Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/27

 word used would imply; but Jesus is able fully, perfectly, and absolutely, (συμπαθειν, Heb. iv. 15.) to suffer and sympathize with. We feel this an important point—we all need sympathy, we crave it, and Jesus in divine love has given us himself and his heart, that heart of God, which is and ever was afflicted in all the afflictions of his people, of old suffering with Israel and now infinitely more so with those who are members of his body; but it is in the fact that he as the God-man suffered being tempted, that we have to look for the full consolation, that the knowledge of the sympathy of Jesus gives. Failing to see this, Irving sought to enhance the sense of the sympathy of the Lord, by making him peccable though sinless; and those who followed him, by giving him, a class of sufferings under the hand of God irrespective of the atonement, of which the New Testament knows nothing. As we have stated, the practical difference between Mr. Newton and Mr. Darby is one of time; the former having regarded our Lord as in grace coming into the circumstances indicated at his birth, taking them up in incarnation; while the latter causes it to commence at a later period; but both views equally separating these experiences and sufferings from his atoning work, and from those sufferings that came down on him as the sin offering of his people. But what, we would ask, is it, that makes a certain measure of this theory blasphemy when taught by Mr. Newton, and “precious truth” when taught by Mr. Darby? in the one case a heresy so poisonous that contact with it would defile even to a thousandth degree, and in the other a truth wholesome and profitable? We ask that these things be weighed in an even balance by the saints. God will do so in his own time, and in the meanwhile let none be deceived by fair words and smooth speeches. For ourselves, we would seek to warn all against such unholy speculations in connexion with Him whose name is Wonderful, and would earnestly impress on all saints, the absolute necessity of our aiming after more adoring contemplation of that Great Wonder of all wonders—the God-man, Christ Jesus, and may such contemplations take the place of all those unprofitable unhallowing theories, which, in ages past, made the church an arena for every thing that was unholy and unchristlike, and which of late years have drawn the minds and hearts of thousands from heaven to earth, from holiness and love to strife and profanity.

We here bring our relation of matters as they occurred in Plymouth, in the first and in the second stage of its history, to a close, on which God in letters of fire had written ; wherein original principles of truth had been violated, and the command to walk in brotherly love, trampled in the dust. Still God is true, though every man be found a liar, and his