Year: 1878

; Life of Christ of our time-read anC


admired of late years in thousands O


Christian families-has been preach


ing at the Abbey on subjects relat
ing to the future life Both las


Sunday and Sunday week the Min


ster was crowded with people to lis


ten to these discourses. The thron;
was 30 great that many had to stant


throughout the services. Our shor


hand writer has provided US witt


verbatim reports of both sermons


but our space is so pre-occupied Il


day with other matters that we Cal


only give a summary of them.


10 bis first discourse, based upoI


l Peter, iv., 6, DR.. Farrar discussed


the subject of the future punish


ment of the ungodly. In reply tt


questions which he assumed his au


dience to be asking, and which ht


said they had the fullest right tC
ask, and which it was the Dounder
duty of ministers of the Gospel, az


far as possible, to answer, he, fol
one, in all deep humility, yet always
asking God for fearless courage anC
perfect honesty, would try to give
such answers. as he could. If il
were but the fragment of an answer
it was because he believed it TO be
Gods will that no other should be
possible. Those who took loose
conjectures for establishing certain


ties, those who cared more for au


thority than for reason and consci
ence, those who pretended to digni-
fy with the name of Scrfptural Ar


gument inferences out of the narrow
aperture of single texts, those who
talked with the glib self complacen-
cy of all ignorance which calls itself
knowledge, as though they had been
admitted into what, with uncon-
scious blasphemy, they called the
| Couuci, Chamber of the Trinity
they, perhaps, might speak readily
of fire and birthstone, and might feel
the consolatory glow of a personal
security as they dilated upon the
awfulness and tinality of the suffer
ings of the damned. But those
whose faith must have a broader
basis than hollow representations
than the ambiguousness of oppos


ing texts-those who grieve over the
dark shadows flung by human the
ologians over Gods light, those who
believed that reason and conscience
and experience-no less than the
Scripture-are no less the books of
God, and that they too, must have a
direct voice in these great decisions,
they would no: be so ready to snatch
Gods thunder into wretched and
feeble hands. They would lay their
mouths in the dust rather than
make sad the hearts which God had
not made sad. They would take in
to account the grand principles
which dominate through Scripture
no less than its isolated expressions /;
and, undeterred by the base and fee
BILE notion that virtue would be i'm
possible without the horrors of an
endless hell, they would declare
their trust that even after death,
through the infinite mercy of the
loving Father, the dead would be
alive again, and multitudes, at any
rate, OF the lost be found.


After this eloquent introduction
the preacher proceeded to state
what, after years of thought on the
subject, he believed, and what he
knew to be the belief of multitudes,
and of yearly increasing multiudes,
of the wisest and the most learned
in the church. Proceeding to eX
anime the subject in detail, he first
set forth the popular notions of hell
to be found in the early theologians,
in Dante, in Milton, and in Shakes
peare, citing some of the most ter
rifle passages descriptive of endless
torture. Happily, the thoughts and
hearts of men were often far gentler
and noble than their creeds, customs
and traditions. 1t was only when
these topics were treated by narrow
minded and loveless hearts that
they were seen in all their intoler
able ghastliness. He knew of moth
ing so calculated to make the whole
soul revolt with loathing from every
doctrine of religion as the easy
complacency with which some cheer
fully accept the belief that they are
living and moving in the midst of
millions doomed irreverslbly to
everlasting perdition. No language
could be stern enough TO reprobate
the manner in which many elder
brothers of the Prodigal had turned
Gods Gospel of plenteous redemp-
tion into anathemas and all but uni
versal perdition. If we were not
unaffected when the destitute perish
with hunger, or the dying agonize
in pain, was there any human being
worthy of the dignity of a human
being who did not revolt and sickeD
at the notion of world of worm
and flame? If St. Paul again and
again flung from him, with a "God
forbid" the conclusion of an appar-
emily irresistible logic, we surely,
who had no irresistible logic against
us in this matter, but only in great
part spiritual selfishness and impen-
etrable traditions, do we not, in the
high name of outraged conscience,
humanity-nay, in the far higher
name of the God who loved us, of
the Saviour who died for us, of the
Holly Ghost who enlightens us-do
we not hurl from US representations
of a doctrine so horrible that every
nerve and fibre of our intellectual,
moral and spiritual life revolts at
1t? Ignorance may if it will, make
a fetish of such a doctrine; pharis
aism may write it broad upon its
philacteries: hatred may inscribe it
instead of Holiness TO the Lord; but
here, in the presence of so many
living, and in this vast mausleum of
the glorious dead-here amid the
silent memorials of the men of fame
and the fathers who begat us, of
whom many, though not saints,
were yet noble, tho ugh erring men,
aud whom though they and we alike
shall certainly suffer, bitterly both
here and hereafter, the penalty of
unrepented sin, we can not and will
not think of as condemned to unut-
terable tortures by irrevisible de-
c-ees. "I "Irepudiate," exclaimed the
preacher, ''these crude and ghastly