A SHARP DEFENCE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 1, 1878

A SHARP DEFENCE.

In a recent number of the Contemporary Review, Canon Farrar offers the following earnest defence to criticisms upon his recent sermons:—

“‘What do the wicked do forever in hell?’ is the question of a once celebrated catechism, which many of my readers must have learned in their childhood. ‘They roar, curse, and blaspheme God.’ Where has this teaching been repudiated? When and where, and by whom, until within the last month or two, has there been a distinct refusal by teachers of this school to indorse the sentiments of the frightful sermon of Jonathan Edwards, entitled, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?’ ‘The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.’ Apart from the metaphor, is this to be regarded as orthodox teaching or not? Is this the God of whom we are taught that his love is deeper than that of a mother, and that his tender mercies are over all his works? Is this the God who says that he will not cast off forever? Is this the God who ‘pardoneth iniquity,’ who ‘retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy?’ If language such as I have quoted be utterly reprehensible, if it be an unconscious blasphemy against the love and pity of our Father in Heaven, why have my sermons been so vehemently attacked? I have received so many letters on the subject, from all sorts of strangers in England and America, that few living men are, I suppose, better able to estimate the character of the extreme popular view, or the hardening, embittering, inquisitorial, Pharisaical, depraving, pride and hatred-engendering influence which it exercises on the minds—not, of course, of all, but of too many of those who hold it. This was the doctrine that produced the Torquemadas, the Arnolds of Citeaux, the Sprengels of the Middle Ages. This is the doctrine which often makes the so-called religious character so little lovely and so little religious. This is the doctrine which to this day produces the dull and obstinate fanaticism of many whom we would fain win to a diviner charity.”