1833.

Let

Dr. Chalmers had long

ing to arouse

been labourthe public the subject: on the death

mind upon

his sermon

of the Princess Char. lotte.

1688 other men put together, to prepare the public mind to respond CHAP. VIL to to the appeal which at length issued under his own immediate auspices from the general assembly of the church. When the nation was startled in the month of November, 1817, by the sudden and lamented death of the Princess Charlotte, he seized the opportunity to turn men's thoughts to the consideration of the true sources of the country's danger. "The time has been," he said, in the well-known funeral sermon which the occasion called forth, "when such an event as the one we are now assembled to deplore, would have put every restless spirit into motion, and set a guilty ambition upon its murderous devices, and brought powerful pretenders with their opposing hosts of vassalage into the field, and enlisted towns and families under the rival banners of a most destructive fray of contention, and thus have broken up the whole peace and confidence of society. us bless God that these days of barbarism are now gone by. But the vessel of the state is still exposed to many agitations. The sea of politics is a sea of storms on which the gale of human passions would make her founder, were it not for the guidance of human principle: and therefore the truest policy of a nation is to christianize her subjects, and to disseminate among them the influence of religion. The most skilful arrangement for rightly governing a state, is to scatter The lessons among the governed, not the terrors of power, not the threats of jealous and alarmed authority, not the demonstrations of sure and ready vengeance held forth by the rigour of an offended law. These may at times be imperiously called for. But a permanent security against the wild outbreakings of turbulence and disaster, is only to be attained by diffusing the lessons of the gospel throughout the great mass of our population, even those lessons which are utterly and diametrically at antipodes with all that is criminal and wrong in the spirit of political disaffection." After showing, with

of the gospel and not the

terrors of

power, the best security of the State.

Appeal for

twenty new

Glasgow,

Chalmers in

CHAP. VII. all his own graphic power, how that wholesome leaven was 1834 disappearing from among thousands, and tens of thousands, to 1838. of the working people, under the influence of those manifold temptations by which they were incessantly surrounded, and to whose destructive assaults they were to so large an extent abandoned, with hardly any one to care for their souls, “is there no room then," the preacher exclaimed, “to wish for twenty more churches, and twenty more ministers; for men Churches in of zeal, and of strength, who might go forth among these made by Dr. wanderers, and compel them to come in; for men of holy 1817. fervour, who might set the terrors of hell and the free offers of salvation before them; for men of affection, who might visit the sick, the dying, the afflicted, and cause the irresistible influence of kindness to circulate at large among their families; for men who, while they fastened their most intense aim on the great object of preparing sinners for eternity, would scatter along the path of their exertions all the blessings of order, and contentment, and sobriety, and at length make it manifest as day, that the righteousness of the people is the only effectual antidote to a country's ruin, the only path to a country's glory."

Dr. Chalmers' demand for

Churches in

seemed at

the time

extravagant.

Twenty additional churches and ministers for his own twenty new single city! It sounded like a wild extravagance. The Glasgow, vast majority saw no need of them. The wise men of this world had no great sense of their value. The political economists, busy with their science of wealth, made little account of an agency that was to be employed in the production, not of money, but of morals. The penny-wise people cried out at the very thought of the expense. The preacher in this, as in many other things, was far a-head of his age; men disregarded his advice, and it will be due to other causes than to their short-sighted policy, if his impressive warning be not ere long realized. Recent events, and the feeling of utter insecurity with which even the most

1883.

to society

resulted

fusing his

demand.

1834 thoughtless are constrained to regard the condition of society CHAP. VII. to in most of the great towns and manufacturing districts of The dangers the kingdom, may now help men to understand that it was which have not the excited imagination of an alarmist, but the wisdom from reof one who had the spirit both of a patriot and a prophet that dictated these words: "I am surely not out of place, when, on looking at the mighty mass of a city population, I state my apprehension that, if something be not done to bring this enormous physical strength under the control of Christian and humanized principle, the day may yet come when it may lift against the authorities of the land its brawny vigour, and discharge upon them all the turbulence of its rude and volcanic energy.”

wrought by

mers in St.

