AN EMBARRASSING RESTRAINT.

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scattered premature snows, under the yoke. Throughout the Chronicle and other publications put forth by the community, this great figure looms, always with formal acknowledgments made of its greatness, often with natural outbursts of affection celebrating its nobility, but, nevertheless, with a certain unexpressed disapprobation visibly mingling with all praise. Even the apostles and prophets are puzzled how to manage a soul so heroically simple, a heart so warm. They are tender of his repugnances and reluctances, but cannot understand how it is that their restraints irk him. And so it is that his days, which are numbered, glide on out of sight of the world. Outside, people imagine him the leader, who has brought and keeps this congregation together, and by right of whose permission prophets speak and elders teach; but in reality, when one looks within, the scene is very dif ferent. The apostles and prophets have patience with him when the light breaks slowly, painfully, upon his troubled soul; and, mastering all the prejudices of his life, all the impulses of his will, this martyr, into whose lingering agony nobody enters, still bends his head and obeys.

A single example of this, contained in a letter from his brother-in-law, the Rev. J. Brodie, of Monimail, I may instance. The Communion was being celebrated in the Newman Street Church one Sunday in June, and Mr. Brodie, then in London on a visit, was present:

"After praise and prayer, he (Irving) proceeded to dispense the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, and pointed out the character of those who were invited to approach, and of those who were unworthy. While he was doing this, one of

the apostles exclaimed: And if there be any one who does not acknowledge that the Spirit of God is amongst us, if there be any one that doubts the work of the Lord, let him abstain; let the unbeliever depart.' Next forenoon, Mr. Irving came to call for me. I very readily expressed my belief that not a few of those who belonged to his congregation were true believers in the Saviour; when he asked me, 'Why, then, did you not come and join with us at our Communion?' I replied, 'Even if I had desired to do so, how could I, after having heard it so plainly stated that all who doubted as to the nature of those manifestations were commanded to abstain?' He paused a moment, and then said, 'Ah, yes, the Spirit hath so enjoined us.' I saw that it was not without a struggle that he gave up the liberal and truly catholic feeling by which he had formerly been led to regard all true believers as brethren."

How many of such groans burst out of Irving's labouring heart is known only to the Divine Confidant of all his sorrows. The grieved and anxious brother who records this incident plied him inevitably once more with argument and appeal, representing that "these manifestations were the effects of excited imagination." In the midst of the harder sacrifices by which he had now to prove his devotion, the sufferer's constancy and patience had again and yet again to go through this trial. He was still remonstrated with about that belief which was bringing upon him internal struggles more severe than any man knew of; and still he held to that only ground on which he could sustain himself, in forlorn but sublime confidence the conviction that he had asked sincerely, and that God had answered. But God's ways were dark to His all-trusting servant" His footsteps are not known."

Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, a profound expectation still moved the community in New

EXPECTATION OF POWER FROM ON HIGH.

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man Street, and kept hope and strength in the breast of Irving. The details of the living tabernacle were not all that he looked for from heaven. The baptism by fire was yet to come, and apostolic gifts, more marked and distinctive than the supernatural impulses which moved Mr. Cardale to confer ordination, were promised to the faith of the Church. This state of expectation is very apparent in the following letter addressed to a pious household in South America, one of the members of which, when in England, had been a partaker in the gift of prophecy :

"London, 14, Newman Street, July 29, 1833.

"MY DEAR FRIENDS AND BRETHREN,In respect of the matters concerning which you ask my counsel, I think that you, my dear Mrs. K-, ought both to desire and earnestly pray to be made the vessel of the Holy Ghost, seeing that once He hath honoured you in so wonderful a manner. But I believe that this will not be until those of the brethren who are set with you to seek the Lord do separate themselves to prayer and supplication, and waiting upon the Lord to join them into a Church, and endow them with His gifts and ministries from heaven. But do nothing without His voice; administer no ordinance, take upon you no rule; only wait upon Him, and, until He, appear for you, use the ordinances as they are found among you in the Protestant Church, from which I would not have you to separate or secede, but be along with them in the bondage and barrenness, in everything but in sin, crying for them and for all the people bitterly unto the Lord, who will separate you, when and how He knoweth best.

"In respect of an Evangelist being sent to you from my Church, I know they shall be sent out unto all the world. from this land, and especially from this Church, if we abide faithful and patient in the Lord; but not until we receive power from on high, the outpouring of the latter rain, the sealing of the servants of God upon their foreheads, which

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WALKING IN DARKNESS.

even now God longeth to give; for which we wait and pray daily, yea, many times a day. Therefore be patient with us, and labour together with us in the Lord for the accomplishing of this very thing. He is preparing builders here; He is gathering stones everywhere. Pray that the labourers may be sent forth unto the harvest, for the fields are already ripe unto the harvest. We are heavy and fruitless in the Lord's hand, yet doth He glorify His abundant grace and goodness in the midst of us, for He hath by no means forsaken us, but doth daily both rebuke and comfort us. Truly my heart weepeth while I write over the let and hindrance we have presented to His work, whereby it hath come to be evilspoken of over all the world. Oh, my brother, restrain thy imagination from the handling of things divine, but in faith and prayer be thou built up and established in all truth. My love to all the brethren who love

the Lord Jesus!

"Your loving friend and servant, for the Lord's sake,

"EDWD. IRVING."

The remainder of the year was spent in this expectant yet sad suspense, waiting for "power from on high," and, when it did not come, groaning in heart over that want of faith which presented "a let and hindrance to God's work," within the isolated circle of the Church in Newman Street. Of that silent conflict which Irving had now to wage with himself, last and perhaps sorest of his trials, there remains no record except the scanty intimations in the Chronicle of the reluctance with which he received various particulars of the new order of things. But "light broke in upon his mind," always at last he "confessed his error;" and so struggled onward on his sorrowful path, more and more wistfully conscious that God's footsteps are not known.

CHAPTER VII.

1834-THE END.

THE last year of Irving's life opened dimly in the same secluded, separated world, within which Providence had abstracted him after his re-ordination. He had not failed in any of the generous and liberal sympathies of his nature; his heart was still open to his old friends, and responded warmly to all appeals of affection; but the life of a man who prayed and waited daily, "yea, many times a day," for the descent of that "power from on high" which was to vindicate his faith and confirm his heart, was naturally a separated life, incapable of common communion with the unbelieving world. And he had paused in those "unexampled labours," which, up to the settlement of his Church in Newman Street, kept the healthful daylight and open air about him. At the end of the year 1832 he and his evangelists had ceased their missionary labours; henceforward nothing but the platform in Newman Street, and the care of a flock to which he was no longer the exclusive ministrant, occupied the intelligence which had hitherto rejoiced in almost unlimited labour. Whether there was any new compensation of work in the new office of the Angel I cannot tell; but nothing of the kind is apparent. He