Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/86

74 he had grappled with so hopefully at the first seemed now beyond remedy. Indeed he dreaded the new ecclesiasticism far more than the old, and his later efforts were less directed to diffusing the views of the Brethren than to saving the Brethren themselves from the principles of “impulsive ministry,” and the abjuration of fixed pastoral relations.

The best witness to the character of his work in India is Dr. Duff. Duff was bound to him by many ties. He had owed “his first glow of devotedness” to Groves’ early tract; and it may well be that he owed his life to the almost parental tenderness with which his friend nursed him through a very serious illness on their voyage from Calcutta to England in 1834. But their friendship owed nothing to agreement in those tenets with which Groves’ name is almost identified to-day. It was from the standpoint of a firm adherent of the time-honoured Presbyterian forms that Duff, writing to Mrs. Groves with reference to the projected memoir of her husband, describes in the following passage the value of his deceased friend’s labours in India. It will plainly appear that if Duff thought Groves sometimes an indiscreet reformer, at least he felt that there was a good deal to reform.

“Before Mr. Groves reached Calcutta, about the middle of 1834, I had heard much of him and his uncommon devotedness to the cause of Christ. No sooner did I meet with him than I felt drawn towards him with the cords of love. He was so warm, so earnest, so wrapt up in his Master’s cause, so inflamed with zeal for the salvation of perishing souls, I regarded it as no ordi- nary privilege that he agreed to take up his abode in my house during his sojourn in Calcutta. …

“Well did I know beforehand that there were different points connected with the principles of establishments, church