Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/14

2 and, strange as it may seem, even to some extent with the Broad Church—by important affinities; and yet it retained unimpaired the intense individuality impressed on it almost from the first by one powerful genius; and it challenges attention now as furnishing a fourth independent conception of the Church—a conception which, comparatively narrow as the extent of its acceptance may be, does nevertheless, by the immense force of its intensive influence, deserve consideration side by side with its more famous competitors.

It is no doubt correct to speak of the Brethren as a small sect, in a relative sense; but this, so far from diminishing the importance of their history, greatly enhances it. The quotation that stands at the beginning of this chapter is in itself a witness that there has been something about Brethrenism that effectually distinguishes it from the multitude of the small sects. Mr. Croskery’s inference that it will be short-lived because Sandemanism, Walkerism and Kellyism sank soon after their rise is a most precarious argument, if indeed it does not stand already refuted. It is no doubt just possible that the movement is now destined to a comparatively speedy extinction, but the whole course of its history, or even the hastiest calculation of its past and present influence, must suffice to show the worthlessness of the analogy on which Mr. Croskery relied. To apply a very simple test, which of all the smaller sects of Christendom has enrolled amongst its enthusiastic adherents such a company (to limit ourselves to men that are gone) as John Nelson Darby and Francis William Newman,