“All the world is wild about Dr Chalmers” wrote William Wilberforce in his diary in 1817. This was some accolade, coming from the Christian MP who led the charge to abolish slavery in the British Empire. Of all the great Christian leaders in Scottish history, Dr Chalmers has been listed alongside such giants as John Knox. Chalmers had the extraordinary gift from God to be able lead the evangelical movement in Scotland like a military general, with great insight, strategy and precision. He had not always been an evangelical Christian, for he was converted to Christ as a liberal Presbyterian minister in 1810, largely through a book by William Wilberforce, with the title, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians. He wrote later that “as I got on in reading it, [I] felt myself on the eve of a great revelation in all my opinions about Christianity.” Indeed, his conversion was nothing short of revolutionary.
Thomas Chalmers grew up in the seaside town of Anstruther and at the age of eleven attended the University of St Andrews, where he studied mathematics. By 1799 he was licensed as a preacher and he then furthered his studies at the University of Edinburgh, after which he was an assistant to the Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews. In 1803 he was ordained as a minister in the Church of Scotland and served as the pastor for the small parish of Kilmany. He was able to continue teaching mathematics and chemistry, whilst running the parish church there.
Dr Chalmers was a multi-talented minister with the strategic brain of a military commander. In 1815 he left the small village parish of Kilmany, where he also had had his eyes on the Chair of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, and gave his life to serving the poor in the parish of the Tron in Glasgow. He soon realised that this parish had grown too large for a single church to manage, so he created the smaller parish of St John’s and began his “experiment”. He divided this parish into twenty-five districts with about 400 people in each, and appointed two visitors to be responsible for each district: one an elder, who would care for the spiritual needs of the people, and the other being a deacon, who would care for the practical needs of those on the district.
In this way the church made spiritual inroads among the poor as the elder set up a Sabbath School and a day school, as well as giving Christian teaching to the adults, and the deacon was responsible for ascertaining the greatest needs of the people on his district, and meeting their crises with the Poor Relief Fund from the church, as well as helping the locals to help themselves with employment.
By 1823 Chalmers’ experiment in Glasgow had thrived. He became something of a celebrity, even being asked to address Parliament in London about his work. People were split over his model: some enthusiastically embraced it and saw a great improvement in their parishes; others thought such a model would only work under the supervision of someone special like Dr Chalmers.
Chalmers was not content with the advances he was making though, and pioneered the Church Extension campaign in 1834, which was an ambitious project to build hundreds of new churches in Scotland, with a slogan, “A church and a minister within easy reach of every door.” He also repeated the Glasgow experiment in Edinburgh in 1844 in the slums of the West Port, which had a population of about 2,000 people, with a high proportion being paupers, thieves and prostitutes. Again, he was successful, leading to many ministers in both Scotland and England adopting his method.
In 1823 Chalmers left the role of being a parish minister to be appointed as the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. It was here that he became the inspiration for many students who became missionaries, and who took his Christian worldview to the nations. Five years later he transferred to the University of Edinburgh, where, as Professor of Theology, he continued to shape the minds of many students. It was Dr Chalmers too, who led the evangelical movement of 474 ministers who left the Church of Scotland over the controlling Patronage Act, and formed the Free Church of Scotland. His passion for gospel unity, on the other hand, was influential in the foundation of the Evangelical Alliance, which was formed in 1846. It is reckoned that up to half of the population of Edinburgh mourned his loss.
“… an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures…” (Acts 18:24, NKJV).
Image: Revd Dr Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), stained glass window in the Presbytery Hall, ETS, photo by Paul James-Griffiths