DR. FARRAR'S "ETERNAL HOPE."

CANON FARRAR preached in Westminster Abbey towards the close of last year a series of Sermons on the prospects of mankind in the future life. These discourses seem to have excited con- siderable hostility in certain quarters. They were supposed to be adverse to the dogma of the endless punishment of the wicked,

a dogma to which many sincere believers cling with a passionate earnestness, partly due to a genuine belief in its moral efficacy, partly to an unacknowledged conviction of its failing hold on the Christian conscience. Hostility of this kind naturally dis- played itself in many misrepresentations. Canon Farrar was affirmed to have committed himself to statements which he had never made, and which did not represent his real belief. He has

now, to set himself right both with friends and opponents, published his discourses, under the title of Eternal Hope. It

will now be readily understood what the book is, and what it is not. It is not a formal theological treatise, such as we have to speak of, works which represent three phases of belief, in Mr.

Oxenham's Catholic Eschatology, Mr. Jukeirs Restitution of All Things, and Mr. Cox's Salcator Mundi. It is a courageous

assertion of hopes which thousands cherish, with a reserve which almost amounts to cowardice. Sermons, hastily composed, and published as they were delivered, are naturally popular rather than scientific. They are highly rhetorical, a quality which possibly subserved the purpose for which they were composed, but certainly does not add to their theological value. Canon Farrar, indeed, has not a precise doctrinal proposition to put forward. He does not accept the dogma of Universalism, holding that we have no grounds for positively affirming such a belief, whatever our hopes may be about the ultimate destiny of all men ; nor does he accept the theory of conditional immortality—a theory which, though it certainly solves in a rough-and-ready fashion some stupendous difficulties, seems radically opposed to the Christian conception of humanity. Philosophy may well believe in a superior order of souls capable of immortal existence, and calmly consign to annihilation,-

" The common rout,

That wandering loose about,

Grow up and perish, as the summer fly,—

Heads without name, no more remembered."

But spiritual equality is of the very essence of the Gospel. Dr. Farrar, indeed, assumes an attitude that is chiefly negative. When we say this, we do not in the least mean to depreciate the value of his utterances. A negative is surely that which best befits our almost absolute ignorance. The Universalist, laying down the dogma that God is, so to speak, bound to save those who

obstinately resist His saving influences, and the Calvinist restricting within the narrowest limits the operation of the divine grace, are both, though not with equal offence, presump-

tuously dogmatic. On the other hand, it is well that some one should come forward and boldly denounce a teaching which daily revolts more and more the better-instructed conscience of Chris- tian belief. Already the most vehement assertors of endless pun- ishment have advanced from the position which their predecessors took, and saw no harm in taking up. The bitterest Calvinist would no longer write in his diary that he had spent an hour in meditating on the mercy of God in damning little infants, and both Mr. Spurgeon and Mr. Moody would probably hesitate to affirm that the chief enjoyment of the blessed will be in contem- plating the sufferings of the lost ; but a great deal yet re- mains to be done in this way. Men make statements which they do not themselves believe, or believe only with restrictions which rob them of nine-tenths of their force, because they are afraid to face the consequences, or fancied consequences, of a more candid course. In spite of all the ex- periences of the past, they still cling to a belief in the deterrent power of wholesale denunciations of hell. We hail with the

* Eternal Hope ; Five Sermons preached in Westminster Abbey, November and December, 1877. By the Rey. Frederick W. Farrar, D.D. London : Macmillan and Co. 1878.

greatest pleasure the bold and manly protest which Dr. Farrar makes in these sermons against an " economy " of this kind. We cannot do better than quote a passage which occurs, not in the sermons, where it would have seemed too personal, but in the notes which Dr. Farrar has appended to them :-

" Thank God, my own hopes of seeing God's face for ever hereafter do not rest on ten times refuted attempts to read false meanings into the Greek lexicon, in order to support a system far darker than St. Augus- tine's, from whose mistaken literalism it took its disastrous origin. But here I declare, and call God to witness, that if the popular doctrine of Hell were true I should be ready to resign all hope, not only of a shortened but of any immortality, if thereby I could save, not millions, but one single human soul from what feat, and superstition, and ignorance, and inveterate hate, and slavish letter-worship, have dreamed and taught of Hell. I call God to witness that so far from regretting the pos- sible loss of some billions of mons of bliss by attaching to the word aidnuei a sense in which scores of times it is undeniably found, I would here, and now, and kneeling on my knees, ask Him that I might dio as the beasts that perish, and for over cease to be, rather than that my worst enemy should endure the hell described by Tertullian, or Minucius Felix, orJonathan Edwards, or Dr. Pnsey, or Mr. Furnis4. or Mr. Moody, or Mr. Spurgeon, for one single year. Unless my whole nature were utterly changed, I can imagine no immortality which would not be abhorrent to me, if it were accompanied with the knowledge that millions and millions and millions of poor suffering wretches—some of whom on earth I had known and loved—were writhing in an agony without end or hope."

Besides the Sermons, Dr. Farrar's volume contains some interest- ing and valuable matter. There is a brief sketch of the eschatologi- cal opinions in the Church, and a thorough criticism of the language employed by Scripture in reference to this subject. We have also a notable letter from Professor l'lumptre, dealing with the teaching of Bishop Butler on the future life. When the greatest theologian that the English Church has produced uses such lan- guage as this,—

" Virtue, to borrow the Christian allusion, is militant here, and various untoward accidents contribute to its being often overborne ; but it may combat with greater advantage hereafter, and prevail completely, and enjoy its consequent rewards in some future states. Neglected as it is, perhaps unknown, perhaps despised and oppressed bore, there may be scenes in eternity lasting enough, and in every way adapted to afford it a sufficient sphere of action ; and a sufficient sphere for the natural

consequences of it to follow in fact And one might add, that suppose all this advantageous tendency of virtue to become effect amongst one or more orders of vicious creatures, in any distant scene or period throughout the universal kingdom of God, this happy effect of virtue would have a tendency, by way of example, and possibly in other ways, to amend those of them who are capable of amendment, and being re- covered to a just sense of virtue. If our notions of the plan of Provid- ence were enlarged in any sense proportionable to what late discoveries have enlarged our views with respect to the material world, representa- tions of this kind would not appear absurd or extravagant,"

—those who are least disposed to venture beyond the limits of authority may gain courage to protest against the horrors of the so-called popular theology.