The Lord of Glory; Counterfeit Miracles; Revelation and Inspiration

as a theory. This, however, did not content "the restless soul" by his side. As Irving himself relates: "And as we

went out and in together, he used often to signify to me his conviction that the Spiritual Gifts ought to be exercised in the Church; that we are at liberty, and indeed bound, to pray for them as being baptized into the assurance of the 'gift of the Holy Ghost,' as well as of 'repentance and remission of sins....' Though I could make no answer to this," he adds, "and it is altogether unanswerable, I continued still to be very little moved to seek myself or to stir up my people to seek these spiritual treasures. Yet I went forward to contend and to instruct whenever the subject came before me in my public ministrations of reading and preaching the Word, that the Holy Ghost ought to be manifested among us all, the same as ever He was in any one of the primitive Churches." ^^ Scott, his assistant,

doubtless did likewise. Here we see, at least, Scott's preparation of Irving himself and of his church for what was to come.

"But," says Mrs. Oliphant,^^ "Mr, Scott's influence did not end there. About the same period at which he was engaged in quickening this germ of expectation in the breast of Irving, circumstances brought him in the way of sowing a still more effectual seed." There was a district in Scotland suffering at this tune under great religious excitement — roused partly by the preaching of John McLeod Campbell, and partly by the influence of the kindly life of Isabella Campbell of Fernicarry, a young saint whose death had Just profoundly moved the community. There, just at this juncture, Scott appeared, a "master of statement and argument," as Irving describes him, and in Mrs. Oliphant's words, "bent all his powers to laying this train of splendid mischief." ^^ "When Isabella Campbell died, a portion of her fame — her pilgrim visitors — her position as one of the most remarkable persons in the countryside, a pious and tender oracle — descended to her sister Mary," ^^ who seems to have been a young woman "possessed of gifts of mind and temperament scarcely inferior to genius," "with all the personal fascination of beauty," and endowed with a "young, fervid and impressionable imagination." ^^ On her the subtlest arguments of one of the acutest men of the day were poured. Irving himself describes the result thus:

"Being called down to Scotland upon some occasion, and residing for a while at his father's house, which is in the heart of that district of Scotland upon which the Hght of Mr. Campbell's ministry had arisen, he (Scott) was led to open his mind to some of the godly people of those parts, and among others to a young woman who was at that time lying ill of a consumption, from which afterwards, when brought to the very door of death, she was raised up instantaneously by the mighty hand of God. Being a woman of very fixed and constant spirit he was not able with all his power of statement and argument, which is unequalled by that of any man I have ever met with, to convince her of the distinction of regeneration and baptism with the Holy Ghost; and when he could not prevail, he left her with a solemn charge to read over the Acts of the Apostles with that distinction in mind, and to beware how she hastily rejected what was, as he believed, the truth of God. By this young woman it was that God, not many months after, did restore the gift of speaking with tongues and prophesying to the Church." ^3

How it came about, Irving describes as follows: "The

handmaiden of the Lord, of whom he made choice on that night" (a Sunday evening in the end of March — i. e., March 28, 1830) "to manifest forth in her His glory, had been long afiOicted with a disease which the medical men pronounced to be a decline, and that it would soon bring her to her grave, whither her sister had been hurried by the same malady a few months before. Yet while all around her were anticipating her dissolution, she was in the strength of faith meditating missionary labours among the heathen;

and this night she was to receive the preparation of the Spirit; the preparation of the body she received not until some days after. It was on the Lord's day; and one of her sisters, along with a female friend who had come to the house for that end, had been spending the whole day in humiliation, and fasting, and prayer before God, with a special respect to the restoration of the gifts. They had come up in the evening to the sick-chamber of their sister, who was laid on a sofa, and, along with one or two others of the household, were engaged in prayer together. When in the midst of their devotion, the Holy Ghost came with mighty power upon the sick woman as she lay in her weakness, and constrained her to speak at great length and with superhuman strength in an unknown tongue, to the astonishment of aU who heard, and to her own great edification and enjojrment in God; 'for he that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself.' She has told me that this first seizure of the Spirit was the strongest she ever had, and that it was in some degree necessary it should have been so, otherwise she would not have dared to give way to it." ^*

