CANON FARRAR ON ENDLESS TORMENT.

Kumara Times, Issue 494, 27 April 1878, Page 2

CANON FARRAR ON ENDLESS TORMENT.

What of the reprobates ! I know that for these-reprobates Christ died. The bigot may judge of their souls if he will. The Pharisee may consign them, with orthodox equanimity, to endless torments; but 1 cannot—will not. Not mine, at any rate, shall be the hands to ch'se against them, with impetuous re coil and jarring sou ml, those gates of hell, lest they should he more justly closed upon me; but I commend ihem with humblest hope, even after this of hopelessness, . to Him who . did : n,ot loathe the whitenes of he lejier. and suffered the woman who was a signer to wash his feet with tears., .-Gchl’s Spirit has nowhere taught us 'that' 1 He who gave give back ; tlnjfc he who once made them innocent children cannot restore their innocence/again ; that He who created them—He who wills them to be aved— cannot recreate them in his own image, cannot! obliterate all their yileijess in. fchevblood of Christ, and uncreate their sins. But

the vast mass, of mankind., belong to the Cthird classJ They are not utter reprobates; they' are not perfect saints. They try to-face both ways, They halt between two opinions. The angel has them by the hand and the serpent by the heart. -; And it is those who try to be God’s children who realise their own excessive sinfulness. Having shown how many of the saintliest and tendorest souls have been driven even to madness as Cowper Was, by the false view of God which is given by the pitiless anathemas of man, Canon Farrar asked his hearers if, when they buried friends or relatives who had not been holy or religious, they dared consign them even in their to the unending anguish of the popular creed they taught ? An arbitrary infliction of burning torment, an endless agony, a material hell of worm and .flame, a doom.to everlasting- sin, and all this with no prospect of amendment, with no hope of relief, jfcq soul's transgression of a few brief hours of struggling tempted life, followed by billions 6f milleniums in, .scorching fire, and all this meant not to ’ correct, but to harden, not to' amend, but to torture and degrade—did yon believe in that for any ope. ypu haye ever loved ? Again, I say, God forbid ! Again, I say, I fling from me with abhorrence such a creed as that. • Let every Pharisee gnash, his teeth if he will; Jet every dogmatist anathematise, but that I can not arid do nbt believe; Scripture '.will not let me; my conscience, my reason, my faith in Christ, the voice of the Spirit Wlthih iny soul, wjll not let me; God will not let me.