Thomas Chalmers Part 4

Meanwhile, another cla.s.s of young persons engaged his attention, and the Sabbath school was handed over to others. It had been suggested to him that great good would result from a students' cla.s.s, from gathering together, on Tuesday evenings, such students as desired to receive from him religious instruction of the same kind as they had been accustomed to receive in their fathers' houses before they came to college. The first winter of this meeting, five students came for the purpose.

Chalmers instructed them and dealt with them, gave them books for Sabbath reading, examining them as to their contents, and at the same time taking a book of his own, _Scripture References_, as a kind of doctrinal text-book of his expositions and examinations. Next year, the number was about a dozen. In the third year, the number became so great that his dining-room was crowded with students. One of them remarked afterwards that they learned more of Christian ethics at these meetings than from all his cla.s.s-room lectures on moral philosophy.

In some instances, the fruit of these meetings was very remarkable.

According to the testimony of Dr. Duff, who was one of Chalmers's young men, the students of St. Andrews, previous to his coming, were a G.o.dless lot. To make a profession of piety was to incur universal derision. Nor were the divinity students much better; some of them, indeed, were more notorious than other students for impiety, immorality, and riotous revellings. Dr. Chalmers was the instrument of a great revival. In 1823-24, some of the students formed themselves into a missionary society, which held meetings next session in the room of a remarkable man, John Urquhart, one of those saintly youths whose early death puts an end to the boundless promise of their student careers. Dr. Chalmers had already become president of a missionary society, embracing different denominations. At the monthly meetings of this society, which became so large that they had soon to be held in the Town Hall, he gave addresses on missionary topics, not only communicating information, but also pressing the motives and encouragements to missionary effort, answering objections, and gathering from the reports on the state of the heathen confirmations of Scripture, and evidences of the divine origin of Christianity. A university missionary society had now become possible, and its career began in 1825-26 under more favourable conditions than could have been looked for. The blessing of G.o.d rested on it, for it furnished some of the first and n.o.blest missionaries that the Church of Scotland sent into the foreign field. The first was the Rev. Robert Nesbit, who spent many laborious and effective years at Bombay. Before Dr. Chalmers left St. Andrews, another of his students, Mr. Adams, had begun his missionary career. In 1829, Chalmers presided at the ordination of Alexander Duff, now one of the brightest names in the record of missions. The Rev. A. Mackay and the Rev. David Ewart followed, and John Urquhart was preparing to go when illness and death arrested his career. A more beautiful or promising springtime of missionary activity could hardly be imagined. And the same course that had thus been begun at St. Andrews was also being followed in Edinburgh.

On 27th December 1825, the Edinburgh University Missionary a.s.sociation was founded, chiefly through the influence of John Wilson, afterwards so well known as Dr. Wilson of Bombay. Chalmers has sometimes been called a man of one idea, and in some minds the notion got hold that all his interest was in home missions, and that he looked with comparative indifference on foreign. It would be more correct to say that he was a man of all manner of ideas, but that he worked out only one idea at a time. In that large heart there was room not only for the welfare of Scotland, but of the whole world too. His identification of himself with the missionary cause, at a time when many derided it, was an act of high moral courage. So was another act, his taking sittings for his family in the dissenting chapels, that they might be nourished with evangelical food, not then to be obtained in the Established Church.

Occasionally he would attend these chapels himself, both on Sundays and week-days; not disdaining the devotional services of a pious mechanic at the prayer-meeting, and deriving far more help therefrom than from the dreary ministrations either of the town church or that of the college.

In one respect Dr. Chalmers's course did not run smoothly at St.

Andrews. He got into loggerheads with his colleagues on the subject of college finance. In dealing with the funds of the college, it had been the practice of the Senatus to lay aside a certain amount for general expenses, and to divide the balance as a supplemental salary among the different professors. Chalmers was not clear that this was a legitimate course, and for some years he refused to receive his share of the supplemental fund, which accordingly acc.u.mulated until it amounted to some 700. Reflecting as this refusal did, or was supposed to do, on the honesty of his colleagues, it gave him more pain than any other public duty he was ever called to perform. After he had left St.

