'His Pity was Ever Active'

This was a talk given at Duncan Street Baptist Church Men's Fellowship Edinburgh on 4th May 2024.

When Dr Guthrie died on 24th February 1873 the funeral was arranged for 4 days later on the 28th of February.

The procession stretched for a mile from the Grange Cemetery down to Salisbury Road where the Guthrie’s lived. There were over 30,000 lining the streets to say farewell to one of Scotland’s favourite sons.

But today his statue stands in Princes Street Gardens and thousands walk past every week without the faintest clue who he was or what he achieved under God for the cause of the gospel.

What I want to do this morning is whet your appetite for an incredibly inspiring figure from an exciting period of church history in Scotland.

Biographical sketches can sometimes crush and depress us. I don’t want to do that today.

Rather, I want to encourage you that Thomas Guthrie faced many of the same challenges you do, but he believed in the power of a big God and a beautiful Saviour.

Guthrie’s life and legacy is a vast subject so let me try and achieve 3 things this morning.

1. Let me give a very quick snapshot of his life.

2. Let me share a little about his incredible impact as a church planter, social reformer and preacher.

3. Let me draw 4 lessons from his life that can inspire and encourage us today.

A Brief Overview of Guthrie’s Life

Thomas Guthrie was born on 12th July 1803 in the Angus town of Brechin to David and Clemintine Guthrie.

He was born four years after the French Revolution and his childhood was in the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars.  As a 12-year-old Thomas Guthrie saw the 42nd Regiment of Highlanders marching in to Edinburgh after the battle of Waterloo in 1815.

He was the second youngest of 13 children - three died in infancy and of the remaining 10 who survived, there were 6 brothers and 3 sisters.

Sent off to Edinburgh university at the tender age of 12 he acknowledges in later life that this was far too young.

He studied four years of philosophy and literature and then a further 4 of theology.  He then studied for another 2 years: chemistry, anatomy and natural history. He attended the lectures of Dr Knox famous for the Burke and Hare murders.  This sparked a lifelong interest in medicine, and he used to prescribe medicine for minor ailments as a parish minister.

Despite clear ability, Guthrie had to wait 5 years to be called to a charge.  During this time, he went to the Sorbonne in France to study and he returned to work in his father’s bank. This allowed Guthrie to hone his preaching skills and to spend time working and getting to know the frustrations of everyday life.

Eventually Guthrie was called to Arbirlot in Angus in 1830 where he proved to be an innovative and diligent pastor for the next 7 years.

In 1837 he was called to Old Greyfriars Parish Church as a collegiate minister to Rev John Sym.

In 1840 he planted St John’s Parish Church in Victoria Street.  The congregation left at the disruption and worshiped in Nicholson Square while they were building Free St John’s which is now St Columba’s Free Church.

He is remembered for launching the Ragged School movement in 1847 after his elders took cold feet and pulled back from supporting it in Free St John's.  His book 'A Plea for Ragged School' was like 'a spark amongst combustibles' and his leadership and vision led to a nationwide and world wide movement.

He was a leader of the temperance movement and wrote the powerful book ‘The City its Sins and Sorrows’ in 1857 to call for radical change to the availability of ‘dram shops’ and ‘gin palaces’.

Guthrie raised an incredible £116,000 in 1845 to build over 700 manses after the disruption.  He was known as the 'Big Beggar Man' as he toured 13 synods and 58 Presbyteries.  

He struggled with a weak heart but continued to write and edit The Sunday Magazine well into his late 60’s after retiring from Free St John’s in 1864.

He died in February 1873. Some of his last words of himself were ‘a brand plucked from the burning.’

Guthrie the Church Planter

By the time Dr Guthrie came to Old Greyfriars in Edinburgh in 1837 he was already convinced of the need for church planting particularly amongst the poor although there is little that could have prepared him for his new parish. He says:

‘I can compare it to nothing else than the change from the green fields and woods and the light of nature to venturing into the darkness and blackness of the coal pit. Guthrie was already an advocate of the revived Parochial System: a church at the very doors of the poor, the church free to all without distinction, properly equipped schools, elders, deacons and district visitors to assist the minister in his pastoral work.’

His vision was for a new kind of church and work began on St John’s in Victoria Street in 1838. When Dr Guthrie entered his new pulpit on 19th November 1840, he could never have imagined that his tenure would be only 2 short years before the congregation would leave at the Disruption.

But in 1840 St John’s in Victoria Street become a beacon of hope for the poor. It was to be a new kind of church where the poor were welcome to hear the gospel without money and without price. Only the balcony continued to be rented out to the wealthier residents of Edinburgh and brought in a healthy income of £280 per year.

Thirty elders and fifteen deacons were allotted districts where they actively sought out non church goers and assisted the poor in practical ways. Dr Guthrie saw the church like a parish well and said: how often have I wished that the parish church was more like the parish well, a well of salvation where all might draw and drink. Finally, in St John’s this vision was realised.

While Thomas Chalmers may have been the great pioneer of church planting in the pre-Disruption Church of Scotland, Guthrie was one of his most zealous followers. Both men were in the vanguard of what Dr Cook of Belfast called a glorious enterprise of Christian aggressions upon the region of popular ignorance.

It is incredible to think that between 1835 and 1841 the Church of Scotland raised a staggering £300,000 and 222 churches were built. Men like Guthrie were not ‘hand ringers’ but men of action.

Let’s take encouragement from the words of Thomas Chalmers at a Church Extension meeting in 1838 where he commended the work that Guthrie was to undertake in St John’s Edinburgh: 

‘I know that my friend Dr Guthrie is a house-going minister, and I also know this is the patent way to create a church-going people. I trust that when this arrangement shall be exemplified in the Cowgate, and multiplied over Edinburgh, it will be found that – what no adjustment of political or civil wisdom has been able to effect – the harmonisation of all classes of society shall be at last effected through the medium of Gospel ministrations, and by the omnipotence of Gospel charity.’

Guthrie the Social Reformer

Dr Thomas Guthrie is famous for his 'Ragged Schools'. The schools went on to become a huge movement that saved thousands of children from a life of crime and abuse. But as with every great movement it had humble beginnings at Guthrie's newly built church in 1847. They had a huge room in the basement and the elders initially agreed to set up a ragged industrial feeding school for '20-30 waifs'. As time drew near for the launch the elders took fright and the project was abandoned. While Guthrie was cast down, and felt like a man who has 'launched a good sturdy boat, sees her before she has taken ten strokes from the shore seized by a mighty billow, flung back, and dashed to pieces on the strand.'

