CHAPTER VII

LONDON, 1822.

"ON the second Sabbath of July, 1822," Irving began his labors in London. The fifty people who had signed his call, with such dependents as might belong to them, and a stray sprinkling of London Scotsmen, curious'to hear what their new countryman might have to say for himself, formed all the congregation in the little chapel. The position was not one calculated to excite the holder of it into any flights of ambition, so far as its own qualities went. It was far from the fashionable and influential quarter of the town-a chapel attached to a charity, and a congregation reduced to the very lowest ebb in point of numbers. Nor did Irving enter upon his career with those aids of private friendship which might make an ordinary man sanguine of increasing his estimation and social sphere. Sir David Wilkie records his belief that the new preacher had introductions only to himself and Sir Peter Lawrie, neither of them likely to do much in the way of opening up London, great, proud, and critical, to the unknown Scotsman; and though this statement may not be entirely correct, yet it is evident that he went with few recommendations, save to the little Scotch community amid which, as people supposed, he was to live and labor. There are stories extant among that community still concerning the early beginnings of his fame, which, after all that has passed since, are sadly amusing and strange, with their dim recognition of some popular qualities in the new minister, and mutual congratulations over a single adherent gained. Attracted by the enthusiastic admiration expressed by a painter almost unknown to fame, of the noble head and bearing of the new-comer, another painter was induced to enter the little chapel where the stranger preached his first sermon. When the devotional services were over-beginning with the Psalm, read out from the pulpit in a voice so splendid and melodious that the harsh metres took back their original rhythm, and those verses so dear to Scotsmen justified their influence even to more fastidious ears-the preacher stood up, and read as the text of his sermon the following words: "Therefore came I unto you without gainsaying as soon as I was sent for. I ask you, therefore, for what intent you have sent for me?" The sermon has not been preserved, so far as I am aware; but the text-remembered as almost all Irving's texts are remembered —conveys all the picturesque reality of the connection thus formed between the preacher and his people, as well as the solemn importance of the conjunction. The listening stranger was of course fascinated, and became not only a miember of Mr. Irving's church, but- more faithful to the Church than to the man-a supporter of the Church of Scotland after she had expelled him. By gradual degrees the little chapel began to fill. So far as appears, there was nobody of the least distinction connected with the place, and it is hard to understand how the great. world came so much as to hear of the existence of the new popularity. This quiet period, full of deep hopes and pleasant progress, but as yet with none of the high excitement of after days, Irving himself describes in the following letter to his friend, Mr. Graham, of Burnswark:' London, 19 Gloucester Street, Queen Square, "' Bloomsbury, 5th August, 1822. "MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,-I have not forgotten you, and if I wished to forget you I could not, sealed as you are in the midst of my affections, and associated with so many recollections of worth and of enjoyment. You always undervalued yourself, and often made me angry by your remarks upon the nature of our friendship, counting me to gain nothing; whereas I seemed always in your company to be delivered into those happy and healthy states of mind which are in themselves of exquisite reward. To say nothing of your bounty, which shone through all the cloud of misfortune; to say nothing of your tender interest in my future, my friends, my thoughts, and your sleepless endeavor to promote and serve them, I hold your own manly, benignant, and delicate mind to be a sufficient recommendation of you to men of a character and a genius I have no pretensions to. So in-our future correspondence be it known to you that we feel and express ourselves as equals, and bring forth our thoughts with the same liberty in which we were wont to express them-which is the soul of all pleasant correspondence. " Youl can not conceive how happy I am here in the possession of my own thoughts, in the liberty of my own conduct, and in the favor of the Lord. The people have received me with open arms; the church is already regularly filled; my preaching, though of the average of an hour and a quarter, listened to with the most serious attention; my mind plentifully endowed with thought and feeling; my life ordered, as God enables me after His holy Word; my store supplied out of His abundant liberality: these are the elements of my happiness, for which I am bound to render unmeasured thanks. Would all my friends were as mercifully dealt with, and mine enemies too. " You have much reason for thankfulness that God, in the time of your sore trials, sustained your honor and your trust in Himself; nay, rather made you trust in Him the more He smote you. His time of delivery will come at length, when you shall taste as formerly His goodness, and enjoy it with a chastened joy, which you had not known if you had never been afflicted. Persevere, my dear friend, in the ways of godliness and of duty, until the grace of God, which grows in you, come to full and perfect stature. " For my thoughts, in which you were wont to take such interest, they have of late turned almost entirely inward upon myself; and I am beginning dimly to discover what a mighty change I have yet to undergo before I be satisfied with myself. I see how much of my mind's very limited powers have been wasted upon thoughts of vanity and pride; how little devoted to the study of truth and excellency upon their own account. As I advance in this self-examination, I see farther, until, in short, this life seems already consumed in endeavors after excellence, and nothing attained; and I long after the world where we shall know as we are known, and be free to follow the course we approve with an unimpeded foot. At the same time I see a life full of usefulness, and from my fellow-creatures, full of glory, which I regard not; and of all places this