A history of the Plymouth Brethren/Chapter 14
The Dissolution of Darbyism—Formation of Mr. Kelly’s Party
It was the wont of Darby’s sagacious eye to survey the whole field of action, and his indefatigable energy enabled him to bring the power of his personal presence to bear wherever it might be needed, even to the ends of the earth. He began a fruitful work in Germany at Elberfeld in 1854. In 1871 he added Italy to his spheres of labour, and his Meditations on the Acts were composed in Italian. A long campaign in the United States began in 1872. The year 1875 found him in New Zealand. For a man born just within the previous century these exertions were surely prodigious. In 1878 he was at Pau, engaged still in translation work.[1]
On New Year’s Day, 1879, Wigram died. He was in his seventy-fifth year. Those who loved him (and they were many) were wont to say, in the months and years that followed, that he, too, had been taken away from the evil to come; for Darbyism was just entering on its long agony of dissolution. Perhaps no leading member of the community left behind him a higher reputation for personal sanctity, unless it were William Trotter. How to reconcile this with many of the plain facts of his history is not at all clear. Doubtless he was constitutionally unfit for controversy, and it was a world of pities that, for the sake of the leader whom he loved ”not wisely but too well,” he should so often have rushed into it. Yet it is simple justice to him to say that in all his polemical pamphlets, bad as they are, there is never a sign that the writer is fighting for his own hand; nor yet of that assumption of superior spirituality from which Darby’s controversial writings are by no means free.[2] Wigram’s character was marked by a fine simplicity; with a singular dignity of bearing he combined a perfect ease and geniality, and whatever his errors may have been it is not to be questioned that he was a devout and earnest man.
Though anxious minds had their forebodings, Darbyism at the time of its downfall presented a successful and flourishing appearance. In 1875 a rather absurd puff appeared on behalf of the Brethren, under the title of Literature and Mission of the so-called Plymouth Brethren. It came from the pen of a Scotch minister, who soon after took the only consistent step, and formally associated himself with the objects of his panegyric. This tract contains the following tribute to the prosperity of the sect. “‘Plymouthism in ruins!’ says a foe. Why, they are perhaps increasing even more solidly than any; for their numbers are being constantly augmented by drafts of the most spiritual, intelligent, conscientious, decided, and devoted, from all the churches: a startling fact, especially for ministers.”
A good deal must be allowed for the dithyrambic style of this writer; but when all deductions are made there is probably a considerable residuum of truth in his statement. Indeed the undoubted power of Darbyism was often a trial to the rival section of the Brethren. John Howard suggested that the “power” might come from a most sinister source; but we are not reduced to this expedient. The strength of Darby’s party lay in its homogeneity. The universal pressure of one iron will ensured a common action. The universal inspiration of one imperial spirit produced a common aim and a common enthusiasm. Discipline was all-pervading and resistless. A party thus equipped for action, and exactly knowing what it wanted, might well be strong; while the Open section was languishing under conditions in almost every respect the exact opposite. But with all this appearance of vigour, Darbyism was decaying within. It could not long outlast its chief, and was very likely to perish before him. In the end, no blow from without struck it down; no insidious foe undermined it. It went to pieces in virtue of its own inherent and self-acting forces of decay; and when this is the case with any community, its fall may claim sympathy, but not regret.
The principal precursor of ruin was the formation of a party holding tenets that passed under the cant name of New-lumpism. This party professed to bewail the increasing worldliness of the Darbyites. It regarded the separation of the self-styled “spiritual” from the unspiritual mass, and the formation of a communion restricted to persons who gave evidence of sufficient attainments in spirituality, as the only hope for the “testimony” originally entrusted to the Brethren. The new evangelism that had remarkably repleted the ranks of Brethrenism was regarded with profound disfavour by this party, which dreaded nothing so much as the entrance of young converts imperfectly indoctrinated in the principles of Plymouth. This was a curious, but a highly instructive sequel to the movement of fifty years earlier. Darby opposed New-lumpism with all his strength; yet it is very doubtful whether its leaders did not to a great extent make him their catspaw, and involve him before he was aware in the most colossal blunder (I do not say the greatest fault) of his whole life.
