IRVING
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IRVING
sublime fancies" this opportunity afforded him scope. "For three mortal hours the vast assembly was held entranced by his gorgeous oratory while he depicted, not the work of that or any other body, but a grand ideal of a mission scheme after the model of apostolic times. During all this time the managers sat in pain- ful solicitude, first for their usual collections, and ulti- mately for the damage that such a discourse must entail upon the cause in which they were engaged. But no- body could suspect the preacher of a design to harm the cause he was called to advocate. To his mind the mis- sionary work was not the same thing with that contem- plated by the society, and, as he spoke from his own inflamed" fancy and full heart, his utterances were for- eign to the subject as they viewed it. But the discourse was more than a blunder; it was a burning protest, though undesigned, against the spirit of cowardly pru- dence in which the work of missions was, and, alas! that it must be said, still is prosecuted. It unluckily struck precisely upon those points which annual reports and platform orators are usually carefid to leave un- touched, and by holding up the bright ideal it con- demned the actual" (Dr. Curry).
However candid may have been his manner and true the zeal for the Christian cause which unquestionably impelled Irving at this time, the effect was to estrange from him many of his Christian friends. But the birth of a son for a time turned his attention from the con- troversy which his acts had provoked and to him, so f )iid of home life, atoned in a measure for the loss of friends. The child, however, soon died, and this addi- tional loss incited him to the study of prophecy. His attention had already been called in this direction by Hatley Frere, " an earnest but one-sided student of the prophecies," who was propounding about this time a new theory of interpretation, the especial object of which was to establish the idea of a personal reign of Christ on eartli. The study and translation of a Spanish work on this subject, generally attributed to Ben-Ezra, but really tlie production of the Jesuit Lacunza (q. v.) (pub- lished by Irving under the title of The Cominy of Mes- siah ill Glory and Majesty), aided in " turning the bal- ance of Irving's mind the wrong way just at the crisis of his intellectual fate. These prophetical studies met an original bias in his mind, and made him a fatal prey to religious delusion." An opportunity soon occurred to lay bef )re the public his favorite theory of the mil- lennium by an invitation from the Continental Society to preach the annual sermon (1825). Like the mission- ary sermon of the previous year, it gave rise to consid- erable commotion, more especialh'' among the friends of "Catholic Emancipation." England at this time was decidedly in favor of bestowing upon Roman Cath- olics unlimited political power, which Irving vehement- ly opposed. A good part of his audience left their seats before the speaker had finished his discourse, which, like the missionary sermon, occupied some " three or more hours in the delivery." To make a bad matter still worse, Irving determined to publish his discourse, enlarged and rearranged, in book form, and during the next year sent it forth under the title Babylim mid In- fidelity Foredoomed, dedicating it " to my beloved friend and brother in Christ, Hatley Frere, Esq." "Irving now threw himself unreservedly," says Dr. Curry, " into the current that swept him away from his moorings. By the strange fascination which often attends the study of prophecy and the expectation of a terrestrial millennium, he now came to expect the speedy coming of Ciirist to set up his kingdom on earth, and this wrought in him the usual results of excitement and spe- cialty of religious thought and conversation. He had reached that stage of mental excitement in which al- most every event becomes a proof of the cherished ex- pectation, and the mind's own action steadily intensities the dominant fascination. In this, too, he craved the sympathy of other minds inspired with the same senti- ments, and these he readily obtained ; a kind of mystic
circle, among whom Avere Hatley Frere, now relieved, of his isolation, the celebrated Rabbin, Dr. Wolff", Ir- ving himself, and Henry Drummond, with others less distinguished, after numerous informal conversations, at length came together in a conference at Albury, the hospitable residence of ]Mr. Drummond, brought to- gether, as Irving declared, by 'a desire to compare their views with respect to the prospects of the Church at this present crisis'" (comp. art. ix,"On Drummond," in the London Huart. licrii'w, Oct. 18G0). " Irving sat down with his niollcy associates, a giant among pig- mies, the most docile of tlie company, and quite ready to yield his own views to the superficial fancies of the least distinguished of the body, and to surrender his clearest intellectual convictions to what was styled the answer to prayer. From such sessions the only proba- ble results followed : the fanaticism in which they be- gan was heightened and confirmed, especially in the single mind capable of being damaged by it."