The study of unfulfilled prophecy was a prominent feature of the movement from the first; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it was one of the main foundations of the whole system. Bellett had his interest in the subject greatly enlarged during a visit to London in the beginning of 1828, of which he communicated the results to Darby, only to find that Darby’s “mind and soul had travelled rapidly” in the same direction. As Darby still remained in his Wicklow curacy, Bellett found his chief Dublin friend in Francis Hutchinson, with whom he visited some of the Dissenting chapels. They preferred however the ministry of the Established Church, and still “held on” to it “loosely”.
Then, towards the close of 1828, Groves paid his last visit to Dublin before his departure for Bagdad, and for the second time made a suggestion that marked an epoch in his friend’s life. Bellett has given the following account of the incident.
“Walking one day with him, as we were passing down Lower Pembroke Street, he said to me: ‘This I doubt not is the mind of God concerning us—we should come together in all simplicity as disciples, not waiting on any pulpit or ministry, but trusting that the Lord would edify us together by ministering as He pleased and saw good from the midst of ourselves’. At the moment he spoke these words, I was assured my soul had got the right idea; and that moment I remember as if it were but yesterday, and could point you out the place. It was the birthday of my mind, dear J—, may I so speak, as a brother” (i.e., obviously, as a Plymouth Brother).
We proceed to trace to the same point the progress of the mind of that extraordinary man who, more than all his associates put together, stamped the whole movement with his personal impress, and to whom is due almost all the interest with which it has been invested,
