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evidence in the Sermons themselves, that Mr. Robertson during his lifetime was an object of suspicion and dislike because of his religious opinions; and that his spirit was chafed and wounded by the treatment to which he was subjected in consequence. To what degree this was owing to any or all those doctrinal sentiments, which have come under review in the foregoing pages, we are unable to determine. Nor shall we attempt to decide the question, how far any coldness or opposition which he suffered on this account was Christian either in its principle or in its particular manifestations. We can very well imagine, however, that with certain classes of religionists Mr. Robertson may have been held in low esteem for a freeness of opinion on points wherein we should thoroughly agree with him. How would extreme Calvinists, for example, be likely to reckon of one who told them that, in logical consistency, they ought to be Antinomians, though they were not? We doubt whether the saving admission would protect the speaker from the anger which his strong expression of the truth would be fitted to evoke from little minds. And when, in face of a powerful popular tendency, he stood up and protested against the excessive cultivation of the masculine graces in our public schools, and pleaded for the inculcation of charity, forbearance, and tenderness, it needs but little knowledge of the circle of society in which Mr. Robertson moved, to understand how the worshippers of muscle might succeed in branding him as an empiric and a weakling. But as a clergyman of the Church of the England, he laid himself open to still more serious question. Let us hear him, and see if he did not. "There is infallibility nowhere on this earth;......not in the Church of England; not in priests; not in ourselves-and it matters not in what form the claim is made, whether in the clear consistent way in which Rome asserts it, or whether in the inconsistent way in which Churchmen make it for their Church, or religious bodies for their favourite opinions.' In another place, referring to the dogma of Baptismal Regeneration, he says, 'This view is held with varieties and modifications of many kinds, by an increasingly large number of the members of the Church of England; but we do not concern ourselves with these timid modifications, which painfully attempt to draw some subtle hair's-breadth distinctions between themselves and the above doctrine. The true, honest, and only honest representation of this view is that put forward undisguisedly by Rome.' This would hardly win him favour with a large number of his order. But what shall we say of the following? Religious men in every profession are surprised to find that many of its

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avenues are closed to them. The conscientious Churchman complains that his delicate scruples, or his bold truthfulness, stand in the way of his preferment; while another man, who conquers his scruples, or softens the eye of truth, rises, and sits down a mitred peer in Parliament.' Or of this? Alas: we, the clergy of the Church of England, for three long centuries have taught submission to the powers that be, as if that were the only text in Scripture bearing on the relations between the ruler and the ruled...... Shame on us! We have not denounced the wrongs done to weakness: and yet, for one text in the Bible which requires submission and patience from the poor, you will find a hundred which denounce the vices of the rich......And woe to us in the great day of God, if we have been the sycophants of the rich, instead of the redressers of the poor man's wrongs: woe to us, if we have been tutoring David into respect for his superior, Nabal, and forgotten, that David's cause, not Nabal's, is the cause of God.' And when we read elsewhere of droned litanies and liturgies,' and hear kindly things said of Quakers and other Nonconformists, and are cautioned against the use of coarse and vituperative language in the controversy with Rome, and are taught that it is irrational and absurd to hope to force the principles of the Anglican Church upon all Christians, and are called upon to admire the marvellous proof supplied some years since by the Free Church of Scotland, that there is still among us the power of living faith,' in the fact that five hundred ministers gave up all that earth holds dear ' rather than assert a principle which seemed to them to be a false one;' we need not have recourse to doctrinal obliquities for the purpose of explaining any shyness or abuse from which the preacher may have suffered.

Closely connected with the point on which we have now dwelt, not unfrequently, indeed, coincident with it, is the union of strong moral instinct and of unflinching moral boldness which marks Mr. Robertson's preaching. He discovers good where bigots and fanatics can see nothing but evil. He drags evil to light, which the popular voice has baptized with the names of sanctity and religion; and, dealing most directly with both the one and the other as they concerned his own ministerial charge and sphere of life, he shrinks from no consequences of a naked and emphatic declaration of what he believed to be 'the whole counsel of God.' It is easy for a minister to animadvert upon tendencies by which his hearers are not likely to be affected, to lash and stigmatize evils which lie beyond the circle of their rank and condition in life, and to extol and recommend the duties which they are least disposed to neglect and avoid. This

Unflinching moral Boldness.

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did not Mr. Robertson. He was a man of elegant education, and was surrounded by those who would only too loudly applaud him if he preached the religiousness of music, painting, and general culture. Hear him. Romance, prettiness, "dim religious light," awe and mystery, these are not the atmosphere of Christ's Gospel. Base the heart on facts. The truth alone

