It cannot be said that Chalmers took very kindly to Glasgow. He missed the wide expanse, the fresh air, the Arcadian simplicity of his much-loved Kilmany; also, the intimate acquaintance he had with every individual, and the comparative leisure of a country life. He found himself 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' by streets and lanes and 'lands,' and flung upon dense masses of population that baffled every attempt at individual acquaintance and interest. No doubt the people were most kind and hospitable, and if dinners and other entertainments could have satisfied him, he might have had them to his heart's content. But, bent as he was on his especial work, and eager to launch new plans of usefulness, it was irksome beyond endurance to have to devote whole afternoons and evenings to eating and drinking, considering the very trifling amount of good that could be expected to come of such protracted engagements. And another thing that worried him was the trifling matters of purely secular interest to which, as a director of societies, or a member of public boards, he was expected to give attention. Fancy an hour spent in debating whether a certain ditch was to be covered over or not; fancy himself and his brother-directors engaged in a long controversy whether pork soup or ox-tail soup should be served to the inmates of an institution, and finally resorting to a practical test—a portion of each kind being brought to each director to taste! Then there was an expectation that much of his time should be devoted to certain attentions that people liked to be paid to them. Why, a funeral was hardly counted respectable unless there were four clergymen in attendance! Much nervous energy was consumed in resisting these unreasonable expectations, and if Chalmers had not come to be a great man, and possessed of a fame which overbore everything, he would certainly have suffered not a little in reputation from the necessity of so often applying a snub where kindness was meant, and becoming a transgressor where tradition had established its law.
During the eight years of his Glasgow incumbency many things happened, worthy to be noticed even in a short biography like this. First of all, his fame as a pulpit orator reached its climax; a climax never surpassed and seldom equalled in the whole annals of the pulpit. In the next place, his ideas of the advantages of the parochial system, brought from Kilmany, were matured, expanded, and practically applied, with results that demonstrated in a wonderful way their Christian wisdom and excellence. Further, as an author, he rose to a higher platform; his astronomical and commercial discourses, when published, spread his fame far and wide; and a quarterly publication which he issued on the Civic and Christian Economy of Large Towns showed the zeal and wisdom with which he grappled with his parochial obligations. Meanwhile, in his closet, he was intensely occupied with the great problem of his personal spiritual life; ever and anon placing himself in the immediate presence of God, detecting and deploring his infirmities and deficiencies, striving to walk with God in every undertaking, duty, and recreation; trying hard to resist the subtle influence of human applause; and longing much for that absolute consecration which would efface self, and make God all in all. Still further, he was most assiduous in affectionate duty to his friends and family; correspondence with father, mother, wife, children, and friends went on without ceasing, even in the busiest periods of public life, and always with an eager desire to promote their highest good. And many an important call to other spheres of labour arose from time to time to distract his attention; now he was offered this important charge, now that; at one time he was entreated to become a candidate for the natural philosophy chair at Edinburgh, and at another for that of moral philosophy; now he was called to London to preach a missionary sermon, and at another time he found it necessary to make a long tour through England to acquire information about the working of the poor-law system. That he was able to sustain life under the prodigious pressure of all these varied engagements cannot but surprise us, and cannot but excite our admiration of the remarkable physical and mental energy that was able to endure it. But it had its effects; and one of these was, that feeling himself unable to sustain the pressure of such an accumulation of burdens, and desirous to prosecute more vigorously his work as an author, he accepted, in 1823, the unanimous offer made to him of the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, though the sphere in itself was absolutely insignificant, and the salary not more than £300 a year.
The first sermon he preached in Glasgow, a few months before his settlement as minister of the Tron parish, was on behalf of the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy. The more intellectual part was an exposition of the principles of Christian charity and his views of pauperism, and the more eloquent part was a touching picture of the family of a deceased clergyman, called to tear themselves from all the beauties of their home, when their hearts were overborne with the far darker melancholy of a father torn from their embrace. Dean Ramsay, who heard this sermon, remarked, in his biographical notice of Chalmers to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that the tears of the father and preacher fell like raindrops on the manuscript, and from many another eye the like tokens of sensibility were seen to flow.