It is the old story. A very insignificant spark fell into the powder magazine, and Darbyism exploded in fragments. The meeting at Ryde had long been an eyesore to the Exclusive Brethren, and for many years past it had enjoyed the good word of nobody. Recently, some London leaders with an inclination to the hyper-spiritual school had “taken up” the objectionable “gathering”—with a view to making party capital out of it, as their opponents thought. In March, 1877, the majority of the meeting seceded, on the refusal of the minority to visit the contractor of an illegal marriage with excommunication. As the offence was one of many years’ standing, and the marriage was not within universally forbidden degrees, the case for extreme measures was not exactly clear. But the meeting had a bad name for laxity, and a large number of Brethren sympathised with the seceders. No second communion was formed, the party that had withdrawn assembling for prayer, but not observing the Lord’s Supper. Meanwhile the minority (known as the Temperance Hall Meeting) accused Mr. Kelly, who was in no good odour with the New-lump school, of having fomented division. Mr. Kelly’s convictions favoured severity in dealing with illegal marriages, and this lent colour to the imputation.
In the autumn of 1878 a young clergyman of the name of Finch, resident in Ryde, left the communion of the Church of England, and was received into the fellowship of the Darbyites in London. It seems that he made it plain that he would not feel at liberty, on his return to Ryde, to associate himself with the Temperance Hall meeting; but this did not hinder his reception. He began the observance of the Lord’s Supper in his own house, with some that had followed him out of the Established Church. In February Dr. Cronin visited Ryde, and took the communion with Mr. Finch at this private meeting. He repeated the act a few weeks later, and by his advice the meeting was transferred to the Masonic Hall.
Cronin had no thought of making a secret of what he had done. On his return to London from the second visit, he reported his action to his own meeting in Kennington, and he wrote to Darby to the same effect. Darby’s reply should be carefully noted. “I only think you have deceived yourself as to the effect of the step. I shall be delighted if I am wrong. … I cannot say that your letter made me unhappy.”
Darby was right. The opposition in London lost no time in declaring itself, and within ten days of Cronin’s report to his own meeting forty or fifty brothers there found it advisable to disown all association with the new meeting at Ryde. They reported this act to the Central Meeting at London Bridge. It was not sufficient. A clamour was raised for the excision of the venerable offender, and the Kennington Brethren were given to understand that if they screened Dr. Cronin they would only share in his ruin.
The difficulty is to distinguish in principle between Cronin’s act at Ryde and Darby’s secession from Ebrington Street thirty-four years earlier. Both steps were taken on purely individual responsibility. Neither carried at the time the approval of the community at large. The Ryde meeting was in much more serious and general disrepute than the Plymouth meeting had been, and Darby himself with characteristic emphasis had spoken of it as “rotten” for twenty years.[3] In some respects the advantage in the comparison rests clearly with Cronin; for he found a protesting meeting already in existence, whereas Darby took the responsibility of setting the dissident movement on foot. Yet Darby described his own act as a return, “if alone, into the essential and infallible unity of the Body”;[4] but came ere long to treat Cronin’s as a crime.
The opposition to Cronin proceeded mainly from some leading Brethren who have been referred to as lending their countenance to the Temperance Hall meeting. The controversy was already sufficiently exasperated, when a furious letter from Darby arrived in London and put pacification almost out of the question. This letter, technically known as “the letter from Pau,” is conceived in its author’s worst style. “The course of Dr. Cronin,” it says, “has been clandestine, untruthful, dishonest, and profane.” The course was clandestine, because Cronin had visited Ryde without giving notice of his intentions; for it could scarcely be said that he had kept quiet about it after it was done. It was untruthful, because Cronin had gone “on the ground that it was notorious that there was no meeting at Ryde; whereas it was notorious that many, and very many, brethren quite as upright as himself, held distinctly that there was;” and it was profane, because the guidance of the Holy Ghost was claimed by the Doctor for such a nefarious transaction.
This opportune letter was circulated with tremendous energy by the leaders of the Priory meeting[5]—a meeting always distinguished by its relentless resort to “discipline” for the enforcement of the highest ecclesiastical pretensions of the sect. These men, who thus used the name of their venerable chief for the prosecution of their own purposes, might have tried rather to save the credit of his grey hairs—a task that they have made it hopeless for any one else to undertake. They did not lack admonition. Mr. John Jewell Penstone[6] printed an open letter on May 1, a few days after the receipt of Mr. Darby’s. “I do not,” he says, “criticise in detail the letter; it needs no detailed criticism from any one. Suffice it to say, that the language used in it is as contrary to the laws of the land we live in as it is to the usage and order of the Church of the living God, and surely contrary to His Holy Word. Do, I beseech you, immediately entreat our beloved and honoured Brother, J. N. D. to withdraw this dreadful and most humbling document.”
