author

John Martindale Farrar

A 19th-century Anglican clergyman, he is remembered for a sermon published in 1853 that argued strongly for keeping Sunday as a sacred day. Though little is widely recorded about his life, his surviving work offers a clear glimpse of Victorian religious debate.

1 Audiobook

The Sabbath

The Sabbath

by John Martindale Farrar

About the author

John Martindale Farrar was an English churchman of the 19th century. A surviving record in Alumni Oxonienses identifies him as John Martindale Farrar, and Project Gutenberg’s text of The Sabbath names him as M.A., Curate of Hurdsfield.

His best-known surviving publication is The Sabbath: a sermon preached in Holy Trinity Church, Hurdsfield, on Sunday Evening, January 30, 1853, in reference to the proposed opening of the Crystal Palace on the Lord’s Day. The sermon places him in the middle of a live public argument of the time: whether popular institutions and entertainments should open on Sundays. His writing reflects the serious, morally urgent style of Victorian religious preaching.

A memorial listing gives his lifespan as 1827–1893, but beyond that, easily confirmed biographical details appear to be limited in the sources I found. Even so, the work that remains shows a minister engaged with the social and spiritual questions of his day, and it preserves the voice of a local clergyman speaking to a much broader national controversy.