The sermons of Frederick William Robertson show traces everywhere of the process by which he passed from the limitations of his youth into the large liberty of his spiritual manhood. Most men grow by inward struggles, by revolt against some earlier training, by what we call reaction. If we compare the sermons of different periods of his life, the earliest do not suffer by the comparison, nor do they differ in any essential feature. From the first his peculiar way of apprehending truth and presenting it was mature and complete, as if he had gone forth from the schools equipped with his full armor.
He was as great a preacher, receiving the same tribute of recognition, while still a young man, under thirty, as at any later time. He stepped at once into his heritage of power and renown. IN the life of Phillips Brooks there appears no trace of an inward revolution by which he attained his spiritual development.
