Letters to Mrs. Coutts

[Mrs. Coutts was daughter of the Rev. Dr. M’Culloch of Dairsie, and widow of the Rev. Robert Coutts of Brechin. After her husband’s death, she resided with her father, whose parish was situated a few miles from Kilmany. Dr. Chalmers’s removal from that neighbourhood suspended an intercourse, afterwards resumed at Edinburgh, to which place Mrs. Coutts removed after her father’s decease. Her singular vivacity of temper and intellect especially endeared her to Dr. Chalmers; and it was at her house that his last visit was paid on the day preceding his death. See Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 513

No. XLII.

Kilmany Manse, 24th October 1811.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — My sister Jane left this for Anster about three weeks ago. She regretted the necessity which

F took her away before making you a visit, from which she promised herself much enjoyment. I follow her about the middle of next month, and, though I will not promise, I have the firm purpose of seeing Dr. M’Culloch at Dairsie before taking my departure. I would be very glad to understand that Mrs. M’Culloch’s health admitted of my spending a day with him. I shall bring “Hannah More” with me if I do come, and nothing but the want of a right opportunity has prevented me from sending it. I have also to return “Henry’s Life,” from the perusal of which I have derived great pleasure. The pigmies of the present age, when they think of his zeal and his prodigious industry in the good way, may well feel humbled at the comparison. Have you read Foster’s “Essays?” They are written in a strain of very profound and original sentiment. The only essay professedly religious is, “On the aversion of Men of taste to Evangelical Religion,” — a most masterly performance, in which he stands forth the sturdy champion of all that is peculiar in the doctrines of the New Testament, but pleads the importance of delivering them in a phraseology and style of expression more congenial to the literary habits of the age. He, of course, does not surrender a single fraction of the sentiment, and even annexes the most pointed reprobation to the mind that can suffer itself to be seduced by the associations of taste from the truth as it is in Jesus. Yet on the principle of being all things to all men that we may gain some, it is right that the fishers of men should accommodate their bait to the prize which they are attempting to secure. He exposes the antichristian tendency of those sentiments which issue every day from the schools of polite literature. And on the principle that Christianity should be made to extend her triumphs in every quarter, he is for arraying her in the same academic elegance of style that has hitherto been too exclusively appropriated to subjects of general literature. You will of course perceive that it would be wrong in a country clergyman to be so far seduced by the splendour of this elegant speculation as to refine himself from the humble and untutored people among whom Providence has appointed him to labour. I may add, (and it is a sentiment in which Foster most cordially acquiesces,) that in every mind seasoned with that taste which is from heaven, the native weight and importance of Scripture truth will be always seen to carry it over all the repulsions of a homely or obsolete style of expression. — With best compliments to all at Dairsie, I am, yours with much esteem, No. XLIII.

Kilmany Manse, ISth December 1814.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — I, some days ago, sent my concurrence in the Glasgow appointment, finally decided thereto by a long letter from Dr. Balfour, in which, among many other things, he says that the consequences of my refusal would be dreadful.

I am most desirous to remain here till September, and it is in the power of the Presbytery at Glasgow to grant me that accommodation. May I request you to join your influence with Dr. Balfour to my request for that object, that he may enable me to stem that rapacious spirit of impatience and monopoly which looketh only to its own things, and not to the things of others, and conceiveth that everything here must be given up for the devouring and clamorous demands of the people of Glasgow.

I am not insensible to the violent separation from a people whom I love, and if I never had the lesson of sitting loose to the world brought home to my feelings, I feel the greatness and necessity of the duty now.

I have been thinking a good deal of the part which people might take, separately from their minister, in the great business of promoting the growth and preservation of religion in the neighbourhood. And I have much to talk with you about those fellowship meetings, Sec., which private Christians may form, and so obtain an interest in the unfailing promise of Christ, that where two or three are met together in His name, there He will be in the midst of them.

My prayer is, that you may be long preserved a blessing to this neighbourhood, and be enabled to exercise among your acquaintances that most precious of all wisdom, the wisdom of winning souls....

0 that God would put it into the hearts of the people to be in earnest about His favour! that the natural tenderness that they now feel may turn into a deep and serious concern about the things of eternity, and that a spirit of united prayer poured upon them for the object they profess to have so much at heart, may be the blessed means of securing to them a pastor according to God’s own heart, who will feed them with know ledge and understanding.

