y manliness and fidelity, by which St. Paul symbolizes
the warfare of life, and the armor of those who would come off
conquerors, is literally and gloriously realized in Mr. Robertson's
course and in himself. He was a soldier of the sublimest type,--a bold,
earnest, self-denying, effective, and high-souled battler of the worst
foes of man, and the gentle, kindly, loving defender of the weak, the
unfriended, the wronged. He his wishes which left him free to fight the
enemies of truth and righteousness.

During his student-life at Oxford his mind seemed to have been held in a
balance by his affections between those who had committed themselves
respectively to the Tractarian and the Evangelical parties. The solution
which he was to work out for himself of any real perplexities involved
in the issue between them was to lead him clear of both of them. His own
devoutness and sincerity, aided no doubt by the domestic and social
influences of his early religious training, set him forward, in the
first experimentings as a curate, as an earnest disciple of the
"evangelical" fellowship. He made a faithful trial of its principles and
methods. His reading and his self-training, his standard of fidelity,
and the tone and style of his ministerial work, were all dictated by the
teaching of that school. He outgrew it, and cast aside all that belonged
to it: he came utterly to detest and loathe its characteristic
peculiarities. Ever remaining heartily loyal, as he believed, in
essential doctrinal conviction, and in practical conformity, to the
Church of England, he allowed himself a range of liberty within the
terms of its formulas, which left him, as he felt, not only unfettered,
but also quickened by the inspiration of a freedom restrained by no
other bounds than those of humility and reverence. His power of
apprehension, his skill in analysis, his keen sagacity and penetration
in detecting the kernel of truth through all husks and integuments, made
him the most facile of critics, as well as one of the most trustworthy
interpreters of conflicting theories. His magnanimity and catholicity of
spirit gave him an almost preternatural comprehensiveness of sympathy
with minds and consciences struggling in opposite directions for
satisfaction. He engaged himself upon all the freshest problems which
the critical, scientific, and radical restlessness of our age has
opened. We believe that professional experts, and even the foremost
pioneers in