Background
Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther in Fife, the son of John Chalmers, a merchant, and Elizabeth Hall.
Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther in Fife, the son of John Chalmers, a merchant, and Elizabeth Hall.
At the age of eleven Thomas Chalmers was entered as a student at St Andrews, where he devoted himself almost exclusively to mathematics. In May 1803, after attending further courses of lectures in Edinburgh, and acting as assistant to the professor of mathematics at St Andrews, he was ordained as minister of Kilmany in Fifeshire, about 9 m. from the university town, where he continued to lecture. His mathematical lectures roused so much enthusiasm that they were discontinued by order of the authorities, who disliked the disturbance of the university routine which they involved.
Chosen minister of Kilmany in 1802, Thomas Chalmers combined his ministerial duties, which he took rather lightly, with teaching mathematics at St. Andrews.
In 1809 a brilliant speech before the General Assembly made Chalmers a marked man in the Church, and thenceforth he was in demand as a preacher and contributor to religious journals. His spiritual "conversion" at this time was occasioned by a severe illness, which threatened him with death, and by a deeper study of Christianity. He was influenced by Blaise Pascal's,Pensees, and his own career as mathematician, scientist, and theologian paralleled in some ways that of the great French Christian thinker. The tone of his preaching became evangelical rather than ethical, stressing not what man could do but what God had done for sinful man.
In 1815 he was called to the Tron Church in Glasgow and in 1819 founded the St. John's Church with a large membership of working people. During his stay in Glasgow, Chalmers energetically pursued both temporal and spiritual improvements, started schools and Sunday Schools, and delivered an immensely popular weekly series of lectures, published in 1817 as Astronomical Discourses.
For "imperative reasons of health," in 1823 Chalmers gave up his pastorate. He became professor of moral philosophy in St. Andrews University, was installed in 1828 as professor of theology in the University of Edinburgh, and for 15 years thereafter trained ministerial students in the evangelical principles he advocated. For seven years he labored with great success to strengthen the finances and further the building program of the Church.
In 1838, before a distinguished audience in London, he eloquently defended the principle of an Established Church; later, however, he felt that the decisions of civil courts in Scotland on the settlement of pastors had become an unbearable usurpation of the rights of the Church and an infraction of the principle of sole authority of Christ over His Church. The controversy came to a head in the Assembly of 1843, when the moderator, Dr. David Welsh, read a protest and left the hall, followed by Dr. Chalmers, more than 400 ministers, and an even larger number of elders. Chalmers thus became founder of the Free Church of Scotland. He was made moderator of the new assembly and principal of the New College created at Edinburgh by the Free Church. He again showed his sympathy for the spiritually destitute by starting a church in the Edinburgh slums.
Thomas' wife Grace Pratt died 16 January 1850 and is buried with him, as is his daughter Grace Pratt Chalmers (1819-1851) and his other two daughters. Chalmers's eldest daughter Anne married William Hanna, who wrote a long biography of his father-in-law. His brother, Charles Chalmers, founded the Merchiston Castle School. Charles' son, David (Thomas' nephew) was a noted industrialist and sole owner of the Cowan & Co Paperworks.