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EDWARD IRVING
MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET

BY
JEAN CHRISTIE ROOT

"A man of one thought, the gospel of Christ;
A man of one purpose, the glory of God;
Content to be reckoned a madman — for Christ."
Ihvino : Missionary Sermon

BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1912

hnz3l ZRG

COPYEIOHT, 1913
ShEEMAU-j FrEICCH &> COMPANT

FOREWORD
The present seems a not unfitting time to rep
resent to candid thinkers of all creeds the man
who perhaps more clearly foreshadowed the
problems and truths of to-day than any other
one man in his period. The author has striven
by the clearest light attainable to present Ed
ward Irving exactly as he was, and to call at
tention to the truths for which he so bravely
and patiently "endured as seeing Him who is
invisible." It has long mattered little to him
personally whether men would or would not
listen to the truths he saw and "with all the
power within him strove to utter." ^ It mat
tered much to his own generation and may mat
ter much to ours if the Church, claiming to be
the conservator of Truth, continues to treat
this man, "a minister of Christ, after the order
of Paul," ^ as an outcast to be permanently for
gotten. Rather might it not be well, if like
Edward Irving, all men everywhere, inside the
Church or out of it, forgetting prejudice,
should honestly welcome the truth wherever
they found it and follow it whithersoever it
might lead them ?
1 Carlyle.
2 Coleridge.

CONTENTS
CHAFTEB PAGE
1 Edward Irving's Period and the
Impending Changes, Heredity
Preparatory Years. ... 1
2 Teaching. Jean Baillie Welsh.
Isabella Martin. Thomas Car
lyle  7
3 Prolonged Probationing. Consid
ers Mission Work. Jean Welsh
Reappears. Call to Assist Dr.
Chalmers. Terrible Conditions
in Glasgow. Applied Chris
tianity Conquers  15
4) Call to London. Strange Accept
ance. Unparalleled Success. . 22
5 Decision as to Marriage. Com
ments by Carlyle and Mrs. Oli-
phant. Marriage to Miss Mar
tin. Birth of Little Edward.
Death of the Child and its Re
markable Effect on Mr. Irvmg.
Journal Letter "To Comfort
Little Edward's Mother." Per
fected Union  28

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
6 Growing Iritfluence. New Church
in Regent's Square. Peculiar
Dedications to Books. Unpopur-
lar Missionary Sermon. . . 42
T Mr. Hatley Frere. Mr. Henry
Drummond and Albury Confer
ences. Irving Declares Christ
the Head of the Church and
Creeds Finite  61
8 Cry of Heresy. Religious Awaken
ing in Scotland. Peculiar Man
ifestations. Baptism of the
Holy Spirit. Advent of the
"Tongues" in Scotland. First
and Second Cases of Healing in
Scotland (Presbyterian). Case
of Miss Fancourt in London
(Episcopalian) . Mr. Irving' s
Attitude towards these Facts. 62
9 Other Ministers Charged with
Heresy. Mr. Irving's Book,
"Human Nature of Christ,"
Severely Handled. Advent of
"Tongues" in Jm Church, July,
1831. Opinions of Carlyle and
Others. Clear Statements by
Henry Drum,mond and Rev. W.
W. Andrews. Mr. Baxter's
Defection. Modern Psycholog-

CONTENTS
CHAPTEK PAGE
ical Statement Concerning
"Gift of Tongues". ... 82
10 Anxiety of Irving's Church Trus
tees. Irving Summoned before
the London Presbytery. A Pe
culiar Trial. Remarkable Ver
dict. Deposed, May, 1832.
Irving Enters Catholic Apos
tolic Church  101
11 Failing Health. Last Call on the
Carlyles. Leaves London for
Rest. Last Journey. Last
Letter. "Dies unto God."
Universal Mourning. ... 113
12 Appreciations by S. T. Coleridge,
Thomas Carlyle, Frederick D.
Maurice, Extract from a Per
sonal Letter, Rev. James Ham
ilton, D. D., Rev. W. W. An
drews, Rev. Geo. Leon Walker,
D. D., Barry Cornwall, Chris
tian Remembrancer, Eraser's
Magazine, January, 1835,
North British Review, Vol.
XXXIX (Attributed to Dr.
Hanna), London Quarterly Re
view, Vol. XIX, Macmillan's
Magazine, Vol. VI (Attributed
to Rev. Robert Story). . . 123

EDWARD IRVING:
MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET
CHAPTER I
Edward Irving's Period and the Impending
Changes. Heredity. Preparatory Years.
Looking backward from the twentieth cen
tury through the changes wrought by the
nineteenth, one sees that that tremendous cycle
introduced changes in material things that
virtually created a new earth, so that if it were
possible to transport a man of to-day back a
hundred years, the world he found would seem
to him utterly alien and barren of comfort.
Great as have been the changes wrought in the
external world by that century, changes in
creeds and moral standards are no less marked,
and while building upon material lines, there
has been what has seemed a crumbling along so-
called religious lines. Only yesterday, as it
were, most men who believed anything spiritual
and accepted any creed, took it for granted
that whatever they personally believed or what
ever creed had won their adherence, contained
all that there was of truth in the world, and
looking down from his particular vantage

2 EDWARD IRVING:
ground, considered all men on any other level
either heathen or heretic.
But into the spiritual world as into the ma
terial, changes or growth that no man could
measure were coming. One of old, wiser than
men had said, "The kingdom of God cometh not
with observation." True as in His own age
when His own race could not receive the truth
that a little child born in a stable might be
come greater than any Csesar ever reigning in
imperial Rome, and introduce changes that
should indeed "turn the world upside down,"
the men who believed in the nineteenth century
could not easily receive the thought that what
ever of dogma or creed might have to go down
in the coming struggle between Science and Re
ligion, growth, brotherhood, applied Christian
ity, and the incoming of the Kingdom of God
on earth lay surely in advance along the lines
that Christianity and Science were each to
travel toward the future. Certain men were
to make great discoveries and inventions ;
other men just as great were to read
just lines of Christian thinking and serv
ing. The successful inventors and discoverers
were to be crowned with honors and with wealth.
The men who "followed the gleam" of Truth
and "blazed" the path toward spiritual freedom
and assured faith were often to be crowned as
had been their Master, with thorns, and to die

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 3
before they saw the result of their labors.
Some of them indeed — ^Wesley, Maurice, New
man, Bushnell, Martineau, — lived to see the
obloquy cast upon their early labors changed
to praise. One however who did perhaps as
much as, If not more than, any other, save
Wesley, to deepen and broaden Christian think
ing, was cast out of his own great church for
preferring the Bible as his teacher to the elabo
rate creed of his church, and died broken
hearted in his prime, leaving a name so obscured
by the unjust judgment of his brethren in the
church and the sad misunderstanding of one
great man whom he had most faithfully loved
and served that even to-day, seventy-five years
after his death, he is utterly misunderstood by
the great majority of men, and still inherits
the promise, "Blessed are ye when men shall re
vile you and shall cast out your name as evil
for my sake."
But it seems to the writer of this sketch that
whatever the world may owe tO' Edward Irving,
she certainly in justice to herself needs to add
to her list of resplendent names the name of the
man who stood In the van In the defense of
Christian sincerity, brotherhood and absolute
loyalty to all the truth he saw.
Born In 1792, Edward Irving was the son of
Gavin and Mary Lowther Irving. His father
was a man of the ordinary Scottish mold.

4 EDWARD IRVING:
energetic, reserved, successful and a devout
Presbyterian. His mother, Huguenot by de
scent, was an unusual woman. To her, her
children owed the peculiar charm of person and
manner that distinguished them. To his latest
day Edward held her In the highest veneration.
The family was prosperous, most comfortably
situated, and able to educate their eight chil
dren on the best lines then common. Looking
at the future through ordinary eyes, one could
see nothing of the tremendous changes just
ahead for all men. True, the American Revo
lution had opened a new world to the poor and
discontented of all lands, and the French Revo
lution was baptizing a nation just across the
channel In the blood of some of its noblest as
well as In that of some of Its vilest citizens ; but
the world as a whole was going on as of old,
and no one foresaw the evil days, as they would
have termed them, that were to come to all re
ligious and thoughtful men In Protestant lands.
Edward Irving, who was destined to become
known as one of the greatest actors on the
theological stage and In many minds the most
subversive of religious teachers, was unusual
even from his boyhood. Thoughtful and In
tellectual beyond his mates, he was also as
noted in athletic lines as In mental superiority.
One illustration of his religious nature even in
boyhood, remains. Before he was twelve he

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 5
walked Sundays to a church six miles distant
with the older men of the parish to listen to a
spiritual preacher, as the minister of their own
parish, holding a life tenure of his office, could
not be deposed, despite his unworthiness.
Irving's native town, Annan, was at that time
the seat of one of the most noted schools In
Scotland — Annan Academy. Its dominie,
Adam Hope, was famous In all the universities
for his success In fitting men for college. Poor
as was Scotland in those days In material
things, she was rich In men of brains and gen
eral ability ; and Adam Hope's graduates, as
capable as their brethren generally, were more
fortunate than many in the high cultivation
they won from him. Edward Irving and
Thomas Carlyle were indeed his most famous
graduates, but all over Scotland and India were
men bearing his stamp who were making their
mark wherever they were. Edward Irving
graduated at thirteen, easily carrying away the
honors even from his own elder brother, as well
he might if it Is true, as was asserted, that with
in a week he mastered five books of Euclid, and
In half that time went joyously through six
books of Homer. Always passionately fond of
poetry, one can Imagine what the opening joys
of those six books must have meant to him.
Entering the University of Edinburgh at
thirteen, there he also carried off the honors.

6 EDWARD IRVING:
At that period no profession ranked higher In
the estimation of tiie devout Scotch, nor even
of those who sought simply social recognition,
than that of minister of the gospel ; and to Ed
ward Irving, the son of a rigid Presbyterian
father, and of a Huguenot mother whose family
had endured exile for their faith, the ministry
was the one calling possible. His first year
after leaving the University was spent In
theological study in Edinburgh. After the first
year, the custom of the times made It possible
for the theological student to pursue his studies
where he chose, simply requiring his return for
his examinations.

CHAPTER II
Teaching. Jean Baillie Welsh. Isabella Mar
tin. Thomas Carlyle.
A year after his graduation Irving secured
a position as master In the school at Hadding
ton through the Influence of Professor Leslie,
professor of mathematics in Edinburgh, who
equally with Prof. Cristlson In the Humanities,
as it was called, expected Irving to distinguish
himself along his own special line. Although
still but a boy. In reality Irving had all the
moral dignity of a mature man and was already
distinguished in his bearing and In his personal
appearance. Wherever he went all his life long,
he won without effort the friendship and ad
miration of the noblest whom he met. It was
one of his peculiarities that he could not be
forgotten either by peasant or by man of the
world. At Haddington, as elsewhere, he made hosts
of friends, but In one family he was most
warmly welcomed. Dr. John Welsh, the not
able doctor of the countryside, opened his home
and his heart to young Irving, and at once
made him the tutor of his only child, little Jean,
whose life was to be so pathetically Influenced
7

8 EDWARD IRVING:
later by the friendship thus formed. An only
child, always delicate and fragile, she possessed
a brain of remarkable power, and a heart as
loyal as it was strong and tender. She was to
prove In some respects a woman to be greatly
pitied, through the unwisdom of some and the
cruel desire for exploitation on the part of
others. But she was to be greatly loved by two
of the greatest men of her period in Scotland,
and to render incalculable service to one at least
of the two. In some respects no woman has
deserved more of her peers and received less.
The writer of this article will be glad If In some
degree she may present her with something of
justice in her estimate formed after the most
careful study. In Carlyle's "Reminiscences" he
gives a story told to him by Jean Welsh about
her father ; that riding home one day from his
long round of visits. Dr. Welsh spied a little
bird with broken wings, left by the careless
hunter who had shot it, to die by the roadside
from whence it could not remove itself. Caus
ing his groom to dismount and lift the bird
gently, the Doctor held It tenderly in one hand
until he had reached his own home; then dis
mounting with as little jar to the bird as pos
sible, he carried It into his office, set its broken
wings deftly, placed it In a cage where he per
sonally attended to Its wants until it was able
to fly. Then, opening the door of its cage, he

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 9
had the pleasure of seeing a strong and happy
bird fly gayly back to its native haunts. Might
not a man so considerate of a wounded bird,
claim something of justice at least for the
memory of the little daughter he loved so much,
who was to make so brave a struggle in her later
days and whose memory at least was to be sadly
marred by careless hunters.''
Remaining in Haddington two years, Irving
was then promoted to a more important post
in the town of Kirkcaldy. There It was his
fortune to remain seven years, finishing during
that time his theological studies, forming
friendships that were to last through life, and
as always In all possible ways serving all whom
he met. Here another home opened to him —
the manse of Kirkcaldy. The minister In the
manse, Rev. Dr. Martin, was a devout, strong
man, and the family a very religious one. As
many another young man impulsive and hon
est-hearted has done, thrown much Into the
society of cordial young ladies, the young
dominie after awhile imagined himself In love
with one of the daughters of the manse,
Isabella Martin, and forthwith bound himself
fast by one of those Scottish engagements
harder far to break In those days than many
an actual marriage to-day.
Here too In Kirkcaldy he met another friend,
Thomas Carlyle, to whom he was to render In-

10 EDWARD IRVING:
estimable service and to receive from him after
his own death, despite a friendship that time
could not destroy, the "Eulogy" which perhaps
more than anything else has caused literary
men to rate Irving as a religious fanatic, even
to the point of madness. They met on this
wise: Irving's rule as a teacher, while most in
spiring to boys who cared to learn, seemed to
some of the parents of some of his dullards too
strenuous; they sent for Thomas Carlyle, a
later graduate of the same great academy in
Annan where Irving had won his first honors.
Carlyle of course, born pessimist, expected to
be received as a rival, but to his great surprise
Irring met him and to his astonished rival said
with outstretched hand and beaming smile,
"You are coming to Kirkcaldy. Two men of
Annan mast not be strangers In Fife. You
must make my house your home and I will help
you to look over the field" ; which he did so
effectively that he materially advanced the for
tunes of the new dominie. Thenceforward till
the end he was to Carlyle — to quote from the
latter — "the freest, brotherllest, bravest human
soul mine ever came In contact with. I call
him, on the whole, the best man I have ever
(after hard trial enough) found in this world
or now hope to find." The records that re
main prove beyond question that through
living's influence on others and his personal

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 11
advice to Carlyle, the latter won his full en
trance into literature and was thus made
known to the world.
The following are Illustrative extracts from
Irving's letters later to Carlyle: —
"Known you must be before you can be em
ployed. Known you will not be for a winning,
attaching, accommodating man, but for an
original, commanding, and rather self-willed
man. Now establish this last character, and
you take a far higher grade than any other.
How are you to establish it.'' Just by bringing
yourself before the public as you are. First
find vent for your notions. Get them tongue;
upon every subject get them tongue, not upon
law alone. You cannot at present get them
either utterance or audience by ordinary con
verse. Your utterance Is not the most favor
able. It convinces, but does not persuade;
and it Is only a very few (I can claim place
for myself) that it fascinates. Your audience
is worse. They are generally (I exclude my
self) unphilosophical, unthinking drivelers
who lie In wait to catch you In your words,
and who give you little justice, or even mercy.
In the rencounter. Therefore, my dear
friend, some other way is to be sought for.
Now pause, if you be not convinced of this con
clusion. If you be, we shall proceed. If you

12 EDWARD IRVING:
be not, read again, and you will see it just,
and as such admit it. Now what way Is to be
sought for.? I know no other than the press.
You have not the pulpit as I have, and where
perhaps I have the advantage. You have not
good and Influential society. I know nothing
but the press for your purpose. None are so
good as these two, the Edinburgh Review and
Blackwood's Magazine. Do not steal away
and say, 'The one I am not fit for, the other
I am not willing for.' Both pleas I refuse.
The Edinburgh Review you are perfectly fit
for; not yet upon law, 'but upon any work of
mathematics, physics, general literature, his
tory, and politics, you are as ripe as the aver
age of their writers. Blackwood's Magazine
presents bad company, I confess; but it also
furnishes a good field for fugitive writing, and
good Introductions to society on one side of
the question. This last advice, I confess. Is
against my conscience, and I am inclined to
blot it out ; for did I not rest satisfied that you
were to use your pen for your conscience, I
would never ask you to use It for your living."
"I like the tone of your last letter; for, re
member, I read your very tones and gestures,
at this distance of place, through your letter,
though it be not the most diaphanous of
bodies." "You live too much In an Ideal world, and

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 13
you are likely to be punished for It by an un
fitness for practical life. It Is not your fault
but the misfortune of your circumstance as it
has been In a less degree of my own. This
situation will be more a remedy for that than
If you were to go back to Edinburgh. Try
your hand with the respectable Illiterate men of
middle life, as I am doing at present, and per
haps in their honesty and hearty kindness you
may be taught to forget and perhaps to un
dervalue the splendors, and envies and com
petitions of men of literature. I think you
have within you the ability to rear the pillars
of your own Immortality, and, what is more,
of your own happiness, from the basis of any
level In life. All that is valuable of the liter
ary caste you have in their writings. Their
conversations, I am told, are full of jealousy
and reserve, or, perhaps to cover that reserve,
of trifling."
In addition to such practical written advice,
Irving exerted his personal Influence among his
own friends In Carlyle's behalf, and welcoming
him as a brother, Into his own London home as
In the old Kirkcaldy days, gladly sheltered him
there till he found employment that enabled
him to support himself comfortably elsewhere.
How on Irving's exit from the world, Carlyle
doubtless unintentionally, but none the less ef-

14 EDWARD IRVING:
feetlvely and we regret to add, unjustly, helped
to close the door and seal It for a time, behind
his vanishing friend, is easily proven by part
of the strange "Eulogium," written Immedi
ately after Irving's death.

