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FROM THE LIBRARY OF
ROBERT MARK WENLEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
L
1
T
Škabát se pakkanak ng b
1896
1929
GIFT OF HIS CHILDREN
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Morboknell del et
1935
GENE VENGAGE "USE
KEM FERTILIAN BALKEN
*
M
*
1

BX
5199
OR7
A3
1677
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON, M.A.
VOL. I.
LIFE AND WORKS
OF
The late Rev. F. W. ROBERTSON, M.A.
NEW AND CHEAPER EDITIONS.
SERMONS.
VOL. I.
VOL. II.
VOL III.
VOL. IV.
EXPOSITORY LECTURES on ST. PAUL'S
Small crown 8vo. price 35. 6d.
Small crown 8vo. price 3s. 6d.
Small crown 8vo. price 38. 6d.
Small crown 8vo. price 3s. 6d.
A New Edition. Small
EPISTLE to the CORINTHIANS.
crown 8vo. price 5s.
LECTURES and ADDRESSES, with other
LITERARY REMAINS. A New Edition. Uniform with the
Sermons. Small crown 8vo. price 5s.
An ANALYSIS of MR. TENNYSON'S 'IN
MEMORIAM.' (Dedicated by permission to the Poet-
Laureate.) Fcp. 8vo. price 25.
The EDUCATION of the HUMAN RACE.
Translated from the German of GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING.
Fcp. 8vo. price 2s. 6d.
LIFE and LETTERS. Edited by the Rev.
STOPFORD A. Brooke, M.A.
I. In 2 vols.
Uniform with the Sermons. Price 7s. 6d.
II. Library Edition. With two Steel Portraits. Demy 8vo.
price 125.
III. Popular Edition. In 1 vol. price 6s.
NOTES on GENESIS. Crown 8vo. price 6s.
The above Works can also be had bound in half-morocco.
* INDIA PROOF PORTRAITS of the late Rev.
F. W. ROBERTSON can be had, price 2s. 6d. each.
SEE THE END OF THE BOOK FOR NOTICES OF THE PRESS.

Fatherme F. Gibson
from 14.8.8.
Sept. 1878.

NIV
OF
MICH
அரு

Sincerely & gratefully gras
Fred W Robertson

Engravel by J. CArmytage from the Bust by M. Popper-

Henry Sing & Ct As, Cornhill, London.
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF
FREDWith ROBERTSON, M.A.
INCUMBENT OF TRINITY CHAPEL, BRIGHTON, 1847-53.
EDITED BY
STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.
CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN.
NEW EDITION.
IN TWO VOLUMES-VOL. I.
HENRY S. KING & CO., LONDON.
1877.
(The rights of translation and of reproduction
are reserved.)
5-25:34
* V.
INTRODUCTION.
THE
HE' Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson' has
now been two years before the public, and has passed
through four editions. It is hoped that the present edition
will bring the book into contact with a larger circle of readers.
The matter is in all essential respects identical with that of
the original two volumes. No abbreviations have been
made; a few alterations only in the arrangement of the
letters seemed advisable, and a few additional notes have
been inserted. Not one of the letters has been omitted: on
the contrary, a few are added, which have come to hand
since 1865.
The rapid sale of the previous editions proves the undi-
minished interest of the public in Mr. Robertson's life and
character. The testimony of the reviews to the influence
and value of his teaching, whether in sermons or letters, has
been generous and comprehensive. Nor has this been con-
fined to those who are in harmony with the tone of his mind,
or agree with his opinions. A tolerance, a just weight given
to his life, as distinguished from his theological views—a
desire to find out the good and not the evil in the man whom
they, nevertheless, oppose as a teacher, have marked the
vi
Introduction
(
generality of the Evangelical, Anglican, and Dissenting
reviews. It is pleasant to feel how much in twelve years
the tone of criticism has altered for the better. There have
been, with two miserable exceptions, no senseless imputa-
tions of infidelity or rationalism, no implied slander, no
attempts to push forward the truth' by depreciating or
staining Mr. Robertson's character. The educated and
gentlemanly partisans of that school which most strongly
opposes Mr. Robertson's theology have spoken of him with
kindness and Christian charity. Of those who have reversed
this mode of action I need not speak. The Ethiopian can-
not change his skin.
It has seemed to me, in sending out this book in the form
in which it will probably continue permanent, that this is the
fitting place to speak of a few of the more salient criticisms
which have been made upon the biography and its subject.
It has been said by some critics that there is no adequate
account given in this book of the 'extraordinary' alteration
in Robertson's opinions which took place at Cheltenham.
But there was very little to record till the moment of change
arrived. Like all radical changes, it was the product of
numberless small, and in themselves unnoticeable things-
passing conversations, passing events, slight shocks, the
books he read, the reflex action of his sermons on his own
mind, and the set which the current of his thoughts took
under the general influences I have described in the text.
It was a great change, but not greater than that which occurs
again and again in the history of men who are forced to win
faith out of doubt. It seems sudden and unexpected, but
in reality it extended over three or four years. It is because
we do not see the steps which led to it, and because its
crisis came in a moment-that it appears to be extraordi-
Introduction
vii
nary. But it was no more extraordinary than is the rapid
development of a plant when it is removed from a soil un-
suited to it into one entirely congenial to its nature.
It may
be said, that it is this very process of removing on which
information is required, and little or none given in the
biography. The fact is, all that could be given was given.
There were no diaries of his feelings kept by Mr. Robertson.
There were no letters written during that period which
could be used. Those who knew him best seem to have
known little about the workings of his mind, and all that they
knew has been embodied in the biography. It was a slow
and insensible growth-and I do not think he was conscious.
himself of its full meaning till just before the crisis came.
Moreover, even had he written diaries at that time of his
spiritual life-had he dissected himself in these, and watched
hour by hour the progress of his soul, and recorded it—I
would not have given it to the world. It is a diseased state
of the public mind which demands to look into the heart of
a man and to see it in all its nakedness and nothing would
have induced me to gratify this morbid curiosity. There
are persons who wish to have everything explained to them
with mathematical precision-even the secret progress of the
soul. I am glad not to have satisfied such persons-and if
I could I would not have satisfied them.
:
The Record newspaper, to which my thanks are due for
the striking confirmation which its review has given to
Robertson's severe judgment of its mission and spirit, has
brought against me two charges of inaccuracy.
It con-
tradicts my declaration that it had reasserted, after
Robertson's death, a charge of socialistic opinions against
him. In reply, I quote the passage on which my opinion
was founded (Record newspaper, December 27, 1853). 'It
viii
Introduction
will be remembered that Mr. Maurice, Mr. Kingsley, the late
Mr. Robertson of Brighton, Mr. Ross, and others of the
same school, were all mixed up, a few years ago, with
schemes of Christian Socialism.' Captain Robertson sent
two indignant denials of this charge to the Record. They
were inserted January 5th and January 12th, 1854; and the
letter of the latter date was accompanied by an introduction,
in which the editor states that the wrong done to Mr.
Robertson, and complained of by his father, was 'purely
imaginary.' It was not so at least to Captain Robertson,
nor, as it seems, was it altogether so to the Record; for in
its first review of Robertson's Life there occur these words:
—‘In the beginning of 1854, we received a long letter from
Captain Robertson, defending his son from the charge of
socialism, implied in a short paragraph, in which he was
named as having been associated with Maurice and Kingsley.'
The words I have italicised are a sufficient answer to the
Record's accusation of inaccuracy. They prove, from its
own columns, that if the charge of socialism was not defined,
it was at least implied. Every one knows the way in which
the Record does its work; and in this case, even after insert-
ing Captain Robertson's two letters of contradiction, it
managed, in a comment upon them, to imply the charge over
again. 'We trust,' it says, 'on the contrary, that he (Mr.
Robertson) was saved from falling into the abyss of error
round which he seemed to sport, and that, whilst numbered
with Christian Socialists,' &c. &c.
The second charge of inaccuracy is thus expressed :—' It is
another of Mr. Brooke's strange blunders, to insert two letters
from Mr. Maurice, which he alleges, without inquiry and
contrary to fact, to have been "part of a correspóndence
published in the columns of the Record." I reply, that I am
}
3
Introduction
ix
right, and the Record wrong. The two letters from Mr.
Maurice did appear in the Record, January 12, 1854.
Robertson has been accused of that which is called
'negative theology.' No accusation can possibly be further
from the truth. If he spoke strongly against views in his
opinion erroneous, he never did so without bringing forward
a positive view on the subject, lest men should be left with
a soul empty, swept, and garnished. His continual effort to
bring into clear light the living spirit of dogmas, forms, and
even of errors, marks the positive character of his teaching.
Above all, he insisted on the historical reality of the Life of
Christ. He preached those facts as the foundation of all
spiritual life, and he held that with the loss of the reality of
the incarnation, the childhood, the temptation, the daily life,
the miracles, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, we
should lose Christianity. In this he differed, ab initio, from
all forms of negative theology; and at the same time, it
resulted from the same antecedent that he differed from
every form of theology which seeks to reduce all minds to one
mode of doctrinal conception. For he rested on a Life, not
on a system. He did not deny the necessity of a system of
theology, but he did deny the necessary permanence of any
system. Christianity was founded on a Life, the spirit of
which was infinite and capable of infinite expansion. It
would therefore be necessarily born again and again under
new forms, conditioned by the character and thought of the
several countries and ages it existed in. But all this con-
tinuance, under diverse forms, of Christianity, depended, in
Robertson's mind, on the historical reality of Christ's person
and Christ's life.
Probably, had he been asked what he thought of the
negative 'theology,' which has now intruded upon the skirts
X
Introduction
1
of Liberal Theology, he would have quoted Goethe's words as
an answer :—' Every work of opposition is a negative work,
and a negation is a non-entity. When I have called the bad
bad, have I gained much by that? But if, by chance, I
have called the good bad, I have done a great wrong. He
who wishes to have a useful influence on his time ought to
insult nothing. Let him not trouble himself about what is
absurd, let him consecrate all his activity on this-on the
bringing to light of new good things. He is bound not to
overthrow, but to build up.'
I have quoted these wise words, because they express as
clearly as possible one of the fundamental tones of Robertson's
mind, and one of the chief characteristics of his teaching.
It was part of his work, then, to assimilate within himself all
that was true in all parties, and to exhibit the truth of which
any error was a perversion by bringing it face to face with the
error. There is a noble passage in Spenser's Faerie Queen,
where the false Florimell, who had been formed of 'purest
snow in massy mould congealed,' and whom a wicked
spright, yfraught with fawning guyle,' inhabited-the snow
signifying the coldness, lifelessness, and slippery nature of all
false representations of any truth or beauty: and the guileful
spirit-the seducing nature of untruth in the garb of truth-is
at last brought face to face with the true and living Florimell,
'like the true saint beside the image set,' and how then the
'enchanted damzell vanished into nought.' It is a picture.
of Robertson's mode of dealing with false representations of
doctrinal or moral truth. He brought them face to face with
the real truths they counterfeited. His teaching has had the
effect of extending far beyond its usual sphere this mode of
action out of which alone a true toleration can arise, and the
result has been the establishing on a wider basis of the idea
Introduction
xi
of the necessary manifoldness of Christian thought which it is
so important to keep before our eyes, and which we are always
in danger of losing. There is, even among those who call
themselves Liberal Churchmen, a tendency towards an
intolerant denunciation and scorn of those whom they think
less advanced than themselves. This is striking at the very
keystone of the arch of their building; and, if the blows of
this intolerance are continued, the result will be as fatal to
the Liberal as it has been already to other parties in the
Church. This sort of work is making them into a mere
party; and the moment a movement in the Church becomes,
in essence, a party movement, it receives the seeds of death.
The Liberal school will be productive and powerful as long
as every man in it is not so bound down by the exigencies of
party as to lose that individuality, independence of thought,
freedom of development, and variety of character and teach-
ing, which make at present the special strength of this
school of theological thought. Liberal theologians ought to
see and allow, if they would make their toleration perfect
and gradually win their opponents to their side, that at
present a certain class of minds cannot approach God except
through the channel of Evangelicalism, and another only
through the channel of High Churchism, just as these
classes in their turn should see that the more modern form of
theology is necessary as a means of arriving at God to another
cast of mind and character. It is this union in diversity
which ought to be seized as the first principle of a Church, and
to the reception of this principle Robertson's teaching, in
spite of his intolerance of a certain type of Evangelicalism,
directly tended and is tending.
I may mention, in connection with the above, that those
Evangelicals who repudiate with pain the Record as their
xii
Introduction
exponent, have complained that Mr. Robertson did not do
justice to them, that he speaks of them in an unchristian
manner, and that I have disfigured the pages of the Biogra-
phy by exhibiting a hatred of Evangelicalism.
With regard to myself, I have consistently refrained from
doing that which has been imputed to me. I have known
too many noble workers and Christian warriors belonging to
that school to speak of it with hatred. I confess that I
abhor the spirit in which the Record and its followers and
admirers strive to defend their position of infallibility and
persecution, and I think it the very spirit of the Devil; but
I equally hate that spirit when it is manifested by any school,
Anglican, Tractarian, or Liberal. I do not abhor it because it
may belong to this or that party-I abhor it because it is the
contradiction and the enemy of Christianity; and I inserted
that letter of Robertson's which has been so much spoken of,
because I believe that the fierce language he used was well
deserved, and I hoped that it would cling-because he was
there attacking, not religious feelings or intellectual error in
doctrine, but a base and lying spirit, and that to brand it
with a name which expressed its infamy was clearly a
righteous act. But I should as soon have thought of con-
founding all Evangelicalism with the Record as I should
have thought of confounding all Christianity with denunciation
of the religious opinions of others. It is true I have said that
Evangelicalism had a weakening effect upon Robertson, and
that when he escaped from it he sprang from a dwarf into a
giant, and I suppose it is the extreme truth of that-it lies on
the surface-which has irritated these critics. But they have
quite mistaken me. I do not hold that Evangelicalism has
a weakening effect upon all men. It would be ridiculous
to say that their system enfeebled such men as Scott,
Introduction
Wilberforce, or Venn. On the contrary, it strengthened
them, and they could not have done their work in an
atmosphere of Liberal theology. But Robertson was
differently constituted. That air which they breathed easily,
choked Robertson, and change of air gave him life, power,
and mental energy. I spoke of the effect of Evangelicalism,
not on all men but on this man; and to accuse me of
intolerance in stating a fact of this kind is like accusing an
Englishman of insular exclusiveness because he says that he
could not live with any pleasure under the irritating, daily
restrictions of French Imperialism.
With regard to Robertson himself, I have always felt, and
I have stated it, that he showed scant justice to the
Evangelical School. He undervalued their efforts, and he
did not allow sufficient merit to their theology. It was the
only exception to his large and healthy tolerance. But he
was a man and not an angel, and I never attempted to
exhibit him as superhumanly perfect. There are few who
arrive at faultless tolerance, and those who do, often do so
from a defectiveness in their nature of noble anger and
enthusiasm. I confess I would, in many cases, rather keep
the latter with the spice of intolerance which distils from it,
than, in losing the intolerance, find the man afflicted with
a rigid prudence and a cold indifference. Moreover,
Robertson had, as I have said, some excuse. In London,
and in great towns, the poison of religious virulence is
diluted by the multitude of opinions-in the country the
distance at which clergymen live from one another disperses
the venom. But in places like Cheltenham and Brighton it
is concentrated, and Robertson being almost alone, with one
or two exceptions who were passive, found it coming drop
by drop upon his head. It is scarcely in human nature not
xiii
xiv
Introduction
4
to feel indignant and sometimes to let loose one's indigna-
tion, and it is not unnatural, as in Robertson's case, to fall
into the mistake that the spirit he suffered from in Brighton
was the characteristic spirit of the school which was foremost
in the attack upon them.
The criticism which the Dissenting Reviews have given to
Robertson's career has been uniformly generous, and marked
by a fresh and intellectual appreciation of his life and work.
This generosity is the more remarkable because Robertson
used now and then somewhat strong expressions about
Dissenters in his recoil from their want of union, and from
their consequent loss of power.
On looking back upon the last few years, and seeking for
the results which have flowed from Robertson's Sermons, and
from the publication of his Letters, perhaps the greatest is
the extension of liberal religious thought among those who
would not have received it from any other man. It has
filtered into the minds of thousands who would refuse to read
the works of others of the Liberal school, but who cannot
help reading Robertson. His teaching, for example, is
largely modifying Evangelicalism, because the higher Evan-
gelicalism is capable of modification. In Ireland, and
especially in Dublin, Robertson has had a very decided
influence upon the preaching of many of the clergymen. In
England, I have heard from every quarter, of men of anti-
liberal tendencies being changed-the whole basis of their
theological thinking altered-by the reading of his sermons.
It is not difficult to find the reason of this. The fault of
most of the sermons of the Liberal school is a want of
emotion. They are often too purely efforts of the intellect.
Often they want fervour-personal enthusiasm for Christ,
pietistic warmth-appeals to the heart. In one word, they
•
Introduction
want the very element which made the sermons of the early
Evangelicals tell so forcibly upon their hearers. Now
Robertson possessed this fervent emotional piety, and he had
derived it from his early connection with Evangelicalism.
Such men as Simeon, Newton, and others had an almost
mystical ardour of devotion, from which Robertson had drunk
deeply. This was increased in him by his eager reading of
such sermons as those of Newman and Manning, who were
as fervent as Simeon and Martyn upon another side of
Christian feeling. His early sermons exhibit a passionate
exaltation of religious emotion, in which thought and logic
are all but consumed in love. Afterwards, when he changed,
this element remained in him beneath his intellectual work,
and made it warm and glowing; and it is owing to the subtle
and insensible influence of this Evangelical element that he
has crept into the hearts of so many of that school, and
introduced into their teaching the leaven of liberal theology.
I do not find that Robertson has had any wide-spread
influence upon the High Church party. This party is far
more rigid in its system than the Evangelical, and though
more tolerant in words, is less inclined to real toleration.
The Evangelicals have the natural intolerance which accom-
panies a strictly dogmatic system, but the High Church party
have not only dogmatic intolerance, but, in addition, priestly
intolerance. Robertson's views on the nature of the Priest-
hood and on the nature of the Sacraments shut him out com-
pletely from the sphere of the High Churchmen. They always
speak of him kindly and with gentlemanly forbearance, but
they reject him utterly and with rigid logic from any union
with them. While ready, with a somewhat patronizing
dignity, to admit of his life having claims on their admiration
-they are too firmly wedded to their ecclesiastical theory,
XV
xvi
Introduction
which Robertson repudiated, to permit his influence to affect
them.
On the more advanced school of Liberal theologians
Robertson has also had very little influence. He is not
Radical enough in his views. He is not fond enough of
destroying. He has too little to do with the intellectual side
of Christianity, and too much to do with the emotional, for
their pleasure. They wonder at his being so widely read.
They admire his genius, reverence his life, but they find his
theology weak and behind the age. They do not seem to
understand that the generality of men really want for life, not
an intellectual but a heartfelt religion; and that it is because
Robertson has given them the latter in conjunction with a
fair amount of Liberal thought and of culture that he has
become the cherished companion, in his Sermons and Letters,
of so large a mass of their countrymen. For it is not so
much on declared followers of any particular school that
Robertson has had the widest influence. It is upon that
numerous class of men who are weary of going to church at
all, who exist apart from any distinct denomination, who wish
to be religious, but who have turned away, sick at heart,
from religions, that Robertson's teaching has told with the
greatest effect.
Whether this influence will be permanent or not is another
question. One portion of it will, I am sure, be permanent;
that portion which bears on the moral life and spiritual being
of men. To all in spiritual difficulty, in doubt, or in trouble
—to all whom sorrow has touched or whom suffering has
enfeebled—to all those spirits whose sensitive organization
has made life so subtle in its varieties of feeling, so difficult to
live, owing to the various aspects in which to such persons
both action and thought present themselves—he will always
Introduction
xvii
be the comforter and the guide of the way to the highest
Comfort. To all who are perplexed with casuistry, with the
solution of peculiar cases of moral action in which two duties
appear to clash, or in which of two duties the highest is to be
discovered and chosen-to all who wish, by the accurate
performance of the smallest duties of life, to reach the
starting point of the higher life where Christ replaces the Law
in our hearts by the Gospel, and coerced obedience to the
moral law is succeeded by the willing obedience which love
renders to a righteous Father-Robertson will always be a
helper and a director. But considered only as a theological
teacher, I doubt if his influence will be permanent. I do
not see how it can last in the rapid advance of the river of
religious thought in England.
I will try in conclusion of this Introduction to mark as
distinctly as possible Robertson's theological position. He
represents the transition period of the theological move-
ment of this century in England. He was partly a prophet
of the old, partly of the new. Hence he is a favourite
with all those minds who in this age of enquiry have
not determined their position. The religious Radical,
while admiring his religious thinking, looks down upon
his theological teaching. The defined High Church-
man and Evangelical adopt the same position. The true
Liberal clearly recognizes Robertson's position and work, but
at the same time holds that to fix himself into another man's
mould when time and knowledge are advancing, would deny
not only the necessity of progress, but even the principles on
which Robertson insisted. But there are thousands, on as
it were a kind of theological bridge, to whom Robertson's
teaching is dear, and whom he helps to see their position.
Representing, as he did, the transitionary period some time
VOL. I.
a
xviii
Introduction
before it appeared, these men find themselves reflected in
him. Some of them cross over to the bank of Liberal
Theology, others return to the shore they had left. He has
helped them to find certainty of opinion, not only by
showing them to themselves, but by the whole drift of his
moral teaching which above all else urges men to be true to
their convictions.
Again, his spiritual life, itself travelling through so many
phases, has an attraction for such men. They see their own
fluctuations there, and either pass on with him to his secure
position, or go back, finding that they cannot accept his
conclusions. As long as this large section of men who are
unsettled exists, Robertson's influence as a theological
teacher will endure. But the moment a man, having used
Robertson thus as a means of determining his position,
becomes a declared Liberal, or retires into the opposite ranks,
Robertson, as a theological teacher, though not as an ethical
or religious teacher, ceases to be of any use to him. There-
fore when Liberal Christianity, assisted as it is by the march
of social, scientific, and political events, becomes the regnant
form of Christianity among the educated classes in England,
Robertson will cease to possess his present wide-spread influ-
ence as a theologian. Nevertheless he will always be read.
As a theological teacher he will always be useful at that point
of an enquiring man's religious life, when his opinions are
floating in solution.
At the time of his death High Churchmen tried to claim
Robertson as tending to their views. Since his death
Evangelical reviewers have declared that he would have
returned, if he had lived, to their orthodox fold. So much
devotion, such love of Christ, has seemed to them quite.
inexplicable to one who was wandering on the dark mountains.
Introduction
xix
cf scepticism. But such a return would have been impos-
sible to Robertson. The principles which formed the very
back-bone of his mind, were in direct opposition to principles
which have been very generally enunciated in the late dis-
cussions; such as the assumed infallibility of the Bible on all
questions; the necessity of stifling doubt; the repression of
all who stir up theological discussions; the duty of keeping
strictly in the old paths; the habit of shutting the eyes to
difficulties and of answering opponents without the requisite
knowledge; the denial of the development of doctrine and
of religious progress, and the general deprecation, as an evil
to be dreaded, of active and critical inquiry. In none of these
things could Robertson have concurred. He liked war
and excitement. He believed in progress. He had no fear
of God's truth being overwhelmed. To him Christianity
could not be in danger. I do not think he could have
breathed in an atmosphere of obstinate theological optimism.
It was not stir, or enquiry, or scepticism, which he feared,
but unrelenting conservatism and stagnation; and there are
few who will not believe that he was right, few who will not
declare, in spite of all our divisions and troubles, that the
Church is in a healther condition than it was twenty years
ago—who will not hope, taking the very excitement as the
ground of the hope, that the Church is advancing towards
that condition of well-established health which is character-
ized by the possession, not of the spirit of fear, but of power,
of love, and of a sound mind. A writer in the Revue des
deux Mondes of February 1, 1866, says :-'Should you ask
now what is the present condition of Christianity in France,
I answer, look at the two opposed camps where a remnant of
life exists, one for the attack, the other for the defence of the
Christian faith. Then look beyond these two camps, and
a 2
XX
Introduction
what do you see remaining? An innumerable crowd, inert,
inanimate, a veritable Dead Sea in which no living being
dwells. That is the world you must reconquer. This
"insouciance-torpeur-engourdissement" of the souls of
men-this is the wound which is eating into our society
-this is the real disease of the age.' Now it is this
state, which this writer so deplores, from which we in
England, at least, are rescued. We live in a world of
religious excitement, from the highest to the lowest ranks.
We are going through a religious revolution, and it is not
impossible that we shall manage it with as much wisdom as
we managed, in 1688, our political revolution. 'It was not
very long ago,' says another French writer, whom I quote
from memory, since some sentimental politicians discovered
the model empire in China. They contrasted Europe, torn
with theological disputes-rent asunder with wars and
revolutions-labouring like a ship in a hurricane, with the
quiet national life and the uninterrupted paradise of peace
which for centuries had prevailed in China. But what is the
true view? China is dying of prolonged infancy. Europe
is still full of life— of faith in the future-of belief in itself.'
،
If we insist on reducing the Church to the standard of
China, it will die and deserve to die; if we accept, as
necessary elements of the age in which we live, the ex-
citement, controversy, criticism, revolutionary opinions,
which are now disturbing us, and set ourselves to find means
of bringing order out of disorder, we shall step soon into a
more vigorous existence than ever. I am certain that would
have been Robertson's opinion. shall not readily forget
the fervour with which I heard him read, 'Ring in the
Christ which is to be.'
I
No one holding such principles could have found a home
Introduction
xxi
in Evangelicalism, or have retired into that High Church
system which holds that the Christianity-and practice and
ritual--of the past are better than those of the present or the
future. I am far from depreciating the noble and honourable
work which the two Conservative parties in the English
Church have done and may yet do. There are principles at
the root of Ritualism, or rather lying hidden in it, which
it would be a misfortune to the Church to lose, and which
will probably, as time goes on, shake off the mists of error
which now conceal them and come forth into clear light to
help forward the march of Christianity. There are hopes,
and I think with good grounds, that the large Evangelical
party in the Church will soon, if it has not done it already,
take up more Liberal ground and revive into a Liberal-
Conservative condition. This is earnestly to be desired, for
it is most important that there should be a strong opposition
to prevent the Liberal theologians from going too fast for
Christian safety. But one thing at least is necessary for the
existence of such an opposition--that it should allow that
Theology has not reached its ultimate expression, and that
it should reserve its strength, not to oppose all extension of
Theology, but only an unconsidered, hasty, and unwise
extension. Theology is not Christianity—it is the scientific
exposition of Christianity; and to declare that it is now
perfect is to degrade it from the ranks of all true sciences,
which are always relative, perfectible, and therefore cannot
be delivered to man in a moment. Those who say that no
higher views of truth can be given or discovered by Theology,
say that we have exhausted the meaning of the Words
Christ-tantamount to the absurdity of saying that we
exhausted the Infinite-and make of Theology, n
temple, but the sepulchre of the human mind.

xxii
Introduction
To views such as I have expressed in these latter pages.
the whole of Robertson's teaching tended. Those who
embark upon the river of his thought, and do not leave it,
are carried out into this sea. It has its dangers, its quick-
sands, its deceitful currents; and it needs, especially now,
wary sailing and good pilots; but it ought to be a subject of
earnest thought whether it is better to be sailing there, on to
something better in the Infinite, or riding at anchor in a
tranquil land-locked bay.
1868.
PREFACE
ΤΟ
THE FIRST EDITION.
THERE would seem to be no apology necessary for present-
ing to the Public the Life and Letters of FRederick W.
ROBERTSON.
The abiding influence of his published writings on all
those readers who are capable of being interested in spiritual
questions and in Christian experience, has awakened in them
a desire to know more of his career.
Constant allusions made in the Public Press and in
Reviews to his pre-eminence as a Preacher-the wide diffu-
sion of his Sermons, not only over this Kingdom, but also
over part of the Continent and of America-the interest in
his teaching, which now (more than twelve years after his
death) is increasing rather than diminishing, have led men
to ask whether his life corresponded to the Ideal pictured
in his writings-whether his private letters would be worthy
companions of his public utterances.
The friends who lived with him and loved him-his Con-
gregation, and especially those Working Men of Brighton
xxiv
Preface to
with whom he was connected-have long and eagerly
wished to have some record of his life.
Those, on the other hand, who knew him not, but who
since his death have learned to reverence him as their
Teacher-who have found in his sermons a living source of
Impulse, a practical direction of Thought, a key to many
of the problems of Theology, and, above all, a path to
Spiritual Freedom,—these with an amount of feeling rarely
given to one personally unknown, have hoped to possess
some more intimate memorial of him, without whose life.
they had not lived.
For these reasons this book has been undertaken.
The publication of Mr. Robertson's Letters was considered
to be of great importance. They seemed to add a personal
interest to his Sermons, to explain fully his mode of thought,
to indicate the source and progress of many of his views,
and to supplement his general teaching. They are full of
tender human thought, of subtle and delicate feeling, and of
much tried and suggestive experience.
They possess also, in common with his Sermons, a
peculiar literary interest. This interest lies not so much
in the originality of their ideas as in the mode in which
these ideas are represented. The choice of words in them
is remarkable. There is sometimes a happy indefiniteness
which belongs to and which suggests the infinite nature of
the things discussed. A spirit pervades them which influ-
ences unconsciously their reader, and renders him receptive
of their truths, by inducing in him a kindred tone of heart.
Even Robertson's slight sketches of an idea, traced perhaps
in a single sentence, contain the materials for a finished
composition. If he is not a Creator, he is eminently a lucid
Interpreter of thought. It is in this power of apt, logical,
The First Edition
and striking expression that the chief literary interest of his
writings consists.
I cannot but believe also that the noble, truthful life he
lived, and the 'very courageous' battle which he fought,
will have an influence as real and as helpful as his Sermons.
The inadequacy with which this Life has been represented
cannot be more a subject of regret to his friends than it is
to myself. The fault can only, perhaps, be pardoned for
the sake of the love and reverence with which the following
pages have been written.
I have to thank many of his friends, and especially his
father, Captain Robertson, for their assistance and advice.
XXV
I wish to draw attention to the interesting letters written
from the Tyrol to Mrs. Robertson, and collected in the first
Appendix, and to those from some of his friends, which are
inserted in the Text and in the second Appendix.¹
In conclusion, I must regret the delay in the appearance
of this book. It is due partly to my absence from England,
but chiefly to my desire to make the collection of Mr.
Robertson's letters as complete as possible. The arrival of
new matter has often compelled me to recast whole chapters,
and I have waited for months in the hope of obtaining an
important Correspondence, and found at last my hope in
vain.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
LONDON: Sept. 15, 1865.
In this Edition, incorporated with the body of the work.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
Birth of F. W. Robertson-Childhood-Love of Nature-Cha-
racter as a Boy at the Academy in Edinburgh-Youthful In-
terests-Choice of Profession-Military Enthusiasm-Studies
for the Indian Service-Circumstances which led him into the
Church-Enters Oxford-Contact with Tractarianism—Religious
Views and Christian Effort-Reading-Arnold and Wordsworth
-Speaking at 'The Union'-His Opinion as to the Position
of a Popular Preacher-Two letters recalling his College Life-
Ferment of his Mind at Oxford-Letter expressing his Opinion
of the Tract School and his Desire for a Military Chaplaincy-
Examination for Degree-He Studies for Ordination-Letter re-
viewing the Position of the English Church
Letters from May, 1838, to June, 1840.
LETTER
I. Reading-Oxford Donnishness
II. Desire for the Coming of Christ
III. Conversation with an 'Infidel'.
•
IV. Separation from his Brother
V. Anticipations of the Difficulties of the Ministry
VI. To a Friend whose Birthday approached
VII. Farewell to Oxford .
►
•
•
PAGE
I
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
xxviii
Contents of
CHAPTER II.
Passage from Collegiate to Active Life-Growth of his Christian
Faith-Early Sadness of his Heart--Ordination--Curacy at
Winchester-First Appearance in the Pulpit-Difficulties of his
Work-Letter Recalling his Life in Winchester-Success as a
Minister-Description of him by a Friend-Spiritual Life-
Devotional Reading-Prayer-Preaching-Despondency arising
from Illness-Examination for Priest's Orders-Close of Minis-
terial Life at Winchester-Continental Tour-Geneva and its
Parties.
• 45
Letters from September 17, 1840, to August 3, 1841.
LETTER
VIII. On first Entering the Ministry.
IX. To his Brother, on his Work
X. To a Friend, on the same subject
XI. Justification by Faith
XII. Aspiration after greater Self-devotion
XIII. Geneva; Discussion with M. Malan on 'Assurance'—with
on the Deity of Christ
M.
•
·
•
•
•
CHAPTER III.
Marriage-Death of his Sister-He takes the Curacy of Christ
Church, Cheltenham-Character and Influence of his Preaching
-His despondency and its Causes-His influence in Society—
His Conversation-His Daring Character-His Reading-Ex-
tracts and Letter throwing Light on his Spiritual Development
-Influences which contributed to the Change in his Opinions-
Progress of this Change-Its Crisis-He leaves Cheltenham for
the Continent
Letters during his Journey.
XIV. Arrival at Innsbruck-Description of his feelings-Tomb of
Hofer Chamois-Hunting-Lassitude of Heart and Rest-
lessness-Walk to Botzen
PAGB
71
71
73
74
74
75
78
106
The First Volume
LETTER
XV. Account of Mental Difficulties-Struggle after Truth-In
the thickest darkness' hold fast to Moral Good-Per-
plexity as to the Ministry-Heidelberg .
XVI. Résumé of the Crisis of Thought through which he was
passing
Correspondence with Mrs. Robertson
xxix
·
•
2. Colour in the Fir Woods-Impressions of the Tyrolese and
their Religion-Storm Clouds in the Pass of Ampezzo-
Walk to Corfara-Magnificent View
CHAPTER IV.
I. Munich and Rubens-The Journey to Innsbruck-Loveli-
ness of the Valley of the Inn-Influence of Beauty on a
troubled Heart-Hofer
116
•
OXFORD.
•
•
5. The Stelvio-Love of Solitude-Scene alluded to in the
Lectures on Poetry-Wood Logs in the Torrent
6. The Falls at Schaffhausen by Day and Night-'I have bad
Dreams'
3. First Impressions do not return; Record them at once-
The Shepherd's Inn-The Dolomite Mountains--Botzen 121
4. Tyrolese Character and Religion-Religious Superstitious
Reverence-Dislike of English Travellers of the Germans
-I travel as a Duty, not for Pleasure
•
7. Heidelberg-View from the Terrace.
8. Decision with respect to Curacy of Christ Church-Open-
ness to Sympathy-Plans for the Future
9. Disinclination for Ministerial Work-Influence at Heidel-
berg over Socinians and others-He is Encouraged and
again Depressed .
•
•
•
PAGE
IIO
{
Return to Cheltenham-Surrender of Curacy of Christ Church-He
accepts the Charge of St. Ebbe's, Oxford-Position in Relation
to the High Church and the Evangelical Parties-Results of his
Work on the Parish of St. Ebbe's and on himself-Trinity
Chapel, Brighton, is offered to him-He refuses, but afterwards
accepts the Offer-Sad Presentiments
113
115
•
118
123
126
127
129
•
• 131
130
134
XXX
Contents of
CHAPTER V.
BRIGHTON, 1847, 1848.
•
Arrival at Brighton-Trinity Chapel-Death of his Infant Daughter
-Self-analysis and Resolutions on entering on his Ministry at
Brighton-First Sermon-Characteristics of his Teaching-
Rapid Increase of his Congregation-He is appreciated by Ser-
vants and Working Men-Wide Sphere of his Work at Brighton
-How he met the Questions raised by the Revolutions of 1848 –
Afternoon Lectures on the First Book of Samuel-Results of
these Lectures-He is accused to the Bishop of preaching Poli-
tical Sermons-His Reply-Foundation of the Working Man's
Institute-He is asked to Deliver the Opening Lecture-His
Answer, and his Opinions on the InstitutionDelivery of the
First Address-His Boldness of Speech-Endeavour to Re-
concile Rich and Poor-Qualifications which fitted him to be a
Mediator
141
S
PAGB
•
C
Letters from August 9, 1847, to January 5, 1849.
LETTER
XVII. Reception of the 'Address '-The Events of 1848. . 161
XVIII. Charge of Radicalism—'Alone with Christ'-Grounds of
the Brotherhood of the Race-Pantheism-' Baptism of
John,' and Baptism of the Spirit-'That which calls
itself Evangelicalism'
163
167
XIX. 'The Wear and Tear' of ceaseless Preaching.
XX.. 'Every one is not called upon to be a Martyr for Truth' 168
CHAPTER VI.
BRIGHTON, 1849.
His Interest in all the questions which agitated Society-Clairvoy-
ance and Mesmerism-Speech at the Meeting for the Early
Closing Association 'Opposition which was roused by his
Preaching-Work and hidden Life.
. 169
The First Volume
Letters from January, 1849, to November, 1850.
PAGE
LETTER
XXI. Reply to Strictures brought against a Sermon on the
Suicide of Judas
XXII. On the Death of a School Friend
XXIII. The Character of a Man is measured by the Poets whom
he loves.
XXIV. The True means of developing our Human Nature
XXV. To a Friend about to become a Roman Catholic.
XXVI. To the same
XXVII. To the same
XXVIII. Loneliness of Heart; but Loneliness with Christ.
CHAPTER VII.
xxxi
•
•
•
→
1S3
• 184
. 185
•
. 186
·
•
His letters-Complexity of his Character-His sensitiveness-His
Knowledge of Men-His Life in Society-Effect of Climate
upon him-Exquisite Perception of Natural Scenery-Impres-
sions received from Art, and how he used them-Appreciation
of Poetry-Intensity of Enthusiasm and of Indignation-His
Eloquence and its Characteristics-Hatred of the Reputation of
a 'Popular Preacher '-The natural Morbidity and the dangerous
Tendencies of his Character-The Means he employed to con-
quer them-His noble Truth and Self-devotion-Causes of the
Gloom which appears in his Letters
187
. ISS
•
174
182
1
Letters, August and September, 1849.
XXIX. Fichte-Life in the 'Supersensuous' World
XXX. My sins nailed Him to the Tree'
XXXI. Who are these who criticise my Sermons
XXXII. 'When I felt the Days before me'
XXXIII. Souvenirs-Joy in Early Morning Air-Beautiful
Aurora-Delight that a Friend had determined to
solve the Mystery of Life
213
XXXIV. Evil of Desultory Reading-Desultory Life-Sacri-
ficial Expression-Fickleness-Night on the Sea. 2:7
•
189
207
209
210
212
xxxii
Contents of
LETTER
XXXV. Effects of Suspicion on Character-Is Prayer of the
Nature of a Charm'?-Where does the Inward
Change begin?
•
•
XXXVI. A Character
XXXVII. Another Character
XXXVIII. 'Is Sensibility to Sensuous Beauty necessary for the
attainment of the Highest Excellence?'- The
Sharpness of saying Farewell to half of One's
Being.
•
•
P
·
CHAPTER VIII.
BRIGHTON, OCTOBER, 1849, to December, 1850.
Visit to Cheltenham-New Interest in the Lives of Others and in
Ministerial Work-Depression-Great Intellectual Activity—
Afternoon Lectures on the Book of Genesis-Gorham Case-
Sermons on Baptism, on the Sabbath, on the Atonement-Viru-
lent Opposition-Solitary Position-Summing up of his Life-
Internal Dissension in the Working Man's Institute-Proposition
to admit Infidel Publications into the Library-His Speech on
the Occasion-Its Meaning-Its partial Success - Reconstruction
of the Association-His Letters on the Subject-Speech at the
Meeting against the Papal Division of England into Dioceses—
Two Letters of Gratitude from Working Men .
•
Letters from October, 1849, to December, 1850.
XXXIX. Miss Martineau's 'Feats on the Fiord' Religious
Superstitions-Moments of Sacred Rest in Life
XL. Effect of Violent Tragedies, e.g. Phèdre, on the Mind,
also of Speculative Reading
XLI. Sabbath Observance-Duty of Cheerfulness in Chris-
tian Life
•
•
•
·
PAGE
•
220
223
225
227
229
251
253
XLII. The Blessing of the Lot of Woman-The inarticulate
Sorrows of the World-How to conquer the oppres-
sive Weight of Time-Giving Happiness.
XLIII. Transmission of Letters on Sunday - The Puritan's
Sabbath-True Basis of a Day of Rest
LIV. Irony and Indignation of Christ-Resignation of Heart
-Recollection of Swiss Tour.
. 261
255
257
259
The First Volume
LETTER
XLV. Evil of taking Opiates
XLVI. Feelings during the Sunday Services-Is human Love
Idolatry?-The Mystery of Suffering
XLVII. St. Paul's Estimate of Women-The Agony of Scep-
263
265
ticism
XLVIII. The Temperaments of the Northern and Southern Na-
tions contrasted
XLIX. Sunset and Sympathy with Nature-Desolate Loneliness
with Truth better than a comfortable Life with the
Consciousness of being in Error-Walk by Night in
Hove Churchyard
L. Keble's Hymn for the 22nd Sunday after Trinity-In-
fluence of Carlyle
LI. 'Walk in the Spirit,' &c. &c.--Does Friendship gain
by Absence?
•
•
•
VOL. I.
•
xxxiii
•
•
•
→
•
•
LII. The Mercy which is Just-The Poetry of Prosaic Life—
When Solitude is useful to Character-Keble's Hymn
for the 23rd Sunday after Trinity
•
·
LIII. Inspiration
LIV. Description of a Stormy Day-Capital Punishment
Keble's Line 'Who for the spangles wears the funeral
pall?'-Shelley's Gloom-Love of Cheerful healthy
•
ppy
LVI. Depression-Keble's Hymn for the 24th Sunday after
Trinity-The Temptation of Christ as enabling Him
to sympathise with Men
LVII. Swedenborg-Story Illustrating how Scepticism is born
of Superstition
•
PAGE
262
Life
276
LV. Source of the Strength of the Will of Christ-Sins of
Thought-Dr. Channing's Life-Did Channing Wor-
ship Christ?
266
·
267
269
271
272
275
280
LVIII. Self-devotion as a mere Instinct-Majesty of Law-
Keble's Hymn for the 25th Sunday after Trinity
LIX. Robespierre's Theory and Practice of the Punishment
of Death-Administration of the Communion to the
Murderer-Superhuman Forgiveness-'Le mystère
de l'existence, c'est le rapport de nos erreurs avec nos
peines'-The Trial of Christ, only three Years!
. 293
b
284
288
290
xxxiv
Contents of
LETTER
PAGE
LX. Shakspeare and his Critics-Healthy Humanity of
Shakspeare
297
LXI. 'Romeo and Juliet'-Threefold Web of Life-A
Friend's Analysis of the teaching in Trinity Chapel 298
LXII. Keble's Hymn for the Sunday next before Advent-
The Doctrine of the Atonement
Tag
•
•
LXIII. The true Mode of beginning a Christian Life-'My
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'-
Christ as Conqueror of ALL Evil-Are we guilty of
His Death?-Character judged by Handwriting—
'If God is Love, why do we need a Mediator?'
LXIV. End served by the Mutilation of our Affections-Rigid
Rules do not produce Goodness Greek Art-
'Comus'-Deep Sadness-Difficulties of position. 309
LXV. January 4, 1850: Duty of larger Interests in Hu-
manity-Death of the Queen Dowager.
LXVI. Anecdotes of the Kaffir War
LXVII. The same subject
LXVIII. Afternoon Lectures on Genesis
LXIX. Anecdote of the Bishop of Glasgow-Self-sacrifice--
Walk by the Sea Coast
·
•
•
•
•
LXX. Humble Resignation
LXXI. Relative Priority of Will and Law-Where can we
best worship, alone in the Temple of the Universe
or in a Church with living Men?.
LXXII. Need of devotional Reading-Channing's Life .
LXXIII. Advice to a Friend perplexed by petty Domestic
Troubles
•
•
•
LXXIV. Uselessness of mere Eloquence-Lessing and War-
burton
LXXV. Hatred of Evil-Sad Fate of an English Lady-
Lessing's Speculation as to pre-Existence - The
'Veracity' of Woman .
LXXVI. The Gorham Judgment
LXXVII. Sermons on Baptism--The Phrase 'Too Late'-The
so-called Means of Grace
LXXVIII. On Baptism
•
•
•
301
•
304
313
314
316
318
320
321
322
323
325
326
327
329
331
333
The First Volume
LETTER
LXXIX. Unconscious Influence The Luxury of doing
Good?' Intellectual Cultivation versus Moral
-
XXXV
•
LXXXV. 'All is Well'.
LXXXVI. The final Cause of Sorrow
LXXXVII. 'Macbeth '-Regulation of outward Life
Good-Lord Byron-Phèdre
LXXX. The Truth that God is Love cannot be reached
through the 'Understanding'-Anecdote of Him-
self-The Necessity of the Economy of Truths—
Story of Rogers and 'Junius'
•
LXXXI. Analogy of Morning, Midday, and Evening with
Human Life-Advantage of living by the Seaside
-Wild Feelings suggested by the stormy Sea · 343
LXXXII. Speculative and Meditative Form of Character con-
trasted with the Practical and Contriving-Blessed
are they that Mourn
LXXXIII. 'The Course of true Love never did run Smooth'-
Romance in early Love
LXXXIV. Calming Power of English Country Scenery-Words-
worth's Prelude-Settled Depression-To do Good
for our own Sake?
•
•
•
·
PAGE
•
336
340
345
346
348
350
351
352
LIFE AND LETTERS
OF THE
REV. F. W. ROBERTSON
CHAPTER I
Birth of F. W. Robertson-Childhood-Love of Nature-Character
as a Boy at the Academy in Edinburgh-Youthful Interests-
Choice of Profession-Military Enthusiasm-Studies for the Indian
Service-Circumstances which led him into the Church-Enters Ox-
ford-Contact with Tractarianism-Religious Views and Christian
Effort-Reading-Arnold and Wordsworth-Speaking at the
Union'-His Opinion as to the Position of a Popular Preacher-
Two Letters recalling his College Life-Ferment of his Mind at
Oxford-Letter expressing his Opinion of the Tract School and
his Desire for a Military Chaplaincy-Examination for his
Degree-He studies for Ordination-Letters reviewing the Posi-
tion of the English Church.
Letters from May, 1838, to June, 1840.
FR
REDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON, the eldest
of the seven children of Frederick and Sarah Robert-
son, was born February 3, 1816, in London, at the house of
his grandfather, Colonel Robertson, a distinguished officer,
who was wounded in the service.
His father, who is still alive, was a captain in the Royal
Artillery. Two of his brothers, Charles Duesbury, of the
VOL. I.
B
2
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Royal Engineers,' and Harry, of the 60th Royal Rifles, won
frequent honourable mention' in the Kaffir war. The
third, Struan, was a captain in the Royal South Lincoln.
Militia. They all survived him, but before he had reached
his twenty-fifth year he had grieved over the death of his
three sisters.
The first five years of his childhood were passed at Leith
Fort. In 1821, his father, then Captain in the Royal
Artillery, retired on half pay in order to attend to the educa-
tion of his children, left Leith and settled at Beverley, in
Yorkshire. There he personally instructed his son for four
years, and then sent him to the grammar-school of the town,
under the Rev. G. P. Richards.
In 1829, the family went to Tours, where young Robertson
studied the classics with an English tutor, attended a French
seminary, and laid the foundation of his accurate knowledge
of the French language. In consequence of the revolution
of 1830, his father returned to England, and placed the boy,
now nearly sixteen years old, in the New Academy, Edin-
burgh, under the late Rev. John Williams, afterwards Arch-
deacon of Cardigan.
He owed much to the careful education and watchfulness
of his parents. They kept him apart from evil influences,
and made his home his most honoured recollection. This
seclusion, and the books he was induced to read in child-
hood, were both so calculated to develope his character in a
true direction, that he mentions them afterwards in some
MS. notes, written at Winchester, as two of the special
mercies with which God had blessed his infancy. The
loneliness which is more or less the lot of the eldest of the
He received the brevet
He is now Lieut. -Colonel in his corps.
rank of Major for his services in the Kaffir war.
Recollections of Childhood
family, soon created in him a thoughtfulness full of imagina-
tion, and a spirit of inquiry which supplied him with the
materials for a silent self-education. But on this account
he became neither morbid nor unnatural. On the contrary,
he was a radiant and eager child, full of healthful enjoyment
of life, delighting in air, and sunlight, and active exercise.
His happy childhood at Leith Fort was a cherished memory
of his ministerial life; and he looked back upon it with a
pleasure deepened by the necessarily sedentary nature of his
profession. In 1849, he writes from Brighton :—
3
My pony, and my cricket, and my rabbits, and my father's
pointers, and the days when I proudly carried his game-bag, and
my ride home with the old gamekeeper by moonlight in the
frosty evenings, and the boom of the cannon, and my father's
orderly, the artilleryman who used to walk with me hand-in-
hand-these are my earliest recollections.
Even at that time there seems to have been nothing in
external nature which did not give him pleasure, and awake
in him a vivid interest. The fresh winds, and sunlight, and
clear waters, which he enjoyed at Leith, seem to have
infused their own spirit into his receptive organisation. He
wandered over the country with an open eye and heart, and
found in every walk and ride something to admire and to
love. He had a child's affection and reverence for animals,
and especially for birds. He studied their natural history;
he watched them to their haunts; he rejoiced in the freedom
of their life as if it had been his own; he even began a
book in which he made drawings of them, with notes on
their habits and habitations. Many will remember the
passage in one of his lectures on Poetry, in which he notices
with enthusiasm Wilson's work on 'Birds,' and Waterton's
'Wanderings,' and describes with the minuteness of affection
B 2
4
Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
the series of stuffed birds which illustrated falconry in the
Exhibition of 1851. 'I have visited,' he says, 'the finest
museums in Europe, and spent many a long day in watching
the habits of birds in the woods, hidden and unseen by them;
but I never saw the reproduction of life till I saw these.'
He describes himself, in boyhood, as iron in strength,
broad and stout.' He excelled in manly games and athletic
exercises, and was the leader of all the daring exploits of his
companions. To this he joined a love of reading and of
quiet remarkable at his age. On the brightest day he would
become entranced in some tale of chivalry or imagination
which charmed him into stillness. He loved to fancy him-
self a knight—seeking adventure, redressing wrongs, laying
down his life for maidens in distress; and often for hours
together the vividness of these imaginary pictures would
separate him from the commonly thoughtless activity of a
boy's life, and exile him from his companions. Lying at the
root of much of this dreaminess, was the sensitiveness of
nerve and feeling which so strongly marked and influenced
his whole existence. It betrayed its presence during boy-
hood in his shy and sometimes defiant manner, and in a
settled self mistrust, often sinking into hopelessness. 'Defi-
ciency of hope,' he says himself, is the great fault of my
character.'
Such a temperament, without his strong will and stern
sense of duty, would naturally have led him into idleness.
But it was not so with him. In childhood he learned
quickly, and mastered fully what he had learnt. His
memory was retentive, and in later years he could recall
with ease page after page of books which he had not read
since his boyhood. But this power never stole from him
his conviction that perseverance in labour was the only
Boyhood and School Life
5
foundation of real knowledge. He was an intense worker.
He never left a subject till he had done his utmost to
exhaust it, and to examine it in all its bearings. At the
Academy in Edinburgh, his toil was incessant, and he soon
took a high place in his class. Though without the advan-
tage of previous training in the lower forms, he gained at the
end of the session the first prizes for Latin verse, English
prose, the French language, and French recitation; and
contested so sharply the prize given to the best Greek
scholar, that the decision was referred to Professor Sandford,
who gave it in favour of the Dux of the Academy-George
Moncrieff, with whom, as boy and man, Robertson main-
tained an unbroken friendship.
All this success surprised no one more than himself; he
continually wrote home in depreciation of his work. This
self-mistrust made him even then acutely conscious of small
errors. In composition, he magnified slight failures in the
rhythm and style of a sentence into grave faults; he was
intolerant of a misplaced stop; he shrank with all the over-
subtle purism of a boy from a mispronunciation or an
antiquated pronunciation of words. He carried this humi-
lity and sensitiveness into morals; the slightest deviation
from truthfulness in words or truthfulness in action was
abhorrent to his nature. His mother said of him, 'I never
knew him tell a lie ;' and he would rather have lost every
prize at the Academy, than owe one to foreign help or to
the usual aid which boys seek from translations.
The principal of the Academy soon recognised the cha-
racter he had to deal with, and gave him repeated encourage-
ment, and of this he speaks with grateful appreciation.
Without sympathy he would have been hopeless, although
he would not have ceased to work; for there was mingled
6
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
in him the womanliness which seeks for external help, and
the manliness which performs a duty even in loneliness. To
romance, sensitiveness, delicacy, humility, great gentleness,
he added, even at this early age, a practical view of life,
calm good sense, steady adherence to right, unselfishness,
and a courage at once enthusiastic and prudent. Two
letters, written when he was sixteen years old, to his mother
and brother, shortly after the cholera appeared at Edinburgh,
will illustrate some of these points of character :—
February 26, 1832.
My dear Mother,-You need be under no apprehension con-
cerning the cholera, as the cases here, upon an average, are one
a week, or something of that kind. If, however, it should
increase in violence, I have made up my mind to remain here.
In the first place, I should bring infection home, and it would
be extremely selfish to bring others into danger merely for my
own private safety. In the next place, instead of escaping it, I
might only rush into danger in my journey. I am sorry to say,
that because I kept a good place at first in my class, the Rector
said to several persons that he expected me to be second at the
end of the year. He will, I am sorry to say, soon find out his
mistake, as I am terribly behind-hand in several things. Ten
o'clock P.M.-I have just finished fagging hard for to-morrow.
July 2, 1832.
My dear Brother,-Tell papa that my suspicions about the
French composition prize were but too well founded; for this
morning, Monsieur Braed, after I had endeavoured for a long
time to get it out of him, acknowledged that he had given the
prize to Moncrieff. He then put me in a very trying situation,
by asking me to recite it (Moncrieff's) on the exhibition day. I
told him I could not decide, but would give him an answer to-
morrow. Though it is hard upon me to be thus made the
herald of my own defeat, I have determined to comply partly
He leaves the Academy
7
for Moncrieff's sake, and partly because I am determined that
whatever I feel, it shall not be visible. A few days ago, the
Academical Club, or rather a deputation, waited on the Rector
to announce the decision upon the English verses given in a
long time ago. The seventh, sixth, and fifth classes were sum-
moned into the Rector's class-room, and the prize was decided
to have been gained by Terrot in my class. After he had recited
his verses, we were told that all the other copies which had been
given in were very meritorious, but that the two next in merit to
Terrot's were so equal, that they had been unable to decide
between them. I was astonished by hearing my motto read
cut as one of them, and still more so when I was called upon to
recite them. Imagine me standing elevated upon the Rector's
platform, and feeling more like a criminal than anything else.
I trembled so violently that I could not hold the paper steady,
and do not know how I managed to get to the end. The
deafening claps of the boys were the first thing that brought me
to my senses. I cannot imagine what I shall do when I recite
the French in the public hall with several hundred spectators,
when I felt so uncomfortable by just reading before a hundred
and twenty boys, most of whom I knew, the masters, and a few
of the directors, and the Academical Club.
At the end of the session he left the Academy, and, under
the care of Mr. Terrot, afterwards Bishop of Edinburgh,
attended the various classes at the University, and at the
age of eighteen returned home, bringing with him a large
amount of multifarious knowledge and many memories of a
pleasant life and profitable study. Of his general reading
at Edinburgh there is no record, but he had devoted him-
self eagerly to practical chemistry and physical geography.
There remains among his papers a MS. book full of notes of
Professor Jameson's lectures, and illustrated by drawings,
which manifest the artistic talents which he afterwards culti-
Со
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
vated, and then, when he had attained to some excellence,
characteristically despised.
But his interest in all these things was small in comparison.
with his enthusiasm for a military life. This was literally
born with him. At Leith, before he was five years old, he
drank in, with all the eagerness of a boy, the intoxicating.
aroma of his father's profession. 'I was rocked and cradled,'
he writes, to the roar of artillery, and the very name of such
things sounds to me like home. A review, suggesting the
conception of a real battle, impresses me to tears; I cannot
see a regiment manoeuvre, nor artillery in motion, without a
choking sensation.'
The traditions of his family suggested and fostered this
passionate love of arms.¹ The conversation at home was
full of recollections of bivouac and battle, and of the
daring exploits of Sir Charles Napier, who was his father's
personal friend and comrade in arms. He writes from the
Academy to his brother, begging that the miniature fort in
the garden at home might not be blown up till he arrived.
He argued daily with his French masters on military
engineering. It is no wonder that, on leaving Edinburgh,
the secret wish of his heart to enter the army had grown
into a settled purpose. This was not, however, the intention
of his father, who considered that the character of his son,
and his deep religious feeling, were unfitted for a barrack
Capt. Robertson, in June, 1805, was embarked on board the
Victory,' when Nelson's fleet of twelve sail of the line took troops on
board at Barbadoes and went in pursuit of the Toulon squadron, and,
whilst serving with the land and naval forces on the coast of North
America in 1813, was mentioned in terms of commendation in four
different despatches. At the capture of Hampton, in Virginia, he
stormed and captured, with signal bravery, the enemy's last field-piece.
1

:
His Enthusiasm for a Military Life
9
life. The Church was, therefore, proposed to him as a
profession; but his answer was decisive-'Anything but
that I am not fit for it.'
He was then (1833) articled to Mr. Borton, a solicitor at
Bury St. Edmunds, and passed a year in his office. But the
sedentary nature of the work broke down his health; and
Captain Robertson discovered that his son had adopted a
profession which he detested, only through a feeling of
chivalrous obedience. It was then resolved that he should
follow the bent of his genius. An application was made
to the Horse Guards for a commission. It was refused on
the ground of age. But his mother's family had been for
tunate enough to do the King, when Prince William, some
service, and the refusal was retracted. His name was
placed upon the list for a cavalry regiment serving in India.
He was enraptured, and immediately began to study for his
profession with enthusiasm. He went to stay with his
brother in the Engineers, at Chatham, to gain an insight
into practical engineering. His whole soul was in his work.
He recalls in later letters that time :-' On that road I kad
walked and ridden, oh, how often; exulting in the future,
fearless, full of hope, and feeling the perfection of the present:
days when I was prodigal of happiness.'
A spirit so buoyant and enthusiastic fitted him well for
the
army, and he became a first-rate rider, a good shot, and
an excellent draughtsman. He omitted nothing likely to
make him a faithful and useful officer. In hope and work
two years were thus passed by, during which he lived with
his family at Cheltenham. There it was that Captain
Robertson, under the impression that his application to the
King had been forgotten, again proposed to his son the
profession of the Church, and again was answered by a firm
10 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
:
refusal. The temptations to which he would be exposed in
the army were strongly set before him, but he could not
believe that they were any real barriers against his entrance
into it; on the contrary, with his usual desire for some
positive outward evil to contend with, he imagined that it
was his peculiar vocation to bear witness to God, to set the
example of a pure and Christian life in his corps, to be, as
he said, 'the Cornelius of his regiment.' The trained obe-
dience of an army to one head harmonised with his own
strong conception of the beauty of order and the dignity of
duty. All the impulses of his character to self-sacrifice,
chivalry, daring, romantic adventure, the conquest of oppres-
sion, the living of life intensely, he looked forward to satisfy-
ing as a soldier; and he believed that the active out-door
existence of a campaign, with its danger and excitement,
would suit his physical temperament, and tend to neutralise
his constitutional nervousness.
Associated in remarkable contrast with his vivid outward
life and activity at this time, was an inward life, peculiarly
sensitive, subtle in thought, more subtle still in feeling, full
of poetical and religious sentiment. It was impossible to
express in prose the minuter shades of feeling which passed
over his heart as boyhood grew into youth, and he began at
this period to read poetry with greater eagerness and to
write verses. His own efforts are, strange to say, charac-
terised by almost no imagination, and curiously devoid of
poetical talent. The influence of Pope, of whom he was
now an ardent admirer, seems to have clogged all his
attempts at English verse. Striving after the terseness of
thought and sharp clearness of expression which mark hist
model, he naturally became incapable of putting into verse.
delicate dreams of intuitive feeling. Perhaps it was owing
Military and Theological Studies
to his discovery of this want that he ceased for a tine to
read Pope, and turned in preference to Byron and
Shakespeare.
To two great objects-the profession of arms which he
had chosen, and the service of Christ in that profession-he
now devoted himself wholly. They filled his life, and for
both of them he read carefully. It marks his honesty and
sincerity of purpose, that immediately on making sure of his
commission in the Indian cavalry, he gave himself up to pre-
paration for service in that country. He would have thought
it a sin against truthfulness of character, if he had adopted
a career without a special training for his work. With this
purpose he studied the early history and geography of India,
and the characters of its various populations. He mapped
the campaigns and made himself master of the strategical
movements of British generals in that country. The fortunes
of India, and the constitution which the English had elabo-
rated for their large dependency, became familiar to him.
It is interesting to observe how fondly he recalled at
Brighton these youthful studies, how he followed the course
of the Sikh war, and read with careful pleasure the exploits
of Napier¹ and the story of Major Edwardes' career.
In a
series of lectures delivered at Brighton, and unfortunately
lost, he treated of Christianity as it would come into contact
with Hindooism with the same wide grasp of principles, and
in the same manner, as he dealt with the advent of Christ
to the Greek, Roman, and Barbarian. The seed of which
these lectures were the flower, was sown at this time.
II
Parallel with his military reading, in rather a strange
contrast, ran his religious reading. Sometimes both glided
A picture of Sir Charles Napier was hung in his study, and he
used to call it his household god.
12
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
into one another, as when, in the hope of advancing Christ's
kingdom, he devoted a portion of his time to the history of
Indian missions, and the study of the reasons of their small
success; and with a rare wisdom, the need of which has at
last been recognised, gained all the information accessible to
him upon the religion of the Hindoos. At other times, his
reading was entirely theological. Towards the end of 1836,
he seems to have almost given up the hope of hearing
favourably from the Horse Guards, and, with a kind of pre-
sentiment, began to labour at books on Evidences and on
Prophecy. Then again, as if the hope of a military life had
reawakened, he analysed the Jugurthine war. In his com-
mon-place book may be seen the fluctuations of his mind
between the Church and the Army as professions, or, at
least, his desire to bring Christianity into a soldier's life.
All these fair hopes were destined to disappointment.
Looking back now on his career as a clergyman, and con-
sidering the wide influence which his published sermons.
have had in England, it is interesting to trace how he was
apparently impelled by circumstances into the clerical pro-
fession.
In March, 1837, he met Mr. Davies, now Vicar of
Tewkesbury, at the house of a common friend in Chelten-
ham. A close friendship soon sprang up between them.
Mr. Davies, believing that he saw in Robertson all the
elements which would form a successful and devoted minister
of the Church, endeavoured to dissuade him from entering
the army. He replied, 'that the matter had been already
1
1 Mr. Davies thus relates the origin of their friendship - The
daughter of Lady Trench, at whose house I met my friend, had been
seriously ill. She was prevented from sleeping by the barking of a
dog in one of the adjoining houses. This house was Captain Robert-
His Change of Profession
13
settled, that application had been made long ago, and in-
terest employed to obtain a commission.' He added, 'I do
not become a soldier to win laurels my object is to do
good.' Mr. Davies, however, did not desist till he had
obtained from him a promise to allow the whole matter to
be reconsidered. His mind, however, remained fixed in its
previous resolution. Three weeks only before he entered
Oxford, his father said to him, 'I think you had better re-
consider your plans and enter the Church.' He answered,
energetically,' No, never!' The following day he met Mr.
Daly, now the Bishop of Cashel, at Lady Trench's. It
struck him as singular that Mr. Daly should ask him, so
soon after his father's suggestion, 'Whether it were defi-
nitely settled that he should go into the army?' After
son's. A letter was written to ask that the dog might be removed;
and so kind and acquiescent a reply was returned, that Lady Trench
called to express her thanks. She was much struck at that visit by the
manner and bearing of the eldest son, and, in consequence, an intimacy
grew up between the families.'
This apparently trivial circumstance is mentioned, because in one of
Mr. Robertson's papers, a curious allusion to it has been found, which
proves that this intimacy promoted the change of his profession. He
is speaking of one of his favourite theories-that all great truths con-
sist of two opposites which are not contradictory. 'All is free,' he
says-' that is false; all is fated-that is false. All things are free and
fated-that is true, I cannot overthrow the argument of the man who
says that everything is fated, or, in other words, that God orders all
things, and cannot change that order. If I had not met a certain
person, I should not have changed my profession: if I had not known
a certain lady, I should not probably have met this person : if that
lady had not had a delicate daughter who was disturbed by the barking
of my dog: if my dog had not barked that night, I should now have
been in the dragoons, or fertilising the soil of India. Who can say
that these things were not ordered, and that, apparently, the merest
trifles did not produce failure and a marred existence ? '
14
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
some conversation, he inquired, 'What would you advise
me to do?' Mr. Daly, who, much impressed by his unaf-
fected piety, desired to see him in the Church, answered:
'Do as your father likes, and pray to God to direct your
father aright.' His friends also at Cheltenham urged the
same upon him. He spoke then to his father, and left the
final decision in his hands. With a romantic instinct of
self-sacrifice, which transcended the bounds of prudence, he
resolved to give up the idea of his whole life. Yet he would
scarcely have done this had not his strong sense of duty
been appealed to by the arguments of his friends, and had
not his characteristic self-mistrust disposed him to believe
that he was himself the worst judge of his future profession.
His father, after anxious consideration, decided, at last, to
send him up immediately to Oxford with Mr. Davies. With
some difficulty, and through the interest of Mr. Churton,
who wished to secure him for his college, a vacancy was
found for him in Brazenose. He wrote home to state this,
and added, with evidently a lingering wish for the army,
'What shall I do?' He shrank with deep pain from com-
pleting the sacrifice. But his father wrote to say, 'Accept
it;' and on May 4, 1837, he was examined and matricu-
lated.
Five days afterwards, the long-expected letter came from
the military secretary, offering him a cavalry commission in
the 2nd Dragoons, with the option of exchange into the 3rd,
just embarking for India. Had it arrived three weeks sooner,
he had never entered the Church; but arriving after his
matriculation, his father considered that God had directed
the circumstances, and the commission was declined.
He was now twenty-one years old, and, accepting, some-
what sternly, his destiny, he began his university career.
His Anxiety for the Spiritual Welfare of Soldiers 15
Before entering on residence, he spent much time with
Mr. Davies. They walked daily together; and his friend,
anxious lest he should have forced his inclinations, asked
him frequently whether he was satisfied with what had been
done. He would never answer directly, but only quietly
reply, 'Wait; some day I will tell you.'
Often (Mr. Davies writes) when passing a soldier in the street,
has he tightly pressed my arm, observing, 'Well, so I am to
have nothing to do with them;' and at other times, 'Poor
fellows, they are but little thought of; few care for their souls.'
I can never forget the fecling and energetic manner in which he
would quote at length the passage from Coleridge's 'Sibylline
Leaves,' dwelling with marked emphasis on the lines-
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch
Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,
Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;
. As though he had no wife to pine for him,
No God to judge him.
It was with great delight that he told me that the application
for a commission had been successful, for it would not be said
that he went into the Church because he could not get into the
Army.
During the summer he went up the Wye, and visited
Tintern by moonlight. Mr. Davies, who accompanied him,
remembers that he always collected the servants of the
several inns to evening prayers, and recalls his intense and
romantic enjoyment of the scenery; and
Yet (continues Mr. Davies), with all this poetical sense of life and
nature, I never knew anyone who took a more correct view of
life, and who was more anxious to deal in a manly and Christian
way with its realities.
16
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
At the time to which I refer I never knew him otherwise than
cheerful, and there were times when his spirits were exuberant,
times when he was in the mood of thoroughly enjoying every-
thing. With him as I was, daily and hourly, I can testify that
he was a constant and prayerful student of his Bible.
He possessed a very logical mind, and in argument was a close
and accurate reasoner. At this time he held firmly what are
understood as evangelical views, and for these he would mildly
but perseveringly contend. He advocated strongly the pre-
millennial advent of Christ. But one who was more free from
the shibboleths of a party, or more abhorrent from anything like
cant, or one who regarded others with a more large-hearted
charity, I never knew.
•
In October 1837, Mr. Robertson became a resident at
Brazenose. With his deep and cultivated interest in all
the variations of religious opinion, he at once came into
contact with the movement which engrossed a large portion
of the most remarkable men in the university, under the
leadership of John Henry Newman. Several efforts were
made to induce Mr. Robertson to join this party. He had
himself been much impressed by a sermon of Mr. Newman's,
'On Sin after Baptism;' and the contest which arose in his mind
from his sense of the fervour and sincerity of religious feel-
ing which marked the Tract school, and his own instinctive
recoil from the doctrines which they held, resulted in a
state of deep mental depression. But depression never
at any time of his life was permitted to pass the point where
it merges into intellectual or spiritual slothfulness; and
now, as always, it spurred him into activity. He began
immediately to study critically the Acts of the Apostles, and
he wrote to his father to say that he had not gone through
the book before he felt satisfied that, on the subject of
Baptism at least, the Tractarian school was in error. With
Disconnection with the Tractarian Movement
17
a calmer mind than before, he now endeavoured to make
himself master of Mr. Newman's opinions, and to refute
them. His copy of Tract 90, and of Dr. Pusey's letter to
the Bishop of Oxford, are largely annotated by his answers
to their arguments. He seems to have read carefully about
this time, as books bearing on the whole subject—' Collier's
History,' 'Calvin's Institutes,' 'Ranke's History of the
Popes,' and many of the replies published at Oxford in
1838-39.
From the main conviction with regard to Mr. Newman's
opinions which he then attained he never afterwards.
swerved. But he did not join then, or at any time, in
the persecution and slander with which the Tractarians
were assailed. He invariably spoke bravely—and that
when brave speaking was dangerous to his position-in
behalf of their manliness, devotion, and practical work.
Nor was he content with convincing himself of the errors
of the prominent school at Oxford. He endeavoured to
counteract its influence among his personal friends, by
setting on foot a society for the purpose of prayer and
conversation on the Scriptures. It was organised, and con-
sisted of seven members, but after lingering through a term
or two it died in 1839.
The necessity of an accurate and critical knowledge of
the Bible became more clear to him from this contact with
various forms of religious thought. It was his habit when
dressing in the morning to commit to memory daily a cer-
tain number of verses of the New Testament. In this way,
before leaving the university, he had gone twice over the
English version, and once and a half through the Greek.
With his eminent power of arrangement, he mentally corn-
bined and recombined all the prominent texts under fixed
VOL. I.
C
18 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
¡
heads of subjects. He said long afterwards to a friend,
that owing to this practice, no sooner was any Christian
doctrine or duty mentioned in conversation or suggested to
him by what he was writing, than all the passages bearing
on the point seemed to array themselves in order before
him.
No change took place in his doctrinal views, which were
those of the Evangelical school, with a decided leaning to
moderate Calvinism. They were mingled with a rare
charity and tolerance, which seem, however, in the excite-
ment of argument, to have sometimes failed him. He took
a large interest in missionary work, especially in that
among the Jews. The society mentioned above, for the
short term of its existence, became one of the centres of
correspondence which were established in England with
the leading foreign mission stations. He strove to interest
others in Christian enterprise; but his enthusiasm, though
not frozen, was chilled by the apathy and coldness of
Oxford. To his excitable and eager temperament, the trim
system, the 'donnishness' which gave the tone to the life
and studies of reading men, were dreary and sleepy and
too hedged in by unelastic rules. With the Utopianism of
a young man, he could not at first see that a large and
varied society must be governed, not by love, but by law;
that if the intellect is to be well trained, it must be restricted
to a few subjects, and forbidden to travel over wider fields
till it has gained sufficient power.
His Christian fervour, for which he found so little food
in Oxford, he maintained by bold speaking and brave
action.
1 rejoice to think of him (writes one of his friends) as I knew
him at Oxford-warm, and generous, and noble-hearted; con-
Influence of Plato and Aristotle
19
spicuous for talent, irreproachable in conduct; and, what was
most of all valuable, and the most cheering subject of retrospect
now, one who carried the banner of the Cross without fear, and
was not ashamed of Christ in a place which, though professedly
consecrated to His service, offered perhaps more hindrances than
helps to a decidedly Christian profession.
He read steadily, though not severely, the usual course.
On every side his imagination seems to have lured him
away from the confined sphere of university reading to sub-
jects suggested by his studies. This, and, I imagine, a want
of enthusiasm for collegiate life and reading, born of regret
for the loss of the real profession of his heart, with the
addition, perhaps, of his constitutional diffidence, were the
reasons why he never aspired to collegiate honours. At first,
however he plunged eagerly, too eagerly, into work. He
attended lectures for sixteen hours in a week. He mingled
with his necessary labours the recreation which natural history
afforded him. He listened with pleasure to the wit, learning,
and imagination with which Dr. Buckland charmed his
geological class. Plato fascinated him. The poetry, the
idealism, the complete power with which the Greek philo-
sopher used the most perfect organ of human thought,
delighted a mind essentially imaginative, and a taste which
demanded that thought should be expressed not only in
accurate, but in polished language. Yet he saw the defects
of Plato, and turned to Aristotle, to balance the scale of
his thought. He studied both with untiring labour, and
he declared many years afterwards that their writings, with
those of Edwards, 'had passed like the iron atoms of the
blood into his mental constitution.' Aristotle gradually won
a great influence over his intellect; and it is possible again
and again to trace in his sermons niceties of mental dis
C 2
20 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
tinction which owe their subtlety to his intimate knowledge
of the 'Ethics.' With the study of these he combined that
of Bishop Butler's works, whose sermons and 'Analogy'
he seems to have completely mastered. Yet he never lost
his passion for Plato. He mentions him as-
One of the poets who, when his brain was throbbing, and his
mind incapable of originating a thought, and his body worn
and sore with exhaustion, made him know what it was to feel
the jar of nerve gradually cease, and the darkness in which all
life had robed itself to the imagination become light, discord
pass into harmony, and physical exhaustion re by degrees into
the consciousness of power.¹
These words are sufficient to mark how much he owed
to the writers whom he revered, and explain much of the
deep depression and strong excitement which characterised
at once his life and his preaching in after years. If many a
time his own imagination was refreshed and kindled by that
of another, only too often also for health and mental power
his imagination dominated, not over his will, but over his
nerves. He was not subdued by the sad and bitter creations
of his own heart, but he suffered, and suffered terribly, in
conquering them.
During the beginning of his college life, the poets which
seem most to have attracted him were Shelley and Coleridge ;
but the more his thoughtfulness deepened, the more he gave
to Wordsworth a veneration which increased as life wore on,
and which gained additional depth from the respect which
he felt for the poet's character. The following quotation
from one of his lectures on Wordsworth will show that this
reverence took root at an early period in his mind. It bears
1 Lectures on Poetry, delivered at Brighton.
His Career at Oxford
testimony also to the influence which Dr. Arnold's life had
exercised over him :-
21
I remember myself one of the most public exhibitions of this
change in public feeling. It was my lot, during a short university
career, to witness a transition and a reaction, or revulsion, of
public feeling with respect to two great men whom I have al-
ready mentioned and contrasted. The first of these was one
who was every inch a man-Arnold of Rugby. You will all
recollect how in his earlier life Arnold was covered with sus-
picion and obloquy, how the wise men of that day charged him
with latitudinarianism, and I know not with how many other
heresies. But the public opinion altered, and he came to Oxford
and read lectures on modern history.
Such a scene had not been seen in Oxford before. The
lecture-room was too small; all adjourned to the Oxford
Theatre; and all that was most brilliant, all that was most wise
and most distinguished, gathered together there. He walked
up to the rostrum with a quiet step and manly dignity. Those
who had loved him when all the world despised him felt that,
at last, the hour of their triumph had come. But there was
something deeper than any personal triumph they could enjoy ;
and those who saw him then will not soon forget the lesson read
to them by his calm, dignified, simple step-a lesson teaching
them the utter worthlessness of unpopularity or of popularity as
a test of manhood's worth.
The second occasion was when, in the same theatre, Words-
worth came forward to receive his honorary degree. Scarcely
had his name been pronounced than, from three thousand voices
at once, there broke forth a burst of applause, echoed and taken
up again and again when it seemed about to die away, and that
thrice repeated-a cry in which-
Old England's heart and voice unite,
Whether she hail the wine-cup or the fight,
Or bid each hand be strong, or bid each heart be light.
There were young eyes there filled with an emotion of which
1
22
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
they had no need to be ashamed; there were hearts beating
with the proud feeling of triumph, that, at last the world had
recognised the merit of the man, they had loved so long and
acknowledged as their teacher; and yet, when that noise was
protracted, there came a reaction in their feelings, and they
began to perceive that that was not, after all, the true reward
and recompense for all that Wordsworth had done for England:
it seemed as if all that noise was vulgarising the poet it seemed
more natural and desirable to think of him afar off in his simple
dales and mountains, the high-priest of Nature, weaving in
honoured poverty his songs to liberty and truth, than to see him
there, clad in a scarlet robe, and bespattered with applause. Two
young men went home together, part of the way in silence, and
one only gave expression to the feelings of the other, when he
quoted those well-known, trite, and often-quoted lines-lines full
of deepest truth :—
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas.
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.
This extract will give an insight into the manner of his
life, and the tendency of his thought during his college
career. What he felt for Wordsworth he felt for himself.
Popular noise and fame were not his objects. He lived
almost in seclusion. He was not extensively known at
Oxford. He made but few friends; but those whom he
made he clung to tenaciously, and when the circle of his
intimacies was completed he did not seek to enlarge it.
Few exercised much influence over him; he was rather the
centre to which men converged, the magnet by which they
were attracted. His acquaintance might have been extended,
had he joined in the manly sports of Oxford, but he was
prevented from doing so by an injury which he received in
42
1:
His Carcer at Oxford
23
his knee at an early period of his residence. The weakness
so induced continued for some months, and he never
mingled in the athletic exercises of the university.
He joined the Union, however, on his entrance, and
spoke frequently. In these speeches he manifested no great
oratorical power. They were chiefly argumentative. But
the style of speaking then in vogue at the Union did
not admit of any display. Mr. Davies once accompanied
him to one of the debates, and his account of it is interest-
ing:
On one of the occasions on which I paid Robertson a short
visit in Oxford, I went with him to the Union. He was to speak
that evening. The subject of debate was the moral tendency or
otherwise of the Theatre. Robertson opened the discussion.
I sat next to him, and he was somewhat nervous, it being about
the second time that he had spoken. Before he got up to
speak, pressing his hand upon my knee, he whispered in my ear,
Davies, pray for me.' The tenor of his observations was op-
posed to the idea that theatrical representations could legiti-
mately be made the channel of conveying any really good moral
influence or instruction. Robertson was answered by Mr.
Ruskin in a very ingenious and somewhat sarcastic speech, which
excited much laughter in the room. With considerable cir-
cumlocution and innuendo he was describing a certain personage
to whose influence he probably thought Robertson had, in his
observations, given too much consideration, when Robertson
said in my ear, 'Why! the man is describing the devil!'
It is not strange that he did not seek oratorical distinction,
for it was his habit to check the dominant tendency of his
mind when it led to outward brilliancy; and he felt at this
time that it was necessary to subdue imagination in order to
gain accuracy in argument. Neither did he make any
attempt to compete for the prizes which Oxford held out for
24
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
those things in which he had succeeded in Edinburgh.'
Once he sent in a poem for the Newdigate, but it was un-
successful. Yet beneath all this reticence, his enthusiasm,
his vigour, his overflowing imagination, and exceeding vivid
sense of life, flowed like a stream of fire.
