Frederick William Robertson Quotes & Sayings

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

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 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

Marriage is not a union merely between two creatures - it is a union between two spirits; and the intention of that bond is to perfect the nature of both. — Frederick William Robertson

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

The man whom society will not forgive nor restore is driven into recklessness. — Frederick William Robertson

No one can be great, or good, or happy except through the inward efforts of themselves. — Frederick William Robertson

Love is not a union merely between two creatures, it is a union between two spirits. — 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

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

Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of a love as strong, as rejoicing in a present one. — 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 Robertson

The true aim of everyone who aspires to be a teacher should be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle minds. — Frederick William Robertson

This is the true liberty of Christ, when a free man binds himself in love to duty. Not in shrinking from our distasteful occupations, but in fulfilling them, do we realize our high origin. — Frederick William Robertson

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

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

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

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 Robertson

On earth we have nothing to do with success or results, but only with being true to God, and for God. Defeat in doing right is nevertheless victory. — 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

The charm of the words of great men, those grand sayings which are recognized as true as soon as heard, is this, that you recognize them as wisdom which has passed across your own mind. You feel that they are your own thoughts come back to you ... — Frederick William Robertson

Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ, that, and only that, you are. — 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

Men ... are bettered and improved by trial, and refined out of broken hopes and blighted expectations. — Frederick William Robertson

Religious controversy does only harm. It destroys humble inquiry after truth, and throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right-a spirit in which no man gets at truth. — Frederick William Robertson

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

Truth is given, not to be contemplated, but to be done. Life is an action, not a thought. — Frederick William Robertson

Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. — Frederick William Robertson

Humility is that simple, inner life of real greatness, which is indifferent to magnificence, and, surrounded by it all, lives far away in the distant country of a Father's home, with the cross borne silently and self-sacrificingly in the heart of hearts. — Frederick William Robertson

What we mean by sentimentalism is that state in which a man speaks deep and true sentiments not because he feels them strongly, but because he perceives that they are beautiful, and that it is touching and fine to say them,-things which he fain would feel, and fancies that he does feel. — Frederick William Robertson

Two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet - a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call divine. — Frederick William Robertson

There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize. — Frederick William Robertson

A happy home is the single spot of rest which a man has upon this earth for the cultivation of his noblest sensibilities. — Frederick William Robertson

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. — 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

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

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

Sow the seeds of life - humbleness, pure-heartedness, love; and in the long eternity which lies before the soul, every minutest grain will come up again with an increase of thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold. — 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

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

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

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

Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth doing. — Frederick William Robertson

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. — Frederick William Robertson

The humblest occupation has in it materials of discipline for the highest heaven. — 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

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 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

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

We are too much haunted by ourselves, projecting the central shadow of self on everything around us. And then comes the Gospel to rescue us from this selfishness. Redemption is this, to forget self in God. — Frederick William Robertson

The question is, whether, like the Divine Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming wise to God. — Frederick William Robertson

Life, like war, is a series of mistakes,he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes: organize victory out of mistakes. — Frederick William Robertson

In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain. — Frederick William Robertson

It is not the situation that makes the man, but the man who makes the situation. — Frederick William Robertson

You reap what you sow - not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred fold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting. — Frederick William Robertson

Women and God are the two rocks on which a man must either anchor or be wrecked. — Frederick William Robertson

False notions of liberty are strangely common. People talk of it as if it meant the liberty of doing whatever one likes - whereas the only liberty that a man, worthy of the name of man, ought to ask for, is, to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed that prevent his doing what he ought. — Frederick William Robertson

Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated. — Frederick William Robertson

It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that insures your growth. — 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

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

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

Pray till prayer makes you forget your own wish, and leave it or merge it in God's will. — Frederick William Robertson

Simpler manners, purer lives; more self-denial; more earnest sympathy with the classes that lie below us, nothing short of that can lay the foundations of the Christianity which is to be hereafter, deep and broad. — Frederick William Robertson

I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them with a deep, living, godlike hatred. — Frederick William Robertson

The only revenge which is essentially Christian is that of retaliating by forgiveness. — Frederick William Robertson

To grieve over sin is one thing, to repent is another. — Frederick William Robertson

A life of prayer is a life whose litanies are ever fresh acts of self-devoting love. — 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

However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do. — Frederick William Robertson

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 Robertson

The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly. — 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

There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny. — Frederick William Robertson

God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness. — Frederick William Robertson

Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. Christ in you is "the hope of glory." It is the eagle eye of faith which penetrates the grave, and sees far into the tranquil things of death. He alone can believe in immortality who feels the resurrection in him already. — Frederick William Robertson

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

Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affliction or grief has humanized the soul. — Frederick William Robertson

To turn water into wine, and what is common into what is holy, is indeed the glory of Christianity. — Frederick William Robertson

Kindly words, sympathizing attentions, watchfulness against wounding men's sensitiveness-these cost very little, but they are priceless in their value. — Frederick William Robertson

Do you want to learn holiness with terrible struggles and sore affliction and the plague of much remaining evil? Then wait before you turn to God. — 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

The Christian life is not knowing or hearing, but doing. — 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

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

Time and pains will do anything. — Frederick William Robertson

No man ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great mistakes. — Frederick William Robertson

The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones. — 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 Robertson

Christ within us, the hope of glory. — 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

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

There is an inward state of the heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart; purity is credible to a pure mind; life is credible to a spirit in which life beats strongly it is incredible to other men. — Frederick William Robertson

If you think that you can sin, and then by cries avert the consequences of sin, you insult God's character. — Frederick William Robertson

To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. — Frederick William Robertson

There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own. — Frederick William Robertson

Child of God, if you would have your thought of God something beyond a cold feeling of His presence, let faith appropriate Christ. — Frederick William Robertson

Only what coronation is in an earthly way, baptism is in a heavenly way; God's authoritative declaration in material form of a spiritual reality. — Frederick William Robertson

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. — Frederick William Robertson

What we are, and where we are, is God's providential arrangement ... and the manly and wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made of them. — Frederick William Robertson