CHAPTER III
Prolonged Probationing. Considers Mission
Work. Jean Welsh Reappears. Call to As
sist Dr. Chalmers. Terrible Conditions in
Glasgow. Applied Christianity Conquers .
Not an easy matter even to-day. In those
earlier years Scottish pulpits were harder still
to win. Once Installed, a minister could not
be deposed save for some flagrant sin. Mere
drunkenness was no disability, and so long as
three persons would listen to a man's preach
ing, he could defy the whole parish to oust him.
Hence positions were as a rule lifelong and a
vacancy could not be filled save by a so-called
Patron, usually the richest and often by no
means the godllest man in the parish. Hence
it easily follows' that while there were many
men of profound piety In the Scottish pulpits,
there were some also absolutely unfitted to
preach the gospel, and many a most worthy
candidate died without securing ai pastorate.
Irving, waiting for years for a call that
did not come, studied carefully what he be
lieved to be needed In a Christian minister.
These years of waiting, hard as they were,
proved In his case but the cutting of a dia
ls

16 EDWARD IRVING:
mond that was to shine with resplendent luster.
His voice, naturally flexible and musical, was
subjected to the most thorough cultivation.
Always passionately fond of Nature, he spent
long hours on the moors and hills of the
countryside, passing often by the lonely graves
of Scottish martyrs who from their dust
breathed inspiration to his soul, and In these
long rambles giving to his voice the most per
fect training till he was so thoroughly its mas
ter that he could speak as in a whisper audible
all over a church, or fUl the church as with
the tones of a noble organ. During his silent
years he had given himself to a careful study
of the effects produced by other preachers,
noting all their failures and by degrees creat
ing In his own mind an ideal preacher. He
destroyed all his written sermons and set him
self to preach as from the depths of his own
soul what he honestly believed to be God's mes
sage to men.
Finally, after four years of waiting had
passed since he had completed his theological
studies, he decided that there was no place
for him In his own country to preach the
gospel, and set himself to prepare for the
foreign field. What his Ideals about mission
ary work were, we shall learn later. Virtually
breaking with his past and ceasing his efforts
to find an opening Into a pulpit he went back to

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 17
Edinburgh for one more term of study to pre
pare himself for the work he now looked for
ward to.
There he again met Jean Baillie Welsh, now
a most charming woman of eighteen, softened
by the suffering her father's recent death had
caused her. Irving too had loved her father,
and nothing was more natural than that the
two should be often thrown together ; — noth
ing also more inevitable than that two so alike
mentally and socially and perhaps at that time
spiritually, should be drawn very close to each
other before either realized the danger In which
Irving as an engaged man, and moreover a man
who If he became a missionary after his own
ideal must not marry, found himself. How
ever, enough passed between them for each to
understand the new joy that had come Into
their lives. Jean Welsh went home. Irving,
supposing himself defeated In his own country,
and desiring time to meet and quiet the new
tumult that had arisen In his heart, burled him
self for some weeks in the wilds of remotest
Ireland where no mails could reach him.
During his stay In Edinburgh he had
preached one day for a friend and learned
later that Dr. Chalmers, then Scotland's fore
most preacher, had been In his audience. As,
however, Chalmers did not seek to meet Irving.
the fact was dismissed with hardly a passing

18 EDWARD IRVING:
thought. On his return from Ireland, how
ever, Irving was astonished to find a letter
from Dr. Chalmers awaiting him, inviting him
to become his associate in a new work he was
about to begin In Glasgow. At the head of a
wealthy congregation and easily the leader In
the great Presbyterian church, Chalmers,
realizing the political and religious dangers
of the day, had resigned the pulpit of the
powerful Tron church and turned aside to
work among the poorest of his countrymen.
It was a time of great political peril. The
French Revolution lay but a few years behind,
and in Great Britain want and suffering among
the poor were creating dangers not unlike
those that had set the poor against the rich
In France. In Great Britain the fear was so
great that In many of the cities the upper
classes had formed themselves Into military
organizations, ready to defend themselves at
a moment's notice. More than once even' In
Glasgow before sunrise the signal went around
to those organized for the defense of the city
to come with all speed to the appointed
rendezvous. The hand of the rich was on their
guns, that of the starving poor quivering to be
at the gunners' throats. One careless shot,
one frenzied murder, and the days of "The
Terror" might have been re-llved In Glasgow
or In Manchester. And every man knew it and

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 19
walked as on the verge of a volcano that might
at any moment burst asunder.
Chalmers saw all this and realized that
whatever might be true of other parts of the
kingdom, the gospel and the gospel alone would
save the masses of hungry people In Scotland
and he undertook a work that few believed
feasible — that of helping them to wait In
patience, if In suffering, for better days. To
assist him In this work he called to Irving who
responded to the call and gave the Interview
desired. He frankly told Dr. Chalmers that
while he would gladly work with him with all
his heart, Chalmers must not be surprised If
his people would not receive him. "If they
listen to me," he said with profound humility,
"they will be the first people I have found that
would." The work was at once begun. With the
ability of a skilled general rather than that
of a preacher, Chalmers organized the whole
of Glasgow Into districts, established schools
for the thousands of neglected children roam
ing the streets, and with Irving and a body
of teachers and other assistants, began his
work. Knowing that the worst thing in the
world for a Scotchman was pauperism, Sun
days or week-days Dr. Chalmers from the be
ginning fell back upon the old Scottish method
of having a "Plate" placed at the door of the

20 EDWARD IRVING:
church In which his hearers might deposit
whatever they pleased. This had been the cus
tom In their old home churches and It at once
appealed to the tenderest memories as well as
to the self-respect even of the poorest. To
the astonishment of the city at large, from the
beginning Chalmers' church supported itself
and continued to do so for some years after his
death. It not only supported Itself — the poor
In the city generally began to respect them
selves, and the time speedily came when all
dangers of an uprising had passed.
In the Interval, however, Irving had gone
about his work somewhat differently from the
methods of Dr. Chalmers, even while loyally
supporting him. Brotherly from boyhood his
heart went out intensely toward these suffering
people and wherever he went among them he
carried not only the strange salutation he al
ways used among his people, "The blessing of
the Lord be upon this house," but he carried
a heart open to share all their sorrows and
whatever else he had he gave to them. Or
dinarily he had little money, but a legacy of
a few hundred dollars coming to him, he at
once turned it Into shillings and sixpences with
which he helped to supply many a scanty table.
Many stories are told of his life among that
people, and while not prefiguring his future
eloquence, they prove to the utmost his wealth

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 21
of human sympathy and his ability In helping
the poor and sorrowing Godward.
After two years of service there, however,
he began to realize that this was not to be
his permanent work — that another could do
the work that he was doing and that fuller
service somewhere was calling tO' him. To his
surprise, however, the call came not from India
or Africa, but from London.

CHAPTER IV
Call to London. Strange Acceptance. Un
paralleled Success.
The pulpit of the Scotch Caledonian chapel
In London, a church built originally for the use
of the orphans of dead Presbyterian soldiers
and sailors, was vacant and some unknown
person recommended Irving and he was called
to consider the position. There were, however,
two requirements that he would have to meet.
As most of the orphans were of Highland par
entage, one service each Sunday was to be
wholly In Gaelic — a language about as easy to
master as Chinese. In addition it was impera
tive that every Scottish church should be able
to assure Its minister a proper livelihood and
at that time that chapel, reduced to a member
ship of fifty, could not possibly offer this ; but
Irving, knowing these difficulties, went up and
preached for them and made a deep impression.
Finding that they really desired his services he
wrote the trustees a letter quite as original as
his statement to Dr. Chalmers about himself.
He said in substance that "in case he should
come among them he would deem it an honor
and privilege if he might not only support hlm-
22

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 23
self but assist In the general support of the
church." As he could not be ordained with
out the consent of the presbytery, and that
would depend on the amount of Income assured
him, he calmly adds that "If It was decided that
they wished him to come, he would come, or
dination or no ordination, letting that take
care of Itself later," and thus he gives the first
glimpse of his later independence of church
polity. But the Duke of York, one of the patrons
of the church, heard him preach, and all diffi
culties were thereafter speedily adjusted; and
he went up to London to his Insignificant little
church and poor people with a joy impossible
for many modern candidates to understand.
Neither he nor his people felt the slightest
foreshadowing of the wondrous changes that
lay but a few months In advance. He began
his work as he had begun in Glasgow, giring
to It his whole heart and soul. But the privacy
he so lamented later was to last but a little
while. Irving, at this time twenty-nine years old,
was as striking in personal appearance as he
was talented and strangely magnetic. Dur
ing the years of his long waiting for a pulpit
he had striven In every possible way to develop
all his spiritual strength and all possible aids
to his power as a preacher. Eloquent, however,

24. EDWARD IRVING:
as was his preaching, all who have heard him
declare that his prayers were absolutely Inde
scribable. "He seems to forget himself," said
one, "and his audience, and to stand simply
In God's own presence speaking to Him as a
son to his own father and asking what he knows
the father will surely give him, and somehow
he lifts his people up Into his own spirit."
He was about six feet four inches in height
and of a form and bearing that so attracted
passing strangers that many a one turned to
gaze on him as he passed on the street. His
memory was stored not only with the Bible
and the fathers of the church, but with Shake
speare, Osslan and all the poets of the day,
whom he used freely. Interpreting them all
through his own irresistible tones, uttered in
the manner of one of the old prophets. It Is
said that his pulpit style never changed, though
his audience certainly did.
His chapel was stirred to Its center and the
news that a young Scotchman of unusual power
had come to London soon reached some of his
compatriots who, clannish as are all Scotch
men, hastened to hear hlm,^ — among them
Wilkie the painter, Cunningham the poet, and
Sir James Mackintosh, distinguished alike as
scholar, jurist and author.
One Sunday Sir James Mackintosh heard
Irving pray for a family of children who had

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 25
lost not only their parents lately In the com
munion of the church, but also their means of
support. Irving spoke of them to God as now
dependent alone "on His Fatherhood," and he
assumed all that that meant to his own high
spiritual sense. The words or the tones or the
peculiar union with God that Irving's prayer
always suggested, so Impressed Sir James, that
meeting Canning, the then prime minister of
England the next day, he told him about Irving,
his eloquence, and above all, the uplifting
power of his prayers. The next Sunday, Can
ning himself was one of Irving's hearers.
Soon after a discussion arose In the House of
Commons on the revenues of the church, and
the necessity that great talent should always
be well paid. It suited Canning to state that
from his personal knowledge this was not al
ways the case; that in a poor little chapel In
London he had lately listened to a young
preacher trained In a denomination whose
churches were most poorly endowed and preach
ing In one of that church's outlying dependen
cies with no endowment at all, preach the
most eloquent sermon that he had ever listened
to. That was sufficient. Given Irving's power
to hold his hearers, there could henceforth be
no more privacy for him and his poor little
chapel, whose membership, however, had al
ready been doubled.

26 EDWARD IRVING:
At once his chapel was crowded to Its utmost
limits. The most famous people In London
packed It to the doors every Sunday. The
pressure was so great that tickets for outsiders
for admission had to be secured six weeks In
advance, and not a foot of standing room was
vacant. To prevent serious accidents, the
street facing the chapel was divided by ropes,
carriages passing up one side, and down on
the other. The reviews of the day were
crowded with criticisms of his manner and style
of preaching, no one, however, denying his
power. Hazlitt, the noted critic, makes him
the theme of some of his most trenchant essays,
seeming to think It Incredible that a preacher
should be equally at home In the Bible and In
Shakespeare, while all who heard him testified
to his unusual power. His sermons were of
great length, never less than two hours, some
times three hours in duration. An aged man
who had regularly listened to him while him
self a student In London, said to the writer : "I
have never known any one else who possessed
Irving's power. He read the Scriptures as
one reading a direct message from God. He
prayed as one who speaks with God. When he
began to preach one forgot everything but the
message he was listening to. Absolute silence
reigned and one was unconscious of the flight
of time. When he ceased speaking one became

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 27
conscious that not only himself but every per
son In the church was bending forward as If
afraid of losing a word, and a deep sigh not
of weariness, but of mental exaltation was
breathed from all as they sat again erect in
their seats."

CHAPTER V
Decision as to Marriage. Comments by Carlyle
and Mrs. Oliphant. Marriage to Miss Mar
tin. Birth of Little Edward. Death of the
Child and its Remarkable Effect on Mr.
Irving. Journal Letter "To Comfort Little
Edward's Mother." Perfected Union.
Finally assured that he had at last found
his place and work, Irving realized that he
must now settle the question of his future home
life. He had continued his correspondence
with Miss Welsh. Of his engagement to Miss
Martin and his unforeseen love for herself she
had learned. She had declared that she could
not listen to him while he was engaged to an
other. Miss Martin of course had known how
things were going, for it was Impossible for
one of Irving's candor to continue to profess
sentiments that had materially changed. Pass
ing by the statements of others concerning this
situation, painful to all concerned, and quot
ing only Carlyle's suggestions In the "Rem
iniscences," edited by Professor Norton, we
learn that there were at one time (before
1821), "on Irving's own part some movements

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 29
of negotiation over to Kirkcaldy for release
there, and of hinted hope toward Hadding
ton. . . . And something (as I used to
gather long afterwards) might have come of
it, had not Kirkcaldy been so peremptory, and
stood by its bond (as spoken or as written),
'Bond or utter Ruin, Sir!' — ^upon which Irving
had honorably submitted and resigned him
self." Mrs. Oliphant, in an article In Macmillan's
Magazine, written after the death of her friend,
Mrs. Carlyle, referring to the affair between
Mr. Irving and Miss Welsh as In any manner
Indicated by Mrs. Carlyle In her later days,
sums up In this manner: "There were some
points about which she was naturally and grace
fully reticent — about her own love, and the pref
erence which gradually swept Irving out of her
girlish fancy If he had ever been fully estab
lished there, a point on which she left her
hearer In doubt. But there was another senti
ment gradually developed In the tale which gave
the said hearer a gleam of amusement unin
tended by the narrator, one of those side
lights of self-revelation which even the keenest
and clearest Intelligence lets slip — which was
her perfectly genuine feminine dislike of
the woman who replaced her In Irving's
life. . . . This dislike looked to me noth
ing more than the very natural and almost

30 EDWARD IRVING:
universal feminine objection to the woman who
has consoled even a rejected lover. The only
wonder was that she did not herself . .
see the humor of It."
These two extracts, we think, quite sustain
the assertion that, like many another young
man who perfectly honest and true-hearted has
become engaged In his early twenties but later
finds himself more deeply interested In a later
friend, Edward Irving found himself in the
painful position of wishing to seek a release
from a woman to whom he had been long en
gaged. To many noble women It must seem
quite Incomprehensible that he was not at once
released, no matter at what cost of pain and
disappointment. But to understand the atti
tude of Dr. Martin and his daughter. It must be
clearly understood that an engagement openly
announced and adhered to for years was con
sidered in those days. In Scotland, quite as
sacred and binding as a genuine marriage bond
is In many lands to-day. Doubtless they felt
almost as keenly hurt as If, after the marriage
service, Edward Irving had asked to be re
leased. Only one thing Is certain to-daj^, that
to their decision, welcome or unwelcome as It
may have been at the time, Edward Irving owed
the truest happiness and the most perfect fel
lowship of his later years ; while to Thomas
Carlyle and Jean Baillie Welsh came a future

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 31
which to each was doubtless the highest con
summation of their lives.
Fortunately no details remain of any corre
spondence on the subject that might by acci
dent have fallen Into the hands of some writer
willing to violate the secrets of the dead. No
one at all familiar with the life of Isabella Mar
tin during the years subsequent to her mar
riage to Edward Irving, can doubt that if God
ever provided a devoted and beloved wife who
was also a most efficient "help-meet" for all
the duties and cares and sorrows that crowded
Edward Irving's remaining years. His hand
certainly united this remarkable couple. And
not only In their case but In many another since
the world began, people who have at one time
earnestly desired to marry each other often
find as time goes on that the Providence or fate,
whichever they may choose to call It, 'that
thwarted their once dearest hopes, planned for
them more tenderly than In their unwisdom
they had planned for themselves.
On the 13th of October, 1823, Edward Irving
and Isabella Martin were married in the old
manse at Kirkcaldy by the venerable grand
father of the bride and at once departed on
their brief wedding journey, duly returning
to London and beginning the work that was
to be so varied, so heavy, and till violently
attacked, so pre-eminently useful.

32 EDWARD IRVING:
It seems a little strange to note that but
for Mrs. Oliphant's noble "Life of Edward
Irving," his memory must greatly have faded
from the minds of men, as, until her "Life" was
published, nearly thirty years after his death,
only brief and often Imperfect sketches of the
real man had appeared, although the British
magazines for a long time contained sketches
of him that though most interesting, were
ephemeral. In the faithful execution of her labor of love
she was greatly assisted by Mrs. Irving's sister
(Mrs. Irving herself having died many years
previous), who was very anxious that a correct
Life of Irving should be published and gladly
furnished all the information In her power, in
cluding Irving's letter "To Comfort Little Ed
ward's Mother," and his other letters to his
wife. Irving's children and other personal
friends also contributed whatever Information
they possessed, and the biography became. If
somewhat lengthy, a mine of valuable informa
tion concerning the man and the preacher,
although of course it could not foretell immi
nent changes that were to give permanent value
to some of his teachings. She also made In this
work the personal acquaintance of Thomas
Carlyle and his wife, and to Mrs. Carlyle she
owed much valuable information as tO' the facts
of Irving's early manhood. Mrs. Oliphant

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 33
seems to have been as just and appreciative to
the Carlyles as she was to Edward Irving, and
In her own Autobiography and Letters she has
given some exquisite glimpses of their domestic
life. Once more busy as preacher, pastor and au
thor, Edward Irving was valiantly striving to
throw his whole soul Into his work; but an ex
perience that lay before him proved to him
self as It now reveals to us, the fact that, as
has more than once been the case with others,
he was fighting a foe that would have sadly
hampered him but for God's chastening hand.
In mid-summer, 1824, a new current of joy
came into his life when his first child was bom —
the little Edward, that "glorious bud of
being," as Irving styled him who so filled his
father's heart with overflowing delight as to
excite some of Carh'le's most characteristic
comments. In the autumn of 1825 the child died of
whooping cough at his mother's old home in
the manse of Kirkcaldy, whither they had gone
for the child's health and also for the sake of
Its mother who was In delicate health. Unable
to return with her husband when he went back
to his church In London, Irring wrote her a
"Journal,"— "To Comfort Little Edward's
Mother," covering a space of several weeks
and certainly unique among men's love-letters

34. EDWARD IRVING:
to their wives. In It he speaks with singular
sincerity, yet delicately, of the divisions that
had existed between them, assuming all the
blame. He seems to have believed the death of
little Edward, by the depth of Its pain to them
and the awakening of his conscience, meant by
God to bring them Into a perfect union and a
fellowship in love and service that nothing
henceforth would be able to break. These let
ters are filled with the tenderest expressions
of love and gratitude to God for the gift of
such a wife, and the full assurance of their
future reunion with the child of their loVe.
This journal covers eighty closely printed
pages In Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Irving," and
really gives the key-note to all their future
life. To quote from Mrs. Oliphant: "This journal
perhaps has no parallel in modem days. A
picture so minute, yet so broad, a self-revela
tion so entire — a witness so wonderful of that
household love, deepened by mutual suffering
and sorrow, which so far transcends In Its
gravity and soberness the voluble passions of
youth, has never, so far as I am aware, been
given to the world. . . . Few men or
heroes have been laid In their graves with such
a memorial as envelops the baby name of little
Edward, and I think few wives will read
this record without envying Isabella Irving

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 35
that hour of her anguish and consolation."
Unique as a masterpiece of Intellectual and
spiritual communion with a wife whom he had
come to love with all his heart, the Journal
glows with the enthusiastic delight of a strong
man's soul in the beauties of nature as he
treads the hills and valleys of Scotland on his
way back to London, describes alike sym
pathetically, the cottages of the poor where he
spends nights In passing, and the mansions of
the rich, shares his every thought of prayer
and of rejoicing In God with her, even makes
his dreams vivid to her, bears her with him
as he repasses the scenes they have visited with
their little vanished boy, shares^ his hours of
depression and of exaltation with her, as if
she were In truth a part of his own soul, and
finally In utter humility shows her his con
sciousness of weakness In the past as well as
his strength In the present to which God has
lifted them with hands close-clasped, that
shall never again be sundered. We quote some
of the more personal parts of the Journal
premising as we do so that while we believe
that as a rule such Intimate revelations should
be sacred to the one to whom they are written,
we also believe that there are times when their
truest lessons may rightfully be carefully
studied by others In kindred needs. Both
Irving and his wife, we believe, to-day would

36 EDWARD IRVING:
willingly share with others the full knowledge
of whatever depths of pain God led them
through to peace and perfect fellowship. If
by that sharing, others might be warned, com
forted and strengthened. Moreover, It Is only
by realizing the depths of Irving's nature as
husband and father In this sad but uplifting
experience as well as by studying him care
fully as he defends himself later before the
London Presbytery, that one can truly under
stand and appreciate the sincere, tender soul
of the man and the logical, consistent course
of the faithful Minister of Jesus Christ. We
give in their sequence, though with much ab
breviation, some of these intimate communings.
"Nov. 7th. Though wearied, my dearest
Isabella, with a day of much activity, and
afterward with an exposition, and now with
much discourse and discussion to James P.
whom I like exceedingly, and William Hamil
ton, all concerning the subordination of the
sensual and visible, and the intellectual or
knowable to the spiritual or redeemable, I do
now sit down with true spiritual delight to
commune with my soul's sweet mate. Yea,
hath not the Lord made us for one another,
and by His providence united us to one an
other, against many fiery trials and terrible
delusions of Satan.'' And, as you yourself

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 37
observed, has He not over again wedded us,
far more closely than In any joy, by our late
tribulation, and the burial of our lovely Ed
ward, our holy first bom, who gave up the
ghost in order to make his father and mother
one, and expiate the discords and dmsions of
their souls.'' Dear spirit, thou dearest spirit
which doth tenant heaven, this is the mystery
of thy burial on the wedding day of thy par
ents, to make them forever one. Oh, and
thou shalt be sanctified, God blessing, by
such a concord and harmony of soul as
hath not often blessed the earth since Eden
was forfeited by sin. My wife, this Is not
poetry, this Is not Imagination, which I write:
It Is truth that lovely Edward hath been the
sweet offering of peace between us forever ;
and so, when we meet In heaven, he shall be as
the priest who joined us — ^the child of months
being one hundred years old. Let my dear
wife be comforted by these thoughts of her
true love. I found much sweet meditation
upon my bed last night, and when I awoke In
the morning. He was with me, and I had much
countenance of the Lord in my secret devo
tions. . . . Farewell, dear Isabella. You
cannot have so much pleasure in reading these
as I have in writing them. The blessing of
the Lord be with my babe" — (the little Mar
garet) "My tender babe. The blessing of the