It is probable that the clearness, force, and fulness of
thought which marked his later eloquence, were owing to
this wise self-restraint. He did not waste energy when his
energy had not sufficient materials to enable him to exhaust
a subject. Moreover, even at that time he dreaded the
temptations of public honour and popular applause. How
clearly he saw these dangers, and how sensitively he shrank
from them, may be seen in a letter to his mother, written
from Brazenose, on hearing of the great success of one of
his friends as a preacher at Cheltenham. It reads like a
presentiment of the position in which he himself was to be
placed. The opinions he expresses were held by him
afterwards with tenfoid force at Brighton :-
Brazenose, 1839.
My dear little Mother,—I hear of M's enthusiastic recep-
tion at Cheltenham. I do believe the station of a popular
preacher is one of the greatest trials on earth: a man in that
position does not stop to soberly calculate how much, or rather
how little, is done when there appears a great effect, nor to con-
'An annual prize is given at Brazenose for the best Latin and
English essays during the year. One year there were three candidates
so equal in merit that the prize was divided. Of these three Mr.
Robertson was one. On another occasion the tutor, the late Rev. T.
Bazeley, was so pleased with some of the essays that he had four of
the best read out in the Hall by their respective authors. The subject
was "The Uses of Satire," and Mr. Robertson was one of the chosen
number.' I am ndebted for this note to the Rev. L. B. Garside, one
of the successful essayists mentioned above.
His Career at Oxford
25
sider how immense is the difference between deeply affecting
the feelings and permanently changing the heart. The preacher
who causes a great sensation and excited feeling is not necessarily
the one who will receive the reward of shining as the stars for
ever and for ever because he has turned many to righteousness.
Misery is a trial, but it makes this world undesirable, and per-
secution estranges a man from resting on earthly friends, and
forces him to choose One whom he would never have chosen if
any other had offered; but prosperity makes earth a home, and
popularity exalts self, and invites compliance to the world. It
is the old story of one winter in Capua effecting a ruin for
Hannibal, which neither the snow of the Alps, nor the sun of
Italy, the treachery of the Gauls, nor the prowess of the Romans
could achieve.
So passed his life at Oxford, a silent, self-contained, pro-
gressive life. There are no materials for a more extended
notice, and those who loved him in life and who love him
now in death must fill up the void from the few extracts
from letters which follow this chapter, and from the scattered
hints which will be found in the letters which he wrote from
Brighton. Two of these letters, written to a young friend
who was about entering college, are so valuable as his own
judgment on his academical career, and so interesting as the
view which his manhood took of his youth, that they are
inserted here in full :-
9, Montpelier Terrace, Brighton: June 8, 1851.
My dear Kennion,-It is with some reluctance that I write to
you on the subject of your studies; as, in the first place, I have
no right to give an opinion; and, in the next, I quite feel the
truth of what you say in your letter to your mother, that none
can decide for you a question with all the bearings of which
none but yourself can be acquainted. She is extremely anxious,
however, that you should decide rightly, and has written to me
to ask what I think. So I am sure you will not think that I am
1
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
'
intruding advice. The chief point seems the question of reading
for honours. Now I believe with you, that honours make little
or nothing in practice, so far as they bear upon a man's future
success. That is, the prestige of them does little in life-is for-
gotten, or slightly looked upon, by the large world. But the
mental habits got insensibly during the preparation for them
are, I think, incapable of being replaced by anything; and this
quite independently of whether a man succeeds or fails in his
attempt. To my idea the chief advantage is the precluding of
discursiveness. For three years or four, a man has an aim—a
long-distant, definite aim. I defy any young man to create this
aim for himself. History, with contemporary authors,' is a very
vague plan, at best. But grant it well mapped out, still he has
chosen his own aim, cannot be certain he has chosen well,
becomes distrustful of the wisdom of the plan, because his own;
will infallibly find that ripened experience will not approve the
line chosen, inasmuch as being untravelled by him, he only
selects it by guess. Difficulties break his ardour; he cannot
struggle with a difficulty while half sceptical as to the unalter-
able necessity of overcoming it; and at last, having read de
omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, he finds that, whatever he
may have got of bitter experience, one thing he has not got, and
that is the steady habit of looking forward to a distant end,
unalterably working on it till he has attained it—the habit, in
short, of never beginning anything which is not to be finished.
At college I did what you are now going to do-had no one to
advise me otherwise; was rather encouraged in it by religious
people, who are generally--at least, the so-called religious-the
weakest of mankind; and I now feel I was utterly, mournfully,
irreparably wrong. The excitement of theological controversy,
questions of the day, politics, gleams and flashings of new paths
of learning, led me at full speed for three years, modifying my
plans perpetually. Now I would give 2007. a year to have read
on a bad plan, chosen for me, but steadily.
26
Advice upon a Course of Study
27
3, Oriel Terrace : March 16, 1852?
My dear Kennion,-It seems to me that your plan would be
a good one for passing your vacation. I have no doubt what-
ever that French will be, on the whole, more valuable to you
than German; indeed, German literature and theology, as they
are at present, open out to the mind such dark vistas of doubt
and Pyrrhonism, that I think you would be wise in postponing
the study for some years. I am sure you are right in devoting
yourself to mathematics. More than, perhaps, any other study,
I believe, they form a masculine and healthy tone of mind.
But I fancy that you will find no lectures in Paris on the subject
-if by lectures you mean public ones. Private lessons from
professors may, of course, be obtained; only it seems to me
you would get these more satisfactorily through the medium of
English, as part of your mathematical time would be expended
in mastering the French terms.
One thing, however, I would strongly recommend, not to put
yourself down in Paris, or anywhere else abroad, alone. I tried
this once in Oxford, during a long vacation, thinking to have
more uninterrupted time for study, and found the plan a perfect
failure. The mind loses its tension for want of society, its
interest in its studies, and that healthy feeling of freshness
which comes from alternating study with conversation. And I
do not think that it would be good for a mind like yours. The
best way of learning French is to get domiciled in a respectable
French family,¹ where there is not another Englishman. Not
in one of those pensions which are common in Paris, and filled
with English; but a private house, where you are forced into
the expression of your ideas and wants in French, if they are
to be expressed at all. If this plan should suit you, I would
write to a friend in Paris who could give me information on this
subject, and would afterwards give you an introduction to Mr.
'He had himself spent some months in a French family in Paris
while waiting for his commission in the army.
28
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Lovett, the English clergyman there, an excellent man.
let me know this.
;
Pray
At the same time this occurs to me as a piece of truth which
I myself learned too late. Your object at the university is
mental discipline-not merely the acquisition of knowledge.
Do not aim at too much. Mathematics, classics, and theology
are your work for three or four years to come, and I would bend
my energies rather upon acquiring these thoroughly than scattering
my efforts over a large surface. I well know the discouragement
which there is in feeling how little of all that can be known is
within our grasp, and the temptation which there is to try a
hundred new fields of knowledge. But the man who succeeds
in life is, allowing for the proverbial exaggeration, generally the
man unius libri. Life is very short; and the painter must not
hope to be a good seaman; nor is the clergyman to pine because
he cannot be the man of literature. I would not be anxious
about German at all, but put it resolutely aside till my college
career.should be over. It can be acquired in after life. Hebrew,
Italian, and German I learned after leaving the university, and
now that I have them, I do not set much value on them. As to
French, if you can conveniently spend some months in the
country now, in conjunction with your pursuit of other things, I
can see no reason why you should not. Only, do not be too
anxious about these things. It is surprising how little they tell
on the great work of life. I am at this moment preparing for a
lecture, or lectures, which I am to give on poetry and the poet's
character at the Philosophical Institution. It is true it is only
the gathering up of ideas that have been in my mind unspoken
for years; but I have sighed again and again to feel how much
I have to reject as unfit for even an enlightened audience, and in
a lecture expressly on the topic, and how many days and years
have been spent in acquiring and pondering over thoughts that
will never tell in this world, and, perhaps, never will be even
communicated. If I were to put what I mean in the shape of
advice, derived, too, from experience, I would say this: Take
care that the mind does not become too fastidious and refined.
It is not a blessing, but a hindrance in the work of life. For a
Advice upon a Course of Study
29
clergyman who has to deal with real beings of flesh and blood,
I believe it perfectly possible for too much of a literary turn to
mar his usefulness, at the same time that it gives him more keen
sensitiveness in perceiving that it is marred. For this reason,
if I were in your place, I should be anxious to give to life as
much the aspect of reality as possible, which a student's life
is apt to keep out of sight. I would read for honours, and
sacrifice everything which interfered with this. But in the
vacations I would vary this with systematic visiting of the poor,
which, more than anything else, brings a man into contact with
the actual and the real, and destroys fanciful dreams.
Thank you very much for your warm and kind remarks about
myself. I would gladly think them true.
As a contrast to the above letters so defined in view and
expression, and exhibiting a mind settled on a firm founda-
tion of fact and thought, the following letter, full of the
ferment of a young man's heart, is interesting, and especially
so in the dearth of all materials out of which a clear concep-
tion of his college life can be formed. It suggests more than
it says. It makes plain that he could not have, at the time
when it was written, pursued those plans of study which his
matured manhood looked back to as the wisest. It is at
once touching and strange to find in it the old passion for
arms developing itself in such an impractical and romantic
compromise between his destiny and his desire. It shows
how near had been his escape from the school of Mr. New-
man, which at first had not only allured his tastes, but had
also ministered fuel to his passionate instinct for self-sacri-
fice. In its evangelical fervour may be seen how liable
during his youth he was to strong reactions. The almost
fierceness with which he speaks against the Tract School is
proof in him of the strength of the attraction it possessed for
him, just as afterwards at Brighton his attacks on Evan-
30 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
gelicalism are proof of the strength with which he once held
to that form of Christianity, and the force of the reaction
with which he abandoned it for ever. Out of these two
reactions—when their necessarily ultra tendencies had been
mellowed down by time, emerged at last the clearness and
the just balance of principles with which he taught, during
1848 and the following years, at Brighton. He had probed
both schools of theological thought to their recesses, and had
found them wanting. He spoke of what he knew when he
protested against both. He spoke also of what he knew.
when he publicly recognised the Spirit of all Good moving
in the lives of those whose opinions he believed to be
erroneous.
Brazenose, Oxford. (1840 two or three months
before he was ordained.)
My dear Father,—I have just received your letter, and take
the first opportunity of answering it, as I shall be very much
occupied the next few days. M. Keary's kind offer¹ is a very
tempting one, as he is a man I should much like to learn
from. But for several reasons I believe I must decline it
decidedly. In the first place, if I am to be in England,
I should prefer being nearer home, unless there were some
very decided reasons to think so distant a place as Hull my
appointed post. But the chief objection which rose in my
mind on receiving the offer, was a feeling which I have long
had, but never decidedly been called upon before to express. I
am willing to look on it as in part merely a sort of romance,
which must give way to any sober consideration that might be
offered. But I seem this term to have in measure waked out of a
long trance, partly caused by my own gross inconsistencies, and
partly by the paralysing effects of this Oxford delusion-heresy,
for such it is, I feel persuaded. And to know it a man must
live here, and he will see the promising and ardent men sinking
one after another in a deadly torpor, wrapped up in self-contem-
Of his curacy at Hull.
Desire for a Military Chaplaincy
31
plation, dead to their Redeemer, and useless to his Church,
under the baneful breath of this accursed upas tree. I say ac-
cursed, because I believe that St. Paul would use the same lan-
guage to Oxford as he did to the Galatian Church-'I would
they were even cut off which trouble you;' accursed, because I
believe that the curse of God will fall on it. He has denounced it
on the Papal heresy, and He is no respecter of persons, to punish
the name and not the reality. May He forgive me if I err, and
lead me into all truth. But I do not speak as one who has been
in no danger, and therefore cannot speak very quietly. It is
strange into what ramifications the disbelief of external justifica-
tion will extend; we will make it internal, whether it be by self-
mortification, by works of evangelical obedience, or by the sac-
raments, and that just at the time when we suppose most that
we are magnifying the work of our Lord. St. Paul had scarcely
reached Corinth, before the Galatians whom he had left behind
in a promising state, were ' entangled again with the yoke of
bondage,' though they had stood in the liberty wherewith Christ
had made them free. But this is rather a long digression, and
lest the thread of connection should be broken, I must return
before I have come to the conclusion of my digression. I was
going to say, that after a season of long, utter, and inexpressible
darkness, caused principally by my own worldly-mindedness,
and not peculiarly enlightened by an examination of the Tract
opinions, I have had some weeks of peace which I had never
expected to know again, and the desire once more, such as I
knew when I first learned the freedom of the gospel, to live to
my Master's glory. May He only grant the wish permanence !
But connected with this there is a feeling of a marked path; per-
haps merely fanciful, yet our desires must be surely some of the
means by which God points out our sphere. When I quitted
the army, it was with an inward feeling of a connection with it
still unbroken, that the step which, if it had been taken at my
own instance, would have been a cowardly desertion of an ap-
pointed post, was, even under the circumstances in which it did
take place, too remarkable to leave me quite at liberty. Some-
how or other I still seem to feel the Queen's broad arrow stamped
♥`.
32
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
1
upon me, and that the men whom in my vanity I imagined I
wished to benefit in a red coat, I might now benefit with a better
founded hope of usefulness, in the more sombre garb of an ac-
credited ambassador of Christ. In short, if it were practicable,
I feel a strong desire for a military chaplaincy. But, however,
I am not certain that this would form a title for ordination. On
this point I should much like to gain information-but if not, I
should prefer a curacy in a situation which would give me an
opportunity for fitting myself for this line.
>
I have had another battle to fight about my not going up for
honours. The new tutor sent for me after an essay which I sent
in, and battled with me for half an hour, being in great wrath
with who, he said, ought to have shown more interest.
And Whitaker Churton was so eloquent on the subject, that my
resolution was well-nigh broken. But I am persuaded it is best
as it is. The translation of Rom. ix. 22, is quite literal. If
will compare the parallel passage Jer. xviii. from which it seems
plain that this was taken, she will see that here, as there, the lead-
ing idea is God's endurance, and sovereign right of making the
clay which was originally a marred vessel, a perfect one; and
that it would be a perversion to infer from the expressions 'fitted
to destruction,' that they were so fitted by Him. At least, that is
my view; but the original is quite as difficult to understand as
the translation. The letters I will send the first opportunity, or
bring, if I come home.
Best love to my dear little motheretta and the young ones.
It remains to notice the circumstances which marked the
passing of his degree examination. He did not go up for a
class; but his scholarship was so sound, and his knowledge
of his subjects so accurate, that on the first day the ex-
aminers wrote to his tutor, Mr. Churton, to request that
he would induce his pupil to compete for honours. By
some mistake, the letter did not reach its destination soon
enough, and he finished his examination in ignorance of the
The Work of the Preacher
33
desire of the examiners. They then urged him to undergo
a fresh examination for a class. He refused, and was given
a day to resume his refusal. He again refused; but the
examiners, according to the Oxford custom in such cases,
put him into the fourth class.
For some time before his degree, and for a short time
afterwards, he read for his ordination examination. Writing
to his mother, he says:-
Brazenose
1840.
I am now reading pretty steadily for ordination, and feel every
day more and more the depths of my ignorance. I am persuaded
that the surest way for a man to be satisfied with his own at-
tainments is to read little; for the more he reads, the more he
sees the boundless extent of what there is to be known, and the
circumscribed nature of his own attainments. However, perse-
verance and prayer may do much. I am now reading the early
Church history with Golightly, which is a very great advantage,
as he has a fund of general information, and is a close reader.
Jones and I also read together. This plan, if not too exclusively
followed, is a very useful one. The conversation which arises
on the points of interest strikes, sometimes one, sometimes the
other, and as you go on, tends to fix the subject more deeply on
the mind, and besides gives habits of accuracy. I have had
several communications (official) from the Bishop of Winchester,
and all at present seems settled for me; but even now, if it be
not my fate, I hope I may be prevented going there.
A letter from Mr. Churton, his tutor, to Captain Robertson,
gives an account of his studies, and his subjects of thought
at this time :-
My chief acquaintance with your son was in the summer of
'40 or '41, being together in Oxford, and having then much per-
sonal intercourse with him: no letters passed between us, though
I can even now recall many interesting conversations. We were
VOL. I.
D
34
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
all alone frequently, besides our college servants, there was no
one else but he and I within its walls. Many an hour, morning
and evening, we paced its quadrangle, in discourse and inquiries
as interesting, I believe, to myself, though many years his senior,
as to him.
The subjects which then came before us, besides
others of a more directly religious character, were chiefly the fol-
lowing :-
1. The deference and amount of implicit obedience due to
college authorities, even by parties already of age, but subjected
to college discipline; and the presumption that our elders are
right in such and such injunctions, inasmuch as we may ordi-
narily assume that years and longer experience ensure greater
practical wisdom.
2. The position and foundation of the Tractarian movement,
as to how far such views and practices were to be found in, or
were sanctioned by, the primitive and early Church; and
whether the Church of the first three centuries was a safe and
sufficient guide to the leaders and writers of that movement.
Hereupon, we not only read together Taylor's' Ancient Christi-
anity,' and verified and compared his passages and quotations
rom the Fathers, but also read several whole treatises from
which his extracts were derived. Besides these points, and
others involved in these, I can call to mind many interesting
inquiries, critical and practical, as to various texts of Scripture,
and many conversations on matters of Christian trial and temp-
tation. I should say that the salient points and features in his
character at that period were earnest diligence and eagerness
towards the object and end of life; a thirsting inquiry after truth,
especially moral and sacred truth; a highly active mind, meta-
physical and yet practical; and a devout disposition of heart,
opening not only to its own wants, but also to the wants of others.
I remember in particular his expressing to me his delight in
Bishop Andrewes' Devotions, as opening before him a new and
wide field of both intercessory supplication and individual self-
abasement.
During this period he was seeking for a title; and part
A Letter to his Friend Moncrieff
35
of a letter to his old friend, Mr. Moncrieff, fitly closes the
sketch of his college career :—
Brazenose: May 26, 1840.
My dear Moncrieff,-
I am glad to hear that your
ministerial labours are begun. May the Lord of the harvest
prosper your work, and ripen the sheaves for his floor. I
cannot conceive a more exalted joy than the being permitted to
see the fruit of our toil in the conversion of the thoughtless to
our dear Master. The prospect we have, as far as human eye
can judge, is a stormy one, and predicts more controversy than
edification. It is impossible to look round on the strange aspect
of all things--the Church reeling to her centre with conflicting
opinions ; in all circles, whether political or religious, minds
unsettled and anticipating a crisis; 'men's hearts failing them
for fear, and for looking for those things which are coming upon
the earth'--without feeling that our path will be a rugged one,
and that the hour of trial is at hand. Do not you think so, even
without any excess of foreboding despondency? To me every
day brings increasing conviction of it, especially when I see the
rapidly developed working of the Tract views, which amount to
nothing less than a direct, or, as Hooker would call it, an
'indirect denial of the foundation.' Our motto must be, morning
and evening, and converted into a prayer, 'Stand fast, therefore,
in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage.' But how strangely
that yoke steals round our necks, even when we think we are
most entirely free from any idea of self-justification.
D 2
36
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Letters from May 1838 to June 1840.
I.
Brazenose: May, 1838.
I have become quite an owl, staying at home all day, and not
moving till the evening. Still I get very little done in the day,
though my rapidly approaching little-go examination should
make me read hard. Scarcely a word yet have I prepared for
it. Not even logic, which is but just begun. Plato is the
fascination, and a magnificent fellow he is-not quite so great
though as the - school would make him out. I expect that
we shall, in a few years, have him much more studied than he
ever has been here yet-Aristotle being all in all. Sewell is
giving public lectures on 'The Republic' (which is the work I
am reading), contemplating it as an anticipation of the Christian
Church! He laboured very hard one day to prove that the
study of Plato had always preceded, or been contemporaneous
with, not only the rise of intellect, but the revival of the Christian
religion another time he said that the esoteric method of Plato
was on the same principle as that which influenced the Divine
mind to reveal his truths in the Bible in an unconnected form ;
with several other wonderful discoveries, 'Que,' as the Latin
Gr. poetically says, ' nunc perscribere longum est? My friends
tell me I am on the high road to Puseyism, loving Plato, and
reading Wordsworth. Myévoro! There is something exces-
sively chilling in the donnishness of Oxford, which insinuates its
unlovely spirit everywhere-lecture, chapel, pulpit, Union, con-
versation, retirement-one feels inclined to say, 'Shall I ever
1we a human being again with anything warmer than a vege-
table attachment?' It
It is just like the contents of my gigantic
brown pitcher last winter-though within eighteen inches of the
fire all day, one globe of ice. Not very elegant or classical,
you will say. Well, then, Medusa's head, rockifying all that
comes near it. Churton took me down, about a fortnight ago,
His Desire for the Lord's Return
37
to Ilsley, the rectory of his brother-in-law, where he did duty.
The family were away, and we, with two other Oxford men, had
the house to ourselves. We all agreed that the distance of
eighteen miles had a marvellous effect in unpetrifying us-so
much as scarcely to recognise one another. Thanks to God,
there are a few spirits of a very different cast here! They must
be indeed on fire with a heavenly flame to preserve the warmth
they do. Two or three of my most intimate and valuable friends.
especially. And they will soon see their Master coming to
emancipate them from this unintelligible world. If we could
but all say, with heart and soul, 'Even so, come, Lord Jesus!'
II.
Brazenose, Oxford: May 23, 1838.
My dear Father,-
1 had wished to reply more fully to
your two letters for which I am in your debt, both of which,
especially the last, gave me much comfort and pleasure. His
ways are indeed wonderful-how wonderful, eternity alone can
show, where we shall see the connection of what we are pleased
to call trivial events, with his most stupendous schemes, and all
that is dark and difficult and melancholy in this unintelligible
world, all that gives our presumptuous reasoning hard thoughts
of God, all that has grieved and disappointed and misanthropised,
will be fully explained, and merged in one unclouded blaze of
glory. The time may be much nearer than we expect. The
last words of our Lord to his Church, uttered by the feeble lips
of his last apostle, grey-headed, and already bending over the
tomb, were- Behold, I come quickly.' I wish we could with
our whole heart and soul repeat the answer, 'Even so, come,
Lord Jesus.' But we are most of us too devotedly buried in the
shadowy nothings of time and space, and too deeply attached to
them, to avoid feeling, in the very spirit of unbelief, that it is a
day whose postponement is to be desired, since they will be torn
from our grasp for ever.
I am now endeavouring to read hard, since I have to take or
to try to take my 'little go' this term, and as I had not a word
•
38 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
prepared at the commencement, and have only just begun, it
will be rather hard work, especially the logic, agreeable as it is.
Plato too, which I am reading in lecture, together with other
occupations, takes up not a little of my time.
III.
B. N. C. October 13, 1838.
My dear Davies,—I write in a hurry, and shall, therefore, be
concise. On the coach to-day was an infidel, with whom I got
into conversation. His views were ncological in regard to
Scripture, and utilitarian in regard to morals. After much
discussion, in which, thank God, I was much helped by books I
have been reading lately, he introduced the subject of super-
natural appearances. These, he said, could be accounted for
on three grounds; but there was a fourth class which cannot be
so accounted for, but this we have no right to call supernatural,
as we know nothing, and future scientific discoveries might
prove it to be quite in the course of nature. I knew what was
coming, but determined that he should make the application
himself, and begged him to be more explicit. He spoke of
ghosts. I told him I had never seen one, and was not particu-
larly interested to prove their existence. After a silence, I told
him that if he would not require a Quixotic expedition on behalf
of ghosts, he might have an apparent advantage; but fairly
avow that he wanted to deny the fact of recorded miracles openly,
as a man, we might talk over the question. He seemed ashamed,
and said a few words about his not meaning exactly that. The
conversation dropped till we got to Oxford, when I suddenly
spoke scriously to him. He was affected, and shook hands,
saying he would give the world to believe it all; that his father
was a religious man, and that his dying wish had been that he
should follow his steps. I asked if he had ever asked a blessing
on his inquiries, for he had read much and controversially. He
replied that he had, but that it had had as much effect as if he
had prayed to a stone. At parting, he asked me earnestly to
recommend him any book I could, and he would promise to
read it.
Letter to his Brother
IV.
39
Brazenose: November 4, 1838.
now.
My dearest Brother, First, I must tell you that you would have
had a letter from me in the last packet, but that a party of ban-
ditti took upon them to intercept it in its passage through Rodney
House, Cheltenham, on the plausible pretext of its being written
on thick paper. After I, of all correspondents the worst, had
actually summoned resolution to write and despatch a letter, it
was very hard to lose the credit of it. I will try to make amends
Your packet was sent to me yesterday-a delightful
surprise. I cannot tell you how I felt as if with you in your
expressions of loneliness and sorrow at our bitter parting. I felt
as if I had never loved you till that moment when we saw the
'Sovucign' bearing noiselessly away across the apparently bound-
less expanse, till she was lost to us for ever in the distance.
My poor dear mother, it must be trouble for her to look to five
years' separation, when one appears to me an age. Such
moments remind us with irresistible eloquence that we have no
abiding-place of rest here. I wish it were not a mere vain re-
minding, but a practical lesson, which might lead us to secure
another home.
The reading your letters, which seemed fresh from your hand,
recalled, with a cold feeling of sadness, the long weary miles of
water which separate us, how long, God alone knows; perhaps
for ever in this world. But let us both pray earnestly that the
separation may not be long, and that even in this world we may
renew the dearer relationship than that of earthly brotherhood.
I am getting now a very delightful little circle of friends around
me at Oxford, and hope soon not to number among my acquain-
tance one man whose society I could afford to give up. There
is one in whom I have been deeply interested-a married man
with a family, his wife a very superior woman. He has been
reading very hard, hoping to take his degree; but, to my sorrow,
failed in his examination-to him a severe trial on many accounts.
I called, he was out; but I found her very much overpowered,
40
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
and suffering intense anxiety for her husband's bitter disappoint-
ment. I sat some time, hoping to soothe; his tread was heard
at the front door, and the whole woman was changed. I did
not hear another sigh, and she calmly and quietly spoke on the
subject, and held up a brighter view of it than she herself saw.
The hour of weakness was past, and the deep strong current of
a woman's affection bore her up. It was the reed rising from
the storm when the oak was shattered.
,
This is a strain of romance almost like the expressions of
boyish days, instead of my brown seared tint of three-and-twenty.
Alas! how changed the spirit of our dream, our pleasant
Pittville walks, only the remembrance of the happy hours we
spent there with the &c. But joy's recollections are no
longer joys; yet sorrow's memory is sorrow still. Now I wish
the thousand leagues that separate us could be traversed as
rapidly in body as fancy; for I should be happily with you
this instant. But our only absent one is not forgotten. We do
and will remember him in our prayers. God bless you, my
dearest brother.
V.
July, 1839.
My dear Davies,-
Thank you- most sincerely thank
you for your kind offer and invitation; but I may not accept it.
I am endeavouring to make up for the reading which I have lost
in the restless and unsettled state of mind of the last year and a
half. I confess that every coach which passes through to
Cheltenham gives me an involuntary pang-partly from remorse
for mis-spent hours, partly from thoughts of the future, partly,
and not least, from a wish to be at home. But it may not be ;
and, besides, I wish to have some solitude to calm myself to a
contemplation of the rapidly approaching time, when, if ever, I
must declare that I feel moved by the spirit of God to be his
ambassador. To do this, with all the whirl and throbbings of an
unbridled imagination and worldly feeling rife in my breast, is a
thing too horrible to be thought of steadily- yivorɑ! I do not
propose remaining in Oxford the whole vacation, though I believe
•
46
A Birthday Letter
4I
it would be better for myself to do it. Part of the time I intend
to pass with a friend, who failed last examination for his pass.
It was from deficiency in Latin writing; and it has been so
strongly put before me that I might be of some service to him,
that I think I shall go over there. Do not, of course, mention
this, as it would seem very indelicate if he were to learn the
reason which decided me... I am much interested in your
account of the difficulties of Miss -; but how much better
they are for her spiritual life than a smooth and easy path. The
Christian's aim is victory, not freedom from attack; and a
soldier cannot learn to fight by pondering over maps and plans
of campaigns in his barrack-room. It must be on the field of
blood, and in the lonely bivouac ; without real trial, how soon
we find rust upon our arms, and sloth upon our souls, and the
paltry difficulties of common life weigh like chains upon us,
instead of being brushed away like cobwebs.
•
VI.
September, 1839.
My dear Hatchard,— . Now, then, in a very few words
(for I have not really time for more), to express the immediate
object of my letter. And yet it is rather hard, for a set epistle
of congratulation, like one of condolence, is likely to be very
stiff. However, each year as it rolls by seems to rivet with more
enduring importance a day of anniversary-more especially one
of an event which was the ushering into an eternity of either
misery or joy a responsible creature. As boys, we have looked
forward to them as the occasion of a holiday and juvenile ball.
As men, we look back on them as so many waymarks on which
are noted the sins and mercies of successive years. They were
seasons of unmingled pleasure- now of self-reproach and melan-
choly retrospect. Opportunities irreparably suffered to slip by
-years of self-indulgence-bad habits formed-friends alienated
-others wantonly grieved-in some instances the hour of
reparation and reconciliation lost for ever, because they have
gone to their long home. Two lines in the frontispiece of a
42 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
!
:
little hymn-book, which I have not seen since five years old,
seem branded with letters of fire on my memory:
Oh! if she would but come again,
I think I'd vex her so no more!
United with all this, the reflection that we were not only not
forwarding the eternal interests of those with whom we were,
but actually blocking up for them the entrance to the already
narrow path-with all this coming in a torrent on the inemory,
what can a birthday be to a reflecting being but a season of
deep humiliation and abasement before his Creator, his Bene-
factor, and his judge? But, blessed be God, these are not his
only titles, or there would be nothing for us but the blackness of
darkness for ever. I trust and pray that we both may feel and
know with respect to the fearful catalogue of past years that
He has, as a Redeemer, 'blotted out the handwriting of
ordinances which was against us, and taken it out of the way,
nailing it to his cross.' If so, your twenty-second birthday
cannot but remind you of a closer and loftier union than that
which you entered on as to-morrow-a connection with dear but
earthly parents; it will tell you of a more real commencement
of existence—a malıyyevería, by which you were permitted to call
God your father, Jesus Christ your brother, an innumerable
company of angels and the spirits of just men made perfect
your society, and Heaven your home. Then, as the best wish I
can offer you, let me send the concluding verses of the third
chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians as a birthday prayer.
VII.
Brazenose: June 24.
My dearest brother, I sit down to give an hour or two
to conversation with you, although so far away; so I shall
just let my pen run on, as perhaps it will, without point or
connection. It is now the long vacation, yet I am staying
up here, within the hoary walls of Brazenose, all alone, partly
for the purpose of reading, partly for the sake of gaining
His Visit to Blenheim
the natural tone of mind after a time of great excitement,
no less than twenty-five ladies in my room-only conceive.
One day we went to Blenheim, a beautiful, but melancholy
place; for it is fast going to decay from the neglect of its ruined
owner, the Duke of Marlborough. The grounds are mag-
nificent and extensive, the house contains some of the finest
pictures in England, especially a Madonna by Carlo Dolci,
which alone would afford hours of enjoyment.¹ There is an
indescribable tranquillity, with an unearthly look of rapt con-
templation, in the countenance and the whole effect, which
makes you feel an involuntary awe; and it is curious to observe
how the most talkative groups of visitors, one after another,
were stilled into silence before it. In the evening, we went
down to the river, it being the last night of the boat-races, in
order to see the Brazenose boat come up in triumphal proces-
sion, as the head of the river for the year, all the others raising
their oars and cheering as we passed. The next day was the
commemoration. Honorary degrees were conferred upon
Wordsworth and Herschel, who were immensely cheered; then
the prize essays and poems were recited. The next we all
rowed down to Newnham in an eight-oar the day lovely.
Newnham, the seat of the Archbishop of York, is a beautiful
place, rendered still more so by the many pic-nic parties who
had gone down, like ourselves, to show the lions to their lady
friends, who with their light dresses, formed a lovely contrast to
the greensward and sylvan shade. We came back by night, the
plash of our oars keeping regular time to the more musical
strains of the Canadian Boat-Song, and La Dame Blanche, with
which the ladies solaced our toil. On Friday they again break-
fasted with me -the vice-principal of my college, and nine ladies.
My room decorated with flowers in silver vases, before each lady
an elegant bouquet; and as I was allowed the use of the college
plate, the table exhibited a gorgeous display. The rest of our
time was spent in seeing Oxford. But, alas! the time came for
parting, and a melancholy party we were on the last morning :
:
This picture is alluded to in his Lectures on Poetry.
43
44 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
}
we had been so entirely together; every one resolved with all
their hearts to please and be pleased, that we seemed like old
friends, instead of which, as in several instances to myself, the
brothers of the ladies were not known before. So we shook
hands, spoke not a word of sorrow, and I returned to my lonely
den, rendered doubly so by the shadowy outline of bright forms
and lovely faces, which so lately beamed in it, and still, to fancy,
seemed to hover round. I have received the kindest invitations
to spend the vacation in different places-Germany, Isle of
Wight, Lancashire, London, Cumberland, Malvern, Islay,
Monmouth-forcing the grateful conviction that somehow or
' other, if I am a friend to no one, I have many friends to me.
I've heard of hearts unkind; kind deeds
With coldness still returning.
Alas! the gratitude of man
Has oftener left me mourning.
That is the genuine, manly feeling of dear old Wordsworth.
45
CHAPTER II.
Passage from Collegiate to Active Life-Growth of his Christian
Faith-Early Sadness of his Heart-Ordination-Curacy at Win-
chester-First Appearance in the Pulpit-Difficulties of his Work—
Letter recalling his Life in Winchester-Success as a Minister-
Description of him by a Friend-Spiritual Life-Devotional
Reading Prayer-Preaching-Despondency arising from Illness-
Examination for Priest's Orders-Close of Ministerial Life at
Winchester-Continental Tour-Geneva and its Parties.
Letters from September 17, 1840, to August 3, 1841.
M
R. ROBERTSON passed out of collegiate into active
life, out of youth into manhood, with a grave and
awful sense of responsibility. His character and Christian
principles, though unannealed as yet, had been partially
moulded into form, and it is necessary to trace their forma-
tion up to this point, if his after-life and more complete
development are to become intelligible.
It was but slowly that his faith, always more intuitive than
dependent upon 'evidences,' had become, consciously to
himself, a power in his life. Various outward events and
influences had assisted in developing its germ into flower
and fruit. At Saxmundham, while yet a boy, he had been
wonderfully preserved from a sudden death;' and deep
rose.
' He was in a covert, walking just in front of his father. A pheasant
He dropped to let his father fire. The father missed the bird,
and was in the act of discharging his second barrel, when, to his
horror, he suddenly saw his son's head at the very muzzle of his gun !
46
Life and Letters of Kcv. F. W. Robertson
gratitude to God was awakened in his heart. There also
one of his sisters had died, and her happiness and peace in
dying had impressed him strongly. At Bury St. Edmunds,
the seclusion in which he had lived had driven him in upon
himself; and the form of his solitary thought had been
determined by the perusal of Abbott's 'Way to do Good'
-a book he valued so highly, that afterwards, at Brighton,
when he felt the hardening effect of constant preaching, he
read it again, as a healthy incitement to activity. At Paris,
whither he went for a few months after his withdrawal from
the law as a profession, his preservation from the 'gross
pollution' of that city—a preservation which he calls incom-
prehensible—increased his faith in the personal watchfulness
and love of God. At Cheltenham, he imputes to the preach-
ing of Mr. Boyd and Mr. Close, and to the society of many
Christian friends, the fervour as well as the sober resolution
for the service of Christ with which he began his college
career.
Consistently and actively among the temptations of Oxford,
he had lived a Christian life, and grown in Christian expe-
rience, and now his realisation of Christ as his Saviour and
his personal Friend was as deep and vivid as the love and
labour which grew out of it into ministerial fruitfulness.
This was the cumulative result of many years of prayer and
struggle.
To this resting-place God brought him not only through
the means of external influences, and of his own thirst after
righteousness, but also through the natural drift of his cha-
racter. In boyhood and youth, his religion, before it had
consciously taken a distinctively Christian form, manifested
itself in two ways-as hatred and resistance of evil, and as a
His Religious Fervour
47
reverence and effort for purity. He wrote in after years, and
it was true of his whole life-
There is something of combativeness in me which prevents
the whole vigour being drawn out, except when I have an
antagonist to deal with, a falsehood to quell, or a wrong to
avenge. Never till then does my mind feel quite alive. Could
I have chosen my own period of the world to have lived in, and
my own type of life, it should be the feudal ages, and the life of
a Cid, the redresser of wrongs.
This side of his religion, the old religion of chivalry, made
him at school the defender of the oppressed, the bold
denouncer of all that was untrue, and the champion of justice
among his fellows. There was mingled with this, during his
youth, that slight tinge of noble superstition which made at
once the strength and the weakness of ancient religious
chivalry. In a letter written from Brighton, he relates and
comments on an instance of this.
I remember when a very, very young boy, going out shooting
with my father, and praying, as often as the dogs came to a
point, that he might kill the bird. As he did not always do this,
and as sometimes there would occur false points, my heart got
bewildered. I believe I began to doubt sometimes the efficacy
of prayer, sometimes the lawfulness of field sports. Once, too,
I recollect when I was taken up with nine other boys at school
to be unjustly punished, I prayed to escape the shame. The
master, previously to flogging all the others, said to me, to the
great bewilderment of the whole school-‘Little boy, I excuse
you; I have particular reasons for it,' and, in fact, I was never
flogged during the three years I was at that school. That
incident settled my mind for a long time; only I doubt whether
it did me any good, for prayer became a charm. I fancied
myself the favourite of the Invisible. I knew that I carried
about a talisman unknown to others which would save me from
ܠܝܢ ܡܐ
48
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
all harm. It did not make me better; it simply gave me
security, as the Jcw felt safe in being the descendant of Abraham,
or went into battle under the protection of the Ark, sinning
no less all the time.
The other side of his boyish religion-the adoration of
purity—he symbolised for himself in Womanhood. Under
this symbol he worshipped, with a boy's unquestioning wor-
ship, his Ideal. Like a boy, too, he transferred to the form
all the excellence of the Idea. Recalling afterwards these
early days of chivalrous imagination and romance, he writes.
in one of his letters :-
The beings that floated before me, robed in vestures more
delicate than mine, were beings of another order. The thought
of one of them becoming mine was not rapture but pain.
At seven years old, woman was a sacred dream, of which I
would not talk. Marriage was degradation. I remember being
quite angry on hearing it said of a lovely Swede-the loveliest
being I ever saw-that she was likely to get married in England.
She gave me her hair, lines, books, and I worshipped her only
as I should have done a living rainbow, with no further feeling.
Yet I was then eighteen, and she was to me for years nothing
more than a calm, clear, untroubled fiord of beauty, glassing
heaven, deep, deep below, so deep that I never dreamed of an
attempt to reach the heaven. So I lived. I may truly say that
my heart was like the Rhone as it leaves the Lake of Geneva.
As he grew up he surrounded his conception of woman-
hood with all the sacredness of his highest religious aspira-
tions, while his reverence for this conception tended in itself
to exalt his desire for holiness of life, and to keep him true
to his ideal. In one of his lectures at Brighton, he says—
JOE
It is feelings such as these, call them romantic, if you will,
which I know, from personal experience, can keep a man all
Early Sadness of his Heart
49
his youth through, before a higher faith has been called into
being, from every species of vicious and low indulgence in every
shape and every form.
And this youthful chastity of spirit was never stained in life.
It is impossible not to feel that to this he owed his keen
insight into moral truth; the lucid power with which he
solved spiritual problems and points in the casuistry of the
heart; that clear analysis of apparently conflicting truths,
which men said came upon them like a revelation, and the
bright and tender sympathy and penetration with which he
recognised the good, and by which he recoiled from the evil,
of the men he met. And now, at his entrance into manhood,
both these ideas, which formed, as it were, his natural reli-
gion, became, and continued always to be, the foundations.
of his spiritual religion. He found them realised for him in
Christ the perfect Man. His writings teem with glowing
descriptions of Christ as the great Vindicator of all wrong;
of Christ in his contest with the spirit of the world, of
oppression, of hypocrisy. To Christ also, as the spotless
Purity, he transferred his young belief in the entire stainless-
ness of womanhood. He saw in Him not only perfect
manhood, but perfect womanhood. One of his ablest
sermons, on the Glory of the Virgin Mother,' is devoted to
the elaboration of this thought.
The prevailing tone of his mind on entering the ministry
was a tone of sadness. This was due partly to his imagina-
tion—an imagination so creative that it gave form and colour
to every thought, to everything he saw and read, and which
when permitted to roam unchecked, wandered on for hours,
thought suggested thought, and feeling feeling, till a whole
VOL. I.
1 Vol. ii., Sermons.
E
50
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
wild landscape of ideas and their forms grew up before his
eyes. He could not live in so ideal a world in which he
became vividly conscious of a fuller life of genius than he
could embody, without becoming at tinies the victim of a
vague sadness, the vagueness of which was its greatest pain.
Add to this an extremely sensitive organisation, and it is
no wonder that both feeling and thought, in this continual
battle between his nature and his will, were, when he was
far too young, preternaturally excited, and that he rapidly
lost the vigorous health and strength of his boyhood. His
spirit consumed his body.
Such an organisation increased, if it did not half create, a
religious sadness-the sadness of one whose spiritual ideal
was always infinitely beyond his practice. He never was
content; he never thought that he had attained, rather that
he was lagging far behind in Christian life. Everywhere
this is reflected in his letters. His feeling of it was so strong,
that it seemed rather to belong to a woman than to a man;
and at certain times the resulting depression was so great,
that he fell into a morbid hopelessness.
In addition to these sadnesses, he had some real grounds
for melancholy. Events had occurred during his college
career which had shaken him terribly. He speaks in one of
his later letters of a shock received in youth, from which he
never altogether recovered; but which, as it was the first,
carved its story most deeply into his heart. And yet all his
characteristic sadness was balanced by the fulness of life
and appreciation of the beautiful which afterwards more
fully distinguished him. The result of this was often, joy-
ousness of spirit, and elasticity of heart which enabled him
to rebound from sorrow, a power of realising all the happy
points of existence, and a delight in all that was fresh and
Growth of his Christian Faith
51
pure in humanity and nature, so keen, so delicate, and so
self-forgetful, that, till the terrible pain of the disease which
killed him began to torture him day and night, he never lost
youthfulness of heart. 'The woof of life is dark,' he says,
'but it is shot with a warp of gold.'
With this character he went up for ordination, and in the
very fact of his ordination is partly, also, to be found the
cause of the sorrowful sternness with which he began his
ministerial work for it was the final and irrevocable seal set
to his self-devoted sacrifice of the profession of the Army to
that of the Church.
On Sunday, July 12, 1840, he was ordained by the Bishop
of Winchester, who, on presenting his papers to him, gave
him as his motto the text from which Mr. Nicholson, his
future rector, had preached the ordination sermon, Endure
hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.' He had him-
self chosen as his text for the short serinon which the candi-
dates write, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the
dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' 'It was chosen,' he
says, 'as peculiarly characteristic of a minister's distinctive
mission.' The motto of the Bishop and his own choice of a
text, were certainly characteristic of the frame of mind in
which he commenced his duties. The enthusiasm which he
felt bordered on the stern devotion of Loyola, and had, like
his, a soldier's spirit at its root. The trumpet-sound of that
selected verse may, perhaps, have stirred his heart with an
association of the réveillé he had so often heard as a boy.
It is necessary to say once more, because it is one of the
key-notes of his character, that all his life long he was a
soldier at heart. Again and again he expresses his conviction
that, in a military life, the highest self-sacrifice he was
capable of could alone have been accomplished. Those
£ 2
52 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
who have heard him speak of battle-battle not as an
incident of mere war, but as the realisation of death for a
noble cause-will remember how his lips quivered, and
his eyes flashed, and his voice trembled with restrained
emotion. Unconsciously to himself, the ring of his words,
the choice of his expressions, his action even in common
circumstances, his view of the Universe and of Humanity,
were influenced and coloured by the ideal he had formed of
a soldier's life, by the passionate longing of his youth to
enter it, and by the bitterness of the regret with which he
surrendered it.
It must not be thought, however, that that bitterness
diminished in the least his Christian devotion or his eager-
ness in Christian work. It was, on the contrary, transmuted
into energy for Christ. The strength of character which
made him feel so keenly the surrender of one profession,
made him adopt another with fervour. He transferred the
same spirit of sacrifice with which he would have died for
men in battle, to a more hidden and a diviner warfare. His
feeling of the solemnity of his duty was profound. One who
knew him well says:--
He took on himself the office of a minister with the keenest
sense of responsibility and the most perfect devotion of will.
He desired to emulate the spirit of St. Paul. I was not present
when he was ordained, but I heard from those who were, that
his agitation was overpowering. When I saw him, the day
after, he looked as if he had been through an illness, He seemed
quite shattered.
He had been given a title by Mr. Nicholson, rector of the
united parishes of St. Maurice, St. Mary Kalendar, and St.
Peter Colebrook, Winchester. These parishes had been
unfortunate. The predecessor of Mr. Nicholson had been
His First Sermon
53
suspended for drunkenness. There were not a hundred
people who attended the church. But with Mr. Nicholson's
arrival, a new spirit came into the place, and the parish
church had been enlarged and rebuilt when Mr. Robertson,
July 19th, 1840, entered on his ministerial duties. The
impression which his earnestness made is detailed in the
following letter from one who was then a teacher in the
Sunday school-
p
I met Mr. Robertson for the first time on the morning of
July 19, 1840, in the Sunday school. His bearing on this
occasion made such an impression on my mind, that I shall
ever vividly remember it. In place of the stiffness and timidity
usually observable in the first ministrations of a young clergy-
man, he fell into his place with the ease and freedom of one
who has worn his armour long. I recollect that after Mr.
Nicholson had formally introduced him to all the teachers as
fellow-labourers, he seated himself on the stool by my side, and
after some remarks to my self on the different systems of educa-
tion, in the course of which he expressed his deep sense of the
value of Sunday schools, he leaned forward and addressed my
class (about a dozen big, rough boys), urging them, in his own
peculiar strain of loving earnestness, to live as Christians, con-
cluding with these words: 'Believe me, there is nothing else
worth living for, is there Mr. -?' turning to me for confirma-
tion. This was his first address as a minister, and his matter
and manner were both equally remarkable.
G
He preached his first sermon in the evening, on the text,
'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,' &c., Isa.
lv. I.
He was at once perfectly at home in the pulpit. His
sermon, a fervid echo of the prophet's invitation, was not merely
read, but preached with an eloquence, confidence of power, and
self-possession I have never witnessed in any similar instance,
On the following Sunday he preached on, 'Thus saith the high
and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity,' &c.; and his confidence
as a preacher had so increased, that he used considerable action.
54
Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
On the third Sunday he preached on, ‘And he brought him to
Jesus.' In this sermon he repeated several times as the burden
of his discourse, he brought his brother to Jesus.' The selec-
tion of these three texts for his first sermons will afford some
clue to the prevailing tone of his mind at that time. They were
made the occasions for a full and forcible declaration of Evan-
gelical views, though unusually free from the peculiar phraseology
of the school which has been so named.
It was not, however, all smooth sailing. There were still,
among a very poor population of from three to four thousand,
much infidelity and immorality-the children of a long
neglect. Violent opposition was made to the building of a
new church, and still more violent to the establishment of
parochial schools, not only by a number of small shop-
keepers, who were bitterly prejudiced and ignorant, but also
by the old High Church gentry of the parish, who looked
upon schools as dangerous innovations.
Among such rough elements did the young minister begin
his work. The difficulties of his position were his stimulus.
He laboured with all his heart; and especially among the
poor and working men, was so earnest, so courteous, so
eager to serve, that in a great measure he overcame their
prejudices. He was self-devoted, but repelled the praise
which named him so.
I would rather be doing my little nothing (he writes to Mr.
Davies) in Christ's vineyard, than enjoying the wealth or honour
of the country. It is a weary wandering this, but it is a great
comfort it will not last long, and there will be an end of battling
with a sinful heart, when the resurrection of the Lord is per-
fected in the resurrection of His members. I have been
reading lately 'Brainerd's Life,' which, to my taste, stands alone
as a specimen of biography. To believe, to suffer, and to love,'
was his motto, like that of the early Christians; but with us.
Letter recalling his Life in Winchester
55
if a minister gives himself a little exertion, a hundred voices
flatter him with an anxiety for his life, as if a fireside, plentiful
table, and warm clothing were compatible with the idea of
suicide. Brainerd did spend himself in his Master's service,
and his was self-denial-and a self-denial which there was none
to witness or admire.
He seems thus from the beginning to have felt the depres-
sion arising from the unthankful nature and severity of his
work; but he found in his rector a faithful friend, whose
sympathy cheered and whose experience guided him. The
following letter, written to Mrs. Nicholson on hearing of her
husband's death, recalls the writer's life at Winchester :-
Cheltenham May 26, 1844 ?
My dear Friend,-I do not hesitate for one moment whether
I ought to intrude upon your sadness or not, for we are mourners
together. In your most affectionate husband I have lost a
friend, and it is my sad privilege to write to you in your
bereavement. I was startled and solemnised by hearing who
had been taken from us- for I never dreamed that I should be
his survivor-and all our happy Sunday evenings, and country
walks, and ministerial union, came rushing over my recollection.
Oh, what days those were-and what kindness did you both
show to me, as a brother and sister and more! After a
moment of bitterness, almost the very first thought that rose on
my heart was, his work is done, and done well; and I felt
10used and invigorated, instead of depressed, by the remem-
brance that we have a work to do, and the night cometh when
no man can work. I cannot look back to all the past without
feeling that his memory is a soothing thing to us all, and
almost longing that our own course was as fairly run, and all as
safe and secure as it is with him. I preached immediately after
I heard the news on I John ii. 15, 16, 17, and there was not a little
1eality and earnestness imparted to what I said from recollecting
how powerfully that lesson had just been impressed upon my
56
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
heart, 'The world passeth away and the lust thereof;' but the
next words forced on my mind the feeling that nothing now can
quench his immortality. Work done-that lasts, and nothing
else, through the wreck of hopes, and the dissolving of this
strange universe-'he that doeth the will of God abideth for
ever.'
What soothing, ennobling recollections yours will be when
the first stunning sensation is over! We want such recollec-
tions to nerve and brace us for our work. Struggling, battling,
conquering, and those that have passed into eternity looking on
the cloud of witnesses. I too have just lost a dear one, and
we weep together; but one feeling must be uppermost with us
both, that we have deliberately chosen the Cross for our portion,
and it is no marvel if some of its blood is sprinkled on us.
Cross is dear, come how and where it will.
The
And now, my dear Mrs. Nicholson, will you ever come and
spend some time with us, and try the kindest welcome of one
who revered and loved your departed husband? It will be a
joy to us if you will; I do not mean just now, for your wound is
perhaps too fresh for that; but whenever you will. Pray let us
hear from you as soon as you can write without pain.
The friendship which this letter proves, supplied him with
the external sympathy he needed to meet the difficulties of
his work. His success in conjunction with Mr. Nicholson
was as great as he could expect.
We have just had (he writes in November 1840) to open two
churches at once, instead of one, in which my rector and myself
exchange duties, and they are both crowded, literally to over-
flowing. We have a lecture in the week, and two adult classes
for men and women, the attendance at which increases weekly,
and our communicants have been doubled in the last three
months. So that amidst much dislike and disgust from the old
High Church gentry of the town, many of the common people
hear us gladly, and some of the upper classes are beginning to
manifest curiosity and interest. My rector is everything I
暑
​His Manner of Life
57
could wish, as a guide and as a friend. His kindness and that
of his wife are unbounded. . . . Both he and I are occupied at
once to the utmost, and cannot spare a day away from the
parish.
He devoted much of his time to the Sunday schools, and
made the teaching systematic and useful by training the
teachers himself. He supplied them with questions on the
Epistle for the day, the answers to which they were to work
out for themselves. He then went over the results with
them during the week. In this way he preserved their
power of individual thought-a point on which all through
his life he laid the greatest stress. In October, 1840, he
wrote to a friend as if he were well satisfied with his
work :
With regard to my own work, I trust it is not entirely unblest,
though it might well deserve to be so. We have much in this
parish to encourage, and I believe the only discouragement is
the sloth of my own heart, which too often produces despon-
dency. Still every day convinces me more and more that there
is one thing, and but one, on earth worth living for—and that is
to do God's work, and gradually grow in conformity to His
image by mortification, and self-denial, and prayer. When that
is accomplished, the sooner we leave this scene of weary
struggle the better, so far as we are ourselves concerned. Till
then, welcome battle, conflict, victory!
As a picture of his general way of life, the following ex-
tract from a letter from one of his Winchester friends is
interesting:-
When I first knew Mr. Robertson, he was certainly both in
appearance and manner the most refined and gentlemanlike
young man I had ever seen. His smile and address were
winning. He was quite free from any of the gaucherie and
effeminacy which now and then characterise men of letters.
58 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Enthusiastic, and aspiring after impossible perfection, he was
grave generally, and a vein of melancholy ran through his
character. He could scarcely derive pleasure enough at this
time from small and common things. Small pleasures were
scarcely pleasures to him. Not much society was offered to him,
and he did not wish for it. He was rather too much disposed
to regard general society as a waste of time.
His powers of conversation were most remarkable, and so
were his acquirements. He was no contemptible scholar, and
of general information he had a large store. His knowledge of
French and Italian literature was far beyond the common. His
power of quotation, especially of poetry, was remarkable.
During the first months of his clerical life he was a close student
in the mornings, getting up early, and cating almost no breakfast,
in order to be able to apply himself to his work. He chiefly at
that time devoted himself to the study of Hebrew and biblical
criticism, though he read all kinds of books. His retentive
memory made him a sort of synopsis criticorum in his own
person. He seemed to know what had been written by most of
the great authorities on all difficult texts. His views were entirely
'evangelical,' but even then puzzles suggested themselves. He
was always trying to discover wherein lay the difference between
'a saving faith' and a merely historical belief in Christ as the
Saviour.
His way of life was most regular and simple. Study all the
morning; in the afternoon, hard fagging at visitation of the poor,
in the closest and dirtiest streets of Winchester; his evenings
were spent sometimes alone, but very often with his rector.
Such was his outward life; but the history, so far as it can
be gathered from his papers, of his spiritual life remains to
be told. He had entered, as we have seen, upon his ministry
partly in sadness and partly under the influence of an ascetic
enthusiasm. But he soon met with temptations and hin-
drances to a severe Christian life which arose from his
peculiar temperament. At Winchester he endeavoured to
Devotional Reading
59
overcome these temptations by austerities. He restricted
himself to all but necessary expenses, and spent the rest of
his income on the poor. He created a system of restraint
in food and sleep. For nearly a year he almost altogether
refrained from meat. He compelled himself to rise early.
Thus he passed through the domain of the Law, before he
entered on the freer region of the Gospel. His motto
always was, 'If any man will follow me, he must deny him-
self, and take up his cross daily.' But at Winchester self-
denial was partially expressed in self-imposed and outward
observances; at Brighton, it was the spontaneous and
natural expression of his whole inward life.
He refrained also from much society. In some papers
which he wrote long afterwards he speaks of this with
approbation.
I am conscious (he says) of having developed my mind and
character more truly, and with more fidelity, at Winchester than
anywhere. Looking back, I think I perceive reasons for this.
First I went out little, and hence perfected what I undertook
before fresh impulses started' up to destroy the novelty and
interest of the impulse already set in motion. For example, I
read Edwards completely and mastered him. The impulse
came to its limit, unexhausted.
It will be seen, by contrasting this with his letters, how
clearly he saw the mistake he had made by desultoriness at
college, and with what determination he corrected a fault.
He found, he said, devotional reading of great use to
him. He read slowly 'The Imitation of Christ ;' but, when
he could, he chose, as his books of devotion, the lives of
'eminently holy persons, whose tone was not merely up-
rightness of character and high-mindedness, but communion
with God besides.' It made his sense of the reality of
60 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
religious feeling more acute when he found it embodied in
the actions of the men who expressed it. He read daily
the lives of Martyn and Brainerd. These books supplied.
a want in his mind, and gave him impulse. 'I recollect,' he
writes at Brighton, 'how much more peaceful my mind used
to be when I was in the regular habit of reading daily, with
scrupulous adherence to a plan, books of a devotional de-
scription.' ¹
1
Prayer was his constant resource. In his hours of gloom
he would often retire and pray alone till he realised God's
presence.
It seems to me now (he writes, in 1841), that I can always see,
in uncertainty, the leading of God's hand, after prayer, when
everything seems to be made clear and plain before the eyes.
In two or three instances I have had evidence of this which I
cannot for a moment doubt. You can have little idea of the
temptations in the ministry to despond and let the hands hang
down; and the many hours of doubt and difficulty which come
upon the soul. And if to these were added the uncertainty,
whether the position itself were one in which we had placed
ourselves without God's direction, they would be indeed in-
tolerable.
He invariably felt the necessity of forms to support
spiritual life, and that all the more, perhaps, from his natural
aversion to them. Prayer, always customary with him, had
become the habit of his life at Oxford.2 He systematised
1 See Letter LXXII. for the whole subject.
2 The following prayer was written at Oxford and used at Win-
chester. It proves the sternness of his opposition to the school of
Mr. Newman :-
We look for Thy promise.
'The enemy has come in like a flood.
Do Thou lift up a standard against him. O Lord, here in Oxford we
believe that he is poisoning the streams which are to water Thy Church
61
Prayer
prayer at Winchester.
He set apart certain subjects for
each day in the week. 'Sunday: Parish; outpouring of the
Spirit. Monday: Act of devotion. Tuesday: Spread of
the Gospel. Wednesday: Kingdom of Christ. Thursday:
Self-denial. Friday: Special confession. Saturday: Inter-
cession.'
The prayer in which all these centred, the one prayer of
his whole life, was, that he might have an 'objective, dis
interested love of Christ,' and that he might have that
possession of God which arises from love for others.'
Bring into captivity (he prays) every thought to the obedi-
ence of Christ. Take what I cannot give my heart, body,
thoughts, time, abilities, money, health, strength, nights, days,
youth, age, and spend them in Thy service, O my crucified
Master, Redeemer, God. Oh, let not these be mere words!
Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon
earth that I desire in comparison of Thee. My heart is athirst
at their source. Pardon us if we err. Oh, lead us into all truth. But,
O our God, if we are not mistaken, if the light which is in us is
darkness-how great is that darkness! Lighten our darkness in this
university with the pure and glorious light of the Gospel of Christ.
Help, Lord, for the faithful are minished from among the children of
men. My Father, I am like a child, blown about by every wind of
doctrine. How long shall I walk in a vain shadow, and disquiet
myself in vain? Let not my inconsistent, selfish conduct be a pretext
for blasphemy against Thy saints and persisting in heresy. Hear me,
my Lord and Master.'
But as his ministerial experience grew, he began to think less of
'heresy,' Tractarian or otherwise, and to see that it was redemption.
from sin, and not so much from untrue opinions, which the world.
required. He writes from Winchester-'I have too much of stern
iniquity and hell rampant to grapple with, to give much time to
1eading or to Church questions; indeed, even the Tractarian heresy
has vanished from my mind amid the sterner conflict with worldly
passions and open atheism; for we have some of these madmen heie.'
62
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
for God, for the living God.
before God?
When shall I come and appear
The preaching which resulted from this prayerful spirit
was imbued by it. Speaking of sermon writing, he says:
The most valuable book I possess is a remembrance of trials
at which I repined, but which I now find were sent in answer to
my prayer to be made a minister. Oratio, meditatio, tentatio.
And those sermons in which these have had much share, I
have found tell most; and I trust that God will bring in his
flock by such a thing as I. I am sure if He does, it will be
strength made perfect in weakness indeed.
Those who are acquainted with his later career will feel
astonished at the contrast it presents to this period. The
austerities, the seclusion from society, even the reading of
that class of devotional books which rather tend to weaken
than to strengthen character, were all put aside at Brighton.
The sermons preached in that town speak continually of
the unprofitableness of asceticism, of the necessity of living,
as Christ did, among men in the world, and of the dan-
gerous tendency of mere devotional reading. It is plain
that if he had lived more naturally at Winchester, he would
not only have retained his health, but also given a manlier
vigour to his intellect. But trained in a very restricted
school of thought and religion which was dominant thirty
years ago, he could not emerge from it without first going
down into its depths. It seems to have weakened every-
thing that he wrote. His letters of this time are scarcely
worth reading. His thoughts are not marked by any indi-
viduality. The only thing which did not suffer was his
work. The desire to die, partly suggested by ill-health,
seemed to him to be a spiritual desire. The sensitiveness
禦
​!
?
Preaching
63
of his conscience unduly exaggerated every failure into a
sin. He fell into a habit of unwise self-dissection. It is
painful to read his diary in which all his inward life is
mapped out into divisions, his sins and errors labelled,
selfishness discovered in all his efforts and resolves, and
lists made out of the graces and gifts which he needed
especially. It is impossible not to feel, when he got rid of
all this, and felt its fruitlessness and its antagonism to the
true spirit of the Life of Christ, how he sprang from a
dwarf into a giant.
And yet all this self-torture and self-inquiry gave him, to
a certain degree, an insight into the hearts of men, though,
generally speaking, only into the evil of their hearts. He
gained a great command over the feelings of those who
felt themselves oppressed with the same weight of sin and
struggle. His sermons touched such men to the quick.
They were delivered with great ease and self-command.
His beautiful voice, his dignified yet vivid action, and the
impassioned earnestness of his manner, made every word
tell. In themselves, the sermons preached at Winchester
do not exhibit much power. Contrasted with those de-
livered at Brighton, they are startlingly inferior. They do
not, to the reader, even foretell his future excellence. They
are overloaded with analyses of doctrine. They are weak-
ened by the conventionalities of University theology.
They are, however, full of forcible appeals to the con-
sciences of men, and of deeply-felt descriptions of the love
of God in Christ.
They contain all the characteristic doctrines against
which he afterwards so deliberately protested at Brighton.
They contain also many passages which are in reality re-
cords of his own spiritual struggles; for in preaching he
64
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
could not argue abstractedly. He saw things by the light
of his own heart, and he preached unconsciously his own
pain and his own effort.
I think (writes one of his friends, who heard him preach
every Sunday at Winchester), that his sermons did prophesy of
his future excellence. I am disposed to say that they were
never at any time more impressive. He then wrote them
throughout with great rapidity, always on Saturday, the time
between breakfast and one o'clock sufficing for a sermon. He
did not use much action, but there was a restrained passion in
him which forced people to listen. Though there was much
thought in all that he said, yet in those days he had, so to
speak, scarcely begun to think, and of course had come to no
conclusions. He had not then thrown off his leading strings.
Sty
This friend of his continues :—
About one year of simple life and hard work, during which I
think he was really happy, passed. A personal trial then befell
him, which he felt very bitterly, and which affected his health
and spirits. He thought himself attacked by the malady which
had carried off so many of his family, and therefore would have
no medical advice, and use no remedies. He imagined that if
he once told his feelings, he would be laid aside at once, and he
was determined to preach as long as he could stand. This he
literally did, and never were his words more telling. He did
preach as one who thought himself dying, to dying men. He
did not then care to live long, and had a sentimental pleasure
in the thought of an carly death. He afterwards said so,
adding that he did not then know how much God had for him
to learn before he should be fit to die.
The following letters mark the gradual rise of these feel-
ings:-
March, 1841.
My work does not prosper as you anticipate-at least it
appears at a standstill, and my own energy and heart for the
Despondency arising from Illness
65
work seem gone for the present. It will not, I trust, be always
so; but after a time I shall be braced up to renewed exertions.
There is much to be learned which cannot be
obtained alone - to say nothing of the responsibility of having
so many souls intrusted to the charge of a young beginner. Oh,
it is a heavy, heavy, weight! I begin to think and tremble as I
never did before; and I cannot live to Christ. My heart is
detached indeed from earth, but it is not given to Him. All I
do is a cross and not a pleasure-a continual struggle against
the current and all I effect is to prevent being hurried back as
rapidly as I might be-but I make no way. I know I shall
soon have some heavy blow to start me from my lethargy.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
May the Holy Spirit warm you to greater self-denial, and
holiness, and love, and devotedness than I can feel or imagine.
Winchester: April, 1841.
I trust, my dear J., you will be taught unceasing diligence.
If you could but feel those words, 'the night cometh when no
man can work,' as you will feel them when it comes, there would
be an end of trifling in you, and me, and all of us, for ever. Things
now of apparent importance shrink up into nothing in sight of
that hour. And there is a work to be done for Christ: how little
time to do it in! Surely there is nothing here worth living for,
but to be conformed to Him in deed, and word, and thought, and
to die really to the world.
Winchester May 31, 1841.
:
My ever kind and considerate rector is pressing me much to
go home for relaxation, which in all probability I shall do soon.
Indeed, I believe I must; for, almost immediately after seeing
you at Oxford, I became very unwell, and whatever it may be, it
seems to increase instead of diminishing in unfavourable appear-
Periods every now and then of extreme lassitude come
on, together with cough and pain in the side. Of course this
may be nothing at all; but I write to you in confidence of friend-
ship, that I begin to suspect my life will not be a long one. Not
ance.
VOL. 1.
F
T
66
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
that I think there is any immediate danger, but a very few years
would seem to be the utmost limit. I fear I am too earnestly
longing to depart; perhaps this has partly contributed to make
me form this opinion of myself, and there is a great difference
between a desire to be with Christ, and a mere wish to be re-
leased from the weariness of the flesh. Which of these two is
my feeling, only God knows. Do not mention what I told you,
as it is merely my own surmise.
My dear sister is
very ill, though my family seem lately to have become sanguine
as to her ultimate recovery. Oh! if we could only learn that
hard lesson, 'Thy will be done!' To say this in every dispen-
sation, be it what it may, is the whole of religion; for what have
we to do but to have our wills entirely merged in that of our
Father? and when this is done, we are ripe for the garner.
•
The medical advice which he at first refused, he was in-
duced at last to seek.
Winchester: June 17, 1841.
I have been for the last week under medical care in town, for
cough and pain in the side, and other unpleasant symptoms,
arising from inflammation of the mucous membrane of the lungs
and bronchial tubes. I am thankful to say that further mischief
is arrested for the present; but the medical men insist on my
giving up duty for some time. I concealed this from my family
as long as it was uncertain, as I told you in confidence; of
course it is a secret no longer, especially as it is not so bad as I
expected.
Again, on July 5, 1841, he writes :--
I have been strongly advised to try a change of scene and air
in Switzerland, and I think it will probably end in my following
this counsel, though I feel much indisposed towards it. But I
must make some effort to escape from this lethargy of body and
apathy of mind, and perhaps this will be the only means I can
devise. With this exception, I do not think there is now very
much the matter with me, only I cannot fix my mind, or interest
67
Close of Ministerial Life at Winchester
myself in one single thing on earth. I know it is a morbid state
which must be overcome by vigorous effort, but the difficulty is
to make it.
Before his departure for the Continent, he passed the ex-
amination for priest's orders. He writes from Farnham to
Mr. Nicholson :-
Mrs. has very kindly offered me letters of introduction to
Geneva, which will considerably contribute to fix my plans of
travel, as I shall proceed there at once, with only a delay of a
few days at remarkable spots on the Rhine, and then make small
excursions from Geneva as my head-quarters. I find a strange
contrast in the views of this July and those of last-when all
seemed a bright field of conquest before the eyes, and there had
been no experience of the painful truth that the professional op-
position to others' sin does not release a minister from the strug-
gle with his own. This time, I have had little but shame to feel,
bitter shame, and God alone can judge how inadequate to the
All this I do not hesitate to say to you, though to others
it would be egotistical and indelicate; but I have just been giv-
ing vent on paper to the thoughts which rose uppermost, with-
out much considering either order or connection. To-morrow I
am to be irrevocably in outward ritual set apart to the work af
God. I would that it were as easy to be separated for ever from
the earthliness within.¹
cause.
With this mournful retrospect and sense of failure closed
his ministerial life at Winchester. His young experience had
passed out of enthusiasm into despondency. Looking back.
three months afterwards, from the death-bed of his sister
It was the custom of the Bishop of Winchester to ask the candidates
for priest's orders to write an account of their diaconate. The account
given by Mr. Robertson seemed to the Bishop so valuable for its sugges-
tions, teaching, and experience, that he retained it, and frequently gave
it to future candidates to read, as a noble expression of the spirit and
mode in which a diaconate should be fulfilled.
F 2
68
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
upon that time, he says:- She is fast wearing away, and
her short career will soon be at an end. Three months ago,
how I should have envied her calm decay, and longed to
share her quiet shroud, and her departure to be with
Christ.'
But this sadness was soon remedied by change of scene
and the excitement of healthy exercise.
He travelled on foot through the Continent. He entered
at once, and fully, into continental life, and manners, and
politics. He endeavoured to see all sides of foreign ques-
tions, by conversing with men of all classes.
Nor did he shrink from speaking of religion as it ever
presented itself to him as a life in Christ. Few would have
dared to have spoken to men as he did on spiritual subjects;
few could have so succeeded if they had dared. Even
Englishmen do not seem to have been offended. Such was
his earnestness and his delicate courtesy, that no one ever
drew back in injured dignity. Men were rather induced to
open their hearts to him. He had a way of half-revealing
himself-of giving freely all he could give of himself, while
the sacred depths of feeling were undisclosed, which insen-
sibly lured men to unfold themselves in turn. The whole
was done unconsciously. He neither knowingly gave nor
withheld. He was carried away to say what he did say by
the impression which the person he conversed with made
upon him. His instinct told him where to stop. Hence
arose the wonderful reality of his words, the strange, entire
absence of self-consciousness which gave such a personality
to all he said, and such an impalpable force to every action
and impression. Old men consulted him; strangers dis-
closed to him the difficulties of their spiritual and worldly
life.
69
His Continental Tour
On the other hand, when he met men who despised
Christianity, or who, like the Roman Catholics, held to
doctrines which he believed untrue, this very enthusiasm
and unconscious excitement swept him sometimes beyond
himself. He could not moderate his indignation down to
the cool level of ordinary life. Hence he was wanting at
this time in the wise tolerance which formed so conspicuous
a feature of his maturer manhood. He held to his own
views with pertinacity. He believed them to be true, and
he almost refused to allow the possibility of the views of
others having truth in them also. He was more or less one-
sided at this period. With the Roman Catholic religion it
was war to the death, not in his later mode of warfare, by
showing the truth which lay beneath the error, but by de-
nouncing the error. He seems invariably, with the pugna-
city of a young man, to have attacked the Roman Catholic
faith; and the mode in which this was done was startlingly
different from that which afterwards he adopted.
With the Neologianism of Germany-to make use of his
own term-he also came into contact.
I travelled several days with a young Prussian of Elberfeld.
He gave a dreadful picture of Krummacher both as to his life
and doctrine, evidently coloured by extreme hatred to religion.
Indeed, the account was its own refutation. It was one of the
many proofs that we daily meet with, that they who will live
godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution. He was well
informed in English and German history, much inclined to
ridicule Scripture and holy things. At last it came to a discus-
sion. He mentioned, as usual, some difficulties in Scripture
and, after a long argument, I told him our hopes, our belief, and
our conviction. Direct assertion did partially what discussion
had failed to do. He ceased bantering, and after a few minutes'
silence, said gravely, 'C'est une belle croyance-I would that I
}
70
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
2
(
could believe it too.' Poor fellow he was afterwards reinforced
by two Swiss of Geneva-one an avowed infidel, the other a
blasphemous Socinian. He was unbounded in his mockery of
Malan, Merle, &c., whom he called madmen. 'Momiers' is the
general popular appellation applied to them. 'They are a new
fashioned set,' he said, 'who are tired of old people. They
have deserted the old (he meant God the Father), and
will have nothing to do with anyone but His Son.' He walked
off on being reminded that the 'new fashioned set' was not
these men, but those who had deserted the doctrines of Calvin.
So I was left to the fearful libertinism of the infidel, backed, I
fear, by the approval, but now silent approval, of my Prussian
acquaintance. We parted, I fear, without any good done. I
hope to get from Merle or Malan some account of the church
here, to-day, or, at least, soon.
From the Rhine, he passed into Switzerland, through the
Jura. He had introductions at Geneva, where he continued
to stay for some time. He plunged at once and eagerly
into the various church and religious questions which then
agitated the city. The vigour, the life, the bright enthusiasm
which he brought to bear on all subjects, delighted and
astonished the circle in which he moved.
Friends sprang
up around his path. It seemed as if he had become a
Genevese, so close was his interest and his sympathy with
the despised Christians of Geneva; and the impetuosity and
determination of his mode of argument are both characteris-
tic of him at this period.
The following letters and extracts of letters written from
Winchester and the Continent, are inserted as containing in
themselves a history of his thought, and feelings, and
opinions. One especially, dated August 3, Hôtel de la
Couronne, is remarkable for a positive statement of his doc-
trinal views during the second year of his ministry, and also
Letters from Winchester and the Continent
for the prophecy of Malan, so sternly fulfilled afterwards-
'Mon très-cher frère, vous aurez une triste vie et un triste
ministère.'
Letters from September 17, 1840, to August 3, 1841.
VIII.
71
September 17, 1840.
The ministry is not to be entered lightly, nor without much
and constant prayer for direction; but if a man's heart be
set to glorify his Lord with the best service his feeble mind
and body can offer, there can be nothing comparable to
the ministry. I have already known some ministerial trials,
and I foresee more, much hardness and much disappointment;
but I may tell you from experience, that you would take nothing
that earth has to offer in exchange for the joy of serving Christ.
as an accredited ambassador. Your kind hopes expressed for
my sister are, I fear, in vain. From the moment that I saw
that fatal hectic, which I know too well, I felt assured her hours
on earth were numbered. May God give us grace to say from
the heart, 'The Lord hath taken away blessed be the name of
the Lord.' I am going to see her as soon as I can.
IX.
Rodney House: October, 1840.
My dearest Duesbery,-My date will show you that I am now
at home for a little relaxation, which is very acceptable after
continued work. . . . . I am sorry, and yet half glad, to find by
your letters that you are still unreconciled to Bermuda. I am
glad, because it shows your heart is still at home with us, un-
cooled by absence, and because it shows that you are unsatisfied,
with anything that is to be found below. I think there is some-
thing implanted in man's heart, fallen creature as he is, which
defies him to be content with anything but God alone. It is a
trace of original majesty, which leaves a mark of what he was
72
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
before the fall. He is always panting for something fresh; and
that is no sooner attained, than it palls upon his taste. And this
strong necessity of loving something makes a man form idols
for himself, which he invests with fancied perfections; and
when all these fade away in his grasp, and he finds their unsub-
stantiality, he must either become a misanthrope or a Christian.
When a man has learned to know the infinite love of God in
Christ to him, then he discovers something which will not elude
his hold, and an affection which will not grow cold; for the
comparison of God's long-suffering and repeated pardon, with
his own heartless ingratitude, convinces him that it is an un-
changeable love. And I hope in God that your disquieted
feelings will terminate in this discovery of the fulness of peace
purchased by the cross of Christ. All goes on satisfactorily at
Winchester, the attention and attendance, I think, gradually
deepening and increasing; and I hope many are becoming more
and more in earnest about their souls. My treatment I only
complain of on the score of exuberant kindness. I live almost
at Mr. Nicholson's, and we go on hand and heart together. I
had to officiate lately at the funeral of a poor man, for a clergy-
man who was unable to attend. The burial-ground is on the
top of a hill which overlooks Winchester, about half a mile off.
I was engaged with my own duty until very late; and night was
just closing in as we set off from the church. An old man came
and walked by my side; we went along, and engaged in a very
interesting conversation. There was something very romantic
as the procession slowly wound round the hill-the deep shadows
gradually closing in; and it rose to the sublime when we stood
at the side of the grave on the top of the exposed hill. It was
nearly dark; and the dark, silent figures closing in around me,
with their white hat-bands streaming in the wind, which moaned
drearily, gave a solemn and unearthly aspect to the scene,
especially when the coffin was lowered down into the grave, only
distinguishable by its dark contrast with the snow around.
Oxford term has begun. Only fancy! It seems the dream of
another life; everything has been so entirely changed in a few
months. Gowns, and lectures, and proctors, and all the con-
Ministerial Foys and Sorrows
73
ventional language and feelings of that august place, will ere
long fade from the imagination. No wonder, for the work of
reading has been succeeded by a sterner struggle, with sin in its
loathsome dens of iniquity. However, with a few exceptions, I
have been well received in the worst places. It is a heavy
thing the weight of souls-hard, up-hill work. Now and then,
little things come out by accident which give hope. I heard
that a poor woman said every word of one sermon went to her
heart, and she thought I was preaching at her. It is necessary
to hear these things sometimes, or it would be more than faith
could bear. Yet faith would bear it. I again make the resolu-
tion to write again soon.
X.
Winchester: November 24, 1840.
My dear Hatchard,-I hasten to answer your letter, which I
received on Sunday morning. Most sincerely I congratulate
you on your prospect of a curacy, but much more on the
approach of the highest earthly honour-the privilege of work-
ing for Christ—and welcome you to a participation of its joys
and sorrows. Perhaps the latter predominate here, but they
are not worthy to be compared to the joys which shall be re-
vealed in us, if we suffer with Him. I think the strictness of
self-examination for ministerial fitness is contained in that
solemn, searching question of our Lord, thrice repeated, 'Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?' And if we can,
from our inmost souls, say as Peter did, 'Lord, thou knowest all
things, thou knowest that I love thee,' I believe the injunction
which follows, and the warning of martyrdom, would be received
with equal joy as our Master's will. I am sensible that it is a test
that makes me humble; still, notwithstanding backwardness in
the work, and much yielding to sloth and self-gratification
instead of sowing in faith without longing to see the fruits, I do
feel that if the labour, the hard toil in the vineyard, were taken
from me, I have nothing left on earth to live for. And I trust
that you may have this spirit, less dulled and clouded by earthly
74
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
motives and low views than it is in me.
J. has not
succeeded in his attempt at the fellowship, and I do not know
that I am sorry for it, as I believe that it would ruin him
altogether to live an Oxford fellow's selfish, dronish life.
XI.
March 4, 1841.
My dear Davies,—.
I received the sermons which
you so kindly sent me, with much pleasure; that especially on
justification seems, under God, calculated to do good. I believe
there is at this time a determined attack made by Satan and his
instruments to subvert that cardinal doctrine of our best hopes
-justification by faith alone; and how far he has already suc-
ceeded let many a college in Oxford testify. It is the doctrine
which, more than any other, we find our own hearts continually
turning aside from and surrendering. Anything but Christ-
the Virgin, the Church, the sacraments, a new set of our own
resolutions; any or all of these will the heart embrace as a
means to holiness or acceptance rather than God's way. You
may even persuade men to give up their sins if they may do it
without Christ; as teetotalism can witness. And the Apostle's
resolution, in spite of all we say, is one which we are again and
again making, and yet for ever breaking, to know nothing but
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
XII.
•
May 22, 1841.
My sister seems to grow weaker day by day; and though
they seem inclined to flatter themselves that she is better, her
extreme languor and continued cough tell a different tale.
Alas! there is no home here, and no abiding comfort; and yet
I do not know why I should say alas! for it is better to have
one tie to earth severed after another till we have nothing left to
live for but Christ. What emphatic energy must have been in
the feeling of St. Paul when he wrote those words: riπ vμav
ἔχων εἰς τὸ αναλῦσαι, καὶ συν Χριστῷ εἶναι, when even we, in the
His Doctrinal Views
75
midst of self-indulgence, can yearn for it! I do not wonder at
the feelings you express in reading H. Martyn's letters; what a
glorious instance he was of what God can make such a thing as
man-little less than a seraph burning in one deathless flame of
love from the moment when, as he expresses it, the last thing
left on earth was taken from him, till the last burning words
were traced at Tocat. It is a book that may well be blistered
by hot tears of shame. Sometimes one is inclined to fancy that
if a path of special usefulness could be pointed out, we might
devote ourselves as he did; but I suppose this is only the usual
feeling of readiness to bear any cross but that which God has
put upon us. I am now reading a book of much devotional
and self-denying fervour, Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of
Christ. I love to feel the oneness of feeling which pervades
the sons of God amidst rivally opposed communions.
see such men as Martyn and à Kempis at the right hand
of Jesus in His kingdom, will be a joy that might almost com-
pensate for a menial post there as the lowest of the low.