Andrews, the university commissioners having looked into the matter, recorded it as their judgment that there was no good reason why he should not accept of the sum standing at his credit; and as Dr. Chalmers had desired only that the matter should be settled by competent authority, he accepted the money. But nothing could exceed his surprise and indignation when he found, in the published report of the commissioners in 1831, a statement that 'the princ.i.p.al and professors appear to have made these appropriations without any authority.' In a letter addressed to the commissioners, and published in 1832, after quoting their judgment in his own case, he said he could not divine what they really thought of these appropriations-whether they were honest or fraudulent. 'If you think them wrong, how is it that to me you have called the evil good? If right, how is it that to your Sovereign you have called the good evil?'

During his five years' inc.u.mbency in St. Andrews, he issued two volumes from the press. The first was the third and concluding volume of _The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns_. Among the topics embraced in this volume were the Poor-Laws and the Combination-Laws. The particular aspect of the Poor-Laws with which he dealt, and which he most thoroughly condemned, was the application of the poor-rates, as in England, to supplement the wages of ill-paid labourers. Though kindly meant, this arrangement, he held, was an invasion of the relation between master and men so ruinous, and involved a bounty to the masters so unjust, that no toleration ought to be found for it. This was also the general opinion; and the practice was discontinued by law.

According to Dr. Chalmers's biographer, his exposure of the practice formed a powerful contribution towards its removal.

In regard to the Combination-Laws, which imposed severe and stringent penalties on any united movements of workmen for increasing their wages, a bill for repealing them had been introduced and carried by Mr.

Huskisson, whose efforts to free industry from the fetters of Protection were hailed by Dr. Chalmers with great delight. Unfortunately, the carrying of this measure into law was accompanied by certain deplorable excesses on the part of some cla.s.ses of workmen, who did not understand how to use their new-found liberty. Dr. Chalmers strongly upheld the righteousness of the repeal of the old laws, mainly on the ground that we ought not to manufacture crime out of acts (such as workmen's combinations) which the natural conscience does not condemn. But with equal firmness he denounced any interference with the freedom of labour, especially when men on strike coerced and persecuted those that might be willing to work. The experience of seventy years has not materially changed the position. 'Strike, if you please,' is the voice of reason and justice to workmen; 'but leave those who do not concur with you at perfect freedom to do as _they_ please.'

The other publication of this period was a book on Literary and Ecclesiastical Endowments. It was devoted chiefly to the case of the Scottish universities. Among the reforms which he advocated, a foremost place was given to the raising of the standard of scholarship for those joining the university. Though apparently disregarded at the time, it was seen, whenever serious attention began to be given to the state of our universities, that this was indeed the most important change to begin with. What Dr. Chalmers proposed was, that an entrance examination should be inst.i.tuted, and that a gymnasium, or, as we now call it, a secondary school, should be attached to each of the universities, for instruction that would qualify for the entrance examination. Modern opinion has so far transcended the modest proposal of Chalmers, that instead of a preparatory school in each university seat, the demand is now for adequate secondary schools scattered over all the land.

It was a very congenial thing for Chalmers to advocate in this way the elevation and ample equipment of our universities. His old love of science and general culture had never died in him, although he had learned to give them a secondary place, and to feel profoundly that the first duty and the chief interest of man concerned his relation to the great G.o.d, without whom nothing could be great, nothing strong. But the spirit of Chalmers was stirred within him as often as he thought of the great leaders of science, and their splendid achievements in astronomy and in other departments. The very name of Newton sent a thrill through every fibre of his being, and roused the desire to follow in his steps, as well as to see every youth around him inspired by his spirit, and by all that was n.o.ble in his example. Speaking of the universities of England, which were more successful than the Scottish in cultivating particular branches, but gave less complete attention to learning as a whole, he said, 'We cannot conclude this pa.s.sing notice of the universities of England without the mention of how much they are enn.o.bled by those great master spirits-those men of might and high achievement-the Newtons, and the Miltons, and the Drydens, and the Barrows, and the Addisons, and the Butlers, and the Clarkes, and the Stillingfleets, and the Ushers, and the Foxes, and the Pitts and Johnsons, who within their attic retreats received that first awakening which afterwards expanded into the aspirations and triumphs of loftiest genius. This is the true heraldry of colleges. Their family honour is built on the prowess of sons, not the greatness of ancestors.'

