There was hardly one of the cathedrals that did not in some way excite his admiration. Canterbury and Ely seem to have come in for a special share. Though black and rusty with age, Canterbury, with its tower between two hundred and three hundred feet high, and a fabric studded with ma.s.sy b.u.t.tresses of high-wrought Gothic, was a splendid structure.
"But my admiration, though high, was greatly heightened on seeing the interior, which is the most perfectly beautiful of all I can recollect, consisting as it does of a stately vista of confronting arches and pillars, with an effect greatly enhanced by the contraction of the sides towards the east end, and the dying away of the columnar vista into narrower and narrower recesses." At Ely, "aided by the printed guide, I studied the whole of this elaborate and highly ornamental pile with a particularity and a feeling of satisfaction greater than I had ever before experienced.... Expatiated over this n.o.ble edifice for hours....
Dined with Mr. Evans at four, but made one more round of the cathedral before dinner." On every occasion he was ready for the ascent of the cathedral stair, even where such a climb was unusual; once, he tells us, after the guide had refused to go further, how he came on some jackdaws"
nests on the steps, the owners being very much amazed at the sight of visitors. Nor did one climb in a day always suffice. On 5th August he climbed the tower of Boston Church in the morning, and that of Lincoln in the afternoon-the one 351 steps, the other 336. At this time he was an elderly and not very lightly-built man of fifty-three.
Some gentlemen"s mansions, like Haddon and Chatsworth, were visited with much interest. But Chatsworth, with all its wonders, did not impress him so much as some other castles. What he liked was a grand baronial residence, befitting the time when the owner was really the head of his people, ready for any expedition which the public interest required, and not merely a landlord drawing his rents. Places that had a connection with great men were peculiarly attractive. We have noticed his reverence for Trinity College, Cambridge, as the abode of Isaac Newton.
Kingston, near Canterbury, acquired a cla.s.sic character, because the rector"s wife was great-grandniece of Bishop Butler, and showed him a snuff-box, a memorandum-book, and an annotated Greek Testament, which had belonged to the author of the _a.n.a.logy_.4 In the immediate neighbourhood of Kingston was the church where Richard Hooker ministered. House and church were accordingly visited. And when he came to Sunderland, its great interest was that Dr. Paley had been its rector, and that he saw the study in which he wrote, the room in which he died, and the field around which he took excursions on horseback.
Newton, Butler, and Paley were among the very chief of Chalmers"s instructors and friends.
4 When asked to record in this Testament his opinion of Butler, he declined, because he did not feel worthy of the honour, but, being pressed, he wrote as follows: "Butler is in theology what Bacon is in science. The reigning principle of the latter is that it is not for man to theorise on the works of G.o.d; and of the former that it is not for man to _theorise_ on the ways of G.o.d. Both deferred alike to the certainty of experience, as being paramount to all the possibilities of hypothesis; and he who attentively studies the writings of these great men will find a marvellous concurrence between a sound philosophy and a sound faith. July 3, 1833."
