A Great Scottish Divine
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THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., D.C.L., whom Lord
Rosebery described as "the most illustrious Scots-
man since John Knox," was born in
Anstruther, in 1780,
drew large crowds in the Tron Church, Glasgow and at
St. Andrews, led 470 ministers out of the Scottish Church
and founded the Free Church. After preaching Law for
eight years he was converted.
In his journal, in May, 1811, he writes: "I am
much
taken with Walker's observation that we are commanded
to believe on the Son of God! I am now most thoroughly
of opinion that on the system of ‘Do this and
live!’ no
peace can ever be attained. It is ‘Believe on
the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved[!]’ (Acts 16. 31). When
this belief enters the heart, joy and confidence enter along
with it!"
Here is his own explanation of the change: "I
cannot
but record," he says, "the effect of an actual
though
undesigned experiment which I prosecuted for upwards of
twelve years among you. For the first eight years of that
time I could expatiate only on the meanness of dishonesty,
on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of
calumny, in a word, upon all those deformities of charac-
ter which awaken the natural indignation of the human
heart against the pests and disturbers of human society.
But the interesting fact is, that, during the whole of that
period, I never once heard of any
reformation being
wrought amongst my people. All the vehemence with
which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life
had not the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my
parishioners. It was not until the free offer
of forgiveness
through the Blood of
Christ was urged upon the acceptance
of my hearers that I ever heard of any of those subordinate
reformations which I made the ultimate object of my
earlier ministrations."
And he closes a farewell speech to a congregation with
these memorable words: "You have taught me," he says,
"that to preach Christ is the only effective way of
preach-
ing morality; and out of your humble cottages I have
gathered a lesson which, in all its simplicity, I shall carry
into a wider theatre."
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