It remains for us to take a glance at some of the more miscellaneous engagements of Chalmers during this period, including his journeys, his speeches in public, the new friendships he formed, his spiritual progress, and his letters to his family and friends.

In the autumn of 1826, after his hard work in Glasgow, Dr. Chalmers treated himself to the rare luxury of a ramble in the south of Scotland.

The character of the man was singularly shown in the objects that attracted him as he proceeded from place to place. In the neighbourhood of Kelso, he stopped his gig opposite Roxburgh Castle, and running up to it, feasted his eyes, even in the midst of rain, on an old-remembered scene-'one of the most glorious panoramas I ever beheld, where the blended beauties of Teviot and Tweed were concentred upon the environs of Kelso and the Palace of Fleurs, with the seats and plantations of other grandees.' But it was places with an historical a.s.sociation that charmed him most. The church of Anwoth, Samuel Rutherford's early home, greatly delighted him. The church, which was like that of Kilmany, but smaller, still remained, but a new one was in course of erection; the manse had just been pulled down. Sir Walter Scott could not have more emphatically denounced such Gothicism, and the soul of Chalmers sympathised deeply with some of the masons that had refused to perpetrate the barbaric act, and had been dismissed from their occupation in consequence. To see Rutherford's 'witnesses,' he went up among the hills and inspected the stones which he once called to witness against some of his parishioners who were indulging in amus.e.m.e.nt on the Sunday. Not less enthusiastic was he at Kirkmabreck, where Dr. Thomas Brown, the son of the minister, was buried. At Dumfries he visited Mrs.

Burns, the widow of the poet, with whom he had a pleasant conversation, and whom he was pleased to see so comfortable. Among the gentlemen whose acquaintance he made was Mr. Cunninghame of Lainshaw, a well-known writer on prophecy, and Mr. Buchan of Kelloe, in Berwickshire, whose house was 'just delicious.' When the panorama of Berwickshire suddenly burst on him, he was overwhelmed. Perhaps what strikes one most in his account of this and other journeys is his readiness to be pleased, his power of finding enjoyment in everything. There is not a single cynical remark in all his narrative, not a flout, nor a grumble, nor a bitter word; he is always happy.

In May 1827 he went to London to open the new church of Mr. Irving in Regent Square. This took place on a Friday; the prayer which Mr. Irving offered was forty minutes in length, and it was an hour and a half ere Chalmers was allowed to begin. He preached again on the Sunday, the crowd comprising Mr. Peel, Lord Bexley, Lord Farnham, Lord Mandeville, Mr. Coleridge, and many other notables. At this time he made the acquaintance of Mr. Coleridge, with whom he spent three hours at the Gillmans' house in Highgate; but while he marvelled at the flow of conversation, he said he could only catch occasional glimpses of what he would be at. He had a pleasant talk in the House of Commons with Mr.

Peel, who showed a great interest in his views on pauperism, the college commission, and likewise in his sermons, all of which he said he had read. He had some intercourse with Macaulay, and heard Brougham; saw also Sir Francis Burdett (father of Lady Burdett-Coutts), a conspicuous radical politician of the day.

