ROBERTSON OF BRIGHTON.

"you will think me an illiterate dog : I am, for the first time, reading 'Robertson's Sermons.' I do not know how to express how much I think of them. If by any chance you should be so illiterate as I, and not know them, it is worth while curing the defect." Thus wrote R. L. Stevenson of "Robertson of Brighton." To read several volumes of ser- mons, however good, is something of an undertaking. We would advise such of our readers who must confess to a measure of illiteracy once shared by Stevenson to take his advice in a modified form and read an admirable selection from Robertson's works made for them by Mr. R. kludie- Smith (Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 3s. 6d. net).

Frederick Robertson's name is remembered, and we might say his fame, but many of those who have vaguely beard of him would be puzzled to-day to say upon what his immensely wide influence rested. It has been said of him that he had a genius for preaching, as other men have a genius for poetry ; he was, he must have been, an orator. Yet his most enthusiastic admirers disclaim for him the gift of oratory, so self-evident was his candour. He died before be was forty of brain disease, brought on by over-work—not book work, not parish work—he died broken down by the nervous strain of preaching. Could he have rested, he would, according to his doctors, have lived, but he could not rest—he was constrained to preach. As a rule, such a temperament is accompanied by fanaticism, and expresses itself in a narrow dogmatism devoid of charity and of common sense. Robertson, for all his ardour, was a man of the widest sympathies; and, impulsive, combative, sensitive, and given to over-statement as he was, his worst enemy could never have accused him of the slightest leaning to obscurantism. Sometimes, as we read his letters as they are given us in Stopford Brooke's "Life" of him, full of genius and of egotism as they are, we revolt against his extreme realism, and long for a less crude view of life and its pain and penalties. He never spoke smooth things; he denounced the comfortable preju- dices of his day ; he never descended to any of the advertise- ments of the popular preacher; he was completely without humour, yet he touched the heart of both educated and uneducated England, and he was, perhaps, the only English popular preacher whose influence extended to the Continent. His life is sad reading, and he painted life in sad colours ; yet men thronged to hear him. He never suggested, however, that men ought to be sad, and urged the duty of augmenting the happiness of youth by every legitimate means, and the duty of easing by charity and by law the "misery," which he perhaps exaggerated, of the poor. He thought men should rejoice while they could, but he doubted if life could afford a serious man much opportunity for rejoicing. Only very exceptional people were, he believed, happy, and this conviction was part and parcel of the peculiar form of evangelicalism which, freed from its dogmatic limitations, yet led him to regard " the cross " as the exclusive symbol of a Christian life. " The deep undertone of this world is sad- ness," he said, "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 this tone." For the lighter melody of life he had but a poor ear, though we are told that he could throw himself heart and soul into a children's game. He believed this defect in himself to be a racial defect, and exaggerated immensely the constitutional gloom of the English people :—

" Of all the nations on the earth none are so incapable of enjoy- ment as we. God has not given to us that delicate development which He has given to other races. Our sense of harmony is dull and rare, our perception of beauty is not keen. An English holi- day is rude and boisterous ; if protracted, it ends in ennui and self-dissatisfaction. We cannot enjoy. Work, the law of human nature, is the very need of an English nature. That cold shade of Puritanism which passed over us, sullenly eclipsing all grace and enjoyment, was but the shadow of our own melancholy, unenjoying, national character."

But if Robertson could at times speak slightingly of the Puritans, no Puritan ever denounced worldliness with more vigour. For what he called " the world-chase," and the men and women who are "fevered by its business, excited by its pleasures, and petrified by its maxims," he had a profound contempt. " Worldliness," he said, " is a more decisive test of a man's spiritual state" than even sin," and that because " sin may be sudden." But if he was hard on the worldly, the sanctimonious never escaped his scourge. He hated " the vulgar, unapproachable sanctity which makes men awkward in its presence and stand aloof." Such "goodness " was, he said, at best but "second rate." Again, he distrusted a great show of moral severity. "Unrelenting severity," he said, "proves guilt rather than innocence." How much purity of heart, he asks, " was proved by the desire of those Pharisees to stone the woman taken in adultery" P Robertson did not believe it possible to keep politics out of the teaching of religion, though he denounced all party- spirited preaching. "My Radicalism," he said, "is religious, not political," yet a Radical he was. In his letters he declared himself an aristocrat by taste and a democrat on principle. He believed that the poor suffered from the tyranny of the rich, and his words often remind one of Tolstoy's terrible sentence : " The rich will do anything for the poor—except get off their backs." With regard to the virtues engendered by poverty, he was, however, to say the least, not sentimental.

