His manner of life in Glasgow was as simple and regular as was possible for one so full of occupation and so eagerly sought after by all sorts of people. As a rule, the forenoon was set apart for reading and composition, and no one was allowed to intrude on him then. But sometimes two or three rooms would be filled with persons waiting for him, and it was remarked that, however overwhelmed, he had a kindly smile and greeting for all. The afternoon was devoted to pastoral work; then, if possible, he had a walk in the Botanic Gardens or elsewhere; dinner was at half-past four, and very often he had some public engagement in the evening. In the course of this busy day he found time to read aloud to his wife Milner's Church History or some other such book. His hospitality was boundless. Breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper, almost every day but Sunday, brought a succession of guests; for, apart from his own large circle, hardly a stranger visited Glasgow who did not bring an introduction, and whom he did not invite to his house. His conversation generally was singularly genial, racy, and lively; whoever was in his society was charmed. Formal dinner-parties he held in great abhorrence as a waste of time and worse, and very seldom did he join them. For occasional recreation, his favourite resort was his native Fifeshire; but in the suburbs of Glasgow and other parts of the country he had dear friends with whom he delighted to spend an occasional day or more. And, though no man had more respect for the poor, or more pleasure in his intercourse with them, he had an especial delight in the society of families of the highest rank, when refinement was blended with Christian worth, and the obligations of high station were conscientiously and gracefully fulfilled.
Most memorable in the history of Glasgow and in the history of Scottish Christianity were the eight years of labour spent by Dr. Chalmers in that city. Of individual cases of conversion the number was beyond reckoning; beginning with his dear friend, Thomas Smith, and ending with a Camlachie weaver—a reckless infidel till Dr. Chalmers came across him, but won by the simplicity and earnest sympathy which he showed in weekly visits during the months when he was dying of consumption. And the circumstances of his various converts were very different. The thoughtless young officer, who entered his church with the crowd as he would have entered the theatre; the fashionable lady, whose curiosity led her to hear the great popular orator; the busy merchant, with no thought nor desire beyond material things; the aspiring student, bent only on literary distinction—each person, arrested and brought to Christ by the force of his appeals, represented the many classes from among which, as Dr. Hanna tells us, it was the privilege of Chalmers to gather recruits for the Kingdom of Heaven.
But more than that: under Chalmers the tide of public sentiment turned decisively to evangelical religion. Before he came, evangelical preaching had been looked on as a combination of sour fanaticism and weak sentimentalism; under his preaching it attained its true rank and glory as the very essence of the Gospel message. Before his time, as the population of the city grew from year to year, thousands had been quietly allowed to fall away from all Christian observances, and to form a community of paganism, leavening the city with carelessness and corruption. It was his powerful voice that roused attention to the evil and the danger, and organised the machinery best fitted to grapple with it. Previous to his time, even the most earnest of the ministers in their week-day ministrations had seldom gone beyond their own congregations, or thought much of the careless and godless families around them; it was Chalmers that, by the emphasis he laid on the territorial method, brought into operation that system of aggression which affords the only hope of arresting and reclaiming the outcast mass. Before his time infidelity was doing its deadly work among the more intellectual and cultivated classes, and the spirit of indifference was widely spread even where a formal profession of religion continued; it was in a large measure the influence of Chalmers that restored a living faith in Christ and in redemption, and aroused concern in that class of society for the life to come.
Still more remarkably, perhaps, had Dr. Chalmers succeeded in inspiring men and women in Glasgow, young men very emphatically, with the spirit of Christian service. His 'agency,' as he called it, resembled the followers of Saul, 'a band of men whose hearts God had touched.' In after years they formed the very élite of the earnest Christian laymen of the West; and to this day, though all of them have passed away, their fervour and devotedness are still found in some of their children and children's children.
Nor had he failed to secure the esteem and affection of the great community of Glasgow. They honoured him personally, and they were proud of his greatness and fame. They were ready with their purses to support whatever scheme he deemed it necessary to set on foot. A more attached or warm-hearted company could not have been found anywhere than the three hundred and forty friends who, ere he left, sat down together at the largest dinner-party that had ever assembled in the city in honour of a single individual.
Why, then, did he abandon the field where his labours had been so eminently successful?
Simply because these labours had grown to such multiplicity and variety as to demand an expenditure of bodily and mental energy that could not be continued.
His incumbency had lasted during eight years of his prime—from thirty-five to forty-three. Happily he had not been prostrated by any severe illness, and the systematic regularity of his life, with the attention he had given to diet, sleep, and exercise, had kept him from breaking down. But who that thinks of all he was doing, the problems with which he was grappling, the schemes he was working, the constant demands of the pulpit, the incessant labours of the parish, the use he was making of the press, the toil of his correspondence, amounting on an average to fifty letters a week, the perpetual turmoil in which he was living, amid crowds of visitors, and all the other fruits of unrivalled popularity, as well as the demands of an increasing and growing family, and his desire to keep up friendly intercourse with his brothers and sisters—can fail to see that the indefinite continuance of such a mode of life was more than could be thought of? Had it continued much longer, a breakdown was inevitable. Very pathetically he wrote to one of his most intimate friends, Mrs. Coutts, of the constant feeling of exhaustion which at times was like to overbear him altogether. Besides, Chalmers was coming to see that through the press there opened to him a way of spreading his views and extending his usefulness which was as full of promise as it was agreeable to himself. But as a minister of Glasgow he could not do through the press what, with a little more leisure, he could fairly expect to accomplish.
And then the prospect of an academic chair was very congenial. It had been his earliest dream while the world was all before him, and it had not yet lost its charm. The tenacity of his affections was very remarkable. Towards the close of his life we shall have occasion to note the long-continued vitality of a strong but unavowed attachment which had sprung up in his boyhood, and it is no wonder that to such a nature the early vision of an academic chair continued to retain its brightness and its fascination. Once and again he had set it aside when it seemed to be within his grasp, because his Glasgow experiments and arrangements were not ripe enough for the change. Now, when the Glasgow work was fairly consolidated; when the bustle and pressure of Glasgow life had become almost unbearable; when, through the press, the prospect had opened of impregnating not Glasgow only, but the whole empire with his views; and when his own Alma Mater had sent him a unanimous invitation to fill a chair which formed a connecting-link between philosophy and religion,—it is not wonderful that he made up his mind to the wrench that was to sever him from his Glasgow friends, and resolved to accept a chair in the university with which his earliest memories were connected, and in which he could look forward to a career of peace and comfort to himself, and great usefulness to his church and country.
CHAPTER IV