is the place for one of my spirit to dwell in. Here there are no limitations to my mind's highest powers; here, whatever schemes are worthy may have audience and examination; here, self-denial may have her perfect work in midst of pleasures, follies, and thriftless employments of one's time and energies. Oh, that God would keep me, refine me, and make me an example to this generation of what His grace can produce upon one of the worst of His children! I have got three very good, rather elegant apartments-a sittingroom, a bedroom, and dressing-room; and when George* comes up, I have one of the attics for his sleeping apartment. Miy landlady, as usual, a very worthy woman, and likely to be well content with her lodger. George comes up when the classes sit down, and in the mean time is busy in Dr. Irving's shop. This part of the town is very airy and healthy, close to Russell Square, and not far from the church, and in the midst of my friends. My studies begin after breakfast, and continue without interruption till dinner; and the product, as might be expected, is of a far superior order to what you were pleased to admire in St. John's." This letter, after salutations as particular and detailed as in an apostolic epistle, ends with the injunction to "tell me a deal about * His younger, and then only surviving brother, of whom and of whose education he seems from this time to have taken the entire burden. Annandale, Sandy Come, and all worthy men." His correspondent, like himself, was an Annandale man, a Glasgow merchant, with a little patrimony upon the side of one of those pastoral hills which overlook from a distance Irving's native town, where George, a young medical student, was busy among the drugs in the country doctor's shop; amid all the exultation of his hopes, as well as in the fullest tide of success, his heart was always warm to this " country-side." About a month later, Dr. Chalmers, then making one of his rapid journeys through England, collecting the statistics of pauperism, came to London for the purpose of "introducing," according to Presbyterian uses and phraseology, though in this case somewhat after date, the young minister to his charge. This simple ceremony, which is entirely one of custom and not of rule, is generally performed by the most prized friend of the new preacher-who simply officiates for him, and in his sermon takes the opportunity of recommending, in such terms as his friendship suggests, the young pastor to the love and esteem of his people. Nobody could be better qualified to do this than Irving's master in their common profession; and it is creditable to both parties to note how they mutually sought each other's assistance at such eventful moments of their life. Dr. Chalmers writes to his wife on arriving in London that he found Irving "in good taking with his charge. He speculates as much as before on. the modes of preaching; is quite independent with his own people, and has most favorably impressed such men as Zachary Macaulay and Mr. Cunningham with the conception of his talents. He is happy and free, and, withal, making his way to good acceptance and a very good congregation." Such, as yet, was the modest extent of all prognostications in his his favor. The good doctor goes on to relate how he was delighted to find that Irving had been asked to dine with him in the house of a Bloomsbury M. P., evidently rejoicing in this opening of good society to his friend and disciple. The two returned together to Irving's lodgings after this dinner, and found there a hospitably-received, but apparently not too congenial guest, "Mr., the singularity of whose manners you were wont to remark, who is his guest at present from Glasgow. This," remarks Dr. Chalmers, "is one fruit of Mr. Irving's free and universal invitation; but I am glad to find that he is quite determined as to visits, and apparently not much annoyed with the intrusion of callers." This is not the only evidence of the imprudent liberality of Irving's farewell invitation to the entire congregation of St. John's. About the same time, to select one instance out of many, a poor man came to him seeking a situation -"a very genteel, respectable-looking young man;" says the compassionate preacher, who refers him;, in a letter full of beseeching sympathy, to his universal assistant and resource in all troubles, the good William Hamilton. Such petitioners came in multitudes through all his after-life, receiving sometimes hospitality, sometimes advice-recommendations to other people more likely to help them-kindness always. Such troubles come readily enough of themselves to the clergymen of a popular church; but the imprudence of inviting them was entirely characteristic of a man who would have served and entertained the entire world if he could. The next Sunday, when Dr. Chalmers preached, the little Cross Street church was of course crowded. Wilkie, the most tenacious of Scotsmen, had been already led to attendance upon Irving's ministrations, and was there, accompanied by Sir Thomas Lawrence, to hear his still greater countryman. But the brilliant crowd knew nothing yet of the other figure in that pulpit, and went as it came, a passing meteor. After this, Dr. Chalmers concludes his estimate of his former colleague's condition and prospects in the following words: "Mr. Irving I left at Homerton; and as you are interested in him, I may say, once for all, that he is prospering in his new situation, and seems to feel as if in that very station of command and congeniality whereunto you have long known him to aspire. I hope that he will not hurt his usefulness by any kind of eccentricity or imprudence." In these odd and characteristic words Dr. Chalmers, always a little impatient and puzzled even in his kindest moments about a man so undeniably eminent, yet so entirely unlike himself, dismisses Irving, and proceeds upon his statistical inquiries. Meanwhile, in this station of " command and congeniality," as Chalmers so oddly terms it, Irving made swift and steady way. Writing at a later period to his congregation, he mentions a year as having passed before the tide of popularity swelled upon them beyond measure; but this must have been a failure of memory, for both the preacher and congregation were much earlier aware of the exceeding commotion and interest awakening around them. He expresses his own consciousness of this very simply in another letter to his friend David Hope.

