"I never met any man, or any ecclesiastic, half so natural, so manly, so
large-hearted, so intensely Catholic in the only real sense, so loyally
true in his friendships, so absolutely unselfish, so modest, so
unartificial, so self-forgetful.... A blessing and a gracious presence
has vanished out of many lives. With a very sad heart I bid him farewell
... the noblest, truest, and most stainless man I ever knew." Thus wrote
Canon Farrar of London in _The Review of Reviews_ for March, 1893, two
months after the death of Phillips Brooks.
The various pulpits, the press, the millionnaires, the poor, and the
lonely, all felt and said nearly the same thing. Canon Farrar wrote
elsewhere, before Dr. Brooks's death, "I cannot recall the name of a
single divine among us, of any rank, who either equals him as a
preacher, or has the large sympathies and the rich endowments which
distinguish him as a man."
The _Nation_ said, "The death of Phillips Brooks strikes down the
greatest figure left to the American church."
[Illustration: PHILLIPS BROOKS.]
The Rev. Stopford W. Brooke, of the First Unitarian Church of Boston,
said, "He was so vigorous, so noble, so persuasive, so ever welcome a
guest of all our hearts, that we had almost forgotten he, too, was
mortal.... We never once doubted his sincerity, or his large, pure,
generous humanity. There was a power in his presence, his smile, the
grasp of his hand, that deep and magnificent eye, which triumphed,
unconsciously to himself, over all our haggling differences of
temperament and opinion, and drew, by the same unconsciousness of
itself, our best manhood to his side. I think this long consistent
unconsciousness of himself was one of the great qualities that so
endeared him to us all. Here was a man possessed of most remarkable
gifts,--an extraordinary vitality, an astonishing 'volume velocity' and
beauty of language, a rich and fertile imagination which idealized
everything it touched, a power of feeling which rose and swept into his
audience like the tides in the Bay of Fundy; and yet he never seemed
aware that he was anything exceptional.... I believe that greatness is
more common, goodness is far more common, than that unconsciousness with
which he wore his greatness and goodness."
Stopford Brooke speaks of another remarkable characteristic of Phillips
Brooks,--"His radiance and his joy. No one who has read at all carefully
the literature of our time can have failed to remark how dominant in it
is the note of sadness. The leaders of the past generation bore, with a
certain sombre melancholy, the burden of the chaos, as Carlyle puts it,
which they were endeavoring to fashion into cosmos."
Not so Phillips Brooks. "Goodness and happiness, duty and joy, were
constant companions in his life. We looked at him, listened to him,
talked with him, and knew he had saved and kept through many long years
the soul's best secret. Through all that he said and did there ran this
river, fresh, clear, and abundant, of inner joy. What an inspiration
that joy was to us!"
Dr. Samuel Eliot, a member of Phillips Brooks's church, and his
life-long friend, says in the eulogy of him, delivered at the Boston
Memorial Meeting, "He was blessed with a hopefulness of which most of us
have but a comparatively scanty share. No trait of his was more
conspicuous. No single source of his power over his generation was more
abundant or more effective. Whatever the foreground might harbor in
shadows, he looked beyond into the distance and saw it radiant....
"How he helped others to be hopeful also, how many shackles he thus
loosed from the heavy-laden, how he thus encouraged his people to work
their way forward to a future filled with promise, is a familiar story.
His hopefulness gave him his strong hold upon young men. To them, always
looking before and not behind, he stood beckoning, and the fire caught
from him spread through them and out from them. Neither they, nor any
others, may have known all the hope that was in him; indeed, he may not
have known it all himself. It often seemed as if he were hoping for
brighter days and holier lives than are consistent with human
imperfections."
Dr. Eliot, after speaking of Phillips Brooks's affection, playfulness of
conversation with his friends, his humor, which rendered his
companionship charming, his delight in children, his unconsciousness of
all his distinctions and successes, the unchangeable simplicity of his
habits, his manners, his opinions, says, "These are pleasant
recollections to all who loved him.... They linger like the soft glow of
a summer twilight, now that his day on earth is over....
