“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” ~ Golda Meir

On Sunday, the 30th, Thomas Chalmers continued in his usual manner with good health and in the best of spirits, had retired to rest with the intention of rising early. He never was to make an appearance again. On investigation he was discovered lying in bed having departed this life to be with his Lord. He fell asleep in Christ evidently without pain or even consciousness.
It has been said, “Posterity seems to regard Thomas Chalmers as a magnificent failure! All the things he fought for, argued for, wrote for, and innovated seem to have failed. Not one book by him, or even about him, is currently in print…"God sees not as man sees, but lookest upon the heart" and success must surely be measured by whether the fight was fought diligently, properly and in a God-fearing manner, not by its worldly success. What shines out brightly from his journal and letters is the aching heart he had for bringing souls to the Lord. All the so-called worldly objectives, such as amendment of the Poor Laws, were aimed at one and the same target - winning souls for the Lord His mighty brain saw clearly what some of us see but dimly, and others not at all - that if all be done to God's glory, and in submission to Holy Scripture, other "secular" matters will come right.
That he failed to get others to see it the same way can hardly be surprising - didn't our Lord suffer the same hardness of heart and lack of appreciation in his day?”

Thomas Chalmers, D.D., an eminent divine of the Scottish Church, was born on 17th March 1780, in the burgh of Anstruther Easter, in Fife, where his father was a shipowner and general merchant. He was the sixth of a family of fourteen, and received his first education in the parish school of his native Anstruther At the age of TWELVE he was sent to the University of St. Andrews, for the purpose of studying for the church, and after passing through a curriculum there of seven years, was licensed as a preacher in July, 1799, the rule of the Scottish Church requiring that a licenciate shall have reached the age of twenty-one being dispensed with in his case, in virtue of the exceptional clause in favour of those possessing 'rare and singular qualities.

Thomas, having to put up with the evils of a overly severe nurse until the age of three, he then was the pupil of an equally severe schoolmaster, who was a worn-out teacher, whose methods was that of rigorous discipline which meant many a beating young Tomas had to bear. This implanted upon Thomas’s mind the evils of injustice and oppression, which he saw around him when he went into the ministry.

It was not until 1810 -11 that is true conversion to the belief in the saving qualities and finished work of Jesus Christ occurred and became the subject of assertion that he had gone mad! Prior to his conversion and on entering the ministry, Thomas Chalmers was in no haste to preach; on the contrary, he refused the numerous demands that were made upon his clerical services, took up his abode in Edinburgh during the winter of 1799-1800, for the purpose of prosecuting his mathematical studies under Professor Playfair. Thomas believed that the minster after the satisfactory discharge of parochial duties should have five days in which to do as he pleased. Thomas, therefore, had to find an outlet for his uninterrupted leisure; and after having exhausted the field of St. Andrews, he resumed his lectureship on chemistry in his little parish of Kilmany. It was during this time while Napoleon’s menace of invasion that Thomas enlisted as Chaplin and lieutenant in the St. Andrews corps of volunteers.

HIS CONVERSION
This resulted from seeing several members of his family carried off from disease in the space of a few months. He started thinking seriously about his eternal wellbeing. After these events Thomas now spoke of new themes, and chiefly of the shortness and insignificance of time, and of the nearness and magnitude of eternity. In later years when an opponent in the General Assembly reminded him of his early views on the work of the ministry, his reply was, “But then, sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes. I thought not of the littleness of time - I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity.” Yet when these new truths were first heard in the Kilmany pulpit the most momentous change was still going on in secret. Smitten with a sense of sin, Chalmers had begun to pray, “O God, fit a poor, dark, ignorant and wandering creature for being a minister of Thy word”.

Gradually the way of salvation by faith in the atonement of Christ was opened up to him and before the close of the year 1811, when he was thirty- one years of age, his journal is recording the joy of assurance and of full commitment: “O God, make me feel the firmness of the ground I tread upon, and enable me to give all my mind to Thy Word. Above all, may I never recede by a single inch from my Saviour”. Also he said, “I had more intimate communion with God in solitary prayer than I had ever felt before; and my sentiment was a total, an unreserved, and a secure dependence on Christ the Saviour.” The vast change in the ministry of Kihnany was soon widely known. To the cerebral, and highbrow members of the Kirk, it had the appearance of insanity the nickname "mad Chalmers was to his for years to come. The evangelical members saw it in a different light. One who visited Chalmers at this time reported: He has long been known as a celebrated philosopher and scorner of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity; now, from conviction and with a warm heart, he preaches the faith he once destroyed. I have had serious conversation with him, and am astonished at a man of such superior powers so modest and humble. He is indeed converted, and like a little child.
The story of his conversion, is best told by Thomas himself, in two letters, of a later date, one addressed to his brother Alexander.

I remember that somewhere about the year 1811, I had Wilberforce's View put into my hands, and, as I got on in reading it, felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in all my opinions about Christianity. I am now most thoroughly of the opinion, and it is an opinion founded on experience, that on the system of - Do this and live, - no peace, and even no true worthy obedience, can ever be attained. It is, - Believe in Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. When this enters the heart, joy and confidence enter along with it. The righteousness, which, by faith, we try to work out for ourselves eludes our impotent grasp, and never can a soul arrive at true or permanent rest in the pursuit of this object. The righteousness which, by faith, we put on, secures our acceptance with God, and secures our interest in His promises, and gives us a part in those sanctifying influences by which we are enabled to do aid from on high what we never can do without it. We look to God in a new light - we see Him as a reconciled Father; that love to Him which terror scares away re-enters the heart, with a new principle and a new power, we become new creatures in Jesus Christ our Lord."

