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the sixteenth century. Not since that lion-hearted man of God had thundered to nobles and maids of honor, to senators and queens, had any preacher in Britain such an audience to command and such power to command it as Irving. There were princes of the blood, ladies high in honor and place, ministers of state, celebrated senators, orators, and philosophers, poets, critics, and distinguished members of the bar and of the church, all jostled together into one motley yet magnificent mass, less to listen and criticise, than to prostrate themselves before the one heroic and victorious man; for it seemed rather a hero of chivalry than a divine who came forward Sabbath after Sabbath to uplift the buckler of faith, and to wield the sword of the Spirit. The speaker was made for the audience, the man for the hour. In Glasgow he was an eagle in a cage; men saw strength, but strength imprisoned and embarrassed. In London, he found a free atmosphere, and eyes worthy of beholding his highest flight, and he did-"ye stars! how he did soar." It was a flight prompted by enthusiasm, sustained by sympathy, accelerated by ambition, and consecrated by Christian earnestness. There might be indeed a slight or even a strong tinge of vanity mingled with his appearances, but it was not the vanity of a fribble, it was rather that of a child. It was but skin deep, and did not affect the simplicity, enthusiasm, and love of truth which were the bases of his character and of his eloquence. His auditors felt that this was no mouthing, ranting, strutting actor, but a great good man, speaking from a full intellect and a warm heart; and that if he had, and knew that he had, a strange and striking personal presence, and a fine deep voice thoroughly under his management, and which he wielded with all the skill of an artist, that was not his fault. These natural and acquired advantages he could not resign, he could not but be aware of, he must use, and he did consecrate. What less and what more

could he have done?

We have heard him so often described by eyewitnesses, not to speak of the written pictures of the period, that we may venture on a sketch of a Sabbath, during his palmy days, in the Caledonian Chapel. You go a full hour before eleven, and find that you are not too early. Having forced your way with difficulty into the interior, you find yourself in a nest

of celebrities. The chapel is small, but almost every person of note or notoriety in London has squeezed him or herself into one part or another of it. There shine the fine open glossy brow and speaking face of Canning. There you see the small shrimp-like form of Wilberforce, the dusky visage of Denman, the high Roman nose of Peel, and the stern forehead of Plunket. There Brougham sits coiled up in his critical might, his nose twitching, his chin resting on his hand, his eyes retired under the dark lids, his whole bearing denoting eager but somewhat curious and sinister expectation. Yonder you see an old venerable man with mild placid face and long grey hair; it is Jeremy Bentham, coming to hear his own system abused as with the tongue of thunder. Near him, note that thin spiritual-looking little old individual, with quiet philosophic countenance and large brow: it is William Godwin, the author of "Caleb Williams." In a scat behind him sits a yet more meagre skeleton of man, with a pale face, eager eyes, dark close-cropped hair and tremulous nervous aspect; it is the first of living critics, William Hazlitt, who had " 'forgot what the inside of a church was like," but who has been fairly dragged out of his den by the attraction of Irving's eloquence. At the door, and standing, you see a young, short, stout person, carrying his head high, with round face, large eyes, and careless school-boy bearing: it is Macauley, on furlough from Cambridge, where he is as yet a student, but hopes soon to be equal with the proudest in all that crowded Caledonian Chapel. And in a corner of the church, Coleridge-the mighty wizard, with more knowledge and more genius under that one white head than is to be found in the whole of the bright assembly-looks with dim nebulous eyes upon the scene, which seems to him rather a swimming vision than a solid reality. And then, besides, there are belted earls, and feathered duchesses, and bishops not a few, and one or two of the Guelphic race included in a throng which has not been equalled for brilliance in London since Burke, Fox, and Sheridan stood up in Westminster Hall, as the three accusing spirits of Warren Hastings.

For nearly half an hour the audience has been fully assembled, and has maintained, on the whole, a decent gravity and composure. Eleven o'clock strikes, and an official appears,

