God leaves not himself without witness in the fruits and results that follow, which those who will see may see, and for which those who will not, will have to answer in having fallen a prey to a blindness the result of their own self-will. It is this conviction which makes it imperative on all to investigate the principles by which they or others are guided, which, if not of God, will carry their advocates into the committing of acts only often the more evil, because apparently the more spiritually directed; for there is “spiritual wickedness in heavenly places” in more senses than one, and the filthiness of the spirit is all the more filthy in God’s sight, because of the apparent or expressed spirituality with which it is associated.
In these pages it has been sought to dwell particularly on the falsity of certain principles maintained and acted on by many, and these remarks will be directed to pointing out the growth and working of these destructive notions, which have marred so much of the Lord’s work, and brought so much dishonor on his name, and added another to the many sects that already deface the religion of Him who prayed that all His followers might be one; for if the following of any one man ever marked any body of men, which justified their receiving the name of their leader, those to whom allusion is here made, have earned the unenviable claim to be called Darbyites. No sooner is the name of “a body” assumed, and “a corporate action” maintained, outside the limited sphere of the two or three, who are gathered in the name of Jesus; than those, so taking to themselves such corporate responsibilities and powers, become virtually a confederacy, a sect, a body of their own, be the name by which they are called what it may. The leader of the party is never the leader in everything. He points out the way, and those who follow, generally outstep their master, in those particulars which form the peculiar characteristics of his creed and action, and while he leads as to the direction that views and acts take, he is none the less under the leading influence of the current, which it may be, he has caused; and borne along by influences which he can no longer control, he becomes at once the leader and the slave of his own system. Notice of the gradual development of the corporate standing assumed by Mr. Darby has already been taken, but those embryo developments already alluded to, and so painfully brought to light eighteen years ago, have not lain dormant; the seed has become the full corn in the ear, and, as some of the party acknowledge, already “new circumstances need new rules,” and as new ideas develop themselves, new expressions are needed to embody them. “The one assembly of God” is an expression made use of in 1861 as the term whereby to designate those federal
