Chalmers

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about other peoples, religions, or nationalities that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: ET 2026-07-22) THOMAS, a clergyman, born in Anstruther, Fife, March 17, 1780. At the age of 12 he was sent from the parish school to the University of St. Andrews, and after studying there seven years, was licensed as a preacher in July, 1799. During the two following years he studied mathematics and chemistry in Edinburgh, and then became assistant professor of mathematics at St. Andrews. In 1803 he was presented to the parish of Kilmany, in Fife, where he made a high reputation as a preacher, which gradually spread throughout Scotland, and in 1815 he was inducted to the Tron Church of delivered there in the following winter produced a sensation not only in the city but throughout the country, 20,000 copies selling in the first year of their publication. It was while pastor of this church that he developed his scheme for the reorganization of the parochial system with a view to more efficient work among the destitute and outcast classes, his influence leading to a considerable extension of the means of popular instruction, both religious and secular. In 1819 he was transferred from the Tron to St. John's, a church built and endowed expressly for him by the Town Council of Glasgow, but his health having been tried by overwork he accepted, in 1823, the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews. In 1827 he was elected to the divinity chair in the University of Edinburgh, an appointment which he continued to hold till the Disruption from the Scottish Church in 1843. In 1832 he published his "Political Economy," and shortly afterward his "Bridgewater Treatise on the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man." During this period he was occupied with the subject of Church extension on the voluntary principle, but it was in the great non-intrusion movement in the Scottish Church that his name became most prominent. Throughout the whole contest to the Disruption in 1843, he acted as the leader of the party that then separated from the Establishment, and may be regarded as the founder of the Free Church of Scotland, of the first assembly of which he was moderator. Having vacated his professional chair in the Edinburgh University, he was appointed principal and primarius professor of divinity in the new college of the Free Church. In addition to his duties in these posts, he continued in Edinburgh his zealous labors for the elevation of the "home-heathen," giving practical exemplification of his a schemes by the establishment of a successful mission in the West Port. He died in Morningside, Edinburgh, May 31, 1847. CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE (shäl-ôn' sür-märn), the capital of the French department of Marne, on the Marne dan river, 107 miles E. of Paris. An old place, with timber houses and many spired churches, it has an interesting cathedral, dating chiefly from the 13th handsome hôtel-de-ville century, a (1772), and a fine public park, though the Germans cut down its immemorial elms for fuel. It still does a consider- Glasgow. His astronomical discourses able trade in Champagne wine, but its manufacture of the worsted cloth known as "shalloon" (Chaucer's chalons) is a thing of the past and the population has dwindled from 60,000 in the 13th century to about 30,000. Near Châlons, which takes its name from the Catalauni of Latin writers, the Romans and Goths in 451 A. D. defeated Attila and his host of Huns. In 1856 Napoleon III. formed the celebrated camp of Châlons, 16½ miles to the N. E. of the town. Hence, during the Franco-Prussian war, on the night of Aug. 21, 1870, MacMahon withdrew his troops, and next day the town was occupied by the Germans. The town was again in the fighting area during the WORLD WAR (q. v.). CHALONS-SUR-SAÔNE (-son), ancient Cabillonum, a town in the French ent of Saône-et-Loire, 842 department miles N. of Lyons. Lying on the right bank of the Saône, at the point where that river is joined by the Canal du Centre, uniting it with the Loire, Châlons has an extensive traffic with the central districts of France, as well as with the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Fine quays and houses line the river, and the chief building is the Church of St. Vincent, 14th to 15th cen The industries are copper and tury. iron founding, machinery and shipbuilding, and the manufacture of glass, paper, hats, wine, chemicals, etc. It has a branch of the famous Creusot Engineering Works. Pop. about 32,000. CHAMÆROPS (kam-i'-rops), a genus of plants belonging to the order Palma- The dwarf fan palm, so called ceӕ. from its low growth. It is the most northerly of the palm genera, and consists of 10 or 12 species. C. humilis extends as far N, as Nice, and the leaves of it are used for making hats, brooms, and baskets, and for thatching pur- C. fortuni, a native of China, poses. furnishes a coarse brown fiber used for hats and a waterproof cloth called So-e.