CHAPTER XII

1826, 1827. The Headship of Christ.

 AFTER the full and detailed personal portrait which Irving gives of himself in these journal-letters, a period of comparative silence follows. This was the silent seed-time of the exciting and exhausting years, full of conflict and struggle, upon the threshold of which he stood. The full flood of life which now carried him along was not more visible in his actual labors than it was in the eager progress of his unresting and ever-active spirit. Whether his mind had ever been content with the sober Presbyterian ideal of a democratic Church, in which the will of the people had really, if not nominally, a distinct and apparent sway, and in which the priests were subject to the perpetual criticism of a community too much disposed to argument and individual opinion to yield much veneration to their legitimate leaders, it is difficult to say; but the Scotch imagination has always found a way of escaping from those prosaic trammels. That which the outside world has distinguished as religious liberty, and recognized as the object of the many struggles in which the Church of Scotland has engaged, has never been so named or considered among the champions of that Church. Their eyes, throughout the long and eventful drama, have been fixed, not upon the freedom of individual worship or the rights of the Christian people, but upon a much loftier. ineffable principle, often converted into an instrument of evil, yet always retaining, to some, the divinest sunshine of ideal perfection. Nowadays, when martyrdoms are no longer possible, and heretical stakes and blocks are long ago out of fashion, it is more difficult than it once was to idealize, out of a struggle for mere ecclesiastical authority, that conflict which, in the days of blood and violence, so many humble heroes waged for the headship of Christ. To many a Scotch confessor this doctrine has stood instead of a visible general, animating the absolute peasant-soul to so distinct a conception of Christ's honor and authority, as the object for which it contended, that the personal ardor of the conflict puzzles the calm observer, who understands as nothing but a dogma this inspiring principle. The events which made the great crisis in the existence of Scotland a struggle for her faith, drove this lofty, visionary conception into the ideal soul of the nation, where it has ever since existed, and is still appealed to, as the experience of to-day can testify. When, according to the evidence of facts, the Covenanters were fighting against the imposed Liturgy and attempted episcopacy of the Charleses, they were, to their own fierce consciousness, struggling for the principle that, in the Church, Charles was nothing, and Christ all in all; nor has the sentiment failed in more recent struggles. Irving had received this national creed along with his earliest impressions: he had even received it in the still closer theocratic model well known in ancient Scotland, where God the ruler was every where visible, in providence, judgment, and mercy. But his impassioned soul led him to reconstruct upon these sublime elements another ideal of a Church than that which has long been supreme in Scotland. Unconsciously his thoughts elevated themselves and grew into fuller development; unconsciously he assumed in his own person the priestly attitude, and felt himself standing between God and the people. Then the community itself rose under his glowing gaze into a baptized world —a Christendom separated by the initiatory ordinance of Christianity, of which Christ was the sole head. The longer he contemplated this world, the more it rose out of the region of doctrine into that of reality. That Lord became no distant Presence, but a Person so intensely realized and visible that the adoring eye perceived the human pulses throbbing in His veins; and for awe, and love of that mysterious union, the worshiper could not keep silence. That faith became no system of words, but a divine evidence and substantial proof of the unutterable glories; that baptism grew out of a symbol and ceremony into a Thing-an immortal birth, to which God Himself pledged His word. One can see this wonderful process going on in the transparent, vehement spirit. Every thing suffered a change under those shining eyes of genius and passion. From impersonal regions of thought they rose into visible revelations of reality. To a mind instinct with this realizing principle, the conception of a Second Advent nearly approaching was like the beginning of a new life. The thought of seeing His Lord in the flesh cast a certain ecstasy upon the mind of Irving. It quickened tenfold his already vivid apprehension of spiritual things. The burden of the prophetic mysteries, so often darkly pondered, so often interpreted in a mistaken sense, seemed to him, in the light of that expectation, to swell into divine choruses of preparation for the splendid event which, with his own bodily eyes, undimmed by death, he hoped to behold. He had commenced his labors, and the studies necessarily involved in those labors, with a certain expansion of -spirit, and power of sublimating whatever truth he touched, but no apparent divergence from ordinary belief. But years of close dwelling upon the sacred subjects which it was his calling to expound had borne their natural fruit. Not yet had he diverged; but he had expanded, intensified, opened out in an almost unprecedented degree. Special truths, as he came to consider them, glowed forth upon his horizon with fuller and fuller radiance; life and human affections seemed to go with the adventurer into those worlds of believed but not appreciated divinity; and, as he himself identified one by one those wonderful realizations which were to him as discoveries, with ever a warmer and fuller voice he declared them aloud. Such was his state of mind in the comparatively silent, and, in some respects, transition period to which we have now reached. His first sorrow did but strengthen the other influences at work upon him, while, at the same time, his many and continual labors, acting upon his health, obliged him to withdraw a little from the din and excitement of his battle-field, and left him fuller scope for his thoughts. In his winter solitude, while his wife was absent, he had begun, more from benevolent motives than with any idea of making use of the accomplishment, to study Spanish; but, before he had made any great advances in the language, a manner of turning the new gift to the profit of the Church came, by a complication of causes-to his eyes clearly providential-in his way. A Spanish work, entitled " The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty," professedly written by Juan Josafat BenEzra, a Hebrew convert to Christianity, but in reality, according to the facts afterward ascertained, the production of a Jesuit priest called Lacunza, was brought to him, as he describes in his preface to the translation of that work, by friends who had been specially impressed by his own views on the same subject. He found in it, as he declares, "the hand of a master," and not only so, but "the chief work of a master's hand;" and feeling assured that his God had sent this " masterpiece of reasoning" to him " at such a critical time for the love of His Church, which Hie hath purchased with His blood," he resolved "to weigh well how I might turn the gift to profit." The result of his ponderings was, that he undertook the translation of the book, concluding, after his fashion, that the Church was as open to receive instruction, wheresoever it came from, as he himself was. Not very long before he had stood up against the champions of Catholic emancipation, taking, without a moment's hesitation, the unpopular side of the question, and declaring with the utmost plainness that, "though it expose me to odium in every form, I have no hesitation in asserting it to be my belief that when the rulers of this nation shall permit to the worshipers of the Beast the same honors, immunities, and trusts which they permit to the worshipers of the true God, that day will be the blackest in the history of our fate." But in the face of these uncompromising sentiments, and almost in a breath with the expression of them, he comes, with characteristic candor and openness, to the feet of the Spanish priest, receives his book "as a voice from the Roman Catholic Church," just as he claims for his own preaching to be "as a voice from the Kirk of Scotland," and finds it his duty to interpret between the Jesuit preacher and the English world. A better illustration of the native candor and simplicity of his mind could not be. Few Protestant preachers would take upon themselves such an office; and those who could believe their own views enforced and supported by the concurrence of a Catholic writer, would be, according to ordinary rules, men of tolerant, not'to say latitudinarian principles-not rigid upon points of difference. Of a very different kind was the toleration of Irving. It was not toleration at all, indeed, nor any modern convenience, but simple love for all who loved his Master's appearing, and unfailing belief in the human utterance which speaks out of the abundance of men's hearts. The same voice which had just declared its horror at the thought of political equality for the Catholics, and doubtless had been anathematized as the voice of a bigot in consequence, declares, immediately after, the determination of the speaker to give no Protestant comment upon the Jesuit's simple words. "The doctrines of the Roman Church," he says, "which now and then appear, are brought forward with so much simplicity and sincerity of faith, and so little in the spirit of obtrusion or controversy, that it seemed to me like taking