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Herbert Henry Farmer
Herbert Henry Farmer (November 27, 1892 – January 13, 1981) was a British preacher, theologian, and academic whose ministry within the Presbyterian Church of England blended pastoral preaching with scholarly insight across six decades. Born in Highbury, London, to William Charles Farmer, a journeyman cabinetmaker, and Mary Ann Buck, he was the youngest of four sons in a working-class family. His academic talent emerged early at Owen’s School in Islington, earning him a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with first-class honors in Moral Sciences in 1914. A pacifist during World War I, he worked on a farm near Cambridge instead of serving in the military, later pursuing theological studies at Westminster College, Cambridge, where he was ordained in 1919. Farmer’s preaching career began with pastorates at Stafford (1919–1922) and New Barnet (1922–1931), where his heartfelt yet intellectually rigorous sermons gained notice, calling hearers to an obedient relationship with a God of both judgment and grace. In 1931, he joined Hartford Seminary in the United States, serving until 1935, when he returned to England as Barbour Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge (1935–1960). He later held the Norris-Hulse Professorship of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (1949–1960), preaching and lecturing on divine-human encounters and Christian ethics, notably in his Gifford Lectures (1950–1951), published as Revelation and Religion (1954) and Reconciliation and Religion (1951). Author of works like The World and God (1935) and The Servant of the Word (1941), he shaped countless ministers through his teaching. Married with family details unrecorded, he passed away at age 88 in Birkenhead, England.
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Herbert Henry Farmer preaches about the impact of sin on our ability to empathize and love others, highlighting how our own self-judgments and internal conflicts can hinder our understanding and compassion towards those around us. He emphasizes that true love and empathy for others can only flow when our souls are freed from exhausting internal struggles, allowing us to fully embrace and support others. Farmer explains that experiencing God's forgiveness can temporarily alleviate our inner conflicts, leading to a deep sense of compassion and willingness to share the benefits with everyone we encounter.
Sympathizing With Others
"Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven" (Matt. 9:2). I do not find for one moment that my sinfulness makes it easier for me to fathom and to sympathize with the moral need of others. Quite the contrary I find that my own harsh judgments of myself continually make me pass harsh judgments on other people. I find that my own easy judgments on myself continually make me pass easy judgments on other people. Sometimes it works the other way and I cover self-indulgence by being exacting to others. I am, in short, erratic and confused. Always I read into others my moral mood at the moment, and I see them, not as they are, but through the distorting medium of my own profound dissatisfaction and conflict with myself. Furthermore, sin not only fogs the understanding, but it dries up the sympathies and the affections. Moral conflict within dams back and turns inwards the vital energies which are meant to flow outwards in sympathy with, and service to, other lives. Really to love other people, really to enter into their lives and be identified with them and stand beside them, is so difficult and so exacting, that it demands that the soul's energies should be completely released from any exhausting, internal struggle with itself. That sounds like the jargon of modern psychology but any one can deduce it from a little observation of himself. It is after some renewed experience of forgiveness, when, for a time at any rate, the inner conflict is allayed, that a man's feelings and desires are most responsive to the need of others. When the gospel of God's forgiveness has deeply laid hold of a man he feels for the moment that he could take the whole world to his bosom and that he would do anything to share the benefit with everyone he meets. It is the peaceful heart which is the deeply sympathetic heart. There is no doubt of that. As sin gets hold of us again and the old conflict returns, so we become conscious of a re-hardening of the surfaces of personality, a withdrawal of sympathy with others, an increase of callousness. Sin is like leprosy in the sphere of the spirit. It anesthetizes the skin.
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Herbert Henry Farmer (November 27, 1892 – January 13, 1981) was a British preacher, theologian, and academic whose ministry within the Presbyterian Church of England blended pastoral preaching with scholarly insight across six decades. Born in Highbury, London, to William Charles Farmer, a journeyman cabinetmaker, and Mary Ann Buck, he was the youngest of four sons in a working-class family. His academic talent emerged early at Owen’s School in Islington, earning him a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with first-class honors in Moral Sciences in 1914. A pacifist during World War I, he worked on a farm near Cambridge instead of serving in the military, later pursuing theological studies at Westminster College, Cambridge, where he was ordained in 1919. Farmer’s preaching career began with pastorates at Stafford (1919–1922) and New Barnet (1922–1931), where his heartfelt yet intellectually rigorous sermons gained notice, calling hearers to an obedient relationship with a God of both judgment and grace. In 1931, he joined Hartford Seminary in the United States, serving until 1935, when he returned to England as Barbour Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster College, Cambridge (1935–1960). He later held the Norris-Hulse Professorship of Divinity at the University of Cambridge (1949–1960), preaching and lecturing on divine-human encounters and Christian ethics, notably in his Gifford Lectures (1950–1951), published as Revelation and Religion (1954) and Reconciliation and Religion (1951). Author of works like The World and God (1935) and The Servant of the Word (1941), he shaped countless ministers through his teaching. Married with family details unrecorded, he passed away at age 88 in Birkenhead, England.