May I request your prayers for the last object in behalf of my much loved and much regretted parish. — Accept the assurance of my warmest and most affectionate regards, and believe me to be, my dear Madam, yours very sincerely, No. XLIV.

Kilmany Manse, 27th January 1815.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — I send you Alleine’s “Alarm,” of which I was happy to find that I had a copy additional to the one I have recently parted with. You may take your own time to it, and it is my prayer that it may be the instrument of a blessed and enduring change upon those whose good you / have immediately in view by it. I am afraid there is a diseased touchiness upon the subject of good works, and an unscriptural alarm about the danger of pressing the plain and obvious work of repentance on sinners at the very outset of their seeking after God. Let me take for an example the case of a young female inquirer addicted to the obviously wrong thing of carrying it with petulance and disrespect to her parents. I do not think it possible that I can at too early a stage press upon her the obligation of the Fifth Commandment. To the question, What shall I do? I would give Paul’s answer to the jailor; but is there anything in his answer so fitted to engross the mind and monopolize the whole of its attention, as to leave no room for the answer of John to similar questions in the third chapter of Luke? Give up this wrong thing, cease your petulance to your father or mother. Their doing so may induce in it the risk of their resting in a performance of their own, and so turning their attention from Christ as their alone resting-place. But the scriptural way of protecting them from their danger is not to remit the practical urgency with which you exhort them to cast off their transgression, for this would be in opposition to scriptural example; but, along with the practical urgency, to give them the infonnation which the Bible gives respecting the ground of acceptance — faith in the Saviour, the necessity of the new birth, the alienated state of the heart by nature from God, which may consist with many acts of outward reformation; and the only way in which this alienation can be overcome, even by a sense of God’s love shed abroad in it by the Holy Ghost. In the meantime, their giving up what is plainly wrong is a proof of earnestness. It is a putting of themselves into the attitude of seekers. Nay, what is more, it may be the expression of faith in its infancy — the beginning of the good way; the day of small things; the smoking of the flax; the first evidence of a regard to the Saviour, and such an evidence as He may reward with His promised manifestations. (John

70 CORRESPONDENCE OF Dll. CHALMERS.

xiv. 21.) All tins may be going on without subjecting our selves to the necessity of waiting till a certain progress be made ere we preach Christ in all His fulness and in all His freeness. Both may be brought forward from the very outset. The effect of the one is to throw the learner into the attitude of service; the effect of the other is to throw him into the attitude of faith or dependence, or perhaps, most frequently, of dim and confused expectation of some great privileges which as yet he sees not in all their extent and in all their preciousness. Now, this compound attitude of service on the one hand, and expectation on the other, is what I think I see clearly exemplified in the New Testament, as by the disciples of John the Baptist, Nathaniel, Zaccheus, Cornelius, Anna, and the twelve tribes. (Acts xxvi. 7.) There has been a sad deal of puzzling with these examples by the orthodox, who, instead of quietly submitting to them, have laboured to dispose of them. This I conceive to be wrong; and on the other hand, these moderes are still more so who shelter themselves under these examples in their opinion about the sufficiency of works. Whereas in every one of them there was no resting in present services whatever, but a carrying forward to Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

Do forgive this presumption in one who is so far behind you in the school of Christ, and who feels himself at the mere threshold of the subject. — Believe me to be, my dear Madam, yours with great regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. XLV.

Glasgow.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — I have many apologies to owe you for delaying my answer so long to your most interesting letter. It came to me at a time when I was highly excitable, and touched upon the most excitable topics; and be assured that the gratifying intelligence it contained of something like a good impression on the minds of my much loved and much regretted people, was not less calculated to move me to the tenderness of tears, than all the painfulness of a removal which in actual feeling was greatly more severe than anything I ever anticipated. I could not but feel how pure and how soothing is the affection of Christians when I read your kind and interesting epistle; and surely if in this dead and darkened world it is found that the sympathy of our common Lord can draw so powerfully and unite so closely, what must be the transports of cordiality which await us in the great family of heaven, when that Lord who is now the object of faith so dull and so languid, and so oppressed with the burden of sin and of sense, as I feel it to be, shall become the object of beatific vision, and all hearts shall join in one unceasing song to Him who sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb for ever and ever?

