(First Notice.)
To those who are not familiar with the name of Frederick William Robertson, we may state that he was the clergyman of Trinity Chapel, Brighton; for the last six years of a short life (1847-1853) he addressed one of the most aristocratic and cultivated provincial congregations in England. His eloquence, poetry, scholarship, and originality, combined with a fearless earnestness, exalted catholicity, and unswerving fidelity to his principles, won him the reverence and sympathy of all classes. It has been well said, by a leading Church of England organ, on the occasion of reviewing his published volumes of Sermons, that " had the Church of England produced no other fruit in the present century, this work alone would be amply sufficient to acquit her of barrenness." His views, which are popularly denominated by the word "Broad," were identified with those of Kingsley, Maurice, and Stanley, with whom he was on terms of the most affectionate friendship. It was, however, since his death, when his volumes of sermons and addresses were published, that the value of his labours began to be appreciated by those thinking, earnest minds outside his immediate circle.
The appearance of the first edition of this book, twenty-five years ago, marks an epoch in the intellectual and religious life of thousands of men, in England and Scotland more especially of the most active and intelligent among the class which, for want of a better term, are called "working men." It was a turning point in their history. The book—or, rather, the opinions and sentiments enunciated therein—came to them as a new and blessed revelation, and the effect was a lasting one. No other writer or speaker whom we can remember has ever so thoroughly won the sympathies and excited such fervent and enduring love and regard among large numbers of hard-headed, deep-thinking, self-reliant, but half-educated men, as this Brighton clergyman did in 1853, and the two or three years immediately following. It was a time of great mental activity among the lower classes in the old country; the close of a long period of excitement, during which no questions— religious, social, or political—were deemed too sacred or too well established to be accepted on trust, by hundreds and thousands of men who, having just begun to think for themselves, were determined to think out their thought, whatever might be the consequences.
The commencement of this particular period of mental activity among the lower section of the middle class, and the upper section of the artizan and labouring class, may be very fairly and accurately dated from the passing of the first Reform Bill in 1832. The assistance of these classes had been asked by the classes above them, to help on the tremendous agitation which preceded the passing of that measure—and it was most cordially and zealously given, on the tacit, if not on the express, understanding, that, the Reform Bill of 1832 was to be but the preliminary effort at a radical and thorough redistribution of political power, so far, at least, as the right to vote for members of Parliament was concerned. That measure transferred the preponderance of voting power from the great landed interest and the aristocracy to the middle class. This was more particularly the case in the cities and boroughs, and the re-adjustment of the representation more in accordance with population at the same time that the franchises was lowered, completed the triumph of the middle class. As might have been foreseen from the first, however, no sooner had this class obtained the victory by the passing of the Bill in question, than they not only repudiated their promised assistance to obtain a similar political recognition of the classes below them, but very plainly intimated that any further extension of the franchise would be dangerous.
It was urged that the democratic element had been extended to the utmost limit, consistent with the safety and stability of our most cherished political institutions ; that all classes below the ten pound householder in boroughs were too ignorant and vicious to be trusted with votes; and that the Reform Bill, which had now become law had made the British Constitution about as nearly perfect as it was possible for a merely human institution to be. This was said, and written, and printed in ten thousand different directions, with more or less plainness, and it gave rise to that bitter feud between the middle and working classes, which has not yet healed, although its origin is forgotten, and the causes which united it are now all removed. Then commenced an agitation among the lower classes for an extension of political rights to them. This was soon concentrated and formulated into a petition, which was called a "charter" by some fervid orator in a moment of inspiration, and the designation was caught up and adopted everywhere as the distinctive name of the demand for political rights and privileges set forth in the five clauses which were afterwards called the "five points" of the charter. Many causes, which it is not our intention to notice here assisted to intensify and embitter the chartist agitation. Ministers of religion of all denominations, with a very few and unimportant exceptions, denounced, sneered at or ignored this demand of the Chartists. But the people were deeply and strongly roused, and instead of cooling down under the rebukes and scorn of those who had heretofore been their spiritual guides, they merely suspected their spiritual guides. The enthusiastic young Chartist—small shopkeeper, artizan, mechanic, or factory operative mostly—who had begun to think for himself on political subjects, and had found overwhelming evidence of his natural and inherent right to have a voice in the making of the laws by which he was governed, and for a breach of which he was subject to pains and penalties—when he found the ministers of