of Edward
Irving--fanatic, saint, and martyr!--the man who, having prayed that
God would speak again in prophecy, would not deny the power of prayer
by refusing to believe that his prayer was answered, even though the
prophecy was unintelligible. And later, when the passionate cadences
of the spirit were in English, and were found to be only trite or
foolish words, repeated and repeated in a wailing chant by some
sincere, hysterical woman, he still believed that a new day of
Pentecost had dawned upon a sinful world! "For," said he, "when I
asked for bread, would God give me a stone?"

Henry Roberts went to hear the great preacher and forgot his haste to
receive his little legacy so that he might hurry back to the tanyard.
Irving's eloquence entranced him, and it alone would have held him
longer than the time he had allowed himself for absence from the
tannery. But it happened that he was present on that Lord's Day when,
with a solemn and dreadful sound, the Tongues first spoke in that dingy
Chapel in Regent Square, and no man who heard that Sound ever forgot
it! The mystical youth from America was shaken to his very soul. He
stayed on in London for nearly a year, immersing himself in those tides
of emotion which swept saner minds than his from the somewhat dry land
of ordinary human experience. That no personal revelation was made to
him, that the searing benediction of the Tongues had not touched his
own awed, uplifted brow, made no difference: he believed!--and prayed
God to help any lingering unbelief that might be holding him back from
deeper knowledges. To the end of his days he was Edward Irving's
follower; and when he went back to America it was as a missionary of
the new sect, that called itself by the sounding title of The Catholic
Apostolic Church. In Lower Ripple he preached to any who would listen
to him the doctrine of the new Pentecost. At first curiosity brought
him hearers; his story of the Voice, dramatic and mysterious, was
listened to in doubting silence; then disapproved of--so hotly
disapproved of that he was sessioned and read out of Church.

But in those days in western Pennsylvania, mere living was too
engrossing a matter for much thought of "tongues" and "voices"; it was
easier, when a man talked of dreams and visions, not to argue with him,
but to say that he was "crazy." So by and by Henry Roberts's heresy
was forgotten and his religion merely smiled at. Certainly it struck
no roots