Who was John Nelson Darby?

Born in a well-to-do family and trained for the legal profession, he gave this up for conscience sake after his conversion, becoming a curate in the Church of England. He served in this capacity in a wild and remote part of Ireland where his life was characterized by devotion and self-sacrifice rare among the Anglican clergy of his day. A keen student of God's Word, as a young man he courageously acted upon the principles he discovered therein. In consequence, he soon found himself outside the church establishment, having begun meeting with other godly believers, many of them young like himself, in simplicity around the Lord Himself. While such meetings began at Dublin in the second half of the 1820s, the Spirit of God was doing a similar work in other countries as well, and it did not take long for such groups to find one another.

The Plymouth Brethren, called by others Darbyites or Exclusive Brethren, and by themselves “Brethren,” are to be distinguished from Bible Christians and Disciples of Christ (qq.v.). They took their origin in Ireland about 1828 after a movement under the leadership of John Walker which was a revolt against ministerial ordination, and in England the origin is connected with the interest in prophecy stimulated by Edward Irving (q.v.). Conferences like those under the Irving movement were held from 1828 at Powerscourt Mansion, County Wicklow, Ireland, at which John Nelson Darby (q.v.) was a prominent figure. Prior to this, from 1826 private meetings had been held on Sundays under the leadership of Edward Cronin, who had been a Roman Catholic and later a Congregationalist, for “breaking bread,” at which Anthony Norris Groves, John Vesey Parnell (second Lord Congleton), and John Gifford Bellett, a friend of Darby, were attendants. In 1827 John Darby resigned his charge and in 1828 adopted the non-conformist attitude of the men named above, prompted by the Erastianism of a petition of Archbishop Magee to the House of Commons, and issued a paper on The Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ (in vol. i. of his Collected Writings, London, 1867). This served to swell the ranks of the Brethren, so that in 1830 a public “assembly” was started in Aungier Street, Dublin, which emphasized “the coming of the Lord as the present hope of the Church and the presence of the Holy Ghost as that which brought into unity” and “the heavenly character of the Church,” and used as the golden text Matt. 18:20. Through Francis William Newman (q.v.), Darby had become acquainted with Benjamin Wills Newton (a lay fellow of Exeter College) and George Vicesimus Wigram at Oxford. He also visited Plymouth (whence the name for the Brethren), where Robert Hawker had been active in Evangelical ministry, and held meetings there, the outcome of which was the first English gathering of the Brethren (1831). The basis of communion was the acceptance of “all that are on the foundation” and rejection of “all error by the Word of God and the help of his ever present Spirit,” recognizing that “claimed service, and not departure.” Before the appearance of Darby’s Liberty of and Teaching (1834), the Brethren had taken their stand upon a free ministry, while other weighty papers by Darby and Newton appeared in the new magazine, The Christian Witness, edited by J. L. Harris. Recruits of note were Henry Craik and Georg (Friedrich) Mueller (q.v.), coming from the Baptist denomination. The latter had been in the service of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, but became convinced that assemblies should consist only of the converted and joined the Brethren, beginning pastoral work at Bristol in 1832 on the lines of their policy, and developing the other activities for which he became famous. Other noted converts to the denomination were Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (q.v.) and Robert Chapman. Darby continued his work in London, then went to the continent, where in French Switzerland he promoted the movement by personal and literary activities, opposing a regular ministry as ignoring the privilege of every believer to direct access to God. While there he became aware of a tendency toward isolation manifesting itself in Newton, shown in his revival of restricted ministry together with doctrinal divergencies, e.g., Newton’s adherence to the Reformation teaching of justification, inclusion of the Old Testament saints in the apocalyptic Church, and belief that the second advent would not precede the “great tribulation,” to which the Church would be subject. Failing to secure satisfaction from Newton and his adherents, in 1845 Darby started a separate assembly.

