fellow-students have made. But they firmly believed in proximity of the Second Advent, and this belief coloured all their spiritual life, and was profoundly influential on their outward conduct.
In private, it made them for many years markedly ascetic; and it was probably by far the most potent of the influences that withdrew them from all connexion with public life, and that even led them to regard participation in politics as an act of treason against the heavenly calling of the Church. The late Professor Newman’s account of his intercourse with Darby illustrates both tendencies. He writes as follows:—[1]
“My study of the New Testament at this time had made it impossible for me to overlook that the apostles held it to be a duty of all disciples to expect a near and sudden destruction of the earth by fire, and constantly to be expecting the return of the Lord from heaven. …
“The importance of this doctrine is, that it totally forbids all working for earthly objects distant in time; and here the Irish clergyman [Darby] threw into the same scale the entire weight of his character. For instance, if a youth had a natural aptitude for mathematics, and he asked, ought he to give himself to the study, in hope that he might diffuse a serviceable knowledge of it, or possibly even enlarge the boundaries of the science? my friend would have replied, that such a purpose was very proper, if entertained by a worldly man. Let the dead bury their dead; and let the world study the things of the world. … But such studies cannot be eagerly followed by the Christian, except when he yields to unbelief. In fact, what would it avail even to become a second La Place after thirty years’ study, if in five and thirty years the Lord descended from heaven, snatched up all His saints to meet him, and burned to ashes all the works of the earth? …
“However the hold which the apostolic belief then took of me, subjected my conscience to the exhortations of the Irish clergyman, whenever he inculcated that the highest Christian must
- ↑ F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith.