Το
XIII.
Hôtel de la Couronne, Geneva: August 3, 1841.
He says
My dear Stru,—I have already sent three letters. You come
fourth in the family; therefore this is directed to you. I begin
from where I left off. This morning I went to call on M.
Malan, without introduction, except that of many mutual ac-
quaintances. I sat talking with him about two hours. The
chief subject of discussion was that of assurance
that a Christian cannot be without assurance, except sinfully.
This I agreed to, though not exactly on the same ground as
that on which he puts it. The proof of adoption is a changed
heart-2 Cor. v. 17. If a man see this change in himself, it is a
proof to him that he has believed, because the work of regenera-
tion is begun the work which God performs in the heart of
all whom He has chosen, conforming them to the image of His
Son-Rom. viii. 29. If he does not see this change, it is
1
76 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
evidently because of the predominance of sin; and therefore
the want of assurance springs from sin. But Malan makes it
sin, not indirectly, but directly. His argument, simply stated,
is this: Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of
God. You acknowledge that. Is He the Christ? Have you
any doubt? You are sure He is? or do you mean to say you
do not believe that He is? But if you tell me you do believe
that He is, how can you doubt your safety? Would you make
God a liar? for He says that 'every one who believes is born of
God.' I do not think this satisfactory, because I believe many
who never will be saved are convinced of it, and so in a certain
sense believe it, as the devils do who tremble, or as Simon did
—Acts viii. 13—who was yet in the bond of iniquity. And it is
this possibility which can make a Christian doubt his own state
even when he says, I believe. Still I admit that want of
assurance is the mark of very low attainments in grace: because
if sanctification were so bright as to be visible, there would be
no doubt. Though a subject on which I have thought much,
he gave me many new ideas. I have only mentioned one for the
present.
Yesterday I dined with M.
They were very attentive,
and the conversation on all manner of subjects extremely inte-
resting, till we came to discuss the advantages of creeds for a
Church. He was for admitting all shades of opinion. I repre-
sented the object of our Church, to admit all whose opinions
differed on subjects not fundamental, and exclude others. But
it soon turned out that our views of fundamental questions
differed entirely, and I told him we could not consider one who
denied the Deity of Christ a Christian. I used this term, be-
cause I knew he would admit the 'divinity.' He then told me
he did not hold the Deity. I said I could not retract, and must
tremble for him. This led to a hot and long discussion. Poor-
misquoted Scripture, and would make no answer to the texts I
brought forward. My chief point was to prove the death of
Christ not merely a demonstration of God's willingness to pardon,
on repentance and obedience, but an actual substitution of suffer-
ing; and that salvation is a thing finished for those who believe
M. Malan's Prophecy
77
-not a commencement of a state in which salvation may be
gained: insisting especially on Heb. x. 14. But to this he
would scarcely even listen, and protested against single texts,
requiring the general tone of Scripture as the only argument.
It would be long to go through it all. He understood fully that
the denial of his right to the name of Christian was not neces-
sarily intolerant, but might be even charity.
I have just returned from another long discussion with Malan,
before several persons, which I do not like, because calmness in
argument is then always difficult. You think of your own vic-
tory instead of the truth. However, I only parried, and allowed
him to cross-question me.
He does it in the most affectionate
and earnest manner; but I could not yield, because I believe all
I said based upon God's truth. He said, 'Mon très-cher frère,
vous aurez une triste vic et un triste ministère.' It may be so;
but prescnt peace is of little consequence. If we sin we must be
miserable; but if we be God's own, that misery will not last long ;
the evidence is lost only for a time, but I do feel sure it is lost.
But God's promise is so clear-Sin shall not have dominion over
you'—that the evidence must become bright again by victory.
Misery for sin is better worth having than peace. I love old
Malan from my very soul, and hate disputing with him, even
though it is the dispute of Christian brothers. How we ought
to yearn for the day when truth shall not only be, but also be felt
to be one.
1
C
78
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
CHAPTER III.
Marriage of Mr. Robertson-Death of his Sister-He takes the Curacy
of Christ Church, Cheltenham-Character and Influence of his
Preaching-His Despondency and its Causes-His Influence in
Society-His Conversation-His Daring Character-His Reading
-Extracts and Letter throwing Light on his Spiritual Develop-
ment-Influences which contributed to the Change in his Opinions
-Progress of this Change-Its Crisis-He Leaves Cheltenham
for the Continent.
Letters during his Journey.
M'
R. ROBERTSON did not travel farther than
Geneva. He met there, and, after a short ac-
quaintance, married, Helen, third daughter of Sir George
William Denys, Bart., of Easton Eston, Northamptonshire.
Almost immediately after his marriage he returned to
Cheltenham. He was cheered by a farewell visit to Win-
chester-
Where (he says) many of my old congregation received me with
great affection, and I preached to a very crowded church my
last sermon.
From what I learnt I have reason to believe that
more than I had thought were savingly brought to Christ during
my ministry there. If this be so, it is more than a requital for a
whole life of labour.
For some months, owing to his ill-health, he was forbidden
to do any regular duty. During this interval of passiveness,
his mind wrought, and forged out some results from his
The Death of his Sister
79
past experience. Even at this period his freedom from
party spirit, and his individuality of character, began to be
recognised. He says, writing in January 1842 :—
How much some systematic preparation for the ministry is
needed in our Church! We enter it almost without chart or
compass; and I suppose the Anglican Church alone exhibits the
strange spectacle so common amongst us of a deacon entrusted
with the sole charge of souls. I hope not to be alone for some
years to corne, if God should spare me so long. I have preached
here several times, and been set down sometimes as a Tractarian,
sometimes as an ultra-Calvinist. I trust the accusations neu-
tralise each other, for they are most certainly incompatible. If
a man will really endeavour to avoid Popery, either that of Rome
or that of a party, and practically hold the real Protestant doc-
trine of the supremacy of Scripture, I suppose he must be con-
tent to come into collision with conventional phraseology, and
several received views. Yet it is somewhat hard to unflinchingly
incur the suspicion of those whom, on the whole, you believe to
be God's people, although it is so easy to keep out of sight what
is unpalatable. I am much tempted to it sometimes in the pul-
pit, and in conversations.
In February of the same year, his sole surviving sister,
Emma, died. She had long been lingering into death. He
watched her with a brother's affection, and the whole image
of her patience crept into his study of imagination,' and
impressed him with a more solemn sense of duty and eter-
nity. He writes in February :-
Dear, dear girl! you cannot dream the holiness which filled
her young mind, increasing daily and rapidly till she departed to
be perfect. There had been a subdued calmness about her for
years, which made the earnestness with which she sometimes
expressed her opinion on vital truths more striking and more
lovely. She had left us all behind, far; and when I think of
her, I am disgusted with the frivolity and worldliness of my
80
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
own heart. Is it credible that a man can have known Christ
for six years, and believed that there is in store an inheri-
tance whose very essence is holiness, and yet be still tam-
pering with the seductions, and follies, and passions of this
wretched place? I trust this solemn scene may make us all
who have witnessed it more in earnest, and more single in
heart and purpose. The days are fleeting away, and there is
little done for Christ, much for self and sloth. And I some-
times shudder, when I wake, as it were, for a moment, to re-
member that while we are dallying, the wheels of the chariot
of the Judge do not tarry too, but are hurrying on with what
will be to some among us fearful rapidity. My dear Hatchard,
what need we have to pray for an ever serious, solemn mind,
and an unresting sense of the presence of God within and
around us! The startling silence in the room where the last
of my darling sisters lies, has chilled my heart with a cold
feeling of certainty that most of our life and profession is
mockery. To serve the Eternal so
Before his sister's death occurred, he had been inquiring
for a curacy.
He wrote to Mr. Hatchard in January
1842:
I am grieved to hear your account of yourself. Take care.
Depend upon it, you will gain nothing by a press of steam, as I
now acknowledge with bitterness: indeed, I do not expect ever
to be worth much again. Can you tell me of a curacy which
combines diametrically opposed qualities-sufficiency of stipend
and easiness of work? By easiness, I mean half services, that
is, I cannot take any duty single-handed, but must have either a
resident rector, or a stipend sufficient to procure regular assist-
ance. I have had a district church mentioned to me.
Such a
thing would just suit me.
The curacy of this district church, the incumbent of which
was the Rev. Archibald Boyd, now incumbent of St. James,
Paddington, was offered to him and accepted. He entered
Obtains a Curacy at Cheltenham
81
on his duties in the summer of 1842, and performed them for
nearly five years. The only external events which marked
these years of his life were the birth of three children and the
death of one.
It was fortunate for him at this time that he had formed a
high estimate of his rector. It was all-important for him,
in a place like Cheltenham, that a great reverence for
another should keep him humble, and that eager emulation
after an ideal should prevent him from being carried away
by the passing excitements of society.
Writing to Mr. Hatchard in the beginning of his second
year at Cheltenham, 1843, he says :-
28, Park Place, Cheltenham: February 9, 1843.
My dear Hatchard,—Many thanks for your kind congratula-
tions, and long letter. I feel considerably antiquated by being
invested with the honour of paternity, and already experience a
sort of foretaste of its cares and responsibilities. I am thankful
to say both my dear charges are going on far better than I could
have hoped, and I only trust that I may be enabled to realise
the promise inseparably annexed to 'training,' for otherwise I
should feel indeed a heavy sinking at the prospect of my boy's
future career.
I am sorry to read your account of your rector's ill health.
What you quote from Bishop Hall is very true in some cases.
God grant that when we are called our work may be done.
Poor Grotius' motto lies sometimes heavy at my heart-' Vitam
perdidi operosè nihil agendo.' You tell me nothing of your
work. Mine is far less satisfactory than at Winchester, partly
from the superficial nature of this place, in which I would not
remain another day but for the sake of my coadjutor and leader ;
partly from the effect of the temptations and the frittering away
of time almost inseparable from a residence here.
Mr. Robertson always preached in the afternoon. He
VOL. I.
G
82
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
soon began to exercise upon his congregation his peculiar
power of fascination. It was the fascination not only of
natural gifts of voice, and speech, and manner, but also of
intellect warmed into a vivid life by the deepest earnestness.
Mr. Dobson, formerly the principal of Cheltenham College,
says of him, in a letter to his father :—
I well remember the first sermon I ever heard him preach at
Cheltenham. It required little sagacity to discover, even from
a single specimen, that he was no ordinary man. Even at this
moment I can see him, then in almost youthful beauty, raising
his hand above his head as he closed his sermon with the words,
'The banner of the cross, without taking up which,' he said, 'no
man could be a Christian.' This generation will not look upon
his like again.
Another friend, who has given much information as to
his Cheltenham life, writes :—
I had taken a prejudice against him, through no fault of his,
when it was my good fortune to hear him preach. At this time
he had just become curate to Mr. Boyd. I was not merely
struck, but startled by the sermon. The high order of thought,
the large and clear conception, the breadth of view, the passion
held in leash, the tremulously earnest tone, the utter forgetful-
ness of self in his subject, and the abundance of the heart out
of which the mouth spake, made me feel that here, indeed, was
one whom it would be well to miss no opportunity of hearing.
From the first he largely swayed those minds which had any
point of contact with his own. In spite of what he says himself
of Cheltenham, in its depreciation, he had very many hearers
there who knew how to rate him at his proper value, before a
larger public had endorsed it. Nor was it among the lay men
and women of Cheltenham alone that he made his influence felt.
I have been told that at the clerical meetings he attended, he
would, for the most part, remain silent, but that sometimes,
when many of his brethren were in difficulty about the meaning
83
His Influence at Cheltenham
of a text, he would startle them by saying a few simple words
which shed a flood of new light upon the passage. He never
put himself forward on these occasions, but his talents were
none the less recognised and held in honour by the foremost of
his brother clergymen. For all this admiration, as admiration,
he did not care. He could not be contented with anything
short of the visible influence of his preaching on the life of men.
This is plainly shown in the following letter, which I enclose
you.
'My dear,-I do not conceal from you that it gave me
pleasure to hear that what I said on Sunday had been felt, not
that it had been admired. God knows that is not the thing that
would give me joy. If I wanted that, I should write and act
very differently from what I do. But it comes, like a gleam of
fitful sunshine now and then across a very bewildered path, to
find that there are chords from which one can strike harmony,
albeit with a rude and unskilful hand. Such things startle and
thrill me now and then, as I suppose the strange melody would
have done, coming so unexpectedly, when the first sunbeams.
fell on Memnon's statue-for to say the truth, it comes often
very heavily upon my heart what is meant by that,--
Or:
Į
As it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.
ἔχθιστη ὀδύνη πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδένος κρατέειν.
'Yours ever, &c. &c.'
This letter suggests one of the reasons of his great des-
pondency during his stay at Cheltenham-he believed his
sermons to be unintelligible. There were some causes for
this belief, but they were not peculiar causes.
There are
always some in every congregation who will depreciate a
curate, and contrast him, however superior, with an incum-
bent; and there are always others who can understand
G 2
84
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
nothing which is original, whom an argument couched in
novel terms bewilders. But common as these things are,
they touched this uncommon nature in a special manner.
Through the mist which his own sensitiveness created he
saw the misconception of a few magnified into a phantom of
failure.
One Sunday (writes the same friend), he had been using all
his eloquence to show that this world without religion is a riddle,
and that the Christian religion is the only key to it. The next
day he received an anonymous letter from one of those lady
hearers whom he was wont playfully to call his 'muslin episco-
pate,' in which he was told that Christianity made all the
difficulties he spoke of plain. So much,' he said to me, in a
tone of bitterness, 'for the good effects that follow from my
preaching.' To the end of his life it was the same.
He always
would look upon the misfortune of want of intellect in others as
a fault of his own. That he was not so unintelligible as his
fancy deemed, even when he had simple, untaught intellects to
deal with, is plain from this circumstance, that when he had
taken charge of a rural parish in one of his Cheltenham vaca-
tions, the church, almost empty when first he came, was rapidly
filled by illiterate country people, who showed the same breath-
less interest in his sermons as the most cultivated hearers to
whom he preached at Brighton. On another occasion I well
remember, when spending part of a summer holiday with him,
how the newly-built church, which stood apart from the village
in a park, became more and more frequented every Sunday by
goodly farmers and rustic labourers, who listened to him, all
eyes and ears, with a pleasant mixture of delight and astonish-
ment. To whatsoever class he spoke, the language of his
sympathies made him intelligible.
Owing to his clerical profession he thought himself, at
this period at least, debarred from all participation in any
of the manlier sports which, by bracing his physical frame,
85
His Self-Depreciation
would have counteracted his over-excitable mental temper-
ament. He allowed himself none of the healthful exer-
cises which he so passionately loved, except an occasional
walk and ride into the country. The absence of these
exercises tended to deepen his despondency; but the chief
cause of his want of heart was his belief that his work at
Cheltenham was a failure.
0
This melancholy fancy (continues his friend) took more and
more possession of him during the latter part of his curacy, but
even at the very outset it darkened round him. It was partly created
by his extraordinary admiration of his rector. It was a great
disadvantage to him that he had to take the afternoon sermon,
when an hour before he had been listening to one that his partial
judgment perhaps overrated. So difficult was it for him to
believe that anything he said was worthy of the place where hi
incumbent had preached, that during the whole of his Chelten-
ham career he never seemed at ease in the pulpit, he never did
justice to himself, he never spoke with satisfaction to himself.
He overshadowed himself by his creation of an ideal which he
did not hope even to approach. Another cause of the melancholy
fancy I have spoken of was his scrupulosity of conscience. It
led him to regard as duties left undone those which others might
deem only too well performed. Often in coming home at night
he would walk with me for hours, and talk of the little good that
he was doing. And when I have tried to comfort him by saying
that he was sowing seed which would germinate in the future,
and bring forth fruit a hundredfold, he has pointed to the pave-
ment on which we were walking together, and asked 'if I thought
he might reap a harvest there.'
Sad and dispirited'-such is an entry in his diary, 1845
-' from feeling my own utter uselessness and want of aim.
Surely man's misery is want of work. I mourn not that I
cannot be happy, but that I know not what to do, nor how
to do it.' He threw the shadow of these thoughts round
86 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Cheltenham itself, and professed in his letters from Brighton
that, but for a few friends there, he would never visit it
again. In all this he wronged himself, as well as many of
his friends. He speaks in later letters from Brighton of
the pleasure he felt in finding so many true hearts in Chel-
tenham. But wherever his sensitive fancy as to his own
work in life comes into play, he must not be judged out of
his own mouth. He arraigns himself, in a letter to a
friend, 'for poor unvisited, and duties left undone :'—
And yet (says this friend), I recollect his calling on me just
before his going abroad, as late as ten o'clock at night, and
taking me with him a distance of three miles, through such a
storm as Lear was out in, to visit a poor, disconsolate old man,
who seemed to have shut himself out from human sympathies,
and therefore all the more enlisted his. I never knew one
whose care and constant kindness to the poor could compare
with his.
In a private diary kept in 1845, there are long lists of
poor and sick whom he visited, and accounts of sums paid
out of a small income to clear off the debts of struggling
workmen; and no man who could write the following
letter to one of his early friends could in reality be back-
ward in labour for Christ :-
Cheltenham November 28, 1843.
My dear Davies,-Your affectionate letter has lain long un-
answered. But I was away on a tour on the Continent of some
duration when it arrived, and since I have been much engaged
in preparing candidates for confirmation. What a solemn
charge the ministry is! I feel it more day by day, and my own
unfitness for it. Surely a man would almost give it up if he
dared. We do things, most at least, so badly, so half-heartedly,
and self creeps in amidst it all so much, that it all seems one
great mass of impurity, which would weigh us down with a sense
:
87
His Social Influence
of intolerable guilt, if it were not that we have something to
interpose between our demerits and punishment. It is a privilege
to know this. There is nothing but this which can give serenity.
At the same time it is a great privilege, too, to know that the
Gospel is a system of resources by which we are to become
purer and better day by day. It is a grand thing to be a Chris-
tian. It is a magnificent hope that we are ever to become
partakers of the Divine Nature.
Not only in public but in private was his influence felt.
He was cordially welcomed everywhere; but it was in the
circle of his own immediate friends that his fascination was
most apparent. It had all the character of genius. He was
utterly unconscious of it. He never spoke for display; and
yet, I have seen him,' said a friend, 'take a flower, and
rivet the attention of his listener with a glittering stream of
eloquent and glowing words, which he poured forth without
premeditation and almost as a soliloquy.' The spirit he
possessed sanctified the influence he gained from these gifts
of nature. He clothed them with the graces of a Christian.
His daily and hourly life-his little acts as well as his
greater his words in society, were all regulated, balanced,
and checked by his ceaseless remembrance of the life of
Christ as the highest life, and by his continual sense of
the presence of God. All was done 'ever as in his great
Taskmaster's eye.' His graceful courtesies did not merely
spring from natural kindness of heart, but were matter with
him of Christian duty. In the drawing-room, he would
separate himself from those he liked best to converse with,
and spend a great part of the evening by the side of the
most neglected, sacrificing himself to brighten a dull exist-
ence. Perhaps his influence upon society was more power-
ful, as more insensible, than his influence in the pulpit.
K
{
88
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Society, in its turn, had a power over him. He easily
received impressions. Some of the highest and best
thoughts were kindled by sparks which fell from the minds
of his friends. His intercourse, even with those inferior to
himself, was always fruitful. He took their ideas, which
they did not recognise as such, and, as first discoverer,
used them as his own; but they were always made more
practical and better for the use. Even of thoughts which
he received from those to whom they belonged by right of
conscious possession he made himself the master. One
from whom he borrowed says of him, 'It was not that he
appropriated what belonged to others, but that he made it
his own by the same tenure as property is first held-by
the worth he gave it.' To such a man society was neces-
sary. He needed its impulse, its clash of opinions, and,
in some degree, its excitement; and he always spoke best,
wrote best, and acted best, when he was kindled either
into combativeness or admiration by the events which stir
the heart of humanity.
He was a marvellously bright and eloquent talker. His
sermons gave no idea of the uninterrupted river of his
speech. It had all the variety of a great stream-quick,
rushing, and passionate when his wrath was awakened
against evil; running in a sparkling glitter for many a
mile of conversation, over art, and poetry, and science,
and the topics of the day, with power at will to stay its
course and collect itself into a quiet seriousness of waters-
again shooting impetuously, yet without a false curve of
its glancing water, when it got into the gorge and among
the rocks of an argument; and flowing with a breadth and
depth, a fulness and strength of stream, with a thousand
eddies of illustrations and thoughts bubbling out of the
89
His Daring Character
opulence of its depths, when it expanded and went statelily
forward over a great subject. He conversed, or rather
spoke, best in the open air. He liked to walk or ride
when he talked, that he might put Nature under contribu-
tion to illustrate his ideas. Physical exercise gave nerve to
his thinking and health to his views of things. He took
deep pleasure in the scenery which surrrounded Chelten-
ham. The aspect of Nature's life, the freshness of summer
air, took possession of him, played in his blood, and quick-
ened into excitement all the daring and courage which,
at times, transformed him from the clergyman of the nine-
teenth century into the bright young knight of the Middle
Ages. One day, riding with his wife and some friends, he
put his horse at a lofty hedge. It was a dangerous leap.
The horse refused it again and again. His friends, who
saw all the hazard, for the ground was hard on the other
side, dissuaded him earnestly from another effort. But he
could not bear to be conquered; and he did not believe
in danger. The horse urged, at last cleared the hedge,
but came down with such a crash on the other side, and
with his rider under him, that the lookers-on thought both
must have sustained serious injury. Robertson got up
smiling; but afterwards owned he had been much too
rash. His courage was always greater than his love of
life. It is no wonder, with such a spirit, matched with so
chivalrous a heart, that he often thought that he had mis-
taken his profession, and said to his friends, that he would
rather lead a forlom hope, than mount the pulpit stairs.'
He believed in his own courage, and honoured it without
a shade of vain delight in it. Once, when walking with a
friend at Cheltenham, his little boy became frightened from
some slight reason. On his friend remarking it, and say-
1
90
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ing that perhaps the child lacked courage, he turned sharply
round and said, 'Courage-want courage! he should never
be a son of mine !'
C
On one occasion (writes a gentleman who knew him well at
Cheltenham), he had been asked to preach at a church where
the congregation was chiefly composed of those whom Pope
describes as passing from 'a youth of frolics' to 'an old age of
cards.' I accompanied him, and listened curiously for his text.
It was this, 'Love not the world, nor the things of the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.'
The sermon was most impressive and eloquent, and bold in its
denunciation. Returning home, he asked me if I thought he
was right in preaching it. I answered, that it was very
truthful; but, considering the character of the clergyman whose
pulpit he occupied by courtesy, and the character of the congre-
gation, not a discreet sermon. It might have been as truthful
without apparently setting both minister and people at defiance.'
'You are quite right,' he answered; but the truth was this: I
took two sermons with me into the pulpit, uncertain which to
preach; but, just as I had fixed upon the other, something
seemed to say to me, "Robertson, you are a craven, you dare
not speak here what you believe;" and I immediately pulled out
the sermon that you heard, and preached it as you heard it.'
This anecdote, as well as that of the leap, displays more
rashness than true courage.
He learnt afterwards that far
loftier courage which has no necessity to prove its own
existence to itself.
During this life at Cheltenham, his intellectual power
became rapidly greater, in proportion as his individuality
of character increased. As he freed himself from conven-
tional forms of thought, he secured a mental grasp and
vigour which he had not at Winchester. He began now
to hew out his own path to his convictions. His con-
His Spiritual Development
tinuous reading of Carlyle marks the state of intellectual
ferment in which he now lived. 'I have gained good and
energy from that book,' he says, speaking of 'Past and
Present.' He read a great many historical books; and it
is curious to find that, in preparing for his class on the
books of Samuel, he had not recourse to commentaries,
but to Niebuhr's Rome and Guizot's work on civilisation,
and to books on political economy. Tennyson and
Dante seem to have been the poets whom he chiefly read,
though his reading of this class of literature must have been
large, since the lectures on poetry which he delivered at
Brighton were first delivered, though not so fully, at Chel-
tenham. Dante he seems to have read every day, and to
have committed the whole of the 'Inferno' to memory
during 1845. German metaphysics took up some of his time,
and usefully. He had the rare power of extracting out of them
what was practical and of rejecting, while his subtle intellect
played with pleasurably, their fine woven gossamer of ideas.
He still kept up his early interest in scientific pursuits, espe-
cially chemistry; and he relieved his leisure with the study of
physical geography. He had a useful habit of reading on
the questions of the day. When the Maynooth Grant was
being contested, he made notes of all the debates, and read,
in order to form a clear opinion, Burke on the Irish Laws,
Lingard, and Hallam. This was his constant practice; and
owing to it he was always ready with a well-considered view
of all the subjects which had agitated the country during
his career.
91
With regard to his inner life while at Cheltenham, the
silent agony and labour of his spirit in much gloom and
anxiety, there is little to record. The following extracts,
not having anything peculiarly private about them, and
1
92 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
1
throwing light upon his spiritual life, are given. One is
dated 1843, the other 1845:
1843.
Meditation for Prayer.-To plead the glory of God manifested
to others in the preservation of his people, and the perpetuating,
at the same time, of his fear in their own breasts, as an argu-
ment to be used before his throne, that He would conduct me
into peace. Joshua lv. 24, viii. 9; Exodus xxxii. 12; Daniel
xix. 19; Joel ii. 17.
To ask for love which I have not, as a free gift, that which I
cannot force upon myself, see 1 John iv. 8. Communion with
God is not to be attained by abstraction and asceticism, but by
the development of Christian sympathies. I John iv. 12.
Self-denial in Eating.-Motives: my body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost. Excess will incapacitate me from glorifying
Him; it will produce listlessness, discontent with self, and
therefore with others. Hence the Christian graces cannot shine
in me.
It will give earthly and grovelling views, and cause me
to forget my state of pilgrimage. It will be a precedent for
fresh indulgence, generally, as well as particularly, in the same
temptation. It will prevent reading and meditation, weaken
my sense of God's presence, and my own acceptance, by losing
the evidence of integrity. It will close my lips in speaking to
others of Christ's self-denial. If observed, it will give a handle
for reproach, and a right to enemies to accuse me of incon-
sistency, and give to them a handle to strengthen them in
persisting against un unworldly life. It is a paltry trial for a
child of glory to fail in. It is a base return for the washing of
the blood of Christ. It is a temptation expressly mentioned as
unfitting for the amoкapadoria of the second coming of Christ.
προσέχετε δὲ ἑαι τοῖι, μήποτε βαρυνθῶσιν ὑμῶν αἱ καρδίαι ἐν κραιπάλη
καὶ μέθῃ καὶ μερίμναις βιωτικαῖς, καὶ αἰφνίδιος ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς ἐπιστῇ ἡ ἡμέρα
¿ctivŋ.—Luke xxi. 34.
→
In sleeping, early rising is to commence the day with an act
of self-denial, which, as it were, gives the mind a tone for the
whole day. It redeems time for early prayer, thereby dedicating
Life at Cheltenham
93
the first warm aspirations to God, before the dull, and deaden-
ing, and earthward influences of the world have had time to
impair the freshness of early feeling. It gives calmness to the
day. Late rising is the prelude to a day in which everything
seems to go wrong.
1845.
Resolves. To try to learn to be thoroughly poor in spirit,
meek, and to be ready to be silent when others speak.
To learn from every one.
V p
To try to feel my own insignificance.
To believe in myself, and the powers with which I am in-
trusted.
To try to make conversation more useful, and therefore to
store my mind with facts, yet to be on my guard against a wish
to shine.
To try to despise the principle of the day, 'every man his
own trumpeter;' and to feel it a degradation to speak of my own
doings, as a poor braggart.
To endeavour to get over the adulterous-generation-habit of
seeking a sign. I want a loud voice from Heaven to tell me a
thing is wrong, whereas a little experience of its results is enough
to prove that God is against it.
against it. It does not cohere with the
everlasting laws of the universe.
To speak less of self, and think less.
To aim at more concentration of thought.
To try to overcome castle-building.
To be systematic in visiting; and to make myself master of
some system of questions for ascertaining the state of the poor.
To listen to conscience, instead of, as Pilate did, to intellect.
To try to fix attention on Christ, rather than on the doctrines
of Christ.
To preserve inviolable secrecy on all secrets committed to
me, especially on any confidential communication of spiritual
perplexities.
To take deep interest in the difficulties of others so communi-
cated.
94
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
To perform rigorously the examen of conscience.
To try to fix my thoughts in prayer, without distraction.
To contend, one by one, against evil thoughts.
To watch over a growing habit of uncharitable judgment.
The following letter, though immature in thought and
weak in expression, bears witness to the delicacy and
strength of his sympathy, and mirrors his Christian
thought :-
1845.
My dear Mrs. The sight of your handwriting was a
most warm pleasure to me. It brought back old days-days
which it would be very strange if I could forget. But I was
much saddened by the contents of your note, because its tone,
though subdued and calm, evidenced a long, dark struggle with
anguish, which has almost been too keen to bear. And, oh!
how little we know one another's bitternesses-how little we
suspect the hours of secret agony and cold struggle that every
earnest, loving heart has to go through in this most unintelligible
world! Sometimes it seems to me a marvel how we can ever
smile again, so often does life seem to shrivel into a failure and
a nothingness. I think I can conceive your trial, and partly
imagine that worst feature of all suffering, its incommunicable,
lonely sensation. To be where we and those around us are
living in two different worlds of feeling, is tenfold more intoler-
able than to be where a foreign language, not one word of which
we understand, is spoken all day long. These have always
seemed to me words from the very brink of the infinite of
feeling: The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger
intermeddleth not,' &c. I would with all my heart that I could
feel for you as I could wish to fecl, or even that I could distinctly
express such feeling as I have. To a certain extent I should
have a right to do this, for I know something of what you have
lost. A most warm, affectionate, and unselfish friend was taken
from me when God bereaved you. But I do feel that sympathy
from man, in sorrow such as yours, is almost mockery.
None
I
Change in his Theological Opinions
95
can feel it, and, certainly, none can soothe it except the Man
Christ Jesus, whose infinite bosom echoes back every throb of
yours. To my own heart, that marvellous fact of God enduing
Himself with a human soul of sympathy is the most precious,
and the one I least could afford to part with of all the invigora-
ting doctrines which everlasting truth contains. That Christ
feels now what we feel-our risen ascended Lord-and that He
can impart to us, in our fearful wrestlings, all the blessedness of
his sympathy, is a truth which, to my soul, stands almost with-
out a second. I do pray that, in all its fulness, this may be
yours- a truth to rest and live upon.
Next to that, stands the deep meaning of the cross, that we
are perfected through suffering. What worthy crown can any
son of man wear upon this earth, except a crown of thorns ?
Sore struggle, darkness, loneliness-but with all that the true
battle of an earnest soul in its terrible struggle into light and
clearness, up to God-that is your portion now. And, oh! may
God stand by you, und teach you that a Christian's motto
everywhere and always is Victory. I look forward anxiously to
seeing you. My wife sends her very kind wishes.
On the whole, these years were years of advance, but
every step of the path was over a conquered enemy. It was
during this period that the basis of his theological science
was entirely changed; his principles of thought attained, but
not as yet harmonised with one another; his system of
interpreting the Bible proved and verified; his whole view
of the relation of God to man and man to God slowly built
up into a new temple on the ruins of the old. When he
began his ministry at Cheltenham, many common and many
peculiar religious experiences; many elements of belief con-
quered out of doubt; many elements of doubt itself, enthu-
siasms, speculations, memories of strange feelings, and secret
feelings which led him into either too poetical or too de-
spairing a view of life, were, as it were, floating in solution
96
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
When his ministry at Oxford began, his character and his
principles were fixed for life.
The outward influences which most contributed to his
development were the friendships he formed, and the cir-
cumstances of his ministry at Cheltenham. The warmth of
his affections made him take the highest view of the duties
of friendship. Even while he was proclaiming in his letters.
something like misanthropy and indifference to his friends,
he was always ready to spend everything in their service.
His heart conquered easily, and in a moment, his philosophy.
The chivalry of his nature made him believe all things of
those he loved. I recollect almost irritating him once,'
said a gentleman, 'because I maintained with regard to a
friend that his moral qualities outshone his intellectual.'
Hence his affection sometimes vitiated his judgment, and he
idealised his friends into a perfection which often did not
belong to them. One result of this was, that when a friend.
failed him, and his idol fell from its pedestal, the shock
almost broke his heart. Another, and the most important,
was, that the greatest changes in his life and modes of
thought were wrought in a large degree through the influence.
of his friends. Not that he was ever a passive instrument
on which they played, but that the chords they struck made
him conscious of the music in himself: their sympathy drew
him out, and sometimes quickened his whole nature into an
almost preternatural activity of thought and feeling, during
which any swift reflection or quick return of his own or a
cognate thought, even any deep interest on the part of
another, kindled so intense a fire of creative force that his
words seemed to pour forth red-hot with the rapidity and
earnestness of an imagination which gathered fresh fuel from
its own consumption.
His Friendships
97
Above all, he needed the sympathy, the reciprocity of
thought, the consciousness of being understood, which a true
and deep friendship gives. And yet this was the man who
afterwards, at Brighton, partly by circumstances, partly by
his own nature, was driven into the deepest solitariness of
heart; whom God saw right to separate from almost all his
brethren, and to surround with slander and misunderstand-
ing, that he might learn to 'stand alone, in the strength of
manlier independence ;' that, divided from human sympathy,
like his master, Christ, he might be able to enter into and to
teach, as none else have done so well in that generation, the
character of the human life of the Saviour. It is a truth.
always new from its strangeness-that the prophet must be
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; despised and
rejected of men: that the consoler must be one who feels all
that is human keenly, but who is unfelt for himself by men.
He had boyish friendships, which he characterised as 'full
of sudden impulses; of impetuous, passionate attachment;
of protestations, vows of constancy, prodigality of promises.'
The friendship of the years of manhood he defines as not
mere intimacy, but as exclusive, personal regard, mingled
with reciprocity of feeling; as founded on the communion
of like with like, or of unlike with unlike;' and a passage in
one of his unpublished sermons at once gives the depth
with which he felt, and the opinion which he held with
regard to the origin of a friendship:
Hearts are linked to hearts by God. The friend on whose
fidelity you count, whose success in life flushes your cheek with
honest satisfaction, whose triumphant career you have traced
and read with a heart throbbing almost as if it were a thing
alive, for whose honour you would answer as for your own; that
friend, given to you by circumstances over which you had no
control, was God's own gift.
VOL. I.
H
98
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
One of these friends was Mr. Boyd. The admiration
which he expresses for his rector in his earlier letters from
Cheltenham rapidly passed into an affection which was
rendered delicate by a veneration almost childlike. Indeed,
there was nothing more beautiful in his nature than the in-
nocent faith which always sought for and believed in the
nobility of others. He saw his friends through the atmo-
sphere of his own love and truthfulness, and when, as some-
times happened, he was, against his will, convinced that
what he saw was partially at least an air-built castle, the
beauty of which was his own creation, the blow fell heavily
and sorely on his heart. The influence of this friendship
was, however, clearly marked. It bore fruit in his sermons.
Under the impulse given by those of Mr. Boyd, they became
entirely changed in character. Instead of writing them in
one morning, without preparation, as he did at Winchester,
he studied for them on Thursday and Friday, and wrote
them carefully on Saturday. They were no longer so much
disquisitions on doctrine or mere impassioned descriptions.
of the love of God in Christ. Their tone was more intellec-
tual, without being less earnest; their generalisations more
daring, and their practical teaching wider. Especially he
learnt to enter into the more minute and subtler phases of
Christian life. Through the ideal which friendship created,
much of his peculiar intellectual power in preaching was drawn.
to the light.
The other friendship which influenced him largely was
formed with a gentleman well read in metaphysics, and
acquainted with the results of the sudden outburst in this
century of theological and philosophical excitement in Ger-
many. He had faced as subjects of intellectual inquiry,
those questions which Robertson had faced as subjects of
t
His Ideas of the Christian Life
99
personal spiritual experience. Both desired, with a most.
single purpose, truth, as the end of their speculations. Their
conversations were frequent and interesting, and it was
partially, at least, due to this friendship that Mr. Robertson
escaped from the trammels which had confined his intellect
and his spirit.
C
The circumstances which, independent of friendship, most
tended to change his theological views, and his principles
of spiritual thought, were connected with the state of reli-
gious feeling in Cheltenham. The controversy of the Tracts
for the Times' was at its height when he entered on his
curacy. The town was a hot-bed of religious excitement.
There were the usual tests of orthodoxy applied to every
new clergyman, and the usual ban placed on those who
could not repeat their Shibboleth. Popular preachers were
adopted as leaders of party; and to hold certain doctrines,
and to speak certain phrases, and to feel certain feelings,
was counted equivalent to a Christian life by many among
their congregations. This is common enough, and Mr.
Robertson came into contact with it at Brighton as well as
at Cheltenham. But coming from Winchester, where there
was little or none of this popular religion, and where his
work lay among the poor, who do not make so great a parade
of their spiritual life, he was shocked by the contrast. At
first, with his unquestioning charity, he believed that all who
spoke of Christ were Christlike. But he was rudely unde-
ceived. His truthful character, his earnestness, at first
unconsciously, and afterwards consciously, recoiled from all
the unreality around him. He was so pained by the ex-
pression of religious emotion which fell from those who were
living a merely fashionable life, that he states himself, in one
of his letters, that he gave up reading all books of a devo-
1
H 2
100
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
I
tional character, lest he should be lured into the same habit
of feeling without acting. His conception, also, of Christ-
ianity as the religion of just and loving tolerance, and of
Christ as the king of men through the power of meekness,
made him draw back with horror from the violent and
blind denunciation which the 'religious' agitators and the
' religious' papers of the extreme portion of the Evangelical
party indulged in under the cloak of Christianity. They
tell lies,' he said, 'in the name of God; others tell them in
the name of the devil: that is the only difference.'
.
C
It was this, and other things of the same kind, which first
shook his faith in Evangelicalism. He was an upright,
faithful follower of that school at college and Winchester,
and, strange to say, a rigid Sabbatarian. The following
letters mark the point of view he occupied when he had been
a year at Cheltenham :—
I
I quite agree with you about the Calvinistic doctrines.
think we ought to preach them in the proportion in which they
are found in Scripture, connected always with election unto
holiness. The fact is, we have one thing, and only one, to do
here on earth-to win the character of heaven before we die.
This is practical, and simple to understand. We cannot do it
alone; but the Spirit's agency is given us under our present
dispensation to mould us by his influences into the image of God.
And with this great truth, what madness it is to spend our time
in speculating about our election! I preach it, I trust, uncom-
promisingly and unmistakably; but as a topic of preaching, I
desire to make it very subordinate to the end towards which it
converges, the restoration of sinners to the heavenly purity which
they have lost.
Cheltenham: January 10, 1843.
It seems to me that, at the Reformation and subsequently, the
error of stickling about non-essentials was shared equally by
both sides. If the High Church party were unpardonable for
Doubts and Questionings
(
making them a matter of life and death, the Puritans were
surely not blameless in dividing the Church upon such matters.
It may be very true that, like the schoolboy who lived once
upon a time,' they refused to say A, because they knew that they
would next be compelled to say B; but still it would have been
better to have waited for this, and made the stand on a vital
point instead of a ridiculous one.
I think the principle is an important one at this crisis,
however the application may be dubious in detail. We need to
walk warily and circumspectly, 'giving no occasion.' Offence
there will be soon, because our principles cannot amalgamate
by any device-not even a second edition of No. 90; with the
Tractarians it is bellum internecinum. But I would reserve the
contest till principle is at stake; and until it comes to genuflec-
tions at the altar, I think there is scarcely any external matter
that might not be complied with. I wish we were together.
You ask after my plans. I have none, but am just waiting till
my path is pointed out. I fear there is no chance of my re-
maining here. My life has been so full of changes, that I
scarcely look at anything now as if it were permanent; perhaps
I have too much of this feeling; for it prevents my forming
plans till the opportunity is past.
·
ΙΟΙ
1843.
Now for your questions. I think Dr. Pusey's doctrine
on the Eucharist just as dangerous, but much more incredible,
than transubstantiation. I think the Vice-Chancellor might
have given him an opportunity of recanting, but I am very glad
he did not, for it would have only prolonged a useless contro-
versy. As to the Church of England, I am hers, ex animo. I
do not mean to say that if I had written her baptismal service,
I should have exactly expressed myself as she has done; but
take her as she is, 'With all thy faults I love thee still.' As to
the state of the Evangelical clergy, I think it lamentable. I see
sentiment instead of principle, and a miserable, mawkish religion
superseding a state which was once healthy. Their adherents
I love less than themselves, for they are but the copies of their
•
102 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
faults in a larger edition. Like yourself, I stand nearly alone,
a theological Ishmael. The Tractarians despise me, and the
Evangelicals somewhat loudly express their doubts of me.
These letters were written in 1843. In the following
years doubts and questionings began to stir in his mind.
He could not get rid of them. They were forced upon him
by his reading and his intercourse with men. They grew
and tortured him. His teaching in the pulpit altered, and
it became painful to him to preach. He was reckoned of
the Evangelical school, and he began to feel that his position
was becoming a false one. He felt the excellence, earnest-
ness, and gladly recognised the work of the nobler portion
of that party; but he felt also that he must separate from
it. In his strong reaction from its extreme tendencies, he
understood with a shock, which upturned his whole inward
life for a time, that the system on which he had founded his
whole faith and work could never be received by him again.
Within its pale, for him, there was henceforward neither
life, peace, nor reality. It was not, however, till almost the
end of his ministry at Cheltenham that this became clearly
manifest to him. It had been slowly growing into a convic-
tion. An outward blow-the sudden ruin of a friendship
which he had wrought, as he imagined, for ever into his
being-a blow from which he never afterwards wholly
recovered-accelerated the inward crisis, and the result was
a period of spiritual agony so awful that it not only shook
his health to its centre, but smote his spirit down into so
profound a darkness, that of all his early faiths but one re-
mained It must be right to do right.' He had passed up
the hill Difficulty with youthful ardour; he had been glad
in the Beautiful house, and seen the Delectable mountains
from afar; he had gone down the hill with enthusiasm and
:
Doubts and Questionings
103
pleasant thoughts; but Apollyon met him in the valley, and
broken by the battle, but unsubdued, he walked in tenfold
gloom through the valley of the Shadow of Death, with the
fiends whispering dark doubts in his ears, till he half believed
them to be his own-stumbling and fainting, but ever going
onwards—till at last emerging victorious he went up upon
the hills to see with clearer vision than before through the
glass of faith the shining of the Celestial City. This is no
mere fanciful parallel. Abstracting some passages evidently
put in to suit the especial subject on which he spoke, and
those to whom he spoke, the following extract from his
lecture to working men, delivered at Brighton, is a descrip-
tion of his own experience at this period, when, leaving
Cheltenham, he wandered alone through the Tyrol :-
It is an awful moment when the soul begins to find that the
props on which it has blindly rested so long are, many of them,
rotten, and begins to suspect them all; when it begins to feel
the nothingness of many of the traditionary opinions which
have been received with implicit confidence, and in that horrible
insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be anything to
believe at all. It is an awful hour-let him who has passed
through it say how awful-when this life has lost its meaning,
and seems shrivelled into a span; when the grave appears to be
the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the
sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the void
from which God Himself has disappeared. In that fearful
loneliness of spirit, when those who should have been his
friends and counsellors only frown upon his misgivings, and
profanely bid him stifle doubts, which for aught he knows may
arise from the fountain of truth itself; to extinguish, as a glare
from hell, that which for aught he knows may be light from
heaven, and everything seemed wrapped in hideous uncertainty,
I know but one way in which a man may come forth from his
agony scathless; it is by holding fast to those things which are
104 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
!
certain still-the grand, simple landmarks of morality. In the
darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever
else is doubtful, this at least is certain.
certain. If there be no God,
and no future state, yet, even then, it is better to be generous
than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true
than false, better to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond
all earthly blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous dark-
ness of the soul, has dared to hold fast to these venerable land-
marks. Thrice blessed is he who-when all is drear and cheer-
less within and without, when his teachers terrify him, and his
friends shrink from him-has obstinately clung to moral good.
Thrice blessed, because his night shall pass into clear, bright
day.
I appeal to the recollection of any man who has passed
through that hour of agony, and stood upon the rock at last, the
surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted from the sky
above, with a faith, and hope, and trust no longer traditional,
but of his own-a trust which neither earth nor hell shall shake
thenceforth for ever.
A friend to whom he confided his mental difficulties has
given the following account. After stating that Mr. Robert-
son belonged to the Evangelical party, he proceeds :-
He was led to reconsider his views. But the reopening of
any vital question was, in his case, attended with infinite pain.
His liberality was so great that he allowed every question to re-
main open for a time; his earnestness was so great that he
brought his best judgment to bear upon it, and very soon arrived
at a conclusion. Then he considered the question closed. He
would not suffer its ghost to haunt him. When he was forced,
therefore, to reconsider a subject of great religious importance,
he was deeply distressed. The examination of particular points
of belief involved him in the examination of a great deal more.
When the rains descended, and the floods came, and the wind
beat upon his house, he must needs go down and look at its
foundation. He suffered severely during the latter part of his
:
His Mental Difficulties
105
stay at Cheltenham. He did not willingly say much to me; but
there was something which he could not hide from a friend,
which allowed him no rest for the sole of his foot. His health
so suffered that I urged the necessity of giving up his curacy,
and advised him to go abroad. I accompanied him as far as
Liége, where we parted, and he pursued his way to the Tyrol.
At Ostend and Brussels he fell in with old friends, who seemed
to cheer him, but the real state of his mind at this period may
best be gathered from two letters written to me from the Tyrol
and from Heidelberg. I have thought it right to send you these
letters, because, while I would jealously guard his memory, it
does not seem to me wise to let the public have half-views of him,
or think that anything is kept back which may help them to form
a true estimate of the man. Their publication will do him no
harm, and may do the truth-seeking part of the world much
good. Any false impression they may create will be corrected
by himself in the letters of his later life.
During his stay at Heidelberg he plunged deeply into German
metaphysics and theology. So the holiday which should have
been given to health, was given to the solution of those hard
problems, by the consideration of which his health had been un-
dermined. It is no wonder that, labouring thus night and day,
he returned to Cheltenham less physically improved than his.
friends had hoped for, though calmer and more composed in
mind. His soul had been stirred to its very depths, and had not
yet had time to settle. The wine did not yet run clearly. He
did not seek for sympathy. He was accustomed, as he said, to
consume his own smoke. But he could not do this so entirely
that his friends could not guess what was going on within. One
of these, I recollect, who was with him at the English Lakes,
said to him one day with some sharpness, pointing to the sum-
mit of Skiddaw, which was unseen the while for mist, 'I would
not have my head, like the peak of that mountain, involved, as
we see it now, in cloud, for all that you could offer me.' 'I
would,' rejoined Robertson, quickly, 'for, by-and-by, the cloud
and mist will roll away, and the sun will come down upon it in
all his glory.'
+
106 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
!
He started for the Continent in September 1846.
The interesting letters which follow reveal clearly his
state of mind. They are very, even passionately, morbid in
their view of life; but morbid thoughts necessarily accom-
pany a struggle for spiritual existence. He was emerging
from this gloom into clearer light, when he arrived at Heidel-
berg. There he took the pulpit for the English chaplain,
and so deeply interested many of the men who heard him,
that his six weeks' stay in this place led to a large corre-
spondence afterwards; especially on the part of some Unita-
rians, who, struck by his tolerance and his consistent support
of the great doctrine of the Church of England, wished to
hear more from him on the subject of their controversy
XIV.
Cortina: September 24, 1846.
My dear I have a spare hour, and I cannot better
employ it than by giving you a sketch of my proceedings. I
shall pass over all till the time when I got to Innsbruck, where
1 arrived about five o'clock one glorious afternoon. It lies in a
valley about two miles broad, and extending in length as far as
the eye can reach. In the centre of this runs, or rather gushes,
the Inn, on its way down to the Danube. From the heights
above, about four hours before you reach Innsbruck, is a view
which, in its way, I never saw equalled. A lovely plain studded
with spires and villages, with none of the disadvantages of a
plain, such, for instance, as is the plain of Gloucester, seen from
Malvern, flat and wearisome. The background to this plain
rises gigantic and abrupt, a long line of mountains, some of
which, when I passed, were covered with recently fallen snow.
Filled with all the disagreeable associations which belong to a
twenty-six hours' drive in a dirty diligence, I cannot describe the
Scenery in the Tyrol
107
revulsion of feeling which is experienced when this splendour
breaks upon you, lighted up by the brilliancy of a sunny day.
It shone everywhere, except on my heart. That night I wandered
alone by the rush of the Inn, and gave myself up unreservedly
to the spirit of the place. I love to do this always. I try to
arrive at a place where I sleep in good time, that I may get my
stroll, after I am quite refreshed, before the sun has set. Such
a one I got last night at Brunecken, and such a one I got three
years ago at the Grimsel, when I left my brothers in the Hospice
and strolled out alone. That evening almost stands alone in my
life. I shall never have such another-so solemn, so awful, so
almost holy. That wild, savage scenery, made more wild by
storm-clouds which were just beginning to drift over the peaks
above me, conveyed sensations which come only once in life.
They say love comes only once. That is a sickly school-girl's
fancy; but I do think nature, in all its mystery, is felt but once.
Yesterday, and at Innsbruck, my feelings were not like those-
not so sweet, not so happy. The sensation was one of laissez
aller. Clouds were there, and rich purple and blackening
mountains, and coming night-and my feeling was a kind of
indifference which is not indifference. It was all drifting on-
clouds, life, time-and I cared not how fast I drifted along with
it. Crumbling mountains, valleys strewed with rocks and ruin,
and all this shrouding itself fast in deepening darkness. I came
back to another world of feeling-lighted streets, people crowd-
ing out from vespers, noise, hurry, and uproar. Two things in
Innsbruck pleased me much : the Hofkirche, in which is Hofer's
monument, and two singular lines of gigantic bronze figures,
besides the finest tomb in Europe-Maximilian's-and the
museum. In the latter is a complete collection of everything in
the Tyrol-birds, vegetables, minerals, works of art, sculpture,
and paintings by Tyrolese artists; and one compartment, as
interesting as all the rest together, where lie Hofer's and
Spechbacher's swords; some of the money coined when Hofer
was governor of the Tyrol, his girdle, braces, sash, and a letter
written for supplies. I drew his sword, and almost felt that it
was done with a soldier's feeling.
108 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Botzen: September 27.
I have been unable to finish this, from the impossibility of
procuring legible ink in the mountain places where I have been
the last few days. When at Innsbruck, I tried to get a shot at
a chamois, and for this purpose engaged a jäger. We walked
out one day to a distant place in the hills, where we slept. Next
morning, at a little after four, the stars still shining brightly, and
the sky like midnight, we set off, and saw the sun rise gloriously
an hour and a half afterwards. We climbed on and on for hours,,
watching the clouds curling beneath us and wreathing themselves:
in fantastic forms, as if the morning light were torturing them-
on and on, through pine forest, and heath, and rocks, till at
three o'clock we had reached our highest altitude; but not even
the trace of a chamois did we see. By nine at night I got back,
ravenously hungry, and prepared to make up for the sleepless
hours of the preceding night; but I was well repaid by glorious
views-which few Englishmen can have seen-of the valleys
of the Stubay, and Sill, and Inn, lying far beneath us. The
night before was a strange and painful one. I could not sleep.
My companion had taken leave of me with the usual respectful
salutation, after supping on trout and sour wine together, side
by side-turning down my bed to see if the sheets were clean,
&c., and all those traits of respectful independence which mark
the lower orders here. For some hours, excitement kept me
awake-excitement from the scenery I had just passed through,
and the anticipations of the morrow to which I looked forward.
That passed away, and still I could not sleep. Lassitude of
heart came on -a strange, melancholy sinking of the spirit.
Life rose before me like a thin shadow. I felt that past years
had been one vast failure, and I looked on to future ones with
a heart utterly adrift, wishing to be wiser than heretofore,
practically wiser, but not knowing how. I was wide awake
when the jäger came to summon me. Night after night has
been like this-restless, whether I sleep or wake; and at five
regularly I throw myself out in the dark to drive away the
spectres. Take one single night as a specimen-the night
1
Scenery in the Tyrol
109
before last. I dreamed that some one was telling me that all
my friends were mourning over the deterioration of my sermons,
&c.—their unintelligibility and emptiness. I woke, went to
sleep again, and then was arraigned for duties left undone-sick
unvisited, schools untaught, &c., with a minuteness of detail—
names I never heard of, &c.-all of which it would be childish
to record. I only tell you my dreams, to show you the unresting,
unaltering state of my heart. Change of scene, hard exercise,
conversation with foreigners; all make no difference. But enough
of this.
I set out on Monday last from Innsbruck with my knapsack,
and walked across the Brenner, up the valley of the Sill, down
the valley of the Eisach, turned off at Mittenwald, passed along
the valley of the Rienz, threaded the pass of Ampezzo, and in
three days and a half arrived at Cortina, within twenty-four
hours of Venice. The pass of Ampezzo is glorious. The road
winds through serrated and striking mountains, in one place
under a glacier. It was a beautiful day when I passed, and I
had the full enjoyment of it-at least the first half. After that,
rain fell in torrents, and by the time I got to Cortina, I was
drenched. But even this, I think, only enhanced the grandeur.
Gleams from time to time revealed the more distant peaks, and
the clouds curling curiously and wildly round the nearer ones,
only made the thing more sublime. . . . Yesterday from a place
called Castleruth, beautifully perched upon an eminence com-
manding views in every direction, and directly under one of the
finest of the grand dolomite crags, I began to descend a most
steep mountain down to Botzen. It was the hardest part of the
whole walk-blistered me severely, wrung my ankle by a slip-
but winds through scenery of enchanting beauty, till, at the foot,
it leads by a single wooden arch thrown high across the Eisach
into the road towards Botzen, twelve miles above it—the same road
which I had quitted when I turned off at Mittenwald to the Passier
Thal. Southern scenery was now making its appearance. Luxu-
riant trellised vines, pumpkins lying rich and yellow on the
ground, a more genial and almost sultry air told that the land
of sunny skies was not far off. Botzen, more south than which
IIO
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
I do not go, lies at the junction of two valleys, the vale of the
Eisach and that of the Adige, and is surrounded by hills which
overhang the town; vines and fig-trees, mulberries, pumpkins,
&c., clothe their sides. To-day I met an English physician at
table, who has lived twenty-five years in Bohemia-looks
German, speaks English with hesitation-and from him I have
got a good deal of information respecting the Tyrol and German
authors. He says Jean Paul is despised-has no claim to the
title of a thinker; that the first Germans look down on all the
metaphysical school; and that the metaphysicians, almost to a
man, are defective in character.
XV.
Hôtel du Prince Charles, Heidelberg: October 24, 1846.
My dear
-Thank you for your affectionate and kind
letter, which I received this morning, and which I hasten at
once to answer. Yet I scarcely know how to answer it. I
would not willingly conceal any part of my heart from you, yet
1 fear I could not intelligibly tell you all, though I can put it in
very distinct English for myself. At least, set your mind at rest
on one point. Whatever mental trials I may experience, you
are not responsible for any. I have heard you state difficulties,
but never argue for them; and the difficulties could not come
upon my mind for the first time-of a man who had read theo-
logical and philosophical controversy-long before, with painful
interest-a man, who, at different times, has lived in the
atmosphere of thought in which Jonathan Edwards, Plato,
Lucretius, Thomas Brown, Carlyle, Emerson, and Fichte lived
-who has steeped his soul and memory in Byron's strong
feelings-who has walked with Newman years ago to the brink
of an awful precipice, and chosen rather to look upon it calmly,
and know the worst of the secrets of the darkness, than recoil
with Newman, in fear and tenderness, back to the infallibility of
Romanism. Such a man is not likely to have been influenced
by a few casual statements of difficulties which he had read of
a thousand times before. I knew well what the state of your
How to get at Truth
mind had been. I thought I knew what it is, and therefore
never, except in a walk once, in answer to a searching question,
did I ever hint to you what was the attraction to my mind in
such books. A man, as it has been well said, 'ought to burn
his own smoke, if he cannot convert it into clear flame.' For
this reason, I shall not enter upon these points, except super-
ficially. I am quite sure that what you say is true about getting
truth—at least truth enough—at last, and I am quite willing to
struggle on in twilight until the light comes. True, manly
struggle cannot fail. I know that. Only a man must struggle
alone. His own view of truth, or rather his own way of viewing
it, and that alone, will give him rest. He can only adopt the
views of other minds for a time; and so long as his own is
inert, the help that he gets directly from others generally does
no good. Indirect, casual hints sometimes do much. I have
never said so much as this to anyone in England, and, of course,
you will kindly not even hint it. Here, in Germany, I have
conversed much and freely on the points of difficulty. I have
found minds here that understand me if they cannot help me;
and in the conviction that a treasure lies near me in German
literature, I am digging away night and day at the superincum-
bent earth, in order hereafter to get at it. Indeed, I have
already plunged into it, perhaps too suddenly, considering my
rudimental acquaintance with the language. Some things I am
certain of, and these are my Ursachen, which cannot be taken
away from me. I have got so far as this. Moral goodness and
moral beauty are realities, lying at the basis, and beneath all
forms of the best religious expressions. They are no dream,
and they are not mere utilitarian conveniences. That suspicion
was an agony once. It is passing away. After finding little-
ness where I expected nobleness, and impurity where I thought
there was spotlessness, again and again I despaired of the
reality of goodness. But in all that struggle, I am thankful to
say, the bewilderment never told upon my conduct. In the
thickest darkness, I tried to keep my eye on nobleness and
goodness, even when I suspected they were only Will-o'-the-
Wisps. Indeed, I startled an Epicurean philosopher some time
III
112 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
I
ago, here in Germany, with the vehemence with which I main-
tained this. He was defending Goethe's views and life, and I
poured out my indignation in such a storm of fury, that he quite
cowered before the blast, and between seven and eight next
morning anxiously begged me to believe that he had overstated
his own views. I had rather be a Stoic in hell fire than an
Epicurean on his principles, or Goethe's, if they be Goethe's.
I am anxious to set you at rest upon this point, for really you
are responsible for nothing. Indeed, a man must have been
profoundly and incredibly ignorant of literature, if these things.
had presented themselves to him in a few conversations in a
new light. As to the ministry, I am in infinite perplexity. To
give it up seems throwing away the only opportunity of doing
good in this short life that is now available to me. Yet to
continue it, when my whole soul is struggling with meaning that
I cannot make intelligible-when I am perpetually bewildering
people, and saying the thing I do not mean-to go on teaching
and preaching when my own heart is dark, and lacks the light
I endeavour to impart-when I feel as if it lay upon me, like a
destiny, to speak truth, and not as Cassandra, to be disbelieved,
but to be for ever unintelligible to my brother man-is very
wretched. . . .
I intend to spend the remainder of my time in Heidelberg.
Several English families are here; some of them well-informed
and agreeable people. Heidelberg is a lovely spot. When I
first saw it, I thought it the loveliest I had ever beheld. But it
was summer then, and I was five years younger. Moreover, I
have seen the grandest scenery perhaps on earth since then.
Still I admire it much, very much, and love to wander alone
beside its winding river, especially at sunset, when the broad
stream of yellow light streams along its whole length, almost
from Mannheim to where I stand. The castle heights and
labyrinths, and the walks on the hill above, are all full of beauty.
And now, my dear- farewell, and God bless you.
Essentials of Christianity
113
XVI.
Hatchett's Hotel, Piccadilly: January 1, 1847.
My dear
--As to all you said about a creed, I never
knew any sane man who doubted any part of what you urged
upon me so warmly. That Christianity is true, that Christ's
character is high, that to do good is better than to do wrong, I
suppose, are axioms. But Paulus, even Strauss, would admit
all this, and Socinians would demand a great deal more before
they would call a man a Christian. Such points never seemed
uncertain to me, except in moments of very bad dyspepsia, and
then the dimness of the eye makes everything look black. But
you will remember that this creed leaves all that we are ac-
customed to consider the essentials of Christianity, as distin-
guished from natural religion, undetermined. For instance,
suppose a man puts the question, Who was Christ? What are
miracles? What do you mean by inspiration? Is the resurrec-
tion a fact or a myth? What saves a man-his own character,
or that of another? Is the next life individual consciousness, or
continuation of the consciousness of the universe? To these
and twenty other questions which I could put, Krause would
return one answer, Neander another, and Dr. Chalmers another;
and I am certain that neither of the two last would be satisfied
with even all that you urged as constituting Christianity-no,
nor a great deal more in addition. Those are not points on
which any man in health can suffer a doubt to last three-quarters
of a second. And the questions I have mentioned, I mention
not as perplexing myself (on that I say nothing), but as touching
the real vitals of the question, which all you urge does not touch.
But now to quit this subject. My mind is more under control
than it was-my nerves braced by the surrender of Christchurch,
and in proof of this, I mean to keep my weakness and wretched-
ness to myself, instead of plaguing my friends with them.
The following letters, though going over the same ground
as the preceding, are kept separate from them and together,
VOL. I.
I
114 Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
partly because they form a series, and partly because, being
all written to one person-his wife-they are linked together
by a unity of feeling.
Portions of them were submitted to the Editor's judgment,
and they appeared so useful, as elucidating a remarkable
time in Mr. Robertson's life, that Mrs. Robertson was re-
quested to permit their insertion. Considering them as
sacred to the dead, Mrs. Robertson was at first disinclined
to allow them to be published, but, at last, unwilling to
retain anything which could make her husband better known
to the world which honoured him, she consented to the
publication of the following extracts. In many ways they
are extremely interesting. Those who will remember that
they were written at a time when, as I have said, he was
passing through the great mental and spiritual crisis of his
life, will look through them, and not in vain, for hints as to
the drift of his thoughts, and the direction in which his spirit
was developing itself. They exhibit also his delight in
natural scenery, and the delicate way in which he observed
it. His reverence and love for colour appear in his descrip-
tions. The rapidity with which he made his 'course,' the
determination and contempt of pain which carried him, in
spite of a strained sinew in his ankle, over twenty-six miles
of mountain walking, belong to and illustrate his character.
It is curious to see with all his professed love of loneliness,
how fresh his interest was in all classes of society; how he
enchanted the German counsellor; how he drew round him,
with his customary magic of manner, the rough herdsmen of
the Tyrol; how he charmed while he taught the English
congregation at Heidelberg.
The two last letters in which he expresses his disinclination
to resume the work of his profession need a slight comment.
Misunderstood at Cheltenham
115
It is plain that that disinclination arose not so much from
dislike to ministerial work in itself, as from his experience
of ministerial work at Cheltenham. For we find him pleased
and happy in his professional labours at Heidelberg. He
had been misunderstood, rejected, and pained at Cheltenham,
and his was not the stern nature which could receive and
carelessly shake off a blow. With his natural incapability
of selfish feeling, he believes that his so-called 'failure' at
Cheltenham was his own fault. He thinks that he is not fit
for work among the upper classes. But when I see him,
in these letters, at Heidelberg-emancipated, his own master
-drawing round him the very class he believed him-
self unfit to teach-attracting, by the atoning influence he
always exercised, both Unitarians and Swedenborgians
to the Church of England-bringing young men to his
feet, and awaking at once the intellect and the spirit
of those who listened to him-I begin to see that it was
the fault of the congregation rather than his own if his
ministry was a failure at Cheltenham; and I am deeply
thankful that God did not permit his servant to enter the
hidden country parish he desired, but placed him where he
should suffer more, and bear a sorer cross, but where also he
was to be as a beacon set on a hill, whose light, warning,
guiding, and inspiring, cannot be hid from men.
Patsch, near Innsbruck: Sept. 18, 1846.
I begin this letter from a small hamlet up high in the moun-
tains near Innsbruck, where I intend to pass the night previous
to an attempt to shoot a chamois. I have got a Tyrolese jäger
or chasseur with me who knows the country well, and at half-
past four to-morrow morning we begin our work. But as the
chamois are very rare now, and to get at them is exceedingly
difficult, I cannot say that I have much hope of success.
N
I 2
116 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
We spent three days in Munich together, in seeing the diffe-
rent collections which it contains of sculpture and painting.
There are a few splendid statues and pictures, especially some
of Rubens, whom I admire more and more. Certainly his faults
are glaring and visible to all; but his genius is that of a giant ;
and when a man has to play with mountains as if they were
balls, you do not expect elegance in his limbs. From Munich
to Innsbruck I travelled with a young Frenchman and two
Italians, the one a cardinal and the other apparently his secre-
tary. These two spoke neither French nor German. We were
much struck by seeing them for nearly an hour occupied in
repeating the evening prayers from their breviaries. It seemed
as if it would never be over. But the way in which they did it
was exactly that of a schoolboy humming over his lessons.
They corrected one another when a mistake was made, smiled,
took snuff, opened the windows, shut them down, had a few
words of conversation now and then by way of interlude-
reminding me very strongly how inevitable a tendency there
is in all forms, even the best, to lose all the spirit which once
animated them, and become like lifeless corpses. No doubt
those prayers were once the expression of true and fervid feeling.
Now, a very cardinal can scarcely go through them without
yawning.
For a stage or two from Munich the country was perfectly
flat;
but at length it began to put on the features of mountain
scenery, till at Partenkirch it became really grand. Our road
wound through mountains, till we began to descend the moun-
tain chain which forms one side of the valley of the Inn. It is
indeed a glorious prospect. The valley of the Inn is perfectly
flat, about two miles broad, studded as far as the eye can reach
in both directions with towns and villages, the spires of churches
rising conspicuously at the interval of every five or six miles.
This beautiful valley is bounded on both sides by alpine chains,
rising steeply and often perpendicularly from the very side of
the road. One mighty rock in particular we passed, which is
called Martin's Wand. It rises a sheer precipice of 1,500 feet.
It is celebrated for a wonderful escape of the Emperor Maxi-
1
Retzsch's Illustrations of Gocthe's 'Faust'
117
milian. He was out chamois-hunting, and in his eagerness fell
and slipped down to the very verge of this descent. There, as
the guide-book says, he hung with his head over, unable to
move. He was seen from below, and the people issued from
their cottages, headed by their bishop, who offered up prayers
for him as for a man at the point of death. At last a desperate
outlaw, who was hunting in that direction, perceived him, came
down a descent which seemed impracticable, bound crampons to
his feet, and led him off safely in a way which was considered
miraculous. We came to this spot, or rather just above it,
when the sun was already low, and steeping the mountain sides
in that peculiar purple tint which in alpine regions is so inex-
pressibly rich.
In all this glory there is a strange tumult in my bosom for
which I cannot assign any cause. Grandeur makes me misan-
thropic, and soft beauty makes my heart beat with a misery
that I cannot describe. In Retzsch's illustrations of Goethe's
'Faust' there is one plate where angels drop roses upon the
demons who are contending for the soul of Faust. Every
rose falls like molten metal, burning and blistering where it
touches. It is so that loveliness does with me. lt scorches
when it ought to soothe. After my arrival at Innsbruck I
wandered alone by the gush of that wild and roaring river.
Everything was still and solemn. Mighty shadows were moving
silently across the valley, like so many giant spectres, as the
sun went down behind the hills. The outlines of the mountains
gradually blended in a sky which became by degrees as black
as themselves, and I was left in the grandeur of darkness. I
felt, as I generally do on such occasions, strongly, the swift rush
of time—on and on, bearing everything along with it into the
Infinite; and here are we, for a moment, powerless nothings, but
endued with powers of agony and thought which none but
immortals feel. Then I went slowly back to Innsbruck, heard
the hum of life again, saw the windows glittering with light,
heard the drone of the church bells, and met the crowds coming
away from vespers. It all seemed a dream. Next day I
devoted to seeing Innsbruck. My first attraction was the
118 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
cathedral. In it is the statue of the celebrated Hofer. It
represents Hofer in Tyrolese costume, with his rifle, decorations,
and a standard in his hand, crowned with laurel by the Goddess
of Victory. But the court of Austria, in their aristocratic little-
ness, considered this part of the design too flattering to a
peasant; and the monument stands now without the crown and
goddess. As if God had not stamped upon Hofer's brow and
heart a nobility of which crowns and titles are but the earthly
shadow. The nobles of Austria will have their memory with
the worms that eat them when Hofer's name is still high among
the aristocracy of the universe.
[The remainder of this letter describes the chamois hunt,
but it is here omitted-a description of the same expedition
having already been inserted.]
Brunecken: Sept. 23.
I proceed to take up the thread of my history where it last
broke off, which was at Innsbruck, after my return from an
unsuccessful chamois-hunt. I have now written three times;
once from Frankfort, once by Mrs. Dalzell, and once from
Innsbruck. I hope you got them all. On Monday last, the
21st, I set off on a pedestrian excursion alone.
I trudged on, very briskly at first, for the sun shone beauti-
fully. Three hours from Innsbruck I came to Schonberg, from
which there is a grand view of three valleys, terminating at this
point. At night I slept at Stainach, a small village in the hills,
at what in England would be called a pothouse. A motley
assemblage was round me in the dining-room, peasants,
travellers, servants, all dining at different tables. A figure of
the Saviour, half as large as life, looked down on the noisy
The season in which we now are is very beautiful
for walking. The fir woods in summer are sombre, from their
having but one hue. Now there is a very beautiful contrast.
There is the deep green of the older foliage, a delicate light
green of this year's growth, and a rich orange of the trees inter-
scene.
•
• •
Impressions of the Tyrol
119
mixed with them which have now their autumn tint. This
orange colour is in some places, where it is well sprinkled in
irregular patches, superlatively fine.
And now I will tell you
my general impression of the Tyrol. So far as I have seen as
yet, I have been rather disappointed in the people. I have
found less simplicitly, less politeness, and far less cleanliness
than I expected. Religious they certainly are, if crosses and
virgins almost at every quarter of a mile be a proof of religion.
But I am inclined to believe that all this is looked upon by them
in the light of a spell, and has much less influence on their
moral conduct than is generally supposed.
Moreover in every
inn there is holy water in your bed-room, and in the dining-
room generally a figure of the Saviour; and at Mittenwald,
under the figure, were some most touching sentences on life and
death. But I never observed that this had any effect in
solemnising the parties who sit beneath it. They are satisfied
with being under protection, and drink, play at cards, smoke,
in a way that to us seems incompatible with religious feeling.
And this I believe is the very essence of superstition—to feel
great reverence for certain objects, visible or invisible, on
account of some mysterious influence with which they are
supposed to be endowed but an influence which all the while
has not necessarily any moral effect, or any connection with
character. It is quite curious how these chapels beset you at
every step, and their number is increased by the erection of one
in every place where a fatal accident has taken place. These
seem to have been exceedingly frequent, and the rude delinea-
tions of the circumstance, a man frozen to death, drowned,
buried by an avalanche, &c., is in desolate districts very solemn
and affecting. The sound of bells, too, in these Alps is a very
peculiar feature.
Cortina, or Ampezzo: September 24.
To-day I had the finest walk of all, indeed the only one that
has approached grandeur. The pass of Ampezzo, the shortest
between Innsbruck and Venice, is remarkably wild and noble.
The shape of the mountains, as well as their height, adds to this
1
120 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
grandeur. They are peaked, serrated, and jagged in all direc-
tions. After the somewhat tiresome, because unaitering,
scenery through which I had gone, this sudden view brought
new sensations, and sent the blood thrilling to the heart, and
then running about in all directions, not knowing where to go.
After getting about half through, it came on to rain, a drenching
shower, for two hours. But this scarcely diminished the beauty
of the scene, for gleams of sunshine every now and then
revealed unseen peaks through the rain, and the clouds drifting
in masses round the peaks, now dipping down, and now leaving
all bare, formed a picture exceedingly striking. Few things are
more interesting than the way in which clouds group themselves
in these regions. Sometimes they seem to hold fast to a moun-
tain peak by a comparatively narrow base, while the rest of the
vapoury mass soars up and up, widening as it goes, to a height
of which you only form a conception by comparing it with the
lofty mountain, which does not reach one-fourth of the
distance.
Corfara: September 25.
This morning, at an early hour, I turned off from Cortina,
which is on the road to Venice, and struck across the hills to
this place. Very few English, so far as I can find, have ever
come this way. The walk was in some places very grand. I
passed castellated pinnacles, covered with snow which fell last
night, ruined forests, fir-trees stripped of their bark and cast
headlong by avalanches from the heights above—a castle in
ruins, which once belonged to the Bishops of Brixen, and con-
tained the retinue of the commander of this district. Though
only thirty years have passed since it was inhabited, it is now
in ruins, overgrown with ivy, and huge masses of the ruin lie
detached, with several young trees, thirty feet high, growing on
them. The more massive a human work is, the more calculated
apparently to defy the encroachments of time, the more signally,
and I think the more solemnly, at last does it show the triumph
of the conqueror. An hour more brought us up another ascent
Continental Character and Scenery
to Piève d'Andraz, where my companion, who was an actuary of
the Langericht, or Tyrolese Court of Justice, had to stay on his
duties. After being parted for a little time, I thought when we
met again that he would have kissed me for joy. Just before
we arrived at Piève d'Andraz we had a glorious prospect. Monte
Civita, with a hundred peaks, lay to my left, at about five miles'
distance, closing up the loveliest valley I ever saw, through
which a stream runs that divides Italy from the Tyrol. Before
me, between two closer peaks, lay Monte Marmoletta, his head
clothed in eternal snow, and his waist braced with glaciers; and
just to the left the little village of Piève, to which I was going,
with its spire and twelve houses. To-morrow, all day, if I can
move at least,' I will go through the haunts of this people.
am now writing in the stove-room, public room, or whatever it
is to be called, the only sitting-room in the cottage, surrounded
by shepherds who have come in wet through, and are discus-
sing their supper and their sour wine-a new scene of life; but
I am more at home with them than in Cheltenham. My guide
is supping with me-an honest modest Italian-on some dish
whose composition I cannot guess, and dare not ask.
I
121
Botzen: September 27, Kaiserkrone Hotel.
I have just finished a letter to you, but still I must begin ano-
ther, that I may put down my impressions while they are fresh.
For I feel strongly that, in this world, things can be felt but once ;
you cannot recall impressions. You recall only part of them,
softened and altered, bearing the same relation to the impres-
sion itself that the mellowed Italian does to the original Latin.
Pictures, scenery, persons, you can feel them in this world but
once. The first time never returns. So I write now, that what-
ever I have to say may be fresh and living. Memory retains
things, but only as a herbarium holds plants; they become
colourless and withered after a time, retaining only the shape of
what they were, and even that distorted. I closed my last letter
at Corfara, after getting in drenched and half frozen to a miser-
He had severely strained a sinew in his ankle.
122 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
1
able little inn, resorted to by the shepherds when their day's
work is done. Twenty or more sat at tables round me, redolent
of garlic, sheep, and tobacco. I make it a duty to feel myself
at home in every society-so I pushed half my supper across to
one of them, to his evident surprise, and afterwards spread out
my map, when the whole party crowded round me, and I de-
lighted them by pointing out to each his native valley or village.
A little after five next morning I threw myself out of bed. The
sky was just light enough for me to see that the clouds were
gone; and by the time I was dressed, and had packed up my
knapsack, the prelude to a brilliant day had begun. I set out
with a man to carry my knapsack, for I had a journey before
me which all told me was impossible; but, as it was Saturday, I
determined to reach Botzen, the nearest town, and not spend
Sunday in the cold mountains. Snow had fallen the night before,
and our path was slippery, up hill and steep, and by the time we
got to Castleruth, my guide was done up. So I took the knap-
sack on my own shoulders, and pushed on down a most steep
mountain, which fatigued me more than the ascent, and reached
Botzen before nine in the evening. The valley through which I
passed is a very remarkable one. In it are mountains of dolo-
mite, peculiar from the sharpness and ruggedness of their peaks,
being cleft by thousands of deep fissures, perfectly bare, and
rising up in all manner of fantastic forms. It was a glorious day
all through, and the sun glittered against the white dolomite
crags as if they had been silver. A Tyrolese valley on a sunny
day, sleeping in the light and rich tints, is exquisitely beautiful.
Above Castleruth I paused to look down upon the village below.
It lay some miles before me, deep down, but still far higher than
Botzen, to which I was going. A rich deep autumn tint covered
all the undulations and woods and meadows, and the massy
peaks, rearing themselves out of it in strange contrast, enhanced
the loveliness of the whole. From Castleruth the way was steep,
so that it could only be descended by small zigzags, till I came
to a bridge thrown by a single arch of wood over the Eisach
into the road which I quitted some days ago at Mittenwald. I
now re-entered it twelve miles above Botzen. By this time the
!
Opinion of Tyrolese Character
123
scenery had somewhat changed its character. Vines, which I
had not seen for a fortnight, festooned themselves in rich pro-
fusion over trelliswork. Rich yellow pumpkins lay delicious-
looking on the ground, and the whole aspect of the country an-
nounced that I was near the land of cloudless skies.
At the table-d'hôte here I met with an Englishman—the first I
have seen for many days. He has been fifteen years in Ger-
many-has married a German lady, and is settled on the Elbe
in Bohemia.
September 28.
To-day, instead of going on as I had intended, I made an ex-
cursion with Mr. to the summit of the Mindola Mountain,
the foot of which is about eight miles from hence. We started
at half-past six A.M., and got back by eight at night. The day,
which at first promised to be cloudy, became bright as time
passed on; and by the time we were at the top, every distant
peak was clear. The view from the top was a noble one. The
Valley of the Adige lay stretched before us, nearly as far as
Meran to the left, down towards Trent to the right, and in the
centre the broad opening of the three valleys with the junction of
the Adige and Eisach just above Botzen, which seemed close
beneath us. In the distance beyond the valley towered up the
dolomite mountains which I passed on Saturday, together with
many others which I had not before seen three lakes lay below
me, with villages and innumerable houses spreading the valley
and hill sides. My opinion of Tyrolese character is much
lowered. Their virtues are primitive, certainly, the virtues of
human nature without principle; such as all people have who
live scattered, and are not subjected to those allurements which
come from the congregation of numbers, from trade and polished
life. They are hospitable, simple, honest; but this only so long
as they have no temptation to be otherwise. As soon as a valley
has become the resort of travellers, and traffic has of course in-
creased, they become as knowing and extortionate as the inhabi-
tants of any country. They are said to be very religious, and if
chapels, crosses, masses, prayers without end, constitute religion
124 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
certainly they are. But their religion seems only a spell or charm,
valuable to keep them safe from danger; and I call that not re-
ligion but cowardice. There is a picture in the gallery at Munich
of which you see many engravings throughout the country, re-
presenting a priest and boy attacked by brigands. The priest
holds up to their gaze the host, while the boy raises a lamp to
let the light fall upon it. The robbers cower down and relax
their grasp upon their victims, awed by the mysterious symbols
of religion. This is called the triumph of faith. It conveys ex-
actly my present notion of the religion of the Tyrolese. I do
not call that faith--it is paltry, abject cowardice. There are
men who would rob and murder; but because a mystery is held.
before them, which may strike them dead, they tremble, and give
up the enterprise. It is very necessary to make this distinction,
because Newman and his party have introduced a language now
popular, according to which religion consists in awe and vene-
ration. The more of these you have, the more religious you are.