The extraordinary change in Darby’s tone towards Cronin gave rise to painful suspicions. The sudden wreckage of an uninterrupted friendship of more than fifty years undoubtedly called for explanation, and many found it in an unworthy jealousy of Mr. Kelly that had long been imputed to Darby even by some of his most fervent admirers.[7] It was now alleged that in the interval between the friendly reply to Cronin and the letter from Pau, some officious friends in London had written to Darby informing him that Mr. Kelly (whose hostility to the claims of the original meeting at Ryde was well known) had been the instigator of the Doctor’s action. This at least is certain, that Darby afterwards took Mr. Kelly’s alleged interference for granted; as will appear almost immediately.
It is a great pity that Darby’s wild charges were taken quite seriously by many of his adherents. He was not much deceived by them himself, at all events in his calmer moments. But others used expressions, even after Cronin’s death in the beginning of 1882, that showed that the purely conventional character of the accusations was not understood by them. One said, “He passed away with sin unconfessed on his conscience”; another, “That wicked old man has gone to his account”. Now whether Darby had merely written under strong excitement, and was afterwards withheld by false shame from acknowledging his fault,—or whether he had instinctively fallen back on moral charges as a much needed makeweight, and had accordingly elaborated them in so artificial a manner,—I cannot say; possibly he could hardly have said himself. But the following facts are certain: Darby wrote to Cronin on January 5, 1881,—“If you could give up breaking bread,” (i.e. in private), “and own you were wrong in the step you took as to Ryde I should be the first to propose and rejoice in your restoration [to ‘fellowship’]. … I believe … it was false confidence in yourself led you to the false step you took buoyed up by others, not doubting the unhappy influence exercised over you by others.”
That is to say, the charges against Cronin’s moral character were to be tacitly dropped! Cronin’s first reply declined Darby’s terms, and refused to consent to his being “the holder of the keys”. The letter is chiefly important for the solemn declaration it contains that neither Mr. Kelly nor any one else had known anything of the writer’s purpose before the hapless visit to Ryde; but in a further reply Cronin explicitly asks if Darby were prepared to withdraw the “immoral charges”.
Darby replied in a stiff note, in which he attempted no answer whatever to this very natural question. Dr. Cronin’s rejoinder, drawing attention to the omission, apparently closed the correspondence.[8]
Though the letter from Pau placed the Kennington Brethren at a great disadvantage, their reluctance to extreme measures was not altogether overcome by it. At a church meeting held on the 28th of April, it was resolved that “the assembly” had “no fellowship with Dr. Cronin’s act in Ryde,” or “with the Masonic Hall meeting,” and that this resolution was tantamount to a censure on Dr. Cronin. The resolution was sent to London Bridge and refused, on the ground that it had not been written out during the meeting. A more formal and explicit censure was then adopted at Kennington; but it also was refused at London Bridge, the plea this time being that four local Brethren had protested against it as insufficient.
The monotonous course of this conflict was broken during May by a most extraordinary occurrence. Darby wrote a second circular, to the same general effect as the former, but containing the following postscript:—
“Since this was written, and so far ready to be sent off, I hear that Kennington has blamed Dr. Cronin, and rejects communion with the Masonic Hall in Ryde. I look upon this as a gracious intervention of God, and thank Him with all my heart for it, but the above was not written for Kennington particularly, but for the matter itself, as concerning all the Brethren, the glory of God itself, so that I still send it.”
The “extreme party” actually decided to circulate this letter without the postscript. The circumstances having leaked out, a stormy scene ensued at London Bridge.
“At the London Bridge meeting on May 10, the subject was brought up, and in substance referred to in the following terms. A brother rose and said: ‘It is rumoured that there was a postscript to this second letter, bearing on Kennington’s rebuking Dr. Cronin. I wish to ask, Does any one here know anything about it?’ There was a long pause and no reply. Another said, ‘I heard the letter was sent to a Wimbledon brother’. Instantly Mr. X.[9] said, ‘I have received no letter with such a postscript from Mr. Darby, and if Mr. Y. had, I should have heard of it’. The first brother looking direct to Mr. Z. said: ‘Mr. Z., do you know anything of such a postscript?’
“Mr. Z.—‘Well, yes, there was a postscript.’
“ ‘Would you kindly read it?’
“ ‘I have not got it with me.’
“ ‘Can you give the substance of it?’
“ ‘No, I cannot.’
“ ‘Why was it not printed?’
“ ‘Because it contained a misstatement as to a fact, and because it did not satisfy a brother’s conscience.’ Amid much sensation it was said, ‘We ought to have it: it might satisfy our consciences.’
“ ‘Did it express Mr. Darby’s satisfaction at what Kennington had done?’
“ ‘No, it did not.’
“ ‘If we had this postscript, would it help us in this matter in any way?’
