The personal oyaron was carefully carried by warriors, and thus served as a fetish. A symbol or representation of it was made by the father's clan at the New Year ceremony after the dream of the youth who was to bear it had been properly interpreted. In the oyaron-concept lies at least one of the bases of totemism (q.v.). The chief deities of the Iroquois were Teharonhiawagon and Tawiskaron. They were twins, and antagonistic to each other, one being the creator and preserver of life and the other the deadly winter god. They were not, however, gods in the usual sense of the term, but man-beings' (ongwe), and their origin is inseparably connected with the cosmologic myth of the Iroquois. According to this cosmology, there were three cosmic periods. In the first a race of man-beings-i.e. superior to man in every way, and uncreated and eternal, but in life and customs entirely like the men of earth-dwelt on the farther side of the visible sky. In course of time one of these man-beings died (an event hitherto unknown), and his posthumous daughter, Awen'hã ́i' ('mature [fertile] flowers or earth'), continuing to converse with her dead father, was sent by him to the lodge of her future husband, the chief Haou'hweñdjiawǎ'g'(' he holds the earth'). After performing an impossible task, her husband directed her to return home, speaking to no one who might address her, even as she had been silent on her way to him. At the bidding of her father, she went back to her husband's lodge. On her first visit she had become pregnant from Haon'hwendjiawa'gi's breath, but, not knowing this, he suspected her fidelity. She gave birth to a daughter, Gaende'son'k ('gusts of wind'). Later, her husband fell ill of vexation, and, as a result of his dream-feast, the great tree (the only source of light at that time) beside his lodge was uprooted, leaving a vast abyss. Through this he thrust his wife, who fell toward the world, at that time only water. Earth was brought from the bottom of the water by the musk-rat and other animals and placed on the back of the Great Turtle, and water-fowl broke the fall of Awĕn'hâï'. Her daughter, who had been re-incorporated with her during the fall, was re-born. Ia like manner, Corn, Tobacco, Deer, Beaver, and other man-beings transferred their kind to earth. Gaende'son'k became pregnant by a man-being, who passed two arrows (one flint-pointed) over her body, and was delivered of twins, one-Teharonhia wagonbeing born in the normal way, and the other-Tawiskaroncoming through his mother's armpit and killing her. After the twins grew up, the benevolent plans of Teharonhiawagon, counselled by his father, who had recovered and had set the tree back in place, were exposed to the machinations of his grandmother, who created the sun from Gaeñde'son'k's head, her body becoming the moon; but they were fixed in position, and began to move only through Teharonhiawagon and his allies, the motive of Awen'hai's anger being Tawiskaron's false charge that Teharonhiawagon had killed his mother at his birth. Teharonhiawagon created all things for men, and each thing Tawiskaron and his grandmother sought to mar. Thus they imprisoned the beasts in a cave, and, though Teharonhiawagon released nearly all, some were re-imprisoned and became otkon. Only after all this did Teharonhia wagon form human beings.1 Among the most beneficent exploits of Teharonhiawagon for the welfare of mankind were his victory in the game of bowl and plum-pit (for which see S. Culin, 34 RBEW (1907], p. 105 ff.), by which he won the government over all living things, and his conquest of the deformed Hadu'i', the man-being of disease and death, who, to save his life, promised to cure the diseases arising from his infection of the earth, thus giving rise to the society of Mask-faces who, at the New Year ceremony, endeavour to exorcize and expel disease and death (see W. H. Dall, in 3 RBEW [1884], p. 144 1.). Among the other divine man-beings were Gaĕñde's (wind), Hodoñni'a' (Aurora Borealsi), Hadawinethǎ' (fire dragon of storm), Hi'no' (thunder), Daga'shwine'da' (spring wind), etc., as well as the man-beings of living creatures of every kind. Mention must also be made of a war-god Aireskoi (Mohawk Aregwens'gwa', 'master of war'), to whom the Mohawk offered human sacrifice (cf. also ERE, vol. vi. p. 884 f.). Prisoners of war, after being tortured to death, were eaten, at least in part, by the Huron and other Iroquoians, and especially by the Mohawk, whose name (cognate with Narragansett Mohowaùuck, they eat [animate] things') expressly implies cannibalism, though they termed themselves Kaniengehaga, 'people of the flint place.' In addition to human sacrifices, which might also be offered in honour of the dead-as when the Onondaga Aharihon sacrificed forty men to 1 Huron cosmology presents a general similarity. For an