The district selected was of the worst description-a fourth part of the whole population being paupers, and another fourth street beggars, thieves, and prost.i.tutes. The population amounted to upwards of 400 families, of whom 300 had no connection with any church. Of 411 children of school age, 290 were growing up without any education. The plan of Dr. Chalmers was to divide the whole territory into twenty districts, containing each about twenty families. To each district a visitor was appointed, whose duty was to visit each family once a week, under directions printed by Dr. Chalmers to show the specific object of the visitation. A school was provided, and the visitors were instructed, in the first instance, to show an active interest in the young, and exhort the parents to send their children to the school. A small fee was exacted, on the principle that what was paid for would be more valued, and that a more regular attendance would be secured.5 The visitors were instructed to meet with Dr. Chalmers every Sat.u.r.day evening, the first meeting taking place on 27th July 1844. On the 6th November, Dr. Chalmers held his first meeting with the people, telling them all he would do for them, and all that they were expected to do for themselves. On 11th November, when the school was opened, there were 64 scholars; in the course of the year there were 250. On the 22nd December, public worship was commenced by Dr. Chalmers in a tan-loft.
The attendance was not encouraging after all the visiting that had been going on-only about a dozen adults, and these mostly old women. In April 1845, the services of the Rev. W. Tasker were secured as missionary-minister, and before the end of the year the nucleus of a fair congregation had been formed. A library, a savings-bank, a washing-house, and a female industrial school were added to the parochial equipments. Dr. Chalmers preached and worshipped often in the loft, met with the visitors, and addressed the people as new features were added to the scheme. "When he was a hearer merely," says Mr.
Dodds, "one would see him near the pulpit, in a crowd of deaf old women, who were meanly clothed, but were following the services with unflagging attention and interest. His eye was upon every one of them, to antic.i.p.ate their wishes and difficulties. He would help one old woman to find out the text; he would take hold of the psalm-book of another, hand to hand, and join her in the song of praise. Any one looking at him could see that he was in a state of supreme enjoyment." And most earnestly did he pray for a blessing on the work, and that it might be the forerunner of many such undertakings.
5 He used to speak with great delight of a poor woman, who told him that by going out at seven in the morning she earned enough, by raking among the ashes, to pay for the schooling of her eldest daughter, but wished the second also to attend. His first impulse was to offer to pay for her, but that, he feared, would hurt her independence; so he said: "What would you say to rise at six in the morning and earn enough to pay for her too?" On the following Sat.u.r.day she came to tell him she had done it. "I could have stood before her," he said, "with cap in hand, for in truth she was above myself."
"We would give Thee no rest, O G.o.d, until Thou hast opened the window of heaven and caused righteousness to flow down that street like a mighty river." "Let such a memorial of Christian philanthropy be set up in that place as to be a praise and an example both in the city of our habitation and in other cities of the land." "Reveal to me, O G.o.d, the right tactics, the right way and method of proceeding in the management of the affairs of the West Port. Oh that I were enabled to pull down the strongholds of sin and of Satan which are there!" "O my G.o.d, give me the power of ordering matters aright in the West Port.... And more especially, O G.o.d, let me understand Thy will in regard to the right place and performances of a female agency." "Draw close the affections and affinity between Mr. Tasker and the families of the West Port....
Do Thou guide and encourage him, O Lord.... Oh may he not only be himself saved, but may he be the instrument of salvation to many; and may both he and I be carried in safety, and at length with triumph, to that prosperous termination for which we are jointly labouring!"
We have no s.p.a.ce to dwell further on the history of the West Port. The sweep of the experiment was complete. On 19th February 1847 a new church was opened; and on the 25th April, one month before his death, Dr.
Chalmers administered the Lord"s Supper to the congregation. On that occasion he said to Mr. Tasker, "I have got now the desire of my heart; G.o.d has indeed answered my prayer, and I could now lay down my head in peace and die." And he wrote to Mr. Lennox, "I wish to communicate what to me is the most joyful event of my life. I have been intent for thirty years on the completion of a territorial experiment, and I have now to bless G.o.d for the consummation of it."
