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LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

PHILLIPS BROOKS

BY

ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN

Professor in the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge

Wt& portraits ano ^Illustration*
VOLUME II

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY

31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1900

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY

ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN

WILLIAM G. BROOKS, ELIZABETH W. BROOKS, JOHN C. BROOKS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

pao:',

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

18G9-1872.

Trinity Church. The Reception in Boston. Contempo-
raneous Comments on Phillips Brooks's Preaching.
Record of Work in the First Three Years 1

CHAPTER II.
18G9-1872.
Extracts from Correspondence and from Note-Books.
Social Life. The Summer Abroad. Formation of the
Clericus Club. Destruction of Trinity Church in the
Boston Fire 35

CHAPTER III.

1873-1874.
Ecclesiastical Controversies. Relation to the Evangeli-
cal School. Extracts from Correspondence. The Sum-
mer Abroad. Death of Frederick Brooks 72

CHAPTER IV.

1873-1877.
Services in Huntington Hall. Extracts from Note-
Books. Method of preparing Sermons. Essay on Cour-
age. Contemporaneous Accounts of Phillips Brooks as
a Preacher. Testimony of Principal Tulloch .... 101

CHAPTER V.

1873-1877.
The Building of the New Trinity Church. The Motives
in its Construction. The Consecration Services . . . 12-4

CHAPTER VI.

1877-1879.
Extracts from Correspondence. Invitation to preach
for Mr. Moody. Summer Abroad. Sermon at West-

vi CONTENTS

minster Abbey. Harvard University confers the
Degree of Doctor of Divinity. Comments on the Gen-
eral Convention. Visit of Dean Stanley to America.
Illness and Death of William Gray Brooks 146

CHAPTER VII.

1877-1878.

Lectures on Preaching. First Volume of Sermons. The
Teaching of Religion. The Pulpit and Popular Skepti-
cism 174

CHAPTER VIII.

1879.

The Bohlen Lectures on the Influence of Jesus .... 209

CHAPTER IX.

1879-1880.

Visit to Philadelphia. Convention Sermon. Correspond-
ence. Death of his Mother. Sermon before the
Queen of England. Westminster Abbey. The New
Rectory 241

CHAPTER X.

1881.

The Call to Harvard University as Preacher and Profes-
sor of Christian Ethics. Extracts from Correspondence 276

CHAPTER XL

1881-1882.

Memorial Sermon on Dr. Vinton. Death of Dean Stanley.

Speeches at Church Congress. Second Volume of
Sermons. The Stanley Memorial. Death of Dr. Stone.

Request for Leave of Absence for a Year 305

CHAPTER XII.
1882.

Plans for the Year Abroad. Germany. Correspondence.

Religious Convictions. Extracts from Note-Book and
from Journal of Travel 329

CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER XIII.

December, 1882-March, 1883.

India. Letters and Extracts from Journal 383

CHAPTER XIV.

May-July, 1883.
The Journey from India. The Visit to Spain. Reception
in England. Visit to Tennyson. Letters. Extracts
from Journal 417

CHAPTER XV.

September-December, 1883.
The Return to Boston. Extracts from Sermons. Address
on Luther. Correspondence. Extracts from Journal 441

CHAPTER XVI.

1869-1892.

Theology. Tendencies of the Age. Freedom of Inquiry.
Authority and Conscience. Orthodoxy. Freedom
through Dogma. Progress. Tolerance. The New
Theology. Dangers of Freedom. The Bible. The
Prayer Book. Creeds. Anglicanism. The Incarna-
tion. The Trinity. The New Theism. Pantheism.
Miracles. Sin. Endless Punishment. The Atone-
ment. Emphasis on the Will. Supernatural Exist-
ences. Mysticism. Morality 481

CHAPTER XVII.

1884-1885.
Extracts from Letters. Visit to Washington. The Old
House at North Andover. Theatre-Going The New-
ton Controversy. Missions. Latin School Address.
Degree of D. D. conferred by Oxford University.
Sermon at Cambridge University. Extracts from Note-
Book 54G

CHAPTER XVIII.

1886.
Portraits of Phillips Brooks at the Age of Fifty. Mis-
apprehensions of his Position. Essay on Biography.

viii CONTENTS

Election as Assistant Bishop of Pennsylvania. Visit to
California. Abolition of Compulsory Attendance on
Religious Services at Harvard. North Andover.
Chautauqua Address on Literature and Life. Death
of Richardson. Fourth Volume of Sermons. Protest
against changing the Name of the Episcopal Church . . 591

CHAPTER XIX.

1887.
Incidents in Parish Life. Invitation to deliver the
Bampton Lectures. Extracts from Note-Books. Ser-
mons at Faneuil Hall. St. Andrew's Mission Church.
Tenth Anniversary of the Consecration of Trinity
Church. Sermon at Andover. Summer in Europe.
Illness. Correspondence 644

CHAPTER XX.

1888.
Railway Accident in Philadelphia. Incidents of Parish
Life. Lenten Services. Correspondence. Sentiment
and Sentimentality. Comments on " Robert Elsmere."
Thanksgiving Sermon 670

CHAPTER XXL

1889.
Watch Night. Occasional Addresses. Lenten Services
at Trinity Church. Illness. Summer in Japan.
Extracts from Note-Books. The General Convention.
Social and Political Reforms. The Evangelical Alli-
ance. Correspondence 699

CHAPTER XXII.

1890.
Speech at the Chamber of Commerce. Lenten Addresses
in Trinity Church, New York. Change in Manner of
Preaching. Correspondence. Address at the Church
Congress. Thanksgiving Sermon 729

CHAPTER XXIII.

1859-1893.
Characteristics. Reminiscences. Anecdotes. Parish
Ministry. Estimates 762

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER XXIV.
1891.
Lent at Trinity Church. Noon Lectures at St. Paul's.
Election to the Episcopate. The Controversy follow-
ing the Election. Extracts from Correspondence . . 817

CHAPTER XXV.
1891-1892.
Consecration as Bishop. The Church Congress at Wash-
ington. Administrative Capacity. Illness. Lenten
Addresses. Union Service on Good Friday. Conven-
tion Address. Correspondence. Summer Abroad.
English Volume of Sermons. Return to Boston. St.
Andrew's Brotherhood. The General Convention in
Baltimore. Death of Tennyson. Correspondence . . 873

1893.
Conclusion 930

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Phillip9 Brook8 at the Age of Fifty, from a photograph by

H. G. Smith. Photogravure Frontispiece

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Thirty-nine, from a photo-
graph by F. Gutekunst. Photogravure 72

Facsimile of the Plan of a Sermon 114

Trinity Church Exterior from the North 144

Trinity Church Interior 204

Rectory of Trinity Church, 233 Clarendon St., Boston . 274
Facsimile of a Letter to Charles H. Parker, Esq. . . . 298

Trinity Church Exterior from the West 33G

Trinity Church Exterior from the East 438

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Forty-nine, from a photo-
graph by the Notman Photograph Co. Photogravure .... 500

House at North Andover, Exterior 552

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Fifty, from a photograph by

H. G. Smith. Photogravure 596

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Fifty, from the portrait by

Mrs. Henry Whitman. Photogravure 664

Rev. Arthur Brooks 726

Rectory of Trinity Church : The Study 794

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Fifty, photographed by H. G.

