Darbyism: Its Rise and Development/Chapter 1
DARBYISM.
CHAPTER I.
When God gave Jesus Christ, He gave him as essentially God’s truth—God’s whole truth to man, and made him also the Eternal Centre of all Light, and of all Life, in the new creation created in him—the Dead and Risen one. This glorious reality, seen in Christ as lie rises, the First born from the dead, the Spirit of Truth who proceedeth from the Father, was sent down from heaven to recreate, by his mighty renewing power, in those who believe, imparting to them that divine nature, which makes them not in adoption only, but in real sonship, the sons of God, who cry, Abba, Father. This, the day of Pentecost brought down to the church, when, endued with power from on high, the risen church—risen from the grave of Jesus, and standing as those who had been “quickened together,” and “raised up together” with Him—bore witness that the old was passing away, and that in Christ must all things now be made new.
Had sin not marred and apostacy not corrupted the simplicity of truth in man’s hand, the pathway of the church would have shone brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. But notwithstanding man’s failures, God has not failed; and the believing soul looks at God’s Christ, and repeats that word of hope, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged until he have set judgment in the earth.” The Spirit of God has not failed; the Comforter, the Advocate, the Interpreter, remains still the witness of an ever-faithful God, who, although much of His truth is again and again lost sight of in the rubbish that man accumulates over it, yet does He bring again the forgotten truth to the surface, making it—so to say—a new life to those who lay hold on it, and thereby introducing a fresh element of power, and in the direction most needed. Truth quickened by the Holy Ghost in the heart, is the power of God; and any truth, when it becomes a living reality, is a witness for Christ, to whom all parts of truth bear testimony, as all rays of created light testify to the sun, whence they come.
Truth will, however, meet with many to assail it, and many well-intentioned friends who will often do much to damage it: still, by the grace of God, the truth maintains its ground against the attacks of its opponents, and the misdirected attachment of those who knew its name but not its power—for truth in Jesus ever sanctifies and energizes those who receive it. Many chapters on church history might be written illustrating this, and most important, though deeply humiliating, would be the lessons we should have to learn; but truly we can extol the infinite wisdom of the great Head of the Church, who did not in the days of his flesh commit the keeping of his sacred person to men, though many believed on Him, because He knew what was in man; and does not now entrust his Name and his truth to any portion of his people exclusively, but has given Himself for all, and his truth to all; and any claim to the exclusive possession of that which is the heritage of the whole family of God, is an assumption which God will not justify, who loves all who love his Christ.
Amongst many truths brought prominently before the Church of God during the last forty years, we may particularly enumerate the second advent of Christ, and the unity of the Church of God. In enforcing the former subject upon all who had ears to hear, no voice was more owned of God than was that of Edward Irving, who seemed raised up to proclaim throughout Christendom the cry, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh.” He spoke and was listened to as few have been since, but his sun set in darkness; and under the delusion of a “Catholic and Apostolic Church” usurpation did he die, a slave to the system he had reared—a beacon to all who have eyes to see; while the doctrine of the speedy return of our blessed Lord lives over his cold grave, and gains ground daily; for he was only an instrument used to proclaim it, and not the author or the sole possessor of it. In connexion with the latter, there arose in the hearts of many of the children of God, a desire for that Christian fellowship which unites all who love the Lord; and which has led to the development of many of the efforts to bring Christians together which we now witness around us. The late Mr. A. N. Groves, who felt much the importance of this, thus wrote from Exeter in 1828 :—
{{smaller|“My full persuasion is, that, inasmuch as any one glories either in being of the Church of England, Scotland, Baptist, Wesleyan, Independent, &c., his glory is his shame, and that it is Anti-christian; for, as the Apostle said, ‘Were any of them crucified for you?’ The only legitimate ground of glorying is, that we are among the ransomed of the Lord, by his grace, either in ourselves or others. As bodies I know none of the sects and parties that wound and disfigure the body of Christ, as individuals I desire to love all who love him. Oh! when will the day come, when the love of Christ will have more power to unite, than our foolish regulations have to divide the family of God. As for order, if it be God’s order, let it stand; but if it be man’s order, I must examine whether or not it excludes the essence of Christ’s kingdom; for, if it does, I remember that word, ‘Call no man master upon earth; for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.’”[1]}}
And in reply to a question put to him as to whether there were no principles in the Word of God which would unite all believers in worship,whatever might be their various views and attainments in the divine life, said,
“Yes there are; we are evidently called to know nothing among our fellow-christians but this one fact, ‘Do they belong to Christ? Has Christ received them ? Then may we receive all such to the glory of Christ.’”
The unsectarian fellowship here contemplated, was the means whereby the oneness of the spirit could be kept in the bond of peace. A unity or a oneness, not in doctrine or in attainment, far less a oneness in external forms and circumstances; but a oneness that owned a common link, in the possession of a common life, and that, the Eternal Life which is vouchsafed to every one that believeth, who therein enjoys in the presence of God that perfect acceptableness, which enables all to stand before the throne, because their garments were washed white in the blood of the Lamb. That this was the point aimed after in those days, is clear from the following extract from a valuable tract widely circulated at the time, entitled “The Blood of the Lamb and the Union of Saints.” It shows us what was then professed, and what we must seek still by the grace of God to maintain as our immovable stand-point, in all that concerns ow church position down here. The writer, referring to Rev. vii., says—
“The manifestation of all the saints before the throne, will show in result the value of the blood of the Lamb. That blood is not to be regarded as having so done its work, as no longer intimately to concern us; for as it is now our title to forgiveness, so eternally it will be our title to glory. It is thus being the ground on which we shall be gathered there, that we may well contemplate it as the gathering point of saints even now. In glory there will be nothing looked to as entitling the gathered multitude to their place before the throne; but their having washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. This one plea suffices for them with God, and as they ave thus, not only to be gathered to him, but also to one another, so do we see a principle of great practical, value as to the union of saints. Now we wish to press upon all the children of God, that the basis of our union in glory is quite sufficient for our union on earth; and even as we shall then be manifested on that ground, ought we now to stand manifestly joined together on that alone.
