The effect of these statements-so plain and scriptural-was immediate and great. They found an echo in many a heart. Earnest Christians, feeling and mourning over the low condition of the churches, welcomed the truth thus brought before them. Many left their respective denominations, and joined the new movement. The numbers so increased that in little more than a year, the house of Mr. Hutchinson was found to be unsuitable for their meetings. Mr. Parnell (afterward Lord Congleton), who appears to have united with the Brethren in 1829, hired a large auction room in Aungier Street, for the use of the Brethren on the Lord's day. His idea was, that the Lord's table should be a public witness of their position. This was the Brethren's first public room. There they commenced breaking bread in the spring of 1830; and it may be taken as a sample of the rooms which Brethren have generally occupied in all parts of the country ever since. In order to make room for the Lord's day morning, three or four of the brothers were in the habit of moving the furniture aside on Saturday evening. Many, on their first visit, felt the place to be very strange, having been accustomed to all the propriety of churches and chapels. But the truths they heard were new in those days; such as, the efficacy of redemption, the knowledge of pardon and acceptance, the oneness of the body of Christ, the presence of the Holy Ghost in the assembly, and the Lord's second coming.
"There is some difficulty," says Mr. Marsden, "in laying before the reader, in a simple form, the principles of this body. It puts forth no standards of faith, nor publishes any forms of worship or discipline. It professes to practice Christianity as Christianity was taught by our Lord and the apostles in the New Testament.... The Brethren equally object to the national church and to all forms of dissent. Of national churches, one and all of them, they say, 'that the opening of the door to receive into the most solemn acts of worship and christian fellowship the whole population of a country, is a latitudinarian error.' Dissenters, on the other hand, 'are sectarians, because they close the door on real Christians, who cannot utter the shibboleth of their party.'... The one system makes the church wider, the other narrower, than God's limits. Thus in either way, the proper scriptural idea of the church is practically destroyed-dissent virtually affirming that it is not one body, but many, while nationalism virtually denies that this one body is the body of Christ. That which constitutes a church is the presence of the Holy Ghost in the assembly. 'It is the owning of the Holy Ghost as the really present, sole, and sufficient sovereign in the church during our Lord's absence.' This is the leading feature in the testimony of Brethren."
Mr. Marsden further observes on the subject of ministry, quoting from their writings: "So far from supposing there is no such thing as ministry, Brethren hold, and have always held, from Eph. 4:12, 1312For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (Ephesians 4:12‑13), that Christ cannot fail to maintain and perpetuate a ministry so long as His body is here below. Their printed books and tracts, their teachings in private and in public affirm this as a certain settled truth; insomuch that it is as absurd to charge them with denying the permanent and divine place of ministry in the church on earth, as it would be to charge Charles I. with denying the divine right of kings. Wherever it has pleased God to raise up pastors after His own heart, they gladly, thankfully own His grace, and esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake."
In a paper lately written by Mr. Darby about the Brethren at the request of a French journalist, we have not only the facts, but the thoughts and feelings connected with their beginning. "We were only four men," he says, "who came together for the breaking of bread and prayer, on the authority of that word, 'Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them' (Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)); and not, I hope, in a spirit of pride and presumption; but deeply humbled at the state of things around us; and praying for all Christians, and recognizing all those in whom the Spirit of God was found as true Christians, members of the body of Christ, wherever they were ecclesiastically. We thought of nothing else but satisfying the need of the soul according to the word of God; nor did we think of it going any farther. We proved the promised presence of the Lord; and others, feeling the same need, followed in the same path, and the work spread in a way we never thought of in the least."
It is very apparent from this extract, that the Brethren had no thought of constructing a fresh system, or of reconstituting the church as God had constituted it at first-of restoring it to its Pentecostal glory. This was the snare into which Satan wiled that otherwise noble soul-Edward Irving. But the Brethren seemed to have had no plan, no system, no organization. They held the common faith of all orthodox Christians with regard to foundation truths; but, having received light from God's word as to what the calling, position, and hopes of the church are, they could no longer remain in what man and the world called "the church." These thoughts and searchings of heart issued, as we have seen, in the secession of many individuals from the various bodies of professing Christians, and in their coming together for worship and communion on the ground of the "one body," as formed and directed by the "One Spirit."