38 EDWARD IRVING:
Lord be with her mother, — ^her tempted but
victorious mother.
"Nov. 9th. I wish to read the Sabbath les
sons, at least In the Hebrew. ... It
would perhaps be an entertainment to your
heart to accompany me, that we do not be
divided In this study when we meet again.
But I forget that you have the dear babe to
watch over ; for whom, my dear, let our souls
be exercised rather than for the dead.
"Nov. 10th. . . . Our little boy! thou
art incorporated with my memory dearly, with
my hope thou art incorporated still more
dearly. We will come, when our Lord doth
call, to thee and to the general assembly of
the first born. Oh, Isabella, I exhort thee to
be diligent In thy prayers for thee and me!
"Nov. 16th. Dear, lovely Edward, what a
sweet tabernacle was that over which thy
mother and I wept so sadly ! My much be
loved child, my much cherished, much beloved
child, dwell In the mercies of my God, and the
God of thy mother ! We will follow thee be
times, God strengthening us for the journey.
"Nov. 21st. May the Lord of His great
mercy fill my soul with the fullness of love to my
dear wife; that as Christ loved the Church, I
may love her, and In like manner manifest with
all gracious words my unity of soul with her
soul ; that we may be one as Thou, our Creator,

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 39
didst Intend man and woman to be from the
beginning."
Thus end our quotations from this rare
journal of love, tenderness, pain and overcom
ing faith. The hand that wrote it and the
eyes that dwelt with tender gladness upon it,
have been dust for scores of years, but doubt
less somewhere among the dearest treasures of
the remaining Irving family, still lie In safety
these time-colored pages. Strange that per
ishable paper, far less durable than parch
ment, should outlast the Intensest mortal feel
ings; but, thank God, we may believe that
while these records must also some day crumble
into dust, the souls that lived and suffered and
overcame, are still but on the threshold of their
eternal life and growth and service, going on
forever Into all the fullness of God's truth,
now no longer parted from their once vanished
boy. We believe that no mother of a vanished
child can read this Journal-letter without feel
ing In her heart a strange and unforgetable
kinship to the man who wrote It; nor that any
wife to whom children have not been given can
read It without realizing that It is truly better
to have loved and "lost awhile" than to have
missed the deepest human loving^ and that
1 Although Thomas Carlyle and his wife passed
through no such experiences of bereavement, words

40 EDWARD IRVING:
even the depth of a sorrow like the Irvings'
must become and remain, glorified by the con-
written by each prove that another sorrow, keener if
possible than that of the Irvings, became theirs as the
years went on, and we deem it as just to their memory,
each once so closely associated with Irving, to quote
lines that prove their nobility in their loneliness as
clearly as Irving proved his in his letter to his wife.
We find in Mrs. Carlyle's exquisite "Lines to a Swal
low Building under Our Eaves" abundant proof of the
pain of childless loneliness, as truly as in Carlyle's
reference to her little chair. One stanza of her pathetic
poem runs thus: —
"God speed thee, pretty bird; may thy small nest
With little ones all in good time be blessed.
I love thee much;
For well thou managest that life of thine,
While I; oh, ask not what I do with mine!
Would I were such!"
Some time after his wife's death Mr. Carlyle wrote:
"Her little bit of a first chair, its wee, wee arms, etc.,
visible to me in the closet at this moment, is still here,
and always was; I have looked at it hundreds of times:
from of old, with many thoughts. No daughter or son
of hers was to sit there; so it had been appointed us,
my Darling. I have no Book thousandth part so beau
tiful as Thou; but these were our only 'Children,' and
in a true sense, these were verily OURS; and will per
haps live some time in the world, after we are both
gone; and be of no damage to the poor brute chaos of
a world, let us hope! The will of the Supreme shall be
accomplished; Amen."
Could there be given a sweeter, yet more plaintive echo
from the heart of the home, so full of genius, so
thronged by the noblest in the world then living, and
yet lacking one of God's supreme gifts, the love and
joyousness of little children?

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 41
sciousness of the Immortality of a love that
those only can fully understand who have
known It.
The death of their boy seems to have been
the one thing needed to lift Edward Irving
above all human selfishness and transform him
into a minister of God consecrated In every de
sire and longing only to deliver with absolute
loyalty whatever he believed to be God's mes
sage to men. Thenceforth, unlimited service,
many a conflict, and eventually a broken heart
lay before him within the radius of a few
short years, but no one reading his life and
labors dispassionately can question that he
went forth to meet his future as seeing the
Invisible and caring only for the doing of
God's will. Back to their united work a little
later went Irving and his wife, thenceforth with
perfectly united hearts, but to pass Into ever
Increasing labors, and in a few short years
into deepening ecclesiastical clouds.

CHAPTER VI
Growing Influence. New Church in Regent's
Square. Peculiar Dedications to Books.
Unpopular Missionary Sermon.
Mr. Irving had no time for society as such,
yet there was no man outside the highest polit
ical positions more prominently before the
public In those days than he. His wife wholly
adapted herself to his home requirements.
Their breakfast table became one of the lead
ing religious centers of London. Around it
gathered every morning, representatives of all
classes prominent in every line of Christian
serrice, or earnest seekers after truth. For a
couple of hours a day Irving gave himself to
this method of meeting his fellows. How he
managed in the remaining twenty- two hours
of the day to accomplish the work he did, is
a mystery. His church grew and prospered
to such an extent that within two years a new
building had to he erected, and one large,
commodious and beautiful was built by Irving's
exertions in Regent's Square, a much more
desirable part of the city. It too was crowded
to its utmost capacity and his influence seemed
monthly to extend In all directions. On all

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 43
great occasions he was prominent in his own
denomination and in much demand elsewhere.
His popularity constantly Increased and he
seemed one of the strongest and most Inspired
of preachers. He spoke as one of the old
prophets — more and more the crowds clamored
to hear him. Wherever he went on the briefest
notice congregations gathered too large for
the churches to hold; but such was the power
of his well-trained voice that even out of doors
on the outskirts of crowds of ten or twelve
thousand, he was clearly heard and without
apparent effort.
Walking as he was, as seeing the Inrislble,
It was not long before he ran straight against
the visible and tangible. As a rule, prudent
writers preface their books so as to attract
the Interest and not to arouse In advance the
criticism of their readers. But Irving spoke
as plainly of his motive In writing his books
as he did courageously of the subject In the
books themselves ; and the preface to his first
book, "Orations and Arguments for Judgment
to Come" (1823), fell like a bomb Into the
ranks of his clerical breth^'en. To quote from
It, he says : "It hath appeared to the Author
of this book, from more than ten years' medita
tion upon the subject, that the chief obstacle
to the progress of divine truth over the minds
of men, is the want of its being properly pre-

44 EDWARD IRVING:
sented to them. This Ignorance, In both the
higher and lower orders, of Religion as a dis-
cerner of the thoughts and intentions of the
heart, is not so much due to the want of In-
quisltlveness on their part, as to the want of
a sedulous and skillful ministry on the part of
them to whom this ministry is entrusted. To
this end they must discover new vehicles for
conveying the truth as it Is in Jesus, Into the
minds of the people, poetical, historical, scien
tific, political and sentimental vehicles. They
prepare men for teaching gypsies, for teaching
bargemen, for teaching miners ; men who under
stand their ways of conceiving and estimating
truth; why not train ourselves for teaching
Imaginative and political men, and legal men,
and medical men? And, having got the key
to their several chambers of delusion and re
sistance, why not enter In and debate the mat
ter with their souls.? Then shall they be left
without excuse; meanwhile, I think, we minis
ters are without excuse."
Accustomed still more In those days than In
these to hold themselves at liberty to criticise
instead of to be criticised, one can easily
Imagine the effect of such words upon minis
ters at large. To some It came as a clarion
call to deeper consecration and more perfect
work; In others It aroused the fighting blood
and prepared the way for union against

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 45
Irving later. That book, as did all his books,
had a large sale, and more and more men's
eyes were fixed upon Its author. The next
event that placed him. If not In antagonism
to his brethren, in seeming criticism of their
methods for Christian serrice, came In a mis
sionary sermon preached before the London
Missionary Society In 1824.
From the beginning of modem missions, no
country had been more deeply interested in
them nor contributed more largely to them
both In men and money, In proportion to her
ability, than Scotland. It was an interest
deeply seated In the hearts of all Scottish
Christians, and no efforts were spared to win
success. The annual preachers before the as
semblies were chosen from their most talented
men, and the man selected had reason to be
lieve himself alike honored and trusted by his
brethren. Of course the work could not be
carried on without funds ; and the larger the
contributions secured, the more effectively
could the work be carried forward. Irving at
that time seemed second only to Chalmers in
the ranks of their preachers, and the sermon
he was Inrited to give was anticipated with
enthusiasm both as an opportunity for hearing
the man at his best and for securing a large
contribution. But to those trusting to his
power to fill the coffers of the Society, Irving

46 EDWARD IRVING:
proved an unknown quantity. We have seen
that In earlier days he had seriously con
sidered becoming a missionary, and had formed
high Ideals of the work, and it was therefore
no new subject for his thoughts. Perhaps he
himself can best tell the story of the feeling
his call to preach the sermon produced in him,
and his method of preparing his sermon. He
said later: "It seemed to my conscience that I
had undertaken a duty full of peril and respon
sibility, for which I ought to prepare myself
with every preparation of the mind and spirit,
and thus, not without much prayer to God, and
self-devotion, I meditated those things which
I delivered In public."
The day for the meeting came. It proved
wet and dreary, but long before the hour for
the service there were such crowds in the
streets that the vast hall was thrown open and
was Immediately filled to the doors, leaving
crowds outside standing in the rain, In the
hope that they might later fill vacated places.
An hour before the appointed time Irving en
tered the pulpit and at once addressed him
self to his work. His text was Matthew x:5-
42. The length of this sermon Is not told;
but the fact that often his sermons were three
hours In length without Intermission, and that
In this sermon there were two pauses for sing
ing and for rest for the people, proves that

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 47
it must have been much longer than his usual
sermons. It Is also told somewhat naively
that most of the dinners of the Presbyterians
In London were spoiled that day, which may
not have added in the minds of some to their
appreciation of the lessons of the sermon.
But little noted Edward Irring the passing
of the hours. He forgot time and place and
established Christian methods. He remembered
only the Master, the work, and the end ; and the
thoughts of the perfect Christian service that
had been springing up In his own soul during
those years of silent consecration, burst forth
in a resistless tide upon his astonished hearers.
He began after a few preliminaries with a
most unexpected statement. "This is the age
of expediency," he said, "both In the Church
and out of the Church, and all institutions are
modeled upon the principles of expediency and
carried Into effect by the rules of prudence.
I remember, In this metropolis, tO' have heard
It uttered and received with great applause in
a public meeting, where the heads and leaders
of the religious world were present, 'If I were
asked what was the first qualification for a
missionary, I would say, Prudence ; and what
the second? Prudence; and what the third?
Prudence.' I trembled while I heard, not with
indignation but with horror and apprehension,
of what the end would be of a spirit which I

48 EDWARD IRVING:
have since found to be the presiding genius of
our actirity, the rule of the ascendant. Now,
If I read the eleventh chapter of St. Paul's
Epistle to the Hebrews, I find that from the
time of Abel to the time of Christ, it was by
faith that the cloud of witnesses witnessed
their good confession, and so mightily pre
vailed, which faith Is there defined the sub
stance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen; whereas prudence or ex
pediency Is the substance of things present, the
evidence of things seen. So that faith and
prudence are opposite poles in the soul, the
one attracting to It all things spiritual and
divine, the other all things sensual and earthly.
This expediency hath banished the soul of
patriotic eloquence from our senate, the spirit
of high equity from our legislation, self-deny
ing wisdom from our philosophy, and of our
poetry It hath clipped the angel Tring and
forced It to creep along the earth. And if we
look not to It, It will strangle faith and make
void the reality of the things which are not
seen, which are the only things that are
real and cannot be removed. Money, money,
money, Is the universal cry. Mammon
hath gotten the victory, and may say
triumphantly (nay, he may keep silence and the
servants of Christ will say it for him), 'With
out me ye can do nothing.' "

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 49
Thence he proceeded to quote the words of
Christ himself In the various gospels, and the
records of the men who through all the ages
have witnessed noble confessions for the truth
In Christ Jesus as they saw It, and gladly given
all they had In his service, outlining what he
believed to be Christ's will in the preaching of
the gospel to those who had not heard It. He
certainly believed that he was declaring the
real mind of the Lord Jesus Christ In this ser
mon. But no bombshell straight from the
camp of an enemy ever produced greater con
fusion and anger in the ranks of an army
marching against it, than did this plain Gos
pel re-statement of Christ's missionary teach
ings produce among nearly all British Chris
tians. Both preacher and congregation have
gone their ways Into the land of perfect un
derstandings since that remote day; but that
sermon Is still extant and any reader can
easily see in Its pages how far Irving's Ideals
differed from, or agreed with, his Master's.
The Scotch are a practical people. Probably
most of his hearers had determined the amount
of their offering beforehand, and the collec
tion may not have fallen much below that
amount; but it certainly did not empty so
many pockets as a different line of teaching
might have done, and Irving had written
another interrogation point In the minds

50 EDWARD IRVING:
of many of his brethren against his name.
The sermon was at once published, and in
a very long preface he dedicates it, of all men,
to Samuel T. Coleridge, then little known, and
till that time a not highly accredited philoso
pher. In this introduction Mr. Irving pro
ceeds after this wise further to astonish his
own denomination and the world at large.
He acknowledges as well understood, the mis
understanding and misrepresentation that Mr.
Coleridge had received alike from the church
and the world — a misunderstanding he per
sonally had once shared, but asserts that, com
ing to know him thoroughly, "you have been
more profitable to my faith in orthodox doc
trine, to my spiritual understanding of the
Word of God, and to my right conception of
the Christian church, than any or all the men
with whom I have entertained friendship or
conversation." This was but the beginning of
the dedication and It lost nothing In pungency
as It proceeded. The years that have followed
have shown that Irving, if among the first
really to feel and frankly confess the power of
Coleridge, was by no means the last or least.
No dedication could have been less "prudent,"
so far as Irving was concerned; but he went
his way unheeding what men said or thought,
so long as he spoke the truth he saw and felt.

CHAPTER VII
Mr. Hatley Frere. Mr. Henry Drummond
and Albury Conferences. Irvimg Declares
Christ the Head of the Church and Creeds
Finite. About this time Mr. Irving became ac
quainted with a Mr. Hatley Frere, a person
who was to exercise much influence over his
future by turning his mind into the serious
study of prophecy. This man, noted for his
learning and his high spirituality, was strongly
convinced that In the Bible was foretold the
second coming of Christ, near the period In
which men were then living. Nothing was
more natural than that Irving In his Intense
belief In revelation, should have felt the strong
est desire to test as far as he could the truth
of these suggestions ; and when Henry Drum
mond of Albury Park, Surrey, with others, en
tered upon this study, Irring joined them with
deepest Interest. Of Henry Drummond Mrs.
Oliphant says that he was at once "a religious
leader and the patron of religious distress
throughout the world; an independent influence
and most caustic critic In the British Parlia
ment; a believer in all the mysteries of faith,
51

52 EDWARD IRVING:
yet a contemptuous denouncer of everything
beyond the shadowy line which he recognized
as diriding faith from superstition ; the tem
poral head. In some respects, of a band of
religionists, and yet a man In full communion
with the busy world, keeping the ear of society,
and never out of the fullest tide of life." At
his house for years he assembled by special In-
ritation clergymen from all orthodox de
nominations, as well as laymen who were known
to be Interested In prophetic studies. There a
week was given under the most perfect condi
tions, to study on these important questions.
This would now be called a Retreat. It was
then simply the Albury Conference. Out of
this Conference, as the result of ostracism in
their own churches and their desire for higher
spiritual fellowship, later grew the Catholic
Apostolic Church, In the formation of which,
Irving, then a Presbyterian, had no share and
was never a prominent member of It, although
for many years after his death its members
were, by his countrymen and generally, called
Irvlngltes ; probably because he was the most
celebrated man who entered its communion
after his own church had cast him out. We
should say In passing, that this church, noted
for the splendor of Its ritual but still more for
the genuine Christian brotherhood among Its
members, and Its peculiar organization — pat-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 53
terned as much as possible after the order of
the apostolic days — still exists, not given to
proselyting but still calmly confident of Its own
call to announce the latest revelation of truth,
and awaiting serenely the speedy coming of the
Kingdom of Christ on earth.
Mr. Irring had always modeled his belief
not merely by human creeds or formulas but
by the New Testament Itself, and he began to
find to his surprise that all men did not find
In the New Testament what he found there and
by degrees he became the subject of much
criticism from unexpected sources. The head
ship of Christ to the church, the oneness In
Him of all believers. Including all the baptized
whether adults or Infants, and the sure and
speedy coming of His Kingdom were henceforth
to be the basis of all his thinking and of all
his service to the church. To understand the
position In which his belief in the oneness of all
believers placed him, one must glance a moment
at the theological condition of the church in
Irving's day. The Roman, the Episcopal and
the Presbyterian churches each believed them
selves the sole repositories of truth and
regarded men outside their own commun
ion either as heretics or heathen. Irving
was a loyal Presbyterian, and had no
thought of stepping outside that fold; but
as the two disciples walking to Emmaus

54 EDWARD IRVING:
felt their hearts burn within them as
they listened to the words of one a seeming
stranger, concerning the crucifixion and the
resurrection and felt strangely drawn to Him,
so Truth wherever he found it, In the Fathers
of his own church, in the anonymous writings
of the Jesuits, or anywhere where It seemed to
him a message from God, Irving's whole heart
responded and he did all in his power to give
to others the impression he himself received.
His writings became most voluminous. He
was In demand everywhere as a preacher on
special occasions. His church prospered
mightily, and he was multiplying outside means
of service for himself and for his people on
every side, in many respects not unlike the spirit
if not the methods of the present Salvationists.
Engaged In religious work that seems as we
read of it, sufficient to have engrossed the lives
of two men, he was also a profound student
and fared steadily on, eagerly absorbing all
books that seemed breathings of new truths or
of old truths that he set forth In a new
vitality that were to mark new eras In Chris
tian thought and hope long after he had been
laid In his grave, hurried thither by the sor
rows and storms evoked by his loyalty to the
Spirit by which God whispered into his soul,
as clearly as In earlier days other "voices"
had led Jean d'Arc to the stake.

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 55
Believing In the divinity of Christ, Irving
accepted Him as the only, though Invisible
Head of the Church ; and as it seemed per
fectly right and natural to him, believed that
all men everywhere, striving toward the Truth
they saw, were His brethren and therefore one
In Him. He was still a thorough Presbyte
rian, but one modeled on the New Testament as
he read It, and considering creeds only human
Interpretations thereof. Had he realized It as
he was to later, this was by no means either
a "wise" or a "prudent" line of action. With
in a very few years we of to-day have seen that
some divergence in thinking on lines theolog
ical may oust a prominent man from a high
position In a church, and Irving, going forward
in the simplicity of his faith, was to be one of
the most notable examples of the results of
standing too literally on the teachings of the
New Testament.
As time went on, Irving's Influence seemed
extending in every direction, his church was
growing rapidly, his young men were practis
ing all methods of evangelistic work in the
streets and in the dwellings of the poor, and
books and pamphlets were coming regularly
from his pen, some of them worth reprinting
more than thirty years after his death, and he
was yearly attending the Albury Conferences.
Still there was no cry of heresy in the air.

