THE LATE DEAN FARRAR

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1685, 15 June 1904, Page 75 (Supplement)

THE LATE DEAN FARRAR

From the time he entered at King’s College and through nut his career at Cambridge Dean Farrar paid the expenses of his owu education entirely by scholarships and exhibitions. “So poor was he, and so rigid was his self-denial and his resolution to spare his struggling parents the least farthing of expenditure on himself, that during his early undergraduate day at Trinity he refused himself the indulgence of tea for breakfast, and drank only water.” Mr Farrar, his son, gives a glowing account of his father’s life as assistant master at Marlborough, and afterwards at Harrow, and of. his subsequent six years’ work as head master of Marlborough “trailing clouds of glory” wherever he went, and “kindling enthusiasm for all that was noble arid chivalrous.” His was a nature not too critical at any time; he was generous of his praise as cf everything else; easily wounded by unfair criticism himself, he was scrupulously careful not to wound others.” One of the dean’s colleagues at Harrow contributes one or two anecdotes illustrating his generosity and capacity for hard work.

“Thomas, the bursar, went to remonstrate with Farrar at what he considered his extravagance in .contributing to school objects. ‘You are always heading lists with twenty or thirty guineas. You must think of yourself more.’ yh,’ he - exclaimed, it only means writing another article for the ‘Contempo rary’ or ‘Fortnightly.’ More than one assistant master can remember, when he was out of sorts, how the master came to his room, and said, ‘-Now don’t you worry yourself. You go to bed. I’ll take your form in the morning:’ Not many men could have endured the extra physical strain, still fewer would have volunteered it. Of his prodigious powers of work I remember a conspicuous instance. At the close of the Christmas holidays I went to see him, and asked him what he had been doing. ‘Looking through the proofs of the. Life of Christ,’ he replied. ‘Have you not been away?’ I asked. ‘No,’ ho answered, ‘I have worked at them thirteen hours a day the whole time.’ I remonstrated. ‘Oh, no,’ ho said, ‘change of work is i as good as a holiday.’ ” It is interesting to recall that as far hack as 1873 the pseudonym F.T.L. Hope under which Dean Farrar’s tale “The Three Homes” was published, showed the bent of his mind the nom de plume being derived from Tennyson’s line, “Faintly trust the larger hope.” It was what Canon Mason called Farrar’s characteristic intensity of conviction that led him to throw down the gauntlet with such startling effect when he preached his five sermons on Eternal Hopo at the end of 1877. These sermons, however, says the biographer, were never intended for publication, but were “preached in the ordinary course of his duties, which, when it became necessary to do so in simple self-defence against the many perversions of his real views which were prevalent among those who had not heard the sermons, he published in the volume entitled “Eternal Hope.” It must he borne in mind, therefore, in regard to the style of the book, and to allegations sometimes made, that it depends for its effect rather on rhetoric than on close reasoning; that this, which was in respect of its far-reaching influence, perhaps, my father’s most important work, and the one by which his name will be handed down to posterity, was not an elaborately prepared theological treatise, but consisted mainly of sermons thrown off in the routine of a very laborious life, and preached Sunday after Sunday to vast popular audiences.

But it was not only on the question of Eternal Hope that his views were deemed heretical, and in connection with ono of his articles for 'Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible he tells the following story: — , “T had been asked to write the article on Deluge for Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible. I wrote it, hut took the views about the non-universality of the Deluge which most inquirers now hold. The editor and publishers, alarmed at this deviation from stereotyped opinion, postponed the insertion of the article, and in vol i. inserted. ‘Deluge: see Flood.’ But even when they had got as far as ‘Flood’ they had not made up their minds, and said Flood, see Noah.’ My article was consequently sacrificed; for FToah’ had been already assigned to the present Bishop of Worcester.” Dean Farrar’s various preferments wore in the nature of “Irish rises” in the point of income.. The headmastership of Marlborough was far less lucrative than the command of a large house at Harrow, and the position involved a larger expendiutre. His preferment to git Margaret’s, Westminster, was again less lucrative than Maryborough; while acceptance of the Deanery of Canterbury involved a heavy sacrifice of income. But these preferments had their compensating advantages in enlarging the dean’s sphere of usefulness, and the prodigious success of his books relieved him in the latter part of his life from all financial anxieties.