"This great man was never greater than he was in the sight of those who
knew him best. 'I shall not change,' he said to a brother clergyman who
seems to have been doubtful whether he would be the same after being a
bishop,--'I shall not change, and you will always find me just as you
have found me heretofore.'"
The Rev. Arthur Brooks, D.D., in a memorial sermon preached in the
Church of the Incarnation, New York City, says that on the afternoon of
the day of the consecration of his brother as a bishop, fearing that
some of his friends might not come to see him as often as heretofore, he
said earnestly, "Don't desert me."
Phillips Brooks was born Dec. 13, 1835, on High Street, Boston, the
second in a family of six sons. His mother, Mary Ann Phillips, the
granddaughter of Judge Phillips, the founder of Phillips Academy,
Andover, was a woman of fine intellect and unusually earnest piety. His
father, William Gray Brooks, a hardware merchant, whose ancestors, like
the Phillipses, held high social position, and power in the State as
well, was a man of refinement and scholarly tastes.
The son Phillips, says the Rev. Julius H. Ward in the _New England
Magazine_ for January, 1892, "seems to have inherited from his mother
the deep and earnest piety and intellectual strength which have always
been his characteristics, and from his father the robust physical
constitution, the strong and resolute spirit, which he has shown in
using them."
"Parents whose praise," says Dr. Arthur Brooks, "because of this great
son, is in the churches to-day, earned it by self-denial and the
subordination of all interests and ambitions to the training and
education of a family of boys.... That love to Christ which glowed in
his words and flashed in his eye, was caught from a mother's lips, and
was read with boyish eyes as the central power of a mother's soul and
life."
Mother-love was always a strong force in the heart of Phillips Brooks.
It is related that when some one asked him if he was not afraid when he
first preached before Queen Victoria, he replied, "Oh no; I have
preached before my mother."
He said in one of his sermons, "The purest mingling of all elements into
one character and nature which we ever see, is in the Christian mother,
in whom the knowledge of all that she knows, and the love which she
feels for her child, make not two natures, as they often do in men, in
fathers, but perfectly and absolutely one."
He often spoke of "that self-sacrifice which is the very essence of her
motherhood."
At eight years of age, Phillips and his brother William Gray, a year and
a half older, were at the Adams School in Mason Street, and entered the
Latin School, then on Bedford Street, in 1846, when Phillips was eleven
years old. Here he was a quiet, good scholar, excelling in the
languages, and all unconscious of his great future. His teacher, Francis
Gardner, was a sad, earnest man, whom Phillips Brooks described nearly
forty years later, when he spoke, April 23, 1885, at the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the Latin School, the oldest school in America.
"Tall, gaunt, muscular ... impressing every boy with the strong sense of
vigor, now lovely and now hateful, but never for a moment tame or dull
or false; indignant, passionate, an athlete both in body and mind.... He
was not always easy for the boys to get along with. Probably it was not
always easy for him to get along with himself. But it has left a
strength of truth and honor and devoted manliness which will always be
a treasure in the school he loved."
In this school young Brooks learned his fondness for and advocacy of the
public school system. He said in his anniversary address, "The German
statesman, if you talk with him, will tell you that, with every evil of
his great military system, which makes every citizen a soldier for some
portion of his life, it yet has one redeeming good. It brings each young
man of the land once in his life directly into the country's service;
lets him directly feel its touch of dignity and power; makes him proud
of it as _his_ personal commander, and so insures a more definite and
vivid loyalty through all his life.
"More graciously, more healthily, more Christianly, the American public
school does what the barracks and the drill-room try to do. Would that
its blessing might be made absolutely universal! Would that it might be
so arranged that once in the life of every Boston boy, if only for three
months, he might be a pupil of a public school; might see his city
sitting in the teacher's chair; might find himself, along with boys of
all degrees and classes, simply recognized by his community as one of
her children! It would put an element into his character and life which
he would never lose. It would insure the unity and public spirit of our
citizens."
These words of Phillips Brooks. Mr. Edwin D. Mead thinks, should "be
printed in letters of gold, and hung up in every home where parents are
thinking of sending their children into private schools, thereby
condemning them to a narrower and less sturdy education than that given
by the State, while also thus withdrawing their own personal interest
from the public schools, which need the personal interest and love of
every earnest citizen to-day as they have never needed them before."
