DeanFrederic William Farrar (Bombay, 7 August 1831 – Canterbury, 22 March 1903) was a senior-ranking cleric of the Church of England, schoolteacher and author. He was a pallbearer at the funeral of Charles Darwin in 1882. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles secret society. He was the Archdeacon of Westminster from 1883 to 1894, and Dean of Canterbury from 1895 until his death in 1903.
Farrar was a classics scholar and a comparative philologist, who applied Charles Darwin's ideas of branching descent to the relationships between languages, engaging in a protracted debate with the anti-Darwinian linguist Max Müller.[5] While Farrar was never convinced by the evidence for evolution in biology, he had no theological objections to the idea and urged that it be considered on purely scientific grounds.[6] On Darwin's nomination, Farrar was elected to the Royal Society in 1866 for his philological work. When Darwin died in 1882, the then Canon Farrar helped get the church's permission for him to be buried in Westminster Abbey and preached the sermon at his funeral.[6]
Farrar believed that some could be saved after death.[7][8] He originated the term "abominable fancy" for the longstanding Christian idea that the eternal punishment of the damned would entertain the saved.[9] Farrar published Eternal Hope in 1878 and Mercy and Judgment in 1881, both of which defend his position on hell at length.[7][10]
Farrar was accused of universalism, but he denies this belief with great certainty. In 1877 Farrar in an introduction to five sermons he wrote, in the preface he attacks the idea that he holds to universalism. He also dismisses any accusation from those who would say otherwise. He says, "I dare not lay down any dogma of Universalism; partly because it is not clearly revealed to us, and partly because it is impossible for us to estimate the hardening effect of obstinate persistence in evil, and the power of the human will to resist the law and reject the love of God."[10]
In April 1882, the then Canon Farrar was one of ten pallbearers at the funeral of Charles Darwin in Westminster Abbey; the others were: The Duke of Devonshire, The Duke of Argyll, The Earl of Derby, Mr. J. Russell Lowell, Mr. W. Spottiswoode, Sir Joseph Hooker, Mr. A. R. Wallace, Thomas Huxley, and Sir John Lubbock (John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury)[11][12]
Family
The memorial to Dean Farrar at St Margaret's, Westminster
On 1 August 1860 at St Leonard's Church, Exeter, he married Lucy Mary Cardew; they had five sons and five daughters:[11]
Reginald Anstruther Farrar (1861–)
Evelyn Lucy Farrar (1862–)
Hilda Cardew Farrar (1863–1908)
Maud Farrar (1864–1949)
Eric Maurice Farrar (1866–)
Sibyl Farrar (1867–)
Cyril Lytton Farrar (1869–)
Lilian Farrar (1870–)
Frederic Percival Farrar (1871–1946)
Ivor Granville Farrar (1874–1944) (born Bernard Farrar)
The first eight were born at Harrow; the last two were born at Marlborough.
The second daughter, Hilda, was married in 1881 to John Stafford Northcote, vicar of St Andrew's, Westminster. John was the third son of Sir Stafford Northcote, 1st Baronet (later created the 1st Earl of Iddesleigh); John and Hilda's son Henry (1901–1970) succeeded as the 3rd Earl of Iddesleigh in 1927.
Farrar's son Reginald published his biography in 1902.[6]Dean Farrar died on 22 March 1903 and was buried in the cloister of the Canterbury Cathedral.[11]
^A Famous Churchman, in the Red River Prospector, published 2 May 1901; retrieved 17 May 2014
^Alter, Stephen G. (1991). Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
^The Eternal Fate of Unbelievers, Part II, "The Witness of Church History (2): The Modern Period", excerpted and adapted from Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment by Robert A. Peterson (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing), 1995, Extract by Garry J. Moes.
^The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment. Walker DP. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964
