WEAL, who have foregone in a great degree the noble virtues and Christian graces of the old English patriarchs, and taken in their private characters, more of the manners and Libertinism of Continental Revolutionists." Who, pray, are these Generous Libertines, from whom Mr Edward Irving is so sorry in being separated? Are these the accomplished" and "imaginative" ones whom he would fain draw to his side?-We believe, indeed, it could be no difficult matter for a child to answer such questions. The truth of the case lies in a nut-shell. The established order of things in England, above all, in the Church, is at present, attacked by two numerous, but, thank God! by two separate bodies of enemies.-The Generous Libertines on the one side, and on the other side, those who have the blasphemous audacity of arrogating to themselves exclusively, the name of "Christians." No wonder that they who hanker after the memory of "Cromwell and his iron band," should hate this division. No wonder that they should thirst for a coalition that might perhaps make once more the chivalry of England to skip! No wonder that these "Christians" should call the Libertines they want to gain by such pretty names as "Generous favourers of their country's weal," &c. &c. &c. Mr Irving complains bitterly in another passage, thus: "We,we Christians, have lost the manly regard of our fathers for liberty and good government, and crouched into slavish sentiments of passive obedience." (p. 244.) Does not this furnish a sufficient clew to Mr Irving's drift?—Yes, we do not fear to say it, go who will to hear this man thunder out his orations and his arguments, that the book this man has published is embued throughout with a strain of most dangerous sentiment. He wants to make the "Ge nerous favourers of their country's weal" Christians, and he wants to make the Christians ashamed of having "lost the old manly regard for liberty," and "crouched into obedience!" Lay these two strings that he has to his bow together, and let any man, whether "accomplished and imaginative," or not, doubt if he can, what is the arrow that the reverend man would fain see his bow loaded with.-Such a way of judging may appear harsh and hasty we assure our readers it is not hasty; and if it be harsh, let Mr Irving speak English, and we shall endeavour not to misunderstand him another time. In spite of a few pretty complimentary phrases used now and then in the course of his production, we cannot doubt that Mr Irving's main intention it to attack the Church of England. It is certainly of no great consequence what, as an individual, he does, or does not attack; but we are extremely sorry indeed to observe, that this tone is by no means an uncommon one at present among the ultras of the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland. We can easily understand that these people should prefer having a church like their own established in the sister kingdoms, if they could manage that point-but it is clear enough, that of this they can have no serious hope whatever. They well know, that if the Episcopal Church of England perish, no established Church whatever can come in its place. They well know, that the Sectaries are too much divided, and too fierce in their spleen against each other. They are willing, therefore, to lend a hand in pulling down the present Church of England, although in the knowledge that there never could be any other Church of England. They flatter themselves that although the Church of England were pulled down to-morrow, the Kirk of Scotland would stand fast and be in no sort of danger. They therefore go on continually decrying the sister church and extolling their own in the same breath, and Mr Irving, among the rest, loses no opportunity of raving about Baxter, and the old non-conformists, as if these were the only clerical names really worthy of the gratitude and veneration of the people of England-really worthy of being reverenced on a par, to say no more, with those of the Knoxes and Melvilles, &c. of the Presbyterian Establishment in Scotland. Not the least extraordinary part of this humbug is, that these people are eternally abusing the Church of England, as a Church too closely united with the state and the affairs of state-and lauding their own Church for its freedom from all such connection-and this at the very same time that they are hankering most eagerly after the restoration of that state of matters which prevailed in the days of the Knoxes and the Prynnes! There never were any churchmen in the world who interfered in politics more fiercely and proudly and sternly than John Knox and the men of his school, both in England and in Scotland. They were the most ambitious of priests-Bating the difference of their doctrines, they were just so many proud sulky popish monks-they had all the rancour of a Caste, all the thoroughgoing ambition of a plebeian faction. We do not mean to deny that, with all these faults, they had many excellencies, and that they produced much good in more ways than one to the country-quite the reverse. But we do think, and, thinking, we do not hesitate to say, that the idea of wishing for the resurrection of the political as well as ecclesiastical predominancy of men of that spirit, is absurdly at variance with the mind of the nation and of the age-and certainly most woefully at variance with the feelings of those more cultivated classes to which this Mr Irving seems so ambitious of exclusively addressing his orations. even Chalmerses,) are quite forgotten. And will these people and the leaders they may so well be proud of having-will all these sit silently and submit to be held in an inferior place by the clergy of the Kirk, when they see England set free from a Churchestablishment altogether? The supposition is ridiculous. The thing