The Viscountess Powerscourt, from attending Drummond´s Albury Conferences on Prophecy, started like meetings at her mansion near Bray, through which Darby met A. N. Groves and J. V. Parnell (Lord Congleton), introduced by his friend J. G. Bellett, who was in touch also with Edward Cronin and others like-minded in Dublin. All of these vindicated the functions of the Holy Spirit and the Christian hope, generally neglected. Darby, constrained by the Scriptural view of the Church as independent of the State, relinquished his parochial position in 1827, and in the next year completed his separation from the Establishment by "breaking bread" in Dublin with some of the above-named associates.

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) spent his life studying the Bible and spreading the truth. In his time, conferences took place and the biblical doctrine was examined. Many devoted much time and energy to intense study. With prayer and in dependence on the Lord they searched the Scriptures - and God answered. So it happened, that a series of biblical truths were re-discovered. Among them, there were, in particular, the following:

Of all the groups of Christian believers that developed in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century, the one which produced the greatest number of gifted writers was the Brethren. Of their founder himself, John Nelson Darby, over fifty substantial volumes were published. But of all this notable group of writers, the one whose works have been most frequently printed is C. H. Mackintosh, generally known as C.H.M., which is all that appeared on the title pages of his major writings.

After resigning his curacy, Mr. Darby made it abundantly evident that he had neither resigned the holy ministry of GOD'S Word nor the practical cure of souls; but like a famous John of the previous century had rather taken the whole world for his parish. In many striking respects his after-career resembles that of John Wesley, although their respective attitudes to the Church of England differed very widely. John Wesley could never conscientiously bring himself to separate from the Establishment; John Darby on the other hand, could not conscientiously bring himself to remain within her pale. In missionary zeal, earnestness, devotedness and thoroughgoing evangelism there was, however, much resemblance between these two giants. In Mr. Darby's case there was, along with the most enthusiastic and ardent evangelism, clear definite teaching as to the Church of GOD, the Body of CHRIST, the Coming of the LORD, prophecy, dispensational truth, the Word of GOD, the operations of the SPIRIT, with the calling and privileges of the Church. In the early days of his ministry; at Powerscourt Castle; and subsequently, in various centres of England, great attention and interest was aroused by this teaching. Sixty or seventy of the most devoted clergymen and some Dissenting ministers attended the meetings and enjoyed the truth together at one time, until they became alarmed as to whereunto this would grow. Then the inevitable reaction followed; clericalism was in jeopardy!

J N Darby demonstrated that one needs to take into account the dispensations in order to understand the Bible properly, especially prophecy and the truth of the church. His teaching became wide - spread. A movement that became very influential, especially in America, and which essentially builds on Mr Darby's re-discoveries, is now know as 'dispensationalism'. A series of books, published in multi million editions, contributed their part to the spreading of these truths (with a greater or lesser degree of accuracy). It is estimated that, today, 20-40 million Americans subscribe to dispensational teaching.

For fifty years he was strenuously engaged in original exposition of Scripture. The "Synopsis," recommended by Bishop Ellicott to the Gloucester theological students, acquired amongst J.N.D.´s adherents authority like that commanded by Wesley´s "Notes" amongst Methodists. Professor Stokes has described it as "the standard of appeal. Every departure from that model is bitterly resented" ("Expositor´s Bible," Acts 1, page 382). But nobody has protested against such use of his writings more than Darby himself, for whom truth was "a growing tree" (C. W., XXIII, page 191). J.N.D.´s ordinary style is repugnant, and in his correspondence reference is made to this as having exercised him. By contrast, his living ministry was matchless and his "spiritual songs" are powerfully beautiful. Weakness in detail was another of his limitations. Nevertheless, in his own generation he singularly served the counsel of God. His criticism of that which he deemed error is usually trenchant and luminous.

