574 EZEKIEL OILMAN ROBINSON. 



His sermons in general were characterized by comprehensiveness of 

 thought, by keenness of analysis, by sharp discrimination in definition, 

 by clear, forceful, and elegant diction, by honesty and earnestness of 

 purpose, and on occasion by tremendous power of appeal. One other 

 characteristic of his preaching, which is worthy of special mention, 

 was what might be called his intellectual honesty. His moral honesty 

 was shown, as, shunning all hypocrisy, he preached level with his 

 convictions. His intellectual honesty he illustrated, as, guarding 

 against prejudice, he preached level with his thinking. He thought 

 as earnestly and as far as he could, and very few thought further ; 

 but where his thinking stopped, there his sermon stopped also. He 

 did not urge upon the minds of his hearers what had failed to gain the 

 assent of his own thinking mind. He knew but in part, ;ind he was 

 honest enough to prophesy but in part. 



In accepting the chair at Rochester in the spring of 1853, Mr. 

 Robinson exchanged the work of the pastor for that of the tlieological 

 instructor, for which he was admirably fitted, and in which he was 

 pre-eminently successful. As a theologian he was pre-eminently an 

 investigator rather than a systematizer, or, to use his own word, a 

 " systemizer." He believed that investigation must be carried to 

 great lengths before the work of systemization can be satisfactorily 

 performed. He was too logical to be unsystematic ; but his critical 

 faculty was always hindering and interfering with the work of con- 

 struction. If, thi'ough his lack of complete system, and by reason of 

 his dominant tendency to emphasize one phase of truth at a time, he 

 sometimes laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency, he at least 

 escaped some of the faults of the systemizers. If his mind was too 

 critical hastily to construct a system, it was too honest to falsify facts 

 or to minify truths. 



Dr. Robinson believed in and taught a rational theology. He cared 

 nothing for words except as they gave expression to reality. He was 

 constantly looking through the formula to the fact, and discarding tra- 

 dition for truth. He revered historic creeds, as statements of belief 

 which have been formed after profound experience, and which signal- 

 ize the victories and the progress of Christian truth ; but he scouted 

 the idea that any divine fact or truth can be exhaustively measured by 

 finite minds, or that there has been or ever can be an ultimate dogma 

 in theology. The Scriptures, as an organic whole, he considered as 

 authoritative ; but he reacted from that method of using particular 

 proof texts which prevents men from seeing the forest for the trees. 

 Discarding the rule that reason may guide us in examining the evi- 



