Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/348

 apart from all mediate human authority; and He has not seen fit to qualify every missionary to trust Him for maintenance, positively apart from all mediate human channels of supply. The Brethren of course simply cannot, in the very nature of things, act on the contrary supposition; but in trying to do so as far as they can, they may certainly succeed in introducing a great deal of unnecessary confusion and weakness into their work.

But, indeed, a failure to reckon with the “facts of life” is a very deep-seated disease of Brethrenism. It underlies that narrow and sectarian spirit which (notwithstanding many honourable exceptions, chiefly among the Open party) has on the whole been a feature of the movement. No ray of light from the inductive method has shone upon the mind of Brethrenism as a system. Its doctors have been hopeless medievalists, constructing their theories in absolute independence of the facts of the world around them. If facts afterwards contradict the theory, so much the worse for the facts.

This is the incurable vice of High Church systems. For example, baptism regenerates ; that the baptised have often nothing of the regeneration about them except the name is unfortunate, but it does not touch the theory. Similarly, the Exclusives have styled the Open Brethren a “leprous” community; that the Open Brethren have been much more useful in aggressive evangelisation, and have been at least as holy in their lives, is curious, but it is held only to illustrate God’s sovereignty—as if God had no care either to mark His approval of what is good or His disapproval of what is bad. Many Open Brethren fall into the same error when they hurl sweeping accusations against the position of all Christians that are not Plymouth Brethren, while they yet must see that many