In 'Out of Harness' which are Sunday Magazine articles collected and published in 1883, Guthrie sees the Lord's providence in this initial disappointment.  He says 'Baffled in this direction another lay open to me.  I might leave the limits of St John's congregation, and of the Free Church, to launch out on the open sea; I might throw myself on the Christian public, irrespective of sect or party; for were these children saved, it was nothing to me to what church they might attach themselves, or whose arm plucked them from destruction.'

The first or ‘original’ ragged school in Edinburgh was established in 1847 in a small room on the Castle Hill. The main building that was eventually used is now part of Camera Obscura and the open bible can still be seen above the door with the words ‘Search the Scriptures’ (John 5 v 39) engraved on it.

The original Ragged School brought together different responses to the needs of these desperate children; education, regular meals, clothes, ‘industrial training’ and Christian instruction. All this was done in an environment of discipline and structure although there is never a sense that the schools were harsh or austere.

The ragged children who attended the school/s did not remain overnight but were in school for 12 hours in the summer and 11 hours in the winter. The day started at 8am with the rather painful sounding ‘ablutions’ and the children were dismissed at 7:15pm after supper. Guthrie describes the daily routine; ‘in the morning they are to break their fast on a diet of the plainest fare, - then march from their meal to their books; in the afternoon they are again to be provided with a dinner of the cheapest kind, - then back again to school; from which after supper, they return not to the walls of an hospital, but to their own homes. There, carrying with them a holy lesson, they may prove Christian missionaries to those dwellings of darkness and sin.'

Guthrie the Preacher

There is a famous story about Dr Thomas Guthrie when he was visiting the studio of an artist. An unfinished picture lay on an easel and Guthrie suggested one or two adjustments that might improve the painting. The artist responded: ‘Dr Guthrie, remember you are a preacher and not a painter.’ With his usual rapier wit Guthrie responded: ‘Beg your pardon, my good friend, I am a painter; only I paint in words, while you use brush and colours.’

While Guthrie’s enduring legacy is his work as a social reformer, his highest calling was always preaching. His colleague, Rev Dr Hanna, said of him: ‘No readier speaker ever stepped on a platform.’ Whatever Guthrie may have lacked in fine theology he made up for in passion and imagery. One anonymous writer said:

‘His oratory wanted none of the polish that distinguished Chalmers’ wild whirlwind bursts, or Hall’s grandly ascending periods, but it had qualities entirely of its own. More, perhaps, than any other preacher of his time, he had the power or knack of fixing truths on the memory. He sent them home as if they had been discharged from a battery, and fixed them there by a process peculiar to himself.’

Guthrie’s pattern of preparation was mainly to study in the early morning. After breakfast he would retire to the vestry where he could be heard rehearsing his sermon. He believed in ‘committing’ his sermon to memory and was scathing of ‘readers’ (those who rigidly read from a script). Like all great preachers, Guthrie spent many hours in preparation and believed ‘that God does not give excellence to men but as the reward of labour.’ Even once his sermons were finished he would revise them: ‘After my discourse was written, I spent hours in correcting it; latterly always for that purpose, keeping a blank page on my manuscript opposite a written one, cutting out dry bits, giving point to dull ones, making clear any obscurity, and narrative parts more graphic, throwing more pathos into appeals, and copying God in His works by adding the ornamental to the useful.’

Despite a deep grasp of truth as can be seen in his published sermons, Guthrie believed in simplicity in his sermons: ‘I used the simplest, plainest terms, avoiding anything vulgar, but always, where possible, employing the Saxon tongue – the mother tongue of my hearers. I studied the style of the addresses with the ancient and inspired prophets delivered to the people of Israel, and saw how, differing from the dry inquisitions or a naked statement of truths, they abound in metaphors, figures, and illustrations.’ As with his character, Guthrie blended a perfect mix of truth and love, passion and solemnity. As he says in a letter to Rev Laurie of Tulliallan: ‘The easier your manner, without losing the character of seriousness and solemnity, so much the better. Vigour and birr, without roaring and bellowing, are ever to be aimed at.’

What can we learn from Thomas Guthrie?

1. Vision - Guthrie had incredible vision. He literally, by God's grace, changed Scotland. His vision was not shaped by the challenges of 19th Century Scotland but rather shaped by the greatness of the God he served. He believed that the Christian gospel could save anyone and transform any community. While others saw homeless and ragged children as burdens or a nuisance, Guthrie saw in these street children the potential for moral and spiritual change. By the time of his death Guthrie had, along with many other social reformers, changed childhood. Rather than being seen as commodities, towards the end of the 19th Century, children were seen as those in need of protection and nurture. Partly as a result of lobbying from social reformers like Guthrie legislation was passed protecting children from working long hours in often dangerous situations.

The DNA of men like Thomas Guthrie and Thomas Chalmers is that they had a big vision. It wasn't a congregational vision or even a Free Church vision but a national vision. Through church extension, the Manse Fund, education and his incredible work with Ragged Schools, Guthrie gave us a great example of the need for a coherent Christian vision for Scotland.

2. Truth - Like so many Christians who get involved in social action, Guthrie never lost his moorings when he become a social reformer. It is clear from his writings that he adhered to the bible as the word of God and remained confessionally Reformed throughout his ministry. He believed in the supremacy and centrality of preaching as the main method that God uses to save sinners. There is no evidence that he ever watered down his preaching or softened his stance on any major Christian doctrine as he became the figurehead for social reform in 19th Century Scotland.

3. Love - As a minister of the gospel, Guthrie embodied love. We are told in James that 'Pure religion and undefiled before God, even the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless, and widows in their adversity, and to keep himself unspotted from the world' James 1 v 27. The fruit of true Christianity is always love for the poor and the oppressed. Many people regard practical love for the poor as a deviation from the gospel. Nothing could be further from the truth. Guthrie's work with ragged children enhanced his message and gave his Christianity a reality and authenticity that made the gospel attractive to sinners. His love was on display throughout the week as he visited some of the worst closes and stairs in the Cowgate, Edinburgh. He was regularly broken by the sights that he saw. Love was the great motivation of his ministry.

