OUR first information of the existence of such a person as "the Reverend Edward Irving,' was derived from certain columns devoted (last summer we think) by a morning paper to the account of a dinner given in his honour in London-himself in the chair. One of the company, the croupier, if we recollect rightly, was reported to have commenced a speech proposing Mr Irving's health, with lauding Mr Irving as a person "equally gigantic in intellect as in corporeal frame." From this we took it for granted, that Mr Irving was a tall man-and from the speech which he made in reply, we could not avoid the conclusion, that he himself was of the croupier's opinion as to the gigantic elevation of his own intellect. In other words, we were impressed by the whole of this newspaper report (which we of course considered as an advertisement,) with the belief, that some Scotch Presbyterian congregation in the city of London had got a new, a tall, and a conceited minister-that, as usual, a good dinner had been given on his inauguration-and that, as usual, the good dinner had been followed with many speeches, which could only appear tolerable to persons influenced by those feelings which we recently had occasion to enlarge a little upon, in treating of the Origin and Progress of the Gormandizing School of Eloquence.

We had quite forgotten all this, until our memory was refreshed by some of those notices wherewith the London newspapers have recently abounded. Mr Irving, it seems, has become a highly popular preacher in London. Canning and Brougham, Sidmouth and Mackintosh, and Michael Angelo Taylor, and Mr Heber, have all been to hear him. The Old Times calls him a quack and an ass-and the New Times says the Old Times is just as absurd in this as in calling (as it lately did) Sir Walter Scott a "Mountebank Minstrel,"-" a dull romancespinner," and we know not what be

The Oracles of God, four Orations.

sides. John Bull, however, takes for once the Old Times' side of the question, and reiterates the cry of "quackery" and "cant," adding, with much urbanity, the designation of " the new Dr Squintum," (this by the way in the very same paper where John very properly abuses Lord Byron for saying that the King weighs twenty stone,)-while, to complete the mys tification, the Morning Chronicle steps forward to abuse John Bull, and to espouse the cause of Dr Stoddart, in direct opposition to that maintained in the spotless columns of " the Leading Journal of Europe."

The only fuct we came to the knowledge of from all these conflicting statements and authorities, was, that the Reverend Edward Irving has the misfortune to have some defect in his organs of vision-which really, in spite of our respect for Mr John Bull, we cannot consider as bearing very closely upon the question of this reverend gentleman's merits as a preacher of the Gospel. Even if we knew that John Bull was as heavy as Lambert, as lame as Vulcan, and as oblique in glance as Thersites himself all in one-we should not enjoy John Bull's wit a bit less than we have been used to do. Such satire as this does harm to nobody but the person who makes use of it. It is never even excusable, except when used in revenge of satire of the same species-and we certainly should be much surprised if we learned that Mr Irving, or any other preacher, had given John Bull any such provocation.

We say, that this of the squint was the only fact we had been able to gather from all this newspaper controversy. The opinions of the several controversialists we, of course, considered as tantamount to nothing; and we thought not much more highly of the information that such and such men of intellectual reputation had been detected amidst the crowd of Mr Irving's chapel upon such or such a Sunday. There is no kind of reputa

VOL. XIV.

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tion which we are inclined to hold in more suspicion (not to say contempt) than that of a much-run-upon, highflying church-orator. Be extravagant -be loud-thunder boldly, and your business is half done. If to a brave, bellowing voice, and a furious gesture, you add some strange uncouthness of look, dialect, or accent-so much the better. But if to these things you add the noble audacity of out-of-the-way and unwonted allusions, political, literary, personal and vituperative, mantling over the spite of these with the thin veil of a sanctimonious sorrowfulness, why, who can doubt the result of such a congregation of allurements?

Whitfield, in the last age, carried everything before him by the mere fearless bawling of enthusiastic mediocrity, aided by the concomitants of a remarkable exterior, and a melodious and well-managed trumpet of a voice. We are entitled to speak in this way of Whitfield, considered merely in an intellectual point of view-because his Sermons, &c. are in print, and are, without exception, the poorest stuff-the most uniform unredeemed trash, that ever disgraced the English press. As for the intentions of the man, that is quite a different matter-we have no doubt that Whitfield was a vain, frothy, loose-tongued declaimer; and that, in spite of all this, he might be a very wellmeaning man; and that, in spite of all his weaknesses, his ministrations might not fail to produce a certain proportion of good.

The great preacher of the present age, again, is (or rather, perhaps, we should say, was) Dr Chalmers.

