1. We may so walk as to have ourselves in the presence of or in company with the Lord.
2. We may act so as to bring our fellow-saints or fellow-sinners into His presence or into His company.
3. We may be living so as to be keeping ourselves before our fellows and companions.
The first is the way of the worshipper.
The second is the activity of a true servant.
The third is the fruit of vanity, and want of single-heartedness, and will surely keep us uncertain, without joy or strength, and prove a snare as well as bitterness in the latter end.
Christian Friend, vol. 13, 1886, p. 305.
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John Gifford Bellett was an Irish Christian writer and theologian, and was influential in the beginning of the Plymouth Brethren movement. Bellett was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated first at the Grammar School in Exeter, England, then at Trinity College Dublin, where he excelled in Classics, and afterwards in London. It was in Dublin that, as a layman, he first became acquainted with John Nelson Darby, then a minister in the established Church of Ireland, and in 1829 the pair began meeting with others such as Edward Cronin and Francis Hutchinson for communion and prayer.
Bellett had become a Christian as a student and by 1827 was a layman serving the Church. In a letter to James McAllister, written in 1858, he describes the episcopal charge of William Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, that sought for greater state protection for the Church. The Erastian nature of the charge offended Darby particularly, but also many others including Bellett.
The pair bonded particularly over prophetic issues, and attended meetings and discussions together at the home of Lady Powerscourt, and Bellett and Darby (along with the Brethren movement in particular) were particularly associated with dispensationalism and premillenialism.
Bellett wrote many articles and books on scriptural subjects, his most famous works being The Patriarchs, The Evangelists and The Minor Prophets.