"Nothing was more remarkable in him," says Canon Farrar, "than his royal
optimism. With him it was a matter of faith and temperament. I think he
must have been born an optimist. Often, when I was inclined to despond,
his conversation, his bright spirits, his friendliness, his illimitable
hopes, came to me like a breath of vernal air."
The summer of 1892 was spent in Europe by Dr. Brooks. He wrote
Archdeacon Farrar after his return, on his birthday, Dec. 13, "In the
midst of a thousand useless things which I do every day, there is always
coming up the recollection of last summer, and how good you were to me,
and what enjoyment I had in those delightful idle days. Never shall I
cease to thank you for taking me to Tennyson's, and letting me see the
great dear man again. How good he was that day!... and how perfect his
death was!... And Whittier, too, is gone.... How strange it seems, this
writing against one friend's name after another that you will see his
face no more!... I hope that you are well and happy. Do not let the
great world trouble you."
While he enjoyed England, he was thoroughly American. He wrote from
London, "I think that the more one travels here the more he feels that,
while there is very much to admire and desire in these English ways, the
simplicity and directness of our American fashions of doing things are
far more satisfactory."
Two weeks later he preached a Christmas sermon at the Church of the
Incarnation, New York, for his brother, Dr. Arthur Brooks. This was the
day of all days which he loved. He enjoyed giving and receiving
Christmas gifts.
He said in his sermon, "One of the very wonderful things about our human
life is the perpetual freshness, the indestructible joy, that clings
forever about the idea of birth. You cannot find the hovel so miserable,
the circumstances and the prospects of life so wretched, that it is not
a bright and glorious thing for a child to be born there.
"Hope flickers up for an instant from its embers at the first breathing
of the baby's breath. No squalidness of the life into which it came can
make the new life seem squalid at its coming. By and by it will grow
dull and gray, perhaps, in sad harmony with its sad surroundings; but at
the first there is some glory in it, and for a moment it burns bright
upon the bosom of the dulness where it has fallen, and seems as if it
ought to set it afire.
"And so there was nothing that could with such vividness represent the
newness of Christianity in the world as to have it forever associated
with the birth of a child.
"It is a strange, a wonderful, birth.... I do not care to understand
that story fully. It is enough for me that in it there is represented
the full truth about the wondrous child of Christmas Day. He is the
child of heaven and earth together. It is the spontaneous utterance of
the celestial life. It is likewise the answer to the cry of need with
which every hill and valley of the earth has rung, that lies here in the
cradle....
"The humble birth of Jesus in the stable of the inn at Bethlehem was a
proclamation of the insignificance of circumstances in the greatest
moments and experiences of life."
A few days later, Jan. 14, 1893, Bishop Brooks took cold at the
consecration of a church in East Boston, and a soreness of throat
resulted. Five days later, Thursday, he seemed somewhat ill, and went to
bed. A physician came, but no alarm was felt. Sunday night the throat
grew diphtheretic, and the bishop became delirious. Monday morning, Jan.
23, at 6.30, Phillips Brooks ceased to breathe.
His last words, spoken to his brother William and the faithful servants
and nurse who stood by the bedside, as he waved his hand, were,
"Good-by; I am going home. I will see you in the morning."
The sad news could scarcely be believed. The great, strong man, bishop
for only a year and three months, had fallen in his very prime. Men's
faces were blanched, and women wept. The poor and the rich had a common
sorrow. Even children felt the bereavement. A little five-year-old girl
was told by her mother that "Bishop Brooks had gone to heaven."
The child knew and loved him, and had always delighted to meet him. "O
mamma!" she replied, "how happy the angels will be!"
On Thursday, Jan. 26, Bishop Brooks was buried. No other funeral was
ever like it in Boston. At 7.45 in the morning the coffin was borne from
the bishop's residence, at the corner of Clarendon and Newbury Streets,
to the vestibule of Trinity Church, accompanied by a guard of the Loyal
Legion, of which Phillips Brooks was chaplain. The colors of the Loyal
Legion covered the coffin, on which lay some Easter lilies among palms.
It is estimated that from eight to eleven o'clock twelve or fifteen
thousand persons passed by the body as it lay in state, and looked once
more upon the face of the man they loved and honored. A heavy plate
glass was over the face, and the coffin was hermetically sealed.
Rich and poor, children and adults, sobbed as they passed on. A
gray-haired and very poorly dressed woman drew a cluster of roses from
her bosom, and, with tears flowing down her cheeks, laid them reverently
upon the casket.
A pale-faced woman, with a little boy scantily dressed for the winter
weather, who could not enter the church for the crowd, begged a
policeman to let her in. He replied brusquely, telling her to get into
line.
"Oh, but I must see him once more!" she sobbed; "he paid for the
operation which gave sight to my boy, and I must see him again."
The people about her were moved by her entreaty, and an usher quietly
told the officer to allow the mother and her child to come in.
Meantime Trinity Church had become filled with the various
delegations,--from Harvard College, Boston University, the Governor and
Committee of the Legislature, clergymen from a distance, theological
schools, officers of the Young Men's Christian Association and Young
Men's Christian Union, and various other organizations.
The church was beautifully decorated. At the back of the chancel was an
arch of laurel, fifteen feet high and nine feet wide, with a spruce-tree
eight feet high on each side. In front of this was a tall cross of
Easter lilies, and the baptismal font was filled with the same flowers.
Roses and lilies sent by friends were heaped everywhere, although a
request had been made that no flowers should be sent.
Among the flowers was a cross with the words, "From Helen." This was the
gift of the little blind girl, Helen Keller, at the South Boston
Institute for the Blind, of whom the dead preacher was very fond.
Just before noon the body, borne on the shoulders of eight strong men,
picked from the various athletic teams of Harvard, passed up the aisle
of the church, headed by the bishops and honorary pall-bearers. The
whole congregation joined in singing "Jesus, lover of my soul," the
music broken by audible sobbing. After brief services, while the people
remained standing, and the organ played its low, solemn notes, the body
was borne out into Copley Square in front of Trinity, and placed on a
draped platform, where an out-door service was held for the more than
twenty thousand persons who could not get inside the church.
A memorial service was held at the same hour in the First Baptist
Church, near by.