A Remarkable Circle of Friends

a remarkable circle of friends

So who was Thomas Chalmers? The aim of this first chap ter is to introduce you to the man, to his work, and to his remarkable and widespread influence. Beginnings Thomas Chalmers was born on 17 March 1780 in Anstruther, a fishing village on the Fifeshire coast of Scotland. He was part of a large family of eight brothers and five sisters, with parents who were fine Christians. His father is described as ‘a man of fervent but unostentatious piety,’ whilst of his mother, after her death, Chalmers could write of ‘the deep and immovable trust of her spirit upon her Saviour’ which ‘shed a singular and beautiful light on the evening of her days.’ To enter a university at the age of eleven, as Chalmers did, seems an extraordinary thing to us. But the University of St Andrews in those days was, as one writer puts it, ‘little more … than a school for big boys from the neighbourhood.’ During the first two sessions Chalmers showed far more interest in golf, football, and handball than in academic stud ies. But a change came when he began to study mathematics at the age of fourteen. His intellect awoke and mathematics became the absorbing interest of his mind. He now applied himself more diligently to his other studies and became an outstanding student. At the age of fifteen, and again it seems an extraordinary thing to us, Chalmers was enrolled as a divinity student and began to prepare for gospel ministry. The key event of this period was the reading of Jonathan Edwards’ The Freedom of the Will . It made a profound impression. ‘I remember,’ he says, ‘when a student of divinity, and long ere I could relish evangelical sentiment, I spent nearly a twelve-month in a sort of mental elysium, and the one idea which ministered to my soul all its rapture was the magnificence of the Godhead,

[4]