Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London

A SELECTION FROM THE NOTICES

OF

MR. ROBERTSON’S SERMONS,

AND OF THE

LIFE AND LETTERS OF F.W.  ROBERTSON.

BY THE REV.  STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.

[BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE, August, 1862.]

“For while hapless Englishmen complain in the papers, and in private, in many a varied wail, over the sermons they have to listen to, it is very apparent that the work of the preacher has not fallen in any respect out of estimation.  Here is a book which has gone through as great a number of editions as the most popular novel.  It bears Mudie’s stamp upon its dingy boards, and has all those marks of arduous service which are only to be seen in books which belong to great public libraries.  It is thumbed, dog’s-eared, pencil-marked, worn by much perusal.  Is it then a novel?  On the contrary, it is a volume of sermons.  A fine, tender, and lofty mind, full of thoughtfulness, full of devotion, has herein left his legacy to his country.  It is not rhetoric or any vulgar excitement of eloquence that charms so many readers to the book, so many hearers to this preacher’s feet.  It is not with the action of a Demosthenes, with outstretched arms and countenance of flame, that he presses his gospel upon his audience.  On the contrary, when we read those calm and lofty utterances, this preacher seems seated, like his Master, with the multitude palpitating round, but no agitation or passion in his own thoughtful, contemplative breast.  The Sermons of Robertson, of Brighton, have few of the exciting qualities of oratory.  Save for the charm of a singularly pure and lucid style, their almost sole attraction consists in their power of instruction, in their faculty of opening up the mysteries of life and truth.  It is pure teaching, so far as that ever can be administered to a popular audience, which is offered to us in these volumes.”

 [EDINBURGH CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE.]

“They are Sermons of a bold, uncompromising thinker—­of a man resolute for the truth of God, and determined in the strength of God’s grace to make that truth clear, to brush away all the fine-spun sophistries and half-truths by which the cunning sins of men have hidden it....  There must be a great and true heart, where there is a great and true preacher.  And in that, beyond everything else, lay the secret of Mr. Robertson’s influence.  His Sermons show evidence enough of acute logical power.  His analysis is exquisite in its subtleness and delicacy....  With Mr. Robertson style is but the vehicle, not the substitute for thought.  Eloquence, poetry, scholarship, originality—­his Sermons show proof enough of these to put him on a level with the foremost men of his time.  But, after all, their charm lies in the warm, loving, sympathetic heart, in the well-disciplined mind of the true Christian, in his noble scorn of all lies, of all things mean