L^tte to hfe ftieiids 
 
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JUN 25 1910 
 
 bX 5199 .R72 A3 1909 
 Robinson, Forbes, 1867-190| 
 Letters to his friends 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 BY 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/letterstohisfrieOOrobi_0 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SOUTHWELL 
 
 ) 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTICE 
 BY HIS BROTHER CHARLES 
 
 SIXTH IMPRESSION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 1909 
 
COLLEGE AND ORDINATION ADDRESSES 
 
 By FORBES ROBINSON, 
 
 Late Fellow of Christ'sCollege, Cambridge^ and Examining Chaplain 
 to the Bishop of Southwell. 
 
 This volume consists of twenty-seven Sermons and Addresses, most 
 of which were delivered to undergraduates in the Chapel of Christ's 
 College, Cambridge. Four of them are on the subject of prayer. The 
 last five were addressed to Ordination candidates in the diocese of 
 Southwell. 
 
 Price $1.50. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 This volume (12,000 copies of which have now been 
 printed) is published privately and cannot be obtained 
 through a bookseller. Copies will, however, be 
 supplied to any persons who desire them (price 
 2s. 6d. post free, or bound in limp leather with gilt 
 edges 4s. post free), on application to Canon Charles 
 H. Robinson, Lynwood, Limpsfield. 
 
 In America copies of this book (price ^i.oo net) 
 and of ' College and Ordination Addresses ' (price 
 ^1.50) can be obtained from Messrs. Longmans, 
 Green & Co., 91 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
 Readers of these ' Letters ' may be interested to 
 know that out of the amounts received in payment 
 for this book £200 has been sent to the Home for 
 Boys in 113 Camberwell Road, S.E., supported by 
 Christ's College, Cambridge, and which Forbes 
 Robinson helped to start. 
 
 Easter 1909. 
 
First Edition, July 1(^0$, . . . <fOO coj>ies 
 
 Second Impression, Oct, 1904 . . 1,000 
 
 Third Impression, June 1905 . . 1,500 
 
 Fourth Impression, May 1906 . . 2,000 
 
 Fifth Impression, Oct. 1907 . . 3,000 
 
 Sixth Impression, April 1909 . . 4,000 ,, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. SCHOOLDAYS I 
 
 II. LIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE , lO 
 
 III. WORK AT CAMBRIDGE , . , . .21 
 
 IV. THE LAST FEW MONTHS . , . . 32 
 V. TWO APPRECIATIONS , . , . . 36 
 
 LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS . . • 54 
 
 APPENDIX . . . . . . « 
 
 INDEX 6 . . . . . . 201 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SCHOOLDAYS 
 
 Forbes Robinson was born on November 13, 1867, 
 in the vicarage of Keynsham, a village in Somerset 
 lying between Bristol and Bath. He was the eleventh 
 child in a family of thirteen, of whom eight were 
 sons and five daughters. His parents were both 
 from the north of Ireland, and his Christian name 
 had been his mother's surname. The motto attached 
 to his father's family crest was * Non nobis solum 
 sed toti mundo nati.' Before he was three years 
 old his father moved to Liverpool and became 
 incumbent of St. Augustine's, Everton. He died 
 before Forbes was thirteen, but the memory of his 
 holy life remained as an abiding influence. Thus he 
 writes of him in 1903 : 
 
 ' The old memories form a kind of sacred history 
 urging me onwards and upwards. I like to feel that 
 I reap the prayers and thanksgivings of my father, 
 that God blesses the son of such a father. The same 
 work, the same God, the same promises, the same 
 hope, the same sure and certain reward. I thank 
 God and take courage.' 
 
 B 
 
3 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 As a boy he was never robust and might even 
 be regarded as delicate. After attending one or two 
 private schools he was entered, at the age of twelve, 
 at Liverpool College, where five of his brothers had 
 been. When his father died in February 1881, the 
 house in Liverpool was given up and Forbes was 
 sent to Rossall. He continued at Rossall till he 
 entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1887. 
 
 The photograph which is inserted on p. 4 was 
 taken just before he went to Rossall. He was then a 
 shy retiring boy, fonder of reading than of athletic 
 exercise. One who was in the same house with him 
 at Rossall, and who is now vicar of a parish in Lan- 
 cashire, writes : 
 
 * His life at Rossall was not an outwardly 
 eventful one. Not being athletic, he lived rather 
 apart from and above the rest of us in a world of 
 books. The walls of his study used to be almost 
 covered with extracts, largely, I think, from the poets, 
 copied on to scraps of paper and pinned up all 
 round, partly to be learnt by heart and partly, I 
 think, for companionship. He was much older than 
 the rest of us whose years were the same as his. His 
 school life was a time of retirement and preparation 
 for the wider life among men at Cambridge. Though 
 my memory of him as a quiet studious member of 
 the house, more often alone than not, and quite 
 happy to be alone so long as his books were near 
 him, is very distinct, I can recall almost nothing 
 of the nature of incident or about which one can 
 write.* 
 
 The present headmaster of Marlborough, who was 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 3 
 
 also a contemporary at Rossall, writes in a letter to 
 the editor of this memoir ; 
 
 * Your brother was a great recluse at Rossall, and 
 I much doubt whether you would get any great 
 amount of information about him from Rossallians. 
 I knew him because we were both interested in 
 reading, and I owed a good deal to his influence. . . . 
 You will find, I believe, that his Cambridge days 
 show him in a far clearer light than his school days. 
 I know that when I saw him at Cambridge I realised 
 with pleasure that he was a welcomed visitor in the 
 rooms of very various types of undergraduates, 
 whereas his circle at school had been very limited, 
 and most boys no doubt regarded him as quite out 
 of it." This is of course to some extent the fault of 
 the athletic standards of our schools, but I also think 
 that he himself developed a great deal socially at 
 Cambridge.' 
 
 A sketch of Forbes, by Dr. James, written for 
 *The Rossallian,' will be found at the close of this 
 chapter. Dr. Tancock, who succeeded Dr. James 
 as headmaster of Rossall a year before Forbes left, 
 writes : 
 
 'When I was appointed to Rossall in 1886, I 
 found him a member of the upper sixth form. . . . 
 He always gave me the impression of an earnest- 
 minded, hard-working boy, with a deep sense of duty. 
 It was rather suggested to my mind sometimes, 
 possibly erroneously, that as a younger boy he had 
 felt himself misunderstood, and a certain reserve was 
 the consequence, not perhaps unnaturally. He was 
 already much interested in theological work. ... It 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 has been a great pleasure to me in later years to hear 
 of his excellent work at Christ's and the strong 
 influence he exerted over undergraduates. It was 
 quite the natural result of the qualities I saw in 
 him at school, provided once his reserve could be 
 broken.' 
 
 Though of Irish descent he only once visited 
 Ireland. This was during his summer holidays in 
 1884, when he travelled round a good part of 
 the north and west coasts. The only adventure 
 of special interest was his unintended voyage 
 across the Bay of Donegal, which was nearly 
 attended with fatal consequences. He and his 
 brother, the editor of this memoir, started in a small 
 open sailing boat from the harbour of Killybegs, 
 intending to return within a few minutes ; but no 
 sooner had they got outside the harbour than they 
 were caught in a squall, which rapidly developed 
 into a gale, and made it impossible to turn the boat 
 or head it for the shore, owing to the immediate risk 
 of swamping. The only means of securing momen- 
 tary safety was to head the boat out into the Atlantic, 
 but as the nearest land in this direction was the coast 
 of America, the prospect was far from cheerful. 
 Eventually the boat was turned a few points further 
 south, in the direction of land which, could not be 
 seen, but which was known to lie about fifteen miles 
 away on the other side of the Bay of Donegal. After 
 having been nearly swamped many times, and run- 
 ning with bare poles, owing to the violence of the 
 gale, the boat arrived at length at Bundoran. As 
 this place was distant some sixty miles from Killybegs, 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 5 
 
 it seemed wearisome to return by land, and a return 
 by sea was out of the question. Accordingly, Forbes 
 and the writer, drenched to the skin and without a 
 v^estige of baggage, started forthwith on a walking 
 tour along the west coast of Ireland, arriving at 
 Connemara in the course of the following week. 
 Forbes's dislike of sea voyages in after years may 
 in part be traced to this experience. During the 
 greater part of the voyage across Donegal Bay he 
 was helpless from sea-sickness ; his companion was 
 busily occupied in baling out the water to prevent 
 the boat from sinking. 
 
 The letters which Forbes wrote from school to 
 members of his family are a curious mixture of 
 humour and religion. It was his keen sense of 
 humour which preserved him from becoming morbid. 
 It was this same sense of humour which helped to 
 attract to him at the University men on whom he 
 eventually exercised a strong religious influence, but 
 whom religious conversation would have inevitably 
 repelled. 
 
 In two letters written to one of his sisters from 
 Rossall in 1886, the following sentences occur. They 
 show that he found time while at school for a con- 
 siderable amount of reading which was not connected 
 with his school work : 
 
 * You ask me to tell you what books I have been 
 reading. Among others, Longfellow's "Hiawatha" 
 and " Evangeline," both exquisite ; continually the " In 
 Memoriam," " Idylls of the King " ; some of Buchanan, 
 which I scarcely recommend ; M. Arnold, which I do 
 most heartily recommend ; and Walt Whitman, the 
 
6 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 great poet of democracy ; " Confessions of an English 
 Opium Eater," by De Quincey, good in its way; 
 G. Eliot and Mrs. Browning, &c., &c. Perhaps you 
 would like some of those. I read Chas. Kingsley's 
 "Andromeda" — it is really a splendid rhythmical 
 piece of hexameter — and some of his Life. I rather 
 like pieces of his poetry, and the one you sent me 
 I liked. 
 
 * My only birthday advice is : Read more Long- 
 fellow. If you have any writers, send me word, 
 though I am sorry to say I can appreciate but 
 few. . . : 
 
 Another letter, written the same year, is entirely 
 composed of selections from Tennyson's 'Princess,* 
 which, he says, * I have just read through.' He ends, 
 * Mind you send me gleanings of Milton if you have 
 time.' In another, * I have been reading a fair amount 
 of Carlyle at present, as we had an essay on " The 
 influence of individuals on great movements of reli- 
 gion, politics, and thought," for which I read especially 
 Carlyle's " Heroes and Hero Worship," and Emerson's 
 " Representative Men," and for which, I am glad to 
 say, I not only got full marks, but the highest 
 maximum possible. Have read Tennyson's " Queen 
 Mary." Am reading " Harold." I liked the first very 
 much, but the latter a great deal more. The scene 
 where Harold debates about telling a lie or the truth 
 is very fine. . . .' The rest of the letter is composed 
 of quotations from * Harold.' In other letters he 
 says, ' Get Emerson's " Essays " for me.' * I send you 
 " Aurora Leigh." . . / 
 
 He left Rossall in the summer of 1887, when he 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 7 
 
 was nearly twenty, and entered Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, in the following October. His brother 
 Armitage, now Dean of Westminster, was then fellow 
 and dean of Christ's College, and Forbes occupied 
 the attic rooms over his. 
 
 The following notice by Dr. James, now head- 
 master of Rugby and formerly headmaster of Rossall, 
 appeared in ' The Rossallian ' and is reprinted here 
 at his suggestion : 
 
 *Forbes Robinson came to Rossall in 1881. He was 
 a member of a large family ; an elder brother is Dean of 
 Westminster ; another is Charles H. Robinson, Editorial 
 Secretary of the S.P.G. and translator of part of the Gospels 
 into Hausa. He was a delicate boy, and lived for a year or 
 two in the headmaster's private house, from which he 
 passed on into Mr. Batson's. Rather shy and retiring in 
 disposition, and unable to take much part in games, he was 
 not conspicuous in the School until he reached the Sixth, 
 and did not make friends as easily as some boys do. But 
 the few who knew him well recognised in him a deeply 
 affectionate if very sensitive nature, and saw how the 
 religious side of it, afterwards so conspicuous, was even then 
 developing. His powers as a classical scholar, though con- 
 siderable, were not exceptional ; they enabled him to reach 
 the Upper Sixth, but not to win a scholarship at his 
 entrance to the university, and I well remember advising 
 him to make theology, to which his inclinations were already 
 drawing him, his special subject at Cambridge. To this I 
 knew he would bring not only interest but power of reason- 
 ing and literary culture. He had won the Divinity Prize of 
 the School in 1885 and again in 1886, and the English 
 Essay Prize (for an essay on " The relative value of art, 
 science, and literature in education ") in the latter year. 
 
8 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 * He went up to Christ's, Cambridge, in 1887, and at once 
 addressed himself to his favourite study. What strides he 
 was making in it were apparent at once from the extra- 
 ordinary series of distinctions which he won — a scholarship 
 at the college, the Carus Greek Testament Prize for under- 
 graduates, the Jeremie Septuagint Prize, a first class in the 
 Theological Tripos, the Burney Theological Essay Prize, 
 the Carus Prize for Bachelors, the Crosse Divinity Scholar- 
 ship, and the Hulsean Prize all fell to him between 1888 
 and 1893, and finally in 1896 he was elected to a Fellow- 
 ship at Christ's, where he had already been Theological 
 Lecturer for a year. 
 
 'His essay which gained the Burney Prize in 1891 was 
 on "The Authority of our Lord in its bearing upon the 
 Interpretation of the Old Testament." He printed it in 
 1893 under the title of "The Self-limitation of the Word of 
 God as manifested in the Incarnation." With characteristic 
 modesty he says in his preface : " I can claim but little of 
 the work as strictly original." This is far too deprecatory ; the 
 essay is a singularly lucid statement and attempted solution 
 of a most difficult theological problem, in which all who 
 believe in the Deity of Christ must be deeply interested, 
 and I can bear personal testimony to its helpfulness. It 
 was only the other day that I was reading it afresh, for I 
 had just recovered it, when I feared that the copy he gave 
 me was hopelessly lost and irreplaceable, from South Africa, 
 where a friend to whom I had lent it had taken it among 
 his books. Among Forbes Robinson's later activities were 
 a work on the Coptic Apocryphal Gospels (" the subject," he 
 wrote to me, " was so technical and uninteresting that I did 
 not send you a copy "), and the editing of a Sahidic frag- 
 ment of the Gospels. 
 
 'But his value to Cambridge and to his college lay 
 mainly in the influence for good which he was able to exert 
 over undergraduates. Again and again I have been told 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 9 
 
 there how great this was ; and it was no little achievement 
 for one whose very modesty and humble-mindedness must 
 have made it difficult. But his heart was in the work, and 
 in the maintaining of Christian influences in university life. 
 It is hard to over-estimate the loss which his death at so 
 early an age implies alike to students of theology and to 
 those among whom he was more immediately w^orking. 
 But he has left us the example of a simple and devoted life 
 and the consecration of great and growing powers to his 
 Master's service. " God buries His workmen, but carries 
 on His work."* 
 
lO 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 LIFE AS AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 From this point forward the sketch of Forbes's life 
 can be given almost entirely in the words of those 
 who knew him at Cambridge. 
 
 A writer in the Christ's College Magazine for the 
 Lent term 1904 says : ' Many older friends will always 
 think of him in his attic rooms, where he began to 
 make his mark in our College society upon his first 
 coming up. Only two other Freshmen had rooms in 
 College, and Robinson's rooms became at once a 
 centre for his year, and later a meeting-place where 
 the gulfs between higher and lower years were bridged 
 over. A little older than most men of his year, he was 
 considerably their senior in character and in intellect. 
 He showed at once the qualities which he retained to 
 such a unique degree in later years — an inexhaustible 
 power of making friends with all sorts and conditions 
 of men, and an insatiable interest in all sides of 
 College life ; the most serious things were from the 
 first not beyond his comprehension, and the most 
 trivial did not appear to bore him, even when their 
 freshness had worn off. His love of books was 
 catholic ; he possessed a great many and read them 
 
1 887 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 II 
 
 to his friends. At the College Debate, of which he 
 became secretary and president in his second year, 
 he was a frequent and fluent speaker, with a remark- 
 able command of language, though sometimes his 
 eloquence was more than half burlesque. His powers 
 of thought and real strength in argument were more 
 often displayed in private discussions, where irony 
 and humour hardly veiled the depth of earnestness 
 below.' 
 
 During his first three years at Cambridge he read 
 for the Theological Tripos. In the course of his first 
 year he was elected a scholar of his College. At the 
 beginning of his second year he won his first Uni- 
 versity distinction, the Carus prize for the Greek 
 Testament. The other University prizes which he 
 gained were the Jeremie prize for the Septuagint in 
 
 1889, the Burney prize essay in 1891, the Carus prize 
 for Bachelors, the Hulsean prize essay, and the 
 Crosse University Scholarship in 1892. He took his 
 degree in the first class of the Theological Tripos in 
 
 1890, and obtained a second class in the Moral 
 Science Tripos of 1891. The year which he spent in 
 reading moral science he afterwards looked back upon 
 as one of the most useful in his life. After he had 
 been reading for some time in view of this Tripos, he 
 wrote to a friend : ' I have come to the conclusion 
 that I know nothing, and am an awful fool into the 
 bargain. . . . The subject is so utterly fresh to me, 
 so completely unlike theology of any sort at Cam- 
 bridge, that I find it hard to do anything at it. In 
 fact, I chucked it up for about ten days in the middle 
 of the term, and determined to have nothing more to 
 
12 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 do with it ; but after that rest I thought better and 
 renewed the study. It is an excellent training for 
 the mind. I never distinctly remember thinking at 
 all before this term.' 
 
 Having learnt to think himself, his desire was to 
 help others by teaching them to think. One who 
 came under his influence several years later says of 
 him : * I owe so much to him in every way. Above 
 everything else he taught me to tJiink. I remember 
 so well the first time I went to him with a difficulty. 
 I expected him to solve it for me, instead of which, 
 at the end of half an hour, I still found that I had to 
 think it out for myself. It was a revelation to me, 
 and has helped me in my dealings with men.' The 
 same friend writes : * I may mention a conversation I 
 once had with him. He had in front of him the 
 answers to some Theological Tripos papers. He 
 took up two of them and compared the answers 
 given to the same question by the two men. The 
 answer required was a translation of a passage of 
 Greek with notes. And, as far as I can remember, 
 
 his words were these : " Now, W , this man has 
 
 passed over the real difficulty. As far as I can tell, 
 he has not even noticed that there is a difficulty. I 
 have given him two marks out of a possible ten. This 
 other man has seen the difficulty and grappled with 
 it. His solution is without doubt incorrect, but that 
 is quite immaterial. Result, eight marks out of ten." 
 I cannot but think that this attitude of mind was 
 largely the secret of his influence.' In another case, 
 when urging a man to attempt some independent 
 investigation of the Synoptic problem, he said : 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 13 
 
 * Your conclusions may be wrong, but you can correct 
 them, and it will teach you to think.' 
 
 One who was an undergraduate with Forbes says 
 of him : He ' did not take a prominent part in religious 
 movements in the College, such as the College prayer 
 meeting or Bible readings, though he was occasionally 
 present at them. In chapel his reverence was quiet, 
 though in no way obtrusive. I think that by not 
 identifying himself with any particular religious party 
 he had greater influence with those men whose minds 
 ran in very different grooves. I always felt when in 
 his company that I was conversing with one vastly 
 superior to myself in intellectual powers, and yet he 
 never appeared conscious of it himself It is sur- 
 prising how considerate he was of the feelings of 
 others. I remember a large print of Pope Leo XI 11. 
 which used to hang in his rooms as an undergraduate, 
 which delighted his gyp, who was a Romanist, but 
 scandalised his Protestant friends. I begged earnestly 
 for a copy of one of his prize essays, which had been 
 printed though not published. He at first consented, 
 but almost immediately asked me to return it, saying 
 that he did not wish it to go out to the world as 
 expressing his matured views. He then asked me to 
 accept instead a small booklet, which he said I should 
 find useful to have in visiting. It contained the 
 verses called " The Old, Old Story." He also gave 
 me a copy of the " Practice of the Presence of God," 
 by Brother Lawrence.' 
 
 Before he decided to read for the Moral Science 
 Tripos he had thought of going in for the Semitic 
 Languages Tripos. With this object in view he 
 
14 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 commenced the study of Syriac. Finding that the 
 best Syriac grammar was written in German and had 
 not been translated, he decided to learn German also. 
 He was advised that Switzerland was a suitable place 
 in which to study German, and accordingly, after 
 taking his degree, he started in the summer of 1 890 
 for Switzerland. The two following letters are in- 
 serted in order to illustrate his sense of humour, as 
 well as to describe the way in which he spent this 
 summer. He eventually returned from Switzerland, 
 having made more progress in Syriac than in German, 
 but without having obtained any great knowledge of 
 either language. Soon after his return he decided to 
 commence the study of Moral Science instead of the 
 Semitic languages. 
 
 To H. M. S, 
 
 * Habkern : July 1890. 
 * A few days after I got to Switzerland, by dint of 
 incessant inquiries and correspondence I found out 
 the name of a pastor who lived in a sufficiently 
 healthy place and who talked German. So I girded 
 up my loins and went to visit him. " Sprechen Sie 
 Englisch, mein Herr ? " I asked. " Nein " was the reply. 
 As I scarcely knew a word of German I was in a con- 
 siderable fix. But I found out that the Pfarrer spoke 
 "Lateinisch"and could read English a little when it was 
 written. So 1 went up to his study and we got paper 
 and pencil and began. I tried to tell him in a mixture 
 of broken English and dog-Latin that I intended to 
 give him the honour of my company. He said he 
 would be pleased to take me "en pension." He then 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 asked how much I wished to pay. I hadn't for the 
 life of me an idea of what I ought to pay. " Ut tibi 
 optimum videtur," I said. But he made me fix my 
 price. Then, when I had fixed it, I had to turn it 
 into Swiss money. The good Pfarrer was so pleased 
 with the honour of my company that he took me for 
 less than I asked. Our greatest difficulty next arose : 
 How was my luggage to be conveyed the five miles 
 from the nearest town up a steep hill? Latin, 
 French, English, German, failed to make me under- 
 stand the situation. At last I took in the Pfarrer's 
 meaning. I was to send it by the milkman after 
 leaving it at a certain hotel. " }a," I cried in an 
 ecstasy of joy, at last grasping his meaning, " Ja, ich 
 mittam der Gepack von der milkman." I arrived the 
 next day. I found the Pfarrer knew Latin, Greek 
 (but he pronounces both quite differently from me), 
 German, French, Russian, Syriac, Hebrew, and a 
 little English. His usual custom is to address me in 
 German. If I fail to understand, he tries Latin and 
 intersperses his remarks with Greek and Hebrew. 
 So my great difficulty is first of all to find out what 
 language he thinks he is speaking in. 
 
 ' Yesterday we were sitting, smoking and drinking, 
 in the village " Wirthshaus " among the natives of the 
 place, the Pfarrer addressing me in Latin, the villagers 
 staring at his learning in adoration and astonishment, 
 and laughing at my attempts at German. The land- 
 lord came up to me when I arrived and sent in a 
 bottle of wine for me, refusing to be paid for it, for he 
 said that the natives of Interlaken fleeced the English ; 
 but when Habkern was for once honoured by the 
 
i6 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 presence of one, the people were not going to treat 
 him in the same way. 
 
 * It is curious how the Pfarrer goes and sits and 
 drinks and gossips in the " Wirthshaus," even on 
 Sunday, I think. Last Sunday they had a country 
 dance, and very curious and pretty was the scene — 
 the old-fashioned wooden room — the odd national 
 dress of the women— the curiously cut brown clothes 
 of the men — the thick boots — the fiddlers raised 
 above the rest — the quaint urn with its inscriptions 
 above — the gaping crowd of villagers. Then the 
 church is strange— very rude and simple, all white- 
 washed. The women sit on one side, the men on the 
 other. They stand to pray and hear the text, and sit 
 to sing and hear the sermon. The organ and font 
 are placed at one end. The elders stand below the 
 organ, the Pfarrer is lost in the far distance, right up 
 in a big pulpit. The " Predigt " or sermon is every- 
 thing. They have one written prayer before and one 
 after the " Predigt." The people never say " Amen " or 
 anything — only sing. They sing so slowly that, 
 although I had only been with the Pfarrer three days, 
 I could almost sing and look out the words in the 
 dictionary at the same time ! I talk German with 
 every one who will talk with me. So well did I spin 
 yarns when I had been in the country three or four 
 days, that with a mixture of Latin and German I 
 managed to make a German use strong language at 
 some of my tales, which he was pleased to think were 
 not exactly true. Reflecting on the situation after- 
 wards, I remembered that I had told him, among 
 other things, that I had walked nearly fifty * stunden " 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 17 
 
 in a day. His language was awful. I found after- 
 wards that " stunde " was not, as I had supposed, an 
 English " mile," but an English " hour." But I keep 
 on talking. I have come to the conclusion that the 
 way to learn a language is to argue in it. Accord- 
 ingly I do so. I have tried to convince them that 
 the order of bishops is semi-apostolic, and that if 
 St. Paul did not actually wear a surplice himself, his 
 successors shortly afterwards did. 
 
 * One other thing, if you ever reply to this letter : 
 would you copy out a few of the most thickly marked 
 lines in the " Grammarian's Funeral " in my edition of 
 Browning ? They are always in my mind, "but I can't 
 quite recollect how they go. There is no poem I 
 like so much as that. I would send you some butter- 
 flies, but I daren't kill them. Some of us may have 
 once been butterflies : as M. Arnold says, 
 
 * What was before us we know not, 
 And we know not what shall succeed.* 
 
 To H, M. S. 
 
 * Habkem : August 1890. 
 
 * There is a French pensionnaire staying here, the 
 same as I am. He is very polite, but his tastes are 
 diametrically opposite to mine. He likes wine, 
 walking, women, smoking, painting, violin and piano 
 playing, dogs, and the like. 
 
 ' He asked me whether I liked the French. I told 
 him " No," and gave him a good many reasons. He 
 abhors the Germans. I told him I thought the 
 Germans were a fine race. I'm occupying my time 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 in sleeping, arguing, observing the natives, and 
 reading a Tauchnitz edition of Martin Chuzzlewit," 
 v^hich is good, though already a young girl of seven- 
 teen has been introduced, very beautiful and all the 
 rest, and I'm afraid she v^on't be poisoned, but marry 
 a certain young man already introduced. I'd give a 
 good deal to be able to write a novel in which all the 
 young ladies tumbled out of windows, six stories 
 high, and were picked up dead. I think I must try 
 and write one. Shall I dedicate it to you ? The 
 heroine will be a plain old lady with white curls, close 
 on sixty-five, without any money, but with a certain 
 amount of intellect. There will be no marriages, but 
 suicides and murders if necessary. 
 
 * I'm inventing a German word of i,ooo letters. It 
 is to be divided into some 150 or 200 compartments. 
 After each compartment there is five minutes for 
 refreshments. After about the 500th letter there will 
 be half an hour allowed for dinner. After the 600th 
 letter or so there will be a notice to the effect that no 
 person with a weak heart may proceed further 
 without consulting a medical man. After about the 
 980th there will be a notice forbidding any one to 
 go further until their family doctor is in attendance. 
 I have thought of the groundwork of the word — the 
 
 finished word I'm going to send to M , as he has 
 
 the strongest constitution of any one I know. Then 
 I shall get Duke Bismarck to patent it ; after which 
 I shall take out a professorship on the strength of it 
 at Berne. It will, of course, be the " Hauptsache " of 
 my existence.' 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 19 
 
 Forbes was far from being an athlete, but in 1891, 
 shortly before his ordination, he accomplished the 
 feat of walking with two athletic friends from London 
 to Cambridge in a day, a distance of more than fifty 
 miles. The following description is by Mr. A. N. C. 
 Kittermaster, who was one of his companions. 
 
 Walk from London to Cambridge. 
 
 Some of us had read that Charles Kingsley had 
 walked from London to Cambridge ; so we deter- 
 mined to follow in his footsteps. We were a party of 
 three — Forbes Robinson, D. D. Robertson, and myself. 
 We spent the previous day at the Naval Exhibition, 
 the night at the Liverpool Street Hotel, and at 
 4.30 A.M. of Tuesday, August 25, 1891, we started on 
 our fifty-mile trudge. We walked steadily, at first 
 over immense stretches of pavement, till we reached 
 Ware, twenty-one miles out. There we had breakfast 
 or lunch of huge chops at 10.15. After that we took 
 the road again, and did not call a halt of any length 
 till we had put another twenty miles behind us. The 
 day was fine but dull, and we were not troubled by 
 the heat. At the fortieth milestone it began to 
 appear doubtful whether we should all reach the 
 journey's end. I have an entry in my diary : ' At 40 
 Robertson bad, I worse, Deanlet {i.e. Forbes) quite fit' 
 So at Foulmire, nine miles from Cambridge, we stopped 
 for tea. By this time I was in a state of temporary 
 collapse, but I remember the other two during tea 
 carried on an animated discussion upon the creation 
 as described in Genesis. We all felt better after the 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 rest and covered the last stage fairly easily, arriving 
 at Christ's at 9.30 P.M. We had a meal in Forbes's 
 rooms, fought our battles over again, and retired to 
 rest about midnight. 
 
 The thing which remains with me best is the 
 amazing ease with which Forbes accomplished the 
 journey. It is a matter of common experience that 
 prolonged physical effort reacts on the mind ; con- 
 versation becomes difficult, and cheerfulness forced. 
 I must say that in my case the thought which for a 
 considerable period occupied my mind was how I 
 was to get to the end. But it was not so with 
 Forbes. He travelled lightly, talking happily on all 
 subjects the whole day. It seemed to make little 
 difference to him whether he took food or no, and he 
 was as willing to stop at every place of refreshment 
 we suggested as to march the whole day without a 
 meal. 
 
at 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WORK AT CAMBRIDGE 
 
 In September 1891 Forbes was ordained as curate 
 to his brother Armitage, who was at that time vicar 
 of All Saints', Cambridge. Several of the letters 
 which are given later refer to his thoughts and feel- 
 ings at the time of his ordination. His connection 
 with All Saints' did not last more than a year, as his 
 brother resigned in the following spring. Forbes had 
 already been licensed as chaplain to Emmanuel Col- 
 lege. He received priest's orders in 1892. In 1895 
 he was appointed theological lecturer at Christ's Col- 
 lege, and in the following year, May 30, 1896, was 
 elected a fellow. During the same year he was 
 appointed an examining chaplain to the Bishop of 
 Southwell. 
 
 One who knew him well, soon after the time of 
 his ordination, writes : * I cannot remember how we 
 first became acquainted, beyond the fact that I used 
 to meet him in the rooms of some prominent mem- 
 bers of the College Football XV. All I know is that 
 several of our year got to know him quite well, and 
 the friendship grew with time. The fact that he had 
 distinguished himself in the Moral Science Tripos at 
 
22 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 first rather awed me, a freshman. But I soon got 
 over that feeling, for he was the last person in the 
 world to trouble any one with a sense of intellectual 
 inferiority. 
 
 * I am sure the private business hours of the 
 Debating Society were some of his happiest moments. 
 His magnificent assumption of wrath on the most 
 absurd grounds ; his vast intensity over trivialities ; 
 his love for the heat and play of debate, would have 
 made a stranger believe he lived for nothing else. 
 
 * Physical strength and virtue seemed to have a 
 strange attraction for him. His assortment of athlete 
 friends was peculiarly wide, and his frank admiration 
 of their qualities gave them a pleasant feeling that in 
 some way he looked up to them — a feeling which I 
 am sure strengthened the hold he had over them. 
 
 * He was a tireless walker, and could go far on very 
 little. A party of us used to take long walks, often 
 on a Sunday, to various places in the country. There 
 was generally a volume of Burke or Emerson in his 
 pocket, whose sonorous periods filled the interval when 
 we lunched frugally or rested. I have never known 
 him anything but good-humoured under any condi- 
 tions. His enthusiasm for our most commonplace 
 jests was unfailing — perhaps one of the surest ways 
 of getting to a man's heart and staying there — and he 
 had a wide tolerance for the minor offences of under- 
 graduate thought and deed. Yet, as for the tone of 
 conversation when he was near, I need scarcely say 
 that one simply did not think of anything unpleasant 
 or vulgar, much less say it. 
 
 ' I used to admire his immense power of putting 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 23 
 
 his thoughts into words, but he could be silent too. 
 Sometimes he would come to my rooms when I was 
 working, throw himself into an arm-chair, and abso- 
 lutely refuse to speak. After a considerable interval 
 perhaps he would consider I had worked long enough, 
 and cocoa and conversation would follow. But it was 
 when I visited him in his own rooms that I remember 
 things most vividly. 
 
 ' I can still see that little room under the roof; the 
 picture on the wall of the dead saint floating on the 
 dark water ; the well-filled bookcase ; the table piled 
 with volumes ; himself throwing everything aside to 
 greet one. It was almost with a feeling of awe that 
 I sometimes climbed those stairs and entered into his 
 presence. Perhaps it would be for a lesson on the 
 New Testament — for when I was reading for a Theo- 
 logical Tripos he was generous, even prodigal, of 
 help. The lesson over — and there are many who 
 know what a goodly thing a lesson from him on the 
 New Testament was — he would open a volume of 
 Tennyson — " In Memoriam " most likely — read a few 
 stanzas, and begin to talk about them. Gradually, it 
 would seem, the things of the world would fade from 
 him. He forgot the hour and my presence as his 
 thoughts poured out. I sat and listened, generally 
 silent, sometimes hazarding a question. Presently — 
 it was often late — I would rise to leave. Rapt from 
 his surroundings, he seemed scarcely conscious of my 
 departure ; and I would go quietly out, almost as 
 though I had been on holy ground, where not once 
 nor twice the dweller had seen God face to face.' 
 
 His power of helping men by silent sympathy is 
 
24 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 referred to by one who writes : ' The many words of 
 kindness, but more particularly the silent sympathy 
 he conveyed in some mysterious manner, will ever 
 keep him present with us/ 
 
 Another, who had known him in his early days at 
 Christ's, and again in later years, writes : * When I 
 was up he was a nervous retiring man, at his best 
 when one found him alone in his own room. Even 
 then he would sometimes talk little. Since my re- 
 turn from South Africa I have found him much more 
 at home with men and much more ready to talk, but 
 retaining his old power of sympathy without words.' 
 His own faith was based rather upon intuitive per- 
 ception of the Divine love than upon argument. On 
 one occasion, quite towards the end of his life, he 
 said to one with whom he was staying, ' Sometimes I 
 sit and think, till I can find no reason for the exist- 
 ence of God ; and then there rises up in me some- 
 thing which is stronger than the love I have for those 
 who are dear to me — and they are very dear — the 
 love of God. It seems to smile at my doubts.' 
 
 Several of his friends have referred to Forbes's in- 
 fluence as a power which helped to develop their own 
 sympathy towards others. Thus one writes : 
 
 * I think perhaps it was my intercourse with him 
 that first taught me to look out for and appreciate 
 the real goodness — or, better, Christlikeness — of 
 others from whom one differed in important matters 
 and with whom one seemed perhaps to have little in 
 common.' 
 
 In some instances friendship between Forbes and 
 an acquaintance seems to have arisen where very 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 25 
 
 little direct intercourse had taken place. One who 
 was greatly his senior says of him, * I have never 
 known any one with whom there was so strong a 
 sense of intimacy founded on so little positive inter- 
 course.' 
 
