VII

FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON

BORN IN LONDON, FEBRUARY 3, 1816: DIED IN BRIGHTON, AUGUST 15, 1853.

Robertson, all things considered, we regard as the most remarkable English preacher of the nineteenth century. He died at the early age of thirty seven, and his active ministry covered a period of only thirteen years; but in this brief period he did a work and fulfilled a ministry that, for depth and extent of its ultimate influence, was scarcely equaled by any contemporary in the labors of twice this length of time. Notable is the fact that this great influence was mainly a posthumous influence, scarcely recognized while he was living, and then only by a limited portion of the English religious public, but wrought by his published sermons and by the publication of his "Life and Letters," prepared by Rev. Stopford Brooke, and given to the world twelve years after Robertson's death. Those sermons, widely read by ministers of all denominations and Christian laymen throughout the English-speaking world, excited the profoundest and most lively interest by their freshness and originality of thought, their novel statement of Christian truth and their impressive style. As the writer recalls the impression

which those sermons made on his own mind when a Seminary student reading them as they first appeared, it seems to him now that they made upon him a deeper impression than the published sermons of any preacher he ever read. They awakened a sustained interest by their suggestiveness and originality, so that one did not soon tire of reading them; they stirred and purified the heart by their noble sentiments; they fructified the mind with seed thoughts which yielded an abundant harvest. They were the work of a man endowed with a rare genius perfected by careful training and self-culture, and refined by piety and suffering.

I. HIS FAMILY AND EARLY HOME ENVIRONMENT

He belonged to a military family. His grandfather, Colonel Robertson, in whose house in London he was born, was a distinguished officer in the English army, and wounded in the service. His father was a captain in the Royal Artillery. Of his three brothers, two, Charles and Harry, won frequent honorable mention in the Kaffir war, and Struan was a captain in the Royal South Lincoln militia. The first five years of his life were passed at Leith Fort, near Edinburgh, where his father was stationed and where he says "he was rocked and cradled to the roar of artillery." The conversation of home was of war and its exploits. Thus he was fed and nurtured from infancy through childhood and youth upon the anecdotes and associations of a soldier's life. Heredity and early environment contributed

to produce in him a martial spirit, and make him eager for a soldier's career. This martial spirit gave a tone to his ministry and was one of the elements of power in his pulpit eloquence as in that of Chrysostom.

His father and mother were pious devout people of the evangelical type. The atmosphere of his early home was made sweet and wholesome by the best influences of religion. They were also people of culture and refinement and moved in a social circle of the best class.

II. EDUCATION AND MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

The father was his children's earliest teacher, and he superintended their instruction for several years after he had ceased personally to give them lessons. At sixteen, after having become well grounded in the classics and French languages, Frederick entered the New Academy, Edinburgh, where he at once took a high place in his class. He possessed the qualities of a superior scholar, extraordinary power of attention, quickness to learn, and a retentive memory, which enabled him in later years to "recall page after page of books which he had not read since his boyhood." He was also an intense worker and early formed the habit, which remained with him, of mastering fully whatever he studied. Besides studying at the Academy, he attended classes at the University and gave himself eagerly to studies in natural science, especially chemistry and physics. Returning home he wished to enter the army, but

his father, believing that this promising son was better fitted by nature for the Church than for the army, proposed to him that he should study for the ministry. He answered, "Anything but that; I am not fit for it." He was accordingly placed in a solicitor's office and stayed there a year until his health became impaired by his sedentary work, and the galling influence of his secret disappointment. His father then consented that he should follow the bent of his mind, and an application was made for a commission in the army. There was then no vacancy, but his name was placed on the list for a cavalry regiment in India. Two years he waited, giving himself enthusiastically, meantime, to pursuits that would fit him for his anticipated career. He became an expert rider, a good shot, and an excellent draughtsman. He omitted nothing likely to make him a good cavalry officer. His father, believing from the long delay that his application had been forgotten and would never be successful, again proposed to this son to enter the Church, and was met again with the same decisive refusal; until other friends and a chain of circumstances united to strengthen the father's persuasions, and his son at length yielded. In one of his sermons in after years, to illustrate how God's providence shapes our course in life, he says: "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 fertilizing the soil of India." The decision made, he promptly acted upon it and entered Brasenose College, Oxford University, being matriculated May 4, 1837. Five days afterwards, the long-expected letter came from the military secretary of the English government, offering him a cavalry commission in the Second Dragoons with the option of exchange in the third just embarking for India. Had the letter arrived three weeks sooner, he had never entered the Church. He was then twenty-one years old.

Though with characteristic submission of spirit he resigned himself to what he believed to be God's will, the disappointment nevertheless saddened his whole life. He never ceased to think of what might have been had his wish for a soldier's career been gratified, and he indulged a secret, but sometimes expressed regret that he had not been permitted to realize it. "All his life long," his biographer says, "he was a soldier at heart." In the height of his popularity as a preacher, he said: "I would rather have led a forlorn hope than mount the pulpit stairs."

The time covered by his life as a student at Oxford, 1837-1840, was one of great interest. Among his contemporaries were Arthur Stanley and Ruskin; among his teachers were Buckland, the geologist, and Thomas Arnold, illustrious both as the great teacher of Rugby School and as lecturer upon history in Oxford. He speaks of Arnold as "every inch a man"; and has given us a picture of his appearance at his opening lecture on Modern History when, after