Not less characteristic of the man were the free and friendly relations into which he entered with some of the common people who were thrown in his way. Usually he travelled on the stage-coach, but occasionally he hired a carriage, and not unfrequently a gig, with the driver at his side. He had the feeling that he would enjoy his holiday all the more if it were mingled with a little study. Accordingly we find that, when pa.s.sing slowly in his gig over some monotonous part of the road, he would pull from his pocket a grave book, like Mede"s Latin Lectures on Prophecy, and have a spell of theological reading. But his eye seemed always to be open to any object of interest, whether in the scenery or in the places he pa.s.sed. With his driver he entered into friendly relations, although he sometimes found him a very dolt. At Huddersfield he hired a gig to carry him through some of the remarkable scenes of Derbyshire. The driver was a grave, silent, and simple lad of twenty-two, and he made a practice of taking him with him to the caverns and other places of interest that he visited. At the Peak Cavern he had to change his coat and hat, "and a worse coat or a worse hat I never saw on the back or head of any carter or scavenger in the land, insomuch that I was a spectacle to the children of the village, who shouted and laughed behind me, and even the driver of the gig could not restrain his merriment. I always take him to the sights along with me; first, because I found a great ignorance of Derbyshire curiosities in Huddersfield, and I want to make him more enlightened and enlarged than his fellow-citizens; secondly, because I always feel a strong reflex or secondary enjoyment in the gratification of other people, so that the sympathy of his enjoyment greatly enhances my own; and thirdly, because I get amus.e.m.e.nt from the remarks of his simple wonderment and not very sagacious observations; and it has now pa.s.sed into a standing joke with me, when leaving any of our exhibitions, that "there is no such fine sight to be seen at Huddersfield."" At Chatsworth, the Doctor gave the lad his hat and silver-headed cane to carry; he followed at a respectful distance, while his master went before with a book in his hand, taking notes of whatever was memorable. He found afterwards that his picturesque appearance and unusual employment had excited much speculation among other visitors as to who he was, and that the conclusion to which they all came was that he was a foreign n.o.bleman.
At Matlock he parted with his driver, who, he found, could hardly read; he warned him that many perish of lack of knowledge, and that he must learn to study his Bible, which was able to make him wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
Chalmers did not always show the same patience and consideration for his fellow-travellers. Once, in Yorkshire, waiting at the door of the coach-office, he found himself beside a herd of swine, whose motions and operations he studied with interest; on the top of the coach he found a company much of the same order-"fat and unintelligent, with only pursy and vesicular projections on each side of their chins, and a superabundance of lard in their gills, whose manners well-nigh overset me, overloading our coach with their enormous carca.s.ses, and squeezing themselves, as they ascended from various parts of the road, between pa.s.sengers already in a state of compression, to the gross infraction of all law and justice, and the imminent danger of our necks." It was enough, he said, to make any man a Tory. Naturally, Chalmers had much of the pa.s.sion which bursts out in this bit of sarcasm; but, before the end of his letter, he feels that he has gone too far, his better nature a.s.serts itself, and he gives utterance to a milder spirit. "I feel it wrong to nourish contempt for any human being: "Honour all men," is the precept of Scripture. We should not despise any of those for whom Christ died; and the tendency to do so is one of those temptations to which refinement and knowledge are apt to expose us, and which ought to be resisted." The "old Adam" was not extinct; but at the bottom of his heart Chalmers wished him destroyed.
Even with a London barber he could have a merry time. To be sure the barber began the fun, for he undertook, by clipping out all the white hairs and leaving only the black, to make his client look forty years younger. This greatly tickled the Doctor, and he proceeded to compliment the barber"s profession, inasmuch as, though he heard universal complaints of a bad hay-crop, his haymaking in the metropolis went on pleasantly and prosperously all the year round. On the completion of the job, the man a.s.sured the Doctor that he looked at least thirty years younger. "I told him how delighted my wife would be with the news of this wonderful transformation, and gave him half a crown, observing that it was little enough for having turned me into a youthful Adonis. We parted in a roar of laughter, and great mutual satisfaction with each other."
His tour in France was undertaken in 1838, on occasion of his reading his paper to the French Inst.i.tute, and lasted about a month. He was struck with the airiness and brightness of Paris, and the apparent leisureliness of the people as compared with London; he remarked, too, how inferior the equipages were to those of England. Among other persons of mark whom he met with were Guizot, who told him that the combination of the moral and economical was wholly unknown in France; Mignet, Madame de Stael, and the Duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Broglie, with all of whom, and many of their friends, he had most agreeable intercourse.
The duke had borne a distinguished part in political history; he was a sort of head of the Liberal party, but with the utmost aversion to noise and violence. The d.u.c.h.ess, a daughter of Madame de Stael, was a lady of many gifts and of eminent piety. The company of such persons, aristocratic yet simple, cultured yet humble, and deeply interested in the welfare of the people, was a great enjoyment to Dr. Chalmers. But, vanity of vanities! a few months after his visit, the d.u.c.h.ess was cut off by sudden illness, and the bright and happy home of the family made desolate. Dr. Chalmers expressed his sympathy in a very tender letter to the afflicted duke.
