THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR JANUARY 1829.

Art. I.—The Last Days: a Discourse on the Evil Character of these our Times: proving them to be the "Perilous Times" of the "Last Days." By the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. Minister of the National Scotch Church, Regent Square. 8vo. pp. 586. Price 12s. London, 1828.

A PORTENTOUS title, framed out of a blunder, and pointed with a pun! Mr. Irving has affixed to his volume this motto: "The vile person shall no more be called LIBERAL."* (Isa. xxxii. 5.) Some wag must have helped him to this text; which, in the sense intended by the inspired Prophet, has no bearing whatever upon the subject of the Orator's philippic against modern Liberalism. But he has done not less violence to St. Paul, than to Isaiah. The Apostle, in writing to his son Timothy, contemplating his own course as nearly finished, warns him of the impending difficulties and perils which would call for all his diligence and fortitude, after he should be himself removed from the field of conflict. Under the expression, the Last Days', he evidently comprehended the Christian dispensation, which had then commenced; and the perilous times are as evidently spoken of, not as a future and specific epoch, but as incident to that whole period. It is, moreover, impossible for any soberminded person to read the sequel of the epistle, without inferring that Timothy had personally to do with the perils predicted, and that the solemn charge given to him by the aged Apostle was intended to prepare him for encountering them.

* Lowth renders the verse: "The fool shall no longer be called honourable, and the niggard shall no more be called liberal." Our Translators have evidently used the word liberal, as Lowth has, in the sense of bountiful.

VOL. I.-N.S.

B

"But watch thou in all things."* Mr. Irving, overlooking the scope of the passage, professes to have proved, that the perilous times against which Timothy was to watch, were not to occur for nearly eighteen hundred years, that they specifically denote the beginning of the nineteenth century! For thus he argues.

There are, and there can be, only two opinions with respect to this point; the first, that they are the last days of the Jewish; and the second, that they are the last days of the Christian dispensation. Of those, the former has been taken up by the opposers of the personal reign of Christ, and urged with great ingenuity, for the end and purpose of getting all the allusions to the coming of Christ crushed into the events attendant upon the destruction of Jerusalem, which was typical thereof. p. 11.

Mr. Irving, after exposing the foolishness' of this opinion, of course triumphs in the supposed alternative. A little better information, however, would have taught him, that there can be, and that there is, a third opinion; the opinion of Calvin, and, we will add, of all judicious expositors; that neither the last days of the Jewish, nor those of the Christian dispensation are intended, but the times of the Christian economy generally. The expression, the last days', is often used indefinitely in reference to future times; but, whenever it has a definite sense, the times of the Messiah are clearly referred to. And before Mr. Irving so rashly and confidently affirmed, that 'the last days' were to be 'evil, and not good', he would have done well to look somewhat more closely into the New Testament, where he will find it stated, that "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers, by the prophets, hath IN THESE LAST DAYS spoken unto us by

* That this may not be thought an unsupported interpretation, we give Calvin's annotation on the passage. Ergo admonet Paulus Ecclesiam fore obnoxiam gravibus morbis, qui raram Pastorum fidem, sedulitatem, vigilantiam, prudentiam, et constantiam indefessam requirant, acsi Timotheo præciperet ut se paret ad certamina quæ ardua ipsum manent, plenaque maximæ solicitudinis....Sub EXTREMIS DIEBUS comprehendit universum Christianæ Ecclesiæ statum. Neque vero ætatem suam cum nostra comparat, sed potius qualis futura sit regni Christi conditio docet. Multi enim imaginabantur beatam nescio quam. pacem et immunem omni molestia. Breviter, intelligit non ita bene etiam sub Evangelio res fore compositas, ut profligatis omnibus vitiis floreant omne genus virtutes. Quare Pastores Ecclesiæ Christianæ non minus habituros negotii cum improbis et sceleratis hominibus quàm: olim habuerint Prophetæ et pii Sacerdotes. Unde sequitur, non esse otiandi tempus."

his Son". To speak of the last days' as characteristically evil times, is, in fact, to contradict the whole tenor of Prophecy, and that in the face of Apostolic interpretation. The last times of Prophecy were those in which Christ was manifested in the flesh for our sakes, and in which, being by the right hand of the Father exalted, and having received the promise of the Holy Ghost, he shed it forth on his Church on the day of Pentecost. They are the times of " the ministration of the Spirit", so "glorious" in comparison with "the ministration of condemnation", the dispensation that was done away t; the times of the final dispensation, that of the New Covenant.

And now we pray our readers to observe, in Mr. Irving's own language, how distinctly these things are written in the Scriptures; how a simple reference to the concordance, and a mere 'perusal of the texts as they occur, will serve to clear up these prophetic matters over which it is the custom of self-sufficient men to cast so much doubt and ambiguity.'

66

But what are these characteristics of the last and perilous, times, which Mr. Irving considers as so exclusively applicable to the times in which we live? As laid down by St. Paul, they would not seem to be so peculiar to any times, or so foreign from human nature under any external circumstances, as to form a very distinguishing feature of any precise era. Men," we are told," shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, &c." Quis enim hypocrita non superbus', we may ask with Calvin in his annotation on the passage. Quis non amans 'sui? non aliorum contemptor? non ferox ac crudelis? non 'fraudulentus?' When was the Church free from hypocrites having a form of godliness? When were no tares mingled with the wheat in the sacred enclosure? Mr. Irving would find it a difficult task to shew, to what times, from the Apostolic age to the present, such evils and perils were not incident. But really we scarcely know how to deal with an opinion so exorbitantly wild and perverse as that which, overlooking the melancholy comment upon the sacred text which is supplied by the pages of ecclesiastical history,—the corruption of Christianity which ensued upon the enthronement of its bishops,-the flagrant disorders and relaxation of morals which disgraced the rival churches of Rome, and Byzantium, and Alexandria, and Carthage, would identify the description specifically with the pre

* Heb. i. 1. See also Acts, ii. 17. and 1 Pet. i. 20. In his citations from the Old Testament, how comes Mr. Irving to have overlooked the description of the latter days in Joel ii. ?

