Page images
PDF
EPUB

fined, and the little girl, a perfectly beautiful 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 starlight, 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 profound than death, of which death is but a shadow, for which we are all craving, and in the depths of which we shall soon behow 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 can not 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:

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 self-denial in this. But I will not commit myself to any plan by expressed resolve. I have now only a few years to live."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 elan of virtue, its freshness, grace, beauty, and sponta.neousness. 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. Götz." You preserve your own dignity by not entering into them. The character which can not defend itself is not worth defending.

4. My mind is difficult to get into activity-unbewegsam. Therefore, in order to prepare for speaking, preaching, etc., 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, etc.

He preached for the first time in Trinity Chapel on the 15th of August, 1847. His sermon, on a favorite subject"The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified," etc.-at once awoke criticism and interest. As his peculiar views developed themselves, many of the old congregation left the church. Their places were rapidly filled up. Thoughtful and eager-minded men came in, 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 inspiration of the Bible, and especially of the historical portions of the Old Testament. He made men feel the life which ran through the doctrinal statements of the Prayer-Book. Whatever 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 applied 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 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 sympathize 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:

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 sis

terly 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 me. I feel that it was kindly imagined and delicately done; 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 recognized the several elements which composed it, his sense of the importance 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 fitting 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 England, 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 sympathizing teacher. He was now transferred to a town which more, perhaps, than any other in England has among its population 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 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.

[ocr errors]

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 uneducated minds among the working-classes. The cry of 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 revolution. 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:

The world has become a new one since we met. To my 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 splotches on the canvas of the universe. I could almost say sometimes, in fullness of heart, "Now let Thy servant depart in peace."

I have been very much overdone by work here. It is extremely trying; full of encouragement, 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 doing something; and for that I am grateful, for it is well-nigh the only thing that is worth the living for.

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 labor;* 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 political subjects in a manner calculated-when men's minds 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

* See this subject fully carried out in Sermons (First Series) XVI. and XVIII.

« PreviousContinue »