Frederick William Robertson
Frederick William Robertson
Frederick William Robertson, known as Robertson of Brighton, was an English divine...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth3 February 1816
mistake greatness men
It is the law of our humanity that man must know good through evil. No great principle ever triumphed but through much evil. No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes.
opinion habit depends
It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits, than to say that our lives and habits depend on our opinions.
brother real light
But if there has been on this earth no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convictions of our own meanness and all suspicions of other's littleness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christianity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we cannot feel Him as a Saviour.
two dying hours
There is a two-fold solemnity which belongs to the dying hour-it is the winding up of life, and it is the commencement of eternity.
prayer self
A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devoting love.
happiness christian son
Brethren, happiness is not our being's end and aim. The Christian's aim is perfection, not happiness; and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked his Master.
god justice and-love
God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite love. Justice is but another sign of love.
god imagination heaven
God's highest gifts--talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power--they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in you that you may be lost.
death heart fighting
Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully--not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts--watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with.
contentment spirit fitting
It is not by change of circumstances, but by fitting our spirits to the circumstances in which God has placed us, that we can be reconciled to life and duty.
jesus character sacrifice
Every unfulfilled aspiration of humanity in the past; all partial representation of perfect character; all sacrifices, nay, even those of idolatry, point to the fulfillment of what want, the answer to every longing--the type of perfect humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ.
hands issues life-and-death
Christ's miracles were vivid manifestations to the senses that He is the Saviour of the body--and now as then the issues of life and death are in His hands--that our daily existence is a perpetual miracle. The extraordinary was simply a manifestation of God's power in the ordinary.
thinking voice may
Read a work on the "Evidences of Christianity," and it may become highly probable that Christianity, etc., are true. This is an opinion. Feel God. Do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not;" and then you do not think, you know that there is a God.
prayer passionate-desire expectations
That prayer which does not succeed in moderating our wishes--in changing the passionate desire into still submission, the anxious, tumultuous expectation into silent surrender--is no true prayer, and proves that we have not the spirit of true prayer.