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ON the translation of the Rev. Dr.
M’Gill, Glasgow, to the divinity chair in the University, the Town Council
made overtures to Dr. Chalmers, then minister of Kilmany in Fifeshire, and
in the prime vigour of his early manhood, and already famous for his
powerful eloquence as a preacher. He loved the quiet pastoral beauties of
his rural parish, and dreaded the turmoil, bustle, and exacting duties
that would devolve upon him in the commercial metropolis of the west; but
these fears and scruples were overcome, and he was transferred to his new
and larger field of usefulness, being inducted to his new charge on
Friday, 21st July, 1815, by Rev. Sir Henry Moncrieff, and on the afternoon
of the Sabbath following he preached his first sermon to a crowded
congregation.
Dr. Chalmers, before the removal of
his family to Glasgow, lived in lodgings in the Rottenrow: his first place
of abode with his family was in Charlotte Street, and his subsequent
residence in Kensington Place. He did not take to Glasgow at first.
Writing to a friend eight days after his induction, he says
:— "I
can give you no satisfaction whatever as to my liking or not liking
Glasgow. Were I to judge by my present feelings, I would say I dislike it
most violently; but the present state of my mind is not a fair
criterion—at a distance from my family, and in a land of strangers; and
though beset with polite attentions, feeling that there is positively
nothing in them all to replace those warmer and kindlier enjoyments which
friendship brings along with it. I have got about a hundred calls in the
course of this week, and I foresee a deal of very strange work in the
business of a Glasgow minister. What think you of my putting my name to
two applications for licences to sell spirits, and two certificates of
being qualified to follow out the calling of pedlars, in the course of
yesterday?"
In a subsequent letter to the same
friend, he says :— "This, sir,
is a wonderful place, and I am half-entertained and half-provoked by some
of the peculiarities of its people. The peculiarity which
bears hardest upon me is the incessant demand they have upon all occasions
for the personal attendance of the ministers. They must have four to every
funeral, or they do not think it has been genteelly gone through. They
must have one or more to all the committees of all the societies. They
(the ministers) must fall in at every procession. They must attend
examinations innumerable, and eat of the dinners consequent upon these
examinations. There seems to be a superstitious charm in the very sight of
them, and such is the manifold officiality with which they are covered,
that they must be paraded among all the meetings and all the institutions.
I gave in to all this at first, but I am beginning to keep a suspicious
eye upon these repeated demands ever since. I sat nearly an hour in grave
deliberation with a number of others upon a subject connected with the
property of the Corporation, and that subject was a
gutter, and the
question was whether it should be bought and covered up, or let alone, and
left to be open. I am gradually separating myself from all this trash." |
