Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/57

Rh ment at Kirkcaldy, where he also kept boarders, and employed his leisure hours in private tuition. In this way he was occupied nearly seven years at Kirkcaldy, attending the Divinity Hall of Edinburgh as what is termed an "irregular student;" that is to say, giving attendance a certain number of weeks annually for six years, instead of four complete winters; this accommodation being made in favour of those students for the church who occupy settled situations at a distance from the college. During all this period his application to study must have been intense, and his progress considerable, though silent and unobstrusive. Of this he afterwards gave full proof, by his acquaintance with several of the living languages, as well as the wide range which his reading had comprised. At an early period, also, the subject of religion had occupied much of his solicitude; and, when only seventeen years old, he was appointed one of the directors of a missionary society. This fact he afterwards stated more than once, when his violent invectives against the secularity of missions made his attachment to missionary enterprise itself be called in question.

After completing the appointed course of study, Mr. Irving was licensed as a preacher, in his native town of Annan. But the prospect of a church was dim and distant, for he had secured no patron; indeed, even long before, he had regarded patronage as the great abomination of the Kirk of Scotland, while in those days popular suffrage went but a little way in the election of a minister. The inaction of an unpatronized probationer was, however, too much for one of his chivalrous love of enterprise, and he resolved to become a missionary, and follow the footsteps of Henry Martyn. Persia was to be the field of his labour; and he began to qualify himself by studying the languages of the East. It was, perhaps, as well that the experiment of what effect a career in the "land of the sun" would have produced upon such an inflammable brain and sturdy independent spirit was not to be tried. At all events, it is certain that his course would have been out of the ordinary track, whether for evil or for good. While thus employed, he was invited by Dr. Andrew Thomson to preach for him in St. George's church, Edinburgh, with the information that he would have Dr. Chalmers, then in search of an assistant, for his auditor. Mr. Irving complied; but after weeks had elapsed, in which he heard nothing further of Dr. Chalmers, he threw himself at haphazard into a steam-vessel at Greenock, resolving to go wherever it carried him, previous to his departure for the east, on which he had now fully determined. He landed at Belfast, and rambled for two or three weeks over the north of Ireland, where he associated with the peasantry, slept in their cabins, and studied with intense interest the striking peculiarities of the Irish character. During this eccentric tour, a letter reached him at Coleraine, that quickly brought his ramble to a close: it was a letter from Dr. Chalmers, inviting him to Glasgow, for the purpose of becoming his assistant. To the great metropolis of northern commerce he accordingly hurried; and true to his anti-patronage principles, which were now brought to the test, he stipulated that he should be proved and accepted by the people as well as their minister, before he entered the assistantship. The trial was made, and was successful. Dr. Chalmers himself had made the choice, and this was enough to satisfy the most scrupulous.

It would have been difficult to have selected a pair so unlike each other, and yet so congenial, as Dr. Chalmers and his assistant. The latter, now twenty-eight years old, had at last found a sphere in which he could display, not only his