday, and neither 
 my brother nor Dr. Goodsir gives us any hope of recovery from 
 this last attack. He was a good deal moved when I was first 
 announced to him. I pray with him occasionally, but shortly, 
 lest he should be fatigued. He sleeps a great deal, and seems 
 to have little or no pain. There is still a considerable portion of
 
 HIS FATHER'S DEATH. 483 
 
 understanding, and when placed on his chair, where he sits for 
 about half an hour with a blanket round him, he can be made 
 to know who is taking him by the hand and speaking to him. 
 He was made very placid last night in this way by the successive 
 announcements of myself and aunt and the two children, and all 
 the rest of us. Since I sat down to this letter he expressed a 
 wish, which was interpreted to be for me. We find a whole 
 chapter too much for him, and I have been selecting a few sepa- 
 rate verses from the Bible, a few of which I read at a time. I 
 asked if he felt the comfort of them, when he shook his head 
 and said, ' Ay.' ' Ay' and ' No' are almost the only articulations 
 he can make out, though he occasionally hits upon some others, 
 such as Jeanie, Isabel, Anne, and we thought he said just now, 
 ' I'll maybe be better the morn.' There is much stillness and 
 self-command in our household. I am most exquisitely gratified 
 with the use of my very excellent wife upon this occasion, who 
 has earned new titles to my affection by this exhibition of her- 
 self ; and I indeed count her to be one of the greatest blessings 
 ever conferred on me by Providence. 
 
 " I took up Sandy in Kirkcaldy on my way. I did not come 
 by Edinburgh. Sandy returned in the chaise that night. I said 
 to my father this night that I trusted his prayers for us would 
 not be forgotten by any of us. He was much employed in in- 
 tercessions for his family before he was struck with palsy on 
 Friday in particular, one evening, that we should live in peace. 
 "With kindest compliments to Mr. Morton and the little ones, 
 believe me, ever yours with true affection, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 "ANSTHDTHER, Sabbath, July 26, 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAREST JANE, The life of our revered father was just 
 lengthened out to half-past two this morning. He was permitted 
 just to touch, as it were, one Sabbath more on earth ere he was 
 transported to that everlasting Sabbath among the worshippers 
 of which he is now sitting in blessedness and in glory. The 
 family are bearing up wonderfully none of us in church of 
 course but I take an occasional walk at the head of the garden. 
 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 church the interval the everything
 
 484 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 connected with the Sabbath, bring the whole -of my father's 
 habits in lively recollection before me, and call forth a fresh ex- 
 citement of tenderness. 
 
 " My dear father is lovely in death. There is all the mildness 
 of heaven upon his aged countenance. My mother bears up to 
 the great satisfaction of us all. She sits much in the room where 
 the venerable remains are lying. My aunt, though much moved 
 at the time of the death, is conducting herself with an equani- 
 mity which goes far to sustain the spirits of the family. I have 
 felt remarkably calm till I sat down to these letters. I have 
 written to James, and have yet to write to Patrick, Charles, 
 and Alexander. that this affecting event did something more 
 than solemnize for the time ! that it formed a turning-point in 
 the history of every one of us, so as that all old things should 
 be done away, and so as that all things should become new. 
 
 " There was not much of the suffering of death, save the 
 weariness and the languor of dying. He ceased, we thought, to 
 take an interest in what we said for about thirty hours before his 
 death. We all sat up two nights in hourly expectation of the 
 event, but it was postponed, and the transition made gentler in 
 consequence. He calmly breathed his last, and his departing 
 spirit has left a most saintly expression behind it. 
 
 " He recommended to his family, in a written note which my 
 mother found, to read Hervey's and Newton's works, and more 
 particularly the ' Theron and Aspasio' of the former. I had 
 begun it two days ago, and trust that I shall never lose my hold 
 of the fulness and peace which lie in the doctrine of Christ's 
 imputed righteousness. 
 
 " I beg that my dear Jane may receive this stroke with sub- 
 mission to the Divine will. My father's ' graces' at length be- 
 came prayer of late, and a frequent petition of his was that we 
 might be reconciled to the whole of God's will : ' Be still, and 
 know that I am God.' 
 
 " My kindest compliments to Mr. Morton. All join in affection 
 to him and to you. Believe me, my very dearest Jane, yours 
 most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " ANSTKUTHER, Sabbath, July 26, 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAR PATRICK, Our revered father died this morning 
 at half -past two. It is, indeed, a most solemn and affecting visi- 
 tation ; and the circumstance of his not being able to articulate 
 since Friday week, serves if possible to add to the longing regret
 
 HIS FATHER'S DEATH. 485 
 
 and tenderness of our feelings. He was much in prayer during 
 this interval. Faith was his food in life, and it was his stay in 
 death. He recommended his children in writing to read the 
 works of Hervey and John Newton of London. The ' Theron 
 and Aspasio' of the former was a very favourite composition of 
 his. You would do well to act upon this recommendation ; and 
 should such an earnestness now come upon you that you would 
 not rest till you found rest in Christ, and hecame a faithful and 
 abiding disciple of His, this would indeed be the best memorial 
 of the best of fathers. 
 
 " It is my earnest prayer that this event be improved in your 
 lasting and confirmed seriousness. The world is a cheat, and he 
 whose affections are set upon it is living in the delusion of ido- 
 latry. How fearfully, then, does the guilt of such idolatry attach 
 to us all ! and go over the whole compass of truth, there is not 
 one of its articles fitted to meet such a case and to mend it, but 
 the article of that atonement which lies in the blood of Christ, 
 and of that sanctification which is imparted by the Spirit of 
 Christ. These were the elements of my dear father's religion ; 
 and I tmst that they will be transmitted as the most valuable 
 bequeathment that can possibly descend to his posterity. Let us 
 be followers of him, and I am indeed deceived if we shall not 
 be the followers of those who, through faith and patience, are 
 now inheriting the promises. I beg you will not be of those who 
 only seek, in a general and indolent way, that they may enter 
 the strait gate. There are many such who shall not be able. 
 We are commanded to strive. It is the one thing needful, for 
 which we should be in readiness to forsake all. May God give 
 you the spirit of grace and supplication, that you may strive 
 with Him in prayer for your salvation. May He give you a de- 
 sire for the sincere milk of the word, that you may strive, through 
 the Scriptures, to become wise unto salvation. May He so con- 
 vince you of sin, and of the sacrifice for sin, that you may seek 
 unto Christ, and at length find Him as the Captain of your sal- 
 vation. Under this Captain fight your way to holiness and to 
 heaven ; live the life of the righteous, and your latter end shall 
 be like his. Tour faithfulness to your earthly master is an essen- 
 tial, but only a small part of your Christianity, which claims a 
 direction over the whole man, and rests satisfied with nothing 
 short of a regeneration so entire that all old things may be done 
 away, and all things may become new. I am, my dear Patrick, 
 yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
 
 486 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " ANSTRUTHER, Sabbath, July 26, 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAL JAMES, Our excellent father died this morning 
 at half-past two o'clock. I have been with him since Tuesday, 
 and it has been a great alleviation that there seems to have been 
 little of violent pain during the whole of his illness. It was in- 
 deed a very quiet and gentle departure, and the heavenly mild- 
 ness of an aged saint is still upon his countenance. . . . Religion 
 was the element in which he has breathed the whole of his life ; 
 it enveloped his deathbed ; and he is now inhaling it pure and 
 undefiled before the presence of his God. 
 
 " The best effect of this visitation upon us all will be, that it 
 lead us to imitate him by walking in the footsteps of his faith 
 and of his holiness. If the departed look upon the world, 
 I know not what could afford to his spirit a more delightful 
 spectacle than that of his children seeking that gospel which 
 they have aforetime despised praying for grace, and not ceas- 
 ing to pray till they have obtained labouring after conversion, 
 and at length finding the accomplishment of their object look- 
 ing earnestly to the free offer of an interest in the blood and 
 righteousness of Christ and, in short, experiencing this effect 
 of the goodness of God, that it leadeth them to repentance. 
 
 " It is my earnest prayer that such an influence may proceed 
 from this mournful event on the minds of the members of all 
 our family. It is alarming to think that if we are not made the 
 better of it, we shall become the worse of it. The gospel has a 
 twofold property : it is the savour of life unto life to those who 
 embrace it, but of death unto death to those who reject it. If 
 we do not rest upon it for salvation, it will fall upon us for our 
 everlasting destruction. God reproves us by His providence as 
 well as by His word ; and he who being often thus reproved 
 hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that with- 
 out remedy. May God deliver us from the fate of those who 
 despise the riches of His forbearance and long-suffering, and 
 after their hardness and impenitent heart treasure up unto them- 
 selves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the 
 righteous judgment of God. 
 
 " The funeral is to be on Friday. I shall write you after it. 
 Give my kindest compliments to Mrs. Chalmers and Mary ; and 
 believe me to be ever yours, with the very greatest affection, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 On the day before the funeral Dr. Chalmers wrote to a much
 
 THERON AND ASPASIO. 487 
 
 cherished Christian friend : " I shall find it out of my power 
 to visit the north of Fife at present. My father's death ren- 
 ders it proper and necessary for me to give the whole time of 
 this excursion to his family. He died in peace, and, I am con- 
 fident, is now in glory. He was a veteran Christian, who had 
 long walked in the good old way of justification by the right- 
 eousness of Christ, and sanctification by the Spirit which is at 
 His giving. Hervey and Newton were his favourite authors, 
 and in particular ' Theron and Aspasio,' which, I am ashamed 
 to say, I had not read till just now that I am engaged in the 
 perusal of it. I feel, my dear Miss Collier, that the righteous- 
 ness of Christ unmixed with baser materials, untempered with 
 strange mortar, unvitiated by human pretensions of any sort, is 
 the solid resting-place on which a man is to lay his acceptance 
 before God, and that there is no other ; that to attempt a com- 
 position between grace and works is to spoil both, and is to deal 
 a blow both to the character of God and to the cause of practical 
 holiness. This is my firm conviction ; but I trust you under- 
 stand that it may be a firm conviction without being a bright 
 and rapture-giving perception. I know that it should enrapture 
 me that it should throw me into the transports of gratitude 
 that it should make me feel as a man in all the triumphs of con- 
 fident anticipation, but I have occasional visitations of darkness 
 and dulness and spiritual lethargy, and then, like Eutherford, I 
 would like to believe in the dark to keep my hold in the midst 
 of all my darkness and all my misgivings to humble myself 
 because of my cold insensibility, but still to trust determinedly, 
 to trust in the name and righteousness of my Lord. 
 
 " I think that holiness is looked upon by some evangelical 
 writers in rather a lame and inadequate point of view. They 
 value it chiefly as an evidence of justifying faith. They are 
 right in saying that it gives no title to God's favour, but they 
 are wrong in saying that its chief use is to ascertain that title, 
 or to make that title clear to him who possesses it. 
 
 " It is, in fact, chiefly valuable on its own account. It forms 
 part, and an effective part, of salvation. It may be considered 
 as an entrance upon heaven. Christ came to give us a justify- 
 ing righteousness, and He also came to make us holy not 
 chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a 
 justifying righteousness not for so temporary an object as this, 
 but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed 
 eternity.
 
 488 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " If the only inducement to a new acquirement of holiness 
 was that it made our title clearer and multiplied our evidences, 
 this does not appear so direct or powerful an inducement as 
 when we are told that holiness is, in fact, the happiness of 
 heaven, and then do we understand how every new accession of 
 it adds to our treasure in heaven, and how, by approximating 
 us to the lost image of God, it, in fact, is helping onwards the 
 great and ultimate object to which our justification may be con- 
 sidered only as a means and a preliminary. Was holiness 
 prosecuted for no other object than to clear up our title to the 
 happiness of heaven, then the whole of the prosecution is ani- 
 mated by a selfish principle. Let holiness be prosecuted as that 
 which constitutes the very element of heaven, and without which 
 we could not breathe in it, then we have the most powerful, 
 direct, and intelligible argument that can be conceived for the 
 acquirement of a character not to work out a meritorious cause 
 of salvation, but to work out an indispensable requisite for heaven 
 not to found a title, for that through the great Head by whom 
 we hold has been already done, but to complete a preparation 
 without which I do not say a man has no right to see God, but 
 without which there is no possibility that a man can see God. 
 I trust that I am the better of Hervey. I like to see a clear and 
 vigorous line of demarcation drawn around the ground of our 
 acceptance with God. I like to see it cleared from all the rub- 
 bish of human knowledge and human pollution. I like to see 
 the firm and unmixed plea of the Lord my righteousness held 
 out to sinners in all its power to encourage them to come to the 
 Lawgiver ; and not till a man submits to Christ as his alone 
 righteousness will he repair to Him as his alone strength ; not 
 till he make himself wholly over to the Eedeemer for acceptance 
 will he make himself wholly over to Him for sanctification ; not 
 till he put away all confidence from himself, and put all his joy 
 in the Lord Jesus, will he serve God in the spirit ; for whether 
 do we receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the 
 hearing of faith ? 
 
 " I desire my affectionate regards to my dear friends Dr. 
 Macculloch and Mrs. Coutts. Mention me also in terms of 
 cordiality to Miss Coutts and the Miss Maccullochs. Give my 
 kindest remembrances to Mr. and Mrs. Walker. 
 
 " Do pray for me, that I may have more light, more comfort, 
 more steadfastness in my Christian walk. that we had more 
 of the power of it in our hearts, and that God would vouchsafe
 
 JOURNAL. 489 
 
 a measure of light and of strength from His sanctuary ! How 
 humbling to all learning when a man is made to know that his 
 doctrine has outrun his experience !" 
 
 Dr. Chalmers remained with his mother and family for about 
 a fortnight after his father's funeral, and was then obliged to 
 plunge once more into the vortex at Glasgow, from the midst 
 of which, after a week or two's experience of its effects, he wrote 
 to Mrs. Morton : " There is something in the bustle of this 
 place that is much calculated to keep impressions of sensibility 
 away from us. My father's death, however, hangs about me, 
 and I am thrown into frequent and occasional fits of tenderness. 
 I look towards Anster now with the feeling of its having sus- 
 tained an irreparable mutilation. I strive to profit by this dis- 
 pensation ; and what I feel to be the foremost lesson to be 
 gathered from the remembrance of an example now solemnized 
 and consecrated by death, is a lesson of meek and enduring 
 patience under the wrongs of this world's provocations. What 
 an indulgent father he was to us all. How effusive his kindness 
 and affection to his whole family. How much, alas ! in the way 
 of thoughtlessness and perverseness and impatience had he to 
 staffer, and with what uncomplaining mildness he suffered it. 
 Oh that God may perpetuate this lesson in my heart, and that 
 from the image of my departed father there may beam a holy 
 and a peaceful influence at all times upon me ! I can write no 
 more upon this subject, for in truth it is still a subject of deep 
 and tender agitation." 
 
 On his return to Glasgow on Saturday the 15th August, Dr. 
 Chalmers resumed his Journal letters : 
 
 " Sunday, August 16. I found on my arrival a line ^ from 
 Dr. Fleming, offering me a sermon in the forenoon, which I 
 accepted. My appearance in my own seat was quite unexpected 
 by the people. Dr. F. preached a very acceptable and well- 
 liked sermon. I had a very crowded audience in the afternoon, 
 and saw much of evident cordiality and good- will on the part 
 of my hearers. 
 
 " Monday. The Grand Duke Michael came to Glasgow late 
 on Sunday evening, and this day went round the town. We 
 were before him at the Lunatic Asylum, but did not wait 
 arrival there. On passing Mr. Barley's cow-house, I saw the 
 crowd collected about Michael's retinue, and I saw four gentle
 
 490 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 men go into an open carriage, one of whom was Michael himself, 
 but I could get nobody to point him out to me ; so that I have 
 seen Michael, and yet may be said never to have looked at him. 
 
 " Tuesday. Busied myself with miscellaneous work in the 
 forenoon. I dined at Mr. Allan Buchanan's at two. Michael 
 and suite had proposed to visit their calender, but kept the men 
 waiting, and did not come on Monday. Allan accompanies 
 me to Mr. M'Vicar's proportion, and though Michael was still 
 expected, he left the calender for me, nor could all my impor- 
 tunities prevail upon him to remain at his post. We afterwards 
 learned that Michael did come, and Mr. William had to do all 
 the ceremony himself. After dinner we went to Mr. M'Vicar's, 
 and proceeded to a diet of visitation. Drank tea in Mr. M'Vicar's 
 at six, and addressed a population of eighty-two between seven 
 and eight. 
 
 " Wednesday. Mr. John Brown of Whitburn came in to tea ; 
 I got him to stop all night with me. Mr. Collins came in after 
 snpper, and we had a great deal of worthy cordial Christian 
 conversation. 
 
 " Thursday. I got up at half-past six, thinking that I would 
 have a canny sederunt at composition, but my ink-bottle was 
 in the dining-room, and I had to slip down for it, when, lo and 
 behold, Mr. Brown was there before me. He was engaged to 
 go out to breakfast, but it was at a distance, and Janet had 
 previously spread the table, on which Mr. B., thinking that I 
 was just going to sit down, said he would like a cup before going 
 out. This compelled breakfast the first. I had previously asked 
 Mr. and Mrs. Pringle from Hawick (the latter of whom was 
 daughter to my landlady there seventeen years ago) to break- 
 fast with me this morning. I snatched an hour for composition 
 in the interval. Professor Leslie with Mr. Leslie called before 
 breakfast second, and the Professor said, after a short stay, that 
 he was engaged, but would call again in an hour. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Pringle came, and we had breakfast the second. After they 
 left me the Edinburgh Professor called, and as I was preparing 
 to go out, another Edinburgh Professor called, even Dr. Thomas 
 Brown of the Moral Philosophy. Their fresh visages and disen- 
 cumbered buoyancy of mind made me envy the situation of a 
 Professor, and I would positively take the Divinity if it was offered 
 to me. I went out with them towards the College, took leave 
 of Professor L. with an invitation to sup, walked a little with 
 Professor B., then called on George Burns about some parish
 
 JOURNAL. 491 
 
 business, then ran to Mr. Smith's hath, then stopped to talk a 
 little with him and Mr. Constable, then dined at two with Mr. 
 A. Buchanan, then called on Mr. M'Vicar, and made another 
 round amongst my dear websters and winders and cartdrivere 
 and brushmakers, then drank tea in Mr. M'V.'s, then addressed 
 my people for an hour, then called with Mr. A. Buchanan at 
 Stockwell on my aunt, then returned to Kensington Place, where 
 Mr. A. B., Professor B., and Mr. Leslie, supped with me. I 
 have a great natural relish for the Professor. I got to bed about 
 half- past eleven. 
 
 " Friday. Got a good spell at composition this morning. 
 The steeple is condemned. It must be rebuilt ere the church 
 can be entered, and the removal is to be postponed till Whit- 
 sunday. I have a very comfortable prospect of additions, how- 
 ever, to my agency, and I trust, if spared to be here and in 
 life, I shall have all my men at their post on the day of my 
 removal to St. John's. 
 
 " Saturday. Eose about half-past six. Composed. Had Mr. 
 George Burns, Mr. Eamsay, a Sabbath-school teacher, Mr. Gil- 
 fillan, and a younger brother from South America, to breakfast 
 with me. Went after breakfast with Messrs. Burns and Ramsay 
 to the parish, where I assigned to each a local district and pro- 
 cured scholars for them. Visited a few sick. Called by appoint- 
 ment on Mr. Falconer, and went out with him, John Smith, and 
 Mr. Collins, to his country house, where we dined, drank tea, 
 and had indeed a very pleasant afternoon. W T alked home be- 
 tween eight and nine, and on my arrival found a line from Lord 
 Elgin at the Black Bull, who told me of the arrival of himself 
 and family in Glasgow. I felt it too late to call upon him, and 
 so I spent a pleasant three hours with preparation for Sabbath, 
 and went to bed about twelve. 
 
 " Sunday. Started at eight. Breakfasted at nine. Called 
 on John Smith, and got him to apprise Mr. Wodrow, one of 
 our teachers, of a probable visit which nobility would make to 
 his school. When Lady Elgin heard of the Sabbath -school ex- 
 pedition, she countermanded an engagement to dine with Mr. 
 M'Intosh. The church greatly crowded all this day. I preached 
 both times. I took the bath in Barley's after the afternoo 
 sermon, then dined at home, then called on John Smith, then 
 went with him to the Black Bull, then got Lady Elgin to g 
 Mr. Wodrow's school, where Lord Elgin came soon afterwar 
 in his gir. Mr. Wodrow was greatly embarrassed, and matte
 
 492 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 did not go on promisingly. Mr. Smith went for Mr. Collins, 
 and we adjourned to George Burns's school in Charlotte Lane, 
 when Lord and Lady Elgin both seemed to be very much grati- 
 fied. I conducted part of the examination. We returned to 
 the Black Bull at eight, when I took leave of them. 
 
 " Monday. Went down to the Black Bull after breakfast. 
 Dr. Jeffrey of the College and I are the conductors of the grand 
 cavalcade. He contributed one carriage, in which he went with 
 the Ladies Bruce. After it followed the carriage in which were 
 Lady Elgin, Mrs. Hamilton, and myself, and behind us Mr. 
 Hamilton's three sons in a kind of basket. The crowd followed 
 us and gathered about us at every place where we stopped. 
 Our objects were : 1. The Lunatic Asylum. 2. The Cow- 
 house. 3. Observatory, where we had not sun enough for the 
 microscope. 4. Tambouring machine. 5. Black Bull, where 
 we took a little refreshment. 6. Mr. Thomson's spinning-mill 
 on the other side of the water. 7. Power-looms. 8. Girdwood's 
 Works. Mr. Thomson, our friend, was with us at the two last 
 places. 9. A drive by the Catholic Chapel, Jail, Nelson's 
 Monument. 10. Mr. Buchanan's calender. 11. Singeing ma- 
 chine, whither Mr. A Buchanan attended us. 12. Black Bull, 
 where we all sat down to dinner about seven o'clock. The party 
 was much gratified, in particular Lady Elgin, who, on the sub- 
 ject of machinery, was quite intelligent. 
 
 " Tuesday. All the Black Bull party went off this morning 
 early for Loch Lomond excepting Lord Elgin, who is still con- 
 fined with the gout. He could not accompany us yesterday, 
 and this day I had a note from him craving a call. I went to 
 him after dinner, and stopped an hour with him. He remains 
 till the Lochlomonders return, and, in the meantime, goes to 
 Mr. M'Intosh this evening. I left the Black Bull, and made 
 a number of visits upon the sick. Came home after seven, call- 
 ing on John Smith on my return, and getting my usual convoy 
 from him. Drank tea, and had an excellent hour and a half 
 for reading Dr. Brown. 
 
 " Wednesday. Did not get up till after seven. Composed 
 till breakfast time. I find the morning system a very admir- 
 able one. It shakes off a weight from me for the whole day. 
 I am no longer troubled with interruptions, for before they 
 happen I am independent of them, and I can carry out a more 
 Christian aspect of cordiality and welcome and good-will to all 
 who want me.
 
 JOURNAL. 493 
 
 " I pray that God may effectually take the ascendency bver 
 your thoughts, affections, and principles. Turn unto Him in 
 the name of Christ, and He will turn unto you. that this 
 movement was decisively taken, that the visitation of a real and 
 settled earnestness was felt, that the question was taken up and 
 prosecuted, that the word of God was desired even as milk is 
 desired by the babe, and that we from one day to another were 
 studying how we should most advance the glory of Him who 
 hath formed and hath redeemed us ! 
 
 " Give my kindest compliments to my mother and Isabel. 
 Tell Anne and Eliza that papa is well, and he wants them both 
 to be very good girls. 0, my dearest, let us think more feel- 
 ingly of their souls, and let us pray and strive that all the 
 members of our family shall meet in heaven." 
 
 " Glasgow, August 27, 1818. After sending away your letter 
 yesterday afternoon, I went to the Observatory, and spent an 
 hour with Mr. Cross, looking at his instruments. On my return 
 
 I sat me down to read, when in came Miss about jelly ; 
 
 and I really disliked exceedingly the idea of my retirement 
 being broken up by her trocking. I therefore gave no encourage- 
 ment to it, and said, what I thought was really the case, that 
 the jelly was already made ; and then she went to Janet with a 
 proposal about apple jelly, and I can assure you the whole 
 matter terminated very much to my satisfaction, when I under- 
 stood it to be the result of the whole conference that I stood in 
 no danger of the threatened invasion. 
 
 " Thursday. Eose at half-past six. Composed. During break- 
 fast a young woman came in to talk of her soul,* the same whom 
 I visited when in fever. She is also very poor. If I knew it to 
 be genuine I should feel more freedom in communicating. Sal- 
 lied out at twelve. Called on Mr. Kirkland ; then visited a sick 
 person in my parish ; then attended a funeral ; then went up to 
 
 * While Dr. Chalmers was very busily engaged one forenoon in his study, a man entered, 
 who at once propitiated him under the provocation of an unexpected interruption, by telling 
 him that he called under great distress of mind. "Sit down, air; be good enough to be 
 seated," said Dr. Chalmers, turning eagerly and fun of interest from his writing-table, T 
 visitor explained to him that he was troubled with doubts about the Divine origin of tl 
 Christian religion; and being kindly questioned as to what these were, he gave, UMOR 
 -.thers, what is said in the Bible about Melchisedek being without father and without m 
 c. Patiently and anxiously Dr. Chalmers sought to clear away each uuo. Mi"* 
 s it was stated. Expressing himself as if greatly relieved in mind, and imagining tl 
 
 shoulders of Melchisedek !"
 
 494 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Mr.' Smith's, and asked the servant to fill the bath ; then visited 
 Mrs. Smith, who is still in a very doubtful way. She pressed 
 me to eat grapes that she had, which I did very much to my 
 own satisfaction. This, however, took up so much time, that 
 when I returned to the bath I found it a complete bumper. 
 Took my three dips in it, and then called on Lord Elgin, who 
 took up your brother's case with zeal and friendship, and is to 
 converse with Mr. Hamilton about it. I read of Thomas Brown, 
 and went to bed about ten. 
 
 " Friday. Started a little after six. Composed. Went to 
 Dunchattan to breakfast, and found that Lord Elgin had gone 
 from it yesternight. Walked to the Black Bull, where I found 
 the whole party returned from the West. Told them that I 
 would call again ; and in the meantime visited Mr. Elder's 
 school at the Saltmarket. On my return got out the whole 
 party to another excursion. 
 
 " Saturday. Started precisely at six. Made preparations for 
 Sunday till breakfast time. Lord Elgin talked to me of the 
 Military College, and told me that Mr. Hamilton and he agreed 
 in thinking that my best plan was to write immediately to Lord 
 Melville. This I will not do. I have no title, and it would at 
 once make me a poor partisan of Ministry. I was proceeding 
 to finish off my preparation for to-morrow, when in came Mr. 
 Collins, and beseeched me, as the town was choke full of 
 strangers, that I would preach my sermon on dissipation. 
 
 " Sunday. Kose at eight. After breakfast called upon Lady 
 Elgin at the Black Bull. Preached in the forenoon the first 
 part of my sermon on dissipation. I had the feeling that I was 
 just preaching over again what many had previously heard ; 
 but John Smith was in the vestry previous to the afternoon ser- 
 vice, and assured me that not above 200 had heard it, and that 
 I could preach nothing more acceptable. There was a great 
 crowd all day. 
 
 " Monday. Started at six. I threw off four pages, or half a 
 careful sermon, before breakfast. 
 
 " Tuesday. Started at six. Wrote four pages of long-hand ; 
 breakfasted ; wrote letters. My sermon on dissipation appears 
 to have made some impression ; and I am satisfied that it is right 
 to repeat some of my Thursday's sermons in the Tron Church. 
 
 " Thursday. Dined with Mr. Kirkland ; Mr. Stow along 
 with us. Went down with these gentlemen at three, and en- 
 tered on the visitation of Mr. Kirkland's proportion. Went
 
 JOURNAL. 495 
 
 round among the families till half-past six, and adjourned to Mr. 
 Collins's to tea. Went back to a house at seven, and convened 
 the families for an address. After it was over, walked home 
 about nine. Mr. Stow accompanied me, and I prevailed on him 
 to engage for some temporary agency in this district. 
 
 " Friday. Rose a little after six. Got Janet to put paper, 
 wood, and coals into the fireplace of my bedroom the night 
 before. Have got a match-box and lighted it on rising. This 
 I propose to make my system all winter. Chipwood is to be 
 had for purchasing, and I shall have a sufficiency of waste 
 paper ; so that either in the study or the drawing-room, rather 
 than in the bedroom, the air of which will not be so free, I shall 
 light up a fire every morning. Prepared some short-hand for 
 Sunday. Breakfasted at nine. Wrote letters. Went out before 
 twelve. Called on Mr. Allan Buchanan at the calender. Took 
 him down to the parish, and assigned him his Sabbath-school 
 district, and got him twenty-six scholars. Visited also some 
 sick. On my return a curious circumstance occurred to me in 
 the Gallowgate. A porter half-drunk came up to me, and stated 
 that two men were wanting to see me. He carried me to a 
 tavern, when it turned out that there was a wager between these 
 men whether this said porter was correct in his knowledge of 
 me. He told me before that he was a parishioner of mine, and 
 I recollected him as one of those whom I had visited. But I 
 was so revolted at this impertinency, that I made the ears of all 
 who were in the house ring with a reproof well said and strong ; 
 and so left them a little astounded, I have no doubt. 
 
 " Grangemouth, Sept. 8, 1818. I preached only in the fore- 
 noon of Sunday. There was an immense crowd. 
 
 " Monday. Started at five. Visited a dying man in Char- 
 lotte Street, and returned to Port-Dundas by nine. I got on to 
 No. 16 by one o'clock. Dr. Wilson was there waiting for me. I 
 walked with him to Falkirk, where I preached for the Sabbath- 
 schools. Dr. W. kept everybody out who gave no silver, so that 
 the audience did not just fill the church, but it was a very select 
 one. The collection was 70. Dined in Dr. Wilson's with a 
 large party of Falkirkers. . 
 
 " Tuesday. Started at six. Am rejoicing in this habit ; tor 
 I can just do as much now with a day full of bustle as I 
 before on a system of resistance and exclusion. Began my next 
 Thursday's sermon, and am now quite resolved to give up all 
 anxious feeling about the quantity of composition. Breakfaste
 
 496 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 in Mr. M'Nab's with a large party of Grangemouth people. 
 After breakfast, was driven up to Falkirk in Mr. M'Nab's gig by 
 his servant, when I called on Dr. Wilson. Took him into the 
 gig, and drove on to Carron, where I was received with great 
 distinction by the superintendent of the works and one of the 
 chief proprietors, who conducted me in person through its vast 
 and ponderous machinery. From that went to Falkirk Tryst, 
 held in a large moor a prodigious cattle-market, of 10,000 
 beasts, and half" as many people. After loitering through this 
 scene, rode back to Grangemouth through a rich and beautiful 
 country, and dined in Mr. M'Nab's. Here there was another 
 large party invited to meet me. After they went, had a pleasant 
 conversation in the evening .with the family. 
 
 " Wednesday. Started at six. Wrote away, with ships and 
 sailors and huzzas and the whole work and roar of a crowded 
 pier immediately under my window, but felt no disturbance. 
 Breakfasted with Mr. Weddel of the Customs ; Mr. M'Nab and 
 others along with me. At eleven the Custom-house boat was 
 got ready its colours hoisted a broad flag at the stern, a long 
 streaming pinnet from the foremast. I was accompanied to the 
 boat by all the constituted authorities of the place and two ladies. 
 I took leave of the ladies and most of the party at the boat ; 
 but there accompanied me to Kincardine, Mr. M'Nab, Mr. More- 
 head, collector of the Customs, and Mr. Weddel, comptroller. 
 The boat was manned by four sailors, and the whole of this 
 escort and preparation was for the single purpose of conveying 
 me across the water. We had a very pleasant sail of six miles, 
 and I really felt much gratified, and I hope grateful for these 
 kind and honourable attentions. Beached Kincardine in less 
 than an hour. 
 
 " Thursday. Started at six. I was engaged to breakfast in 
 Mr. Sand's, when two Burgher ministers were asked. We mus- 
 tered up three horses, and had a very pleasant ride in the fore- 
 noon to Salinehill, about nine miles from Kincardine. The day 
 was clear, and we saw at least sixteen counties. I could not 
 believe that I would have seen what I saw most distinctly and 
 undeniably Loudoun Hill in Ayrshire, and the Goatfell of 
 Arran, with hills beyond them. Figure, my dear, that from a 
 hill in Fife you should see the Arran hills, which look so pro- 
 minent from Fairlie." . . . 
 
 " Glasgow, Sept. 28, 1818. Monday. Composed. Had a 
 party of six at breakfast. Was bothered with a proposal from
 
 JOURNAL. 497 
 
 Mr. H. about a school in Brussels. All right ; but why must Dr. 
 Chalmers be ever and anon the rallying-point of every such ope- 
 ration ? Why are they constantly running with all their plans 
 and propositions to Dr. Chalmers? What idle, wandering, 
 leisurely person is this Dr. Chalmers, who has so much time to 
 spare, for every enterprise that is conceived and set agoing by 
 all the philanthropists of this our age ? 
 
 " Wednesday. Wrote for the General Session. I had not sat 
 
 long when in came Miss , with all the plenitude of some 
 
 mighty doing, which turned out neither more nor less than a 
 plum-jelly operation, which, greatly in opposition to my wishes, 
 she brought upon me whether I would or not. Janet had spoken 
 to me some days before, when I told her that you had given no 
 directions about it, and that I did not want it. Janet now tells 
 
 me that she told Miss that you had given no orders about 
 
 it, but did not like to tell her that I did not want it. I told her 
 so myself, however, but it seems the materials were all bought 
 and the operations begun; and Miss - , upon feeling cor- 
 rected by my remark, spoke so as to fill me with a kind of remorse 
 at my severity. So I went out on a round of visitation, and 
 took her mother in my way. Called also on Mr. Turpie ; and on 
 coming back at four found the table covered for me and Miss 
 
 , She left me about six. The operation is completed." 
 
 " Glasgow, Oct. 2, 1818. I preached yesterday (Thursday) 
 to a full house, and it gratifies me to think that labour expended 
 on a sermon does not render it the less but the more acceptable. 
 Let me labour to preach Christ and not myself. In coming home 
 at eight found Mr. Brown of Biggar, who supped with me, and 
 with whom I had a truly agreeable conversazione. 
 
 " Saturday. I devoted this forenoon to parochially visiting 
 the sick, and had comfort in the exercise. 
 
 " Sunday. Preached in the forenoon to an immense crowd. 
 The circuit is now sitting, and I saw a number of law-looking 
 faces there. Went down in the evening to the Tron, where I 
 preached to another very immense crowd. that God would 
 simplify my aim and that of my hearers I 
 
 " Monday. Mr. Falconer called between eleven and twelve. 
 He told me that he had been dining lately with Mr. , whc 
 had complained bitterly of my neglect towards his family, and 
 compared it with my attentions to Mr. B., whom, by the way, 1 
 have only spent a single hour with in the evening for a whole 
 half year, and Mr. Falconer concluded with recommendu
 
 498 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 me to make up for my bygone negligence. I should have heard 
 this with the utmost patience and charity, in which I am sorry 
 to say that I failed. I should bear all things, and do all without 
 murmurings and disputings, and be meek and gentle with all 
 men. But, at the same time, it is obviously impossible that I 
 
 can be dragged or dragooned into Mr. 's house in his present 
 
 humour, or pay an attention extorted from me in the spirit of a 
 jealous exactor ; nor do I think it my duty to dine at my hearers' 
 tables whenever they choose to let out an invitation. I must try 
 to keep a charitable spirit towards him ; and I am sure that my 
 absence from his house bears no more reference to him particu- 
 larly than it does to the hundred others who have kept asking 
 and asking at me, and have just as good a right to be angry as 
 he, that I have never moved a single footstep to them. This is 
 
 really a vulgarism which must be abolished. . . . The 
 
 have been particularly cold at meeting, and Mr. Falconer's re- 
 marks have let me into the explanation. They have conceived 
 themselves to be grievously insulted by the neglect of uncon- 
 scious me, who all the while was prosecuting my own affairs 
 without the slightest intention either of offending them or any 
 other body who spoke when I was spoken to, and went to the 
 church when the bell rang. 
 
 " Tuesday. I met Mr. , and was charged by him with 
 
 not calling. I told him that I was told the same thing by a 
 hundred others. Parted with him in good humour. Spoke again 
 to the excellent Mr. Falconer about it, and had a good deal of 
 mild and charitable remark from him. I believe I shall call and 
 give Mr. my whole mind about this matter. In the mean- 
 time, let it be my most fixed and firm determination to cultivate 
 a distance from general society. I beg you will come to Glasgow 
 on this principle, my dear, and let us do our utmost to keep our 
 house clear of the swarms by which it has been hitherto infested. 
 
 " I find that I cannot leave Glasgow till Tuesday the 13th, 
 which is Tuesday first, owing to my having to meet a few more 
 sacramental people on Monday. I shall not expect another let- 
 ter from you before meeting, and you need not expect another 
 from me if all is well. Take the utmost care of Anne ; and oh ! 
 my dear, let us never forget that the care of souls is the one 
 thing needful. Oh ! my dearest, let Christ be full in your eye : 
 He has wrought out a righteousness for you. Lay hold of it ; 
 cleave to it; let it not go. Feel that you live by Him, and pray 
 that you be inclined and enabled to live to Him. Oh ! my dear
 
 DEATH OF DR. BALFOUR. 499 
 
 G., let us comfort, support, and encourage each other in this 
 matter. Believe me, my ever dearest Grace, yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 On the day mentioned in the last paragraph of this journal 
 Tuesday the 13th October Glasgow lost one of the most emi- 
 nent of its ministers by the sudden death of the Rev. Dr. Bal- 
 four. On the preceding day he was attacked on the street by 
 an illness which prevented his reaching home was carried into 
 a friend's house, and after thirty-two hours of lingering insensi- 
 bility, died there, in the 71st year of his age, and 40th of his 
 ministry in Glasgow. The interest he had taken in his appoint- 
 ment to the Tron Church the great personal kindness which he 
 had shown his perfect freedom from all professional jealousy, 
 and his cordial delight at the promise of good presented by his 
 peculiar parochial labours, had endeared Dr. Balfour to Dr. 
 Chalmers, and on the Sabbath which succeeded his death, in 
 closing his discourse, he gave the following expression to his 
 regret and admiration : 
 
 " I have also to make another intimation. The Sabbath 
 next following is the anniversary of our collection for the Bible 
 Society. To stimulate that collection I have an ample store of 
 materials for argument and encouragement, but I forbear them 
 all for the sake of one touching argument which lies nearer 
 home, and the force of which, as well as the tenderness of which, 
 will, I am persuaded, be felt by every Christian in our society. 
 The cause for which I am pleading has lost one of the most 
 zealous and the most distinguished of its advocates. He who, 
 on this very day, and perhaps at this very hour, would have 
 been eloquently asserting its claims, is now eloquent no more. 
 Those lips from which there wont to flow all the power of per- 
 suasion as well as all its gentleness, are for ever sealed ; and his 
 well enthroned ascendency over the people who wont to lead the 
 way in this great exertion of Christian philanthropy can be no 
 longer maintained by the energy of the living voice, but after 
 the deep emotion of a few weeks and the ceaseless fluctuation of 
 a few years, must at length fade away amongst tie remembrances 
 of the dead. The death of one so eminent should redouble the 
 energy of survivors. It is like the giving way of the sheet an- 
 chor, which leaves the vessel in distress, and puts the mariners 
 on their expedients. Our city laments and is dejected under 
 an event which saddens the hearts of all its population. But it
 
 500 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 is just such an event as should rally in more strenuous deter- 
 mination every friend of Christian philanthropy. It should draw 
 them together in a firmer bond ; and I trust that none who re- 
 vere the memory of our departed patriarch, that none who felt 
 while he was alive the worth and the weight of his venerable 
 testimony, will ever abandon the cause which he cherished upon 
 earth, and has now left an orphan upon your liberalities and 
 your prayers. 
 
 " There are certain topics almost too oppressive for a public 
 speaker to venture on, and the event which suggested the de- 
 livery of the above observations most assuredly is one of them. 
 Death never makes such effectual demonstration of his power as 
 when he singles out the man who occupies the largest space in 
 public estimation as when he seizes upon him whose loss is 
 felt by thousands with all the tenderness of a family bereave- 
 ment as when he puts a sudden arrest upon his movements, 
 and that before the infirmities of age had withdrawn him from 
 the labours of a conspicuous and increasing usefulness as when, 
 with the force and rapidity of a whirlwind, he meets his un- 
 suspecting victim, and bears him away from the familiar walk 
 of life and business and activity to the chamber of his last 
 agonies as when he sends the fearful report of this his achieve- 
 ment through the streets of the city, and it runs in an appalling 
 whisper among the multitude as when all that inquiring friends 
 and weeping relations can do serves only to demonstrate how 
 vain is the help of man, and how sure and how resistless are the 
 approaches of the last enemy. 
 
 " There is something in the feelings even of unsanctified 
 nature which revolts from speaking evil of the dead, and ac- 
 cordingly it has often been remarked that death hushes the 
 voice of calumny, and disarms her of all her bitterness. But in 
 the present instance this had not to be done. That eminent 
 servant of Christ who now rests from his labours had the outset 
 of his ministry beset with all the antipathies of human corrup- 
 tion against the truth as it is in Jesus, but he stood the zealous 
 and the unmoved champion of the faith once delivered to the 
 saints, and for forty years has he witnessed amongst you the 
 good confession of a firm and consistent testimony ; and doc- 
 trines the most galling to the pride and to the ungodliness of 
 men he fearlessly avowed, because he knew them to be the doc- 
 trines of the gospel. But he not only uttered them in word, he 
 also felt them in power ; and so they broke out upon his cha-
 
 CHARACTER OF DR. BALFOUR. 501 
 
 racter in the fair efflorescence of all that is kind and beauteous 
 and attractive in practical Christianity. And thus there were 
 many who felt no sympathy with his evangelical principles, yet 
 could not withstand the exemplification of evangelical worth and 
 evangelical temper which stood visibly engraven on the character 
 of the living and the acting man. And hence, my brethren, am 
 I confident that I speak to the observations of you all, when I 
 say that he accomplished by his living what the majority of men 
 can only attain by their dying, he at length purchased an entire 
 exemption from the asperities of human censure ; and after com- 
 pelling the silence of gainsayers by the lustre of his unquestion- 
 able virtues, did he spend the last years of his course surrounded 
 by the honours of a well-known and established reputation, loved 
 by all and venerated by all. 
 
 " The pulpit is not the place for panegyric, but surely it is the 
 place for demonstrating the power of Christianity, and pointing 
 the eye of hearers to its actual operation ; and without laying 
 open the solitude of his religious exercises, without attempting 
 to penetrate into the recesses of that spirituality which, on the 
 foundation of a living faith, shed the excellence of virtue over 
 the whole of his character, without breaking in upon the hours 
 of his communion with his God, or marking the progress and the 
 preparation of his inner man for that heaven to which he has 
 been called were I called upon to specify the Christian grace 
 which stood most visibly and most attractively out in the person 
 of the departed, I would say that it was a cordiality of love, 
 which, amid all the perversities and all the disappointments of 
 human opposition, was utterly unextinguishable ; that over every 
 friend who differed from him in opinion he was sure to gain that 
 most illustrious of all triumphs, the triumph of a charity which 
 no resistance could quell ; that from the fulness of his renewed 
 heart there ever streamed a kindliness of regard which, whatever 
 the collision of sentiment or whatever the merits of the contest, 
 always won for him the most Christian and the most honourable 
 of all victories. And thus it was that the same spirit which bore 
 him untainted through the scenes of public controversy did, 
 when seated in the bosom of his family, or when moving through 
 the circle of his extended acquaintanceship, break out in one 
 increasing overflow of goodwill on all around him ; so that per- 
 haps there is not a man living who when he comes to die will be 
 so numerously followed to the grave by our best of all mourners 
 the mourners of wounded affection, the mourners of the heart.
 
 502 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the mourners who weep and are in heaviness under the feeling 
 of a private and a peculiar and a personal bereavement."* 
 
 The civic loss which was thus so eloquently and tenderly 
 lamented, was followed by a national one. On the 17th Novem- 
 ber Queen Charlotte died ; and although it was not his habit to 
 refer often in the pulpit to public events, Dr. Chalmers could 
 not refrain from paying the following tribute to her worth : 
 
 " There appears to be nothing in the progress of religion 
 which is at all calculated to level the gradations of human ranks, 
 or to do away the distinctions of human society. Not to anni- 
 hilate poverty, for it is said of the poor that they shall be with 
 us always ; not to bring down from their eminence the autho- 
 rities of the land, for there is positively nothing in the Bible 
 that can lead us to infer that even under the peace and righteous- 
 ness of a millennial age there will not be kings and queens upon 
 the earth ; and certain it is that they will be the instruments 
 of helping forward this great moral consummation the former 
 being the nursing fathers, and the latter the nursing mothers of 
 the Church. The Utopianism which would regenerate the world 
 by political and external revolutions, is, I trust, at this time of 
 day pretty generally exploded. The kingdoms of the earth may 
 become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ with the external 
 framework of these present governments, and at least with all 
 those varieties of outward condition which are offered at this 
 moment to the view of the observer. There must therefore be 
 a way in which Christianity can accommodate itself to this 
 framework a mode by which it can animate all the parts and 
 all the members of it a mode by which, without the overthrow 
 of existing distinctions, it can establish a right reciprocity of 
 feeling and of conduct between them a charm by which it can 
 divest grandeur of all its disdainfulness, and poverty of all its 
 violence, and, chasing away all the asperities of party from the 
 laud, can, from the monarch's throne to the peasant's hovel, bind 
 together the whole of a Christianized nation under the influence 
 of one common charity. 
 
 " Nor will it be, I am persuaded, altogether unsuitable to this 
 train of reflection, if for a single moment I bid you draw a por- 
 tion of this sweetening influence to your hearts by looking at the 
 tomb of royalty, and contemplating the recent debt which has 
 been paid to the mortality of our common nature. If anything 
 
 * From an unpublished MS.
 
 DEATH AND CHARACTER OF QUEEN CHARLOTTE. 503 
 
 can disarm malice of its spitefulness, it is the death of him who 
 is the victim of it; if anything can drown that murmuring 
 voice by which the Queen of England was wont to be assailed 
 when she stood out in living glory to the public, it will be the 
 Queen of England in her grave. Majesty in the full possession 
 of splendour and enjoyment may provoke the enmity of spec- 
 tators, but not so with majesty in the coffin. The sympathies 
 of nature will force and will find their way through all the 
 barriers of political asperity. We may now learn a lesson of 
 charity for those whom birth or whom fortune has doomed to 
 the obloquy of greatness. It is a lesson, I do think, that in 
 this age of harsh and unsparing invective, we stand eminently 
 in need of; and it is our joy to perceive that in the present 
 instance the lesson has been acquired, and that, with a few 
 revolting exceptions, one emotion of honest and heartfelt re- 
 gret accompanies the remembrance of one who, for upwards of 
 half a century, has borne the fatigues and endured the vexations 
 of royalty. 
 
 " The favourable eye of the country on the present occasion 
 is resolvable, I think, into something more than the indulgence 
 of feeling, moved and softened into tenderness by death. It 
 appears, in fact, to be the eye of the country opening at length 
 to the perception of a truth which, during the life of our de- 
 parted Queen, lay involved in the mists of prejudice and delu- 
 sion. For that one defect with which her memory has been 
 charged, and which certainly is not the besetting sin of princes, 
 there has as yet no evidence transpired in the accumulations of 
 a sordid or excessive parsimony ; and for that other defect, 
 which is the besetting sin of princes, let the history of nearly 
 sixty years vouch for her entire and honourable exemption from 
 it. To estimate the whole weight of the public obligation on 
 this single account, let us just compute the difference in point of 
 effect on the tone of public morals between the royal counte- 
 nance smiling a connivance on profligacy and impiety, and the 
 royal countenance being steadily and determinately withheld 
 from them. In this age when Sabbaths are trampled under 
 foot, and the sickening profligacies of the country threaten to 
 sweep away the old and characteristic virtues of the families of 
 England, I cannot but look on the removal of our domestic and 
 sober-minded Queen in the light of a great moral disaster to the 
 land ; and it is my prayer that the friends of public decency 
 may never, never have such a spectacle of licentiousness to sigh
 
 504 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 over as may lead them to contrast the sad degeneracy that is 
 before them with the remembrance of those purer and better 
 days, when one who was decked with the splendours of a coronet 
 could maintain throughout the whole of her deportment the 
 habits of a Christian ; when vice was abased and overawed in 
 the presence of royalty, and she who stood loftiest in grandeur, 
 stood also the foremost in moral guardianship to shield the purity 
 and inatronize the virtues of the British nation."* 
 
 * Unpublished MS. On the occasion of the death of George III., which occurred on the 
 29th of January 1820, he made from the pulpit the following allusion to the event: 
 " Though he was well stricken in years ere he gave up the ghost, and is now to be gathered 
 to his fathers, and though, ere the visitation of death, he languished for many months under 
 the power of another and more affecting visitation, and though the eyes of our venerable 
 monarch had long been closed in darkness, and though his faculties lay imprisoned in a 
 darkness still more mysterious, and though he had long ceased to tread that public walk 
 where the humblest of his people were often cheered and dignified by the greetings of their 
 Sovereign, and though in respect of moral and intellectual distance he stood as remote from 
 the nation as if he had already travelled through the dark vale that leads from time to eter- 
 nity yet who does not feel that the final extinction of that life, all faded as it was, has left 
 a mournful and a melancholy blank in the country behind it ? One cannot think without a 
 movement of sensibility that in him the longest and the busiest period of British history has 
 come to its termination, and the lapse of time is, as it were, more prominently marked by 
 the disappearance of him who for more than half a century figured the most exalted person- 
 age among its affairs ; and the very virtues of our monarch, so fitted to uphold the piety and 
 the morals of an else degenerate age, serve to imbitter the regrets of our nation ; and I am 
 conadent that I speak the feelings of all who are present when I say, that in every bosom 
 the good and the venerable and the holy stand associated with the idea of his person ; so that 
 though for years he may rationally and politically be said to have expired, yet to the coun- 
 try's feelings a certain charm which his death has now broken up still continued to hang 
 over the barely vital existence of our beloved king ; nor do we know in what other way the 
 loss can be replaced to our empire than by the personal influence of his Christianity and his 
 worth being transmitted through the royal line from generation to generation, thoroughly 
 assured as we are that the moral force which lies in the character of our rulers does more to 
 maintain the piety and the order of any community of human beings than either the political 
 force which lies in the wisdom of our councils, or even the military force which lies in the 
 vigour and promptitude of our arms." Unpublished MS.
 
 A WINTER OF UNREM1TTED LABOUR. 505 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 rCULICATION OF A VOLUME OF SERMONS TRANSLATION TO THE PARISH OP 8T. 
 
 JOHN'S VISIT TO DUNBLANE ATTEMPTS TO EXTRICATE HIMSELF FKOK THE 
 
 EXCITING SYBTEM OF PAUPER-MANAGEMENTPROPOSED AS CANDIDATE FOR 
 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY CHAlR IN EDINBURGH AGITATION IN GLASGOW 
 ANXIETIES OF DR. CHALMERS FIRST NUMBER OF THE " CIVIC AHD CHRIS- 
 TIAN ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS" OPENING OF THE CHURCH OF ST. JOHN*S 
 
 DECISION OF THE MAGISTRATES AND COUNCIL IN HIS FAVOUR FINAL 
 
 EXTRICATION FROM DIFFICULTIES, AND COMMENCEMENT OF PAROCHIAL OPE- 
 RATIONS IN ST. JOHN'S. 
 
 " MY volume labours very much during the process of its 
 delivery. It is a very large impression that they are throwing 
 off, and it may be pretty far on in January ere the publication 
 is completed. I am sure that it will bring another nest of hor- 
 nets about me, 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, and surely one would suppose from this with 
 some kind of gratification by the public at large." Dr. Chal- 
 mers wrote thus in November 1818, regarding a volume of con- 
 gregational sermons which was then passing through the press. 
 The impression was a large one, the publisher having resolved 
 to print at once 7000 copies, and the process of its delivery was 
 so much more tedious than its author had contemplated, that 
 the volume was not published till the 24th of February 1819. 
 The hopes of the publisher and the fears of the author were 
 alike disappointed, the sale being slower, and the critics less 
 angry than either had anticipated. The superintendence of the 
 press, however, formed but an insignificant portion of the labour 
 undergone during the winter of 1818-19. " I never," writes 
 Dr. Chalmers on the 24th April 1819, " kept so close by Glas- 
 gow, nor worked so hard in it as during this last winter. ^ I 
 have now preached twenty-nine Sabbaths without intermission 
 in the Tron Church, and that without a stated assistant, though I 
 have occasionally got assistance for half a day." It was because 
 he believed that the time of parting was so near at hand that he 
 kept so closely by the Tron Church congregation. On the 5th
 
 506 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of June 1818, the Magistrates and Town-council had elected 
 him to be minister of the church then in course of erection. The 
 new church was considerably larger than the Tron, involving of 
 course more fatigue to the preacher who should occupy its pul- 
 pit. The new parish was to contain a population of at least 
 10,000, composed almost entirely of operatives. With a larger 
 church and a worse population there seemed but little reason 
 why Dr. Chalmers should prefer St. John's to the Tron ; but 
 this translation promised to open the way for the accomplishment 
 of his favourite parochial projects. With the old parishes of 
 Glasgow the Magistrates and Council, bound either by law or 
 practice, could not do as they pleased, nor had any of the 
 ministers or kirk-sessions a separate and independent parochial 
 authority. It was, however, understood that the official autho- 
 rities were prepared to go so far along with Dr. Chalmers as to 
 enable him in this new parish to try those schemes of reforma- 
 tion which he was known to have so much at heart, and in 
 which, by the very necessities of his position, he had hitherto 
 been thwarted. In obtaining authority from the Court in Edin- 
 burgh to erect this parish, the Magistrates and Council had pro- 
 cured the insertion of a clause in the deed of erection entitling 
 them, should they deem it expedient, to give the minister and 
 kirk-session a certain separate, independent, and exclusive juris- 
 diction ; and they had instructed their committee, annually 
 appointed for the letting of the seats in the city churches, in -the 
 event of Dr. Chalmers being presented to St. John's, " in letting 
 the seats of that church to give a preference, first, to those per- 
 sons resident in St. John's parish, who, in consequence of the 
 public notice to that effect, had lodged their application with 
 the Chamberlain prior to the date of the last meeting of Council ; 
 and, secondly, to such members of Dr. Chalmers's present con- 
 gregation as may be inclined to remove to St. John's Church."* 
 It was expected at the time that this minute was drawn up that 
 the church would be opened in the autumn of 1818. After being 
 nearly completed, however, a large portion of the building re- 
 quired to be taken down, so that it was not ready for occupation 
 till September 1819. These favourable symptoms of a desire to 
 meet his wishes induced Dr. Chalmers gratefully to accept an 
 appointment which had been so handsomely tendered to him. 
 On the 31st day of March a presentation in his favour to the 
 church and parish of St. John's, accompanied by his letter of 
 
 * Copy Minute of Council, of date June 5, 1818.
 
 VISIT TO DUNBLANE. 507 
 
 acceptance, was laid on the table of the Presbytery of Glasgow, 
 and on the 3d day of June he was formally admitted to the new 
 benefice. " Sabbath first, being the 30th," Dr. Chalmers writes 
 to his friend Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, " is the last of my con- 
 nexion with the Tron Church, and as the church of St. John's 
 is not yet ready for me, I am counting upon the interval of a 
 good many weeks, during which I propose to expatiate among 
 my friends in the country. My arrangements are going on most 
 prosperously. I have now got thirty-five gentlemen and three 
 lady teachers. I have also completed the survey of my parish, 
 and have still 150 Sabbath-scholars to provide with teachers, 
 besides an indefinite number of female teachers to look out for. 
 Amid great physical distress and many difficulties among our 
 population, it gives me comfort to think of an operation which I 
 am sure alleviates even at present the burden which is upon 
 their spirits, and will, I trust and pray, have fruit in eternity. 
 
 " I cannot tell you how truly grateful I am for all you write 
 and all you say on theological subjects. You have given most 
 useful direction to my own mind, and I have endeavoured, in 
 some of my later pulpit demonstrations, to press home the lesson 
 of salvation and spiritual health being synonymous with each 
 other. It is truly excellent what you say of not waiting at the 
 pool. Be assured that many render the method of setting out 
 on the business of Christianity so mystical and so separate from 
 human agency, and so scrupulously remote from all that man 
 can will or do in the matter, as absolutely to discourage him 
 even from going to the pool, even from opening his Bible, even 
 from directing his thoughts to the subject of it, even from hear- 
 ing what Christ has got to say to him, and turning to its obvious 
 application and purpose the plainest and most palpable of His 
 requirements. Believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Exhausted with the unremitted labour of the preceding win- 
 ter, Dr. Chalmers's first resort was to Dunblane. In passing 
 through Stirling, " I breakfasted," he says, " with Provost Little- 
 john, and met all the other members of the deputation ; received 
 much cordiality and attention ; during the time that I remained 
 saw the church, castle, and other curiosities ; the Provost, who ac- 
 companied me, by expatiating on the beauties and advantages of 
 Stirling, doing his utmost to put me in bad humour with myself 
 and my determination." From the strain of the two following
 
 508 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 letters we may gather that the quiet of Dunblane, and other ad- 
 vantages enjoyed there, gave a spiritual direction to his thoughts. 
 
 " DUNBLANE, July 10, 1819. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I am here a few days for the mineral waters 
 of this place. . . . My retirement here gives me a leisure for 
 reading which I never enjoyed when in Glasgow. You know 
 that this town is the seat of one of our old Scottish bishoprics. 
 There was a library left in it by Archbishop Leighton, which 
 survives to this day ; and the force and fidelity and experience 
 of our older writers far surpass the average compositions of our 
 present day. I have just finished the perusal of one of these 
 works Alleine's ' Alarm to the Unconverted.' Tf the title do 
 not repel you, I am pretty confident that the subject, after you 
 have got fairly introduced into it, will not ; nor could I conceive 
 a more ardent wish in behalf of the dearest friend I have in this 
 world than that he should read that work, and make a faithful 
 application of all its truths to his conscience, and make a serious 
 and deliberate effort to weigh well its various chapters, confident 
 as I am that if he do so, and drink in the spirit of the perform- 
 ance, and actually proceed upon its directions, he will have 
 peace in this world, and perfect felicity in the world to come. 
 You must bear with me in this recommendation. With best 
 compliments to Mrs. Chalmers and Mary, believe me, dear 
 James, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " DUNBLANE, July 17, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, . . . Since I came here I have been twice 
 at Keir, and am greatly pleased with the whole manner and 
 attentions of that kind and respectable family. I hope to be 
 here till Friday next week, when I move to Edinburgh for two 
 or three days, and then return to spend about a fortnight in 
 Glasgow. ... I feel my want of capacity for the direct exer- 
 cises of godliness am in a state of longing and general earnest- 
 ness, but want sadly a habitual frame of heavenly-mindedness. 
 I read with mortification, and I had almost said envy, of the 
 devotional feelings and delights of other men ; and just feel'my- 
 self, as it were, at the place of breaking forth, and on the margin 
 only of that spiritual territory within which all is life and light 
 and enlargement and holy affection. It is easy to talk of a 
 simple faith in the testimony ; but there must be the issuing of 
 a certain sound on the part of the trumpet to him who lingers
 
 CUMBROUS MODE OF PAUPEIl MANAGEMENT. 509 
 
 at the threshold, and who, when told just to believe and just to 
 perform the bare act of faith, is still encompassed with helpless- 
 ness, and impressed with the suspicions and the straitening of a 
 mind not yet loosed from its bondage. Yet come the enlarge- 
 ment when it will, it must, I admit, come after all through the 
 channel of a simple credence given to the sayings of God, ac- 
 counted as true and faithful sayings. And never does light and 
 peace so fill my heart as when, like a little child, I take up the 
 lesson, that God hath laid on His own Son the iniquities of us 
 all. Do believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 "Thomas Erskine, Esq. THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 On the 27th Dr. Chalmers arrived in Glasgow, and ten busy 
 days were spent in earnest negotiation with the highest official 
 men of the city regarding his favourite plans for the parish of 
 St. John's. With the exception of the arrangement about the 
 seat-letting, which, from the high rate charged for the seats, 
 rendered it comparatively of little effect in so far as the hum- 
 blest class of his parishioners was concerned, he had hitherto 
 secured only the expression of good-will of leading men in the 
 different public bodies. The time, however, for the actual com- 
 mencement of his ministry in St. John's was drawing near, and 
 he felt the necessity of having definite and authoritative enact- 
 ments to proceed upon. One great inducement to the acceptance 
 of the new charge was his hope of introducing a new mode of 
 pauper-management. In order to effect this he required to 
 extricate himself from the meshes of the existing system of ad- 
 ministration. Under that system the fund raised by voluntary 
 contributions at the church-doors was kept distinct from the 
 fund raised by legal assessment, and was subject to different 
 control. All the church-door collections were placed at the 
 disposal of the General Session, a body composed of all the 
 ministers and elders of the city. The fund raised by assessment 
 was placed at the disposal of the committee of the Town Hospital, 
 an institution which had both in-door and out-door pensioners. 
 The first application for public relief was made to the elder of 
 the district in which the applicant resided. The case was then 
 reported by this elder to the kirk-session of his own parish. 
 But that kirk-session, not permitted to retain the collection made 
 at its own church-door, and having no definite income with which 
 to square its annual expenditure, had only to insert the name 
 on the roll, fix the allowance, and report to the General Session,
 
 510 MEMOIKS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 from whose funds a monthly distribution was made among the 
 separate kirk-sessions, according to the number and necessities 
 of the cases on the roll of each. When these cases had multi- 
 plied beyond the power of the voluntary fund to meet them, or 
 when the largest sum granted by the session, which rarely ex- 
 ceeded five shillings a month, was deemed insufficient from the 
 pauper becoming older or more necessitous, there occurred a 
 transference to the Town Hospital, whose ampler fund admitted 
 of larger allowances. " So that each session," says Dr. Chal- 
 mers, describing this cumbrous apparatus, " might have been 
 regarded as having two doors, one of them a door of admittance 
 for the population who stand at the margin of pauperism, and 
 another of them a door of egress to the Town Hospital, through 
 which the occupiers of the outer court made their way into the 
 inner temple. It will be seen at once how much this economy 
 of things tended to relax still more all the sessional administra- 
 tion of the city, and with what facility the stream of pauperism 
 would be admitted at the one end when so ready and abundant a 
 discharge was provided for it at the other. We know not how 
 it was possible to devise a more likely arrangement for lulling 
 the vigilance of those who stood at the outposts of pauperism, 
 and that too at a point where their firm and strenuous guardian- 
 ship was of greatest consequence even at the point where the 
 first demonstrations towards public charity were made on the 
 part of the people, and where their incipient tendencies to this 
 new state, if judiciously while tenderly dealt with, might have 
 been so easily repressed. To station one body of men at the 
 entrance of pauperism, and burden them only with the lighter 
 expenses of its outset, from which they have a sure prospect of 
 being relieved by another body of men, who stand charged with 
 the trouble and expense of its finished maturity there could 
 scarcely have been set agoing a more mischievous process of 
 acceleration towards all the miseries and corruptions which are 
 attendant on the overgrown charity of England." * As a pre- 
 liminary and essential step, it was necessary that the kirk-session 
 of St. John's should be altogether disjoined both from the General 
 Session and the Town Hospital, and that one simple and unem- 
 barrassed relationship should be established between it and the 
 Magistrates and Council. But to effect this was no easy matter, 
 both legal and political difficulties occurring to obstruct it. " If 
 I dare make an allusion to natural philosophy, let me reveal to 
 
 * See Works, vol. XT. pp. 33, 34.
 
 LETTER TO THE LORD PROVOST. 511 
 
 you, gentlemen," said Dr. Chalmers, addressing himself to the 
 agency of St. John's, " that the difficulties I had to contend with 
 in this matter often put me forcibly in mind of the difficulties 
 which Sir Isaac Newton experienced in his attempt to resolve 
 the problem of three bodies. It is an affair of very simple com- 
 putation to assign the path of a planet acted upon by the sun 
 exclusively, and when no other force is admitted into the com- 
 putation than the mutual attraction of the two bodies ; but it 
 instantly becomes a labour of very profound analysis when the 
 planet is acted upon both by the sun and the disturbing force 
 of another planet, such as our earth for example, which, under 
 the joint attraction of the sun and moon, gives us an example 
 of the problem of three bodies. Now I just felt, and with great 
 intenseness too, this very difficulty, when I had to compute my 
 way among the mutual attractions, or rather repulsions, of no 
 less than four bodies. When all is reduced to one simple re- 
 lationship between us and the heritors, all will go smoothly 
 and without embarrassment. But I must confess, that when 
 tossed and tempest-driven under a set of opposing influences 
 which we know not well how to manage or comprehend when 
 placed in the middle of clashing and conflicting authorities 
 on every side of us, when we had to steer our course under the 
 beck of so many great unwieldy corporations, which appeared 
 to frown from their respective orbits both upon us and upon 
 one another, I must confess, that when we had thus to walk 
 among such elements of perplexities, the enterprise of assimi- 
 lating a town to a country parish often looked to me a very 
 hopeless speculation." Toiling amid the difficulties of this pro- 
 blem, he addressed on the 3d August the following letter to 
 the Lord Provost of Glasgow : 
 
 " GLASGOW, August 3, 1819. 
 
 " MY LORD, When I received the intimation of my appoint- 
 ment as minister of St. John's, it gave me sincere pleasure to 
 be informed at the same time, that a letter written by myself 
 to Mr. Ewing was read to the Magistrates and Council previous 
 to my election, as it gave me the flattering assurance, that 
 the leading objects adverted to in that letter met with the ap- 
 probation of the honourable body over which your Lordship 
 presides. 
 
 " In that letter I adverted to the wish I had long entertained, 
 and which is publicly enough known by other channels, for a 
 separate and independent management, on the part of my session,
 
 512 .MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of the fund raised by collections at the church-door, and with 
 which fund I propose to take the management of all the existing 
 sessional poor within our bounds, and so to meet the new appli- 
 cations for relief as never to add to the general burden of the 
 city by the ordinary poor of the parish of St. John's. 
 
 " And I here beg it to be distinctly understood, that I do not 
 consider the revenue of the kirk-session to be at all applicable 
 to those extraordinary cases which are produced by any sudden 
 and unlocked for depression in the state of our manufacturers. 
 Nor, if ever there shall be a call for pecuniary aid on this par- 
 ticular ground, do I undertake to provide for it out of our ordi- 
 nary means, but will either meet it by a parochial subscription, 
 or by taking a full share of any such general measure as may 
 be thought expedient under such an emergency. 
 
 " Your Lordship will not fail to observe, that if the new cases 
 of ordinary pauperism accumulate upon us in the rate at which 
 they have done formerly, they would soon overtake our present 
 collections. And yet my confidence in a successful result is not 
 at all founded on the expected magnitude of my future collec- 
 tions, but upon the care and attention with which the distribu- 
 tion of the fund will be conducted a care and an attention 
 which I despair of ever being able to stimulate effectually till I 
 obtain an arrangement by which my session shall be left to 
 square its own separate expenditure by its own separate and 
 peculiar resources. 
 
 " At the same time, I can also, with such an arrangement, 
 stimulate more effectually than before the liberality of my con- 
 gregation ; and with this twofold advantage I am hopeful, not 
 merely of being able to overtake the whole pauperism of St. 
 John's, but of leaving a large surplus applicable to other objects 
 connected with the best interests of the population in that dis- 
 trict of the city. 
 
 "What I propose to do with the surplus is, to apply it as we 
 are able to the erection and endowment of parochial schools, for 
 the purpose of meeting our people not with gratuitous education, 
 but with good education on the same terms at which it is had in 
 country parishes. 
 