an advantage of the honest, well-meaning man to enter the lists against him, unaccoutred as he was.... Oh no; I had no heart to catch him tripping, or to expose the weakness of so dear a teacher, concerning whom I was continually exclaiming to the companion of my solitary labors,'I hope yet, in some of my future pilgrimages, to meet this grey-haired saint in the flesh, and receive his blessing, while I tell him how much I love him, and have profited from his instructions."' This contrast of sentiment will possibly puzzle some observers. Irving, it is evident, was not careful to preserve his consistency; but it is difficult to make out how a man who labored so lovingly over this priest's book, and presented him, all Jesuit as he was, to the Protestant world as a teacher to whom he himself looked up, could be much of a bigot, even though he took the most uncompromising and decided position on the political question of Catholic disabilities. His views on political questions generally seem to have been forming at this time into a more decided shape than they had hitherto possessed. Out of the eclectic personal creed of a professional man, to whom politics were secondary, they had consolidated into something which, from the outside, looks like High Toryism in its most superlative and despotic development. His frequent references to the " Convocation Book," described in his letters, and the conclusion he arrives at, that subjects are not justifiable in taking up arms against their lawful governors, seems, at the first glance, a singular principle for the descendant and champion of the Covenanters; but it belongs, as naturally as any other development of doctrine, to the elevation and growth of all his thoughts. To him, with whom the limit of practicability told for nothing, and whose business was with the far more generally forgotten or slighted ideal form of things, the consideration of how it would work was out of the question; enough men there were in the world to consider that; his work was entirely of another description. To his eyes, full of sublimating light, the secular forms of government stood forth like the spiritual, in all the authority of Divine origin. The nation was a Christian nation, periling its very existence by the admission into power of any who did not recognize the principle of its being. The powers that be were ordained of God. The purity of the national faith was the safeguard of its life, and the ark of national safety was in danger the moment that unhallowed hands touched or approached it. Such was the political creed of the fervid Scotch preacher when the world was palpitating around him with Catholic struggles and the early essays of Reform. I Almost all the strength of contemporary genius went with the popular stream. Hie, all Old-world and unprogressive, stood against the tide. How circumstances could modify belief, or individual and temporary hardships set aside everlasting truth, it was not in him to understand, nor did he enter into the less or more practicable degrees of national virtue. His stand was taken upon the absolute. From this point of view he protested against the abolition of tests, against the emancipation of Catholics, and, most of all, against the great atheistical principle, as he held it, that power was derived from the people instead of from God. Upon this, as upon the antipodes of those lofty politico-religious principles which he himself held like a prophet in a world consciously ruled of God, he looked with horror. Such elevated theories of government are not always necessary to disgust thoughtful men with the doubtful and unreliable impulses of popular supremacy. But Irving's views were not founded upon any calculation of results. To put power into the hands of any man who was not ready, and, indeed, eager to declare himself a follower of Christ, according to the apparent means of Christ's own appointing, was an act of national sacrilege to him who considered himself bound to obey that power when exercised as the ordinance of God. Thus a political creed, which time and the hour have made obsolete, as being all impracticable, flashed forth into life in the hands of a champion who thought only of right and never of practicability. Whatever may be said of those doctrines of divine right and religious government, which by times have been perverted by human ingenuity into the most horrible instruments of cruelty and national degradation, the grand idea of a Christian nation, governed by Christians, on the broad basis of that law which is good-will to man, as held by such a mind as that of Irving, must always remain a splendid imagination: no vulgar political belief, although it called forth from the Optimist demonstrations of his own strenuous sentiments, which were swept off, all futile and unavailing, before the inevitable tide. Early in the year 1826 the work of Ben-Ezra came into Irving's hands, confirming and strengthening his heart in respect to the new revelation of doctrine which had already illuminated his path. He had begun his Spanish studies only a few months before, with the view of helping his friend, Giuseppe Sottomayor; and it was not until summer that he undertook the translation of the book which had impressed him so deeply. He had, by this period, so exhausted his strength in his ordinary pastoral labors that his congregation became anxious about his health, and insisted on the necessary rest and relaxation which alone could recruit him. "About this time," as he- himself says, "it pleased the Lord to stir up the greater part of my flock to exhort me by all means, as I valued my own health and their well-being, to remove a little from the bustle and intrusion of this great city, and abide in the country during some of the summer months; and two of the brethren who loved me much engaged, unknown to me, a place in the country, where, without forsaking my charge, I might reside in peace and quietness amid the beauty and bounty with which God bath covered the earth. This occurring so unexpectedly, at the time when all concerned were soliciting me to undertake the whole care and responsibility of the translation, and perceiving that the work was likely to suffer from a divided labor, without being at all hastened, I resolved at length, insufficient as was my knowledge of the language at that time, to conquer all difficulties, and heartily to give myself to the Lord and to His Church during these weeks of retirement; for I was well convinced that the health which I most needed was the healing waters of the Holy Spirit, which I thus made bold to solicit, by devoting myself to His service; and certainly the laborer was not disappointed of his hire. I prevented the dawning of the morning, and I envied the setting in of the shades of evening to labor in my work; and when my hands and my eyes failed me because of weakness, the helper whom God hath given meet for me served me with hers, and so we labored to bring this labor of love to completion, purposing to offer it to the Church as our Christmas offering. Oh that my brethren in Christ might have the same divine satisfaction and unwearied delight in reading that I had in translating this wonderful work!" It would be difficult to add to, without impairing, the perfection of this beautiful sketch of the summer leisure which Irving "gave to the Lord." The retirement of the pair, so wonderfully united in labor and sympathy, was at Beckenham, where, with that child of tears over whom they could not choose but watch with double solicitude, they lived in quiet, at least, if not in repose, for the greater part of the summer. During all this time Irving went up to London every Saturday, remaining until Monday, to fulfill his usual laborious ministerial duties, and in the interval labored, as he has described, at the work-perhaps, of all literary labors, the most tiresome and wearing out-of this translation. Such was his version of relaxation and ease. He worked at it so closely that he was at one time threatened with loss of sight in consequence, those strong out-of-doors eyes of his evidently not having been adapted by nature for poring perpetually over print and paper. However, he appears to have known the true medicine for his own case. The village quiet, and incidental advantages, passively enjoyed, of fresh air and summer greenness, comforted and refreshed his heart as he sat laboring with his imperfect Spanish over the long treatise of Lacunza; and, in the calm of those toils, his health returned to him. The defect in his eyes even helped him to find out the auxiliary which was at hand, and of which, in after times, he largely availed himself. " I rejoice to tell you that Edward is very much better," writes Mrs. Irving to her sister. " He has now made me almost- entirely his amanuensis. I even write his discourses, which to him is a most wonderful relief. This will surprise you when you remember he could bear no one in the room with him; still he can bear no one but myself; but he can stop and give ear to my observations.".. And the anxious mother diverges from this description into expressions of subdued alarm lest baby should have the hooping-cough, and a wife's tender admiration of her husband's increasing fondness for the child. Once more the strain is idyllic; but the fond woman's letters, in which "' dear Edward" appears as the centre of every thing, invested with a certain impersonal perfection, do not convey so clear a picture out of the bosom of that domestic happiness, tranquillity, anxiety, love, and labor-the sublime but common course of life-as the brief words in which he himself commemorates the summer scene. It was a halcyon moment, subdued by the touch of past sorrow, and that trembling which experience so soon