Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/60

 does, to which so many in strange infatuation have committed themselves; a principle which will necessarily prove fatal to those who hold it. It measures faithfulness to God in others by an unrighteous standard of its own, by which standard also it measures its own delinquencies. It cries out “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we;” it casts out their “brethren for the Lord’s name’s sake,” making that holy name the cloak of its unrighteousness, and says “Let the Lord be glorified.” (Is. Ixvi, 5). Eighteen years has this course been run, which has withered out spiritual affection, and fostered nothing but pride, leaving behind it a system of discipline that places acknowledged saints walking in the fear of God, owned and blessed by Him, on a par with the openly vicious, and the avowed denier of the Lord Jesus, for both are equally excommunicated by it. Is this walking in the fear of God? Is this honouring the name of Jesus? Alas! for the wickedness and the delusion, where Satan triumphs and hell rejoices.

In the Word of God, a great deal is written about the dangers to which the saints would be exposed from two different sources,—the heresies of some, and the love of pre-eminence in others—each developing a schismatic spirit, the one centering in evil living or false doctrine, and the other in a falsely assumed control; both alike endanger the oneness of the spirit which the Church was commanded to “keep” as “the apple of the eye;” to guard it for the honor of His name, who would show to the world “how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity,” and who pronounces his reprobation on those who sow discord among brethren, seeing motes in another’s eye, and failing to see the beams in their own. The discipline commanded in the Word of God is plain and unmistakeable. It meets the evil-doer and says, “put away from yourselves that wicked person.” It meets the man “who brings not the doctrine of Christ,” and says “receive him not into thy house, nor bid him God speed;” but as if to prevent the fratricidal use made of this most plain and important passage, it explains what the Spirit means when he speaks of one who brings not the doctrine of Christ, and shows him to be none other than “a deceiver and an Antichrist.” It meets the man who, to serve his love of filthy lucre, or his love of power and influence, comes in as a schismatic into the Church of Christ; and it commands distinctly that no fellowship be had with him, for such ”are subverted and have sinned, being condemned of them selves.” To this the attention of those might profitably be directed, who advocate the present schismatic discipline. Let those tremble who use Scripture language and trample in the dust the precepts of the Lord; who