Daily Inspiration Quote by John Nelson Darby

A neat piece of pious shorthand, Darby compresses a whole ecclesiology into a single, slightly barbed sentence. The first clause appeals to unimpeachable authority: Christ "preferred the poor". Not merely cared for, not merely preached to, but preferred - a word that implies hierarchy, taste, even bias. That choice matters. It reframes the poor from objects of charity to the very site of spiritual legitimacy, the people through whom you can tell whether a faith is real.

Then comes the pivot: "ever since I have been converted so have I". Conversion here is doing double duty. It is confession (I did not used to prefer them) and credential (now my instincts align with Christ's). Darby is quietly drawing a boundary between the converted and the merely respectable religious: if your social gravity still tilts toward power, you have not actually crossed over.

Context sharpens the edge. Darby, a foundational figure in the Plymouth Brethren movement, operated in a 19th-century Britain where evangelical seriousness often lived uncomfortably alongside imperial confidence and class stratification. His broader project distrusted established church structures and spiritual complacency; this line reads like an internal critique of genteel Christianity as much as a call to compassion. The subtext is not "be nicer to the poor" but "stop using religion to launder comfort". By claiming a changed preference, Darby offers a test of conversion that is social and visceral, not merely doctrinal: your loves, and your loyalties, should visibly relocate.