The effect of this testimony was felt everywhere. Many earnest Christians in various paces, feeling the dead state of things around them, were led to read these books and to search the scriptures as to whether the new doctrines were in accordance with the word of God. Numbers were convinced of their soundness, left their different denominations, and united with the Brethren. And as it was generally the most spiritual, earnest, and intelligent members who did so, their secession was the more conspicuous, and the more irritating to their ministers. This has been the real source of so many bitter attacks against the Brethren from that day even until now. They were publicly denounced from the pulpit as a most dangerous people, and as holding and teaching the most erroneous doctrines. Pamphlets were also written and widely circulated in which the Brethren are grossly misrepresented. These we have before us, and they speak for themselves. It is quite evident in calmly reading these attacks, that they were written in haste, in anger, and without due information on the subjects which are referred to. Nearly all that we have seen are most incorrect as to mere dates and facts, and even as to persons and authors. What should we think of an historian who attributed the " Babylonish Captivity" by Luther to the pen of Melancthon, or the sermons of John Wesley to George Whitfield? And we have read a lengthy paragraph in one of these attacks, exposing a well-known preacher of the gospel to the ridicule of the truly orthodox, on account of the way he conducted his meetings, supposing him to belong to the Brethren: whereas he is a member of the Church of England, and never even occasionally broke bread with the Brethren.
But all these mistakes are of very little consequence, provided the Brethren are thoroughly abused, and the people prevented from going to hear them. The ministers were alarmed. An interest in the truth had been awakened, which they could not meet: rest of soul was found with Brethren, not because they were better than others, but because the Holy Ghost was owned as working sovereignly in their midst; members dropped off from the old congregations, and Brethren's meetings sprang up in their immediate neighborhood.
To all who are in any measure acquainted with the Brethren, such pamphlets and books, and similar articles in magazines, have no weight whatever. To designate a respectable community of Christians living amongst us by the most unseemly names-such as we should be ashamed to repeat here-to heap upon them unmeasured abuse, and to denounce them as the worst of heretics, can have no moral weight with any unprejudiced mind, and generally defeats its own object by awakening a spirit of inquiry and increasing the number of seceders. And we know that all such unworthy efforts to arrest inquiry have utterly failed, from the steady and marvelous increase of Brethren in nearly all parts of the world. The work is of God and vain is man's puny arm stretched out against it. It is His own special testimony in these last and evil days notwithstanding the failure of those who carry it; and we deeply grieve for Christians who speak against it, knowing certainly thereby that they do not understand it, and are not in the enjoyment of it.
But amongst the many assailants of Brethren during the last thirty years, there have no doubt been some who were honest in their convictions and earnestly contended for what they believed to be the truth of God. We refer to those who have disputed with Brethren on such subjects as an ordained ministry, on what is the church, on the Holy Ghost in the assembly as distinct from being in the individual Christian; whether there is a first and a second resurrection with a judgment of the quick and the dead, or only one general resurrection and one general judgment; whether as Christians we are under the law as a rule of life; the nature and object of the law; and the difference between the righteousness of the law and the righteousness of God. On all these subjects the Brethren have met their opponents in the most fair and scriptural way. And no one can read their writings with a desire to know the mind of God without being deeply edified.