Meanwhile the "power" passed across the Clyde to the opposite town of Port Glasgow into another pious household. When James Macdonald returned from his work to his midday dinner one day "he found his invalid sister in the agonies of this new inspiration. The awed family concluded... that she was dying." But she addressed her brothers at great length and solemnly prayed that James might at that time be endowed with the Holy Ghost. "Almost instantly James calmly said, 'I have got it.'" With a changed countenance in a few moments, "with a step and manner of the most indescribable majesty — he walked up to his sister's bedside and addressed her in these words of the 20th Psahn: 'Arise and stand upright.' He repeated the words, took her by the hand, and she arose." ^^ After this wonderful cure James Macdonald wrote to Mary Campbell, "then apparently approaching death, conveying to her the same command that had been so effectual in the case of his sister." She rose up at once and declared herself healed. And here we have the restored gifts prepared for the church.

The only remaining step was to convey the gifts to Irving's church. Of course, he was at once informed of the extraordinary events which had taken place in Scotland. He seems to have caught the contagion of excitement at once. John Bate Cardale, a lawyer of Irving's circle, who afterward became the first Irvingite "Apostle," went to Scotland at the head of a delegation to investigate and report. Meanwhile the church at London was kept in an attitude of strained expectancy. But the "gifts" did not come at once. An isolated case of healing occurred in October, 1830 — a Miss Fancourt — but this instance seems to have stood somewhat apart from direct relation whether to the Scotch manifestations or to the coming events in Irving's church.^^ Irving's baby son took sick and died, and though they sought it anxiously with tears there was no interposition to save him. During the next spring daily prayer-meetings were held in the early mornings to ask directly for the "gifts of the Spirit," news of the unbroken exercise of which was now coming continually from Scotland. "Irving," says Mrs. Oliphant, "had no eyes to see the overpowering force of suggestion with which such prayers" "might have operated upon sensitive and excitable hearts." ^^ At last we hear incidentally in July, 183 1, that two of the flock in London had received the gifts of tongues and prophecy.^^ They had been in exercise, however, for some months before that, first in the form of speaking with tongues at private devotions, then in the presence of others, and at length both in speaking with tongues and in prophesying at small prayer-meetings.-' The formal date of the beginning of the "power" is usually given as April 30, 1831, when Mrs. Cardale spoke solemnly with the tongues and prophesied. David Brown,

however, seems to imply^° that the first to exercise the power in the presence of others was Emily Cardale at a date apparently very near this. He is speaking of the early-morning prayer-meetings in the church, which, he says, began to be held two weeks before the General Assembly of 1831.^^ It was the custom of a party from the prayer-meeting to go home with the Irvings to break-

fast. "At one of these breakfasts," he writes, "a sweet, modest, young lady. Miss Emily Cardale, began to breathe heavily, and increasingly so, until at length she burst out into loud but abrupt short sentences of English which after a few minutes ceased. The voice was certainly beyond her native strength, and the subject matter of it was the expected power of the Spirit, not to be resisted by any one who would hear. Mr. Irving asked us to unite in thanksgiving for this answer to our prayers." "Other such instances," adds Brown, "followed, but as yet all in private, first by the same voice, but afterwards by a Miss Hall, and then by a man who rather repelled me (a teacher by the name of Taplin) who professed to speak in an unknown tongue." It was through this Miss Hall that the

voices were introduced into the public services of the church, on Communion Sunday, October 16, 1831. We have several accounts of the scene by eye-witnesses.^^ What they chiefly dwell upon is the startling effect of the outcry, and the rush of the young woman, either unable to restrain herself, or alarmed at what she had done, into the vestry, whence proceeded a succession of doleful and unintelligible cries, while the audience of fifteen hundred or two thousand people, standing up and straining to hear and see what was toward, fell into utter confusion.