early account of it see J. de Brébeuf, in P. Le Jeune, Jes. Rel. x. 127-129. show his esteem for his brother-many other forms were practised. If war was unsuccessful, the Mohawk offered a bear to the war-god; but the most characteristic Iroquoian sacrifice was that of the white dog, which was the centre of an elaborate ritual performed at the New Year (late in January or early in February). The object of the whole rite is to fulfil the dream-desire of Teharonhiawagon, and thus to recruit his vigour, that he may prove victorious over Tawiskaron, the god of winter. Before the sacrifice proper, all old fires must be removed and the new fire must be lighted; next comes the asperging with ashes' (Huron aoutaenhrohi; cf. ERE, vol. vi. p. 885), when all pass by the fire-god. After the fire-rites, which occupy three days, through the fire to escape fevers and other maladies produced comes the dream-rite (mistakenly described in the Jes. Rel. under the name ononharoia (see ERE, vol. vi. p. 886]), involv 942 f.), and also taking three days. The next rite is the strang ing a number of minor rites (summarized by Hewitt, HAI ii. ling of a white dog (formerly partially burned and eaten), which is dressed, adorned, and painted to represent Teharonhia wagon, and, placed standing on the song bench, is addressed with prayer and sacrifice of tobacco. The man-being Teharonhiawagon accepts the victim and the tobacco, but rejects a proffered bow and arrow. Thus the dream-desire of Teharonhiawagon is satisfied. The four or five days following are taken up by the great Feather and Drum dances, the Personal clan chant, and Great Wager (ceremonial game of plum-pits).o The other great Iroquoian festivals are the tapping of the maple tree, maple-gathering, maize-planting, strawberry-gathering, bean-gathering, green-maize feast, and maize-gathering. At the more important of these-White Dog, maize-planting, green-maize, and maize-gathering-confession of sins is one of the chief rites; and all festivals are accompanied by ceremonial games and dances. Belief in immortality was strong among all Iroquoian peoples (cf. ERE, vol. vi. p. 886); and they attributed to animals the same intelligence as to men, so that in hunting they killed all game that they could find, lest the survivors should warn their fellows that they were being pursued. LITERATURE.-The chief source is the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ed. R. G. Thwaites, 73 vols., Cleveland, 1896-1901; other early sources are J. F. Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages amériquains, Paris, 1724; S. de Champlain, Voyages, do. 1830; P. F. X. de Charlevoix, Hist. et description générale de la Nouvelle France, do. 1744 (Eng. tr., J. G. Shea, New York, 1866-72); C. C. Le Roy Bacqueville de la Potherie, Hist. de l'Amérique septentrionale, do. 1722; of modern writers the most important is L. H. Morgan, League of the Ho-dé-no-saunee, or Iroquois, Rochester, N.Y., 1851; see also H. R. Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois, Albany, N.Y., 1847; H. Hale, Iroquois Book of Rites, Philadelphia, 1883; D. Cusick, Sketches of anc. Hist. of the Six Nations 2, Tuscarora, N.Y., 1828; J. V. H. Clark, Onondaga, Syracuse, N.Y., 1849; C. Colden, Hist. of the Five Indian Nations of Canada, London, 1747; F. Martin, Hurons et Iroquois, Paris, 1877; E. Johnson, Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, Lockport, N.Y., 1881; W. W. Canfield, Legends of the Iroquois, New York, 1902; W. M. Beauchamp, Iroquois Trail, Fayetteville, N.Y., 1892; S. H. Stites, Economics of the Iroquois, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1905; E. A. Smith, 'Myths of the Iroquois,' 2 RBEW [1883), pp. 47-116; J. N. B. Hewitt, 'Iroquoian Cosmology,' 21 RBBW (1903), pp. 127-339, and numerous artt. in Amer. Anthropologist, and HAI. For the southern tribes, in addition to such general works as IRVING AND THE CATHOLIC APOS- 1 The Iroquoian man-beings were subject to destiny, and, as was the case in Egypt, the divine stood in need of human aid (J. G. Müller, Gesch. der amerikan. Urreligionen 2, Basel, 1867, p. 148 f.; Hewitt, HAI ii. 939 f.). 