IV.

BY THE REV. WILLIAM ARTHUR.

CANON FARRAR rightly condemns the practice. of building doctrines on "isolated texts torn. from the context," and not "on the whole scope and tenor of revelation." Few practices are more blameworthy, but of these, one is that of setting up doctrines without any texts to found them upon. The negative design of Canon Farrar's volume is to do away with the doctrine of eternal punishment; but its one positive design is to set up a Purgatory that is not Romish. And we believe that his only serious attempt to show that, according to Holy Scripture, any such Purgatory has an existence, rests upon the isolated text touching the spirits in prison, reinforced by the text from the Creed touching the descent into hell.

First invoking general principles, Canon Farrar strongly invokes also history and experience. What, then, according to him, are

the general principles recognised in the Bible as those on which our Creator governs all things? He does not tell us. What, again, according to him, are the general principles on which it is shown by history and experience that our own world is governed? He does not tell us. He makes no assertion that history and experience teach that our world is governed on what we may call the painless principle, that is, on the principle that the Creator, being perfectly benevolent, will never inflict pain on the creature; nor any assertion that Holy Scripture declares such to be the principle whereon He does govern. Neither does Canon Farrar assert that history and experience have shown that among men benevolent government requires that all penalties, for whatever offence, should be terminable; or that Holy Scripture declares that to be a guiding principle of the government of God over both men and angels. But much of Canon Farrar's book will have to be recast should the day ever come when he recognises, with full consciousness, the fact, and the consequences of the fact, that these principles are not recorded in experience, not enunciated in Holy Scripture, but are contrary to the whole scope and tenor of one and the other.

Canon Farrar over and over again unconsciously assumes that the Universe ought to have been governed on the principle that the Ruler would never inflict pain on the subject. To Canon Farrar there may be something in a distinction between inflicting and causing to be inflicted, or in modern jargon, between inflicting by "interference" and inflicting as "a natural consequence." To us these are dialectic distinctions, not moral; distinctions of mode, not of intent; of contrivance, not of polity. So, while to Canon Farrar the distinction between inflicting physical pain and other pain seems to have much to do with the cruelty involved, to us when pain has to be inflicted, whether from ill-will or good-will, if cruel at all, the cruelty of inflicting an equal amount of pain, by physical rather than by other means, is not greater as compared with less, but is simply grosser cruelty as compared with more refined.

Canon Farrar never, indeed, says that it is an established fact in historical science that causing pain implies a delight in suffering; but he declaims as if nobody could doubt it. He never says plainly that inflicting punishment implies cruelty, but he declaims as if that were an accepted certainty. Numerous expressions,

even explicit ones, occur in direct contradiction to the assumptions here indicated. Nevertheless, the assumptions underlie the current of thought.

That province in the government of God on which Dr. Farrar fixes his attention, is the rule maintained over men beyond the grave. In judging of what that must be, he seldom seeks guidance in the rule maintained amongst us on this side of the grave. He has to assume that the latter does proceed on the principle of rewards and punishments; but, on the other hand, he would sometimes appear to assume that a perfectly benevolent government would not resort to either of these expedients, against both of which objections can be raised. He does not for guidance turn at all to the palmary instance of Holy Writ— the procedure in the case of angels; nor to the cardinal fact there revealed that a younger race and an elder, the first inhabiting only this world though destined for another, the second inhabiting another world though conversant with this, the one consisting of spirits housed in flesh, the other of spirits not so housed, act and react one upon the other, and are, as to government, dealt with on common principles by a common Ruler.

Canon Farrar does not deny the existence of punishment. He is not at all times unconscious of the fact that it may be merciful, though, perhaps, he means merciful only to the offender, not in the wider sense in which punishment, without mercy to the doer of a wrong, may be saving mercy to the sufferer of the wrong, and protecting mercy to the community. Canon Farrar thinks he relieves the character of the Ruler from charges of cruelty by intimating that He does not inflict the tortures-say those of delirium tremens"attached"-by whom ?-to certain acts, but that we ourselves inflict them. Though Canon Farrar vehemently denies that all who die impenitent suffer eternal punishment, he does not deny, he only wishes he could absolutely deny, that any do. But this admission, and it seems to be a real admission, reduces to-we know not what pages and pages of hot epithets. He does not believe that the doctrine of the final salvation of all the wicked is firmly established. He treats the doctrine of the annihilation of spirits as incapable of proof. In the language of his own Church, he calls the Romish doctrine of Purgatory "a fond thing vainly invented." But he holds that not the substantive "Purgatory," but