 Gloucester Street, Queen Square, "5th November, 1822. "MY DEAR FRIEND, —You have too good reason to complain of me, and a thousand more of my Scottish friends; but be not too severe; you shall yet find me in London the same true-hearted fellow you knew me in Glasgow...... But I had another reason for delaying; I wished, when I did write, to be able to recount to you an exact account of my success. Thank God, it seems now beyond a doubt. The church overflows every day, and they already begin to talk of a right good Kirk, worthy of our mother and our native country. But into these vain speculations I have little time to enter, being engrossed with things strictly professional. You are not more regular at the counting-house,nor, I am sure, sooner (Anglic} earlier), neither do you labor more industriously, till four chaps from the Ram's Horn Kirk,* than I sit in to this my study, and occupy my mind for the benefit of my flock. The evening brings more engagements with it than I oan overtake, and so I am kept incessantly active. My engagements have been increased, of late, by looking out for a house to dwell in. I am resolved to be this Ishmaelite no longer, and to have a station of my own upon the face of the earth. So a new year will see me fixed in my own habitation, where there will be ever welcome entertainment for him who was to me for a brother at the time of my sojourning in Glasgow. When I look back upon those happy years, I could almost wish to live them over again, in order to have anew the instances I then received of true brotherly kindness from you and so many of your townsmen. "You would be overjoyed to hear the delight of our Scottish youth, which they express to me, at being once more gathered together into one, and the glow with which they speak of their recovered habits. This is the beginning, I trust, of good among them. So may the Lord grant in His mercy and loving-kindness. " Now I wish to know about yourself-how all your affairs prosper..... I could speculate much upon the excellent fruit season, and the wretched oil season; but you would laugh at my ignorance. And there is something more valuable to be speculated upon. I do hope you prosper in the one thing needful, under your most valuable pastor; and also my dear friend Graham. Give my love to him, and say I have not found time to answer his letter; but if this thing of settlement were off my mind, I should get into regular ways. Do not punish me, but write me with all our news; and believe me, my dear David, your most affectionate friend, EDWARD IRVING." The immediate origin of Irving's popularity, or rather of the flood of noble and fashionable hearers who poured in upon the little chapel in Hatton Garden all at once, without warning or premonition, is said to have been a speech of Canning's. Sir James Mackintosh had been by some unexpected circumstance led to hear the new preacher, and heard Irving in his prayer describe an unknown family of orphans belonging to the obscure congre* One of our Glasgow churches, popularly so called. gation as now " thrown upon the fatherhood of God." The words seized upon the mind of the philosopher, and he repeated them to Canning, who " started," as Mackintosh relates, and, expressing great admiration, made an instant engagement to accompany his friend to the Scotch Church on the following Sunday. Shortly after, a discussion took place in the House of Commons, in which the revenues of the Church were referred to, and the necessary mercantile relation between high talent and good pay insisted upon. No doubt it suited the statesman's purpose to instance, on the other side of the question, the little Caledonian chapel and its new preacher. Canning told the House that, so far from universal was this rule, that he himself had lately heard a Scotch minister, trained in one of the most poorly endowed of churches, and established in one of her outlying dependencies, possessed of no endowment at all, preach the most eloquent sermon that he had ever listened to. The curiosity awakened by this speech is said to have been the first beginning of that invasion of "society" which startled Hatton Garden out of itself. This first year, however, of his residence in London was so far obscure that he had as yet opened his voice only in the pulpit, and had consequently given the press and its vassals no vantage ground on which to assail him. It is perhaps, with the new publicity which his first publication brought upon him in view, that he reminds his people how " for one year, or nearly so, beginning with the second Sabbath of July, 1822, our union went on cementing itself by mutual acts of kindness, in the shade of that happy obscurity which we then enjoyed. And I delight to remember that season of our early love and confidence, because the noisy tongues of men and their envious eyes were not upon us." With the best will in the world, newspapers can take but little notice of a popular preacher, and periodicals of higher rank none at all, so that it was merely private criticism which commented upon the great new, voice rising up in the heart of London. Besides the vague general facts of the rapidly raised enthusiasm, of applications for seats in the little Caledonian chapel, which would only accommodate about six hundred people, rising in one quarter to fifteen hundred, and Irving's own simple and gratified intimation that "the church overflows every day," there is very little certain information to be obtained of that firstyear of his progress in London. Thirty Sermons, taken down in short-hand by W. J. Oxford, but published only in 1835, after Irving's death, and forming the second volume of Irving's Life