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 THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 EDITED Bi" 
 
 M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE
 
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 eJloaeon Sta?eet
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
 MDCCCXCIX
 
 Dedicatedj by permission^ 
 
 to the 
 
 Bight Reverend 
 
 WILLIAM NEILSOX McYICKAR, D.D., 
 
 Bishoj)- Coadjutor of Bhode Island.
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 Li preparing this volume the ivriter has 
 been struclc by the fact that as yet there 
 is ve7y little written about Phillips Brooks 
 excepting by 7nenibers of his profession, 
 Fossibly, this gives a layman the better 
 reason for ventin^ing to touch the subject in 
 his oton ivay. He has not touched it, in 
 this instance, icith any hope or wish of 
 doing what a clergyman might do with it. 
 If there is too little of theology, he trusts 
 there is not correspondingly too much of the 
 personal Phillips Brooks, Indeed, he does 
 not believe this to be possible, and would be 
 better content if he could feel that the man of 
 ivhom he has written had been more clearly 
 and completely pictured in the narrative. 
 
 Although the author has not written 
 clerically, he wishes to express his prese7it 
 obligations to those tvho could not well tvrite 
 otherxoise. Many sermons and essays from 
 clerical petis have provided information, 
 which has been gratefully used. In particu-
 
 X PKEFACE 
 
 Jar the privately printed ^^ Reminiscences''^ 
 of tlie Rev. C. A. L. Richards and tlw Rev. 
 G. A. Strouff, from which many citation.s 
 are made, have thrown a clear personal light 
 up(/n their subject. For the direct aid of a 
 friend's good advice the Rev. W. D. Rob- 
 erts, assistant at Trinity Church, Boston, 
 during the last four years of the rectorship 
 of Phillips BrooJcs, must be wannly thanked. 
 Finally, and chiefly, the author would 
 record his special indebtedness to the Rev. 
 Prof. A. V. G. Alien, of Cambridge, tvho 
 of his time now largely devoted to com- 
 pleting the authoritative ^^ Life and Letters 
 of Phillips Brooks ^^ has given generously 
 to read the proof of this volume, and thus to 
 free it from errors which could not other- 
 wise have been avoided. 
 
 Boston, March, 1899.
 
 CHEONOLOGY. 
 
 1835 
 December 15. Phillips Brooks was born 
 at 56 High St., Boston. 
 
 1839 ' 
 
 His family left the First Church, Chauncy 
 Place, and became members of St. Paul's 
 Church, Dr. J. S. Stone, rector. 
 
 1842-46 
 Attended Adams School, Boston. 
 
 1846-51 
 Attended Boston Latin School. 
 
 1851 
 Entered Harvard College. 
 
 1855 
 Graduated at Harvard College. 
 
 1855-56 
 Taught at Boston Latin School. 
 
 1856 
 Entered Alexandria (Ya.) Theological 
 Seminary. 
 
 1859 
 Graduated at Alexandria.
 
 xii CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1859 {continued) 
 July 1. Ordained deacon. 
 Became rector of the Church of the 
 Advent, Philadelphia. 
 
 1860 
 May 27. Ordained priest. 
 
 1862 
 Became rector of the Church of the Holy- 
 Trinity, Philadelphia. 
 Death of his brother George. 
 
 1863 
 Noveniber 26. Delivered The Mercies of 
 Jleoccupatlon : A Tliaiiksglving Sermon. 
 Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia. 
 
 1865 
 April 23. Delivered The Life and Death 
 of Abraham Lincoln: Sermon at Holy 
 Trinity Church, Philadelphia. 
 July 21. Made the prayer at Harvard 
 Commemoration Service. 
 August. Set out on first journey abroad. 
 
 1866 
 September. Returned from journey, hav- 
 ing visited Great Britain, Germany,
 
 CHEONOLOGY xiil 
 
 Austria, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, 
 Italy, Greece, France, and Switzerland. 
 
 1869 
 November 7. Became rector of Trinity 
 Church, Boston. 
 
 1870 
 June-September. Visited the Tyrol and 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Elected overseer of Harvard College. 
 October 6. Made the prayer at laying 
 of corner-stone of Memorial Hall, Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 1872 
 June-SepteTiiber. Visited Norway, Swe- 
 den, Finland, Eussia, and Germany. 
 November 10. Old Trinity Church, Bos- 
 ton, destroyed by fire. 
 
 1873 
 Present Trinity Church, Boston, begun. 
 
 1874 
 Spent the summer in Europe. 
 Death of his brother Frederick. 
 
 1876 
 Ee-elected overseer of Harvard College.
 
 xiv CHRONOLOGY 
 
 1877 
 February 11. Historical sermon, dedi- 
 cation of Trinity Church, Boston. 
 Delivered and published Lectures on 
 Preaching, 
 
 Eeceived Degree of S.T.D., Harvard 
 College. 
 Summer in Europe. 
 
 1878 
 Published SemioTis. 
 
 1879 
 Delivered and Published The Influence 
 of J&ius (Bohlen Lectures). 
 Death of his father. 
 
 1880 
 Spent the summer in Great Britain and 
 France. 
 Death of his mother. 
 
 1882 
 Invited to Plummer Professorship, Har- 
 vard College. 
 
 Published The Candle of the Lardy and 
 Other Sermons. 
 June. Set out on journey to England,
 
 CHEONOLOGY xv 
 
 France, Italy, Germany, Austria, India, 
 and Spain. 
 
 1883 
 Elected to third term as overseer of Har- 
 vard College. 
 
 September, Eeturned from foreign travel. 
 Published Sermons preached in English 
 Churches. 
 
 1885 
 April 23. Delivered Address at celebra- 
 tion of two hundred and fiftieth anniver- 
 sary of the foundation of the Public Latin 
 School, Boston. 
 
 May-September. Travelled in England, 
 Germany, Italy, and France. 
 
 1886 
 Elected assistant bishop of Pennsyl- 
 vania. Declined. 
 
 May- June. Made a journey to California, 
 Yosemite, and Vancouver's Island. 
 Became one of the Board of University 
 Preachers, Harvard College, holding the 
 post till 1891. 
 November. Delivered the sermon at the
 
 xvi CHRONOLOGY 
 
 two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
 the foundation of Harvard College. 
 December 15. Delivered Address at two 
 hundredth commemoration of the foun- 
 dation of King's Chapel, Boston. 
 
 1887 
 Published Twenty Sennons (Fourth 
 Series). 
 
 Delivered and published Tolerance (two 
 lectures addressed to the students of sev- 
 eral of the Divinity Schools of the Prot- 
 estant Episcopal CI lurch). 
 Spent the summer in England, and at- 
 tended the Queen's Jubilee. 
 
 1889 
 June-Septeinher. Made a journey to 
 Japan. 
 
 1890 
 Delivered Noonday Lenten lectures to 
 business men in Trinity Churcli, New 
 York. 
 
 Spent the summer in Switzerland and 
 England.
 
 CHRONOLOGY xvii 
 
 1890 (^continued) 
 Published The Light of the World^ and 
 Other Sermo7is. 
 
 1891 
 April 30. Elected bishop of Massachu- 
 setts. 
 
 October 14. Consecrated bishoj) of Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 1892 
 Delivered Noonday Lenten lectures to 
 business men in St. Paul's Church, 
 Boston. 
 
 June-September. Made a journey to Eng- 
 land, France, Tyrol, and Switzerland. 
 December 21. Delivered address at annual 
 celebration of the New England Society, 
 Brooklyn, N.Y. 
 
 1893 
 January 23. Phillips Brooks died. 
 Sermons (Sixth Series), published. 
 
 1894 
 Letters of Travel, published. 
 
 1895 
 Sermons for the Principal Festivals and
 
 xviii CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Fasts of the Church Year (Seventh 
 
 Series), published. 
 
 Death of his brother Arthur. 
 
 1896 
 Neto Starts in Life, and Other Sermons 
 (Eighth Series), published. 
 
 1899 
 Phillips Brooks House, Harvard College, 
 completed.
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 I. 
 
 The man whose life is the theme of 
 this small volume had opinions of his 
 own about the reading and the writing 
 of biographies. An address to the boys 
 of Phillips Academy, Exeter, delivered 
 in 1886, showed beyond question that 
 the whole subject of biography was fa- 
 miliar and dear to him. On this occa- 
 sion he used a few words which cannot 
 be ignored by any one who would at- 
 tempt to describe his life. '^I think," 
 he said, ^ ' that the reading of many biog- 
 raphies ought to be begun in the middle. 
 It seems a disorderly suggestion, but it 
 has reason in it. It is the way in which 
 you come to know a man. You touch 
 his life at some point in its course : you 
 find it full of attractive activity ; you 
 grow interested in what he is doing. So 
 you grow interested in him ; and then, 
 not till then, you care to know how he
 
 2 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 came to be what you find liim, — what his 
 training was, what his youth was, who 
 his parents were, perhaps who his an- 
 cestors were, and who was the first man 
 of his name who came over to America, 
 and where that progenitor's other de- 
 scendants have settled. The same is 
 true, I think, of a biography. Indeed, 
 I have often wondered whether a biog- 
 raphy might not be written in that way. 
 . . . Probably biographers will not so 
 write for us ; but we may sometimes 
 read thus the biographies which they 
 have written in the dull order of chro- 
 nology, and find them full of livelier 
 and deeper interest." 
 
 If within the limits of the present 
 writing it is not possible to act upon 
 the whole suggestion of this passage, at 
 least we need not utterly disregard it. 
 Let us, then, look at two events of the 
 year 1865. 
 
 When the news of the fall of Rich- 
 mond reached Philadelphia, a meeting
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 3 
 
 for public rejoicing was immediately 
 held in front of the building from 
 which, eighty- nine years before, the 
 Declaration of Independence had been 
 given forth. To offer up thanksgiving 
 for the ending of the Civil War, a man 
 not yet thirty years of age, slender, ex- 
 traordinarily tall, and of a countenance 
 the more beautiful for its great earnest- 
 ness, stood up, with his eyes toward the 
 sky, and thanked God from the very 
 heart of the whole assemblage gathered 
 outside of Independence Hall. One 
 person was there, however, who had no 
 rightful place in the crowd ; for he 
 turned to the man beside him, and 
 said, — 
 
 ^^Look at that old fogy yonder, pray- 
 ing with his eyes turned up, as if God 
 was any more up than down." 
 
 ^^ Who are you calling an old fogy I " 
 replied his neighbor, who happened to 
 know the young preacher so grossly mis- 
 defined. ^ ^ Take that. ' ' So saying, and
 
 4 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 acting with less of Christian forbearance 
 than of singular appropriateness to the 
 prayer just then making for the over- 
 throw of our enemies, he dealt the fel- 
 low a stinging blow. It wiis an answer 
 which, in spite of its vigor, lacked the 
 important virtue of telling who the ^^old 
 fogy" was. 
 
 This was in April of 1865. In July 
 of the same year the sons of Harvard 
 met at Cambridge for the commemora- 
 tion of their brothers who fell in the 
 war. Lowell's Ode for the occasion 
 seems permanently to have fixed the 
 memory of it, not as a local and special 
 celebration, but as something national 
 and universal. Yet the testimony of 
 those who took part in all the proceed- 
 ings is not that the Ode or the music 
 or the Oration or the Poem — each the 
 utterance of an acknowledged master — 
 was the memorable interpretation of the 
 spirit of the day. This, according to 
 the unanimous verdict of President Eliot,
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 5 
 
 Colonel Higgiuson, and many others, 
 was found rather in the prayer made 
 at the morning exercises in the First 
 Church by the young clergyman already 
 seen in Philadelphia, and still under 
 thirty ; for it was he who brought to- 
 gether and gave forth the whole sense of 
 loss, pain, loyalty, sacrifice, joy, and sor- 
 row, which others later in the day were, 
 according to their several ability, to 
 utter. If the fame of this young man's 
 loyal eloquence in Philadelphia had not 
 reached the ears of authorities alert 
 to hear good things about the children 
 of the college, he could never have 
 been asked to offer the Commemoration 
 Prayer. Personally, he was little known 
 in the world of Harvard outside the col- 
 lege generation into which he was born. 
 But now the assembled dignitaries of 
 college, State, and army, learned that a 
 new and glowing light had flamed out 
 on their horizon. Spell-bound they lis- 
 tened to the words, and were taken up
 
 6 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 by the spirit of the j)reacher who in the 
 next decade was to write, ^^ It was hard 
 during the Eebellion to illustrate the 
 Christian warfare by the then familiar 
 story of the soldier^ s life without hear- 
 ing through the sermon the drums of 
 the Potomac, and seeing the spires of 
 Richmond quite as much as the walls 
 of the New Jerusalem in the distance." 
 The drums and the Southern spires and 
 the heavenly vision seem all to have 
 blended in the marvellous prayer. When 
 it was done, the eager whispered ques- 
 tion which sprang to almost every lip 
 was, ^^Whoisthisr'
 
 n. 
 
 The reader hardly needs to be told 
 that it was Phillips Brooks. So closely 
 identified were his later and earlier 
 years with Boston and Harvard College 
 that it is hard to realize the existence 
 of a period when Phillips Brooks was 
 something of a stranger in the place of 
 his birth and longest residence. None 
 had a better inherited right to be known 
 in Massachusetts than he who took 
 pleasure in calling John Cotton his 
 "very great grandfather." This rela- 
 tionship was on his father's side. On his 
 mother's, he could claim a common 
 descent with the founder of Phillips 
 Academy, Andover, and with "Wendell 
 Phillips. His mother, Mary Ann Phil- 
 lips, has been defined as gifted with a 
 genius for religion. The simple fact 
 that four of her six sons entered the 
 ministry of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church speaks volubly for her influence.
 
