THOMAS CHALMERS,

D.D., LL.D.

IT has been remarked that the whole history of the reformation in Germany, in the sixteenth century, may be read in the history of the struggles of Luther's soul, in his own translation from darkness into marvellous light. He who would understand the preaching of the Reformer, and the heavings of the public mind, of which it was the chief instrument, must go into the monk's cell at Erfurth, and see by what steps and conflicts he became a new man there. The same remark may be made, with considerable truth, of the relation in which the late Dr. Thomas Chalmers stood to the progress of religion in his native country during the last forty years. He had his pioneers, men whose names deserve to be held in everlasting remembrance, at the sound of whose trumpet-voices some twenty years earlier, an age of formalism was startled and awakened as from a dream. But he was raised up at the very time when his eminent gifts, consecrated to the highest purposes by Divine grace, were likely to tell most powerfully on his country; while the peculiarities of his own spiritual history, blended with the peculi arities of his mind, gave a special character to his

ministry, exactly such as his times needed, and could not fail, with God's blessing, to leave its impress on his age. He who would understand the religious history of Scotland during the last forty years, must go into the closet and the sick chamber of Thomas Chalmers, and see how God visited his benighted soul, and by what steps that soul was led onwards to the possession of light and peace.

Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther, in the county of Fife, on the 17th March, 1780.* He is described as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther school. "Joyous, vigorous, and humorous, he took his part in all the games of the play-ground-ever ready to lead or to follow when school-boy expeditions were planned and executed; and wherever for fun or for frolic any little group of the merry-hearted was gathered, his full rich laugh might be heard rising amidst their shouts of glee. But he was altogether unmischievous in his mirth. He could not bear that either falsehood or blasphemy should mingle with it.” Idle and merry as he was, none of his school-fellows could learn at once so quickly and so well as he could when he chose to apply himself. One of the two books which took the strongest hold upon his thoughts, and filled his childish imagination, was the Pilgrim's Progress. And before he could read or understand the pictured scenes of the Bible, many of them, which

It is scarcely necessary to say that for our information respecting the subject of this tract, we are indebted mainly to the Memoir in four volumes by Dr. Hanna.

he heard from the lips of Christian parents, made a deep impression upon him.

Within a few miles of Anstruther is the University of St. Andrews, a place with which is intimately associated the name of John Knox, and of other Scottish reformers, and which was the scene of some of the most exciting events in the history of the Scottish reformation. Thomas Chalmers was only in his twelfth year when, along with an elder brother, he became a student at this ancient seat of learning. It was with the avowed intention of becoming a minister of Christ's gospel that he did so. But at this time his heart was an entire stranger to the power of the gospel. Some of his ancestors had been, and some of his relations were ministers. And this made the idea of entering on this work as a profession familiar to him, while its occupations, the most serious and solemn parts of which he did not at this time understand, seemed very attractive to his imagination. During the first two years of his college course, he is described by a fellow student who survives him, as having been very volatile and idle in his habits, the greater part of his time being occupied in boyish amusements, such as golf, football, and particularly handball, in which latter he was remarkably expert. His character, however, was one of the strictest integrity and warmest affection.

The third year of his college attendance was his intellectual birth-time. "That intelligence which never afterwards knew a season of slumbering inactivity then awoke. That extreme ardour of impulse, and that strong force of will which had shown

themselves from infancy, took now a new direction, urging on and upholding him in his mathematical studies."

This was, however, only an intellectual awakening. Heart and conscience had no part in it. On the contrary, the youthful student, though not for a moment relinquishing his intention to prosecute the clerical profession, imbibed principles at variance with the true nature of the gospel, and from the influence of which he was not delivered for many years. St. Andrews, according to his own subsequent testimony, was at this time overrun with a system whose most prominent feature was the practical rejection of the doctrine of man's depravity and Christ's atonement, "under the chilling influence of which (he says) we inhaled, not a distaste only, but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly gospel, insomuch that our confidence was nearly as entire in the sufficiency of natural theology as in the sufficiency of natural science." In addition to this, Chalmers had fellow students who were enthusiastic devotees of science (and who afterwards became men of fame in the world of letters), but who in a religious point of view, stood midway between the Christian and the infidel. They were not a little tainted by the irreligious spirit of the French revolution, and the youthful Chalmers was kindled into generous emotion at the glowing prospects which they cherished as to the future progress of mankind in virtue of political changes. The religion of his early home now appeared to him as a 66 religion of confinement and intolerance-unworthy of entertain