The Blood of the Lamb—the Union of Saints, became thus the watchword and the rallying point of thousands who sighed for a fellowship, everywhere hindered by the doctrines and commandments of wen. In the Epistle to the Ephesians (chap. iv.) the Apostle speaks of two unities—“a unity of the spirit,” and a “unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” The latter pointing onwards to the time of the glory, when all shall come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when the one Body, and the one Head, shall be manifested in the one Christ. Till then it is the “oneness of the Spirit” that we are called on to keep—a oneness we have not to make, but to keep—a oneness that, just in proportion as it is kept, will grow up into a manifested oneness, that cannot be produced by any action from without, but must be grown up into from within, by the hidden power of the Spirit of Life; a life the exhibition of which is Love, for God is Love, and “He who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him;” and this life, this love, is as a seed sown, and that grows up spontaneously into a development which accords with its internal organization, as appointed by God, not by man. We hear much about the unity of the body as something to be kept; but what we are called upon to keep, is the inner, deeper, unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which, in proportion as it is kept and maintained, will grow up into an exhibition even now more or less perfect of that outward similitude, which God shall exhibit hereafter, when He reveals in the Church the glory of Immanuel. Failing to see this, men have been led from the Apostle’s days downward, to seek a development of the Christian Church after some particular form or other, as an external unity to be attained, and thereby going back, in fact, to the externalism and ritualism of a past dispensation.Spiritual unity is a deep reality, and if the enquiries and aspirations of the saints of God had been directed towards its maintenance, instead of towards the realization of the unity of body, there would have been no place for aught, but those precious fruits of the Spirit, love, mercy, and truth, which would have redounded to the glory of God, wherein all saints would have been growing up into Him in all things, who is the Head, even Christ.
After speaking of this unity of the Spirit which the Church of God is responsible for keeping, the Apostle brings before us the sevenfold unity, kept and maintained by God himself; unto which in Christ we have been brought, and in the power of which we are called now to walk; and for the measure in which we have not so walked, we shall have to answer, when we all “stand before the judgment scat of Christ.” This seven-fold unity is described by St. Paul, as follows:—“There is one body, and one Spirit even as ye are called in one hope of your calling ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all , who is above all , and through all, and in you all.” (Eph. iv. 4—6.) This is the great central truth in the person of Christ, and in the fellowship of the Spirit, around which all our Church associations and feelings are to gather, and flowing out of which all our individual life and activities as saints must proceed; for, continues the Apostle, “Unto each one is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ; wherein worketh that one Spirit, towards the perfecting of the Saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ.” The body is nothing less than the whole mystic body, the bride of Christ; which, in the Revelation, is presented to us in her destined place in heaven, that body for which the Saviour prayed (John xvii.), that the members of it might be one and partakers of his glory.
Opposed to this grand principle of Church unity, that finds its resting place in Heaven, its centre in Jesus, and its life in the indwelling Spirit, is the notion of an earthly external oneness, guarded by an array of articles and creeds, and canons, which seeks to manifest union in a uniformity maintained, rather than in a life enjoyed. This principle of unity we see in Romanism; but there is more Romanism than that which is connected with Rome, and there are more popes, than he who occupies the chair of St. Peter; and there may be bonds of fellowship only the more inslaving, because the more undefined.
Besides the “great mystery” of which the Apostle speaks in Ephesians, touching the oneness of the Church in heaven, there is “the mystery of the seven candlesticks,” spoken of in the Revelation, which concerns the Churches on earth, seen not as one, but as many. Before the throne there stands the one candlestick, with its seven branches and its seven lamps of fire, which is represented in the golden candlestick of the Sanctuary of Israel; but, on earth, the candlesticks are seven, each standing on its own base, each separate and distinct, though all in the mystic number seven bound together, as having one common centre, but yet each standing separately under the guidance of the Lord, amongst which He is presented as walking, whose feet are as fine brass, and His eyes as a flame of fire. It is the confounding together of these distinct mysteries, which has led to those assumptions, to which the Church has been witness from the earliest days; and to stigmatize with the name of independency, of heresy, or of schism, the individual responsibility each Church has to the Lord; and to represent the acting on such responsibility as subversive of the fundamental truth of the one Church, has been, in all ages, the effort of those who have really divided the true Church of God, by arrogating to themselves alone, the name, title, functions, and dignity, that belong to the whole body.
On this most deeply important matter much of the whole question at issue rests, between Mr. Darby and his followers on the one hand, and the brethren from whom they are now separated on the other. If we turn to the first few chapters of the Revelation we see unmistakeably the mind of the Lord revealed to us. Amongst the things that shall be hereafter, we are there brought in vision into the Holiest of Holies, and in chapters iv. and v. see the church of the Heavenlies in its glory, as figured by the living creatures and the Elders—their position, their song, their redemption, and their dignity, all speak to us of the glory of the Bride of Christ, the Lamb in the midst of the throne. In the preceding chapters, however, we have not what shall be, but what was,—a picture of that which was visible on earth, the present condition and circumstances of those, who are here awaiting the advent of their Lord, and who are commanded to watch, to fight, and to overcome. The whole scene is one of conflict and of trial, the exact fulfilment of that which the Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian elders to expect in the visible church of God—not prosperity and rest, but a constant succession of those two great dangers which have beset the path of the saints all through their journey, namely, the coming in of grievous wolves among them from without, and the rising up of false teachers from within, whose object would be respectively to destroy in the one case, and to lead away disciples after them in the other. Both these evils we see marking the condition of the seven Apocalyptic Churches, and He who holds the stars in his right hand is there revealed as walking amidst the golden candlesticks, even He whose promise was, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end.” He who is now amongst us, still walking up and down amongst the churches; for the seven churches are not descriptive of the then state of the church alone, but reveal that which will characterize it all through this dispensation. These chapters reveal to us what the presence of Jesus amongst his people really means: it is no simple promise of protection—it is a promise of that watchful care and jealous love, which, walking among the assemblies, metes out to each its meed of praise and its needed warning. As we have already noticed, each church occupies a place of its own, having an individual responsibility to the Son of Man, who upholdeth them all, unseen by man, witnessing all that goes wrong, and with his eyes of fire not overlooking any departure from truth, either in doctrine or in practice. It may be truly said that each church maintains its own standing before the Lord, as if besides there is no other. There is no charge laid to the door of one church for not having gone into the concerns of another: there is not the slightest appearance of any metropolitan relationship—the metropolitan centre was above in the glory, and all catholic claims rested there. Metropolitanism and catholicism have over been the rocks on which, through the pride of man and the working of the flesh in the church, the brightest hopes of the children of God in church matters, have made shipwreck. The want of this metropolitan centre as a universal controlling power, has been that which on every side man has sought to compensate for, by some contrivance of his own. It has led the church to feel the weakness of her position in the earth, as Israel felt the comparative weakness of their position among the nations, which led them to ask a king, who should go before them. This source of outward weakness in Israel and in the church, was the divinely appointed means for keeping ever alive that sense of weakness in themselves, and of strength alone in God, which was to produce dependence on God Himself. This is just that which it is so hard for man to be content with, in consequence of which the spirit of confederacy has been everywhere fostered, in one way or other. God’s purpose appears to have been, to keep every assembly as much dependent on Himself alone, as every individual is; each assembly having its own prescribed responsibility exclusively to the Lord, and standing or falling—not by reason of the standing or falling of others—but as it held fast, or otherwise, the Head, from whom all the joints and bands proceed. None of these Apocalyptic churches are blamed for each other’s faults. The fact of a universal fellowship in Christ was never brought in to instigate or to set aside matters of discipline in individual churches, either in doctrine or in practice. In all such matters each assembly was to be individually accountable to the Lord: they were spoken to separately, and the warning was addressed to each separately, telling the fallen or falling church that the candlestick would be removed from amongst them unless they repented.