and Works-a production evidently got up to catch the market at the moment of his deathcontains the only record remaining to us of his early eloquence. Nobody who reads these sermons, imperfect as they must be from the channel through which they come, will wonder at the rising glow of excitement which, when a second year set in, brought all London struggling for places to the little Scotch church, already fully occupied by its own largely increased congregation. They have, it is true, no factitious attractions, and genius, all warm and eloquent, has preached before without such results; but the reader will not fail to see the great charm of the preacher's life and labors already growing palpable through those early proclamations of his message. Heart and soul, body and spirit, the man who speaks comes before us as we read; and I have no doubt that the first thrill of that charm which soon moved all London, and the fascination of which never wholly faded from Irving's impassioned lips, lay in the fact that it was not mere genius or eloquence, great as their magic is, but something infinitely greater-a man, all visible in those hours of revelation, striving mightily with every man he met, in an entire personal unity which is possible to very few, and which never fails, where it appears, to exercise an influence superior to any merely intellectual endowment. Nor is it possible to read the few letters of this period, especially those above quoted, without feeling the deep satisfaction and content which at last possessed him, and the stimulus given to all his faculties by this profound consciousness of having attained the place suitable for him and the work which he could do. A long breath of satisfaction expands the breast which has so often swelled with the wistful sighs of longing and deferred hope. He is the " happy warrior" at length able to work out his life "upon the plan that pleased his youthful thought;" and his descriptions of his studies and the assiduity with which he set to work-_his very self-examinations and complaints of his own unworthiness, are penietrated with this sentiment. He stands at the beginning of his career in an attitude almost sublime in its simplicity, looking forward with all the deep eagerness of an ambition which sought not its own advancement-a man to whom God had granted the desire of his heart. Few men consciously understand and acknowledge the fullness of this blessing, which, indeed, is not often conferred. Most people, indeed, find the position they had hoped and longed for to fall far short of their hopes when it is attained. 

Irving was an exception to this common rule of humanity. le had reached the point to which he had been struggling, and amid all the joyful stir of his faculties to fill his place worthily, he never hesitates nor grudges to make full acknowledgment that he has got his desire. Not merely obedience and loyalty constrain him to the work, but gratitude to that Master who has permitted him to reach the very post of his choice. With a full heart and unhesitating words, and even more by a certain swell of heroic joy and content in every thing he does and says, he testifies his thankfulness. It is no longer a man struggling, as most men do, through ungenial circumstances and adverse conditions whom we have to contemplate, but a man consciously and confessedly in the place which his imagination and wishes have long pointed out to him as the most desirable, the most suitable in the world for himself. With this buoyant and joyful satisfaction, however, no mean motives mingled. Irving's temper was eminently social. He could not live without having people round him to love, and still more to admire and reverence, and even to follow; but no vain desire of "good society" seems to have moved the young Scotchman. He was faithful to Bloomsbury, which his congregation favored; and when he set up his first household in London, though moving a little out of that most respectable of localities, he went farther off instead of nearer the world of fashion, and settled in Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville. Here he lived in modest economy for some years, prodigal in nothing but charity. The society into which he first glided was still Scotch, even when out of the narrower ecclesiastical boundaries. David Wilkie was one of his earliest friends, and Wilkie brought him in contact with Allan Cunningham, a still closer countryman of his own. Thus he made gradual advances into the friendship and knowledge of the people about him; and with his young brother sharing his lodging and calling out his affectionate cares, with daily studies close and persevering as those he has himself recorded; with the little church Sunday by Sunday overflowing more fully, till accidents began to happen in the narrow streets about Hatton Garden, and at last -the concourse had to be regulated by wiles, and the delighted, but embarrassed managers of the little Caledonian chapel found an amount of occupation thrust upon their hands for which they were totally unprepared, and had to hold the doors of their little building like so many besieged posterns against the assaults of the crowd; and with notable faces appearing daily more frequent in the throng'of heads all turned toward the preacher, Edward Irving passed the first year of his life in London, and sprang out of obscurity and failure with a sudden unexampled leap to the giddiest height of-popular applause, abuse, and idolatry, bearing the wonderful revolution with a steady but joyful simplicity, recognizing his success as openly as he had recognized the want of it, under which he suffered for so many silent years.