Among home friends, Chalmers remained as simple, unsophisticated, and kindly as before. 'Of all men,' said Mrs. Grant of Laggan at this time, 'he is the most modest, and speaks with undisguised gentleness and liberality of those who differ from him in opinion. Every word he says has the stamp of genius; yet the calmness, ease, and simplicity of his conversation is such, that to ordinary minds he might appear an ordinary man.... He is always powerful, always gentle, and always seemed quite unconscious of his own superiority.' About the same time, Mrs. Grant received a visit from her friend, Sir Walter Scott, and it is interesting to observe the resemblance she saw between the two men. 'His good-nature, good-humour, and simplicity are truly charming. You never once think of his superiority, because it is evident he does not think of it himself. He, too, confirmed the maxim that true genius is ever modest and careless.'

In the autumn of the same year he paid his first visit to Ireland. He had been asked to preach, and crowds as usual thronged to hear him. He was greatly interested in the Giant's Causeway and the surrounding scenery, and seems to have relished the new aspect of character which Ireland furnished. But the place which had the deepest interest for him was Gracehill, a Moravian settlement, where his wife had been educated, and in the cemetery of which was the tomb of her mother. To be on the spot where his mother-in-law, whom he had never seen, departed this life; to converse with the physician that had attended her in her last hours; and to walk through the school-house where his wife had received her education, thrilled his susceptible nature; it was with reluctance that he tore himself from these 'bowers of sacredness.' We can hardly conceive a warmer or more delicate tribute to his wife, or a clearer evidence of his affection for her and her family.

We have already adverted to some of his appearances in the General a.s.sembly, but to these we must now add a remarkable pleading, in 1828, in favour of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The royal a.s.sent had just been given to a bill repealing these Acts, but so vital did the matter appear to Dr. Chalmers, that he proposed that the a.s.sembly should present a humble Address to his Majesty, expressing its satisfaction that it was no longer requisite to take the sacrament as a qualification for civil office. In his speech he compared the old law, viewed as a b.u.t.tress to the Established Church, to those wooden props which one sometimes sees leaning obliquely against the walls of a house,-creating the impression that when a house needs such props, it is one of the craziest in the street. Yet he was careful to affirm his high regard for an established church in itself, apart from such miserable b.u.t.tresses. His motion was lost by 123 votes to 77, but in spirit the a.s.sembly agreed with him.

As he was making his speech, his eye met that of Edward Irving, who was sitting opposite him, and who was wild on the opposite side. Irving was then delivering lectures on prophecy in Edinburgh to enormous audiences.

Already he was manifesting symptoms of that disordered judgment which ultimately carried him so far astray, and Chalmers was sorely troubled.

As to his dealings with his own family, the same warmth of heart continued to show itself toward them which his earlier years had manifested. When his sister Isobel, next younger to himself, was dying, in the middle of his first session at St. Andrews (January 1824), he charged himself with her case as if it were his chief interest, and for a twelve-month wrote letter after letter to her, pressing on her with equal tenderness and earnestness all that bore on her spiritual welfare.

He was greatly cheered to learn that she was full of peace and joy in believing, and able to sustain with cheerful patience the sore pains that accompanied her illness. Her life closed with the closing year, and with her declaration that Jesus was fulfilling to her His latest promise, for He was now coming to receive her to Himself.

Very beautiful, too, was his spirit to his mother. Now that he lived at St. Andrews, he could see her often. In 1826 her last remaining daughter was married, and she was left alone. Deaf and lame, she was cut off, to a large extent, from intercourse with others. Yet her son could write: 'What a season of delight and of ripening for heaven has my mother's old age turned out to her, who, in the absence of all foreign resources, enjoys a perpetual feast in the happy repose of her spirit on that Saviour whom she trusts-that G.o.d whom she feels to be reconciled to her!' The dear old woman wrote of herself to her eldest son, James, in her seventy-seventh year: 'Since I last wrote to you I have had several severe complaints. I am very frail and very infirm; but what a blessing it is that my memory and the faculties of my mind are as active as if I were twenty! I bless G.o.d that it is so. I feel a pleasant contentment and peace of mind that the world cannot give nor take away. I amuse myself with working and reading. G.o.d is very good to me, who gives me a contented and happy frame of mind; and I trust my G.o.d will never leave nor forsake me, that when death comes, He will also be with me, and give me good hopes through Jesus Christ our Lord.'