“ ‘No, it would not. I assure you, upon my word, it would not.’”
The incident affords a highly instructive illustration of the length to which men will go in the interests of the Church. Things still moved slowly at Kennington. Considering the pressure brought to bear on that unhappy meeting, the protracted delay is a high tribute to the strength of the attachment subsisting between Dr. Cronin and his fellow-worshippers. But it was a struggle against fate. The delinquent had once and again promised not to repeat his offence; he had agreed to abstain for the time being from the communion; but all compromises were rejected by the inexorable Central Meeting. The “act of independency” called for “judgment”. At last, Kennington submitted to the hard necessity. On the 19th of August, 1879, a resolution was taken, and transmitted to the Central Meeting, just transferred to Cheapside. It bore the odd direction, “To the Assembly of God in London,” and ran as follows:—
“After long waiting and prayerful consideration, and the failure of all previous action by the assembly, and admonition, we are sorrowfully compelled to declare Dr. Edward Cronin out of fellowship, until he judges and owns the wrongness of his act at Ryde. Eph. iv. 3.”
A statement follows that “Colonel Langford and five others objected” to the resolution. If I could recover the names of the gallant Colonel’s five allies I would gladly publish them with all honour.
The same evening, at the Priory, a small company decided to disown fellowship with Cronin for his “schismatic act”; with Kennington, for its “refusal to judge” Cronin; with all “assemblies” that would not follow suit; and finally with the Central Meeting itself—presumably for its failure to hurry things on sufficiently fast.
The next week, Darby, who had been in the North, returned to London, and brought some sort of order into chaos. He quashed the resolution of the Priory, and compelled the acceptance of the Kennington act of excommunication against Cronin. Some prospect of peace, on the basis of making Cronin the scapegoat, now appeared, and men began to breathe more freely.
The respite was short. On the very day of the Kennington act of excision, and of the wholesale excommunication by the Priory, the meeting in Ramsgate met to discuss the same burning question. Ramsgate was a stronghold of “New-lumpism,” and the great majority of the meeting were prepared to go all lengths with the Priory. The meeting was adjourned to the 22nd, by which time the Priory “bull” (as the moderate party called it) had come to hand. It was suggested that the terms of the resolution, apart from the clause disowning the Central Meeting, should be adopted by the Ramsgate Brethren. Only four Brothers dissented. As the four were immovable, all the rest withdrew one by one, saying, “I leave this assembly as now constituted”. In the end, there were two rival meetings in Ramsgate, each claiming to be the one only “expression” of the Church of God in the town. They were distinguished by the names of their several places of meeting, the seceders being known as Guildford Hall, and the others as Abbott’s Hill.
In very few quarrels is it more impossible to feel the slightest enthusiasm for either party. The manifestoes of both alike are destitute of any trace of a liberal sentiment or an enlarged view of the situation. It was even urged in the defence of Abbott’s Hill that it had been as severe as the seceding party in condemnation of Dr. Cronin, deeming that he ought to have been excluded at Kennington on his first return from Ryde. Indeed the demoralising effect of a long subjection of heart and conscience to an irresponsible and oppressive tribunal was for a long time painfully evident everywhere.
The Ramsgate question soon became the absorbing topic of the hour in London. The seceders had many sympathisers; but there were not a few who were offended by the frivolity of the separation, and who mistrusted the ambition for a “clean ground” and a “new lump”. Unity, though all had shared in reducing it to a name, not to say to a byword, was still the ideal of many. Moreover, Darby’s rejection of the projects of the seceders was peremptory in the extreme. In reply to a letter from their leader, dated September 18, 1880, he wrote, “I have not remarked those who have taken the ground you do have advanced in holiness and spirituality, rather the contrary, and I am satisfied it is the path of pretension, not of faith. … Were the movement of those you join yourself to, to break up Brethren, … your party … would I think be the very last I should be with.” Nor was this all. In the previous July Darby had written from Dublin with evident reference to the common cry that division was the only cure,—“As regards division, I am as decided as possible. … I have long felt that this party which assumes to be the godly one is the one to be feared. … I should add that Stoney wrote in reply, that he was as far from division as I could suppose; but I do not think he knows what he is doing.”[10]
Darby was thus at feud with both parties; for on the other side were those who not only considered the moral charges against Cronin preposterous, but who held that his ecclesiastical delinquency had been greatly overstated. They would have said, “An ecclesiastical irregularity,” where others cried, “Schism”. In short, a party was forming that had only partially imbibed the extreme High Church principles of the sect. This party really believed that the Bethesda discipline was imperatively called for in the interests of sound doctrine; and they could view without horror Cronin’s act of communion at an irregular “table” that had not the remotest ecclesiastical relations with Bethesda.
