Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) was a British clergyman, schoolmaster, and author. The Dean of Canterbury 1895–1903, his theological works had a significant influence on the religious sentiment and culture of the Victorian middle class.
Born in Bombay, British India, where his father was an Anglican missionary, Farrar was educated at King’s College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained in 1854, taught at Harrow, became headmaster of Marlborough 1871–76 and honorary chaplain to Queen Victoria 1869–73, and afterward became a chaplain-in-ordinary. He was made a canon of Westminster and rector of St Margaret’s in 1876, Archdeacon of Westminster in 1883, chaplain to the House of Commons in 1890, and Dean of Canterbury in 1895.
Farrar is known for his Life of Christ (1874,) which had 30 editions in as many years. His other theological writings include Mercy and Judgement (1881,) History of Interpretation (1886,) and The Bible: It’s Meaning and Supremacy (1897.) He is also remembered for the philological writing Language and Languages (1878) and the bestseller Eric, or Little by Little (1858,) one of the numerous school stories that he composed.
Farrar was a friend of naturalist Charles Darwin and did not agree with his theory of evolution. Nevertheless, Darwin nominated Farrar for a Fellowship of the Royal Society. In return, Farrar helped secure for Darwin the honor of burial in Westminster Abbey and gave Darwin’s funeral sermon.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Frederic William Farrar
Man’s liberty ends, and it ought to end, when that liberty becomes the curse of his neighbors.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Liberty
There is only one real failure possible; and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Mistakes, Failure, Failures
Knowledge, without common sense, says Lee, is “folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.” But with common sense, it is wisdom; with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Common Sense, Knowledge
Age and sorrow have the gift of reading the future by the past.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Past
No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted word, failure and success and measure them by the eternal, not the earthly, standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be pre-eminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross—was that a failure.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Work
No soul can preserve the bloom and delicacy of its existence without lonely musings and silent prayer, and the greatness of this necessity is in proportion to the greatness of evil.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Meditation
No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it.
—Frederic William Farrar
Topics: Eternity
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