I thank you for your kind notice of Alexander Paterson. Will you deliver to him my assurance of the deep interest I take in his progress and stability as a Christian? Tell him from me that he must look to the things of others as well as to his own things, and that, by mixing discretion with zeal, I trust that he may do much through the private channels of his acquaintance. Both you and he will be interested to know that two of my inquiring communicants at present have assigned the reading of Alleine’s “Alarm” as the first cause of their earnestness in the matter of salvation; and I trust that this will encourage him to persevere in a method which he found to be successful on a former occasion, of directing the attention of others to such books as, by the influence of the all-essential Spirit, may set a-going in the souls of others such a good work of seeking as may find its accomplishment in their finding those things which belong to their peace.

Speaking of my communicants, do you know I have been much interested in the young who have come forward? They are twenty-three in number, and upon the whole I am much satisfied. In the country, the principle of accommodation to custom is much stronger than in the town, and accordingly I have found more of genuine conviction, and more of real and inquiring earnestness, at present, than I ever recollect on any similar occasion. But how liable to delusion we all are upon this subject! It is by their fruits only that we can know them; and I think that in my attendance on the unhappy men now under sentence of death, one of the most heartless circumstances in the matter is the total uncertainty we are under of the actual state of their hearts. One of them is a Roman Catholic, and I was much struck at the outset with his fluency and doctrinal knowledge, and, above all, his intrepid composure in the dreary prospect before him. I thought at the same time that there was a want of softness and contrition in his tone, different from what I would have expected of one who felt his own demerits and obligations to a Saviour; and now I am strongly inclined to suspect that his priest has been ministering a peace to him which I fear is no peace. He is to suffer to-morrow, and I, this night, got a message from him, through the medium of his own clergyman, that he wishes to be attended by him exclusivehr.

We have great reason to be thankful that we have got comfortable lodgings, and all enjoy an average share of health. My dear wife is taking well with her new situation, and Anne is making rapid progress. Miss Pratt and my brother Charles are also with us. I limit myself to a given number of visits, and have had a pretty severe contest to maintain with my friends upon the subject. We dined last week at Mrs. Dinwiddie’s with Dr. Balfour’s people: her kindness is unbounded. There is one circumstance I cannot but admire in Dr. Balfour. I have found it necessary to take iry own way in several things which went contrary to his wish and to his opinion, and I am sure that my conduct in reference to him has been such as would have impressed an ordinary man with the idea of my being a captious, cross-grained, and truly cappernouted personage. Yet there is a Christian kindness about him which survives all this — which remains un quelled in the midst of all annoyance, and which has compelled such a reverence for him on my part, as I trust will last during all the remainder of our earthly pilgrimage....

0 write us soon, for a letter from you is indeed a very great refreshment. Tell me of any good you know to be doing in your neighbourhood. I will not say much of the state of things here till I know more about it. I have heard some sermons from others since I came here. Dr. Balfour I think the most useful and impressive of them all. Mr. Love preaches in a line which to me is highly interesting. It must be unacceptable to the Independents, those men of simple assent, who .make it so very simple that it appears to me to take in only one truth, when in fact the Bible takes in many, and furthermore tells us that lie is instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven who lays up in the treasure of his understanding things new and old. It is true in the most absolute and unconditional sense of the word, that by faith we are saved; but it is a faith in the whole of God’s testimony, and if you give me this, you give me a Christian who feels as much peace as the doctrine of Christ’s sufficiency warrants him to do, and aspires after as much repentance as the teaching of Christ lays upon him, and prays for as much aid from the Spirit as Christ is commissioned to bestow, and aims at all that variety of grace and accomplishments which the Law and the example of Christ oblige him to. There is a way of dividing Christ so as to make some part of it stand on the foreground, and some in the distant and almost unperceived background of our contemplation; but

I fear that many a zealot of orthodoxy will have been found in this way to have in fact rejected Scripture by rejecting the profit which all Scripture is fitted to confer upon the entire believer. — Yours very affectionately, No. XLYI.

Glasgow, 28th February.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — Your most refreshing letter I got a few days ago, and what I shall first reply to is your inquiry after my health, which I can assure you never was better than I now feel it to be. I take my own way as to invitations and parties, and when I do go from home, it is generally to some mercantile villa in the neighbourhood, where I spend a few days and am let alone, and am suffered to eat and study and take exercise just as pleases me. I am surrounded with kindness, and the only thing I regret is, that I am sure the aspect of determination by which I hold out against its numerous and ever-plying proposals, must carry in it the expression of gruffness to the natives of this dinner-giving city. There is no help for it however; and I please myself with thinking that, under God, I am indebted to all this regularity for the degree of strength arid freedom from all that is physically unpleasant which I now so happily enjoy....

