A Remarkable Circle of Friends

a remarkable circle of friends

year as his appointment to New Greyfriars’ Thomson also founded The Edinburgh Christian Instructor, a journal which under his editorship became so outspoken in its promotion of evangelical doctrine and practice as to provoke a vote of censure in the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly. The year 1810 was significant for a third reason. It was on 24 December of that year that Thomas Chalmers, minis ter of Kilmany in Fife, began to read William Wilberforce’s Practical View of Christianity . Long afterwards, in a letter to his brother Alexander, he writes of its profound impact on him: ‘…as I got on in reading it, [I] felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in all my opinions about Christianity. I am now most thoroughly of opinion, and it is an opinion founded on experience, that on the system of — Do this and live, no peace, and even no true and worthy obedience, can ever be attained. It is, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. When this belief enters the heart, joy and confidence enter along with it. The righteousness which we try to work out for ourselves eludes our impotent grasp, and never can a soul arrive at true or permanent rest in the pursuit of this object. The righteousness which, by faith, we put on, secures our acceptance with God, and secures our interest in his promises, and gives us a part in those sanc tifying influences by which we are enabled to do with aid from on high what we can never do without it.’ The effect of Chalmers’ conversion is traced out in the first chapter of this book. Through his preaching, and then later through his training of a host of young men who would afterwards serve as gospel ministers, a vibrant evangelicalism spread far and wide. Norman L. Walker in his Scottish Church History sums up the influence of these two men in this way: ‘God can bestow no greater gift on a cause than that of a man of genius and eloquence to advocate it. The success of the Reformation was

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