November 1825 found him again at his work in St. Andrews, with a better prepared course, and a very numerous class. Notwithstanding the labours of the recess, no symptom of exhaustion appeared; on the contrary, he seemed to thirst for further labour, and whereas the subject of political economy had been considered to fall to the professor of moral philosophy, he intimated that in the following session he would make political economy the subject of a separate course. A numerous class was enrolled, but instead of teaching the subject by lectures, he treated it by means of a text-book. The text-book was Dr. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, on portions of which the students were examined, the professor occasionally adding explanations or little dissertations of his own, or referring to more modern books which gave the latest aspects of the subject.
It should be added that Dr. Chalmers always opened his class with prayer. This was an innovation in a class of philosophy. The prayers were short and pithy, often bearing on the subject of the preceding lecture, and the language was often felicitous, and even sublime. Of the like quality were the prayers he offered when he became a professor of divinity. Many of these will be found in the Institutes of Theology.
But at St. Andrews he was very far from confining himself to academic labours. He could not look round him without feeling that, small though the town was, it was not less in need than crowded Glasgow of efforts to dispel its spiritual darkness, and awaken young and old to the things of eternity. The place had fallen from its high estate; it was no longer like the St. Andrews of those days when, fragrant with martyr memories, it formed one of the chief centres of evangelical influence in Scotland. The first form of pastoral activity to which Dr. Chalmers betook himself was that of a Sabbath-school teacher. As soon as he had leisure after the first session, he marked out for himself a district of the town in the neighbourhood of his house, visited the families, and invited the children to attend a class of his own on the Sunday evenings. For that class he made as careful, though not as elaborate, preparations as for his students in the university. By and by it increased to rather burdensome size.
Meanwhile, another class of young persons engaged his attention, and the Sabbath school was handed over to others. It had been suggested to him that great good would result from a students' class, from gathering together, on Tuesday evenings, such students as desired to receive from him religious instruction of the same kind as they had been accustomed to receive in their fathers' houses before they came to college. The first winter of this meeting, five students came for the purpose. Chalmers instructed them and dealt with them, gave them books for Sabbath reading, examining them as to their contents, and at the same time taking a book of his own, Scripture References, as a kind of doctrinal text-book of his expositions and examinations. Next year, the number was about a dozen. In the third year, the number became so great that his dining-room was crowded with students. One of them remarked afterwards that they learned more of Christian ethics at these meetings than from all his class-room lectures on moral philosophy.
In some instances, the fruit of these meetings was very remarkable. According to the testimony of Dr. Duff, who was one of Chalmers's young men, the students of St. Andrews, previous to his coming, were a godless lot. To make a profession of piety was to incur universal derision. Nor were the divinity students much better; some of them, indeed, were more notorious than other students for impiety, immorality, and riotous revellings. Dr. Chalmers was the instrument of a great revival. In 1823-24, some of the students formed themselves into a missionary society, which held meetings next session in the room of a remarkable man, John Urquhart, one of those saintly youths whose early death puts an end to the boundless promise of their student careers. Dr. Chalmers had already become president of a missionary society, embracing different denominations. At the monthly meetings of this society, which became so large that they had soon to be held in the Town Hall, he gave addresses on missionary topics, not only communicating information, but also pressing the motives and encouragements to missionary effort, answering objections, and gathering from the reports on the state of the heathen confirmations of Scripture, and evidences of the divine origin of Christianity. A university missionary society had now become possible, and its career began in 1825-26 under more favourable conditions than could have been looked for. The blessing of God rested on it, for it furnished some of the first and noblest missionaries that the Church of Scotland sent into the foreign field. The first was the Rev. Robert Nesbit, who spent many laborious and effective years at Bombay. Before Dr. Chalmers left St. Andrews, another of his students, Mr. Adams, had begun his missionary career. In 1829, Chalmers presided at the ordination of Alexander Duff, now one of the brightest names in the record of missions. The Rev. A. Mackay and the Rev. David Ewart followed, and John Urquhart was preparing to go when illness and death arrested his career. A more beautiful or promising springtime of missionary activity could hardly be imagined. And the same course that had thus been begun at St. Andrews was also being followed in Edinburgh. On 27th December 1825, the Edinburgh University Missionary Association was founded, chiefly through the influence of John Wilson, afterwards so well known as Dr. Wilson of Bombay. Chalmers has sometimes been called a man of one idea, and in some minds the notion got hold that all his interest was in home missions, and that he looked with comparative indifference on foreign. It would be more correct to say that he was a man of all manner of ideas, but that he worked out only one idea at a time. In that large heart there was room not only for the welfare of Scotland, but of the whole world too. His identification of himself with the missionary cause, at a time when many derided it, was an act of high moral courage. So was another act, his taking sittings for his family in the dissenting chapels, that they might be nourished with evangelical food, not then to be obtained in the Established Church. Occasionally he would attend these chapels himself, both on Sundays and week-days; not disdaining the devotional services of a pious mechanic at the prayer-meeting, and deriving far more help therefrom than from the dreary ministrations either of the town church or that of the college.
