After a lengthened debate a declaratory enactment was passed, prohibiting in future such pluralities as had been permitted in the cases of Dr. Arnot and Mr. Ferrie. A succeeding Assembly was persuaded to cancel this enactment on the alleged ground that it was incompetent and unconstitutional to pass such an act without the advice of the presbyteries of the Church. An overture embodying its terms was sent down to the presbyteries by the General Assembly of 1816; and a majority of the returns having been in its favour, it passed into a standing law of the Church of Scotland in 1817, that a chair in a university cannot be held in conjunction with a country parochial charge.

I am singular in my opinion that he bears in some striking features a resemblance to your father: I mean not in looks, but in the qualities of his mind. The resemblance which the members of a family bear to one another, and that even in its remoter branches, and in the particular which I now allude to, has often struck me. I am persuaded that the same affinity may be traced between the two whom I have mentioned, and that in that acuteness and eloquence which are the acknowledged qualities of the minister of Kilmany, he discovers the relation which he bears to his granduncle. On making this remark to one of my brethren from Fife acquainted with both, he seemed to think that the former was superior in point of talent; to which I replied, that in some respects it might be true, as there were some sciences in which the former had made proficiency to which your father had paid no attention, nay, in fact, always treated with contempt-I here refer to Chemistry and Political Economy. Besides, I told him that it was only in the decline of life that I was acquainted with your father, but that even in that stage, when, alas! most of us exhibit nothing but infirmities, I was much disposed to think that he was wrong. I am not sure that your father would have engaged with the ardour with which the minister of Kilmany does in Missionary and Bible Societies. Here, however, I have perhaps rather ascribed to your father my own ideas than his. For my own part, I must own to you that I have never yet seen any proper call to us for engaging in the measures of these Societies, and such is the feeling of this part of the country with a very few exceptions."

CHAPTER XVI.

MINISTRY AT KILMANY-ITS FIRST SEVEN YEARS-THE CHANGETHE SICK-ROOM-THE VISITATION THE EXAMINATION-THE CLASS FOR THE YOUNG-THE PULPIT THE RESULT.

PAROCHIAL duty pressed lightly upon Mr. Chalmers during the first seven years of his ministry at Kilmany. If he "expended as much effort upon the religious improvement of his people as any minister within the bounds of his presbytery," if he could triumphantly challenge his brethren to prove that he had been outstripped by any of his predecessors in the regularity of his ministerial attentions,"* the standards to which he thus appealed must have been miserably low. The sick and the dying among his parishioners had not indeed been neglected during those earlier years. Kindly inquiries were made, tender sympathy was shewn, and needful aid was tendered; but no solicitude was manifested as to their religious condition, no references occurred in visiting them to their state and prospects for eternity, and it was only when specially requested to do so that he engaged in prayer. Two or three weeks were annually devoted to a visitation of his parish, so rapidly conducted that he scarcely did more than hurriedly enter many a dwelling to summon its inmates to a short address, given in some neighbouring apartment, and confined generally to one or other of the more ordinary moralities of domestic life. With the general body of his parishioners he had little intercourse. They might meet

* See ante, pp. 89, 90.

"I have

him occasionally on the road, and receive the kindliest notice, but the smile of friendly recognition broke over a countenance of dreamy abstraction; and when the quicklymade but cordial salutation was over and he was gone, his wondering parishioners would gaze after him as upon a man wholly addicted to very strange, and, in the eyes of many of them, very questionable pursuits. Comparatively little time. or care was bestowed upon his pulpit preparations. known him," says Mr. Smith, "not to begin them till Sabbath morning. He told me that he wrote in short-hand, and when once he began he kept the pen going till he had finished the discourse. His sermons were in general very short." But they were written in a fervid strain, and delivered with energetic animation. The first effect, indeed, of the great spiritual change, was to chasten rather than to stimulate the vehemence of his delivery in the pulpit. In those earlier days, whether from choice or from necessity, he frequently preached without any written notes. The obstructions afterwards complained of and felt to be invincible, do not then appear to have stood much in his way, for he never used so ardent and so significant an elocution as in those fervid extempore expostulations upon stealing or lying or backbiting, explained according to popular belief by the circumstance, that the minister had come home late on the Saturday evening, and that the indefatigable newsmonger, John Bonthron, had been seen entering the manse shortly after his arrival. When the impulse moved, or the occasion invited, Mr. Chalmers could write as eloquently then as he ever did afterwards. The two fast-day sermons of this period have been compared with that splendid discourse which the occasion of the first of them elicited from Robert Hall. Without pressing that comparison to an issue, it may be taken as a very signal proof of the native genius * See Posthumous Works, vol. vi. pp. 40 and 62.