 " My reason for troubling your Lordship with this intimation 
 is, that 1 require the sanction of the heritors of the parish ere I 
 can allocate any part of the sum raised by collections in this 
 way. Without this sanction I shall make no attempt to stimu- 
 late the liberality of my congregation beyond what is barely
 
 COMMUNICATION FROM SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE. 513 
 
 necessary for the expenses of pauperism. With this sanction I 
 shall have the best of all arguments by which to stimulate the 
 liberality of my hearers and the care of my distributors, and 
 (most important of all) the zealous co-operation even of the 
 poorest among my people, who will easily be persuaded to ob- 
 serve a moderation in their demands, when they find it stands 
 associated with a cause so generally dear to them as the educa- 
 tion of their families. 
 
 " There is another object, which I shall not press immediately, 
 but which your Lordship will perceive to be as necessary for the 
 protection of the other parishes of Glasgow as of my own ; and 
 that is, that the law of residence shall take effect between my 
 parish and the other parishes of the city. I am quite willing 
 that every other parish shall have protection by this law from 
 the ingress of my poor, in return for the protection of my parish 
 from the ingress of theirs. It is practically the simplest of all 
 things to put this into operation from the very outset. But I 
 mention it now chiefly with a view to be enabled to remind your 
 Lordship, when it comes to be applied for afterwards, that it is 
 not because of any unlocked for embarrassment that I make the 
 application, but in pursuance of a right and necessary object, 
 which even now I have in full contemplation. 
 
 "I shall only conclude with assuring your Lordship, that 
 nothing will give me greater pleasure than to transmit, from time 
 to time, the state of our progress in the parish of St. John's re- 
 specting all the objects alluded to in this communication ; and 
 that I hold myself subject to the same inspection and control 
 from you, as the heritors of my parish, which the law assigns to 
 the heritors of other parishes. 
 
 " A deed of consent and approbation relative to the various 
 points that have now been submitted through your Lordship to 
 the Magistrates and Council, will very much oblige, my Lord, 
 your Lordship's most obliged and obedient servant, 
 
 (Signed) THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 With this letter unanswered, and amid a host of perplexities 
 as to the future, Dr. Chalmers left Glasgow on the 7th August, 
 stayed during the 8th in Edinburgh, and early on the morning of 
 the 9th crossed to Petty cur, where, having an interval of leisure, 
 he thus journalized the events of the preceding day: "The 
 interesting occurrence of this day is a communication from Sir 
 George Mackenzie and Dr. Brewster, backed with an earnest 
 
 VOL. i. 2 K
 
 514 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 solicitation from Mr. Thomson that I would allow my friends in 
 Edinburgh to make interest for my succeeding to Playfair in the 
 Natural Philosophy class. There is no doubt it is a situation of 
 great ease and great pecuniary independence ; but still I would 
 not abandon St. John's for a year or two if I could carry all my 
 arrangements, nor would I abandon my profession but for the 
 prospect of an equal Christian good in another sitiiation ; so that 
 I have just said nothing at all, and, in the meantime, I shall 
 make this a strong argument for two objects : 1. For strenu- 
 ously and determinedly insisting on all my own arrangements in 
 my own parish. 2. For giving all my strength to its duties, and 
 no part of that strength to other things. It is very hard when 
 one set of friends urge my acceptance of the Professorship, be- 
 cause, say they, I will kill myself with the fatigue of my present 
 exertions, that another set of friends, after I put away the Pro- 
 fessorship for the sake of parochial usefulness, will lay the most 
 interminable fatigue upon me additional to the work of my 
 parish. I shall after this stand upon high ground for doing 
 nothing to draw me away from an employment for the sake of 
 which I have put a situation of ease and enjoyment away from 
 me ; and not only so, but for keeping all my strength entire by 
 squandering away none of it on preaching and speechifying out 
 of my proper and peculiar limits. I am more fortified than ever 
 now by this event in my resolution to incur no fatigue whatever 
 away from St. John's, and the habit of refusing all will soon 
 exempt me from any applications." 
 
 On the morning of the 10th he arrived at Anstruther. " My 
 mother," he writes to Mrs. Chalmers, " I think much altered. 
 Age has imprinted its marks upon her far more strikingly and 
 abundantly than I had before noticed. I bathed, dined, went to 
 bed afterwards, and for the first time I ever recollect slept in 
 broad daylight. This I think due to sea-bathing, which is an 
 excellent soporific. I have written to Mr. John Graham, one of 
 my elders, and have great pleasure in keeping up my intercourse 
 in this way with St. John's. I have been reading more of Dod- 
 dridge, and do indeed find myself a very alienated and undone 
 creature. Let me cleave to Christ, and receive all my complete- 
 ness from Him. Oh ! make an active and honest work of your 
 soul. May God help us to be thorough and consistent in this 
 matter. may He unite our hearts more to Himself, and in 
 the blood of Christ may we be cleansed and sanctified ! Were
 
 CANDIDATE FOR NATURAL PHILOSOPHY CHAIR. 515 
 
 there no atonement what might have been our dread and 
 anxiety, but now that there is an atonement, let not our dread 
 and anxiety be just what they would have been without one. 
 Take the comfort of this doctrine. Have full assurance of heart 
 in the blood of the everlasting covenant. Have peace and joy 
 in believing it." 
 
 " Anstruther, August 11. Yesterday night I wrote to Mr. 
 Parker, and am using every influence to obtain my favourite 
 arrangements for the parish of St. John's. ... My mother and 
 I sort famously. She loves solitude, and so do I. She is deafer 
 than I ever recollect, but there is a simplicity in having only 
 one deaf person to manage. It is when you have half a dozen 
 to carry along with you that the matter becomes inextricable ; 
 and when, in addition to the passive obstacles of mere deafness, 
 there is also the one obtruding and active annoyance of positive 
 and constantly recurring misconception, then is it indeed a trial 
 which in this small way is the heaviest I ever was exposed to. 
 
 " August 12. Am now, I trust, sleeping away my languor, 
 and getting stout and well. I have been overdoing, and it is 
 no rest from it to go into the midst of ceremony, and contending 
 claims about visits, &c. &c. Fairley was no relief; Dunblane 
 was none. Anster I like better than all our retreats, and Mr. 
 Q-ordon [who had accompanied him from Edinburgh on this 
 visit] is a great fill-up. The true enjoyment of solitude is in 
 having one person as fond of it as yourself, and with whom you 
 can occupy an unemployed hour just when you like and yonr 
 business is over." 
 
 But while all was moving on so pleasantly at Anstruther, 
 materials for discomfort were gathering elsewhere. On the 
 very day of his leaving Edinburgh, Dr. Andrew Thomson had 
 formally proposed Dr. Chalmers as a candidate for the Natural 
 Philosophy chair, stating in his letter of proposal that he had 
 the best reasons for believing that if the choice of the Council 
 should fall upon him he would accept. This announcement 
 surprised and grieved many of Dr. Chalmers's friends. The 
 report travelled rapidly to Glasgow, that with his own sanction 
 a canvass had commenced on his behalf for the vacant chair. 
 His own letters were meanwhile coming in rapid succession from 
 Anstruther, urging his friends to additional efforts on behalf 
 of his projects for St. John's. Misconceptions naturally arose 
 which the spirit of hostility framed into aspersions (apparently 
 well founded) upon Dr. Chalmers's motives. Meanwhile he was
 
 516 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 utterly unconscious of the public ferment which his fancied course 
 of procedure was creating. It*was not till Thursday the 19th 
 that Dr. Chalmers was made aware, by a letter from Mrs. Chal- 
 mers, of the excitement which had arisen in Glasgow, and of the 
 misrepresentations which were in circulation. The subjoined 
 extracts from his journal letters will show the depth and acute- 
 ness of the feelings which this intelligence created : 
 
 " Friday 20th. For the first time since I came to Anstruther 
 has my peace been a little broken in upon. If I do not get my 
 arrangements it will become a serious question with me if I shall 
 remain in St. John's ; certainly I ought not if there be an im- 
 pression on the part of those among whom I labour of my having 
 acted unworthily in this matter. The public at large I hope I care 
 not for : but if my own people, and especially my own agency, shall 
 have their minds infected by the rumours which are now flying, 
 there is either an entire end of my usefulness, or that usefulness 
 may be easily made greater elsewhere. . . . You may show this 
 to Mr. Collins, and, at the same time, let him and you both rest 
 assured that if I can get my agency satisfied and indeed con- 
 vinced that it is they, and they alone, who have given such an 
 attraction to the parish as led me to lay a stop upon the canvass 
 in Edinburgh, if I can get this one object accomplished and my 
 arrangements granted, I care not for all the interminable gossip- 
 ings that may be now in full currency amongst you. I thought 
 a good deal of the Glasgow groups last night, and as they stood 
 in imagination before me, there was one half line of Burns 
 that I could not get out of my head ' And some were busy 
 bletherinY If Mr. Collins can report any alienation on the 
 part of the agency about this matter, then it will be quite im- 
 perative upon me to vindicate myself to them ; and I certainly 
 do feel it hard that such a phrase as even that of vindication 
 should be at all necessary to be resorted to by one who in the 
 whole of this proceeding has evinced the strength of his deter- 
 mination for his own parish, provided that he is suffered to 
 manage it in his own way. The thing which perplexes me more 
 than anything else is my having no letter since I left Glasgow 
 about the operations of the deaconship. If my own friends fail 
 me, then I shall construe this into a very strong and distinct 
 intimation indeed, though, if God be pleased to prolong the 
 health of my body and the faculties of my mind, I will not de- 
 spair of being more happily and more usefully employed in some 
 other walk of exertion. ... I have just had a letter from Mr.
 
 AGITATION IN GLASGOW. . 517 
 
 Mackenzie, giving me the intelligence of a unanimous decision 
 of the Magistrates and Council in my favour. The only point 
 now is the zeal, and cordiality, and sound-heartedness of the 
 agency, and I trust that the vile, and malignant, and ignorant 
 gossip of the place will have no influence upon them. The can- 
 vassers in Edinburgh began at the wrong end. If an explicit 
 declaration was necessary for the prosecution of the canvass, it 
 ought to have been held necessary for the commencement of it, 
 and then there would have been none of this fuss and folly. 
 
 " Sunday lid. The keeping up of this mysterious silence on 
 the part of Mr. Collins disturbs me greatly. 
 
 " Monday 23d. Rose at seven. Wrote a letter to Mr. Col- 
 lins, which, if he do not answer, there is a breaking up of 
 my agency, and in this case I shall try and carry on the matter 
 upon the strength of weavers, and the native population of the 
 parish. 
 
 " Wednesday 25th. It has happened that in all my attempts 
 at peace away from Glasgow something connected with Glasgow 
 has found me out in the deepest of my retirements, and broken 
 up the attempt. It is so now with the intimation you gave me 
 more than a week ago of Mr. Collins going to write disagreeable 
 things, and his mysterious silence, leaving the imagination to 
 brood over them as things of shape and magnitude unknown. I 
 hope in time to sit down to a quiet and independent and easily 
 managed concern. But it were better still to have no such hope, 
 to look on crosses as the conditions of our pilgrimage, and to 
 forbear regaling our fancies with any enjoyment beneath these 
 skies, with any rest short of heaven. My great and engrossing 
 anxiety at present is, that my deaconship are in a state of entire 
 heart and spirit for the functions which await them. 
 
 "26<A. I write this to make you easy on the subject of 
 the Professorship. I have found out the key to this mysterious 
 silence now. I have only seen the Caledonian Mercury to-day, 
 and I fear that these papers must draw me out once more. I 
 showed all my documents to J. N. two days ago, and he is quite 
 satisfied, and to J. D. yesterday, and he is equally so. Mean- 
 while, you will go in with my feelings when I say, that under- 
 standing as I do that there is a great deal of misunderstanding 
 in Glasgow about this matter, I shall never set a foot in it till 
 I make Glasgow as thoroughly ashamed of the precipitancy of 
 its judgment against me, as I would be ashamed if I were con- 
 scious of possessing one fraction of that wortblessness which they
 
 518 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 so unkindly impute to me. I feel myself called and justified in 
 coming forward with a written statement. 
 
 "August 27. I am only able to put down short-hand jot- 
 tings, which I trust will do famously. I mean to entitle them, 
 ' Eemarks by Dr. Chalmers applicable to the outset of his con- 
 nexion with St. John's Parish, Glasgow.' In this pamphlet I 
 will interweave as much narrative as will fulfil the whole pro- 
 mise of yesterday. I know not how soon I may send some of^ 
 the MS. I want my brother and Mr. Collins to be the sole 
 publishers. It will form part of a series of papers which, if God 
 spare me, I mean to publish from time to time, on the Civic and 
 Christian Economy of our Large Towns. ... I have received 
 Mr. Collins's letter at last, with Mr. Nelson's, and Mr. Craig's, 
 and Mr. Falconer's. I take their letters to be truly kind." 
 
 Mr. Collins had waited only till he could convey to Dr. Chal- 
 mers the united assurances of the most zealous and influential 
 of his agency, that their attachment and confidence remained 
 wholly unshaken, and that their only regret was that be should 
 have suffered any apprehensions as to their fidelity to prey upon 
 his spirits. Reassured in heart, Dr. Chalmers returned to Glas- 
 gow, his vindicatory narrative issuing from the press almost con- 
 currently with his return. On Friday, September 24, the first 
 Number of the " Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns" 
 was published. It opened with the following narrative : 
 
 " I shall preface these remaks by the short and comprehensive 
 statement of an affair which I know has painfully agitated the 
 minds of many, and given birth to a very busy fermentation of 
 rumours and calumnies in your city. 
 
 " I was in Edinburgh on the 8th of August last, and there 
 received letters from two gentlemen of literary rank and estima- 
 tion in that city, holding out to me a prospect of the Natural 
 Philosophy Chair in Edinburgh, and urging me to take the 
 matter into serious consideration. 
 
 " I had a conversation with the gentleman who delivered these 
 letters to me on the subject of them. It is impossible to recol- 
 lect all the particulars of that conversation. But I assuredly 
 know what my mind and determination have uniformly been on 
 this subject, and could say nothing at variance with that deter- 
 mination. It may be expressed by the following short alterna- 
 tive : that if I got my arrangements in the parish of St. John, 
 I would not take the professorship ; but if I did not get these 
 arrangements, I would think of it.
 
 HIS OWN PARISH IN HIS OWN WAY. 519 
 
 " I left Edinburgh early on the morning of the 9th ; and my 
 proceedings from that day to the 12th will best evince what the 
 practical impulse was which I received from these overtures. I 
 had no correspondence with Edinburgh during that period, but 
 was quite assiduous in my correspondence with Glasgow. The 
 object of it was to achieve for myself the first term of the above 
 alternative, or in other words, to hasten on the accomplishment 
 of my favourite objects for the parish of St. John. It was to 
 attain that condition on which I made my continuance in the 
 one office, and my rejection of the other office to turn. I knew 
 not what my friends in Edinburgh were doing ; for that was a 
 matter on wWch I had given no counsel, and uttered no desire, 
 and put forth no effort, and obtained no information. But what- 
 ever they were doing, I was labouring with all my might to nul- 
 lify their exertions ; and, in allusion to the shrewd remark which 
 some of you may have heard, that I was working with both my 
 hands, I have to observe, that there is a sense in which it is per- 
 fectly true ; for with the one hand I was pulling down the wall 
 of separation between me and my parish, and out of its broken 
 materials I with the other hand was rearing a barrier between 
 me and the professorship. 
 
 " But while I in the prosecution of my wishes was working as 
 hard as I could for the first term of the alternative, my friends 
 in Edinburgh, it would appear, were in the prosecution of their 
 wishes working as hard as they could to realize the hopes which 
 were held out by the second term of it. This, gentlemen, is the 
 short explanation of the whole mystery, and serves to unriddle 
 all the crudity and contradiction on this topic, by which the 
 minds of my acquaintance have been so variously exercised. 
 
 " On the evening of the 12th I received the first letter I had 
 gotten from Edinburgh on this subject since I left it, requiring 
 an explicit declaration of myself as a candidate. In my reply, 
 I reiterated my adherence to the first term of the alternative, 
 and stated, that ' I was doing all I could to induce a favourable 
 arrangement of matters in Glasgow, and of course was counter- 
 working with all my might my kind friends in Edinburgh.' 
 This letter laid such a discouragement on the attempt of my 
 friends to get me into Edinburgh, that they forthwith aban- 
 doned it. 
 
 " There are only two misstatements among the multitude of 
 others which have been circulated on this subject that I feel at 
 all disposed to single out on the present occasion. The first is,
 
 520 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 that I vacillated in my purposes. There was no vacillation. I 
 took my ground from the first, and I all along acted upon it ; 
 and it was not my hesitation, but my steady and unfaltering 
 adherence to the assigned object of my own parish in my own 
 way, which in as far as I was concerned put an end to this 
 affair. 
 
 " The second misstatement is, that these overtures had been 
 made to me so early as a few days after the death of Professor 
 Playfair. The author of this misstatement could not have taken 
 a more effectual method of stamping the character of a well-sus- 
 tained hypocrisy on my late visit of ten days to ypur city, from 
 the 27th of July to the 7th of August and that not merely in 
 the eyes of my parochial agents, but in the eyes of our highest 
 official men, among whom I was negotiating with all my might 
 my favourite arrangements for the parish of St. John. The truth 
 is, that the idea of filling the Natural Philosophy Chair of Edin- 
 burgh was never, in any shape or for a single moment, present 
 to my mind before I left Glasgow on the 7th of August ; and 
 the propositions which were made on the 8th were the very first 
 that were offered to me on the subject." 
 
 On Sabbath the 26th, two days after the explanatory pam- 
 phlet had appeared, the Church of St. John's was opened for 
 public worship. The following account of the opening services 
 is extracted from the Glasgow Herald: " Dr. Andrew Thomson 
 of Edinburgh, and Dr. Chalmers the minister of the parish, 
 preached in presence of the Magistrates and a most crowded 
 congregation. The first gentleman commenced the services of 
 the day, and took for his text Hebrews iii. 12 ; Dr. Chalmers 
 preached in the afternoon from Isaiah xxix. 9-12. In the 
 evening the parochial sitters took their places, when Dr. Thom- 
 son again preached. From the intimations previously given, it 
 was understood that the last of these services was meant for 
 the exclusive benefit of the inhabitants of the parish, who are 
 enabled by a wise and liberal arrangement on the part of the 
 Magistrates and Council to obtain as good a right of occupation 
 to the evening seats as is held by any other sitters among the 
 day congregations of our city. . . . The decidedly parochial 
 aspect of the evening congregation was scarcely if at all im- 
 paired by any great admixture of hearers from the general and 
 indiscriminate public ; and it was felt as a novel and affecting 
 singularity to witness such a multitude of the labouring classes 
 of our city so respectably provided with Sabbath accommodation
 
 DECISION OF THE TOWN-COUNCIL. 521 
 
 in one of the churches of the Establishment. The impression 
 was much heightened upon observing that the great body of the 
 population, on retiring from church, when they had reached the 
 bottom of Macfarlane Street, turned in nearly an unbroken 
 stream to the east along the Gallowgate, or in the direction 
 which leads to the main bulk of the parish and its inhabitants. 
 . . . It gives us pleasure to observe that the hour of meeting 
 for the evening sitters is so early as four in the afternoon, there- 
 by giving to this parochial diet the character and convenience of 
 a day service, and enabling the hearers to spend an unbroken 
 Sabbath evening in the bosom of their own families."* 
 
 The recent decision of the Magistrates and Council, of which 
 he had been informed before leaving Anstruther, was to the 
 effect " that the minister and kirk-session of St. John's church 
 and parish shall have the separate, independent, and exclusive 
 management and distribution of the fund which may be raised 
 by voluntary or charitable collections at the doors of the said 
 church, for the relief of the poor resident in the said parish : but 
 reserve for further consideration the other matters noticed in Dr. 
 Chalmers's letter, particularly the proposed application of the 
 collections made at the church doors to any other purpose than 
 the relief of the poor, and the enforcement of the law of residence 
 as between the different parishes into which the city of Glasgow 
 has been divided." { It was more difficult to persuade the 
 General Session to relinquish its right of oversight or interfer- 
 ence. At last, however, this final difficulty was removed. " I 
 have been much turmoiled and agitated of late," Dr. Chalmers 
 writes near the close of December, " by certain unhappy contro- 
 versies about the management of my parish ; but these I have 
 now got over, and breathe a far freer and more peaceful atmos- 
 phere than I did at the outset of my connexion with my present 
 charge." \ The initial difficulties had formed in fact the chief 
 difficulties of the problem. " It required," says Mr. Stow, " the 
 mind and enthusiasm and urbanity and childlike generous feel- 
 ings of a Chalmers to argue every point, to bear with the old 
 fashioned prejudices and stubborn resistance to his schemes at 
 every step. They could not but admire the man ; but to knock 
 on the head at once all their long experience by such a revolu- 
 tion was not to be tolerated. It was not enough for Dr. Chalmers 
 
 Glaiqow Herald, Monday, 27th September 1819. 
 
 t Extracted from the Records of Council. 
 
 ^ Letter to Mr. Wilberforce, dated 21st December 1819.
 
 522 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 to explain his views in the most graphic manner, when sage 
 men believed them to be quite Utopian ; he must prove that 
 they will actually succeed, else they must not even be attempted." 
 In this, as in so many after instances, he found it easier actually 
 to do the work than to convince others that it was practicable. 
 The close of the year, however, saw him clearly extricated from 
 the different administrative bodies with which he had been im- 
 plicated ; and his own parish being now fully given up to him to 
 work it in bis own way, he turned with hopefulness of heart to 
 that agency which his four years' ministry in Glasgow had been 
 gradually forming, and which I cannot but regard as the noblest 
 band of Christian laymen which has ever gathered around a 
 Christian minister, or concentrated its energies upon the cultiva- 
 tion of a single parish.
 
 ATTACHMENT TO THE PAROCHIAL ECONOMY. 523 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 DR. CHALMERS'S HEREDITARY ATTACHMENT TO THE OLD PAROCHIAL ECONOMY 
 OP SCOTLAND HIS MINISTRY IN GLASGOW EXCLUSIVELY PAROCHIAL EX- 
 TENT AND CONDITION OF THE PARISH OP ST. JOHN'S ITS EDUCATIONAL 
 
 NECESSITIES MODE ADOPTED FOR MEETING THESE NECESSITIES ERECTION 
 
 OF TWO SCHOOL-FABRICS, AND PARTIAL ENDOWMENT OF FOUR SCHOOLMASTERS 
 EDUCATIONAL FRUITS OF THE ST. JOHN'S MINISTRY EXPLANATORY AD- 
 DRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE MACFABLANE STREET SCHOOLS. 
 
 A STRONG feeling of attachment to the old parochial economy 
 of Scotland was a hereditary sentiment with Dr. Chalmers. His 
 father had carried it so far that, although the churches of Eastern 
 and Western Anstruther stood but a few hundred yards apart, 
 he did not go to hear his own son preach when his doing so would 
 have carried him across the separating burn and away from his 
 own parish church. The one dominant idea which Dr. Chal- 
 mers carried with him from Kilmany, and which ruled the eiforts 
 of a lifetime, was that all those peculiar parochial means and 
 influences which, among the peasantry of Scotland, had secured 
 such an almost universal education of the young, and such an 
 intellectual and moral elevation of the general community, could 
 be employed, and would be equally efficacious amid the densest 
 city population. On his settlement in Glasgow, he publicly an- 
 nounced that he considered himself to be set apart as the minister 
 not of those who might choose to come to hear him in his church, 
 but of those who resided within his parish. Throughout the 
 whole period of his ministry his private attentions were devoted 
 almost exclusively to his parishioners as distinguished from his 
 congregation. He did not indeed refuse to attend the sick or 
 dying among his hearers, but he never visited ministerially the 
 families of those who had no other claim upon his attention than 
 their sitting regularly in his church. He had been greatly ham- 
 pered in carrying out his principles during the period of his 
 Tron Church ministry, but now all checks and impediments were 
 withdrawn. He had, it was true, five times as many people to 
 deal with as could hopefully be intrusted to any one minister 
 and kirk-session. According to a census taken by himself, the
 
 524 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 parish of St. John's, previous to Whitsunday 1819, contained a 
 population of 10,304 souls. But this population did not come 
 into his hands in the same condition in which a country parish 
 of equal magnitude would be committed to the care of its clergy- 
 man. It had deeply degenerated, and needed to be reclaimed. 
 Of the - 2161 families of which it was composed, there were so 
 many as 845 families who had no seats in any place of worship 
 whatever ; and even that proportion gave no adequate idea of 
 the extent to which church-going habits had been relinquished. 
 The number of sitters in their own parish church scarcely 
 amounted to a hundredth part of the whole population. And 
 St. John's was not only one of the largest, it was the very 
 poorest parish in the city. The numerical ratio which the 
 household servants in it bore to the general population, an index 
 of the condition of a community as to means, was about one to 
 every thirty-three in many districts it was so low as one to every 
 fifty-seven. Weavers, labourers, factory-workers, and other ope- 
 ratives, made up the great bulk of the community. It was a 
 large and onerous charge. Nevertheless, suffered now to manage 
 it in his own way, Dr. Chalmers entered upon the task with all 
 the elastic spirit of one emancipated from bondage, and all the 
 hopeful confidence of one whose faith in the power of moral and 
 spiritual influences, both human and divine, over the very worst 
 of our species, was perhaps larger and stronger than that of any 
 other man of his generation. The four years of his ministry in 
 St. John's were among the busiest in a life overcrowded in every 
 portion with activities ; and if we include the after and the in- 
 direct as well as the immediate results accomplished by them, 
 they formed four of the most productive of his years. 
 
 In St. John's, as in the Tron Church parish, 'Dr. Chalmers's 
 earliest efforts were directed towards the education of the young. 
 His preparations were so far matured, that at the commencement 
 of his operations he had a band of forty-one Sabbath-school 
 teachers, whose number, however, he needed to double, ere 
 according to his method of sub-division the whole space was 
 sufficiently covered. But four years' experience had now taught 
 him that more was required than to supply religious instruction 
 to those who could already read. Among the poorest classes 
 many children were growing up without any, and still more 
 with a very imperfect and comparatively useless education. 
 " There are many," said Dr. Chalmers, addressing a meeting of 
 his own parishioners, " who have been two or three quarters at
 
 EDUCATIONAL NECESSITIES OF ST. JOHN'S. 525 
 
 school, and have even got on as far as the Bible ; but when I 
 come to examine them, I am struck with their slovenly and im- 
 perfect mode of reading, obliged as they are to stop and to spell 
 and to blunder on their way through every verse in such a 
 manner as to make it palpable to those who hear them that it 
 had been very little worse for them though they had never been 
 at school at all. Now, be assured that those who cannot read 
 with fluency and readiness to the satisfaction of others, cannot 
 read with satisfaction, or any real understanding of what they 
 do read, to themselves. They may go through the form of 
 reading their Bibles, but I am sure that they do not understand 
 them ; and what is this to say, but that the Bible is still a sealed 
 book to them that they want the key by which it is to be 
 opened." Much of the existing evil Dr. Chalmers attributed to 
 a defect in the existing means and system of education. The 
 schools of Glasgow at the period were divisible into two classes 
 endowed schools iu which education was given gratis, and 
 adventure schools in which the masters were supported wholly 
 by the fees of their pupils. For the children of the middle and 
 higher classes of society the second kind of schools supplied both 
 in quantity and quality a good and sufficient education. But 
 the labouring classes, if they did not succeed through patronage 
 or perseverance in getting their children into those public schools 
 where a gratuitous education was provided, had no alternative 
 but to send them to one or other of those miserable schools 
 which in garrets or by-rooms half-educated and ill-paid teachers 
 had opened. The actual result was, that many parents kept 
 their children at home, still hoping to get them into the free 
 schools that many were satisfied with the meagre instructions 
 of teachers who themselves needed to be taught, and that not a 
 few had lost the desire of providing their families with this first 
 necessary of spiritual and intellectual life. Nor would it in Dr. 
 Chalmers's apprehension have much mended the matter though, 
 by one princely act of charity, the endowed schools had been so 
 multiplied that there was standing-room within their walls for 
 all the children of the community, and a wholly gratuitous edu- 
 1 cation provided for them. The education which parents pay 
 nothing for they prize as of little value ; while that which is 
 made somewhat costly to them they are more ready to appreciate, 
 and more anxious that it should be actually and sufficiently ac- 
 quired. And as it serves to relax the care and diligence of 
 parents a system of entirely gratuitous education has an equal
 
 526 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 tendency to relax the care and diligence of teachers removing 
 that, stimulus which operates when the fruits of their labour are 
 proportioned to the effort and the abilities which they put forth. 
 " The only way," said Dr. Chalmers in a pamphlet circulated 
 at this period,* " of thoroughly incorporating the education of 
 the young with the habit of families, is to make it form a part 
 of the family expenditure, and thus to make the interest and the 
 watchfulness and the jealousy of parents so many guarantees for 
 the diligence of their children. And for these reasons do we 
 hold the establishment of free schools in a country to be a frail 
 and impolitic expedient for the object either of upholding a high 
 tone of scholarship among our labouring classes or rendering the 
 habit at all general, or perpetuating that habit from generation 
 to generation." Between the two methods, of leaving a com- 
 munity to supply itself with education and of providing gratuitous 
 instruction for all its families, there lay a middle course that 
 followed by the founders of the parochial schools of Scotland. 
 Dividing the country into what were then considered as manage- 
 able districts, a school-house had been built in each, and a 
 partial endowment provided for the teachers their income from 
 school-fees and fixed salaries when combined large enough to 
 secure a highly respectable class of well-qualified instructors, 
 and yet the fixed portion of it not so great as to secure a com- 
 petence however ill they taught or however few their pupils. 
 This mixed system had wrought well in country parishes. Dr. 
 Chalmers resolved to adapt and apply it to the population of St. 
 John's. On Monday, the 27th September the day after the 
 church had been opened at a meeting of a few members of the 
 congregation organized into an " Education Committee," it was 
 resolved " That there should, in the first instance, and as soon 
 as possible, be raised by subscription a sum of money deemed 
 adequate to the erection of one fabric, to include two school- 
 houses and two teachers' houses, which, when completed, shall 
 in all time thereafter be exclusively occupied for the use and 
 benefit of the parish of St. John's." Dr. Chalmers headed the 
 subscription by putting his name down for 100 five other 
 gentlemen subscribing each a like sum subscriptions of 50 
 and lesser sums promptly following. In the course of a week 
 or two 1200 were raised. The site which appeared to be most 
 
 * The pamphlet entitled " Considerations on the System of Parochial Schools in Scotland, 
 and on the Advantage of Establishing them in Large Towns," was printed and privately 
 circulated at the close of September 1819, and was published in February 1820. It will be 
 found in Works, vol. xii. pp 191-219.
 
 NEW SCHOOLS OPENED. 527 
 
 suitable for the erection was in Macfarlane Street, and belonged 
 to the College. Dr. Chalmers went to Principal Taylor to 
 negotiate a purchase. In the hope of obtaining it on reasonable 
 terms he urged at once the novelty and importance of the under- 
 taking. The Principal acknowledged the importance but de- 
 murred as to the novelty. " We have been talking for twenty 
 years," he said, " of establishing parochial schools in Glasgow." 
 " Yes ; but how many years more did you intend to talk about 
 it? Now we are going to do the thing, not to talk about it; 
 and so," said Dr. Chalmers, putting the Principal into good 
 humour by some kindly saying, " you must even let the price be 
 as moderate as possible, seeing we are going to take the labour 
 of talking and projecting entirely off your hands." The applica- 
 tion was successful the ground was purchased the building 
 was commenced, and early in July 1820 was ready for occupa- 
 tion. The patronage, including the right of electing the masters, 
 was vested in the original subscribers of 100, the minister of 
 the parish, and the elders and deacons, who collectively had two 
 votes for each body. Dr. Chalmers knowing how important was 
 the choice of his first teachers did not trust to testimonials 
 private inquiries were instituted the schools of the candidates, 
 when accessible, were visited, and a day fixed for a comparative 
 trial. On Thursday, the 10th June, he writes to Mrs. Chalmers, 
 " proceeded with Mr. Irving and Mr. Collins, our two examina- 
 tors in the trial of our school candidates, to St. John's vestry, at 
 eleven o'clock; Mr. Montgomerie and Mr. Macgregor being 
 there also as patrons. We had twelve to examine, and gave 
 them tasks to do in the church, besides subjecting each of them 
 to a very strict and careful examination. This work took us up 
 till six o'clock, and we sent John out for wine and bread and a 
 tea-kettle, and made negus for ourselves and the young gentle- 
 men. Our choice has fallen on Mr. James Aitken for the 
 English school, whom you do know, and Mr. Macgregor, for the 
 commercial school, whom you do not know." Two teachers 
 having been thus nominated, to each of whom a salary of 25, 
 with a free house, was guaranteed, in order that the fees might 
 be reduced to 2s. per quarter for reading, and 3s. per quarter 
 for writing, arithmetic, book-keeping, &c., the schools were 
 opened on the 16th July. The right of admission was restricted 
 to parishioners of St. John's. " On the day of opening," says 
 Mr. Aitken, " I was waited on by an old lady, who craved 
 admission for a very interesting boy she held by the hand ; but
 
 528 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 she resided in Gorbals, and the principle had been adopted and 
 announced that none but the children of parishioners were 
 .admissible. 'But he is a good boy, and Dr. Chalmers will be 
 sure to admit him if you tell him that he is my grandson and 
 an orphan, and that his father was a minister.' I felt a strong 
 desire to oblige the old lady, and engaged to submit the case to 
 Dr. Chalmers. I did so at a meeting of St. John's agency held 
 that evening in St. John's Church. His reply was, ' All very 
 well ; but you know how many extra-parochial applications have 
 already been rejected, and by every additional refusal the ur- 
 gency for more schools will just gain additional strength, so that 
 in place of one school in St. John's, each parish will be forced 
 into an erection of its own, and the whole city, and not Glasgow 
 only, but every town and city in Scotland will be blessed with 
 its parish schools.' " 
 
 It was soon apparent that for the educational demands of St. 
 John's parish alone the two schools thus opened were not suf- 
 ficient. On the 7th August Dr. Chalmers, at a meeting of his 
 Education Committee, stated that " the present schools, though 
 only opened on the 18th of July last (less than a month), are 
 already crowded to such excess that the teachers have been 
 obliged to teach two day-classes instead of one, and that alto- 
 gether the number of scholars accommodated far exceeded the 
 powers of the teachers to do justice to, while many could not 
 be admitted who had applied." In these circumstances, Dr. 
 Chalmers proposed the erection of another fabric in the eastern 
 district of the parish, trusting to the liberality of the congrega- 
 tion of St. John's in a matter of such importance to the best 
 interests of the parishioners. The second appeal was forthwith 
 made, and the liberality which was trusted to did not fail : about 
 1000 were speedily collected. The second fabric was raised. 
 Two additional masters were nominated. 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 793 
 children out of a population of 10,000 souls. 
 
 And his care and influence reached much further than the 
 bare provision of school-houses and schoolmasters. He took the
 
 PRIVATE ATTENTIONS TO MASTERS. 529 
 
 liveliest personal interest in all the operations which he had set 
 agoing. " His visits to ray school," says Mr. Aitken, " were 
 almost daily, and of the most friendly description. In all states 
 of weather and in every frame of mind he was there ; depositing 
 himself in the usual chair, his countenance relaxing into its 
 wonted smile as he recognised the children of the working 
 classes. Again and again, looking round upon them from his 
 seat, his eye beaming with peculiar tenderness, he has exclaimed, 
 ' I cannot tell you how my heart warms to these barefooted 
 children!' One day, after sitting longer than usual, he left, 
 saying, ' I expected to meet Major Woodward and his lady here. 
 Be sure, should they call, to tell them these are the children of 
 our working classes, they form so striking a contrast to the 
 sights they are accustomed to in Ireland.' Sometimes he would 
 enter the school buoyant and congratulatory, introducing the 
 
 Bishop of , or Lord and Lady , developing to the 
 
 visitors this or that other feature of his parochial system, and 
 generally concluding with the request, ' Now just let us hear 
 one class read a portion before we go.' I may add, that he never 
 once interfered in the slightest degree in the management of the 
 classes. In everything pertaining to the internal ^anagement 
 of the school I was allowed to take my own method. ... I 
 might record several instances of his goodness and condescension 
 as manifested in the many friendly visits he paid to my family. 
 Early in the week following my appointment I received my first 
 private call. One circumstance occurred during the visit which 
 I still remember most vividly. One of my children had been 
 presented with a pair of guinea-pigs. These had found their 
 way into the apartment where we were sitting, and ran about 
 in all directions. I could have wished to turn them out, but 
 had not the power to rise from my chair. I could have seen 
 them at Jericho. He soon observed them, followed them with 
 his eye as they now retreated under his chair and again ventured 
 out into his presence, he even changed the position of his feet to 
 give them scope. That same kindly eye, one glance of which 
 we all loved so much in after-life to catch, beamed only the more 
 warmly as the creatures frisked in greater confidence around 
 him. It was to me an omen for good. He who could enjoy 
 thus the innocent gambols of these guinea-pigs could not fail to 
 be accessible for good when occasion required. It was the first 
 flush of that largeness of heart which afterwards appeared in all 
 I ever heard him say or saw him do. In all his intercourse 
 VOL. i. 2 L
 
 530 MEMOlliS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 with his teachers he showed that he considered their labour in 
 the classroom sufficiently harassing without any additional per- 
 plexities. His inquiries were frequent on every point on which 
 our personal or family convenience depended. ' Does your house 
 smoke? Is it not cold in consequence of its northern exposure? 
 I fear that you will feel considerably cribbed and confined in it.' 
 These, and many other considerate inquiries into our condition, 
 made the service light and pleasant that otherwise might have 
 seemed oppressive and intolerable. He seemed, of all men I 
 ever was professionally connected with, best to understand that 
 the teacher is not to be considered as a mere drudge a beast 
 of burden who may be treated as one pleases, well to-day and 
 scurvily to-morrow, as the whim of his employers may dictate." 
 
 Before the first of the St. John's schools was opened Dr. Chal- 
 mers invited the parishioners to a meeting at which he delivered 
 the following address : 
 
 " The first thing I have to say of these schools is, that in no 
 one sense of the term are they charity schools. I know that 
 this misconception has gone abroad, and I take the earliest 
 opportunity of correcting it. The education is riot given it is 
 paid for. It is not given to a particular number, as in some 
 schools, where so many poor scholars are admitted gratis, and 
 marked out by this distinction from the rest of their play-fellows. 
 We are anxious to keep every distinction of this kind away from 
 our establishment. Each scholar comes upon the same equal 
 and independent footing. There is nothing to elevate one but 
 his superior scholarship, and this is an elevation which may be 
 attained by the very poorest in attendance. There is nothing 
 to degrade another but that he is left behind in the career of 
 emulation and this is a degradation that the son of the richest 
 parent may be consigned to. There will no other inequality be 
 over known within the walls of our institution, but such as arises 
 from the diversity of talent and diligence and personal character. 
 In every other respect it will be a little republic ; and we can as- 
 sure the poorest parishioner who may send his children to these 
 schools, that one of the most gratifying exhibitions to which we 
 look forward in the course of our regular examinations by the 
 minister and members of session and gentlemen who have reared 
 this edifice for the instruction of the young, is to find that the 
 son of his best affections is also the pupil of our first and fore- 
 most admiration, that he stands the most signalized by his
 
 EXPLANATORY ADDRESS. 531 
 
 masterly and scholarlike appearances, and that on the busy 
 field of contest for preferment in places, and the approbation of 
 respectable visitors, he has come out the victor in this honour- 
 able struggle with his fellows, and borne the palm of superiority 
 away from them. 
 
 " The next thing I have to say of these schools is, that though 
 the fees of attendance are very moderate, and though this be a 
 circumstance of peculiar accommodation for the labouring classes 
 of society, yet we do not want on that account the wealthier 
 families of the parish to lie off from the benefits of the institution, 
 and abstain from sending their children.. We desire quite the re- 
 verse of this. We earnestly recommend these schools to the coun- 
 tenance of the higher classes in the parish ; and now that they 
 are built and endowed, all the countenance that we want of them 
 is that they will simply send their children to be educated there, 
 and that not on a higher fee because of their better circum- 
 stances for this is a distinction to which we obstinately shut our 
 eyes in this matter, but on the common fee that is paid by all, 
 whether rich or poor, who may be in attendance. The great 
 peculiarity of these schools is, that the education is so cheap as 
 that the poor may pay, but at the same time it is so good as that 
 the rich may receive. . . And it is matter of sincere gratulation 
 to many of us that while the education we have attempted to 
 provide has been so brought down in its terms as to be accessible 
 I trust to the very poorest among you, it is at the same time 
 such education as the very wealthiest may prize, and of which 
 we can assure them, that while it is calculated to raise the 
 young of humble life to a higher reach of scholarship than they 
 have yet perhaps been in the habit of attaining, it is also an 
 education which would sit most gracefully on the minds and 
 persons of their own children. 
 
 " We have met since we came to Glasgow with an occasional 
 feeling of dread and of dislike on the part of the higher classes 
 upon this subject, as if their children would be tainted by inter- 
 course with the young of our common and operative population, 
 as if their minds would be vitiated and their manners be vul- 
 garized by breathing the atmosphere of the same room with 
 them, as if it would break down the kind of distinction in classes 
 which necessarily obtains in grown-up society, and which ought,, 
 some think, to obtain also in the pursuits and exercises of boy- 
 hood. I have no hesitation whatever in saying, that receiving 
 my first education in a country school where there was p.n indis-
 
 .532 MKMOIKK OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 criminate mingling of the children of all ranks and degrees in 
 societj', this is a feeling which I cannot at all sympathize with. 
 I speak to the experience of some who now hear rue, who are not 
 natives of the city, and receiving their early education at some 
 parochial seminary in the country, were of course exposed to the 
 admixture of all sorts of children. Are they at all sensible of 
 having received any permanent infusion of vulgarity whatever 
 hy sharing in the same sports, or associating in the same exercises, 
 or standing up in the same class with children of a station in- 
 ferior to their own ? Even though I had suffered some loss from 
 such a cause, there is one noble compensation that is gotten at 
 such a school. It is well to learn there the lesson of respect for 
 our common nature. It is well to have observed there that 
 neither talent nor character are the prerogatives of rank alone. 
 It is well to acquire there such friendships as will be- retained 
 in future life ; and should it so happen of the two parties in such 
 a friendship that one is covered with affluence and honour, while 
 the other toils in humble poverty, it is exceedingly well that the 
 prosperous and distinguished citizen should have to recognise on 
 some future day in some obscure artisan the school-fellow of his 
 now fading remembrance, with whom he strove for mastery in 
 the class, and perhaps was overcome by him. I am sure that 
 if his heart be in its right place, there were a luxury of feeling 
 here which he would not forego, nor could his bosom refuse its 
 cordiality to the object of a remembrance so interesting, and 
 through the individual for whom he experienced such an emotion 
 of kindliness would he learn to bear a friendly and respectful 
 homage to the whole class of society to which he belonged ; and 
 therefore it is, that so far from wishing the children of various 
 ranks in the parish not to mingle at these schools, I want them 
 to mingle as extensively as they may. Let vice and black- 
 guardism, and every communication of evil, be guarded against 
 with all a parent's vigilance and a parent's alarm ; but disdain 
 not to associate your children in scholarship even with the 
 humblest offspring of poverty. A far blander and better state of 
 society will at length come out of such an arrangement. The 
 ties of kindliness will be multiplied between the wealthy and the 
 labouring classes of our city, the wide and melancholy gulf of 
 suspicion between them will come at length to be filled up by the 
 attentions of a soft and pleasing fellowship and instead of rude 
 encroachment on the one side, and the pride of a distant and dis- 
 dainful jealousy on the other, will there be a community more
 
 EXPLANATORY ADDRESS. 533 
 
 humanized by the circulation of a mutnal good-will, and of 
 which the extreme parties will be more mellowed into one as 
 the intercourse of advanced life is thus softened by the touching 
 remembrances of boyhood. 
 
 " It has been alleged that if the schools be as open and ac- 
 cessible to the children of the wealthy as to other children, and 
 if the sound of an invitation so very general be sent abroad over 
 all the families of the parish, there is danger of their being filled 
 to excess, and of many who stand most in need of a cheap edu- 
 cation being excluded by others who stand less in need and have 
 got in before them, and thus of a pressure of application being 
 brought down upon us greater than we can bear, and of a cla- 
 mour for admittance being raised greater than we can satisfy, 
 and of a crowd of expectants disappointed and excluded and put 
 ofl' whom we have no room for. Why, my brethren, to tell you 
 the truth, this is just what we want. There are certainly some 
 kinds of pressure that we are not very fond of, and some sorts of 
 clamour which we know it were impossible by any expedient 
 whatever to appease, and certain crowdings for admittance and 
 relief which are quite interminable, and cannot possibly be man- 
 aged to the satisfaction either of one party or another. But this 
 does not apply to the present case. We hold it our duty to 
 meet the whole demand of the whole parish for the kind of edu- 
 cation that we have now proceeded a certain length in providing 
 for you ; and if the provision already made be not enough, we 
 hold it our duty to extend it ; and should the present fabric be 
 overcrowded and overrun, this we shall consider as an intima- 
 tion to us for another fabric and other teachers. We see the 
 end of the demand for good and cheap education, and we should 
 like to overtake it. On this particular ground, therefore, I have 
 no objection whatever to be surrounded and assailed with your 
 most earnest and vehement importunities. It were music to my 
 ears to hear your loudest and most urgent cries for this kind of 
 schooling to your families, and I shall make it my business to 
 echo the cry back again to a quarter where I am sure of the 
 readiest and the kindliest and the most plentiful returns of 
 generosity, to a quarter crowded with your best and sincerest 
 and most enlightened friends ; with a set of men the style of 
 whose liberality is not yet perhaps completely understood, but 
 who I am sure up to the light they have, are all on edge for the 
 furtherance of your best and truest interests ; men who would 
 grudge a single shilling if they thought that it helped to make
 
 534 MEMO! US OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and to multiply paupers, but men who will not grudge a thou- 
 sand of them when the object is to make and to multiply scholars ; 
 men who recognise in the very poorest of their brethren those 
 high capacities which entitle them to a full and equal place on 
 the general level of humanity, and would rejoice in admitting 
 them to the brotherhood of all those privileges which belong to 
 our common nature ; men who know you to be their equals in 
 all the grand and enduring attributes of our species, and long for 
 nothing more than to see the gate thrown open by which all 
 the children of all the population may find their way to an ac- 
 complished and respectable manhood in society upon earth, and 
 instead of perishing as many of them do now for lack of know- 
 ledge, may, through .the light of Divine science that is unfolded 
 in the Scripture, attain a place in that society of heaven, where 
 the distinctions of rank and of fortune are all unknown ; these 
 men will hail your demand for more education, nor will they 
 rest till the parish to which they have devoted their philanthropy 
 be as fully instated in all the means of respectable scholarship 
 as any parish which our classical and lettered and intellectual 
 Scotland has to boast of. 
 
 " But for what purpose, it may be asked, the above style of 
 education for the labouring classes ? Is it to help on their pre- 
 ferment in life, that from labourers they may be fitted for the 
 business of higher situations in society ? No ! some of course 
 will in the vicissitudes of human history attain such an eminence, 
 and their learning will serve to grace and to guide them in the 
 place they have reached. But most assuredly it is not that 
 they may aspire after an elevated condition that I would have 
 them all to be learned, but to bless and to dignify and to pour a 
 moral and literary lustre over the condition they already occupy. 
 Were all to aspire, many would be disappointed ; for, be as- 
 sured, that to the end of the world the men of opulence will be 
 the few, and the men of industry will compose the multitude. 
 The structure of human society admits of no other arrangement ; 
 and Avhatever political convulsions may await us, through what- 
 ever stormy and adverse seasons of tumult and destruction and 
 disturbance this land may have to pass, it cannot fail to settle 
 down at last both in this and in every other nation into an 
 economy of men of affluence who compose the minority, and 
 men of labour and artisanship who compose the great majority 
 of every commonwealth. And therefore, my brethren, my object 
 in pouring the light of education through the mass would not be
 
 EXPLANATORY ADDRESS. 535 
 
 to kindle tip a diseased ambition among you after the high places 
 of society. This some of von by perseverance and industry and 
 good fortune will attain. But to associate the object of general 
 education with the excitement of a general ambition of this kind 
 among the people were an attempt to divert the uncontrollable 
 tendencies of human society. And what then is the object ? it 
 may be asked. It is not to turn an operative into a capitalist : 
 it is to turn an ignorant operative into a learned operative, to 
 stamp upon him the worth and the respectability of which I 
 contend he is fully susceptible, though he rise not by a single 
 inch above the sphere of life in which he now moves, to trans- 
 form him into a reflective and accomplished individual not to 
 hoist, as it were, the great ponderous mass of society up into 
 the air where it could have no foundation to support it, but 
 supposing that mass to rest and be stationary on its present 
 basis, to diffuse through it the light both of common and of 
 Christian intelligence. I know that there has been a most severe 
 and overwhelming pressure of late on the labouring classes, and 
 that between sleep to recruit their exhausted nature and labour 
 to subsist, there are many who for months together have not 
 had a single hour of recreation, and that thus the privilege of 
 reading to store their minds either with general or religious 
 information, has by circumstances been withheld from them. 
 But it is not to be always so. There will, I prophesy, if the 
 world is to stand, there will be a great amelioration in the life 
 of general humanity. The labouring classes are destined to 
 attain a far more secure place of comfort and independence in 
 the commonwealth than they have ever yet occupied, and this 
 will come about not as the fruit of any victory gained on the 
 arena of angry and discordant politics, but far more surely as 
 the result of growing virtue and intelligence and worth among 
 the labourers themselves. I trust the time is coming when 
 humble life will be dignified both by leisure and by literature, 
 when the work of the day will be succeeded by the reading and 
 the improving conversations of the evening, when many a lettered 
 sage as well as many an enlightened Christian will be met with 
 even in the very lowest walks of society, when the elements 
 of science and philanthropy and high scholarship will so ripen 
 throughout the general mind of the country as to exalt it pro- 
 digiously above the level of its present character and acquire- 
 ments. 
 
 " On that future day, which I pray may not be far distant
 
 536 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ill that millennium of light and love, of which it is prophesied 
 that many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased, 
 there may jnst be as many mechanics, and as many labourers, 
 and as many men of handicraft, as there are at this moment. 
 And while zealous, therefore, for the growth of the cause of 
 learning amongst them, it is not, we think, the object of this 
 cause to stir up a restless appetite for being removed from one 
 condition of earthliness to another condition of earthliness. That 
 object is to refine alike and to dignify alike every condition of 
 earthliness. It is to give us the comfortable feeling as we move 
 through the swarms of population that issue from the manufactory 
 and the workshop, that instead of a rude mass of ignorance and 
 its companion profligacy, we are in fact passing through a most 
 respectable assemblage of human worth and human accomplish- 
 ment. This has been verified in many individual instances, and 
 did we only do what we ought, it will be verified throughout the 
 whole mass in the course of another generation. A most de- 
 lightful eminence of mental cultivation has been attained by the 
 ploughmen of a country parish and by the mechanics of a city 
 parish. It is clear as day to all who have been much in contact 
 with those classes of society, that there are among them the full 
 capabilities for thus adorning their own condition with all the 
 graces of cultured and well-taught humanity. And I repeat it, 
 the main object of pouring a more copious and rich supply of 
 education amongst them is not to furnish them with the means 
 of abandoning their status, but to furnish them with the means 
 of morally and intellectually exalting it. It is not to raise them 
 on the artificial scale of life, but to raise them on that far nobler 
 scale which has respect to the virtues of mind and the prospects 
 of immortality. It is to confer a truer dignity upon each than 
 if the crown of an earthly potentate were bestowed upon him. 
 It is to pour the stores of knowledge into his understanding, and 
 more especially of that sacred knowledge by the possession of 
 which he becomes rich in faith and heir of that kingdom which 
 God hath prepared for those who love Him."* 
 
 * From an unpublished Manuscript.
 
 CORHESPOS DENCE WITH Mil. WILBERFORCE. 537 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MK. WILBERFORCE DURING THE WINTER 1819-20 DE- 
 SCRIPTION OP THE STATE OF GLASGOW DURING THE PERIOD OF THE RADICAL 
 RIOTS SUGGESTIONS BY DR. CHALMERS AS TO POLITICAL MEASURES FOR AME- 
 LIORATING THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE INFLUENCE OF THE RELIGIOUS 
 
 ELEMENT. 
 
 FROM 1808 to 1813 tbe harvests in this country were deficient. 
 During four of these years the political state of the Continent 
 virtually prohibited any foreign supply of grain. The result of 
 this was a rise in the price of wheat from seventy-five shillings 
 per quarter, the average price for the six years from 1802 to 
 1807, to one hundred and eight shillings, the average price for 
 the six succeeding years. This rise in value being proportionally 
 much greater than the defect in produce, the cultivation of land 
 became so much more profitable. It was apparently a period of 
 great agricultural prosperity. Whenever it was brought into 
 the market, land was eagerly purchased at advanced prices ; 
 rents in many instances were doubled ; cultivation was forced 
 beyond its proper limits, to the exhaustion in some instances of 
 productive soils, while lands were brought under the plough the 
 tillage of which, at slightly lower prices, could not be remunera- 
 tive. The crop of 1813, so large as to leave a surplus for two 
 years, effected a sudden reduction in the price of grain. The 
 Peace soon followed, opening the Continental markets. Land- 
 lords and tenants were in despair. In the spring of 1815, the 
 price of wheat had fallen from one hundred and eight shillings 
 to sixty shillings per quarter. If it rose to sixty-six shillings, 
 according to the existing corn-law, British ports would be opened 
 for the admission of foreign grain. The demand for additional 
 protection to the agricultural interest became so urgent that a 
 Bill was hurried through the House of Commons fixing eighty 
 shillings per quarter as the point at which importation should 
 commence. 
 
 Throughout the war, and even under the severe prohibitory 
 commercial policy of Bonaparte, British goods had in large quan- 
 tities found their way into the Continental markets. The natural
 
 5.18 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 impression in this country was, that when peace brought that 
 policy to an end, the Continental demand would experience a 
 large increase ; and the first results seemed to verify this impres- 
 sion. Our exports in 1814 were double those of the preceding 
 year; and although the increase was not relatively so great, the 
 exports in 1815 exceeded in value those of 1814 by about seven 
 million pounds sterling. The alluring prospect led the British 
 merchant astray. He forgot that the resources of the Continent 
 were necessarily limited, and had been drained by war. The 
 overtrading into which he plunged bore its accustomed fruits. 
 The Continental markets were glutted : English goods were sell- 
 ing in them at lower prices than in this country. Heavy losses 
 and frequent bankruptcies ensued. The pressure fell at last, and 
 most heavily, upon the working classes. Multitudes were thrown 
 out of employment at the very time that the reduction of our 
 military establishment had thrown a large number of additional 
 hands into the labour market. To aggravate the evil, the price 
 of bread began again to rise. The autumn months of 1815 and 
 the spring months of 1816 were most ungenial. The crop of 
 1816 turned out one of the worst which had been for many 
 years. In the course of twelve months wheat rose to double its 
 former value ; and in 1817 and 1818 the war and famine prices 
 were once more reached. There was no class of operatives upon 
 which the pressure of the times fell more heavily than upon the 
 hand-loom weavers. In the end of August 1819, Mr. Cleland 
 made a survey of Glasgow and its neighbourhood. Taking a 
 radius of about five miles from the centre of the city, excluding 
 Paisley, but including all the suburbs and many populous vil- 
 lages beyond them, he found within the circle now specified 
 18,537 looms, of which 13,281 were working, and 5,256 were 
 unemployed. The results of this and of other surveys and in- 
 vestigations Mr. Cleland embodied in a publication entitled 
 " The Rise and Progress of the City of Glasgow," &c. Seizing 
 upon the leisure which a fortnight's visit to Kirkcaldy in Janu- 
 ary 1820 afforded to him, Dr. Chalmers undertook to review 
 this work in the Edinburgh Review. Confining his attention 
 exclusively to the capital fact stated above as ascertained by 
 Mr. Cleland, he devoted his paper to an inquiry into the causes 
 and remedies of those evils under which the manufacturing 
 population was at this period labouring. Many of the leading 
 ideas unfolded in this review will be found in the following 
 series of letters addressed to Mr. Wilberforce :
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. WILBERFORCE. 530 
 
 " GLASGOW, December 15, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAE SIR, I should have answered your last kind com- 
 munications long ago. I have been most thoroughly engrossed 
 with professional work, but feel myself urged at present to write 
 you on the subject of our affairs in this city. The population 
 are overawed for the present by the large military force in town. 
 But you know that this is not the most pleasant, neither is it the 
 most permanent means of tranquillity. It were greatly more 
 desirable to sweeten the spirits of the disaffected than to subdue 
 them ; and while I approve very much of certain minor expedi- 
 ents for this object such as the repeal of the cottage tax, and 
 of the taxes on the first necessaries of life to be commuted into 
 an income tax upon the wealthier classes yet, from my exten- 
 sive minglings with the people, I am quite confident in affirming 
 the power of another expedient to be such that it would operate 
 witli all the quickness and effect of a charm in lulling their 
 agitated spirits. I mean the repeal of the Corn Bill. I have 
 ever been in the habit of disliking the interference of the Legis- 
 lature in matters of trade, saving for the purpose of a revenue. 
 The interference in question is perhaps of all others the one by 
 which Government has incurred the greatest waste of popularity 
 with the least return of advantage to the country ; nor could 
 they take a readier step than by recalling this measure to soothe 
 the manufacturing districts of the country. 
 
 " There is, I have often thought, a native vigour in the ele- 
 ments of a nation's prosperity, in virtue of which they survive 
 all the fears and forebodings of our economical reasoners ; and I 
 am quite sure that the more our Government approximates to 
 nature and justice and liberty in her commercial regulations, the 
 nearer will the country be to the best possible adjustment of all 
 the various interests which abound in it. You are quite familiar 
 with the bugbears of political imagination on the matters of 
 trade, and how effectually time and experience came to dissipate 
 them at length. What else was it than a bugbear which arrested 
 for years the abolition of the slave-trade ? and did ever com- 
 merce rise more triumphantly above all the fancied mischiefs 
 which were to flow from this measure than she did upon that 
 occasion ? It is an equally groundless chimera that the landed 
 interest will sensibly suffer from the repeal of the Com Bill. It 
 will bring no mischief upon the country, and do more than 
 Government can by all her other devices accomplish towards the 
 object of recalling our people to loyalty and quietness.
 
 540 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " On this subject I have only to add, that had such a measure 
 been proposed a week ago in Parliament it might have been 
 resisted as carrying in it the appearance of an extorted conces- 
 sion. But now that the menacing attitude of the Radicals has 
 been so effectually reduced it would not compromise the dignity 
 of Government to confer upon them this most soothing of all 
 gratifications. It were more like the act of a conqueror extend- 
 ing a deed of clemency to the vanquished than the compliance 
 of a degraded sovereign with the high demands of his rebellious 
 subjects ; and be assured, that by no single measure, or no num- 
 ber of measures that can be specified, could Government hold out, 
 Avith a greater prospect of a welcome and responding movement 
 on the part of the country, the olive branch of reconciliation. 
 
 " I can take up no more of your much-occupied time at pre- 
 sent. I mean to write you soon on a topic about which you put 
 me a question that is, the state of religion in this quarter. I 
 shall be at all times happy to meet any inquiries upon any 
 subject relative to this neighbourhood in which you may be 
 interested. At the same time, however much I feel myself 
 honoured by an epistle from your own hand, I beg, for your own 
 ease which it is the duty of all your friends to consult to the 
 uttermost when it is more convenient for you, to send your 
 communication by any amanuensis whom you may choose to 
 employ. 
 
 "Mrs. Chalmers desires her most respectful compliments to 
 you, and I beg mine to Mrs. Wilberforce. 
 
 " I cannot adequately express the tenderness and veneration 
 that I feel for one who has done so much under God for the best 
 of causes. Believe me, my dear Sir, yours with the utmost love 
 and esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " GLASGOW,. December 21, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Mr. Maxwell, to whom you refer, is not, I 
 believe, of my opinion with regard to the Corn Bill, but I be- 
 lieve that he is equally hostile with myself to the maintenance 
 of the poor by assessments ; and if there can be one form in 
 which assessments are more hurtful to the interests of the lower 
 orders than another, it is when the produce of them is adminis- 
 tered to meet the defect either of work or of wages. The sure 
 and almost instantaneous result of such a measure is a further 
 reduction in the wages. And it is this which lays Scottish 
 industry under such a disadvantage. English industry is in
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. WILBEIiFOKCE. 541 
 
 many instances upheld partly by a proper remuneration in the 
 shape of wages, and partly out of the poor-rate. The Scottish 
 operative suffers all the disadvantage of the reduction which 
 your system has produced in the nominal price of labour without 
 the compensation ; and I can assure you, that of all parliamen- 
 tary measures I know none that would more effectually relieve 
 our working classes of this heavy disadvantage than the enact- 
 ment by which you should restrict your poor's-rate to the relief 
 of that want alone which arises from inability to work, and not 
 to that want which arises from the work being inadequately 
 paid for. This would instantly raise the nominal price of labour, 
 and so bring our operatives OH a par with those of your country. 
 
 " Do not, I beseech you, grant us the equalization we need 
 by extending any part of your poor's system of management to 
 us ; but as an act of justice to iis, expunge that part of your 
 system which provides out of a legal and compulsory fund for a 
 defect of work or of wages. This, by the way, would prove a 
 good first step towards the gradual abolition of your poor-laws 
 altogether. It is a sound principle in political economy, that 
 what you give to labour out of a legal provision you take away 
 from it in the shape of wages, and when you withhold the 
 former ingredient from the remuneration, the other ingredient 
 expands to a magnitude equal to the sum of both. This is 
 beautifully illustrated on a small scale by Mr. Vivian in his 
 examination before the House of Commons' Committee, the 
 Report of which was ordered to be printed July 4, 1817. 
 
 " But the urgent matter is present relief. You will, of course, 
 perceive that it would place me in an invidious light were I to 
 say, that a pecuniary grant by Parliament for the purpose of 
 direct distribution among the poor is not advisable. It would 
 expose me to the outcry of many. It is, however, my firm con- 
 viction that this is really not the kind of application which 
 would do so much good as a loan to be laid out on spade labour, 
 and by which the operatives would be drawn away from their 
 looms, and through the production of the article being lessened, 
 a better price will come round for their work, and matters be 
 restored to a fair average. Money to supplement defective 
 wages in any line of industry has not the salutary effect that 
 money has which is employed to draw away workmen from that 
 line of industry. The temptation to the former instead of the 
 latter is, that it appears to require a less sum to make good a 
 difference than to render full wages for the new kind of labour
 
 542 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALME11S. 
 
 that is devised as a substitute for the weaving. But the truth 
 is, that could a small fractional part of otir weavers be taken 
 up in this way, it were a mighty relief to us ; and what I would 
 earnestly advise is, that Government should comply to as great 
 an extent as it can with the various proposals which are before 
 it from this quarter on the subject of advances of money, whether 
 by loan or by grant, for employing so many of our weavers at 
 another occupation. One mighty advantage would be, that it 
 would transfer so many of them permanently to another line and 
 habit of industry altogether, and thus take away that excess of 
 labour which is now given to the preparation of an article for 
 which I fear there is now a permanent reduction in the demand. 
 
 " There is this peculiarity in weaving, it is easily acquired, 
 and can be done by women and boys ; hence a vast overplus of 
 work in times of general depression. I trust the day is com- 
 ing when, like strawplatting and tambouring, it will sink down 
 into a female employment, as too cheap a branch of industry for 
 men to be engaged with. 
 
 " I never upon any occasion represented the distresses of the 
 people here to be such as called for any other measures than 
 those which I now recommend. I think that there ought to be, 
 and I trust that there is, a very great exertion making through 
 the channels of private kindness, I should like to see the whole 
 of almsgiving reduced to the scriptural principle of secrecy. I 
 do think that the obtrusive hand of public charity serves to 
 arrest sympathy, and to freeze a far more copious fountain of 
 liberality than it opens ; and sorry should I be if individual 
 compassion, flowing in unseen but innumerable rills, did not 
 discharge a far greater amount of relief on the unfortunate than 
 even Government itself could afford to bestow. 
 
 " I repeat my very great desire for what I deem the best 
 expedient in our present difficulties a sum to draw away 
 labourers from the loom to other employments. We have a few 
 stocking weavers as well as common weavers ; it were well if 
 they too were provided for in this way. They are as ill off 
 as the others ; and this, by the way, is due, I have heard, to 
 the extreme liberality of the poor's-rate at Nottingham, which 
 deducts from the wages as much as it affords of legal provision, 
 and exposes the Scotch operatives to a proportional disadvantage. 
 
 " Believe me to be, with most respectful compliments to Mrs. 
 Wilberforce, my dear Sir, yours very sincerely, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. WILBERFORCE. 543 
 
 " I kept this letter one day, that I might converse with one 
 of the most intelligent of our public men on the subject of it. 
 He agrees with myself in thinking that the suitable remedy 
 is for Government to grant the aid in loan that was requested 
 some time ago. 
 
 " I cannot close this without reiterating the expression of the 
 very fervent and unabated regard that I have all along enter- 
 tained for you. I beseech you to spare yourself all fatigue in 
 the work of correspondence. I trust that my school pamphlet 
 has reached you. For once I should like to trouble you with 
 my urgency by requesting as favourable an opinion of the sys- 
 tem in writing as you feel yourself entitled to give. I refuse all 
 extra-parochial money for the object, as I want to exhibit a 
 parish in a state of complete provision for schooling upon its 
 own capabilities. Yours very affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " GLASGOW, December 23, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, It just occurs to me to say, that what ought 
 to be advanced as the peculiar claim of the Scottish operatives 
 on relief from Parliament is the peculiar disadvantage under 
 which the English system of poor-laws has laid them, by the 
 depreciation which it has effected on the nominal price of labour. 
 Better surely that compensation were rendered to them in the 
 shape of a loan for giving them employment, which is only an 
 occasional boon, and required in times of particular depression, 
 than that there should be any attempt to assimilate what is pure 
 to what is corrupt, by an extension of a debasing and deteriorat- 
 ing system to a part of the country that is yet uncontaminated. 
 I have the utmost confidence, I assure you, after we have 
 weathered a few months, in the certainty of our proving that a 
 manufacturing population can be sustained without any legal or 
 compulsory provision whatever. Keep our part of the country 
 free from poor-rates, and we shall remain a palpable argument 
 on the side of a reformation which you stand so pressingly in 
 need of. Give way to the present emergency, and at once 
 establish the principle among us, and you set a conclusive seal 
 upon a system which all your enlightened men would rejoice in 
 seeing that it was mitigated if not entirely abolished. 
 
 " I have had much conversation in the course of this day upon 
 the subject, and the general desire is for such a measure as would 
 draw away our operatives from their looms, and not any such as
 
 544 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 would fix them to that employment and merely supplement the 
 defective wages they receive for it. By the former expedient 
 you will soon clear away a mischief which consists in an over- 
 stock of manufactured goods. By the latter expedient you 
 aliment and perpetuate the very evil which it is proposed to 
 do away." 
 
 " GLASGOW, January 22, 1820. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Perhaps I should delay answering your last 
 till the decided revival of our trade, which would enable me to 
 speak more fully as to the whole progress of that visitation which 
 seems to have excited so much notice and commiseration at a 
 distance. There are the incipient symptoms of such a revival ; 
 and I confidently expect that our population will be conducted 
 to a state of average comfort without even the advantage of the 
 last loan awarded to our city by Government. The truth is, 
 that our city has not yet been able to avail itself of this accom- 
 modation from certain difficulties attendant on the purchase of 
 ground, so that I trust the truth of a favourite doctrine will in 
 this instance be realized, that even through the darkest vicissi- 
 tudes either of a town or a nation's fortune, the daily bread of 
 all its inhabitants may be assured to it by the hand of private 
 sympathy, and out of the capabilities which actually exist within 
 its limits. I must confess that I took alarm at the parliamentary 
 notice that was taken of our situation, fearful as I was that it 
 would beget a delusive confidence on the part of the givers here, 
 as if something so effectual were to be done as to supersede their 
 responsibility for the sufferings of their poorer brethren ; and 
 further, fearful lest the receivers should feel themselves relieved 
 from those shifts and exertions which are always sure to be 
 made when the show of a great public interference in their 
 behalf is withheld from them. I deprecate the interference of 
 Parliament in these cases in any other way than the one way 
 of simply aiding the provision of work, and of such work as 
 might withdraw labourers from an overdone branch of employ- 
 ment. I am glad that the ' Christian Observer' has come forth 
 with such a series of wise and enlightened observations upon 
 this subject. 
 
