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fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, that you also shall share in the prize of them that overcome; you also shall eat of the "hidden manna, " and receive the "white

stone."

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ROBERTSON

THE LONELINESS OF CHRIST

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON, was born in London in 1816, educated at Edinburgh University and took his degree at Oxford in 1841. From a law office he passed into the ministry, where his career, tho brief, was exceptionally brilliant. His English style commends itself to the preacher's study for its naturalness, poetic beauty, lucidity, and strength. It is the style of a man of unique genius. He died of consumption at Brighton in 1853, little more than thirty-six years of

age.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the career of Robertson was the influence he exercised over the workingmen. This class had in his day become estranged from the Church of England, few of whose clergy had any power to attract their attention and adherence. He was denounced as a socialist because of his foundation of a workingmen's institute, and the opposition and vilification which he thus met with no doubt helped to shorten his life.

ROBERTSON

1816-1853

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.

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HERE are two kinds of solitude: the first.

consisting of isolation 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 rising up to heaven at home for his safety. The traveler 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.

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an icy chill of unsympathizing indifference to the heart; when eyes gaze into ours, but with a glazed look which can not 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 can not say, as Christ said, "Somebody hath touched me"; for the contact has been not between soul and soul, but only between form and form.

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And there are two kinds of men, who feel this last solitude in different ways. The first are the men of self-reliance-self-dependentwho 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 on 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

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