Thomas Chalmers (March 17, 1780 - May 31, 1847), Scottish mathematician and a
leader of the Free Church of Scotland, was born at Anstruther in Fife.
Overview
At the age of eleven Chalmers was entered as a student at St Andrews, where
he devoted himself almost exclusively to mathematics. In January 1799 he was licensed as a
preacher of the Gospel by the St Andrews presbytery. In May 1803, after attending further courses of lectures in Edinburgh, and acting as assistant to the professor of mathematics at St Andrews, he was
ordained as minister of Kilmany, about 9 miles from the university town, where he continued to
lecture. He was highly regarded during his lifetime as a natural theologian.
Mathematics
His mathematical lectures roused so much enthusiasm that they were discontinued by order of the authorities, who disliked the
disturbance of the university routine which they involved. Chalmers then opened mathematical classes on his own account which
attracted many students; at the same time he delivered a course of lectures on chemistry, and
ministered to his parish at Kilmany. In 1805 he became a candidate for the vacant professorship of
mathematics at Edinburgh, but was unsuccessful. In 1808 he published an Inquiry into the Extent
and Stability of National Resources, a contribution to the discussion created by Bonaparte's commercial policy. Domestic bereavements and a severe illness then turned his thoughts
in another direction.
Christianity
At his own request the article on Christianity was assigned to him in Dr Brewster's
Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and in studying the credentials of Christianity he received a new impression of its contents. His
journal and letters show how he was led from a sustained effort to attain the morality of the Gospel to a profound spiritual
revolution. After this his ministry was marked by a zeal which made it famous. The separate publication of his article in the
Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, and contributions to the Edinburgh Christian Instructor and the Eclectic Review,
enhanced his reputation as an author. In 1815 he became minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow, in
spite of determined opposition to him in the town council on the grounds of his evangelical teaching. From Glasgow his repute as
a preacher spread throughout the United Kingdom. A series of sermons on the relation
between the discoveries of astronomy and the Christian revelation was published in January 1817, and within a year nine editions
and 20,000 copies were in circulation. When he visited London Wilberforce wrote, "all
the world is wild about Dr Chalmers."
His Parish
In Glasgow Chalmers made one of his greatest contributions to the life of his own time by his experiments in parochial
organization. His parish contained about 11,000 persons, and of these about one-third were unconnected with any church. He
diagnosed this evil as being due to several shortages: personal influence; spiritual oversight; and the raw number of parochial
organizations, which had not kept pace in the city, as they had done in rural parishes, with the growing population. He declared
that twenty new churches, with parishes, should be erected in Glasgow, and he set to work to revivify, remodel and extend the old
parochial economy of Scotland. The town council consented to build one new church, attaching to it a parish of 10,000 persons,
mostly weavers, labourers and factory workers, and this church was offered to Dr Chalmers that he might have a fair opportunity
of testing his system.
In September 1819 he became minister of the church and parish of St John, where of 2000 families
more than 800 had no connection with any Christian church. He first addressed himself to providing schools for the children. Two
school-houses with four endowed teachers were established, where 700 children were taught at the moderate fees of 2 and 3
shillings per quarter. Between 40 and 50 local Sabbath schools were opened, where more than 1000 children were taught the
elements of secular and religious education. The parish was divided into 25 districts embracing from 60 to 100 families, over
each of which an elder and a deacon were placed, the former taking oversight of their spiritual, the latter of their physical
needs. Chalmers was the mainspring of the whole system, not merely superintending the visitation, but personally visiting all the
families, and holding evening meetings, when he addressed those whom he had visited.
This parochial machinery enabled him to make a singularly successful experiment in dealing with the problem of poverty. At
this time there were not more than 20 parishes north of the Forth and Clyde where there was a compulsory assessment for the poor, but the English method of assessment was rapidly
spreading. Chalmers believed that compulsory assessment actually swelled the evil it was intended to mitigate, and that relief
should instead be raised and administered by voluntary means. His critics replied that this was impossible in large cities. When
he undertook the management of the parish of St John's, the poor of the parish cost the city £1400 per annum, and in four years,
by the adoption of his method, the pauper expenditure was reduced to £280 per annum. The investigation of all new applications
for relief was committed to the deacon of the district, and every effort was made to enable the poor to help themselves. When
once the system was in operation it was found that a deacon, by spending an hour a week among the families committed to his
charge, could keep himself acquainted with their character and condition.
Moral Philosophy
In 1823, after eight years of work at high pressure, he was glad to accept the chair of moral
philosophy at St Andrews University, the seventh academic offer made to him
during his eight years in Glasgow. In his lectures he excluded mental philosophy and included the whole sphere of moral
obligation, dealing with man's duty to God and to his fellow-men in the light of Christian teaching. Many of his lectures are
printed in the first and second volumes of his published works. In the field of ethics he made
contributions in regard to the place and functions of volition and attention, the separate and underived character of the moral
sentiments, and the distinction between the virtues of perfect and imperfect obligation. His lectures kindled the religious
spirit among his students, and led some of them to devote themselves to missionary effort. In November 1828 he was transferred to the chair of theology in Edinburgh. He then introduced the practice of following the
lecture with a viva voce examination on what had been delivered. He also introduced text-books, and came into stimulating
contact with his people; perhaps no one has ever succeeded as he did by the use of these methods in communicating intellectual,
moral and religious impulse to so many students.
