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.
 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.
End.
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
Home | Biography | Literature | Letters | Interests | Links | Quotes | Photo-Wallet