Darby, on the contrary, saw that the very existence of his party was bound up with the suppression of such irregular communion. He had, it is true, at first viewed Cronin’s proceedings without alarm; partly, because Cronin, if he stood alone, was not a man to carry much weight; partly, because Darby himself would very likely not have minded replacing Temperance Hall by Masonic Hall. Ultimately, he was restrained from this by one (or both) of two considerations. He may have apprehended that by disowning Temperance Hall he would be playing into the hands of Mr. Kelly; or he may not have dared to set the ultra-spiritual party at defiance.
It may seem a strange speculation that Darby might be afraid of a party among his own followers; but there is a point beyond which no man can altogether hold in check the forces of fanaticism that he has evoked. After that point, he must follow if he would still lead. Historically, it is clear that Darby at least made a truce with the party of which he had so frankly expressed his dislike, if he did not actually capitulate to it.
For indeed that party could find some basis in his writings for its most extravagant pretensions. He might make Unity his watchword to the last, but the only possible result was that his followers lost all sense of the meaning of unity. When, upwards of thirty years earlier, Darby had initiated his gradual process of resolving Brethrenism into its component parts, he had taken for his device, Separation from Evil God’s Principle of Unity. This was a bold attempt to reconcile his principle of universal communion with his practice of universal schism; but what limit could he prescribe to the action of such a formula? If the “New-lumpists” held that the spiritual must form a new communion by forcing out or excising the unspiritual, it was open to them to say that they sought only a further and more exquisite refinement of that mysterious, impalpable “unity” which their great prophet had taught them to seek.
How impassable the gulf between the “spiritual” party and those who still sought for some moral significance in spiritual things, was finely illustrated in a correspondence between two London Brethren who were acknowledged leaders in the advocacy of the principles of their several parties. One of them had made some severe strictures on Dr. Cronin’s schismatical act. The other wrote to remonstrate. The first replied, “If you understood (pardon me saying so) the unity of the Spirit as the constitutional bond of the church, the body of Christ compacted together by that which every joint supplieth, you could not … have put any moral conduct, even the murder of a wife, as deeper in sinfulness than a persistent wilful denial of the constitution of the Church of God.” This was not the language of a raw disciple of an extravagant school; it was the language of the school’s greatest leader.
In the London community, for months and even for years, the Ramsgate “question” effectually banished all more edifying topics. It became everybody’s duty to investigate the local facts. Parties formed rapidly, and their differences threatened once more the disintegration of the whole system. Indeed, to the apprehension of the disputants, Luther had not raised a more important question; for the very existence of the last witness to the Church of God upon earth was at stake.
Unhappily, the question on which so much depended proved very intractable. Discrepancies in the evidence were not unimportant, but the total absence of a judicial spirit in most of the investigators was doubtless a far greater hindrance. I have not the least intention of pursuing the quarrel in detail; it could be of no general interest. It is almost incredible to what depths of pettiest technicality both parties descended. A broad and statesmanlike view of the matter could have appealed to nobody. The Sunday after the secession at Ramsgate, some twenty or thirty people of the minority (which must have rallied in the interval) had come to the door of the meeting-room, only to find that by some mistake it had not been opened. They had accordingly dispersed, and the question was now raised whether by their omission to “break bread” they had not forfeited their character as an “assembly,” even if on other grounds they could be recognised. This involved the discussion of all the circumstances to which the omission to open the room might be attributable. It was even sought to investigate the state of mind of the company that the closed doors had discomfited. In some cases, men made for better things devoted no little dialectical skill to the public elucidation of these momentous points.
It had been reported that one of the leaders of this minority, after the failure to effect the desired entrance, had taken a walk on the sands. This was urged against the claims of his party with great pertinacity by the supporters of the Guildford Hall seceders. Afterwards it was definitely ascertained that the walk on the sands was not taken till the afternoon, and this discovery shifted the stress of the argument.
Some moderate minds were for a temporary arrangement to refuse recognition to both meetings; and this course was actually at one time decided upon at Cheapside. All who knew anything about Darbyism were of course agreed that to acknowledge both was out of the question, since a ban of excommunication lay between the two. To admit to “fellowship” persons coming from both meetings would “identify” the whole community with both, and thus constitute it one huge self-contradiction—for above this petty mathematical conception of unity the mind of Darbyism could not rise.
It was not until April, 1881, that matters came to a head, though the strained state of feeling during the whole of that time made London life amongst Exclusive Brethren almost unendurable to sensitive people. Within the last week in April and the first in May, two London meetings came to a decision by large majorities to recognise Guildford Hall; and they duly forwarded to Cheapside notifications to that effect.