In 1841 the movement which ended in the Disruption
was rapidly culminating, and Dr Chalmers found himself at the head of the party which stood for the principle that no minister
shall be intruded into any parish contrary to the will of the congregation. Cases of conflict between the church and the civil
power arose in Auchterarder, Dunkeld and Marnoch, and when the courts made it clear that the church, in their opinion, held its
temporalities on condition of rendering such obedience as the courts required, the church appealed to the government for relief.
In January 1843 the government put a final and peremptory negative on the church's claims for spiritual independence.
On May 18, 1843, 470 clergymen withdrew from the general
assembly and constituted themselves the Free Church of Scotland,
with Dr Chalmers as moderator. He had prepared a sustentation fund scheme for the support of the seceding ministers, and this was
at once put into successful operation. 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.
(reference from The Popular Encyclopedia, published by Blackie & Son, 1883.)
Dr Chalmers's action throughout the Free Church controversy was
so consistent in its application of Christian principle and so free from personal or party animus, that his writings are a
valuable source for argument and illustration on the question of Establishment. "I have no veneration", he said to the royal
commissioners in St Andrews, before either the voluntary or the non-intrusive controversies had arisen, "for the Church of
Scotland qua an establishment, but I have the utmost veneration for it qua an instrument of Christian good." He was
transparent in character, chivalrous, kindly, firm, eloquent and sagacious; his purity of motive and unselfishness commanded
absolute confidence; he had originality and initiative in dealing with new and difficult circumstances, and great aptitude for
business details.
During a life of incessant activity Chalmers scarcely ever allowed a day to pass without its modicum of composition; at the
most unseasonable times, and in the most unlikely places, he would occupy himself with literary work. His writings occupy more
than 30 volumes. He would have stood higher as an author had he written less, or had he indulged less in that practice of
reiteration into which he was constantly betrayed by his anxiety to impress his ideas upon others. As a political economist he
was the first to unfold the connection that subsists between the degree of the fertility of the soil and the social condition of
a community, the rapid manner in which capital is reproduced (see Mill's Political
Economy, i. 94), and the general doctrine of a limit to all the modes by which national wealth may accumulate. He was the
first also to advance that argument in favour of religious establishments which meets upon its own ground the doctrine of
Adam Smith, that religion like other things should be left to the operation of the natural
law of supply and demand.
See also
Published works
His academic years were prolific also in literature of various kinds. In 1826 he published a third volume of the Christian and
Civic Economy of Large Towns, a continuation of work begun at St Johns, Glasgow. In 1832 he published a Political Economy, the
chief purpose of which was to enforce the truth that the right economic condition of the masses is dependent on their right moral
condition, that character is the parent of comfort, not vice versa. In 1834 Dr Chalmers was elected
fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in the same year he became
corresponding member of the Institute of France; in 1835 Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L. In 1834 he became leader of
the evangelical section of the Scottish Church in the General Assembly. He was appointed chairman of a committee for church
extension, and in that capacity made a tour through a large part of Scotland, addressing presbyteries and holding public
meetings. He also issued numerous appeals, with the result that in 1841, when he resigned his office as convener of the church
extension committee, he was able to announce that in seven years upwards of 300,000 had been contributed, and 220 new churches
had been built. His efforts to induce the Whig government to assist in this effort
were unsuccessful.
Natural theology
Chalmers' Bridgewater Treatise, in the series On the Power, Wisdom and
Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man,
appeared in two volumes 1833 and went through 6 editions. As noted by Robert M.
Young, these books effectively represent an encyclopedia of pre-evolutionary natural history, commissioned and published
whilst Charles Darwin was on board The
Beagle.
In the department of natural theology and the Christian evidences he ably advocated
that method of reconciling the Mosaic narrative with the indefinite antiquity of the globe which William Buckland (17841856)
advanced in his Bridgewater Treatises, and which Dr. Chalmers had previously communicated to him. His refutation of
David Hume's objection to the truth of miracles is perhaps his intellectual chef d'oeuvre.
The distinction between the laws and dispositions of matter, as between the ethics and objects of theology, he was the first to
indicate and enforce, and he laid great emphasis on the superior authority as witnesses for the truth of Revelation of the
Scriptural as compared with the Extra-Scriptural writers, and of the Christian as compared with the non-Christian testimonies. In
his Institutes of Theology, no material modification is attempted on the doctrines of Calvinism, which he received with all
simplicity of faith as revealed in the Divine word, and defended as in harmony with the most profound philosophy of human nature
and of the Divine providence.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
References
Among the best recent biographical accounts and academic studies of the life and works of Thomas Chalmers are those of
John Roxborogh, Alexander Campbell
Cheyne, Friedhelm Voges and S. J. Brown.
See also
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