the general cause. He sent me a letter he had written to the King, on the Test, &c., and begged that I would read every word of it before I spoke. I did so, and found it unsatisfactory and obscure, but not half so much so as his sermon." At the discussion upon the Abolition of Tests, in the General Assembly of that year, Chalmers again describes the apparition of Irving, making himself visible among the assembled spectators, and doing all that a bystander could to make his own strenuous opposition apparent. "Irving is wild on the other side from me," said the calm and liberal divine, who supported with all his force of practical wisdom the abolition of a safeguard proved to be useless, and who had read, without being at all influenced by it, the eloquent letter to the King, in which the idealist opposite him set forth his splendid impracticable vision of a Christian nation bound under God to be swayed by only Christian men; "he sat opposite to me when I was speaking, as if his eye and looks, seen through the railing, were stationed there for my disquietude." He, by the way, had a regular collision with a Dr. H., a violent sectarian, who denounced him as an enemy to the Gospel of Christ. The colloquy that ensued was highly characteristic; Mr. Irving's part of it began with "Who art thou, O man, that smiteth me with thy tongue ?"

Nothing could better illustrate the characters of the two men, whom it is always interesting and often amusing to see together, than this odd juxtaposition: the one, clear-sighted and executive within the legislative area-the other, impatient, eager, visionary, outside; spending his strength in vehement appeals and

protests against the inevitable tide of things which was, visibly to his eyes, sweeping down the lofty claims and standing of his country. Chalmers puts the impracticable optimist aside with a mixture of impatience and compassion finds his impassioned protest "obscure and unsatisfactory," and proceeds, in spite of the brilliant gaze fixed upon him "through the railing," to clear the modern working ground for modern action and practical necessities. Irving, with a certain loving, noble scorn, all unaware of the different direction in which his friend's eyes are turning, and totally inaccessible to all considerations of practicability, watches the formation of the commonplace road, shaped according to compelling circumstances, and burns to rush in and establish the eternal ideal track, deviating for no compulsion, which neither he nor any other man can ever fix upon the surface of this earth. Yet, let nobody think that the ideal protest outside was of less use to humanity than the operative sense within. Chalmers helped on the course of modern affairs and smoothed and widened the national path: Irving, with extravagance, with passion, with convictions which knew no middle course, stirred the hearts in men's bosoms, and kept alive the spirit of that sublime impracticable, which, never reaching, every true man strives to reach, and which preserves an essence of national and spiritual life far beyond the power of the most perfect organization or the highest political advantages to bestow.

Whether Chalmers's conclusion, that the lectures of this course were "quite woeful," was shared by the Edinburgh public, seems very doubtful; for, to the last, that public, not over-excitable, crowded its streets in

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND.

23

the early dawn, thronging toward that point where the homely West Church, with its three galleries, stands under the noble shadow of the Castle Hill; and his wonderful popularity was higher at the conclusion than at the beginning. Nor is it easy to believe that the same year which produced the splendid oratory of the Last Days, could have fallen so far short in the special mission with which he felt himself charged. But Chalmers's disapproving eye did not perceive nor recognise the overpowering force of that conviction which had taken possession of his friend. The second Advent was, to him, a doctrine open to discussion, possibly capable of proof; to Irving, a closely-approaching stupendous event, of which woe was unto him if he did not warn his brethren. The one man was not able to judge the other with such an astonishing gulf of difference between.

Other encounters, telling upon his future career, happened to Irving at this remarkable era of his life. It was one of the critical periods of religious thought. Here and there, throughout Scotland, one mind and another had broken the level of fixed theology, and strayed into a wider world of Christian hope and love. Departing from the common argumentative basis of doctrine, such minds as that of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen and Mr. Campbell of Row, afterwards notable enough in the agitated Church, had concentrated themselves upon one point of the bountiful revelation of divine truth, and declared, with all the effusive warmth of Christian love and yearning, the "freeness of the Gospel." According to their view, a substantial difference had taken place in the position of the world since the great act of

24

CAMPBELL OF ROW.

redemption was accomplished.

It was not a pro

blematical salvation, only real when faith and conversion came to the individual soul, but an actual fact, entirely changing the position of the human race, which was manifest to them in the work of our Lord and Saviour. It was not that salvation might be, as man after man believed and received it, but that salvation was, for God had accomplished and revealed that greatest demonstration of His love. Leaving to other men the task of balancing with all those wonderful mysteries of limitation, which, whether called divine election or human resistance, show visibly, in gloom and terror, the other side of that glorious picture, they addressed themselves to the joyful utterance of that unquestionable universal proffer of love which God makes to all His creatures. This delicious gleam of light, opening ineffable hopes of universal safety, and emboldening the preacher to summon every man, as in the position of a redeemed creature, to the assurance of that love and forgiveness which dwelt in God, had begun to brighten the pious soul and laborious way of the young west-country minister, with whose name, as a system of doctrine, these views were afterwards identified in the early autumn of 1828. Dreaming nothing of heresy, but anxious to consult a brother in the ministry, of older experience and more vivid genius than himself, about this tremulous dawning glory which had brightened the entire world of truth to his own perceptions, John Campbell of Row, saintly in personal piety, and warm in Celtic fervour, came, with the natural diffidence of youth, to seek an interview with Irving. He found him alone in the drawing

room at Great King Street, with one of the children. of the house playing on the carpet at his feet, a tender domestic accompaniment to the high reverie and musings of the interpreter of prophecy. The stranger less a stranger as being the dear friend of one of Irving's dearest friends-told his errand modestly he had come to ask counsel and help in the midst of his hopes and difficulties. Irving turned towards him with the natural gracious humbleness of his character, and bade him speak out. "God may

have sent me instruction by your hands," said the candid heart, always more ready to learn than to teach. It is not hard to imagine what must have been the effect of these words on the young man, shy of his errand. They sat down together to discuss that high theme, with the child playing at their feet. Nobody will doubt that their after-friendship lasted till death.

I am not able to estimate what effect Mr. Campbell's views had upon the mind of Irving. As one part, and that a deeply important one, of the truth, great and wide enough to deserve any man's special devotion, and, indeed, the most clear demonstrative exhibition of the Gospel, it is evident that he entered into it heartily; and holding, as he himself held, that Christ's work was one which redeemed not only individual souls but the nature of man, no one could be more ready than he to rejoice in the fullest unconditional proclamation that Christ died for all. His own sentiments, however, on other subjects, and the higher heroical strain of a soul which believed visible judgment and justice to be close at hand, and felt, in the groaning depths of its nature, that the world he contemplated was neither con