consideration of the results his marriage might hereafter have on the labor market.

And I quite agree with you, the case you put is parallel, that of benevolent actions. When one sees how the noblest schemes fail, or begins to question the results of this or that act, uncertain whether it will or not produce good, I confess it seems to me that with this motive only deep-thinking or sadly-feeling hearts would let all opportunities go by. O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you-how long shall I suffer you?

But any thing, my dear -, to abolish that detestable doctrine which is preached in some evangelical pulpits, that self-happification is the great duty, or, as they call it, saving one's own soul; which is merely prudence on a large scale, and makes worldly selfishness wrong, only because it is a shortsighted calculation.

Act, if you can, for the general good; or, rather, think that you act so, for your heart is too feminine and tender to be swayed by abstractions. To express, in a sentence or two, my feelings:

God's will: not man's happiness.

Right: not a balance of profit and loss.

God's will and Right will eventuate in man's happiness, and in a balance of profit; but with these things I feel myself unable to grapple.

Do not think I treat your views or arguments lightly. I honor you for them. And, besides, I am inclined to think that I have attacked the tendencies of your views, rather than the views you really hold.

But I have written so hurriedly, that I fear this hasty sketch is not worth sending. May God bless you and teach vou-better than I can-and teach me, for I deeply need it, and feel only that truth is infinite, and my guesses at it are few and blundering.

Yours, with most sincere esteem,

F. W. R.

CHAPTER XI.

1853.

Friendship of Mr. Robertson with Lady Byron.-State of his Health.-Advance of Disease.-Sermons of this Year.-The Principles which underlie his Teaching.Adoration of the Virgin.-Sacrament of the Mass.-Purgatory.-Apostolical Succession. The Seven Sacraments. - Suggestive, not Dogmatic Teaching. The Peace-maker.-Foundation of his Teaching.-His Position with regard to Unitarianism-Lecture on Wordsworth.-Letter in answer to a Criticism, in which he discloses the loneliness of his Heart.-Wordsworth and High-Churchism.-Letter replying to one of the High-Church Party who urged him to unite himself to them. -Increasing Weakness.-Visit to Cheltenham.-His Congregation offers him a Curate. The Vicar puts a veto on his Choice.-Last Sermons preached in Trinity Chapel, May 29, 1853.

DURING the first few months of 1853, Mr. Robertson seems to have been frequently at Esher, where Lady Byron lived. He had known her almost from the time of his arrival at Brighton, and acquaintance soon passed into a deep and lasting friendship. He said of her that she was one of the noblest and purest women he had ever met. "Her calm, subdued character," he writes, "warm sympathy, and manifold wisdom have been one of my greatest privileges here." He

heard from her the whole history of her life, and she committed into his hands the charge of publishing, after her decease, her memoirs and letters. This was, to her great regret, frustrated by his death. While he lived he sought her sympathy, and always received it. Her friendship gave him new life, and supplied him with strength to conquer his trials.

And, indeed, he needed at this time both sympathy and assistance. He was almost worn out. His state of health was dangerous in the extreme. The annexed letter, written in January, 1853, is a true account of his condition:

January 13, 1853.

To-day I have done little. Titus would have written, "I have lost a day." I prepared for Sunday with little zest and much lassitude of mind, walked with S- read the newspaper, and scarcely any thing else besides. It is strange how much more loss I feel in me of life's vital force than a year or two ago; it seems a tortoise existence; the truth of which simile you will appreciate, if you remember that the pulse of that creature beats about once to twenty pulsations of our blood, and every function of his nature, walking, etc., is performed in the slowest way, as if existence were dragged out.