of their author, that two discourses, written off-hand, written in all likelihood each at a single sitting, prepared for thin audiences of unsympathizing rustics, and thrown aside as soon as delivered, should be capable of bearing a comparison with an effort which was made, in the first instance, before a crowded and intelligent audience, and upon which all the care and skill of one of the greatest masters in the art of composition had afterwards been lavished. Upon the whole, however, and till the period of his illness at Fincraigs, Mr. Chalmers' ministry was unpopular and ineffective, his church but poorly attended, and his private ministrations followed with but trifling effects. But the great change came, and with it a total alteration in the discharge of all parochial duty. From a place of visible subordination, the spiritual care and cultivation of his parish was elevated to the place of clear and recognised supremacy. To break up the peace of the indifferent and secure by exposing at once the guilt of their ungodliness and its fearful issue in a ruined eternity-to spread out an invitation wide as heaven's own all-embracing love, to every awakened sinner to accept of eternal life in Jesus Christ-to plead with all, that instantly and heartily, with all good-will and with full and unreserved submission, they should give themselves up in absolute and entire dedication to the Redeemer-these were the objects for which he was now seen to strive with such a severity of conviction" as implied that he had one thing to do, and "with such a concentration of his forces as to idle spectators looked like insanity."*

The first use he made of that returning strength which, after so many months' confinement, enabled him to cross again the threshold of Fincraigs, was to visit all the sick, the dying, and the bereaved in his parish; and when all trace and feeling of his own infirmity had departed, he still delighted to mingle

Foster's character of Howard.

his sympathies with the weak and the sorrowful. There was indeed such a restless activity about his manner, such a physical incapacity for very soft or gentle movements, that the sickroom seemed an uncongenial place; yet there was such exquisite tenderness of feeling, such rapid appreciation of the condition of the patient, and such capacity in a few short and weighty sentences to minister to his spiritual sorrows or perplexity, that a brief visit from him was often sufficient to shed a flood of light upon the understanding, or to pour a full tide of comfort into the heart. Extreme delicacy of feeling and his own great reserve threw obstacles in his way, which were often very painfully felt by him. But if he could not at once overcome the barriers which lay in the way of an immediate, free, and confidential spiritual intercourse, he could speak of Him whose love to sinners had no limits, and lay under no restraints. "No one ever preached the gospel to the dying with greater simplicity or fulness, and yet with characteristic simplicity he would often say, 'Oh! that I could preach to the sick and dying as Mr. Tait of Tealing does.'"* His interest in this as in every other part of his ministerial labours, grew with his own. advancing light and love. During the years 1813, 1814, the only two years of full ministerial labour at Kilmany, he made a few short-hand memoranda, entitled, "Records of spiritual intercourse with my people." Guided by these, let us follow Mr. Chalmers in one or two of his visits to the sick-chamber or the house of mourning.

February 15th, 1813.-Visited Mrs. B., who is unwell, and prayed. Let me preach Christ in all simplicity, and let me have a peculiar eye on others. I spoke of looking unto Jesus, and deriving thence all our delight and confidence.-O God, give me wisdom and truth in this household part of my duty.

* MS. Memoranda, by the Rev. Islay Burns.