Divine Healing: The Formative Years: 1830–1880

Theological Roots in the Transatlantic World

Robinson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781621895862
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

Divine healing is commonly practiced today throughout Christendom and plays a significant part in the advance of Christianity in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Such wide acceptance of the doctrine within Protestantism did not come without hesitation or controversy. The prevailing view saw suffering as a divine chastening designed for growth in personal holiness, and something to be faced with submission and endurance. It was not until the nineteenth century that this understanding began to be seriously questioned. This book details those individuals and movements that proved radical enough in their theology and practice to play a part in overturning mainstream opinion on suffering. James Robinson opens up a treasury of largely unknown or forgotten material that extends our understanding of Victorian Christianity and the precursors to the Pentecostal revival that helped shape Christianity in the twentieth century.

1

The Healing Ministry in Irvingism

Irvingite Healings1

In the years 1830–35, the religious world of Britain was alerted to a charismatic revival that predated the Pentecostal movement by more than seventy years.2 For Mrs Oliphant, the biographer of Edward Irving, the charismata witnessed then were “an agitating and extraordinary chapter in the history of the modern church . . . Almost every notable Christian man of the time took the matter into devout and anxious consideration.”3 She commented on one doctrinal position that came to be espoused: “the idea that disease itself was sin, and that no man with faith in his Lord ought to be overpowered by it, was one of the principles which came to be adopted in the newly-separated community.”4 The community in question was that made up of the 800 who followed Edward Irving from the National Scotch Church in Regent Street, London in 1832, to form a new congregation that was to form the nucleus of the new Catholic Apostolic Church [CAC]. The Presbytery of London had earlier repudiated the charismatic manifestations that started in 1831 in the Regent Street church as unscriptural and contrary to the subordinate standards of the Church of Scotland.

The lower Clyde region of western Scotland was the first to witness a flurry of charismatic manifestations. On 28 March 1830 a young woman, Mary Campbell, lay dying from tuberculosis and while praying with her sister she began to speak “in an unknown tongue, to the great astonishment of all who heard, and to her own great edification and enjoyment in God.”5 The following month, James Macdonald in Port Glasgow, also had an experience that he construed as the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Within minutes he went to the room of his dying sister, Margaret, and commanded her in the words of Acts 3:6, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” She arose, instantly recovered, prompting him to write to Mary Campbell, “conveying to her the same command which had been so effectual in the case of his sister.”6 Mary later recounted, “I was verily made in a moment to stand upon my feet, leap and walk, sing and rejoice.”7 A few evenings later James and his twin brother spoke in tongues for the first time, and the following evening they both spoke and interpreted tongues. Thus, in the words of Mrs Oliphant, “A new miraculous dispensation was, to the belief of many, inaugurated in all the power of apostolic times by these waters of the West.”8 When Mary Campbell moved to Helensburgh in 1830 crowds gathered round “the young attractive rapt enthusiast.”9 Numbered among them were merchants, divinity students and advocates and, much to the disquiet of the neighbouring minister at Greenock, “gentlemen come from Edinburgh who . . . bow to her decisions with the utmost deference as those of one inspired by Heaven.”10 But the news emanating from Scotland found its greatest impact by reaching the ears of Edward Irving in London. As the Christian Observer, the voice of moderate evangelicalism expressed it at the time, “[T]he new notions which have convulsed the Church of Scotland . . . are beginning to distract the Church of England.”11 The periodical judged that the outburst would prove disruptive, but short-lived, in asking: “Do the asserters of the new miracles believe that any man will credit the Port Glasgow prodigies ten years hence”?12

What explanation can be given for this sparsely populated, rural area of Scotland, becoming the focus of such dramatic scenes? Strachan has plotted the developments towards the end of the 1820s in the Gare Loch area of the lower Clyde that were to launch Edward Irving on the trajectory he came to take so enthusiastically.13 When John McLeod Campbell was inducted in 1825 to the parish ministry of Row (Rhu), a hamlet at the head of the Gare Loch, few could have envisaged the outcome. As in much of Scotland, the Calvinism of double predestination hung heavily on the shoulders of Campbell’s parishioners. A narrow, legalistic mindset, furthered by a lack of assurance of salvation, seemed to have sapped their religious energy. Campbell began to teach both the universality of the atonement and the assurance of personal salvation, positions that were to lead to a heresy trial in 1831 and his deposition by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The outcome, in the words of one contemporary reviewer, was the beginning of “no small stir round the Gare Loch and all over the land. There was an awakening of religious life there, which got its first impulse from the Row-kirk. Greenock, Glasgow, Edinburgh thrilled as with the gush of a fresh spring-tide.”14 Mary Campbell and her sister Isabella, both consumptives, were among those stirred by their minister’s preaching.

Alexander John Scott was to prove another link in the chain of causation. A son of the manse, he was strongly influenced by his father, the Rev. John Scott of Greenock. Old Dr. Scott, unusually for his time, wearied of the neglect of teaching on the Holy Spirit in the Church of Scotland. He protested, “It is melancholy to think how little the offices of the Holy Spirit are known, or considered, or improved. How can reading, or hearing, or catechising, or praying even, be profitable, while this is the case?”15 Little wonder then that he encouraged his own family and congregation to “go to the school of the Holy Spirit” and also that his son should take up the challenge. It was while on a preaching tour of west Scotland in 1828 that Edward Irving, minister of the Scots Kirk in Regent Square, London, first met Scott. He was so favourably impressed—“a most precious youth—the finest and strongest faculty for theology I ever met with”16—that he invited Scott to be his missionary assistant. During his assistantship between 1828 and 1830, Scott became convinced that the charismata manifested in the early church ought to be still operative. He tried hard to persuade Irving of this position but, much as he admired Scott, Irving was not completely won over. While visiting Scotland in the autumn of 1829, Scott spent time seeking out those affected by the lower Clyde revival, among them Mary Campbell. He was coming at the time to the conviction that the work of the Spirit in regeneration and Spirit-baptism were not to be conflated, a view opposed to the Reformed understanding and one that came later to have a defining salience for the later Holiness and Pentecostal movements. While he could not convince Mary on this point, she was persuaded to study the Acts of the Apostles. Through her study of Acts and John’s Gospel, she came to the conclusion that it was only by the exercise of perfect faith and the power of the Holy Spirit that the human Jesus was kept free from sin. A pivotal text for her was Acts 10:38: “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the Devil; for God was with him.” When she was informed that Irving had been preaching such a doctrine in London for some years, it was to him that she turned to explore the implications of her fresh insight.

Edward Irving now entered centre stage. After serving his assistantship under the highly renowned Thomas Chalmers at St. John’s, Glasgow, Irving received the call in 1821 to the Caledonian Chapel in London. His powerful oratory began to draw such large crowds from all sections of society that a larger church had to be built. It was completed in 1827 at Regent Square and was known as the “National Scotch Church.” His controversial views on the nature of Christ’s humanity combined with Scott’s affirmative attitude to the charisimata carried the potential for a volatile brew, needing only a catalyst to produce a heady reaction. Mary Campbell’s letter to him provided that. In her letter she wrote of her new conviction in the context of her wasting illness. In an article written for the new Fraser’s Magazine, Irving ha...