It may be well to add that under Mr. Tasker and his successors the cause has prospered greatly. After being enlarged twice, the original church still proved too small, and a new and s.p.a.cious building was erected a little way off. The congregation now numbers upwards of 1300 communicants. Of course it is not wholly territorial; people that have become attached to a church cannot be driven out of it when they leave the neighbourhood; but the old building is still retained as a mission church, and the territorial work continues. In the Free Church in Edinburgh the experiment was repeated many times, new territorial churches in poor and needy districts having been erected at Holyrood, Pleasance, Back of Canongate (Moray), Cowgate, Cowgate Head, and Fountainbridge. In Glasgow there have been many more, and several in the other large towns of Scotland. The Established Church has striven with great success to have its extension churches endowed, thereby carrying into effect the original idea of Chalmers. And yet, in spite of all this, the aim of Chalmers is as far from being realised as ever.
With the increasing population, the number of persons, in our large towns especially, who have no connection with any church is larger than in Chalmers"s time. And, alas! the wave of scepticism and of secularism that is pa.s.sing over us intensifies the evil and magnifies the difficulty.
In connection with his public labours, it only remains for us to advert to his work as professor of theology during the last few years of his life. It had long been his desire to reduce his lectures to a form that would convey the fruits of his maturest reflections, both on the credentials and contents of the Christian revelation. When he began his _Horae Biblicae Quotidianae_ and _Sabbaticae_, he began at the same time to condense and reconstruct his lectures; the two works advanced _pari pa.s.su_; the devout study of the Scriptures went hand in hand with the endeavour, in the spirit of the Baconian philosophy, to present the substance of their contents. Hence arose his _Inst.i.tutes of Theology_-a work which has received far too little attention since German theology began to supersede our own, but which may one day, in some future age, be valued as it should.
But the great merit of Chalmers as a professor lay in the enthusiasm with which he inspired his students. It would have been hard indeed for any conscientious youth to be under him and not feel his soul quickened, at least occasionally, to a sublime ardour, and fired with a new ambition. So wonderful was his influence, that at the Disruption nine-tenths of those who pa.s.sed through his cla.s.ses stood by his side.
The present writer, though he spent but one session under him before the Disruption, can bear testimony, not only to the intellectual and spiritual impulse he gave, but to the subtle sympathy which drew his students to share his church views, though he never alluded to them in the cla.s.s, and to the enthusiasm with which they listened to him in the General a.s.sembly. He well knew that in the Free Church the ma.s.s of the ministers would be but poorly paid, and that there was all the greater reason why they should be well equipped by superior scholarship, and especially by superior piety, for their office. And in this he was highly successful. After three sessions in the Free Church College, he could testify that the students of his last session stood the highest of any he had known, not only in general proficiency and scholarship, but also in their sense of divine things, and devotedness in heart and spirit to the great objects of the Christian ministry. In his later years, it was his practice to invite his students to private interviews for spiritual conversation and prayer.
On 4th June 1846, he laid the foundation-stone of the Free Church College. It had been considered a great stroke of policy that the most commanding site in the city had been secured for the building. The writer of this sketch, who was present on the occasion, remembers his grand appearance after the ceremony, when his n.o.ble head appeared above a confused pile of stones and timbers; and, producing a sc.r.a.p of paper covered with shorthand hieroglyphics, he apologised, with a broad smile, for taking to "the paper," seeing it was but a sc.r.a.p, whereas if he were to speak extempore, his remarks might become an "interminable rigmarole." Not a little of the short speech was addressed to the workmen engaged in the building. That dear object of his life, to raise the working population to a higher level of life in the best sense of the word, came back on him in all its strength. Within the walls to be erected, there would be, he said, no false theories of equality taught or countenanced; but there was one equality between man and man that would be strenuously enforced,-the essential equality of human souls; it would be taught that, in the high count and reckoning of eternity, the soul of the poorest of nature"s children, the raggedest boy that ran along the pavement, was of like estimation in the eye of Heaven with the greatest and n.o.blest of the land. The young men in that college would ever be taught that, though their education might fit them for the company of princes and peers, it would be their peculiar glory to be visitants of the poor man"s humble cottage, and to pray by the poor man"s dying bed. "Heaven grant that the platform of humble life may be raised immeasurably higher than at present, and through the whole extent of it-that the mighty host who swarm upon its surface, brought under the elevating power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and so rescued from grovelling ignorance and loathsome dissipation, may rise to a full equality with ourselves in all that is characteristic of humanity, and take their place, along with us, side by side, on the footing of kindred and companionable men." He then made a graceful allusion to the young queen, who had mercifully escaped one of those horrible attempts on her life that occurred in the earlier part of her reign; prayed that she might long continue to adorn her exalted position, and concluded by calling for three cheers on her behalf. Thus the college of the Free Church was founded on a cordial recognition of both ends of the social scale: with benevolent wishes for the working mult.i.tude on the one hand, and a cordial and loyal tribute to the Sovereign on the other.