God’s principle of independency, as illustrated in these divinely instructive epistles, is opposed to man’s principle of confederacy, wherein he seeks his escape from his weakness and want of spiritual power. It is man’s tower, which he is ever building, that his weakness be not seen: it is his covering, wherewith he seeks to hide his poverty and nakedness. These epistles seem written by the Lord of grace, as if to meet the very circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, when the pure gold has been dimmed, and the silver mixed with dross. In this, independency is no more a denial of the oneness of the whole body of Christ, than the claim of independency, necessarily made by each Christian man, can be construed into a denial of his individual fellowship in the body. Each knows that he will have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ; and the sense of an individual responsibility, necessitates an individual line of action, knowing that to his own Master he stands or falls. The word hereafter will not be, To the church that overcomes; but, To him—to the individual saint. It is “to him” that all the glorious promises here are addressed, for all local church standing ceases, when brought into the presence of the Throne, where each will have his place assigned in the body, according to a rule of individual faithfulness, and not according to the measure of any collective faithfulness here, except as such bears on individual faithfulness to God, in the local relationships in which His providence may have placed him as a saint.
Such were the catholic grounds on which those called “Brethren” sought to realize a fellowship, that should, in its largeness, be able to receive and welcome “all saints.” These were the principles recognized among them at the commencement; principles which were held, not as theories in the mind, but as holy practical obligations in which they sought to walk, associated as they were with devotedness to God in themselves, and with the real desire to carry them out in grace and forbearance towards others, each seeking to have fellowship, as far as possible, with those from whom he might differ. While thus holding the truth they had been taught, in love, they were owned and blest. But it is easy to begin with principles of unsectarian catholicity when those who hold them are few and feeble, and difficult to maintain them when holpen with a little strength. To hold the unity of the saints as a theory is one thing, to walk and act in the daily forbearance of grace required to keep it, is quite another. At the outpouring in the day of Pentecost, “all that believed were together,” and “they continued steadfastly in the Apostle’s doctrine and in fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers.” “The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one mind, neither said any that aught of the things that he possessed were his own,” and “great grace was upon them all.”
A few weeks or months passed away, and we read of murmuring in the Church; for, as if to give a warning voice at the very commencement of the dispensation, we see the enemy coming in and sowing discord, in that happy circle of heaven-born souls. This is, alas, no uncommon thing, for when the freshness of a new found principle has passed away, when the joy of a recently discovered truth fades, when numbers increase who come into truth neither in its original love nor power, but who hold it in deference to a favourite teacher, rather than in allegiance to the Lord, and maintain it rather for its own sake than for Christ’s, the result inevitably is, that holding the truth out of its life-giving centre, Jesus, all ends in confusion, man, ultimately, taking the place of God.
Plymouth had early become the place in which, from a variety of causes, many of the so-called “Brethren” had collected, and where some of those of most esteem and of most power in ministry, had assembled round them a large number of saints, among whom the principles which they held, were most prominently brought before the Church at large. There was then much power as well as much grace, as those will certify who remember the earliest days of the Plymouth meetings. But little as it was generally seen, there were not wanting at an early period ominous indications, that humble and unpretending beginnings were growing up into a wall of pride, which, unless watched against, would separate rather than unite, the scattered members of the heavenly family. Among those who early saw the tendency of things in Plymouth, was the late Mr. A. N. Groves. He had been associated at the very commencement with the carrying out of the very principles we have been speaking of, of the fellowship of saints on the ground of the common life in Christ, of an open table, and an open ministry; but leaving England in 1829, when a few were meeting in Dublin, he came to England again 1835, to find a strong and compact body in Plymouth and elsewhere, meeting ostensibly on the same grounds. In moving about among them, he perceived but too plainly that they were becoming exclusive and sectarian. This led to his writing a long letter to Mr. Darby, before leaving England, in which he points out with almost prophetic clearness, what the effect of these changes would be. As this testimony is of great importance, we will give a lengthened extract from the letter, which bears date March 10th, 1836:—
{{smaller|“I wish you to feel assured that nothing has estranged my heart from you, or lowered my confidence in your being still animated by the same enlarged and generous purposes that once so won and rivetted me: and though I feel you hare departed from those principles by which you once hoped to have effected them, and in principle returning to the city from whence you departed, still my soul so reposes in the truth of your heart to God that I feel it needs but a step or two more to advance, and you will see all the evils of the systems from which you profess to be separated, to spring up among yourselves. You will not discover this so much from the workings of your own soul, as by the spirit of those who have been nurtured up from the beginning in the system, they are taught to feel the only tolerable one; that not having been led like you, and some of those earliest connected with you, through deep experimental suffering and sorrow, they are little acquainted with the real truth that may exist amidst inconceivable darkness: there will be little pity and little sympathy with such, and your union daily becoming one of doctrine and opinion more than life or love, your government will become—unseen, perhaps, and unexpressed, yet—one wherein, overwhelmingly, is felt the authority of men; you will be known more by what you witness against than what you witness for, and practically this will prove that you witness against all but yourselves, as certainly as the Walkerites or Glassites: your Shibboleth may be different, but it will be as real.“It has been asserted, as I found from your dear brother W—— and others, that I have changed my principles; all I can say is, that as far as I know what those principles were, in which I gloried on first discovering them in the word of God, I now glory in them ten times more since I have experienced their applicability to all the various and perplexing circumstances of the present state of the church; allowing you to give every individual, and collection of individuals, the standing God gives them, without identifying yourselves with any of their evils. I ever understood our principle of communion to be the possession of the common life or common blood of the family of God (for the life is in the blood); these were our early thoughts, and are my most matured ones. The transition your little bodies have undergone, in no longer standing forth the witnesses for the glorious and simple truth so much, as standing forth witnesses against all that they judge error, has lowered them in my apprehension from heaven to earth in their position of witnesses.****
The position which this occupying the seat of judgment will place you in will be this: the most narrow-minded and bigoted will rule, because his conscience cannot and will not give way, and therefore the more enlarged heart must yield. It is into this position, dear Darby, I feel some little flocks are fast tending, if they have not already attained it. Making light not life the measure of communion.”[2]}}
Would to God the solemn warning given had been effectual, in leading Mr. Darby and his party to retrace their steps at that early part of their career, and we should not now have to mourn over a brother on the awful pinnacle on which he now stands, helped on by those who, acting with him, have placed him there, a beacon to the Church at large; nor should we have had to mourn over many of the Lord’s disciples led away by the, enemy unto a following of man rather than of God.