But these are only religious feelings if they are felt for true
objects. A man who crouches before a crucifix, or trembles
before the sacrament, and does not bow his whole heart in
adoration of the good, the holy, the true, is not religious, but
superstitious. They want to show that superstition in itself is
good. I say, superstition has no religious element in at all. It
is all cowardice. And a man who walks into a church with his
hat on his head, breaks images remorselessly to pieces, tosses
consecrated bread out of the window, or treads it underfoot, and
yet prostrates his heart to goodness and nobleness, loving,
honouring and cultivating all that, is the man in whom awe and
reverence have their right places, though foolish people would
call him irreverent.
You cannot conceive how England is detested throughout
Germany. The 'Allgemeine Zeitung,' the leading newspaper, is
perpetually attacking us-our behaviour in India, our religious
hypocrisy, our slavery to forms and fashions, our commercial
policy, &c. A short time ago the 'Times' had, in some article,
remarked upon the great advantage derived by Germany from
the English travellers who pass through it. Upon which the
German Feeling towards England
125
'Zeitung' replied, that if a few innkeepers rejoiced at this, the
whole nation mourned. 'Only let God deliver us from the
affliction of that horrid nation passing through our towns and
besetting us like a plague of flies in our diligences, hotels, walks,
with their stupid faces, their vulgarity, their everlasting inquisitive-
ness about hotels and sight-seeing, and utter inability to appre-
ciate anything higher, and it would be a day of jubilee for all
Germany.' I do not give the words, but that was the purport
of the article. The Baroness gave me a letter to an Augus-
tinian priest living in Meran, the author of the best guide to
the Tyrol, who has himself explored every corner of it, in order
that I might ascertain from him whether it would be dangerous
at this late season of the year to cross the glaciers with crampons
on the feet into the Oetz Thal. He received me very courte-
ously in a room most plainly furnished, containing little more
than a table covered with books and writing materials, and a
few chairs. A bedroom which I saw through an open door was
equally simple, no carpet, no curtains. He told me he thought
I might venture with a guide by one path that he pointed out.
Accordingly, this morning at six o'clock I set out, the first four
hours of my path lying on the high road to Innsbruck. But it
soon came on to rain heavily, and I reached this hole of a place
by nine o'clock, drenched through once more, the clouds hanging
round me so low and dense that it would have been absurd to
proceed further. Ah! well, I suppose I must give up the grand
glaciers. Six months hence what will it matter? And, after
all, I do the whole of this more as a duty than because I can
produce any real emotion of interest in my heart. I hold it a
duty to see what can be done by the bracing up of my nervous
system, and one mountain is almost as good as another for that.
As soon as the fine weather sets in in earnest I turn north, and
shall settle in some German place where I can get on a little
with the language, for here without books I can do nothing.
What I do learn by conversation is but provincialisms and
patois.
126
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Innsbruck: Oct. 8.
Here I am again, my pedestrian excursion being over. And
now, to take up the thread where it last broke off. I had
reached the top of the Stelvio, just after wading ankle deep
through snow and slush, up the most wonderful road in Europe.
As usual I did it fast, accomplishing in six hours and a half
what a man in the hotel-book boasted to have done in nine;
nay, four miles more-for he started from Prad, and I had a full
hour's work to get to Prad. When I got to the very summit,
faint with exertion, the clouds hid the grand view from me; and
I went on for an hour more of descent, to a single house on the
bleak mountain side, which is at once the custom-house and an
hotel-a massive building, of enormous stones, built to keep off
the avalanches, if possible. In this lofty spot I got tolerable
accommodation. As I had missed the grand view from the
summit, I went back next morning so far to try my chance
again, through snow which had fallen in the night as deep as
my knee, and on drifts deeper than the hip. But a grand sight
awaited me at the top the sun shining on the magnificent
Orteler Spitze, whose peak of snow glittered in brilliant contrast
to the bare bleak rocks of his sides, down which, as if in streams,
his glaciers, glittering brightly too, descended into the valley.
I had a curious series of manœuvres to get rid of an oily, stupid
Italian. What a relief it was! I cannot tell you how the love
of solitude has grown upon me. I can enjoy these mountains,
with their sombre pine woods and their wild sights and sounds,
only when I am alone. Rocks and crags crumbling down in a
long line of ruin; uprooted trees hurled headlong, bark and
branches gone, and their black stumps dotting the mountain far
above, where they were before the avalanche or the torrent
reached them; wild birds soaring and shrieking as you pass
along, disturbed perhaps from their feast on a dead horse; the
clouds sailing solemnly in long white lines above, or wreathing
themselves like living shrouds round the crags. There is
grandeur and wonder in all these things; but the spell is broken
if human beings are near you. I spent Sunday at Nauders--a
The Stelvio and Schaffhausen
127
delightful spot, close to the Pass of Finstermünz. After dinner
I strolled down to the Finstermünz Pass-about an hour's walk
—that I might see as much of it as possible, though I had to
walk through it again on Monday on my way. I was dis-
appointed. The Stelvio is more wonderful, and more grand too.
It is a narrow cleft in the mountain, through which the River
Inn gushes on its way to Innsbruck. The cliffs on each side
rise steep and precipitous, leaving only room for the stream and
the road by its side. The descent to it from Nauders is very
rapid, which adds to the grandeur. The Inn roars and thunders
through it, and I took pleasure in watching the fir-tree stumps,
which are cut by the woodmen above in certain lengths, and
then committed to the stream to be carried down to the valleys.
Some pieces stemmed all falls and projecting points gallantly;
others sunk for a time, and then you saw them emerging below,
conquerors out of trial. Some were stranded, and left high and
dry upon the bank, or on rocks in the centre of the stream:
others had got out of the current, and were carried round a
projecting point into still water, either stationary, or floating
slowly back instead of on, as if there had been a destiny before
them, and that destiny unfulfilled; while others beside them,
not their superiors in activity or strength, were steadily buffeting
their way forwards and home. What an image of life! Two
days more brought me to Innsbruck, through fine scenery, by
the side of the Inn all the way.
Schaffhausen: Oct. II.
I have taken my path through Switzerland, and pass to day,
Sunday, here. The hotel is about two miles from the town, and
just opposite the Falls of the Rhine. I was disappointed at the
first view from this place, as it is higher than the river, and half
a mile from the Fall, which looks insignificant. The river turns
at right angles by the Fall, and opposite exactly is Weber's
Hotel. Yesterday, after arriving, I went down to the water's
edge, crossed where you see the dotted line, and got exactly
beside the Fall, midway between the top and bottom. Here
is far the finest view-the only spot where you can understand
1
128 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
and take in its grandeur. You see the mighty river above, a
sheet of glass, pouring over the ledge, as if it would overwhelm
you. The next moment it flashes past you like lightning, con
vulsed, into a sea of foam, and loses itself below in a cloud of
spray, which rises eighty feet at least in height. In this spray
an iris, delicately beautiful, was visible, rising out of the very
depths below, and arching itself up twenty feet above the highest
level of the water. In the centre of the Fall two tall rocks rear
themselves out of the froth, the river thundering and foaming
down their sides. To the foot of one of these I got the boatmen
to row me, through the foam under the Fall, and, after some
tossing, landed, climbed up a slippery path to the top, and sat
there, the Fall being above and below me, and on both sides;
but this view is not equal to the side one. On a near view I felt
the full magnificence of the Fall. The blending of the colours
was very singular. In places the lights on the descending waters
were of a lovely grass-green, while the shadows were warm,
almost purple. The full height is seventy feet; but this is
lessened by the descent being made partially over a declivity of
irregular ledges before the grand leap is taken. The snow
mountains of the Bernese Oberland extend themselves in long
lines opposite the window of the room in which I write. My
heart bounds at the unexpected sight, and I am half tempted to
set off in that direction to-morrow. The weather has once more
become warm and lovely, so different from the bleak weather I
had in the Tyrol; and if it were only one week earlier in the
year, I certainly should go. The well-known form of the Jung-
frau cuts into the clear sky, white and sharp, with that peculiar
outline which you only see in this clear atmosphere-looking,
indeed, as if there were no intermediate atmosphere. Last
night I sat up long in my bedroom, unable to get to sleep,
watching the Fall of the Rhine by moonlight. The pale beams
fell beautifully on the white foam, making the dark rocks darker
still by contrast. The spray rose up, floating like thinnest silver
tissue; and the incessant roar of the falling water, softened by
the distance into a murmur like that of a forest shaking in the
wind, might have served for a soldier's dirge or a poet's lullaby.
Heidelberg.
129
It was singularly solemn stars silent and clear above, looking
out of a sky of infinite blue; no wind, no cloud, and the stone
statues on the terrace below (something like our own dear
terrace at Aix-les-Bains) glittering cold and white, like spectres,
gazing on the convulsion of the Rhine beneath them. An
English family and myself are alone in this great hotel, yet I
have not offered to perform the service for them. I cannot.
Even to read prayers seems an effort beyond my power. More
and more I feel that I am not a minister, and never can be one.
Exercise has not braced my nerves, nor destroyed the phantoms,
if they be phantoms, which rise before me. So long as I am
awake, I can keep unpleasant thoughts away; but directly I
sleep, the power of banishing them is gone. I sleep but ittle;
yet that is no gain, for my half-waking dreams are worst.
Heidelberg: Oct. 13 (Tuesday).
Here I am at last, having exactly carried out all my intentions
to the letter; and here I think I shall stay for some weeks at
least, as living is tolerably reasonable, and there are but few
English. Moreover, the scenery is perhaps the most beautiful
which this part of Germany affords. The views in all directions
are fine up and down the river, and the ruins of the old Castle
are always a delightful place to wander in. I was much tempted
to make an excursion in Switzerland, especially the evening
before I came away from Schaffhausen. I never saw a scene
more lovely than that which presented itself from the terrace
before the hotel. The evening was cloudless, the air peculiarly
still and clear, and the long range of snow mountains in the
Bernese Oberland, Glarus, &c. as distinct almost as the Malvern
Hills. A glorious sunset lighted them up with a rich glow,
which by degrees subsided into a delicate rose blush, and then
a minute after the snow was left opaque and cold. I cannot
describe the effect of this singular transition. The paleness of
the snow is quite of a livid hue, like the colour of a corpse, and
gave me a very strange sensation-almost a shudder. The
beauty of this spectacle filled me with the wish for enterprise,
and I walked into Schaffhausen, two miles from the hotel, to
VOL. I.
Κ
130 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
<
inquire the hours of the diligences to Zurich. However, an old
guide who was in the hotel, when I spoke to him of the beauty
of the weather, drily shook his head, and said, Nein; I have
been a guide twenty-five years. Take my word for it, it is
going to rain.' At this moment not a cloud was to be seen;
but a little after midnight the rain was falling from a sky
without a star, and the dawn broke upon a desolate and dreary
prospect of mud and puddles.
Hôtel du Prince Charles, Heidelberg: November II.
I have at last decided upon my course with respect to Christ-
church. You were perfectly right, I was most unwise to bare
my feelings even to the extent I did. A man who 'wears his
heart upon his sleeve' must not be surprised if he finds it a
temptation ‘for daws to peck at.' That I said as much as I did
to any human being, I now deeply regret. But I shall go on
doing so to the end of the chapter. Sympathy is too exquisitely
dear to me to resist the temptation of expecting it; and then I
could bite my tongue with vexation, for having babbled out
truths too sincere and childlike to be intelligible. But as soon
as the fit of misanthropy is past, that absurd human heart with
which I live trusts and confides again-and so I go on, alter-
nately rich and bankrupt in feeling. Yet, yet, say what I will
-when any one soothes me with the semblance of sympathy-
I cannot for the life of me help baring my whole bosom in
gratitude and trust. A very expensive, perhaps a generous, but
certainly a very weak way of giving lessons in anatomy gratis-
vivisection performed by the lecturer upon himself. Mr. - has
mistaken me. He thinks I am disinclined to the work of active
good towards my fellow-creatures. God knows it is the only
one wish I have on earth to know how to do it; and I am sure
I set heart and soul to work, till I found that I was at work
the wrongway; and I do not see that it is very wise to go on
pouring water into reservoirs when you find that there are holes
out of which it runs as fast as you pour. The Danaïdes did
that; but the Danaïdes were in hell. I shall now take my own
Views of Ministerial Work
131
course, and permit advice from no one.
I have given up
Christchurch, and now the question is, what is to be the next
step? I have two or three plans. The only one I shall men-
tion at present, as the one that I think I shall try first, is, not to
give up the ministry, but to make the experiment of working in
a country parish, in which I have to deal with the poor only.
For the rich I am neither mentally nor morally qualified. There
is something either in my manner, language, or tone of thought
which they will not brook; and then I have not calmness of
nerve or meekness enough to prevent being agitated, and treat-
ing this in return with pride and coldness. In this way minis-
terial work is not likely to get on. But I am not yet certain
that I could do nothing with the poor. If I had the work to
myself, and could carry out my own plans, I have still a linger-
ing hope that I could go on cheerfully, and not unsuccessfully.
Will you ask my father if he would kindly be on the look-out for
something of this sort, that I may stay in Cheltenham after my
return as short a time as possible? I should not like more than
a thousand people, at the very utmost. A house would be
desirable. I should prefer agricultural poor, and a non-resident
rector. Such things are perpetually offering themselves, and
there is no need to be in a hurry. My mind has gone through
a complete revolution in many things; I am resolved now to
act, and feel, and think alone; your letter and others have com-
pletely determined me.
My life goes on here as usual; I am asked out a great deal,
almost always in a family way, and have become very intimate
with some families. I preach every Sunday. People have come
to church who had for long absented themselves. Some
Socinians, too, go whenever I preach, so that my absence from
England may not be altogether useless; yet I am not, and never
shall be, at my ease with the upper classes.
Hôtel du Prince Charles, Heidelberg: November 30.
I propose to leave Heidelberg in about a week or ten days
from the present time, so that after the receipt of this letter it
will not be of any use to write to me. This morning my father's
K 2
132 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
letter arrived, by which I find he is already on the look out for
a curacy. I confess I feel strangely disinclined to work again.
A feeling so gloomy and desolate appears to rest upon my heart
when I think of the drudgery and apparent fruitlessness of my
ministerial career, that I can hardly make up my mind to believe
that I am really about to make the attempt again. It will, I
fear, be only an attempt; and the last, if it should result in
failure. What makes it seem more dreary is, that I have found
a home and extraordinary kindness among the congregation
here, and in less than two months a warmer union has grown
up between us than I have had in Cheltenham after a residence
of some years. To-day I mentioned my resolve, and I cannot tell
you how I have been touched by the unfeigned regret which has
been exhibited. I have had more proofs of my ministry telling
here already than during my whole stay in Cheltenham. One
family brought over a whole library of Swedenborg's books.
They have, it appears, not opened them since I came, and have
voluntarily promised not to study them any more. A Socinian
confessed that the heart's want of the atonement had suggested
itself to her strongly. And three young men of high talent,
Socinians, come regularly, and listen with the deepest attention.
All this is encouraging. It has brightened my stay here much,
but it has made the return very painful. I wish I could have so
arranged that we could have passed the winter here. However,
this is now out of the question, and I must make up my mind
calmly and fairly to make the experiment of work once more if
I can.
But I shall be able to judge of this better when I get
back to England. Since I wrote the above, I have been much
tried by the unexpected warmth with which the congregation
here have testified their regard at my departure. Two young
thoughtful Socinians came in tears, and told me it would be the
quenching of their spiritual life. A Socinian lady wept bitterly.
Two more have been in tears this very evening, warmly urging
me to stay. A French gentleman has been equally urgent, and
two more families have argued for hours. I may say it to you,
the request that I should remain has been unanimous. And yet
I feel, on looking over the past, that all this bright sky would be
Effects of his Preaching at Heidelberg
133
clouded over once more, excited hope would end in failure. They
have strangely overrated me, and I know that I could not fulfil
their anticipations. Then to feel estrangement again, to see
suspicion awaken, misunderstandings arise, and to give up
another congregation in bitterness, would be too much to bear.
Reluctantly, and with feelings strongly inclined to stay, I have
all but decided not to comply with their request. Friday—I
have been again greatly tempted to reconsider the question.
There is a congregation earnestly wishing me to remain, not
from popular preaching, but because they think they are getting
good spiritually and morally. Individuals among them have
been roused, and say out plainly that they are anxious not to be
deserted in this crisis of their mental history-that Heidelberg
would be no longer the same, in the event of their losing their
weekly instruction. Is this a call from God or not? Then, on
the other hand, the emolument would be very trifling-though
Heidelberg is cheaper to live in than England. I should lose
the time I remain here in English work, though I should gain
in mental education. Now balance all these things together,
and tell me what you think, and also what my father thinks.
134 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
CHAPTER IV.
OXFORD.
Return to Cheltenham-Surrender of Curacy of Christchurch-He
accepts the Charge of St. Ebbe's, Oxford-Position in Relation to
the High Church and the Evangelical Parties-Results of his Work
on the Parish of St. Ebbe's and on himself-Trinity Chapel,
Brighton, is offered to him-He refuses, but afterwards accepts
the Offer-Sad Presentiments.
AF
FTER an absence of nearly three months, Mr. Robert-
son returned to Cheltenham. He had during his
stay at Heidelberg surrendered the curacy of Christchurch
with feelings of unmixed pain.
My father (he writes from Cheltenham, March 2, 1847) showed
me your letter to him containing an inquiry respecting my
health, and I answer it in his stead. I have been very unwell,
thoroughly done up, mentally and bodily. I wandered six weeks
in the Tyrol alone, trying the effect of mountain air and hard
exercise. After that, I spent about nine weeks at Heidelberg,
where I took the duty, got much interested in and attached to the
congregation, studied Goethe, Schiller, and Krause, and got
back something like calmness and health again.
I am now well, but idle and useless. I have given up the
curacy of Christchurch. If I take work, it must be single-handed.
I am afraid I can no longer brook to walk in leading-strings;
but, however, enough of this.
As his health increased and his mind recovered from the
His Independence of Party
135
tempest which had swept over it, he began to be impatient
for some labour. The Bishop of Calcutta offered him a
chaplaincy in his diocese, with the promise of a canonry, but
he did not wish to leave home. He then wrote to the
Bishop of Oxford, with whom, as Archdeacon Wilberforce,
he had been acquainted at Winchester, placed himself at
his lordship's disposal, and asked for some employment.
The bishop at once offered him the charge of St. Ebbe's,
Oxford. The church was situated in one of the worst parts
of the town. The parish had not been regularly worked for
some time, owing to the severe illness of the incumbent. It
was a difficult post, and the emolument was very small.
Mr. Robertson hesitated before accepting it, not on account
of the disadvantages, but because of his disagreement with
the known views of the Bishop of Oxford.
Before my son (writes Captain Robertson) went to St. Ebbe's,
he saw the bishop in London, and frankly told him that he did
not hold, and therefore could not preach, the doctrine of
Baptismal Regeneration. The bishop replied, ‘I give my clergy
a large circle to work in, and if they do not step beyond that, I
do not interfere. I shall be glad, however, to hear your views
on the subject.' An hour's conversation followed, and at the
close his lordship said, 'Well, Mr. Robertson, you have well
maintained your position, and I renew my offer.' It was at once.
accepted.
From his connection with the Bishop of Oxford, it has
been hinted that Mr. Robertson sympathised at this time
with the views of the High Church party. It may be well
here to set that question at rest. He had no sympathy with
their views; but he had a great deal of sympathy with the
men who held them, with their self-devotion, and with their
writings. He reverenced the self-sacrificing work which they
were performing among poor and neglected parishes. He
136 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
(
said that, as a body, they had reasserted the doctrine of a
spiritual resurrection, which had been almost put out of sight
by the 'Evangelical' party. He read Newman's sermons
with profit and delight till the day of his death. There was
no book which he studied more carefully or held in higher
honour than the Christian Year.' It seemed to him that
some of its poems were little short of inspiration. He saw
in the importance which the Tractarians gave to forms a
valuable element which he never lost sight of in his teaching.
Only, while they seemed to say that forms could produce
life, he said that forms were necessary only to support life;
but for that they were necessary. To use his own illustra-
tion bread will not create life, but life cannot be kept up
without bread. On the subject of Baptism, he felt no
sympathy with the Evangelical view, which left it doubtful
whether the baptized child was a child of God or not; but
because the Tractarian view declared that all baptized per-
sons were children of God, he could so far sympathise with
it. But on all other points, starting as he did from the basis
that Baptism declared and did not create the fact of sonship,
his difference was radical. The persecution, too, which this
party suffered, secured his sympathy. He even believed
that it had received but scant justice from one with whom he
largely agreed. He maintained that Dr. Arnold did not
stand quite impartially between the Evangelicals and Tract-
arians, but judged the former less severely than the latter.
On the other hand, it must be said that he himself showed
but scant justice to the Evangelical party. He seems to
have imputed to all its adherents the views of the Record
newspaper. He sometimes forces conclusions upon them
which the great body of them would repudiate. He over-
states, unconsciously, some of their opinions. If there was
:
Accepts St. Ebbe's, Oxford
137
any intolerance in his nature it oozed out here. But sur-
rounded as he was by them at Brighton; constantly attacked,
by some manfully, by others in an underhand manner; the
victim of innuendos and slander, it was difficult for him
always to be smooth-tongued. Nor was he now or after-
wards the leader or the servant of any party in the Church.
He stood alone. He fought out his principles alone. He
has been called a follower of Mr. Maurice; but though
holding Mr. Maurice in veneration, he differed on many
and important points from both him and Professor Kingsley.
He was the child of no theological father. At this time,
however, when a new impulse had come upon his life-when
he was unshackled by a subordinate position—he was
least of all thinking of party opposition or party teaching.
One was his Captain, even Christ; and he did not care,
provided he fought under Him the good fight, what regi-
ment he belonged to. All were his brothers in arms who
were loyal to his Master's cause. He was ready, under great
worldly disadvantages, to lead the forlorn hope which the
bishop offered him. He did not accept it with any bright
expectations. His experience, as he states in the following
letter, had been very painful :-
Cheltenham: May 3, 1847.
I have just accepted St. Ebbe's, Oxford (offered by the
bishop), after once refusing it. But as he seemed desirous I
should take it, I consented, though reluctantly. It is a forlorn
hope, I fear, and the stipend is miserable: ... and altogether
I feel depressed at the prospect of a residence in Oxford, with
its cold, formal, forbidding conventionalisms. But for the
present it seems the path of duty, and I am prepared to give it
a fair trial. Nor do I ever expect to find the line of duty—
lying, as it does, up the hill, with the cross at the top of it—a
pleasant path.
•
138 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
I have lately, as I told you, given up Christchurch here
with feelings of inexpressible pain. A ministry of twilight, at
the best, and difficulty, has closed. Every effort has been
crowned with the most signal failure, and I shrink sometimes
almost in torture from the idea of beginning work again, with the
possibility of five such years once more before me. This is not
an encouraging tone of mind to begin a ministry with, so beset
with difficulties as St. Ebbe's. However, as I certainly have no
earthly inducement to take it, perhaps the work may be blest,
even though mine.
<
In appearance at least, that work was blest. The place
entirely yielded to him. The usual attendants of the church,
as well as the rough and poor people of the parish, among
whom he laboured faithfully, made themselves over to him
at once. The undergraduates, a sensitive touchstone of a
man's worth, dropped in one by one at first, and then rushed
to hear him in crowds.' 'Every Sunday,' says a friend who
visited him at Oxford, the church was thronged with these
young men, who hung breathlessly on every word he uttered.'
Here, then, for the first time, he began to make himself felt,
and to feel what he could do. Here, for the first time, he
was entirely free; able to say, without opposition from
without, without a shadow of inward restraint, the thing in
his own heart. Here, too, for the first time, perhaps, he
rested firmly on principles which he had secured at the price
of a terrible spiritual contest. He became more peaceful.
The dark shadow of failure began to pass away.
But he
was ill at ease; life lay upon him very heavily; it seemed,
do what he might, that he could not be happy.
1 The Saturday Review has entered into an elaborate argument to
prove the impossibility of this. I can only say that I am not respon-
sible for the account. It was told to me by an eye-witness, who may
have exaggerated what he saw.
Accepts Trinity Chapel, Brighton
139
It was now that, after two months of work at St. Ebbe's,
Trinity Chapel, Brighton, vacant by the retirement of Mr.
Kennaway, was offered to him. He refused it at once.
He thought it would be a discourtesy to the bishop, and a
failure in manly duty, to surrender St. Ebbe's. The material
advantages he would gain made him suspicious of himself.
The following letter gives the further history of this trans-
action, exhibits the self-sacrificing spirit which inspired his
life, and will close this brief record of his Oxford ministry:-
Oxford: July 3, 1847.
My plans, as you are rightly informed, are altered, and I am
only waiting till the bishop can release me by sending a substi-
tute to go to Brighton. I refused Trinity at first distinctly; but
after a day or two a letter came expressing the regret of the
trustees, Rev. James Anderson, Lord Teignmouth, and Mr.
Thornton, at my decision, and asking me to reconsider it. At
the same time they enclosed a letter from the Bishop of Oxford,
in answer to a request from them, which gave them permission
to open the negotiation again, by releasing me, if I wished, from
my engagement. I should tell you that this letter came just as
I was in great perplexity about certain difficulties which had
arisen in the way of a residence in Oxford, and singularly
coincidental in point of time. I therefore referred it to the
bishop's decision, asking his opinion; not as to what he would
like; for I knew he would wish me to keep Oxford; nor as to
what would be most advantageous to me, for 300l. a year is
better than 1157., but what he thought my duty considering
the sphere of usefulness apparent in Oxford, and the drawbacks
in a watering-place ministry, such as temptations to vanity, the
improbability of influencing character deeply, &c. He replied
that he thought it my duty to accept Trinity, so I go reluc-
tantly.. I much, deeply regret that difficulties have prevented
my remaining. So grand an opening for important, but not
glittering usefulness, I shall probably never have again.
140 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
However, I believe, if I can read my own heart, that I have
acted honestly. I am sure I go to a place from which I shrink,
and with small hope and much misgiving.
However, I will try to do my work. My life, if I may judge
by the decline of mental accuracy and strength, and the
weakening of nerve, has got more than half way, and the rest is
down-hill. The half-way house is behind: and if Brighton be
another form of Cheltenham, home cannot be very far off. I
am getting tired. And the complexion of my spontaneous
thoughts now is the increasing contemplation of rest. Rest in
God and Love. Deep repose in that still country where the
mystery of this strange life is solved, and the most feverish
heart lays down its load at last.
a
141
CHAPTER V.
BRIGHTON—1847, 1848.
Arrival at Brighton-Trinity Chapel-Death of his Infant Daughter-
Self-analysis and Resolutions on entering on his Ministry at
Brighton-First Sermon-Characteristics of his Teaching-Rapid
Increase of his Congregation-Appreciated by Servants and
Working Men-Wide Sphere of Work at Brighton-The Ques-
tions raised by the Revolutions of 1848, and how he met them-
Afternoon Lectures on the First Book of Samuel-Results of these
Lectures--Foundation of the Working Man's Institute-He is asked
to Deliver the Opening Lecture-His Answer, and his Opinions on
the Institution-Delivery of the First Address-His Boldness of
Speech-Endeavour to Reconcile Rich and Poor-Qualifications
which fitted him to be a Mediator.
Letters from August 9, 1847, to January 5, 1849.
IN
N the August of 1847 Mr. Robertson came to Brighton.
The short period during which he had preached at
Oxford was the pause which always occurs after a revolution
of thought, before the new ideas have gained sufficient
strength and roundness to be used with ease. At Oxford he
was like the swimmer who has for the first time ventured
into deep water; at Brighton he struck out boldly into the
open sea. There was no hesitation, no reticence in his
teaching. In the silence and solitude of the mountains of
the Tyrol, his soul, left to explore its own recesses, and to
feel its nothingness in the presence of the Infinite,' had fixed
its foundations deep and sure. From henceforward, his re-
(
142 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ligious convictions never wavered, and the principles of his
teaching never changed.
¿
The sunny aspect of his new home pleased him. The
bracing air, the clear sea, and the breezy expanse of pasture
above the town, seemed to sympathise with his active frame,
his free mind, and his large heart. The constant change of
light and shadow on the wide waters of the Channel, and on
the grassy bosses and slopes of the Downs, freed the scenery
from the monotony which made him impatient; and the
magnificent cloud-land, and the sunsets which adorn the
evenings of Brighton came upon him then, and always, with
a surprise of pleasure. It was his custom, when worn out
with the excitement of work, or when he was preparing in
thought his sermons, to walk along the edge of the cliffs, or
over the rolling waves of the green hills, and sitting down
where he could command a full view of sea and sky, restore
his heart with the calm, or 'awake his imagination with the
beauty of the landscape.
But, on his first coming to Brighton, he had but few mo-
ments of quiet or enjoyment. He was wholly occupied in
house-hunting, and with the arrangements necessary for
assuming the direction of Trinity Chapel. The following
letters sum up the history of the first few months of his life
at Brighton :-
9, Montpelier Terrace, Brighton August 9, 1847.
My dear,-At last I am able to tell you that we have
fixed upon a house-the above being the address-into which
we hope to move to-morrow. . . . I can form no conception yet
of how I shall like my work. Brighton is too large to have the
disagreeable peculiarities of Cheltenham and Kennaway's
congregation seems to be chiefly composed of tradesmen. That
will relieve me from much that I expected of unpleasantness.
:
Death of a Child
143
Still, looking at the many disadvantages there are, I have great
misgivings as to that kind of success which a proprietary-chapel
needs the filling of seats, &c. But Brighton seems a healthy
place, and I am sure it is bracing. My wife is decidedly better
than in Cheltenham; and the heir to my estates and title spends
hours on the beach, tossing stones into the sea, without specu-
lating about their future destinies, or the probable depth of the
ocean into which they fall.
9, Montpelier Terrace, Brighton: November 29, 1847.
My dear ——-I only write you one line to tell you of a sad
loss and disappointment we have just sustained. My wife has
been prematurely confined, and the little girl, a perfectly beauti-
ful little thing, is dead. I have just returned from putting my
little beautiful one myself into her grave, after a last look at her
calm, placid countenance lying in her coffin. It was by star-
light, with only the sexton present; but it was more congenial
to my heart to bury her so than in the midst of a crowd in the
glaring daylight, with a service gabbled over her. In the infinite
expanse of darkness there was more of heaven and more of God,
to my soul at least, and more of that deep, still rest, more pro-
found than death, of which death is but a shadow, for which we
are all craving, and in the depths of which we shall soon be--
how soon! My poor wife is sadly cut up, and looking ghastly
and haggard; but Taylor says she is going on perfectly well. I
was away in London when it took place (Friday), and did not
get home till Saturday night to be startled by the unexpected
news. How I got through yesterday's services I scarcely know,
unprepared and upset as I was; but I did get through. I am
very much disappointed, but I feel that Infinite Love guides all.
An account of his ministry at Brighton cannot have a
better introduction than the following, written on his arrival
at Brighton. It is full of careful foresight of the difficulties.
likely to beset him. It marks the earnestness with which
he studied his own heart, and resolved to do his duty :—
:
144 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
1. I want two things-habit of order and de suite. I begin
many things and re-begin, each time with greater disrelish and
self-distrust. At last, life will be a broken series of unfinished
enterprises.
Hence, I must resolve to finish: and to do this, I must not
undertake till I have well weighed-e.g. I will not now give up
German, I will study scripture-books thoroughly through,
histories separately and thoroughly.
I am conscious of having developed my mind and character
more truly, and with more fidelity at Winchester than anywhere.
Looking back, I think I perceive reasons for this. First, I went
out little hence, perfected what I undertook before fresh
impulses started up to destroy the novelty and interest of the
impulse already set in motion. It came to its limit unexhausted,
e.g. in studying Edwards.
Hence, I think, it will be wise at Brighton to go out little;
and even to exercise sclf-denial in this. But I will not commit
myself to any plan by expressed resolve.
years to live.
I have now only a few
'Mein Gott! ernst ist das Leben! möchte ich
es fühlen !
My danger is excitability—even in Scripture conversations
was it not so? This makes me effeminate, irresolute, weak in
character-led by circumstances, not bending them by strong
will to my own plan and purpose. Therefore I must seek calm
in regular duty, avoiding desultory reading-desultory visits.
2. Artificial excellences.—Goodness demands a certain degree
of nerve, impulse, sudden inspiration. Characters too much
trained miss these. Some turn their eyes perpetually on self in
painful self-examination. Suspicion destroys the élan of virtue,
its freshness, grace, beauty, and spontaneousness. Artificial
merits are like artificial flowers-scentless. Cultivate natural,
not unnatural excellences.
3. Explanations are bad things. 'Man betrügt sich oder den
andern, und meist beide. Gotz.' You preserve your own
dignity by not entering into them. The character which cannot
defend itself is not worth defending.
4. My mind is difficult to get into activity-unbewegsam,
Commencement of his Ministry at Brighton
145
Therefore, in order to prepare for speaking, preaching, &c., it is
good to take a stirring book, even if not directly touching upon
the subject in hand. Love is all with me.
Mental power
comes from interest in a subject. What I have to set in motion.
is some grand notion-such as duty, beauty, time in its rapid
flight, &c.
He preached for the first time in Trinity Chapel on August
15, 1847. His sermon, on a favourite subject—' The Jews
require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we
preach Christ crucified,' &c.-at once awoke criticism and
interest. As his peculiar views developed themselves, many
of the old congregation left the church. Their places were
apidly filled up. Thoughtful and eager-minded men came
a, by degrees, from all parts of Brighton, attracted not only
by his earnest eloquence, but by his original thought and clear
reasoning. He clothed in fresh brightness the truths which,
because their garments were worn out, men had ignorantly
imagined to be exhausted. He drew out the living inspira-
tion of the Bible, and especially of the historical portions of
the Old Testament. He made men feel the life which ran
through the doctrinal portions of the Prayer Book. What-
ever he touched sprang into being; and many of his hearers
entered on a new existence. Other men who were engaged
in the great questions of society and of the world, were
drawn to his ministry by the wide knowledge which he
showed of past history, and by the force with which he ap-
plied Christianity to the social problems of the present age.
Young men eagerly listened to his delicate analysis of the
human heart, and of those difficulties of religious thought
which, even now presenting themselves for solution, had
only then begun to agitate the mind of England. Others of
a lighter cast came to enjoy the brilliant imagery and the
VOL. I.
L
146 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
rapid rush of clear language. Servants and working-men
came to hear with reverence and affection a man who spoke
as if his whole being were in the words he used, and who
seemed to sympathise with their lives as none had ever done
before.
The appreciation of his teaching by servants, a class
seldom reached by an intellectual preacher, was remarkable.
The story which follows is extracted from a short memoir
published after his death :-
LAN
On the morning of Christmas Day 1847, scarcely five months
after his arrival at Brighton, Mr. Robertson, on ascending to
his reading-desk, found there a set of handsome prayer-books,
which had been presented to him by the servants of families
attending the chapel, as a Christmas offering. Naturally
affected by this evidence of kindly feeling, he in his sermon took
occasion to advert to the subject of presents, and drew a picture
of the delight which would fill the heart of a fond brother who,
on the morning of his birthday, should awake and find in his
chamber a rose placed there by sisterly affection.
The simple
gift, almost valueless in itself, would be more prized by the
brother's heart than a purse of gold. The application of the
incident he left to those who could best understand its hidden
meaning. The gift was subsequently acknowledged by the
following letter:
'9, Montpelier Terrace, Brighton: December 27, 1847.
'My dear Friends,-I should not satisfy my own heart if I
were not to tell you how much I was gratified on Christmas Day
by your thoughtful offering of the new books for Trinity Chapel.
It would be injustice to you if I were to say this with the idea
that it emanated from any personal feeling towards myself, who
am as yet a stranger among you. I am persuaded that your
higher motive was the wish to adorn the services of a house
dedicated to the worship of God; but, as the minister of that
house, it will not be out of place if the thanks are expressed by
I feel that it was kindly imagined and delicately done;
me.
J
His Interest in his Duties increases
147
and I am the more touched by being told that all who joined in
presenting it are in circumstances of life which make the offering
doubly precious. I shall never read out of those books without
the inspiring feeling that there are hearts around me.
'I am, my dear friends,
'Your affectionate minister,
'FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON.'
As the congregation became larger, and he recognised the
several elements which composed it, his sense of the im-
portance of his work increased, and with that his interest in
his duty.
And the town in which he was now placed opened to him
a field for his earnestness and his genius. The change from
Cheltenham to Oxford had not been greater than was now
the change from Oxford to Brighton. He had formerly left
a half-fashionable place, with narrow interests and a confined
sphere of thought, for one of the thinking centres of Eng-
land, where all social, political, and theological questions.
were debated with as much eagerness as latitude. There he
had easily taken his place as an inspiriting and sympathising
teacher. He was now transferred to a town which, more,
perhaps, than any other in England, has among its popula-
tion the sharp contrasts which mutually irritate one another
into aggressive life in London. He came into contact at
Brighton with religious tendencies and sects as extreme as at
Cheltenham, but they were opposed more strongly than at
Cheltenham by a bold freedom of thought among the upper
and lower classes, which tended in the former to carelessness
or silent contempt for Christianity, and in the latter to open
infidelity. He met with men of all classes, whose opinions
had been formed and widened in the storm and stress of
London life, and with others whose prejudices were as blind
L 2
148 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
as those of the smallest village in England. He associated
with clergymen of all religious denominations, who had
rendered themselves known by their eloquence and their
writings or by their active leadership of party. He mingled
with persons of every shade of Conservatism and Liberalism,
and, among the working men, with large numbers of hot and
eager Chartists.
If he had been as fresh and enthusiastic as he had been
six years before, he would, like a young soldier, have rejoiced.
at his position, placed thus in the fore-front of the battle.
But, as we have seen, he was worn and weary.
He had a presentiment, which was not altogether painful
to him, that his work-done as he did it, with a throbbing
brain, with nerves strung to their utmost tension, and with
a physical excitement which was all the more consuming
from being mastered in its outward forms-would kill him
in a few years. He resolved to crowd into this short time
all he could. He had long felt that Christianity was too
much preached as theology, too little as the religion of daily
life; too much as a religion of feeling, too little as a religion
of principles; too much as a religion only for individuals,
too little as a religion for nations and for the world. He
determined to make it bear upon the social state of all
classes, upon the questions which agitated society, upon the
great movements of the world.
Shortly after his arrival at Brighton, he had an opportunity
for carrying out his intention. The great surge which took
its impulse from the volcanic outburst of February, 1848, in
Paris, rolled over half of Europe. The decrees of February
25, 26, by which Lamartine declared France republican,
chimed in with the hopes of all the educated as well as un-
educated minds among the working classes. The cry of
Effect of the Revolution of 1848 upon him 149
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the demands based.
upon this watchword, created a wild fear in some Englishmen
and a wild joy in others, which were alike irrational. No
man in society could be silent on these subjects. Mr.
Robertson resolved not to be silent in the pulpit. His spirit
was stirred within him, as the spirits of Coleridge and of
Wordsworth had been at the beginning of a greater revolu-
tion. He rejoiced in the downfall of old oppressions; and
in the 'young cries of Freedom,' he thought that he heard
the wheels of the chariot of the Son of Man, coming nearer
and nearer to vindicate the cause of the poor. He writes
in 1848:-
To my
The world has become a new one since we met.
mind, it is a world full of hope, even to bursting. I wonder
what you think of all these tumults:
For all the past of time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever thought hath wedded fact.
Some outlines of a kingdom of Christ begin to glimmer, albeit
very faintly, and far off, perhaps, by many, many centuries.
Nevertheless, a few strokes of the rough sketch by a master-
hand are worth the seeing, though no one knows yet how they
shall be filled up. And those bold, free, dashing marks are
made too plainly to be ever done out again. Made in blood, as
they always are, and made somewhat rudely; but the Master-
hand is visible through the great red blotches on the canvas of
the universe. I could almost say sometimes, in fulness of
heart, ' Now let Thy servant depart in peace.'
I have been very much overdone by work here. It is ex-
tremely trying; full of encouragment, but full of a far larger
amount of misunderstanding and dislike than I expected to
meet with. And I work alone with many adversaries,' and
few to bless; but with a very distinct conviction that I am
150 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
doing something; and for that I am grateful, for it is well-nigh
the only thing that is worth the living for.
1
He had already begun, in January, 1848, a course of
lectures on the First Book of Samuel. In explaining the
history contained in that book he necessarily entered on
questions belonging to the life of society, and to the rise and
progress of national ideas. At the very beginning of his
exposition he was forced to speak of a great revolution. As
he went on, he came into contact with the subject of the
rights of property and the rights of labour; and, in the
election of David instead of Saul, he was obliged to discuss
the limits of authority, and how far an unjust or a weak
king is a rightful ruler of a people. So there was scarcely a
question debated in 1848 which was not brought before
him. He did not refuse them. They were all treated of;
but as Israelitish, not as modern questions. It was not his
fault that these lectures, running side by side with the
national convulsions and social excitement of Europe and
England, had a double interest-an ancient and a modern
one. It was not his fault that men did what he could not
do in the pulpit, and applied the principles which he found
in the First Book of Samuel, to the society and times in
which they lived.
However, he irritated and terrified almost all parties in
Brighton. A cry was raised against him. He was spoken
of as a Revolutionist and a Democrat.
An anonymous
letter was sent to the bishop of the diocese, complaining of
a certain sermon, and accusing him of preaching on politi-
cal subjects, in a manner calculated—when men's minds
See this subject fully carried out in Vol. i. Sermon xvi., and
Vol. ii. Sermon i.
3
Letter to the Bishop
were excited by the events occurring on the Continent-to
disturb still more the feelings of the working men in Brighton.
He answered, that if the principles revealed in the inspired
history of Israelitish society happened to be universal, and
to fit the events going on in 1848, it only proved the deep
inspiration and universal character of the Bible, and he was
not to be blamed. The following is the letter which he
wrote to the bishop in answer to the accusation brought
against him. It shows not only how meekly he could reply,
but also with what strange acuteness he felt these cowardly
attacks. It is interesting also for the account which it gives
of his way of composing his sermons.
151
My Lord, I wrote to Mr. Anderson at the same time that I
wrote to your lordship, enclosing the sermon for his perusal, as
you had requested him to make the investigation, and told him
that I conscientiously believed the sermon to be almost sentence
for sentence as it was delivered. I explained to him at the same
time that, knowing it to be a sermon liable to be misunderstood,
I had written it nearly all out the same night that it was preached,
lest I should be compelled in self-defence to publish it, and that
what I sent I believed to be in consequence quite complete.
Moreover, I expected that your lordship would show it to my
accuser, both in justice to him and in justice to me, and that he
would have full opportunity of making any strictures upon it. I
believe it is accurate even to words. I should say, too, that the
word extempore does not exactly describe the way I preach. I
first make copious notes; then draw out a form; afterwards
write copiously, sometimes twice or thrice, the thoughts, to dis-
entangle them, into a connected whole; then make a syllabus ;
and, lastly, a skeleton, which I take into the pulpit. May I be
permitted to send your lordship the notes I made for this par-
ticular chapter, together with the syllabus, as an example of my
plan, lest it should scem that, in preaching thus, I save myself
toil? Indeed, being unable from nervousness to preach from a
152 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
manuscript, and finding that the drain upon the mind necessary
for conscientious preparation for preaching without a MS., in
addition to other work, is telling very severely on my constitu-
tion, I have by the advice of friends relinquished all idea of
retaining Trinity Chapel beyond this year, which I have already
intimated to Mr. Anderson. I confess that I wait with much
anxiety your lordship's reply: for though I know nothing was
said that could lay me open to episcopal censure, it would pain
me very nearly as much to know that your lordship's opinion
was unfavourable to the view I have taken.
Will you permit me, my lord, to urge one thing in reply to the
strong feeling which your letter to Mr. Anderson seems to imply
has been excited by this sermon? It is a view I have heard again.
and again from the pulpit, founded on prophecy, that all earthly
dynasties will be dissolved before the Messiah's coming. The
shattering of the image in Daniel is always so understood. And
the turning of the sun into darkness, and the moon into blood is
usually expounded as figuring the overthrow of earthly powers
and aristocracies. These views are preached, published con-
tinually, and listened to without offence. The wisest interpreters
predict a state of anarchy and violence before the establishment
of the Kingdom. And I cannot but think that, if I had taken a
dark view of all this instead of a bright one; if I had preached
a more popular notion of the Coming of Christ instead of this—
that Good and Evil are struggling together, and Good disen-
gaging itself from Evil, not without hideous birth-throes and
agonies-the identical view which I preached would have been
heard without the smallest opposition; or had I confined my-
self to lecturing the turbulent lower classes there would have
been nothing of severity observed. But I spoke of the faults of
those above me, and they complain that they should not be so
taught in the presence of their servants and inferiors.
I cannot help believing that-hinc illæ lacrymæ, my lord. I
feel that in dealing with God's truth a minister of Christ is clear
from the charge of presumption if he speak strongly, yet affec-
tionately, of evil or faults in his social superiors. It brings no
pleasure with it. It makes him personal enemies. It is ruin
The Working-Man's Institute
153
to his worldly interests. And worse than all to a sensitive heart,
it makes coldness where there was cordiality. Yet through life
I am ready to bear this if need be. An earnest searching
ministry among the rich is very, very saddening work. The rest of
my life will be consecrated to the poor. Forgive me, my lord,
this prolixity.
If such were the feelings with which a certain number
among the upper classes regarded his teaching, working
men, on the other hand, who were themselves revolutionist
in feeling, and all who saw something deeper in the revolu-
tions than a mere blind attack upon existing Governments,
listened to these lectures as sincere endeavours towards a
Christian solution of great problems. Many a man traces
to their influence upon him his escape from the false frater-
nity and the false freedom of Socialism, into a higher region
of thought, where a truer brotherhood and a purer liberty
were conferred on him, in Christ. But not only in the
pulpit, where he was necessarily shackled, did he meet these
questions. A better and a more public opportunity was
soon afforded him. In the beginning of the year 1848, he
had visited, during a severe illness, Mr. Holtham, a member
of his congregation. 'I found one thought,' Mr. Robertson
says, 'uppermost in his mind: how shall I do good to the
working classes?' Their consultations for many weeks on
the subject resulted in a steady effort to establish a Working-
Man's Institute at Brighton. The following is an extract
from a letter of Mr. Holtham :-
•
My dear Sir,- . . Some day, when you have ten minutes'
leisure, I want to ask your opinion as to whether anything can
be done to awaken the minds of the working men (as yet totally
sealed) to the subject of religion.
How I wish that you had the strength of ten men, or that we
had a few men like you. From such as you the working men
154 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
would learn that religion, true religion, is really compre-
hensible; that its dogmas are consistent with plain reason
-that its teaching is in harmony with their consciousness of
truth, justice, and generosity; and that in becoming Christians
they need not cease to be men.
I am more and more impressed with the width and depth of
the gulf which exists and (as intelligence of a certain sort in-
creases) increases between this class and the teachers of religion;
and sometimes I really stand aghast and confounded at the
mystery involved in it. If ever there was a voice, 'not loud but
deep' to reach-if ever there was a life to awaken the working
man's sympathy and affection-surely that voice with its 'Come
unto me,' surely that life of sacrifice and earnest tenderness,
were, and are, all that could be needed; and I think both of us
have remarked that not only in this country, but in others per-
haps more strikingly, where the working clergy have engraved
more deeply than here the history of Jesus upon the hearts of
the poor, there are traces of a love and reverence for Him,
making themselves distinctly seen even in and through the
collisions and distractions of life.
Surely, then, all that is wanted is the adoption of an apostolic
spirit—the real teaching of Christ to the poor-of Christ, the
human, yet how divine; the labouring, the loving, the exalting
Saviour of the people.
He threw himself with courage-and it needed courage at
that time, with enthusiasm-and it needed enthusiasm, into
Mr. Holtham's plan. The institute was set on foot. It
was supported by the subscription of a penny a week from
each of the members. More than a thousand put down
their names. They cleaned, and papered, and furnished the
house in which they met, with their own hands. The
library was, for the most part, bought by themselves. In this
way their independence was secured. But they were not too
haughty to accept assistance and gifts of books from the
The Working-Man's Institute
wealthy. Thus, in accordance with one of Mr. Robertson's
deepest desires, the rich and the poor were brought
together, on the ground of sympathy. He was asked by the
committee, which was composed solely of working men, to
open the institute by an address. He answered in a letter,
which shows that even then, scarcely a year after his arrival
in Brighton, the isolation which so painfully affected his
career had already begun
155
I do not think I am at all the man that should be selected.
They should have some one of standing and influence in the
town, and I am almost a stranger; and my taking so prominent
a position might fairly be construed into assumption. Again,
I am much afraid that my name might do them harm rather
than good. They wish not to be identified at all with party
politics and party religion; and I fear that in the minds of very
many of the more influential inhabitants of the town my name
being made conspicuous would be a suspicious circumstance.
It is my conviction that an address from me would damage
their cause. For though the institution is intended to be self-
supporting, yet there is no reason why it should wilfully throw
away its chances of assistance from the richer classes, and I am
quite sure that of these very many, whether reasonably or un-
reasonably, are prejudiced against me, and perhaps the pro-
fessedly religious portion of society most strongly so. Now, I
do think this is a point for very serious consideration, and I
think it ought to be distinctly suggested to the committee before
I can be in a position to comply with or decline complying with
their request. Besides this, I believe that they have erred in
their estimate of my mental calibre. I wish most earnestly, for
their own sakes, that they would select a better man.
Two other letters written at this time and bearing on the
subject are subjoined :-
P
Last night I attended the meeting of the Working-Man's
Institute, and was very much struck with the genuine, manly,
156 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
moral tone of the speakers. I went home with quite elevated
hopes for my country when I compared the tone with that of
the French clubs. And my whole heart sympathised with what
your feelings must have been in the success of your brave
efforts. Of course, people who expect in it a perfect Utopia
will be disappointed or gratified by finding it so far a failure.
But the similar institutions of the upper classes have been, like
all human things, chequered with good and evil-a means of
increasing the powers of good men for good, and those of bad
men for bad. You do not expect more than this, the inevitable
result of all powers and privileges added to humanity. But
they must be added, come what may. There
There is no other in-
telligible principle which will not be compelled in consistency to
recognise barbarism as the highest state.
The following, written to Lady Henley, gives an account
of his hopes and fears :-
I am anxious to enlist your sympathy in the cause which I
am trying to assist. The case is this. About 1,100 working-
men in this town have just organised themselves into an associa-
tion which, by a small weekly subscription, enables them to have
a library and reading-room. Their proceedings hitherto have
been marked by singular judgment and caution, except in one
point-that they have unexpectedly applied to me to give them
an opening address.
A large number of these are intelligent Chartists, and there
is some misgiving in a few minds as to what will be the result
of this movement, and some suspicion of its being only a
political engine.
My reasons for being anxious about this effort are these-it
will be made. The working-men have as much right to a library
and reading-room as the gentlemen at Folthorp's or the trades-
men at the Athenæum. The only question is, whether it shall
be met warmly on our parts, or with that coldness which deepens
the suspicion, already rankling in the lower classes, that their
superiors are willing for them to improve so long as they them-
selves are allowed to have the leading-strings.
His Address on the Opening of the Institute
157
The selection of books for the library is a matter of very great
importance; as I have become aware, since getting a little insight
into the working of this institute, of an amount of bitterness and
jealousy, and hatred of things as they are, which I had not
before suspected in its full extent. And people go on saying,
'Peace, peace, when there is no peace!'
The address was delivered on Monday, October 23, 1848.
It was listened to with deep admiration and attention. It
was so eloquent; the voice and manner with which it was
delivered were so thrilling, the earnestness and deep belief
of the speaker in all that he said were so impressive, that
men said the words seemed imprinted on their characters for
ever. It was moreover a brave and noble speech, more
brave and noble than can be easily understood at present.
Fifteen years ago the feelings and opinions on the social
relations of the upper and lower ranks of society, which are
common now, were very uncommon, especially on the lips
of clergymen. The 'elevation of the working classes,'
meant to most men at that time, the destruction of the aris-
tocracy and the monarchy: to own any sympathy with a
Chartist, was to acknowledge onself a dangerous character :
to speak of the wrongs of the labouring men, was to initiate
a revolution to use the words 'liberty, equality, and frater-
nity,' and to say that they had a meaning and a truth in
them, was to that large class of persons to whom terms have
only one meaning and truth only one side-to whom error is
error and nothing more-teaching which was perilous in
a politician, but almost impious in a clergyman. Supported
by his faith in truth, Mr. Robertson cared for none of these
things. He taught the right, and left the seed to its own
vitality. It cost him ease and finally his life to speak, but
he would not be silent. The misunderstanding and censure
158
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
which he incurred stung him acutely, but could not sting him
into faithlessness to duty. He did not seek for martyrdom:
few men have ever shrunk more painfully from publicity;
but he steadfastly resolved to fulfil his work and to bear its
cross. One class, though for a long time suspicious, received
his words with joy, and hailed him as a faithful friend. The
working men of Brighton felt that, at last, a minister of the
Church of England had entered into their aspirations and
their wrongs.
And because they were sympathised with as
men, and neither patronised nor flattered, neither feared nor
despised, they were ready to lay aside prejudice, and hear
what a man of another class than their own had to say upon
the subjects which were agitating them. There was not one
of these subjects which he shrank from in his lecture. To
omit one he would have considered cowardly to leave one
without an attempt at solving it, unworthy of a man whose
business was thought: to touch upon one without bringing
Christian principles to bear upon it, unworthy in a minister
of Christ. The whole address may be described as an effort
to destroy the errors of socialistic theories, not by de-
nouncing them, but by holding forth the truths which lay
beneath them and gave them their vitality: to show that
these truths were recognised in Christianity and placed there
upon a common ground-where the various classes of society
could meet and merge their differences in sympathy and
love.
For this task of reconciliation he was qualified, not only
by his extensive knowledge of history and political economy,
but also by the many-sidedness of his views and feelings,
and by the chivalry and justice of his character.
There was a kind of double nature in him. He was in-
stinctively a Tory, but he was by conviction a Liberal. His
}
His Political Views conciliatory
159
early training at home, his reverence and his desire for a
military career, cherished in him the flower of chivalrous
obedience, and made him an enthusiastic royalist. 'I sus-
pect,' he says, 'that if the crown were ever to tyrannise, and
the people were to rise, I should be found fighting against
the mob, at least if, unfortunately, a queen were sovereign,'
He was aristocratic in feeling, in tastes, and in sensitiveness.
But though his tastes were with aristocracy, his principles
were with democracy. His duty to the race was stronger
than his sympathy with a class. He therefore resolutely
subordinated the latter to the former. He recoiled also from
the vulgarity, the loud assertiveness and obtrusiveness of the
mob; but he was, on the other hand, too just not to make
allowances for the want of polite training and education. By
a manly suppression then of his ultra-sensitiveness, he soon
became capable of recognising, beneath the rough exterior
of the working-men, their nobility of character. Perhaps,
also, the chivalry of his nature, which would have enlisted
him, like Falkland, on the side of Charles I. in the civil war,
because the king was unfortunate, was now enlisted on the
side of the working-classes for the same reason.
It was
enough for one who once wished that he had been a knight
of the olden time.
From all this it followed that his life became a contest
between his tastes and his principles, between his sympathies
and his duties. He thought himself that 'this discord in
him marred his usefulness.' Looking at it more closely,
it seems to be that very element of discord, or rather of
manifoldness, in his character which made his usefulness.
Feeling with and comprehending the nature of both sections
of society, he was, on the one hand, fitted to hold the scales,
to judge, and make peace between the upper and lower
160 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
classes, and, on the other, prevented from being seduced by
the plausibilities of Socialism, or blinded by the prejudices
and fears of extreme Conservatism.
Thus, the disturbances in Europe, during which the evils
suffered by the working poor rose to the surface of society,
did not frighten him out of his principles.
What appals me (he says, writing in 1851), is to see the way
in which persons, once Liberal, are now recoiling from their own
principles, terrified by the state of the Continent, and saying
that we must stem the tide of democracy, and support the
Conservatives. Why, what has ever made democracy dangerous
but Conservatism? The French revolution! Socialism! Why,
these men seem to forget that these things came out of Toryism,
which forced the people into madness. What makes rivers and
canals overflow-the deep channel cut ever deeper, or the dam
put across by wise people to stop them?
On the other hand, he was not swept away into the
alluring current of Socialism. His glance at the politics and
passions of the time was calm and clear. His aristocratic
tastes, his sympathy with the idea of rank, and his reverence
for the past, made it impossible that he should be a Radical.
And he systematically opposed Socialism on economical as
well as on Christian grounds, as dangerous to the State, and
as destructive of the liberty it professed to confer. The
result was, that speaking at one time like a Liberal, and at
another like a Conservative, he was misunderstood, and
reckoned an enemy by the extreme spirits of both parties.
He saw the truth itself of the question, while they wished
him only to see the half truths which they each held. He
met the fate of those who are beyond their time.
He felt, however, that in the conflict in his own mind, he
needed some fixed grounds on which to rest. Dragged
Letters to Mr. Moncrieff
161
aside by two extremes, he fell back on Christianity, not as a
via media, but as declaring truths which embraced in their
ample round the wisdom of Conservatism and the progressive
spirit of Liberalism, which solved the questions of the day-
neither by laying down laws, nor by coercive measures for
oppression or for liberty, but by spreading in all classes a
spirit of love, of duty, and of mutual respect. This was the
ruling idea of this opening address. It was immediately
published, and drew comments on it from all sections of the
press. The letters to Mr. Moncrieff which are subjoined are
an answer, apparently, to some objections made to this
lecture, and fittingly begin the letters appended to this
chapter :-
XVII.
9, Montpelier Terrace, Brighton: January 5, 1849.'
My dear Moncrieff,-It was a great pleasure to see your
hand-writing again after so long a silence. A few days ago, I
received a paquet containing some Christmas lines, signed
'G. R. M.' Were they yours? If so, thank you very much for
them. You were more mindful than I of the claims of friendship ;
at least, in appearance; for, to say the truth, I was rather
ashamed of my 'Address,' and was very unwilling that it should
be printed; as an extempore speech never should be submitted
to the scrutiny of the closest in its extempore state. For this
reason I did not send you a copy; but yesterday, on the receipt
of your letter, I gave orders to have one forwarded to you. Now
to the point of your note. I have not seen the article in the
Observer, and very likely shall not see it. My lecture was a
hasty production, and offers a mark for severe criticism in respect
of many inaccuracies and more inelegancies, as it is only the
Though written in 1849, the two letters to Mr. Moncrieff belong,
from their connection with the address, to the year 1848, and are
therefore inserted here.
VOL. I.
M
162 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
short-hand report in the newspaper corrected, and corrected
carelessly, for which I have no excuse but pressure of work. It
has attracted more notice than it deserved, and than I expected,
vituperative and laudatory; has been read by her Majesty;
distributed by nobles and Quakers; sneered at by Conserva-
tives; praised by Tories; slanged by Radicals, and swallowed,
with wry faces, by Chartists. But I do not mean to notice any
attacks upon it. It is very faulty; but I know that it has done
good. I only wish now that I had done it in a less hasty way.
If
you wish to annihilate the old lady of the Christian Observer,
I shall only say, 'Sanguine placâsti Frederick et Virgine casa?
For I take for granted she is an old maid, male or female. Is it
not melancholy that the popular religion only represents the
female element in the national mind, and that hence it is at once
devotional, slanderous, timid, gossiping, narrow, shrieking, and
prudish? If you make a bonfire of her, will you let me see the
paper with which you light the pyre?
Ever affectionately yours,
F. W. R.
P.S.-I should like to have a chat with you on the marvellous
events of the past year. Not forgetting the Californian Pac-
tolus, which bids fair to create many a Midas, and decorate
him afterwards with ears asinine. As to Europe, I am in
ecstasy :-
For all the past of time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder peals,
Wherever thought hath wedded fact.
And I really cannot see that the horrors and atrocities with
which the right cause has been advanced ought to lead to any
faithless doubt of the results, or whether it be on the whole the
cause of God or not or that the dungeons of the Inquisition
and the robber castles of the aristocracy in former ages proved
Christianity to be infernal, or the idea of gradations in rank im-
practicable and diabolical. But I find myself in a minority here
on that point, and excommunicated by the religious and respect-
able. In the midst of all which, I humbly console myself with
*
Letters to Mr. Moncrieff
163
remembering that One before whom my spirit bows with ador-
ation profounder in proportion as I understand Him and His
infinite mind, was in His day reckoned an infidel and a latitu-
dinarian worldling by the religious, and an anarchist whom it
was fatal to the respectability of Cæsar's friend to even defend.
Oh for his sublime, brave, divine truthfulness !
XVIII.
1849.
My dear Moncrieff,-Thank you much for your kind letter.
It is refreshing to meet with sympathy of sentiment on such
matters, for the only satisfaction I get from being in a 'promi-
nent position' is that of being a good butt for rotten eggs and
cabbage-stalks. Loving peace and sympathy, it is saddening
to be perpetually provoking 'a sword.'
Now for your strictures-for which I am most grateful, and
with which 1-do I agree? Yes, and no.
I thought I had based distinctly my own convictions on the
Bible, in a way visible to every one, as the source from whence
I drew my anticipations for the future. And most unquestion-
ably it is only from thence, that is, from Christ's life and mind
expressed in His life, that my views respecting brotherhood,
&c., are deduced. No doubt I am called a radical, but my
radicalism is not political, but religious-a principle, and not a
scheme-a conviction of the rights of others, and I am quite
sure no wish to assert my own. When I first heard the charge
of radicalism, some time back, I was astounded, for I had not
looked at myself in the glass for a long period, and knew not
what manner of man I was. I had tried to feel the meaning of
Christ's words, and to make my heart beat with His; and so I
became what they call a Radical. Nevertheless, the Radicals
and Chartists refuse to own me as brother, and call me a rabid
Tory. However, of one thing I have become distinctly conscious
-that my motto for life, my whole heart's expression, is, 'None
but Christ;' not in the (so-called) evangelical sense, which I
take to be the sickliest cant that has appeared since the Phari-
と
​M 2
164 Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
sees bare record to the gracious words which He spake, and
then tried to cast Him headlong from the hill of Nazareth; but
in a deeper, real sense-the mind of Christ; to feel as He felt;
to judge the world, and to estimate the world's maxims, as He
judged and estimated. That is the one thing worth living for.
To realise that, is to feel 'none but Christ.' But then, in pro-
portion as a man does that, he is stripping himself of garment
after garment, till his soul becomes naked of that which once
seemed part of himself; he is not only giving up prejudice after
prejudice, but also renouncing sympathy after sympathy with
friends whose smile and approbation was once his life, till he
begins to suspect that he will be very soon alone with Christ.
More awful than I can express. To believe that, and still press
on, is what I mean by the sentence, 'Nonc but Christ.' I do
not know that I can express all I mean, but sometimes it is to
me a sense almost insupportable of silence, and stillness, and
solitariness.
I think there is perhaps a difference in our views of brother-
hood, but in words more than in reality. I could not say that
one man is not neighbour to another, except so far as they
recognise the Father. Nor could I say that they are not
brethren, except in Christ, and as recipients of his Spirit. I
believe brotherhood and neighbourhood to be rcal, prior to the
acceptance of these truths-real, not realised, but yet to be
realised as a duty. And the realisation of them leads to the
higher, truer union-union in Christ. The Samaritan was
neighbour to the Jew by benevolence, whether the Jew recog-
nised it or not, and whether the Samaritan was, or was not,
distinctly conscious of their relation to a common Father. A
man, as man, is the child of God; and one child is brother to
another, whether they are conscious of their heritage relation-
ship or not. The operatives whom I addressed were my brother
men--though very possibly not my brother Christians, for a
large proportion of them were infidels, and a very large num-
ber Chartists. And brotherly kindness is brotherly kindness,
whether the command of Christ has been received and under-
stood or not. I can go to a man and say, 'Love your brother,'
Letters to Mr. Moncrieff
165
without telling him that Christ commands him so to do. if I
believe that he rejects the authority of Christ. But I feel clear
and firm in my manner of saying this, because I know it is in
accordance with Christ's will, though he does not.
Christ gave
the command as one not resting on arbitrary authority, but on
eternal principles which are recognisable by the human heart—
which ought to be recognised; and which men are morally
guilty, more or less, for not recognising on the bare statement
of them.
I know that pantheism occupies this ground; and I think
that pantheism is, for the most part, sentimental trash, offering
no distinct ground on which to rest, but only a cloud-floor,
which gives way in temptation, before the present and substan-
tial reality of what is pleasant. Nevertheless, I am no more
afraid of a truth because pantheism has unrealised it, than I
am of another because revolution has caricatured it into devilry.
Nay, I am rather inclined to believe it the more firmly, because
I see that even the false phantom of it has had power to enchain
so many human hearts. I believe in Juno's beauty all the more
from Ixion's passionate admiration of a fog-likeness of her.
Base coin is valued because the mint-stamped is gold. Besides,
even pantheism itself has its true side. It seems to me to be
the necessary reaction from the dreadful dead machinery of
preceding conceptions. I think some pantheists are nearer the
truth than most evangelicals. Many-most-make this world
a machine, at a great distance from which a Superintendent sits,
guiding and interfering, certainly, but totally disconnected in
his own being and contact from the said machinery, which is in
itself composed of quite base and gross materials. Now I be-
lieve that the pantheist is right in saying, there is something
much more divine in God's universe than that. The life which
pervades all is He in whom we live and move and have our being.
The different gradations of life are more truly of the same divine
essence than the hard material distinctions of common minds
make them. The life of the plant, and the life of the animals,
and of the intellect of man, are essentially allied to the higher
life which theologically we call the divine life in the soul. And
I believe that it will some day be demonstrated, that the Creator
166 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
is much more closely united to His own works than our un-
spiritual conceptions represent Him. God is a Spirit-by which
most people seem to mean a subtle, ethercal gas, imponderable,
perhaps, but still not only substance, but matter beside, however
attenuated. Now spirit is mind; and I do not know what is
meant by the locality of mind, except by saying that the universe
is localised Deity, and that the universe is everywhere-and
everywhere, according to both psalmist and pantheist, that
which waxes old as doth a garment, folded and unfolded as a
vesture, is changed-while He, the Former, in the form remains.
The Church is 'the body,' of which Christ is the Spirit-the ful-
ness of Him which filleth all in all. The universe, in a sense,
is the body, of which God is the Spirit - the fulness of
Him which filleth all in all- a lower life, but God's life
still. For this reason, I do not know how to keep language
unequivocal.' The two passages I have quoted from St. Paul
and from the Psalms are equivocal--pantheistic in their form--
indeed, I suppose one was the language of a pantheist-admitted
and adopted by St. Paul in that wondrous way of his which ex-
tracted the element of truth from everything, while rejecting the
error. My statement above might come from a pantheist's lips;
but I am no pantheist-I believe earnestly in God's personal-
ity-by which I mean consciousness, character, and will. Again,
I could not say that to aim at the heart's excellences, without
seeking the Spirit's agency, is a deep delusion and a dangerous
dream. Surely Cornelius, and men like him, did so; and the
earnestness of their aim brought that very conviction of a void
which opened their souls for the reception of the Spirit. Surely
in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness
is on his way to God, whether he have heard 'if there be a Holy
Ghost or not.' Surely this aim at heart-exccllences is the baptism
of John. Can we, without unrealising all moral convictions,
lend ourselves for a moment to language which seems to say
that good is not good, except it have added to it some incompre-
hensible element, which does not make those who boast of its
possession visibly more noble and more heavenly than others,
but often very much narrower and revoltingly conceited? In
proportion as a man aims at excellence, will he find that there is
T
167
The Spirit of the Universe
a Spirit, not himself, but external to himself, which he does not
seek, but which seeks him-just in that proportion will he be
forced to look—not in, but up and out. Be good, change your
lives-repent-aim at heart excellences-that seems to me the
first thing to say and the first thing to feel. Then the doctrine
of the Spirit comes not as a cut-and-dried dogma, but the inter-
pretation in words of an external necessity of the soul.
I believe we agree; at all events, I am certain our hearts are
one in God and Christ. Possibly my expressions are bad and
inadequate; but in proportion as I adore Christ (and I do think
my whole soul thrills and trembles at the thought of Him, when
I understand, or fancy I understand Him, and feel my own heart
acquiescing in his life, and views of life and God, and acknow-
ledging them to be revelations), exactly in that proportion do I
abhor that which calls itself Evangelicalism, I feel more at
brotherhood with a wronged, mistaken, maddened, sinful Chartist
than I do with that religious world which has broken Popery into
a hundred thousand fragments, and made every fragment an
entire, new, infallible Pope-dealing out quietly and cold-blood-
edly the flames of the next world upon all heretics who dispute
their dictum, in compensation for the loss of the power which
their ancestor, by spiritual descent, pleasingly exercised of dis-
pensing the flames of this world. Luckily, the hope remains
that they are not plenipotentiaries of the place with which they
seem so familiar. More and more, day by day, one's soul feels
itself alone with God, and resolved to listen for his voice alone
in the deeps of the spirit.
XIX.
Feb. 4, 1848.
sea.
My dear Acworth,-
I wish you would come down
here some day. We have nothing, however, to show, except the
In many respects Brighton has the disadvantages of Chel-
tenham. It is excitable, and the floating portions of society are
superficial. The voluntary system, too, is detestable, and cuts
the mouth like a Mameluke bit, reminding a man of his servi-
tude at every step. And I feel the wear and tear of heart and
mind in having so constantly, and in so unassisted a way, to
M
168 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
speak on solemn subjects. A man who is by profession bound
to speak for present effect-for, except in the present, what can
speaking do?—necessarily injures himself and his character. I
do not mean in the way of popularity; for I find nothing se-
ducing in that, and would gladly, joyously give it all up to-
morrow for a calmer life; but I mean in the destruction of re-
pose, and the inability to see any truth in its quiet beauty. All
proportions are distorted, and it becomes an everlasting race be-
tween one's own mind and itself.
I have no one thing to complain of here that I had in Chel-
tenham, except the excitement, and that is killing. But the
utter hopelessness of being listened to is past. In outward
success all looks well. Consequently, I work in good spirits.
But Sunday night, Monday, and all Tuesday are days of
wretched exhaustion-not despondency, but actual nervous pain.
I do as little as I can; indeed, I cannot do less; but I begin to
fear I shall never keep it up. Brighton air is wonderful; but
even that fails.
XX.
Brighton July 11, 1848.
I will tell you, however, seriously, one thing which seems
to me now plain. Every one is not now called upon to be a
martyr for truth. It is perfectly true that whenever there is a
great soul pouring out its utterances to the world, there will be a
Calvary; but before we pour out our utterances, we should be
quite sure that we are great souls, that the truth is one impor-
tant enough to suffer for, and that the persons we speak to are
worth the illumination, and not blind Pharisecs, before whom
Divine wisdom says, 'Neither tell I you by what authority I do
these things.' These three rules save from much irritation,
which exhausts and does no good, like a great horse kicking at
flies, every kick covering him with sweat, and enough to break
twenty men's legs. But flies are not men. The convulsive kick
goes through the swarm innocuous, and back they buzz and hum
again. You always get the worst of it when you kick at flies.
Squash them, if you can, without more effort than a switching
of the tail; if not, let them alone.
•
169
CHAPTER VI.
BRIGHTON 1849.
His Interest in all the questions which agitated Society-Clairvoyance
and Mesmerism-Speech at the Meeting for the 'Early Closing
Association'-Opposition which was roused by his Preaching—
Work and hidden Life.
Letters from January, 1849, to November, 1850.
IT
T was in 1849 that Mr. Robertson's genius was most
productive and most clear. The political and
social disturbances of that year and its predecessor,
the ferment which kept all society bubbling with excite-
ment, communicated their ardour and their movement to
his spirit. His heart throbbed in response to the music
of the march of the world, always to him a martial music.
He spoke and thought best when great events encompassed
him. Whatever was agitating society, he took up either in
the pulpit or on the platform, or in conversation with his
friends. But before he gave a public opinion on any subject
he studied it with care. He did not argue blindly on the
outside, but sought to obtain the central point of a question,
that he might see without confusion the different forms
under which its idea had manifested itself; and explain by
the analogies of its past, the course of its present develop-
ment. In small things as well as great this was his method.
170
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
In the beginning of 1849, Alexis, the well-known clairvoyant,
came to Brighton. Mr. Robertson was invited to meet him
at several séances. He refused at first, but afterwards going
found to his great delight, that in his presence there were
no revelations. His want of faith,' said Alexis,' dimmed
the mesmeric vision.' 'My close observation,' said Robert-
sɔn, 'confused the charlatan.' He treated the matter half
mirthfully, half seriously. He laughed, for he thought it a
clever cheat. He frowned at the dishonour he believed to
be offered by it to the calm and healthy verities of science
and law. He was accustomed to mourn over the credulity
which clairvoyance and its kindred induced, over the idle-
ness they encouraged, the craving for excitement they
created, and over the generation which, seeking after such
signs, could not believe in the truth of Christ. The letters
which follow exhibit partially these thoughts :-
January, 1849.
<
I shall not be able to attend the séance to-morrow, as that old
fox objects to the presence of any one who is wide awake.'
There is a very beautiful passage in Virgil's 'Æneid,' in which
the ghost of Hector sadly appears to Encas before the final
ruin of Troy, and in a dignified way gives up all for lost. 'If
Troy could have been saved by mortal arm, this right hand
should have saved her.' . . . That which the noble Trojan said
of divine Troy, I now, in foiled and melancholy honesty, say of
the divine senses of the celestial sex. Ah well, it is only a
specimen of what goes on in affairs more important. The
Father of Lies has it all his own way in this world-in small
things as well as in great-and it is a piece of absurd knight-
errantry to tilt against him. I sometimes am tempted to doubt
whether any one who tries to open people's eyes in science,
politics, or religion, is to be reckoned as a sublime martyr or an
egregious fool. The Cross, or the cap and bells? Certainly,
had it not been for ONE, I should say, the cap and bells.
A va
His Interest in General Questions
Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
171
Why cannot sensible people see the mighty pigeon-plucking of
this world without interfering? Why not let the Cagliostros.
finger diamond necklaces from queens, and Alexis dupe? What
is truth? The path to the pillory of ridicule. What is the
champion of truths, big or little? That poor foolish sylph that
interposed to save Belinda's curl, and got cut in two by a paltry
pair of scissors for his pains.
Now, can you believe that I could have sat down and wept
to-day? Not simply to see that foolish scene, so grave and so
ridiculous, but to connect it with all the analogy of life. It
made me sick at heart to think of the futility of all attempts to
tell people the whole of religious truth-to be brave, and true,
and faithful. Let people go on in their old way; do not come
into collision with foolish old views and superstitions! Say out
the truths of God and then what thanks do you get for bring-
ing light to people who love darkness? which nine hundred and
ninety-nine in the thousand do.
I think the best work that Signor R- could consult would
be Turton's 'Reply to Dr. Wiseman on the Eucharist.' It
seems to me, however, that the surest way of arriving at correct
views of this matter is to endeavour to enter into the mind of
Christ, His tone of feeling, and the scope of His grand life.
Transubstantiation then gradually withers from the conception
as a contradiction to Christianity, which is a Spirit and a Life.
To localise it; to tie it in any way to the material; to bind it
to'days and months, and times and years;' to make it 'meat
and drink;' to prevent its getting beyond the rudiments, that is,
'the alphabet of the world;' to make it 'subject to ordinances';
to make it anything but the worship of a spirit-God in spirit
and in truth—is to go back to Judaism.
But I do not wonder at the belief in Transubstantiation; it only
assumes the fact of a miracle, very possible in itself—a religious
mistake, though a great one. But I do marvel at grown men
believing in clairvoyance, and then refusing to listen to the
172 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
argument for Transubstantiation. I met the other day a lady,
thoughtful, independent, and candid, thoroughly inartificial and
free from prejudice, who was completely converted into a
devotee of the superstition of 1849. After which, I can com-
prehend that Transubstantiation should have been undoubted
for a thousand years, annihilated at the end of that time, re-
suscitated, and that it should have in it a fair prospect of lead-
ing a vigorous existence of, say, another thousand of years.
The next subject which engrossed him, and which brought
him prominently before the public, was the closing of shops
in Brighton at an earlier hour than was customary. A
meeting was called on April 24, 1849, by the Early Closing
Association, and he was asked to speak. His speech was
remarkable for its grasp of both sides of the question. He
thought well of the plan proposed, but for that very reason
was calm and sober in his tone, and determined to look in
the face all the difficulties which environed the subject.
He stood between the masters and the young men.
He
claimed for the former freedom from coercion ; he even
spoke of the peculiar difficulties they would have in carrying
out the views of the Association, owing to the number of
strangers who came into Brighton at a late hour. He claimed
for the latter their right, as men, to time for self-improvement,
but he demanded that their leisure should be well employed.
Then, with one of his rapid turns of thought, he showed to
his audience of the higher classes, that it was not only those
who sold, but those who bought, in whose hands the ques-
tion lay.
It was a noble speech, full of economical knowledge,
sober arguments, and wise prevision of difficulties. It is
curious to find so imaginative and excitable a man keeping
so steadily in the path of common sense. He pleased
Opposition increasing
173
neither party; one thought his words too bold, the other
thought them too lukewarm; but though his speech won
few cheers, it made its impression afterwards, when the
passions of men had cooled down to the reasoning point.
During the rest of the year he made no public address,
except from the pulpit, but from that place his influence
radiated every day more powerfully. His chapel became
crowded to the doors. His sermons grew more weighty
and more eloquent. The two confirmation lectures preached
this year, on Jacob's Wrestling and the Parable of the Sower,
display the opulence of thought and care which he spent on
the education of the young. It will be seen, however, from
a letter, written to answer some objections made to his
analysis of the despair and suicide of Judas, and subjoined
to this chapter, that side by side with his influence, the opposi
tion to his ministry increased and became more harassing.
'It is only too true,' he says, 'that the perpetual chafings
and work of a place like Brighton have destroyed all claim
to philosophic clearness, and that I am getting less fit for
study and mental tension.' The officious support of some
who got up addresses to him, and subscriptions for his
portrait, and the vulgarising efforts of others who did the
same on mercenary grounds, drew him into a prominence
which pained him.
My enemies (he writes), not content with the usual modes
open to snarlers, actually invade me in my castle; and on the
strength of being religious, come with long faces, though perfect
strangers, to warn me of the wrath in store for me hereafter, if
I do not repent of my manifold heresies. So you see I am in a
hornet's nest, and buffets only exhaust strength in vain, the
amount of real good done being very problematical.
To hide himself from this public shadow of himself, he
174 Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
gave himself up to quiet and continous work. He held
a weekly lecture in his vestry for the poor; he visited among
them; he endeavoured to draw around him the young men
of Brighton belonging to that class which is so rarely touched
by clergymen the shopkeeper's assistants, the clerks; all
those, in fact, whom his speech on the question of Early
Closing had partially, by its sobriety, alienated from him.
He shrank more and more into a hidden way of life, refused
to publish his sermons, and kept, as much as possible, apart
from society. In a letter written to his mother, at the close
of the year, he speaks of some unauthorised publication of
one of his Advent lectures :--
'
The miserable publication of St. Paul's Novitiate,' as the
printer calls it, was a libel-absurd, curtailed, and in some places
absolutely false. Pray-pray let it be known that all these
things are more or less misrepresentations, and done entirely
without my sanction! It is of great importance that they
should not appear, for I have abundance of slanderers-I can.
not tell why, for I molest no one, abstain now even from public
lectures, go out very little, and only ask to be left alone. I take
no pains to contradict innumerable falsehoods, for it would be
endless. I take my own path, quietly, and never retaliate.
In the October of this year there began a long and volu-
minous correspondence with several persons, which has,
most fortunately, been preserved. It will appear in its
proper place. Meanwhile, the letters which follow include
all that can be known of the history of his life during the
first nine months of 1849:-
XXI.
1849.
My dear
I ought long ago to have replied to your kind
request for a reply to the objections brought against my sermon
Opposition increases
175
on Acts i., but I have always felt a defence of my own views
peculiarly irksome, as I am glad to escape the unprogressive
task of circling round anything which I have ever said or
written.
