EXCITEMENT IN EDINBURGH.

19

to have attracted them to Irving. Hosts of people cheerfully made themselves uncomfortable for the chance of getting admittance; and those who came, came not once, as to an unparalleled exhibition, but time after time, as unable to escape from the spell. "He is drawing prodigious crowds," Dr. Chalmers writes. "We attempted this morning to force our way into St. Andrew's Church; but it was all in vain. He changes to the West Church, for the accommodation of the public." In that vast building, fitted up with three hideous galleries, the wonderful invention of the eighteenth century, the crowd did not lessen. "Certainly there must have been a marvellous power of attraction that could turn a whole population out of their beds as early as five in the morning," adds Dr. Chalmers. "The largest church in our metropolis was each time overcrowded." And the enthusiastic hearers took the younger members of their households with them, when it was practicable, through the crowd, by way of impressing that wonderful eloquence, so unlikely to appear again in their day, upon the minds of the new generation.

It was altogether an extraordinary new chapter in the preacher's life. Perhaps to disturb the equilibrium of the composed society of Edinburgh, and draw an immense congregation of his sober-minded countrymen from their morning slumbers and home comfort, into such a crowded assembly as the rising sun rarely shines upon, was the greatest triumph to which he had yet attained. It does not seem, however, that he looked at it at all in this vulgar light. "I have

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DISSATISFACTION OF CHALMERS.

fairly launched my bark. God speed us!" he writes to his wife; and, without another word of comment upon his extraordinary audiences, proceeds to report his progress through Dumfriesshire, and to diverge into purely domestic matters, telling how one of the Kirkcaldy sisters, then in his native country, "is dear to all who know her;" but, "being of the Reformation school by education," perceives that the family with whom she resides is "but Evangelical;" and sending to another sister-the bride Elizabeth—the tender regards which her circumstances call forth, "My brotherly love and ministerial blessing upon her virgin head," he writes; his heart evidently touched with the tearful joy of that crisis of youthful life. Nor could any one guess, from this brief correspondence, that the writer was at the height of popular applause, followed, lauded, and commented upon by the whole disturbed town, in which he had appeared like a sudden meteor; the agitating popularity which encircled him leaves no trace upon his hurried and simple communications.

And now the objections which had always risen against him began really to take a form grievous to his heart. London criticism had not dismayed the dauntless orator; but he was now among friends, and exposed to animadversions of a heavier kind. Again Dr. Chalmers comes in, puzzled and full of doubt, yet speaking plainly the opinion for which his mind had evidently been preparing since his visit to London. "For the first time, heard Mr. Irving," he notes in his brief journal; "I have no hesitation in saying it is quite

THE STATESMAN AND THE VISIONARY.

21

woeful. There is power and richness, and gleams of exquisite beauty, but withal, a mysterious and extreme allegorization, which, I am sure, must be pernicious to the general cause. He sent me a letter he had written to the King, on the Test, &c., and begged that I would read every word of it before I spoke. I did so, and found it unsatisfactory and obscure, but not half so much so as his sermon." At the discussion upon the Abolition of Tests, in the General Assembly of that year, Chalmers again describes the apparition of Irving, making himself visible among the assembled spectators and doing all that a bystander could to make his own strenuous opposition apparent. "Irving is wild on the other side from me," said the calm and liberal divine, who supported with all his force of practical wisdom the abolition of a safeguard proved to be useless, and who had read, without being at all influenced by it, the eloquent letter to the King, in which the idealist opposite him set forth his splendid impracticable vision of a Christian nation bound under God to be swayed by only Christian men; "he sat opposite to me when I was speaking, as if his eye and looks, seen through the railing, were stationed there for my disquietude. He, by the way, had a regular collision with a Dr. H., a violent sectarian, who denounced him as an enemy to the Gospel of Christ. The colloquy that ensued was highly characteristic; Mr. Irving's part of it began with 'Who art thou, O man, that smiteth me with thy tongue ?'"

Nothing could better illustrate the characters of the two men, whom it is always interesting and often

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22

USES OF THE IMPRACTICABLE.

amusing to see together, than this odd juxtaposition: the one, clear-sighted and executive within the legislative area; the other, impatient, eager, visionary, outside, spending his strength in vehement appeals and protests against the inevitable tide of things which was, visibly to his eyes, sweeping down the lofty claims and standing of his country. Chalmers puts the impracticable optimist aside with a mixture of impatience and compassion - finds his impassioned protest "obscure and unsatisfactory," and proceeds, in spite of the brilliant gaze fixed upon him "through the railing," to clear the

modern working ground for modern action and practical necessities. Irving, with a certain loving, noble scorn, all unaware of the different direction in which his friend's eyes are turning, and totally inaccessible to all considerations of practicability, watches the formation of the commonplace road, shaped according to compelling circumstances, and burns to rush in and establish the eternal ideal track, deviating for no compulsion, which neither he nor any other man can ever fix upon the surface of this earth. Yet, let nobody think that the ideal protest outside was of less use to humanity than the operative sense within. Chalmers helped on the course of modern affairs and smoothed and widened the national path: Irving, with extravagance, with passion, with convictions which knew no middle course, stirred the hearts in men's bosoms, and kept alive the spirit of that sublime impracticable, which, never reaching, every true man strives to reach, and which preserves an essence of national and spiritual life far beyond the power of the most perfect

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SCOTLAND.

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organization or the highest political advantages to bestow.

Whether Chalmers's conclusion, that the lectures of this course were "quite woeful," was shared by the Edinburgh public, seems very doubtful; for, to the last, that public, not over-excitable, crowded its streets in the early dawn, thronging toward that point where the homely West Church, with its three galleries, stands under the noble shadow of the Castle Hill; and his wonderful popularity was higher at the conclusion than at the beginning. Nor is it easy to believe that the same year which produced the splendid oratory of the Last Days, could have fallen so far short in the special mission with which he felt himself charged. But Chalmers's disapproving eye did not perceive nor recognise the overpowering force of that conviction which had taken possession of his friend. The Second Advent was, to him, a doctrine open to discussion, possibly capable of proof; to Irving, a closely-approaching stupendous event, of which woe was unto him if he did not warn his brethren. The one man was not able to judge the other with such an astonishing gulf of difference between.

Other encounters, telling upon his future career, happened to Irving at this remarkable era of his life. It was one of the critical periods of religious thought. Here and there, throughout Scotland, one mind and another had broken the level of fixed theology, and strayed into a wider world of Christian hope and love. Departing from the common argumentative basis of doctrine, such minds as that of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen