Dear Brother, It may be helpful in more ways than one if we now test recent proceedings of the gravest consequence by that unity of action, which we have all hitherto professed, and which I believe to be the only Scriptural principle, whatever the number of meetings in a place. Some seem by no means alive to the import of what is at stake. In places where brethren are used to but one meeting, they might easily go wrong if they judged from their own circumstances which do not raise the question; as others may err who have yielded to feeling against that which touched them personally, or awakened their indignation. But truth is not learned or kept thus.
In August 1879, the Park Street meeting shocked with a slight exception the spiritual intelligence and even the consciences of brethren generally by a Declaration sent out independently of the rest of the saints in London. In that document they committed themselves to refusing fellowship, not only to a brother whose case was before another meeting, but to that meeting for what it agreed to do that very evening! and to all others, individuals or meetings, which did not clear themselves directly or indirectly from association with either the brother or the meeting, in question!! They added that they disowned the present constitution of the weekly meeting as a medium of communication between the local meetings in London!!!
Now such an action as this taken in the Lord's name, even in itself (apart from the fundamental breach in sending it out as an assembly decision, without so much as seeking the acceptance of the saints in London), was not only unheard of in our midst but opposed to what had uniformly been our bearing of old. It was not so as to Plymouth in 1845-6, though the evil there was beyond comparison worse than anything alleged against the brother or meeting accused in London. It was not so after the Bethesda matter as to Bath, where a new meeting, outside that which had the previous sanction of G. V. W. &c., was begun with the sanction of J. N. D. &c. It was not so later still as to Jersey, whence saints from two meetings (till one collapsed), who had no intercommunion there, were allowed to break bread at the Priory, and so elsewhere, with the consent of the same persons who denounced a less fault in the Ramsgate case as the destruction of the testimony, &c. It was not so as to Newton Abbot, where, a party outside the then and still acknowledged assembly were sustained vehemently in word and deed by the same elder brother who from the first would have no less than the expulsion of his still more aged brother; yet was the offense very like his own. It was not so as to Christchurch (N. Z.), where G. V. W. had stood with the meeting on the one hand, and on the other J. N. D., after hearing two sisters, wrote his sympathy with their seceding friends; yet nobody thought of declaring him out, though surely responsible. Such cases, two of them recent, prove how contrary to all our habitual forbearance with godly brothers in conflicting circumstances were the proceedings of Park Street. They were due to a fierce party-spirit rising up to a not undesired crisis of division, as against brethren who could not consent to such extreme courses, believing them to be alien to Christ and Scripture.
But even if the aim of Park Street had been consistent, righteous, and godly, we are now to see how the hitherto constantly practiced principle of the assembly's united action in a place bears on the recent acts, and so on all who accept them.
The Declaration of 19th August 1879 was sent out in all directions by Park Street, as if it had been the sole gathering to the Lord's name in London. Can any intelligent believer deny that this was in direct violation of the principle we owned? It is in vain to plead the fault of Kennington or any other. The saints in Park Street were bound, if they. claimed (as they did) assembly character, to have submitted their proposal to all the gathered saints in London, even if they arrogated to themselves the sudden title to blot out with a stroke of their pen the intermediate weekly meeting, which no sober person could deem justifiable. It was really an act not only independent but revolutionary; unless it be assumed that the assembly even in a small corner of a city can do no wrong, or that the sin of independency is impossible among brethren because they do not call themselves Independents.
Never was a document from an assembly in fellowship so generally blamed and rejected as the Declaration of Park Street. Every one knows there were not a few nor inconsiderable circumstances tending to make anything emanating from that meeting acceptable to all brethren. Even from the least assembly a solemn act would on the face of it be received with the utmost respect. What then must have been the chagrin and amazement of the Park Street meeting, if they over knew it from their present leaders, that (with scarce an exception beyond the not many daring and determined promoters of division, striving after “the reins” here and there,) brethren throughout Great Britain and Ireland, the Channel Islands, &c., not only rejected the judgment so peremptorily passed by Park Street, but hid away or destroyed the document, some even remonstrating with that meeting more severely than any other had ever experienced in our previous history
Then followed before the close of August 1879 the notable second document from Park Street, dropping the Declaration, under the pressure of the same strong hand which forced the acceptance of the Kennington judgment on a most reluctant party. Yet it was that abandoned Declaration (in every way an error and an object of censure and shame both in its intrinsic contents, and in sending it out so independently, that it did not even claim to emanate from the assembly in London), which was the occasion of the Guildford Hall agitation, and in effect, though dropped, the policy of the Park Street party.
Turn we now, from the sorrowful and humbling details that intervened, to April 1881, when Park Street made the letter from Guildford Hall the reason for judging the Ramsgate case. Let us forget if we can the strong bias in favor of the Guildford Hall leader and his company who had fallen into the ditch through zeal for their Declaration, and stuck to it as of God when Park Street itself was compelled to give it up. Let us ignore even the private encouragement given by chiefs of the Park Street party to Guildford Hall in beginning for the third time that phase of the meeting which it was their known resolve to accredit as God's assembly in Ramsgate to the rejection of Abbot's Hill, and so get rid of all who could not accede to such harsh and partial measures. Let us assume that the Park Street meeting had neither prejudice nor prepossession, was without will or plan, without heat or underhand ways, but all simple and loving, righteous and holy, as suits the Lord's presence. Let us conceive adequate testimony heard and weighed without effort to sway the saints, and the total absence of influence or threat first or last from high quarters.
