THOMAS CHALMERS.

BY FRANCIS HUSTON WALLACE, M.A., B.D.,

Professor in Victoria University.

ONE hundred years ago there entered upon the fourth year of the Arts course in the old Scotch University of St. Andrews, a boy in his fifteenth year, big, brawny, powerful in physique, buoyant and even boisterous in spirits. He had matriculated in the University in 1791, in the twelfth year of his age. He was the son of John Chalmers, a prosperous merchant and ship-owner of Anstruther, Fifeshire. The boy had shown no early genius. He had been a boy among boys. His early intellectual stimulus was found in the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress," and certain stories of travel and adventure. Early school days were not remarkably well spent. His first two years at the University gave no promise of future greatness. While without any vices, open-hearted, affectionate and a favourite among "the boys," he had never kindled into any love of study. Yet Thomas Chalmers, that inferior, unpromising student, was destined to be the greatest pulpit orator of his time, the hero of the Free Church, and the most imposing ecclesiastical figure in Scotland since the days of John Knox.

His intellect was awakened by the study of mathematics, and, when once he began to grapple with the great thoughts and problems of the universe, he pursued all congenial subjects of investigation with keenest relish, and communicated the results of his thinking with rare power of exposition.

Having from his earliest youth conceived the purpose of becoming a minister, not so much from religious as from social and ambitious motives (for to the country boy in Scotland then the minister was the greatest of men), he passed, in 1795, from Arts to Theology; and in 1799 was licensed by the Presbytery of St. Andrews as a preacher of the Gospel. But his thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and he spent two years in post-graduate study at St. Andrews, mathematics and physics being his favourite subjects.

In 1803, he was ordained minister of the little parish of Kilmany, nine miles from St. Andrews. During the winter of 1802-3 he had been assistant instructor in mathematics at St. Andrews University. His methods were too fresh and unconventional to find favour among the "dons," and, much to his disgust, his services were dispensed with at the close of the one session! The proximity of Kilmany to St. Andrews afforded him

next year the opportunity of revenge. He formed independent university classes in mathematics and chemistry, whose high success vindicated his power and methods as a teacher. This double work, teaching during the week at St. Andrews, and preaching on the Sabbath in Kilmany, he did not continue beyond the session of 1803-4. Yet for some years to come his heart was rather in science than in theology; in the study of mathematics and political economy than in the cure of souls. In 1808, he published his first contribution to political economy, his famous "Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources." During these later years, Thomas Chalmers had been struggling with the profoundest religious problems; now bathed in the sunshine of a clear faith in a good God; now wrapped in the deadly gloom of Materialism; verging at times upon mental derangement in the intensity of his anguish; and often heard to pray: "Oh, give us some steady object for our mind to rest upon!" Finally, his mind found repose in the Christian conception of God and the world. But a specific Christian experience he had not yet known; his ambition was still to shine in science and literature. The duties of his parish sat very lightly upon him. He declared it "his own experience, that, after the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week in uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science in which his taste may dispose him to engage."

But in his thirtieth year there came a revolution. Out from a great crisis he emerged a new man, with a new conception of Christianity, a new personal relation to God, a new aim and object in life. "It was good for him that he was afflicted." The death of a brother beloved, of a dear sister, and of an uncle; the serious illness of two other sisters; his own dangerous illness, debarring him from public work for more than a year; a gradual process of thought, thus face to face with the dread realities of human existence, and face to face with "the Gospel of the glory of the Blessed God," all issued in his conversion in intellect, heart and life.

Before this he thought of Christianity mainly from the ethical standpoint. Now and henceforth he regards it from the standpoint of human sin, and sees in it not a mere republication of natural theology, but the great salvation. He feels intensely and he preaches fervently the fundamental truths of human sin, of redemption by the blood of Christ, of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. He is now a converted man in his own conscious life, and an ambassador for Christ in his divine commission. All the energies of a noble and powerful nature are now devoted to lead.

ing other men to the life which he has found. In the conversion of Thomas Chalmers dawned the new day of evangelicalism for Scotland.

I do not propose to write a biographical sketch. This is impossible within the limits of this article, and also unnecessary. I need only refer my readers to Dr. Hanna's classical "Biography of the late Rev. Thomas Chalmers," or to that racy little volume by James Dodds, "Thomas Chalmers, a Biographical Study."

Suffice it to say that Chalmers remained minister of Kilmany until 1815, when he was elected to the Tron Church, Glasgow. This he exchanged for the new parish of St. John's, in Glasgow, in 1819. In 1823, he became professor of moral philosophy in the University of St. Andrews, and in 1828, he assumed the chair of theology in the University of Edinburgh. In 1843 he was first Moderator of the Free Church, and spent the rest of his life as Principal of the Free Church College, dying in 1847.

Let us now consider Dr. Chalmers under certain aspects of his life, work and character.

