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CHAPTER IX
1824.
THE year
1824 began with no diminution of those incessant labors. It is wonderful
how a man of so great a frame, and of outof-door tendencies so strong and
long cherished, should have been able to bear, as Irving did, confinement
in one of the most townlike and closely-inhabited regions of London. In
Pentonville, indeed, faint breaths of country air might at that period be
supposed to breathe along the tidy, genteel streets; but in Bloomsbury,
where many of Irving's friends resided, or in the dusty ranges of Holborn,
where his church was, no such refreshment can have been practicable. Nor
had the Presbyterian minister any relief from curates, or assistance of
any kind. His entire pulpit services -and, according to his own
confession, his sermons averaged an hour and a quarter in length —his
prayers, as much exercises of the intellect as of the heart, came from his
own lips and mind, unaided by the intervention of any other man; and
besides, his literary labors, and the incessant demands which his great
reputation brought upon him, he had all the pastoral cares of his own
large congregation to attend to, and was ready at the call of the sick,
the friendless, and the stranger whensoever they addressed him. That this
overwhelming amount of work, combined as it was with all the excitement
inseparable from the position of a popular preacher-a preacher so popular
as to have his church besieged every day it was opened-should tell upon
his strength, was to be expected; and accordingly we find him writing in
the following terms to Mr. Collins, of Glasgow, the publisher, who had
taken a large share in Dr. Chalmers's parochial work in St. John's, and
was one of Irving's steady friends. Some time before he had undertaken to
write a preface to a new edition of the works of Bernard Gilpin, which is
the matter referred to: "7 Myddelton Terrace, 24th February, 1824. "MY
DEAR MR. COLLINS, —I pray you not for a moment to imagine that I have any
other intention, so long as God gives me strength, than to fulfill my
promise faithfully. I am at present worked beyond my strength, and you
know that is not inconsiderable. My head! my head! I may say with the
Shunamite's child. If I care not for it, the world will soon cease to care
for me and I for the world. If you saw me many a night unable to pray with
my wife, and forced to have recourse to forms of prayer, you would at once
discover what hath caused my delay. I have no resource if I throw myself
up, and a thousand enemies wait for my stumbling and fall. " I am now
better, and this week had set to rise at six o'clock and finish it, but I
have not been able. Next week I shall make the attempt again and again
till I succeed; for upon no account, and for no sake, will I touch or
undertake aught until I have fulfilled my promise in respect to Gilpin.
But one thing I will say, that I must not be content with the preface of a
sermon or patches of a sermon. The subject is too important-too many eyes
are upon mei-and the interests of religion are too much inwarped in
certain places with my character and writing that I should not do my best.
"The Lord bless you and all his true servants. " Your faithful friend,
EDWARD IRVING." This conscientious determination to do nothing imperfectly
is, amid all the exaltation and excitement of Irving's position, no small
testimony to his steadiness and devout modesty. Adulation had not been
able to convince him that his name was sufficient to give credit to
careless writing, nor had the vehement and glowing genius, now fully
enfranchised and acknowledged, learned to consider itself independent of
industry and painstaking labors. He had learned what criticism awaited
every thing he wrote; and even while he retaliated manfully, was doubtless
warned in minor matters by the storm just then passing over, which had
been raised by his former publication. His next point of contact with the
astonished and critical world, which watched for a false step on his part,
and was ready to pounce upon any thing, from an imperfect or complicated
metaphor to an unsound doctrine, occurred in the May of this year, when he
had been selected to preach one of the anniversary sermons of the London
Missionary Society. The invitation to do this was presumed to be a
compliment to Irving, and voucher of his popularity, as well as a prudent
enlistment of the "highest talent" to give attraction to the yearly
solemnity of the society. IHad the London committee been wise, they would
scarcely have chosen so daring and original an orator to celebrate their
anniversary, since Irving was exactly the man whose opinions or sentiments
on such a topic were not to be rashly predicated. The preliminaries of
this discourse, as afterward described by himself, were not such as
generally usher in a missionary sermon. Instead of reading up the records
of the society, and making careful note of thca;uses for congratulation
and humility, as it would have been ~rrrec!t Ao have done-instead of
laying up materials for a glowing iaccount of its progress and panegyric
upon its missionaries, Irviiig' preparations ran in the following
extraordinary channel: " Having been requested by the London Missionary
Society,I he writes, "to preach upon the occasion of their last
anniversary, I willingly complied, without much thought of what I was
undertaking; but when I came to reflect upon the sacredness and importance
of the cause given into my hands, and the dignity of the audience before
which I had to discourse, it seemed to my conscience that I had undertaken
a duty full of peril and responsibility, for which I ought to prepare
myself with every preparation of the mind and'of the spirit. To this end,
retiring into the quiet and peaceful country, among a society of men
devoted to every good and charitable work, I searched the Scriptures in
secret, and in their pious companies conversed of the convictions which
were secretly brought to my mind concerning the missionary work. And thus,
not without much prayer to God and self-devotion, I meditated those things
which I delivered in public before the reverend and pious men who had
honored me with so great a trust." It may easily be supposed that a
discourse, thus premeditated and composed by a man whose youth was full of
missionary projects; such as no practical nineteenth century judgment
could designate otherwise than as the wildest romance, was not likely to
come to such a sermon as should content the London or any other Missionary
Society. It was not an exposition of the character of a missionary, as
apprehended by an heroic mind, capable of the labors it described, which
had been either wished or requested. But the directors of the society,
having rashly tackled with a man occupied, not with their most laudable
pursuits and interests, but with the abstract truth, had to pay the
inevitable penalty. The day came. In preparation for a great audience, the
chapel in Tottenham Court Road, once known as the Tabernacle, and built
for Whitfield, was selected. The day was wet and dreary, but the immense
building was crowded long before the hour of meeting, many finding it
impossible to get admittance. So early was the congregation assembled,
that to keep so vast a throng occupied, the officials considered it wise
to begin the preliminary services a full hour before the time appointed.