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bearing the Bible in his hands, and thus announcing the approach of the preacher. Ludicrous as might in other circumstances seem the disparity between the forerunner and the coming Man, his appearance is welcomed by the rustle and commotion which pass through the assembly, as if by a unanimous cheer—a rustle which is instantly succeeded by deep silence, as, slowly and majestically, Edward Irving advances, mounts-not with the quick hasty step of Chalmers, but with a measured and dignified pace, as if to some solemn music heard by his car alone-the stairs of the pulpit, and lifting the Psalm-book, calmly confronts that splendid multitude. The expression of his bearing while he does this is very peculiar; it is not that of fear, not that of deference, still less is it that of impertinence, anger or contempt. It is simply the look of a man who says internally, "I am equal to this occasion and to this assembly, in the dignity and power of my own intellect and nature, and MORE than equal to it, in the might of my Master, and in the grandeur and truth of my message.' Ere he proceeds to open the Psalm-book, mark his stature and his face! He is a son of Anak in height, and his symmetry and apparent strength are worthy of his stature. His complexion is iron grey, his hair is parted at the foretop, and hangs in sable masses down his temples, his eye has a squint, which rather adds to than detracts from the general effect, and his whole aspect is spiritual, earnest, Titanic; yea, that of a Titan among Titans a Boanerges among the sons of thunder. He gives out the psalm-perhaps it is his favorite psalm, the twenty-ninth-and as he reads it, his voice seems the echo of the "Lord's voice upon the waters," so deep and far-rolling are the crashes of its sound. It sinks, too, ever and anon into soft and solemn cadences, so that you hear in it alike the moan and the roar, and feel both the pathos and the majesty of the thunderstorm. Then he reads a portion of Scripture, selecting probably, from a fine instinctive sense of contrast, the twenty-third psalm, or some other of the sweeter of the Hebrew hymns, to give relief to the grandeurs that have passed or that are at hand. Then he says, "Let us pray," not as a mere formal preliminary, but because he really wishes to gather up all the devotional feeling of his hearers along with his own, and to present it as a whole burnt-offering to

Heaven. Then his voice, "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes," rises to God, and you feel as if God had blotted out the Church around, and the Universe above, that that voice might obtain immediate entrance to his ear. You at least are conscious of nothing for a time save the voice and the Auditor. "Reverence and lowly prostration are most striking," it has been said, "when paid by a lofty intellect, and you are reminded of the trees of the forest clapping their hands unto God." The prayer over, he announces his text, and enters on his theme. The sermon is upon the days of the Puritans and the Covenanters, and his blood boils as he describes the earnest spirit of their times. He fights over again the battles of Drumclog and Bothwell; he paints the dark muirlands, whither the Woman of the Church retired for a season to be nourished with blood, and you seem to be listening to that wild eloquence which pealed through the wilderness and shook the throne of Charles II. Then he turns to the contrast between that earnest period and what he thinks our light, empty, and profane era, and opens with fearless hand the vials of apocalyptic vengeance against it. He denounces our "political expediences," and Canning smiles across to Peel. He speaks of our "godless systems of ethics and economics," and Bentham and Godwin shrug their shoulders in unison. He attacks the

poetry and the criticism of the age, inserting a fierce diatribe against the patrician Byron in the heart of an apology for the hapless ploughman Burns; knocking Southey down into the same kennel into which he had plunged Byron; and striking next at the very heart of Cobbett; and Hazlitt bends his brow into a frown, and you see a sarcasm (to be inserted in the next "Liberal") crossing the dusky disc of his face. Nay, waxing bolder, and eyeing the peers and the peeresses, the orator denounces the "wickedness in high places" which abounds, and his voice swells into its deepest thunder, and his eye assumes its most portentous glare, as he characterises the falsehood of courtiers, the hypocrisy of statesmen, the hollowness, licentiousness, and levity of fashionable life, singling out an individual notoriety of the species, who happens to be in more immediate sight, and concentrating the "terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye," upon her till she blushes through her rouge, and every feather in her head-dress palpitates in reply

to her rotten and quaking heart. It is Isaiah or Ezekiel over again, uttering their stern yet musical and poetic burdens. The language is worthy of the message it conveys, not polished, indeed, or smooth, rather rough and diffuse withal, but vchement, figurative, and bedropt with terrible or tender extracts from the Bible. The manner is as graceful as may well coexist with deep impetuous force, and as solemn as máy evade the charge of cant. The voice seems meant for an "orator of the human race," and fitted to fill vaster buildings than earth contains, and to plead in mightier causes and controversies than can even be conceived of in our degenerate days. It is the "many-folded shell" of Prometheus, including in its compass soft and soul-like sounds," as well as loud and victorious peals. The audience feel in contact, not with a mere orator, but with a Demoniac force.

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That this sketch is not exaggerated, we have abundant testimony. Canning repeatedly declared that Edward Irving was the most powerful orator, in or out of the pulpit, he ever heard. Hazlitt has written panegyric after panegyric upon him, annexing, indeed, not a few critical cavils and sarcasms, as drawbacks from his estimate. De Quincey called him once to us a "very demon of power," and uniformly in his writings speaks with wonder, not unmingled with terror, of the fierce, untamed, resistless energy which ran in the blood and spoke in the talk and public oratory of Edward Irving.

Yet there can be little doubt that these splendid exhibitions, while exciting general admiration in London, were not productive of commensurate good. They rather dazzled and stupified, than convinced or converted. They sent men away wondering at the power of the orator, not mourning over their own evils, and striving after amendment. They served, to say the most, only as a preface, paving the way for a volume of instruction and edification, which was never published; as an introduction, to secure the attention and gain the ear of the public, for a sermon, and an application thereof of practical power, which was never preached.

Irving, indeed, left himself no choice. He had so fiercely and unsparingly assaulted the modes of thought and styles of preaching which prevailed in the Church, that he was compelled, in consistency and self-defence, to aim at a novel and

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