DEAN FARRAR

Evening Star, Issue 11890, 19 May 1903, Page 8

DEAN FARRAR

The death of Dean Farrar (says a Home paper) will call to mind to many who heard them the famous sermons which he preached in Westminster Abey on the doctrine of ‘ Eternal Hope.’ No sermons were ever so much talked about in England or written about in the newspapers, which had leading articles on them as if they had been political speeches; and the echo of the controversy reached the other side of the Atlantic, It was something more than an echo, indeed, for one recalls that when Dr Farrar visited America some time afterwards ‘Eternal Hope’>was omitted from a list of his books in an address presented to him. It had been left out in consequence of the bitter feling the book had aroused, and Dr Farrar was bold enough to call attention to the omission. Those who imagined that the dean repented of the sermons in later life did him a great injustice. They cost him a bishopric, it has often been said, but the dean cherished his belief of hope after death until the end. He had been much moved, he once said, by the deaths of some of those connected wjth him, and after he had preached the first sermon letteifc of thankfulness came in from the most distant parts of the Empire; and from lonely missionaries in far-off lands. Such an outpouring of gratitude only strengthened him in his faith, and he clung to it more firmly than ever in q>ite of his critics. Dr Farrar often recalled “ the grandest and most awful sight he ever witnessed,” That was the description he gave to the bunting of his school when he was a boy in the Isle of M<m He was one of the first to alarm thp school. r: -.-v;

I shall never forget,” he once said, “waking up at with the suffocating smell of smoke, and, when I opened the door at one end of the long donnißbriea, being met by the bunting flames. I roused'my brother, and we nn from bed to bed waking up the boys. Then came the fearful suspense while we all stood huddled together in a dark passage, waiting for the key to be found for theonly safe , door of exit.” 'Hie man who was to preach to the most distinguished congregations in England preached his first sermon m a workhouse, and it was Dr Farrar himself who aid that “ if ever there was a dead failure toy first sermon was one.” ■ One by one the old men and women left the infirmary chapel’at oauabury Workhouse as the young man proceeded with his discourse, and his first attempt was anything but promisng of the brliiant career which was before him.