Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/78



establishment of Brethrenism abroad is primarily due to the zeal of the men who bore the largest share in founding or in consolidating it at home. We must needs limit our attention here to the most important or most characteristic episodes; and, from this point of view, precedence must be assigned to Groves’ work in India, Darby’s in the Canton de Vaud, and Müller’s in Germany.

We follow the chronological order; but Groves’ work, though in some respects the most interesting of the three, had less effect than the others in the formation of churches on the new model. The explanation must be sought chiefly in the personal character of the missioner. If Groves had said, “I am not so anxious to form a party as to infuse principles,” he would have said with transparent truth what many a sect-maker has said with more or less unconscious disingenuousness. To have a ring of churches looking up to him as their founder does not seem to have had any attraction for him; else he might surely have had it. Nor is it possible even to imagine him trying to undermine the influence of a pastor with his flock. Whatever difficulties his disintegrating principles may have created in India we always find him, whether in conference or in controversy, dealing with the clergy first of all, and in all things aboveboard.