1S3 



CHALMERS, REV. DR. THOMAS. 



CHALONER, SIR THOMAS. 



r.t 



In the midst of the bustle and fatigue of his life in Glasgow, 

 increased ten-fold by the hospitality which his celebrity obliged him 

 to exercise, Dr. Chalmers had never ceased to sigh for the academic 

 quiet of a professor's chair in one of the Scottish universities ; and in 

 January 1823, much to the suprise of the public, he resigned his 

 charge, and accepted the chair of Moral Philosophy then vacant in his 

 native University of St. Andrews. The new post was one of much 

 less emolument, and of far less publicity than that which he had 

 resigned ; but even had his tastes not disposed him to accept it, he 

 had paramount reasons in tho state of his health, which was giviug 

 way under the wear and excitement of city-life. Forty-three years 

 old when he accepted the chair, he retained it till his forty-ninth 

 year, or from 1823 to 1828. The winters of these five years were 

 spent by him in the preparation and delivery of his class-lectures, 

 and in the genial society of many of his old friends ; but he carried 

 with him to St. Andrews those notions and schemes of Christian 

 philanthropy which he had matured in Glasgow, and the little Fife- 

 shire town felt during these five years the vivifying influence of his 

 spirit and enthusiasm. Occasionally he preached in St. Andrews and in 

 the neighbourhood round; annually in May he visited Edinburgh to take 

 part in the business of the General Assembly, where his eloquence as 

 before was felt as a conquering force on the " Evangelical" side in all 

 the great ecclesiastical controversies of the time ; and excursions in 

 Scotland and Ireland, and journeys as far as London, varied his summer. 

 It was proposed at one time to elect him to the Moral Philosophy 

 chair in the newly-established University of London ; but this pro- 

 posal, which might have altered the whole tenor of bis future career, 

 was not carried out. The literary results of his five years' sojourn at 

 St. Andrews were courses of ' Lectures on Moral Philosophy,' and on 

 1 Political Economy,' prepared for his class and reserved for publica- 

 tion ; a third volume of his ' Christian and Civic Economy of Large 

 Towns," published in 1826 ; and a treatise on ' Ecclesiastical and 

 Literary Endowments,' published in 1827. 



Dr. Chalmers's next appointment was to the chair of Divinity in the 

 University of Edinburgh. The duties of this office he assumed in 

 1828, and he discharged them during fifteen years t. e. from 1828 to 

 1S43, or from his forty-iiinth to his sixty-third year. His activity 

 during these fifteen extraordinary years of his life (not taking account 

 of hit occasional sermons) was made up of three distinct kinds of work 

 his duties as theological professor; his continued exercises in litera- 

 tim', speculation, and schemes of Christian philanthropy; and his 

 controversial energy in connection with the serious ecclesiastical 

 struggle which during that time convulsed Scotland. 1. Hit Labours 

 as Thcolvyical 1'rofeuor. In this important capacity, which involved 

 the theological instruction and training of between one and two 

 hundred young men annually for the Scottish Church, Dr. Chalmers 

 exerted a vast influence, less as a man learned in theological lore, than 

 aa a man of noble purpose and burning enthusiasm with whom no 

 young man could come in contact without love and veneration, and 

 who was in the habit not only of communicating massive thoughts of 

 his own on almost all subjects, but also of stirring up thought in 

 others. His class-room was truly a centre of life and intellectual 

 influence ; and those who went forth from it carried with them 

 perforce much of his spirit and many of his views. 2. Hii independent 

 laboun in literature, speculation, and Chrittian philanthropy. Of 

 these it is impossible to take full account; suffice it to say that in 

 1831 he published his treatise on 'Political Economy,' and in 1833 his 

 Bridgewater treatise ' On the Adaptation of External Nature to the 

 Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Mau ; ' that in 1838 he delivered 

 in London, and afterwards published, a scries of ' Lectures in Defence 

 of Church Establishments;' that in the following year he made a 

 tour through Scotland to advocate the cause of church extension ; that 

 in 1841 he published a volume on ' The sufficiency of the Parochial 

 System without a poor-rate for the right management of the Poor ; ' 

 that during the same period he delivered, during the summer vacations 

 various lectures to popular audiences on topics of natural science ; and 

 that he gave much of his time to the superintending of an attempt to 

 carry out his notions of proper parochial management in one of the 

 poorest districts of Edinburgh. Some of the labours here mentioned 

 . ed public recognition, in the form of honours conferred upon 

 him. Thus in 1830, he was appointed one of the king's chaplains for 

 Scotland; in 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh, and a corresponding member of the French Institute ; and 

 in 1835 he received the distinction of Doctor of Laws from the 

 University of Oxford. 3. Hit connection with the Scotch Church Contro- 

 versy. The " Evangelical " party with which, since 1810, Dr. Chalmers 

 bad been eo permanently connected, had gradually increased in the 

 church, so as at last to attain the majority ; and in 1832, Dr. Chalmers 

 was elected to the moderatorship, or presidency, of the General 

 Assembly of that year. In 1834 the Assembly, under the auspices of 

 the ruling party, and with his advice and sanction, passed the famous 

 "Veto Act," the design of which was to modify the action of the 

 <>ge of livings in the Church of Scotland, by enabling 

 the Church Courts to reject any nominee of a patron on the ground 

 of his being displeasing to the majority of the congregation or 

 poruhiunfT-- over whom he was appointed. Several nominees having 

 in immediately subsequent years been rejected in accordance with 

 this at, appeals were made to the Civil Courts of Scotland and to 

 mon. mv vor.. IT. 



