Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/93

Rh at Vevey “to break bread,” held on a Monday, at which Nationalists and Dissenters united. “Very happy,” is Darby’s terse comment. “It is a beginning.”

It was in fact the beginning of a great deal. Following English precedent, Darby made the study of prophecy the pivot of his work; and his delineations of millennial glory dazzled the minds of his hearers. There existed in Vaud a certain religious malaise, of which the growth of Methodism in an otherwise uncongenial soil had been a symptom. The Free Church had yielded less satisfaction than its promoters had hoped, and the minds of its adherents were prepared to hail the charms with which the certain future—doubtless it was said, the near future—was invested in Darby’s prophetic dissertations. He was never “weary,” Herzog tells us, “of urging on his hearers this decisive word: ‘Prophecy tends to snatch us from the present evil age; that is its principal effect’.”

Darby was in some sense the guest of the Dissenters, but he let it be known from the outset that he would make no difference between them and the “Nationalists”. The result was that his meetings were largely attended by the members of both Churches, and he pursued a policy that may be variously characterised according to the point of view taken. He would doubtless have said that he spoke the word, as his hearers were able to bear it.

“Persons who had for a long time followed his lectures affirmed that he preached nothing but the truths of salvation, and never allowed himself a word that was hostile to the existing Church. He delivered the discourses of which we have just spoken, equally on Sundays and on other days, either in the place