The first meeting to take this action was one situated at Hornsey Rise; the second was the incomparably more important Priory. The Priory, of course, sat merely to register Darby’s edicts. To put this beyond reasonable doubt, Darby announced at the earlier of the two meetings at which the investigation was conducted, that he would immediately leave if Abbott’s Hill were recognised. This was a threat that had more than once stood Darby in good stead during his stormy career. It is interesting to see him now, as an octogenarian, using it still with the same implicit reliance on its efficacy.
In this instance it was probably quite superfluous. There were at the outside only four dissentients when the sense of the meeting was finally taken. According to the principles that Darby had avowed for forty years, a minority of four (or, for the matter of that, of one) was as absolute a barrier against an “assembly decision” as the largest possible majority; but this was not the first instance in which Darby had thought it best to quietly ignore the principle. Indeed, it was a case of imperious necessity, for there was scarcely a London meeting that could claim to be unanimous on Darby’s side; and out of twenty-six meetings represented at Cheapside, five came to a decision absolutely adverse to Guildford Hall.
Abbott’s Hill made a qualified submission. It ceased to observe the communion on the 8th of May, in hope that a union with the triumphant seceders at Guildford Hall might in that way be effected. Guildford Hall, however, was in no mood to make concessions, but insisted that the rival meeting should be broken up, and that its members should make individual application for admission, with confession that “the position had been false, the course evil, and the table iniquity”. The Abbott’s Hill Brethren were sadly crushed and broken-spirited, but these terms, conceived with a magnanimity befitting a people whose preeminent spirituality had been the original cause of separation, were more than they could bring themselves to accept. They resumed the observance of the Lord’s Supper on the 12th of June, and lived in hopes of recognition from meetings that were reputed hostile to the “Park Street decision”.
Though they obtained this finally, it was not at once declared. The London meetings carried on their discussions into the autumn. Such of them as dissented from Park Street contented themselves with rejecting Guildford Hall, generally without defining an attitude to Abbott’s Hill. This was in some measure due to undeniable faults in the conduct of Abbott’s Hill,[11]but chiefly to a total change of front on the part of Mr. Kelly’s following.
Both sides were beginning to feel that the form of the controversy was cumbersome, and as if by a common impulse efforts were being made to simplify the issue. The Kellyites felt that the claims of Abbott’s Hill would afford them no strong footing, and possibly thought that in any case it would be wiser and better to find broader ground. They accordingly rejected the Park Street decision as imposing a new test of communion, and so far fell back (consistently or inconsistently) on original principles.
Their opponents also had a new policy. The historical case for Guildford Hall was to a great extent given up when once the question passed from London to the provinces, and it receded further and further from view as the question pursued its way to the ends of the earth. The cry was raised instead that it was the universal duty to “bow to the Park Street decision”. It could not, of course, be said with decency that it was a duty to submit to Darby’s ruling, and it was therefore necessary to invoke “the authority of the Assembly,” which thenceforth became a topic round which a great, and surely (within its limits) a very important, conflict raged.
But, conceding the loftiest views of the authority of the Assembly, there were still two flaws in the claim that the Priory decision settled the question; and Mr. Kelly’s followers were not slow to point them out. For one thing, it was of course de fide with the Exclusives that no local meeting in London could take any action of a disciplinary character, without the fellowship of all the other metropolitan meetings; and this would surely suffice to deprive the decision of the Priory of any right to give the law to the world. In the second place, the Priory was not the first meeting to announce a decision: the meeting at Hornsey had been beforehand with it; why were Brethren not rather called to bow to the decision of Hornsey? The real answer, of course, was that Hornsey, not being Darby’s meeting, was not a name to conjure with, and was, in fact, useless for the purposes of the party.
The truth, however, could hardly be avowed so bluntly, and the Darby party, unable to defend their position in argument, very wisely determined on reprisals. What alternative, they asked, had the Kelly party to propose? The only answer given to this question was that to refuse communion on the ground of a difference of opinion as to a quarrel at Ramsgate was to impose a new and unheard-of test of Christian fellowship. The retort naturally was, “Are we then to reject both meetings at Ramsgate, thus cutting off the innocent with the guilty from the privileges of the Church of God on earth; or are we to receive both, though one at least must be wrong, thus lending the sanction of the authority of the Assembly to schism?” It is hard to see how either party could answer the other. Each was irresistible in attack, impotent in defence. The deadlock that only Darby’s supreme authority had for thirty years held in suspense had come at last with a witness.
