he took a large room in Aungier Street, belonging to a cabinet-maker. There the meeting was transferred during that month.”
Cronin adds some graphic touches.
“We soon began to feel as humbler brethren were added to us that the house in Fitzwilliam Square was unsuited. This led us to take a large auction room in Aungier Street for our use on the Sundays, and on [? oh] the blessed seasons with my soul, with John Parnell, William Stokes and others, while removing the furniture aside, and laying the simple table with its bread and wine, on Saturday evenings—seasons of joy never to be forgotten—for surely we had the Master’s smile and sanction in the beginning of such a movement as this was! … From that to my leaving Dublin [for Bagdad] in 1830, there were continual additions of evangelical Christians, all of us with very little intelligence as to the real character of God’s movement amongst us.”
The association of Parnell with the company in Fitzwilliam Square was not the beginning of his Brethrenism. In consequence of my earlier articles in the British Weekly, a venerable Brother,[1] widely known in the “Open” section of Brethren, addressed to me privately a valuable communication from which I transcribe the following passage:
“What I learned [as to the commencement of Brethrenism] was as follows, my authority being Lord Congleton himself, to whom I repeated the story as I had heard it, and who pronounced it substantially correct.
“About 1825, in Dublin, three friends, of whom Lord Congleton was one, closely associated during the week, but on Sundays separated by their denominations, began to feel the unscripturalness and anomaly of such a state of things, and set themselves to seek some community that would afford a common ground on which to show their oneness as children of God, though differing
- ↑ W. Collingwood, Esq. May I express a hope that Mr. Collingwood, whose association with the Brethren is now of nearly sixty years’ standing, will yet give to the public his very interesting recollections of the earlier days of the movement?