brings into all mortal enjoyment, yet sweet with  the more exquisite happiness which only those who have sorrowed and trembled together can snatch out of the midst of their years. This laborious retirement had been preceded by the toils and excitements of a London May, with all its calls upon the powers and the patience of the great orator. One of the religious meetings of the season was distinguished by an oft-told incident-one of the common wonders which have established Irving's character for eccentricity among those who know little more of him than is conveyed by such anecdotes. This was the meeting of the Hlibernian Bible Society, at which, the'previous year, he had made so remarkable an appearance, denouncing and resisting the terror or complacency with which its members yielded to a popular outcry. This year-probably, as one of his friends suggests, that he might offer his support as openly as his rebuke-he gave his watch, till he should be able to redeem it, to the subscription in aid of the Society. It is the only incident standing out from this tranquil period of his life. During the summer of 1826, while Irving was busied with his translation, the expectation conveyed in this Spanish book, to which his own mind and that of many others had been directed, with special force and clearness, not very long before, seems to have swelled within the minds of all who held it to such an amount of solemn excitement and inquiring interest as could no longer keep silence. If the advent of the Lord were indeed close at hand; if events were visibly marching forward to that great visible era of doom and triumph, as so many students of prophecy concurred in believing, it was but natural that a hope so extraordinary should bring the little brotherhood into a union far more intimate than that of mere concurrence in belief. The bond between them was rather that personal and exciting one which exists among a party full of anxiety for the restoration or election of a king-a patriotic band of conspirators furnished with all the information and communications in cipher which can not be given at length to the common mass —than the calmer link between theologians united in doctrine; and, indeed, one wonders more at-the steady pertinacity of human nature, which'could go on in all the ordinary habitudes of the flesh under the solemn commotion of such a hope, than at any kind of conference or extraordinary consultation which might be held under the circumstances. "A desire to compare their views with respect to the prospects of the Church at this present crisis" naturally arose among them, as Irving informs us in the preface to Ben-Ezra; and after several meetings during the summer, a serious and lengthened conference on the subject was arranged to take place at Albury, the residence of one of the most remarkable of the little prophetic Parliament, the late Henry Drummond. It is unnecessary to enter into any history of this remarkable man, who was but the other day, in the full force of his wonderful individuality, taking his part in all the affairs of the world. That individuality was too marked and striking to permit any calm, general opinion of the merits of a man who 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 Parliament; a believer in all the mysteries of faith, yet a contemptuous denouncer of every thing beyond the shadowy line which he recognized as dividing faith from superstition; the temporal 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. Such a conjunction of character had never been witnessed before in his generation, and has given occasion for estimates as different as are the points of view from which they are taken. Such as he was, all impetuous and willful-with an arbitrary magnificence of disposition possible only to a man born to great riches, and unconscious of many of those natural restraints which teach most men the impossibility of putting their own will into full executionMr. Drummond had from his youth dedicated his wealth, his wit, his unparalleled activity, his social position, every thing he had and was, to the service of God, according as that appeared to his vivid but peculiar apprehension. Before this time he had appeared in the track of the Haldanes at Geneva, where the dead theological lethargy of the early Reformed Church was again waking into life, and had heard the Hebrew Wolff questioning the Roman professors in the chambers of the Propaganda. Not very long before, Irving himself, a very different mould of man, had recorded in his journal a certain dissatisfaction with the perpetual external activity of the restless religious potentate. But this warm link of common belief awoke closer feelings of brotherhood. Henry Drummond, impatient, fastidious, and arbitrary, a master of contemptuous expression, acting and speaking with all the suddenness of an irresponsible agent, was as unlike a mall as could possibly be supposed to the great Scotch preacher, with all the grand simplicity of his assumptions and tender brotherhood of his heart. But "they who loved His appearing" were united by a spell which transcended every merely human sympathy; and from this time Mr. Drummond appears to have exercised a certain degree of influence, varying, but always increasing, over the career of Irving. Their first point of actual conjunction appears to have been at this meeting of prophetical students, held at Albury. When the summer was over, with all its restraints of labor and fashion, and early winter whitened the gentle hills of Surrey, the grave little company assembled in that house, which has since given character and color to the district round it, and become for one division of Christians a kind of visible Beth-El in the wilderness of men's houses.' One of our number," says Irving, in the preface already quoted, " well known for his princely munificence, thought well to invite by special letter all the men, both ministers and laymen, of any orthodox communion whom he knew or could ascertain to be interested in prophetic studies; that they should assemble at his house of Albury Park, in Surrey, on the first day of Advent, that we might deliberate for a full week upon the great prophetic questions which do at present most intimately concern Christendom. In answer to this honorable summons, there assembled about twenty men of every rank, and church, and orthodox communion in these realms; and in honor of our meeting, God so ordered it that Joseph Wolff, the Jewish missionary, a son of Abraham and brother of our Lord, both according to flesh and according to faith, should also be of the number. And here, for eight days, under the roof of Henry Drummond, Esq., the present high sheriff of the county, and under the moderation of the Rev. Hugh M'Neil, the rector of the parish of Albury, we spent six full days in close and laborious examination of the Scriptures.... These things I write from recollection, not caring to use the copious notes which I took; for it was a mutual understanding that nothing should go forth from the meeting with any stamp of authority, that the Church might not take offense, as if we had assumed to ourselves any name or right in the Church. But there was such a sanction given to these judgments by the fullness, freeness, and harmony which prevailed in the midst of partial and minor differences of opinion; by the spirit of prayer, and love, and zeal for God's glory and the Church's good; by the sweet temper and large charity which were spread abroad; and by the common consent that God was in a very remarkable way present with us, that I deem it my duty to make known these great results to the Christian churches which I have thus so early an opportunity of addressing. "Having said so much, I think it to be my duty farther to state the godly order and arrangement according to which the Albury conference, concerning the second Advent, was conducted; for to this, under God, I attribute in no small degree the abundance of blessings with which our souls were made glad. We set apart a day for each subject, and resolved to give no more than one day to each; and as we were but six free days assembled, having met on the Thursday and parted on the Friday of the week following, we joined the fourth and seventh subjects together, conceiving them to be closely connected with one another; and having apportioned a separate subject to each day, we proceeded to each day's work after the following method: we divided the labor of each day into three parts-a morning diet before breakfast, the second and principal diet between breakfast and dinner, and the third in the evening. The object of our morning diet, to which we assembled at eight o'clock preciselyas early as we could well see-was two-fold: first, to seek the Lord for the light, wisdom, patience, devotion to His glory, communion of saints, and every other gift and grace of the Holy Spirit which was necessary and proper to the labor which was that day appointed us in God's good providence: this office was always fulfilled by a minister of the Gospel. Secondly, one of the number was appointed over night, and sometimes several nights before, to open the subject of the day in an orderly and regular way, taking all his grounds of argument, and substantiating all his conclusions out of the Holy Scriptures; and while he thus proceeded, the rest of the brethren took down the substance of what he said, and noted down the texts from which he reasoned; for we sat in the library around a large table, provided with every convenience for writing and for consulting the Holy Scriptures. When the outlines, and divisions, and whole groundwork of the subject were thus laid out by the brother, strengthened by our prayers, we parted without at that time declaring any thing, and