Part 29

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,

PHILLIPS."

The people of Trinity Church had built for their pastor a beautiful home on Clarendon Street. In one of the closets were kept dolls for his nieces. This home was the scene of many merry-makings for the children of his brothers, and for other children.

From Jeypoor he writes to Gertie about the monkeys of India, and the nose-jewels of the women, and tells her he has got a nose-jewel for her. He rides on a great elephant, "almost as big as Jumbo."

To Josephine, the little daughter of the Rev. John Cotton Brooks, his brother, in Springfield, Mass., be sends an amusing poem of his own composition. From England he writes that he wished the strawberries grew on trees, as it was difficult for him to pick them, as one might imagine from his great size,--six feet four inches tall, and large frame in proportion.

At Badgastein he takes a bath for Gertie, who has rheumatism, back in America; and from Chamouni, he writes her that she must get well and strong, "to play with me."

He writes to his brother William interesting accounts of India. Bombay, with its great hospital for sick and wounded animals, where "they cure them if they can, or keep them till they die," is very curious. It is to be hoped that we, with our boasted civilization, will some time be as kind to animals as they are in India.

He preaches at Delhi. He is extremely interested in Benares, with its five thousand Hindoo temples, the "very Back Bay of Asia." He sees thousands of pilgrims bathing in the sacred Ganges to wash their sins away, or burn their dead upon its banks.

Phillips Brooks preached during his absence at St. Botolph's Church, Boston, Lincolnshire, England; at the Chapel Royal, Savoy, London; at St. Paul's Cathedral, the Temple Church, St. Margaret's, at Westminster Abbey, at Lincoln Cathedral, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and elsewhere, always to the great delight of his hearers. He met such men as Browning and Tennyson. He was the warm friend of the lamented Dean Stanley.

Of Browning he writes, in "Letters of Travel," "He was one of the men whom I wanted most to see here; a pleasant gentleman, full of talk about London and London people, with not a bit of the poet about him externally."

Again he writes, "I dined with Mr. Forster and Mr. Bright, and had our great English friend pretty much to myself for two hours. He is a great talker, especially when he gets onto America; and he knows what he is talking about. Both he and Forster are friends worth having. Bright, personally, wins you in a minute by his frankness and cordialness and manliness of his greeting."

He attended one of Mrs. Gladstone's receptions; met Mr. Gladstone at dinner at Mr. Bryce's; breakfasted with Matthew Arnold, "and liked him very much;" met Jean Ingelow, Mrs. Ritchie (Thackeray's daughter), Hughes, and many others.

Dr. Brooks returned to Boston Sept. 22, and the people received him with open arms.

Dr. Brooks was a Broad Churchman, and broad in every sense of the word. His secretary tells of a conversation he had with the rector, when, after differing in opinion, he said to Phillips Brooks, "I am very sorry that I have said what I have just said."

"Why?" was asked.

"Because it is not pleasant to me to differ with you in opinions," was the reply of the secretary. Dr. Brooks answered with much earnestness, "This is a free country, and every man has the right to express his own opinions."

Phillips Brooks was one of the most tolerant of men. In two lectures on "Tolerance," delivered before the students of several divinity schools of the Episcopal Church, he said, "Tolerance is the willing consent that other men should hold and express opinions with which we disagree, until they are convinced by reason that those opinions are untrue.

"I know some ministers," he said, "who want all their parishioners to think after their fashion, and are troubled when any of their people show signs of thinking for themselves, and holding ideas which the minister does not hold. Thank God, the human nature is too vital, especially when it is inspired with such a vital force as Christian faith, to yield itself to such unworthy slavery....

"Bidden to believe that souls would be punished for wrong-thinking, people have come to doubt whether souls would be punished for anything at all. The only possibility of any light upon the darkness, any order in the confusion, must lie in the clear and unqualified assertion that such as God is can punish such as men are for nothing except wickedness, and that honestly mistaken opinions are not wicked....

"The only ground for us to take is simply the broad ground that error is not punishable at all. Error is not guilt. The guilt of error is the fallacy and fiction which has haunted good men's minds."

Again he said, "Insincerity (whether it profess to hold what we think is false or what we think is true), cant, selfishness, deception of one's self or of other people, cruelty, prejudice,--these are the things with which the Church ought to be a great deal more angry than she is. The anger which she is ready to expend upon the misbeliever ought to be poured out on these."

"The noblest utterance of hopeful tolerance in all that noble century," said Dr. Brooks of the Pilgrims, "was in the famous speech in which John Robinson, their minister, bade loving farewell to his departing flock at Leyden, in which occur those memorable words, 'I am verily persuaded, I am very confident, that the Lord has more truth to break out of His holy word.'"

"At the consecration of Trinity Church," says the Rev. Julius H. Ward, "he invited prominent Unitarian clergymen, and at least one layman, to receive the communion." And yet Phillips Brooks's one gospel message, in which he believed and spoke, was the power of Christ unto salvation.

"Of the Episcopal Church," he said, "there are some of her children who love to call her in exclusive phrase The American Church. She is not that; and to call her that would be to give her a name to which she has no right. The American Church is the great total body of Christianity in America, in many divisions, under many names ... as a whole bearing perpetual testimony to the people of America of the authority and love of God, of the redemption of Christ, and of the sacred possibilities of man....