Nobody now doubts that Dr Chalmers owed nine-tenths (to say the least of it) of the great effect he produced, to the mere animal vehemence and exterior uncouthness of his delivery. The Doctor was for a considerable time over-rated in a most extravagant manner and yet nobody can deny that he did deserve to be rated highly. The publication of his first Sermons reduced him at once to a comparatively moderate station-and he has ever since been declining; yet much remains. He is not-every one who has read his books, admits the great master of imagination, of reason, and of language, which he at first passed for. He has not much imagination at all-witness the laborious tinkering

of what are meant to be his finest descriptive essays. In reasoning, he is coarse, rather than dexterous, extremely narrow, and extremely vague at the same time. In language he is grossly inaccurate-bombastic and bald by turns, a barbarous innovator, a most vulgar artizan. Yet much remains-a certain manly vigour redeems more than half these faults-a direct, honest earnestness-a scorn of petty affectations→ a pervading spirit of bold truth of sentiment-these are qualities which no one can deny to him. And then he made his own style-bad as it is in many respects, this style of preaching was his creation-a novelty, and his own. He stepped into a new walkhe wielded a new weapon-his errors were the errors of a man possessed, if not of genius, (in its true sense,) certainly of very strong and remarkable talents. And therefore he must not be altogether forgotten, at least in his own time.

What attraction the delivery of Mr Irving may possess, we have no means of guessing. From the fact of his being so much followed in London, we cannot doubt that it has at least the character of extraordinary earnestness and vehemence, which of itself is enough to make any preacher, to a certain extent, and for a time, excessively popular. But one thing we are altogether unable to account for, and this is, that, although Mr Irving seems never to have been out of Scotland until last year, we should never, by any accident, have heard his name mentioned in Scotland until after he had succeeded in making a noise in London. He was, it seems, assistant to Dr Chalmers at Glasgow for a considerable time, and yet, though till lately the name of Chalmers was never out of the mouths of the Glasgow people, we certainly never heard one of them even mention the name of his associate and colleague. Perhaps he is a Glasgow man, and failed there on the old principle of the prophet's being without renown in his own land. Perhaps his accent was too close an image of their own to be agreeable. Perhaps the far-sought charm of Dr Chalmers's High Fifeish barbarity was too powerful a rival for the native horrors of the Gallowgate. Of all this we know nothing. But Mr Irving has published a volume, and so put it in the power of us, and of every

one who, like us, never had any opportunity of seeing or hearing the man himself, to form some opinion as to his merits, in so far as these do not consist in visible and audible peculiarities.

We shall confess honestly at the outset, that the opinion we have formed is by no means just what either the chairman or the croupier of the dinner devoured in honour of Mr Irving's installation in Hatton Garden Chapel would have suggested.-But we shall come to it all in due season.

In the first place, however, we think Mr Irving one of the most absurdly self-conceited persons of our time. Look, on the very threshold, at the title-page of his volume itself.

66 FOR

THE ORACLES OF GOD, FOUR ORATIONS:

FOR

ris.

Sermon, but the Oration, or the Apology, or the Argument that is about to commence; and a more serious doubt may also be entertained, whether, upon the whole, the edification of Christian congregations is at all likely to be increased by the dropping from the pulpit addresses of their ministers, of that plain, and even formal style and announcement of arrangement, which the experience of so many ages has, all over Christian Europe, proved to be, at the least, compatible with many advantages, both to the reason and the memory of the great majority of hearers.

But Mr Irving will make little of this last doubt. He begins his book with a distinct announcement that he means it not for ordinary readers, but for the learned, imaginative, and accomplished classes of mankind. These classes, he modestly observes, - are quite neglected by the preachers of the present time. Nobody, it seems, either preaches sermons, or prints books, likely to serve the cause of religion among the lovers of poetry, science, sentiment, or politics. All these classes of people have as yet been left entirely out of view-but at last there is some hope for them, since behold and listen! the Rev. Edward Irving, A. M. has girt "the loins of his mind," and has, to use his own language, a thorough conviction”— "That until advocates of religion do arise to make unhallowed poets, and undevout dealers in science, and intemperate advocates of policy, and all other pleaders before the public mind, give place, and know the inferiority of their various provinces to this of ours-till this most fatal error, that our subject is second-rate, be dissipated by a

cr

FIRST-RATE ADVOCATION OF IT-till we can shift these others into the background of the great theatre of thought, by clear superiority in the treatment of OUR subject, we shall never see THE MEN OF UNDERSTANDING in this nation brought back to the fountains of living water, from which their fathers drew the life of all their greatness.'

There is a vast deal more of this sort of talk; and more than once, Mr Irving clearly and distinctly avows, that his desire is to see the days of predominant puritanism re-established. For example:

"But, by the spirits of our great fathers in church and state!" are we never again to