 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 William Gray Brooks, the father of this 
 family, was a substantial Boston mer- 
 chant, of strong i^hysique, integrity, and 
 will. PhilliiDS Brooks, the second of 
 his sons, was born in Boston, December 
 13, 1835. The boy was baptized by 
 the Unitarian minister of the First 
 Church in Ohauncy Place, which the 
 family attended. It is curious that they 
 should soon have done precisely what 
 Phillips Brooks, in his own ministry, 
 led many Unitarians to do, — transfer 
 their allegiance to the church of Epis- 
 copacy. In 1839 Mr. and Mrs. Brooks 
 became members of St. Paul's Church, 
 of which the Eev. Dr. Alexander H. 
 Vinton was soon to become the rector. 
 The personal influence of a clergyman 
 like Dr. Vinton in the household of a 
 parishioner like his vestryman, Mr. 
 Brooks, may be powerful for good j and 
 so it was in this case. To the wise 
 influence of Dr. Vinton, at several criti- 
 cal points in the lifetime of Phillips
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 9 
 
 Brooks, the younger man owed a debt 
 of gratitude, which he was always ready 
 to acknowledge. 
 
 The effective influences of Phillips 
 Brooks's boyhood were by no means 
 only those of religion. In the middle 
 years of the century the life of a Boston 
 boy, born into the best circumstances of 
 the place, had the power to plant in the 
 right soil many seeds of fruitful man- 
 hood. The domestic life of the period 
 was marked with a simple dignity. 
 There was no dearth of older men to 
 whom the younger could look up, and 
 learn the true meaning and value of dis- 
 tinction. These, in a manner, were the 
 advantages of an aristocracy. To hold 
 them at their just weight, there were 
 the compensating democratic advan- 
 tages of training in the public schools. 
 Here the boy learned to think of his 
 city as the impartial mother of all, and 
 rubbed his wits and shoulders against 
 those of other boys of all degrees. The
 
 10 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 trouble was with the boy himself, if the 
 combining influences did not bring him 
 early to some realization of 'things as 
 they are." The joint effect of these in- 
 fluences was clearly to be seen in Phil- 
 lips Brooks. With his spirit of democ- 
 racy were mingled some of the best 
 qualities of the patrician ; and these in 
 turn could never so take i^ossession of 
 him as to make him forget that he and 
 the man of humblest intellect and sta- 
 tion were essentially brothers. 
 
 Of the outward circumstances of the 
 boy's schooling it is not worth while to 
 recall many details. He was sent first 
 to the Adams School, and then to the 
 Boston Latin School. The value he 
 placed upon the training of this insti- 
 tution is fully set forth in the historical 
 address he delivered at the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of its founding. 
 To find himself in the same scholastic 
 succession with Franklin, the Adamses, 
 John Hancock, Emerson, Motley, Sum-
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 11 
 
 ner, and Phillips, — this alone must have 
 been a strong inward stimulus to a boy 
 keenly responsive to suggestion. Out- 
 wardly, he made himself remembered as 
 one who wrought a just blending of 
 study and play, taking part and pleas- 
 ure in baseball games on the Common, 
 but not in the sports or pranks which 
 called forth the more boisterous ele- 
 ments of young human nature. 
 
 With the class of 1855 he entered 
 Harvard College ; and here his record 
 followed naturally upon that of his 
 school -days. Felton, Agassiz, and Long- 
 fellow were members of the strong 
 teaching force, at the head of which 
 stood President Walker, one of the men 
 to whom Phillips Brooks felt himself 
 most indebted. In general, the young 
 man's scholarship was of fair but not 
 exceptional rank. The single point in 
 which he seems to have shown real dis- 
 tinction was that of writing : in this he 
 proved and maintained an easy mastery.
 
 12 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 In these days, also, he formed his habits 
 and tastes of reading widely in the 
 books best worth reading. As Brown- 
 ing — whose Rabbi Ben Ezra he never 
 wearied of quoting — was, a few years 
 later, the poet of his special admira- 
 tion, in college it is said to have been 
 Tennyson. In Memoriam — perhaps al- 
 ways the poem of all poems for which 
 he cared most — had been published 
 only a year before Phillips Brooks be- 
 came a collegian ; and the enthusiasm 
 of such a youth for such a poem, still 
 fresh to the world, is easy to imagine. 
 But, apart from the more and less ^^ hu- 
 mane letters" of the college course, 
 there were other things which enlisted 
 the healthy interest of the young man. 
 As a single illustration of the fact that 
 so early as this no human thing was 
 utterly foreign to Phillips Brooks, one 
 is not sorry to find his name on the 
 programme of the Hasty Pudding Club 
 theatricals of his class. In the catalogue
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 13 
 
 of alumni lie might have seen that 
 twenty-six men named Phillips and 
 twenty-two named Brooks had received 
 degrees from the college before his class 
 of 1855. When his own graduation 
 came, he had every reason to bear away 
 from the four years of his Cambridge life 
 and from all the years preceding them a 
 deep-rooted loyalty to the Alma Mater 
 which had given him of her fulness, and 
 must be repaid out of his. 
 
 The year which followed the gradua- 
 tion of Phillips Brooks stands alone in 
 the record of his life as a year of unmis- 
 takable failure. He became an usher 
 in the Boston Latin School, still under 
 the mastership of Francis Gardner, his 
 own teacher. When he made the his- 
 torical address to the alumni of the 
 school in 1885, it must have been with 
 a certain satisfaction that he repeated 
 Mr. Gardner's opinion of the man who 
 failed as a school-teacher, — that he 
 could never succeed in any capacity.
 
 14 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 So much wiser than Mr. Gardner — 
 through no virtue of our own — are we 
 of later years that we do not even like 
 to think what might have happened 
 if Phillips Brooks had succeeded as a 
 school-teacher. It is good to know that 
 his failure lay simply in his inability to 
 discipline the more difficult boys : with 
 the better pupils he was eminently a 
 success. When his failure was apparent, 
 and the authorities had found a man to 
 take his place, he resigned in February 
 and spent the remainder of the school 
 year, without occupation, at his father's 
 house. 
 
 Probably this was the very discipline 
 which Phillips Brooks most needed at 
 the time. It forced him to search his 
 heart, and decide what was indeed the 
 work for him to do in the world. 
 Toward making this decision he sought 
 the advice of Dr. Vinton and President 
 Walker ; and both of them, in common 
 with every domestic influence and a
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 15 
 
 powerful inward impulse, urged him to 
 enter the ministry. It was in compli- 
 ance with the sage counsel of Dr. Vinton 
 that he went for his theological education 
 to the Seminary at Alexandria, Vir- 
 ginia, Harvard College had contributed 
 its share of critical and scholarly ele- 
 ments to the training of this son of hers : 
 it was something far different which the 
 Alexandria Seminary had to give him. 
 The distinguishing mark of this school 
 was its evangelical fervor. A large per- 
 centage of its graduates became mission- 
 aries, and so ^' Low Church '^ were all its 
 tendencies that a witty alumnus has 
 seen fit to point out the astonishing fact 
 that very few of his Alexandria brethren 
 have become extreme ritualists. Most in- 
 fluential in the seminary was the Eev. Dr. 
 William Sparrow, a man of great learn- 
 ing and piety, whose influence led Phil- 
 lips Brooks many years later to describe 
 him as ^'one of the three or four men 
 whom I have known whom I look upon
 
 16 PHILLIPS BUOOKS 
 
 with perpetual gratitude for the help 
 and direction they have given to my 
 life, and whose power I feel in forms of 
 action and kinds of thought very dif- 
 ferent from those in which I had specifi- 
 cally to do with them.'^ The man of 
 whom these words could be written must 
 have possessed some merely intellectual 
 power above and beyond the average of 
 intellect displayed at Alexandria. On 
 his first night at the school the young 
 Bostonian stood amazed at the religious 
 zeal of the young men who poured out 
 their souls at a prayer- meeting. On 
 the next day, in the recitation- room, he 
 was no less amazed to find these same 
 young men entirely unprepared in their 
 studies. ^' The boiler,'^ as he afterward 
 described the phenomenon, ^Miad no 
 connection with the engine. '^ In Cam- 
 bridge he had doubtless been more fa- 
 miliar with the spectacle of engines 
 detached from boilers. From these new 
 surroundings there were obvious ad-
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 17 
 
 vantages to be gained by a student for 
 the ministry. Yet this one apparently 
 never reconciled himself entirely to the 
 change of atmosphere j for, in his last 
 year at the seminary, he wrote to an 
 intimate friend, whose course was com- 
 pleted ; '^When are you coming to see 
 us ? Leave your intellect behind : you 
 won' t need it here. ' ' Against the bodily 
 discomforts of the place, the young stu- 
 dent had corresponding grounds for com- 
 plaint. The present Bishop of New 
 York, we are told, took pity on the tall 
 new-comer assigned to a room in which he 
 could not stand up and a bed from which 
 his feet protruded far, and gave him the 
 freedom of his own quarters. Others also 
 have borne witness to the immediate rec- 
 ognition of his power as a writer. Until 
 a special task called for the exercise of 
 this gift, it was not remarked that his 
 talents were extraordinary ; but here, as 
 at Cambridge, he showed at once that in 
 the writing of his mother tongue he
 
 18 PHILLIPS BROOK 
 
 stood supreme among his fellows. Here, 
 too, in some sonnets read before the 
 seminary Rhetorical Society, he revealed 
 the presence of that poetic endowment 
 upon which many would have been glad 
 to see him call more frequently than for 
 the carols with which he supplied his 
 Sunday-schools from time to time. At 
 least one of these — ^^O Little Town of 
 Bethlehem," written for the Sunday- 
 school of Holy Trinity Church, Phila- 
 delphia, — has taken a definite place in 
 the religious poetry of the language. 
 Every preacher, he believed, must be 
 something of a poet; and scattered 
 everywhere through the sermons of Phil- 
 lips Brooks are the fragments which 
 show us how he lived up to this article 
 of his belief. 
 
 It was in the neighborhood of Alexan- 
 dria that the great preacher made his 
 humble beginnings at preaching. Three 
 miles from the seminary was a chapel, 
 attended for the most part by ^^poor
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 19 
 
 whites,'^ to whom the students rendered 
 a half- fledged ministry. Mr. Brooks 
 himself used to tell of the response he 
 elicited from a countryman of the region 
 by an invitation to attend the chapel 
 services: ^^ Stranger, we don't like you 
 fellows comin^ down and prac^mn' on 
 us.'' If, however, one were to believe 
 and recount all the anecdotes of Phillips 
 Brooks, the writing of books far larger 
 than this one would be called for. The 
 obscure Virginia chapel would be at 
 once an important scene of story. On 
 the one hand, it is said, and probably 
 with truth, that the first efforts of the 
 untried speaker filled him with discour- 
 agement. On the other, probably with 
 more of romance than of accuracy, w^e 
 hear of the ignominious defeat which he 
 visited upon an ^^ opposition party" in 
 the chapel, headed by a Northern unbe- 
 liever, who finally was brought with aU. 
 but one of his followers to baptism and 
 confirmation. The report of this tri-
 
 20 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 iimph, we also hear, brought from Phil- 
 adelphia the representatives of the first 
 parish of Avhich Phillips Brooks had 
 charge. They listened to his preaching, 
 the story goes, and begged him on the 
 spot to become their minister. This is 
 not an incident to which the reader 
 is asked to give entire credence ; but, 
 like many another anecdote of Phillips 
 Brooks, it is true in spirit, if not in let- 
 ter, and might even be classed with the 
 stories which ought to be true if they 
 are not. The present writer, however, 
 does not set himself to deal with doubt- 
 ful statements, but prefers to bring to an 
 end this hasty review of the seminary 
 days with the prophetic words of one of 
 the Alexandria professors : ^' That young 
 man is fitted for any position that the 
 Church has to give him.''
 
 III. 
 
 In 1859 Phillips Brooks finished his 
 seminary course, was ordained deacon on 
 July 1 by Bishop Meade of Virginia, and 
 immediately took charge of the Church 
 of the Advent in Philadelphia. He 
 would not pledge himself at first to 
 more than three months of service, 
 so honestly doubtful was he of his 
 ability to satisfy the parishioners. How 
 seriously he took the work to which he 
 felt called, we may infer from his words 
 spoken nearly twenty years later: ^^I 
 can remember how, as I looked forward 
 to preaching, every book I read and 
 every man I talked with seemed to teem 
 with sermons. They all suggested some- 
 thing which it seemed as if the preacher 
 of the gospel ought to say to men." 
 What he felt this something to be, we 
 may know from these other words of his 
 concerning the true interpreter of God to 
 men : ^ ' He looks into their faces as if he
 
 22 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 saw behind each of them another face, 
 which shone through theirs, and gave to 
 their sordidness its dignity and value." 
 With such conceptions of the work he 
 had to do, together with his inborn quali- 
 fications for doing it, there was of course 
 but one possible ending for his first three 
 months at the little church in the un- 
 fashionable portion of the city where the 
 Advent stood. The young rector pledged 
 himself to the parish for a year, and, 
 when this was done, remained for about 
 one year more in the same place. He 
 was ordained to the priesthood on May 
 27, 1860. 
 
 During his rectorship of the Advent, 
 he was wont to say, he received from a 
 German, for the only time in his minis- 
 try, a refusal of admission to a house he 
 wished to visit as a clergyman. But 
 here, on the other hand, may be placed 
 the familiar anecdote of his finding a 
 poor mother taking care of a sick child, 
 for whom he insisted upon caring himself
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 23 
 
 while the woman went for a walk in the 
 fresh air. It is also of this time that 
 a clerical contemporary and lifelong 
 friend tells of walking home from church 
 one day with Mr. Brooks after he had 
 preached a sermon intended to bring 
 consolation into lives that were crushed 
 with sad experiences all unknown to 
 him. The friend expressed a wonder at 
 his ability to speak as he had spoken 
 of things of which he must be igno- 
 rant 5 ^ ' and his answer, ' ' says the friend, 
 ^^ comes back to me often with the little 
 preluding laugh that never hid his ear- 
 nestness from those who knew him, — 
 ^ Oh, well, don' t you think a fellow can 
 put himself in other people's place, and 
 see how they must feel?' " This was a 
 power which he never ceased to exhibit. 
 ^^ Knowing the burdened man's burden 
 just because of the unpressed lightness 
 of his own shoulders, feeling the sick 
 man's pain all the more because his own 
 flesh never knew an ache," — these words
 
 24 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 from his sermon, ^^The Choice Young 
 Man/' written many years later, ex- 
 plain more fully than his off-hand an- 
 swer on the Philadelphia street the 
 power of comprehending sympathy 
 which he always possessed. To rich and 
 poor, in public and in private, he gave 
 freely of the fruits of this power, and 
 often, we may be sure, without knowing 
 how much he gave. To its value for those 
 who needed it most there was perhaps 
 no better testimony than that which Dr. 
 Holmes, after a great bereavement late 
 in his life, paid to the preacher by leav- 
 ing his own church and coming Sunday 
 after Sunday to hear what the sermons 
 of Phillips Brooks might say to him. 
 
