Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/278

 indeed, it is open to their opponents to say that it was carried to affectation. Every circumstance that, to an ordinary mind, would have constituted ineligibility in a meeting-room, was apparently an attraction to them. An upper room reached by a narrow staircase, or a loft above a mews, afforded a meeting-place thoroughly to their taste. It would seem to have been generally a matter of necessity if they erected an iron room; and if a wealthy brother built them a plain but comfortable chapel, the company assembling there might find itself chaffed about “going to heaven in silver slippers”. Their communion service often consisted of earthenware plates and undisguised wine bottles (sometimes with the labels unremoved); but decanters were by no means forbidden, and I have even known a very decent pewter service. In such a case as this, however, some local circumstance would probably explain the exceptional splendour. The communion table was generally of common deal, and most meeting-rooms extemporised a pulpit, when the occasion demanded one, by placing a large sloping desk of the same material on one end of the table.

Possibly there was a sort of ritualism in much of this—a rather unnecessary aping of the primitive under wholly altered circumstances. But who shall say that even an exaggerated protest on behalf of evangelical simplicity is unneeded by the Church at large? And it is certain that any one who has once drunk deeply into the spirit of Darbyism, whatever his gain or loss in other respects, must remain for ever independent of the whole paraphernalia of alleged “aids” to worship.

Turning to the social sphere, and comparing Darbyism with the common standards of Protestant practice, we find it Protestant in respect of the loyalty and tenacity