THE AFTERGLOW
THAT Mr. Darby should have been able to inspire such enthusiasm as he undoubtedly did throughout a long life in men of widely differing temperaments and ranks of Society, and that his influence should still remain a potent factor in the lives of ".Brethren " all over the world, although over half a century has elapsed since his death, is in itself a striking tribute to his powerful personality.
As to the various controversies in which he was engaged, and which ran practically right through his career, it is well to remember the saying of Dr. Ganden: " If either truth or peace must be dispensed with, it is peace and not truth. Better to have truth without public peace, than peace without saving truth." The temper in which John Nelson Darby engaged in controversy is very instructive; it was alike humble and pious, both very rare qualifications of the controversialist. As he wrote to one on this subject, " If I am useful to any, and the LORD accepts it as service done to Him, I am content."
Not to secure a triumph in the ecclesiastical arena, but to help the saints and serve the LORD, was J. N. Darby's ambition when entering the lists with ardor and boldness in defense of the truth.
The lapse of time naturally has, and should have, an influence in softening the asperities of controversy, and particularly in qualifying our estimates of those who have been active in the struggle. It is however possible to allow this tendency to become too strong, and to forget that we are called to the same conflict; that we too must fight the good fight, and keep the faith whole and undefiled, until we finish the course.
This, however, does not warrant the misusing of extracts from his voluminous writings to justify on one hand some rooted prejudice of narrow mindedness, nor, on the other hand, the attempt to bolster up loose preferences as to Christian fellowship or service.
To study Darby will not make the Christian student a Darbyite, nor a so-called Plymouth Brother. It will help immensely to make him an instructed disciple, a man of GOD with a mind well furnished in divine truth. He will also discover that " old foes with new faces in the theological arena have been met and faced by this good soldier of JESUS CHRIST. Indeed the intellectual reader will note that much " modern thought " is really the resuscitation of " ancient errors" long since exploded. This business of dealing in theological and ecclesiastical antiques is strongly supported by the Devil as generation after generation acclaims the old theories as " new light or " modern thought."
In his preface to The Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, which the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. C. J. Ellicott, Editor of his well-known Commentary, recommended to the theological students of his diocese, Darby says: " The reader... is not to expect a commentary, nor, on the other hand, to suppose that he has a book which he can read without referring continually to the word itself in the part treated of. The object of the book is to help a Christian, desirous of reading the word of GOD with profit, in seizing the scope and connection of that which it contains. Though a commentary may doubtless aid the reader in many passages in which GOD has given to the commentator to understand in the main the intention of the SPIRIT of GOD, or to furnish philological principles and information, which facilitate to another the discovery of that intention; yet if it pretend to give the contents of scripture, or if he who uses it seeks these in its remarks, such commentary can only mislead and impoverish the soul. A commentary, even if always right, can at most give what the commentator has himself learned from the passage. The fullest and wisest must be very far indeed from the living fullness of the divine word. The Synopsis has no pretension of the kind. Deeply convinced of the divine inspiration of the scriptures, given to us of GOD, and confirmed in this conviction by daily and growing discoveries of their fullness, depth, and perfectness; ever more sensible, through grace, of the admirable perfection of the parts, and the wonderful connection of the whole, the writer only hopes to help the reader in the study of them.
The scriptures have a living source, and living power has pervaded their composition: hence their infiniteness of bearing, and the impossibility of separating any one part from its connection with the whole, because one GOD is the living center from, which all flows; one CHRIST, the living center round which all its truth circles, and to which it refers, though in various glory; and one SPIRIT, the divine sap which carries its power from its source in GOD to the minutest branches of the all-united truth, testifying of the glory, the grace, and the truth of Him whom GOD sets forth as the object and center and head of all that is in connection with Himself, of Him who is, withal, GOD over all, blessed for evermore.
To give all this as a whole and perfectly would require the Giver Himself. Even in learning it, we know in part, and we prophesy in part. The more-beginning from the utmost leaves and branches of this revelation of the mind of GOD, by which we have been reached when far from Him -we have traced it up towards its center, and thence looked down again towards its extent and diversity, the more we learn its infiniteness and our own feebleness of apprehension. We learn, blessed be GOD, this, that the love which is its source is found in unmingled perfectness and fullest display in those manifestations of it which have reached us even in our ruined state. The same perfect GOD of love is in it all. But the unfoldings of divine wisdom in the counsels in which GOD has displayed Himself remain ever to us a subject of research in which every new discovery, by increasing our spiritual intelligence, makes the infiniteness of the whole, and the way in which it surpasses all our thoughts, only more and more clear to us. But there are great leading principles and truths, the pointing out of which in the various books which compose the scriptures, may assist in the intelligence of the various parts of scripture. It is attempted to do this here. What the reader is to expect consequently in this Synopsis, is nothing more than an attempt to help him in studying scripture for himself. All that would turn him aside from this would be mischievous to him; what helps him in it may be useful. He cannot even profit much by the following pages otherwise than in using them as an accompaniment to the study of the text itself.
From what has been said it will easily be understood that the writer can readily feel the imperfection of what he has written. Often he would have liked to have introduced the developments which he has enjoyed, when unfolding particular passages in detail and applying them to the hearts and consciences of others; but this would have turned him aside from the object of the work. He trusts, however, that the right direction is given to the scriptural researches of the reader: grace alone can make those researches effectual.
He cannot close this short introduction to the book without expressing the effect which the discovery of the perfectness and divinely ordered connection of the scriptures produces in his mind as respects what is called Rationalism. Nothing is proved by the system so denominated but the total absence of all divine intelligence, a poverty associated with intellectual pretension, an absence of moral judgment, a pettiness of observation on what is external, with a blindness to divine and infinite fullness in the substance, which would be contemptible through its false pretensions, if it were not a subject of pity, because of those in whom these pretensions are found. None but GOD can deliver from the pride of human pretension. But the haughtiness which excludes GOD, because it is incompetent to discover Him, and then talks of His work, and meddles with His weapons, according to the measure of its own strength, can prove nothing but its own contemptible folly. Ignorance is generally confident, because it is ignorant; and such is the mind of man in dealing with the things of GOD. The writer must be forgiven for speaking plainly in these days on this point. The pretensions of infidel reason infect even Christians.
He would add that it has not been his object to unfold the blessed fruits the word produces in the mind and ways of him who receives it, nor the feelings produced in his own mind in reading it, but to help the reader in the discovery of that which has produced them. May the LORD only make the word as divinely precious to him as it has been to the writer; to both ever still more so! "
The influence of Darby's life and teaching has been discovered in most unexpected quarters. The verger of perhaps the highest Anglican Church in London, where the clergy. are sometimes. referred to by other clergy as " spikes " because of their extreme Roman and Eastern proclivities, once remarked to the writer, " The Brethren. Ah, yes, my people are Brethren." An Evangelical clergyman present at an address in a Public Hall given by the writer on "'The Bible " shook hands at the close saying, " You are one of the Brethren, I know; many of my friends too belong to them "; though the speaker had given no clue to any denominational affinity in his address.
Some words of Bishop Francis Paget in " Hallowing of Work " may serve to conclude this brief review of the long life of a truly great man. " A man's gifts may lack opportunity, his efforts may be misunderstood and resisted; but the spiritual power of a consecrated will needs no opportunity, and can enter where the doors are shut... in this strange and tangled business of human life, there is no energy that so steadily does its work as the mysterious, unconscious, silent, unobtrusive, imperturbable influence which comes from a man who has done with all self-seeking." Such a man was JOHN NELSON DARBY.
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