Born at Annan, August 4, 1792, at thirteen entered Edinburgh University, and in 1810 became a schoolmaster at Haddington, in 1812 at Kirkcaldy. Here three years later he was licensed to preach, and in 1819 he was appointed assistant to Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow. In 1822 he was called to the Caledonian Church, Hatton Garden, London; his success as a preacher there was such as had never been known. In 1825 he began to announce his convictions in regard to the imminent second advent of Christ; this was followed up by the translation of “The Coming of the Messiah” (1827), professedly written by a Christian Jew, but really by a Spanish Jesuit. By 1828, when his “Homilies on the Sacraments” appeared, he had begun to elaborate his views of the Incarnation, asserting Christ’s oneness with us all in the attributes of humanity; and he was charged with heresy as maintaining the sinfulness of Christ’s nature. He was now deep in the prophecies, and when in the beginning of 1830 he heard of extraordinary manifestations of prophetic power in Dumbartonshire, he believed them. He was arraigned before the presbytery of London in 1830 and convicted of heresy, ejected from his new church in Regent’s Square in 1832, and finally deposed in 1833 by the presbytery of Annan, which had licensed him. The majority of his congregation adhered to him, and a new communion, the Catholic Apostolic, was developed, commonly known as Irvingite, though Irving had little to do with its development. Shortly after his health failed, and he went down to Glasgow, where he died of consumption, December 8, 1834. He is buried in the crypt of the cathedral. See Life by Mrs. Oliphant (1862) and Carlyle’s “Essays” and “Reminiscences.”

Personal

  I spent Sunday at Glasgow, and I believe saw everything very remarkable…. Unluckily Dr. Chalmers was out of town, a circumstance which I did not learn till the afternoon, and attended his church both services in hopes of hearing him. In the morning I heard a very heavy piece of Presbyterian divinity, which I had hardly time to digest in the interval. I was, however, highly gratified in the afternoon by Dr. Chalmers’s coadjutor (a Mr. Irving, I think), who is one of the very small number of powerful and original thinkers I have heard from the pulpit, and whom I should be willing constantly to attend.

  You have doubtless heard of the prevailing fashion of resorting to the conventicle to hear Dr. Chalmers’s late assistant, Mr. Irving. It is not merely the opposition members of both Houses, Lord Lansdown, Mackintosh, &c., that attend him; their political nonconformity might be supposed to endear to them his ecclesiastical dissent: but the orthodox Lord Liverpool, the vindicator of existing institutions Mr. Canning, press into his meeting-house; and even with tickets you must be at the door an hour before the service commences, if you wish to get in without losing one of your coat pockets by mere mobbing.

  I have got acquainted with Mr. Irving the Scotch preacher, whose fame must have reached you. He is an humble disciple at the foot of Gamaliel S. T. C. Judge how his own sectaries must stare, when I tell you he has dedicated a book to S. T. C., acknowledging to have learnt more of the nature of faith, Christianity, and Christian Church, from him than from all the men he ever conversed with! He is a most amiable, sincere, modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montague told him the dedication would do him no good. “That shall be a reason for doing it,” was his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack.

  I must not forget to tell you of an exploit of mine, which I think I should not have undertaken unless I had been prompted by my son. I was going last Saturday, at six in the morning, to hear the celebrated Mr. Edward Irving. He preached at seven in Sir Harry Moncrieff’s church, which suited him from its great size, and me from its proximity. It was necessary to take possession of a seat an hour before the service began: my son went with me, and we were accommodated with a seat within good seeing and hearing distance, for seeing is indispensable. I should tell you that the sensation created by this setter-forth of new doctrines in the new Athens, reminds one of a more authentic preacher’s influence in the old. I heard nothing that raised him above the place he formerly held in my opinion: but in justice I must add that the prophet is less affected and theatrical than I expected; that he has a very pleasing and well-modulated voice; and that his action is not unsuited to his doctrine, which he evidently supposes to be authorised by inspiration. Of his discourse I will only say at present that it has little coherence, a great deal of verbiage, and no indication, that I can discover, of high imagination or sound reasoning.

