Sometimes we find an entry in his journal: ’Fasted somewhat this day,’—so eager was he to leave no means of spiritual quickening unused. But still we find severe judgment against himself. ’Old things are not wholly passed away: the love of literature _for itself_, and the love of literary distinction, have not passed away. Let me love literature as one of those creatures of God which is not to be refused, but received with thanksgiving. Let me desire literary distinction, but let my desire for it be altogether that I may add to my Christian usefulness, and promote the glory of God; then, even without these, I would be a new creature. The impression of my defects is not such as to overwhelm me, but stimulate me.’ During his St. Andrews incumbency, Dr. Chalmers had been offered various offices, notably that of professor of moral philosophy in the University of London. To none of these offers did he accede; but when, on 31st October 1827, the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh unanimously elected him to fill the chair of theology in the university there, he gladly accepted the office, the more especially that it had been arranged that he was not to enter on his new duties till November 1828. It was a trial to him to part with the calm and quiet he had enjoyed at St. Andrews, and again plunge into a vast and bustling community like that from which he had escaped five years before, and which had left little more than ’the dazzling recollection of a feverish and troubled dream.’ But theology was a higher department than moral philosophy, and Edinburgh was a centre of wider influence than St. Andrews. His course was clear; nevertheless, in his closing lectures, he assured his students that nothing in what was before him was fitted to displace them from his recollections; but, on the contrary, from his individual acquaintance with them all, he would ever regard his connection with them as a more tender relationship than he could hope to enjoy with the students of Edinburgh. CHAPTER V EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY 1828-1843 It was but natural for Chalmers, in entering on his new duties as professor of divinity in the University of Edinburgh, to rally all his energies for a task so important—to be performed, too, in so commanding a sphere. The course of theology through which he had to conduct his students occupied three sessions, and for each consecutive winter it was necessary for him to produce a fresh set of lectures. Happily the subjects discussed in his first session were already familiar to him—natural theology and the evidences of Christianity. What was necessary for him in this session, was to expand, complete, and combine materials that, in a very limited measure, he had already used at St. Andrews.