HIS REMONSTRANCE. 229 nothing contradictory to the constitutions of the Church of Scotland. And to that letter I refer the trustees, as containing the grounds of my proceeding. Farewell! may the Lord have you in His holy keeping and guidance! "Your affectionate and faithful friend and pastor, So the year closed, in perplexity and anxious fear to all those friendly and affectionate opponents whom the heat of conflict had not yet excited into any animosity against himself; but not in perplexity to Irving, who, secure in his faith, doubted nothing, and was as ready to march to stake or gibbet, had such things been practicable, as any primitive martyr. But sharp to his heart struck those reiterated prayers which he could not grant—those importunities of affectionate unreasonableness, which would neither see this duty as he saw it, nor perceive how impossible it was for him, believing as he did, to restrain or limit the utterances of God. Such a want of perception must have aggravated to an intolerable height the sufferings of his tender heart in this slow and tedious disruption of all its closest ties; but he showed no sign of impatience. He answered them with a pathetic outburst of sorrowful love, "There is nothing which I would not surrender to you, even to my life," nothing but the duty he owed to God. In that dreadful alternative, when human friendship and honour stood on one side, and what he believed his true service to his Master on the other, Irving had no possibility of choice. Never man loved love and honour more; but he turned away with steadfast sadness, smiling a smile full of tears and anguish upon those brethren whose affection would 230 IMPORTUNITIES OF HIS FRIENDS. still add torture to the pain that was inevitable. He could descend into the darkening world alone, and suffer the loss of almost all that was dear to his heart. He could bear to be shut out from his pulpit, excommunicated by his Church, forsaken of his friends. What he could not do, was to weigh his own comfort, happiness, or life, for a moment, against what he believed to be the will and ordinance of God. CHAPTER V. 1832. THE next year began with but a gradual increase of darkness to the devoted household, from which old friends were failing and old ties breaking every day. It was no lack of affection which necessitated those partings; but utter disagreement in a point so important, and the growing impatience of the sensible, "practical" men around him for that impracticable faith which no motive of prudence nor weight of reasoning could move, inevitably took the heart from their intercourse, and produced a gradual alienation between Irving and his ancient brethren. Other friends, it is true, came in to take their place partisans still more close, loyal, and loving-but they were new, little tried, strangers to all his native sympathies and prejudices, neither Scotch nor Presbyterian : and with equal inevitableness took up an attitude of opposition to the older party, and made the pathetic struggle an internecine war. On all sides the friends of years parted from Irving's side. His wife's relations, with whom he had exchanged so many good offices and tender counsels, were, to a man, against him: so were his elders, with one exception. His friends outside the ecclesiastical boundaries were still less tolerant. Thomas Carlyle and his wife, both much beloved, not only disagreed, but remonstrated; the former making a vehement protestation against the "Bedlam" and "Chaos" to which his friend's steps were tending, which Irving listened to in silence, covering his face with his hands. When the philosopher had said, doubtless in no measured or lukewarm terms, what he had to say, the mournful apostle lifted his head, and addressed him with all the tenderness of their youth-"Dear friend!"-that turning of the other cheek seems to have touched the heart of the sage almost too deeply to make him aware what was the defence which the other returned to his fiery words. None of his old supporters, hitherto so devoted and loyal, stood by Irving in this extremity; nobody except the wife, who shared all his thoughts, and followed him faithfully in faith as well as in love to the margin of the grave. In the midst of all these disruptions, however, he snatches a moment to send the good wishes of the beginning season to Kirkcaldy Manse: "I desire to give thanks to God that He has spared us all to another year," he writes, "and I pray that it may be very fruitful in you and in us unto all good works. We have daily reason to praise the Lord. He gives us new demonstrations of His presence amongst us daily. There is not any church almost with which He hath dealt so graciously. May the Lord revive and restore His work in the midst of you all! I would there were in every congregation a morning prayer-meeting for the gifts of the Spirit." These brief words mark, however, 7 the limits to which he is now reduced in those once overflowing domestic confidences. He can but utter with an unexpressed sigh the still affectionate good-will, and make a tacit protest against harsh judgment by fervent utterances of gratitude for the manifestations of God's presence. Sympathy of thought and spiritual feeling was over between those close friends. Very early in this year the little band of "gifted" persons, whose presence had made so much commotion in Regent Square, and of whom we have hitherto had no very clear and recognisable picture, is opened up to us in the narrative, which I have already referred to, of one of the most remarkable among them, Mr. Robert Baxter, then of Doncaster. Having but recently appeared within the inspired circle, this gentleman had made his utterances with so much power and authority, that already adumbrations of an office higher than the prophetic overshadowed him, and he seems to have taken a leading place in all the closest and most sacred conferences of the prophets. He had been for some years known to Irving; his character for godliness and devotion stood high, and he was so much in the confidence and fellowship of the minister of the church in Regent Square as to have been, before any gifts had manifested themselves in him, permitted occasionally to conduct some part of the service in the morning prayermeetings. At length he spoke, and that with a force and fulness not yet attained by any of the other speakers. "In the beginning of my utterances that evening," he says in his narrative, "some observations were in the power addressed by me to the pastor in a commanding tone; and the manner and course of utter |