The governing idea is the ruin of the Church, or apostasy of the dispensation (C. W., I, p. 192), which was his "burden" ("Correspondence," I,, 52); but he could echo words of Calvin (commentary on Ps. 102:14): "The sadder the desolation into which the Church has been brought, the less ought our affection to be alienated from her" Loof´s criticism of Darby´s conception of the apostolic Church as "an organised visible society" (C. W., XX, 450, cf. "Correspondence," II, 245, 278), that "Church" with him meant "that which the Protestant faith has always made of it" fails, because J.N.D. did not accept Augustine´s distinction. He found "the essential principle of unity" ("Correspondence," I, 114) in the operations of the Holy Spirit. The Bishop of Birmingham considers him wholly wrong here; but then Dr. Gore´s view of the relation of the Church to the Bible is very different from that of J.N.D. No one, indeed, rightly instructed, pretends that the position — one of weakness, as J.N.D. always said — is a logical one; none, for that matter, is to be found, pace Bishop Gore, outside Rome, as to which Darby held that the "historical" Church is a caricature of that exhibited in the New Testament. A controversy (1866) over his papers on the sufferings of Christ arose only from the objectors´ failure to seize his real position.

Newton remained at Plymouth for two years. The dispute so far had concerned the special “testimony” of Brethren as such. According to notes of a lecture by Newton acquired by Harris in 1847, Newton’s position as to our Lord’s person was unsound: Christ by his incarnation and as a descendant of Adam entered upon a relation of distance from God, and as an Israelite incurred from birth the condemnation attaching to the broken law. Tregelles shows that the personal sinlessness was maintained through the seal at Christ’s baptism, although lifelong suffering was entailed by his relationship. Newton withdrew the first part of his statement, but did not satisfy Darby, and a definite alienation separated the two men. Newton severed his connection with the Brethren, but continued till his death (1898) to write on prophetical subjects. Tregelles is reported by Scrivener to have died in the communion of the Church of England. In 1848 the Bristol company did not refuse fellowship to the adherents of Newton, and one of their number, George Alexander, seceded on the ground that “blasphemers were sheltered,” taking occasion for this action in a paper intended to apply to the special circumstances but construed as a statement of a general policy. After debate and several assemblies, it was decided that no one upholding Newton’s views should be received into communion, and several to whom this applied withdrew, though it appeared that they were afterward readmitted. Darby insisted upon the fundamental of “separation from evil” as “God’s principle of unity”; the result was a breach between him and the Bristol company, his followers insisting upon his statement as the watchword, while the opponents’ formula was “the blood of the Lamb is the union of saints.” Wigram charged Craik with statements concerning Christ’s physical ailments which savored of Newtonianism; but Darby sent a farewell message to Craik on his deathbed (1866), which did not, however, heal the breach. A new magazine, The Present Testimony, edited by Wigram, became the organ of the exclusives, followed in 1856 by the monthly Bible Treasury, for which William Kelly (q.v.) was responsible, and to this also Darby contributed papers on the sufferings of Christ, in which he argued that Christ endured certain non-atoning sufferings, in addition to those borne vicariously in death, due to his voluntary position in Israel (John 11:51), in fulfilment of prediction of his participation in the sorrows of the godly remnant in the last days. This had no affiliation with the Newtonian doctrine, which affected the whole life of Christ; but some of his followers, unable to distinguish between Darby’s position and Newton’s, withdrew from fellowship with him. Darby offered to abstain from ministry, but was counseled not to do so by his prominent supporters. Meanwhile he had worked on German soil, where he had met Tholuck, and had visited the United States, Canada, and other British colonies lecturing and writing.

