This immunity was doubtless due to the happy survival of the great chief of the party. In Darby and Darbyism I made the following observations on Mr. Kelly’s position: “At the age of eighty, he stands before us as the only survivor of a remarkable school; and with unimpaired zeal and energy, with no mean statesmanship, and with the genuine theological sense that even outsiders have often acknowledged,[1] he guides the affairs of the little section that still, to his mind, represents the original Brethrenism—or, in other words, that represents the Church of God on earth.”
I quote these words with pleasure as a tribute to one who has through a long life, in a most ungrudging and disinterested spirit, devoted his “laborious days” to the cultivation of the highest learning; but I regret to find that they are no longer fully applicable. Quite recently, as I am informed, some fifty meetings have broken off from Mr. Kelly’s lead. Their manifesto is a tract by Mr. W. W. Fereday of Kenilworth, entitled Fellowship in Closing Days. Mr. Fereday and his friends, like the parties of Messrs. Guff, Stuart and Grant, abandon the Bethesda discipline,—a course vainly urged on the Kellyites fifteen years earlier by Dr. Neatby, whose connexion with them was severed from that time.
A short account may conveniently be added here of the relation of Open Brethrenism to Darbyism. A good deal has been said in recent chapters that in its entirety only applies to Darbyism. An attempt will now be made
- ↑ I quote a single instance: “A man who born for the universe narrowed his mind by Darbyism” (Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries, p. 164). The severity of the implied criticism on the school enhances the high value of the compliment to the man.