will not stand for four-and-twenty hours. But the Presbyterian Dissenters are not all. There is a prodigious body of Episcopalians in Scotland. At this moment, there is scarcely a single noble family in Scotland that is not Episcopalian. Almost all the higher gentry are in the same way. Perhaps it would not be saying too much to say, that fully TWO-THIRDS of the landed property in Scotland are at this hour in the hands of Episcopalian proprietors. Now the land, and the land alone, is burthened with the maintenance of the kirk establishment. It is very true, that the burden is, comparatively speaking, light, and easy to be borne; yet, if the gentry of England were set entirely free of tithes, does any one believe that the gentry of Scotland would But the truth is, nothing can be submit willingly to any payment, howmore ridiculous than the notion pre- ever moderate, of tiends? No; backvalent among a particular class of our ed by the great Presbyterian dissentScottish churchmen, that their esta- ing bodies, the landed men of Scotblishment would not be shaken by land would certainly rise in an instant the downfall of the Church of Eng- against the continuance of such a sysland. It is very true, that their sti- tem. It is a great pity that it should pends are moderate, and that their be so; but, in point of fact, the nobles establishment is, on the whole, as lit- and the higher gentry of SCOTLAND, tle burthensome as any establishment are, with very few exceptions, in these could well be. But this is not the days, ENGLISHMEN. There is not one question. There is a very great body of the higher nobility of Scotland that of Dissenters in Scotland too—a great spends, on an average, more than two and an increasing body of Presbyte- nights in the year in the metropolis of rian Dissenters. The clergymen of Scotland. There is not one of them these sects in Scotland are, it is noto- that has a house there; when they rious, just as well educated, as learn- come thither, they are strangers, and ed, as eloquent, and every way as re- put up at a hotel, just as they would spectable, as those of the Established do in Amsterdam or Paris. Every Kirk. Nay, it is a singular enough Scotch gentleman who can afford it, fact, that in our own day, the two carries his family not to Edinburgh, men who have done most for the li- but to London. With few exceptions, terary reputation of the Presbyterian the young men of fashion and fortune clerical order in Scotland, are not are all chiefly educated in England. members of the Established Presby- England iseverything; Scotland is noterian Church at all. What has the thing but a place to get rents from, Kirk of Scotland produced in these and to shoot grouse in for a few weeks days that can sustain a moment's com- after the rising of Parliament. These parison with the Dictionary of Dr Ja- people are all English-their speech is mieson, and the Historical Works of English-their prejudices are English; Dr M'Crie? These are books which more than half of their blood is in will keep their place hundreds of most instances English blood. These years after fifty Chalmerses, (yes, people will certainly oppose as much as in them lies the downfall of the venerable Church of England; but, that once down, is it anything less than craziness and mere imbecility to dream that they will make a second, and a more successful battle, for the purpose of upholding the Kirk establishment of Scotland?-a Church of which they are not, and have not for a long while been, accustomed to consider themselves as, in any true sense of the word, members an establishment with which they have long ceased to have any connexion, except that of paying for it, and of appointing the ministers, (which last benefit, by the way, cannot be supposed to be held at any very high vafue, seeing that the Kirks of Scotland have long ago ceased to be looked upon as convenient shelves for the younger sons even of the poorer orders of the Scottish gentry.), When Mr Irving laments over the want of sympathy and close union between what he is pleased to call, "WE, WE CHRISTIANS," and "THE GENEROUS FAVOURERS OF THEIR COUNTRY'S WEAL, WHO HAVE IN THEIR PRIVATE MANNERS ADOPTED THE LIBERTI NISM OF FRANCE," we are well aware that what he really weeps over is the Toryism, generally speaking, and certainly the steady loyalty, of that great party within the Church of England, which is commonly distinguished, we shall not ask how improperly, by the name of the Evangelical party. He preaches and publishes in London, therefore it cannot be doubted that this is what the orator means. It is, however, not a bit the less true, that there is a great deal too much sympathy and union just at present between certain infidel enemies of the Church of England and certain other enemies of hers. It is the great reproach of a very considerable party in the Kirk of Scotland, for example, that they have suffered themselves, on many very important occasions, to be led into a shameful copartnership and co-operation with men who abstain from attacking their church now, only because they see (what the others would have seen long ago, had not the bile of conceit and prejudice blinded them,) that the most effectual way of ruining that minor and poorer, but equally hated establishment, is to begin with sapping the foundations of the more extensive and imposing structure in the sister country. We need not go into close particulars. What we say will be intelligible enough to everybody that lives in Scotland, and to the great majority of those who do not live in Scotland also. We may just hint, however, in a single sentence, that the subscription for HONE, to take one example, was aided and abetted here in Scotland, not only by the Edinburgh Reviewers, but by many ruling elders, who figure among the loudest