66 EDWARD IRVING:
About this time occurred an accident which was
later used by his enemies as a proof of a judg
ment of God against him. It may be stated
that there are few such accidents to-day. Irv
ing had gone to his wife's early home to per
form the marriage ceremony between her sister
and one of the elders of his church. Inrited
to preach as he always was when away from
his own church, the parish church on Sunday
evening was crowded to such an extent that
one of the galleries fell beneath the crowd,
killing eighteen people and seriously injuring
many. Distressing as was this accident at the
time, it is doubtful If any one then had the
slightest prerision that It would later be
quoted solemnly as proof of God's disapproval
of Irving ; yet it was.
Not caring to cite any of the Illustrations
that still remain of his eloquence, magnificent
as they are, even deprived of the wondrous
music of his voice, and the grandeur of his
presence, our aim Is simply to quote enough
of his varied addresses to prove his intense
spiritual earnestness, and that but one motive
— the glory of God, and power to' draw men
Godward, — controlled him from the beginning
till the ending of his career as a minister of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Given a little out of
Its order here, we subjoin another proof of
the simplicity as well as power of his preach-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 57
ing, taken from his sermon at the ordination
of the Rev. Hugh McLean, pastor-elect of the
Scots' Church, London Wall. In this sermon
we find so clearly expressed his own opinions
of the duties and experiences of the faithful
Christian minister, that we think It wise to
quote enough of It to epitomize the sum of his
own thinking as to the most desirable results
of a faithful ministry, — not wealth, not
popularity, nothing that men call success
measured by an earthly standard. This
charge to the young pastor presents the
strongest possible refutation to Carlyle's as
sertion, that, when "fashion went her Idle way,"
Irving, to draw them back again, was capable
of resorting to what would have been mere
tricks of trade to fill again his diminishing
audiences. Fashion's votaries still crowded
about him and with an Infinite sadness Irring
gazed down Into their faces, realizing with un
utterable pathos how little they were willing
or able to take of the Infinite treasures God
was offering to them. There is no hint of
disappointed vanity In this address. It has
rather the ring of a man far' removed from
vanity or from fear, one following closely in
the footsteps of a crucified Master, yet sure
that he is In full accord with a risen and over
coming Lord, that Lord the hope of whose
reappearing was even now filling Irving's

58 EDWARD IRVING:
heart with ever-growing hope. As always, m
this address, Irving blends the practical with
the spiritual. He says, in part:
"I speak of those many functions which the
new man hath to discharge toward those to
whom we are related by other ties than the
ministerial, or the pastoral, or the ecclesiasti
cal, — to friends and to acquaintances, to ser
vants, to men in general, and to the society
of which thou art a member, and to the civil
polity of which thou art a subject. For the
present, thou must dwell, like a wayfaring man,
In a lodging; but I trust thou wilt soon be
master of thine own house, to give thy people
a pattern of household government, as Joshua
resolved to do, and as every bishop and every
elder is required to do. Thou wilt keep hos
pitality; but accumulate riches at thy peril.
Oh, If thou grow rich, — oh, if thou shouldst
die rich, I will be ashamed of thee. Look at
the hard hearts of rich men ; look at their self-
importance ; look at their contempt of Christ ;
and pray, oh earnestly pray, to be kept from
that greatest snare. Thy cloak and thy
parchments, brother, — that Is, thy decent ap
parel and thy books, — ^be these thy riches, and
then thou canst speak out against Mammon,
and tell those men of thousands and tens of
thousands, who thou art surrounded with.

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 59
what they should do with their treasures. If
thou spare them, God will not spare thee. I
give thee It In charge this day, that thou re
prove them, and their accumulations sharply.
Keep thou hospitality. Shew thou to lordly
prelates what the word bishop meaneth. Shew
thou to substantial citizens what the word hos
pitality meaneth; and to all, what faith
meaneth. Go thou out as poor a man as thou
came In; and let them bury thee when thou
diest. And If God should bless thee with a
wife and children, put no money In the bank
for them, but write prayers in the record of
the book of life ; be this thy bank of faith ; be
this thy exchange, even the proridence of God ;
and let the lords of thy treasury be the proph
ets and the apostles who went before thee.
Oh, my brother, be zealous for the good primi
tive customs of the Church; abjure thou the
prudential maxims of this metallic age. Oh,
be thou a man far above this world, living by
faith In the world to come like one of tho elders
who have obtained a good report. Be thou of
a bold countenance and a Hon heart, of a single
eye and a simple spirit ; otherwise Satan will
soon hedge thee in and mow thee up ; he will
come to thee as a counsellor, but we of the
presbytery, whose voice I now speak, are thy
counsellors ; he will come to thee as a
threatener; but who dare meddle with thee, who

60 EDWARD IRVING:
art Christ's anointed minister; he will come to
thee as a flatterer; be thou therefore honest
and self-denied. If thou do thy duty, as I
trust thou wilt, thy dearest friends will come
to warn thee, and will exceedingly afflict thee
by their apprehensions; but thou art not to be
seduced by friends, being this day charged by
the whole Church of Christ to be faithful unto
Christ, and to no other allegiance. The time
is coming, yea, now is, when thou mayest have
to testify against wickedness In high places,
as did the fathers of the Church; and thou
must, and then there will come about thine ears
such a hurricane of stormy voices; but, like
Elijah, thou must stand In the cleft of the
rock till it passeth by. But, If thou hast any
floating Interest, If thou hast any selfish end,
canst thou stand all this, my brother? no, thou
wilt shrink and yield every limb of thee. If
thou art not ready to die, get ready as fast as
thou mayest ; for the soldier In the battle who
Is not ready to die hath two enemies to fight ;
and if thou be not ready to die for Christ, thou
mayest have a hundred; but If thou be ready
to die for Christ thou hast but one, who Is
emphatically the enemy, against whom, that all
thine energies may be collected, give this day
all Interests, all affections, all gains, all talents,
all things unto the Lord, and count them but
as dung that thou mayest win Christ. What

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 61
the Lord Jesus, who was followed by a multi
tude, did say to them Indiscriminately, I may
well tum round and say to thee His soldier.
His captain of a hundred, yet, I trust, to be
His captain of a thousand, — 'He that would
be my disciple must hate father and mother,
and sister and wife, and children, and houses
and lands, and his own life also, — must take
up his cross, and follow me.' "
Remembering that the Lord Jesus had been
first followed by multitudes and afterward
crucified by some of these same multitudes,
Irving, as clear-eyed In his analysis of men
and their motives as he was single-hearted In
his devotion to Christ, must have known, If
man ever did, that mere personal popularity
was as transitory and valueless as the beauty
of a vanishing soap-bubble. He spoke but his
truest, deepest thoughts in this most apostolic
charge. Of It Mrs. Oliphant says most truly
that "it reads like an ode of the most thrilling
and splendid music." It is a gladness to re
member that the man so charged walked step
by step with Irving through all the coming
changes of Irving's remaining years ; and,
faithful unto death In all the truth God opened
to him as to Irving, years after Irving had
been called home, he, too, went forward Into
that perfect knowledge toward which, together,
they had bravely striven.

CHAPTER VIII
Cry of Heresy. Religious Awakening in Scot
land. Peculiar Manifestations. Baptism of
the Holy Spirit. Advent of the "Tongues"
in Scotland. First and Second Cases of
Healing in Scotland (Presbyterian). Case
of Miss Fancourt, in London (Episcopal
lian). Mr. Irving's Attitude towards These
Facts.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, in no Prot
estant land were the Bible and the Presbyte
rian Church more deeply enshrined in the hearts
of Its people than in Scotland. For years In
the 17th century the Lowlands had been
drenched with the blood of its martyrs and
confessors. In his youth and later, Edward
Irving's long lonely walks among the hills and
moors led often by the graves of martyrs
whom Claverhouse and his dragoons had slain.
A few miles below Annan lay Wigtown where
was still pointed out the spot where on the
then dry sands had been placed the stakes to
which were bound two women left to die by
the Incoming tide, who had refused every offer
of release If they would "take the test," and

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 63
died triumphantly, remembered with grateful
reverence even In Irving's day. In short, the
Bible and Presbyterlanism had been so welded
as by fire Into the souls of the Scotch, that to
them probably more than to any other cause,
Scotland owes It long line of heroic and In
tellectual men, and saintly women. No de
scendants of that land, exiled to the ends of
the earth though they may be, can ever
think of the home of their ancestry without a
thanksgiring for the Influences mental and
spiritual that they have Inherited from that
land, even from Its lowliest homes. Naturally
among such a people, and In Edward Irring's
day, no disgrace could cause more suffering
to a sensitive, loyal son of the Presbyterian
church, than the charge of heresy — a dis
tress all the deeper probably. In proportion
to its Injustice, and yet that charge, deadly
as It was, was imminent in Irving's path, for
suddenly a new sensation burst upon the
Presbytery. Like the first gunshot In the
early morning that betokens the presence of
hostile forces, the cry of heresy fell upon
Irving's astonished ears. He had been preach
ing upon the human nature of Christ and
claiming that because He was human He must
have been "tempted In all points like as we
are." A man of the deepest sympathies him
self, few have felt more keenly the full mean-

64 EDWARD IRVING:
Ing of the words, "Himself bore our griefs and
carried our sorrows," and "was in all points
tempted like as we are," and to him in an un
usual degree Christ was more pre-eminently
human than any other man who has worn the
veil of flesh, at the same time that he was also
to him God enshrined In flesh. He had been
speaking very freely of the brotherhood of
Christ and His pity even for the tempted and
fallen, not forgetting as he went on the Divine
fellowship. A Mr. Cole among his hearers, a
churchless clergyman with plenty of time for
heresy-hunting, bred in the extremest school of
the old theology, was horrified by the Idea that
temptation eould have had any power over
Christ the sinless, and followed Irving Into his
vestry to ask If he really meant what he had
been saying. Of course he replied that he did,
quoting the Scriptures to sustain his position.
Cole rushed away, inflamed with theological
anger, and In a day or two burst Into print
with the most violent Invectives against Irv
ing's theology. Thus another train was laid,
with occasional additions from Cole, of supplies
for the coming disaster.
About this time Irving went as was his wont
when seeking rest from city service, on a walk
ing tour through Scotland, preaching often
two or three times a day, spending hours In
earnest conference with friends whom he visited

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 65
by the way, whose thoughts were like his own.
Wesley's great work among the English poor,
culminating In the powerful Methodist church,
had been crowned by his triumphant death just
before Irving's birth ; but the work he had so,
wondrously begun was still going on, while on
other theological lines Maurice, Newman and
Martineau, each still In his early manhood,
were unconsciously preparing for the work set
for them to do ; and now, to Scotland, was com
ing a new wave of deepening and uplifting
spiritual life. Scattered at various points In
the land, among laymen such men as Erskine
of Linlathen, and In the pulpits Campbell of
Row and Story of Rosneath and many another
as devout yet now forgotten teacher, were
eagerly bending forward and listening as they
believed to calls to Christller living and clearer
visions of the coming kingdom of God. Of
these, Campbell, although Chalmers said of
him later, "His was the most saintly soul I
have ever known," was to precede Irving to
the pillory ; — he also was to be tried before his
own Presbytery, and judged, not by the testi
mony of his peers, but by casual hearers of
every rank and every degree of Intelligence.
He also was to be silenced, yet his memory still
lingers among readers of old Christian litera
ture like the fragrance of a broken box of
ointment. Erskine in his quiet study, a place

66 EDWARD IRVING:
that proved safer than a pulpit, sent forth
such works as "The Unconditional Freeness of
the Gospel," and, judged by Its author's peers
In Christian thought and scholarship, the work
made its mark on true thinkers, while the
author, as a literary man, was safe from
theological persecution.
It was Inevitable that Irving's own spiritual
consecration should have been deepened and en
larged by conferences with such men as these,
and that with ever increasing earnestness he
should have believed in the speedy coming of
the kingdom of God, thus by a few years fore
shadowing the coming to our day of such men
as D. L. Moody of the world's ministry, Dr.
A. J. Gordon of Boston, and hundreds of others
of our most consecrated men.
On his vacation tours from and to London,
crowds of working men were anxious to listen
even on week-days, to Irving's preaching, and
as they were only able to attend his serrices
before five o'clock In the morning or after nine
in the evening, he was accustomed to preach
before five and after nine to large congrega
tions gathered from the neighboring localities.
In some of the cities crowds of from ten to
twelve thousand gathered in the open air to
hear him ; and such was his control of his
voice that the listeners on the outskirts heard
him distinctly, while those near him were not

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 67
conscious of unpleasant effort. Certainly no
common message from any common man could
have attracted crowds at such untimely hours,
or massed such audiences In the streets ; and it
Is said that In the cottages where he rested,
the poor listened as eagerly as did those of
earlier days to his Master.
Returning Invigorated to London, Irving
pressed on with increased zeal in the multiply
ing labors that came to him. The annual con
ferences at Albury came and went and In them
he entered into deep spiritual communion with
men outside his own denomination. In whose
minds he is said to have assisted In develop
ing the thought of the Broad Church, since so
Important In the Church of England. The
majority of the Alburians were Churchmen and
by his Intimate association with them, meeting
and speaking with them, and now) and then
welcoming them Into his own pulpit as If they
were Indeed his brethren in Christ Jesus, Irving
was laying broad the foundation for one of the
two charges that led to his deposition. One
can never think of the great men then pressing
forward In the Church of England, of that
great Church's freedom In non-essentials, of
the high service she was and Is rendering and
Is to render to' the world at large — one can
never recall these things, while still remember
ing all that was steadily drawing nearer to

68 EDWARD IRVING:
Irring, even to the breaking In sunder of his
uncompleted years and the temporary thwart
ing of his message to the world, without a
sense of inexpressible regret that that great
sheltering and strengthening Church had not
won him permanently Into Its communion ; and
yet In that case the world would have lost the
lesson of one of the subllmest overcomlngs In
Its later years.
About this same time, too, one Alexander
Scott, still a Probationer, but in those days a
man of such rare clearness of thought and ap-
preriatlon of spiritual truths that a great
future which he failed to achieve was expected
for him, came into Irving's friendship and
helped to deepen, though he does not seem to
have originated, the lines of thought In which
Irving was treading. Irring was more and
more looking forward to the coming of the
kingdom of God, and In connection with the men
before referred to — Campbell, Story and
Erskine — In his books and by his sermons
broadcast was awakening, especially In Scot
land and In London, ever deepening Interest In
the reviring messages of the gospel. In many
of the towns as well as In many of the humble
cottages of Scotland, new heights and depths In
God's Inexhaustible love and power seemed
awaiting the acceptance of saintly souls. Who
can estimate the force of the marvelous sense

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 69
of being permitted to touch by faith the divine
love and power, that is able fully to redeem,
able to give health of soul and health of body
as well. And yet bodily healing had not thus
far even entered Into their Imaginations, for
these humble Christians were conscious only of
deepening rest in God and a strange indescrib
able sense of His nearness to them.
We do not profess In any degree to be able
to understand, much less to explain, the re
markable phenomena we are about to describe ;
but into this restful and prayerful atmosphere,
unheralded, came events strangely like similar
ones that occurred to the early Christians and,
one would think, might have been received as
indications of coming blessing, rather than of
evil, by a devout church, and that yet were
destined to become the cause of much heart
burning and to be smothered by conscientious
though timid Christians before they were In
any degree understood. The day of William
James and his "Varieties of Religious Ex
perience" had not then dawned, and disaster
to existing conditions seemed Imminent. There
has been and still Is so much misconception
concerning what were called the "Gifts of
Tongues," and "Healing," that we perforce
give a somewhat detailed account of their
origin In which, by the way, Irving had no part
unless, as all Christians profess to believe,

70 EDWARD IRVING:
prayer Is an active power with God. In Lon
don he and his people had certainly been pray
ing for the return of the "Gifts."
The advent of "The Tongues," so-called, was
on this wise : On a little farm near Fermlcarry
at the head of the Gairlock, not far distant from
Glasgow, lived a family named Campbell, noted
for Its quiet simplicity and unusual salntllness.
Their peculiar traits even in sorrowful circum
stances, had awakened a deep sympathy in all,
notably among their wealthier* neighbors. A
sister, Isabella, had died a while before, leaving
such an Impression of holiness that had she been
a Catholic, her home Would have become the
shrine of the countryside. A younger sister,
Mary, had Inherited many of her sister's char
acteristics physically and spiritually. She too
was apparently In, the last stages of tuber
culosis and supposed by all to be rapidly near
ing the end. Thought by others to be dying,
she like many another consumptive, seemed
to cling strangely to life and to hopes of future
usefulness. Irving, who was later attracted to
the scene by what occurred there beforei his
visit, may describe It : "It was on the Lord's
day; and one of her sisters, along with a
woman friend who had come to the house for
that end, had been spending the whole day in
humiliation and fasting and prayer before God
with special respect to the restoration of the

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 71
'Gifts.' They had come up In the evening
to the sick chamber of their sister who was laid
on a sofa, and along with some others of the
family were engaged In prayer. In the midst
of their devotion the Holy Ghost came with
mighty power upon the sick woman as she lay
In her weakness, and constrained her to speak
at great length and with superhuman strength
in an unknown tongue, to the astonish
ment of all who heard, and to her own
great edification and enjoyment In God,
'for he that speaketh with a tongue
edifieth himself only.' " Thus, apparently
without human agency, certainly without Irv
ing's, came the gift of tongues, whose tolera
tion was later to be one of the cogent reasons
for condemning Irving as a half Insane fanatic.
Just across the Clyde, In the little town of
Port Glasgow, lived at the same time another
family, as noted among their friends for re
ligious sincerity and humility as were the
Campbells among theirs. The fame of the
Campbells was so widely spread that many had
heard of their religious experiences who did not
know them personally. The McDonalds were
among this number. In this family were two
brothers, ship-builders, plain, quiet Christian
men, and an Invalid sister. They too were
soon to be singled out from their neighbors
and to stand forward In a new and unlocked-

72 EDWARD IRVING:
for prominence In their little world. Familiar
probably with the report of Isabella's char
acter. It is supposed that they did not know of
Mary's experiences, and we do not even know
the name of their sister. It was the experience,
not the person, that seems to have produced
the profound impression this event created.
One day, the brothers entering their home,
found their sister In an agony which In their
distress they supposed to be the pangs of
death. Going to her bedside, "she at once ad
dressed her brothers," as their own simple story
tells, "at great length, concluding with a
solemn prayer for James that he might at
that time be endowed with the power of the
Holy Ghost. Almost instantly James calmly
said, 'I have It.' He walked to the window and
stood silent for a minute or two. Those who
saw him trembled, there was such a change
upon his whole countenance. He then with a
step and manner of the most Indescribable
majesty walked up to her bedside and addressed
her In words from the twentieth Psalm —
'Arise and stand upright.' He repeated the
words, took her by the hand, and she arose."
From that time her health was perfectly re
stored and she went out and In among them
as one endowed not only with a restored life
but with new powers.
A few days later James wrote to Mary

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 73
Campbell, then supposed to be In the last stage
of consumption, and addressed to her the same
words he had spoken to his own sister. Con
scious as yet only of the new gift of tongues,
and realizing more clearly than at any prerious
time the exhausting power of her dread disease,
she had given up all hope of continued life and
was calmly facing death. James McDonald's
letter was read to her. She lay still for a few
moments and then in obedience to the call
spoken by no audible voice, but, as she felt,
dictated by the Holy Spirit, asked for her
clothing, rose and dressed herself, and pale and
emaciated still, and at first with feeble steps,
but calmly Ignoring her physical weakness,
took her place again in the family circle.
These experiences of the Campbells, already
noted for their salntllness among all their ac
quaintances, made them of course one of the
most conspicous private families in that part
of Scotland. As a proof of Mary Campbell's
entire restoration to health we may add that
she later married, reared a large family and
died aged, maintaining to the end her high
saintly character. The McDonalds, however,
always retiring, shrank from all publicity,
maintaining to the end their godly simplicity
of life. In these two families, strict Presby
terians, started more than eighty years ago a
line of bodily healing without money and with-

74 EDWARD IRVING:
out price, that there seems every reason to be
lieve should have continued and broadened In
beneficent growth, had not the church turned
Its back upon the early teachings of Its Mas
ter, and damming up the original stream, al
lowed it later to force its way through other
channels, thus greatly undermining the church
of to-day by substituting a modern for the
Christ-given order of things, but proving by
the glad acceptance of that Imperfect substitu
tion that the original truth Is again to come
duly Into full acceptance, making the church
what Its Founder designed It to be — a refuge
for the sick as well as for the sinful, and prov
ing that even to-day the weakest and saddest
may be re-born Into entire newness of life.
About the same time in a different class of
society, entirely removed from the Influence
either mental or spiritual of these humble folk,
an educated lady, the daughter of a clergyman
of the Church of England, accustomed to the
quietness and well-ordered regularity of the
more formal modes of worship In that com
munion, learned to her infinite blessedness that
God's gifts sometimes' far surpass man's ex
pectations, and that In every communion God
finds his own. We condense her own statement
of the case, which, by the way, she prepared
by her father's request. Attacked by hip dis
ease, she went through a course of treatment

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 75
by skillful physicians, but returning home after
this treatment found herself still unable to
walk, making the attempt once or twice, but
suffering much from her efforts. She was
soon wholly confined to her couch. Eight
years after the disease seized her, still almost
a helpless invalid, one day in October, 1830,
a friend called upon her who had known of her
suffering and had been led to pray earnestly
for her recovery. He asked in faith and God
graciously answered his prayer. In her own
words she says : "Rising to leave, Mr. G. put
out his hand and said, 'It is melancholy to see
a person so constantly confined.' I answered,
'It is sent In mercy.' 'Do you think so? Do
you think the same mercy could restore you?'
God gave me faith and I answered, 'Yes.'
'Do you believe Jesus could heal as in old
times?' 'Yes.' 'Do you believe It is only un
belief that prevents It?' 'Yes.' 'Do you be
lieve that Jesus could heal you at this very
time?' 'Yes.' (Between these questions he
was evidently engaged In prayer.) 'Then,' he
added, 'get up and walk to your family.' He
then had hold of my hand. He prayed to
God to glorify the name of Jesus. I rose from
my couch quite strong. God took away all
my pain and we walked down, stairs. Dear
Mr. G. prayed most fervently, 'Lord have
mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us.'