The other letter to James Anderson completes the picture of a changed man. “My sir, our divinity is not of the right kind unless it be a fair transcript of that divinity which exists in the New Testament. I admit the doctrine of good works, not because it comes to me in the shape of a corollary to the demonstrations of the schoolmen, but because it comes to me in warm and immediate from “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” I do not think I can be wrong in calling no man master but Christ; and at all events it is making faith in Him my security and my refuge. I summon up the conception of Jesus as my friend, and with such an image in my heart, I feel the intolerance of orthodoxy stripped of all its terrors. I repair to the grand principle of faith as my refuge not merely against the anxieties of certain guilt, but against the anxieties of possible ignorance; and that doctrine of the sufficiency of Christ, which occupies so high, not too high, a place in their systems, I convert into my defence and my protection when they frown condemnation upon me.
That which availeth is, "Faith working by love;" and if the love of Christ be shed abroad upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit, it is to be rejoiced in as the "pledge and the earnest of our inheritance." This is the attainment, which we must strive after; and we have the highest authority for believing that prayer and diligence and the exercises of patience and faith, are means, which, if strenuously persevered in, are never resorted to in vain.

Your sublime views of eternity are most congenial to me; and I can well understand the regret with which you complain that they are not more habitual to you. Nothing has convinced me more effectually of our fallen state than this habitual estrangement of the mind from those high themes of faith and of eternity, which, in its better moments, it acknowledges to be not merely of high, but of exclusive importance. The God, who gives us every breath and whose sustaining hand upholds us every moment, should be ever present to our devotion and our thoughts. It is so in heaven; and if not so on earth, it is precisely because the bible representation is true, that the moral constitution of our nature is unhinged, and that the banishment of Adam from the paradise of Eden involved in it the banishment of all his posterity from its exercises and its joys. We should love God with our heart and strength and mind, says the first commandment of the law; and there is not a truth in the whole compass of philosophy which rests more firmly on the Baconian basis of experiment, than that in the heart and life of every individual who comes into the world this commandment is fallen from.

The law is for the direction of those who are able to keep it, but it serves another purpose. It instructs us, by its observed violations, in the melancholy but important truth, that all are guilty before God. It compels us to the remedy laid before us in the gospel, and is the "schoolmaster, which brings us to Christ". When you feel the wretched deficiencies of your own heart, take in a full impression of its unworthiness, and do not seek to protect yourself from the humiliating contemplation. The protection offered us in the gospel is protection against the terrors of the law, and not against the shame and the consciousness of having violated it. “Be not afraid, only believe", says the Saviour and the experience of every day carries home to my heart that the only applicable expedient for man in the actual state of our present being, is simply to take to Christ, to unite with him by faith, to approach God through that Mediator who is able to save to the uttermost, to perfect our union with the Saviour by doing Him the honour of trusting Him, or taking Him at his word, and to look for sanctification, for heavenly mindedness, for conformity to the will and image of Christ, for redemption not merely from the punishment of sin, but also from its power, for "progressive virtue and approving heaven” - to look for these, and for all other spiritual blessings, as the promised effects of that union. If you come to the tranquillity of such final conviction as this, is it possible, I ask, not to view the great agent in the process of reconciliation as your friend? Can the heart of the Christian refuse the energy of His impressive voice? “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you”? Virtue is not exploded; it is hung upon a new principle (2 Cor. 14 15).

Extract from a report of Thomas Chalmers funeral service.
“A little before one, a large body of citizens, desirous of testifying respect to the memory of the deceased Thomas, joined in the procession, assembled on the south side of Charlotte Square; as did also the Magistrates and Town-Council of the city, in St. George's Church, in the same square. At one o clock, the General Assembly left Free St. Andrew's Church, the Moderator and Office-bearers in front, in gowns and bands, preceded by the two officers of Assembly, dressed in deep mourning, with hanging crapes, and white rods in their hands, and walking four abreast, proceeded to the Lothian Road, where they halted at about a hundred yards in advance of Free St. George's Church. The members of Assembly were followed by the Professors in the New College, in their gowns and bands. The ministers and elders not members of Assembly, now left Free St Georges Church, walking four abreast, preceded by four beadles, two and two, dressed in deep mourning, and with black rods in their hands, and took their place in the procession immediately behind the Professors. Next came the ministers of other denominations. These were followed by the probationers and students, walking also four abreast, and preceded by two officers dressed in the manner last described. Next in the procession came the Rector and Masters of the High School in their gowns, and preceded by the Janitor in his official costume; and following in their rear were the Rector, Teachers, and Students of the Edinburgh Normal School, with other Free Church teachers in Edinburgh and neighbourhood. Forming the rear of the procession came the large body of citizens, who had assembled in Charlotte Square, walking four abreast. Thus formed, the procession. There was a moral sublimity in the spectacle. It spoke more emphatically than by words, of the dignity of intrinsic excellence, and of the height to which a true man may attain. It was the dust of a Presbyterian minister which the coffin contained; and yet they were burying him amid the tears of a nation, and with more than kingly honours.”

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