From the Boston Latin School young Brooks went to Harvard College when
he was about fifteen and a half years old. "The college attracted him
with its promises," writes the Rev. Dr. Alexander McKenzie, in the May,
1893, _New England Magazine_. "Even the Triennial Catalogue was
stimulating as he read there of twenty-five men named Phillips and
twenty named Brooks, who had graduated from this university. The place
for his own name which should join the two lines was inviting."
And yet Phillips Brooks in no way distinguished himself in college,
save, perhaps, in composition. His professors were such men as Agassiz,
Longfellow, Asa Gray, Lowell, and others. During his junior year he
roomed in Massachusetts Hall, and his senior year in Stoughton.
One of Brooks's class writes, "He was a general favorite, always hearty
and kindly, with an abounding sense of humor, which he carried with him
through life.... No one could have surmised what profession he would
choose, and almost any calling would have seemed appropriate."
Mr. Robert Treat Paine, his classmate, says, "At college he cared little
for sport, but preferred to read omniverously almost everything and
anything that came in his way." Tennyson was an especial favorite.
After graduation Brooks returned to the Boston Latin School, and became
a tutor. Here he failed. He could not or would not be a strict
disciplinarian, and he left the position.
Francis Gardner, his former teacher, had said that he "never knew a man
who had failed as a schoolmaster to succeed in any other occupation."
In one case at least he was mistaken. The young man might and did fail
as a schoolteacher; he was a great success as a preacher and a man.
He went back to his college president, James Walker, to advise about his
future work in life, and decided to enter the ministry.
At the suggestion of his pastor, Dr. Alexander H. Vinton, of St. Paul's
Church on Tremont Street, he went to a theological seminary at
Alexandria, Va., in 1856. Here his piety seemed to deepen, as he gave
himself to study and to mission work.
He preached his first sermon in a little hamlet called Sharon, two or
three miles from the seminary, urged to go thither by a classmate. The
people were mostly poor whites and negroes, who, being plain themselves,
enjoyed the plain preaching. The schoolhouse was soon crowded, and more
came than could be accommodated.
His classmate told, at his home in Philadelphia, of this good work. The
Church of the Advent in that city needed a rector. A committee came to
hear Brooks, of course without his knowledge, were delighted, and called
him to their poor parish.
Fearful that he would not give satisfaction, young Brooks, now
twenty-four years of age, consented to preach for three months, and at
the end of that time accepted the call for a year, at a salary of one
thousand dollars.
"The dissatisfaction with his work," says Dr. Arthur Brooks, "and the
eagerness to press on to something better and more complete, while all
the time men were praising what he had done, was always a recognized
feature of his power."
Fortunately for young Brooks, Dr. Vinton had moved to Philadelphia, and
had become rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity, in a wealthy part
of the city.
Not forgetting his former parishioner, he invited the young preacher to
occupy his pulpit Sunday afternoons. Both here and at the Advent,
Phillips Brooks soon won a place in the hearts and lives of his hearers.
Dr. Vinton was called to St. Mark 's Church, in New York, and Phillips
Brooks was asked to take his place at the Holy Trinity. He did not
accept till invited the third time, and finally became rector Jan. 1,
1862, when he was twenty-seven.
During Phillips Brooks's ten years in Philadelphia, he took a fearless
stand for the colored people, and in all that related to the Civil War.
When the three months' men were called out to defend Philadelphia from a
feared attack of the Confederates, young Brooks, with a shovel on his
shoulder, was in the van to help throw up earthworks.
In his Thanksgiving sermon, Nov. 26, 1863, he thanked God "that the
institution of African slavery in our beloved land is one big year
nearer to its inevitable death than it was last Thanksgiving Day."
When Abraham Lincoln lay dead at Independence Hall, in the journey from
Washington to Springfield, Ill., Phillips Brooks preached a noble
sermon, April 23, 1865. Many have recalled these words, which might be
written of himself, now that he has gone from us.
