Thomas Chalmers

“ Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main movement culminated in the Bridgewater Treatises, Pursuant to the will of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the President of the Royal Society selected eight persons, each to receive a thousand pounds sterling for writing and publishing a treatise on the "power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation." Of these, the leading essays in regard to animated Nature were those of Thomas Chalmers, on The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man ”

“ Much nervous energy was consumed in resisting these unreasonable expectations, and if Chalmers had not come to be a great man, and possessed of a fame which overbore everything, he would certainly have suffered not a little in reputation from the necessity of so often applying a snub where kindness was meant, and becoming a transgressor where tradition had established its law.
During the eight years of his Glasgow incumbency many things happened, worthy to be noticed even in a short biography like this. First of all, his fame as a pulpit orator reached its climax ”

“ He grew up with a positive dislike both of the Calvinistic theology and the evangelical life. It was not till after he had been some years in the ministry that, under the acute pressure of personal illness and family bereavements, he came to see as they did, and to live as they lived. The change to them must have been like the conversion of Augustine to Monica. And yet, in after years, their intercourse was not wholly without friction. It is touching to mark in the son's diary tokens of his humiliation on account of the crossness with which he sometimes spoke to them. ”

“ Chalmers, whose originality lay rather in his quick insight and fire than in his mainly commonplace thought, had the credit of recognising the religious side of Carlyle's genius, when to the mass of his countrymen he was a rock of offence. One of the great preacher's criticisms of the great writer is notably just: "He is a lover of earnestness more than a lover of truth." ”

“ 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 God'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. ”

“ Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities—whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party? It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules ”

“ The ultimate picture was the conception of the whole world of life, past and present, as a single family tree growing up from the simplest possible roots, and gradually spreading out first into the two main branches of animals and plants, and then into the endless series of complicated ramifications that make up living and extinct animals and plants. ”

“ 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 destitute 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. ”

“ It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. ”

“ 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 ”

“ How is a man to keep up his acquaintance with all that is doing in the physiological world—in a world advancing with enormous strides every day and every hour—if he has to be distracted with the cares of practice? ”

“ And if we had none of us been able to discern the paramount significance of some of the most patent and notorious of natural facts, until they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma—creation or nothing? ”

“ If he no longer believe death to be a stroke from the sword of God's justice, but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with a wall of darkness. ”

“ Making a man a Bishop, or entrusting him with the office of ministering to even the largest of Presbyterian congregations, or setting him up to lecture to a church congress, really does not in the smallest degree augment such title to respect as his opinions may intrinsically possess. ”

“ But, the more profoundly does the conception of evolution lay hold of human thought, the more inevitable it becomes to recognise that man and all that is best in man—his aspirations, ideas, virtues, and practical and abstract justice and goodness—are just as much the product of the cosmic process and part of the Cosmos as the most sinister results of the struggle for existence. ”

“ It is with this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable or unreasonable ambition for scientific fame which I may have permitted myself to entertain to other ends; to the popularisation of science; to the development and organisation of scientific education; to the endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution; and to untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England, as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong, is the deadly enemy of science. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 noble in his example. ”

“ This indeed was the reigning idea of Chalmers, pursued steadily throughout his whole life, alike in his sermons, his books, his scientific researches, his practical schemes, his intercourse with his fellows, and, we may add, his communion with his God. If ever a life had unity, it was that of Chalmers. To get men impregnated with the spirit of Christ, and alive to the lessons of His Gospel was, one way or other, his continual aim. ”

“ We must, in fact, definitely reject what we know as matter as the absolute reality of the universe, for it becomes very plain that what we call matter we know merely as affections of our own consciousness. ”

“ Following the shoreline of Queensland, at a distance of from ten to one hundred and fifty miles, and stretching for twelve hundred and fifty miles, is the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, one of the wonders of the world. ”

“ The shelving floor of the ocean rises nearly to the surface along this line, and vast colonies of coral building creatures have formed their reefs up to the water's edge along the ridge. The turbulent waves scouring over this living mass have carved and moulded it into millions of fantastic islands, sometimes heaping detached masses of dead debris high above the surface of the water. ”

“ From the heated atmosphere of public controversy we make a pleasant transition when we accompany Chalmers on the visits he paid from time to time to London and other places, and when we sit by him in the privacy of his home. We see something of the spontaneous outflow of both mind and heart; we are charmed with his genuine humanity, his interest in life, his humour and simplicity, and, in his devotional hours, with his profound humility and intense aspiration after holiness. ”

“ A slightly different title too is given in the only other copy of which trace has been found, that given in the Murphy Catalogue, no. 534.
[827] A large number of the Chalmers manuscripts relating to America are enumerated in Thomas Thorpe’s Supplement to a Catalogue of Manuscripts, 1843. Such as relate to periods not of the Revolution are somewhat minutely described under the following numbers:—
No. 616. Copies of papers, 1493-1805, two volumes, £12 12s. ”

“ Remaining the same, we find his singularly energetic, forceful nature; his high integrity and kindliness of heart, as it constantly streamed out towards his family, his friends, and his flock; his eager desire for the welfare of his people, for their advancement and elevation in all that he counted good, pure, and noble; his indomitable energy of purpose and fearless contending for right and truth; his passionate intensity of conviction, rolling itself out in whirlwinds and tempests of eloquence, that swept all before it. ”

“ Finally, behind the sharp division made between man and the Cosmos, there still lurks one of the oldest and most enduring fallacies of the world, a fallacy that Huxley himself spent a great part of his intellectual life in discovering and routing. The fallacy is the conception of the Cosmos as something separate and apart from man, as something through which he, however briefly, passes. ”

“ Livingstone in Africa at a later period, determined to lead the life of a bachelor. A recent disappointment in connection with an application for augmentation of stipend, confirmed him in that resolve. But neither Chalmers nor Livingstone had taken into reckoning a mysterious influence which can make sport of the firmest resolutions, and prostrate strong men at the feet of Hymen. Chalmers had fallen in love with Miss Grace Pratt, daughter of Captain Pratt of the First Royal Veteran Battalion, who had been living for some time with her uncle, Mr. Simson, at Starbank, in the parish of Kilmany. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I never saw any set of men who were so animated by one spirit, and whose zeal was so steadily sustained. The Doctor was the life of the whole. He was ever most ready to receive a hint or suggestion from the youngest or most inexperienced member ”

“ 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 God. ”

“ Unless we make the unscientific and preposterous assumption that our present knowledge of nature and of natural forces is absolute and complete, it is unscientific and illogical to declare at once that any supposed events could not have happened merely because they seem to have contradicted so-called natural laws. ”

“ As this century advanced, the conception of the dignity and worth of each individual man, rich or poor, bond or free, had spread more and more widely, bearing as its fruit the emancipation of slaves, the spread of political freedom, the amelioration of the conditions of the dregs of humanity, the right of all to education, the possibility of universal peace based on the brotherhood of man; and all that was best in philosophy and in political practice seemed bound up with a lofty view of the unit of mankind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The key to all philosophy lies in the clear apprehension of Berkeley's problem—which is neither more nor less than one of the shapes of the greatest of all questions, 'What are the limits of our faculties?' And it is worth any amount of trouble to comprehend the exact nature of the argument by which Berkeley arrived at his results, and to know by one's own knowledge the great truth which he discovered—that the honest and rigorous following up of the argument which leads us to materialism inevitably carries us beyond it. ”

“ 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 ”