When the preacher appeared at last, his discourse was so long that he had
to pause, according to the primitive custom of Scotland, twice during its
course, the congregation in-the intervals singing some verses of a hymn.
One of the hearers on that occasion tells that, for three hours and a
half, he, only a youth, and, though a fervent admirer of the orator, still
susceptible to fatigue, sat jammed in and helpless near the pulpit, unable
to extricate himself. All this might have but added to the triumph; and
even so early in his career it seems to have been understood of Irving
that the necessity of coming to an end did not occur to him, and that not
the hour, but the subject, timed his addresses, so that his audience were
partly warned of what they had to look for. But the oration which burst
upon their astonished ears was quite a different matter. It had no
connection with the London Missionary Society. It was the ideal
missionary-the apostle lost behind the veil of centuries-the evangelist
commissioned of God, who had risen out of Scripture and the primeval ages
upon the gaze of the preacher. He discoursed to the startled throng met
there to be asked for subscriptionsto have their interest stimulated in
the regulations of the committee, and their eyes directed toward its
worthy and respectable representatives, each drawing a little congregation
about him in some corner of the earth of a man without staff or scrip,
without banker or provision, abiding with whomsoever would receive him,
speaking in haste of his burning message, pressing on without pause or
rest through the world that lay in wickedness —an apostle responsible to
no man —a messenger of the Cross. The intense reality natural to one who
had all but embraced the austere martyr vocation in his own person gave
force to the picture he drew. There can be little doubt that it was
foolishness to most of his hearers, and that, after the fascination of his
eloquence was over, nine tenths of them would recollect, with utter
wonder, or even with possible contempt, that wildest visionary conception.
But that it was true for him, nobody, I think, who has followed his course
thus far will be disposed either to doubt or to deny. The wildest hubbub
rose, as was natural, after this extraordinary utterance. It would not
have been wonderful if the irritated London Society, balked at osnce of
its triumph and the advantage to be derived from a wise advocacy of its
cause, had set down this unlooked-for address as a direct piece of
antagonism and premeditated injury. I am not aware that any body ever did
so, but I allow that it might have been alleged with some show of justice.
To judge of Irving's course on this occasion by mere ordinary laws of
human action, it would not be very difficult to make out that somehow,
piqued or affronted by the society, or at least dis-.pproving of it while
pretending to serve it, he had. taken opportunity of the occasion,
and.done his best to place it in a false position before its friends and
supporters. The fact was as different as can well be conceived. Resolute
to give them of his best, as he himself describes, and judging the
"reverend and pious men" whom he was about to address as free to follow
out the truth as himself, the conscientious, simple-minded preacher went
down to the depths of his subject, and, all forgetful of committees and
rules of " practical usefulness," set before them the impossible
missionary-the man not trained in any college or by any method yet
invented-the man the speaker himself could and would have been but for
what he considered the interposition of Providence. The amazed and
doubtful silence, the unwilling fascination with which they must
have.listened through these inevitable hours to that visionary in his
visionary description, watching in impatience and helpless indignation
while the wild but sublime picture of a man who certainly could not be
identified among their own excellent but unsublime messengers rose before
the multitudinous audience in which, a little while before, official eyes
must have rejoiced over a host of new subscribers, all, alas! melting away
under the eloquence of this splendid Malaprop, may be easily imagined. One
can fancy what a relief the end of this discourse must have been to the
pent-up wrath and dismay of the missionary committee; and, indeed, it is
impossible not to sympathize with them in their unlooked-for discomfiture.