the House of Lords, and the result was that the Veto Act was 

 declared to be contrary to the law of the land, and that not only 

 were nominees rejected by it pronounced to be entitled to all the 

 emoluments of the livings, but that it was pronounced illegal in the 

 church to appoint any other clergymen to the spiritual cure of the 

 parishes in question. Thus arose a controversy which agitated 

 Scotland throughout its whole extent for ten years ; and in which the 

 original question of the " Non-Intrusion " of clergymen upon unwilling 

 congregations was merged in the question of the proper relations 

 between Church and State. Of this controversy Dr. Chalmers was, 

 on one side, the chief champion ; and for several years he was inces- 

 santly occupied in defending his view of the questions in dispute in 

 speeches and through the press, both against the " Moderate " party 

 in the church itself, who had from the first opposed the Veto Act, and 

 also against the civil courts and the government. More than once it 

 seemed as if the legislature was on the point of devising some means 

 of healing the breach which had been made, and restoring quiet to 

 Scotland ; but at last, these hopes being over, the struggle was ended 

 at the meeting of the General Assembly on the 18th of May 1843, by the 

 so-called "Disruption" i. e. by the voluntary secession of upwards of 

 400 clergymen, followed by a large portion of the people of Scotland 

 from the Established Church, and the institution of a new ecclesiastical 

 body called " the Free Church," At the head of this secession was 

 Dr. Chalmers, who was nominated moderator of the first General 

 Assembly of the new church. 



The last four years of Dr. Chalmers's life were spent by him as 

 Principal and Professor of Divinity in the New College founded by tho 

 adherents of the Free Church for the theological education of its 

 ministers (his chair in Edinburgh University having been necessarily 

 vacated by him on his secession from the establishment). During these 

 years, too, he exerted himself prodigiously iu arranging the organisa- 

 tion of the new church, and in raising funds for its support ; and 

 probably at no period of his life was the statesman-like character of 

 his intellect, his power of dealing with new social emergencies and of 

 leading men, more conspicuously shown. He had seen the foundations 

 of the new church laid very much to his mind, and was preparing to 

 resign tho farther work of completing its organisation into the hands of 

 his many able and younger colleagues, and to devote the rest of his days 

 to his labours as a theological professor, to Christian and philosophical 

 literature in connection more immediately with the ' North British 

 Review,' then started under his superintendence, and to a new experi- 

 ment of Christian philanthropy which he had begun in one of the 

 most wretched quarters of the old town of Edinburgh, when death 

 removed him. He had just returned from a visit to England iu 

 apparently excellent health and spirits, to take part in the proceedings 

 of the General Assembly of the Free Church, when on the morning of 

 the 31st of May 1847, he was found dead in his bed at hia house at 

 Morningside near Edinburgh. His death was felt throughout Scotland 

 like a national shock ; and all ranks and parties joined iu doing honour 

 to his memory as one of the greatest men that Scotland had produced. 

 He left a widow who did not survive long, and six daughters, one of 

 them married to the Rev. Dr. Hanna, under whose superintendence a 

 new issue of the collected works of Dr. Chalmers has been put forth 

 in twenty-five volumes, and who has also written his life iu four 

 volumes, and edited much of his correspondence. 



Dr. Chalmers was a mau of powerful frame, not tall, but massively 

 built ; his head was very large. It was remarkable in a man so cele- 

 brated over Britain as an orator, that he always spoke not only in a 

 broad Scottish, but also in a broad provincial Scottish accent, mis- 

 pronouncing almost every word. Personally he was a man of most 

 simple, bland, and sociable manners, with a great fund of anecdote and 

 broad humour. His works, notwithstanding the force of intellect that 

 they show (and his speculations in social and political economy, in 

 particular, are valued by many of the best thinkers of the day who 

 have no sympathy with his theological or ecclesiastical opinions), but 

 faintly convey an idea of what the man was while he lived, and of what 

 he still is in the memory and imagination of the Scottish people. 



CHALONER, SIR THOMAS, father and son. The elder Sir 

 Thomas Chaloner was born in London about 1515, and educated at 

 Cambridge. He was sent, when a young man, with Sir Henry Knevet, 

 to Germany, and attracted attention in the court of Charles V, He 

 accompanied Charles on his expedition to Algiers, was shipwrecked 

 off the coast of Barbary, and narrowly escaped drowning. On his 

 return to England, ho was employed about the court, and was knighted 

 for his conduct at the battle of Musselburgh, in the year 1547. The 

 fall of his patron, the Duke of Somerset, affected his fortunes ; but 

 on the accession of Elizabeth, he was sent as ambassador to Ferdi- 

 nand I., emperor of Germany, and was also employed iu a similar 

 capacity iu Spain. He died October 7, 1565, and was buried in St. 

 Paul's. His literary productions consist of a large collection of 

 poetical pieces in Latin, and some prose works, one of which is ' Ou 

 the right ordering of the English Commonwealth.' He appears to 

 have been highly esteemed by his contemporaries as a brave, able, and 

 worthy man. 



Sir Thomas Chaloner, the son, who inherited a considerable portion 

 of his father's abilities, was born in 1559. To him is attributed tho 

 discovery of the alum-mines near Whitby, in Yorkshire, the first that 

 were worked in England : he, at all events, has the merit of having 



