It is not our purpose to offer our readers an elaborate review of Mrs. Oliphant's most interesting work, to which we trust they will do justice by reading it for themselves; but rather to pause upon the vital question which this "Life of Irving" must raise in the mind of the Christian student of human nature and of the ways of Providence. How, namely, was it, that a man such as we have indicated, such as this book commends to the brotherly love and reverence of every fellow-Christian, could, under Divine permission, have been deluded—as we cannot doubt that deluded he was—into recognizing as immediate utterances of the Holy Spirit, the too-often incoherent and meaningless ejaculations of pious enthusiasts, being in fact carried off his feet, as it were, by one of the first waves of that surge of spirit-manifestation and influx which has since heaved so convulsively and spread so widely among us? It is the answer to this problem, unconsciously afforded in the work before us, (the writer of which appears to have mournful glimpses of the momentous question, without having attained to a satisfactory solution of it) an answer beautifully justifying and illustrating the guiding love and mercy of the Lord in the case of this gifted one among His creatures, which has most especially attracted our interest and attention. From a spiritual point of view, we can clearly trace, first the natural tendencies of character and defects of intellectual development which exposed Irving to the mistake into which he fell, and secondly, how this very mistake was bent by the Lord into means of purification and correction of those tendencies and failings which had opened the way to the assaults of error. Such a lesson is to be read, doubtless, in the life of every man who suffers himself to be regenerated by the Lord, but it may not often be so beautifully legible as in the life-history before us. His life from an external point of view was simple and uneventful enough. The child of respectable Scotch parents in humble life, residing in the little town of Annan, Dumfriesshire, he passed, as one of a large family, through the ordinary routine of boyish schooling, diversified by healthy country wanderings and sports, well fitted to develop all wholesome natural activities of mind and body; and from the age of thirteen till nearly eighteen, being designed for the ministry, he studied during term-time at the Edinburgh University, returning to home-life at Annan during the vacations. From that age he maintained himself by schoolteaching, first at Haddington and afterwards at Kircaldy, while completing, and for several years subsequent to completion of, the theological studies and course of training required by the Presbyterian Church previous to the grant of a license as "probationer;" which license enables the young minister to preach and assist in Divine service; but is distinct from "ordination," which is only granted when the "probationer" has been "called" and appointed to the charge of a flock of his own. His first essays in preaching, in aid of Dr. Martin, of Kircaldy,-whose daughter Isabella he subsequently married after a long and devoted attachment,—were quite unappreciated. The great, but probably unripe, gifts he possessed appear to have been quite beyond the scope of apprehension of his hearers, and for years he remained an unsuccessful "probationer." In 1818, at the age of twenty-six, utterly weary of the life of a school-master, which he felt to be in no way his fit vocation, he threw it up, and renewed his studies at Edinburgh; where,-after more than a year of hope deferred, and when, well-nigh desperate, with exhausted means, he was revolving a plan of throwing up all at home, and going forth to exercise as a missionary abroad, the gifts for which he could find no field in his own country,-the celebrated Dr. Chalmers hearing him preach through the intervention of Dr. Andrew Thomson, engaged him as assistant in his zealous labours in his parish of St. John's, Glasgow. Here he laboured with unwearied devotion for more than two years, loved-as Irving always must be by all who knew him-rather than understood or appreciated. There is something very interesting in the record of these early unsuccessful years,-for even in Glasgow his preaching was scarcely more than tolerated,—and of his mournful recognition of the little value his efforts bore in the eyes of others, while yet he felt within himself, and yearned for scope to exercise, those powers of eloquence and enthusiasm in his Master's service, in which, at a later day, he appears to have stood unrivalled before the world. At last, in 1822, he received a "call" from the almost expiring congregation of the Scotch Presbyterian Church, in Cross-street, Hatton-garden, London,* and was after some delays ordained to that 'charge," in his own parish kirk of Annan, in the summer of that year. From this time, for several years, Irving's career was one unbroken * The same chapel, both before and since appropriated to the worship of the New Church. It would seem most singular that a man like Irving, striving, groping, hungering for some better, more living development of Christianity than that with which he was acquainted, should, though so near it outwardly, literally preaching in a New Church pulpit, never, as would appear from his life, have so much as heard of the new Christian dispensation, but that we discern in the history this book unfolds, the barrier which a one-sided religious development of his nature had erected against any intellectual reception of the spiritual light it might have afforded him. We say, any intellectual reception, because, that in heart and soul he was open to its influences, and was a true servant of the Lord, a true worker in His true though invisible church, none who read this biography will doubt. triumph. The little Cross-street chapel, in which, at his first taking charge, a congregation of scarcely fifty could be reckoned on, was, before a full year had elapsed, filled to overflowing, and his position so far assured, that in the autumn of 1823 he married and brought home to London that long and dearly-beloved wife, his deep devotion to whom, with his pious and touching letters, and journals written for her eye alone, during their unavoidable separations, forms one deeply interesting feature in his biography. Fame which might have turned the head of any man, followed. His preaching, his religious publications, became a subject of the most enthusiastic admiration, the most excited public attention and discussion; the little chapel became far too small for audiences who filled the court and besieged the doors in vain; and the building of the larger Scotch National Church, in Regent-square, was soon resolved upon. Early in 1827 it was completed, and taken possession of by Irving and his congregation, his popularity and success