Here is a passage which one would have thought could not conduce to his popularity with any class in his congre- gation : - " It was not, except by invitation, in the rich man's house that Christ was found; it was not for his ears that His instructions were framed. It was His passion to teach those who were for- gotten by the national instructors. There was a burning, almost passionate, indignation in His language whenever it came in His way to rebuke their oppressors, who shut up knowledge from them, and would have kept them uneducated; who over-reached them (in Bible phraseology devouring widows' houses ') ; who lived in purple and fine linen, while Lazarus lay forgotten at their very threshold. Political economy has spoken its fine lessons of philanthropic humanity. Demagogues have courted the popular voice by loud harangues against what they call the oppression of the rich. Sentiment has taken poverty under its patronage, and adorned the cottage in touching stories with imaginary graces and purities that are never found there. But no man ever stood up the poor man's champion but Christ, and those who, like Christ, have lived with the poor and for them."

In spite of the dark colours in which he painted, it would be difficult to call Robertson a pessimist. He pooh-poohed

many of the sentimental regrets and fears which lead men to glorify the past :-

" See, then, the folly and the falsehood of the sentimental regret that there is no longer any reverence felt towards superiors. There is reverence to superiors, if only it can be shown that they are superiors. Reverence is deeply rooted in the heart of humanity —you cannot tear it out. Civilization, science, progress, only change its direction; they do not weaken its force. If it no longer bows before crucifixes and candles, priests and relics, it is not extinguished towards what is truly sacred and what is priestly in man. The fiercest revolt against false authority is only a step towards submission to rightful authority. Emancipation from false lords only sets the heart free to honour true ones."

But it may be asked—all this has little directly to do with religion—what did the people of Brighton "go out for to hear "?

Was it religion or was it merely strong, and perhaps rather biassed, sense? Robertson was undoubtedly a man of religious genius as well as a preacher of genius. " A sublime feeling of a Presence comes about me at times," he said in a letter to a friend, " which makes inward solitude a trifle to talk about." In some extra- ordinary manner Robertson's congregation appeared to be conscious of this Presence. As to the creed he taught, he is, of course, usually regarded as one of the founders of the Broad Church. The superstructure he did not live to see nor to argue about, and whether he would have said with some that no such Church now exists, or with others that all other Churches have taken or are taking refuge within its portals, we cannot say.

These are the "principles" upon which he "taught," given in his own words:-

"First—The establishment of positive truth instead of the negative destruction of error. Secondly—That truth is made up of two opposite propositions, and not found in a via media between the two. Thirdly—That spiritual truth is discerned by the spirit instead of intellectually in propositions; and therefore truth should be taught suggestively, not dogmatically. Fourthly—That belief in the Human character of Christ's Humanity must be ante- cedent to belief in His Divine origin. Fifthly—That Christianity, as its teachers should, works from tho inward to the outward, and not vice versti. Sixthly—The soul of goodness in things evil."

It is a pity that, despite these great principles, Robertson

wasted his strength very often in small controversies, such as Sunday observance, &c., and the unfortunate fact that he had no sense of humour often led him to take seriously and regret childishly, and answer bitterly, criticisms which were not worth thinking about, and critics wholly unworthy of his steel.

Robertson himself knew that certain serious defects of character are almost inseparable from the preacher's office. "I wish I did not hate preaching so much," he wrote

one day ; "the degradation of being a Brighton preacher is at times almost intolerable," and, again, he regrets that he has weakened his nervous system by " stump oratory." Preaching always excited him, and a sermon would leave him for days too much agitated to work. He doubted of tea

if he ought not to give it up—for the sake of his spirit— though he would not attend to his doctor's advice and give it up for the sake of his body. Blameless as was his life and fruitful as were his exhortations, he could not escape the minor dangers which the pulpit shares with the

stage. He grew sensitive and self-centred, he came to need the stimulus of a crowd moved to emotion. Close as were his intimacies and wide as were his benevolences, the circle of his affections was latterly narrow indeed. Yet he hated excite- ment as much as he craved it :—

" I am persuaded there are few things morally so bad as excite- ment of the nerves in any way ; nothing—to borrow a military word, and use it in a military sense—nothing demoralizes 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 excite- ment is inseparable from a life of vice. The opera, the stage, the ballroom, French literature, and irregular life—what must they terminate in ?"

It is impossible to deny that he was a man who sacrificed his life and something of his soul to a rare and wonderful gift, and it is impossible altogether to approve of that sacrifice, even though he had consecrated that gift to the service of God and men.