to be found, and most especially in the very places in which Mr. Irving so uncharitably and so falsely denounces their absence. Let Mr. Irving take the tour of our cathedral towns, and he will find the clergy employed in a very different manner from that which he probably would expect, or certainly would desire. With scarcely an exception, he will find every institution which diminishes human woe, or increases human happiness, cherished by the liberality and supported by the activity of the cathedral clergy. If he can find an exception-if he can find a careless, idle, or sleeping Chapter, let him hurl at them his keenest bolt, we shall not interpose to stop the blow. But until the exception shall be found, it would be much more worthy of the charity of a Christian minister to "believe all things" which are good, than to invent all things which are bad. We are willing, on our part, to suppose that Mr. Irving, during his residence in Glasgow, was an excellent parish priest, and that all the commendations which he has bestowed upon himself, are amply deserved. We would only observe, that there are thousands of parish priests in the English Church, who are daily and hourly running the same course of holy exertion, without calling in the feeble aid of self-panegyric to applaud

or to disgrace-their labours. There are thousands who are content to do their duty to God and to man, without prating either of themselves, or of "the tear of sentiment, which the eye of beauty swims with at a tale of distress."

Dismissing this Farewell Discourse, we shall now proceed to his Orations. These are preceded by a preface, in which Mr. Irving attributes the ignorance of religion which prevails among the higher, as well as the lower orders, " to the want of a sedulous and a skilful ministry." This deficiency, Mr. Irving, with his usual modesty, proposes himself to supply. It appears that our poor" dumb dogs" of the south have quite mistaken the matter, and are to this very day wholly unacquainted with the best method of illustrating and enforcing religious truth. This method Mr. Irving has discovered, and his discovery he has been generous enough to publish in the following clear and intelligible language:

"But, whereas men read for entertainment and direction in their several studies and pursuits, it becomes needful that we make ourselves adept in these, and into the body of them all infuse the balm of salvation, that when the people consult for the present life, they may be admonished, stealthily and skilfully invaded with admonition, of the life to come. So that, until the servants and ministers of the living God do pass the limits of pulpit theology and pulpit exhortation, and take weapons in their hand, gathered out of every region in which the life of man or his faculties are interested, they shall never have religion triumph and domineer in a .

country, as bescemeth her high original, her native majesty, and her eternity of freely-bestowed well-being." Orations. Preface, p, vi.

But, after all, we must look to Mr. Irving himself as the brightest example of his own discovery:

His own example strengthens all his laws,

And is himself the great obscure he draws.

His first Oration is upon the "preparation for consulting the Oracles of God." This is a subject of the highest importance, and of the most extensive application. Whatever his abilities or his attainments may be, every one among us stands in need of much pious and prudential preparation before he can approach the Oracles of God with effect, and with utility. Those especially, who, either from apathy or from neglect, are unacquainted with the sacred volume, require an able and a judicious introduction to its contents. Men must be taught both what they are to seek and what they are to find; their researches otherwise will too often conclude either in error or in disappointment. Now in this Oration of Mr. Irving's on "the preparation necessary for consulting the Oracles of God," we can most truly say, that there is not a single difficulty removed, not a single prejudice anticipated, not a single caution supplied. On the contrary, there is much to mislead the expectation, and to disqualify the judgement of the reader; to give him false notions and false feelings. Let us hear what Mr. Irving is pleased to call "the Preparation for the Announcement."

"THE PREPARATION FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENT.-When God uttereth his voice, says the Psalmist, coals of fire are kindled; the hills melt down like wax, the earth quakes, and deep proclaims it unto hollow deep. This same voice, which the stubborn elements cannot withstand, the children of Israel having heard but once, prayed that it might not be spoken to them any more. These sensible images of the Creator have now vanished, and we are left alone, in the deep recesses of the meditative mind, to discern his comings forth. No trump of heaven now speaketh in the world's

ear.

No angelic conveyancer of Heaven's will taketh shape from the vacant air, and, having done bis errand, retireth into his airy habitation. No human messenger putteth forth his miraculous hand to heal Nature's immedicable wounds, winning for his words a silent and astonished audience. Majesty and might no longer precede the oracles of Heaven. They lie silent and unobtrusive, wrapped up in their little compass-one volume, amongst many, innocently handed to and fro, and having no distinction but that in which our mustered thoughts are enabled to invest them. The want of solemn preparation and circumstantial pomp the imagination of the mind hath now to supply. The presence of the Deity, and the authority of his voice, our thoughtful spirits must discern. Conscience must supply the terrors that were wont to go before

him; and the brightness of his coming, which the sense can no longer behold, the heart, ravished with his word, must feel." P. 9. Again Mr. Irving proceeds in the same strain:

"Though a veil be now cast over the Majesty which speaks, it is the voice of the Eternal which we hear, coming in soft cadences to win our favour, yet omnipotent as the voice of the thunder, and overpowering as the rushing of many waters. And though the veil of the future intervene between our hand and the promised goods, still they are from His lips, who speaks and it is done, who commands and all things stand fast. With no less emotion therefore should this book be opened than if, like him in the Apocalypse, you saw the voice which spake; or like him in the trance, you were, into the third heavens translated, companying and communing with the realities of glory, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived." P. 16.

Once more let our readers hear Mr. Irving, and understand him-if they can.