 " The infidelity of this neighbourhood has been much over- 
 rated. There is a fearful majority of practical ungodliness 
 amongst us, as there is everywhere, and I believe some few 
 hundred, even of the labouring classes, who avow Deism or 
 Atheism ; but I think I am quite sure that the irreligion of the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. WILBERFORCE. 545 
 
 Eadicals did much at length to neutralize their political influ- 
 ence amongst our people. The whole spirit of Kadicalism is, 
 I think, fast subsiding amongst us, and the tone of the public 
 feeling is now that of tranquillity and confidence. 
 
 " Whatever our difference of opinion may be about the Corn 
 Bill which I consider as just another example of that busy and 
 unwise intermeddling which is too characteristic of all Legisla- 
 tures I have to entreat that you will not lose sight of the measure 
 of restricting your poor-rates to the poverty that springs from 
 the inability of working alone. This would equalize the Scotch 
 and English operatives. It is all that we want for keeping our- 
 selves untainted by this baneful system altogether, and would, 
 I think, form amongst you a good first step of a gradual process 
 for its ultimate and entire abolition. 
 
 " It were well if amid the engrossments of public matters we 
 could keep our hearts at liberty for the influences of God's Holy 
 Spirit. How possible is it, alas ! to be busied even among 
 Christian doings, and yet to be abandoned by the life and unc- 
 tion of Christianity altogether ! And yet the two are com- 
 patible ; and who exemplified it better than the apostle Paul, 
 whose conversation was in heaven, while he sustained a busy 
 and diligent and ever doing converse both with the men and 
 the things of this lower world ? 
 
 " With most respectful and kind regards to Mrs. Wilberforce, 
 and Mrs. Chalmers's best remembrances to yourself, I beg you 
 to believe me, iny dear Sir, yours most affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " I have got 900 raised for my education fabric, and will 
 begin to it immediately. I got several offers of foreign aid, 
 but rejected them all. I am confident that a complete apparatus 
 of scholarship might be raised all over the country did each 
 satisfy himself with the cultivation of his own local portion of 
 the great territory. Your kind letter has been of the greatest 
 use to me." 
 
 "GLASGOW, March 22, 1820. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I suffered an unfinished letter to lie a long 
 while beside me, when I was called upon last Saturday by two 
 men going to London on the business of our Emigration Socie- 
 ties here. I took the liberty of reading that letter to them, 
 along with another, of which I made them the bearers, to Mr. 
 Finlay. They go without any advice from me, and in virtue 
 
 VOL. I. 2 M
 
 540 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of a resolution by their own constituents. I trust you will 
 excuse the liberty that I have taken. I am sure that I am 
 exceedingly averse to give you any trouble. But however fruit- 
 less their mission may be as to the business object of it, I am 
 quite satisfied that nothing would tend more to tranquillize the 
 public feeling than a little more of personal intercourse between 
 the various orders of society ; and I am sure that from the in- 
 terview even of a very few minutes with yourself, they will bring 
 down a good and a sweetening influence along with them. 
 
 " The matter seems to be thus : Some months ago in Glas- 
 gow there was a very general desire on the part of our labouring 
 classes to seek relief in emigration. For this purpose meetings 
 were called, which generally terminated in the factious expres- 
 sion of political discontent, to the great annoyance of a certain 
 number among them who were honestly bent upon this object, 
 and have prosecuted it with such steadiness and perseverance as 
 at length to have obtained a grant of land and other advantages 
 from Government, leaving however the means of conveyance 
 across the Atlantic to be provided for in another quarter. Of 
 course the men have been elevated by all this to a very high 
 degree of buoyancy, and are now I fear on the eve of a very sore 
 mortification, unless our Glasgow public can be stimulated to a 
 handsome subscription for the object of providing them with a 
 passage to Canada. I do not see altogether the use of the Lon- 
 don expedition ; but even if it should satisfy the people that 
 their main dependence for getting what they want must be on 
 the public at home and still more if it should draw out either 
 from yourself or Mr. Finlay such expressions as may stimulate 
 the people here to make an effort for completing what Govern- 
 ment has so kindly and liberally begun it will not have been 
 in vain. 
 
 " It had been infinitely better that Government had made no 
 advances upon this subject, than that such a distressing failure 
 of hope and such an accession of discontent should come out of 
 it. The grant is only for a definite number, you will observe ; 
 and the expense of conveying the whole is, according to my rate 
 of estimation, far from beyond the capabilities of Glasgow. It 
 is not my opinion that it can have any great effect, economically 
 speaking, on the state of matters here. It will leave a very 
 small vacancy behind it, and a single week of such importations 
 as we have often had from Ireland would fill it up again. It 
 is this which makes me regret that Government should ever
 
 RIOTS IN GLASGOW. - 547 
 
 encumber itself with trade or pauperism, or interfere in any way 
 with the economics of the country, save for the purpose of a 
 revenue to itself. But as it has interfered, and brought on so 
 many of our families to a ground of hope and of dependence, 
 I shall regret that it shall reap as the fruit of its own doings, 
 founded though they have been in a real desire to promote the 
 welfare of our community, the suspicion and discontent of men 
 who have kept so steadily aloof from the turbulence of the times. 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Distress had engendered political discontent. The materials 
 for agitation were abundant, and in too tempting a condition 
 for the demagogue. The demand for parliamentary reform, 
 which, so long as it confined itself to a moderate extension of 
 the representation, had found supporters among all classes of the 
 community, was among the lower orders changed into a fiercer 
 cry for universal suffrage and annual parliaments. The very 
 name of Reformer was rejected, and that of Radical adopted in 
 its stead. The disastrous results of the Manchester meeting in 
 August 1819 stimulated the general irritation. At a large 
 assemblage convened soon afterwards in the Glasgow Green, 
 the leading speakers appeared dressed with weepers, as if in 
 mourning for those whom the swords of the Manchester yeo- 
 manry had cut down. Secret societies were extensively organ- 
 ized. Threats of rebellion began openly to be uttered. The 
 13th of December, announced as a holiday from labour, was anti- 
 cipated in Glasgow with the greatest apprehension. It passed, 
 however, peaceably all tendency to riot being suppressed by 
 the admirable dispositions made by the public authorities. For 
 a month or two the alarm subsided, to break out, however, in 
 March 1820, in greater force than ever. Rumours of pikes 
 manufactured in large quantities, of midnight drillings, and of 
 days fixed for the great rebellion breaking out, were rife through- 
 out the city. At last the worst fears of the most terrified seemed 
 about to be realized. On the morning of Sabbath the 2d April 
 printed proclamations were to be seen posted on the walls, com- 
 manding an immediate and entire cessation from labour, and 
 summoning the people to open insurrection, " Signed by order of 
 the Committee of Organization for forming a Provisional Govern- 
 ment," The consternation felt that forenoon in Glasgow was 
 intense. The authorities immediately assembled. The civic
 
 548 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 troops, the Glasgow yeomanry and sharp-shooters, got orders 
 to be ready at a moment's warning. The military were on the 
 alert ; hussars dashing through the streets, posting pickets on 
 the various roads leading into the town. It was understood 
 that the signal for commencing the rebellion in Glasgow was 
 to be the stoppage by the Radicals of England of the Lon- 
 don mail, which then generally reached Glasgow about five 
 o'clock in the morning. Three gentlemen of the Glasgow yeo- 
 manry rode out to Hamilton (a distance of ten miles) on Sunday 
 night, that in case the mail did not arrive there at the usual 
 hour information of the event might be carried as quickly as 
 possible to Glasgow. At half-past four o'clock, on Monday 
 morning, all the troops, civic and regular, were at their appointed 
 rendezvous, and under arms. The three volunteers, however, 
 appeared ere long, bringing the tidings that the mail had reached 
 Hamilton at the usual hour, and that in England all was quiet. 
 But the alarm was not to be so speedily dissipated. On Monday 
 it was evident that the treasonable proclamation in one part of 
 its summons had been obeyed. Voluntarily, or through intimi- 
 dation, the public works were deserted. For many miles around 
 Glasgow the whole working population ceased from labour. 
 Crowds poured along the various roads, and bands of idlers, with 
 sullen and scowling visages, filled the streets. The authorities 
 were informed that "Wednesday had been fixed as the day upon 
 which the Eadicals from all the adjoining districts were to march 
 into and take possession of the town. Throughout the whole of 
 that night all the available troops were under arms. The firm 
 spirit of the inhabitants, the resolute attitude of the authorities, 
 and the strong military force, struck terror into the half-armed 
 and ill-guided multitude, and without any bloodshed the out- 
 break was repressed. Next day brought tidings of the skirmish 
 at Bonnymuir, near Stirling, in which the only band of Radicals 
 that faced the troops was scattered in a few moments, nineteen 
 having been taken prisoners on the field. Betrayed, as they 
 imagined, by their friends in England, and awake to the folly 
 of their schemes, the resolution of the Radicals melted speedily 
 away a better spirit soon returned among the working popula- 
 tion, and in a week or two all terror of a Radical insurrection 
 had passed away. 
 
 On the 18th April, Dr. Chalmers resumes his correspondence 
 with Mr. Wilberforce : " MY DEAR SIR, As far as I know of 
 our disaffections in this city, I would say that there are perhaps
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. WILBERFORCE. 549 
 
 not half a dozen instances of people befriending Radicalism who 
 are possessed of more than 200 a year. Its most active in- 
 stigators appear to be the well-paid workmen of cotton-mills and 
 other manufactories where there has been little or no decline of 
 wages, though the depression that obtains in the weaving de- 
 partment gives them without doubt the advantage of such 
 materials as encourage them greatly to prosecute the designs of 
 agitators. I ought also to have mentioned that among the 
 weavers themselves, who, speaking generally, are a highly in- 
 telligent order of men, there are not a few who act as delegates 
 and leaders to the rest, and are well qualified for the whole 
 business of counsel and committeeship. Of these there are cer- 
 tainly some who have acquired their taste and their talent for 
 public management, I think, from the circumstance of being the 
 members of a dissenting congregation, and thus offer the melan- 
 choly combination of a fierce, restless, and dangerous politics, 
 with a regular and respectable habit of attendance upon the 
 ordinances. But still this is so far from being generally the 
 case, that the aspect here of Radicalism upon the whole is just 
 what it is with you an aspect of infidelity and irreligion, the 
 great majority of the men of ascendency among them being of 
 this stamp, and verily all, I believe, who have stated their 
 determination to the extent of actual war and bloodshed, having 
 just as little of the profession of Christianity as they have of the 
 substance of it. 
 
 " This is so palpably the case, that I believe the general pub- 
 lic, undiscerning as they are upon this subject in the main, have 
 the well-founded impression, in the present instance, that religion 
 and Radicalism are utterly at antipodes with each other ; so 
 that we have little, I trust, to fear from any wrong association 
 in the public mind upon this topic. And here I ought to say, 
 that though Dissenterism has often the effect of engendering a 
 political taste and tendency among those who are connected with 
 it, yet our dissenting ministers here have nobly acquitted them- 
 selves on the present occasion. I know an instance in which 
 a member of the Methodist Churches was excommunicated for 
 his attendance on the Union Societies. Mr. Ewing, our Inde- 
 pendent minister, has both preached and published in the 
 strongest terms against the political spirit of the times ; and, on 
 the whole, Glasgow is just all the less Radical than it would 
 have been by every congregation of Christian worshippers, whe- 
 ther in the Establishment or out of it, that is within its limits.
 
 550 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " It is awkward for a man to refer to his own works, but I think 
 that No. 3 of my periodical publication, which was out before our 
 recent explosion, explains why Glasgow should be so Radical 
 in spite of its supposed numerous attenders upon Christian wor- 
 ship. The truth is, that after all they form a woful minority of 
 our whole population, and nothing but the multiplication of our 
 Established Churches, with the subdivision of parishes, and the 
 allocation of each parish to its own church, together with a pure 
 and popular exercise of the right of patronage, will ever bring 
 us back again to a sound and wholesome state of the body politic. 
 I shall resume this, if God will, in a day or two. I am, my 
 dear Sir, yours very affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " GLASGOW, April 25, 1810. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I should have mentioned in my last that the 
 irreligious spirit of the rioters in Glasgow was strongly evinced 
 by their breaking the windows of two of our Established clergy ; 
 but as it is our misfortune to be implicated with the pauperism 
 and civil business of the place, this, perhaps, is not so unequi- 
 vocal an expression as the fact of their having broken the win- 
 dows of one of the Methodist chapels. You will, of course, have 
 seen the circular sent by the Methodist Committee in London to 
 all their ministers, dated the 12th November last, and which 
 serves not merely to vindicate that body, but Evangelical Chris- 
 tianity at large, from the suspicion of being at all favourable to 
 political turbulence. The alleged ground of complaint is poli- 
 tical. As I wrote before, there is an exceeding degree of odium 
 and unpopularity attached to the Corn Bill. They share in 
 feeling here with the English Radicals on the common topics of 
 reform, annual parliaments, &c. I have little doubt, however, 
 that were the circumstances of the people amended, their dis- 
 contents would very quickly subside. As to the prevalence of 
 the discontent, I would say of the vast majority of the labouring 
 population, perhaps five-sixths of them, that they are passive 
 would rather be quit of all the disturbance and alarm that we 
 have been exposed to, though, at the same time, they would ac- 
 quiesce so far with the Radicals as to offer no positive opposition 
 to any new order of things which they might have instituted. 
 But this is no argument for a feeling of security, as I should 
 suppose that in all revolutions the agents in the business, whether 
 by counsel or war, are by much the minority of the whole popu- 
 lation. The truth is, that turbulence and discontent are far
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. WILBERFORCE. 551 
 
 more active and stirring and ostensible than are the opposite 
 qualities ; so that a minority with these will, to the general eye, 
 outnumber the majority without these, and thus it is th'at the 
 imagination of the multitude may be held in bondage by com- 
 paratively few from among themselves ; and this may be enough 
 tor the purpose of giving effect to the schemes and operations of 
 a disaffected minority. I have considerable intercourse with the 
 families of my own parish, consisting of upwards of 10,000 
 people, and though chiefly among the poor, I am quite sure that 
 there was as honest a terror, and as sincere an aversion to pub- 
 lic disturbance among them as among the families of the rich. 
 But this terror laid them open to the influence of the agitators, 
 who compelled almost the whole of them to strike work. On 
 that occasion I am convinced that the intimidators did not form 
 more than a tenth part of the intimidated. 
 
 " I quite agree with you as to education. No system of co- 
 ercion can prevent demagogues from obtaining it ; and a few of 
 them are far more formidable when operatiug on the soil of 
 general ignorance among the population. The true way of dis- 
 arming them of their influence is to educate the people up to 
 them. And it is all in confirmation of this that our cotton- 
 spinners, with good wages, were greatly more disaffected and 
 mischievous than our weavers with bad wages. There is less 
 of scholarship among the former than the latter, for a reason 
 which you will easily perceive. They go early to cotton-mills, 
 and have no command of their own hours afterwards. Weavers 
 have that command, and there is a better rate of education 
 among them than the others. At the same time, Glasgow is 
 not a fair specimen of Scotland. My own observations have 
 convinced me that there is a great decline of scholarship here ; 
 and I should liken our general population more to that of an 
 English town than any other Scottish population I am acquainted 
 with. I am not aware of the proportion that the Irish disaffected 
 bear to the Scotch, but from the apprehensions that have taken 
 place, I should regard it as greatly beyond the proportion of their 
 numbers in this place. ,r> -,. 
 
 " The most tranquillizing measure that Parliament could 
 adopt would be the abolition of the Corn Bill. The next would 
 be the repeal of the cottage tax, and such other taxes as bear 
 hard on the necessaries of life. Let the deficiency be^made up 
 by an income-tax* I trust there will be no bankruptcy, however 
 partial. Fiat jitstitia, ruat ccelum. I trust that faith will be
 
 552 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 kept with our national creditors. So long as the upper and 
 middling classes have such a command over business we have 
 not yet attained to the limit of our resources. A five per cent, 
 income-tax would enable Government to make a number of 
 popular, and I may add moral commutations, covering I should 
 suppose the whole loss incurred by the cottage, salt, and butter 
 tax, and by the abolition of the lottery. 
 
 " I yesterday saw one of our sheriffs for the populous county 
 of Eenfrew, and he assures me, that in the cases which come 
 before him for ordinary crime among the young he notices a 
 very sensible decline of education. It will really not be fair to 
 argue against education from the case of Glasgow, which has 
 receded very widely of late from the general condition of Scot- 
 land in respect to scholarship. Believe me, my dear Sir, yours 
 most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " GLASGOW, May 2, 1820 
 
 " MY DEAK SIR, I should have mentioned in my last, that 
 the shawl manufactory recently introduced into Paisley requires 
 a great number of boys, whose business it is to draw such pulleys 
 as the working of the pattern may require, and are therefore 
 called draw-boys. They amount to upwards of 2000 it would 
 appear, and going to this business very young they are almost 
 universally without reading. It is thus that the young men 
 are very widely contrasted with the old in that town, who are 
 indeed among the most intelligent and best educated opera- 
 tives in the kingdom. But be assured that it is not the know- 
 ledge of our people, but their growing ignorance which has 
 opened a wide and effectual door for all the Radicalism that 
 exists among them. 
 
 " I feel that I have been guilty of some omissions as to a few 
 former topics of our correspondence. I have not had the satis- 
 faction of seeing your work on education, nor do I recollect 
 anything more at present respecting the Baptist communica- 
 tions on this subject from India, with the exception of a very 
 enlightened memoir about schools. 
 
 " I have been called upon by two members of our Emigration 
 Societies. If anything could be done for them in the way of 
 guiding them to information, I would feel myself very much 
 obliged. 
 
 " They have called upon me in the instant, and I must come 
 to a close, only observing that the men have been buoyed up to
 
 VINDICATION OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT. 553 
 
 a high state of expectation, and that if they are frustrated it will 
 really turn what might have been a matter of gratitude into a 
 matter of discontent, the more formidable that there will be 
 really some reason for it. I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 One of Dr. Chalmers's main objects of anxiety at this period 
 was to vindicate the religious element from having had any other 
 than a salutary effect. He entered upon this vindication in a 
 more formal and elaborate manner than was possible in any 
 correspondence, in two discourses* preached in St. John's Church 
 on Sabbaths the 30th April and 7th May. " An enlightened 
 Christian," he said upon the former of these occasions, " recog- 
 nises the hand of God in all the shelter that is thrown over him 
 from the fury of the natural elements ; and he equally recognises 
 it in all the shelter that is thrown over him from the fury of 
 the moral elements by which he is surrounded. Had he a more 
 favourable view of our nature he might not look on government 
 as so indispensable ; but with the view that he actually has, 
 he cannot miss the conclusion of its being the ordinance of 
 heaven for the Church's good upon earth ; and that thus a 
 canopy of defence is drawn over the heads of Zion's travellers ; 
 and they rejoice in the authority of human laws as an instru- 
 ment in the hand of God for the peace of their Sabbaths, and 
 the peace of their sacraments ; and they deprecate the anarchy 
 that would ensue from the suspension of them with as much 
 honest principle, as they would deprecate the earthquake that 
 might engulf, or the hurricane that might sweep away their 
 habitations ; and, aware of what humanity is, when left to itself, 
 they accept, as a boon from heaven, the mechanism which checks 
 the effervescence of all those fires that would else go forth to 
 burn up and to destroy. 
 
 " This, at all times the feeling of every enlightened Christian, 
 must have been eminently and peculiarly so at that time when 
 our recent alarms were at the greatest height. It was the time 
 of our sacrament ; and to all who love its services, must it have 
 been matter of grateful rejoicing, that, by the favour of Him 
 who sways the elements of nature, and the as uncontrollable 
 
 * These two discourses, embodied into one, entitled " A Sermon on the Importance of 
 Civil Government to Society," were published on the 16th May. In less than a month 6000 
 copies of the two first editions of this sermon were issued, and on the 9th June a third 
 edition of 3000 copies was printed. It now appears in Dr. Chalmers's Works, vol. vi. pp. 
 335-377.
 
 554 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 elements of human society, we were permitted to finish these 
 services in peace ; that in that feast of love and good-will we 
 were not rudely assailed by the din of warlike preparation ; that, 
 ere Sabbath came, the tempest of alarm, which had sounded so 
 fearfully along the streets of our city, was hushed into the quiet- 
 ness of Sabbath ; so that, like as if in the midst of sweetest 
 landscape, and amongst a congregation gathered out of still and 
 solitary hamlets, and with nothing to break in upon the deep 
 repose and tranquillity of the scene save the voice of united 
 praise from an assembly of devout and revering worshippers, 
 were we, under the protection of an arm stronger than any arm 
 of flesh, and at the bidding of a voice more powerful than that 
 of mighty conquerors, suffered to enjoy the pure and peaceful 
 ordinances of our faith, with all the threats and all the outcries 
 of human violence kept far away from us. 
 
 " It was the apprehension of many, that it might have been 
 otherwise. And what ought to be their enduring gratitude, 
 when, instead of the wrath of man let loose upon our families, 
 and a devoted city given up to the frenzy and the fierceness of 
 a misguided population ; and the maddening outcry of comba- 
 tants plying against each other their instruments of destruction ; 
 and the speed of flying multitudes, when the noise of the foot- 
 men and the noise of the horsemen gave dreadful intimation of 
 the coming slaughter ; and the bursting conflagration, in various 
 quarters, marking out where the fell emissaries of ruin were at 
 work ; and the shock, and the volley, and the agonies of dying 
 men, telling the trembling inmates of every household, that the 
 work of desperation had now begun upon the streets, and might 
 speedily force its way into all the dwelling-places : this is what 
 that God, who has the elements of the moral world at command, 
 might have visited on a town which has witnessed so many a 
 guilty Sabbath, and harbours within its limits the ungodliness 
 of so many profane and alienated families. In what precious- 
 ness, then, ought that Sabbath to be held ; and what a boon 
 from the kindness of long-suffering Heaven should we regard its 
 quietness, when, instead of such deeds of vengeance between 
 townsmen and their fellows, they walked together in peaceful 
 society to the house of prayer, and sat in peacefulness together 
 at its best loved ordinance." 
 
 On the Monday which followed the delivery of this passage, 
 Thistlewood and his four companions, convicted for the Cato 
 Street conspiracy, were executed in London, and the whole
 
 THE LONDON EXECUTIONS. 555 
 
 country was shocked by the horrors of such a scaffold scene as 
 has rarely if ever been witnessed among us.* On the succeeding 
 Sabbath, while prosecuting his subject, Dr. Chalmers made the 
 following allusion to the execution : " There is something in 
 the history of these London executions that is truly dismal. It 
 is like getting a glimpse into Pandemonium ; nor do we believe 
 that in the annals of human depravity did ever stout-hearted 
 sinners betray a more fierce and unfeeling hardihood. It is not 
 that part of the exhibition which is merely revolting to sensitive 
 nature that we are now alluding to. It is not the struggle, and 
 the death, and the shrouded operator, and the bloody heads that 
 were carried round the scaffold, and the headless bodies of men 
 who but one hour before lifted their proud defiance to the God 
 in whose presence the whole decision of their spirits must by 
 this time have melted away. It is the moral part of the exhibi- 
 tion that is so appalling. It is the firm desperado step with 
 which they ascended to the place of execution. It is the un- 
 daunted scowl which they cast on the dread apparatus before 
 them. It is the frenzied and bacchanalian levity with which 
 they bore up their courage to the last, and earned, in return, the 
 applause of thousands as fierce and as frenzied as themselves. It 
 is the unquelled daring of the man who laughed and who sung 
 and who cheered the multitude ere he took his leap into eternity, 
 and was cheered by the multitude, rending the air with appro- 
 bation back again. These are the doings of infidelity. These 
 are the exhibitions of the popular mind after that religion has 
 abandoned it. It is neither a system of unchristian morals, nor 
 the meagre Christianity of those who deride, as methodistical, 
 all the pecularities of our faith, that will recall our neglected 
 
 * " Ings then came up ; he was dressed in his butcher's jacket. On reaching the scaf- 
 fold he gave three cheers, and turned round several times to the multitude, and smiled at 
 them, and then sung in a discordant voice ' give me death or liberty.' Brunt was the 
 last that came out. He passed hastily up the steps, and advanced with a laugh on his 
 countenance. Whilst the rope was adjusting, he looked towards St. Sepulchre's Church, 
 and perceiving some one with whom he had been acquainted, he nodded several times, and 
 then made an inclination of the head towards the coffins as if in derision of the awful dis- 
 play. When his neckerchief was taken off, the stiffener fell out, and he kicked it away, 
 saying, ' I shan't want that any more.' The executioner now proceeded to pull their caps 
 over their eyes, and adjust the ropes. When he came to Ings, the unhappy man said, 
 ' Now, old gentleman, finish me tidily ; tie the handkerchief tight over my eyes ; pull the 
 rope tighter, it may slip.' . . . When the bodies had been suspended exactly half an 
 hour, the executioner and an assistant appeared on the scaffold to prepare for the revolting 
 ceremony of decapitation. Thistlewood was first cut down, and being placed with his head 
 on the block, an eminent medical Professor, disguised in a rough jacket and trousers, and 
 a mask on his face, appeared with an amputating knife, and in a few moments the head was 
 severed from the body. . . . The operator was loudly his=ed and groaned at by the mob, 
 and some atrocious expressions were applied to him." Extracted from Glasgow Herald of 
 date May 5, 1820.
 
 556 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 population. There is not one other expedient by which you will 
 recover the olden character of England but by going forth with 
 the gospel of Jesus Christ among its people. Nothing will sub- 
 due them but that regenerating power which goes along with 
 the faith of the New Testament, and nothing will charm away 
 the alienation of their spirits but their belief in the overtures of 
 redeeming mercy."
 
 LETTER TO MRS. CHALMERS. 557 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 4 
 
 ILLNESS OF HIS BBOTHER ALEXANDER VISITS TO BLOCH.URX, STRATHBLANE, 
 
 AND GLENFINART PAROCHIAL LODOIKGS MINISTERIAL ACTIVITY THE REV. 
 
 EDWARD IRVING HIS AGENCY AND THEIR OPERATIONS INSTANCES OF HIS 
 
 PLAYFUL FAMILIARITY THE DINNER IX TEE VESTRY ANECDOTES OF MR. 
 
 IRVING AND DR. BELL ADDRESS TO THE ELDERS. 
 
 "March 17, 1820. I am this day forty. Oh that God may 
 give me a more tenacious purpose than ever of cleaving to Him 
 wholly ! I desire to be as He would have me. What a removal 
 of a mighty barrier it is that Christ has died for our sins. It is 
 my desire to live for Him who died for me. Pray for me and for 
 yourself; and let not the world that passeth away detain our 
 attention' from the world that is fast approaching. God will give 
 us rest in eternity if we serve Him aright here. . . . That 
 is a sad delusion in virtue of which things present so engross 
 our hearts ; and nothing serves more surely to perpetuate it than 
 the legal imagination of our being able to cast off the burden of 
 this engrossment with our own strength. Let us admit by faith 
 the things which are told to us and offered by God, and these 
 will cast them out. Let us lay hold of the stretched-out forgive- 
 ness ; and should we thus receive the atonement, that will re- 
 lieve and purify the heart of its evil visitants. Let me entreat 
 you to look to the word of God's testimony, and think not that 
 anything else than a simple reception of these words, ' that the 
 blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin,' is necessary for the pur- 
 pose of your being cleansed from your sin. It is the idea that 
 something more is necessary which obstructs this reception. It 
 is the imagination of a great personal work to which you must 
 set yourself, and in which you have hitherto sat down in listless- 
 ness and despair, that keeps you at a distance from God. He 
 approaches you with overtures and what you have to do is to 
 close with them. He approaches you with tidings and what 
 you have to do is to give credit to them. This is doing the 
 work of God, that you believe on Him whom He hath sent ; 
 and could this transition be accomplished, then would you be 
 translated into a habit of cheerful and progressive obedience,
 
 558 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 which in a way of legalism, or in the attempt to establish a 
 righteousness of your own, yon never can attain. 
 
 "Let me know particularly how Sandy is. I have long 
 mourned over my utter helplessness in the way of free commu- 
 nication on these subjects with my own relatives. I could no 
 
 more, fo'r example, enter into close conversation with than 
 
 I could fly. that I were enabled to say, by example, by 
 patience, by kindness, what I have not yet been able to say in 
 words." 
 
 These instructive sentences were addressed to Mrs. Chalmers, 
 whose sister had been married a few months previously to Dr. 
 Chalmers's favourite brother Alexander. An alarming and tedi- 
 ous illness, which had attacked him in the beginning of the 
 year, affected the whole summer arrangements of the family in 
 Glasgow. Mrs. Chalmers joined her sister at Kirkcaldy in 
 February, and remained with her till the end of August. Dur- 
 ing the earlier part of this period, the children were left with 
 Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, and he had to taste the sweets and 
 the bitters of his solitary charge. " The children were up stairs," 
 he says, describing one of his arrivals from Edinburgh, " while 
 I settled with the porter in the lobby, and went afterwards to 
 my own bedroom. I heard them come down in a very gleesome 
 style, but they had to wait in the lobby till I came out, which 
 when I did they positively quivered and danced with pure glad- 
 ness. I felt the cat and kitten principle most powerfully towards 
 them, and spent a very joyous and thankful hour with them." 
 "Was greatly fashed," he writes again about a week afterwards, 
 " with the restlessness of the bairns upon the sofa at one time 
 pressing in between me and the back of it ; at another standing 
 upright and coming suddenly down upon me ; at a third sitting 
 upon its elevated border and repeating this threatening position, 
 forgetful of all my biddings upon the subject, and in fact putting 
 me into a perfect fry with their most incessant and ungovernable 
 locomotion." Of both the joys and the sorrows of this condition 
 he was relieved at the end of May, and during the months of 
 June, July, and August, he was alone in Glasgow. One delight- 
 ful week was spent at Blochairn, with a family to whom he 
 became very strongly and tenderly attached. " I stayed," he 
 says, " in Mr. Parker's from Monday the 5th June to Saturday 
 the 10th. On Saturday I took my final leave of Blochairn. 
 The kindness I have gotten there is very great, and will, I 
 trust, be indelibly graven upon my remembrance." On Monday
 
 STRATHBLANE AND GLENFINART. 559 
 
 the 12th, Dr. Chalmers preached for the Rev. Dr. Hamilton at 
 Strathblane, and stayed during the following week in one of the 
 most agreeable and hospitable of Scottish manses, from which 
 he writes " The way here is to breakfast at eight and dine at 
 two. This gives me a forenoon of from four to five honrs, during 
 which I make two distinct efforts of study. I threw off this 
 forenoon (Thursday) a great quantity of No. IV. ; and immedi- 
 ately after dinner Mr. Hamilton and I ascended the highest hill 
 in the neighbourhood, from which we had a superb view ; the 
 Lomouds of Fife and Largo Law were distinctly visible. The 
 ascent took us two hours and a quarter, the descent about an 
 hour and a quarter. We drank tea with a parochial family, and 
 attended a library-meeting after it. ... Saturday. After 
 dinner, I left Strathblane, and set out on a walking expedition 
 to Glasgow. A chaise, with only two in it, and one of them Mr. 
 M'Callam, a man of Architecture, whom you may recollect at 
 our house in Kilmany, overtook me, and I got a place in it to 
 Glasgow. I was a good deal annoyed with one of the London 
 deputies calling upon me and telling me of his success in conse- 
 quence of my letter to Mr. Wilberforce, and after all craving 
 something personally from myself. Called on a parishioner with 
 the view of announcing my purpose to have family worship in 
 his house on Monday night : he also unhallowed the visit by 
 obtruding upon me a case of pauperism. This contrasts a little 
 painfully with the pleasure and quietness of the scene which I 
 have left so recently." 
 
 " Glenfinart, Wednesday, June 28. I proceeded in the steam- 
 boat to Gourock, from whence I hired a small boat for this 
 place. It was delightfully calm and warm, and after two hours 
 of partly rowing and partly sailing up the fresh and bold and 
 nobly-banked Loch Long, I landed about a mile below Glen- 
 finart, where I found Lord and Lady Dunmore, Lady Jane 
 Montgomerie, the young Earl of Eglinton, aged seven, his tutor, 
 and a few callers, who left us in a few minutes; all above 
 named remaining as the guests or inmates of the house for some 
 time. Thursday. I had a most delicious drive with Lord Dun- 
 more in a gig up the interior of a singularly wild and simple 
 country. Dined about four, and had a little party afterwards 
 to ascend the highest hill in the neighbourhood. His Lord- 
 ship soon gave up the ascent. We had a little pony, _of which 
 I made great use. It was somewhat hazy, but I enjoyed the 
 prospect amazingly. We descended so as to be at home again
 
 560 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 after nine. Brought down a beautiful new plant, and investi- 
 gated it before the Countess and Lady Jane. Tell Sandy that 
 it is the saxifraga stellaria. Lord Dunmore is very accomplished 
 in conversation. I trust that I feel more solemnized among 
 these great features of the Divine workmanship ; but oh how 
 slender is the principle of my spiritual life! There is the 
 utmost kindness in this place." 
 
 " Glasgow, Tuesday, July 11. Miss 's sister, a married 
 
 woman, called with the object of delivering a long rigmarole 
 invective against her sister. I was quite impatient. She spoke 
 of my being in her sister's will, and of my having taken her 
 down one day in my chariot from Kensington Place to St. 
 John's, which was all true of the noddy. I got so desperately 
 tired of her incessant volubility that I said I would listen no 
 longer, and left the drawing-room for my bedroom, whither, 
 however, she followed me, but I soon got the door shut against 
 
 her ; and I shall now insist that Miss puts my session out 
 
 of her will altogether, for I am to have nothing to do with a set 
 of cackling wives and old maids.* Mr. Kobert Dalgleish's chaise 
 came with Mr. and Mrs. Wood to take us out to Cainpsie, where 
 we all arrived about four o'clock. After tea, a number of us 
 walked to Campsie Glen, and did not return till eleven o'clock 
 at night. 
 
 " Wednesday. Went on horseback with a brother of Mr. 
 Dalgleish's to scale the Muckte Bin, a large and lofty hill in the 
 neighbourhood. The chaise came so far on after us with Mr. 
 and Mrs. Wood, and Miss Dalgleish. The day was hazy. After 
 we descended a little from the. top, Mr. A. D. and I parted from 
 the chaise party taking our horses and our guide along with 
 us. I had nearly laired among the soft moss of the hill, and in 
 the struggle my horse fell on its side, but providentially not till 
 it had thrown me on my side at a sufficient distance away from 
 it, having previously, in throwing back its head, struck my face 
 and set my nose a bleeding. I was not materially hurt. We 
 walked and rode alternately home, my companion keeping me 
 abundantly in countenance by falling twice from his horse. 
 The chaise party at home long before us : we found them at 
 dinner between five and six o'clock. After dinner, there came 
 an express from Kilsyth, with an intimation of poor Dr. Rennie's 
 
 * Greatly teased one day by a lady, who kept him listening to her for a long and at a very 
 inconvenient time, he said to a friend after her departure, when describing the infliction 
 from which he had just escaped" And it would have been nothing if she had been saying 
 anything to the purpose, but it was a mere gurgle of syllables."
 
 DEATH OF DR. RENNIE. 561 
 
 death. This is his sacramental week, and I had been engaged 
 to preach there to-morrow. We were on the eve of sending a 
 messenger to Kilsyth to inquire if the sacrament was to go on, 
 when Mr. Lapslie came in the meantime and told us that it was. 
 I took the warm bath this evening in one of the immense circu- 
 lar vats of the manufactory. It was fortunate that it was not a 
 dyework, else I might have come out of a bottle-green colour. 
 
 " Thursday. I took my leave of the kind people of Campsie, 
 and on reaching Kilsyth found Dr. M'Lean and Mr. Marshall 
 there before me. Was conducted to the room where the corpse 
 lay, and got a view of it. Mr. Marshall preached most admirably 
 in the forenoon on ' Grieve not the Spirit.' I preached in the 
 afternoon. We saw Mrs. Rennie for a little, and there was a 
 struggle between her anxiety to prolong our talk with her, and 
 my anxiety about the boat, into which we got at half-past six 
 o'clock, and are now on our way to Glasgow. I have written 
 the whole of the last page, and what is written of the present, 
 since I came on board." 
 
 A hasty visit was paid to Kirkcaldy in the end of July. In 
 passing through Edinburgh on his return to Glasgow, Dr. Chal- 
 mers spent a night at Merchiston Castle, where Dr. George 
 Bell was residing. " He assures me," says Dr. Chalmers, " that 
 had I declared myself a candidate I would have obtained the 
 Moral Philosophy Chair,* but that as matters stood nothing 
 short of such a declaration would do. He evidently believes 
 that I would have taken it had it been offered, and perhaps he 
 is right. My desire is, to give the remainder of my days to 
 intellectual rather than to bodily labour. An excess of the 
 latter I find to be very hurtful, and should God uphold me in 
 strength and in the exercise of my faculties, I contemplate a 
 far more deliberate process of authorship than I have yet had 
 leisure for." 
 
 That he might prosecute his parochial labours with greater 
 facility and less distraction, Dr. Chalmers rented a small apart- 
 ment within the bounds of the parish. " I called on Mr. New- 
 
 * The Moral Philosophy Chair in the University of Edinburgh had become vacant by the 
 lamented death of Dr. Thomas Brown. Dr. Chalmers was early asked to become a candi- 
 date. " I this day," he writes on the 9th March, " received letters from Dr. Jones and Dr. 
 Charles Stuart about the Professorship. The former was asked by a member of the Town 
 Council to put the question, whether, if I was elected to the Chair, I would take it ? I wrote 
 back that I was too busy to deliberate about such a supposition that I was not at all 
 solicitous for a change and that if patrons did not choose to hazard my refusal I did not 
 want to have anything to do with them. I told him I was not a candidate, nor did I ask 
 anybody to move in the matter at all" 
 
 VOL. I. 2 X
 
 5G2 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 bigging," he writes on his return to Glasgow, " and went along 
 with him to Mrs. Hamilton's. I take one room from her, and 
 the bed is to be put up on Monday. I took a lesson from you, 
 and determined to settle beforehand about the rent. She said 
 that would be according to the trouble, and condescended on 
 six or seven shillings a week, but that we would not cast out. 
 After such a moderate condescension as this, I do think that 
 there is very little danger." The following letter presents such a 
 picture of ministerial activity as has seldom been paralleled : 
 
 , HEAD OF MARLBOBOUGH STREET, 
 AT MR.S. HAMILTON'S LODGINGS. 
 
 " MY EVEK DEAREST GRACE, I have been so much occupied 
 these ten days that Ihave not been able to put pen to paper for 
 you, and a regular journal of my transactions is now out of the 
 question. I landed here on Monday evening last week, and find 
 everything done for me in a most quiet and comfortable style. 
 I only regret that my present very long visitation should lie so 
 remote from the district of my parish that is immediately around 
 me. This will be a mighty improvement in any of my future 
 parochial lodgments ; and I feel and perceive the mighty charm 
 of being much among the people in the capacity of their next- 
 door neighbour. 
 
 " As it is, I spend four days a week visiting the people in 
 company with the agents of the various districts over which I 
 expatiate. I last week overtook between 700 and 800 people, 
 and have great pleasure in the movement. This I am generally 
 done with in the forenoon, and then dine either at the vestry or 
 in a friend's house. In addition to this I have had an agency 
 tea every night excepting yesternight ; and in a few evenings 
 more I expect to overtake the whole agency of my parish. At 
 nine I go out to family worship in some house belonging to the 
 district of my present residence, where I assemble the people of 
 the land or close vicinity, and expect, ere I quit my present 
 quarters, to overtake in this way the whole of that district. I 
 have generally Mr. Newbigging, who lives on the opposite side 
 of the road, to accompany me upon these excursions in the 
 capacity of precentor, and to drink a tumbler of rum toddy with 
 me ere I go to bed. I generally breakfast at home ; so that tea 
 and punch have formed the only manufactures which I have yet 
 required of my landlady. 
 
 " I furthermore have an address every Friday night to the
 
 PAROCHIAL LODGINGS. 563 
 
 people of my vicinity in the Calton Lancasterian schoolroom, and 
 a weekly address will be necessary for each of the four weeks 
 in St. John's Church, to the people whom I have gone over in 
 regular visitation. Add to all this the missionary monthly 
 meeting held yesternight, and you will find that, without one 
 particle of study, I am in full occupation. I study only on the 
 Fridays and Saturdays ; and I am happy to say that the stock 
 prepared by me in Kirkcaldy is serving me out abundantly for 
 my pulpit ministrations. 
 
 " In spite of all I have done, I have had many interruptions. 
 Going to Mrs. Wood one day for papers connected with Mr. Bal- 
 lardie's affairs; a meeting of the Sabbath-school Society another; 
 the Presbytery a third ; my Thursday's sermon a fourth ; a call- 
 ing on stamp-offices and banks a fifth ; a meeting of session a 
 sixth ; and lastly, another series of measures to originate for a 
 second fabric, to be raised by a different operation over all the 
 sitters in the parish of St. John's. It is wise to disentangle 
 severe study from severe exertion ; and I have great reason to 
 be thankful, that though I have been labouring strenuously, I 
 find that I am standing out marvellously. 
 
 " On Thursday last I got a letter from Mr. Andrew Thomson, 
 stating that Mr. Dickson was dying, and urging me to declare 
 for the successorship assuring me, at the same time, that if I 
 would do so, I would be sure of obtaining it. T did not choose 
 to answer this immediately, as I thought it possible Mr. George 
 Bell might write. On Saturday, however, I got another letter 
 from Mr. Thomson intimating the death, and still more urgent 
 for an immediate reply than before, as the opposite party were 
 taking measures for a moderate clergyman. I wrote him, there- 
 fore, a declinature. On Tuesday I had a letter from Mr. George 
 Bell, of the same date with Mr. Thomson's that came on Satur- 
 day, and which he by mistake had kept up. It was as urgent 
 as Mr. Thomson's for my acceptance, and stated that he was to 
 be in Glasgow on Thursday. I adhered to the answer I gave 
 Mr. Thomson, and so that matter also rests for the present. 
 
 " My parochial operations are now at their most interesting 
 crisis, and I do not feel that there is any church or congregation 
 in Scotland that should tempt me to abandon them. There is 
 a prodigious excess of reading day-scholars inasmuch that 
 another fabric has been resolved upon, and measures Imve been 
 taken to prosecute a subscription for it among the sitters, and 
 we have already got four patrons of 25 each, viz., Mr. Fal-
 
 564 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 coner, Mr. Eobert Brown, Mr. George Watson, and Mr. David 
 Stow. The subscription is still in its infancy, and promises 
 remarkably well. Mr. W., our excellent friend, is evidently 
 labouring under a vehement desire to be a patron of the second 
 fabric as well as the first ; and this desire is further seen in. an 
 evident struggle with the very modesties which made him recall 
 for a season his 100 subscription to us, and Mr. Collins and I 
 cannot help laughing most ecstatically at this circumstance, 
 while in proportion to the heartiness of the laugh is the hearti- 
 ness of the love that we bear to him. 
 
 " I had a long letter from Captain Gordon forwarded to my 
 lodgings by Mrs. Foljambe, an English lady, who with her 
 family are on a Scottish tour. I got it on Friday night, but I 
 could not see her all Saturday, and did not meet with her till 
 between sermons on Sunday a very pleasant and polite person- 
 age certainly, who offered me l for my schools after she heard 
 sermon. In the morning of Sunday, too, before breakfast, and 
 when I was still in bed, there came in an aged clerical-looking 
 personage, whom I had not before seen, and who asked if he 
 was in the apartment of Dr. Chalmers, to which I replied in the 
 affirmative. He announced himself to be Dr. Bell, founder of 
 the Madras system of education, and he spoke with great ve- 
 hemence and volubility in behalf of his method. In the course 
 of the day I handed him over to Mr. Collins, who you know is 
 the stout antagonist of the new system, and they have had a good 
 tough controversy upon the subject. He spoke himself hoarse 
 to me about it on my walk from the church to the bath ; and on 
 the Monday morning at breakfast I got him and Mr. Collins to 
 have a further engagement thereanent ; I believe he has left us 
 in some degree of dudgeon. I have most gratifying testimonies 
 from Edinburgh and other places of the progress of the system 
 of locality. The work will not, however, get into very wide and 
 abundant circulation till it has attained the size of a volume." 
 
 " August 15, 1820. It is now more than a week since I left 
 off ; and in the animating bustle of a condition th'at I certainly 
 like very much, and in which I trust that God may honour me 
 to be useful, I have suspended many things that I ought to 
 mind. I expect to be done with my visitations in two days, and 
 propose spending next week in light miscellaneous work devoted 
 chiefly to the fabric. 
 
 " We have now got twelve patrons, and have made sure of 
 660. Eight hundred will warrant us to proceed.
 
 THE REV. EDWARD IRVING. 5C5 
 
 " Since writing last, Mr. Bell and I had an interview. He 
 acquiesces ; but assures me, at the same time, that if I would 
 only state my willingness, I would get it without a struggle. 
 This I am quite decided about ; and on the other hand, it gives 
 me pleasure to observe that the people here are laying their ac- 
 count with losing me sometime ; and many of them even now 
 acknowledge the superiority of a professorship to a church. 
 
 " When I look back for the events of the past week, I find 
 myself at a loss how to single out any for your attention. I 
 have been in a state of prodigious activity, and have not suf- 
 fered by it. I have finished the whole round of my agency as 
 to teas ; and have really now very great comfort in the pauper- 
 ism of the parish going on so smoothly and so easily. I fully 
 expect that it is verging fast to annihilation. Yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 His parochial arrangements were now complete, and with al- 
 most superhuman energy Dr. Chalmers guided and impelled 
 every movement of the complicated apparatus. At the com- 
 mencement of his ministry in St. John's he had secured the 
 services of the Rev. Edward Irving, then a licentiate of the 
 Church. There were peculiarities both of thought and utterance 
 which made Mr. Irving unpopular as a preacher. He had given 
 up the prospect of a settlement at home, and had resolved to 
 leave his native land, full of the chivalrous romance of Chris- 
 tianity. His intention was, relying simply upon such resources 
 as he could open up for himself by the way, to go as a mission- 
 ary to Persia, after a preliminary wandering over Europe. To 
 qualify himself for the self-imposed office, he applied himself to 
 the study of the modern languages, and buried himself among 
 his books. " Rejected by the living," as he told a friend,* "I 
 was conversing with the dead." In the midst of bis studies he 
 was interrupted by a note from Dr. Andrew Thomson asking 
 him to preach in St. George's, and telling him that he would 
 have Dr. Chalmers, who was looking out for an assistant, as an 
 auditor. He complied with the request, and preached as he had 
 been desired, without, however, having seen or conversed with 
 Dr. Chalmers. Days and weeks elapsed without any indication 
 of his preaching having made any favourable impression. His 
 books were all packed up and despatched to Annan, while he 
 himself set off on a farewell tour round the west coast of Ayr- 
 
 * The Rev. Mr. Craig of Rothesay.
 
 506 MEMOIRS OF PR. CHALMERS. 
 
 shire to see some friends ere his departure for the East. Loitering 
 on the quay at Greenock he stepped into a steamboat which was 
 to carry him, as he thought, to Stranraer. It was only after 
 her paddles had commenced to move that he discovered that she 
 was bound for the Highlands. He leaped ashore, and treading 
 in no pleasant frame of mind the Greenock quay once more, he 
 resolved that, carry him where she might, he would embark in 
 the next boat that sailed. It so happened that the vessel was 
 bound for Belfast, and having just time to write his father say- 
 ing, that if any letter came for him it should be addressed to 
 Coleraine, he crossed the Channel and wandered for two or three 
 weeks over the north of Ireland, sleeping in the houses of the 
 peasantry, and in all its lights and shadows seeing Irish life. 
 In due time he reached Coleraine, which there awaited him a 
 letter from Annan, containing an enclosure which his father told 
 him he would have copied if he could, but he could not decipher 
 a single word. It was a letter from Dr. Chalmers requesting his 
 immediate presence in Glasgow. He hurried there, arriving on 
 a Saturday, when he found that Dr. Chalmers had gone to Fife- 
 shire. As there was nothing definite in the letter, and as weeks 
 had passed since it was written, Mr. Irving was about to give 
 up the matter altogether when told by a friend that Dr. Chal- 
 mers had just returned. He saw him, and was told that it was 
 his desire that he should be his assistant. "Well, sir," said Mr. 
 Irving, after the unexpected tidings had been communicated to 
 him, " I am most grateful to you, but I must be also somewhat 
 acceptable to your people. I will preach to them if you think fit, 
 and if they bear with my preaching they will be the first people 
 that have borne with it." He did preach, proved acceptable, 
 and for the two years which followed the busiest perhaps in 
 all his busy life Dr. Chalmers was refreshed and sustained by 
 the congenial fellowship and effective co-operation of a like- 
 minded and noble-hearted associate. There were three public 
 services every Sabbath in St. John's Church, and one in a school- 
 house situated in the eastern end of the parish, which commenced 
 at the same time with the forenoon service in the church. These 
 four services were shared equally between Dr. Chalmers and his 
 assistant, the forenoon and evening service in the church on each 
 alternate Sabbath devolving upon the one, the service in the 
 school-house and the afternoon service in the church devolving 
 upon the other. Dr. Chalmers commenced a series of lectures 
 upon the Epistle to the Eomans, and his assistant a series of
 
 WEEK-DAY CONGREGATIONS. 5C7 
 
 lectures upon the Gospel of St. Luke. The same lecture which 
 was delivered by each in the forenoon in the church was re- 
 delivered, but not on the same day, to the evening congregation, 
 the series as preached in the forenoon being generally two or three 
 lectures in advance of the series as delivered in the evening. It 
 was particularly desired that the evening congregation should 
 only consist of parishioners and those of the poorer classes whom 
 the high seat-rents charged upon the general or forenoon con- 
 gregation served to exclude. The labours of household visitation 
 were also shared between Dr. Chalmers and his assistant. In 
 this department Mr. Irving was pre-eminently effective. In 
 many a rude encounter the infidel radicalism of the parish bent 
 and bowed before him. His commanding presence, his manly 
 bearing, his ingenuous honesty, his vigorous intellect, and above 
 all, his tender and most generous sympathies melted the hearts 
 of the people under him, and second only to that which his more 
 illustrious colleague possessed was the parochial influence which, 
 after a few months' visitation, he gained and most fruitfully ex- 
 ercised. His own round among the families of the parish Dr. 
 Chalmers completed within two years. The general manner of 
 these visits has already been described. Much greater pains, 
 however, were now taken both by himself and the other parochial 
 agents to secure a large attendance at the evening addresses, by 
 which these forenoon visitations were followed up. The success 
 justified the effort. Multitudes who otherwise would never have 
 had the overtures of Divine mercy addressed to them were 
 brought within the sound of the preacher's voice. These local 
 week-day undress congregations assembled in a cotton-mill, or 
 the workshop of a mechanic, or the kitchen of some kindly ac- 
 commodating neighbour, with their picturesque exhibition of 
 greasy jackets and unwashed countenances, and hands all soiled 
 and fresh from labour turning up the pages of unused Bibles, 
 had a special charm for Dr. Chalmers ; and all alive to the 
 peculiar interest and urgency of such opportunities, he stirred 
 up every faculty that was in him while he urged upon the con- 
 sciences and the hearts of such auditors the high claims of the 
 Christian salvation. His chosen and beloved friend Mr. Collins 
 who, after such a life of honourable service in the cause of 
 Christ as few laymen among us have ever lived, in that retire- 
 ment into which feeble health has forced him* still cherishes with 
 unabated zeal those interests which in bygone years he toiled so 
 
 * Mr. Collins is now no more. He departed this life on the 2d of January 1853.
 
 568 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 much to further often accompanied Dr. Chalmers to these 
 evening meetings ; and we have his reiterated and emphatic 
 testimony, that no bursts of that oratory which rolled over ad- 
 miring thousands in the Tron Church or in St. John's, ever 
 equalled, in all the highest qualities of eloquence, many of those 
 premeditated but unwritten addresses, in which, free from all 
 restraint, and intent upon the one object of winning souls to the 
 Saviour, that heart which glowed with such intense desires for the 
 present and eternal welfare of the working classes, unbosomed 
 in the midst of them all the fulness of its Christian sympathies. 
 
 His own peculiar province of preaching and visiting formed 
 but a section of that wide domain over which the labours of Dr. 
 Chalmers at this period extended. Single-handed, or even with 
 such zealous aid as Mr. Irving could supply, but little compara- 
 tively could be done towards bringing the young and old of a 
 population of 10,000 under effectual Christian training. He 
 threw himself, therefore, upon the help of the laity, and in no 
 region of effort does his power appear to us to have been rarer 
 or more unrivalled than in his gathering around him, and 
 stimulating to such noble deeds of Christian philanthropy so 
 large a number of the intelligent and influential merchants of 
 Glasgow. His genius threw a spell over many, and his brilliant 
 fame, which now filled the empire, would have made them proud 
 and happy to be associated with him. And in that intense and 
 impulsive enthusiasm with which he embarked on any enter- 
 prise, there was much that was contagious. But his power over 
 his agency had deeper and more enduring roots. Not a few of 
 those who now became his fellow-workers owed to his ministry 
 their first serious impressions of religion. And all, as in concert 
 with him they prosecuted their labours of Christian love, came 
 under the imperial sway of that guileless simplicity, that genial 
 kindliness, that homebred sagacity, that playful humour, that 
 generous and grateful benevolence which broke out at every 
 stage of his intercourse with them, and which bound them to 
 him and to the cause in which he had enlisted them by links of 
 attachment a thousand times stronger than mere genius or fame 
 has ever forged. 
 
 The parish of St. John's was divided into twenty-five districts, 
 called proportions, each embracing from sixty to one hundred 
 families. Reviving the ancient order of deacons, which in 
 Scottish Presbyterian practice had long fallen into disuse, Dr. 
 Chalmers appointed over each of these districts an elder and a
 
 THE ST. JOHN'S AGENCY. 569 
 
 deacon ; the spiritual interests of his proportion being committed 
 to the former, and its temporal interests to the latter. The 
 whole management of the pauperism of the parish, the details 
 of which are reserved as the subject of a separate chapter, was 
 intrusted to the deacons. In each district one or more Sabbath- 
 schools were instituted ; male and female teachers, to the num- 
 ber of between forty and fifty, being engaged in this work, while 
 a few classes were opened for the adult population. There were 
 the ordinary meetings of the kirk-session, there were monthly 
 meetings of the deacons, monthly meetings of the Sabbath-school 
 teachers, monthly meetings in the church for missionary purposes, 
 and frequent meetings of the Educational Association ; all of 
 these Dr. Chalmers regularly and punctually attended, or, if at 
 any time necessarily absent, such excuse as the following was 
 sent by him : " I entreat that the want of my presence may 
 have no weight in injuring the spirit and energy of your pro- 
 ceedings, and let the worth of the cause at all times carry it 
 over the want of a thing so worthless as a mere human instru- 
 ment." When present at these meetings of the different sections 
 of his agency, he was himself the soul and spirit of almost every 
 movement, but there was no desire to dictate, no assumption of 
 superiority. Gifted as he was with the happy art of placing all 
 around him at perfect ease, entire liberty of discussion was suf- 
 fered, yet the liberty never was abused. The hint or suggestion 
 of the humblest or youngest member received the fullest and 
 kindest consideration, and, if adopted, to mark the obligation 
 thus conferred, it was generally called by the name of its pro- 
 poser. " Our meetings," says one of his elders,* looking back 
 over thirty years, " were very delightful. I never saw any set 
 of men who were so animated by one spirit, and whose zeal was 
 so uniformly sustained. The Doctor was the very life of the 
 whole, and every one felt himself, as led on by him, committed 
 to use his whole strength in the cause of that good God who had 
 in His mercy sent us such a leader." It was only in greater 
 matters, or when general principles were concerned, that Dr. 
 Chalmers personally interfered. The minor details were in- 
 trusted to the agents themselves, the confidence reposed in 
 them quickening and animating their zeal. But while much 
 was committed into their hands, the most incessant vigilance 
 was exercised over the manner in which every duty was dis- 
 charged. Eegular reports from all quarters were constantly 
 
 * James Thomson, Esq.
 
 570 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 coming in, and messages and requests and suggestions were as 
 constantly being issued. Had "his agents but preserved all the 
 brief notes of a line or two which they received from Dr. Chal- 
 mers, it would be seen what an incessant shower of these little 
 billets, not one of which was despatched on a fruitless errand, 
 he was constantly discharging. Intercourse at meetings or 
 by letter was not enough ; something closer and more familiar 
 was required to bind all lovingly together. Every Monday 
 morning in his own house there was an agency breakfast, to 
 which a general invitation was issued, and at which from six 
 to eight of his elders, deacons, or Sabbath-school teachers, were 
 generally present. More special invitations to tea were also 
 given, and that with such frequency, that there was scarcely 
 an agent who' was not asked once to the house within each six 
 weeks. 
 
 Over the whole of this intercourse the charm of an open- 
 hearted cordiality and the light of a cheerful mirthfulness were 
 thrown. Entering the schoolroom in Macfarlane Street one 
 Monday forenoon, he said to Mr. Aitken, " My family, you are 
 aware, are now at Kirkcaldy, and as I wish to have an hour's 
 easy chat with you and Mr. M'Gregor, will you just come up 
 at three o'clock and have a steak with Mr. Irving and myself 
 in the vestry?" In company with Mr. Irving he called as the 
 schools were dismissing, and the two ministers and the two 
 teachers proceeded to the vestry. The table was set, and John 
 Graham, the beadle, officiated as waiter. Tales of the school 
 and out of the school followed close upon each other. " I am 
 afraid," said Dr. Chalmers to one of the teachers, "that your 
 labour is not of the right sort too exhausting." Mr. Aitken 
 mentioned that Dr. Bell from India had called the previous day 
 between sermons, desiring to see the classroom. " I had a call 
 from him," said Dr. Chalmers, " this morning. I was lying 
 awake in my old woman's room, cogitating whether I should 
 get up or not, when I heard a heavy step in the kitchen, and the 
 door opening, and the speaker entering, a rough voice exclaimed, 
 ' Can this be the chamber of the great Dr. Chalmers?'" "And 
 what did you say ?" inquired Mr. Irving, who enjoyed exceed- 
 ingly the ridiculousness of the question. With a quiet smile 
 and inimitable archness, accompanied by frequent shutting of 
 his eyelids, " I even told him," said Dr. Chalmers, " that it was, 
 and I invited him to stay and breakfast with me. I knew that 
 Mr. Collins was to be out with a proof, and was glad to think
 
 HIS ENJOYMENT OF MUSIC. 571 
 
 that the discussion between the merits of his school system and 
 the Scottish, which I knew was soon to follow, would be sup- 
 ported by one who, I suspected, was more than a match for 
 him." "Well," said Mr. Irving, "and how did it turn up?" 
 " Mr. Collins arrived as I expected, and to it they set tooth and 
 nail." " And the result ? " " Collins was too many for him." 
 The hour filled up with such pleasant talk, the two teachers 
 returned to their schoolrooms, and the two ministers to their 
 rounds among the parishioners. 
 
 At an agency tea-party, Mr. Irving, who had just returned 
 from a tour in Ireland, related some amusing particulars of his 
 perambulations through the liberties of Dublin. " I entered," 
 he said, " a miserable cabin, in which an old woman was smok- 
 ing a pipe by the fire. Seeing three coarse portraits on the 
 wall, I asked her who they were ? ' Sure that's St. Paul on the 
 right.' And this? 'An' sure, isn't that St. Peter?' And he 
 in the centre ? ' And don't you know Pat Donnelly, the bruiser? 
 sure everybody knows him.' " Mr. Irving proceeded to tell 
 of his going to the Roman Catholic chapel in Dublin to see high 
 mass performed, a ceremony which he had never witnessed. To 
 escape observation, he ensconced himself behind a pillar, where 
 he stood. Every now and then, however, an old woman behind 
 him pulled him by the skirts, saying, " Sure you'll go down on 
 your knees." " And did you go down ? " said one of the St. 
 John's elders. " I went down at last, both to please the old wo- 
 man, and to prevent the tails of my coat being torn off by the 
 tugs she was constantly giving." The question as to whether 
 he should have done this or not was raised and keenly discussed. 
 Dr. Chalmers said nothing. The discussion closed, and con- 
 versation took another turn, still, however, Dr. Chalmers stood 
 in dreamy abstraction. He was evidently still busy trying to 
 settle the qucestio vexata satisfactorily to his own mind ; nor 
 was it till some practical question had to be determined that he 
 came out of his abstraction. 
 
 Such instances of absence of mind would frequently occur. 
 " Three members of session," says Mr. Aitken, " being also 
 patrons of the school, called on me, along with the Doctor, to 
 perfect a certain arrangement regarding my adult class. The 
 Doctor had introduced the subject when the drums in the adjoin- 
 ing barracks struck up the usual tattoo, and continued playing 
 military airs. The discussion was maintained by the other 
 gentlemen, but the Doctor, I saw, was completely engrossed by
 
 572 , MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the music. They came to a decision during his mental absence, 
 and waited his hearing. That was only obtained when the 
 drums stopped. ' Well, gentlemen,' he then said, ' what do you 
 propose?' 'The question is settled, Doctor.' .'Indeed! then 
 I suppose we may go.' It had been often disputed whether the 
 Doctor had any tune. This I cannot determine, but am certain 
 he had his musical enjoyment as well as others of this the 
 above is one proof, his choice of Scarborough * and Devizes as 
 his favourite tunes with all precentors is another." 
 
 Mr. Thomson and Mr. Heggie, an elder and a deacon, went out 
 one evening to Kensington Place, where Dr. Chalmers was living, 
 to speak to him about some parish matters. They found him 
 on the floor busy playing at bowls with his children. " Come 
 away, Mr. Heggie," he exclaimed when they entered, without 
 changing however his position, " you can tell us how this game 
 ought to be played." Elder and deacon, minister and children, 
 were soon all busy at the game together. " This is not the 
 way," said Mr. Thomson, " we used to play bowls in Galloway." 
 " Come along, then," said Dr. Chalmers, " let us see what the 
 
 * Scarborough was the chief favourite, scarcely a Sabbath passing in which the preesntor 
 did not get specific instructions to close the services by singing it ; and they were once 
 opened by it in St. John's in rather a singular manner. A half-witted woman, who was a 
 most faithful attendant on Dr. Chalmers's ministry, seized the opportunity, and as soon as 
 the first line of the psalm had been given out from the pulpit, struck up the favourite tune. 
 The precentor had no time given to him to interfere, and BO well and so powerfully was his 
 office performed for him that he wisely let her singing stand for his own, and struck in at the 
 second line of the psalm. This woman's extreme love for the ministry, turned at last into an 
 extreme love for the person, of Dr. Chalmers, a love which became with her an absorbing 
 passion. She firmly believed it to be returned. " Mrs. Chalmers folk said was his wife, but 
 she kent better, and so did the Doctor himsel'." At first she had been perfectly harmless, 
 and had been freely admitted to the church, but now persecuted by all kinds of strange 
 attentions from her, and alarmed as to what her singular passion for him might tempt her to 
 do. Dr. Chalmers was seized with a nervous terror of her. One Sabbath, when the church 
 was very crowded, she had got up to the top step of the pulpit stair. Dr. Chalmers entered 
 the pulpit without noticing her, but on turning round, there she was by his side. " John," 
 said he to the beadle, shrinking back to the furthest side of the pulpit in extreme terror 
 "John, I must be delivered conclusively from that woman." She was now forbi4 access to 
 the church, as the very sight of her disturbed him. Nevertheless, she faithfully attended in 
 Hacfarlane Street, and when she could not get near to him she would stand wiping with her 
 handkerchief the froth off the mouth of the horse which had carried him to church. At 
 one time she was seized with the dread that he did not get enough to eat at home. Coming 
 upon him once unexpectedly at the corner of a street, " Come, Doctor, do come, and get a 
 plate of parritch ; I hae fine meal the noo." As he would not take the food that she 
 thought so necessary at her house, she resolved to carry it to his own. One evening, at 
 Kensington Place, the servant, on opening the door, was surprised by a large round bundle, 
 covered with a red handkerchief, being thrown into the lobby. On unwrapping it, it was 
 found to contain oat cakes and sheep's trotters, for the special sustentation of the minister. 
 On his return to Glasgow a year after going to St. Andrews, he entered the house of one of 
 his elders in great agitation; "Mr. Thomson," he said, " that daft woman is in pursuit of 
 me. Can you not carry me to my brother's by some way that she cannot track our path ?" 
 Mr. Thomson undertook and executed the commission ; but they had not been long gone 
 when she appeared at the door with a large jug of curds and cream, nor would she be satis- 
 fied till Mrs. Thomson had taken her through all the rooms of the house to convince her 
 that Dr. Chalmers was not there.
 
 A GAME AT BOWLS. 573 
 
 Galloway plan is." And to it they set again with keener relish 
 than ever, till Mrs. Chalmers at last said, " What a fine para- 
 graph it will make for the Chronicle to-morrow, that Dr. Chal- 
 mers, and one of his elders, and one of his deacons, were seen 
 last night playing for a whole hour at marbles ! " " Well, 
 really," said Dr. Chalmers, starting up, "it is too bad in us, 
 gentlemen, we must stop." Two hours of useful and instructive 
 conversation followed, not made in any way the less so by the 
 manner in which they were ushered in. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers often spoke of " the prosperous management of 
 human nature" as one of the noblest and most delightful exer- 
 cises of human power, and most pleasantly and most prosperously 
 was such management now carried on by himself, with admir- 
 able skill, which never once, however, bordered upon artifice, 
 the singleness and simplicity of the aim being always as conspi- 
 cuous as the wise adjustment of the means -the harmlessness of 
 the dove being blended 'with the wisdom of the serpent. Nor 
 was it forgotten that while many plans were formed, and many 
 efforts made, and many zealous agents embarked in their pro- 
 secution, something else and something higher was needed ere 
 any spiritual fruit was borne. At the first setting apart his 
 elders to their office in St. John's, Dr. Chalmers thus addressed 
 them : 
 
 " The. whole habit and tendency of my thoughts on the sub- 
 ject of Christian usefulness incline me to attach a far higher 
 importance to your relationship with the parish of St. John's 
 than to your relationship with the church, and I do honestly 
 believe, that never till the rights of parishes come to be better 
 respected, never till the attention of ministers and elders be 
 more restricted to the population of a given local territory, 
 never till God put it into the hearts of men to go forth among 
 our heathen at home with the same zeal and enthusiasm which 
 are expected of missionaries who go abroad, will there be any- 
 thing like a revival of religion throughout the mass of our city 
 families, or a reclaiming of them from those sad habits of alien- 
 ation from God and from goodness into which the vast majority 
 of them have fallen. 
 
 " There is one circumstance of encouragement which you will 
 soon, in the course of your movements through the districts that 
 are assigned to you, be enabled to verify by your own experience. 
 All the householders, with scarcely one exception, and whatever
 
 574 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 be their character in respect of Christianity, will welcome you 
 with the utmost cordiality and courteousness. There is some- 
 thing in the very presence of one human being when he comes 
 with the feelings and the desires of friendship, which serves to 
 conciliate and to subdue another human being. Bear an honest 
 regard to the people, and the people will, in spite of themselves, 
 bear you an honest regard back again. This is what may be 
 called an open door for you in the first instance, and the effect 
 of frequent intercourse between the higher and lower orders of 
 life in tranquillizing the general spirit of a community, and 
 softening their malignant antipathies which else might ferment 
 and fester and break out into open violence, and consolidating 
 something like a system of brotherhood through a mighty ag- 
 gregate of human beings this, I say, would confer a civil 
 blessing on the establishment of an eldership that is altogether 
 incalculable. 
 
