At the Disruption there was a vast amount of work to be done, for it would have required more than seven hundred churches to accommodate all the congregations that adhered to the Free Church. There were, besides, many cases of peculiar difficulty, caused chiefly by the refusal of proprietors to grant sites for churches and manses on their properties, a refusal which on vast estates like those of the Duke of Sutherland or the Duke of Buccleuch would have amounted to an absolute extinction of the church. Dr. Chalmers, however, under the influence of his strong desire for a sabbatic decennium, kept clear of the ordinary work of the church, excepting the Sustentation Fund and his college lectures. As for the college itself, it was mainly in the hands of Dr. Welsh, until his lamented death in 1845, when Dr. Chalmers felt constrained to become convener of the College Committee. Among other services, Dr. Welsh took in hand to provide for a college building, which it was proposed to erect from the contributions of twenty subscribers of £1000 each. This was a serious undertaking at a time when the wealthier friends of the church had been straining all their energies for the Building, Sustentation, and Mission Funds. But the whole sum was speedily contributed in the way proposed, and though in the end the price of the site and the cost of the building amounted to more than double the sum named at the beginning, the whole was ultimately provided. Such liberality for college purposes was due in a great degree to the profound regard in which Dr. Chalmers was held, and in a somewhat less degree to his colleague Dr. Welsh.