 It was a fortunate circumstance for 
 Phillips Brooks and for Philadelphia 
 that, at the time of his coming there, 
 Dr. Alexander H. Vinton, the friend 
 who already more than once had exerted 
 the right influence at the right moment, 
 was the rector of Holy Trinity Church,
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 25 
 
 one of the most prominent parishes of 
 the city. From the very first, Dr. Vin- 
 ton believed in Phillips Brooks. Ac- 
 cordingly, he often asked the young man 
 to occupy his pulpit on Sunday after- 
 noons. The two results of this preach- 
 ing were that many members of the Holy 
 Trinity parish went frequently to the 
 distant Church of the Advent for even- 
 ing and other services, and that when 
 Dr. Vinton in 1861 was called to St. 
 Mark's in the Bowery, in New York, 
 Mr. Brooks was asked and asked again 
 to take his place, and after less than 
 three years in the ministry found him- 
 self in charge of the important church 
 on Eittenhouse Square. The prompt 
 obtaining of high military rank by 
 some of the youths who entered the 
 Civil War was hardly more remarkable 
 than this rapid elevation of the young 
 clergyman. 
 
 The Civil War was well begun when 
 Phillips Brooks took up his new duties.
 
 26 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 They and it and he were soon found to 
 occupy the closest possible relations to 
 one another. In his own definition, 
 Philadelphia represented the ^^temper- 
 ate zone of religious life" ; but it lay far 
 too near the equator of warfare to be 
 temperate in all things connected with 
 the Rebellion. The number of persons 
 more or less openly in sympathy with 
 the South was large, especially in the 
 walks of society from which the con- 
 gregation of Holy Trinity was mainly 
 drawn. I have heard it said of another 
 Episcopal church in Philadelphia that 
 in the war-time the clergyman could not 
 read the prayer for the President with- 
 out causing a rustle of silken skirts worn 
 by ladies who insisted at this point upon 
 rising from their knees. To set one's 
 self in public and in private uncompromis- 
 ingly on the side of the North was a far 
 more difficult thing iu Philadelphia than 
 in Boston. But such a New Englander 
 as Phillips Brooks could stand only
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 27 
 
 where he stood upon the questions of 
 that day, and no New Englander could 
 have stood there more firmly. One 
 who was closely associated with him 
 then, and in earlier and later days, 
 has written thus of his attitude : ^ ^ He 
 was ever ready to speak, to work, to 
 set others working. He encountered 
 blizzards of prejudice and virulence. 
 Vestrymen protested, judges who were 
 parishioners ceased to be judicial, rich 
 pew-holders clamored, pot-house poli- 
 ticians raged, fine ladies carped and 
 sneered, pleaded and cajoled. None of 
 these things moved him. He went his 
 way, spoke his word, did his deed, and 
 bore himself like a simple king.^' 
 
 To the same authority we owe the 
 record of an outward deed in which 
 Phillips Brooks bore a characteristic 
 part. Lee's army before Harrisburg 
 was supposed to be threatening Phila- 
 delphia itself. Yet the city was pre- 
 paring absolutely no means of defence.
 
 28 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 A few clergymen, among them Mr. 
 Brooks, decided one Monday morning 
 that something must be done at once, 
 and that they mnst do it. It was the 
 time when a number of ministerial soci- 
 eties were holding their weekly meetings. 
 To all of these were sent copies of a 
 paper in which the clergy of the city 
 should offer their physical services for 
 its defence. The response was immedi- 
 ate. About a hundred ministers, with 
 Mr. Brooks and an aged Presbyterian 
 at their head, presented themselves at 
 the mayor's office, and begged to be 
 employed in throwing up earthworks. 
 While waiting for orders, they bought 
 spades and other necessities ; but, what 
 was more important, the municipal au- 
 thorities and the laity took the hint, and 
 set about the work they were ashamed 
 to leave entirely in clerical hands. 
 
 When the good news from Gettysburg 
 reached Philadelphia, Phillips Brooks 
 interrupted the morning service to an-
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 29 
 
 nounce it to his people. On the follow- 
 ing Thanksgiving Day he preached on 
 ^^The Mercies of Eeoccupation. ' ' It 
 needed the vision of an optimist to see 
 much of good in those troubled years, 
 and precisely what the title of the ser- 
 mon meant many must have been puzzled 
 at first to know. But he did not leave 
 them long in doubt that ^^the re-entrance 
 into the principles and fundamental 
 truths of the nationality which they 
 inherited ' ' seemed to him to outbalance 
 many losses, and that "the reoccupa- 
 tion of the disused duties and privileges 
 of justice and liberty and human brother- 
 hood" was indeed a mercy. No less 
 than for all these things was he thankful 
 for Abraham Lincoln, ^^so honest, so 
 true, so teachable at the lips of the 
 Almighty. ' ' 
 
 Between Lincoln and Phillips Brooks 
 many men have taken pleasure in trac- 
 ing spiritual resemblances. In the 
 largeness of their sincerity, in the sim-
 
 30 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 plicity and directness of their natures, 
 there were indeed certain elements of 
 likeness. The words which the preacher 
 applied to the President might without 
 too great a strain have been said of the 
 preacher himself: ^^ There are men as 
 good as he, but they do bad things. 
 There are men as intelligent as he, biit 
 they do foolish things. In him goodness 
 and intelligence combined and made their 
 best result of wisdom. ' ' But for one man 
 to recognize the power and to feel strongly 
 drawn to the personality of another is 
 not necessarily to be like that other, and 
 it may fairly be questioned whether the 
 resemblance between these two men will 
 bear any close analysis. Certain it is 
 that Phillips Brooks lacked nothing of 
 appreciation for everything that Lincoln 
 was and did. One who spent the morn- 
 ing with Mr. Brooks after the news of 
 the President's assassination came has 
 written to me, ^^His grief Wiis intense — 
 in fact, too great to express.'' Yet he
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 31 
 
 soon expressed it in a noble eulogy de- 
 livered in Holy Trinity Church. From 
 this it is worth while to transcribe the 
 few words which show perhaps most 
 clearly how positive were the convictions 
 of the preacher on the chief issue of the 
 Civil War: ^^By all the goodness that 
 there was in him, by all the love we 
 had for him, — and who shall tell how 
 great it was? — by all the sorrow that has 
 burdened down this desolate and dread- 
 ful week, I charge his murder where it 
 belongs, — on Slavery. I bid you to re- 
 member where the charge belongs, to 
 write it on the door-posts of your mourn- 
 ing-houses, to teach it to your wondering 
 children, to give it to the history of 
 these times, that all times to come may 
 hate and dread the sin that killed our 
 noblest President. ' ' Are these the words 
 of the all-tolerant Phillips Brooks ? Yes, 
 and all the more his for illustrating clearlj^ 
 his belief that the truest tolerance is based 
 upon a full knowledge of the evils which
 
 32 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 it is called upon to bear. Entirely, too, 
 are the words his own in another way ; for 
 they show the fulness of his appreciation 
 for the man whom it is not too fanciful 
 to place — quite apart from resemblan- 
 ces — beside and with the few to whom 
 Phillips Brooks owed a personal debt for 
 the formation of his completed manhood. 
 When the war was over, and Mr. 
 Brooks had taken the part we have seen 
 him play in the Harvard Commemora- 
 tion service, — apart perhaps the more 
 strenuous because of the loss of one of 
 his brothers in the great struggle, — he 
 stood in sore need of rest, and proceeded 
 at once to take it in the first of his 
 many journeys abroad. For nearly 
 thirty years he made it his practice to 
 go abroad every other summer, serving 
 his parish each alternate year through 
 all the months when many city clergy- 
 men are following their congregations 
 into the country and woods. Two of 
 his journeys — this first one and another
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 33 
 
 in 1882-83 — lasted each for more than 
 a year. It was on the second of these 
 long journeys that he went as far as 
 India ; and in the summer of 1889 he 
 and his friend, Dr. (now Bishop) Mc- 
 Yickar, made their way to Japan. For 
 most clergymen many of these travels 
 would have been impossible; but Mr. 
 Brooks had the wisdom to put his free- 
 dom from all domestic cares, and the 
 means which were always at his dis- 
 posal, to the best of uses. '' Home- 
 keeping youth have ever homely wits ' ' ; 
 and, as the years went on, there is no 
 doubt whatever that the effect of con- 
 tact with humanity in all countries and 
 under all conditions was to make 
 broader and broader the sympathy of 
 Phillips Brooks with all mankind. He 
 was making a good beginning when, 
 out of his first experiences in foreign 
 lands, he wrote to a lifelong friend, 
 ^^O, Charles, you should be over here, 
 if only to see what a little thing the
 
 34 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 Protestant Episcopal Church looks, seen 
 from this distance ! '' 
 
 In this first journey of all, it is highly 
 interesting to observe what the young 
 traveller took with him. Study and 
 understanding had prepared him to re- 
 ceive impressions which would have 
 been utterly lost upon the unfit. Espe- 
 ciallj^ in Palestine does he reveal his 
 preparedness for travel; for all his let- 
 ters show him as the close student of the 
 Bible, walking for the first time among 
 the scenes which had already become es- 
 sentially real to him. Because he took 
 so much, of course he was capable of 
 bringing back the more. Living memo- 
 ries of many places and things returned 
 with him, delightful recollections of de- 
 lightful persons, — Mrs. Kemble, Mrs. 
 Gaskell, Dean Milman in England; Mot- 
 ley in Vienna ; Story in Rome, engaged 
 upon the statue of Edward Everett, now 
 standing in the Boston Public Garden, 
 but then failing to impress the young
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 35 
 
 traveller with its dignity, ^^for he has 
 only got one trouser on," — to quote 
 from a letter to Mr. Brooks's father, — 
 ^^and is very much in the condition 
 of ^Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son 
 John.' " Most serious, on the other 
 hand, are the impressions made by cer- 
 tain sights. At Dresden he sees the 
 ^^ Madonna di San Sisto," and writes 
 home: ^^I will not say anything about 
 it, because there is no use trying to tell 
 what a man feels who has been waiting 
 to enjoy something for fifteen years, 
 and, when it comes, finds it is some- 
 thing unspeakably beyond what he had 
 dreamed." A beautiful copy of the 
 picture, by the way, hung in front of 
 his study desk through all the last years 
 of his life. In Egypt he says : ' ^ I went 
 and stood in the shadow of the Sphinx, 
 and looked up into her vast stone face. 
 If the Pyramids are great in their 
 way, she is a thousand times greater 
 in hers, as the grandest and most ex-
 
 36 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 pressive monument of a religion in the 
 world. '^ In 1879, thirteen years later, 
 he uses his remembrance of the Dres- 
 den Madonna and the Sphinx to illus- 
 trate, in a lecture to Philadelphia di- 
 vinity students, the contrasts between 
 the religions of the West and of the 
 East. ^'The Sphinx has life in her 
 human face wTitten into a riddle, a 
 puzzle, a mocking bewilderment. The 
 Virgin's face is full of a mystery we 
 cannot fathom, but it unfolds to us a 
 thousand of the mysteries of life. It 
 does not mock, but blesses us. The 
 Egyptian woman is alone amid the 
 sands, to be worshipped, not loved. 
 The Christian woman has her child 
 clasped in her arms, enters into the 
 societies and sympathies of men, and 
 claims no worsliip except love.^' These 
 citations will justify themselves, if they 
 show with what permanence and to 
 what good purpose the impressions of 
 Mr. Brooks's travels entered into the
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 37 
 
 work of his life. Perhaps even a more 
 vivid showing of the inter-relation be- 
 tween what he saw and what he thought 
 could be made by comparing passages 
 from his letters from India with his ut- 
 tered opinions at home in unwavering 
 support of foreign missions. 
 
 Our present concern, however, is with 
 the rector of Holy Trinity Church, 
 Philadelphia, who did not return to his 
 parish until the autumn of 1866. The 
 long rest fitted him for taking up his 
 duties — which to a rare degree were 
 also his pleasures — with great hearti- 
 ness. In the absurd demonstrations in 
 Philadelphia against letting negroes ride 
 in the street cars, Mr. Brooks was found 
 precisely where his path through the 
 war-time must have led him, — on the 
 side of the race which Lincoln had set 
 free. Regarding another phenomenon 
 of Philadelphia streets, we are told that 
 he rejoiced in the fact that the city was 
 so laid out, with streets of small houses
 
 38 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 between the avenues of the rich, that 
 the poor could never be lost to sight. 
 For them and for the rich he labored 
 with an equal zeal. As the report of 
 these labors spread abroad, the opportu- 
 nities to go elsewhere began to arise. 
 One of them brought with it the possi- 
 bility of a quieter life in the presidency 
 of Kenyon College at Gambler, Ohio. 
 But the quieter life never appealed so 
 strongly to Mr. Brooks as the turmoil 
 of the city j and in this case there was an 
 additional reason for declining the prof- 
 fered place. ^^ His chin dropped into his 
 collar, ' ' writes a friend who recalls the act 
 of decision; and he said, ^^ ^No! they 
 wouldn't let me have free swing, and 
 I wouldn't take the post unless they 
 did.' " The call to assume the rector- 
 ship of Trinity Church, Boston, must 
 have carried with it a more hopeful 
 l^romise of the ^^free swing"; for in 
 November of 18G9 he began the rector- 
 ship which filled the greater part of his
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 39 
 
 active life and is more closely associ- 
 ated than any other work with his 
 name.
 
 IV. 
 