76 EDWARD IRVING:
Haring been down a short time, finding my
handkerchief left on the couch, taking the
candle I fetched it. The next day I walked
more than a quarter of a mile, and on Sunday
from the Episcopal Jews' Chapel, a distance
of one mile and a quarter. Up to this time
God continues to' strengthen me, and I am per
fectly well ; to Jesus be all the glory.
"It Is material to add that my legs, the flesh
of which was loose and flabby, feeling them in
a short time after I walked down, were firm as
those of a person in full health. The back,
which was curved, is now perfectly straight.
My collar-bones have been pronounced by a
surgeon to be in quite a natural state, whereas
one of them was before much enlarged.
"I must tell you that my mind had not been
at all occupied with those events which had
taken place In Scotland ; Indeed, all that I had
heard concerning them was that a young per
son had been restored In answer to prayer;
this was perhaps five or six months back. I
had heard of nothing since, and can with truth
say my mind had never been led to the con
templation of such subjects. I had not the
least idea that my dear friend was offering up
prayer In my behalf, for he did not say so
until. after the mighty work was wrought; he
then said, 'This was my errand, for this I have
been earnestly praying;' and with all humility

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 77
gave the glory to Jesus, to whom be all might,
majesty and dominion. "Elizabeth Fancourt."
It has been claimed, and we believe without
dispute, that each of these three cases was
thoroughly authenticated, and the cures per
manent. It Is also, we believe, perfectly safe
to claim that many corresponding cases —
cases we mean of perfect cure through simple
faith — ^have occurred both In Catholic and Prot
estant communions, and, to remove even the
suspicion of hypnotism, or any mental collu
sion, often in cases where the sufferer, entirely
unaided by the personal presence of any pray
ing friend, was alone with God In prayer.
Studying the manifestations carefully, one
faces this question, difficult to answer: Had the
Church of Christ eighty years ago cherished
these gifts, Instead of trying to stamp them
out as eril, what standing room in the world
would have been left for the confusing claims
of the many varied forms of mental healing of
to-day? But important and blessed as these
unexpected experiences were to those who felt
their healing power, this new development
ushered In what has seemed to the world a most
disastrous ending to Irving's course — disas
trous or glorious as one measures It by natural
standards or by Chrlstly standards.
Slowly as news traveled In those days, Irving

78 EDWARD IRVING:
at the center of religious thought must soon
have heard of the remarkable experiences In
these three distinct but equally consecrated
families ; and his heart already looking to God
for the renewal of the early "Gifts," must have
throbbed with Inexpressible joy — ^a faith and
joy which he freely shared with his own people,
to the quickening of their prayers with his own
for similar blessings. We may note In pass
ing that In the first meeting at Albury In 1825,
Irving probably received his first inspiration
to hope for the renewed "Gifts" which he had
supposed superseded when the Immediate oc
casion for them passed, by the strong assertion
of the Rev. J. Haldane Stewart, a noted clergy
man of the Church of England, who mentioned
the success he personally had had In promot
ing meetings for special prayer for the out
pouring of the Holy Spirit and for the promise
of "the latter rain," made In Joel. In the dis
cussion that followed, another, supposed to be
the Mr. Drummond earlier described, also a
churchman, said:
"The miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased
not because they were no- longer of use to the
Church, but because the faith of the Church
grew cold and dead. The Roman Church
maintains that we Protestants have no ground
whatayer for saying that miracles were ever to

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 79
cease, and that we can produce no warrant
from Scriptures for saying so. In this she Is
right, and if the faith and purity of the Church
burned as bright now as In the days of the
Apostles, she would again exhibit that light to
the world."
This, so far as we know, was the first ex
pression of faith In our times, by a Protestant,
In the supernatural gifts of the Spirit as the
permanent endowment of the Church. To a
soul like Edward Irving's, thirsting for truth
whencesoever It came — from Jeivlsh, Roman or
Protestant lips, — ^these words from men whom
he could fully trust, proved of mighty import,
broadening his hope, deepening his consecra
tion, and enlisting all his powers In the en
larged hopes he saw! opening before the Church
of God. A year or so later In a "Homily on
Baptism," he used this expression, "In the
grace of God under which the baptized are
brought" (he was speaking for all the bap
tized, children as well as adults), "It Is prom
ised that they shall receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost." As far as we can judge, the presence
of the Holy Ghost had been neither expected
nor desired unless In quiet guise in the ordinary
churches of that day, and such expressions, as
well as prayers for the renewal of the gift's,
soon made Irving a still more marked man

80 EDWARD IRVING:
among his fellow ministers, and during the last
years of his life led him through conflicts and
sufferings which he met with a noble endurance
that lends a tragic Interest to his history. We
can in no wise explain the coming or the ceas
ing of these deep spiritual experiences. We
refer to them simply as necessary to Indicate
his position, and the reasons by which he
vindicated his course.
If "in me ye shall have peace," was attesting
itself as true, to^ him, "In the world ye shall
have tribulation," was to prove Itself no less
true. The Church at large did not realize that
the doctrine of the human nature of Christ as
Irving presented it, might prove to be one of
the most vital spiritual truths as yet revealed
to man ; that In the Incarnation might be the
scientific answer to the greatest problem in
natural law that man was to face ; the Incarna
tion bridging the gulf between man as human
and men uplifted by it Into sons of God. It
did not even dream that It stood facing new
recalllngs of truths, which, accepted, would
bring again intO' startling clearness a truth ob
scured for centuries, that in Christ men had
been made sons of God, and through Christ had
already entered IntO' a new dispensation. This,
Edward Irring was simply striring to make
clearer to the comprehension of the Church ;
but the Church, bound In theological formal-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 81
Isms, forgetful of her supernatural baptism,
turned upon Irving and his associates with
what it believed to be holy horror toward men
striving to destroy the Church of God. There
Is no doubt whatever that those arrayed against
Irving believed themselves the actual conserva
tors of Christian truth, and any one an enemy
of the truth who disagreed with them.

CHAPTER IX
Other Ministers Charged with Heresy. Mr.
Irmng's Book, "Human Nature of Christ,"
Severely Handled. Advent of "Tongues" in
Ms Church, July, 1831. Opinions of Carlyle
and Others. Clear Statements by Henry
Drummond and Rev. W. W. Andrews. Mr.
Baxter's Defection. Modem Psychological
Statement Concerning "Gift of Tongues."
In the meantime, lesser lights than Irving
were being dealt with summarily by their Pres
byteries. Among others, Campbell of Rowe,
whom Chalmers had called "the holiest man I
ever knew," had been deposed for teaching that
all the world stood on common ground as re
gards the love of God, and all who would, might
be saved. For this assertion alone, the Church
of Scotland cast him out.
Fearless as was Irring, there could be little
question of the fate that would sometime over
take him, and Into It he must have walked with
open eyes, for abundant fuel was soon to be
added to his pyre. About this time In the Lon
don Presbytery, consisting of three members
besides himself, after much irregular proceed
ing and the misquoting of his teachings, he was
censured for his book on the human nature of

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 83
Christ, but as he had been ordained by a Scotch
Presbytery, an English Presbytery could not
depose him and he stood calmly upon his
rights and went quietly on his way, upheld
manfully and trusted as of old by his own
church In Regent's Square. His book on the
human nature of Christ was severely handled
by the London Presbytery and severely crltl-
dsed in the pulpits of that Presbytery.
To a generation that ranks Dr. Falrbairn
as one of Its theological standard bearers and
calmly accepts his doctrine of the passlbllity
of God, — that God can suffer in proportion to
His being, — It must require little theological
strain to think with Irving that Christ did have
a human nature, that he could have sinned, that
he must have suffered even unto blood striving
against sin.
To allow Mr. Irving to speak for himself as
to what he had really written on this subject
we give somewhat copious extracts from the
tract and from other deliverances on the same
topic, for two reasons, first to show simply what
he believed on the subject as distinguished from
what he was reported as believing ; also because
we believe that thoughts so vital have a mes
sage for every generation, second only to the
teachings of the Gospels. Wonderful as is
Irving's style, the truths he declares glorify the
style, as a pearl of great price does Its setting.

84 EDWARD IRVING:
"The point at issue," he says, "is simply
this: whether Christ's flesh had the grace of
sinlessness and Incorruption, from its proper
nature, or from the Indwelling of the Holy
Ghost: — I say the latter!"
"The prerious truth for which we contend
Is, not whether Christ's flesh was holy — for
surely the man who saith we deny this blas-
phemeth against the manifest truth — ^but
whether during His life It was one with us in
all its infirmities and liabilities to temptation,
or whether, by the miraculous generation. It
underwent a change so as to make It a differ
ent body from the rest of the brethren. They
argue for an Identity of origin merely; we
argue for an Identity of life also. They argue
for an inherent holiness ; we argue for a
holiness maintained by the person of the Son,
through the operation of the Holy Ghost.
They say, that though His body was changed
in the generation, He was still our fellow In all
temptations and sympathies ; we deny that it
could be so ; for change Is change ; and If His
body was changed In the conception It was not
In Its life as ours Is. In one word, we present
believers with a real life; a suffering, mortal
flesh; a real death and a real resurrection of
this flesh of ours : they present the life, death,
and resurrection of a changed flesh; and so
create a chasm between Him and us which no
knowledge, nor even imagination, can overleap.

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 85
And In so doing, they subvert all foundations:
there Is nothing left standing In our faith of
Godhead, in our hopes of manhood."
ON THE TEMPTATION"
"If His humanity bore not His human en
counter, but needed the aid of His superior
faculties, then how serveth It as an encourage
ment or an example to us who are mere men,
and have no such divinity to bear us up? His
humanity sustained Him against all earthly
encounters ; and whatever His divinity served
Him, It served not to lighten the load which lay
heavy upon His shoulders.
"I speak not now of the mere Inward strug
gles which He had to maintain as the surety of
mankind. Neither do I speak of those unre
corded temptations of the powers of darkness
which He had to sustain throughout His life,
and of which we have a shrewd intimation in
the expression with which this recorded tempta
tion concludes, 'The deril departed from Him
for a season' ; nor of the hidings of His
Father's countenance, nor of anything save the
outward visible sufferings with which men can
sympathize. It may be said many of His fol
lowers have endured as much ; but hath any one
endured It without sin? To endure Is nothing.
The tortured Indian endures many crucifixions.
Bed-rid patients endure whole years of torture,
of which single nights have in them materials

86 EDWARD IRVING:
of many a tragedy. Nature must endure what
the hand of God layeth on, however great It
be. But doth she endure without murmuring,
even what she cannot avoid enduring? And
what Is laid upon her by every wicked son of
Belial, doth she endure without the resentment
of a man? But here Is a man, a very man, by
distinction the Son of man, enduring heaps of
trouble and affliction from every outward and
inward quarter, and carrying Himself under
It, not like a man, but like a God. This was
the trial, not that He should bear, but that He
should bear as one who bore not ; not that He
should endure In a sinful world, but that with
out sin He should endure ; that for all His cruel
condition He should be able to challenge the
severest inspection of that host of enemies He
was surrounded with, and who had risen up
against Him ; that He should bear the knowl
edge of Him who searcheth the heart and
trieth the reins of the children of men, and re
ceived the testimony that He had done no
violence, neither was any deceit In His mouth.
Such was the heavy work which Christ under
took and such the happy Issue to which He had
to bring It.
"Having before Him this yet unattempted
work of conquering In flesh and blood all the
enemies of flesh and blood, both on earth and
In hell, of preserring Himself immaculate

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 87
though a man, perfect and sinless though a
sorely tempted man, it was very desirable that
He should have at the outset of such a perilous
voyage some trial of His strength to endure its
hardships. Having a human soul full of an
ticipation and feeling, as we see through all
His life, especially in the garden of Gethsemane,
He could not look upon the trial before Him
without misgivings. If, after having proved
His strength In this wilderness, and through
all the scenes of His ministry, such horrors
overtook Him on entering the last scene of It,
what anxieties and fears must have pressed Him
at Its outset, when, from being a private man,
He undertook so high a task! Think not I
lower His dignity thus to behold Him accessible
to those troubles of the spirit. It doth but
prove the more the tenderness of His humanity,
and encourage that fellow-feeling with Him
which Is the most genuine mark of His disciples.
But take from your Idea of His dignity or not,
it Is the truth that He had such misgivings,
and prayed His Father In His agony to let the
cup pass from Him. We have been so much
agitated with disputes about His divinity that
we dare hardly trust ourselves to conceive of His
humanity, lest we should trespass upon the in
tegrity of the former. But this nervous
delicacy must not be Indulged either by you or
by me; we must look upon His true humanity.

88 EDWARD IRVING:
and speak of it as the evangelists and the
apostles likewise spoke of It. And when need
Is, we must do the same of His divinity. These
misglrings of the human soul of Christ, It was
the purpose of this temptation to chase away :
— to give Him, in the very outset and beginning
of His undertaking, a proof that He was equal
to Its utmost perils ; that He might take cour
age and enter upon it with boldness ; that in
all His difficult passages memory might have
a spot to flee to, whereat He encountered this,
and more than this. This temptation I con
sider to be one of three remarkable passages
of the same kind, which are recorded In His life.
The other two are the transfiguration and the
agony." . . . "This is the redemption, this is the
at-one-ment which was wrought In Christ, to' re
deem the will of a creature from the oppression
of sin and bring It to be at one with the will of
the Creator: — " Preface to "Our Lord's
Human Nature."
During these passing years, repeated be
reavements had come to Irring and his wife In
the deaths of little children, but the union be
tween them had grown steadily deeper and
stronger with each successive sorrow or trial
till they stood united In a perfect union that
nothing earthly was to mar or break. Albury

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 89
still Influenced Irving greatly, seeming to give
him In each visit renewed strength and inspira
tion. Passing once from Albury to Ireland for
a week of rest for himself and his wife, in what
would hardly seem rest to an ordinary man,
he preached thirteen times in the week to
audiences crowding churches to suffocation
while crowds were seated outside the churches
listening through the open windows. In all
these services leading Catholics as well as
Protestants were present, proving that not onlj^
In the Church of England was Irring arousing
deep Interest In his teachings but also among
thoughtful Roman Catholics. It may, we think,
safely be claimed that In his day through the
universal hunger for truths that had lain
silent, Irring's preaching met a general re
sponse from all classes and conditions of men,
whatever their respective creeds. The truths
he preached drew them far more than his mag
nificent personality, powerful as that was, and
left them with a deepening hunger for truth.
After his return to Regent's Square sup
posedly rested, Irving turned to his people with
power both simplified and intensified by his own
deepening spiritual life. All the old power of
his oratory remained. That was Inevitable as
part of himself; but he was more and more
merging Into quiet strength, and striving to
help his people to turn wholly to God and in

90 EDWARD IRVING:
Him find for themselves all the grace and power
In His bestowal. The preaching serrices still
went on as of old. But prayer and personal
work by him and his people grew more and more
dominant. Their dally six-thirty morning
prayer-meetings drew large crowds of earnest
Christians, and prayers for the gift of the Holy
Spirit were constantly offered. Week by week
tidings were received of the deepening work of
the Spirit In Scotland and of the actual return
of the gifts of the early Church, and there Is
no doubt that Irving and his people longed for
similar manifestations of God's presence, which
presently often appeared In their prayer-meet
ings. For a time all was as orderly In their regu
lar church serrices as of yore ; but suddenly one
Sabbath day In the midst of one of Irving's most
solemn sermons, a woman previously dis
tinguished for her great quietness and personal
sanctity, rose from among the congregation
and hastened into the vestry, closing the door
behind her, but giving way while alone to one
of the Intense manifestations that had hitherto
appeared only in their private services. This
was the end of quiet services In the Regent's
Square Church. Many such manifestations oc
curred later, and between "The Tongues," as
they were called, during the attempts at wor
ship by Irring and his congregation, and the

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 91
crowds who hastened Sunday after Sunday to
listen or jeer, as their tastes Inclined them,
there was henceforth no peace for Irring or his
people. At all the services the church was so
crowded that fears were entertained of a repeti
tion of the Kirkcaldy disaster; and the London
papers were full of witticisms and jibes at the
expense of Irving and his people, and many of
his Intimate friends supposing him responsible
for the uproar, believed that he was losing his
reason and leading his flock into all manner
of delusions. For the last time Carlyle and his
wife listened to Irving In his pulpit. Carlyle
describes the service characteristically and
adds : "Poor Jean was on the verge of fainting
and did not recover the whole night."
We confess that tO' us, Carlyle's description
of the service and Its effects seems a sad misun
derstanding of the real character of his dearest
friend while that friend was probing with all
the loyalty that was in him, new and unex
pected, and, to him not fully understood, con
ditions that he did not dare to suppress simply
because, as he himself said later, during his
trial before the Presbytery, he did not under
stand them and therefore could not tell whether
they were, or were not, answers to the prayers
of his people for the gift of the Spirit.
If one were forced to base his conclusions of
the matter on the testimony of Irresponsible

92 EDWARD IRVING:
newsmongers and the reports of captious critics
one might indeed suppose that for a time Irving
did lose his mental balance and that an epidemic
of religious madness held high carnival in the
Regent Square church. But proridentlally
we have several calm, dispassionate descriptions
of the occurrences at this very period. The
writer of the longest of these descriptions was
Mr. Henry Drummond, previously sketched In
one of our earlier chapters, and thus strongly
etched by Rev. W. W. Andrews :
"The late Mr. Henry Drummond, one of the
keenest and most sarcastic Intellects of the day,
and a remorseless hater of shams and pre
tenses ; as fearless In exposing, as he was sharp-
sighted In detecting, all impostures and char
latanry ; a man whose whole character was In
antagonism to the fanaticism that is bred In
excited crowds ; of the highest culture, and the
widest acquaintance with society; who had al
ready been a member of Parliament, and sat
again (long after Irving's death), from 1847
to his death, — twelve or thirteen years — as the
representative of his county ; — this man, who
won for himself the universal respect of the
country by his Independence, his boldness, his
Integrity, and his sound conservative principles,
which yet never carried him Into factious op
position to any administration, not only be-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 93
lleved in the reality of the spirtual manifesta
tions, but was himself the subject of them. His
own account of his experience is as follows : —
" 'So soon as the manifestations occurred in
London, I watched them narrowly ; I found per
sons uninstructed in the schools of theology,
pouring out a mass of doctrine, condensed into
a few abrupt sentences, such as no living divine
could utter. I heard everything they said tend
to exalt Jesus and to abase the creature; I
felt a sympathy in all that was expressed with
something within myself; I experienced the
spoken word to be like a two-edged sword,
dividing soul and marrow, and discerning the
thoughts and Intents of the heart, in the detec
tion and rebuke of sin. Although I soon found
my requests answered by a greater spirit of
grace of supplication being given me, and by
a fuller realization of God as Love —
and consequently a greater confidence in
Him than I ever had before — nothing
particular occurred until the 29th of the above-
mentioned July (1832), when, during an utter
ance of the Spirit through Mrs. Caird, which,
however, contained nothing remarkable, either
in word or manner, I felt an extraordinary
anxiety for the souls of men, and particularly
for some persons present, and a most earnest
desire that they should enter Into Jesus before
the door was shut, upon His coming to judg^