Supposing then all otherwise to be unimpeachable both before the meetings and during them, there stands before all the solemn fact of independency reappearing once more, and if possible more widely, deeply, and unanswerably. For Park Street took up the Ramsgate question after another local meeting (Hornsey Rise) had gone into the matter and presumed to have the Lord's mind on one half at least (Abbot's Hill), though (strange to say) they did not broach the other half (Guildford Hall) for more than a month after.
What then can be thought of any one not only saying but printing, or allowing others to print, for the guidance of souls, that “it was forced upon them (Park Street), and they were obliged to go into it"? What is the meaning of London brethren circulating the statement that “the same thing might have happened at any other meeting in London or elsewhere, and we should have accepted their decision"? One may account perhaps for such words on the score of ignorance of the facts and the rash supposition of what was just the reverse; but what of those living in town or visiting (as many then did) to become conversant with what was going on, who know that all this is unfounded? They must be aware that our brother wrote under a delusion as to all this; and yet they allow positively false impressions to spread at home and abroad, without any effectual appeal to disabuse the writer's mind. Are Christian men fallen so low as to say not a word because such statements have been or may be useful in gaining the unwary? There are hundreds of his associates who must know that Hornsey Rise in part had judged the matter, as already explained. The statement evidently presents what ought to have been, not at all the fact as it was. If the case had been sound, vain repetition could not have ensued. When a matter is known to be judged as before God, no one thinks of reopening it. Bexley Heath, &c. were notoriously enthusiastic partisans of Guildford Hall. Nobody but enthusiasts heeded their judgment. What a sign of the state of the assembly then! Not even Hornsey Rise could be satisfied, else they would have “accepted their decision,” instead of beginning judgment as they did and formally disowning Abbot's Hill. This again did not satisfy; and therefore up rose Park Street which discussed Abbot's Hill on April 21st and 28th, and Guildford Hall on May3rd, deciding to refuse the one and receive the other.
But the extraordinary fact remains that not only did fruitless independent action mark the meetings in town or country that preceded the intervention of Park Street, but when Park Street did take it up, the same leaven of independency fatally betrayed its presence; for it was expressly given out that Park Street only acted for itself, and when its notice was with difficulty entered on the paper, it was said to be only binding on themselves, with information of this given to others! a thing absolutely unprecedented in our doings and sayings, again letting out the sad reality of independency. Now this was a subversion of the united action of God's assembly. There was no proposal to the saints all over London, still less any acceptance by them when it becomes truly the judgment of the assembly in London. It was Park Street only acting for itself, and getting it on the paper solely as notifying that fact to the rest after it was done! Unity of action was no longer the rule.
The saints in London who espoused Guildford Hall were thus betaking themselves pro hac vice to independent devices. It was the sin of Park Street in 1879 reproducing itself more desperately, yea, irremediably for the present, in 1881. An independent act had been cleverly, but without real conscience work, got rid of in 1879; it reappeared with portentous virus in 1881, and it never ceased its activity till the poison was diffused through all the meetings of that party in London. Think of thankfully accepting such a judgment as of God!
For so imaginatively incorrect is the picture, that not one local meeting throughout London simply accepted the Park Street decision. They each separately judged the matter, “resolving themselves into fragmentary independent meetings;” and each sent a separate decision in a way wholly unexampled to Cheapside for the notice paper. And so it has been in many assemblies throughout Great Britain and abroad. Independency supplanted unity save with brethren who could not follow Park Street in this open departure, adhering to the ground on which Brethren have hitherto stood by grace. And none so zealously impressed on the country meetings the duty of a fresh and conscientious judgment for themselves than emissaries of Park Street or men who had attended the judicial meetings there, (in the most direct antagonism to such as the writer of the letters, who fear to face the facts, paint the case as it should be, and call on the saints to do no more than “thankfully to accept the judgment of our Brethren gathered at Park Street"). Witness the shameful proceeding at Birmingham.
Every brother, however, who in this serious trial cleaves to the truth as we have learned and practiced it, knows that according to the word a decision has no claim on the acceptance of the saints till it can be truly and in godly order the judgment of the assembly in a city, and not only in one part of it. He who employs Matt. 18 to justify independent not only mistakes the Lord's promise, but has already in heart abandoned the divine ground of God's church for a unity which is only invisible, as Protestants generally make it.
The conduct of Park Street and of its followers among the other local meetings in London is the more strange, as the resort to independent action, though so aggravated and general, was simply in order to do this one business. As unity had ever prevailed before, so to unity they immediately returned, after employing independency to effect a purpose which, it is to be supposed, they despaired of accomplishing otherwise. Now I reject this playing fast and loose with a divine principle as unworthy of men of God. Is it not a plain undeniable warning for simple souls, unacquainted either with the details of Ryde and Ramsgate, of Kennington and Park Street, or with the rank and wild growth of party and personal feeling, which was the true source of the mischief and had long been seeking a plausible pretext for division? And I cherish the conviction that the mass of the saints, carried away by fear, favor, influence, companionship, and a crowd of other motives, do in their hearts detect as well as deplore this division; which stands in the most marked contrast with the separation from Bethesda &c., instead of having any analogy, as some have wantonly said.
Ever yours affectionately in Christ, W. K.
To R. A. S.
P.S. My informant declares that the expression in the Bible Treasury for March, 236, col. 2, “fresh baptism with the Holy Spirit,” was his, not the brother's own, as reported: so I gladly correct.