Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/84

72 So far, Groves’ labours had done little for the extension of Brethrenism as an ecclesiastical system. Subsequently a very vigorous and extensive work, substantially on the lines of the Brethren, sprang up in the north of Tinnevelly, under the leadership of a disciple of his, named Aroolappen. This really remarkable Christian, who displayed from early days an energy of faith not unworthy of his teacher, is not claimed as a convert of Groves’. In a letter of condolence, indeed, that he addressed on the occasion of Groves’ death to one of the mourners, he speaks of himself as Groves’ “dear child in Christ Jesus ”; but it is probable that this spiritual relationship was adoptive. Groves seems first to have met him in Tinnevelly at the end of 1833, and their close friendship remained uninterrupted for twenty years, and was then only severed by death. The present missions of the Open Brethren, not only in Tinnevelly but also in Travancore, are, as I understand, to be affiliated to Aroolappen, and through him to Groves.

More important in itself perhaps, though less to our present purpose, was the influence that Groves seems to have exercised upon English residents over a very wide and varied field in India. In modern phraseology this would be described as a “deepening of spiritual life,” and the missioner’s qualifications for the work were acknowledged by many who were painfully apprehensive of his influence in other respects. Two remarks made to him in the summer of 1834, just before he sailed to England, are well worth quoting. “I was told,” he writes, “I was the greatest enemy the Church of England ever had in India, because no one could help loving my spirit, and thus the evil sank tenfold deeper; but indeed, I do not wish to injure, but to help her, by taking from her all her false confidences.” A few days