I will briefly give you the replies which refute the charges of
your friend's note.
First of all: my 'desire to be original, and going astray from
the old paths.'
Whether I aim at an appearance of originality or not, God
must judge, who alone has the right to scrutinise motives and
impute them. As to originality, things which are very familiar
to those whose reading is professional and varied, may appear
new to those who chiefly seek the teaching and read the works
of one school of theology. 'Old paths' require to be defined.
That which is old now was new once, and treated with very
great bitterness at first, as all new forms of truth are sure to be.
Evangelicalism was called new-fangled fifty years ago. I
presume that no one would maintain that the popular preaching
of the present day is in the old paths, either of thought or
phraseology, in which Jeremy Taylor or Bishop Andrews
walked; or that they were not liable to the charge of novelty in
their day, compared with the tone of thought and teaching pre-
valent in St. Bernard's; or that Bernard's preaching was not
very, very different from that of Chrysostom's day. Nay, more
¦
-the Apostles—He himself—what was the charge against them,
but that they did not walk in the old paths, but taught 'new
doctrines?' Evangelicalism itself, worn threadbare as it is by
trite thought—and certainly, to do it justice, guiltless of mental
power or fresh thought, for the last ten years at least-what was
it called in the days of Cecil and Scott? The 'good old' High
Church talked loudly of new lights.
I am said to have apologised for Judas,' thereby falling into
one of the various old exploded errors of heterodox teachers, 'to
which my desire of seeming original guides me.'
My apology' for Judas consisted in saying that his sin was
not murder, but unbelief, and that he was sincere in what he
176 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
E
did; also that his temptation was Satanic, and that he is in
hell.
I do not fancy that Judas would thank me much for my
apology. We will examine this heterodox defence.
What I said was, in effect, this. The essential guilt of
suicide is unbelief, that is, despair of God's love and goodness.
Distrust is the sin of sins, which makes sin sin. Luther said.
strongly, but not too strongly, 'Nothing damns except unbelief.'
My sermon, therefore, charged Judas with unbelief, final and
desperate. I do not know what your correspondent thinks of
the sinfulness of unbelief; but it is clear that he is very much
shocked at a charge of murder being converted into one which
only imputes unbelief: only unbelief!
I may, perhaps, add that the question, as to what is the
essential guilt of suicide, is settled by the reply of Christ when
the evil suggestion was presented to Him. He did not allege
the Sixth Commandment, which he assuredly would have done
had suicide been murder; but 'Thou shalt not tempt' (i.e. try,
make experiment of) 'the Lord thy God.' He treated it as a
temptation, not to murder, but to distrust; which was exactly
what I did, on His infallible authority.
I shall briefly dispose of the remaining objections.
Your correspondent is scandalised by the expression that Judas
was sincere, and says, with a note of admiration, 'the sincerity
of Judas, who betrayed his Master, bare the bag,' &c.
I did not say that Judas was sincere in his betrayal of Christ,
nor in his stewardship of the common purse-I did not say that
he was a sincere man. I simply said, he was sincere in his
remorse. A thief may behave honestly sometimes. The un-
just steward was commended by his lord. Yet I have heard of
commentators of the Rationalistic school who were as much
offended with the Bible as your friend is with me, because it
commends a man who has tampered with his Master's accounts.
The Bible, however, commends him, and Christ puts him forth
as a pattern to Christians, not because he had acted honestly in
all cases, but because he had done wisely in one. He who com-
mended him as wise in that act, did not exactly say that his
Reply to Strictures on Sermon on Judas
177
waste and duplicity were objects of admiration. And if I assert
that Judas was sincere in his remorse, it requires some ingenuity
to pervert this into an opinion that he was sincere in his kissing
his Redeemer. The suicide of Judas was the act of a man
sincere, even to agony, in his remorse. Did he pretend to cast
down the gold? Did he pretend the pangs which drove him to
despair? I say, further, all suicide is sincere. I stated that for
the express purpose of showing that sincerity does not make the
matter better, and that remorse is not penitence. Your corres-
pondent, without having heard the sermon, hears of a detached
expression, and charitably assumes that it was part of the
'apology' for Judas. It formed, in fact, part of the demolition
of a supposed apology that might be made for him.
Again: Where does Scripture speak of Judas not working
out his destiny, by which he was as truly destined to salvation
as any other of the apostles, but that his destiny crushed him?’
I reply: Every one has a mission in this world to accomplish.
That is the destiny given him to work out. Judas had such a
mission. God had appointed him to salvation by His call as
truly as the other apostles, unless we are prepared to believe
that the Eternal Love predestines to sin. He had a 'ministry
and apostleship from which he by transgression fell.' Judas
was sent into the world to work out his own salvation with fear
and trembling. God 'did not will the sinner's death.' Surely,
surely, the Bible is plain enough on that point. But Judas
would not accept his mission, and then that which was given in
blessing turned to curse. His destiny crushed him; he went to
his own place, the place he had prepared for himself, not the
place prepared by God. So it is with you and me. No decree
of God has insured our misery. All things work together for
good to those who love God. But the same things work together
for evil if they do not love God. The sailor who yields to
and works with the winds of God is brought by them to the
haven where he would be; but if he try to beat up against them,
the very gale that was carrying him to safety overwhelms him;
he is crushed by the very destiny that was working out his
VOL. I.
N
178 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
1
salvation. All I said on this point was simply expository of the
sentence, 'He went to his own place.'
I think you told me there was a feeling of condemnation for
the use of the word courage in connection with the act of Judas.
Suicide implies physical courage. There is a higher courage,
which I distinctly contrasted with this animal daring, which
enables a man quietly and bravely to endure the weariness of
this heavy life, obloquy and hatred. He who has that is safe,
as I then said, from suicide; and it was to contrast it with
this, that I admitted the other courage which belongs to the
suicide.
And to deny this is surely absurd. I do not reckon physical
courage very high; but still I do not think there are many
gentlemen in Brighton who are men enough to stab themselves,
if all religion were out of the question. If it seem a very easy
thing to inflict a deathblow on self, perhaps they might come to
some conclusion on the point, if they will only try to bind up
their own arms, and use the lancet next time it is wanted.
This objection is so weak that I can scarcely speak of it with
gravity.
Lastly, your friend asks, 'When does Scripture mention the
least impatience or any sin in the man Christ Jesus?' and then
goes on to speak, with great horror, of my 'awful notion' of
admitting the germ of evil, etc. in Him.
I presume this is a misconception of an expression which I
have more than once used. Specially dwelling on the Redeemer's
sinlessness, I have shown how all the innocent feelings of our
nature were in Him, but stopped on the verge which separates
the innocent from the wrong. An inclination of human nature
is not wrong-hunger, anger-but being gratified unduly, or in
forbidden circumstances, it passes into sin. 'Be ye angry, and
sin not.' Legitimate anger was to stop short of sinful vindictive-
ness.
Similarly, Our Lord felt the weariness of life, and was anxious
to have it done, amidst perpetual opposition of enemies and
misconception of friends. How am I straitened till it be
4
:
Reply to Strictures on Sermon on Fudas
179
accomplished?' 'O faithless generation, how long shall I be
with you? how long shall I suffer you?'
There was no germ of sin in Christ; for sin is the acting of
an evil will. Sin resides in the will, not in the natural appetites.
There was no germ of sin in Him; but there were germs of
feeling, natural and innocent, which show that he was in all
points tempted like as we are.
If I say to a man who is angrily calling Mr. Smith O'Brien a
felon, 'You mistake; it is not felony, but treason, he is guilty
of,' I have not defended the poor man much by saying he is a
traitor instead of a felon-I have simply vindicated the right
use of words. If I say Judas' guilt was not murder, but final
and fatal despair, and call it, as I remember well I did, the sin
of sins, it is somewhat difficult to make me out as an apologist
for suicide.
So much for the apology for Judas.
Certainly, there is an exploded heterodox defence of him with
which I am acquainted. It was held that not from avarice, but
from a desire to force on the acknowledgment of his Master's
mission, he betrayed Him. Your correspondent seems to fancy
I have adopted this. Mr. M'Neile, no oracle of mine, but a
very good man, and high in the Evangelical world, adopted it,
and printed the sermon; but, his orthodoxy remains unım-
peached : nor has he been accused, so far as I know, of affecting
novelty, absurd as the view is. But this is the happy fate of all
party-men.
Further, however, I said that Judas went to his own place—a
very emphatic expression. I said the soul gravitated downwards.
The sin which led to suicide led to hell; but it was his own
place, in the way of natural retribution, not of arbitrary repro-
bation. This was another feature in the apology for Judas. I
left him in hell. What more would they have? Only an un-
believer!—only in hell!
Now, with regard to the propriety of the assertion that the
sin was despair, not murder,—
Your correspondent says, 'Where does Scripture draw a dis-
tinction between killing and murder?' The only reason in
N 2
ISO Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Scripture for the heinousness of the crime is not that it involves
hatred and malice, but that 'in the image of God created he
man.'
All through the Book of Leviticus a distinction is drawn between
killing and murder-all through the Bible. To kill is to take
away life; to murder is to kill with malice prepense. The
soldier kills, so does the executioner, so does the man who acts
under sudden and dreadful provocation, so does the man who
acts in self-defence, so does the duellist, so does the man who
treasures up a wrong for years. In every one of these the
image of God, wherein He made man, is destroyed. Is there
no distinction between them? They are all killing; are they
all murder? Is it just to brand the guilt of a man, or rather the
act of a man, who shoots a footpad demanding his purse with
merraces, with the same name as is appropriated to the act of
Rush? You may get one rude generic name, like murder, to
include a vast number of offences, just as the generic name
Animal includes man and zoophytes, with endless intermediate
gradations. But it is only a very rude way of talking. And a
man scarcely differs from a zoophyte more than the suicide,
which has no hatred in it and no malice, does from the murder,
which is one of revenge. It is only loosely that we call suicide
self-murder; well enough for popular conversation, but utterly
unfit for the expression of accurate thought.
All this comes from the loose way in which people think of
sin, and the unmeaning way in which they, therefore, talk of the
sinlessness of the man Christ Jesus. They forget that He
suffered being tempted. In point of fact, they deny, without
intending it, all that makes His sinlessness sublime and real.
They reduce that glorious Heart to a mere machine, and make
His life a theatrical exhibition, in which fictitious struggles and
sorrows went on. He only pretended to struggle with tempta-
tion! It really would appear, according to them, that He did
not actually suffer in putting down the inclination which arose
spontaneously and innocently.
However, this is a very large subject, and I cannot go into it.
The insinuation of 'German neology' is a comprehensive
German Neology
181
and very convenient charge by which all earnest thought is
tabooed at the present day. It is quite enough to hint that it is
German. So at the time of the Reformation they spoke of
Greek and Hebrew. 'Greek,' said a Roman Catholic priest,
'is a new language, just discovered, and full of heresies. As
for the Hebrew language, all who study that become Jews
immediately.' So they speak of German now. Englishmen.
seem to think that the Redeemer died exclusively for them, and
that light shines nowhere but here. Sixty millions of God's
creatures speak German, and can only get their theology in
that. Alas! for those who have not the English theology,
though it be, unfortunately, only a feeble echo of that which, in
its freshness, came from Germany three hundred years ago.
'Verily, we English are the men; and truth shall die with us.'
But the singular part of this charge is, that they who make it
know so little of the matter, that, like your correspondent, they
are not even aware that the present heterodoxy of Germany is
not neologian, and that neologianism is exploded even there.
To them, neology, rationalism, mysticism, mythicism, pan-
theism, all mean pretty much the same thing; and one charge
is nearly as good as another, because all are vague and myste-
rious, like the venerable fee-fi-fo-fum of our childhood.
To live by trust in God-to do and say the right because it is
lovely-to dare to gaze on the splendour of the naked truth,
without putting a false veil before it to terrify children and old
women by mystery and vagueness-to live by love, and not by
fear, that is the life of a true, brave man, who will take Christ
and His mind for the Truth, instead of the clamour of either the
worldly world or the religious world: between which two, alas !
there is as little difference now as in the days of Pharisaism;
or rather, if there be any difference, we know who said that the
'world' of sinners was, as knowing its blindness, rather in the
less danger of the two.
The chief difference between the two views of suicide is this:
the one says Hell, and something worse, if you dare to murder
yourself. I would rather say, Trust God, and believe in Him
as Love, and suicide is impossible. If the other argument were
:
182
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
1
the only thing that could save us from fifty suicides a day, I
would not use it; for the goodness which is only produced by
fear is no goodness at all. I quite agree, with every fibre of my
heart responding, with the sentiment of that noble thinker
Milton: Were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be
preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of
evil-doing. For God, sure, esteems the growth and completion
of one virtuous person more than the restraint of ten vicious.'
I believe that the great lesson for us to learn—every day it
seems more true to me—is this: God and my own soul; there
is nothing else in this world I will trust to for the truth. To
those alone we are amenable for judgment—to Him and to His
voice within us. From all else we must appeal. Only we must
not appeal so haughtily as we are sometimes tempted to do-as,
perhaps, I have done on this present occasion—in independence,
but not in pride.
XXII.
9, Montpelier Terrace, Brighton: March 29, 1849.
My dear
I will most willingly comply with your request,
difficult as it is; for how difficult to express another's feelings!
and besides, in a public inscription, as little of private feeling
as can be profaned, the better. But will you tell me a little
more precisely what you wish? You use the word poet. Do
you wish a prose or a verse inscription? For your sake, or your
sister's, I would do either; but I think the latter would certainly
prove a failure—and is it desirable?
I have never spoken or written a syllable to you about our
dear lost William, because I cannot. Every year I feel less
inclined than I once was to get upon subjects of the deepest
interest. Every year I feel that utterance profancs feeling, and
makes it commonplace. He is gone—with all his fresh, bright,
marvellous flow of happiness. What is there more to be said
than is contained in those dreadful words-He is gone? How
often I have thought of the evening he left Tours, when, in our
boyish friendship, we set our little silver watches exactly together,
Wordsworth, Shelley, and Burns
183
and made a compact to look at the moon exactly at the same
moment that night, and think of each other! I do not re-
member a single hour in life since then which I would have
arrested, and said, Let this stay. And to William all was so
bright and hopeful! Only now and then, the shadow projected
by the more solemn and sombre aspect of the Future seemed
to rest upon his heart-even that was transient. I have sympa-
thised with you often in secret, dear -; but for him, I see
nothing in his lot that is not a subject for envy. Why should
we wish him to have remained a little longer?—to have been
slashed or mangled in obedience to the orders of some
and then to be lost among the names of the innumerable gallant
hearts that are made clay of to satisfy the cupidity of East India
merchants? Oh no! better, surely, as it is. And as to the
eternal question. We know of him-what is all that we can
ever know of any one removed beyond the veil which shelters
the unseen from the pryings of curiosity—that he is in the hands
of the Wise and Loving. Spirit has mingled with spirit. A
child, more or less erring, has gone home. Unloved by his
Father? Believe it who may, that will not I.
XXIII.
•
•
February 22, 1849.
My dear Friend, I send you the volume of Wordsworth,
which you forgot last night. One must not be too young, either
in heart or years, to lie entirely open to his influence.
I fancy character may be measured, both in depth and
quality, by the poet who is the chosen favourite. He is a kind
of Nilometer to mark the depth at different distances on the
river. A man's Nilometer, in the higher regions, may be
Shelley. The wild and marvellous stream is then still in the air
region, finding a home among clouds, cutting a narrow way
through clefts of rock, flowing for many hundred yards together
under frozen patches of snow-a strange and beautiful life in the
waste of the cternal silence, issuing out clear and pure and cold
a little higher up, from the delicately blue cavern of the glacier.
184 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ļ
Even in its lower and earthier flow, the stream will appear to
hold mysterious connection, as if by invisible sympathy, with its
source, and even the inarticulate murmurs of its daily ripples
will seem but the cadences which ought to be heard only in
those still and solemn realms.
Down in the plains, in the less unearthly part of its course,
the water-mark of such a man will stand at Burns. A strong,
swift flow, so deep as to scarcely seem to move on the surface;
somewhat turbid, but the very carth which discolours it will
often be purer than the snow which falls into other rivers direct
from the cloud of Heaven.
Between these two regions of such a man's life, Wordsworth
will mark the height and temperature of the stream in a part of
its course which will be at present invisible-being lost, as is the
case with some rivers, for many miles underground. But when
this lost power of life shall reappear, Wordsworth will only
mark the depth and temperature near the banks. The central
depths he will not be able to sound.
XXIV.
February 26.
I have been reading the sermon or essay I sent you, to find in
it some clue to the tone of your note, and in vain—in vain, at
least, so far as a legitimate clue is concerned.
For surely you
have misinterpreted its meaning if you think it says that the
spirit of Humanity is to be stilled into silence, that the diviner
impulses may start to their supremacy. We do not reach
spirituality of character by spasmodic, unnatural cfforts to crush ·
the nature that is within us, but by slow and patient care to
develop and disengage it from its evil. It is not angelic, but
human excellence at which we are to aim; nor can we 'be
perfect as our Father is perfect' except in our degree. 'Every
man in his own order.' To become saints, we must not cease
to be men and women.
-
For man is not as God,
But then most God-like, being most a man.
The Fathers
185
And if there be any part of our nature which is essentially
human, and to effect the excision of which would destroy its
humanity, it is the craving for sympathy. The Perfect One
gave sympathy and wanted it. Gave it, as every page wil
show, wanted it—' Could ye not watch with me one hour?'
'Will ye also go away?'
go away?' 'Simon, the son of Jonas, lovest thou
me?' Found it, surely, even though His brethren believed not
in Him—found it in John, and Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus.
Though some of the following letters belong to 1850, it
has been considered better for an obvious reason to throw
them all together :—
XXV.
October, 1849.
I do not read the Fathers now. I know their system pretty
well, I believe, from having examined with great interest their
advocates' and their opponents' writings! and I am sensible of the
healing effect produced by such a system on the mind of those
who accept it. Nay, I even know that their errors are but forms
of truth which lie beneath them; false forms, which yet convey
spiritual truth to those who do not know or suspect the false-
hood of the form. The misfortune is, that I am certain they
are false-as false as Romanism-though even in that system
mariolatry and purgatory are material and gross statements of
spiritual facts, which I think our systems neglect. But then I
cannot by an act of volition receive a system for the sake of the
comfort which I know to be to me a lie. It is at my peril that I
thus falsify my inmost nature and consent to be deluded by a
figment. To those to whom it is not a lie, I do not dispute-
nay, I cordially, and, I hope, charitably, believe-that the
system may be elevating, purifying, life-giving; but I had rather
stand alone in a waste howling wilderness, tempted by Satan,
and conscious of having stripped myself of all unreality, than
accept the happiest consolation that the more inhabited world
could give me.
186 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
:
XXVI.
May, 1850.
Do you believe in God? Dare you not trust yourself like a
child to Him? Oh, what is your baptism worth if it has not
taught you that blessed central truth of all-that He is your
Father! Dare you so stifle His voice in your soul, which comes
in the simple rushings of earnest thought, and then call it
conscience? Are you sure that you may not be shutting out a
ray from heaven, although you fear that it is a meteor from
hell? . . . I tried no arguments against Romanism, for I feel
that Romanism is only an infinitely small and sensualistic embodi-
ment of truths-a living human form shrunk into a mummy-
with every feature there hideously like life, especially when it, by
force applied from without, by wires or galvanism, moves humanly
.. God made the soul to correspond with truth. Truth is its
own evidence, as the lightning-flash is, as the blessed sunlight is.
... Alas! alas! you do not believe that you have a soul—you
do not believe in God-you do not believe that His Spirit can find
your soul-you believe in the dial, and not in the sun-you dare
not be alone with Christ-you do not feel the solitary yet
humbling grandeur of being in His vast universe alone as He
was, with your Father.
His life is not the pattern of your life,
and His divine humanity is not the interpretation of the
mysteries of your solitary being. You cannot walk the valley
of the shadow of death fearlessly, as David did, because ‘Thou
art with me.' You must have a crowd of and a number of
other good men by some hundred thousands to assure you that
All this universe is God's blessed sacra-
you are not alone.
ment, the channel of His spirit to your soul, whereof He has
selected two things as types of all the rest the commonest of
all elements, water, and the commonest of all meals, a supper,
and you cannot find Him except in seven! Too many, or else
too few; but even in that protest against the Protestant limita-
tion of grace to two channels I recognise a truth, only distorted
and petrified as usual.
'A closer Walk with God'
187
Oh, be brave and wait! These are dark days-lonely days-
and our unbelieving impatience cannot bear to wait, but must
rashly, and by impetuous steps of our own, plunge after the
ignis fatuus of light. Peace at once! Light at once! I cannot
wait my time, and I will not! I do not say all this as one who
is utterly unable to comprehend 'the delusion of people who
cannot be content with the sound and excellent principles of our
incomparable liturgy.' I only comprehend too well the struggles
and the agonies of a soul that craves light and cannot find it.
And as to our 'incomparable Church,' why it does not require a
prophetic spirit to see that in ten years more she must be in
fragments, out of which fragments God will reconstruct some-
thing for which I am content to wait, in accordance with His
usual pian, which is to be for ever evolving fresh forms of life
out of dissolution and decay. If not in my time, why then still
I wait. I am alone now, and shall be till I die, and I am not
afraid to be alone in the majesty of darkness which His presence
peoples with a crowd, I ask now no sympathy but His. If He
should vouchsafe to give me more I shall accept it gratefully ;
but I am content to do without it, as many of his best and
bravest must do now.
Why cannot you live with Him? . . .
I have no superstitious evangelical horror of Romanism, but
Alas! alas! for the substitution of an artificial, created
conscience for the sound and healthy one of humanity, whose
tides are distinct and unmistakable in their noble music, like
those of nature's ocean in its irresistible swell!
XXVII.
November 25, 1850.
Till to-day I did not know of your loss, which, it seems, is
now no longer a fresh grief, so swiftly does time pass. No, God
and time are the only cures for sorrow, and they do cure. I
feel that the blest are the dead. To live is unvaried trial.
Your last letter seemed to breathe a misgiving about the
constancy of my trust and friendship, in consequence of your
change. You need not doubt: I wish you had taken a more
•
•
188
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
daring, braver, and truthful course. I wish you had dared to
live alone with God for a few years. I believe that you will not
find peace long in Rome. But the fact of your being there does
not alter my feeling towards you in one iota. Beneath, far
beneath all forms of the sight and feeling, I joyfully recognise
the unity of that spirit which forms the basis of all true lives.
At bottom we mean- -all good minds mean-substantially the
same thing; and I look forward more and more yearningly to
the day when we shall see this, as well as take it for granted.
For yourself I am in less apprehension; for I know that if you
are spared, you will not die a member of the Church of
Rome.¹
XXVIII.
I am where I was, gathering fresh accretions round the
nucleus of truth; I hold surer every day that my soul and God
seek each other, and am utterly fearless of the issue. I am but
'an infant crying in the dark, and with no language but a cry ;'
nevertheless I am not afraid of the dark. It is a grand awful
mystery! but God is in it, the light of the darkest night.
I am alone, lonelier than ever-sympathised with by none,
because I sympathise too much with all. But the All sympa-
thises with me. I have almost done with divinity-dogmatic
divinity, that is-except to lovingly endeavour to make out the
truth which lies beneath this or that poor dogma, miserably
overlaid as marble fonts are with whitewash.
•
I read Shakspeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Coleridge, Philip
Van Artevelde for views of man to meditate upon. instead of
theological caricatures of humanity; and I go out into the
country to feel God; dabble in chemistry, to feel awe of Him;
read the life of Christ, to understand, love, and adore Him; and
my experience is closing into this, that I turn with disgust from
everything to Christ. I think I get glimpses into His mind,
and I am sure that I love Him more and more. .. A sublime
feeling of a Presence comes about me at times, which makes
inward solitariness a trifle to talk about.
A prediction subsequently verified.
•
1
189
CHAPTER VII.
Letters of Mr. Robertson-Complexity of his Character-His sensitive-
ness-His Knowledge of Men-His Life in Society-Effect of
Climate upon him-Exquisite Perception of Natural Scenery—
Impressions received from Art, and how he used them-Appre-
ciation of Poetry-Intensity of Enthusiasm and of Indignation—
His Eloquence and its Characteristics-Hatred of the Reputation
of a 'Popular Preacher'-The natural Morbidity and the danger-
ous Tendencies of his Character-The Means he employed to
conquer them-IIis noble Truth and Self-devotion-Causes of the
Gloom which appears in his Letters.
Letters, August and September 1849.
IT
T was in this year 1849, that Mr. Robertson became
the constant correspondent of several persons. From
henceforth the account of his outward and his inward life is so
largely given by himself, that a biographer has fortunately
but little to say. But the letters and extracts of letters
need in some sort a preface, for many of them are so
peculiar, and even startling, from their extremely passionate
expressions and morbid excitement, that doubts have been
entertained as to the advisability of publishing them. But
if they had been kept back, so much of the real essence of
the man, so much of that which was most distinctive in
him, would be left undisclosed, that no true conception of
his character and of his genius would be possible. The
extreme complexity of that character, a complexity which
190 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
naturally accompanied its great powers, will always render
it liable to be mistaken. Apparent contradictions, ap-
parent inconsistencies, strange minglings of strength and
weakness, continually arise before us, as we read his letters.
It would be possible to give to the world a picture of him
the harmonies of whose colours would be easily seen by
all; but it would not be a true picture. The picture
painted in these letters is difficult to comprehend, and the
harmonies of its colours are subtly and perplexedly involved.
Many will not understand it, and not understanding will
misrepresent it; but to those who can find the key, it
will be as varied and interesting as it is full of suggestive
teaching.
The root of all that was peculiar in Mr. Robertson's
character and correspondence lay in the intense sensitive-
ness which pervaded his whole nature. His senses, his
passions, his imagination, his conscience, his spirit, were
so delicately wrought, that they thrilled and vibrated to
the slightest touch. His great power of sympathy arose
out of this sensitiveness.
My misfortune or happiness (he says) is power of sympathy.
I can feel with the Brahmin, the Pantheist, the Stoic, the Platonist,
the Transcendentalist, perhaps the Epicurean. At least I feel
the side of Utilitarianism which secms like truth, though I have
more antipathy to it than anything else. I can suffer with the
Tractarian, tenderly shrinking from the gulf blackening before
him, as a frightened child runs back to its mother from the dark,
afraid to be alone in the fearful loneliness; and I can also
agonise with the infidels, recoiling from the cowardice and false
rest of superstition. Many men can feel each of these separately
and they are happy. They go on straightforward, like a one-
eyed horse, seeing all clear on one side. But I feel them all at
once, and so far I am allseitig, ein ganzer Mann. But I am not
His Life in Society
191
such in this sense, that I can harmonise them all; I can only
feel them. For this greatness there must be an all-feeling heart
together with an all-seeing eye. This world and its inner music
is like a perfect band. Each instrument, alone, is harsh, in-
complete; all together are harmony. The world is a full
concert : he who hears only one tone, hears imperfectly; he who
hears all separately, hears out of tune, discordantly, and con-
fusedly he only understands the universe who can hear all or
most at once. So also with sight. To a perfect vision the
impression on two retinas is felt as only one.
Yet there is comfort in this thought. To feel all separately
is one step towards feeling all harmoniously. So a town begun
in different parts, as Munich, is painful to look at. In years or
centuries it will form one whole. Or a country whose railway
plans are only partially executed is unpleasant to journey over,
for you are perpetually interrupted in your travels. Yet the
time is coming when it shall be a perfect net work, and every
detached bit shall help to connect the rest, and communication
with every part shall be had. So I feel as much as I can. I
will get every kind of Bewusstsein. They will harmonise at
last.
His knowledge of men was also due to his sensitive
sympathy. He seemed to feel by it, as if by a sixth sense,
the character of those with whom he came into contact.
It was not through knowledge of the world, nor through
reasoning on the actions of men, that he recognised what
they were.
He felt them. Hence he had a very strange
and great power. He almost always felt in the presence of
others, not his own feelings, but theirs. He iden-
tified himself with them for a time. He was thus enabled
to reveal men to themselves, to tell them what their life
meant, and how to idealise it and to ennoble it; to draw
out in them what was best and highest; and all this with
a gracious tact, due also to his sensitiveness, which seldom
192 Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
did too little and never went too far. Thus he had pre-
eminently the gift of governing the hearts of men; and
it is high and deserved praise to say of him, that the two
great dangers which beset this gift,-the danger lest the
power of governing should be degraded into the lust of
dominion, the danger lest the desire of retaining that
power should end in truckling to men, or in suppression of
the truth through fear of giving offence,-were always by
him avoided and abhorred.
His sensitiveness followed him into society, and consti-
tuted his pleasure and his pain. He was easily jarred; but
when in tune with those around him, when in the com-
pany of those he loved and trusted, the harmony of his
nature imparted itself to all around him. In his happier
moods he was as radiant as a child: he joined with a
fascinating cheerfulness in the games and merriment of
young people; it seemed a relief to him to throw off with
them the whole burden of life, and to forget the sorrow
and disappointment with which his career was beset. His
whole being blossomed under the sunshine of love and
comprehension in such society he diffused peace, and
drew out from each, all that was best and purest; but
where he felt that he was suspected and misunderstood, he
would often sit silent for the whole evening.
The aspect of outward nature, which was society to him,
affected him in a like manner. He basked and seemed
to live more vividly in broad sunshine. On the other hand,
when his nervousness had increased from the pressure of
disease, it made all the difference between rapidity of
thought, ease of arrangement of his subject, and laborious.
failure, whether he wrote in a room which faced to the
south or north. At that time, and in a lesser degree
Impressions from Nature and Art
193
always, a gloomy day influenced him like a misfortune, and
an ugly, inharmonious colour brought on nervous irritation.
He had therefore an exquisite perception of natural
scenery. Those who have heard his sermons will re-
member how often and delightedly he spoke of the sun-
sets at Brighton: not indulging in vague description, but,
with the artist's power of seeing, italicising, as it were, the
essential and characteristic points of form and colour in
the clouds and sky. His wanderings in the Tyrol and
Switzerland were never forgotten. Certain scenes, espe-
cially, seem to have been engraved upon his memory.
There is a vivid description of one of these in one of his
lectures upon Poetry which is worth quoting :-
I wish I could describe one scene which is passing before
my memory at this moment, when I found myself alone in a
solitary valley in the Alps, without a guide, and a thunderstorm
coming on I wish I could explain how every circumstance
combined to produce the same feeling, and ministered to
unity of impression: the slow wild wreathing of the vapour
round the peaks, concealing their summits, and imparting
in semblance their own motion, till each dark mountain-form
seemed to be mysterious and alive; the eagle-like plunge
of the lammergeier, the bearded vulture of the Alps; the
rising of the flock of choughs, which I had surprised at their
feast on carrion, with their red beaks and legs, and their wild
shrill cries startling the solitude and silence, till the blue
lightning streamed at last, and the shattering thunders crashed
as if the mountains must give way. And then came the feelings
which in their fulness man can feel but once in life: mingled
sensations of awe and triumph, and defiance of danger-pride,
rapture, contempt of pain, humbleness, and intense repose, as if
all the strife and struggle of the elements were only uttering the
unrest of man's bosom : so that in all such scenes there is a
O
VOL. I.
194 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
feeling of relief, and he is tempted to cry out exultingly, There!
there! All this was in my heart, and it was never said out until
now.
Here the accurate delineation of the outward scene and
the immediate combination of it with the mental analogue
to it in his own mind, are peculiarly characteristic of his
genius. He moralised Nature, not wilfully, but uncon-
sciously. Phenomena lay in his brain as pictures upon
sensitive paper, till thought seized on them as illustrations;
and in proportion to the vividness with which the impres-
sion had been received, was the clearness and concinnity
of the thought and its illustration. Nothing can be better,
e.g. than the comparison of the invisible Church existing in
the idea of God, and the visible Church mixed with human
infirmity and sin, to the Rhone as it issues purple and clear
from the Lake of Geneva, and the same river discoloured
after its junction with the Arve.
The same sensitiveness regulated the effect of Art upon
him. He had no ear for music; but, in certain states of
feeling, beautiful sound-only as beautiful sound, not as
scientific music-made his mind creative, and lingered so
upon his ear that he could not sleep at night. His love of
paintings and sculpture arose not so much from the educa-
tion of the connoisseur, as from the feelings they awakened.
He allowed a picture to produce its influence upon him,
without, at least at first, an active exercise of his own mind
upon the picture. His was the 'wise passiveness' which
allowed the spirit of the work to have its own way with him
before he began to criticise. Two illustrations of this will
be found in his lectures on Poetry: onc, a Madonna at
Blenheim, which he could not gaze upon without being con-
scious of a calming influence;' the other, a print of a dying
J
Impressions from Nature and Art
195
camel in the desert, anticipating in despair its doom from
the vultures. 'You cannot look at the print,' he says,
'without a vivid sense and conception of despair. You go
through street after street before the impression ceases to
haunt you.'
The impressions thus received he retained. He had not,
on their reception, 'hooked them to some useful end,' and
so destroyed their freshness and universality. Afterwards
they came in naturally and freely, as illustrations of ideas.
and assistance to thought, and, as was often the case, in dif-
ferent connections and with different meanings. In Art, as
in other things, he grasped the spirit and scorned the letter.
Hence there was a freedom of usage possible to him, which
could not belong to the mere critic who had settled the
purport of the picture, and so limited its meaning. He was
one of the first to recognise the genius displayed in the early
efforts of the pre-Raphaelites. When most persons saw only
the crude, hard colouring, the ungracious outlines, and the
startling way in which features were represented, as if they
were seen through a magnifying-glass, he felt at once the
power and the truth in the new school of Art, and prophesied
its future influence and excellence.
The same principle belongs to his appreciation of poetry.
He allowed it to make its own impression. Delicacy of
passion and subtlety of feeling made that impression indelible.
Presenting his heart in passiveness thus to receive, it was in
his power to gain many diverse ideas from the same portion
of any poem, the diversity depending on his state of health
or mind at the time. The impressions and ideas thus
received he then assumed lordship over, and used them as
it pleased him. He brought intellect to bear upon them,
and became the student and the critic. Thus he relates in
02
196 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
:
his letters, that late one night he was reading the murder
scene in 'Macbeth;' and it arose so vividly before his
imagination, that he went upstairs to bed with almost the
very dread which Macbeth had in his own heart, and was
obliged to go back again, to prove to himself that he was
not a child afraid of its own shadow. It was easy to see
that out of such a strong realisation as this, was born the
power which produced his critical explanation of that very
scene in his lecture upon Poetry. He had been himself
Macbeth. When he divided himself from that experience,
he looked back to it, and argued upon it.
Hence it was also a unique pleasure to hear him read
poetry. 'No one,' says one of his friends, 'ever interpreted
more musically the rhythm, or with more appreciation the
beauties, of a poet.' But he seldom read aloud; he required
to feel that those who listened, listened with the heart.
In the same way as he felt Art, he felt the thoughts of
books and men, with an acuteness prophetic of brain-disease.
The pleasure he received on hearing of a noble act was so
keen, that it bordered upon pain. Men still recall the deep,
almost stern enthusiasm of joy with which he spoke of the
great obedience of the soldiers who died in the wreck of the
'Birkenhead ;' and the tones of his voice when he described
the cry of the Hungarian nobles, 'Let us die for our king,
Maria Theresa!' The indignation, on the other hand, with
which he heard of a base act, was so intense that it rendered
him sleepless. His wrath was terrible, and it did not
evaporate in words. But it was Christ-like indignation.
With those who were weak, crushed with remorse, fallen, his
compassion, longsuffering, and tenderness were as beautiful
as they were unfailing. But falsehood, hypocrisy, the sin of
the strong against the weak, stirred him to the very depths
His Eloquence
197
of his being. I have seen him,' writes one of his friends,
'grind his teeth and clench his fist when passing a man who,
he knew, was bent on destroying an innocent girl.' 'My
blood,' he writes himself, after a conversation on the wrongs
of women, 'was running liquid fire.'
From all this arose his eloquence and its power. His
mind was crowded with images which he had received and
arranged in an harmonious order. With these he lit up the
subjects of his speech, flashing upon abstruse points the ray
of an illustration, and that with a fulness of apt words, and
with, at the same time, a reticence, which kept the point.
clear in the midst of the illustration.
He had also an extraordinary power of expression and
arrangement. This belonged to him partly from the sen-
sitiveness of his ear to rhythm-for, like many who have no
ear for music, he was acutely conscious of the melody of
ordered words-and partly from the sensitiveness of his
imagination and of his intellect: the imagination unsatisfied,
unless it had grasped the heart of the thought; the intellect
unsatisfied, unless it had cut, polished, and placed in the
finest setting, the diamond of the thought. To such a degree
is this true, that even where the form of a sentence seems
to be faulty, its force is even lost if the words be transposed.
'I cared almost as much for the form,' writes one, as for the
substance of what he said, and often asked him, "You said
so and so; tell me how you put it?" This he could not
endure.'
So entirely was his heart in his words, that, in public
speaking especially, he lost sight of everything but his sub-
ject. His self-consciousness vanished. He did not choose
his words, or think about his thoughts. He not only
possessed, but was possessed by, his idea; and when all was
T.
198 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
over, and the reaction came, he had forgotten, like a dream,
words, illustrations, almost everything. It was always as
great a mental exertion to recall as to think out a sermon;
and he was frequently unable, if he waited till Monday, to,
write out the notes of what he had delivered on Sunday,
unless it had been partially written before-hand. After some
of his most earnest and passionate utterances, he has said to
a friend, 'Have I made a fool of myself?'
!
But though he was carried away by his subject, he was
sufficiently lord over his own excitement to prevent any loud
or unseemly demonstration of it; he never transgressed the
boundaries of what is called pulpit modesty. If the most
conquering eloquence for the English people be that of the
man who is all but mastered by his excitement, but who, at
the very point of being mastered, masters himself-appa-
rently cool, while he is at a white heat-so as to make the
audience glow with the fire, and at the same time respect the
self-possessed power, of the orator-the man being always
felt as greater than the man's feelings; if that be the
eloquence which most tells upon the English nation, he had
that eloquence. He spoke under tremendous excitement,
but it was excitement reined in by will. He held in his hand,
when he began his sermon, a small slip of paper, with a few
notes upon it. He referred to it now and then; but before
ten minutes had gone by, it was crushed to uselessness in his
grasp; for he knit his fingers together over it, as he knit his
words over his thought. His gesture was subdued: some-
times a slow motion of his hand upwards; sometimes bending
forward, his hand drooping over the pulpit ; sometimes erect-
ing himself to his full height with a sudden motion, as if up-
raised by the power of the thought he spoke. His voice-a
musical, low, clear, penetrative voice-seldom rose; and
His Eloquence
199
when it did, it was in a deep volume of sound, which was
not loud, but toned like a great bell. It thrilled, also, but
that was not so much from feeling as from the repression
of feeling. Towards the end of his ministry he was wont
to stand almost motionlessly erect in the pulpit, with his
hands loosely lying by his sides or grasping his gown; his
pale, thin face, and tall, emaciated form, seeming, as he
spoke, to be glowing as alabaster glows when lit up by an
inward fire. And, indeed, brain and heart were on fire. He
was being self-consumed. Every sermon in those latter
days burnt up a portion of his vital power. Weakness of
body made him more excitable, and every excitement made
him weaker.
But his eloquence was not only the eloquence of apt ex-
pression, of apt illustration, and of excited feeling it was
also the eloquence of thought. He united, in a rare combi-
nation, imaginative with dialectic power. He felt a truth
before he proved it; but when once it had been felt, then
his logical power came into play. He disentangled it from
the crowd of images and thoughts which clustered round it.
He exercised a serene choice over this crowd, and rejected
what was superabundant. There was no confusion in his
mind. Step by step he led his hearers from point to point,
till, at last, he placed them on the summit, whence they
could see all the landscape of his subject in harmonious and
connected order. He hated an isolated thought. He was
not happy till he had ranged it under a principle. Once
there, it was found to be linked to a thousand others.
Hence arose his affluence of ideas; his ability for seizing
remote analogies; his wide grasp and his lucid arrangement
of his subject; his power of making it, if abstruse, clear; if
common, great; if great, not too great for human nature's
200
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
į
daily food. For he was not only a thinker, but the thinker
for Man. All thought he directed to human ends. Far
above his keenness of sympathy for the true and beautiful
was his sympathy for the true and beautiful in union
with living hearts. He strove always fervently to make
the ideal real by connecting it with humanity.
In connection with this power of eloquence was his recoil
from its results. When he fancied that he was expected to
shine, he would relapse into the most icy reserve. He seldom
talked much in general society. He never seemed to have
any feeling of superiority.
Unless elicited (writes a friend)-and that was done with
difficulty-no one could have guessed the mass of information
on all subjects which lay beneath that playful and quiet exterior,
but nothing could be more brilliant and magical than the flow
of ideas when they did come. He would go on uninterruptedly
for hours. Yet he was ever eager to learn, listened to others.
deferentially, and spoke, even when most excited, with extreme
modesty.
Every mental nerve, so to speak, of his delicate nature
quivered with pain at being made the common talk and the
wonder of a fashionable watering-place. If he hated one
thing more than another, it was the reputation of being a
popular preacher. He abhorred the very name, as some-
thing which brought with it contamination. A chivalrous
gentleman, he shrank from the parade of show, the vulgaris-
ing of his name, the obtrusion of his merits upon the public.
Moreover, he felt that he was more than a fine speaker; and
yet, most unfortunately, he convinced himself that his hearers
only saw in him a beautiful talker, and not a teacher. Much
of the indignant scorn and pride which rushed out sometimes
in his words, when he spoke of the common opinions and
Strength and Weakness
rules of the world, may have taken their keenness from this
conviction.
201
Not very long after he came to Brighton, a subscription
was opened to present him with a testimonial. A book,
elaborately bound, was placed to receive names in the read-
ing-room of the Library. Mr. Robertson was indignant.
One day the book mysteriously disappeared. It was never
known, but shrewdly suspected, that he had himself carried.
off the obnoxious volume, and committed it in triumph to
the flames. There are praises which are insults, which
cannot be received without the receiver feeling self-con-
tempt. He could not understand what he had done to de-
serve this torture. Such applause galled him, and stung
him into galling words. He spoke of being made a stump-
orator, of the infinite degradation inflicted on him by popular
opinion, of the self-scorn which it engendered. He wrote of
it, at the beginning of his ministry at Brighton, in words as
strong as those which follow, which date from its close :-
If you knew how sick at heart I am with the whole work of
parlement, talkee, palaver, or whatever else it is called; how
lightly I hold the 'gift of the gab;' how grand and divine the
realm of silence appears to me in comparison; how humiliated
and degraded to the dust I have felt, in perceiving myself quietly
taken by gods and men for the popular preacher of a fashionable
watering-place; how slight the power seems to me to be given
by it of winning souls; and how sternly I have kept my tongue
from saying a syllable or a sentence, in pulpit or on platform,
because it would be popular! . . .
There was something morbid in this. He was so wrung
by the false admiration which was given him, that he could
not feel the true reverence of those who formed the body of
his congregation. Indeed, there was an element of morbid-
202 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ness in all the developments of his sensitiveness. But it
was a morbidness which had not grown upon him from
without like a fungus on a tree, but which was the natural
outcome of his constitution and temperament. It was born
with him. He never could have been entirely free from it,
unless he had been a soldier in constant warfare. It was
increased by physical disease, till it threatened to become a
tyrannous power. But here, where his greatest weakness
lay, appeared his greatest strength. If he could not exactly
say, 'Most gladly, therefore, would I glory in mine infirmity,
that the power of Christ may rest upon me,' yet those who
have closely known his character can say for him that he
turned his necessity to glorious gain. He transmuted the
dross of his nature into gold by the alchemy of Christian
effort. 'He was the most inflexible person,' says an inti-
mate friend, with all his almost morbid delicacy of feeling
-an iron will, impossible to move when it was fixed by
principle.' Another writes-
(
His sharpest griefs never got the better of his power of con-
centrating himself in thought or in action. He could put them
aside, as if they did not exist. Some of his finest sermons were
thought out when distress of mind, it might be supposed, only
gave him leave to feel. Some of his hardest work in the world
was done when his spirit was most keenly wounded.
He possessed a clear view of the dangers to which he
was exposed by his sensitiveness and impressibility. He
might have been wrecked on the same rock as Coleridge.
But his resolution was early taken: he would be, by God's
help, a man after the pattern of Christ Jesus. He laboured
from his earliest years to conquer the perilous tendencies of
his nature. They arose sometimes from the excessive
nervous irritation which the fierce excitement of mental
Strength and Weakness
203
exertion produced. He met them then by severe physical
exercise. Into this, when it was possible for him—and that
was but seldom-he entered with the eagerness with which
he did everything. He had a lithe form; his step was
quick, his carriage soldier-like, and it was refreshing to meet
him as he walked, his motion breathed so of activity.
It was almost amusing to go with him when he went out
shooting over a moor. He was entirely absorbed in his
work. He would walk for hours after a single bird, and
reluctantly leave off the pursuit of this coy grouse when
night began to fall. He would sit for hours in a barrel sunk
in the border of a marsh, waiting for wild-duck. His ex-
citement kept him from feeling weariness, ennui, or discom-
fort. These hours of delight he obtained about once a year,
and, in the earlier years of his ministry at Brighton, they
refreshed him. But towards the end, when he had lost
nervous force, the severity of the exercise which he some-
times took was a mistake. He reduced irritation by it,
but he robbed himself of strength when he had none to
spare.
But when the dangers to which his character was liable
arose from mental or spiritual causes, he met them differ-
ently. When he was tortured by the noise of slander which
surrounded him, and by the petty party opposition to which
he was subjected, he had recourse to the healing influence
of poetry, or took refuge in the study of chemistry, and in
the dignity and calmness of the laws of that science forgot
for a time the pain he suffered. He did not fall into the
common mistake of endeavouring to eradicate his natural
qualities because they seemed to tend to evil; he rather
tried to restrain, balance, and exalt them by a higher motive.
He fought with evil, he said, as Perseus fought with the sea-
204
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
=
monster-from above. His rule of life was not 'Crush what
is natural,' but 'Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the
lusts of the flesh.' Far above all other motives was his love
to Christ. That was the root of his life, and the life of ail
his effort. It was a conscious, personal, realised devotion.
It was too hallowed a feeling for him to speak much of. It
coloured and pervaded every thought; was an unceasing
presence with him; lay at the foundation of every endeavour,
and was brought to bear on every action in life, on every
book he read, and almost on every word he spoke.
Temptations and doubts he tried to solve by working
among the poor. The indulging in mere aspirations he
would not permit himself; he freed his ideal world from its
atmosphere of sloth and vague cloud-land, by putting, as far
as he could, his aspirations into action. No work was too
small for him. He did not despise the dullest intellect; and
was fair, patient, and gentle in argument, even with the
intolerant. He listened to a child with interest and consi-
deration. Somehow, he reached the most dense in a
Sunday-school class. He led the children to elaborate for
themselves the thought he wished to give them, and to make
it their own. No pains or patience were spared in doing
this. It was strange to see so fiery a nature drudging on so
meekly, and gently, and perseveringly, content to toil at
striking sparks out of apparently hopeless clay. But un-
tiring earnestness and unflinching resolution in duty made
him do all things as in God's sight.
The mere pleasure of using fine words about religious
feelings, and loud-sounding phrases about social wrongs, he
despised with a true man's scorn. He spoke much of
Courtesy; and a friend has said of him, that his bearing
towards inferiors was marked by the most polished delicacy;
C
His Contest with Himself
205
that his consideration for the comfort of servants was so great,
that they adored him.' He spoke much of Truth, and he
was crowned with its crown-the crown of thorns. He
spoke much about Self-sacrifice, and he gave up his own
pleasures and pursuits to almost anyone. He grudged a
sixpence spent on personal gratification, and retrenched in
what was even needful, that he might give to the necessities
of others, and he died at his post with his armour on to
the last. He spoke much about the wrongs of woman; and
it is very touching to know that during the last year of his
life he frequently went forth at night, and endeavoured to
redeem the fallen women of Brighton. This was the way in
which he waged the battle against himself. It was a stern
and a concealed contest. His suffering was great; but he
kept it to himself. Only to one friend he compares himself
to the Spartan boy who held his cloak around him while the
fox was gnawing at his entrails. The physical pain he
endured during the last six months of his life was excruciating.
And yet, through all this, nothing is finer than his quiet
devotion to all small duties, his steadfast mastery over him-
self, his unwavering adherence to a course of teaching which
brought upon him the censure and slander which, however
his reason might despise them, stung his heart to the last.
But he could not always restrain himself. Sometimes,
when he was sure of sympathy, his passion broke forth in a
redundance of sorrowful words; or his views of life, when
physical exhaustion had made him less master over dark
thoughts, were poured out in the relief of almost wild expres-
sion. It is these passages in his letters which his friends
have hesitated to give to the public. But without them, I
repeat, any view of his character would be incomplete. Its
strength could not be understood unless through what men
206 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
may call its weakness. Moreover, in these states of excite-
ment-which were partly natural and partly unnatural, partly
true and partly untrue- -some of his finest thoughts and most
delicate analyses of feeling, and some of most startling elo-
quence, were produced. Pain made him creative: it was when
his heart's blood was being drawn, that the heart of his genius
was revealed.
The letters which are inserted after this and the follow-
ing chapter were written in 1849 and 1850. It must be
distinctly kept in mind by the reader who wishes to dis-
tinguish between the work of Mr. Robertson and his feelings,
who wishes to separate the apparent unmanliness of some
of his expressions from the manliness of his life-first, that in
these years ill health of a serious character began to throw
its sombre shade over life, and extreme nervous irritability
and pain to follow every intellectual exertion; secondly,
that in these years, also, he recognised clearly, with a sorrow
proportioned to his passionate desire for sympathy, the
loneliness to which his teaching doomed him, and the
systematic opposition which he prophesied, only too truly,
would increase year by year in virulence. One other cause
there is for the gloomy hue of some of his letters: it is, that
few men have ever felt more deeply than he with the sorrow
of the world. Brought much into contact with grief, and
pain, and guilt-realising by the force of his imagination
the sufferings of the battle-field, and the cry of thousands,
homeless, miserable, and done to death by the selfishness.
of men—appalled by the sin and crime which he saw every-
where and in their true light, he was often crushed to the
earth by the thought of the guilt and suffering of Humanity.
He felt them personally, acutely, as if they were his own.
It was no fictitious pain, no ideal grief; he could not put it
Letters and Extracts
207
aside. And, in connection with this, the terrible contradic-
tion which all this sorrow, pain, and sin seemed to give to the
truth that the Ruler of this world is Love, pressed upon him
with a force which fiercely demanded a solution. Abraham's
awful question, 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?' rang in his ears, and again and again was the ex-
pression of his inmost thought. He felt that life was not
worth living, unless he could find the answer to that question.
In proportion to the strange depth of his power of suffering
with men, and to the almost preternatural keenness with
which he felt the mystery of the great problem of the universe,
was the slowness with which he found the answer. But he
did find it, as the reader of his letters will see-and in the
Cross of Christ. Once found, he acquiesced in its teaching,
quietly and faithfully. All questioning, all doubt left him
as he drew near to the close of his career. He could look
beyond the scene in which Humanity suffers, to the larger
stage where suffering has its result in perfection, and bow
humbly before the wisdom of the infinite Charity. But, in
the meantime, the inward pain he suffered, both from the
doubt and that which suggested it, continually emerges in
his writings, and colours his views of life.
Letters and Extracts.
XXIX.
August, 1849.
My dear
--The translation I sent you of Fichte is not
the best. It was reckoned a failure: so, if you like to wait till
1 See, for proof of this, Letters in Vol. II. pp. 99 et seq. I draw
particular notice to these letters, because it has been widely asserted that
his opinions did not give him peace of mind, and that the gloom of his
life was owing to his views of Truth being unsatisfactory to himself.
208 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
the new one comes, which will be to-morrow, you can; or, it
you prefer that, and then compare it with the other, perhaps
that may be better, as it is only by degrees, and with some toil,
that anyone gets to Fichte's meaning. I have begun to-day a
work of his, which I had never read before, with wonder and
delight-partly because it must perforce elevate, and partly
because it is but the scientific exposition of views to which
gradually and unscientifically I have worked my own way; in
which I may henceforth progress, but go back never. The first
chapter singularly resembles, even in expression, the views of
last Sunday's sermon,-God being apprehended by thought, and
in no other way approachable by us. Yet it is scarcely singular;
for Plato, or the little I read of Plato, gave me an impulse which
can never end through eternity, and Fichte's view is scientific
Platonism.
My whole being, love and thought, must form themselves
round this, and after the spirit of the supersensuous, or else
never exist at all. Oh! that I could grasp the sublime truths
which have floated before my soul as the solution of life's
mystery for years, and which to the mass of minds are but the
world of shadows-to me the only realities! . . . . I am com-
pelled to penetrate into a region that is invisible, and there,
somehow, in the eternal and the unalterable, which is not
subject to the vicissitudes of that which is perishable-transient
emotions, vexatious circumstances—I seem to find a home. . . .
But this is an unsatisfactory, and, what is worse, an unproduc-
tive state. It may be grand to expatiate in a world of feeling
and loneliness into which human voices do not penetrate. But
we have a work to do on this earth; and I am almost sure that
that work is done best by those minds which are definite, deal
in formulas, and are not haunted by the sick dream of the un-
found beauty, and pervaded by a conviction of the unreality of
everything except thought and the invisible.
From within we must fetch our strength; for dependence
upon aught external to our own souls leaves us strengthless,
when its presence is removed or delayed. . . . Our best blessed-
ness can only be shaken to the centre by ourselves. Life is what
(
My Sins Nailed Him to the Tree'
209
we make it. And there are delicately-organised minds in which
a mental error—a fault in the tone of thinking—can produce
more misery than crime can in coarser minds. . . .
XXX.
My dear Friend,-I do most earnestly rejoice that people
have felt an improvement and a softened purified tone in my
ministry.
I will endeavour to develope the Catechism into the sense in
which I am at present content to accept its very words. 'He
bore my sins,' for instance I am willing to say, and in deep
humiliation, in a deeper sense than many mean; though I
doubt not, because deep and because connected with the great
principle which awfully pervades the universe, therefore, for that
very reason, counted a heterodox sense.
It is often said, 'My sins nailed Him to the Tree. There is
a sense in which this contains a deep and extensive truth—
another in which it is merely the statement of an absurdity.
The crisis of the conflict between the kingdoms of Good and
Evil took place in the death of Christ the highest manifesta-
tion of Good in Him—the highest manifestation of Evil in the
persons of those who saw the Divinest Excellence, and called it
Satanic Evil. To call evil good and good evil-to call Divine
Good Satanic Wickedness, there is no state lower than this. It
is the rottenness of the core of the heart: it is the unpardonable
because irrecoverable sin.
With this evil, in its highest development, the Son of Man
came into collision. He died unto sin. The Prince of this
World came and found nothing congenial in Him.
He was
his victim, not his subject.
So far as I belong to that kingdom or fight in that warfare, it
may be truly said, the Saviour died by my sin. Every time I
hate a good man for his meekness or his goodness-find bad
motives to account for the excellence of those who differ from
me-judge sins of weakness more severely than sins of wicked-
ness-shut God out of my soul to substitute some lie of my own
VOL. I.
P
210
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
or of society,-I am a sharer in the spirit to which He fell a
victim. He bare my sins in His body on the Tree.
Similarly, He Himself says of the prophets-'The blood of
all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the
world, shall be required of this generation.' Why? Because
they bare witness that they allowed the deeds of their fathers.'
In their day they did the same thing in spirit which their fathers
did in theirs. So in the Sanhedrim Stephen saw the same
brood of vipers which had stung Moses and the Prophets. So,
too, the indulger of hatred is guilty of murder, and takes his
place with murderers.
But to say that He bore my sins in this sense-that He was
haunted by an evil conscience and its horrors for this lie of mine,
and that cruel word, &c., is to make a statement of which it is
not enough to say that it is false: it is absolutely unmeaning, as
well as destructive of all real conception of the enormity of sin.
No effort can get any conception of what is meant by conscience
of another's sin. It represents Him as suffering under a
delusion, and makes the whole agony base itself upon a figment,
as unreal as a recovery at law under the noms de guerre
of 'Doe and Roe,' invented by those who had to defend them-
selves against the monkish chicanery of the Middle Ages by
subtleties as ingenious as their own. Quite rightly do the
advocates of this 'Redemption by a figment of Law' call this
system of justification a 'forensic proceeding.'
(
XXXI.
Enclosed you will find one of those letters which provoke me,
though meant in kindness. Is it pride which makes such
things offensive, since annoyance implies conscious superiority
to the praiser, and seems inconsistent with the apparent humility
which disclaims power? I think not, Two gentlemen come
into my chapel-one uncertain of my orthodoxy, the other
strongly prejudiced against the belief of it: both go away
satisfied that all is right, and magnanimously condescend to
intimate approval, which, being interpreted, means all is harm-
*
Spirit of Criticism
ess, old, regular, dull. Whereat I have no right to take offence;
put the assumption of a right to approve is a little galling,
because it implies the idea of being in possession of a measure
by which the approver is entitled to try, and, if necessary,
blame. To award approbation, is to retain the power and right
of awarding rebuke. From an indisputable superior that can
be borne, from a friend it is delightful, for then it is only the
answer of a second and a purified conscience. No one is
insulted by what his own conscience, the most sacred part of
himself, affirms. But when it comes from a stranger who has
no claim to friendship, and has no right at least to assume
superiority, it seems to me very like the comments of a master
on a schoolboy's exercise, which he certainly would have scored
if it had had faults, and perhaps even given him an imposition.
I disclaim the power of ninety-nine out of every hundred who
hear me to even judge of what I say; and that, not because I
think myself superior to them, and am therefore proud, but
because I live in a realm of thought which is not theirs, and
they do not know the existence of the problems which I cannot
solve, nor can they guess the difficulties. In entering the
narrow channel of the Bermudas, the pilot stands not at the
helm, but at the bows, looking down into the deep water, clear
as crystal, to see the coral reef above which, or rather through
which, he is threading his dangerous way. Sometimes there is
scarcely twice the ship's own breadth between point and point;
yet between those he must go, cannot pause, and ten feet
divergence on either side would be shipwreck. He may do his
work very awkwardly, and even be conscious of great mistakes;
but with the most perfect humility he may utterly disclaim the
power of any one standing on the shore to judge his seaman-
ship, who is looking along a smooth, level surface, instead of
looking down upon a bed of rocks that lie beneath the surface.
No wonder that his tacks, and turns, and zigzag eccentricities of
course are perfectly unintelligible. 'I would have steered direct
to that point.' 'Yes, my good friend, but did you see the rock?
and if not, what can you know about the matter? Come up
here, and then give me an opinion if you can.' Now, the pilot
2II
P 2
212 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
who is up there, is not a wiser man than the other, but he has
got a different point of view, and from that point he defies all
human judgment, until you go and sit beside him.
XXXII.
You ask for an explanation of Tennyson's expression-
When I felt the days before me. 1
I think it is one of those of which you cannot distil the
quintessence without crushing the flower. The work of analysis
in the laboratory is always a coarse one. Earthen crucibles,
and hammers, and cold furnaces, and blowpipes, no doubt,
scientifically resolve all things into their elements, but the
graceful forms of things disappear in the midst of the rude
apparatus. However, I will try.
Our connection with the future may be a dead or a living one.
Freshness of anticipation and hope make it living. Repeated
disappointment or satiety dull that feeling, and, as it were,
benumb the sense by which we vividly felt the connection thrill
our being. A wire of metal connects you with the electrical
machine, and every spark travels to your frame.
A rod of glass
connects you too, but not electrically, being a non-conductor.
You do not feel the innate real force, the spiritual life which is
in the machinery before you. It is only machinery. Or, again,
did you never in fishing feel the life that is throbbing at the
other end of the line when a fresh untired fish is running out all
the tackle? Did you never observe how all this changes into a
dull, dead drag when either the animal is worn out, or a piece
of lifeless sea-weed has got entangled on your hook, and draws
it perpendicularly, heavily downwards? Magnify that-fancy
the vigorous pull of a whale drawing a thousand fathoms of rope
7
G
This is not Tennyson's expression; but the explanation applies.
truly to the lines, which are-
'O! to feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard the days before me, and the tumult of my life.'
¦
On Symbols and Souvenirs
213
after him, and the boat joyously plunging after, at an appalling
rate through an ocean which has no bounds visible on either
side, the gunwale brought level with the waves, and the breakers
dancing in their spray, with just sufficient risk to make the
excitement wilder; and then, I suppose, you have a kind of
illustration of a poet's young heart when he feels the days
before him, the wild pulsation of the strife.' When the life of
the future slackens, the mighty mass slowly gravitates, and the
pull is a dead one, down rather than up; or else it rises to take
breath, and lies flat-to plunge no more into the unfathomable.
XXXIII.
September, 1849.
My dear
-What do I think of souvenirs? I like them
much, provided they are not costly. Yet I know not whether I
do not like even more to dispense with symbols altogether. For
they gather round them, by constant use, new associations, by
which the old are obliterated, the precious and hallowed first
ones. All things worn or often seen are liable to this. The old
habit of erecting an altar of stones to commemorate any signal
event was different. It was revisited only at the interval of
years, and infallibly brought back the old feeling with which it
had stood in connection once. But ornaments, and such things,
collect accretions of daily incidents which they suggest; and the
symbol does not naturally, but only arbitrarily, recall the person
or idea intended to be consecrated by it. I have an insuperable
objection to presents-almost a monomania; I am happier
without receiving.
There is a pretension in what is costly, too, that is provoking.
It seems to affect to interpret in one kind of value that which is
precious in another order altogether-feeling by gold—and feel-
ing is simply incommensurable except by feeling. Gold no more
interprets it or symbolises it than things seen can resemble things
heard. Whereas trifles - humble and unpretending - do not
challenge an indignant comparison between the preciousness of
the material and the preciousness of the feeling, and simply
standing as memorials may become valuable.
214
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
I do not think I have rightly made clear, even yet, why pur-
chased presents dissatisfy me. The reason is, perhaps dimly felt,
rather than definitely made plain, even to myself. It has been an
instinct which I have not thought it necessary to analyse. Let
me try. I think I am pained rather than pleased by such sou-
venirs, because they are arbitrary symbols of regard. They are
like the symbols used in algebra to represent any number, say
745. You take a letter, x or y. You say that y equals and
represents 745-a connection purely arbitrary. To-morrow y
may represent 20 if you say that it is to do so. It is only by an
act of the will that the letter represents a number. Take it out
of that connection-let the arbitrary meaning pass-and the
natural idea suggested is a sound.
Similarly with purchased presents. I get a piece of metal or
stone, and say, 'let it represent my regard.' This is arbitrary,
for the only connection which subsists between it and me, really,
is that I paid for it a certain number of pounds or shillings. It
is not my idea or device executed in metal (for then, indeed, the
metal does become a secondary, and the device a primary thought
—provided the material be not so costly as to overwhelm and
annihilate the idea of design and designer); nor is it my work,
nor anything which is peculiarly associated with my history, for
the laws of such tokens absurdly lay a stress upon the gift being
new. So that in fact I have merely given my friend an algebraic
symbol, which might have represented another as well as myself,
and will in truth some day represent him, if he die, and it become
the property of a relation. Now it may even happen, and I
think generally does, that this arbitrary meaning is not the one
naturally suggested by the symbol, but is rather one which it
requires a distinct effort of the will to call up and recreate. I use
the pencil-case which my friend has given me, daily; but that
daily use surrounds it with manifold associations. I used it,
perhaps, for instance, to write a letter in some desolate place in
the Alps, where I could get no ink: well, that association, in
spite of myself, rivets itself to the token of my friend's affection.
It lies before me ever after, suggesting that sublime scenery, and
calling up the forms and features of the friends or strangers who
On Symbols and Souvenirs
215
were with me then, rather than those of the donor. Or, perhaps,
instead of one vivid association, it may connect itself with innu-
merable weaknesses which it suggests when I look at it,—
sometimes one, sometimes another. It is very plain that its
representation of my friend is now no longer the natural, but
only an arbitrary one. I can by an act of will recall the algebraic
meaning, and recollect that it was said, Let case = A B C's
regard. But by an act of will I can also recall that regard itself
without the presence of the pencil-case; so that the symbol is
no real assistance to keeping him in mind, because it requires
exactly the same effort which would have succeeded without its
intervention.
I have no objection to receive costly presents from persons I do
not value (except so far as a feeling of independence revolts against
accepting them), because I possess a thing which is in itself worth
having, and I do not feel anything inadequate in the represent-
ation, for they represent themselves these valuable gifts, which
is all I want. But with any one for whom I feel regard, a
souvenir provokes me to look at it, just as an illuminated cloud
does at sunset, because I know the glory will soon pass and
leave the dull cloud behind alone. The gold will be there on
the finger or on the table as usual; but the beauty of its signifi-
cance will be gone or dimmed.
There are, of course, some gifts which are not arbitrary, but
natural symbols, and suggest all that is desired without effort.
If Sir Charles Napier would give me the horse he rode at
Meeanee with the great scar still remaining, no subsequent
association could supersede that. The shot he gave my father,
which grazed him in the action, a letter, something that has
been used or worn, these are natural memorials significant for
ever of one thing, and never by any possibility of a second in
the same degree.
So much for receiving. I do not mind giving; for though I
cannot bear to profane, by meaner associations, anything which
has once reminded me of a friend, I feel no pain at the idea
of that which has belonged to me being profaned. Indeed, I
should not apply such a word to it. I give for the pleasure of
216 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
giving, and also for present use or present pleasure. When
those are passed, I like to give again, something which may be
of new use and new pleasure. Some years ago, when I could ill
afford it, I gave a man a gold snuff-box like a boy: I was not a
bit hurt by seeing that same box last year, dull, in evident dis-
use, lying among a number of gimcracks on a side-table. I know
he values me as much as he did when I was a boy. But in
receiving it is quite different.
As in this bad world below,
Noblest things find vilest using.
I cannot bare to profane, by common use, even the writing of
one I care for. A direction on a parcel or an envelope I care-
fully tear off and put in the fire, before I could convert the paper
even, into the cover of a book or another parcel. So much of
superstition-is it such ?-clings to minds which fancy themselves
entirely emancipated from all the delusions of materialism.
For these reasons I am painfully fastidious about receiving
I had rather have nothing, far rather, when I must. I dislike
everything except it be of a character such as I have indicated
in the class of things enumerated above. Not arbitrary, but
natural.
•
I say a flower is more precious than gold or jewels,-not
simply as precious, but more precious, just because it has no in-
trinsic value, and because it will so soon wither. Its withered
leaves are more treasured than a costly gem, and more sacred
because they have not two kinds of value, but only one. Such
gifts are as disembodied spirits-all spirit, and pure.
All sombre thoughts pass away beneath the genial influence
of this serene, cloudless sky. What a soft, pure, pearly blue!
and the white smoke rises up into it in slow and most indolent
wreaths, as if it were resolved to enjoy itself and recline upon
cushions of summer air, robed in loosest, thinnest morning
drapery of gauze.
Does not every fresh morning that succeeds a day of gloom
and east wind, seem to remind us that for a living spirit,
On Symbols and Souvenirs
217
capable, because living, of renovation, there can be no such
thing as 'failure,' whatever a few past years may seem to say?
Some years ago, on a moonless, but clear and starry night, I
saw the aurora in a form quite different from its usual one-
streaks, or rather flakes, of pale pure white light moving slowly
and solemnly, exactly as if they were crystallising over a broad
band of red, which spanned the zenith like the reflection of a
town in flames. The softer light gradually bathed the fiercer
one in its own pure glow, till it blended with it into a translucent
rose flush. Harmonised, and yet contrasted with the quietness
of an unclouded summer's night sky, it was thrillingly beautiful,
and to me, not knowing what it was, mysterious too, almost
awful; yet the softest, holiest, thing I ever beheld. . . . That
which I rejoice over in your last note is the calm contemplation
of the difficulty of life, without the feeling that the mystery is
practically insoluble. You are quietly prepared to try in earnest
to solve it—making the ideal and the actual harmonise. Others
go on contending with low wants and lofty will, till their mortality
predominates. I do trust the possibility of that, the result of
perpetual failure, is past with you; your immortality is to conquer.
I read that prophetically, even in the passionate way in which
you speak of the humiliation of our present state and sphere of
action, because resolve is blended with it-a resolve which has
recognised all the difficulties, and is yet prepared once more to
meet them.
XXXIV.
My dear
--It is very surprising to find how little we
retain of a book, how little we have really made our own when
we come to interrogate ourselves as to what account we can
give of it, however we may seem to have mastered it by under-
standing it. Hundreds of books read once have passed as com-
pletely from us as if we have never read them; whereas the
discipline of mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract
of a book which is worth the trouble, fixes it on the mind for
years, and, besides, enables one to read other books with more
218 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
B
attention and more profit. I am very anxious to do what good
I can while it is allowed me. To this, as to every other thing
which has light and life, perhaps the night cometh. Then
feelings pass, hopes perish: that which was becomes more faint
and dreamlike every day-that which is done alone remains with
permanency. But a man must prepare alone; for, as Goethe
says, 'mental power elaborates itself in solitude.' All else is
only valuable as an impulse and an excitement to this. Much
of our time is necessarily taken up, but we should force our-
selves resolutely sometimes to be alone. . . . Broken and inter-
rupted as life is, it demands all the more earnest effort to prevent
it all falling into fragments. I knew the restlessness and misery
of time occupied in a desultory way-the hurried scramble into
which it converts existence, and the loneliness and aimlessness
which it leaves behind, and which tempt one to get rid of them
by the same unprofitable seeking of distractions again.
All devotional feeling requires sacrificial expression. There
is a 'sacrifice of the lips,' and there is also the sacrifice of an
offering which involves expense and suffering. The first, being
the readiest at command, is the most usually given; but, being
given, it unfortunately prevents the other, because, first of all,
costing little, words are given prodigally, and sacrificial acts
must toil for years to cover the space which a single fervid
promise has stretched itself over. No wonder that the slow
acts are superseded by the available words, the weighty bullion
by the current paper-money. If I have conveyed all I feel by
language, I am tempted to fancy, by the relief experienced, that
feeling has attained its end and realised itself. Farewell, then,
to the toil of the 'daily sacrifice!' Devotion has found for itself
a vent in words.
Now there seems to me to be a great difference in the effects
produced by these two kinds of sacrificial expression. That
by words is simply relief-necessary, blessed-without which
smothered feeling would be torture-sometimes, in some minds,
madness. But, being only relief, it does not strengthen the
feeling, except so far as it prevents morbidness. It rather weakens
Influence of Friendship
219
it by getting rid of the painfulness. It is a safety-valve; but
the danger is that so much force should escape by an impetuous
rush through this-that there should be little left to bring higher
energies into action. For this reason I rejoice, even though
made restless, when my words cannot be commensurate with
emotions. The other kind of expression, on the contrary-the
sacrifice of acts-is not only a relief, but a strength to feeling.
You condense your floating vague desires in something that
does not disperse into thin air. There it is, visible-done; one
of the facts of life; part of your history, credit realised in gold;
a pledge for the future, for this reason, that if your feelings
should alter afterwards, all those acts which have cost so much
are thrown away, and become so much time, suffering, expense,
lost for ever. You guard the feeling for the sake of not losing
all this. Thus deeds become a home which arrest and bind to
themselves the feeling and the love which built them up. Your
heart becomes the inmate of its own acts, and dwells in the
midst of its expenditure. It has given away its home, and it
has no other home except in remaining near the one to whom
all this has been given. Thenceforth two spirits dwell together.
I think the heavenly philosophy of this is contained in those
words, 'Sell that ye have, and give alms . . . for where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.' We cannot afford to
lightly throw away that person or that cause on which we have
ventured so much.
No friendship is worth the name, unless it does the highest
good, assisting to escape from the manifold forms of selfishness,
and to look at duty with fresh impulse.
People make great mistakes about fickleness. An impetuous
mind shows more ardour in small things than others do, and
therefore is supposed to be deeply engaged, whereas all the time
it may be conscious to itself of merely hovering round rapidly,
without any intention of fixing, or any suspicion of being sup-
posed to have fixed. Such touches are but embassies . . . to
tamper with the feelings, ere it found empire for life.' Did you
ever see the hawk moth in his marvellous gyrations, poised in
220 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
air with wings vibrating so rapidly as to be almost invisible,
though scarcely moving from the spot? He will try a hundred
leaves and flowers, or else how could he know where to rest?
but he is quite in earnest all the time, and it is the steady pause
and unerring dart of the hawk itself at last. I should not call
the wild shy insect fickle.
I have been sitting out to look at this lovely night, with a pale
pearly sky, into, not at, which you look, till you have pierced
into the for ever. Oh for the 'sea psalm' and 'the tender grace
of a day which is dead,' and never can come back! These are
the moments when we feel the strange union we have with
apparently unconnected existence; yet not the moments when
we most strongly realise our immortality. For that, I think,
one impulse of human affection or sympathy is more potent.
XXXV.
It is impossible to calculate the effects which may be produced
by distrust and suspicion. They make the heart collapse, and
wither the character. I believe that universal distrust would
ruin any character.
If anything like insincerity or aiming at effect be hinted, it is
but natural to endeavour to remove such impressions; but this
can only be done by making every word and act look as
probable and as natural as is possible. True feelings and true
words are suppressed, if they do not seem likely, even supposing
that untrue ones are not simulated instead, because they seem
likely. All this produces a secret sense of acting a part: true
it is that the part is only this, to seem what we are; but that
itself is acting, and it is the commencement of a habit of
insincerity. Not really insincerity in itself, it is yet in feeling so
like to the feeling of insincerity that the transition from one to the
other is fearfully facilitated. When the feeling of real duplicity
or insincerity actually presents itself, the mind is already half
familiar with it, having been familiar with the semblance, and
does not recoil with that vehemence which marks a heart that
On Prayer
has never suspected itself, nor been suspected. I would engage,
if it were not a Satanic task, to make any child a liar by cross-
questioning every assertion, and showing him that I suspected
every thought and feeling. He would soon learn to dwell in
the region of plausibilities, and cease to breathe the fresh, free
air of unconscious truth.
221
I must have expressed myself very ill for you to have
mistaken what I said respecting prayer. I did not mean that
the change of heart cannot be obtained by prayer. I only said,
though evidently not with sufficient distinctness, that Simon
Magus' leaning upon Peter's prayer, was of a piece with the rest
of his conduct, and belonged to a mind which looked for
marvellous effects from external agency. Money, imposition of
hands, prayer-it was all the same-something that could be
performed independently of character, anything but inward
moral effort. Prayer was to Simon of the nature of a charm ;
certain cabalistic words, of the secret of making which
efficacious Peter was in possession. I think there is a great
difference between Simon's praying himself, and asking another
to pray for him.
Of course, the latter is also done by Chris-
tians, rightly; but in the mouth of a man like Simon, such a
request is only superstition, if you compare it with the rest of
his character. Indeed, I believe that the reliance which many
people now place on the intercession of others for them,
leading, as I have seen it lead, to an indolent feeling of some
mysterious transaction going on without the sphere of their
cognisance, in which they are interested, and the results of
which will some day be comfortably their own, is very much of
the same nature-a mere belief in magic.
It is also possible that even a man's own prayer may assume
this character, and be little more of a spiritual act than the
Calmuck's rotation of a metal plate, on which the prayer is
inscribed: such, unquestionably, was the prayer of the
Pharisees, who expected that 'they should be heard for their
much speaking.' Whenever praying degenerates into saying
prayers, or when prayer becomes prayers, measured and
counted, acts instead of utterances, I think this has taken place.
222
Life and Letters of Rev. F. WV. Robertson
Only in this sense could I say that the soul cannot invest itself
with the Spirit through prayer.
As to the remainder of your question-where the inward
change begins?-there you touch a point on which I hold it
impossible to give theoretical satisfaction, though it does not
seem to be difficult to answer it to our own selves practically.
The question, in fact, touches the great difficulty of the union of
the Spontaneous with the Necessary. A reply, one of the best
I know, is given in a book I am reading; whether it will satisfy
you I cannot yet say :—
'What makes a man turn to God in the first instance?'
Unquestionably, the Spirit that is seeking him; but which is
also seeking us, which requires a reciprocal effort on our part.
I firmly believe that the Universal Spirit, 'not far from any one
of us,' is seeking all; and in the union-point, where the will of
the Finite is changed by, and voluntarily adopts as its own, the
will of the Infinite, lies the answer to the deep question you
have put-'What makes a man turn to God in the first
instance?' I despair of ever giving, or ever seeing given, a
clearer reply than this, which leaves the matter still unfathom-
able; for plainly there is something in it deeper than the
furthest-reaching minds have yet penetrated. Once it was a
question of torture to me, interfering with energy, and
paralysing me with the feeling of being a mere machine, acting
under the delusion of spontaneousness. Now I am pretty well
satisfied with the practical solution of the question, except in
moments when thought works darkly, apart from action-God's
own appointed eye-salve for the blinding disease of speculative
tendencies. My reply (for myself sufficient) is this :-Reasoning
tells me I am a leaf, blown about by the breath of the spirit-
wind as it listeth. I review the reasoning step by step, find no
flaw in it. Nothing but a horrible predestination environs me.
Every act of my past and future life, external and internal, was
necessitated. The conclusion is irrefutable. I act upon this.
Immediately I find that, practically, I have got wrong. I
cannot act upon the idea of being fated, reft of will, without
injuring my whole being. My affections are paralysed, my
A Character
223
actions disordered. I find, therefore, that the view, which is
theoretically truth, translated into conduct becomes practically
a lie.
Now, on the other hand, conscience tells me I am free.
I am to seek God. I am not to lie passive, waiting for the
moving of the waters, but to obey a voice within me which I
recognise as divine, and which says, 'Arise, take up thy bed
and walk.' My intellect stands in contradiction to my con-
science; but conscience is given me to act by. In matters of
duty, therefore, I am bound to obey my conscience rather than
my intellect.
I believe the voice which says, 'You can seek
God and find Him, rather than the one which says, 'Poor
victim of fantasy, you cannot stir, you can only wait!' There
is the best concise reply I can give you to your question.
XXXVI.
A Character.
I thought I saw that sympathy and questionings had roused
her, and anything is better for her than a dead calm, when the
sails hang flaccid by the masts. I build the hope of usefulness
upon this kind of influence with more certainty than upon any
other, and it is a great delight to me to find that it is not yet
exhausted, but still tells; just the same kind of delight which a
pilot, I suppose, feels when, in the midst of a long tropical lull,
the ship once more acknowledges the helm in his hand. And
this is only one of the many indications which makes the
wants and needs of her character intelligible to me. Excite-
ment. The word, unfortunately, only has a bad sense, and we
have not another for the corresponding good one; as our
phlegmatic national character cannot acknowledge any excite-
ment to be good or natural, and therefore provides no name for
such an idea. Excitement-by which I mean that which stirs,
and gives us a vivid consciousness of actually being-is at once
the health and disease, the food and poison, the need and the
bane, of her existence.
Some people can be wound up, and go for years without wind-
ing up again; but you cannot wind up a Geneva watch in that
224 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
:
way. The longer a habit is persevered in, the easier it becomes
to them. It is not so with her she needs perpetually the con-
struction of a set of habits, in order to save her from the weari-
ness of 'unchartered freedom;' but no sooner has habit threat-
ened to become inveterate than it passes into monotony, and
she pants for freedom-she wants then again to feel
-The wild pulsation that she felt before the strife,
When she heard the days before her, and the tumult of her life.