In one respect Dr. Chalmers's course did not run smoothly at St. Andrews. He got into loggerheads with his colleagues on the subject of college finance. In dealing with the funds of the college, it had been the practice of the Senatus to lay aside a certain amount for general expenses, and to divide the balance as a supplemental salary among the different professors. Chalmers was not clear that this was a legitimate course, and for some years he refused to receive his share of the supplemental fund, which accordingly accumulated until it amounted to some £700. Reflecting as this refusal did, or was supposed to do, on the honesty of his colleagues, it gave him more pain than any other public duty he was ever called to perform. After he had left St. Andrews, the university commissioners having looked into the matter, recorded it as their judgment that there was no good reason why he should not accept of the sum standing at his credit; and as Dr. Chalmers had desired only that the matter should be settled by competent authority, he accepted the money. But nothing could exceed his surprise and indignation when he found, in the published report of the commissioners in 1831, a statement that 'the principal and professors appear to have made these appropriations without any authority.' In a letter addressed to the commissioners, and published in 1832, after quoting their judgment in his own case, he said he could not divine what they really thought of these appropriations—whether they were honest or fraudulent. 'If you think them wrong, how is it that to me you have called the evil good? If right, how is it that to your Sovereign you have called the good evil?'
During his five years' incumbency in St. Andrews, he issued two volumes from the press. The first was the third and concluding volume of The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns. Among the topics embraced in this volume were the Poor-Laws and the Combination-Laws. The particular aspect of the Poor-Laws with which he dealt, and which he most thoroughly condemned, was the application of the poor-rates, as in England, to supplement the wages of ill-paid labourers. Though kindly meant, this arrangement, he held, was an invasion of the relation between master and men so ruinous, and involved a bounty to the masters so unjust, that no toleration ought to be found for it. This was also the general opinion; and the practice was discontinued by law. According to Dr. Chalmers's biographer, his exposure of the practice formed a powerful contribution towards its removal.
In regard to the Combination-Laws, which imposed severe and stringent penalties on any united movements of workmen for increasing their wages, a bill for repealing them had been introduced and carried by Mr. Huskisson, whose efforts to free industry from the fetters of Protection were hailed by Dr. Chalmers with great delight. Unfortunately, the carrying of this measure into law was accompanied by certain deplorable excesses on the part of some classes of workmen, who did not understand how to use their new-found liberty. Dr. Chalmers strongly upheld the righteousness of the repeal of the old laws, mainly on the ground that we ought not to manufacture crime out of acts (such as workmen's combinations) which the natural conscience does not condemn. But with equal firmness he denounced any interference with the freedom of labour, especially when men on strike coerced and persecuted those that might be willing to work. The experience of seventy years has not materially changed the position. 'Strike, if you please,' is the voice of reason and justice to workmen; 'but leave those who do not concur with you at perfect freedom to do as they please.'
The other publication of this period was a book on Literary and Ecclesiastical Endowments. It was devoted chiefly to the case of the Scottish universities. Among the reforms which he advocated, a foremost place was given to the raising of the standard of scholarship for those joining the university. Though apparently disregarded at the time, it was seen, whenever serious attention began to be given to the state of our universities, that this was indeed the most important change to begin with. What Dr. Chalmers proposed was, that an entrance examination should be instituted, and that a gymnasium, or, as we now call it, a secondary school, should be attached to each of the universities, for instruction that would qualify for the entrance examination. Modern opinion has so far transcended the modest proposal of Chalmers, that instead of a preparatory school in each university seat, the demand is now for adequate secondary schools scattered over all the land.
It was a very congenial thing for Chalmers to advocate in this way the elevation and ample equipment of our universities. His old love of science and general culture had never died in him, although he had learned to give them a secondary place, and to feel profoundly that the first duty and the chief interest of man concerned his relation to the great God, without whom nothing could be great, nothing strong. But the spirit of Chalmers was stirred within him as often as he thought of the great leaders of science, and their splendid achievements in astronomy and in other departments. The very name of Newton sent a thrill through every fibre of his being, and roused the desire to follow in his steps, as well as to see every youth around him inspired by his spirit, and by all that was noble in his example. Speaking of the universities of England, which were more successful than the Scottish in cultivating particular branches, but gave less complete attention to learning as a whole, he said, 'We cannot conclude this passing notice of the universities of England without the mention of how much they are ennobled by those great master spirits—those men of might and high achievement—the Newtons, and the Miltons, and the Drydens, and the Barrows, and the Addisons, and the Butlers, and the Clarkes, and the Stillingfleets, and the Ushers, and the Foxes, and the Pitts and Johnsons, who within their attic retreats received that first awakening which afterwards expanded into the aspirations and triumphs of loftiest genius. This is the true heraldry of colleges. Their family honour is built on the prowess of sons, not the greatness of ancestors.'