The last of the public services rendered by Dr. Chalmers to the Free Church consisted of a paper on the education question, and of his evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons on the refusal of sites. It was about the time when the question of national education was coming full into the arena of discussion; and, at the request of Mr.
Fox Maule, afterwards Earl of Dalhousie, Chalmers, who had given much attention to the subject, recorded his views in a short paper. The difficulty was about the introduction of religion. Dr. Chalmers"s view was substantially that which was subsequently acted upon: he advised that there should be no legislative enactment on the subject of religion, but that the regulation of this should be left to the governing bodies of the several schools. Not that religion was unimportant, but the very reverse; but because the Christian church was so divided that it could be far better seen to by the local managers.
To this he added a conscience clause; the result being substantially the system which prevails in Scotland at the present day. He took occasion to add, "We despair of any good being done in the way of Christianising our population but through the medium of a government themselves Christian, and endowing the true religion, which I hold to be their imperative duty, not because it is the religion of the many, but because it is true."
It was in the last month of his life that he set out for London, to meet the Site Committee. On the 9th May 1847 he preached in Marylebone Presbyterian Church, "with more comfort than I ever did in London."
After replying to the questions put by the committee through Mr. Maule, he encountered an onslaught from Sir James Graham, who came armed with a bundle of papers containing speeches, etc., of Chalmers, by means of which he thought to entangle him. After his long examination before Sir James appeared, Chalmers was somewhat exhausted, but he roused himself, and met him in the spirit of a practised warrior. The only point of importance raised by Sir James arose out of the London lectures, in which he had spoken very favourably of the Church of England. "I told him that I did not advocate the Church of England; that I felt more hopeful of it then than now, when like to be overrun by Puseyism; that even then I denounced its figment of an Apostolical succession, and, without directly attacking its Erastianism, spoke of our own independence, and in terms which provoked the jealousy of English churchmen," etc. etc. But a great part of the examination concerned the voting of women at the election of office-bearers and the like; a paltry question, as Dr. Chalmers called it, having no sort of reasonable connection with the refusal of sites. "We concluded," Dr. Chalmers wrote to his wife, "in a state of great exhaustion, yet with an erect demeanour and visage unabashed."
We conclude with a glimpse of his more private life in the few years preceding his death. Unwearied as he ever was in his endeavour to cultivate the affections of his children, and impress them with the most serious responsibilities of life, his interest in them seems only to have deepened as they grew up. He began a series of monthly letters to be addressed to each in succession, and carried it on for a considerable time. Two of his six daughters were married, but they were not excluded from the privilege of his fatherly correspondence. And by and by, a grandson, Thomas Chalmers Hanna, was old enough to receive letters fitted to interest him, and draw his affections to so loving a grandfather. It is strange, indeed, that any biographer of Chalmers should have represented him (as Mrs. Oliphant has done) as not showing social affection. "My ever dear Anne," "My dearest Eliza," "My dearest Grace," were his ordinary salutations, and the spirit of the letters corresponded to the address. Very touching is his letter to his eldest daughter on the death of a beloved infant. As for his grandson, he just revels in affection. "Tell Tommy how much I love him, and pray for his being good." On occasion of his last visit to London, he visited the widow of his brother James, and prayed with her; a likeness of his brother was shown him, and impressed him so much that it haunted him for days. This was the brother that had held himself so much aloof both from him and all the family.