Along with Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, whom he found at Paris, he made a short provincial tour, embracing Evreux, Broglie, Alencon, Lemans, Tours, Orleans, Malesherbes, and Fontainebleau. The scenery pleased him much; it was the kind he liked best, for he did not so much care for the sublimely picturesque as for fertile valleys and well-wooded uplands.
While in France, he was much interested in the law of succession, especially to landed property, and its effects on the condition of the people. He had supposed that, by giving rise to endless subdivision of the land, the law must bring down the people to a very low standard of living. In point of fact, he found it less disadvantageous than he had thought. On one point he was more convinced than ever, that to elevate a country, moral and economical forces must go together.
We must now glance at Chalmers in his family and inner life during this busy and trying period of his life. A man who is forming new acquaintances by the hundred, and is constantly receiving the enthusiastic applause of thousands, is in no small danger of two things-of letting his home-affections become somewhat languid, and of neglecting his inner life. But in the case of Chalmers, we can find no evidence of either of these results. Shortly before his departure from St. Andrews, his domestic affections had been profoundly stirred by the death of his mother; and hardly had his first session in Edinburgh closed, when he was called to follow to the tomb the remains of Alexander, his youngest and favourite brother. His journal for 25th April 1829 has the following entry: "It was a large funeral. The sun shone sweetly on the burying-place. I was like to give way, when, after leaving the grave, I pa.s.sed Mr. Fergus; neither of us could speak. Oh that G.o.d would interpose to perpetuate the impressions of this day! This is the fifth time within these few years that I have been chief mourner, and carried the head of a relative to the grave. But this has been far the heaviest of them all."
Dr. Chalmers himself had an alarming illness in 1834, though, happily, it pa.s.sed without serious results. He had been at a meeting of the Presbytery of Edinburgh, at which he had vehemently opposed the proposal of the Town Council to curtail the number of the city ministers; and he had been greatly excited by the thought that the real welfare of the people should be obstructed and hindered by the very men who professed to be their friends. It was on this occasion that he proclaimed himself a Radical, the only consistent Radical among them. "The dearest object of my earthly existence," he then said, "is the elevation of the common people-humanised by Christianity, and raised by the strength of their moral habits to a higher platform of human nature, and by which they may attain and enjoy the rank and consideration due to enlightened and companionable men. I trust the day is coming when the people will find out who are their best friends, and when the mock patriotism of the present day shall be unmasked by an act of robbery and spoliation on the part of those who would deprive the poor of their best and highest patrimony. The imperishable soul of the poor man is of as much value as the soul of the rich; and I will resist, even to the death, that alienation which goes but to swell the luxury of the higher ranks at the expense of the Christianity of the lower."
Dr. Chalmers was moved in the very depths of his soul-for the proposal of the Town Council was a blow at the ruling idea of his heart-and he delivered himself of these sentiments with such overwhelming energy that his friends at the moment trembled for the consequences. As he was walking homeward after the meeting, on hailing a friend and taking his arm, he suddenly stopped short, and said he felt very strangely. His sensations were giddiness, and a numbness on the right side, as if he were going to fall. It was but too evident that he had sustained a slight attack of paralysis. When medical aid was obtained, it was seen that the muscles on the right side of his face were slightly paralysed, and his speech somewhat affected. Sensation over the right side was very much impaired, but the mind was wholly untouched. Rest and the ordinary treatment soon restored him, and in a short time he was able to resume all his ordinary studies and avocations.