and most strenuous orators in our General Assemblies upon the ultra-Whig and ultra-Presbyterian side of the Kirk. This is true; let who will say that this is right. It is really enough to make one laugh to see how good, worthy, shortsighted men are taken in by a few flummery paragraphs about them and their immaculate Kirk, and their liberality! by people whose real intentions are scarcely covered by any veil at all, except when, for particular purposes, they are endeavouring to conciliate those, who, if they had as much wit as we cannot doubt they have honesty, would be the foremost and most unrelenting enemies of such a crew. There is much that the truly respectable clergy of the Church of England might do well to notice, and to imitate in the clergy of the sister Church here in Scotland-their strict residence; their humble, zealous visitations of their people; their uniform and undivided attention to the duties of their calling and their cures. There is, on the other hand, much that the clergy of Scotland ought to imitate and rival in the character of their English brethren; above all, in that thorough scholarship, both professional and extra-professional, which, in spite of all the sneers of the Irvings et hoc genus, has rendered, and now keeps the attacks of infidel writers and infidel orators ineffectual in Britain. The clergy of Scotland do their duty admirably, in their parishes most admirably; and they deserve, and they possess, the warmest good wishes of every lover of the Truth within the country where there ministry is exercised. But what would have become of the cause of Christianity over all Britain, long ere now, had there been no better fighters for that cause against the great army of infidel wits, than Scotland, and the Church of Scotland, has of late years reared? Had there been no Watsons, no Horsleys, no Paleys, in the last age, what would have been the condition of the British people, and of that faith which was then assailed by enemies indeed worthy of the name of enemies? What was Beattie to such men as these? Such a man as Beattie did very well to be paraded and puffed-he was a worthy good man, but weak as water. He had the vanity to have himself painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, sitting in an elbow-chair in the clouds, with his Essay on Truth in his hands, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Gibbon, lying under his feet, writhing, in the character of devils. The print from this picture figures at the beginning of his life. Any one who just looks at it for a minute, and considers what the man, with that happy, contented, imbecile, sleepy face did what he was, and what these trampled devils did and were, must blush, if the blood has any way to his cheeks, for the literary triumphs of the Kirk of Scotland.* The clergy of England should imitate the clergy of Scotland; the clergy of Scotland should imitate the clergy of England. But as for such people as Mr Irving, it will be much if they look round them for a little, in either church, and strive to imitate, in the first place, that Christian humility which distinguishes the brightest ornaments of both the one and the other of them. not been so, indeed, we should not of course have devoted so much space to him and his book. But has he shewn himself to be a great man?-a great orator?-a great reasoner?—a masterly and original mind?-a master of English eloquence? No such things. He is neither more nor less than a clever copier of Dr Chalmers of Glasgow. It is very true, that he has been reading Taylor, Barrow, Baxter, and Hooker, and that he has endeavoured to infuse into his language a spice of their olden rhetoric. The attempt was praiseworthy, but the result has certainly been anything but satisfactory to those who read (for we can say nothing as to those who hear,) Mr Irving. Those old writers were admirably accomplished masters of the English tongue; there is a rich mellow luxury about their periods, which, to imitate, is hopeless, unless in very superior hands indeed to the like of Mr Irving. And, besides, he could not-no man could-imitate both them and Dr Chalmers at once. Chalmers has his own merits, but they lie toto cælo away from those of our old prose classics of the 17th century; and the attempt to blend the two styles has been productive of an extremely unpleasing effect. It has covered the whole strain with an But it is high time we should speak insufferable appearance of affectation a few words about his book-more-double affectation too—of laboured strictly considered as a book. We have already seen how openly Mr Irving avows the highly ambitious views under the influence of which he has commenced his career of authorship. We have seen that he despises the name of Sermons; that he will write nothing but Orations after the manner of Cicero and Demosthenes, and Arguments or Apologies after the manner of the Fathers. We have seen, too, that he expressly says, he means himself for the "more learned, imaginative, and accomplished classes;" in other words, that his object is to infuse the spirit of religion into the popular literature, and thence into the popular mind of the age-that he means to work a revolution in religion and in letters. And what has been hitherto his success? We admit, at once, freely and fully, that he has shewn himself to be a man of considerable talents; if it had frigidity of ambitious feebleness-of uninspired extravagance. The whole style of the orator's thinking, the whole conception of his strain, are servilely after Chalmers. We are pretty sure there is not one train of thought at all striking in the book, the germ of which may not be found even in Chalmers's printed works. But to us, who have very frequently heard Dr Chalmers preach, the identity of the two things is throughout quite palpable-painfully so, indeed. The imitation is as close, now, as the imitation of Jeffrey's way of reviewing by the underling imbeciles of his Journal,as the imitation of the author of Waverley's style by the authors of The Cavalier, The King of the Peak, Pontefract Custle, The Rise and Fall of Somerset, and such books. Now, there is no doubt, that considerable talent may be shewn in the midst of even this kind of imitation; but high talent Our correspondent has forgotten two really respectable divines of the last age in Scotland, Campbell and Macknight; but still we do not quarrel with his general argument as to this matter.