  I met to-day the celebrated divine and soi-disant prophet, Irving. He is a fine-looking man (bating a diabolical squint) with talent on his brow and madness in his eye. His dress, and the arrangement of his hair, indicated that. I could hardly keep my eyes off of him while we were at table. He put me in mind of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill did that horrible obliquity of vision harmonize with the dark tranquil features of his face, resembling that of our Saviour in Italian pictures, with the hair carefully arranged in the same manner. There was much real or affected simplicity in the manner in which he spoke. He rather made play, spoke much, and seemed to be good-humoured. But he spoke with that kind of unction which is nearly allied to cajolerie.

  Irving caught many things from me; but he would never attend to anything which he thought he could not use in the pulpit. I told him the certain consequence would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. Sometimes he has five or six pages together of the purest eloquence, and then an outbreak of almost madman’s babble.

  You will have heard of the death of Irving. You cannot enter into my feelings on this event, as you did not know him or regard him as I did. He has been a remarkable man in a remarkable age. He was a man of much child-like feeling to God, and personal dependence on Him, amidst things which may well appear unintelligible and strange in his history.

  He was one of those whom Burns calls the nobles of nature. His talents were so commanding, that you could not but admire him; and he was so open and generous, that it was impossible not to love him. He was an evangelical Christian grafted on the old Roman—with the lofty stern virtues of the one, he possessed the humble graces of the other. The constitutional basis and ground-work of his character was virtue alone; and, notwithstanding all his errors and extravagances, which both injured his character in the estimation of the world, and threw discredit upon much that was good and useful in his writings, I believe him to be a man of deep and devoted piety.

  Dr. Rainy, who attended him, informed me of various particulars in these days; but, indeed, so touched with tears, after nearly thirty years’ interval, was even the physician’s voice, and so vivid the presentment of that noble, wasted figure, stretched in utter weakness, but utter faith, waiting for the moment when God, out of visible dying, should bring life and strength, that I can not venture to record with any distinctness those heart-breaking details…. As the gloomy December Sunday sank into the night shadows, his last audible words on earth fell from his pale lips. “The last thing like a sentence we could make out was, ‘If I die, I die unto the Lord. Amen.’” And so, at the wintry midnight hour which ended that last Sabbath on earth, the last bonds of mortal trouble dropped asunder, and the saint and martyr entered into the rest of his Lord…. He was laid in his grave in the December of 1834—a life time since; but scarce any man who knew him can yet name, without a softened voice and a dimmed eye, the name of Edward Irving—true friend and tender heart—martyr and saint.

  We ourselves saw less and less of Irving; but one night, in one of our walks, we did make a call; and actually heard what they called the Tongues. It was in a neighbouring room, larger part of the drawing room belike. Mrs. Irving had retired thither with the devotees; Irving for our sake had staid, and was pacing about the floor, dandling his youngest child, and talking to us of this and that, probably about the Tongues withal,—when there burst forth a shrieky hysterical “Lall-lall-lall!” (little or nothing else but l’s and a’s continued for several minutes); to which Irving, with singular calmness, said only, “There, hear you; there are the Tongues!” and we two, except by our looks which probably were eloquent, answered him nothing; but soon came away, full of distress, provocation and a kind of shame. “Why wasn’t there a bucket of cold water to fling on that lall-lalling hysterical mad-woman?” thought we, or said, to one another: “Oh Heavens, that it should come to this!”—I do not remember any call we made there afterwards; of course there was a Farewell call; but that too I recollect only obliquely…. Seldom was seen a more tragical scene to us, than this of Irving’s London life was now becoming!