In his last visit to his native Anstruther and its neighbourhood, in 1845, his unchanged and unchangeable affection for the scenes and friends of his youth showed a marvellous freshness and tenacity. Many are the stories of his pleasure in recalling memorials of the past. He hunted up an old schoolfellow, a tailor, and told him that he had been the first to acquaint him with the form of the earth. He congratulated another schoolfellow, who, like himself, had suffered from smallpox, that while other people"s faces were "aye getting the waur, theirs were always getting the better o" the wear!" He sought out the place where Lizzie Green"s water-bucket used to stand, where he and his heated playfellows had often been allowed very kindly to slake their thirst.
But most pathetic was his visit to the house of Barnsmuir. When he was some twelve or fourteen years old, the eldest daughter of that house had been in the habit of riding into Anstruther on a little pony, and Chalmers had conceived a deep and tender attachment to her, like that of Lord Byron for his Mary Duff. The young lady was married while he was at college, and she had died many years before this visit. At his special request her youngest sister met him at Barnsmuir. In the house, the remembrance of that early love came upon him with singular power; he asked respectfully about her life and death, and learned with deep emotion that she had died in the full Christian hope, and that some of his letters to her sister had soothed and comforted her. He then asked if there were any portrait of her, and being shown a profile, gazed on it with great earnestness, fixed his own card on the back of it, and, gazing on it again, gave expression to his strong affection, and burst into a flood of tears. It was a touching proof, as his biographer has said, that he was as much distinguished for the tenderness and tenacity of his attachments as for the brilliance of his gifts.
Dr. Chalmers was ever very simple, and yet in some respects singular, in his habits of life. Abstemious he was to a degree; ever watchful lest he should at any time be in a condition of body that would interfere with the activity of his intellectual and spiritual nature; at times, at least, practising total abstinence, and always great moderation in both food and drink. It was his usual practice to spend the early part of the day in composition and study; he so carefully excogitated his subjects that he was ever ready to use his pen, never obliged to loiter in order to form his plan or shape his thought, but able to write rapidly as soon as the pen was in his hand, and seldom or never correcting. His handwriting was anything but elegant, yet very characteristic; the upright letters, the firmness of each stroke, and the continuity of the whole indicating decision, force, and flow. So exact was his view, that he could calculate for weeks and months beforehand the rate of his progress and the day when each piece of writing would be finished. His remarkable calculating or counting faculty was brought into operation in what we should call fantastic ways. In stropping his razor, he would begin with two strokes, next day three, and so on till he reached a maximum number; then he would reverse the process and gradually diminish till he came back to two. In walking he put his staff to the ground regularly at each fourth step; counting, if he chose, the number of his steps, and able to keep count even if he should meet a friend and walk with him in animated conversation. When he lived in Inverleith Row he delighted to find new routes to the university, and ascertain and record their several lengths. One day, as he told a favourite student, he had been trying to find a near road between Comely Bank and Inverleith Row, but got entangled, as he put it in his original way, "in the accessories of a farmhouse, where I was set upon by a mastiff, and so obliged to turn back." We have noted his delight in ascending cathedral towers, and his invariable habit of counting the steps. At any famous stream he would lap the water, thus making the connection more intimate between the stream and himself. His love of order was remarkable, though one might not have supposed it from his general manner. It was through the power of orderliness that he was able to achieve all he did within the compa.s.s of his life. By varying his employments,-now writing, now visiting or attending meetings, now travelling, now preaching or lecturing, now entertaining friends, now reading and pondering, he kept himself comparatively fresh, and seemed at all times ready for new work. "_Nulla dies sine linea_" might have been his motto, had it not been that every day had half a dozen linea in place of one.