 " But it must be remarked, on the other hand, that so wide 
 and universal a welcome from the families may lead, at the out- 
 set, to a most delusive anticipation. A civil comes more easily 
 and readily than a Christian effect. You are not to infer, be- 
 cause the good-will of the people can be so immediately carried, 
 that the conversion of the people will therefore speedily follow 
 in its train. There is much of what is constitutionally attractive 
 among men distinct and apart from any religious tendencies ; 
 and there is none who sets himself in good earnest to the work- 
 ing of a Christian effect, that will not soon feel himself engaged 
 in a business where aids and instruments are necessary that are 
 altogether superhuman. You will, in particular, be struck with 
 the obstinate and determinate stand which the manhood of the 
 population will make to all your proofs and all your earnestness. 
 In sad proof of the progressive hardening of conscience will it- 
 be seen how arduous if not how impossible it is, with all the 
 arts and resources of Christian philanthropy, to make any sensi- 
 ble advances on those who have been suffered to ascend from 
 boyhood without the Word and without the ordinances. 
 
 " It is this which has shut up so many adventurers on the 
 field of Christian usefulness, both at home and abroad, to the 
 melancholy conclusion, that the grown-up generation are to be 
 given up in despair, and that the hope of brighter and better 
 days all lies with the capabilities of the young ; and I certainly 
 do recommend, among the foremost objects of your attention, 
 the encouragement of those religious schools which may be
 
 ADDRESS TO THE ELDERSHIP. 575 
 
 situated within the limits of your respective localities, and for 
 the discouragements which you will experience in the obstinacy 
 and immovableness of many parents, you will often meet with 
 a cheering compensation in the promise and docility of their 
 children. 
 
 " At the same time, I would never give up any human being 
 in despair. Forget not the affirmation of the missionary Elliot, 
 that it was in the power of pains and of prayers to do anything. 
 We are apt to confide in the efficacy and wisdom of our own 
 arrangements to set up a framework of skilful contrivance, and 
 think that so goodly an apparatus will surely be productive of 
 something to please ourselves with parochial constitutions, and 
 be quite sanguine that on the strength of elderships and deacon- 
 ships and a machinery of schools and agents and moralizing pro- 
 cesses, some great and immediate effect is to follow. But we may 
 just as well think that a system of aqueducts will irrigate and fer- 
 tilize the country without rain, as think that any human economy 
 will Christianize a parish without the living water of the Spirit 
 without the dew of heaven descending upon the human ad- 
 ministrators, and following them in their various movements 
 through the houses and families under their superintendence. 
 Still it is right to have a parochial constitution, just as it is 
 right to have aqueducts. But the supply of the essential influ- 
 ence cometh from above. God will put to shame the proud 
 confidence of man in the efficacy of his own wisdom, and He 
 will have all the glory of all the spiritual good that is done in 
 the world, and your piety will therefore work a tenfold mightier 
 effect than your talents in the cause you have undertaken ; and 
 your pains without your prayers will positively do nothing in 
 this way, though it must be confessed that prayers without pains 
 are just as unproductive, and that because they must be such 
 prayers of insincerity as cannot rise with acceptance to heaven. 
 It is the union of both which best promises au apostolical effect 
 to your truly apostolical office ; and with these few simple re- 
 marks do I commend you to Him who alone can bless you in 
 this laudable undertaking, and give comfort and efficacy to the 
 various duties that are involved with it."
 
 576 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 CHAPTEK XXX. 
 
 THE ST. JOHN'S EXPERIMENT OF PAUPER MANAGEMENT CONDITIONS UNDER 
 
 WHICH IT WAS UNDERTAKEN DIRECTIONS TO DEACONS MODE OF CONDUCT- 
 ING IT ILLUSTRATIVE INSTANCES THE RESULTS ALLEGED EXPLANATIONS 
 
 OF ITS SUCCESS TESTIMONY OF DR. MACFARLANE REPORT BY MR. TUFNELL 
 
 REASONS OF ITS RELINQUISHMENT. 
 
 " I THINK it right to state," said Dr. Chalmers,* " that my 
 great inducement to the acceptance of the parish of St. John's 
 was my hope thereby to obtain a separate and independent man- 
 agement of the poor, which I felt it extremely difficult to obtain 
 in my former parish from the way in which we were dovetailed 
 and implicated with a number of distinct bodies." The desired 
 extrication being once fairly effected, he proposed to relinquish 
 for the future all claim upon the fund raised by assessment, and 
 to conduct a population of 10,000, the cost of whose pauperism 
 averaged 1400 annually, into the condition of an unassessed 
 country parish, and to provide for all its indigence out of the 
 fund raised by voluntary contributions at the church-doors. The 
 experiment was almost universally regarded as chimerical ; but 
 as severe censures had been passed by its proposer on the exist- 
 ing mode of pauper management, and as sanguine expectations 
 were expressed by him as to the result, there was a general 
 desire in all the public bodies that full scope and opportunity 
 for working it should be afforded. The magistrates of the city 
 consented that the entire and exclusive control of the church- 
 door collections in St. John's should be vested in the kirk-session 
 of that parish. The General Session relinquished all claim to 
 interfere, while the Town Hospital readily acquiesced in the pro- 
 posal submitted to it by Dr. Chalmers. Its own pensioners, out- 
 door and in-door, connected with the parish of St. John's, the 
 Town Hospital was to continue to maintain, permitting the 
 kirk-session of that parish to retain all its own funds, on condi- 
 tion that it took up all the new cases that should occur ; that it 
 bore the charge of all the existing cases of sessional poor ; and 
 
 * In evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1830. See Works, vol. 
 xvi. p. 314.
 
 DIRECTIONS TO THE DEACONS. 577 
 
 that henceforth neither from the one class nor from the other 
 should a single pauper be sent to the Town Hospital, or become 
 chargeable on the general assessment for the city. The annual 
 outlay upon the sessional poor whose claim to parochial relief 
 had already been admitted, was 225. The yearly collections 
 at the church-doors amounted to 400 received at the forenoon 
 and afternoon services, and 80 at the evening service. With a 
 balance therefore of 255 per annum, all new cases were to be 
 permanently provided for, and all the old cases, however aggra- 
 vated, were to be prevented from passing into the Town Hospital. 
 A generation of paupers is so short-lived that the obvious result 
 of this arrangement would have been that in the course of a 
 few years what had previously cost 1400 annually, would be 
 intrusted to a body of management who had only 480 annu- 
 ally at its disposal. The reduction however of pauper expendi- 
 ture from the larger of these sums to the smaller, was far short 
 of the extraordinary result which was actually accomplished. 
 
 The new applications for relief were committed for investiga- 
 tion to the deacons. Confident that a comparatively small sum 
 would be adequate, and jealous of mismanagement should a 
 larger sum be allotted for the purpose, Dr. Chalmers gave into 
 their hands the evening collection alone, the available surplus 
 of the two day-collections being reserved for other parochial 
 purposes. All depended on the watchful vigilance of those who, 
 stationed at the out-posts, opened or closed the entry which led 
 from poverty to pauperism. The instructions issued for their 
 guidance were few but compendious. " When one applies for 
 admittance through his deacon upon our funds, the first thing to 
 be inquired into is, if there be any kind of work that he can 
 yet do so as either to keep him altogether off, or as to make a 
 partial allowance serve for his necessities ; the second, what his 
 relatives and friends are willing to do for him; the third, 
 whether he is a hearer in any dissenting place of worship, and 
 whether its session will contribute to his relief. And if after 
 these previous inquiries it be found that further relief is neces- 
 sary, then there must be a strict ascertainment of his term of 
 residence in Glasgow, and whether he be yet on the funds of 
 the Town Hospital, or is obtaining relief from any other parish. 
 If, upon all these points being ascertained, the deacon of the 
 proportion where he resides still conceives him an object for our 
 assistance, he will inquire whether a small temporary aid will 
 meet the occasion, and state this to the first ordinary meeting. 
 
 VOL. t. 2 o
 
 578 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 But if instead of this he conceives him a fit subject for a regular 
 allowance, he will receive the assistance of another deacon to 
 complete and confirm his inquiries by the next ordinary meeting 
 thereafter, at which time the applicant, if they still think him a 
 fit object, is brought before us, and received upon the fund at 
 such a rate of allowance as upon all the circumstances of the case 
 the meeting of deacons shall judge proper. Of course pending 
 these examinations the deacon is empowered to grant the same 
 sort of discretionary aid that is customary in other parishes." 
 
 To a deacon just entering upon office Dr. Chalmers wrote,* 
 " I had three applications from your district yesterday, each of 
 which will afford a distinct opportunity for introducing you into 
 a habit by the perfecting of which what you now feel to be a 
 laborious business will soon be felt a very easy, manageable, and 
 at the same time interesting task. There is a distinction to be 
 observed between one sort of application and another. The first 
 is for relief grounded on age or bodily infirmity, in virtue of 
 which those applying are not able to work ; this furnishes the 
 cases for ordinary pauperism. The second is for relief granted 
 on the want of work or defect in wages ; this it is not under- 
 stood that by the law of Scotland we are obliged to meet or to 
 provide for, and therefore ought never to be so met out of the 
 ordinary funds. Your present applications are all of the second 
 order, and the likelihood is that you will be able to meet them 
 by work alone, or if this will not suffice, by a small temporary 
 donation, which will be paid by Mr. Brown, our treasurer, when 
 you render your account to him. In prosecuting the second 
 sort of applications, you have to ascertain, in the first instance, 
 whether the applicants have resided three years in Glasgow ; 
 and secondly, what are the profits coming into the family from 
 their various sources and employments. Now, what I would 
 earnestly recommend to you, is a thorough examination of these 
 matters in the three present instances, were it for nothing but 
 your own improvement in a business in which you will soon 
 acquire an expertness that will give a facility and pleasure to all 
 your future operations. Be kind and courteous to the people, 
 while firm in your investigations about them ; and just in pro- 
 portion to the care with which you investigate will be the rarity 
 of the applications that are made to you. The evidence for resi- 
 dence is had either by the receipts of rents from landlords, or 
 by the oral testimony whether of these landlords or of creditable 
 
 * Letter addressed to Campbell Nasmytb, Esq., dated December 2, 1819.
 
 SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS. 579 
 
 neighbours ; the evidence for income, by inquiring at the people 
 who furnish them with work. It may serve you as a sort of 
 criterion of the adequacy of the means if you take along with 
 you the fact that many are now working on the Green for 6s. 
 a week, and are struggling with this as a temporary expedient 
 for wearing through with their families far from being a com- 
 fortable provision, we admit ; but in times like the present, the 
 burden is not all transferred from the poor to the rich, but is 
 shared between them : it should be a compromise between the 
 endurance of the one and the liberality of the other. NJ3. If 
 drunkenness be a habit with the applicants, this in itself is an 
 evidence of means, and the most firm discouragement should be 
 put upon every application in these circumstances. Many appli- 
 cations will end in your refusal of them in the first instance, 
 because, till they have had experience of your vigilance, the 
 most undeserving are very apt to obtrude themselves ; but even 
 with them show good-will, maintain calmness, take every way 
 of promoting the interest of their families, and gain, if possible, 
 their confidence and regard by your friendly advice and the cor- 
 dial interest that you take in all that belongs to them. It is a 
 mighty element in all your inquiries, the character of the appli- 
 cant, and hence the good of a growing familiarity with your 
 district." 
 
 Furnished with the general instructions, and occasionally 
 guided and stimulated by such private letters of advice as the 
 one now given, the deacons of St. John's commenced their in- 
 teresting work. That work was at first somewhat delicate and 
 difficult. A few hours could carry each through the territory 
 allotted to him, and make him familiar with the limited number 
 of families which it contained, but the applications for relief 
 were numerous. The first imagination of the people was, that 
 as a new and better system had been instituted under Dr. Chal- 
 mers, liberal allowances were to be more freely and generously 
 distributed. It was not long till this misconception was recti- 
 fied, nor was it difficult to carry the whole mind and feeling of 
 the general community in favour of the methods and objects 
 which these zealous agents set themselves to explain, to recom- 
 mend, and to accomplish. The scrutiny to which each case was 
 subjected was patiently, minutely, and most searchingly con- 
 ducted. It was soon perceived that the very last thing which a 
 deacon would allow was that any family in the parish should 
 sink into the degraded condition of being chargeable on the
 
 580 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 parish funds. The drunken were told to give up their drunken- 
 ness, and that until they did so their case would not even be 
 considered ; the idle were told to set instantly to work, and if 
 they complained that work could not be gotten, by kindly appli- 
 cations to employers they were helped to obtain it ; the im- 
 provident were warned, that if, with such sources of income 
 as they had, or might have, they chose to squander and bring 
 themselves to want, they must just bear the misery of their own 
 procuring. A vast number of the primary applications melted 
 into nothing under the pressure of a searching investigation. 
 Deceptions of all kinds were attempted, and until experience had 
 quickened incredulity, and made detection easier, were frequently 
 successful. " In acting," says Mr. Kettle, " as a substitute for 
 a friend, who had gone to the coast, I repeatedly assisted a poor 
 woman from his district who had four children (one in her arms), 
 and whose husband was in the Infirmary. On detecting her, 
 and putting her into the hands of the police, it turned out that 
 her husband was an industrious weaver, she a drunken slut, and 
 their domicile nearly a mile out of the parish. A brother deacon 
 had a case still more flagrant. A poor woman in tears applied 
 to him to bury a grown-up daughter who had died that day. He 
 refused, notwithstanding much importunity and reference to 
 another deacon, in whose district she had lately been, until he 
 made a personal visit. This he did, but could find no such per- 
 son. She applied next day, and on sending a young man with 
 her, she disappeared in a crowd by the way. In stating the 
 matter to her former deacon, he wondered if her husband, whom 
 he had been at the expense of burying some six months before, 
 was really dead. The two went in quest of the family, and 
 found the buried husband and the dead daughter performing all 
 the usual functions of life. I need hardly say that the woman 
 was a drunkard. Such cases of deception were, however, rare, 
 as the surveillance in general was very complete." 
 
 When the difficulties and distress of the applicants were 
 patent and indubitable, every argument was employed and every 
 facility was afforded to induce them to relieve themselves by 
 their own efforts and their own industry. The father and mother 
 of a family composed of six children both died : three of the 
 children were earning wages, three were unable to work. The 
 three elder applied to have the three younger admitted to the 
 Town Hospital. They were remonstrated with ; the evil of 
 breaking up the family the loss to the younger children the
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE INSTANCES. 581 
 
 disgrace that would be incurred by consigning them to pauperism, 
 and the small additional sum required to keep them all together, 
 were pointed out. The offer was made of a small quarterly 
 allowance if they would continue together. They yielded to 
 a suggestion wisely, kindly, but firmly urged. The quarterly 
 allowance was only twice required. The Town Hospital was 
 saved a sum fifty times greater than was expended upon the 
 children at home, and that home was made fifty times happier 
 and more blessed. "Who is there," says Dr. Chalmers, after 
 recording an incident of which he made frequent use, " that does 
 not applaud the advice that was given, and rejoice in the ulti- 
 mate effect of it? We could have no sympathy either with the 
 heart or understanding of him who could censure such a style 
 of proceeding ; and our conceptions lie in an inverse order from 
 his altogether of the good and the better and the best in the 
 treatment of human nature." 
 
 But the applicants were often absolutely helpless. They 
 might have near relations, however, able to assist, or their 
 neighbours, touched by the sympathies which former acquaint- 
 ance or felt proximity to distress beget, might be willing to aid. 
 In one district two young families were deserted by their 
 parents. Had the children been taken at once upon the paro- 
 chial funds, the unnatural purpose of the parents would have 
 been promoted, and the parochial authorities would have become 
 patrons of one of the worst of crimes. The families were left to 
 lie helplessly on the hands of the neighbourhood, the deacon 
 meanwhile making every endeavour to detect the fugitives. 
 One of the parents was discovered and brought back ; the other, 
 finding his object frustrated, voluntarily returned. An old and 
 altogether helpless man sought parish aid. It was ascertained 
 that he had very near relatives living in affluence, to whom his 
 circumstances were represented, and into whose unwilling hands, 
 compelled to do their proper work, he was summarily committed. 
 Typhus fever made its deadly inroads into a weaver's family, 
 who, though he had sixpence a day as a pensioner, was reduced 
 to obvious and extreme distress. The case was reported to Dr. 
 Chalmers, but no movement towards any sessional relief was 
 made ; entire confidence was cherished in the kind offices of the 
 immediate neighbourhood. A cry, however,' of neglect was 
 raised ; an actual investigation of what the man had received 
 during the period of his distress was undertaken, and it was 
 found that ten times more than any legal fund would have
 
 582 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 allowed him had been supplied willingly and -without any sacri- 
 fice whatever to the offerers. A mother and daughter, sole 
 occupiers of a single room, were both afflicted with cancer, for 
 which the one had to iindergo an operation ; the other was in- 
 curable. Nothing would have been easier than to have brought 
 the liberalities of the rich to bear upon such a case ; but this 
 was rendered unnecessary by the willing contributions of food 
 and service and cordials of those living around this habitation of 
 distress. " Were it right," asks Dr. Chalmers, " that any legal 
 charity whatever should arrest a process so beautiful?" "I 
 never, during my whole experience in Glasgow, knew a single 
 instance of distress which was not followed up by the most 
 timely forthgoings of aid and of sympathy from the neighbours : 
 I could state a number of instances to that effect. I remember 
 going into one of the deepest and most wretched recesses in 
 all Glasgow, where a very appalling case of distress met my 
 observation that of a widow, whose two grown-up children 
 had died within a day or two of each other. I remember dis- 
 tinctly seeing both their corpses on the same table : it was in 
 my own parish. I was quite sure that such a case could not 
 escape the observations of neighbours. I always liked to see what 
 amount of kindness came spontaneously forth upon such occa- 
 sions, and I was very much gratified to learn a few days after, 
 that the immediate neighbours occupying that little alley or 
 court laid together their little contributions, and got her com- 
 pletely over her Martinmas difficulties. I never found it other- 
 wise, though I have often distinctly observed, that whenever 
 there was ostensible relief obtruded upon the eyes of the popu- 
 lation, they did feel themselves discharged from a responsibility 
 for each other's wants, and released from the duty of being one 
 another's keepers ; and this particular case of distress met the 
 observation of the Female Society at Glasgow, which Society 
 bears upon the general population, and with a revenue of some 
 hundreds a year, from which it can afford very little in each in- 
 dividual instance, besides the impossibility of having that minute 
 and thorough acquaintance with the cases that obtains under a 
 local management. 1 remember having heard that a lady, an 
 agent of that Society, went up stairs to relieve this widow, and 
 gave all that the Female Society empowered her to give, which 
 was just five shillings. The people observing this movement felt 
 that the poor woman was in sufficient hands, and that they were 
 now discharged from all further responsibility ; so that the open-
 
 THE RESULTS. 583 
 
 ing up of this ostensible source of relief closed up far more 
 effectual sources that I am sure would never have failed her." 
 
 By patient inquiries imposture was thus detected, and the 
 deserving and the undeserving poor were carefully distinguished 
 from each other. By kindly counsel and temporary aid habits 
 of industry and the spirit of self-reliance were fostered. By dili- 
 gent application at all the natural and ordinary sources of relief, 
 relations and friends and neighbours were stimulated to the ful- 
 filment of obligations binding in themselves, and most beneficial 
 to society in their discharge ; and all this was done by men who 
 held a far different kind of intercourse with the poor from that 
 of the cold official, who, ignorant of everything but the applica- 
 tion made, presents himself in no other than the repulsive 
 attitude of rejecting it if he can, or reducing the allowance to 
 its lowest limits. The St. John's deaconry employed as it was 
 to promote the education as well as to manage the indigence 
 of the parish mingling as it did familiarly with all the families, 
 and proving itself, by word and deed, the true but enlightened 
 friend of all, did far more to prevent pauperism than to provide 
 for it. 
 
 The results of these operations during the three years and 
 nine months that Dr. Chalmers personally presided over them 
 was most striking and instructive. The whole number of new 
 cases admitted on the roll was twenty, the annual cost of whose 
 maintenance was 66. Of these twenty cases, however, one 
 was that of a lunatic, one of a deaf and dumb person, two of 
 illegitimate children, and three of families where the husband 
 had run away, so that there were only thirteen admitted on the 
 ground of general indigence, the yearly expense incurred on 
 their behalf amounting to no more than 32. 
 
 The number of sessional poor (that is, of poor who had been 
 on the session's roll of one or other of the three parishes from 
 sections of which St. John's had been composed) originally com- 
 mitted to Dr. Chalmers, after deducting those transferred to the 
 session of St. James's, was ninety-eight, of whom, in the course 
 of the period above indicated, twenty-eight had died and thirteen 
 had been displaced in consequence of a scrutiny, leaving thus 
 seventy-seven on the roll, the cost of whose yearly maintenance 
 was 190. Their prosperous financial condition induced the 
 session of St. John's, in the second year of their operations, to 
 take the whole of the Town Hospital paupers connected with 
 their parish off that institution, involving themselves in an addi-
 
 584 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 tional expense of 90 a yeai'. So that all the old pauperism 
 which had not originated under their management and which 
 they had every reason to estimate as much larger than under 
 that management it should have been and all the new pauper- 
 ism which had arisen was now managed at a yearly cost of 
 280. From one-tenth of the city, and that part composed of 
 the poorest of its population, the w^ole flow of pauperism into 
 the Town Hospital had been intercepted, and an expenditure 
 which had amounted to 1400 per annum was reduced to 280. 
 
 " By very many," says Dr. Chalmers, " our scheme was viewed 
 with a hostility which proved to be relentless and persevering ; 
 and by many more, who looked to it with good-natured com- 
 placency, it was regarded as at best an airy, perhaps a beautiful 
 idealism, the fond and sanguine speculation of a mere student, 
 whose closet abstractions would never stand when brought into 
 collision with the practical wisdom of practical men. We appeal 
 to the still abiding recollection of more than twenty years back, 
 if, mixed with no little derision and disdain, our proposal was 
 not met with an incredulity which was all but universal."* 
 
 It was sagely predicted at the outset of this experiment that it 
 was sure to misgive, from the inability of any city parish of such 
 a kind and extent of population to maintain its own poor from 
 its own church-door collections. Nearly four years had now 
 elapsed, and after defraying the expenses of all that they had 
 originally undertaken, and assuming an additional annual bur- 
 den of 90, the session of St. John's had 900 of surplus, of 
 which, with the consent of the Magistrates and Council, 500 
 had been appropriated for the perpetual endowment of one of 
 their parochial schools. Such unbounded prosperity might be 
 attributed to the singular liberality which Dr. Chalmers's mini- 
 strations had called forth, and to the large amount which his 
 church-door collections annually realized. He was apprehensive 
 from the beginning that his success might be attributed to such 
 a cause, and it was partly because of this, and partly because he 
 desired to deliver his deacons from the temptation which the 
 command of large and expansive funds is apt to produce, that he 
 intrusted them only with the pence of the poor the small col- 
 lection of 80, received from the evening congregation. And 
 now the singular and significant result was held up before the 
 eyes of the incredulous, that even with so small a sum as this 
 all the pauperism of 10,000 people, emerging during the course 
 
 * See Works, vol. xxi. pp. 103, 104.
 
 EXPLANATIONS OF ITS SUCCESS. 585 
 
 of nearly four years, could be adequately met, if at the first 
 rightly dealt with. But there was still another suggestion 
 which, in anticipation of some appearance of success in an en- 
 terprise which they regarded as wholly Utopian, had been made 
 at a very early stage by the opponents of the scheme. Dr. 
 Chalmers, it was said, might succeed in reducing his pauper 
 expenditure within sufficiently narrow limits, by 'starving the 
 poor out of his own parish, and driving them into the parishes 
 adjoining. So fully open was his eye to this objection, and so 
 well grounded was his confidence that the actual result would 
 be precisely the opposite of that which the objectors had antici- 
 pated, that the reader may have already noticed, that in his 
 letter to the Lord Provost, Dr. Chalmers strongly urged that 
 the free interchange then suffered between the poor of the differ- 
 ent city parishes should cease, and that a law of residence, the 
 same as that which subsisted between different country parishes, 
 should be established between them. His impression was, that 
 the poor themselves would be so much better pleased with a 
 system which, while it would do nothing for the idle and the 
 dissolute, brought human sympathy and kindness, and all friendly 
 aids to industry into the dwellings of those who were in real 
 want that instead of an efflux out of his parish there would be 
 an influx into it, or, to use his own phrase, his conviction was, 
 that his imports would exceed his exports. And it remains as 
 one out of many evidences of his practical sagacity and foresight, 
 that it turned out exactly as he had conjectured. At the begin- 
 ning of March 1823, fifteen of the St. John's poor had removed 
 to other parishes, and twenty-nine from other parishes had been 
 received, the imports being thus about double the exports, a 
 sum of 28 having thus been added to the natural and proper 
 parochial expenditure. 
 
 Driven from their first positions, and forced by the evidence 
 of figures to confess that a remarkable result had been realized, 
 the opponents of the scheme now began to attribute it to the 
 extraordinary eloquence and zeal of its author, and to the strenu- 
 ous management of that select body of agents which he had 
 gathered from all quarters of the city, and whom by his presence 
 and his impulsive energy he had kept working at a rate of 
 vigilant activity altogether unprecedented. It would need, they 
 said, another Dr. Chalmers, and another agency such as he only 
 could assemble and inspire, to accomplish in any other parish 
 a like result. It was in vain alleged by Dr. Chalmers that the
 
 586 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 result which had awakened such wonder was mainly attributable 
 neither to him nor to his agency, but to the workings of nature's 
 own simple mechanism, from which they had done little more 
 than remove the encumbering check which had been laid upon 
 it, so as to allow free scope for its own spontaneous evolutions. 
 It was in vain that in proof of this he pointed to the unassessed 
 suburb of the Gorbals,* where, upon a population of 20,000, as 
 poor as any within the city, the whole annual expenditure for 
 pauperism was 350, but which nevertheless was found to be 
 in so much better a condition than the assessed districts to 
 which it lay contiguous, that when in 1817 an extraordinary 
 expenditure of 10,000, raised to meet the existing distress, 
 came to be distributed, it was found that instead of requiring 
 more this parish required three or four times less than its own 
 proportion of this sum. The idea had seized the public mind 
 that some magic charm belonged to the chief operator and his 
 chosen agents, by whom the parish of St. John's had been con- 
 ducted to its existing condition ; and much was due to Dr. 
 Chalmers, and much to his zealous band of coadjutors. It was 
 his instinctive perception that much of the idleness and im- 
 morality of the lower classes was due to a legal security of sup- 
 port, and his strong intuitive faith in the power of a few primary 
 principles of our nature to make a better provision for human 
 want than law had made, which prompted him to try the ex- 
 periment. And it was his singular power over others, both to 
 convince and to inspirit, which surrounded him with fellow- 
 workers without whose aid it could not have been successful. 
 Great confidence in his wisdom was required. " At my first 
 outset," says one of his agents, " in surveying my proportion, 
 I found so many families, and even clusters of families, without 
 any visible means of support, that I could hardly sleep at night 
 thinking of their starving condition, but after more matured 
 observation I found out secret springs of supply, and became 
 more easy in my mind." In each deacon's first visitation of his 
 
 * In 1819, in the Royalty of Glasgow (assessed) there was one pauper to every twenty- 
 seven persons ; in the Gorbals parish (unassessed) there was one pauper to every one hundred 
 and seventy -eight persons. In the Royalty, supposing each person to pay an equal share 
 of it, the sum expended on the poor amounted to three shillings and elevenpence half- 
 penny per head; in the Gorhals parish to threepence halfpenny per head. See Cleland's 
 " Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the City of Glasgow," &c., p. 33 : Glasgow, 1820. 
 It is curious to compare with this the information given in the " Third Report of the 
 Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor in Scotland," bearing date August 1848. 
 It appears from this Report that in 1848 there was one pauper to every 11-51 of the 
 population, and that the cost amounted to four shillings and a penny three-farthings 
 per head.
 
 THE CHIEF DIFFICULTY. 587 
 
 district, in acquainting himself familiarly with all its families, 
 in his inquiries and efforts connected with the education of all 
 its children in his thorough sifting of all cases of alleged want 
 presented to him in his firm refusal of all aid to the undeserv- 
 ing, much time and much energy were undoubtedly consumed. 
 Still, however, it was true that the main difficulty had lain, 
 and the chief expenditure of strength had been put forth in 
 carrying the parish over that obstacle which the assessment had 
 created. Once brought into the condition of an ordinary un- 
 assessed country parish, the management was very simple. From 
 answers drawn up in reply to a series of questions put to them 
 by Dr. Chalmers, it appears that the time spent by each of his 
 deacons on the pauperism of the parish did not on an average 
 exceed three hours a month. Even the forcing of the passage, 
 arduous for the first adventurer and the gallant crew who accom- 
 panied him, was made comparatively easy for all who should 
 come after, while, by the subdivision of parishes, the initial 
 difficulties admitted of being indefinitely lessened. The public 
 mind, however, remained unconvinced. The system had suc- 
 ceeded, it was said, in Dr. Chalmers's hands, but it would fail 
 in any other. His removal from Glasgow in 1823 put this 
 assertion fairly to trial. It would be seen when he had with- 
 drawn how much of the success had been due to his presence 
 and power. Instead of giving way and falling speedily to the 
 ground, the system survived unhurt the shock of his departure 
 as well as of the lengthened vacancy in the parish which ensued. 
 His successor, the Eev. Dr. Macfarlane, has left us the following 
 testimony as to the manner in which it wrought during his in- 
 cumbency : " The experience of sixteen months, during which 
 I was minister of St. John's, confirmed the favourable opinion 
 which I previously entertained of the system ; it worked well in 
 all respects. With an income from collections not much ex- 
 ceeding 300, we kept down the pauperism of a parish contain- 
 ing a population of 10,000 ; and I know from actual observation 
 that the poor were in better condition, and excepting the worth- 
 less and profligate who applied and were refused assistance, 
 were more contented and happy than the poor in the other 
 parishes of Glasgow. I was also agreeably disappointed at 
 finding that Dr. Chalmers was not the only person having suf- 
 ficient influence to obtain the aid of the respectable members 
 of his congregation in administering the affairs of the poor ; I 
 had not the smallest difficulty in procuring a sufficient number
 
 588 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of deacons for that purpose."* In 1830, ten years from the 
 commencement of the undertaking, Dr. Chalmers informed the 
 Committee of the House of Commons, before which he was ex- 
 amined, that the whole annual expense of St. John's pauperism 
 for the preceding year had been 384, or, deducting the expense 
 for lunatics and for deserted children, which, owing to peculiar 
 circumstances, had come to press heavily upon the parish, was 
 232. At the end of the year 1833, an English Poor-law 
 Commissioner, E. C. Tufnell, Esq., visited Glasgow, and after 
 careful inquiry as to the state of matters in St. John's, drew up 
 a report, from which we take the following extract : " This 
 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. ... Its chief virtue 
 seems to consist in the closer investigation which each new case 
 of pauperism receives, by which means the parish is prevented 
 from being imposed on ; and as it is well known by the poor 
 that this severe scrutiny is never omitted, attempts at imposition 
 are less frequently practised. The laxity of the old manage- 
 ment and utility of this investigation may be exemplified by 
 what occurred when it was first put in practice. As all the 
 St. John's sessional poor were closely examined, it was thought 
 unfair not to bring their out-door hospital poor, which the old 
 system had left, to the same scrutiny, when it was discovered 
 that many persons were receiving relief who had no claim to it, 
 and who were consequently instantly struck off the roll. One 
 man was found in the receipt of a weekly allowance who had 
 eight workmen under him. ... In spite, however, of this 
 success, the lovers of the old system still oppose the new as 
 keenly as ever, and there seems to be as much difference of 
 opinion in Glasgow at present respecting its merits as when it 
 was first established. Amid these conflicting statements, it would 
 be presumptuous in a stranger to give an opinion, except so far 
 as it is drawn from facts, and these, it seems, are all in favour 
 of it. ... The essence of the St. John's management consists 
 in the superior system of inspection which it establishes ; this 
 is brought about by causing the applicants for aid to address 
 themselves, in the first instance, to persons of station arid char- 
 acter, whose sole parochial duty consists in examining into their 
 condition, and who are always ready to pay a kind attention to 
 their complaints. This personal attention of the rich to the 
 
 * See Works, vol. rri. p. 345.
 
 MR. TUFNELI/S REPORT. 589 
 
 poor seems to be one of the most efficient modes of preventing 
 pauperism. It is a subject of perpetual complaint, that the poor 
 do not receive the charities of the rich with gratitude. The 
 reason of this appears to be, that the donation of a few shillings 
 from a rich man to a poor man is no subtraction from the giver's 
 comforts, and consequently is no proof of his interest in the 
 other's welfare. If the rich give their time to the poor, they 
 part with a commodity which the poor see is valuable to the 
 givers, and consequently esteem the attention the more, as it 
 implies an interest in their prosperity ; and a feeling seems to 
 be engendered in their minds of unwillingness to press on the 
 kindness of those who thus prove themselves ready to sympathize 
 with them in distress, and to do their utmost to relieve it. This 
 feeling acts as a spur to the exertions of the poor ; their efforts 
 to depend on their own resources are greater, and consequently 
 the chance of their becoming dependent on the bounty of others 
 less.' 1 * 
 
 But though sufficient to elicit such a testimony from a 
 stranger, thirteen years' experience of its success was not suffi- 
 cient to obtain for this system the countenance and support of 
 the civic authorities of Glasgow. From the very outset of the 
 enterprise, there were two conditions laid down by Dr. Chalmers 
 as essential to final and permanent success. The first was, that 
 a law of residence should be established between the different 
 parishes of the city. The equity of this was apparent, as other- 
 wise a parish might to a great extent become burdened with a 
 pauperism which it had done nothing to create. The second 
 condition was, that a parish which had ceased to receive from 
 the assessment fund should be no longer forced to contribute to 
 it ; and in the case at least of such parishes as (like St. John's) 
 saved the fund far more than they yielded to it, the equity of 
 this condition was equally clear. Though urgently pressed, 
 neither of these conditions was acceded to. The St. John's 
 deaconry were burdened with a load not of their own making, 
 which it was peculiarly irksome to bear ; and their parish, hav- 
 ing cost the city nothing for so many years, had to contribute 
 its share to the central fund. The required conditions remaining 
 unfulfilled, all public countenance being withheld, their expendi- 
 ture for lunatics and exposed children growing upon them at a 
 much greater rate than the population of their parish, and the 
 
 * For the remainder of 3Ir. Tufaell's raost interesting Report, sec Dr. Chalmers's Worka, 
 TO!, xvi. pp. 437-444.
 
 590 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 funds of a chapel with which their pauper management was 
 implicated falling into an unprosperous condition, it did not sur- 
 prise Dr. Chalmers, that the managers of St. John's should 
 finally, in 1837, have voluntarily relinquished their office, end 
 suffered their parish to lapse into the general system of Glasgow. 
 That intelligent and devoted member of this management* to 
 whom in later years, and after long experience of his ability and 
 zeal, Dr. Chalmers was in the habit of specially referring in all 
 matters connected with St. John's, informed him " that as the 
 scheme did not receive the countenance which we all thought it 
 well deserved, both from the authorities and the sessions gene- 
 rally, we were discouraged, and did give it up. At the same 
 time, we were all satisfied that it was a scheme quite practicable 
 even in St. John's, increased as it was in population from 8000 
 to 12,000, and had proved this to a demonstration after eighteen 
 years' experience." It did, however, both surprise and grieve 
 Dr. Chalmers exceedingly, to find that under such circumstances 
 the voluntary relinquishment of an enterprise, hampered and 
 discouraged throughout, should be publicly held up and gene- 
 rally regarded as a conspicuous evidence of its failure ; and that 
 those whose very want of faith in its success had contributed so 
 largely to the relinquishment should plead that relinquishment 
 as a justification of their want of faith. It endured, through 
 all vicissitudes, for eighteen years. The accounts of its receipts 
 and disbursements throughout this period show that its whole 
 expenditure on pauperism was upwards of a thousand pounds 
 less than the produce of the church-door collections ; that if 
 the expense for lunatics and foundlings and illegitimate children 
 and the families of runaway parents be deducted, the balance in 
 favour of the experiment amounts to upwards of 2000 ; that 
 never in any year was there a pauper expenditure higher than 
 at the rate of 50 for each thousand, and that the average 
 expenditure for the eighteen years was at the rate of 30 for 
 each thousand of the population. I shall have occasion here- 
 after to refer to the general question of poor-laws and pauper 
 management, but I cannot close this account of the triumphant 
 experiment of St. John's, without saying, that if Glasgow had 
 but received the lesson which upwards of thirty years ago was 
 given to her had she promoted the scheme which was executed 
 under her own eyes, and within her own domain had those 
 feeble imitations of the operations of St. John's which were com- 
 
 * William Buchanan, Esq.
 
 THE FUTURE. 591 
 
 menced in others of her parishes, been fostered into maturity, 
 instead of being allowed, as they were, to wither into decay and 
 extinction had her unwieldy parishes been broken up, and her 
 in.elligent citizens been invited, under public patronage, to fol- 
 low in the track which the deaconry of Dr. Chalmers had opened 
 up the cost of her present pauperism, instead of the enormous 
 sum of 120,000, might have stood at the moderate sum of 
 12.000* more than 100,000 a year would have been saved 
 to Ler, whilst her poor would have been better cared for ; and 
 her citizens, engaged to such extent in kindly offices among 
 them, would have linked all classes of her community together 
 in closer and blander ties. The instructive example, however, 
 was rot followed. A policy directly the reverse of that coun- 
 selled by Dr. Chalmers was pursued the voluntary mode of 
 exercising charity was discountenanced the legalized mode of 
 enforcing it was favoured, till the assessed finally swallowed up 
 all the unassessed parishes. The different boards established 
 under the recent Poor-law have diligently carried out the prin- 
 ciple and spirit of that Act, with the result, that during the last 
 ten years the cost of pauperism has increased in a twenty-fold 
 higher ratio than the population,-]- amounting for one year to the 
 enormous sum of 150,000. In the General Assembly of the 
 Church of Scotland in 1822, when engaged in his first public 
 explanation and defence of St. John's operations, and when 
 threatened with a measure which would have driven him back 
 upon his course, Dr. Chalmers said, " Do with the first adven- 
 turer what you will order him back again to the place from 
 which he had departed compel his bark out of its present secure 
 and quiet landing-place, or let her be scuttled if you so choose, 
 ani sunk to the bottom ; still, not to magnify our doings, but to 
 illustrate them, we must remind you that the discovery survives 
 th( loss of the discovery ship ; for if discovery it must be called, 
 the discovery has been made a safe and easy navigation has 
 been ascertained from the charity of law to the charity of kind- 
 ness ; and, therefore, be it now reviled, or be it now disregarded 
 
 Estimating the present population of Glasgow at 400,000, and taking the rate at which, 
 'or eighteen years, the poor were supported in St. John's namely 30 per 1000 of the popu- 
 lation the whole expenditure would amount to 12,000. The actual expenditure, sup- 
 posing it to be reduced to 100,000, is at the rate of 250 for each thousand. 
 
 t Dr. R. Buchanan, after giving the cost of pauperism in Glasgow as it stood in 1840 and 
 1849, adds, "It thus appears, that while the population had increased between August 
 1840 and May 1849 about 20 per cent., the cost of pauperism had, during the same interval, 
 increased about 430 per cent." See " The Schoolmaster in the Wynds; or, How to Educate 
 the Masses." Glasgow, 1850.
 
 592 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 as it may, we have no doubt upon our spirits, whether we look 
 to the depraving pauperism or to the burdened agriculture of 
 our land, that the days are soon coming when men, looking for 
 a way of escape from these sore evils, will be glad to own our 
 enterprise, and be fain to follow it."* 
 
 * See Works, vol. xvi. p. 154. For full information upon the subject of this Chapter the 
 reader is referred to Dr. Chalmers's Speech before the Assembly of 1822, and particularly to 
 its Appendix. See Works, vol. xvi. pp. 145-216." Statement in Regard to the Pauperism 
 of Glasgow, from the experience of the last eight years, first published in 1823." See Works, 
 vol. xvi. pp. 217-284. Evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons ot the 
 subject of a Poor-Law for Ireland. See Works, vol. xvi. pp. 312-378. Reflections of 1839 
 on the now protracted Experience of Pauperism in Glasgow. Works, vol. xvi. pp. 42S-444 ; 
 see also vol. xv. chap, xii., and vol. xxi. sect. iv.
 
 THE COMMERCIAL SERMONS. 593 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 PUBLICATION OF A VOLUME OP SERMONS, AND OP THE " CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC 
 
 ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS " ADDRESS TO HIS AGENCY IN OCTOBER 1821 
 
 VISIT OP KING GEORGE IV. TO SCOTLAND IN AUGUST 1822 THE LANDING AT 
 
 LEITH PIER ENTHUSIASTIC LOYALTY OP DR. CHALMERS TOUR THROUGH 
 
 ENGLAND IN SEARCH OF INFORMATION AS TO THE STATE AND PROSPECTS OF 
 
 ITS POOR-LAW ADMINISTRATION INTERCOURSE WITH LORD CALTHORPE, MR. 
 
 W1LBERFORCE, MR. CLARKSON, MR. MALTHUS, ETC. SUDDEN DEATH OF MR. 
 
 BROWN RETURN TO GLASGOW. 
 
 AMID all the urgency of these parochial labours, the press 
 was actively employed. In November 1820, a volume of ser- 
 mons was published, " On the Application of Christianity to the 
 Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life." Concurrently with 
 the commencement of the St. John's ministry, a series of quar- 
 terly publications on the " Christian and Civic Economy of 
 Large Towns" began to be issued, and was sustained in un- 
 broken order till Dr. Chalmers's removal to St. Andrews. These 
 papers were devoted to the exposition of the very measures 
 which he was then carrying into accomplishment ; so that at 
 this period he presents himself to us in the unique and compound 
 character of the skilful deviser, the vigorous conductor, and the 
 eloquent defender of his own schemes of Christian usefulness. 
 We scarcely know to which of the three the wisdom of his 
 counsel, the energy of his action, or the eloquence of his expo- 
 sition the palm should be awarded. The rare exhibition of 
 three such qualities, each so high in its degree, all working at 
 once and for the one object, excites unbounded admiration. 
 There was an instance in ancient times of the general who 
 planned the campaign, and who personally presided over its 
 conduct, becoming afterwards its best historian; but it was 
 while he was in the very heat and tumult of his bustling enter- 
 prise that Dr. Chalmers carried on continuously his narrative ; 
 so that it might almost be said, that he was doing the work 
 with the one hand while he was describing it with the other. 
 The weight, however, of the conjunct operation soon became 
 too heavy for him, and he sought a partial relief. In October
 
 594 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 1821, having invited his agency to meet him in the church, he 
 addressed them in the following terms : 
 
 " I beg leave, in the first instance, to explain my general 
 purpose in calling you together. You are well acquainted with 
 the power and the charm that I have ever been in the habit of 
 associating with locality how I regard this, in fact, as the only 
 principle on which a crowded town can be brought under a right 
 or efficient system of management that by the adoption of this 
 principle the population of a city would be in as fair circum- 
 stances for becoming Christian and moral and civilized as the 
 population of any country parish that there is a wide and open 
 door for entrance among the families themselves, insomuch that 
 if any Christian philanthropist should assume a district to him- 
 self, and give his time and his attentions to those who reside 
 within its limits, and cultivate an acquaintance with them, 
 founded on good-will to our brethren of the species, and the 
 desire in any way to be of service to their interests, it is found 
 that there will scarcely a shut door or a shut heart be ever met 
 in the prosecution of such an enterprise as this, affording there- 
 fore free scope for all the undertakings of him whose heart 
 deviseth liberal things, and securing that most encouraging of 
 all outsets to the work and the labour of love, even the almost 
 universal welcome of a thankful and a cordial population. 
 
 " I was, indeed, so convinced of this when I first came to 
 Glasgow, about six years ago, that I longed from the very 
 commencement for a parish as separated as possible from the 
 general town, and where I could reiterate my visits in the same 
 houses and on the same families without the distraction of city 
 business, or the interminable calls for ministerial attention from 
 the people who resided without the limits of the parochial terri- 
 tory. I succeeded in a great measure in this object, and thought 
 that, by incessant personal labour, I should be sure to achieve 
 what I had so long been desirous of, the condition of being the 
 personal acquaintance of all the parishioners, an object which I 
 thought might be generally accomplished by the perseverance 
 of a busy routine among the sick and the dying, and all others 
 who called for the attention of their minister upon Christian 
 grounds ; being resolved, as you well know, to disembarrass 
 myself from the whole charge and concern of secularities, and 
 become exclusively a spiritual labourer in the midst of those 
 who had any value or professed any desire for having services of 
 that description administered to them.
 
 ADDRESS TO THE AGENCY. 595 
 
 " The design was in the abstract good and unexceptionable, 
 but the execution has fallen miserably short of the design. I 
 can now experimentally say, that it is an undertaking much 
 beyond the strength of any single individual ; and as the fruit 
 of much observation and of many actual trials upon this subject, 
 I have come to the conclusion, that instead of nine thousand, 
 which is the population of our parish, that perhaps three thou- 
 sand form a manageable and a desirable extent, throughout 
 which a laborious and hard-working minister might make his 
 exertions and his ascendency as much felt in a city as it were 
 competent for him to do in the general run of the country 
 parishes of Scotland. 
 
 " You will also, I trust, concede to me a peculiar indulgence 
 from the consideration that in one respect I stand a little dis- 
 tinct from the mere pastor of a parish. You know that, whether 
 to good or to ill account, I have fallen into the habit of devoting 
 a good deal of time and strength to the exertions of authorship. 
 I think that three thousand is an overtakable number in a city 
 for one who gives himself up exclusively to the labours of a 
 practical clergyman ; but I do assure you, that when one has 
 got into a tract of literary publication, and finds himself, from 
 the encouragement of any usefulness, whether real or imaginary, 
 induced to persevere in this, that he would have very little time 
 to do full justice even to three thousand, and that perhaps the 
 preparations of the pulpit and the press were enough to engross 
 his faculties, without such a straining and pressure upon them 
 as might serve to hasten their decay, and bring them at length 
 to a speedy and premature extinction altogether. 
 
 " I can assure you, that I know not a more effectual method 
 of making one's earthly existence most painfully harassing and 
 uncomfortable than by associating an excess of missionary with 
 an excess of mental labour, than by combining in one person a 
 jaded body with an exhausted spirit. One species of fatigue may 
 be endured, but both together are insufferable ; and when both 
 kinds of service are attempted in too high a degree, the quality 
 of both will be most essentially deteriorated. 
 
 " The question with me has been long in agitation, which oi 
 the two I should surrender. By giving up the one, I sacrifice 
 the favourite object of a parochial acquaintanceship, extending 
 over the field of that vineyard the care of which has been as- 
 signed me by Providence. By giving up the other, I must not 
 only dilute my pulpit preparations, but bid adieu to the labours
 
 596 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of authorship ; and I have resolved, in the choice of two evils, 
 to devote myself more assiduously than before to the cares and 
 exertions of a mere student, and to abandon to a great degree 
 the parish as an unprotected orphan to the care and the charity 
 of other labourers. 
 
 " I should like you, however, to understand what the precise 
 extent is to which I shall find this abandonment to be necessary. 
 I used to make regular monthly and quarterly rounds among 
 all the sick and dying of the parish : I shall give up the rounds 
 but will go to any patient that requires my services, and the 
 channel through which he will require it, generally speaking, 
 will be by the elder of his proportion. I shall also, if possible, 
 continue to go through all the houses of the parish in two years, 
 and invite each proportion to a week-day evening address ; and 
 another very important approximation to the people which I 
 would never like to forget, as affording, perhaps, the finest 
 opportunity for Christian usefulness to the most interesting sort 
 of parochial group that occurs in the annals of the parish I 
 should like to make attendance on the parish funeral take the 
 precedence of all other duties and engagements whatever. 
 
 " Now, my brethren, I am somewhat ashamed of the egotism 
 in which I have indulged, and with which, I fear, you may be 
 thinking that I have detained you a great deal too long, I 
 therefore hasten to the practical application of all these remarks. 
 There is a way in which the parish, instead of a loser, would 
 become a gainer by the resolution that I have now announced 
 to you. There is a way in which the whole benefit and influence 
 of locality might be realized among its populace to an extent 
 that would greatly multiply the good which it were in the power 
 of any single individual to accomplish ; in a word, what he 
 cannot do in his own person may be done twenty or thirty or a 
 hundred-fold by deputation ; and I have had too much experi- 
 ence of the zeal and the acceptableness of your services to doubt, 
 my friends, that if you approve of the step which necessity has 
 laid upon me, you will study, each within his own sphere, to 
 render to the families a greatly overpassing compensation for 
 the services which I withdraw from them." 
 
 Prosecuting his series of quarterly publications, Dr. Chalmers 
 had advanced so far, that in the spring of 1822 he had fully 
 entered on the great question of pauperism. After discussing 
 this subject in its Scottish aspects and bearings, he meant to deal
 
 THE KING S VISIT TO SCOTLAND. 597 
 
 with it in reference to the condition and prospects of England. 
 Feeling, however, that his information was too limited to allow 
 of anything like an adequate treatment of it, he resolved to make 
 a tour of inspection through a number of the English counties, 
 and, by inquiries conducted on the spot, to become his owu 
 Commissioner ; but this tour was postponed for a week or two 
 by a public event in which he took the profoundest interest. 
 Some months before King George IV. landed on the Scottish 
 shores, he wrote to Mr. Wilberforce, " We are looking for the 
 royal visit, and it is my decided opinion that the best political 
 effects will follow from it. I wish you had access to the royal 
 ear on the subject of the King's route, for I am sure if he miss 
 Glasgow it will be deeply felt as a stigma by the whole popula- 
 tion. There was a most unfortunate advice given to Prince 
 Leopold when in this neighbourhood, and that was, to avoid 
 Glasgow because of the Eadicalism which was then in full fer- 
 mentation amongst us. Little do they know of our nature who 
 do not calculate on the efficacy of that charm which lies in the 
 condescension of superiors. It delights me to think that, after 
 all, monarchy is so congenial to man, that the monarch has 
 simply to show himself, and have a tolerable character, and he 
 is sure of the honest welcome and cordiality of all his subjects. 
 It will be quite marked if the King visit the Duke of Montrose 
 and do not visit Glasgow ; and, on the other hand, should he 
 visit our city, he may walk through the most Eadical streets of 
 it, and be hailed with acclamations from all the occupiers. It 
 would positively put us all into temper and tranquillity for many 
 years to come. P.S. What I write respecting the King is from 
 a real desire to promote a great public and patriotic good in this 
 city and neighbourhood." It was soon known that the King's 
 visit was to be restricted to the immediate neighbourhood of 
 Edinburgh, and as the day approached on which he was expected 
 at Leith, such crowds of strangers poured into the Scottish 
 metropolis, that, in defect of accommodation, tents, in which 
 hundreds were content to sleep, were raised on Salisbury Crags. 
 On the oth August, Dr. Chalmers wrote to Mrs. Chalmers, then 
 living at Fairley, who was to accompany him into Edinburgh : 
 ; ' There still hangs an uncertainty over the most probable time 
 of the King's landing, but I do think it safe to postpone the 
 movement till Monday the 12th, and far more convenient. In 
 this case, I do not think that yon should move till Saturday, 
 and I shall make my projected visit to Daldowie on the Friday,
 
 598 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and return on the Saturday, so as to meet this arrangement ; 
 and I would recommend our taking Anne to Edinburgh. Her 
 school-fellow, Miss Kamsay, is to be taken by Miss Crombie. 
 It is a sight that will leave an indelible impression upon young 
 people, and, should they be spared, may be their talk and their 
 triumph fifty years hence, when we are asleep in the dust. Mr. 
 Gibson was with us this day at breakfast ; and there could not, 
 you will allow, be a better hand for conveying to us the whole 
 state and hubbub and enthusiasm of Edinburgh on this great 
 occasion, in which he fully participates." 
 
 Edinburgh had not seen royalty in state since the days of our 
 ancient monarchs, and under the guidance of Sir Walter Scott 
 she stirred herself up to give to the King who now came to 
 Holyrood a right loyal welcome. The first and perhaps the 
 finest burst of her loyalty was given at the King's landing. 
 Soon after midday, on Wednesday the 14th August, borne for- 
 ward by a gentle but steady breeze, the royal squadron entered 
 Leith Roads, and amid salvos of artillery and the cheers of 
 congregated myriads, the royal yacht came to anchor off the pier. 
 The day, however, proved unfavourable, torrents of rain de- 
 scended, and the landing was postponed till the following day. 
 That day rose bright upon a city well fitted for the picturesque 
 and magnificent processions which her streets witnessed during 
 the royal fortnight. 
 
 " Leith Pier, Thursday, 15th August, twelve o'clock" (we 
 quote now from a letter written on the spot, and as the events 
 evolved) " A gun has just been fired from the royal squadron, 
 as a signal that his Majesty has left the yacht, and the bells of 
 Leith have struck up a merry peal. Leith Fort and the vessels 
 of war in the Eoads are thundering away ; Edinburgh Castle and 
 every gun on the surrounding heights responding. Never was 
 there such a sight as is now before us ; anxiety is at its height, 
 and the people on the pier are with difficulty persuaded to keep 
 their seats, notwithstanding the danger of confusion, to such a 
 degree are the feelings excited. The King is off the end of 
 the pier in his barge with the royal flag flying, with sixteen 
 rowers. He is now advanced half-way along the pier. The air 
 rings with acclamations, and the cheers of his assembled subjects 
 seem to be most grateful to him." And among all the cheers 
 which rent the air as he passed along, there was not one which 
 came from a heart more full of chivalrous loyalty than that 
 which issued from the platform where Dr. Chalmers and his wife
 
 JOURNEY TO DUMFRIES. 599 
 
 and little daughter were standing. " The hurst of enthusiasm," 
 says one who was standing at the moment by his side, " with 
 which he hailed his sovereign's approach was tremendous. 
 ' Well done honest fellow God bless him ! Is not monarchy,' 
 he added, turning round to me, ' congenial to our nature ? ' In 
 one of the royal processions through Edinburgh he was much 
 annoyed that louder demonstrations of loyalty did not break 
 forth from all around him, and turning impatiently to the person 
 next him, he exclaimed, ' Why, sir, you are not half vociferous 
 enough.' Some curiosity having been manifested as to who 
 should preach in the High Church on the occasion of the King's 
 attendance there, Wilkie * asked him whether Principal Baird, 
 who had a habit of crying (Scotice greeting) in the pulpit, was 
 to preach. ' Why,' said Dr. Chalmers, ' I do not know ; but if 
 he does, it will be George Baird to George Rex, greeting.' " 
 
 After witnessing the processions and attending at the levee 
 in Holyrood House, Dr. Chalmers returned to Glasgow, and 
 soon after set out upon that tour of which the following records 
 are presented to the reader : 
 
 " CUMXOCK, September 2, 1822. 
 
 " MY EVER DEAREST GRACE, Was a little too soon at the 
 coach. It takes in four only, and was full inside ; an elderly 
 gentlewoman, a young lady going to spend her boarding-school 
 
 vacation in the country, Major , and myself. He upon the 
 
 whole interesting. Lost his wife three years ago in India in 
 childbed. Both mother and child died, and he, left without a 
 family, travels for the dissipation of his melancholy. He never 
 knew your brother, and his introduction to me is founded on the 
 single circumstance that he lodged for three weeks in the same 
 quarters after he had left them ; a tolerably slender argument, 
 you will allow, but I feel pleased and affected by him, with no 
 other drawback than a disagreeably drawling voice, which he 
 exercises, too, pretty freely. He is just now going all the way 
 to Hereford, within thirty miles of Gloucester, for the purpose 
 of attending an oratorio in that place next week a pretty 
 strong proof of his affection for music. We did not breakfast 
 till we reached Kilmarnock, a distance of twenty-two miles. 
 There was a number of outside passengers, among whom was 
 the brother of the young lady, who turned out afterwards to be 
 the Laird of Dalswinton, formerly the property of Thomas 
 Miller's father. We dined at Sanquhar, and reached Dumfries 
 
 * Sir David Wilkie. See " Memoir of W. Collins, R.A.," vol. i. p. 20a
 
 600 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 after eight o'clock. It was on the whole a good day, aiid the 
 Nith was in all its glory. It recalled the former period of five 
 years back, when you and I and John Smith went over the same 
 track in a post-chaise. Drumlanrig Castle on the opposite side 
 of the river stood forth in great majesty. On reaching Dumfries 
 I found Dr. Thomas Duncan, his brother Henry of Ruthwell, 
 whom you have seen, and Mr. Clyde, waiting me at the inn. 
 They explained the arrangements of to-morrow, and I left them 
 with Mr. Clyde for Mr. Inglis, who, though above eighty, is still 
 marvellously well. The Misses Inglis expressed great disap- 
 pointment at not seeing you. I had to conduct family worship 
 before supper, and had a very pleasant little family party of 
 themselves alone. Mrs. Clyde was not with us. I ought to 
 have mentioned that I read a good deal in the coach, of the 
 Bible and Cunninghame's Sermons, and lastly a large pamphlet 
 by Mr. Davison on the Poor-laws. The females left us within 
 a few miles of Dumfries, and I ventured on a close and firm 
 
 appeal to Major about his griefs, and his feelings, and his 
 
 prospects. I was favoured to be free and faithful with him, and 
 he professed, and I believe felt, the utmost gratitude at my ex- 
 planations. I believe that we are greatly too timid and reserved 
 on the topic of Christianity, and I have often found a gratifying 
 result from being open and intrepid about it. This day's history 
 is an example of it. The Major was disappointed in not getting 
 on to Carlisle this evening, so I left him at the inn. 
 
 " Tuesday. Mr. Clyde and I went forth at nine to Dr. Dun- 
 can's, where we breakfasted with a party. Mr. Henry Duncan 
 there, Provost Kerr, the present chief magistrate, Mr. Armstrong, 
 
 treasurer of the kirk-session, Major , and, lastly, Miss Goldie, 
 
 who knew your brother and inquired about him. I put my 
 questioning powers upon their full exercise ; Miss Goldie is very 
 sensible indeed, and, upon the whole, I have gotten most satis- 
 factory information in this place. Preached in one of the 
 churches to an audience that comfortably and without squeezing 
 filled it, the multitude being repressed by a previous intimation 
 that nothing less than silver would be received. The collection 
 was seventy pounds. I had some introductions afterwards. 
 There were eleven established clergy there, besides a number 
 of dissenting ministers. Went afterwards to the poor-house, 
 where I had a conference with the dignitaries, and got all the 
 information I wanted. I also inspected the establishment, and 
 took in a powerful impression from my sight of the aged and
 
 DR. DUNCAN OF RUTH WELL. 601 
 
 orphan inmates. Then -went to Mr. Inglis's, where I wrote and 
 packed up for half an hour, and took lunch with them. Mr. 
 Duncan of Ruthwell came with his gig to me after two, for the 
 purpose of taking me out to his manse, which takes me forward 
 about eight miles. I left the Inglises with a feeling of great 
 mutual cordiality, and have the utmost veneration and love for 
 the old gentleman, whose affection on the other hand for me 
 would fain have led him to kiss me both at meeting and parting 
 a catastrophe which I by coyness and good management had 
 the good fortune however to avoid on both occasions. Got on to 
 Ruthwell after four. I again preached at half-past five to a 
 well-filled church. The congregation of a very interesting moral 
 aspect. After tea called on Mr. Duncan's mother, who lives in 
 an elegant cottage which, Mr. Duncan has raised upon his pre- 
 mises. She is a fine old lady, and an aunt of Mr. Duncan lives 
 along with her. He has forty acres of glebe, and out of it has as- 
 sumed a policy of five or six acres around his house, which he has 
 transformed from a moor into a very beautiful and gentlemanly 
 pleasure-ground, consisting of gardens, lake, and a number of 
 well-disposed trees. Had an hour before supper to wind up my 
 narrative and letters. Obtained most satisfactory information 
 from Mr. Duncan, and threw myself into bed between twelve 
 and one. I should have mentioned that I was asked by the 
 magistrates to dine, which I could not do, but at eight I received 
 a letter from the Provost inclosing a burgess ticket which they 
 had meant to give me after dinner. It was exceedingly hand- 
 some to send this mark of distinction ten miles after me. 
 
 " 4tth. Started about seven. Wrote a little. Got into the 
 gig with Mr. Duncan at eight. Rode to Mount Annan, the seat 
 of General Dirom, where we had been invited to breakfast. A 
 
 very great company there, and among others Mr. R , Rector 
 
 of Liverpool. He is an important acquisition to me. He be- 
 friends locality and district schools. I left pamphlets with him 
 and the General. Got out to Annan at twelve, where, agreeably 
 to our arrangement of yesterday, I met with my old friend Major 
 
 and hired a post-chaise along with him to Carlisle. Called 
 at Annan on Mr. Irving's father and sister for a few minutes ; 
 took leave of Henry Duncan ; parted with the Major at Carlisle 
 after giving him a letter to Mr. Gipps of Hereford. Reached Mr. 
 F.'s after three. Thought there was a great deal of stiffness and 
 coldness and reserve at first, but it all wore off in the evening, 
 and I ascribe a great deal of this in England to mere shyness.
 
 602 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Met here with most satisfactory information from Mr. N . 
 
 A crowd of other people here also. Received satisfactory letters 
 from Kendal and Liverpool, and all looks promising thus far on. 
 I was introduced here to a number of religious characters ; and 
 came up to my bedroom at eleven, where I wrought at winding 
 up my narrative, and finished a little after twelve. 
 
 " Thursday. Started at six. Packed and prepared for my 
 departure at seven. Got breakfast previously at Mr. Fawcett's. 
 Had the coach to myself till I came to Shap, where a young 
 man whose friends are in Glasgow came in, who knew me, and 
 two ladies beside. It was a famous coach. I read a good deal 
 at Cunninghame's Sermons, and a pamphlet on the Poor-laws. 
 Reached Kendal between one and two. I have prospered to my 
 uttermost wish in Kendal. I had a letter to Mr. Gandy of this 
 place from Mr. Walkinshaw, who had been kind enough to write 
 him besides by post, and he called, insisting that I should dine 
 with his brother arid lodge with him. He first took me to the 
 work-hoiise, where I saw much and got most satisfactory infor- 
 mation, then to his own house, where I met with the mayor, 
 recorder, and overseer of Kendal, with Mr. Crewdson, a Quaker, 
 from which gentleman I obtained most kind and satisfactory 
 answers to my queries. Crewdson struck me as a most admirable 
 fellow, both on the score of principle and good sense. Then 
 dined at the other Mr. Gandy's, where there was a very superior 
 company, consisting I should imagine of the best society in the 
 place. Among others Mr. Christopher Wilson, banker, with 
 10,000 a year, a great landed proprietor, a magistrate, and 
 most intimately and intelligently acquainted with pauperism. 
 I left them, to drink tea with Mr. Crewdson, and I had very 
 great pleasure for two hours in the bosom of this interesting and 
 well-regulated Quaker family. Went back to Mr. John Gandy, 
 with whom I stopped all night. His lady is indeed remarkably 
 good-looking, and of very pleasing and cultivated manners 
 withal. I am much pleased with my doings at Kendal, and 
 have accumulated a great deal of substantial information. 
 
 " Friday. Got into the coach at seven. Had a long journey 
 of seventy-six miles to Liverpool. Employed most of my time 
 in reading, and finished ' Courtenay on the Poor-laws.' The 
 coach mostly full. A man from Mr. Hope stopped and inquired 
 for me on our entrance into Liverpool. I went out and landed 
 at Everton, where Mr. Hope lives, after eight at night Dr. 
 Barr and Mr. Mejunel, a French minister, there before me, Miss
 
 ARRIVAL IN MANCHESTER. 603 
 
 Hope, whom you may have seen, also there. I requested an hour 
 of my bedroom before supper, where I got comfortably forward 
 with my various writings. On being called down again I was 
 ushered into a most select and genial society, consisting of Dr. 
 Pye Smith of Homerton, Dr. Raffles of this place, and Dr. Barr. 
 Dr. Smith has chalked out for me a most admirable arrangement 
 when I go to London : he is an Independent minister in one of 
 its suburbs. Tell Mr. Collins that I have got his letter in- 
 closing one for Dr. Eobertson of Warrington, and that nothing 
 can exceed the kindness and rational hospitality, and above 
 all, perfect arrangements of Mr. Hope on my behalf. He has 
 laid down all the meetings for me at Liverpool with very great 
 judgment and regard for my substantial comfort, and I do feel 
 exceedingly well served and obliged by all his attentions." 
 
 " MANCHESTER, September 9, 1822. 
 
 " Saturday. Started between six and seven in Mr. Hope's. 
 Wrote a good deal before breakfast, which we had at half-past 
 eight. Mr. James Cropper, a Quaker there, a most respectable 
 and intelligent man, with whom I had a most delightfully inter- 
 esting conversation. He talked, and I took short-hand notes, 
 and this went on among ladies and tea-cups and plates of but- 
 tered toast. The thing that charms me in Liverpool is the 
 business rapidity and distinctness wherewith all my interviews 
 
 and queries are gone through. Miss obtruded her reports 
 
 upon me, which are good in their season ; but I have no room 
 for anything at present but pauperism. ... At half-past 
 nine Mr. Cropper, Mr. Hope, and I, went down in the family car 
 to Liverpool, where I took short-hand notes of a conversation 
 with Mr. Ellis and Mr. Hardeman, and am now quite ripe on 
 the pauperism of Liverpool. Tell this to Mr. Collins, as it will 
 interest him. I then called on Mr. Gladstone, who is mainly 
 unintelligent upon the subject ; but it is good to have the kind- 
 ness of Members of Parliament on your side, whether you have 
 their understandings or not. Mr. Gladstone I hold to be a most 
 sensible and judicious person, but so manifoldly engrossed with 
 other topics as not to have turned the powers of his gifted and 
 vigorous mind to this one in particular. I then called on Charles 
 Parker, who kindly accompanied me in all my future Liverpool 
 excursions. ... A little before two I got into the coach 
 for Manchester. ... I reached Mr. Daniel Grant's of Man- 
 chester about seven, and found Mr. Dalgleish there with a letter
 
 604 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 from you. Did you know, my dearest G., the pleasure which a 
 communication from you, however short, is at all times sure to 
 administer, you would write me frequently. I am thankful for 
 your tidings of comfort and prosperity at home : God grant that 
 undisturbed peace and affection may ever dwell amongst us, and 
 that our dear children may rise around us and call us blessed. 
 I was not long at Manchester before I smelt a design against me 
 to preach ; and as I had to go to Nuttle and preach there on the 
 morrow, the first suggestion was that I should preach in Man- 
 chester on the Tuesday. But I had so decidedly resolved against 
 all week-day sermons in England, that rather than this very 
 obnoxious arrangement I forfeited my prospect of a quiet domes- 
 tic Sabbath in the country, and consented to take Manchester on 
 the Sabbath evening. 
 
 "Sunday. Preached to a full congregation in Mr. Roby's 
 chapel at half-past six. I was not worse of my exertion. In 
 the vestry I was introduced to a number of the dignitaries in the 
 place. Kobert Tennent, Mr. Hugh's son, I had great pleasure in 
 meeting. We supped at nine, with a considerable party, in Mr. 
 D. Grant's, where I live, and I threw myself into bed at eleven. 
 ... I should have mentioned an amusing enough circumstance 
 in the coach from Liverpool to Manchester. An old gentleman 
 eyed me with great curiosity, which at length passed into the 
 complacent smile of a conscious and confident discovery. After 
 an interval of many minutes' observation and cunning scrutiny, 
 he first asked me if I was from Glasgow, and my affirmative 
 answer served him with food for his satisfaction a little longer. 
 He then ventured to ask if my name was Chalmers. On my 
 replying aright thereunto, he told me that he was quite sure of 
 it, though he had never seen myself, for in ' Peter's Letters ' he 
 had seen my picture ; which I said was the best account of the 
 picture that I had heard, for it was generally thought to be an 
 execrable one. However, I got immediately into the best pos- 
 sible terms with all present, and the cordiality was kept up 
 during the whole of my journey. 
 
