is a specimen of that sheer nonsense into which the adulations of friendship are so apt to degeneråte. Sophistry and rhetorical dash are characteristics which no candid and discriminating reader can deny. There is no evidence that the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Edwards "had passed like the iron atoms of the blood into his mental constitution." He has shown himself incompetent, not only to solve, but also to apprehend, in clearness and consistency, the fundamental problems of Christian theology. By his own admission, his system was vague.

The main cause of his failure, however, was a deficient experience of the truths of evangelical religion. This deficiency is painfully apparent throughout his "Life and Letters," as well as in his sermons. The reader may look in vain for any account of his experience of what the Saviour described as being "born of the Spirit," and as having "passed from death unto life." We are told of "his deep religious feeling," as one of the reasons why "the church was proposed to him as a profession" by his father; and of "his realization of Christ as his Saviour" while at the University, as "the cumulative result of many years of prayer and struggle." But we are told of "his religion, before it had consciously taken a distinctively Christian form," partaking of the nature of "the old religion of chivalry." At Winchester he prescribed to himself a course of austerities and outward observances, and read "books of devotion." Such religion, however, the biographer says, "weakened everything he wrote," so that his "letters of this time are scarcely worth reading." Passages from one or two written prayers are given, which indicate a desire to live in consecration to Christ; but by themselves they prove no more than similar extracts from the writings of notoriously irreligious "It is impossible not to feel," says Mr. Brooke, "when he got rid of all this, and felt its fruitlessness and its antagonism to the true spirit of the life of Christ, how he sprang from a dwarf into a giant." It is obvious enough that he "got rid of all this," but not that he passed into such an improved spiritual state. Judging by the scriptural rule, "By their fruits ye shall know them," it is almost impossible not to feel that he sadly degenerated. Certainly he came to hate the doctrines which he had once adopted as fundamental to religion. He

men.

also came to hate those who continued in the faith and exemplification of those doctrines. His biographer admits that, "If there was any intolerance in his nature it oozed out here." He himself declared: "As I adore Christ, exactly in that propor tion do I abhor that which calls itself Evangelicalism. I feel more at brotherhood with a wronged, mistaken, maddened, sinful chartist, than I do with that religious world." After he departed from their faith, he could hardly speak of evangelical Christians except in language surcharged with gall. In reading his language concerning them, one is painfully reminded of the Apostolic declarations: "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death. . . . For he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?" The Unitarian type of piety was much more congenial to Robertson. "What care I," said he, "if Dr. Channing adores, saying that he does not adore." It was not very complimentary, however, to speak of Channing's biographer's piety as "immeasurably below his." This dislike of the evangelical portion of Christendom was aggravated rather than mitigated by time. About two years before his death, without provocation, and in a letter of calm advice to a young man respecting his studies, he deliberately declared that "religious people are generally the weakest of mankind.” It must have been a strange piety, that manifested itself spontaneously in contempt and hatred of those who manifest most the spirit of Christ. And the secret of its strangeness may be found in the fact, stated by himself as "the result of a scrutiny," that his love for Christ was, "not because of any reference to his love for me, which somehow or other never enters into my mind." The contrast of such an experience with the Apostle's is significant; "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. . We love him, because he first loved us."

The sermons of Mr. Robertson are to be classed with the most dangerous of modern religious publications. His acknowledged excellences only render his defects the more potent. His readers are liable to be deceived, as he doubtless deceived himself, by a style which was rambling and diffuse, and over

loaded with rhetorical illustrations; and also by the indefiniteness and brevity of his statements in regard to points which he wished to enforce in opposition to sentiments commonly received. The poison is sugared over so deeply as to be liable to be taken with relish and without suspicion, except by "those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." He talks a great deal about Christ, but for the most part without the proper name. He seems to have had a morbid preference for the pronouns "He," "His," and "Him." He talks also much of the cross, but for the most part means not the cross of final and atoning suffering, but the cross of lifelong privation and rejection. When he speaks of Christ he generally means, not the Son of God in union with a human nature, but the Son of man as the "blossom of our cominon humanity." It is on account of such a style that many read him with approval and delight, misunderstanding his meaning; and are surprised when at length they detect the deception..