It was her son's privilege to be much with her during her last illness.

'My mother's has been to me by far the most impressive deathbed I ever attended. The predominant feature of it has been the deep and immovable trust of her spirit upon the Saviour. This has been growing apace for some years, and it shed a singular and beautiful light on the evening of her days.'

It could not have been said of Dr. Chalmers that they made him the keeper of the vineyards, but his own vineyard he had not kept. How like the Apostle he was in being jealous over himself with a G.o.dly jealousy will appear from such extracts from his journal as this: 'I live as if in exile from G.o.d, in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Erred in levity with Mr. Duncan in our reading-room; more kind and hospitable to Mr. Dwight than formerly on a similar occasion; marvelling little of G.o.d when moving through His delicious air upon our ride, and in the midst of His unnumbered beauties. Oh that I could a.s.sociate with everything the first great Cause of all things! Absolutely nothing of the serious or sacred in me when sitting among eighteen immortals in the evening. What an exclusion of religion from the world's companies! Give me wisdom and principle, O G.o.d. Oh! let me redeem the time, and give myself to the work of an entire and spiritual Christianity!'

Sometimes we find an entry in his journal: 'Fasted somewhat this day,'-so eager was he to leave no means of spiritual quickening unused.

But still we find severe judgment against himself. 'Old things are not wholly pa.s.sed away: the love of literature _for itself_, and the love of literary distinction, have not pa.s.sed away. Let me love literature as one of those creatures of G.o.d which is not to be refused, but received with thanksgiving. Let me desire literary distinction, but let my desire for it be altogether that I may add to my Christian usefulness, and promote the glory of G.o.d; then, even without these, I would be a new creature. The impression of my defects is not such as to overwhelm me, but stimulate me.'

During his St. Andrews inc.u.mbency, Dr. Chalmers had been offered various offices, notably that of professor of moral philosophy in the University of London. To none of these offers did he accede; but when, on 31st October 1827, the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh unanimously elected him to fill the chair of theology in the university there, he gladly accepted the office, the more especially that it had been arranged that he was not to enter on his new duties till November 1828.

It was a trial to him to part with the calm and quiet he had enjoyed at St. Andrews, and again plunge into a vast and bustling community like that from which he had escaped five years before, and which had left little more than 'the dazzling recollection of a feverish and troubled dream.' But theology was a higher department than moral philosophy, and Edinburgh was a centre of wider influence than St. Andrews. His course was clear; nevertheless, in his closing lectures, he a.s.sured his students that nothing in what was before him was fitted to displace them from his recollections; but, on the contrary, from his individual acquaintance with them all, he would ever regard his connection with them as a more tender relationship than he could hope to enjoy with the students of Edinburgh.

CHAPTER V

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

1828-1843

It was but natural for Chalmers, in entering on his new duties as professor of divinity in the University of Edinburgh, to rally all his energies for a task so important-to be performed, too, in so commanding a sphere. The course of theology through which he had to conduct his students occupied three sessions, and for each consecutive winter it was necessary for him to produce a fresh set of lectures. Happily the subjects discussed in his first session were already familiar to him-natural theology and the evidences of Christianity. What was necessary for him in this session, was to expand, complete, and combine materials that, in a very limited measure, he had already used at St.

Andrews.

A greater contrast can hardly be imagined than the divinity cla.s.s-room under his predecessor and under himself. The last professor was a striking ill.u.s.tration of what the essential dulness and lifelessness of Moderatism could produce when matured and crowned by old age and infirmity. Two years before the appointment of Chalmers, a deputation of students, including the late Princ.i.p.al Cunningham and Dr. Wilson of Bombay, had waited on the professor, requesting him (but in vain) to provide a subst.i.tute, as his voice could not be heard. Naturally the attendance had fallen to a fraction, and utter lifelessness prevailed.