The trial in all matters connected with the Church, as in every thing in, which co-operation and fellowship is concerned, commences with the increase of numbers. Many throughout the country had been led to adopt the views of “the Brethren,” and small assemblies were formed, drawn together under the consciousness of the blessing of the promise realized to those who met together for worship simply in the name of Jesus; but as these assemblies increased over the country, the question of Church government, let it be called by what name it may, naturally arose, and the question was, Whether they were to stand “without connexion” with one another, or be subordinated to “one common centre.”
This question is put in a letter written by Mr. Wigram, as early as A.D. 1838.
“My dear Friend and Brother,—there is a matter exercising the minds of some of us at this present time, in which you may be (and in some sense certainly are) concerned. The question I refer to is, how are meetings for communion of saints in these parts to be regulated; would it be for the glory of the Lord and the increase of testimony to have one central meeting, the common responsibility of all within reach, and as many meetings subordinate to it, as grace might vouchsafe—or to hold it to be better to allow the meetings to grow up as they may without connection and dependent upon the energy of individuals only? I think I have no judgment in the matter save that (as those who have the fellowship of the divine mind,) our service ought to be intelligent, and whatever is done to be done wittingly. As to feeling, I do indeed long to find myself more distinctly associated with those who as brethren will feel and bear their measure of responsibility, but this is all I can say; for truly, provided there be in London some place where the wanderer can find rest and communion, my desire is met; though the glory of the Lord will, of course, be still to be cared for.“Oct. 6, 1838.”[3]“I am, dear brother, yours in Jesus,
(Signed)“G. V. W.”
This letter is of importance in this inquiry, as it shews clearly the two opposite principles present to the writer’s mind; the one, that which Mr. Darby has since carried out with an iron hand, never contemplated in 1838; the other, that in which the saints in Bethesda have sought to maintain their ground, under “the energy of individuals” raised up of God to feed the flock committed to their care. This “energy of individuals” is just the energy of the faith and gift of “the pastors and teachers” given to the church, which it has been Mr. Darby’s great aim in every case to keep down and suppress; for he could but see that the full energy of individual faith and faithfulness, was utterly incompatible with the principle of the one centre under one control, which thus early seemed to be looming in the distance, hazily and indistinctly no doubt at this time, but still none the less really there.
The original ostensible ground of fellowship Mr. Darby explains in letters written to a clergyman in 1839, as follows:—
“Whenever the first great truth of redemption,—in a word, whenever Christ has received a person, we would receive him. That false brethren may creep in unawares is possible. If the Church be spiritual, they will soon be made apparent; but as our table is the Lord’s and not our’s, we receive all that the Lord has received, all who have fled as poor sinners for refuge to the hope set before them, and rest not in themselves, but in Christ as their hope.****You say would you receive a Roman Catholic? If a Roman Catholic really extolled Jesus, as a Saviour, and his one sacrifice of himself, as the sole putting away of sin, he would have ceased to hold the error and delusion by which the enemy, has misled some souls, who are still I would trust precious to Jesus; he would cease to be a Roman Catholic, in the evil sense of the word, and on those terms only could he be with us. I repeat then, that we receive all who are on the foundation, and reject and put away all error by the word of God, and the help of his ever blessed, ever living Spirit.”[4]
Here Mr. Darby expresses himself in language that most fully bears out all that any have ever asserted, of the original and catholic ground on which “Brethren” commenced their blessed service to the Church at large—a service designed to be so loving, so gracious in its dealing with the consciences of others, and in its bearing towards the weaknesses, infirmities, and differences of our brethren, that all might be won over to walk in unsectarian harmony and love, as heirs of the same glory, and partakers of the blessings of the same infinite atonement. Happy would it have been had Mr. Darby carried out the lesson he thus sought to teach others.
