Dispensation - Definition - Darby

The detail of the history connected with these dispensations brings out many most interesting displays, both of the principles and patience of God's dealings with the evil and failure of man; and of the workings by which He formed faith on His own thus developed perfections.

But the dispensations themselves all declare some leading principle or interference of God, some condition in which He has placed man, principles which in themselves are everlastingly sanctioned of God, but in the course of those dispensations placed responsibly in the hands of man for the display and discovery of what he was, and the bringing in their infallible establishment in Him to whom the glory of them all rightly belonged. 

John Nelson Darby, Collected Writings of J.N. Darby: Ecclesiastical 1 “The Apostasy of the Successive Dispensations”

Editor Note: Although not written as a formal definition by Darby, it does show the same thoughts as his predecessors’ understanding of a dispensation. These ideas would be carried on by future dispensational teachers. Darby did not hold the 7 fold dispensational scheme that CI Scofield later developed from other scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries. This is a frequent misunderstanding of Darby’s view on dispensations. He probably held to 3 or 4 but did not often relay his thoughts as often as later dispensational teachers.