Frederick William Robertson quotes
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“Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1866). “Sermons ...”, p.271
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“If you think that you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of sin, you insult God's character.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“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.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.403
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“What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1857). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton: Second Series”, p.94
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“We win by tenderness. We conquer by forgiveness.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1861). “Sermons ...”, p.252
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“Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1871). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton”
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“Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1866). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton”, p.288
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“The humblest occupation has in it materials of discipline for the highest heaven.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a " Christ within us, the hope of glory.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do any thing that is worth the doing.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Now see what a Christian is, drawn by the hand of Christ. He is a man on whose clear and open brow God has set the stamp of truth; one whose very eye beams bright with honor; in whose very look and bearing you may see freedom, manliness, veracity; a brave man--a noble man--frank, generous, true, with, it may be, many faults; whose freedom may take the form of impetuosity or rashness, but the form of meanness never.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1857). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton: Second Series”, p.54
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“There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to say,--I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John appealed to Christ.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“If the duties before us be not noble, let us ennoble them by doing them in a noble spirit; we become reconciled to life if we live in the spirit of Him who reconciled the life of God with the lowly duties of servants.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Let a man begin in earnest with "I ought," and he will end, by God's grace, if he persevere, with "I will." Let him force himself to abound in all small offices of kindliness, attention, affectionateness, and all these for God's sake. By and by he will feel them become the habit of his soul.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“He who seeks truth must be content with a lonely, little-trodden path. If he cannot worship her till she has been canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must take his place with the members of that wretched crowd who shouted for two long hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" till truth, reason, and calmness were all drowned in noise.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“There is rest in this world nowhere except in Christ, the manifested love of God. Trust in excellence, and the better you become, the keener is the feeling of deficiency. Wrap up all in doubt, and there is a stern voice that will thunder at last out of the wilderness upon your dream.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1866). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton”, p.34
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“By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“The Christian life is not knowing or hearing, but doing.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“And now because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil, which is false to your nature, into the life of goodness, which is the truth of your being. Scorn all that is mean; hate all that is false; struggle with all that is impure Live the simple, lofty life which befits an heir of immortality.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of a love as strong, as rejoicing in a present one.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your souls and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul with all its ailments before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience " from dead works to serve the living God," so that if you must suffer, you will suffer as a forgiven man.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“There is a mighty gulf between those who love and those who do not love God To the one class we owe civility, courtesy, kindness, even tenderness. It is only those who love the Lord who should find in our hearts a home.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“He in whose heart the law was, and who alone of all mankind was content to do it, His sacrifice alone can be the sacrifice all-sufficient in the Father's sight as the proper sacrifice of humanity; He who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, He alone can give the Spirit which enables us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. He is the only High-Priest of the universe.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“The mistake we make is to look for a source of comfort in ourselves: self-contemplation, instead of gazing upon God. In other words, we look for comfort precisely where comfort never can be.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Do you wish to become rich? You may become rich, that is, if you desire it in no half way, but thoroughly. A miser sacrifices all to his single passion; hoards farthings and dies possessed of wealth. Do you wish to master any science or accomplishment? Give yourself to it and it lies beneath your feet. Time and pains will do anything. This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world is truer still of the world to come.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“This world is given as the prize for the man in earnest.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“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.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“God's justice and love are one. Infinite justice must be infinite love. Justice is but another sign of love.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1868). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton: Third Series”, p.195
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“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.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devoting love.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“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.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“A heart renewed--a loving heart--a penitent and humble heart--a heart broken and contrite, purified by love--that and only that is the rest of men. Spotlessness may do for angels, repentance unto life is the highest that belongs to man.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“To grieve over sin is one thing, to repent is another.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“It is not in understanding a set of doctrines; not in outward comprehension of the "scheme of salvation," that rest and peace are to be found, but in taking up, in all lowliness and meekness, the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air: your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine--what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature; evil is evil because it is unnatural; a vine which should bear olive-berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased; an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“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.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“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.”
-- Frederick William RobertsonSource : Frederick William Robertson (1871). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.775
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“Time and pains will do anything.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy--that is, reverences God--does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks--they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“He who, with strong passions, remains chaste--he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can yet restrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, spiritual heroes.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“This is the ministry and its work--not to drill hearts and minds and consciences into right forms of thought and mental postures, but to guide to the living God who speaks.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“Tell men that God is love; that right is right, and wrong, wrong; let them cease to admire philanthropy, and begin to love men; cease to pant for heaven, and begin to love God; then the spirit of liberty begins.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, never turning aside to merely inciting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
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“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.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“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.”
-- Frederick William Robertson -
“In the darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain. If there be no God and no future state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward.”
-- Frederick William Robertson
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