#3. Defection of Cronin and Kelly. In 1879 a gathering at Ryde, Isle of Wight, failed to deal with depravity in the midst, and Darby’s old Dublin associate Cronin, desiring to end the scandal, founded a new “assembly” in the place. Darby regarded this as a breach of unity, and called upon Cronin’s home congregation at Kensington, London, to discipline the offender, and to “judge” his “indiscretion.” Cronin was defended by use of Darby’s avowal that the old assembly was “rotten” and that for thirty years he himself had avoided it. A crusade was nevertheless directed against Cronin by the leaders at Park Street, Islington, and additional matters connected with baptism entered into the controversy. Finally, although Darby had asked only for a stern rebuke, Cronin’s stubbornness widened the breach and he was excommunicated. About the same time there was disruption at Ramsgate, Kent, one of the rival parties at which supported Cronin while the other strongly condemned him, the assemblies at Blackheath, where Kelly resided, and at Islington also taking opposite sides. The result was a split in 1881 at Park Street like that which had occurred in the Bethesda affair. Each side charged the other with “independency,” and Darby described the situation as a struggle between intelligence and the Spirit, by “intelligence” referring to Kelly’s endeavor to give intellectual expression to the policy hitherto pursued and thereby to maintain the “unity of London.” The man who had so long led meditated withdrawing altogether from the Brethren, feeling that the encroachments of the world had marred “the testimony”; but his faith reasserted itself. Darby’s survival of this poignant situation can be counted only by months, as he died the next year. He was little disposed to learn from others, and claimed to have “the mind of the Spirit.” He united Roman Catholic with Evangelical ideas, though his own apprehension of Scripture dominated his mind. He regarded himself as the beginning of the Plymouth Brethren, which was true at least so far as the English branch was concerned. Where he was iconoclastic, it was not, as he expressed it, “with an Edomitic attack but with Jeremianic sorrow.”

#4. Further Divisions. The year 1885 was notable for concurrent divisions among Darby’s last associates on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States Frederick William Grant, of Plainfield, N. J., alienated rivals in the Islington party by his candidly independent attitude toward some of their cherished doctrines. He was an ex-clergyman of Canadian origin, a man of much erudition, and highly esteemed in his section. He held that the saints of the old dispensation possessed eternal life, and agreed with the interpretation of Rom. 7 which holds that the apostle there describes the moral condition of believers even after receiving the seal of the Spirit. The English leaders detached their adherents from fellowship with him. At Reading, England, Clarence Esme Stuart, an accomplished Biblical scholar who had sided with Darby in 1881, came into collision with James Butler Stoney, an unbalanced teacher who was no longer held by the restraint imposed by Darby’s presence. Stuart’s primal offense was that at Reading he had not adopted the hymn-book last revised by Darby; second, that he unduly distinguished between the standing and state (or condition) of believers, holding that the Pauline expression “in Christ” sets forth condition alone, and that in this are to be sought such distinctions as obtain fundamentally between believers of the different dispensations. With these doctrinal issues was combined a social breach between him and a local female ally of the Stoney school. Upon this last matter the Reading assembly refused to give judgment, though with some dissent against the order of procedure, supported by the Stoney faction dominant in London, which separated from Reading and carried many assemblies with them. Those in Great Britain who disowned the interference of the London adherents continued to recognize the Grant contingent in America. Stuart gave color to the new departure by shortly afterward emphasizing his view of atonement, according to which Christ, as high priest only after death, made propitiation by blood not on the cross but in heaven, in the interval between death and resurrection. This view was not unknown in theology (e.g., Professor George Smeaton), but was regarded by Stuart’s critics as a novel inference from Darby’s teaching. The year 1890 witnessed a further division among the “exclusives” of the party formed in 1885. Frederick Edward Raven of Greenwich became prominent through teaching doctrines which were reprobated by the old Darbyites. He questioned the claim of believers in general to have had eternal life imparted to them, in doing so seeming, as an Apollinarian, to impair the glory of Christ’s person. He held also that Scripture is not as such the word of God but the record of it, to which resort is to be had for confirmation of oral ministry. Reconciliation he regarded, with Calvin, as a continuous process which believers undergo. In the division which ensued a majority of Stoney’s associates and a small band in the United States stood with Raven, but the continent of Europe was lost to them. From 1881 to his death in 1906 Kelly continued to be revered as a sound teacher of the first order, possessed of great capacity as a leader and controversialist. He was unremitting in his ministry and in writing, defending the truth as he conceived it against all innovation, in particular against the higher criticism. With him passed away the last survivor of the golden age of the Brethren.

