the table of the Lord, that sweet memorial of Love,—love strong as death,—turned almost everywhere by brethren into The rod of their Administration.”
But the epoch of Exclusivism really derives its whole character, and therefore its sovereign explanation, from the personality of Darby. It is scarcely possible to write the story of the Brethren without bearing hardly on them. In their narrow and obscure sphere,—in their life of almost monastic seclusion, and, in ordinary circumstances, of scarcely less than monastic quietude,—they hardly have a history beyond the history of their quarrels. Consequently, they have come before the public in a light that does them a great injustice; and this is peculiarly true of the most remarkable of them all. The time has come for presenting a picture of Mr. Darby as he appeared to those who saw him through many years from within his own community, and perhaps knew nothing, except by distant and uncertain rumours, of the fierce struggles in which he had lost so much of a man’s most precious possessions.
It must be premised that his immense influence, like the influence of other men that have exercised an extraordinary fascination, has a great deal in it that defies analysis. When by a highly expressive metaphor we call it magnetic, we do justice alike to its power and its mystery. No doubt Darby had many perfectly intelligible titles to success. His attainments were great and varied, apart from his classical and theological scholarship. He could write and speak in several modern languages, and translated the whole Bible into French and German! If his ambition had lain in such directions, and if he could have condescended to pay more regard to form, he might have entitled himself to the honours of a philosopher
