MISSTATEMENTS OF HIS DOCTRINE.

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repeated, and expounded, and defended, this momentous matter of belief.

It is unnecessary that I should give any account of a question which he states so fully and so often in his own words, nor is it my business to pronounce upon the right or wrong of a theological question. But I think I am warranted in pointing out again the deeply disingenuous guise in which this matter was first set before the public. When the difference appears thus, according to his own statement of it, "Whether Christ's flesh had the grace of sinlessness and incorruption from its proper nature, or from the indwelling of the Holy Ghost,-I say the latter," it is a difference which certainly may exist, and may be discussed, but which cannot shock the most reverent mind. But when, on the other hand, it is stated as an heretical maintenance of the "sinfulness of Christ's human nature," the matter changes its aspect entirely, and involves something abhorrent to the most superficial of Christians. But in this way it was stated by every one of Irving's opponents; and attempts were made to lead both himself and his followers into speculations of what might have happened if the Holy Ghost had not, from its earliest moment of being, inspired that human nature, which were as discreditable to the questioners as aggravating to men who held the impossibility of sinfulness in our Saviour as warmly and entirely as did those who called them heretics. The real question was one of the utmost delicacy and difficulty, a question which the common world could only alter and travestie; re-presenting and re-confuting, and growing indignant over a dogma which itself had

72

THE "MORNING WATCH."

invented. Only by such a statement of it, which, if not distinctly false, was thoroughly disingenuous, could it at all have been brought into a platform question, for common discussion before the untrained and inexact public.

In the early spring, the first number of the Morning Watch, a quarterly journal of prophecy, to which he alludes in his letter to Dr. Chalmers as meditated by the leading members of the Albury Conference, came into being. Its editor was Mr. Tudor, a gentleman now holding a high office in the Catholic Apostolic Church. (I take, without controversy, the name assumed by itself; gladly granting, as its members maintain, that to designate it a sect of Irvingites is equally unjust to its supposed founder and itself.) Irving took advantage by this publication to explain and open up the assailed doctrine, already popularly known as the doctrine of the Humanity, reasserting all his former statements with renewed force and earnestness. Besides this, the chief thing which appears to me remarkable in these early numbers of the Morning Watch, is the manner in which Irving pervades the whole publication. Amid eight or ten independent writers his name occurs, not so much an authority, as an all-influencing unquestionable presence, naturally and simply suggesting itself to all as somehow the centre of the entire matter. They speak of him as the members of a household speak of its head; one could imagine that the name might almost be discarded, and "he" be used as its significant and unmistakable symbol. To realise the fulness of this subtle, unspoken influence, it is necessary to glance at this publication, which has fallen out of the recol

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lection of the greater part of the world. I do not remember to have met any similar instance of unconscious, unquestioned pre-eminence. No man there but is ready to stand up for every word he utters, for every idea he advances; ready, even before knowing what the accusation is, to challenge the world in his behalf. It is hero-worship of the most absolute, unconscious kind, all the more absolute that it is unconscious, and that neither the object nor the givers of that loyal allegiance are aware to what extent it goes.

I cannot pass over the beginning of this year without quoting some portion of a letter of consolation addressed to his friend Mr. Bridges, in Edinburgh, who had just then lost his wife. Irving's own wife was at this time subject to the ever-recurring ailments of a young mother, and often in a state of health which alarmed her friends; and it was accordingly with double emotion that he heard of the death of another young mother, she who, timid of his own approach, had forgotten all her alarm at sight of his reception of her babies. The news went to Irving's sympathetic heart.

"MY DEAR AND WORTHY FRIEND,-Now is your hour of trial, and now is your time to glorify God. Out of all comparison, the heaviest trial of a man is upon you. Now, then, is the time for your proved faith to show its strength, and to prove it unto honour and glory in the day of the Lord. The Father plants us, and then says, Blow every blast, and root up the plant which I have planted:' our faith standing fast proves that He has planted us to bring Him honour and glory against a fallen world, which we overcome without any visible help. The Father gives us as sheep unto Christ, and says, 'Now, ye wolves, snatch them if ye can.' The afflictions

and adversities of the world, yea, and the hiding of the Father's countenance, also come against us; our faith, however, stands fast in the Lord. Christ is glorified as the good Shepherd. As affection is proved by adversity, so is faith in God proved by trial; as a work is proved by enduring hardship, so is the work of the Spirit proved by sore visitations of God. God sendeth them all in order to bless us, and glorify Himself in our blessedness with Himself. Oh, my brother, I write these things to you because I know you are of the truth; your faith standeth not in man but God. . . . . I believe the time of tribulation is at hand, and that God will spare us that wait for Him, as one that spareth his own son that serveth him. Oh, how my loving and beloved friends are removed! They are taken from me whom God gave me for comforters. My own heart is sore pressed;what must yours be, my excellent and bountiful friend? But I wait His coming, and wait upon His will. May the Lord comfort you with these words which I have written, with His own truth, with His own spirit.

....

"Your faithful and affectionate friend,

"EDWARD IRVING."

These letters are all dated from Judd Place, another street in the same locality, where he had again entered upon the possession of his own house. Here he remained as long as he occupied the Church in Regent Square. There are various doubtful traditions in existence which describe how he used to be seen lying upon the sooty London grass of the little oasis in Burton Crescent, his great figure extended upon the equivocal green sward, and all the children in those tiny gardens playing about and around him,—which was most like to be the case, though I will not answer for the tale. This entire district, however, most undistinguished and prosaic as it is, gathers an interest in its homely names, from his visible appearance amid its noise and tumult. His remarkable figure was known in those dingy

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scorched streets, in those dread parallelograms of Bloomsbury respectability. The greater number of his friends were collected within that closely populated region, to which the new Church in Regent Square now gave a centre as it still gives a centre to a little Scotch world, half unaware, half disapproving, of Irving, who tread the same streets and pray within the same walls, and are as separate and national as he.

This spring was once more occupied by thoughts and preparations for another visit to Edinburgh, on the same high errand as had formerly engaged him there. A letter of anxious instructions to his friend Mr. Macdonald, about the necessary arrangements for the course of lectures he meant to deliver, shows that he had already more difficulty than on a former occasion in finding a place to preach in.

"I yesterday received a most fraternal letter from Dr. Dickson," he writes, "most politely and upon very reasonable grounds of damage and danger to the House, refusing me the use of the West Kirk, and I am perfectly satisfied. Indeed, it is as it should be, and as I anticipated it would be. The subject I have to open is too common and concerning to be confined to the walls of a house: it ought to be open as the day to all hearers from the streets and the bye-ways, and from everywhere. . . . . You who know law, and are wise as concerneth this world as well as concerneth the world to come, see if there be anything to prevent me preaching in the asylum of the King's Park; and, if not, then signify by public advertisement in one or two of the papers, and by handbill and otherwise to this effect:-'I hereby give notice that, God willing and prospering, I will preach a series of discourses, opening the book of the Revelation in regular order, beginning on Tuesday, the 19th of May, at six o'clock in the evening; and continuing each evening that week; but in the week following, and to the end of the series, at seven o'clock in the morning (not to interfere with the hours of