without parallel. All London soon flocked to hear him. Her orators, and scholars, and nobles hung upon his lips, as he discoursed of righteousness, and temperance, and judgment to come, with the boldness and power of one of the old prophets. There was a charm in his eloquence which few could resist. The melody of his wonderful voice, his commanding attitude, his piercing eye, the splendor of his imagination, the fearlessness with which he rebuked sin, even in the highest places in society, and the freedom with which he preached the Gospel, unrestrained by the dry trammels of a system, gave to his ministrations a hold upon the spirits of men that was probably never surpassed. A writer in the "London Quarterly Journal of Prophecy," who seems to have often heard him, thus describes his oratory: "His attitudes in the pulpit were as natural as they were striking. They were graceful and eloquent. There were no grimaces nor attitudinizings,' such as magazine critics loved to describe. Once we remember him discoursing on resurrection, and, if we mistake not, speaking particularly of the resurrection of the Lord. The only words which we at this moment recall, were these four, which began a sentence of no common power, 'Up from the dead.' The utterance of these words was accompanied with a stooping and raising of the body, and an indescribable movement of the hands, which we at this hour seem still to see, and which appeared to us to be the perfection of pulpit action, the words and the motion adding wonderfully each to the other's power and meaning. He was in the habit of occasionally elevating himself in the pulpit on one foot, or rather on one tiptoe, and extending his arm above his head, which, adding to his natural height, gave him the aspect of supernatural majesty, and sent down his burning words like so many thunderbolts, upon the heads of his breathless hearers. Often was the vast multitude so wrought into sympathy with the preacher, and carried onward by his appeals, as to be on the point of rising in one mass to respond to the glowing utterance. He seemed at such times, as one who knew him well, and heard him often, testifies, like a general speaking to his army, and urging them to bat

tle, and in such moods produced by such appeals, there was nothing into which they would not have followed such a leader, with all whose feelings, whether of sympathy or antipathy, each man and woman amongst them was, for the moment at least, so thoroughly identified."

There are many almost amusing proofs of the sensation which his preaching created amongst classes not accustomed to be much moved by the pulpit. Hazlitt, in his Table Talk, after speaking of his having "gained an almost unprecedented, and not an altogether unmerited popularity," and of "the glittering of coronet coaches rolling down Holborn Hill to Hatton Garden, titled beauty, the parliamentary complexion of his audience, the compliments of poets, and the stare of peers," goes on, in a half-vexed, half-admiring spirit, to unfold the causes. "But in addition to this, he went out of his way to attack Jeremy Bentham, and the town was up in arms. The thing was new. He thus wiped the stain of musty ignorance and formal bigotry out of his style. Mr. Irving must have something superior in him, to look over the shining, close packed heads of his congregation to have a hit at the great Jurisconsult in his study. He next, ere the report of the former blow had subsided, made a lunge at Mr. Brougham, and glanced an eye at Mr. Canning, mystified Mr. Coleridge, and stultified Lord Liverpool in his place in the gallery. It was rare sport to see him, 'like an eagle in a dovecote, flutter the Volscians in Corioli.' Our spiritual polemic is not contented to defend the cidadel of orthodoxy against all impugners, and shut himself up in texts of scripture, and huge volumes of the commentators as an impregnable fortress; he merely makes use of the stronghold of religion as a resting place from which he sallies forth, armed with modern topics, and with penal fire, like Achilles of old rushing from the Grecian tents, against the adversaries of God and man. Peter of Aretine is said to have laid the princes of Europe under contribution by penning satires against them; so Mr. Irving keeps the public in awe by insulting all their favorite idols.”

And what was the character of the preaching which shot its arrows with such telling effect, into regions armed against

most religious assaults with impenetrable mail? If we may judge from his Orations, and Argument for Judgment to come, which were given to the world early in the second year of his ministry, it was rather intellectual than doctrinal or spiritual. There was great boldness and freedom and splendor in it, but no attempt at a systematic unfolding of Christian dogma, nor any deep entrance into the things of the Spirit. His first work was done in the outer court as it were. It was the preaching of Christian morality in its external aspects, rather than as the fruit of a deep spiritual life. As he entered on his career, it was the face of society which first arrested his attention, and its contrariety with Christianity even according to the commonly received conceptions of it; and he sought to bring the full power of the gospel into play in laying bare its evils, detecting its hypocrisies, and holding up to scorn and indignation its selfishness, ostentation, and pride. And he did this with a fearlessness, a terrible power of invective, a strength of reasoning, and an exuberance of imagination, which compelled men to listen to him. He spared no rank nor class, but his witness was borne specially to the highest, who were drawn in unprecedented numbers by the spell of his eloquence. Of Byron and Southey, then in the heighth of their reputation, he said, when preaching on "Judgment to Come," "Instead of which mighty fruit of genius, this age (Oh, shocking!) hath produced out of this theme two most nauseous and unformed abortions, vile, unprincipled and unmeaning; the one a brazenfaced piece of political cant, the other an abandoned parody of solemn judgment. Of which visionaries, I know not whether the self-confident tone of the one, or the ill-placed merriment of the other, displeaseth me the more. It is ignoble and impious to rob the sublimest of subjects of all its grandeur and effect, in order to serve wretched interests and vulgar passions. I have no sympathy with such wretched stuff, and I despise the age which hath. The men are limited in their facul ties, for they both of them want the greatest of all faculties, to know the living God, and to stand in awe of His mighty power. With the one, blasphemy is virtue when it makes for loyalty; with the other, blasphemy is the food and spice of jest

