Born in 1816 in London, Robertson grows up with father and grandfather in Army careers. His family are faithful Church participants. Yet, Robertson's health keeps him out of his father's career and impells him to take up a career with the heavenly Father.. Frederick Robertson is a 19th Century English Biblical preacher who summingly rejects the infallibility of the Bible. His rejection of Biblical fundamentalism draws on examples from Leviticus 21:16-23 and Judges 8:30, where he points out in these two instances (and others) infuse Scriptural conflict with Jesus' teaching. Using Jesus as prime template, Robertson seeks to clarify, through writing and preaching, the heavenly Father's Authority through Christ in our lives, inspiration through the Holy Spirit, and Christian fidelity in marriage within Christ's love for His Church.
Robertson reminds us that our Lord said, "I do not seek to destroy but to fulfill" Matthew 5:7. And within Jesus' fulfillment is New Life in our surrendering our lives to Jesus and becoming His disciples. Robertson probed the Scriptures for connecting elements of the New Covenant underlying what Jesus teaches us.
Biographer, James Blackwood, poignantly wrote this about F.W. Robertson of Brighton:
Teaching the Bible was the core of Robertson's entire ministry... He read, marked and inwardly
digested the Holy Scriptures... No small part of Robertson's power lay aim the source of his
preaching. Authority!! He loved to realize the past, to bring it before his eyes, and to make
it as distinct and read as if he had lived in it; to know David or Paul as a friend; to identify
himself with the people of the Bible, thought with thought, sense with sense, until he knew
the inner windings of the characters. Robertson's teaching were saturated with the Bible.
Robertson, such a Christian!! Do not our hearts resound with such a person as this Robertson?!? Yet this is within each of our reach also. To know the Authority of the Word, Jesus Christ, as our source of strength, through Scriptural immersion, we may then move with Spirit sensitive awareness impacting everyday experiences and relationships.
As Leander Keck of Yale Seminary reminds us, the forces which seek to exercise command over us yield to the Authority of Christ, these motivational realities of what we say and do. To be an authority figure at home, work, and within marriage is to know and live motivated by the Holy Authority of Christ whom we know through Scripture, directly effecting ones experiences. Our lives and this world are our context through which we make moral choices grounded in our Christian faithfulness.
Faithful discipleship was found during Robertson's pulpit term, Riots broke out the major cities nearby. The Chartists were threatening England with an overthrow of government. The English pulpits were especially aware of political and social effects on the working poor. Robertson helped to establish a workingmen's center in Brighton, identifying more with the workers that with the elite of society. He taught and cared for those we deem the last, least, and lost. He reminded them Jesus speaks to their conditions. Consequently, some said, Robertson was 'logic on fire'!! Scholarship and Imagination fueled by Christ !!
F.W. Robertson was a bright candle whose wick was shortened, dying young of a brain tumor at 37. His wife and family wanted a small funeral at his Church yet Brighton-Town would have none of that--- peoples of all denominations, the Societies, those of the workingmen's center (more than 1500 burly men) marched and wept unashamedly out in the streets at their loss of this man who lead them in faith's Holy Authority. And on Robertson's tombstone reading:: He awakened the holiest feelings in the poor and in the rich, in the ignorant and in the learned."
The Anglican Church was the spiritual home of Robertson, but Brighton-Town By The Sea took in the whole of Robertson because He lived and shared the holiness of Jesus... and all because of his continual immersion of himself in the Scriptures and as result it's outward overflow into the lives of a Town touched by the Lord's Holiness, Grace, and Authority.