refreshed ourselves with breakfast, where we met the pious and honorable lady and family of our worthy host. Two full hours were allowed from the breaking up of the morning till the assembling of the midday diet, which was at eleven o'clock, in order that the brethren might each one try and prove himself before the Lord upon the great questions at issue, and that we might come together with convictions, not with uncertain persuasions, and speak from the conscience, not from present impressions. And when we assembled, and had shortly sought the Divine favor to continue with us, an office generally performed by our reverend Moderator, he proceeded in due course to ask each man for his convictions upon the subject which had been laid before us in the morning, and the rest diligently used their pen in catching the spirit of what dropped from each other's lips. No appeal was allowed but to the Scriptures, of which the originals lay before us; in the interpretation of which, if any question arose, we had the most learned Eastern scholar perhaps in the world to appeal to, and a native Hebrew-I mean Joseph Wolff. In this way did every man proceed to lay out the nature and ground of his convictions, which was done with so much liberty, and plentifulness, and mutual respect and reverence of the Holy Word as much to delight our souls. Now this diet lasted oft four, and sometimes almost five hours, our aim being to gather the opinions of every one before we parted; and when we tired, we refreshed ourselves with prayer, which also we regarded as our main defense against Satan. This diet also we closed with an offering of the clerical brethren whom the Moderator might pitch upon. After dinner we again proceeded, about seven o'clock, to the work of winding up and concluding the whole subject, but in a more easy and familiar manner, as being seated round the fire of the great libraryroom, yet still looking to a moderator, and with the same diligent attention to order, each seeming desirous to record every thing that was said. This went on by the propounding of any question or difficulty which had occurred during the day, addressed to him who had opened the subject, or to any other able to resolve it; and so we proceeded till toward eleven o'clock, when the whole duties of the day were concluded by the singing of a hymn and the offering up of an evening prayer. Such were the six days we spent under the holy and hospitable roof of Albury House, within the chime of the church bell, and surrounded by the most picturesque and beautiful forms of nature. But the sweetest spot was that council-room where I met the servants of the Lord-the wise virgins waiting with oil in their lamps for the bridegroom; and a sweeter still was that secret chamber where I met in the spirit my Lord and Master, whom I hope soon to meet in the flesh." And upon this the warm emotions of the preacher burst forth into verse-verse less melodious and full of poetry than his ordinary diction, but not less the expression of those high-pitched and lyrical climaxes of feeling which naturally find utterance in rhythm and cadence. The narrative, however, which Irving gives in such detail, redeems the singular assembly out of that oblivion into which it and its proceedings have since fallen. What their deliberations were, or the results of them, is neither important to this history, nor is the present writer qualified to enter into such a subject. They who had set their chiefest hopes upon the personal appearance of our Lord, at a period which some actually fixed, and all regarded as close at hand, looked also, as a necessary preliminary of that appearance, for a personal development of evil, more remarkable and decided than any thing that had preceded it; and had so identified and concluded upon the source from which this anti-Christ was to come, that the ruin of the First Napoleon, and the death of his harmless and unfortunate son, had so much effect upon one, at least, of the disappointed expounders of prophecy, as, when fact could no longer be contradicted, to bring an illness upon him. This gentleman, as common rumor reports, first declared that it could not be, and then " took to his bed" in dire disappointment and distress. A more formal account of the deliberations and conclusions of this extraordinary little assembly was published by Mr. Drummond himself, first in 1827, and afterward when the successive meetings took place. These reports, however, being given in the form of dialogues conducted by Philalethes, Anastasius, &c., are by that masquerade so withdrawn out of all recognizable individuality, that neither the persons who took part in the conference, nor the historian of it himself-piquant and characteristic as are his other writings-are able to throw any perceptible token of their presence through the chaos of words and consultations. The assembly only meets again in Irving's Preface, and in a lighter sketch made by the missionary Wolff, who, about this time, had come over to England under the patronage of the pious autocrat of Albury. "Within the chime of the church bell," as Irving says-looking out upon the woods and lawns which inclosed that venerable remnant of ancient masonry, within the walls of which another ritual and a fuller worship were to connect and commemorate the names of Irving and Drummond, occurred this conference-the beginning of the second chapter of the preacher's career-a prayerful retreat of piety, surrounded by all the gepni-"tobhservances of hospitality and human communion. It is an'mera:6i no small importance in Irving's life. Doubtless a more;lan usual awakening of general interest on the subject of prophe:;-So often left in the mystery which can never be fully cleared ujmp;:itil the end come-was evidenced by a consultation so remarkable, But of the men there assembled, there was, perhaps, no such indivisible man as Irving-none so liable to be seized upon by the splendid expectation, which was henceforward, more or less, to abstract his thoughts from things more earthly, or to give himself up, with such ever-increasing devotion, as a herald of his Lord's coming. This he did henceforth, often losing, in the breathless interest of his theme, all regard to those necessary boundaries of time and space, of which he never had been too observant. His companions are described generally as ministers and members of all the different orthodox churches- men both lay and clerical; some of them already distinguished, and some who were hereafter to become so. Mr. Hatley Frere, who, according to his own testimony, was the first to turn Irving's thoughts toward prophecy; Mr. Lewis Way, whose publications on the Second Advent Irving cites, along with his own and that of Ben-Ezra, as a token of the unity of three churches in the one great doctrine; the Rev. Hugh M'Neil, since so notable a member of his party in the Church; along with Wolff, Drummond, and Irving, are the only members named at this early conference. But the solemnity of the meeting, the importance which all its members felt to attach to it, and the evident curiosity it awakened, make it of itself a remarkable incident in the history of its time. That time was clearly a time of expectation. An age of great events was just over, and the public mind had not yet accustomed itself to the domestic calm. At home the internal economy of the country was swelling with great throes-agonies in which many people saw prognostics most final and fatal. Out of all the visible chaos, what a joyful, magnificent deliverance, to believe-through whatsoever anguish the troubled but short interval might pass-that the Lord was coming visibly to confound his enemies and vindicate his people! No wonder they assembled at Albury to build themselves up in that splendid hope; no wonder the empire thrilled, through some thoughtful and many believing minds, at the mere name of such an expectation; least wonder of all that a mind always so lofty, and attuned to high emotions as that of Irving, should have given itself over to the contemplation, or should shortly begin to cast wistful looks over all the world, not only for prophecies fulfilled, but for signs approaching - watching the gleams upon the horizon which should herald the advent of the Lord. This meeting, he tells us, delayed the completion and publication of the book which had cost him so much toil; but it was, after all, only the January of 1827 when that laborious performance, with the long preface, which occupies half of an octavo volume, and is one of his finest and most characteristic productions, was "offered to the Church." I can find no evidence of the amount of favor which Ben-Ezra and his work attained in the Church; but the translator's preface has been often quoted, and was reprinted in a separate form, along with some other of Irving's shortest and least-known publications, a few years ago, by some of his admirers in Glasgow. The year 1826 contains few letters and little domestic incident. Once only, besides that picture of the tender seclusion and generous labors of the little family at Beckenham, which I have already instanced, the clouds open round the Pentonville house. It is to show the great preacher and his wife consulting together over a calamity which has suddenly fallen upon her father's family. The minister of Kirkealdy had been the unfortunate possessor of shares in the Fife Bank-a local joint-stock banking company-which had fallen into sudden ruin by the misconduct of some of its man such an occurrence as unhappily has been familiar enough to us all in more recent days. Immediately upon hearing of it, the first impulse of Irving was consolation and help. He and his Isabella took the matter into tender consideration-so much money was expected from