Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/59

 against that unholy and malicious feature of Darbyism that seems to occupy pre-eminently, the place of the railer and the accuser of the Brethren. We remind the people of God of that solemn word of the Master, addressed to all, “it were better that a millstone were hanged about a man’s neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of the Lord’s little ones;” but what shall we say of a discipline that is maintained by falsehood, and by the suppression of the truth? and of a system that makes such a discipline possible, nay more, necessary to maintain it? But thus out of theories implying the greatest spirituality and heavenly-mindedness, has been developed a system wherein the worst evils of human nature, those defiling things that proceed from the heart of man, are brought into exercise and sanctified in being made the foundation of union and communion at the Supper of the Lord—a system that falsely charges godly men with blasphemy, and then makes the acceptance of the charge a ground of church fellowship!!

The separation from Bethesda which was commenced after the writing of the Letter of the Ten, and maintained the more firmly even after the judgment given at the church meetings in December, 1848, was, as we have seen, not to be confined to those meeting in Bethesda alone. This would have been evil enough; but it was determined to carry out this discipline on all who agree, not to sanction in word and practice this wholesale excommunication. The natural and necessary effect of these separations, by which the only elements that stood in the way of absolute exclusiveness and sectarianism were eliminated from them, was, that schism ripened fast. The notion of being “a body” which should comprise all those assemblies who acted with Mr. Darby became a more and more clearly developed theory from this time. This change, in fact, (though denied in theory perhaps by some) at once reduced those under its influence to the standing of a schismatic body, and presents Darbyism as but another of the many sects they had so protested against.

Allusion will have to be made to this notion of a corporately responsible “body” hereafter; for that which is here seen in its earliest stage, will be found to attain a far fuller developement before this history comes to a close. This new principle was however necessary in order to carry out the new discipline which had been introduced, and the system and the discipline acted and re-acted on each other. It has been observed that “No very lasting evil arises from the wrong acquittal of an individual, so long as the standard itself by which right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are measured, is not made crooked.” But this is just what this terrible