The weather has got fine and agreeable, and couia we only realize more of the presence of God in our souls; could we carry about with us a more affecting sense of eternity; could we live in a more simple reliance on the promises of Christ, and glory more in His cross, and, renouncing every dependence, admit the record of God about His Son as the exclusive and unmingied ground of all our securities and all our hopes; could, I say, our spiritual interests be in a state of prosperity, we, in every other respect as to health, and circumstances, and kind friends, and agreeable family tempers and affections amongst us, have great reason to bless God the giver of all comfort, and the God of all consolation....

I have very much of what I could call a picturesque memory — that is, I retain a vivid impression of all the visible scenery which is spread around a much loved and much regretted neighbourhood. I have at this moment a panorama of Dairsie before the eye of my fancy: and the Manse, and Osnaburgh, and the front of your father’s house, and Craigfoodie, with the whole mountainous line which demies your northern boundary, pass in bright succession before me. I should not have mentioned this, but to assure you that as the places have taken a rivetted hold on my memory, so the persons have taken an equally firm and obstinate hold of my affections. I bear on my heart a great degree of tenderness for you all. I think I see a strong mark of nature now in the names that crowd so many of Paul’s Epistles. His affection for the people drew him out to name them, and he had a pleasure in so doing. I feel the same pleasure in desiring you to remember me to Dr. M’Culloch and Miss Collier,* whom I love in the Lord; Misses M’Culloch, Nancy, and llobiua; Mr. Swan, whose spiritual progress I rejoice in; and last, though not least, Alexander Paterson. Do you know if he received a letter I sent him some weeks ago? I should have written Miss Collier and Mr. Swan before this, but they shall come next in turn. Will you tell Miss Collier that I met her brother once, and only once, since I came to Glasgow? I have had a good deal of debate with the ladies about their female societies of late, and they have turned a good deal quieter upon my hand. My business is also simplifying, as I refuse every work that is not strictly ministerial. The load is enough to crush the shoulders of twenty clergymen; but I think it is their own fault to submit to it. May God

* Who frequently resided at Dairsie, with tier friend Mrs. Coutts.

prosper your soul. Do let me have a letter soon from your quarter. Mrs. Chalmers joins in compliments. — I am, my dear Mrs. Coutts, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. XLVII.

Burntisland, ISth December 1817.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — I received yours while at Anster. One of the ingredients in the mortification I felt at the very unexpected recall I got at Kilmany* was, that it completely put an end to my hope of seeing your much loved neighbourhood during this excursion. I left Anster last week with the purpose of preaching at Dunfermline, but have been arrested in my progress by a cold which has hung about me for some weeks, but which I am hopeful is now getting away.

I never do leave Glasgow without returning to it with a new experimental lesson on the positive hazard and criminality of involving myself in too many preaching engagements, and I very much fear that, unless an invariable rule be laid down and acted up to, the urgency of people who, in the shape of kind friends, and zealous lovers of that which is good, and most confident advisers of that which it is duty for me to attempt, will at length compel me to retire, either by death or by resignation, from the work of preaching altogether.

Your letter refreshed me greatly; and I never do get a favour of that kind, either from you or from Miss Collier, with out the feeling that it is altogether suited to me. For in truth, my dear Madam, I feel that I have got no farther than to the threshold of those great topics which constitute the life and the aliment of a believer. I long to realize the joys and the exercises and the habits of experimental religion, to love Christ as fervently as good Samuel Rutherford — whose letters I am now reading — seems to have done, to have more devotedness, and more * See Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 137.

spirituality, and more of the real feeling and desire of one who is crucified to the world, and alive only unto God. But all this I am most wo fully short of. It comes to me all in word and not in power; and little do you know what a barren and in every way heartless subject you have to deal with. But the error lies in thinking that I can work my own way to my own enlargement; in not practically clinging to Christ as my alone sufficiency; in not simply leaning upon the promises which are yea and amen, and praying in faith to Him from whom every good and perfect gift cometh. I entreat your prayers, and those of your respected father and Miss Collier. I wish you had told me more particularly about her. The wheeling variety of my present situation may diminish my intercourse with my old acquaintances, but sure I am that it has not abated the regard I feel for the Christian society of your neighbourhood. Will you give my kindest remembrances to your father, Misses Collier, Coutts, and M’Culloch? Tell Alexander Paterson how much I regretted the shortness of my interview with him, and what a pleasant thing it would have been to me to have gone over to Dairsie from Kilmany with him on the Sunday evening that I preached there. — Believe me to be, my dear Mrs. Coutts, yours most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. XLVIII.