 "Monday. Rose between seven and eight. Breakfasted 
 between eight and nine. I am much behind in my writings, 
 both as to letters and as to the extending of my short-hand con- 
 versations at the various places. I have therefore secured part 
 of this forenoon from all intrusion as well as I can. Mr. James 
 Alexander, however, of Glasgow, is here, and he called after 
 breakfast, with his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Bannerman ; and then,
 
 MR. TWEDDEL AND MR. DALTON. COS 
 
 after retiring from them, there came in a deputation of Methodist 
 ministers, requesting a sermon on Tuesday. I got pleasantly 
 quit of them ; and Mr. Dalgleish, who is really most attentive 
 to me, is determined that I shall have no interruption till one, 
 at which hour any who call are to call back again. I have thus 
 been enabled to finish a letter to Jane, another to Mr. Cropper 
 of Liverpool, and a third to Mr. Robertson of Glasgow, and 
 furthermore, to carry forward my Journal from the beginning of 
 this sheet to the point at which I now stand ; and I just hear 
 the door-bell ringing. Mr. Tweddel, and Mr. Burns, a Metho- 
 dist preacher, called the latter I did not know. Went out with 
 the former and Mr. Dalgleish, first to a conference with Mr. 
 Murritt, a magistrate, and two others, from whom I got informa- 
 tion respecting an outer township then to Mr. Brierly, the 
 boroughreeve of 'Manchester, who in conjunction with others 
 gave me all the requisite information about Manchester then 
 dined with Mr. Tweddel, in company with Mr. Holt and others 
 then at night went to Salford. At this point Mr. Dalgleish left 
 us. Thomas Potter and the boroughreeve of Salford, with ten 
 or twelve of the select vestry, gave me all the particulars of that 
 township. Mr. Norris is not at home. Returned to Mr. Twed- 
 del's after tea, and stopped there all night. Mr. Tweddel seems 
 to me a mild, elegant, and on the whole a very cultivated man, 
 with a kind of literary retreat, and of literary habits, and 1 
 feel very much interested in him. I went to bed between twelve 
 and one. 
 
 " Tuesday. This rather a day of whirl and confusion, and 
 most unfortunately ceremony and invitations and calls are be- 
 ginning to mix with my objects, and sadly to impede them. I 
 am glad of the present interval, between two and three, to 
 enable me to bring up my Journal thus far. An immense party 
 of citizens came to dinner, among whom I had particular enjoy- 
 ment in Mr. Brierly, the boroughreeve of Manchester, and a Mr. 
 Dalton, who lives here, and is the most philosophical chemist in 
 the island a Quaker, of great simplicity and profound science. 
 We had speechifying after dinner, in which I bore part. All 
 Mr. Grant's brothers were present, along with Mrs. Grant and 
 her father Mr. Dalgleish. He has been most attentive to me : 
 came from Glasgow at this particular time upon my account, 
 and even offered to accompany me to Birmingham. This 1 
 would on no account hear of. The party sat up most uncon- 
 scionably late, insomuch that it was one o'clock ere I got to bed.
 
 606 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Wednesday. I reached Birmingham at five in the evening. 
 Found Mr. Knott waiting me at the inn and more than he, 
 Mr. Hunter from Gloucester, and his brother, who together 
 made, if you recollect, the long call upon us in the forenoon of 
 the day that we went down to Fairley. We all went off in a 
 hackney coach to Mr. Knott's, where they remained an hour or 
 two, and I spent the night. Mr. B., Mr. Knott's partner, and 
 three other citizens of Birmingham, came in and passed under 
 my questioning process. I have been treated with much kind- 
 ness here. Mrs. Knott and her mother very domestic and 
 motherly people ; but nothing can exceed the trouble that Mr. 
 Hunter's brother has been at in this matter, tie lives near 
 Warwick, and came in his own carriage, and went out this day 
 to Darlaston, in order to obtain Mr. Lowe, the clergyman, to 
 meet with me, and takes me to-morrow to Worcester, along 
 with his brother the clergyman, who is still in bad health and at 
 large from his parish. I have, furthermore, had the most satis- 
 factory letters from Mr. Davies, the clergyman of Worcester, rela- 
 tive to the arrangements that he is making for me in that place. 
 
 " I fear that all this bustle is not very consistent with the 
 habit of spirituality, and that it even engrosses too much of our 
 correspondence. 0, my dear G., let us think of life, with all its 
 vanities and sorrows, as coming speedily to its close, and let us 
 labour for the meat that endureth. I endeavour to lift myself 
 up at times unto God; and sure I am that out of Him all is 
 treacherous here and wretched through eternity. My mind has, 
 within these two years r been sadly agitated and exercised, and 
 yet I cannot but trust that out of its many conflicts and sore 
 distressful processes of thought and feeling, the peaceable fruit 
 of righteousness will at length, by the favour of a righteous and 
 merciful God, be made to arise. Do give me your kind com- 
 munications on my journey through England, and let me know 
 of yourself and my dear children. Give a kiss to each of them 
 from me, and lay it upon them to fear God and to keep His 
 commandments. that He would put His fear more and more 
 within us, and deliver us from that evil heart of unbelief by 
 which it is that we depart from the living God. Give my com- 
 pliments to my aunt and Helen. I now expect to be at Pudhill 
 in two days, and have the prospect before me of tolerable ease 
 for five or six days." 
 
 " GLOUCESTER, September 13, 1822. 
 
 " Thursday. Started at seven ; wrote at the extension of my
 
 GLOUCESTER. 607 
 
 notes ; had a numerous party to breakfast, among whom were 
 Lord Calthorpe, brother to the gentleman that breakfasted with 
 us several days, the Eev. Mr. Spooner, brother-in-law to Mr. 
 Wilberforce, Mr. James of Birmingham, and the Eev. Mr. Lowe 
 of Darlaston, with whom I had most interesting conversation on 
 the subject of his parish pauperism.* Lord Calthorpe made an 
 arrangement with me that will take effect in a subsequent part 
 of my journey. After they went off, Mr. Knott and others 
 moved along with me through Birmingham, where I visited the 
 Charity Workhouse, and made a call or two ; then came back 
 to an early dinner at Mr. Knott's, along with the two Mr. 
 Hunters, of whom I wrote in my last letter. They are truly 
 extravagant in their kindness. The brother at Leamington has 
 a carriage, and they insisted on conducting me in it to Worces- 
 ter, which is twenty-six miles. Thither then we drove, and 
 arrived after seven. We all then called on Mr. Davies, clergy- 
 man. There was a great posse of friends and neighbour ministers 
 assembled to receive me, and I expatiated among them on pau- 
 perism, as well as conducted family worship. I was pressed to 
 my bed that was in readiness for me, but I would not leave my 
 friends, and so insisted on going back to the inn, well pleased 
 with the opportunity of showing off my independence on the 
 journey, an exhibition of which as yet I had had no opportunity. 
 We all took supper together, and I, after writing and extending 
 my notes, went to bed about twelve. 
 
 u Friday. Started at seven. Went out to breakfast at Mr. 
 Davies's : a minister from the country there whom I questioned 
 well about pauperism, and two clerical young men. After 
 breakfast held parley with some of the official gentlemen of the 
 place, and had, indeed, a most lucid and satisfying conversation 
 with them. Then had an excursion through the town to the 
 Cathedral, where we ascended the tower, and had a most 
 brilliant panorama all around. The Severn, with its wooded 
 and fertile banks, formed the leading feature of this glorious 
 scene. It was a most brilliant day, and altogether the place 
 and the people are very dear to me. Mr. Davies a most pious 
 and simple-hearted Christian, and his wife of a spirit altogether 
 kindred to his own. I am treated with great kindness, and a 
 distinction that is really too much. We had an early dinner, 
 and I left Worcester at two. I here took leave of the Mr. 
 Hunters, who would have come forward to Gloucester with me 
 
 * See Works, yol. XT. p. 14J.
 
 COS MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 had I allowed it. The clergyman is now travelling for his 
 health, and both he and his brother came a great deal out of 
 their way for the sake of showing attention. He is to be in 
 Edinburgh next winter, and, I hope, will take a week with us 
 in Glasgow. The coach from Worcester stopped at Chelten- 
 ham, where you once were, you may recollect, previous to your 
 reaching Gloucester. There I was detained half an hour, which 
 I employed in looking about through the streets. Then got 
 into the mail, and reached Gloucester at seven, where I am 
 fairly inned. Called on Dr. Barron, and drank tea there. A 
 numerous company waiting me : I had been expected to dinner. 
 The conversation won't take place till to-morrow after breakfast. 
 Several kindred spirits here. I went to the inn about ten ; 
 supped. Had letters from Jane and Mr. Irving, the former 
 breathing all the warmth of most delighted and affectionate 
 kindness. 
 
 " Saturday. Started at seven. Breakfasted with Dr ; Barron. 
 Had a satisfying conversation with some city gentlemen about 
 the pauperism of Gloucester. Walked about the city. Visited 
 the cloisters that we had done five years ago, and had a brilliant 
 view from the top of the Cathedral tower. Left Gloucester at 
 two. One lady in the coach, who recognised me to be Scotch, 
 talked much of Scotland and its ministers, and at length fairly 
 discovered who I was. She turned out to be from the neigh- 
 bourhood of Clapham, and appeared to me a person of great 
 worth and piety, though I did not altogether like her request 
 that ere I left the coach I should give her some ' pretty little 
 exhortation.' However, I promised to let her know when I 
 should reach Clapham. Mr. Morton waited my arrival when 
 the coach stopped. Mrs. Morton came out to the garden, and 
 all was cordiality and pleasure. They are very fine children, 
 and the second one particularly well-looking. I had five letters 
 waiting me ; one from Dr. Stock, announcing his expectation 
 of me at Bristol, another from Mr. Hale, inviting me to live 
 with him in the neighbourhood of London, another from Row- 
 land Hill, who is now at Wotton-under-Edge, soliciting a visit 
 and a sermon, another from Mr. Collins, which I purpose to 
 answer soon, other two about preaching, and lastly, a letter 
 from Lord Elgin, urging me to call at London on Secretary 
 Peel, and enclosing a letter from Mr. Peel, expressive of the 
 pleasure that he would have in meeting me. After tea I had 
 conversation with the men of three neighbouring parishes, and
 
 ARRIVAL AT MR. MORTON'S. 609 
 
 calls from Mr. Edkins and Mr. Burder. The former came from 
 Swansea when he heard of my intention to preach for him, a 
 distance of upwards of a hundred miles ; and I have been pub- 
 lished by newspaper advertisements and handbills in Gloucester, 
 Cheltenham, &c. You may see me along the roadside by sales 
 of fat cattle, and roups of dung, and all the other items of coun- 
 try information. I had to write a good deal after supper, and 
 went to bed at twelve. 
 
 " Sunday. Started at seven ; had previously the three young 
 Misses at my bedside. They are exceedingly fond and inte- 
 rested about their uncle. Went to church at half-past ten. 
 There was no afternoon sermon. Walked back to the chapel 
 at five, and preached again in the evening to a lamp-light con- 
 gregation, more numerous, and, on the whole, more plebeian 
 than in the morning. 
 
 " Monday. Started before seven ; wrote. I had in the 
 children and heard their repetitions, which I promised to hear 
 yesterday, but they had gone to bed before I arrived. Walked 
 a little out with them before breakfast. Mr. Edkins breakfasted. 
 Sat too for information all forenoon and writing. The plan was, 
 that I should write between calls down stairs, and thus do a 
 deal of business in the presence of the family. This I have 
 completely succeeded in doing. The overseer of Woodchester 
 came in first with his information, and then the overseer of 
 Horsley. I also brought up two days of my conversational notes. 
 Mr. Morton and I made an excursion on horseback connected 
 with the business of my inquiries ; he and I went first to K., 
 where we called, by invitation, on Mrs. K., an eminently pious 
 and excellent person I do think, who for several years has been 
 confined to her bed or to the sofa. I had much of kindest 
 conversation with her. Her brother-in-law, Colonel K., is the 
 master of the property, and has a large landed income. On our 
 return we spent an hour or two in the vestry at Horsley, when 
 I felt deeply interested by ^he business of their monthly meeting, 
 and had the opportunity of witnessing the altercations and un- 
 gainly features of English pauperism. People who earn thirty 
 shillings a week coming with applications some for rent, others 
 because the wife had taken sick, &c. It was to me a novel but 
 richly edifying scene. 
 
 " Tuesday. Got up before six. I took an early breakfast. 
 I prayed with Jane in her bed ; she was a little agitated, but 
 she is borne up by the assurance of my speedy return, and this 
 
 VOL. i. 2 Q
 
 610 MEMOIKS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 consideration had its effect also on the dear children. Mr. Mor- 
 ton came down to the road with me, and the coach for Bristol 
 took me up a little before seven. We went to Wotton-under- 
 Edge by the same road that we took, you may remember, on 
 our returning from it to Pudhill. The country is in all its glory. 
 Young Mr. Ryland I found in the coach, and he and I were the 
 only inside passengers. I inquired for Mr. Thomson, but he 
 has left Wotton-under-Edge for two years. I left my compli- 
 ments with his father, who is still here. The coach stopped 
 nearly half an hour, and I spent it with the interesting veteran 
 Rowland Hill, who, it seems, spends his summer months here, 
 and has a chapel of his own for preaching in. Mrs. Hill asked 
 kindly for you. I took a second breakfast, and the old gentle- 
 man convoyed me to the coach. We got on to Bristol between 
 eleven and twelve. Mr. Ryland has furnished me with a room, 
 where I have the expectation of writing for two hours ere I sally 
 out to my operations in this place. His father and mother are 
 from home, and I, after finishing this letter, have the prospect 
 of passing a good deal more of writing through my hands. 
 
 " Seek God earnestly. Be very sure that Christ's righteous- 
 ness is unto all who believe. Oh that we had the life and the 
 peace of those who are spiritually-minded ! Pray for me, and 
 let both of us pray for our dear children. Oh what a fleeting 
 and precarious world ! I hope that I have been providentially 
 led into my present inquiries. I am full of hope and encour- 
 agement as to the result of them ; yet let me not forget the 
 inestimable worth of human souls ; * and oh, that God would, 
 by His Spirit, bear down the perpetual ungodliness of my nature. 
 Compliments to aunt, Helen, and the dear, dear bairns. Yours 
 very affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " WELLS, September 18, 1822. 
 
 " MY DEAREST GRACE, I yesterday had a most convenient 
 retreat for writing in Dr. Ryland's house. Dr. Stock and Mr. 
 Crisp at length called. The former urged me to live with him 
 
 * " I am greatly engrossed by my arrangements in a new parish to which I hare been 
 lately appointed, one collateral effect of which, I am quite confident, will be the overthrow 
 of its pauperism. The public are looking upon this as my only aim, and that I am intent 
 on the prosecution of a mere civic experiment. I can assure you that I look upon pau- 
 perism as a disease fostered by artificial stimulants which will disappear of itself on their 
 mere removal. It may be made to vanish at a touch ; but though the restoration of the 
 parochial system to our great cities would effect this reformation, as well as many others, 
 yet such is my humble estimate of its importance that I should count the salvation of a 
 single soul of more value than the deliverance of a whole empire from pauperism." From 
 letter addressed to Dr. James Brown, St. Andrews, dated Glasgow, January 30, 1819.
 
 JOHN FOSTER THE BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER. 61i 
 
 in such a kind and agreeable way, that I neither could nor did 
 I feel inclined to refuse him. Walked to his house with Mr. 
 Crisp from Dr. Ryland's, a distance of about a mile and a half, 
 leaving my luggage with Mr. Ryland, that he should take care 
 to see it in time for the coach next morning. Dr. Stock lives 
 at Clifton. At dinner we had Lady Despencer, her daughter 
 the Countess, Mr. Foster, and one or two others. Mr. Foster 
 walked six miles to meet me, and returned on foot in the even- 
 ing. I had previously seen a letter from him to Mr. Knott that 
 was almost as good as apologetical. We gradually got into a 
 habit of cordiality with each other. I like his society and con- 
 versation extremely. At tea there came in my informers, Mr. 
 Johnson, Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Sanders. None of the others 
 whom Mr. Collins recommended were to be had. I got all the 
 facts and details, however, from the gentlemen present ; and 
 after a pleasant general talk in the drawing-room, they and Mr. 
 Foster went away, leaving among others the ladies above speci- 
 fied, with Mrs. Pringle, sister to Farquhar Gordon of Edinburgh, 
 and Mr. Grinfield, a most delightful clergyman of Bristol. We 
 had much genial talk upon the best subjects ; and after they 
 took leave, we went to bed about twelve o'clock. Dr. Stock is 
 the pleasantest and most interesting man I know. 
 
 " Wednesday. Started at half-past six ; breakfasted. Dr. 
 Stock took me down in his chaise to the coach, and we were 
 there in time; but the luggage was not forward in sufficient 
 time, and after a painful anxious looking for the porter, whom 
 Mr. Ryland did not bring with him, he having come previ- 
 ously himself, the coach at length went off without me. In 
 five minutes the dawdling creature came, and I had nothing for 
 it but to hire a post-chaise and drive in pursuit of the coach. 
 Poor Mr. Ryland was very sorry, and I did what I could to 
 soothe him. Overtook the coach at the distance of six miles from 
 Bristol, and had to pay thirteen shillings and sixpence additional 
 for this mistake. Reached Wells between eleven and twelve. 
 The Bishop had previously written that his house was so full that 
 he could not receive me as a lodger. I put up, therefore, at the 
 Star Inn, where, after two or three hours in writing, I sent him 
 a note of my arrival. He soon after came from his deanery, 
 with Lord Calthorpe and another gentleman. They took me 
 into their carriage on an excursion to the Abbey of Glastonbury, 
 whither the whole of the party at his house had previously gone. 
 There I was oppressed by a number of introductions to strangers,
 
 612 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 and certainly was not very comfortable. Did not get into terms 
 of ease with the Bishop, and on the whole this part of the ope- 
 rations went off heavily. Eeturned from Glastonbury in the 
 carriage along with two gentlemen distinct from the Bishop and 
 Lord Calthorpe, who preferred returning on horseback. Visited 
 with them the Cathedral of Wells, which is one of the finest I 
 ever saw. The Bishop of Wells has a magnificent palace. The 
 Bishop of Gloucester, as Dean of Wells, lives in the Deanery, 
 and there I went along with him about six. He had previously 
 joined us in the Cathedral, and been so good as obtain an inter- 
 view for me with the overseer for the poor. After conversing 
 with him about half an hour, was summoned to dinner, where 
 they had all previously sat down to the number perhaps of 
 twenty. There was a place left for me at the head of the table, 
 next to Lord Calthorpe, and he was most particularly attentive. 
 I had a good deal of talk at tea, and thought I could overhear 
 the suppressed exclamation of ' shocking ! ' as I went on 
 with some of my required explanations on the subject of the 
 poor. I took leave of them at ten o'clock, and went to bed in 
 the inn. 
 
 " Thursday. Started between five and six. Went to the 
 Deanery by appointment ; took an early breakfast there. Went 
 along with the Bishop and Lord Calthorpe in a carriage to 
 breakfast with a clerical friend at the distance of about seven- 
 teen miles, who was nearly on the road to Sherbourne. When 
 I got to Bruton, which was two miles distant from the place, I 
 found, by investigating the distance onward, and the impos- 
 sibility of finding a ready conveyance in any other way, that it 
 was expedient for me to take leave of the Lord spiritual and the 
 Lord temporal without proceeding to breakfast, and to take a 
 chaise to myself from Bruton to Sherbourne, which was twelve 
 miles off. The Bishop was I thought coldly polite, but Lord 
 Calthorpe remarkably otherwise, and made an appointment to 
 meet me at Salisbury, and to go on with me thence to South- 
 ampton, where he had led Mr. Sturges Bourne, M.P., to expect 
 me. I fell into the hands of a Bristol clergyman named Dr. 
 Bridges at this place, with whom and his lady I breakfasted ere 
 I set off for Sherbourne, which I did in a post-chaise by myself, 
 and reached Patrick between one and two. He had previously 
 engaged people to come and be my informers about the pauperism 
 of the neighbourhood, and a few from Sherbourne and the other 
 parishes were in attendance upon me. Mr. James, their parish
 
 DRIVE TO SOUTHAMPTON. 613 
 
 curate, I particularly liked, and he went off in sufficient time ; 
 but Mr. , an Aberdeen agriculturist, -who was very intelli- 
 gent and sagacious certainly, but talkative and noisy withal, 
 though he saw me overborne with drowsiness, and knew that I 
 had to start next morning at four, chose to remain till nearly 
 twelve o'clock, at which time I threw myself into bed. 
 
 " Friday. Started between four and five. I had an appoint- 
 ment to meet Lord Calthorpe at one in Salisbury, which was 
 thirty-six miles off, and took a post-chaise all the way in defect 
 of a public conveyance. I got a convoy from Patrick and his 
 wife, first to Shaftesbury, where we breakfasted, and then to the 
 Glove, in all a distance of twenty-one miles. I was a good deal 
 affected in taking leave of them, and going on in my solitary 
 journey. I felt a real revival of affection towards Patrick, and 
 a cordial sympathy with all the circumstances of their condition. 
 They went back in the chaise that brought me, and I went on- 
 wards to Salisbury, where I met Lord Calthorpe according to 
 promise, and got on with him in his carriage to Southampton. 
 We took the road by the New Forest ; and it was indeed most 
 beautiful. On our way we called at Sturges Bourne's, who had 
 gone previously forward to Southampton to dine with us at Mr. 
 Henry Kyder's, formerly one of the under Secretaries of State, 
 and brother to the Bishop of Gloucester. His Lordship was 
 most kind and pleasant during the whole road, and among other 
 things said that it would be a want of frankness in him not to 
 state a circumstance which, after that he revealed, explained to 
 my satisfaction the whole frigidity of my reception at Wells. 
 The Bishop, it seems, was annoyed by my reference to him in 
 my chapter of the 'Civic Economy' upon patronage;* and I 
 can see as much now of the way in which it might implicate 
 him with the other bishops as to make me regret that I have 
 done it. It is only in so far satisfactory to myself that I have 
 not, on the present occasion, obtruded upon his company. Mr. 
 Hunter of Gloucester wrote him of my progress southwards, and 
 then he wrote me an invitation to Wells, and I was totally un- 
 conscious of having done anything which could have offended 
 either him or his lady, though I now see it might have been 
 abundantly vexatious to them both. It is so far well, however, 
 that his brother, Mr. Ryder, was most kind, and spoke most 
 complimentarily of my publications, and instanced particularly 
 
 See Works, vol. xiv. pp. 229, 230.
 
 614 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 my ' Commercial Discourses/ as having done great good both to 
 himself and some of his acquaintances. I liked Sturges Bourne, 
 too, very well ; but I fear that he was not prepared to coalesce 
 with me to the full extent of my views upon pauperism, and that 
 perhaps I may have discomposed him a little by the tenacity 
 wherewith I stood up not for the regulation of a compulsory 
 fund, b\it for the total annihilation of it. However, all was kind 
 and civil and easy, it being a very small and select party. I 
 had to move away from Southampton next morning at four by 
 the mail ; and though invited to take my bed with Mr. Eyder, 
 yet I resolved not to disturb the family by so early a movement, 
 and therefore I motioned to go to the inn, whence the coach was 
 to depart. It was half a mile from Mr. Eyder's house, and 
 therefore the more kind in him and Lord Calthorpe actually to 
 walk with me and show me the house. I took leave of them 
 about ten, and threw myself into bed. 
 
 "Saturday. Started at four. Got on to Portsmouth a little 
 after seven. Landed at the George Hotel, where I breakfasted. 
 I should have mentioned that I had previously written to Sir 
 George Grey the intimation of my visit, and had obtained a 
 most gracious reply from him at Wells. After breakfasting in 
 the inn, I called on Mr. Griffin, who was from home, but his son 
 was most attentive to me. I then called on Sir George arid 
 found Lady Grey from home, being wind-bound at Plymouth. 
 There was a daughter there, and one or two lady visitors besides. 
 I then went forward on my investigations of pauperism at Ports- 
 mouth, Portsea, and Gosport. I spent a very busy forenoon, 
 during which I conversed with the Mayor of Portsmouth, Dr. 
 Bogue, and many others. Mrs. Boag was most kind. I re- 
 turned to Sir George's at five, and there I received a letter of 
 invitation from Mr. Butterworth, now at Portsmouth, and a call 
 from Mr. Legh Richmond, also there along with the former 
 gentleman. Mrs. Gordon, sister of Lady Grey, was also there. 
 She is in profound affliction, yet took a most intelligent and feel- 
 ing interest in my expedition, and presented me with a book, 
 and gave me a good deal of information. I was surprised to 
 meet Mr. M'Lintock on the street, who was so attentive to us in 
 the King's yacht. He, too, dined with us in the Dockyard. I 
 was strongly solicited to stay and preach ; but I had previously 
 written to London, and had no other way of fulfilling the ex- 
 pectations I had created there than by going forward in a night 
 coach, which left Portsmouth at eight, and carried me to London
 
 MR. HALE OF HOMERTON. 615 
 
 at seven in the morning. There was no other passenger but a 
 lady. I was not able to sleep, and never could in travelling ; 
 so that with the fatigue and sleeplessness of former days, I was 
 pretty well prepared for repose during the first day of my arrival 
 in the metropolis. 
 
 " Sunday. Mr. Hale was waiting my arrival at the inn, and 
 took me out in his carriage to his house at Homerton. He is 
 a most sagacious and excellent man, and admirably well en- 
 lightened on the subject of pauperism. I got my breakfast, and 
 by his advice threw myself into bed immediately after it. There 
 I slept for about three hours, and though far from being rested 
 thereby, I was much refreshed by it. Got up towards one ; 
 dined with the family. Preached for Dr. Pye Smith of Homer- 
 ton at three ; a very small house, that holds about 600, and 
 this was favourable. Again preached in the evening at half- 
 past six for Mr. Burder of Hackney. Mr. Bunting relieved me 
 of all the prayers. I have really not been overdone by all this 
 work. Supped at nine ; Mr. Fletcher was of the party ; and 
 went to bed towards eleven. 
 
 " Monday. Gave all this morning in Mr. Hale's to the work 
 of taking down his most important depositions on the pauperism 
 of London. Found that I could scarcely enter upon the heavy 
 arrears of my correspondence, and therefore must spend another 
 day here in busy solitude. Wrote both Mr. Irving and James, 
 from the latter of whom I received an answer ; and I shall spend 
 a night in his house, either on Wednesday or Thursday, or both. 
 Dr. Pye Smith dined with us, and his wife and daughter drank 
 tea. I felt this to be a considerable interruption to my work. I 
 have many letters to answer, not having been able to do any- 
 thing in this way since I left Wells. I have also more than a 
 whole week's conversations on pauperism to extend. I am very 
 much refreshed from my fatigues ; but find that the multiplicity 
 of work in London will prevent me from many of those short 
 excursions that I had conceived to be possible. I am more and 
 more convinced of this world's tastelessness and treachery that 
 it is with God alone that any satisfying converse is to be had ; 
 but, oh how the blindness and carnality of nature stand in the 
 way both of clear discernment and of lively feeling I Give a 
 kiss to each of the children in my behalf. I received your few 
 short but precious lines at Bristol appended to Mrs. Hutcheson's 
 letter. Yours, most affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 616 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " HOMERTON, NEAR LONDON, September 24, 1822. 
 
 " Tuesday. Kose this morning at seven. Had a very busy 
 day till dinner-time with my writings. After breakfast went 
 out for an hour with Dr. Pye Smith, and heard him lecture. 
 Mr. Irving dined with us. He brought out his three elders, 
 who entreated me to do a thing I had no time for, relative to 
 the inducting of Mr. Irving. They went off before dinner. Mr. 
 Irving brought a large packet of letters, but none from you, 
 which I feel somewhat surprised at. There is one from Lord 
 Elgin, urging me to go to Lord Grenville. My business at 
 present is with men of parochial management, and not with 
 grandees of any sort ; and it will positively cut up my designs 
 if they are to be thus interrupted. Mr. Irving stopped all 
 night ; and he is in good taking with his charge. Went to bed 
 about twelve. 
 
 " Wednesday. Started after seven. Mr. Hale and son, Mr. 
 Irving and myself, went to town in Mr. Hale's carriage to Lord 
 Calthorpe's, where I breakfasted. I came in upon the family 
 worship. Mr. Babington and Mr. Zachary Macaulay were there. 
 I had much conversation with them ; and we were afterwards 
 joined by Mr. Cunningham of Harrow. The latter gentleman 
 walked with me first to Marylebone Workhouse, the particulars 
 of which I jotted down ; then to Mr. Higgison ; then, after 
 taking leave of him, to Cheapside, where I was introduced to 
 Mr. M., connected with four London parishes, and from whom I 
 got most satisfying information ; then to the counting-house of 
 Mr. Hamilton, which is at all times open to receive me for 
 writing letters, and where at this moment I have carried forward 
 my business to the point at which I am now writing you. Mr. 
 Hamilton then took me to a coach for Clapham. On our way 
 we called on James, when I got a few minutes of hurried con- 
 versation with him. It seems that he has been a good deal 
 pestered since my arrival with inquiries al>out me. Among the 
 rest my friend Mr. Davidson of Charlotte Street made several 
 calls ; and James replied to his written interrogations about me 
 in a note of which he kept a copy, that is perfectly character- 
 istic of him. I got on the top of a coach for Clapham, whither 
 I had been invited by Mr. Dealtry, the minister thereof. He 
 had a large party of parishioners to dinner, whom he wanted to 
 impregnate with my views. The most distinguished of them all 
 was Mr. Robert Grant, the brother of Charles, whom we saw ; 
 a most distinguished literary character, and who I think will
 
 CLAPHAM. 617 
 
 undertake the cause of anti-pauperism in the 'Edinburgh 
 Eeview.' Miss Wallace, it seems, lives near Clapham, but 
 though she wrote me a very urgent letter for a call, I could not 
 make it out. The lady I met in the coach between Gloucester 
 and Pudhill also wrote, reminding me of my purpose to call, but 
 I could not make it out. I stopped with Mr. Dealtry all night, 
 and felt happy in the elegant and lettered hospitalities of an 
 English rector. Mrs. Dealtry is a fine creature, and Dealtry 
 himself a most active, sensible, and enlightened man, and withal 
 very friendly. There were additional ladies at tea, among whom 
 Miss H., daughter of the deceased Henry, was the most remark- 
 able. It was an assemblage of pious and highly cultivated 
 individuals who have established the local system of schools in 
 Clapham. Mr. Dealtry is to attempt the imitation of my pauper- 
 istic processes even in the face of the existing laws. Went to 
 bed between eleven and twelve. 
 
 " Thursday. Started after six. Mr. Dealtry walked with me 
 to Vauxhall Bridge, and set me on the way to Grosvenor Square. 
 I took the first hackney I could get hold of after leaving him, 
 and went then to breakfast with Lord Calthorpe. He had ascer- 
 tained that Mr. Peel was out of town ; but assured me, from 
 conversation he had had with the under Secretary of State, that 
 he felt very kindly towards me ; and he arranged it that I should 
 write him, and present him with some of my Numbers on ' Civic 
 Economy,' which I have done. I then, after breakfast, took a 
 hackney coach at his house, and drove to Mr. Hale's place of 
 business at Spitalfields, in the other end of London. He had 
 there arranged meetings for me with the clerks and assessors of 
 Christ Church, Shoreditch, and Whitechapel. I spent about 
 three hours in taking down their information. While thus 
 employed, Mr. Buxton, M.P., the av.thor of the book on ' Prison 
 Discipline,' called, and I was introduced to him. This I regard 
 as a very fortunate interview. He is a plain, intelligent, and 
 very friendly person. You have heard me often admire his 
 book ; and he has done me important service in the way of 
 introductions. I walked from Spitalfields to Mr. Hamilton of 
 Cheapside, and thence took a coach for Mr. Irving's. On step- 
 ping in, I met Lord Calthorpe, who asked me to breakfast with 
 him a third time, with a view to call afterwards on Mr. Vansit- 
 tart. Drove to Mr. Irving's. He speculates as much as before 
 on the modes of preaching, is quite independent with his own 
 people, and has most favourably impressed such men as Zachary
 
 618 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Macaulay and Mr. Cunningham, with the conception of his 
 talents. He is happy and free, and withal making way to good 
 acceptance and a very good congregation. I stopped with him 
 two hours ; and was delighted to find that he had been asked to 
 dine with me at Mr. Butterworth's, M.P., in Bedford Square, 
 whither we both went at five o'clock, and remained till nearly 
 nine. Mr. Hale was there, and Mr. Kichmond of Turvey, with 
 one of his unmarried daughters. I settled an arrangement for 
 visiting him in Bedfordshire. Mr. Irving and I went off toge- 
 ther, and walked to his lodgings, where I found Mr. , the 
 
 singularity of whose manner you wont to remark, and who is 
 his guest from Glasgow at present. This is one fruit of Mr. 
 Irving's free and universal invitation ; but I am glad to find 
 that he is quite determined as to visits, and apparently not much 
 annoyed with the intrusion of callers. I took a coach from 
 Irving's to my brother's at Walworth ; arrived there before ten ; 
 supped and had family worship ; found Mrs. Chalmers and Mary 
 quite well, and very happy to see me. James was very jocular, 
 and we spent a very happy and friendly evening together. Went 
 to bed about twelve. 
 
 "Friday. Started before seven. Took part of a breakfast 
 with James : he and Mary accompanied me towards Grosvenor 
 Square. James parted with me before Mary, who crossed the 
 Wellington Bridge with me, took me to the end of Piccadilly, and 
 returned by Westminster Bridge. I breakfasted with Lord Cal- 
 thorpe ; after which we sallied out to Mr. Vansittart's in a coach. 
 We missed him, and I left my card. Thence he took me to Lord 
 Teignmouth's, where I met my old friend Mr. Charles Shore. His 
 Lordship is a very mild and patriarchal-looking nobleman ; and 
 I felt softened and solemnized by his presence. I could only 
 afford a very short call ; and on coming out I parted with Lord 
 Calthorpe at the door, and walked onwards to call on Mr. Butter- 
 worth. I took a coach the latter part of the way. With Mr. But- 
 terworth I visited a few families in St. Giles', where I witnessed 
 both the extremes of human wretchedness and human wicked- 
 ness ;* yet a welcome on the part of the people that convinced 
 me how susceptible they might be under the local system of a 
 wholesome impression. I then visited the St Giles' workhouse, 
 and saw the out-pensioners and overseers in contact, or rather in 
 conflict, with each other. It was big with interest to see hun- 
 dreds of them penned together in a small yard, and waiting their 
 
 * For an interesting allusion to this incident, see Works, Tol. xxi. p. 18.
 
 MRS. FRY AND MR. GURNET. 619 
 
 turn to be called in. Mr. Butterworth's carriage then took me 
 to Mr. Bunting's, where I met with interesting people, and was 
 conducted by them to St. Luke's Hospital, where I witnessed 
 a similar concovirse. I took down also the states of the two 
 parishes of St. Giles' and St. Lute's. From the latter place I 
 took a coach to Zachary Macaulay's, where I met a very distin- 
 guished party, and had much of pleasing and profitable talk 
 upon pauperism Lord Calthorpe, William Smith, M.P. for 
 Norwich, Mr. Buxton, M.P., Mr. Cunningham of Harrow, Mr. 
 Babington, and a son of the late Mr. Percival's. We joined the 
 ladies at tea, after which I had to conduct family worship ; and 
 Mr. Cunningham with myself staid all night. Mr. Dealtry was 
 also of the party; and things do look very hopeful as to the 
 introduction of the matter into Parliament. 
 
 " Saturday. Mr. Cunningham and I left Mr. Macaulay's after 
 an early breakfast, in a gig. He first called with me on Mr. 
 Murray, M.P. His family are all very religious. We then went 
 to Mr. Vivian, rector of a parish about eleven miles from London. 
 I wished to see him from the very striking and peculiar testi- 
 mony that he gave before a Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons on the Poor-laws. He is gruff and outspoken and very 
 decisive in his opinions ; and one of his earliest salutations to 
 me was, that he rejoiced to see a man from Scotland on the sub- 
 ject, for so much nonsense had come in upon them from that 
 country through the Edinburgh Eeview. Poor Mr. Cunningham 
 knew not how to look. We sat about two hours in conversation 
 with him, and I was much interested by his views. When Mr. 
 C. went off for the gig, I told Mr. Vivian that it would be a 
 want of frankness and fairness in me not to disclose myself as 
 the unfortunate author of the articles in question. This, on the 
 other hand, confused him not a little, but we really got upon 
 better terms after this eclaircissement ; and having agreed to 
 exchange publications, we parted very good friends. Mr. Cun- 
 ningham then took me to Stanmore, whence I was to post it by 
 myself to Upton, where Mr. Gurney, a brother of Mrs Fry's, 
 resides, and where I was to get the interesting particulars of the 
 parish of Westham. I had been led to believe that it was only 
 eight miles of posting, but, lo and behold ! by its being on a 
 different side of London, we found it twenty-two. I had to be 
 there at half-past two, but could not get till half-past four. I 
 resolved, however, to go ; took leave of Mr. Cunningham ; 
 arrived at Upton, where I was most kindly and welcomely
 
 620 MEMOIRS OF PR. CHALMERS. 
 
 received. They had despaired of me, and sent away the over- 
 seer, and were half through their dinner. But all was delight- 
 fully made up for. The venerable Mrs. Fry and her husband 
 were there, with Mr. and Mrs. Gurney, both of whom are most 
 charming people. They are all Quakers, and much congeniality 
 both of feeling and of sentiment I enjoyed with them. I am 
 delighted with the ready acquiescence of people so benevolent 
 and at the same time so practised as they are in the habits and 
 circumstances of the poor, in my speculation. They sent for 
 the overseer again before tea, and I took down the state of the 
 parish, with some very interesting facts confirmatory of my views. 
 I left them after eight. Mr. Gurney drove me in his gig along 
 the outskirts of London to Mr. Male's, at the distance of five 
 miles off. It was a fine moonlight night. Mr. Hale had asked 
 certain people to sup ; and I found myself getting fast behind in 
 my writings. I fear that I must defer a good deal of work till 
 my return to Glasgow. Got to bed between eleven and twelve. 
 
 "Sunday. Eose at seven. Breakfasted between eight and 
 nine. Kode to Mr. Irving's chapel with Mr. and Mrs. Hale and 
 William their son in their carriage. A great crowd at the door, 
 and among the rest my niece Mary. We drove through the 
 crowd to a back-door, and with much ado got into the vestry. 
 Mr. Irving made the first prayer. There was a very crowded 
 congregation, though the chapel is small, not being seated for 
 more than 600. After service I received friends in the vestry, 
 among whom were Mr. Gow, Mr. Charles Vertue and lady, Miss 
 Wallace, a lady from Dundee, and David Wilkie, the artist, who 
 introduced to me Sir Thomas Lawrence and another painter. 
 Went thence to Mr. Dinwiddie, Mr. Irving's elder, and dined 
 with Mr. Wilkie, Mr. and Mrs. Hale, and many others. Before 
 dinner I had time to call on Charles Vertue. Then after dinner 
 drove to the Methodist Chapel, where Mr. Bunting received me. 
 He did all the devotional part of the service, and I preached to 
 an immense assemblage of three thousand people. Mr. Butter- 
 worth and many others were in the vestry before I left it. My 
 friend Mr. Hale took me home in the carriage, and had some 
 people to sup with me. Mr. Irving joined us, and spent the 
 night at Homerton. He has sermon to his people in the evening, 
 and not in the afternoon. I was certainly a good deal fatigued, 
 and, after the supper company broke up, was glad to go to bed 
 between eleven and twelve. 
 
 "I am now with Lord Calthorpe at his house in Suffolk,
 
 MR. HANBURY. 621 
 
 where Mr. and Mrs. Wilberforce and three of their family, Mr. 
 Clarkson, Mr. Shore, and many others, are. This is Wednesday, 
 and I am three days behind my narrative. I hope to resume it 
 to-morrow. May God take you into His most holy keeping. 
 Yours, most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " BURY ST. EDMUNDS, October 3, 1822. 
 
 " Monday. Started between six and seven. Breakfasted at 
 seven, and before eight left the kind family of Hale in Homer- 
 ton. Mr. Hale, to crown all his goodness to me, insisted on 
 accompanying me in a post-chaise at his expense to the interior 
 of Essex, about forty miles off, and I soon saw that I could not 
 resist this without hurting and offending him. Mr. Irving I also 
 left at Homerton ; and as you are interested in him, I may say, 
 once for all, that he is prospering in his new situation, and seems 
 to feel as if in that very station of command and congeniality 
 whereunto you have long known him to aspire. I hope that he 
 will not hurt his usefulness by any kind of eccentricity or impru- 
 dence. Mr. Hale passed on to a beautiful country till we came 
 to Booking, where the pauperism is in a most diseased state. 
 Here we met with a farmer, who furnished me with all the 
 particulars. Mr. Buxton has two uncles of the name of Han- 
 bury, great landed proprietors in this neighbourhood, and it is to 
 them I am indebted for the excellent arrangements of this day. 
 Mr. Charles Hanbury met us at Booking, and regrets exceed- 
 ingly his journey to Cheltenham, whither he is now going ; but 
 Mr. Osgood Hanbury, his brother, sent his carriage to us at 
 Bocking, and in it we went to Halstead, about seven miles off, 
 in a very distempered state of pauperism indeed, when another 
 farmer met us by the kindness of our good friends, and gave us 
 all the details. I was here introduced to the vicar. Thence we 
 went, still in Mr. Osgood Hanbury's carriage, to Holfield Grange, 
 his seat, where we were treated in the true primitive style of the 
 hospitality of Old England. The house is one of Queen Anne's 
 days, and I liked the old gentleman exceedingly, as being frank, 
 and friendly, and peculiar withal. He had two daughters with 
 him, and a party to meet us at dinner, among whom were Mr. 
 Harvey, M.P., and Mr. Nolon, M.P., the latter of whom has 
 written upon the Poor-laws, and on which topic we had a great 
 deal of conversation. I was, on the whole, satisfied with the 
 progress that we had made. I got to bed between eleven and 
 twelve.
 
 622 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Tuesday. Started between six and seven. Mr. Hanbury 
 got the overseer from Coggeshall to meet me in his house at 
 seven, and from him I took down the state of its pauperism. 
 Mi*. Hanbury assisted, and, after an hour's work, we took an 
 early breakfast. Mr. Hale and I got into his carriage at half- 
 past eight, and were driven to Booking, where we had been 
 yesterday, with a view to recover the road from London to Bury. 
 After waiting here for some time, I secured in one of the coaches 
 my place for Bury, and here took leave of my very kind friend 
 Mr. Hale. I got on through an interesting country to Bury at 
 one, and in the Angel Inn found Lord Calthorpe. He wrote, 
 and I wrote along with him, for nearly an hour, after which he 
 left me for a little. In the meantime, Mr. Godfrey, a magistrate 
 and landed proprietor, came to me by Lord Calthorpe's appoint- 
 ment, and from him I got the state as to pauperism of one of 
 the Suffolk parishes. Then came in Mr. Wilberforce, who really 
 looks a great deal better than when I saw him last ; but nothing 
 can exceed the singularity of his movements. He positively 
 danced and whisked about like a squirrel. He insisted on taking 
 some packages with his own hand to the carriage that was wait- 
 ing us at the door, and skipped before us in such a way that I 
 could not refrain from laughing outright. I have the utmost 
 love for him, at the same time, and the utmost reverence. He 
 spoke highly of Mr. Collins, and was friendly and kind to the 
 uttermost. He and I and Mr. Godfrey went together in a car- 
 riage of Lord Calthorpe's to his house at Ampton, where Mrs. 
 Wilberforce, three of their family, Mr. Clarkson, and several 
 others, were. Mr. Edward Elliot, whom you may recollect, was 
 among them : he is now the officiating curate of two small 
 parishes here, and is much, I should imagine, with Lord Cal- 
 thorpe. There were one or two pious clergymen, and we spent 
 a very happy evening in pleasant conversation. Mr. Clarkson 
 and I drew very much together. Went to bed about eleven. 
 
 " Wednesday. Started at seven. Took from Mr. Clarkson 
 in the library his most important depositions relative to the poor 
 of his . parish and neighbourhood.* I had to conduct family 
 worship and expound at half-past nine in the presence of a very 
 numerous party of guests and domestics. After breakfast retired 
 again to the library with Mr. Clarkson and Mr. Bickersteth for 
 their testimonies about their parishes. The latter is an admir- 
 able clergyman of an adjoining parish. I should have said that 
 
 See Works, voL XT. pp. 281-283.
 
 MR. MALTHUS. 623 
 
 Mr. Charles Shore joined us yesterday from London. Mr. Clark- 
 son and I at twelve got into a carriage of Lord Calthorpe's, and 
 Mr. Shore and Mr. Godfrey went outside, to Bury, where, by his 
 Lordship's kindness, I had interviews and communication with 
 overseers and official men, who gave me the accounts of no less 
 than five very important parishes. Though this is not a day of 
 great transaction, yet I do feel fatigued by all this work. At 
 four we again left Bury for Ampton, about five miles off, and 
 thence, after stealing about an hour to write, went down to 
 dinner, where we had a very high and enlightened company. 
 Among the rest, were Lord Euston, eldest son to the Duke of 
 Grafton, and Sir William Parker. I got very well on, and at 
 tea had Mr. Wilberforce in a corner, and made good progress 
 with him on the topic of pauperism. I also had my separate 
 conversations with Mrs. and Miss Wilberforce, Mr. Edward 
 Elliot, Mr. Clarkson, and several others, and went to bed be- 
 tween eleven and twelve. 
 
 " Thursday. Started at seven. Left Lord Calthorpe's in his 
 carriage with Mr. Clarkson for Bury at half-past seven. His 
 Lordship has been most kind to me, and in the most delicate 
 way gave me the friendliest advice as to the future composition 
 of my work. He takes a great interest in it ; and I can per- 
 ceive that my articles in the Edinburgh Eeview on pauperism 
 have made a deeper impression throughout England than I was 
 aware of. This I have collected from various parts of the 
 country. I left Mr. Clarkson at Bury, and thence took my place 
 to Cambridge. On my road I passed through Newmarket, and 
 was interested by the view that I had of the great racing-ground. 
 There was a coach that most opportunely took me up at Cam- 
 bridge to London. I had not to stop for it above ten minutes, 
 and it passed within half a mile of the East India College, where 
 I arrived about four. I have certainly forgotten a few things ; 
 but I do not wonder at it in the very bustling and variegated 
 career which I have run. I had much of kindred and substantial 
 converse with Mr. Malthus. He is a great friend of Dealtry's, 
 and, altogether, it is well that I have made this retrograde 
 movement. I have travelled upwards of one hundred and fifty 
 miles from London, and at the East India College am only nine- 
 teen miles from it. I might perhaps have desired a better and 
 a shorter route for my various objects, and seen as much, but I 
 have met with so many unforeseen yet urgent temptations to 
 deviate. The cruelest disappointment I have yet sustained is
 
 624 MEMOIKS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 at this place. I am engaged to be at Turvey to-morrow (Fri- 
 day). Mr. Malthas thought that I would have reached him this 
 evening late, and spent to-morrow with him. Sir James Mack- 
 intosh, who lives at the distance of six miles, was to have 
 dined with me, and, in obedience to arrangements that are fixed 
 (and it was quite indispensable to fix beforehand), I have to 
 forego the advantage of a conversation on this interesting topic 
 with the leader of Opposition in Parliament. When I come 
 next to England, it must be for the special object of converse 
 with influential men. Dr. B., the Principal of the College, 
 and his lady, a Scotchwoman, together with others belonging 
 to the Institution, joined us in the evening. I took leave of 
 Mr. Malthus about eleven, and went with Dr. and Mrs. B. to 
 their house (Mr. Malthus's beds being altogether occupied), and 
 retired at twelve. I have been very kindly and welcomely en- 
 tertained. 
 
 " Friday. Started at seven. Left Dr. and Mrs. B. in a post- 
 chaise at eight. Came on to Hatfield, where 1 now am waiting 
 for the stage-coach to Bedford. Here I have written Mr. Mal- 
 thus, giving vent to my feelings of regret and disappointment 
 at not meeting with Sir James Mackintosh, and here, also, I 
 have brought up my Journal to you. I have lagged behind for 
 a long time, but I rejoice in thus overtaking this object. It was 
 with no small interest that I learned it to be Sir James's invari- 
 able practice to write Lady Mackintosh a full journal of all his 
 movements and conversations when away from her. I found 
 that the innkeeper at Hatfield had been overseer of his parish, 
 so that while waiting there for the coach I was not idle alto- 
 gether, but yoked upon him, and posed him well with questions. 
 Lord Cranbourne, son to the Marquis of Salisbury, I found to 
 be a fellow-overseer of his, and I thought that I could not do 
 less than leave a set of my publications for the joint benefit of 
 my host and his Lordship : the latter I understand to feel a 
 particular interest in the subject. Got into the coach for Bed- 
 ford before eleven. Found there a lady and a young boy, who 
 afterwards turned out to be the son of Sir Thomas Baring. I 
 had been expected, it seems, at his house, and, somehow or other, 
 the young gentleman recognised me, and we became known to 
 each other. Sir Thomas lives in Hampshire, and this, his 
 youngest son, had just come from home on his way to a board- 
 ing-school in the road before reaching Bedford. We had much 
 of pleasing and good conversation ere he parted from us, and
 
 JOURNEY TO LEICESTER. 625 
 
 the lady formed a very pleasant addition to our little party. On 
 reaching Bedford, I found Mr. Eichmond at the front- door of 
 the inn. He had brought his servant and his gig from Turvey 
 to take me home there ; but we dined at the inn ere we set 
 forth, and, in the meantime, Mr. Hillyard, with his wife and 
 daughter, waited on us to pay their respects. I got documents 
 illustrative of the pauperism of the town, and then went on with 
 Mr. Eichmond in his gig to Turvey. I was delighted with the 
 salutations that Mr. Eichmond experienced in his parish and 
 village. We landed at the rectory about six, and happy I was 
 to repose in the bosom of a kind and interesting family. Mrs. 
 Eichmond was very motherly, and the domestic group altogether 
 highly interesting. After tea the two overseers of the parish 
 came in, and I had from them the state of the parish. I have 
 made a real accession to my knowledge of English pauperism 
 by this movement, and the kindness of the family has been quite 
 unbounded. Went to bed before eleven. It is a curious house, 
 consisting of many offsets and intricacies and ramifications, and 
 the style of the rooms is highly picturesque and interesting. I 
 have had real enjoyment in this visit, and Mr. Eichmond has 
 risen greatly in my regard in consequence of it. 
 
 " Saturday. Started at seven. Was greatly delighted with 
 the strength and refreshment I had gotten from being eight 
 hours in bed. Breakfasted at eight, and left the family after 
 nine. I made Mr. Eichmond a firm proselyte to my system. 
 It is really a most amiable family. Mr. Eichmond accompanied 
 me in his gig as before to Newport Pagnell, eight miles off, the 
 nearest place to a coach. On our way visited Olney, where I 
 alighted at the vicar's, and was shown the house and garden of 
 our dear poet Cowper. A little farther on called on Mr. Fry of 
 Emberton, a rector, where we also met Mr. Westoby, a curate. 
 Here I got a great deal of light on the subject of pauperism. 
 Hurried on to Newport, and there found the Leicester coach just 
 going off. It was full inside, so that I had nothing for it but 
 to be an outside passenger for fifty miles. It was a glorious 
 day, however, and a country altogether new. I dined at North- 
 ampton, and reached Leicester after six. On entering the town, 
 I was stopped at the toll, and there told that a Dr. Chalmers in 
 this coach must be let down at Parson Hall's. There I was let 
 down accordingly, and found him from home, with a very kind 
 letter of regret from him. I also there found Mr. Smyth's letter, 
 and to him I would offer my compliments and best thanks. 
 
 VOL. i. 2 K
 
 626 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Here, also, I met with his nephew, Mr. Hall, from Kettering, 
 who was to have preached, and with him I made the arrange- 
 ments for the morrow. I then took a post-chaise, and drove on 
 to Mr. Babington's, between five and six miles off. Arrived there 
 at eight o'clock. Found a large dinner party there, and, among 
 others, Mr. Whitmore, M.P., who is one of the most valuable 
 auxiliaries that I have at all met with. I venerate Mr. Babington, 
 but I shall speak more of him afterwards. There was a number 
 of ladies, too, at tea, and altogether the reception I have met 
 with has been of a most kind and encouraging nature. There 
 was much of conversation, and we sat up till nearly twelve. I 
 had to conduct family worship. A kiss to the dear children. 
 My dearest Gr., yours most affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 "NOTTINGHAM, October 9, 1822. 
 
 " On Sunday T arose at eight, and at nine Mr. Babington's 
 coach took us all into Leicester. Outside and in there were a 
 good many members of his family, including himself and Mrs. 
 Babington, with Mr. Whitmore. I preached both forenoon and 
 afternoon, spending the interval with the Misses Something from 
 Derbyshire, now living at Leicester. We also drank tea there, 
 and returned to Eothely Temple, which is Mr. Babington's place, 
 in the evening. 
 
 " Monday. Eose at seven. Mr. Babington, that most perfect 
 and practically right of men, had arranged many interviews 
 with me at his house this day. I in particular had gentlemen 
 from Leicester who gave me a full account of the pauperism 
 there. Among others were Mr. Coote and Mr. Eobert Hall, 
 junior. There was a very large party at breakfast ; and I did 
 not get quit of my informers till about one o'clock. I was also 
 taken out to meet with neighbours who called, and among others 
 I had great pleasure in Mr. John Babington, a son, who is a 
 clergyman of a neighbouring parish, a Mr. Erskine, also a clergy- 
 man of a parish here, and son to Lord Erskine, and Mr. Eose, the 
 parish minister, who is married to a daughter of Mr. Babington. 
 At one I went out with Mrs. and the Misses Babington to visit 
 their village called Eothely, and was much struck with the 
 superior style and manners of these English cottagers. We 
 called at the rectory, where I thought highly of Mrs. Eose. 
 Dined with somewhat of a family party, and had afterwards 
 converse with Mr. John Babington about his parochial pauperism.
 
 LETTER FROM MRS. LUNDIE. 627 
 
 Mr. Whitmore left us in the evening, and I do count him a very 
 great Parliamentary acquisition to the good cause : kind and 
 clever and expert in all the forms and business of the House. 
 Went to bed at eleven. . . . Mr. Coke of Norfolk expressed a 
 very kind and urgent desire to see me ; and had the geography 
 at all suited I should certainly have felt it my duty to go, it 
 being of mighty importance to gain the countenance of influ- 
 ential people." 
 
 ******* 
 
 At Eothely Temple Dr. Chalmers was introduced to the Eev. 
 Edward Morgan, the now venerable vicar of Syston, who in- 
 vited him to preach in his pulpit. The liberal spirit which 
 prompted this offer was fully felt and responded to by Dr. Chal- 
 mers, who told Mr. Morgan that he would rather preach in the 
 Established Church than out of it when in England. On the 
 ground of the existing legal hindrances which stood in the way 
 of compliance, the offer was declined. It induced a friendship, 
 however, which was afterwards followed- by a very interesting 
 correspondence. 
 
 On Saturday, the 12th October, Dr. Chalmers crossed the 
 Border, and chose for his first resting-place in Scotland the 
 manse at Kelso, in the society of wbose highly cultivated mini- 
 ster, the Rev. Mr. Lundie, and in that of his accomplished lady, 
 he experienced a most grateful repose after the efforts and 
 varieties of six weeks' incessant toil. The events of the three 
 days which followed are best told in .the words of a letter, 
 addressed at the time by Mrs. Lundie to her friend the Eev. 
 Matthias Bruen of New York : 
 
 " Kelso, October 25, 1822. Dr. Chalmers was so kind as to 
 retxirn this way from his English journey to investigate the state 
 of pauperism. He met with your friend Lord Calthorpe, Clark- 
 son, Wilberforce, Babington, Cunningham of Harrow, &c., and 
 has gained such a favourable impression of the form piety assumes 
 in the Episcopal Church, that I daresay Andrew Thomson will 
 accuse him of wishing to be a bishop.* Dr. Chalmers arrived 
 on Saturday. The good man rejoiced to be at the fireside of a 
 
 * The impression here referred to was not created by this visit to England. Writing to 
 Mr. Wilberforce in March 1822, some months before this visit was paid, Dr. Chalmers says, 
 " We had a visit from Mr. Gray of Sunderland lately, one of the good men of the Church of 
 England. It is truly refreshing to have a visit from such. It always puts me in mind of a 
 saying of Brainerd, that he had beard hundreds speak about religion, but not above one or 
 two speak religion. We Scotch speak about it look at the matter intellectually come 
 forth with our didactic speculations about the thing ; but the evangelical English clergymen, 
 as far as I can observe, possess the thing, and possessing it they have by far the most effec- 
 tive ingredient of good preaching, which is the personal piety of the preacher himself."
 
 628 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Scotch manse once more, and said he was happy because he might 
 speak Scotch as he could not help doing, and no one would mis- 
 understand him. He preached on ' He who being often reproved 
 hardeneth his neck,' &c. He said we must listen now, for he 
 could make the argument no stronger if we lived these twenty 
 years, and that our hearts are like metal if they do not break 
 under the hammer of the Word they will harden. There was 
 a climax ' Death will come the coffin will come the mourners 
 will come,' &c. It was delivered with such power that from the 
 duchess to the apprentice boy all wept. On Monday we were 
 loath to lose the great and good man, and set out with him 
 to Jedburgh. His mind expanded and rejoiced over the beau- 
 ties of nature ; and no youth in his teens could have recited 
 with more zest quotations from descriptive poems Thomson's 
 * Seasons,' &c. 
 
 ' Sweet Teviot, on thy silver tide 
 The blazing bale-fires burn no more,' &c. 
 
 The varied treasures of his mind lavished on us by the way were 
 quite delightful. We went on to Edgerstoun ; part of the way 
 lay by a dashing stream, part through woods, and part by cot- 
 tages adorned by roses, and all of it in company with a man of 
 God to whom it was safe to confide our doubts, and even to com- 
 mit our vagaries. We found Mr. Eutherford was not at home. 
 His amiable wife was by the library fire with her sister-in-law, 
 and Mr. Brown, a remarkably large stout man of seventy-two. 
 He had been a parishioner in Cavers when Dr. Chalmers was 
 assistant there, and the greetings and cordial inquiries between 
 them were quite animated. We fell into devout discourse pre- 
 sently, and conversed till late, the aged gentleman, as was 
 remarked next day, listening keenly and seeming to ponder 
 what was said. He had not read Wilberforce's ' View,' the first 
 book, Dr. Chalmers said, which had cast light into his mind. 
 Next morning I heard a bustle in the room where the aged 
 guest slept, our rooms were in a turret of the mansion with 
 a thin partition between ; I heard a servant call in an alarmed 
 manner down stairs for help, and ran into the room, where I 
 found a man trying to support the giant frame of Mr. Brown. 
 I had just time to throw the pillows below him before he sank on 
 the floor. It were vain to tell of watching the pulses of a dying 
 heart, of unwillingness to believe that he was gone, of chaffing 
 dead feet and bleeding dead arms, and attempting to warm a 
 chilling frame. Mrs. B., always gentle, received every advice
 
 SUDDEN DEATH OF MR. BROWN. 629 
 
 with gratitude. Dr. Chalmers, who had never seen death be- 
 fore but once, stood like a statue, holding up both his hands. 
 Then we knelt and he offered up a comprehensive and solemn 
 prayer. Then we stood again and gazed till we fancied we saw 
 the features move, and the huge breast heave, and wiped the 
 dews off the brow that was never to feel again. After a time 
 the family assembled, and Dr. Chalmers addressed us on, ' Be ye 
 also ready,' &c. He made many ineffectual efforts to find the 
 passage, ruffling the leaves of the Bible in obvious agitation, 
 and at last he gave up the attempt, saying, we all were acquainted 
 with the words. The sou of Mr. Brown, who was not far off, 
 and arrived some time before, seemed as if he had been alarmed 
 into stone, till, in the progress of the address, the poor youth 
 melted to tears. 
 
 " We felt that we could not leave Mrs. E. on that day, which 
 was touching in all its hours. We went to the porter's lodge 
 and assembled all the cottagers, and Dr. Chalmers addressed 
 them. He also addressed the poor son when no one was present 
 but myself, and with a father's tenderness besought him to read 
 Alleine's ' Alarm,' and to pray. He wept over him. We ram- 
 bled for hours in the woods. One is accustomed to consider 
 great men as to their fame, their talents, their usefulness, but 
 that day I considered a great man as to his cftvn religious ex- 
 perience. It was touching to see him sit down on a bank 
 repeatedly with tears in his eyes, and say, ' Ah ! God has rebuked 
 me ; I know now what St. Paul means by being instant in season 
 and out of season. Had I addressed that old man last night 
 with urgency it might have seemed out of season to human eyes, 
 but how seasonable it would have been ! ' 
 
 " During our walk he spoke confidingly of his early views. 
 He did not understand gospel truth, and felt an aversion to the 
 sabbatical air of his father's house, yet all the time he was a 
 consistent Theist adoring God the Creator, and delighting to 
 expatiate on His works, so that when at College if a companion 
 forced himself on his Saturday walk in the country, it was a 
 disappointment ; he enjoyed solitary musings and adoration. He 
 then spoke with simplicity and genuine feeling on the difference 
 between the character of the Creating and the Redeeming God, 
 and quoted Cowper ' My Father made them all.' 
 
 " We set out next morning, ^nd drove down that road in safety 
 up which Mr. Brown had come in health as good as ours. Break- 
 fasted at Dr. Somerville's ; had a large meeting of friends at
 
 630 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Mary Leslie's, where we again enjoyed worship with Dr. Chal- 
 mers, and there bade farewell he taking his way to Cavers 
 and Wilton, I mine to tell my family at home that one was 
 taken and the other left." 
 
 Of the visit to Cavers there is no other notice than this brief 
 entry in his Journal, " October 16. To Cavers. Splendid 
 charity of Mr. Douglas." On Saturday the 19th Dr. Chalmers 
 arrived in Glasgow, and on Monday, after reviewing the inci- 
 dents of his seven weeks' absence he wrote thus to his sister Mrs. 
 Morton : " I have reason to pray and to strive lest the busy 
 routine of operations should altogether secularize me. It is a 
 withering world a dry and a thirsty land where no water is 
 a place of exile from the fountain of life and light that is laid up 
 in the Divinity, and in the dust of which it is the constant and 
 downward tendency of our hearts to be ever grovelling. It is 
 good that we feel our nothingness, and that under the impulse 
 of this feeling we seek for our all out of the sufficiency that is 
 in Christ. Never will He reject the feeblest approaches of those 
 who are humbled by an affecting sense of their own worthless- 
 ness ; and it forms a great peculiarity of the gospel, which is all 
 its own, that under its influence alone it is, that when we are 
 weak then are we strong."
 
 LETTER TO MR. WOOD. 631 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXII. 
 
 CHURCH IN EDINBURGH OFFERED AND REFUSED CORRESPONDENCE WITH PRIN- 
 CIPAL NICOLL AS TO THE VACANT CHAIR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS ACCEPTANCE OF THAT CHAIR LETTER OF 
 
 EXPLANATION TO HIS AGENCY ERECTION OF A CHAPEL OF EASE IN THE 
 
 PARISH OF ST. JOHN'S APPEARANCES BEFORE THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS 
 
 SPEECH IN THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1821, ON THE THEOLOGICAL EDU- 
 CATION OF CANDIDATES FOR THE HOLY MINISTRY THE TABLE CONTROVERSY 
 
 CASE OF PLURALITY OF OFFICES INDUCTION OF PRINCIPAL MACFARLANE 
 
 AS ONE OF THE MINISTERS OF GLASGOW. 
 
 " MORE than twenty years ago, immediately before Dr. Muir 
 came to Edinburgh, Bailie Smith called on me,* at the request 
 of the Lord Provost and Magistrates, to request me to ascertain 
 if Dr. Chalmers would accept of the then vacant charge in Edin- 
 burgh. They had resolved to present him if he would accept ; 
 but they made it a rule never to offer a presentation without 
 previously ascertaining that it would be accepted. My neigh- 
 bour, the late Mr. Wood, who was, I believe, a distant relative 
 of Dr. Chalmers, and in whose house I had frequently met the 
 Doctor, happened to be going to Glasgow next day, and I re- 
 quested him to call on Dr. Chalmers and state to him what had 
 passed between me and Bailie Smith, adding that it would be 
 very obliging, as the Bailie had suggested, that even if Dr. 
 Chalmers declined to come to Edinburgh on this occasion, he 
 would state his general views on this subject." 
 
 In consequence of this communication Dr. Chalmers addressed 
 the following letter to Mr. Wood, which, though not read at the 
 Council table, was known to all the Magistrates and Council, 
 and of course to a considerable portion of the public : 
 
 " GLASGOW, January 30, 1822. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, The subject of our conversation this morn- 
 ing is not new to me, having repeatedly had to deliberate on 
 similar overtures from Edinburgh on the occasion of former 
 vacancies. This has familiarized me the more to the merits of 
 the proposition which you have had the goodness to lay before 
 
 * Letter from John Shank More, Esq., dated June 1850.
 
 632 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 me, and may account for the readiness and decision of my 
 answer to it. 
 
 " You know that all my personal tastes and partialities are 
 on the side of Edinburgh ; nor, were it right to indulge an 
 earthly perspective, can I figure any sort of beau ideal that more 
 regales my imagination than to retire from the fatigue and dis- 
 traction of my present habits to the literature and intellectxtal 
 society of our cultivated metropolis. Any situation of superior 
 Christian usefulness to the one that I now occupy, and which 
 would at the same time afford tranquillity and leisure for the 
 prosecution of theological learning, I should feel, in spite of all 
 the ties which bind me to Glasgow, to be quite irresistible. 
 
 " But this is what I cannot look for in the mere exchange of 
 one parish for another ; and, besides, though my present arrange- 
 ments for St. John's are nearly all settled, and in so far I feel 
 myself emancipated from the necessity for remaining, which 
 before had a powerful effect to fix and detain me in my present 
 situation, yet are these arrangements so prosperous and so pro- 
 mising, that I am not aware of any ministerial charge in Scotland 
 more important than the one which I now hold, or which should 
 induce me to abandon the field of my present labours. 
 
 " All my gratitude is due to those gentlemen of the Town 
 Council in Edinburgh who have kindly offered to befriend me 
 in this matter. I should regret it extremely if the way in which 
 I have hitherto kept aloof from the offices which they patronize 
 were at all to disoblige or alienate a single individual among 
 them. The truth is, that there is not a body of men in the 
 kingdom to whose patronage I should feel greater satisfaction 
 in being indebted for such a retreat from the manifold activities 
 of a city parish, as would not withdraw me at the same time 
 from the service of Christianity, but only enable me to exchange 
 the personal for the literary labours of my profession. Yours 
 very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 But although he negatived the proposal made to him in the 
 beginning of the year 1822, a different treatment awaited another 
 proposal which he received near its close. Soon after his return 
 from England, Dr. Chalmers received the following letter from 
 the Rev. Dr. Nicoll, Principal of the United College, St. An- 
 drews : 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, November 16, 1822. 
 