Yet so deeply imbued were both parties with the idea of the Divine authority of Exclusivism that comparatively few at that time boldly abandoned an untenable position, and acknowledged the futility of the Exclusive scheme. A universal choice had to be made between the two illogical positions. Those most deeply imbued with the High Church conception bowed to Darby; those that were tinctured with a somewhat more liberal and generous Christianity followed the lead of Mr. Kelly.
“Bowing to Park Street” became a mania amongst Brethren. No devotee of Rome ever bowed to the authority of the chair of St. Peter with more relish. A good deal of hot Protestant blood was stirred, however, by the spectacle, and the cry of “Popery” was freely raised. The Derbyites replied with the yet more terrible cry of “Bethesda”. There was some truth perhaps in both charges; unless indeed the distinctive position of Kellyism were, that two meetings separated by a sentence of excommunication might both be recognised by other meetings, so long as no question of heretical doctrine were implicated in the local dispute. Even so, the principle was a new departure in Darbyism; and while we may gladly acknowledge that Mr. Kelly and his friends took a stand for Christian unity and liberty up to a certain point, the Park Street party are entitled to the dubious credit of the greater fidelity to the common traditions of Exclusivism.
The earlier rupture of 1848 had involved a mixed question of doctrine and of discipline. In 1881 no doctrinal question was so much as hinted at. This completed the absurdity of the situation. Before any one can be expected to see his duty, in obedience to Holy Scripture, to associate himself with Darbyism as with the only “expression of the Church of God upon earth,” he must form an opinion about the rights of the quarrel in 1848—in which the evidence is voluminous, complicated and difficult to procure; and he must subsequently determine the rights of a tedious, involved and obscure quarrel in 1881—a quarrel that had confessedly no position to Christian doctrine; and finally, having on these points (presumably through many perils and hairbreadth escapes) reached a conclusion favourable to Darbyism, he must determine the rightness of excluding from Christian fellowship persons whose perspicacity has not been sufficient to bring them safely to the same conclusion. Kellyism of course is partly in the same condemnation. Fancy a reclaimed thief or drunkard being required to investigate some of the most unintelligible and unedifying episodes of modern Church history as an indispensable condition of intelligently taking the only position in which he can have the approval of the Divine Head of the Church! Would to God the case were merely an imaginary one!
The quarrel soon diffused itself over the face of Christendom. On the Continent Darby’s name was a more potent spell than even in England, and the difficulties of a Continental campaign might have daunted the stoutest heart. The requisite courage, however, was not wanting. Mr. Kelly’s character had been so recklessly aspersed at the beginning of the troubles in England that he had wisely refrained thereafter from taking a prominent part in the controversy. In his absence, a very large share in the resistance to Darby’s violent measures had fallen to a younger man, well known both in London and in Switzerland, Dr. Thomas Neatby. Dr. Neatby now, with the help of M. Compain of Paris, determined to prosecute the cause of Kellyism abroad. Several publications were issued, discussing the curious history with great minuteness. The chief burden of the defence of Darbyism in its Continental stronghold fell upon Mr. W. J. Lowe, a Brother who had been associated with Darby in the translation of the New Testament into French.
The success of the assailants was not great, though they obtained, in the late J. B. Rossier of Vevey, an adherent representing the very origin of Brethrenism abroad. This good man had united himself to Darby in 1840, and had been favourably known as a writer amongst Brethren almost from the first. But even Rossier’s name carried no weight as against Darby’s. Probably he knew, as indeed all his allies knew, that there was nothing but a losing game to play; but it is impossible not to admire the dauntless spirit with which the gallant octogenarian played it.
The claim of plenary authority for the decision of an “assembly” (a claim that was of course not preferred on behalf of “assemblies” that had decided in an opposite sense to Darby) seems to have been even more effectual on the Continent than at home. At Vevey old M. Rossier addressed some remonstrances to the meeting with respect to its support of the Park Street decision, and received a brief reply containing the following words: “The assembly maintains in its integrity the letter it addressed to you, and accepts no kind of discussion on matters settled for the assemblies of God, and so held by every brother who recognises and respects the presence of the Lord in the assembly”.
Rossier had sought to sustain his remonstrance by a liberal use of arguments from Scripture, and there was a terrible pertinence now in the following reference to the apostate Jews of Jeremiah’s day. In his rejoinder he charges his opponents with teaching that “Christ has placed His authority in its entirety in the hands of the Church, whose decisions are thus raised to an equality with the Word of God”; and proceeds, “You say to me, ‘As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee; but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth’”.