  Few of the present generation think of the Rev. Edward Irving except, perhaps, as a superstitious enthusiast; yet, with all his eccentricities, he was a man eminently worth knowing and listening to…. The personal appearance of the speaker at once arrested my attention. Over six feet high, limbs and body finely proportioned, the ample forehead surmounted by a mass of jet-black hair, parted in the centre and dropping in curls on his shoulders: the features regular and expressive, especially the piercing dark eyes (their effect somewhat marred, however, by a squint); a stately bearing, and a majestic style of eloquence, such as might befit an apostle, conscious of a mission from on high; gestures sometimes, indeed, outré, even fantastic, yet often startlingly emphatic,—everything about him was strange, strong, telling. The man himself and his weird aspect at first engrossed one’s thoughts; yet when he fairly warmed to his subject, and the stirring tones of a voice at once persuasive and commanding gradually asserted their magnetic power, one forgot the speaker and all his peculiarities, listening, not to the words, but to the thoughts, fiery and earnest,—thoughts, one instinctively felt, that had their origin down in the depths of conscientious conviction.

  I never heard him utter a harsh or uncharitable word. I never heard from him a word or sentiment which a good man could have wished unsaid. His words were at once gentle and heroic…. He loved to dwell on great and good men, and on noble actions His memory could not apparently retain anything that was mean.

  The rumor of his burning eloquence and marked peculiarities had preceded him to London; crowds, on his appearance in the Metropolis in 1822, flocked to hear him preach; and finding that the Scottish clergyman was indeed something strange and startling, came again, and in ever-increasing numbers. Irving drew for a while the attention of men of all faiths—or of none; but it was as a meteor that shoots across the heavens, and then is quenched in darkest night. Soon there came a time when the enthusiasm, bordering on extravagance, of the preacher provoked yet more extravagant responses from a devoted few of his hearers; when to the Scottish Kirk Irving became a stumbling-block, and to the polite world of London foolishness. The former cast him out; the latter sneered at him, ceasing to throng and hear a preacher whom some called a hypocrite and others a madman, and whose peculiar eloquence had no longer the attraction of novelty. A brief season of mockery and persecution, and the sensitive nature of the man gave way. The disease that Edward Irving died of was, practically, a broken heart…. At the time to which I refer, Irving was in the prime of manhood and of striking presence: tall, slender, but by no means attenuated, with strongly marked features of the Roman type, and a profusion of long, black, wavy hair that hung partly over his shoulders. On looking closely into his face, you saw how grievously its expression was marred by an obliquity of vision, amounting in fact to a decided “squint.” It is said to have been in only one of his eyes; but its effect was fatal to the claim that might otherwise have been advanced in his behalf of possessing an awe-inspiring mien, a countenance such as one might indeed associate in fancy with a Boanerges.

  Her letters [Mrs. Carlyle] show that her feelings for Irving, first controlled by principle and honour, soon underwent a very natural change. Her love for him was the passion of an ardent and inexperienced girl, twenty or twenty-one years old, whose character was undeveloped, and who had but an imperfect understanding of the capacities and demands of her own nature. In the years that followed upon this incident she made rapid progress in self-knowledge and in the knowledge of others, chiefly through Carlyle’s influence, and she came to a more just estimate of Irving’s character than she originally had formed. Irving’s letters to her, his career in London, his published writings, revealed to her clear discernment his essential weakness,—his vanity, his mawkish sentimentality, his self-deception, his extravagance verging to cant in matters of religion. The contrast between his nature and Carlyle’s did “affect her profoundly,” and her temporary passion for Irving was succeeded by a far deeper and healthier love.

  Edward Irving had, as we have seen, left Kirkcaldy an engaged man, pledged to Miss Isabella Martin, who afterwards became his wife. Yet was there an unsatisfied longing in his heart also, for the image of the bright, eager face of Jeannie Welsh, his former pupil, haunted his mind and thoughts, and refused to be banished. Parting from her while she was still almost a child, he had yet had opportunities of seeing her while she ripened into her lovely womanhood, and he had learned to know his own heart, whose deep strong love was, alas! given to her, and not by any means to be taken away and bestowed on Miss Martin, or any other woman. Irving knew it, blinded himself to it, perhaps, in a measure, and at one time desperately hoped against hope. But the days of hope were over before 1821, and he knew he was only looking at the roses in another man’s garden.

