190

HIS INFLUENCE ON THE VIEWS OF IRVING.

utmost simplicity and frankness acknowledging what he had learned. If imagination had anything to do with this serious and sad history, it would not be difficult to picture those two figures, so wonderfully different, looking down from the soft Highgate slopes upon that uneasy world beneath, which, to one of them, was but a great field of study, proving, as never any collection of human creatures proved before, all the grievous but great conclusions of philosophy; while to the other, it raged with all the incessant conflict of a field of battle, dread agony of life and death, through which his own cry "to the rescue!" was continually ringing, and his own hand snatching forth from under trampling feet the wounded and the fallen. Here Irving changed the common superficial idea of the world's conversion that belief calmly held or earnestly insisted on in the face of acknowledged disappointment in many missionary efforts, and the slowness and lingering issues of even the most successful, which is common to most churches. "That error," as he himself says, "under which almost the whole of the Church is lying, that the present world is to be converted unto the Lord, and so slide by a natural inclination into the Church-the present reign of Satan hastening, of its own accord, into the millennial reign of Christ." For this doctrine he learned to substitute the idea of a dispensation drawing towards its close, and

its natural consequence in a mind so full of love to God and man-of an altogether glorious and overwhelming revolution yet to come, in which all the dead society, churches, kingdoms, fashions of this world, galvanically kept in motion until the end, should be

finally burned up and destroyed. Whether this development of wistful and anxious faith, and the "deliverance" conveyed by it; or whether that more subtle view of the ancient and much-assailed Calvinistic doctrine of election, which sets forth God's message and messengers as specially addressed to "the worthy," and universally received by them wherever the message is heard was the substance of what the preacher learned from the poet-philosopher, there is no information. The prodigal thanks with which the teaching was received, given out of the fulness of a heart always ready to exaggerate the benefits conferred upon it, is almost the only distinct record of what passed between them.

Such was his society and occupations when he returned with the companion of his life from Scotland. He brought his wife into a house in which the tumult of London was perpetually heard; not into a quiet ecclesiastical society, like that which generally falls to the lot of the wives of Scotch ministers, but to a muchdisturbed dwelling-place, constantly assailed by visitors, and invaded by agitations of the world. Among all the other excitements of popularity, there came also the pleasant excitement of a new church about to be built, of size proportioned to the necessities of the case. The same crowds and commotion still surrounded the Caledonian chapel, but they became more bearable in the prospect of more roomy quarters. An unfailing succession of private as well as public calls upon the kindness, help, and hospitality of a man whom everybody believed in, and who proffered kindness to all, helped to increase the incessant motion and activity of that full and unresting life. Thus within eighteen months after

192

A SIMPLE PRESBYTER.

his arrival in London had the Scotch preacher won the friendship of many, not specially open to members of his profession and church, and made himself a centre of personal beneficences not to be counted. If ever pride can be justified, Edward Irving might have been justified in a passing thrill of that exultation when he brought his wife from the quiet manse which all along had looked on and watched his career, not sure how far its daughter's future was safe in the hands of a man so often foiled, yet so unsubduable, to place her in a position and society which few clergymen of his church have ever attained, and indeed which few men in any church, however titled or dignified, could equal. The peculiarity of his position lay in the fact that this singular elevation belonged to himself, and not to his rank, which was not susceptible of change. That his influence was extended a thousand-fold, with little addition to his means, and none to his station, and that while he moved among men of the highest intellect and position, neither his transcendent popularity nor his acknowledged genius ever changed that primitive standing-ground of priest and pastor which he always held with primitive tenacity. The charm of that conjunction is one which the most worldly mind of man cannot refuse to appreciate; and perhaps it is only on the members of a church which owns no possibility of promotion, that such a delicate and visionary though real rank could by common verdict be bestowed.

CHAPTER IX.

1824.

THE year 1824 began with no diminution of those incessant labours. It is wonderful how a man of so great a frame, and of out-of-door tendencies so strong and long cherished, should have been able to bear, as Irving did, confinement in one of the most town-like and closely-inhabited regions of London. In Pentonville, indeed, faint breaths of country air might at that period be supposed to breathe along the tidy, genteel streets; but in Bloomsbury, where many of Irving's friends resided, or in the dusty ranges of Holborn, where his church was, no such refreshment can have been practicable. Nor had the Presbyterian minister any relief from curates, or assistance of any kind. His entire pulpit services-and, according to his own confession, his sermons averaged an hour and a quarter in length his prayers, as much exercises of the intellect as of the heart, came from his own lips and mind, unaided by the intervention of any other man; and besides his literary labours, and the incessant demands which his great reputation brought upon him, he had all the pastoral cares of his own large congregation to attend to, and was ready at the call of the sick, the friendless, and the stranger, whensoever they addressed him. That

VOL. I.

194

FAILURE OF HEALTH.

this overwhelming amount of work, combined as it was with all the excitement inseparable from the position of a popular preacher -a preacher so popular as to have his church besieged every day it was opened -should tell upon his strength, was to be expected; and accordingly we find him writing in the following terms to Mr. Collins of Glasgow, the publisher, who had taken a large share in Dr. Chalmers's parochial work in St. John's, and was one of Irving's steady friends. Some time before he had undertaken to write a preface to a new edition of the works of Bernard Gilpin, which is the matter referred to:--

"7 Middleton Terrace, 24th February, 1824.

'MY DEAR MR. COLLINS,-I pray you not for a moment to imagine that I have any other intention, so long as God gives me strength, than to fulfil my promise faithfully. I am at present worked beyond my strength, and you know that is not inconsiderable. My head! my head! I may say with the Shunamite's child. If I care not for it, the world will soon cease to care for me and I for the world. If you saw me many a night unable to pray with my wife, and forced to have recourse to forms of prayer, you would at once discover what hath caused my delay. I have no resource if I throw myself up, and a thousand enemies wait for my stumbling and fall.

"I am now better, and this week had set to rise at six o'clock and finish it, but I have not been able. Next week I shall make the attempt again and again, till I succeed; for upon no account, and for no sake, will I touch or undertake aught until I have fulfilled my promise in respect to Gilpin. But one thing I will say, that I must not be content with the preface of a sermon or patches of a sermon. The subject is too important too many eyes are upon me—and the interests of religion are too much inwarped in certain places with my character and writing, that I should not do my best.

"The Lord bless you and all his true servants.

"Your faithful friend,

" EDWARD IRVING."