Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/60

48 portion of God’s Spirit than in any I could frame for myself. In order to learn Divine truth, it became to me a surer process to consult him, than to search for myself and wait upon God : and gradually, (as I afterwards discerned,) my religious thought had merged in the mere process of developing fearlessly into results all his principles, without any deeper examining of my foundations. Indeed, but for a few weaknesses which warned me that he might err, I could have accepted him as an apostle commissioned to reveal the mind of God.”

The following paragraph completes the picture, and gives us at the same time Newman’s impressions of his friend’s later course, at a time when an impassable gulf had opened between them. The words were written about 1850.

"“In his after-course (which I may not indicate) this gentleman has everywhere displayed a wonderful power of bending other minds to his own. … Over the general results of his action I have long deeply mourned, as blunting his natural tenderness and sacrificing his wisdom to the Letter, dwarfing men’s understandings, contracting their hearts, crushing their moral sensibilities, and setting those at variance who ought to love: yet oh! how specious was it in the beginning! he only wanted men ‘to submit their understanding to God,’ that is, to the Bible, that is, to his interpretation! From seeing his action and influence I have learnt, that if it be dangerous to a young man (as it assuredly is) to have no superior mind to which he may look up with confiding reverence, it may be even more dangerous to think that he has found such a mind: for he who is most logically consistent, though to a one-sided theory, and most ready to sacrifice “self to that theory seems to ardent youth the most assuredly trustworthy guide. Such was Ignatius Loyola in his day.”"

The picture is life-like, unless it be for one particular. It is hard to believe that “weak” can ever have been an apt epithet for Darby’s bodily presence. Emaciation and neglect could not so have affected the strong, well-formed, rugged features, of a high and characteristically English type, full of courage and inflexible resolve. In