But Irving faltered not, through good or evil report. Though parted from all old friends, and become a derision to the world, he held on his way with martyr courage. His work was nearly done. He was restored again to his place as angel and chief pastor in the church, subject, however, to the teachings and revelations of the prophets. For a few months he toiled on, like Samson in the prison-house of the Philistines, but the silver cord was loosening, and the golden bowl was soon to be broken. In the autumn of '34, he was sent by the prophets on a mission to Scotland. He was then a mere shadow of his former self, apparently on the border of the grave, and the physicians told him his only hope of life lay in a journey for rest to a milder clime. But he accepted the voice of the prophets as the voice of God. He had also adopted the notion that all sickness is the immediate fruit of sin, and curable by the new gifts of the Spirit; and as he had once been miraculously cured (as he supposed) of cholera, had no doubt of a similar cure in the present instance. He reached Glasgow, to preach occasionally to a few hearers in a Lyceum Hall, to walk through the streets, leaning on the arm of friends, exciting the pity of passing spectators, to sink exhausted on the bed he was never more to leave, though expressing the fullest confidence that God meant to raise him; to murmur, in delirium, the Hebrew measures of the xxiii Psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd;" to break out into glowing appeals, memorials of his former power; and at last to yield up the suffering spirit, with the utterance: "If I die, I die unto the Lord. Amen” At midnight of the Sabbath, Dec. 7th, 1834, Edward Irving died, aged 42.

His life is to us a mystery hard to understand. A man, frank, ingenuous, sincere, devoted in friendship, with singular disinterestedness, he had the misfortune of parting before death with nearly all the friends with whom his life-work had united him. An orator, pronounced by De Quincey "by many degrees the most eloquent of our age," and by Canning "the most eloquent he had ever heard in or out of Parlia ment," he toiled arduously for many years without recognition in Scotland, and saw himself. deserted at the last by all the

rich and titled, to whom he had once been an idol for worship. A Christian preacher, whose piety was of a seraphic type, whose labors were gigantic and unresting, and who seemed to have no other desire than to know his Lord's will and do it, he was left to fall into the wildest delusions, and to make utter shipwreck of his great powers, if not of his character. His submission to God seemed most child-like in his deepest humiliation. When miracles were wrought for the healing of Mary Campbell and Miss Fancourt, and many others, his own child was sick unto death, and though he wondered that Divine power did not interpose for her as for others, he never murmured that she was passed by. When the gifts of tongues and prophecy and healing came upon the humblest meinbers of the church, and he longed with a burning zeal to become a possessor of the same, but was denied, he never doubted their genuineness, nor envied the superior privileges of his brethren, nor complained of his own hard fortune. And when forsaken by old friends, and abandoned by his church, and stigmatized by the General Assembly, and condemned by the London Presbytery, and deposed by the Annan Presbytery, and silenced by upstart prophets, he never thought for a moment of repining or wavering in duty to his Master, but went on with a cheerful courage to the bitter end. If ever an heroic martyr spirit ruled in a human frame, it was supreme in Edward Irving.

With such wonderful qualities as a man, a Christian and a preacher, how came his life to be one of the saddest tragedies of our century?

It was owing partly, no doubt, to the infirmities which genius is heir to, and one of his infirmities was his great impressibleness by inferior minds. It is almost incredible that he should have been led astray by men of such moderate capacity. Mr. Hately Frere conversed with him, and he was inspired with an enthusiasm for prophetic study, and with a faith in the immediate second advent of Christ. A Dr. Wilkins unfolded a theory that nature has no tendency to disease, but rather the reverse; and that, were it not for our ignorance and perversity, we would come to our full age, and drop into Vol. xxviii,-17.

