Irving, EDWARD

Irving, EDWARD, was born in the town of Annan, Dumfriesshire, August 4, 1792, and at thirteen entered the university of Edinburgh. In 1810 he became a schoolmaster at Haddington, in 1812 at Kirkcaldy, where three years later he was licensed to preach; and in 1819 he was appointed assistant to Dr Chalmers, then a minister in Glasgow. His sermons did not prove very popular; Chalmers himself was not satisfied. In 1822 Irving accepted a call to the Caledonian Church, Hatton Garden, London. His success as a preacher in the metropolis was such as had never previously been witnessed. After some years, however, the world of fashion got tired of Irving; but it was not till his more striking singularities of opinion were developed that fashion finally deserted him. At the close of 1825 he began to announce his convictions in regard to the second personal advent of the Lord Jesus, in which he had become a firm believer, and which he declared to be near at hand. This was followed up by the translation of a Spanish work, The Coming of the Messiah in Majesty and Glory, by Juan Josafat Ben Ezra, which professed to be written by a Christian Jew, but was in reality the composition of a Spanish Jesuit. Irving's introductory preface is regarded as one of his most remarkable literary performances. In 1828 appeared his Homilies on the Sacraments. He now began to elaborate his views of the incarnation of Christ, asserting with great emphasis the doctrine of his oneness with us in all the attributes of humanity. The language which he held on this subject drew upon him the accusation of heresy; he was charged with maintaining the sinfulness of Christ's nature. But he paid little heed to the alarm thus created. He was now deep in the study of the prophecies, and when the news came to London in the early part of 1830 of certain extraordinary manifestations of prophetic power in the west of Scotland, Irving was prepared to believe them. Harassed, worn, baffled in his most sacred desires for the regeneration of the great Babylon in which he dwelt, branded by the religious public and satirised by the press, the great preacher, who strove above all things to be faithful to what seemed to him the truth of God, grasped at the new wonder with a passionate earnestness. Matters soon came to a crisis. Irving was arraigned before the presbytery of London in 1830 and convicted of heresy, ejected from his new church in Regent's Square in 1832, and finally deposed in 1833 by the presbytery of Annan, which had licensed him. His defence of himself on this last occasion was one of his most splendid and sublime efforts of oratory. The majority of his congregation adhered to him, and gradually a new form of Christianity was developed, commonly known as Irvingism, though Irving had really very little to do with its development (see CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH). Shortly after his health failed, and, in obedience, as he believed, to the Spirit of God, he went down to Scotland, where he sank a victim to consumption. He died at Glasgow, December 8, 1834, in the forty-second year of his age. See Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays and his Reminiscences, and Mrs Oliphant's Life of Edward Irving (1862).