In the mean time, preoccupied and lost in the contemplation of that most
true, yet most impossible servant of God, whom he had evoked from the past
and the future to which all things are possible, Irving, all unaware of
the commotion he had caused, went on his way, not dreaming that any body
could suppose the present machinery and economics of commonplace
missionary work injured by that high vision of the perfection of a
character which has been, and which may yet be again. He says he " was
prepared to resist any application which might possibly be made to me" to
publish his sermon; an entirely unnecessary precaution, since the
complacency of the London Society evidently did not carry them the length
of paying the preacher of so unwelcome an address the customary
compliment. But in the commotion that followed-in the vexation and wrath
of "the religious world," and the astonished outcry of every body
connected with missions, the preacher, not less astonished than
themselves, discovered that his doctrine was new, and unwelcome to the
reverend and pious men for whose hearing he had so carefully prepared
it.'When he heard his high conception of the missionary character
denounced as an ill-timed rhetorical display, and that which he had
devoutly drawn from the only inspired picture of such messengers
characterized as not only visionary and wild, but an implied libel upon
their present representatives, his sincere heart was roused and startled.
He went back to his New Testament, the only store of information he knew
of. He drew forth Paul and Barnabas, Peter and John, first missionaries,
apostles sent of God. The'longer he pondered over them the more his
picture rose and expanded. Was not the errand the same, the promise of God
the same? and why should the character of the individual be so different?
The natural result followed: confirmed by farther examination, and
strengthened by opposition, the sermon enlarged, and grew into an appeal
to the world. Pity, always one of the strongest principles in his soul,
came in to quicken his action. A missionary in Demerara, who had
apostolically occupied himself in the instruction of slaves, had been
arrested by an arbitrary planter-legislation, upon some outbreak of the
negroes, on the false and cruel charge of having incited them to
insurrection, and had been actually, by Englishmen, found guilty, and
sentenced to death in consequence. The sentence was not carried out,
fortunately for those who pronounced it; but the unfortunate missionary,
already ill, and savagely incarcerated, died a martyr to the cruelty which
had not yet dared to bring him to the scaffold. The case, an ugly
precedent to other cases in another country, which we find ourselves now
at full liberty to stigmatize as they deserve, awoke the horror and
compassion of England; and when the forlorn widow returned home, Irving,
eager to show his sympathy and compassion, and finding the name of a
missionary martyr most:fit to be connected with his picture of the
missionary character, came once more before the world with the obnoxious
discourse, which his first hearers had not asked him to print. "Being
unable in any other way," he says, " to testify my sense of his injuries,
and my feeling of the duty of the Christian Church to support his widow, I
resolved that I would do so by devoting to her use this fruit of my heart
and spirit. Thus moved, I gave notice that I would publish the discourse,
and give the proceeds of the sale into her hands. When again I came to
meditate upon this second engagemhent which I had come under, and took
into consideration the nov:ity of the doctrine which I was about to
promulgate, I set my-:self to examine the whole subject anew, and opened
my ear to every objection which I could hear from any quarter, nothing
repelled by -the uncharitable constructions and ridiculous account which
was often rendered of my views, the effect of which was to convince me
that the doctrine which I had advanced was true, but of so novel and
unpalatable a character that, if it was to do any good, or even to live,
it must be brought before the public with a more minute investigation of
the Scriptures and fuller development of reason than could be contained
within the compass of a single discourse. To give it this more convincing
and more living form was the occupation of my little leisure from pastoral
and ministerial duties, rendered still less during the summer months by
the indifference of my bodily health; and it was not until the few weeks
of rest and recreation which I enjoyed in the autumn that I was able to
perceive- the true form and full extent of the argument which is necessary
to make good my position." As this is the first point upon which Irving
fairly parted company with his evangelical brethren, and exasperated that
large, active, and influential community which, as he somewhere says, not
without a little bitterness, "calls itself the religious world," and as it
discloses with singular force the temper and constitution of his mind, I
may be permitted to enter into it more fully than one of his shortest and
least complete publications might seem to deserve. He himself explains, in
a very noble and elevated strain, the manner in which he was led to
consider the character of the Gospel missionary. He was present at one of
the great missionary meetings in the metropolis —those meetings with which
all the British public have more or less acquaintance, and which collect
audiences as wealthy, as devout, and as estimable as can be found any
where, yet which are, as every body must allow, and as many uneasily feel,
as unlike apostolical conferences as can well be imagined. In such an
assembly, " where the heads and leaders of the religious world were
present," a speaker, whose name Irving does not mention, expressed himself
amid great applause in the following manner: "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? still I would answer, Prudence." The
effect which such a statement was like to have upon one listener, at
least, in the assembly, may well be imagined. Startled and disgusted, he
went away, not to examine into the memoirs of missionaries or the
balance-sheets of societies, but into the primitive mission and its
regulations. He finds that faith, and not prudence, is the apostolic rule.
