J. N. Darby
When God is working in a very definite way, He raises up servants endued with the gifts and qualities suited to the hour. The man God chose to serve in an outstanding way in the revival of Church truth at the beginning of the nineteenth century was John Nelson Darby. He was the son of John Darby of Markley, Sussex, and Kings County, Ireland, and was born in the year 1800. When he was fifteen, the family went to reside in the ancestral castle in Ireland, and young Darby, who had received his early education at Westminster School, then went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated at nineteen and became Classical Gold Medalist. Later he studied law, and in 1822 was called to the Irish Chancery Bar.
In the meantime, he had been going through intense spiritual exercises, and for seven years only the barest gleam of hope entered his soul. When the light at last broke through, it was by the written Word of God and apart from human instrumentality. Having come to know the Lord, he now “left all, rose up, and followed Him” (Luke 5:2828And he left all, rose up, and followed him. (Luke 5:28)). He could not conscientiously continue his legal career, so he became a clergyman and served at first as a curate in a wild parish among the mountains of Wicklow. Prof. F. W. Newman, who knew him well, says of him at this time:
“Every evening he sallied forth to teach in the cabins and, roving far and wide over mountains and amid bogs, was seldom home before midnight. By such exertions, his strength was undermined, and he so suffered in his limbs that, not lameness only, but yet more serious results were feared. ... His long walks through wild country and among indigent people inflicted on him much severe privation; moreover, as he ate whatever food offered itself (food unpalatable and often indigestible to him), his whole frame might have vied in emaciation with a monk of La Trappe.”
Of his loyalty to the Holy Scriptures the same witness says:
“Never before had I seen a man so resolved that no word of the New Testament should be a dead letter to him. I once said, ‘But do you really think that no part of the New Testament may have been temporary in its object? For instance, what should we have lost if St. Paul had never written, “The cloke that I left at Troas ... bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments” (2 Tim. 4:1313The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments. (2 Timothy 4:13))? ’ He answered with the greatest promptitude, ‘I should have lost something, for it was exactly that verse which alone saved me from selling my little library. No! Every word, depend upon it, is from the SPIRIT and is for eternal service!’”
While traveling, as was his custom, on horseback, he was thrown and badly injured. Before this, his mind had been disturbed by observing the difference between the Church of his day and the view of it in the Acts of the Apostles. During his illness, this exercise ripened, and he left the Church. In justification of this (he was still under thirty) he wrote, “The man who would say that the Church of England is a gathering of saints must be a very odd man or a very bold one. All the parishioners are bound to attend by her principles. It was not the details of the sacramental and priestly system which drove me from the Establishment, deadly as they are in their nature. It was that I was looking for the body of Christ (which was not there, but perhaps in all the parish not one converted person), and, collaterally, because I believed in a divinely-appointed ministry. If Paul had come, he could not have preached (he had never been ordained); if a wicked, ordained man, he had his title and must be recognized as a minister; the truest minister of Christ unordained could not. It was a system contrary to what I found in Scripture.”
Shortly after this, he was found with the few already mentioned, meeting on Lord’s Day in a private house in Dublin to remember the Lord Jesus in the breaking of bread. About this time, he wrote a remarkable pamphlet entitled “The Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ.”
In these days, too, he attended, with many others, the meetings on prophecy held in Powerscourt Castle. In the early days, sixty or seventy earnest clergymen and a number of Dissenting ministers attended, but when they saw his uncompromising attitude to clericalism, which he had left for conscience sake, they deserted him.
He was now launched on his career of service, which was to be, for over fifty years, one of unremitting, unselfish labor for Christ and His saints. He traveled far and wide at home, on the Continent and across the Atlantic. He visited, he preached, he taught and he wrote voluminously. He was never idle, yet always maintaining that close communion with the Lord that gave lustre to his testimony and fragrance to his life.
He visited the Continent for the first time in 1830 when he supported the labors of F. P. Monod in France. He visited France again in 1836. Then in 1837 he paid his first visit to Switzerland. Two years later he again visited Switzerland, spending four years in that country and France, returning again in 1844 and 1848 and making further visits between 1850 and 1854. In 1854, on the suggestion of his brother who was living in Duesseldorf, he went to Germany for the first time, spending some time in Holland en route. Frequent visits to France, Holland, Switzerland and Germany were undertaken from then onwards until 1862, when he visited the United States and Canada. After a further sojourn of eighteen months in France, Germany and Switzerland, he spent two years in the United States. On his return, the Continent again claimed his labors, but to the countries already named he added Italy and Spain. Germany saw him again in 1870. Thereafter until 1879, he traveled not only in Europe and America, but he also visited Australia and New Zealand. In these frequent journeyings, covering a space of almost fifty years, he was occupied in preaching, teaching and exhorting the people of God. Three large volumes of letters give some insight into these labors and into his own exercises. In the midst of all these activities, he found time to write the varied papers and treatises which fill the thirty-four volumes of his Collected Writings, to translate the whole Bible from the original languages into German and French and the New Testament into English from the Greek, and also to compile the Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. No teacher has penetrated more deeply into the holy mysteries of revelation nor expounded more accurately the doctrines taught in Scripture.