This was the same for men like CH Spurgeon as Alex DiPrima says in his excellent book 'Spurgeon and the Poor; ‘Spurgeon believed gospel proclamation and social ministry ought to be inseparable in the work of the church. Good works of love and mercy toward the poor are the hands and feet of the gospel message. The Christian community should be marked by compassion for the poor, and this compassion should adorn the proclamation of the gospel.’ 

4. Hope - It was this combination of truth and love that gave Guthrie such hope for the communities he worked in and for the individuals he sought to reach. The gospel, when preached in all its fullness and freeness, should fill every sinner with a sense of hope that Christ died to reconcile them to a holy God. The church has gone though many periods when this message has been lost or when she has lost confidence in the power of this gospel to reach the darkest and most hopeless parts of our communities. Guthrie (among others) gave the Free Church the belief that the gospel, accompanied by education for the poor and the practical outworking of love through the local church could redeem the darkest and most hopeless communities.

As we said at the start Guthrie’s funeral took place on 28th February 1873.  230 children from the Ragged School attended his funeral and one little girl was overheard saying ‘he was all the father I ever knew.’

Dr Candlish took his funeral and preached on Hebrews 9 v 27, 28. He said;

‘Men of talents, men of abilities, men of learning, are not uncommon. Men powerful in thought are often raised up: but genius, real poetic genius, like Guthrie’s come but once in many generations. We shall not look upon his like soon, if ever. Nor was it genius alone that distinguished him. The warm heart and the ready hand; the heart to feel, and the hand to work. No sentimental dreamer or mooning idealist was he. His pity was ever active.’

May we know some of that 'active pity' as we seek to win Scotland for Christ.  

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection - Thomas Chalmers: Disruption Times (3)

This is the third article in a series on Thomas Chalmers.  You can read the first one here and the second one here.  The contents of these blog articles were originally delivered at the 1996 Historical Studies Conference and you can listen to the original address here.

 5. Edinburgh University - 1828-1843

Again, Chalmers was following a Moderate into the chair, and as in St. Andrews, his arrival was greeted with huge excitement.

His Theology

His lectures in theology were philosophic and began with the condition of man in sin, moving to the remedy that God had provided in Christ. The posthumous publication of these lectures in his Institutes of Theology, left some disappointed it must be said. More modern assessment has tended to denigrate Chalmers as a theologian, and even in cases to suggest that the organisation of his lectures in the Institutes.  As Stuart Brown says,

"reveals a mind struggling against doubts about some of the harsher doctrines of scholastic Calvinism and seeking a more personal form of Christianity - while at the same time concerned not to challenge openly the Calvinist orthodoxy of the Westminster Confession which he was bound by his professorial office to uphold. The experience of Erskine of Linlathen and Macleod Campbell had evidently made a profound impact on Chalmers, and his concern for the ecclesiastical organisation and Evangelical mission of the church discouraged him from experimenting in his lectures or in print with new theological ideas."

But there are at least two elements behind Chalmers' theological arrangement that help to explain it and refute the charge that he was a frustrated radical confined in the straitjacket of the church's confessional standards.

Firstly, the fact that his own mind had been drawn to the sovereignty of God long before he had ever come to accept Calvinistic doctrine. That remained strongly with him. And is that not at the root of Calvinism, indeed of Pauline theology, and a central feature of divine revelation itself?

Secondly, it should be remembered that Chalmers could only reach so far in his Moral Philosophy and Natural Theology course. The ethics in such disciplines brought him to the point of man's condition but could throw little light on how man was to be recovered. In his theological lectures Chalmers was anxious to make an immediate connection with where he had left off in his previous course. This was no hesitant Calvinism, nor an incipient Arminianism. It was the work of a thinker in revealed theology rather than a learned theologian like his successor William Cunningham. But it was the work of a man who, in preaching and lecturing, was concerned to set side by side the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. The one was not to be dealt with in any way that impaired the force of the other. His theological teaching sought always to convey the force of each.

Catholic Emancipation

By this time the movement for Catholic emancipation had taken on new momentum, and Chalmers had years earlier made known his support. Now he entered the campaign more fully. He had dealt with the subject at the opening of Edward Irving's new church in London in May 1827, asserting that the Protestant faith should not fear Catholic emancipation. Indeed, Chalmers believed that Protestantism had suffered as a result of excluding Roman Catholics from holding political office.

At a meeting in Edinburgh he gave an impassioned speech supporting emancipation. It was one of the most memorable speeches ever given in the city. In it Chalmers argued that the laws enforcing Protestantism had weakened it, making it to rely upon political support rather than on the truth itself. Moreover, Roman Catholics would be more amenable to the Gospel if emancipation should be established. On this latter point his expectations were groundless as history proves. However, his argument was not founded on that belief, but on the conviction that emancipation was a matter of justice.

Two weeks later, addressing the presbytery of Edinburgh, he again stressed the need for emancipation. He argued that there was no Scriptural reason why the state should not extend constitutional rights to all its citizens irrespective of religious persuasion, providing that did not threaten the state's endowment of the established religion. Chalmers would find that his efforts here would add to the determination of disapproving Dissenters to oppose him in his greater efforts for church extension.

Church Extension and Opposition

His main efforts were again now in fact for church extension. By the Assembly of 1834 the Evangelical Party were in the majority and Chalmers was placed as convener of the Committee on Church Accommodation. A huge effort followed on a national scale - appeals, collections, and the formation of associations. In 1835 he reported that £65,000 had been contributed in the year and 64 new churches were in process of building. Over £200,000 was collected within four years and 200 churches erected.

Chalmers himself was at the head of such singular success. Not only did his organisational skills lead the way but he was able also to fill many of the new pulpits with men who had been his own pupils, and they were men of outstanding qualities in cases like Robert Murray McCheyne, Dundee,

The problem was that of funding these new ministries. Seat rents would have to be kept low enough not to deter the poorest in these parishes, yet that would prove insufficient of itself to keep these ministers. An endowment would be needed, and an approach was made to the government, some of whom had expressed favour with the request. But just then Chalmers was thwarted. Opposition arose from Dissenters who saw in this church extension scheme a move on the part of the Establishment to limit their influence.

Chalmers was surprised and annoyed, but the opposition was stronger than he realised. Hugh Miller, through his editorship of The Witness gave him much support. Like Chalmers he considered the church to be the most important institution in the land, and that the people of Scotland needed to be brought to see what a large interest they had in it.