 In July 1892 — i,e. about nine months after his 
 ordination as deacon — he took part in a kind of 
 peregrinating mission tour through part of South 
 Cornwall. Dressed simply in cassock and cape, and 
 carrying a small brown paper parcel containing 
 necessary luggage, he and his brother (the compiler 
 of this book) walked from village to village, preach- 
 ing afternoon and evening in the open air. At the 
 end of the evening service an appeal was made to 
 the people. It was explained to them that the 
 preachers had come without provision or money, and 
 hoped to receive hospitality from those to whom they 
 ministered. Night after night Forbes and his com- 
 panion were taken in and entertained, often by very 
 poor people. A unique opportunity was thus afforded 
 of getting to know something of the home life as 
 well as of the religious beliefs of the poor. As a 
 rule, those who acted as hosts were Nonconformists. 
 Forbes spoke once or twice each day to the people 
 who gathered, and his addresses, which were gene- 
 rally based on the words ' Our Father,' were admi- 
 rably suited to the comprehension and needs of the 
 simple country people. 
 
 For several months during 1895 he took charge 
 of a small country parish near Cambridge, called 
 Toft. While staying at Toft he wrote to a friend, 
 * I like living among country folk and talking with 
 
26 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 and visiting them. I want to get out of my life into 
 their Hves. This parish work humiliates if it does 
 not humble one. . . . The smallest parish is a tre- 
 mendous responsibility.* 
 
 The following are a few additional notes contri- 
 buted by others who knew Forbes at Christ's : ' His 
 broad sympathies, his unfailing efforts to find out 
 the good in persons and systems — the rays of truth 
 which each possessed — combined with the rare faculty 
 of going deep down beneath vexed questions, and 
 thus lifting controversies to a higher and serener 
 atmosphere : these were qualities in him which were 
 known especially by those privileged to have more 
 intimate knowledge of him than that vouchsafed by 
 formal lectures or social gatherings .... He is now 
 another link with the life beyond these conflicting 
 voices, one " who loved Heaven's silence more than 
 fame.'" 
 
 The same writer says of him in another letter : 
 * His extreme fairness and toleration, which at first 
 seemed to me to reduce half one's cherished beliefs 
 to open questions, was of the greatest value in dis- 
 pelling ignorance and prejudice, and in promoting 
 true charity and a more intelligent faith. He de- 
 lighted to call attention to the fact that our Lord 
 found something commendable and exemplary in the 
 serpent. And so, in dealing with those with whom 
 he most disagreed, he tried to fix attention on that 
 portion of truth which lay behind their opinions, 
 or on those real difficulties, to be slighted only by 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 27 
 
 the superficial, with which they were grappling. 
 Tertullian, with his love of scoring off opponents, 
 fared badly at his hands, and he used to treat 
 Clement of Alexandria more sympathetically than 
 Irenseus. 
 
 * It was striking to find a mind so evenly balanced 
 and philosophical become fired with enthusiasm as 
 he spoke in simplest language, in chapel or else- 
 where, of great Christian truths or the victories of 
 faith. His sermons influenced, I believe, many of 
 the naturally careless. Simple, impartial, earnest 
 and sympathetic, he won, I know, the deepest 
 affection and respect of man}^' 
 
 Another writes : ' Bright, pure, and strong — this 
 was the impression he gave me . ... Many men will be 
 very sorry that he is not here any more, but every one 
 who kfiew him will be very thankful that he was 
 here, and that they had an opportunity of hearing 
 him " think" sometimes. I recall him most in his 
 own rooms, beginning to talk on some small matter, 
 and gradually lifting us higher and still higher, until 
 we all silently listened, following as best we, with our 
 muddier minds, could ; and even when he got beyond 
 us there were still inspiration and strength to be got 
 from his flashing eyes and on-rushing earnestness ; 
 but if some smaller mind broke in, in a moment he 
 was down at the level of that mind, half bantering 
 and wholly sympathising. Nevertheless, some of us 
 have never forgotten the things he showed us as he 
 led us up, and the possibility of soaring very high 
 without losing touch with those whose levels are 
 pathetically human .... I do know that he helped 
 
28 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 me much, and that many things he said I shall never 
 forget, and thank God for still.' 
 
 A Cambridge and international athlete, an inti- 
 mate friend of Forbes, writes : * Though I have lost 
 your brother Forbes, and life will be for ever poorer 
 to me, I can't thank God enough that I ever knew 
 him and loved him, and that he called himself my 
 friend. He was so dear to me — my greatest friend in 
 the world. His goodness and his help to me in my 
 Cambridge days were wonderful. He altered my 
 life. God has called him home and to the blessed 
 rest of the children of God, and we are rich still with 
 his memory and the influence of his beautiful, patient, 
 Christlike life.' 
 
 In another letter he writes : * The death, or, as 
 I like to think of it, the passing of Forbes into the 
 Great Beyond has been such a grief to me. You 
 have no idea what he was to me — a real man " sent 
 from God" into my life. I could do nothing when 
 I heard the sad, and to me utterly unexpected, news, 
 but kneel down by my bedside, and weep till I could 
 weep no more for my beloved friend. I feel so rich 
 and proud to have had him for my friend, and to 
 have had his love ; and so do many Cambridge men. 
 Oh, but I did so love him ! and my prayer now is 
 that the memory of him with me always may 
 strengthen my weak and feeble life, and help me to 
 live somewhat more as he lived, very near the Master.' 
 
 He obtained but little help from self-introspection 
 or self-examination. Thus he writes in one of the 
 letters given later on : * I am not sure that we cannot 
 learn more about others than we can about ourselves. 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 29 
 
 I never think it is profitable to study oneself too 
 closely. I never could meditate with any profit on 
 my sins. But there, I dare say I differ from many 
 others.' 
 
 To very intimate friends he would in rare in- 
 stances admit that the secret of any influence which 
 he possessed over men was the outcome of his efforts 
 to pray for them. One who had known him intimately 
 at Christ's writes in 1904 : 
 
 ' About eighteen months ago I had the privilege 
 of spending a night with him, and then for the first 
 time I realised how much of his spiritual power was 
 the outcome of prayer. He told me that in his 
 younger days he had taken every opportunity of per- 
 sonally appealing to men to come to Christ. " But," 
 he went on, " as I grow older I become more diffident, 
 and now often, when I desire to see the Truth come 
 home to any man, I say to myself, * If I have him 
 here he will spend half an hour with me. Instead, 
 I will spend that half-hour in prayer for him.' " 
 Later on, when I had retired for the night, he came to 
 
 me again and said, " W , what I have said to 
 
 you is in the strictest confidence : don't mention it to 
 any one." And this revelation of his inner life is my 
 last memory of him.' 
 
 On another occasion he said to one with whom 
 he was staying, when speaking of the little that men 
 could do for each other, ' I think that I should go 
 mad were it not for prayer.' 
 
 As an instance of his common sense in a matter 
 in which as a bachelor he could have had no personal 
 experience, he strongly urged a married man, before 
 
30 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 deciding to accept a curacy which had been offered 
 to him, to let his wife see the vicar's wife or women- 
 folk. ' She will know intuitively/ he said, ' whether 
 she can get on with them and they with her, and it 
 will make all the difference to your work and happi- 
 ness.' The man to whom this advice was offered 
 writes : * The advice was given seriously, but with that 
 bright twinkle of his ; and 1 owe much to it, for we 
 have been here since . . . and I don't want to go.* 
 
 The following is an extract from a notice which 
 appeared in the ' Guardian ' : 
 
 * By his published work he is best known to the 
 outer world as one of the few English scholars who 
 have given attention to Coptic. In 1896 he edited 
 " The Coptic Apocryphal Gospels " in the " Cam- 
 bridge Texts and Studies." The important article on 
 the Coptic Version in Hastings's " Bible Dictionary " 
 came also from his pen, and he was engaged on an 
 edition of the Sahidic fragments of St. Luke's Gospel. 
 His deepest interest, however, lay not in these sub- 
 sidiary studies, but in the fundamental problems of 
 theology proper. His Burney Prize essay, printed at 
 the University Press in 1893 under the title of "The 
 Self-limitation of the Word of God as manifested in 
 the Incarnation," is no doubt comparatively slight, 
 and in some respects immature ; but its reverent and 
 fearless treatment of the difficulties of his great theme 
 gave promise of work of permanent value in this field. 
 His interest in the great problems never flagged, and 
 his sympathetic touch with the life and thought of 
 the younger men in his college kept him constantly 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 31 
 
 engaged on the task of putting into clear and ever 
 clearer expression such solutions as he was able to 
 attain. His sermons in College Chapel were singu- 
 larly effective, because he never wasted a word, and 
 because every sentence was felt to be the outcome ot 
 strenuous thought tested by living experience. 
 
 * It is not surprising, therefore, that he exercised 
 an unusual influence upon younger students. His 
 friends were very closely bound to him indeed, in 
 bonds which death can consecrate but cannot sever. 
 They can never cease to thank God for the pure, 
 bright, tender, utterly sincere, fearless, and faithful 
 spirit He has given them to love.' 
 
32 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE LAST FEW MONTHS 
 
 From the time that Forbes took his degree at Cam- 
 bridge his health was far from strong. He suffered 
 from time to time from a form of eczema which caused 
 him a good deal of discomfort and pain. Many of 
 his letters contain references to the fact that he had 
 been unwell and had been unable t j do as much work 
 as he had hoped. In September 1897 he went with 
 his brother Armitage on a visit to St. Petersburg and 
 Moscow. He stayed in the house of a Russian priest 
 at St. Petersburg, and was much interested in the work 
 of Father John of Kronstadt, with whom an interview 
 was arranged which unfortunately fell through at the 
 last moment. Towards the end of 1897 he deve- 
 loped a bad cough and was threatened with phthisis. 
 He accordingly spent Christmas and the first two or 
 three months of 1898 at St. Moritz in Switzerland. 
 His health then seemed to be much improved. For 
 several years he went back to St. Moritz to spend the 
 greater part of the Christmas vacation. He took 
 great delight in tobogganing, and on one occasion 
 was awarded a prize for a race in which he took part. 
 In the summer of 1899 he went out to South Africa 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 33 
 
 during the Long Vacation. He visited Pretoria and 
 had an interview with President Kruger and his wife. 
 One of his letters records his impressions of the Pre- 
 sident. He was for some time disposed to believe 
 that the war, which broke out soon after his return, 
 could and should have been avoided, but he subse- 
 quently modified his views on this point. 
 
 Towards the end of August 1903 the pain from 
 which he had suffered intermittently for years became 
 so much worse that he came up to consult a London 
 doctor, and by his advice remained in town as a patient 
 at St. Thomas's Home. When he entered the home 
 he fully expected to undergo an operation within 
 a fortnight; but the doctor who had suggested it 
 declared, after further examination, that no operation 
 was necessary. Meanwhile Forbes lingered on in the 
 home week after week. Eventually a partial opera- 
 tion was performed, and after he had spent thir- 
 teen weeks in the home the surgeon suggested his 
 removal to a private nursing home, where he could keep 
 him under closer observation. Here he performed a 
 second operation. This seemed at first to have been 
 a success, and after a fortnight in this private home 
 he was well enough to start for Switzerland again. 
 He went at first to St. Moritz, where he had been so 
 often before ; but, finding that the pain returned and 
 that he could not sleep, he went down to Alassio on 
 the Riviera. Here he was for several weeks till his 
 return to England. He reached Westminster on 
 January 13 and went up to Cambridge on the follow- 
 ing day. For a few days he was well enough to 
 lecture, and it seemed as though he might be able to 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 resume his old work. On Sunday evening, January 17, 
 he was * at home ' in his rooms and received over 
 sixty undergraduates who came to welcome him back. 
 Soon the old trouble returned, and he rapidly grew 
 worse. His pain became almost constant, and he 
 was removed with great difficulty to another London 
 nursing home on January 29. It was then pro- 
 posed that the original operation which had been 
 suggested, but had never been performed, should 
 take place, and he fully expected that this would 
 result in his restoration to health and to work. A 
 few days later he was threatened with blood-poison- 
 ing, and it became obvious that the operation must 
 be delayed. On Saturday evening, February 6, he 
 seemed fairly cheerful. Neither he nor his doctors 
 had any idea that he was in an extremely critical 
 state. About midnight, as the pain had become 
 worse, his doctor was sent for, and he gave him an 
 injection of morphia. Soon after this he asked his 
 nurse to turn the light down and said to her, * If I 
 am asleep in the morning do not wake me.' She 
 looked in about 3.30 A.M. to see if he was asleep, and, 
 finding him awake, inquired if he would like a drink 
 of champagne. He said yes, and asked her first of 
 all to help him turn over to the other side. As she 
 was in the act of assisting him, he passed away, 
 without a movement of any kind. A happy smile 
 lingered long on his face after the end had come. 
 
 His body was removed the same evening to 
 St. Faith's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. Here 
 on the following Thursday morning, February 11, 
 at 9 A.M., the funeral service was said. The chapel 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 35 
 
 was filled with his friends, who had come from Cam- 
 bridge and elsewhere. His body was buried the 
 same afternoon at Eastbourne in the same grave 
 with that of his sister, the Deaconess Cecilia, who had 
 passed away five months before. 
 
 The inscription on the memorial card issued to 
 his friends was : 
 
 CUM CHRISTO VICTURUS 
 DE MORTE AD VITAM MIGRAVIT 
 DOMINICA IN SEXAGESIMA 
 ANNO SALUTIS MCMIV 
 iETATIS SUiE XXXVII. 
 
 And, doubtless, unto thee is given 
 A life that bears immortal fruit 
 In those great offices that suit 
 
 The full-grown energies of heaven. 
 
 DB 
 
36 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 TWO APPRECIATIONS 
 
 The two following sketches of Forbes Robinson's 
 life at Cambridge have been contributed, the first by 
 the Rev. T. C. Fitzpatrick, Fellow and Dean of 
 Christ's College, and the second by the Rev. Digby B. 
 Kittermaster, of Clare College, now Head of the 
 Shrewsbury School Mission in Liverpool. 
 
 Mr. Fitzpatrick writes : 
 
 * College life has changed a good deal since the 
 days when a young graduate, on his election to a 
 fellowship, was advised not to see too much of the 
 undergraduate members of the College, that the 
 division between the senior and junior members of 
 the College might be preserved. A custom of that 
 kind, once established, is not easy to break, for 
 traditions of all sorts, good and bad, live long in 
 College. 
 
 * Fortunately, the relations between the under- 
 graduates and the fellows of the College are gradu- 
 ally becoming more natural, to the benefit of the 
 whole body. Forbes Robinson will be long re- 
 membered for the influence that he exerted in this 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 37 
 
 direction, and what he has effected it will be compara- 
 tively easy for others to carry on. 
 
 * It is my desire to give some slight impression of 
 his life in College, and I do not wish to say much 
 about his teaching work. I must mention, however, 
 what frequently struck me, the great joy he had in 
 teaching ; his success was not surprising. When he 
 found (in January last) that he could not take up all 
 his lecture work he would not allow another to give in 
 his place the course of lectures on Church History. " I 
 want," he said to me, " to give them myself in my own 
 way," and he hoped to have given them this Easter 
 term. I was not surprised to hear from a pupil of the 
 interest that he and others found in a similar course 
 of lectures which he had given the previous year. 
 " He put things so," the pupil told me, ** that you could 
 not forget what he had said." 
 
 * My last recollection of him as a teacher bears 
 witness to his interest and purpose. Word was 
 brought me before morning chapel that he had been 
 obliged to call in the doctor in the middle of the 
 night. I went to his rooms after chapel and found 
 that he was asleep. I put up a notice that he would 
 be unable to lecture. He awoke soon after I had 
 left his rooms ; he had another notice put up that he 
 would lecture in his rooms. When I came back to 
 College later in the morning I looked in and found 
 him lying on his sofa with the room full of men, 
 sitting where they could. The class will not forget 
 that lecture, nor shall I forget the sight. 
 
 * When two men have lived a number of years 
 within the same College, it is difficult for them to 
 
38 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 realise the change in their relationship that has come 
 with time. There is a comradeship that comes 
 through the influence of circumstances rather than 
 from that personal attraction which two men feel for 
 one another, and which arose they don't remember 
 when or how. It was this comradeship of work and 
 the sharing of responsibilities that led me to know 
 Forbes Robinson. We had lived some years in 
 College before I knew much of him ; I was some 
 years his senior, and our lines of work were very 
 different. As far as I know, he never talked to older 
 men in that frank way which was his custom with 
 those of his own age, and still more with men 
 younger than himself Some weeks ago I was stay- 
 ing at the hotel on the Riviera where he had been at 
 Christmas time. The English lady, whose husband 
 keeps the house, told me that with them Forbes 
 Robinson hardly talked at all, but that he took their 
 boy out for long walks and talked to him ; and the 
 boy's face lit up as I spoke to him of Forbes. 
 
 * There is still the recollection in College, handed 
 on from year to year, of the walk which he took at 
 the end of a Long Vacation from London to Cam- 
 bridge with two other men, and how he talked all the 
 way. It was these conversations, often prolonged 
 for two or three hours, that impressed those to whom 
 he opened out his thoughts, and who in turn let him 
 see something of their inner life. 
 
 * Forbes always had one or two special friends 
 among the younger men, whom he seemed to me 
 to look upon as heroes , he always yearned for sym- 
 pathy, and he was prepared to give to others all that 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 39 
 
 he had got. This closer relationship with a few men 
 did not in the least narrow his interest in the life of 
 the College. He gained, I cannot believe that it can 
 have been without an effort long and hard, the power 
 of taking an interest in all sorts of things that form 
 no small part of the life of the average man. There 
 was nothing strained or exaggerated in his relations 
 with other men ; he was at all times just himself 
 
 'When he was elected a Fellow, being also 
 Theological Lecturer, he was anxious to do some- 
 thing to interest and help those who were not theo- 
 logical students, and he had, first on Sunday mornings 
 after Chapel, and afterwards in the latter part of the 
 afternoons, Greek Testament readings for non-theo- 
 logical men, and some terms he took up some of the 
 problems that present themselves as difficulties to 
 the thoughtful man. These papers were prepared 
 with great care, and, as I know, at no small cost of 
 time and energy. 
 
 *0n Sunday evenings he was "at home" from 
 9 to 1 1 to any members of the College who cared to 
 come. On those occasions it was a curious sight 
 that met the eyes of any late comer as he opened the 
 door and saw men in groups sitting on the floor, as 
 chairs were insufficient ; as a rule there was no general 
 subject of conversation— numbers made that im- 
 possible. Most Sunday evenings there was music, 
 but not always, and it was difficult at the end of the 
 evening to say what could have brought so many 
 men together. It was a common ground of meeting 
 for different kinds of men. Forbes Robinson was 
 often at his best on these occasions ; he would join 
 
40 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 first one group and then another, and take part in the 
 subject which was being discussed. Generally one or 
 two would remain when the others left, and deeper 
 problems would then be talked over. Only on one 
 Sunday of last term was Forbes Robinson well enough 
 to be " at home." The room was more crowded than 
 I had ever seen it. It was a sort of welcome back 
 after his absence the previous term. It was evident 
 that it gave him pleasure, and evident, too, that he 
 was all the time in pain. Yet with a brightness, 
 which must have cost him much, he talked with 
 one and another of simple daily interests in the way 
 that showed his sympathy with life, and gained for 
 him the power of saying on other occasions deeper 
 things. 
 
 • Nothing could have been simpler than the cha- 
 racter of these gatherings. Simplicity was the secret 
 of his power. 
 
 * I find it impossible to write of my own con- 
 versations with him ; they dealt chiefly with the 
 difficulties of Cambridge, of College life, and of the 
 lives of those in our College for whom we felt we had 
 a responsibility. Talking of the difficulties of belief, 
 I was struck by his quiet answer : " I do not believe 
 some things which I did when I was younger ; but 
 those which I believe, I believe more firmly." Forbes 
 Robinson had a great belief in the power of inter- 
 cession. Quite recently a man in his year told me 
 that when Forbes Robinson was an undergraduate 
 he had known him spend two hours during the after- 
 noon in intercession for his friends. One is not 
 surprised that prayer was a subject on which he 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 41 
 
 thought much. He was to have written an important 
 article on it. 
 
 *As we talked together of different men, I re- 
 member being struck with the desire he expressed 
 that men should be good and strong, and not of any 
 one type. He had a great confidence in the 
 essential goodness that there is in men, and he 
 always formed a high estimate of another. 
 
 * His letters will indicate how deeply he entered 
 into the lives of others, and how wide were his 
 sympathies. A member of another College told me 
 that the news of the death of Forbes Robinson reached 
 him just after the close of their evening chapel, and 
 he had not long returned to his rooms when an 
 Indian gentleman called, an undergraduate of this 
 College, who almost in tears told him of all that 
 Forbes had done for him, and how he had learnt in 
 Hall at Christ's from the strange silence that some- 
 thing must have happened, and was told of the loss 
 that came so unexpectedly upon us on Sunday, 
 February 7. 
 
 * I close this short account of my friend with 
 extracts from three letters casually taken from those 
 which have reached me. A young clergyman writes : 
 " I feel I owe a very great debt to him, both as a 
 lecturer and as a friend. His clearness of mind and 
 power of thought were such as I have never seen in 
 any other man. But far more precious than these 
 intellectual gifts was the inspiration of his personal 
 character. His ideals were so high, and he lived so 
 close to them. Few lives have better expressed the 
 truth of the words of which he was so fond : * He that 
 
42 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 loseth his life shall find it' " A schoolmaster writes : 
 " The last talk I had with him was a month before 
 my ordination, and I remember the emphasis that 
 he laid on the praying side of a clergyman's life." 
 A doctor writes : " Looking back upon my time at 
 Christ's, I think that of all the influences which 
 helped me, the most potent was my friendship with 
 Forbes Robinson. ... I came to know him some- 
 what intimately by spending an Easter vacation with 
 him, and several of our conversations then have left 
 a lasting impression on my mind. ... I suppose, as 
 one gets older and sees so much more of death, that 
 a deepening faith takes away that sense of personal 
 loss and leaves behind a feeling of gladness that yet 
 another friend has passed to the Communion of 
 Saints." 
 
 ' Of his life we may use the motto of his College : 
 
 *AD HONOREM CHRISTI JESU ET FIDEI EJUS 
 INCREMENTUM.' 
 
 Mr. Kittermaster writes : 
 
 * Forbes Robinson did not regard any one of us as 
 a " mere undergraduate," one of a mass ; that was the 
 first thing which those of us who knew him as under- 
 graduates learnt. He was genuinely interested from 
 the first in his undergraduate acquaintances ; inter- 
 ested in them as men, not as promising pupils, not 
 as likely scholars, not as athletes, not as material 
 for " improving " influence, but as men — individuals, 
 each possessing a separate and distinct human per- 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 43 
 
 sonality, and therefore of the truest and deepest 
 interest to him. 
 
 ' Our public schools taught us (and for most of us 
 Cambridge continued the teaching) that to be of 
 any real importance and consequence among his 
 fellows a man must be " good at games," or perhaps — 
 but this more rarely — " good at work." Such is the 
 simple creed of the undergraduate. If he satisfies 
 neither of the above requirements, then he recognises, 
 with greater or less sadness, that he is an ordinary 
 man, the " average undergraduate." He is one of the 
 crowd if he has no athletic powers to commend him 
 to the notice of his fellows in statu pupillari ; he is 
 one of the crowd if he has no slightest hope of 
 making for himself any name in the intellectual 
 world, to commend him to the leaders of thought at 
 Cambridge. And this knowledge is to many a Cam- 
 bridge boy, playing at being a man, a matter of real, 
 if unconfessed, grief. 
 
 * But " there is no such thing as the average man, 
 or at least as the average undergraduate." This 
 was the belief which Forbes Robinson held with 
 increasing conviction as his life went on. And it 
 was this belief which accounted to some extent for 
 the very large part which his friendship undoubtedly 
 played in the life of many a Cambridge under- 
 graduate. 
 
 * For a man condemned by his fellows and himself 
 to the position of the " ordinary man " found himself in 
 the presence of Forbes (as all of us universally called 
 him) to be no such thing. Gradually and with genuine 
 surprise he learned from him — not by any definite 
 
44 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 word of teaching — that though it might cost him 
 efforts painful and many to get the better of his 
 "special," and though athletic fame knew him not 
 at all, yet the possibilities of his own peculiar per- 
 sonal life were wonderful and great. For here 
 was one who compelled men by his genuine un- 
 affected interest in their lives and work to be 
 themselves genuinely interested in them too. A 
 man could not know Forbes for long and not be 
 quickly conscious of a new sense of the value of 
 himself, which made him believe that his own per- 
 sonality and life were things of great importance. 
 For " He is interested in me " is what almost every 
 man felt from the start of his acquaintance with 
 Forbes. " He is interested in me " we felt when he 
 passed us in the street with his quaint humorous 
 smile of recognition ; we felt the same when we 
 entered his room, to be received often without a word 
 but with the same half smile : we felt the same again 
 if we knew that he was watching the progress of a 
 football match or boat race in which we were taking 
 part. And " he is interested in me " — most wonderful 
 of all — we felt as we listened to him in the lecture 
 room, and were compelled to attention ; for his 
 interest in the men in front of him, coupled with his 
 interest in his subject, forced us all — pass men and 
 honours men alike — to listen to the history of Church 
 and Doctrine and Creeds. It was this unfeigned 
 interest in men, simply as men, that in the first 
 instance gave him the influence which he certainly 
 exercised over all sorts of men, including the kind of 
 men whom the majority of their fellows disregarded, 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 4$ 
 
 or perhaps despised ; " the babes and suckh'ngs of the 
 undergraduate world," to quote another. Such men, 
 in whom most of us could find little to attract us, 
 were to him vastly interesting — interesting for their 
 simple human personality. 
 
 * Some men perhaps never discovered from what 
 source his interest in them sprang. They knew that 
 their views of the possibilities of their own life were 
 enlarged, that they believed in themselves more for 
 having been with him ; but it was not all at once 
 that they discovered the reason of his interest and 
 belief in them. It was due to the Christ. With each 
 new friendship and acquaintance which Forbes made 
 — and this is especially true of young men — he saw 
 deeper into the meaning of the Incarnation of Christ. 
 This was the secret of his extraordinary interest and 
 amazing belief in nearly every one of us. He saw in 
 us all, however ordinary, however commonplace — 
 yes, however unlovely were our lives — something 
 somewhere of Jesus Christ. 
 
 ' Then some of us were privileged to discover that 
 what he felt for us was something far deeper and 
 holier than is expressed by the word "interest." It 
 was love. In every fullest sense he understood the 
 grand full meaning of the word. His love for his 
 friends was something altogether larger and deeper 
 and truer than is generally understood by the word. 
 It was so holy a thing that it is hard to write of it. 
 He knew, and the knowledge is perhaps rarer than is 
 supposed, what in all its fulness was the meaning 
 of the love of one man for another. This is why 
 he could enter into the spirit of Tennyson's " In 
 
46 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Mcmoriam " as almost no one else could. Tenny- 
 son's experience might have been so entirely his 
 own. His love for his friends was indeed a wonder- 
 ful, sacred thing, beautiful to see. With Henry 
 Drummond he felt that it was better not to live than 
 not to love. Love was to him a part of all his being: 
 for in him dwelt " the strong Son of God, Immortal 
 Love," compelling him to love his fellow-men. 
 
 * It was to him a real grief that (as he often quite 
 wrongly supposed) one or two of those, for whom he 
 would quite willingly have cut off his right hand if 
 in any way it could have advantaged them, cared 
 not at all for him, nor ever understood how he cared 
 for them. But he found relief from the strange un- 
 satisfied longing, engendered in him by this belief, in 
 intense continuous prayer for those whom he loved. 
 He prayed, it is certain, as few men pray. Prayer 
 was to him the very breath of life. And his prayers, 
 like his life, must have been utterly selfless. Many 
 do not understand the amount they owe to his 
 prayers. Some of us may some day realise the 
 magnitude of the debt ; at present it is not seen. 
 But he prayed with all the effort of his being for his 
 friends : eagerly, passionately, unceasingly he prayed. 
 
 Pray for him, believe in him ; believe in him, pray 
 for him," he was never tired of saying to those who 
 spoke to him of some disappointing friend. And his 
 own life was a proof of the power which lay behind 
 such prayer. 
 
 * To those reading this who did not know Forbes 
 Robinson it may seem that a man of such intensity 
 of feeling and holiness of life would be more likely 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 47 
 
 to frighten away than to attract to close quarters the 
 " average undergraduate " (whose existence he denied). 
 This most certainly was not the case. For, if there 
 was in him something utterly divine, he was also 
 human as ever man could be. He admired, like the 
 veriest freshman, the physical strength and powers of 
 the athlete. In his presence the man of bodily 
 attainments and strength of limb experienced the 
 strange sensation of being looked up to by one whom 
 he knew to be utterly superior to him. But perhaps 
 nearly all who knew him experienced this at one 
 time or another ; for he must have been one of the 
 most humble men that have ever lived. His humility 
 was almost a fault. It led him to depreciate himself 
 so far. And yet how beautiful a thing it was ! He 
 did indeed count all men better than himself. 
 
 ' He easily condoned offences which in some eyes, 
 and especially the eyes of dons, loom as a general 
 rule heinous and large. And the riotous under- 
 graduate, who cuts chapels and lectures, found that 
 a don — yes, and a junior dean — could be a friend 
 of his. 
 
 * He possessed too a keen and real sense of 
 humour. He could, and often did, laugh with all his 
 heart. He chaffed continuously his large circle of 
 undergraduate friends. When he was questioning a 
 man in the lecture-room, you felt that all the time he 
 was half chaffing him. He addressed us all in lectures 
 as " Mr.," in a half serious, half amused style. " It is 
 the only chance for some men to retain any self- 
 respect — to address them as * Mr.' " — he would say, 
 after the discovery of some more than usual piece of 
 
48 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Ignorance in his class of " special " men ; " for how 
 can a man have any self-respect unless addressed as 
 ' Mr.' who does not know which are the Pastoral 
 Epistles, or who is the Bishop of Durham (then 
 Bishop Westcott) ? " 
 
 * He could not remember the name of his best 
 friend on occasions, and he would recount with real 
 glee how he had been known successfully to intro- 
 duce two men, not knowing the name of either. On 
 one occasion it fell to him to introduce to each other 
 a low-caste West African native and a particularly 
 high-caste Brahmin rejoicing in a lofty sounding 
 polysyllabic title : of course he transposed the names 
 — with results, so he declared, almost fatal to himself. 
 
 ' He would display with humorous pride to his 
 athletic friends a photograph of himself coming in 
 second in a toboggan handicap race at St. Moritz, 
 which he always maintained he morally won. He 
 was full of spontaneous humour. When he greeted 
 you, when he looked at you, when he talked with 
 you, it was always with a half smile on his face. It 
 was his sense of humour which procured him a quick 
 entrance into many a man's life and heart. It was 
 his sense of humour which made the hostile under- 
 graduate, hauled for cutting lectures or chapels, 
 forget his hostility and the presence of the don ; 
 though at the end of the interview he, probably for 
 the first time, began to think whether chapel-going 
 had any meaning, whether a lecture, if listened to, 
 might conceivably profit the listener. It was his 
 sense of humour which made all feel at home with 
 him, which at the first attracted the most unlikely men, 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 49 
 
 which inspired with confidence the shyest, and made 
 the most frivolous and thoughtless not afraid of him. 
 Yet while he would laugh, and make us laugh, for as 
 long as ever any one wished, through all his un- 
 affected merriment he made men feel the strange 
 earnestness of his life. And all knew that, while he 
 never obtruded on us religious or even serious matters, 
 he was ready at a moment's notice to speak with us 
 of spiritual things. And most men felt something of 
 what a friend of his wrote of him after his death : " He 
 understood of 'the things that matter' more than 
 any man that I shall ever meet." And many men 
 who owe to Forbes Robinson their first serious 
 thoughts of and their first insight into " the things 
 that matter " must feel the same. It is this fact that 
 makes it impossible to measure the far-reaching deep 
 influence of his life. For the greatness of that life 
 lay not in any large influence on any large body of 
 undergraduates, though the undergraduate life of 
 Christ's College must, as a whole, have felt his real 
 influence ; nor was his life great simply because he 
 was a scholar and a thinker. But his life was great, 
 and will for all time remain great, because it was an 
 inspiration — there is no other word : it was, and is, a 
 lasting, vivid, real inspiration to a few. What Bishop 
 Westcott did on a large scale, Forbes Robinson did 
 on a small. He inspired men — inspired them to 
 search for and hold to the realities of life. 
 
 'To sum up: a man admitted into the inner 
 chamber of his life learnt there something of these 
 three things : {a) The value of his own personality, 
 {b) the meaning of love, (c) the power of prayer. 
 
 B 
 
50 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 * a. The value of his own personality. — A man, as 
 he talked with Forbes, was taught with increasing 
 clearness the amazing possibilities of life for any one 
 who has tried to think what it means to say that 
 " this is I." Many of us, conscious in ourselves only 
 of very ordinary attainments, of no very high ideals, 
 of weaknesses of character, learnt from our friend that 
 in spite of all this, our own personality was God's 
 greatest gift to us. We learnt from him that our 
 own particular commonplace life was, with all its 
 failures and inconsistencies, a tremendous enterprise, 
 big with opportunities. He taught us this by his 
 belief in us. He held (again like Bishop Westcott) 
 through everything to the faith of " man naturally 
 Christian." By his belief in a man he forced him at 
 last to believe in himself. For he taught us that we 
 were, each one, two men — the real " Ego " and the 
 false — and that the real self must in the end have 
 the mastery over the false, because that real self was 
 the Christ. 
 
 * b. The meaning of love, — It is impossible for 
 lesser natures to enter into all that the word " love " 
 meant to Forbes. His love for his friends was " won- 
 derful, passing the love of women." He loved some 
 men with an intensity of feeling impossible to de- 
 scribe. It was almost pain to him. If he loved a 
 man he loved him with a passionate love (no weaker 
 expression will do). We undergraduates found our 
 natures too small to understand it. Yet, as we learnt 
 to know him more and more, we began too to learn a 
 little of what real love is — we began to learn what 
 can be the meaning and the wonder and the power 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 51 
 
 and the depth of the love of man for man. And we 
 understood in time that his love for us and his belief 
 in us sprang from the same high source— from the 
 Christ in him, in us. 
 
 V. The power of prayer. — This last lesson ex- 
 plained the other two. Perhaps only a few of those 
 who knew Forbes as undergraduates learnt it. Yet 
 an intimate knowledge of him must have forced 
 almost any man to the belief that ' more things are 
 wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.' He 
 prayed for those he loved, it is certain, for hours at a 
 time. All his thoughts about some men gradually 
 became prayers. He could not teach us everything 
 that prayer meant to him ; he could not teach us to 
 pray as he prayed. Yet through him one or two at 
 least of his undergraduate friends saw a little further 
 into the eternal mystery of prayer. And men must 
 sometimes — with all reverence be it said— have ex- 
 perienced in his presence the same kind of a feeling 
 of some great unseen influence at work as that which 
 the disciples must have experienced in the presence 
 of Christ after He, apart and alone, had watched 
 through the night with God in prayer. For many an 
 hour of his life did Forbes spend like that, striving with 
 God for those he loved. He believed—he knew (this 
 was his own testimony)— that he could in this way 
 bring to bear upon a man's life more real effective in- 
 fluence than by any word of direct personal teaching 
 or advice. So did he prove once more that the man 
 of power in the spiritual world is the man of 
 prayer. 
 
