play of holy zeal at once deludes and deceives such. We allude to this here, where faith is claimed for the perpetration of actings of the greatest church wickedness, considering the light possessed, that has darkened the page of church history for many a long year. But God’s estimate of the faith claimed is to be read in the light of the delusions of all kinds, into which he has allowed him and his followers to be led; into the assumptions of “The one Assembly”; into false teaching on the sufferings of Christ; into a proud schismatic discipline separating from those who bow not down to their idol. It is God who has cast them down, not man; it is God who has hardened and blinded, as he ever will, the wilfully hardened and blinded, who have already refused to feel and refused to see. Let the spirit and tone of the extract given, be examined in the light of present events and passing revelations, in which God would have us learn that “he shall have judgment without mercy that shewed no mercy,” for he would teach us that “mercy rejoiceth against judgment.”
It is not our purpose here to go into Mr. Darby’s speculations[1] into what he calls “this third kind of suffering,” which, as he says, it is “difficult to get hold of,” speculations which bring the Holy One of God into the moral condition of an unsaved Jewish remnant, of such as are under the punishment of that blood-guiltiness which the nation called down upon them and upon their children, when they crucified their King, and thus bringing the Victim into the moral place of the murderer! Of this remnant Mr. Darby writes, “They are under the law; they do not know what it is to be reconciled to God, but they come into awful conflict with Satan, Antichrist, and the terrors of that day. They will be under the sufferings which come from the full letting loose of Satan upon them, without the knowledge of God’s favour resting on them” (Bible Treasury, Vol. II, 157), of which passage Mr. Dorman fitly remarks, “It is a strange scene whence to deduce the experiences of the Lord Jesus!” It matters not whether these experiences belong to elect sinners or to others; they are experiences of sinners as such, in moral and spiritual alienation from God, and into these experiences the Son of God, we are told, enters, that He might be able to sympathize with certain persons when passing through judgment for their sins. In the first place, the Son
- ↑ Those who desire further information relative to Mr. Darby’s doctrine on the “Sufferings of Christ,” are referred to Mr. Dorman’s Pamphlet, entitled “Close of Twenty-eight Years’ Association with J. N. D.”; and Captain Percy Hall’s “Grief upon Grief,” both published by Houlston & Wright, Paternoster Row, London.
