CHALMERS.* THOMAS CHALMERS had a stormy youth, not in the
ordinary sense of the word, for he was among the most blameless of men, but from what Mrs. Oliphant calls the " whirlwinds and tempest of thought" which swept over his soul. They raged in the region of speculation, they raged in the domain of practical life. He goes as a tutor to fill up an unoccupied portion of time during his last year as a theological student. His employer treats him with less consideration than he thinks becoming to his situation and to his own merits. His resentment is of the fiercest. " You have far too much pride," says the employer. " There are two kinds of pride, sir," was the reply. " There is that pride which lords it over inferiors, and there is that pride which rejoices in repressing the inso- lence of superiors. The first I have none of, the second I glory in." A special offence was the failure to include him in certain supper-parties. " I sup elsewhere ! " was the young tutor's magnificent reply to the servant who brought him his repast. And he made it a practice to entertain friends of his own at the inn on the evenings of the supper- parties. Two years afterwards he has a disappointment, the local magnate passing him over in presenting to a living. Such at least is Mrs. Oliphant's conjecture. He proceeds to denounce magnates in general with more than prophetic vehemence : " The great whom I have bad the misfortune to be connected with are not only a disgrace to rank, but a disgrace to humanity." Nevertheless, patriotism triumphing over the sense of injury, "I must still consider it my duty to resist the inroads of foreign enemies." The next year finds him a pluralist—minister of Kilmany and Deputy-Professor of Mathematics at St. Andrews. What mathematics he taught we are not told, but he taught them in a way which the Professor of Rhetoric might have copied. His chief was disturbed, and showed his disturbance very ungraciously. Chalmers denounced him at the public examination. That brought his career as a deputy to an end, but not his career at St. Andrews. He set up private classes in mathematics, and a class in chemistry. The University was horrified, but had to submit. The mathematical classes, commenced only as a protest, were given up ; but the chemistry was continued, till the young minister of Kilmany was promoted to a larger sphere. Before this happened, there had come the change which gave a new bent to the keen intellectual interests of the man. The spiritual element, to which hitherto no more prominence had been given than professional decency required, became predominant. He " flung himself with impetuosity unsubdued, though the current of its outflow was changed, into the occupations of a fisher of men, a devoted pastor and priest, having no thought but the saving of souls."
The new sphere of work was the Tron Church at Glasgow. And now the splendour of his eloquence made itself known. It had not failed to start forth before. At sixteen, the prayer which, as a divinity student's professional exercise, he had uttered before a critical audience, had electrified his hearers.
Thomas Chalmers : Preacher, Philosopher, and Statesman. By Mrs, Oliphant. London Methuen and Co,
His first appearance in the General Assembly had been a success. But now, at the Tron Church, he was recognised at once as the great orator of his time. When be took part, shortly afterwards, in a debate in the General Assembly, Jeffrey said that the speech reminded him more than anything that he had ever heard, of what we are told of the eloquence of Demosthenes. In London, " all the world grew wild about him," as Wilberforce put it. Canning was melted to tears. When, some years later, he lectured in London on "Church Establishment," the effect was even more startling. He lec- tured sitting, but now and then rose to his feet in an access of enthusiasm ; when he did so, " the whole audience rose with him in a sympathetic climax of excitement." Shall we ever see the like again ? Is it the orator or the audience that fails us ?
Meanwhile, Chalmers had been carrying on at Glasgow a Work of the most practical kind. Poor-laws he bated ; he held that the plate held at the church-door, not thrust, as oui. torpid charity requires, under every worshipper's face, was sufficient. And it was sufficient, not only in his own time, but in the time of his successor. We must refer our readers to Mrs. Oliphant's admirable chapters on this subject. It would be impossible to summarise them.
Suddenly he brought this experiment to an end. Mrs. Oliphant cannot conjecture his reason. Possibly it was an outbreak of the old impatience of secular business, which we find showing itself on his first removal to Glasgow. His system was successful, but it compelled him to " serve tables," and this was exactly the thing that he hated. Anyhow, he accepted a Chair at St. Andrews. It was not a ()hair of Theology ; the subject was Moral Philosophy. But Chalmers could make any subject theological ; and Moral Philosophy is certainly very "near the line."
His residence at St. Andrews lasted for five years—busy years, though his office was not one of overwhelming labour, because he was profoundly interested in the great social questions of the day. " He loved," we are told, " a quiet round of golf, but gave it up because he thought it impaired his power for work,"—an instance, we venture to think, that even Dr. Chalmers sometimes erred.
In 1828 he was translated to a Chair of Divinity at Edin- burgh. There ho was recognised at once as a great power. Appointments were given at his prompting ; statesmen con- sulted him. In the Assembly he was without a rival, though, of course, not without opponents. In 1840 the great " Intru- sion " question became acute; three years later it reached the crisis. All along, Chalmers was the guiding spirit of his party; it was he who, on the famous 18th of May, walked at the head of the "four hundred and more" who left everything for con- science sake. His work was not ended there. He lent his unrivalled powers of organisation to providing for the newly
founded Church ; and the Sustentation Fund, one of the
greatest successes of the age, was largely his work. Mrs. Oliphant, who does not conceal her .sympathy with those who were left behind, expresses what is evidently a wish more than a hope, that the jubilee of the Free Church (which falls this year) mighb be celebrated by reunion. To the English observer, such reunion has always seemed, in theory at least, possible since patronage in the Established Church was abolished ; but broken things must be joined at once or never. Time works too many changes, and creates too
puny, interests. In this case, half-a-century of compulsory voluntaryism has destroyed the faith in Establishment, in
which Chalmers and his colleagues never wavered for a moment. Four years later, Chalmers died suddenly. No record exists of his last moments, for he died alone. "He was found sitting half-erect, his head reclining quietly on the pillow,—the expression of his countenance that of fixed and majestic repose."
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