having at that time reached their zenith. But we fully agree with Mrs. Oliphant, that no one who reads, and is capable of appreciating the letters and journals above referred to, showing the spirit in which he laboured and prayed during these years spent on the giddy heights of popular applause, can for a moment accept the common hypothesis, that his head was turned, and his vanity inflamed by fame and success, and that hence his fall into the errors and delusions which followed. The causes of such fall lay no doubt within him; but they lay far deeper than this, in the warp and woof, the inherent and acquired tendencies, of his grand and large-hearted, but fallible, human nature. It appears to have been in the years immediately succeeding the opening of his new church, that Irving's attention was first strongly drawn to dwell on the interpretation of Scripture prophecies, and like all Calvinists—for though at heart as far from Calvinism as a man could well be, he was still a Calvinist, we must remember, in his intellectual creed-he unfortunately adopted, apparently without question, the belief in a literal external fulfilment of prophecy. From this to a belief in the speedy second coming of the Lord into this natural world, the transition was easy; and closely connected with this arose the expectation and belief in a restoration to the church of those miraculous gifts of "tongues" and "prophecy" which had blessed the church in earlier ages, and were conceived to be inevitable adjuncts and heralds of the Lord's second coming. For the restoration of these gifts, then, did Irving and his friends betake themselves to enthusiastic and unwearied prayers; they waited and watched for their Lord as men wait for the morning; but looking for the spiritual day-dawn in the natural world, how should they but have been led astray-as they were? For when, in 1830, there first appeared in Irving's congregation outbursts of enthusiastic utterance, on religious subjects, in the mother tongue sometimes, -sometimes in vehement outpouring of incomprehensible "unknown tongues,"-how could he, or those who felt and believed with him, but believe that these were the gifts sent in answer to their prayers? Had they not, as Irving so touchingly and so constantly reiterates,-had they not prayed their Heavenly Father for bread, and were they to believe He had sent them a stone? Not without deep mental struggle-for he must well have foreseen the inevitable worldly results-Irving proceeded after a time to avouch his faith in these utterances of the Holy Ghost, as he deemed them, by so arranging the services of his church as to permit of the exercise of these supposed gifts by the inspired persons. The act was that of a hero. Fame, position, his very existence as a Presbyterian minister, the means of subsistence for his beloved family,-all was placed at stake that man could, in an earthly point of view, hold dear. But believing-as he proved too well that in all sincerity and single-mindedness he did believe the inspirations to be genuine and Divine, how else could a true servant of the Lord have acted? If any further testimony to his pure faith and sincerity were needed, we have it in the fact, unparalleled in the history of such men, that this inspiration, these gifts so ardently prayed for, so profoundly revered, were never shared by Irving himself. To him this would appear to have been a cause of deep regret, perhaps humiliation; to us it affords splendid testimony that his heart and faith were too pure, too singly fixed on serving his Master's will, to allow him to become the tool and the mouthpiece of enthusiastic spirits, such as, no doubt, influenced those around him. That to the gifts so ardently sought, yet thus denied to himself, he nevertheless yielded implicit faith and obedience, we regard as one of the rarest and noblest traits of human nature we have ever met with; while that a man of Irving's intellectual capacities should have been imposed on by such incoherent and pointless utterances as we find recorded, is a melancholy proof of the insufficiency of human intellect when it has once shut out the spiritual light from above, by looking for it in a sensual, external direction. (To conclude in our next.) 121 FROM EDEN TO THE WILDERNESS. No. I. WE are taught that the purpose of God in creation is to give of His own to others, to be conjoined with others, and to make them eternally happy. In this purpose were prophesied the universe, man, and heaven. It foretold the universe, since that was needed as the foundation of all things, as the outward covering of that spiritual world whence mediately it derives its existence. It was needed, too, to afford the elements of bodily existence to that finite being in whose growth into angelic strength and beauty the purpose of God found fulfilment. And the fitness of the material world to the wants of corporeal man is exact. For light and all the beauties of form and colour presuppose vision,-fragrant odours the sense of smell,-flavours the sense of taste,-sounds the ear,—hard and soft, smooth and rough, hot and cold, the perception of touch,-air, pulmonic action and vocal sounds, and fruits and seeds a digestive apparatus that should fit them for nutrition. But if that purpose demands the creation of worlds specially fitted to meet the outward needs of their inhabitants, not the less does it foretell a spiritual nature in man, fitted to receive life from God in all the fullness and perfection possible to the condition of finite existence. That purpose demands that there shall exist in the human spirit a region where love to God, and the wisdom that leads its movements out to action, shall find a holy place one, too, where the love of other men, with its guiding intelligence, shall find its home. Nor less does it require that each man shall have that sense of individual existence which distinguishes him alike from the Being who made him, and the men with whom he lives. Hence the gift of the selfhood, which gives a man to feel that he is in some sort his own, and distinct from all beside, was not alien from the Divine purpose;-good when in subordination, it is only infernal when supreme. But the purpose which accounts for the existence of the world and man, since it issues from a Love that knows no limit, cannot be satisfied with accumulating upon its creatures the good gifts which bring happiness in the world of time, but demands a heaven also where humanity may live and grow in goodness and bliss without the limitations that time and space impose. In the Love of God, therefore, were prophesied the Universe, Man, and Heaven. And since Infinite Love, guided by Wisdom not less, can only produce that which is good, Man and the Universe, as they came forth from the hand of God, were very good." Primeval man was moved by the purest love, under the guidance of the highest finite 66 |