Yet Darby was truly great. The late Andrew Jukes is acknowledged as “a true and original mystic,” but there is little doubt that Darby was the fount of his mystic inspiration. For several years Jukes, as a young man, was in Darby’s communion, and tracts that he wrote in those days show that Darbyism was infused into the whole substance of his thought. Another mystic, Mrs. Frances Bevan, found in Darbyism that which met her wants and detached her from the Church of England, notwithstanding the strength of the ties that bound her to it. Turning (perhaps from the disappointments of Brethrenism) to the study of the German mystics, she produced from their writings, in a series of fascinating volumes, a catena of quotations in which the Darbyite is startled by the clearness and intensity of the echo of tones that have become familiar to his ear in such different surroundings.
Darby’s mind is perhaps most simply and efficiently studied through his hymns; and the hymns require study; cursory perusal avails little. I am even reluctant to give extracts, for Darby’s hymns must be studied as a whole. But has the effect of the Incarnation often been more nobly conceived than in the following stanza?
“God and Father, we adore Thee
For the Christ, Thine image bright,
In whom all Thy holy nature
Dawned on our once hopeless night.”[1]
And if Darby could lay the foundation, he could also place the top-stone. How many hymns on heaven have reached the height of the concluding stanza of his “Rest of the saints above”?
- ↑ I am indebted for this fine verse to my critic in the British Weekly for January 17, 1901—“H. W. P.” The italics, in this and in the next quotation, are mine.
