Letters to the Rev. Dr. Charters of Wilton
Rilmany Manse, 18th November 1812.
MY DEAR SIR, — I have been most wanting to the duty and reverence I owe you in not writing sooner. It gives me great concern to hear of Mrs. Charters. I hope that she may recover, and, at all events, it is my prayer that she may be supported in this the day of her visitation, that she may have great peace and joy in believing, and be able to join in the triumphant exclamation of the Apostle — “Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I have been a good deal hurried since marriage. My wife has read your marriage present, (for which accept our best thanks,) but I am ashamed to say that I have not. I have been inquiring for “Henry on Meekness,” but have not found it. Mrs. Chalmers is constitutionally meek, beyond most women of my acquaintance. Constitutional meekness is amiable, and companionable, and pleasing, but I would not say of it, that it was virtuous, till it rested on a religious principle. My article on Christianity is now printing, I believe. I was not able to take it in person to Edinburgh from being confined with rheumatism. I am now well again.
I have received your pamphlets, and have given some of them away. I shall be most happy to see those on Justice and Old Age. It would delight me to pay you another visit soon, but I cannot risk the exposure of winter, and my travelling next summer will depend on a number of circumstances.
I am sure you would be charmed with the eighth Report. Our County Society is doing nothing, and, what is worst of all, it has suspended the far more efficient operation of districts and parishes. My parish has been operating at the rate of £30 a year and upwards. There is another forming at Balmerino, a contiguous parish. This system carried over the face of the county of Fife would produce ^3000 a year, instead of the paltry £150, which, I understand, is all that they have been able to realize on the more extended scale of a County Society. Would it not be a fine spectacle to see the parish system ex tended over Scotland, and a whole people combining their energies in a cause, the very supporting of which is an exercise of piety.
My prayer to God is, that He may bear up your old age with His best consolations, that He may bless you in the evening of life, and, when He calls you hence, that He may take you to Himself, and make you for ever happy in His presence.
Mrs. Chalmers joins me in compliments, and believe me yours, with great esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCXXI.
Glasfjoio, 2Qth December 1816.
MY DEAR SIR, — I at one time thought I should have been able to visit you in the month of November, but I find the engagements of my new situation often to thicken upon me in such a way as to disappoint all my wishes and to disarrange all my plans. It would be a great pleasure to myself to spend some days in your neighbourhood, but at present I really cannot specify any future week in which I am sure that it would be altogether convenient.
My health has improved greatly within these few months, partly, I believe, from having betaken myself to horsemanship, and partly from my having shaken away from me that load of secular duties which, in shape of attendance on the various institutions of the place, and of ministering in things temporal to the need of a crowded population, frittered away all the time, and vulgarized all the habits, and put to flight all the literature and all the spirituality of our clergymen. This is what I wrote to you about formerly; and be assured, my dear Sir, that all my fears, before I entered Glasgow, upon this subject, were fully realized by the facts which met my observation. And I have no doubt that the evident depression which has taken place in the theology and general science of our city ministers is, in a great measure, referable to the vicious system of associating them with so much of the public management of city and Government affairs.
Be kind enough to remember me to Miss Hardy and to Mr. and Mrs. Usher.
I have no intention at present of publishing my last charity sermon in Edinburgh. I am just now in the press with a thin octavo volume, comprising a series of discourses on the infidel argument of astronomers against the truth of Christianity. Fuller, in “The Gospel its own Witness,” gives a chapter to this discussion. I enter more at large into it, and shall send you a copy when it comes out, which I expect to be in the end of January.
Mr. Smith, a principal bookseller here, told me some time ago that he had sold more of your sermons and of Blair’s, than of any other author’s.
I pray God to bless and sustain the evening of your days, and that whether we meet on this side of the grave, we may be found without spot and blameless on the day of the coming of our Lord. — I am, my dear Sir, yours most truly, No. CCXXII.
Kirlcaldy, 14th September 1820.
MY DEAR SIR, — I can assure you that it is often matter of regret, if not of self-reproach to me, that I have not returned your kind visit, and gratified my own feelings by renewing my old intimacies with a neighbourhood to which I feel very strongly attached. It is all due, I can assure you, to the force of circumstances; and were it not for the claims of relationship in Fife, I am quite sure that Roxburghshire would be the quarter of a very early excursion. I am fearful of promising, but I cannot think of despairing of seeing you once more on this side of time.
My feeble essays to do good can scarcely yet bear to be mentioned. I have certainly been amply supported in them by the aid of a number of well-principled men in Glasgow, and I am more persuaded than ever that it is only through a vigorous and well-conducted ecclesiastical agency that any decisive influence can be brought to bear, on our vicious and rapidly deteriorating population.
It is my earnest prayer that you may inherit the blessing promised to those who maintain a patient continuance in well doing. I have looked lately into Cotton Mather’s “Essays to do Good,” and thought of you all the while. I only learned so much as the existence of this great American philanthropist a few weeks ago. That, by the way, is one of the miseries of our great town, — I have no time for reading, and have suffered the whole literature of the country to get beiSre me. Give my kindest compliments to Miss Hardy when you see her. I ascended the Terrace very lately, in the hopes of meeting with my old friend there, and learning of you; but I found a new name upon the door. I beg to be remembered to Mr. and Mrs. Usher of Courthill. May God bless and sustain you. — I beg you to believe me, my dear Sir, yours very affectionately,