94 EDWARD IRVING:
ment, which then appeared peculiarly near; so
that I was constrained to cry out to all pres
ent, with a loud voice, to "enter now." This
took place at family prayers In the evening;
and as soon as they were over, I retired to my
own room, and on my knees Implored my
Heavenly Father, If this were not excitement
or delusion, to let It cause the same power to
return quickly, and abide on me ever. Upon
rejoining some other persons afterwards, I felt
their most religious expressions cold to express
the sensations I myself had ; there was a realiza
tion of the presence of God In Christ, and of
my own oneness with Jesus, diffusing a joy
such as no words can describe; and just in pro
portion as I have been enabled ever since to
abide all day long In Him, so Is the power of
the Spirit mighty within me to tell forth His
mind and truth and praise. But I cannot com
mand this power to come upon me; nor can I
tell beforehand what will be given me to say, the
subject and the power coming together; while,
on the other hand, if I repress or withhold what
I am prompted to utter, I feel a grief of the
Spirit which must be experienced to be under
stood. I am therefore as conscious as I am of
my existence, of a power within me, yet dis
tinct from me ; not using me as a mere machine,
but bending my will and affections to love, to
glorify Jesus ; giring a peace and joy, and love

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 95
to God and man, passing all understanding.' "
So much misunderstanding has always ex
isted In regard to the "Gift of the Tongues,"
supposed by Irving and his people to be the
manifestation of the baptism by the Holy
Ghost, that we deem It right to give the state
ment of a man above criticism as to the actual
events then occurring there. We refer to the
Rev. W. W. Andrews, who furnished valuable
data concerning this period. He was originally
a Congregational minister for several years In
Kent, Conn., where his memory Is still fragrant
among the older people. Becoming Interested
In the teaching of the Catholic Apostolic
Church, he went abroad and made the Intimate
acquaintance of Its leaders, later joining Its
fellowship and remaining a faithful and useful
leader In the American branch of that church.
He had planned to write a life of Edward
Irring and had collected much material for it,
which he generously allowed the writer to use
as freely as she desired. Mr. Andrews died
aged, some twenty years ago, near Hartford,
Conn. We have selected Mr. Drummond's
statement alone, from others, as strong, but
written by unknown though educated men, and
leaving this class of evidence epitomize Mr.
Andrews' further statements as to the diffi
culties that surrounded Mr. Irving In his
efforts to "try the spirits" now struggling for

96 EDWARD IRVING:
utterance. He acknowledges that among the
uneducated and excitable members of the Regent
Square Church, many abandoned themselves to
mystical and unwarranted applications of
scriptural passages, and supposed themselves
inspired when In truth they were only excited,
but as this was more than once true of people
really devout. If Ignorant, Mr. Irving strove
to bring calm influences to bear upon them,
while not hampering those who seemed like Mr.
Drummond to speak simply and truly as the
Spirit gave them utterance. Just at this time
when London was loudly criticising the work
among Mr. Irving's own people, a stranger
appeared, who was to be a shining light among
them for a few weeks, and then to change ut
terly his attitude, saying that he had been
deluded and had deluded others. This man,—
we use Mr. Andrews' Information, but not his
words, — an educated English lawyer, a devout
churchman, had heard of the work In Mr.
Irving's church, and came up to London to
study the manifestations. Suddenly seized by
the same Influence, — the Ploly Spirit as he then
believed — he became at once one of the most ac
tive advocates of the new Gift. His education,
his eloquence, and above all his apparent sin
cerity, made him at once a leader In the new
movement. But as Mr. Andrews says, "with
out previous control from authority, and desir-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 97
ing none," as soon as some prophecy of his did
not materialize as soon as he expected, or as he
had supposed it would, he at once said that he
had been deceived or had spoken by a lying
spirit. He at once withdrew from the Regent's
Square church, and published a statement avow
ing his change of attitude. This startling de
fection only came to Mr. Irving's knowledge the
evening before his final defense before the Pres
bytery after he had been told by them that he
was not to be judged by the teachings of the
Bible nor by the ancient creeds and standards
of the Church of Scotland, but upon trivial
violations of then accepted standards. His one
reference to the defection of his "dear friend"
Is pertinent and we quote It: "Now no prophet
since the world began has been able to interpret
the time, place, manner and circumstances of
his own utterances."
It only remains to add concerning Mr. Bax
ter that although he lived many years after
ward, he could never deride whether he had been
mistaken in claiming that he had spoken by
divine inspiration or by some other. All he
knew was that something outside himself pos
sessed him In those days of strange experience.
He lived and died, troubled by grave doubts as
to the course he had pursued; of the pain, and
to the extent of Mr. Baxter's ability, of the
Injury he Inflicted upon the man who always

98 EDWARD IRVING:
spoke pityingly of him there could be no doubt.
Having given the Rev. W. W. Andrews' ac
count of Henry Drummond's own statement and
one other experience, one attributing the Gift
of the Tongues to the Holy Spirit, and the
other asserting that they came from a lying
spirit, we think It only just to quote from a
recent standard work — Dr. Cutten's "The
Psychological Phenomena of Christianity" — In
the chapter on Glossolalia — the Gift of
Tongues. Dr. Cutten states that experiences of this
kind In Christendom are not confined to the
primitive Christians nor to the early centuries
of this era, but appeared In the thirteenth cen
tury among the Franciscans and still more re
cently during the last two centuries among the
early Quakers and Methodists, and later still In
the Catholic Apostolic Church, at one time im
properly called Irvingites. Dr. Cutten asserts
that upon the ignorant and superstitious these
phenomena In others acted like wildfire, leading
them Into strange and bewildering excesses and
to manifold contradictions.
Mr. Andrews says that just such excesses,
mingled with the genuine manifestations In Mr.
Irving's church, thus greatly increasing his la
bors and perplexities as he patiently tried to
sift the tares from the wheat and prove what
was from God and what was not.

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 99
If the question is asked why Mr. Irving him
self did not share in the Gift of Tongues, one
may add the further question, Why did not St.
Paul speak of the first baptism of the Spirit at
Pentecost, as did St. Luke, who was there and
spoke of the things that he himself had seen and
shared ; while Paul, who was not present at Pen
tecost, always referred, when brought before his
judges, to the vision he saw on the road to
Damascus that tumed him from a persecutor
of the Nazarenes Into one of their noblest sup
porters, and yet Invariably spoke of the baptism
of the Holy Ghost and the speaking of tongues
as shared by him In common with most of the
earlier Christians In much the same manner as
did Mr. Drummond In his statement, Paul say
ing distinctly that he would rather speak five
words in the common language than ten thou
sand In an unknown tongue because the five
words would benefit his hearers and ten thou
sand bless only himself?
We may, we think, without reproof, assert
that God knows better than man how to lift His
individual servants Into the highest communion
with Himself. Luke may have found It at Pen
tecost ; Paul on the road to Damascus, and Ed
ward Irving In the everyday path of uplifting
sorrow and whole-souled consecration to the
Lord who became so real and so near to him as
his days went on ; while to many an uneducated

100 EDWARD IRVING:
man quietly but earnestly seeking after God
has been given since Christ Himself appeared,
wisdom and strength and power to receive and
to follow even unto the death. If need be, God's
deepest revelations of Truth.

CHAPTER X
Anxiety of Irving's Church Trustees. Irving
Summoned before the London Presbytery. A
Peculiar Trial. Remarkable Verdict. De
posed, May, 1832. Irving Enters Catholic
Apostolic Church.
No one will question that a most serious prob
lem presented Itself to the trustees of the Re
gent's Square Church. Events were daily hap
pening that Irving himself did not pretend to
understand and that no person could control,
and by all logic, even modern, the trustees of
the church were forced to take action. It was
a most painful position for every one. There
were conferences with eminent lawyers and with
Presbyteries, and finally Irving was cited to
appear before the London Presbytery, already
referred to as in serious doubts as to his ortho
doxy, but able only to hear him, not to depose
him. For several weeks Irving and his people had
foreseen coming disaster, but believing them
selves following where God was leading, and am
ply able to defend their position by the teach
ings of the Old and the New Testaments, they
went calmly on to meet the Inevitable. Many
101

102 EDWARD IRVING:
of Irring's nearest friends did their best to per
suade him to adapt his course to the customs
of the Church, but while showing deep apprecia
tion of theIrpersonanove,he was adamantine in
his resolution to stand with his church on their
rights to obey God as they understood Him.
Finally the trustees appealed to the Presby
tery on the following points, summarized here,
but still stated clearly:
First, that Mr. Irving has suffered and per
mitted and still allows persons neither ministers
nor licentiates of the Church of Scotland to take
part in the public services of the church.
Second, that he allows persons neither mem
bers of the church nor seat-holders, to do the
same. Third, that he allowed females to take part
in the public services of the church.
Fourth, virtually the same as first.
Fifth, that he appointed times for the sus
pension of the usual order of worship for the
exercise of the supposed "Gifts."
The first question really at Issue was. Has
the Holy Ghost manifested Itself In the church
at Regent's Square? If so, could any Chris
tian Presbytery forbid its manifestations? A
question not presented might have been, What
would a Presbytery who forbade these manifes
tations have done on the day of Pentecost had
they been In power? Doubtless every minister
of the Presbytery had preached at various times

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 103
on the story of Pentecost and prayed for the
descent of the Holy Spirit, and It was. If not
the bravest, at least the safest line to give to
their examination In turning the question aside
from the consideration of the Holy Spirit's
presence and proceeding to try Mr. Irving on
the acknowledged fact that he had allowed min
isters and perhaps unordained members of other
denominations, and still more, women, to speak
In his church, and had changed somewhat
the order of the service therein. Is there a
Protestant church anywhere to-day that
would consider such a course worthy of severe
blame? Irving had taken the ground from the begin
ning of the controversy that his course was fully
justified by the teaching of the Bible and by the
ancient standards of the Church, and expected
to be justified by proving that he had fully fol
lowed this course. He seems to have had no
doubt as to the result till to his amazement he
was quietly told by the court that his course
was to be judged without reference to the Bible
but only to the trust deeds and the standards of
the Church.
This statement once made and sustained by
the court, nothing was left for Irring but to
submit to whatever decision was made. He did
this with dignity but with a solemnity and
power that has had no parallel In later days.
Believing as he did In the speedy coming of

104 EDWARD IRVING:
Christ, and that although he could not explain
them, the special experiences In his church had
come as direct answers to his own prayers and
those of his people, Irving stood before the
Presbytery as St. Paul might have stood before
Festus and Agrippa, pleading, not his own
cause, but what he believed to be the cause of
the Church of Christ.
His address was very long and may have
seemed full of bombast to the impatient Pres
bytery listening to it. We give but the briefest
summary. Referring to the exclusion of the
Bible from the trial, and the substitution of the
modern standards of the Church, he said pith
ily: "I entreat you to set up the Holy Scrip
tures as the only basis of faith and practice; to
look as ministers, and to look as people to them
alone; and I know this, that if you throw the
Bible aside, you will not look to much else that
Is good. You may talk about standards as you
please, but I know there will be little reading of
the standards or other good books If there be
not much reading of the Scripture. Therefore
I entreat you to put the standards on their own
basis, and every moment to walk before the
Lord in His commandments. I tell you, O
Presbytery, It will be a burdensome thing if ye
do with a high hand and without examination
or consideration, upon any grounds, upon any
authority, shut up that house in which the voice

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 105
of the Holy Ghost Is heard. Oh ! If ye will tum
aside from that and say, 'No, there are no cus
toms or authority In the canons of the Church
for it, and we will not consider whether the
thing is In the Scripture or not ; If ye will not
consider it In the only true light — the light of
the Scriptures — I tell you ye shall be withered
In your churches, I tell you ye will be rislted
with heavy retribution; I tell you, the waters
In your cisterns shall be dried up ; I tell you,
your flocks shall pine away for hunger and shall
die. If ye will as members of a Christian court
give your decision against me, while I deplore
it on your account and that of the complalners,
I rejoice, yea, I rejoice exceedingly for my own
sake and the sake of my flock, that we are
counted worthy to suffer shame and reproach
for the testimony."
These words, spoken after two days of har
assing trial and an Intervening night of un
ceasing toil, by a man facing the utmost dis
grace that the Presbytery could Inflict upon
him, yet bellering In his own soul that he and
his people were standing In the defense of the
tj-uth as It had been revealed to them, do not
seem to the writer like the ravings of a mad
man but rather as the brave words of one like
Paul facing his block or Peter standing beside
his own cross. The words In which he foretold
the disasters Imminent to the Church of Scot-

106 EDWARD IRVING:
land were often sadly recalled ten years later
when the disruption of the Church took place
through some of the very evils Irving had dep
recated, and more than four hundred of Its
leading ministers, Chalmers at their head, were
literally turned out with their people, from their
churches and their manses, "without pastures
or fields to feed their flocks" ; and In the words
of one of their leaders, "more than one thought
sadly of Irving and their treatment of him, and
wished that he were again among them."
There were one or two postponed meetings
for what one must believe was from the begin
ning a foregone conclusion, and then after a
most Informal evening meeting the verdirt was
announced. Before we quote the verdict given at the close
of this strange trial. It will be well to state a
few of the facts connected with the first so-called
trial, for heresy in London a short time pre
viously. It had been found illegal to pass any
judgment upon Mr. Irving by any Presbytery
save by the one In Scotland where he had been
ordained. In addition to the fact that the Lon
don Presbytery had no jurisdiction over him,
Mr. Irving had strenuously appealed against
their unjust treatment of him In refusing to
consider with him personally any errors they
might find In his tract on the "Human Nature
of Christ," and their misrepresentations of his

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 107
printed statements, so that the first London In
vestigation neither had any authority over him,
even If he were proved heretical, nor had acted
in accord with the ordinary methods of Pres
byteries. This being true, the second Presby
tery could have had no warrant for quoting the
Illegal verdict of the first. Probably, however,
not caring to send down to Scotland for depo
sition, one of their most popular and useful
clergymen on charges so trivial as those upon
which he had been tried before them, they pro
ceeded to bring in the following peculiar ver
dict — a verdict that does not In the remotest
degree allude to the subject stated in his In
dictment or at his trial. This verdict, though
stripped of Its verbiage. Is In substance strictly
correct. We add only the fact that this ver
dict and the trial that preceded It were severely
criticised by all the leading lawyers In the coun
try, and It was said It could not have been ren
dered In any ordinary court of justice. We
give the joint verdicts without further com
ment. "Whereas the said Rev. Edward Irv
ing, having previously been delated and con
victed before this Presbytery on the ground of
teaching heresy concerning the human nature
of our Lord Jesus Christ, has been declared to
be no longer a member thereof, yet in respect
that the trust deed of the said church legally
drawn and concluded with the consent of the

108 EDWARD IRVING:
said Rev. Edward Irving, and the said trustees
as parties thereto, expressly provides that this
Presbytery shall or may act and adjudicate in
all cases of complaint brought . . . against
the minister of the said church . . . and
the Presbytery ... do find that the
charges In said complaint are fully proven ;
and therefore do decern that the said Edward
Irving has rendered himself unfit to remain the
minister of the National Scotch Church afore
said, and ought to be removed therefrom, in
pursuance of the conditions of the trust deeds
of the said church."
The Presbytery added that Irving must re
turn to the church at Annan where he had been
ordained and there be formally deposed In con
formity with the rule of the Church making
deposition possible only in the church of one's
ordination. Annan, as we have said, was
Irving's birthplace ; In that same old church he
had been baptized, later received Into the com
munion of the Church ; he had often gone j oy-
ously back and forth to the old town he loved
so well ; there, too, he had been ordained ; and
he once more was to go thither among his kins
folk and old friends, branded as a heretic, to be
deposed from the ministry, then to leave Annan
forever, — its noblest, bravest, truest son.
The Sunday after the conclusion of his trial,
for which Irving had foreseen no such ending,

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 109
was to have been a more than ordinarily Im
portant one to him and to his people. Two
hundred new communicants were to be received
Into the church, and not knowing whether the
services of that day would or would not be in
terfered with, but hoping against hope, a large
number had assembled for the six o'clock morn
ing prayer meeting; they found the church
doors locked against them and a notice that It
was not to be opened again till other arrange
ments had been made. The people stood for a
while dismayed In the street and then ad
journed to a large hall In the neighborhood
that happened just then to be vacant. Dur
ing the week Irving went down to Annan as
the Presbytery had commanded and the church
was crowded to witness the exercises of his ex
pulsion by the local Presbytery. For some
reason the services were prolonged till late In
the .afternoon, when It became so dark that a
candle had to be brought to the pulpit to
render whatever reading was needed possible.
It was a strange, sad scene — the congregation
almost hidden from sight In the darkness, and
the mental gloom deeper than the outward,
resting heavily upon the people. Suddenly the
Rev. David Dow, the Presbyterian minister of
Irongray and therefore not a member of
Irving's church, but a man who had often at
tended the Regent's Square services and be-

110 EDWARD IRVING:
lieved that he had received the gift of the
"Tongues," rose from his seat in the darkness
and started towards the door, exclaiming as he
went, "Arise, depart! Flee ye out! Ye can
not pray! How can ye pray to Christ whom
ye deny ? Ye cannot pray. Depart, depart !"
After a moment Irving arose from his seat and
followed him, not without protest from some
of those present, but probably accompanied or
followed by several of his other clerical friends
who had come down with him from London to
attend the trial. Of course the trial was never
concluded; but to all Intents and purposes,
Irving was thenceforth an outcast from the
Presbyterian church. He had made a most
solemn appeal against the Presbytery, affirm
ing what he really believed and not what men
who did not know reported him as beliering,
but had been told by the Moderator that he
seemed to think himself preaching to a London
congregation, and not on his defense before the
Presbytery. Returning to London, Irving and many of his
flock eventually allied themselves with the Cath
olic Apostolic Church, already established and
flourishing, but he went among his new brethren
simply as an ordinary member of the church;
probably If he had lived he would have risen
to eminence In that church, but his days were
numbered. He said of himself one day sadly,
"The reproaches of my brethren have broken

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 111
my heart"; but he tried bravely and patiently
to adapt himself to the new role given to him.
It seemed to some, Mrs. Oliphant among them,
that the lowly place he occupied In his new
church relations should not have been given to
a man of his character and abilities ; but Irving
himself accepted the change In peace and quiet
ness. That there were Issues imminent Infinitely
more serious than the placing of any man In a
subordinate position, or even than the breaking
of a noble Christian heart, has long seemed in
controvertible to some earnest thinkers. Tre
mendous changes that have not even yet reached
their limitations stood Immediately confronting
not only the church at large but also the whole
world. Henceforth these two — ^Edward Irring on
one side, the Presbytery on the other — ^went
their parted ways : Irring soon to prove beyond
a question that he had truly won the welcome:
"Well done, good and faithful servant, enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord"; this most
cautious Presbytery to leave for Time to prove
that by silencing the voice of one crying "Pre
pare ye the way of the Lord" and for awhile
checking the stream of widening primitive
Christian faith they had unconsciously earned
the solemn condemnation of their Master,
speaking to all the centuries and potent In
their day as In ours, "In vain they do worship

112 EDWARD IRVING:
me, teaching for doctrines the commandments
of men." They had debarred the Bible and de
liberately preferred the Trust Deeds of their
Trustees and the stated polity of their church ;
warranted, perhaps, by these it was easy by the
vote of one small Presbytery, and that one not
composed of the Intellectual or spiritual leaders
of their church, to send forth Edward Irving
branded as a heretic.
They felt no foreshadowing of the problems
even then Imminent before all churches and the
world at large, nor how soon the one sure
refuge left to the church would be not its
"Standards," but the full acceptance of the
gospel In all Its primitive purity, or Its destruc
tion from critical unbelief and the Ignoring of
Chrlstly standards of love and faith. Who, to
day, can say what access of peace and Inde
structible faith might have been won to the
churches as a whole had the work begun In those
years In widely-varying communions been fos
tered to "see whereunto It would grow," instead
of being sedulously trained to suit prudent
modern standards? We know what the years
have brought and where the world stands to
day, but we can only wonder where It might
have stood had Christians cared less for "tra
ditions of men and more for the clear teachings
of Jesus Christ."