The Dissenters, or Separatists, had their roots in Scottish secession movements from 1733 onwards. Chalmers and the Evangelicals actually regarded Dissenting congregations as a benefit to the Establishment, but many Dissenters had voiced their opposition to the plans for Catholic emancipation fearing that this was the first step towards the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic church. Some Dissenters made the occasion one for attacking all Establishments thus elevating the Voluntary Principle.

Controversy raged for a whole decade. Chalmers kept a level-headed distance. But he did expound on occasions the policy he passionately believed in. Establishment was defendable, but only as it is an effective instrument of evangelism. The Voluntary Principle (where Church endowment is by voluntary contribution of the people) in his view simply wasn't adequate for the needs of a whole community. Voluntaries planted new churches on the principle of attraction, mainly drawing their own sympathisers. The Established church, when operating in Chalmers' vision of it, demanded provision for all the population. Its duty was to supply a Gospel ministry to everyone.

The Voluntaries, on the other hand, argued that no Established church could be truly "free", being under state authority. Chalmers utterly repudiated this. The church and state had coordinate but independent jurisdictions.

When the appeal was made to parliament for the endowment of the new extension charges the Dissenters responded with a memorial in opposition to it. In it they suggested that the main objective of Chalmers was to annihilate dissent under the guise of a scheme to supply religious education to those lacking it. This was an unworthy charge against him. The parliamentary commission set up to look into the question of endowment reported that both dissenting and established congregations in Glasgow and Edinburgh had spare Accommodation. Chalmers had been effectively blocked.

In the course of the crisis on church extension and its endowment, it became apparent that, in the opinion of the civil courts, the independence of the established church was not what it claimed. The Reform Bill of 1832 was felt by many, including Chalmers, to be against the moral and Christian well-being of the nation. It seemed that the new interest in secular politics was a threat to the establishment of the church, given that a shift in political power had placed influence in the hands not only of Dissenters but also Rationalists with hostility to all religion.

The Patronage Question

While the endowment of church extension was the crucible in which crisis developed, it was the question of patronage that provided the catalyst. To the 1832 General Assembly, of which Chalmers was Moderator, three synods and eight presbyteries presented overtures drawing attention to what they regarded as the evils of patronage. Chalmers believed the church already possessed powers to deal with misuse of patronage. In 1813 he had stated that the church might reject a patron's presentee if they judged him unsuitable. The church courts had the ultimate power to decide whether a presentee was suitable, taking account of all the details of the circumstances. The rights of the patron were not absolute, as indeed the 1712 Act of parliament restoring patronage had recognised, although not stated explicitly. Under Moderatism the call of a congregation had become denuded of its real significance, and the priority for Chalmers was the restoration of its significance and effect.

Chalmers himself preferred not to resort to legislation at first. This was not to be the case, however, and instead it was decided that the church should legislate for a uniformity of practice in congregational settlements.

Chalmers immediately suggested that, in such a case, the church should apply to the government to recognise this step, not because he held any doubts about the church's power to enact such legislation, but rather because he knew that others did, and he thought it better to clear the matter from all doubts and concerns from the outset. In this Chalmers deferred to what he regarded as the better judgement of Lord Moncrieff, although he was to regret afterwards that he had done so.

The legislation finally enacted was what came to be known as the Veto Act, passed by the General Assembly in 1834 under which, "the majority of the male heads of families, resident within the parish, being members of the congregation, and in full communion with the church...ought to be of conclusive effect in setting aside the presentee..."

The Ten Year Conflict

This was the marker for the beginning of the "Ten Years Conflict", which would culminate in the 1843 Disruption. The Veto was challenged almost at once. Proposed settlements in Lethendy and Auchterarder were vetoed only to be referred to the Court of Session who pronounced against the veto. The Lord President stated,

"That our Saviour is the temporal Head of the Kirk of Scotland, in any temporal, or legislative, or judicial sense, is a position that I can dignify by no other name than absurdity. The parliament is the temporal head of the Church, from whose acts, and from whose acts alone, it exists as the national Church, and from which alone it derives all its powers."

A complete impasse between the church and the civil courts was reached in early 1841. Marnoch, in the presbytery of Strathbogie, had seen the intrusion of John Edwards, on the signature of only one parishioner and against 261 signatures on the Veto against him.

The patron introduced another man, favourable to the people, but Edwards had taken matters to the Court of Session, who ordered the Presbytery to take Edwards on trials for ordination.

The Presbytery, with Moderates in the majority agreed, but the Commission of Assembly forbade proceeding. Seven ministers went ahead, to be suspended by the Commission, but they proceeded anyway to what was, as Dr. Hanna describes,

"an ordination unparalleled in the history of the Church, performed by a presbytery of suspended ministers, on the call of a single communicant, against the desire of the patron, in face of the strenuous opposition of a united congregation, in opposition to the express injunction of the Assembly, and at the sole bidding, and under the sole authority, of the Court of Session."

The church sent some of the ablest ministers, Chalmers included, to preach in Strathbogie. Interdicts were served copiously on ministers intending to preach there, only in most cases to be disregarded.

The effect of these manoeuvrings was to bring to the attention of more and more people throughout the country that every vestige of spiritual authority was being stripped from the church. With Chalmers prominent, negotiations were carried out with the government, but he was disliked by the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. His successor, Sir Robert Peel, proved a no more certain source of hope. Lord Aberdeen launched a bitter and unjustified attack on him. The Home Secretary was sure that the situation needed the strong arm of the State, and Lord Hope, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates was chief adviser to the Moderate Party.

Amid such upheaval and pressure, it is enlightening to find evidence of Chalmers' simple, strong and vital faith. He wrote in his Journal, June 21st, 1840,

"Have not yet recovered the shock of Lord Aberdeen's foul attack on me in the House of Lords. May I live henceforth in the perpetual sunshine of God's reconciled countenance. May I experience the sanctifying power of such a habit. Save me, save me, O God, from the untoward imaginations which disquiet and inflame me, warring against my soul, and engrossing my thoughts, to the utter exclusion of the things which make for holiness and peace...Hide me under the covert of thy wings, and let the menaces which overhang the country and the church pass away from them both."

Preparing for Disruption

But by now it was becoming increasingly likely that only a break with the State could preserve the spiritual independence of the church. For church extension endowment Chalmers had knocked at the door of the Whigs and gone from them to the Tories. Both had failed him. But he had experienced the generosity of the people. As the men of parliament failed him again now, Chalmers would need to go to the people again. He had not lost his vision of a church commensurate with the needs of the people, but now it would need to be without the advantages of Establishment. It was in this vein that Chalmers now looked ahead.