He finds that religious faith alone has the prerogative of withstanding
"this evil bent ofprudence to become the death of all ideal and invisible
things, whethr er poetry, sentiment, heroism, disinterestedness, or
faith." HI finds that the visionary soul of good, which in other matters
is opposed to and conquered by the real, is in faith alone unconquerable,
the essence of its nature. He then touches upon the only particular in
which the early mission differs from the mission in all ages, the power of
working miracles, and asks whether the lack of this faculty makes an
entire change of method and procedure necessary? With lofty indignation,
he adds the conclusion which has been arrived at by the religious world:'"
The consistency of the Christian doctrine with everlasting truth is
nothing; the more than chivalrous, the divine intrepidity and
disinterestedness of its teachers is nothing; the response of every
conscience to the word of the preacher is nothing; the promise of God's
Spirit is nothing; it is all to be resolved by the visible work, the
outward show of a miracle.... The Gospel owed its success in the first
ages wholly to this, or to this almost wholly; but for us, we must
accommodate ourselves to the absence of these supernatural means, and go
about the work in a reasonable, prudent way, if we would succeed in it;
calculate it as the merchant does an adventure; set it forth as the
statesman does a colony; raise the ways and means within the year, and
expend them within the year; and so go on as long as we can get our
accounts to balance." This conclusion the preacher then sets himself to
overthrow by propounding the character of the "missionary after the
apostolic school," which, although prefaced by due acknowledgment of "the
high and seated dignity which this society hath attained in the judgment
of the Christian Church, and the weighty and wellearned reputation which
it hath obtained, not in Christendom alone, but over the widest bounds of
the habitable earth," was indisputably contrary to the very idea of
missions, as held and carried on by such societies. Only the first part of
a work, intended to be completed in four parts, was given to the world,
the mind of the preacher being more deeply engrossed from day to day in
that law of God which was his meditation day and night, and directed ever
to new unfolding of doctrine and instruction. This publication was
dedicated to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the
remarkable letter which follows: "MY DEAR AND HONORED FRIEND,-Unknown as
you are in the true character of your mind or your heart to the greater
part of your countrymen, and misrepresented as your works have been by
those who have the ear of the vulgar, it will seem wonderful to many that
I should make choice of you from the circle of my friends to dedicate to
you these beginnings of my thoughts upon the most important subject of
these or any times; and when I state the reason to be that you have been
more profitable to my faith in orthodox doctrine, 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, it will, perhaps, still more astonish the
mind, and stagger the belief of those who have adopted, as once I did
myself, the misrepresentations which are purchased for a hire and vended
for a price concerning your character and works.... I have partaken so
much high intellectual enjoyment from being admitted into the close and
familiar intercourse with which you have honored me, and your many
conversations concerning the revelations of the Christian faith have been
so profitable to me in every sense, as a student and preacher of the
Gospel —as a spiritual man and a Christian pastor, and your high
intelligence and great learning have at all times so kindly stooped to my
ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with the affection of friend
to friend, and the honor due from youth to experienced age, but with the
gratitude of a disciple to a wise and generous teacher, of an anxious
inquirer to the good man who hath helped him in the way of truth, I do
presume to offer you the first-fruits of my mind since it received a new
impulse toward truth, and a new insight into its depths from listening to
your discourse. Accept them in good part; and be assured that, however
insignificant in themselves, they are the offering of a heart which loves
your heart, and of a mind which looks up with reverence to your mind.
