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Chalmers
1780-1847
Biographical Note
Thomas Chalmers, theologian, preacher and philanthropist, was born at Anstruther, near St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1780. In his thirty-fifth year he experienced a profound religious change and became a pronounced, though independent, evangelical preacher. On being appointed to the Tron Church in Glasgow, he set about to face what he called “the home heathenism.†During the week days he delivered his series of “Astronomical Discourses,†in which he endeavored to bring science into harmony with Christianity. His “Commercial Discourses†were designed to Christianize the principles of trade. But he reduced pauperism chiefly by fighting against intemperance in Glasgow. On being transferred to St. John’s Parish, the largest, but poorest in the city, he made Edward Irving his assistant. In 1828 he was called to the chair of theology in Edinburgh University.
But it was as a preacher that he exerted most influence by bringing the evangelical message into relations with the science, the culture, the thinking of his age. In doing this he carried his hearers away by the blazing force of his eloquence. Many times in his preaching he was “in an agony of earnestness,†and one of his hearers speaks of “that voice, that face, those great, simple, living thoughts, those floods of resistless eloquence, that piercing, shattering voice!†He died in 1847.