and relatively larger in Scotland. The one happy result of this disruption was that the excommunicated party seems to have decided to abandon the Darbyite discipline altogether, and “to heartily welcome any godly member of the body of Christ apart altogether from questions of a mere ecclesiastical kind”. This appears to mean that, while retaining their own list of recognised meetings, and their own internal procedure, they place Open Brethren, Kellyites, and the adherents of whatever other varieties of Plymouthism there may be, on the same footing for “occasional communion” as the members of any other evangelical denomination. This happy example was followed, in 1892, by the Grantites in America.
Almost at the same time, a “discipline,” if possible still more absurd, was being enacted in America under the auspices of two well-known Darbyites, Lord Adelbert Cecil and Mr. Alfred Mace. Mr. Mace was a young evangelist of a good deal of popular power. The connexion of Lord Adelbert Cecil with the Brethren was of longer standing. He was a son of the second Marquis of Exeter, and his adherence to the Brethren had caused some sensation at the first. This was far from having spoilt him, and he was always marked by a particularly unobtrusive bearing, by an extreme simplicity and unworldliness in all his habits, and by great devotion to his work of itinerant evangelisation. His death by drowning in 1889, before he had completed his forty-eighth year, was the occasion of much sincere regret. But Mr. Scott is thoroughly justified in calling both these Brethren “men ministerially unfitted for such work” as the disciplinary proceedings in Montreal.
The object of discipline was Mr. F. W. Grant of Plainfield, New Jersey, probably the most accomplished