General

  Irving’s book is come three days ago. Mrs. Buller bought it. I fear it will hardly do. There is a fierce and very spiteful review of it and him in the last “Blackwood.” There is strong talent in it, true eloquence and vigorous thought, but the foundation is rotten, and the building itself a kind of monster in architecture, beautiful in parts, vast in dimensions, but on the whole decidedly a monster. Buller has stuck in the middle of it, “Can’t fall in with your friend at all, Mr. C.” Mrs. Buller is very near sticking; sometimes I burst right out laughing when reading it. At other times I admired it sincerely.

  Take the volume of “Sermons on Astronomy,” by Dr. Chalmers, and the “Four Orations for the Oracles of God” which Mr. Irving lately published, and we apprehend there can be no comparison as to their success. The first ran like wild-fire through the country, were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of inns, and were to be met with in all places of public resort; while the “Orations” get on but slowly, on Milton’s stilts, and are pompously announced as in a Third Edition. We believe the fairest and fondest of his admirers would rather see and hear Mr. Irving than read him. The reason is, that the ground-work of his compositions is trashy and hackneyed, though set off by extravagant metaphors and an affected phraseology; that without the turn of his head and wave of his hand, his periods have nothing in them; and that he himself is the only idea with which he has yet enriched the public mind! He must play off his person, as Orator Henley used to dazzle his hearers with his diamond-ring.

  We mean not to deny that some of Irving’s productions are worthy, not only of his floating reputation, but of that gift in him which was never fully developed, or at least never completely displayed. In all his writings you see a man of the present wearing the armor of the past; but it is a proof of his power, that, although he wears it awkwardly, he never sinks under the load. It is not a David clad in a Goliath’s arms, and overwhelmed by them; it is the shepherd-giant, Eliab, David’s brother, not yet at home in a panoply which is not too large for his limbs, but for wearing which a peaceful profession and period had not prepared him. Irving, in native power, was only, we think, a little lower than the men of the Elizabethan period, and of the next two reigns. He was originally of a similar order of genius, but he had given that genius a less severe and laborious culture, and he had fallen upon an age adverse for its display. Hence, even his best writings, when compared to theirs, have a certain stiff, imitative, and convulsive air. There is nothing false in any of them, but there is something forced in most. You feel always how much better Irving’s noble, generous thoughts would have looked, had he expressed them in the language of his own day. Burke had as big a heart, a far subtler intellect, and richer imagination than Irving, and yet how few innovations, and fewer archaisms, has he ventured to introduce into his style.

  Irving’s sermons were for a time one of the wonders of London; when read they perhaps hardly sustain their reputation, yet they are noteworthy among the comparatively few really remarkable examples of recent English homiletics.

  Had Irving set himself with anything like the devotion of Chalmers to the “excavation” of the heathen in some district of London, instead of curiously prying into the unfulfilled prophecies of the future, there might have been no tongues, but there would have been more good effected, and the Church might not have had to mourn over the aberration of one of her noblest sons. It is the aggressiveness of the Church that is to keep it orthodox, and whenever schemes of prophetic fulfillment, or indeed speculations of any sort, take the place of efforts for the evangelization of the unconverted, we may look out for the uprising of some form of Irvingism.

  His works in theology, if they can be so called, Sermons and Addresses, are in most cases poems of passionate fervour with an antique touch as if of the Prophets and Seers.

  His “Orations” (1823) at times come as near to the rolling majesty of Milton’s impassioned prose as rhetoric that rarely rings quite true well can. But the intellectual substance is of a meagreness which ill corresponds to its sumptuous clothing. He was rather a visionary than a prophet. His imagination did not so much interpret life as envelope it in a cloudy effulgence; and unable to read, like the author of “Sartor” the “eternal miracle of creation,” flung the glory of miracle over imposture and delusion.