2 The White Dog Sacrifice is of the scapegoat type (J. G. Frazer, The Scapegoat, London, 1913, pp. 209 f., 233). rate substance and local influence; his mother, to which the ear of the church-goer had become Mary Lowther, came of a family of bonnet lairds' accustomed. The Argument for Judgment to come in the adjacent parish of Dornock. He was bap-foreshadows that prophetical teaching which, totized in the Established Church, which in the west gether with the exercise of spiritual gifts, conof Scotland was much influenced by traditions of stitutes the popular conception of Irvingism. the Covenanters. His education was received at This was followed in two years by Babylon and the Academy of his native town under Adam Infidelity Foredoomed of God, a survey of conHope, who also became schoolmaster to Thomas temporary history in the light of that millennial Carlyle, and at Edinburgh University, where he principle of interpreting Daniel and the Revelation matriculated at the age of thirteen. He gave no which had begun to be revived among Protestant early promise of his subsequent career; at school Christians in the early decades of the 19th cent., his only distinction was that of an athlete. At and of which Irving's mind proved readily recepthe University he graduated M.A. in 1809, and, tive. Another influence, which approached him still undistinguished, entered the Divinity Hall. from a different quarter, was that of S. T. ColeThereafter he followed the usual course prepara- | ridge, to whom he had been personally introduced tory to the ministry of the Church of Scotland, in 1823. supporting himself meanwhile by teaching in the Mathematical School recently established in Haddington. With this work he combined the function of private tutor to the daughter of a medical practitioner in the town, Jane Welsh, the future wife of his friend Carlyle. Two years later, while his University studies were still incomplete, he was appointed to the mastership of another new Academy at Kirkcaldy, Fifeshire. In 1815 he became a Probationer of the Church of Scotland, being licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Kirkcaldy, and for the next three years combined this new office with the work of his school. In 1818 he resigned his mastership and returned to Edinburgh, where he remained until, in the following year, he was appointed assistant to Thomas Chalmers (q.v.) at St. John's, Glasgow. The fame of the latter was too great, and Irving's genius was too strongly contrasted with that of his chief, to allow much scope to the younger man, and his work during the next two years, though discharged with uninterrupted loyalty and sufficient credit, was not such as to command the enthusiastic appreciation either of the minister or of the congregation of St. John's, or to attract the notice of those who could further his interests. But his position as assistant to Chalmers was prominent enough to bring him under the notice of the Caledonian Church in Hatton Garden, London, a struggling outpost of the Church of Scotland, the pastorate of which had little to commend it to an ambitious man. In 1822, Irving was appointed to this charge, and at last in his thirtieth year he received ordination from his native Presbytery at Annan. | The year 1826 is important as that of the first of the Conferences held at Albury Park, Surrey, by invitation of Henry Drummond, M.P., under the presidency of Hugh MacNeil, rector of the parish and subsequently dean of Ripon. Drummond had already been brought into contact with Irving, and, knowing his attitude towards the study of the prophets, offered him a seat at the Conference, in which his eminence soon gave him a leading place. As will be apparent, the Albury Conferences were not the product of Irving's ministry, nor was his London congregation directly concerned in them, though Drummond, by whom they were organized, afterwards became a prominent member of the body associated with his name. The movement represented by them is still active in evangelical circles, and in Irvingism it became a formative principle. The Morning Watch, a periodical inaugurated by the Conference, virtually became, before its discontinuance in 1833, the organ of the new community. In 1827 the church in Regent Square was opened to accommodate the crowds for which the small chapel in Hatton Garden was totally inadequate. The building still stands, but no longer as the National Scots Church. The congregation, which continued to use it after Irving's extrusion, became identified in 1843 with the party of the Scottish Disruption, and is now in communion with the English Presbyterians. It was about this time that Irving became acquainted with John McLeod Campbell of Row, who was beginning to re-state the doctrine of the Atonement on lines similar to those which governed his own theory of the Incarnation. This was developed in three In less than twelve months his popularity was volumes of sermons and a book on the Last Days, assured. The incident usually associated with published in 1828. It would be erroneous to say the sudden outburst of the new preacher upon the that the alleged heresies for which the two men big world of London was the visit of Canning to were severally deposed from the ministry had a the National Scots Church at the instance of his single source in the mind of either. They are colleague, Sir James Mackintosh, and a subse- to be regarded as parallel developments of a comquent speech in the House of Commons, in the mon tendency. It is significant that the General