As a thinker he occupied no mean place in the history of his country, though his pre-eminence did not lie in the sphere of thought so much as in that of action. He had large powers, vast energy, keen interest in natural science, political economy and theology. His contributions to the literature of his favourite subjects were so numerous that they now occupy thirty volumes. But he would have written better had he written less. He was too anxious to move men to right thought and action to be the coolest of investigators, the most careful of reasoners. He was the born orator, teacher, organizer. In political economy he was not devoid of originality, but his interests here were intensely practical; he was the friend of the poor; his works in this department were more valuable than his words.

In theology he was Calvinistic, but of the most lovable type, broad, generous, sympathetic with all goodness in thought and life. Methodists can never forget his characterization of Methodism as "Christianity in earnest." The keynote of his intellectual activity, as of his whole life was, as James Dodds expresses it, "constitutional intensity." He said of himself that he was formed for "a life of constant and unremitting activity." It was this intensity rather than great acumen which characterized him as a thinker. It was this intensity which made him a mighty power as preacher, teacher and Church leader.

As a preacher his success was immediate and extraordinary. So soon as his great powers had been once inspired by the principle of new life in Christ Jesus, Kilmany was too narrow a sphere.

In spite of the great unpopularity in those days of his evangelical principles, Glasgow claimed him, and his sermons in the Tron Church became the sensation of the hour. The famous "Astronomical Discourses," in which he discussed the objections to Christianity drawn from the vastness of the universe and the improbability that the great God of the universe would so concern Himself with the insignificant affairs of this little world, excited the keenest interest, and when published sold as no sermons had ever sold before. When he visited London, his eloquence was found as effective in the capital as it had been in his native north. His pulpit power never waned. Its sources lay in no special methods of preparation or delivery, in no extraordinary refinement or finish of style, but in the massive simplicity of the great truths which he proclaimed, the intensity of his convictions, the fervour of his utterances. Mathematical in the bent of his mind, he was a reasoner throughout. Yet his reasoning was always on fire with the supreme and consuming desire to move men to action. Each discourse tended to some one definite, practical end, and consisted in the presentation under different aspects and illustrations of the one truth which was fitted to move men to that one end.

Carlyle, in his "Reminiscences of Edward Irving," characterizes Chalmers' discourses as "usually the triumphant on-rush of one idea with its satellites and supporters." Such intensity and concentration of thought and feeling and volition made Chalmers' reading of sermons from manuscript a tremendous power. To sit down and quietly peruse one of these discourses gives one no adequate impression of the matchless oratory which moved the cool-headed Lord Jeffrey to declare that Chalmers' speaking reminded him more of the effect of Demosthenes' eloquence than anything else that he had ever heard, and made Canning weep and exclaim: "The tartan beats us all!" Chalmers was a great and good man, and the whole man spoke in every accent, syllable, and gesture, and his glorious intensity made him the pulpit orator of his time.

It was this same quality, above all others, which made him a power as professor. Other men may have communicated more exact information, or may have gone deeper in original investigation. Few professors ever so inspired their students. In St. Andrews, as professor of moral philosophy, in Edinburgh as professor of theology, his influence was a benediction to his students and the Church, kindling young men into something approaching his own glowing energy, intellectually, morally and religiously, and sending them out, consecrated in every fibre of their

being, to what they not only believed but felt to be the grandest work of life, the work of saving souls.

His method as professor was a combination of reading lectures, of conversational drill, and of the use of text-books But the secret of his greatest power with his students was the close, loving contact of his great personality with theirs.

In no character does Chalmers appeal more strongly to the sympathies of our day than as a philanthropist. His interest in social science was not so much academic as practical. It was not a theory that he was after, but action such as would improve the condition of the masses. His action was indeed taken in accordance with sound principles which he enunciated in his various writings. But his aim was not to write but to do. It was his conviction, as it was Carlyle's, that the betterment of the condition of the working classes was the great question of the immediate future, and that the problem must be solved on Christian principles.

In his first parish in Glasgow, that of the Tron, he found a population of about eleven thousand, a considerable proportion of which never attended church, and were sunk in ignorance, poverty and practical heathenism. His conviction was that for the rescue of such populations the direct influence of well-organ. ized Christian agency, the hand-to-hand work of good men making themselves personally familiar with the wants of the people, was essential. As he failed to move the city authorities to action on a larger scale, for the whole city, he prevailed upon them to set off for him a new parish in a neglected part, the parish of St. John's, with a population of about ten thousand, and thither, resigning the pastorate of the Tron Church, he betook himself, to work out his beneficent plans of city mission.

His schemes were comprehensive, embracing the relief of the poor as well as the care of souls, the city handing over to him the entire supervision of the parish, with authority to act. He established day-schools and Sabbath-schools. He divided the parish into twenty-five districts, with from sixty to a hundred families in each. Over each district he placed an elder to supervise its more religious, and a deacon to care for its more temporal, wants -Chalmers himself presiding over and inspiring all his workers, visiting the people indefatigably during the day, and holding services, now here, now there, throughout the parish in the evenings.

The relation of this work to poor relief is of special interest to us. The English system of compulsory poor rates was beginning to take root in Scotland. Chalmers dreaded it as destined to bear evil fruit for all concerned, pauperizing the recipients of relief, and withering the Christian sympathies of those who ought