"In him," said Phillips Brooks, "was vindicated the greatness of real
goodness and the goodness of real greatness.... How many ears will never
lose the thrill of some kind word he spoke--he who could speak so kindly
to promise a kindness that always matched his word. How often he
surprised the land with a clemency which made even those who questioned
his policy love him the more for what they called his weakness; seeing
the man in whom God had most embodied the discipline of freedom not only
could not be a slave, but could not be a tyrant....
"The gentlest, kindest, most indulgent man that ever ruled a state!...
The shepherd of the people!... What ruler ever wore it like this dead
President of ours? He fed us faithfully and truly. He fed us with
counsel when we were in doubt, with inspiration when we sometimes
faltered, with caution when we would be rash, with calm, clear, trustful
cheerfulness through many an hour when our hearts were dark. He spread
before the whole land feasts of great duty and devotion and patriotism,
on which the land grew strong. He fed us with solemn, solid truths....
"He showed us how to love truth, and yet be charitable--how to hate
wrong and all oppression, and yet not treasure one personal injury or
insult. He fed _all_ his people, from the highest to the lowest, from
the most privileged to the most enslaved. Best of all, he fed us with a
reverent and genuine religion."
When Harvard celebrated the close of the war, and Lowell gave his
immortal "Commemoration Ode," Phillips Brooks offered the prayer, as
only one with his great heart and eloquent lips could pray. Nobody ever
forgot that prayer. Harvard from that day forward knew and honored her
son.
A few years later, May 30, 1873, Phillips Brooks spoke at the dedication
of Memorial Hall in Andover. He said, "They saw that their country was
like a precious vase of rarest porcelain, priceless while it was whole,
valueless if it was broken into fragments. What they died to keep whole
may we in our several places live to keep holy!"
In 1869 Phillips Brooks was called to Trinity Church, Boston. He loved
his native city, "the home of new ideas," as he called it, and accepted.
At that time the church edifice of Quincy granite was on Summer Street.
It was burned in the great fire of 1872, whereupon the wealthy
congregation, idolizing their pastor, built on the Back Bay, at Copley
Square, the present Trinity Church edifice, costing about one million
dollars, one of the handsomest and most complete church buildings on
this continent. It was designed by the famous architect, Mr. H. H.
Richardson. It is in the form of a Latin Cross.
"The style of the church," says Mr. Richardson, "may be characterized as
a free rendering of the French Romanesque, inclining particularly to the
school that flourished in the eleventh century in Central France,--the
ancient Aquitaine."
Four thousand five hundred piles were driven to support the building,
the tower of which, resting on four piers, weighs nearly nineteen
million pounds. Mr. John La Farge decorated the building with great
skill and beauty. Dr. Vinton, the venerable pastor of Phillips Brooks's
boyhood, preached the consecration sermon in the new church, Feb. 9,
1877.
Phillips Brooks did not wish that this grand church should be for the
people of Trinity only. The galleries were made free, and the rented
pews could be occupied by strangers after a stated hour. He said, "Such
a church as this has no right to exist, or to think that it exists, for
any limited company who own its pews. It would not be a Christian
parish if it harbored such a thought. No, let the world come in. Let all
men hear, if they will, the truths we love. Let no soul go unsaved
through any selfishness of ours."
This year Mr. Brooks was made a Doctor of Divinity by Harvard
University. He had already been one of her overseers for several years.
In 1881 the beloved Dr. Andrew P. Peabody resigned his office as
preacher at Harvard, and the President and Fellows naturally turned to
Phillips Brooks as the one of all others who could win and hold the
students to a higher spiritual life. He was chosen preacher to the
university, and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals.
Dr. Brooks loved his Alma Mater, and hated to refuse, but Trinity Church
and Boston could not spare him. When he gave his answer, President Eliot
says, "He was very pale and grave, and he spoke like a man who had seen
a beatific vision which he could not pursue."
More and more, however, Phillips Brooks became a part of the higher life
of Harvard. The religious work at the college is divided among six
preachers. In each half-year, for two or three weeks, a minister
conducts morning prayers, preaches Sunday evenings, and each forenoon is
at Wadsworth House, to talk with any students who may choose to come.
These were precious seasons to Phillips Brooks: for he loved young men,
and they loved him. The Rev. Julius Ward tells of a letter written by
Dr. Brooks to the father of a freshman, in which the warm heart of the
preacher exclaims. "What dear, beautiful creatures these boys are!"
