OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., LL.D. BY HIS SON-IN-LAW, THE REV. WILLIAM HANNA, LL.D. PREFACE. THE reader will be pleased at finding that in so many of the following pages Dr. Chalmers becomes his own biographer. I have done little more than select, arrange, and weave into a continuous narrative those materials which his family already possessed, or which friends and correspondents have kindly presented. In doing so, I was relieved of one difficulty, frequently the greatest with which a relative who undertakes a biography, has to contend: there has been no conflict between what was due to truth, and what was due to affection or to relationship. The nearer that Dr. Chalmers was approached, and the more that was seen of him in the retired and most familiar scenes of life, the deeper was the love and veneration which he awakened; the more minute, exact, and faithful in all respects the narrative of his life can be rendered, it will only excite the more affectionate admiration, while more fully accomplishing the still higher object of making his life subservient |