Trackboat, 26th September 1818.

MY DEAR MADAM, — I am thus far on my way to Glasgow — looking behind me with most affectionate regret, and before me with a desolate feeling of coldness and apprehension. God has not been pleased to turn my taste and my liking towards my present situation. I am sure I do the people of Glasgow great injustice; but I have never yet had any homeward associations with that town. Still there is in it a great quantity of Christian worth; and it is, in truth, a most unseemly exhibition, that I should receive so much in the way of affection, and render so little back again. But it is the glare, and the publicity, and the continual controversy, and the jarring of human faction, and the total want of that kind and familiar intimacy which gave such a charm to all my intercourse with Dairsie and Kilmany, that have withered up the scene of my present duties, and spread something like the aspect of wilderness over the whole extent of it. I have great need of your prayers that I may be more submissive to the will of God — that I may give myself entirely over into His hands, that I may be enabled to do His work, and look not anywhere on this side of time for my pleasant resting-place. Oh, that I could find a readier access to the conscience — that I could manifest the truth more powerfully and more permanently — that I could keep by the simplicity that is in Christ, and beware of making His cross of none effect by the words of man’s wisdom!

I think more favourably of Fife, in the Christian sense of the word, than I did on any former excursion. There is more seeking than I ever observed before; but such is the delusion of the human heart, that one may find rest in the consciousness of being a seeker. One may please himself with his earnestness, and, going no farther, may cease to be earnest any longer. One may receive an impulse, and yet stop short of salvation. One may, in fact, be establishing a righteousness of his own, when, like Paul, it should be his supreme desire to win Christ, and to be found in Him, and so submit himself unto the righteousness of God. — Believe me, my dear Mrs. Coutts, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. XLIX.

January 1817.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — I received your kind letter some time ago, and never receive any letter from you without recognising the style and character of one of the great spiritual family. It is a family composed, I believe, of the professing of many different creeds, and the members of many different denominations; and yet the difference cannot be such as to impair that oneness which the Great Head of the Church ascribes to all his followers. But I have seen so many examples of late of satisfying evidence, that the root of the matter might be in the mind of a Presbyterian, and an Independent, and a Baptist, and an Episcopalian, and an Arminian Methodist, and even a Roman Catholic, as disposes me very much to withdraw my attention from the distinctions of man, and fix it on the message of God, as it comes to us in its direct and original form in the book of His own counsel. There is danger of resting in the face of such grounds, of being satisfied with names without ideas, of the kingdom of God coming to us in language only, and not in power, of holding converse with an argumentative theologian, while an utter stranger to converse with the Author and the Finisher of Faith. And, therefore, it is that, when satiated and bewildered among human illustrations of the truth, I think it a good escape for the mind to look to the truth as it is in the Bible — to sit down to it just as I was reading it for the first time, with the conscious ignorance and docility of a child — to stir myself there, that I may lay hold of God, and lay hold of Christ, just as God has set Him forth to me.

I have been greatly refreshed by a visit from a truly spiritual man, Mr. Erskine of Linlathen. His whole soul is in Christianity — resting all his hope on the basis of Christ’s death — and dissolved in tenderness and admiration at the blended love and holiness of God as manifested in that transaction. I know nothing that more realizes Christ to us than when we read Him in one of His own living epistles, than when we see His workmanship before us in the heart and habits of a fellow Christian.

Mrs. Chalmers was complaining, and so seriously, some weeks ago, that I was much alarmed for her. Appearances, however, are again more favourable, and I desire, from this lesson, to learn the precariousness of all earthly blessings — to build my foundation somewhere else than in this vale of suifering and of change — to cast it deep on the faith of the Gospel, that I may have the Giver of eternal life for my friend, and eternal life itself for my inheritance.