For twenty-two years Phillips Brooks did his grand work in Trinity
Church, and, indeed, in the whole city and the whole land. He said, "No
man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his
life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him He gives him for
mankind."
When the Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon of Boston remarked to Dr. Brooks,
after hearing his twentieth anniversary sermon, that he had also heard
him preach his ninth, he replied, "Twenty years is a long time in a
man's life, and I cannot expect more than another twenty;" and then with
a serious but eager look, added, "And then I hope something better will
come."
He preached to overflowing congregations at Trinity, at the Young Men's
Christian Union, the Moody Tabernacle, Appleton Chapel at Harvard, and
elsewhere. He did not seem to realize that men crowded the house to hear
_him_. To a brother minister in a Boston suburb, where he frequently
preached, and where every inch of standing-room was utilized when he
came, he remarked, "Grey, what a splendid congregation you have!"
He was extremely modest. When invited to furnish some data for his
college class record, he wrote, "I have had no wife, no children, no
particular honors, no serious misfortune, 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."
Phillips Brooks was as great in pastoral work as in preaching. He said
in his "Lectures on Preaching," delivered at the Yale Divinity School,
in January and February, 1877, "The preacher needs to be pastor, that he
may preach to real men. The pastor must be preacher, that he may keep
the dignity of his work alive. The preacher who is not a pastor grows
remote. The pastor who is not a preacher grows petty.... Be both; for
you cannot really be one unless you also are the other."
He visited his people, both poor and rich. Two young men had attended
Trinity Church for a time, and then ceased going. They roomed at the top
of a high building in a plain quarter of the city. One day, answering a
rap at their door, they beheld the majestic figure of Phillips Brooks.
"Well, boys," he said, grasping them cordially by the hand, "you did not
expect to see _me_ here, did you?"
Indeed, they did not, for they supposed that the rector did not know
them even by sight. They went regularly to Trinity after that friendly
visit.
A physician tells this story, which has appeared in the press. He said
to a poor woman whom he had visited, "You don't need any more medicine.
What you need now is nourishment and fresh air. You need to get out."
"But I have nobody to leave with the children," was the reply.
"Well, you must manage to get out somehow," was the response.
The doctor dropped in a day or two later to see how the poor woman had
"managed." She had told her troubles to the man who bore many burdens
cheerfully, Phillips Brooks; and he was there caring for the children
while the poor mother took the air.
Dr. Brooks loved mission work. Like Charles Kingsley, he was always very
close in heart with the poor and the laborers. He said, "It is not
wealth simply in itself,--it is the pride of wealth, the indifference of
wealth, the cruelty of wealth, the vulgarity of wealth, in one great
word, the selfishness of wealth, which really makes the poor man's
heart ache and the poor man's blood boil, and constitutes the danger of
a community where poor men and rich men live side by side." He was
especially interested in St. Andrew's Church on Chambers Street, which
was under the care of Trinity. Here one of the first, if not the first,
girls' clubs in the country was organized, to which Dr. Brooks delighted
to speak of his travels abroad. The Vincent Hospital, the Guild Hall of
St. Andrew's, hung with pictures, gifts from him, the Kindergarten for
the Blind,--all were dear to his heart.
Phillips Brooks was a generous man, with both money and time. He helped
many a boy through college. On one occasion he received a check for one
hundred dollars from a parish where he had preached, and immediately
sent it to a poor clergyman. To a chapel in a suburban town he gave five
hundred dollars towards paying its debt.
He did not like to have his photograph taken and sold; but when informed
by those who were holding a fair for St. Andrew's Mission that they
would probably make fifty dollars through such sale, he immediately sent
a check for that amount.
He was finally prevailed upon to sit for his picture in 1887. In the
following eight months more than three thousand photographs were sold.
Four years later an arrangement was made whereby a royalty was paid on
each picture, and the proceeds used in mission work.
A lady desired some instruments for a medical missionary about to start
for Japan. She applied to Phillips Brooks, with the thought that some of
his wealthy parishioners might provide them. "A good set will cost one
hundred dollars," she said; "but an inferior one can be bought for fifty
dollars."
