Frederic William FarrarBesprekingen

Idealiserad skildring Jesu liv, mest intressant för bilder och tidsanda

BT301.F2 copy1 and BT301.G2 copy 2

Here's another of those books read by the protagonist of Of Human Bondage, Philip. Gah!

This was pretty awful. I thought it might be one of those archetypal British school boys books. I rather liked Stalky and Company when I read it, both as a youth and again as a more "mature" person. A year of so ago, I tried Tom Brown's School Days and found it unreadable, so I gave up on it. Anyway, perhaps this book is also meant to be a British school boy book, but it was also flagrantly written to provide moral teaching to young boys. What it actually shows, however, is a complete moral bankruptcy on the part of the author.

So, we have adolescent boys doing the kinds of things adolescent boys do. They have some rules handed down from above, but aren't given reasons for those rules other than being told, I suppose, that breaking them will inevitably lead to moral decay. But, the masters in the school pretty much ignore the boys and they, being adolescent boys, run amok when they can. Once in a while, they are caught stepping over the ill-defined lines (one of their masters awakes from his un-noticing moralistic trance, or something), and then their good, moral masters beat the living crap out of them with sticks. So, that's how we make Christians out of people: set incongruous rules; publicly humiliate people who break the rules, even inadvertently; and beat the living crap out of them if they piss the masters off too much with their adolescent behavior.

Then you have teenage boys constantly crying about one thing or another, holding hands, hooking their arms around each other's necks, and so forth. In what planet does that happen?

This was an extremely popular Victorian boys' book. Farrar's style is lively and engaging and he is clearly writing about what he knows. The plot, however---a sort of Pilgrim's Regress---strains our credulity. A lifetime's worth of poor decisions and moral deterioration is crammed into a few years of Eric's youth, with consequences that seem out of proportion. Laissez-faire school leadership which allows all this presented without apparent judgement on Farrar's part, as is the absence of Eric's parents, stationed in India. Personal responsibility and Muscular Christianity should be enough, appparently. But time and again firm purpose of amendment is undermined by false pride and a desire for popularity which a modern psychologist might attribute to emotional neglect. Schoolboy crushes are presented in deeply romantic terms with no hint of moral objection. A puzzling environment, but the backdrop to a great deal of Victorian literature.

"Farrar's St. Winifred's had served to form my expectations of school life, a book which, undeniably maudlin, is also undeniably absorbing." In Eton and Kings, 5-6.

The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Kings

"God shows all things in the slow history of their ripening."—George Eliot.

God has given us many Bibles. The book which we call the Bible consists of a series of books, and its name represents the Greek plural τὰ Βίβλια. It is not so much a book, as the extant fragments of a literature, which grew up during many centuries. Supreme as is the importance of this "Book of God," it was never meant to be the sole teacher of mankind. We mistake its purpose, we misapply its revelation, when we use it to exclude the other sources of religious knowledge. It is supremely profitable for our instruction, but, so far from being designed to absorb our exclusive attention, its work is to stimulate the eagerness with which, by its aid, we are able to learn from all other sources the will of God towards men.

Thirteen-year-old Julian Home was Dean Frederic Farrar’s ideal boy, eulogized when he goes off to boarding school:

'For when he first went to school, Julian was all the more dangerously circumstanced, from the fact that he was an attractive and engaging boy. With his bright eyes, beaming with innocence and trustfulness, the healthy glow of his clear and ingenuous countenance, and the noble look and manners which were the fruit of a noble mind, he could never be one of those who pass unknown and unnoticed in the common throng. And since to these advantages of personal appearance he superadded a quick intelligence, and no little activity and liveliness, he was sure to meet with flattery and observation.'

A very thorough and descriptive view of the life of Jesus Christ. I think it remains the definative work on his life. Most others have drawn from it.

Preface dated 1882.

The book has a 'gilt' embossed cover showing one boy doffing his cap beside another with a cricket bat. The book once belonged to Ye Becket Librarie, West Tarring, 'our up-to-date circulating library'. West Tarring is part of Worthing now.

MAPS; APPENDICES (15); INDEX; CHRONOLOGY; CHAPTER NOTES; REFERENCES TO SCRIPTURES

A boy seems to be taking guard yards out of his crease on the front cover - green wicket on a blue background.