With the appointment of Chalmers, an enthusiasm sprang up unprecedented in the history of the university. 'The introductory lecture,' says Dr.

Hanna, 'was delivered amid rapturous applause, and, with scarcely any sensible abatement, the excitement of that first meeting was sustained throughout the whole of the succeeding session.' Besides the regular students of the church, a very large body of amateurs attended the course. From these the professor exacted no fee; but at the end of the session, through the Rev. Robert Morehead, an episcopalian clergyman, they asked his acceptance of a sum of money, and, in an elaborate address, expressed the delight and benefit with which they had listened to the course.

In subsequent years, Dr. Chalmers re-wrote his divinity lectures, and after his death these were published in two volumes, ent.i.tled, _Inst.i.tutes of Theology_. Besides delivering his own lectures, it was his practice to comment on his textbooks,-Butler's _a.n.a.logy_, Paley's _Evidences_, and Hill's _Lectures in Divinity_, his notes on these now forming a separate volume of his _Posthumous Works_.

Most Calvinistic treatises on systematic theology start from the divine point of view, setting forth the nature of G.o.d; and, on the basis of His Sovereignty, explaining his relation to man. Chalmers preferred to start with the actual condition of man, the diseased and disorganised state into which he had fallen, and to rise from that to the provision which G.o.d had made for his recovery through Jesus Christ. It is not difficult to see what led him to prefer this order. In his course of moral philosophy, he had come to an abrupt and impa.s.sable barrier.

Natural ethics gave abundant proof that man's moral nature was disordered, and that he had lost fellowship with G.o.d; but it threw no light on the awfully important questions how that nature was to be healed, and how that fellowship was to be restored. The answer to these questions, as Chalmers often insisted, must come from a higher source.

It was tantalising to a teacher of moral philosophy to have to leave man in this predicament, and to be restrained from dwelling on the response of revealed theology to his eager questionings. And hence, when revealed theology became his theme, Chalmers was eager to set forth at once the point of junction between the two theologies, to show how the revealed took man up at the point where nature left him; in a word, to bring the remedy of revelation into connection with the disease of nature. If, in general, this order is more acceptable to Arminian than Calvinistic divines, this was not Chalmers's reason for preferring it.

We have seen that the sovereignty, the all-sufficiency and universal operation of G.o.d, was the first theological truth that took a powerful hold of his mind, even before he became reconciled to evangelical doctrine. That hold it retained ever after. The root of Calvinism, or, we should rather say, of Paulinism and Augustinianism, was planted at the beginning in the very heart of his being.

But, from the eminently practical character of his mind, it was not his habit to put the higher doctrines of Calvinism in the forefront of his preaching, or even of his theology. Man must be dealt with as a responsible being; his responsibility must ever have its place beside G.o.d's sovereignty. It would be ruinous to handle either of these doctrines in such a manner as to destroy or even impair the force of the other. The combination of the two was one of the great objects of his theological teaching.

Chalmers's style of theological discussion was very unlike the common.

It was not fashioned on the anvil of the schoolmen. There was a remarkable combination in it of the philosophical and the popular. His mind was deeply philosophical, delighting in first principles, and eager to concatenate truth, to establish comprehensive laws, to reconcile apparently conflicting doctrines, and to bring what seemed unreasonable into harmony with reason. But his style was so diffuse and flowing that he appeared to want the exactness and correctness of a philosophic mind.

Moreover, he could not confine himself to the strictly intellectual aspects of theology; he could not but include its moral and practical aspects. In bringing out the practical bearings of doctrines, he was liable to become somewhat declamatory.

