Thomas Chalmers, Scotland’s greatest 19th century churchman; a friend told about the statue on George Street and I decided to investigate his history.
My interests lie in Chalmers’ early years, family life, upbringing and the conditions that created this noble man. This article will provide the context for Chalmers’ success later in his life.
Chalmers believed that a person’s value in the greater world was based in foundation, not wealth, on principle and integrity. He emphasised altruism in social organisations and that was found to be consideration reflected by the society in which he lived, pre-industrial Fifeshire. He despised the counterfeit divisions of individualistic wealth.
The Church of Scotland was arranged on the Presbyterian model, and churchly law was characterised and imposed by an order of Church courts. Two clerkly associations advanced. Each body represented a far-flung understanding of both the Calvinist orthodoxy of the Westminster Confession of Faith and of appropriate ecclesiastical form within the organisation. When he began preaching in 1811, there was a subdued interest in the cautious, wholly religious Northern Fife scene. However, he was an ardent Evangelical preacher and soon his sermons attracted large crowds at Kilmany.
Thomas was born in Anstruther to Elizabeth and John in 1780. From the age of three, he was taught by a blind scholar who was a strict disciplinarian. Later, his uncle, an elderly naval Captain and eminent Burgh leader instructed him in arithmetic, fortunately, they had access to the family library. Soon, it was time to be acquainted with his first phrontistery. At age 11, he and his brother joined St. Andrews University, the most basic and least esteemed for scholarship in Scotland. St. Andrews had been ruined since its term of Medieval significance, when the bishopric, cathedral, and university had been at the heart of Scotland’s theological and developmental life.
Thomas’ father’s company was not flourishing but the household was still moneyed. Of his three older brothers, one enrolled with a financial corporation in Merseyside, while the other two became ship’s officers. John Chalmers (1740-1818) inherited a successful business and a sum of £10,000. However, he wrestled to maintain control, lacking the commercial acuity of his father, and the business gradually declined. His thread and dye trade could not withstand the pressure of competing with the large textile industries in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. Beset with supporting 13 children, in 1804 he closed the thread and dye works and committed his remaining years to a modest retail woollen merchandise store.
Now, when I look to the statue on George Street, I see the man. Thomas Chalmers, leader of the Free Church and know that fertile environment that nurtured his beliefs.