 The call to Boston was something far 
 more to Phillips Brooks than a mere call 
 to a new parish. It was a summons 
 home. Though Trinity Church was not 
 the church of his boyhood, its parish- 
 ioners might almost as well have been 
 the families he had known at St. Paul's ; 
 for they represented practically the same 
 element in Boston society. The indi- 
 viduals, however, could hardly have 
 drawn him so strongly from congenial 
 surroundings and wide opportunities in 
 Philadelphia as the fact that Boston wjis 
 the city of his birth. What this means 
 to every Bostonian like Phillips Brooks, 
 hardly any one but such a Bostonian can 
 realize. If any proof were needed to 
 show that his love for the place was 
 something far beyond a mere sentimental 
 feeling, it would be necessary only to 
 look at such of his writings as '^ A Cen- 
 tury of Church Growth," in the Memo-
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 41 
 
 rial History of Boston, his addresses at 
 the two hundred and fiftieth commemo- 
 ration of the founding of the First 
 Church in Boston and the similar cele- 
 bration at the Boston Latin School, at 
 his historical sermon when the new 
 Trinity Church was completed, and at 
 his many utterances with reference to 
 Harvard College. They all reveal the 
 mind of one who not only loved, but 
 knew his native city, its past and its 
 present. On returning from one of his 
 trips abroad, he is said to have ex- 
 claimed, ^^ There is nothing on earth so 
 good as being a minister in the city of 
 Boston." And very shortly before his 
 death, according to the same reporter of 
 his words, he said to one of his friends, 
 ' '■ What do you suppose I have been do- 
 ing to-day I Why, just walking around 
 Boston and looking at the streets and 
 the people." Even Walt Whitman 
 could not have taken a truer delight in 
 his Manahatta. Yet the call to the new
 
 42 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 parish, like the earlier call to the one he 
 was leaving, could not be accepted until 
 it was urged upon him so strongly that 
 nothing but accei3tance was possible. 
 One may well imagine that among the 
 persistent Boston vestrymen who would 
 not take No for an answer were some of 
 those who had been present at the Har- 
 vard Commemoration. 
 
 The old sexton of Trinity Church, 
 Boston, to which Phillips Brooks came 
 in 1869, is remembered for consistently 
 driving the poor into the galleries and 
 giving to rich visitors the vacant seats 
 on the floor. If he did this, it was by a 
 tacit or expressed permission of the au- 
 thorities ; and it is hardly necessary to 
 say more of the condition of formalism 
 into which the i^arish had been brought, 
 even by rectors of so many good abilities 
 as Bishop Eastburn's. Evidently, just 
 such an one as Phillips Brooks was 
 needed to bring a new spirit into the old 
 gray, square- towered church in Summer
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 43 
 
 Street. The spirit Avhich lie brought to 
 the parish, however, was soon seen to be 
 too expansive for the old buikling. Be- 
 fore the end of 1870 a special meeting of 
 the '^Proprietors " was called to consider 
 the expediency of building in another 
 part of the city. It was promptly de- 
 cided to leave the old church, the legis- 
 lature authorized the action, land was 
 bought in the new Back Bay region, 
 competitive designs for the building 
 were invited, bodies were removed from 
 tombs under the old structure, when the 
 great fire of 1872 destroyed the building 
 and left the parish no alternative but to 
 carry out its well-formed plans. On the 
 night of November 10 Phillips Brooks 
 worked with a will at rescuing movable 
 things, and was one of the very last to 
 leave the doomed building. Mural tab- 
 lets to Bishop Parker and Bishop Gris- 
 wold were destroyed f but the old Bible 
 was saved from the desk, and from the 
 walls a tablet to the memory of Dr. Gar-
 
 44 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 diner. It was as if a part of the past 
 had been seized from the burning and 
 carried on into the future. 
 
 It was indeed a large future for which 
 the parish, following at every point the 
 guidance of its rector, was preparing 
 itself. He it was who more than any 
 one else saw the attendant possibilities. 
 Henry Hobson Richardson, the architect 
 of the new church, physically his fellow 
 and personally his intimate friend, found 
 in Mr. Brooks a sympathetic and large- 
 minded collaborator. From the very 
 beginning the preacher impressed him- 
 self upon the building in which his 
 words were most frequently to be heard, 
 and at the end it was found that his will 
 set aside $2, 000 from his somewhat nar- 
 row fortune toward tlie completion of 
 the front of the church. This has now 
 been done ; and it were well for all who 
 look upon the finished structure to 
 realize how largely the living personality 
 of Phillips Brooks concerned itself with
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 45 
 
 every detail for the building, from the 
 preliminary drawings of the architect to 
 the final interior decorations of his other 
 friend, Mr. John La Farge. ^^A man 
 has no right," the preacher once ex- 
 claimed in scorn, ^' to give to the tint of 
 his parlor walls that anxiety of thought 
 which belongs only to the justification 
 of the ways of God to man/^ But to 
 the walls of Trinity, Phillips Brooks, 
 always keeping clear the distinction be- 
 tween means and ends, could and did 
 give of his most effective thinking. 
 
 The first pile for the new church was 
 driven April 21, 1873 ; the last stone 
 in the tower was laid in July of 1876 ; 
 and on February 9, 1877, the furnishing 
 and interior decorations having been 
 meanwhile accomplished, the church 
 was consecrated. For this occasion the 
 preacher, by a special appropriateness, 
 was the Eev. Dr. Vinton. The friend 
 of his boyhood and of the chief crises of 
 his manhood thus stood with Phillips
 
 46 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 Brooks upon the new threshold of his 
 broadening career, and gave him God- 
 speed into his great future. 
 
 Before proceeding to see just how 
 this future unfolded itself, we may well 
 pause for a moment to look at a hasty, 
 spontaneous picture drawn by one quite 
 unprepared for the preaching he de- 
 scribes. The time of the sketch is in 
 the period between the burning of the 
 old church and the comi)letion of the 
 new, — a time when Trinity parish was 
 using Huntington Hall in the Massachu- 
 setts Institute of Technology for its ser- 
 vices. The hand which drew the picture 
 was that of Principal John Tulloch of 
 St. Andrews University in Scotland, 
 travelling in America in 1874, and writ- 
 ing thus from Boston to his wife: ^'I 
 have just heard the most remarkable 
 sermon I have ever heard in my life, — 
 I use the word in no American sense, — 
 from Mr. Pliillips Brooks, an Episcopal 
 clergyman here ; (M{iial to the best of
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 47 
 
 Frederick Eobertson's sermons, with a 
 vigor and force of thought which he 
 has not always. I have never heard 
 preaching like it, and you know how 
 slow I am to praise preachers. So much 
 thought and so much life combined, 
 such a reach of mind, and such a dei)th 
 of insight and soul. I was electrified. 
 I could have got up and shouted.''
 
 These words of Principal Tullocli's 
 have to do with Phillips Brooks solely 
 as a preacher. Still regarding him en- 
 tirely in this light, it may be said that 
 the year 1877 stood out with a special 
 prominence in his career. Not only was 
 it marked by the completion of the new 
 Trinity Church, but in a way perhaps 
 even more intimate and significant, — by 
 the delivery of his Lectures on Freaching 
 at the Divinity School of Yale College. 
 The volume containing these lectures 
 tells us far more about Phillips Brooks 
 himself than the most speaking volume 
 of his sermons. It is, in effect, the apolo- 
 gia pro Slid vita. In it he explains him- 
 self by setting forth, at once minutely 
 and broadly, his ideals for preaching and 
 preachers. As a book, of course it is 
 intended for clerical readers ; but it is 
 written with such a delightful blending 
 of wisdom with th(^ (piiet humor which
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 49 
 
 eminently belonged to its author, and 
 contains so plentiful a measure of truth 
 and sincerity, that it is a book for no one 
 class. The clergy, one may well imagine, 
 might prefer to have the laity leave it 
 alone ; for it sets standards of clerical pur- 
 pose and achievement which, to say the 
 least, are not commonly attained. In 
 forming any true estimate of Phillips 
 Brooks, the Lectures on Preaching must 
 inevitably be taken into account. With 
 the two lectures on Tolerance, delivered 
 ten years later to the students of several 
 of the Episcopal theological schools in 
 the country, it provides the best possi- 
 ble background for considering Phillips 
 Brooks in his pulpit. To write about 
 him at all, without making some special 
 scrutiny of his individual qualities as a 
 preacher, would be to shirk an obvious 
 duty. 
 
 At the very beginning of his Lectures 
 to the Yale students, Mr. Brooks insisted 
 that real preaching was the expression
 
 50 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 of ^' Truth through Personality.'^ Of 
 these two elements every true sermon 
 must be compounded. The excess or 
 the defect of either quality at the ex- 
 pense of the other causes the sermon to 
 be less truly a sermon than it should and 
 might be. If this, then, is preaching, 
 what is to be said of the preaching of 
 Phillips Brooks in the light of his own 
 definition? 
 
 In the first place, what was the truth 
 as he saw it ? It was eminently a simple 
 thing. It lay for him within the form- 
 ulae of the Church, but did not press 
 itself violently against the boundaries 
 of all these formula. ^^The fatherhood 
 of God and the brotlierhood of man" 
 has become a cant phrase, but perhaps 
 there is no other wliich sums up more 
 succinctly the tenets of the Christian 
 faith which Phillips Brooks most de- 
 lighted to emphasize. The shortcoming 
 of the phnuse is that it does not bind 
 together the brotlierhood and the father-
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 51 
 
 hood to which it refers by the strong 
 link of sonship through Jesus Christ. 
 It was in the workings of this relation- 
 ship that the preacher^ s faith in both 
 God and man was strongest. Because 
 he left the complexities of belief to 
 otherSj he could hold the most positive 
 convictions himself, and could advise 
 the beginners in the ministry ; ^ ^ Preach 
 positively what you believe. Never 
 preach what you do not believe, or deny 
 what you do believe. ' ' Doctrine and dog- 
 ma have come to be regarded as words 
 of danger and rigidity. The advice of 
 Phillips Brooks was, ^^ Preach doctrine, 
 preach all the doctrine that you know, 
 and learn forever more and more j but 
 preach it always, not that men may be- 
 lieve, but that men may be saved by 
 believing it.'' The subjects of sermons 
 were, in his opinion, to be ^^ mostly eternal 
 truths, and let the timeliness come in the 
 illustration of those truths by, and their 
 application to, the events of current life."
 
 52 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 Thus, indeed, it was the simplest truth of 
 the gospel which he felt himself called to 
 proclaim, not a bundle of separate mes- 
 sages for separate classes of men. The 
 very same sermon could serve its purpose 
 for him at Wellesley College and at the 
 Concord State's Prison. A Boston minis- 
 ter, invited to address about eight hundred 
 physicians at a dinner of the Massachu- 
 setts Medical Association, has told of 
 his remarking to Mr. Brooks, ^^I don't 
 know what under the sun to say, ' ' and of 
 receiving the characteristic response: 
 ^^It doesn't make much difference what 
 you say, so you do not say what they 
 expect. Preach the gospel." This wiis 
 what he himself always stood ready to 
 do, and the most and the least critical 
 were equally ready to hear him. At 
 one time during an early ^ ' Moody and 
 Sankey revival" in Boston, Mr. Moody 
 was ill, and Mr. Brooks was asked to 
 preach in his place. The great ^ ' taber- 
 nacle" put up for the services was
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 53 
 
 thronged ; and, as the people poured 
 out of it, one man, typical of the thou- 
 sands who were present, was heard to 
 say: ^^Why, here we have a preacher 
 of our own just as good as Moody." 
 Mr. Brooks indeed was often at his best 
 — -even according to the standards of the 
 fastidious — before such miscellaneous 
 gatherings of the ^^ unchurched" as he 
 found at the Sunday evening services 
 at Faneuil Hall, the Globe Theatre, 
 and the Grand Opera House. Once, 
 when he was asked in England what 
 sermon he was going to preach on a 
 certain Sunday, his natural response 
 was, ^^Oh, I have only one sermon." 
 And, truly, through everything he said 
 and wrote, one message, one simple inter- 
 pretation of spiritual truth as he saw it 
 to men as he knew them, might have 
 been traced. The appeal of his message 
 was not only to the mind, not only to 
 the heart, but, in these perfectly chosen 
 words of his own, ^Ho that spiritual
 
 54 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 reason which is no special function of 
 the nature, but is the best action of the 
 whole nature working together, the affec- 
 tion and the will being partners of the 
 brain. ' ' 
 
 This definition of the receptive facul- 
 ties of his hearers shows something of his 
 understanding of their natures. His 
 knowledge of men was probably even 
 exceeded by his faith in them. To ap- 
 preciate fully the qualities of his preach- 
 ing and of his feeling about preaching 
 in general, it is necessary to give quite 
 as much thought to his belief in men as 
 to his faith in God. When he found 
 that his complete trust in any individual 
 had been misplaced, we are told that 
 his sense of personal grief and loss was 
 almost as great as if a part of his belief 
 in the Deity had been taken away from 
 him. His own words from the lecture 
 on ^^The Ministry for our Age'' define 
 the constant attitude of his mind and 
 spirit toward his fellow-men, and un-
 
 PHILLIPS BKOOKS 55 
 
 consciously define himself: ^' There is 
 in every man's heart, if you could only 
 trust it, a power of appreciating genu- 
 ine spiritual truth, of being moved into 
 unselfish gratitude by the love of God. 
 Continually he who trusts it finds it 
 there. A hundred men stand like the 
 Spanish magnates on the shore, and 
 say : ^ You must not venture far away. 
 There is no land beyond. Stay here, 
 and develop what we have.' One 
 brave and truthful man like Columbus 
 believes that the complete world is com- 
 plete, and sails for a fair land beyond 
 the sea, and finds it. The minister who 
 succeeds is the minister who, in the 
 midst of a sordid age, trusts the heart of 
 man who is the child of God, and knows 
 that it is not all sordid, and boldly 
 speaks to it of God, his Father, as if he 
 expected it to answer. And it does 
 answer ; and other preachers who have 
 not believed in man, and have talked to 
 him in low planes, and preached to him
 
 56 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 half-gospels which they think were all 
 that he could stand, look on, and wonder 
 at their brother- preacher's unaccount- 
 able success.'' 
 
