(1835-1893)
Phillips Brooks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13th, 1835,
and died there January 23d, 1893. He inherited the best traditions of
New England history, being on the paternal side the direct descendant of
John Cotton, and his mother's name, Phillips, standing for high learning
and distinction in the Congregational church. Born at a time when the
orthodox faith was fighting its bitterest battle with Unitarianism, his
parents accepted the dogmas of the new theology, and had him baptized by
a Unitarian clergyman. But while refusing certain dogmas of the orthodox
church, they were the more thrown back for spiritual support upon the
internal evidences of evangelical Christianity. "Holding still," says
the Rev. Arthur Brooks, "in a greater or less degree, and with more or
less precision, to the old statements, they counted the great fact that
these statements enshrined more precious truth than any other."
Transition to the Episcopal church was easy; the mother became an
Episcopalian, and Phillips Brooks received all his early training in
that communion. But heredity had its influence, and in after-life the
great Bishop said that the Episcopal church could reap the fruits of the
long and bitter controversy which divided the New England church, only
as it discerned the spiritual worth of Puritanism, and the value of its
contributions to the history of religious thought and character.
Such were the early surroundings of the man, and the subsequent
influences of his life tended to foster this liberal spirit. For such a
purpose, Boston itself was a good place to live in: it was too large to
be wholly provincial, and it was not so large that the individual was
lost; and at that time it was moreover the literary centre of America.
When Phillips Brooks entered Harvard, he came into an atmosphere of
intense intellectual activity. James Walker was the president of the
college, and Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, and Longfellow were among the
professors. He graduated with honor in 1855, and soon after entered the
Episcopal theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia.
The transition from Harvard to this college was an abrupt one. The
standards of the North and South were radically different. The theology
of the Church in Virginia, while tolerant to that of other
denominations, was uncompromisingly hostile to what it regarded as
heterodox.
When the War was declared he threw himself passionately into the cause
of the Union. Yet his affection for his Southern classmates, men from
whom he so widely differed, broadened that charity that was one of his
finest characteristics, a charity that respected conviction
wherever found.
No man, in truth, ever did so much to remove prejudice against a Church
that had never been popular in New England. To the old Puritan dislike
of Episcopacy and distrust of the English Church as that of the
oppressors of the colony, was added a sense of resentment toward its
sacerdotal claims and its assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy. But he
nevertheless protested against the claim by his own communion to the
title of "The American Church," he preached occasionally in other
pulpits, he even had among his audiences clergymen of other
denominations, and he was able to reconcile men of different creeds into
concord on what is essential in all. The breadth and depth of his
teaching attracted so large a following that he increased the strength
of the Episcopal Church in America far more than he could have done by
carrying on an active propaganda in its behalf. Under his pastorate
Trinity Church, Boston, became the centre of some of the most vigorous
Christian activity in America.
His first charge was the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia; in two
years he became rector of Holy Trinity Church in the same city. In 1869
he was called to Trinity Church, Boston, of which he was rector until
his election as bishop of Massachusetts in 1891.
It is impossible to give an idea of Phillips Brooks without a word about
his personality, which was almost contradictory. His commanding figure,
his wit, the charm of his conversation, and a certain boyish gayety and
naturalness, drew people to him as to a powerful magnet. He was one of
the best known men in America; people pointed him out to strangers in
his own city as they pointed out the Common and the Bunker Hill
monument. When he went to England, where he preached before the Queen,
men and women of all classes greeted him as a friend. They thronged the
churches where he preached, not only to hear him but to see him. Many
stories are told of him; some true, some more or less apocryphal, all
proving the affectionate sympathy existing between him and his kind. It
was said of him that as soon as he entered a pulpit he was absolutely
impersonal. There was no trace of individual experience or theological
conflict by which he might be labeled. He was simply a messenger of the
truth as he held it, a mouthpiece of the gospel as he believed it had
been delivered to him.
[Illustration: PHILIPS BROOKS.]
Although in his seminary days his sermons were described as vague and
unpractical, Phillips Brooks was as great a preacher when under thirty
years of age as he was at any later time. His early sermons,
delivered to his first charge in Philadelphia, displayed the same
individuality, the same force and completeness and clearness of
construction, the same deep, strong undertone of religious thought, as
his great discourses preached in Westminster Abbey six months before his
death. His sentences are sonorous; his style was characterized by a
noble simplicity, impressive, but without a touch showing that dramatic
effect was strained for.
He passionately loved nature in all her aspects, and traveled widely in
search of the picturesque; but he used his experience with reserve, and
his illustrations are used to explain human life. His power of painting
a picture in a few bold strokes appears strikingly in the great sermon
on the 'Lesson of the Life of Saul,' where he contrasts early promise
and final failure; and in that other not less remarkable presentation of
the vision of Saint Peter. His treatment of Bible narratives is not a
translation into the modern manner, nor is it an adaptation, but a
poetical rendering, in which the flavor of the original is not lost
though the lesson is made contemporary. And while he did not transcribe
nature upon his pages, his sermons are not lacking in decoration. He
used figures of speech and drew freely on history and art for
illustrations, but not so much to elucidate his subject as to ornament
it. His essays on social and literary subjects are written with the aim
of directness of statement, pure and simple; but the stuff of which his
sermons are woven is of royal purple.
The conviction that religious sentiment should penetrate the whole life
showed itself in Phillips Brooks's relation to literature. "Truth bathed
in light and uttered in love makes the new unit of power," he says in
his essay on literature. It was his task to mediate between literature
and theology, and restore theology to the place it lost through the
abstractions of the schoolmen. What he would have done if he had devoted
himself to literature alone, we can only conjecture by the excellence of
his style in essays and sermons. They show his poetical temperament; and
his little lyric 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' will be sung as long as
Christmas is celebrated. His essays show more clearly even than his
sermons his opinions on society, literature, and religion. They place
him where he belongs, in that "small transfigured band the world cannot
tame,"--the world of Cranmer, Jeremy Taylor, Robertson, Arnold, Maurice.
His paper on Dean Stanley discloses his theological views as openly as
do his addresses on 'Heresies and Orthodoxy.'
As might be expected of one who, in the word's best sense, was so
thoroughly a man, he had great influence with young men and was one of
the most popular of Harvard preachers. It was his custom for thirty
alternate years to go abroad in the summer, and there, as in America, he
was regarded as a great pulpit orator. He took a large view of social
questions and was in sympathy with all great popular movements. His
advancement to the episcopate was warmly welcomed by all parties, except
one branch of his own church with which his principles were at variance,
and every denomination delighted in his elevation as if he were the
peculiar property of each.
He published several volumes of sermons. His works include 'Lectures on
Preaching' (New York, 1877), 'Sermons' (1878-81), 'Bohlen Lectures'
(1879), 'Baptism and Confirmation' (1880), 'Sermons Preached in English
Churches' (1883), 'The Oldest Schools in America' (Boston, 1885),
'Twenty Sermons' (New York, 1886), 'Tolerance' (1887), 'The Light of the
World, and Other Sermons' (1890), and 'Essays and Addresses' (1894). His
'Letters of Travel' show him to be an accurate observer, with a large
fund of spontaneous humor. No letters to children are so delightful as
those in this volume.