Part 28

"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.