The Henson Journals

[599]

Tuesday, January 18th, 1916.

533rd day

I received the books from the London Library: & proceeded to read them. Arnold's book ('Robertson of Brighton, with some notes of his times & contemporaries') is tiresomely discursive & egotistic, but it is useful as correcting the rather too idolatrous volumes of Mr Stopforde [Stopford] Brooke. An observation of Henry Crabb Robinson entered in his Diary under the date Oct. 23rd 1846, when he first met Robertson at Heidelberg, sums up the great preacher's attitude very justly:–

"He is liberal in his opinions: & though he is alarmed by the Puseyites, he seems to dislike the Evangelicals much more."

But Robertson was always conscious of a certain instability in his opinions. 'He once said to a friend, who reported to me the incident', says Mr Arnold, "These are my present ideas: I am not quite sure what they will be next year".' He must have been a strange, volcanic creature, full of surprises for his friends. "His very calm was a hurricane" said Lady Byron who knew him well. César Malan's prophetical speech was abundantly justified, "Mon très cher frère, vous aurez une triste vie et un triste ministère". [My very dear friend, you would have a sad life and a sad ministry.] But the speaker was accustomed to take a sombre view of the Christian minister's lot. He told Arnold 'that within his experience very few ministers were happy men'. I can affirm the truth of this for one. There is a very acute & illuminating comment on Robertson's catholicity in a letter of Campbell of Row. (v. Memorials. ii. p.109), whose sympathy with the English divine was not unmixed with a certain suspicion of his tendency. It is extremely difficult in 1915 to understand the tremendous hold on devout & independent minds which the doctrine of the Atonement possessed.

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