CHAPTER XI
Failing Health. Last Call on the Carlyles.
Leaves London for Rest. Last Journey.
Last Letter. "Dies unto God." Universal
Mourning.
One more sore sorrow came to him In those
days, and his youngest child faded slowly
away, as Irving believed, from the land of
shadows Into the world of perfect communion
and unhindered service, whither his father was
so soon to follow him. It was evident to all
who saw his prematurely aged and bent frame
that Irving's strength and life were ebbing and
he was finally pei^suaded by his anxious friends
to go on one more journey In search of rest
and strength. He still held strongly to the
belief In God's power to give perfect health
when needed by his children and he could not
believe that his own work on earth was nearly
ended, and he set forth on a horseback jour
ney, planning to go through Wales to Scot
land. Carlyle shall describe to us his own and
his wife's last glimpse of Irving:
"Edward Irring rode to the door one even-
113

114 EDWARD IRVING:
ing, came In and staid with us some twenty
minutes — ^the one call we ever had of him here ;"
(In their latest London home, Cheyne Road;)
"his farewell before setting out to ride toward
Glasgow, as the doctors, helpless otherwise,
had ordered. He was very friendly, calm and
affectionate; chivalrously courteous to her, as
I remember. 'Ah, yes!' looking round the
room, 'you are like another Eve, you make
every place you live in beautiful.' He was not
sad in manner, but was at heart, as you could
notice, serious, even solemn." Thus the
three whose lives had been so notably united
and dirided, parted ; Irving leaving them doubt
less as he left all to whom he said farewell, with
a solemn, tender benediction that held in It all
he could possibly desire for any whom he loved,
and thenceforth steadily faring down through
the narrow gates of death up to the eternal
and perfect service ; the Carlyles going for
ward toward the more than thirty years of
prosperity and growing fame that were to be
theirs together, and afterward, to the world
knows what, of underserved criticism and later,
of justice.
Irving passing away from the pain and dis
tress of his last months In London went slowly
onward down through the "beautiful, solemn
mountains of Wales," towards his Scottish des
tination. On the way he wrote many tender

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 115
and hopeful letters to his wife and children,
yet one sees, reading between the lines, that the
writer Is not growing stronger In bodily health.
Finally, caught In a severe shower, he rides
on In extreme weakness to a "motherly Inn"
where he was "greatly tempted" to take the
surgeon's advice. He says, "My spirits sank
for one-half hour and I had formed the seri
ous resolution of turning Into the sick-room.
But I remembered the words of the Lord upon
my journey and ordered my horse and rode
with great speed forward." This for a time
seemed to relieve him. Stopping that night at
another wayside house, still In great weakness,
but declining medical aid, he drank copiously
of hot tea and gruel and retired, finding, as he
says, when he awoke that "God had so blest
this treatment that at first I exclaimed, 'Can
It be that I am entirely healed?' But I soon
found that the Lord's hand is still upon me.
Yet I am sure that I received a very great
deliverance' that night. To-day my headache
has retumed, with sickness."
In his letter of the next day he says : "Now,
my dear, I write you again to express my de
cided judgment that you should not any longer
be separated from me. My God Is sufficient
for me, I know, and He hath been my sufficiency
during these three days and nights of the
shairpest fiery trial both of flesh and heart

116 EDWARD IRVING:
which I have ever proved. ... In the
night seasons the Psalms have been my con
solations against the falntings of flesh and
heart." On the day following he writes from Liver
pool his last letter, saying to his wife: "At
the same time, in your coming, if you see
It your duty to come, proceed tenderly and
carefully In respect to yourself, coming
by such stages as you can bear. I hope
you will find me greatly better under this
quiet and hospitable roof. Be of good cour
age, my dear wife, and bear thy trials, as
thou hast ever done, with yet more and more
patience and fortitude. It will be well with the
just man at the last. Now farewell. The
blessing of God be upon you all.
Your faithful and loving husband,
Edward Irving."
Leaving her three children, one of them a
baby, at the earliest possible moment, his wife
reached him, finding him greatly weakened In
body but still Indomitable in faith. After a
few days, rested, and strengthened somewhat
by her gentle ministrations, they started for
Glasgow, the final stage In his journey. Not
as he had come in his prime, full of the zest
of consecrated hope; not to the activities of
Chrlstly living ; yet stronger and braver In soul,
despite his dying body, and to attain greater

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 117
heights than he had ever before ascended, came
Edward Irving and his suffering wife. There
they were received with the tenderest welcome
by their friends, the Taylors ; and at their
hospitable door Irving's earthly journeys
ended. There were a few weeks of increasing
weakness, yet of unfailing faith. He could not
realize that his earthly days were drawing to
a close. Once or twice before, his life had
seemed miraculously prolonged, and full of
faith and strong desire to serve God for many
more years upon the earth, he still fully ex
pected to be restored to health and active serv
ice. But his friends saw clearly that the end
was rapidly approaching. Mrs. Irving's
father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. Martin, and
Mr. Irving's mother, joined Mrs. Irving In the
care of her husband, while those at a distance
who had known and loved him carried him In
their sympathetic prayers. He seemed to have
no anxieties for his own future nor for that
of his family. A day or two before his death,
his mother, then an aged woman, asked him
who would care for his family If he should be
taken away. "The elders of the church will
care for them, mother," was his reply. He
knew that In the Catholic Apostolic Church
no member ever lacked any help or comfort
that was needed, and that through that
church. If In no other way, God would care for

118 EDWARD IRVING:
his family, as the future abundantly proved.
Then there came a Sunday morning, De
cember 7, 1834, when, withdrawn from further
conference with earthly friends, he entered
upon his last conflict — alone with God. He
was fording depths of physical pain and could
no longer respond to the dear home voices, but
amid the pangs of his fainting body, his soul
still rested upon God. Hour after hour passed
In the long, sore struggle. Over and over he
repeated to himself strange, deep whispered
words that none about him could understand,
till Dr. Martin, bending over him, caught the
words of the twenty-third psalm in Hebrew;
then a little later came his last perfected sen
tence, — "If I die, I die unto the Lord," and
thus he fell asleep, dying as he had lived, "unto
the Lord," forgetting not when heart and flesh
were falling him, and the shadows of the valley
of death were pressing heavily, the central
thought of his life — the Lord his God.
"Write, saith the Spirit, Blessed are the dead
who die In the Lord, for they rest from their
labors and their works do follow them." They
laid him down to rest where his conflict had
ended, and the most splendid of the Scottish
churches, the Glasgow Cathedral, opened Its
doors to receive him and he was buried within
its crypt. Thither to his burial, forgetting all
that had seemed to them in their rigidity his

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 119
mistaken faith, and remembering only his
saintly life, his Christ-like brotherhood and his
all-embracing sympathy, came from various
parts of Scotland and from England, not only
those who had stood shoulder to shoulder with
him to the end, but those who had supposed
themselves permanently estranged. It was a
strange, sad, pitiful burial; for strong men do
not weep easily, and many were there that day
who could never thenceforth speak of him with
out tremors In their voices and pain in their
hearts. One can but wonder to how many of them
came the sad prescience of the clouds that were
soon to gather about their beloved church,
rending it in twain, and literally fulfilling his
prophecy as to hastening disasters. Still
less was It possible for them to foresee the im
pending changes soon to envelop all Christen
dom. Not a man there was to live more
than a quarter of a century longer without
seeing with dismay the scientific and Intellec
tual change that was to enshroud Christendom.
Had Irving lived to the full measure of his
days, he too would have had to face the changes
that were coming; but no one who truly un
derstood the man could for an Instant doubt
that whatever shreds of broken creeds, man-
made, were to be rent away, nothing that could
have come within the range of his powerful

120 EDWARD IRVING:
intellect could have caused him for an instant
to cease to believe In God, the Creator and
Father, in Christ the Incarnate son of God and
In the Ploly Spirit the Eternal comforter.
But they knew not what was coming and they
left him to his rest in silence and peace. But
If it Is true that he rested from his labors, it
is quite as true that his works have followed
him. The memory of God is a long, long memory,
and no man can do an abiding work In His
name and be forgotten by Him. Irving indeed
rested from his labors and the world went its
way; but he had taught strenuously certain
truths half-forgotten In the many generations
since the Master had first uttered them, and the
truths obscured for a while by the deposition
and disgrace of their teacher could not be
burled In any crypt ; and even though turned
aside for a while and in the later guise less
spiritual than as he presented them, have
shaken many a church to its center in our own
day. Irving taught In all Its fullness the Father
hood of God, the brotherhood of Christ, the
presence and power of the Ploly Spirit, the
power of faith to heal the sick and to cleanse
the sinful. He believed In, too, and taught, the
speedy coming of the kingdom of God. To
many there was never a time when that king-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 121
dom seemed more remote and uncertain
than It does to-day. But the kingdom
of God cometh not with observation. Many
a change has come to the material world
since 1834, and to some It seems that even
greater changes have come into Christendom,
and that many an old-time creed is being swept
from the face of the earth. But only a few
knew for more than one generation that the
faith of Christ had superseded the power of the
Cffisars, and Paul and Huss and Savonarola and
Latimer and Ridley and many another man
and woman, saints of God, have laid down their
lives defeated, as men spell Defeat, but vic
tors as God spells Victor; and no man In his
generation did more to foreshow the coming
of the kingdom of God than did Edward Irring.
To-day, even so many years after his death,
none of us may know, none foretell, what lies
Immediately awaiting the Church and the world.
Yet we believe that the truths of science, some
times so unjustly feared, when once fully under
stood, will establish forever the existence of a
creative mind behind the laws through which
He has worked through the long millenniums.
Prophecy fulfilled, surprises as greatly those
who live In the days of its fulfillment as It may
have perplexed those who proclaimed it and
looked forward to its fulfillment.
The divlnest truths often seem incongi'uously

122 EDWARD IRVING:
small In their beginnings. The stable at
Bethlehem and the cross at Calvary promised
little as the beginnings of a "kingdom that
should have no end," and the Church of to
day, clasping In one hand shreds of crumbling
creeds, and reaching forth the other for truths
It can as yet neither fully understand nor In
terpret, Is, we believe, standing In the dawn of
a day to be great with the glorious reveallngs
of God dwelling among men. We do not clearly
know, we do not need to know what the im
mediate future Is rapidly bringing to the
world. Like Edward Irving we need only to
know that while we live on the earth, whether
In darkness or In light, "we live unto God,"
and that when we die, understanding God's
perfect will or not, we "die unto Him."

CHAPTER XII
APPRECIATIONS By
S. T. COLERIDGE.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
FREDERICK D. MAURICE.
EXTRACT FROM PERSONAL LETTER.
REV. JAMES HAMILTON, D.D.
REV. W. W. ANDREWS.
REV. GEO. LEON WALKER, D.D.
BARRY CORNWALL.
CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.
ERASER'S MAGAZINE, JANUARY, 1835.
NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, VOL. XXXIX.
(Attributed to Dr. Hanna.)
LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW, VOL. XIX.
MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE, VOL. VI.
(Attributed to Rev. Robert Story.)

Presenting only a condensation of a large
amount of material In the hands of the author
for a life of Edward Irving, she deems it only
just to her readers to give them In these Ap
preciations literal extracts from several articles
published soon after his death by men who had
known him well, and worked with him on lines
of Christian serrice. Two of these articles
were, however, written in later years by Amer
icans — one by the Rev. Mr. Andrews, earlier
described, the other by the Rev. Dr. George
Leon Walker, a prominent Congregational
clergyman, than whom during all his ministry
no one more fully Illustrated the same high con
secration and remarkable spiritual power that
controlled the man whom he so ably described
In his article. The author feels that these ex
tracts more than emphasize her own high
estimate of Edward Irving.

' t "DUT I hold withal, and not the less firmly
AJ for these discrepandes In our moods and
judgments, that Edward Irving possesses more
of the spirit and purpose of the first Reformers,
that he has more of the head and heart, the life,
the unction, and the genial power of Martin
Luther, than any man now alive ; yea, than any
man of this and the last century. I see In Ed
ward Irring, a minister of Christ, after the or
der of Paul ; and If the points, in which I think
him erroneous, or excessive and out of bounds,
have been at any time a subject of serious re
gret with me, this regret has arisen principally
or altogether from the apprehension of their
narrowing the sphere of his influence, from the
too great probability that they may furnish
occasion or pretext for withholding or with
drawing many from those momentous truths,
which the age especially needs, and for the en
forcement of which he hath been so highly and
especially gifted." S. T. Coleridge.
i i I" TIS was the freest, brotherllest, bravest
A -I. human soul mine ever came In contact
with. I call him, on the whole, the best man
I have ever (after hard trial enough) found In
this world or now hope to find.
125

126 EDWARD IRVING:
"Think (If thou be one of a thousand, and
worthy to do it) that here once more was a
genuine man sent into this our Mwgenuine
phantasmagory of a world, which would go to
ruin without such; that here once more, under
thy own eyes, in this last decade, was enacted
the old Tragedy (and has had its fifth act now)
of 'The Messenger of Truth In the Age of
Shams.' "This man was appointed a Christian Priest ;
and strove with the whole force that was In him
to be it. . . ."
Thomas Carlyle: Eulogy.'

' t T HAD no personal Intercourse with the
A late Mr. Irving, and I heard him preach
but rarely. . . . But I learnt lessons from
some of Mr. Irving's books, which I hope I
shall never forget. I recollect with gratitude
portions of his sermons on the Incarnation of
our Lord: — by some portions of them I was
grieved. . . . What he taught me was to
reverence the education he had received In the
John Knox School, and the fathers who had
Imparted It to him. I had not that reverence
before ; I had shrunk from what I believed to
be hard, narrow, and Inhuman. He showed me
that the old patriarchs of Scotland had a belief
In God, as a Living Being, as the Ruler of the

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 127
earth, as the Standard of Righteousness, as the
Orderer of man's acts in all the common rela
tions of life, which was the most precious of all
possessions to them, the want of which is the
cause of all feebleness and immorality In our
age. He made me perceive how entirely differ
ent their godliness was from the sentimental
religion, which consists in feelings about God;
or from the systematic religion, which consists
of notions about Him. He led me to see that
unless we begin from God — unless we start
from the conviction, that the thing which is
done upon earth He doeth it Himself — the belief
In Christ will pass Into a belief in the mere
Savior for us, — the belief in a Spirit will be at
first a mere recognition of certain Influences
acting upon us, and will evaporate at last Into
pantheism. "I perceived, clearly, that Mr. Irving had not
acquired these convictions in England, He
acknowledged- — ^brave man as he was—his
obligations to Coleridge as a teacher, at a time
when such an acknowledgment was perilous, al
most fatal, to his reputation with the circle
which then paid homage to the young Scotch
preacher. It now requires no courage for any
man ... to express the utmost depth of
gratitude to that benefactor ; still I am sure
that what Irving owed to him, though it was
theological lore In the strictest sense, was not

128 EDWARD IRVING:
this theocratic faith. That he brought with
him ; It was part of his convenanting, Calrinls-
tical culture. As such I paid it, and still pay
It, the profoundest homage. I have learnt
since to honor the teaching of the English
Church. I have to bless God for teaching
which belongs to what calls itself the Catholic
Church. But I have found nothing In either
to supersede this. I have found nothing In
either which is good without this. I reverence
it as Protestant theology in the highest, purest
meaning of that word, and as the very ground
of all theology. . . .
"I thank Mr. Irving for showing me that If
Protestantism Is only a religious machinery. It
must be a very bad religious machinery; that
If It assumes Its higher, diviner right, it will be
stronger than ever it was — ^just because it can
not stand alone, but will demand a humanity
as wide as Its theology, and grounded upon
that."
Frederick Denison Maurice.
From Introduction to "Doctrine of Sacrifice."
i t QOON after this I went to B., and there
^>-^ continued In the work of the ministry
during the remainder of Mr. Irving's life. I
was not a member of his church, had never par
taken of the Lord's Supper under his ministry,
and had no partiality for Presbyterianism. B.

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 129
was then a long day's journey from London,
where I had no business, but as often as I could,
I took the journey, solely to attend his minis
try, which I found the more instructive and val
uable the more I heard It, and to cultivate his
acquaintance more closely. From his instruc
tion I learned more of Christian truth, and
from his example more of the Christian life,
than from any other man. I ever found his
house a home to me, or If it should be already
full, as It often was, then that of some of his
friends, during very frequent visits to London.
"To a very large number of young men,
earnest in purpose to devote themselves to
God's service, and from various ranks of
sodety, I found him to be, as to myself, a guide,
a counselor, and friend, and his early, and I
may call it, tragical death, left among us a
blank which never can be supplied on earth
again." Extract from a personal letter to Rev. W. W. An
drews, written by one who, when he met Mr. Irving,
was a young clergyman in the Church of England.
i i TT^EW have. In these last times, more mar-
A velously united the pastor and the
prophet; consecrated genius and assiduous af
fection ; that intellectual sublimity, which enno
bles the topics which It touched, and that exu
berant benignity which propitiated, and carries

130 EDWARD IRVING:
captive the objects of Its continued forthflow-
Ing than did Edward Irving. His mind was
like his heart, of the largest human size ; and as
he loved without effort, so he was Ineritably
eloquent. And because he squandered his brave
thoughts and buming words on the most ordi
nary occasions, and in the midst of the littlest
men, so the very consistency of his grandeur
abated much of its effect, In a world which keeps
Its grandeur for set times and gala days.
There was nothing vulgar In his make, and con
sequently nothing looked trivial in his eye.
His mental furniture was all in keeping, — mas
sive, unique, ample ; and his vocabulary was the
expression of his mind. Through the stained
window of his rich-coloring fancy every land
scape wore Its luxurious gayety or Its purple
gloom ; and In the silver basket of his Idealism,
the most common gourds shone through, like
golden apples. And It was not his fault, but
the world's, that life Is not the thing of won
der, and nobility, and delight, which his crea
tive eye beheld It. Hence came what is vulgarly
called his vanity. No sort of vanity Is good;
but the most Innocent Is that which comes, as
his did, not from the contempt of others, but
from loving them too much. He only loved the
praise of men so far as he loved themselves, and
believed them sincere. It was men's hearts of
which he was so greedy. Their huzzas and

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 131
clapping hands he never hungered after.
"Seldom have bigger thoughts and loftier
sentiments struggled for expression In mortal
speech, than those which are embodied in his
magnificent 'Orations' ; and though his prac
tical wisdom did not keep pace with his dis
cursive prowess, the might of his genius, and
the grandeur of his views, and the prevailing
solemnity of his spirit, gave a temporary lift
to an earthly age. His presence was like
Elijah's In the land of Israel, a protest against
prevailing sins ; and, like every protest In
Jehovah's name. It carried a sanction and
diffused an awe. And here lay his moral
greatness. Here was the thing which truly
made him a Hero. In each controversy he took
what he believed to be the Lord's side; and In
every audience spoke clearly out what he be
lieved to be God's truth. With all his love of
human love, he had no fear of man ; even as
with all his faithfulness, there mingled no atom
of malignity. In the pulpit,, as bold as the
Baptist, he was In private a very Barnabas —
a son of consolation. In his voice, and looks,
and movements, such continual comfort — In his
spontaneous sympathy, and exuberant joy, that
perpetual cordial, which — an Image of a better
Friend — made no day dull on which he shone,
and no dwelling desolate which still expected
his visit. And whilst the multitudes came out