-C. N. VOL. XIV. U -anything like commanding talentanything like the talent that is capable of working a revolution, or anything like a revolution, either in preaching, or in any other department of intellectual exertion, is quite out of the question in such a case. Facile est inventis addere, is an old and a true saying; and even if Mr Irving had gone considerably beyond Dr Chalmers in Dr Chalmers's walk, we should never have dreamed of putting him by the side of his master. Even if he had kept all the startling boldness of Dr Chalmers's way of preaching, and yet made his language pure and correct English, instead of the pyebald offensiveness of the Chalmerian style, we should not have said, here is a man worthy of taking his place by the side of Chalmers. But he has done nothing of this sort. He has the audacity without the vigour; the os magna soniturum without the original nerve and pith; the goowwov Thλauyes, without the capacity of the temple behind. He has not equalled the excellencies-nothing like it; and he has kept, ay, and added to the defects. All this might, no doubt, have passed off extremely well, if Mr Irving had been contented to speak his orations and arguments, and not to print them. He has probably a vigorous and impressive style of declaiming, and if he had been wise enough to avoid publication, he might, in a place where Dr Chalmers could be little known, have continued to maintain the reputation of a powerful and even of an original preacher. But this printing in a great measure undid Chalmers himself and what wonder that it should have gone near to undo his pupil and imitator altogether? In our opinion, such must have been the effect of Mr Irving's very ambitious debut as an author. We shall now proceed to justify what we have felt ourselves constrained to say, by a few extracts from the book. The following passage it may be proper to introduce with the remark, that it occurs within three pages of the beginning of the first Oration-that "On preparation for consulting the Oracles of God." "Who feels the thrilling fear or trembling hope there is in words whereon the eternal destinies of himself do hang? Who feels the swelling tide of gratitude within his breast, for redemption and salvation coming, instead of flat despair and ever. lasting retribution? Finally, who, in persing the word of God, is captivated through all his faculties, and transported through all his emotions, and through all his energies of action wound up? Why, to say the best, it is done as other duties are wont to be done; and, having reached the rank of a daily, formal duty, the perusal of the Word hath reached its noblest place. Yea, that which is the guide and spur of all duthe first and the last of Christian knowty, the necessary aliment of Christian life, ledge and Christian feeling, hath, to speak the best, degenerated in these days to stand rank and file among those duties whereof it is parent, preserver, and commander. And to speak not the best, but the fair and common truth, this book, the offspring of the divine mind, and the perfection of heavenly wisdom, is permitted to lie from day to day, perhaps from week to week, unheeded and unperused; never welcome to our hapted, if admitted at all, in seasons of sickpy, healthy, and energetic moods; admitness, feeble-mindedness, and disabling sorrow. Yea, that which was sent to be a spirit of ceaseless joy and hope, within the heart of man, is treated as the enemy of happiness, and the murderer of enjoyment; and eyed askance, as the remembrancer of death and the very messenger of hell! "Oh! if books had but tongues to speak their wrongs, then might this book well exclaim-Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! I came from the love and embrace of God, and mute Nature, to whom I To,man I came, and my words were to the brought no boon, did me rightful homage. children of men. mysteries of hereafter, and the secrets of I disclosed to you the the throne of God. I set open to you the gates of salvation, and the way of eternal life, hitherto unknown. Nothing in heaven did I withhold from your hope and poured the full horn of Divine Providence ambition; and upon your earthly lot I and consolation. But ye requited me with rival: Ye sequester me from happiness no welcome, ye held no festivity on my arand heroism, closeting me with sickness and infirmity; ye make not of me, nor use me for your guide to wisdom and prudence, but press me into a place in your last of duties, and withdraw me to a mere corner of your time; and most of ye set me at nought and utterly disregard me. I came, the fulness of the knowledge of God; angels delighted in my company, and desired to dive into my secrets. jecting me to the discipline and dogmatism ye, mortals, place masters over me, subof men, and tutoring me in your schools of learning. I came, not to be silent in your dwellings, but to speak welfare to you and to your children. I came to rule, and my throne to set up in the hearts of men. Mine ancient residence was the bosom of God; no residence will I have but the soul of an immortal." But It must be quite needless for us to criticise the above. It has all the worst |