His reading, after he became a professor, was considerable, partly in theological books, partly in books of practical religion, and to a small extent in general literature. So little direct sign of anything Shakespearean is there in his writings that it rather surprises us to find him recording towards the end of his life that he had completed an entire perusal of the great dramatist, as well as of Milton and Gibbon.
He considered Shakespeare "an intellectual miracle, the greatest man that ever lived." His favourite piece was _Midsummer Night"s Dream_, showing, as Dr. Peter Bayne has remarked, "that after all the struggles and worries of his life, he still walked in the aerial gaiety, the many-tinted, summerlike beauty, the genial though keen sagacity of that poem. It is a very remarkable circ.u.mstance, telling of a gentleness of nature, a kind, gleesome humour, an exuberant, unstrained force and freshness of intellect, rarely seen among theologians."
In the prosecution of his incessant labours, he was no doubt considerably helped by his sense of humour. He knew well the relaxation and the refreshment derived from a good laugh. Many a humorous story he used to tell. One of his favourite stories referred to a boor who was getting married, but was such a dolt that he could not give an answer to the questions of the minister. One of the man"s neighbours who was present, chagrined at such want of manners, and desiring to give the fellow a needed lesson in etiquette, gave him a slap on the back, and said, "Ye brute, can you no" boo to the minister?" And it mattered not if the story told against himself. When the astronomical discourses were delivered, Dr. Chalmers came on an honest woman who had been hearing one of them, and was curious to know what she could make of it.
"Weel, sir," said the woman, "I canna say that I understood ye a"thegether, but, O sir, there was something unco suitable and satisfyin" in your psalms!"
During his visit to London in connection with the Site Committee in May 1847, he had greatly enjoyed his intercourse with many friends-among them Isaac Taylor, James Hamilton, Baptist Noel, Mr. Morell, and Thomas Carlyle. He described Carlyle as "a strong-featured man, and of strong sense. We were most cordial and coalescing, and he very complimentary and pleasant; but his talk was not at all Carlylish; much rather the plain and ordinary conversation of good, ordinary common-sense, with a deal of hearty laughing on both sides." Chalmers greatly lamented the alienation which he saw between the churches and the body of literary and scientific men. He enlarged on "localism" and the West Port; nothing was too hard for "localism." Carlyle remarked afterwards to a friend, "What a wonderful old man Chalmers is! or, rather, he has all the buoyancy of youth. When so many of us are wringing our hands in hopeless despair over the vileness and wretchedness of the large towns, there goes the old man, shovel in hand, down into the dirtiest puddles of the West Port of Edinburgh, cleans them out, and fills the sewers with living waters. It is a beautiful sight."
After a flying visit to Brighton, where he preached for one of his former students, he proceeded to Gloucestershire, and spent a happy time with his ever dear sister Jane. On Sunday he preached his last sermon in the Independent chapel of the Rev. Mr. Dove, from the text Isaiah xxvii. 4, 5. A brief visit was paid at Darlington at the house of Mr.
and Mrs. Backhouse, "a most delicious abode." He was profoundly interested in Mrs. Backhouse"s account of the heavenly state of mind of her father for some time before his death; while Mrs. Backhouse was herself deeply struck with the very same spirit in him. During this visit the whole of his journal letters had been addressed to his wife; on Thursday (the 27th) he wrote to her, "This is my last sheet.
To-morrow evening I expect to see you by the favour of Him whose right hand preserves us continually, and for whose grace on us all I ever pray.-I ever am, my dearest Grace, yours most affectionately, Thomas Chalmers."
He arrived at his house in Morningside on the Friday evening (2 8th May), apparently in his usual health and strength. On the following morning, at breakfast, his conversation was as lively and vigorous as ever. The forenoon of the Sat.u.r.day was occupied in preparing the College Report, which he was to give in on Monday to the General a.s.sembly. On the Sabbath morning he conversed freely with the Rev. Mr.
Gemmel, who was staying at his house; afterwards with Dr. Cunningham; then attended afternoon service in Morningside Free Church, and on his way home called on Mrs. Coutts, an old Fifeshire friend, of high Christian character. Part of the evening was spent in writing to his sister, Mrs. Morton, and in conversation with Mr. Gemmel. His family never saw him more genial and happy. After worship, he bade his family remember that they must be early to-morrow; then he waved his hand and said, "A general good-night."
