THE BEXHILL-EALING-BATH
CONDEMNATION OF
PRINCIPLE
OF DIVISION BY MR DARBY
BELOVED BRETHREN,
About ten years ago a letter of commendation was sent from Ryde to Kingston-on-Thames, and was read to the saints as usual. Ryde meeting was then commonly designated as a ‘plague spot’ by brethren desirous of breaking up that meeting, and avoided by most on account of the ‘covert evil’ said to exist there.
My having done right in reading to the saints a letter of commendation from a gathering in such a condition, was gravely questioned by our brother W.K. The usual monthly meeting of brothers in London came on a few days after, and at this meeting (with about 150 brothers present, including W.K.) I asked J.N.D. before them all if I had done wrong in reading, as usual, a letter of commendation from Ryde? He replied, ‘Certainly not, Ryde has never been judged out of fellowship’. W.K. replied (as did others) on behalf of his view of the matter.
J.N.D. answered, ‘Your individual judgment has no weight whatever in such a case, RYDE IS IN FELLOWSHIP, and a letter of commendation of one in fellowship there, is valid everywhere among us, until at a competent meeting of brethren it is shewn before all that that gathering cannot be owned’13.
One at Ealing can scarcely have forgotten this. If he has, most of these 150 brethren are the living witnesses of J.N.D.’s words. It is hence manifest that our beloved brother, Mr Darby, would not only have had no sympathy with, but would have been a ‘swift witness’ against, the actors in this Bexhill-Ealing-Bath schism, were he now with us. J.N.D. is gone, but scripture says of such—
“REMEMBER YOUR LEADERS WHO HAVE SPOKEN TO YOU THE WORD OF GOD; AND CONSIDERING THE ISSUE OF THEIR CONVERSATION; IMITATE THEIR FAITH’’—Heb 13: 7 NT.
The supposed existence of doctrinal or moral evil is no ground for division. Let it first be proved (1 Thess 5: 21), not proclaimed. Ryde, like Greenwich, was loudly proclaimed and not proved. It is not Christian charity (1 Cor 13) which publishes pamphlets against brothers, charging them with doctrines which the writer has manufactured, and which the accused deny they ever desired to teach! It is not Christian charity, but an ‘evil spirit’, which under the plea of ‘zeal for the truth’, has blinded its victims.
If J.N.D. had the Lord’s mind, the seceders have no divine ground for their feet14, for until this day a ‘competent meeting’ has not been held about Greenwich. Neither those gone out at Bexhill15, Ealing, or Bath can claim (not having fully heard the accusers in the presence of the accused) to have held this ‘competent meeting’. W.K. and his party are still out of fellowship, as are those who have gone out lately at Bexhill, Ealing, Bath, &c, while Ryde is in fellowship to this day. “Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good”—3 John 11. Of two steps, necessary in a time of failure, “Cease to do evil, learn to do well” (Isa 1: 16, 17), I have only spoken of the first, the second is the doctrine. As we take the first step in the fear of God (and only then) we shall learn the second, see John 7: 17.
Yours affectionately in Christ
August 21 1890
P.S. I add a word as to the new fellowship. It seems clear to me that it is based on the ability of one gathering to cut off (excommunicate) another, a power, as I have said, which was sought to be forced upon us, but refused by Mr Darby ten years ago, except on the fullest investigation and most undeniable proof. And this assumed power takes its rise from a prior state of things (as it did then), namely, the condemnation of individuals in their absence, also in pamphlets and in private letters, now going on for two years, forgetting the grace and Model of action (John 13), refused by P.A.H., as to my brother. Where, if we accept this division (and with such precedents to guide us), must be individual confidence, and the gatherings of the saints in a few years, unless the Lord come?