"Would you send your son to the war with an old-fashioned musket," he
said, "instead of a rifle? The man who goes to fight Satan in his
strongholds must have the best appliances that can be obtained." And Dr.
Brooks paid the money from his own pocket.
A printer, the husband of a woman attending Dr. Brooks's church, became
ill, and the men in the office raised money to send their fellow-workman
to California. The preacher heard of it, and called at the building. The
cashier spoke through the tube to the foreman in the composing-room,
saying that a gentleman wished to see him. "Send him up," was the reply.
And up four flights walked Phillips Brooks, and quietly slipped twenty
dollars into the foreman's hands, though refusing to allow his name to
be put on the subscription paper.
He gave his time generously. When his private secretary, the Rev.
William Henry Brooks, DD., said to him that in using so much time for
others he had none left for himself, he replied, "I have plenty of
time." Being asked "Where?" he answered, "In the railroad cars."
Soon after Phillips Brooks became bishop he was urged to have office
hours, but refused. He said, writes his secretary, in a sketch of the
great leader, "A clergyman may come from a distance to see me, and be
compelled to return very soon. Not knowing my office hours (should there
be such), he might fail of the accomplishment of his errand, and so have
his journey to no purpose. Or a layman, leaving his business to consult
with me, not knowing of the observance of office hours, might find his
time wasted, and be disappointed of the desired interview. No, I am not
willing to have office hours. If people wish to see me I ought to and
will see them."
When some one expressed fear that these numberless calls would wear him
out, he said, "God save the day when they won't come to me."
When I had occasion myself two or three times to consult him, he never
seemed in a hurry, never cold or indifferent, never ostentatious,--only
small souls are that,--and never exclusive. He had so mastered himself
as not to be annoyed; and such mastery over self gives mastery over
others.
He answered letters by the thousands; indeed, none ever went unanswered.
He was like Longfellow in this respect,--a true gentleman.
He received letters from all countries, and upon all subjects. A lady
wrote from the South, wishing a position in the house of one of the
diocesan institutions, with her two children, and if that were not
possible, asked that he would recommend a boarding-place. Phillips
Brooks was abroad, but sent the letter to his secretary, asking that he
send her the desired information. "Be sure," wrote Dr. Brooks, "and tell
her that the answer was not delayed any longer than was absolutely
necessary. Explain to her that I am in Europe."
A widow in Minnesota, whose husband, a Massachusetts man, had been
killed in the war, could not prove that he was her husband, as she had
lost her marriage certificate, and therefore could not obtain a pension.
She knew the name of the minister who married her, but he was dead.
Phillips Brooks took time to find evidence of her marriage, and she
received her pension.
A letter came from New York City, asking that a list of all the papers
and periodicals published by the several parishes in Dr. Brooks's
diocese be sent. It was a work of many hours, but it was done.
The _Girls' Friendly Magazine_ tells this incident. Phillips Brooks
said to a friend in his study, "Who is this man who writes this letter?
You ought to be able to tell me, for he comes from your town. He wants
to know if I think it is right to play chess."
"That man," said the friend, "is a poor old crank. There is nothing for
you to do but to throw his letter in the waste-basket."
"That I will not do," was the answer of Phillips Brooks. "He has written
me a courteous letter, and I am going to return him a courteous answer,
like a gentleman."
Phillips Brooks was extremely fond of children, as one may see from his
letters to his nieces, published in the August, 1893, _Century
Magazine_, or from the beautiful picture in "The Child and the Bishop,"
where, in 1890, Dr. Brooks holds, as he says, "'Beautiful Blessing' in
my happy arms."
In 1882-83 he spent over a year in Europe, sailing in the Servia about
the middle of June, 1882, with his friend, the Rev. Dr. McVickar of
Philadelphia, with other friends. Dr. Brooks visited England, France,
Italy, India, and Spain.
From Venice he writes to his niece Gertie, the daughter of William Gray
Brooks, in a Boston bank, "Do go into my house, when you get there, and
see if the doll and her baby are well and happy, but do not carry them
off; and make the music-box play a tune, and remember your affectionate
uncle,