parish, Glas

Chalmers demanded twenty churches, and the city The wonders authorities gave him one-that famous St. John's in which Dr. Chalhis great moral experiments in regard to the management John's of the poor, and the general amelioration of the most gow. neglected classes of the people were carried on, with an energy and a success amply sufficient to justify their author's most sanguine anticipations; but the community was not ripe for the reception of his doctrines, even when the demonstration of their soundness had been wrought out before its eyes. His gigantic efforts, however, were by no means in vain; individuals here and there, of large hearts and liberal minds, were adopting his views, the more religious portion of society were becoming increasingly alive to their duty; an impulse had been given to the cause of Christian philanthropy which it never lost, and there needed only that favourable concurrence of events which appeared in the reforming assembly of 1834, to make manifest the amount of progress and preparation for a great church extension movement, which had been already made. At that assembly, upon the resignation of Dr. Brunton, Dr. Chalmers was immediately, and by common consent, summoned to take

Chalmers

becomes the the Church tion com

convener of

accommoda

mittee in

1831

CHAP. VII. his place as convener of the committee on church accommo- 1834

his first

year's labours.

to

dation. Instantly the vessel, which hitherto had lain like 1838.

a log upon the waters, began to move; with a fresh crew, and another steersman, and a fast rising breeze, she sped at once upon her course; and from her annual voyage returned to each succeeding assembly, bringing better news and more ample treasures for the great cause on which they had sent her forth. From 1828 till 1834 the committee had existed and had done nothing; within one year thereafter, at the assembly of 1835, Dr. Chalmers found himself in a position, The result of in his report, to say, "The result on the whole has been satisfactory; the whole contributions, in collections, donations, and individual subscriptions, to the general fund for church accommodation amounts in this, the first year of its (new) existence, to £15,167, 12s. 8d. ** But this is not the whole pecuniary result which we have to make known to you, and not even the most prosperous and best part of it. In reply to our application for aid, we were often told of the home ecclesiastical wants which stood in the way of a remittance to the general fund; and whenever the local exertion and the general contribution came into conflict with each other, it has been our uniform policy to encourage the former in preference to the latter,-assured that, in every instance where an interest was once awakened for the necessities of any immediate neighbourhood, there would not only be a far more intense feeling, but a far more productive liberality than could be expected in favour of the larger but more distant operations of a central or metropolitan board. The effect has justified our anticipations, and we now proceed to enumerate, in geographical order, beginning with the north of Scotland, the additional places of worship in connection with the establishment, built or building, subscribed for, or being subscribed for, in various parts of the country." This general announcement was followed

to 1838.

new Church

es built or

building in

one year."

1834 up by the long statistical array of parishes, places of worship, CHAP. VIL number of church sittings and of pounds sterling which the triumphant and rejoicing convener had it already in his power to record as the trophies of his first year's toil. The assembly listened with feelings of wonder and gratitude as the seemingly interminable roll proceeded, and which Dr. Chalmers thus summed up at its close: "It will thus be observed that the number of new places of worship com- Sixty-four pleted or now in preparation is sixty-four; that the whole sum subscribed for distinct local erections is £55,021,78. 9d., and that, if to this be added the general fund, as far as it stands disengaged from this, we have to report a grand total of £66,326, 1s. 11d." Amid the acclamations with which this memorable report was received, it might have both amused and instructed the curious on-looker to study the countenances of some of the former leaders of the assembly. These were victories on a field with which they were The divided totally unacquainted, victories which they hardly knew whether to welcome or deplore. Sixty-four new churches, all of them strangers to the blessings of the cherished law of patronage, their congregations destined to choose their ministers by their own free voice, and these ministers, all of them, by the chapel act, entitled to take their places in the courts of the church,-what hope was there for moderatism under such a condition of things! Reflections of this kind doubtless robbed Dr. Chalmers of a good many cheers; they would have deprived him, indeed, in all probability, of very many more, had not certain other considerations operated at that time in his favour. The establishment was threatened by external foes; the numerous and active supporters of voluntary church principles were still plying all their energies to effect a separation of church and state, and not a few in consequence, even of those who had no sympathy with the recent ecclesiastical reforms, were still well enough

feeling with

which the party heard triumphis.

moderate

of these