The Assembly of 1842 set aside interdicts served against Strathbogie commissioners taking their seats. For the first time in the conflict the Assembly declared, that "patronage is a grievance, has been attended with much injury to the cause of true religion in this Church and Kingdom, is the main cause of the difficulties in which the Church is at present involved and ought to be abolished."

The Assembly also adopted the document which was to become famous as the “Claim, Declaration and Protest anent the Encroachments of the Court of Session.” It was, as expected, dismissed by parliament, an action that provoked Robert Murray McCheyne to say of 7th March 1843 in his usual saintly candour,

"An eventful night this in the British Parliament. Once more King Jesus stands before an earthly tribunal, and they know him not."

At the Convocation of 470 ministers in November 1842 Chalmers played a leading role. He preached a powerful sermon on Psalm 112 verse 4, "Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness." It is worth quoting from it at some length. He said,

"The great lesson of this text is the connection which obtains between integrity of purpose and clearness of discernment, insomuch that a duteous conformity to what is right, is generally followed up by a ready and luminous discernment of what is true. It tells us that if we have but grace to do as we ought, we shall be made to see as we ought; or, in other words, that if right morally, we are in the highway of becoming right intellectually.

The great lesson of our text is, that if we purpose aright we shall be made to see aright, and that the integrity of our will shall be followed up by light in the understanding. God will establish the just. Commit then thy works to the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. It is he who, by the light of his Holy Spirit, makes good the connection between singleness of purpose and wisdom of conduct, and thus I understand the text, that he maketh wise the simple and giveth understanding to the simple."

From his experience of financing church extension, he also put forward a plan for financing a secession should it need to take place, and by this time few doubted that it would. 

The Decisive Moments

In the Assembly of 1843 the Non-Intrusionists were in the minority for the first time in 10 years. The Moderator Dr. Welsh, instead of constituting the Assembly, announced that he and others could not regard it as a free Assembly. He then read a protest setting out the reasons, handed it to the clerk, and then left, followed by Chalmers and over 190 ministers and elders, joined by many more at the Tanfield Hall where the first Assembly of the Church of Scotland Free was constituted. Chalmers was enthusiastically elected Moderator.

It is impossible to conclude that Chalmers himself had been persuaded by anything less than extraordinarily weighty considerations in severing his connection with the State, a connection that he had held to be so indispensable to the good of the church and its mission.

Chalmers and his allies were convinced that not only had the State's interference been an assault upon the prerogatives of Christ's Headship of his church, but also a stranglehold upon the church's enterprise and activity, a fatal blow to its spiritual life and power. Had even a little latitude been left to the church to give effect to the voice of the people, Chalmers would likely have retained the church-state connection. He did not take the strong view that other Disruption men took of the divine right of the question, but the absoluteness of the State's claims left him in no doubt that severance was needed and right in the circumstances.

Nor was it the case that Chalmers, after the Disruption had taken place, could no longer retain and pursue his vision of the church as God's instrument for the good of the nation. He believed that more good could be done by a disendowed church than by an established church controlled by the State. It was still this conviction that spurred him on in the remainder of his life to the building up and strengthening of the Free Church.

6. New College 1843-1847

Chalmers entered on his service in the Free Church's theological institution, known as the "New College", in November 1843, as Principal and Professor of Divinity. A vast amount of work was necessary in raising up the Free Church, in the provision of manses and schools, and in financing its ministers. All this needed to be virtually a replica of the Establishment they had left, relying on the generosity of the people. Chalmers committed himself mainly to his College lectures and to the Sustentation Fund. 

The Sustentation Fund

By the end of the first year the Sustentation Fund efforts had raised £68,700, enough to pay 600 ministers £100 each. But Chalmers was disappointed. For one thing he wanted to pay each minister another third of that figure.

Then, secondly, he knew that many more ministers were required for new congregations.

Thirdly, the Fund was not, as it stood, going to be sufficient to finance major mission enterprises to the spiritually destitute which Chalmers still dearly longed to see. That was his major disappointment with the Fund.

Chalmers tried to alter the "equal dividend" element that ensured each congregation received an equal benefit from the Fund. But some congregations were selfishly withholding funds while drawing their equal dividend. The brotherly spirit had been over calculated. Chalmers failed in his appeal. He remonstrated vehemently, sometimes with more than reasonable force. But it's easy to see why, when he saw that the Fund was not going to be the means of carrying out his urge of regenerating Scotland's spiritual wastelands.

Yet Chalmers was not finished. Perplexed, but not in despair. He had one more project in mind that would again apply his convictions and would show by God's blessing that they were vindicated. This was the West Port project.

The West Port

Building on his experiences in Glasgow, Chalmers chose this area of Edinburgh for his final evangelistic and social venture. An area of 2000 people, the West Port was one of the poorest and most crime-ridden of districts. Chalmers mapped it out into 20 districts, assigning one to a specific worker who was to visit the twenty families or so there every week. 

Chalmers' Journal shows that on this he spent as much energy in prayer as on any other work he had ever engaged in.

"O pour forth the spirit of generosity on my coadjutors and their friends in the work of cultivating the West Port of Edinburgh...reveal to me O God the right tactics, the right way and method of proceeding in the management of the affairs of the West Port. Oh! that I were able to pull down the strongholds of sin and of Satan that are there...Be my help and my adviser, O God, and tell me by thy word and Spirit what I ought to do."

Progress was not at first encouraging. Yet Chalmers encouraged his helpers with advice like the following,

“We are not worthy of having entered on the experiment if not capable of persevering with it under the discouragement it may be of many alternations, and for a time, if God so please to exercise our faith and patience, of reverse."

A missionary minister, William Tasker, was secured for the work and by the end of 1845 a congregation had been formed. The meetings increased and a building for 520 was built in early 1847, the greatest number of the attenders being from the local area. In April that year Chalmers administered the Lord's Supper to the congregation. He confessed to Tasker,

“I have got now the desire of my heart; God has indeed answered my prayer, and I could now lay down my head in peace and die."

It was exactly a month before his death. How it would have filled him with ecstatic joy to see revival spread across the country in 1860-61, in which new charges like the West Port were also embraced. Tasker wrote in 1861,

“At this moment I have nearly 60 candidates for communion, two thirds of whom date their serious impressions within the last three months. At present we have at least 60 persons who hold district prayer meetings in almost every close of the West Port."