a new publication-so much was at present in hand; and with suggestions of lofty comfort in his heart, and warm, instantaneous filial impulses of aid, he thus writes to the father in trouble: "21st January, 1826. " MY DEAR FATHER,-I have heard from Elizabeth of the loss in which you have been involved by wicked and worldly men, which is nothing new in the history of God's faithful servants, and ought not to trouble you. He that hath the stars in his right hand may say to you, as to the angel of the Church of Philadelphia,' I know thy poverty (but thou art rich).' Remember we are but promised to live by the altar, and the rest is so much burdensome stewardry, to which we submit in accommodation to the weakness of our people.... Therefore be not cast down, nor let my dear mother be cast down. Though the worst should come to the worst, what mattereth it? The kingdom of Heaven is still ours, unto which all things shall be added. And unto the new Jerusalem, the city of our habitation, the kings do bring the riches of the earth. " But we must provide things honest in the sight of all men, that the name of Christ and his Gospel be not blasphemed, and that I may be partaker of your trial, and partaker also of your joy in rising above it, we, Isabella and I, must be allowed to contribute our part. I. I shall now also see to a fourth edition of the Orations, the third having been nearly sold off some months ago.... Isabella and I feel much for you and our dear mother, but we are not amazed or confounded as if some strange thing had befallen you.. " This letter is concluded by Mrs. Irving with the touching argument of a woman and a mother. " If we have been able to say,'The will of the Lord be done,' when He saw meet to take from us those who were far more dear than all worldly goods," writes little Edward's mother, her heart still bleeding from that wound, " I trust you will be enabled to take well the spoiling of your goods." It was thus they comforted each other, who had mourned together. Early in 1827, the church in Regent Square-over the building of which Irving and his congregation had watched so lovingly, and which was to deliver them from the crowds and commotion of the little Caledonian chapel-was at last completed. At the time of its erection, it was considered the handsomest church not belonging to the Establishment (for the Presbyterians of that day, proud of their National Church, and connection with the Scotch Establishment, would have done any thing sooner than allow themselves to be called Dissenters) in London. One thousand sittings were taken at the time of its opening; and the excellent William Hamilton writes, in all the pious joy of a church official, about the "gratifying success" which had attended the opening services, at which Dr. Chalmers officiated. "I Dr. Chalmers," writes Mr. Hamilton, sending the newspapers which contained an account of these services, along with his own joyful description, to his future wife, the sister-in-law of Irving, in Kirkcaldy manse, " was so highly pleased with his stay among us, that he spontaneously offered to pay us an annual visit. Ite has complied with our request to publish the sermon he preached at the opening, which contained a powerful defense of our excellent pastor, and a most eloquent eulogium on his extraordinary talents, piety, and worth, which was not a little gratifying to the congregation, but gall and wormwood to some of his enemies who were present." On the evening of the same Sunday, Dr. Gordon, of Edinburgh, another old and tried friend of Irving, preached; and with the highest auguries of increase and prosperity-relieved from the inconveniences of popularity which they had felt so deeply, and able at last to appear, not in relays, but as a body together —the congregation into which the fifty worshipers of Hatton Garden had grown entered into quiet possession of the handsome church for which they had labored and longed. " Both Dr. Gordon and Dr. Chalmers," says the affectionate witness we have just quoted, "love our friend, and bore a noble testimony to him in public and in private wherever they went.... Our session now consists of seven elders and seven deacons all, I believe, sincerely devoted to the good cause; and I am happy to say that the most perfect harmony prevails among us, and, indeed, throughout the congregation." Such were the domestic circumstances of the community over which Irving presided. Inspired by his fervid teaching, they believed themselves established there to carry out "a work which is likely to be the means, in God's hand, of greatly advancing the spiritual interests of our countrymen in the metropolis." By this time already many of the sermons which were afterward found out to be heretical had been preached and listened to with equal unconsciousness of any divergence from the orthodox faith, and the unanimity of regard and admiration with which the people clung to their leader had been as yet rather strengthened than diminished by any thing that had been alleged against him. The long services in which he would not be curtailed; his perpetual determination, notwithstanding the overflowing of human kindness in his heart, to be among them the priest, the pastor, the spiritual guide, and not the companion and friend alone; the high position he assumed, and uncompromising distinctness of his attacks upon all the special forms of evil, had neither lessened the confidence nor weakened the affection of his adherents. People who steadily, and not capriciously according to the dictates of fashion, resorted to the teaching of a man who kept them nearly three hours at a stretch, Sunday after Sunday, plunged in the deepest questions of religion-sometimes maintained the strain of an argunent which ascended into the secret places of the Trinity, unfathomable mystery-sometimes stirred with appeals and exhortations which excited the multitude into all but open outcry, must indeed have been under the sway of a fascination seldom exercised, and of which few men know the secret. The thousand souls, who at its earliest commencement declared their allegiance to the preacher in his new church, had suffered this test of their sincerity, and were unanimous, harmonious, objecting neither to his long sermons nor to his orthodoxy. But other sentiments had begun to dawn upon other men. Dr. Chalmers, always doubtful, puzzled, but admiring, never knowing what to make of this genius, which he could not choose but acknowledge, yet which was so different from his own, and in some respects so incomprehensible to it-Dr. Chalmers writes from London to his wife with the same half wondering, half comprehending regard which was visible in almost every thing he said of Irving, as follows: "7th May. Mr. Irving made his appearance and took me to his house, where I drank tea. Mr. Miller and Mr. Maclean, Scottish ministers of the London Presbytery, were there. Their talk is very much of meetings and speeches. Irving, though, is very impressive, and I do like the force and richness of his conversation.... Studied about two hours, and then proceeded to take a walk with James.* We had just gone out, when we met Mr. Irving. He begged of James the privilege of two or three hours in his house, to study a sermon. I was vastly tickled with this new instance of the inroads of Scotsmen; however, James could not help himself, and was obliged to consent. We were going back to a family dinner, and I could see the * A brother of Dr. Chalmers, noted, as all the readers of his biography will remember, for a certain kind churlishness, and special terror of the encroachments of Scotch visitors, and the universal entertainment and introductory letters required by them alarm that was felt on the return of the great Mr. Irving, who was very easily persuaded to join us at dinner, and the study was all put to flight. There was not a single sentence of study all the time; and notwithstanding Mrs. C-'s alarm about the shabbiness of the dinner, every thing went on most delightfully. Irving intermingled the serious and the gay, took a good, hearty repast, and really charmed even James himself, so that I was very glad of the inroad that had been made upon him. Thutrsday. Irving and I went to Bedford Square. Mr. and Mrs. Montagu took us out in their carriage to Highgate, where we spent three hours with the great Coleridge. His conversation flowed in a mighty unremitting stream. You know that Irving sits at his feet, and drinks in the inspiration of every syllable that falls from him. There is a secret, and, to me, unintelligible communion of spirit between them, on the ground of a certain German mysticism and transcendental lake poetry which I am not yet up to. Friday. Mr. Irving conducted the preliminary services in the National Church. There was a prodigious want of tact in the length of his prayers-forty minutes; and, altogether, it was an hour and a half from the commencement of the service ere I began... The dinner took place at five o'clock. AMany speeches. Irving certainly errs in the outrunning of sympathy." The length of this preliminary service seems to have troubled the great Scotch preacher mightily. He appears to have felt, with true professional disgust, the wearing out of that audience which properly belonged not to Irving, but to himself. Long after, he recurs to the- same incident in a conversation with Mr. J. J. Gurney. "I undertook to open Irving's new church in London," says the discontented divine. "The congregation, in their eagerness to obtain seats, had already been assembled three hours. Irving said he -would assist me by reading a chapter for me. He chose the longest in the Bible, and went on for an hour and a half. On another occasion he offered me the same aid, adding,'I can be short.' I