Letters to the Rev. Dr. Jones of Edinburgh
No. XXXVII.
Kilmany Manse, 14th November 1812.
MY DEAR SIR, — I owe you much gratitude for your good services, and though not able for much exertion in preaching, I look upon myself as bound to make you a plentiful repayment for your most friendly and seasonable assistance to me. You ascribed my illness to the right cause when you laid it upon the Dundee kirks ;* and this may serve as a lesson against too much exertion, or too many engagements, in all time coming. I shall certainly make up for my deficiencies, in as far as the Destitute Sick Society is concerned,f if God spare me in health and strength for it — though I would certainly prefer the summer-side of the year for any undertaking of that kind. My complaints have left me for the present, and I regret, from the shortness of their duration, that I should have had them at so unseasonable a time.
* See Memoirs, vol. i. p. 304. t See Memoirs, vol i. p. 328.
My prayer to God is, that you may have many seals of your usefulness — that you may be the instrument of reclaiming many from darkness to the marvellous light of the Grospel — and that the seed scattered around you in the course of your ministrations, may fall upon hearts prepared by Divine grace to receive it I wish you the truest of all enjoyments to an evangelical mind, when I wish that you may see the pleasure of the Lord prospering in your hand — sons and daughters turned unto righteousness — and the extensive field, which Providence has assigned to your labours, growing richer every year in the fruits of faith, and charity, and all righteousness.
I owe you much gratitude, not merely for your substantial services, but for your full and friendly communication of them. Your letter gave me great relief; and while I admit only your two first claims upon me for a sermon early, I can assure you that I shall always look upon you as having the first title to my future services. And, ceteris paribus, I shall always, in my journeys to Edinburgh, be decided by the time of your sacrament. I have no immediate prospect, however, of being in the city. — My best compliments to Dr. Fleming, and believe me, my dear Sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. XXXVIII.
Kilmany Manse, 12th February 1813.
MY DEAR SIR, — I should certainly prefer preaching for you at one of your little sacraments; and as to my not being able to assist Dr. Fleming, you have perhaps forgot my former assurance to you, that one engagement during one visit to Edin burgh is all that I can answer for at present. I hope that in time I shall be able to make up for the actual disappointments I have already given you both — but I must be cautious not to lay the foundation of future disappointments; and, be assured, that though greatly and decidedly better, I am still too frail a subject, and live at too great distance from you, to have any regular dependence upon.
I am glad to observe, by a note from Mr. Wright, subjoined to your letter, that he has begun the penny-a-week operation in his parish; and it gives me still greater pleasure to” understand that this mighty instrument has been put into action in Edinburgh, in behalf of the Missionary Society. There is something very animating in the stir that is now abroad; and it is my hope and prayer, that it may speedily redound to the furtherance of the Messiah’s kingdom. But while so much is doing to push forward the limits of the visible church among heathen, let it never be forgotten, that even within these limits there are many, and very many, who still stand without, and let us not relax our efforts in the cultivation of the home territory. It is my delight to observe, that so far from there being any interference in the two concerns, they give life and energy to one another, and that, generally speaking, those Clergy, who are most assiduous in the way of vitally Christian izing their own districts, are ever readiest to give their assistance and their testimony to Missionary enterprises. It is the same with the great body of the people — give them a share and an interest in the cause, and though the object be foreign, I contend that it is accompanied with a home influence, and that the inference is not merely understood but felt among them. If so much is to be done for sending the Bible to others, with what consistency can we neglect it for ourselves, or suffer it to lie beside us unread, unopened, and unattended to?
My best compliments to Dr. Fleming when you see him. o Mr. Tait will be a rare accession to the ministry in Edinburgh. He may be deficient in splendour, but he has a hearty good will to the business, and is, to a great degree, experimentally conversant in the work of close dealing with souls; and a single human being called out of darkness, though he lives in some f>2 CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. CHALMERS.
putrid lane or unheard of obscurity in your great city, is a brighter testimony than all the applauses of all the fashionables. — Yours with much regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. XXXIX.
Kilmany Manse, Ylih January 1814.
MY DEAR SIR, — I arrived here in safety on Wednesday, and am not in the slightest degree fatigued or worse by my excursion. This I attribute, in a great degree, to the very polite system which obtains in Hanover Street. The truth is, that any complaints I have are chiefly dependent upon the stomach; and I have the misfortune to be extensively connected with a set of people who worry you with what they absurdly think kindness, and are so outrageous in pressing you to this one thing and that other thing, that you have neither peace nor liberty in their presence. I have just been telling my wife that I enjoyed a most delicious exemption from all this, and that I was never more happy than in the bosom of your easy and enlightened family.