His writings are not always easy to follow; he wrote as the thoughts came. He never obtruded his scholarship. Nevertheless, he was a profound scholar with a remarkably acute mind. In his Collected Writings, the whole range of Scripture is examined and commented on, the prophetic scriptures are illuminated in a remarkable way, the errors of popery are laid bare, and many other errors exposed in the light of Scripture. The Essays and Reviews in which the modernists of his day set forth their pernicious notions are also examined and refuted. The Oxford Movement is likewise exposed. Valuable helps to the scholar are found, too, in these volumes, such as the treatise on the Greek article and particle. Then, too, the Synopsis of the Books of the Bible is an incomparable commentary on the whole of Scripture.
His letters give us an insight into his character and show us a man of God, humble, unselfish, laborious, devoted, and a man of one aim — the glory of God. But the deepest and richest notes of spirituality are struck in his poems. They show more than anything else how truly he breathed the atmosphere of heaven. We quote a few verses.
The Call
What powerful, mighty Voice, so near,
Calls me from earth apart —
Reaches with tones so still, so clear,
From the unseen world my heart?
’Tis solemn; yet it draws with power
And sweetness yet unknown:
It speaks the language of an hour
When earth’s forever gone.
• • •
Blest Lord, Thou spak’st! ’Twas erst Thy voice
That led my heart to Thee —
That drew me to that better choice
Where grace has set me free!
My happiness, O Lord, with Thee
Is long laid up in store,
For that blest day when Thee I’ll see,
And conflict all be o’er.
Yes! Love divine in Thee I know;
The Father’s glories soon
Shall burst upon my ravished view —
Thyself my eternal crown!
1832
The Saints’ Rest
Rest of the saints above,
Jerusalem of God!
Who, in thy palaces of love,
Thy golden streets have trod,
To me thy joy to tell?
Those courts secure from ill,
Where God Himself vouchsafes to dwell
And every bosom fill!
• • •
There, only to adore
My soul its strength may find —
Its life, its joy forevermore,
By sight nor sense defined.
God and the Lamb shall there
The light and temple be,
And radiant hosts, forever, share
The unveiled mystery!
1845
Love Divine
O Mind divine! So must it be,
That glory, all, belongs to God!
O Love divine! That did decree
We should be part, through Jesus’ blood!
Oh, keep us, Love divine, near Thee,
That we our nothingness may know,
And ever to Thy glory be —
Walking in faith while here below.
1880
Darby was not a sectarian. In his heart he embraced every lover of Christ, and the ground he stood on was ground which belongs to all the people of God, namely to “depart from iniquity ... and follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:19,2219Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. (2 Timothy 2:19)
22Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. (2 Timothy 2:22)), taking the Scriptures alone as the sole and all-sufficient guide for faith and conduct. He viewed the Church publicly as in irremediable ruin and believed that the path for those who sought to be true to Christ was one of individual faithfulness. The faithful would thereby find themselves on common ground and, walking in the light, as God is in the light, would enjoy fellowship with one another.
He told a friend a few weeks before his death, “There are three things which I have dwelt much upon:
God is my Father, and I am His gift to His Son.
Christ is my righteousness.
Christ is my object in life and my joy for eternity.”
He fell asleep in Jesus on April 29, 1882.
George Mueller
In the early years of the nineteenth century, there was little evidence of Christian life in Germany. Lutheranism was dead. There had been no counterpart there to the Great Awakening which had so revived Christianity in England in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the Napoleonic wars had made matters worse.
There were, however, lights burning here and there. Often a few, faithful believers would gather together to read the Scriptures and pray together in a house. Preaching or teaching was forbidden in the territory of the King of Prussia. But they could read and pray. Such a little gathering was wont to meet in Halle in the home of a godly tradesman named Wagner. One Saturday afternoon, two young students from the University came in and were warmly welcomed. One was a backslider who had had, in earlier days, Christian impressions. The other was George Mueller, then a rather reckless, pleasure-loving youth, addicted to drink. There were many like him in that University, once famous as the center of Pietism, where Franke had taught, and where, a century before, Zinzendorf had been a student. There were nine hundred students of divinity in the days of which we speak and scarcely any with the knowledge of God.
