"OUR DEAR FATHER'S LETTER." 357 She and her pastor stirred in his troubled bosom. husband had not followed him, could not believe as he did; with grief on both sides they had so far parted; but his thoughts were roused from his own troubles, when he saw a further attack made upon their faith: “London, March 27, 1833. "MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--At Isabella's request, I enclose this letter from her father, that you may see how they all do. The Lord's hand is heavily upon us and our dear children. Martin and Ebenezer are both very ill, and my wife and I have been together up the great part of last night. She has laid down to get some rest. Dear Elizabeth and dear William, be not shaken from the true faith in which I founded you of our Lord's oneness with us, in all the infirmities and temptations, properties and accidents of the flesh, otherwise you will be subverted from the way of godliness altogether, and fall into Pharisaical pride and hypocritical formality. If you cannot go along and suffer with me in all things, stand upon the rock, or you sink into the waves. For, if the holiness of Jesus made Him avoid our flesh, must we not, as we grow holy, avoid sinners, instead of embracing them with our love, to draw them near, and so become Pharisees instead of Christians? And oh, my children, if the Son of God with our flesh could not be holy, how shall you and I in the flesh be holy-how should we be commanded to be holy? Oh, give not way, there, either to father or mother, or any mortal, else you go altogether. These words I write to you, because I know you can bear them, and lest our dear father's letter should prejudice your minds against the truth. "Your faithful and loving brother, "EDWD. IRVING." very ill. Meanwhile, the youngest of the children continued "His mother said that the Lord had punished their child for their sin," writes Mrs. Hamilton, in April, which sin, I think, they conceive specially to be Edward's having remained in Scotland, after meeting with the Presbytery," an error for which, she proceeds to say, he was sharply rebuked in the church, after he returned. But, whether or not the ailing infant bore this burden, it is certain that its life was waning; and another bereavement fell immediately, as intimated in the following letter to Dr. Martin, upon the much-suffering house : "14, Newman Street, April 23, 1833. "MY DEAR FATHER,-The Lord, in His severity and His goodness, hath been pleased to chastise us for our sin and the sins of the flock by removing from us our darling Ebenezer, who seemed, like Edward, a child of God from his mother's womb; for, surely, during the months of his life, he never showed anything which might not become a child of God; and when, in faith, I addressed words of godliness to nourish the seed of faith which was in him, his patient heed was wonderful. We are much comforted of our heavenly Father, and of our dear flock, under all our trials. Peace be with you. Farewell! "Your loving and dutiful son, "EDWD. IRVING." I cannot undertake to account for the sublime unreason of this man, who, in faith, addresses words of godliness to the dying infant. Perhaps it may want small apology to those who, like myself, have seen that solemnity of death shadowing over a baby-face, of which this " patient heed" gives but too pathetic and affecting a picture. But he had long believed in the possibility of infant faith, -a point to which Coleridge refers, in the Aids to Reflection, as one which he will. not reply to "honoured Irving" upon, without careful consideration of the whole question. This article of faith, which may look fantastic enough to cool spectators, the father of those dead children has bequeathed to his Church, which, I believe, gives children a share in some of its most solemn services. Limits of human possibility were never in Irving's heart; he could not understand the existence of any soul debarred from communication with that Lord of life in whom he had his being; it was easier far to believe that the little intelligence which yet had not dawned into human expression, was, in an intercourse even more close than his own, hidden with Christ in God. It is strange to turn from this passion and agony of human life, so heavily overcast by the sorrows sent of God, and the vexations imposed by man, to glance at what the outer world was saying, and what miraculous uncomprehension existed in the minds of many who came to gaze at the wonders in Newman Street. I do not know who the American, Dr. Addison Alexander, may have been, but I am told he was a man of some note in his own country. He was in Irving's church on the 10th May, 1833, and sent an account of what he saw there to the New York papers. With American detail, he described the man, the church, and the services which he thought "extremely well contrived for scenic effect;" then added his impression of the demeanour of the preacher. "Dr. Cox and I," said the self-important Transatlantic spectator, "flatter ourselves that he observed and preached at us. I saw him peeping through his fingers several times, and I' suppose he was not gratified to see us gazing steadfastly SCO AN AMERICAN SPECTATOR. at him all the time, for he took occasion to tell the people that it would profit them nothing without the circumcision of the ear." This was the tone assumed, not by travelling Americans alone, but by all the general public, which imagined itself too enlightened to be deceived by any spiritual manifestations. It was a juggle which was supposed to be going on before those keen observers; and the heroic sufferer, who stood upon that platform before them, with the heart breaking in his generous and tender breast, was the chief trickster of the company, and was supposed to cast jealous eyes upon any curious stranger who might "gaze" too "steadfastly" and, perhaps, find out the secret of the imposture. In sight of such amazing misconception, miracles themselves lose their wonder; nothing is so wonderful as the blindness of those human eyes, which, "gazing steadfastly," do but demonstrate their own total incapacity to see. During this summer considerable accessions were made to the separated community. An Independent congregation in the city, presided over by Mr. Miller, having gone through the same process which had taken place in Regent Square, attached itself to the new Church, its minister being also re-ordained angel over it and the ecstatic voices began to be heard in the Church of England, from which they also ended by detaching at least one clergyman in London. The most singular proof, however, of the advance and development of the community, is to be found in the winding up of the Morning Watch, and the very remarkable reasons assigned for the ending of that strange periodical, the history of which breaks in like 66 361 an episode of pure romance into the duller records of ordinary literature. Commenced, at first, to afford a medium by which the consultations and conclusions of the Albury School of Prophets might be brought before the public, it had faithfully followed all the gradual expansions of the new Spiritualism. Vague but grand expectations had been in the heart of its originators. They believed the Lord to be at hand-the world's history to be all but concluded. The night was over, the day breaking, when Henry Drummond and his brother seers set their Morning Watch upon the battlements, that the sentinels might communicate to each other how the shadows dispersed, and the gleams of coming sunshine trembled from the east. Now a strange fruition was coming to those hopes. Not the Lord, indeed for the gates of heaven still closed serenely in azure calm upon the far celestial glory-but a Church, with all its orders of ministers called by direct inspiration, a spiritual tabernacle, constituted by God himself, had been revealed to their faith; and all that close band of true believers stood breathless with expectation, each man listening whether, perhaps, his name might not be the next upon the prophetic roll. One by one the sentinels thus summoned dropped into other offices; and at last it became necessary for their leader to make the following announcementsuch an intimation as, I presume, no editor of a periodical ever made before since literature was : "The followers of Christ and the followers of Antichrist are now gathering; each is now requiring, not merely the nominal but the personal services of their respective adherents; Christ is gathering His children into the true |