Diogenesister:
From Jim Penton's Book, Apocalypse Delayed, 1988 edition, pp. 22-24:
Early Schisms: 1878 and 1881
Barbour, Russell, and Paton were united briefly to preach and publicize the ideas outlined in Three Worlds. Russell quickly began to make converts, including A. D. Jones, one of his clerks, and A.P. Adams, a New England Methodist minister. But problems soon arose. The small band of unnamed Adventists expected, as Three WorIds taught, that the spring of 1878 would see them, as Christ's chosen saints, carried away to heaven. When that did not happen, disillusion and division occurred.
Russell remained loyal to the teachings expressed in Three Worlds while Barbour set off on another course. Russell developed the explanation that those dying in the Lord from 1878 forward would have an immediate heavenly resurrection rather than having to sleep in their graves; so, he held, 1878 was a marked year. But Barbour refused to accept that solution and began a whole new exercise in date-setting. In addition, he then took a position in conflict with that held by both Russell and Paton on the nature of the atonement. According to Russell: 'Mr. Barbour soon after wrote an article for the Herald denying the doctrine of the atonement - denying that the death of Christ was the ransom price of Adam and his race, saying that Christ's death was no more a settlement of the penalty of man's sins than would the sticking of a pin through the body of a fly and causing it suffering and death be considered by an earthly parent as a just settlement for misdemeanor in his child.’
Russell disagreed with Barbour's new stance and a schism followed. Barbour was a particularly proud, severe man, and he had certainly been the most prominent member of the small association that had formed in 1876. But Russell was determined to differ from him on what he considered a fundamental doctrine. He took issue openly with Barbour's position on the atonement and obtained Paton's support in an article which was published in the December 1878 Herald. Early in 1878 the split between Barbour - with A.P. Adams in his camp - and Russell and Paton became complete. Russell accused Barbour of withdrawing money which he (Russell) had deposited and of treating it as his own. Then, when Russell founded a new magazine, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, Barbour 'poured upon the Editor of the TOWER the vilest of personal abuse.’ What followed was a battle between the former associates to gain support from those who received the two journals, for the readers of them were the same persons. At the time, Paton, as much as Russell, served as a leader of those who had broken with Barbour. Russell urged him to write a book called Day Dawn to replace Three Worlds, and A.D. Jones agreed to publish it. It was primarily Russell, however, who carried on the struggle with Barbour, and it was he who produced a small book called Tabernacle Teachings in answer to some of Barbour's criticisms of his doctrines.
Paton did not object openly to any of Russell's ideas; evidently he was a much more pacific man than Barbour. But he, too, soon began to produce articles which Russell regarded as a denial of the ransom doctrine of the atonement. Consequently, in 1881, he refused to publish any more of Paton's articles and the two separated with some bitterness.
By 1881, of the five principal associates who had taken a stand on the doctrines outlined in Three Worlds, only A.D. Jones remained in fellowship with Russell; ad even that relationship did not last. With Russell's blessings, Jones founded a journal named Zion's Day Star in New York City. Within a year he, too, denied Russell's theory of the ransom and eventually was to repudiate the Bible itself.