Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/193

Rh enough, was to receive a band of Scottish ministers, and witness the work of constituting a Presbyterian church. The hall, which could contain 3000 sitters, had been crowded from an early hour with those who, in the faith that the ministers would redeem their promises, had come to witness what would follow. This new General Assembly Dr. Welch opened with prayer, even as he had, little more than an hour previous, opened the old; after which, it was his office to propose the moderator who should succeed him. And this he did by naming Dr. Chalmers, amidst a tempest of approving acclamation. "Surely it is a good omen," he added, "or, I should say, a token for good from the Great Disposer of all events, that I can propose to hold this office an individual who, by the efforts of his genius and his virtues, is destined to hold so conspicuous a place in the eyes of all posterity. But this, I feel, is taking but a low view of the subject. His genius has been devoted to the service of his Heavenly Master, and his is the high honour promised to those who, having laboured successfully in their Master's cause, and turned many to righteousness, are to 'shine as the stars for ever and ever. Dr. Chalmers took the chair accordingly; and who can guess the feelings that may have animated him, or the thoughts that may have passed through his mind, at such a moment? He had lived, he had wrought, and this was the result! A man of peace, he had been thrown into ecclesiastical controversy; a humble-minded minister, he had been borne onward to the front of a great national movement, and been recognized as its suggester and leader. And while he had toiled from year to year in doubt and despondency, events had been so strangely overruled, that his aims for the purification of the old Church had ended in the creation of a new. And of that new Church the General Assembly was now met, while he was to preside in it as moderator. That this; too, was really a national Church, and not a mere sectarian offshoot, was attested by the fact of 470 ministers standing before him as its representatives; while the public sympathy in its behalf was also represented by the crowded auditory who looked on, and followed each successive movement with a solicitude far deeper than mere transient excitement. All this was a mighty achievement—a glorious victory, which posterity would be proud to chronicle. But in his opening address he reminded them of the example given by the apostles of our Lord; and by what followed, he showed the current into which his mind had now subsided. "Let us not forget," he said, "in the midst of this rejoicing, the deep humility that pervaded their songs of exultation; the trembling which these holy men mixed with their mirth—trembling arising from a sense of their own weakness; and then courage inspired by the thought of that aid and strength which was to be obtained out of His fulness who formed all their boasting and all their defence. Never in the history of our Church were such feelings and such acknowledgments more called for than now; and in the transition we are making, it becomes us to reflect on such sentiments as these—'Not I, but the grace of God in me;' and, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

Such was the formation and such the commencement of the Free Church of Scotland. And now it might have seemed that Dr. Chalmers should be permitted to retire to that peaceful life of study and meditation in which he so longed that the evening of his day should close. But the formation of the new Church, instead of finishing his labours, was only to open up a new sphere of trial and difficulty that imperiously demanded the uttermost of his exertions, and which only promised to terminate when his own life had ended. To him