It is of his appearance on this occasion that an elaborate description was given by Mr. J. G. Lockhart in his pseudonymous publication, Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk. It has been reproduced in almost every biography, but the picture is too striking to be wholly left out here. After describing other features of the face, he remarks:—
'The eyes are light in colour, and have a strange, dreamy heaviness that conveys any idea rather than that of dulness, but which contrasts in a wonderful manner with the dazzling, watery glare they exhibit when expanded in their sockets, and illuminated into all their flame and fervour in some moment of high entranced enthusiasm. But the shape of the forehead is perhaps the most singular part of the whole visage; ... it is without exception the most mathematical forehead I ever met with, being far wider across the eyebrows than either Mr. Playfair's or Mr. Leslie's.... Immediately above the extraordinary breadth of this region, in the forehead, there is an arch of imagination carrying out the summit boldly and roundly, in a style to which the heads of very few poets present anything comparable, and over this region again there is a grand apex of high and solemn veneration and love.... Never perhaps did the world possess an orator whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says.' [The writer then dilates on his defects in gesture and pronunciation, and the disappointment caused by his first utterances.] 'But then, with what tenfold richness does this dim, preliminary curtain make the glories of his eloquence to shine forth, when the heated spirit at length flings from it its chill, confining fetters, and bursts out elate and rejoicing in the full splendour of its disimprisoned wings.... I have heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in regard to argument, and have heard very many deliver sermons far more uniform in elegance both of conception and of style; but most unquestionably I have never heard, whether in England or in Scotland, or in any other country, any preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his.'
It was soon after, that on hearing a speech of Chalmers's Lord Jeffrey remarked, 'I know not what it is, but there is something altogether remarkable about that man. It reminds me more of what one reads of as the effect of the eloquence of Demosthenes than anything I ever heard.'
An extraordinary impression was produced by a sermon preached before the Lord High Commissioner, during the proceedings of the Assembly, from the text, 'When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?' There was a reference to the infidel argument that modern astronomy, through the revelation by the telescope of the boundless multitude of worlds existing in the heavens, had shown the earth to be too insignificant a section of God's universe to justify the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of God. To refute this objection, Chalmers brought forward the not less wonderful discoveries by the microscope of the minuteness of God's works, and the conclusion was irresistibly established that there is 'not one portion of the universe of God too minute for His notice, nor too humble for the visitations of His care.'
This sermon was one of a series which Chalmers, on whom the degree of D.D. had been conferred by the University of Glasgow (21st February 1816), was now delivering there. It had been an old practice of the ministers of Glasgow, of whom there were then eight, to preach in turn on Thursdays in the Tron Church, and Dr. Chalmers, deeming it fitting that week-day sermons should have a character of their own, selected the discoveries of modern astronomy as the basis of his course. The interest and novelty of the subject, as well as the fame of the preacher, drew extraordinary crowds to the church. In January 1817, the series being completed, the sermons were published in a volume. The demand was marvellous. Nine editions were called for within a year, and nearly 20,000 copies were circulated. And, beyond the ordinary circle of sermon readers, men like Hazlitt and Canning were arrested and impressed. The sermons necessarily bore the marks of a hasty, and in some respects a juvenile production; this Chalmers himself afterwards acknowledged, and his own preference was given to another series—the 'Commercial Discourses,' which bore 'On the Application of Christianity to the Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life,' and were published in 1820.
The Astronomicals had been reviewed, not quite favourably, by John Foster, whose acquaintance Chalmers made about this time. But, so far from showing any chagrin at the freedom of his comments, Chalmers at once took Foster to his heart; and there was no public writer of the day of whom he thought more highly, or whom he more warmly commended in after days to his students. Some of the Reviews treated the sermons severely; but from Christopher North, in Blackwood, they received hearty commendation.
His popularity in Glasgow was almost surpassed by that which he found in London. In May 1817 he preached in Surrey Chapel for the London Missionary Society. His publisher, Mr. Smith, who accompanied him, wrote home, 'All my expectations were overwhelmed in the triumph. Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever excelled it, nor did he ever more arrest and wonder-work his audience. I had a full view of the whole place. The carrying forward of minds was never so visible to me; a constant assent of the head from the whole people accompanied all his paragraphs; and the breathlessness of expectation permitted not the beating of a heart to agitate the stillness.'