Page:Neatby - A history of the Plymouth Brethren.djvu/95

Rh rules of the dissenting congregation. ‘He is extremely broad,’ many members of the National Church who had joined him said in his praise; ‘he administers the Lord’s Supper to all without distinction who attend his meetings, and he does not even insist in the least that they should leave the National Church.’”

The following is an interesting account of the dénouement. It must of course be remembered that it is written by an adversary.

"“When he judged people’s minds sufficiently prepared, Mr. Darby proceeded to the realisation, strictly speaking, of his plan. The idea was to explode in fragments organised Dissent as it had previously existed; thus to draw to himself the best energies of the revival in the National Church, and to group them without any kind of ecclesiastical organisation, in congregations absolutely free, that would have no centre but himself. By the suppression of every form of organisation his system gave all the more play to the ascendency of his powerful individuality.”"

Darby followed up his triumph. He established at his house “a sort of little academy, where certain disciples, maintained for the most part at his own expense and that of his English and Vaudois friends, were initiated by him in his way of understanding Scripture”. Provision was thus made to replace him during his frequent absences from Lausanne; and in the supply of the pulpit the ordained ministers, to the horror of Professor Herzog’s ecclesiastical soul, obtained no preference. Herzog, however, had his revenge by hitting off neatly one of the characteristic little affectations of Darbyism. “To forward the ecclesiastical levelling,” as he tells us, “they actually took away the little table on a platform that had served the former preachers as pulpit; and one day when one of the latter had taken it into his head to replace the innocent bit of furniture —‘What’s the good of that chimney-piece?’ cried an ardent disciple of