132 EDWARD IRVING:
to hear the prophet, the memories In which he
now chiefly lives are theirs who knew him as
the pastor. ..."
' Dr. James Hamilton.
From a sermon preached on an anniversary of the
dedication of the Church in Regent's Square, by Rev.
Dr. James Hamilton. Dr. Hamilton was Mr. Irving's
successor in the Church in Regent's Square, and in the
pulpit from which he had been deposed, and a religious
writer of note.
i i A STANCH Protestant and Presbyte-
-^^ rian, he yearned after what was good
and true In every communion, and had words
of loftiest eulogy for the precious things and
holy men of Rome; full of reverence for the
treasures he recovered for the profit of his own
times, he reached forward with joyful hope to
the coming and IQngdom of his Lord ; strong In
his love, and bold In his assertion of personal
freedom, he upheld with his whole heart the
principle of obedience to authority. These op
positions of truth and counter-currents of feel
ings he could not perfectly reconcile, and this
made him an enigma to his generation. There
Is no spirit of partisanship In him.
"He sought for the whole truth, and gave It
forth as he learned It, without fear or par
tiality ; and narrow men who clung to their par
ties and their shibboleths, were vexed and
Irritated. They saw a man whom no formulas

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 133
of theirs could measure, wild In his look, and
terrible in his power, breaking their idols In
pieces, and making the land to ring with the
battle-cry of the coming King; and thej' knew
that God was preparing to lead up His Church
out of the dark night of the past Into the glory
of His kingdom, and that this man's work was
to startle the sleepers and summon them to
arise and gird themselves for the march.
"He united In himself, without being able per
fectly to reconcile them, the most varied relig
ious elements. He was a Protestant In his
strong individuality (the personal being as
strongly developed In him as In Martin Lu
ther) ; In his abhorrence of Romish supersti
tions and errors and tyranny ; in his apprecia
tion of the fullness of the Gospel, and of the
power of the Cross of Christ ; and In his strong
assertion of the Will of the Father, and of His
eternal, all-embracing purpose In His Son. He
had recovered, also, the great truth of Patristic
Theology, the Incarnation, the basis of all
sound Christian doctrine, which the Reformers,
and their successors still more, had too much
lost sight of In contending for one of Its fruits,
the Atonement. And In addition to the noblest
features of the Reformation, and of the age of
the Fathers, he was holding up with great
power the hope of the primitive Church, the re-

134 EDWARD IRVING:
turn of the Lord Jesus Christ In the glory of
the resurrection to rule the earth In righteous
ness. "Mr. Irving died too soon to see whereunto
the work would grow for which he had thus
periled all things, and how signally the provi
dence of God was to accomplish his vindication.
Within ten years after his death, the Church
of Scotland, of which he had said, 'That the
General Assembly, Synods, Presbyteries, and
Kirk Sessions, with all the other furniture of
the church, are about, like the veil of the tem
ple, to be rent In twain, or to be left like the
withered fig tree, fruitless and barren, I firmly
believe,' was after one of the fiercest struggles
through which any Church ever passed, rent in
twain. . . . The flock which followed
him Into exile, and were left without a shelter
In the streets of London, now celebrates Divine
service with majestic rites In a building worthy
almost, for size and grandeur, to be ranked
with the Cathedrals of England."
Rev. W. W. Andrews.

r

with the old apostolic fire and fervor for
the salvation of men and the glory of the Sav
ior, Irving was that man. Into whatever mis
takes as to the time of the millennial era or of
the tokens of its coming he was led, it is Impos-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 135
sible not to see that human souls were dear to
him and the honor of the Master above all.
This Is as manifest in the lowliness as In the
splendor of his work. It shines out quite as
conspicuously in his house-to-house visitations
of the poor and wretched as In his majestic pul
pit utterances and marvelous prayers, which
fascinated and awed the crowds of wearied Lon
don worshipers. He loved men. He followed
and sought them out as lost sheep. He sought
the house of God and the honor of One who was
humiliated and crucified for men.
"A saint of God was Edward Irving, and the
Scottish Church, which censured and deposed
him, can show few more brIlKant or more
sacred names than his, whatever his errors of
judgment or mistakes of biblical interpretation.
The church where first he preached In stated
care of souls did well to open its doors to the
deposed minister for funeral and for sepulcher.
Long will It be before It can offer like sacred
office to one whose name will enkindle recollec
tions more noble and more tender."
Rev George Leon Walker, D. D.
Quoted from The Independent. Dr. Walker was
pastor of the First Church, Hartford.
AT a meeting of a literary club which Irving
had been expected to address, held soon
after his death, Barry Cornwall (B. W. Proc-

136 EDWARD IRVING:
tor) read a paper from which we take the fol
lowing extracts :
"Those who have been In collusion or coopera
tion with him that Is gone alone can furnish
facts sufficiently accurate and minute to form
a true estimate of his character.
"And more especially when It happens that
through the Importance of the services on the
one hand, or the heat of contention on the other,
a great man has been either too highly or too
lightly esteemed by his contemporaries, it be
comes the duty of all who knew him to state
fully all they knew.
"But our present purpose Is not to eulogize ;
we merely wish to record a few Instructive par
ticulars concerning Edward Irving as a man
and as a theologian, — In either of which char
acters he is justly appreciated by those only
who have known him Intimately and long. And
In both these aspects, to those who knew him
well, there was a progressive and accelerating
advance towards perfection as he drew near the
end of his course, the last years of his life being
the most Instructive, the most lovely as a man,
the most exemplary as a Christian. . . .
"The first great feature In Edward Irving's
character was godliness, and Its correspondent
deportment towards man, a reverence for sta-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 137
tion and authority. It was manifested In every
thing he did. In every word he spoke, that In
God he lived and moved, and had his being: no
act was done by him but in prayer : every bless
ing was received with thanksgiving to God, —
every friend was dismissed with a parting bene
diction. The next feature in his character was
purity and simplicity, which was In fact only
the result and the expression of that habitual
piety towards God which dwelt In him continu
ally. God was continually In his thoughts and
he therefore ever sought for traces of God In
His Image, man.
"His friend Coleridge, In his 'Aids to Reflec
tion,' designated him as a mighty wrestler for
truth. "There was In truth no affectation In him:
his peculiarities were become habitual and nat
ural to him and It required thought and effort
to avoid them; which was continually apparent
to those who saw him often, and who Invariably
found that all his peculiarities both of manner
and expression became most strongly marked
when he became most animated, at which time It
Is obvious that a man is most natural: he for
gets to be affected In proportion as he becomes
animated.

138 EDWARD IRVING:
"Coleridge had a mind which could only be
fully appreciated by one of similar capacity
and power, and this he found In Edward Irv
ing; it therefore became as great a delight to
the one to Impart as to the other to receive.
And It Is not easy to ascertain whether Cole
ridge most loved and respected Irving or Irv
ing, Coleridge: each has recorded his high es
timation of the other, — Irving In the dedica
tion of his missionary sermon, Coleridge In the
notes to his 'Aids to Reflection.'
"The lessons he taught Irving enabled him
to bring at once Into practical bearing upon
theology and upon morals all the deepest truths
of philosophy, — the matured results of a long
literary life, devoting almost exclusively to
metaphysical research a mind of unusual com
prehension and accuracy.
"The effect became immediately apparent In
a course of sermons on the Trinity, which were
preached In Hatton Garden, though not pub
lished till many years after, and when Mr. Irv
ing had removed to Regent's Square. Those
discourses were delivered when his popularity
was at its zenith, and received by all with the
greatest applause, and produced in multitudes
an effect which has ablden to the present
time. None could see then anything but truth,
and beauty, and orthodoxy, In those discourses
which are now stigmatized as heretical and dan-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 139
gerous by a very large portion of the religious
world. "These animosities will now, in some meas
ure, subside: Edward Irving is gone to his
rest, and the survivors have taken their stand
on one side or the other. But the truths which
he proclaimed will not die with him, — they will
be only the more dearly cherished by those who
knew him; and they may perchance be listened
to by many who knew him not, but who had im
bibed from others a prejudice which made them
reject everytMng which came from Edward
Irving." Quoted from Preiser's Magazine, January, 1835.
4 < TN his view, spiritual discernment was a no-
A bier faculty than intellectual perception,
and devotional fervor took rank before theo
logical acumen.
"Irving very distinctly set forth that re
ligion had broader foundations than intellectual
power to rest upon; that the spiritual discern
ment was a faculty as active in the soul as In
tellectual perception in the mind; and that
childhood had Its power of being religious as
well as manhood.
"Edward Irving Is one of the most difficult
writers we are acquainted with to tear oneself
away from. . . .

140 EDWARD IRVING:
"Irring united connectedness without its
limitations to diffuseness, without its Inco
herences. "Throughout all Irving's writings there
runs that perfect fairness of spirit which en
abled him to detect the weak points in his com
munion and recognized much of the excellencies
of communions from which he dissented. The
unsparing severity with which he used to ex
pose the besetting faults of his co-religionlsts,
the frank and cordial manner In which
he always spoke of the Church of England
as a sister church, the courageous acknowl
edgment which he ever and anon made of essen
tial truth underlying the erroneous dogmas
and practices of the Roman branch, distin
guish him as a man of great nobility of
heart." A Churchman in the Christian Remembrancer. (Re-
printed in Littell's Living Age.)
i frilHE depth of his habitual piety — the in-
A- timacy of his acquaintance with aU the
varied woes, real and imaginary, which perplex
and torment the human breast — the tenderness
and love with which he would listen and enter
Into all the niceties of sorrow — the delicacy
with which he would minister to the mind dis
eased, and afford relief and consolation — none
but his flock, and the many hundreds who ap-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 141
plied to him, especially clergymen of the
Church of England from all parts of the king
dom, can really appreciate. It Is small praise
to say that ofttimes has he fasted, whilst the
food prepared for himself was sent to his poor
brethren, who were Ignorant of the quarter
whence their wants were supplied ; but he en
tered Into all the necessities of every Individual
of those over whom he presided, temporal and
spiritual; so as to make them his own — ^wept
with their sorrows and rejoiced in their joys,
as the fondest parent over the most endeared
offspring. He was never heard to speak an
unkind word of any of his numerous opponents,
far less of any of his friends ; he found some
thing to commend in every child of Adam,
and on this he loved to expatiate. He
opened his heart, and with it his house and
hand, to every one who came In his way ; and
although he hugged many a viper to his
bosom, the baseness of one did not make him
shut up his compassion against the rest of his
kind. At no time or place or company, or
circumstance, was he otherwise than as a min
ister of God; he entered Into the full Impor
tance of the idea of being an ambassador from
heaven, and he was never asleep on his post.
His conversation and presence threw a sanctity
over every society Into which he entered; and
none could cease for an Instant to be conscious

142 EDWARD IRVING:
that there was a servant of God In the midst
of them. . . .
"His defense before the Consistory of Lon
don was a masterpiece of eloquence and rea
soning; and there was not a lawyer present
who was not convinced that the cause should
have been determined on his side; but his
judges were not selected from amongst
lawyers, but from amongst his accusers and
executioners. The church which cast him out
signed its own condemnation, when all her min
isters attended his funeral as the obsequies of
a minister of Christ. . . .
• • ¦ • • ¦ •
"It Is doubtful if the death of any other in
dividual could have produced the deep, though
not clamorous grief, in so many manly breasts
as has been now experienced; each of whom
will say, 'Multis flebilis occldit, nullls fleblllor
quam mlhi.' "
From an article printed beside Carlyle's "Eulogy" in
Praser's Magazine, January, 1835.
t i T T E was not, as people once thought,
A A puffed up with windy vanities and the
poor breath of popular, applause. Thomas
Carlyle understands many things and many
men; but he surely did not comprehend this
man, his friend and brother, when he spoke of
him as having swallowed this intoxication, and

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 143
then 'being unable to live without It, striving to
win back the tide of fashion, which had ebbed
from his church, and gone to gaze on Egyptian
crocodiles and Iroquois hunters.' We can see
no trace of this poor craving in any part of
his life. An egotist he was, but not of the
paltry type. On the contrary, there was a
kind of sublime humility In his egotism, like
that of a Domlnick or a St. Francis ; and
while he believed in himself, in his powers, his
missions, his conrictlons, and scrupled not to
speak of them and to deal with them as divine
Infallibilities, he was yet quite willing to be
come a nothing, if only the world would just
believe with him. Hence his stout dogmatism,
clothed with an appearance of reason, where
that came handy and serviceable; boldly con
temptuous of reason, when that would no
longer avail. . . .
"Not a mere London notoriety, this friend
of Coleridge and admired of Canning; not an
orator Henley, or a Dr. Cumming, but verily
and nobly a true servant of God. We know
not what the English have thought of him,
since he left them to find a resting-place In the
dim, old crypt of St. Mungo's. But we can
vouch for It, that in Scotland his memory has
been tenderly cherished ; that we are not with
out misgivings as to the justice of our treat
ment of him; and that there are far more

144 EDWARD IRVING:
tears dropt over his grave, than there are
bitter words of his life."
Quoted from North British Bemew, Vol. XXXIX.
(Attributed to Dr. Hanna, son-in-law of Dr. Chalniers.)
i i T3EHIND his age in many respects, —
D borrowing his language, his tastes,
and his very spirit from the past, — seeming
always more like a reproduction of antiquity
than a part of the life around him, — Irving
was yet before his age. He represented al
most every school of present religious thought.
It Is not difficult to discern in him the type of
the highest sacramentarlanlsm. His theories
of the humanity and brotherhood of Christ are
reflected, at least, in the principles of the
Broad Church school. The lowest Evangeli
calism may claim him as its pattern.
"This fullness and variety of his remark
able life complicates the difficulty of forming a
correct estimate of him. Some unique men
are scrutable by no age. The world cannot
make up Its mind about them. The more It
knows of their history, the more it is puzzled.
Cromwell, notwithstanding Carlyle's admirable
and exhaustive apology, Is yet a mystery;
society cannot decide whether he was a sub
lime and godly patriot, or a ruthless hypocrite.
Bacon wears yet the twofold character of un
compromising fidelity and unprincipled time-

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 145
serving. William Penn enjoys the reputation
both of a saint and of a rogue. And, while
some exalt Edward Irving as the grandest and
most apostolic man of his day, others denounce
him as the veriest fanatic.
"There Is no parallel to his popularity in
the history of the modern church. The suc
cess of Whitefield Is not analogous. White-
field was a preacher for the masses. He held
the vast audiences which thronged to hear him
spell-bound by a power which, while full of
the intensest passion, and often radiant with
Imagination, was at the same time richly veined
with popular wit, and varied with homely Illus
tration. He had worshipers among the
ranks of fashion and intelligence; but they
were such as his occasional brilliance had
dazzled, or his fidelity had alarmed. But
Irving, with no popular adaptation, and with
a stately and old-world phraseology, which
gave a ponderousness to a fancy always pro
found, often mystical, and never precisely
brilliant, achieved a success which, If not so
wide-spread, was not less wonderful, perhaps
more wonderful than that of Whitefield. The
ministry of Whitefield had, too, the charm of
novelty. Those were new truths that came
flashing from his lips. He preached to a dead
world and a dead Church, the Gospel of life.
He was the Herald of a Divine Love, which the

146 EDWARD IRVING:
tens of thousands who hung upon his utter
ances had never heard of, or which they had,
at most, regarded as a theory of philosophy,
rather than a living and universal power.
This was not Irving's case. He was sur
rounded by preachers of unquestioned fidelity
and zeal. The crowds which gathered round
him were made up of those to whom the Gospel
was perfectly familiar. What then was the
secret of his power?
"Neither to style nor to circumstances can
we attribute his popularity. He had. It is
true, a majestic person. There was fascina
tion In his flashing eye. His deep and musical
voice fell with almost magic strain upon the
ear. But deeper lay the secret of his power.
He stood before the people less as a minister
than as a prophet. He came suddenly among
the Churches like some risen Moses from the
hidden grave of Nebo, or like some Ellj ah from
the burning chariot. Though a man of the
future, pointing reverently onwards, he was
essentially a man of the past. He spoke with
the authority of him of the camel's hair and
leathern girdle. His mission was not to throw
the lights of recent scholarship upon the truth,
or to exhibit It under its conventional aspects.
The burden of his ministry was. Thus saith
the Lord! With scarcely thirty summers upon

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 147
his head, he pronounced his message In the
language of antiquity and with the dignity
of the sage. The world saw before It a
prophet of God, appealing not to its passions,
or its fancy, but to Its reverence and faith."
Quoted from London Quarterly Review, Vol. XIX.
' < T N a time when truth was but feebly
A spoken, when Christian faith was not too
strong and vital, Irring stood up and spoke to
his generation, and (recognizing his fit mis
sion) to the heads and leaders of his generation
— to the sages and peers and senators who
thronged round him — out of the fullness of an
Intense conviction. And this conviction was the
conviction of that truth which. In his preface
to the 'Doctrine of Sacrifice,' Mr. Maurice says
he learnt from Edward Irring. . . .
"There was always In him, curiously enough,
even to the last, a more than Presbyterian
doggedness of devotion to the Kirk of Scot
land, combined with a higher than most High
Churchmen's belief In the divine origin, char
acter, and significance of the Church, its
priesthood, and Its sacraments.
"When people had a cause to gain, they
tried to enlist this mighty voice on their side,
thinking that Its utterances could no doubt be

148 EDWARD IRVING:
trained to the common uses and expediencies
of the world, and to take Its part In defending
the popular compact which even Religious
Societies do not disdain to make between God
and Mammon. But it would not do. They
take him to their Missionary Meetings, where
he hears an Evangelical orator proclaiming
that 'the first requisite of the modem Mis
sionary, Is prudence, and the second, prudence,
and the third prudence;' and then they hear
him, from the pulpit where he is asked to plead
their cause, idealizing, in those stately periods
which he seemed to have learnt to frame at the
feet of Milton and Hooker, the picture of no
modern prudent Missionary, but of the burn
ing Evangelist, the hero of the Cross, going
forth wltjtiout staff and scrip, thinking nothing
of subscriptions, with no vision of edified
crowds In Exeter HaU, but caring only 'to
spend and to be spent' In the Master's cause.
"Thus his life-battle ended right bravely
and faithfully fought through all those toll-
some years In which he had seen his sublime
Ideas of right and truth gradually scorned
and rejected by the Church and the world.
He had preached righteousness in the great
congregation; and Belial and Mammon were
as dominant as before ! He had unrolled the
dark and splendid web of the Apocalypse; and

MAN, PREACHER, PROPHET 149
men had laughed the revelation to scorn!
He had proclaimed his Lord's oneness with
our humanity, as the root and hope of all
humanity, and the Church of his love had
branded him as heretic and traitor! He had
seen the dawning glory of 'the latter day,'
and had heard with the Inward ear the very
voice of God ; and the dawn had faded, and
the voice had spoken only to silence and wound
and trouble him ! It seemed all a failure ;
and so he died.
"We wish we could enter more fully Into the
results of his life and teaching. Could we do
so, we should see how wide these results have
been, — how his teaching regarding Sacraments
and Church Orders Is reproduced in the High
Churchism of England at the present day, how
his teaching regarding the restored 'gifts'
created the possibility of that new 'Catholic
and Apostolic Church,' — how his teaching re
garding the Brotherhood of Christ, along with
that of Mr. Campbell regarding the Father
hood of God, was the germ of all the deepest
teaching of the Broad Church now; above all,
how the spectacle of his life, his words and
works, was a sign to his generation, a witness
that quickened the religious life of Britain
throughout all its borders.
"He sleeps now within the crypt of the
magnificent Cathedral of Glasgow. In the

150 EDWARD IRVING:
narrow window that lights his resting place
a relative has placed a figure of the Baptist,
portrayed with more of Christian feeling and
reality of life than are common In Protestant
religious art. It is a fitting mark for the
grave of one who spoke and lived 'in the spirit
of Ellas.' Had he been laid there a thousand
years ago, his tomb would have become a
famous shrine."
Quoted from Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. VI. (Prob
ably written by Rev. Robert Story.)

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