The following article appears in The Popular Encyclopedia, published by Blackie & Son, 1883.
CHALMERS,
Thomas, D.D., an eminent divine of the Scottish Church, was born on
17th March, 1780, in the burgh of Anstruther Easter, in Fife, where his
father was a shipowner and general merchant. He was the sixth of a
family of fourteen, and received his first education in the parish
school of his native place. At the age of twelve he was sent to the
University of St. Andrews, for the purpose of studying for the church,
and after passing through a curriculum there of seven years, was
licensed as a preacher in July, 1799, the rule of the Scottish Church
requiring that a licenciate shall have reached the age of twenty-one
being dispensed with in his case, in virtue of the exceptional clause
in favour of those possessing 'rare and singular qualities.'
The
first two winters after being licensed were spent by Chalmers in
Edinburgh in studying mathematics and chemistry; and the post of
assistant to the professor of mathematics at St. Andrews having become
vacant, he applied for and obtained the situation.(A 3D map of St.
Andrews can be seen here) In May, 1803, he was presented to the parish
of Kilmany, in the N.E. of Fife, and having been dismissed from
factious motives from his place of assistant teacher of mathematics, he
resolved to open classes of his own for teaching that science in the
town of St. Andrews. These were so successful that he commenced a class
of chemistry also, his lectures on and demonstrations in which created
quite a sensation. About this time his views as to the obligations of a
Christian pastor were very different from what he was subsequently led
to entertain, and he deemed it a sufficient fulfilment of these to
return to Kilmany on the Saturday evenings, and from thence back to St.
Andrews on the Monday mornings, devoting the bulk of his time to
scientific pursuits. In 1804 he was defeated in an application for the
chair of natural philosophy at St. Andrews, and again in 1805 for the
same chair in Edinburgh University. An objection made to his
candidature for the latter chair, 'that the vigorous prosecution of
mathematical or natural science was incompatible with clerical duties
and habits' occasioned his first literary effort, 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. In
1808 he published an Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National
Resources, the object of which was to show that the Berlin decree would
not touch the real foundations of the prosperity of Britain. (His
conversion to true belief in the saving qualities and finished work of
Jesus Christ ocurred during 1810-11 and became the subject of the
slanderous assertion that he was mad!- ALN)
In
1812 Mr. Chalmers married Miss Grace Pratt, second daughter of Captain
Pratt, of the 1st Royal Veteran Battalion. The following year his
article on Christianity appeared in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and
shortly afterwards his review of Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the
Earth, in the Christian Instructor, a publication conducted by Dr.
Andrew Thomson. In this last he propounded the interpretation of the
first verses of Genesis, afterwards adopted by Dr. Buckland, with a
view to make the truths of revelation and the discoveries of geological
science harmonize. In his lectures at St. Andrews in 1803 he had
already said, '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.'
His fame as a preacher had by
this time extended itself throughout Scotland, and a vacancy having
occurred in the Tron Church of Glasgow, he was elected to the charge by
a large majority of the town-council, and inducted on 21st July, 1815.
In the month of November following he commenced his series of
astronomical discourses, in accordance with a custom observed in
Glasgow, of the city ministers delivering in rotation a course of
sermons in the Tron Church on Thursdays. The effect of these was
perfectly electrifying, and created a sensation such as no sermons had
ever before produced in Glasgow. It is related, that when the hour of
delivering them arrived, merchants and men of business would regularly
leave their desks and proceed to the Tron Church, while the more
liberal among them would, in addition, grant a similar indulgence to
their clerks and assistants. In the commencement of 1817 these
discourses were published, and attained a sale of nearly 20,000 copies
by the end of the year. They raised their author to the position of the
first preacher of the day, and in a visit which he shortly afterwards
paid to London, the most distinguished literati and statesmen crowded
to listen to the wondrous oratory of the Scottish divine.
The
main object which engaged Dr. Chalmers on his arrival in Glasgow, was
the reorganizing of the parochial system, so as to provide a machinery
by which the destitute and outcast might be visited and reclaimed, and
the young instructed in the lessons and duties of religion. With this
view he allocated to each of his elders the part which they should
respectively bear in carrying out this new scheme, and succeeded in
infusing into them the same ardent active spirit by which he himself
was animated. Especial efforts were directed towards the establishment
of Sabbath-schools, which in the course of two years had an attendance
of 1200 children. Great exertions were also made by Dr. Chalmers to get
new churches erected throughout Glasgow, the church accommodation for
which comprehended scarcely a third of the inhabitants. In this he
ultimately succeeded, and in addition, a new parish and church (St.
John's) were erected and endowed expressly for himself by the
town-council of Glasgow.
To this he was
in 1819 transferred from the Tron. The same zeal and activity which had
there marked his pastoral career, were displayed in the conduct of his
new parish. Besides numerous Sabbath- schools, two large week-day
schools, in which all the primary branches of education were taught at
a low rate, were established on behalf of the parishioners of St.
John's. The fatigues, however, which such unremitting attention to
parochial affairs involved were becoming too much for his health, and
he had now so far adjusted matters in his parish, that the management
of the machine might be intrusted to others.
aberdeen2b
Aberdeen - in the rain. Chalmers spent most of his career in one city or another. Mainly Glasgow. Edinburgh - Princes Street in 1978.
Chalmers was here quite a lot of his life.
On
the vacant chair, therefore, of moral philosophy, in the University of
St. Andrews, being offered to him, he accepted it, though, as might
have been expected, a considerable disappointment was thereby produced
in Glasgow. The date of his transfer to St. Andrews was November, 1823.