Smith. Photogravure 848

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Fifty-five, from a photo-
graph by Pach Brothers. Photogravure 886

Phillips Brooks at the Age of Fifty-six, from a photograph
by Elliott & Fry. Photogravure 936

THE LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

PHILLIPS BROOKS

CHAPTER I

1869-1872

TRINITY CHURCH. THE RECEPTION IN BOSTON. CONTEMPO-
RANEOUS COMMENTS ON PHILLIPS BROOKS 's PREACHING.
RECORD OF WORK IN THE FIRST THREE YEARS

Phillips Brooks began his ministry in Trinity Church,
Boston, on Sunday, October 31, preaching in the morning
from the text, St. John ix. 4, 5 : "I must work the works
of him that sent me, while it is day : the night cometh, when
no man can work; " and in the afternoon from St. John iv.
34: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to
finish his work." From this moment began the long period
of twenty-two years until he resigned his rectorship. During
these years he knew himself and thought of himself primarily
and almost solely as the rector of Trinity Church. He con-
centrated his energies in making the church united and
strong. He lavished upon it the wealth of his affection.
He believed strongly in the corporate life of a parish, an
organism of which he himself was a vital part. Trinity
Church he believed had a great future before it, as it had
also a great past behind it. To help it to realize its pos-
sibilities was the single task to which he devoted his powers.
A few words about its situation and its history will make
more clear the picture of the work he was to do.

The church edifice then stood on Summer Street, near
vol. n

i PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Washington Street, one of the relics of an earlier Boston when
Summer Street and the adjacent territory was the scene of
fine residences with their ample gardens. The church had
been built in 1829, and though robbed somewhat of its im-
pressiveness by the change in its surroundings, it still pos-
sessed an air of distinction and solid majesty. It belonged
to a style of architecture which has since passed away. It
was built of granite with a massive battlemented tower, and
at the time of its erection was regarded as one of the finest
churches in the city. Mr. Brooks has thus described it
in his historical sermon on Trinity Church, published in
1877:

It was a noble building in its day. It was one of the first of
the Gothic buildings of this country, which were built after
church architecture had begun to waken and aspire, and few that
followed it equalled its dignity and calm impressiveness. The
lighter and more fantastic styles of building sprang up in the
city. The timber spires that made believe they were stone
leaped up with unnatural levity into the sky; the cheap stone
sculpture covered and deformed great, feeble fronts ; the reign of
imitation came; and in the midst of all of them Trinity stood,
in its exterior, at least, strong, genuine, solid, with its great
rough stones, its broad bold bands of sculpture, its battlemented
tower, like a great castle of truth, grim, no doubt, and profoundly
serious, but yet able to win from those who worshipped there for
years an affectionate confidence and even tender yearning for
love.

Trinity Church in Boston resembles to some extent Trinity
Church in New York, as being the centre and home of Epis-
copal traditions and prestige. Its organization went back to
the year 1729. Like the old North Church on Salem
Street, it was an offshoot from King's Chapel, which was
the first Episcopal Church in Boston, and had been founded
in 1689. But King's Chapel had ceased to be an Episcopal
Church, and the neighborhood of old Christ Church had
changed until it had lost its ancient influence, so that Trinity
Church was left as the stronghold of Episcopacy in Boston.
During the trying days of the Revolution it had remained
open to its worshippers when most of the Episcopal churches

Jet- 33"3 6 1 TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 3

were closed. When the alternatives had been presented of
closing its doors or of omitting the petition, in the Litany, for
King George and all the royal family, it had chosen the latter
with the hope that it would be "more for the interest and
cause of Episcopacy, and the least evil of the two, to omit a
part of the Litany than to shut up the church." It shows the
tenacity of the corporate life of the church, that many of its
worshippers were the descendants of the families who first
constituted it. They were conservative, holding by the tradi-
tions, cherishing the names of past rectors, among whom
Dr. Parker, afterwards Bishop of Massachusetts, and Dr.
Gardiner were men prominent in the social and civic life of
Boston.

It seemed to many incongruous that Phillips Brooks, the
heir of a long line of Puritan ministers going back to the
settlement of the colony, and of eminent Puritan laymen
honored for their devotion to the "Standing Order," should
be the rector of Trinity Church, with its reversal of these
traditions, representing what seemed in New England an
alien church, indifferent to the highest ideal of Christian
truth. But that question had been settled for him when his
mother made the transition from Puritanism to Episcopacy
while he was an infant, a migration which caused her
many searchings of heart, but which she never lived to
regret. As for Phillips Brooks, he did not feel the situation
to be incongruous. He had been brought up on the Church
Catechism; he knew no other church; he was loyal to it
while yet admiring and applauding the history of his ances-
tors. He studied the records of Trinity Church, making
himself familiar with American history in the eighteenth
century and with the process of its religious thought, in
order to connect himself more closely with the life of the
church of which he was the minister.

Trinity Church had again shown its loyalty and devotion
to the cause of Episcopacy when, in 1842, Dr. Manton East-
burn had been elected bishop of the diocese of Massachusetts.
The diocese being unable to provide a salary for the bishop,
it had called him to be its rector, and thus relieved the situa-

4 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

tion. The endowment known as the Greene Foundation sup-
ported from this time an assistant minister, who divided with
the bishop the burden of preaching and other parochial min-
istrations', always officiating in the bishop's absence on his
episcopal ministrations. Among these assistant ministers
had been the Rev. Thomas M. Clark, now the Bishop of
Khode Island, the late Kev. John Cotton Smith, and Dr.
Henry C. Potter, the present Bishop of New York. But this
arrangement had not worked well. It was a case of divided
responsibility. The assistant ministers were not free to carry
out any projects of church extension, while the bishop was
also hampered by the double burden he was carrying. When
in 1869 the bishop resigned the rectorship, it was felt by
all that a new era had dawned in the history of Trinity
Church.

The new rector brought with him to Boston the ways he
had learned from Dr. Vinton, and which he had put into
successful practice in Philadelphia, the Wednesday even-
ing lecture, the Saturday evening Bible class, and the com-
municants' meeting in preparation for the Lord's Supper.
These were the methods of the Evangelical school in the
church. Things were beginning to change at this time, new
modes of parish activity were becoming popular, and a com-
plicated machinery of what was called "church work" was
coming into vogue. Much of it was adopted by Mr. Brooks,
though without display or ostentation. He was equal to any
one in appropriating methods of activity and in administer-
ing them wisely. But he preferred the Wednesday evening
lecture to the observance of Saints' Days, as being a fixed
occasion in the week, while the latter came irregularly and
were in danger of being neglected. Thus Wednesday even-
ing became a sacred occasion. One of the first fruits of
his ministry in Boston was to find the chapel of Trinity
Church too small for the purpose, and calling for an imme-
diate enlargement. But this did not meet the need, and the
service was transferred to the church, where every seat was
occupied.

