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?’