Chalmers' letter 1 to Eliza

Letter to Eliza 1839

In 1839, Dr. Chalmers's second daughter was married to the Rev. John Mackenzie, at that time minister of the parish of Dunkeld in Perthshire. Immediately after the marriage he proceeded on his Church Extension tour in the north of Scotland, from which he writes to Mrs. Mackenzie

"Inverness, August 28, 1839. "MY DEAREST ELIZA, . . . But let me stop all further description of my travels, and conclude this letter with the expression of my earnest wishes for your highest wellbeing. I have often felt it as one great evil of too public a life, that it dis-severed one from his family; and when I think how highly favoured I have been, in that, though twenty-seven years a family-man, I have never yet been exposed in my household to the visitation of death, I deeply feel that such a lengthened opportunity should have been consecrated more to the culture and preparation of those immortal spirits over whom I am appointed to watch. Let me hope that you will not in your new circnmstances neglect this greatest of all concerns; and while I am far from wishing that you should overtask yourself with the duties either of the house or of the parish, I cannot but rejoice that you are ao much in the way of all that stands most connected with the things of faith and of eternity. With the aim fixed on a better world, not only is the happiness of the future but that of the present life most effectually provided for; and the power of him who has chosen God in Christ for his portion is in itself a fulfilment of the saying, that godliness both the promise of the life which now is, as well as of that which is to come.
I am, my dearest Eliza, yours very affectionately.
THOMAS CHALMERS."