EDWARD IRVING." These lavish thanks, bestowed with a rash prodigality,
which men of less generous and effusive temperament could never be brought
to understand, were, according to all ordinary rules of reason, profoundly
imprudent. To put such a name as that of under any circumstances, on a
work which its author was already assured would be examined with the most
eager and angry jealousy, and in which a great many of his religious
contemporaries would but too gladly find some suspicious tendency, was of
itself imprudent. But so, I fear, was the man to whom giving of thanks and
rendering of acknowledgments was always congenial. It was not in his
nature either to guard himself from the suspicion of having received more
than he really had received, or to provide against the danger of
connecting himself openly with all whom he loved or honored. This
publication was received with shouts of angry criticism from all sides,
and called: forth an Expostulatory Letter from Mr. W. Orme, the secretary
of the outraged Missionary Society. This letter is exactly such a letter
as the secretary of a Missionary Society, suddenly put upon its defense,
would be likely to write, full of summary applications of the argumentum
ad hominem, and much pious indignation. Between the preacher and his
assailant it would be altogether impossible to decide; they were concerned
with questions in reality quite distinct, though in name the same; the one
regarding the matter as an individual man, capable of all the labor and
self-denial he described, might reasonably regard it; the other looking
upon it with the troubled eyes of a society, whose business it was to
acquire, and train, and send forth such men, and which had neither leisure
nor inclination to consider any thing which was not practicable. It is
entirely a drawn battle between them; nor could it have been otherwise had
a champion equal to the assailant taken the field. But the religious world
was too timid to perceive the matter in this light. To attack its methods
was nothing less than to attack its object; nor would it permit itself to
see differently; and a man who acknowledged, with even unnecessary warmth
and frankness, the instruction he had received from one who certainly was
not an authorized guide in religious matters, and who prof* In Leigh
Hunt's correspondence, published since the above was written, occurs the
following notice of this dedication in a letter from Charles Lamb: "I have
got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher, whose fame must have
reached you. Judge how his own sectarists must stare when I tell you he
has dedicated a book to S. T. C., acknowledging to have learned more from
him than from all the men he ever conversed with. IIe is a most amiable,
sincere, modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montagu
told him the dedication would do him no good:'That shall be a reason for
doing it.' was his answer." The kind Elia adds, "Judge, now, whether this
man be a quack." offered to them a splendid antique ideal instead of the
practicable modern missionary, became a man suspect and dangerous; and the
coldness, of which he again and again complains, rose an invisible barrier
between the fervent preacher and the reverend and pious men to whom, in
all simplicity and honest endeavor to lay his best before them, he had
offered only the unusual and startling truths which they could not
receive. While all this was going on Irving's life proceeded in the same
full stream of undiminished popularity and personal labor. Besides the
passing crowds which honored and embarrassed the chapel in Cross Street,
its congregation had legitimately increased into dimensions which the
pastor, single-handed, could not dream of retaining the full
superintendence of; neither, if he could have done it, would such a state
of things have been consistent with Presbyterian order. He seems to have
had but one elder to yield him the aid and countenance with which
Presbyterianism accompanies its ministers. Accordingly, from the summer
retirement at Sydenham, which he alludes to in the preface to his
missionary oration, he sent the following letter, an exposition of the
office to which he invited his friend, to William Hamilton: "Sydenham, 22d
June, 1824. "'DEAR SIR,-It has for a long time been the anxious desire and
prayer, and the subject of frequent conversation to Mr. Dinwiddie and
myself, that the Lord would direct us in the selection of men from among
the congregation to fill the office of elders among us..... And now, my
dear brother, I write to lay this matter before you, that you may cast it
in your mind, and make it the subject of devout meditation and prayer.
That you may be rightly informed of the nature of this office, I refer you
to Titus, i., 6; 1 Timothy, v., 17; Acts, xx., 17; and that you may
farther know the powers with which the founders of our Church have
invested this office, I extract the following passage from the second book
of Discipline, drawn up and adopted by the General Assembly for the
regulation of the Church in the year of our Lord 1590. Book 2d, chapter
vi.* * The quotation is as follows: "What manner of persons they ought to
be, we refer it to the express word, and mainly to the canons written by
the Apostle Paul. "Their office is, both severally and conjointly, to
watch over the flock committed to their care, both publicly and privately,
that no corruption of religion or manners enter therein. "As the pastors
and doctors should be diligent in teaching and sowing the seed of the
Word, so the elders should be careful in seeking after the fruit of the
same in the people. " It appertains to them to assist the pastor in the
examination of them that come to the Lord's table. Item, in visiting the
sick. "They should cause the Acts of the Assemblies, as well particular as
general, to be put in execution carefully. And now we pray of you, our
dear and worthy brother, to join with us and help us in the duty for which
we are ourselves unequal, of administering rightly the spiritual affairs
of the congregation. No one feels himself to be able for the duties of a
Christian, much less of the overseer of Christians; and you may feel
unwilling to engage in that for which you may think yourself unworthy. But
we pray you to trust in the Lord, who giveth grace according to our desire
of it, and perfects his strength in our weakness. If you refuse, we know
not which way to look; for, as the Lord knoweth, we have fixed upon you
and the other four brethren because you seemed to us the most worthy. I,
as your pastor, will do my utmost endeavor to instruct you in the duties
of the eldership. I shall be ready at every spiritual call to go and
minister along with you; and, by the grace of God, having no private ends
known to me but the single end of God's glory and the edification of the
people, we who are at present of the session will join with you hand in
hand in every good and gracious work... "If you feel a good will to the
work-a wish to profit and make progress in your holy calling-and a desire
after the edification of the Church, the gifts will be given you, and the
graces will not be withheld. Therefore, if it can be consistently with
your conscience and judgment, we pray you and entreat you to accept of our
solicitation, and to allow yourself to be constrained by the need and
importunity of the Church to be named for this holy office. "' On Friday,
next week, I shall come and spend the evening at your house, and converse
with you on this matter; meanwhile accept of my heartfelt wishes for your
spiritual welfare, and let us rejoice together in the work which the Lord
is working in the midst of us. I know that you will not take it amiss that
I.have used the hand of my wife in copying off this letter-[up to this
point the letter had been in Mrs. Irving's angular feminine handwriting,
but here her husband's bolder characters strike in]-who is well worthy of
the trust, although I can not bring her to think or write so. "I am, my
dear brother, your most affectionate pastor and friend, " EDWARD IRVING."
