The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-11-12
PLYMOUTH BRETHREN
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2s.)

l interests are certain of warm es.
 pousal in England so long as tha' | island persists and l am very sure 1 that when American newspaper report | er's essay, as for instance last week | to question the Rev. k. J. Campbell on his theological opinions they promptly display an ignorance that would be impossible to Englishmen of | a parallel type. For since the intel l lectual scepter passed from the coast westward in America and the old Sc cinian debate and the old debates on baptism sank to rest before the inter- ests of scientific discovery, industrial development and the march toward the Pacific, American boys and girls have hardly had time to read their Bibles and hardly know whether Abraha'r, was an Old Testament hero. one of the apostles, or the name of a sign in the Semitic Zodiac.
 But I am discursive, though not without reason.
 Darby's followers had better right to be identified with Dublin than with Plymouth, for it was in the Irish cap itaI that with Anthony Graves, an- other student of Trinity college. and few more the first association was formed in 1S2S though in 1880 a sec- ond group was organized at Plymouth. England. Darby could preach in at least three languages, and did so throughout France, Germany and Switzerland as well as the British Isles. He edited "The Christian Witness which was the official organ of the movement, and published much beside. have an impression that the weekly newspaper known as The Christian and published by Morgan and Scott in London is the lineal descendant of Darby's quarterly Witness. The places of assembly were never churches, l'but rooms" generally upper rooms. The assumption of Brethrenism was curiously identical with the oxford Movements assumption, 'that some where on the earth there must be an organism worthy to be called the per- feet church. Only instead of marking back to the historic institutions, Darby led his followers back of all 1nstitu- tions, to what he called the word. He considered that he was completing the tentative service of Luther and Zwingli and Calvin. But he utterly de- clined to base his position on any mans doctrine. Consistently at every point he brought himself to test and re- test every utterance of the church and churchmen by reference to "the Word. ' And his process depended upon the prior assumptions CD that the scrip lures are equally authoritative In every part, though showing progressive de-
 velopment which he called "dispensa- tional truth" and CD that main ob- ject of the Scriptures is to teach au- thoritative dogma. He examined Dan | ier as eagerly as Pusey did, and was | just as certain that in that Book was | hidden a scheme of future history to | the end of time.
 ! But 1t was not his views about the unscripturalness of a state church or | of a paid ministry or of the Second | Advent or even of the equal right of all male members of the body to | ''prophesy" or preach or teach that
 made Darbys influence so strong and so durable. It was, his reclaiming o1 | the Scripture from what may be called the Protestant Tradition, and his 1 eminent attachments as scholar fitting
 him to expound the Scriptures, along
 with his thorough going democratic
 radicaism that constituted his holc
 upon so many minds
 | "Brethrenism" had very checkereG
 history and is now in a steady process
 of absorption after having profound I-iy affected the intellect of Protestan lorthodoxy everywhere. The most emi
 nent example of that influence Is per haps Dr. Campbell Morgan, the famous | Bible teaching pastor and evangells whom Atlanta for instance crowded t l near Tn tW1ce the nulnSeTS ludt 6iSCt
 ed, at about the same date, MT. Roosc welt or President Taft. Another ex | ample is Rev. F. B. Meyer, Baptis
 as the other Is Congrcgational1st, ant nether by any means logical follow
 CT of Darby. The same must be sai' l of Moody and of that Dr. A. c. Dixon a Baptist pastor in Boston, who as stunned charge of Mooey's Congrega tional church in Chicago. and wen thence a little while ago to the pastor | ate of Surgeons old tabernacle il | London pr. Broughton of Atlanta | Of the same group and so is that teach ling evangelist Mir. Newell. who wa conducting meetings in Birmingham .l not many months ago. And whereve
 indeed you find modern Protestan
 evangelist, as for example Dr. Ora.
 or pr Torrcy of the Moody institute I who equires as a first principle tn
 absolutely, inerrant, dognlatic author ity of the Bible ir all points of theo lretical theology or church organization
 there as surely you come upon the in iiuence of Darby. I believe pr
 Brooks, a Presbyterian minister in Si Louis, was the greatest disseminate o
 of Brethrenism in the west and soutl
 Much more might be written I'm
 amazing intolerance of the Exclusive Brethren, who communicated one an
 ether till "all was blue" the opposition | Of all alike 10 really SclentlHc Stud
 of biblical material, the insistence upo
 personal, fervent, clear-cut evangelism b. every believer, above all the re-discover cf the difference between popular re
 ligion and the grace of the Lord Jesu
 Christ, all deserve and even challenge at
 tention, which we may perhaps render a
 some future day. But it was the air
 rather of the present paper to set tn , Plymouth brethren in the light of thei , s storic environment than to describe a a their beliefs or their really notabl |, achievements. I. however, cannot eve < for a moment bid them farewell withou f crediting them with much "undenomina tional'' missionary service. the inan
 mission of China, the foundation of tn
 American Baptist mission on the Cong, { 1ha Central American misidon operate