CHALMERS, THOMAS (178o-1847), Scottish divine, was born at Anstruther, Fifeshire, on March 17, 1780. In 1799 he was licensed by the St. Andrews presbytery. After further study at Edinburgh he became assistant to the professor of mathematics at St. Andrews, and was ordained as minister of Kilmany, Fife shire. In 1808 he published an Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources, a contribution to the discussion created by Bonaparte's commercial policy. His article on "Chris tianity" in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia enhanced his reputation as an author. In 1815 he became minister of the Tron church, Glasgow, and his repute as a preacher spread throughout the United Kingdom. A series of sermons on the relation between discoveries of astronomy and the Christian revelation was pub lished in Jan. 1817, and within a year nine editions and 20,000 copies were in circulation. When he visited London Wilberforce wrote, "all the world is wild about Dr. Chalmers." In Sept. 1819 he became minister of the church and parish of St. John where he was singularly successful in dealing with the problem of poverty. When he undertook the management of the parish its poor cost the city £ 1,400 per annum, and in four years, the expenditure was reduced to £280 per annum. In 1823, after eight years of work at high pressure he was glad to accept the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, the seventh academic offer made to him during the eight years spent in Glasgow. In Nov. 1828 he was transferred to the chair of theology in Edin burgh.
In 1826 he published'a third volume of the Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, a continuation of work begun at St. John's, Glasgow. In 1832 he published a Political Economy, and in 1833 appeared his Bridgwater treatise on The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man. In 1834 he became leader of the evangelical section of the Scottish Church in the general assembly. In 1841 the movement. which ended in the Disruption was rapidly culminating, and Dr. Chalmers found himself at the head of the party which stood for the principle that "no minister shall be intruded into any parish contrary to the will of the congregation." Cases of conflict be tween the Church and the civil power arose in Auchterarder, Dunkeld and Marnoch; and when the courts made it clear that the Church, in their opinion, held its temporalities on condition of rendering such obedience as the courts required, the Church ap pealed to the Government for relief. In Jan. 1 843 the Govern ment put a final and peremptory negative on the Church's claims for spiritual independence. On May 18, 470 clergymen withdrew from the general assembly and constituted themselves the Free Church of Scotland, with Dr. Chalmers as moderator. He had prepared a sustentation fund scheme for the support of the seceding ministers, and this was at once put into successful operation. He himself became principal of the newly founded Free Church college, Edinburgh. On May 3o, 1847 immediately after his return from the House of Commons, where he had given evidence as to the refusal of sites for Free Churches, by Scottish landowners, he was found dead in bed.
Dr. Chalmers' writings are a valuable source for argument and illustration on the question of Establishment. They run to 38 volumes concerned with theology, devotional practice and social economy. The most important of them is his Institutes of The ology written in his later years at the Free Church college.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-W. Hanna Memoirs (Edinburgh, 1849-52) ; CorBibliography.-W. Hanna Memoirs (Edinburgh, 1849-52) ; Cor- respondence (1853) ; and Lives by E. B. Ramsay (3rd ed. 1867) ; D. Fraser (1881) ; Mrs. Oliphant (1893) and W. G. Blaikie (1896) .