 ' These are the great lessons of Forbes Robinson's 
 
 B 2 
 
52 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 life — lessons which many a careless undergraduate 
 learnt in a greater or less degree, and, learning, caught 
 from the teacher something of his passion for life 
 and love and prayer, for service of God and man. 
 
 * There must be many who will not soon forget 
 the lessons ; there must be many in whose lives the 
 influence and inspiration of that saintly life will be 
 for ever a power making for holiness and high ideals 
 of living ; there are, it is certain, very many who will 
 thank God continually that they were, in their 
 undergraduate days, allowed to call Forbes Robinson 
 friend. 
 
 ' How many of us, when we heard with a shock of 
 almost horror that he had passed from us, conjured 
 up before us the picture we shall never see again — the 
 picture of our friend sitting any evening at his table 
 in Darwin's historic rooms at Christ's, dimly lighted 
 with candles ! We shall remember long the quick 
 look up at our entrance, the half-smile on his face, 
 the welcome of a man's love in his eyes, however 
 busy and tired he might be. Then, though it cost 
 him later hours out of bed, the invitation to sit down, 
 followed quickly by an indignant remonstrance as we 
 ousted his cat from the best arm-chair. And then 
 the talk that followed : sometimes almost trivial ; 
 sometimes (but only if we wished it) deeply serious ; 
 sometimes — and these occasions were precious — a 
 kind of soliloquy on his part, as he spoke of God, of 
 the realities of life, of love, of prayer. Then, with 
 still the same half- smile, he would bid us " Good 
 night," and watch us out of the room with the same 
 look of love in his eyes with which he welcomed us 
 
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 
 
 S3 
 
 as he turned back to his table to work and think and 
 pray far into the night. 
 
 * So many a one of us has left him again and again, 
 to return to the merry, careless, selfish undergraduate 
 world a nobler, better man. And now he has passed 
 from us — " dead ere his prime " we should say, did 
 we not understand that somewhere the faithful, 
 hopeful, loving soul has better work to do. He is, 
 as he ever was, "in Christ." He lives. His life 
 remains here and beyond. His faith in God, in 
 prayer ; his hope for every man ; his utterly wonder- 
 ful, amazing love, — they still remain. For vwl ^svsl 
 (nothing can rob us of the word) iriarLs, kXiris, 
 dycLTrr), ra rpia ravra* /jlsI^cjv tovtcov rj a<yairr]J 
 
54 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 To A. V. R. 
 
 Brislington Hill, Bristol : September 24, 1890. 
 
 ... I have been persuaded to try the Semitic 
 Languages Tripos. I have been learning German 
 and Syriac a little this Long with that aim in view. . . . 
 I don't really know what to do. I am trying to do 
 what will best fit me for my future work. It is hard 
 to know what is right. 
 
 . . . The only thing I want is not to develop into 
 a mere bookworm. . . . The atmosphere of Cambridge 
 so tends to deaden one, and to make one un- 
 sympathetic with humanity ; and yet the Church to- 
 day does so need men who know something, men 
 who can express with no uncertain sound the truth 
 of Old Testament and New Testament criticism. I 
 want so to find out what the Old Testament is, and 
 how far we can believe in it, in its essential truth, in 
 its historical accuracy. The question can only be 
 settled by scholars — by scholars filled with the spirit 
 of humility and understanding. It cannot be settled 
 by the so-called spiritual faculty alone, but only by 
 the intellect guided by the Spirit of Truth. 
 
 I have been reading St. John's Gospel in Greek 
 and Syriac, and more and more I become convinced 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 55 
 
 that what it says is truth : f^t;— life— anything worth 
 calling life— anything that can last— anything that is 
 of use here and hereafter— is to be gained alone by 
 actually eating and drinking the Body of the Son of 
 Man. The expression is awfully strong— the ex- 
 pression in itself. I am not talking of all sorts of 
 modern explanations of the expression. Take it as 
 it stands in the original : ' You have no life, unless 
 you eat and drink. . . / 
 
 I wish there could be a small Greek Testament 
 reading in the College for considering what the New 
 Testament really means, apart from modern interpre- 
 tations. Is it possible to find out the true, original 
 meaning of that book, and to understand its problems 
 a little and its solutions ? ' Quid importat scientia 
 sine timore Dei ? ' 
 
 To T. R, M, ^ 
 
 Aldeburgh House, Blackheath: March 20, 1891. 
 
 I am gradually finding out how ignorant I am 
 of the meaning of the New Testament, and how 
 miserably I have read my own miserable notions and 
 glosses into the words of St. Paul. I am sure that 
 the solution of the greatest problems which concern 
 humanity is to be found in his Epistles, if we could 
 only approach them without bias and with more 
 childishness. I feel certain that the Incarnation is 
 the great fact of the world's, and probably of the 
 universe's, history. * The Word was made flesh.' 
 And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
56 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 The death on Calvary must have had effects far 
 beyond this particular world. * He descended into 
 hell.' He claimed His power over all parts of His 
 universe. The Good has conquered. The Bad is 
 defeated. 
 
 To T, H. M. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge: July i8, 1891. 
 
 We have but lately heard that my missionary 
 brother^ has passed away into the eternal world. He 
 died in Africa. He gave up all, he gave up his life 
 for Christ. Terribly as we feel the loss, and shall 
 feel it still more, I cannot help thanking the Eternal 
 Father that He has accepted the life-sacrifice, and 
 feeling that He calls upon us here and now, each 
 day and moment of our lives, to offer up ourselves on 
 the altar of universal thanksgiving. Life is sacrifice, 
 renunciation : true life is dependence on God. Sin 
 is isolation, death — a failure to recognise and act on 
 our dependence. I do feel as I seldom felt before 
 something of the love of the Father, the grace of the 
 Son, the communion of the Spirit. We must learn 
 that an individual hope, aspiration, ambition, is 
 against the law of the universe — the law of self- 
 sacrifice. We must learn that our wills are ours to 
 make them God's ; that if we have a single hope or 
 thought which He does not inspire, which true 
 humanity cannot share, the hope and thought are 
 wrong. God grant that you and I may renounce 
 
 * John Alfred Robinson, formerly a scholar of Christ's College, 
 who died at Lokoja on the River Niger, on June 25, 1891. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 57 
 
 our individual lives, and become truly ourselves by 
 martyrdom, by allowing the Christ in us to live. 
 
 I am to be ordained in September. Pray for me. 
 There is no power like prayer. Let us pray for one 
 another. The great Father longs for simple lives, 
 simple piety, perpetual thanksgiving. And we have 
 so much to be thankful for — so much here and now. 
 I do long to offer body, mind, soul, affections, will, 
 hope, to Him as a thanksgiving. Self-renunciation, 
 life in a Church, a Body, is the only life. God grant 
 we may live it ! 
 
 To T. H. M. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : November 17, 1 89 1. 
 
 Do you know that it isn't a bad thing to feel a 
 babe? We must all become simple little children 
 before we enter the kingdom of heaven, because God, 
 who lives in that kingdom, has the simplest heart in 
 all the wide universe — the most childlike, for God is 
 Love. He has no cross purposes. Though He is 
 stronger and better and bigger than we are. He is 
 simpler. He will love a poor, simple old woman in 
 His simple way with a wonderful affection. He is 
 so simple, because He does not know what sin is. 
 God never sins. God is Light, and in Him is no 
 darkness at all. 
 
 It is this simplicity, this love of One who is 
 omnipotent, uncreate, illimitable, eternal, that makes 
 me reverence Him, adore Him, live for Him, love 
 Him. 
 
 Simplicity is wonderfully attractive. The man 
 who knows least of sia is most helpful to me, because 
 
58 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 he is most simple and Godlike. The * man of the 
 world ' is most repulsive, because he is most like the 
 Devil. 
 
 To E. N, L.y on the occasion of his ordination. 
 
 Cambridge : March lo, 1892. 
 
 It gives me great pleasure to think that on Sun- 
 day next you will be made a Deacon in God's Church. 
 I thank God that He has called you to one of the 
 highest offices on earth, that henceforth you will be 
 * in ' or (shall we say ?) * under ' orders — God's orders 
 — that you willingly renounce your life, your thoughts, 
 your hopes, your ambitions to Him. You will pro- 
 bably hear much and be told much at this time. 
 I have nothing to say that you have not heard and 
 will not hear said far better by others. Our Church 
 gives the keynote in the collect for Sunday : * We 
 have no power.' I never realised my weakness, my 
 pride, my hollowness so much as I did at my ordina- 
 tion. God has been teaching me, even in the short 
 time since I was ordained, wonderful lessons — lessons 
 of strength being perfected in weakness. He alone 
 knows the depths of our hypocrisy, our vanity, our 
 atheism, and He alone can help us. To get nearer 
 to Him, to know Him better — this is what I want, 
 this is eternal life. As we believe in a Person who 
 is by our side, who is helping us, training us, we shall 
 be able to proclaim Him to others. Do not mind 
 about feelings. You may have beautiful feelings at 
 your ordination time. Thank God if you have. He 
 sends them. You may have none. Thank God if 
 you have not, for He has kept them back. We do 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 59 
 
 not want to feel better and stronger ; we want to be 
 better and stronger. And He has made us better 
 and stronger. He has given us His Spirit as we 
 knelt before the bishop. We must go forth in that 
 strength. We must use it, Hve on it, and it will be 
 ours. Kara T'qv itLcttiv vjjiMv ysvrjdrjTco v/jllv. When 
 we feel most hopeless, most wretched, most distant 
 from God, remember * feelings don't matter.' Re- 
 member that God's Son felt the same temptation, 
 remember that He too was forsaken by His God. 
 And when all seems lost, Satan seems master, we 
 are misunderstood ; remember that * I believe in the 
 Holy Ghost,' who is stronger than separation or death, 
 than feelings, than our hearts. All our feelings and 
 thoughts and wishes are nothing. God is everything 
 and in all. All our conceptions will be shattered, all 
 our schemes overthrown, that a Great Person behind 
 may be revealed. To know, to love, to make known, 
 to make men love that Person is our work in life .... 
 
 We are men sent from God. We come to bear 
 witness of a Light. Do not let us confuse ourselves 
 with our message. The message is everything ; we 
 are nothing. The Light simply shines through us. 
 We must be glad to be shattered, rejected, if so be 
 that the Light shining through us may be manifested. 
 
 One suggestion I make : that you do what I 
 believe you are expected by the words of the Prayer- 
 book to do — say the Morning and Evening Prayer 
 daily always, unless you are ill, at home or in church, 
 and the Litany on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. 
 You will find this a greater help than almost anything 
 else — a help against superstition, narrowness, bigotry, 
 
60 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 heartlessness. If you decide not to do so, do it with 
 some really good reason, and not because others do 
 the same, or because it is a bother. 
 
 And now good-bye. And may God grant us to 
 know Him on earth, so that we may together know 
 Him better hereafter. 
 
 To W, A. B. 
 
 Blackheath: April 20, 1892. 
 
 . . . No amount of philosophical theories are 
 worth much compared with a simple picture of home 
 life. It is these common relations of life which are 
 most awful and sacred. The highest life we know is, 
 I think I may say with reverence, family life — life of 
 Father and Son ; family life on earth is a faint 
 picture of something better in heaven. We shall be 
 surprised some day to find that, while we have been 
 searching for the noble and divine, we have it all the 
 while at home. The relations of brother and brother, 
 son and father, are eternal realities, which we shall 
 never fathom, for God Himself is below them. 
 * Omnia exeunt in mysterium,' as Kingsley says in 
 ' Yeast.' I am very pleased with that novel. The 
 description he gives of the sufferings and squalor of 
 villages is positively awful. We do want men who 
 believe that self-sacrifice, not selfishness, is at the top 
 of all, who are sure that family life is made in heaven 
 and is made in the image of God's life, who know 
 that in the present is the eternal, to go and live and 
 work and die in our villages. But Kingsley shows 
 it is not enough to give alms or other social benefits — 
 we must do more than that, we must raise their whole 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 6l 
 
 life and condition. I believe myself that this can only 
 be done from inside. Thus, when God wished to 
 redeem man, He did it from inside. Man himself 
 fought and conquered. Deity entered into humanity. 
 It is not merely that we must live simply, think 
 simply, work, as they do. That is well, but we 
 must do more. If we want to look at them from the 
 inside, I know only one way — the old, old way which 
 God Himself adopts. We must love them, love the 
 Christ, the Spirit in them — not the beast, the devil in 
 them. Like attracts like. To love and to detect 
 that, we must have some of that Spirit, that Christ. 
 
 That means to say that to help others from the 
 inside, we must be right inside ourselves. And yet 
 none of us are right inside. But there is that in us 
 which is right, that in us which is not ourselves, but 
 is deeper than ourselves. A Son who will make us 
 true sons, a Brother who will teach us how to be 
 brothers, a Human Being who will show us what is 
 in all human beings ; a Love who will teach us what 
 we always fancy we know, but what we don't know 
 (else we should be divine) — how to love ; a Man who 
 will make us saints and gentlemen — the Man Christ 
 Jesus. Yes, and there is in us a Great Spirit who is 
 uniting us by invisible bonds to all that is good and 
 healthy and Godlike, a Spirit who disciplines our 
 will when it is weakest and most self-indulgent, who 
 trains our spirit and fights our battles against the 
 evil spirit, a Person who makes us persons. How 
 then do men differ? If in every man there is the 
 Light which lightens him, the Christ, the Spirit, what 
 is the difference between good and bad men ? Does 
 
62 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 a good man possess religion, or faith, or love ? No, 
 the best men would tell you they were possessed 
 by faith and love, rather than that they possessed 
 them. What faith or love they have is not a posses- 
 sion — it is in them, not of them, not belonging to 
 them. It comes from the Christ in them. The 
 difference between men is not that one is inspired 
 and another is not, but that one yields to the Spirit, 
 another does not. We begin to obey when we lose 
 ourselves in that Spirit and forget all but God. We 
 ought never to settle any detail in life without taking 
 Him into account : we are fools if we do. How can 
 we be logical ? For He is in that detail, and not to 
 think of Him is not to understand that detail. For 
 every detail is more than a detail — it is the expres- 
 sion of a Person. 
 
 I have wandered into a train of thought suggested 
 by * Yeast,' and in part copied directly from it. For- 
 give me. I was half thinking aloud. That is my 
 one excuse for saying what I am trying to think. 
 
 I never played golf I do that sort of thing by 
 
 deputy. K is the sort of man to do it for me. 
 
 At any rate, I trust him with my football and rowing. 
 It doesn't tire you so much if you do it that way. 
 Only let me give you one piece of advice, which I 
 only wish I acted upon : ' Don't do your thinking 
 by deputy:' do your rowing, golf, football, cricket, 
 skittles, talking if you like, but not your thinking. 
 
1 880. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 63 
 
 To D, D. R.y written apropos of a discussion on 
 St. PauVs idea of the relation between Sin and 
 the Law. 
 
 2 New Square, Cambridge : 
 Monday before Easter, 1892. 
 
 I cannot but help feeling that part of your diffi- 
 culties are self-made. Is there such a difference 
 between Jewish law and law in general ? What is 
 law — law in the abstract ? What do you mean when 
 you talk about laws of science or morality ? Surely 
 there is no such thing as law in the abstract. You 
 really mean God's thought. All law existed long 
 before this world existed, as the thought of God. 
 This thought expresses itself, when the world is 
 actually made, in animals, nature, man. But this 
 thought is somewhat long before it expresses itself, 
 because it is God's thought. With Him 'to think ' is 
 'to do.' Before you and I were born, before men 
 were made, man exists in God as a thought. Each 
 of us is an expression of part of that thought. The 
 whole thought is the image of God, not any one part. 
 Now, when I speak of man as something in contra- 
 distinction to men, I mean the thought of God in 
 contradistinction to its individual realisation. So 
 when I speak of law as distinct from special laws, 
 I mean a thought of God as distinct from its special 
 expressions. Otherwise * man ' and * law ' are abs- 
 tractions and nonentities. 
 
 The nominalist is right in so far as he denies that 
 law as an abstract thing (considered apart from a 
 person — as his thought) is anything : the realist is 
 right in so far as he affirms that law, apart from 
 
64 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 any particular manifestation, is an eternal reality. 
 The reconciliation of nominalism and realism is 
 found in God. Applying this to the case in hand 
 — you admit that the Ten Commandments are the 
 ground of morality ; therefore, I say, they must be 
 an expression of a thought of God, the Author of 
 morality. But you are puzzled to find that the 
 most trivial sanitary arrangements are considered 
 by the Jew as equally a manifestation of God. Need 
 we be In every little sanitary precaution I recog- 
 nise, or ought to recognise, an expression of that 
 same mind as I see it in the Ten Commandments. 
 God is Light, therefore the clean, the healthy, the 
 decent is an expression of Him. God is Love, there- 
 fore the social, the self-sacrificing, is an expression of 
 Him as well. But sanitary arrangements and the 
 like, though an expression of an unchanging prin- 
 ciple, change according to state of civilisation, climate, 
 country. Therefore we take the principle, not the 
 expression, as the ultimate reality in the case of these 
 sanitary laws. 
 
 I am afraid I am rather stupid, and cannot make 
 my meaning plain. I want to show you that the 
 Jewish law only differs from English law as being 
 in some ways a more complete expression of God's 
 nature. But in all sanitary law, &c., now we have 
 God's nature expressed. And it would be true to 
 say, ' God spake unto England, saying ' — e.g. in a 
 right decision in court ; it would be true to say, 
 * God spake unto the judge, saying.' Therefore, 
 what holds good of Moses' law holds good of all 
 law, because all law is a thought of God. There- 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 65 
 
 fore St. Paul uses indifferently voixos and 6 vo^ios^ for 
 what is true of God's thought is true of every 
 expression of it. In fact, he more often perhaps 
 argues about one particular expression of it. Why ? 
 Because we can only tell what the thought is by 
 studying the expression. 
 
 Don't be taken in by abstractions. An ideal is 
 nothing — worse than nothing — unless our ideal is 
 God's idea. Then it is the only reality, because 
 God's idea will take effect. His idea is to make 
 man in His image, and be sure it will take effect. 
 Commandments, judgments, statutes, mean much the 
 same in the Old Testament, I conceive, as we mean 
 when we use them. The Ten Commandments are 
 not so called in the Bible, I think. They are called 
 ' words,' I think. 
 
 I do not think St. Paul at all restricted vo^os to 
 the Ten Commandments. In fact, I don't know that 
 he ever very clearly separated those off from all the 
 rest. 
 
 Do not in your essay make the same mistake as 
 many of the Jews in St. Paul's time. Do not try to 
 consider law apart from the Law-giver. They looked 
 upon law as a dead thing by itself, not as an expres- 
 sion of the character of a person. 
 
 Thus the Commandment about resting on the 
 Sabbath day was considered by them as an order as 
 though from a tyrant. But God, when He gave it, 
 did not simply say, ' Here it is : do it ' — but * Do it 
 because,' and He gives the reason why. The reason 
 is different in Exodus and Deuteronomy, because the 
 books were, to a certain degree perhaps, written to 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 illustrate different aspects of God's character. Exodus 
 says : * Work and rest, because God's life is work and 
 rest. Therefore human life made in His image is 
 work and rest.* Deuteronomy says : * Work and 
 rest. God has emancipated you from slavery. He 
 bids you rest.' In both cases God is the ground of 
 the law. Study law — any law — English law — and 
 in so far as it is law, and not lawlessness under guise 
 of law, you will be studying God Himself ; for if 
 St. Paul's principles are true at all, they must be true 
 of all law. But, oh ! don't deal with abstractions, 
 which sound well, but mean little. Let us use what 
 we have. It is a grand thing to know that the 
 highest ideal we can conceive must be realised, for 
 the highest ideal must be part of God's idea. 
 
 Don't try to look at moral law apart from national 
 life. St. Paul did not. Law is seen in national life. 
 A nation is a better expression of God than an indi- 
 vidual, because God is three, not simply one. He is a 
 social Being, a Being of relations. And nations will 
 last for ever. Law will always be seen worked out in 
 national life. God has more worlds than one. Each 
 nation is a thought of God worked out in human clay 
 (of. Jeremiah xviii. i-6). Human clay lasts for ever 
 (* I believe in the resurrection of the body '). Law 
 will always be worked out thus. We are part of a 
 thought of God — part of an English nation — little 
 fragments of a huge whole. Our immortality depends 
 on the fact that we are parts of a nation, parts of a 
 Divine idea, which lasts for ever. Law is more com- 
 pletely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because 
 God's life is conscious. Law is more completely seen 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 67 
 
 in family and national than individual life, because 
 in God Himself are seen the archetypes of human 
 relations. 
 
 This letter is disjointed, but contains a few thoughts 
 which may prove helpful — thoughts I have been learn- 
 ing from others of late. 
 
 We are having lovely weather. 
 
 The buds ' feeling ' after each other — new life and 
 resurrection life — a type, a pledge of fuller resurrec- 
 tion, of Easter life— nay, the same Life — *I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life' — working in trees and 
 flowers and man. What a glorious thing to live in a 
 world which has been united with its Maker — a world 
 of perfect law and order — a world where every infrac- 
 tion of law must and will be punished — a world where 
 Love is Law and Law is Love — a world where a 
 great thought is being realised, and will be realised 
 in and for us 1 You use ' Theology ' loosely — 
 ' Theology ' is tAe thing and ' Religion ' is not, I think, 
 nearly such a fine word. Theology is the Learning, 
 Knowing, Studying God. I am sorry I have said 
 nothing about Jewish sacrificial law. I meant to. 
 That expresses a great fact. It dimly hints (as sacri- 
 ficial law in other nations does) at the fact that the 
 ground of the universe is self-sacrifice — that the 
 ground of all human, whether family or national, life 
 is a filial sacrifice. I think other nations besides Jews 
 regarded all law as coming from God ; nay, I think all 
 nations did in part at least 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 ToE, N. Z., on the occasion of the death of his hrotlter^ 
 who was killed by lightning at Cambridge} 
 
 June i8, 1892. 
 
 ... I do feel for you, and could do a great deal to 
 help you. I can only tell you what I have felt to 
 be the only thing which makes life endurable at a time 
 of real sorrow — God Himself He comes unutterably 
 near in trouble. In fact, one scarcely knows He exists 
 until one loves or sorrows. There is no * getting over * 
 sorrow. I hate the idea. But there is a * getting 
 into ' sorrow, and finding right in the heart of it the 
 dearest of all human beings — the Man of Sorrows, a 
 God. This may sound as commonplace, but it is 
 awfully real to me. I cling to God. I believe He 
 exists. If He does not, I can explain nothing. It 
 He does, all whom we love are safer with Him than 
 with us. If we can only get nearer ourselves to God, 
 we shall get nearer to those whom we love, for they 
 too are in God. 
 
 We shall be one, ever more and more really one, 
 the nearer and the liker we get to God. . . . My dear 
 friend, words are poor comfort at a time like this, when 
 we see into eternity. A Person is our only hope, and 
 that Person is God. God often takes those whom He 
 loves best home to Himself as soon as He can. In 
 the process of their development they break through 
 the bonds of space and time. He has taken your 
 brother, but not taken him away from you. We are 
 
 ' Writing to another friend at this time he says, ' He was walking 
 with a friend, and in a moment, without any apparent pain, •* God's 
 finger touched him and he slept, " * 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 69 
 
 all in the same home — praying for, knowing, loving 
 each other. . . I believe in the communion of saints — 
 I believe that those who began to know God here, and 
 whom we call dead, are not dead. They are just 
 beginning to live, because they are finding out God : 
 they are just beginning to know us, because they see 
 us as we are — they see us in God. They are with Jesus, 
 and Jesus is a human being. Because they are with 
 a human being, a man, the man, the Son of man, they 
 must, they do, take a deep interest in the affairs of 
 the sons of men, and — may we not believe ? — in us, 
 whom they knew below. . . .These are truths which 
 sorrow helps me to make my own. I pray that you 
 may never, never ' get over ' the sorrow, but get through 
 it, into it, into the very heart of God. 
 
 To A. W. G. 
 
 Blackheath : June 27, 1892. 
 
 I have more and more come to the conclusion for 
 some time past that the only reality underlying and 
 explaining the world must be personal. I know that 
 I am a person, and that it is persons — especially a few 
 particular persons — not things, who have influenced 
 me and had a power in my life. All my ideas of 
 justice and purity and goodness are inseparably 
 bound up with persons. At last I have come to the 
 conclusion that nothing exists except the personal, 
 and that below all is One who is personal. That 
 means to say that the world and things in it are only 
 real in so far as they are thoughts of God. We are 
 real only in so far as we are thoughts of God. A 
 
70 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Roman Catholic poet, speaking of the Virgin Mary, 
 says : 
 
 If Mary is so beautiful, 
 What must her Maker be ? 
 
 I look round the world and I see persons who 
 attract me in a wonderful way — persons who are more 
 gracious and simple than I am ; and then I cannot 
 help feeling that they all are a kind of faint picture 
 of One who is better than all of them, One in whose 
 image they are made. I like, I cannot help liking, 
 intensely some of them ; and from them I am led on 
 to Him who made them and who therefore must — 
 if I only knew Him — be more attractive even than 
 they are. I believe that we are intended to rise from 
 them to Him who made them, that if we stop short 
 with the creature, we lower ourselves — we become 
 idolaters. We worship beauty or intellect or good- 
 ness as though they belonged to the creature ; we 
 thereby lower ourselves and the persons whom we 
 worship. If, on the contrary, we rise from them to 
 the Personal Being, we see more in them than we 
 ever saw before, and we get nearer to them than we 
 ever got before. For life is a circle whose centre is 
 God. Each of us is unconnected with his neighbour, 
 but connected with the centre from whom he comes. 
 The nearer the centre, the nearer we get to each 
 other. When we get to the centre, we really become 
 united with each other. To die is to get a step 
 nearer the centre. The closer we are connected with 
 the centre, the nearer we are to those whom we call 
 dead. Our communion with them is spiritual, be- 
 cause ' God is spirit ' and they are in Him. But the 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 71 
 
 Spiritual is not the unsubstantial, the nebulous, the 
 gaseous ; it is the personal — to my mind the awful — 
 reality. The more truly we understand persons, the 
 more we shall find they are spirits. 
 
 I tell you what has been the greatest possible 
 strength to me of late. God is not merely a Person, 
 He is Three Persons in One. I am always trying to 
 get closer to those whom I love best, to know them 
 more, to serve them better. Yet something is ever 
 keeping us apart. I said ' something,' I mean ' some 
 one,' for only a person can keep a person from 
 another — only a malicious, a devilish person — yet I 
 feel that some day I shall be able to love, and know 
 them better. Then I look out on life and I see how 
 again and again death, and some one worse than 
 death, is separating us, misinterpreting motives, keep- 
 ing men apart ; men are struggling to be one, and 
 cannot be ; on earth persons long to be one, persons 
 who love feel they ought to be, they must be one. 
 In heaven Three Persons are really, perfectly, quite 
 One. What we are trying to do has been done there. 
 Men try to be one. God is One. And the comfort 
 comes in when one knows that ' in the image of God 
 made He man.' Our life is a copy ; God's life is the 
 original. Because God is One, we, whose life is a 
 picture of His, shall some day be one, as He is. The 
 unity of Deity is a pledge of the unity of humanity. 
 
 The more we make our life like the original the 
 more shall we realise what we long to realise — truer, 
 deeper, more eternal unity. But we are not simply 
 trying to be, we are one. All we have to do, I 
 believe, is to act as though we were one. We have 
 
72 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 proofs of this unity. We find ourselves doing an 
 action which we should never have done unless we 
 had known some one. That one lives over his life, or 
 part of his life, again in us. So too we are living 
 over our lives in other people, perhaps in some who 
 have passed into other worlds of fuller activity than 
 this. In living our lives over in each other, we show 
 that we are more than we thought ; and it is grand 
 to think how big our lives may become in this way, 
 for those whom we influence — into whom our life 
 flows in — in turn may influence others. When I get 
 quite quiet, and my mind is sane, and my conscience 
 at rest, when I almost stop thinking, and listen, I 
 am quite sure that a Personal Being comes to me, 
 and, as He comes, brings some of His own life to 
 flow into my life. I am also sure that with Him 
 come those who live in Him, that all whom I have 
 known or know, and longed or long to know better, 
 who were worth knowing, are near me, are, if I 
 let them, living their lives in my life, making me 
 what I should not be without them. (These are 
 facts, of which I think I may say I have more 
 certainty in the best moments of my life than I have 
 now that Switzerland exists. But I may be exagge- 
 rating. Perhaps as regards the second fact — of the 
 other persons with Him — I may have spoken too 
 strongly as regards my certainty. It is so hard to 
 say exactly what one means.) 
 
 I don't know that these thoughts will be of much 
 use to you. They may sound somewhat too philo- 
 sophical. But I have more or less purposely put them 
 in a philosophical form, because we are not thus so 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 73 
 
 easily led astray into vague pleasant feelings, which we 
 sometimes get from rhetoric. But I do wish I could 
 put a little more of my feelings into this cold paper, 
 and cruel, unsympathetic ink. For what I have 
 written is not a mere philosophy of life ; it is the 
 only thing that makes life tolerable for a moment to 
 me ; it is the one thing which I intensely long to 
 realise. To my mind life is love, and love is life. 
 Love is not sentimental affection, simply the readi- 
 ness to die for a person. But love is the laying 
 down of life for a person, absolutely renouncing your 
 life for another. It means living the best life you 
 can conceive of for the sake of one you love ; know- 
 ing for certain that your life is flowing into that other 
 person, though you may never see him again in this 
 world. Love is purifying yourself that another may 
 be pure. Love for one person, if it be true love, leads 
 you at once to God, for ' God is Love.' I do not 
 know what that means, but I do know that the little 
 meaning I can see in it explains everything. As we 
 love, God is there ; we see God, we are in God. So 
 we are led on from unselfish love on earth to that 
 unselfish family life of Three in One in heaven ; we 
 are led on to Him in whose image we are made, and 
 whose image we never so clearly reflect as when we 
 love most. I could go on talking on this subject 
 almost for ever, but I think I had better not tax your 
 patience. 
 
74 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 To W. A. B, 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : July 5, 1892. 
 
 How very jolly for you to get out right away into 
 the country ! I hope some day to be able to do the 
 same. But I think, on the whole, / am better suited 
 for retiring from the world than you are ! If it were right 
 to wish it, I might almost wish to exchange places with 
 you. But yet I don't. It is very curious — I dare say you 
 have thought of it — how very, very few people, if any, 
 you would deliberately wish to change into, if you 
 could. One admires many people, and would like to 
 have their goodness, their intellect, or their beauty or 
 strength — but how few of them one would really be : 
 to cease at once to be yourself, and suddenly to be 
 some one else — to look at life with tAezr eyes, to have 
 tkeir past, t/zetr hopes for the future, t/ietr sins, tAetr 
 inmost thoughts, t/uzr anxieties. There is only 
 about one man in the world, whom I know, whom I 
 would like to be — and even of that I am not sure. It 
 is the wonderful sense of personality. We abuse *me' ; 
 we often vaguely say we would rather be some one 
 else ; yet very few of us wish to lose * me ' : and most 
 of us perhaps never will. 
 
 Liddon is, I should think, somewhat stiff and 
 uninteresting. Gore's Bampton Lectures on much 
 the same subject are far more interesting to my mind, 
 far more human. Lectures IV, V, vi of Gore would 
 perhaps interest and educate you on the subject. 
 
 Are you so sure that your course at Cambridge is 
 ' over ' ? 
 
 I looked behind to find my past, 
 And lo, it had gone before. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 75 
 
 You will find traces of that course, before you have 
 done, in yourself and in others for good or for evil. It 
 is a good thing to think that nothing good is ever 
 i over '—that whatever we do is done for eternity, is 
 part of ourselves and of others— that we live on in 
 others, live on a nobler life than we lived in ourselves. 
 When we influence another, our life flows into 
 another : we live our life over again in him. The, day 
 will come when we shall see more clearly into what we 
 have been doing. As yet we are like children play- 
 ing with knives : they little know how near they are to 
 killing themselves at times. So we are playing with 
 big issues : we call them small and secular, we treat 
 them as such— yet every speck of dust is big with 
 infinity. Would that we could see the Infinite Being 
 at every turn, then we should begin to live. You 
 will get wrong in all your plans unless you see them in 
 Him, and Him in them, and correct them as you see 
 them thus— correct your thoughts to fit in with His 
 thoughts, not His thoughts to fit in with your thoughts. 
 
 But you'll learn it is true. You'll understand later 
 on why I am always talking about a Person ; why to 
 know that Personal Being is life. Meanwhile, thank 
 you very, very much for what you have taught me. 
 I feel I am down in the bottom class of that school, 
 but I am glad that I have got into the school at all. 
 Later on I may reach a higher standard, and know 
 the Teacher better. In that school the lesson each of 
 us is set to learn is love, and the name we are all 
 trying to spell out is the name of the Father and 
 of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Some of us, 
 perhaps, have learnt to spell one part of the name, 
 
76 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 some of us another. But none of us have properly 
 learnt to love one single person as we ought ; and few 
 of us have learnt to see the Father's love in all, the 
 Son's grace in all, and the Spirit's fellowship in all. 
 But patience must have her perfect work : and if we 
 work hard at our lessons, we shall know more, love 
 more, think in a simple way, and do more. But we 
 must not be learning merely from each other ; the 
 pupils must look away to the Master of all in the 
 centre, and as we all learn from Him and love Him, 
 we shall be more modest, there will be no competi- 
 tion — save who can love most and sacrifice most — 
 and do most for Him who has done all for us. 
 
 This letter is hurried. Forgive it. Write again. 
 Accept the wuU for the deed. Think, think, think ! 
 
 To T. H. M. 
 
 Ivy House, Holkham : September I, 1892. 
 
 The sacraments are tremendous realities to me, 
 just because they are a living protest against ail 
 Popish, High Church, Low Church schemes of 
 thought — because they are a protest that man does 
 nothing, God does all — that everything is a sacra- 
 ment of the grace of God. They explain all life to 
 me. They teach me what love means, for when man 
 might least expect it, love comes deluging in, and 
 the outward and visible is overwhelmed with the 
 inward and spiritual. Oh, if bread and wine and 
 water are capable of being transformed into the 
 highest means of grace and hopes of glory ; may 
 not living, human, breathing persons — may not those 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 77 
 
 I love— be sacraments as well ? When we come near 
 human beings we love, we should come with the same 
 feelings of reverence as when we kneel at that altar, 
 for we are coming to that which is part of God's 
 image— made in His likeness. And as we speak to 
 them, when they answer purely and simply, the Word 
 of God speaks through them. This is not degrading 
 the sacraments— nay, but raising all human life — 
 nay, raising the sacraments as well, for it brings them 
 into relation with real life, and transforms the poor 
 magical abstractions into eternal realities. 
 
 To IV. A. B., who had told him that he had made up 
 his mind to take up school work till he was old 
 enough to be ordained. 
 
