Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/79

 looking at Him as the impersonation of the heavenly body, of which He is the Head; or as King of Israel, the Head of His faithful people in the latter day, when the remnant of Israel, having learnt grace, and having the spirit of supplication poured on them from on high, will look on Him whom they pierced, and mourn, worshipping at the feet of Him whom they crucified and slew. This explains that which meets us so frequently in the Psalms, for the interpretation of which this third class of sufferings and experiences has been invented, whether by Mr. Newton or by Mr. Darby. We allude to this, because there is much sweetness and comfort to the child of God in realizing that his Jesus thus gives utterance to the groanings and sorrows of all His redeemed ones, whether in their sorrows from the ungodly, or in their suffering under the loving discipline of their Father in heaven, and of this we would seek by all means not to rob any of the saints. We are commanded to weep with those who weep, and this none the less because the tears are often the result of the chastenings of a Father; and so Jesus weeps with those that weep, and rejoices with those that rejoice, and the expression of all this we find in those beautiful experiences of the Psalms, which have only to be rightly understood to prove a feast of fat things to the saints of God.

There is, however, all the difference imaginable between experience so entered into, and the ascribing to him what is conveyed under the following or similar sentences, when personally he is said to have come “under the exercises of a soul learning when a sinner the difference of good and evil.” It is this false experience which is attributed to Christ that has the terrible danger of undermining the whole work of the cross. Mr. Newton was doubtless at heart sound, even when intellectually we find him overwhelmed with the subtleties of a speculative teaching that aroused the attention of godly sober-minded Christians, and led the brethren in Bethesda to feel justified in the extreme measure of separating from him. And if Mr. Darby and his followers had not excommunicated themselves from all but themselves, that which justified the course pursued towards Mr. Newton in 1848, would necessitate a similar course towards Mr. Darby in 1866. The doctrine is identical in this, its main feature, that Christ is personally placed under the judgment of God, otherwise than atoningly. This was the real poison in the doctrine of the one, and it is the real poison in that of the other. We do not consider Mr. Newton to have been fundamentally unsound himself, having a reservation in his own mind which kept the noxious doctrine from undermining the foundations of truth in his own soul; the same may, we would hope, be true of Mr. Darby