This apostolical rescript, warmed with the quaint touch of domestic
affection at the end, accomplished its purpose, and the excellent man who
had all along been Irving's referee and assistant in every thing personal
to himself, his friends, and charities, be"They should be diligent in
admonishing all men of their duty according to the rule of the Evangel. "
Things that they can not correct by private admonition they must bring to
the eldership. "Their principal office is to hold assemblies with the
pastors and doctors who are also of their number, for establishing of good
order and execution of discipline, unto the which assemblies all persons
are subject that remain within their bounds." This latter is the
formidable institution of the Kirk Session, which bears so large a part in
Scottish domestic annals, and has been subject, in later days, to so much
ignorant invective, came one of the rulers and recognized overseers of the
Church, which henceforward had, like other Presbyterian congregations, its
orthodox session, in which for years the preacher found nothing but
fervent sympathy, appreciation, and assistance. A little farther on we are
introduced into the bosom of the modest home in Pentonville, where
domestic life and its events had now begun to expand the history of the
man. The swell of personal joy with which the following letter breaks into
the record of outside events and interests will charm most people who have
had occasion to send similar announcements. It is addressed to Dr. Martin:
"Pentonville, 22d July, 1824. "MY DEAR FATHER,-Isabella was safely
delivered of a boy (whom may the Lord bless) at half past eleven this
forenoon, and is, with her child, doing well; and the grandmother, aunt,
and father newly constituted, with the mother, are rejoicing in the grace
and goodness of God. "Mrs. Martin and Margaret are both well, and salute
you grandfather, wishing with all our hearts that you may never lay down
the name, but enjoy it while you live. " I am well, and I think the
pleasure of the Lord is prospering in my hand. A wide door and effectual
is opened to me, and the Lord is opening my own eyes to the knowledge of
the truth. Your arrival and our great-grandfather's (whom, with all the
grand-aunts, salute in our name-I know not what they owe us for such
accumulated honors) is expected with much anxiety. I feel I shall be much
strengthened by your presence. "Your dutiful son, EDWARD IRVING." -This
child-child of a love, and hope, and sorrow not to be described;
celebrated, afterward, as poet's child has rarely been, by such sublimated
grief and pathetic resignation as have wept over few graves so infantine
—was afterward baptized, by the greatgrandfather above referred to, in the
presence of the two intermediate generations of his blood. The child was
called Edward, and was to his father, with emphatic and touching verity,
"his excellency and the beginning of his strength." The little tale of his
existence sent echoes through all the strong man's life-echoes so tender
and full of such heart-breaking pathos as I think no human sorrow ever
surpassed. In the mean time, however, all was thankfulness in the
increased household; and the patriarchal assemblage of kindred, father,
and father's father, could have prophesied nothing but life and length of
days to the child of such a vigorous race. Along with all the public and
domestic occurrences which filled this busy life, there are connected such
links of charity and private beneficence as put richer and idler men to
shame. Irving's charity was not alms, but that primitive kindness of the
open house and shared meal which is of all modes of charity the most
difficult and the most delicate-a kind almost unknown to our age and
conventional life. To illustrate this, we may quote one tragical episode,
unfortunately more common among Scotch families, and, indeed, among
families of all nations, than it is comfortable to know of: A young man, a
probationer of the Church of Scotland, who had been unsuccessful in
getting a church, or, apparently, in getting any employment, had turned
such thoughts as he had in the way of literature, and had written and
published, apparently by subscription, a Treatise on the Sabbath. Having
exhausted Edinburgh, he came to London with the vain hopes that bring all
adventurers there. He seems to have had no particular talent or quality
commending him to the hearts of men. Into London he dropped obscurely,
nobody. there finding any thing to respect in his half-clerical
pretensions or unremarkable book. He went to see Irving occasionally, and
was observed to fall into that dismal shabbiness which marks the failure
of heart and hope in men born to better things. Irving had bought his book
largely, and stimulated others to do the same, and now watched with
anxiety the failure and disappointment which he could not avert. One
evening a man appeared at his house with a note, which he insisted upon
delivering into Irving's own hand. The note was from the unfortunate
individual whom we have just described. It was written in utter despair
and shame. "The messenger was the landlord of a' low public house,"" says
a lady, a relative of Irving's, then resident in his house, and acquainted
with the whole melancholy story, "where M had been for three days and
nights, and had run up a bill which he had no means of paying. It appeared
that he had boasted of his intimacy with Mr. Irving, and the man had
offered to carry a note from him to' his great friend,' who, M — declared,
would at once release him from such a trifling embarrassment. Edward was