The truth is, that it is a living life that she needs-successions
of the habitual and the impulsive: the habitual, to give her rest;
the impulsive, to make her feel voluntariness-the life of feeling
instead of the horrid deadness of machinery. But every time
she passes from one of these states into the other, will be a state
of trial-settling down from excitement, rousing up from mono-
tony. Both will cause her suffering, just as drowning and resus-
citation are both miserable sensations. The only remedy against
this would be to discover, if possible, a new invigorating excite-
ment before the old has worn out. She is happy, calm, bright,
active, good, energetic, when she has been moved; for I perceive
--and how well I uuderstand it !—that her heart sets her intellect
and other powers in motion, not her intellect, her heart. I wish
I knew how deep necessity for excitement could be harmonised
with equally deep need of rest. No form of life will do that
which does not healthily combine satisfactions for both these
wants. I have not said all I want to say about excitement. It
seems to me, as things are, to do her more harm than good; she
takes it indiscriminately of all kinds. That astonishing de-
scription given by De Quincey of the experience of an opium-
eater, passing from sublimities almost celestial into horrors quite
infernal or that strange state which I felt for twelve hours
under the influence of chloroform, and vainly attempted to
describe. If she would use the chloroform of life prudently,
under control, to assuage pain, it might be well. Her exquisite
susceptibility, managed with a philosophy which she is capable.
of, and which is but the application of and the only real use of
self-anatomy, would fit her to be one of the noblest beings I ever
•
A Character
225
conceived. I speak thus out of painful experience. My nature
resembles hers in many things-impulsive, sustained in good by
stimulus, flagging without it; and yet exhausted sometimes to
a state in which I could call Dante's conceptions of the Inferno
dull. For example, the thought of drudging on here at the same
work, unvaried; two sermons a Sunday, inspiration by clock-
work for several years, is simply the conception of an impossi-
bility. I want perpetually the enthusiasm which comes from
fresh views of duty and untrodden paths of usefulness-new
impulse from the heart; yet that in itself, when it comes, leaves
me worn to the extremity of endurance. Something of this I
have observed in her, with keener susceptibilities and less of the
necessity which, at the same time that it galls, forces me to work
at a given time. Consequently, I make no doubt, she suffers
more and has fewer remedies. My safety lies, or rather lay, in
the resolve to work up to the collar, hot and hard, without inter-
mission to the last, not leaving time or coolness to feel the parts
that were galled, and raw, and wrung. It would,
It would, I suppose,
have ended soon, only in doing all this I
ings of others for good. . . . However, I have that which she
has not a routine. . . . It is from this similarity that, knowing
myself, I think I partly know her and her needs. The key to
all her character is its impulsiveness, and the whole secret of her
moral improvement and inward happiness lies, not in the blunt-
ing but in the right direction of it. . . . Strength is what we
want in all trials, small or great. The cup did not pass, even at
the entreaty with tears which came from Him, but there was
seen an angel strengthening Him to bear, and to drink it in
gentleness, not to put it aside.
stirred the human feel-
XXXVII.
Another.
Often it is the safest way to shut the eyes and be half blind to
many things in a friend's character, which must be taken as it
is, for better for worse: but in -'s character I am grateful to
find that his perfect transparency reveals only the more deli-
VOL. I.
Q
P
226 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
cately the moss-fibres, which are not blemishes, but beauties in
the rock-crystal. I was prepared to discover many faults, but I
was not prepared to find that the very faults and the things
which disappoint will bear the magnifying-glass, and only give
fresh insight into a character which perfectly astonishes me by
its exquisite delicacy. I do verily believe that his imperfections
are like pearls in the sea-shell-aberrations from healthful nature,
if you will, but more tender and tinted with heavenlier iridescence
than even the natural shell itself.
Some failings are so precious that they command reverence,
and touch deeply, like the fine blue mould which grows on sweet-
ness, and which you gently brush aside until a closer scrutiny
has shown you how curiously and finely beautiful it is. I can
trust that character.
a
Altogether my conviction receives fresh accessions of
strength, that in all that belongs to the finest as well as the
loftiest of character, I have never met anything that came near
what I dreamed-a being not conventionally right, not correct
by rule, not stiffened into propriety by a little hoard of maxims,
but moving often in new worlds amidst relationships and spheres
of feeling where others would be bewildered, and left without
chart or compass, and yet guided unerringly by a kind of
sublime instinct, as the bird of passage is, in its high flight for
the first time through fields of air, where the sound of wings was
never heard before. The more I see, the more I honour that
marvellous heart, the more I feel it is unlimited and incalculable;
in this way possessing that of the infinite, without which I
suppose it would be impossible to feel towards anything with
perfect security of permanence. -'s character is a living one,
inexhaustible. None can prophesy what he will say or do under
given circumstances; but when the event has shown, then all is
found in harmony with the rest, and beautiful; and the dis-
covery of these new traits is a source of perpetual surprise and
ever-fresh pleasure. From the first, I perceived that was
not to be tried by the laws by which others are fairly tested, just
because their life is guided by them. I should as little think of
referring -'s life to the ordinary maxims of convention, as I
A Stray Thought
227
should of applying the simple ellipse of the common planet's
revolution to determine the course and aberrations of the comet;
yet the comet is vague and eccentric only to an astronomy which
is not advanced enough to estimate the larger number and the
complication of the forces which are at work within it and with-
out it. Its wild and wondrous flight is just as really in obedience
to a law within itself as the career of a common star-only a
higher and more comprehensive law-and its apparently capri-
cious movements might be calculated with as much certainty, if
only the mathematics large enough were found. I like a mind
and heart which I cannot calculate, and yet in which'I have the
firmest trust that there is in them no caprice, and which are for
ever ruled by law. I can repose on such an one in faith, even
when I cannot understand. Only by faith can friendship with
such an one subsist. Nothing has struck me more than the
refined perceptions in reference to a friendship that is passed. It
is very rare and very beautiful to see feelings which once were
true, respected after their truthfulness has passed away.
There is strength as well as delicacy in one who can still respect
and be just to the memory of obliterated friendship.
•
XXXVIII.
A Stray Thought.
Perhaps no man can attain the highest excellence who is in-
sensible to sensuous beauty. A sense of earthly beauty may, and
often does, lead to softness, voluptuousness, and defilement of
heart; but its right result is to lead on as a stepping-stone to
the sense of a higher beauty. Sensuous beauty leaves the heart
unsatisfied; it gives conceptions which are infinite, but it never
gives or realises the infinite.
For human beauty is a sight
To sadden rather than delight,
Being the prelude of a lay
Whose burden is decay.
Still it leads on to the infinite. It answers partly to a sense
Q 2
228 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
•
which it does not satisfy, but leaves you craving still, and,
because craving, therefore seeking. The true objective of that
sense is moral beauty; and by degrees we find and feel, as the
outward fades and crumbles away, that there is a type of real
beauty hidden under its seeming. Through the sensuous we
perceive the supersensuous; through the visible the invisible
loveliness. Through disappointment at the unreal phantom, we
learn to believe in and live for the unchangeable. No man
knows the highest goodness who does not feel beauty. The
beauty of holiness is its highest aspect. To act right because
it is beautiful, and because noble, true, self-denying, pure acts
commend themselves to a soul attuned to harmony, is the
highest kind of goodness. To see the King in his beauty'
is the loftiest and most unearthly attainment. Can anyone be
keenly alive to this who has no heart for external beauty?
Surely he who is callous to form and colour, and unmoved by
visible beauty, is not above, but below our nature; he may be
good, but not in the highest order of goodness. Goethe says
that the Beautiful is above the Good: probably meaning that
the beauty of an action is a more spiritual and elevated notion
than its obligation or its usefulness.
He was a wise father who firmly severed the rope by which
one son was precipitated into the abyss for ever, in order that
he might secure the other, the half of his happiness. And if
one half of man's being can never fulfil its end in this life, it is
but wise to give to it the eternal farewell resolutely and decisively,
if the unexpected prospect present itself of enabling the other,
which is, after all, the nobler half, to rise out of the caverned
gloom into the light of day. Yet it is a desolate sensation and
a sharp one-that act of drawing the knife across the strands of
the cord, and saying, quietly, 'for ever.' Not a pleasant one
when the sullen plunge of that which was once so cherished is
heard below in the dark waters of a sea which never gives up
her dead. . . . The other half is destined to ascend like the
brother saved by the sacrifice of the other son.
!
229
CHAPTER VIII.
OCTOBER 1849-DECEMBER 1850.
Visit to Cheltenham-New Interest in the Lives of Others and in
Ministerial Work - Depression Great Intellectual Activity-
Afternoon Lectures on the Book of Genesis-Gorham Case-
Sermons on Baptism, on the Sabbath, on the Atonement-
Virulent Opposition-Solitary Position-Summing up of Life-
Internal Dissension in the Working-Man's Institute-Proposition
to admit Infidel Publications into the Library-His Speech on the
Occasion-Its Meaning-Its partial Success-Reconstruction of
the Association-His Letters on the Subject-Speech at the
Meeting against the Papal Division of England into Dioceses-
Two Letters of Gratitude from Working Men.
Letters from October 1849 to December 31, 1850.
A form
Ma
M
N October 1849 Mr. Robertson paid a short visit to
Cheltenham. He walked and rode over the haunts
which had been endeared to his youth. He renewed some
old acquaintances, and rekindled the embers of old asso-
ciations. There were many happy and many exquisitely
painful recollections awakened within him. 'These cases,'
he says, speaking of some disappointments he had suffered,
and some opportunities he had lost, 'have come like the odour
of newly-turned earth upon my heart.' On the whole, the
visit appears to have done him good.
parison which it forced him to institute
and the present made more plain than before his own
Perhaps the co-
between the past
230 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
advance in intellectual energy and spiritual knowledge. It
is by comparing periods, not days of life, that progress
becomes manifest. He returned to Brighton convinced
that he had gained clear views of truth. In the Tyrol, in
1847, he had despaired; now, though he was wearied of
life, he could say, 'I know the right, and even in darkness
will steer right on.'
:
There arose in him about this time, also, a greater
interest in the lives of others. He had thought too much
about his own trials and difficulties. He had been a 'self-
torturing sophist.' Speaking of his past life, he says of
himself, Formerly, my eyes but slept to look within all
my interest in the outward world faded in comparison with
my intense interest in the inner world.' But now he had
discovered new interests. He found among his congrega-
tion some whose mental and spiritual difficulties were
similar to those which had been his own, and to whom he
could give the sympathy and help which are born of a
Suffering which has passed into Victory. All his powers
were aroused. By entering fully into the lives of others he
freed himself from much of that painful self-consciousness
which is the curse of a sensitive character. In proportion
as his friendship was deep was his imagination penetrative
into the characters of his friends, and that to such a degree
that he took their lives into his own. And for all in whom
he became interested, he was untiring in effort. He in-
vented new plans for their lives, new interests, new pur-
suits. He sought ceaselessly for remedies for their trials,
and means of escape from their perplexities. There never
lived a truer friend.
It was at this time also that his interest in his ministerial
work became greater, though, from his letters, the contrary
Great Activity
231
might be imagined. But the passages in which he de-
scribes his dislike of preaching and his own coldness of
heart are, in reality, descriptions of the reaction of feeling
after the intense excitement of preaching. Such passages
are almost always to be found in letters written on Monday.
They are in themselves proof of the almost awful in-
tensity with which he laboured. He could not do his
duty with the quiet monotonousness which neither wears
out the mind nor exhausts the body. He did it with a
repressed fierceness which, when the time of its expression.
on Sunday-was over, left him a prey to thoughts which,
in healthier moments, he denied to be his own. 'I am not
fit,' he says, 'for ministerial work. I want years and years
to calm me. My heart is too feverish, quivers and throbs
too much as flesh recently cut by the surgeon's knife.'
Thus the deeper his interest in his work, the greater was
his excitement; and the greater the excitement, the more
morbid was the reaction, the more gloomy the aspect in
which he saw his labours, the darker his misgivings of their
success.
And it is no wonder that he was at this time so exhausted
and so painfully depressed, for his mental work was great.
Never during his whole life had his intellect been more
productive. In October he preached upon the question of
the Sabbath, which was being then agitated in Brighton in
connection with some new post-office regulations. The
sermon is published in the first volume, under the title of
'The Shadow and Substance of the Sabbath.' In Novem-
ber he embodied in a sermon-Caiaphas's View of
Vicarious Sacrifice '-his partly original theory of the
Atonement. In December alone he preached fifteen
times-mostly on the advent of Christ. He delivered to
•
232 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
crowded congregations on Friday mornings four Advent
lectures on Christianity in contact with the Greek, the
Roman, the Barbarian, and the Jew, which were in their
way unique. He preached on Sunday mornings such
sermons as 'The Means of realising the Second Advent,'
vol. i. 152; 'The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest,' vol. i.
211; and the 'Loneliness of Christ,' vol. i. 227. In the
afternoons he finished his lectures on the Acts of the
Apostles, with which he had begun the year. Towards the
end of the month, he preached-on the day of public
mourning for the Queen Dowager-the only sermon pub-
lished during his lifetime-The Israelite's Grave in a
Foreign Land.'
Land.' Most of these sermons have been pre-
served; and they are, even in a literary point of view,
wonderful, considering the short time in which they were
produced, for their sustained power of thought and of
expression, for their research and originality. None of
them are unworthy of the others; none of them betray care-
lessness of preparation or dependence on mere fluency of
diction. It is fortunate that they were preserved, though
their preservation cost him more labour than their prepa-
ration. They were written out for a friend, from memory,
the evening of the day on which they were delivered.
Everyone knows how irksome it is to recall, in cold blood,
what has been said in excitement; to write out, in the
study alone, what has been brought out by the presence of
numbers. It was peculiarly irksome and irritating to him,
but he did it freely and gladly, because impelled by friend-
ship. He forgot the toil; but the toil did not forget to
produce its fruit of exhaustion. If there be added, to com-
plete this account of one month's intellectual work, that
almost every day he was engaged in preparing the pupils
Lectures on the Book of Genesis
233
of the Training School for examination, it is astonishing
that he was not more morbid in feeling and outworn in
body.
Early in January 1850 he went away to recruit his health
and to visit some friends in Ireland; but the visit was not
long enough to restore his strength. On his return he
commenced lecturing in the afternoons on the Book of
Genesis. His letters prove how systematically and fully he
prepared for this work. The lectures, when published, will
show with what mingled wisdom and freedom he met the
difficulties of the earlier chapters; how fairly he stated the
claims of scientific and historical truth, even when they
were in conflict with the narrative of the sacred text; and
while declaring that the Mosaic cosmogony could not be
reconciled with geological facts, still succeeded in showing
its inner harmony, in principles, with the principles of
scientific geology. Neither did he shrink from putting his
congregation in possession of the results of German criti-
cism upon Genesis. He made them acquainted with the
discussion on the Jehovah and Elohim documents, but he
did not deny the Mosaic compilation of these documents.
He discussed fully the question of the universality of the
Flood. He spoke with a boldness, adorned with a rare
reverence, upon the vexed and generally avoided subjects
of the confusion of tongues, the destruction of the cities of
the plain, the temptation of Abraham. In no case, how-
ever, was his preaching destructive, but constructive. Men
went away from his chapel opposed, it is true, to the
popular theory of Inspiration, but deeply convinced of an
Inspiration. It was, indeed, impossible, in treating of
1 See Appendix III.
234
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
these matters, to avoid the great question of Inspiration,
and its limits; it was, therefore, introduced incidentally
from Sunday to Sunday. His mind became stirred on the
subject. But the only result of this interest was his trans-
lation at this time of Lessing's small treatise on 'The
Education of the Human Race.' '1 The following sentence
occurs in one of his letters written in March, 1850:-
I projected once a work on Inspiration, and had well-nigh
resolved to do it-a year ago, when the impulse to do great
things and to be a standard-bearer was renewed with mighty
force. Had I kept to this resolve, Lessing's remarks, and some
other fragments, should have been translated as pioneers; for
the English mind is not prepared yet, and Lessing's advice.
(67, 68, 69) ² is worth attending to.
2
In March, while these lectures on Genesis were still
continuing, the Gorham case was decided. With the
decision given he fully agreed; but he thought it necessary
to meet the whole question openly before his congregation,
and endeavour, as was his custom, not to reconcile the
opinions of both parties, or to steer a middle course be-
tween both, but to discover a higher truth, in which all
that was true in the opposing views might be retained,
1 Published in London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1858.
267. The youth must consider his Primer as the first of all books,
that impatience at being only preparing may not hurry him on to
things for which he has, as yet, laid no basis.
68. And that is also of the greatest importance now. Thou ablu
spirit, who art fretting and restless over the last page of the Primer-
beware! Beware of letting thy fellow-scholars mark what thou per-
ceivest afar, or what thou art beginning to see!
69. Until these weaker fellow-scholars are up with thee, rather
return once more back into this Primer, and examine whether that
which thou takest only for duplicates of the method, for a blunder
in the teaching, is not, perhaps, something more.'
NË
I
Virulent Opposition
235
and all that was false discarded. This was done, as he
believed, in the two sermons which have been published.¹
They created a great sensation in Brighton. They dis-
pleased, of course, both the extreme parties; but they
reconciled to the Church many who had despaired of ever
accepting the teaching of her Baptismal Services.
Thus within the short space of six months, which perhaps
were the most important in their results on Brighton, and
through his published sermons on the general public, he had
-not with that Pharisaic liberalism which thanks God that
it is not as other men are—not from the desire of being
peculiar―not without any thought of self, but from faithful
following and brave speaking of what he believed to be true
-put himself into opposition with the whole accredited
theological world of Brighton on the questions of the Sab-
bath, the Atonement, Inspiration, and Baptism. The re-
sults were sad and dreary for him. His words were garbled ;
passages from his sermons, divorced from their context, were
quoted against him ; persons who could not understand him
came to hear him and look at him as a strange phenomenon;'
he became the common talk of all the theological tea-tables
of the town. People were solemnly warned against him;
those who knew little of his doctrines, and less of himself,
attacked him openly, with an apparently motiveless bitter-
ness. He had dared to be different from the rest of the
world, and that in itself was revolutionary. He was called
Neologian, Socialist, Sceptic: all the cruel armoury of
fanaticism, and especially the weapon of blind terror, was
used against him
In December 1849 he writes:
1 Vol. ii. pp. 45-61,
236 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
It is not all smooth sailing. Indeed, the bitterness and viru-
lence of which I hear in every direction are quite unaccountable
and women are even more violent in their bitterness than
men. Once these things moved me it is strange how little I
care for them now. Once I met them with defiance, and scorn
for scorn: now I wonder they ever could have provoked me. I
desire to be as meek and gentle under dispraise and dislike as I
am indifferent to flattery. O that I could breathe the Spirit of
Him who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He
suffered, threatened not! For, in His case, all was undeserved;
but I cannot tell how much, in my case, rashness and pride have
irritated people. This, however, I have learnt—that three years
of perpetual warfare with the world, and the repayal of hatred
for love, were no trifling endurance. To simply bear the dislike
which had been provoked, was not so difficult; but to persevere
in exasperating it day by day, and never flinch even when His
loving spirit sank and flagged in the wilderness and in Gethse-
mane, and still go on, till hatred did its worst-oh I think I
know what that must have been to a loving spirit, when I so felt
it with a stern one!
And on January 1, 1850, he writes, speaking of the sermon
on the death of the Queen Dowager :—
The sermon will be published, I expect, this week. It will be
some time before I rush into print again; and that was not the
sermon to have selected. It has nothing in it—at least, nothing
that I know of—good or bad; though, I doubt not, the heretic-
hunters will find plenty of tendencies towards Mahometanism,
Red Republicanism, Puseyism, and Swedenborgianism. I was
tormented into publishing, and in an evil hour of weakness gave
way, for which weakness I now feel the twinges of remorse.
How long will sermonising continue? With all my heart I hope
not to the end of life, unless life is very nearly done; for it is a
kind of mean martyrdom by a lingering death, like the benevo-
lent system of roasting at a slow fire, in which the good Christian
people of former times manifested the extent of their Christian
proficiency.
Ultra-Sensitiveness
237
Thus, a partaker of the destiny of those who dare to preach
Truth higher and more spiritual than is recognised by the
teachers of their time, he stood apart-a very solitary man.
On the last day of 1849 he preached on the loneliness of
Christ. The sermon (vol. i.) was an unconscious but vivid
portrait of his own career and life; it was written with the
blood of his own heart. And no one can be astonished, who
places himself in his position, and realises his ultra-sensitive-
ness, at the summing-up of his work at Brighton, written in
February 1850. It is almost needless to say that this sum-
ming-up, though true to his own point of view, was not in
reality true. His labours had been most successful; the
greater part of his congregation were devoted to him; he
was reverenced and loved by them with an unobtrusive
reverence and a silent love, which were too deep to be openly
expressed. But this very silence of affection and veneration,
so different from the loud applause given generally to a
popular preacher, he, most strangely, almost wilfully, refused
to recognise. He only saw in the mass of his congregation
those who came to criticise or sneer, or to listen to him as a
stump-orator; he only heard the slander, the bitter speaking,
the theological clamour of his opponents. To all the rest
he was blind and deaf. He sums up thus, in a most touch-
ing manner, his life :-
February 11, 1850.
A year has passed, nearly, since I resolved to live above this
world. O God! how little has been done! High, bright, en-
thusiastic hopes of things impossible, and of things possible
still, how they teemed in my imagination! the ideal, of course,
always transcends the actual, and now experience of life again
with its manifold struggles, 'fallings from us, vanishings.' has
left a sobered, saddened, but unconquerable resolve to life in
earnest.
:
238
238 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal;
'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not written of the soul.
Farewell, all visions and wishes of distinction-farewell to them
for ever! But not farewell to something holier and better, far
holier, and more worthy of beings whose divine spark is mixed
with clay. I can hear in my heart the 'still sad music of
humanity,' and selfishness seems to me even more contemptible
than it did, now that I am more distinctly conscious of an end
to live for. My career is done. And yet I do not look on life
with any bitter or disappointed feeling, but gently and even
gratefully. I read the last stanza of Wordsworth's 'Intimations
of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood,' which have
something of the subdued and chastened feeling which I am
beginning to realise :-
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, or glory in the flower, etc.
I am not sorry that the wild throb of romantic, boyish anticipa-
tion of a future can never be felt again. I know the realities of
a world of error now, but whose Maker's name I am profoundly
convinced is Love. I feel its grand, sad laws, and I bow myself
to them submissively, not wishing them other than they are.
These were his thoughts in March, 1850. It was now,
while everything connected with him had a curious interest
for the little world of Brighton, that the Institute for Work-
ing Men, to the welfare of which he had united himself from
the beginning, began to suffer from internal dissension. He
had long foreseen the possibility of this. There was a radical
error, in his opinion, in the constitution of the society. In
his preface to the 'Address on the Question of the Introduc-
tion of Sceptical Publications into the Library of the Insti-
tute,' he states this error clearly, and its results. After
The Working Men's Institute
239
narrating the origin of the Institute and its objects, he pro-
ceeds :-
It was, of course, foreseen that the rock on which such a plan
might be wrecked would be any successful effort to divert the
funds and machinery of the Institute from its original intention
to the purposes of a political party.
But, in this case, the withdrawal of all well-disposed persons
would leave the association to dwindle till it became quite
extinct. For its very existence depended upon numbers. The
experiment, therefore, appeared to be a perfectly safe one, inas-
much as perversion of its purposes must inevitably be followed
quickly by annihilation.
One fatal oversight (such, at least, it appears to the author of
these pages) in the constitution of the society realised the fore-
seen danger. It has been justly held that the working men
ought to have in their own hands the management of their own
society, lest the smallest suspicion should arise that there was
any desire in those who were their benefactors to coerce or
trammel them. Every attempt at interference was scrupulously
avoided. All this was wise and just. But beyond this, not only
was the domination of the upper classes made impossible, but
even their assistance and advice excluded, by making hono-
rary members incompetent to vote or act in Committee; a
mistake which originated in an over-scrupulous generosity
on the part of one who suggested it, but fatal, because false in
principle.
To have vested the power of unlimited control or rule in the
richer classes, would have been a surrender of the very principle
on which the plan rested. But to reject all co-operation and
assistance from them, to receive their contributions and refuse
their advice, was to create and foster a spirit, not of manly, but
of jealous independence, and to produce in a new form that
vicious state of relationship between class and class which is at
this day the worst evil in our social life—the repulsion of the
classes of society from each other at all points except one, so as
to leave them touching at the single point of pecuniary interest.
240 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
And thus the cementing principle of society is declared to be the
spirit of selfishness-the only spirit which is essentially destruc-
tive. A fatal blunder!
It was on Thursday, March 28, that the proposition to
admit infidel publications was discussed in a meeting of the
members of the Institute. He wished to go, and 'to impart,'
as he said, 'a healthier tone, if possible;' but on the same
night he writes—
،
I did not attend the meeting of the Working Men's Associa-
tion, as I told you I had intended, and am almost sorry I did
not; but some of the committee were afraid for me of violence
and rudeness from the Socialists, and thought too, that even if
I swayed the vote by a speech against the infidel publications,
they would only say that it had been done by the influence of
priestcraft. On this consideration I left them to fight the battle
for themselves, and I sincerely hope that they have got a signal
victory. But I find by inquiry that Socialism has made terrible
strides in England: Louis Blanc's views are progressing swiftly.
They say that we must get rid of the superstitious notion of an
invisible God. Till that is done, nothing can be effected. And
then, of course, Communism and a scramble for property ensue.
A strong Radical told me that he can remember the time
when Toryism was in the ascendent in public meetings here, and
the Radicals only just able to make head against it. Then
Radicalism became triumphant; but now Radicalism is to
Socialism what Toryism was to Radicalism, a kind of feeble
aristocracy which can scarcely show its head, so completely is it
put down by the ultra-Socialism of Louis Blanc's school.
A few days afterwards he writes again-
I have been all the morning interrupted by deliberations
respecting the affairs of the Working Men's Institute, which is
in terrible disorder. Poor is dead! and there is no one to
stem the torrent of infidelity but myself. I am going to make a
desperate attempt in a public address.
{fon
His Public Address in the Town Hall 241
It was almost imperative that he should do so, for he was
bound up with the interests of the Institute. He felt that he
was personally compromised by its proceedings. He felt
that the whole cause of the elevation of the working man was
in jeopardy. He would not be silent, He asked no advice
of either party; alone, he took the whole responsibility of a
public address. It was a great responsibility. For, on the
one hand, there was the large minority of sceptical and
Chartist members in the Institute, who would call his effort
'priestcraft,' and prate about being lorded over by a clergy-
man and a gentleman, and perhaps attempt personal violence;
and, on the other hand, outside of the Institute, there were
not only those who, exasperated against him already, were
likely to become more so by the bold way in which he felt
he ought to speak; but also others, who, having seen enthu-
siastic folly in the whole scheme from the beginning, would
now think this last attempt to save a sinking ship the crown-
ing folly.
With that fine confidence so characteristic of him, he threw
himself upon the sense and candour of the men.
His speech was long remembered for its tact. The great
room of the Town Hall was crowded to excess. Every class
in Brighton was represented in the audience. All the work-
ing men of the Institute were there. The large minority of
sceptical Socialists had come determined to make a disturb-
ance—to hoot him down. They had dispersed themselves
in parties throughout the room. He began very quietly,
with a slow, distinct, and self-restrained utterance. He ex-
plained the reason of the meeting. When he spoke of him-
self as the person who had summoned them-as one who
was there to oppose the introduction of the infidel books,
knots of men started up to interrupt him; a few hisses and
VOL. I.
R
242 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
groans were heard; but the undaunted bearing of the man,
the calm voice and musical flow of pauseless speech, power-
ful to check unregulated violence by its regulated quietude
of utterance, went on, and they could but sit down again.
Again and again, from different parts of the room, a man
would suddenly spring to his feet and half begin to speak,
and then, as if ashamed or awed, subside. There were mur-
murs, passionate shuffling of fect, a sort of electricity of ex-
citement, which communicated itself from the excited men to
every one in the room. At last, when he said, 'You have
heard of a place called Coward's Castle-Coward's Castle is
that pulpit or platform from which a man, surrounded by his
friends; in the absence of his opponents, secure of applause,
and safe from a reply, denounces those who differ from him,'
there was a dead stillness. He had struck the thought of the
turbulent-the very point on which, in reference to the ad-
dress, they had enlarged; and from that moment there was
not a word, scarcely a cheer, till the last sentence was given.
It seemed, said one of them, and what he said was confirmed
by others, as if every man in the room were thrilling with
the same feelings, as if a magnetic power flowing from the
speaker had united them all to himself, and in him to one
another. The address was the most remarkable of all his
speeches for eloquence, if eloquence be defined as the power
of subjugating men by bold and persuasive words. It was
remarkable for two other reasons which may not occur to the
ordinary reader. First, in it he revealed much of his inner
life and character. He was forced by the circumstances
under which he made the address to speak of himself. The
personal explanations into which he entered were an overt
self-revelation. But there was one passage in the address in
which, without the knowledge of his hearers, he disclosed the
Analysis of his Speech
243
history of the most momentous period of his life. It has
been already quoted (p. 103), and is the most important
passage in all his works for anyone to study who wishes to
know what he suffered, and how strongly he emerged from
his suffering at the great religious turning-point of his life.
Few men thought, as he delivered those magnificent sen-
tences with stern and suppressed emotion, that they were
forged in the fire of his own heart. But all did feel that he
was disclosing to them the central principle of his whole
life, the result of all his past religious struggle, when he spoke.
the following words :-'I refuse to permit discussion this
evening respecting the love a Christian man bears to his
Redeemer-a love more delicate far than the love which was
ever borne to sister, or the adoration with which he regards
his God--a reverence more sacred than man ever bore to
mother.'
This address is also remarkable, because in it he boldly
threw down the gauntlet to his opponents. It was not only
an address to the working men, it was an address to the
whole of Brighton. Perhaps he did not do this consciously.
But those who knew the state of feeling against him which
has been described above, felt that he was making his
apology, not in the sense of a recantation, but in the same
sense as Socrates made his apology before the Athenian
people. He was out of the pulpit. He could speak more
freely. He appeared not so much as the clergyman as the
man. It was remarked by more than one that he wore a
black cravat. When he said that infidelity was often the cry
of narrowness against an old truth under a new and more
spiritual form-sometimes the charge caught up at second-
hand, and repeated as a kind of religious hue-and-cry, in
profoundest ignorance of the opinions that are so charac-
i
R 2
244 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
(
terised-when he denounced the 'religious' newspapers-
when he said, 'I have learned to hold the mere charge of
infidelity very cheap '—when he poured pity, instead of ana-
themas, on Shelley, because 'God was represented to him as
a demon, and Christianity as a system of exclusion and bitter-
ness'—when he declared that the existence of God could not
be demonstrated to the Understanding-when he defended
himself for having said that there was a moral significance
in the works of Dickens,' and called the objection 'cant'.
when he spoke of the taunts which he had heard levelled
against his friends the working men,' and his connection
with them-when he refused to join in the cry of men,
terror-stricken by events upon the Continent, that to instruct
the working men and to side with them was giving sinews to
infidelity and Socialism-he was in reality appealing to the
general public against the private clamour which had been
raised against his teaching, and boldly asserting that he
stood undismayed by his opinions; that, in spite of all, he
would not bate one inch, but steer right onward. And as
such it was accepted. Many men who had taken up the
blind cry against him, listened, and went away saying, 'That
is a true man; a man different from that which I imagined
him to be; a man with whom I do not agree, but in the
attack against whom I will join no more.' The manliness of
Brighton, even where it differed most widely from him, was,
after that address, always on his side. Nor was the mode
in which he made this defence unworthy of himself or of a
Christian man. It was daring, determined, but in spirit
gentle, Speaking of the suspicion, misrepresentation, and
personal dislike he had incurred, he says-
I do not say this in bitterness. I hold it to be a duty to be
liberal and generous even to the illiberal and narrow-minded.
Reconstruction of the Institute
245
And it seems to me a pitiful thing for any man to aspire to be
true and to speak truth, and then to complain in astonishment
that truth has not crowns to give, but thorns; but I say it in
order that you and I may understand each other.
The result of the address on the members of the Institute
was more successful than he had expected. Some of the
sceptical minority were convinced that they were wrong;
the rest separated in a body, and, carrying off with them a
large portion of the library and property, established a new
society, which did not long exist. The majority, along with
some waverers who were confirmed into truer views of social
questions, combined to carry out the views of Mr. Robertson.
The first thing done was to rescind the old rule that no
gentlemen were to be admitted to vote or act on the Com-
mittee, and to reconstruct the Association on this amended
footing; the second was to ask Mr. Robertson to be their
new President. The two following letters will show how
readily he entered into the difficulties which beset the first,
and how wisely he refused the second :—
No. I.
I will pledge myself, if your society is formed, and contains in
it the elements of vitality, to give either an opening address or
a lecture before the close of the year.
But it seems to me a matter of great importance that public
attention should not be ostentatiously called again so soon to
your efforts at self-restoration, so long as they are only efforts.
If the Institute is needed, really craved, and earnestly desired
by the working men, they will enrol themselves in sufficient
numbers to insure its existence without the excitement of an
address. If they would not without this, then I am sure that to
attempt to secure their adhesion by such means would be very
dangerous.
It was published in the Letters and Addresses.
246 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
On the former occasion nearly 700, in a fit of transient enthu-
siasm, joined themselves, I believe, and (out of about 1,300)
withdrew directly after. If artificial means are necessary to
preserve its existence, then the society will soon die a natural
death; and we should be again covered with the shame of an
abortive attempt. The cause of the working men cannot afford
this. Better fail silently than make another public confession of
incapacity.
Now, an address at present would draw the attention of the
town. It would perhaps induce waverers to join, as all public
excitement does; and it might secure immediately ready money.
But these are trifles compared with the risk of withdrawal of
many soon after. And suppose that enough to support did not
join?
Let me propose therefore-Begin your society as soon and as
quietly as possible; that is, as quietly as is consistent with that
publicity which is necessary to acquaint the working men with
the fact of a new association being in process of formation. If
sufficient members do not present themselves, then the thing
quietly dies away till a better opportunity; and be sure that no
artificial excitement could have given it permanence, though it
might have caused a premature abortive birth.
After some months, if the association lives with internal
strength, then we may try external aids. I, for my part, pledge
myself as I have said. But the great lesson for us all, in these
days of puffing advertisements, is to learn to work silently and
truly, and to leave self-advertisement and self-puffing to people
who are on the verge of bankruptcy.
No. 2.
In reply to your letter of this day, I may briefly say that the
idea of my accepting the presidentship of the Institute is quite
out of the question. I do not consider myself competent for
such an office, nor am I sure that it would be to the advantage
of the society. . . . I believe I could assist the members more
truly, at all events more independently, in a subordinate posi-
Refuses to be President of the Institute
247
Prominence and power are things for which I have no
tion.
taste.
I am very anxious that there should be no second failure, but
I think that the greatest wisdom and experience are needful to
prevent it. . . . The working men have shown that even a right-
minded majority is unable to protect itself against a turbulent
minority, without the introduction of other elements of society
to support them-to support, not dictate; for I should be very
sorry to see a majority of gentlemen on the Committee. But
they want some, of weight and wisdom, to fall back upon. And,
indeed, this is the only true democratic principle to my mind-
not an oligarchy of the poorest, but a fusion of ranks, with such
weight allowed, under checks, as is due to superior means of
acquiring information.
What grieves me to the heart is to see distrust in the minds
of working men of those wealthier than themselves; and nothing
is more mischievous or unchristian than to gain popularity with
them by fostering these feelings, and insinuating that the clergy
and the religious and the rich are their enemies, or only espouse
their cause for an end.
I must not accept any high office: I am their friend, but I
want nothing from them-not even influence, not their praise.
If I can do them even a little good, well; but for their sakes
I must not take anything which could leave on one of their
minds the shadow of a shade of a suspicion of my motives.
The society, after working admirably for some years, has
lately, to the great regret of many, been closed for want of
support. It does not appear, after Mr. Robertson's death,
to have been taken up by any person, with the exception of
Mr. Ross, outside of the actual sphere of the working men.
After the delivery of the above-mentioned address, Mr.
Robertson did not appear in public, except in the pulpit, for
many months.
The end of 1850 is celebrated for the mistake which the
Church of Rome made, and for the short and foolish blaze
1
248 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
I
of excitement kindled by it in England. The mistake of
the Church of Rome was in departing from the quiet method
of conversion they had been using. The foolishness of the
English people was in making a great noise, only to end in
the pretentious nonentity of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.
Brighton was, of course, convulsed. Platforms and pulpits
rang with a jangle of denunciations. The only man who
seems to have kept his head was Mr. Robertson. His
speech at the 'great meeting' was a model of good sense
and calm knowledge; a quiet protest against what he called,
with fine irony and with accurate acquaintance with eccle-
siastical history, 'an act of schism on the part of the Church
of Rome.' What he thought privately of the whole matter
will be found in the following extracts :-
This foolish act of the Pope has made Protestants nearly
beside themselves with terror. Already they see the fires of
Smithfield lighted, thumbscrews at work, and the 'mystery' of
the Apocalypse throned at Canterbury. We have a great meet-
ing here on Thursday, to which I look forward, only expecting a
vast deal of foolish talking, and perhaps recrimination, bandied
back against the Church of England. Here have the bishops
been coquetting with semi-Popery for fifteen years, but the
moment it assumes an attitude invasive of their spiritual privi-
leges, 'the Right Reverend Fathers in God' rise as one man, the
noble champions of the faith, and, much as they dislike contro-
versial preaching, recommend all their clergy to preach, disse-
minate tracts, &c., against the 'mother of abominations,' and
so forth. On Sunday I could not help saying, at the end of my
sermon, 'I have purposely abstained from entering on the subject
upon which the public mind is nearly frantic; I could easily
have roused your indignation and inflamed passions, but for
myself I do not like that kind of work. Assume, if you will, in
the week, the attitude of defiance; but let us, for one Sabbath-
day, keep free from that, and take the attitude of humiliation.'
The subject of the sermon was, 'I am a sinful man, O Lord!'
i
Papal Division of England into Dioceses
249
Thursday.
To-day was spent in a long-protracted meeting at the Town
Hall, on the subject of the Papal division of England into
dioceses; it was crammed to the window-sills. I went deter-
mined not to say a word; but, after two persons had spoken,
several voices called out my name : this was repeated so often,
becoming clamorous at last, that at the close of the day, in an
evil hour, I rose. I heartily wish now I had not, for I was un-
prepared and hampered, partly by seeing a Romanist there, a
former friend, for whom my heart winced at every severe ex-
pression, and partly from disagreement with the words of the
address. Afterwards I had a long conversation with M
(discussion, rather), which lasted until two or three in the
morning. At last I said, 'Now, M, it is not often one man
lets another see the core of his heart: I do not mean to let you
see mine, but I have told you much of my views. You know
what I do not believe, and what I do. You would call my creed
meagre—I call it large, for there are many points on which I
am in perplexity. What I believe, I believe strongly. You have
heard me preach, too. You saw that crowd; you know what it
costs me to address them; now tell me, as an old friend, would
you advise me to go on or retire?' He said, with enthusiasm,
'I do not hesitate one moment-go on. I tell you frankly,
there were points in your sermon I did not quite agree with. I
wished the evangelical element had been there; but I felt, if it
were only there-no, I cannot tell you what I feel, for it would
look like extravagant flattery. I will only say, I felt it would be
a glorious thing for a man to stand up as you stand in a place
like Brighton: but, never mind, perhaps it is better as it is.
Men come to hear you who would not come if you thought as
I do.' I verily believe that if M- had only said 'Retire,' I
should have retired forthwith.
The year closed for him heavily. His health had visibly
decayed. He suffered keenly, though he denied it, from
the loneliness of his position. A gloom deepened over his
250 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
}
heart. But now and then gleams of happiness shot across
his spirit when he learnt that he had done some good to a
human soul. Two letters which touched him greatly are
inserted here; they complete the history of this period:-
An Anonymous Letter, enclosing a Present of 10s.
Rev. Sir,-An humble individual begs the acceptance of the
enclosed as an Easter offering, and as a grateful acknowledg-
ment, in some sort, for the many wise lessons he has received of
truth, honour, charity and love; and for the hope of immortality
with which he is now impressed, which has begotten a cheerful-
ness of mind to which for years he has been a stranger.
May God in His infinite mercy long spare you to us in health
and prosperity, and bless you! is the sincere wish of, faithfully
yours,
THE WRITER.
An Anonymous Letter, accompanying a pair of Candlesticks,
the Work of the Writer.
Sir,-A humble individual, desirous of acknowledging the un-
flinching kindness you have shown towards the working classes
of this town, begs the acceptance of the enclosed; and, in doing
so, he hopes you will pardon what I am afraid you will think an
un-English way of sending a note without a name. My apology
must be, that as you do not know me, you will not put any
wrong construction as to my motive in doing so. Nothing but
the profoundest respect would have induced me to take the
liberty I have.
A☆
Believing you to be a man as well as a gentleman, that you
can come down to the level of working men, and understand
them (a rare qualification now-a-days in one in the class that
circumstances have placed you), all working men think it so
much the more valuable to have your advice and assistance.
May it long be continued!
I do not complain that we have not the sympathy of the
upper classes. I believe we have; but there is not one in fifty
Miss Martineau's 'Feats on the Fiord'
251
that can come down to our circumstances, to the bond of our
common nature--to comprehend that, although the mechanic
and artisan of this country are deep thinkers, yet they often
stand in need of advice and the assistance that education gives.
We have their good wishes and pecuniary assistance—thanks
for it--but sometimes a little kindly advice would do far more.
It is this difference that makes us feel we could grasp you by
the hand as a brother in the cause of progress of the nation.
Would that there were more such ! How much more would
true religion, morals, and sound intellect be brought out! No
fear then of the Pope or the devil.
Believe me, Sir, I am very respectfully yours.
Letters from October, 1849, to December, 1850.
XXXIX.
October 17, 1849.
I have just finished 'Feats on the Fiord.' Miss Martineau's
graphic powers are uncommon. I seem to see a Fiord, like a
valley spread with water into the land; the vast flocks of wild
fowl; the sun only dipping in summer below the horizon; the
outline of the reindeer on the mountain, cut against the sky, and
the Lapp slily running off with the cheese laid on the mountain-
ridge as an offering to Nipen. A Lapp's hut must, I think,
resemble an alp for filth, and be somewhat like it altogether.
An alp is a Tyrolese herdsman's hut. On the mountains there
are patches of vegetation among the pine-forests; these in
winter are covered with snow, but in the summer months afford
pasture for cattle. The herdsmen ascend, having under their
charge the cows of several lowland farmers. Each superintends
the cattle of many farms. They milk them, make cheese, and
at the end of the season each farmer receives a number of
cheeses, in proportion to the number of cows that he contributes.
I never knew what filth was until I tried to breakfast, when
chamois-hunting, in an alp. I had taken bread with me, and
endeavoured to improve it by the addition of cream, butter, and
cheese; but the room was nearly ankle deep in dirt, the human
252 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
beings in it scarcely tolerable within six yards; the cream black
and white in about equal proportions, from the soot which had
fallen in; the butter kneaded up with hair, as mortar sometimes
is; and the cheese yielded to scarcely anything less violent than
a hatchet. I fancy the four-feet-high Lapps would feel quite at
home in an alp.
(
What I like in Miss Martineau, too, is her genial heart-her
willingness to live and let live.' She feels the falsehood and
the injury of religious superstitions. She has no false sentiment
about their romantic beauty. They take the manhood from the
breast, the self-reliance and the trust in God-leaving behind a
restless attempt to propitiate fickle, capricious, malicious beings,
whose only superiority lies in power. The worship of power
singly is always a degrading worship; submission to caprice
always demoralising-submission producing trickiness, subtlety,
and trust in cunning rather than in rectitude. All this Miss
Martineau sees; yet, whether it be heathen or Christian super-
stition, she nearly always has a healthy and just allowance for
the necessary admixture of error with all that is human, and
sees that not by anathemas, but by gradual enlightenment, such
errors are to be expelled. In short, she sees the difference
between pernicious error and wilful vice.
I began that book at sunrise, and finished it a little after
breakfast-time. It gave me a healthy glow of feeling, a more
cheerful view of life. I believe the writer of that book would
rejoice that she had soothed and invigorated one day of a way-
worn, tired being in his path to the Still country, where the
heaviest-laden lays down his burden at last and has Rest.
Yet, thank God! there is rest-many an interval of saddest,
sweetest rest-even here, when it seems as if evening breezes
from that other land, laden with fragrance, played upon the
cheeks and lulled the heart. There are times, even on the
stormy sea, when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of heaven,
and sends into the soul a dream of ecstasy which can never
again wholly die, even amidst the jar and whirl of waking life.
How such whispers make the blood stop and the very flesh
creep with a sense of mysterious communion! How singularly
On Tragedy
253
such moments are the epochs of life-the few points that stand
out prominently in the recollection after the flood of years has
buried all the rest, as all the low shore disappears, leaving only
a few rock-points visible at high tide!
XL.
October 18, 1849.
I have been pondering over your question as to the probable
effect of tragedies such as 'Phèdre,' &c. upon the mind. Now,
Aristotle's deep view of the end of the tragic drama is this:
that it aims, through the medium of two feelings which it
represents in action-terror and fear-to refine those very feel-
ings in the spectators. To refine, of course, means to take off
the rudeness and painfulness of such emotions, and make them
almost pleasing sensations. That is, the terrible and pathetic
in real life are painful things to witness; but in the mimic
representation the worst part is taken away by the conscious-
ness that it is unreal, at the same time that it is sufficiently like life
to produce an impression somewhat similar to that which would
be called forth by reality. The feeling thus made faint becomes
pleasurable, just as warmth is enjoyment, though heat be
intolerable. Of course it is plain that this refinement of feeling
unrealises it-unfits for the contemplation of the terrible and
pathetic in real life-substitutes the mimic emotion which is
useless, a merely artificial production, for the true one which
the Creator has appointed to rise in the bosom in such circum-
stances for the express purpose of leading to action, exciting
sympathy, hardening against danger, and so on.
A person who
is refined by high-wrought scenes in novels is necessarily sure
to shrink from such scenes in real life, because in the mimic
case he had all the excitement without the pain, and he will
turn aside from circumstances where excitement cannot be had
without pain. And such a one is sure to be found wanting
when true feeling is required for use, because the feelings have
got the habit of being roused, without leading to exertion.
They have got this habit in the unreal, and they will keep to it
in the real. They will rise at the sight of distress or pain: but
254 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
they have never been trained to pass promptly into the work of
sympathising and relieving, and accordingly such persons seem
and come to be looked upon as callous amidst the trials of
others over which they wept in the romance. This, I fancy, is
Aristotle's 'refinement' of feeling, and this must be the danger
in all refinement of society. The tragedy and the romance,
therefore, only begin to appear when the mind of a large por-
tion of the nation is at leisure to cultivate hothouse feelings,
which are always feeble monstrosities. The bull-fight and the
amphitheatre only begin when war and the chase have ended.
The emotions which found in these a healthy exercise once,
get their unhealthy repast by seeing without any call for acting.
It is plain to me that in this way all such reading is injurious
to the generality. All the feeling we can command we want for
acting. When we come to act, the feeling is not there to make
acting easy; and what we have to do we must either leave
undone or do with a cold heart, simply from having been accus-
tomed to train the feelings to refinement, and not to action.
I wish that nature could do her own healthy work upon all
our hearts. I could conceive a marvellously healing power to
come from opening the soul, like a child's, to receive spon-
taneously, without effort, the impressions of the unliving-and
yet how living !—world around us with all the awe that accom-
panies them.
One impulse from a vernal wood
Will teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Also I suspect that speculative philosophy is not good to
read, however interesting; at all events, not alone. It has too
little of a basis of proved fact to rest upon, and depends for its
truth too much upon feeling. Positive science, such as chemis-
try, natural philosophy, mineralogy, and geology, rests on facts:
and the effect of certainty which it produces on the mind is
always a healthy feeling. Here again it is as I said above.
The cure is, to come in contact with Nature and with Fact,
instead of exhausting strength by mighty blows struck at
The Observance of the Sabbath
255
random on the yielding air, in the region of conjecture and
bewildering mystery. I love that region; it is indeed the
region of Faith; but it requires a brain practised much on
more earthly precipices to avoid being dizzy and lost in the
immense abyss.
XLI.
October 19.
I am convinced there is a deep truth in the strict view which
many take of the observance of Sunday. I am certain that
their arguments are wrong-that the Sabbath is not a perpetual
obligation; that it was Jewish, and that it passed away with
Christianity, which made all days and places holy.
Nevertheless, I am more and more sure by experience that
the reason for the observance of the Sabbath lies deep in the
everlasting necessities of human nature, and that as long as
man is man the blessedness of keeping it, not as a day of rest
only, but as a day of spiritual rest, will never be annulled.
Almost everything may become an object of doubt; but, in the
midst of a wilderness of shadows, broken and distorted in every
way, of one thing I am certain-one thing is real-the life of
God in the soul of man. I am quite sure that there is One
who is seeking us rather than sought by us, that He will seek
and find the earnest; and I am sure that this hidden com-
munion may become an object of actual experience as soon as
the seeking is reciprocal. If I have not yet acted on it, I know
that not with the intellect, but with the spirit, man finds God;
in other words, by that which is allied to God in our souls, we
touch Him. The Jews required 'a sign,' that is, something
that would prove God to their sensuous nature. The Greeks
sought after wisdom; that is, by reason and mental tension
they expected to realise the Divine: but St. Paul's conviction
was, that the spiritual man alone—that is, the man who sought
with his spirit-could understand the things of God. By the
spirit, I suppose, he means that which I called above the part
in our nature which is allied to God, which shows itself, not in
cleverness and nimbleness of apprehension, but in devotion,
!
:
:
{
!
256 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
in the submissive heart, in gentleness, humbleness, and love.
I fancy that Sunday has lost in meaning, unless this part of our
being is called into energy. I have been beating the air in vain.
with investigation. The true way was much nearer.
Not by
soaring high or diving low do we get the Anointer, but by
something very near to us-trusting. Is not that the substance
of those verses which so many people find difficult, Romans x.
6, 7, 8, 9?
I could not quite satisfy myself with the desolate feeling
which instinctively I feel as often as you talk of resolving to fix
your heart on God alone. Is not this that which ought to make
me supremely happy? But as I was walking in the town to-
day, in a back street, and musing over this, I detected the
reason of it not doing so at once. God is Life, not Death: He
is not to be found, as the Legion-haunted tried to find Him,
among the tombs. I do not think that the spirit in which you
sometimes despondingly speak of living for Him alone, really
means nothing more than the burial alive of a nun who is
taking the black veil and thinking to become thus the spouse
of Christ. You speak of living for God and with God, as if
it were dying to all that is bright, and cheering, and beautiful,
and blessed. You speak as one would speak of going into a
parish union, which is good only when there is nothing else to
do. No wonder that, involuntarily and almost without a
distinct analysis of the feeling, I feel a kind of shudder and a
vague cheerlessness when you talk so. No; be vouée if you
will, but it must be au blanc, with more cheerful and more
grateful tones-not as if to serve God and to hear the eternal
prison-doors clank behind you were identical. Serve Him, love
Him, live to Him, and you will be bright and full of hope, and
noble. They shall renew their strength.' The heart vainly
pants for some celestial fruit, forbidden to our wants.' Yes,
but how unjust and unreasonable to complain if our expecta-
tions are not fulfilled! A sailor, I fancy, would not have a
right to count himself of a superior order of beings, if he sat
dripping on a rock, and pined for wings instead of sails. Sails
are not so swift as wings, and are much more coarse: but there
(
Woman's Position
257
is nothing for it but to patiently content himself with his limita-
tions, and humbly follow in the wake of the laws of nature,
making such use of wind and steam as the constitution of his
being permits-and not look up, envying the sea-birds in the
air. That will not get him on many knots an hour, I fancy.
And besides, even with wings, they will live and die gulls;
whereas the very limits that cramp him call out the energies of a
day-by-day diviner manhood.
XLII.
My dear
A woman's position is one of subjection,
mythically described as a curse in the Book of Genesis. Well,
but I ween that all curses are blessings in disguise. Labour
among thorns and thistles-man's best health. Woman's sub-
jection? What say you to His? Obedient,' a 'servant ;'
wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him. Methinks a
thoughtful, high-minded Woman would scarcely feel degraded
by a lot which assimilates her to the divinest Man: 'He came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' I have always con-
ceived that you had learned to count that ministry the sublimest
life which the world has seen, and its humiliation and subjection
precisely the features which were most divine. The Greeks at
Corinth wanted that part to be left out, and it was exactly that
part which Paul would not leave out-Jesus Christ, but Jesus
Christ crucified, which the Evangelicals rob of all its beauty,
Trust me, a noble woman laying on herself the duties of her sex,
while fit for higher things-the world has nothing to show more
like the Son of Man than that. Do you remember Wordsworth's
beautiful lines to Milton ?-
Thy soul was as a star, and dwelt apart ;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness: and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.
I do not know anything of Alfieri's 'Life.' By whom is it
VOL. I.
S
258 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
written? The misfortunes of genius, its false direction, its
misery, I suppose rise partly from the fact of the life of genius
being that which is chiefly given to the world. Many a soldier
died as bravely and with as much suffering as Sir John Moore
at Corunna; but every soldier had not a Wolfe to write his
death song. Many an innocent victim perished-yes, by
hundreds of thousands-on the scaffolds of France, and in the
dungeons of the robber barons, but they died silently. A few
aristocrats whose shriek was loud have filled the world with pity
at the tale of their suffering. Many a mediocre boy have I seen
spoilt at school-many a commonplace destiny has been marred
in life only these things are not matters of history. Peasants
grow savage with domestic troubles, and washerwomen pine
under brutal treatment: but the former are locked up for bury-
ing their misery in drunkenness-the latter die of a broken
heart, with plenty of unwritten poetry lost among the soapsuds.
I fancy the inarticulate sorrows are far more pitiable than those
of an Alfieri, who has a tongue to utter them. Carlyle in this
respect seems to me to hold a tone utterly diverse from that of
the Gospel. The worship of the hero, that is his religion;
condescension to the small and unknown, that was His!
A little plan which I have found serviceable in past years, is
to put down every night the engagements and duties of the next
day, arranging the hours well. The advantages of this are
several. You get more done than if a great part of each day is
spent in contriving and considering 'what next?' A healthful
feeling pervades the whole of life. There is a feeling of satis-
faction at the end of the day on finding that, generally, the
greater part of what is planned has been accomplished. This
is the secret of giving dignity to trifles. As units they are
insignificant; they rise in importance, when they become parts
of a plan. Besides this—and I think the most important thing
of all—there is gained a consciousness of Will, the opposite of
that which is the sense of impotency. The thought of time, to
me at least, is a very overpowering and often a very annihilating
one for energy: Time rushing on, unbroken, irresistible, hurry-
ing the worlds and the ages into being, and out of it, and making
The Gratitude of a Poor Girl
259
our 'noisy years seem moments in the being of the eternal
Silence.' The sense of powerlessness which this gives is very
painful. But I have felt that this is neutralised by such a little
plan as that. You feel that you do control your own course;
you are borne on, but not resistlessly. Down the rapids you go,
certainly, but you are steering and trimming your own raft, and
making the flood of Time your vassal, and not your conqueror.
I first, I think, began this plan after reading a valuable little
book, and a sunny, cheerful one, Abbot's Way to do Good.' It
has been omitted for years, but I have begun it again these last
few days.
(
'There is nothing in the drudgery of domestic duties to
soften,'-you quote that. No, but a great deal to strengthen
with the sense of duty done, self-control, and power. Besides,
you cannot calculate how much corroding rust is kept off-how
much of disconsolate, dull despondency is hindered. Daily use
is not the jeweller's mercurial polish : but it will keep your little
silver pencil from tarnishing.
I have been interrupted by the visit of a lady of my congrega-
tion, who came to take leave; one, it appears, who has been
warmly attached to the instruction given there.
She told me
the delight, the tears of gratitude, which she had witnessed in
a poor girl to whom, in passing, I gave a kind look on going
out of church on Sunday. What a lesson! How cheaply
happiness can be given! What opportunities we miss of doing
an angel's work! I remember doing it, full of sad feelings,
passing on, and thinking no more about it; and it gave an
hour's sunshine to a hu.nan life, and lightened the load of life
to a human heart-for a time!
XLIII.
October 24.
I have just returned from Lady G's a party of ten or
twelve to dinner. Conversation after, chiefly military, turning
on Indian battles; so I talked. Afterwards had a discussion
with Mr. about the post-office regulation of transmitting
letters on Sunday, in opposition to which there is to be a
S 2
260 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
mceting to-morrow. I maintained the difficulty of the question:
he asserted its facility. I instanced the case of my being
thrown out for the last train on Saturday night; what would
have been done had there been no train on Sunday morning?
The inestimable value of a day of physical repose and spiritual
rest is granted; but the details of that must be modified by
circumstances. Sailors must work a ship on Sundays; ships
must arrive on Sundays; battles must be fought; news must
travel. Life and death, or-what is equivalent-property to an
immense amount, must often be involved, if the business of a
great country, and much of the correspondence, receives a sudden
shock in the metropolis and all country towns. Two days in
the week there would be no delivery. Moreover, it is a matter
of degree. The question is not an easy one. For, on the other
hand, the compulsory working of so many thousands on the day
of rest is almost identical with smothering the life of religion in
the soul. I certainly do feel by experience the eternal obligation,
because of the eternal necessity, of the Sabbath. The soul
withers without; it thrives in proportion to the fidelity of its
observance. Nay, I even believe the stern rigour of the
Puritan Sabbath had a grand effect upon the soul. Fancy a
man thrown in upon himself, with no permitted music, nor re-
laxation, nor literature, nor secular conversation- nothing but
his Bible, his own soul, and God's silence ! What hearts of
iron this system must have made! How different from our
stuffed-arm-chair religion and 'gospel of comfort!' as if to be
made comfortable were the great end of religion! I am per-
suaded, however, that the Sabbath must rest, not on an enact-
ment, but on the necessities of human nature.
It is necessary.
not because it is commanded; but it is commanded because it
is necessary. If the Bible says, 'Eat the herb of the field,'
self-sustenance does not become a duty in consequence of the
enactment, but the enactment is only a statement of the law of
human nature. And so with the Sabbath; and this appears to
be a truer and a far more impregnable base to place it on.
as to the enactment, great part of it is indisputably dispensed
with. The day, the mode of observance, the manner of
For
L
The Puritan Sabbath
261
computing the twenty-four hours from twelve to twelve, or from
sunset to sunset. If these be ceremonial, who is to prove that
the number one in seven is not ceremonial too, and that it
might not be changed for one in ten? If all this is got rid of,
and 'no manner of work' is construed to permit hot dinners
and fly-driving on the Sabbath, then it is only an arbitrary
distinction to call any other part, or even the whole of it, of
moral and eternal instead of ceremonial obligation. You cannot
base it on a law: but you can show that the law was based on
an eternal fitness. There I think it never can be dislodged.
XLIV.
have been dining at Mr. E-'s, and escaped at 9.20; a
pleasant party enough; that is, there were a good many
intelligent men, and the conversation was of a better order than
usual. Mr. E- remarked, in conversation, that our Lord
never once used irony. I alleged Mark vii. 9 : 'Full well ye
reject,' &c., which, after a long discussion, and the production
of Greek Testaments, &c., was universally admitted to be
decisive. Then came the maxim, that the indignation ex-
pressed by Him against hypocrisy was no precedent for us,
inasmuch as He spoke as a Divine person. A gentleman of the
name of
maintained this. I contended that it was
human, and that if a man did not feel something of the same
spirit under similar circumstances, if his blood could not boil
with indignation, nor the syllable of withering justice rise to
his lips, he could not even conceive His spirit. Mr. E
agreed to this, to my surprise, and told an anecdote. Could
you not have felt indignation for that, Robertson?' My blood
was at the moment running fire- not at his story, however; and
I remembered that I had once in my life stood before my
fellow-creature with words that scathed and blasted; once in
my life I felt a terrible might; I knew, and rejoiced to know,
that I was inflicting the sentence of a coward's and a liar's
hell.
I feel most as I should be when my mind is in the attitude of
262 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ļ
- do you remember the dear old simile of Shelley, which I have
not quoted for so long, though it has been again and again in
my meditations; that I used to quote so often? There is
something in the feeling of that simile that is quite after my
own heart the solemn night, the purity of the thread of light,
the Divine compassion of the placid Thing above, the quiet
devoted sadness of the solitary inhabitant of night and air
below, a butterfly in all but gaudiness. No, I have not given
the serene feeling and sacred sensations of the simile. It is
quite peculiar, and I have repeated it to myself a thousand
times. Resignation was the word I wanted. The homage of
resignation beneath the clear pale sky of night, with Eternity
and Immensity all round, imparting themselves to the look
upwards. It is all in vain, I do not express it. Shelley's single
line says it all. The sound of the words responds to the
thought and image which they suggest. I cannot tell you what
a stillness they produce in me, and how entirely, more than
anything I know, they image what I feel.
I have been asked to go to Switzerland, and a man ought to
go there to feel intensely at least once in his life. The only
question is, it will scarcely be possible for me to exceed seven
Sundays of absence.
I fear it is not possible, but what a dream! The valley of
Rosenlaui, that loveliest of earthly spots; the stern grandeur of
the Grimsel, where the wildest and loneliest thoughts were in
my heart four years ago; and the fall of the Aar at Handek,
where I got a sensation new in life; or the spots of the Tyrol,
where I wandered for long weeks alone. For a time I almost
think I would give up the rest of the year, anything for that.
But, no; a few weeks soon pass, though they leave behind a
memory which tints all existence, and apparently absorb all
existence into themselves.
XLV.
My dear
-I implore you, do not try morphine ever; no,
not once. I will trust you not to do so, not to take any opiate
¡
Advice against the use of Opiates
263
I
whatever. I ask it humbly. Pledge me your word that you
will honourably comply with this, in the letter and in the spirit
too. It is a wicked and cowardly attempt to rule the spirit by
the flesh. It is beneath you. If you do it I can honour you no
longer; the results upon the system are slow, sure, and
irreparable, and the habit grows until it is unconquerable.
am deeply, anxiously in earnest. You are not worthy the
fidelity of my friendship if you try to drown misery that way.
Except in the grossness of the effect, where is the difference
between the opiate and the dram? Do you not know what keeps
the gin palaces open ?-Misery! The miserable go there to
forget. You must not and shall not do it, for it is degradation.
I would have you condescend to no miserable materialism to
escape your sorrow. Remember what Maria Theresa said
when she began to dose in dying, 'I want to meet my God
awake.' Remember that He refused the medicated opiate on
the cross. Meet misery awake. May I borrow sacred words?
C
Having begun in the spirit, do not be made perfect through
the flesh.' Summon the force to bear out of your own heart,
and the divine that dwells there-not out of a laudanum bottle.
I have spoken ruggedly, but not rudely. Forgive me; I am
not myself to-night! I would gladly sustain the depression I
feel, by an opiate, or by anything else; but I resist, because it
is despicable.
XLVI.
Another Sunday done: crowded congregations, pulpit steps
even full, ante-room nearly so. Morning, the Sabbath subject ;
the afternoon, the conclusion of Acts xviii. I sat in church
thinking, 'Now, how this crowd would give many men pleasure,
flatter their hearts with vanity, or fill them with honest joy!
How strange that it is given to one who cannot enjoy it, who
takes no pains to keep it, who would gladly give all up, and
feels himself in the midst of all a homeless and heartless
stranger!' In the afternoon, for a few minutes, gentler
thoughts came, and there was a rush of warmer, perhaps better
feeling in some parts of my sermon, where I was speaking of
له
264 Life and Letters of Rev. F. WV. Robertson
Apollos's character-brilliant and gifted, yet sitting humbly to
be taught by Priscilla; and also where St. Paul, taking a vow,
seemed to indicate that there was in his heart a lingering
attachment to the ceremonies, and even the superstitions,
hallowed by carly associations.
C
has been here since eight o'clock. He had been reading
Fichte's Blessed Life.' We had a long talk about it; he is but
a beginner in these matters, but was deeply interested. I will
tell you a thought which came out in conversation, and which I
expressed. Fichte seems to discountenance attachment to the
individual and the visible. The clinging which to cut away
would be cutting the heart to the quick, he would call an indi-
cation of a mind not set on the Invisible. And yet how is this?
Then they who feel least, and attach themselves least, are the
religious of the earth. The gentlest and tenderest, who have
forgotten self in the being of another, are consoled with the
pleasing assurance that they have neither part nor lot' in the
blessed life. And He, whose tears flowed so freely over the
grave of friendship, and over his country's doomed metropolis,
who loved John with so peculiar and selective an attachment—
what are we to say of Him? Oh! it cannot be. It cannot be,
that God has given us beings here to love, and that to love them
intensely is idolatry. I can understand self-annihilation for
another dearer than self; but I cannot understand the annihila-
tion of those dear affections, nor the sacrifice of a bleeding heart
at the shrine of Him whose name is Love. I do not, however,
comprehend anything of the matter. It is all dark. I do not
understand why the tenderer the heart is, the more it is exposed
to be torn, and rent, and tortured. Separations, bereavements,
deaths, broken hearts-there is something very stern in the
aspect of this world, when you penetrate below the superficial
smile it wears—very stern, and every day makes life a more
serious thing, more suggestive of grave thought Then, the
next moment, there is, perhaps, a burst of lightheartedness, un-
worthy of one who thinks and feels; but here again Elena's lay
in 'Philip Van Artevelde' gives the true account of that :
The human heart cannot sustain, etc.
St. Paul's Estimate of Women
265
And that very provision for happiness or lightness, in spite of
such serious thought, seems to give us glimpses of the truth
that Love sits at the helm of this dark world's course, after all.
Else Talleyrand's hideous sneer might be almost believed: 'the
happy are they who have hard hearts, and hard' how shall I
euphonise it?' peptic powers.'
XLVII.
I rather agree with the view of St. Paul having taken, person-
ally, a low estimate of women. It seems to me inseparable
from his temperament. I had a friend full of fire and ardour
like St. Paul, though wanting his tenderness, who was blessed
or unblessed with the same gift as St. Paul, and he spoke in the
same way-not contemptuously, for he liked to be soothed and
flattered by them-but as if they were born to be helpmeets for
man, and that chiefly. That respectful chivalry of feeling which
characterises some men can only exist where that is found
which St. Paul lacked, and which was in many respects a gift;
still, no man can lack any one of the feelings of humanity, how-
ever much misery he may escape by it, without loss in some
other respect. It is a matter of great interest, and even awe, tɔ
me, to observe how the nobler feelings can exist in their intensity
only where the whole nature, the lower too, is intense also; and
how that which is in itself low and mean becomes sublimated
into something that is celestial. Hence, in the highest natures
I suppose goodness will be the result of tremendous struggle;
just as the 'borc,' which is nothing in the Thames, becomes a
convulsion on the Ganges, where the waters of a thousand miles
roll like a sea to meet the incoming tide of the ocean.
I never, however, could reconcile that coldness of nature in
St. Paul with the singular fire and passion of his character, nor
with his remarkable and exuberant tenderness. Men are divided
into three classes-the irascible or passionate temperament, the
sensual, and the melancholy. St. Paul belonged to the first,
which is no doubt the finest, and, on the whole, the happiest.
Poor -! The secret, however, of his scepticism seems to
have been crime; or was the crime the result of scepticism
266 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
For when the soul is tossed over that sea, without a chart, and
without a polar star, it is almost at the mercy of any fitful gust
of passion. I cannot blame severcly what others so condemn-
the bitterness of that sarcasm in the
People often mis-
take a contortion of anguish for a diabolical grin. Often the
cry of despair is taken for a shout of savage triumph; many a
brave man, and tender withal, has struck a woman ruthlessly
her death-blow. Yes, but then the man was drowning. No
one can understand the horrid laugh of hopelessness which
delights to scatter its scorn on the falsehoods which are deluding
others, after they are proved falsehoods, but he who has felt the
ice of doubt cracking beneath his feet, and seen himself alone
on a single ice-block, severed from mankind. I do not excuse,
but I can understand, both the want of reverence and the
immortal life which result from such despair.
XLVIII.
October.
My dear
-I know little of the Countess Hahn Hahn or
Frederica Bremer, but I can easily understand that the female
character is very different in those places from here. Tennyson,
I remember, in his 'Princess,' which I have not in my posses-
sion to refer to, but shall get to-day, draws the distinction well
between the characters of the north and south :-
Oh, swallow, swallow, swallow flying south.
'Dark, tender, true,' I think, are the epithets he applies to the
north:
And dark and true and tender is the north.
The south, of course, passionate, impulsive, brief-lived in feeling.
I believe the former makes the nobler character. At least, it
has been given to the north again and again to regenerate the
worn-out south by the infusion of nobler blood and more vigorous
intellect. In the estimate formed of women, I should think
there cannot be a doubt which is the truer and deeper-that
which makes her a plaything, or that which surrounds her with
the sacredness of a silent worship. A temperament like that of
St. Paul's is happier, and for the world more useful.
܀
•
His Appreciation of Cloud Scenery
267
(
Still I think that tone of mind, which could only be found in
the north, only confers the power of suffering-dignified suffer-
ing if you will, but only suffering. In one or two cases here and
there you meet with those whose hearts the holy forms of
young imagination have kept pure.' But commonly, I believe,
the very purity of these aspirations becomes a dangerous gift.
They lie very close to what is wrong, they transform themselves
very easily into tempters-Lucifers cast down from heaven.
Tenderness transmutes itself into something allied, yet different;
disappointment becomes heart ruin. Do you remember in the
'Arabian Nights' the story of the princess gifted with super-
natural power-using it always nobly-blowing flames of fire at
the genie, and reduced to a heap of ashes in the conflict by her
own fire the very moment after victory? It is all very myste-
rious. The sons of dust crawl plodding on in safety to their
journey's end; and they who aspire to guide the fire coursers of
the sun, or float through heaven on wings of waxen purity, are
precipitated into ruin, or else left in cold dank seas of dis-
appointment.
XLIX.
October 30.
Walking down Regency Square, about four o'clock, I was
struck by the singular beauty of the sky. Two mighty conti-
nents of cloud stretched from above me in parallel lines towards
the horizon above the sea, where they seemed to meet. A river
of purest blue, broad above my head, narrow by perspective in
the distance, ran between them, seeming to lave their shores.
Each of them had a rim or edge of bright gold, as if the river
were rippling and glistening on the banks; and innumerable
islets of gold were dotted along both shores; the parallelism of
them, producing that effect of perspective which you see in an
avenue of trees, gave a strong perception of the boundlessness
of the distance into which they stretched away. Looking at
sky and clouds, you scarcely estimate distance. The vault
şeems very measurable, and it does not occur to you that clouds
which appear only a few yards in length are really acres and
208 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
acres of vapour. This combination of forms, however, forced
me to realise the immensity of space, and a deeper sense of
grandeur and loveliness came to me than I have felt for many
weeks. It has always been so. When I have not perfect union
with humanity, I find in trees and clouds, and forms and colours
of things inanimate, more that is congenial, more that I can in-
form with my own being, more that speaks to me-than in my
own species. There is something in the mere posture of look-
ing up which gives a sense of grandeur; and that, I suppose, is
the reason why all nations have localised heaven there, and
peopled the sky with Deity.
I have received a letter from to-day. It is full of hope
and touching in all its misery! Her sorrows have been great,
and her trials are severe. She has attempted to find peace in
the patristic system, which she recommends to me, but it is quite
plain that she has tried it in vain. I replied that I knew the
system pretty well, having studied it once with anxiety; that I
doubted not it had in it a remedy for those who could believe it ;
that I was not prepared to say that to them it was not a real
remedy, for the form of error often conceals a truth, and to many
minds presents the truth only, the wrapping being instinctively
rejected, as the grape-skin or sugar-cane fibre is rejected by the
palate when the sweetness of which they are but the vehicle
has been extracted; that even of the worst of Romish errors
the same might be said, as, for instance, Mariolatry contains the
sublime truth of the adorableness and heavenliness of female
purity; but that no act of volition could extract this nutriment
from error when the conscience recognised it as error; that to
adopt a system because others who believed it earnestly have
had their spiritual nature nurtured by it, to believe it for the
sake of the advantage of it, must fail; that it would be destruc-
tion to the moral being; that I would rather live solitary on the
most desolate crag-shivering, with all the warm wraps of false-
hood stripped off, gazing after unfound truth-where 'bird doth
not find bush, nor insect wing flit over the herbless granite,'—
than sit comfortably on more inhabited spots, where others are
រ
}
Musings in Hove Churchyard
269
warm in a faith which is true to them, but which is false to me.
I said this to her more concisely in a few lines.
I went out this afternoon to get some fresh air, and cool a
little feverishness. After a walk I bent my steps to the spot
most congenial to my feelings at that time, the churchyard at
Hove. It was quite dark, but the moon soon rose and shed a
quiet light upon the long church and the white tombstones. I
went in, and was pleased to hear not a single human sound far
or near. The moon was rising, like glowing copper, through
the smoke at Brighton. Above there were a few dense clouds,
edged with light, sailing across a marvellous blue, which softened
towards the zenith into a paler and more pearly cobalt, with
clear innocent stars here and there looking down so chaste and
pure. I heard nothing but the sea; that, however, very distinctly,
chanting no 'sea psalm,' but falling with a most dissonant heavy
endless clang upon the shore. It found for me the expression I
could not put in words.
I went to the tomb, and stood beside it quietly for some time.
I felt no bitterness-infinite pity and tenderness-that was pre-
dominant. I did not kneel to pray; I do not know why. I
passed E. M——'s tomb, and paused one moment. The bride-
groom lies beneath the hillock where so many fell at Chillian-
wallah; the bride is desolate. Two who were there are dead,
both young. That marriage and that death are singularly joined
in my mind, for poor E was planning her own wedding then,
and settling that I should marry her. Young R, too, has
gone, but I do not envy any of them, except the soldier, perhaps.
I wish I had been with my own gallant, wondrous regiment in
that campaign.
L.
November 5.
Keble on this occasion is scarcely equal to himself. The
connection is forced. The mountain boy, getting hardened by
years, is very indistinctly linked with the thought of'unforgiving-
1 Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity.
ι
270 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ness; nor do I see why a mountain boy is peculiarly called upon
for the exercise of that grace. Besides the 'blest restraint' is
not one calculated at all to produce any real elevation of cha-
racter. It is little more than an animal existence, and all those
notions of peasant purity and pastoral innocence are miserably
false and sentimental. They belong rather to the heathen times
of Corydon and Amaryllis than the more true Christian concep-
tion of a new birth into goodness and progressive excellence by
knowledge of evil and hatred of it. If the mountain boy had
lived in that narrow 'blessed range' all his life, I suspect his
perception of the beauty of the 'snow-clad peaks of rosy light'
would have been very dim and dull indeed. It is education
which draws out the beauty of these things. I fancy my little
Charles would see more beauty in his regiment of leaden soldiers
than in the sublimest view in Switzerland.
Oh, lady, we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live.
A child's glance on nature is void of rapture, unless, by some
unfortunate precocity of constitution, feeling is very early de-
veloped; especially a boy's glance, to whom a beautiful hill is
rather a fine place for a scamper, or a good cover for grouse,
than a place for sensibility to expatiate in. The sense of the love-
liness of nature comes with the first susceptibility of the spell of
woman. I have little doubt that the 'thwarting cliffs' were
never called by so poetical a name as 'thwarting' by the young
gentleman of the hills, until he found his rudeness checked by
the vigorous chastisement of Peggy's delicate fingers making his
ears tingle. 'Altered day dreams;' why, the dreams of boy-
hood are nothing to the dreams of manhood. The mysteries of
this unintelligible world, and the solemn beauty and wonder of
existence, do not begin in their fulness until the heart has begun
to lose itself in 'life's scducing wild.'
I do not quite know what to say about Carlyle. Sure I am
that his mind has had more influence on the thoughtful young
inen of the day than any other I could name,
His thought is
Carlyle
271
more moulded into many of the leading Americans' thought,
and his power has told more upon the tone of feeling amongst
the most highly educated manufacturers than that of any, I
suppose, in England; and I am not prepared to think that that
is an attribute of mere talent. Formative influence is a preroga-
tive of genius; but the truth is, that talent, at least, often be-
comes nearly as intuitive as genius. When the mind is stored
with a vast variety of thoughts, which by digestion it has made
its own, it is wonderful how rapid by habit those combinations
become, which we generally attribute to genius only. Then
again, as Carlyle says of Mirabeau, who was charged with using
other men's materials, 'to make other men's thoughts really your
own, and not simply reproduce them, is an evidence of genius.
Why did they not make as much use of the raw material of their
own thoughts as he did?'
LI.
I will quote a passage which has struck me :—
"The true art of moral culture is to balance extravagant
tendencies by quickening those which are languid. Growth is
a safer means of producing harmony in character than repres-
sion.' How often have I felt and said this! You cannot descend
to the regions of the lower nature, and wrestle with success
therc. You must go above and fight them, as Perseus fought
the dragon that would have destroyed Andromeda, on wings in
the air. The lower is subdued, not by repression, but by making
it simply an instrument of the higher. No fasting, for instance,
will make the soul pure; but a noble attachment will keep all
baser feelings in check and ennoble them. By the bye, that is
a better remedy than Cato's; that was the very essence of St.
Paul's system; that was the gospel according to him. Not
repression, coercion, law-that only produces dreadful conflict.
'Ye cannot do the things ye would.' 'Walk in the spirit'-the
higher life of loftier motives-'and then ye will not fulfil the
lusts of the flesh!' and that is true particularly as well as
generally. No court-martial or provost-marshal's cord would,
272 Life and Letters of Rev. F. IV. Robertson
stop thieving in a regiment, or make a coward brave; but an
esprit de corps and honour have done it again and again.
I am quite sure that is the real answer to Tractarianism and
Sabbatarianism. Those systems, 'as systems,' will not produce
animals as noble even as the dog is, though I admit there are
some of the noblest of the species hampered by them, and also
that some who never can be made noble require to be kept by
them from doing harm.
I sometimes believe that the expression of communion is much
more rich and varied where the presence is only that of mind,
than when friends are together, and hour after hour passes, each
taking for granted that all which he desires to say is understood.
The presence which is bodily, soothes and contents, but perhaps
for that very reason checks the utterance of thought and feeling,
which only becomes articulate from a sense of want. Is not
that the history of the origin of speech itself? Is it not want
which brings out the child's first tones, and elaborates language
as the requirements of men, by civilisation, become more
multiplied and complex? And if we had perfect fulness of all
things, the entire beatitude of being without a want, possessing
all blessedness within, should we not lapse into the eternal silence
of God Himself?
All the utterances of man-
-his music and his poetry, the
heirloom which the gifted have bequeathed to their species-are
but the results of a want, of a loneliness which coarser and
blunter spirits had been fortunate, or unfortunate, enough not to
feel, and which compelled them to articulate expressions, like
the thirsting baby, in moans, or cries of happiness, as the case
might be.
November 10.
I quite agree with what you say about sympathy produced by
fault, but I think you will not find my view inconsistent. I only
say that mercy which is shown by us sinners to sinners is either
deficient or extravagant. Fair, generous, firm mercy is only
shown by One who has been tempted and not erred.
I gave
LII.
The Poetry of Ordinary Life
273
three examples-Paul the apostle and David, of severity; the
former having not been tempted, and the latter having fallen-
one of weak leniency, Saul the king, who sympathised too much
with Agag.
Miss is a kind, true friend, but I do not quite accept
what she says about V's life being too clumsy and real.
