DECEMBER, 1899, FROM DR. VAN SOMEREN, TO MR. F. E. RAVEN

DECEMBER, 1899, FROM DR. VAN SOMEREN, TO MR. F. E. RAVEN

In reference to above notice, at an interview with the two most prominent brothers (Tunks and House) responsible for it, it was emphatically stated: that it was never meant as an assembly judgment or supposed to have the force or endorsement of the gathering and that it was meant to be an authoritative dictum of brothers to close up finally what was ever a source of disunion and scandal, claiming that a brothers’ meeting was a tribunal contemplated in Scripture for just such a purpose and this on the ground of Acts 15 and the passage in 1 Corinthians where it speaks of the least esteemed judging between brethren — and others supposed to be equally to the point.

^[p. 155] The point then seems to be, Can a brothers’ meeting claim such a part scripturally and is there an authority residing in it to settle aught in matters which it is judged need not come before the gathering? I have no doubt that if brothers looking into a matter feel that it is not one which the gathering need have cognisance of, they can leave it there, or if judging wrong attaches to certain ones, can express that judgment to those brothers privately and seek to exercise them, but this only in an individual capacity, and not collectively as brothers having any collective capacity. If this is incorrect, I would like to be set right.