Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/343



“ a carcase, Plymouthism a ghost,” was the epigram of Dr. John Duncan. The abjuration of “system” was the special boast of the Brethren, and it has proved their ruin. Lost in mystic contemplations, they dreamed of reproducing on earth such a spontaneous harmony of pure spiritual movement as filled the serene sphere of their vision. The matured results of the experiment are now before us, rendering criticism surely superfluous.

If they had the weakness of mysticism, they had its strength. They did not master the truths of salvation in a logical concatenation; they saw them. Inference was nothing; immediate perception everything. Newton, like many others, said that the Church was seated in heavenly places “representatively”. This, to the genuine Darbyite, was the most frigid of glosses, the most nugatory of legal fictions. The saints were seated “spiritually” in heaven; and so far from the spiritual being akin to the unreal or fictitious, it was the one thing absolutely and intensely real. Where logical Puritan divinity was anxious to explain, Darby only cared to feel. That which can be explained is an insignificant segment from the circle of truth.

This determined the character of the entire school. In systematic divinity they were weak, and their history shows the perilous character of the weakness. But the