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.