But the event in his personal history that touched him more than anything else during this period was the completion of his sixtieth year, on 17th March 1840. It was a favourite thought that the seventh decade of life ought to be turned into a kind of Sabbath, and spent sabbatically, as if on the sh.o.r.e of the next world, or in the outer courts of the heavenly tabernacle. In the case of his mother the last years of her life had had something of this character, and Dr. Chalmers longed for a like experience. Deep in his soul lay the desire for direct and deliberate communion with G.o.d, for he not only believed in such communion as the greatest privilege of the human spirit, but he knew that it brought to the worshipper an actual communication of divine influence, so far as the creature was capable of receiving the divine.
"Oh that my heart were a fountain of gracious things," he wrote in his diary on his sixtieth birthday, "which might flow out with gracious influence on the heads of my acquaintances, and more particularly of the members of my family!"
So far as the seventh decade had been looked forward to as a time of rest, the hopes of Dr. Chalmers were wholly frustrated. The seven years that yet remained to him, if not the very busiest of his life, were years of peculiar tension, anxiety, and disappointment-things far more trying to the vital energies than work itself. The Church Extension scheme had to be worked out at home under the depressing influence of disappointment of Government help; and then came the crisis of the conflict with the civil courts,-the negotiations with Government, the taunts of Lord Aberdeen, the sickness of hope deferred, and, finally, the shattering of the national church. Though the Disruption brought quieter times, it did not bring the rest and freedom from care for which Chalmers longed; the entire fabric of the Free Church had to be set up, and especially the Sustentation Fund; his longing for rest was but the chase of an _ignis fatuus_ that seemed always to lead him deeper and deeper into the fray.
Notwithstanding all, however, as time advanced, and his fame became more and more established, no change ever took place in the simple and humble demeanour of his spirit. "I never saw a man," said Joseph Gurney, "who appeared to be more dest.i.tute of vanity, or less alive to any wish to be brilliant." In one of his home letters he gives his reason for refusing all requests for his autograph: he could not bear anything that might imply his desire to be considered a great man.
But, though rest and leisure seemed further away than ever, Dr. Chalmers was determined that his seventh decade should not altogether want its sabbatic character. For this end, he resolved to make a far more systematic and earnest study of the Scriptures. In October 1841 he began two series of readings-a daily and a Sabbath portion. To impress the lessons of each pa.s.sage the more on his mind, he made use of his pen, and carefully recorded the first, freshest, and readiest thoughts that the pa.s.sage read suggested to him; not with any view to publication, nor with any idea of composing a commentary, but simply for his own edification. The Sabbath lessons, being a chapter for each Sabbath day from the Old Testament and one from the New, were more elevated and spiritual than the daily; and his remarks were often in the form of a direct address to G.o.d. This practice was continued with undeviating regularity, no matter where he might be, or however much engaged. If the volumes in which he entered his remarks were not at hand, he would write them in shorthand, and carefully extend them afterwards. In some of his meditations he would express in the frankest manner the most hidden thoughts and feelings of his soul. It is remarkable that one who, in his ordinary intercourse with men, seldom unveiled his feelings, and did not appear in any special degree to be under the influence of the unseen, should, nevertheless, in his communings with G.o.d, have shown such frankness and such an intense desire for divine guidance, and grace to enable him to follow it. Dr.
Hanna well remarks, "Behind the outer history of his life there lay that inner spiritual history which made the other what it was. His correspondence, his speeches, his published writings, and his published acts, which furnish such ample materials for unfolding the one history, are absolutely barren as to the other. We know of no other individual of the same force and breadth of character who, in all his converse, public and private, with his fellow-men, spoke so little of himself, or afforded such slender means of information as to his own spiritual condition and progress; and yet it would be difficult to name another of whose deeper religious experience we have so full and so trustworthy a record."
It was the troubles of the church, and the profound responsibility therewith connected, that so powerfully stimulated his desire for fellowship and guidance from on high. Only those who lived at the time can realise the exceeding bitterness of the tone of many opponents, shown both by word of mouth and through the press; and their readiness, if any prominent churchman should make a slip, to pounce upon him and hold him up to the reprobation of the public. It is a mode of treatment that has not yet become obsolete. Some sally of Dr. Chalmers"s had in this way brought a nest of hornets about him-"Yet I am supported in a way that is marvellous under every visitation." Under April 2, 1840, he writes in his journal:-
"An utter prostration of spirit from the speech of Lord Aberdeen."-"April 3. Recovered my spirits, but not my spirituality.
