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Part 4: Six notable Protestant Christian old earth creationist Gap Schoolmen honoured in this work (I Sam. 2:30).

Chapter 1: Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).

Chapter 2: William Buckland (1784-1856).

Chapter 3: Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873).

Chapter 4: J. Pye Smith (1774-1851). a] General. b] Pye Smith in some other writers’ works. c] So whatever happened to Homerton College & New College?

Chapter 5: John Pratt (1809-1871).

Chapter 6: Henry Jones Alcock (1837-1915). a] General Introduction. b] Henry J. Alcock’s old earth creationist Local Earth Gap School model. c] Alcock’s Errors. d] Some further biography on Henry Jones Alcock.

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(Part 4) CHAPTER 1

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847).

Thomas Chalmers (d. 1847) 1.

The Presbyterian, Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), was first a Presbyterian Church of Scotland Minister, being ordained in 1803 as the Minister of Kilemy parish in Fife, Scotland. He became an Evangelical in connection with reading the Evangelical Church of England William Wilberforce’s Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797). From 1815 he gained prominence as a great pulpit preacher in Glasgow, Scotland, first in the Tron parish, and then at St. John’s Church of Scotland from 1819 2. He was also a teacher at St. Andrew’s University and Edinburgh University in Scotland.

The Scottish Presbyterian events of 1843 in which the Free Church of Scotland was formed are known as “the Disruption.” This split the Established Church of Scotland so that between about “one-third of the ministers and laity of the Church of Scotland 3” and “nearly half the Church of Scotland,” left to become the Free Church of Scotland . This percentage division of about 50:50 remained until after the removal of the power of the courts to appoint Ministers in the Church of Scotland had been taken away, and most of those in the Free Church of Scotland then reunited with the Church of

1 Picture from: James A. Wylie’s Disruption Worthies , With an Historical Sketch of the Free Church of Scotland from 1843, Edited by J.B. Gillies, 1881; Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 1881.

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica CD99 (1999 A.D.), op. cit. , “Chalmers, Thomas.”

3 Ibid. , “Free Church of Scotland.” 430

Scotland in 1929 4; although a smaller minority group remained with the Free Church of Scotland which has generally been a more conservative church than the Church of Scotland which has generally been more liberal. I thank God I was privileged to undertake a trip around parts of the UK that included Scotland in December 2001 and January 2002, on my first trip to London (April 2001-April 2002) where I worked as a school teacher. I took the following two photos in Glasgow at that time.

St. Mungo’s Church of Scotland St. Vincent Street Free Church of Cathedral, Glasgow, Dec. 2001. Scotland , Glasgow, Dec. 2001.

In May of 1843, just over 200 Church of Scotland commissioners walked out of that Church’s General Assembly as a protest against the fact that because the Church of Scotland was the Established Church, the State Courts had used its powers to sometimes appoint Ministers in local Church of Scotland Churches contrary to the wishes of the congregation. They thus broke with the Established Church of Scotland to become the Free Church of Scotland , on the basis that they wanted their church to be free from such state courts, with members of each local church being the ones who would choose their Minister. However, at the Disruption, the Moderator, Thomas Chalmers, publicly stated that they believed in the Establishment Principle (Ps. 2:10-12; Isa. 49:23), even though they did not think that this should allow state courts to appoint Ministers to local churches, and so the Free Church of Scotland simultaneously rejected what were called “Voluntaries,” i.e., persons opposed to the Establishment Principle who considered that the State had no duty to Establish or support a