We must now glance at Chalmers in his family and inner life during this busy and trying period of his life. A man who is forming new acquaintances by the hundred, and is constantly receiving the enthusiastic applause of thousands, is in no small danger of two things—of letting his home-affections become somewhat languid, and of neglecting his inner life. But in the case of Chalmers, we can find no evidence of either of these results. Shortly before his departure from St. Andrews, his domestic affections had been profoundly stirred by the death of his mother; and hardly had his first session in Edinburgh closed, when he was called to follow to the tomb the remains of Alexander, his youngest and favourite brother. His journal for 25th April 1829 has the following entry: ’It was a large funeral. The sun shone sweetly on the burying-place. I was like to give way, when, after leaving the grave, I passed Mr. Fergus; neither of us could speak. Oh that God would interpose to perpetuate the impressions of this day! This is the fifth time within these few years that I have been chief mourner, and carried the head of a relative to the grave. But this has been far the heaviest of them all.’ Dr. Chalmers himself had an alarming illness in 1834, though, happily, it passed without serious results. He had been at a meeting of the Presbytery of Edinburgh, at which he had vehemently opposed the proposal of the Town Council to curtail the number of the city ministers; and he had been greatly excited by the thought that the real welfare of the people should be obstructed and hindered by the very men who professed to be their friends. It was on this occasion that he proclaimed himself a Radical, the only consistent Radical among them. ’The dearest object of my earthly existence,’ he then said, ’is the elevation of the common people—humanised by Christianity, and raised by the strength of their moral habits to a higher platform of human nature, and by which they may attain and enjoy the rank and consideration due to enlightened and companionable men. I trust the day is coming when the people will find out who are their best friends, and when the mock patriotism of the present day shall be unmasked by an act of robbery and spoliation on the part of those who would deprive the poor of their best and highest patrimony. The imperishable soul of the poor man is of as much value as the soul of the rich; and I will resist, even to the death, that alienation which goes but to swell the luxury of the higher ranks at the expense of the Christianity of the lower.’