ARCHDEACON FARRAR ON MODERN PREACHING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8162, 25 January 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

ARCHDEACON FARRAR ON MODERN PREACHING.

We live in times when nearly all know how to read, and when excellent books are within the easy reach even of the poorest. Nothing is more fatal to tho pulpit than that in the very subjects with which it doals it should be surpassed in knowledge by the pew. The printing-press must inevitably be a formidable antagonist to tho autocratic dogmatism of the sermon. In days when a preacher might fairly be convinced that his trainiug placed_ him immensely above tho standpoint of his hearers, and that in learning and knowledge he was necessarily a Triton among minnows, he might be excused for adopting a somewhat dictatorial tone, and for assuming that his ipiie dixit was sufficient to dominate over the opinions of his auditors. But when a preacher chooses to adopt such a stylo in these days few are sure to be found, evon in village congregations, who have a right to say of him, " Qui, autrefois, main now avonn change tout cc/a." Nothing is more offensive in the modern preacher, especially when he is young and raw and ignorant, than tho assumption ot any right to lay down tho law on disputed topics. Ho should rather endeavour to convince, and to illustrate, and to persuade, and to win. The pulpit is no longer a coward's castle. The preacher can be answered, if anyone thinks him of suflicient importance to make it worth while to do so. His most selfimportant assertions will be taken only for what they are worth. Exposure will sooner or later await his incompetence. His most aggresively ignorant dogmatism will be listened to with a smile, and will be taken as a measure nob of his authority, but of his conceit. Nothing will tell more powerfully and more deservedly against the modern preacher than for him to give himself the airs of the mediajval inquisitor or the domineering priest. There are two great departments of knowledge which preachers are constantly tempted to invade, with no better equipment than that of a traditional and uninstructed opinion, which has remained unchanged in the midst of progress, and which is often rendered still more offensive by being ornamented with a, smattering of impossible apologetics. Thoy are the domains of science and of Biblical criticism. In both domains numberless priests, and even whole generations of priests and religious teachers, have maintained and enforced views which are entirely false. The beacon light of progress over every such sunken reef of persecuting ignorance should serve as a warning to tho modern teacher to avoid the arrogance of a nescience which takes itself for knowledge and denounces what it cannot understand.

It is perfectly true to say that there is and can be no antagonism between the Church and science, while at tho same time there is no more deplorable fact than the hostility to science which has been dis played century after century by the immense majority of the Church's representatives. Not a few, indeed, of the martyrs of science have themselves been priests— among them Roger Bacon, one of the greatest of them all; but this has not saved them from years of anguish and persecution, inflicted upon them by the inflated and ignorant intolerance of their brethren. No one who is acquainted with tho history of science, and has sufficient honesty to accept facts, can possibly deny that scarcely a single truth of capital importance in science has ever been enunciated without having to struggle for life against the fury of theological dogmatists. In every instance tho dogmatists have been ignominiously defeated. The world moved, us (Jalileo said it did, in spite of the Inquisition. A groat puritan divine thought that lie had checked the progress of astronomical inquiry when he said that he preferred to believe the Holy host rather than Newton ; yet Newton was absolutely right and the puritan divine was hopelessly wrong. Thousands of pulpits fulminated anathemas against the early geologists ; and one religious controversialist — with the exquisite culture and suavity which marks tho ordinary language of self-sudicienb bigotssatisfied himself that during the ages which preceded the creation "Cod has been preparing a hell for tho geologists." Yet, before thirty years had elapsed, the rejection of the truths which paleontology had revealed would have been regarded as the mark of an idiot. The men of science quietly advanced in their sacred task of deciphering tho letters which Cod had inscribed upon tho rocky tablets of the earth, leaving the theologians to square their Biblical objections with the new revelation as best they could. In our own time, to give bub one instance more, we have heard from preachers, and sometimes from men who could barely scrape through the matriculation examination of a tenth-rate college, the most furious denunciations of Darwinism and tho doctrine of evolution. Darwin himself opposed to these tirades tho silence of a magnanimity too noble even for tho indulgence of private disdain. And already not a few leading theologians adopt the theory of evolution as one which can be applied in even wider regions than those of physics. Let the modern preacher learn a little wisdom, a little modesty, n little suspension of judgment from the disastrous annals of the past. His curses, like chickens, will only come homo to roost. No truth, of science can collide with any truth of religion. Cod has revealed Himself in nature, of which science is the interpreter, as Ho has revealed Himself in Scripture, of which theology is the exponent. If men of' science have often misread for a time the teachings of God's works, theologians have demonstrably erredand that far more egregiously, and for ages together, and with far more disasbrous.consequences—as bo tho true meaning of God's word. Cod speaks in many voices, and has more books than one. Let all religious teachers, above all let ignorant and unscientific teachers, abdicate at once their insolent pretension to decide ex cathedra on new scientific discoveries and theories. They are wholly incompetent to pronounce any opinion upon them. Let them leave to science the things that belong to science. Science is perfectly able to take care of herself. If her sons are often hasty in their inductions and generalisations, they have no monopoly of error. The light of God will show what their opinions are worth. If those opinions be erroneous, they will be refuted on scientific grounds ; and tho lesson of historic experience proves that if they be correct, all other weapons, whether they pretend to be sacred or not, will be of no avail against) them. When, as is too often the case, a preacher poses as *' Sir Oracle " against some scientific theory, while he is as conspicuously ignorant of science as he is of most other subjects, he presents a spectacle which is ridiculous alike to cods and men. j i