A full epitome of the doctrine developed among the Brethren could be obtained only from the writings of Darby, who was the chief teacher. So large was his authority in his denomination that for most Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin were mere ciphers. On the Godhead and the person of Christ the teaching is that common to Catholic Christianity. On human nature it is held that Adam was first sinless, not virtuous or holy; the fall spelled unqualified ruin. The atonement has two sides: Godward it is propitiation; manward, substitution; the purchase of all, the redemption of the believer, and Christ’s death under wrath. Predestination is held as the election of individuals, the assured acceptance of believers, together with denial of free will and reprobation. Justification implies the righteousness of God (not of Christ specifically) displayed in the resurrection of the Savior, with dissociation of his life from the process. Sanctification is positive and practical; in the latter aspect it involves self-judgment and confession to God, insuring a sense of forgiveness through Christ’s priesthood, which preserves from sin, as his advocacy restores. Cleansing by his blood is once for all, cleansing by the Word continues. Not the law, but the Second Man’s risen life is the believer’s rule. The Church was primitively one visible, closely organized community. The “assembly,” in view of grace, is the body of Christ; in view of government is the house of God; one is the product of the Spirit, the other is the product of man, marked by failure and ruin. National churches are too broad, non-conformity is too narrow. Darby denies what has been suggested by critics — that the “gathering” is held to be coextensive with “the Church of God on earth”; he also repudiates the further assertion that for eighteen centuries there has been no church. The ordinances are (1) baptism, which is required for fellowship. Among the exclusives mutual toleration is practised by baptists and pedobaptists. Darby’s view was based on the recognition of privileged position (outward as distinct from inward, essential baptism). Other pedobaptists practise household baptism. (2) The Lord’s Supper is observed weekly in the forenoon, at which leavened bread and fermented wine are taken by the members seated. The institution is commemorative only. Participation in this is jealously guarded; in theory it is the privilege of all believers, but in practise the theory is overborne by the notion of full fellowship. The special means of grace are the Holy Scriptures according to the canon of the Reformers. The book is infallible; consequently the idea is condemned that the Church and the Bible stand or fall together. The higher criticism is not recognized; development is disowned, and the truth is recovered by reversion to St. Paul (not, as the Quakers hold, to the “historical Christ”). Since Darby’s dying recommendation not to neglect the Johannine doctrine, the center of gravity is increasingly sought in that. The Bible version favored is Darby’s own (in English, French, and German); he rejected the Revised Version with the words, “They have not had the mind of God at all.” In the matter of the ministry Darby did not begin by questioning the validity of Anglican orders. His conception of the office was service in the Word, the faithful exercise of a special gift, for which the individual is responsible to the Lord alone. A distinction is made between “gift” and “office”; the latter came through apostolic appointment and is no longer available. The “assembly,” while not being the source of the ministry, since it is the taught and not the teacher, may or may not accredit the ministry as profitable. Anything beyond the moral influence of the Spirit is regarded as delusion. In theory, all godly men are possibly competent, whether in formal fellowship or not; but in practise such fellowship is presupposed, and the flock is discouraged from “wandering.” The public ministry of women is disallowed. Worship is conducted, as among the Quakers, by “waiting on the Lord,” and conventional collections of hymns are used in praise and prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is discarded, as symbolic of the position and desires of the inchoate Church and typical of the Jewish remnant. The local assembly acts through non-official organs, men of moral weight whose personal influence is encouraged as commanding confidence. As discipline excommunication is practised for grave delinquency and for lapse into fundamental error in doctrine. With the exclusives 1 Cor. 5:6; 2 Tim. 2:19 sqq.; and 2 John 10 have furnished the rule of action. While this has been the object of criticism, in practise its influence has been salutary, restraining tendencies to antinomianism. For eschatology, it is held that believers at death go not to Hades but to a heavenly paradise with Christ.