The Lord of Glory; Counterfeit Miracles; Revelation and Inspiration

siderable volume which appeared the same year under the title The Brazen Serpent or Life Coming through Death. "The world," said he,^'' "does not like the recurrence of miracles. And yet it is true that miracles have recurred. I cannot but tell what I have seen and heard. I have heard persons, both men and women, speak with tongues and prophesy, that is, speak in the Spirit to edification, exhortation, and comfort." A closer acquaintance with the phenomena, however, first shook and then shattered this favorable judgment. The developments in London were a great trial to his faith, as indeed they were also to that of the originators of the "gifts" at Port Glasgow, who did not hesitate to denounce them as delusions. "James Macdonald writes," ^^ Erskine tells one of his correspondents, "that the spirit among them declared the London people to be 'deceitful workers transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ.' Strange things — spirit against spirit." He discovered that some at least of the deliverances of the Macdonalds rested on no profounder inspiration than paragraphs in the current newspapers.^^ Before the end of 1833 he required to write:^^ "My mind has undergone a considerable change.... I have seen reason to disbelieve that it is the Spirit of God which is in M, and I do not feel that I have stronger reason to believe that it is in others." His conviction grew ever stronger that all the manifestations he had himself witnessed at Port Glasgow were delusive,'** and that the whole development had originated and been maintained through a dreadful mistake.*^

Why he should have ever given himself to such a delusion is the real puzzle. There is an article in the Edinburgh Review for June, 1831, reviewing the new charismatic literature, considering which the reviewer impatiently but not unjustly exclaims that "theologians look for truth, as children on excursions seek for pleasure, by leaving the plain path and the light of day to penetrate into caverns and scramble in the dark." ^^ 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 criterion 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,^^ "the very fact of their being prepared to pass judgment between God and Satan in the affairs of Port Glasgow amounts to a direct pretence to inspiration," "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 argvmient, 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."

Certamly the claims made to "gifts" which admitted of external tests, failed to justify themselves in the application 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 receiving 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 exclauns, "it is no light thing to use the holy name irreverently, as I have been made to feel." ^^ "'She

was not at all careful in her statements/ wrote an impartial spectator of the doings at Fernicarry, who knew the attractive prophetess well," R. H. Story tells us/^ 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, accompanied 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 remarkable 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.^° 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 supplied 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.^^ 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." ^^ He does not seem able to find the right way.^^

You wiU doubtless be glad to have some account of the nature of the "prophetic" deliverances, and other manifestations of this movement. You will find such an account 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 "manifestations" of the first service at the Newman Street

Church. ^^ We cannot quote them at large; here are some examples. In the course of his exposition of the first chapter of I Samuel, Irving mentions the church as barren... on which the ecstatic voice interposes: "Oh but she shall be fruitful: oh! oh! oh! she shall replenish the earth and subdue it — and subdue it!" A httle further on, another breaks in with less appositeness to the subject:

"Oh, you do grieve the Spirit — you do grieve the Spirit! Oh! the body of Jesus is to be sorrowful in spirit! You are to cry to your Father — to cry, to cry, in the bitterness of your souls! Oh it is a mourning, a mourning, before the Lord — a sighing, and crying unto the Lord because of the desolations of Zion — because of the desolations of Zion — because of the desolations of Zion! " There were seven of

these voices heard during the course of the service. They were all pious, but repetitious, and, one would think (with Mrs. Ohphant), quite unnecessary, interruptions of the service.

It is more difficult to convey a notion of what the " speaking with tongues" was like. The "tongues" were thought at first to be real languages. Observers of the Scotch instances are very clear that, although unintelligible to their hearers, they were languages with recognizable structure as such.^^ Cardale easily separated in J. Macdonald's utterances two distinguishable tongues.^^ Mary Campbell declared that the tongue which she spoke was ordinarily that of the Pelew Islanders.^'^ The opinion soon became settled, however, that the "tongues" were an ecstatic heavenly and no earthly speech. The piercing loudness and strength of the utterance was its most marked characteristic. One witness speaks of it as "bursting forth" from the lips of a woman, "with an astonishing and terrible crash." ^^ Baxter says that it fell on him at his private devotions so loudly that he stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth to keep from alarming the house.^^ Irving's own description of it

is as follows: "The whole utterance from the beginning to

the ending of it, is with a power, and strength, and fullness and sometimes rapidity of voice, altogether different from that of the person's ordinary utterance in any mood; and I would say, both in its form and in its effects upon a simple mind, quite supernatural. There is a power in the voice to thrill the heart and overawe the spirit after a manner which I have never felt." ^° Carlyle once heard it, and he

gives a characteristic description of it.^^ "It was in a neighboring room..,. There burst forth a shrieky hysterical 'Lah lall lall!' (little or nothing else but /'s and a's) continued for several minutes.... 'Why was there not a bucket of water to fling on that lah-lalling hysterical madwoman?' thought we or said to one another." Doubtless both accounts are somewhat colored by the personal equation.

We may imagine what a public service would be like liable to interruptions by such manifestations. Henry Vizetelly, in his Glances Back Through the Years (1893), gives us a vignette picture of Irving in his new chapel in

Newman Street. "What chiefly attracted me to the chapel in Newman-street was the expectation, generally realised, of the spirit moving some hysterical shrieking sister or frantic Boanerges brother (posted in the raised recess behind Irving's pulpit), to burst forth suddenly with one of those wild rapid utterances which, spite of their unintelligibility, sent a strange thrill through all who heard them for the first time.... He had grown gray and haggardlooking, and this, with his long, straggling hair and restless look, emphasized by the cast in his eye, gave him a singularly wild and picturesque appearance. His voice, too, was piercingly loud, and his gestures were as vehement as those of any street ranter of the day."

I think you will not be sorry, however, to place by the side of this a full-length portrait of one of those earlymorning prayer-meetings held in the Regent Street Church, which were the scene of the first public displays of the

"power." You will bear in mind that the hour is six in the morning, which in the winter was before dawn.

"The church appeared to me," writes our observer,^^ "to be pitch dark; only the lights from the gas lamps shining into the windows enabled us to grope our wayforward. It seemed to be entirely full, but my friend accosted a verger, who led us to an excellent seat, nearly opposite the reading desk. After the people were seated the most solemn stillness prevailed. The sleet beating upon the windows was the only sound that could be heard. The clouded sky and the driving snow increased the obscurity, and it was not for some time that we could perceive our nearest neighbors, and assure ourselves that the place was full from one end to the other. I quite believe in the exquisite simpKcity and entire sincerity of Mr. Irving's whole character. I believe him to have been incapable of deliberately planning the scene which followed. Had he, however, been the most consummate actor that ever lived, had he studied the art of scenic portraiture and display from his youth up, he could not have produced a finer effect than on this occasion. Just as the clocks outside struck six, the vestry door opened and he entered the church with a small but very bright reading lamp in his hand. He walked with solemn step to the reading desk, and placing the lamp upon it, immediately before liim, he stood up facing the audience. Remember, this was the only Hght in the place. It shone upon his face and figure as if to illuminate him alone. He had on a voluminous dark blue cloak, with a large cape, with a gilt clasp at the throat, which he loosened at once, so that the cloak formed a kind of a background to his figure. Tall, erect, and graceful, he stood for a few moments in silence, his pale face in the white light, his long dark locks falling down upon his collar, his eyes solemn and earnest, peering into the darkness of the building.... After a few musical, earnest words of prayer he opened the Bible before him, and