Another peculiarity was his fondness of ill.u.s.tration, the product, as it seemed, of the poetical rather than the philosophic faculty. The result was that, as a philosophic theologian, Chalmers hardly got justice. And since his day philosophic theology has pa.s.sed into a quite different groove. He was just beginning to know something of German philosophy when he died. He was greatly interested in it, and had he survived, he would in all likelihood have given much of his attention to it. But he could only have known it at second hand, and any discussion of it in these circ.u.mstances must have been of but secondary weight. And now that the German standpoint has become so common, the theology of Dr.

Chalmers, as well as that of his successor, Princ.i.p.al Cunningham, has fallen into the background. But it would not be easy to say how much is missed by even philosophical students when they give the go-by to his writings.

The academical and other honours conferred on him had more respect to his position as a preacher and a philanthropist than a professor of theology. In 1830 he was appointed one of her Majesty's chaplains for Scotland, the letter from Sir Robert Peel in which the announcement was made to him saying emphatically that the honour was conferred in consideration of his high character and eminent acquirements and services. At the Disruption, when he ceased to be a minister of the Established Church, he resigned this appointment. It was but the other day that it transpired that her Majesty wished him to continue to hold it. But such was his conscientiousness that, though the salary was placed at his credit by the Queen's Remembrancer till his death in 1847, no part of the salary was ever drawn either by him or his family. In 1834 he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Inst.i.tute of France, and in the following year he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. Such honours as these last were without a parallel in the case of any Presbyterian minister. About the same time he was elected a Fellow, and thereafter a vice-president, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Among other honours, he was asked by the Bridgewater Trustees to write one of their eight treatises on natural theology, the subject a.s.signed to him being 'The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Const.i.tution of Man.' This essay was afterwards merged in his work on _Natural Theology_. In his visits to Oxford and Cambridge he received almost unbounded attention from the most distinguished men in both universities, and in his intercourse with them he had much enjoyment. At Cambridge he could not restrain his delight at being entertained in the college of Newton-a name which held an extraordinary place in his regard. In recognition of his appointment as a corresponding member of the French Inst.i.tute, he visited France in 1838, and read a paper to the Inst.i.tute on the 'Distinction, both in Principle and Effect, between a Legal Charity for the Relief of Indigence and a Legal Charity for the Relief of Disease.'

The right treatment of pauperism continued to exercise his mind and to draw forth his testimony on every available occasion. In 1829 he was summoned to London to give evidence before a Parliamentary Committee on the Irish Poor-Law. His view was ever the same. A compulsory rate created a spirit of dependence, and thereby tended to the increase of pauperism and the degradation rather than the elevation of the people.

It was often said that comfort tended to the improvement of character.

His belief was the very opposite; it was character that tended to the increase of comfort. His success in Glasgow led him to believe that the same system would succeed in Ireland. He had sought to stimulate friendship and kindliness among all cla.s.ses, so as to induce them to help one another in times of need; nothing had had a greater effect in diminishing pauperism. This was far too valuable and efficient a weapon to be carelessly thrown away.

But to all his schemes for remedying pauperism there came a death-blow in 1844. In 1840, Dr. Pultney Alison of Edinburgh, a medical pract.i.tioner of great eminence and not less benevolence, published a pamphlet in which he drew a painful picture of the miserable condition of the poor, especially in many parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and strongly urged the necessity of an ampler provision for them, secured by law, though one result of this would be the increase of the cost of Scottish pauperism from 150,000 to 800,000 per annum. Chalmers did what he could to counterwork Dr. Alison. When the British a.s.sociation met in Glasgow in 1840, he contributed a paper on the subject, and the public interest was so great that the meeting where it was discussed had to be adjourned to a church. He delivered several lectures to his students, which were afterwards collected and published in a volume.

But the absorbing interest which had arisen in the Church question that was now under vehement discussion, and other causes, chilled the interest of the public in pauperism; and in 1844 a measure was enacted by Parliament, in opposition to the views of Chalmers. To him it seemed that even though an immediate improvement in the condition of the poor might be thus obtained, it must be at the sacrifice of many of the virtues that went to elevate them.