Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/288

 midst would be pretty sure to lose all his friends at a stroke. If a member of one of their families, as he grew up, abandoned Darbyism, the interest of his relatives in his doings became languid, except in respect of their hope of his restoration.

But within their own limits they provided all the interests that their genuine adherents required. Beyond their mutual entertainment, they desired no social pleasures; beyond the honours that their own community could bestow, they had no ambition. And it must be said that if they seemed on the one hand to narrow their friendships, on the other they widened them indefinitely. The Brethren were spread over the face of the earth, and wherever one Brother was, there was the friend of any other. To this day, a father whose son is summoned on business to Shanghai, to Brisbane, to San Francisco, ascertains the name of a leading Brother there, and a letter precedes the traveller to his destination. On his arrival, the young man will be met at the landing-stage, or on board ship, by the Brother to whom the introduction was addressed, and in all probability will be invited to make a long stay under his roof. We may link with this the interesting fact that the Brethren entirely keep their own poor, and must then admit that they have copied the primitive in a way that puts to the blush a great party that has the primitive constantly in its mouth; and that if the Plymouth Brother, even in the day of his decadence, is still a power to be reckoned with, he has earned his continuance, in the teeth of many faults that might well have been thought certain to cut his career short, by the zealous practice of some very solid virtues.

It is the same thing with their ambitions. Once the great world beyond was fairly shut out, Brethrenism