"The church which to-day effectively denounces intemperance and the licentiousness of social life, the cruelty or indifference of the rich to the poor, and the prostitution of public office, will become the real church of America. Our church has done some good service here. She ought to do more.... She ought to blow her trumpet in the ears of the young men of fortune, summoning them from their clubs and their frivolities to do the chivalrous work which their nobility obliges them to do for their fellow-men. She ought to speak to Culture, and teach it its responsibility."

Five volumes of Dr. Brooks's sermons have been published and read widely: one in 1878; another in 1881, "The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons,"--the first sermon was preached in London, and attracted wide attention; in 1883, "Sermons in the English Churches;" in 1886, "Twenty Sermons," dedicated to the memory of Frederick Brooks, his brother; and in 1890, "The Light of the World and Other Sermons," dedicated to the memory of his "brother, George Brooks, who died in the great war."

The Rev. Frederick Brooks, who was the talented young pastor of St. Paul's Church in Cleveland, Ohio, was drowned by falling one dark evening through the Charlestown draw of the Boston and Lowell Railroad bridge. The last inspiring talk which he made was at one of the Temperance Friendly Inns in Cleveland, where he encouraged us with his words of sympathy and interest.

Phillips Brooks wrote two other books, "Lectures on Preaching," and the "Bohlen Lectures," on "The Influence of Jesus." Besides these he has written several Christmas carols of extreme beauty, and some pamphlets. All his books have gone through many editions, and, like Spurgeon's, have been read by thousands.

In an address on "Biography," delivered at Phillips Exeter Academy, he said that he would rather have written a great biography than any other great book.

The "Lectures on Preaching" abound, like all his work, in short, concise sentences full of meaning, and should be read especially by every one who intends to preach.

He tells young men that the talk about prevalent aversion to hearing the gospel is foolish. "The age," he says, "has no aversion to preaching as such. It may not listen to your preaching. If that prove to be the case, look for the fault first in your preaching, and not in the age. I wonder at the eagerness and patience of congregations.... Never fear, as you preach, to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble."

The necessary qualities in a preacher, Phillips Brooks thinks, are, "Personal piety,--nothing but fire kindles fire,"--hopefulness; such physical condition as comes from a due regard to health; enthusiasm; "the quality that kindles at the sight of men, that feels a keen joy at the meeting of truth and the human mind."

First among the elements of power, Phillips Brooks puts "personal uprightness and purity." "No man permanently succeeds in the ministry who cannot make men believe that he is pure and devoted; and the only sure and lasting way to make men believe in one's devotion and purity is to be what one wishes to be believed to be." He said. "No man can do much for others who is not much himself.... The priest must be the most manly of all men."

The second element of power is "freedom from self-consciousness." "No man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his sermon."

The third element is "genuine respect for the people whom he preaches to." "There is no good preaching in the supercilious preacher."

The fourth is "gravity." Dr. Brooks thinks the "merely solemn ministers are very empty ... cheats and shams;" but thinks the "clerical jester" merits "the contempt of Christian people." "He is full of Bible jokes.... There are passages in the Bible which are soiled forever by the touches which the hands of ministers who delight in cheap and easy jokes have left upon them.... Refrain from all joking about congregations, flocks, parish visits, sermons, the mishaps of the pulpit, or the makeshifts of the study. Such joking is always bad, and almost always stupid; but it is very common, and it takes the bloom off a young minister's life." Dr. Brooks was especially careful in remarks about any person.

The fifth element of power is "courage." "If you are afraid of men, and a slave to their opinion, go and do something else. Go and make shoes to fit them."

Phillips Brooks then turns to the dangers which beset young preachers. The first is self-conceit. "He who lives with God must be humble," he has said in his sermon, "How to Abound." Another danger is narrowness. Still another is self-indulgence. "We are apt to become men of moods, thinking we cannot work unless we feel like it.... The first business of the preacher is to conquer the tyranny of his moods, and to be always ready for his work. It can be done.... Resent indulgences which are not given to men of other professions. Learn to enjoy and be sober; learn to suffer and be strong. Never appeal for sympathy."

Again he said, "The clergy are largely what the laity make them.... It was not good that the minister should be worshipped and made an oracle. It is still worse that he should be flattered and made a pet. And there is such a tendency in these days among our weaker people.... It is possible for such a man, if he has popular gifts, to be petted all through his ministry, never once to come into strong contact with other men, or to receive one good hard knock of the sort that brings out manliness and character."

Dr. Brooks liked to have ministers share their knowledge; giving such lectures as Norman Macleod's on geology to the weavers at Newmilns. "Would that more of us were able to follow his example." This was what Charles Kingsley loved to do.

Of political preaching, Dr. Brooks said to the students, "I despise, and call upon you to despise, all the weak assertions that a minister must not preach politics because he will injure his influence if he does, or because it is unworthy of his sacred office.

