To
love God is to love character. For instance, God is Purity. And to be pure in thought and look, to turn
away from unhallowed books and conversation, to abhor the moments in which we
have not been pure, is to love God. God
is Love; and to love men till private attachments have expanded into a
philanthropy which embraces all—at least even the evil and enemies with
compassion—that is to love God. God is
Truth. To be true, to hate every form of
falsehood, to live a brave, true, real life—that is to love God. God is infinite; and to love the boundless,
reaching on from grace to grace, adding charity to faith, and rising upwards
ever to see the Ideal still above us, and to die with it unattained, aiming
insatiably to be perfect even as the Father is perfect—that is to love God.
-
F.
W. Robertson[1]
[1]
Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853) was an English Divine. His father was a
captain in the Royal Artillery, and young Frederick was imbued with the
military spirit at a young age. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and
University. Frederick began his career as a solicitor in Bury St. Edmunds, but
his health suffered from the sedentary work. He really desired a military
career, and was on the list for the 3rd Dragoons in India, but
bowing to his father’s wishes, he entered Oxford instead.
Frederick was
enthusiastically religious; his beliefs ran to moderate Calvinism. In 1840, he
was ordained, and threw himself into evangelical pursuits. He carried
devotional asceticism to an extreme; a year later, he was compelled to seek
relaxation. This he did by traveling to Europe, where he met and married Helen
Denys. Returning to England, he became curate of Cheltenham. But Frederick had
long been harboring doctrinal doubts, and after four years in this city, they
came to a crisis. He left Cheltenham for Europe. In northern Italy he came to a
resolution, basing it on one key point: “The one great certainty to which, in
the midst of the darkest doubt, I never ceased to cling—the entire symmetry and
loveliness and the unequalled nobleness of the humanity of the Son of Man.”
In August 1847 Frederick began his famous ministry at
Trinity Chapel, Brighton. Here he stepped at once into the foremost rank as a
preacher; thousands came to hear his sermons, from every walk of life and from
every shade of religious inclination. His biographer says they found in his
preaching “a living source of impulse, a practical direction of thought, a key
to many of the problems of theology, and above all a path to spiritual
freedom.”
Despite this success, Frederick’s closing years were
sad ones. His sensitive nature was subjected to extreme suffering, rising
mainly from opposition to his enthusiasm for the revolutionary themes circulating
in 1848. He developed a disease of the brain, which brought on at first
lassitude and depression, and finally, excruciating pain. In June 1853 he
preached for the last time, and in August he died. (Source: fwrobertson.com)
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