Already the disease which slew him began to declare itself plainly. Loss of the old power and of quickness in thinking; the necessity for a laborious exercise of will in order to stimulate thought, and appalling exhaustion after such an effort, were some of the first symptoms. It is sad to see that a change in the day appointed for his lecture on Wordsworth was sufficient to throw him into mental confusion; that his memory, which once could retain for years together the order of his reasoning and thinking on any subject, was now so far enfeebled that the whole work of his lecture had to be done over again. Torturing pains in the back of his head and neck, as if an eagle were rending there with its talons, made life dreadful to him. During Monday, Tuesday, and the greater part of Wednesday in every week, he suffered severely. Alone in his room he lay on the rug, his head resting on the bar of a chair, clenching his teeth to prevent the groans which, even through the sleepless length of solitary nights, the ravaging pain could never draw from his manliness. It is miserable to read, week by week, the records of his advancing illness, and to know that it might have been arrested by the repose which he did not and could not take. Yet among his discourses of this year are some of the most striking that he ever preached. The sermon on "The Glory of the Virgin Mother" is as original as it is remarkable for the new method in which he proposed to treat the subjects of controversy between our Church and that of Rome. intended that it should be the first of a series in which the

He

positive truths underlying the Roman Catholic errors should be brought into clear light. This plan he would have carried out with the help of the first two of the principles which he lays down himself as characteristic of his teaching. I quote the whole of the passage (numbering the principles, for the sake of clearness), as important for a just comprehension of his writings:

The principles on which I have taught:

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 antecedent to belief in His Divine origin. Fifthly. That Christianity, as its teachers should, works from the inward to the outward, and not vice versa. Sixthly. The soul of goodness in things evil.

On the first of these the whole of his controversial teaching was founded. By the formula of the second he evolved the positive truth with which he confronted the errors he opposed. The best illustration which can be given of the working of this method is his examination of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the adoration of the Virgin in the sermon mentioned above. A slight note supplies the information that it was his intention to have applied this method of analysis to all the Roman Catholic dogmas. The passage is as follows:

Purgatory, Mariolatry, Absolution, Apostolical Succession, Seven sacraments instead of two, Transubstantiation, Baptismal Regeneration, Invocation of saints each is based upon a truth; but crystallized into form, petrified into dogmas, they are false. Endeavor to trace the meaning contained in Romish institutions; do not meet them with anathemas. Discover what the Roman Catholic means, translate to him his longing, interpret to him what he wants. I can conceive no more blessed work than this for the man of large heart and clear, vigorous intellect.

The sermons on Baptism and Absolution are also elaborate examples of the way in which he performed this work.

From notes, with which I have been supplied, of conversations with him, other instances of his application of this method are extracted.

On the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he says:

In opposition to the Dissenting view, it is Christ's body and blood received ; in opposition to the Romanists' view, it is not Christ's body and blood to those who receive it unworthily. We do not go between the two. Each of these opposite statements of the Dissenter or of the Roman Catholic are truths, and we retain them. It is not merely bread and wine; it is, spiritually, Christ's body and blood: God present spiritually, not materially, to those who receive

it worthily-i.e., to the faithful. It is not Christ's body and blood to those on whose feelings and conduct it does not tell.

It is well known that he went further than this. He held, with our Church, that the Sacrifice of Christ was once offered and no more. But he held, also, that ultra-Protestantism missed the truth contained in transubstantiation; that that sacrifice is repeated daily, in a spiritual manner, in the hearts of all faithful people. The Romanist is right in the principle -wrong in his application of the principle. The Sacrifice of Christ is forever going on, but not in the sacrifice of the Mass.

He met the doctrine of Purgatory as follows:

The ultra-Protestant utterly denies it. But the law of the universe is progress. Is there no more pain for the redeemed? Is there nothing good in store for the bad? We ask ourselves such questions when we observe the large class of human beings who are neither heavenly nor damnable. We know here that affliction and pain soften some, while they harden others, as heat, which softens iron, hardens clay. We are told that as men die so they rise. Some few die ripe for the presence of God; others, as in the case of the Pharisees, to whom good appeared only as Satanic evil, need only go on to find, as Milton has expressed it," myself is hell." But, in the case of the first class mentioned, does not analogy make it more than conceivable that their pain should be remedial, not penal? Here, then, we have the principle of purgatory. I have stated this hypothetically; the Roman Catholic states it as a dogma. Our fate is decided here. This is said rigorously by the ultra-Protestant. So it is; there is the Protestant truth. The Romanist states the opposite truth, and says, "Our destiny is determined beyond the grave." So long as either is a positive statement of a truth, it is right; but the moment either denies the truth of the other it becomes falsehood.