said,' How long will it take you?''Only an hour and forty minutes.'" Such an indiscretion was likely to go to the heart of the waiting preacher. Dr. Chalmers never seems to have forgotten that impatient interval, during which he had to sit by silent, and see his friend take the bloom of expectation off the audience, which had come not to hear Irving, but Chalmers. In all his after remarks,,a reminiscence of his own sore experience recurs. On the following Saturday, he records that "Mr. Gordon informed me that yesternight Mr. Irving preached on his prophecies at Hackney Chapel for two hours and a half; and though very powerful, yet the people were dropping away. I really fear lest his prophecies, and the excessive length and weariness of his services, may unship him altogether, and I mean to write to him seriously on the subject." This was the impression of a stranger, unaware of the long training by which Irving had accustomed his people to these prolonged addresses; and also of an elder, and-so far as experience went-superior in the Church, who was slow to forget that "the great Mr. Irving" had once been his own nameless assistant and subordinate. With dissatisfied and doubtful eyes, the celebrated Scotch preacher contemplated the apparently brilliant and encouraging position of his friend. The practicable, which did not trouble Irving, was strongly present in the mind of Chalmers. He, with both feet planted steadily on the common soil, cast a troubled eye upon the soaring spirit which scorned the common restraints of possibility. Hie shakes his head as he tells his wife of the mingled fascination and imprudence visible to himself in this incomprehensible man. Chalmers, too, was capable of following one idea with the most absorbing enthusiasm; but his ideas were those of statesmanship, practicable and to be worked out; and with the eyes of a wisdom which, if not worldly, was at least substantial, and fully aware of all the restrictions of humanity, he looked on doubtfully at a man who calculated no possibilities, and who estimated the capacities of human nature, not from among the levels of ordinary life, but from the mountain top of his own elevated and impassioned spirit. Dr. Chalmers shook his head. What else could a man of reason and ordinary prudence do? Nothing could be certainly predicated of such a career as that which, under changed circumstances, made now a new, and, to all appearance, prosperous beginning. Triumph or ruin might be beyond; scarcely the steady progress and congregational advancement, which is the only advancement in life open to the hopes o: an orthodox Scotch minister. Such a progress, happy but uneventful-a yearly roll of additional members, perhaps a hundred pounds or so of additional income, a recognized place on the platform of Exeter Hall —was not a natural vaticination of the -future course of Edward Irving; and over any thing else, what could Chalmers-what could any other sober-minded, clerical spectator do otherwise than shake his head? Something was like to come of it too far out of the ordinary course to yield ordinary comfort or happiness; and I don't doubt that Chalmers returned to Scotland alarmed and uneasyi comprehending as little what would be the end, as he entered into the thoughts and emotions which were bringing that end about. " And, indeed, it was a crisis of no small importance. Up to this time the preacher and his congregation had been in exceptional circumstances. They had never been able to make experiment of that calm congregational existence. Crowded out of the little Caledonian chapel for years, their hopes had gone forward to that new church which was to be a kind of national centre in the noisy capital, and the completion of which was to open the way to a great and extended' mission. It was only natural that all the projects and hopes both of leader and people should fix upon that place as the scene of the result and issue to their great labors. Doubtless they did so unawares. For years the preacher had been used to see round him an unusual exceptional crowd, drawn out of all regions, necessarily unsteady and fluctuating-a crowd which he could charm, and thrill, and overawe for the moment, but out of which few results could be visible. Now was the time to test what had been done in that flattering overflow of popular admiration. If, as Carlyle says, "hopes of a'new moral reformation" had fired the preacher's heart-if, with the flattered expectatior, of a popular idol, he was watching to see the " sons of Mammon, and high sons of Belial and Beelzebub, become sons of God, and the gum-flowers of Almack's to be made living roses in a new Eden" —now was the time to test that dream. The tiny chapel where celebrities could not be overlooked, and where the crowd never could lessen —first chapter and preparatory stage of the history-was now left in the quiet of the past; and with full space to collect and receive all who sought him, and the highest expectations and hopes of now seeing the fruits of his labor, Irving entered that new temple, whence a double blessing was to descend upon his people's prayers. If fashion had crazed him with her momentary adulation, here was the critical point at which fashion and he parted; the beginning of a disenchantment which, next to personal betrayal, is perhaps the hardest experience in the world. This has been accepted by many-and asserted by one who knew him thoroughly, and from whose judgment I know not how to presume to differ-as the secret cause of all the darker shadows and perplexing singularities of his later life. I am as little able to cope with Mr. Carlyle in philosophic insight as I am in personal knowledge; I can only take my appeal to Irving himself in the singular journal which has already been given. If that record shows any trace of a man whose heart has been caught in the meshes of the social enchantress; if he looks to have Circe's cup in his hand as he goes pondering through those streets of Bloomsbury and Pentonville, or with anxious care and delicacy visits the doubtful believer in Fleet Market, and comforts the sorrowful souls who seek his kindness in the nameless lanes of the city, I am willing to allow that this was the influence that set his mind astray. But if the readers of this history are as unable as myself to perceive any trace of that intoxication-an intoxication too well known in all its symptoms, and too often seen to be recognized with difficulty-another clew may be reasonably required for this mystery. I can find no evidence whatever, except in what he himself says in the dedication of his Sermons to Mr. Basil Montagu, of even a tendency on Irving's part to be carried away by that brilliant social stream. He speaks of himself there as "being tempted to go forth, in the simplicity of my heart, into those high and noble circles of society which were then open to me, and which must either have ingulfed me by their enormous attractions, or else repelled my simple affections, shattered and befooled, to become the mockery and contempt of every envious and disappointed railer." But that was at the earliest period of his London experience. The master of the Pentonville household, with all its quaint and simple economics; with its domestic services, frequented not by the great, and its stream of homely guests-the faithful priest, exercising all the human courtesies and Christian tendernesses of his nature to win a sullen London errand-boy, or convince a'skeptic of the humblest ranks-who is not to be moved by the representations even of his anxious elders to shorten his services by half an hour, or adapt himself to the necessities of his popularity-is, on his own evidence, the most unlike a man carried away and crazed by the worship of Fashion that can be conceived. If he had been such a man, here was the sickening moment when the siren visibly went her way. The crowd that fluctuated in the tiny aisles of the Caledonian chapel, and presented the preacher with a wonderful, suggestive, moving panorama of the great world without, which he addressed through these thronged and everchanging faces, settled into steady identity in Regent Square. The throng ceased in that spacious interior. Those mists of infinitude cleared off from the permanent horizon-"Fashion went her idle way," Mr. Carlyle says: indisputably the preacher must have learned that he was no longer addressing the world, the nation, the great capital of the world, but a certain clearly definable number of its population-a congregation, in short, and not an age. This great change happened to Irving at the moment when he had apparently arrived at the beginning of his harvest-time. The office-bearers of his church found the fruit they sought in the roll of seat-holders and communicants, the visible increase which had promoted them from the Caledonian chapel to the National Scotch Church. But to the preacher the effect must have been wonderfully different-as different as reality always is from expectation. At the end of that uncertain, brilliant probation, which seemed to promise results the most glorious, he woke and found himself at the head of a large congregation. It was all his friends could have wished for him-the highest amount of external success which his Church acknowledged. But it was an indifferent climax to the lofty hopes of the great evangelist. Yet this great shock and crisis seems to have been encountered and got through unconsciously, with no such effects as might have been anticipated. There is, indeed, no evidence that Irving was himself aware when he passed out of that wide horizon of hope and possibility into the distinct field laid out for him under the smoky canopy of London sky. Yet here is the evident point when that transition happened. The