 Holkham : September 3, 1892. 
 
 A home circle reminds me, I think, more than 
 anything else of that other home, that other family— 
 the home of a Father and of a Son, the family circle 
 of the Three who live in one unity. We should thank 
 God for every family circle on earth into which we 
 are allowed to enter, and in whose life He allows us 
 to share— for any true family on earth— yes, and 
 every little child who is bom into this strange world 
 of ours is a sure and certain pledge— a real sacra- 
 ment—that God loves us still, has not forgotten us, 
 is giving us little glimpses into His own family life, 
 is making existence here a more perfect image of life 
 in heaven. We should come into such a family circle 
 with the same feelings of awe as when we bend on 
 our knees to receive the Holy Communion. For 
 here, too, we enter into Holy Communion— the com- 
 
78 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 munion of simple, human, happy family life ; here, 
 too, we approach a sacrament, outward and visible 
 signs of happy, quiet, home life — the signs of an in- 
 ward and spiritual grace — the grace which lies below 
 and interprets all human grace in man and woman — 
 the grace of our dear Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 
 True, that grace is but little realised in the best ot 
 families — little consciously realised in the noblest life. 
 But, oh ! surely a human family — brothers and sisters 
 in a home on earth — are a sure and certain pledge 
 that this grace does exist — that God is — for here we 
 have an exquisite though imperfect copy of the family 
 life of God. Thank God when you see a good or a 
 beautiful man or woman, a pure and a simple family 
 — thank God, because it is a revelation, a manifesta- 
 tion, an unveiling, a copy, a likeness of Himself 
 For though beauty often is proud and trivial, yet it 
 is a manifestation of Him from whom all beauty 
 comes, in whom all beauty dwells, by whom all beauty 
 exists. And so not only thank — pray. Pray to Him 
 that the outward and visible may be ever more and 
 more but an expression of something inward and 
 unseen and spiritual. For beauty, grace, intellect, 
 everything is doomed, unless it is sacramental — unless 
 it draws its life from God below, unless it lives but 
 to testify of Him who is. 
 
 It is an awful problem — a beautiful face with no 
 true moral beauty below — splendid physical grace 
 with no deeper grace beneath — a strong, capable 
 intellect which is not the expression of a noble soul. 
 What does it all mean ? How in a world, where the 
 outward and visible is but a manifestation of the 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 79 
 
 good God, can such awful anomalies exist ? Partly 
 it is due to the law that goodness is rewarded to^ a 
 thousand generations (Exodus xx. 6. R.V. margin, 
 cf. Deut. vii. 9), while wickedness is visited upon 
 the third and fourth— that is, that one who is beautiful 
 in body or intellect, and who knows God, leaves the 
 blessing of such beauty long after him to descendants 
 who are little conscious of the reason of its origin, 
 and who have little thought of God. 
 
 Beautiful eyes, where there is no beauty of soul 
 beneath, are the eyes of others, long since dead, look- 
 ing at us still— men who served God in their genera- 
 tion. An exquisitely touching voice, where there is 
 no music in the life of the one who possesses it, may 
 be the voice of one who knew God, and left his 
 legacy for a thousand generations. But still the 
 problem remains. In many cases the outward and 
 inward seem divorced. Now let us not try rashly to 
 solve the problem ourselves. We are inclined when 
 we see such beauty to say, * It is no use talking. I 
 am quite sure, whatever you say, that there must be 
 some fine traits in the character of one whose face 
 is like the face of an angel, whose voice is sweeter 
 than that of the sons of men.' We may be, I believe 
 we are, partly right— at least in many cases, for the 
 spiritual powers of those who are gone may still in 
 part live on in their descendants. But often, if we 
 are candid, we must admit that apparently the out- 
 ward and visible are separated from the inward and 
 spiritual, that we have outward beauty and grace 
 which is no sign at all of anything deeper— nay, that 
 the very spiritual qualities, of which it is the sign, 
 
So 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 and which may once have existed in the person, have 
 been used for the vilest ends. This being the case, 
 we are still left with the problem, Is the outward and 
 visible not intended to be a sign of something deeper? 
 Here it is not a sign. Why not ? Will it ever be 
 so ? To put the case in its short, simple, concrete 
 form, how can a * flirt ' exist when by all the laws of 
 the universe beauty should surely be a sign not 
 of instability, insipidity, unspirituality, worldliness, 
 shallowness, hypocrisy, but of the Supreme ? 
 
 I cannot answer this question. I doubt whether 
 any man can. But I can show you where its ultimate 
 solution must lie. It lies in the sacraments. Yes, 
 they are the answer to the whole problem. They 
 tell us that the outward and visible — the commonest 
 objects, water, wine, bread — may be the signs of 
 something which is deeper than anything we know. 
 And they tell us more. They are to my mind a sure 
 and certain pledge that some day the outward and 
 visible shall really correspond to the inward and in- 
 visible. For, remember, this world lasts for ever. 
 The good lasts, and is purified by fire. The evil 
 alone is consumed. The sacraments are a pledge to 
 me that some day upon this world our longings after 
 a correspondence of the inward with the outward will 
 be fulfilled — how, God only knows — probably not in 
 the way we expect, but in a way far, far better. For 
 His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways 
 are not our ways. When therefore you are utterly 
 bewildered and perplexed by finding so much that is 
 attractive which seems utterly divorced from God's 
 life ; when you find yourself that the outward and 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 8i 
 
 visible in your own life — the words you say, the 
 actions you do, tend to become absolutely different 
 from your real inward life ; when you feel that every 
 one is a hypocrite, and you are the w^orst of all, kneel 
 down at that wonderful service, and take what is the 
 one power of making outward and inward correspond, 
 of making our words a true index of our thoughts, 
 our actions a true presentation of our lives ; kneel 
 down and pray that all you love may enter more and 
 more into the meaning of that service, that they too 
 may flee from self to One who is stronger than self— 
 to the power which is capable of transforming our 
 actions — to the power which raised Christ from the 
 dead, and is capable of raising us up also. Then 
 you will gradually be taught that all life is of the 
 nature of a sacrament — that all food is to be taken 
 because thereby we have health and strength to mani- 
 fest forth the grace of God in a too often graceless 
 world — you will be taught lessons which I cannot 
 even suggest ; for God knows so much more than 
 any of us what unsearchable riches He has as an 
 inheritance for us. Let us enter upon that inherit- 
 ance. God has called us to be saints, called us, 
 chosen us — chosen us before the world was made — 
 He has chosen us that in us, through us. He might 
 manifest Himself. It is not humility that prevents 
 us recognising the fact. It is our selfishness and 
 stupidity. For the very fact that He has called and 
 chosen you and me and all His Church before we 
 were born shows that everything comes from Him. 
 IVe are utterly worthless and vile, but when united, 
 as we are united to God, we are transformed into His 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 image, we partake of His life. Only let us be what 
 we are — sons of God. 
 
 In regard to those words, * I looked behind to 
 find my past, and lo it had gone before,' I do not 
 know whether you are right or wrong about the 
 Greek idea. The past has gone before us, we are 
 always coming upon it. Some day we shall be con- 
 fronted with it. Every day that we live we are 
 making something that we shall meet again. The 
 only way to get unity into our lives — to make it 
 possible to look back without sentimental repining or 
 an awful sense of dread — is to get God as the centre, 
 God as the foundation. As we look back then we 
 shall find days * linked each to each by natural piety' 
 — we shall see that our life forms a connected whole 
 a real progress, something worth calling life. 
 
 . . . Do you know that the best way to strengthen 
 your best thoughts is to try and express them ? Get 
 them out ; you help others, you help yourself Don't 
 be careful of the grammatical accuracy and the finish 
 of your sentences ; I don't think St. Paul was. I 
 was thinking to-day that perhaps a man who never 
 wrote letters never could appreciate St. Paul. He 
 was a great letter-writer. Copy him. Read him. 
 Read him fairly quickly. Get into him. Find out 
 his motive power, his real meaning. Read the Greek, 
 not from a critical point of view only, but read the 
 Greek. Do not trouble too much about the dic- 
 tionary and accurate translations, but keep reading 
 and perhaps saying aloud the Greek. St. Paul knew 
 so much of God. Read him, and as you read, a 
 greater than St. Paul will come into you, interpret 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 83 
 
 him, explain him. St Paul himself will be with you, 
 I think, trying to show you what he meant, and what 
 he has found out that he means now. 
 
 But do write me a proper letter. We are just 
 beginning life, and we have so much to learn from and 
 to teach each other. Everj-thing is new to us. Every- 
 thing is strange. x'\lready it seems to me I have been 
 trained in a hard school — harder, I hope, than you 
 will ever need to be trained in — to understand what 
 God and love mean. I seem to have had a rough time 
 of it, perhaps rougher than most ; and even now I arn 
 trained in a way which is not attractive to me, trained 
 to throw myself not on any merely human love, but 
 on Him who is perfectly human and perfectly divine. 
 May God train you in a less rough school, if possible ! 
 But at any rate, may He train you — train you to get 
 out of self, bring you into deeper sympathies, stronger 
 attachments, simpler earnestness ! He alone can give 
 unity to all our thoughts and desires. He alone can 
 give stability. And we poor little creatures, who 
 seem to have twice as much affection as we have 
 mind, how we do need that stability ! We want not 
 to be blown hither and thither by every manifestation 
 of strength, beaut\% brain — we want to be able to 
 enter into the meaning of what we see and cannot 
 help admiring, without becoming the slaves of the 
 visible and the finite. We must build on the one 
 foundation that is laid. We must lay our affections 
 deep down in the man Christ Jesus. As we see Him 
 in men — and, when we cannot see that, see men in 
 Him — we shall be more stable, less childish, less 
 fickle. We never go deep enough. We skim over 
 
 G 3 
 
84 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 life. We must get into its heart. We must never 
 begin an affection which can have an end. For all 
 affection must draw us into God, and God has no 
 end. The moment we see any one whose strength, 
 grace, goodness, beauty, or simplicity attracts us, we 
 have deathless duties by that person. For the 
 attraction is the outward sign of a spiritual connection 
 — a sign that we ought to pray for that person, to 
 thank God for the manifestation of His character, 
 which we see in a riddle, through a glass in that life, 
 that human life. 
 
 And then we shall be prepared to realise deeper 
 relationships, more wonderful mysteries of love — to 
 see with clearer eyes the heart of the Supreme. 
 We cannot make relationships too spiritual. We 
 cannot be too careful to see them in God and God in 
 them. Think what it is to see a relationship in God^ 
 to see it existing there in His life, as His thought, 
 long, long before we were born, long before we had 
 an idea that we were intended to realise it. What a 
 new light on old relationships — brother and brother, 
 brother and sister, father and child, husband and 
 wife, all thoughts of God, all being gradually entered 
 into, appropriated, realised, understood, worked out 
 by us. They seem so common and natural, and yet 
 they are intensely awful and sacred and mysterious. 
 And then think what it is to see God in them — to see 
 One from whom all family life flows, penetrating 
 those whom we have never properly learnt to love and 
 those whom we love as much as we can. God in 
 them — all that is good and attractive — not their own, 
 but God's. The eyes which seem to be contemplat- 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 85 
 
 ing something which \vc cannot see, the face which 
 h'ghts up at times with another than human hght ; 
 the eyes, the face, a realisation and expression of that 
 Being who is at once human and divine, God and 
 man. Why, this is bringing heaven down to earth, 
 this is a reahsation in part of the holy city coming 
 down from heaven. For as we think of them, above 
 all as we pray for them, we are led beyond them, we 
 forget our own selfish interests in them, we are 
 brought out from the * garden ' life of individual 
 souls into the * city ' corporate life of a great human 
 society, a family, the Church of God. We should 
 live, we should die for Christ and His Body — the 
 Church — the fulness of His life, who is filling all in 
 all. We must cease thinking and praying for our- 
 selves and for others, as though we were alone. We 
 are all part of one great society. Around us — nay, in 
 us — are others, some whom we can see, some who in 
 the course of development have burst the bonds of 
 space and time and matter, all one, one, for ever one. 
 We all have one common Lord, one common hope, 
 one common life, one common enemy, one common 
 Saviour, who is working through us, in us, in those 
 whom we least understand, in those in whom we 
 should least expect it, in those who are almost repul- 
 sive to us, in all — working out one big purpose 
 through the ages, the purpose of the Eternal. 
 
 Remember me at my ordination as priest, please. 
 Remember me, for I need it so much, you do not 
 know how much. It is such an important time, and 
 I cannot understand or enter into its significance, as 
 I long to do. Discipline, discipline, discipline, self- 
 
86 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 discipline — obedience to * orders.' Oh ! how I long 
 to have the power to realise these ! Pray for me that 
 I may ; that you may, pray also. Be very strict with 
 yourself. Compel yourself to obey rules. You are 
 hurting so many besides yourself when you are not 
 strict with yourself. For we are * one body.' You 
 are injuring those whom you like best, for you have 
 less power over them, when you have less power over 
 yourself — less power to influence, to pray, to thank 
 for them. 
 
 Do remember how marvellously sacred a school- 
 master's work is : it is not enough to be able to play 
 games — how I sometimes wish I could ! — it is not 
 enough to be able to teach Latin and Greek : a 
 schoolmaster should be so much more. He repre- 
 sents the authority of God. He can be so much, he 
 may be so little to boys. We can never enter into a 
 boy's life, into his deepest thoughts, his * long, long 
 thoughts,' unless we too become little children, unless 
 we become young and fresh and simple — and all young 
 life comes from Him, who makes all the little chil- 
 dren who ever come into this big world. Let us 
 enter into His life. Do not become a schoolmaster 
 simply to fill up time, to have something to do. 
 
 To W, A, B. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : November 20, 1892. 
 
 ... I am glad that you like your school, that you 
 like your boys. . . . Think of the weak chaps, those 
 who are * out of the way/ those who are not naturally 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 87 
 
 attractive, those who positively repel you. They 
 often most need your sympathy, your prayers. 
 
 And now about your ordination. Do you know 
 I am doubtful whether it would be a good thing for 
 you to be ordained to a school chaplaincy. I am 
 almost more than doubtful. You would, I suppose, 
 have no parish work, nor anything to do with poor 
 folk. Your work would be reading prayers, and 
 preaching about three times a year, I suppose. You 
 would scarcely care to be a curate in a country or 
 poor town parish later on, would you, if you began 
 thus ? But, after all, I must not, I dare not, advise 
 you. I can only point you to the Being who alone 
 can advise us. The great thing is to renounce all 
 plans, all thoughts of self, to give up all we are and 
 expect to be, to come into His presence, and then to 
 ask His advice. Or rather we must come to Him 
 like little helpless children and ask Him to help us to 
 renounce planning and arranging with self as goal— 
 to beg Him to give us strength to give up all. 
 
 The great thing is to get the life where we shall 
 develop best all our powers— viz. the life in which 
 we shall have most opportunities of sacrifice. Can 
 you get, can you use, opportunities of self-sacrifice 
 in your school life? Can you get fuller and better 
 elsewhere ? ... Of course, if you find that you have 
 more influence over boys than you would be likely to 
 have over other folk, that might alter the case. Have 
 you found that you can influence them more for good 
 than you would be likely to influence others ? 
 
 Our one work in life must be to advance God's 
 glory, God's kingdom. The time is short. The night 
 
88 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 soon comes. The great problem is how to do most 
 in that short time ; how we ourselves can best lose 
 ourselves in the little time that we have for losing 
 ourselves. * He that loseth himself, findeth himself.' 
 
 To D. D. R, 
 
 14 St. Margaret's Road, St. Leonards: January 10, 1893. 
 
 I have been thinking to-day of that strange 
 statement * I no longer call you slaves . . . but I 
 have called you friends.' To understand any one you 
 must be their friend : you are able then to judge their 
 life from the inside, to see why and how they do 
 what they do ; all their actions which seemed dis- 
 connected and purposeless before are seen to be part 
 of a plan, to have an end, a goal. We cannot under- 
 stand the riddle of life, the necessity of all the details 
 in the great scheme of redemption, the reason for 
 certain means of grace, the real significance of the 
 hope of glory, while we are slaves. The whole 
 appears so purposeless, such waste of energy, such 
 unintelligible and irrational self-sacrifice. Why must 
 the Christ suffer ? Why could not sin be overcome 
 in a less costly way? Why is the victory of the 
 Christ so incomplete ? Why do some, who are better 
 than we, take so little interest in the eternal ? We 
 cannot answer these and a thousand other questions 
 while we are slaves. All is a hopeless enigma, a 
 play without a plot, a novel with no plan. But 
 become a friend of a man and all is changed. Each 
 act in his life, each thought in his life, each word 
 from his lips — they have not ceased to be a problem, 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 89 
 
 they are ten thousandfold more wonderful than they 
 ever were before : they are still a problem ; but there 
 is, there must be, we feel, a purpose running through 
 the whole. We have but one object — to understand 
 him more, to see what divine ideal he is trying to 
 work out in all the details of his common life. Each 
 detail is important ; each thought, however wayward, 
 must be recognised and understood. All are seen 
 in the clear, dry light of eternity ; each is seen in 
 something like its right proportion. We feel that his 
 life is our life — nay, more interesting than our own 
 miserable life — that if we are ever to know ourselves 
 we must know him first. So, too, become a friend of 
 Him who alone is, and all is changed. Gradually, 
 perhaps painfully, yet surely, as w^e become like very 
 little children, the meaning of the whole dawns upon 
 us. We see it all : we see that it could not be 
 otherwise : we cannot say why, but we are quite sure 
 that we see it — at least, we see a little way, and 
 where the light ends and it begins to get dark, we 
 feel that it is all right beyond — that He who is with 
 us in the light will be with us in the darkness. We 
 are no longer slaves, doing His will because we must. 
 We are friends, and we cannot help taking deep 
 interest in all that He does. His acts. His thoughts, 
 His words, they are still a problem — we cannot make 
 them all out. But they are the same kind of problem 
 as a friend is — a strange exquisite torture. We do 
 not know what the whole of his life means ; he can 
 do things which we cannot, and which we rejoice to 
 know that we can never do. We only see one side 
 of him ever, and the rest is only known to God. 
 
90 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 And yet we do know part of his life, and we are 
 content to know no more ; what we know is good, 
 and what we do not know or understand must also 
 be good. We judge from what we see what that 
 must be which we cannot see. We do not wish it 
 otherwise. We feel that it would be impious to try 
 and understand him fully, for is he not connected 
 with God Himself? So we see one side of the life of 
 the Eternal ; but we are friends ; we do not wish it 
 otherwise. We cannot understand Him — we never 
 can. And yet * I have called you friends.' His 
 main purposes we see : the plan by which He 
 realises them we see in part. And as we know Him 
 better, we shall be able to track His footsteps even 
 where we did not expect to find Him. We shall 
 learn that His methods are simpler and better than 
 ours, that His thoughts are surer, deeper, higher than 
 all our schemes and plans. I am constantly finding 
 that ordinances, customs, beliefs, which I used to 
 despise as strange, antiquated, or useless, are yet the 
 very ones which I need, that my fathers knew better 
 than I my needs, that above all God Himself had 
 provided institutions and customs, and had waited 
 until I was old enough to learn their use and to bless 
 Him as I used them. So, as we know a man better, we 
 feel that we must pray for him and his the more. As 
 we become the friends of the Word, we feel we must 
 pray that His will may be done ever more and more — 
 His purposes realised by us and ours. Let us then 
 not begin by criticising the world and God ; let us 
 first be the friends of God, and then in the light of 
 undying friendship and prayer begin to criticise. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 91 
 
 We must be the friend of a man before we under- 
 stand his life ; we must be the friends of Jesus Christ 
 before we understand His life now upon earth. 
 
 I used to skate : I don't now. I obey herein one 
 of the great maxims of my life : * If you want to get 
 a thing well done, don't do it yourself I consider 
 that K , in this as in other similar pursuits, per- 
 forms the ancient and 'sacred duty of delegation.' 
 I have no doubt that he does it admirably. Why 
 must people try what they can't do well ? Why not 
 leave it to those who like it and can do it well t The 
 wretched public-school-boy conception of dull unifor- 
 mity is an abomination to me ! If K doea the 
 
 walking, you do the thinking; G does the 
 
 dandy, M the grumbling, S the jack-in-the- 
 box, G the running, M the philosopher, and 
 
 D the little vulgar boy — allow me to do what 
 
 after all is the hardest of all tasks, 'to do nothing 
 gracefully.' (I am afraid that I begin by trying ' to 
 do nothing — gracefully,' but end by ' doing nothing 
 gracefully.' You see the difference !) I believe in 
 division of labour — let each man do what he is made 
 to do best — and those who feel their vocation to be 
 nothing but receiving the results of the labour of 
 others — why, let them try to do it with the best 
 grace they can ! Forgive me if such be my case. 
 
 To /. Z. D. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge: May 15, 1893. 
 
 I think you are right in believing in the intense 
 worth of sympathy. But * sympathy ' is the Greek 
 
92 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 as * compassion ' is the Latin form of * suffering to- 
 gether with.' He who has suffered most has perhaps 
 the most power to sympathise ; not simply to pity 
 or console, but to go right out of self and to get 
 right into another, to see life with his eyes, to feel 
 as he feels. If, then, you find many of those among 
 whom your lot is cast almost incapable of sympathy, 
 may it not be that they have not yet learned the 
 meaning of suffering ? They may not have had so 
 many opportunities of suffering as you, or, if they 
 have had as many, they may not have found any 
 one to interpret to them what it all meant. Thank 
 Him from whom all sympathy comes if you have 
 known anything of the sufferings of life, anything of 
 the worries and disappointments and delays and 
 unsatisfied ambitions which so many have ; if you 
 have known these — known their inner meaning, and 
 have been led out and beyond your own into that 
 wider life of suffering, and have learned what it is 
 to fill up in your turn ra vaT£pr]fjLaTa roiv OXL-yjrscov 
 
 One hates to see others whose centre is self. 
 Their whole life looks so mean and low. Life over, 
 the Ego alone left ; and what a poor, wretched, 
 snivelling creature after all — this which we pampered, 
 this which we thrust forward for others to admire and 
 flatter ! If we were not in much the same case, we 
 might be able to view it in others with somewhat 
 different eyes. And yet do you know that, as a 
 matter of fact, our Ego is dead — self is not — and the 
 devil's greatest lie is to make us believe in this self? 
 For do not you and I belong to One stronger than 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 93 
 
 self — One whose own self may live in us — does live 
 in us — whether we recognise the fact or not? We 
 died years ago to self when He claimed us for Him- 
 self, and we rose again to a selfless life in Him : Bs 
 ovKSTC iya>, Bs h Sfiol 'KpLaTos. 
 
 We act a lie whenever we make our Ego instead 
 of His Ego the centre. If He is our centre and our 
 goal, then be sure our Ego will begin to live, because 
 it is * grounded ' and rooted in His. Any trouble 
 and anxiety that leads you out of self to the Infinite 
 Ego, that makes you feel helpless and lonely and in 
 need of a Human Helper and a Human Comforter, 
 thank God for it. He is teaching you to cast your- 
 self upon One who is perfectly human because 
 perfectly divine. He is teaching you that you are 
 not your own ; that long, long ago yourself died : 
 el ovv <7VV7]yspOr)TS t&) Xptaraj, ra avco ^t]tslts. 
 
 Thus we are led to .understand something of the 
 meaning of our Christian names — to see that they 
 are living pledges to us, whatever we do, wherever we 
 go — that Christ's name is called upon us — that when 
 tiny little children we were brought home to the 
 Great Ego in whom alone our Ego can ever find 
 satisfaction— to feel that we are His and He is ours. 
 
 To J. L, D, 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : October 9, 1893. 
 
 The step which you contemplate taking is one 
 with far-reaching issues — reaching away through time 
 and beyond it. I advise you to try and gain a general 
 idea of the meaning of the first half of St. Paul's 
 
94 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 second letter to the Corinthian Church — to try and 
 enter into its general spirit. Few things will humble 
 you more : you will see something of the unspeakable 
 dignity of the office of him who represents God to 
 his fellow-men, and of the tremendous enthusiasm and 
 love which a man must have if he would be the 
 minister that St. Paul would have him be. I do not 
 know what St. Paul means when he says that we are 
 ambassadors on behalf of Christ : but the more I 
 think of what the words seem to mean, the more I 
 am startled at the awful responsibility that we have 
 laid upon us. To represent Christ, to treat with men, 
 to attempt to arrange — if one may so speak — terms, 
 to use all our powers in performing the work of the 
 embassy — this at least is involved in the words. 
 What strikes me so much in the letter is the manner 
 in which St. Paul literally loves the Church ; how he 
 longs to communicate his own enthusiasm to it ; how 
 he would die, almost does die, himself to bring life to 
 them. All his hopes are bound up with theirs — his 
 salvation with their salvation. He seems to * fail 
 from out his blood, and grow incorporate ' into them. 
 We are called to the same office as St. Paul, we have 
 the same power working in us as he had working in 
 him : we too shall have success in so far as we love 
 — as we identify ourselves with those whom God has 
 given us to take care of. The more we are disci- 
 plined and yet enthusiastic, the more capable shall we 
 be of love — of getting out of self — of working our 
 way into others — of representing the Christ to them — 
 of understanding and making allowances for them — 
 of seeing them in the ideal, the only real, light ia 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 95 
 
 which God sees them — seeing them in the Christ, in 
 whom we live — mind that; with all your intellectual 
 training, you don't forget the other. Now is the time 
 to learn, to force yourself to learn, to pray — to pray 
 not for a few minutes at a time, but to pray for an 
 hour at a time — to get alone with yourself— to get 
 alone with your Maker. We shall not have to talk 
 so much to others if we pray more for them. We 
 talk and we do not influence, or we influence only 
 for a time, because our lives are not more prayer-full. 
 
 To /. Z. D. 
 
 Aldeburgh House, Blackheath, S.E. : 
 December i6, 1893. 
 
 I cannot help thinking of you both at this time. 
 It means so much to you both — more than either 
 of you dreams that it means. The issues of your 
 Ordination day are very far reaching indeed. They 
 stretch away and beyond this world in which we 
 now are. The rush of school work and of prepara- 
 tion for examination has probably not left you as 
 much time as you could have wished lor thinking 
 over what it all moans. I hope you will have more 
 time after the service is over. But you may be 
 comforted in the thought that the last few years 
 have been a definite preparation for your life-work. 
 Though you must regret, as you never regretted 
 before, misuse of time and powers in the past, yet 
 you have had an education which has in some de- 
 gree prepared you for this time, an education for 
 which you may thank our common Master. But this 
 
96 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 thought by itself would be but a small comfort. For 
 you must feel, if you are the man I take you for, how 
 unworthy you are to be what you are called to be. 
 Now there are two ways of dealing with this feeling. 
 You may say, * I am not called to be an absolute 
 saint ; but I will try to reach a fairly high standard ; * 
 or you may say, * Yes, I am called to be an absolute 
 saint. I will not lov/er my ideal. I will comfort 
 myself with that single word "called." If He has 
 called me. He will do in me and for me what He 
 wills.' This second way is the true way of dealing 
 with feelings of unworthiness and unfitness. You 
 and I are utterly unfit. But we are both called — 
 called from our mother's womb — called to be saints 
 and to be ministers. He who called us will help us. 
 With man the call seems quixotic, impossible ; with 
 Him all things are possible. At times when the call 
 is loudest we can but reply, * Ah ! Lord, I am but a 
 little child.' We are intensely conscious of feebleness 
 and, what is worse, of treachery and meanness within ; 
 we half love what we are called upon to denounce ; 
 we play with the sin we are to teach men to abhor. 
 Yet the call is sure, is definite, is perpetual, and 
 again and again you will in all probability find 
 what a help it is to look back to that day in which 
 the call took formal shape. You have that as a 
 definite fact to rest upon, to reprove, to encourage, 
 to urge to renewed effort, to force you to be true and 
 energetic. 
 
 One thing you must learn to do. Whatever you 
 leave undone you must not leave this undone. Your 
 work will be stunted and half developed unless you 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 97 
 
 attend to it. You must force yourself to be alone 
 and to pray. Do make a point of this. You may be 
 eloquent and attractive in your life, but your real 
 effectiveness depends on your communion with the 
 eternal world. You will easily find excuses. Work 
 is so pressing, and work is necessary. Other engage- 
 ments take time. You are tired. You want to go 
 to bed. You go to bed late and want to get up late. 
 So simple prayer and devotion are crowded out. And 
 
 yet, T , the necessity is paramount, is inexorable. 
 
 If you and I are ever to be of any good, if we are 
 to be a blessing, not a curse, to those with whom we 
 are connected, we must enter into ourselves, we must 
 be alone with the only source of unselfishness. If we 
 are of use to others, it will chiefly be because we 
 are simple, pure, unselfish. If we are to be simple, 
 pure, unselfish, it will not be by reading books or 
 talking or working primarily, it will be by coming in 
 continual contact with simplicity, purity, unselfish- 
 ness. Heaven is the possibility of fresh acts of self- 
 sacrifice, of a fuller life of unselfishness. You are a 
 man and a minister in so far as you are unselfish. 
 You cannot learn unselfishness save from the one 
 Source. Definite habits of real devotion — these we 
 must make and keep to and renew and increase. 
 Then we shall gradually find that we are less depen- 
 dent on self — that even in the busiest scenes we dare 
 not act on our own responsibility — that, be the act ever 
 so small and trifling, when we are in difficulty we 
 shall naturally, inevitably, spontaneously turn to that 
 place whence help alone can come. But it is a won- 
 derful help again and again to feel that we have been 
 
 li 
 
98 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 alone with Him, that we are not working on our own 
 responsibility, that He is the ' Living Will ' that rises 
 and flows ' through our deeds and makes them pure.* 
 
 To K S. H. 
 
 Aldeburgh House, Blackheath : December i6, 1893- 
 
 Sometimes when I look round and see how some 
 men, some who are infinitely nobler and better than 
 I am, some who have taught me more than they 
 know, and of whom I am utterly unworthy : some- 
 times when I see these men struggling to find the 
 Truth, unable to definitely receive the facts of the 
 Christian revelation, to whom Christmas brings an 
 uncertain message at best — oh ! I feel unutterably 
 contemptible. Why should I see truth, as I believe, 
 and why should they not } Why am I given an 
 advanced book in God's great school and they are 
 kept back ? And yet they are immeasurably better 
 than I am, and some have better intellectual power 
 also. I know that I hold that lesson book in trust 
 for them, that as I learn I must live out the truth, 
 and teach as well as learn from them. But why was 
 I entrusted with truth ? and why cannot I communi- 
 cate it ? Why can I love a man almost better than 
 myself, and yet be unable to make him see the Light 
 that is blinding my eyes? These are questions 
 which you cannot answer and which I cannot 
 answer. The answer is ' behind the veil' But such 
 unsolved problems do stir me up from my natural 
 laziness, and make me try to develop all my faculties 
 in due proportion in the service of Him who has 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 99 
 
 revealed Himself to me, and who has called me to be 
 His witness and servant. . . . Gradually we shall 
 learn what the service of the intellect means — how 
 vile a heresy it is to suppose that the mind is not to 
 be trained in His school — how unguided spiritual 
 power may be a curse to a man and the community 
 in which he lives. . . . 
 
 If you take my advice you will try to get a cer- 
 tain amount of time alone with yourself. I think 
 when we are alone we sometimes see things a little 
 bit more simply, more as they are. Sometimes when 
 we are with others, especially when we are talking to 
 others on religious subjects, we persuade ourselves 
 that we believe more than we do. We talk a great 
 deal, we get enthusiastic, we speak of religious 
 emotions and experiences. This is, perhaps, some- 
 times good. But when we are alone we just see how 
 much we really believe, how much is mere enthusiasm 
 excited at the moment. We get face to face with 
 Him and our heat and passion go, and what is 
 really permanent remains. We begin to recognise how 
 very little love we have, how very little real pleasure 
 in that which is alone of lasting importance. Then 
 we see how poor and hollow and unloving we are ; 
 then, I think, we also begin to see that this poverty, 
 this hollowness, this unloving void can only be filled 
 by Him who fills all in all. To get alone — to dare 
 to be alone — with God, this, I am persuaded, is one 
 of the best ways of doing anything in the world. It 
 is possible to be constantly speaking of Him, to glow 
 with enthusiasm as we talk about Him to others, and 
 yet to be half-conscious that we dare not quietly face 
 
loo 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Him alone. This is my own experience, and I do 
 not doubt that, though you are better than I am, it is 
 yours as well. If we are ever to be or to do anything ; 
 if we are ever to be full of deep, permanent, rational 
 enthusiasm, we must know God. If we are ever to 
 know each other we must know Him first. There- 
 fore it is that I want you to dare to be alone and 
 to think. I believe that we do most for those whom 
 God has begun to teach us to love, not by constantly 
 thinking of their goodness, their grace, their sim- 
 plicity, but by never thinking of them apart from God, 
 by always connecting their beauty and purity with a 
 higher Beauty and a higher Purity by seeing them 
 in God, by seeing God in them. Let us learn to 
 make every thought of admiration and love a kind of 
 prayer of intercession and thanksgiving. Thus human 
 love will correct itself with, and find its root in. Divine 
 love. But this we can only do if we are willing to be 
 alone with Him. 
 
 It is a grand thing to think that we are both in 
 the same great school, that we both have the same 
 great Master, and that our discipline is not bounded 
 by this life. 
 
 To D. D. R. 
 8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor : Jan. 2, 1894. 
 While holding as firmly and unreservedly to the 
 belief that a revelation is a possibility that has actually 
 been realised, I am becoming more aware of the 
 partial and limited view which any single individual 
 can have of the significance of such a revelation ; and 
 with this conviction comes a desire not to hinder by 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS loi 
 
 any words or prejudices of mine the education of one 
 to whom I owe more than I at present know. Yet, 
 as I believe that no individual life is beyond the wise 
 ordering of a Divine economy, I am sure that he must 
 have lessons to learn from me as well as I to learn 
 from him. Hence I dare not refrain from suggesting 
 to him — often in answer to questions that he puts to 
 me — sides of truth which, as I believe, I have been 
 allowed to apprehend. The knowledge of truth (in 
 however small a degree) is a trust that we hold for 
 the sake of others. What I fear for him and for you — 
 for you even more than for him— is not that you will 
 form wrong opinions on religious or ethical subjects, 
 but that you will lack that moral earnestness that forces 
 a man, whether he will or not, to look the facts of life 
 in the face, that deadly earnestness that refuses to 
 allow us to contemplate creeds as works of art, but 
 forces us to ask whether these things be so. Life as a 
 whole must be faced. What has induced men to 
 believe this and that tenet? Why have men craved 
 for a knowledge of an unseen Being } Why have 
 systems of priestcraft arisen ? How is it that those 
 who most revolt against such systems are slaves to 
 other systems bearing different names, but in substance 
 the same ? Is there a Deliverer ? Is there a unity 
 beneath all this confusion } Can man know such a 
 unity if there be one ? Can such a unity be revealed ? 
 Has it been revealed ? Why do men think it has been 
 revealed if it has not? While I am slow to force 
 upon those whom I most respect and love lessons 
 which I believe that I have slowly learnt in a school 
 in which perhaps they have not been, and never will 
 
I02 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 be, educated, yet I am sure that I cannot be wrong in 
 praying for them and in urging them to be increasingly 
 earnest in the search for and the practice of truth. You 
 are a man in so far as you live. You live in so far as 
 you are self-sacrificing. You are self-sacrificing in so 
 far as you unswervingly practise the truth you know 
 and follow after that which you do not yet apprehend. 
 And I am sure, if there be a unity beneath our lives, if 
 there be One who is educating us when we are most 
 wayward, we shall eventually be led by, it may be, very 
 different paths to a single goal. Meanwhile each 
 failure to be earnest, each relapse into sentimentality, 
 unmanliness, morbidness, despair, unreality, laziness, 
 passiveness, may itself be a discipline, making us 
 utterly mistrust ourselves, whether at our worst or at 
 our best, and forcing us to inquire whether there be 
 any help elsewhere, any power that can sweep through 
 our lives and force us to be human. 
 
