Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/161

Rh limits, a third difficulty was to be confronted, that could not so easily be overcome, as it arose from his own parish, of which he had the oversight. That our ministers might be able, like the apostles of old, to give themselves "continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word," our church had wisely appointed not only deacons to take charge of the temporalities of the congregation, but elders to assist the pastor in the visitation of the sick, and all the outdoor duties of his ecclesiastical charge. But while the work of the deaconship had become of late little more than a dead letter, the duties of the eldership had diminished almost entirely to the Sabbath collections in the church porch, and their allocation to the poor of the parish. Most truly, therefore, did a certain minister of Edinburgh, after a charity sermon, announce, in full simplicity of heart, to those who might be disposed to contribute still farther, that in going out, they would find standing at the door "the church plates, and their concomitants the elders." Chalmers felt that this worn-out machinery must be renewed, and restored to its former efficiency; for otherwise, in a parish containing nearly twelve thousand souls, he could be little more than its Sabbath preacher. To this important task he therefore addressed himself, and the result of his labours in the ecclesiastical organization of his parish, which were followed by general imitation, proved how justly he had appreciated the difficulties that beset a city minister, and the most effectual remedies by which they are obviated.

While he was thus contending with this "mortal coil" of secular occupation, and shuffling it off as well as he might, the pulpit preparations of the new minister evinced that it was not his own ease that he sought by this earnest desire of silence and seclusion. For it was not by mere eloquence and originality of style that his weekly sermons not only retained, but increased his reputation and efficiency; on the contrary, their depth of thought and originality of sentiment were more wonderful than their language, powerful and startling though it was. His preaching was in some measure the commencement of a new era in the history of the Scottish Church. To understand this aright, we must keep in mind the two parties into which the Church had been divided, and the solicitude they had manifested for nearly a century, to avoid every meeting except a hostile collision. On the one side was the Evangelical party, with whom the sympathies of the people were enlisted, and on the other the Moderates, who generally speaking, comprised the aristocracy, the philosophists, and the politicians of the community, men who talked of the "march of mind," and the "progress of improvement," and who thought that religion, as well as everything else, should accommodate itself to that progress. With such men the theology of our fathers was distasteful, because it was old-fashioned, and their aim was to dilute it so effectually with modern liberalism as to adapt it to the tastes and exigencies of the day. Hence the cautiousness with which they were wont, in their sermons, to avoid all such topics as election, regeneration, and the atonement, and the decided preference which they showed for those moral duties upon which man can decide and act for himself. In this way, they too often confined their teaching to those virtues on which all creeds are more or less agreed, so that sometimes it would have been difficult to divine, from the tenor of such discourses, whether the speaker was Christian, Pagan, or Infidel. With the evangelical party the case was wholly different. Eager to preach the paramount importance of faith, they were too ready to lose sight of its fruits as exemplified in action; while every mention of human virtue was apt to be condemned as legalism, self-seeking, and reliance on the covenant of