1780-1803
Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther, Fifeshire, on the 17th March 1780, when the flowers were appearing on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds was come. It seems never to have been noticed that this was St. Patrick's day, and no one has ever instituted a comparison between the lives of the two illustrious Scotsmen. But if only we had authentic materials for the life of Patrick, whose Scottish birth seems well established, it would probably be found that there was no slight similarity. Transferring his labours to Ireland, Patrick, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ as his instrument, laboured for the double object of bringing individuals within the Kingdom of God, and elevating and purifying the condition of the country. The same double aim was ever present to the mind of Chalmers. On the basis of the Gospel, he could not separate the social from the personal, the general from the particular, the temporal from the spiritual. He had always an Arcadia, a Utopia, a new spring-tide for his country in his vista; but a spring-tide to be realised in one way only--by the coming of the Spirit from on high.
Anstruther was not a stirring town, for through the union with England it had lost no little of the trade, whether legal or contraband, which in former days, along with the other little towns on the Fife seaboard, it had carried on with France and England. But an abundant element of life and activity was supplied within his father's house, where nine brothers and five sisters, among whom Thomas came fifth, must have sufficed to make any household lively. The father was in fairly prosperous business, and provost of the town. He is described as 'dignified and handsome in appearance, highly honourable, courteous, and kind; and of fervent but not ostentatious piety.' The mother was in person short, thick, erect, devoted to her household, sharing her husband's piety, but so self-restrained that a smile was seldom seen on her face. The family was connected with many members of the middle-class, some also of the clergy, and a sprinkling of the landed gentry.
The parish school of Anstruther, to which Chalmers, persecuted by a scolding nurse, went at the age of three, was taught by a master never very efficient, and in Chalmers's time old and nearly blind, who made up for other deficiencies by his great energy in flogging. There was an assistant teacher who was not much more effective in teaching than his principal, but who was as mild as the other was severe. This gentleman, who survived Chalmers, bore a very touching testimony to his kindness. 'No man,' he exclaimed on one occasion, 'knows the amount of kindness which I have received from him. He has often done me good both as respects my soul and my body; many a pithy sentence he uttered when he threw himself in my way; many a pound note has he given me; and he always did the thing as if he were afraid that any person should see him.' Of Chalmers as a schoolboy the testimony is that he was 'one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther school.' Had one chanced to come upon the school-children engaged in their various amusements (says one of his biographers), one should soon have distinguished 'one boy above the rest, seeming about ten or twelve years of age, who is the leader in their sports--strong, active, merry, and boisterous, with big head, matted dark hair, large plain features, broad shoulders, well-proportioned but brawny limbs, his laugh always loudest, and his figure always foremost at football and the other games in which they are contending.'[1]
[1] _Thomas Chalmers: A Biographical Study_. By James Dodds.
The father and mother of Dr. Chalmers, as we have said, were of strong religious character, hearty followers of the Calvinistic theology, and, though too busy to bestow much attention on the education of their family, very desirous that they should all accept their views. Much though Chalmers respected and honoured them, he did not at first fall in with their views of life and duty. He grew up with a positive dislike both of the Calvinistic theology and the evangelical life. It was not till after he had been some years in the ministry that, under the acute pressure of personal illness and family bereavements, he came to see as they did, and to live as they lived. The change to them must have been like the conversion of Augustine to Monica. And yet, in after years, their intercourse was not wholly without friction. It is touching to mark in the son's diary tokens of his humiliation on account of the crossness with which he sometimes spoke to them. Both were deaf, and an aunt who lived with them was deafer still, and it annoyed Thomas, with his naturally impatient temper, to find himself misapprehended, often to have to repeat his remarks, and always to speak in that louder tone which the deaf require. We may be sure that when he felt and confessed thus in secret, he would try to make up for it at other times by double kindness, for of all things that could vex him, to inflict needless pain was about the worst. His respect for them was alike sincere and affectionate; and for his mother's widow hood--lonely, but bright, calm, and holy, he had such a reverence that it became the very pattern of all that he desired most earnestly for his own old age.