 " You are aware that our Moral Philosophy Chair in St. An-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH PBINCIPAL NICOLL. 633 
 
 drews is vacant, and the purpose of this letter is to ask yon 
 whether you would accept of this Chair were it offered without 
 any solicitation on your part ? If you ask how I come to put 
 this question, my answer is, you have been heard to say, I 
 understand, that the exertions required in your present situation 
 are rather too much for your constitution, and that you believed 
 a more limited and retired sphere of action might be advisable 
 for you. There is an idea, too, that you are attached to the 
 scenes of your early years, and that St. Andrews would be by 
 no means a disagreeable residence for you, whilst your employ- 
 ment as a teacher of Moral Science would embrace the same 
 general object which a clergyman has in view. I beg of you to 
 understand that this letter is written without any authority from 
 my colleagues, and even without their knowledge, and in the 
 first instance for my own private guidance. If your mind be 
 at once decidedly against the plan, you will require no time for 
 deliberation, but if you judge it deserving of consideration, then 
 I think your best way would be to meet me in Edinburgh 
 where I am to be at a county meeting on Tuesday next when 
 we can have a conversation on the subject. Be assured, how- 
 ever, that I have no wish to converse with you on anything like 
 jobbing politics. 
 
 " If you come among us, you shall come free as the air you 
 breathe. No favour will be considered as done to you, and con- 
 sequently you will be under no obligation to any individual. 
 My support will be given to your character to your varied ac- 
 quirements and splendid talents to your integrity as a man 
 to your gentlemanlike and mild manners as a member of 
 society ; and if my colleagues give their support, I know that 
 it will be given on the same grounds. The living, I am sorry 
 to say, cannot be reckoned higher than 300 a year, but I think 
 it will increase. 
 
 " I ought to have said that your name would never be men- 
 tioned unless there were a certainty of success, and that your 
 presence would not be required for nearly twelve months. Be- 
 lieve me to be, my dear Sir, with sincere respect, yours faithfully, 
 
 FRANCIS NICOLL." 
 
 This frank and generous communication, coming from one 
 whose sentiments on many points of ecclesiastical polity differed 
 widely from his own, was taken into immediate and earnest 
 consideration. The interview in Edinburgh proposed by Dr.
 
 634 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Nicoll took place, and was succeeded by the following inter- 
 change of letters : 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, January 11, 1823. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, Referring to my former letter, and to the 
 conversation which passed subsequently betwixt us in the month 
 of November, I have now to express my hope that you are 
 ready to answer the question which that letter contained, and 
 which I now repeat with the knowledge and concurrence of my 
 colleagues. They, it is true, as I then stated, did not know of 
 my holding any written or verbal communication with you in 
 November ; but it is equally true, on the other hand, that I 
 would not have done what I did if I had not believed that they 
 entertained an equally favourable opinion with myself of your 
 character and talents. 
 
 "I can now say that they are ready to receive you most 
 cordially as a colleague whose name will add splendour to the 
 College, and whose dispositions will render him a most valuable 
 acquisition to the private society of its members. By coming 
 amongst us your plans of public usefulness will not be upon the 
 whole impeded, for though you will be completely occupied dur- 
 ing session time with your duty as a Moral Philosophy Pro- 
 fessor, you will have six months entirely to yourself unfettered 
 by College rules. 
 
 " If your answer be favourable, the election may take place 
 immediately or not as agreeable to yourself ; but I cannot pro- 
 mise now that the matter has been spoken of that it can be kept 
 out of public view for any length of time. I may add, that 
 though the election takes place now, the admission which con- 
 stitutes you a professor will be made to suit your own wishes, 
 any time between this and the month of November. You are 
 aware that the family of the late incumbent enjoy the emolu- 
 ments up to Whitsunday. Expecting to hear from you as soon 
 as you can, I remain, my dear Sir, with sincere respect and 
 esteem, your very faithful servant, FRANCIS NICOLL." 
 
 " GLASGOW, January 13, 1823. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have received the communication by which 
 you have honoured me, and I am happy that it found me alto- 
 gether free from the doubts and hesitations which I expressed 
 to you at our interview in Edinburgh. 
 
 " I feel myself to be highly flattered by the distinguished 
 mark of approbation which you and your colleagues have con-
 
 ELECTION TO THE CHAIR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 635 
 
 ferred upon me, and it shall be my assiduous endeavour to justify 
 your confidence by the faithful performance of those different 
 duties which you have called upon me to discharge. 
 
 " If you think it altogether right and formal in me to an- 
 nounce this determination to the official people here previous to 
 my election, it would make it less necessary that it should be 
 immediate. But if the actual election must precede any such 
 announcement, then the sooner it takes place the better, as it 
 would shorten that period of annoyance which would take place 
 between the first report of your movements in Glasgow and the 
 promulgation of my acceptance. I have, besides, an interest in 
 making the earliest possible communication both to the Lord 
 Provost and to my kirk-session, and, on the whole, should prefer 
 that I had it in my power to render the attention to them of 
 making them acquainted with my views ere the topic came in 
 any shape before the public. I have another object in the 
 matter being fully settled and understood and that is, that it 
 would give an energy and decision to my concluding movements 
 in Glasgow, and so enable me the sooner to perfect my various 
 arrangements. 
 
 " You would oblige me much by your reply, that I may know 
 how to act in regard to this matter, which I feel to be of some 
 importance in my present situation. 
 
 '' I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude for the very 
 handsome manner in which you and your colleagues have acted 
 towards me. I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 On the 18th January 1823, Dr. Chalmers was unanimously 
 elected to the vacant office. A meeting of his elders, deacons, 
 and Sabbath-school teachers was immediately summoned, and 
 the following letter, which was read to them, gave the first pub- 
 lic announcement in Glasgow of the contemplated removal : 
 
 " GLASGOW, January 20, 1823. 
 
 " I have called together the gentlemen of the agency of St. 
 John's, for the purpose of making known my acceptance of the 
 offered Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. An- 
 drews ; and it is not without much agitation that I contemplate 
 the prospect of leaving such a number of friends, in whose kind- 
 ness and Christian worth I have found a refuge from many dis- 
 quietudes. The appointment is altogether unlocked for and
 
 036 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 unsolicited on my part, and just happens to be the seventh that 
 has been submitted to my consideration since I have been con- 
 nected with Glasgow. You will therefore believe, that it is not 
 upon a slight or hasty deliberation that I have resolved to accept 
 of it ; and I now hasten to offer the explanation of my reasons 
 to those who are best entitled to know them. 
 
 " My first is a reason of necessity, and is founded on the im- 
 perative consideration of my health. I should like to unite the 
 labour of preparation for the pulpit with the labour of household 
 ministrations in the parish ; this is a union which I have made 
 many attempts to realize, and I now find myself to be altogether 
 unequal to it : this mortifying experience has grown upon me 
 for a good many months, but never did it become so distinct and 
 decisive until the present winter. My very last attempt at ex- 
 ertion out of doors has been followed up by several weeks of 
 utter incapacity for fixed thought. I find it impossible any 
 longer to acquit myself both of the personal and mental fatigues 
 of my present office ; and when, under an impressive sense of 
 this, a vacant professorship came to my door, I entertained it as 
 an opening of Providence, and have resolved to follow it. 
 
 " My second is a reason of conscience. I am aware that the 
 fatigue of my present office is shortly to be lightened by the 
 erection of a Chapel of Ease, and the subdivision of the parish 
 into two equal parts. I have often taken encouragement to 
 myself from the anticipation of this important relief; and if my 
 successor be possessed of ordinary strength, and have nothing to 
 carry off his mind from the direct work o'f the ministry, he will 
 now, I am persuaded, feel the comforts of a sphere so reduced 
 within manageable limits, that it may be overtaken. But it so 
 happens of me, that my attention of late has been divided be- 
 tween the cares of my profession and the studies of general phil- 
 anthropy ; and, while sensible of the rebuke to which this might 
 expose me from those whose piety and Christian excellence are 
 entitled to veneration, yet I can affirm of every excursion that 
 I have recently made in the fields of civic and economic specu- 
 lation, that I have the happiness of him who condemrieth not 
 himself in that which he hath allowed. I can truly say, that 
 when I entered on this field it was not because I knowingly 
 turned me away from the object of Christian usefulness, but be- 
 cause I apprehended that I there saw the object before me ; but 
 the field has widened as I have advanced upon it, insomuch that 
 I cannot longer retain the office which I now hold without in-
 
 EXPLANATORY LETTER TO HIS AGENCY. 637 
 
 justice to my parish and congregation without, in fact, becoming 
 substantially, and to all intents and purposes, a pluralist. 
 
 " In these circumstances, Gentlemen, I have been met, and 
 most unexpectedly, with the unanimous invitation of a college 
 within whose walls I can enjoy the retirement that I love, and 
 again unbosom myself among the fondest remembrances of my 
 boyhood. It was there that I passed through the course of my 
 own academical studies, and that I am now called upon to direct 
 the studies of another generation. Some of you have long known 
 what I think of the great worth and importance of a professor- 
 ship, and that I have even held a literary office in a university, 
 through which the future ministers of our parishes pass in nu- 
 merous succession every year, to be a higher station in the vine- 
 yard, even of Christian usefulness, than the office of a single 
 minister of a single congregation.* 
 
 " Moral philosophy is not theology, but it stands at the en- 
 trance of it, and so, of all human sciences, is the most capable 
 
 * In the explanatory remarks appended to the first number of the " Christian and Civic 
 Economy of Large Towns," published in September 1819, there occurs the following pas- 
 sage: "You know that a machine, in the hand of a single individual, can often do a 
 hundred-fold more work than an individual can do by the direct application of his own 
 hands. He who makes the machine, then, is more productively employed than he who, 
 without it, engages immediately in the work. To produce a steam-engine, which sets one 
 hundred looms agoing, is a far larger contribution to the goods of the country than to work 
 at a single loom. This principle, obvious enough in manufactures, is sadly overlooked in 
 the business of human society. The man who spends so much time in the services of a 
 philanthropic institution, is not so productively employed as he who excites the principle 
 which prompt* those services in the breasts of a hundred men. He who does the work is 
 not so productively employed as he who multiplies the doers. He who is a mere agent in 
 the business of charity is not so efficient a contributor to the cause as he who rears a chari- 
 table agency. ' Put them,' says the apostle to one preacher, ' put them in mind to be ready 
 unto all good works.' To another preacher he says, ' Meditate on thine own peculiar work, 
 give thyself to it wholly.' 
 
 " But, further the elevated office of a Christian minister is to catch men, There is, how- 
 ever, another still more elevated, and that, too, in regard of Christian productiveness which 
 is to be employed in teaching and in training the fishers of men. A professorship is a 
 higher condition of usefulness than an ordinary parish. Some of you may think that this 
 holds true only of a theological professorship ; but this is your mistake. There are many 
 university subjects which, without being hurtfully transformed, admit of the very strongest 
 impregnation of Christianity. This holds eminently and characteristically true of Natural 
 Philosophy, where science and sacredness may be made to stand together in perpetual con- 
 junction where the demonstrations of the one may be employed to kindle and sustain the 
 devotions of the other where every new step in the march of investigation leads to a new 
 evolution of the glories of the Divinity and where the unequivocal testimonies which must 
 ever fall from the abundance of a heart filled with the light of the gospel, would not descend 
 with less emphasis upon the hearers that it came associated with that light of philosophy 
 which they now hold in too exclusive veneration. 
 
 " Were there, at this moment, fifty vacancies in the Church, and the same number of 
 vacancies in our Colleges, and fifty men to start into view, equally rich in their qualifica- 
 tions for the one department and the other, some of you would be for sending them to the 
 pulpits I would be for sending them to the Chairs. A Christianized university, in respect 
 of its professorships, would be to me a mightier accession than a Christianized county, in 
 respect of its parishes. And should there be a fountain out of which there emanated a 
 thousand rills, it would be to the source that I should carry the salt of purification, and not 
 to any of the streams which flow from it."
 
 638 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of being turned into an instrument either for guiding aright, or 
 for most grievously perverting the minds of those who are to be 
 the religious instructors of the succeeding age. 
 
 " It is my anxious wish that these reasons, which have satis- 
 fied myself, should satisfy you. In the calm retreat of an ancient 
 and much loved University in the employment which it offers, 
 so akin to the themes that I hold in the highest estimation in 
 the post of superior usefulness which is there assigned to me in 
 the unbounded leisure and liberty of its summer vacation, during 
 which I may prosecute my other favourite pursuits, and more 
 particularly, may renew, for months together, my converse with 
 Glasgow, and so perpetuate my intimacy with yourselves ; in 
 these there are charms and inducements which I have not been 
 able to resist, and which I have not seen it my duty to put away 
 from me. 
 
 " I feel the highest gratitude for your affectionate services, nor 
 shall I ever cease to remember your toleration for my errors, and 
 the kind indulgent friendship wherewith you have ever regarded 
 me. My prayer for you all is, that you may be enabled, by the 
 grace of God, to live the lives and to die the deaths of the 
 righteous that you hold fast the doctrine which is unto salva- 
 tion, and grow daily in the faith of the gospel, which both 
 pacifies the conscience and purifies the heart. Quit not, I 
 beseech you, those stations of usefulness to which you were 
 guided, not, I trust, by any human attachment, but by a prin- 
 ciple of allegiance to Him who is the same to-day, yesterday, 
 and for ever. Do with all your might that which your hand 
 findeth to do ; and more particularly do I crave, that throughout 
 the remaining months of my abode in the midst of you, you will 
 afford me the aid of all your light and experience in the matur- 
 ing of those final arrangements by which the parish may be 
 transmitted in the best possible condition to my successor. 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 The resolution thus announced fell upon his agency with all 
 the shock of a surprise. They could scarcely believe that from 
 a position of so much greater publicity, and, as it seemed to the 
 eye of ordinary observation, of so much greater usefulness, Dr. 
 Chalmers would retire to a sphere comparatively limited and 
 obscure. Some wondered upon what principle such a resolution 
 could have been adopted ; many felt a disappointment, tinged 
 slightly with chagrin, that from all his own schemes of useful-
 
 CHAPEL OF EASE IN ST. JOHN S. 639 
 
 ness, now fairly set in motion, the chief operator should so sud- 
 denly withdraw his hand ; a few distinctly and heavily con- 
 demned. In the acceptance of the Professorship, however, there 
 had been a promptitude which argued previous and mature de- 
 liberation ; and there was the tone and spirit of such a settled 
 purpose in the letter, that all felt the step to be irrevocably 
 taken. Among the general public of Glasgow the ferment 
 created was as great as among his own devoted flock, but it was 
 not subject to the same restraints. Through different channels, 
 and under the cloak of many flattering words, imputations unjust 
 and ungenerous were cast upon Dr. Chalmers.* Unmoved from 
 his purpose, however pained at heart by the commotion thus ex- 
 cited, he devoted himself with increased assiduity to all the duties 
 of his parish. It had served in no slight degree to recommend 
 the proposal of Dr. Nicoll, that by allowing him to remain for 
 nearly a whole year in Glasgow, it would afford ample time for 
 bringing all his parochial operations into a condition of com- 
 pleteness. Among them there was one which had only recently 
 been commenced, to which a supreme importance was attached. 
 The enormous magnitude of the parish had hitherto proved the 
 chief obstacle to the accomplishment of his favourite design of 
 reaching and reclaiming that portion of the population which 
 had sunk into absolute indifference to religion, and into utter 
 neglect of all its outward ordinances. A few stray visits, made 
 by different persons, scattered over the surface of a year, were 
 altogether insufficient to effect this purpose. To make the enter- 
 prise a hopeful one, the visits must be frequent, the operation 
 must be intense ; it must be practicable for the clergyman, by 
 frequent and reiterated attentions, to deepen and render perma- 
 nent the first impressions of his ministry. In order to realize this, 
 Dr. Chalmers proposed to disjoin from his bulky parish a popu- 
 lation of three thousand, to build a new church, and to plant 
 another minister among its families. It was a scheme which, 
 embracing as it did all his other methods of parochial adminis- 
 tration, and bringing them into action within manageable limits, 
 was regarded by him as the chief and crowning effort of his 
 ministerial life. Having in vain endeavoured to induce the 
 Magistrates and Council of the city to erect another parish 
 
 * Besides many paragraphs in the newspapers, two pamphlets were published at this 
 time, entitled " Reflections on the Address of Dr. Chalmers to the Agency of St. John's, 
 Glasgow, containing his Reasons for Relinquishing the Pastoral Charge of that Parish : 
 Glasgow, 1823 ;" and "Defence of the Rev. Dr. Chalmers ; addressed to the thinking and 
 unprejudiced pan of the Inhabitants of Glasgow : Glasgow, 1823."
 
 040 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 church, he issued a proposal that the funds necessary for the 
 erection of a chapel of ease within the bounds of St. John's 
 parish should be raised by shares of 100 each, on which the 
 ordinary rate of interest should be paid. " Dr. Chalmers," it 
 was stated in the circular sent to a few friends, " begs to assure 
 all the gentlemen whose names are subjoined, that however 
 promising or productive of good the intended chapel may be, he 
 does not ask them to subscribe to it as a scheme of benevolence, 
 but simply lays before them a scheme which bids fair for an 
 adequate remuneration, and to which, if any shall subscribe, he 
 becomes a sharer in a property. He is the more anxious to im- 
 press this, as he feels he has drawn very largely on the kindness 
 of his friends already in his former parochial undertakings, and 
 he can truly say that he should be sorry if any were to take a 
 part in this measure unless it agreed with their perfect con- 
 venience as well as with their perfect convictions." Having 
 himself taken five shares in the undertaking, and eleven other 
 individuals having each consented to take one share, with the 
 full consent and approbation of the Magistrates and Council, an 
 application was made to the Presbytery of Glasgow to grant a 
 constitution to the intended chapel of ease. By one of the 
 articles of this constitution, it was provided, that the Sabbath 
 collections in the new chapel should be at the disposal of the 
 Session of St. John's, to be applied to the relief of the poor within 
 the chapel district. This article was objected to, and the church- 
 door collections claimed for the general funds of the city. The 
 Presbytery remitted the matter simpltciterto the General Assem- 
 bly of 1822, before which Court Dr. Chalmers made that expo- 
 sition and defence of his general system of pauper management 
 to which I have already alluded. The Assembly granted, with- 
 out discussion, all that Dr. Chalmers required. The pecuniary 
 obstacle which arose from the limited amount of the subscription 
 was the only one which now remained, and the " splendid 
 charity" of Mr. Douglas of Cavers, which placed 500 at Dr. 
 Chalmers's disposal for the object, did much to remove this 
 obstacle. The building was commenced, speedily completed, 
 and opened for public worship in May 1823. At a general 
 meeting of his agents, summoned upon the occasion, whilst un- 
 folding all his plans for the future management of the afiairs of 
 the chapel, Dr. Chalmers said, " Give me a pious and laborious 
 and unwearied clergyman then, and surround him with coadju- 
 tors of like zeal and principle and Christian philanthropy with
 
 SPLENDID CHARITY OF MR, DOUGLAS. 641 
 
 himself, and let their devoted and unremitting object be to devise 
 and do everything by which this chapel might be the organ of 
 a religious blessing to the families who reside within their por- 
 tion of the vineyard, and I affirm of such an economy, set up 
 and prosecuted with ardour, that it is indeed the likeliest instru- 
 ment I know, under the countenance of God's Holy Spirit, for 
 clearing out a well- watered garden in the midst of this vast 
 moral wilderness. Nor would I despair, with the territorial rule 
 of seat-letting, which I have always deemed of so much im- 
 portance, of witnessing in future years the fabric that is just 
 finished filled to an overflow with a local, and at the same time, 
 it is to be hoped, with a pious and spiritual congregation. I 
 should deem it one of the main distinctions of my life, were I in 
 any way instrumental to an achievement so glorious ; nor do 
 I know of a transformation more fitted to affect the heart of a 
 Christian philanthropist than when, under a judicious and per- 
 severing, and withal religious management of such a district, a 
 portion of the city mass, where Sabbath profaneness and week- 
 day profligacy reigned almost without mitigation, should come 
 at length to be the theatre of ministerial visitations and fellow- 
 ship meetings and well-educated children and church-going fami- 
 lies." The expense of the erection having exceeded the original 
 calculation, Mr. Douglas again came .forward and appropriated 
 to this object an additional sum of 500. In June 1823, a 
 minister was ordained, and all looked fair and promising for the 
 future. Dr. Chalmers's removal from Glasgow scarcely lessened 
 the interest with which he watched over the progress of this 
 enterprise. For several years afterwards he made an annual 
 visit to the city of his former labours, preaching in the chapel on 
 five or six Sabbaths consecutively, and visiting the parishioners. 
 Nevertheless this first great step in Church Extension, taken 
 under his own eye and care, signally failed. Many secondary cir- 
 cumstances contributed to this failure. A separate kirk-session was 
 not allowed to the chapel minister, so that he stood to the kirk- 
 session of St. John's very much in the same disadvantageous 
 position in which Dr. Chalmers himself had stood in relation to 
 the General Session of Glasgow. The church-door collections 
 having been appropriated to the poor, the salary of the minister 
 as well as the interest of all the sums which had been advanced, 
 was to be provided for out of the seat-rents. To make this fund 
 sufficient for such a purpose, these seat-rents were originally 
 fixed according to a scale so high as to operate prejudicially to 
 VOL. i. 2s
 
 642 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the entire defeat, in fact, of the object aimed at, for not only did 
 the interest remain unpaid, but the current income of the chapel 
 became inadequate to meet its current expenditure, so that it 
 was necessary to assess the original proprietors. His own sub- 
 sequent experience convinced Dr. Chalmers that with such a 
 population as that committed to this clergyman's care no pro- 
 prietary chapel could succeed, and that instead of yielding a re- 
 turn for sums originally advanced, two or three hundred pounds 
 per annum would need to be gratuitously devoted to such an 
 undertaking during the first four or five years of its existence. 
 
 It was but rarely during the period of his residence in Glas- 
 gow that Dr. Chalmers took part in the proceedings of the 
 Ecclesiastical Courts. In the ordinary routine business of these 
 Courts he felt comparatively little interest ; and of the general 
 tenor of their decisions in matters strictly ecclesiastical, he did 
 not approve. Occasionally, however, when large interests were 
 involved, or favourite designs were likely to be thwarted, with 
 all his accustomed ardour he threw himself into the ecclesiastical 
 encounter ; and as he came with his heavy armour all fitted on 
 and furbished well beforehand, he cleared a wide space around 
 him, and dealt forth many a heavy stroke. 
 
 In the General Assemblies of 1821 and 1822, he rendered 
 most effective aid to the movement which was then making 
 with a view to modify and extend the theological education of 
 candidates for the holy ministry. As the matter stood, there 
 were many different ways in which, after his four years' attend- 
 ance on the literary and philosophical classes, a student might 
 qualify himself for being taken on trial for licence by a Presby- 
 tery of the Church. He might give regular attendance during 
 three, and partial attendance during one session, at any of the 
 Divinity Halls ; or, without hearing a single course of lectures 
 on theology, by his mere presence for a few days at one of the 
 University seats in the course of six successive sessions, and by 
 performing a few prescribed exercises, he might qualify himself 
 for the ministry. Between these two, which may be regarded 
 as the extreme methods, there -were various ways adopted by 
 students, and allowed by the Church, of compounding together 
 sessions of regular and irregular attendance upon the theological 
 classes. The object of those with whom Dr. Chalmers now 
 co-operated was to abolish altogether the six years' occasional 
 attendance, to make a regular attendance for three full sessions 
 to be in every case imperative, and to enjoin that at least two
 
 IMPROVEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 643 
 
 years' attendance should be given on the classes of Hebrew and 
 Church History. The speech of Dr. Chalmers in the General 
 Assembly of 1821 in favour of the proposed reformation was one 
 of the most brilliant which he ever delivered before the Supreme 
 Court of the Church. Its most powerful passages were after- 
 wards embodied in the " Christian and Civic Economy of Large 
 Towns," and in his work on the " Use and Abuse of Literary 
 Endowments." One passage, however, not hitherto published, 
 we cannot resist inserting here, because of its bearing upon a 
 question of present interest in England. 
 
 " Were I to define, Moderator, what is meant by turning a 
 man into a Christian, I would say that it consists in stamping 
 on the fleshly tablet of his heart the doctrines and the morality 
 which are already graven on the tablet of Scripture, so that the 
 Christianity which is impressed on the living subject shall be 
 a precise transcript of the Christianity that is written on the 
 unalterable Record. The Bible is the seal which gives the im- 
 pression; the human mind is the recipient which takes it; and 
 the faculty by which a man judges of the accordantly that there 
 is between the one and the other, is altogether different from the 
 faculty of putting forth that efficacious touch through which the 
 impression is actually made good, and the man becomes, in the 
 language of the New Testament, a living epistle of Christ Jesus. 
 But it is better that he have both these faculties than only one 
 of them. It is surely better if, in addition to the operative 
 faculty by which Christianity is wrought, he should also have 
 the discerning faculty by which Christianity is estimated. Sup- 
 pose him to have the power of so bearing with urgency and effect 
 upon the seal, as that a deep impression shall be left by him on 
 the heart to which it is applied, he is surely not the worse, but 
 the better, if, after he has done so, he can look with a judging 
 eye on the character that has been formed, and mark the 
 authentic lineaments by which it accords, or the spurious linea- 
 ments by which it deviates from the great and unalterable pat- 
 tern of the word of God. For this purpose he is the better of 
 being able to look with a learned eye upon his Bible, and by aid 
 of the Grammar and Lexicon, and all the instruments of philo- 
 logy and criticism, to manifest the doctrine which is graven 
 thereupon. And for this purpose he is also the better of being 
 able to look with a metaphysical eye upon the arcana of our 
 nature, or at least with an eye of sagacious observation on all 
 the phenomena of human conduct, that he may be able to drag
 
 644 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 forth to light that moral and intellectual picture which the Bihle 
 is said to have left upon the soul. A rough and home-spun 
 operative in the work of Christianity may do the work, but it is 
 well that an accomplished clergyman be near him to decide upon 
 the work and to discriminate between the genuine and the coun- 
 terfeit in Christianity, so as that he both may rectify and restrain 
 the excesses of fanaticism, and also recall the departure that 
 heresy is making from the law and from the testimony. 
 
 " If I saw a young aspirant after Christian usefulness casting 
 perhaps an ambitious eye toward the ministerial office, but utterly 
 unable for the cost of a ministerial education, I would not force 
 and foster this ambition by any artificial processes whatever. I 
 would not lure him to the hazardous adventure of swelling by 
 the accession of one man the already overdone competition that 
 there is for vacancies. I would not thus conduct him to the 
 margin of a field on which if he enters he may miss the useful- 
 ness that his heart is set upon, and reap nothing to himself but 
 a harvest of disappointed hopes, and fruitless endeavours, and 
 unavailing regrets and sympathies. Least of all would I, for the 
 purpose of admitting him amongst us, let down the incumbent 
 literature of our clergy, and smooth for him an avenue of admis- 
 sion to our Establishment. The very last thing I would concede 
 should be to level that hill of difficulty, by whose steep and 
 rugged and arduous ascent it is that we attain a lofty and labo- 
 rious scholarship. I would persist in making it most firmly 
 indispensable that the only gate of entrance for every minister 
 of our Church should be on the very summit of that hill. And 
 then, should it be said, that for the sake of heightening and re- 
 fining the one ingredient of the Church's literature I am lessen- 
 ing the other ingredient, of the Church's piety, and for the sake 
 of an accomplishment by which she is adorned, stripping her of 
 a grace by which she is blest and rendered effective for the con- 
 version of multitudes, I would answer, that it is still a possible 
 thing to make this piety available for the best of purposes. The 
 Christianity of this man is not lost to the cause : he may still 
 be a leaven for good in the sphere he occupies, unlettered though 
 he be in all that proceeds from halls or colleges. Still in him 
 may the word of God have made its sound and wholesome and 
 sufficient impression, and from him the impression may be re- 
 flected back again on the minds of many others as unlettered as 
 himself. And thus all in the book of God's testimony, which 
 mainly goes so to enlighten a man as to turn him into a Chris-
 
 IMPROVEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 645 
 
 tian, may be made to pass from an humble convert to his ac- 
 quaintances and neighbours, and without the learning which 
 serves to acquire for Christianity the dignified, though vague 
 and general, homage of the upper classes, he may at least be a 
 fit agent for transmitting essential Christianity throughout the 
 plebeianism that is around him. 
 
 "Let us have as learned a clergy as possible for without 
 having such for judges and overseers, the faith of the Christian 
 world might be occasionally disfigured by the excesses of fanati- 
 cism ; but let us also have as zealous and operative a laity as 
 possible ; for, be assured, that without the activities of a zealous 
 spirit faith might cease to be found, and the abuses be got rid of 
 only by getting rid of the whole stock upon which such abuses 
 are occasionally grafted. It is here that churches under the 
 domination of a worldly and unsanctified priesthood are apt to 
 go astray. They confide the cause wherewith they are intrusted 
 to the meiely intellectual class of labourers, and they have over- 
 looked, or rather have violently and impetuously resisted, the 
 operative class of labourers. They conceive that all is done by 
 regulation, and that nothing but what is mischievous is to be done 
 by impulse. Their measures are generally all of a sedative, and 
 few or none of them of a stimulating tendency. Their chief con- 
 cern is to repress the pruriences of religious zeal, and not to ex- 
 cite or foster the zeal itself. By this process they may deliver 
 their Establishment of all extravagances, so as that we shall no 
 longer behold within its limits any laughable or offensive carica- 
 ture of Christianity. But who does not see that by this process 
 they may also deliver the Establishment of Christianity alto- 
 gether, and that all our exhibitions of genuine godliness may be 
 made to disappear under the same withering influence which 
 deadens the excrescences that occasionally spring from it. It is 
 quite a possible thing for the same Church to have a proud com- 
 placency in the lore and argument and professional science of its 
 ministers, and along with this to have a proud contempt for the 
 pious ardoiir and the pious activity of its lay members. In other 
 words, it may applaud the talent by which Christianity is esti- 
 mated, but discourage the talent by which Christianity is made. 
 And thus, while it continues to be graced by the literature and 
 accomplishment of its clergy, may it come to be reduced to a 
 kind of barren and useless inefficiency as to the great practical 
 purposes for which it was ordained. 
 
 " All the piety which is shut out by this overture from the
 
 646 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Church for the sake of its literature, will roll back among the 
 people, and there, in this land of toleration, will it find scope 
 and liberty to expatiate, and the same ambition which has been 
 checked in its primary impulse, will find vent in some other 
 walk and some other way of Christian usefulness ; and the like- 
 lihood is, that catching the irrepressible spirit of the times, it 
 will go to augment those religious activities which are now so 
 busily afloat among unofficial and unordained laymen ; and thus, 
 the final upshot of such a process may be a more intense opera- 
 tion of Sabbath teaching, and of lay itinerancy, and of unlettered 
 Methodism, and, in a word, of all those gratuitous and self-origi- 
 nating movements which have hitherto been more exhibited on 
 the outfield of sectarianism than in the enclosed and well-kept 
 garden of an Establishment. 
 
 " Now, Moderator, the fact is undeniable, that to certain in- 
 dividuals this were a most cheering spectacle, and to certain 
 others, this were a spectacle utterly to be loathed and nauseated. 
 The former have such an impression of nature's lethargy and 
 deadness and unconcern, that they are glad to bring from any 
 quarter whatever the various and ever-plying activities of Chris- 
 tian zeal to bear upon it ; the latter, again, in their treatment of 
 humanity, proceed on such an excessive fertility of weeds and 
 ranknesses in the human heart, that all the toil and strenuous- 
 ness of ecclesiastics must be given to the great object of keeping 
 them down, and so of confining Christianity within the limits of 
 moderation. The former are pleased to behold any symptom of 
 spiritual life or vegetation at all ; the latter think, if positive 
 strength should be put forth on the side of spiritual vegetation, 
 positive strength should also be put forth on the side of repress- 
 ing its hated overgrowth. The former, so far from being alarmed 
 by the rumours of a stir, and a sensation, and an enthusiasm, and 
 the revival of an old Kilsyth or Cambuslang awakening, whether 
 in a Western isle or a Highland glen, are ready to hail it as they 
 would the promise of some coming regeneration ; the latter are 
 apt to look upon all this as a most vile efflorescence of everything 
 that is vulgar and vicious and degrading, and it is impossible 
 adequately to express the utter disdain with which the promoters 
 of such a work are regarded by them, and they look down upon 
 them as empirics who invade the province of the regular faculty, 
 and do the same mischief in theology that is done by quacks in 
 medicine ; that, altogether, it is the product of a fanaticism 
 which ought to be extirpated, and an offence that, if possible,
 
 IMPROVEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 647 
 
 should be instantly and conclusively swept away. The former, 
 again, are not wanting in some hard thoughts of the latter, and 
 they have even been heard to say of them, that in their desire 
 to rid the Church of such offence, they are on the highway to 
 the deadliest offence of all, even that of a vineyard so cleared 
 and purified in all its vegetative tendencies, as to offer from 
 one end to the other of it an unvaried expanse of earthliness 
 that, in their eagerness to check the excrescences of spiritual 
 growth, they would do it so effectually as to reduce to a naked 
 trunk what else might have sent forth its clustering branches, 
 and yielded in goodly abundance, the fruits of piety and right- 
 eousness that under this blasting operation spurious and genu- 
 ine Christianity are alike obliterated, and the work of pulling 
 up the tares is carried on so furiously that the wheat is pulled 
 up along with it the vineyard under such a management is 
 rifled of its goodliest blossoms as well as of its noxious and 
 pestilential weeds ; and thus, the upshot of the process for ex- 
 tirpating fanaticism may be to turn the fruitful field into a 
 wilderness, and to spread desolation and apathy over all its 
 borders." It was not till after many defeats that the object 
 which Dr. Chalmers and his friends had in view was attained, 
 and the standard of theological qualification for the ministry 
 in the Church of Scotland permanently raised. 
 
 In the last year of his Glasgow ministry two questions arose, 
 one of which perplexed Dr. Chalmers almost as much by its 
 triviality as the other excited him by its magnitude, while both 
 obliged him to run the gauntlet in all the Courts of the Church, 
 and to appear personally before Presbytery and Synod and As- 
 sembly. The large number of communicants, and the small 
 number of those who could be accommodated at tables of com- 
 munion, running as they then usually did in single lines along 
 the aisles, prolonged the services of a sacramental Sabbath in 
 St. John's to a wearisome and unprofitable length. By turning, 
 however, a certain number of pews in the lower part of the 
 church into communion tables, and reducing the number of 
 ministerial addresses to communicants, the services were mate- 
 rially and most beneficially abbreviated. This plan was fol- 
 lowed to the great comfort of the worshippers in St. John's, and 
 with a very general concurrence of public feeling in its favour. 
 As intelligence, however, of the innovation spread abroad, it 
 reached the ears of more than one reverend stickler for the good 
 old way of sitting in the aisles, upon whose ecclesiastical con-
 
 648 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 sciences such grievous injury was inflicted, that they could not 
 rest till they had dragged the daring innovator before the tri- 
 bunals of the Church for judgment. It was in vain that they 
 were remonstrated with as to the awkwardness of turning such 
 a topic into a subject of grave ecclesiastical debate. Kather 
 than that such a scandal should be endured, .and the ancient 
 practice of the Church be set aside, they would carry the ques- 
 tion from the Presbytery and Synod to the General Assembly, 
 and their sturdy purpose was achieved. 
 
 " I do exceedingly regret," said Dr. Chalmers, as he stood 
 before the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, " that this matter was 
 ever brought before the Synod at all. It is quite obvious from 
 the speeches of some of the members, that there must have been 
 a world of misconception on a topic which, I think, so far at 
 least as the proceedings in my own church are concerned, I could 
 have removed. There is no exclusion of the poor there is no 
 indiscriminate admittance of the qualified and unqualified there 
 is no disappearance of the table on which our sacramental ele- 
 ments are placed in full view of the communicants, and, above 
 all, there is nothing to confound our sacramental Sabbath with 
 an ordinary Sabbath ; and the whole effect of the change, or 
 rather of the very great improvement that has been made upon 
 our administration, is, that while all the essential requisites of 
 this great Christian feast are more scrupulously adhered to, there 
 has been established a comfort and an order and a solemnity that 
 under the old style of management was utterly unattainable. 
 
 " I think that I could satisfy every spectator of the truth of 
 these assertions, and was not without hopes of having had an 
 opportunity of doing so to the original mover in this business ere 
 he had stirred so ostensibly therein. Ere that very innocent 
 practice was established, which I was not the first to introduce 
 into the churches of our Establishment, the day of a sacrament in 
 St. John's was a day of discomfort and almost intolerable suffer- 
 ing from the pressure and the stifling almost to suffocation, and 
 the way in which every inch of progress to the tables was fought 
 for by the crowd of competitors who, during the time of seven 
 table services, stood wedged in the long but narrow access that 
 led to them. And it is erroneous to think that under the pre- 
 sent arrangement there is nothing left to signalize a day of com- 
 munion from an ordinary Sabbath. There is the same table for 
 the accommodation of the elements, and at which the minister 
 presides in the view of all the congregation, as there is in the
 
 THE TABLE CONTROVERSY. 649 
 
 other churches of the city. There is the same decent covering 
 of white extended before all the communicants. It is true that 
 the partakers are not so placed as to look one to another, but 
 what is of more importance, and carries in it a greater propriety, 
 they are all so placed as to look to the minister who addresses 
 them. It is also true that they do not sit about a table, but they 
 sit at a table, and about it or at it, is the express utterance that is 
 left to us by the words of our Directory. We could in this way 
 press all the middle seats in the body of the church into the 
 peculiar service of the day ; but anxious only for as much relief 
 as would make it a day of tolerable ease and comfort to all parties, 
 we only required about one-half of these seats. There is not a 
 sitter present, and I believe not a minister who ever witnessed the 
 ceremonial, that will not vouch for it as being far more impres- 
 sive and far more characteristic of a day of sacredness than were 
 the crush, and the bustle, and the irritation, and the whole tribe 
 both of moral and physical discomforts that were attendant on 
 the old style of ministration. It is a service now to which many 
 delicate and infirm can repair, who never could have ventured 
 themselves into a squeeze that, without the powers of a robust 
 constitution, was almost overwhelming. 
 
 " Such, Moderator, is my aversion to controversy, that I 
 would infinitely rather if no hearing were necessary. The 
 element of debate is one in which I breathe with the utmost 
 discomfort : and to be surrounded with uncongenial minds and 
 uncongenial feelings, is a thing of as great dread and desolation 
 to me as to be placed in the midst of a vast howling wilderness. 
 And surely, my brethren, it is not for xis to be ever standing in 
 battle array, as if no game were dearer and more delightful to us 
 than that of combats. There is enough to vex and to agitate 
 the Church without making a trifle to light up a torch of discord 
 in the midst of us ; and, therefore, while I cannot give up with- 
 out a struggle the substantial advantage of my present arrange- 
 ment, while I cannot willingly recur to the bustle and the 
 pressure and the fatigue, and the oppressive length and weari- 
 ness of our old services, yet sure I am, that if we can be 
 protected from these, and all that is required be some meaner 
 sacrifice, about which it were utterly childish either to have or 
 to prolong a controversy, then should I most honestly rejoice in 
 some accommodation that might restore us to the peace which I 
 love and to the cordiality of this brotherhood, which I feel in- 
 deed most anxious to maintain.
 
 650 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " I shall only say, that my general dislike to controversy is 
 aggravated and made far more intense when I bethink myself 
 of this controversy. I declare, that on the question whether the 
 communicants should look at each other, or should all look in 
 one way to the minister, I would be positively ashamed to appear 
 as a combatant even on the right side of it. I can conceive 
 nothing more fitted to make our Church the laughing-stock of 
 the public, and the business of our Church the jeer and the scorn 
 of infidelity, than the exhibition of so many grave and grown-up 
 ecclesiastics letting themselves down to the arena of a discussion 
 in every way so paltry and so puerile. This is not a matter for 
 which the peace and unanimity of our Church ought to have 
 been hazarded, and can scarcely be obtruded upon the public 
 notice without reminding observers of the fierce and frequent 
 agitations of a former age, when tippets and surplices, and 
 priestly garments, and sacramental postures formed the materials 
 of many a sore and disquieting argument. I cannot find it in 
 my heart to feel a greater homage for the table controversy than 
 I have for the tippet controversy of a generation that has now 
 gone by ; and sorry should I be if our Church, by descending 
 to entertain it, shall let itself down to the taunt and the scorn of 
 a public whose literature, and whose cultivated intellect, and 
 whose powers of searching or satirical discernment have so wo- 
 fully outrun its Christianity. Yes, my brethren, there are fitter 
 and nobler topics for our ecclesiastical judicatories. The country 
 has higher demands upon us than to waste our strength or our 
 time upon such puny altercations. It were more befitting the 
 dignity of this Court if, instead of lavishing its wisdom on a 
 thing so trivial as what may be called the etiquette of ordinances, 
 it were to look abroad on those melancholy wastes where both 
 the spirit and the form of our ordinances are alike disregarded ; 
 if instead of exhausting our own forces on a paltry and vexatious 
 warfare within, we were to turn them in one mighty combina- 
 tion against the power of the common enemy ; if instead of 
 turning upon us the eye of a jeering world, we should compel 
 its reverence by the character of importance and of worth which 
 sat upon all our deliberations ; in a word, if we should match 
 and master the spirit of this infidel age by a lofty sense upon our 
 part of the lofty interests that are confided to us, and instead of 
 stooping to the imbecility of points, if we came forth in the whole 
 business of our courts and of our parishes armed with the reason 
 and authority of unquestionable principle."
 
 THE WEST OF SCOTLAND CHARACTERIZED. 651 
 
 How this great controversy of the tables was disposed of by 
 the supreme judicatory of the Church was thus pleasingly re- 
 lated by Dr. Chalmers, many years afterwards, when lecturing to 
 his students in Edinburgh about zeal for circumstantials and the 
 magnifying of small matters in religion : " If," said he, " there 
 be any geographical distinction between one part of Scotland 
 and another in this respect, I would say that the interesting 
 relics of the olden pertinaciousness and the olderi zeal for little 
 things, are to be found most abundantly in the West. I am 
 sure I affirm this without the slightest feeling of reproach or 
 even of disrespect. Were there no other pr ciple, indeed, than 
 my love of antiquities, I should feel inclined to regard this 
 peculiarity with the utmost toleration ; for, agreeably to the 
 general law which I have just announced to you, I have found 
 it associated in that part of our Establishment with so much of 
 upright and pure and resolute assertion in behalf of great prin- 
 ciples, that I, with all my heart, forgive the obstinacy of this 
 adherence to small points, and retain in their favour a very large 
 surplus of high and positive esteem to the bargain. For ex- 
 ample, they have been all along the sturdy champions of non- 
 pluralism in the Church, of ministerial residence in the parishes, 
 of sacredness in Sabbath observation, of the cause of Christianity 
 at home by their incessant efforts to enlarge the Church accom- 
 modation, and of the cause of Christianity abroad by the support 
 which they have ever rendered both to Bible and Missionary 
 and Colonial societies. After this goodly enumeration of great 
 and noble services, the occasional littleness wherewith they at 
 times may be associated are like spots on the sun, and I am sure 
 ought to be viewed in no other light than with the most good- 
 natured indulgence, just as one views the feebleness or peculiari- 
 ties of some aged friend for whose substantial worth at the same 
 time we have a just veneration. Accordingly, it is not within 
 the limits of the Bothwell region that land of sturdy principle, 
 signalized by the exploits and the martyrdoms of our covenant- 
 ing forefathers where I would attempt the slightest innovation 
 on their ancient forms, however harmless, or even to a certain 
 extent beneficial ; seeing there are many there who, on the 
 proposition of any change, however insignificant, will resist you 
 by saying they will never consent to let down even the smallest 
 pin of the tabernacle. There was an attempt some time ago to 
 introduce the organ into the Scottish Kirk it was the most 
 unwise of all enterprises to attempt it in the west. Since that
 
 C52 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the abomination of a painted window in one of the churches was 
 obtruded on the public gaze ; but it could not be permitted to 
 stand another Sabbath in the west. To read the line in psalm- 
 singing is one of the venerable and antique peculiarities of eur 
 land ; and the abolition of it met with far the sturdiest resistance 
 in the west. The antipathy to paper in the pulpit, which used 
 to be in force all over Scotland, is still in greatest force and 
 inveteracy in the west. I state not this for the purposes of 
 levity or ridicule, but of presenting to your notice the very 
 peculiar conjunction which I have just now remarked upon be- 
 tween a zeal for great principles, mixed up, as it often is, in the 
 history of the Church, with a zeal and tenaciousness about the 
 merest bagatelles. The west is the very quarter to which I 
 look most hopefully for the revival of our Church and the main- 
 tenance of our highest moral and religious interests ; and how- 
 ever amused therefore with the innocent peculiarities to which 
 I have just now adverted, it cannot dispossess the veneration 
 and serious regard wherewith I look at that portion of our Church 
 very much, in fact, as our General Assembly looked at the 
 question which broke out about the tables, and finally disposed 
 of it when our venerable mother, sitting in her collective wis- 
 dom, was called on to decide the quarrel that had broken out 
 among her children, she allowed me, the one party, to con- 
 tinue the table-service in the way I had found to be most 
 convenient ; but, instead of laying aught like severity or rebuke 
 upon the other, she, while disappointing them of their plea, 
 dismissed them at the same time with a look of the most be- 
 nignant complacency." * 
 
 In March 1823 a presentation to the Inner High Church of 
 Glasgow was issued by the Crown in favour of the Rev. Dr. 
 Duncan Macfarlane, Principal of the University of Glasgow. 
 On the llth June this presentation was laid before the Presby- 
 tery, when after some discussion it was agreed that it should 
 lie on their table till next meeting, for the purpose of mature 
 deliberation on the peculiar circumstances of the case. It was 
 not doubted that the Church had full liberty to receive or to 
 reject such a presentation. There was a general concurrence 
 in the judgment delivered by Dr. Hill " that the Church Courts 
 have sufficient power to prevent any union of offices when the 
 duties of the two are found incompatible." In favour of that 
 
 * See Posthumous Works, vol. ix. pp. 394-396.
 
 CASE OF PRINCIPAL MACFARLANE. 653 
 
 particular union of offices which the Presbytery of Glasgow was 
 now required to sanction, not one redeeming or extenuating cir- 
 cumstance could be urged. The duties of each office were suffi- 
 ciently onerous, if discharged aright, to fill up all the time, and 
 exhaust all the energies of the ablest occupant ; and both were 
 amply endowed. If such a plurality were permitted, it would be 
 difficult to discover upon what principle any plurality could be 
 condemned. With Dr. Chalmers special circumstances conspired 
 to awaken the most determined resistance to this contemplated 
 conjunction. He had been struggling for years to convince the 
 Church and the public that in our large cities a population of 
 eight or ten thousand, many of whose families had sunk into the 
 lowest condition of ignorance and irreligion, was much too large 
 for any minister to undertake. He had got his friends to supply 
 the funds, and the Church to give her sanction to the disjoining 
 a portion of his own parish, and to the erection of an additional 
 church within its bounds. Other three clergymen of Glasgow 
 having imbibed his principles, and being animated by his ex- 
 ample, had originated measures for the erection of chapels of 
 ease in their respective parishes. The grand process, on which 
 he believed so much to hang, of breaking down the overgrown 
 parishes into districts small enough to be thoroughly pervaded, 
 had most hopefully commenced. But it would traverse all the 
 principles which he had so strenuously advocated ; it would 
 falsify all that he had said about overwrought ministers and 
 overpeopled parishes ; it would tie up his hands from ever soli- 
 citing again from the civil or ecclesiastical authorities that 
 clerical labourers should be multiplied and clerical labour be 
 subdivided ; it would do much to check the career so auspici- 
 ously commenced, and to darken the hopes which now brightened 
 its earliest stages, if the Church herself were to take a parish 
 which was as large and as difficult to manage as St. John's, and 
 commit it to the care of one who was already burdened with the 
 duties of a. Principal. Most willingly and heartily, therefore, 
 did Dr. Chalmers co-operate with Dr. Macgill and the other 
 opponents of pluralities in resisting the settlement of Dr. Mac- 
 farlane as minister of the High Church. Their first efforts were 
 successful. By a considerable majority the Presbytery of Glasgow 
 "judged it to be both inexpedient and incompetent to proceed in 
 the presentation laid on their table to Dr. Macfarlane, in respect 
 that he appears to them to be, in hoc statu, an unqualified pre- 
 sentee." Against this judgment Dr. Macfarlane protested, and
 
 654 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 appealed to the ensuing Synod of Glasgow and Ayr. On the 
 16th October the Synod proceeded to consider this appeal from 
 the judgment of the Presbytery. The legal and constitutional 
 grounds on which the Presbytery had acted were ably stated by 
 Dr. Macgill and others. It was reserved for Dr. Chalmers to 
 allude to the allegation which had been industriously circulated, 
 and which had found a place even in the papers submitted to 
 the Court, that those who resisted the settlement of Dr. Macfar- 
 lane were resisting the supreme power in the State, were acting 
 the part of disloyal subjects of the Crown. After some general 
 observations he proceeded to deal with this allegation. " I 
 would have said no more, but for one affirmation in the reasons 
 of the appellant, even that this proceeding of ours is ' disrespect- 
 ful to the Crown.' That is indeed a noble anecdote of British 
 jurisprudence in the preface to De Lolme's ' Essay on the British 
 Constitution.' On his first arrival in London, he attended a 
 court of law, when the cause happened to be a question between 
 a subject and a prince of the blood. It was decided for the sub- 
 ject, and against the prince a circumstance which in itself was 
 quite enough to surprise the foreigner. But there was an accom- 
 paniment to the thing which surprised him infinitely more than 
 the thing itself; and that is, that no surprise whatever was 
 either felt or expressed by the spectators not even one move- 
 ment of popular satisfaction, and no mobbish or tumultuary 
 delight because of the poor man's triumph, and the great man's 
 overthrow. And why ? because the thing just happened in the 
 even and ordinary course of English justice; it was but an 
 everyday incident in the administration of law ; and of the 
 whole assembled public who were present, and had looked 
 calmly and intelligently on throughout the whole of the process, 
 not one discovered the slightest astonishment, not one betrayed 
 any indecent exultation at the verdict, because it was precisely 
 the verdict which, from the abstract merits of the case, they had 
 been led to anticipate. It was this which gave to this enlight- 
 ened stranger his profoundest sense of the excellence of our 
 constitution ; and this is the origin of far the soundest treatise 
 which has appeared on the government and constitution of our 
 highly privileged land. 
 
 " Now this is a noble anecdote. It has the moral sublime in 
 it ; and were I called to fix upon the thing that should be placed 
 over against it in most direct and humiliating contrast, it should 
 just be this reason of the appellant. It is a reason I could not
 
 CASE OF PRINCIPAL MACFARLANE. 655 
 
 have dared to utter in your bearing, lest you had rebnked me 
 into silence for so presuming on the paltry and pusillanimous 
 stuff which this venerable Court was made of. It is a bugbear 
 to frighten children ; and foreign as it is to all the habitudes of 
 English justice, it would indeed sound most strangely in English 
 ears. It smells of feudalism all over ; and in politics, it is as 
 unlike to the true spirit of British loyalty as in religion a drivell- 
 ing superstition is unlike to the homage of a rational and en- 
 lightened piety. Take my word for it, sir, that no feeling of the 
 sort exists at head quarters ; nay, were the whole truth known, 
 the feeling there would be exactly the reverse. In the hurry 
 and hard-driving of the public offices, things are often done 
 before the evil tendency is understood, and then a loop-hole of 
 retreat is deemed of all things to be the most desirable. And 
 were it only known with what fond, yet painful interest, the 
 whole of Scotland was now looking on ; were it known that our 
 Kirk, with all its errors, was still the dearest object of our 
 people's veneration ; were it known how much it is that the 
 righteousness of her measures is fitted to gladden all the land, 
 and to pour the sunshine of an honest triumph into the very 
 humblest of our cottages ; were it known that, by this appoint- 
 ment, the most loyal magistracy in our empire have been 
 thwarted, and the purest and most patriotic designs for the 
 public weal are now placed on a brink of fearful uncertainty ; 
 were all this known, I feel sure, as of my existence, that the 
 royal complacency would smile upon our calumniated labours, 
 and not upon the men who could degrade their sovereign into 
 a scarecrow, and prostitute his venerated name to the service ot 
 a hurtful and unhallowed usurpation. 
 
 " I am far from alleging anything personal against the pre- 
 sentee, whom I know to be a most accomplished gentleman, and 
 whose talent and energy and literature fit him so well for gracing 
 the high office wherewith he is invested, and shedding an illus- 
 tration on the distinguished University over which he presides. 
 I would be far from making him an offender for a word, and am 
 most willing to believe that this obnoxious clause hath crept 
 inadvertently into his paper ; at least, I am quite sure that he 
 could have no unworthy or dishonourable purpose by its inser- 
 tion, and perhaps was not even aware, at the time, of its un- 
 doubted tendency to fasten a political odium on our side of the 
 question, and to implicate in the charge of disaffection a set of 
 men whom he knows to be as orthodox in their politics, and in
 
 656 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 every way as leal-hearted as himself. If I have been betrayed 
 into any warmth, it is not the warmth of personal antipathy, but 
 of public principle ; for it is indeed mine honest conviction, that 
 if this decision of our Presbytery be finally carried, there is not 
 a single blow by which, on the one hand, a deadlier infliction 
 can be laid on Eadicalism, and, on the other, the cause of royalty 
 be more surely riveted in the hearts of my countrymen. There 
 will be a tumult of delight throughout all our borders, but a 
 moral reverence for the throne will mingle loud and high with 
 our nation's ecstasy. The king God bless him! will gather 
 in every Scottish eye a fresh lustre upon his diadem ; and with 
 such an intermedium between him and his subjects as a pure and 
 disinterested Church, nothing, from one end of the land to the 
 other of it, nothing will pass upwardly to the royal ear but the 
 plaudits of & grateful and rejoicing population." 
 
 After a lengthened hearing of the case, the Synod of Glasgow 
 and Ayr affirmed the sentence of the Presbytery of Glasgow, and 
 the matter was carried by appeal before the General Assembly 
 of 1824. In the debate which took place upon the question 
 before the Supreme Court, Dr. Chalmers made another effort to 
 avert from the Church the dreaded evil ; but the spirit which 
 had been evoked in the west of Scotland had not yet spread 
 widely enough over the country, and when the vote was taken 
 in the General Assembly, it was decided, by a large majority, 
 that the sentence of the Presbytery of Glasgow should be re- 
 versed, and that Dr. Macfarlane should be admitted as minister 
 of the High Church.
 
 MR. CARLYLE S DESCRIPTION OF MR. IRVING. 657 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 DR. CHALMERS IN THE BOSOM OP HIS FAMILY IN CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS 
 
 RELATIVES IN GENERAL SOCIETY IN SECRET BEFORE GOD. 
 
 " MR. IRVING remained for two years in Glasgow as Dr. Chal- 
 mers's assistant, after which he was called to the metropolis, 
 where a speedy and unbounded popularity raised him to an ele- 
 vation such as no Presbyterian minister before or since has ever 
 reached in London. Even in Glasgow there were^ot a few who 
 became enthusiastically attached both to his person and his mi- 
 nistry. It could not well be otherwise. Mr. Carlyle has said of 
 him and assuming his point of view, we doubt not the perfect 
 truthfulness of the picture "What the Scottish uncelebrated 
 Irving was, they that have only seen the London celebrated 
 (and distorted) one can never know. His was the freest, brother- 
 liest, bravest human soul mine ever came into contact with. I 
 call him, on the whole, the best man I have ever (after trial 
 enough) found in the world, or now hope to find." Such a man 
 was never without devoted friends. In his preaching, although 
 breaking through all common trammels, he was, while in Glas- 
 gow, still under a species of restraint. His conscious power had 
 not yet full freedom, and was working (perhaps it would have 
 been better had it continued to do so) under checks. Many, how.- 
 ever, saw and felt that power, and admired its products. " His 
 preaching," said Dr. Chalmers to his successor, " is like Italian 
 music, appreciated only by connoisseurs." On leaving Glasgow 
 Mr. Irving delivered a farewell oration, in which the whole 
 wealth of his magniloquent phraseology was lavished upon an 
 eulogy of Dr. Chalmers, to which, in the presence of the St. 
 John's congregation, Dr. Chalmers was forced to listen. The 
 manuscript was left for publication. The proof-sheets having 
 been sent to Dr. Chalmers for revision, in his absence fell hap- 
 pily into hands discreet enough to reduce the high-flown pane- 
 gyric within the bounds of reasonable praise. Returning some 
 months afterwards to Glasgow, his printed sermon was handed 
 to Mr. Irving, who, on looking over it, broke out into expressions 
 
 VOL. i. 2 T
 
 658 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 of astonishment and indignation at the liberties which had been 
 taken with bis production expressions which had been more 
 measured had he known who the culprit was.* Though himself 
 innocent of the mutilation, Dr. Chalmers rejoiced at the result. 
 " My dear sir," he said, speaking of it to a friend, " if that 
 sermon of Mr. Irving's had been published as he delivered it, 
 what would the world have said both of us and of St. John's 
 congregation, but that we were all members of a joint-stock puff 
 manufactory." The friend to whom this was said was the Rev. 
 Mr. Smyth, Mr. Irving's successor in the assistantship of St. 
 John's, to whom, as having lived for some time in the family 
 his own most kindly nature laying him open to all its genial 
 influences we are indebted for the following picture of Dr. 
 Chalmers's domestic life, as well as for the tribute to the me- 
 mory of her%ho, while the pages of the first volume -j- of these 
 Memoirs were informing thousands of her priceless worth, was 
 withdrawn, in the peace and hope of the gospel, from all the ap- 
 proval and fellowships of earth to the more kindred communion 
 of the heavens. "It was on Saturday, June 8, 1822," says Dr. 
 Smyth, "that I joined Dr. Chalmers at Limekilns for Glasgow. 
 I shall never forget the kindness which he showed me that day. 
 Although a native of the west of Scotland, I had not been in 
 the city of Glasgow since my childhood, and that merely for a 
 few minutes. All was new and strange. My heart was full, 
 and my anxiety was intense. Well do I recollect how thoroughly 
 Dr. Chalmers made me acquainted with the localities through 
 which we passed along the Canal. ' Come now, my dear sir,' 
 (I seem at this moment to hear the very words,) ' and I will 
 initiate you into the mystery of the locks,' a mystery which I 
 had never seen before. At intervals he was busily occupied with 
 the perusal of Sibb's ' Soul's Conflict,' a book which he greatly 
 valued on account of its deep experimental character. We 
 reached Glasgow on Saturday evening, and had a most affec- 
 tionate welcome from the Doctor's family, including his aunt 
 Jean, as she was lovingly called, an old la'dy with whom I after- 
 wards spent many happy hours. When we entered the dining- 
 room for tea, my eye lighted on a table literally covered with 
 letters, the accumulation of a few days. It appeared to me a most 
 Herculean task for any man to address himself to the reading, 
 how much more to the answering, of some fifty or sixty epistles 
 
 * The abridgments had been effected by Mrs. Chalmers, to whom Mr. Irving was parti- 
 cularly attached, and whom he used to call his second mother. f Original edition.
 
 HIS CORRESPONDENCE. 659 
 
 on all varieties of subjects, public and private. It was Dr. 
 Chalmers's practice at this time to reply to his correspondents, 
 whenever it was practicable for him to do so, in course of post. 
 In his answers he generally confined himself to the matter im- 
 mediately on hand, waving prefaces, and getting at once in 
 medias res. In this way, although, perhaps, no man in Britain 
 had a more extensive and multifarious correspondence, he suc- 
 ceeded in never falling behind with his answers. I have re- 
 peatedly seen him reply to ten or twelve letters in the course 
 of an hour. In this respect, as in others, our venerated friend 
 was a striking example of the power of methodical adherence to 
 a fixed system in accomplishing what to most men would have 
 been an insuperable labour. Sabbath, June 9th, was the com- 
 mencement of my public work in Glasgow. I preached in the 
 school-house in the morning, and in the parisb^cburch in the 
 afternoon, and heard Dr. Chalmers in. the evening. The Lord 
 was very gracious and helpful : I got through with calmness, 
 and felt, I trust, thankful for better strength than my own. Ar- 
 rangements were made for my continuance in Glasgow several 
 weeks, and during that period I bad ample opportunities of becom- 
 ing well acquainted with Dr. Chalmers's ' manner of life,' as well 
 as of his mighty enterprises for the temporal and spiritual welfare 
 of men. Many have been under the impression that Dr. Chalmers 
 was more a man of powerful impulses, who achieved wonderful 
 things by fits and starts of burning zeal, than of systematic per- 
 severing application of mind. There never was a greater mistake. 
 With all his transcendent genius and talent and philanthropy, I 
 am satisfied that the main secret of his strength lay in his in- 
 domitable resolution to master whatever he undertook.. What 
 has been considered by some as a defect was indeed an excellence 
 of no common order. When convinced that it was his duty to 
 address himself to some course of study or of action, he concen- 
 trated on that his energies of mind and body, and with indefati- 
 gable assiduity completed his work, unless some urgent call of 
 duty, which did not admit of postponement, interfered. Dr. 
 Chalmers devoted at least five hours each day to study; I 
 use the word in its proper sense ; he was thus studiously oc- 
 cupied partly before breakfast, and thereafter till one or two 
 o'clock in reading and composition. These were his hours, and 
 it was understood that they were, except in the event of some 
 special emergency, not to be invaded by friend or stranger. It 
 being midsummer when I first resided under his roof, he gener-
 
 060 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ally relaxed for two hours, taking some favourite walk, and 
 kindly inviting me to accompany him. The Botanic Garden 
 was a much-loved resort. He luxuriated among the plants and 
 flowers of the season, and delighted to examine minutely the 
 structure and the beauties of some humble production that would 
 have escaped the notice of a less practised eye. He said to me one 
 day, after he had been rapt in admiration of Nature and Nature's 
 God ' I love to dwell on the properties of one flower at a time ; 
 to fix my mind on it exclusively until I feel that it has taken 
 complete hold of my mind. This is a peculiarity of my constitu- 
 tion. I must have concentration of thought on any given thing, 
 and not be diverted from it.' My attention was arrested in the 
 garden by a sun -flower of large dimensions and exquisite colour- 
 ing. He said, with deep emotion, ' that we could so open, 
 our hearts to the beams of the Sun of righteousness !' It was 
 in such scenes that one not only saw but felt that the train of 
 thought was heavenward that his heart and his treasure were 
 in heaven. 
 
 " He dined generally at half-past four o'clock ; and it was Dr. 
 Chalmers's practice to sally forth, as he playfully expressed it, 
 after dinner, from his house in Windsor Place to St. John's 
 parish, spending at least two hours several nights in the week 
 among his parishioners. In these visits it was repeatedly my 
 high privilege to accompany him. They were generally short 
 but most instructive multum in parvo. He possessed a singular 
 power of stating the sum and substance of the Gospel in a few 
 comprehensive and most weighty sentences, and closed each 
 visit with a most appropriate prayer. . . . The more advanced 
 hours of the evening were spent in a less onerous way letter- 
 writing, or the literature of the day, or the society of friends 
 who partook of his large-hearted hospitality and that of his 
 beloved household. In no respect did Dr. Chalmers present a 
 more attractive example of all that is kind and lovely than in 
 the bosom of his own family. His children were young, but 
 they were to him objects of daily and most affectionate interest ; 
 he was playful amongst them even to occasional romping. His 
 smile of fatherly love was ever ready to encourage their ap- 
 proaches ; and when absent for a few weeks he printed little 
 letters for their acceptance. I can hardly trust myself, even at 
 the distance of so many years, with detailed references to that 
 once happy and precious home in which it was my lot to spend 
 several months. The united heads of it have been removed
 
 MRS. CHALMERS'S CHARACTER AND DEATH. CGI 
 
 from that household of which they were at once the ornament 
 and the glory revered, beloved shedding down on children 
 and domestics sweet and hallowed influences binding all in one 
 home-circle of warm and steadfast attachment. I may be per- 
 mitted here to record my tribute of affectionate reverence for the 
 memory of Mrs. Chalmers. To have been the wife of such a man 
 afforded a strong presumption of qualities which lie thoroughly 
 estimated ; and none who knew his lamented wife well could 
 fail to be satisfied that she was in all respects a help-meet for 
 her distinguished husband. Possessed of talents decidedly su- 
 perior, of large and varied information, of warm-hearted affec- 
 tions, and of what is infinitely better, enlightened and decided 
 piety, Mrs. Chalmers commanded the esteem and the confidence 
 of her family and her friends. Her judgment was calm, sound, 
 and comprehensive. She possessed a tact and a Delicacy of per- 
 ception which fitted her for being a wise and faithful counsellor. 
 Dr. Chalmers had unlimited confidence in her discretion. He 
 felt that her coincidence with him in opinion or in plans was of 
 great value. She strengthened his hands and encouraged his 
 heart in every labour of love. Nor did she ever forget the limits 
 of a woman's sphere : exquisite feminine delicacy was united 
 with great vigour and promptitude of mind. Habitually cheerful 
 and happy, there was a sunshine of the soul which even the 
 clouds of affliction did not obscure. Her health frequently suf- 
 fered, but this trial served to bring out more fully the ornament 
 of a meek and quiet spirit. Thoroughly conversant with Dr. 
 Chalmers's views in regard to many exciting questions, she en- 
 tered into his enthusiastic defences and expositions of them with 
 her whole heart. And with what gentle affection she poured a 
 healing balm into the waters when ruffled, or in danger of being 
 so, tendering some word in season that bound up the wound which 
 ignorance or envy had inflicted. Her kindness to myself during 
 my repeated sojournings I trust that I shall never forget. I 
 experienced in her society much that was calculated to guide 
 my inexperience, and to strengthen me for private and public 
 duty. Her discernment of character was remarkable. It seemed 
 as if by intuition she could at once discriminate between the 
 true and the false-hearted, and yet there was the charity which 
 hopeth all things. 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. It was my mournful 
 privilege to be with her on that day which covered Scotland's
 
 662 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Church and people in sackcloth ; and after the mortal remains 
 of the husband who had been so many years the dearest object 
 of love were deposited in the grave, not one murmuring or im- 
 patient word escaped her lips ; all was lowly submission to her 
 Father's good and righteous will a widow indeed, but firmly 
 trusting in the widow's God, and raising her agonized yet con- 
 fiding heart to Him who was a man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief. The conflict of nature was severe, but the victory ot 
 faith was not denied. Her sainted spirit had communion in its 
 sorrows with the unsuffering inhabitants of heaven, and after a 
 brief season of earthly tribulation, she too has entered the rest 
 that remaiaeth for the people of God. May we be indeed follow- 
 ers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises." 
 
 It was one of Dr. Chalmers's earliest prayers for her who was 
 afterwards to be his wife " 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 prove to be a mere 
 step a transition in her march to a joyful eternity."* It was 
 while so many were reading this prayer for the first time that 
 the last of its petitions was fulfilled. 
 
 At the time of his removal to St. Andrews, which was now 
 approaching, Dr. Chalmers's family consisted of four daughters. 
 " You know," he said, in announcing the birth of one of them, 
 "my preference for daughters. I honestly believe they are the 
 better article of the two." The eldest of his family was six 
 years old when the following letters were printed for her : 
 
 " DUNBLANE, Saturday Evening. 
 
 " MY DEAR ANNE, I rode all the way from Glasgow to this 
 place on the top of a coach. When I came here I found Mr. 
 Buchanan standing at the place where the coach stopped, and 
 he was very glad to see me, and shook hands with me, and took 
 me to Mrs. Buchanan and Miss Taylor. I dined with them, 
 and then went to another house, where I pay money to the per- 
 son who lives in it for allowing me to have a room of the house 
 to myself. In this room I sleep, and eat, and study, and see all 
 the people that call upon me. 
 
 " There is a number of people from Glasgow and other places 
 in this town, living in rooms of different houses like myself. 
 The thing which brings them here is a well of water about two 
 
 * See p. 210.
 
 PRINTED LETTER. 
 
 miles off, of a very bad taste, but it is good for the health to 
 drink it. That is the reason why I have come here, and I drink 
 the water every day. I went one morning to the well, and there 
 was a great number of ladies and gentlemen all drinking the 
 water out of tumblers. But instead of going so far as the well 
 before breakfast, I get the water brought to my room, and I 
 drink six tumblers full of it every morning. 
 