 For this reason I would impress on you the 
 necessity of trying to think out your position, of 
 asking yourself how you may be most human and 
 best serve God (if, indeed, you believe that this is 
 possible) and your generation. There are around 
 you social forces making for good. Ought you to 
 be — nay, can you be — isolated ? Does isolation give 
 greater strength ? Does it enable you to do more or 
 to be better ? These questions are not merely sug- 
 gested by me. They have already suggested them- 
 selves in one form or another to you. I am frightened 
 of their not receiving the attention they merit. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 To T. H. M, 
 
 8 Alexandra Gardens, Ventnor : January 3, 1894. 
 
 The fact that you have not all the sympathy and 
 manly help and advice that you could wish for from 
 those around you will, I trust, force you to depend 
 with simpler confidence upon the unchanging Ground 
 of all human sympathy. You will, I hope, take all 
 these experiences without grumbling as a real and 
 necessary stage in your education ; remembering that 
 if you find yourself repining at the distressful circum- 
 stances in which you are placed, you may be dis- 
 honouring Him who has placed you where you are. 
 I do not, of course, mean that such reflection will 
 make you condone and excuse the lukewarmness of 
 others, but you will grasp the truth that God uses 
 even the sin of this world as an instrument in the 
 education of His people, and that you yourself may 
 have your character formed partly through the faults 
 of others, for whom you are still bound to pray. 
 
 This great Christmas festival that is past must be 
 a power to us in the year that is coming on. We 
 must enter into and be penetrated by the Life that 
 has been manifested. For it is life that you and I 
 need. Our own puny individualistic life of morbid 
 self-consciousness and sensibility must be transformed 
 by the fuller Life in which all may have a share ; and 
 thus we 'shall come to think less of ourselves, our 
 successes, our failures, what others think about us 
 and what others ought to think about us — we shall 
 forget all this because we shall share in the Universal 
 Life, which penetrates through all and which makes 
 
I04 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 men forget themselves and their ills, and be pure, 
 simple, healthy, unselfish. And this life has been 
 realised and men have seen it, and it is still with us 
 to-day. In so far as we share in it we shall become 
 natural, unaffected, human. Nay, more. Because 
 the life there manifested is divine as well as human, 
 we shall realise also with fuller force what it is to be 
 a child of a Father who is in heaven. It is life, not 
 a system, that we need. It is life which is given us 
 when we are adopted as sons ; it is life that we 
 receive when the Source of all life gives us Himselt 
 to feed upon ; it is life that Christ bestows upon us 
 when we gradually realise our position as members 
 of a society in which no man can live for himself 
 alone. Life is life in so far as it is unselfish. May 
 He who has called us and given to us all our privileges 
 teach us to live out that which we know and believe ! 
 
 To F. S. H. 
 
 Cambridge : August 4, 1895. 
 Life will not be the same without having you up 
 here. I am very dependent upon others, and I soon 
 begin to be downcast if I have not some one to help 
 . or to be helped by. But happily He who takes away 
 is the same as He who gives, and His great heart of 
 affection understands our manifold and seemingly 
 contradictory needs. Life would be intolerable if we 
 had no one who knew us perfectly, not simply the 
 outside part of our life, but that inside and apparently 
 incommunicable part. Those who are least able to 
 express themselves in words, or who (if they did 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 105 
 
 express themselves) fear that they would be mis- 
 understood, find in Him an unspeakable consolation. 
 But I must not look at things from the individualistic 
 standpoint. No problem can ever be solved until we 
 have in some measure realised that the Life which 
 flows through us is larger than our own individual 
 life. We get morbid, and our reason becomes warped, 
 when we think of our own future alone. Every 
 obstacle in our path, every interruption to the course 
 which we have planned for ourselves, every rough 
 discipline, tells us that our life and future are not our 
 own, that they are intimately connected with a larger 
 life, a greater future. I have been thinking of those 
 words — so like Jesus Christ to have uttered them — 
 fir) /ispiiJLvrjar]Ts. We are always anxious about a 
 set of circumstances which will soon be upon us — 
 engagements which we tremble to meet. Jesus Christ 
 tells us, firj fxspi(xvr]a7)Tc. I believe that work in the 
 present world would be far more free and effective if 
 we would obey the command. We cannot enter into 
 life as it comes, because we are living in an imaginary 
 future. The man of God lives in the present ; he 
 leaves the future to God, firj /jLspijjLvrjo-rjrs. If God 
 has conducted us so far. He will not leave us. It is 
 easy to talk, hard to act. I think we gain the power 
 to act, we gain the calm peace of God, by compelling 
 ourselves to remain at certain times in His presence. 
 Habits of prayer are slowly formed, but when formed 
 are hard to break. Talking may be a great snare 
 when it takes the place of prayer — and how easily it 
 does ! It is easier to talk with a man than to pray 
 for him — in many cases. 
 
io6 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 To F. S, H, 
 
 Clovelly: September ii, 1895. 
 
 I am reading * The Newcomes ' : have you ever 
 read it ? I find it hard to appreciate Thackeray as 
 much as some people do. Occasionally he says some 
 very true things and shows that he is acquainted 
 with human nature in its brighter and darker aspects. 
 But, on the whole, the story of marriage and giving 
 in marriage — selling your daughter for money or a 
 title — the picture of young men who sow their wild 
 oats and then repent and marry innocent ladies and 
 live virtuously and die in the odour of sanctity — on 
 the whole the story does not seem to correspond to 
 the ideals which haunt me, even though I do not act 
 up to them. Surely life is something utterly different 
 from all this. Surely somewhere there is a picture of 
 human life, somewhere in the mind of God Himself, 
 where the young man grows up without any har- 
 vest of wild oats, with clear and unselfish ideals, 
 with a longing to make the world purer and diviner 
 than he found it, a picture which is in some measure 
 realised around us to-day. May God deliver us not 
 only from vicious but from selfish thoughts ! I 
 believe Thackeray saw something of that picture, 
 but he didn't draw it with the colours I could have 
 wished. There is a solemn text in Ezekiel, which 
 came in the lesson lately, ' The righteousness of the 
 righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his 
 transgression.' Past religious experiences are of little 
 value without present righteousness. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 107 
 
 To his cousin G. F, 
 
 Clovelly, N. Devon : September 12, 1895. 
 
 I am in perhaps the quaintest and one of the 
 loveliest villages in England, just doing nothing, and 
 enjoying the simple life around me. You would like 
 this village, with its one steep, narrow, picturesque 
 street, the great sea far down below, the little stone 
 pier jutting out and helping to form a small harbour. 
 Then on either side of the village are woods reach- 
 ing down to the cliffs — beautiful woods, where oaks, 
 and in places heather, are glad to grow. St. Paul 
 says in the lesson to-day that the things which are 
 seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen 
 are eternal. And one feels how true are his words- 
 how the trees, woods, flowers fade and die ; how the 
 old sea wears slowly away the cliffs ; how men and 
 their dwellings pass away ; how all these things 
 which are seen are temporal ; and yet the beauty, 
 the love, the joy, the purity, are more permanent 
 than the particular manifestations of them are. The 
 beauty which is manifested in the country around is 
 eternal. The life which is seen in man has a future 
 beyond this world. 
 
 As we enter in behind the veil, as we see that 
 life and love which are expressing themselves in 
 objects around us, we are already in the eternal, in 
 that which endures. 
 
 It is not, as we are constantly thinking, the things 
 that are present which are temporal, and the things 
 that are future which are eternal. No; the things 
 
io3 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 which are present have an eternal side to them — the 
 unseen side. 
 
 The man who is a slave to the seen has least of 
 the eternal about him : the man who despises not 
 the seen, but who through the seen rises to the un- 
 seen, is partaking of eternal life. . , . 
 
 To F. S. H, 
 
 Cambridge : October 23, 1895. 
 
 Let me congratulate you on the way you ran 
 against Yale.^ I was delighted to read of your 
 * romping ' home !!.... It seems to me that 
 every unfulfilled longing is no accidental part of life. 
 The longing, in so far as it is genuinely human, is 
 derived from Him in whose image man is made. 
 When it is hard to see why it is not gratified, yet we 
 may confidently believe that this is part of our 
 training. Is it not a noble work to enter into and, in 
 some measure, bear the burdens of other men's lives, 
 even if they have only imperfect sympathy with ours ? 
 May we not sometimes even learn more in this way — 
 or at least learn different lessons — than if they were 
 so similar to ourselves that they could at once under- 
 stand us ? I am afraid that you have a hard struggle 
 before you. You must take care not to act upon 
 first impressions, or impulse — not even if those im- 
 pressions are favourable . . . your best * pearls ' must 
 be used carefully. 
 
 * In the international athletic sports in U.S.A. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 109 
 
 To F, S. H. on his going to a airacy in Liverpool 
 
 Cambridge : October iS, 1S96. 
 
 In some respects I am glad to hear of your 
 change of plans. I think you will be more in your 
 element working in a poor part of a large town. . . . 
 Our dean has just been preaching on the words * One 
 soweth, and another reapeth.' It is a help to realise 
 the continuity of work. We enter into the work of 
 many a man who has passed away, and who, while 
 he worked, often despaired and thought that he was 
 achieving nothing. No work is lost. The obscure 
 and petty — these are relative terms. We use them, 
 but we are told on the best authority that there is 
 nothing secret which shall not be made manifest. 
 The consciousness of the continuity and perpetuity 
 of work quiets and calms us ; we need not hurry over 
 anything. When we have left off sowing, others will 
 reap. God give us grace to work, for the night 
 cometh when no man can work. I am so sorry that 
 I have not been able to come up and see you. But 
 we are working in the same field, though it is too 
 large across to see one another ! 
 
 To C, T, JV. 
 
 St. Moritz : February 1S98. 
 
 Two new toboggan runs have been opened : one 
 is a Canadian run on soft snow without turns, short 
 and sweet ; the other is part of the Crista run, an ice 
 
no 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 run, which I suppose is quite the finest in the world, 
 with splendid corners. When it is all made it will 
 be about a mile in length. ... In a noisy salon it 
 is difficult to collect my scattered thoughts. Music 
 and other atrocities are in full swing ; and as I 
 seldom use my brain now, the works are rusty. I 
 wish you could see this country in winter. ... A 
 male rival of The Brook has appeared. He is im- 
 pressed with the dust and dampness of the atmo- 
 sphere — takes out trays to toboggan on into Italy — 
 sprinkles water on his bedroom floor, because he 
 considers a damp atmosphere conducive to sleep. 
 So far we have not fallen out altogether with one 
 another ; some of us are on speaking terms. We 
 only confidentially discuss whether so-and-so has 
 come here for his mind. We have an archdeacon, a 
 canon, a curate, two captains ; one Plymouth-brother- 
 like, who takes most gloomy views about the future 
 of us, or most of us, including the parsons ; the other 
 very noisy, who attempted the Canadian toboggan 
 run which is supposed to be safe for ladies and 
 children, and swears that he almost broke his neck. 
 He had an upset and went head foremost into the 
 snow, and, according to his own account, had to be 
 dug out. If he had been a heavier man, I under- 
 stand that he would have broken his neck. As two 
 accidents have occurred there, it is not absolutely 
 safe. . . . This place is a splendid pick-me-up. I 
 am a reformed character — go to bed between 6 and 
 10.30 P.M. I was detected last night cheating at 
 cards. But reformation to be effective requires time. 
 Give up, I say, one bad habit at a time, and then 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS ill 
 
 tackle the next. I have given up early rising as 
 being the most patent of my evil practices. 
 
 To J. K. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : August 19, 1898. 
 
 , , , . I am sure that we have need to learn not 
 only in the school of health but also in the school of 
 sickness. These breaks in life, and the sense of help- 
 lessness and weakness which attend them, are not 
 simply periods to be ' got over ' — to be made the best 
 of till we can ' start again ' — but they have a meaning 
 which we can find, if we only look with the eye of 
 faith. It is strange how, although God sees the whole 
 way in which we ought to go, He leaves us in com- 
 parative darkness. We need, I am sure, revelation. 
 ' Lord, open the young man's eyes, that he may see.' 
 We shall take the wrong turning if we trust to our 
 ordinary eyes ; we shall find the path if we have the 
 eye of faith to see what God is revealing. . . . And 
 now at this time I need your prayers. I have — and 
 this, I need hardly say, is private — an invitation from 
 the Bishop of to come and lecture to theologi- 
 cal students, whom he hopes to gather round him. 
 Of course the scheme is rather in the air so far. He 
 has not yet got the men. But he has an attractive 
 power, and he might on a smaller scale do some such 
 work as Vaughan used to do for men who did not go 
 to definite theological colleges. Will you pray for 
 me that I may go if I ought, and not go if I ought 
 not, please? 
 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how, 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. 
 
XI2 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 To J. L. D. 
 
 Cliff Dale, Cromer: Octobers, 1898. 
 
 I do not belong and I never have belonged to any 
 of the societies or guilds which you mention. I am 
 a member of a Church. For that reason I dare not 
 join any party. In fact, I cannot understand what 
 ' parties ' have to do with a Church. The Church by 
 its very existence is a witness against parties and 
 divisions. It will take me more than a lifetime to 
 learn what it is to be a member of a Church ; and no 
 one can learn the lesson while he persists in clinging 
 to a party. He must be a member not of a part but 
 of a whole. I therefore have no time to waste in 
 joining a party. 
 
 I feel strongly that the various societies and 
 guilds, based upon party life, are eating away the very 
 life of the Church. But I am slow in condemning 
 my neighbour for conscientiously joining any such 
 society. He may only be able to see one side of 
 truth, and it is better — far better — that he should see 
 that side than nothing at all. 
 
 To the mother of his godchild^ Margaret Forbes, 
 
 April 12, 1899. 
 
 It is such a joy to me to be allowed to be her 
 godparent, and I shall remember her often in my 
 prayers. What a wonderful revelation she must be 
 to you both — making the Heavenly Home a fuller 
 reality than ever before ! It is through earthly rela- 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 113 
 
 tionships that we realise the meaning of the unseen 
 world. I like those lines of Faber : 
 
 All fathers learn their craft from Thee : 
 
 All loves are shadows cast 
 By the beautiful eternal hills 
 
 Of Thine unbeginning past. 
 
 To his mother, 
 
 Rouxville, Orange Free State : July 8, 1S99. 
 
 It is a strange and somewhat terrible study in 
 religion — this Boer religion. It seems to have little 
 or no connection with morality. Kruger seems to 
 have amassed great wealth by doubtful means. A man 
 comes to him and offers him, say, 8,000/. on condition 
 that he may have the right to sell mineral waters. 
 Mrs. Kruger comes in and counts the money ; and if 
 it is right, the concession is granted. Yet he is reli- 
 gious, very religious. A short time ago they wanted 
 to fire shells into the low-lying clouds during a time 
 of drought. The clouds gather, but they will not 
 break. Firing shells was found to have a good effect 
 in bringing the rain. But Kruger stopped it because 
 it was wrong to ' fire shells at the Almighty.' You 
 would think that a little state like this might be an 
 ideal one with its simple scattered population of 
 farmers. But it is by no means so. Corruption and 
 injustice are only too prevalent. At the start off they 
 were unfortunate in their choice of President. The 
 state was at war with the Basutos at the time when 
 he was elected ; and three months after he was made 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 President he had to be deposed, because he was dis- 
 covered selling arms to the Basutos. 
 
 The Dutch don't treat the natives as well as we 
 do. Yet in some respects their laws are wise. A 
 native may not live in the Free State without doing 
 some definite work, unless he pays a tax of Ss. a 
 month : this is, I think, a wise rule. 
 
 We had two very nice services last Sunday at the 
 English church ; I preach twice to-morrow. 
 
 To C T. W. 
 
 Durban : July 1899. 
 I write to congratulate you most heartily on your 
 First Class. ... I believe you will find in a year's 
 time that whatever your work may be, contact with 
 others — the necessity of influencing and guiding 
 them — will be a tremendous help to you in your own 
 life. . . . 
 
 Good man ! I am delighted to think that you 
 may see the Bishop of Durham. Prophets' eyes are 
 needed out here to catch the glory which must be 
 slowly — so slowly — gaining on the shade. There is 
 so much materialism, so little refinement and spiritu- 
 ality. 
 
 I had a grand voyage : only three people rescued 
 from drowning before I got on board, and two stowa- 
 ways after we left Madeira, and two or three days of 
 rough weather. I enjoyed it. . . . 
 
 I had afternoon tea, or rather coffee, with Uncle 
 Paul. He is a strong, fine old man. He was sitting 
 puffing away at his large pipe. It was after a long 
 day's work in the secret Volksraad. He was tired. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 115 
 
 * It is hard work,' he said, ' for the head.' The State 
 attorney, a young Christ's man, explained to him that 
 
 * we were both at the same school in England.' Kruger 
 was eloquent on the subject of the Petition. He told 
 me that some of the 21,000 had died three years 
 before they signed it, and some had signed it owing 
 to a bottle of whisky. * And I want you to let that 
 be known in England ' (I know anything said to you 
 will circulate— by experience). He said, did the 
 subtle old man, that he wanted to do what was right 
 and fair irrespective of nationality. 
 
 This Transvaal question is complicated. I thought 
 it easy at first. But now I can see no moral grounds 
 of any sort for a war with the Boers, in spite of their 
 iniquities. There is a great deal to be said on their 
 side, and much iniquity concealed under such specious 
 phrases as * Imperialism,' * Supremacy of Great 
 Britain in South Africa.' I cannot see that we have 
 a real cause for war, but it is a big question with 
 many sides. If England goes to war and wins, she 
 will have her work cut out. * Can she afford,' said 
 the Attorney of the Transvaal to me, ' to have a 
 second Ireland at the distance of some 5,000 or 6,000 
 'miles from home ? What if she had war in India ? ' 
 
 To W. A. B. 
 
 Lucknow Lodge, Berea, Durban : August 22, 1899. 
 
 I thank my God in my prayers on your behalf 
 for His goodness in granting you His best gift — a 
 human soul to love and to inspire. Together you 
 will be able to know and love Him better than either 
 of you could alone. You cannot make your love too 
 
 I 2 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 sacred ; as you know God you will learn to know one 
 another. 
 
 We are inclined to think that we know all that 
 love means. The truth is, we are only beginners. 
 Thank God that we are in the school, although only 
 in one of the lowest forms. He will teach us, as years 
 go by, to sanctify ourselves for the sake of another. 
 We have not learned to love until we are living the 
 highest possible life, in order that the object of our 
 affection may become a saint. God is giving you a 
 present, the value of which you see in part now, you 
 will realise fully hereafter. You must wrestle with 
 God for her and for yourself If you are true to the 
 highest, both of you will rise together and see God. 
 If you are not, she may not be able to mount alone. 
 
 I am filled with joy and hope as 1 think of you 
 both. I believe that you will live for God more com- 
 pletely now than ever before, and that you will be a 
 fuller blessing to your people. You have my prayers. 
 I want you to make your ideals higher and higher. 
 Then, when you have gained one height, you will find 
 that what you took for the summit from the plain 
 was not really so : there were further peaks beyond. 
 
 It is the beginning of an endless life. If God 
 Himself be the centre of all, the nearer we are to Him, 
 the nearer we are to one another. I am glad that 
 your wife is one who shares in your ideals, who lives 
 for the highest. What a life in store for you here 1 
 And there — 
 
 Before the judgment seat, 
 Though changed and glorified each face, 
 Not unremembered you will meet 
 For endless ages to embrace. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 117 
 
 You will be nearer the centre then, and nearer to one 
 another. 
 
 May God Himself bless you, dear old fellow! 
 Forgive this poor attempt at a letter. I share in your 
 joy, although I am not actually with you. I never 
 remember any wedding outside my own family which 
 has given me greater pleasure. It was good of you 
 to ask me to be present — very good. 
 
 B , I a77i glad. You must thank God and ask 
 
 Him to tell you what it all means, and for her sake 
 live as good a life as you possibly can. 
 
 With best love I am your friend, 
 
 Forbes. 
 
 To a Frieftd after hearing of his intended ordination. 
 
 Durban : August 1899. 
 
 Your ordination will be like my own over again. 
 It is unutterably good of God ... to put it into 
 your heart to live the life which I had prayed might 
 be yours. MsifoTf^av toutwi^ ovk tyw %a/Jti/, Xva aKovuy 
 TO. i/MU TSKva h T7] aXrjdsla irspLiraTovvTa . . . 
 
 . . . If your temptations are great it is because 
 your nature is rich and noble ; and when it is dis- 
 ciplined you will have tremendous power. I shall 
 not be content until your every thought is led captive 
 to ' the obedience of the Christ.' You are born to be 
 a saint, and you will be wretched until you are one. 
 You are not the kind of man who can do things by 
 halves. 
 
 I think I have told you of my father's words 
 spoken during his last illness : ' If I had a thousand 
 
ii8 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 lives, I would give them all — all to the ministry.* 
 You will not regret your decision. If angels could 
 envy, how they would envy us our splendid chance 
 — to be able, in a world where everything unseen 
 must be taken on sheer faith, in a world where the 
 contest between the flesh and the spirit is being 
 decided for the universe, not only to win the battle 
 ourselves but also to win it for others ! To help a 
 brother up the mountain while you yourself are only 
 just able to keep your foothold, to struggle through 
 the mist together— that surely is better than to stand 
 at the summit and beckon. You will have a hard 
 time of it, I know ; and I would like to make it 
 smoother and to * let you down ' easier ; but I am 
 sure that God, who loves you even more than I do, 
 and has absolute wisdom, will not tax you beyond 
 your strength. . . . I'll pray for you, like the widow 
 in the parable, and I have immense belief in prayer. 
 . . . You remember what was said of Maurice, ' He 
 always impressed me as a man who was naturally 
 weak in his will ; but an iron will seemed to work 
 through him.' That Will can work through you and 
 transform you, but for God's sake don't trust to your 
 own will. . . . 
 
 If you are ordained it will be because there is one 
 who in St. Paul's words — 6 acfyopio-as fis sk KoCktas 
 fMTjTpos fxov — was separating you from birth and 
 educating you with a view to the Gospel of Christ . . . 
 
 Tasks in hours of insight willed 
 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.^ 
 
 ^ Matthew Arnold, Morality* 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS U9 
 To his mother, 
 
 Estcourt, Natal: August i8, 1899. 
 
 General Gordon came to Kokstad on his way to 
 Basutoland. When he arrived he went to the Royal 
 Hotel, ordered a room, threw open the window, and 
 spent two hours in prayer and meditation. The 
 next day was Sunday. He asked Mr. Adkin what 
 was being done for 1,000 Cape Mounted Infantry 
 then stationed there, and when he learnt that nothing 
 was being done for their spiritual food, he burst into 
 tears. On Monday morning the first telegram which 
 he sent off to the Cape Government was a request 
 that a chaplain should be appointed. Mr. Adkin 
 was appointed and remained chaplain until the force 
 was disbanded. General Gordon went on to Basuto- 
 land, and had wonderful power over the natives. 
 He told them that no force would be brought against 
 them ; he himself was without weapons. He was 
 settling the country, when news came to him that 
 the Cape Government was, contrary to stipulation, 
 sending an armed force against them ; so he left the 
 country in twenty-four hours. 
 
 Cecil Rhodes was once at Kokstad. When he 
 was near the place, he lay down on the hillside and 
 exclaimed: 'Oh, how I wish they would let me 
 alone— let me stay here ! ' However, he had to go 
 down to be feted. He was listless, and bored by the 
 banquet, until the present mayor began to attack him 
 violently in his speech, and to complain about the 
 Cape Government, and to express a desire that Natal 
 would take them over. Then Rhodes woke up with 
 
I20 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 a vengeance and gave them a great speech, Ixopo 
 is where Rhodes started out in South Africa. His 
 name still figures on the magistrates' books — fined 
 lo/. for selling a gun to a native. 
 
 To his cousin^ J. C, H., on the occasion of the death 
 of his brother. 
 
 December 7, 1899. 
 
 You know, without my saying it, that you have 
 my deep sympathy and prayers at this time. . . . 
 We dare not and cannot sorrow as do others who 
 have no certain hope. Our sorrow is of another 
 kind. For I am quite sure that 
 
 In His vast world above, 
 A world of broader love, 
 God hath some grand employment for His son.^ 
 
 How real it all makes that other world, to have our 
 own brothers there ! It makes it in a deeper sense 
 our home. 
 
 To the mother of his godchild, Margaret Forbes, 
 
 Dore House, St. Leonards : January 10, 1900. 
 
 I am so glad to feel that my little godchild will 
 have real training. I don't know how far I received 
 such a training myself at an early age ... I came 
 towards the end of a large family. The only per- 
 manent instruction which I can remember imparted 
 to me by my nursery maid was a caution not to look 
 
 » Faber, The Old Labourer, 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 121 
 
 behind me when I passed people in the street, 
 enforced by the biblical precept, * Remember Lot's 
 wife.' I know what a fascination I had to look 
 behind, accompanied by a terrible dread of the con- 
 sequences. 
 
 I have always felt that Faber's *God of my Child- 
 hood ' describes the normal and true development of 
 a child's life. I am sure that, although the gravity 
 of sin should be early recognised, greater stress 
 should be laid upon the Fatherhood and kindness 
 of God. I was noticing to-day, when reading the 
 second lesson, how Westcott and Hort have placed 
 the clause in the Lord's Prayer which speaks of the 
 Fatherhood of God in a line by itself as a heading to 
 the whole prayer, putting a colon after the clause, 
 and beginning the first petition with a capital letter. 
 The prayer begins with * Fatherhood ' and ends with 
 a reference to ' Sinfulness.' I think this fact is sig- 
 nificant We may not all be intended to come to 
 know religious truth in that order. But I think we 
 are intended, when we do know it, to lay even more 
 stress on the Fatherhood of God than on our own 
 imperfections. It is a wonderful and terrible thing 
 to watch the development of a human spirit. We 
 can understand so little about any life, even when it 
 is near and dear to us. But I am not sure that we 
 cannot learn more about others than we can about 
 ourselves. I never think it is profitable to study 
 oneself too closely ! I never could meditate with 
 any profit on my sins. But there, I dare say, I differ 
 from many others. 
 
 Well, I hope that the hair of my godchild is 
 
122 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 growing, and that she has now more than her god- 
 father. His is coming to an untimely end. 
 
 To F, S. H.^ who had recently become a chaplain in 
 the Navy. 
 
 St. Leonards: January il, 1900. 
 
 I am thinking of you in your new, difficult, and 
 interesting life, and wondering how you like it. Or, 
 rather, I am sure that you like it in its main features. 
 There are in every life drawbacks and discourage- 
 ments, for we live by faith and not by sight, and 
 faith must be perfected in the midst of perplexities 
 and contradictions. The mists are useful. It would 
 not do to have brilliant sunshine all the time. For 
 in that case, where would faith come in ? Steering 
 towards our port in the fog means trusting the Pilot. 
 * Mercifully grant that we, which know Thee now by 
 faith, may after this life have the fruition of Thy 
 glorious Godhead.' I suppose that none of us fully 
 knows what this prayer means. I think that there 
 will be more need of faith hereafter than we usually 
 think. Can we ever apprehend the Father or the 
 Son without faith ? The deepest truths are grasped 
 by faith not sight. The man who has learned to 
 exercise faith here will have fuller scope for his 
 faith hereafter. What a shock to wake up in the 
 next world and to find that the riddles of life still 
 need faith for their solution ! Yet I imagine that it 
 will be so. Only faith will be able to go deeper than 
 here. The faith perfected in the mists of life will, in 
 the sunshine of eternity, see deeper into the meaning 
 of events. I wish I had more faith. Not sudden 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 123 
 
 fliVhts of faith annihilating time and space and rising 
 up" to the throne of heaven. But I wish I could 
 ground all my actions on faith, and regularly see the 
 invisible and live as one who could see always and 
 everywhere the Unseen. We are schooled in different 
 ways. We cannot attain to perfection in a night. 
 As we advance in the Christian life progress seems 
 slower. In some sense it is so. It is easier to cast 
 off a number of definite bad habits clearly inconsis- 
 tent with the ideal just at first, than to perfect self- 
 sacrifice, humility, and self-discipline. But we are 
 advancing, though we know it not. If the engines 
 are always kept working, we shall reach our goal 1 
 
 To C. N. W.y who had recently been ordained. 
 
 St. Leonards-on-Sea : Januar}' 12, 1900. 
 
 You must remember how much your future 
 efficiency is dependent upon a judicious use of your 
 strength during the next two or three years. I am 
 sure you are right in looking back upon your life 
 and tracing in its developments a higher than human 
 guidance. It is a helpful thing to trace now and 
 anon God's hand in our individual Hfe. It brings 
 Him nearer to us, and it is an awful thought that 
 He is actually working within us. It makes us trust 
 Him for time to come even when the prospect is 
 gloomy. I think that we do well to spend some 
 time in trying to interpret details of our past life. 
 As years go on, we should have such a firm faith 
 founded on the rock of experience that we will not 
 be lightly shaken. Peace should be a characteristic 
 
124 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 of our life — the joy and peace which come from a 
 certainty that there is a Purpose in all events. The 
 sense that God has been with us in the past is a help 
 in interpreting the history of our nation. Even our 
 troubles are a proof that He is disciplining us. For 
 the service of Intercession, which my brother uses 
 in Westminster Abbey at the time of this war, the 
 opening sentence is ' The Lord our God be with us,' 
 and the answer is, ' As He was with our fathers.' 
 
 The College is getting on well. You must come 
 up and see me this year, while you still know a 
 number of men. I have now a little evening service 
 — compline — in my rooms at lo o'clock ; Masterman 
 asked me to have it. He asked men to come, and 
 they asked others. I purposely refrained from ask- 
 ing any one. We are sometimes a goodly number. 
 I think it is helpful to those who come. It is, I 
 know, to me. We have a hymn when we have suffi- 
 cient musical talent I 
 
 To G.J. C. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : 1 900. 
 
 Gwatkin has exploded Anthony, * who never 
 existed.' But for all that I think Anthony is much 
 like Adam and Eve. The originals may * never have 
 existed.' Yet their story belongs to all tinre. And 
 there will be Anthonies and Adams and Eves to the 
 end of time. It comforts me to feel that that which 
 makes for evil is not my true self, but a wretched, 
 cunning animal existence independent of me, exist- 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 125 
 
 ing before I came into being, although capable of 
 appealing to me — a serpent 
 
 I am half glad and half sorry to hear of your 
 harmonium. Public worship is a terribly difficult 
 thing, and it is well at times that we should realise 
 its difficulties, and have it stripped bare of many 
 helpful accessories. Yet worship in a village church 
 impresses me. As in a college chapel, I realise 
 then the continuity of the race. An old church 
 tells me of generations of men who lived my life, 
 to whom the present was everything, and the dead 
 almost nothing, who never could seriously believe 
 that some day the world would whirl and follow 
 the sun without them. It tells me more than 
 most things of what St. Paul means when he said 
 that we were all making one perfect man. And I 
 am humbled and thankful to know that I in my 
 generation can do something towards the Christ * that 
 is to be.' 
 
 Read the Old Testament itself Nothing will 
 atone for lack of knowledge of the Bible. Robertson 
 Smith's and Adam Smith's books (especially the 
 latter's) on the Old Testament Prophets ought to 
 prove useful. . . . When I call a man by his Christian 
 name, I usually make it a rule to pray for him. 
 I shall do so in your case. I will try to pray every 
 day. I wonder whether you would sometimes pray 
 for me : I believe immensely in the power of prayer. 
 It is the greatest favour I can ask of you, and I know 
 I have no right to prefer the request ; but it would 
 be kind of you if you could occasionally. One needs 
 all the help one can get in this strange life up here. 
 
126 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Now I will end. I have written you a strange, 
 unreserved letter. Forgive me. How I wish this 
 
 dreadful war was at an end ! U 's going was a 
 
 blow to me ; but I am sure he did the right thing. 
 I admire and love that man. . . . 
 
 To G,J. C. 
 
 Castleton, Swanage : 1900. 
 
 , . . You will not have misinterpreted my silence. 
 I could not answer your letter until I had secured a 
 time for quiet thought and for prayer. When I try 
 to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am doing 
 better when I am praying for you than when I am 
 writing to you. Yet I must write. ... It is strange 
 that God should have made us thus. To those whom 
 He honours most He gives largest capacity for love, 
 and therefore largest capacity for suffering. It is 
 still more strange that we would not wish to be with- 
 out the love in spite of the agony which it brings. 
 It must be because 
 
 All loves are shadows cast 
 By the beautiful eternal hills 
 Of Thine unbeginning past. 
 
 I feel this truth * in seasons of calm weather.' But 
 at other times I ask myself, I ask God, angrily, 
 Why should some men have no obstacle to their 
 love ? Why should another suffer more than any one 
 can tell— more than, it sometimes seems to me, can 
 ever be requited ? I cannot answer the question. 
 But I often think of the great unsatisfied heart of 
 God, and then I think of this poor unsatisfied heart 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 127 
 
 made m His image, and I feel that He understands 
 me, and that I understand Him better than I used 
 to do, before this terrible hunger of love began. 
 
 I pray God that He will deal tenderly with you, 
 
 G , and I am sure that He will. It cuts me to the 
 
 heart to think of your suffering, and I would stop it 
 this moment if I could. So would God — for He 
 loves you more than I do— unless it were the best 
 thing for you. It is written of the Son of man, 
 EfiaOsv d(t>' 03V siraOsv. May the same words be true 
 of you and of me ! God bless you and give you 
 Light and Peace ! 
 
 Peace is something more than joy, 
 Even the joys above ; 
 
 For peace, of all created things, 
 Is likest Him we love. 
 
 This letter may appear cold to you. It is not 
 I feel more deeply than I write. . . . Some day, if 
 you care to hear, I will tell you something about my 
 own imperfect life. I can't write it down. Later 
 the day will dawn. But God sends the darkness 
 that we may learn to trust Him. I have never yet 
 found Him to fail. We cannot trust Him too much. 
 
 To the mother of a friend, after having been 
 present at his funeral. 
 
 Cambridge : April 22, 1900. 
 
 I feel I must write and tell you how grateful I 
 am to you for your kindness in allowing me to be 
 present on Thursday. Whenever I think of your 
 
128 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 son who has passed away, that text comes into my 
 mind : * Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God.* He was pure in heart, and I cannot think 
 of him as lifeless, but as actually seeing God. ... I 
 am thankful to have been allowed to be his friend. 
 I shall never forget him ; his life remains a source of 
 strength and inspiration to me. It comforts me now 
 to know that he is sinking deeper and deeper into 
 the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. 
 