Among the arrangements he projected at once for increas-

jet. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 5

ing the activity of the parish and creating a sense of respon-
sibility for those without was a mission on West Cedar Street,
where a Sunday-school was gathered, under the charge of a
theological student from the Cambridge seminary. There
was at this time an Episcopal Church, St. Mark's, on West
Newton Street, which, having fallen into weakness on account
of the changing population, was no longer able to maintain a
rector. lie proposed that this church edifice should be pur-
chased and become a dependency of Trinity Church, and that
the income of the Greene Foundation be devoted to the sup-
port of its minister. This project was carried out after some
delay, and the Rev. Charles C. Tiffany, now Archdeacon of
New York, was called in 1871 to be its rector, and assist-
ant minister of Trinity Church on the Greene Foundation.
These things are mentioned as showing the energy of the new
rector, and the large spirit of religious enterprise with which
he began his parish ministry in Boston. But these yield in
importance to another scheme, which he broached to the par-
ish during the first year of his incumbency, 1870, that the
church should be removed to another part of the city, where
it could do a greater work and better meet the needs of its
parishioners. There was some opposition to the scheme, even
among his warmest friends and supporters, for it meant a
violent uprooting of sacred associations. In the vaults be-
neath the church lay the remains of relatives and friends.
There were other difficulties to be overcome. But Mr. Brooks
continued to urge the removal as an indispensable condition
of progress, until the plan was approved by the wardens and
vestry. To overcome opposition, to create sympathy and
agreement, and even enthusiasm, to recommend himself to
the confidence of men of affairs in so important an undertak-
ing, is an illustration of the many-sided capacity of the new
rector.

It took time to carry out this large plan. All through
the years 1870 and 1871 it was the one foremost purpose in
Mr. Brooks's mind, on which he concentrated his energies
and his interests. He was studying the city of Boston and
the possible directions of its growth, in order to the most

6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

available site. Before any other steps could be taken, it
was necessary to gain the permission of the legislature to
sell the old edifice. On December 3, 1870, the first meeting
of the Proprietors of Trinity Church was held to consider the
question of removal. Early in the next year Mr. Brooks
appeared before a committee of the legislature and stated
the reasons why the removal of the church was desired :

I think there is necessity for a removal of Trinity Church for
the best interests of the parish, and a necessity which is more
and more strong constantly. There has been a growing convic-
tion with me ever since I have been rector of the parish that it
would be necessary to move. The reasons are simply these: the
entire change of the population in Boston which has removed all
the residences from Trinity Church, leaving literally no residences
within that region round the church which is usually considered
the parochial line. All our congregation are therefore obliged to
come from a great distance, which looks badly for us in two
ways; in the first place by rendering their attendance unstable
and preventing the church from accumulating any permanent
parish ; for a family coming from a great distance is loosely at-
tached, and unless it is in some way geographically connected with
the parish it cannot be counted upon to sustain the church. The
instability and lack of adhesion and difficulty in conducting any
of the educational and charitable work of the parish, arising from
teachers and taught residing at very great distance, is one reason
that has forced itself upon me. These difficulties are increasing
every day. Every removal that has taken place I may say
almost every removal since I have been in the parish has been
a removal to a greater distance from the church. Therefore look-
ing forward a few years, we can see how much the present diffi-
culties are likely to be increased. Then there are difficulties that
attach to the location of the church, the nearness of a busi-
ness street, and the extreme noisiness during the Lent services.
These have been much greater this season than last season. Then
in addition to these two reasons there are the very serious ones
attaching to the accommodations of Trinity Church, which are
entirely incapable of remedy in our present location. The
church originally was simply a structure for the church proper
and since then there has been added a Sunday-school or lecture
room, and this is the only room we have at present. We have
no rooms for class instruction and for carrying on the work of the
parish. Our lecture room is inadequate for our lecture-room pur-

jet. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 7

poses. For this reason I think almost any one who is associated
with the work of the church, who is engaged in the actual chari-
table and educational work of the church, feels the necessity of
a change of location ; and without knowing personally the opinion
of each one of those who are so engaged, I should say that with
three or four exceptions they all favor the removal.

The permission to sell having been granted by the legisla-
ture, it was accepted by the Proprietors of Trinity Church.
The question of the new site was not an easy one, and delib-
erations proceeded slowly. Not until the end of the year
1871 was the lot purchased on which the present Trinity
Church now stands. Mr. Brooks was at first strongly at-
tracted by the lot on the corner of Beacon and Charles streets
facing the Common. But the wisdom of the final choice
needs no justification. On March 6, 1872, the building
committee was created, consisting of George M. Dexter,
Charles Henry Parker, Robert C. Winthrop, Martin Brim-
mer, Charles R. Codman, John C. Ropes, John G. Cushing,
Charles G. Morrill, Robert Treat Paine, Jr., Stephen G.
Deblois, and William P. Blake. The committee voted at
once to notify Mr. Brooks of all meetings and their readi-
ness to receive any suggestions from him. Six competitors
were invited to furnish plans, and in June the late H. H.
Richardson, of the firm of Gambrill & Richardson, was
chosen as the architect. "The building committee were at
once impressed," writes Mr. Robert Treat Paine, in his final
report, "with the importance of purchasing the triangle of
land which now forms the whole Huntington Avenue front
of our estate. An appeal was made to the parish for gifts
of money, and a generous response enabled the committee to
make the purchase." The additional amount thus called for
was $75,000, but the contribution reached -$100,000. "The
church," continues Mr. Paine, "thus completed its title to
the whole domain of over an acre, enclosed by four public
streets, and making the church visible in all directions. So
far as the committee know, this is the only site of the Back
Bay where these advantages could have been secured."

Plans for the new church had already been drawn by Mr.

8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Eichardson, when the enlargement of the estate by the pur-
chase of the triangle called for their entire remodelling.
It was while the building committee were engaged in this
study for a new design that the great Boston fire, on Novem-
ber 10, 1872, swept away the old Trinity Church on Sum-
mer Street. Whatever indifference or opposition there had
been to the removal of the church could now exist no longer.
A new interest and enthusiasm united the parish in the
determination to make the new edifice a grander one than
the old had been. The building committee appointed an
executive committee out of its numbers, Messrs. Eobert
Treat Paine, C. H. Parker, and C. W. Galloupe, "with
full powers to prosecute with all despatch the erection of
the new church." Mr. Richardson encouraged them to
think that in two years the new edifice would be completed.
In this hope and expectation the large hall in the Institute
of Technology on Boylston Street was hired for the Sunday
services. The expectation was not fulfilled; it was more
than twice two years before they saw the consummation of
their desires. But meantime in this secular hall, with no
accessories or associations of sacred worship, Mr. Brooks
entered upon a still more powerful phase of his ministry,
under the influence of which Trinity Church not only re-
mained united, but received large additions to its member-
ship.

