Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/209

 said Darby. All eyes turned upon a very humble-looking brother, who had hitherto kept modestly in the background. Darby immediately went up to him, saying, “Je logerai où logent les frères”. And the entertainer of obscure itinerants became the host of the great man himself.

The multitude of petty and carping divines who opened their mouths wide for his words were a cause of no small irritation to Darby. He once overheard a company of them discussing the recent death of Dr. Davis—a young coloured man, known as “the good black doctor,” who after qualifying in London as a surgeon lost his life from small-pox while attending on the wounded in the Franco-Prussian war. The work for which he laid down his life was deemed a sadly worldly piece of philanthropy by the zealots of Darbyism, and the group was actually discussing whether it were not by a judgment mingled with mercy that the young surgeon had been called hence. Darby broke in on the debate with an impatient, “Well, well, God has accepted his service and taken him home”. There are some people so small that all the heroism in the world exists in vain for them. Darby was not of their number; and whatever narrow principles of seclusion from the common interests of mankind he may have taught, he was at least incapable of pronouncing so petty an elegy over the valiant dead.

One of the happiest results of this magnanimous disposition was the extreme simplicity that he observed in all his preaching and teaching, and of which he, to a great extent, set the fashion throughout his special