the grave as a shock of corn in its season; and it expanded in his mind into the belief that all sickness is the immediate fruit of sin. Mr. Campbell told him of his new views of the Atonement as effective for the race, and not through individual faith, and it became a part of his creed. Alexander Scott argued with him that the wonderful gifts of the Spirit ought to be in possession by the church in all times, and he began to look for a new Pentecost. He read Bishop Overall's Convocation Book, and was forthwith converted to a belief in the divine right of kings, and in the sacrilege of rebellion on the part of subjects He went to a confirmation by the Bishop of Chester, and was so impressed by the service that he writes to his wife: "The more I look at the church of England, the more do I recognize the marks of a true apostolical church, and desire to see somewhat of the same ecclesiastical dignity transferred to the office-bearers of our church, which hath the same orders of bishops, priests, or presbyters, or elders, and deacons, whereof the last is clean gone, the second little better, and the first hath more of worldly propriety, or literary or intellectual character, than of episcopal authority and grave wisdom." This susceptibility to impression was a weakness in his nature, turning him into an intellectual chameleon to reflect the color of his associates, and making his fall inevita ble in the companionship of such men as then attached themselves to him.

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A second cause of failure, we think, was a neglect of broad and generous study, and a communion with kindred minds. His fiery nature needed the composing power of good books and intellectual society. He must have been familiar with the writings of the Fathers, and with the masters in English literature before coming to London, and his mind was then in its healthiest state. He had also been intimate, to that time, with men of promise in literary clubs, who held his eccentricities in check. But we find no trace in his letters or journals, after the splendid beginning of his career in London, either of generous study, or intellectual fellowship. His reading was almost wholly of a morbid kind, of works on prophecy, and the second advent. His associates, to a large degree, were

the poor people of his parish, to whom he was a faithful pastor, and men of one idea, like Frere, and Scott, and Campbell, and Henry Drummond. His active mind, no longer supplied with the nutritious aliment it needed, like the spider, spun its fancy webs from its own body, and ultimate exhaustion was inevitable.

His labors, too, were gigantic and incessant, knowing no leisure or rest. His vacations from the London parish were generally given to more exhausting work in writing, or translating, or daily preaching abroad. For twelve years his whole nature was strained to the highest tension, and it is not surprising that even his splendid physical health succumbed, and his mental soundness was impaired.

His failure stands as a beacon in the history of the church, warning all men that genius cannot supply the want of common sense, nor piety atone for the neglect of generous culture, nor burning zeal escape the penalty of violating constitutional laws. His associate at Glasgow, Dr. Chalmers, had a glorious. career of success and honor, and left a whole nation mourners, who felt that he had given a new social and religious life to Scotland. Edward Irving, "who went to London with the noble purpose of making a demonstration for a higher style of Christianity," after flashing across the sky of the metropolis with a meteor glare, went down to his grave with the pity of his generation for a wasted life. His voluminous writings are little known, and the most familiar ones are called hard reading even by his admirers; and his influence is perpetuated only in a small community of Christians, having little evangelical life, and destined either to extinction or absorption in Romanism.

ARTICLE IV.-WOLFF ON BAPTISM.

Baptism, the Coveant, and the Family. By Rev. PHILIPPE WOLFF, late of Geneva, Switzerland. Translated freely from the French by the Author, with some additions. Boston: Crosby & Nichols.

1862.

We have "another Richmond in the field" of the wellfought controversy on the mode and subjects of Baptism. The formidable Goliah who now challenges our attention is from beyond the seas. Rev. Philippe Wolff descends from the mountains of Switzerland, to make an irruption on the Baptist fold: and if utter rout and havoc are not made of Baptist principles, it will be from no failure in the violence. and malignity of the assault. The work is not, it seems, original in English. It was written primarily in French, in order to check the growing "favor which Baptist principles have of late met with among the Evangelical Christians" in France and Switzerland; and the author was so well pleased with his performance, and probably found its sweet temper and profound erudition so effectual in bringing to their senses those foreign Evangelical errorists, that he is disposed to try its virtue against the still more deep-seated and formidable heresy on this side of the water. We have given to the reading of it, in its Anglicized dress, as much time as our self-respect would allow, and we are bound to say that we do not conceive it, from its intrinsic merits, or even demerits, entitled to a moment's notice at our hands. A book displaying more pretentious ignorance and ingrained vulgarity we