When Phillips Brooks came to Boston it was his study to
be the rector of Trinity Church, to carry out the ideal of a
parish minister as he conceived it in all its scope and in all
the detail of its relationships. To give himself up to the
work of preaching the gospel of Christ to the congregation
over whom he was set to minister was his single purpose. To
this end he sought to know the people to whom he preached,
to study their needs, to share their joys and sorrows, to lead
them into larger conceptions of the mission of a parish to
the church and to the world. No one could have written the
"Lectures on Preaching" who was not first and foremost
and always the parish minister, devoted to his people, giving
them of his best, and in the relationship of mutual love and

*t. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 9

service finding his satisfaction and reward. He does not
indeed record any vow of exclusive faithfulness to this special
purpose, but that it was his purpose, his single aim, is writ-
ten on all his work after coming to Boston, and finds expres-
sion in unmistakable manner. During the year before he
came to Boston, while the call was under his consideration,
he must have been solemnly deliberating with himself and
reaching a determination as to his line and method of work.
We must therefore note at this point a significant change
and epoch in his ministry. In Philadelphia he had appeared
almost as a reformer and agitator, with a work to do outside
the pulpit, which rivalled in importance and popular interest
his work as a preacher. He had thrown himself into the
cause of the abolition of slavery with an intensity and rare
eloquence which was not surpassed by any one. He had
espoused the cause of the emancipated slaves, pleading in
most impassioned manner for their right to suffrage in order
to their complete manhood. In the interest of the Freed-
men's Aid Society he had made stirring platform addresses
in the greater cities of Pennsylvania and in New York.
He was more prominently identified than any other citizen in
Philadelphia with the local issue whether the negroes should
be allowed to ride in the street cars. From his activity in
these moral causes he had become as widely known as by his
eloquence in the pulpit.

But from the time when he came to Boston he ceased to
be identified with any special reform. There were others,
who, as soon as the war was over, had addressed themselves to
the cause of the working people, seeking the redress of social
evils, enlightening the popular mind, and securing the needed
legislation for the amelioration of social burdens. Phillips
Brooks might easily have followed in the same direction. It
was in him to have become a reformer, and to have used the
pulpit and the platform as his levers of influence. But he
did not take this role. He gave himself to his parish, and
exclusively to the preacher's task, and for seven years he
was supremely interested in the work of building the new
Trinity Church as if that should be the crown of his labors.

io PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

We have seen that his father was dismayed when his son
devoted his strength to what seemed like preaching politics;
how he earnestly dissuaded him from carrying politics into
the pulpit. The advice may not have been without its in-
fluence. But apart from this a man like Phillips Brooks could
not have had his Philadelphia experience without studying
its bearing upon his work as a preacher. As he studied it,
he saw that the two functions were incompatible, and that
of the two the mission of the preacher of the gospel of Christ
was the higher, the more important, the more far reaching
and fundamental in its influence, the primary condition of
all successful enduring reforms. It must not be supposed for
a moment that he was not interested in every social or moral
issue which aimed at the improvement of man. His interest
was recognized and presupposed. He never failed when he
was called upon to advocate any good cause. He sympa-
thized with those who devoted their lives to such ends. On
occasions in his own pulpit, and especially on Thanksgiving
Day, he uttered himself freely on the questions of the hour.
But he did not identify himself exclusively with any of them,
nor work for them in direct manner, but always indirectly
through the power of Christian truth, brought home to the
heart by the preaching of the gospel. Of all the cities in the
land, Boston, more than any other, was associated with ideal
issues and moral reforms. It might be almost called the
home of reformers since the days when the preparation began
for the American Revolution. It puzzled Boston people,
therefore, when Phillips Brooks came among them and began
at once to exert his magic influence. They found it impos-
sible to label or classify him. He was neither a moral, a
social, nor a religious reformer. It is amusing now to look
back at the efforts made to define his position by critical
analysis, or by comparison with other men. Boston at last
accepted him for himself without attempt at analysis or
criticism. But in the earlier years it was not so.

One cannot think of Boston without thinking of Unita-
rianism. When the schism took place, in the first part of
the nineteenth century, which divided the Congregational

-*t. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 11

churches into Orthodox and Liberal, the latter body carried
with it the social prestige, the wealth, the intellectual culture
of Boston. It was represented by Harvard College also, and
by a line of men eminent in literature, Emerson and Haw-
thorne, Longfellow and Holmes and Lowell, and many others.
It had given birth to two great preachers and reformers,
Channing and Theodore Parker, who had added to the fame
of Boston by their eloquence, their high character, and their
large influence. Phillips Brooks had now come to take his
position by divine right among the greatest and best of her
children. Her literary men recognized him at once as enti-
tled to an equal place. There could be no doubt of his great-
ness, but what was he, and how should he be described ?

At first there was an inclination on the part of the Uni-
tarians to claim him as their own. Such power, such genius,
marked him as of necessity one who, though he might not be
conscious of it, must be at heart a Unitarian. They were un-
familiar with the breadth of the national Church of England ;
they were indifferent to Maurice and Stanley and Arnold,
Kingsley, F. W. Robertson, Thirlwall and Tait and Temple,
who represented liberal theology in the English Church, with
whom Phillips Brooks was affiliated in spirit, and at whose
feet he had sat as a pupil. Archbishop Tillotson and the
liberal theologians of the English Church in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries they had long since forgotten.
They could not believe that such things were indigenous in
the Anglican Church, having their roots in the Reformation
and in the Book of Common Prayer. However it was, the
Unitarians flocked to the new preacher, the man with a
message to which they responded as divine. Against this
disposition on the part of Unitarians to "attend the earnest
and attractive ministry of Phillips Brooks," the "Liberal
Christian," a Unitarian organ in Boston, gave a most em-
phatic protest :

We hold the earnestness and sincerity of those Unitarians who
desert their own worship and their own laborious pastors to swell
the tide of hearers of Orthodox Liberals at a very cheap value.
There is a certain meanness, and time-serving, and cowardly

12 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

spirit, and a carelessness about intellectual and moral distinctions
which is discouraging and deserves strong rebuke. (1870.)

The "Liberal Christian " was indeed very much in earnest
in its protest, refusing to admit a communication in reply,
which extenuated the fault of the culprits.

The editor of the "Christian Register" (Unitarian) went
with the crowd to listen and to know for himself what these
things meant. He was inclined to be severe and prepared to
notice flaws, yet he was also determined to be fair and to get
at the truth. "While he admired the noble presence of the
preacher, he found defects in the voice, and thought the
rapidity with which he read the service somewhat irreverent.
He was on the watch for any "omissions " in the service, but
could not detect them. This was his report to his readers :

The text of the sermon was "She hath done what she could."
The first half of the sermon was satisfactory and impressive, that
human responsibility was limited by human power and oppor-
tunity. Every man, however weak and humble, has some thing
especially appointed for him to do, and the harmony of the uni-
verse is incomplete so long as he neglects his task. . . .