Mr. Robertson, as may be seen from his instance of the Pharisees, was not a Universalist in doctrine, however he may have hoped that Universalism was true. "My only difficulty," he once said to a friend, "is how not to believe in everlasting punishment."

With regard to the doctrine of Apostolical Succession, he says, using the principle given above:

There is an Apostolical Succession. It is not the power of God conveyed by physical contact-it is not a line of priests; it is a succession of prophets-a broken, scattered one, but a real one. John was the successor of Elias's spirit. In the spiritual birth Luther was the offspring of the mind of St. Paul. Mind acts on mind, whether by ideas or character: herein is the spiritual succession. He made use of the same principle in speaking of the Romish doctrine of Seven Sacraments:

We can

The Roman Catholic has seven sacraments; we have but two. rise to a higher truth than either. The sacraments, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, are representative symbols. One day was set apart to sanctify all time; one tribe to make all the nation holy; one nation to make the whole world the kingdom of God. In this way the race was educated. On the same principle God has divinely ordained two material acts, to represent

the truth that all nature is holy when every thing in it reveals His sacredness to men: that all acts are holy when done in the spirit of Christ. Water, the simplest element, represents the sacredness and awfulness of all things. By the consecration of the commonest act of life—a meal-every act is made holy. By the extension of these symbols from two to seven, we really limit their meaning-we say that seven alone are holy; but when we retain only one element, and one act as set apart to be holy by Christ, we see in these symbols the statement of two universal truths-that all the material universe and all acts ought to be holy to the Lord.

This argument, which has been condensed out of many scattered hints, he closes thus:

The Protestant truth is that two symbols only are ecclesiastically set apart; the Roman Catholic truth is that many more than these are channels of divine communication to our spirits. These two views make up the whole truth. The Protestant falsehood is limiting to these two the grace (here meaning a strong and vivid impression) of God; the Romanist falsehood is the negation of the Protestant truth: these two are not the only ecclesiastical sacraments-there are five more; by which assertion he has got into superstition, and lost the universal meaning of the sacraments.

The third principle of his teaching, that spiritual truth is discerned by the spirit, and not intellectually in propositions, pervades all his writings, and is especially laid down in a sermon preached in this year, 1853, on "The Good Shepherd," in a passage beginning, "The Son of Man claims to himself the name of Shepherd," etc. He believed that the highest truths were poetry-to be felt, not proved; resting ultimately, not on the authority of the Bible or the Church, but on that witness of God's Spirit in the heart of man which is to be realized, not through the cultivation of the understanding, but by the loving obedience of the heart. Therefore his own personal teaching was suggestive, not dogmatic. He did not choose his text in order to wring a doctrine out of it, but he penetrated to its centre, and seized the principle it contained. It was the kernel, not the shell, for which he cared. He taught no schemes of doctrine. His thoughts could not flow in cut channels, but only, like a river, livingly, and "at their own sweet will." Owing to this, he never became the leader of a sect or the follower of any religious school. He stood aside from all parties, and yet, standing aside, he was formed to be the reconciler and uniter of parties.

While he sternly denounced moral evil, he was tolerant of intellectual error; while he spoke severely against the bigotry of sects, he conciliated minor differences of opinion. His peculiarly receptive character, which reflected what was good as naturally as a calm lake reflects its shores; his intuitive grasp of truth; his large love, which felt all that was real in men, formed, unconsciously to himself, a common ground