On the following morning he was found dead in bed. It seemed likely, from the state of the body, that his spirit had departed soon after he lay down. There was not the slightest trace of struggle, either on the face or in the att.i.tude of the body. Never did death give a lighter touch.
In a funeral sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Alexander, the mode of his departure was beautifully idealised. He recalled a pa.s.sage in one of Dr. Chalmers"s sermons, in which he fancies a man "standing on the margin of this green world," and feeling himself very closely bound to "the region of sense, and of life, and of society"; but suddenly arrested by seeing some happy island of the blest floating past, "in the light of its surpa.s.sing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody, and a purer beauty resting on every field": discerning also in its inhabitants "a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence that put a moral gladness into every bosom, and united the whole society in rejoicing sympathy with each other, and with the beneficent Father of them all"; observing, moreover, signals of welcome for himself, and an open pathway of communication to the island; insomuch that he is captivated by the sight; earth becomes a wilderness, and "the land of invitation" attracts him with irresistible power.
"With this grand pa.s.sage in my mind," said Dr. Lindsay Alexander," I could not but fancy him who uttered it, as realising at the moment of his departure some of the features of the case here supposed. I pictured to myself how, when the premonitory touch of the Destroyer broke his slumbers, he might imagine for a moment that he had been summoned to his appointed work, and how, casting his eye upon the materials he had prepared, he might begin to turn, with no reluctant emotion, his thoughts upon the duties with which he was charged; but in an instant another scene burst upon his view; a brighter radiance than that of the morning sun fell upon his brow; sweeter voices than those of wife or child broke upon his ear; a grander career of service than any earth could furnish stretched before him; the hand of One more glorious far than any child of man hung out to him the signals of welcome; and, as he gazed, he acknowledged the superior claims of that brighter world, and laid himself meekly down, and so his spirit pa.s.sed rejoicingly away, leaving his earthly tabernacle with a smile upon the lips, and not one shade of suffering on the brow."
On that Monday morning, the General a.s.sembly met to receive his College Report. When the sad news came, the shock was so overwhelming that it would have been impossible to look at business, even if respect for his memory had not demanded an adjournment. As men recovered somewhat from the first shock, the sense of bereavement, of impoverishment, of widowhood, grew the greater. There were many men of extraordinary gifts in that a.s.sembly, but who was there to be named with him?
An unprecedented concourse of mourners, much greater than had ever been seen at an Edinburgh funeral, followed his body to the grave. And from every pulpit, and from other quarters innumerable, the most respectful and cordial tributes were paid to his memory. It was felt that since the days of Knox no such man had been known in the Scottish church. His greatness was shown alike by what he was and what he had done. He seemed to combine the orator and the statesman, the ecclesiastic and the patriot, the philosopher and the poet, the scientist and the saint. No man had ever been so run after as a pulpit orator. No man of his day had ever conceived so great undertakings or done so much to realise them. His two hundred churches astonished every one; his Sustentation Fund astonished still more. With theology in the forefront, his horizon included philosophy, physical science, social science, political economy, and literature; and for each and all of these he found a place and a use in the Kingdom of G.o.d. And with all his greatness he was simple as a child. Like his Master, "he made himself of no reputation"-never sought great things for himself. The world, and even the church, hardly knew how near he lived to G.o.d-how much he had of the saint. He was known to be very affable and affectionate, but the depth and tenderness of his affection, especially for his own family, were hardly suspected. When it was announced that, with all his gifts and graces, he had pa.s.sed from among his brethren, it seemed as if the brightest star in the firmament had ceased to shine.
It is an interesting question-if Chalmers had been alive at the present day, what would he have thought of the position of the different branches of the Scottish church, and what counsel would he have given to them on the subject of union?