"How different the ordinary proceeding of Christians, who with timorous, mistrustful spirits; with an abeyance of intellect, and a dwarfish reduction of their natural powers; enter to the conference of the word of God! The natural powers of man are to be mistrusted, doubtless, as the willing instruments of the evil one; but they must be honoured also as the necessary instruments of the Spirit of God, whose operation is a dream, if it be not through knowledge, intellect, conscience, and action. Now Christians heedless of this grand resurrection of the mighty instruments of thought and action, at the same time coveting hard after holy attainments, do often resign the mastery of themselves, and are taken into the counsel of the religious world-whirling around the eddy of some popular leader-and so drifted, I will not say from godli ness, but drifted certainly from that noble, manly, and indepen+ dent course, which, under steerage of the word of God, they might have safely pursued for the precious interests of their immortal souls. Meanwhile these popular leaders, finding no necessity for strenuous endeavours and high science in the ways of God, but having a gathering host to follow them, deviate from the ways of deep and penetrating thought-refuse the contest with the literary and accomplished enemies of the faith-bring a contempt upon the cause in which mighty men did formerly gird themselves to the combat-and so cast the stumbling block of a mistaken paltriness between enlightened men and the cross of Christ! So far from this simple-mindedness (but its proper name is feeble-mindedness,) Christians should be-as aforetime in this island they were wont to be the princes of human intellect, the lights of the world, the salt of the political and social state. Till they come forth from the swaddling bands in which foreign schools have girt them, and walk boldly upon the high places of human understanding, they shall never obtain that, influence in the upper regions of knowledge and power of which unfortunately they have not the apostolic unction to be in quest. They will never be the master and com

manding spirits of the time, until they, cast off the wrinkled and. withered skin of an obsolete age, and clothe themselves with intel-, ligence as with a garment, and bring forth the fruits of power and of love and of a sound mind," P. 23.

Now, without any disposition to cavil, we would fairly ask, what preparations for approaching the Oracles of God can be furnished by all this idle rhodomontade. What prejudice does it abate? what difficulty does it remove? No man will have a greater desire to approach his Bible than he had before; or even if he had, will he find the slightest assistance in his approach? He will open the Scriptures-in the very first page he will stumble on a difficulty; as he proceeds, he will find these difficulties increase, and he will close the volume in disgust or despair. Against this fatal, but common process of an uninstructed mind, Mr. Irving has provided no remedy, no caution, no preparation. On the contrary, from the passages which we have cited, and still more from the whole tenor of the Oration, the ignorant reader would be led to expect to find the Scriptures a tissue of grand and gaudy declamation-which shall in a moment captivate and absorb the soul. How disappointed will such a reader be to find, that in order to understand and digest the word of God, much time, much attention, and much perseverance is required, and that "all the day long must be his study in it." We should not suspect that the knowledge which Mr. Irving himself possesses of the Scriptures is very deep, if the following assertion is to be taken as a speci

men :

"Before the Almighty made his appearance upon Sinai, there were awful precursors sent to prepare his way: while he abode in sight there were solemn ceremonies and a strict ritual of attendance; when he departed the whole camp set itself to conform unto his revealed will." P. 7.

There is not a child even in a "Cathedral town," but would tell Mr. Irving that the whole camp set itself to conform to a certain golden calf," to say nothing of divers other abominations. It would not be amiss if Mr. Irving and the crowds who follow him, were to turn to this remarkable history, and to apply it in such a manner as their consciences may perhaps direct them.

Of Mr. Irving's "for the Oracles of God," our readers have probably had enough; we can assure them that with the exception of one or two passages, the whole is cast in the same mould of idle rhapsody and impracticable absurdity.

The second and the larger portion of the volume is dedicated to what Mr. Irving is pleased to call, by courtesy we presume, "an argument" for Judgment to Come-being a

series of assertions and digressions, of premises without conclusions, and of conclusions without premises. This argument Mr. Irving undertakes to enforce in the character of an advocate; his brief is taken from the revelation of Godand his tribunal the whole reason and understanding of man. Of this tribunal, or rather of the judge who occupies it, Mr. Irving thus speaks:

"To these instincts of nature Christ's laws apply most sweetly, bringing in no lordly authority, but operating by means of affection and improvement and hope of eternal gain. With these instruments they apply to conscience or self-judgment alone, setting on no watchman of any kind, except the observation of God, who loveth good and hateth evil; who promoteth happiness, and striveth that unhappiness may cease. They make the mind the mistress of her. self; they place her own judgment of herself above the world's second only to God's; they take her into contract with God, no third party being conscious. She rejoiceth in a liberty of her own, inward and unseen. She contemplateth her own growing beauty in the mirror of the divine law, and becomes enamoured of herself— to which the flattery of royal persons is as nothing. Her outward actions are like the motions of her limbs, obedient to an inward willingness, by no outward force constrained. The law of men is under her feet; she sits arbitress over all, obeying or disobeying higher councils." P. 151.

Vastly grand this, but not quite intelligible. Legal metaphysics set the understanding at double defiance. In return, however, for these and other edifying examples of the chiaro oscuro, Mr. Irving has treated us with some brilliant discoveries, which he is kind enough to come all the way from Scotland to develope. Let us take the following as a specimen :

"Now here again we remark, that were there not judgment days, no wisdom nor wise administration could protect the law from being trampled under foot of men. You might preach obedience at every corner, and show how it promotes the good of each, by securing the welfare and peace of the whole; but it were vain, had you not a regular roll made up of the offenders, and a regular assize holden of their offences, and proper sentences adjudged to their transgression. Some would always be found ignorant enough not to comprehend their own well-being secured in the common weal-others wilful enough to provide for themselves at the expense of the common weal, and therefore measures must be taken that the well-informed and well disposed suffer not at the hands of the ignorant and the wicked.-Judgment and discrimination must take place, or the whole platform of a well-ordered state will be speedily undermined." P. 115.

The legal part of his audience must, doubtless, be much amazed by this magnificent discovery, that the law cannot be