Frederick W. Robertson Quotes

       Frederick W. Robertson
       1816-1853
      
       Young Frederick W. Robertson wanted to join the army. But his evangelical father urged him to enter the ministry and circumstances pushed the young man in that direction. He threw himself heart and soul into training. Frederick was ordained in the Church of England by the Bishop of Winchester who gave him this motto: "Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Filled with determination, Frederick became one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century England.
      
       His evangelical upbringing and his personal concern for soul-winning, made him seem a natural ally of the Low Church. Indeed, he loved the common people and preached his best sermons to groups of working men. But it was in the Broad Church that his independence of thought, love of the natural sciences and sympathy with social concerns placed him.
      
       The careful search for truth and the exhausting work of caring for his parish at Brighton wore him out. He took unpopular political stands and this brought him much criticism. A lonely man, the strain broke his health. He preached only thirteen years, dying at the young age of 37. His printed sermons came to be widely admired after his death.

True rest is not that of torpor, but that of harmony; it is not refusing the struggle, but conquering in it; not resting from duty, but finding rest in it.     Topics: Adversity, Contentment, Struggles How different is the poet from the mystic. The former uses symbols, knowing they are symbols; the latter mistakes them for realities.     Topics: Books Multifarious reading weakens the mind more than doing nothing, for it becomes a necessity, at last, like smoking: and is an excuse for the mind to lie dormant whilst thought is poured in, and runs through, a clear stream over unproductive gravel, on which not even mosses grow. It is the idlest of all idleness, and leaves more of impotency than any other.     Topics: Books, Reading, Idleness I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, and never turning aside to merely inviting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Jonathan Edwards, have passed, like the iron atoms of the blood, into my mental constitution.     Topics: Books, Reading A silent man is easily reputed wise. A man who suffers none to see him in the common jostle and undress of life, easily gathers round him a mysterious veil of unknown sanctity, and men honor him for a saint. The unknown is always wonderful.     Topics: Character Make but few explanations. The character that cannot defend itself is not worth vindicating.     Topics: Character It is not the situation which makes the man, but the man who makes the situation. The slave may be a freeman. The monarch may be a slave. Situations are noble or ignoble, as we make them.     Topics: Character In these two things the greatness of man consists, to have God so dwelling in us as to impart his character to us, and to have him so dwelling in us that we recognize his presence, and know that we are his, and he is ours. The one is salvation: the other the assurance of it.     Topics: Character, Holy Spirit, Assurance Sacrifice alone, bare and unrelieved, is ghastly, unnatural, and dead; but self-sacrifice, illuminated by love, is warmth and life; it is the death of Christ, the life of God, and the blessedness and only proper life of man.     Topics: Character, Sacrifice Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth; he was truth; truth, through and through; for truth is a thing not of words, but of life and being.     Topics: Character, Truth To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity.     Topics: Christianity The Christian life is not merely knowing or hearing, but doing the will of Christ.     Topics: Christianity