 A score of other passages from, the 
 Lectures on Preaching might advan- 
 tageously be taken to illustrate points 
 of positive biographical interest. To 
 the sermons themselves less than to these 
 lectures on sermons may we look for the 
 motives which underlay the preaching 
 — that is to say, the life — of Phillips 
 Brooks. The sermons were the sepa- 
 rate expressions of the general principles, 
 which, as occasion required, he set forth 
 in lectures for the guidance of his 
 younger brothers in the ministry. The 
 lectures on Tolerance contain one pas- 
 sage so characteristic of Phillips Brooks 
 in his estimate of the truth to be 
 blended with his personality into ser- 
 mons that the reader will surely pre- 
 fer it to any recasting of its definition 
 of a man's relation to his fellow-men.
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 57 
 
 ^^ Every true Churchman, — that is, 
 every man who truly values his place 
 in the Christian Church, — it seems to 
 me, must think of himself as standing 
 in the midst of four concentric circles. 
 He is the centre of them all. They rep- 
 resent the different groups of his fellow- 
 men with whom he has to do. They 
 sweep in widening circumference around 
 the spot of earth on which he stands, 
 and make the different horizons of his 
 life. What are they ? Outermost of all 
 there is the broad circle of humanity. 
 All men, simply as men, are something 
 to this man. It is the consciousness 
 homo sum, the consciousness which the 
 Latin poet crowded into his immor- 
 tal line, which fills this circle with vi- 
 tality. Next within this lies the circle 
 of religion, smaller than the other, be- 
 cause all men are not religious, but 
 large enough to include all those of 
 every name, of every creed, who count 
 their life the subject and the care of
 
 58 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 a divine life which is their king. Next 
 within this lies the circle of Christian- 
 ity, including all those who — under any 
 conception of Him and of their duty 
 toward Him — honestly own for their 
 Master Jesus Christ. And then, inmost 
 of all, there is the circle of the man's 
 own peculiar Church, the group of those 
 whose thought and worship is in general 
 identical with his who stands in the 
 centre, and feels all these four circles 
 surrounding him." Intensely feeling 
 the reality of his relation to the men 
 within all four of those circles, the 
 preacher could confidently declare, '^I 
 cannot live truly with the men of my 
 own Church unless I also have a con- 
 sciousness of common life with all Chris- 
 tian believers, with all religious men, 
 with all mankind.'' Who shall say that 
 the true secret of his power lay any- 
 where but in the universal symi>athy 
 out of which these words are spoken? 
 Through this very belief of his in all
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 59 
 
 mankind, he could preach with the 
 greater zeal his other belief: '^Not man 
 with religion is something more, but 
 man without religion is something less 
 than man." 
 
 It will be clear to every reader with 
 a regard for the things to which the life 
 of Phillips Brooks was devoted that his 
 view of these things was entirely inspir- 
 ing and uplifting. No wonder, it may 
 weU be said, that beliefs so human and 
 magnanimous found their utterance in 
 words so capable of stirring the heart of 
 man. It was indeed as he told the theo- 
 logical students at New Haven: ^^Let 
 a man be a true preacher, really utter- 
 ing the truth through his own personal- 
 ity, and it is strange how men will 
 gather to listen to him. We hear that 
 the day of the pulpit is past j and then 
 some morning the voice of a true 
 preacher is heard in the land, and all the 
 streets are full of men crowding to hear 
 him, just exactly as were the streets of
 
 60 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 Constantinople when Chrysostom was 
 going to preach at the Church of the 
 Apostles, or the streets of London when 
 Latimer was bravely telling his truth at 
 St. PauPs." Now that the words which 
 men thronged to hear from the lips of 
 Phillii^s Brooks can reach us only 
 through the medium of print, it is easier 
 to appreciate the wisdom which he dis- 
 played in giving to Personality an im- 
 portance equal to that of Truth as a 
 quality of the sermon. On many sides 
 the complaint is heard that the sermons 
 of Pliilliixs Brooks are disappointing 
 reading ; and so, in a measure, they 
 certainly are. Especially for one who 
 never saw him in the pulpit, and is con- 
 sequently unable to bring the visualiz- 
 ing memory to bear upon the printed 
 page, must the need of the personality 
 make itself felt. '^Now and then,'^ 
 said Mr. Brooks himself, '^you do find a 
 volume of sermons whieli, as it were, 
 keep tlieir author in them, so that, as
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 61 
 
 you read them, you feel him present in 
 the room. But, ordinarily, reading ser- 
 mons is like listening to an echo. ' ' The 
 echo in the world of nature loses half 
 its interest, if the voice to which it 
 responds is unheard or unknown. In 
 like manner for those who have known 
 Phillips Brooks, by no means the least 
 interest and value of the printed ser- 
 mons lie in their service as a sort of 
 magic glass through which the reader 
 can look, and see and hear the preacher 
 at the height of his living power, can 
 ^^feel him present in the room" as other 
 readers cannot. I am the more inclined 
 to believe this is true, and to be sorry 
 for those who in reading the sermons are 
 unable to associate the Personality with 
 the Truth, because of my own experi- 
 ence in finding the far greater satisfac- 
 tion in sermons which I first heard from 
 the preacher's own lips. Other sermons 
 may be intrinsically better ; but in these 
 the human voice may be most clearly
 
 62 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 heard, the human presence most defi- 
 nitely realized. And, because this is 
 true, one is willing to admit at once 
 that the sermons, for all their revelations 
 of spiritual insight and an excellently 
 ordered mind, may not be important con- 
 tributions to theology or really extraor- 
 dinary as feats of the intellect. ^^The 
 affection and the will being partners of 
 the brain, ' ' one may nevertheless find in 
 them, whether the preacher's figure 
 rises up behind the page or not, many 
 things which must appeal with potency 
 to the ^^ spiritual reason." A pui-ely 
 practical suggestion to him who would 
 come nearest to getting their original 
 effect is that they should be read with all 
 possible rapidity. They were written to 
 be spoken so ; and reading them in the 
 same way, bearing the while with cer- 
 tain repetitions and elaborations which 
 belong more truly to words for the ear 
 than to words for the eye, any one may 
 gain a certain conception of their origi- 
 nal effect.
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 63 
 
 At best, however, this conception must 
 be inadequate. The actual personality 
 of the preacher was essential to the full 
 force of what he had to say. Let us try 
 to see through what medium the truth 
 as he saw it was delivered to men. In 
 the great round pulpit of Trinity Church, 
 inviting its occujiant to look out in 
 every direction except behind him, the 
 figure of Phillij)s Brooks comes most 
 familiarly to mind. Six feet four inches 
 in height, symmetrically massive of fig- 
 ure, clad in the black Geneva gown, 
 of which the shadow happily grows less 
 each year in the pulpits of the Episcopal 
 church, he moves with swift dignity to 
 his place. The text is announced in a 
 quiet voice, sometimes too low to reach 
 all corners of the great structure ; and 
 the sermon begins on the same gentle 
 pitch. Woe to him whose ears are not 
 quick to hear, for though the volume of 
 voice increases as the sermon proceeds, 
 the speed of delivery begins at a maxi-
 
 64 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 mum, in keeping with his habit of 
 plunging into the very midst of his sub- 
 ject, and taxes the unaccustomed listener 
 to the utmost. The average speaker 
 gives forth about 120 words to the min- 
 ute : from 190 to 215 are said to have 
 poured from the lips of Phillips Brooks 
 in the same space of time. But the grad- 
 ual raising of the voice, together with 
 a remarkable clearness of enunciation, 
 diminishes the difaculty of keeping pace 
 with the speaker's extraordinary speed. 
 The voice itself may perhaps best be 
 described as carrying with it rather too 
 much breath to satisfy the most fastid- 
 ious, yet so full of sympathy, tenderness, 
 pleading, and conviction as to make one 
 quite impatient of the elocutionary stand- 
 ards which would condemn it. The 
 gestures are as nothing. A raising of 
 the hand and pressing it to the side, a 
 toss of the head as if in protest against 
 the human limitations wliich place any 
 barrier, physical or mental, between
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 65 
 
 man and the utterance of truth to him, — 
 these are all. If the total effect is not 
 eloquence of the highest order, one 
 knows not what to call it. 
 
 Such are the tangible expressions of 
 the personality which rises before the 
 mind, remembering Phillips Brooks. 
 This personality expresses itself, how- 
 ever, in another manner not quite so 
 obvious, yet intimately connected with 
 an important phase of the preacher's 
 conception of the truth. What he be- 
 lieved with his mind about men's capac- 
 ity for spiritual things he seemed to 
 declare by his mere physical presence. 
 ^'How often," writes Bishop Clark, ^^I 
 have heard him say, ^ I love to preach ' ! " 
 In talking about ^'The Teaching of Ee- 
 ligion, ' ' Mr. Brooks once said : ^ ^ A man 
 will dig his ditch better if he knows and 
 cares for the great plan of giving the 
 thirsty city water. Still, he can dig his 
 ditch for his dollar a day. But a man 
 cannot really preach at all unless he
 
 66 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 knows why he preaches, unless he is in 
 some degree eager to make men know 
 the Christ whom he knows. ^ ^ This very 
 love of preaching, based upon a thorough 
 belief in what he had to say and in the 
 need of men to hear it, shone out 
 through him whenever he rose to speak, 
 and gave to his words a power of con- 
 vincing which the words of a man less 
 completely convinced in his own heart 
 could not carry with them. Mr. Brooks, 
 we are told, preferred never to speak 
 without preparation, and we may be 
 perfectly sure that he never fell into 
 what he counted ^ '• the crowning disgrace 
 of a man^s ministry,^' — writing his ser- 
 mons on Saturday night ; but whether 
 he read the sermon from his fluently 
 written manuscript or spoke it without 
 recourse to notes of any kind, he added 
 to the truth with which he dealt the 
 winning and compelling power of his 
 irresistible peisonality. Illnstrating all 
 his own deli nit ions of good preaching
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 67 
 
 and true preachers, he stood iu his pul- 
 pit before and above his generation as 
 the very messenger of God to man.
 
 VI. 
 
 The personality of Phillii^s Brooks 
 displayed itself in many ways outside of 
 the pulpit. The qualities of the preacher, 
 to be sure, were those which most clearly 
 distinguished him from men in general ,- 
 but it would be entirely unfair to ignore 
 the other qualities through which he 
 expressed his nature. How pre-emi- 
 nently he preferred to think of him- 
 self as the preacher rather than the 
 writer or speaker or anything else may 
 be inferred from this suggestion to theo- 
 logical students: ^^ I think that it is 
 good for every minister to write some- 
 thing besides sermons, — books, articles, 
 essays, at least letters, — provided hehiis 
 control of himself and still remains the 
 preacher, and does not become an ama- 
 teur in literature instead." His own 
 control of himself in this direction was 
 most rigid. On one occiision, of which 
 the present writer happens to know, a
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 69 
 
 Christmas carol which Mr. Brooks wrote 
 for his Sunday-school was secured for 
 publication in a secular periodical for the 
 young. The publishers could do noth- 
 ing less than to send him a liberal check 
 for the few stanzas, asking that it might 
 be applied to the purposes of the Sunday- 
 school; but the check came promptly 
 back with thanks and so courteously 
 firm a note that the ^ incident was 
 closed." Mr. Brooks was evidently not 
 to be enticed into forgetting for an in- 
 stant that he was a minister, and not a 
 minor poet. And thus in all the varied 
 functions of his life he was consistently 
 himself. 
 
 To the complaint that he lacked the 
 administrative faculties needed by the 
 modern city clergyman, there was always 
 a sufficient reply in the mere existence 
 of St. Andrew's chapel, established by 
 Trinity Church, of the Trinity House, 
 the Trinity Club, the industrial and em- 
 ployment societies of the i^arish, the
 
 70 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 flourishing Sunday-school, and many 
 other expressions of parochial activity. 
 If there was one thing which he es- 
 pecially resented at the lat«r time when 
 all his motives and actions were vigor- 
 ously scrutinized, it was the charge that 
 his executive ability was weak. It is 
 true, the details of parish management 
 were often committed to other hands; 
 but the very best of administrators fre- 
 quently are those who best know how to 
 utilize the abilities of others. A part 
 of the wisdom Mr. Brooks displayed in 
 administering his parish lay in expend- 
 ing his own force where it could do most 
 good, — in the pulpit, — and in placing 
 much of the other work precisely where 
 it could best be performed. The parish 
 itself found no fault with his methods. 
 The state of feeling constantly existing 
 between him and them was indeed well 
 indicated — so far as outward things re- 
 veal inward — by the attempt upon one 
 occtision to make the rector's salary
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 71 
 
 larger, and by his absolute refusal to 
 listen te any such proposition. It was 
 for many activities besides preaching, 
 however, that his energies were re- 
 served. His accessibility to all comers 
 at all hours was so well known as to 
 bring down upon him many ^^devasta- 
 tors of the day." When he became a 
 bishop, and was urged to adopt office 
 hours in order to shield himself from in- 
 numerable visitors, he exclaimed, ^^God 
 save the day when they won't come to 
 me ! ' ' and held his time no less at the 
 disposal of every one who might ask for 
 it. "With his correspondence the same 
 principle was pursued. Xo matter how 
 trivial the letters which poured in upon 
 him day by day, he made himself ac- 
 countable for answers to them all. His 
 own handwriting was uncommonly clear, 
 and one is not sorry to hear that the 
 righteous indignation of which he was 
 thoroughly capable sometimes showed 
 itself when illegible letters came to him.
 
 72 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 ^^What right has that man to save his 
 time in writing badly and steal mine?" 
 And, again to quote from Bishop Law- 
 rence's report of his predecessor's words : 
 ^^ What a bit of self-conceit on the part 
 of that student that he should think that 
 what he writes is worth my while to 
 decipher ! ' ' Yet the probability is that 
 the ill-written words were not only de- 
 ciphered, but considerately answered. 
 