All this was exceedingly impressive. He spoke with such
fervor and unaffected earnestness that we felt quickened and up-
lifted by his appeals in behalf of our doing our best, and making
the most of our chances in life. Then came the only unsatisfac-
tory passage of the discourse. It seemed to be assumed that as
sinners we must not only repent, but rely upon Christ's atoning
blood. No particular theory of the atonement was insisted upon,
but in some way we must feel that we are ransomed and bought
with a price.

The room was growing darker, and we became less and less
sure that we understood Mr. Brooks perfectly. But we were
quite convinced that while he was only mildly "Evangelical " and
used, mainly, Scriptural expressions that admit of a Unitarian
interpretation, he left the plain path in which he had been walk-
ing for the devious ways of theological subtleties. Still the
general effect of the sermon was excellent, and we came away
deeply grateful for the most that we had heard, with a new un-
derstanding of Mr. Brooks's deserved popularity; and fully
believing that he is as rational and independent as an honest man
can possibly be while remaining within the Episcopal Church.
The whole atmosphere about him was far superior in simplicity

*"". 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 13

and manliness to anything that we had ever known in his
denomination.

"If the Rev. Mr. Phillips Brooks," remarked the "Con-
gregationalist," an Orthodox paper, commenting on this
report, "has trembled and felt weakened as to the security
of his position in this city, he must now take heart and dis-
miss his fears. The editor of the ' Christian Register ' hav-
ing been to hear him has come away ' fully believing that he is
as rational and independent as an honest man can possibly
be while remaining within the Episcopal Church.' These
things are not recovered from the forgotten years for the
purpose of illustrating the amenities of religious controversy,
but in order to reproduce the moment when Phillips Brooks
came to Boston. It recalls the picture of Boston, or of any
Massachusetts town, in the colonial days, when a stranger
entered its precincts. Before he could be accepted, he must
be questioned and made to give an account of himself. The
inquiring looks now directed upon the new preacher, the
sharp criticism to which he was subjected, were simply the
inevitable Boston greeting. It was Boston's way, that
was all. Philadelphia had a different way. It had not the
suspicion of the stranger as such. It knew a good thing
when it saw it, and did not spoil its enjoyment by overanx-
ious questioning. It was not perhaps so easy a thing for
Boston to bow before Phillips Brooks as it had been for
Philadelphia. Boston is a city with peculiarities of its own,
and they are marked and strong. But on this point let
another speak, one whom Boston loved and revered :

Shall I say [writes Dr. Channing] a word of evil of this good
city of Boston? Among all its virtues it does not abound in a
tolerant spirit. The yoke of opinion is a heavy one, often crush-
ing individuality of judgment and action. A censorship, un-
friendly to free exertion, is exercised over the pulpit as well as
over concerns. No city in the world is governed so little by a
police, and no city so much by mutual inspection and what is
called public sentiment. We stand more in awe of one another
than most people. Opinion is less individual or runs more into
masses, and often rules with a rod of iron. 1

1 Works, vol. ii. p. 265, ed. 1845.

i 4 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

It was not only the Unitarians that had questions to ask.
The Orthodox or Trinitarian Congregationalists were puzzled.
The Unitarians watched him to see whether he were Ortho-
dox, and the Orthodox were curious to see whether he were
a Unitarian in disguise. At this time the antagonism be-
tween these two parties was strenuous and even bitter, for
the painful associations of the schism which Channing had
led were still fresh in the memory of many then living. The
influence of Theodore Parker had only intensified these reli-
gious antipathies. Parker had divided the Unitarians into
two wings, the conservative and the progressive ; but he had
also aggravated the prejudices of the Orthodox against the
whole body of Unitarians by his denial of miracles and the
supernatural, by his criticism of Scripture and rejection of
its external authority. But his was on the whole the grow-
ing tendency in Boston. He was a transcendentalist, build-
ing on the authority of an inner light, finding God and im-
mortality and religion in the natural instinct of the human
soul, and needing no external authority, whether of Scrip-
ture or prophet or person of Christ, as the sanction of reli-
gious truth. But there was also something better in Parker
which would be apparent when the storm of controversy had
died away. It was then with dark suspicions in their minds
that Orthodox critics approached the new preacher. They,
too, were not quite satisfied. The trouble with both these
classes of critics was that they went to their inquiry with
formal tests of doctrines or dogmas uppermost in their minds,
while the preacher was in another atmosphere, thinking not
of doctrines but of life.

The Episcopalians [says the Boston correspondent of the Chris-
tian Intelligencer] have a new light and popular preacher, Rev.
Phillips Brooks, late of Philadelphia. Before coming here he
had achieved a high reputation in the pulpit, and as a liberal in
doctrine and churchly rites. However true it may be we know
not, but he is said to occupy about the same theological position
as Robertson of England. We heard him on Sunday evening,
and he did what too many Orthodox ministers do in this region,
threw out a "sop " to the Unitarians. His sermon was unex-
ceptionable in almost every particular. It was, in fact, the best

MT . 33-36} TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 15

sermon on the whole we have heard here for some time. It was
practical, written in a clear and forcible style, with passages of
wonderful beauty and eloquence. It was delivered with that
impetuous earnestness that distinguishes certain nervous natures.
No one could listen to it without being moved to live for God.
But a fly was in the ointment, needlessly there. He went out of
his way to say, "I don't believe in total depravity," and then
added that he believed there was something good in all men,
giving the impression to those who did not know better that the
doctrine known as "total depravity " embraced the view that
every man is as bad as lie can be, or is utterly destitute of what is
good. But still he intimated that there is no recuperative ele-
ment in the soul, an important feature, however, of the discarded
doctrine. Of course all liberals delight in such statements or
caricatures, and then quote them as proof of the effect of their
liberalism in modifying evangelical doctrines. Mr. Brooks ought
to know just what total depravity as a theological doctrine
involves, and while the term is confessedly objectionable as now
interpreted, yet, like many legal and medical terms, can be
explained.