can make you free.' More fully in another sermon he writes: "Refinement-melting imagery—all the witchery of form and colour-music-architecture; all these, even coloured with the hues of religion, producing feelings either religious or quasireligious, may yet do the world's work. For all attempt to impress the heart through the senses, to make perfect through the flesh, is fraught with danger [of sensuality acting through the worship of the graceful and refined]. There is a self-deception in those feelings: the thrill, and the sense of mystery, and the luxury of contemplation, and the impressions on the senses; all these lie very close to voluptuousness, enfeeblement of heart; yea, even impurity.' With these sentiments our strongest convictions join hands, and we equally admire the discernment and the courage to which we are indebted for them. Not less worthy of honour is the attitude which we see Mr. Robertson holding towards those to whom he preached, when we consider that they belonged, for the most part, to the wealthy and aristocratic classes of society. The meanest soul that ever trod the boards of a pulpit can be eloquent over the vices of the rich and honourable in their absence. To exhibit these in their true character, when the offenders themselves are before you, your ministerial influence over them for the future depending meanwhile on the dignity, delicacy, and propriety with which you fulfil your task, requires no common wisdom and no ordinary moral bravery. What shall we say of the man who, with haughty scions of nobility and purse-proud nabobs looking him in the face, could speak thus? Let us mark that distinction well, so often confused-kings, masters, parents; here is a power ordained of God, honour it. But wealth, name, title, distinctions, always fictitious, often false and vicious; if you claim homage for these separate from worth, you confound two things essentially different......They who retain these superstitious ideas of the eternal superiority of rank and wealth, have the first principles of the Gospel yet to learn. How can they believe in the Son of Mary? They may honour Him with the lip; they deny Him in His brethren. Whoever helps to keep alive that ancient lie of upper and lower, resting the distinction not on official authority or personal worth, but on wealth and title, is doing his part to hinder the establishment of the Redeemer's

kingdom.' This is sufficiently bold; but we wonder how many assemblies either of the upper or lower classes ever hear any thing like what follows. There are men and women in this. congregation who have committed sins that never have been published to the world; and therefore, though they be still untouched by the love of God, they have never sunk down to degradation; whereas the very same sins, branded with public shame, have sunk others not worse than them down to the lowest infamy.' With like fidelity, though in gentler tones, he speaks of the possible connexion between elegant life and forgetfulness of God, and insists that for a man to live for the world alone, however unblemished a reputation he may have, and however much he may recoil from everything that is little, gross, and evil, is to be degraded and debased in the truest sense of the words; and that in every such instance we see a soul formed with a capacity for high and noble things, fit for the banquettable of God Himself, trying to fill its infinite hollowness 'with husks which the swine do eat.' There is scarcely any thing more admirable, indeed, in these Sermons, than the pains which the preacher takes to impress his hearers of the higher ranks of life with the intrinsic worthlessness of all worldly good, and the chaste and dignified, yet terrible, plainness of speech, with which he sets forth their social obligations and grave religious responsibilities.

To crown all, Mr. Robertson is a fair illustration of his own doctrine, that men's spirit and actions are often in advance of their creed. His religious belief departs, as we think, very seriously, at some points, from the simple and obvious teaching of Holy Writ; and his Sermons exhibit many redundancies and defects, the inevitable fruit of his errors. At the same time, we are bound to acknowledge the eminently Christian temper which marks the great bulk of his writings; the passionate sympathy with the person, history, work, and kingdom of Christ, according to his conception of them, which they evince; the soundness and deep importance of many of the practical principles which he lays down and enforces; and the exceeding pathos and point of those many gracious and solemn expostulations and appeals, addressed to the young, the worldly, and others, which are found up and down the course of the Sermons. Mr. Robertson has his prejudices, as we have seen; and we believe he does injustice to parties and opinions which in the main are the strength, so far as anything human can be, of the cause of Christianity. But we acquit him of the smallest intentional wrong to any man or any class of sentiments. The whole tone of his preaching proves him to have been incapa

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ble of doing this. If he was mistaken, his intention was pure. He hated imposture and charlatanry and dogmatism with an intense hatred; and he sometimes allowed the feeling to go forth towards objects which bore the semblance of these evils, but were not really what he took them to be. On the other hand, his love of whatever was unaffected, genuine, true, and good, was equally fervid; and it sometimes embraced more than a wellbalanced judgment could venture to deem worthy of it. But none who reads his Sermons with care will deny that the spirit of the author is usually worthy of his profession, and in particular shows that jealousy for truth, that sensitive reverence for moral purity, and that large-hearted Christian love, which are allowed on all hands to take rank among the highest outward proofs of the power of the Gospel. Christ, too, if He be not apprehended and taught as we could desire, is still the Alpha and Omega of Mr. Robertson's discourses. His infinite love in the gift of Himself for our salvation, the marvellous wisdom of His ministry and conversations with His disciples, the profound spiritual significance of His whole life and conduct, the perfectness of His submission to the mysterious will of His Father, the vital connexion between Him and whatever is good and holy in man, the imperative necessity of such a faith in Him as shall make us partakers of His sacrifice; these and kindred subjects are the leading topics and animating spirit of his preaching. Christ is the life of our souls. 'Excellence without Christ is but a dream.' The guiltiest may come to Christ; and He will send none empty away. And whoever takes hold of Christ and follows Him can no more perish than God can deny Himself, or the moral constitution of the universe suffer disruption and collapse. With all Mr. Robertson's idealism, naturalism, and humanism, no Methodist living could preach a free, full, and perfect salvation from sin more broadly and earnestly than it is sometimes preached in these pages. We wish the sound of the eloquent preacher's trumpet was always equally certain.

A similar combination of strength and weakness is observable in the subordinate principles and sentiments which cluster about the central doctrines of the book. The gold, however, is vastly in excess of the clay. It would do the idolaters of sincerity a world of good to hear the wise words our author speaks on the relations between goodness and truth, and especially to ponder what he says when he tells us that 'subtle minds which have no broad, firm footing in reality,...may become guilty of anything, and excuse it to themselves.' We do not know when we have seen the fact, that the Divine government is not simply one of ‘love,' more