"When some clear question of right and wrong presents itself, and men with some strong passion or sordid interest are going wrong, then your sermon is a poor, untimely thing if it deals only with the abstractions of eternity, and has no word to help the men who are dizzied with the whirl and blinded with the darkness of to-day."

He constantly urged men of all classes to do their best. "The primary fact of duty lies at the core of everything," he said.

He preached his own sermons with the single motive "of moving men's souls." He wrote rapidly, and spoke rapidly, over two hundred words a minute. Two stenographers were always necessary to record his sermons or addresses. His Lenten noonday sermons at Trinity Church, New York, or at St. Paul's Church, Boston, were crowded with the busiest business men of both cities. He could preach with or without notes. He could write a sermon in six hours, at two sittings of three hours each; but he had been studying and thinking all his life for it.

In 1886 Dr. Brooks was elected assistant-bishop of Pennsylvania, but declined.

In 1889 the freshmen of Wellesley College made him an honorary member of their class. He accepted the position, as had Dr. Holmes and others with former classes. He enjoyed meeting with the young women, for he always treated men and women alike, with no increased suavity for the latter. About a week before his death, says an article in the Feb. 15, 1894, _Golden Rule_, he went to Wellesley College to address the students, and afterwards received them in the large parlors. "I met my class here one Sunday afternoon," he said, "and they asked me questions, ten to the minute. It was very interesting. They did not differentiate at all between the questions that may be answered and the questions that may not."

In 1891 Phillips Brooks was chosen Bishop of Massachusetts, after a heated contest between the High and Broad Churchmen. Dr. Brooks wisely kept silent during the whole controversy.

He possessed, what he said impressed him most about Mr. Moody, "astonishing good sense."

He was consecrated with most impressive services, Oct. 14, 1891, in Trinity Church; Bishop Potter of New York preaching the consecration sermon.

It is said that the regular salary of the former Massachusetts bishop was six thousand dollars. As Phillips Brooks received eight thousand from Trinity, it was suggested that he be given eight as bishop, but this he would not permit.

Bishop Brooks took up his work with his wonted earnestness and zeal. "The amount of speaking that he did was appalling," says Bishop William Lawrence; "four to seven sermons and addresses on a Sunday, with sermons, addresses, and speeches in quick succession through the week."

"He was the most unselfish man I ever knew," says his secretary. "He was always sacrificing himself for others. Not only did he never speak of himself, but he never even thought of himself." He seemed never to waste a moment of time, and yet had time for everything. He was careful always to keep appointments promptly.

Bishop Brooks lived the frankness which he preached. "To keep clear of concealment," he said, "to keep clear of the need of concealment, to do nothing which he might not do out on the middle of Boston Common at noonday--I cannot say how more and more that seems to me to be the glory of a young man's life. It is an awful hour when the first necessity of hiding anything comes. The whole life is different thenceforth."

Phillips Brooks kept his warm heart through life. "Sentiment," he said, "is the finest essence of the human life. It is, like all the finest things, the easiest to spoil.... Let him glow with admiration, let him burn with indignation, let him believe with intensity, let him trust unquestioningly, let him sympathize with all his soul. The hard young man is the most terrible of all. To have a skin at twenty that does not tingle with indignation at the sight of wrong, and quiver with pity at the sight of pain, is monstrous." He thought a young man should "go responsive through the world, answering quickly to every touch, knowing the burdened man's burden just because of the unpressed lightness of his own shoulders, ... buoyant through all his unconquerable hope, overcoming the world with his exuberant faith.... Be not afraid of sentiment, but only of untruth. Trust your sentiments, and so be a man."

Phillips Brooks urged the joy which he always showed in his own life. "Joy, not sadness, is the characteristic fact of young humanity. To know this, to keep it as the truth to which the soul constantly returns,--that is the young man's salvation. Whatever young depression there is, there must be no young despair. In the morning, at least, it must seem a fine thing to live."

He loved his work better than all else on earth. He wrote a friend in England, "I have had a delightful life; and the last twenty years of it, which I have spent in Trinity Church, have been unbroken in their happiness."

Bishop Brooks was courageous. In his sermon, "The Man with Two Talents," he says, "To do great things in spite of difficulties, that is a very bugle-call to many men."

Again he says, in "Going up to Jerusalem," "Oh, do not pray for easy lives! Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle!"

He emphasizes this in his sermon, "The Choice Young Man," in his Fifth Series. "Sad is it when a community grows more and more to abound in young men who worship wealth, and think they cannot live without luxury and physical comfort. The choicest of its strength is gone."

Of gambling he said, "In social life, in club, in college, on the street, the willingness of young men to give or receive money on the mere turn of chances is a token of the decay of manliness and self-respect, which is more alarming than almost anything besides."

Bishop Brooks was grandly optimistic. Dr. Samuel Eliot says, "A mother wrote, asking him to baptize her little boy, and he wrote back, 'What a glorious future before a child born at the close of our century!'"

"I don't want to be old," he used to say, "but I should like to live on this earth five hundred years."

"Believe in man with all your childhood's confidence," he wrote in "Visions and Tasks," "while you work for man with all a man's prudence and circumspection. Such union of energy and wisdom makes the completest character, and the most powerful life."

He said, "I always like men who believe terribly in other men."

"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."