Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/256

 introduced a new phraseology into his exposition of the Psalms, but a new system of interpretation. “Consequently,” he writes to Darby, “… I fancied your words were perpetually at war with your meaning. … Further than this I may add, there reigned in my mind up to this time, a kind of absolute confidence that it was next to impossible that you should really hold anything that was wrong. And I daresay I am not alone in this conviction.”

The barrier of so influential a prepossession once removed, Dorman’s mind travelled rapidly. His letter, which very clearly marks a crisis, lays down that the question raised derives its supreme importance from its implication “with the fundamental principle of our special association,”—that is, the association of Exclusive Brethren as such. “It must be,” the writer proceeds, “a strange principle of moral righteousness that will allow a man from day to day to go on repelling with unrelenting severity the most distant connexion with an evil, while he is at the same time conscious of being in the very closest association with what he suspects to be but a modification of the same thing. This is no hypothetical case; and I must say that no upright conscience can long bear the strain which is thus put upon it.”

The character of Darby’s reply must be judged from Dorman’s next letter, which affords a glimpse into a controversial method that unhappily is not new to us. It must be remembered that an unbroken harmony had attended the relations of the two men for twenty-eight years; that Dorman had sacrificed all his associations and all his prospects to follow Darby’s banner, and had all too faithfully served the interests of his chief ever since. The remonstrance that follows, coming from a singularly manly and sober writer, is an eloquent