Notwithstanding these catholic views thus forcibly expressed, it became increasingly manifest in Plymouth, that sectarianism and partizanship were becoming developed with fearful rapidity, so that, while knowledge had increased, that deepest and most humbling of all knowledge—self-knowledge—had not; for where there is that, there will ever be found that growth in grace which, as it knows how much there is to be borne with in him who possesses it, makes it easy, for him to bear with others as need may require. When there is rottenness beneath the surface, and a falsity within, that denies the outward profession, matters for a while may go on externally, as if all were sound; but, sooner or later, the Allwise God will allow circumstances to arise which will break up the surface, and shew what lies underneath. These circumstances do not produce the evil—they only make it manifest; for God sees, and will make us to see likewise, that a hidden evil is more deadly in its results to the creature, and more dis honouring to God in the end, than an open evil that bears its condemnation on its face; even as the whitewashed Pharisee is further from the kingdom, than the outcast publican. When we are deceived as to our real attainment, God in love comes in to detect and point out the evil he would have us to judge. If we learn the lesson and judge ourselves, well: if not, He will come in, in judgment, and put his people to an open shame, selling them as He did Israel of old, into the hands of an oppressor—it may be to one of the Canaanitish kings around them, or it may be to one of themselves—an Abimelec,[5] the son of the bondswoman, a true Ishmael, having his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him. The saints often need much exercise of soul to understand the Lord’s ways with them, and to see the Lord’s hand towards them, for which a single heart and a single eye are essential; but where these are found, and the broken heart acknowledges the Lord’s righteousness in laying open the evil, and exposing the deception, there can be healing, and He will again bind up those who walk in lowliness; but where this is the case, the saints of God will not be found sacrificing “righteousness, judgment, and mercy” to “mint, anise, and cummin," by making a boast of that which is easily accomplished, to the neglect of that which calls for self-sacrifice and self-renunciation.
Mr. Darby was during this period little in Plymouth: Mr. Newton’s ministry was permanent, and he gradually drew around himself a large and influential number of those in fellowship. The differences between the teachers gradually augmented, their views became more and more antagonistic, and the partizanship of the taught was every year becoming more and more apparent. While grace was declining, dogmatism on both sides was on the increase, and, as a necessary result, that forbearance which can alone enable saints—encompassed with infirmity on all sides—long to walk together, grew less and less. One result alone can follow such a state of things, and that took place in 1845. It will be unjust to regard the leaders as solely responsible for the consequences that followed. Where there is no fuel, the fire goes out; and the unholy flames that were kindling, would have been early extinguished, if the pride and partizanship of the body, had not added fuel to the fire lighted up by the teachers. The fire, however, was taken into the bosom, and will burn on as set on fire of hell, till all concerned in it have come to confess to God and to his church—not the sins of others, but their own; not in vague generalities that mean nothing, but with that definiteness and speciality, which the broken heart is ever prepared for, and with which alone the Lord will return to dwell; for He can have no fellowship with pride, and he who indulges in it, will be known only afar off. To their own Master and to ours they will have to answer in that day, when he will bring to light the hidden unconfessed sins of His people, and make known at his holy judgment scat, that which has been secret, as well as that which has been open, of those evil ways that have continued unacknowledged and unconfessed here; for the fire of that day shall come down on and destroy all that is not of Him, by Him, and to Him in all our ways and works.
In this melancholy year that was to test professions of a heavenly calling made, and sacred truths held (as it proved, too much in the head and too little in the heart by both teacher and scholar), Mr. Darby comes to Plymouth and finds Mr. Newton’s influence paramount. Motives we will leave to God; acts and deeds we are responsible for bringing to the Word of Truth, so as to judge the evil and put it away far from us, that we fall not under its defilement and its power. Mr. Darby’s position in many ways could not but be painful in the extreme to one bent on ruling, as an undisguised partizanship placed him in the minority. What an opportunity for grace to shine in! for Christ to triumph in the saint over self! But, alas, self triumphed over Christ on both sides of the conflict, though in different ways; and the schismatic spirit of “I am of Newton,” and “I am of Darby,” as of old in Corinth, came in and carried all before it, but those who had been walking before God. They could but sigh and weep for the sin and wickedness carried on in the holy name of Jesus, and seek to keep aloof from that which so dishonoured the Lord. In Corinth, Paul would take no part in the unholy strife that was going on, amongst those who contended for belonging to Paul, to Peter, or to Apollos. He was content to remain the servant and not to become the master, for he belonged to them, and sought to raise them out of their sectarianism by telling them, that Paul, and Cephas, and Apollos were alike theirs—theirs to serve in the bonds of the gospel; and in the same spirit the cloquent teacher, Apollos, could not be persuaded by Paul to come among them, as if to keep himself out of sight, that the crucified Lord might eclipse him as well as Paul. The result of this acting in grace, was, that in the second Epistle we read nothing of the divisions that marked the first Epistle— grace and forbearance had triumphed over self and schism. The grace of the teachers in Corinth was, however, wanting in Plymouth; and regardless of the unity of the body that had been boasted in, and the command to keep the unity of the spirit that had been taught, Mr. Darby meets what he considers the sectarianism of another by a sectarianism of his own, which he consummates by making a division among the saints with whom he had been in fellowship from the commencement; and that, notwithstanding the remonstrance of most of the brethren who came from a distance to investigate the state of things in Ebrington Street. Having effected the division, he spread a table elsewhere on the last Sunday of that eventful year, which was in future to be exclusively “the table of the Lord” around which himself and his followers were to rally. From this meeting we must date the rise of Darbyism, and its development into a distinct and self- excommunicated body, separated on grounds subversive of the great truth around which, as opposed to all sectarianism, “the Brethren” had sought to rally the saints of God, namely, that the Blood of the Lamb was the basis of the union of the family of heaven: for in regard to those from whom Mr. Darby separated, Mr. Wigram, who acted with Mr. Darby in the matter then, as he has done since, gives the most unqualified testimony, and writes, “They are all accredited as Christians, and I can accredit them as such without any question.”
The grounds of this melancholy division were, as we gather from Mr. Darby’s narrative,[6] sectarianism, clericalism, and erroneous prophetic views. There was no charge of heresy; there was not one scriptural ground on which the separation could be justified; but, as if there had been no injunction to mutual forbearance and long-suffering, and as if the blood of the Lamb no longer constituted the sure foundation of all true fellowship here, as it is of all the fellowship in the glory, we find Mr. Darby either excommunicating the saints, with whom for so many years he had been in fellowship, or perhaps more correctly, excommunicating himself; in either case, in the action itself, as well as in the spirit and manner of it, rending the body of the Lord, and saying in fact as one of old, who had no mother’s heart to yearn over the child, “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.” Oh for the bowels of Christ Jesus, the heart of the loving Master, that yearned in the Apostles, that would have sacrificed self a thousand times on the altar of the Lord, for His body’s sake. Where was the love that travailed in birth again till Christ was formed in the Galatian churches—the love that gave to the Apostles a mother’s solicitude for the people of God, that could not cut them off, though in love to them it was wished that the ungodly false teachers might be even cut off for their sakes. The spirit at work now was that which virtually said, “If it cannot be mine let it be broken in pieces.” Oh! the sin, the awful sin, of schism! but the sin is ours—a brother’s sin is our own, to bear in priestly power before the altar. Let this be remembered, and a brother’s sin will cause grief and not bitterness: when our brethren have sinned, then the dishonour to God and the shame to ourselves we have all to bear in tears before our God, as Daniel and Jeremiah did, who felt the sin of the daughter of their people as their own—to bear, to confess, to seek to wash away, in the power of the precept contained in John xiii. How clearly these actings prove, that real love to the Lord and value for the unity of his body had declined; that leaders wanted to maintain their own opinions and keep their own followers; and that these followers had made their leaders and their opinions the real bond of their union, instead of Christ himself, who in his blessed person binds all the holy and beloved ones of God, into the same bundle of Eternal Life with Himself, the Lord and Master of them all. Alas! how had the fine gold thus early become dim, and the silver turned to dross; and to us belongs shame and confusion of face.