 You were talking to me about W ; I could not 
 
 say all that I wished to say. ... I am very, very 
 slow to suggest ordination to a man. I realise the 
 responsibility of doing so, but there is no man whom 
 
 I desire to see ordained more than W ; he has 
 
 been to me more help than I can possibly say. I 
 dare not try to tell you all that he has done for me, 
 because you would think I was exaggerating. I 
 cannot help feeling that, if he helps me so much, he 
 might help others also, and that, if he were ordained, 
 he would have singular opportunities for rendering 
 such help. But I do not press him in the matter, 
 because I might do wrong ; but I pray again and 
 again that, if God wishes him to be ordained. He will 
 make His purpose clear, and I am quite sure that 
 He will not leave us in the dark. 
 
 To C T, W. 
 
 Cambridge : July 1900. 
 
 I was delighted to read in the paper yesterday of 
 your election to a fellowship. . . . The life will be a 
 harder one than that of an ordinary parish clergy- 
 man ; it will be easier to lose sight of ideals. But 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 129 
 
 the importance of the work is in proportion to its 
 difficulty. Blessed is the man who finds his work, 
 and does it ; and you will be blessed. . . . 
 
 You should read St. Patrick's * Confession/ a 
 genuine work of my distinguished countryman. It 
 is full of humility and zeal. I give you a quotation : 
 'After I had come to Ireland I used daily to feed 
 cattle, and I often prayed during the day. More and 
 more did the love of God and the fear of Him increase, 
 and faith became stronger and the spirit was moved ; 
 so that in one day I said as many as a hundred 
 prayers, and in the night nearly the same. . . . And 
 there was no sluggishness in me, as I now see there 
 is, for at that time the spirit was fervent within me.' 
 Pathetic — that last part. He might have been living 
 at Cambridge ! But I hope better things for you. 
 
 To C T. W. 
 
 Thirlmere : September 1900. 
 My thoughts are with you now — and my prayers. 
 * He had seven stars — in His right hand,' was the 
 thought which comforted me at my own ordination, 
 when I felt, as seldom before, my own hollowness and 
 incapacity. We can shed light — we are safe — because 
 we are * in His right hand.' ' The eternal God is our 
 refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.' 
 We can never go beyond His love and care. In 
 moments of perplexity and uncertainty, although we 
 cannot feel His presence, He is there. * In His right 
 hand.' 'They that turn many to righteousness shall 
 shine as the stars for ever and ever.' 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 May God give you the power to love and the 
 power to pray ! Much prayer and much love are 
 needed for a successful ministry. Good-bye, and God 
 bless you and make you a true and faithful pastor ! 
 Remember St. Paul's words : 17 hvvafiLs h aadsvsLa 
 TsXsiraL rjBLO-ra ovv fxaXKov Kav')(ri<TO^aL sv rais 
 aa-OsvsiaLS, Xva iina-Krjvroa-Tj stt^ s/jus rj Bvva/juis rov 
 ^pKTTov * orav fycip aa-Qsvo), tots hvvaTOs sIjjll, 
 
 To W. D. H, 
 Dale Head Post Office, Thirlmere : September 20, 1900. 
 
 My thoughts and my prayers are with you at 
 this time. I remember how at my own ordination, 
 when I felt as never before my own utter weakness 
 and incapacity, the thoughts in the first chapter of 
 the Revelation, of Christian ministers as * stars in His 
 right hand ' comforted and supported me. In His 
 right hand — with His power we can do all things. 
 As the lesson for to-day says, 77 hvvafius sv aaOsvsia 
 TsXsiTac, strength is perfected in weakness, otuv 
 aaOsvco, tots hvvaTos slfiL. 
 
 You will feel more, as years go on, the greatness 
 of the task which you are undertaking — the over- 
 whelming responsibility— the dread lest through any 
 carelessness on your part one of the least of the sheep 
 may be lost. But you will also feel more and more 
 that you are * in His right hand.' And if the eternal 
 God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting 
 arms, you need not fear what the devil or man can 
 do unto you. I pray that God may be with you and 
 give you the spirit of prayer and the spirit of love. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 131 
 
 Your ministry will only be effective if you pray much 
 and love much. And if you make mistakes, yet if 
 you love much your sins will be forgiven. 
 
 To his brother, a doctor in South Africa, 
 
 September 1900. 
 
 When I feel what the grace of God has done for 
 my life, what it is doing, what it will do, I can despair 
 of no one else. I am filled with wonder and amaze- 
 ment and thanksgivings and hopes. I am sometimes 
 so thankful that I still live, that in a world of light 
 and dark shadows I can show my faith in God, before 
 the other world dawns with its full day and unclouded 
 brightness— and most of all that I can here and now 
 pray for those whom He has taught me to love. I 
 cannot conceive this world without prayer. It is 
 worth while making any efforts, however desperate, 
 to learn to pray. When the Day dawns, how 
 wonderful it will be to look back and trace the path 
 through which He has led us in the Twilight 1 
 
 To F. J. a 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : 1900. 
 
 The more He tries you by His silence, the greater 
 to my mind is the proof that He believes in you. 
 He knows you will come through. He has great 
 work for you to do, and therefore you need a strong, 
 perfected faith, and He is trying to give you it. 
 
 I am so sorry at what you tell me about prayer. 
 But do go on. When things are at their darkest, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 light comes. After all God knows how much you 
 can bear, and He will not, if you will only persevere, 
 allow you to be utterly confounded. Don't be in the 
 least discouraged at your inability to concentrate your 
 attention. Even a man who had lived in the presence 
 of God for years has told us that 
 
 The world that looks so dull all day 
 
 Glows bright on me at prayer, 
 And plans that ask no thought but these, 
 
 Wake up and meet me there. 
 My very flesh has restless fits ; 
 
 My changeful limbs conspire 
 With all these phantoms of the mind 
 
 My inner self to tire. 
 
 Do you expect to fare better, when you are exer- 
 cising faculties which have been for long more or less 
 dormant ? The same man goes on to say — and I 
 think it is a comforting truth — that God sees further 
 than we do, sees what we mean ; 
 
 These surface troubles come and go, 
 
 Like ruffliugs of the sea ; 
 The deeper depth is out of reach 
 
 To all, my God, but Thee. 
 
 Even if your conscience condemns you, remember 
 that God is greater than your conscience. He sees 
 that you want to pray, and the battle is half won when 
 there is even the want. I like these old words of the 
 hymn ; 
 
 Satan trembles when he sees 
 The weakest saint upon his knees, 
 
 even if he can't collect his thoughts. I find it 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 133 
 
 usually easier to pray for others than for myself, I 
 believe in beginning by praying for what is easiest. 
 I don't kneel down. I find it more possible to con- 
 centrate my attention when I am walking about or 
 sitting down. And I tell God what I know about a 
 man, and how I want him to live a better life. Some- 
 times I seem to struggle for him as though for very 
 life. I go on and on and on — sometimes repeating 
 the same request. I try to copy the poor widow who 
 wearied out the dishonest judge. I am not distressed 
 when my thoughts wander. I know that they will 
 always wander without God's help. The distress 
 occasioned by wandering thoughts, and the attempt 
 to trace the stages by which they wandered, I regard 
 as temptations of the devil. ... I go back as calmly 
 as possible to the matter in hand. 
 
 Excuse my 'egoism.' I put it in the first person, 
 because I believe my own experience will help you 
 more than rules derived from the experience of others. 
 
 Suppose you spend half an hour in this way, and 
 only really pray for three or four minutes, your efforts 
 will be more than rewarded. You will have done 
 more than you know for the person for whom you 
 have prayed. And the next half-hour you will find 
 that you can concentrate your attention for a minute 
 or two longer. Don't think too much about yourself 
 when you pray. You must lose your soul if you 
 would save it. 
 
 There is probably some one thing or some one 
 person easier than others for you to pray for. Begin 
 with that. 
 
 I never try, as some people do, to classify and 
 
134 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 enter into details about my sins. I bring the whole 
 contradictory, weary, and unintelligible mass of them 
 to God, and leave them with Him. I am quite sure 
 I shall never do better without Him. But I know 
 that He believes in me, and will help me in spite of 
 myself. He believes in you too, dear old fellow I 
 May God bless you for your kindness to me ! Write 
 me just a short note to tell me that you don't despise 
 me in spite of what must seem to you rather unin- 
 telligible and ridiculous confessions. 
 
 I can't help it. And if you can bring yourself to 
 do it, call me too by my Christian name* 
 
 To the same, 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : September 28, 19CX5. 
 
 I feel more and more the necessity of being alone 
 occasionally for some time — to get time enough to 
 pray. I think my supreme desire is to be a man of 
 prayer. You must help me to accomplish the desire : 
 * Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo.* 
 
 So it is with prayer. As the stone gets worn 
 away, not by the force of the drop of water but by its 
 constant trickling, so prayer often renewed must at 
 length attain its end. It is a wonderful privilege to 
 be able to state all one's wishes and hopes for others 
 in prayer —to know that there can be there no possi- 
 bility of misunderstanding — to tell to God the in- 
 comprehensible depth of one's love, and to feel that 
 He knows what it means, because He Himself is love. 
 It is glorious to be made in His image, and to be sure 
 that all one's highest yearnings are a reflection — 
 however broken, partial, and unsightly — of His own 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 135 
 
 marvellous life. We have indeed cause to be grateful 
 for our ' creation.' I often look at the poor dumb 
 creatures, and thank God that He has given me such 
 full powers of love, which they cannot understand : 
 for I would rather have the pains of love than any 
 other pleasure. 
 
 To F. S. H.f a chaplain in the Navy. 
 
 Cambridge : November 4, 1900. 
 
 I ought to have written before this. The fact 
 that I did not answer at once is partly accounted for 
 by my having a good deal of work to do, and partly 
 by physical weakness. I have not been very well 
 this term. It is cruel of you to suspect me of having 
 forgotten all about you. I am not that sort. I owe 
 too much to you in the past ever to forget you. 
 I don't think that you really suspected me of incon- 
 stancy. I am so sorry that you are sometimes lonely 
 and very miserable. I feel at times weak, physically 
 weak. I think that at such times one can lean back, 
 as it were, on the Divine arms. He understands our 
 weakness and weariness. He knows what loneliness 
 and sadness mean. And He is not extreme to mark 
 what we do amiss. He knows that we are but flesh. 
 And He * dwells not in the light alone, but in the dark- 
 ness and the light.' Even when the darkness hides 
 Him and we cannot find where He is, we can, as it 
 were, reach out our hands to Him, and we are safe. 
 God has much to teach us while we are teaching 
 others. And life is not exactly the same as we 
 thought at the beginning. He teaches us by unex- 
 
136 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 pected experiences. But the comfort is that He never 
 changes ; we may be weary, but He never slumbers 
 nor sleeps. Sometimes we feel very fit and capable. 
 Then is the time to pray and to rise to the heights. 
 Later, when we are incapable, although it is hard to 
 rise, we need not fall. When the mist clears we can 
 go on again, and it may be that we shall find that 
 even in the mist we had gone further than we 
 thought. The deep snow and the long dark rainy 
 days are necessary for the perfecting of the fruit, 
 as well as the sunshine. And we do need sunshine. 
 I feel more and more grateful and thankful to God 
 for His goodness. He has been so good to me, and 
 I don't deserve it. And I think that if you look 
 back and look forward you will feel more and more 
 His marvellous sympathy and affection. I am glad 
 you have been reading Robertson's Life. Though he 
 may have been almost morbid at times, he was a 
 great man and did a great work. . . . You will find 
 later that your work has been far more effective than 
 you expected. Don't try to rush it. You can't help 
 men much until you know them very well ; and 
 when you know them you find how utterly different 
 they are from what you had expected them to be. At 
 least I do. No two men are alike. Each man that 
 you come really to know is utterly different from 
 any man you have ever met or will meet. 
 
 To F. /. C, 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : November 5. 1900. 
 
 It is good of you to think of me and above all to 
 pray for me. I need your prayers — and most of all 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 137 
 
 when I am run down and unable to pray myself. I 
 can see the mountain top at times : then the mist 
 comes down, and I cannot see the way ; I try to 
 keep where I am, though I may not be able to 
 advance ; and when the mist clears I go on again. 
 Possibly, sometimes, we may be going forward even 
 in the mist, although we seem to be making no 
 progress, or going backward. 
 
 God judges by a light 
 Which baffles mortal sight. 
 
 I often wish I had more physical strength and was 
 able to do what other men can do ; but I can't. And 
 I have no doubt that all is well — that I am made to 
 do one particular piece of work, and that I have 
 strength enough for that — and thank God for that. 
 
 To a brother in South Africa, 
 
 December 1900. 
 
 It is a marvellous thought that God can reveal 
 Himself to man — even primitive man. In those 
 stories Jehovah is very near to man. He walks in 
 the garden at nightfall. He shuts Noah into the 
 Ark. He comes down to see the city and the tower 
 'which the children of men builded.' He talks with 
 Moses face to face as a man speaketh to his friend — 
 and a ladder connects heaven and earth, and the 
 angels, instead of using wings, walk up and down the 
 ladder — and, behold, Jehovah stood above it. At any 
 moment you might meet Jehovah Himself Three 
 men come to see Abraham — and Jehovah has 
 
138 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 appeared to him. A man wrestles with Jacob, and 
 he has seen God face to face. They were right when 
 they thought of God as very near to man, of man as 
 capable of reflecting Goo's likeness. Ye too shall 
 see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending 
 and descending upon — the Son of man. It is good 
 for us as children to read these stories to realise that 
 heaven is very near to earth. It is good for us as 
 men to read them again to realise that heaven is even 
 nearer earth than we thought as children. As I said 
 before, how marvellous it is that God can reveal 
 Himself to man and through man, that He has 
 revealed Himself entirely, * the perfect man,' as 
 Maurice says, reflecting the perfect God — God and 
 man so near one to the other that men can look 
 upon the Son of man and see God — see Him in His 
 perfection ! Our years ought to be bound each to 
 each by natural piety. The child should surely be 
 the father of the man. 
 
 With age Thou growest more divine, 
 More glorious than before ; 
 
 I fear Thee with a deeper fear 
 Because — I love Thee more. 
 
 I have been reading Moody's Life. It has much the 
 same effect as Finney's used to have in days gone by — 
 it creates a longing to work and live for God, to bring 
 men nearer to Him, to come nearer to Him myself. 
 Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and there is 
 none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. 
 
 What a wonderful thing that we, as a family, are 
 so united — that our Ideal is so much the same— 
 isn't it? 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 139 
 
 To F, S, H. 
 
 St. Moritz: January 6, 1 90 1. 
 
 I have succeeded in unfreezing my ink, so I can 
 write and — although it is late to do so — wish you a 
 happy new century. It is only once in a lifetime 
 that one can do that sort of thing ! I am out here 
 for my health. I wasn't up to much last term. 
 However, I am as fit as a lord now, and return to 
 Cambridge this week. I have been reading out here 
 two very different kinds of books. One is Well- 
 hausen's * History of Israel,' the other Moody's Life 
 by his son. Wellhausen's book gives you in outline 
 the position of modern advanced criticism of the Old 
 Testament. I have never before studied the history 
 from the critical point of view really seriously. The 
 study has proved extraordinarily interesting, and I 
 must say that in the main I agree thoroughly with 
 Wellhausen's position. You will see it more or less 
 clearly put in that * History of the Hebrew People ' 
 in two small volumes by Kent which I recommended 
 to you before. The history of the gradual progress 
 of the divine revelation to the human race is a mar- 
 vellous study : the way in which that people were 
 educated to become the teachers of the world is 
 utterly different from anything which we should have 
 devised. I am struck more and more by the mar- 
 vellous fact that God can and does reveal Himself — 
 in His essential moral nature — to man ; that we are 
 so made that we can apprehend the revelation ; nay, 
 that we in turn can in measure reveal Him to men ! 
 
 Moody's Life stirs me up to realise more the worth 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 of the individual, the surpassing value of man's moral 
 and spiritual nature. I long to help men to see what 
 I see, to love Him whom I love, and the failure of 
 my efforts is largely, I feel, due to defects in myself. 
 Still I do not despair of doing something. 
 
 To his brother Edward in South Africa, 
 
 Brislington, Bristol : April lo, 1901. 
 
 I was much interested in . . . (your letter) and in 
 seeing a little into your life. There is a strange 
 family reserve among us which I sometimes deplore. 
 Perhaps it must always be so, that we can tell most 
 readily to strangers our deepest thoughts and feelings. 
 Yet I feel that we ought, as far as we can in this 
 short life, to understand one another. We have been 
 led by different paths to understand different aspects 
 of Truth. Yet, when we have climbed to the top of 
 the hill, I dare say we shall find that our paths were 
 nearer to one another than we ever realised. At any 
 rate, we shall meet on the top. I often think that 
 your whole method of gaining truth must be unlike 
 mine. I use my reason, but I am more than half 
 affection, and it is that which helps me most. My 
 strange love for some men makes me seek to live 
 their lives, to see the world as they see it ; above 
 all, it forces me to pray. Prayer never seems to me 
 irrational ; yet I do not pray so much because my 
 reason bids me as because my affection forces me. 
 I sometimes feel that I should go mad if I didn't or 
 couldn't. And then, again, I am incapable of telling 
 them all I feel, and I have to find some one to tell it 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 141 
 
 to, and I feel forced back on One who knows me 
 through and through, and I find comfort in pouring 
 out my soul to Him — in telling Him all, much that 
 I dare say to no one else — in letting Him sift the 
 good and evil — in asking Him to develop and satisfy 
 the good, and to exterminate the evil. I cannot help 
 trusting Him. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care. 
 
 You will tell me perhaps that I am too much like 
 a woman in matters of faith. Yet so I am made. 
 I must follow the lead of my whole being — not of 
 my mind alone. I often wonder how it is that I 
 love with such a strange, passionate, unutterable 
 affection, and whether many men are like me. 
 
 I am most pleased to hear of your doings, espe- 
 cially of your whist parties. 
 
 To F. S, H.y chaplain on board H.MS. Canopus. 
 
 Brislington : April 10, 1901. 
 
 I am glad that you like your ' parish.' I feel 
 more and more that I should prefer being among 
 sailors to being among soldiers. I am afraid that 
 I should do little good among either. Still I like, 
 or think that I should like, naval officers even more 
 than army officers. If they do talk a great deal of 
 'shop,' that is a healthy sign. I only wish our 
 officers in the army were — I will not say more proud 
 of their profession (for they have, I dare say, suffi- 
 
142 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 cient pride) — but more anxious to learn and to think 
 out matters connected with it. I dare say the naval 
 officer is obliged to act more independently and to 
 think for himself in an emergency ; for the army 
 discipline is carried to such an extreme that the man 
 for some years has seldom any occasion to act on 
 his own initiative — to rise to an occasion. He simply 
 has to ask a superior what to do next. He tends to 
 resemble the Hindu station-master who telegraphed 
 * Tiger on platform ; please wire instructions.' If their 
 talking shop is worrying occasionally, yet be of good 
 comfort, it is on the whole a good sign. It is better 
 than talking golf or polo all day, and better far than 
 loose and unmanly conversation. The more you are 
 interested in the matters yourself, not simply because 
 you want to be all things to all men, if by any means 
 you may gain one or two, but because you are a man 
 and a Christian, and therefore all things human have 
 an interest to you, the more you will enjoy such 
 *shop.' We want not only to affect an interest in 
 what is of vital concern to our neighbours, but to 
 feel it. I begin to realise more now than I used to 
 that I must not simply watch football matches, or 
 run with the boats, because I want to show interest, 
 but because I am learning — however late in the day 
 and however imperfectly — to feel a real concern for 
 such matters. And, strange to say, I am more 
 interested in them than I used to be. Since the 
 Lord took human flesh and interested Himself in all 
 human life, He has left us an example that we may 
 follow in His steps. We must call nothing, and no 
 man, common or unclean. My own life and my own 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 143 
 
 interests are terribly contracted. Sometimes I have 
 been foolish enough to glory in the fact, and to think 
 that I honour God in caring only for my brother's 
 soul and not for his whole life. But love has taught 
 me that this is a low and incomplete view. God 
 numbers the very hairs of our head, and he who loves 
 and tries to help another must enter into his life and 
 care for all that he cares for. I hope that God will 
 spare me a little longer to work in College, and to 
 learn to become one with others — to see life with their 
 eyes, to let them teach me — that so, if it please Him, 
 I may gain some of them for His service. 
 
 The disciple cannot expect to be above the 
 Master. The Master was not popular. He ex- 
 plained His deepest teaching to a few — a very few. 
 If you have one or two to whom you can explain 
 part of your being, thank God. You will find that 
 one man understands one side, another appreci- 
 ates another side. It is a comfort that there is One 
 who knows us through and through. What a terrible 
 blank life would be if we had no God to whom to 
 pour out our whole soul ! There are sides of our 
 being which no one but God seems to be able to 
 apprehend. I am feeling now comfort at nights in 
 simply telling Him all — feelings which I cannot 
 explain to any one else, asking Him to interpret, to 
 sift, to allow the better to live, to annihilate the 
 untrue. I do not cease to expect great things from 
 Him, to expect that He will do for my * parish ' as a 
 whole more than I have dreamed of or wished for. 
 But then 1 am content if He works slowly, and does 
 what I did not wish or expect to happen. He works 
 
144 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 slowly in nature, and I am not surprised if human 
 nature is still more stubborn material for Him to 
 work upon. But what a joy it is when one character 
 in which we are interested, for which we have prayed 
 and wrestled in prayer, shows slight but sure signs 
 of healthy development ! I feel inclined to shout for 
 joy at the miracle — for it is a miracle — and I thank 
 God and take courage. He does not let us see many 
 results, but He lets us see just enough to help us to 
 go forward. It is a help when what is clear and true 
 to us begins to dawn upon another. ' My belief 
 gains infinitely,' says Novalis, * when it is shared by 
 any human soul.' 
 
 Let your * parish ' clearly see that * it is one thing 
 to be tempted, another thing to fall.' Vile, foul 
 thoughts which come to us are not in themselves a 
 sign that we are falling. They are first of all from 
 outside, and are suggestions entirely alien in origin 
 from ourselves ; they are from the devil. They only 
 become wrong when entertained, when welcomed in 
 the least degree as guests and allowed to stay. Our 
 aim is to bring every thought at once into captivity. 
 
 I have just come back from the seaside, and as I 
 looked at the sea I thought more than once of * the 
 ocean of Thy love.' The waves of the sea beat 
 against a stubborn rock and seem to make no impres- 
 sion. But in a few years' time the rock begins to 
 yield. The constant wash of the waves wears it away. 
 So with our hard, stubborn wills. The ocean of His 
 love will reduce them slowly but surely, and likewise 
 the stubborn wills of men around us, thank God ! 
 When you are tired and human strength gives way, 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 145 
 
 remember * the best of all is — God is with us.' I 
 often feel worn out, and then I love, as it were, to 
 lean back upon Him — without speaking — as a child 
 on its mother's arms. 
 
 I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 
 Beyond His love and care. 
 O brother ! if my faith is vain, 
 
 If hopes hke these betray, 
 Pray for me that I too may gain 
 
 The sure and safer way. 
 And Thou, O God, by whom are seen 
 
 Thy creatures as they be, 
 Forgive me if too close I lean 
 My human heart on Thee.^ 
 
 I am, I fear, but a poor friend. I wish you had 
 some one who loved you as well as I did, and who 
 was less weak and selfish. You must not give me up 
 in spite of my defects. I love you and am proud of 
 you — proud to think that you are doing work among 
 men whom I should be powerless to influence. 
 Easter once more brings new life and hope. May 
 the God of all life, of all peace, of all hope, be with 
 you and all your flock ! May He guide pastor and 
 sheep ! Don't despair ; go on manfully ; you are 
 doing greater work than you know, and if your 
 eyes were open that you could see, you would find 
 that the host that was with you was more than all 
 that were against you. Into His keeping I commit 
 you. Good-bye. Your friend 
 
 Forbes. 
 
 > Whittier. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 To W. O, 
 
 Brislington : April 190 1. 
 
 I am glad that the lot has fallen to you in fair 
 places. * It has been said with true wisdom that 
 God means man not only to work but to be happy in 
 his work. . . . Without some sunshine we can never 
 ripen into what we are meant to be.' So writes Dr. 
 Hort. I am reading his Life with great joy. He 
 drank deep of life, and I want to do so also. I want 
 to live in the present — in the sunshine of eternity. I 
 feel more and more inclined to thank God for life and 
 all the good things it brings, and for the friends He 
 has given me, and the measure of strength and 
 health to use in the service of man. 
 
 I had no idea where that Essay had gone. I 
 suppose it is most immature and unsatisfactory ; yet 
 the central idea, however imperfectly expressed, must 
 surely be true. He took Manhood — in its weakness 
 and strength — up into God. He was tempted. That 
 thought helps me immensely. * It is one thing to be 
 tempted, another thing to fall.* We often accuse our- 
 selves wrongly when foul thoughts spring up within 
 us. They are temptations from without — from the 
 devil. They only become sins when entertained as 
 welcome guests. I have lately thought that Christ's 
 life, like ours, was a life of faith, that it needed a 
 real and constant effort of faith for Him to realise 
 His relationship with the unseen Father. Here and 
 hereafter human life is based on faith. If we get 
 this idea into our minds, Christ's temptations become 
 more real. They are temptations to faithlessness. I 
 like your idea that Christ has entered into our man- 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 147 
 
 hood, into the phases (if there be such) * of the life to 
 come.' 
 
 Rest in the Lord. This thought comes home to 
 me more than it used to do. I like to bring all the 
 perplexities of life — the thoughts and feelings which I 
 can explain to no one — of some of which I cannot say 
 whether they are right or wrong, or where the right 
 shades into wrong — and to leave them with Him to 
 develop (if right), to sift, to correct. What a blank 
 life would be without God ! . . . 
 
 Easter brings fresh hope and life. It is glorious 
 to begin existence in a world which has been re- 
 deemed. I am sure — since He rose and defeated 
 death — we ought to trust to life, to delight in it. * I 
 am the Life.' 
 
 Breathe in the fresh air. It is one of the best 
 gifts that the good God has bestowed upon us. We 
 want fresh air not only in our lungs but all through, 
 if I may say so, our being. I long to be more natural 
 and happy — not that I wish for * religious happiness,' 
 but something quite different — the happiness which 
 comes in the right exercise of power and in conscious 
 dependence upon Him in whom we live. 
 
 In reply to a letter from H. P., a master at Clifton 
 Collegey who was in doubt whether he ought to 
 resign his mastership and go down to the College 
 Mission in Bristol, 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : May i, 1901. 
 
 I have not had time to think over the matter yet, 
 but my first feeling is that you ought to be very slow 
 
 L 2 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 to move. If men in your position, who feel keenly 
 interested in the highest welfare of their pupils and 
 long to influence them in spiritual matters, all go 
 away to parish work, what is to become of our public 
 school boys ? Masters are only too anxious to leave 
 for more ' directly spiritual ' work, as they say. But 
 in doing so they leave a work of exceptional difficulty 
 and importance behind, and who is to take their 
 place? I understand and appreciate your feelings, 
 but I am not at all sure that you have any call to go. 
 
 How much directly 'spiritual' work have you 
 with the boys? Could you, if you desired, get 
 more ? 
 
 I will pray over the matter. Do be slow before 
 you decide to leave. I believe you ought to stay, 
 although it may be more difficult to maintain your 
 own spiritual life and ideals in a school than in a 
 parish. You may be doing more good than you 
 know. It is easier to find men to do parish work 
 than to do school work of the highest kind. 
 
 There is a sermon of Lightfoot's in which he 
 urges clergymen at the University not to go away, 
 because it is hard to maintain their spiritual ideals at 
 Cambridge, and because they seem to have so little 
 direct spiritual influence. May not this apply to your 
 work also ? 
 
 To one about to be ordained. 
 
 Cambridge: May 190 1. 
 
 It seems so clear to us that you have a call, that 
 I find it hard to realise that you yourself are un- 
 
LETTERS TO KI5 FRIENDS 
 
 certain. But the very fact that you have been * count- 
 ing the cost/ and that you have no ecstatic joy at 
 the prospect before you, encourages me. I am glad 
 you reahse the difficulties beforehand. What you 
 don't fully see is the strength upon which you will 
 be able to dravr. I often think of those lines of 
 Tennyson : — 
 
 O living Will that shalt endure 
 
 WTien all that seems shall suffer shock, 
 Rise in the spiritual rock. 
 
 Flow through our deeds and make them pure,^ 
 
 That Will can transform our will, and the ver>* weak- 
 ness of our natural will is then a help. The strength 
 is seen and felt to come from an invisible source : 
 
 * Thy will, not my will' 
 
 The terrible need of men to nght against the 
 forces of evil impresses me. The call is so loud on 
 every side. And if men like you cannot hear it, I 
 am driven almost to despair. ... I often think ct 
 my father's words on his deathbed : 'If I had a 
 thousand lives I would give them all — all to the 
 ministr}'.' 
 
 The thought that gave me comfort at my own 
 ordination was a text suggested to me by my brother : 
 
 * He had in His right hand seven stars.' In His right 
 hand — we are safe there. I felt such a worm as I 
 had never felt before. ' But fear not, tl:ou worm 
 Jacob.' . . . Don't look for happiness or peace at 
 this time, but for the presence and power (whether 
 felt or unfelt) of that God whom we both love and 
 
150 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 try to love better. Do not persuade yourself that 
 you do not love God. You do, more than you have 
 any idea of. The part of your ' Ego ' which you 
 would least wish to lose is not even your love for 
 men — but for God. If you had your choice now, 
 and had to decide what part of your being you would 
 retain for eternity, it would be the latter. Beloved, 
 if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our 
 heart. ... * He who loves makes his own the 
 grandeur that he loves.' 
 
 He had in His right hand seven stars. He is 
 the Judge, but He also is our refuge and strength and 
 hope. 
 
 To D. B. K, 
 
 Cambridge: July 1901. 
 
 When we set to work to help others we discover 
 something of our own weakness. But along with 
 that discovery comes the realisation of an inex- 
 haustible fund of strength outside ourselves. We are 
 fighting on the winning side. God must be stronger 
 than all that opposes. It is uphill work, especially 
 at first. But just as in learning a language or learn- 
 ing how to swim, after toiling on with no apparent 
 result, there comes a day when suddenly we realise 
 that we can do it — how we know not : so it is in 
 spiritual matters. There is effort still, sometimes 
 gruesome effort ; but it is aJl different from what it was. 
 We find the meaning of the paradox, * Whose service 
 is perfect freedom.' Love takes the place of law, 
 and, although it is hard at times to serve God, it is 
 still harder to be the permanent servant of Satan. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 151 
 
 Your enthusiasm ought to increase, the more you 
 look life in the face and see its sin and misery. ' God/ 
 said Moody, * can do nothing with a man who has 
 ceased to hope.' Our hope in the possibilities of the 
 individual and of society ought to grow brighter and 
 saner as time goes on. . . . Missionary work — I have 
 often wished to do it myself, but have been 'let 
 hitherto.' ... It is a tremendous help to me to know 
 that we are both serving the same Master and that 
 I can trust you to His love. 
 
 To an Auckland ^brother' after Bishop 
 Westcotfs Death. 
 
 Cambridge : August 1901. 
 
 My thoughts are with you at this time. I am 
 most thankful that you have been a year with that 
 man of God, and have gained ideals and inspiration 
 for work which will haunt you all your life long. In 
 moments of weakness, at times * when your light is 
 low,' the memory of his strenuous, holy life will be a 
 power making for self-discipline and righteousness. 
 And it is more than a memory. For he taught us 
 by word and deed that we are all one man, that 
 those who have realised what it is to belong to the 
 body here will enter more fully into its life there. 
 *We feebly struggle, they in glory shine' — yet we 
 are verily and indeed one. That thought is often a 
 comfort to me. When I feel the contradictions and 
 perplexities and weaknesses of my own life, I love 
 to think that I am part of a whole — that I belong to 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 the same body and share in the same spirit as some 
 other man who is immeasurably my superior. 
 
 When one whom we have known and venerated 
 on earth passes to the eternal home, it seems more 
 like home than it was before. It is peopled not only 
 with countless saints of whom I have heard, but with 
 one whom I have known and seen, and hope to see 
 again. His prayers for us, his influence upon us 
 there are more effective than they could have been 
 here. 
 
 The great triumph of Christianity is to produce a 
 few saints. They raise our ideal of humanity. They 
 make us restless and discontented with our own lives, 
 as long as they are lived on a lower plane. They 
 speak to us in language more eloquent than words : 
 * Come up higher.* 
 
 To F. J. a 
 
 Belvedere Hotel, St. Moritz: Sunday, December 15, 1901. 
 
 I feel more and more thankful that I have not 
 had to wait till the next world to know God's true 
 nature and character and will. It is passing strange 
 that He should love us so much, and wish to unveil 
 Himself to us, * that we might be a kind of firstfruits 
 of His creatures.' But that phrase * stewards of 
 His mysteries' almost appals me. A steward must 
 be faithful, and must render an account of the way 
 in which he has used his master's goods. God grant 
 that at the final reckoning we may not be found un- 
 profitable servants. 
 
 How those simple words in the twenty-third 
 Psalm satisfy us more and more as life advances, 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 153 
 
 and as we realise that He is not our Shepherd only, 
 but the chief Shepherd of the whole flock, and that 
 He has yet other sheep whom He is looking for, 
 and whom He will teach to hear His voice amid 
 the babel tongues of the world. It is a comfort to 
 me to feel that He has no private blessings for me 
 apart from the rest of the family — that we are one 
 in Him, and that each blessing unites us not only 
 to the Head of the family, but to all the brothers 
 within it. 
 
 I suppose at first it is hard to realise the unseen 
 world for long together. But gradually that world 
 dominates our being, and interprets the world we 
 see, and makes all life intelligible and well worth the 
 living. 
 
 To H. J, B. 
 
 Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz : December 16, 1901. 
 
 I feel a new man now in this fresh mountain air. 
 If I always lived here I might be good for something. 
 What a parable of life ! If we could live in the 
 higher world and breathe in its air, what strong, 
 healthy men we should be ! I stayed a night once 
 with Westcott, and it seemed to me that he lived 
 and moved and had his being in a higher region, to 
 which I now and then came as a stranger, and he 
 could see habitually, what I sometimes saw, the way 
 of God in human life. I am sure we are meant to 
 have our home in that higher world, and that we 
 only see life sanely, steadily, and in its true propor- 
 tions, when we view it from that vantage ground. I 
 have always been thankful that I spent that night 
 
154 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 with Westcott, and thereby gained, not simply fresh 
 inspiration, but a radically new revelation of human 
 life and its possibilities. It gave me an insight into 
 the dignity and the destiny of our common human 
 nature. 
 
 You have never been long absent from my 
 thoughts, and at last I have had time and strength 
 to begin to pray for you as I could wish. It is the 
 only way in which I can show my gratitude to you. 
 I don't understand much about prayer, but I think 
 of that strange, bold parable of the unrighteous judge 
 and the widow, and I take my stand on that. I shall 
 not be content until your true self is formed ; and I 
 think that God must be very ready to answer the 
 prayer, however imperfect its form may be, of one 
 who loves another more than he can understand. I 
 like St Paul's words : rsKvia fjuov ovs ooBlvco fJi'S-^pts ov 
 /jiopcjxoOfi Xpt<TT09 iv v/ixtv. Only I wish I were not 
 such a worm myself However, the thought of you 
 compels me to live a better life. If I could only 
 make all my thoughts of you into prayers and 
 actions for you I should be more content. 
 