 If the offending student was an under- 
 graduate at Harvard, Phillips Brooks 
 could have been nothing but lenient to 
 him. The college for many years was 
 practically his second parish. In its 
 hold upon his affections, it probably 
 stood second to no institution of what- 
 ever sort. All the force of hereditary 
 and youthful homage bound it closely to 
 him ; and the college in turn bound him 
 to itself by its pride in everything he 
 did for it, from offering the prayer at 
 the Commemoration service to deliver- 
 ing the sermon at the two hundred and
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 73 
 
 fiftieth anniversary and becoming one 
 of its ^^ University Preachers." There 
 vras undoubtedly a reason, stronger than 
 that of mere association, for this interest 
 of Phillips Brooks in Harvard College. 
 Bishop Lawrence has told us of ^^one 
 great overhanging disappointment which 
 weighed upon him in some of his darker 
 moments, and which drove him to some 
 of his most desperate work. ' ' The dis- 
 appointment ' ' was that, with some ex- 
 ceptions, the best and strongest manhood 
 did not come into the fulness of com- 
 munion with Jesus Christ." To one 
 who believed with the intensity of Phil- 
 lips Brooks both in man and in God, 
 the realization of this fact must indeed 
 have brought moments of bitterness. 
 But it is evident that with them must 
 have come the determination to reach 
 the men in whom he believed, and to do 
 it before they had come to years of in- 
 flexibility. Harvard College, his own Al- 
 alia Mater, was at his very doors, crowded
 
 74 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 with the youth who year after year were 
 stepping out into the foremost ranks of 
 American manhood. It was an op- 
 portunity from which Phillips Brooks 
 would have been the last to turn away, 
 even if the college had ever shown the 
 slightest disposition to let him do so. 
 
 In 1870, only one year after Mr. 
 Brooks came to Boston from Philadel- 
 phia, he was made an overseer of the 
 college, and in later years, broken only 
 by the intervals prescribed by law, was 
 twice re-elected. President Eliot has 
 made public record of his support of all 
 changes in the college regulations which 
 should enlarge the freedom of the stu- 
 dents, simplify their living, and develop 
 their capacity for self-control. When 
 the appointment of instructors came be- 
 fore the board, Mr. Brooks never raised 
 questions of the religious, political, or 
 philosophical views of the applicant, 
 but feared the effect of a pessimistic 
 or cynical temper, and tried to protect
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 75 
 
 the college from its baleful influence. 
 Three times, in the agitation in favor 
 of voluntary chai)el, he voted against 
 abandoning the old compulsory system ; 
 but in the end his vote was cast in favor 
 of the present method. ^^In the exist- 
 ing state of college opinion on the sub- 
 ject/' he declared, ^'I can no longer 
 have anything to do with compulsory 
 prayers." 
 
 In 1877 the college bestowed upon 
 him the degree of S.T.D. ; and Mr. 
 Brooks — who heard the news of it in 
 Europe — wrote home to his mother, 
 ^^I am very sensible of the honor, but 
 hope people will not begin to call me by 
 the title." Nor did they, nor even 
 after the dignity of '^Doctor" was ele- 
 vated to that of ^^ Bishop," was it pos- 
 sible for those who really knew him to 
 stop thinking, and usually speaking, of 
 him simply as Mr. Brooks. It was in 
 1881 that the title of Professor Brooks 
 was offered to him; and, as the offer
 
 76 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 came from Harvard College, and held 
 out not only the Plummer Professorshij) 
 of Christian IMorals, but also the post of 
 Preacher to the University, it was not a 
 proposition to be carelessly dismissed. 
 After a few days of consideration Mr. 
 Brooks came to President Eliot to ask 
 if the corporation fully undei-stood that 
 he was a Trinitarian. The president 
 told him that the question was not one 
 of creed, — the college wanted him, no 
 matter what his beliefs might be. After 
 a week of further consideration he came 
 again to the president, and told him he 
 could not accept the offer. But, in the 
 words of President Eliot, ' ' he was very 
 pale and grave, and he spoke like a 
 man who had seen a beatific vision 
 which he could not pursue. Before we 
 parted, he had assured me that he 
 would do everything in his power, short 
 of leaving Trinity Church and Boston, 
 to further the religious work of the uni- 
 versity. That promise he amj)ly re-
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 77 
 
 deemed." Well skilled in reporting 
 the gifts of the sons of Harvard to their 
 mother, President Eliot has further de- 
 clared of Phillips Brooks : ^ ' He was one 
 of the greatest benefactors the univer- 
 sity has ever had ; for he gave himself, 
 his time, thought, and love, his burn- 
 ing words, and his convincing example 
 of purity, uprightness, and manly 
 piety." 
 
 The fulness of this giving was not at- 
 tained until the present system of ad- 
 ministering the religious affairs of the 
 college was adopted in 1886. Under 
 this system five clergymen of different 
 denominations divide the year into por- 
 tions, during which each ''University 
 Preacher" in turn takes up his resi- 
 dence in the college yard, conducts the 
 voluntary chapel service every morn- 
 ing of the week, and usually on every 
 Thursday afternoon and Sunday even- 
 ing. Besides all this, he holds himself 
 in readiness, for certain hours each day,
 
 78 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 to see any students wlio may wish to call 
 upon him. in his rooms at Wadsworth 
 House. This was a work into which 
 Phillips Brooks could not have failed to 
 enter with zeal ; and all his beliefs about 
 the willingness of men to respond to the 
 best teaching of spiritual truth were 
 borne out by the eagerness with which 
 the students thronged to hear and see 
 him. Appleton Chapel, at quarter be- 
 fore nine o'clock in the morning, has 
 never been overcrowded, I believe, since 
 the compulsory prayers were aban- 
 doned ; but on the mornings when Phil- 
 lips Brooks conducted the service it was 
 far more nearly in that condition than 
 at any other morning services of the 
 year. On Thursday afternoons and 
 Sunday nights when he preached, the 
 place was sure to be crowded to the 
 doors. If the students liked it, so did 
 he, and in a note to his fellow- 
 preacher, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, 
 he wrot<^, ''After all, the true Christian 
 Church is Api)leton Chapel. '^
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 79 
 
 Of his more personal intercourse with 
 the undergraduates whom he saw at 
 Wadsworth House, still another of his 
 fellow-preachers has written : '■ '- They 
 came to him — as has been said to me 
 more than once — afraid of his greatness, 
 and they went away remembering only 
 his kindness." The memories of these 
 private interviews are now the individ- 
 ual possessions of many men who would 
 forget many things they learned at Cam- 
 bridge more willingly than the words 
 and spirit of the kind, great man who 
 treated them as his equals. A story told 
 in public by our present ambassador to 
 Great Britain gives evidence that no 
 shadow of superiority to the undergrad- 
 uates was assumed even at the times 
 when they must have been vividly aware 
 of its existence. According to the anec- 
 dote, whether true or well found, Mr. 
 Brooks unwittingly walked in one morn- 
 ing upon a company of young fellows 
 huddling over a dying fire, and miser-
 
 80 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 ably recovering from a niglit of dissipa- 
 tion. He gave them, a friendly greeting, 
 and sat down for a few minutes' talk, in 
 which no word of censure or rebuke 
 found a place. Then he rose to go, and, 
 putting his hand kindly on the head of 
 the young man whom he knew as the 
 leading spirit, said, ^^Well, boys, it 
 doesn't make you feel any better, does 
 it? " No sermon that he ever preached 
 could have been better adapted to its 
 end than these words. The remem- 
 brance of all his words so stirred the 
 hearts of the men of Harvard that im- 
 mediately upon his death measures were 
 taken for the building of the commodi- 
 ous ''Phillips Brooks House," now just 
 completed, and meant to stand for all 
 time within the college yard as a memo- 
 rial of the preacher and the centre of 
 all religious work for and by the students 
 of the university. 
 
 The desire of Mr. Brooks to reach the 
 men of his time revealed itself in many
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 81 
 
 utterances outside of his own parish and 
 the Harvard community. Historical, 
 civic, and literary occasions of many sorts 
 called upon him as a sx)eaker, and always 
 he made himself felt primarily as a man 
 among men. ^N'owhere could this im- 
 pression of him have been more clear 
 than at the monthly meetings of the 
 Loyal Legion, which he attended regu- 
 larly for many years. ^ ^ To see him and 
 all the officers standing and repeating 
 the Lord's Prayer together was worth 
 a month of trouble." So wrote one of 
 the bravest of Massachusetts soldiers, and 
 the picture of the man of peace praying 
 with the men of warfare to whom his 
 whole heart had gone out through the 
 death- dealing years they had survived 
 is one of the images which the younger 
 generation will do best to preserve in all 
 its clearness of outline and suggestion.
 
 VII. 
 
 ^^I HATE had no wife, no children, 
 no particular honors, no serious misfort- 
 unes, and no adventures worth speaking 
 of. It is shameful at such times as these 
 not to have a history ; but I have not got 
 one, and must come without." This is 
 the response which Phillips Brooks 
 made to a request, late in his life, 
 for personal details to be printed in a 
 record of his college class. Happy is 
 the country without a history j and, if 
 men are like the lands they live in, there 
 must be a great deal of happiness in the 
 lives of clergymen who remain long in 
 one parish. Certainly, they do not teem 
 with incidents of historical value ; and, 
 certainly, the life of Phillips Brooks 
 from 1877 — let us say — to 1891 was 
 free from conspicuous events. 
 
 Every one who has returned from 
 travels abroad, and received greetings no 
 more enthusiastic than if lie had been
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 83 
 
 visiting a neighboring city, knows how 
 much less important such journeys are 
 in the eyes of the public than in his own. 
 The events which broke the same- 
 ness of the clerical life of Mr. Brooks 
 were largely those of foreign travel ; and, 
 since he was an extensive and accom- 
 plished traveller, he regarded his jour- 
 neyings as matters of course, and did 
 not expect his friends to take them more 
 seriously than he did. For him they 
 were always mere holidays, and his let- 
 ters home never lost a boyish freshness 
 and light-hearted appreciation of all the 
 humors of the way. He could look with 
 amusement upon the shortness of the beds 
 and the surplices in which he was asked 
 to sleep and to preach ; and, when he re- 
 turned from a journey with two friends 
 of physical proportions like his own, he 
 could doubtless laugh at the good stories 
 of their Brobdingnagian adventures just 
 as heartily as if the stories had been 
 true. From India he could write of his
 
 84 PHILLIPS BKOOKS 
 
 visit to the place where Gautama sat six 
 years under a tree, evolving Buddhism, 
 as a pilgrimage which a Boston minister, 
 in days when a large part of Boston 
 would rather think itself Buddhist than 
 Christian, was in duty bound to make. 
 
 From Paris he wrote in 1880 to his 
 brother William, ' ^ I have to be in Lon- 
 don, or rather at Windsor, next Sunday, 
 to make a few remarks to the Queen. ^' 
 In this democratic fashion he announced 
 his invitation or summons to preach be- 
 fore Her Majesty. The sermons which 
 he preached in ^yestminster and other 
 pulpits three years later were the amaze- 
 ment and delight of English congrega- 
 tions. Mr. Macmillan asked that they 
 might be made into a book, which was 
 promptly published under the title /S^er- 
 mons xyredclied in English Churclies. Dean 
 Farrar has told of the exclamation of an 
 American woman in London : ^^ I am so 
 glad he preached that sermon at St. Mar- 
 garet's. It is a special favorite of ours
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 85 
 
 at Boston. ' ' And, indeed, the title of the 
 volume was not Sermons written for Eng- 
 lish Churches. There as here, however, 
 the man won men to himself in private 
 life, even as his sermons won hearts to 
 the truths he proclaimed in public. Many 
 of his foreign letters give us delightful 
 glimpses of domestic scenes into which 
 the traveller was welcomed. Of all his 
 English friends. Dean Stanley, whose 
 bust is the only memorial of its sort in 
 Trinity Church, Boston, was probably 
 held first in the esteem and love of 
 Phillips Brooks. But the names of 
 other Churchmen hardly less famous, 
 besides those of Tennyson, Browning, 
 Arnold, and of many men whose lives 
 are a part of the best record of the Yic- 
 torian era, appear and reappear in the 
 annals of his journeys. Sprung from 
 the best blood of his own land and city, 
 Phillips Brooks retained, behind all his 
 sense of the common dignity of man- 
 kind, a keen appreciation of whatever
 
 86 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 possessed distinction. To this, in men, 
 as in sculpture, architecture, painting, 
 and to a far smaller degree in music, 
 he paid the full due of recognition and 
 of reverence. Yet from the embodi- 
 ments of distinction with which the best 
 of English society made him familiar, 
 he could turn at the end of every holi- 
 day with the zest of a boy to the thought 
 of home ; and it is not extravagant to 
 suppose that the week of the westward 
 ocean voyage was to him often the best 
 week of the summer or the year away 
 from Boston. 
 
 The friendships to which Phillips 
 Brooks returned in America bound him 
 close to men still living in Boston and 
 elsewhere. It is especially for them to 
 speak of the part he bore in their inti- 
 mate relationships. One point which 
 any one may observe is that some of the 
 best friends of liis college and seminary 
 days held their place among the best 
 friends of his final years. If they were
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 87 
 
 for the most part clergymen, it is no more 
 remarkable than that lawyers and phy- 
 sicians should select most of their friends 
 from their professional associates. The 
 one group of men to whom Phillips 
 Brooks probably stood nearest as a 
 friend was the ^'Clericus Club," estab- 
 lished by him in 1870, meeting first in 
 his study at the Hotel Kempton, after- 
 ward in his house in Marlborough Street, 
 and still later at the Trinity Church 
 Eectory on Clarendon Street. From its 
 foundation till 1891 Mr. Brooks was its 
 president, and as a rule its monthly 
 host. Its total membership, represent- 
 ing in general the more liberal thought 
 of the Episcopal Church in New Eng- 
 land, had at the time of Bishop Brooks's 
 death reached approximately the number 
 of sixty. At no one time was it nearly 
 so large, and the intimate intercourse 
 which was possible for its members made 
 it also possible for them to carry out into 
 their parishes and lives something more
 
 88 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 vital than the memory of the papers 
 which they read and freely discussed. 
 The spirit of the man who was at once 
 their leader and their friend must in 
 some measure have communicated itself 
 through them to many circles of human- 
 ity. There is, on the other hand, abun- 
 dant reason to believe that Phillips 
 Brooks i)laced a high value upon every- 
 thing which the club and its associations 
 brought to him. 
 