It is painful to dwell on these sorrowful events in Plymouth, and to contemplate the terrible sin that sought to justify the course taken, by calumny and slander. Of all this the Lord be judge. As if however, the more a recognized principle is set aside, the greater the necessity of making a boast of it, we find Mr. Darby, on the 5th of February, 1846, writing apparently from Plymouth as follows:
“What I felt from the beginning and began with was this: the Holy Ghost remains, and therefore the essential principle of unity with his presence; for ‘whenever two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them.’****We are not stronger, nor better than others, Dissenters, &c., but we only own our bad and lost estate, and therefore can find blessing. I do not limit what the Spirit can do for us in our low estate, but I take this place where He can do it. Hence government of bodies in an authorized way I believe there is none : where this is assumed there will be confusion. It was so here, (that is in Plymouth) and it was constantly and openly said, that this was to be a model, so that all in distant places might refer to it. My thorough conviction is, that conscience was utterly gone, save in those who were utterly miserable.
“I only therefore so far seek the original standing of the church, as to believe that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Christ will be, and that the Spirit of God is necessarily the only source of power, and that what he does will be blessing through the Lordship of Jesus. These provide for all times. If more be attempted now, it will be confusion only. If men set up to imitate the administration of the body, it will be Popery or dissent at once.”
In these last words—prophetic, alas! of the writer’s party—we most fully concur; but what may be the meaning of Mr. Darby, when he says that the “government of bodies in an authorized way” brings confusion and Popery, we may conjecture, but he has not told us. To those who know of no authorized way but the Word of God, such an expression sounds strange; for they know and bear witness to the fact, that there is an authorized way that brings order, for our “God is not the author of confusion, but of order, as in all the churches.” There is, however, a confusion worse confounded, wherever an unauthorized power comes in, and usurps the power and authority of that which ought to be recognized—an unseen hand, that breaks in pieces, but yet shields the person who uses it. This is confusion and tyranny, that contains some of the worst features of Papal jesuitism. We leave it to others to comment on the “principle of unity with his presence” here spoken of, in the light of the sad and sorrowful events in Plymouth, which had preceded it only a few months; but this we know, that the presence of Jesus, the High and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, and whose name is holy, is to be found—whether in the church or in the individual—with the humble and contrite spirit that trembles at the word, and nowhere else. It is not for man to bring railing accusations: he should seek ever to be guided by that holy and humble spirit, which led the Archangel to say to an adversary “The Lord rebuke thee,” and to say no more. We arc all servants to one master, to whom alike we stand or fall; but it is surely our place, to point out wherein a teacher in the Church of Christ turns aside from the Lord’s highway of truth, and builds again that which he once destroyed; and this not so much on his own account as for the sake of many who, in proportion to his influence, will be led by him. We remember Mr. Darby’s remarks on the blinding influence of a wrong course upon the soul, which deserve to be weighed and pondered by himself and by all. Writing of those opposed to him in this first Plymouth controversy, he says,
Would that the writer and all saints could remember this “incapacity, as it would enable them often to recall their past ways, and exercising self-judgment on themselves, bring them back to the Lord, and to the church in sackcloth and ashes; but alas we know that when the eye is blinded because they “would not” hearken, a state is super-induced of which it can be said they “could not,” after which the fearful sentence at any time may be passed “they shall not;” and then the judgment seat of Christ is the only resource where all shall see eye to eye, where all delusion shall be dissipated, and where alas many will see how much has been lost in eternity, by that which commenced in time, with a “would not.”“There is another work often incomprehensible to one not under its influence, and that is an incapacity to discern right and wrong, an incapacity to see evil where even the mere natural conscience would discern, and an upright conscience reject at once. I speak of this incapacity in true saints; the truth is, the soul, when under this influence, is not at all in the presence of God, and sees every thing in the light of the object that governs it. The influence of the enemy has supplanted and taken the place of conscience.”[7]
These events in Plymouth had a great influence on all who had adopted the views of “the Brethren.” The course pursued by Mr. Darby and his adherents was viewed by many, as subversive of the grounds of Christian fellowship, and necessitating a sectarian bond of union, in some truth or truths, rather than in Him who is emphatically the Truth, and not merely a portion of it. The whole transaction acted on the minds of the wise as a solemn warning; the voice that had long been speaking in gentle whispers from the sanctuary, now spoke in thunder, calling on all to examine their ways. They were led to see the precipice over which their cherished hopes of peace and power, might at any moment be thrown headlong, unless they repented and did their first works. There was much public confession, much private sorrow; the iron had entered into the soul, and many withdrew farther and farther, from that exclusiveness of spirit and narrowness of mind, which had perpetrated the evil, or sought to justify the course pursued at Plymouth.
