Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/227

 upon earth” was concerned, were ratified in heaven, and whose ban therefore, even if possibly mistaken, was for the time being sustained by Divine authority. Otherwise, the spectacle would never have been witnessed of good men dreading the discipline of an “assembly” that they knew beyond a doubt to be scandalously in the wrong. Amongst Open Brethren there is probably very little of such a feeling. Darbyism, profoundly wise in its generation, knew the value of mysterious and awful claims.

The force of this spiritual terrorism was felt by people who might well seem to have been fortified against it by every kind of prophylactic,—by high intelligence, great force of character, liberal culture, and not least by eminent social advantages, with all their power to exempt from servile terrors.

But only when the kind of tribunal that wielded this power is considered does the dramatic character of the situation fully disclose itself. It might be a very small and unlettered company, composed of individuals little fitted to inspire awe by any personal qualifications. Such a company could pronounce against a man who might have made his mark on the great world without, a sentence of excommunication that would blast his reputation where alone he had troubled to possess one, deprive him of almost all his friends, and well-nigh make (to outward seeming) an end of his usefulness; and that would create, at least during the anticipation, a vague spiritual dread, worst of all perhaps while it lasted. Even so, the Church of Rome invested the most ignorant of her priesthood with a spiritual power before which the most potent elements of secular strength stood cowed.

I am aware that many will think this picture greatly overdrawn. They will naturally assume that so eminent a man could not fail to make his ascendency felt over an