-Irving announces certain Changes - Arrangement of the Church Sweet Waters Letter to Alan Ker Position of the Angel God's Footsteps are not known - Irving's Mode of explaining himself - His Reasonableness Contrast between Irving and Baxter-Doctrine of "the Humanity"- Fighting in the Dark Annan Presbytery - Incompetence of the Judges Irving's Arrival in Annan David and Goliath Irving's Defence - The Captain of our Salvation - Decision of the Presbytery - Scene in Annan Church - Irving leaves the Church - Deposition - "Our dear Father's Letter" - Another Death Infant Faith An American Spectator - The Morning Watch Conclusion of that Periodical - Irving's Difficulties An embarrassing Restraint The Communion in Newman Street . 329 Sent to Edinburgh · Is no longer his own Master Voyage to Greenock Enters Glasgow - His last Letter-Flesh and Heart faint and fail — His Certainty of Recovery — At the EDWARD IRVING. CHAPTER I. 1828. THE year 1828 commenced amid those domestic shadows, and had not progressed far before the public assaults, in which Irving's life was henceforward to be passed, began. In the early beginning of the year he had prepared for publication three volumes of his collected sermons; the first volume setting forth the very heart and essence of his teaching, his lofty argument and exposition of the Trinity, and its combined action in the redemption of man; the second, his conception of the manner of applying Divine truth as symbolised in the Parable of the Sower; and the third, his views on national and public subjects. When this work, however, was all but ready for the press, one of the spies of orthodoxy hit upon a grand and unthought of heresy, in the splendid expositions which the congregation had received without a suspicion, and which Irving himself had preached with the fullest conviction that the sentiments he uttered were believed by all 2 SERMONS ON THE TRINITY. orthodox Christians. Up to this period his works had been arraigned before less solemn tribunals; failures in taste, confusion of metaphors, and an incomprehensible and undiminishable popularity, which no attack could lessen, and which piqued the public oracles, had been brought against him, one time or another, by almost every publication in the kingdom. But even when a man is fully convicted of being more eloquent and less cautious than his neighbours, when he is proved to fascinate the largest audiences, and utter the boldest denunciations, and give the most dauntless challenges to all opponents, with the additional aggravations of a remarkable person, and some peculiarities of appearance, these things are still not enough to make him a heretic. The religious world had long been shy of a man so impracticable; but yet had been forced, by way of availing itself of his genius and popularity, to afford him still its countenance, and still to ask anniversary sermons, though with fear and trembling, from the greatest orator of the time. These anniversary sermons, however, were so little to be depended upon were so much occupied with the truth, and so little with the occasion, or the subscription lists -that he was not, and could not be popular among the religious managers and committee people, who make a business of the propagation of the gospel. He was a man of a different fashion from their favourite model, by no means to be brought into conformity with it; and they regarded him afar off with jealous eyes. At last the inevitable collision occurred. Irving's sermons on the Trinity were uttered to an audience so unaware UNCONSCIOUS OF ANY DOUBT UPON THE SUBJECT. 3 of any error in them that, by special desire of the officebearers of the congregation, they were placed first in the volumes which their author prepared as a complete manifestation of his varied labours. The sermons themselves had been preached some years before; they are mentioned in Fraser's Magazine, in the éloge pronounced upon him after his death, as having been first delivered in Hatton Garden, where no man hinted heresy; and Irving himself describes the gradual composition of several of them in his journal-letters in 1825; they were not, however, ready for publication till the beginning of the year 1828; and seem to have been selected in all simplicity, and, as the preface relates, with no controversial meaning, "as being designed for the instruction of the church committed to my ministerial and pastoral care, of whom I knew not that any one entertained a doubt upon that great head of Christian faith." These sermons, though of a very different character from those bursts of bold and splendid oratory by which the preacher had made his great reputation, are perhaps more remarkable than any of his other productions. How any man could carry a large audience breathless through those close and lofty arguments, and lead them into the solemn courts of heaven to trace the eternal covenant there, preserving the mighty strain of intelligence and attention through hours of steadfast soaring into the ineffable mysteries, is a question which I find it hard to solve. But he seems to have done it; and all unaware of the fact that underneath, in the cloudy world below, certain sharp eyes, unable to follow him, could yet follow and discern where his brilliant way cut through divers floating clouds of doctrine, |