This is the second in a blog series on Thomas Chalmers by Rev James Maciver. You can read the first one here. The content was originally delivered at the 1996 Scottish Historical Studies Conference and can be found here.
3. Glasgow - 1815-1823
To begin with Chalmers missed Kilmany and was considerably frustrated with Glasgow, especially the amount of time he was expected to devote to serving on council boards and committees. While his pulpit oratory probably reached its zenith at this time Chalmers was restless and unsatisfied.
While the population of Glasgow had grown enormously by this time the church had lost many of the working masses from its numbers. Poverty was a serious problem in the depression following the Napoleonic War, and as political economy had always been a favourite subject with Chalmers, so now he addressed the question of poor relief.
The power of the Gospel for him was much more than pulpit oratory for the citizens that flocked to hear him. The working classes must also be saved from lapsing further into paganism and crime. In Chalmers' estimation, only as the Church was seen to be a mighty engine for good was it worthy of people's veneration, in post-Industrial Revolution Scotland. Poor relief, church extension, evangelism, and Gospel preaching were all of a piece for Chalmers, inter-related strands of the church's business in the world.
St. John’s Parish
Appalled by the spiritual ignorance as well as the social deprivation of masses of people in his own parish, Chalmers was now prepared to put his theories to the test. He persuaded the town council to erect and finance a new parish, St. John's, in an area populated by many of the poorest in the city.
To try and keep pace with the swelling population in the cities the church had increased the number of ministers in already existing parishes in a "collegiate" arrangement. When that proved inadequate, new church buildings were erected, but the financial cost was high and the councils, by whose patronage they had been set up, recouped their outlay by charging high seat rents which the poor could not afford. This was the situation Chalmers was determined to remedy in St. John's.
The Organiser
From 1819 to 1823 Chalmers presided over the work in St. John's, preaching, visiting, organising schools and charity work. These years were remarkably fruitful for Chalmers and his deacons. Wherever possible family members were encouraged to contribute to poverty among their own relatives. Chalmers consistently emphasised to those who were in work the stigma of sending their out-of-work relations to the poor-house, when they should instead be prepared to contribute to a scheme like his to prevent this.
One of the main objectives of his scheme was to stimulate this sense of responsibility. Compassion and contribution from relatives and neighbours, coupled with independence, economy, and sobriety would ward off poverty to a much greater degree. He viewed the legalisation of pauperism as a degradation of the poor.
He was convinced that poverty was only exacerbated by encouraging dependence on State help. For him the old method of relief from church door collections, when accompanied by a careful system of parochial visitation, was the best solution to the needs of the poor. Chalmers in this no doubt looked back on a pre-Industrial Revolution Scotland, but not in the spirit of the romanticist that longs merely to repeat the past. He believed that a church revitalised from the grip of Modaratism was the best means to effectively deal with the rapidly increasing social problems of his day.
Looking at the venture from a financial perspective makes interesting reading. The cost of maintaining the poor in the area of this parish up till then had amounted to £1400 per annum. The St. John's door collection ran to £480, yet Chalmers was determined that all cases of poverty within the parish, apart from those already inmates of the local poor-house, should be met from these door collections.
The outcome of these labours was such that by the end of his time in St. John's Chalmers had seen a considerable drop in the number of new cases of poverty in the parish, and in addition a corresponding drop in the cost of keeping them. By the second year of the scheme St. John's had taken over the maintenance of all the inmates of the poor-house. The poverty that had cost the council £1400 a year was now managed by St. John's at a cost of £280.
The comment of Dr. Hanna in his Memoirs of Thomas Chalmers, is instructive.
"The St. John's deaconry - employed as it was to promote the education as well as to manage the indigence of the parish - mingling as it did familiarly with all the families, and proving itself, by word and deed, the true but enlightened friend of all, did far more to prevent pauperism than to provide for it."
Despite this the scheme was not to continue successfully in Glasgow, nor was it much taken up elsewhere. This was not due to lack of interest. There were those who took note of the success of his scheme, and Chalmers longed to see something similar applied in England, but many of those who identified with it there were already committed in time and resources to the anti-slavery movement.
In addition, from 1828 onwards, Chalmers, by that time in Edinburgh, faced staunch opposition from the Dissenters, or Separatists, and from a government which had no intention of allowing the church to regain its claim over society.
In Glasgow itself Chalmers had called for laws of residence to be drawn up to prevent the poor in other areas descending upon St. John's, and so limiting the scheme to that parish alone, but this was never done.
Perhaps one of the main reasons why it wasn't replicated elsewhere at the time was that Chalmers in his social policies was ahead of his time. And such a scheme as St. John's required an enormously energetic leadership. Chalmers himself could not only enter enthusiastically into such work, but also inspire others to carry his plans into effect. But there were few, even then, of his kind around.