 Don't imitate Uriah Heep with * Yours most 
 humbly.' I won't stand that nonsense ! and you 
 give yourself away just a few lines above, when you 
 assert that you are too proud to confer a favour on 
 me, and read Greek Testament with me. What a 
 funny chap you are ! Can't you see, you idiot, what 
 a pleasure you give me ? We shall have to com- 
 promise, and I'll have to make some concession to 
 
 your pride. Neither nor I know much about 
 
 your section, but we could help you in your first part 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 155 
 
 papers. Of course, he could do it miles better than 
 I can ; but, all the same, you are going to be my 
 pupil. Promise me that you won't make any 
 arrangement with him until you have talked the 
 matter over with me. I'll make some compro- 
 mise for the sake of your miserable pride, you 
 wretched creature. 
 
 Write to me soon again, if it isn't a great bore. 
 I can't recall as much as I could wish of your con- 
 versations with me. In fact, I have the unpleasant 
 feeling sometimes that I did too much of the talking ! 
 But one or two things that you said to me live in 
 my memory, and make me wish to be more fit to 
 talk to you. 
 
 St. Moritz is much as usual. It is a strange 
 little world in itself The comic and the tragic are 
 blended weirdly together, and nature is unimagin- 
 ably beautiful. I wish you could see this snow. It 
 has an attraction for me, and I am sure it would 
 have for you. I think you understand more about 
 the meaning of beauty than I do. When I see a 
 magnificent landscape, I want to share the sight with 
 some one else. I feel quite lonely when I am inter- 
 preting it alone. I wonder why that is ? 
 
 To F. /. C. 
 
 Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz: December 21, 1901. 
 
 Christmas seems to mean more to me, the longer 
 that I live. I gaze with bewilderment on that stu- 
 pendous mystery of love— the very God entering 
 into and raising our human nature. My whole con- 
 ception of the meaning, the possibilities of our 
 
156 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 common human nature is transformed, as I see that 
 it can become a perfect reflection and manifestation 
 of the Divine nature. * The Word became flesh, and 
 lodged in us! The manger at Bethlehem reverses 
 all our human conceptions of dignity and greatness. 
 * The folly of God is wiser than men.' It is to the 
 humble — to babes — that God can reveal Himself. In 
 them He can find His home. 
 
 O Father, touch the East and light 
 The light that shone when Hope was born. 
 
 It is in Christmas that Tennyson found the birth of 
 Hope. It is Christmas that, as life goes on, bids us 
 never despair — of our own or of human nature 
 around us. 
 
 To a friend at Cambridge, 
 
 Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz : December 30, 1901. 
 
 I shall never forget this last Christmas Day, for 
 your letter came in the evening. I read it again 
 and again, and wonder at it more each time I read it. 
 I can't tell you what I feel about it. I knew that 
 you more or less liked and respected me, but I didn't 
 know that you loved me. I've got what I wanted. 
 When you merely respected me, I dreaded the day 
 when you would find that I was different to what 
 you thought I was. But now I feel I am safe (f>6^09 
 ovK taTLv £v rfj aydirrj^ however imperfect you find 
 me. I know now that I can trust you not to throw 
 me off. And love is not extreme to mark what 
 is amiss, otl aydnrr) KakvTrrsi irXrjOos d^apTiSyv. 
 I can't thank you for your kindness, but I thank 
 God for giving me the most precious gift in the 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 157 
 
 world, a human soul ' to love and be loved by for 
 ever.' As I look at your letter I feel a mere worm, 
 and my one wonder is how on earth a man like you 
 can call me your friend. I can't thank you ; but I'll 
 do my best to live up to the standard you expect of 
 me, and to be a true friend to you. And my idea of 
 friendship is, as you know, prayer. I can't, worse 
 luck, do much for you, but I do pray for you, and 
 * whatever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall 
 receive.' It has been truly said that the hcnu, the 
 where, and the when are not told us, but only the 
 what. And I am quite certain that even,- prayer 
 I offer for you is heard and answered, when I believe 
 what I say ; but the manner, the place, and the 
 occasion of the answer — of these things I know 
 nothing. I am sure that God loves to see us happy, 
 and the pure joy of the knowledge that such a man 
 as you loves me is almost more than I can bear. It 
 throws a new light on life here, and on that fuller life 
 to which God is leading us hereafter ; like you, 
 thank God, I cannot complain of lack of friends, but 
 I have never had one who has written me such a 
 letter, full of an affection for which I crave. The 
 worst is, I can't repay your kindness. You bring 
 me nearer to God, you make me realise in the 
 strangest way His affection, you make me feel the 
 worth and mystery of a human soul. I wish I could 
 return your help somehow or other. Do show me 
 the way. I wish you did not find it so difficult to 
 pray for me. I am sure you are right in going back 
 to such a man as St. Paul for subjects of prayer. 
 The opening chapters of his letters to the Ephesians 
 
158 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 and Colossians give the kinds of requests which it is 
 worth making on behalf of any one. There is surely 
 no harm in finding that, as you pray for another, your 
 own faith is growing. There is nothing selfish in 
 that. It is rather the result of the law BlBors koX 
 hoOrjcrSTaL vfilv. 
 
 Your faith can only grow with exercise, and you 
 exercise it by praying for others. You would only be 
 selfish if you prayed for some one else in order that 
 your own soul might be benefited. 
 
 But don't think too much of selfishness. Bring 
 all your half selfish desires to Him who knows us 
 through and through ; and in His presence, almost 
 unconsciously, your motives will gradually be purified. 
 You will learn to walk in the light as He Himself is 
 in the light. As I look back on this letter, a large 
 part of it seems selfish. I expect much is ; but, even 
 in the selfish parts, there is something more besides. 
 I can only just say what I feel, and ask God gradually 
 to eliminate what is wrong. In His light I shall see 
 light. 
 
 Life is large, and I am fearful lest, in attempting 
 a rough and ready asceticism, I should exclude as 
 wrong some elements which are in reality God-given. 
 T feel that in the case of our affections and our 
 longing for beauty. They are implanted in us, and 
 tended and watered by One who is perfect Love and 
 perfect Beauty. They easily lead us into sin, but 
 that fact does not imply that they are wrong in 
 themselves. We have to bring them to their source 
 that He may interpret them. ' Too late have I sought 
 thee,' said Augustine, * thou Beauty, so ancient and 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 159 
 
 SO new, too late have I sought thee.' I cannot 
 understand the mystery of your life, dearest, but I 
 feel that all that craving for beauty is in some kind 
 of way a craving for God. Only God demands the 
 first place in your life before He will give you any 
 satisfying interpretation of that aspect of His life. 
 You must love Him for what He is — not simply 
 because He is Beauty. 
 
 I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty, 
 I woke and found that life is Duty. 
 
 They are not really contradictory conceptions. 
 Nay, Duty has a spiritual beauty of her own. But 
 sometimes they seem for a moment divergent, and 
 then you must at all costs choose the latter, and you 
 will find that 
 
 The topmost crags of Duty scaled, 
 
 Are close upon that shining tableland 
 
 To which our God Himself is shield and sun. 
 
 And, if I am not mistaken, that land will be utterly 
 full of an absolutely satisfying beauty. 
 
 But I feel that I scarcely yet understand any- 
 thing about the meaning of Beauty. All I can do is 
 to relate it immediately to God. If I see beautiful 
 scenery, I am usually thinking of God and thanking 
 Him. If I see human beauty, I feel that I am on 
 holy ground, and I always try to pray for a face that 
 attracts me. I feel that I have a duty in return for 
 the revelation that has been given. But, as you see, 
 I can explain but little. These are merely rules of 
 practical life which we very imperfectly carry out. I 
 cannot explain the relation of physical and spiritual 
 
i6o 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 beauty in human beings. I feel, of course, that there 
 ought to be, there very often is, some such relation. 
 But sometimes there is something utterly wrong, and 
 apparently no such connective. The connection, I 
 take it, is more perfect in nature ; but in man, why, 
 something has occurred, something anomalous, which 
 mars the whole. Sin has come in somewhere, I 
 suppose. 
 
 I can't express on paper what I feel, or give you 
 any real conception of what you are to me. You 
 would be startled if you knew. God bless you, and 
 work out in you, not my miserable ideal of what I 
 think you ought to be, but His own ideal, which 
 exceeds all our thoughts and imagination, of what 
 you are to be. 
 
 To G. /. C, 
 
 Christ's College : 1901. 
 
 ... I was never so pleased to hear of any 
 engagement as of yours. I thank God with all my 
 heart. I cannot put my joy into words, but somehow 
 or other it seems to bring me nearer to the source of 
 all joy. I feel more than ever that He cares for us 
 and is educating us, and I feel that He has been so 
 good to you, because He loves you. The older I 
 grow the more I am impressed by His infinite 
 sympathy and concern for us. And when He gives 
 us not only love but a return of love, it seems to me 
 that He is giving us the very best thing that He has 
 — a part, as it were, of Himself * The merciful and 
 gracious Lord hath so done His marvellous works, 
 that they ought to be had in remembrance.' 
 
 I cannot tell you how glad I am. But I thank 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS i6i 
 
 God in my prayers for you ; and I am sure that if 
 He has been so good to you in the past, He will not 
 forget you in the future. 
 
 To the same when he had just accepted a mastership 
 at Eton, 
 
 Brislington, Bristol : 1901. 
 
 .... How good of you to write and tell me of 
 your future work ! . . . The responsibility of such a 
 life is to my mind almost overwhelming. * Who is 
 sufficient for these things ? Our sufficiency is of God.' 
 
 I am thankful that the offer came as it did — un- 
 sought by you. You will feel happier in accepting it. 
 ' Infinite sympathy is needed for the infinite pathos 
 of human life ' — more especially of a boy's life. The 
 first, second, third, requisite for a master is, in my 
 judgment, sympathy. As I look back on my own 
 school days, I cannot help feeling that most of my 
 masters were either lacking in it or else strangely in- 
 capable of manifesting it in a form which I could 
 understand. Sympathy with the dull, unpromising 
 boy is a divine gift, and I trust that Holy Orders 
 will confer upon you this grace also. I thank God 
 that you are taking orders, and finding your work in 
 teaching. Forgive this lecture from one who has no 
 right to speak, and who is himself strangely deficient 
 in sympathy. 
 
 To D. B. K. 
 
 Eastbourne : September 1901 
 
 I am glad that you have been home. I feel that 
 home is a revelation — a means whereby the Eternal 
 Father shows us Himself and His purposes, a 
 
 M 
 
I62 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Strengthening and refreshing of our tired souls. . . , 
 I have prayed earnestly for you that your faith and 
 love may not fail. I feel intensely the same difficulty 
 as you, and I am only slowly learning to overcome 
 it. I do not think we can learn to love people who 
 are altogether different from us in many respects, all 
 at once. I love some men with a strange, unsatisfied 
 affection. All my thoughts about them I am gra- 
 dually learning to resolve into prayers for them, and 
 I want to live longer that I may pray for them more. 
 
 Well, it seems to me that God gives us this affec- 
 tion that we may learn to do to others as we would 
 do to these. I cannot pretend to care for many with 
 whom I come into contact as much as I do for the 
 few. But I can pray for them, and the feeling will 
 more or less come in time. Just try to pray for some 
 one person committed to your charge — say for half 
 an hour or an hour — and you will begin really to love 
 him. As you lay his life before God, as you think of 
 his needs and hopes, and failings and possibilities, as 
 you pray earnestly for him as you would for some one 
 whom you feel intense affection for ; at the end of 
 the time you will feel more interested in him, you will 
 think of him not as one of a class but as a separate, 
 mysterious person. You will not, it may be, have 
 time to pray for many in this way, but you will learn 
 imperceptibly to extend your sympathy — to feel real 
 love for many more. I advise you to keep a record 
 of these prayers. It is quite worth your while to 
 take practically a day off sometimes, and to force 
 yourself to pray. It will be the best day's work you 
 have ever done in your life. Remember that ! 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 163 
 
 Don't be troubled by comparing yourself with 
 other clergymen. I think you are like me — not 
 ecclesiastically minded. I don't have the sort of feel- 
 ings which a large number of persons have about 
 their work and their preaching. I can't put the 
 difference into words, yet I feel it. But I must serve 
 God in my own way, and I am sure that He will use me 
 to do the work for which I am best fitted. And the 
 same is true of you. Try to refer all your actions to 
 His standard ; and test your work in His presence ; 
 and don't ask what So-and-so thinks of it. 
 
 I very much wish you had some gentlemen to 
 associate with besides parsons. You must keep up 
 as much as possible with your college friends ; and 
 use every opportunity which reasonably presents 
 itself of seeing some * society.' God knows what is 
 best for you at present. 
 
 God nothing does or suffers to be done 
 
 But thou wouldest do thyself, couldest thou but see 
 
 The end of all events as well as He. 
 
 I am sure that He will not forget you. He knows 
 what is best for your development. It may be that 
 He takes you away from friends that you may learn 
 to pray for them more and to see Him more clearly. 
 
 I think you will influence many men whom a 
 more ordinary parson would not touch. ... I am 
 quite certain that if you have infinite hope — hope 
 against hope — you will be a tremendous power in the 
 place where God has put you. 
 
 Get as much exercise as you can, and always get 
 a clear day off in the week, and don't give up any of 
 your old interests. Don't always read * religious ' 
 
 M 2 
 
i64 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 literature. . . . When the long day is done and we 
 stand before the judgment seat, I believe that many 
 will rise up and call you blessed. Only pray for in- 
 dividuals — for a long time together. To influence 
 you must love ; to love, you must pray. 
 
 To one about to be ordained^ 
 
 Eastbourne : September 1901. 
 
 I shall indeed remember you on Sunday next. 
 The words of the lesson come home to me to-day — 
 KOI etpTj/csv fiot *ApK£l (TOO rj %a/>is /-toy • 17 r^ap BvpafiLS 
 sv aaOsvsia rskslraL. 
 
 We are poor creatures, but there is Grace — and 
 we can come into contact with it — and that is all we 
 need. We may have failed in the past, but Christ 
 offers a new childlike life and endless hope. 
 
 I am glad to think that you will be returning to 
 your difficult post at Cambridge. I am sure that 
 you will return to it with fresh humility and courage 
 — sv ifKrjpwiJLaTt, evkof^ias KpiaTOV, 
 
 To W. D, H, 
 
 St. Moritz : January 4, 1902. 
 
 I hope that you are now less overworked than 
 you were in October. You must at all costs make 
 quiet time. Give up work, if need be. Your in- 
 fluence finally depends upon your own first-hand 
 knowledge of the unseen world, and on your expe- 
 rience of prayer. Love and sympathy and tact 
 and insight are born of prayer. I am glad you have 
 a Junior Clergy S.P.G. Association. Try to take an 
 intelligent interest in it, and mind you read a paper 
 before long. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 165 
 
 To his brother Edward in South Africa. 
 
 Hotel Belvedere, St. Moritz : January 7, 1902. 
 
 I am glad to think that we are now in many 
 respects agreed about the general question of the 
 war. I suppose in any great historical upheaval 
 there are at the time a number of people who are 
 attempting to make capital for themselves out of the 
 misfortunes of others ; there are many who are work- 
 ing for their own hand ; and yet, when we look back 
 on the crisis and judge it as a whole in the calm 
 light of history, we see that a large and rational 
 purpose has been worked out. At the time of the 
 English Reformation — as some one was saying to me 
 lately, pointing the parallel which I am working 
 out — there must have been a number of honest and 
 pure souls who held aloof from the whole of what 
 appeared to be political jobbery and fortune-making 
 at the expense of religious sentiment. Yet now most 
 of us feel that the movement could not have had the 
 effects that it had, unless down below all there was 
 a strong upheaval of the national conscience. You 
 will no doubt see many defects in this historical 
 parallel ; but the thought is at any rate suggestive, 
 and full of what we require in these latter days — 
 hope. Of course I feel that injustice, dishonesty, 
 cruelty, selfishness are in no way palliated because 
 they take cover and occasion in a real movement of 
 national feeling. 
 
 I feel for you much in your work for examina- 
 tions. It must come very hard with ill health and 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 in a hot climate, with the freshness of youth to some 
 extent passed. But 
 
 O well for him whose will is strong, 
 He suffers, but he shall not suffer long ; 
 He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong. 
 
 It needs more courage than you were required to 
 show on the field of battle. But the reward is sure. 
 I feel strongly that this life is but the prelude to 
 a larger life, when each faculty will have its full 
 exercise. 
 
 Ah yet, when all is thought and said, 
 The heart still overrules the head ; 
 Still what we hope we must believe. 
 And what is given us receive ; 
 Must still believe, for still we hope, 
 That in a world of larger scope, 
 What here is faithfully begun 
 Will be completed, not undone. 
 
 These words come from Clough — the soul of honesty. 
 To H. /. B, 
 
 Derwent Hill, Ebchester, Durham : April 14, 1902. 
 
 It seems to me a truism to say that we ought to 
 look at life in the light of eternity. Only then does 
 the true significance of the meanest action in life 
 appear. Life is redeemed from triviality and vul- 
 garity. So far from worldly possessions losing their 
 value, and ordinary occupations appearing insigni- 
 ficant, their importance is realised as never before. 
 If man does not live for ever, his character and 
 actions seem of comparative unimportance. If he 
 does live for ever, it is rational for him to look at 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 167 
 
 each action in the light of that larger life which he 
 inherits. If something like class distinctions are 
 eternal, it is an inducement so to use your distinctive 
 privileges here in a worthy manner, that hereafter 
 you may use them for nobler ends. 
 
 I have expressed myself badly, but you will see 
 what I want to say. My relations to you surely 
 become not less, but more important, when I realise 
 that I am only beginning to know and love you here. 
 The eternal element in them — the knowledge that 
 there is throughout an implicit reference to a Third 
 and Unseen Person in all that I say to you or think 
 of you — fills me with a sense of awe, and makes the 
 relations more real because more spiritual. 
 
 To the mother of his godchild^ Margaret Forbes. 
 
 July 6, 1902. 
 
 I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to see 
 my godchild. ... I feel she has a strength of 
 purpose and a desire to know the truth which will fit 
 her for high service in God's kingdom on earth. I 
 pray for her, and I shall do so in the future with 
 fuller understanding and with great hope. What 
 God hath begun He will assuredly bring to perfection. 
 I hope that some day she will learn to pray for 
 Uncle Forbes. I should value her prayers. It is 
 good to feel that in the midst of your weary time of 
 v/eakness God has given you such a child as a pledge 
 of His affection for you, as an assurance that He 
 believes in you. To give you a little child to train 
 for Himself is a proof that He trusts you very much. 
 I do not know that He could have given a greater 
 
168 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 proof of His confidence in you. And it is God's 
 implicit trust in us that draws out our trust in turn. 
 We trust and love Him, because He first trusted and 
 loved us. I wonder more and more at the way in 
 which He trusts us. To allow us to suffer without 
 telling us the reason, when He knows that we shall 
 be inclined to think harshly of Him — that is, perhaps^ 
 the greatest proof that He believes in us. He can 
 try our faith and perfect it by long-continued trial, 
 because He knows that we shall respond, that we 
 shall prove * worthy to suffer.' 
 
 To H.J, B, 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : August 26, 1902. 
 
 The worst of seeing you for some time is that I 
 feel it all the more impossible to live without you. 
 I realise now as never before that you are out and 
 away before me, and better than I am ; and yet I 
 feel that you are part and parcel of my life. You 
 mustn't be too hard on me if I can't come up to your 
 ideal. 
 
 Intellectually the Hebrew and Greek ideals may 
 be irreconcilable. Yet * life is larger than logic ; ' 
 and practically we may become heirs of both ideals. 
 The man who loses the world, who gives up all 
 without any desire for gain, is often given the whole 
 back again transfigured, glorified by sacrifice. To 
 get you must forget. If you love God absolutely 
 with all your being, you inherit the life that is as 
 well as that which is to come. If all is not given 
 you, yet enough is given for the development of 
 character. But there must, it seems to me, be an 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 169 
 
 absolute sacrifice — a surrender of your whole being — 
 whatever the result may be. There must be no 
 calculation. 
 
 High Heaven rejects the lore 
 
 Of nicely calculated less and more. 
 
 You must love the Lord your God with all your 
 heart and all your mind : you must trust Him to do 
 the best by you. You say the Hebrew ideal does 
 not appeal to you. But I know better ; for you half 
 like me, and I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews ! 
 There must be a dash of recklessness about the man 
 who gains the other world. * All or nothing ' is the 
 requirement of the kingdom of Heaven. To gain 
 yourself you must throw yourself away — ' lose your 
 soul.' You must have faith. ' He who loves makes 
 his own the grandeur that he loves ' is a sentence of 
 Emerson which consoles me when I think of my love 
 for you. 
 
 To a friend at Cambridge, 
 
 40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne : September 8, 1902. 
 I have been thinking of you. I keep myself from 
 becoming morbid by making most of my thoughts 
 into prayers for you. The glory — wonder — strange- 
 ness of being loved by a man from another and a 
 better world fills me with gratitude to God. Some- 
 times it seems a dream, and I half dread that I shall 
 wake up and find that you have ceased to care for a 
 worthless creature. But <j>6^os ovk sariv h dyaTrrj, 
 dW* T) rsksLa dyaTrr] s^co ^dWsL tov (f>6^op. I need 
 not fear. I know that you will love me, whatever 
 happens. 
 
170 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 I want you to be one of the best men that ever 
 lived — to see God and to reveal Him to men. This 
 is the burden of my prayers. My whole being goes 
 out in passionate entreaty to God that He will give 
 me what I ask. I am sure He will, for the request 
 is after His own heart. I do not pray that you may 
 * succeed in life ' or ' get on ' in the world. I seldom 
 even pray that you may love me better, or that I 
 may see you oftener in this or any other world — 
 much as I crave for this. But I ask, I implore, that 
 Christ may be formed in you, that you may be made 
 not in a likeness suggested by my imagination, but 
 in the image of God — that you may realise, not mine, 
 but His ideal, however much that ideal may bewilder 
 me, however little I may fail to recognise it when 
 it is created. I hate the thought that out of love for 
 me you should accept my presentation — my feeble 
 idea — of the Christ. I want God to reveal His Son 
 in you independently of me — to give you a first- 
 hand knowledge of Him whom I am only beginning 
 to see. Sometimes more selfish thoughts will intrude, 
 but this represents the main current of my prayers ; 
 and if the ideal is to be won from heaven by im- 
 portunity, by ceaseless begging, I think I shall get 
 it for you. But it grieves me to think that I can do 
 nothing else for you. To receive so many favours 
 from you, and to be incapable of doing more in return 
 — this is what saddens me. I feel an ungrateful 
 brute. You have brought new joy, hope, power into 
 my life, and I want to show my gratitude. You 
 would be doing me a real kindness if you would tell 
 me how I could show it. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 171 
 
 Don't think by what I have said that I simply 
 care — as an ' Evangelical ' would say — for your ' soul.' 
 Every part of your being — ever^'thing you do or say 
 — all that you are — has a strange fascination for me. 
 Only I feel that the whole of it is a revelation of 
 God ; and I want that revelation to be clearer, truer, 
 simpler. I am sure God does not only care for our 
 souls. It is every part of our complicated being 
 — all sides of our manifold life — that attracts Him. 
 He loves our home life, our affection for the dear old 
 Mother Earth which He made, our interest in the 
 men and women whom He formed in His own image. 
 He longs that all those interests should be developed 
 — that we should live genuine, sane human lives. But 
 true development here or elsewhere — the law of exis- 
 tence in heaven or on earth — is life through death. 
 * Verily, verily, I say unto you. Except a grain of 
 wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by 
 itself alone ; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.' 
 You must give up all. As I think of you, those 
 words keep ringing in my ears : * If any one cometh 
 to Me, and hateth not his own father and mother, yea, 
 and his own self also, he cannot be ^^ly disciple.' 
 
 I cannot tell you what they mean. You must 
 find them out for yourself 
 
 If I were a true disciple of Christ, you could see 
 what they mean by looking at me. But I am not. 
 You must learn their meaning for yourself Your 
 mother's life will speak louder than words of mine. 
 Only I know they are true. Christ will recreate the 
 world, recreate the home, human beings, dear Mother 
 Earth ; but He cannot do so until you have been 
 
172 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 willing to give up all — until He has caused y ou to 
 be * born again.' When the ruler asked how these 
 things could be, Christ could only repeat His words. 
 The man must work it out for himself. 
 
 But I am sure that he that willeth to do the will 
 shall know whether the teaching be true. There are 
 no doubt some mere intellectual obscurities in the 
 ideal which I might make simpler if I were not such 
 a duffer. But finally a paradox would be left — a 
 paradox which can only be solved by living the ideal 
 out, and finding it work. It is the pathos of our love, 
 of God's love for us, that each man, however much 
 he is loved, must work out the ideal for himself. No 
 man can save his brother's soul. 
 
 I do not like to weaken the paradoxes of the 
 Gospel. I think there is more in Christ's words 
 concerning 'loving one's life' or *self' than you 
 suggest. You say it means ' self-denial.' Yes, that is 
 true, but what a tremendous meaning 'deny one's 
 self has ! To disown your identity, that is not much 
 easier when you come to think of it than to lose your 
 life. I know you will find out what it all means, and 
 that human love, beauty, home, social service, will be 
 more real than ever before, because you will see the 
 eternal reality underneath. You will be a 'new 
 creation.' 
 
 Now I must stop without satisfactorily answering 
 your question, without entering into any casuistical 
 questions concerning conformity such as you suggest. 
 I should like you to think out that problem in 
 casuistry more for yourself, before I attempt to 
 answer it Forgive me for talking so much about 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 173 
 
 myself. When all is said and done, words fail me. 
 I can only thank God that you exist, and that you 
 let me love you. 
 
 To H. P., a Clifton College master who had given 
 up school work in order to devote himself to the 
 School Mission in Bristol. 
 
 40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne : September 30, 1902. 
 
 ... I am glad that you feel you have done right 
 in giving up your school work. I am sorry that you 
 left Clifton, but you thought you ought to go, and 
 that is an end of the matter. I can only hope that 
 you are in some measure a connecting-link between 
 the school and its mission. . . . Don't forget me in 
 my very different work — and yet work for the same 
 Master — at college. I have need of your prayers. 
 It is so easy to blunder, and to drive a man further 
 from the kingdom by lack of sympathy and love. I 
 feel more than I used to my weakness, and my 
 absolute need of prayer. 
 
 To his brother Edward in South Africa. 
 
 40 Upperton Gardens, Eastbourne : October I, 1902. 
 
 The October term has an interest of its own, 
 bringing, as it does, a batch of freshmen. I try more 
 and more not simply to impose my ideals upon them, 
 but to find out their ideals and to quicken them with 
 all my power. But assuredly ' infinite sympathy is 
 needed for the infinite pathos of human life ; ' and 
 my sympathies are as yet imperfectly developed. 
 
 Still, as years go by, I think I can sympathise 
 more with those who have been trained up in other 
 
174 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 schools of thought and experience. I was reading in 
 a book lately that v/e are largely responsible for our 
 own experiences, that we have a duty to get them of 
 the right kind. The book was by an American lady 
 on social questions. I think there is truth in her 
 words. 
 
 To D. B. K.y head of a Public School Mission. 
 
 Eastbourne : October 1902. 
 
 I delight to know men better, because I find so 
 much more in them than I had expected. They 
 differ from me, and I try to get out of the habit of 
 making them in my own image, and try to find the 
 image in which God is making them. I have been 
 praying for you. I want a spirit of sanity and sacri- 
 fice to possess you, that you may be able to see the 
 good works which God has prepared beforehand that 
 you should walk in them. . . . 
 
 I am struck by the sacrifice which Christ demands. 
 Unless the man hates father, mother, family, friends, 
 yea, and himself also, he * cannot be ' His disciple. 
 Christ gives them all back again — only * with perse- 
 cutions.' We find more in the world, when we are 
 ' crucified to it,' than ever before ; but there is a 
 something added. We have a deeper joy in home 
 ties, in human love, in social life, in the changing 
 seasons, in the dear old earth. Only the joy has a 
 note of sorrow, a pathos, which Christ calls * perse- 
 cutions.' We see more in life, and yet we are in a 
 measure out of sympathy with our surroundings. 
 We have heard and we can never forget the sorrows 
 of those who are * one man ' with us. There is more 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 175 
 
 in that word * persecutions ' than this, as no doubt 
 you have found. But this, I think, is part of its 
 signification, isn't it ? . . . 
 
 I believe in your * mission ' even more than you 
 do. It is men like you, who through great tribula- 
 tions strive to enter the Kingdom, that God uses. 
 The fact that you are two men, and that the true man 
 — the Christ — is painfully yet surely being * formed * 
 in you, means that you will be able to appeal to 
 others who are painfully conscious of their double 
 consciousness and are often the slaves of the lower, 
 inhuman self. Your wealth of affection will make 
 you feel as St. Paul did — rsKvia /lov, ovs ttoXiv ot>Blv(o 
 fi^-^^pLS ov fiop(f>o)6fj l^pLcrros iv v/mv. 
 
 These words sum up for me, better than any 
 others, my deepest wish for my friends. I fall back 
 with desperate energy upon prayer, as the one power 
 by which my wish can be realised. 
 
 You seem to look ahead almost more than is 
 necessary. I delight in the feeling that I am in 
 eternity, that I can serve God now fully and effec- 
 tively, that the next piece of the road will come in 
 sight when I am ready to walk on it. * I do not ask 
 to see the distant scene.' I hate the unsettled feeling 
 that I have not yet begun my main work. 
 
 Don't measure work by human standards of great- 
 ness. Your present occupation might well be the envy 
 of angels — if they could envy. 
 
 But now I am lecturing. So it is time to shut 
 up. . . . 
 
 I fear that the origin of evil is more of a mystery 
 to me now than when I wrote that essay I But I 
 
176 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Still think that we are fighting a real being, one whom 
 we can best describe as personal. His will, it seems 
 to me, must be given to him by God. He has iden- 
 tified it with a hitherto unrealised potentiality for 
 disobedience. In plain language, his will is free, and 
 therefore capable of resisting God. I should like to 
 have a talk with you some day about it. But, as you 
 see, the problem is beyond me. . . . 
 
 It is a strength to me to feel that you are fighting 
 
 the devil in yourself and others up in , and that I 
 
 am * one man ' v/ ith you. 
 
 To D, B. K. 
 
 St. Moritz : January 1903. 
 
 It is getting on for your birthday, isn't it ? Con- 
 gratulations. I wish I knew the exact day. I think 
 more and more that a birthday is a subject not — as 
 poor Job thought — for anathemas, but for congratu- 
 lations. To be a reasonable human being — with 
 capacity for seeing something of God's purposes for 
 the race — with power to forward them — with oppor- 
 tunities for love and sacrifice and prayer — oh ! I 
 am so glad that I was not a mere animal. And to 
 be born at the end of the nineteenth century — I 
 prefer that period even to Apostolic times. We can 
 know more of God's purposes, enter more deeply 
 into His mind and even His heart, than primitive 
 Christians. 
 
 I have been reading to-day Temple's essay on 
 * The Education of the World ' in * Essays and 
 Reviews.' Get hold of an old copy of that book, and 
 read it. It is strong and manly, and rings true. I 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 177 
 
 love that old man with his tenderness, simplicity, 
 thoughtfulness, and will of steel. I thank God for 
 him. There is something about utter goodness 
 which makes me worship, and fills me with the 
 challenge, * Go and do thou likewise.' Goodness is 
 as infectious as any disease. 
 
 I have been thinking lately of the self-sacrifice of 
 God's life. I suppose that is the reason why He can 
 enter into our lives — see them from the inside. 
 
 Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest, 
 Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame. 
 
 It must have been the wealth of His self-sacrifice 
 which made Him give us selves — wills — of our own. 
 Then He makes them His own by more self-sacrifice. 
 We are made in His image — made to go out of self, 
 and find our self by losing it. Other men at first 
 seem to limit our freedom, but later we find that the 
 apparent limitations are only just scope for realising 
 our true self Each time we go out of self, and enter 
 into another ' ego,' we return the richer for our sacri- 
 fice. We take up other lives into our own, and are 
 richer than a millionaire. 
 
 I think that when the other * ego ' is most unlike 
 our own — when at first sight the man is repulsive, 
 and (worse still) uninteresting to us — when the sacri- 
 fice is great, if we would see life through his eyes, 
 share his ambitions, fears, longings, and mental out- 
 look, then is the time when we are peculiarly 
 rewarded for our pains. Our consciousness is larger, 
 more human, more divine than before. 
 
 * By feeblest agents doth cur God fulfil His 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 righteous will* is the thought suggested by some of our 
 brother-clergy. God does not choose the agents we 
 should choose. Or perhaps the latter do not respond 
 to His choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and 
 that it is my faults writ large which I detest in them. 
 I feel that, with all the riches of the revelation which 
 I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack 
 of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life 
 which is the stumbling-block to my message. They 
 have often far less light than I have, but walk in it 
 more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye 
 troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But 
 it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence 
 in their presence. But the forces of good must be 
 united (' Keep, ah ! keep them combined. Else . . .'), 
 and if by any effort we can enter into their lives, and 
 transcend the barriers between us, we are not only 
 enriching our own life, but we are doing our best to 
 show a combined front against the almost over- 
 whelming forces of evil. 
 
 Even the Apostles must have found it hard to 
 work together. We know they did. Look at Peter 
 and Paul. Yet the Spirit of unity was stronger than 
 all that opposed Him, and the One Body was in 
 some measure realised. What was difficult in the 
 childhood of the Body is still more difficult in its 
 manhood. And Englishmen, with their strong sense 
 of individuality, find it a terrible lesson to learn. 
 
 But pray. You enter then into another man's 
 * ego.' You see him in God. You see him as an end 
 in himself Remember Kant's maxim — a wonderful 
 maxim from one who would not, I suppose, be 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 179 
 
 technically called a Christian — ' Treat humanity, 
 whether in thyself or in another, always as an end, 
 not simply as a means.' Put aside a certain amount 
 of time, and pray for one man. If your thoughts 
 wander, do not be disturbed, do not try to find when 
 they began or how^ they began to wander ; do not 
 despair, go back to the subject in hand. And God 
 will have mercy. Your influence, your life, your all, 
 depends on prayer. 
 
 We must faint sometimes. But let your saddest 
 times, your deepest struggles be known to God. 
 Gain there the strength and quietness which \-ou need 
 for life. But don't let men see the agony — let them 
 see the peace which comes from wrestling alone with 
 God — wrestling for them. 
 
