ABSTRACT
The eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival had, in the words of W.R. Ward, ‘impressively demonstrated the real force of that Cinderella of Protestant doctrines, the priesthood of all believers’.23 The Irish Home Mission, which showed Darby the value of mobilizing the laity, was part of a growing movement that produced similar effects in the early nineteenth century. Spanning the two centuries were the itinerant evangelists Robert and James Haldane who introduced to their Edinburgh congregation an ecclesiology and patterns of worship similar to those which the Brethren were to adopt some 30 years later. It is not possible to demonstrate a direct influence of Haldaneite thinking on the Brethren, but influences emanating from the Haldanes undoubtedly made some impact. Arguments employed by James Haldane can be paralleled in Brethren writings,24 and the phrase ‘social worship’, forming the title of one of his most influential books, was used by Henry Craik and George Müller when they were steering their Baptist church in Bristol towards Brethren practices. In subsequent years Craik continued to use the term.25 In addition the Haldanes had affected Irish evangelicalism: the Home Mission was probably one product of their influence. Two Irish secessionist bodies of the period founded by Thomas Kelly and John Walker, which adopted a primitivist ecclesiology, were inspired by Haldaneite thinking and the Brethren were certainly aware of their existence.26 Even if the Brethren were not reading the Haldanes, their arguments and vocabulary had passed into the milieu from which the Brethren emerged. There were also other movements among the laity in contemporary evangelicalism. Many of the small fellowship meetings in Ireland and England, the former having previously influenced the Haldanes, gave their followers a predisposition towards Brethrenism.27 Lay agency was also promoted by two other influential Scots in the early nineteenth century: by Thomas Chalmers whose Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, published from 1819, enjoyed a wide readership and by David Nasmith who founded a number of city missions, including the London City Mission in 1835, which extended Chalmers’