The Preacher
We cannot leave Chalmers' ministry in Glasgow without touching upon Chalmers as a preacher of the Gospel. Before he came to Glasgow evangelical preaching had been regarded by many, as had been true of Chalmers himself, as either sentimentalism or fanaticism, or something of both. Through Chalmers now that perception was being steadily transformed. It was by his voice that the city awoke to the evils and corruptions it possessed, as it was through his industry that the means were set up to tackle them. Not the least of his achievements in Glasgow was the raising in public esteem of evangelical preaching.
Yet Chalmers left Glasgow in 1823, after eight dynamic years. No doubt the incessant toils of preaching, writing, visitation, correspondence (some 50 letters a week), family commitments, and all his practical schemes, were taking their toll. He was at times exhausted. But that would not explain his decision to leave, and to take up the offer of the chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews. Nor was the main reason in his desire for an academic chair which he had cherished since boyhood. Chalmers saw that his influence could now be even more widespread than was possible through his Glasgow pulpit, especially through the press, and without the burdens of a parish ministry. He could build upon his unrivalled fame as a preacher and extend his usefulness even further.
In fact, as he mentioned in his letter to his elders, deacons, and Sabbath School teachers in January 1823, he saw that, to all intents and purposes, to continue to hold a preaching ministry and be a leader of such an enlarged work as his social reform, would require him to be a pluralist!
And there was something else, something of which he had written in the early stages of his work, The Christian and Civic Economy of large Towns, in 1819.
"You know that a machine in the hand of a single individual can often do a hundred-fold more work than an individual can do by the direct application of his own hands...But further, the elevated office of a Christian minister is to catch men. There is, however, another still more elevated, and that too, in regard to Christian productiveness - which is to be employed in teaching and training the fishers of men. A professorship is a higher condition of usefulness than an ordinary parish...Were there at this moment fifty vacancies in the church, and the same number of vacancies in our Colleges, and fifty men...rich in their qualifications for the one department and the other, some of you would be for sending them to the pulpits - I would be for sending them to the chairs. A Christianised university, in respect of its professorships, would be to me a mightier accession than a Christianised county, in respect of its parishes. And should there be a fountain out of which emanated a thousand rills, it would be to the source that I should carry the salt of purification, and not to any of the streams which flow from it."
It was in such a mind, from such a work, into even greater influence, that Thomas Chalmers preached his farewell sermon in Glasgow on 9th November, 1823, and gave his introductory lecture in St. Andrews five days later.
4. St Andrews University - 1823-1828
Very different were the thoughts, feelings and aspirations of the new professor of Moral Philosophy to those he had cherished some twenty years earlier in this same place of learning. The enthusiasm with which students awaited his lectures was intense, especially in the second year of his professorship there, regarded by many as the most brilliant in all his academic career.
Excitement and Activity
St. Andrews university sat petrified in Moderatism when Chalmers arrived there. Students now began to vote against it with their feet. Chalmers had brought life, conviction and enthusiasm. A Missionary Society was established and some of the young men who now gathered at his feet, like Alexander Duff and John Adam, were destined to become highly influential missionaries.
After the 1825 Assembly he engaged in preaching and working in his former parish in the Tron, Glasgow. All the way through his enormously busy schedule he made conscience of being a good family man! Writing to his wife regularly, he told her that she was to give the children a feast of strawberries on the delivery of each letter and to let them know that these were from him!
Chalmers was far from confining himself to academic labours. St. Andrews was not Glasgow, but it had its dark side nevertheless. Chalmers took on the role of a Sabbath School teacher, visiting the families as well as teaching the children. On Tuesday evenings he began a class of religious instruction for students.
While at St. Andrews Chalmers advocated raising the academic standard for those entering Scottish universities. He proposed an entrance examination and that a secondary school should be attached to each of the universities, specifically to instruct students towards sitting this entrance examination. By modern standards this may seem a modest proposal to say the least, but it was part of a plea for greater endowment of Colleges, and the principle and vision behind this appeal should not be lost on us. As he put it himself,
"The family honour (of colleges) is built on the prowess of sons, not the greatness of ancestors."
To Chalmers the greatness of any College was not simply a matter of great men in their past; it was very much also to do with the calibre of men graduating from them continuously. That was why endowment was important to him.
In October 1927 he was elected to fill the chair of Divinity at Edinburgh University. He accepted, knowing he would not begin there till November 1828. Theology was higher in importance than moral philosophy, and Edinburgh was of greater influence than St. Andrews. But this phase of his career was to present him with even greater challenges.
To be continued.
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