TO THE REVEREND
JOHN PYE SMITH, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S., ETC., ETC.,
FIFTY YEARS TUTOR IN THE PROTESTANT DISSENTING COLLEGE AT HOMERTON.
Ἡδὺς ἐκεῖνος ὁ φίλος ὁ τὴν ψυχὴν διαπρέφων.
NEILUS, Episc. et Mart.
REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,
It is not without some hesitation and inward debate, that I have come to the resolution of dignifying my present labour by connecting it, in this manner, with your honoured name.
Not that I have any fear of being called to account by yourself, for the assumption of such a liberty. Having been one of the first to sanction the undertaking, you will not repudiate the result of its fulfilment.
But there are many who delight to hold you in honour, and who, without misgiving, may be called Nathanaels in piety, simplicity, and zeal—possibly, also, in the want of a large intellectual sympathy with regard to the various modes in which the elements of Religion, material and formal, are capable of being apprehended—to whom every truly German theologian is little better than a Nazarene. My fear is, lest some individuals of this class should interpret my sincere and uncaptious homage into an attempt to identify you with the details of doctrine and sentiment contained or implied in the following pages. Certainly, if such an attempt were made, it could be fruitful of evil to none save its author. You could not suffer: the Church and the World know you too well.
Considerate readers, however, will, I trust, bear in mind that a Translator, by the mere act of translation, does not even profess his own adherence to the system of his author. If it were so, a man might easily come to be esteemed the luckless champion of half-a-dozen different and hostile creeds. Much less, then, is the imputation of such an adherence implied in a mere Dedication.
There are reasons, moreover, for connecting your name with that of Schleiermacher: especially in an age which groans over the want of Union in the Church, and yet, in too many instances, hugs that mental littleness which renders Union impossible; an age, therefore, which cannot afford that any real analogy or identity between the services attempted or accomplished by men of God in different countries and under different circumstances, should be overlooked or ignored. The invidiousness, not to say the impertinence, of a formal comparison between yourself and the great German, I would wholly avoid. I should be very unworthy, too, to write myself your Pupil, if I were ignorant or forgetful of the existence of an important difference, in principle as well as in detail, between your system and his. Yet if (though under different circumstances and in spheres of different extent) to combat alike, for love of the same Kingly Prophet and Priest of Humanity, against that bondage of the letter, which leaves no room for a free, symmetrical developement of the higher life in man, but condemns even the renewed mind to a state of hopeless pupilage,—against that inflated fanaticism, which dreams that it can dispense with learning, and looks for the fire-baptism of Pentecost and the success of the Apostolic preachers without their previous training under the Prince of all Instructors,—and last, not least, against that haughty, Gorgon-eyed, soul-freezing Rationalism, which tends to confound Eternal Reason with the lean results of Human Reasoning, Faith with logical Understanding, and Religion with Morality,—if the participation in this grand conflict of principle (πρὸς τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις) may form a bond of union between Christian Teachers of different countries and of different Church-Communities: then, doubtless, in that world in which all truth-loving spirits come to understand one another, there will be no lack of sympathy between yourself and him.
“Yet a little while” is this mutual understanding delayed! The day of conflict and toil—in its burden and heat, at least—is almost ended. A brief interval of venerable repose—(may it yet be long enough for the accomplishment of some parting service to the Church, in which ages unborn shall rejoice!)—of repose consecrated by the respect, the sympathy, the prayers, of all who know how to appreciate the refinement of the gentleman, the learning of the scholar, the fidelity of the friend, the simplicity and integrity of the man of God—and then—“the night cometh”! A night, not shadowy, phantasmal, drear, like that through which the noblest Preceptor of Heathendom had to grope his uncertain way; but clear, calm, cloudless, illumined by the presence of the Perfected through Suffering, and fading into the pale dawn of Light Eternal!
In grateful acknowledgment of a relation which, although formally at an end, will, I trust, continue in some sense to have a virtual existence until, in one or both of us, the “mortal shall have put on immortality,” I beg permission to lay this humble offering, though of foreign growth, upon the altar of your jubilee rejoicing; and once again to subscribe myself,
REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,
With the greatest respect,
Your obliged and affectionate Pupil,
WILLIAM FARRER.
LONDON, April 1850.