The popular verdict on the preaching of Phillips Brooks
was more important than the judgment of the critics. There
had been no similar event in the history of Boston which
created such excitement, such widespread interest, such a
veritable sensation. He stepped at once into the same rela-
tive position as he held in Philadelphia. Trinity Church on
Summer Street was crowded with eager hearers. It was
almost unseemly the way in which the people claimed him
for their own, regardless of the privileges of those whose
special minister he was. They came from every direction,
feeling that they must be there. Precedents and vested
rights, distinctions of pewholders, the authority of the sex-
ton, these seemed like an impertinence when Phillips Brooks
was to preach. The true gospel of Christ, the word of life,
must in the nature of the case be offered alike to all, without
distinction. It was a trying situation for the stately, deco-
rous parishioners, who had associated worship with calmness
and dignity, and with ample accommodation in the high-
backed, luxurious pews. It was no slight inconvenience and
annoyance when they sought access to their pews to find them

1 6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

occupied by strangers, whose apologies did not relieve but
only magnified the grievance. Mr. Dillon, the sexton, to
whom it fell to manage these things, strove to rise to the
occasion and struggled to meet an emergency so wholly
unlike anything he had hitherto known in his long adminis-
tration. He tried to sort the people who presented themselves
for admission, sending some to the galleries, and allowing
others, whom he judged more fit, to occupy the waste spaces
in the pews on the floor, but his expedients were futile. 1
There were too many seeking to be admitted, that was
the simple difficulty. There was room perhaps for a thou-
sand people, and the demands were for more than double the
accommodation. The people became indignant and vented
their anger on Mr. Dillon, "the grim and truculent sexton,
who acted as if he owned the church." Complaints found
their way to the newspapers, with accounts of the "most
disgraceful scenes ever enacted within the walls of a Protest-
ant church." Many who came were unfamiliar with the
ways of the Episcopal Church; they regarded the morning
and evening prayer as something to be tolerated, " intro-
ductory exercises " before the sermon could be reached. They
rejoiced at least that "Mr. Brooks ran it off so rapidly."
Mr. Brooks did what he could to facilitate matters. The
pews in the galleries were declared free, and after pew-
holders had taken their seats the church was thrown open to
all. But this was no temporary evil to be cured by any
expedient. It lasted as long as Phillips Brooks remained
the rector of Trinity Church. Bishop Eastburn continued
for a while to attend the services at Trinity. But he was
not accustomed to such excitement, or to see people flocking
in crowds to the proclamation of the gospel. He was not
altogether sure that the new preacher could be "sound in his
views." He betook himself to the roomier spaces of St.
Paul's.

1 In Mr. Dillon' s view of the situation, the end to he aimed at was to reduce
the numbers who sought admittance to the church. " He once came to me in
the vestry room," said Mr. Brooks, " to tell me of a method he had devised for
this purpose, ' When a young man and a young woman come together, I sepa-
rate them ; ' and he expected me to approve the fiendish plan."

*t. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 17

Many of those who went to hear Mr. Brooks for the first
time were so impressed that they must needs give utterance,
in newspaper articles, to the emotions which stirred them.
Some went prepared to watch closely and see vividly in order
to get the material for a striking literary report. There are
in these early years at Trinity many of these pen-and-ink
sketches of the preacher and the wonderful effect of his
preaching, descriptions of the church and the congregations,
and the accessories which made the scene impressive. All
agree in being compelled to describe the preacher himself as
though that were a part of the message.

The door of the anteroom opens, and Mr. Brooks appears in
his white flowing robes. There is something almost boyish, yet
beautifully sweet and earnest as well, in his face and manner.
He is emphatically a manly man, with no sentimental, morbid,
sickly notions of life. He is a "muscular Christian " and believes
in work and stout-hearted endeavor. And he walks through the
earthly and tangible as beholding the things that are invisible and
heavenly. All this and more we find in his strong spiritual
countenance.

The old building [according to another report] seems the fit-
ting place of worship for the solid men of Boston. There is an
air of ancient respectability about it. . . . The deep roomy pews,
and thoughtfully padded, seem adjusted for sleeping, and though
seven can sit comfortably in them, if you humbly ask for the fifth
seat in some of them, beware of the lofty look and high-bred
scorn which seems to say, Are not the galleries free for negroes,
servants, and strangers ? . . . I shall have to let you in, I sup-
pose. Take that Prayer Book, and keep quiet; service has begun.
Don't you see Mr. Brooks?

Yes, we do see the Rev. Phillips Brooks, a tall, stout, power-
fully built man, with a smooth boyish face, and very near-sighted
eyes, which nevertheless, by the help of glasses, seem to search you
out in whatever dark corner you may be hidden. He is reading
the service with a thin voice and rapid, breathless, almost stutter-
ing delivery, and yet with a certain impulsive and pleading ear-
nestness that carries even Congregationalists on their knees and
takes them with him to the throne of grace.

To reproduce here the many comments upon Phillips

Brooks when he first made his appearance in Boston would
vol. n

1 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

be impossible, and yet to neglect them altogether would be
a loss to his biography. The time never came when people
tired of portraying him or of writing their impressions.
Those who wrote were not more eager to rehearse than were
the thousands, who had not heard or seen for themselves,
eager to read what was written. It is part of the story of his
life to give him in his relations with the great body of people
who heard him gladly, who were sure that something unknown
before in the history of the pulpit was now enacting, and that
it behooved them to catch and preserve each slightest accent,
as an almost sacred responsibility. Thus they loved to de-
scribe his appearance as though in this case the symmetry of
form and beauty of countenance were in some mysterious way
the counterpart of the spirit within, and nature had for once
succeeded in making the body the transparent revelation, the
harmonious accompaniment, of the immortal soul. Such was
the opinion of the many, but others dissented :

He is exceedingly portly and also very tall ; in bearing one of
the most commanding men of his day. He has a fine, well-pro-
portioned head, covered with a short growth of thick dark hair,
which he wears easily without careless indifference and also with-
out dainty niceness. ... A certain throwing of his head up and
a little to one side is his most prominent gesture ; and it is all the
more effective that it is not strictly elegant. There is nothing in
his voice, bearing, or look which can explain his almost unexampled
popularity. For popular he is almost beyond precedent.

He stands in the pulpit [says another writer] smooth-faced,
full-voiced, as self-reliant a man as ever occupied such a station.
He indulges in few gestures; he has no mannerisms. If, under
any circumstances, he might realize the popular conception of an
orator, he does not betray the possibilities here. He provokes
no attention to predominant spirituality by inferior vitality.
There is a splendid harmony of strength, bodily and mental,
which prevents the measurement of either. It is only when he is
out of his desk and level with his audience that you realize his
stature. In the lecture room or crowded street he stands like
Saul among the people. The well-balanced head and strong
shoulders draw your eyes at once. He dresses well, lives well,
and holds his own decidedly in social circles. . . . His power

^33-3^ TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 19

is not limited to his church ministrations, nor is he making him-
self known by some brilliant special development. It is the
whole man mentally, morally, and spiritually, leader, helper,
friend which is attaining such preeminence. But when he
preaches, you are carried away to the need of men and of your
own shortcomings, and have no present consciousness of the per-
sonality of the speaker. A transparent medium is the purest.
You do not think of Phillips Brooks till Phillips Brooks gets
through with his subject.

