A Remarkable Circle of Friends

1 Thomas Chalmers

On Fire for the Gospel

When Thomas Chalmers gave his inaugural lecture as Profes sor of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh in November 1828, people came in such numbers that a strong police presence was required to keep things in order. Imagine! Nor did the interest diminish. ‘His class-room continued to be crowded all through the session,’ writes one of his biographers, Norman L. Walker. It was all so very different from how things had been. Theology lectures in the past, says Walker, had been ‘often clear, sometimes learned, and students had come forth from the Hall with a more or less competent knowledge of theological systems. But,’ he says, ‘there had never been any approach to “an explosion,” and youthful enthusiasms had been rather dulled than fanned into a flame. Now there was a professor in possession to whom Christianity was not a mere framework of dry bones, but a living force. His own soul was on fire; and whatever he felt himself he made his audience feel. And as a consequence, there immediately began a process which in time told visibly upon the face of Scotland — the inspiring of a race of men who carried the life with them into the pulpits which they filled, and became the means of bringing about a great revival of religion.’

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