puzzled what to do, but at last resolved to go to the house, pay the bill,
and bring the unfortunate man home. Hie went accordingly, desiring me to
get a room ready. M —-- was very glad to get his bill paid, but would
scarcely leave the house till Edward told him he would free him only on
condition that he came with him at once. None of us saw him for a day or
two, as he was, or pretended to be, so overcome with shame that he could
not look us in the face. But he soon got over this, and joined the family
party. Decent clothes were obtained for him, and we hoped he was really
striving to give up his bad habits." This continued for some time, when,
"one day, he went out after dinner and did not return. Two or three days
passed, and no account could we obtain of him. At last another note was
brought, written in the same self-condemnatory strain, begging for
forgiveness and assistance." There is little need for following out the
sickening story. Every where there are families who have received the same
letters, made the same searches, heard the same humiliating confessions
and entreaties, but only for those who belong to them, whom nature makes
dear amid all wretclihedness, to whom the hearts of mothers and sisters
cling, and in whose behalf love still hopes against hope, are such cases
usually undertaken. To do it all for a stranger-to bring the
half-conscious wretch into a virtuous home, to while him with domestic
society and comfort, to seek him out again and again, pay debts for him,
find employments for him, receive his melancholy penitences, and encourage
what superficial attempts after good there may be in him, is a charity
beyond the powers of most men. In rural places, here and there, such good
Samaritans may be found; but what man in London ventures to take upon
himself such a responsibility? This doleful story throws a light upon the
private economics of the Pentonville house which I should be sorry to
lose. Those who were in more innocent need were received with still more
cordial welcomes. Friends pondering where to cast their lot —people
meditating a change of residence, and desirous of seeing how the land lay,
found a little mount of vision in the house of the great preacher from
which to investigate and decide. A stream of society thus flowed by him,
fluctuating as one went and another came. If any man among his friends was
seized with the thought that London might be a sphere more desirable than
Edinburgh or than Annan, such a person bethought him, naturally, of Edward
Irving and his hospitable house. The great people who sought the great
preacher never interfered with the smaller people who sought his
assistance and his friendship; and those who had no possible claim upon
his hospitality got at least his good offices and kind words. In the
middle of the summer, just two years, as he himself tells us, from the
time of his coming, the foundation stone of his new church was laid. It
was planned of a size conformable to the reputation of the preacher. This
event was celebrated by Irving in three sermons-one preached before,
another after, and the third on occasion of the ceremony-in which last he
takes pains to describe the discipline and practice of that Church of
Scotland which stood always highest in his affections; but, at the same
time, speaks of the building about to be erected in terms more like those
that might be used by a Jew in reference to his temple, or by a Catholic
of his holy shrine, than by Presbyterian lips, which acknowledge no
consecration of place. Doubtless the sublimation which every thing
encountered in his mind, the faculty he had of raising all emotions into
the highest regions, and of covering even the common with an ideal aspect
unknown to itself, may have raised the expressions of a simple sentiment
of reverence into this consecrating halo which his words threw around the
unbuilt church; but it must not be forgotten that from his very outset a
certain priestly instinct was in the man who bade "' Peace be to this
house" in every dwelling he entered, and who gave his benediction, as well
as his prayers, like a primitive pope or bishop, as indeed he felt himself
to be. For rest and recreation, the little family, leaving London in
September, paid a short visit to the paternal houses in Scotland, and then
returned to Dover, where they remained for some weeks, and where Irving,
never idle, entered fully, as he himself relates, into the missionary
oration of which we have already spoken. At a later period, after having
again entered into harness, in the November of the same year, he visited
Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool by invitation, in order to stir up
his countrymen there to the support and revival of the Church of their
fathers, for want of which many of them had sunk into indifference, or
worse. From Birmingham, where he opened a new church and preached the
discourse on the "Curse as to Bodily Labor," which was published some time
afterward, he writes to his wife: "Birmingham, 29th or rather 30th
November, 1824.' "MY DEAREST VIFE,-I am arrived safe, notwithstanding your
evil auguries, or rather suggestions, of doubt and unbelief, which the
faith of God's providence can alone dissipate, and the assurance that I am
about our Father's business; and I have found a home here at the house of
Dr. J, my father's adjoining neighbor, and my very warm friend, into whose
heart I pray the Lord I may sow some spiritual seed in return for his
temporal benefits, for as yet he is in the darkness of Unitarianism.