The result of all that had taken place was, to develop, under the direction of Mr. Darby and those acting with him, a system that, denying the sufficiency of the blood as the bond of Christian fellowship, and the power to maintain it, took upon itself virtually to set up tests of communion, and therefore, bearing witness against itself as having gone back into the sectarianism out of which it was boasted they had come; and he who once gloried that he could welcome a Roman Catholic and hold fellowship with him at the Lord’s table, if he were on the foundation, ends in 1845 with refusing all fellowship with saints from whom he differs in no vital matter whatever, and saints borne witness to even by their opponents. Here again we would remind all, that at this time there was no charge whatever made of heresy or false doctrine,—nothing had been brought forward against those separated from, touching even remotely the foundation of the church’s standing and glory. But it is hard to hold a truth when pride has to be crucified, and self put into the dust, in order to maintain it. It is kept as long as it calls for no sacrifice, and too often given to the winds, when it thwarts the heart’s self-will. It proved, however, how little the truth of the unity of the Spirit in the body of Christ was practically held, among those who boasted that they had come out of all sects, and left sectarianism all behind them. Let us remember that schism, variance, emulation, wrath, strife, &c., are among the elements of our fallen nature from which, whenever the proud heart boasts itself free, God will plunge it again in the mire of that out of which it had made its boast to have been set at liberty; for he who glories must ever glory in the Lord, seeking to walk humbly and softly before God and man.
Whenever the enemy has work to be done, he will, if possible, employ the Lord’s people to do it, thereby increasing its power for mischief. Those ever do the greatest mischief to any truth, who vehemently defend it, unless the heart and the word, the theory and the practice, go hand in hand. It is for those who hold truth to hold it in godly fear, to watch and to pray lest Satan find them unprepared, and lead them to belie in the hour of trial, what was loudly proclaimed before. The object of Satan, in the present state of things in Plymouth, was to bring into disgrace those precious truths of the heavenly calling—the unity of the Church, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—which had formed so prominent a feature in the teaching of “the Brethren.” For some time (upwards of a year) God gave opportunity for repentance; but, instead of humiliation, there was pride; and instead of confession of sin, the justification of evil; and God again allowed the occasion to arise that should still further develop the evil that remained unconfessed and unforsaken. The seeds sown by his hand who “soweth discord among brethren” in 1845, were not slow to bear fruit. In 1847, Mr. Newton, and others with him, were accused of teaching that in connexion with the Lord, which was derogatory to his character, tending to that which would be subversive of the efficacy of the Atonement.
This led to the second Plymouth controversy, and, in the present instance, not as in the former, touching matters of prophecy and church order, but of doctrines touching the person of our Lord. There had been much taught on all sides on the experiences of the Lord as gathered from interpretations of the Psalms, that went beyond the statements and the truth of God; and unsound statements had been current for years in Plymouth, before the year in which Mr. Newton was charged with heresy. As schism had developed itself in Mr. Darby, heresy had developed in Mr. Newton—and both the natural result of the condition of things in Plymouth: and we find Mr. Newton then placing our Lord, by virtue of his relation to Adam, and not vicariously, under ”sentence of death,” and under the inflictions of the hand of God in wrath otherwise than as our sin-bearer. It is painful to reflect how far the truth was departed from in vain speculations on the position occupied by the Lord in his relation to God and to mạn, which must, if but carried out to their legitimate result, open the way for the denial of those essential verities, which an impartial reader, perusing Mr. Newton’s writings, could but see he held as well as his opposers. That love which alone can enable one to deal rightly with the errors of another, was wanting; and Mr. Newton’s erroneous views were so taken up, distorted, and exaggerated, that those not then mixed up with the discussions, and looking back upon them through the influence of time and circumstances, can but wonder how it was possible that those pro fessing themselves actuated by the holiest principles of love for the Lord’s honour, could so forget their Master and his grace, as to come to the controversy in a spirit, that in its uncharitable character tended to cast into the shade the erroneous statements of him whom it was sought to withstand. Truth fears no error, and light dreads no darkness: this it is needful to remember, or man will come to fight the Lord’s battles with an arm of flesh. Had the truth been the only thing to have been defended in the present conflict, the antagonists of error would have been content with the armour of light;” they would not have gone to buckle on Saul’s armour, or to use his sword and his bow; they would have been content with the five smooth stones from the brook of the water of life, and have met the evil in faith, with the sling and with the stone. The object of the war in the mind of him who wages it may ever be judged of by the weapons he makes use of: if the war is undertaken for the honour of God, it will be remembered, that He is as much to be honoured in the manner of the conflict, as in its legitimate end; for he who strives for masteries is not crowned unless he strive according to the laws laid down by Him who has appointed the conflict. Judging of the war then going on at Plymouth by this rule, we see truth and error, right and wrong, so lost sight of in the personal animosities that reigned, that those religious disputes became a byword and a reproach—a lie on the principles professed, and a libel on the name of Him whom all called Lord and Master.
How far Mr. Darby was the person to come forward against Mr. Newton, after the painful position he had occupied towards him but two years before; or how far he has before or since proved himself guiltless in this very matter, which in another he so violently condemned, is a matter of serious enquiry. Certain it is that both before and since, Mr. Darby’s own writings on this very subject of our Lord’s experiences have been such, as to all divinely instructed Christians must appear as far from the simple statements of Scripture, as anything written by him whom he op posed, and separation from whom he has made a fundamental element in his creed. Of the later developments of Mr. Darby’s views on this solemn subject of the sufferings of Christ, we shall write hereafter; and will only here allude to a few expressions made use of by him. Mr. Darby writes: that “Jesus was for forty days in the wilderness, under the weight of actual separation from God, exactly as on the cross, when under the wrath of God” (Words of Truth, vol. iii. p. 364); that “Jesus took the place of Cain in the earth, the place of the estrangement of the soul from God” (Ibid, p. 360); that he was “the brother of the Cain world” (Christian Witness, vol. iii.) ; that Christ entered in exercise of soul, into “the sense of guilt under a broken law,” &c. (The Sufferings of Christ, p. 31). In reading these and similar expressions it has to be borne in mind that Mr. Darby holds—and we believe rightly—that our blessed Lord stands before us as actually bearing sin only on the cross, so that these expressions cannot be explained as referring to anything vicariously borne for sin. Mr. Newton on the contrary now holds the whole of the Life of Christ to have been one great sin-bearing, till it was consummated on the cross, and therefore explains expressions he may now make use of in accordance with the theory he at present maintains; which enables him to say that, which would be fatal error when spoken from Mr. Darby’s point of view. While saying this, it does not in the least justify or palliate Mr. Newton’s remarks about the Lord in the year under contemplation; holding, as he then did, that sin-bearing was confined to the cross.
