In 1828 the divinity chair in the University of Edinburgh became vacant, and Chalmers was unanimously elected to it by the town council. This appointment he held till the dis ruption of the Scottish Church in 1843. In 1832 he published his (Political Economy,' and shortly afterward appeared his contribution to the celebrated Bridgewater Treatises, On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man.' In 1834 he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of France. An important matter which now largely engaged his atten tion was the subject of church extension, which he had zealously advocated from the days of his ministry in Glasgow. But Lord Mel bourne's government was little disposed to aid the Church of Scotland on this occasion, and it was consequently obliged to carry out its scheme on the voluntary principle. Amid the various public movements with which Chal mers' name stands connected, these is none in which it more prominently occurs than .in re lation to the great non-intrusion movement in the Scottish Church. Throughout the whole of this memorable controversy, from the pass ing of the veto law by the General Assembly to the Disruption in 1843, he acted as the leader of the Evangelical party in their strug gles with the civil power, and may be regarded as the founder of the Free Church, of the first assembly of which he was moderator. He was
also the originator of the sustentation fund, out of which the ministers of that body are principally supported. Having vacated at the Disruption his professorial chair in the Edin burgh University, he was appointed, on the establishment of a new college in connection with the Free Church, to the offices of principal and primarius professor of divinity in that institution. The energy which made Chalmers remarkable as an orator was infused into all his practical undertakings; and the social and religious movements which he inaugurated left their mark far beyond the bounds of his own country. His published works are very numerous embracing sermons, tracts, essays, works on political economy, the parochial sys tem, church establishments, etc. They exhibit the same energy of conviction, together with. a breadth and profundity of view, which, though many of his theories have not been accepted by other thinkers, will always make them a rich mine of suggestion and instruction to inquirers into the complicated relations of human society. Consult 'Lives,' by Hanna (1849-52); Fraser (1881) - Mrs. Oliphant (1893) ; Blailae (1897). See FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.