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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 emphasizes the importance of aspiring to the highest ideals and continually testing ourselves through lofty professions, like Peter stepping out in faith onto the water. He highlights the folly of fearing failure and maintaining a worthless consistency out of egotism, urging instead for a generous impulse to learn through defeat and grow in self-knowledge and knowledge of Christ. Farmer stresses that true conviction in Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life comes from facing life's challenges with Him, beginning with a plunge into Christian discipleship and a grand experiment of trusting Him.
Testing Our Weakness
"And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water" (Matt. 14:28). None of us knows what his weaknesses and his powers are, nor how exactly life will test them; but it is quite certain that we shall never know what they are, nor will life's tests teach us anything, unless we aspire to the highest that we know, and are continually testing ourselves by the most lofty professions. To shut out ultimate success through fear of interim failures, to maintain a worthless consistency by the miserable expedient of walking always along the mud flats, to fail in nothing because you had promised nothing, that is a folly which is only explicable on the ground that it springs from a narrow and calculating egotism. Far better always is the generous impulse, which, like Peter, says, "I will, I am able," and then goes out to learn through defeat a deeper knowledge of self and a deeper knowledge of Christ. And how can anyone know with fully proved conviction that Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, before he has gone through the whole of life in His company and faced all its worst challenges with Him? Christian discipleship always must begin in ignorance; or to put it in another way, it must always begin in a sort of plunge, a grand experiment. Something draws us to Him and we risk our lives upon Him. There is only one way to prove Him trustworthy and that is to trust Him. We do not ask of anyone to do more than make honest experiment of Jesus. Our faith in preaching Him is that, if Jesus is fairly given His chance, He will be able to make triumphant use of it.
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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.