Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/77

Rh of Newton, Groves was grieved to find the narrower views already in the ascendant. When the evil spirit of sectarianism is gone out of a man he is very apt to find himself a wanderer through dry places, seeking rest and finding none; and he is fortunate indeed if he does not fulfil his course according to the parable, until his last state is worse (and perhaps incomparably worse) than his first. So at least it certainly was with the great mass of the Brethren. Groves, on the other hand, with his singularly pure, lofty and tender spirit, had no more interest in a sect than he had capacity to form one. He was essentially catholic; and he had to endure the grief—which to a man less pure from the taint of self-seeking would have been the bitter mortification—of seeing another man enter into his labours and convert them to purposes that he abhorred.