No; remember, He had nowhere to lay His head; that was
clumsy and real enough. Paul, whom I consider the sublimest
of the human race, toiled at tent-making. Elizabeth Fry went
into dirty dungeons, and in Ireland would have, with indomitable
perseverance, done something in mud hovels. I only wish there
were more real coarseness forced into V———'s life. The outward
and visible do not always weigh down the inward; but often
inward life wants more pressure on it from without to make it
salient. The noble frigate looks heavy enough in calm, but
springs to the gale, like a sea-bird, gracefully. Rely upon it, the
real poetry of life is found where He found it-in multiplying
loaves and fishes, in descending to things so mean as wine
required for a feast, in collecting a few rude simple people round
Him, in working the earlier part of His existence humbly at the
carpenter's trade, in a very homely existence, and V———— ought
not to talk of submission, or of a nunnery. Did you ever read
Blanco White's description of a nun's life and mind-its stag-
nation, its anile childishness, its over-conscious purity, which is
really impurity; its miserable, crushed natural tendencies, and
the dreadful revenge nature takes in asserting her rights? Trust
me, she who would be wiser than her Maker, is only seeming
wise. She who nourishes one part of her being by the extinction
of another, is but a stunted monstrosity after all. Let V-
Let V-be
sure that God has given a woman no nobler destiny than that of
an abundant home, not the less noble for its trials. Her tone is
not a worthy one; it is effeminate, not feminine.
I wish to speak firmly. V would despise me if I did not.
He was not a true friend, but a sentimentalist for the moment,
who was for taking all the coarseness and terre-à-terre life out
of the way, that his Divine Friend might lead a languid, poetical
life of comfort. I would not be a Satan to her. No. Is a
VOL. I.
T
P
274 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
terre-à-terre life after all as sharp as the cross? Are howling
winds and cold rooms as unpoetical as Pilate's judgment-hall
and the rude mock of the ruffian soldiery?
In speaking of 'Knox's Rambles,' and the effects of association
with men in sharpening the intellect, you remark that this seems
inconsistent with the fact that great spirits have been nursed in
solitude. Yes, but not the ploughman's solitude. Moses was
forty years in Midian, but he had the education of Egypt before,
and habits of thought and observation began, as shown in his
spirit of inquiry with regard to the burning forest. Usually, I
suppose, the spark has been struck by some superior mind,
either in conversation or through reading. Ferguson was,
perhaps, an exception. Then again, stirring times set such
master-minds to work even in this solitude, as in Cromwell's
case. I remember, too, a line of Goethe's, in which he says:-
Talent forms itself in solitude,
Character in the storms of life.
But I believe both your positions are true.
The soul collects its
mightiest forces by being thrown in upon itself, and coerced
solitude often matures the mental and moral character marvel-
lously, as in Luther's confinement in the Wartburg. Or, to take
a loftier example, Paul during his three years in Arabia; or,
grander still, His solitude in the desert the Baptist's too. But,
on the other hand, solitude unbroken, from earliest infancy, or
with nothing to sharpen the mind, either by collision with other
minds, or the expectation of some new sphere of action shortly,
would, I suppose, rust the mental energies. Still there is the
spirit to be disciplined, humbled, and strengthened, and it may
gain in proportion as the mind is losing its sharpening educa-
tion.
I have just read Keble's hymn for the twenty-third Sunday
after Trinity. The last stanza but one is truly consolatory; and
those lines about the dead leaves represent a feeling which is
irresistible in autumn. I recollect how sometimes the heaps of
soft leaves, the fluttering of the falling ones through the air, have
brought almost a pang to my heart. Do you know sometimes
1
Degrees of Inspiration
275
they have made me think of my mother's grey hairs, with melan-
choly reminiscences of what she was. The unmurmuring way
in which the vegetable creation resign their lives is very striking,
as a thought, in connection with the great law of being; for, by
the sacrifice of life, voluntary or involuntary, and by that alone,
can other and higher life exist. The mineral soil gives its force
to the grass, and the grass its life to the cattle, and they sacrifice
theirs for man; all that is involuntary, and of course there is in
it nothing great or good. But voluntary acquiescence in and
working with that manifested law or will of God is the very
essence of human goodness. Is it not another name for
Love?
LIII.
The difference between Moses and Anaxagoras, the Epistles
and the 'Excursion,' I believe is in degree. The Light or the
Word which dwells in all men, dwells in loftier degree in some
than in others, and also is of a nobler kind of inspiration.
Bezaleel and Aholiab-artificers-were men inspired we are
told. Why they more than other seers of the Beautiful? But
who would compare their enlightenment with that which en-
nobles the life instead of purifying the taste? And, again, who
would compare a philosopher, physical or metaphysical. reveal-
ing in the one case the laws of matter, and in the other the laws
of mind, with the revealer of spiritual truth? Is the dictum of
Anaxagoras, that all our sense of knowledge is delusive, to be
compared with that which Moses reveals-Jehovah is one Lord
and Holy? The Excursion' reveals some beautiful truths of
our moral being; but by how much our spiritual life is higher
than our sensitive and moral, so much are the Epistles above
the 'Excursion '-higher in kind and higher also in degree of
inspiration, for the Apostles claim, in matters spiritual, unerring
power of truth. Newton's revelation of the order of the heavens,
grand as it was, is inferior to that which we technically call
inspiration, by how much one single human soul transcends the
whole material universe in value.
(
I think it comes to this: God is the Father of Lights, and--
T 2
276 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
the King in his beauty, and-the Lord of Love. All our several
degrees of knowledge attained in these departments are from
Him. One department is higher than another; in each depart-
ment, too, the degree of knowledge may vary from a glimmering
glimpse to infallibility: so that all is properly inspiration, but
immensely differing in value and in degree. If it be replied,
that this degrades inspiration by classing it with things so com-
mon, the answer is plain: a sponge and a man are both animals,
but the degrees between them are almost incalculable.
I think this view of the matter is important, because in the
other way some twenty or thirty men in the world's history have
had a special communication, miraculous, and from God. In
this, all have it, and by devout and earnest cultivation of the
mind and heart may have it increased illimitably. This is really
practical.
LIV.
My morning was broken up. I could not go out to Hurst
until half an hour before two, just in time to see the children off
by the train. There was then an hour and a half to wait for
the next train. I sat down upon a bench, and read a small
work of Ullmann's, a professor at Heidelberg. It was a wild
day, with driving clouds, drizzling rain, and lurid gleams of
sunshine at intervals; but warm. It was rather fine to see the
black and lead-coloured clouds drifting over the steep sides of
the Downs, sometimes so dark and solemn in their march that I
felt a kind of awe creeping over me. I am very fond of a driving
sky, when it is not monotonous, and when the altitudes of the
clouds vary a good deal-some sweeping quite low and only just
topping the hills, others sailing more slowly far above, and with
tracts of clouds between these, The variety of colour, the great
diversity of speed, give a great charm to such an aërial effect: it
impresses you more with the idea of supernatural life than when
a surface of cloud is drawn at one uniform speed across the
sky. Coming home, the heavens cleared brightly towards the
setting sun, while all the rest was denser and more leaden by
the contrast. Orange flakes and lines were shot across a clear
On Capital Punishment
277
sea-green sky, passing into blue, but made green where the
yellow mingled with the blue, without any red to keep the two
from blending. But it was the wildness of the whole, and the
recklessness with which the whole air seemed animated, that
gave the day its peculiar character, and power of exciting
interest. I sat and read, and watched effect after effect, until
the air and I seemed friends.
The miserable Mannings were executed this morning; they
have been hawking the account of their last hours about
Brighton, but I have not yet seen it. There is something dis-
gusting in the thought of a large class of human beings getting
their livelihood out of a death so horrible.
I have not maturely considered capital punishment. The
questions are, Does it deter from crime by example? Does it
give a deeper dye to sin in public estimation? or does it harden
by the spectacle, and enlist public sympathy on the side of the
criminal, instead of on the side of the law? Or rather, there is
a previous question to be settled: is the object of punishment
threefold only-to serve as an example to others, to ameliorate
the offender, and in some cases to defend society by his entire
removal? Or is there a fourth element, the expression of
righteous vengeance? for I acknowledge I cannot look upon
vengeance as merely remedial. The sense of indignation which
arises in the human bosom spontaneously against some crimes
must, in a degree, be a reflection of that which resides in the
mind of Deity. If so, there is in Him that which the Scripture
calls wrath, and we are not entitled, I think, to assume that all
penalty is intended to effect, or can effect, the reformation of the
offender. Probably some penalties are final, expressing infinite
justice, and then the higher award of human law must resemble
that. It is the indignation of society or mankind, purified of all
personal vindictiveness, expressed in a final punishment. For
doubtless man--that is, society, as distinguished from individual
man-speaks in a degree with the authority of God. He hath
committed all judgment unto Him, because He is the Son of
Man.' All hangs on that. Is final penalty the dignified expres-
sion of vengeance, putting aside the question of remedy or of
278 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
social safety, and does not the element of vengeance enter into
all punishment? If not, why does the feeling exist, not as a
sinful, but as an essential part of human nature in His words,
too, and acts?
I do not know any other ground on which I could defend
capital punishment; for the scriptural authority, 'whoso shed-
deth man's blood,' &c., is quite inconclusive, being a Jewish rule,
and it would be hard to show that it belongs to the race as well
as to the nation. Nor do I think there is much weight in the
horror which the idea excites of 'hurrying the sinner before his
Judge,' and taking from him what you cannot restore. Perhaps
there is something mawkish in this. The law of society may be
just as truly the voice of God, declaring the termination of the
criminal's existence, as a fever, or an earthquake, or, as a better
parallel, his own suicide would be; and if so, I would no more
shrink from pronouncing sentence than I would from defending
my own life by the destruction of another's.
On the other hand, the great difficulty is, that a murder com-
mitted suddenly, with half an hour's preparation, must be visited
with the same penalty as a crime such as that of Rush or the
Mannings.
And again, if the feeling of society be so strongly averse to
shedding blood that, as now, there is a morbid interest for the
criminal, and ladies sentimentalise, and send bouquets, and use
compassionating opera-glasses, while philanthropists rouse pub-
lic indignation against the law, then it is plain that, whether
or not the public conscience has become diseased, it is better to
award a milder punishment to criminals, and so continue the
public indignation felt against them, than to make crime interest-
ing, and its details the pungent element in such books as 'Jack
Sheppard.'
Whatever becomes of the abstract question of the rightful-
ness of capital punishment, I feel persuaded that society in
England is fast approaching to a state in which it will be peri-
lous to the morals of the community to retain the practice much
longer. Symptoms of disgust and sympathy are beginning to
be manifested so generally, that it is only in atrocious cases,
Shelley
279
where a feeling of revenge for a horrible cruelty satisfies itself
with the criminal's death, that deep murmurs of dissatisfaction
can be suppressed.
Those are my crude thoughts on the subject.
You ask what is the meaning of Keble's line-
Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall?¹
S
He has just said, that earth would not be worth having if it
were all, even though affection's kiss brightens it often; and
then compares those kisses to spangles on the pall. Who
would be in a coffin for the pleasure of having a velvet pall with
spangles over him? What matters it to the dead? It is not
a very polite insinuation, however, to dear affection.' He
means, Who would live this dead life for the sake of a few
moments of affectionate happiness, or rather a good many, for
he says 'oft'? I reply, I would.
I agree with you about Shelley, as to his exquisite delicacy
and his power of expressing the inexpressible. There certainly
was no coarseness in his mind; still I do not know whether
that very refinement be not sometimes more dangerous than
what is coarse. So thought Shakspeare :-
'Tis too much known, that with devotion's visage
And pious action we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
I do not, however, really include Shelley in this; because
false, miserably false, as his creed and system were, I do believe
that a soul truly refined, pure, and filled with a large love,
dwelt in him. There was, however, a fibre of madness in his
composition. That 'Sunset' is very beautiful; but those lines
are morbid, and belong to the region of spectral phantasms, not
real life, not the life of sunny humanity, peopled by
Creatures not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food.
The charnel-house, and the tombs with 'dead selves,' ' vexed
1 Hymn, Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity.
280 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ghosts,' and a kind of madness, are all very well for a being
who is half insane, as Shelley certainly was; but positively I
will not walk with anyone in these tenebrous avenues of cypress
and yew.
I like sunny rooms and sunny Truth. When I
had more of spring and warmth I could afford to be prodigal
of happiness; love the 'darksome lawn brushed by the owlet's
wing;' and meditate for hours over decay. Now I want sun-
light and sunshine. I desire to enter into those regions where
cheerfulness, and truth, and health of mind and heart reside.
In the seventh verse of Keble, it ought to be 'were,' not
'where.'
LV.
November 16.
You ask if Christ's will was strong, simply because upheld by
the Spirit without measure in Him? I should reply, because
He was a perfect man. Perfect man is manhood with all its
appetites, affections, moral sense, aspirations, intellect, in
complete equilibrium. Fallen man is not a watch with some-
thing wrong added (sin), but merely a watch without the regulator;
the mainspring runs the chain out too fast. He alone had a
mind in entire harmony with God's. He alone could say, 'I
and my Father are one.' 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I
work.' It was that entire harmony with the mind of God which
made His will so strong. Self-will is weak sometimes, even in
a Napoleon. The will that moves with God must be strong,
and ever right. My judgment is just;' Why? Because I
seek not my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.' ..
C
You ask me about sins of thought. I suppose some persons
have sinned by the argument you mentioned, that having done
as wrong as they could by an evil thought, there was no reason
why they should debar themselves of the rest. But if this were
an honest argument, it proceeded upon an entire misconception
of the passages which would be alleged. The Saviour told men
who were priding themselves upon being immaculate in act,
that numbers of them would have done the sin if they had
had an opportunity, or if they had dared. To have thought it
281
Sin in Thought and Act Contrasted
and wished it, placed them on a level with those over whom
they were triumphing. But it is one thing to say that a man
who would do a crime if he could, having already done it in his
heart, is just as guilty as if he had done it; and it is quite
another thing to say that a person who has had an opportunity
and checked himself-for instance, spared his enemy's life when
he was on the point of taking it—is as bad as if he had done it.
The difference is very plain: the one would if he could —the
other could and would not. The great controversy between
Him and Judaism was respecting the value of acts. They held
that to have not been 'extortioners, unjust,' &c., entitled them
to thank God they were not as other men were. He announced
that the act received its quality from the spirit in which it was
done. Feeling decided the question. Out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts. Many a one who was priding himself there, was
just as bad as if he had sinned. What thanks to the rich
Pharisee that he had never been an extortioner like the needy
publican? In kind they were guilty of the very sins which they
condemned. He that is without that sin, let him first cast a
stone.' Is there not many a murderer who has never taken
away life, but in his heart again and again killed with a deadly
hatred? Now the test whether he is a murderer or not comes
when his foe is in his power, when the danger of detection seems
past, where there is nothing but his own will and conscience to
guide his act. David had such a chance, and so had Saul.
Neither slew the other, but Saul hurled his javelin with a right
good will, and David at the very last moment spared Saul and
Nabal. Which was the murderer? Which had really slain
the other in his heart? And do you fancy David might just as
well have taken those two men's lives, having resolved on it?
Why, there is the parable of the son who said to his father, 'I
go not,' and afterwards went. The resolve of disobedience was
made. Do we fancy that it was not in any way reversed or
cancelled by the change of purpose? The comment of Christ
is, that he (that son) did the will of his father. There is no
passage in which it is said that the sin of thought is equal to
the sin of act. It is simply said the sin of act may be done in
282 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
>
thought, so far as thought goes. Whether it is equivalent to an
act, I think entirely depends, as I said before, upon the question
whether, opportunity and safety being given, it is carried into
action. Where these are not actually given in this world,
clearly only God knows whether it would have been carried into
act. Of course I do not say that the sin of even resolve is
trifling. I only say that there are many steps, and until the
act of sin is done there will always remain one step more of
turpitude except in those cases to which He so often alludes,
where nothing but circumstances, and not the heart, prevented
the commission. But that would convict many a prude and
many a sanctimonious thing who holds up his immaculate
hands in pious astonishment at that which he would gladly do,
if he dared. Nay, I do believe that a secret leaning towards
the sin, and a secret feeling of provocation and jealousy towards
those who have enjoyed what they dare not, lies at the bottom
of half the censorious zeal for morality which we hear.
I am
nearly sure it is so with women in their virulence against their
own sex; they feel malice, because they envy them. There is
a marvellous touch of inspiration in 'Timon of Athens,' I think
-a cutting down into the marrow of truth which is perfectly
startling in its knowledge of human nature. I feel I can scarcely
venture to quote it. I remember that, even as a boy, it set me
thinking.
Dr. Channing's life is full of interest, but of a calm, thoughtful
kind. He had no adventures; nor were his inward struggles,
as detailed, at least, very striking. He had taken immense
pains with himself, but the nobler element of his nature was so
strongly predominant, that his life was steady continuous
victory, unmarked by any of those partial victories of evil which
give fearful interest to the lives of the greater part of those who
have fought their way to uncommon excellence.
The purest
love for man, the most unconquerable trust in human naturc,
seem to have been the very basis of his being. He was a Uni-
tarian, but that is a very wide term, including a vast variety of
persons thinking very differently on essentials.
I can only say
that I should be very glad if half of those who recognise the
Life of Channing
283
hereditary claims of the Son of God to worship, bowed down
before His moral dignity with an adoration half as profound, or
a love half as enthusiastic, as Channing's. I wish I, a Trini-
tarian, loved and adored Him, and the Divine goodness in Him,
anything near the way in which that Unitarian felt. A religious
lady found the book on my table a few days ago, and was
horror-struck. I told her that if she and I ever got to heaven,
we should find Dr. Channing revolving round the central Light
in an orbit immeasurably nearer than ours, almost invisible to
us, and lost in a blaze of light; which she has, no doubt, duly
reported to the Brighton inquisition for heretics. But, by the
bye, I began on that very day to write out the conversation.
Here it is all incomplete.
I am not so
A lady called to-day, and when she came into the drawing-
room, she put her hand on Channing's Memoirs.' 'I am
sorry to see you read this book, Mr. Robertson.' I replied, 'Dr.
Channing was one of the highest of his species. For a minister
to refuse to read such a book would be miserable.
sensitively afraid of error as that. I throw myself on the Father
of Lights, read all, and trust that He will answer a desire for
light. An immoral book I refuse to read, but a book containing
merely false doctrine, or what is supposed to be false, I dare not
refuse to read; or else I could not, with any consistency, ask a
Roman Catholic to read my book of Protestant heresy.' 'But
Dr. Channing could not be a good man, because he did not
believe in Christ.' 'Pardon me, he did he loved Christ. I
wish I adored Him half as much as Dr. Channing did!' 'But
he denied that he adored Him.' 'I cannot help that. If the
lowliest reverence, and the most enthusiastic love, constitute
adoration, Dr. Channing worshipped Christ. I care not what
a man says. His homage was more adoring than that of
nine out of ten who call Him God. Besides, do you remember
the story of the two sons, one of whom said, “I go, sir,” and
went not; the other refused to go, and went? What care I, if
Dr. Channing adores, saying that he does not adore?' She
replied, 'I believe he adored himself much more.' I returned,
'that some passages in his Diary expressed the deepest self-
284 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
:
abasement.' 'Well, probably he had a high ordeal; he was
mortified at not attaining that before the world.' 'Do you
recollect,' I answered, 'how the Pharisees got over a similar
difficulty to yours? There was a holy man before them, and
because they could not deny the beauty of His deeds, they found
out that they were done from diabolical motives, for Beelzebub's
cause. Take care; do you recollect what sin they committed
by that, seeing good, and refusing to recognise it as good? It
is a perilous thing to set out with the assumption that a doctrine
is true, and that all who do not hold that doctrine are bad.
Christ reverses that order of procedure. "Believe me for the
works' sake." I would just as soon disbelieve in God as con-
template a character like Dr. Channing's, and hesitate to say
whether that was a divine image or not; whether God had
accepted him or not; whether those deeds and that life were the
product of evil or the fruit of the heavenly Spirit.'
LVI.
November 18.
I am very unfit to write; much tired, dispirited, and lonely.
Several reasons may have contributed to this. The day was
dark with fog and gloom. I spoke very badly indeed, though
fluently, and this has added a depressing sensation of impotency
to sadness. I know that it is partly physical; that I am not
myself, nor master of my fancies, and, therefore, I will not let
my pen pour out feelings of which I might be ashamed, and
which certainly I should disown to-morrow. I am persuaded
there are few things morally so bad as excitement of the nerves
in any way; nothing-to borrow a military word, and use it in
a military sense-nothing demoralises so much as excitement.
It destroys the tone of the heart; leaves an exhaustion which
craves stimulus, and utterly unfits for duty. High-wrought
feeling must end in wickedness; a life of excitement is
inseparable from a life of vice. The opera, the stage, the ball-
room, French literature, and irregular life, what must they
terminate in? And I should almost add, the pulpit, where the
nervous system is more than ordinarily susceptible. I can only
;
The Workings of the Heart
285
defend it on that which I believe to be the great law of our
being, sacrifice-sacrifice for others. You can have little idea
of the gloomy thoughts with which I have to struggle on many
Sunday evenings.
It is Keble's beautiful hymn to-night, on the loneliness of
the soul.¹ I have read it, and tried to think of what ideas
would be suggested in association with the separate verses.
Is it quite true that no
no human eye could be permitted
safely to read all, and scan the inmost workings of the heart?
Would the recoil be in every case, as he images it, like a
mother's arm from a serpent coiled round her loved infant? I
suppose it is impossible to read with tenderness and mercy.
Personal feelings come in; inability to take in all circumstances
before and after we judge severely that which is uncongenial
with our tendencies; nay, even that also which is congenial;
for I fancy we dislike our own feelings in another—they seem
caricatures. And yet I do not quite agree. I think there are
some minds and hearts which might be safely trusted to read all
without losing their respect and affection for us. Doubtless
these must be of the very highest order. I could only name
one or two. I remember an anecdote of Thomas Scott having
said to his curate, who was rather agitated on having to preach
before him, 'Well, sir, why should you be afraid before me,
when you are not afraid before God?'
But how very easy
it was to answer! He had only to say, God is not jealous,
nor envious, nor censorious; besides, God can make allow
ances
I will do all I can to answer fully your deeply-important
questions. I can answer them, for I had to find the answer for
myself through much mental trial: whether it will satisfy you,
I do not know. But the irrationality of the popular Brahminical
system shocked me, for it is Brahminical. I believe in the
Atonement now, in a nobler sense than I did before, and also
in His sufferings for the sins of men; but not chastisement, or
hell, as they horribly call it-nor His Father's wrath.
Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.
286 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
First, respecting His 'sympathy,' which you seem to think
represented as little in my sermon and you speak of the
trifling pain of fasting. Recollect, however, that the whole
majesty of the temptation is destroyed if you understand it
literally.
What was the temptation? To use Divine power to procure
comfort; to choose abundance instead of stones; a life of ease
instead of the hard rock on which the highest must repose ever
in this world. How many houses would have been open to Him
like that of Bethany, had He chosen! Instead of executing
His mission, might He not have turned aside to live in abund-
ance? You must remember His soul was preparing for its
work; He was forecasting the trials of His life; His spirit was
silently acquiescing in and recognising His destiny, and, one by
one, dismissing the alternatives which suggested themselves-a
life of ease instead of hardness; rashness and distrustful im-
petuosity instead of the slow, patient toil of years, and after
that of centuries; homage to the 'splendid majesty of Wrong;'
expediency, in some form or other; to make the kingdoms of the
world His own, instead of uncompromising worship of the
good-unless you keep all this in mind, of course it is ridiculous
to talk of anything very divine in fasting. I only gave fasting
as a convenient illustration of the way in which there might be
pain in subduing the affections and appetites, and yet no sin;
how He might really suffer being tempted, with no tendencies
to evil. But, of course, I recognised, and even expressly men-
tioned, the suffering of the tempted human soul as the far more
important part of His trial. You say you cannot look upon
those trials and tests as anything; but have you reflected that
that temptation was but an image of temptations which in a
thousand forms beset Him through life? Have you thought
what it was for a real man to excogitate a course of action which
was new in the world's history, and steadily keep to it in spite of
treachery and desertion, the apparent worthlessness of human
nature, the ripe rottenness at the core of the nation whose
blessing He was bent on accomplishing? Have you reflected
how He might have purchased life by silence and a very little
The Ground of the Sympathy of Christ
287
prudent time-serving; what it is to be alone, misunderstood, and
in dreadful sense of forsakenness at last to feel that all was
failure to hope for human nature in its lowest degradation; to
believe that man is kindred with Deity, even in Jerusalem; to
see a spark in the worst outcast which might become a bright
and blessed flame; to despair of none; to hope for human
nature even with His last breath on the cross, and with laughter
of His devil-like foes rising to His dying ear?
Is there no sympathy here? Are those light tests? Think
you He cannot sympathise with our worst sorrows who shielded
from scorn the broken-hearted who could only smite upon his
breast; who stood like a God between their victim and the hell-
hounds who were baying for their prey, till they cowered at His
feet and slunk away; who could forgive a coward, and select the
alien and heretic as a type of the neighbour who is to be loved;
who was peculiarly sensitive to the charm of woman's society
and its soothing gentleness; who wept for temporary grief; who
was considerate for the tired disciples and the hungry maltitude;
whose chosen home was the house of the publican and sinner;
who bore contempt with majestic dignity-is that a trifle?—who
felt keenly, as His own touching words witness, the pain of
homelessness? Oh, can you say that He could not enter into
our worst sorrows, or that His trials were in 'show'? Compre-
hend that heart, containing all that was manliest and all that
was most womanly. Think what you will, but do not mistake
Him, or else you will lose the one great certainty to which, in
the midst of the darkest doubt, I never ceased to cling-the
entire symmetry and loveliness, and the unequalled nobleness of
the humanity of the Son of Man. Ask me any questions you
will on this, for if there have been a subject I have pondered
over and believed in, it is the mind and heart of Jesus. Do not
go to that absurd nonsense of mysterious suffering that cannot
be comprehended-something neither of earth nor heaven, neither
the affection of the man nor the God-a mystery, and so forth,
of which the Bible says nothing. Mysterious enough they were,
as the sufferings of the deepest hearts ever must be, but myste-
rious only in this sense. Alas! they are intelligible enough to
288 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
anyone who has ever conceived a sublime mission with a warm
heart, and felt courage and tenderness fail in the idea of executing
it; intelligible enough for anyone who knows what it is to, be
wrung to the heart by the sorrows and faults of others. All that
is unintelligible is the degree of agony. To understand that,
we must first be like Him-as noble, and as loving, and as spot-
less.
As to the sacrifice-penalty and its atonement for sin—I will
try to take it for my next Sunday subject.
LVII.
Mr. Crabb Robinson has sent me a 'Life of Swedenborg,'
which seems to have impressed him greatly. I have been run-
ning it over while at a dinner, but can make out nothing, except
that Swedenborg was a man of great genius, under hallucinations
of the intellect. He was very abstemious, singularly pure in
life in every way; his chief beverage was coffee made very
sweet, without milk; he abstained during his latter years from
animal food, and passed whole nights without sleep. He held a
perpetual communion with departed spirits, but I observe they
were all those whose lives had impressed his imagination, and,
if not men of genius, seem to have been generally kings, dukes,
princesses, and persons of such earthly greatness. In some of
the quotations there are evidently flashes of very intuitive genius,
poured on or into scriptural passages. The intuitions are true,
but they have as little to do with the passages as they have with
the Koran; and had he been a Mahometan, he might have
spiritualised the Koran in the same way. His biographer, who
is not an admirer, but a blind idolater of him, takes them, of
course, as authentic expositions. Perceiving that in themselves.
they are marvellously true, he takes for granted that they are
the very truths presented and intended by those texts. One
grand truth he seems to have grasped-the fact of Divine
Humanity as the only possible object of man's worship. He
has besides identified Jesus Christ with this object. I have long
felt the truth of the former of these positions, and I am more
289
Only a human
The important
Swedenborgianism
and more satisfied of the truth of the latter.
God, and none other, must be adored by man.
thing in the worship is, that it be a Divine, and not a sensual or
even a rational humanity. I extract a passage, which also
agrees with my creed, though I do not know that I ever bor-
rowed mine except from my own reflection.
'Sex is a permanent fact in human nature.
Men are men
and women, women, in the highest heaven as here on earth.
The difference of sexes is therefore brighter and more exquisite
in proportion as the person is high and the sphere is pure. The
distinction not only reaches to the individual, but it is atomically
minate besides. Every thought, affection, and sense of a male
is male; and of a female, feminine. The smallest drop of intellect
or will is inconvertible between the sexes. If man's, it can never
become woman's, and vice versâ. The sexual distinction is
founded upon two radical attributes of God-his divine love and
his divine wisdom, whereof the former is feminine and the latter
masculine. The union of these in Him is the divine marriage,
and the creation proceeds distinctly from them, and images or
aspires to a marriage in every part. Therefore, there are mar-
riages in heaven, and heaven itself is a marriage.'
He then oddly reconciles this with the text, 'In heaven they
neither marry,' &c.
Then there are the most extraordinary accounts of expiration
and inspiration of the breath; the latter connecting the thoughts
with the earthy; the former, or the retention of the breath, which
is the same thing, connecting with the spiritual world. Sweden-
borg declares that he lived for hours without inspiring; and a
host of odd stories about divers, Indian yogies, people in a
trance, and the whole phenomena of hybernation, are alleged in
corroboration, but I shall not take up your time with those.
Mr. C R— drank tea with me last night. He was full
of anecdote, and more than I ever saw him anxious for religious
information. Last Sunday's sermon seems to have struck him,
and appeared very original. In a discussion in some party
where I was the subject of malevolent remark, accusations of
heterodoxy, &c., he said, 'The only thing I can say is, that I
VOL. I.
U
290 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
never heard him without having some stumbling-block removed;
and doctrines that appeared to me absurd in the orthodox
system shown to be in harmony with eternal reason and truth.'
He told me a curious story in illustration of the way in which
scepticism follows upon superstition. When a boy, he obtained
permission to witness the celebration of the Communion from
the gallery of the dissenting chapel in which his parents wor-
shipped. The bread had been cut into squares, and then piled
again in its own natural form of a loaf. When he saw this fall
up in picces regularly diced, at a single touch of the venerable old
minister's hand, he trembled, and thought a miracle had been
performed; but when he expressed his wonder to another boy,
and was told the secret, instantly his feeling was that a trick of
deception had been played. Accordingly, at supper, he cut up
his own roll, and said to his father, 'Now, sce me do the Sacra-
ment as well as Mr. ;' the roll tumbled into square frag-
ments amid peals of laughter; upon which he was punished,
instead of having it quietly explained to him that no deception
had been intended; but who does not see that that apparent
irreverence was real reverence for truth, and that Luther ex-
posing Tetzel's indulgences was not more really doing a religious
act than the child who was pouring light upon what he believed
to be a sham? They laid the first seeds of scepticism in a
young heart, by demanding irrational and blind instead of
rational reverence for mysteries.
LVIII.
As I walked home in my dragoon cloak, I thought that I
ought to be at this moment lying in it at rest at Moodkee, where
the Third fought so gallantly, and where spots of brighter green
than usual are the only record to mark where the flesh of heroes
is melting into its kindred dust again; but in this, as in all
other things, a man must reap as he has sown. I believe the
spirit of exceeding self-devotion, as a mere romantic instinct, is
but folly. Your reward is the satisfaction of finding that you
have lost all and gained nothing as well as done nothing. Your
Keble
291
thanks are reproach and blame, and you begin to find, when it
is too late, that wisdom and prudence alone can redeem even
self-sacrifice from the worthless class of mere blind instincts.
One man's instinct is to save his life, another's to lose it; one's
to get rid of self, another's to pamper it; one's to give away,
another's to save up. These are only instincts, in themselves
neither good nor evil, except as guided by thought and by being
an instrument of that, ennobled.
•
I agree with and admire all you say about capital punishment.
I doubt its efficacy much. I am not quite sure that the sole, or
even chief end of punishment is the reformation of the offender.
I think a great deal of law. Law rules Deity; and its awful
majesty is above individual happiness. That is what Kant calls
'the categorical imperative,' that is a sense of duty which com-
mands categorically or absolutely-not saying 'it is better,' but
'thou shalt.' Why? Because 'thou shalt,' that is all. It is
not best to do right-thou must do right; and the conscience
that feels that, and in that way, is the nearest to divine humanity.
Not that law was made, like the Sabbath, for man; but man
was made for it. He is beneath it, a grain of dust before it it
moves on, and if he will not move before it, it crushes him :
that is all, and that is punishment. I fancy that grand notion
of law is what we have lost, what we require to get, before we
are in a position to discuss the question of punishment at all, or
to understand what it is. Your criticism on my expression-
' vengeance,' is just; but what I meant was a truth, though I
expressed it badly: I have tried to re-state it in what I have
now said of law.
To-day I read Keble.* It is singularly beautiful to-day. Do
you observe the parallel which pervades it? The rainbow in
the morning, spoken of in stanza two, and that of the evening,
in stanza six, are taken as the types of life. The proverb is,—
A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd's warning,
But a rainbow at night is the shepherd's delight.
1 Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity.
7
U 2
292 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
The reason of this is, that a rainbow in the morning, being
always opposite the sun, must be in the west the rain is falling
there therefore, and that is the rainy quarter; at night it must
be raining in the east, from which quarter not much rain is to
be expected.
I fancy Keble's observation is quite correct in reference to
character. The kindling eye, &c., betray the child of impulse
and vivid emotion, which are so frequently found disconnected
from principle; and most truly, I think, he describes such a
man's life, ' dawnings gay, bright noons of sun and shower.'
I think the pastor was quite right to sigh over such a child.
Philip Van Artevelde has the same idea.
her dawn
Was bright with sunbeams, whence is drawn
A sure prognostic that the day
Will not unclouded pass away.
Bright sunrise-sunset dark, mixed with clouds, sorrow, and
uncertainty. The other character is the safest, the surest, and,
in the end, the most blessed—when the calm, steady, humble
inquiring heart feels the beam of everlasting Truth and mild
Love burst upon it in the serenity of life's evening, the rainbow
of hope throwing its tinted arch over the feebleness of declining
years. There is in this a good deal of true insight into charac-
ter and destiny. And yet, looking over the children of a family,
how nine parents out of ten would reverse that prophecy, and
anticipate success and happiness from the radiant one, suffering
the other to fall unnoticed into the background. I believe that
life always falsifies this estimate. The rainbow child is soon
quenched in tears and darkness. The great men in nearly all
departments of existence have been the dunces of the nursery
and the school-room. The first shall be last, and the last first.'
How the deeper inspiration reverses the prophecy of semblances!
How precious in the sight of God those qualities are which we
think of almost meanly-plodding habits, meekness of heart,
sense of dependence; and how almost of the nature of curses
what we call 'gifts' are-beauty, brilliancy, sensitiveness, feel-
Robespierre on Capital Punishment
293
ing; things, by the way, which are almost always connected
with selfishness in some way or another, and therefore, sown
with the seeds of misery and failure. Quite right, Keble, teach
us realities and not semblances-to see things as God sees
them, and in the spirit of true poetry, prophetic of results.
That is a very graceful little poem, and deeply true.
LIX.
My Advent lectures commence next week. I begin to briefly
reply to your letter.
Robespierre's theory of the abolition of the punishment of
death, taken in connection with his subsequent atrocities, never
startled me. He never could have understood Portia's refusal
to put even Shylock to death illegally. The eternal sanctions
of Law were unintelligible to him. The transgression of Law
was a trifle in comparison with human life, and, as you might
have expected, human life was a trifle in comparison with a
theory of his own. I should always anticipate that the rigorous
expounder of law would be the one to be able to say most ex-
quisitely in practice: The quality of mercy is not strained.'
Did that rigour and mercy in Portia's character ever strike you
as a union no less beautiful than true? And I should expect
that a sentimental tenderness for life which is blind to the
majesty of law, would be exactly the temperament that could be
cruel when, not law, but itself, was interfered with. It spares
to gratify its own feelings: it will not shrink from saying 200,000
aristocrats must die if its feeling demands the sacrifice. A
severe view of Right, even if somewhat too severe, would have
saved Robespierre from that. Of course, I do not mean that
the objection to sanguinary punishment is necessarily senti-
mental, nor that it betrays obtuseness to the perception of the
Absolute Imperative within the conscience. I only mean that
very often it is so, and that tenderness to evil may be expected
to precede a violent outburst of evil. As I said lately-' tempted,
yet without sin, therefore we go boldly to find mercy. The
tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. For all this, however,
294 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Robespierre's view may have been right, though wrong in him ;
a little more sense of law and of wrong might have made him
a defender of capital punishment. Perhaps a great deal more
might have brought him in a vast circle back to the same point
of mercy again. Extremes meet: and I think Lamartine's
statement a powerful one: 'Le moyen le plus efficace de
déshonorer le meurtre est d'en montrer par la loi une sainte
horreur.'
The administration of the Communion to the murderer has
always appeared to me, in every sense, a ghastly mockery. A
minister of the gospel of forgiveness goes to the criminal with a
message that, at least, appears singularly inconsistent. The
chaplain, in Mrs. Manning's case, I think, outraged all decency;
nor do I see how, in any case, it is justifiable when the man, up
to the very last fortnight, by pleading 'not guilty,' has remained
impenitent. Better leave the whole in uncertainty for the next
world; but the practice, I fancy, retains a lingering trace of the
magical views of the sacrament. All this, however, is a digres-
sion, for I was alluding to the apparent inconsistency of putting
a man to death after bringing to him words of mercy. Queen
Elizabeth's 'God may have mercy on you, I never can,' and then
a last deadly shake. Would it not have been almost superhuman
to forgive, when a woman found that by diabolical malice she
had been induced to irrecoverably slay the man who loved her to
the last. Only fancy the rush of such an agony! 'it cannot be
undone, and there lies the fiend who did it.' I fear I could scarcely
have said, 'God may forgive you.' It is in the demand for such
superhuman efforts as these that Christianity appears sublime.
Looking into my own heart, I think I could forgive the deadliest
wrong done to myself. I do not think I could forgive one who
had diabolically done a wrong to one I loved, or wilfully made
me commit a wrong towards that one which was irreparable.
As usual, I ask how would He have felt? the latter case was
impossible to Him; as to the former, I only know that His
language towards those who crushed the weak, and in cold blood
slew the innocent, was not mild. THEY 'knew what they did.'
Did the last prayer include them? Whether the last confession
The Mystery of Existence
295
of the dying countess might have touched pity, I do not know ;
but one could have hardly helped feeling, it is too late this death-
bed remorse.
'Le mystère de l'existence, c'est le rapport de nos erreurs avec
nos peines.'
Do you not understand that? It is the kind of connection
which is the mystery. Crime is less severely treated than error.
A weakness of the heart produces more misery, more both to
self and others, and is more severely chastised than a deliberate
wickedness. It has often made me ponder. Look at weak Eli,
only a little too indulgent. The result-a country's dishonour
and defeat, two profligates, a death-bed of a widow and mother
on which despair sits, and the death of a wretched old man, for
whom it would have been a mercy if his neck had been broken
before his heart. Then again Pilate, only irresolution- the
result, the ruin of the Holiest. My only solution of the mystery
is this. The hardening effects of sin, which save from pain, are
worse judgments than the sharpest suffering. Anguish is, I am
more and more sure, corrective; hardness has in it no Hope.
Which would you choose if you were compelled to make a
choice?-the torture of a divided limb granulating again, and
by the very torture giving indications of life, or the painlessness.
of mortification; the worst throb from the surgeon's knife, or
ossification of the heart? In the spiritual world the pangs of
the most exquisite sensitiveness cut to the quick by the sense
of fault and aching almost hopelessly, but leaving conscience
still alive, and aspiration still uncrushed, or the death of every
remnant of what is good, the ossification of the soul, the painless
extinction of the moral being, its very self? This is my reply
to myself. The whole mystery of pain has been unravelling
itself to my heart gradually, and now that I have got a clue, the
worse than Cretan labyrinth turns out to be harmonious and
beautiful arrangement, so that the paths which are still unex-
plored, I can now believe are part of the same plan. Pain has
long ceased to be an unintelligible mystery to me. Agony and
anguish-oh, in these, far more than in sunshine, I can read a
meaning and believe in infinite Love. Goodness is better than
296 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
happiness; and if pain be the minister of goodness, I can see
that it is a proof of Love to debar happiness; nor am I moved
from this conviction by exceptional cases, by perceiving that
sometimes the result seems opposite, or by seeing that, as in the
brute creation, it falls in apparent wantonness, without any
result beyond suffering. I am so certain that all is right, that
nothing of this kind, mental or physical, disturbs me. I know
that the heart, like the wound, must bleed till the wound has
cleansed itself by its own blood. Then, and not till then, the
blood will dry. The questions of the final removal of moral
evil, and its apparent inevitable necessity beyond even infinite
power to remove, is a far heavier weight and darker shadow on
my heart, but I have an answer to that too.
You say you do not think it was so difficult for our Lord, if He
knew it was only to last three years. First of all, time is not
measured by years; the intense heart throws centuries into an
hour. Succession of thoughts, instead of dull repetition of a
monotone, might make three years of incalculable length. Then
besides, remember it is a Man, out of the resources of His
human mind, pondering over, recognising, and resolving on a
plan alone, which was new in the world's history, an untried
battle with the worldly principle in its manifold manifestations.
Only three years! Yes! but try to resolve on a plan—there are
ten thousand possible to you-a plan for the country's good,
which will involve, I do not say death, but great hardships in the
teeth of all the conventions of society, and with the probability
of having it said by your own relations, as it was said of Him,
'He is beside himself.' Keep to it unflinchingly, until you can
say in the very hour of failure, triumphantly, 'It is finished!
Only try that in a small way, and then say, three years are
nothing. No, nothing when they are done, for the years go
fast; but recollect the minutes move slow.
A propos of the measurement of time, I remember two pretty
lines of Moultrie :
____________
I have a son, a third sweet son; his age I cannot tell,
For they reckon not by years or months where he is gone to dwell.
Shakspeare's Healthy Humanity
297
LX.
Much of the beauty that is laid to Shakspeare's charge is too
far-fetched to have been intended by him. Mrs. Jameson errs
in this respect, and so do the Germans. In an article ir
Blackwood, years ago, replete with humour, I recollect these
words, 'And she,' as the poet pathetically expresses it, 'did so."
Such critics do with Shakspeare just as Swedenborg with the
Bible-inform it with themselves and their own sentiments and
philosophy, or, as the wolf did with Baron Munchausen's horse,
began at his tail and ate into him until the baron drove the
wolf home, harnessed in the skin of the horse. Certainly Shak-
speare was a 'million-minded man,' if he was conscious of the
innumerable philosophies and psychological truths which his
million critics have found in every trifling word and sentence.
I am heretic enough to think that Shakspeare was mind and
dust, and that he can be very low and gross. Horace ventured
to opine that now and then Homer nodded a little; he said it
in a very gentlemanly way-for the friend of Mæcenas was a
perfect gentleman-but I have no doubt he was reckoned a
heretic for saying it. What I admire in Shakspeare, however,
is that his loves are all human-no earthliness hiding itself from
itself in sentimental transcendentalism-no loves of the angels,
which are the least angelic things, I believe, that float in the
clouds, though they do look down upon mortal feelings with
contempt, just as the dark volumes of smoke which issue from
the long chimney of a manufactory might brood very sublimely
over the town which they blacken, and fancy themselves far
more ethereal than those vapours which steam up from the
earth by day and night. Yet these are pure water, and those
are destined to condense in black soot. So are the transcenden-
talisms of affection. Shakspeare is healthy, true to Humanity
in this; and for that reason I pardon him even his earthly
coarseness. You always know that you are on an earth which
has to be refined, instead of floating in the empyrean with wings
of wax.
Therein he is immeasurably greater than Shelley.
Shelleyism is very sublime, sublimer a good deal than God, for
298 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
God's world is all wrong, and Shelley is all right-much purer
than Christ, for Shelley can criticise Christ's heart and life-
nevertheless, Shelleyism is only atmospheric profligacy, to coin
a Montgomeryism. I believe this to be one of Shakspeare's
most wondrous qualities—the humanity of his nature and heart.
There is a spirit of sunny endeavour about him, and an acqui-
escence in things as they are-not incompatible with a cheerful
resolve to make them better, which I trust will be good for your
mind. Mine wants it much. I speak bitterly of transcendent-
alism, for it is the rock on which I split; and I do not believe
either in its usefulness or its heavenliness.
For man is not as God,
But then most God-like, being most a man.
A sunny, cheerful view of life-resting on truth and fact,
coexisting with practical aspiration ever to make things, men,
and self, better than they arc-that, I believe, is the true health-
ful poetry of existence. All other poetry of feeling, however
delicate and beautiful, is only sickly; the mawkish feeling,
which sees more beauty in unnatural Consumption than in the
ruddy glow of exercise.
LXI.
I have got Schlegel, and mean to master all that he has said
of Shakspeare. Spare moments of time I occupy in studying
'Romeo and Juliet.' Certainly it is the most exquisite embodi-
ment of the master feeling that was ever made. I shall have
much to say about it soon. But one thing strikes me in a view
of the whole-how very masterly the representation is of the
unrelenting way in which consequences follow acts in this world.
A clandestine marriage and a revengeful duel-the results are a
double death. And this is not all. Circumstances mingle with
all human acts; they are partly, as it would seein, necessitated,
or, at least, excused by peculiarity of position. There is no act
which has not its excuse and its apparent inevitableness.
Ordinary writers tag a moral to their tale; as Miss Edgeworth
does-which peeps out in every page: 'If he had acted so, then,'
Shakspeare's Healthy Humanity
299
&c., but the moral of life is not forced upon you in this way;
it is complicated, perplexing, and requires study to find out.
Nay, you may find fifty morals instead of the moral of life's
tragedy; and in this way Shakspeare paints. Partly circum-
stance, partly fault, partly what in itself is beautiful, lead to the
catastrophe. Not one simple cause, but many causes, inter-
twined, made up the shot web of his tragedy, as of life. And
yet as unrelentingly as in life, the sorrow comes to blight it all.
Situated as they were, a Montague and a Capulet, could they
be severely blamed for marrying? Situated as Romeo was, his
friend killed for him, could he refuse Tybalt's challenge? And
yet these double errors, the results themselves of the faults of
others, not wholly blameless, yet not unmixedly culpable, slowly
and surely bring on the end.
There are three great principles in life which weave its warp
and woof, apparently incompatible with each other, yet they
harmonise, and, in their blending, create this strange life of
ours. The first is, our fate is in our own hands, and our
blessedness and misery is the exact result of our own acts. The
second is, 'There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew
them as we will.' The third is, 'The race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong;' but time and chance happen (eth)
to them all. Accident, human will, the shaping will of Deity:
these things make up life. Or rather, perhaps, we see a three-
fold causality from some defect in our spiritual eyesight. Could
we see as He sees, all would be referable to one principle which
would contain them all; as the simple, single law of gravitation
embraces the complex phenomena of the universe; and as, on
the other hand, by pressing the eyeballs so as to destroy their
united impression, you may see all things double. Shakspeare
paints man instead of writing moral tales. Of course, there is
a moral in what he writes, as there must be in all that is true;
but it is absurd to ask what was the lesson he meant to inculcate.
He meant none, I fancy. He merely meant to say, 'There,
there are men and women. Under such circumstances, such
beings would act so, and such would be the consequences.'
How much more instructive than history, which is merely,
300 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
except in mere annals, events grouped in the connection in
which the historian sees them, not in which they occurred,
unless he be a man as gifted as Shakspcare. Hence history is
merely, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, Mr. Hume's or
Mr. Gibbon's theory substantiated by a dry romance, until Mr.
Somebody Else comes and writes the romance in his way, the
facts being pliable, and equally available for both. Accordingly,
Mitford's History of Greece' is aristocratical principles demon-
strated from Grecian history, and Connop Thirlwall's is demo-
cratical principles proved from the same facts, and Alison's
history is Mr. Wordy's account of the French revolution in
twenty volumes, written to show that Providence was always on
the side of the Tories,' as Coningsby's friend assured him.
do believe there was great wisdom in Marlborough's saying,
that the only English history he knew, or that was worth know-
ing, was that written by Shakspeare, for Shakspeare does not
give facts as they occurred-no, but he gives ideal facts, since
the facts cannot be got at.
I
(
You like to hear of my work and its success. Dr. King was
expressing surprise at the thoughtfulness and freshness of last
Sunday's sermon, which you have seen, and telling me of the
slow and silent results of my teaching in revolutionising long
habits of thought, life, &c. I remarked, that what surprised me
most was, that I had been left so long unmolested, in spite of
great grumbling, dissatisfaction, and almost personal hatred.
He said, 'I can tell you the reason. You preach positively
instead of negatively; you state truths which they cannot deny;
they can only talk of tendencies, consequences, &c.; they can
only say it is dangerous, they dare not say it is false; if you
were once to preach defensively or controversially, it would be
all over with you, and it would do your heart and mind harm
besides; but every one sees that you have a message and a
truth to establish; you set up your truth, and they are dismayed
to find, if that be true, their view is knocked down, but you did
not knock it down.' These were not his words, but the
substance of what he said, and I think, on the whole, that it is
not untrue. He told me that more than one clergyman had
The Doctrine of the Atonement
301
1
said to him, 'I think exactly what Mr. R- said, but I should
not dare to say it publicly.' A Scotch gentleman remarked to
another person, 'Why, Irving was turned out of the Church of
Scotland, for saying one-tenth part of what Mr. R— said on
Sunday of the human nature of Christ. What a happy thing it
is that the Church of England is too divided to unite in exter-
minating him.' Meanwhile I go on, resolving to be at least
true. I feel no certain tenure of anything or any one.
I am
prepared, at a moment's notice, to find the whole break up with
a crash, as fine summer weather ends in a storm, the forces for
which had been slowly collecting in the sunshine for weeks-
nay, were the sunshine itself. I think I partly know what He
felt in knowing that the crowds He addressed contained the
Pharisees lying in wait, and yet went on. This is my feeling.
I command crowds-I have not hearts.
LXII.
My dear ——————-‚—My prediction was right; yesterday morning
rose with all the frost gone, and to-day it is raining fast, and the
sky is dense with clouds.
I have been writing lately on the subject of Keble's lines. I
have little doubt that the Church of Rome has paid far more
attention than we have to that which forms the subject of this
hymn the treatment of penitence. She has more power to
soothe, because she dwells chiefly on that which is the most
glorious element in the nature of God-Love. Whereas Protes-
tantism fixes attention more on that which is the strongest.
principle in the bosom of man-Faith. Accordingly, the
Church of Rome treats the penitent by moving representations
which touch the heart. Protestantism would do so by an
appeal to the intellect, assuring you that if you will only believe,
the whole pain has been suffered for you.
you. When
When you state your
misgivings, on perceiving that many of the penal consequences
The Scotch gentleman made a mistake. Mr. Robertson's view of
the human nature of Christ differs essentially from the view of Iiving.
2 Hymn for Sunday next before Advent.
302
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
P
of faults follow transgression, in spite of faith, the reply is-
'Yes, in this world; but in the next all the consequences are
remitted.' Now this appeal to the intellect leaves the intellect
to its own surmises. Why remitted there, if not here? on what
principle, and how proved? If no faith will save a drunken
man from delirium tremens, where is the proof that it will
shield him from other consequences hereafter?
You are
then referred to the Atonement, and informed in evangelical
metaphysics that infinite sin demanded an infinite sacrifice;
that the infinite sacrifice having been paid, it will be unjust to
punish you again. Once more the intellect replies-' But I am
punished; and if eternal punishment would be unjust, temporal
punishment is also; the whole penalty is not paid, and, in spite
of all my admiration of the clever scheme, the heart will have
its dire misgivings.' It appears to me that Protestantism
throws upon the intellect the work of healing which can only
be performed by the heart. It comes with its parchment
'signed, sealed, and delivered,' making over heaven to you by
a legal bond, gives its receipt in full, makes a debtor and
creditor account, clears up the whole by a most business-like
arrangement :-
My
>>
CR.
Infinite.
>>
""
[
DR.
Infinite.
""
"
""
And when this Shylock-like affair with the scales and weights
is concluded, it bids you be sure that the most rigorous justice
and savage cruelty can want no more. Whereupon Selfishness
shrewdly casts up the account, and says, 'Audited!' 'I am
safe.' Nay, it even has a gratitude to Him who has borne the
pain instead; a very low kind of affection; the same, differing
only in degree, which young Peel felt for Byron when he
volunteered to accept half the blows which a young tyrant was
administering. The love which is only gratitude for escape
M
The Doctrine of the Atonement
303
from pain is a very poor love. It does not open the heart wide,
and, accordingly, basing his hopes only on a quid pro quo, a
sinner's penitence is half selfish, and has rarely in it any of that
glorious abandon which, whether wisely directed or not, has so
marked the Roman penitence, and which we explain away by
saying it is work done to win Heaven by merit. The Protestant
penitent, if the system succeeds, repents in his arm-chair, and
does no noble deed such as boundless love could alone inspire;
he reforms, ànd is very glad that broken-hearted remorse is
distrust of God, becomes a prosaic Pharisee, and patronises
missionary societies, and is all safe, which is the one great point
in his religion.
The sentiment in Keble's last stanza is a true one-the
'scattered fragments love can glean '—and it seems to me the
idea I have been labouring for the last two or three Sundays to
bring out is the real cause of the difficulty-Does the sacrifice
of Christ save me from the consequences of my sin? That
question has two meanings; it may imply, Does it break the
connection between my sin and its natural result-pain, &c. ?
For instance, will it allow the spendthrift to remain rich after
he has squandered all away-will it give back time lost to the
idle man? The reply to that is, No. Look to its operation
here. Most assuredly it leaves all the natural results in their
unalterable order of sequence.
But the question may mean-Does the sacrifice save me from
that which is worse than all pain, the feeling of God's wrath, the
sense of banishment from the presence of His beauty and His
love? The reply to that is, It does. Realise the spirit of the Cross
-the surrender of self-will in love-feel, that is. believe, that God
is love; in all the sharpest suffering feel that, and do you then
ask if hell can be your portion? Can love endure hell? pain?
yes; agony? yes; He did-hell, never. That is, you are redeemed
-redeemed by love from remorse, from the disposition to repeat
wrong, from the sense of God's displeasure; and the pain you
bear is not taken away, but is transmuted. The spirit in which
you bear it makes all the difference; it changes it from penal
fire into wise, loving, corrective discipline; nay, makes it even
304 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
the means, by its very present sharpness, of saving from future
transgression, and consequently from future pain; and even the
pain itself has a tendency, by the slow and healing results of time,
to wear out and to become, like the memory of the lost, a sweet
and blessed melancholy, passing into even deep joy. The whole
question is, from what are we redeemed-from the penal conse-
quences or moral consequences of guilt? I answer from the
moral, and through them eventually from the penal; but only the
appropriation of the Spirit of the Cross redeems. Love transmutes
all. This seems to me the answer to your question of some
days back, when you asked about being saved, and yet suffering.
I reply, Salvation is goodness, humbleness, love. He who has
them, not will be, but is saved, and all pain only makes him
nobler, and gives him a higher heaven. If he says, 'How
unfair that I should suffer pain,' it either shows that he is not
yet saved, for he is living, not in love and trust, but suspecting
God, or else it is equivalent to saying, 'My soul can be made
divine without suffering,' which is just about as wise as to say
we can have serene summers and heat without lightning.
LXIII.
My dear
I am very tired. I could scarcely instruct
my class to-day, I have been so languid, that you must not be
surprised if this letter exhibits in its replies the traces of a jaded
mind that cannot grasp its subject.
C
First of all, the twice-told tale of Keble's Sunday before
Advent, and its being 'use.' Things new and old out of the
treasure-house. Is the sunrise use? Suppose a child casts up
a sum wrong ten times, and the hands get hot and the brain
dizzy, what do you say? Calm yourself, my child; take a
walk round the garden, then sit still, resolve, wipe it all out, and
try again, and I will sit beside you until you do it.' I say to
you, try again. As to the dream, let it be a spur and incentive
to rouse and invigorate, not to terrify. You are not alone in this
world; neither are you to begin again the scrupulously regular
life which you have once found fail. Wait! Let all come by
On Beginning the Christian Life
305
degrees. Prescribe no ascetic rules nor self-invented ritual for
yourself. That is law, and law only irritates.
Begin from belief and love, and do not coerce belief. Your
mind is at sea. Be patient, you cannot drift on the wide, wide
sea for ever; drifting on in one direction, you must come into a
current of wind at last bearing towards some land. Be sure you
are in His hand, not hated but loved. Do not speak bitterly of
Him, nor mistake Him. Perhaps I was too severe on Shelley,
but it was partly because I can make few allowances for delibe-
rate enmity to God, though I may for not seeing Him; and
partly because I fancied in many things he had done you injury.
Let me say one word; do not begin with distasteful religious
duties, long prayers, &c. Begin with the distinct moral duties.
'If any one will do His will he shall know of the doctrine.' Be
simply a seeker of God and truth: and be sure you never can
seek Him in vain. Then make yourself at rest about the end,
death, and so on. You must not 'make haste,' to borrow a
phrase from a prophet.
Now about the sermon. 'My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?' certainly was the cry of a human soul in sharp
anguish oppressed with doubts and misgivings. What else
could it be? Was He not tried in all points, like as we are?
What could it be that suffered but a human soul? Deity is
impassible. God was not angry with Him; God could not be
angry with self-sacrificing love. He could not, without denying
His own nature, annex Hell-that is, an evil conscience and
remorse-to perfect goodness. Christ endured the penalty of
imputed sin, the sins of others. But imputed sin is not actual
sin, though constantly we see it bear the penalty of such—that
is, be punished as such. The chastisement of our iniquities was
upon Him.' It was not merely the 'penalty of His own daring'
that He bore. He bore the penalty of our transgressions. He
crushed the head of the serpent, Evil, which would otherwise
have crushed us, and the fang pierced Him. There is a parallel
in the death of Socrates, so far as martyrdom goes; but His
death was sacrifice, not merely martyrdom; Socrates was
simply true to his convictions, and suffered for them. He
VOL. I.
X
306 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
distinctly came that we might have life, and have it more
abundantly. He alone, of all that are woman-born, corceived
the idea of a contest with evil for the world's sake.
Many have conflicted with single forms of evil-that of their
own country, that in their own profession-and in the conflict
have been bruised; but He did battle with evil, not Jewish evil
only, but the world's evil; evil in its manifold forms, grappling
with it in its home; all evil. Socrates sanctified some kinds
of the most horrible licentiousness; he was only a philosophical
reformer. He came not to reform the Jewish church or Jewish
state; He had no system or plan of that kind, nor did He fall a
martyr to any such scheme. It was the overthrow of sin for
which He came, with a glance reaching over the ages. The
Son of Man-man's Redeemer. It was not a sacrifice for a view
or a truth, but for the truth. This answers the question, whether
there are not some sins not at all of the nature of those which
crucified Christ. There are none such. Sin is the genus of
which a few particular manifestations are but the species. The
will which has shaken itself free from God's will, is the central
principle of sin. It matters not whether this shows itself as
hypocrisy, or cruelty, or falsehood, or licentiousness: it is part
of the mighty principle of that kingdom whose prince had nothing
in Christ. Perhaps in actual fact the first two of these had the
chief hand in His destruction, but that was, so to speak, an
accident and not essential. Had He come into contact with
Herod, He would have perished as the Baptist did, thongh the
Baptist was only a martyr.
And, again, 'they who crucified Him hated Him, because their
deeds were evil.' What particular sins can you with certainty
except from those evil deeds, and how could you be sure that any
one such sin was not the cause of all the rest in their character?
No, I believe that all sins are of the same family. Impure love
is only a form of hate and cruelty, and easily passes into them;
and I could not say that those men were not cruel just
because they were impure, nor that they were not oppressors,
just because they were avaricious, and so on. By which logical
connection I believe, even in this way, we could bring in every
Pharisaism
307
form of sin guilty of the death of Jesus Christ. He was on the
one side, they on the other. He sought His Father's will, and
all men who seek their own will are of the party of His
crucifiers.
There was some cavilling at that sermon, much misrepresenta-
tion, much bitterness; but the chief objections I have heard, were
in the way of suggested consequences—‘if so,' 'then,' with which
I do not meddle. Let them draw the consequences, I state
truths. The only tangible point they could fasten on, was the
assertion that Christ bore imputed sin, but not the wrath of God,
on which point I defy an attack. They have not a single syllable
to support what they say. It is as pure an addition to the Bible
as ever was made by Romanism.
Forgive my descending to gossip like this,¹ but it is not
merely gossip. To me these things are instructive; I see them
in the light of history. I behold the incarnation of the spirit of
the ancient Pharisee. I find that evil is not subject to the laws
of space and time; that it belongs to no country, and is of no
complexion nor climate. I realise the past when I contemplate
a thing like this. I feel that I am living in the presence of the
Ages, in eternity, and not time: among truths and principles,
of which it is only manifestations that are subject to apparent
sequence. These are the things that vitalise the Bible; and I
suppose it is because I know the Bible and have lived in it, that
I view them with such severity of condemnation. Here again,
however, there is need of caution: I may be a Pharisee for
strongly blaming those faults, while I am tender to others more
congenial to my nature.
I may
Compound for sins I am inclined to,
By damning those I have no mind to-
for Pharisaism is not confined to matters of Sabbath-keeping
and self-complacency in hereditary descent from Abraham, but
belongs to every form of self-congratulation.
The translation of the Latin sentence is, 'His talent was so
He had been relating some stories about intolerant Sabbatarianism.
X 2
308 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
flexible in all directions, that one would have said, he was destined
especially by nature for everything that he took in hand.' There
is a beautiful description of this versatility of power in 'Henry V.'
Act I.; the lines-
A g
That, when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still,
always seemed to me perfect melody, and therefore well agreeing
with the eloquence of which they are the description.
As to the character (judged from handwriting), it is of course
guesswork-some things right, others wrong-written, too, in
the style of an ancient oracle, or Hamlet's account to his friends.
of his interview with the ghost, or Romeo's first description to
Benvolio of his attachment. That is, it would equally do for a
great many persons, and is so carefully guarded, that if one side
is wrong, the modified explanation must be right. The person
is not so versatile as the Latin quotation represents, but is versa-
tile to a certain extent.' That would be true of any one who
could do three things with tolerable expertness-sing a song,
ride a horse, or carve a turkey. It would also be true of the Duke
of Wellington, and everybody except the Admirable Crichton,
Michael Angelo, &c., on the one hand, and a man whose physical
and intellectual fingers were all thumbs, on the other. Your
butler can clean plate, drive a car, exercise horses, wait at table,
and be late for the railway train. Between the oracular and the
guesswork, all these characters must, more or less, fit. Send
him the same hand as a lady's, and you will get back feminine
instead of masculine excellences. Thinking it is a man's, he
has not introduced one quality that is feminine! These men
are all humbugs. You might as well cross a gipsy's palm, as
seek astrologers who 'peep and mutter,' consult the flight of
birds, inspect the palpitating interiors of slain animals, judge
from handwriting, or tie handkerchiefs before their eyes and say,
Je ne vois pas clair.
'If God is Love, why do we need a mediator?' I think the
best answer is, I do not know. Nor do I know why, God being
Love, the intervention of maternal suffering is the indispensable
The Withering of the Affections
309
condition of existence, or why suffering is the necessary medium
for the procuring of anything that really deserves the name of
blessing. Why are knowledge, civilisation, health, purchased
only by severe labour for us by others, that is, through media-
tion? I only know that it is so-an unalterable law, the beauty
of which I can dimly see, and always most brightly in those
moments when I am least earthly in feeling, and most disposed
to reckon nobleness immeasurably above physical or even
mental comfort. And seeing that as the law of the universe, I
am prepared to believe and acquiesce in it when found in the
Atonement, as part of the Divine government—a philosophically
as well as theologically demanded necessity. It is no exception
to the great system, but in perfect harmony with it.
LXIV.
You have heard people say, 'how impossible it is to acquiesce
in the stunting and mutilation of the affections, and all the con-
tradictions of a withering and chilling destiny.' Hard, of course,
to submit to the denial of anything on which we have set our
hearts; but so might a child say who has to go to school when
the day is bright and fine; and so might we say, when tempted
to sin, for sin is the doing of that which is, at the time at least,
very delightful. But for the stunting and mutilation of the
affections I fancy we always have to thank ourselves—our own
imprudence, if not guilt. Besides, I do believe that there is a
very profound reason for what seems to us the mutilation of the
affections. Our affections are deciduous, and have a prospective
end, like the scaffolding by which the house is built. They
perish to give way to the building. Love excites the profoundest
life of man; and each lower degree of Love prepares the way
for one which is higher. The Love of God is the end of all, and
I suppose that all must drop off, leaf by leaf, till that fruit is
matured. The withering, no doubt, is often exquisitely painful;
still we find that the heart cannot grow here of itself, and that
it retains to the last its 'strong necessity of loving.' In the
ordinary appointment this goes on gradually through the suc•
310 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
cessive stages of filial tenderness, fraternal affection, intense
love, wedded purity and confidence, friendship, patriotism. In
other cases it is done by wrenches, as there are some flowers
that blossom with a loud crack, when the old covering, once green
and tender, falls off; and the great thing, then, seems to be to
go on to the next stage humbly, if one has been missed, instead
of sinking to the same level again. N—, for instance, has
had one of the seasons blighted. In the midst of all tempta-
tions, how purely and calmly he has waited! Ten years of
desolation, with a purity of light that has commanded respect
and surprise in his corps; and now the rainbow begins to arch
again-vividly it never will. But there is a deep calmness,
which, mingled though it will be with a melancholy that I suppose
will always last, has in it no bitterness. I do respect that way
of bearing blight. It is very beautifully put, I remember, in
Wordsworth's' Founding of Bolton Priory:'-
'What is good for a bootless bene ?'
With these dark words begins my tale.
And their meaning is—whence can comfort spring
When prayer is of no avail ?
'What is good for a bootless bene?'
The falconer to the lady said.
And she made answer, 'Endless sorrow!'
For she knew that her son was dead.
Then comes her endurance, and she founds the priory:
And the lady prayed in heaviness,
That looked not for relief;
But slowly did her succour come,
And a patience to her grief.
Oh! there is never sorrow of heart
That shall lack a timely end;
If but to God we turn, and ask
Of him to be our friend.
Does your friend really think that the certainty of death in
six months would not sound to her like a knell? Oh, no; be
The Law and the Gospel
311
sure few really wish for death. Bad as life is, it is in the power
of a single dream to make us feel that it is not death we long
for :-
'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant;
More life and fuller, that we want;
No heart in which was healthful breath,
Has ever truly longed for death.
Several of letters speak with wonder of the failure of his
attempt to attain peace and goodness by the devoted life of
regularity which he led for many years.
Let me suggest one hint on this which may become a living
thought in your mind. No one can 'attain to righteousness, if
he seek it, as it were, by the works of the law.' It matters not
whether it be a ritual or daily duties. Mere unloving, untrusting
regularity fails in producing goodness. Goodness comes not
from death, but life. How could suspicions of God, seared
feelings, and, to quote from heathenism, 'the rancorous melan-
choly of one who possesses a noble longing of heart for a better
faith, but proudly suppressed it,' how could that soil nourish
anything that would bear sweet fruit, or branch into noble
deeds?
Yet I can see that this stage, too, is necessary. The bitter,
degrading law, deteriorating the heart, goes before the Gospel.
We cannot skip the seasons of our education. We cannot
hasten the ripeness and sweetness by a single day, nor dispense
with one night's nipping frost, nor one week's blighting east
wind.
My Advent subject is not yet fixed. I have been diving into
reminiscences of the classics, and have been quite startled by
things which I passed over formerly without reflection. One
thing that has made me reflect much, has been the effect pro-
duced by sculpture on the Greeks. Those sublime works, of
which fragments are to us like inspiration, were, by the judgment
of heathens themselves, productive of a corruption of feelings
and morals that is scarcely credible; I thanked God that we
have not the treasures of Italy or the Continent; painting, too.
312 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
And it is very singular to find how all the nobler heather. con-
demned the stage and the dance, and the poetry which answers
to our romance-such men as Plutarch, Cato, Socrates, &c.
One very impassioned passage in Plato, I remember, struck me
when a boy-where he banishes all such things from his ideal
republic; and all the softening strains of music, the Ionian and
Lydian styles, retaining only the majestic and masculine Dorian,
and one or two others.
By the by, I have just read 'Comus.' What a noble poem
that is! Shakspeare, of course, was the greater genius, but
Milton was a sublimer man. How seraphically pure and ele-
vated the atmosphere which he breathed! You feel the dig-
nity of goodness in reading ten lines of what came from his
soul! .
I took my Keble in sorrowful and deep depression, which I
had not felt till that minute. I sat meditating on the red
embers in the fire, glowing with the history of years, as they so
strangely do sometimes, till I lost myself in the wilderness of
the past and future. Were I to prophesy, it would not be in
Romeo's strain :
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne.
I should say life is gathering all its fires for the last crisis--and
there is nothing more. Nor do I think that exhaustion is the
cause of this. . .
I find that suspicion has attached to the Training School, in
consequence of my connection with it. The instant I heard
this, I wrote to the secretary to say that I understood such was
the case, and that he was either a participator in the distrust, or
else aware of it; that as I belonged to no party, I was quite
ready for myself to share the distrust of all, the usual fate of
those who stand alone, with not merely a negative but a positive
line of thought and views; but that I would not for one moment
involve the interests of a public institution in my fate. I there-
fore asked him to tell me straightforwardly and manfully, whether
such a feeling was experienced to his knowledge, that I might
put an end to all difficulties at once, by resignation of the office
Independency of his Views
313
which the bishop had asked me to take, and which I had not
sought myself.
Such is my position. It cannot last long. I only care to be
true and open, without provoking unnecessary hostility.
A person of influence sent me a message, that if I would only
avoid giving such strong opinions as those upon the Sabbath, I
might count upon speedy preferment-to which I returned an
answer, that the Lord Chancellor might give me the richest pre-
ferment in the land, but that he could not give me peace of
conscience with it; that the world had nothing to give me
which I cared for; that I held the true thing to be ever the safe
thing in the long run; and that I could not turn one hair's-
breadth out of my own path for Royalty itself. I wish I could
say these things less sternly, for I was conscious of saying on
Sunday I threw myself on the indulgence of the congregation,
being tired, in too haughty a tone. I know that this offends and
shuts me out from sympathy in solitariness; yet I cannot alter.
It is not in me either to make or to desire to make a party; and
my feeble, unsustained efforts are like buffets upon the wind.
They watch by hundreds for my halting, and the mass of beings
over whom I wield a temporary influence for a brief half-hour,
are only chained by fluency-held together as a column of sand
is supported by the breath of desert wind. When that wind
ceases, it resolves into its atoms again.
LXV.
A long, stupid visit is just over. I do believe that there ought
to be more interest in humanity and more power of throwing
one's self into the mind of every one, so that no visit should
appear dull. An infinite being comes before us with a whole
eternity wrapt up in his mind and soul, and we proceed to
classify him, put a label upon him, as we should upon a jar,
saying, 'This is rice, that is jelly, and this is pomatum,' and
then we think we have saved ourselves the necessity of taking
off the cover; whereas, in truth, the Tory, Radical, Evangelical,
gossip, flirt, or feather-brain are all new beings in the world :
!
314
Life and Letters of Rev. F. WV. Robertson
such a one never having existed before, each having a soul as
distinct in its peculiarities from all other souls as his or her face
is from all other faces. This seems to have been one great feature
in the way in which Our Lord treated the people who came in
contact with Him-He brought out the peculiarities of each,
treated each one as a living man, and not as a specimen of a
labelled class, like the stuffed giraffes, cassowaries, humming-
birds, and alligators you see in museums. Consequently, at His
touch each one gave out his peculiar spark of light, and each
one of the characters we have in the Gospels is distinctly him-
self, and no other: the representative, of course, of a class, but
as distinctly marked off from all others of that class as the class
itself is from all classes. What deep interest there would be in
the most commonplace society if we could associate with human
beings in this wondering, inquiring way, exactly as the chemist
interrogates every new subject by innumerable tests until he has
discovered its properties and affinities.
I dined with on Wednesday. Mr. A told me some
interesting things about the unaffected simplicity of the Queen
Dowager, and the deep religiousness of her character. Certainly
it is a wonderful thing to remember how she steered through
one of the most tangled portions of our history, giving no offence,
dismissing all pomp, refusing to hold a court, and, by the simple
power of spotless goodness, commanding an enthusiasm which
has been rarely given to the most splendid achievements. I do
not know that I have ever heard anything so real as her funeral
directions since the account of the death of Arnold.
LXVI.
I had a long conversation with Captain H about the
Cape, where he has been recently quartered and engaged with
the Kaffirs, whom he represents as nearer to animal existence
than anything he ever saw. They seem as lithe as serpents,
and as capable of concealing themselves from observation on
almost bare ground as a hare. On one occasion they came
suddenly on a party of them sitting round a fire at breakfast.
Anecdotes of the Kafir War
315
A Fingoe gave the alarm, and in a moment the Kaffirs threw
themselves on all-fours on the ground, and glided in all direc-
tions through the embers and bushes, so swiftly and tortuously
that, though he put up his rifle and is a first-rate shot, he could
not cover one of them, but was obliged to give it up and bring
his rifle down. He knew those officers of whose interception and
murder you may remember the account in the papers some time
ago. They were out foraging on ground so bare of grass, that
though he rode over it an hour or two afterwards, he could see no
place where a man could hide himself. On their return 400 or 500
Kaffirs, through the very midst of whom they must have ridden,
suddenly started up and cut them off. They rode for their lives,
and would have escaped, but that the horse of one, named
Chetwynd, fell, upon which the others stopped, dismounted, and
stood back to back, and being all armed with double-barrelled
guns, sold their lives dearly. Seven Kaffirs were found dead,
and others were carried off. Of themselves there were only five.
They were soon overwhelmed with assagais; one was found
pinned to the ground with an assagai through his cheek, another,
who fought most desperately, was seized, and, as an honour,
carried some yards off to a large stone, on which his head was
cut off; the skull is now in the possession of a Kaffir chief in
the form of a drinking-bowl. They paid, however, dearly for
their success, for they were pursued, and 200 of them hemmed
in in the bush. The soldiers gave no quarter, and every one
was cut to pieces.
On another occasion, while H and some of his men were
at breakfast, a soldier exclaimed, and looking up he saw a Kaffir
within twenty yards of him, on a knoll of ground, in the act of
hurling his assagai. He stooped under a rock, and the assagai
glanced over the point of it, and remained buried in the ground
so close to a sergeant that the quivering end struck him. Look-
ing up again he saw the Kaffir stamping with rage at having
missed. They rushed after him, as he was at the end of a very
narrow bush or belt of wood. H-
sent twelve men each side
(
•
of it to run down as fast as
they could, and when he judged
that they had outrun the Kaffir, who must be impeded by the
316 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
i
trees, ordered them to turn, enter the bush, meet, and drawing a
line across it, beat every foot regularly back to the point at which
the Kaffir disappeared, as you would draw a cover for a fox.
As he stood leaning on his rifle, expecting to hear the cry of dis-
covery, and shots, he saw slowly rising, within three yards of him,
the Kaffir's black head and glittering eyes. He remained trans-
fixed and fascinated for several minutes, the Kaffir glaring at
him, and he not daring to raise his rifle, knowing that he would
be off in a moment. However, his rifle went off by accident, and
H————, in a fury, struck at the Kaffir with the butt-end with all his
might. The stock broke and the Kaffir disappeared. Up came
the men at the sound of the shot, and searched the place for an
hour, in vain. He then went off, leaving three perdu behind at
the spot where the savage had been seen. Scarcely had he got
a quarter of a mile when three shots were heard-crack, crack!
He ran back, and found that the Kaffir had put up his head
again, exactly in the same place, and again got off like the ghost of
Hamlet's papa, not one being able to tell what had become of him.
I am going to dine with him again on Thursday, and shall
hear more of these anecdotes. I do not know how it is, but
they rouse me more than anything of our civilised life. I do not
mean this last story, for the poor wretch deserved to get off, and
I should not like that kind of work. But the risk and excitement
are more real than the being badgered by old maids of both
sexes in a place like Brighton.
LXVII.
I have this moment returned from dining with Captain H
and hearing a long account of Kaffirland and incidents of Cape
warfare. On the whole, they are very horrible, and make war
more a matter of shambles than it appears in books. The
Kaffirs torture all their prisoners. Our officers were tied up to
the trees, and the young Kaffirs practised at them with the
assagai, the mothers looking on and clapping their hands at
a good shot. Some were flayed alive, others burnt with hot
sticks; then there is a bullock-goad, a specimen of which he
Anecdotes of the Kaffir War
317
Horrible as all
showed me, a favourite instrument of torture.
this is, H said that they are not so ferocious as our English
soldiers. A Kaffir one day pointed to one of the men in a state
of intoxication, and then significantly to himself, saying, ' You
would make us like that.' They treat our women, too, with
delicate respect, which our men never imitate. H
has seen
a soldier deliberately place his musket to a woman's breast, that
he might kill both herself and the child at her back with the
same shot; the English officer, a subaltern, took no notice of
this barbarity, and H————— was obliged to put him under arrest.
Indeed, it seems that officers and men become brutalised there.
He mentioned one colonel at whom a Kaffir fired, and singed
his face. The colonel knocked the Kaffir down, strode over
him, and coolly took out his knife and jagged it across his throat,
instead of stabbing or shooting him. From his account, I confess,
I felt strongly on the side of the Kaffirs. They feel that they
will become as degraded as Hottentots by being subject to the
English. At present they do not drink, and have a much finer
sense of honour than the brutal soldier.
For a long time it was a mystery where the Kaffirs got their
arms and ammunition. At last, when the war was ended, the
secret came out. Every captured musket had the Tower of
London stamp upon it-that is, the condemned muskets, which
are bought up by merchants, had been shipped off to the Cape
and sold to the savages. Nor did they ever want powder;
steamers were fitted out by dealers at the Cape, and sent up the
shore with ammunition. Can you conceive selfishness and treason
of a darker turpitude than this? And the Kaffirs afterwards
said, in Shylock's vein, 'These be your Christian merchants !'
He showed me a number of coloured drawings, vividly repre-
senting Kaffir life-one a very hideous but strangely fascinating
one, in which an English officer, stripped to his shirt, is kneeling
in the hands of the torturer, whose exultation and refinements
in cruelty are diabolical.
This is man! and these things are going on while we sit by
our fireside and complain of ennui, or weariness, or religious
persecution or scandal, or some other trifling gnat-bite. There
318
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
was a bundle of assagais, which H- showed me, of various
kinds. It is about six feet long, taper, about as thick as your
finger at the thickest part where the iron blade joins it, and
feathering off like a reed at the other end. This they use on all
occasions to cut their food, shape their pipes, gash their prisoners,
and as a javelin, capable of being thrown a hundred yards with
wonderful precision.
They are a fine manly race of men, the women beautiful in
figure, but all plain or ugly. I should except a few-an officer
told me that one was the most beautiful woman he ever saw.
LXVIII.
Mists and darkness have shut out the sun to-day, but it has
been close and warm. I have to-day arranged my time and
occupations. From ten to eleven A.M., I mean to teach little
Charlie geography; the hours before that I spend in my
own studies, which for some time will be chiefly in works
bearing upon Genesis, which I mean to study thoroughly, taking
such books as Prichard's 'Physical History of Man,' Wilkin-
son's 'Egyptians,' &c. At present I am working at Palfrey, an
American, and two of the best Germans, who in all matters of
research are immeasurably before the English exhausting a
subject. From eleven to one, similar occupation. Then I
receive visitors or write letters. At fifteen minutes to three I
hurry to the post. Three or four days in the week I have a class
at the Training School in ecclesiastical history-Daniel and St.
John. Then visits to sick, engagements, walk, &c. Dinner at
six, listen to Charlie's prattle till eight, then study again till ten.
Arrangements like these, however, are only capable of being
kept in an approximating way, for accounts, interruptions, &c.,
sadly break in upon the best-arranged plan; but only in hard
work, with the neck ever close to the collar, can I find any
oblivion of thoughts that would be otherwise distracting.
Now let me give you something of the Book of Genesis.
The earlier part consists of extracts from two distinct docu-
Preparation for his Lectures on Genesis 319
ments, distinguished by the use of 'God' (Elohim) and ‘Lord'
Jehovah).
