418 IRVING received, some of the persons associated with Mr. Irving in the study of prophecy, and in the hope of the second coining of Christ, deemed it proper to investigate the matter. Accordingly, several gentlemen residing in London made a journey to Glasgow to inquire into the nature of these phenomena. After a careful scrutiny these persons were satisfied that it was in reality a revival of the " spirit- ual gifts" common in the first ages of the church, and specially referred to in St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians. Soon after the same phenomena appeared in London, at first in private meetings of members of the estab- lished church, and afterward in Irving's con- gregation. A full account of these " spiritual gifts" was given by Irving himself in "Eraser's Magazine" in 1830. The consequence of his course in this matter was the loss of his great popularity, and an opposition in his own con- gregation. His writings were censured by the general assembly of 1831, and in 1832 this op- position resulted in his expulsion by the trus- tees from the building which had been erected for his use, after a hearing before the London presbytery. His adherents, numbering about SCO communicants, met at first in a hall in Gray's Inn road. They resolved to build, and money was collected for the purpose, but were forbidden by utterances which they regarded as divine; and after some months they hired a house in Newman street, with a hall which had been used by West the artist as a picture gallery, the house being taken for a parsonage. Irving was now (March, 1833) arraigned before the presbytery of Annan in Scotland upon a charge of heresy and irregularity, and de- posed. His defences are among his best ora- torical efforts. The portion of the congrega- tion that adhered to him retained at first the Presbyterian order of worship and constitu- tion of membership ; hut this was early modi- fied through the agency of the prophetical utterances which abounded among them. Attention had been directed to the restora- tion of apostles and prophets as the most fun- damental constituent of the church ; and some time in 1832, at a meeting for prayer held in a private house, it is asserted, one of those pres- ent was declared in the word of prophecy to be an apostle, and exhorted to the exercise of his office, in conveying "the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands." When Mr. Irving had been deposed in Scotland he ceased, in obedience to what he believed to be a spirit- ual utterance, from fulfilling priestly functions, confining himself to the work of a preacher or deacon until he should receive a new ordina- tion from the spirit. On April 5, 1833, he be- lieved that this supernatural ordination was I conferred, when by the hands of the apostle he was constituted " angel," or chief pastor or bishop of the church. Wilks says ("Life of Edward Irving," London, 1854) : " It seems to be generally supposed that Irving appointed the apostles, not that he was appointed by them." The facts are the reverse of this. The movement did not begin in his church, nor as the result of his teaching, although he at an early period gave his adhesion to it. That he held a prominent position in the movement is manifest, but the form which it took was not the result of any plan or theory of his, nor was it fully and finally developed until some years after his death. Not long after these events his health failed. In the autumn of 1834 he set out, in obedience as he supposed to the word of the Holy Spirit, on a journey to Scotland, where he died. His per- sonal characteristics were striking. He was at least six feet high; his limbs were well pro- portioned ; black hair clustered in profusion over his lofty forehead, and descended in curls upon his massive shoulders; his eyes were dark and piercing, though affected by a squint ; on his lips sat the firmness of a ruler and trem- bled the sensibility of a poet. He associated and lived in the world without restraint, join- ing in the forms and fashions of a mixed so- ciety, and was remarkable at the same time for blamelessness of life. His morals were un- tainted, his conscientiousness exact. A collec- tion of his "Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses" was published in 1828 (3 vols. 8vo, London). Since his decease two series of his works have been published under the editorship of his nephew, the Rev. G. Carlylo ; the one entitled "The Collected Writings of Edward Irving" (5 vols., London, 1864-'5); the other, " The Prophetical Works of Edward Ir- ving" (2 vols., London, 1867-'70). Mrs. Oli- phant's memoir of him (1862) is very complete, and in the main accurate ; and a review of it in the "New Englander" for July and October, 1863, supplements it in a very satisfactory manner. The church in Newman street be- came the centre of a widely extended commu- nity, which began very rapidly to spread throughout the British isles. In the next two years after Irving's death additional persons were called to be apostles, until the number of twelve had been completed, when they were as a whole set apart, or separated to the work to which they had been called, and grad- ually the organization of the church was per- fected. The constitution of this body claims to be the perfect development of that which was established in the beginning of the Chris- tian church. Its characteristic feature is the fourfold ministry of " apostles, prophets, evan- gelists, and pastors and teachers," referred to by St. Paul in chapter iv. of his Epistle to the Ephesians. Within this fourfold classification are comprehended the three orders of the church catholic, bishops, priests, and deacons. The collective apostolate is the head of the episcopate, and holds the relation of centre of unity to the whole church. The body declines any name but that of the " Catholic Apostolic Church," holding this not exclusively of all other churches, but as the only name by which the church should consent to be known. The
