The Henson Journals

[589]

Saturday, January 15th, 1916.

530th day

I wrote to Dicey and the Master of Trinity asking them whether their recollections could throw any light on the question, Whether Robertson in his life–time achieved any general fame as a preacher. I also wrote to a Welsh Calvinistic minister, who had addressed me 'more in sorrow than in anger' on the Temperance question. Also, at Fedarb's instigation, I wrote to Col: Lloyd Williams, who has been invalided home with pneumonia. The War still goes against us. Montenegro has now fallen before the Austrians, & the Turks have invaded Persia. Lord Chelmsford's appointment as Viceroy of India is announced in the papers. It is great preferment, but thoroughly well–deserved by hard and efficient work.

[591]

Mark Pattison's account of his own religious development had a general resemblance to that of Fredk Robertson, though in temperament & habit the two men were wide as the poles asunder:–

"I seemed to my friends to have changed, to have gone over from High Anglicanism to Latitudinarianism, or Rationalism, or Unbelief, or whatever the term may be. This is not so: what took place with me was simple expansion of knowledge and ideas. To my home Puritan religion, almost narrowed to two points – fear of God's wrath and faith in the doctrine of the atonement – the idea of the church was a widening of the horizon wh. stirred up the spirit and filled it with enthusiasm. The notion of the church soon expanded itself beyond the limits of the Anglican communion and become the wider idea of the Catholic church. Then Anglicanism fell off from me, like an old garment, as Puritanism had done before.

Now the idea of the Catholic Church is only a mode of conceiving the dealings of divine Providence with the whole race of mankind. Reflection on the history and condition of humanity, taken as a whole, gradually convinced me that this theory of the relation of all living beings to the Supreme Being was too narrow and inadequate. It makes an equal Providence, the Father of all, care only for a mere handful of the species, leaving the rest (such is the theory) to the chances of eternal misery. If God interferes at all to procure the happiness of mankind, it must be on a far more comprehensive scale than by providing for them a church of which far the majority of them will never hear. It was on this line of thought…that I passed out of the Catholic phase, but slowly, and in many years, to that highest development when all religions appear [593] in their historical light, as efforts of the human spirit to come to an understanding with that Unseen Power whose pressure it feels, but whose motives are a riddle. Thus Catholicism dropped off me as another husk wh. I had outgrown. There was no conversion or change of view: I could no more have helped what took place within me than I could have helped becoming ten years older." (v. Memoirs 326f.)

If Robertson had lived, what position would he have finally reached? His ardent devotion to the Person of Jesus would, perhaps, have saved him from the chill agnosticism into which Mark Pattison had passed. His combative temperament would certainly have swept him into the controversies occasioned by 'Essays & Reviews': and he might easily have been forced out of the Establishment in that epoch of persecution. He would not have sympathized with the 'Ritualist' development of Tractarianism, and the conflicts which culminated in the declaration of Infallibility would have stirred him deeply. I suspect that he would have supported Irish Disestablishment. My speculation as to the obscurity in which the famous preacher lived is, perhaps, settled by the quotation from the "Saturday Review" appended to the vol: of 'Sermons – First Series':–

"When Mr Robertson died, his name was scarcely known beyond the circle of his own private friends, & of those among whom he had laboured in his calling. Now, every word he wrote is eagerly sought for, and affectionately treasured up, & meets with the most reverent & admiring welcome from men of all parties and all shades of opinion."

Is there a parallel in the history of great preachers to this obscurity in life, and this wide & persistent reputation after death?

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