I saw lately the observation, that justification was only the means to an end — that the great and ultimate object of Christ’s undertaking was to redeem us from all iniquity, and purify us unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Is there no danger of an inquirer being satisfied with justification as the object in which he terminates? It certainly is not the object in which Christ terminates, nor will the accomplishment of it be enough to make out that travail of His soul upon us by which He is satisfied. Let us, therefore, while we lodge all our security for acceptance on His propitiation, go zealously on in co-operation with Him, as the Lord our strength and our purifier — that He may be magnified in our bodies — and that, by growing in holiness, we may be fit for the only happiness which Heaven has to offer. — I remain, my dear Madam, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. L.

Glasgow, 8th February 1822.

MY DEAR MADAM, — It grieves me to have deferred writing you so long. I had a very heavy arrear of correspondence upon me, which I have not yet liquidated wholly. I sympathize most deeply with you all in the result of your application to Lord Elgin.* I am not at all clear that it is right to urge his Lordship in the face of a private engagement. I see nothing * An application to Lord Elgin, as Patron, relative to a ministerial appointment.

for it but quietly to wait that counsel of the Lord, which alone shall stand, after all human desires have been tried and found ineffectual. There is one very open and distinct line of duty for all who feel concerned in the religious prosperity of your most interesting parish, and that is, to multiply as much as in you lies the lay securities for the growth and transmission of a Christian spirit among the families. In this view I hold all your schools to be of capital importance, and I would not have you to underrate the capabilities even of the humblest labourers in the cause. I should not be surprised if Alexander Paterson, in his day and generation, shall be found to have turned more unto righteousness than many of the most esteemed and evangelical clergy of our Church.* At the same time it is of prime importance to a parish that there be in it a sound, and scriptural, and, withal, an exemplary clergyman. I am delighted with your account of Mr. Simpson, and also with the testimony that Alexander Paterson has borne of Mr. Cook in Kilmany.

I have been reading Thomas a, Kempis lately, on the “Imitation of Jesus Christ,” — a very impressive performance. Some would say of it, that it was not enough evangelical. He certainly does not often affirm, in a direct and ostensible manner, the righteousness that is by faith. But he proceeds on this doctrine, and many an incidental recognition does he bestow upon it; and I am not sure but that this implies a stronger and more habitual settlement of mind respecting it, than when it is thrust forward and repeated, and re-repeated, with a kind of ultra-orthodoxy, as if anxious to vindicate one’s soundness, and to acquit oneself of a kind of exacted homage to the form of sound words. I think it of mighty importance to lay down the extent of the required sanctification, and strenuously to

* See a very interesting Memoir of Alexander Paterson, entitled “The Missionary of Kilmany, by the Rev. John Dai;lie” Edinburgh, 1853.

urge it. I have been thinking of the Saviour’s expostulation with Nicodemus in this view — “If thou believest not when I tell you of earthly things, how can ye believe when I tell you of heavenly things 1” If we believe not in the change that must take place upon the earthly subject, even man, ere he can be admitted to the Kingdom, we may feign, but we do not really put any belief in the change, from wrath to complacency, that has taken place in the mind of the Heavenly Lawgiver towards those who flee for refuge to the great propitiation. The earthly thing which Christ had spoken of was regeneration; the heavenly thing which He proceeded to speak of was the atonement. If we believe not the one, we have no real belief of the other.

But nothing can be more precious than Romaine. His three treatises on “Faith” are all overrun with the flavour of the very essence of the Gospel.

I have no news. A perpetual bustle, and, at the same time, a stir and an activity in Christian things, which I regard as hopeful in this place. May God bless you and yours. I always rejoice in a letter from Dairsie. I offer my most affectionate regards to the venerable Doctor, Miss Collier, Miss Coutts, Miss Nancy, Mr. Simpson, and last, though not least, Alexander Paterson. Mrs. Chalmers joins me in best compliments. — I am, my dear Madam, yours very affectionately, No. LT.

St. Andrews, 23d April 1827.

MY DEAR MADAM, — I had very great pleasure in the receipt and perusal of your much esteemed letter. But why, my dear Mrs. Coutts, do you talk of intruding upon me? Our intercourse has of late been rare, and our correspondence far less frequent than it ought to have been. But I never can forget the Christian kindness and encouragement which I enjoyed under the roof of your excellent father, and all the friendly converse that I have had both with yourself and Miss Collier. Dairsie is one of the most memorable portions in my retrospect of the past; and all the feelings which I had then are undiminished by change of scene or distance of time.

