Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/59

Rh having enjoyed no mean advantages of cultivation,) directed his keenest attacks. I remember once saying to him, in defence of worldly station,—‘To desire to be rich is unchristian and absurd; but if I were the father of children, I should wish to be rich enough to secure them a good education’. He replied: ‘If I had children, I would as soon see them break stones on the road, as do anything else, if only I could secure to them the Gospel and the grace of God’. I was unable to say Amen, but I admired his unflinching consistency. … For the first time in my life I saw a man earnestly turning into reality the principles which others confessed with their lips only. That the words of the New Testament contained the highest truth accessible to man,—truth not to be taken from nor added to,—all (as I thought) confessed: never before had I seen a man so resolved that no word of it should be a dead letter to him. I once said: ‘But do you really think that no part of the New Testament may have been temporary in its object? for instance, what should we have lost, if St. Paul had never written the verse, “The cloak which I left at Troas bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments”?’ He answered with the greatest promptitude: ‘I should certainly have lost something; for that is exactly the verse which alone saved me from selling my little library. No! every word, depend upon it, is from the Spirit, and is for eternal service.’”

In after years Darby’s library was not little, and possibly he modified his more extreme views, though he certainly never permitted himself the mere luxury of culture. It is reported that he said, “I read nothing but bad books and the Bible”; and the story, as Newman would say, if it is not true, is startlingly well invented.

“In spite of the strong revulsion which I felt against some of the peculiarities of this remarkable man, I for the first time in my life found myself under the dominion of a superior. When I remember, how even those bowed down before him, who had been to him in the place of parents,—accomplished and experienced minds,—I cease to wonder in the retrospect, that he riveted me in such a bondage. Henceforth I began to ask: What will he say to this and that? In his reply I always expected to find a higher