The difference between Mr. Newton’s views at this time, of which we write, and Mr. Darby’s views as since more fully brought out, is rather in regard to the time when these experiences became our Lord’s, than in the experiences themselves. Both have maintained the spotlessness of the person of the blessed Lord, but both, with Mr. Irving who went before them , sought in their own way so to view the person of the Lord as to bring him within the range in which each thought the full sympathy of the Saviour possible, seeking, as we feel assured, wrongly, the fulness of the sympathy of Jesus, in his manhood apart from his God-head. Fallen man with all his experience of sin, is only able (μετζιοπαθειν—see Heb. v. 2) to suffer and sympathize up to his own little measure, as the Greek word used would imply; but Jesus is able fully, perfectly, and absolutely, (συμπαθειν, Heb. iv. 15.) to suffer and sympathize with. We feel this an important point—we all need sympathy, we crave it, and Jesus in divine love has given us himself and his heart, that heart of God, which is and ever was afflicted in all the afflictions of his people, of old suffering with Israel and now infinitely more so with those who are members of his body; but it is in the fact that he as the God-man suffered being tempted, that we have to look for the full consolation, that the knowledge of the sympathy of Jesus gives. Failing to see this, Irving sought to enhance the sense of the sympathy of the Lord, by making him peccable though sinless; and those who followed him, by giving him, a class of sufferings under the hand of God irrespective of the atonement, of which the New Testament knows nothing. As we have stated, the practical difference between Mr. Newton and Mr. Darby is one of time; the former having regarded our Lord as in grace coming into the circumstances indicated at his birth, taking them up in incarnation; while the latter causes it to commence at a later period; but both views equally separating these experiences and sufferings from his atoning work, and from those sufferings that came down on him as the sin offering of his people. But what, we would ask, is it, that makes a certain measure of this theory blasphemy when taught by Mr. Newton, and “precious truth” when taught by Mr. Darby? in the one case a heresy so poisonous that contact with it would defile even to a thousandth degree, and in the other a truth wholesome and profitable? We ask that these things be weighed in an even balance by the saints. God will do so in his own time, and in the meanwhile let none be deceived by fair words and smooth speeches. For ourselves, we would seek to warn all against such unholy speculations in connexion with Him whose name is Wonderful, and would earnestly impress on all saints, the absolute necessity of our aiming after more adoring contemplation of that Great Wonder of all wonders—the God-man, Christ Jesus, and may such contemplations take the place of all those unprofitable unhallowing theories, which, in ages past, made the church an arena for every thing that was unholy and unchristlike, and which of late years have drawn the minds and hearts of thousands from heaven to earth, from holiness and love to strife and profanity.
We here bring our relation of matters as they occurred in Plymouth, in the first and in the second stage of its history, to a close, on which God in letters of fire had written Ichabod; wherein original principles of truth had been violated, and the command to walk in brotherly love, trampled in the dust. Still God is true, though every man be found a liar, and his revealed truths are none the less our guide, because man in his pride has become a fool in his attempt to carry out God’s purposes by his own plans carried out in his own wisdom. It is thus that many like David have sought to make the ark of God ride on a new cart, which has been made for it; and have to learn, as those who had gone before them that the ark can only be borne on the shoulders of God’s consecrated priests, who have to come to the service in robes made white in the blood of the Lamb; these and these only come to the great and holy work of carrying out God’s thoughts according to the “appointed manner” and for all others a Perez-uzzah will be found, to mark their presumption and their folly.
- ↑ See Memoir of A. N. Groves, published by Nisbet & Co., Second Edition, p. 49.
- ↑ See Mr. Groves’s Memoir, p. 529.
- ↑ Quoted from page 4 of “The New Opinions of the Brethren,” published by Benjamin L. Green, Paternoster Row, London.
- ↑ See Mr. Darby’s correspondence with Rev. J. Kelly, p.p. 61, 64.
- ↑ Read the solemn warning contained in Judges, vi. vii, viii. and ix.
- ↑ We give Mr. Darby’s reasons for separating from Ebrington Street, as given by himself in the “Narrative of Facts,” p.p. 75, 76:—
“First, practically the present hope and expectation of the Lord’s coming was put off and set aside.
“Secondly, the heavenly calling, which brethren had specially been favoured to bring out, and glory of the Church with Christ, is confounded with earth, and subverted and set aside. Our Mother declared to be the establishment of a system, which had been going on from the beginning, in glory in the earth. ‘Christianity supreme in the earth, in Mount Zion and Jerusalem,’ ‘identical with Zion arising in the moral grace and dignity of its high calling in the earth.’ (Thoughts on Apocalypse, p.p. 138, 142.) ‘This is our parent, the system to which we belong,’ Jerusalem.
“Thirdly, unfeigned faith in the presence of the Holy Ghost to guide and minister in the assemblies of the saints, was undermined and subverted.
“Fourthly, the unity of the body of Christ, as gathered by the presence of the Holy Ghost in this present time of the Church on earth, was undermined and subverted too.
“Fifthly, the Deification of the Saints, that is ‘Omniscient power of superintendence,’ ‘Omnipotent power necessary to such execution.’ And referring to Ezekiel’s vision but as a description of the power of the cherubim who symbolize the redeemed, ‘Nowhere absent, but everywhere present in the perfectness of undivided action,’ and they ‘will apply to the earth, the wisdom of the elders, and the throne.’
“And as a sixth point, the constant extenuation of the evil of Popery. And the decided absence of Christ from the teaching, while the Saints were exalted ‘almost into co-equality with God.’
“I may add, as a seventh, the exaltation and beauty of a personal Antichrist in a way quite contrary to Scripture, so as to alarm and shake the minds of the Saints.”
That too much weight be not attached to any of the above reasons, we add Mr. Wigram’s reasons for joining in the act of separation from those “accredited as Christians,” “without any question,” as given in his “Reasons for withdrawing from Ebrington Street.”
“The cause of withdrawal was not difference of judgment upon the prophetic question, neither was it a question of doctrine: my act of withdrawal took place solely and simply because a new and a human church system had been introduced, and one which appeared to screen guilt. I am thankful for this, because while it forced me to separate from the congregation, as such, it left me free to have fellowship with any as individuals in the congregation. They are all accredited as Christians, and. I can accredit them as such without any question. The hinge of all this is a new ecclesiastical polity having been introduced, and acted upon and avowed in Ebrington Street, new, and opposed to what I had known there from the Beginning.” - ↑ See Narrative of Facts, p. 10.