Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/61

Rh been a year in London, when he published a collection of sermons in a closely printed octavo volume of 600 pages. These discourses, which had already been preached in Hatton Garden, he afterwards prepared for the press ; and as no ordinary title-page was sufficient for him, the work was thus inscribed, " For the Oracles of God, Four Orations: for Judgment to come, an Argument in Nine Parts." They were not sermons; he wished them to be considered something better; and the quaint title with which they startled the first glance of the reader, had cost him no little deliberation. And yet, they were sermons after all. It must be acknowledged, however, that as such they were no ordinary productions; for with all their literary faults and oddities, they contained an amount of rich original thought and stirring eloquence such as few pulpit productions of the present day can exhibit. This was indeed apparent at the first opening of the volume, where the following magnificent exordium caught the eye, and rivetted the attention. It would be difficult, however, to conceive its full power when it was first delivered in the pulpit, and when it pealed upon the ears of the congregation like the stately solemn sound of a church organ uttering the notes of the Te Deum:

"There was a time when each revelation of the Word of God had an introduction into this earth which neither permitted men to doubt whence it came nor wherefore it was sent. If, at the giving of each several truth, a star was not lighted up in heaven, as at the birth of the Prince of Truth, there was done upon the earth a wonder, to make her children listen to the message of their Maker. The Almighty made bare his arm, and through mighty acts shown by his holy servants, gave demonstration of his truth, and found for it a sure place among the other matters of human knowledge and belief.

"But now the miracles of God have ceased, and nature, secure and unmolested, is no longer called on for testimonies to her Creator's voice. No burning bush draws the footsteps to his presence chamber; no invisible voice holds the ear awake; no hand cometh forth from the obscure to write his purposes in letters of flame. The vision is shut up, and the testimony is sealed, and the word of the Lord is ended; and this solitary volume, with its chapters and verses, is the sum total of ail for which the chariot of heaven made so many visits to the earth, and the Son of God himself tabernacled and dwelt among us."

The announcement of a work from the press by the Rev. Edward Irving, acted upon the critics as a view-halloo does upon a band of huntsmen beating about for game, but at a loss as to its whereabouts. As yet, they had got nothing but the tidings of the diurnals, and the scraps of the penny-a liners, which they had regarded as the mere yelping of the curs of the pack ; but now the start was made in earnest, and off went the hunters in full cry. Never, indeed, had a volume of sermons, even from Chalmers himself, excited such a stir, and every review was immediately at work, from the Jupiter Tonans of the Quarterly, to the small shrill whistle of the weekly periodical. And never, perhaps, on any one occasion was criticism so perplexed and contradictory, so that Mr. Irving was represented as the truest of talented men and the most deceptive of quacks a profound thinker, and a shallow smatterer a Demosthenes of the real sublime, and a Bombastes Furioso of mere sound and nonsense. It often happened, too, that the very same paragraphs which were quoted by one set of critics as master-pieces of eloquence, were adduced by another class to prove that his oratory was nothing but sheer noise and emptiness. And whereabouts lay the truth? With both parties. Scarcely was there an excel-