Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/22

10 she seemed only to desire to know the mind of God, that she might fulfil it. … From that moment, I have myself never had a doubt of my own liberty in Christ to minister the word; and in my last visit to Dublin I mentioned my views to dear Mr. Bellett and others.”

Bellett has left on record, as may be seen below, the extraordinary sensation that the communication of Groves’ discovery occasioned him. To us, whether we think Groves right or wrong, his new point of view has become so familiar that we have difficulty in entering ever so little into the feelings of those to whom it came as a flash of supernatural illumination. This immense disparity between our feelings and theirs is, in great part, a measure of the influence that Plymouth Brethrenism has exercised.

The friend over whom Groves had twice cast so powerful a spell was much the most important figure in the Dublin movement, so far at least as residents there were concerned. We proceed to trace briefly his story.

John Gifford Bellett was born in Dublin on the 19th of July, 1795, and was thus a few months younger than Groves. He was educated at the Grammar School, Exeter, where Sir William Follett, the brilliant lawyer, Attorney-General under Sir Robert Peel’s second administration, was his schoolfellow and friend. At school he gave promise of no small scholarship, and in the early part of his career at Trinity College, Dublin, he carried off the classical prize from all his contemporaries. After this he did little. “It is likely,” according to his brother, the Rev. George Bellett, “that the strong religious feelings which he afterwards, through God’s mercy, so deeply imbibed, may not only have made him indifferent to honours of this sort, but have caused him to look upon them as unlawful.”