 " I began this letter on Saturday, but I find it very slow 
 work, and cannot do much at a time, eo that it is now Wednes- 
 day. I preached on Sunday at Lecropt. The church is so 
 small, and the number of people was so great, that I had to 
 preach out of doors. You know that in the Sauchope Hall road 
 the watchmen go into a kind of wooden presses ; well, Papa got 
 into one of these presses and preached to the people, who were 
 standing or sitting on the grass. 
 
 " I do not see Anne, or Eliza, or Mamma, yet I am often 
 thinking of them, and love them much, and pray that we may 
 all please God and meet in heaven. I am your earthly father, 
 God is your heavenly Father, and He is always thinking of you, 
 and loves you, and wants you to be fit for seeing Him in that 
 happy and glorious place where Christ sitteth at His right hand. 
 Papa has written you this letter to let you know how much he 
 wishes you to be good and obedient to your parents, and sorry 
 for your faults, and desirous of becoming better, being kind and 
 respectful to all who are older than yourself. And so likewise 
 has your Father in heaven written you a letter, a very large 
 letter, that has been printed and made into a book, the name of 
 which you very well know. And what I want you to do with that 
 book is to read it, and to do what it bids you, and to mind what 
 it tells you, and to pray that God would enable you more and 
 more to understand and to love it ; ~for be assured, my dear Anne, 
 that it is only by taking our lesson from God, and doing the will 
 of God, that we can either please Him in time, or be happy with 
 Him in eternity. 
 
 " I am now to write the rest of this letter to Mamma, but 
 when she is done with reading it she will give it back to you, 
 and you will keep it as your own. 
 
 " Be a good girl yourself, and tell Eliza that Papa bids her 
 be a good girl also." 
 
 " KIKKCALDT, Tuesday, November 16, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR ANNE, I mean to write a very long letter to 
 Mamma, but have not yet time to finish it ; I will therefore
 
 664 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 write a few things to you just now. It was yesterday when I 
 left Glasgow, but I had not time to call in at the nursery to 
 see you and Eliza, for I was afraid I would be too late for the 
 boat. So I went up to the Canal, and got on to the steamboat, 
 where you remember that you once were. Now there are two 
 steamboats at that place, and each of them likes to get in a great 
 number of people, because the more people go into the boat, the 
 more money comes to the owners. Well, after the two boats 
 left the land there was a great strive betwixt them who should 
 sail fastest, and the people in the different boats got very angry 
 at one another, and the boat that I was in struck the other 
 boat, and it shook in such a way that one of the men in this 
 other boat fell into the water, and he would have sunk down 
 to the bottom of the* sea and been drowned, but he was able to 
 swim, and he kept himself a long time upon the water, and he 
 cried out to the people in the boats to help him, for both the 
 boats were sailing fast away from him, and if we had left the 
 poor man in the sea he would have sunk down to the bottom of 
 it and died. 
 
 " Papa saw the poor man in the water, and he heard him cry, 
 and he was very much afraid that the man would not be taken 
 out again, and that so, if he has any little children like you, or 
 Eliza, or Grace, they would have lost their papa. Well then, 
 the other boat put out a little boat with men in it to go after 
 him, and our boat turned round and went up to him, and we 
 threw out a rope, and he got hold of the end of it, and we drew 
 him out of the water and into the boat, and the poor man was 
 so wet and so cold that he trembled very much. But he was 
 very glad, and we were all very glad that we had saved his life. 
 
 " I came to Kirkcaldy yesternight, and slept in uncle Sandy's 
 new house ; and this day before dinner I married Sandy to aunt 
 Helen, and her name is no longer Miss Pratt but Mistress Chal- 
 mers. We had nobody at the marriage but grandpapa Pratt, 
 and grandmamma Pratt, and Miss Willis, and the servant. 
 Grandpapa Pratt was dressed in a red coat and gold buttons 
 like a soldier. There is a very curious custom here, that when 
 people are married the boys get money for buying a foot-ball to 
 play with. After dinner there came one set of boys and got three 
 shillings, then there came other boys rapping at the door, and 
 they got three shillings, then after that there came more boys 
 still, and they also got three shillings, however when other boys 
 came, making a great noise and calling out through the key-hole,
 
 MRS. CHALMERS OF ANSTRUTHEK. 665 
 
 ' Oh, doctor, if you please, give us a foot-ball,' we thought that 
 we had given away enough of money, and would give no more, 
 so they ran off, and huzza'd upon the street ; and I will write 
 mamma afterwards how we got home from grandmamma Pratt's 
 house to the new house of uncle Sandy. 
 
 " Be a good girl. Papa loves you. God loves you. Papa 
 sends you a letter, and tells you a number of things, but the 
 great use of a letter from Papa is to tell you to be good. God 
 has also sent you a letter, and that letter is the Bible, and the' 
 Bible tells you many things about kings and prophets, and wars, 
 and families, but the great use of the Bible is to make you good. 
 If you do all that the Bible bids you, and believe all that the 
 Bible tells you. you will be taken up to heaven, and be for ever 
 happy with God. 
 
 " Learn about Jesus Christ, and love Him because He is your 
 Saviour, and keep His commandments. Be very kind and good 
 to Eliza, and tell her that Papa loves her very much. Yours 
 truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 His father's family was now widely scattered, and in the tumult 
 of such a life as he lived in Glasgow, it was not easy for Dr. 
 Chalmers to sustain a very regular correspondence with any of 
 them. At Anstruther, the bustle of a large and stirring house- 
 hold had been exchanged for the stillness of an almost deserted 
 dwelling. Of her fourteen children, one daughter only was left 
 with Mrs. Chalmers to cheer her solitary widowhood. For up- 
 wards of forty years her life had been one of incessant domestic 
 activity ; her gentler husband, too much engaged in business 
 during the day, and too fond of cheerful relaxation in the 
 evening, to share much of that burden which the continued 
 watching over so many romping restless children imposed. 
 Her singular firmness both of principle and purpose fitted her 
 to control a household where there were elements at times im- 
 patient enough of restraint. " Thomas," she once said, in a 
 slow deliberate tone, as her manner was, even when most ex- 
 cited, " Thomas, remember that I am your mother." It tells 
 both for the power of the one and the impressibility of the 
 other, that when he was at an age much above that of boy- 
 hood, this single sentence was sufficient to check the impetuous 
 youth. Both parents shared equally the spirit of an inflexible 
 moral integrity ; both were scrupulously methodical in their 
 general habits, and strictly punctual in the keeping of all en-
 
 660 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 gagements.* But yet the diversity was great : it showed itself 
 even in look and manner Mr. Chalmers tall and commanding in 
 presence, but bland and affable and easy of access, with a smile 
 for every one, and a jest for those who liked it ; Mrs. Chalmers 
 stout and short, as kind in heart, but more measured in courtesy 
 of a peculiarly firm and steady gait, and almost undeviatingly 
 rectilineal in all her motions. Mr. Chalmers was social in his 
 feelings and habits, a lover of gentle glee, a humorist himself, 
 ' and a hearty relisher of all mirthful tales. This love of humour 
 was shared by many of his children, but it was altogether want- 
 ing in their mother. The family at Anstruther was often in a 
 roar of merriment, but Mrs. Chalmers remained unmoved. If, 
 however, she had less wit than her husband, she had more 
 practical wisdom if less fitted to win love and reverence, she 
 was more fitted to command obedience and respect if her tem- 
 per was less mild and amiable, her sense of the true and the 
 right was so strong, and carried into action with such unwaver- 
 ing resolution, that she often stood firm where he would certainly 
 have given way. One of the most submissive and affectionate 
 and dutiful of wives, she was one of the most energetic of 
 mothers, confirming her right to enforce their duties upon her 
 children by the faithfulness with which her own were discharged. 
 She- had not lived many years with a husband of such simple 
 and devoted piety till she was led to the same fountain of peace 
 and holiness out of which he drew so largely, and having be- 
 come one with him in the good hope of the gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, she became one with him in heart and purpose as to all 
 earthly things. To her his death was a most desolating stroke, 
 nor can one well conceive a greater contrast than that between 
 those years of her married life, when so many children were 
 growing up about her, and the ten years of her widoAvhood, when 
 she was left almost alone ; yet she never wearied, nor did a 
 
 * The punctuality which reigned over all the domestic regulations was sometimes not a 
 little inconvenient to Mr. Chalmers's guests His aunt, while living in the house, appearing 
 one morning too late at breakfast, and well knowing what awaited her if she exposed herself 
 defenceless to the storm, thus managed to divert it. " Oh ! Mr. Chalmers," she exclaimed, 
 as she entered the room, " I had such a strange dream last night ; I dreamt that you were 
 dead." "Indeed," said Mr. Chalmers, quite arrested by an announcement which bore 
 so directly upon bis own future history. And I dreamt," she continued, " that the funeral 
 day was named, and the funeral hour was fixed, and the funeral cards were written ; and 
 the day came, and the folk came, and the hour came, but what do you think happened ? 
 why, the clock had scarce done chapping (striking) twelve, which had been the hour named 
 in the cards, when a loud knocking was heard within the coffin, and a voice, gey peremptory 
 and ill-pleased like, came out of it, saying, ' Twelve's chappit, and ye're no liftm'.' " Jlr. 
 Chalmers was himself too great a humorist not to relish a joke so quickly and cleverly con- 
 trived, and in the hearty laugh which followed, the ingenious culprit felt that she had 
 accomplished more than an e cape.
 
 MRS. CHALMERS OF ANSTRUTHER. 6C7 
 
 single hour bang heavy on her hands. She read, she wrote, 
 she worked, she went on errands of kindness among the poor, 
 and not even in the days when her strength was greatest ami 
 her hands were full of many cares, did her steady indomitable 
 spirit of perseverance more remarkably exhibit itself. Her 
 family was much scattered, but she sustained a correspondence 
 with them to an extent quite unusual with those of her rank 
 and years. Births am? marriages were happening almost yearly 
 in the family, and scarcely an event <fc this kind occurred at 
 which some piece of handiwork from Anstruther did not tell of 
 her kind remembrance. She had so laid out her time for weeks 
 beforehand, that the day never came without bringing its set 
 work along with it. She had a number of pensioners whom she 
 assisted in different ways, and among whom her visits and ser- 
 vices were distributed with the most precise regularity. There 
 were few left in Anstruther of the associates of her early days, 
 and her extreme dislike to all petty gossip, conspired with the 
 weeding hand of time, to narrow her circle. It was her rule, 
 as she herself announced it (and she never had a rule which 
 she did not execute), that whenever told of anything that a 
 neighbour had said or done amiss, she instantly put on her 
 bonnet, and went at once to the person, and told what had been 
 said, and told who said it, and asked if it was true. It is not 
 likely that to the ears of one known to practise such a habit 
 many tales of scandal would be conveyed. Of her higher life 
 her hidden walk with God there are some memorials which 
 we shall hereafter present ; meanwhile, the following extracts 
 from letters written to her by Dr. Chalmers will convey an idea 
 of the affectionate interest which he continued to take in her 
 welfare : 
 
 " DuMBARjaE, August 13, 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAR MOTHER, I hope you will at all times apply by 
 letter in every case of duty or of difficulty where my presence is 
 required. This is my own wish and feeling ; and I am sure it 
 is Sandy's also. We hope that you will enjoy great comfort and 
 peace, and should like to do all in our power to make up for the 
 heavy loss that we all have sustained. It were well if we could 
 turn with all our hearts to God when earthly props and earthly 
 comforts are so fast departing away from us that we were living 
 as strangers in this land of sin and suffering that we were 
 labouring after that holiness without which there is no meetness 
 for heaven, and that in the prayers and preparations of a life of
 
 668 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 faith we found our time to pass away and to leave the lasting 
 fruits of improvement in grace and righteousness behind it. 
 
 " It is my earnest prayer that Christ may be all your desire 
 and all your salvation. He casts out none who come unto Him. 
 God casts out none that come unto Him through Christ. There 
 is abundance of good-will in heaven if there was only faith upon 
 earth : but the straitening lies here. The assurances of God's 
 kindness in Christ Jesus are heard by us with the hearing of the 
 ear, but the inner mangoes not take hold of them. When I 
 wish for you that God would work faith with power, I wish that 
 which would sanctify us wholly here and secure us an inheritance 
 of blessedness hereafter. Believe me, my dear Mother, yours 
 very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Grangemouth, Sept. 25, 1818. MY DEAR MOTHER, I am 
 thus far on my way back to Glasgow. I left Mrs. Chalmers 
 yesterday at Kilmany. I can truly say, that however kindly I 
 was treated by my old acquaintances I did regret the necessity 
 which kept me from Anster. I never felt a stronger inclination 
 to visit it than I did during this excursion ; but circumstances 
 made it quite impossible. I can only say for myself, that I shall 
 ever, I trust, feel it to be my inclination, as I know it to be my 
 duty, to come as frequently as I can well get away ; and I beg 
 you will be quite free in letting me know whenever there is 
 any special necessity for my presence. I do indeed feel a more 
 tender relationship to Anster than ever ; and though my father's 
 death has broken one tie with the place, yet your solitude has 
 bound the other tie more closely than before. 
 
 " It is my earnest prayer that our late melancholy visitation 
 may be blessed and sanctified to us all. It is indeed wofnl to 
 think of the carnality of our hearts of our strong natural aver- 
 sion to God and to godliness of the total want of affection for 
 the things which are above of our listlessness and carelessness 
 nnder the most affecting bereavements and the sorest dispensa- 
 tions of a kind Providence. All this is indeed very sinful, and 
 it is well to know that it is a sinfulness which must not merely 
 be forgiven, but which must also be overcome ere we can reach 
 heaven. Without holiness no man can see God. This is just 
 as much God's truth as that the blood of Christ cleanseth from 
 all sin a very alarming consideration truly to those who are 
 not seeking after holiness, or who know not where alone it is to
 
 LETTERS TO HIS MOTHEB. 669 
 
 be found, even in the fulness of Jesus, through whom it is that 
 we are washed and sanctified as well as justified. 
 
 " Give my kind compliments to Isabel and my Aunt. It is 
 my prayer for you all that you may be saved. This was Paul's 
 prayer for Israel, who were his kinsmen according to the flesh ; 
 and it were well for us that our natural affection were more 
 strongly and more habitually turned towards the great object 
 of the everlasting salvation of our relatives. 
 
 " Let me know if you can read my present letter ; for if you 
 can, it will give me satisfaction to know that I can make myself 
 legible. I have made a particular effort, and I hope I have suc- 
 ceeded in it. I think pretty well of it myself, but I am not the 
 best judge of that matter.* rl am, my dear Mother, yours most 
 affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Glasgow, Jan. 14, 1819. I read your letter with great 
 satisfaction and gratitude. It delights me to perceive that you 
 have so much comfort after the desolating stroke that has been 
 inflicted on you, and that God has been pleased to mingle so 
 much enjoyment with a lot darkened by one of the heaviest of 
 all temporal calamities. . . . 
 
 " I am rather disposed to think that the trouble you are put 
 to on account of the Radernie money being heritable is all as it 
 should be ; but I hope that you will get it all accommodated and 
 to your mind by and bye. 
 
 " Let us cherish the spirit of strangers and pilgrims on the 
 earth'. Our business here is to perfect holiness in the fear of 
 God. It is not enough that we make use of Christ as our propi- 
 tiation : we should use Him as our strength and follow Him as 
 our example. It is a striking passage where He says, that unless 
 we forgive we shall not be forgiven. All those who have re- 
 demption through His blood are endowed with the same grace 
 towards their fellow-men that they have received from His 
 hands. What need is there for prayer and watchfulness, to be a 
 Christian indeed. Let us lay hold of the covenant of peace with 
 God, and He by putting His love into our hearts, and writing it 
 in our minds, will sanctify us wholly. Believe me, my dear 
 Mother, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " April 24, 1819. MY DEAR MOTHER, I am just now in the 
 
 * " I had a letter last night from Thomas. They are all well. It is a vast labour the 
 reading his letters I sometimes take a week to make them out" Letter from Mrs. Chal- 
 mers, dated 14th November 1821.
 
 C70 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Canal-boat on my passage to Glasgow. I left home on Monday,' 
 and have spent the week with Lord and Lady Elgin at Broom- 
 hall, and am now on my return to it. ... I gladly avail myself 
 of such an opportunity as I can obtain for writing to you as the 
 present. The truth is, that in Glasgow I have a great deal of 
 work both without and within doors, and often feel no inclination 
 to write after the fatigues of a laborious day. I also find that a 
 press and redundancy of business are greatly against the progress 
 of one's personal Christianity, and may well understand how it 
 is that in the parable of the sower the cares of life are enume- 
 rated among the thorns which choke the good seed of the word 
 of God. I think that an excursion to the country ought to be 
 good for one's spiritual interest as well as for the mere object of 
 repose. It is observable that both Christ and His apostles are 
 most strenuous in warning their disciples against carefulness. 
 There is no commandment in the keeping of which there is a 
 more immediate reward than that by which we are charged 
 against indulging oppressive or disquieting thoughts about the 
 things of a present evil world. Our Saviour, indeed, gives us no 
 warrant for extending our anxieties on this point beyond the pre- 
 sent day; He counts these anxieties to be enough for us : ' Suffi- 
 cient unto the day is the evil thereof.' When to-morrow comes, 
 it will bring its cares and its necessities along with it. And 
 what a mighty relief would it yield to one's spirit, could we 
 cast all our care about futurity on Him who careth for us could 
 we ' be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and 
 supplication, make our requests known unto God,' and thus be 
 enabled to give our entire mind to the one thing needful, an 
 undistracted strength to the seeking of the kingdom of God and 
 its righteousness. 
 
 " But though every day brings its cares, and we are called 
 upon not to care for to-morrow, yet every day brings also its 
 duties; and there can be no doubt that what the hand findeth 
 then to do, we should do then with all our might ; and, indeed, 
 it is by the strenuous performance of this day's duties that futu- 
 rity is often provided for. 
 
 " I did not anticipate this vein of reflection when I sat down : 
 I have been led to it by my own experience and my own case. 
 And there is often such a resemblance in human hearts and 
 human circumstances that it may not be altogether unacceptable 
 to you. I am, my dear Mother, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER. 6H 
 
 " Glasgow, Dec. 29, 1819. MY DEAR MOTHER, We re- 
 ceived your letter, along with a parcel from Miss Leslie. I have 
 indeed been very throng, bnt I am getting into a state of greater 
 quietness and regularity. We are all in good health here ; and 
 though times are very hard for our labouring classes, yet we 
 confidently look forward to days of greater peace and more 
 abundant employment for them than we have had for a good 
 ma/iy months back. . . . It is of truly deep and awful concern 
 that we choose the better part. But, on the other hand, it is 
 most encouraging to know that life is the season of free offers 
 and free invitations from heaven. There is a righteousness 
 already provided, which is unto all and upon all who believe. 
 There is an obedience already rendered, the whole merit of 
 which is imputed to the faithful ; and none are prohibited, but 
 all are entreated to put in for their share of the fulness that is 
 in Christ Jesus our Lord. We never will come to rest till we 
 come to this. There is a natural legality about us in virtue of 
 which we seek to establish a righteousness of our own. This is 
 an attempt which the longer we prosecute the wider will be our 
 distance from true peace of heart ; and not till we come to a 
 simple reliance on the blood and mediation of the Saviour, will 
 we know what it is either to have trust in God, or know what 
 it is to walk before Him without fear, in righteousness and in 
 true holiness. 
 
 " The apostle says, ' We love Him because He first loved us.' 
 Let us only be once convinced that He bears a good will to us, 
 and we will not be long, through the love of God shed abroad 
 in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, of bearing a gratitude towards 
 Him back again. It is the want of faith which gives rise to 
 want of love ; and therefore it is that our prayer should be for 
 larger and larger measures of that faith whereby we are saved, 
 and that faith whereby we are sanctified. 
 
 " It is my earnest desire to see you soon ; but I cannot well 
 leave Glasgow. Believe me, my dear Mother, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Edinburgh, Feb. 4, 1820. MY DEAR MOTHER, I sincerely 
 hope and pray that this illness of Sandy's may be blessed to 
 his spiritual and everlasting good. It is truly lamentable to 
 think of the delicacy and difficulty which obtain among human 
 beings, and in particular if they are nearly related to each other, 
 and which restrains them from speaking freely and closely and
 
 672 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 earnestly about one another's souls. I wish I could be more at 
 ease and more urgent upon this subject than I find myself to be, 
 so as to discharge the apostolic injunction of being instant in 
 season and out of season. May God grant us all a more affect- 
 ing and practical sense of eternity, and lead us to cleave more 
 habitually to Him whose blood hath atoned for the guilt of all 
 who believe in Him. ... It gives me the sincerest pleasure to 
 observe that Mr. Murray has been so attentive to you, and has 
 offered an opinion upon your business which both you and James 
 are inclined to follow. I trust that your anxieties on this mat- 
 ter are now drawing to a close, and there is nothing of which I 
 feel more truly and earnestly desirous than that the evening of 
 your days should be spent in piety and in peace. 
 
 " There is certainly much to comfort us amid the trials of a 
 wise Providence in this world, and did we look with a believer's 
 eye beyond the world, we would there behold a region where all 
 was light and tranquillity and joy a God in heaven proffering 
 His love to us a High Priest at His right hand through whom 
 the chief of sinners may draw nigh a Holy Spirit through 
 whom it is that we are made to feel the word of promise in its 
 power and in its preciousness, and who, if He dwell in our 
 hearts, will be to us the token and the earnest of our heavenly 
 inheritance. The crosses of human life serve to try whether we 
 have faith to keep these things fast, whether we count it all joy 
 when we fall into tribulation, whether we are more glad because 
 of the hopes of a coming heaven, or more sorrowful because of 
 the hardships of a present world. They furnish a test, in fact, 
 how it is that our affections lie, nor do we know how a Christian 
 can give a more satisfactory evidence of the reality of his faith 
 than in looking onward to the things which are unseen and 
 eternal, to feel the present affliction to be light, and even bear it 
 with patience and with thankfulness. 
 
 " I preached yesternight to all the Sabbath-scholars in my 
 parish, amounting to 1200. There was a very full attendance, 
 and the children filled the whole body of the church. Believe 
 me to be, my dear Mother, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers's correspondence with his eldest brother, while 
 modified by James's peculiarities, partook of that racy vigour 
 with which both writers could wield the pen. Adopted by his 
 grandfather while yet an infant, James had been early separated
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER. 673 
 
 from his own family, and almost as soon as his education was 
 finished he forsook his native land. Chagrined by losses and 
 disappointments, he resolved never to enter business again on 
 his own account, and left Liverpool to settle in London as clerk 
 in an extensive mercantile firm. His situation was lucrative 
 enough to enable him to leave a handsome independence to his 
 family ; but imagining that it was not all they might have de- 
 sired, he became unwilling to see much of his Scottish relatives 
 and friends. This unwillingness soon found ways and means of 
 justifying itself, and fostered by a sensitive temperament grew 
 into a passion. In a family remarkable for hospitality he stood 
 alone, both in his ideas and in his practice, as to social inter- 
 course ; but so much spare energy did he possess, that, unsatis- 
 fied with a sturdy defence of his own position, he delighted in 
 assaulting that of others. Behind all his assumed unsocialism 
 there lay a true warm heart ; nor could anything be kindlier 
 than the welcome which, whenever they did come to him, any of 
 his Scotch relatives received. Let us hope, too, that behind all 
 the apparent dislike to religionism there may have been hidden, 
 or may finally have been formed, the simple spirit of a comfort- 
 ing and sanctifying Christianity. Soon after Dr. Chalmers's 
 settlement in Glasgow, James lost his only son, and the follow- 
 ing correspondence opens with the letter written to him at that 
 time : 
 
 "GLASGOW, October 25, 1815. 
 
 " My DEAR JAMES, It is with much concern that we hear of 
 the afflicting dispensation which has come over your family, and 
 that by the death of your only son your domestic circle has suf- 
 fered so sore and so melancholy a bereavement. It is little that 
 friends can offer upon such a melancholy occasion but the ex- 
 pression of their sympathy and their prayers ; but it were well 
 that as so little help can be looked for from man, we were to lay 
 the whole burden of our sorrow upon Him who does not afflict 
 willingly any of the children of men. 
 
 " A beautiful sentiment I have met with in some author is, 
 that when friends die away from us we should draw nearer to- 
 gether, and yield a more affectionate support and assistance to 
 each other during what remains to us of our earthly pilgrimage. 
 But a still higher and more enduring effect of such a chastise- 
 ment is, when it carries our wandering hearts to Him who alone 
 has the words of everlasting life when it rebukes our neglect 
 of that message which contains in it the will of God for our sal- 
 
 VOL. i. 2 u
 
 674 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 vation when it gives us a more earnest direction of heart than 
 we have ever before experienced to Him who came to destroy 
 death to redeem us from the curse of the law which gives death 
 its sting to secure pardon and everlasting life to those who 
 believe and obey Him and of whom it is said, that he who hath 
 the Son hath life, and he who hath not the Son hath not life. 
 
 " Give my warmest and kindest condolence to poor Mrs. 
 Chalmers. May God strengthen her under the heaviness of her 
 present affliction ; and Mary, who I am sure has had her 
 heart sadly moved and agitated by this melancholy event. It 
 is my earnest prayer that it may yield the peaceable fruit of 
 righteousness to one and all of you. Mrs. Chalmers joins in 
 kind remembrance of you. Yours most affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " Glasgow, April 18, 1818. MY DEAR JAMES, I should 
 have written you sooner, but I have been very much occupied. 
 There are many doings in this place that a minister has to oc- 
 cupy himself with, and which give him an infinitely less com- ' 
 mand of time than I had in my country parish. However, I 
 suffer much less from the encroachments of society than you 
 seemed at one time to apprehend ; and a letter of yours upon 
 this very subject contributed not a little to my adoption of a 
 defensive system, which has done much to secure my time and 
 my independence. 
 
 " I am sorry to understand, by a letter from Jane, that you 
 do not feel yourself altogether comfortable in your present situa- 
 tion. I trust you may get another that may accommodate you 
 better ; and in the meantime it is my earnest wish that you 
 feel as comfortably and bear as calmly and determinedly as cir- 
 cumstances will admit. I remember the day well when any 
 external and uncontrollable necessity would have led me to 
 abandon myself to impatience and vexation. In this respect, 
 though I am often visited with the remainder of the old spirit, 
 I think that I can say my temper has undergone some improve- 
 ment. The cause may not be so easy to assign ; but of one 
 thing at least I am sure, that while it is the duty of every man 
 on higher grounds to search the Scriptures, even because in 
 them there is everlasting life yet he will also find there lessons 
 of a peaceful and philosophic tendency, by obedience to which 
 all that is calculated to annoy and discompose other men, is made 
 to feel light unto him.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER. 675 
 
 " I would have you to be without carefulness. ' Be careful 
 for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, make 
 your requests known unto God ; ' ' Godliness is profitable unto 
 all things, and has the promise of the life that now is, as 
 well as of that which is to come ; ' ' Cast all your care upon 
 Him, for He careth for you ; ' ' God is my helper, and I will 
 not fear what man can do unto me;' these are a few out of 
 many dissuasives against such thoughts and feelings as tend to 
 corrode the very root of enjoyment in this world, gathered out 
 of a book which if we neglect, we do it at the peril of all our 
 expectations in another world, and will indeed most assuredly 
 incur the doom of ' How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great a 
 salvation ? ' . . . All here are well. Helen is still with us. A 
 letter from Jane refreshes and delights us occasionally. I do 
 hope to hear from you soon. Give my kindest compliments to 
 Mrs. Chalmers and Mary ; and believe me ever, my dear James, 
 yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " LONDON, May 4, 1818. 
 
 "DEAR THOMAS, I observe Jane has been writing to you 
 about my situation not being a very pleasant one. It is indeed 
 far from being comfortable ; indeed, I have been on the out- 
 look for some time, but can hear of nothing as yet that is likely 
 to suit. You do not say whether you are likely to publish any 
 thing soon. I lately got your sermon before the Hibernian 
 Society ; and I believe our countrymen here feel rather sore 
 that you should have favoured the Irish so much and denied the 
 like favour to the Scotch, who fully expected that you should 
 also have published your sermon for their benefit. They think 
 you have made fish of the one and flesh of the other. ... I 
 believe I mentioned to you some time since that some of the 
 printsellers had executed a figure intended to represent you, 
 which they had in fact bound up with some of your works, which 
 is a most disgraceful thing - r and I would really beg of you to 
 get a correct and rather flattering miniature taken of yourself, 
 so as to give the lie to these catch-penny things who have so 
 completely bungled you in this kind of way ; for by binding up 
 and selling with your works this ugly thing, you are handed 
 down to posterity as one of the most frightful-looking figures 
 that ever existed." 
 
 " November 20, 1818. 
 
 " MY DEAR JAMES, My mother you know to have very great
 
 676 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 resources in herself ; she is fond of what, in Scottish phrase, is 
 called tracking, and the garden with the outhouses, and the 
 work of various little charities which she practises in Anster, 
 will afford complete scope for the indulgence of this favourite 
 propensity. I have received some letters from her lately, and 
 am much pleased with the Christian spirit manifested in them. 
 I trust that her affliction will be improved to her by the power 
 of Him who alone can sanctify and bless all His visitations. 
 
 " It grieves me to perceive that you are not comfortably 
 situated. I like not to obtrude upon you what you may feel to 
 be my offensive peculiarities, and yet I would be keeping back 
 what I hold to be a most important testimony, did I not advert 
 to the power of Christianity in smoothing and softening all the 
 annoyances of life. I doubt not that your feelings are perfectly 
 natural in respect of discomfort and provocation ; but sure I am 
 that nothing will give solid peace, even in this world, but the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ ; that without this there is no situation 
 but will minister vexation and bitterness to the occupier, and 
 with it there is no situation that can altogether rid a man of his 
 tranquillity." 
 
 "LONDON, January 4, 1819. 
 
 " DEAR THOMAS, I am at all times obliged to you for your 
 good advice, and shall very thankfully receive it upon religious 
 subjects as well as on any other. I mention this because you 
 like not, you say, to obtrude upon me what I may feel to be your 
 offensive peculiarities. Now, they are the very reverse of being 
 offensive, and you are much mistaken if you think that I am at 
 all indifferent to this subject. I may not perhaps go to what you 
 may consider a sufficient length in outward appearances, being 
 rather a closet religionist than otherwise, and a former careless 
 habit may still lead me at times to express my indignation by a 
 
 hearty , but I am by no means insensible of the power of 
 
 Christianity in smoothing and softening the annoyances of life. 
 My great want is the opportunity of exercising it in peace and 
 with an undisturbed mind. . . . 
 
 " You seem to have misunderstood my hit as you term it at 
 the sainthood. I do assure you I mean no disrespect whatever 
 to that most useful and respectable set of men ; on the contrary, 
 1 am fully sensible of their value and importance to society, 
 though at the same time I do confess there may be some of .their 
 opinions and ways that I do not approve. You seem also to 
 have a notion that I do not hold with the sentiments and pre-
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER. 677 
 
 cepts of the Bible ; but in this you are also much mistaken. It 
 is my wish to make the Bible the rule of my faith and conduct. 
 I know no other religion than that of believing in the Scriptures 
 of the Old and New Testaments, and endeavouring to frame my 
 life according to their precepts. I do not hold with what is called 
 religions intercourse ; it is a matter entirely between God and 
 my own heart. I hold no communication whatever with man 
 upon the subject, except that of hearing the word preached ; for 
 I have often found that religion has been made a cloak for the 
 worst of crimes, and I firmly believe that there is more wicked- 
 ness practised under its mask than in any other way ; and I do 
 confess, that when I observe a man take any out of the way 
 pains to convince the world that he is a religionist, I view him 
 with a most suspicious eye. Their notions of sin I cannot say 
 I altogether hold with. It appears to be a great sin for a man 
 to pull a weed or two out of his garden on a Sunday, but it is 
 not a sin to break in upon a family on the Sabbath evening, and 
 then sit two or three hours scandalizing the whole neighbour- 
 hood. It is a heinous and crying sin for a man to express his 
 indignation at wickedness or injustice by an oath. I do not 
 mean to justify the crime of profane swearing, but I mean to say 
 that swearing is an open, and, if I may use the expression, an 
 honest sin. It tells at once for itself. It exposes fully to the 
 world its own deformity by its own act. But a man may be 
 guilty and in the daily practice of all the other sins to the very 
 latest hour of his existence, and not be found out, and he re- 
 tains to his last breath the character of an upright religious and 
 honest man. Now, we often find it to be men of this very de- 
 scriptiou who are the strictest religionists, whose very light is 
 darkness, who are the tithe-payers of mint, &c., and neglect the 
 weightier matters, and who go about hawking it from house to 
 house, leading astray silly women, &c. You never will hear m<? 
 speak disrespectfully of religion, but you may of those who pro- 
 fess and practise it, though I am far from entertaining opinions 
 of this kind of the generality of professors. I am a member of 
 no sect : I am only an occasional hearer. I commune with none 
 but God and my own heart. JAMES CHALMERS." 
 
 " GLASGOW, February 18, 1819. 
 
 " MY DEAR JAMES, I received yours of the 4th of January, 
 and should not like to defer answering you for a long time. I 
 have been much occupied of late by the publication of a volume
 
 678 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 of ' Congregational Sermons,' which have been five months in 
 the press, and which I expect to be out next week. I expect to 
 be able then to send you two copies, one for yourself, and another 
 which I beg you may forward to Mr. Morton in Gloucestershire. 
 
 " In reply to an observation of your letter, you will forgive me 
 for saying, that whenever Christianity is real it confers a peace 
 which carries it over all the disadvantages of external situation, 
 and that where the peace does not exist, there is reason to fear 
 that it is due not to what is adverse outwardly, but to what is 
 adverse inwardly. It is not to judge but to warn you that I 
 take the liberty of remarking, that that man's pretensions to 
 heaven would be utterly discredited could it be said that under 
 a strong inducement he uttered an occasional lie ; and I fear that 
 as little can be said for that man's religion who, under some 
 strong provocation, utters an occasional oath. It is a bad exter- 
 nal symptom of the state of the heart, and of the way in which 
 it really stands affected to this matter of supreme and vital 
 importance. And perhaps a cool and direct examination of the 
 heart itself might throw light upon this subject, might lead one 
 to ascertain whether there be any honest or practical earnestness 
 about it, whether God be the Being with whom we have really 
 at any time to do, whether His message be habitually listened to, 
 or habitually neglected, whether the great peculiarities of that 
 doctrine on the reception of which He makes all human salva- 
 tion to turn, be our familiar food, or be strange to our minds as 
 a piece of dark and unknown mysticism. All this may perhaps 
 be got at by an act of deliberate self-inquiry ; it is a question of 
 most fearful importance, and it were well for us not to shrink 
 from it now, while return is possible, and pardon is within the 
 reach of our offer, and God stands in readiness to receive even 
 those who, by the alienation of a whole life, have done all that 
 in them lay to provoke and to estrange Him. 
 
 " Do take all this in good part ; you know that I have no ill 
 will. Give my kindest compliments to Mrs. and Miss Chalmers, 
 and believe me, dear James, yours most truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 "LONDON, April 21, 1819. 
 
 " DEAR THOMAS, I received yours of the 18th February, and 
 am afraid from a letter since received from Anstruther that my 
 mother appears likely to experience considerable difficulty in 
 getting her money from the Eadernie bond. I have been most
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER. 679 
 
 cruelly hampered and annoyed by Scotch borements, and it 
 really begins to assume the appearance of a sort of systematic 
 persecution. ... It is the tremendous train that is always at 
 their rear, and the set they are sure either to bring with them 
 or send after them that frightens me at Scotch visits. What for 
 instance could be more pleasant to us than to have either Charles 
 or Alexander up for a week or so during the summer to look 
 about them, were it not for that vile system of introductions, 
 that incurable Scotch disease of making you acquainted with all 
 their acquaintances. It is really carried to such an unreasonable 
 pitch that I am afraid to approach even so near as to write a 
 letter ; and I daresay Sandy has thought it strange that I never 
 answered the letter he wrote me when Jane was married. It 
 would give me great pleasure to see some little reform in the 
 manners, customs, and propensities of my countrymen. You 
 take a deal of pains with the savages abroad, but you never think 
 of those at home : the one I do assure you want civilizing as 
 much as the other. JAMES CHALMERS." 
 
 "GLASGOW, May 14, 1819. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I shall have it in my power, I trust, to spend 
 some time in Anstruther in the months of June and July, when 
 I shall pay every attention to my mother's affairs, and do all I 
 can to place matters on a secure and comfortable footing for her. 
 
 "In your complaints about Scottish obtrusiveness, you go 
 completely beyond the sympathy and understanding of all your 
 friends in this quarter. I am convinced, that if you subjected 
 the matter to a calculation of the real time that it has taken 
 away from you, you would be astonished to find how perfect a 
 bagatelle you had made a bugbear of and allowed to disturb you. 
 At all events, it is easy, I apprehend, to protect yourself from 
 people whose society you do not like, without such a tremendous 
 expense of discomfort and uneasiness to yourself. The brooding 
 over it, I am thoroughly convinced, creates ten times more of 
 real suffering than the whole matter of the annoyance itself 
 would, and that without practically helping on your deliverance. 
 It really appears to me that you have a morbid excess of feeling 
 about the whole of this matter insomuch, that the very appear- 
 ance of a Scotchman in your street is enough to light up a war 
 of apprehension within you. I am sure there is nothing I would 
 like better to see in you than a more tranquil temperament of 
 mind, founded on such conceptions of the truth as would lead
 
 680 MEMOIRS OF DR. CH ALMERS. 
 
 you to have peace and joy in believing, and would enable you 
 to feel lightly all the cares and vexations of a deceitful pil- 
 grimage. With best compliments to Mrs. Chalmers, I am, dear 
 James, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " LOXDOX, June 1, 1819. 
 
 "DEAR THOMAS, My mother seems to think that as next 
 heir-male I can lay some claim to the estate of Eadernie, but 
 they may make a kirk and a mill of it before I give myself any 
 trouble about it. My riches do not consist in the possession of 
 money, but in the possession of the domestic quietness and peace 
 which I am permitted to enjoy. I have no wish to extend my 
 means so as to meet the demands of connexions. My great 
 object is to curtail my connexions so as to make my means 
 answer, and consequently an introduction to a new acquaintance 
 has not the effect of getting me a new acquaintance, but a con- 
 trary effect, that of losing an old one ; for let the introductionist 
 be who he will, I cut him. 
 
 " My situation continues daily to become worse and worse. I 
 suppose I am now in a state of punishment for the concern I was 
 led into at Liverpool in the slave-trade, and that I must look 
 forward to nothing but a continued state of bondage while I 
 live : 
 
 ' Slave merchant once, 
 But now himself a slave.'" 
 
 " GLASGOW, April 13, 1820. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I am sensible that it is long since I wrote, 
 but I am sadly overdone with employment, and must be held a 
 privileged man in respect of correspondence. I have sometimes 
 to throw off twenty communications in the day about my home 
 business, and then the letters from a distance get leave to accu- 
 mulate for a time, when the load becomes at length oppressive 
 to my feelings. 
 
 " You will have read much of Glasgow of late in the news- 
 papers. There was great alarm, and a very general feeling of 
 insecurity for some time, and nothing but the presence of an 
 overawing military force has kept the peace of our city. What 
 explosion may occur on their departure remains to be seen, but 
 there is quietness, and a very general return to their work, in 
 the meantime. 
 
 " Sandy was most alarmingly unwell. His physician said, 
 about six weeks ago, that if there was no change, he would not
 
 i^UJi WITH HIS BROTHER. 681 
 
 live above a few hours ; in the meantime, he is recovering and 
 gaining strength, though slowly, and there is ground to appre- 
 hend that he may be very imich of an invalid during the re- 
 mainder of his days. 
 
 " My wife and I were at Kirkcaldy for about a fortnight when 
 Sandy was at his worst. Let us hope that his distress may de- 
 tach him from the love of a world that is in every way unworthy 
 of the affections of an immortal creature ; and we may be very 
 sure that all is not right about us, and that we are not in a state 
 which it will do to die with, till the love of Him who made the 
 world is shed abroad in our hearts, and we are reclaimed from 
 the ungodliness of nature. 
 
 " Give my best compliments to Mrs. Chalmers and Mary, and 
 believe me to be, dear James, yours very truly, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS." 
 
 " GLASGOW, January 1, 1821. 
 
 " DEAR JAMES, I daresay I may have good-humouredly said, 
 in John Hall's presence, something about not writing you till 
 New- Year, but it is not on that account that I have selected this 
 day for this letter ; the truth is, that my mantelpiece is labour- 
 ing under the weight of unanswered correspondence, and I have 
 turned this into a holiday from my ordinary work for the purpose 
 of clearing it away. 
 
 " May the roll of seasons at length awaken us to true wisdom. 
 There is a way of escape from the corrosions of this cheating 
 and distressful world. I am sure, that would we implicitly walk 
 by the Bible, we should at length find ourselves in a way of 
 pleasantness and a path of peace. The injustice of man would 
 not disturb us ; the hopes and disappointments of the world 
 would not overwhelm us. We should feel calmness in the midst 
 of perplexity and persecution. And how tempting are the offers 
 of the gospel when even now it invites us to put on a righteous- 
 ness which will secure our acceptance with God, and promises 
 such a new spirit and a new heart, as would render us alive to 
 the power of godliness. 
 
 " Give my very kindest regards to Mrs. Chalmers and Mary, 
 in which my Mrs. Chalmers most cordially joins. May you 
 have many returns of the season, and may a life of repentance 
 and faith be followed by an endless felicity hereafter. Believe 
 me to be, my dear James, yours very affectionately, 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 682 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 It is pleasing to know, that with the lapse of years his situa- 
 tion not only became quite agreeable to James, but that his 
 feelings towards his countrymen were in some degree mollified. 
 In March 1836, he writes thus to his sister Helen : " Your 
 letter of the 20th, and your addition to Patrick's about two 
 years since, contain the only Anster news I have had for the 
 last nine years, and very acceptable and amusing they were to 
 me. I am always fond of hearing Anster news, either about the 
 people or the improvements of the place ; and I assure you, I 
 set great store by your last letter, for it had not a single particle 
 of the poison in it, though this one was a little tinctured there- 
 with, but nevertheless in moderation, and I am in great hopes 
 that a Scotch reform is now working in the articles of invitation 
 and impressment, and that the tenets of a certain school will ere 
 long be exploded. Though it is evident that the slime of the 
 ' auld serpent's 1 crawl has not as yet evaporated, yet it is pleas- 
 ing to think that great progress has of late been made towards 
 it, and I hope I may live to see the day when the good folks of 
 Scotland will contract the reality and sincerity of good manners, 
 and, as a matter of course, abandon those of the other descrip- 
 tion, which never yet had any other effect than that of making 
 the tongue falsify the heart. An invitation, according to my 
 notion of the thing, ought only to occur once in a man's whole 
 life, and it should run thus ' Whenever you come my way, I 
 shall always be glad to see you.' What a comfort it would be 
 if they would only confine themselves to that, and if my good 
 sister Jane, for instance, when she first came to live in England, 
 had just told me that, leaving the rest to me, and suffering me 
 to be the judge of my own convenience and time, I really think 
 I should have visited her long before this and often ; but the 
 incessant whipping and spurring and driving, and you must, 
 and you shall, and I'll take it very ill of you if you don't, and I 
 insist upon it, and I'll take no denial, and I can see nothing to 
 hinder you why, it is enough to frighten a poor creature like 
 me almost out of his wits. Invitation, invitation, rattling and 
 reeling and ringing in one's ears everlastingly, as if a man could 
 have no enjoyment beyond that of guzzling and drinking, and 
 the worst of all is, that they won't believe what you say ; for 
 surely, if I tell a man that I like a bowl of kirn milk better than 
 a bowl of punch, he ought to believe me but no ; he likes the 
 punch best himself, and I must like it too, and ne'er a drap of 
 kirn milk will he give me. It is, indeed, a great failing in the
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER. CSS 
 
 Scotch, that they cannot, or will not, admit it possible that a 
 person can have likes or dislikes, or feelings different from their 
 own, and they even go so far as to think they have a right 
 to sport with the feelings of another merely because they have 
 not the same themselves, which shows either a great cruelty or 
 a great want of knowledge of the world ; but things, I now 
 hope, are in a fair train of amendment, and that nothing now 
 exists to impede the glorious work of Deformation in the manners 
 of the people, or to obstruct the impressment and asking-twice 
 system from being rooted out and annihilated ; and then, I hope, 
 a good downright and straightforward ' no' to an invitation will 
 cease to be considered an insult or breach of manners, and that 
 I can enjoy the luxury of a visit to Scotland in safety and com- 
 fort, and be suffered to look about me in my own way, when 
 and where I please, without being laid hold of and dragged 
 away against my will to the beastly guzzlement. Now, in all 
 this I do not mean to say anything against, or in the smallest 
 degree to find fault with real hospitality far from it ; hospitality 
 is highly commendable and praiseworthy when properly exer- 
 cised ; all I mean to say is, that the Scotch overdo it, and carry 
 it beyond its proper bounds, by their system of impressment ; 
 for surely they ought to allow the object of it to have a say in 
 the matter, without cramming it down his throat whether he 
 will or not. Now, you see what a grand sermon I have written 
 to you, and I hope you will seriously consider it, and come in to 
 it, and profit by it, for sure I am that the great Dr. Chalmers 
 never wrote such a sermon in his days ; but, after all, I begin 
 to think I am getting too old now to go to any distance from 
 home, and it is many years since I had a journey of any kind, 
 for as people get into years, their tastes and enjoyments undergo 
 great changes. 
 
 " I was just thinking the other day of some few curious par- 
 ticulars relating to myself which may not be unamusing to you 
 were I to state them. It is very near forty-seven years since I 
 first left Scotland, and nearly thirty-five since I was in it at all. 
 I have not been in a Mason's Lodge since the present century 
 commenced ; it is upwards of thirty-two years since I was on 
 horseback ; it is thirty-two years since I heard a minister of the 
 Established Church of Scotland preach ; it is twenty-three years 
 since I saw the sea ; it is sixteen years since I was at a greater 
 distance from London than eight miles ; and I have not now a 
 single relation living upon the face of the earth whose house 1
 
 684 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ever was in in my life. Now, I am sure, you cannot complain, 
 for I have written you a long letter of highly important in- 
 telligence."* 
 
 We have to invite the reader to enter a different region as 
 he takes up the religious portion of that correspondence which, 
 during his residence in Glasgow, Dr. Chalmers maintained with 
 Mrs. Morton. In the course of this period, Mrs. Morton was 
 severely tried by the deata of one of her sons, who, though very 
 young, with evidence of superior talent, gave evidence also of a 
 genuine faith in Christ : 
 
 " GLASGOW, June 24, 1816. 
 
 " I wish I had more to communicate to you of what is called 
 experimental religion. It is easy to expatiate with sense and 
 consistency, and scriptural soundness on the truths of Christi- 
 anity ; but these truths are proposed to my mind, and if I em- 
 brace them I have faith, and faith, wherever it exists, has its 
 accompanying influences, and I should like that I could feel 
 those influences more ; and it is the consciousness of these influ- 
 ences in the shape of love and peace and joy, and actual strength 
 for obedience, which supplies every Christian with all that he 
 knows and all that he can tell of his religious experience. The 
 primitive Christians had this in great perfection. Peace ruled in 
 their hearts, and they rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of 
 glory; and they had the feeling of a faith which grew exceeding- 
 ly, and of love to the saints and to all men which made distinct 
 and sensible progress within them. Let us keep by the Saviour, 
 that He may, by His Spirit, work the same things in us, and 
 beautify us by His salvation, and give us to second and to feel 
 His work of grace within us, that we may have the witness and 
 be able to tell of the great things which He has done for our souls. 
 
 * Inheriting the parental punctuality and the parental Toryism, James carried both of 
 them to an extreme degree. In balancing his private receipts and disbursements at the 
 close of a year, one penny more than he could account for appeared to have been spent : 
 that penny cost him weeks and months of uneasiness till, crossing one of the London bridges, 
 which he had occasion to cross once a year, and on which there was a penny toll, he sud- 
 denly remembered that twelve months before he had paid a penny there which he had not 
 entered in his books. Under the excitement of the moment he adjourned to a neighbouring 
 coffee-house, and dedicated a foaming draught of porter to the great discovery. After the 
 passing of the Reform Bill, to which he was greatly opposed, he addressed the following note 
 to the collector of the assessed taxes : " I hereby give you notice, that I refuse to pay all 
 farther rates and taxes until after the 21st of July next, my sole object in so doing being to 
 render myself ineligible to be registered as a voter, for I happen to be one of those who do 
 not consider the privilege (if it may so be called) to be worth the shilling you charge for it, 
 neither do I feel myself competent to judge of the fitness of a person to serve in Parliament, 
 and therefore leave my share of it to the more enlightened. All other payments except those 
 due in April you can have punctually to a day."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. 685 
 
 " On the religious education of children I shall only say at 
 present in the general, that you cannot begin too early, that 
 God should be spoken of to the very youngest, and the name 
 of Jesus Christ familiarized to them, and every association of 
 reverence and love that the tone and style of the parents can 
 attach to the business of religion should be established in them. 
 Their consciences are wonderfully soon at work. They know 
 what a fault is in reference to their parents, and they can soon 
 feel and understand the same thing in reference to God ; and 
 there is nmch about God being the giver and the maker and the 
 upholder of all things, about which their minds can take in the 
 information, and their hearts can be made to feel a solemn and 
 a touching impression." 
 
 " Glasgow, Feb. 23, 1818. MY DEAREST JANE, I know 
 that Helen wrote you very recently, but I find that I have not 
 answered my last received letter from Pudhill, and I am too 
 fond of the correspondence from that quartet not to recur to it 
 whenever time and other engagements permit me to do so. Be 
 assured then I speak out of the abundance of my heart when I 
 say, that I hold it one of the purest and most delightful of all 
 my feelings in this world of many distractions, that feeling of 
 tenderness which I ever associate with you and all your concerns ; 
 and perhaps there is a slight mixture of poetical delusion in the 
 thought, but it is certainly a pleasant one, that the neighbour- 
 hood on which Providence hath ordained your habitation, rich 
 as it is in the beauties of nature, and richer still in the pieties 
 and charities of the excellent people who live in it, would be my 
 best occasional retreat from the fatigues and anxieties of my 
 ordinary existence. 
 
 " I had written thus far down a week ago, and have since 
 had a letter from Patrick, announcing his settlement with Mr. 
 Gordon, a circumstance which gives me very great pleasure. 
 We had also a letter from Mary Chalmers, who I trust is in 
 earnest about her soul. She mentions that her father is not 
 getting so fond of his present situation, and that this affects his 
 health and spirits. I fear we are too delicate and forbearing in 
 our remarks upon the great topic of immortality, and of that 
 gospel which points the way to it. I meditate a letter to hftn 
 soon, and I have to request that you will not overlook this sub- 
 ject in your future communications with him. Helen is anxious 
 about Robert, since Patrick writes that he is poorly. Let us
 
 686 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 know particularly of him. May God prosper you in your children, 
 and enable you both to suffer and to do the whole of His will 
 respecting them. 
 
 " We are greatly taken up with plans and speculations re- 
 specting the poor, and churches, and matters of active and 
 Christian economy in our town. I am getting an occasional 
 hit, too, I perceive, from controversialists, but I do not dip at 
 all into their performances till I am enabled to resume a formal 
 and deliberate attention to the subject, so as not to put my mind 
 under the control of such a random and fluctuating element as 
 that of criticism. Thus in the meanwhile I am as much at my 
 ease as the man who is profoundly asleep in a storm. 
 
 " The man who really exercises faith in the truths of the 
 gospel will be saved. And there is a style of universality in 
 these truths which warrant the believer to make a personal 
 application of them to himself. If the blood of Christ cleanseth 
 from all sin, why may not the believer say from my sin ? If 
 whosoever cometh unto Christ will riot be cast out, why should 
 I look upon myself as an outcast ? If the word of salvation 
 has reached you, the offer of salvation has been made unto you. 
 
 " And yet it is as true if any man forsake not all he cannot 
 be Christ's disciple, and therefore unless I forsake all. that 
 Christ wants me to forsake I cannot be His disciple. I may 
 try to realize the comfort of the former assertions in my heart 
 without realizing the direction of the latter upon my conduct. 
 But it will not do. The body is in this case full of darkness, 
 because the eye is not single. And every attempt to divide 
 Christ, or to draw the veil from one part of His testimony while 
 we keep it wrapt on another part of it, will always terminate in 
 fruitless and ineffectual attempts to have Him for our friend 
 and comforter. 
 
 " The cry however of ' turn us and we shall be turned,' raised 
 even from the very depths of impenitency and rebellion, will not 
 be turned away from ; and if it be the cry of one who is in good 
 earnest seeking after God, it is a cry that will not be lifted in vain. 
 It is altogether as much a gift from Christ when we obtain the 
 grace of repentance, as when we obtain the grace of forgiveness ; 
 and I am sure that in proportion as I draw from my own 
 energies, for the purpose of making good my repentance, in that 
 very proportion must I fall short. that we could live a life 
 of faith on the Son of God, and find to our joyful experience that 
 it is a life of holy and affectionate obedience.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. C87 
 
 " All our family are well. Anne can now read her Bible, 
 and Eliza has all the prattle of an incipient talker." 
 
 " Glasgow, July 3, 1818. MY VERY DEAR JANE, In the 
 meantime do you maintain your diligence in the use of means, 
 and God will meet you while thus employed with such mani- 
 festations of His truth as He knows to he good for you. I have 
 heen preaching lately on faith and a good conscience, and been 
 endeavouring to explain what it was that an evangelical good 
 conscience consisted of. The conscience of every Christian at- 
 tests that in himself there dwelleth no good thing. It charges 
 him with the evil that resides naturally and constitutionally in 
 his heart, and therefore speaks to him in the terms of an evil 
 conscience. But he who gives way to his evil tendencies is 
 altogether an opposite person to him who makes head against 
 them who desires in truth and in good earnest to resist them 
 to the uttermost, and if possible to extinguish them altogether, 
 and who avails himself of every promised aid which the Gospel 
 reveals, that the flesh may be crucified and that grace may have 
 the ascendency. A man may be the tenant of a vile body and 
 yet be a man of the latter description and not of the former. 
 His conscience may trouble him by representing to him how 
 obstinately and how deeply seated a corruption there is in the 
 nature which he brought with him into the world, and from 
 which he will not be finally separated till he leaves the world ; 
 but his conscience may at the very same time gladden and cheer 
 him by the testimony that he is plying every expedient of sancti- 
 fication which the Gospel puts into the hand of a believer for 
 keeping the body under subjection ; and this is the very good 
 conscience which Paul had when he said, ' This is my rejoicing, 
 the testimony of my conscience, that in simplicity and godly 
 sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God I 
 have my conversation in the world.' 
 
 " I feel the same love to Mr. and Mrs. Hoskins and Miss 
 Bliss that you have. I feel the remembrance of the Psalmody 
 in Shortwood Chapel to be sweet ; and many are my associa- 
 tions of delight and tenderness with you and your neighbour- 
 hood. I still hold by the wish of making out Gloucestershire 
 next summer ; but I must be almost entirely with you, and 
 never preach any more than I find to be good for me for I go 
 to rest and not to work."
 
 688 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 " Glasgow, Sept. 3, 1818. MY DEAREST JANE, I should 
 have written you long ago, and have condoled with you much 
 sooner in your present condition of sorrow upon sorrow. Let 
 me entreat of you not to be swallowed up of overmuch sorrow ; 
 and though it be easier for me to bid your resignation than for 
 you to practise it, yet that does not prevent its being a real and 
 an acquirable state of mind, that one should sorrow not even as 
 others that have no hope that one should count it joy when 
 they fall into tribulation that one should walk by faith, not by 
 sight that one should look beyond the changes and the suffer- 
 ings of time to the glories and the blessedness of eternity. All 
 this we are bidden do in the Bible all this we shall be strength- 
 ened to do in waiting upon God all this we shall obtain in 
 answer to the believing prayer that He would strengthen us 
 with all might, according to the working of His glorious power, 
 unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. 
 
 " I can conceive the bitterness of your bereavement, though 
 I have not yet felt it in my own personal experience. It seems 
 by far the strongest tie of relationship in nature that which binds 
 a parent's affection to his offspring. I have tried to figure the 
 loss of my own children ; and should I ever be called upon to 
 bear it, I even now think it the severest infliction next to the 
 loss of my wife, that Providence has in reserve for me. 
 
 " I trust that in your case religion will anticipate the work of 
 time that Christianity will moderate your grief long before the 
 period at which without Christianity the grief would in the 
 course of nature, and by the mere operation of variety, die away. 
 There is one peculiar alleviation in which you ought to take 
 comfort : your son could talk of Christ and take comfort in Him ; 
 he could image the Saviour to be his friend ; and go not to think 
 that He who said ' Suffer little children to come unto me,' would 
 pass such a feeling unnoticed, or would fail to recognise the faith 
 and the trust and the hope of the young believer as the badges 
 of a relationship, all the privileges of which we have reason to 
 think he is now possessing in glory." 
 
 " Track-boat, October 13, 1818. MY DEAREST JANE, I was 
 lately in the north of Fife, and made a rapid survey of Kilmany 
 and its inhabitants. I could not help being struck with one 
 circumstance, the general change that had taken place among 
 the people in respect of their bodily appearance, proving how 
 surely and how speedily the body draws towards its decay, and
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. 689 
 
 this, combined with the stability of character graven upon their 
 souls, proving how obstinately all the features of worldliness and 
 corruption adhere to us unless a principle more powerful than 
 calculation more powerful than any that can be excited by the 
 obviousness of advancing frailty and decay be brought to bear 
 upon us. What an argument for immediate repentance, for be- 
 taking ourselves to the great movement of conversion immedi- 
 ately for not merely seeking, but striving, not merely walking, 
 but in the language of Scripture fleeing. The Bible tells us 
 what we are to flee from the coming wrath ; and, oh ! delight- 
 ful intimation, it points out to us where we are to flee to for 
 refuge to the hope set before us. There we have a sure refuge 
 from condemnation a hiding-place from the storm. There also 
 we have a sure refuge from the tyranny of sin as well as the 
 guilt of it. Sin shall not have dominion over you ; for you are 
 not under the law but under grace. I know not how you feel 
 in this respect, but I am sure that every day I live I have more 
 reason for self-renunciation and self-annihilation ; and let me not 
 think this a strange thing, for Paul renounced all confidence in 
 the flesh : he was dead unto himself. Every day I live I feel 
 more and more that I must carry Christ and the exercise of 
 prayer in His name along with me into the very slightest of my 
 duties. Neither let me count this strange, for Paul rejoiced in 
 the Lord Jesus, and was thus made to serve God in the Spirit. 
 Though dead yet nevertheless he lived, and Christ lived in him. 
 He made Christ his sanctification as well as his righteousness, 
 and reached a habit of holy obedience by doing what we in order 
 to attain holiness must do after him, live a life of faith on the 
 Son of God. 
 
 " Let me recommend two small treatises which I think would 
 delight you. The first is Serle's ' Christian Kemembrancer,' 
 a small duodecimo volume ; and indeed all Serle's works are 
 excellent. The second is a pamphlet by a daughter of Sir 
 John Sinclair, entitled 'Principles of the Christian Faith.'* It 
 is well calculated to recommend evangelical principles to the 
 people of higher walks in society. 
 
 "There is a good old phrase in the older writers, that of 
 ' acting faith.' As we read the Bible, let us act faith on each 
 clause and verse of it in other words, let us press upon our 
 minds the consideration of the business of all that we are read- 
 
 * "Letter on the Principles of the Christian Faith." By Hannah Sinclair. Edinburgh, 
 1818. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 X
 
 690 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ing. This may be combined with another good practical direc- 
 tion : Eead the Bible with as particular an application to yourself 
 as if you were the only person in the world, and as if, therefore, 
 that redemption which was set up for the world was set up for 
 your special and individual behoof. I advised a person lately 
 to do that, and in homely phrase, as she is a homely person, she 
 yoked to the reading of the Bible upon that principle, and by 
 taking home to herself its invitations and its promises and its 
 assurances, she has attained, I trust, peace and joy in believing. 
 Extend this principle to the duties and the threatenings arid all 
 the other declarations of the Bible, and then will the believer be 
 also the doer of the word, applying himself to the performance 
 of all its precepts, and in so doing making the appointed use of 
 all its privileges." 
 
 " GLASGOW, November 30, 1818. 
 
 " MY EVER DEAREST JANE, I received yours two days ago. 
 I am sorry to perceive that you are still in heaviness, though I 
 trust that you will at length reach a far more speedy and effec- 
 tual deliverance from it than ever can be gotten by worldly 
 intercourse. You have resources in Christian society, arid I do 
 think that Mr. Hoskins's family being so near is a great privi- 
 lege. Other society than Christian I would not recommend ; 
 and I cannot tell you what an improvement has taken place of 
 late in the peace and enjoyment of our family here, since we 
 have adopted the resolution of going out nowhere excepting for 
 a business or for a Christian object. This we have rigidly acted 
 on since our last return to Glasgow, and are quite determined 
 from our experience of its advantage never to recur again to 
 society for the mere sake of general fellowship. The thing is 
 endless, vexatious, and in every way unproductive. At the 
 same time it does not hinder us from taking tea in such families 
 as understand our plan, and are willing to turn the tea into a 
 fellowship meeting, being at full liberty to introduce Christian 
 conversation, being carried forward by the congenialities of those 
 around us, and at the same time concluding by family worship. 
 This I have only done twice, however, since we came back, 
 which is upwards of six weeks ago, Mrs. Chalmers's cold pre- 
 venting her from going out at all. I am happy to say, however, 
 that she is getting better, and I trust that God will unable us to 
 act inviolably upon this system. The spirit of the world is at 
 antipodes with the spirit of the New Testament, withering, blast- 
 ing, secularizing. The comfort we draw from this quarter is
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. G91 
 
 hollow, deceitful, and ruinous. Keep alive by prayer and the 
 exercise of faith a spiritual mindedness, and you will reach 
 tranquillity in this way if there be any truth in the Bible, for 
 to be spiritually-minded is life and peace. 
 
 " At the same time I would come forward with a direction 
 which I think you will derive much comfort from the regular 
 observance of. It is suggested both by my own experience, and 
 by a remark of Brainerd, one of the most devotional and experi- 
 mental Christians whom the world ever saw. He says, that even 
 to the comfort of a religious life a regular distribution and filling 
 up of time is very subservient, and I know nothing that would 
 conduce more to your perfect restoration at present than such an 
 arrangement and such a determination. One part of our family 
 system we derive much pleasure and improvement from. From 
 dinner to tea I read aloud to Mrs. Chalmers, and I never wish 
 for a single creature to be with us whose call would interrupt 
 this process. We are getting triumphantly on with Milner's 
 ' Church History,' and in the same way it is possible that all the 
 other home arrangements, regularly following each other and 
 making progress towards a salutary object, may be powerfully 
 instrumental in the hand of God to the purpose of sustaining the 
 quietness of our spirits. 
 
 " It is a mighty interest we have at stake. Eternity is coming 
 on. There is a contest to be maintained for it, for the crown of 
 life is only given to him that overcometh. Though the warfare 
 be not at our own charges still there is a warfare. Though 
 God worketh in us, still we have to will and to do, for it is just 
 by making us will and do that He worketh. We should not be 
 swallowed up of overmuch sorrow ; we should not sink under 
 the visitations of Providence. There may be a need for being in 
 heaviness for a season, and you have had this season of heavi- 
 ness. But the weight I trust will at length be cast aside, 
 vigorous expedients resorted to for escaping from its pressure, 
 the prevailing cry to God not cease to be lifted up, till the trial 
 of your faith is completed, and it be found to praise and honour 
 and glory. 
 
 " Perhaps you have anticipated me in that part of the plan 
 which relates to family reading. I would recommend above all 
 things religious lives to you. I think you will be pleased with 
 the very progress of this operation, and long, as I do, for the 
 coming round of this agreeable family exercise. 
 
 " Be assured that I know of nothing which more binds the
 
 692 MEMOIKS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 members of a household into a common sympathy than some 
 such joint exercise, from which all derive a common gratification." 
 
 " Glasgow, Feb. 19, 1819. MY DEAREST JANE, I expect 
 to be out with a volume of Sermons next week, and propose 
 sending your copy to London, that it might be forwarded to you 
 by James. . . . Let this thought, that God cannot lie, keep in 
 conscious safety the heart of every one who looketh to Jesus. 
 They who look shall be saved. The sun in the firmament is 
 often faintly seen through a cloud, but the spectator may be no 
 less looking to him than when he is seen in full and undiminished 
 effulgence. It is not to him who sees Christ brightly that the 
 promises are made, but to him who looks to Christ. A bright 
 view may minister comfort, but it is the looking which ministers 
 safety. 1 know not if you have seen Kutberford's ' Letters.' 
 They would delight you by the strong impregnation of spiritu- 
 ality there is in them, and would perhaps derive a subordinate 
 interest from the Scottish dialect and Scottish familiarity of the 
 composition. . . . 
 
 " My dear wife is certainly better than she was, though I am 
 not without my anxieties. I desire to sit loose to the world, and 
 would I could attain a habit of reconciliation with its bitterest 
 deprivations, on the ground that God so willed it. I fear that I 
 derive much of my composure from constant and engrossing 
 employment. I should like to know that my labour is in the 
 Lord, and then should I know that it is not in vain. 
 
 " Let us cherish the feeling of strangers and sojourners, and 
 nothing shall disturb us. Nothing, says the Psalmist, offends 
 those who love God's law. Great is their peace. What a desir- 
 able salvation is that which saves us from our hatred of God's 
 law, which makes us consent to it, and delight in it after the 
 inward man. Could people see that salvation is not so much 
 from the punishment of sin as from the sin itself, they would 
 be less doubtful about the necessity of sanctification, for in this 
 case to be sanctified were something more than the fruit of being 
 saved. It were to be saved itself; and, in truth, heaven has no 
 other happiness to offer than that which springs from righteous- 
 ness and goodness and truth. Let us cultivate these, and instead 
 of looking upon heaven as the reward of them, look upon them 
 as our heaven. They form the commencement of heaven here, 
 and will be perfected hereafter, where we shall behold him as 
 He is, and so become like unto Him. THOMAS CHALMERS."
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. 693 
 
 " Fairley, near Largs, June 30, 1819. MY DEAREST JANE, 
 I have to apologize for this long delay. I do not in general 
 suffer my letters to lie over a month, and ere this month comes 
 to its end, I wish to acquit myself of an obligation that I have 
 suffered to hang too long upon me. 
 
 " We are at present here in Mrs. Hutcheson's, about forty 
 miles from Glasgow, on the sea-side, where I and the children 
 bathe. I think that Mrs. Chalmers will be much the better of 
 it : she is certainly stronger than she was, but I am not without 
 my apprehensions, she has been so delicate all winter. I desire 
 to bow myself before the will and wisdom of God ; but I find, 
 that without a hold of Christ, there is no hold of God at all. I 
 fear that I have not adverted enough to the reception of the 
 gospel as the great initiatory step of our return to God. Let us 
 work as we may before this, we may widen our distance, but 
 certainly not shorten it ; and not till the tidings of great joy be 
 simply taken in not till credit is given to the plain word of the 
 testimony not till we believe the record not till we are per- 
 suaded by the promises, and so embrace them, are we translated 
 into the vantage-ground of reconciliation with God ; and this 
 entrance into peace is also the entrance into holiness. Let a 
 man examine himself and tell me if, at the moment of his sin- 
 ning wilfully, Christ was in his mind, or a faith in His blood 
 was tranquillizing his fears of God's wrath. He says no. I reply, 
 that had this consideration been present with him, the purpose 
 of sinning wilfully would not have been present with him ; or, 
 in other words, let us keep a firm hold of Christ as our propitia- 
 tion let us dwell habitually on the doctrine of His cross, and 
 we shall find it our best habitual defence against all the licen- 
 tiousness and wilful sin that have been imputed to it. 
 
