and scramble in the dark." 46 In this article occurs a pungent paragraph which ought itself to have awakened Erskine to the true nature of his procedure. The subject in hand is the criterion employed to discriminate between true and false manifestations of the Spirit. True to his spiritual individualism, his "enthusiasm," to give it an old name, Erskine had contended that the only possible cri- terion in such cases is our own spiritual discernment. " The only security," he wrote, "lies in having ourselves the seal of God — that gift of the Holy Ghost by which we may detect the lying wonders of Satan." "According to his account, therefore," the reviewer comes down with his sledge-hammer blow,47 "the very fact of their being pre- pared to pass judgment between God and Satan in the affairs of Port Glasgow amounts to a direct pretence to in- spiration." "The gift pretended," he continues, "is that ' discerning of spirits ' so celebrated by the Apostles, as the divine endowment by means of which Simon the magician was detected by Peter and Elymas the sorcerer confounded by Paul. It is not the first time, doubtless, that men have indemnified themselves for the absence of visible gifts by setting up a title to invisible ones. Their argument, if it entitles them to either, entitles them to both. Their claim is unfortunately confined to the case which admits no other proof than their mere personal assertion that they are inspired."
Certainly the claims made to "gifts" which admitted of external tests, failed to justify themselves in the appli- cation of these tests. Even poor Mary Campbell was, in the end, led to confess that she had not behaved quite honestly in the matter of her "gifts." "I had, before re- ceiving your letter," she writes to Robert Story, "come to the resolution to write to you and to confess my sin and error for calling my own impressions the voice of God. Oh," she exclaims, "it is no light thing to use the holy name irreverently, as I have been made to feel." 48 "'She
SCOTTISH COLLAPSE 147
was not at all careful in her statements/ wrote an impartial spectator of the doings at Fernicarry, who knew the at- tractive prophetess well," R. H. Story tells us,49 and then goes on to remark on what he calls her Celtic temperament, "impressive rather on the spiritual than on the moral side." It is rather a sordid story, all in all, and we leave it with only two remarks, both of which appear to us very relevant. The one concerns the pathetic circumstance that Robert Story sent Mary Campbell's confession to Irving, accom- panied with a note exposing her "want of simplicity" — and remarking on how "disappointing a career hers had turned out, especially as she was considered the most re- markable and conclusive evidence of the Holy Ghost being again with power in the midst of the church" — just in time to be delivered after Irving's death.50 The other concerns the completeness with which the criterion desiderated by the Edinburgh reviewer of the reality of the gift of spiritual discernment alleged to be laid claim to by Erskine, is sup- plied by the issue in these Scotch instances of claims to spiritual gifts, so confidently accepted by Erskine. This issue for a time profoundly and salutarily shook Erskine's confidence in his judgment in such cases. "The shake which I have received in the matter is, I find, very deep," he writes.51 But he can only add: "I hope I shall not be led to shut my ear against the true voice because I have been deceived by a false one." 52 He does not seem able to find the right way.53
You will doubtless be glad to have some account of the nature of the "prophetic" deliverances, and other mani- festations of this movement. You will find such an ac- count with specimens of the Scotch "tongues" in the eighth appendix to Hanna's edition of Erskine's Letters, written during this period. Mrs. Oliphant, in the course of her biography of Irving, records quite a number of the utterances. In particular she gives the interjected "mani- festations" of the first service at the Newman Street
148 COUNTERFEIT MIRACLES