Indeed this was the position unflinchingly taken up. A French Brother, who, like most Continentals, “bowed” to the simulacrum of the authority of Park Street, and to the reality of the authority of Darby, received from a very close friend of former days, who had taken a leading part in the advocacy of the more liberal views of Mr. Kelly, a letter discussing the situation. The Frenchman answered with a blunt refusal to attend or reply to the remonstrances of a révolté—a rebel.
It might have been hoped that the absence of doctrinal complications would have moderated the bitterness of the strife; but if any improvement existed it was scarcely perceptible. The Kelly party indeed, when once things had settled down, showed no wish to persecute; but it was otherwise with their rivals. Perhaps the estimate of schism as worse than wife-murder was widely accepted. At all events, adherents of Park Street again and again refused the proffered hand of old and tried friends. The presence of even near relatives was sometimes publicly ignored. All spiritual relations would be generally suspended, even when a minimum of social intercourse was still admitted. Mr. J. Coupe, a very well-informed writer, gives an example of the prevailing intolerance. It may stand as the representative of many things that I have no wish to perpetuate.
“In the far Western States lived an Exclusive and his wife. They were more than a hundred miles from one of their own meetings and with no other Christians could they hold any fellowship. Far off as they were shoals of conflicting pamphlets reached them. The result was the wife went with John Darby, the husband refused his authority, and from that moment they could no longer remember the Lord’s death or worship together!”
This is no isolated case of extravagant bigotry. It is typical of Darbyism.
- ↑ Schaff’s Herzog, Art. J. N. Darby.
- ↑ It is some comfort to learn, on the authority of “Philadelphos,” that both Wigram and Darby expressed, about 1871, regret for some of the violent language they had used. “Philadelphos” unfortunately gives us no clue to the amount of this regret, nor to the ground that it covered; but the bare fact that anything was done in this direction is a cause of thankfulness. See The Basis of Peace, p. 26.
- ↑ This was the common report. Dr. Cronin asked him just before his departure for Pau to visit the meeting and judge of its state. Darby replied, “Never will I put my foot into that unclean place. I have known it for twenty years to be a defiled meeting.” This rests on Dr. Cronin’s testimony. An Examination of the Principles and Practice of the Park Street Confederacy, by G. Kenwrick, p. 14.
- ↑ This expression occurs in a tract that Darby wrote (in October, 1846) entitled Separation from Evil God’s Principle of Unity. J. E. Howard’s sarcastic comment is worth quoting. “What sort of answer have we to ‘the grand question of the nineteenth century—What is the Church?’ The Church is the pearl, and the pearl has many incrustations, and when these incrustations are all stripped off, we have Mr. Darby ‘alone, in the essential and infallible unity of the body,’ a unity which certainly cannot be broken unless it should please this gentleman some time to quarrel with himself; as it was said of one of Cromwell’s captains that if John Lillburn were left alone in the world John would quarrel with Lillburn, and Lillburn with John.”
- ↑ By this time removed to Park Street, Islington, and sometimes known by the old name, sometimes by the new.
- ↑ Mr. Penstone, who at the time of writing is connected with Open Brethren, is one of the oldest living representatives of Brethrenism. He was first associated with it in Little Portland Street, at least as early as 1839. The letter referred to in the text is dated from Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berks, which was his home for many years.
- ↑ If this were mere idle conjecture, I should have been silent about it; but I know it to have been strongly believed in by people who could scarcely see any other flaw in Mr. Darby’s character; and I have in my possession a copy of a letter from Cronin to Darby, in which the writer mentions that he has often asked his correspondent for an explanation of this feeling. There is a good deal of corroborative evidence; and, apart from all this, the charge was so freely brought at the time of which I am writing, that even the most summary account would be organically incomplete without a reference to it.
- ↑ I do not know how this correspondence first became public; but as it was freely used in print twenty years ago, I betray no confidence in using it now. The copy in my possession is in a most trustworthy hand, and I have reason to think it was taken from the original.
- ↑ The book from which this quotation is taken (Epitome of the Ramsgate Sorrow, p. 8) gives the real initials, which were readily identifiable at the time. I prefer to give no clue to the identity of the persons involved.
- ↑ Exposé, p. 29; Epitome, p. 26.
- ↑ I feel bound to state that on a reexamination of the evidence after the lapse of twenty years I am still of opinion that, according to the common principles of Darbyism, there was absolutely no reason for disowning Abbott’s Hill. Some of its measures were liable to censure. The whole question is left on one side in the text, partly because of its intrinsic insignificance and want of general interest; partly because the controversy was ultimately made to turn on wholly different points, as will immediately appear.