wide popular current ebbed away from the contracted ways of iIatton Garden, and subsided into a recognizable congregation in Regent Square. "The church was always well filled, but no longer crowded," says the calm official retrospect of the present community belonging to that church. Fashion then and there took her departure; but, so far from plunging into wild attempts to reattract her fickle devotion, the preacher seems to have gone on unconscious, without even being aware of what had happened to him. Years intervened, and the fervent beginnings of thought-then only appearing in a firmament where the hidden lights came out one by one, all unforeseen by the eager gazer till they startled him with sudden illuminations-came to developments never unaccordant with the nature that produced them, though mysterious and often sad enough to the calm lookeron, before the world which had subsided out of its frenzy of admiration was tempted to return into a frenzy of curiosity and wonder. In the mean time, Irving's sober-minded Scottish friends left him in his new beginning with alarms and uneasy forebodings, not that he would peril his understanding in attempts to retain his popularity, but that the unmanageable sublimation and prophet-spirit of the man, inaccessible as they felt it to all such motives, would ruin his popularity altogether. Some years before two silver salvers had been presented to Irving by the grateful office-bearers of the Scotch Church in Liverpool. When the National Scotch Church was opened, he presented them, with an impulse of natural munificence, for the service of the house of God. Every body at all acquainted with the usages of the Church of Scotland must be aware of the collection made weekly at the doors of every place of worship-a collection entirely voluntary, yet so thorough "an institution" that, to an old-fashioned Scotsman, the fact of passing "the plate" without depositing a coin in it would be something like a petty crime. The fund thus collected is entitled the Session Fund, and is in parish churches appropriated to the relief of the poor; and it was from this fund alone that Chalmers, in the day of his reign in Glasgow, provided for the poor of his parish, and abolished pauperism in St. John's. Irving designed his silver salvers for the reception of this weekly bounty, and presented them to the church on the day of its opening, engraven with the following inscription: "These two plates I send to the National Scotch Church, London, on this the 11th of May, 1827, the day of its opening, that they may stand on each side of the door to receive the offerings for the Poor, and all other gifts of the congregation of the LORD in all time coming while He permits. And if at any time, which God forbid, the fountain of the people's charity should be dried up, and the Poor of the Lord's house be in want of bread, or His house itself under any restraint of debt, I appoint that they shall be melted into shillings and sixpences for the relief of the same, so far as they will go. " EDWARD IRVING, A. M., V. D. MI., " Minister of the National Scotch Church, London." Irving's purpose, I am sorry to say, was not carried out. The elders, more prudent and less splendid than he, imagined or discovered that the show of the silver at the door of the church, even though watched over by two of their members, would be too great a temptation to the clever thieves about. Irving's salvers were altogether withdrawn from the office of receiving the pennies and sixpences of the congregation, and were placed, where they still remain, among the communion plate of the church in Regent Square. The only public appearance which he is recorded to have made at this period was at one of the field-days of the long and warm intestine war which at that time was raging in the Bible Society. The conduct of that society generally had not been agreeable to Irving. Going to the meetings of its London Committee as to the assembling of a body of men engaged in the service of religion, he had been at once chilled and startled by the entirely secular nature of their proceedings. When he remonstrated, he was answered that they were not missionaries, but booksellers; and this was doubtless one of the points at which the vulgar business, and bustling secularity of the religious world disgusted a man who had nothing whatever to do with a mere community of booksellers, nor could understand why the Church's interest should be specially claimed for such. His indignation and protest on this point, however, were private; the controversy was a public one, and had now lasted for many years. The question was whether or not the Apocrypha should be issued along with the canonical Scriptures as a part of the Bible, which the Society professed themselves commissioned to spread throughout the world. The warmest interest had been excited in religious circles generally, and especially in Scotland, by this dispute. North of the Tweed the Apocrypha has always been held in particular abhorrence, and the idea of supporting, by their labors and subscriptions, a society which sent forth this spurious revelation along with the canon of Scripture, roused the pugnacious kingdom into a blaze of displeasure and resistance. The Society at its headquarters stood out stoutly; why, it seems impossible to find out, unless by an instinct of self-assertion and controversy; and it was not until the whole community was in commotion, and a serious secession threatened, that the London Committee came to its senses. Just at the moment when it was about to do so, at the Anniversary Meeting held in May, 1827, Irving made his appearance in the place of meeting. His entrance created a commotion which interrupted the business-the general public, apparently, having by this time come to understand that this man could not be regarded with calm impartiality, but must either be loved or hated. The tumult raised on his appearance naturally aroused the orator to assert himself, and, independently of the timid authority of the chair, to make himself heard. It is difficult, in the vague account given, to find out what " motion" it was that Irving supported, or what was accomplished by the forgotten assembly, whose cheers and hisses would have long ago passed into oblivion but for the presence of that unusual champion. With a straightforward manfulness and simplicity, which look quaint and out of place upon such a platform, and which must have been wonderfully confusing to the minds of the Society, he advises them to " acknowledge that they are exceedingly sorry." And when this suggestion is received with mingled hisses and applause, he indignantly asks, "Is there any member of the Church of England-is there any consistent Protestant Dissenter-who would think it at all degrading to him to acknowledge himself in error when he felt he was so, and when so doing would heal the wounds which had been inflicted thereby, and so unite a whole Christian Church to the Society? Would it be at all degrading to the Committee to say that it was sorry that that which is not the Word of God had been (say unwittingly, or unwarily, I mind not the word) mixed up and circulated with the Book of God? Let them, I say, record that which they have individually expressed by word of mouth-that that which is not the Bread of Life has been sent out to the world as the Bread of Life, and that they are sorry!" The answer which the Bible Society or its Committee gave to this appeal is not recorded. But Irving triumphantly overcame the opposition against his own appearance, and retired from the meeting, which he did immediately after his speech, amid universal applause. In the mean time, his private family story went on, amid the clouds which, having once descended, so often continue to overshadow the early history of a household. In the same spring, another infant, a short-lived little Mary, came to a house saddened by the long and serious illness of the mother. In the depression occasioned by this interruption of domestic comfort, Irving writes, in a mood certainly not habitual, but from which such a temperament as his can never be severed, "For myself, I feel the burden of sin so heavily, and the unprofitableness of this vexed life, that I long to be delivered from it, and would gladly depart when the Lord may please; yet, while He pleaseth, I am glad to remain for his Church's sake. What I feel for myself, I feel for my dear wife, whom I love as myself. And at present my rejoicing is, that she is able to praise Him in the furnace of trial and the fire of affliction." In another and brighter mood, however, he writes the following letter, full of projects, to Dr. Martin: " 8th June, 1827. " MY DEAR FATHER,-We have all great reason of thankfulness to the Giver of all gifts and the Fountain of all strength for the recovery of Isabella and the children, whose health is now so far re-established as that Dr. Darling recommends her going to the country in a few days. I am now fairly entered upon my duties in the new church, and, by the grace of God, have begun with a more severe self-devotion to secret study and meditation. In the morning I propose to expound the whole Epistle to the Ephesians, in order to clear out anew some of the wells of salvation which have been choked up, at least in these parts, and to see if there be not even deeper springs than the Reformers reached. In the evening I am to discourse upon the sixth vial, which I propose as a sequel to my discourses upon Babylon and Infidelity.Foredoomed, and which I intend to print in the fall of the year. I think that, by God's blessing, I can throw a new and steady light upon the present face of Christendom and the world. Besides this, I have a little tribute of friendship to pay to