 Perhaps because his own life was that 
 of a bachelor, he cared all the more for 
 his friendships and that contact with 
 domestic affairs which, after the death of 
 his parents, he retained through the 
 households of his brothers. The Letters 
 of Travel reveal, to a marked degree, 
 the true joy fulness of his relationships 
 with parents, brothers, and nieces. He 
 was constantly writing to liis nearest 
 kinsmen, not because it was his duty, 
 but evidently because he loved to do it, 
 and knew with what love his stej)s were
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 89 
 
 followed everywhere. Wlieii lie was at 
 home, all the domestic festivals found 
 him ready to do them honor. After his 
 parents moved from Boston to !N'orth 
 Andover, the Thanksgiving dinner of 
 the family took place year by year with 
 great circumstance at the E^ctory. Here 
 also the nieces at any time could find in 
 a closet the dolls kept for their private 
 entertainment. Mr. Brooks's own birth- 
 day was regularly celebrated at the 
 house of his brother in Boston. The 
 children dressed his chair with flags and 
 ribbons. Until the years crowded the 
 candles too close, there was always a 
 cake ; and, to speed the bringing in of 
 the gifts, the dinner was sometimes hur- 
 ried out of aU keeping with its proper 
 dignity. But the greatest excitement 
 over gifts was of course at Christmas 
 time. Then the younger members of 
 the family were summoned separately to 
 breakfast at the rectory, and after care- 
 ful deliberation there were morning
 
 90 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 visits to the shops. The importance of 
 secrecy in the Christmas of childhood 
 was never lost to sight. ^ ^ Very private ! ' ' 
 was the heading of a letter written from 
 Vienna in November of 1882 to one of 
 the nieces in Boston. ^^ This letter is an 
 awful secret between you and me/' it 
 began. ^ ^ If you tell anybody about it, 
 I will not speak to you all this winter. 
 And this is what it is about. You know 
 Christmas is coming ; and I am afraid 
 that I shall not get home by that time, 
 and so I want you to get the Christmas 
 presents for the children.'' Here fol- 
 low injunctions to find out ^4n the most 
 secret way" what they would like best. 
 ^^Then you must ask yourself what you 
 want, but without letting yourself know 
 about it, and get it, too, and put it in 
 your own stocking, and be very much 
 surprised when you find it there." 
 
 The uncle of the summer-time was, 
 however, perhaps even more delight- 
 ful than this Christmas correspondent.
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 91 
 
 After the death of the last of the previ- 
 ous generation the ancestral place at 
 North Andover came into the possession 
 of Phillips Brooks. Here, within reach 
 of his parish duties, he spent most of the 
 summers not devoted to travel. The 
 children of the family could ill have 
 been spared from the North Andover life. 
 "Without them the fireworks on the 
 Fourth of July might have been tame, 
 but with them were a source of boyish 
 delight to their uncle. To the children's 
 society the afternoons were given almost 
 as devotedly as the mornings were kept 
 for work. The '^ Corn-barn" was fitted 
 up as their playhouse. Trophies of 
 travel were its decorations; and one of 
 its chief pieces of furniture was a great 
 arm-chair, from which Mr. Brooks used 
 to watch the children at work over 
 the cooking-stove he had given them. 
 When there were plays in prepara- 
 tion, he helped with his own hands 
 to build the stage. Generally, in the
 
 92 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 afternoon he took a long drive in a 
 buggy which had a place for just one 
 child. But there were shops in the 
 little towns through which the drive was 
 sure to lead, and there was always time 
 to stop and buy some toy for those 
 who had been left behind. In the even- 
 ing perhaps there were games, into 
 which Mr. Brooks entered with all 
 heartiness. Thus ended many a quiet 
 day J and upon the simple picture which 
 their succession presents one may look 
 with a sense of the truest satisfa<jtion. 
 
 The children of Mr. Brooks's own 
 family received in fuller measure what 
 he gave to all children with whom he 
 came into contact. In his parish, and 
 later in his diocese, he invariably made 
 himself the friend of the youngest 
 generation, and seemed to get, for ex- 
 ample from a Christmas festival, quite as 
 much pleasure as his presence and words 
 were sure to give. With one of the most 
 remarkable children of the century, the
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 93 
 
 deaf, dumb, and blind Helen Keller, 
 his relations were strikingly beautiful. 
 ^^ Please tell me something that you 
 know about God, ' ' she wrote to him ; 
 and the substance of the long reply, 
 fitted precisely to the nature and 
 understanding of the child, is to be 
 found near the end of his letter : ' ' And 
 so love is everything ; and if anybody 
 asks you, or if you ask yourself, what 
 God is, answer, ^God is love.''' In 
 addition to the letter- writing there was 
 an Intimate personal intercourse, which 
 caused the child soon after the bishop's 
 death to write, ^ ^ Oh, it is very hard to 
 bear this great sorrow, — hard to believe 
 that I shall never more hold his gentle 
 hand while he tells me about God and 
 love and goodness." But the memory 
 of his words came back to her : ' ^ And in 
 the midst of my sorrow I seem to hear 
 his glad voice say : ^ Helen, you shall see 
 me again in that beautiful world we 
 used to talk about in my study. Let
 
 94 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 not your heart be troubled.' Then 
 heaven seems very near, since a tender, 
 loving friend awaits us there. '^
 
 VIIT. 
 
 Had the i^rivate and parochial affairs 
 of Phillips Brooks been allowed to run 
 their course till the end of his life, that 
 end might have come less quickly. He 
 would, moreover, have been spared the 
 publicity into which his motives and 
 everything that concerned his inmost 
 life were dragged by the conspicuous 
 events of the few closing years. ' ^ When 
 I think how much of other people's 
 thoughts I have dared to occupy for the 
 last three months,^' he wrote to a friend 
 in the summer of 1891, ^^I am truly 
 ashamed of myself ; but it has not been 
 my fault. And now it is over; and I 
 shall go into the upper house, and be 
 forgotten. '^ As early as 1886 he might 
 have gone into the House of Bishops, 
 for then he was elected Assistant Bishop 
 of Pennsylvania. From the fact that he 
 declined the of&ce, it was felt that he 
 preferred never to become a bishop.
 
 96 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 Indeed, with his marvellous power as a 
 preacher, — a power to which the busi- 
 ness men of Xew York paid their trib- 
 ute when they thronged from Wall 
 Street to the noonday services at Trin- 
 ity in the Lent of 1890, — he might well 
 have been content to end his clerical 
 life as he began it. 
 
 This, however, was simply not per- 
 mitted to him. When the diocesan con- 
 vention of Massachusetts met in April of 
 1891 to elect a successor to Bishop Pad- 
 dock, the delegates found themselves in 
 an unusual i^osition. One of the candi- 
 dates had already received the suffrages of 
 the unsectarian public. The newspapers 
 and general opinion had said that, if the 
 diocese of Massachusetts should fail to 
 make Phillips Brooks its bishop, it would 
 fall irreparably short of a great opi>ortu- 
 nity. There were not wanting those 
 within tlie church who thought that the 
 election of a man holding the theological 
 views of ]\Ir. Brooks, and exhibiting his
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 97 
 
 sympathy with men still more widely at 
 variance with the stricter sect of Church- 
 men, would be an ecclesiastical calamity. 
 "When the vote was cast, the laity were 
 found to be overwhelmingly in his favor, 
 and the clergy so far in agreement with 
 them as to leave no doubt that the dio- 
 cese had chosen the leader it really 
 wanted. 
 
 Up to this time the churchmanship of 
 Phillix^s Brooks had been a matter which 
 concerned only his voluntary hearers and 
 his bishop. So long as there was no 
 interference from these quarters, his 
 preaching could go on unquestioned. But 
 it is the law of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church that a majority of the bishops 
 and standing committees of every diocese 
 shall give their consent — their placebit — 
 to the consecration of every bishop-elect. 
 He is usually so ' ^ safe ' ' a man that no 
 serious question is raised. It is only in 
 the case of extremists that there is any 
 doubt of confirmation. When Father
 
 98 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 Grafton was elected bishop of Fond du 
 Lac, the standing committee of Massa- 
 chusetts sent out a circular declaring that 
 he was not too extreme a man for the 
 episcopate. Phillips Brooks himself, rep- 
 resenting absolutely different views from 
 Father Grafton, wrote a letter to the 
 president of the standing committee of 
 Kentucky, saying, '^If we reject extreme 
 men from the episcopate, we shall make 
 the episcopate narrower than it is.^^ It 
 would have been too much to expect 
 that all those who differed from Phillips 
 Brooks would look upon his candidacy 
 with correspondingly open minds. Yet 
 there might easily have been a nearer 
 approach to the manner in which he and 
 Massachusetts dealt with the question of 
 Fond du Lac. 
 
 The objections of those who were most 
 active in opposing the confirmation of 
 the choice of Massachusetts were un- 
 doubtedly sincere. The pamphlet in 
 which the bishop of a AVestern diocese
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 99 
 
 brought together his ^^Open Letter '' 
 and many other expressions of opposi- 
 tion speaks for the positive convictions 
 of one who believed with all his heart 
 that the Church to which his life was 
 devoted would really be hurt by accept- 
 ing a bishop who had been baptized as 
 an infant by a Unitarian, had joined in 
 public services with ministers of differ- 
 ent creeds, had even invited them to 
 partake of the communion when Trinity 
 Church was consecrated, and was him- 
 self ^'an Arian of some sort." It was 
 even an offence that a Unitarian minis- 
 ter had written a sonnet of satisfaction 
 on his election. If the "Western bishop 
 knew that students for the Methodist 
 ministry were sent by their instructors 
 to hear the preaching of Phillips 
 Brooks, at least he did not mention it. 
 Xor could it have been known that 
 Mr. Brooks had written to a lady 
 in some uncertainity about coming to 
 confirmation, ^ ^ I am content that our
 
 100 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 Churcli should be a helpful friend to 
 one who has been living among quite 
 different associations, and who does not 
 think it best to come into closer personal 
 connection with her." Still less could 
 it have been foreseen that within two 
 years a Congregational minister in 
 AYorcester would say from his i)ulpit : 
 ^^ Entirely and deeply loyal as he was to 
 his own branch of the Church, it was 
 simply impossible for us to identify him 
 wholly with it, because the Christ that 
 was so signally manifested in him was 
 our Christ and the Christ of all believ- 
 ers ; and therefore this man, transcend- 
 ing all sectarian limits, was the brother 
 and bishop of us all." That any man 
 should become the bishop of all, with- 
 out bringing all into one mode of 
 thought, w^as indeed a ground for fear to 
 the Western guardian of the faith. He 
 called upon Mr. Brooks to define his 
 position on several theological points, 
 and received this reply: ^^I have been
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 101 
 
 for thirty-two years a minister of the 
 Church, and I have used her services 
 joyfully and without complaint. I have 
 preached in many places, and with the 
 utmost freedom. I have ^Titten and 
 published many volumes, which I have 
 no right to ask anybody to read, but 
 which will give to any one who chooses 
 to read them clear understanding of my 
 way of thinking. My acts have never 
 been concealed. 
 
 ^^ Under these circumstances, I cannot 
 think it well to make any utterance of 
 faith or pledge of purpose at the present 
 time. ' ' 
 
 Here was one who loved the Church of 
 his boyhood and manhood as loyally as 
 the most intense of his opponents, one 
 who believed that it was abundantly 
 spacious for them and for him. It could 
 have been no easy thing for such a man 
 to bear in silence the bitterest charges 
 of disloyalty, and to hear it proclaimed 
 that the place in which he found himself
 
 102 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 was not a place where he could honestly 
 remain. Yet, through all the weeks 
 when his name in certain regions was 
 little better than a target for abuse, no 
 word of retort or justification passed his 
 lips. When he found a savage picture 
 of his face in a newspaper, he could 
 even make light of it by writing to 
 Bishop Clark, — 
 
 ^^Ko wonder, if 'tis thus he looks, 
 The Church has doubts of Phillips 
 Brooks," — 
 
 with other lines to the effect that at 
 least he meant to do his best. For 
 charges of one sort he was indeed alert. 
 ^^ After all," he said, 'Hhey have let 
 me off i)retty easily. As yet I have 
 never been charged with breaking either 
 the sixth or the seventh or the eighth 
 commandment." At another time he 
 told a friend that he cared nothing about 
 what might be said of his opinions and 
 position in the Church j ^^but," he con-
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 103 
 
 tinned, ' ^ if yon hear a word against my 
 moral character, I mnst know it, — that 
 must be met.^' Carefnlly as he and his 
 friends might listen for accusations such 
 as these, they conld hear absolutely 
 nothing. That which did make itself 
 heard, in spite of all endeavors of the 
 extremists in opposition, was the positive 
 confirmation which the bishops and the 
 dioceses set upon the choice of Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 On the 14th of October, 1891, in Trin- 
 ity Church, Boston, PhUlips Brooks was 
 consecrated to the episcopate by the lay- 
 ing on of hands by nine bishops of the 
 Church. If there had ever been any 
 real doubt of his loyalty to the system 
 for which they and the ceremony stood, 
 it would have been dispelled by his 
 standing as the central towering figure 
 of the solemn rites. His face, to those 
 who watched it as the procession of 
 priests and bishops made its way from 
 the chancel to the doors which opened
 
 104 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 to the world, expressed something more 
 of inward than of outward consecration. 
 Yet the symbol and the reality were as 
 one, and the full significance of his work 
 as a bishop was to be that every formal 
 act could show itself glowing with a 
 light of the spirit that shone within. 
 