"June 8. Sadly engrossed with the Dean of Faculty"s charge against me.
My G.o.d, uphold me!"-"June 21. Have not yet recovered the shock of Lord Aberdeen"s foul attack on me in the House of Lords. May I live henceforth in the perpetual sunshine of G.o.d"s reconciled countenance!"-"July 5. A letter yesterday from Dr. Gordon, enclosing one from Lord Aberdeen, which will require a strenuous exercise both of wisdom and charity. My G.o.d, guide and govern all my movements!"-"July 17. Hurt by a report in the _Witness_ of Lord Aberdeen"s saying in the House that after having brought the church into jeopardy, I had left them to find their way out of it as they could. Recovered from this.
Desire to roll all over upon G.o.d."
Alongside of these appeals to G.o.d for grace and wisdom in public life, numberless pa.s.sages occur in which one knows not whether to admire more his profound humility or the intensity of his aspirations for a more heavenly condition:-
"1841, May 17. Cannot but remark how I gravitate to unG.o.dliness. Why are my thoughts when alone and not studying so little occupied with G.o.d?
And oh that in company I might appear more for His glory! a.s.sist me to do this in my family, and let me watch my opportunities for doing Christian good.... Let me carry about with me a distinct confidence in forgiveness through the blood of Christ, and with earnest desire of showing forth His praise and learning His doctrine, let me try how this confidence will work in me. The fruits of righteousness so produced will arise from the sense of my own nothingness, and have Christ alone as their origin."-"July 10. Am I not too light-hearted and too luxurious, and altogether too self-indulgent? Certain it is that in and of myself I am altogether vile and worthless, and would need, in dependence on grace alone, to have more of watchfulness unto prayer, more of self-denial, and a far more tender sense of the evil of unG.o.dliness than habitually and practically belong to me."-"July 4.
Never am I in a better frame than when dwelling in simple faith on Christ"s offered righteousness, and making it the object of my acceptation. O Lord, I pray for more and more of the clearness and enlargement of this view; and grant me the spirit of adoption. Oh that I could attain the experience of him who says, "I have believed, therefore have I spoken"!"
One is constantly reminded in reading the private journals of Dr.
Chalmers of the 119th Psalm, with its remarkable combination of profoundest humility and intense and holiest longing for conformity of heart and life to the will of G.o.d. And it does not surprise us to learn that the text of Scripture which he felt to describe his own case most correctly was the verse (20), "My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto Thy judgments at all times."
CHAPTER VI
NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH
1843-1847
Gifted and mighty men though many of the leaders of the Disruption were, Chalmers towered high above them all. With the mult.i.tude his ill.u.s.trious name gave a dazzling _eclat_ to the movement; with the thoughtful the fact that a man of his sagacity, patriotism, and caution, and strong proclivity to an established church, should have thrown himself heart and soul into the non-intrusion cause, created the conviction that it must be supported by very weighty considerations. What but the strongest sense of fatal injury to the church could have induced him, after electrifying London with pleadings for a national establishment of religion, to forsake his own, and become practically a voluntary? No man felt his responsibility for the Disruption more deeply than Chalmers; and no man laboured more a.s.siduously in behalf of the Free.
Church, in the creation of which he had had such a share. To the General a.s.sembly of 1843 he gave in the Reports of the Sustentation and Building Committees, both of which were very encouraging. The months of August and September were spent in a tour to the east and north of Scotland, on behalf of the Sustentation Fund. In October he attended an extra meeting of the General a.s.sembly at Glasgow, opening it with a sermon from Nehemiah xi. 16. In November he had to enter on his duties as Princ.i.p.al and Professor of Divinity in the Free Church Theological Inst.i.tution, now known as the "New College."
