Father, Thy name our souls would bless

John Nelson Darby was born in 1800, 100 years after the birth of Count Zinzendorf. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin between the ages of 15 and 19. Darby was an outstanding student, gaining many honors and capturing the gold medal in the classics. He studied law at Trinity and was admitted to the Irish bar, but he left shortly to pursue spiritual matters. Darby was ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland in 1826 and from then on was considered a very High Churchman. He relates that at one time even disowned the name protestant:

“I looked for the church… I too, governed by a morbid imagination, thought much of Rome, and its professed sanctity, and catholicity, and antiquity… I held apostolic succession fully, and the channels of grace to be there only. ”

By this Darby indicated that he too, at one time, had thought that grace was with the Catholic Church because it seemed to be in succession with the apostles that had gone before. Darby said further, “I held thus Luther and Calvin and their followers to be outside [the church]. ” He started meeting with the others for the Lord’s table beginning in the winter of 1827 and resigned his curacy in 1828. However he still kept one foot in the state church, while meeting informally with the brothers around the Lord’s table. Though Darby was still a Churchman, the Lord gradually was shining upon him, opening him to the matters concerning the Church. He wrote a treatise called “Considerations of the Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ” (1828). This is considered the Brethren’s first published pamphlet.

Most church historians acknowledge Darby to be the principal leading one in the beginning of the Brethren movement. The following summary is by Neatby:

“… The maker of Brethrenism as a system, its guiding an energizing spirit throughout, was John Nelson Derby. In the grandeur of his conceptions, in the irresistible vehemence of his will, in his consummate strategic instinct, in his genius for administration, and most of all in his immense personal ascendency, he stands unrivaled amongst the Brethren. His energy was stupendous. He was working for Brethrenism before he was 30, and when he was 80 he was working as hard as ever; nor had he been known to relax his efforts—efforts to put forth up the to the full measure of his great strength, and often beyond it—during the whole of the intervening time.

John Nelson Darby and the Brethren Assemblies
Beginning
B. Some of the Brethren

Missing verse 3

3. There in the purpose of Thy love
Our place is now prepared,
As sons with Him who is above,
Who all our sorrows shared.

Ref: Little Flock Hymnal