Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/85

Rh later he records that “the chaplain is most kind in many respects: he says, ‘they cannot have too much of my spirit or too little of my judgment’”. The former remark, though not unkind, partakes of the exaggeration of controversy; the latter is perhaps not far from the truth. Norris Groves is one of the Church’s great saints; but a solid judgment was not his forte. He had a strong case against many an existing arrangement, but his opponents might be excused for thinking that the almost total abrogation of arrangement would not mend matters. Time, at any rate, has been so far on their side.

Some of the most eminent men in India were suf ficiently calm and large-minded to realise that whatever harm, from their point of view, Groves might accomplish was bound to be far outweighed by the good; and they extended to him their cordial friendship. Henry Martyn’s friend, Daniel Corrie, the veteran missionaries of Serampore, and above all, the young Scotchman who was to leave so deep a mark on Eastern missions, Alexander Duff, were chief amongst these. In later days, (for, with the exception of occasional visits to England, Groves devoted the last twenty years of his life to India), the honoured names of Fox and Noble, clergymen of the Church Missionary Society in Masulipatam, must be added to the list.

It must also be said that as time went on Groves grew to hope less and less from the movement that he had done so much to inaugurate. From the time that Darby’s principles of fellowship gained the ascendency in England, Groves considered that the downfall of the Brethren was decreed. Though he personally adhered through life to their communion, he evidently ceased to expect them “to work any deliverance in the earth”. The disease