It was natural for him to be very much cheered by the numberless letters and visits of congratulation that came to the Free Church from every quarter. When even those who had as voluntaries been his most inveterate opponents in his church endowment effort, came with their warm and most brotherly salutations, a new hope of union sprang up that rekindled hope for the highest welfare of Scotland.
Speaking to the General a.s.sembly held at Glasgow in the autumn of 1843, he said:-
"I confess to you that I was much interested by the arrival, by one post after another, of those addresses and resolutions from various churches, of whose very existence I was not aware till I received their letters.
And I think that every man, whose heart is in the right place, will be delighted with such movements. They are movements quite in my own favourite direction, because one and all of them are movements of convergency; or, in other words, movements which point in the first instance to union, and, as soon as possible and prudent, I trust their landing-place will be incorporation. There is among them one very pleasant address, signed by-I have not had time to count the names,-but I believe some of the youngsters of my family tried a more wholesale method of arriving at a probable estimate of the amount of support thus given to the Free Church; instead of numbering, they measured it, and found it about seventeen yards long.... I have felt exceedingly delighted with these communications. I must say that I consider it as infinitely more characteristic of the religion which we profess-the religion of peace and charity-that instead of each denomination sitting aloft and apart upon its own hill, and frowning upon each other from their respective orbits, they should hold kindly and mutual converse, and see each other eye to eye, while they will discern, to their mutual astonishment, if not how thoroughly, at least how substantially, they are at one. I just conclude with observing that now is the time to rally about the common standard all that is pure and vital in Protestantism; for now it is that we shall have to make head against a new form and revival of Antichrist, whether in the form of Popery-naked Popery, or Popery in disguise, even that Antichrist which threatens to shake a most withering mildew over the whole of Christendom."
The same views were expressed with equal emphasis at a general meeting, held about the same time, in commemora tion of the two hundredth anniversary of the Westminster a.s.sembly. And when the Evangelical Alliance was projected, he wrote a pamphlet in its favour, expressing a strong desire that it should be called the Protestant Alliance, and that it should have for its double object the protection and promotion of the cause of Protestantism; and, in his own familiar and favourite line, the work of a great Home Mission.
Among the eminent strangers who visited Scotland about this time none excited a livelier interest in Dr. Chalmers"s mind than Dr. Merle D"Aubigne, who came in 1845, when in the full flush of his fame as the popular historian of the Reformation.
At the Disruption there was a vast amount of work to be done, for it would have required more than seven hundred churches to accommodate all the congregations that adhered to the Free Church. There were, besides, many cases of peculiar difficulty, caused chiefly by the refusal of proprietors to grant sites for churches and manses on their properties, a refusal which on vast estates like those of the Duke of Sutherland or the Duke of Buccleuch would have amounted to an absolute extinction of the church. Dr. Chalmers, however, under the influence of his strong desire for a sabbatic decennium, kept clear of the ordinary work of the church, excepting the Sustentation Fund and his college lectures. As for the college itself, it was mainly in the hands of Dr. Welsh, until his lamented death in 1845, when Dr. Chalmers felt constrained to become convener of the College Committee. Among other services, Dr. Welsh took in hand to provide for a college building, which it was proposed to erect from the contributions of twenty subscribers of 1000 each. This was a serious undertaking at a time when the wealthier friends of the church had been straining all their energies for the Building, Sustentation, and Mission Funds. But the whole sum was speedily contributed in the way proposed, and though in the end the price of the site and the cost of the building amounted to more than double the sum named at the beginning, the whole was ultimately provided. Such liberality for college purposes was due in a great degree to the profound regard in which Dr. Chalmers was held, and in a somewhat less degree to his colleague Dr. Welsh.
