as set on fire of hell, till all concerned in it have come to confess to God and to his church—not the sins of others, but their own; not in vague generalities that mean nothing, but with that definiteness and speciality, which the broken heart is ever prepared for, and with which alone the Lord will return to dwell; for He can have no fellowship with pride, and he who indulges in it, will be known only afar off. To their own Master and to ours they will have to answer in that day, when he will bring to light the hidden unconfessed sins of His people, and make known at his holy judgment scat, that which has been secret, as well as that which has been open, of those evil ways that have continued unacknowledged and unconfessed here; for the fire of that day shall come down on and destroy all that is not of Him, by Him, and to Him in all our ways and works.
In this melancholy year that was to test professions of a heavenly calling made, and sacred truths held (as it proved, too much in the head and too little in the heart by both teacher and scholar), Mr. Darby comes to Plymouth and finds Mr. Newton’s influence paramount. Motives we will leave to God; acts and deeds we are responsible for bringing to the Word of Truth, so as to judge the evil and put it away far from us, that we fall not under its defilement and its power. Mr. Darby’s position in many ways could not but be painful in the extreme to one bent on ruling, as an undisguised partizanship placed him in the minority. What an opportunity for grace to shine in! for Christ to triumph in the saint over self! But, alas, self triumphed over Christ on both sides of the conflict, though in different ways; and the schismatic spirit of “I am of Newton,” and “I am of Darby,” as of old in Corinth, came in and carried all before it, but those who had been walking before God. They could but sigh and weep for the sin and wickedness carried on in the holy name of Jesus, and seek to keep aloof from that which so dishonoured the Lord. In Corinth, Paul would take no part in the unholy strife that was going on, amongst those who contended for belonging to Paul, to Peter, or to Apollos. He was content to remain the servant and not to become the master, for he belonged to them, and sought to raise them out of their sectarianism by telling them, that Paul, and Cephas, and Apollos were alike theirs—theirs to serve in the bonds of the gospel; and in the same spirit the cloquent teacher, Apollos, could not be persuaded by Paul to come among them, as if to keep himself out of sight, that the crucified Lord might eclipse him as well as Paul. The result of this acting in grace, was, that in the second Epistle we read nothing of the divisions that marked the first Epistle—