course of which the statesman alluded to the Assembly (1831) which condemned Campbell dieloquence of the sermon then heard. From this rected that any attempt on the part of Irving to moment Irving was provided with the opportunity exercise his ministry in Scotland should be met by best suited to his genius, and his permanent the Presbytery concerned with an inquiry into his congregation, as it was swelled by the numbers writings on the Incarnation. It was the sermons drawn from every religious communion, not least published in 1828 that contained the statements from the Church of England, gradually lost its which first brought him under the suspicion of peculiarly Scottish complexion and took on the having asserted the sinfulness of Christ's humanity. characteristics of its leader's expanding thought Action had actually been taken the previous year and feeling. In 1823, Irving issued his first publi- (1830) by the Presbytery of London, from the concations, both of which were based on his pulpit sequences of which Irving escaped only by the discourses, and quickly passed through several doubtful expedient of claiming exemption from editions. The Orations were at once recognized their jurisdiction, alleging that the trust-deeds of as affording examples of a new type of religious the National Scots Church required their minister address (the title itself was ambitious, though to be ordained by a Presbytery in Scotland. His justified by the contents), and exhibit the claim position, though anarchical, was practically tenand intention of the author to present divine truth able, because he was unanimously upheld by his to the public mind in a form alike more compre- own Kirk Session, who in a few months were themhensive and more vital than the conventional selves to invoke the authority of the same Presby echoes of a narrow and moribund evangelicalism | tery, when on a grave matter of Church discipline they found themselves irreconcilably opposed to the pastor whose orthodoxy they had stoutly maintained. Meanwhile events had taken place in Scotland, destined to precipitate the crisis which in a few years severed Irving from the communion of his native Church. An old friendship existed between himself and Robert Story, minister of Roseneath, which on more than one occasion had brought him to preach on the Gareloch. Here he met Alexander Scott, who, coming to London in the first instance as Irving's assistant, received a call to the Scots congregation at Woolwich, and was in consequence involved before the London Presbytery in a charge of heretical teaching concerning our Lord's human nature. Sharing Irving's view of the Incarnation, he insisted that the exceptional gifts of the Spirit, manifested in the Apostolic Church, were a permanent endowment of the Body of Christ, restrained only by the faithlessness of later Christians. This teaching he disseminated, among other places, in his old home in the West of Scotland. At Fernicarry Farm, in Campbell's parish of Row, lived Mary Campbell, a young woman of exceptional piety and unusual personality, who in 1830, while apparently a hopeless invalid, became the subject of spiritual manifestations which her friends claimed as a reappearance of the tongues spoken of in the NT. Shortly afterwards the power,' as it came to be called, visited a shipbuilding family at Port Glasgow. James and Margaret Macdonald, brother and sister, spoke in an unknown tongue, and the latter was raised from sickness at the word of the former. James then proceeded to inform Mary Campbell by letter of what had occurred, exhorting her to a similar act of faith, whereupon she too rose from her bed, apparently fully restored to health. From that time she continued, like Margaret Macdonald, to speak with tongues, with which was associated what was claimed as the gift of prophecy. She married, and became a familiar figure among the friends of the new movement as Mrs. Caird. A sympathetic but not unquestioning account of these proceed. ings has been preserved in the Memoirs of Robert Story, published (Cambridge, 1862) by his son Herbert, sometime Principal of Glasgow University. Wide-spread interest in the phenomena arose throughout Scotland. They were investigated by Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, who appears to have acknowledged their genuineness. No money was made out of them, and there is no evidence of imposture. They may, perhaps, be classed and judged with similar manifestations in other parts of Christendom. Irving, predisposed alike by character and antecedents, at once accepted them as a baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire. In 1831 the gifts of tongues and prophecy appeared, it was believed, in answer to fervent prayer, among the members of Irving's congregation. The gift of healing was also claimed, and an attitude