'March 3rd, 1818.—Cannot say much of my walk with God. Do not burn with love to man. 5th.—Cannot yet record a close walk with God. Got impatient with a man who called on me and with —— in the evening. O for a humbler and nearer course of devotedness to the will of my Saviour. 6th.—Have not yet attained such a walk with God that in looking to the day that is gone I can see anything like the general complexion of godliness. 7th.—Cannot yet speak to my walk with God. Will a quiet confidence in Christ not bring this about? 8th.—Not yet. O my God, help me. 9th.—Not yet. Trust that I am finding my way to Christ as the Lord my Strength. O guard me against the charms of human praise!'
At a later period he is equally humble and equally fervent.
'Feb. 24th, 1822.—Was greatly impressed with Erskine's talk about realising God every quarter of an hour. O heavenly Father, let me do it, and free me from the sense of guilt towards Thyself, and enable me rightly and rejoicingly to lift up my head, too, in the presence of mine enemies. 25th.—Disturbed, but feel great alleviation in habitual realisings of God, which I have had all this day. 28th.—O my Saviour, I can do nothing for Thee! April 7th.—It is humiliating amid the busy externals of religion to think how little my soul is taking up or making progress therein. 9th.—O my God, cause me to hold thee in constant remembrance. Restore energy to me, but let me never lose sight of my creatureship and my worthlessness. May I be pure in heart, and so see God. Loose all my bonds, and may I serve Thee with delight and thankfulness all my days.'
It is obvious to modern readers, though it was not to him, that when he was most depressed, a share of the depression was due to physical exhaustion. The number, the constancy, and the intensity of his labours could not but dull the faculties that soar highest of all, and call as a remedy for physical rest; while, like so many others in the like circumstances, he was laying all the blame on the wickedness or the earthliness of his heart.
With the members of his family he maintained the closest fellowship. When he heard of his father having had a paralytic stroke, he hurried to his bedside, and was present at the end. His affection and respect for him were unabated. 'My dear father is lovely in death. There is all the mildness of heaven upon his aged countenance.' Writing on the following Sunday to his much-loved sister Jane (Mrs. Morton), he says: 'It is truly affecting when the thought of former Sabbaths in Anster presents itself to my mind, and I think of it as the day he loved, and how the ringing of the bells was ever to him the note of joyful invitation to the house of God; the sight of the people going to and from the church—the interval—the everything connected with the Sabbath, bring the whole of my father's habits in lively recollection before me, and call forth a fresh excitement of tenderness.'
Towards his widowed mother he ever acted with the most tender and respectful affection. His letters to her were both frequent and regular, full of concern for her temporal and spiritual comfort, and manifesting that interest in all the members of the family which is so grateful to a mother's heart.
But the fullest outpourings of his heart, in his correspondence with friends at a distance, were to his sister, Mrs. Morton. Well could he assure 'my ever dearest Jane'—'one of the purest and most delightful of all my feelings in this world of many distractions is the feeling of tenderness which I ever associate with you and all your concerns'; nor was he less sincere in saying that he could think of 'no more delightful scene of occasional rest and recreation than the neighbourhood where Providence had ordained her habitation, so rich in the beauties of nature, and still richer in the pieties and charities of the excellent people that lived in it.' To her he writes freely of all the events of his life, and still more of the vicissitudes of his Christian experience, and of the ever open refuge alike from domestic sorrows and spiritual infirmities which we have in the grace of our Saviour and in the love of our Father. All the more tenderly did he write when the deep shadow of bereavement fell upon her home; when a heart full of humility and somewhat disposed to despondency was liable to be swallowed up with over much sorrow, and to forget (as he reminded her) that even when the day is overcast and lowering, the sun is shining with undiminished lustre.
