under the more fatal drawback of a certain speculative sublimity that estranges ordinary minds. So effectually have these disadvantages operated that that principle, which may fairly be called the most fundamental that the Brethren professed, is now but little known among themselves, and seldom so much as guessed at by even well-informed outsiders.
Some two years after the appearance of Hall’s pamphlet, the most earnest and unwavering opponent of the principles that Darby’s influence had imposed upon the Brethren passed to his rest. Anthony Norris Groves died in the house of his brother-in-law, George Müller, on the 20th of May, 1853, in his fifty-ninth year. His mission work in India had exposed him to peculiar trials. For some years he was misled by the idea of a self-supporting industrial mission. This proved a failure, and brought him into long-continued depression of spirits, in which he found characteristic consolation in the reflexion that “to feel ourselves the Lord’s free-born children in the way of holiness, is a most privileged place, amidst all the bondage of earth’s cares”.[1] It is worth while to record this sentiment. The peculiar genius of Christianity has not often received more striking expression.
Afterwards he wisely devoted himself exclusively to the ministry. The time of the great disruption found him on a visit to England, and he took, as we have seen, a prominent place in the guidance of the later policy of Bethesda. He had written in India, in 1847, his views on some of the peculiar features of Darbyism, in the following terms:—
“If the question were put to me … do you consider the Spirit unequal to the task of keeping order in the way we desire to
- ↑ Italics my own.