To answer these questions we must bear two things in mind: first, that he held the recent treatment of the church by the civil courts, and virtually by the state itself, to be destructive of her liberty and her life, insomuch that it had become an absolute necessity to abandon connection with the state; but, second, that he held the state bound to contribute to the support of the church, and the Free Church bound to return to her old connection, provided the liberty should be restored and practically secured of which she had been unrighteously deprived.
Would he, then, have held that liberty to be now restored, and the way to an honourable, safe, and beneficial alliance reopened? We doubt it.
He would certainly have seen that, in point of fact, the Established Church now enjoys a degree of liberty that enables her to discharge the ordinary functions of a Christian church without obstruction, and in particular to continue with great success that very enterprise of church extension for which he thought that she would be able to do nothing.
But he could not have failed to see that this liberty was an indirect fruit of the Disruption, and that it was quietly conceded to the Established Church in order that she might stand practically on the same platform of liberty with the nonconformist churches, and especially her great rival the Free Church. He would have found no concession of principle, no acknowledgment by the state or by the civil courts of an essential difference between a Christian church and a civil corporation, and no acknowledgment that the church, as the creation of Christ, enjoyed privileges from Him independent of any state. He would have found no repudiation of the dictum of the then Lord President that the Established Church had no jurisdiction whatever in the country except what had been conferred by the state; and he would have found no security that if a new collision should occur between church and state, between the worldly and the spiritual power, the state would repudiate her old principles and policy.
Further, the contention of Chalmers in his London lectures and in his latest deliverance (see p. 148) always was, that the state ought to support religion, not merely because people wished it, but because the religion was true. Would he, then, have found in the members of the present Parliament any such value for revealed truth, as such, as would have given him confidence in them as its guardians? A Parliament that numbered Agnostics, Jews, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and what not among its members-how could such a body be a nursing-father or a nursing-mother to the Christian church? Such a Parliament could not safely be intrusted with its guardianship. It was a very different condition of things when the Scottish church allied itself to the Scottish Parliament, all or nearly all being members of the church. Nor could he have found any cause for believing that at any future time, within reasonable distance, the nursing of the church could be safely committed to parliamentary hands.
But what then? There were three great Presbyterian churches in Scotland, with much of their resources wasted through division, but capable, by reasonable arrangements, of so combining their forces that his grand object-the bringing of all Scotland under the influence of Christian teaching-might at the least be greatly advanced. We can hardly conceive of any other advice that Chalmers would have given than that the vinculum of state-connection should be severed, and all the three churches should unite, and rouse themselves for one great, sustained, imperial effort to turn the country into the garden of the Lord. But what of the endowments? It is just as difficult for us to conceive that he would have been in favour of alienating them to secular purposes. No, he would have said, that is not necessary, and should not be; keep them for their original purpose, and place them under some public management, so that every congregation of the united body may have a share of them, if it please. This was certainly his feeling in a somewhat parallel case. In 1833, when the Irish Church Reform Bill was under discussion, Chalmers wrote to his sister, Mrs. Morton, "I am relieved by the bill, the only flaw in it (although that may be one of deadly mischief) being the secularisation of the sum which they expect from the sale of church lands."6 We can readily conceive how the great soul of Chalmers would have expanded once more, and his face beamed as the hope arose anew, that even yet his beloved country might realise his magnificent ideal, and, by G.o.d"s blessing on the labours of a united church, its waste and desolate places might yet blossom as the rose.
6 _Correspondence of Dr. Chalmers_, p. 216.
No doubt, Chalmers died a disappointed man, so far as his great scheme for the good of his country was concerned. He failed, and yet he did not fail.
"If he strained too wide, It was not to take honour, but give help; The gesture was heroic. If his hand Accomplished nothing-(well, it is not proved) That empty hand thrown impotently out Were sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven Than many a hand that reaped a harvest in, And keeps the scythe glow on it."
We love the man for his n.o.ble aims and heroic efforts; and our love and admiration are only touched with a tenderer feeling, in that, when he failed, he did not abate one jot of heart or hope for his church and country, but left behind him his West Port experiment as a monument of what was possible, and an encouragement to all future generations to continue to cherish what had proved for him-a hope unfulfilled.