 You are not one man, but two or three. Thank 
 God for that It means that you will have a hard 
 life — an awful struggle with self or selves : but it also 
 means more influence, more power to enter into 
 man's life. So many of the finest men owe their 
 attractiveness to their diverse, many-sided nature. 
 You will be able to feel for such, and perhaps to 
 help them. You are half a Greek with your yearning 
 for beauty and knowledge, half a Hebrew with your 
 loathing for sin and love of God. The Greek in you 
 must not be annihilated, but it must be subordinated 
 to the Hebrew. Conscience must be absolute master. 
 You must sacrifice the ' Greek ' to Christ ; but He 
 will give you back what is best in the Greek ideal, 
 all the better for the mark of the Cross on it. He will 
 give it you back partly in this world, partly in the 
 next, when you have learnt to renounce it — if need 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 were, for ever — for His sake. But you must give up 
 all for Him without thought of reward. He can give 
 no reward to the man who is looking for it. The 
 thought of your life helps me. Go on, for the night 
 Cometh when no man can work. Thank God it is 
 yet day. 
 
 To his brother Edward in South Africa. 
 
 Miihlen, Switzerland: January ii, 1903. 
 
 I found walking a pleasant change after reading 
 philosophy, which I have been doing during my 
 holidays. I seem to have been getting my ideas a 
 little clearer, and am no longer as content as I was 
 with the Kantian doctrine, that our knowledge in 
 speculative matters never gets beyond * appearances.' 
 I feel that at every turn we do get to that which is — 
 to an underlying reality. I cannot feel that Kant's 
 hard and fast division between * speculative ' and 
 'moral' reason holds good. The external world, 
 because it is intelligible, must be akin to us ; there 
 must be an intelligence in it, otherwise it would never 
 become an object of knowledge to our intelligence. 
 It is not only in our ethical life that we come across 
 the absolute consciousness. I feel now more than 
 ever how we cannot divide up ourselves into water- 
 tight compartments, and think of reason, will, and 
 feeling as separate things, lying side by side. They 
 can be separated — abstracted — in thought, but in 
 actual life you never find one without the other. We 
 cannot think without some degree of attention, and 
 attention involves an exercise of will, and will cannot 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS iSi 
 
 be exercised without desire, and desire involves 
 feeling. 
 
 I think faith also cannot be regarded as a separate 
 faculty. Reason, will, and feeling are all involved 
 even in the faith of a poor cottager ; much more does 
 reason enter into the faith of a thoughtful man. 
 
 I have been reading Butler, and hope when I go 
 back to study Hume. What a v/ealth of light the 
 conception of * Development ' has shed upon the 
 problems which exercised the eighteenth centur)' ! I 
 have read half through Leslie Stephen's ' Thought in 
 the Eighteenth Century,' and I have been struck 
 again and again at the new aspect that the old 
 questions take when looked at from the standpoint 
 of Evolution. 
 
 I feel also that we need to study more the evolu- 
 tion of thought — the necessary phases that reason 
 (like man's physical life) must pass through before 
 perfection. . . . 
 
 I think you are right, that education must now 
 include instruction in imperial ideas — in our relations 
 with that larger social life which is dav/ning upon us 
 — a step towards a still larger social life to be realised 
 in the brotherhood of nations. 
 
 To F. J. C. 
 
 Christ's College, Cambridge : Febraary I, 1903. 
 
 I am slow to suggest to another man that what 
 seems bad luck is in reality the voice of God making 
 itself felt in his busy life, calling him to fuller sacrifice. 
 But I am sure that we are right when we interpret it 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 thus for ourselves. I share your wish for 'some 
 really strong man ' to come as a prophet and read 
 the writing on the wall, and tell us *what it ail 
 means.' Yet the absence of human help is not 
 accidental. It must be designed, in order that we 
 may learn to fall back on the everlasting arms — to 
 find by experience that the unseen is more real than 
 the seen. 
 
 There is an arm that never tires 
 When human strength gives way. 
 
 I like that phrase, ' worthy to suffer.' It is to those 
 whom God loves best and most that He gives — as 
 He gave to His Son — the chance of suffering. Sym- 
 pathy, strength, reality — these are some of its fruits 
 for those who allow them to grow. * He cannot be 
 My disciple.' I can't help sometimes thinking of 
 these words. Unless the man is prepared to make 
 sacrifice the basis of his life, he cannot be Christ's 
 disciple. I don't think we always realise the ' trans- 
 valuation of values' found in Christ's teaching. 
 * Blessed are the poor — the hungry. He that would 
 save his life shall lose it. He that loseth, saveth. 
 He that would be greatest shall be least. It is more 
 blessed to give than to receive.' As I think over 
 such statements as these, I find that I have again 
 and again to revise, as it were, my moral arithmetic 
 — to change my standards, to revise my ideas of great 
 and little, happiness and misery, importance and in- 
 significance. 
 
 I am sure that nothing but the highest will satisfy 
 you. God has given you singular powers of influence 
 and of attracting others. He will demand an account 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 183 
 
 of those powers. You know Matthew Arnold's lines 
 on his father. I believe the day will come when 
 men will say like words of you. 
 
 But thou would'st not alone 
 Be saved, my father ! alone 
 Conquer and come to thy goal, 
 Leaving the rest in the wild. . • ♦ 
 Therefore to thee it was given 
 Many to save with thyself. 
 
 That is what I want you to be — a tower of strength 
 — strength perfected, it may be, in weakness — weak- 
 ness forcing you to despair of self, and find the Rock 
 of Ages. You have been so much to me, and helped 
 me so often, that I feel you must be born to help 
 others as well. And this quiet time, it may be that 
 God is using it to call you closer to Himself, to teach 
 you to revise your * values,' to show you a new fund 
 of strength. 
 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how, 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. 
 
 You must — literally must — let His will overpower 
 your will. Nothing but complete sacrifice will satisfy 
 you or Him, and I believe in you profoundly. I am 
 sure that, whatever be the ghastly struggle, you will 
 go through with it, and find your strength in Him. 
 I pray for you. 
 
 To his mother, 
 
 Cambridge: March 15, 1903. 
 
 The term is almost over ... I am enjoying a 
 quiet Sunday. What a blessing these Sundays are 
 
FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 to us — a foretaste of a fuller life of service and 
 worship hereafter ! I have been thinking lately with 
 comfort of the quiet perpetual work of the Holy 
 Spirit, silently but surely leading us on to higher 
 things— comforting, correcting, guiding. It gives 
 ground for hope in dealing with men, this knowledge 
 that there is One who perfects what we feebly struggle 
 to begin, who watches over men with a love that 
 will not let them go. We are not alone in our work ; 
 we have omnipotence and illimitable wisdom on our 
 side, forwarding our efforts. When I consider what 
 the Spirit has accomplished in my own life, I have 
 large hope for others. The argument from personal 
 experience is singularly convincing. * The fellowship 
 of the Holy Ghost ' — it is He who unites men and 
 interprets them one to the other. It is He who gives 
 spirit and life to our words. 
 
 To H. J. B. 
 
 Bexley House, Cromer: March 31, 1903. 
 
 It was good of you to send me that card from 
 Florence. You don't know how glad it made me. 
 To know that you were thinking of me was a 
 strength to me. Your love for me comes as a 
 perpetual surprise and inspiration. I feel a brute 
 compared with you, but the knowledge that you care 
 for me more than you do for most men makes me 
 feel that I must try to be good. * In Italy of the 
 fifteenth century renaissance we see in strange 
 confusion all that we love in art, and all that we 
 loathe in man ! ' Greek history was short compared 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 with the Hebrew : I suppose because intellectual 
 and artistic ideals are more easily realised than 
 ethical and religious. It takes time to make a saint. 
 It is part of the discipline of life to find the two sets 
 of ideas apparently antagonistic. There is a higher 
 unity in which they are blended — in God Himself. 
 It must be right to follow the dictates of conscience 
 when it bids us lose our soul if we would gain it. 
 We cannot trust God too much. If we forget our 
 self, He will see that our truest self is ultimately 
 realised. 
 
 I can't express myself well, for I have just finished 
 a spell of hard work. I have sent away my tripos 
 papers to-night. I am going up to Edinburgh on 
 Friday or Saturday. I fear I shall not see you 
 until April 21. Will you tell Armitage that I will, 
 if convenient to him, sleep at Westminster that night 
 instead of going straight to Cambridge ? The 
 hopelessness of ever showing my gratitude to you or 
 of ever making you realise how much I love you 
 oppresses me. I don't know what I should do if I 
 had not One Higher than I am to confide in — if I 
 could not leave you in His hands — if I could not gain 
 strength and life for you by appealing to Him. 
 
 O brother, if my faith is vain, 
 
 If hopes like these betray, 
 Pray for me, that I too may gain 
 
 The sure and safer way. 
 
 And Thou, O God, by whom are seen 
 
 Thy creatures as they be, 
 Forgive me if too close I lean 
 
 My human heart on Thee ! 
 
186 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 I lean closer and closer as life goes on. I feel 
 that our hope lies in despair — despair of self. The 
 vessels which contain the treasure are, as to-night's 
 lesson says, earthen, * that the excess of the power 
 may be God's and not from us.' And there is a 
 power, there is a life working in us. It is the quiet, 
 sane, constant work of the Spirit in and upon our 
 spirit, that never hastes and never tires : which gives 
 me comfort for you, for myself, for all of us. The 
 same life that is at work in the hedge across the 
 road is in us, only in us it attains full self-conscious- 
 ness and freedom. We can deliberately use it or 
 refuse it. Forgive the length of the letter. But I 
 felt so tired that I thought it would do me good to 
 write to you, selfish brute that I am. 
 
 I expect you enjoyed your time in Italy im- 
 mensely. I should have liked to be with you. I 
 wonder if ever we shall be there together ? Some 
 day we shall be in a world where the barriers of 
 space are broken down : * There shall be no more sea/ 
 Yet it seems to me that we have not altogether to 
 wait for that other world. They are half broken 
 down already ; and if we had faith as a grain of 
 mustard seed, we should realise tne meaning of a unity 
 deeper than any special or temporal bond. If we fail 
 to realise its meaning now, shall we realise it then ? Is 
 not life here a training for life hereafter ? If we learn 
 nothing in this school, we shall not be able to take our 
 places in that school of ' broader love.' The best part 
 in me does not complain. I thank God for His thought- 
 ful goodness in bringing you near to me. I thank Him 
 for the mystery of life, which enables me to realise that 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 187 
 
 Power ' which lives not in the light alone, But in the 
 darkness and the light' I become more and more 
 inclined to thank Him as I see Him more clearly. 
 
 To F, S. H. on his accepting the post of chaplain at 
 the Royal Naval College, Osborne, 
 
 Cambridge : April 30, 1903. 
 
 I am satisfied with your decision. I thought over 
 the matter, but I could not see my way quite clearly 
 to say anything more definite, so I did not write 
 again. Don't think that my silence was due to 
 slackness. I did what I thought was better than 
 writing. I spent an hour in praying over the matter. 
 Now that the matter is settled I can tell you what 
 
 a keen pleasure it is to me to have my dear old 
 
 near me in England,^ and doing a piece of work 
 which is full of hope and joy. I would not say this 
 before, because I did not wish to influence your 
 decision by private considerations. Get some quiet 
 time for prayer before September i, that when you 
 go to Osborne you may go kv TrXrjpcofiarc svXoylas 
 XpLarov (* filled full with the blessing of Christ '). I 
 feel increasingly the need of such times to learn to walk 
 by faith without stumbling, and to accustom myself to 
 the atmosphere of faith, to see things as they appear 
 to a man who has faith * as a grain of mustard seed.' 
 
 Westcott records a visit (see * Life,' i. 249) to his 
 old schoolmaster. Bishop Prince Lee. * " People quote 
 various words of the Lord," said the Bishop, " as con- 
 taining the sum of the Gospel — the Lord's Prayer, 
 
 ' He had been offered work in South Africa, 
 
i88 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and the like ; to me the 
 essence of the Gospel is in simpler and shorter terms : 
 firf <j)ol3oVf fiopov irio-Tsvs} Ah ! Westcott, mark that 
 ^ovov" and his eyes were filled with tears as he 
 
 spoke.' Ah ! S , mark that fxovov ! . . . God bless 
 
 you in your new work and make you a blessing to 
 others as you have been to me. 
 
 ToJ.K. 
 
 St. Thomas's Home, St. Thomas's Hospital : 
 August 28, 1903. 
 
 ... I am most grateful for your kind words, 
 though I know full well how little it is that I have 
 done for you. We clergymen so often seem to be 
 working in the dark. There are no clear results to 
 show, as e.g. a doctor can comfort himself with, when 
 he has visibly cured a patient. And I for one am 
 too easily inclined to despair, and to wonder whether 
 the work is not in vain. But ' trust is truer than our 
 fears.' Yet it does me good when I feel I have done 
 anything, however tiny, for a man. After all, results 
 are best left in God's h^nd. He gives us enough to 
 help us the next step onward, but not enough to 
 exalt us, and to make us think we can do anything 
 without His assistance. Work 'in the Lord' cannot 
 be in vain. 
 
 I am glad you have been reading Bishop West- 
 cott's life. He was a man of God, and his life is an 
 inspiration, and a prophecy of what our life may — 
 nay, some day — will be. ... I like that passage 
 
 ' * Be not afraid, only believe.' 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 189 
 
 when he goes to see his old schoolmaster, Bishop 
 Prince Lee, who tells him with tears in his eyes that 
 to his mind the whole Gospel message is summed up 
 in the words ' fjLrj (f)offov, /jlovov Trta-Tsvs.' 
 
 To a friend who had been an international athlete. 
 
 St. Thomas's Home : September 5, 1903. 
 
 We had a fairly good * Long ' in spite of the 
 miserable weather. Congratulate me. I won my 
 first athletic distinction last * Long ' — a ten-shilling 
 prize. I am thinking of chucking work and be- 
 coming a professional. It was a second prize in a 
 tennis tournament. I had (I must own) the best 
 player in College as my partner. I want to get a 
 very conspicuous object as prize. What do you 
 suggest ? 
 
 To C. T. W, 
 
 St. Thomas's Hospital : September 1903. 
 
 I am getting on first-rate, and I hope to be up 
 early next week. I believe you are ri^ht We 
 should do well if we had more regularity and self- 
 discipline in our life at Cambridge, and we should 
 have more power over others. Pray for me. . . . 
 
 You needn't pity me. I am having a very good 
 time. It is jolly to do nothing, and not even to 
 have to dress and undress— both exhausting and 
 monotonous occupations. It has been a glorious 
 day, and although it is almost 7 P.M., I am still out 
 on the balcony enjoying the cool breezes. 
 
1 90 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 To W, O. 
 
 Alassio : December 1903. 
 
 Death has come near to my family lately. I told 
 you that my sister — the Deaconess — had passed away 
 from Ms} It is not all sorrow, when we know that 
 the life has been spent in walking with God, when 
 we know that this corruptible puts on incorruption, 
 and that what is sown in intense bodily weakness is 
 raised in strength — eternal strength. 
 
 I am so glad that God has given to you His 
 highest blessing. I long to meet your future wife. 
 It makes me very happy to think of the happiness in 
 store for you — to know that you are in the best of all 
 schools. I thank God. Love will bring you both 
 nearer to the source of Love. . . . This new blessing, 
 as you say, is * the gathering up of the best that 
 God gives.' I can't express my thoughts as I would, 
 but I am very, very glad. . . . 
 
 Illness teaches one many lessons. I trust I have 
 learned some. I have been amazed at the goodness 
 of my friends ! 
 
 To W, P.i an officer in the Army, 
 
 Hotel Salisbury, Alassio, Italy : December 21, 1903. 
 
 I don't think things happen by chance. Indeed 
 I am sure they do not I have never felt so humbled 
 to the earth. One sees one's life as a whole, when 
 one is helpless and can do nothing, and the whole 
 looks very poor and mean. It is like the judgment- 
 
 ' His sister, Deaconess Cecilia, * passed away ' at the Deanery, 
 Westminster, on September 8. 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 
 
 191 
 
 day — only with this grand exception, that life is not 
 yet over, that the night has not yet come in which 
 * no man can work,' that you have still a chance to 
 make the future better, more honest, more noble than 
 the past Then, again, I learnt the utter and wonder- 
 ful kindness of my friends. I felt so selfish and so 
 surprised at the goodness they showed me. Again, 
 I saw something of the mystery of pain. My own 
 was so trivial compared with that which some others 
 had to bear. Yet I had enough to startle me that 
 such a fact should be permitted on earth at all. I 
 don't suppose we can understand its meaning ; but 
 my consolation was that it is not necessarily a sign 
 of God's displeasure — that the highest life was a life 
 of suffering, that the Son of Man was a ' Man of 
 Sorrows.' Everything seems to me to depend upon 
 the way in which one takes the pain — if one volun- 
 tarily says, ' Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,' 
 then one is entering into the highest life, and the pain 
 becomes a new method of serving and knowing God. 
 But physical pain, if prolonged, is a terrible thing ; 
 and there is no time on a bed of sickness for praying 
 or thinking much of God unless one is accustomed 
 to do so in health. The needs of the poor body 
 press in upon one. Death-bed repentances are 
 realities, but I am inclined to think that they are very 
 rare. It is terribly dangerous to defer being good 
 until we are ill. Illness does not necessarily make 
 us good. 
 
 I am afraid I was but a poor coward, and yet my 
 faith did not utterly fail. God is the one hope for a 
 man who is ill, and He is true to His word. He 
 
192 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 hides His face behind the clouds ; but even when I 
 couldn't see Him at all, I felt that He was there. 
 Pray for me ; at present I feel too weak to pray much 
 for myself I want — I do want — to be a better man, 
 to help others nearer the kingdom. I want, when life 
 is over, to have a better record to look back upon 
 than I had in hospital. 
 
 To F. vS. H, 
 
 Alassio, Italy : January 2, 1904. 
 
 Your letter came to me at a time when I was 
 rather low. I had to have a second operation. 
 However, after fifteen weeks of Nursing Homes I 
 escaped, and, as soon as I could, made my way to St. 
 Moritz. For once the place didn't seem to suit me 
 very well. So, after little more than a week, I came 
 down into Italy. I am so far recovered now that I 
 quite hope to be able to go back to college at the 
 beginning of this term. 
 
 Illness and pain have taught me some lessons — at 
 least I hope so. I feel solemnised, startled, when I 
 think of how life looked when I could do nothing for 
 the time. Pray for me that I may be more real. I 
 learnt, too, how futile it is to put off repentance till 
 sickness. It is hard at such a time to think of aught 
 save self and physical pain. And my own pain was 
 so trivial compared with that of others. O God ! it 
 is a terrible thing. Some day shall we be able to 
 understand, if not with the head, with the heart, part 
 of its meaning ? Meanwhile the individual can say, 
 however feebly, * Thy kingdom come, Thy will be 
 done,* 
 
LETTERS TO HIS FRIENDS 193 
 
 To his brother^ a doctor in South Africa. 
 
 Alassio, Italy : January 7, 1904. 
 
 At last I am beginning to get tired of doing 
 nothing. I hope that eventually I shall be stronger 
 than I have been for some years past. At any rate 
 I hope a little first-hand experience of pain will 
 make me more sympathetic. Pain seems to me now 
 a greater mystery than ever before. But I comforted 
 myself with the thought that in the highest Life 
 ever seen on earth, there was a full measure of 
 spiritual, mental, and physical pain. Also it was a 
 comfort to feel that w^hen one accepted, not simply 
 with resignation but with faith, certain suffering, one 
 was in sympathy with the will of the universe, ' work- 
 ing together with God ' in some mysterious way. 
 What a strange place a hospital is ! How wonderful 
 the Gospels are, v/ith their hope and comfort on 
 every page — hope for the physical as well as the 
 mental side of man's life ! I like more than ever now 
 to read how Jesus went about healing ail manner of 
 diseases and all manner of sickness and bringing Hfe 
 and strength wherever He came, showing us that 
 Heaven is on our side in our wrestle with all that 
 deforms and degrades human nature. 
 
 I certainly don't regret my illness. Besides 
 showing me the marvellous kindness of friends, it 
 has, I hope, taught me much. 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 To the Master of Chrisf's College^ Cambridge. 
 
 Hotel Salisbury, Alassio : Dec. i8, 1903. 
 
 My dear Jklaster, — I was deeply grateful for 3'our letter and for your 
 card. They came at a time when I was needing sympathy and counsel. 
 You will not, I trust, have misinterpreted my long silence. I knew you 
 were ill yourself, and I was quite determined that I would not make you 
 worse by writing in a melancholy strain. Yet week after week went by, 
 and I never felt that I could honestly say I was mending. Even after 
 I left the Nursing Home, although I felt stronger in myself, there was still 
 the local trouble. I thought I would write from S. Moritz, but for once 
 the Engadine did not prove a success. 
 
 This is my first visit to the Riviera, and I am delighting in the 
 marvellous scenery. The semi-tropical vegetation is a contrast to the 
 snow7 wastes of the Engadine. The weather so far has been atrocious, 
 and I am glad of thick winter things and furs. But when the sun comes 
 out, I shall be thankful. 
 
 Of course I never intended S to show you that letter, written at 
 
 the one time when I really lost heart for a while. I ought not to have 
 written it — 
 
 ' Man, what is this, and why art thou despairing ? 
 God shall forgive thee all but thy despair.' 
 
 I ought to have remembered the sermons I preached to others I I am 
 ashamed of myself. 
 
 I quite intend going back at the usual time next term, and I dare say 
 it will be only a matter of time before the operations take full effect and 
 the slight pain passes away. A certain amount of work will do me good, 
 and keep me from thinking of the irritation. But I am glad I took 
 Armitage's advice, and gave up examining for the Tripos. It would 
 have meant reading during this and the Easter vacation. I am looking 
 forward w'ith childish keenness to seeing Cambridge again ! 
 
 I was seldom guilty of writing so much about myself. I need hardly 
 tell you what a joy it has been to me whilst lying in bed to hear more 
 and more favourable accounts of you. That good-bye that I said on the 
 day when I went into hospital was one of the worst experiences I have 
 ever had in life. To say good-bye and yet to be unable to thank you for 
 sixteen years of kindness — from the time when I first came to College as 
 a raw undergraduate — it was awful. But I thank God from the bottom 
 of my heart that He has raised you up. 
 
 I fear that convalescence is a wearisome time — that sometimes you 
 must feel that you are making little progress — especially when the weather 
 is so much against you. But it will not be very long now before you are 
 able to come back again to work — and you won't despair as easily as I did ! 
 I am so sorry about that letter to S falling into your hands. 
 
 I have heard little about the meeting in support of the Boys' Home, 
 l)ut the little I have heard is satisfactory. 
 
 Please remember me very kindly to Mrs. Peile. Forgive this long 
 letter, and please don'i answer it. 
 
 Your grateful and affectionate pupil, 
 
 Forbes Robinson. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 The following letter addressed to the Editor of this 
 volume was received from the Rev. H. Bisseker, 
 chaplain at the Leys School, Cambridge, too late for 
 insertion in an earlier portion of the book : 
 
 'Your brother's friendship, as you must have 
 heard so often during the past few months, was 
 valued in Cambridge beyond that of most men, and 
 I am probably only one of many who still look to 
 that friendship as among the prominent facts of 
 their time up here. Though personally I did not 
 learn to know Mr. Robinson when I first came up, 
 his brotherliness so deeply impressed me during the 
 four years for which our friendship lasted, that I still 
 find it difficult to believe that he is no longer to be 
 found in the familiar rooms at Christ's, and has ceased 
 to be a part of our Cambridge life. And yet, in 
 another sense, he has not ceased to be a part of that 
 life ; for one feels that during his residence up here 
 he managed, if one may so express it, to put a bit of 
 himself into more than one man, and that in this way 
 he will continue to live among us long after he 
 himself has been removed. 
 
196 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 * I have often thought about him and his quiet, 
 strong influence since we heard that we had lost him, 
 and almost invariably the same three of his charac- 
 teristics assume the uppermost place in my thought. 
 Different sides of his nature would appeal to different 
 men : I can best serve your purpose by mentioning 
 those which made the deepest impression on my own 
 mind. 
 
 * One of the chief causes of your brother's influence 
 was unquestionably his sense of the value of the 
 individual. He used to take men one by one and 
 make a separate study of each. The consequence 
 was that he knew his men. On any given visit the 
 acquaintance did not, as it were, have to be begun 
 over again. On the contrary, the acquaintance once 
 formed, some common ground already existed ; for so 
 great was your brother's power of sympathy that, 
 where at the first no such common ground appeared 
 to exist, he soon learnt to find a standing-place 
 himself on that assumed by the man he was seeking 
 to know. And not only did Mr. Robinson possess 
 this power of valuing the individual, but he also was 
 able to inspire the objects of his influence with the 
 knowledge of his particular interest in them. Thus 
 they soon dropped the idea of acquaintanceship, and 
 began to think of him as friend, and there you have 
 in a word the secret of his wide influence. He was 
 interested in men^ but what he loved was a man, 
 
 * Mr. Robinson was no less marked off from the 
 majority of men by the stress which he laid upon the 
 reality and power of prayer. We used from time to 
 time to have long talks together on this subject, so 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 197 
 
 that I can speak with some little knowledge of the 
 place which he assigned it in his life. With charac- 
 teristic modesty he not infrequently distrusted himself 
 in his active contact with men. His very anxiety to 
 help others towards the ideals by which his own life 
 was dominated led him to see the risk of placing 
 hindrances in their way by an injudicious intrusion 
 into the secret places of their hearts. Drawn in 
 different directions, therefore, by his passionate desire 
 to win men for Christ and his cautious fear lest 
 untimely words of his should hinder rather than help, 
 he found refuge in giving himself up to earnest prayer 
 on their behalf. And prayer to him meant more 
 than a light repetition of words. He used often, I 
 believe, to spend as long as half an hour at a time in 
 seeking blessing for a single man. We cannot doubt 
 that, in the strong influence which he himself exerted 
 upon so many of those who knew him, such persistent 
 prayer received at least a part of its own answer. 
 
 ' The last element in your brother's individuality 
 which always impressed me was his restrained, but 
 genuine, mysticism. In the few accounts of his life 
 that I have read I do not remember any allusion to 
 this characteristic. That he possessed it, however, 
 and this to no usual degree, seems to my mind quite 
 patent ; in fact, it was this suggestion of mysticism 
 that first attracted me to him. The mysticism one 
 sees around one is often so unregulated and so 
 ignorant that it was refreshing to find a mystic who 
 was also an enlightened scholar and thinker. It 
 confirmed the feeling, instinctive in one's heart, that, 
 despite the abuse of caricature, a deep, intelligent 
 
198 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 apprehension of unseen realities is of the essence 
 of the fulness of religion. Mr. Forbes Robinson 
 appeared to possess an unusually certain cognisance 
 of the unseen world. How well I remember the way 
 in which, again and again, tea over and our pipes 
 lighted, he would curl himself up in one of his or my 
 own big chairs and discuss questions of interest to 
 us both with a far-away look in his eyes altogether 
 suggestive of a genuine otherworldliness ! And this 
 familiarity with unseen verities seemed to run through 
 all those parts of his life with which I was acquainted, 
 and indeed to be to him the most real fact of all 
 existence. To use the simple language of olden 
 days, I believe that " he walked with God " : and that 
 explains his life. 
 
 * These, then, were the three characteristics of your 
 brother which more than any others have impressed 
 themselves upon my mind. I do not think that they 
 were three separate sides of his personality : I should 
 say, rather, that they were three different expressions 
 of one fundamental attribute. It was because he 
 walked so closely with God that he so loved the 
 individual sons of God. It was because he so loved 
 the Great Father and each child of His that he had 
 so strong a faith in the power of prayer and such 
 unwearying patience to persist in it. 
 
 ' A life like your brother's, if I may say one thing 
 more, forms, I sometimes think, one of the strongest 
 pledges of human immortality. In one sense, it is 
 true, he seems to have done so much ; and yet, in 
 another sense, those of us who knew the faculties 
 which he had cultivated, his knowledge and patient 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 199 
 
 scholarship, his sympathy and insight, his tact and 
 passion for men, and, most precious of all, his power 
 with God, were looking for even greater things in 
 years to come. Such fitness for influence as he 
 possessed is not acquired in a day, and just when its 
 worth was being proved he was taken from us. 
 Surely these gifts and graces are not now as if they 
 had never been, or as if, once granted, they had been 
 idly wasted ! Can that earnest, patient cultivation 
 really have been gratuitous, and the unselfish instinct 
 that inspired it mistaken ? Were it so, the whole 
 universe looks out of joint. The more I consider 
 such lives as that of your brother — lives, I mean, 
 which, bearing promise of so rich a harvest, are yet 
 cut off before the full harvest can possibly have been 
 realised — the more my conviction grows that the 
 passing of such men as he is not death, but only " the 
 birth which we call death." ' 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter written to 
 his brother Edward from St. Leonards : — 
 
 ' Life has passed rapidly amid the genial surround- 
 ings of St. Leonards. Certainly I like the seaside. 
 Even being at school by the sea has not taken away 
 my liking for it. To-day we have had a fairly good 
 sea — roughish waves, a somewhat deep green colour, 
 a few black-sailed barks, no sun, a number of clouds, 
 a general seaside smell. One is more or less reminded 
 of New Brighton ! Was one ever happier than when 
 one played at Egremont by the sea or walked towards 
 
200 
 
 FORBES ROBINSON 
 
 Wallasey ? Shall we ever live over again our child- 
 life ? Is it, can it be gone for ever ? Is there not 
 still another child-life for us, coming from Him from 
 whom all youth comes ? Eternity is ever young. 
 The Eternal is the source of all youth. Perhaps once 
 again on the " shores of Eternity " we shall play 
 together, men and yet children, old but still young, 
 perhaps we shall once more find joy, simple joy in the 
 very simple, in what seems to others the common- 
 place. Perhaps some day our imagination will be 
 able to make towers of sand into something more 
 than sand, into what we used to make them when we 
 two played together, and lodged with George at 
 Liscard. Meanwhile, I am your brother, Forbes.' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Anthropomorphism in the 
 
 O.T., 137 sq. 
 Average man, the, 43 
 
 Beauty, natural, 155, 158 sq. 
 Beauty, origin of personal, 78-81 
 Boers, religion of the, 113 
 Boer war, the, 165 
 
 Christmas, meaning of, 155 sq. 
 Christ's College Magazine, extract 
 
 from, 10 
 Clough, quotation from, 166 
 Communion of saints, 69 
 Continuity of work, 109 
 Cornwall, open-air preaching in, 
 
 25 
 
 Criticism of O.T., 54, 139 
 
 Daily service, repetition of, 59 
 
 Eternity, life in the light of, 
 166 sq. 
 
 Faith, function of, 122 sq. 
 Fitzpatrick, Rev. T. C, sketch 
 
 by, 36-42 
 Friendship, permanent character 
 
 of, 84 
 
 Friendship, the, of Christ, 89 sq. 
 Future life, the, 69, 120, 128, 
 151 sq., 152 sq. 
 
 Gordon, General, in S.Africa, 119 
 
 Hebrew and Greek ideals, 
 168 sq,, 185 
 
 Holy Spirit, work of the, 184, 186 
 j Home life, significance of, 60, 
 I 77 j^., 84, 112 i^., 120 j^., 161 J^. 
 j Humour, sense of, 47 sq. 
 
 Incarnation, results of his belief 
 in, 45 
 
 Influence upon others, 75 
 
 James, Dr., sketch by, 7 sqq. 
 
 Kant, philosophy of, 178, 180 
 Kittermaster, Rev. D. B., sketch 
 
 by, 42-53 
 Kruger, interview with, 114 sq. 
 
 Law as revealed to the Jews, 
 63 sqq. 
 
 Letter-writer, St. Paul a, 82 
 ; Letters — 
 
 ■ H. J. B., 153, 166, 168, 184 
 I W. A. B., 60, 74, 77, 86, 115 
 
 F. J. C, 131, 134, 136, 152, 
 155, 181 
 
 G. J. C, 124, 126, 160 
 J. L. D., 91, 93, 95, 112 
 G. F., 107 
 
 i A. W. G., 69 
 
 i F. S. H., 98, 104, 106, 108, 
 I 109, 122, 135, 139, 141, 187, 
 1 189, 192 
 I J. C. H., 120 
 
 W. D. H., 130, 164 
 ] A. E. K., 188 
 I D. B. K., 150, 161. 174, 176 
 i T. K., Ill 
 ' E. N. L., 58, 68 
 j T. H. M., 55, 56, 57, 76, 103 
 
202 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Letters. — cont. 
 W. O., 146, 190 
 H. P., 147, 173 
 W. P., 190 
 A. V. R., 54 
 D. D. R., 63, 88, 100 
 C. N. W., 123 
 
 C. T. W., 109, 114, 128, 129, 
 189 
 
 Anonymous, 117, 127, 148, 
 
 151, 164 
 To a friend at Cambridge, 156, 
 
 169 
 
 To his brother Edward in S. 
 
 Africa, 140, 165, 173, 180 
 To his brother, a doctor in S. \ 
 
 Africa, 131, 137, 193 
 To his mother, 113, 119, 183 j 
 To the mother of his godchild, 
 
 M. F., 112, 120, 167 i 
 Life, ^<i)i\ as used in St. John, 55 
 Life, the Divine, manifested, 
 103 sq. 
 
 Love, his, for his friends, 45 sq.^ 
 
 50, 156 sq,^ 184 
 Love, meaning and scope of, 73, 
 
 76, 115 sqq.^ 126 sq.y 144 sq. 
 Love, the action of the Divine, 
 
 144 sq. 
 
 Motto, family, i 
 
 National life, significance of, 66 
 Natural beauty, eternal, 107 
 Naval officers, life of, 141 sq. i 
 
 1 
 
 Ordination, letters to candidates j 
 forj 58, 129 sq.^ 148 sq.y 164 j 
 
 Pain, mystery of, 191, 193 | 
 Parties in the Church, 112 | 
 Person, God revealed as a, 7 ij^., 7 5 i 
 
 Prayer, his habit of intercessory, 
 29, 40, 51, 125, 216, 140 sq., 
 154, 157, 169 sq., 175, 187 
 
 Prayer, need of, 95, 97, 131-134, 
 162 sq., 164, 179 
 
 Providence revealed in life of in- 
 dividuals, 121 sq. 
 
 Sacraments, the, their signifi- 
 cance, 76 sq. , 80 
 
 Saints, called to be, 96, 152 sq. 
 
 Schoolmaster, the work of a, 
 86 sq., 148, 161 
 
 Selfishness, tendency of, 92 sq. 
 
 Self-sacrifice, 168 sq.y 172 
 
 Self-sacrifice of God, 177 
 
 Simplicity of the Divine nature, 
 57. 
 
 Suffering, a proof of the Divine 
 
 love, 168, 182 
 Sunday evening * at homes, ' 39 sq. 
 Sympathy, meaning and need of, 
 
 91 sq., 108, 142 .r^., 173, 177-9 
 Sympathy, silent, 23 sq. 
 
 Tancock, Dr., impressions of 
 
 F. R., 3^^ 
 Temptations of Christ, 146 
 Thackeray's novels, 106 
 Think, attempts to teach men to, 
 
 12 
 
 Toft, work at, 25 sq. 
 Toleration, 26 sq. 
 Trinity, significance of doctrine 
 of, 71, 75 
 
 Unity of all men in God, 70 
 
 Walk from London to Cam- 
 bridge, 19 sq. 
 Worship, public, 125 
 
 Sfiottiswoode &* Co. Ltd., Printers, London, Colchester and Eton. 
 
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