HWGA 15
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Section 15 – Period from 1905 to 1910
The principle feature of this period was the Glanton division, the last serious division among brethren walking in fellowship with Park St. _____ meeting. It was a period of some uncertainty due to Mr. Raven’s untimely death in 1903. Mr. Taylor was serving freely and acceptably at special meetings in this country: Indianapolis, Toronto, Rochester, New York, etc. Mr. Taylor made his first trip to Great Britain in 1910 and served extensively as shown by notes of Ministry by J.T. Vol. 2 & 3.
From 1903 to 1907 a local difficulty at Alnwick, near Newcastle, had divided the meeting. At the end of two years Glanton and the neighboring meetings, with the concurrence of most of the brethren in the district, decided to receive from Alnwick any person who had judged himself and sought reconciliation with his brethren in Alnwick.
This was an infringement of the principle of “Local responsibility” and an interference with the Lord’s rights. An attempt was then made to suspend fellowship with the Northumberland meetings which were in confusion. A sister from Whitley Bay, in Northumberland, presented a letter to George St., Edinburgh (Dr. Wolston’s local meeting) and they received her rejecting the idea of suspended fellowship. Edinburgh was then divided.
The rival parties’ claims were considered by experienced brethren in London and they considered that the action of Glanton was a gross interference with the Lord’s rights as Son over God’s House, with an attempt to solve the difficulty which existed in a human way, the intention being that those who were received at Glanton would ultimately return to Alnwick to form a new meeting.
Nothing plainer in Scripture is seen that each local assembly, such as Corinth, the seven assemblies in Asia, has its own local responsibilities, and that no local assembly has authority to deal with or exercise discipline in regard to another.
The division was severe in the north of England and among leaders lost were the following:
Arthur Cutting, Rowland D. Edwards, Inglis Fleming, Algernon J. Pollock, Hamilton Smith, Harold P. Barker, Frank B. Hole, James T. Mawson, James McBroom, J. Alfred Trench, W. Bramwell Dick, Harry J. Vine, Dr. W.T.P. Wolston, T. Oliver and J. Wilson Smith. (unintelligible writing)
In Canada and in the U.S., Some three or four hundred brethren were lost, leadership mainly by Magowan and O’Brien. In England, (unintelligible writing), some two hundred meetings were lost and important mission fields, such as, Brazil under S.E. McNair and India ____ and Persian work under M. Sa-Ed.
The Glanton meetings within a year found open doors for them amongst the Grant party, and within two years the Glanton and Grant assemblies in America had united in a dozen cities. Glanton expressed readiness to bear all the blame for the Grant division, and the Grants were content to have it so.
About 1925 some of these were put out because they held to some of Mr. Raven’s teaching, which exercised many and ____ to the return of many, including William Magowan, the American leader.
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