I looked in upon Mr. Wright of Markinch, on my road homewards, and find him to be as you represented him — altogether a man of our own spirit. It is most refreshing to meet with such, and grievous to think how thinly scattered they are over the surface of our Establishment....
Since seeing you, I have been looking into the last Number of the Moravian Accounts, and am quite delighted with the gentleness, unction, and simplicity which pervade it. This is Monday; and to give you an idea of the deep retirement of my situation, I am only in possession of the news of Tuesday last — a most interesting period. The frost here is the most intense I ever recollect. It will be as severe in France, in spite of its southern situation, as forming part of a great continent — in which case, if the allies do not find good quarters, they will be ill enough off.
My wife joins me in kindest remembrances to yourself, Mrs. and Miss Jones. My best compliments to the young gentlemen. I trust that Mr. Thomas’s cold has left him. — Yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. XL.
Kilmardinny, 3d January 1816-
MY DEAR SIR, — I am here spending a few days, as I do not find the Glasgow frosts to be altogether so congenial to my feelings as the same kind of weather in the country.
I had not got over a single paragraph of your manuscript * without a very warm and pleasurable impression of the friendship which dictated it. I trust I shall never forget the proof it exhibits of a very cordial, open, and generous attachment to myself; and I do feel the very sincerest gratitude for your spirited and able vindication.
I was particularly pleased with your bold assertion as to your own experience of ministers who reprobated as unscriptural a ministerial address to sinners, and who even found fault with yourself for so doing. This put me in mind of the great comfort and direction I derived from your conversation, some years ago, when I was greatly oppressed with anxiety about being more formally orthodox in my sermons. I saw that you were not at all so fettered, and I liked the boldness, and freeness, and urgency with which you entered immediately on every one truth, for which the Bible gives its plain and authoritative warrant. You told me at that time, that as I got older I should get more confident; and I trust that any confidence I have may not be confidence on any other ground than on the ground of Scripture, and on the revelation of Him who bids us call no man master but Himself only.
* A critique on some of the Reviews of Dr. Chalmers’s “Address to the Inhabitants of Kilmany.” — See Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 16, 17, and Appendix A, 491-494.
You have well answered that very strange charge of the reviewer, that a mourning for sin, and .an easiness about particular sins, is a contradiction in terms. A mourning for one particular sin, and a being at ease about that particular sin, is doubtless a contradiction; but it is really in the face of all ex perience to say, that a man may not contract a listless habit of indulgence in certain offences with a general habit of anxiety about himself, on the score of sin and his salvation from it. I think it one of the most frequent and familiar exhibitions of human character.
Will you accept of my gratitude for the whole argument? It is a very complete and impressive one. You have very dexterously alluded to the favourable review of the Observer. It was really wrong to pit me in the way they did against a whole description of clergymen. The review in the Herald is much kinder, and in a better spirit. I got it sent me by Grreville Ewing, with an intimation that he was the author of it. I had a closet conversation, on the subject of the Address, lately, with our friend Dr. Balfour, who dissents from several of its positions; but I have found in him an unquelled kindness of temperament, which no differences, either in opinion or practice, can possibly extinguish. We see wonderfully little of one another, owing to his not walking, and to my not visiting. Dr. Lockhart is more in my way. I do not find the preaching easier yet; and the winter of Glasgow has turned out differently from what I expected. The frost, which I formerly found so bracing, condenses the smoke of our public works, and fills all our streets with a darkness that may be felt; but the goodness of my friends is unbounded; and should I be enabled, through an occasional change of air, to weather this one season, I trust that I shall be enough seasoned and smoke-dried for the same kind of durability with a stock-fish.
My kindest love to Mrs. and Miss Jones, in which Mrs.
Chalmers joins me. We are concerned to hear of poor Mrs. Pitcairn. I am glad to observe that David is picking up his spirits a little. My prayers are for your personal and ministerial comfort. — Believe me to be, my dear Sir, yours with great esteem and regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. XLI.
Glasgow, 26tf* March 18 10.
MY DEAR SIR, — I have seen the Instructor of this month, and recognise in your article all the spirit and ardour of honest conviction, along with the evidence of a friendship to myself, for which I cannot be too grateful. I think it pretty discernible in the reply, that there is the blinking and the evasion of a worse cause. It is ridiculous to deny a prototype to the character of which you assert the reality. They are met with on my daily path in dozens; and I do think it a pity that, in these argumentations, they cannot refrain from the invidiousness of petulant and personal observation. — I remain, my dear Sir, yours, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.