As an instructor of youth, his affectionate concern for their welfare,
independent of the mere intellectual attractions of his lectures, made
him universally beloved by the students, many of whom he used to
assemble at his house on Sunday evenings, for the purpose of religious
conversation and instruction. In the town of St. Andrews, likewise, he
laboured assiduously in visiting the humbler classes, and promoting
their religious and moral improvement. In 1827 the divinity chair in
the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the resignation of Dr.
Ritchie, and Dr. Chalmers was unanimously elected to it by the
town-council on 31st October. This appointment he continued to hold
till the Disruption from the Scottish church in 1843. In 1832 he
published his Political Economy, and shortly afterwards appeared his
contribution to the celebrated Bridgewater Treatises, On the Adaptation
of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man.
In
1834 he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of
France; and the following year, while on a visit to Oxford, had the
degree of Doctor of Laws conferred on him by its university. An
important matter which now largely engaged his attention was the
subject of church extension, which he had zealously advocated from the
days of his ministry in Glasgow. But Lord Melbourne's government was
little disposed to aid the Church of Scotland on this occasion, and it
was consequently obliged to carry out its scheme on the voluntary
principle. The results were satisfactory, and in 1838 Dr. Chalmers was
enabled to state to the General Assembly, that within the last four
years there had been collected about £200,000, out of which nearly 200
new churches had been built.
Amid the
various public movements with which Dr. Chalmers name stands connected,
there is none in which it more prominently occurs than in relation to
the great non-intrusion movement in the Scottish church. Throughout the
whole of this memorable contest, from the passing of the veto law by
the General Assembly to the Disruption in 1843, he acted as the leader
of the Evangelical party in their struggles with the civil power, and
may be regarded as the founder of the Free Church, of the first
assembly of which he was moderator. (The second was Robert Candlish) He
was also the originator of the sustentation fund, out of which the
ministers of that body are principally supported. Having vacated at the
Disruption his professorial chair in the Edinburgh University, he was
appointed, on the establishment of a new college in connection with the
Free Church, to the offices of principal and primarius professor of
divinity in that institution.
Towards
the end of 1844 he set on foot a scheme for reclaiming the inhabitants
of the West Port district in Edinburgh, a locality notorious alike for
physical squalor and moral degradation. A staff of visitors was
organized for the purpose of visiting the different families in this
quarter; a school was opened in the close which had earned an unenvied
fame as the scene of Burke and Hare's murders; and lastly, an old
tannery loft was opened for worship on Sundays, Dr. Chalmers himself
conducting the services. Ultimately a territorial church was erected in
the West Port, and opened on 19th February, 1847. This movement was
about the last public work in which Dr. Chalmers engaged.
On
28th May of last-mentioned year he returned to his house at
Morningside, near Edinburgh, from a journey to London on the subject of
national education. On the following day (Saturday) he was busily
employed in preparing a report to the General Assembly of the Free
Church, then sitting. On Sunday, the 30th, he continued in his usual
health and spirits, and retired to rest with the intention of rising at
an early hour to finish his report. The next morning he did not make
his appearance, and no answer being returned on knocking, his room was
entered, and he was discovered lying tranquilly in bed quite dead. He
had evidently passed away in a moment, without pain or even
consciousness. He was interred in the Grange Cemetery, whither an
immense assemblage of persons of all denominations accompanied his
remains to the grave.
The energy which
made Chalmers remarkable as an orator was infused into all his
practical undertakings; and in the social and religious movements which
he inaugurated he has left his mark in the history of his country. His
published works are very numerous, embracing sermons, tracts, essays,
works on Political Economy, the Parochial System, Church
Establishments, &c. They exhibit the same energy of conviction,
together with a breadth and profundity of view, which, though many of
his theories have not been accepted by other thinkers, will always make
them a rich mine of suggestion and instruction to inquirers into the
complicated relations of human society. Of his posthumous works,
published by his son-in-law and biographer, Dr. Hanna, his Daily
Scripture Readings and Sabbath Scripture Readings, the latter
especially, are valued for their devotional feeling.
Notes
Note
that the visiting in the West Port district was not the first project
of this sort. See Andrew Bonar's Diary for 25th Dec.1831, and the
quotation from R.M.M'Cheyne's diary which AAB gives in his Life of RMM
at 3rd March 1834. Also the preceding paragraph.
An account of the funeral of Thomas Chalmers can be found here..
A major entry on the Disruption can be found here
OPINION
- Posterity seems to regard Thomas Chalmers as a magnificent failure!
All the things he fought for, argued for, wrote for, and innovated seem
to have failed. Not one book by him, or even about him, is currently in
print. So is this a just decision? To my mind it is not. Judged by
those standards all the Judges of the Old Testament would be accounted
failures, as would also our Lord! No, "God sees not as man sees, but
lookest upon the heart" and success must surely be measured by whather
the fight was fought diligently, properly and in a God-fearing manner,
not by its worldly success. What shines out brightly from his journal
and letters is the aching heart he had for bringing souls to the Lord.
All the so-called worldly objectives, such as amendment of the Poor
Laws, and Church and College Extention were aimed at one and the same
target - winning souls for the Lord. His mighty brain saw clearly what
some of us see but dimly, and others not at all - that if all be done
to God's glory, and in submission to Holy Scripture, other "secular"
matters will come right.
That he failed to get others to
see it the same way can hardly be surprising - didn't our Lord suffer
the same hardness of heart and lack of appreciation in his day? (ALN)