towards disease, strikingly allied to that which in later times has become characteristic of Christian Science, began to be assumed by 'the spiritual.' But, if disease was spoken of among them as sin, it was because the Spirit must uphold and consecrate, not negate and annihilate, the flesh. It was, however, the two former gifts that exercised a determining influence on the fortunes of Irving and his people, by being called into the church." Irving claimed to have tried the spirits' of the prophets, in right of his ministerial commission as angel or pastor, and, finding them to be true spirits, made provision for the exercise of their function in the Scots Church. This involved scenes of excitement, which, as rumour swiftly spread and curious crowds assembled, degenerated into unseemly confusion. Remonstrance proved unavail. I ing, and, acting on legal advice, the trustees, who as members of the Kirk Session had supported Irving in his repudiation of the London Presbytery, now appealed to it under the trust-deed of the Regent Square Church. The facts were undisputed. The case really turned upon the truth or falsity of the plenary inspiration claimed by the 'gifted,' but implicitly rejected alike by the prosecuting trustees and the Presbytery. The view of the latter was unexpectedly strengthened by the repudiation of their former testimony on the part of one or two of the prophets-notably Robert Baxter, who subsequently published his retractation in a Narrative of Facts (London, 1833). But Irving, supported by the majority of the prophets, women as well as men, maintained his conviction, and his defence became an arraign. ment of his judges. The result, however, was never really doubtful. Such evidence as they could offer was, from the point of view of the court, mere opinion; and no tribunal to which the matter could conceivably have been submitted could have decided that an offence had not been committed against the recognized order of the Church. Accordingly, by direction of the Presby tery, the doors were locked against the minister and the greater part of his miscellaneous congregation, which ultimately found shelter in Newman Street. These proceedings revived the charge of heresy which had already been levelled at Irving, and in 1833 he was formally indicted before the Presbytery of Annan, which had ordained him, and which now deposed him. Though Irving consented to defend his teaching before the Presby tery, he never appealed against the judgment, and accordingly in this year he passed out of the Church of Scotland. 2. The Catholic Apostolic Church.-Henceforward the personality of Irving ceases to be an important factor in the movement, which had already begun to crystallize into a religious society having little affinity with the Presbyterianism amid which it took its rise. Though a congregation of several hundred members or communicants, together with an indefinite number of adherents, migrated with their pastor from Regent Square, the minority that remained were the real representatives of those who had called him to London ten years before. The more influential members of what must now be called the new body were men and women collected from various quarters who had found in Irving a rallying point for association on the basis of millennial expectation and the exercise of spiritual gifts. From the moment that Irving acknowledged the utterances of the prophets as the authoritative voice of the Spirit, his function towards the society practically ceased. Making no claim to exceptional endowments on his own behalf, he became a follower rather than a leader. The new authority, which had begun to emerge in the person of two apostles, who had been appointed by prophecy, already claimed his submission. An alleged prophecy declared that, the Church of Scotland having withdrawn his commission, his position as pastor or angel of the congregation must remain in abey ance unless duly restored by the Spirit. When at length the prophetic voice proclaimed his reinstatement, he was allowed to resume his office only by ordination at the hands of the new apostolate. Soon afterwards another prophetic utterance sent him on a mission to Scotland, and, reaching Glasgow after a circuitous journey through England and Wales, he died in that city on 7th December 1834, and was buried in the crypt of its ancient cathedral. The religious society thus brought into being still exists, but it has had little or no public history. Popularly called Irvingite, a name only partially justified by facts, it is officially styled the Catholic Apostolic Church. The name is said to be due, not to arrogant assumption on the part of its members, but to the mistake of a census clerk, who abstracted it from a return, in which a London householder had described himself as belonging to a 'congregation of the