It is

Perhaps some who have read these works may think that this article is too disparaging. His defects, however, have not been exaggerated. Much more might have been extracted on the points examined, of the same kind as these quotations. On several other topics his sentiments are at variance with the Scriptures. On almost every important doctrine he is inconsistent with himself. Numerous sentences might be quoted which, taken alone, would prove him to have been substantially orthodox. But these do not neutralize his errors. not necessary to quote them in order to estimate him fairly. Many of his statements, which seem correct in themselves, are seen to be erroneous in the light of the context, and of other declarations on the same subjects. His defects are largely in excess of his excellences, and therefore his works are to be condemned rather than commended. The unsound portions taint all the rest. That which seems to be in accordance with God's word is in effect but the disguise under which that which is contrary to God's word pleads for a charitable construction. His false position as a minister, his employment of technical terms in unusual senses, and his occasional strictures upon Universalists and Unitarians and Tractarians, constitute just that advantage which errorists so much desire in the work of

proselyting. The so-called liberal school would not be so fulsome in praise and commendation of his works if it did not regard them as a specially good lever for overturning the Orthodox system of faith. It is well for the defenders of the faith always to have reference to the interpretation which latitudinarians put upon the works they commend to the public. It is in vain to hope that the works of Robertson will carry a sufficient antidote to the errors they inculcate. Their prevailing tone and their legitimate influence are not evangelical.

These sermons, in connection with the letters which explain them, should be an admonition against a style of preaching so profusely rhetorical. As in the case of this author, so in that of such as shall attempt to preach like him, truth will be sacrificed to fancy. Imagination "is a vain thing for safety," unless held under control by the reins of reason, and by the brakes of a remorseless logic. The fascination of brilliant metaphor may easily carry unguarded preachers, as well as their hearers, beyond the bounds of what is written in the testimony of God. Rhetoric is good, if it be employed to enforce instead of concealing the truth. No better rule can be found than that of the Apostle, who said: "My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." The preacher who adopts the contrary rule may succeed in securing popularity with that portion of the community that prize the sanctuary chiefly as a place of intellectual entertainment, but he will sooner or later be heard with disapprobation, or be left with disgust, by such of his congregation as "try the spirits whether they are of God." It was so with the author of these sermons. "As his peculiar views developed themselves, many of the old congregation left the church." Their places were rapidly filled up. This process began very soon after he went to Brighton, and seems to have continued through his whole ministry there; for near the close of it he lamented, "That enthusiasm, and affection, and trust, and perhaps respect, towards me have cooled." Those who frequented the house of God for the sake of worshipping him in spirit and in truth, were evidently not content with sermons in

which they were directed to "feel Christ and live him," without having the truth of "Christ and him crucified" as the object and support of that faith, which is the essential condition to all genuine religious feeling. Could Robertson have lived, and, like Chalmers, have been converted from his errors to the truth as it is in Jesus, his preaching would have been greatly modified, his hatred of evangelical Christians would have turned to love, and his usefulness, even though confined to his own congregation, might have been "gold, silver, precious stones," instead of "wood, hay, stubble." Unless there could have been such a radical change, he died not too soon for the spiritual welfare of his people, or for his own posthumous fame. There is indeed a fascinating power in his works, but it must be ascribed, in his own language respecting the vain, boastful, jealous, and irascible Italian artist, Cellini, to "The imaginativeness of a brain, which had in it a fibre of insanity, near which genius often lies."

ARTICLE II.

THE ART OF NOT GROWING OLD.

WE all have heard the story of the man who had a knife, which in the course of time was renewed in all its several parts, blade, rivets, handle and the rest, till at last no part of the original knife was left; and yet its owner declared that it was the same old knife.

Looking upon the changes which occur during life in individual character, it almost seems to us that identity can be affirmed of it only as it was affirmed of that knife by its owner. For, as Coleridge says, "Men exist in fragments." One change after another takes place, until little or nothing appears to be left of the original person. This is true of each department of his nature, the moral, the intellectual, the physical. We die daily, and we are renewed day by day. With each stage of life we put something off, and take some new quality on. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I