“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” — 1 John 2:15 Those who struggle with habitual sin are keenly aware of the despair and fatigue that comes from trying harder and harder to control the desire to do what is wrong in the eyes of God. For this person, there be times of limited success in overcoming sin, but eventually he/she falls back again into unhealthy patterns. In "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection", Thomas Chalmers argues that no matter how hard we may try, we’ll never overcome habitual sin in our lives unless we switch our affections from the world to Jesus Christ. Thankfully Christ loved us first and is more than willing to set us free if we’d only realize the true Gospel power that we can all have in our lives today.

It is not often that the world has seen men like Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a humble servant of Christ who in spite of his outstanding natural gifts longed to be a true man of God. First published in 1853, this selection of his correspondence breathes the warmth of this remarkable man's devotion to Christ and godly wisdom expressed to his earest friends.

The report for 1870/1871 includes "An alphabetical catalogue" of the library, and later reports include "List of books added" up to .