Mueller’s conscience made him feel ill at ease in such pious company, and he made some kind of apology. “Come,” said the kind Wagner, “as often as you please.” The proceedings were a revelation to Mueller. He did not even possess a Bible. When one of the company fell on his knees to pray, he was amazed; he had never knelt down to pray himself nor seen anyone else do so, divinity student though he was. The Spirit of God began to work in his heart. He could not wait for the next meeting. He must go again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Gladly he drank in the truth as unfolded to him from the Word of God. It was November 1825 when he found peace with God. For four years, however, he passed through a time of testing and struggle. He thought of taking up missionary work. His father, bitterly disappointed, refused his sanction.
Dr. Tholuck, a truly evangelical man, had meantime come to the university, and by his influence, it underwent a great change. Young Mueller had now lost his father’s support. By a remarkable, providential ordering, a gift reached him from an anonymous donor, and this led him to deep thanksgiving and a fresh dedication to God’s service. He had become very proficient in Hebrew, and Dr. Tholuck suggested he should work among the Jews. Accepting work under a London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews, he came to London in 1829.
The widespread movement of the “Brethren” had just begun, and Mueller was evidently influenced. He felt he could no longer accept a commission to serve God from a Society. He must be sent of God and rely on the arm of the Lord alone. The essential features of the truth then exercising those who were leaving the Churches and sects laid a powerful hold upon him. He married, about this time, the sister of A. N. Groves, a dentist who had given up a very lucrative calling to serve as a missionary at Baghdad. Going later to Teignmouth, he met a godly and learned but humble-minded man named Craik. Mueller and Craik entered into a partnership in service which continued many years.
Mueller had no income and depended entirely on the freewill offerings of those he served, for he refused any salary. The result was that he and his wife often did not know where the next meal was coming from. It was thus he learned that utter dependence on God’s provision which enabled him in after years to build a great orphanage and feed and educate thousands of children.
Mueller and Craik were then led to Bristol, where they secured two chapels, one named Gideon and the other Bethesda. Here they labored, preaching and teaching. A little company of believers was gathered, consisting, at first, of Craik, Mueller, another man and four women — seven in all. They gathered in scriptural simplicity, desiring only to act as the Lord should be pleased to give light through His Word. In time they were joined by many others.
It was the time of the cholera plague in Europe. The disease attacked Bristol, and many were carried off. Craik and Mueller were in constant attendance on the sick and dying, carrying to them the water of life. Disease apart, the condition of the poor at this time was pitiable. Mueller was on his knees praying, not for means for himself, but for money to relieve the prevailing distress. That same hour the postman arrived with a gift of £60.
Two years had passed since his arrival in Bristol. His teaching and preaching kept him busy, but he would do more for the extension of God’s kingdom. He conceived a rather bold plan to spread the gospel and circulate the Bible. He proposed to found what he called the Scriptural Knowledge Institution. He had not a penny of his own. No one was to be asked to contribute. He would pray —simply pray and trust. He planned also to establish Day Schools and Sunday schools in which children would be instructed, not only in knowledge, but in the Scriptures. In the following year, there were five such schools, two for boys and three for girls. But there were still many poor, homeless, neglected waifs, and his heart went out to these. He put before his brethren his plan for a home for orphans, and helpers were secured. Thus began the work which became so well-known. No money was ever solicited; it all came in answer to prayer. Many times funds were low or quite exhausted, but God never failed to supply the needs. “Lord,” he prayed, “I believe that Thou wilt give me all I need for this work. I am sure I shall have all, because I believe that I receive in answer to my prayer.”
The total of all the money received in answer to prayer during his lifetime amounted to nearly one and a half million pounds (equal to several times that sum at today’s purchasing value of the pound).
He was able in his lifetime to educate and provide for nearly ten thousand orphans in his Homes at Bristol, of whom half confessed the Lord. He also founded schools in Scotland, India, Straits of Malacca, British Guiana, Essequebo, Belize, Spain, France and Italy, a total of 117, in which 122,000 young people were educated and of whom 20,000 were reported to have been converted. The circulation of Bibles amounted to 279,000, as well as 1,440,000 New Testaments and 109,000,000 tracts and booklets.
When seventy years of age, he left the orphanage in other hands and traveled about, preaching and giving addresses. This he continued to do for twenty years, during which time he visited forty-two different countries. He lived after this another three years, reaching the advanced age of ninety-three. He died practically without means, having spent all he received on the objects to which he devoted his life.
The following brief details of gifted men among the first generation of Brethren are given in order of date of birth. Lack of fuller details and limitations of space combine to make these references briefer than we would wish.
J. L. Harris (1793-1877) became associated with brethren meeting in Plymouth in 1832, having been previously curate of Plymstock. He wrote much and edited the first magazine of the Brethren, the Christian Witness in 1834. It was he who first noticed and drew attention to the heretical teachings of B. W. Newton. He and Newton were, at that time, the two leading brethren in the Plymouth gathering.