Nevertheless, they have family prayers, at which I this night presided;
and while I sought, I could not find to avoid in my prayers the matter in
dispute between us, but was constrained, as it were, by superior power, to
make cordial testimony to our risen and reigning Lord, our Savior and our
God. " I have seen the committee, and find all things looking
prosperously.... Mr. L-J has had so much distress in his family that he
was content I should come here and not to him; but I go to-morrow
afternoon to weep with him and his motherless children. Mrs. L loved you
to the end with a strange and strong love, and it was her greatest earthly
desire to have seen you. There is something so uncommon in this that it
seems to me to point the way that you should love her children, and do for
their sakes what she longed to do for your mother's child. Therefore, my
dear Isabella, do write Miss L ——, and strengthen her, and invite her,
when she can be spared, to come and spend some time with us..... Be
careful of yourself and the little boy-the dear, dear little boy, my
greatest earthly hope and joy-for you are not another, but myself-my
better and dearer half. I pray the Lord to bless you, and be instead of a
friend, and husband, and father to you in my absence. Let not your
backwardness hinder you from family prayers night and morning. "I hope I
shall find time to write to Margaret, our beloved sister, to whom I have
much that is affectionate to communicate, and somejhing that may be
instructive..... Forget me not to Mary,* over whom I take more than a
master's authority, feeling for her all the guardianship of a parent,
which she may be pleased to permit me in..... My brotherly and pastoral
love to the elders of the flock..... Say to Thomas, the moralist, that I
love him at a distance as much as at hand-I think sometimes full better,
as they say in Annandale. To my Isabella I say all in one word, that I
desire and seek to love her as Christ loved the Church. "Your most
affectionate husband, EDWARD IRVING." Another brief letter follows from
Liverpool, where he also preached for the encouragement and strengthening
of the Scotch Church already in existence there. It is naturally to his
wife that his letters are now chiefly addressed, and the result is, as
will be shortly shown, as wonderful a revelation of heart and thoughts as
one human creature ever made to another. By this time the natural course
of events seems to have withdrawn him in a great degree from regular
correspondence with his friends in Scotland-a change which his marriage,
and all the revolutions which had taken place in his life, as well as the
full occupation of his time, and the perpetually increasing calls made
upon it, rendered inevitable. His affections were unchanged, but it was no
longer possible to keep up the expression of them. The new friends who
multiplied around him were of a kind to make a deep impression upon a mind
which was influenced more or less by all whom it held in high regard. We
have already quoted his warm expressions of esteem and affection for one
of his servants, Mr. Basil Montagu and his wife. To Coleridge he had also
owned his still higher obligations, Another friend, whom his friends
consider to have had no small influence on Irving, was the Rev. W.
Vaughan, of Leicester, an English clergyman, who is supposed, I can not
say with what truth, to have been mainly instrumental in leading him to
some views which he afterward expressed. His distinguished countryman,
Carlyle, referred to with playful affection in the letter we have just
quoted, not then resident in London, was his occasional guest and close
friend. Good' David Wilkie, and his biographer, Allan Cunningham, were of
the less elevated home society, which again connected itself with the
lowest homely levels by visitors and petitioners from Glasgow and
Annandale. In this wide circle the preacher moved with all the joyousness
of his nature, never, however, leaving it possible for any man to forget
that his special character was that of a servant of God. The light talk
then indulged in by magazines breaks involuntarily into pathos and sev
riousness in the allusions made in Frazer's Miagazine, years after; to
this early summer of his career. The laughing philosophers, over their
wine, grow suddenly grave as they speak of the one among them who was not
as other men: "In God he lived, and moved, and had his being," says this
witness, impressed from among the lighter regions of life and literature
to bear testimony; "no act was done but in prayer; every blessing was
received with thanksgiving to God; every friend was dismissed with a
parting benediction." The man who could thus make his character apparent
to the wits of his day must have lived a life unequivocal and not to be
mistaken. It was while living in the full exercise of all those charities,
happy in the new household and the first-born child, that he worked at the
missionary oration, the history of which I have already told. Apart from
the ordinary comments upon and wonderings over the stream of fashion which
still flowed toward Hatton Garden, this oration was, for that year, the
only visible disturbing element in his life.
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