My mother’s was indeed a most triumphant death. Her peace and joy were altogether in believing. Her Christianity was objective, and that of one who looked outwards. She read Owen’s “Spiritual-Mindedness” some months ago; but she remarked that when she looked only to herself, she found that all was corruption, but that all her trust was in the Saviour. She expressed an abundance of peace which flowed through her heart like a mighty river.

Mrs. Chalmers and our children are well. Do give my kindest regards to Miss Collier and Mr. Simpson, in which Mrs. Chalmers joins. — Believe me, my dear Madam, yours most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. LIT.

Collmwell, Inj B urnt island, 2d April 1834.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — Miss Young is just leaving us; but I cannot let her go without assuring you both of the gratification and the gratitude which I felt in consequence of your kind and liberal offer of Thursday last. It is true that the means for my first enterprise are already provided;* but, should I succeed, I have still a second in reserve — respecting which I may, in the course of months, communicate with my friends, and you among the number — my only anxiety being that you do not make an inconvenient sacrifice.

I observe, that in spite of my explanatory letter, there is * See Memoirs, vol. iii. pp. 445, 446.

still great misrepresentation of our objects. It is a marvellous time; and though I feel it my duty to labour while it is day, yet I cannot help the presentiment of a dark midway passage that must be described ere the world shall emerge into the peace and righteousness of its latter-day glory.

Meanwhile, I cannot describe how inexpressibly soothing it is to be sustained by the countenance and affection of one’s oldest and best-tried Christian friends. You have had much to exercise you; and it is my earnest prayer, that in the light of God’s reconciled countenance, ever growing into brighter and more cheering manifestations, you may increase day by day in that peace and joy which passeth all understanding. — Ever, believe me, my dear Mrs. Coutts, your most attached and grateful friend, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. LIIL

Penicuik, 12th July 1834.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — May God grant the fulfilment of your wishes in regard to the effect of my own solitude upon my j heart and principles. It gives me a fresh view of my native ungodliness, that even in this deep retreat I cleave so much to the things of sense and of time. I am never better than when I take a simple and objective view of the great propitiation, and look on the sunshine of God’s reconciled countenance to be an element I am as free to rejoice in as I am to breathe the air that is around me, or to open my eyes on the light of Nature.

I beg you will excuse the brevity of this letter — a poor return for your deeply interesting communication. But the truth is, I am ordered to work as little as possible. The most prominent of my symptoms is an almost perpetual noise in my head, which is aggravated always by exertion.* * See Memoirs, vol. iii. pp. 433-444.

Give me a place and an interest in your prayers. — Ever believe me, my dear Mrs. Coutts, yours very affectionately, No. LIY.

Bumtisland, 9</t July 1841.

MY VERY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — Be assured that I feel very calm and confident on the Church question — not on the ground of the Parliamentary Returns, or in the assured prospect of any thing being done in our favour by the present or any future Government, but on the ground that our way of duty is clear, and that if our ways please God, He will make our enemies to be at peace with us.

Should the Establishment be broken up, I think, that if true to our principles, there is a very great field of usefulness before us; and that we need be at no loss for turning ourselves to such openings for the Christian good of the people, as will amply compensate for all the hardships to which we might in consequence be exposed. — Ever believe me, my dear Mrs. Coutts, yours with the greatest esteem and regard, No. LV.

Morningside, 13th December 1842.

MY DEAR MRS. COUTTS, — It gives me great pain to decline your application for myself, though I shall transmit your request to Mr. Hanna; and it will afford me great pleasure if he can comply with it.

I never do preach but with a serious invasion on my press of study, and so a very hurtful encroachment on an object to which I should like, if I were permitted it, to devote all my strength for the remainder of my days, and that is, the completion of my theological lectures for the benefit of my students, and as an offering to the cause of theological education. The troubles of the Church, and my implication therewith, have deprived me of years of preparation; and one of the cruellest effects of any public appearance I make is, that it is followed up by a host of applications — some of them from my best and dearest friends, which I feel it most difficult, but, withal, most necessary and incumbent upon me to reject. This distresses, but it must not influence me. I may not be able to justify these refusals to others; but the constant feeling of exhaustion, wherewith I am at all times haunted and well-nigh overborne, forms to my own mind and conscience a sufficient exoneration. — I ever am, my dear Mrs. Coutts, yours very truly,