J. G. Bellett (1795-1864). Bellett was one of the few who met with Darby and others to break bread in Dublin in 1828. J. N. Darby and he were both at Trinity College, Dublin; both were called to the Bar in that city. The work of God began in both when they were young, and they were lifelong friends. His ministry was of a very spiritual character. As a writer, his style is elegant. His books on the patriarchs, the evangelists, and the moral glory of the Lord Jesus have always been greatly valued.
Sir Edward Denny (1796-1889). Although a man of noble birth and considerable wealth, Sir Edward Denny threw in his lot with the poor of the flock. He wrote a number of hymns and poems. He also published some interesting prophetical charts. He lived in a quiet, simple style himself, using his money for the furtherance of God’s work and the relief of the poor.
G. V. Wigram (1805-1879), twentieth child of Sir Robert Wigram, was educated at Oxford University and converted while a subaltern in the Army. He was one of the first of those who gathered to the name of the Lord at Plymouth in 1830. From 1838 he was actively connected with the gatherings in London. He was the sponsor of the Englishman’s Greek and English Concordance and the Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance—valuable helps to those who, though not Greek or Hebrew scholars, desire to become acquainted with the words used in the original language of the Bible. He edited the second Brethren periodical, The Present Testimony, and, in 1856, the collection of hymns entitled Hymns for the Poor of the Flock. He was closely associated with J. N. Darby throughout his life. He paid a number of visits to New Zealand, the West Indies and elsewhere, where his ministry was greatly valued. His writings reflect his spirituality and grasp of the truth.
Lord Congleton (1805-1873) was another of the little group that first met in Dublin — in fact, it was he who hired the first public room in 1830 in Aungier Street. In September 1830, he went with others to join A. N. Groves, who had given up a lucrative profession as a dentist to undertake missionary service. Groves was then in Baghdad, where Mrs. Groves later died with the Plague. As there was no opening for the gospel in Baghdad, they went to India. Lord Congleton returned in 1837, continuing his service in England, but Groves labored on in India and saw some fruit for his labors.
J. G. Deck (1807-1884). In 1824 J. G. Deck went to India as an Army Officer, but he was converted two years later, after his return to England. He became a fearless witness among his fellow-officers, but as his light increased, he felt compelled to leave the army, intending to become a clergyman. He saw, however, that there was much in the Establishment not according to the Word of God and decided to follow that Word alone. As a result of his preaching in Devonshire villages, many were converted and gathered in simplicity to the Lord’s name. He is best known by his hymns, of which many are sung today. In 1853 he went to New Zealand, where he labored among the Lord’s people till his death.
J. B. Stoney (1814-1897) was a native of Ireland. At fifteen he entered Trinity College, Dublin. When in 1831 cholera broke out in Dublin, he was taken ill and cried to God for mercy. Having given his heart to the Lord, he abandoned his studies for the Bar and proposed to enter the ministry. He did not wait, however, for human ordination but at once began to preach the gospel. He was led later to throw in his lot with those who were leaving human systems and gathering together simply to the Lord’s name. Among them he was greatly used. One of his works, Discipline in the School of God, is well-known. He was truly a man of God.
William Kelly (1820-1906) was born in Ireland but lived for many years in Guernsey and later in London. When about twenty years of age, he joined the many then gathering in simplicity to the name of the Lord. He was a gifted teacher and able expositor of the Word. Beside his own works, he edited the Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, in itself a valuable service to his own and later generations.
C. H. Mackintosh (1820-1896) was born in Ireland, awakened by letters from his own sister when he was eighteen, and obtained peace through a paper written by J. N. Darby. As author of the widely-read Notes on the Pentateuch, his name is well-known. He labored much and effectively in the gospel, especially during the Revival in 18591860. His writings helped many in all parts of the world, beside those who gathered with Brethren.
C. Stanley (1821-1888) was an outstanding evangelist. He seldom spoke to souls or preached without blessing resulting. He wrote many gospel tracts, which were also very greatly blessed. One piece of advice is characteristic of him. He said, “I have always found blessing and results in proportion to communion with Christ in His love to the whole Church, whether in writing or preaching, and no Christian can prosper in his own soul unless he is seeking the welfare of others.”
A. Midlane (1825-1909), born in the Isle of Wight, is best known as a hymn writer and especially as the author of “There’s a friend for little children.” This first appeared as a contribution to C. H. Mackintosh’s periodical Good News for the Young. It has been translated into a hundred languages and sung all over the world. He wrote many other hymns and poems. The gospel hymn beginning, “The perfect righteousness of God is witnessed in the Saviour’s blood,” has been scarcely equaled as a poetic presentation of the simple truth of the gospel.