His manner of entering the church [says another observer] was
quite peculiar. He hurried in, sweeping his left arm in long
circuits and glancing quickly about and abruptly kneeling at the
altar. In selecting his places in the Prayer Book he continued
to glance nervously about. . . . And yet there was something
even then that interested one in him and gave assurances of his
sincerity. His complexion is dark, his forehead low, his face
full, and his figure and motions those of an overgrown lad ; and
yet in spite of all and through all there is a struggling for good-
ness and culture. . . . The sermon was a model, rapidly de-
livered and yet effectively, when the preacher had advanced far
enough to lose himself in it, and thrilling the hearer by every
word. . . . There was apparently as little aim at effect in the
preparation as in the pronouncing of the discourse, but it was
exquisitely written and every sentence was a blade, though wreathed
in flowers. The hearer was both transported and cut down,
delighted with the rhetoric that saluted his ear and regaled his
taste, and penetrated and solemnized by the truth with which he
was addressed.

Another listener goes to hear him at St. Mark's, West
Newton Street, one Sunday evening in midsummer, allowing
an ample half hour before the appointed time, only to find
the edifice already nearly filled, and the silent, steady stream
of worshippers appropriating every available spot with an
earnestness noticeable to the merest stranger, and this al-
though the heat is intense and the atmosphere almost stifling.

A stranger [he continues] cannot be long in doubt of the just-
ness of his popularity, as he enters in that unpretending manner
and goes instantly to his work, without a seeming thought of any-
thing but his duty as a worshipper. Look at the man ! Would
you not look at him twice in any surroundings ? All our previous
ideas of a pale, formal stereotyped Episcopal minister . . . are

so PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

put to flight at once and forever, as we are instantly magnetized
with the man's polished energy and the spirit he infuses into
every part of the service. With a physique the embodiment of
perfect health, you look in vain for any symptom of the spirit-
ualized consumptive symptoms that old-time people were wont to
regard as a sure advance towards saintship. A round, full,
smooth face, shadowed with massive eyebrows and lighted with
eyes of richest black, not flashing but deep, his whole expression
so free from guile and affectation, and every movement so full of
inexhaustible vitality, that he seems to retain all the wealth of a
pure, boyish nature, crystallized into perfect manhood.

Here are a few more descriptions of Phillips Brooks in the
pulpit and of his manner of preaching :

At last the order of evening prayer is concluded and the
preacher mounts the turret-like pulpit. He is clad in the plain
black gown, with a collar, vest, and necktie such as ordinary
mortals may wear; and carries a manuscript which his eyes,
intently following, scarcely leave from the smoothing out of the
first page to the turning of the last. While the choir are singing
the final verse of the preliminary hymn, he somewhat nervouslv
adjusts the tablet before him to his height and the lights at his
side to his eyes, and then stands motionless, gazing forth for a
moment with a pleasant and rather inquiring cast of countenance
over the congregation. . . . His sermon to-night is from Romans
vii. 22: "For I delight in the law of God after the inward
man." . . . The sermon is scarcely over thirty minutes long,
but is preached with so rapid an utterance that from the lips of
another it might take a third longer. It is founded upon an
exegesis which is novel, but its proposition commands assent, its
argument is strong, its tone is exhilarating, and one goes from it
pondering the oft-repeated question, What is the secret of Phillips
Brooks's preaching? Where is the hiding of his power?

When he reaches his sermon [says another observer] and
plunges into his subject, as if it were a message from heaven,
delivered for the first time to mortals, so fresh and earnest it is,
then the real height of the man's power is reached. . . . He
avoids all the old, worn grooves of reasoning, and leads you by his
own routine of thought into the clearest and simplest comprehen-
sion of life's duties and God's demands. And as he is lifted by
his theme into a rarefied atmosphere, and with a marvellous faith
catches a glimpse of still higher summits to be reached, like a
mountain climber, scaling from crag to crag, you are rapidly

mt.33-3^ TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 21

borne along with him, till the worries of earth look very trifling
from the crest where he pauses.

After this [according to another report] he entered the pulpit in
a black gown and announced his text, Hebrews ix. 22: "Wherein
was the golden pot that had manna and Aaron's rod that budded,
and the table of the covenant." . . . This meagre outline can
convey no idea of the richness of the sermon. . . . His style
was simplicity itself. Illustration and imagery are not profuse
but perfect. His power, however, is what no one less gifted than
he can describe to another who has not felt it. It seems to come
from a deep, personal experience which gives his message author-
ity. . . . He has a certain great-heartedness, and a passionate,
irrepressible desire to bring others to the Saviour whom he finds
so precious, that people of all shades of belief, and no belief, are
carried along, for the time at least, by the same enthusiasm that
seems to possess him. Out of twenty or more of his sermons
which we have heard, there has not been one which would have
been unsuitable for a revival meeting. Whatever the subject, the
central thought is always the cross of Christ the goodness of
the gospel to a sinful soul.

A stranger's earliest impressions on listening for the first time
to the young preacher, whose name is already famous far beyond
the limits of his own denomination, is doubtless amazement at the
rapidity with which words and sentences follow each other from
his lips. Utterly devoid of those pulpit mannerisms and affecta-
tions of which the world is weary, his first utterance seems to
fling him body and soul into his subject. . . . It is the earnest
wrestling of a brilliant intellect with great and yet simple truths,
evolving new and startling conceptions, or clothing familiar
thoughts with rare and subtle beauty. No written words can do
justice to the varied powers of this great pulpit orator. He has
the keenest analytic skill, the most charming purity of style, a
wonderful grasp of glowing imagery, the most evident sincerity,
the most touching pathos, and the broadest catholicity. . . .
There are none of our so-called popular preachers who at all
resemble Mr. Brooks, either in manner and style of delivery or
in peculiarities of thought.

We have seen that Mr. Brooks puzzled the inquiring minds
bent on detecting his theological bias. But according to the
majority of the best opinion, his teaching was in the strict
sense Evangelical. An Old School Presbyterian says :

12 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Writing from an " Orthodox " standpoint, your correspondent
may be pardoned for expressing the joy he felt that Puritan truth
is the doctrine of the preacher now most admired and sought
after in degenerate Boston. It was most refreshing and hope-
inspiring to hear him.

It is this compound [says another writer] of Broad Church lib-
erality and absolute fixedness and certainty as to points of belief
and faith that accounts for Mr. Brooks's wide influence in the
community.

Here and there [says a writer in the Congregationalist] you
will find one who thinks that the Unitarians get a little more
comfort out of his preaching than he ought to give them. But
there is reason for the remark that such suspicions are mostly
confined to those who seldom hear his sermons, if in some
instances they are not unaccompanied with what is very near akin
to a professional jealousy. I have never heard but one opinion
from those qualified by knowledge and impartiality to judge, and
that is that the current of his preaching is strongly and warmly
Evangelical.

