In this new field he found full scope for his talents, and was quickly distinguished, not only as an eloquent and useful preacher, but a most effective promoter of the interests of education, now become of paramount importance in
such an over-crowded manufacturing city. Here also he found that cheering
and strengthening intercourse of mind with kindred mind, which forms only
an occasional episode in a country manse. He likewise married Miss Hamilton, sister of the Lord Provost, and to all appearance had reached that comfortable termination in which the rest of his days were to be spent in peace.
But his health, which had been always delicate, and the weakness of his chest,
made the task of preaching to large audiences, and the week-day duties of his
office, so laborious and oppressive, that in a few years he would have sunk
under them. Happily, however, his labours were not thus prematurely to terminate; and the offer of the chair of church history, in the university of Edinburgh, which he received from government in 1831, came to his relief.
This was the boundary to which unconsciously all his past studies had been tending, while the weakly state of his constitution only hastened the crisis. It was more in accordance with his feeling of duty to accept such a charge, for which he had strength enough, than to break down in an office which was
growing too much for him. And, even setting this aside, he felt that the great
work of training up an efficient ministry was of still higher importance than
the ministerial office itself. These inducements were obvious not only to himself, but to his attached congregation; and they freely acquiesced in the parting,
although with much sorrow and regret. He therefore left Glasgow, in November, 1831, for his new sphere of action, and received the degree of doctor in divinity from the university, at his departure.
The office into which Dr. Welsh was now inducted, had hitherto, in Scotland, for more than a century, been one of the least distinguished of all our university professorships. This was by no means owing either to the inferior importance of church history as a subject of study, or to any innate dryness and want of interest that belongs to it; on the contrary, we know that it embraces subjects of the highest import, and exhibits the development of the human mind in its strongest and most intense aspects—and is consequently of a more stirring and interesting character in itself, than either the rise and fall of empires, or the record of triumphs and defeats. But Scotland had been so exclusively occupied with her Solemn League and Covenant, that she had found little time to attend to the history of other churches; and even when better days succeeded, those classical and antiquarian studies upon which ecclesiastical history so much depends, had fallen so miserably into abeyance, that the evil seemed to have become incurable. What, indeed, could a student make of the history of the church for at least twelve centuries, when his "small Latin and less Greek" could scarcely suffice to make out the name of a bygone heresy, or decipher the text in the original upon which the controversy was founded? In this state, any one or anything had sufficed as a stop-gap, to fill the vacuum of such a professorship—and it had been filled accordingly. But now a new order of things had succeeded. A more ardent literary spirit had commenced among our students, a wider field of inquiry had been opened, and they could no longer submit to doze over a course of lectures as dark as the dark ages, among which they lingered for months, or listen to a teacher who, perhaps, knew less about the matter than themselves. It will be seen, therefore, that nothing could have been more opportune than the appointment of Dr. Welsh.
