19 July: Boreham on Thomas Chalmers

A Maker of Men
The nineteenth of July! It was on the nineteenth of July that Thomas Chalmers and Queen Victoria met. He was the most commanding figure in the country—massive, mountainous and altogether majestic. She was a girl in her teens, having mounted the throne only a few days earlier. The great man was deeply moved by her girlish shyness. She was, he says, timid, tremulous and agitated, but he hastens to add that, infected by her modesty and embarassment, he himself left the royal apartment still nervously clutching the address that he had come from Scotland to present to her young majesty. Chalmers, according to Lord Rosebery, left a deeper impression on Scottish life than any man of his time. The fact that men of the stature of J. G. Lockhart, Thomas Carlyle, and W. E. Gladstone felt, in the presence of Thomas Chalmers, like schoolboys in the presence of a headmaster, sufficiently demonstrates the intellectual and moral grandeur of the man. These three were sympathisers and admirers; but men like Hazlitt, Jeffrey, Canning, and John Stuart Mill, surveying the scene with less impassioned and more critical eyes, were scarcely less impressed.

Canning was considered the most brilliant and most fastidious orator of the day; but when he listened to the rugged eloquence of Chalmers, he shook his head despairingly. "The tartan beats us all!" he exclaimed. Gladstone heard Chalmers at Oxford. The future Prime Minister, who had just come of age, listened spell-bound. He determined to cultivate the great man's intimate acquaintance, and, on being invited to breakfast, was positively embarrassed by the excessive modesty of his host. Gladstone was in his twenties; Chalmers in his fifties. Yet, Gladstone avers, the modesty of the elder man was so oppressive that it was impossible for his juniors to attune themselves to his transcendent superiority. He behaved to them as they expected to find themselves behaving to him. To the last day of his long life, Gladstone loved to salute the memory of Chalmers as one of the most formative influences in his own manhood.

Two Hemispheres Into One Globe
Born on St. Patrick's Day, 1780, Chalmers was in a desperate hurry to get going. The sixth of 14 children, favoured with no particular advantages, he matriculated at 12, became a divinity student at 15, and, at 19 received his preacher's licence. He settled at Kilmany in Fifeshire; and then his trouble began. For the story of Chalmers is the most intriguing record in our annals of the way in which the ethical and evangelical elements may be blended in the work of a great teacher. Chalmers began by stressing the ethical only. His people at Kilmany—folk of the flock and the field, men of the plough and the pasture—were very fond of their young minister and very proud of him. But why, they wondered, did he fulminate, Sabbath after Sabbath, on the heinous wickedness of theft, murder and adultery? Why did he constantly address them in a strain that implied that they ought all to be in gaol?

Then, after eight years at Kilmany, Chalmers became the victim of a serious illness. In the solitude of his room he saw the absurdity of his past behaviour. He passed through a profound spiritual crisis. The very fabric of his sturdy manhood was softened and sweetened and strengthened. Returning to his pulpit he blended the evangelical with the ethical and was amazed to find that his transformed ministry precipitated the results for which he had earlier struggled in vain. Four years later he was called to Glasgow, and, at Glasgow, he exercised an intensely evangelical ministry with a superbly ethical application and sweep. His work for the submerged masses in the slums of Glasgow is still cited as one of the highlights of the city's history.

Flinging Fragrance Across The World
The impact of Chalmers upon Glasgow awoke the enthusiasm of Carlyle. "I rejoice," wrote the sage, "that you, with your generous, hopeful heart, believe that there still exists in the churches enough of divine fire to awaken the supine rich and the degraded poor, and to act victoriously against such a mass of pressing and accumulating ills. With a Chalmers in every British parish, much might be possible." He continued his triumphant ministry until he felt it incumbent upon him to take a step that startled everybody. At the height of his resounding fame, he relinquished his great public work and plunged into the seclusion of a university professorship. He was 43 at the time and had the world at his feet. But, 30 years earlier, Carey had challenged the church to the conquest of the world, and Chalmers felt that Carey was right. He conceived the idea that the best way of realising Carey's dream was by firing the imagination of Scotland's most brilliant graduates. In his classroom he soon awoke the enthusiasm of men like Duff and Nesbitt, Mackay and Ewart—all now numbered among the immortals—and, within a few years, the students of Chalmers were bearing the torch to all earth's continents and islands.

The beauty of his death matched the nobility of his life. It was a Sunday evening. He, now 67, had remained at home, spending the twilight hours with his grandchildren. Immediately after prayers, he withdrew, smiling and waving his hand to them all. When they called him in the morning, there was no response. To this day, his lovely resting place in the Grange cemetery at Edinburgh is reverently visited by thousands of pilgrims who recognise the immensity of the debt that humanity owes him.

F W Boreham

Image: Thomas Chalmers