Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/89

Rh town of Lausanne. His arrival there, in March, 1840, inaugurated a most extraordinary movement, of which the influence spread with startling rapidity over the whole of the Canton and far beyond it, yet without sacrificing to the rapidity of its growth any element of solidity and permanence.

Such a result is no common tribute to the skill and determination of the man who ventured on so great an enterprise single-handed. That he met with favouring circumstances is unquestionable; but that was owing to no mere freak of propitious fortune. Darby had a keen eye to favouring circumstances. Where they promised him a footing he struck in promptly; he gained no footing that he did not make good; and he won no victory that he did not convert into a stepping-stone to another. “De succès en succès” is the description left of his campaign by a determined and formidable opponent.

Information is ample and authoritative. On the one hand, the writer just quoted has left a full account of it in a large pamphlet, entitled Les Frères de Plymouth et John Darby. His position as Professor in the State Church’s Theological College at Lausanne, and his great eminence as a theologian, lend special value and interest to his polemic. Perhaps no theologian of an equally wide reputation has devoted so much attention to any episode in the history of the Brethren. I refer to J.J. Herzog, the editor of the Real-encyclopadie. Herzog writes, as I have said, from the standpoint, of an avowed and determined enemy of Darbyism. He is never indeed intentionally unfair, and at times he pays tributes to Darby that he might defensibly have withheld; but his work is still the work of a partisan, and of a partisan smarting under painful blows and heavy losses. It is