Letters to His Friends

by Forbes Robinson

APPENDIX

The following letter addressed to the Editor of this volume was received from the Rev. H. Bisseker, chaplain at the Leys School, Cambridge, too late for insertion in an earlier portion of the book:

'Your brother's friendship, as you must have heard so often during the past few months, was valued in Cambridge beyond that of most men, and I am probably only one of many who still look to that friendship as among the prominent facts of their time up here. Though personally I did not learn to know Mr. Robinson when I first came up, his brotherliness so deeply impressed me during the four years for which our friendship lasted, that I still find it difficult to believe that he is no longer to be found in the familiar rooms at Christ's, and has ceased to be a part of our Cambridge life. And yet, in another sense, he has not ceased to be a part of that life; for one feels that during his residence up here he managed, if one may so express it, to put a bit of himself into more than one man, and that in this way he will continue to live among us long after he himself has been removed.

'I have often thought about him and his quiet, strong influence since we heard that we had lost him, and almost invariably the same three of his characteristics assume the uppermost place in my thought. Different sides of his nature would appeal to different men: I can best serve your purpose by mentioning those which made the deepest impression on my own mind.

'One of the chief causes of your brother's influence was unquestionably his sense of the value of the individual. He used to take men one by one and make a separate study of each. The consequence was that he knew his men. On any given visit the acquaintance did not, as it were, have to be begun over again. On the contrary, the acquaintance once formed, some common ground already existed; for so great was your brother's power of sympathy that, where at the first no such common ground appeared to exist, he soon learnt to find a standing-place himself on that assumed by the man he was seeking to know. And not only did Mr. Robinson possess this power of valuing the individual, but he also was able to inspire the objects of his influence with the knowledge of his particular interest in them. Thus they soon dropped the idea of acquaintanceship, and began to think of him as friend, and there you have in a word the secret of his wide influence. He was interested in men, but what he loved was a man.

'Mr. Robinson was no less marked off from the majority of men by the stress which he laid upon the reality and power of prayer. We used from time to time to have long talks together on this subject, so that I can speak with some little knowledge of the place which he assigned it in his life. With characteristic modesty he not infrequently distrusted himself in his active contact with men. His very anxiety to help others towards the ideals by which his own life was dominated led him to see the risk of placing hindrances in their way by an injudicious intrusion into the secret places of their hearts. Drawn in different directions, therefore, by his passionate desire to win men for Christ and his cautious fear lest untimely words of his should hinder rather than help, he found refuge in giving himself up to earnest prayer on their behalf. And prayer to him meant more than a light repetition of words. He used often, I believe, to spend as long as half an hour at a time in seeking blessing for a single man. We cannot doubt that, in the strong influence which he himself exerted upon so many of those who knew him, such persistent prayer received at least a part of its own answer.

'The last element in your brother's individuality which always impressed me was his restrained, but genuine, mysticism. In the few accounts of his life that I have read I do not remember any allusion to this characteristic. That he possessed it, however, and this to no usual degree, seems to my mind quite patent; in fact, it was this suggestion of mysticism that first attracted me to him. The mysticism one sees around one is often so unregulated and so ignorant that it was refreshing to find a mystic who was also an enlightened scholar and thinker. It confirmed the feeling, instinctive in one's heart, that, despite the abuse of caricature, a deep, intelligent apprehension of unseen realities is of the essence of the fulness of religion. Mr. Forbes Robinson appeared to possess an unusually certain cognisance of the unseen world. How well I remember the way in which, again and again, tea over and our pipes lighted, he would curl himself up in one of his or my own big chairs and discuss questions of interest to us both with a far-away look in his eyes altogether suggestive of a genuine otherworldliness! And this familiarity with unseen verities seemed to run through all those parts of his life with which I was acquainted, and indeed to be to him the most real fact of all existence. To use the simple language of olden days, I believe that "he walked with God": and that explains his life.

'These, then, were the three characteristics of your brother which more than any others have impressed themselves upon my mind. I do not think that they were three separate sides of his personality: I should say, rather, that they were three different expressions of one fundamental attribute. It was because he walked so closely with God that he so loved the individual sons of God. It was because he so loved the Great Father and each child of His that he had so strong a faith in the power of prayer and such unwearying patience to persist in it.

'A life like your brother's, if I may say one thing more, forms, I sometimes think, one of the strongest pledges of human immortality. In one sense, it is true, he seems to have done so much; and yet, in another sense, those of us who knew the faculties which he had cultivated, his knowledge and patient scholarship, his sympathy and insight, his tact and passion for men, and, most precious of all, his power with God, were looking for even greater things in years to come. Such fitness for influence as he possessed is not acquired in a day, and just when its worth was being proved he was taken from us. Surely these gifts and graces are not now as if they had never been, or as if, once granted, they had been idly wasted! Can that earnest, patient cultivation really have been gratuitous, and the unselfish instinct that inspired it mistaken? Were it so, the whole universe looks out of joint. The more I consider such lives as that of your brother—lives, I mean, which, bearing promise of so rich a harvest, are yet cut off before the full harvest can possibly have been realised—the more my conviction grows that the passing of such men as he is not death, but only "the birth which we call death."'