Basil Montagu... and an aphoristic history of the Church of Scotland, from the primitive times to this time, for an introduction to a work containing the republication of our authorized books at the Reformation. It is for man to design, but God to permit and to enable; yet, if He spare me, I hope to do His Church some service. I ask your prayers, and entreat solicitously for them, although I know that we must have the spirit of prayer in ourselves and for ourselves. Farewell; may the Lord make the going down of your age more brilliant than the beginning of it, and enrich you all with His divine grace, and enlighten you with His countenance. Amen.'" Your affectionate son, EDWARD IRVING." The little Mary died in December of the same year. Though the second blow does not seem to have struck like the first, it deepened the channel of those personal tears first wrung from Irving's eyes by the death of his little Edward, and quickened into pathetic adoration his thankfulness for the almost revelation, as he believed it, which had thrown light upon that doctrine of Baptism, henceforth to be held as one of the brightest, comforting inspirations of his life. The volume of Lectures on Baptism, in which he set before the Church the views which had been so consolatory to his own heart, was prefaced by the following touching dedication: " To ISABELLA IRVING, my wife, and the mother of my two departed children: " MY HONORED AND BELOVED WIFE,-I believe in my heart that the doctrine of the holy Sacraments, which is contained in these two little volumes, was made known to my mind, first of all, for the purpose of preparing us for the loss of our eldest boy; because on that very week you went with him to Scotland, whence he never returned, my mind was directed to meditate and preach these discourses upon the standing of the baptized in the Church, which form the sixth and seventh of the Homilies on Baptism. I believe it also, because, long before our little Edward was stricken by the hand of God in Scotland, I was led to open these views to you in letters, which, by God's grace, were made efficacious to convince your mind. I believe it, furthermore, because the thought contained in these homilies remained in my mind like an unsprung seed, until it was watered by the common tears we shed over our dying Mary. From that time forth I felt that the truth concerning baptism, which had been revealed for our special consolation, was not for that end given, nor for that end to be retained; and therefore I resolved, at every risk, to open to all the -fathers and mothers of the Christian Church the thoughts which had ministered to us so much consolation. "I desire most gratefully to acknowledge my obligations to the fathers of the Scottish Church, whose Confession of Faith concerning the Sacraments, and especially the sentence which I have placed as the motto* of this book, were, under God, made instrumental in opening to me the whole truth of Holy Scripture concerning Baptism and the Lord's Supper; of which having been convinced, by God's blessing upon these words of my fathers in the Church, upon consulting the venerable companion of my early studies, Richard Hooker, I found such a masterly treatise upon the whole subject of the Sacraments, that I scrupled not to rank as one of his disciples, and to prefer his exposition infinitely to my own; yet to both to prefer that sentence of our own Confession which I have placed as the motto of my book. For this reason it is that I have reprinted those parts of Hooker's treatise which concern the doctrine of the Sacraments. "' And now, my dear wife, as we have been sorely tried of the Lord by the removal of two such sweet children, let us be full of prayers and fellow-feeling for those who are in like manner tried; and, above all, be diligent in waiting upon those children of'Christian Baptism whom Christ hath committed to my charge as a bishop and shepherd of His flock; unto all whom, even as many as by my hands have been admitted into His Church, I do now bestow my fatherly benediction in the Lord. May the Lord make you the mother of many children to glorify His name forever and ever! This is the prayer of your loving husband, EDWARD IRVING." The volumes thus inscribed were not published till 1828; but they belong to this period of much quiet, but many emotions, which lay between the death of his two children. He labored much, and pondered more, during these two years. They were the seedtime of a great and melancholy harvest; and containing, as they did, the first germs of those convictions which he afterward carried so far, and the adjuncts of which carried him still farther, they are full of interest in the history of his life. The Albury Conference, which drew him into the close and exciting intercourse of a brotherhood engrossed with hopes and expectations unshared by the common world, and the opening of his church, which brought him suddenly out of the brilliant, indefinite world of possibility into a certain position, restricted by visible limits of the real, were, perhaps, equally operative in preparing his mind for all that dawned upon it. What that was, and how it began to develop, may be better treated in another chapter. * The motto of the book is as follows: " We utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm sacraments to be nothing but naked and bare signs." —Confession of Scotch Reformers. One of the most noble pieces of oratory which Irving ever produced-the Ordination Charge, which reads like an ode of the most thrilling and splendid music —was delivered in this spring at the ordination of the Rev. Hugh Maclean to the charge of the Scots Church, London Wall. It is a kind of satisfaction to know that the man so magnificently addressed —in a strain to which perhaps no Scotch minister, and few priests of any description, have ever been called to listen-had soul enough to follow the leader, who charged him to his duty as one hero might another, out into the conflicts and troubles of his after-life. Such an appeal must have thrilled to the heart of any man capable of being moved to high emotions. I am not aware that any similar ode has ever embellished the ordination service of any other Church than that which Irving here describes as " the most severe and uncompromising" of all Christian churches. It is an unrivaled outburst, full of all the lyric varieties and harmonies of a great poem, and must have fallen with startling effect upon the commonplace ears of a quiet company of ministers, no man among whom, except the speaker, had ever distinguished himself, or had a chance of distinguishing himself. Such an address might have given a climax to the vocation of a heaven-born preacher, but it is only the genius capable of being roused to the utmost by such an appeal that is ever able to offer it; and the heroic strain called, forth no answering wonder. But the young preacher to whom it was addressed threw his humble fortunes, in after days, into the same lot as that of his instructor in the office of the ministry; and one feels a certain comfort in knowing that the disciple was faithful to the master who had connected his unknown name with an address which inferred such noble qualities in him who could receive it. Later in the year, Irving made a short visit to Leicester, to see his friend Mr. Vaughan, with whom, and with "some other ministers of the Church of England there," we hear that " he had some delightful intercourse." "He was expressing to me yesterday," writes William Hamilton, "how much he had been gratified by the harmony which prevailed, and the exact coincidence of their views on almost all the important points which they discussed." The same writer goes on to tell how Irving had visited with him the families under his own charge as an elder, and of" the cordial reception they every where met with." " Mr. Irving is very happy and successful on these occasions," writes his admiring "and it is very delightful to see such harmony and good feeling among the members." Thus, undeterred by the many absorbing subjects of thought which were rising to his mind —by the engrossing prophetical studies which Dr. Chalmers feared would " unship him altogether"'-or even by the impatience and almost disgust which often assailed his own spirit in sight of the indifferent and unimpressible world, he pursued all the varieties of his immediate duty, carrying through it all a certain elevation and lofty tone which never interfered with the human loving-kindness in which all his brethren had a share. Notwithstanding his unsparing condemnation of evil and worldliness, Irving had so much of the "celestial light" in his eyes, that he unconsciously assigned to every body he addressed a standing-ground in some degree equal to his own. The "vision splendid" attended him not only through his morning course, but throughout all his career. The light around him never faded into the light of conzmon day. Unawares he addressed the ordinary individuals about him as if they, too, were heroes and princes; charged the astounded yet loyal-hearted preacher, who could but preach, and visit, and do the other quiet duties of an ordinary minister, to be at once an apostle, a gentleman, and a scholar; made poor astonished women, in tiny London apartments, feel themselves ladies in the light of his courtesy; and unconsciously elevated every man he talked with into the ideal man he ought to have been. This glamour in his eyes had other effects, melancholy enough to contemplate; but, even though it procured him trouble and suffering, I can not find it in my heart to grudge Irving a gift so noble. The harm that comes by such means is neutralized by a power of conferring dignity and happiness, possessed by very few in the common world.