When we compare Chalmers as he came to Kilmany and as he left it, we
find much that remains the same, and much that has been changed or
modified.
Remaining the same, we find his singularly energetic, forceful nature;
his high integrity and kindliness of heart, as it constantly streamed
out towards his family, his friends, and his flock; his eager desire for
the welfare of his people, for their advancement and elevation in all
that he counted good, pure, and noble; his indomitable energy of purpose
and fearless contending for right and truth; his passionate intensity of
conviction, rolling itself out in whirlwinds and tempests of eloquence,
that swept all before it. The great change which he has undergone has
not destroyed these fundamental elements of character.
Nevertheless, all things have become new. He has learned that true
life, in its every department, must be lived in fellowship with God. He
has learned the way to God, to God reconciled, a loving Father, a
considerate Master, a gracious Friend and Guide. He has seen the
reality of Christ’s atonement, and of the work of the Holy Spirit, and
found a new value in prayer, and a new use of the sacred Scriptures. He
has got new light on the true welfare of the people, and especially on
the need for every one of personal contact with Christ; new light, also,
on the true dignity of every individual man and woman in view of the
capacities of their souls and the immortality that is before them. He
has found a nobler theme and a higher inspiration for that eloquence
which has moulded his labours in the pulpit. He is not less desirous to
see the people prosperous and happy, but he has been convinced that
their true welfare is dependent on heavenly grace, and, in the case of
the poor, that there is nothing like Christian influence whether for
preventing or alleviating the evils of poverty, or, where there are
poor, raising them above the depressing conditions of their lot. And
this is just the germ of that more comprehensive view of the conditions
of social welfare to which he will be drawn when he finds himself side
by side with the teeming thousands of Glasgow. He looks forward more
ardently than ever to the full development of the parochial system. Nor
has his enthusiasm for science abated. He has seen that, much though he
loves it, it is not his part to devote to it the time needed for his
more immediate duties. But now that he sees it more clearly than ever a
department of that great kingdom of God in which all interests are
combined in a wonderful unity, his respect for it is greater rather than
less. And, as a handmaid to the Gospel, he will soon find a noble use
for it in those astronomical discourses which are soon to arrest the
attention of the intellectual world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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