The West Port proved to be a blueprint for other congregations to work from, most notably Chalmers' old charge in the Tron, Glasgow. Yet the goal of Chalmers was never fully realised by himself or after him. Population increased in the cities so rapidly that the church's resources failed to keep up with it. In addition, the famines of 1845 and 46 in the Highlands and in Ireland left thousands facing starvation and showed the inadequacies of both Church and State.

Chalmers was aghast at the laissez-faire attitude of the Whig government and the lack of response from private philanthropy, many preferring to conclude that the people in these areas had brought the famine on themselves and it would be better to let nature take its course and eradicate the population than support it artificially. Chalmers appealed to the government, wrote articles and called for reform.

In reality Chalmers was appealing against his own convictions that State handouts, without corresponding efforts of work on the part of the recipients, were not the answer to poverty. But this was a crisis of unusual proportions, and even had it not been, the failure in response to an ideal is not the same as the ideal itself being a failure.

The Final Days

Early in May 1847 Chalmers was in London, appearing before a Committee of the House of Commons, in relation to the complaints by the Free Church against those who had refused it sites for places of worship, including such powerful landowners as the Duke of Sutherland.

On 28th May he arrived back in Edinburgh, weary and needing rest. Friends and family were anxious, but he parried them. On Sunday 30th May he attended church services but was too tired to conduct family worship that evening, promising to do so in the morning. His housekeeper found him next morning in bed, propped up half sitting. He had died very soon after he had left them the previous evening.

His friend and colleague Thomas Guthrie, deeply affected, said,

"Men of his calibre are like mighty forest trees. We do not know their size till they are down."

Conclusion

Chalmers remains one of Scotland's greatest sons. He was the kind of rare individual who gives direction to a nation, and whose interest is not either in people's souls or in their temporal welfare, but in both.

While he influenced many in the middle and upper classes his heart was also set upon the lot of the poor, the uneducated, the ungodly. Church extension and endowment, educational reform, overseas missionary work, opposition to the Erastianism of the Court of Session, leadership of the body that resulted from the Disruption, were alike tasks for which he was eminently gifted.

His life story also gives the lie to the suggestion that it was the turn in theology from the late nineteenth century onwards that gave impetus to concern, denouncement of, and action about, social deprivations. To think of Liberal theology applying itself to the problems of Chalmers' time, with greater success than Chalmers had, is to forget that its near relative, Victorian Moderatism, had no moral energy at all to transform spiritual and physical slum conditions.

Chalmers himself described Moderate preaching as,

"like a winter's day, short, and clear, and cold; the brevity is good, the clarity is better, but the coldness is fatal. Moonlight preaching ripens no harvests."

Chalmers knew from his own experience, and amply demonstrated in his projects, that only the theology in which Christ's sufficiency and man's utter helplessness in the dilemma of sin, in which Holy Spirit regeneration, active faith in Christ, and a living hope are to the fore, can ever deliver the moral force needed to do good to a nation. 

But perhaps his greatest feature was that in the midst of having a horizon so broad as to include philosophy, physical science, social science, political economy, education, and theology, he retained the piety of a simple Christian.

The most suitable epitaph is in his own words,

"I want to grow in the faith in all its simplicity and self-abasement. I want self to be crucified, and the Saviour to be all in all with me...there is a wonderful charm in the righteousness of Christ becoming our by faith; it throws another moral atmosphere over the soul, and renews at the very time that it pacifies. I desire Christ to be all in all to me...O my God may the fear of thee supplant every other fear, and the love of thee subordinate every other love."

Philanthropy grows best in the Soil of Christianity

Philanthropy is not a casual product; it is not a mere outcome of a zeitgeist, or fashion of the age; its roots are deep in the soil of Christianity; it cannot pick up a living either from Paganism, or Agnosticism, or Secularism, or any other system cut off from the influence of the love of Christ.

This is one of the first paragraphs in William Garden Blaikie’s Leaders in Modern Philanthropy published in 1884.  What follows is a barnstorming tour of all the great Christian philanthropists from John Howard, William Wilberforce, Elizabeth Fry, Andrew Reed, Thomas Chalmers, Thomas Guthrie, David Livingstone, William Burns, John Patterson, Agnes Salt and many others.  The claim that some make that Dr Thomas Guthrie was some kind of lone voice in 19^th century Scotland is simply not supported by facts.  Guthrie built on the work of Sheriff Watson in Aberdeen and John Pounds in England.  His work was taken up by many particularly Lord Shaftesbury in England.  He was part of a wider movement that rediscovered evangelical theology and roused a sleeping church to the Biblical mandate of fighting for justice and showing mercy to the marginalised.  Their work sprang from their theology.

Rev W.G. Blackie

Despite the UK’s departure from its Christian heritage, much of our society remains rooted in the Bible.  The idea that we are all equal in the sight of the law, the idea of education for all, the concept of compassion for the poor are inextricably linked to a Biblical view of humanity.  If you don’t think this is important look closely at other society’s and see the radical difference.  The foundational Christian belief that man is made in the image of God has radical implications for the way we treat our fellow man, particularly those who need special protection and care.  Christianity teaches that everyone has dignity and worth.  It also teaches that anyone can be redeemed from their fallen/sinful state.  Man’s fundamental problem is not poverty, housing or power, it is sin (Matthew 15 v 15-20).  The addict, the wife beater, the thief can all be redeemed and transformed by the grace of God.  Christianity is about grace, hope and most of all love.  It is religion of redemption and second chances.

But much more than personal transformation, Christianity places on the believer ‘a strong dynamic impulse to diffuse the love which had fallen so warmly on themselves’ (Blaikie).  Our Saviour, ‘the friend of publicans and sinners’ is our ultimate example.  Jesus taught repeatedly about the need to love the poor in parables such as the Good Samaritan.  His teaching in Matthew 25 on the sheep and the goats couldn’t be clearer.  He defined true greatness: ‘the servant of all being the greatest of all.’  Remember that Jesus was speaking at a time when the order of the Roman empire masked a barbarous culture. Gladiatorial sports slaughtered tens of thousands for nothing but the amusement of the baying mob.  Slavery was commonplace and women were often used as sexual play things.  Yes, there were occasional spurts of compassion when an amphitheatre collapsed but there was no systematic relief of the poor.  It was a hierarchical society where groups and classes were systematically oppressed and kept down.  A bit like modern Britain.