religion all arrayed against him, and denying that he had any such rights began to question the claims to his consideration and respect of any minister of the Gospel. The man who was sleek and well-to-do himself and who was in league with the rich to deny him his political rights, might not be a safe guide either in the matter of religion. From examining with more or less deep and bitter suspicion the claims the minister of religion had to his consideration and respect, to examining the claims to his credibility of the doctrine taught by the minister was a very short and almost inevitable process. The spirit of free enquiry was abroad, the Chartist was fired with zeal at the progress he had made, and the hopes and aspirations which had been aroused within him, he had no intellectual guides whom he could trust, except his fellow workmen who were united with him in solemn league to win their political rights—why should his free enquiry stop at political questions? As a matter of fact it did not. Wages were low, work was often scarce for long periods at a stretch, books—such books as he wanted to read—were scarce and expensive, but by clubbing together he and his immediate friends and acquaintances could purchase a volume every month or two which could be passed round and read in turn, and this was done. The books were read earnestly and thoroughly, through and through, until every argument was mastered and digested. Hume, Toland, Paine, English translations of the Philosophical Dictionary, Volney, Rousseau, Strauss, and a host of other authors, more or less under the ban of the Churches were the first books secured. Nor was the other side neglected. Butler's Analogy, Paley's Natural Theology, and works of that class were read with the same zeal and earnestness, for with nineteen out of every twenty of these young men the matter was regarded as of greater moment even than that of political enfranchisement. Reading clubs, mutual improvement societies, and similar organisations were supplemented to the local committee meetings of the Chartist movement, and although the tax on newspapers still existed and prosecutions for sedition and blasphemy were not at all rare, in addition to prosecutions for evading the newspaper stamp duty, cheap unstamped newspapers were printed and circulated by hundreds and thousands, and these too found their best supporters and most careful readers among the organisations above referred to. The ministers of religion were kept tolerably well informed of all these proceedings, and every young fellow who belonged to any such organisation was boldly and openly denounced as an infidel, and set up as a mark for petty persecution. It will never be known—there is no need for it to be known—how much cruel wrong was suffered by many of these young men through this cause. Families were separated which never again were united, friendships were broken, the victims had in many instances to migrate to a neighbourhood to obtain the means of living as employers or customers, as the case might be, were afraid or indisposed to countenance men labouring under such a horrible imputation as that of being infidels. But the suffering was cheerfully borne by the majority from the assurance in their own minds that they had only exercised an honest and conscientious criticism, and had honestly and conscientiously stated the conclusions to which they were obliged to come. It was a terrible time with many, thirty or thirty-five years ago. Robert Owen's social experiments at New Lanark were in everybody's mouth, and "Socialist" societies were being formed in all the manufacturing towns to assist in establishing Owen's pet theory of "A new moral world." Most of the Chartists, who had drifted farthest away from the Churches, became members of these societies. The ministers of religion fulminated still more fiercely against the Socialists than against the Chartists, but the only visible effect was a deeper dislike and distrust of the ministers of religion by those against whom their denunciations were directed.
As years went on, however, the Socialists themselves came to be grouped under two tolerably distinct classes. These were the careless, the reckless, or the unreflective, who had dropped down to practical atheism and more or less looseness of life—and the earnest, thoughtful, conscientious seekers after truth wherever it might be found, possessing a deep regard, amounting to reverence, for all that commended itself to their reason and judgment. whether it was found to the Bible, in Plato, the Koran, or any other book attainable —men whom phrenologists would most likely declare to have a large development of veneration, conscientiousness, ideality, and the reflective faculties. They had broken away from all religious associations, and were regarded by all conventionally religious people as utterly lost, reprobate scoffers and Atheists, who from mere perversity, and a desire to revel in vice and immorality, had broken away from all restraint and professed to doubt everything sacred, in order to have some excuse for their licentiousness. These men—and there were thousands of them in the old country twenty-five years ago—were in a very uncomfortable condition. The only safe ground, the only sure footing they could find was to hold fast to moral principle and live pure and blameless lives as far as this was possible—taking the consequences in a future state of existence. It was just at this time that the first edition of the Rev. F. W. Robertson's book appeared.
*" Lectures. Addresses, and other Literary Remains." By the late Rev. Frederick W. Robertson, M.A., of Brighton. A new edition. Henry S. King and Co., London,-1876; [Watson, Ferguson.and Co., Queen street, Brisbane].
Week (Brisbane, Qld. ), 1876, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article184998714
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