It is not my purpose to enter on a formal examination and criticism of Irving's views; they have already been judged by the course of history. But having thus pre- sented them to you in his own highly ornate language, we may turn our attention to some account of the rise of the movement called (but not by its adherents) "Irvingism," as to a theme far more interesting and certainly as instruc- tive for the general object which we have in view. We have spoken of Edward Irving as its founder, and so he was, without whose susceptibility, enthusiasm, force, and eloquence it could never have come into existence. But in another sense he may be thought of rather as its chief vic- tim. It presents a curious subject for speculation, to con- sider how little often the chief movers in events like this are the real originators of them or the true forces which produce them. Just as J. H. Newman was in every high sense the leader of the Oxford movement while yet he him- self was rather pushed on by the activity of others, so that it is literally true that it was Hurrell Froude who was at the bottom of his Anglo-Catholicism and W. G. Ward who nagged him, against his will, into Romanism; so Edward Irving was in every high sense the founder and leader of "Irvingism," which justly bears his name, while yet it is equally true that he was driven into it step by step by the influence and force of other minds. With all his sensitive- ness of heart, enthusiastic earnestness of purpose, soaring views of religious truth, and grandeur of style in its presen- tation; in a word, with all those qualities which in their combination gave him a certain measure of greatness; his simplicity, perhaps we must also say, within due limits, his vanity, and certainly we must say his intellectual
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weakness and deficiency in judgment and common sense, made him the easy prey of other and more energetic orders of mind. Henry Drummond was his Hurrell Froude; Alexander J. Scott was his W. G. Ward.
Irving had none too brilliant a career as the young as- sistant of Chalmers in Glasgow, and the summons to Lon- don in July, 1822, to take charge of the dying Caledonian Chapel there, came no less as a surprise than as an oppor- tunity.11 From the first, however, he achieved in London a popularity which began by being astonishing, and ended by being immense. He became the talk of the town. Statesmen and men of letters hung on his words. Society took him under its patronage. The little church in Hatton Garden was soon outgrown. This sudden and unexam- pled popular applause perhaps did not completely turn his head, but it distinctly injured him. It left him an en- thusiastic, simple-minded man ; but it gave him overween- ing confidence in himself; and it infected him with the illusion that some high and world-wide mission had been committed to him.
At the very beginning of his London career, he adopted the crass premillennial views which later colored his whole thought. This was the work in him of James Hatley Frere,12 a man of incisive mind and strong individuality, who seems to have deliberately selected Irving to be the popular mouthpiece of his Apocalyptic speculations. These he succeeded in impressing on him with amazing complete- ness of detail. Then came "the little prophetic confer- ences" at Albury, Henry Drummond's beautiful Surrey residence, where "the students of prophecy," as they called themselves, began in 1826 to meet for annual conferences on the meaning of the prophetic Scriptures.13 These con- ferees were men of high social position and easy financial circumstances — Gerard Noel, Hugh McNeile, Lewis Way, Joseph Wolf, with Henry Drummond, the richest and most eccentric of them all, at their head — "a singular mixture
136 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES
of all things," Carlyle describes him; "of the saint, the wit, the philosopher, swimming, if I mistake not, in an element of dandyism." 14 Irving's imaginative disposition took fire, and he soon became the chief figure of the coterie, and began to proclaim everywhere that the Lord was shortly to come, and that the chief duty of believers was to press the signs of the times on the attention of men.