Now the question is, whence were the materials for this history
procured? The answer is a very interesting one; but I be-
lieve I shall have to give it in the lecture which you will get. At
present it is enough to say, that it is almost certain that it was
not from Egypt, but Chaldea, from whence Abraham came.
For the Egyptian and Phoenician cosmogonies do not at all
resemble that of Moses; whereas that of the Etruscans, derived
from Chaldea, and that of Berosus, a Babylonian priest, singu-
larly resemble it in important points. We might have almost
expected this, from the story of the confusion of tongues, the
scene of which is Babylon. It appears, therefore, that at the
time when the Israelites left Egypt, and long after, the very ac-
counts which were given to them by Moses were the accounts
taught and received by another portion of the human race, from
whom they had been brought by Abraham and preserved for
centuries. It seems that Moses committed to writing those parts
which were chiefly calculated to be prefatory to his Law, and to
corroborate by an appeal to antiquity the great doctrines he was
commissioned to teach-the Unity of God and His moral govern-
ment of the world, nations, and individuals-the religious parts
of the tradition chiefly, and others which historically bore upon
the foundation of the Israelitish commonwealth: as, for instance,
those records which declared that the Canaan, which he re-
quired them to conquer, had been the property of their ances-
tors, that they had an hereditary right there, and that the pre-
sent possessors were only usurpers.
•
This explanation of two documents will account for what
must have often struck you the repetitions which you find in
many accounts, as of the Creation and Deluge, the going back
every now and then to a point which had been passed, and tra-
cing the same ground over again in different words, until the
thread is taken up where it was broken off. You find two dis-
tinct accounts of the Creation: one in chap. i. to chap. ii. v. 4;
the other from chap. ii. v. 4 to the end, beginning, 'These are
the generations,' &c., which is the common and well-known way
320 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
of commencing a history. In these two histories there are even
discrepancies of a trifling nature. For instance, in the first, man
is created male and female at once. In the first, animals are
created on separate days before man; in the second, chap. ii, v.
19, they are created after man, and brought to him to name.
The great points, however, are in both the same-the Unity of
God, the non-eternity of things as they are; and indeed the one
supplements the other very materially.
LXIX.
February 16.
I will put down a little anecdote for you, on Lady M's
authority. The present Bishop of Glasgow, whom I know per-
sonally, is the son of a man of very large property. When a
young man he desired to enter the ministry, but his father ob-
jected on the ground that the duties of a clergyman were incom-
patible with those of a large landed proprietor, he being the
eldest son. After a time, however, he made to him this proposal:
he gave him permission, subject to the condition of his renoun-
cing his rights of birth in favour of his younger brother. To
this, after a consultation with Mr. Wilberforce, he agreed. Sub-
sequently he was appointed to a large living, which partly re-
placed his pecuniary loss; but last year the bishopric of Glas-
gow, worth almost nothing, only a few hundreds-I think two or
three-was offered him. Without hesitation he made a second
sacrifice, and now has one of the most laborious places in the
kingdom. Does not this do one's heart good? Tell it to,
and ask her whether I was wrong in saying that human goodness
is no dream? The case contains nothing very grand; still,
when you come to think of it, it is not an easy thing to exchange
the position of a man of wealth for that of a hard-working coun-
try clergyman. And though this might be done once by a kind
of mistake, in young enthusiasm, before life was known, and the
sacrifice appreciated, yet when it was repeated in mature age,
with all the realities of past experience to make Quixotism im-
possible, I feel it was a thing which I should be glad to have the
heart to do. It were far easier, I fancy, to lead a forlorn hope.
Submission to Divine Will
321
I walked to-day alone, along the beach and then round by
the well-known corner under the bridge, and so home by the
Dyke Road. The day was very bright, but a brisk wind ruffled
the sea, and swept the sea-gulls, as if against their will, with
twice their usual rapidity, across the waves. Hundreds of these
birds were regularly hunting up and down one single large field,
without going off from it for at least an hour that I watched
them. Not having a gun, I did not go up to them to ascertain
what was the cause of their attraction; but I suppose there
must have been some sea-substance spread over the ground as
manure. A large flock of Norwegian or hooded crows were
mingled with them, and the distant hills were exceedingly dis-
tinct and clear, in that way which is often a prelude to rain;
but I have observed that wind has sometimes the same effect.
The shadows of the clouds were very pretty, and the blue of both
sky and sea fine; the air bracing and exhilarating.
LXX.
I did not forget my resolve, which I trust I shall not break
through as a habit. I try to blend my will with His, to submit
mine and merge it in His. Milton's lines-to Cyriack-Skinner—
on his own blindness floated across my mind, in which he speaks
of not abating one jot of hope, nor arguing against Heaven's
will, but steering right onwards. I asked that I, and those dear-
est to me, might in all things unsophistically see the right, and
do it.
I do not know that I have felt so softened and humbled for a
long time as at the hour of prayer this morning; more gentle-
ness seemed to distil upon my soul than I have felt for a
long time. I could have wept, not happy nor sanguine, but sub-
dued and humanised tears. I do not know exactly why; at
least, it would take long to explain the train of thought. But it
ran very little upon myself, or upon my own concerns. Words-
worth, in his account of the revulsion by which young disappoint-
VOL. I.
Y
L
322 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
ment passes into something resigned, and almost cheerful at
last, speaks of a kind of sweet melancholy and repose found--
In the soothing thoughts which spring
Out of human suffering.
LXXI.
I have just returned from spending the evening with the
M————s. I took a long walk with to-day. She was brought
up under Chalmers, but has a large and catholic mind, fresh,
vigorous, overflowing with cheerful desires and efforts to do good,
which she carries out on her own estate and everywhere-the
secret of all happiness. I spent the evening alone with them,
and felt refreshed; a long conversation about confession, abso-
lution, baptismal regeneration, and the modes of restoring peace
and holiness after sin. She spoke of the excessive beauty of
M -'s last volume of Sermons; I have not read them.
Your criticism about 'There must be a will before there can be
a law' is quite just. Our minds, by their very constitution, must
conceive of a law as prior, not in point of time but in point of
order of conception, to the Eternal Will, in all moral questions.
What I was alluding to, I suppose, was the laws of the physical
universe, and I meant prior in point of time. Will decided that
those and no others should be the laws which regulate matter.
The Divine idea realised is the constitution of this universe, but
that of course implies that the idea existed before the realisation
of it. All you say, however, is perfectly true, and most accu-
rately thought.
The reply to the feeling about the Temple of God in the Uni-
verse, as contrasted with a London building, is a very long one.
It would lead into all the questions about the place which belongs
to the artificially symbolic in contradistinction to the naturally
symbolic. I have no doubt that God has so constructed
nature as to be an appropriate symbol of the Highest. I
believe it has a sacramental power even. But then the harmony
of mind with the All is a different thing, and less definite than
the sense of harmony with living, imperfect human beings,
Need of Devotional Reading.
323
struggling together towards God, sinful and weak, which is the
idea of a Church. The universe exalts; but I do not know that
it distinctly elicits the consciousness of guilt-of dependence on
human beings, or of our great need of sympathy with humanity.
Perhaps it rather repels us from mankind than attracts; and
I believe one end of united worship is to bring feelings of this
class into distinct consciousness. Of course that does not
reply to the objection about flaunting congregations, &c. Only
observe, that is an objection against display and vanity, and
their unfitness for public worship-not an objection against
public worship itself. 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love
is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.' But this does not
imply that the stalled ox itself is bad, or even that the herbs are
better, only that they are preferable to the other with a certain
addition, which neutralises all its value. I do sincerely believe
in the Temple of the Universe—its noble architecture, the music
of its full choir of everlasting psalmody; and I am persuaded,
especially to minds in certain states, nothing is more healing, or
so healing. I hold it to be imperative on us to vindicate this
great truth, that true worship may be given-ay, and most fitly
suggested there. Still I believe that lowlier but perhaps more
really spiritual worship, because more fitted to fallen man, is to
be found in a congregation of united adorers, which the other
cannot supersede.
podlag
LXXII.
February 22.
I will tell you of a want I am beginning to experience very
distinctly. I perceive more than ever the necessity of devo-
tional reading. I mean the works of eminently holy persons,
whose tone was not merely uprightness of character and high-
mindedness, but communion-a strong sense of personal and
ever-living communion-with God besides. I recollect how far
more peaceful my mind used to be when I was in the regular
habit of reading daily, with scrupulous adherence to a plan,
works of this description. A strong shock threw me off the
habit--partly the external circumstances of my life, partly the
Y 2
324 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
perception of a most important fact, that devotional feelings are
very distinct from uprightness and purity of life-that they are
often singularly allied to the animal nature, the result of a warm
temperament-guides to hell under the form of angels of light,
conducting the unconscious victim of feelings that appear divine
and seraphic, into a state of heart and life at which the very
world stands aghast. Cases of this kind came under my
immediate cognisance, disgusted me, made me suspect feelings
which I had hitherto cherished as the holiest, and produced a
reaction. Nevertheless, the only true use of such a discovery is
this, that our basest feelings lie very near to our highest, and
that they pass into one another by insensible transitions. It is
not true to take the tone so fearfully sounded in Tennyson's
'Vision of Sin,' nor that of Mephistopheles when he sneeringly
predicts to Faust the mode of termination for his sublime
intuition,' after the soliloquy in the forest, when Gretchen's
image has elevated his soul. The true lesson is to watch,
suspect, and guard aspirations after good, not to drown them as
spurious. Wordsworth says—
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the patient hour of silent thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself.
،
I feel the need of works of this kind, and I shall begin them
again. The Tractarian school have felt and tried to administer
to this craving by the publication of Romish devotional books,
but of the most corrupted and erotic character. Our affections
must be nurtured in the Highest, or else our whole life flags and
droops. At present you are reading ' Channing's Life,' and will
persevere, however discouraging his saintly elevation may be;
for high thoughts and aims and feelings are caught by contact
with the loftiest minds, far more than by any didactic discourses.
Pray do not give up 'Channing's Life,' nor read it by starts, but
consecutively, and, if possible, regularly every day at a fixed
hour. You must bear in mind, however, that his biographer's
mind and tone of piety are immeasurably below his. The book
is worth comparatively little, but the extracts are exceedingly
J
Channing
325
valuable. I should not, however, say that devotionality was the
characteristic of Channing's mind, so much as aspiration and
adoration. Largeness of heart is more evident than warmth,
and I have heard his writings characterised as cold; but it is a
love which is too pure and translucent for the bubbling and
turbid effervescence of an affection with which much that is
earthly mingles. However, I am not sure that intellectual
brightness does not make it too clear for love, which requires a
kind of dim haze to live in, where the horizon, and the finite,
sharp outlines of things are not discovered, and where imagina-
tion by its own swell conceives the infinite of love far better than
the eye can exhibit it.
LXXIII.
My dear A—,—I am quite certain that all our expectations
of peace in this world are delusive, except so far as we resolutely
address ourselves to duty as it unceasingly presents itself in
form after form. Otherwise, all soon gets disordered, and our
hearts run rapidly down to discord. 'Take my yoke upon you
you shall find rest for your souls.' At present manifold
perplexities are crowding upon you, and you would fain get away
into a place of solitude, to escape the harassing and distressing
calls. But you remember that when He went into the desert
apart to rest awhile, the people followed Him, and He had all
the perplexity of calculating numbers and provisions, how to
provide loaves and fishes for the crowd who were dependent on
Him? I do not read that He threw off the responsibility, or
called it and considered it beneath and unworthy of His divine
energy. How very meekly and patiently He listened to the
rule-of-three sum of five loaves and a few fishes-provision
enough for one lad, but—for so many! And then the arrange-
ment and marshalling of them all-ranks of fifties, and
hundreds, and thousands-Divine expedients to meet temporary
deficiencies and past improvidence. Surely something of that
spirit is available in somewhat similar emergencies, if the
miraculous part of it cannot be repeated. Who can tell how
your destiny may be bewildered or brightened according as you
326
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
meet this emergency truly to yourself and God, or shrink from
it in a way that is not courageous? He was tempted to escape
duty and long toil by some sudden act of rashness, and to
choose plenty and enjoyment instead of a rock-pillow and
fidelity to common-place, unromantic needs and occupations;
but He felt the reality of a higher life within, nurtured not by
solaces but God's presence, and He chose to wait rather than
faithlessly distrust.
LXXIV.
This afternoon I received a packet which touched me a good
deal; it was a — book, sent from
by a gentleman, who
once came to me in great anguish after a sermon in Trinity
Chapel, which had struck home and revealed to him the
inevitable results of the line of conduct he was pursuing. I
did not know he had left the country. It appears that the
warning was in vain; all his earthly happiness is and must be
wrecked for ever, and he has quitted England, I should conceive,
The inscription on the titlepage, in Latin, is
never to return.
as follows:-
In memory of a warning,
Given, how benignly,
Forgotten, how evilly,
Mourned, how vainly,
Ended by ruin, how entirely!
Given by Infelix.
And that is all I know of the concluding history of one of the
saddest tales of an unregulated heart I ever heard or perhaps
shall ever know. I shall write, but to what purpose?-words,
idle words—the whole realm of Chatterdom is worth nothing-
noise and smoke, nothing else. The babble of little birds
round the unaltered flight of a hawk, which moves majestically
on, do they stop the death or ruin which is before him? I
trow not. Eloquence, rhetoric, impressive discourses, &c. &c.
&c.-soft gliding swallows, and noisy impudent tomtits-is the
true worth of the first orator in the world. I believe I could
1.
!
Warburton's 'Divine Legation of Moses' 327
have become an orator, had I chosen to take the pains. I see
what rhetoric does, and what it seems to do, and I thoroughly
despise it. I think it makes people worse instead of better;
exposes the feelings to tension, like the pulling constantly of a
spring back, until the spring loses its elasticity, becomes weak,
or breaks; and yet, perhaps, I do it injustice with an un-
worldly noble love to give it reality, what might it not do?
I have translated a few more of Lessing's paragraphs for you.
In order to understand them, I must explain to you, very
briefly, Warburton's system, which he partly admits and partly
refutes. Warburton published a book, entitled 'The Divine
Legation of Moses.' The argument of the whole, well sustained
by immense learning but much erroneous reasoning, was this:
Warburton saw no doctrine of future life in the Old Testament
this is only true, however, of parts, of which the Pentateuch
is certainly one-he concluded from this that Moses must have
had miraculous power to substantiate his claims as a Divine
messenger. Mahomet, for example, may have passed for one,
and yet be an impostor, because his promises were to be
fulfilled hereafter, and could not be tested here. He appealed
to superstitious hopes, &c., and had thus a hold upon the
present life; but a lawgiver who appealed to no future sanctions
and only to present ones, must have been true in his predictions.
of those present ones-Divine interference, &c. &c.-because
they could be tested every day. If he told the Israelites that
they passed through the sea dry, and that their shoes had not
worn out; if he threatened disobedience with wondrous penal-
ties, the Jews could try his credentials on the spot; but as they
recognised these credentials, Warburton held that miraculous
power must have been there.
LXXV.
There is no excellence in me to kindle excellence-there is
nothing, absolutely and literally nothing, true and good. Some-
thing, perhaps, which a superior being might mournfully and
328 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
gently look upon and recognise as the germs of a once-possible
—perhaps still in the eternities possible-excellence; but after
years remaining rudimentary still, more or less dry and
withered. A common gardener would require a very powerful
microscope indeed to detect the smallest symptom of remaining
life, and that, perhaps, the Chief Gardener could only see in a
certain capacity of intense hatred for certain forms of wrong,
somewhat, however, of the acescent kind, hot and bitter.
Hatred for wrong is a kind of life, but there is little of the
sanguine love and hope for good left.
I am truly rejoiced to find that you are beginning to feel the
beauty and power of such writers as Newman and Channing.
I think you will by degrees acknowledge the genius of the
latter. It is simple, as all genius is, and not so striking as the
splendour of Macaulay's diction, but far deeper if it be true
'que les grandes pensées viennent du cœur.'
I read a melancholy story to-day. A young English lady, who
had been sent from Australia to finish her education in England,
was returning to her parents, when the vessel was wrecked, and
all the party with whom she was, except herself, was slain. She
was taken prisoner by the natives, and has been forced to live
with them ever since. She has been seen more than once, vigi-
lantly attended by a black. She is hurried away instantly when the
whites are seen. All efforts hitherto to penetrate the forest, and
discover her, have been unavailing. The Australian savage is
almost lower than the Bosjesman in the scale of humanity.
Conceive such a lot for a refined and educated girl! Poor, poor
thing! I should like to be in Australia. In my present mood,
I would lead the forlorn hope in search of her; I would not re-
commend any black to come within reach of my rifle. How much
better a virgin grave in the Atlantic would have been for her!
I have finished Lessing for you, in order that you might have
it all complete on Sunday morning. The latter part is merely
an old speculation about our pre-existence, as old as Pytha-
goras, dimly suspected by Plato, hinted at by Tennyson in the
'Two Voices,' and a fancy, I suppose, which has occupied some
The Word 'Extroitive'
329
minutes of all our lives. You will take it as a fancy, nothing
more. It can neither be proved nor disproved. Still, even in
the apparent absurdities of some minds there is more that is
instructive than in the wisdom of others. The whole piece is
valuable, chiefly as suggestive; it is crude and imperfect; but
it gives large glances into God's world and the Life of man as a
whole, and after all does not err in putting in too much details,
or in shading too much the grand sketch.
'Extroitive' is a coinage of Coleridge.¹ 'Introit' is a musi-
cal word, meaning an entrance. Extroitive means that which
goes from within abroad. Introitive, applied to a character,
would mean one which is exactly the reverse. Thus extroitive,
in his mode of application, describes a character which con-
siders the outward consequences of moral evil chiefly, shrinking
from them, and penetrates less to the heart and kernel of the
matter-shuddering at the deformity of evil in and for itself.
From this he draws the conclusion that women are less hypo-
crites to their own minds than men, because they do not often
pretend to themselves to be guided by principle, nor use
sophistry to make their acts square with right. It is quite
sufficient for such a mind to say, 'It was necessary to do
wrong; or else'. Consequently, women are less veracious
than men; dereliction from truth being a slight thing to them
in comparison of having to endure the consequences of speak-
ing it. In other words, they feel a Necessity above Right-a
fearful thing to feel. I believe this is a correct exposition of
what Coleridge means. I am afraid, however, it explains
Shakspeare where Coleridge himself puzzles over him in the
conclusion of his 'Notes on All's Well that Ends Well,' respect-
ing Helena's conduct.
LXXVI.
March 9.
Lord Langdale has pronounced, at last, the judgment of the
Privy Council in Gorham v. Bishop of Exeter. The decision,
¹ See Coleridge, 'Lectures on Shakspeare,' &c. p. 114.
330 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
in which the Council, with the exception of Knight Bruce, were
unanimous, with the approval of the two Archbishops, and the
disapproval of the Bishop of London, is to the effect that Mr.
Gorham's views are not contrary to the doctrine of the Church
of England. The arguments are very temperate and wise, and,
I think, unanswerable. If you have the paper, pray look at
the quotations from our great divines at the close of the judg-
ment; they are decisive, I think, that Mr. Gorham's opinions
are at least honestly tenable in the Church of England. I do
not agree with Mr. Gorham any more than I do with the Bishop,
and I think, on the whole, the Bishop's views are less likely to
undermine Christianity than Mr. Gorham's; for the former at
least acknowledges all Christians as God's children, whereas the
latter only uses it in the judgment of charity, 'consider a man
honest until he is proved a rogue,' which in common life does
not make us feel particularly at ease, when we are going through
a crowd with money or jewels on us. Nor does it, practically,
much satisfy the good people that those around them are
Christians, whatever they may say in the judgment of charity,
which is especially restricted to the Baptismal font. The com-
mon expression among them is, Is he a Christian? Now, with
all my heart I love our service for pronouncing, as St. Paul does,
'that all who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,
that is, are Christians. Baptism is the grand special revelation
to an individual by name, A, B, or C, of the great truth Christ
revealed for the race, that all, Greeks and barbarians, are the
children of God. It is the fact which they are to believe, a fact
before they believe it, else how could they be asked to believe
it? Faith does not create the fact, it only receives it. Baptism
is the visible declaration of this, saying, 'Now, remember you
are a child of God, from henceforth live as such.' I accept
gladly the expression of the Catechism, 'My baptism, wherein
I was made a child of God,' &c.—made, as the Queen is made
Queen at her coronation. She was Queen before; nay, if she
had not been Queen, coronation could not make her Queen; it
could not make Lady Jane Grey Queen. Baptism could not
make me a child of God, unless I were one by reason of my
Sermons on Baptism
331
C
Humanity already. To live as such-to believe it and realise
it-is to become regenerate. The Bishop says that baptism
makes a child of God, in the wrong sense that it creates him
such, transforms him, which is magic. Still, without disputing
how a child became a Christian, the Bishop would agree with
me in this, that the child is henceforth to be treated as a temple
of the Holy Ghost, in which way St. Paul treated all Christians
baptized, even though guilty of flagrant crimes. Whether you
believe it or no, you are temples of God, as such holy; if any
man pollute the temple of God, him shall God destroy.' Does
not the sin consist in this-in denying that they were God's
children, and living as if they were not such? Whereas
Mr. Gorham, who holds that this magical efficacy takes place,
but only in some cases, leaves the whole truth of Christianity
maimed and disfigured, and brings us back to the spirit of the
Jews and the Pharisees. 'I am a child of God in virtue of
something not general, like baptism, but special and personal,
as feelings, opinions, &c. You are a publican, a Gentile, one of
the world in short and then what has become of Christianity?
I have been asked in many directions to publish my sermon
on Baptism, which seemed to strike nearly everybody in a new
light, being not a via media, or cautious attempt at steering
between two extremes, but a larger truth which absorbs them
both, and annihilates their respective errors. I have not yet
quite decided. Next Sunday I shall preach again on the same
subject, with further elucidations.
>
LXXVII.
I have been interrupted by two long visits-one a pressing
request from the Athenæum to lecture. I refused. The other,
a visit from the sister of a Quaker, who has applied to me for
baptism in consequence of the sermon of last Sunday, and a
series of impressions produced in Trinity during some months
past.
I find the two sermons on Baptism have made an impression,
in some cases producing great dislike, but in others producing
332 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
thought, and appearing to shed light on what had before been
dark. So far, I have reason to be grateful. I am nearly deter-
mined, however, not to publish, at all events for some time. If
I should, it will be in another form, with the whole recast and
remoulded.
You must not ever permit yourself the use of that word 'Too
late!' Alfieri, when did he begin to study? Shakspeare, when
did he leave off deer-stalking and dissipation? He was thirty
before he wrote his first poem. Thomas Scott began Hebrew
at fifty-six. I do not see what is the use of striking experience
if it cannot be applied, and if time can ever be 'too late.' Too
late, of course, for any of us to undo the past, but not too late
for the past to make the future and the present wiser and better
than they would have been with our often bitter past expe-
rience.
A propos of prison-house vegetation, &c., Silvio Pellico com-
posed his 'Memoirs' in prisons, the only materials offered for
which were created by a fresh living habit of observation. Do
you remember how he contrived to make for himself a life of
thought out of the transient visits of the plain uninteresting
daughter of his gaoler, by simply cultivating a healthy interest
in all that is human and has life? Do you forget the story of
Picciola? Do you know where the best book which Spain
has given to the world, 'Don Quixote,' was written? By a one-
armed man, whose other arm was lopped off, in a dungeon.
Oh! be assured that what they call the means of grace are like
the means of travelling, very good for getting fast over the
ground without exertion, with the assistance of others, but not
so good for developing inward muscular energy. A languid lady
behind her four greys may look contemptuously on the pedes-
trian who is struggling along the dusty high-road, and making
small progress in comparison-that is, of her horses-but in
comparison with her!
gets on very fast with the assistance
of - in knowing all about God and the spiritual life; but in
respect of thinking for himself, getting power to stand alone and
lead a John-Baptist life in the wilderness, with no means of
grace, sermons, gifted ministers to commune with, why I think
C
On Baptism
333
had much better go to Juan Fernandez at once, and try to
find out how much he has in him of his own; of what stuff he
is made, and how, alone, he can front the everlasting Fact, and
feel at home in it. A student of medicine, listening to a clinical
lecture by the bedside of a patient, learns a great deal about
muscles, nerves, and names; but I fancy a feeble attempt in
great pain to stagger across the floor of the hospital, teaches
more of the practice of health and use of the muscles than all the
clinical lectures in the world. Crutches are capital for locomo-
tion, but for strengthening the limbs which they save from the
ground, until its bulk becomes flaccid, not very capital, I guess!
No; rely upon it, the spiritual life is not knowing, nor hearing,
but doing. We only know so far as we can do; we learn to do
by doing, and we learn to know by doing what we do, truly,
rightly, in the way of duty, that, and only that we are. Sermons
are crutches-I believe often the worst things for spiritual health
that ever were invented.
LXXVIII.
:
Thursday, March 21.
Now, to reply to your remark on the view of baptism which I
gave. You ask why the Church of England calls a child,
previous to baptism, a child of wrath, if baptism merely recog-
nises the fact of it being a child of God. Baptism does not
merely recognise the fact; it reveals it, as a fact unknown,
and previous to the knowledge of which the child or man
cannot be called regenerate. One who is by right a child.
of God lives, in fact, a child of wrath, pursuing the path to
certain misery by sin. Was not the younger son, in the parable,
his father's child really and truly, whether he lived as such or
not; but was he not also a child of wrath, and what good did
his relationship do him until he recognised it and claimed its
rights? In truth, and in fact, he may be said to have then
really, in a figurative sense, for the first time, had power to
become a son. Yet that power rested upon a fact which was
quite independent of his moods and feelings. I would use, with
334
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
all my heart, both expressions of our formularies :-a child of
wrath before baptism made a child of God by baptism: and yet
I would earnestly maintain that baptism could only make the
child such, in virtue of its being by right, not by recognition,
such before.
To all practical purposes the fact is valueless until revealed,
just as a child of a sovereign might be living as the son of a
pirate, if he had been kidnapped and did not know his parentage;
but all the value of the revelation depends upon the circumstance
that it is the revelation of a fact, and not the demand of a
sentiment, nor the performance of a miracle, nor the fabrication
of a new relation. For instance, the kidnapped pirate-what
would be the power of a message declaring him a royal child?
None, except the power of a fact. Adoption by a stranger would
be nothing, nor could it make him heir to a throne. Still, you
will observe that without that message the fact would be profit-
less, and he never could have inherited the kingdom. Would
you not say, rightly, that he was the son of piracy before, but
that the message had made him heir of a kingdom; and this
not as a façon de parler-you would be speaking of a reality.
Baptism is such a reality; God's missive to an individual, bearing
a name, personally, specially directed as a superscription-I
baptize thee, A. B. C.
I believe this will remove all difficulty about the Thirteenth
Article. What can be the value of an outlaw's deeds, voluntarily
outlawed, refusing his father's laws, spurning his father's home,
and living in the original sin—the fountain guilt of denying by
every act his likeness and relationship to God, refusing by his
life to be His child, and leading therefore, not a life of truth and
fact, but, as St. John says, the life of one who is a liar, and does
not the truth, to whom Christ came as one of His own and he
received him not?
Cornelius' alms, &c., were not looked upon as sins, you say.
No; and the Article does not say that acts done with the in-
spiration of God's Spirit are sins, but those that are done with-
out. Now, St. Peter expressly declares that Cornelius had the
Spirit, and therefore he baptized him. He had, in fact, been
On Baptism
335
living long under its influence, which Peter was astonished to
find. What is the Spirit of Christ ?-that whereby we cry Abba,
Father; and surely we could not say the deeds are good which
are done in an opposite spirit.
The more I study the Prayer Book the more I am convinced
that no other view will explain its words, and the more do I feel
their preciousness, of which the Dissenters would rob us. I
would not give up one sentence which it contains upon the
subject. I would far rather hold the Romanist than the dis-
senting Evangelical vulgarisms upon the subject. And, indeed,
practically, I fancy there would be little difference between my
teaching on this point and that of a Tractarian, except in the
dark view they necessarily take of the quenching of a baptismal
spark by sin, to be rekindled only by tears, &c. &c. &c. I
should touch on the ground they do. You are a child of God,
claim your privileges-you may lose them else for ever—‘a child
of God,' and baptism is your assurance of it, not your feelings,
which are sanguine to-day and depressed to-morrow, but the
one baptism. Only he would say, In baptism you were mira-
culously manufactured into God's child. I would say, By bap-
tism was revealed to you a truth which by nature you could not
have.
I do not agree with you about the Jesuitical character of our
Church and its services. I believe the Articles are open Articles.
I do not think it impossible for men holding very different views
to be able to sign them, except a rabid Dissenter ; even a Calvinist
might-of course not a Quaker.
Do study the Services in this spirit, and see whether they do
not proclaim most blessed truths, that all are God's children,
de jure but not de facto-that there must be a separate body-a
Church differing from the evil world-though the world itself
ought to be, and one day will be, 'the kingdom of our Lord and
of His Christ.'
You are quite right in saying that the argument against God
waiting to send down His Spirit would hold with equal force
against prayer. Of course, if prayer could dictate to God time
and place, or if it left no alternative to God to grant or not,.
336 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
which the Romish doctrine presumes, or if God never answered
prayer except in the way which it prescribes, or if He never
gave, except in answer to prayer, as Rome says in reference to
baptism, or if the fact were not that prayer is the voice of the
Spirit of God Himself within us, and the reply, therefore, an
answer to Himself (Romans viii. 26, 27). God does not wait on
a man for his claim of the promise, to the last, because He gives
the Spirit before he prays. Is not prayer spiritual life, whether
it be in words or in aspirations?
LXXIX.
The weather for the last ten days has been bright and clear,
but a piercing north-east wind has made all outdoor work
wretched, and appears to pepper the mouth and throat with
invisible cayenne and sands of the desert. To-day it has come
down in hail and snow. Probably, when it does change, we shall
have genial summer all at once with startling contrast.
I have been very hard at work lately, with almost no time for
reading or writing. Next week service every day, and two
sermons on Good Friday, will abridge my time sadly, besides
constant occupation in preparing pupils at the Training School
for Government examination in the ensuing week. To-day I
scarcely know where to turn, so much must be done before
night. To-morrow morning I mean to take Luke xi. 1, and
preach on Unconscious influence. The Disciples saw their
Lord praying, and asked to be taught. So also St. Peter went
straight to the sepulchre, and St. John, who had hesitated before
at the door, went in after, indirectly and unconsciously influenced
by that act. All life is a history of the power of involuntary
unconscious influences like these. Our conscious influence is
the result of intention, and on the whole does little; but our
unconscious influence is the aggregate result of our whole
character, manifesting itself in words, looks, acts, that are not
meant to effect anything, but which inevitably mould others.
Our conscious and intentional influence may fail or may be false,
but our involuntary is inevitable, and every moment operative, and
7
Intellectual Cultivation
337
must be true. This is the leading thought which I mean to
work out; but having a violent cold, my mind is somewhat dull
and unfit for work.
It is not an enviable feeling, nor do I think there is much that
is enviable in the feeling of any great duty. The luxury of
doing good is sentimental trash and self-contradiction. How
can any duty be done with ease? Is not all our life—our lower
life, at least—a miserable and fruitless attempt to reconcile the
indulgence of our low desires for a summer holiday with the
infinite and ever-increasing calls of conscience and law? Is
not all our higher life a perpetual struggle to reach a horizon of
duty, which is unbounded and ever-widening before us, as we
fulfil its claims? Two things have brought this powerfully
before me-one is the instruction of little Charlie, which has
made me rouse myself to feel how much is to be done, and how
fearful failure is; the other the meditation upon John x. 17, 18,
on which I preach to-morrow-that sublime law of our humanity,
as of His sacrifice, converted into blessedness by the truth that
it is rendered to Love, not hard Necessity: 'Therefore doth my
Father love me, because,' &c. Oh! shall we not try, cheerfully
and sweetly, to take up this law, not as our severe obligation,
but as our glorious gain? Let youthful freshness pass, worn
looks come; and in me they are coming fast, and will come
faster. What matter if, as the outward perish, the inward is
renewed day by day? What matter if we see it in those that
are dearest to us-if we know that in them, too, the same
glorious reproduction is taking place?
What Channing says about intellectual cultivation not injuring
moral character among the poor, is true and not true-true, in-
asmuch as eventually, of course, things must find their level, but
not true if he meant to say that the cultivation of the under-
standing alone improves character. I say it makes a bad cha-
racter worse by multiplying power.¹ · It is, of course, right to
strengthen physical fibre, and he who refused it for fear of
1 Channing expressly guards against this objection in his Essay 'On
the Elevation of the Working Classes.'
VOL. I.
Z
338 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
giving bad men the upper hand would talk absurdly; but he
would be quite right in saying that mere cultivation of strength
--albeit a gift of God's, to scorn which would be a reflection
upon the wisdom of the Creator-only increases a bad man's
power of evil. I say that though in the long run, perhaps after
centuries of anarchy and blood, mental cultivation given alone
will result in moral good, yet in the meanwhile, and for the
present, the harvest will be bitter fruit and ranker villany.
'Knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth up.' Cultivated
understanding has no necessary connection with strengthened,
much less purified, Will, in which moral excellence lies, and in
which alone Bacon was
The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind.
I do not want a greater proof of the truth of this than in what
is going on, perhaps at this moment, or, at all events, a couple
of hours ago, in the Institution. Practised disputants and
sharpened intellects, these working men have learned to deride.
God, and trample upon the simplest and first principles of right
and wrong. No, no; clear ideas do not advance the soul one
step towards the power of doing what is right. It is a great
thing when we learn that to understand, and appreciate, and
even feel truth is not one atom of power given to the will to be
true. The discipline of habits and acting does this, as old wise
Aristotle long ago saw we 'become good by doing good,' not
by moral treatises, for goodness is the habit of the will, not per-
ceptions or aspirations.
It seems to me no reflection on the wisdom of the Creator,
that intellect cultivated alone will make the poor bad members
of society. Any quality cultivated alone must destroy the har-
mony which the Creator intended, and produce a monster, in
which part has the proportions of a giant, part the stunted
withered limbs of a dwarf-a hideous unnatural whole. Look
at a Nisi Prius lawyer, with clearest notions of evidence, prin-
ciples of law, &c. &c., and withal how much sometimes of per-
sonal meanness and hatred, of pettifogging and professional
lying!
•
Lord Byron
339
I am not quite sure what Byron means by the tenth stanza.
Probably he did not quite know himself, for I should scarcely
suppose he would say, in genuine and contrite humbleness, 'that
the thorns which he had reaped were of the tree he planted.'
Perhaps it was truer than he meant; for all that vapid, sated,
weary feeling, which he describes, was but the inevitable conse-
quence linked to a life of excitement and indulged passion. I
fancy that awful description of Tennyson's in 'The Vision of
Sin' would truly describe his latter state, or, at all events, that
state to which he was on the high-road, had he lived long
enough. The hideous pleasantry of 'Don Juan' is a tolerably
near approach to it, with a scepticism, more than incipient, of
the goodness of others, and of those feelings which had once
seemed half-divine, and strangely ended, like the fabulous mer-
maid, beautiful above, in debasement and animalism. Yet I
sometimes have thought 'Don Juan' was a symptom of amelio-
ration, inasmuch as it was a symptom of reaction. All these
feelings, which he once reckoned romantic and sublime, had
conducted him-where? Consequently, those hideous sneers
at fine feeling bespeak the arrival of a moment in which he
could be no longer deceived by feelings, the end of which he
distinctly saw. Unhappy enough to come to a state in which
one can sneer at feelings, purest, holiest, early feelings, but
better than that other eternal delusion!
I send you a paper giving you an account of the Phèdre. Do
you not think it is utterly horrible to depict vividly the struggle
of an incestuous passion on the stage? Do look over this, and
think whether could possibly be allowed to see such a
representation. I meant to have brought it to you, if you had
not sent for it; to show you what it is: indeed, the heathen
story itself is awful. Only fancy a woman exhibiting herself on
the stage to men who are imagining her with all those storms of
convulsed and agitated expression, under the influence of a
passion such as it should not be supposed a woman could con-
ceive! Even any passion is a dreadful thing to exhibit, terribly
resisted, and terribly victorious; but such a one as this! Could
any girl or woman understand with sympathy the beauty of the
22
340
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
piece, and not be morally for ever the worse for it? Do read it
over, and see how atrocious it must be exactly in proportion as
it is powerfully and well represented.
LXXX.
September, 1850.
My dear Sir,-Not knowing your designation and address, I
must apologise if I have erred in the superscription of my letter
to you.
It gives me great pleasure to find that the little address which
has fallen into your hands has awakened any interest or sym-
pathy.
The passage you refer to (page 17), 'To believe in God is
simply the most difficult thing in the world,' is, I think, true.
By God, I mean God as He is; not a first cause, nor a machinist,
Creator Mundi, but One whose name is love immanent to us,
meaning good and not evil, and having a right to our supreme
adoration and reverence. I do not believe that the understand-
ing can discover Him. Paley's argument from design is valu-
able for those who vaguely feel Him, in order to give a stable
solid ground for mere feeling to rest on-valuable also in defence
of religion, as showing that it has something to say for itself,
and forcing the intellectualist to treat it with courtesy; but for
proving God's existence, or demonstrating to one well-informed
infidel the falsity of his opinion, I believe it ever has been, and
ever must be, powerless. For instance, it does not even touch
the arguments of a Pantheist.
There may be a First Cause, intelligent, designing, &c., and
his name, if you like, may be God; but so far I only believe in
Him as I believe in electricity, gravitation, or any other cause,
which assuredly has a great deal to do with my destiny.
Believe, in the sense of trust, I do not. In morals we only
believe so far as we are. Rochefoucauld believed in no prin-
ciple of action beyond selfishness and vanity. How could good-
ness, generosity, &c. be proved to him? By what evidence?
There were the acts before him in history and human life
proving design. Rochefoucauld, being vain and selfish, could
not believe beyond, or make anything of such proofs. In oppo-
!
God cannot be found by the Understanding 341
sition to the hypothesis of an intelligent Creator, I confess that
the hypothesis of the Epicurean, or the Stoic, or the Pantheist,
is at least able to make a long fight-far too long to infallibly
secure victory in the limits of a life of thought. I do not think
that where such men as Laplace, D'Alembert, Hume, Voltaire,
have never seen any demonstration, the understanding can be
the real court of appeal. Nay, I am ready to acknowledge, that
of the intellectual conception of God as Creator, Cause, Imma-
nent Life, Lord of the World, &c., I am not prepared to assert
or deny anything-I know nothing. My understanding feels
itself utterly bewildered. I can affirm the contradictory, as well
as the assertion, of any of these theories: and if I were compelled
in intellectual gladiatorship to surrender them all, I should not feel
in the smallest degree dismayed. My God is not the philoso-
pher's god; and in the most vigorous graspings of the intellect,
I am often conscious of most losing hold of the Lord of Right
and Love.
4
The evidence of goodness and wisdom in the external world is
very questionable, in some moods at least. I found a caterpillar
the other day writhing in anguish, and perforated by a dozen
maggots, which had come from the eggs of an ichneumon-fly.
It penetrates the skin of the living animal, leaves its eggs, and
the grubs eat the creature alive by degrees. Is that goodness?
Wonderful contrivance, certainly; but I should not accuse the
understanding of any one who preferred to believe in the fate
of the Stoics necessitating this, rather than an Omnipotent Will.
I know that with the doctrine of the Cross, and the glimpse
which it gives us into the grand law of the universe-Sacrifice,
conscious and unconscious, for the life of others—this does not
startle; but I profess that I have never yet found the argument
from the understanding, or a hint of it, which can make it
pleasant to believe in a God who has made such a provision as
this.
Nor do I think that we get at the feeling through the under-
standing.¹ A slave is dependent on his tyrant master. A child
depends upon his parent from day to day. But you may exhaust
¹ He adopts Coleridge's sense of the word, Understanding.
342
Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
all your logic in proving to either that he must depend, or ought
to depend; and at the end of all, you may be very far indeed
from making one step towards the production of that 'conscious-
ress of dependence,' which is implied in the words, 'I believe.'
You can demonstrate power, but the master's right to enforce,
the parent's love in requiring obedience-what arguments prove
those when the will rebels? I am not sure that in this brief
addition to the sentence of the address I have elucidated my
meaning much; if not, I should be very happy to reply to any
difficulties you may find in admitting my assertions.
I met an intellectual man in the train, who, after a good deal
of conversation about Carlyle, Sir Robert Peel, &c., broke into
'I heard a very extraordinary man yesterday in Brighton,' &c.
&c. To which I replied, 'I think I ought to stop you,' after he
had pronounced the name. He then looked me in the face,
coloured, and said, 'But where is the voice that was so tremu-
lous? you are not the same man?' Then he began to tell me
what he had romanced about me-how happy (he said to his
wife) I must be in having chosen that profession, in preference
to any other, with such a temperament, daring and sensitive, &c.
&c. Alas! how little can human beings read each other. The
heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth
not; ' yet after all, why 'Alas'? Is it not better that it should
be so, than that our inmost soul should be legible to all? In
this respect it seems to me that Sir Robert Peel was peculiarly
happy and wise. Men complained that he kept them in the
dark, that they had not the slightest conception of what he was
preparing to do or thinking of. Of course if a great mind
become communicative and intelligible to every small mind, the
wisest plans would be abortive, and the maturest counsels dashed
by time and tide. If a man see further than his generation, his
views must appear horrible to them; the only thing he has to
do is to keep them until sufficient numbers are on his side to
realise them. Unquestionably this is a proceeding of the highest
mind: suppose he let us into his counsels beforehand? Why,
even to Abraham, the intelligence being antedated by a singlet
day, the act is unintelligible, and he does all he can to thwart it.
to
Anecdote of Rogers
343
The great difficulty is to do this without duplicity; for in an
honourable mind and a true one it is wisdom veiling itself in
mystery; but in a crooked one it is mere cunning. Take
Christ's life for an example. Who knew what He meant to do?
Not even John, much less the world.
I have just returned from Lord Lansdowne's. Some people,
whose names I could not catch, dined with us. He told a rather
good story of Rogers. Francis, the author of Junius, was present.
Rogers turned to him, and said, 'Sir Philip, may I ask you one
question?' Every one supposed
Every one supposed it was one bearing on the
authorship. Francis fiercely replied, 'At your peril, sir.'
Upon which Rogers quietly turned away, and said in an
undertone, ‘There spoke Junius Brutus.' He talked to me alone
a long time after dinner about Ireland, &c.
LXXXI.
Till this visit to Mr. V, I never estimated the advantages
which the residents of streets opposite the sea have. The ex-
ceeding beauty, freshness, and appearance of the sea and the
sky in the early mornings, so different from the common-place
look of midday, have struck me very much. Midday is like mid-
life, full of commonplace, of toil, and with less of romance; with
most people at least. Morning and evening correspond with
youth and age, in both of which there is a peculiar poetry. Yet
to the eye that is open to see it, the midday and middle life have
a wonder and mystery of their own; that is, to those who will
look at either horizon, east or west-for the sun is above, unseen
then, and only visible at the other periods-which, I take it, is
the reason why the heavenly wonder seems to have passed
from that period. 'Heaven lies around us in our infancy,'
and I suppose the mystery of the grave brings heaven again
round our decadence, just as the sun approaches the horizon
again at evening. There is something more than fancy
in this, for we are so constituted, that the analogy is felt
by all of us. Morning, spring, youth- the feelings in them
resemble each other, and re-suggest each other; so in autumn,
344 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
evening, and age. And I fancy, that to get the uncommonplace
feeling in the middle period, we must look up and remember
that the light which lights us, with such a glare on the world and
earth, is just as mysterious and sublime as when we saw all its
tender pulses quivering in the morning.
I never, I think, felt the freshness of the world, and the truth
that every morning is a new day-an universe unbroken and
fresh for effort and discovery-so much as two mornings ago by
the seaside. I do not mean that, even for a moment, it gave a
conception of a fresh career or burst in life for me, but only that
it gave me a conviction of a fact. To-day all is changed, but
again I feel the advantage people here have from seeing the
innumerable moods in which the sea presents itself. The wind
is driving and moaning wildly--the sea all white on the beach-
dark and cleft into grand chasms beyond—and almost lost in
not a dense but a semi-transparent mist towards the horizon;
the carts and flys which go past the dining-room window are
seen, as I sit, low down, as if they were on the brink of a preci-
pice; large gulls, with their wild, strange scream heard every
now and then, as they go down perpendicularly to the surface of
the wave that has brought up their food, or floating about on the
mist, colourless like shadows-'And I would that my tongue
could utter-The thoughts that arise in me.' For at this moment
my heart is in perfect unison with all this scene. I look, and
look, until I wish I had no will. Yet the loss of will, with all
the other faculties-memory, conscience, fancy-remaining, is
surely the very condition of insanity; for the will alone keeps
them from discord. I am not miserable, however. This soothes
me. Am I justified, however, in all this utterance of egotistic
sentiment? Feeling which ends in itself, and leads to nothing,
ought to be stifled. It is not romance. Romance is
Imagination: honourable aims,
Free commune with the choir that cannot die.
Romance may make a person make shipwreck in his voyage,
but it never makes him anchor, more especially in stagnant
water; whereas sensitiveness, and feeling merely intense, do.
The Speculative and the Practical
LXXXII.
345
It is curious, when two minds come together, to find how large
a department of that which is the very sphere of the activity
and life of one, is a region unentered by, and absolutely forbid-
ding to, the other. I cannot conceive how or why 's life is
so lonely, for he enters into and likes all subjects which other
men like, understands business and the world, and is perfectly
secure from those dreadful rushings of the spirit into unfathom-
able questions in which I have found no bottom, and shuddered
to find none. He is safe, too, from that worst trial which comes
from a disposition that has in it-I use the word in a good
-romance; for how can such a mind be tortured, or how
such a heart disappointed? I perceive,
sense-romance
To each his sufferings: all are men.
Sp
That predominance of the meditative over the contriving facul-
ties inevitably exposes one to dislike, as it did Hamlet, for now
and then a certain tinge of seeming scorn is sure to mingle with
its reveries on men and women. It is not, however, any feeling
of superiority, but rather pity-not, I believe, insulting, though
bitter. 'Quintessence of dust,' applied to humanity, is a mixture
of regard and regret for frailness. It is dust, but quintessence
of it. So, too,' Frailty, thy name is woman who does not feel
that there is at least as much tenderness and mourning in that,
as bitterness? Is it not disappointed worship
fondly lingering before the desecrated shrine? However, as it is
somewhat subtle to extract this, it is unwise to utter these
amalgams of feeling aloud, for very few will pause to analyse
and perceive that two metals, one at least a precious one, are
fused together.
that still hangs
'Blessed are they that mourn.'
asked what that means. Is it not a revelation of the
uses of adversity?—and does not the whole teaching of the Cross,
in accordance with this, say that sorrow and pain alone wake us
up to reality, and that trial is a truer refiner of character than
346 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
pleasure. Of course, this is not our first impression; it needs a
revelation to tell it, or at all events to interpret our own expe-
rience. You have a proof of that in a child's wonder at the ex-
pression, for how should a happy careless child divine such a
mystery?
I will grieve not, rather find,
Strength in what remains behind.
In the soothing thoughts which spring
Out of human suffering.
•
I cannot tell her the meaning of those words of Christ. Life
alone can apply the meaning, or explain how true they are; for,
indeed, they are only subjectively true, deriving their truth, not
from sorrow and pain in themselves, but from the tempers on
which they fall; so that they are not true always-to some never
true. Yet how deep they are, and how such convictions alone
can make this life intelligible or tolerable!
That is a blessed faith which feels that there cannot be clouds
and gloom for ever-which, ever resting in conviction of what
God is, hopes and knows that 'joy cometh in the morning.'
That cheerful undespairing temper marks Shakspeare's thought
throughout; in conjunction with that text, 'Blessed are they
that mourn,' let it mark yours.
LXXXIII.
I am persuaded there is more in reserved people than we
give them credit for; they often conceal a deep and real feeling
under an imperturbable exterior.
'The course of true love never did run smooth;' but then that
means, I fancy, that it never shows itself to be true-never ex-
hibits its strength-until rough obstacles destroy its smoothiness.
Many an attachment would have shown all the impetuosity of a
dammed-up stream had it been checked, which, under existing
circumstances, seems to flow monotonously and uninterestingly
enough. The St. Lawrence is tame some miles above Niagara.
No doubt the romance of the affair you mention has suffered,
but I doubt whether the journey of life will be a bit less happy
j
Romance Marriages
347
for that. There is a great difference between travelling one
hundred miles in England and the same distance in South
Africa, where Cumming spanned and unspanned with consider-
able difficulty every night and morning; and the romance of
the pathless travel was immeasurably the greater, yet the douce
gentlemen who travel to London and back every day do not less
truly attain the end and object of travelling. Moreover, mar-
riages which had romance in their preparatory circumstances,
do they really turn out better than others? I recollect being
pained with this feeling when quite a young child, on reading
the sequel to the romantic adventures and final union of Prince
Camaralzaman and Princess Badoura, in the Arabian Nights.'
They were all-in-all to each other-their constancy tried for years;
and in after-life all went wrong. It struck me, little as I then
knew of life, as true to life, and so did some of Crabbe's painful
but nature-like tales. It is well to feel how much of happiness
is gained, or how much of wretchedness is spared, by the absence
of those violent feelings which exhaust life, and leave the cha-
racter dishevelled, the features worn with a graver as deep as
that which sharp anguish cuts into the cheeks—
Scathed by fiery passion's brunt.
How many such countenances we see with the marks of
strong undisciplined feeling in them! I saw a lady of fifty to-
day with cheeks as calm as if she were twenty; yet not apathetic,
but wise, full of self-control, affectionate, and benign in manner.
You felt that there was in store for her-
An old age, serene and bright,
And calm as is a Lapland night.
I felt that self-rule and delivery from intense emotion and violent
accès are the necessary qualifications for growth of character and
the power of completing anything on this earth. Everything
must pay its price, and romance in the feelings or circumstances
of courtship often pays a very, very heavy one.
348 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
LXXXIV.
They all came in from Lindfield yesterday. I went out to
fetch them, and spent some hours in the village of Lindfield
itself, where I strongly felt the beauty and power of English
country scenery and life to calm, if not to purify, the hearts of
those whose lives are habitually subjected to such influences.
Not that human nature is better there, but life is more nåtural,
and real nature I hold to be the great law of our life, both phy-
sical and religious. Physical does, in fact, by derivation, mean
natural-physics being the study of nature. I am sure that re-
ligion is the recall to real instead of perverted nature, just as the
medicinal art is the recall of the body to natural health. There
are false systems in both, as well as true, being marked in each
case by the artificial and unnatural mode of dealing with the
diseased part. You would give Allopathy as an instance of this,
and I should give what St. Paul calls' bodily exercise,'-literally,
asceticism. Whereas Christ invariably appeals to unsophisti-
cated nature, says, 'Sin no more,' just as if we should say, 'You
have eaten too much and drunk too much, poor man; well, eat
less and drink less;' there is no magic besides that which will
cure you, no doses of humbug, copious or infinitesimal.
I have begun to read Wordsworth's 'Retrospect'¹ again, and
have persevered, in spite of the dulness, which at first deterred
me; I rejoice extremely that I did. I find it deeply interesting,
now that I have got a clue to his object, which is to show how
influences are provided for us, if we will once surrender our-
selves to them, partly passively, partly actively, instead of
inventing artificial discipline; and that those influences, being
God's, are the best-slow, sure, and purifying. It is a history of
his own life, and, being a reflection of it, is apparently mono-
tonous, having no shocks or striking incidents; but his inten-
tion is to show how, just from this very monotony, a character
of purity and strength was built up. Some passages are exces-
sively beautiful, the diction always pure and clear, like an
The Prelude.'
Stanley's Life of Arnold
349
atmosphere of crystal pellucidness, through which you see all
objects without being diverted aside to consider the medium
through which they are seen. When you do pause to think of
this, you remark, 'What a clear atmosphere! what pure water!
or, what transparent crystal !' but at first you remark only the
object. This, too, I observed of Stanley's 'Life of Arnold.'
Every one spoke of Arnold, no one stopped to observe how
well Stanley had done it; Stanley had merged himself and
become transparent. Lord Lansdowne was the first whom I
ever heard remark upon the biographer, though I had been on
the watch long to see if any one would.
For myself, never have I felt a more fixed and settled de-
pression. The thought of fixture here, except under the alter-
native of great pecuniary sacrifice, has been overwhelming at
some moments, and at others, a dead, heavy weight: to be for
ever, en evidence, especially for one so unfitted as I am for it by
tastes and predilections; yet now that the die is cast, I will not
shrink nor cast a look behind, but endeavour to be equal to the
hour, and do my duty.
The day is gloomy, oppressive in the house-what it is out-
side I do not know. Thought has flowed sluggishly, like a thin
green stream, in a dead level, without health and without clear-
ness; zest and interest are wanting, but I put down a part of
this to the weather, though it is only a continuation of what has
been unaltered indifference to almost all things. I am strug-
gling against it as yet with poor success, but I hold it a duty—a
real and paramount duty-and I will not tamely yield. I know
how powerless a motive 'our own sake' is to make us work with
interest. It is like taking a constitutional with the painful
consciousness in every movement that it is for the sake of
health, instead of health coming while we are seeking, not
health, but an object. Such I find the use of shooting, riding,
&c., and such must be the way of getting good from interest in
others. You cannot wake up in them an interest by feeling it
will do good to yourself; the interest must have no reflex
motive, or else it will do no good. Hence, the uselessness of
preaching to do right, to be charitable, &c. &c., because it will
350 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
make you happy now and hereafter. No doubt it will, but you
cannot be charitable because it will. Hence, too, the folly of
the system which resolves all our actions into a refined selfish-
ness. So far as you try to be good, in order to be personally
happy, you miss happiness-a great and beautiful law of our
being. Heavenly happiness is the result of our own energy,
and cannot be poured upon the soul, and is almost entirely
independent of circumstances, made by us, not for us.
I am ashamed of the hasty way in which I dismissed Words-
worth's Prelude.' It is a noble work, one that has made my
eyes fill again and again, not by its pathos, but by its lofty tone
and translucent purity: a severe work, worthy of patriarchal
times, when men went out into the fields to meditate at even-
tide, and disciplined their spirits by the pure influences of rock,
hill, stream, forest, twilight, and darkness, and that too, as in
Isaac's case, on the eve of marriage.
Do not fear with regard to ; all will be well. Affection-
ateness, maidenly self-possession, and a quiet spirit are more
likely to bud into a beautiful character hereafter than that
impetuosity of sentiment which too often makes life the prey
of wild and self-destructive passions. Principle is a higher
thing than feeling, and will stand life's terrible test far better.
LXXXV.
November 12.
I confess the awful mystery of life, and the perplexity which
hangs around the question-what it is, and what it all means.
Nevertheless, I am persuaded-as persuaded as of anything I
can be in this world-that the meaning is good and not evil—
good, I trust, to the individual as well as to the whole. There
is a wondrous alchemy in time and the power of God to trans-
mute our faults, errors, sorrows-nay, our sins themselves-into
golden blessings; a truth which always appears to me promi-
nent in the history of the Fall. The curses on man and woman,
toil, &c., are all, in the process of time, changed into benedic-
tions; the woman's lot itself, of subjugation and pain, becoming
the very channel of her best powers of character, the condition
Beneficial Effects of Suffering
351
of her devotion and her meekness. It is only the tempting devil-
snake, in whose curse there is no element of alteration only
apparently a degradation, a slighter doom, no pain-better for
him had it been so, for anguish might have slowly worked out
change-but to crawl, and creep, and eat the dust of lower
Being for ever. A truth for which my whole spirit blesses and
adores the Ever Just. 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they
shall be comforted.' asked the meaning of this; surely it
is plain? The tears which destroy the beauty of the outward
man, channel his cheeks, cut his features with the sharp graver
of anguish, are doing a glorious work on the spirit within,
which is becoming fresh with all young and living feelings.
I have just returned from the committee relating to the
'Protestant and Anti-Popery,' &c. &c., meeting on Thursday,
into which I was hooked. They asked me to speak on that
day. I refused; on which the vicar begged for a show of
hands, and they were raised, and the thing carried by clerical
acclamation. Only conceive that! Of course I have still my
option.
LXXXVI.
To-day I had a long and strange interview with a lady who
has recently become a member of the congregation.
She
asked me if I had ever known a case of trial so severe as hers.
'Yes,' I replied: 'numbers; it is the case of all. Suffering is
very common, so is disappointment.' 'Are our affections to be
all withered? '—'Very often, I believe.' 'Then why were they
given me?''I am sure I cannot tell you that, but I suppose it
would not have been very good for you to have had it all your
own way.' 'Then, do you think I am better for this blighting
succession of griefs?'-'I do not know, but I know you ought
to be.' Wordsworth was lying open on the table, and I pointed
to her these lines:-
Then was the truth received into my heart,
That under heaviest sorrow earth can bring,
If from the affliction somewhere do not grow
352 Life and Letters of Rev. F. W. Robertson
Honour which could not else have been a faith,
An elevation and a sanctity;
If new strength be not given nor old restored,
The blame is ours, not nature's.
The deep undertone of this world is sadness: a solemn bass
occurring at measured intervals, and heard through all other
tones. Ultimately, all the strains of this world's music resolve
themselves into that tone; and I believe that, rightly felt, the
Cross, and the Cross alone, interprets the mournful mystery
of life the sorrow of the Highest, the Lord of Life; the
result of error and sin, but ultimately remedial, purifying, and
exalting.
C
LXXXVII.
I read, or rather studied, 'Macbeth' through last night,
sitting up very late, and never felt half its beauty-beauty as
distinct from power-before.
Macready is now giving his farewell appearances, and
'Macbeth' is for to-night. I was strangely tempted to go.
Macready nobly tried to purge the stage from all its evils, and
Shakspeare is free from the strong objections I have to any
acting which merely exhibits dangerous feeling in its might. A
friend had taken places and I had resolved not-nevertheless, I
felt the temptation strong last night. The murder-scene be-
came so vivid that I actually felt a sensation of creeping awe
as I went up the stairs of the silent house, and in very shame
was obliged to walk down again through the dark passages, to
convince myself that I was not a child haunted with unreal
terrors. I felt the tears actually start in reading that noble
scene in which Macduff's fidelity to honour and goodness is
tested by Malcolm. Macduff's burst of disappointment, on
discovering that the prince, to whom all his heart's homage had
been given, is, as he supposes, unworthy of it, touched me until
my heart seemed too large. Those fine lines (Act IV.
Scene 3)—
Fit to govern! No, not to live;
Shakspeare's 'Macbeth.'
353
and then, when Macduff has the man he hates with noble hatred
at last 'within sword's reach,' I could have almost shouted. I
felt as if to have a firm grip of a sword in a villain's heart
were the intensest rapture this earth has to give the only thing
which such as Macduff had worth living for. Places were
taken for two nights-'Othello' and 'Macbeth'-but I could
not trust myself to either.
I have been trying lately to regulate my outward life some-
what more satisfactorily than usual-my papers, my study, my
hours, in order that the inward life may have a faint chance of
growing into form. The outward is at least within our power-
whether the inward is I do not know; but the one acts upon
the other, and it is a duty, at least, to do all that can be done.
That all but omniscient Shakspeare says, in reply to Macbeth's
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart? .
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
Then Macbeth says :-
VOL. I.
Come, put mine armour on, give me my staff, &c.
wisely resolving upon present action.
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C
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A SELECTION FROM THE NOTICES
OF
MR. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS,
AND OF THE
LIFE AND LETTERS OF F. W. ROBERTSON.
BY THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.
Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen.
A SELECTION FROM THE NOTICES OF
MR. ROBERTSON'S SERMONS,
AND OF THE
LIFE AND LETTERS OF F. W. ROBERTSON
BY THE REV. STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.
Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen.
[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, August, 1862.]
"For while hapless Englishmen complain in the papers, and in
private, in many a varied wail, over the sermons they have to listen
to, it is very apparent that the work of the preacher has not fallen
in any respect out of estimation. Here is a book which has gone
through as great a number of editions as the most popular novel. It
bears Mudie's stamp upon its dingy boards, and has all those marks of
arduous service which are only to be seen in books which belong to
great public libraries. It is thumbed, dog's-eared, pencil-marked, worn
by much perusal. Is it then a novel? On the contrary, it is a volume
of sermons. A fine, tender, and lofty mind, full of thoughtfulness, full
of devotion, has herein left his legacy to his country. It is not rhetoric
or any vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to
the book, so many hearers to this preacher's feet. It is not with the
action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of
flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience.
On the contrary,
when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this preacher seems
seated, like his Master, with the multitude palpitating round, but no
agitation or passion in his own thoughtful, contemplative breast. The
Sermons of Robertson, of Brighton, have few of the exciting qualities of
oratory. Save for the charm of a singularly pure and lucid style, their
almost sole attraction consists in their power of instruction, in their
faculty of opening up the mysteries of life and truth.
It is pure
teaching, so far as that ever can be administered to a popular audience,
which is offered to us in these volumes."
2
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
[EDINBURGH CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE.]
"They are Sermons of a bold, uncompromising thinker-of a
man resolute for the truth of God, and determined in the strength of
God's grace to make that truth clear, to brush away all the fine-spun
sophistries and half-truths by which the cunning sins of men have
hidden it.
There must be a great and true heart, where there
is a great and true preacher. And in that, beyond everything else, lay
the secret of Mr. Robertson's influence. His Sermons show evidence
enough of acute logical power. His analysis is exquisite in its subtle-
ness and delicacy.
With Mr. Robertson style is but the
vehicle, not the substitute for thought. Eloquence, poetry, scholarship,
originality—his Sermons show proof enough of these to put him on a
level with the foremost men of his time. But, after all, their charm lies
in the warm, loving, sympathetic heart, in the well-disciplined mind of
the true Christian, in his noble scorn of all lies, of all things mean and
crooked, in his brave battling for right, even when wrong seems crowned
with success, in his honest simplicity and singleness of purpose, in the
high and holy tone-as if, amid the discord of earth, he heard clear,
though far off, the perfect harmony of heaven; in the fiery earnestness
of his love for Christ, the devotion of his whole being to the goodness
and truth revealed in him."
•
[CHURCH OF ENGLAND MONTHLY REVIEW.]
It is hardly too much to say, that had the Church of England
produced no other fruit in the present century, this work alone would
be amply sufficient to acquit her of the charge of barrenness.
The reputation of Mr. Robertson's Sermons is now so wide-spread, that
any commendation of ours may seem superfluous. We will therefore
simply, in conclusion, recommend such of our readers as have not yet
made their acquaintance, to read them carefully and thoughtfully, and
they will find in them more deeply suggestive matter than in almost any
book published in the present century."
[MORNING POST.]
"They are distinguished by masterly exposition of Scriptural truths
and the true spirit of Christian charity."
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
[BRITISH QUARTERLY.]
"These Sermons are full of thought and beauty, and admirable
illustrations of the ease with which a gifted and disciplined mind can
make the obscure transparent, the difficult plain. There is not a
Sermon that does not furnish evidence of originality without extravagance,
of discrimination without tediousness, and of piety without cant or
conventionalism."
3
[ECLECTIC REVIEW.]
"We hail with unaffected delight the appearance of these volumes.
The Sermons are altogether out of the common style. They are strong,
free, and beautiful utterances of a gifted and cultivated mind. Occa-
sionally, the expression of theological sentiment fails fully to represent
our own thought, and we sometimes detect tendencies with which we
cannot sympathize: but, taken as a whole, the discourses are fine
specimens of a high order of preaching."
[GUARDIAN.]
"Very beautiful in feeling, and occasionally striking and forcible in
conception to a remarkable degree.
Even in the imperfect
shape in which their deceased author left them, they are very remarkable
compositions."
[CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.]
"We should be glad if all preachers more united with ourselves,
preached such Sermons as these.
))
[WESTMINSTER REVIEW.]
"To those who affectionately remember the author, they will recall,
though imperfectly, his living eloquence and his living truthfulness.”
[GLOBE.]
"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, is a name familiar to most of us, and
honoured by all to whom it is familiar. A true servant of Christ, a
bold and heart-stirring preacher of the Gospel, his teaching was unlike
the teaching of most clergymen, for it was beautified and intensified by
genius. New truth, new light, streamed from each well-worn text
when he handled it."
i
4
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
[BLACKWOOD's Magazine.]
"When teaching of this description keeps the popular ear and secures
the general attention, it is unquestionable proof that the office of the
preacher has, in no way, lost its hold on the mind of the people. The
acceptance of a voice so unimpassioned and thoughtful, so independent
of all vulgar auxiliaries, so intent upon bringing every theme it touches
to the illustration and sanctifying of the living life of the hour, that
which alone can be mended, and purified, and sanctified, is a better
tribute to the undying office of the preacher than the success of a
hundred Spurgeons. Attention and interest are as eager as ever where
there is in reality any instruction to bestow."
[LITERARY GAZETTE.]
"In earnestness of practical appeal, and in eloquent and graceful
diction, Mr. Robertson has few rivals, and these characteristics are
sufficient to account for his unusual popularity."
[NATIONAL REVIEW.]
"A volume of very fine Sermons, quite equal to the previous series.*
[BRIGHTON EXAMINER.]
"There is in the Sermons in this volume the same freshness,
vigour of thought and felicity of expression, as characterised whatever
Mr. Robertson said.
[ECONOMIST.]
"Mr. Robertson's Sermons have the great and rare merit of neutral-
ising by a more charitable and affectionate spirit, and by a wider
intelligence, all that may appear rigid and doctrinaire in the Church
of England. The result seems to have been his special mission: it
most fully explains the mind of the man.
We recommend
the Sermons to the perusal of our readers. They will find in them
thought of so rare and beautiful a description, an earnestness of mind
so steadfast in the search of truth, and a charity so pure and all-
embracing, that we cannot venture to offer praise, which would be,
in this case, almost as presumptuous as criticism."
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
5
[SATURDAY REVIEW.]
"When Mr. Robertson died, his name was scarcely known beyond
the circle of his own private friends, and of those among whom he had
laboured in his calling. Now, every word he wrote is eagerly sought
for and affectionately treasured up, and meets with the most reverent
and admiring welcome from men of all parties and all shades of
opinion.
To those that find in his writings what they
themselves want, he is a teacher quite beyond comparison-his words
having a meaning, his thoughts a truth and depth, which they cannot
find elsewhere. And they never look to him in vain.
He
fixes himself upon the recollection as a most original and profound
thinker, and as a man in whom excellence puts on a new form.
There are many persons, and the number increases every year, to whom
Robertson's writings are the most stable, satisfactory, and exhaustless
form of religious teaching which the nineteenth century has given-the
most wise, suggestive, and practical."
[BRIGHTON HERALD.]
"To our thinking, no compositions of the same class, at least since
the days of Jeremy Taylor, can be compared with these Sermons delivered
to the congregation of Trinity Chapel, Brighton, by their late minister.
They have that power over the mind which belongs only to the highest
works of genius: they stir the soul to its inmost depths: they move the
affections, raise the imagination, bring out the higher and spiritual part
of our nature by the continual appeal that is made to it, and tend to
make us, at the same time, humble and aspiring-merciful to others and
doubtful of ourselves."
[From a SERMON preached at the CONSECRATION of the BISHOP of
NORWICH, by the REV. J. H. GURNEY, late of MARYLEBONE.]
"I do not commit myself to all his theology; I may differ from the
preacher in some things, and listen doubtfully to others. But I know
of no modern sermons at once so suggestive and so inspiriting, with
reference to the whole range of Christian duty. He is fresh and original
without being recondite : plain-spoken without severity; and discusses
some of the exciting topics of the day without provoking strife or
6
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
lowering his tone as a Christian teacher. He delivers his message, in
fact, like one who is commissioned to call men off from trifles and
squabbles, and conventional sins and follies, to something higher and
nobler than their common life like a man in earnest, too, avoiding
technicalities, speaking his honest mind in phrases that are his own, and
with a directness from which there is no escape. O that a hundred like
him were given us by God, and placed in prominent stations throughout
our land!"
[GUARDIAN.]
"Without anything of that artificial symmetry which the traditional
division into heads was apt to display, they present each reflection in a
distinct method of statement, clearly and briefly worked out; the
sentences are short and terse, as in all popular addresses they should be;
the thoughts are often very striking, and entirely out of the track of
ordinary sermonising. In matters of doctrine such novelty is sometimes
unsafe; but the language is that of one who tries earnestly to penetrate
into the very centre of the truth he has to expound, and differs as
widely as possible from the sceptic's doubt or the controversialist's mis-
take. More frequently Mr. Robertson deals with questions of practical
life, of public opinion, and of what we may call social casuistry-
turning the light of Christian ethics upon this unnoticed though familiar
ground. The use of a carriage on Sunday, the morality of feeing a
railway porter against his employers' rules, are topics not too small for
illustration or application of his lessons in divine truth.”
[BRIGHTON GAZETTE.]
"As an author, Mr. Robertson was, in his lifetime, unknown; for
with the exception of one or two addresses, he never published, having
a singular disinclination to bring his thoughts before the public in
the form of published sermons. As a minister, he was beloved and
esteemed for his unswerving fidelity to his principles and his fearless
propagation of his religious views. As a townsman, he was held in
the highest estimation; his hand and voice being ever ready to do all in
his power to advance the moral and social position of the working
man. It was not till after his decease, which event created a sensation
and demonstration such as Brighton never before or since witnessed,
that his works were subjected to public criticism. It was then found
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
that in the comparatively retired minister of Trinity Chapel there had
existed a man possessed of consummate ability and intellect of the
highest order; that the sermons laid before his congregation were
replete with the subtleties of intellect, and bore evidence of the keenest
perception and most exalted catholicity. His teaching was of an
extremely liberal character, and if fair to assign a man possessed of
such a universality of sympathy to any party, we should say that he
belonged to what is denominated the 'Broad Church.' We, with many
others, cannot agree in the fullest extent of his teaching, but, at the
same time, feel bound to accord the tribute due to his genius."
7
[MORNING CHRONICLE.]
"A volume of very excellent Sermons, by the late lamented Incum-
bent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton."
[TITAN.]
"But the Sermons now under notice are, we venture to say, taking
all the circumstances into consideration, the most remarkable discourses
of the age.
. They are throughout vital with the rarest force,
burning with an earnestness perhaps never surpassed, and luminous
with the light of genius.
We suspect that even Brighton little
knew what a man Providence had placed in its midst."
*
On the "Analysis of Mr. Tennyson's In Memoriam: "--
[GUARDIAN.]
"An endeavour to give, in a few weighty words, the key-note (so to
speak) of each poem in the series. Those will best appreciate the
amount of success attained by Mr. Robertson who try to do the same
work better."
8
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
From a few of the Notices on Mr. Robertson's "Lectures
on the Epistles to the Corinthians :"
[MORNING POST.]
"It was Mr. Robertson's custom every Sunday afternoon, instead of
preaching from one text, to expound an entire chapter of some book in
the Scriptures. The present volume is made up from notes of fifty-six
discourses of this kind. 'Some people were startled by the introduction
of what they called secular subjects into the pulpit. But the lecturer
in all his ministrations refused to recognize the distinction so drawn.
He said that the whole life of a Christian was sacred-that common
every-day doings, whether of a trade, or of a profession, or the minuter
details of a woman's household life, were the arenas in which trial and
temptation arose; and that therefore it became the Christian minister's
duty to enter into this family working life with his people, and help
them to understand its meaning, its trials, and its compensations.' It
is enough to add that the lectures now given to the public are written in
this spirit."
[CRITIC.]
"Such discourses as these before us, so different from the shallow
rhapsodies or tedious hair-splitting which are now so much in vogue,
may well make us regret that Mr. Robertson can never be heard again
in the pulpit. This single volume would in itself establish a reputation
for its writer."
[BRIGHTON HERALD.]
Were there no name on the title-page, the spirit which
shines forth in these lectures could but be recognized as that of the
earnest, true-hearted man, the deep thinker, the sympathizer with all
kinds of human trouble, the aspirant for all things holy, and one who
joined to these rare gifts, the faculty of speaking to his fellow-men in
such a manner as to fix their attention and win their love.
In whatever spirit the volume is read-of doubt, of criticism, or of
full belief in the truths it teaches-it can but do good; it can but
leave behind the conviction that here was a genuine, true-hearted man,
gifted with the highest intellect, inspired by the most disinterested
Notices of Robertson's Sermons.
motives and the purest love for his fellow-men, and that the fountain
at which he warmed his heart and kindled his eloquence was that which
flows from Christ."
9
[BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.]
"This volume will be a welcome gift to many an intelligent and
devout mind. There are few of our modern questions, theological or
ecclesiastical, that do not come up for discussion in the course of these
Epistles to the Christians at Corinth,"
[MORNING HERALD.]
"No one can read these lectures without being charmed by their
singular freshness and originality of thought, their earnest, simple
eloquence, and their manly piety. There is no mawkish sentiment,
no lukewarm, semi-religious twaddle, smacking of the Record; no pro-
clamation of party views or party opinions, but a broad, healthy, living,
and fervent exposition of one of the most difficult books in the Bible.
Every page is full of personal earnestness and depth of feeling; but
every page is also free from the slightest trace of vanity and egotism.
The words come home to the reader's heart as the utterance of a sincere
man who felt every sentence which flowed from his lips."
[PRESS.]
"One of the most marked features of these lectures is the deep
feeling which the preacher had of the emptiness and hollowness of the
conventional religionism of the day. The clap-trap of popular ministers,
the pride and uncharitableness of exclusive Evangelicalism, the pomp
and pretension of ritualism and priestly affectation the miserable
Pharisaism which is lurking underneath them all-form the subject of
many strikingly true and often cutting remarks. He has no patience
with the unrealities of sectarian purism and pedantic orthodoxy. His
constant cry, the constant struggle of his soul is for reality. Hence
while his views of objective truth are at times deficient, or, at least, very
imperfectly stated, he leaves a deep impress of subjective religion upon
the mind, by a style of teaching which, far from uninstructive, is yet
more eminently suggestive."
-
A SELECTION FROM THE
NOTICES BY THE PRESS OF
"THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE LATE
REV. F. W. ROBERTSON."
[THE SPECTATOR.]
"No book published since the 'Life of Dr. Arnold' has produced
so strong an impression on the moral imagination and spiritual theology
of England as we may expect from these volumes. Even for those who
knew Mr. Robertson well, and for many who knew him, as they thought,
better than his Sermons, the free and full discussion of the highest
subjects in the familiar letters so admirably selected by the Editor of
Mr. Robertson's Life, will give a far clearer insight into his remarkable
character and inspire a deeper respect for his clear and manly intellect.
Mr. Brooke has done his work as Dr. Stanley did his in writing the
'Life of Arnold,' and it is not possible to give higher praise.
Everyone will talk of Mr. Robertson, and no one of Mr. Brooke, because
Mr. Brooke has thought much of his subject, nothing of himself, and
hence the figure which he wished to present comes out quite clear and
keen, without any interposing haze of literary vapour."
[THE CHRISTIAN WORLD.]
(C
The Life of Robertson of Brighton supplies a very unique illus.
tration of the way in which a man may attain his highest fame after he
has passed away from earth. There are few who make any pretension
to an acquaintance with modern literature who do not know something
of Mr. Robertson's works. His sermons are indisputably ranked with
the highest sacred classics.
The publication of his 'Life
and Letters' helps us to some information which is very precious, and
explains much mystery that hangs around the name of the great Brighton
preacher. It will be generally admitted that these two volumes will
furnish means for estimating the character of Mr. Robertson which are
not supplied in any or all of his published works.
There was
no artificiality or show about the pulpit production, no half-utterances
·
•
I 2
Notices of Robertson's Life and Letters.
or whispers of solemn belief; but there was the natural restraint which
would be imposed by a true gentleman upon his words when speaking
to mixed congregations. Many of us wanted to know how he talked and
wrote when the restraint was removed. This privilege is granted to us
in these volumes.
There was no romance of scene and
circumstance in the life of Frederick Robertson; but there was more
than romance about the real life of the man. In some respects it was
like the life of a new Elijah.
A more thoughtful, suggestive,
and beautiful preacher never entered a pulpit; a simpler and braver
man never lived; a truer Christian never adorned any religious com-
munity. His life and death were vicarious, as he himself might have
put it.
He lived and died for others, for us all. The sorrows and
agonies of his heart pressed rare music out of it, and the experience of a
terribly bitter life leaves a wealth of thought and reflection never more
than equalled in the history of men.
"
[THE GUARDIAN.]
"With all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an imperfect
standard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of what there is in
the world beyond a given circle of interest, the book does what a
biography ought to do-it shows us a remarkable man, and it gives us
the means of forming our own judgment about him. It is not a tame
panegyric or a fancy picture. The main portion of the book consists of
Mr. Robertson's own letters, and his own account of himself, and we are
allowed to see him, in a great degree at least, as he really was.
It is the record of a genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, its
duty, its perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, many
anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of the fruits
that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a man with great
faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature.
•
[THE MORNING POST.]
"Mr. Brooke has done good service in giving to the world so faithful
a sketch of so worthy a man. It would have been a reproach to the
Church if this enduring and appropriate memorial had not been erected
to one who was so entirely devoted to its service; and the labour of
love, for such it evidently was, was committed to no unskilful hands. . .
Mr. Robertson's epistolary writings-gathered in these valuable volumes
-often unstudied, always necessarily from their nature free and un-
restrained, but evidencing depth and vigour of thought, clear perception,
varied knowledge, sound judgment, earnest piety, are doubtless destined
Notices of Robertson's Life and Letters.
to become as widely known and as largely beneficial as his published
Sermons. It is impossible to peruse them without receiving impressions
for good, and being persuaded that they are the offspring of no ordinary
mind."
13
[THE MORNING HERALD.]
"Mr. Brooke has done his own work as a biographer with good
sense, feeling, and taste.
These volumes are of real value
to all thoughtful readers. For many a year we have had no such picture
of a pure and noble and well spent life."
[THE ATHENÆUM.]
"There is something here for all kinds of readers, but the higher a
man's mind and the more general his sympathies, the keener will be his
interest in the Life of Robertson.
>>>
[THE NONCONFORMIST.]
"As no English sermons of the century have been so widely read,
and as few leaders of religious thought have exerted (especially by works
in so much of an unperfected and fragmentary character) so penetrating
and powerful an influence on the spiritual tendencies of the times, we
can well believe that no biography since Arnold's will presently be
possible to be compared with this, for the interest excited by it in the
minds of readers who consciously live in the presence of the invisible
and eternal, who feel the pressure of difficult questions and painful
experiences, and who seek reality and depth, and freedom in the life
and activity of the Church of Christ.
Mr. Brooke has pro-
duced a Life of Robertson' which will not unworthily compare with
Dean Stanley's 'Life of Arnold,' and which, with that, and Ryland's
'Life of Foster,' and the 'Life of Channing,' is likely to be prized as
one of the most precious records of genuine manly and godly excellence."
(
[THE MORNING STAR.]
"The beautiful work which Mr. Brooke has written contains few, if
any, romantic episodes. It is the life of a man who worked hard and
died early.
Mr. Brooke has acted wisely in allowing Mr.
Robertson to speak so fully for himself, and in blending his letters with
his narrative, and arranging them in chronological order. These letters
are in themselves a mine of intellectual wealth. They contain little of
table-talk or parlour gossip; but they abound with many of his best and
most ripened thoughts on multitudes of subjects, political, literary, and
scientific, as well as theological. We wish we could present our readers
•
14
Notices of Robertson's Life and Letters.
with extracts from them; but even if we had space, it would be unfair
to the writer to quote disjointed fragments from a correspondence which
now belongs to the literature of the country.
Mr. Brooke
has performed his responsible task as a biographer and an editor in
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a spirit of just and discriminating appreciation, and with admirable
ability."
LONDON: PRINTED BY
AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
SPOTTISWOODE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

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