It was as the New Testament church grew and spread throughout the Roman Empire that Christianity’s counter cultural message of love for the poor began to change societies.  As Blaikie says: ‘In the course of time, barbarous sports disappeared; slavery was abolished or greatly modified; laws that bore hard on the weaker sex were amended; the care of the poor became one of the great lessons of the Church.’  This is not to say that the church did not frequently go wrong.  Often the methods of showing love became exaggerated and distorted.  The alms giving in the mediaeval church became more about the abuse of power than equipping the poor to become self-reliant.   The reformation was a great return to Biblical Christianity and while it was a time of great conflict it also saw a return to Biblical philanthropy and care for the poor.  It encouraged education and saw the start of schools, colleges and universities.  The Bible was not only given to the common man but he was also taught how to read it.  This why William Tyndale became a hunted terrorist.  His English New Testament was a threat because it challenged the power of a corrupt church.

So far so good.  Even the most cynical atheist would surely acknowledge that Christian philanthropy has done great good.  But let’s be honest, there have been many inspiring philanthropists who haven’t had an ounce of love for God.  It is wonderful to read of philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie building libraries, donating ornate organs and building palaces of peace.  My family home in Sutherland has many monuments to the generosity of Carnegie.  We celebrate every effort that is made to relieve the poor and change society for the better whether in Christs name or not.  Nobody can deny that many charities have sprung up with little or no Christian inspiration.  But history shows us that all too often the greatest social reformers have been compelled by a zeal for God that leads to an enduring love for his neighbour.  They inspire followers who, if not always sharing in their theology, agree with their goals and are willing to follow their example.  Often secular philanthropists (such as Carnegie) are blessed with great fortunes and influence but it takes an exceptional love to persevere in championing the poor without wealth or power.  It is one thing for an inspiring political leader to rise up but unless it is underpinned with the theology of Christian compassion, how long will it last?

Dr Thomas Guthrie

Men like Thomas Guthrie and William Wilberforce inspired a movement rooted firmly in Micah 6 v 8.  They called the church and nation to love justice, show mercy and walk humbly with the God of the Bible.  They wrote, they spoke, they preached, they persuaded and they campaigned for change to the way the poor were treated.  The work went on long after they were dead.  Their work changed whole communities, changed laws and changed the direction of our nation.  When Guthrie died in 1873 not only was education about to be offered to all, but thanks to Christian social reformers children were finally being offered protection and care instead of exploitation.  Men like Guthrie and Wilberforce were hated and opposed because they challenged the powerful vested interests in the alcohol and slave industry respectively.  But through all the challenges, they had an unquenchable hope in the redeeming gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  A hope that the most visionary and noble secularist can’t offer.  This is why secularism soon turns to pessimism.  As Blaikie says;

Secularism may try to keep up its spirits, it may imagine a happy future, it may revel in a dream of a golden age.  But as it builds its castle in the air, its neighbour, Pessimism, will make short and rude work of the flimsy edifice.  Say what you will, and do what you may, says Pessimism, the ship is drifting inevitably on the rocks.  Your dream that one day selfishness will be overcome, are the phantoms of a misguided imagination; your notion that abundance of light is all that is needed to cure the evils of society, is like the fancy of keeping back the Atlantic with a mop.  If you really understood the problem, you would see that the moral disorder of the world is infinitely too deep for any human remedy to remove it; and, since we know of no other, there is nothing for us but to flounder on from one blunder to another, and from one crime to another, till mankind works out its own extinction; or, happy catastrophe! The globe on which we dwell is shattered by collision with some other planet, or drawn into the furnace of the sin.

It is the Christian gospel that has been the great agent of change in human history.  Has the church at times been corrupt?  Absolutely.  Has it at times disregarded the poor and even abused them.  Unfortunately, it has.  But what has been the fruit of the revival of true Christianity?  It has always been love, particularly for the poor.  The spirit of self-seeking is supplanted by the spirit of service and love.  Vice is replaced by virtue.  When men love God in sincerity, they will love their neighbour, particularly the poor and the outcast.  The church at its best lives by that early ‘mission statement’ in James 1 v 27 ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.’  As Thomas Guthrie said about the kind of Christianity that brings transformation to communities;

We want a religion that, not dressed for Sundays and walking on stilts, descends into common and everyday life; is friendly, not selfish; courteous, not boorish; generous, not miserly; sanctified, not sour; that loves justice more than gain; and fears God more than man; to quote another's words - "a religion that keeps husbands from being spiteful, or wives fretful; that keeps mothers patient, and children pleasant; that bears heavily not only on the 'exceeding sinfulness of sin,' but on the exceeding rascality of lying and stealing; that banishes small measures from counters, sand from sugar, and water from milk-cans - the faith, in short, whose root is in Christ, and whose fruit is works.

William Wilberforce

Radical Hospitality

Back in February I met, for the first time, Catriona Murray from North Tolsta.  It is always good to meet another Murray (there is rarely a gap in conversation) but I was delighted to meet Catriona because I had read her testimony in the Stornoway Free Church Newsletter a few days earlier.  I asked if I could re-publish her testimony on my blog and in only 8 weeks it has been read by 1200 people around the world.  You can read it by clicking here.  Since then Catriona has become a prolific blogger and we have agreed to occasionally write for each other.  We share an interest in the 'radical roots' of the Free Church and we both hope to blog on this subject in the future.  This is her latest excellent contribution - enjoy!

'Radical' is probably not the first word most people would choose to describe the Free Church of Scotland. That, however, is probably because of a double misunderstanding: a failure to grasp what 'radical' means; and a failure to comprehend what the Free Church is.

Last summer, Stornoway Free Church did something which some probably saw as radical. I mean, it's all relative, but I'm fairly sure that Sy FC is not known for its 'out-there' approach to life. However, like a lot of dear old things that are written off as set in their ways, it surprised everyone - twice over.

First of all, it opened its doors to visitors - tourists and islanders alike were invited to simply come in and look around. Still a relatively new member, I volunteered to be a 'greeter'. No actual weeping was involved, though I did do some gnashing of teeth beforehand. After all, what would we talk about to visitors? I feverishly imagined myself, for want of anything better to say, pointing out the years of varnish build-up on the pews, or offering such gems as, 'if we had an organ, it would probably be in that corner'. Oh, me of little faith. That's not how it was at all. It turned out, as I should have realised, that a warm welcome and sharing our love of Christ was enough. Of course it was.