Catholic and Apostolic Church worshipping in Newman Street.' Its organization was practically completed when the college of apostles was increased from two to twelve in obedience to a prophetic message. Prophets and evangelists being already in existence, the fourfold ministry was completed by the ordination of pastors and teachers a local priesthoodconsisting, in the case of each congregation, of the bishop or angel (cf. the angels of the churches' in the Apocalypse), or chief pastor, with the elders and deacons. The meeting-place in Newman Street has been replaced by a fine Gothic Church in Gordon Square, and there are churches in Edinburgh and other large cities, as well as at Albury. Outside Britain and Germany its extension has been limited. Its forms of worship have been assimilated to those of ancient Christendom, and its ritual is elaborate. It possesses a liturgy constructed for the most part on Eastern models. These changes, which were speedily introduced, may be traced partly to the study of the Apocalypse, partly to the eclecticism of its members. Its ministry has never been professional, being composed for the most part of persons engaged in ordinary occupations. Many of its members were, and still are, actively engaged in public affairs, and as individuals take a prominent part in works of general utility and philanthropy. But in its corporate capacity the community has lived apart, and, except for the sensation caused by the outbreak of the 'gifts,' has neither courted nor received a place in popular consideration. This is the natural consequence of the theory of its origin, which also accounts for its apathy in respect to missionary work. It is due, not to the cooling of its early zeal, but to its expectation of a returning Lord. The appearance of the gifts was regarded as a sign of the approach of the Son of Man. The apostolate was constituted for the 'ingathering of the nations.' Evangelists were at first sent out into the highways; apostolic journeys were undertaken in Europe and elsewhere; but their object was not to propagate the gospel in the spirit and on the method of the great missionary societies, but to bear final testimony before nations and kings to the coming of the Day of the Lord. The witnesses had no zeal for the extension of the Church, but for its preparation as a bride adorned for her husband. They had no special tenets to proclaim as contrasted with the received teaching of Christendom. Their exclusiveness was due not to what they conceived as the false teaching, but to the apathy, of the churches. If they were in a peculiar sense God's people, it was only because they were aroused, expectant, waiting for the final baptism. The new Apostolic ministry, as they conceived it, belonged to the whole Church. Its establishment was not the construction of a new organ of evangelical activity, but the final ordering of the household before the return of the Master. Their testimony given, they were content to wait in spiritual readiness for the rending of the heavens. They became a church within the Church, instituting a rite of 'sealing,' or laying on of hands, by which those who received the witness of the last times were set apart against the final Day of Redemption. But the sealed' were not necessarily required to withdraw from the communion of other Churches, and Irvingites' have always been found communicating and, it is said, even ministering in other religious bodies. A special affinity with those Churches which retained the order of bishops, successors of the angels' who presided over the apostolic churches, has always been recognized, in spite of the fact that Irving himself had been a Presbyterian minister, and that the connexion of his people with the Church of England was only through individuals who had abandoned its ministries. The last of the apostles is now dead, and the church is in process of readjustment to the new conditions created by the lapse of the college. Difference of opinion regarding the apostolate has led to a division of the Irvingites and to the formation of the New Apostolic Church.' The latter body holds that the number of the apostles may be many more than twelve, and traces its origin to Germany, where Irvingism had been introduced in Bavaria by William Caird in 1841, centres being formed at Augsburg, Berlin, Königsberg, and Hamburg. The New Apostolic Church arose from the endeavour of the prophet of the Berlin congregation, Heinrich Geyer, to have new apostles chosen. Excommunicated in 1863, he joined Schwartz, the bishop at Hamburg, and formed the new organization. As in Holland under the direction of Schwartz, so in Germany the new body has discarded much of its elaborate ritual, and lays less stress on the expectation of the speedy Second Advent. Their main centre is Brunswick, where one of their