The biography of Robertson, prefixed to this volume, will gratify the curiosity which every sympathetic reader of the first series of his sermons must have felt regarding the incidents of his career. It was evident to a close observer that the peculiar charm and power of the preacher came from peculiarities of character and individual experience, as well as from peculiarities of mind. There was something so close and searching in his pathos, so natural in his statements of doctrine, so winning in his appeals,--his simplest words of consolation or rebuke touched with such subtile certainty the feelings they addressed,--and his faith in heavenly things was so clear, deep, intense, and calm,--that the reader could hardly fail to feel that the earnestness of the preacher had its source in the experience of the man, and that his belief in the facts of the spiritual world came from insight, and not from hearsay. His biography confirms this impression. We now learn that he was tried in many ways, and built up a noble character through intense inward struggle with suffering and calamity,--a character sensitive, tender, magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing, though not thoroughly cheerful. The heroism evinced in his life and in his sermons is a sad heroism, a heroism that has on it the trace of tears. Always at work, and dying in harness, the spur of duty made him insensible to the decay of strength and the need of repose. He had no time to be happy. The most striking mental characteristic of his sermons is the originality of his perceptions of religious truth. He takes up the themes and doctrines of the Church, the discussion of which has filled libraries with books of divinity which stand as an almost impregnable wall around the simple facts and teachings of the Scriptures, protecting them from attack by shutting them from sight, and in a few brief and direct statements cuts into the substance and heart of the subjects. This felicity comes partly from his being a man gifted with spiritual discernment as well as spiritual feeling, and partly from the instinct of his nature to look at doctrines in their connection with life. He excels equally in interpreting the truth which may be hidden in a dogma, and in overturning dogmas in which no truth is to be found. In a single sermon, he often tells us more of the essentials of a subject, and exhibits more clearly the religious significance of a doctrine, than other writers have done in labored volumes of exposition and controversy. This power of simplifying spiritual truth without parting with any of its depth accounts for the interest with which his sermons are read by persons of all degrees of age and culture. His method of arrangement is also admirable; his thoughts are not only separately excellent, but are all in their right places, so that each is an efficient agent in deepening the general impression left by the whole. The singular refinement and beauty of his mind lend a peculiar charm to its