IRVINGITE GIFTS 1. Edinburgh Review, vol. LIII, p. 302.
2. F. J. Snell, Wesley and Methodism, 1900, p. 157.
3. “The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained,” etc., in Works, New York, 1856, vol. V, p. 328.
4. “I acknowledge,” he says, “that I have seen with my eyes, and heard with my ears, several things which, to the best of my judgment, cannot be accounted for by an ordinary course of natural causes; and which I therefore believe ought to be ascribed to the extraordinary interposition of God.” If any man choose to style them miracles, I reclaim not. I have diligently inquired into the
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facts, I have weighed the preceding and following circumstances. I have strove to account for them in a natural way… I cannot account for (them)… in a natural way. Therefore, I believe they were… supernatural.” (Op. cit, p. 325.) On Wesley’s ingrained superstition and wonder-craving proclivities, see the remarks by L. Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, 1880, I, pp. 220 ff.; and Isaac Taylor, there referred to. 5 ‘“A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Conyers Middleton; occasioned by his late Free Inquiry,” in Works, as cited, vol. V, p. 746. 6 Snell, as cited, pp. 153 f. 7 Works, 1811, vol. VIII, pp. 322, 329. Cf. The Edinburgh Review, January, 1831, p. 272, note. On Wesley’s views on extraordinary exercises, see Richard Watson, “Life of Rev. John Wesley,” in Watson’s Works, 1835, pp- 89 ff.; also Watson’s observations on Southey’s Life, pp. 385 fi., 421 fi. 8 John Lacy’s Prophetical Warnings, 1707, pp. 3, 31, 32, as cited by William Goode, The Modern Claims to the Possession of the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit, Stated and Examined, etc., second edition, 1834, p.
5. Cf. pp. 188-189. Goode’s account of “The French Prophets’ and similar phenomena is very instructive. 0 An interesting account of present-day ‘“‘Irvingism’ will be found in an article by Erskine N. White in 7’.e Presbyterian and Reformed Review, October, 1899, vol. X, pp. 624-635; see also the article by Samuel J. Andrews, “Catholic Apostolic Church,” in Tke New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, with its supplement by Th. Kolde, and the added bibliography. 10 The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, edited by his nephew, the Reverend G. Carlyle, M.A. In five volumes, London and New York, 1866, vol. V, pp. 499 ff., 532 ff. 11 Chalmers himself says: “When Irving was associated with me at Glasgow he did not attract a large congregation, but he completely attached to himself and his ministry a limited number of persons with whose minds his own was in affinity. I have often,” he adds, “observed this effect produced by men whose habits of thinking and feeling are peculiar or eccentric. They possess a magnetic attraction for minds assimilated to their own.” (William Hanna, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, New York, 1855, vol. III, pp. 275-276.) C. Kegan Paul (Biographical Sketches, 1883, p. 8) puts it thus: “Though his labors from house to house were unceasing, though all brought face to face with him loved him, in the pulpit he was unrecognized… A few looked on him with exceeding admiration, but neither the congregation nor Chalmers himself gave him cordial acceptance.” In Glasgow, says Mrs. Oliphant (The Life of Edward Irving, New York, 1862, p. 08), “Irving lived in the shade.” “It was then a kind of deliverance,” says Th. Kolde (Herzog-Hauck, vol. IX, 1901, p. 425, lines 14 f), “when by the intermediation of Chalmers, he was chosen in 1822 as minister to the little (it had then about fifty members) Scottish (so-called Caledonian) congregation which was connected with a small Scotch Hospital in Hatton Garden, London.” 12. See sub. nom. in the Dictionary of National Biography. 13. From 1829 to 1833 they published a periodical, The Morning Watch, a Journal of Prophecy. 14. J. A. Froude, Life of Carlyle, 1795-1835, vol. IL, p. 177. 15. See Mrs. Oliphant’s Life, p. 302. 16. Ibid., pp. 312, 362.
17. The writer of the sketch of Scott in the Dictionary of National Biography thinks Mrs. Oliphant does him injustice. There seems to be no good reason for so thinking. Cf. what David Brown says of him, The Expositor, III, VI, pp. 219, 266.