number, F. Krebs, gradually rose to be the father of the apostles.' His successor, H. Niehaus, terms himself the Stammapostel,' and it is even believed that in the Stammapostel' as well as in the other apostles Christ is incarnate. Since the beginning of the new century the New Apostolic Church has suffered the secession of the Sceptre of Judah,' which differs little except that it lays still less emphasis on eschatological hopes. Except for the United States, no exact statistics are available for the Irvingites. They are supposed to number about 5000 in Great Britain and about 20,000 in Germany and Switzerland; the New Apostolic branch estimated their adherents at 70,000 in Europe at the end of 1909. According to the last religious census of the United States (1906), the Catholic Apostolic Church reported 11 organizations, with a membership of 2907 and 14 ministers; the New Apostolic Church, 13 organizations, with a membership of 2020 and 19 ministers. Since the last previous religious census (1890) the Catholic Apostolic Church had increased by 1 organization and 1513 members; the New Apostolic Church was not reported in America in 1890. The main strength of both bodies is in the N. Atlantic States, especially in New York, which has 7 out of the total number of 24 organizations. 3. Criticism.-Our estimate of Irvingism as a religious phenomenon will vary according as we view it in regard to the particular community in which its principles are embodied or to the spiritual movement of the 19th cent., to which it is vitally related. The lancet window above the great preacher's grave has been filled with a figure of John the Baptist 'crying in the wilderness," and it is probably as a similar voice that his true character is best judged. He is an arresting rather than a constructive power, prophetic of the needs of his time rather than himself supplying them. He was able to recognize, but not to focus and apply, the influences which were destined to recover a fuller Christianity for a widening age. The limitations of Irving's personality and the isolation of his position will to a large extent explain the abortive character of the movement which bears his name. It cannot be said that its failure to command popular sympathy and to carry types of God's judgments; Irving saw in the activities of Regent Square forces intimately connected with the shaking of worlds. This want of features that most readily offer themselves to the critic. If we may not deny that the Spirit manifests Himself in unexpected quarters, and pursues methods that are 'foolishness with men,' we are yet bound to judge a phenomenon in relation to its environment, and to estimate its value in some proportion to its effectiveness. Closely connected with the foregoing must be noted Irving's lack of humour, which belongs also to the whole movement. He always takes himself very seriously. Every occasion is great, every speech an utterance. His style is stilted, often turgid, never delicate. The world is identified too readily with Babylon. There is none of that shrewd observation of the facts of society which makes the prophet caustic and the seer sympa. thetic. He does not really know life as he knows his Bible. It follows that he did not know men, still less women. He took every one at his own valuation, mistook cranks for persons of insight, and became the tool of minds smaller than his own. It is a mistake to charge him with conceit. The movement which revolved round him never made him its centre or took the impress of his personality. It claimed to be an outpouring of the Spirit, but never through the medium of himself. No one e.g., has ever ventured to claim for him the posi tion assigned to Montanus in the primitive schism with which Irvingism has often been compared. Irvingites resent being so named, not merely as unchristian, but as wrong in fact. The secondary position which their leader assumed without complaint after his deposition from the Scottish ministry witnesses alike to the sincerity of his aims and the humility of his character. His theology was his own, but the specific millennial expectation and the constructive work, of which the 'gifts' were the instrument, belonged to others. Drummond, Cardale, and their associates, not Irving, were the builders of the 'Catholic Apostolic Church.' Irving had no constructive genius. with it the reason and judgment of his contemporaries is itself evidence of error, for this would be true of Christianity itself in its initial stages. But we are justified in pointing out the presump-proportion in the Irvingite movement is one of the tions against a stable and progressive work which are to be found in the character of Irving's genius. His spiritual greatness varied almost in inverse proportion to his intellectual equipment. Unlike the Tractarians, he had no solid basis of