its close, after which he again commenced his duties as a member of the General Assembly, and entered with ardour into the subject of church plurality, upon which he spoke sometimes during the course of discussion. It was during this conflict that a frank generous avowal was made by Dr. Chalmers that electrified the whole meeting. On the second day of the debate, a member upon the opposite side quoted from an anonymous pamphlet the declaration of its author's experience, that "after the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science in which his taste may dispose him to engage." When this was read, every eye was turned to Dr. Chalmers; it was the pamphlet he had published twenty years ago, when the duties of the ministerial office appeared to him in a very different light than they now did. He considered its resurrection at such a period as a solemn call to humiliation and confession, and from this unpalatable duty he did not for a moment shrink. Rising in his place, he declared, that the production was his own. "I now confess myself," he added, "to have been guilty of a heinous crime, and I now stand a repentant culprit before the bar of this venerable assembly." After stating the time and the occasion in which it originated, he went "on in the following words:—"I was at that time, Sir, more devoted to mathematics than to the literature of my profession; and, feeling grieved and indignant at what I conceived an undue reflection on the abilities and education of our clergy, I came forward with that pamphlet, to rescue them from what I deemed an unmerited reproach, by maintaining that a devoted and exclusive attention to the study of mathematics was not dissonant to the proper habits of a clergyman. Alas! Sir, so I thought in my ignorance and pride. I have now no reserve in saying, that the sentiment was wrong, and that, in the utterance of it, I penned what was most outrageously wrong. Strangely blinded that I was! What, Sir, is the object of mathematical science? Magnitude and the proportions of magnitude. But then, Sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes—I thought not of the littleness of time—I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity."
Hitherto the course of Dr. Chalmers at St. Andrews had been comfortable and tranquil; but this state was to continue no longer. It would have been strange, indeed, if one who so exclusively enjoyed the popularity of the town and its colleges, should have been permitted to enjoy it without annoyance. In the first instance, too, his grievances arose from that very evil of church plurality of which he had at first been the tolerant advocate, and afterwards the uncompromising antagonist. A vacancy having occurred in the city parish of St. Leonards, the charge was bestowed, not upon a free unencumbered man, but upon one of the professors, whose college labours were enough for all his time and talent; and as he was unacceptable as a preacher, many of the students, among whom an unwonted earnestness had of late been awakened upon the important subject of religion, were desirous of enjoying a more efficient ministry. But an old law of the college made it imperative that they should give their Sabbath attendance at the church of St. Leonards; and when they petitioned for liberty to select their own place for worship and religious instruction, their application was refused, although it was backed by that of their parents. It was natural that Dr. Chalmers should become their advocate; nnd almost equally natural that in requital he should be visited by the collective wrath of his brethren of the Senatus. They had decerned that the
