DR. Chalmers is one of those great, commanding figures that are raised up in times of need to guide nations and churches in days of peril and crisis. No doubt, apart from the Disruption struggle Dr. Chalmers would have been reckoned one of the greatest Scotsmen of his time but there can be no doubt that the struggle into which he threw himself called forth those gifts of intellect and leadership by which he had been so richly endowed by God to give him a place head and shoulders above the ablest of his contemporaries and it was an age of intellectual giants. When an attempt is made, however, to analyse the various elements that gave him such prominence and called forth almost idolatrous admiration on the part of those who were associated with him in the struggle that culminated in the Disruption one has a difficulty in analysing them. Dr. Hanna’s great biography, no doubt, places abundant material before his readers fitted to help in forming an opinion for themselves and his latest biographer Prof. Hugh Watt has attempted to answer the question though we cannot say that he has been altogether successful.
It is true that in great crisis when the common crowd feel the need of a leader to express their inmost thoughts its words and actions will in the excitement of the crisis hail with unquestioning delight one who expresses the inarticulate thoughts of their hearts. A crisis of more than ordinary intensity is required to produce this effect but the leader must have gifts of mind and speech that will lend effect to his utterances and appeal with powerful effect to the minds of those who are willingly led by him. Dr. Chalmers had a massive intellect and when the fire burned within there poured forth from his lips a torrent of burning, irrepressible words that carried the hearers off their feet. In the case of Dr. Chalmers’s auditory it was not only the simple-minded that came under the spell of his eloquence but staid and sober-minded men. Prof. Watt quotes a description given by Dr. Begg of one of Dr. Chalmers’s lectures in London in defence of the establishment principle of religion. At the end of one of these lectures, which were delivered by Chalmers in a sitting posture, so great was the effect produced by one of his utterances that they “were responded to by a whirlwind of enthusiasm, which probably never was exceeded in the history of eloquence.”
* Thomas Chalmers and the Disruption by Hugh Watt, Professor of Church History, New College, Edinburgh University (Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh). Price 12/6.
Dr. Chalmers began his ministerial career at Kilmany in Fifeshire. On entering on his duties he was an unconverted man and of all the anomalies surely that of an unconverted minister is one of the most tragic alike for himself and the flock committed to his charge. Hitherto his great aim was to climb the ladder of fame by sitting in a professor’s chair. It was during the early years of his Kilmany ministry that he wrote a pamphlet in which he maintained that a parish minister might devote five days of the week in uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science in which his taste may dispose him to engage. He himself, at the time had three classes in mathematics and another in chemistry at St. Andrews University. He even went the length of writing a pamphlet in defence of such pluralities which was to be used against him in later years when the question of Pluralities was raised in the General Assembly (1813). In the debate, after making a speech against Pluralities he was reminded of what he had said in his pamphlet in 1805. He met the ad hominem argument with humility and dignity in a speech part of which has often been quoted. “Sir,” said he in addressing the Moderator, “that pamphlet I now declare to have been a production of my own, I published more than twenty years ago. I was indeed much surprised to hear it brought forward and quoted this evening; and I instantly conceived that the reverend gentleman who did so, had been working at the trade of a resurrectionist.2 Verily I believed that my unfortunate pamphlet had long ere now descended into the tomb of merited oblivion, and that there it was moulting in silence, forgotten and disregarded. But since that gentleman has brought it forward in the face of this House, I can assure him that I feel grateful to him from the bottom of my heart, for the opportunity he has afforded me of making a public recantation of the sentiments it contains. I have read a tract entitled the Last Moments of the Earl of Rochester and I was powerfully struck in reading it, with the conviction how much evil a pernicious pamphlet may be the means of disseminating. At the time when I wrote it, I did not conceive that my pamphlet would do much evil; but, sir considering the conclusions that have been deduced from it by the reverend gentleman, I do feel obliged to him for reviving it, and for bringing me forward to make my public renunciation of what is there written. I now confess myself to have been guilty of a heinous crime, and I now stand a repentant culprit before the bar of the venerable Assembly. The circumstances attending the publication of my pamphlet were shortly as follows: As far back as twenty years ago, I was ambitious enough to aspire to be successor to Professor Playfair in the mathematical chair of the University of Edinburgh. During the discussion which took place relative to the person who might be appointed his successor, there appeared a letter from Prof. Playfair to the magistrates in Edinburgh on the subject, in which he stated it as his conviction, that no person could be found competent to discharge the duties of the mathematical chair among the clergymen of the Church of Scotland. I was at that time, sir, more devoted to mathematics than to the literature of my profession; and feeling grieved and indignant at what I conceived an undue reflection on
* 1 It had been published anonymously.—Editor.
2 “The resurrectionists” were men who digged up newly buried bodies and sold them to doctors for dissection purposes. In many of the country burying places one may see small houses which were erected for the “watchers” who kept vigil during the night. Fortunately this barbarous and gruesome practice ceased long ago.
the abilities and education of our clergy, I came forward with that pamphlet to rescue them from what I deemed an unmerited reproach, by maintaining that a devoted and exclusive attention to the study of mathematics was not dissonant to the proper habits of a clergyman. Alas! sir, so I thought in my ignorance and pride. I have now no reserve in saying that the sentiment was wrong, and that, in the utterance of it, I penned what was outrageously wrong. Strangely blinded that I was! What, sir, is the object of mathematical science?—Magnitude and the proportions of magnitude. But then, sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes—I thought not of the littleness of time—I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity! When he finished a deathlike stillness, says his biographer, reigned throughout the House.
It is difficult to assign Dr. Chalmers his true place as a preacher—if judged by his eloquence he stands supreme but he did not excel in the departments in which Dr. Love and Dr. Candlish excelled. He lacked the incisive insight of Dr. Moody Stuart and the simple spirituality of Robert Murray McCheyne. The famous Astronomical Discourses which carried his hearers along as if entranced when the great orator spoke of the majesty of God and the vastness of His universe left indelible impressions on the minds of his hearers. Some of his sermons may yet be read with interest but generally speaking one wonders at the spell cast over his hearers when his sermons were delivered. He laboured under the disadvantages of reading his sermons and of having a strongly marked broad Scottish accent but in spite of all this he held his audiences in the hollow of his hand when he warmed to his subject.
As a theologian he did not equal say Principal Cunningham. Chalmers might sway his students as he did his audiences by his extraordinary eloquence but he was not a systematic theologian like Cunningham. For ordinary men it is difficult to assign Chalmers his true place—it is a case, however, of pigmies endeavouring to explain the power of a giant.
His work in dealing with the poor, and his masterly financial scheme as embodied in the Sustentation Fund of the Free Church should not be overlooked. When an idea seized his mighty intellect there was tremendous driving power in the man to carry it forward in the face of formidable difficulties.
His strong support of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 lost him the favour of many true Protestant friends as it did also with some of the other Evangelical leaders. As stated already he did not wish to do away with patronage as Dr. Andrew Thomson and Dr. Begg did. The Veto Act was meant to nullify some of its evil but it did not lay the axe at the root of the tree. It was a compromise.
Whatever may be the verdict of the future on this extraordinary man we are left on no manner of doubt as to the very high pedestal to which his contemporaries raised him. He passed quietly away in his sleep on 31st May, 1847, while the Assembly was sitting. The news was received with stunning effect. It was like the crash of a mighty oak in the forest. His funeral was the largest ever seen in Edinburgh—all classes paid tribute to him. “It was the dust of a Presbyterian clergyman,” said the Witness, “that the coffin contained; and yet they were burying him amid the tears, and with more than kingly honours.”