 There were many ways in which the 
 first Sunday after his consecration might 
 have been spent, but the way he chose 
 was probably the best of all. An old 
 friend in the ministry was in deep sor- 
 row for the loss of his wife. To this 
 friend Bishop Brooks devoted the Sun- 
 day, preaching for him, and bringing 
 him courage and comfort through the 
 words spoken both in public and in 
 private. As he went about the diocese 
 in the weeks and months that followed, 
 it was not to personal grieis that he was 
 called upon especially to minister. Yet 
 into all his relations with his clergy and 
 their people he infused a strong personal 
 quality, which left behind him every-
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 105 
 
 where a sense that the effective bishop 
 and the affectionate friend were strangely 
 blended into one. In the capacity of 
 Mend, he could say to the choir-boys at 
 Newton, in the last public address of his 
 life, ^ ^ When you meet me, let me know 
 that you know me." As a bishop on 
 the other hand, he won the reputation 
 of ^^a stickler for the canons." Yet 
 one does not need to look far and long 
 to see him again in the less formal light, 
 this time, at the first and only meeting 
 of the House of Bishops he attended, 
 leaning over to the seminary classmate 
 who long before had befriended him, 
 and whispering, ^ ^ Henry, is it always as 
 dull as this ? ' ' The great seriousness of 
 his of&ce, however, was always behind 
 any humorous lack of seriousness with 
 which he could take himself for the 
 moment. Just as in his parish ministry 
 he had ^ ^ loved to preach, " so in all the 
 labors of his new oflSce he experienced 
 a hearty delight. ^^I like this going
 
 106 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 round from place to place, and preach- 
 ing to all these new people,'^ he once 
 said to Bishop Clark. ^'I wish that I 
 could have begun this sort of life ten 
 years earlier." 
 
 It was not a part of his nature to 
 spare himself any fraction of the work 
 which came to him. Letters were an- 
 swered with the scrupulousness of old, 
 and demands of every sort upon his time 
 were met without a question. When 
 his secretary attempted to condole with 
 him on having so little time to him- 
 self, he declared that he had plenty 
 of it — in the railroad cars. The total 
 power of good that might have been 
 wrought by a continuance of his travels 
 over the length and breadth of his native 
 State, bringing into every town and city 
 the influence of his words and i^resence, 
 can hardly be overestimated. Bat the 
 labors to which he subjected himself were 
 more than a man, no longer young and 
 never content to live with anything less
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 107 
 
 than the fullest exercise of his powers, 
 could be expected to bear. His zest of 
 living was expressed one day when he 
 exclaimed to his successor, ''I don't 
 want to be old, but I should like to live 
 on this earth five hundred years.'' The 
 horror of his life, he is said to have told 
 another friend, was that he might lose 
 his voice in old age and be unable to 
 preach ; but then, he said, he would ask 
 his friends, a few at a time, to come to 
 his study, and let him whisper his mes- 
 sage to them. The look of age, creeping 
 gradually through recent years into his 
 face, had begun to remind men that his 
 strength, like theii s, had its bounds. But 
 for him the death by slow degrees would 
 have been a horror indeed, and the spec- 
 tacle of it a sadness to men. Happily 
 this was not to be. A sharp and sudden 
 illness seized him when he had been but 
 fifteen months a bishop ; and on January 
 23, 1893, he died. 
 
 It is something to live in the age of
 
 108 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 photography. But for this art the extent 
 to which Copley Square outside of Trin- 
 ity Church was thronged on the day when 
 Bishop Brooks was buried might be for- 
 gotten. The pictures remain to teU 
 us that on the 26th of January the 
 great chui'ch could hold but a small por- 
 tion of the multitude which came to 
 render him the last act of reverence. 
 The municipal offices and many places of 
 business were closed. A sense of public 
 grief, an accumulated personal bereave- 
 ment, was clearly to be felt throughout 
 the city. Men and women of every sect 
 and of none truly mourned the loss of the 
 man whose greatness had belonged to Bos- 
 ton and to America. ^' If you are look- 
 ing for Christian unity, ^ ' one of its chief 
 advocates was told that morning, ^'you 
 will see more of it to-day than you ever 
 have seen before or are likely soon to see 
 again. ' ' One wished that Bishop Brooks 
 himself could have known what his death 
 would mean to the whole city of his birth
 
 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 109 
 
 and love, and even more particularly 
 tx) Harvard Ck)llege. Eight young men 
 from the University, seven of them under- 
 graduates, served as his pall- bearers. As 
 the funeral procession moved from Trinity 
 Church to Mount Auburn, it passed, at the 
 request of the undergraduates, through 
 the college yard, by Gore Hall and Uni- 
 versity out through the gate between 
 Harvard and Massachusetts. The college 
 bell tolled slowly. The undergraduates 
 crowded the steps of the buildings and 
 with uncovered heads stood thickly 
 massed on either side of the driveway 
 until the whole procession had passed 
 them by. It was a farewell of which the 
 highest exemplar of manhood in any 
 form, physical, intellectual, or spiritual, 
 might have been thought worthy. That 
 a great body of collegians, the keenest of 
 men to know a man when they see him, 
 should stand bareheaded on a winter day, 
 and pay this farewell homage to Phillips 
 Brooks, speaks more truly than any
 
 110 PHILLIPS BEOOKS 
 
 words of description coiild speak for the 
 essential quality of manhood that was in 
 hinL
 
 IX. 
 
 There is no art to do for personalities 
 what photography can do for scenes and 
 faces. The achievements of a man, the 
 effect of his personality and its mediums 
 of expression, can be described in words. 
 But the personality itself is a thing which 
 eludes reproduction in the terms of hu- 
 man speech. With Phillips Brooks this 
 indefinable gift of personality was the 
 dominating element of power. Surely, 
 it was not his mind by itself which placed 
 him head and shoulders above most of 
 his contemporaries. In the mere gift of 
 intellect some of them surpassed him. 
 It has frequently been said that, if he had 
 devoted himself to literature, his gifts of 
 insight and of self-expression would have 
 wrought wonderful results. Perhaps 
 they would ; for, certainly, men of no 
 greater mental equipment have made 
 enviable names for themselves in letters. 
 But all these speculations are futile.
 
 112 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 He chose the work of preaching for the 
 expression of his personality, and it 
 remains for us only to fix our final regard 
 upon its individual methods and effect. 
 
 Let us say at once, then, that the gifts 
 of circumstance, physique, and tempera- 
 ment played an important part in mak- 
 ing him what he was. Whether through 
 his own merits or not, he was shielded 
 from the petty concerns and cares which 
 hamper the majority of mankind. To 
 illustrate his physical indifference to the 
 ills of the body, it is told that he once 
 held up his thumb, bearing the scar of a 
 surgeon's knife and said : ^^Men tell me 
 that was about the severest pain which a 
 man can have. If that is so, then I have 
 less respect for pain than I thought I 
 had. ' ^ Joined with this physical superi- 
 ority was the corresponding temperament 
 of the optimist. The union of these quali- 
 ties in many persons would have served 
 to repel the natures more sensitive to the 
 unequal things of life. But in public
 
 PHILLIPS BKOOKS 113 
 
 and in private utterances a third quality 
 of sympathy was blended with these 
 other two in such a manner as to make 
 them far less a means of suggesting the 
 unattainable than of communicating 
 strength. ^ ^ To look up into his honest 
 clear eyes, ' ' wrote Lucy Larcom, when 
 she was first making his acquaintance, 
 '^was like seeing the steady lights in a 
 watch-tower. ' ' This, then, was a physi- 
 cal presence which of itself expressed 
 what men and women needed to know. 
 
 The spiritual gifts, to which his intel- 
 lect brought many and important aids, 
 gave him his true distinction. In an 
 age commonly called the most material 
 he rose up and presented a living proof 
 of his belief that all men could be 
 touched and stirred by the utterance of 
 genuine spiritual truth. Dr. Holmes 
 described him as ^ ^ the ideal minister of 
 the American gospel." And so he was, 
 the interpreter of the unseen, spiritual 
 things so hidden behind the temporal and
 
 114 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 seen that it is all too easy for a people 
 like ours to forget their existence. To 
 readjust a favorite figure of his own, 
 Bishop Brooks was a window of clear 
 glass, through which the light which 
 was to him the light of life shone down, 
 with the least possible loss of clearness 
 through transmission, into the lives of 
 men. Before them he set up the high- 
 est and noblest standards of living ; and 
 into the theological atmosphere of his 
 time, within and outside of his own 
 branch of the universal Church, he in- 
 troduced, for laity as for clergy, a 
 clearing influence, of which the effec- 
 tiveness cannot possibly be restricted to 
 the period of one man's life. 
 
 Like the actor and the orator, unlike 
 the poet and the painter, the preacher 
 must yield up the fullest power of his 
 work when his voice is silencM and his 
 personality removed. But the preaeher 
 who is also a teacher of positive truth 
 cannot wholly perish. He passes on to
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 115 
 
 others something of the spirit that was 
 in him. The chief torch, is extinguished, 
 and it seems at first as if little or no 
 light would be left. But soon our eyes 
 begin to see the rushlights and the 
 candles which have lit themselves at 
 the torch ; and, though no one of them 
 is so bright as this was, yet their total 
 light makes the gray world a far more 
 tolerable place. Moreover, many lights 
 are stiU to be lit which will owe their 
 quality of brightness to the torch they 
 have never known. So surely has it 
 been and will it be with the influence 
 of Phillips Brooks.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Soon after the death of Phillips 
 Brooks, the Eev. Arthur Brooks, of 
 New York, began the preparation of 
 the exhaustive Life and Letters of his 
 distinguished brother. In 1895 the Rev. 
 Arthur Brooks died, leaving the work 
 unfinished. Its beginnings and the ma- 
 terial for its completion were then put 
 into the hands of the Rev. Prof. A. Y. G. 
 Allen, who at this writing has gone far 
 toward finishing the two large volumes, 
 which are to be published by Messrs. 
 E. P. Button & Co. of New York, the 
 publishers of all the writings of Phillips 
 Brooks. Until it appears, the reader 
 wiU search in vain for a complete ac- 
 count of the preacher's life. 
 
 It may be expected that many of his 
 sermons, when they can be read in inti- 
 mate connection with his letters and 
 other memorials, will seem to bear a 
 definite relation to the life he lived.
 
 BIBUOGRAPHY 117 
 
 There are, indeed, several of his pub- 
 lished volumes which have a biographi- 
 cal value of varying obviousness. These 
 are mentioned below. 
 
 In chronological relation with them 
 are included references to the few maga- 
 zine articles in which the reader will 
 find the most suggestive comment and 
 general information. As the present list 
 is meant to include only the writings of 
 easiest accessibility, it does not touch 
 upon the many sermons and pamphlets 
 relating to Phillips Brooks which have 
 appeared since his death. 
 
 I. LEomBES ON Preaching. Delivered 
 before the Divinity School of Yale Col- 
 lege in 1877. (Xew York, 1877 : E. P. 
 Dutton & Co.) Here the preacher's 
 advice to beginners in his profession re- 
 veals and suggests many things concern- 
 ing his own practice of it. 
 
 II. New England Magdzine, January, 
 1892. ' ' Phniips Brooks. " By the Rev. 
 Julius H. Ward.
 
 118 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 III. Harvard Monthly, February, 1893. 
 (Phillips Brooks memorial number, con- 
 taining papers by President Eliot, Dr. 
 Lyman Abbott, E. E. Hale, and others. ) 
 
 IV. Andover BevieWj March-April, 1893. 
 ^'Phillips Brooks. '^ By Professor (now 
 Bishop) William Lawrence : besides an 
 admirable unsigned editorial article. 
 
 V. Atlantic Monthly, April, 1893. ^^ Phil- 
 lips Brooks.^' By the Be v. Alexander 
 V. G. Allen. 
 
 YI. New England Magazine, May, 1893. 
 '^Phillips Brooks and Harvard Univer- 
 sity.^^ By the Rev. Alexander Mac- 
 kenzie. 
 
 VII. Phillips Beooks. By Arthur 
 Brooks (Black and White Series). 
 (New York, 1893: Harper Brothers.) 
 This is a reprint of the article which the 
 brother of Phillips Brooks contributed 
 to Harper'' s Magazine for May, 1893. In 
 another form he had already delivered
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 119 
 
 it as a sermon at the Churcli of the In- 
 carnation, New York. 
 
 VIII. Essays and Addresses, Relig- 
 louSj Literary, and Social. Edited 
 by the Rev. John Cotton Brooks. (New 
 York, 1894: E. P. Dutton & Co.) 
 There are no sermons in this volume, 
 but the preacher, without obtruding his 
 mission, is almost constantly present. 
 
 IX. Letters of Travel. Edited by 
 M. F. B. (New York, 1894 : E. P. Dut- 
 ton & Co.) This volume contains the 
 informal letters written to members of 
 his family while Phillips Brooks was 
 spending his longer and shorter vacations 
 in travel. They are from all parts of 
 the world, and unconsciously exhibit 
 many personal characteristics of the 
 writer. 
 
 X. Reminiscences. By Thomas M. 
 Clark, D.D., LL.D. (pp. 266-272). 
 (New York, 1895 : Thomas Whittaker).
 
 120 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The bishop of Ehode Island was for 
 
 many years an intimate friend of 
 
 Phillips Brooks, and here, as always, 
 
 writes as a shrewd observer of life and 
 
 character.
 
 The beacon BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE, Editor. 
 
 The aim of this scries is to furnish brief, readable, and 
 authentic accounts of the lives of those Americans whose 
 personalities have impressed themselves most deeply on the 
 character and history of their country. On account of the 
 length of the more formal lives, often running into large 
 volumes, the average busy man and woman have not the 
 time or hardly the inclination to acquaint themselves with 
 American biography. In the present series everything that 
 such a reader would ordinarily care to know is given by 
 writers of special competence, who possess in full measure 
 the best contemporary point of view. Each volume is 
 equipped with a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important 
 dates, and a brief bibliography for further reading. Finally, 
 the volumes are printed in a form convenient for reading 
 and for carrying handily in the pocket. 
 
 The following volumes are the first issued : — 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS, by the Editor. 
 DAVID G. FARRAGUT, bv James Barnes. 
 ROBERT E. LEE, by W. P.' Trent. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, by Edward Everett 
 
 Hale, Jr. 
 DANIEL WEBSTER, by Norman Hapgood. 
 
 The following are among those in preparation : — 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON, by John Burroughs. 
 EDWIN BOOTH, by Charles Townsend Copeland. 
 AARON BURR, by Henry Childs Merwin. 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, by W. B. Shubrick 
 
 Clymer. 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by Lindsay Swift. 
 
 SMALL, PvlAYNARD & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 6 Beacon Street, Boston.
 
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