It must be owned that Dr. Chalmers was not satisfied with the success of the Sustentation Fund. It had been adopted not only unanimously but enthusiastically by the whole church, and considering all that had to be done for other purposes, it was marvellous that in the first year it amounted to 68,700, enough to furnish fully 100 to six hundred ministers. That, however, was but two-thirds of the amount which Chalmers had named as the minimum payment to each minister from this fund. And, besides, there were many additional ministers to be provided for, needed by the new adhering congregations; and moreover,-and this was never absent from his thoughts-there was to be considered the vast home-mission work needed in order to realise his lifelong desire to overtake the whole spiritual dest.i.tution of the country. It was the inadequacy of the Sustentation Fund to realise this further object that was the chief cause of his disappointment. Moreover, he found in the machinery of his scheme a serious leak, which bade fair to ruin it.
Every congregation was to receive an equal dividend for its minister from this fund, whatever might be the amount of its own contributions.
In order that this provision might work satisfactorily, it was necessary that congregations should make an equal effort for the fund. But it was soon found that many congregations were steeped in selfishness, and, while drawing their equal dividend, their contributions were but a fraction of what they should have been. Chalmers had calculated on a brotherly spirit and a brotherly conscience, which he now found were often wanting. He became alarmed for the future, and proposed a modification of the original arrangement, to the effect that no congregation should receive from the fund more than its own contribution and a half more. But it was too late. The fund had been const.i.tuted on the footing of an equal dividend, and there was a strong opposition to the change. Chalmers remonstrated by word of mouth and by pamphlets on the "Economics of the Free Church." All that the a.s.sembly would allow was that the new plan should be tried with new congregations. But as the new congregations were generally comparatively poor, the result was something like starvation to their ministers; and, after a short trial, the plan was given up. But no one could deny the serious nature of the evil that Chalmers had pointed out, and for many a long year there were perplexed discussions as to the remedy. Even now, though the leak has been abundantly dealt with, it has not been quite overcome. In his remonstrances, Chalmers showed more vehemence than was perhaps reasonable, considering that it was the defect of his own original scheme that caused the difficulty. But his vehemence was due to the conviction that came home so strongly to him, that the Sustentation Fund could not become the instrument of carrying out his dearly-cherished project,-of recovering the whole waste-places of Scotland, and making them parts of the vineyard of the Lord. The thought saddened him, and it led him to speak more disparagingly of what the Free Church had accomplished, and what the Sustentation Fund had accomplished, than was altogether deserved.
After experiencing three disappointments-from the Whigs, and the Tories, and the Free Church, it might have been supposed that, all eager as he was for rest and quiet, he would now let the matter alone. But no.
There remained one other step. By an _experimentum crucis_, by a demonstration of what, under the divine blessing, could be done by his scheme in as unfavourable a district as could be found, he might yet vindicate it in the eyes of all men; he might leave behind him a monument which would be a perpetual rebuke of the languor and listlessness of the church; a perpetual encouragement to similar undertakings, and a perpetual testimony to the maxim of John Eliot, the apostle of the North American Indians, which he used often to quote, that "prayer and pains can do everything."
This was the origin of the West Port experiment. Writing on 26th July 1844, just fourteen months after the Disruption, to his friend Mr.
Lennox of New York, the munificent founder of the Lennox Library and the Lennox Hospital, New York, between whom and Dr. Chalmers there had sprung up a very cordial friendship, he said: "I have determined to a.s.sume a poor district of two thousand people, and superintend it myself, though it be a work greatly too much for my declining strength and means. Yet such do I hold to be the efficiency of the method with the divine blessing, that perhaps, as the concluding act of my public life, I shall make the effort to exemplify what as yet I have only expounded."
To prepare the way and interest the public in his scheme, he delivered four lectures, in which the methods and advantages of territorial schools and churches were set forth with his usual force. Free Church feeling was running very hieh at the time, and Dr. Chalmers was at great pains to show that his undertaking was dictated solely by a regard to the good of the people. "Who cares," he asked, "about the Free Church, compared with the Christian good of Scotland? Who cares about any church but as an instrument of Christian good? For be a.s.sured that the moral and religious well-being of the population is of infinitely higher importance than the advancement of any sect."