Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/76

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"“You must not, however, dear brother, think, from anything I have said, that I shall not write freely and fully to you, relative to things in India, feeling assured in my own heart, that your enlarged and generous spirit, so richly taught of the Lord, will one day burst again those bonds which narrower minds than yours have encircled you with, and come forth again, rather anxious to advance all the living members of the living Head into the stature of men, than to be encircled by any little bodies, however numerous, that own you for their founder. I honour, love, and respect your position in the Church of God; but the deep conviction I have that your spiritual power was incalculably greater when you walked in the midst of the various congregations of the Lord’s people, manifesting forth the life and the power of the Gospel, than now, is such that I cannot but write the above as a proof of my love and confidence that your mind is above considering who these remarks come from, rather than what truth there may be in them.”"

Whether we agree with Groves or with Darby, or differ from both, it will be hard to deny that this letter is marked by no ordinary combination of faithfulness, delicacy, and large-hearted wisdom. In what spirit Darby received it I have not the least idea, but its practical effect upon him would seem to have been nothing. Indeed, the letter is a sort of last utterance of a vanishing standpoint. Darby carried the day at all points. In later times such a fraternising with congregations of other denominations as Groves pleaded for has been almost as alien from the procedure of the Open Brethren (with some eminent and strongly-marked exceptions) as from that of the Exclusive party itself.

There is no doubt that even at that early date Darby carried the multitude with him. At Bristol indeed the rule of Müller and Craik safeguarded the interests of more liberal principles; and there Groves was amply satisfied. But at Plymouth, notwithstanding that Darby’s influence was seriously qualified by the local preeminence