making. Barren souls! and is the land of Shakespeare, and Spenser and Milton, come to this that it can procreate nothing but this profane spawn, and is content to exalt such blots and blemishes of manhood into ornaments of the age. Puny age! when religion, and virtue, and manly freedom have ceased from the character of those it accounted noble. But I thank God who hath given us a refuge in the great spirits of a former age, who will yet wrest the sceptre from the hands of these mongrel Englishmen; from whose impieties we can betake ourselves to the Advent to Judgment of Taylor, the Four Last Things of Bates, the Blessedness of the Righteous of Knox, and the Saints' Rest of Baxter, books which breathe of the reverent spirit of the olden time."

In his "Orations for the Oracles of God," there is a spirit of great reverence for the Holy Scriptures, in the plenary inspiration of which he was ever a firm believer.

"Oh, if books had but tongues to speak their wrongs, then might this book well exclaim, Hear O heavens, and give ear, O earth! I came from the love and embrace of God; and mute nature, to whom I brought no boon, did me rightful homage. To men I came, and my words were to the children of men. I disclosed to you mysteries of hereafter, and the secrets of the throne of God. I set open to you the gates of salvation, and the way of life hitherto unknown. Nothing in heaven did I withhold from your hope and ambition, and in your earthly life I poured the full horn of Divine providence and consolation. But ye requited me with no welcome. Ye held no festivities on my arrival. Ye sequester me from happiness and heroism, closeting me with sickness and infirmity."

When enumerating the hindrances to the proper study of the Scriptures, he whose life was to be a continual battle, thus speaks of controversy:

"In the train of these comes controversy, with his rough voice and unmeek aspect, to disqualify the soul for a full and free audience of its Maker's word. The points of the faith we have been called on to defend, or which are reputable with our party, assume in our esteem an importance disproportioned to their importance in the Word, which we come to relish chiefly

when it goes to sustain them. And the Bible is hunted for arguments and texts of controversy, which are treasured for future service; the solemn stillness which the soul should hold before his maker, so favorable to meditation and rapt communion with the throne of God, is destroyed at every turn by suggestions of what is orthodox and evangelical where all is orthodox and evangelical; the spirit of the readers becomes lean, being fed with abstract truth and formal propositions; their temper uncongenial, being ever disturbed with controversial suggestions, their prayers undevout recitals of their opinions, their discourses technical announcements of their faith."

In his "Argument for Judgment to Come," Mr. Irving addressed himself to the great questions of human responsibility and Divine retributions, with much force of reasoning, and with a vividness of illustration and burning zeal in carrying the truth home to the understandings and hearts of men, which have been seldom equaled. We give one extract, not for its literary merits, but for its bearings on a subject in regard to which there is a painful skepticism gaining ground in our days:

In all the passages where Christ speaks of the two states of retribution, it is always with the strongest possible assurance of their eternity. His words are 'everlasting punishment,' 'everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels,' 'into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' This last expression, the most terrible of all, He repeats three times in the compass of one short discourse. The opposite condition of the righteous is described in terms equally expressive of eternal endurance. I do not remember, and have not been able to discover, any passage of Scripture where it is written that the conditions of good and ill, which follow judgment, will have an end. On the contrary, wherever in the writings of the Apostles they are alluded to, they are spoken of as irreversable and irremediable. Nevertheless, there are passages having an indirect reference to this subject which speak-which have been thought to speak-a different language. In seizing hold of them, some Christian, with Origen at their head, have given to these words, eternal and everlasting, a limited sense. The passages I refer to are in Paul's writings, where he speaks of the universality of the free gift through Jesus Christ unto justification of life.

"The true interpretation of this and other passages where Christ is said to have died for all, is this, that he hath offered the gift of eternal life as a free donation to the world, without any preference or hinderance of any one. But there