All must see, whatever their own opinion of the case, that it could only have been considerations of extraordinary force that constrained Dr. Chalmers to forgo that connection with the state which he had so long held to be indispensable for the successful work of the church, and to cast her on the voluntary offerings of the people. From the hour when the noble ambition to turn Scotland into a spiritual garden first filled his soul, the aid of the state had appeared a sine quct, non to the accomplishment of this great object. What then induced him to part with it? Only because he was profoundly convinced that the subjection which the civil courts demanded would prove fatal to its spiritual life and power, fatal to its spirit of enterprise and activity, fatal to that largeness of heart and confidence of success which were necessary for great undertakings, and fatal to its own character as a consistent and fearless witness for the supremacy of the church’s head. If it should flinch in its hour of trial, it deserved to be flung aside as a dishonoured and useless thing. If the decisions of the Court of Session and the House of Lords had been less extravagant, if they had even left to the church a vestige of power to give effect to the voice of the people in the settlement of ministers, and in the other matters involved, Chalmers would still have clung to the connection of church and state. It was simply the extravagance of the claims of the civil courts to supreme jurisdiction that placed Chalmers among the leaders of the Disruption, for he did not take the strong view that some of the other leaders took of the divine right of the question. Whether he was sanguine enough to hope that the Free Church disestablished would be able to do for Scotland all that might have been done by a free Established Church, he certainly believed that, in the circumstances, the Free Church was by far the more likely body to grapple with the enterprise that had ever floated before him. Writing to Sir George Sinclair in 1841, he said, ’Looking to the Christian interests of Scotland, I believe that more good could be done by the instrumentality of a disendowed church than by an established church exposed to such interferences as those of the Court of Session during the last few years.’ And, under this belief, what remained of his life was devoted to the building up and strengthening of the Free Church, in the earnest hope that much of the blessing for which he had longed and worked and prayed so intensely would in this way be realised for his country.