It may be of interest to the reader to have some little account of the origin of Christadelphianism.
Its founder was Dr. John Thomas, M.D., who was born in London in 1805 and died in New Jersey, U.S.A., in 1871. Though a medical man, he practiced medicine very little. At one time he took to farming, but made no success of it. The most of his life was spent in promulgating his strange doctrines by word of mouth, and the aid of a busy voluminous pen.
When twenty-seven years of age he emigrated to the United States of America, and got into touch with and joined a sect named Campbellites, so called after the chief propagandist of the system. Baptism, as essential to salvation, is one of their chief doctrines. After some time Dr. Thomas began to teach the non-immortality of the soul, to deny eternal punishment, etc., and indeed was beginning to shape what became in time known as Christadelphianism. Christadelphianism is a coined word meaning The Brethren of Christ.
When about thirty-three years old the divergence between Thomas and Campbell became acute, and occasioned a very wordy warfare on paper. It makes sad reading. Bitter personalities were indulged in on both sides. It ended in their parting. Laboring often under great disappointments and reverses, Dr. Thomas founded the sect that bears the name of Christadelphian. Dr. Thomas visited Great Britain three times, and finding his propaganda more prosperous in this country, decided to reside in England, went to the States to arrange his change of residence, but died before it could be carried into effect. We glean the accounts of how this sect originated from a biography of Dr. Thomas written by Mr. Robert Roberts.
Mr. Robert Roberts was the chief exponent of Dr. Thomas' views in Great Britain. He was born in Aberdeen in 1839 and died in an hotel in San Francisco in 1898, and was buried by the side of Dr. Thomas in the Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, U.S.A.
He has written his biography in a book of 386 pages.
When very young he got into touch with a Christadelphian meeting in Aberdeen, though not known by that name then. Gradually he went south till he finally made Birmingham his headquarters, where the Christadelphians, we understand, have their stronghold in this country. They are a struggling sect at their best. Their assemblies are not numerous and often small.
Robert Roberts' autobiography is strangely like Dr. Thomas' biography. There is the same struggle, disappointments and reverses, the same bitter personalities, and the same kind of sad end. His life was a hard struggle to plant a system that was the negation in every detail of the gospel.
Whilst there is a great show of quoting the Scriptures, it reminds us of the Scripture, which says, " In which [the inspired writings of the Apostle Paul] are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction " (2 Peter 3:1616As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16)). How true these words are of Dr. Thomas and Mr. Robert Roberts, and all who imbibe their anti-Christian teaching.
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