the heart of the Eternal and Supreme: and Christianity shall be what it may yet become, in proportion as that life, or anything like it, is lived over again in personal example and influence of any human spirit that aspires toward that perfect ideal.

I was much struck this afternoon by an extract which Mr. Oakley read from one of the earliest inspectors of schools in England. " As I go," he says, "from school to school, I perceive in each a distinctive character, which is that of the master. I look at the school and I look at the master, and there is no mistaking the resemblance: his idiosyncrasy has passed upon the school. I seem to see him reflected in the children as in so many fragments of a broken mirror." Yes, it is perfectly true with regard to masters in schools. I know it myself. I remember, when engaged in education at Oxford, we tutors of the different colleges used to look with the utmost interest at the different types of character and intelligence impressed upon the scholars who came from our different public schools. I remember how this type penetrated even into details; how the sagacious observer of character at one of the colleges said, on seeing the original handwriting of the greatest public teacher in this century, “That is the handwriting which I have seen in a hundred different forms in the handwriting of all the scholars that came from Rugby."

Now it is this power of impressing our own characters on others which is especially given to school-masters and schoolmistresses of any institution; it is the power which is their greatest privilege and their greatest responsibility. It is also the best illustration,— with all reverence be it spoken,the best of the illustrations and the effect produced on the world by the Founder of our common Christianity, and also

of our relations toward him. Whenever any trait of justice, or generosity, or far-sighted wisdom, or wide tolerance, or compassion, or purity, is seen in any man or woman throughout the whole human race, there, as in the fragments of a broken mirror, we see the reflection of the divine image. There we see, as in the various characters of a manifold handwriting, the letters, the turns, the spirit of the character of his hand. If, in the effect produced among us on any single human will, we see any one of the principles which I have endeavored to describe; if we see truthfulness, if we see graciousness, if we see perception, the keen perception of the true needs of his or her time or situation; if in the effect on the world, if even in a few instances, some such boy or girl, some such man or woman, were planted in any neighborhood, in any nation, in any church,- would not definite, precise, unmistakable evidence be seen of the principles of our common Christianity, because it would express the incontestable features, the unquestionable characteristics, of our common Master?

Vol. 18-I

ROBERTSON

FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON, a distinguished English clergy,

an army officer, and was born in London, February 3, 1816. His early wish was to enter the army, but relinquishing this desire he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and took orders in the Anglican Church in 1840. For the next two years he was curate of the church of St. Mary Kalendar at Winchester, and for four years more curate of Christ Church, Cheltenham. On August 15, 1847, he became incumbent of Trinity Chapel in Brighton, where he immediately became a living force in the community. As an eminent English critic has remarked, "There is perhaps no parallel in English church history to the influence of Robertson's ministry at a small proprietary chapel." The six years of his ministry at Brighton marked an important epoch, not only in the history of Brighton, but in that of English religious thought, his liberalizing influence being felt in constantly widening circles in the Established Church and in the Nonconformist bodies also, and before long extending to America. Robertson displayed a singular aptitude in reaching the working classes, and his founding of a workingmen's Institute in 1849 was one of the important incidents in his career. No English preacher of his time was more untrammelled than he, and perhaps none more original. His fearless course subjected him to more or less detraction and misrepresentation, and being a man of extreme sensitiveness and no sense of humor he felt very keenly the attacks that from his position he could hardly hope to escape. His sensitiveness to adverse criticism and the intense earnestness with which he threw himself into his work wore him out long before his time, and on August 15, 1853, he died at Brighton of inflammation of the brain. At his funeral two thousand persons followed him to the grave. His reputation as a preacher is firmly established upon five series of "Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel " (1855-90). Other works which he left are "Lectures and Addresses on Literary and Social Topics (1858); "Expository Lectures on St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians (1859); "Notes on Genesis" (1877).

SERMON: THE LONELINESS OF CHRIST

"Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me."-John xvi, 31, 32.

T

HERE are two kinds of solitude: the first consisting of insulation in space; the other, of isolation of the spirit. The first is simply separation by distance. When we are seen, touched, heard by none, we are said to be alone. And all hearts respond to the truth of that saying, This is not solitude; for sympathy can people our solitude with a crowd. The fisherman on the ocean alone at night is not alone, when he remembers the earnest longings which are arising up to heaven at home for his safety. The traveller is not alone, when the faces which will greet him on his arrival seem to beam upon him as he trudges on. The solitary student is not alone, when he feels that human hearts will respond to the truths which he is preparing to address to them.

The other is loneliness of soul. There are times when hands touch ours, but only send an icy chill of unsympathizing indifference to the heart; when eyes gaze into ours, but with a glazed look which cannot read into the bottom of our souls; when words pass from our lips, but only come back as an echo reverberated without reply through a dreary solitude; when the multitude throng and press us, and we cannot say, as Christ said, "Somebody hath touched me:" for the contact has been not between soul and soul, but only between form and form.

And there are two kinds of men, who feel this last solitude in different ways. The first are the men of self-reliance, self-dependent: who ask no counsel, and crave no sympathy; who act and resolve alone,— who can go sternly through duty, and scarcely shrink, let what will be crushed in them. Such men command respect: for whoever respects himself constrains the respect of others. They are invaluable in all those professions of life in which sensitive feeling

would be a superfluity: they make iron commanders, surgeons who do not shrink, and statesmen who do not flinch from their purpose for the dread of unpopularity. But mere self-dependence is weakness; and the conflict is terrible when a human sense of weakness is felt by such men.

Jacob was alone when he slept in his way to Padan Aram, the first night that he was away from his father's roof, with the world before him, and all the old broken up; and Elijah was alone in the wilderness when the court had deserted him, and he said, “ They have digged down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword: and I, even I, only am left, and they seek my life to take it away." But the loneliness of the tender Jacob was very different from that of the stern Elijah. To Jacob the sympathy he yearned for was realized in the form of a gentle dream. A ladder raised from earth to heaven figured the possibility of communion between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God. In Elijah's case, the storm, and the earthquake, and the fire, did their convulsing work in the soul, before a still, small voice told him that he was not alone. In such a spirit the sense of weakness comes with a burst of agony, and the dreadful conviction of being alone manifests itself with a rending of the heart of rock. It is only so that such souls can be taught that the Father is with them, and that they are not alone.

There is another class of men, who live in sympathy. These are affectionate minds, which tremble at the thought of being alone: not from want of courage nor from weakness of intellect comes their dependence upon others, but from the intensity of their affections. It is the trembling spirit of humanity in them. They want not aid, nor even countenance, but only sympathy. And the trial comes to them not in the shape of fierce struggle, but of chill and utter loneli