His eldest brother, James, who lived in London, was a hard subject to deal with. He seemed to shut himself up from all his family, and to stand in awe lest they should come to visit him. He had resolutely abstained from hearing his brother preach after he became famous. Hardly any case could have more convincingly verified the remark, how unlike brothers may be to each other. James had a kind of mania for balancing his personal accounts to the minutest fraction, and on one occasion worried himself for months in the endeavour to account for a penny, till a year after, when about to cross a toll-bridge, he remembered that he had crossed it a twelvemonth before, and forgot to enter the penny in his accounts. Yet Thomas bore with him patiently, and dealt with him affectionately but faithfully, evidently in the hope that he might change. And before the end he did become more amiable. In announcing his father's death, Thomas pathetically, and with an obvious practical design, remarked that if their beloved parent looked down upon them, 'nothing could afford his spirit a more delightful spectacle than that of his children seeking the Gospel which they had aforetime despised, praying for grace, and not ceasing to pray, till they had obtained.'
His own children were hardly old enough, while in Glasgow, for more than the ordinary fondness of a father. Yet we find him, in his absences from home, and when driven hither and thither by manifold engagements, writing, in imitation of print, those elaborate letters to his little daughter Anne, of which her future husband, Dr. Hanna, has given us a sample in the second volume of the Life (p. 410). One cannot but admire the extreme neatness and clearness of the printing, a memorable contrast to the hieroglyphics he used to dash off on ordinary occasions, which were so illegible that, in his early days, when a letter came from him, his father suggested that it had better be kept till he should himself arrive to read it for them. Once, in the absence of Mrs. Chalmers, when he had been constituted head nurse, an elder and a deacon, on calling in the evening, found him squatting on the floor and playing at marbles with the children. And nothing would serve him but that they should join in the game.
The ever-warm affection of Dr. Chalmers for all the members of his family was the more remarkable that he was so rapidly extending the circle of his friends, receiving so much notice from the most distinguished men and women of the country, and carrying on so voluminous a correspondence with many of them. Among those whose acquaintance he made in his Glasgow period we may note a few. There was James Montgomery, Moravian and poet, whom he saw at Sheffield; whom he greatly perplexed when he told him that when at the Moravian settlement of Fulneck, near Leeds, he had invited the Scotch lads to the inn, and found there were no fewer than 'saxtain or savantain of them'; but whom he charmed no less by the admiration he expressed for the Moravian missions, and by his undertaking—what he more than fulfilled—to raise £500 for them in the course of the year. Another new friend was Mr. Wilberforce, for whose character, talents, and work he had unbounded respect, but who amazed him by the singularity of his movements—'he positively danced and whisked about like a squirrel.' He had an important correspondence with him, beseeching him to support the repeal of the Corn Bill, which he held to be the great danger to the country. There was the Gladstone family at Liverpool, with whom he was greatly taken—William could then have been but a boy of six (A.D. 1817). Legh Richmond visited him at Glasgow, and Chalmers says, 'I had most congenial talk with him, and am greatly humbled by the very superior attainments of other Christians.' When Edward Irving, in hopeless disappointment, was about to leave the country, it was Chalmers that arrested him, having formed such an opinion of his pulpit gifts and noble character that he engaged him as his assistant. We have already noticed some of the friends he met when engaged in his poor-law inquiry; to these we may add Robert Hall, the cleverest man in conversation he ever knew, but surpassed by John Foster in the depth and grandeur of his thoughts. With Mr. Malthus, too, he had much congenial converse. About this time he found a close ally in Mr. Douglas, the proprietor of Cavers, where he had been assistant in his youth, who became so well known as a thoughtful Christian writer, and who placed more than one £500 in his hands to assist him in his schemes for St. John's. Among other things that Mr. Douglas owed to Chalmers's example and influence was the habit of systematic working. Mr. Erskine of Linlathen was another Scottish layman for whom he had remarkable regard, his spirituality of mind being to Dr. Chalmers most impressive and stimulating. Mr. Erskine's work on the Freeness of the Gospel, though looked on suspiciously by some very orthodox persons, was to Dr. Chalmers very delightful. Afterwards Mr. Erskine adopted some views with which he could not sympathise. With Lord and Lady Elgin he appears to have been on terms of most intimate friendship. Mr. Colquhoun of Kellermont may be added to the list of distinguished Scottish friends; and, besides these, there were his coadjutors in the St. John's undertaking, the members of his congregation, and nearly all the men of mark and Christian worth in the community of Glasgow.