Secondly, on the busiest Sunday of the Stornoway calendar - Hebridean Celtic Festival weekend - the church hall was open, offering free Sunday breakfast. People stumbled, bleary-eyed and stiff, out of their tents and caravans, into a drizzly, grey morning. Their day was cheered considerably by an invitation to come and eat with the Stornoway congregation, in the warmth and comfort of the MA Macleod Memorial Hall. The thing is, as quite a few people told me, they didn't expect this sort of thing from the Free Church. Surely, instead of sharing bacon rolls and coffee with them, the minister ought to have been living up to the Calvinist stereotype and denouncing their music and dancing from the pulpit? 'When I heard that a church was doing breakfast today, I assumed it was Martin's Memorial', one local told me, alluding to our more down with the kids C of S neighbour. And, I have to admit, I would probably have made the same assumption, had I been in their wellies.

Being radical in this way isn't just about quashing the tired old image of nay-saying Wee Frees, though. In fact, it's not remotely about that - seeing the surprised delight on people's faces is just an added bonus - but it is about fulfilling what Christ requires of us. Something which is radical is simply that which has roots, and the Free Church was founded on that highest principle of all: refusal to submit to any headship except that of the Lord Jesus Christ. His words in the Gospel of Matthew affirm that what Stornoway Free Church did last summer was nothing less than obedience to Christ's example:

'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.'

The only reward that Christians seek in doing as their Lord bids is the increase of His kingdom and glory. Sometimes, they have to be content with obedience and trust the rest to Him, that He will bless the effort made - but sometimes, they have the encouragement of seeing fruit for their labours. 

In a curious sequence of events, I have met two different visitors who took breakfast with us on that Sunday last July. Both were affected by the simple, Christian love demonstrated, and by the worship in which they shared afterwards. And both are now in a relationship with Christ that is changing their lives.

In 1846, three years after the establishment of the Free Church, it was the first agency to respond to famine in the Highlands. The collection of funds called for by Rev. Thomas Chalmers was one of the single largest collections ever made by a Scottish church, for any purpose. There is, of course, still literal hunger in our midst, which must be met. Spiritual hunger too stalks our land. If we are prepared, the two can be sated, for 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God'. Our duty, our radical calling, is surely to bring the stranger in to sit at our table, and offer him both.

What can we Learn from Dr Guthrie?

Over the last few months in The Record we have looked at different aspects of Dr Guthrie’s incredible ministry: his preaching, his pastoral work, his work as a social reformer, his pioneering work as a church planter and his role as the 'Apostle of Temperance'.  

His legacy is awe inspiring and very humbling.  The key question is what can we learn from Dr Guthrie and apply in our own situation today?

1.  Vision - Dr Guthrie had incredible vision.  He literally, by God's grace, changed Scotland.  His vision was not shaped by the challenges of 19th Century Scotland but rather shaped by the greatness of the God he served.  He believed that the Christian gospel could save anyone and transform any community.  By the time of his death Guthrie had, along with many other social reformers, changed childhood.  Rather than being seen as commodities, towards the end of the 19th Century, children were seen as those in need of protection and nurture.  Partly as a result of lobbying from social reformers like Guthrie legislation was passed protecting children from working long hours in often dangerous situations.  The DNA of men like Thomas Guthrie and Thomas Chalmers is that they had a big vision.  It wasn't a congregational vision or even a Free Church vision but a national vision.  Surely Guthrie teaches us that our current vision for Scotland is too small and parochial.   

2. Truth - We need to know what we believe.  Unlike so many Christians who get involved in social action, Guthrie never lost his Biblical moorings when he became a social reformer.  It is clear from his writings that he adhered to the Bible as the word of God and remained confessionally Reformed throughout his ministry.  He believed in the supremacy and centrality of preaching as the main method that God uses to save sinners.  Guthrie preached the whole counsel of God with love and tenderness but never compromised on doctrine.  Are we as a church falling out of love with the reformed theology that compelled men like Guthrie and Chalmers?  Are we embarrassed by our reformed heritage?

3. Love - As a minister of the Gospel, Guthrie embodied love.  We are told in James 1 v 27:  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.  The fruit of true Christianity is always love for the poor and the oppressed.  Many people regard practical love for the poor as a deviation from the gospel.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Guthrie's work with ragged children enhanced his message and gave his Christianity a reality and authenticity that made the gospel attractive to sinners.  We must never love people just because they may become Christian’s or come to our church.  We must love them because they are made in the image of God and the gospel commands us to love our neighbour.  The very essence of grace is to love with no strings attached.  How are we loving those on the margins of society like Dr Guthrie?  Are our churches places where people with addictions, relationship difficulties, prisoners, women experiencing domestic violence will find grace and love? Do we want these kind of people in our churches?  If we do, how will we support them and disciple them?

4. Hope - It was this combination of truth and love that gave Guthrie such hope for the communities he worked in and for the individuals he sought to reach.  The gospel, when preached in all its fullness and freeness, should fill every sinner with a sense of hope that Christ died to reconcile them to a holy God.  The church has gone though many periods when this message has been lost or when she has lost confidence in the power of this gospel to reach the darkest and most hopeless parts of our communities.  Guthrie (among others) gave the Free Church the belief that the gospel, accompanied by education for the poor and the practical outworking of love through the local church could redeem the darkest and most hopeless communities. Do we still have this hope?

There is a famous story about Dr Guthrie and Thomas Chalmers standing on George IV Bridge looking down on to the Cowgate.  Guthrie tells us; ‘Hopeful of success, he [Chalmers] surveyed the scene beneath us, and his eye, which often wore a dreamy stare, kindled at the prospect of seeing that wilderness become an Eden, these foul haunts of darkness, drunkenness and disease, changed into "dwellings of the righteous where is heard the voice of melody."  Contemplating the scene for a little in silence, all at once, with his broad Luther-like face glowing with enthusiasm, he waved his arm to exclaim, "A beautiful field, sir; a very fine field of operation” (Out of Harness, Thomas Guthrie).  

It takes great vision to look at some parts of Scotland and see them as a ‘beautiful field’ but yet that is what men like Dr Guthrie saw in places like the Cowgate. Thomas Guthrie brought hope to thousands through his preaching, his pastoral care and his practical Christianity.  Nobody was beyond redemption for Guthrie.  He preached a gospel that was free for the worst sinner and believed that nobody was a hopeless case.  He is an inspiration to us, that in dark and difficult days, the gospel can once again reach the darkest corners of Scotland.