PREFACE. 
III 
listic crusade at Plymouth in its early days was started in 
Ireland. 
It was an aristocratic and intellectual movement.  John 
Nelson Darby, a learned man of good family, reasoned 
thus : 
The Bible is the Word of God. 
If its literal interpretation is once abandoned, the whole 
structure crashes to earth. 
This it will be seen is identically the Catholic position, 
save that for “ literal ” Rome reads “ Ecclesiastical.” 
Darby, too, found himself forced into the practical admis-
sion that “ literal ” meant Darbeian ;  for some of the 
more obvious contradictions and absurdities in the Bible 
are too necessary to the practical side of religion to be 
ignored. 
Seeing this, they devised an elaborate system of mental 
water-tight compartments.  The contradictions of Old and 
New Testament were solved by a Doctrine that what was 
sauce for the Jewish “ Dispensation ” was not necessarily 
sauce for the Christian “ Dispensation ”.  Cleverer than 
Luther, they made possible the Epistle of James by a series 
of sophisms which really deserve to be exposed as master-
pieces of human self-deception.  My space forbids. 
So, despite all the simplicity of the original logical posi-
tion, they were found shifting as best they might from 
compromise to compromise.  But this they never saw 
themselves ;  and so far did they take their principle that 
my father would refuse to buy railway shares because