It is not necessary to give an account here of the natural excitement which was raised in London; of the increasing confusion which the exercise of the "gifts" brought into the public service of the church; of the suit instituted by the trustees against Irving for breach of trust deeds, and his exclusion from the church; of the founding of the first Irvingite Congregation in Newman Street in a deserted studio which had been erected for the use of the painter West. The new ''prophets" as a matter of course soon began to exercise the authority which they found in their hands as inspired servants of God. They drove Irving along from step to step, until at last a new spirit appeared on the scene in the person of Robert Baxter (first in August, 1 83 1, but not as a force until early in 1832).^^ Instead of unintelligible ''tongues" and weak repetitions of pious platitudes, Baxter, when the "power" was on him, delivered himself authoritatively in specific commands to Irving, ' arrangements for church order, and the like, and even definite predictions of the future. Here was something new and dangerous. Irving was startled and filled with doubt. But the "power" in Baxter argued him down, and all the "prophets" bore witness to the genuineness of Baxter's inspiration, so that the whole movement was committed to this new development. The dangers inherent in it were not slow in showing themselves. The first shock came when the "power" in Baxter commanded him to go to the Court of Chancery and deliver a message which would be there given him, whereupon he should be cast into prison. He went, and no message came to him, and he was not cast into prison. Other predictions that had been made failed of fulfilment. Contradictions began to emerge between the several deliverances by the same organ, or between the several organs. Spirit was arrayed against spirit. The spirit that had spoken acceptably in one, was pronounced by another, speaking in the Spirit, nothing other than an evil spirit. Some who had been very forward in speaking, and had received the indorsement of others speaking in the Spirit, were convicted of having framed their own messages. Baxter's eyes were opened, and the very doctrinal basis of Irving's teaching having become — as well it might — suspect to him, he found himself at last no longer able to believe that the manifestations in which he had himself taken so prominent a part were of God.3^

The climax of this particular development is very dramatic. Having reached his conclusion, Baxter (who lived at Doncaster) naturally travelled at once up to London to communicate it to Irving. He arrived at the moment of a crisis in Irving's own affairs. It was the very morning when Irving was to appear in the suit brought against him by the trustees of the church for permitting in it practices contrary to the trust deed. Irving was at breakfast with a party of friends. "Calling him and Mr. J. C[ardale] apart," says Baxter,^^ "I told them my conviction that we had all been speaking by a lying spirit and not by the Spirit of the Lord." But we will let David Brown describe the scene from within. • He had himself reached the conclusion that there was nothing supernatural in the "manifestations"— this was not exactly Baxter's conclusion — and had determined to separate himself from Irving. He had broken this to Mrs. Irving but had postponed announcing it to Irving himself until after the trial, which was to take

place that day. "The select few of us," he writes,^^ "came home with him " — from the early-morning prayer-meeting — "to breakfast, in the midst of which Miss Cardale uttered, in the usual unnatural voice, some words of cheer in prospect of the day's proceedings. But scarcely had she ceased when a ring came to the door, and Mr. Irving was requested to speak with the stranger. After five minutes' absence, he returned, saying, 'Let us pray,' and kneeling down, all followed while he spoke in this strain: 'Have mercy. Lord, on Thy dear servant, who has come up to tell us that he has been deceived, that his word has never been from above but from beneath, and that it is all a lie. Have mercy on him, Lord, the enemy hath prevailed against him, and hither hath he come in this time of trouble and rebuke and blasphemy, to break the power of the testimony we have to bear this day to this work of Thine. But let Thy work and power appear unto Thy poor servant....'"

So strong was the delusion to which Irving was now delivered— that Irving who had been hitherto plastic wax in the hands of everybody. He was soon established in his new church in Newman Street. In that church an elaborate order was set up, and an ornate ritual instituted according to the pattern of which Baxter himself had drawn the outlines, and which was ever more fully developed by deliverances from Baxter's foUowers.^^ "Before the opening of this church, the prophet himself had published the wonderful narrative in which he repeated the predictions which came from his own lips, and, appealing to the whole world whether they had been fulfilled, proclaimed them a delusion." ^^ Nothing, however, could now stay the development of the ''Catholic Apostolic Church," not even Irving himself, had he wished to do so. More and more overruled and set aside by the powers he had evoked and could not control, he sank into an ever more subordinate position in the edifice he had raised.^ ^

Meanwhile it was not going much better with the "gifts" in Scotland, where they had originated, than in London, whither they had been transplanted. The report of their outbreak on the Clyde had found a ready response in the heart of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. His whole religious life was intensely individualistic, and he too had become imbued with the same chiliastic hopes which in London were fostered by the prophetic studies of Albury. Predisposed to recognize the phenomena as endowments of the Holy Ghost, he repaired at once to Port Glasgow and became an inmate of the Macdonalds' house, living with them for six weeks and attending the daily prayer-meetings, where he witnessed the manifestations. His immediate conclusions he published to the world in a tract, On the Gifts of the Spirit, issued at the close of 1830, and in a more con-