learning upon which to ground his theology. He had a vision of great religious ideas rather than a comprehensive theology. This is the true criticism of his doctrine of the Incarnation. An adequate inheritance of theological thinking would have kept him from those clumsy statements of our Lord's human nature which exposed him to the assaults of a criticism equally ill-equipped. His philosophy was also at fault. While, therefore, he always maintained Christ's immunity from actual sin, he invariably insisted that the humanity which the Son of God assumed was sinful. By this he meant to assert that God became flesh under the conditions which sin had imposed, in order that He might redeem what He took. It is, therefore, the Spirit indwelling the creature' which lifts the Body of Christ and all its members above sin. The second proposition, which was the practical conclusion that Irving wished to reach, is genuine Nicene theology, and this a competent theological tribunal ought to have recognized. The imperfection of the first proposition, which really marked a return to a fuller doctrine of the Person of Christ than the formal evangelicalism of his contemporaries, lies in the false psychology, misled by the phrase sinful flesh,' which does not predicate sin solely of the will. But in so far as Irving's teaching was a strong assertion of the identification of Christ with human nature as sin has made it, not excluding its guilt, his doctrine cut deeper than that of his accusers. The further criticism, which attempts to find in Irving's error concerning the peccability of Christ's manhood the secret of his attitude towards the spiritual gifts,' and to discredit in consequence his whole system, is not consistent with facts. In so far as the expectation which led him to acknowledge claims disallowed by others sprang out of his theology, rather than out of his reading of the NT, it must be attributed to his strong identification of believers with Him who is their federal Head.' But this is no more than is involved in the statement of Athanasius, that God became Man in order that we might be made divine' (de Incarn. Verbi, liv. 3 [PG xxv. 192]). This language is admittedly hyperbolical, but it is intended to cover no more than the 'grace of unction,' a phrase by which Hooker, a writer with whom Irving acknowledged his own sympathy, expressed the supernatural powers which human nature received by union with the Godhead in Christ. Again, the prophetic element in Irving's personality was allowed to dull his intellectual appreciation. He had the Johannine rather than the Pauline temper, but in the form which appears in the Apocalypse rather than in the Fourth Gospel. He was the mystic in fervent action, not in calm contemplation. The procession of events, and not the eternal silence, fascinated him. God was always coming forth out of His place rather than inhabiting eternity. His own impatience of spirit was manifested in his eager desire for speech, and in his readiness to welcome divine events from day to day. This injured his sense of proportion, and led him to give values to occurrences within his own circle which at once endowed them with significance in the march of history. This was the spirit of the ancient prophets with a difference. They saw in their immediate social experience His ecclesiastical isolation is another fact to which due weight must be given. In Scotland he could make no headway. With the standards of the Presbyterian Church he was not out of sympathy. On the contrary, his conception of the pastoral office and of sacramental grace conformed more closely to the ideals of the Confession than the theory and practice of most of his contemporaries. But the intellectualism of Scottish Christianity met with an imperfect response in him, and for all his fervour his undisciplined mysticism failed to impress his fellow-countrymen. London emphasized his lonely position. Such sup. port as he might have secured from the fabric of his own national Church was withdrawn, and he was, of course, outside the life and traditions both of the English Church and of English Nonconformity. Thus he became emphatically a voz clamantis. What was, in any case, his true function had to be exercised outside the continuous life of an existing society. There was nothing for him to revivify and inspire. He could but make himself the rallying point for units drawn from other religious societies. In this he differed entirely from the Tractarians. Like them, he began with a complete distrust of the progressive liberalism of the 19th century. Like them, he made no attempt to capture the new forces or permeate the new society with Christian principles. But, while the Oxford men threw back their disciples upon the ancient deposit of Christian doctrine and the inherent powers of the Christian community, |