Parish Life: A Thomas Chalmers Reader

The great Scottish pastor, social reformer, educator, author, and scientist Thomas Chalmers (1740 -- 1847) was among the most influential and highly regarded men of his day. He served as the pastor of three congregations, taught in three colleges, published more than 35 best-selling books, and helped to establish more than a hundred charitable relief and missionary organizations. He counted as his friends such luminaries as the Duke of Wellington, Sir Walter Scott, King William IV, Thomas Carlyle, William Wilberforce, and Robert Peel.In 1809, having already made his mark as a brilliant professor of mathematics at St. Andrews and serving a small rural parish, he underwent a spiritual transformation following an extended illness. Afterward, he completely abandoned himself to his ministry, setting about a reform of the ministry to the poor, widows, and orphans. He established a pioneer missionary society and a Bible society and also began a prolific publishing career. Believing that his ministry should first and foremost be to the parish, Chalmers began a program of visitation from house to house that took two years to complete, developed Sabbath evening schools, undertook care of the poor, education of the entire community, and reform of the local economy. In later years, he prepared others for a similar impact in ministry at the University of Edinburgh and led the Evangelicals in establishing the Free Church.

Parish Life provides a new of generation readers with the very best of his work. It includes a wide variety of sermons, lectures, articles, and essays affording a new look at one of the most remarkable public men of the last two centuries.