.XX.1 MERCY AND JUDGMENT. BY ARCHDEACON FARRAR. "We know our place and our portion: To give a witness and to be condemned; to be ill-used and to succeed. Such is the law which God has annexed to the promulgation of the truth: its preachers suffer, but its cause prevails."-Dr. Newman, Tracts for the Times, iv. p. ix. AGAIN and again it has been asserted or implied-even by those whose character and position should have made them more careful in their statements-that I deny the eternity of punishment. Once more, and once for all, I desire to render such false witness inexcusable by saying on the very first page of this book that I have never denied, and do not now deny, the eternity of punishment. And, to avoid any possible mistake, I repeat once more, that though I understand the word eternity in a sense far higher than can be degraded into the 1 This Section consists of the "PREFATORY AND PERSONAL” opening to Archdeacon FARRAR'S Mercy and Judgment, published in 1881.—J. II. vulgar meaning of endlessness, I have never even denied, and do not now deny, even the possible endlessness of punishment. In proof of which, I need only refer to the pages of my own book-Eternal Hope-standing as they do unaltered from the very first. In the month of November 1877, during my ordinary course of residence as a canon, I preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey on 1 Peter iv. 6, "For for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead." At that time there had been some discussions both on the nature of Eternal Happiness, and the question, "Is life worth living?" Accordingly, on October 14 I had preached on "What Heaven is;" and on November 4 upon the value and preciousness of human life. But since I desire always and above all things to be truthful and honest, it was impossible for me to attempt the refutation of that cynical pessimism which treats human life as a curse and as a mistake, without entering into the awful question of future retribution. While in common with all Christians I believed that there would be a future punishment of unrepented sin, and even that it might continue without any revealed termination so long as impenitence continued, it appeared to me that, on that subject, many of the conceptions constantly kept alive by current teaching were derived only from mistaken interpretations of isolated texts, and were alien from the general tenor of Divine revelation. I knew it to be the popular belief, sanctioned by ordinary sermons, that the vast majority of living men would pass from the sorrows, miseries, and failures of our mortal life into inconceivable, hopeless, and everlasting agonies. I gave some specimens of that teaching, and in order not to prejudge it, those specimens were chosen, not from the writings of the vulgar and the ignorant, but from the pages of great men whom I love and reverence-from Dante and Milton, and Jeremy Taylor and Henry Smith. I endeavoured to show, as far as could be shown in the narrow limits of a sermon addressed to a mixed multitude, that much which had been said on this subject was unscriptural and untenable. In that sermon, and in one delivered on November 18 upon the question, "Are there few that be saved?" it was my object to prove that the current belief went far beyond what was written, and tended to force upon men's minds a view of God's dealings with the human race which it was almost, if not utterly, impossible to recon |