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This LIFE OF IRVING, the biography by Arnold Dallimore, is an easily read and moving story, told with sympathy and honesty. It also seeks to deal accurately with the extraordinary claims which became associated with Irving's later ministry (he was tried for heresy and removed from the ministry of the Church of Scotland). Certainly Irving drew the affection of most of the evangelical Christians who knew him. The ministry of Edward Irving in London, from its dramatic beginning in 1822 to its tragic close in 1834, when the preacher was only 42, became a talking-point of the 19th Century. And two of the ablest literary figures of the last century, Margaret Oliphant and Thomas Carlyle, ensured that the memory of those remarkable years would not be lost. Arnold Dallimore, the biographer of George Whitefield, came to the conviction that although much has been written on Irving since Oliphant and Carlyle, there was need for a new popular account. The result was THE LIFE OF IRVING. Strangely, the same spiritual issues which were raised by Irving's ministry have again become prominent in recent years.
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