however, entitled "Caledonia," a historical and topographical account of North Britain from the invasion of the Romans down to the present time, in 3 vols. 4to, was left unfinished at the time of the author's death. It displays prodigious research, and is full of valuable information, but is disfigured by an awkward clumsy style. His last published work was "The Life of Mary Queen of Scots," in 2 vols. 4to, a violent and prejudiced defence of that unfortunate princess. Mr. Chalmers died on the 31st May, 1825.—J. T.
CHALMERS, Thomas, born at Anstruther, Fife, March 17, 1780; died at Edinburgh, May 31, 1847. His boyhood was not remarkable; but when a young student at St. Andrew's under Dr. James Brown, his intellect awoke, and geometry was the fairy world on which the eyes of his understanding opened. Soon after, the perusal of Jonathan Edwards on the Freedom of the Will introduced him to "a sort of mental elysium, in which he spent nearly a twelvemonth; the one idea which ministered to his soul all its rapture being the magnificence of the Godhead, and the universal subordination of all things to the one great purpose, for which he evolved and was supporting creation." And in much the same way did other truths from time to time effect their advent, gaining all the homage of his intense and enthusiastic nature. Thus for some years he was absorbed in chemistry, which the discoveries of Black, Lavoisier, and Davy conspired to render the most romantic of the sciences; and, by and by, as the disciple of the Wealth of Nations, he was entranced in economical reveries, and bent all the strength of his mind to questions of taxation, trade, and labour. In the meanwhile he had become a minister. On the 31st July, 1799, from the presbytery of St. Andrew's, he obtained license to preach the gospel; from July, 1801, till September, 1802, he was the assistant minister at Cavers in Roxburghshire; and in November of the latter year he was appointed to the charge of Kilmany in Fife. But whilst the ministry was his profession, science was his pursuit. Not but that he loved his people, and occasionally perambulated their abodes, "his affections flying before him;" and in frank and homely exhortations he sought to soften their manners and improve their morals, but with very inconspicuous success. His own heart was divided, and it was the lesser half which conscience was able to rescue for his parish and his pastorate. The Saturday afternoon was devoted to some hasty preparation for the pulpit, and the rest of the week he was wandering among the glorious hills, alone or in the society of his neighbour and brother-naturalist, Fleming of Flisk, chipping the rocks, and exploring the quarries; or he might be seen trudging along to St. Andrew's, to enlighten its lieges on the wonders of oxygen, or to improvise mathematical poems to a class of applauding students; whilst the gospel, which it was his commission to proclaim, lay upon the shelf an unsolved enigma, or looked out upon him from the pages of the Testament, an "open secret" to which he had never yet adverted.
The death of a beloved sister, followed by a lingering illness of his own, forced his mind into earnest contact with the truths of revelation. The first result was a new view of the lofty requirements of christianity. As delineated in the apostolical writings, and as exhibited in the person of its Divine Founder, it possessed a symmetry and grandeur of which he had never formed the least conception; and for many months it was his daily effort, both in intercourse with others and in the on-goings of the inner man, to realize the beauty of its holiness. Very noble were his efforts, and probably no one except himself would have pronounced them entirely unsuccessful. Still, the very process which, in the eyes of on-lookers, was elevating his character, tended to quicken his own moral sensibilities so much more rapidly, that the usual paradox was repeated, and growing excellence was hidden from his own eyes by a deepening sense of his own deficiencies. In this mood of mind, he was prepared to hail a statement of the divine plan for saving sinners, and nobilitating anew their natures, which he first met in the Practical View of Mr. Wilberforce. A right relation to God as the starting-point and not the goal, a gratuitous forgiveness, and a present salvation, were the truths which he then for the first time apprehended; and as they rose upon his soul in all their self-commending majesty, he felt "the true light now shineth," and he wept and exulted in the immortal day-spring.
From this time forward (and he had reached his thirtieth year) it may be said that all the powers of his extraordinary intellect were devoted to develope and apply the great discovery; and it was not long till Kilmany and the district adjacent confessed the power of his fervid ministry. The change in his preaching was followed by a perceptible change in many of his people. In a valedictory address he declares—"I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life, had the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed by the utter alienation of the heart in all its desires and affections from God; it was not till reconciliation to him became the distinct and the prominent object of my ministerial exertions; it was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their acceptance, and the Holy Spirit, given through the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, was set before them as the unceasing object of their dependence and their prayers . . . . that I ever heard of any of those subordinate reformations which I aforetime made the earnest and the zealous, but I am afraid, at the same time, the ultimate object of my earlier ministrations."
Of such preaching and its results the fame soon spread, and in July, 1815, he was transferred to the Tron church in Glasgow, which, in 1819, he exchanged for the new church and parish of St. John's in the same city. In this latter sphere his leonine energies were chiefly given to work out his fondly-cherished ideal of a city parish, in virtue of which it should be approximated as nearly as possible to a rural district, with provision for maintaining a friendly christian intercourse with all its families, and for educating and morally elevating all its inhabitants; and with the fellow-workers whom his own fervour enlisted, his success was remarkable. But it was his efforts in the pulpit which chiefly contributed to render memorable and unique the eight years of his Glasgow ministry. All his powers were in their prime. One by one the great truths of revelation had come into his soul; and, as with its illimitable grandeur and infinite adaptation, each divine announcement filled that soul like a possession, it was the effort of the sermon to gain for it the vivid perception and intelligent assent of a promiscuous auditory; but even whilst labouring by the simplest illustrations to make it plain, the elevation of his spirit still kept it sublime. With something of each hearer in his own composition; with a store of good sense, and a proverbial homeliness which conciliated the practical, and with an imagination which carried helplessly captive the more sentimental; with a pathos which melted every tender heart, and a fearless majesty which made every manly nature thrill with contagious heroism—he brought to his theme an intellectual ascendancy and a fervour of spirit entirely his own, and the listener who at first walked on the same level, at last could only keep him company by catching the skirt of his mantle or mounting his chariot of fire. Into each discourse he threw his soul entire—the geometrician's breadth of axiom and carefulness of deduction, the psychologist's insight into the arcana of human consciousness, the philanthropist's desirousness for his hearers' welfare, the christian's high-toned virtue and devotion. Like a pebble cast into the quiet crater, he often commenced with some plain and simple aphorism; and as it began to gather towards itself the materials which a copious science furnished, the overhanging cloud expanded and displayed the chromatic glories which a gorgeous imagination cast upon it; and as then the ground began to tremble and the firmament to mutter with mysterious emotion, the volcano burst—like flaming seraphim words of rapture went up, like red lava the overwhelming demonstration came down, and with thunder in his ears and an earthquake in his frame the hearer carried away a new sensation at the least, and along with it, peradventure, the elements of a change in his moral constitution.
Like all noble natures. Dr. Chalmers was distinguished by a profound and all-pervading sincerity. He could not be perfunctory. When he commenced his career, the evangelical ministry was wont to confine itself to a few traditional topics and time-honoured commonplaces. The consequence was that most of its preaching missed the mark. It edified believers, but it was little calculated to increase their number. With his eyes open to the immediate exigency. Dr. Chalmers could only grapple with existing evils. For example, amongst the more intelligent citizens he found not a few whose religious faith was disturbed by scientific doubts; but instead of denouncing as black arts astronomy and geology, or flinging anathemas in the face of facts, he stepped forward with philosophy in the one hand and the bible in the other, and by such feats of sanctified eloquence
