"On Friday, June 4, 1847, one of the most amazing funeral processions ever seen in Edinburgh made its way to the Grange Cemetery. Well nigh half the population of the city lined the route. It was the dust of a Presbyterian minister which the coffin contained and yet they were burying him amid the tears of a nation and with more than kingly honors."

So Hugh Millar in a contemporary newspaper chronicled the funeral of Thomas Chalmers, who died suddenly on a Sunday evening in his sixty-seventh year.

Carlyle said of him: "No preacher ever went so into one's heart. I suppose there will never be such a preacher in any Christian church." Later on, hearing of his death, he said: "I believe that there is not in Scotland, or all Europe, any such Christian priest left."

It was in the little fishing town of Anstruther, in the ancient kingdom of Fife, that on March 17, 1780, this great Scotsman -- the sixth of fourteen children -- was born into a middle-class home. To us today his educational career seems incredible. Beginning at the parish school at the age of three, he proceeded to the University of St. Andrews when twelve years old, to Divinity Hall at fifteen, and after four years' training was licensed to preach the Gospel before he was twenty.

Following a short term as assistant in a Presbyterian church, he was appointed to the living at Kilmany. An acceptable preacher and a friendly visitor, his work was crowned with more than average success, but his heart was not in Kilmany; it was nine miles away in St. Andrews, where during the week he lectured on mathematics and chemistry. He was absorbed in matters intellectual -- never idle, alert in body and mind -- but he had not found his soul; his heart was not yet ablaze with a love for Christ.

His congregation was very fond of its young minister and proud of his academic attainments. Already in his preaching there were hints of that sublime thunder that afterwards rolled through the world. In his later years it was said of him that Scotland shuddered beneath his eloquence as a cathedral vibrates to the deep tones of the organ.

But his farmer folk at Kilmany could not be expected to foresee all this. They felt that their minister was no ordinary man; yet there was one thing that puzzled them. Why did he persist in preaching to these hard-working and law-abiding farmers in a strain that implied that they all ought to be in prison? He thundered forth each Sunday against the wickedness of theft, murder, and adultery. This kind of thing continued without a break from 1803 until 1811 and the parish stood bewildered.

Apart from that he made an excellent minister. He loved to get to the homes of his people and he won their admiration, confidence, and love.

He remained in Kilmany until 1815, but the last four years saw a great change. Every Sunday he had something fresh to say about the love of God, the Cross of Christ, and the way of salvation. He urged his people with tears to repent, to believe and to enter into life eternal. He set before them the beauty of the Christian life and sought to lead them into it.