18. Fraser’s Magazine, January, 1832, quoted by Mrs. Oliphant, P- 303- 19. Ibid. p. 363. zo. Ibid., p. 365. 21. Ibid. p. 378. 22. Ibid. p. 379. 23. Ibid., p. 363. 24. Ibid., p. 379.
25. Ibid., p. 381. It is perhaps worth mentioning that neither of these young women was bedridden. The miracle did not consist in their literally rising up from their beds.
26. Samuel J. Andrews, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. II, 457, thinks it worth while, in the interest of the genuineness of the “gifts,” to insist on their first occurrence in England apart from Irving’s congregation. The deputation to Scotland, he writes, “returned fully convinced that the utterances were divine. In May, 1831, like utterances were heard in London, the first in a congregation of the Church of England. This being reported to the bishop, he forbade them in the future as interfering with the service. Their occurrence in several dissenting congregations brought forth similar prohibitions, and this led to the utterances being made chiefly in the church of Edward Irving, he being a believer in their divine origin. But they were not confined to London. At Bristol and other places the same spiritual phenomena appeared.” The entire drift of Andrews’s account is to represent the “gifts” as thrust upon, rather than earnestly wooed, by Irving and his fellows. This is wholly unhistorical. On Miss Fancourt’s case, see Mrs. Oliphant, Life, etc., pp. 416, 561; it was the subject of a controversy between The Morning Watch and The Christian Observer, some account of which may be read in The Edinburgh Review, June, 1831 (vol. LIII, pp. 263 ff.). The opinion of the medical attendants was that there was nothing miraculous in the cure. One of their opinions (Mr. Travers’s) is so modern, and a parallel case which is inserted in it is so instructive, that we transcribe the latter part of it. ‘“A volume, and not an uninteresting one,” we read, might be compiled of histories resembling Miss Fancourt’s. The truth is, these are the cases upon which, beyond all others, the empiric thrives. Credulity, the foible of a weakened though vivacious intellect, is the pioneer of an unqualified and overweening confidence, and thus prepared, the patient is in the most hopeful state of mind for the credit as well as the craft of the pretender. This, however, I mention only by the way, for the sake of illustration. I need not exemplify the sudden and remarkable effects of joy, terror, anger, and other passions of the mind upon the nervous systems of confirmed invalids, in restoring to them the use of weakened limbs, etc. They are as much matters of notoriety as any of the properties and powers of direct remedial agents recorded in the history of medicine. To cite one. A case lately fell under my notice of a young lady, who, from inability to stand or walk without acute pain in her loins, lay for near a twelvemonth upon her couch, subjected to a variety of treatment by approved and not inexperienced members of the profession. A single visit from a surgeon of great fame in the management of such cases set the patient upon her feet, and his prescription amounted simply to an assurance, in the most confident terms, that she must disregard the pain, and that nothing else was required for her recovery, adding, that if she did not do so she would become an incurable cripple. She followed his directions immediately, and with perfect success. But such and similar examples every medical man of experience could contribute in partial confirmation of the old adage, ‘Foi est tout.” Of all moral energies, I conceive that faith which is inspired by a religious creed to be the most powerful; and Miss Fancourt’s case, there can be no doubt, was one of the many instances of sudden recovery from a passive form of nervous ailment, brought about by the powerful excitement of this extraordinary stimulus, compared to which, in her predisposed state of mind, ammonia and quinine would have been mere trifling.” A curiously similar instance to that given by Mr. Travers is adduced by a distinguished recent surgeon, Mr. George Buchanan, in illustrating what he saw done at Lourdes. It is recorded by the Messrs. Myers, in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. IX (1893-1804), pp. 101 fI., and we have cited it thence on a previous occasion. See above, pp. 218 ff. Doctor W. B. Carpenter, in an article in The Quarterly Review, vol. XCIII (1853), p. 513, directly refers to Miss Fancourt’s case, and pronounces it a case of “hysterical”’ paralysis, such as is well known to be curable by mental means.