+ 2 Cor. iii. 7-11.

sent state of the Christian church. Unhappily, the palpable absurdity of an opinion affords no security against its spreading among the ill-informed; and we must therefore proceed to shew, upon what grounds the Author rests his belief, that we are hurrying headlong, and as it were absorbed, stern-foremost, into the jaws of an almost inevitable whirlpool.' That Mr. Irving may not complain of being misrepresented, we shall lay before our readers a few specimens of his application of the words of St. Paul to the present evil times.

Having glanced at the operation of this principle of selfishness, in what is commonly called the world, but which we consider to be a true, integrant, and responsible part of the church of Christ, we are now to shew its application to the religious world; for of its application to the commercial and political world no one entertaineth a doubt. Within the last forty or fifty years, from the time that the late revival of religion began to take effect, the personal hath become everything, the common almost nothing. The state of our own souls, the only question; the state of the church a very secondary one, if a question at all. In respect to preaching, the consideration hath been, How did it bear upon myself? not, how did it bear upon the glory of Christ? How felt I? not, how accorded it with the truth of the orthodox faith? Hence arose that substitution of frames and feelings for the sacraments and ordinances of the church, to which our fathers were wont to look, and that preference of exciting and rousing declamations, to the opening of texts and doctrines of the Scriptures. The patient perseverance of our fathers to set forth the truth, and separate it on every side from the error, hath given way to a certain loose indifference to the truth, and regard only to that which doth us good. Men speak of a sermon in the same language, and perhaps with the same gesture of the hand, smiting the body in the same place, with which they speak of a dinner. "It did me good, sir; I felt the better for it." Against all which, the selfish or personal form that religion hath taken within the last thirty or forty years, I object not in its place, but grieve that it should have usurped the whole, and eclipsed the person of Christ, or eclipsed it all save that fragment which every one can apply to himself; that it hath extinguished the love and admiration of the purpose of God, as a manifestation of his own being, and of his work as an accomplishment of his own glory, and turned it all into a plan or scheme for doing so much good to so many men.' pp. 45, 46.

And now to shew how this characteristic (covetousness) applies to the world called religious, few words are necessary: you have only to be present and hear what is the first subject of conversation in all their meetings, and the great theme of their delight: is it not the state of their funds? What the great end of their speeches? the increase of donations and subscriptions. What the great labour of their travellers, and what the proof of their success? the amount of their ingatherings. What the qualification for honourable office? the amount of your contributions. What the great fear and apprehension? lest

the funds should fall off. What, in short, the bulwark of their strength, and the anchor of their hope, and the assurance of their faith? If these things do not betray a covetous spirit in this religious world, I know not where it is to be met with elsewhere. I could never find in my heart to accuse the other world of covetousness, if I must acquit this world. But, dear brethren, I am not here to be afraid to speak the truth of either, nor desire at all to screen either. For, as hath been said, they are to me alike integrant parts of the church of Christ, to whom I am bound to fulfil my office of preaching. And I must say, that the art of raising money hath been carried to a refinement in the religious world, which I have never seen any thing equal to elsewhere. They say, for the end of doing good with it: so would the merchants say. They say, for the spreading of the Gospel: I have shewn that it is never contemplated by our Lord in his instructions, as at all a means of spreading the Gospel. But if it be as a means to a most excellent end they seek it, why hear we little or nothing comparatively of the glorious end; nothing about the other means, but all, or almost all, about this one paltry means? But, as I have said, it is not my purpose to argue, or justify my argument, but simply to shew out the fact for your preservation against the perilous times. And no one who hath an eye to observe, or an ear to hear, but will justify me in saying, that in comparison with any former age of the Protestant church, the covetousness of the religious societies of the religious world passeth all bounds, and is only to be found paralleled by the zeal of the begging friars, seeking alms to enrich their overgrown and luxurious convents. Against which error I warn you to be upon your guard most strenuously; and to set the mammon of unrighteousness very low; in its proper place, to make the proper use of it; but surely to esteem any gift of the Spirit, such as prayer, or instruction, or admonition, or reproof, as a far more valuable contribution.' pp. 52, 53.

*

In former times, ere the age of selfishness came in, men, being full of the eucharistical spirit, would devote of their substance to build a church, offering it in faith that the Lord would assemble a people, and set his name therein; or they would found a lectureship in a church already built, in the faith of the ordinance of preaching; or taking pity upon the poor of Christ's church, they would build almshouses, or mortify sums of money, or otherwise present of their substance to the house of God, which is the church of Christ. I know that these things went often to excess, and were by Satan converted to superstitious uses: but the very abuse is a proof of the superabundance of the spirit out of which it arose. Almost all these things are done away with: the whole zeal hath gone into another channel; for the foundation of schools to teach mechanical knowledge, for the providing of apparatus to such institutions, and founding lectureships and libraries, and whatever can advance knowledge independent upon religion. And those endowments which the piety of our fathers appropriated to the church, are continually envied, and threatened with sacrilegious spoliation. It is so also in state matters: the voluntary services to defend the country in war are now no more in being; the voluntary services of justices of the peace to administer justice, is continually quarrelled with. The