 " I had a letter from James in his usual characteristic style 
 some time ago, and I thought fit to write him an admonitory 
 letter upon the subject. It was a temperate enough reply ; but 
 there is a diseased nervousness about him of which I am partly 
 conscious myself, and against which I know it is my duty to 
 struggle to the uttermost. If the light of God's reconciled 
 countenance were perpetually in the mind, it would surely keep 
 the temper perpetually unruffled coming to the great conclusion 
 again, that by keeping the truth of salvation in our memory we 
 keep the influence of the Spirit upon our hearts. What a mar- 
 vellous gospel is that which opens a free portal to friendship with 
 God for every sinner who will, and into which, if any sinner
 
 694 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 enter in, he will find purification as well as peace. May the 
 very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and grant that, by being 
 kept steadfast in the faith, you may be kept steadfast in the 
 whole discipline and obedience of the gospel." 
 
 " Glasgow, April 13, 1820. MY EVER DEAREST JANE, I am 
 exceedingly sorry to observe from your letter that you appear of 
 late to have been looking more to yourself than to your Saviour. 
 You never will reach comfort or maintain comfort in this way of 
 it. God hath laid on His own Son the iniquities of us all. This 
 is a truth, however much you may choose to intercept it from 
 your own soul by shutting your eyes against it, and however 
 much you may persist in forbidding yourself when God has not 
 forbidden you, and however much you may look away from the 
 grace and benignity and good-will which are above you to the 
 dark and fearful and suspicious nature that is within you. You 
 never will fish up peace and joy from the privacies of your own 
 heart, but you and all are invited to fetch down peace and joy 
 from the Sun of righteousness, who stands openly and broadly 
 in the view of all, and emits the widely sounding voice of ' Look 
 unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved.' 
 
 " If you think other people so much better than you are your- 
 self as to resign all your pretensions into their hands, will you 
 just resign your judgment, and more particularly your judgment 
 of yourself, into their hands also ? Now, I must say that my 
 judgment of you is altogether different from your own. It is 
 not true that all is over ; and it is not true that you are beyond 
 the reach of redeeming mercy ; and it is not true that you are 
 not welcome to forgiveness and acceptance through Christ ; and 
 it is not true, else God is a liar, that if you come unto Christ 
 you will be cast out as having no part or lot in His salvation. 
 I desire no better warrant for drawing nigh to God than that 
 you have. I want no other calls than those which lie at your 
 door as well as my own. I do not look for a larger and a kinder 
 invitation than that which is equally addressed to you as to me. 
 It is not because a more encouraging offer has come to me than 
 to yourself that I feel peace when you feel none. If there be 
 any difference it may lie in this, that I put the right interpreta- 
 tion upon the offer and you are mistaking it. The truth is, that 
 your great error lies in constantly ruminating upon the act of 
 faith, when you should be looking to the object of faith in 
 making your comfort turn upon the question, Do I believe ?
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. 695 
 
 when you should make it turn upon the question, Is God willing 
 to receive me into friendship for Christ's sake ? There may 
 hang a great doubtfulness upon the former question when there 
 ought to hang none whatever on the latter question ; and if you 
 would just dwell more habitually on the latter it would bring 
 you into a surer and speedier establishment of your peace, and 
 at length make even the former question cease to be doubtful 
 to you." 
 
 " Glasgow, August 24, 1820. MY EVER DEAREST JANE, I 
 cannot express the pleasure and satisfaction which your letter 
 gave me, and I can assure you, that, independently altogether 
 of the gratification I obtained from learning that you were per- 
 sonally in greater peace and comfort than you have been hereto- 
 fore, I also felt instructed by the just description that you gave 
 me of what I count the very attitude in which a Christian should 
 at all times be found, sensible that in himself there is nought 
 but vileness and carnality and rebellion, and that all his supplies 
 both of comfort and of strength should be fetched to him from 
 the fulness that is in Christ Jesus. 
 
 " Be assured, that while you have suffered from an excess of 
 sensibility on the topic of your own sinfulness, there are others, 
 and myself among the number, who feel it to be their sore 
 disease that they do not suffer enough who are sensible of sin 
 in themselves, without being sensible of its exceeding sinfulness, 
 and whose only refuge, in these circumstances, is that Christ's 
 righteousness can alone avail them for meritorious acceptance 
 with God, and that His Spirit can alone revive within them 
 those moral sensibilities which lie dormant and overborne under 
 a sad burden of carnality." 
 
 " Glasgow, Nov. 18, 1820. MY DEAR JANE, Be assured 
 that it is no want of affection which has kept me from writing 
 to you, but bustle and variety and manifold engagements ; and 
 your letters are always acceptable, more particularly when they 
 bring such pleasing accounts of your health and spirits. I trust 
 that the sunshine of gospel truth will ever irradiate your mind ; 
 and recollect that your safety does not depend upon the state of 
 your impressions within, which is variable, but upon the founda- 
 tion which God Himself hath laid, even on the work of Jesus 
 Christ, the strength and efficacy of which are invariable. There 
 is a great deal to be made of the phrase, that 'He is a tried
 
 696 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 foundation.' Let us try Him, and we shall never find Him give 
 way under us. Let iis venture our all upon Christ. And 
 that we felt more and more of peace in believing Him, and of 
 delight in obeying Him. 
 
 " I perfectly agree with you in your sentiments about my 
 mother ; she is a truly substantial and meritorious personage, 
 and, I believe, very much in earnest about her everlasting 
 peace. I am glad that the thorns of anxiety about the matter 
 of the settlement are well nigh plucked away from her heart ; 
 and there is not an earthly object about which we should be 
 more solicitous than that she shall enjoy the evening of her days 
 in comfort and piety and peace. 
 
 " My dear wife and children are at present in good health. 
 I have the utmost reason to be thankful on Mrs. Chalmers's 
 account ; I think her better than she has been for these two 
 years ; and, I am sure, that never could a kinder and a gentler 
 spirit have been provided for the solace of my companionship 
 through life. I wish you much peace in your family ; and as 
 this world's prosperity grows and becomes more abundant, may 
 the still higher blessing of thankful hearts, illumined by the 
 hope of the gospel, grow along with it." 
 
 " Glasgow, May 11, 1821. MY DEAR JANE, I am surprised 
 to hear of the prodigious length of time since I last wrote you. 
 I had no idea that it was four months ; but, indeed, my dear 
 Jane, I scarcely expect to be able to do justice to any of my 
 friends while I am involved in the bustle of my present under- 
 takings. I lead a life of great fatigue and activity here, and 
 yet am getting fat notwithstanding. But be that as it may, I 
 have been visited of late by my old ambition for a professorship 
 that is, however, a theological professorship, where, with God's 
 blessing, I think I could do infinitely greater good to the cause 
 than by fagging among the details of one parish and one con- 
 gregation. All the civic purposes that were to be served by my 
 peculiar management are now as good as accomplished ; and to 
 make ministers is a far higher function than to be a minister. 
 Should I ever succeed in this object, then the unbounded leisure 
 of summer would enable me to do many things that I at present 
 cannot do ; and 'I beg more particularly that you will assure 
 Mr. Aitkins that my declining to do for him the services he 
 requires is due altogether to the pressure and urgency of my 
 own immediate engagements.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. 697 
 
 " I trust that you will go peacefully and prosperously on in 
 the great work of sanctification. Would you inquire for Gu time's 
 ' Trial of a Saving Interest in Christ ?' It is a small duodecimo, 
 and has been long the favourite author of our peasantry in 
 Scotland. He wrote about a hundred and fifty years ago ; and 
 one admirable property of his work is, that while it guides it 
 purifies. It makes known all our defects, but ministers the 
 highest comfort in the presence of a feeling of our defects. To 
 find mercy we need only to feel misery. One of the most 
 precious little remarks I have met with lately is in Owen on 
 ' Indwelling Sin,' where he adverts to a believer being far more 
 apt to be burdened with a sense of sin, and to feel the fear of 
 it in his own character, than an unbeliever, ' because,' says he, 
 ' if we are carried along the stream we fear nothing, and it is 
 only when we strive against it that its progress and power are 
 discernible.'" 
 
 " Glasgow, Oct. 19, 1821. MY EVER DEAREST JANE, I was 
 exceeding sorry to perceive the tenor of your last communication 
 not that it gave me the slightest apprehension for your safety, 
 but that I feel for your present heaviness, for which it would 
 appear that there is a needs be (1 Pet. i. 6), though, in due 
 time, God will again exalt you. The cross, my dear J., is the 
 way to the crown ; and it still holds true, that the way to heaven 
 is through manifold tribulations. Think not that any strange 
 thing hath happened to you. Your case has been exemplified 
 a thousand and a thousand times over by saints who are now in 
 glory, and such examples have not yet ceased. It is not a week 
 ago since I had converse with a young lady exercised just as 
 you are, and that after an interval of fifteen years, all which 
 time she drooped and was in exceeding despondency under a 
 similar visitation. We are poor weak variable creatures ; but 
 Christ is the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever. I regard 
 your present darkness as arising from a cloud that passeth over 
 the creature, and not from any real change of aspect or regard 
 towards you on the part of the faithful Creator. You believe 
 in the undiminished lustre of the natural sun even though the 
 day should be overcast and lowering ; exercise the same faith in 
 the Sun of righteousness. It requires, no doubt, a stronger faith 
 to believe in the dark, as Samuel Rutherford expresses it, than 
 to believe in the full sunshine of clear and gracious manifesta- 
 tions ; but does not this very circumstance prove that safety is
 
 698 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 one thing and sensible comfort is another ? for, in proportion to 
 the want of sensible comfort may the strength of that principle 
 of faith be on which alone depend the acceptance and salvation 
 of a sinner. It is not he that brightly images the Saviour, but 
 he that believes the Saviour, who shall not be confounded or 
 put to shame. Trust, then, in the midst of discouragements : 
 keep a determined hold while the billows of temptation pass 
 over you : say, Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him ; 
 and when like to give way under the imagination that you are 
 ready to perish, bethink yourself of the cross of Christ, and, 
 be assured, it ig utterly impossible you can perish while so em- 
 ployed. 
 
 " I am more convinced than ever that professing Christians 
 do not lay their account sufficiently with trials in this world. 
 They are not enough impressed with their condition as strangers 
 and pilgrims ; their appetite is far too much set on present en- 
 joyments ; nor do any of us feel aught as if we were on a journey 
 of hardships and difficulties, and often great painfulness, else 
 we would be more prepared to endure hardness as good soldiers 
 of Christ Jesus. 
 
 " I have been reading lately Eomaine's ' Life of Faith,' I am 
 now reading his ' Walk of Faith,' and I mean to conclude the 
 series by reading his ' Triumph of Faith.' I do not want to 
 divert you from the Bible, but I think that these treatises are 
 fitted to urged upon you the very comfort and direction which 
 are in the Bible. He is very precious, in particular, upon the 
 cross ; and I begin to see how wrong it is to calculate upon much 
 in the way of rest or recreation on this side of time. Oh ! we 
 are not enough of travellers not enough as if setting or set out 
 on our path to eternity too much bent on present happiness, 
 rather than living by future hope. If you see not now much of 
 the glory of God, rejoice in the hope of that glory." 
 
 " Glasgow, Nov. 30, 1821. Your last letter, as was to be ex- 
 pected, gave me great uneasiness, but I can truly say that it had 
 no weight whatever in convincing me of the truth of your im- 
 aginations. You and every human creature have your changes 
 and your fluctuations, but Christ is unchangeable. Disease may 
 draw a sort of darkening shroud for a time over your heart, or 
 it may be permitted to the great adversary of souls to do the 
 same, but the Sun of righteousness is, nevertheless, shining all 
 the while ; and your state is altogether different from the state
 
 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS. MORTON. 699 
 
 of those who are in darkness because they love the darkness. 
 This is the state of all worldly men. But you, so far from lov- 
 ing the darkness, feel it to be' your sore burden, make it the 
 subject of your heavy complaints, reproach yourself for hardness 
 because you do not feel enough ; and yet, I am sure, that were 
 the alternative proposed to you, whether would you have the 
 light of Christ in your soul or be made the most prosperous and 
 replete with earthly enjoyments of all who are alive, you never 
 would hesitate one moment. You would instantly show the 
 difference that there was between yourself and him whose portion 
 is on this side of time, who has made the world his resting-place, 
 and who, instead of longing after the beams of Divine truth, 
 finds them to be in every way offensive and uncongenial to him. 
 If you cannot enjoy at present you can at least wait. You may 
 just look as you can to the word of God's prophecy, aye and 
 until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your heart ; and 
 it is impossible that one who so waiteth and so longeth will for 
 ever be shut out from the comfort and the accomplishment of 
 such precious sayings as that ' the blood of Christ cleanseth from 
 all sin,' and ' God is not willing that any should perish,' and 
 ' He will give His Spirit to them who ask Him,' taking out the 
 heart of stone, and at length dissolving their hardness, and 
 giving them a heart of flesh." 
 
 " Glasgow, May 24, 1823. MY DEAREST JANE, It gave us 
 all very sincere pleasure to hear of the amendment of your health, 
 and we do most sincerely hope that it will make progress to a 
 perfect recovery. I think it very opportune that you come to 
 us at the time you propose, for it is the very time when I do- 
 mesticate in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, sharing my whole 
 time between the study of my preparations for St. Andrews, and 
 family relaxation. Even though I should have to spend six or 
 eight hours every day in my attic story, this will still leave a 
 far greater remainder for those in my own house than I have 
 ever had since I came to this neighbourhood. 
 
 " If God be pleased to spare me I think that I might now 
 look for more repose and more of attention to my own personal 
 Christianity than I have been able to have in this sadly bust- 
 ling city. I am so thankful at an opening which combines with 
 a relief that was quite indispensable to me, a station of far 
 greater public utility than the one which I now occupy. It is 
 indeed a mighty call upon me to make it so, that the Christi-
 
 700 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 anity of the step has been so much doubted and questioned by 
 many ; and additionally to the higher calls of duty, I do confess 
 that I should feel a satisfaction in being able by proof and actual 
 exhibition, to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. This 
 however is of no importance, and should be felt so when com- 
 pared with the glory of God and the good of His Son's Church 
 upon earth." 
 
 " Glasgow, Sept. 16, 1823. MY DEAREST JANE, It were 
 well if we could at all times simply and firmly put our trust in 
 God. I feel the evil heart that departs from the living God. I 
 know that I have been sadly secularized among the manifold 
 engagements and agitations of Glasgow. It will need much 
 prayer and watchfulness, and stirring up of decayed feelings, to 
 strengthen within me the things that remain and are ready to 
 die. Forbid that philosophy should seduce me from the sim- 
 plicity that is in Christ. I have often been comforted by that 
 passage where the Apostle adverts to the oppositions of science, 
 but adds immediately, ' falsely so called.' It is false science only 
 that he abjures, and this is tantamount to the recognition of true 
 science. I am strongly impressed with the conviction that from 
 science, and more particularly from that branch of it with which 
 I am now more particularly associated, there may be gathered 
 so many trophies to the glory of God, and to the doctrine of His 
 Son's cross. I entreat your prayers, that God may bless my 
 retirement, that He may guide my speculations aright, that He 
 may enable me simply and humbly and faithfully to prosecute 
 the cause of truth, and, renouncing self with all its vanities, to 
 seek the honour of God, and illustrate His ways for the salvation 
 of men. 
 
 " It is proposed that my last Sunday here shall be the 9th of 
 November, which is the one immediately succeeding our sacra- 
 ment. I shall probably give my first lecture in St. Andrews on 
 the 17th of November, and am hopeful that I may be enabled 
 to describe my course in a decent and unexceptionable way." 
 
 "I am quite ashamed of myself," said Dr. Chalmers; "I 
 meet so many people daily in the street whom we ought to have 
 invited here long ago." Mrs. Chalmers, to whom these words 
 were addressed, felt that some slight reproach was cast upon her 
 domestic management, as if a larger hospitality should have 
 been exercised. Her quiet but effective method of turning this
 
 LETTER FROM MR. COLQUHOUN. 701 
 
 reproach aside was to keep an accurate list of those who sat 
 down to table during the week or two which followed. This 
 list has unfortunately been lost. It showed, that at breakfast, 
 dinner, tea, and supper, on almost every day but Sunday, differ- 
 ent relays of guests had been received ; and when the gross 
 aggregate was exhibited to Dr. Chalmers he was himself aston- 
 ished, and confessed that he had no idea that so broad and con- 
 tinuous a stream was passing through his dwelling. The door 
 of that dwelling was indeed thrown quite open ; and there were 
 so many waiting to seize the opportunity of personal contact 
 with its admired and honoured host as to create a continued 
 pressure at its entrance. His manifold parochial labours brought 
 parishioners and agents in crowds about him ; beyond the limits 
 of his own congregation, a wide circle of friends, who could not 
 persuade him to enter so largely as they desired into general 
 society, were delighted to snatch a few moments of him in his 
 own dwelling, while there was scarcely a stranger or foreigner of 
 distinction visiting Glasgow who, bringing an introduction, did 
 not find that it secured immediate and easy access. * Occasion- 
 ally he complained of this, but in truth he invited and encour- 
 aged it to the uttermost. Let his hours for study be secured, 
 and there was scarcely any wearying of him by any succession 
 of visitors, however numerous or varied. There have at times 
 been three different rooms full of people waiting for him, and 
 when he issued from his retirement he had a cordial welcome 
 ready for each one of them. His social retirement or relaxation 
 lay in a visit to Fifeshire, or a day or two in one or other of the 
 suburban villas, which were always ready to receive him, or in 
 a visit to Mount Greenan or Killermont, Glenfinart or Broomhall. 
 It was a wide range of intercourse from the parochial tea-table 
 of some honest citizen to the cultivated society of the wealthy 
 commoner or the polished peer, but Dr. Chalmers relished it 
 almost equally at either extreme. Delighting in his visitations 
 among the poor, he had the highest possible appreciation of the 
 refinement of manners and high culture of intellect and taste 
 generally attendant upon rank. 
 
 " I think it was 1818 or 1819," says Mr. Colquhoun, " that 
 Dr. Chalmers first came to Killermont. I have received (for I 
 was not then at home) an account of one incident of his visit 
 from my friend Mr. Dundas, the sheriff of Selkirkshire, which is 
 
 * One of these foreineis with whom Dr. Chalmers was particularly interested was 
 Monsieur Biot, the celebrated i
 
 702 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 too characteristic to be omitted. Our family circle was then 
 unbroken, and among them my eldest sister, who to her many 
 accomplishments added the study of botany, attracted Dr. Chal- 
 mers's attention. With his usual warm interest in the pursuits 
 of the young he talked with her on that subject and examined 
 the flora which she had collected. One plant in the series was 
 wanting and he inquired why ; on her telling him that she had 
 not been able to find it, he said it was surely to be had in the 
 neighbourhood, and the subject dropt for that evening. The 
 next morning, when the family assembled for prayers, Dr. Chal- 
 mers did not appear, and his bedroom was deserted. The family 
 sat down to breakfast without him, nor was it till breakfast was 
 half over that he came into the room, his hat in his hand, tired 
 and heated from a long walk, but carrying with him the missing 
 plant, which he presented to my sister. It is needless to say 
 how much this trait affected the young hearts that were pre- 
 sent, as it has remained impressed on Mr. Dundas to the present 
 day. 
 
 " Dr. Chalmers's next visit to Killermont must have been in 
 the summer or autumn of 1822, and we all recollect the interest 
 which he showed in conversing with myself, then at Oxford, and 
 with my brother, then quite a boy, on the subject of our respec- 
 tive studies. It was not the manner of a man who condescended 
 to minds far his inferiors, but as if he became one of us, and our 
 studies were as keenly relished by him as if he were himself 
 engaged in them. To my brother he talked eagerly of his boyish 
 studies ; of me he inquired much of an Oxford course, and 
 seemed to listen with as much delight to my account of Aristotle's 
 Ethics, which he compared with his favourite Butler, as though 
 the Oxford student could give instead of gaining information ; 
 and in his walks with us his delights in nature were more keen 
 than those of any of the party ; and whilst rowing in the boat 
 on the river Kelvin gathering the water-lilies, of which I re- 
 member he had an intense admiration, his glee was as boyish 
 as ours. 
 
 " Some years afterwards he passed several days at Killermont ; 
 our family circle was then sorely broken, and there remained 
 only two of the sisters whom he had before seen, but I well re- 
 member that to one of these, who died the following summer, 
 his conversation on religious subjects was of the utmost benefit. 
 She saw along with the greatness, the simplicity and tenderness 
 of bis mind, and was encouraged, in some walks which she took
 
 HABITS IN SOCIETY. 703 
 
 with him, to confide to him her doubts and difficulties. I wish I 
 had preserved the letter in which, after her death, he alluded to 
 this, and spoke with characteristic force of the preparedness 
 which he had noticed in her heart for the great change which 
 was then before her. But, mixed with all that readiness to 
 converse on religious subjects, was the same buoyant delight in 
 literature, tke arts, and the beauties of nature. I recollect his 
 profound admiration for some casts from busts of the great 
 painters and architects in the capitol at Home, from which, he 
 said, he took in great impressions the exquisite enjoyment 
 when, riding in the afternoon on a quiet pony, he was taken to 
 see the distant views of Ben Lomond and Loch Lomond. His 
 habit, I remember, was to go to his room after breakfast, and to 
 remain there till one or two o'clock engaged in writing, at times 
 telling us that he had written without intermission, and, at 
 other times, that he had a blank morning, and had not done a 
 quarter of an hour's work with his pen his practice being, as 
 he told me, after attempting some time unsuccessfully, to lay 
 his pen down, and take up a book upon some subject entirely 
 different from that on which he was writing, until the inspira- 
 tion of composition returned upon him, and he then resumed his 
 work. His habits in society varied. Generally, when at his 
 ease, and when his mind was not occupied with a train of 
 thought, his conversation was full of interest, and it became so 
 almost always when those who were with him touched upon a 
 congenial subject, when he threw himself into it with all his 
 peculiar strength and eloquence of language combined with the 
 most unaffected simplicity, but at times I have seen him perfectly 
 silent, and wearing that blank look which he could throw into 
 his countenance when the mind was otherwise engaged. I re- 
 member the late Lady Colquhoun gave me an instance of this, 
 which, I imagine, must have occurred about the same time. He 
 had gone, for the first time, to pay a visit at Kossdhu, and Lady 
 C. waited his arrival with great anxiety ; when, however, he 
 was shown into the drawing-room, after the first salutations were 
 over, he sat perfectly silent, wearing his blank look. She tried 
 a variety of subjects, but in vain, and he soon retired to his room. 
 On coming down to dinner, he apologized, in the most amiable 
 manner, for his silence, confessing, that a train of thought on the 
 subject on which he was writing had occurred to him on his jour- 
 ney to Eossdhu, and that he was terrified lest, if he entered into 
 conversation, he should lose it before it was secured on paper."
 
 704 MEMOIRS OF DK. CHALMERS. 
 
 Such was Dr. Chalmers in the bosom of his family, in corre- 
 spondence with his relatives, and as he moved among his fellow- 
 men. Honoured, admired, beloved, wherever he went and in 
 whatever circle he mingled, spiritual danger might have lurked 
 in the universal homage which was rendered to him, had he been 
 numbered with those who, judging themselves by themselves, 
 and comparing themselves with others, are not wise* But since 
 those memorable days at Kilmany, when the Spirit of God had 
 taught him what he truly was, and what the law of God im- 
 peratively required, he had been accustomed to judge himself 
 according to a higher than the human standard, and, by its con- 
 stant application, had been learning the lesson of humility. 
 How he thought and felt when regarding himself in his higher 
 relationships, and placing himself before the supreme tribunal, 
 the reader may form some idea from the following extracts from 
 a Journal kept during a rapid visit paid to Anstruther and St. 
 Andrews during the spring of 1821, and from his ordinary Jour- 
 nal, which, after a cessation of some years, we recover, although 
 in sadly contracted dimensions, in the beginning of 1822 : 
 
 " Feb. 22, 1821. Bead a little of Guthrie with much satis- 
 faction. What a blessed assurance, that they who believe in 
 Christ shall not be ashamed. Let us trust in His promises, and 
 we shall not be ashamed by the failure. He hath promised that 
 we shall not be tried beyond our ability for bearing. He hath 
 promised that they who submit themselves to the mighty hand 
 of God shall be exalted in due time. He hath promised that our 
 sins and our iniquities shall be remembered no more. There is 
 a wonderful charm in the righteousness of Christ becoming ours 
 by faith : it throws another moral atmosphere over the soul, and 
 renews at the very time that it pacifies. I desire Christ to be 
 all in all to me. 
 
 " Feb. 26. Surely in the keeping of the heart with all dili- 
 gence, in the maintenance of the life of faith, in the pressing 
 forward from one degree of grace unto another, in the habitual 
 looking up to God in Christ, and forward to eternity surely in 
 all this there is enough to keep the mind awake, and to raise it 
 above all the dependencies of a vexatious world. I have derived 
 much comfort from the text, ' Be careful for nothing, but in every- 
 thing, by prayer and supplication, make your requests known 
 unto God.' I find relief in prayer. May the overruling God 
 cause all things to work together for my good. I desire to be 
 weaned from myself, and wedded to the Saviour to abide in
 
 EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL! 705 
 
 Him, and bring forth such fruits as may glorify the Father. -I 
 am on the eve of finishing Guthrie, which I think is the best 
 book I ever read.* I shall leave it as a present to the Anster 
 folks, and pass from it to Brook on ' Religious Experience.' 
 
 " St. Andrews, Feb. 28. I have here a very full enjoyment 
 of all the pleasures of memory, and, on looking back to the 
 familiar scenes of twenty-five years ago, feel a most interesting 
 glow and revival in my heart ; but the men have all disappeared, 
 and, oh ! that we felt as we ought what a shifting land it is that 
 we occupy. ... I called at the room which I occupied in the 
 College for three years, from 1796 to 1799, and which is still 
 occupied by one of the students. I found three of the divines 
 here, and had a little conversation with them. Went into the 
 closet and adverted to the coal-bunker from which I had been 
 in the habit of making my own fire. , . . Dined with a profes- 
 sorial party : much literary facetiousness, and more of the truly 
 academic cast than can be met with in Glasgow from one end of 
 the year to the other of it. I met with much unmerited kind- 
 ness, and even distinction ; but I still perceive what a seducing 
 thing literature is when unaccompanied with the life and ear- 
 nestness of Christianity." 
 
 '" Tuesday, Jan. 1, 1822. Miscellaneous. Wrote an address 
 for my agency. In depression and perplexity on the earlier part 
 of the day, but found great relief afterwards from ' Thomas a 
 Kempis.' Should be greatly more passive and unconcerned 
 than I have hitherto been, and above all, less anxious about 
 vindication in the eyes of my fellows, remembering that it is 
 God with whom I have to do. Oh ! teach me so to number my 
 days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom. Lighten, if it 
 be Thy blessed will, the pressure of this world's cares, and above 
 all, reconcile me to Thy will, and give me a peace which the 
 world cannot take away. 
 
 "4<A. Dined with Mr. Ewing. I fear that my manner is 
 greatly too intolerant. Let me guard against it. Oh ! let not 
 the flesh have dominion over me. I enjoyed an evening of 
 greater tranquillity than I have had for upwards of a twelve- 
 month. my God, do Thou perpetuate this, and enable me 
 to consecrate my days to Thy service and glory. Protect me 
 
 * " I should like to know how the little book I left was relished among you. I still think 
 it the best human composition I ever read relating to a subject in which we are all deep!} 
 interested, and about which, it i? my earnest prayer, that we may all be found on the r%hi 
 side of the question." From a letter dated Glasgow, 29th March 1821. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 Y
 
 706 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 from mine enemies, and give me courage and conduct and 
 charity in the midst of them. 
 
 " lth. Make me at length to transfer all my energies to the 
 pursuit of what is enduring. Lift me above the world, and 
 mortify me alike to its pleasures and its pains. Yet let Christ 
 live in me, and make me to be all awake to the joys and exer- 
 cises of the coming immortality. 
 
 " 15th. A forenoon and afternoon of regular composition. 
 Called on Mrs. Hutchison. Had Mr. Allan Buchanan to drink 
 tea : he is friendly to the chapel speculation. I am sadly de- 
 pressed when my eye is towards my relations with the creature, 
 but have found an escape from this when casting my eyes 
 towards Divine things. Is not this finding tribulation in the 
 world and peace in Christ ? 
 
 " Iftth. A forenoon and afternoon of regular composition. 
 Make daily visits to the Missionary reading-room. Find nought 
 but misery in the field of my earthly contemplations. Cause 
 this desolation to be replaced by the things that are above by 
 the realities of faith by the hopes of immortality. Yet I find 
 that I nmst not let go my hold of Christ, or I relapse into all 
 the perplexities, and agonies, and fears of nature. 
 
 " 23d. I am getting more into a bustled and arduous state, 
 and must shrink back again a little more into retirement. 
 my God, may I yield myself up unto Thy service, and actually 
 serve Thee. 
 
 " 25th. Had a parochial address in St. John's Church in the 
 evening. A little colded. I find how fatigue lays me open to 
 the power of evil thoughts. Is not this a proof that my labours 
 are not spiritual ? If they were so, would not a holy influence 
 emanate from them ? my God, give me to grieve not Thy 
 Spirit. May I hold a busy transaction with Him all the day long. 
 
 " Sunday. 27th. Let me humble myself under the mighty 
 hand of God, and He will exalt me. my God, aid and coun- 
 sel me ; translate me into the life of faith ; give me to lie under 
 a constant sense of death and eternity. Keep me close by Christ, 
 and sanctify me wholly. 
 
 " Feb. 4. Attended the session, and had a missionary meet- 
 ing in church after it. my God, give me to enter more 
 decisively on the business of ray sanctification. Do emancipate 
 mo wholly, Almighty Father ; and seeing that I have so much 
 of Christianity in word, let me try and taste what sort of 'thing 
 Christianity is in power.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM JOURNAL. 707 
 
 " Feb. 6. An ordinary meeting of Presbytery ; dislike its 
 atmosphere though it is my duty to enter it, and- if possible to 
 soften and transform it. I desire a habitual sense of my own 
 emptiness, and long for the feeling of a positive grace or influ- 
 ence from on high out of Christ's fulness. my God,, confirm 
 my peace ; enable me to rest upon Thyself, and to fear not what 
 man can do. Accept of my gratitude for Thy preservation of my 
 dear wife. Do sanctify her wholly, and may I be enabled to 
 watch over the souls of my dear children. Deliver me from 
 worldliness, and teach me to know Thyself and Jesus Christ 
 whom Thou hast sent. 
 
 " 18th. Begin to feel again the fatigue and the sore vexation 
 of Glasgow. my God r may I be still and do Thy work as 
 Thy servant. Admit me into Thy service. Loose my bonds. 
 Give me to strive that I may enter in at the strait gate. Oh ! 
 for Christ's sake be merciful to me, and put Thy law in my heart. 
 Bruise Satan under my feet shortly. Give me to be patient in 
 tribulation, and rejoicing in hope. Introduce me into, converse 
 with the spiritual realities of my condition. 
 
 " 23d. Mr. Gladstone breakfasted, Mr. Erskine dined, and 
 stayed. I felt absorbed, and not so open to Mr. Erskine's con- 
 versation as usual. 
 
 "Sunday, 24^. Was greatly impressed with Mr. Erskine's 
 talk about realizing God every quarter of an hour. 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 
 in the presence of my enemies. 
 
 " 25th. Disturbed, but feel great alleviation in the habitual 
 realizing which I have had alt this day of God. sustain me 
 in this, Almighty Father ! May I hide me in the pavilion of 
 Thy residence. 
 
 " 27^. Gleams of comfort, all of which to be true must be 
 shed upon me from higher and greater views than any which 
 this world can open. 
 
 " 28th. my Saviour, I do nothing for Thee I 
 
 " March 20. Had a clerical meeting in Dr. Dewar's. Greatly 
 soothed and relieved by its spiritual atmosphere. 
 
 11 April 7. May I exercise myself unto godliness. my 
 God, may the fear of Thee supplant every other fear, and the 
 love of Thee subordinate every other love. It is humiliating 
 amid the busy externals of religion to think how little my soul
 
 708 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 is taking up-or making progress therein. Cause me to be filled 
 with that peace which passeth all understanding. 
 
 "8th. This our day of thanksgiving ; Mr. Hamilton preached. 
 Had a small party of deacons and elders along with Dr. Scott. 
 Erred in bringing on the topic of pauperism, and so elbowing 
 out better things. 
 
 " 9th. my God, cause me to hold Thee in constant re- 
 membrance. Eestore 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. 
 
 " 10th. A remark of Mr. Craig's about the recognition of the 
 Spirit both in our private Christianity and in our ministrations 
 impressed me much, I desire to grow in detachedness from this 
 world, and in devotedness to Him who made it. 
 
 " Sunday, I4=th. Was fatigued, but went through a good deal 
 of family exercise in the evening. Kegaled myself with the 
 solidity of the objective part of religion, and long to enter a field 
 of enlargement in preaching on the essential truths of the gospel. 
 Let me know nothing among my people but Jesus Christ and 
 Him crucified. 
 
 " Sunday, April 21. I was greatly fatigued, and feel particu- 
 larly deficient in such soul exercises as distinguished the history 
 of Boston and many others. But let me at least exercise con- 
 stant faith. 
 
 " May 9. A most tempestuous day in the Presbytery, and 
 the prospect before me now of a complete argumentation on the 
 topic of my chapel before the General Assembly. I must now 
 give myself up to the labour of preparation, and at the same 
 time be calm and humble, and commit myself to God. 
 
 " 12th. I feel the obligation of domestic Christianity, but 
 am straitened and at a loss how to go about it. Let me not be 
 slothful, but a follower of those who through faith and patience 
 are now inheriting the promises. 
 
 " 24:th. Had my laborious speech in the Assembly. 
 
 " August 3. I feel the claim and the power of Christ's im- 
 puted righteousness. my God, enable me to be the faithful 
 and effective herald of this great truth to my people. 
 
 "Sunday, Oct. 17. Have a strong tendency to religious con- 
 templation in my bed. I trust that faith both in its peace and 
 purifying influence is making progress. But how great ought 
 to be my watchfulness and humility."
 
 ADDRESS TO HIS AGENCY. 709 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 FAREWELL DISCOURSES IX ST. JOHN S AND THE CHAPEL OP EASE .SPIRITUAL 
 
 FRUITS OF THE MINISTRY IX GLASGOW ESTIMATE OP ITS GENERAL EFFECTS 
 
 DEPARTURE FROM GLASGOW INSTALLATION AND INTRODUCTORY LECTURE 
 
 AT ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 
 SUCH painful feelings had been excited by the first announce- 
 ment of Dr. Chalmers's acceptance of the Chair of Moral 
 Philosophy at St. Andrews, that it was some time before he 
 could bring himself to allude publicly to the subject. At length, 
 however, in addressing a meeting of his agency held in February 
 1823, he thus ventured upon the delicate topic : " About three 
 months ago, gentlemen, I had prepared an address to you on the 
 subject of English pauperism, and what I conceived to be its 
 influence on the moral and spiritual state of the population. 
 That preparation was the result of a visit, and of the many 
 examinations which I had made in various parishes of England, 
 and I hoped by it to satisfy your minds on the great Christian 
 importance of a question which I shall ever, I think, regard as 
 one on which the best interests of many millions of beings are 
 suspended. Nor is there wanting, I apprehend, the sanction 
 even of apostolical example for the man who breathes the desire 
 of the evangelical heart to busy and to interest himself in this 
 great undertaking. I have ever been struck with that procedure 
 of the Apostle of the Gentiles, whereby he relinquished for a 
 time ministerial labour, exchanged the work of the pulpit for 
 the work of the common tent-maker was so impressed with the 
 mischief of dependence on public charity as to put forth his own 
 hands, that he might teach the people how they should strive to 
 the uttermost of themselves rather than be burdensome to others. 
 Nothing but a strong and riveted conviction in his mind of the 
 mighty bearing which such a lesson had on the interests of the 
 gospel could have tempted away from his more peculiar vocation 
 that man who was determined to know nothing among his people 
 save Christ and Him crucified ; and, I trust, that even at this 
 hour it is possible to give part of one's strength and attention to 
 this very cause, and yet truly to say with the Psalmist, in refer-
 
 710 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 ence to the cause of human souls and their salvation from guilt, 
 ' If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her 
 cunning : let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I 
 prefer not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.' 
 
 " I have still the prospect of one or two addresses to you 
 more, and in one or other of them I may offer to you the result 
 of my various observations on the busy tour which 1 lately pro- 
 secuted through England. At present, I confess to you, I have 
 no heart for it. This theme is for the present dispossessed by 
 one that is greatly nearer arid more interesting. The pauperism 
 of England for the time being is not the matter on hand ; and 
 you will indulge me if, even in the treatment of that matter, 
 there shall be a, want of that vigour or distinctness which ought 
 to characterize every intellectual exposition. There are seasons 
 of turbulence in which, like the vessel in a storm, the mind is 
 driven from all her purposed bearings, and lies at the mercy of 
 a thousand fluctuations ; there are moral hurricanes, throughout 
 the violence of which all pilotage is abandoned, and there is 
 nothing for it but to lie in helpless and hopeless endurance till 
 the tempest shall be blown over, till the effervescence shall in 
 some measure be wrought off and subsided, and those powers 
 which stood off in passive abeyance shall again resume their 
 wonted command, and take the same collected survey as before 
 of those signs that are around it, and the prospects which lie 
 before it. I wished to have convened you sooner, gentlemen, 
 but positively I could not. To withstand the heavy and the 
 altered countenances of my best friends was greatly too much 
 for me. Not that I have been led to construe it into any feel- 
 ing of hostility on your part ; I flatter myself with a better in- 
 terpretation ; and I am still confident, if not of your approbation, 
 at least of your regard ; and I know experimentally what the 
 general complexion of every such separation is, and I remember 
 well the cold and withered aspect that sat on a much loved 
 parish when all its kind and cherished intimacies I resolved to 
 abandon at the voice of a call from an unknown land. It ap- 
 peared like a blight on all the subsisting cordialities which up 
 to that moment were in full operation amongst us ; but it was 
 not so. Their distaste for the movement, and their distance of 
 manner, and even their disapprobation, all turned out to be tem- 
 porary. A fow months wrought out, not perhaps a reconciliation 
 of feeling, but what was of more importance, a reconciliation of 
 principle. The conscientious of my former neighbourhood now
 
 ADDRESS TO HIS AGENCY. 711 
 
 admit that I was right. From you, on the present occasion, I 
 cannot expect any such admission. I have done nothing which 
 at all entitles me to require it at your hands ; I have not yet 
 made out my claim to such an acknowledgment. This is the 
 season of my endurance, under which I must put up with the 
 many adverse judgments of men, and lay my account with the 
 censure and condemnation of many of my fellows. It is only by 
 the history of my future years that I can work out a satisfactory 
 vindication, and, I do confess, that next to the force of that 
 primary obligation under which I lie, to do all and to suffer all 
 in the service of my Master in heaven, there is a human or an 
 earthly force that powerfully urges me on to vindicate the Chris- 
 tianity of my present movement. I am most thoroughly aware 
 that you will not be the indifferent spectators of my future story, 
 and I am aware both of the indulgence and of the moral earnest- 
 ness wherewith you will regard it ; and I know that your im- 
 perative demand upon me is, that I shall give myself wholly to 
 the calls of the gospel to the service and interest of the Re- 
 deemer's kingdom in the world. I am too well convinced both 
 of the honesty and independence of your judgment, to think that 
 yon will ever cheer me with the sentence of your positive appro- 
 bation till you have seen of my after labours that they are 
 instrumentally more productive of a blessing to the cause than 
 would have been the continuance of my exertions in the midst 
 of you. You will forgive me, gentlemen, if, additional to the 
 direct impulse of principle, I shall feel the consideration which 
 I am now stating to be indeed a powerful auxiliary stimulus to 
 the labours of the years that are to come, if I shall make it the 
 study of my life to earn at length from your own mouths the 
 verdict of my ample justification, if I shall look onwards to this 
 as the most gratifying triumph which the world could afford me ; 
 and after working for, and perhaps winning the meed of your 
 explicit acknowledgment in my favour, I shall exult in it as the 
 proudest and most pleasing recompence for all my agitations." 
 
 In the summer months of 1823, Mr. Parker invited Dr. Chal- 
 mers to occupy Blochairn, a house in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of Glasgow. Tempted by the opportunities for quiet study 
 which such a residence appeared to offer, Dr. Chalmers accepted 
 this invitation. So strong, however, was the hold which Glas- 
 gow continued to retain, and so desirous was he to consecrate 
 to her service the last relics of available time and strength, that
 
 712 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 the period for his removal overtook him with scarcely any pre- 
 parations made for his new duties at St. Andrews. On Wednes- 
 day, the 5th November, he laid before the Presbytery of Glasgow 
 his letter of resignation of the church and parish of St. John's, 
 which, after many expressions of affectionate regret from different 
 members, the Presbytery was pleased to accept. As his instal- 
 lation at St. Andrews was to take place on Friday the 14th 
 November, it was understood that his farewell discourse in the 
 church of St. John's would be preached on Sabbath the 9th. 
 Applications for admission had for several weeks been pouring 
 in with distressing profusion upon those who had seats in that 
 church. To many individuals of rank and consideration tickets 
 were issued entitling them to a place on the pulpit stair or in 
 the vacant area around the precentor's desk. As it was resolved 
 that every possible effort should be made to secure admission to 
 the regular seat-holders or their friends, and to those to whom 
 tickets had been thus appropriated, the elders and doorkeepers, 
 assisted by a strong body of police, planted themselves, on Sab- 
 bath morning, at the main entrance to the church. At so early 
 an hour as nine o'clock an ominous stream of foot-passengers 
 began to turn into Macfarlane Street, and the roll of carriage 
 wheels was heard sounding along the Gallowgate. Before the 
 doors were opened, Macfarlane Street, and other neighbouring 
 streets, were filled with excited groups waiting eagerly for ad- 
 mission. At last the main entrance was thrown open, the 
 gathered crowd converged upon it, and the conflict commenced. 
 For a brief season the efforts of the doorkeepers and their allies 
 were successful ; the assailants, however, multiplied so rapidly, 
 and the mass accumulated behind drove on those before them 
 with such impetuosity, that the well-guarded entrance was forced. 
 When it was seen that success had crowned the efforts of the 
 assailants, the crush through the passage became tremendous 
 a dense but still struggling mass of human beings compressed 
 for a few moments into extreme compactness, and then expand- 
 ing as the perilous passage at last was made and the interior 
 of the church was gained some to draw breath after the stifling 
 squeeze some to re-arrange their dishevelled habiliments some 
 to turn an eager eye upon the scene of recent conflict. And 
 now the tide of battle was for a moment turned as a party of the 
 73d Regiment, summoned hastily from the adjacent barracks, 
 forced their way through all impediments, and took up their 
 position beside the entrance to the church. By their effective
 
 FAREWELL DISCOURSE AT ST. JOHN'S. 713 
 
 aid, and after much personal exertion, the elders and doorkeepers 
 succeeded in obtaining access for a number of the congregation 
 who otherwise would have been excluded. Still, however, even 
 through the barrier of bayonets, the crowd continued to make 
 way, till not a single spot of sitting or standing ground within 
 was left unoccupied. Into a church seated for about 1700 nearly 
 double that number was packed. " The pew in which I sat " 
 one who was present has informed us " contained fourteen 
 sittings, but on that occasion twenty-six persons were crammed 
 into it, some sitting, some standing on the floor, others standing 
 on the seat." The confusion grew within as the pressure some- 
 what abated from without ; and it was no gentle or very Sabbath 
 frame of spirit that prevailed. At length the preacher rose 
 within that pulpit from which he was to address his hearers for 
 the last time. In a moment the bustle ceased, and all the varied 
 expressions of that great crowd of faces was turned into one 
 uniform gaze of fixed and profound attention. After prayer and 
 praise, the text, from Psalm cxxxvii. 5, 6, was twice distinctly 
 read, and its general lessons having been unfolded and impressed, 
 and the preacher coming at the close to speak to those from 
 whom, as their minister, he was now to be finally dissevered, 
 " I will never forget," he said, " that it is your princely benefi- 
 cence which has carried me forward in covering this parish with 
 those institutions both of scholarship and piety that have done 
 most to grace and to dignify the people of our beloved land. I 
 will never forget the labours of that devoted band to whose 
 union and perseverance I still look for even greater services than 
 they have yet rendered to the cause of Christian philanthropy. 
 I will never forget the unexcepted welcome and kindness of my 
 parochial families, among whom the cause, that to the super- 
 ficial eye looks unpopular and austere, hath now found its con- 
 clusive establishment. I never will forget the indulgence and 
 the friendly regards of this congregation ; and I beg to assure 
 each and all of them, that if a cold and ungenial apathy, whether 
 of look or of manner, was all the return that they ever could 
 obtain for their demonstrations of Christian affection towards 
 myself, it was not because I had not the conviction of that 
 manifold good-will which was on every side of me, but that 
 moving in a wide and busy sphere, and hurried in the course of 
 a few moments from one act of intercourse to another with more 
 than a thousand of my fellows my jaded and overborne feelings 
 could not keep pace with it. There are hundreds and hundreds
 
 714 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 more whom in person I could not overtake, but whom in the 
 hours of cool and leisurely reflection I shall know how to ap- 
 precia'te. And when I gaze on that quarter the richest to me 
 of all the wide horizon in the treasures of cordiality and grateful 
 remembrance then sweeter than to the eye are those tints of 
 loveliness which the western sun stretches in golden clouds above 
 it will be the thought of all the worth and the tenderness and 
 the noble generosity that are there. Oh ! I never can forget 
 the city of so many Christian and kind-hearted men. I never 
 will forget the countenance I have gotten from its upright and 
 patriotic citizens. . . . From the deep exhaustion not 
 incurred in the treatment of my parochial managements, for 
 at all times was there a charm and tranquillity in these but 
 from the deep exhaustion of hurry and fatigue and manifold 
 distractions from -without, have my footsteps been lured into a 
 most congenial resting-place, among whose academic bowers 
 Rutherford and Halyburton spent the evening of their days, and 
 amid whose venerable ruins their bodies now sleep until the 
 resurrection of the just. Should those high and heavenly themes 
 on which they expatiated through life, and which shed a glory 
 over their deathbeds, ever cease to be dear unto my bosom 
 should the glare of the world's philosophy ever seduce me from 
 the wisdom and simplicity of the faith should Jesus Christ and 
 Him crucified not be the end of all my labours in expounding 
 the law of righteousness, then let the fearful judgment of heaven 
 blight and overcast the faculties that I thus have prostituted. 
 ' If I forget thee, Jerusalem if I forget thee, thou Church 
 and city of my God let my right hand forget her cunning. Tf 
 I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
 mouth : if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.' " * > 
 
 When Dr. Chalmers descended from the pulpit it was entered 
 by the Rev. Edward Irving, who invited the vast congregation 
 to accompany him, as with solemn pomp and impressive unction 
 he poured out a prayer for that honoured minister of God who 
 
 * On the fly-leaf of an old book in his library entitled " A Sober Enquiry into the 
 Nature, >fea?ure, and Principle of Moral Virtue : its Distinction from Gospel Holiness ; 
 with Reflections upon what occurs Di^erviceable to Truth and Religion in this matter, 
 in three late Book--. &c. By K. P. London, 1673 " the following memorandum was 
 found written : "Sunday, Avgvst 10, 1823. This book was given to me this morning by 
 Thomas Lilly, No, 1, Saracen's Lane, off the Gallowgate, Glasgow, when I called on his 
 daughter, with a view to engage her as a teacher to one of my parish Sabbath-schools. 
 His object is that I may be guided aright in the labours of my new office ; and I hereby 
 testify the desire that I feel to harmonize the spirit of a moral philosophy class with that 
 spirit which actuates a pious and humble family in the commonest walks of society. 
 
 THOMAS CHALMBBS."
 
 DISCOURSE IS THE CHAPEL OF EASE. 715 
 
 had just retired from among them. The church had been so 
 closely packed that it took forty minutes to empty itself; and 
 before the last of the hearers had left St. John's, Dr. Chalmers, 
 who had barely time to transfer himself from the statelier to the 
 humbler edifice, had commenced the afternoon service in the 
 Chapel of Ease. His text here was from Heb. iii. 13. After 
 dwelling upon the danger of postponing to a deathbed the great 
 and urgent work of preparation for eternity, he continued thus : 
 "But while I would urge upon every obstinate and stout- 
 hearted sinner the hopelessness of a deathbed repentance, I must 
 not omit to mention how in the Bible there is recorded one in- 
 stance of repentance even then, that none might despair, though, 
 only one, that none may presume.- For myself I never met with 
 one decisive evidence of a saving change in a malefactor's eel), 
 and out of many hundreds I can quote exceedingly few in the 
 chamber of a last and a fatal disease. There is, however, one 
 very delightful experience of this sort that is still fresh upon my 
 memory, and which I relate in this place because the scene of it 
 was in the immediate neighbourhood, and within the confines of 
 that territory upon which this chapel stands. Though I should 
 not name the individual I may name his residence, which was 
 in Marlborough Street, and his occupation, which was that of an 
 operative weaver. I think I can at least say of him, that though 
 he had passed the season of youth, and was somewhere between it 
 and middle age, he only a few months before his decease was not 
 serious. There is much in the progress of a wasting and hope- 
 less consumption that is very affecting, when death hath set its 
 irrevocable seal upon the patient, and the trouble within gives 
 the assured token to himself that he is fast hastening to his 
 grave. The visible accompaniments of such a scene are all of 
 them familiar to you. The difficult respiration, the gathering 
 hue of pale and languid sickness, the moistened forehead, the 
 gradual sinking of the voice till the mind and memory of the 
 sufferer can only be drawn from signs and looks, and almost 
 inaudible whispers, the now shrunk and withered arm that one 
 little year ago was braced with all the vigour of manhood, the 
 fitful and broken slumbers, the now capricious appetite that is 
 ever shifting its demands for some object of strong but unnatural 
 craving these are all familiar to you ; and so are the many 
 other speaking and significant tokens that the room you have 
 entered is the apartment of a dying man. The air of serious- 
 ness that sits upon every countenance the soft and gentle
 
 716 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 approach of some inquiring neighbour the unsuccessful en- 
 deavour of the nearest and dearest of the relatives to hide the 
 tears which she cannot suppress the sad and settled conviction 
 over the group of visitors that all must be soon over these are 
 the workings of nature, and they are all of them familiar to 
 you. But the secret workings of grace in the soul are not so 
 familiar, for they are indeed far less frequent ; the earnest and 
 practical direction of a heart set upon eternity, the deep engage- 
 ment of a mind now weaned from life, and even regardless of its 
 last sufferings and struggle, while busying itself with the reali- 
 ties of faith ; the hesitations, and the inquiries, and the many 
 .fruitless efforts of unbelief, till the light of the Spirit's demon- 
 stration bears them all away, and the weary soul can now take 
 his secure and steadfast hold upon the sacrifice ; the triumph 
 wherewith, when now standing on the confines of the two worlds, 
 he looks onward to the coming immortality, and the noble tes- 
 timony that he leaves behind him these are not so familiar, 
 and therefore the more precious and memorable when they are 
 realized. And there did occur one cheering example of it with 
 one of the very humblest children of labour and poverty among 
 yourselves, whose simple story is, that he sickened, and died, 
 and left an only child to the guardianship of a widowed mother, 
 and of homely literature as his was, inscribed to him on the 
 blank leaf of his Bible a few verses, which, as the effusions of a 
 dying father whose spirit had but recently undergone a transfor- 
 mation that meetened it for heaven, has in it more of a true and 
 a touching pathos than the most elaborate poetry : 
 
 ' To thee, my son, I give this Book, 
 In hopes that thou wilt from it find 
 A Father and a Comforter, 
 When I do leave thee here behind. 
 
 ' I hope that thou wilt firm believe 
 That Jesus Christ alone can save 
 He bled and suffer'd in our <*tead, 
 To save from death Himself He gave. 
 
 ' A strong desire I now do crave 
 Of them to whom thy charge is given, 
 To bring thee up to fear the Lord, 
 That we may meet at last in Heaven.' * 
 
 This, doubtless, is but one example, yet enough to prove how 
 
 * These lines, with the date llth June 1823, and the addition, " lam your very sin- 
 cere affectionate father, John Hastie," were found after Dr. Chalmers's death in one of his 
 repositories where nothing but papers on which he put the utmost value were deposited. 
 The lines were in Dr. Chalmers's own handwriting on a small slip of paper, and below them 
 he had added "Thistrom a common weaver in Marlborough Street, inscribed on a Bible 
 to his only child. He had been an infidel till within a few mouths of his death."
 
 DISCOURSE IN THE CHAPEL OF EASE. 717 
 
 worthy of Christian cultivation are those vast and untrodden 
 spaces that teem with families who are altogether beyond the 
 pale of the word and of ordinances enough to prove that there 
 is not an aggregate of human beings through which a minister 
 of the gospel might not ply his unwearied rounds, and earn the 
 triumphs of a high and heavenly apostleship enough to set at 
 rest the obstinate incredulity of those who affirm of the cities of 
 our land, that such is their hard-favoured and impracticable 
 resistance to all the endeavours, whether of kindness or of Chris- 
 tianity, as to give the visionary character of a dream to the dear 
 and delightful- prospect of their ultimate reformation. I speak 
 to the very poorest of my hearers : to you also belong the high 
 capacities of an immortal spirit ; to you belong all the elements 
 of moral worth and moral greatness | to you the path of glory is 
 open, and the exalted High Priest, who once sojourned in this 
 world amid pains, and privations, and indignities more severe 
 than all that any disciple of His is ever doomed to encounter, 
 He from the golden treasury of those gifts and graces where- 
 with He is invested is ready even now to shower upon you every 
 thing that is needful either to bless you in time or to fit you for 
 eternity. I can vouch for the comfort wherewith a minister of 
 the gospel might move from family to family throughout the 
 vicinities of this immediate population. I can vouch for the 
 perfect graciousness of a kind and honest welcome from you all. 
 I can vouch for the open door of access that there is in every 
 house to the visitations of Christian philanthropy ; and that even 
 in towns which are conceived to teem all over with loathsome 
 dissipation and profligate companionship, there is a most warm 
 and willing response to the familiar converse and the domestic 
 services of the minister. May he who labours within these walls 
 be enabled to verify this by his own personal experience. May 
 the countenance of Heaven rest upon all bis ministrations, and 
 while engaged in the Sabbath exercises of piety, or in the week- 
 day intercourse with your families, may a blessing from on high 
 attend every footstep of his progress in the midst of you. Mean- 
 while I will take leave of you. No breaking up of my official 
 relationship will lessen that close and affecting relationship 
 which I shall ever feel towards your families. If God be 
 pleased to spare me there is no house where I would more will- 
 ingly resume for a season the ministrations of the word of life, 
 no portion of the great vineyard of Christ in which I shall ever 
 feel a more peculiar interest and property than that which is
 
 718 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 attached to it. May the blessing of God rest upon you all. May 
 parents have great comfort of their children ; and may children 
 brought up in the ways of piety rise around their parents and 
 call them blessed. Above all, may you be found in that way of 
 pleasantness and path of peace which leads to heaven. A few 
 years more and the storms of this changing life shall all have 
 blown over us. Let our prayers often meet in the upper sanctu- 
 ary ; and when the morn of the resurrection cometh may we be 
 found side by side at the right hand of our Judge and Saviour." 
 While the narrative of the Camlachie weaver's deathbed was 
 given, and as the verses which he had written were read, Dr. 
 Chalmers's hearers were melted into tears. The whole however 
 of the affecting story had not been told. This man had been 
 the only son of a pious mother, who was a widow. In his boy- 
 hood he had been apprenticed to a master who was an infidel, 
 and who, with about twenty men under him, had sown so sedu- 
 lously his own principles among them, that every one of them 
 had been seduced into unbelief. Among the rest this unprotected 
 widow's son fell a victim to his arts, and when his mother saw 
 him married to his master's daughter, who was as bold an un- 
 believer as her father, and when she heard him blaspheme that 
 holy name in which she trusted, it was too much for her to bear 
 deprived of reason she died in an asylum for lunatics. In the 
 course of years, and when his own only child was grown up, 
 consumption seized upon him. The near look at eternity, and 
 perhaps the remembrance of his mother's instructions and prayers, 
 threw him into spiritual distress. A minister was sent for, who 
 attempted to reason with him, but he " was too deep," and the 
 wound remained unhealed. It so happened that he was living 
 at this time in the district of St. John's parish assigned to Mr. 
 John Wilson, one of the most valued and beloved of Dr. Chal- 
 mers's elders, who soon brought his minister to see the dying 
 man. The simplicity, the earnestness, the sympathy displayed 
 by Dr. Chalmers, won the man's confidence, and it was not long 
 till he related the histoiy of his unbelief. Weekly, during nearly 
 three months, Dr. Chalmers's visits were repeated. The in- 
 structions given and the prayers offered at that bedside were 
 blessed : a sinner was turned from the error of his ways, and 
 a soul was saved from death. Very shortly before his death Dr. 
 Chalmers visited this man. Both felt that the interview was 
 to be the last. " Doctor," said he, lifting his Bible off the 
 bed on which it lay, " will you take this book from me as a
 
 SPIRITUAL FRUITS OF HIS MINISTRY. 719 
 
 token of my inexpressible gratitude?" " No, Sir," said Dr. 
 Chalmers after a moment's hesitation ; " No, Sir, that is too 
 precious a legacy to be put past your own son give it to your 
 boy." The dying man obeyed his instructor's last advice. He 
 gathered up his remaining strength of body and mind ; asking 
 for a pen he wrote the lines which Dr. Chalmers quoted, and 
 having written them, laid his head back upon his pillow and 
 expired. 
 
 A few months after his settlement in Glasgow, Dr. Chalmers 
 had wept over the grave of his beloved friend Thomas Smith, 
 and a few weeks previous to his departure from Glasgow he 
 stood by the deathbed of this converted weaver. He saw the 
 first and the last fruits of his Glasgow ministry seized by the 
 hand of death, while ripening under the eye of the earthly hus- 
 bandman, and laid up in the heavenly garner. But who could 
 tell him of the numbers who, during the course of these eight 
 years, and under that ministry, had been savingly impressed by 
 Divine truth ? We know of the thoughtless young officer, who 
 flaunting in idle vacancy through the city streets on a Sabbath 
 forenoon, and attracted by the eager crowds which he saw pour- 
 ing into the Tron Church, turned into that church as he would 
 have done into a theatre, but found it to be indeed the house of 
 God to him the very gate to heaven. We know of the fashion- 
 able lady, full of taste and high refinement, but devoid of all 
 earnest thought or care about her immortal soul, driving from her 
 mansion in a neighbouring county to be regaled by the eloquence 
 of the celebrated orator, but found of Him whom she sought not, 
 and turned effectually unto God. We know of the busy bust- 
 ling merchant, immersed in all the calculations of this world's 
 traffic, lifted to the sublimer calculations of eternity, and from 
 the very whirl of this world's most powerful engrossments won 
 over to a life of faith and devoted philanthropy. We know of 
 the aspiring student, sent by thoughtless parents to college to 
 prepare for the Christian ministry inflamed by literary ambi- 
 tion, but dead in heart to the love of Christ, awakened as from 
 a trance, and made to feel the true nature of that office into 
 which he had been heedlessly rushing, ushered into it fired with 
 the fresh fervours of the all-constraining love. Of these we 
 cannot speak more particularly, nor can we offer any estimate of 
 the number of those whose first religious impressions are trace- 
 able to the same earthly source, but we may be permitted to 
 express the opinion, that with all the transient and tumultuous
 
 720 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 excitement of its mere pulpit oratory, there has rarely been a 
 ministry of equal length as largely blessed of the Divine Spirit 
 to the conversion of individual souls. The more general effects 
 of that ministry in its bearings upon the religious condition of 
 Glasgow and of Scotland, lie open enough to observation. When 
 Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow, by the great body of the upper 
 classes of society evangelical doctrines were nauseated and de- 
 spised : when he left it, even by those who did not bow to their 
 influence, these doctrines were acknowledged to be indeed the 
 very doctrines of the Bible. When Dr. Chalmers came to Glas- 
 gow, in the eye of the multitude evangelism stood confounded 
 with a drivelling sanctimoniousness or a sour-minded asceticism : 
 when he left it, from' all such false associations the Christianity 
 of the New Testament stood clearly and nobly redeemed. When 
 Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow, for nearly a century the Magis- 
 trates and Town-council had exercised the city patronage in a 
 spirit determinately anti-evangelical : when he left it, so com- 
 plete was the revolution which had been effected, that from that 
 time forward none but evangelical clergymen were appointed 
 by the city patrons. When Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow, 
 there and elsewhere over Scotland there were many most devoted 
 clergymen of the Establishment who had given themselves up 
 wholly to the ministry of the word and to prayer, but there was 
 not one in whose faith and practice weekday ministrations had 
 the place or power which he assigned to them : when he left it, 
 he had exhibited such a model of fidelity, diligence, and activity, 
 in all departments of ministerial labour, as told finely upon the 
 spirit and practice of the whole ministry of Scotland. When 
 Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow, unnoticed thousands of the city 
 population were sinking into ignorance, infidelity, and vice, and 
 his eye was the first in this country to foresee to what a fearful 
 magnitude that evil, if suffered to grow on unchecked, would 
 rise : when he left it, his ministry in that city remained behind 
 him a permanent warning to a nation which has been but slow 
 to learn that the greatest of all questions, both for statesmen 
 and for churchmen, is the condition of those untaught and de- 
 graded thousands who swarm now around the base of the social 
 edifice, and whose brawny arms may yet grasp its pillars to 
 shake or to destroy. When Dr. Chalmers carne to Glasgow, in 
 the literary circles of the Scottish metropolis a thinly disguised 
 infidelity sat .on the seats of greatest influence, and smiled or 
 scoffed at a vital energetic faith in the great and distinctive
 
 FAREWELL DINNER. 721 
 
 truths of revelation, while widely over his native land the spirit 
 of a frigid indifference to religion prevailed : when he left it, the 
 current of public sentiment had begun to set in in a contrary di- 
 rection, arid although it took many years, and the labour of many 
 other hands to carry that healthful change onward to maturity, 
 yet I believe that it is not over-estimating it to say, that it was 
 mainly by Dr. Chalmers's ministry in Glasgow by his efforts 
 at this period in the pulpit and through the press that the tide 
 of national opinion and sentiment was turned. 
 
 And if Glasgow was honoured in numbering Dr. Chalmers 
 so long among her citizens, and in having been the sphere in 
 which labours so eminently useful had been prosecuted, she 
 proved herself not unworthy of the privilege. From her official 
 men he always received the most courteous treatment, and to 
 their kindness he was indebted for the facilities afforded him in 
 carrying his plans into execution. Her citizens vied with one 
 another in all kindly recognitions of one of whom all were proud, 
 while among the narrower circle of his own congregation many 
 personal attachments were formed, purer, deeper, and more 
 lasting than any afterwards created during a long lifetime of 
 affectionate intercourse with his fellow-men. Never was Dr. 
 Chalmers surrounded by a band of truer or warmer-hearted 
 friends than were numbered among the three hundred and forty 
 gentlemen who, on the 'Tuesday after his farewell discourses 
 were delivered, sat down together at the largest dinner-party 
 that had ever assembled in Glasgow in honour of any single in- 
 dividual. Whig and Tory, clergymen and laymen, churchmen 
 and dissenters, joined in friendly concert to bestow upon him 
 this parting memorial of their regard. In the course of that 
 happy and harmonious evening he was not unsuccessful in con- 
 veying to those around him how much and how deeply he was 
 gratified. Having at last intimated to the Lord Provost, who 
 was in the chair, his wish to retire, his Lordship suggested that 
 as a final mark of respect to their honoured guest, the company 
 should all stand up as he withdrew. This closing and unex- 
 pected token of their good-will quite overcame Dr. Chalmers. 
 Bowing repeatedly to all quarters, he could only say as he with- 
 drew, " I cannot utter a hundredth part of what I feel, but I 
 will do better I will bear it all away. Gentlemen, farewell." 
 
 On the day after this farewell dinner (Wednesday the 12th), 
 Dr. Chalmers left Glasgow for Fifeshire, and in the course of 
 the same day was followed by Charles S. Parker, Esq., James 
 
 VOL. i. 2 z
 
 722 MEMOIRS OF DR. CHALMERS. 
 
 Ewing, Esq., James Dennistoun, Esq., and Kobert Dalgleish, 
 Esq. On Thursday they all met together in Kirkcaldy at the 
 house of Mr. Walter Fergus, and on Friday morning the whole 
 party proceeded together to St. Andrews, where, in the Univer- 
 sity Hall, and in presence of the Principals, Professors, and 
 students, Dr. Chalmers was formally installed in his new office. 
 It had been announced that the Introductory Lecture of his 
 course would be delivered on Monday the 17th. In accordance 
 however with Dr. Chalmers's desire a desire grounded on his 
 wish to gratify the friends who had accompanied him from 
 Glasgow it was delivered on the day which immediately suc- 
 ceeded his induction. Short as was the notice, the Hall of the 
 University Library was crowded to excess, nor were the hopes 
 of any disappointed as the eloquent Professor closed his lecture 
 in these words : 
 
 " Nearly up to the present moment have I been engrossed 
 with other cares, and, as if newly escaped from a hurricane, do 
 I feel myself cast upon the shore of a territory difficult both of 
 penetration and progress, though not altogether unknown. It 
 may be thought, that ere I set forth on so important an expedi- 
 tion, I should have spent an interval both of preparation and 
 repose ; and I should have thought so too, had I believed that 
 by this rapid transference of myself from the labours of one pro- 
 fession to those of another, I would d an injury to any of my 
 regular pupils, or at all hurt the great interests of their scholar- 
 ship. But it has long been my sentiment, that for the objects 
 of practical education, there should be much of the free and the 
 colloquial intermingled with the formally and severely elaborate 
 on the part of a master that in this way alone the juvenile 
 mind can be grappled with, and even at close quarters, and a 
 ready adaptation be made to such existing difficulties in its way 
 as can only be ascertained at the time by a conversational or 
 questionary process. I have, therefore, in the full purpose of 
 largely intermingling an extemporaneous treatment of my subject 
 to the class with the more formal preparations of my solitude, 
 not been deterred by the magnitude of the undertaking that is 
 before me. Even its novelty has not thrown me into despair ; 
 for I honestly believe that it might be for the good of every 
 unpractised hearer, when, instead of following his guide as he 
 makes an easy promenade on the course that he has already 
 smoothed, and over which he has, and perhaps often, conducted 
 successive parties of travellers when, instead of this, he has to
 
 INTRODUCTOEY LECTURE AT ST. ANDREWS. 723 
 
 pioneer his own way through its yet untried difficulties, when he 
 has to share all the hazards, and, at the same time, on the 
 moment of embarking, feels all the life and freshness of an en- 
 terprise ; and the head adventurer himself looks around on a 
 youthful but devoted band, and can gather from the countenances 
 of all that even now they have resolved to share in his own 
 labours, and been animated to a sympathy with his own daring. 
 " At present I will expatiate no more, save to deliver one 
 short tribute of grateful acknowledgment to that Alma Mater 
 with whom are linked my tenderest associations, who hath been 
 pleased to call, from a long and fatiguing wander, one of the 
 unworthiest of her sons to whom, at the moment when he was 
 on the eve of sinking under a pressure by which he was well- 
 nigh overborne, she opened the gate of welcome, and found for 
 him a retreat and a resting-place within her walls. I never 
 thought that on this side of time I should have been permitted 
 to wander in arbours so desirable, and that thus embowered 
 among my most delicious recollections, I should have realized in 
 living and actual history the imagery of other days that the 
 play-fellows of my youth should thus become the associates of 
 my manhood, or that the light-hearted companions of a season 
 that has long passed away, should, by the movements of a mys- 
 terious but, I trust, kind Providence, stand side by side as 
 colleagues in the work of presiding over the studies of another 
 generation." 
 
 In the afternoon of the day on which this lecture was de- 
 livered, Dr. Chalmers's friends from Glasgow entertained at 
 dinner the two Principals, all the Professors of the University, 
 the ministers of the city, and a number of gentlemen from the 
 neighbourhood. So gracefully did Glasgow surrender to St. 
 Andrews what St. Andrews had originally bestowed. 
 
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