Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/182

130 had commenced anew, and must be encountered over again. The Extension Scheme was his favourite enterprise, in which all his energies for years had been embarked; and could he leave it no w in its hour of need, more especially after such a hopeful commencement? He therefore began an arduous tour for the purpose on the 18th of August, 1839. He commenced with the south-western districts of Scotland, in the course of which he visited and addressed ten presbyteries successively. And, be it observed, too, that this prince of orators had a difficulty in his task to encounter which only an orator can fully appreciate. Hitherto his addresses to public meetings had been carefully studied and composed, so that to extemporaneous haranguing on such occasions he had been an utter stranger. But now that he must move rapidly from place to place, and adapt himself to every kind of meeting, and be ready for every sudden emergency of opposition or cavil, he felt that the aids of the study must be abandoned—that he must be ready on every point, and at every moment—that, in short, all his former habits of oratory must be abandoned, and a new power acquired, and that too, at the age of sixty, when old habits are confirmed, and the mind has lost its flexibility. But even this difficulty he met and surmounted; his ardour in the work beat down every obstacle, and bore him irresistibly onward. "It is true," he said, "that it were better if we lived in times when a calm and sustained argumentation from the press would have carried the influential minds of the community; but, as it is, one must accommodate his doings to the circumstances of the age." After the south-western districts had been visited, he made another tour, in which he visited Dundee, Perth, Stirling, and Dunfermline; and a third, that comprised the towns of Brechin, Montrose, Arbroath, and Aberdeen. A fourth, which he called his great northern tour, led him through a considerable part of the Highlands, where he addressed many meetings, and endeavoured everywhere to stir up the people to a due sense of the importance of religious ordinances. But it is melancholy to find that labours so great ended, upon the whole, in disappointment. At the commencement Dr. Chalmers had confidently expected to raise ₤100,000 for the erection of a hundred new churches, and in this expectation he was fully justified by the success of his previous efforts. But ₤40,000 was the utmost that was realized by all this extraordinary toil and travel. Still, however, much had been done during his seven years of labour in the cause of church extension; for in 1841, when he demitted his office as convener of the committee, 220 churches, at a cost of more than ₤300,000, had been added to the Establishment. He had thus made an extensive trial of Voluntaryism, and obtained full experience of its capabilities and defects, of which the following was his recorded opinion:—"While he rejoices in the experimental confirmation which the history of these few years has afforded him of the resources and the capabilities of the Voluntary system, to which, as hitherto unfostered by the paternal care of Government, the scheme of church extension is indebted for all its progress, it still remains his unshaken conviction of that system notwithstanding, that it should only be resorted to as a supplement, and never but in times when the powers of infidelity and intolerance are linked together in hostile combination against the sacred prerogatives of the church, should it once be thought of as a substitute for a national establishment of Christianity. In days of darkness and disquietude it may open a temporary resource, whether for a virtuous secession or an ejected church to fall back upon; but a far more glorious consummation is, when the State puts forth its hand to sustain but not to