One other testimony to his power as a preacher comes
from New York, when he preached at Grace Church in the
year 1870. The occasion rose at once to dignity and signi-
ficance, calling for description and comment which found
expression in the "Evening Post:"

The preacher was a man of mark in every sense, and the
moment you set eye upon him you asked who he was, if you did
not know him before. . . . There was no look or tone of assump-
tion in him, and in fact, until he warmed in his sermon, there
was nothing in his manner to impress you with remarkable power.
. . . His subject was positive religion, viewed especially in its
superiority over merely negative or repressive religion. It was a
strong and telling and glowing argument for the brave virtue that
follows the " Spirit " above the petulant asceticism that is always
fighting with the "flesh." The preacher held his congregation
fixed on his words for forty minutes. We listened to him with
the more attention from the fact that he is a memorable sign of
the times. He seems to be run after more by young people,
especially of the more cultivated class, than any other preacher,
and he is the most conspicuous man now in the pulpit of Boston,
that city so renowned for its theologians. ... It is not

-* T - 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 23

difficult to discover the secret of his power, although he has not
all of the conditions which have heen regarded as essentials of
success among his associates. He has no remarkable qualities of
voice, or elocution, or gesture. He speaks and reads very rapidly
and has no dramatic touches of pathos or humor. He does not
abound in original metaphors or epigrammatic points, in rare
classic allusions or profound philosophic distinctions. He has
none of the tragedian's startling tones and attitudes, and nothing
of the buffoon's grimace and merriment, which are now not un-
known in the pulpit. But the power of the man lies in the ful-
ness of his nature, his thought, his affections, his purpose, and his
speech. There is a great deal of him, and he lets himself out
without reserve, without affectation, without conceit, without
meanness. His sermon flows from its large fountain head in full,
continuous course, now in easy talk, and now in swelling volume,
and now in dashing force, until it pours into the open sea under
the eternal heaven, and carries you on its grand tide to its glorious
vision. ... It is a significant fact that Harvard, which has
been so eminent for the cautious accuracy, careful elegance, and
dainty reserve of its orators, should have sent such an unusual
representative into the pulpit, and that her representative preacher
now is this stalwart Broad Churchman, who preaches the human-
ity of Channing with the creed of Jeremy Taylor, and strikes at
the shirks and shams of our day with the dashing pluck and the
full blood of Martin Luther.

Space must be found for another calm, intelligent estimate
of Phillips Brooks as a preacher. It was written by a
Bostonian, as the extract just given was from the pen of a
New Yorker, by a Unitarian who abandoned his fold to listen
to him. No better statement than this was ever made :

One word remains to be said in regard to the ministry which it
has been our privilege to attend during the last winter (1869-70),
listening to those impressive utterances :

Where all is calm and deep and grave,
With a full soul's mature sedateness ;

where the overflow of vital power, and wealth of poetic imagina-
tion, and the nameless enchantment of genius are all made tribu-
tary to an awful earnestness of soul, a solemn and tender sense of
responsibility in preacher and hearer, which sends the latter away
with very different emotions from those awakened by the rhe-
torical brilliancy, or dazzling oratory, or mere theatrical perform-

24 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

ance of whatever kind. Of three points which make this ministry
especially attractive we notice, first, an extraordinary mental
clearness and precision, which make every word aid in guiding
the hearer straight to the point intended; which admits no re-
dundance in its beautiful and finished expression, and, in its most
glowing imagery and felicitous illustration, never gives the idea of
external ornamentation, but rather deepens the impression of the
truth to be conveyed as by the exposition of a purely natural
analogy or preexisting correspondence between things divine and
human. And secondly, we are impressed by its rare persuasive-
ness, a power of taking for granted assent, which almost com-
pels it, an emphasis laid on points of agreement, rather than on
those of difference, so that we find ourselves addressed from
the broad ground of a common humanity rather than from the
narrow platform of doctrinal distinctions, and are led to recognize
the central truths which underlie and comprehend all our diversi-
ties of opinion. But once more and including all the rest, we
find in this preaching a depth of thought and purpose, a scorch-
ing analysis of character and motive, that cuts clean through the
crust of conventionalism (whether of worldliness or religion), and
takes us to those depths (shall we say?) or lifts us to those
heights where we are set face to face with eternal realities, in
whose sight the poor routine of our daily life is transfigured with
new hope, made quick with grateful impulse and weighty with
sacred meaning.

These testimonies all belong to the first years of Phillips
Brooks's ministry in Old Trinity on Summer Street, while
he was making the conquest of Boston. They may suffice to
show how the city was moved at his coming. There were
those of course who doubted whether it was more than a
passing fashion, some of whom went to analyze or criticise
but for the most part remained to pray. Those were wisest
who accepted the situation as inevitable, recognizing that
some strange phenomenal power was in evidence ; that this
was no case of the ordinary sensational preacher, but some-
thing that was real and abiding, and as deep and mysterious
as the mystery of life in this world. If it may have been
hard at first for the Boston clergy to bend before such royal
presence in the pulpit, they did not show it ; they demon-
strated their own greatness by admitting that a greater had
come among them. Still, it was a disturbing experience in

-*t. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 25

all the churches. It was a source of further disquiet that it
was impossible to classify the preacher according- to received
canons of criticism. Those who listened in order to sit in
judgment sometimes thought they had discovered the secret
of his strength and again frankly admitted their failure.
"His power consists in his simplicity," said one, "in his
earnestness and strength, exhibited in the expression of a
theology free from the narrowness and technicalities of those
dogmatic schemes which make religion ridiculous and weigh
it down." Another said, "Of course he has a fine intellect,
but it is the warm, earnest heart guiding the intellect that
gives him such influence over his hearers." Still another:
"He knows what is in us all. He speaks out of the common
experience and comes right to the heart of men." And
again thought another :

His secret does not lie in his thought or his style ; not in his
utterance, which is rapid almost to incoherency, and marred by an
awkward habit of misreading his writing, a delivery unrelieved by
the charm of a musical or even a pleasant voice ; but in his evi-
dent honesty of conviction, sincerity of purpose, and earnestness
of desire, he does not think of himself or of the impression he is
making; also, in that he approaches men on the side of their
hopefulness. He is a man of exceptionally intellectual abilities,
but the moral qualities are so obvious and forceful as to make
the other seem secondary.

Those who made no attempt to penetrate the secret were
on the safer side. The preacher had the "vision and the
faculty divine," beyond which it was impossible to go; of
which Plotinus had said, as quoted by Coleridge: "It is not
lawful to inquire from whence it sprang, as if it were a thing
subject to place and motion, for it neither appears hither nor
again departs from hence to another place; but it either
appears to us or it does not appear. So that we ought not
to pursue it with a view to detecting its secret source, but to
watch in quiet till it suddenly shines upon us; preparing
ourselves for the blessed spectacle as the eye waits patiently
for the rising sun." Somewhat in this mood he was waited
upon by the people. And the people in this case were

26 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

worthy of study, as was the preacher to whom they listened
with rapt attention and in a wonderful stillness. They, too,
have been described in these reports from which extracts
have been made. It seemed to some as though the congre-
gations were made up mostly of young men, to others as if
young ladies under thirty predominated.

The packed congregations of old Trinity [says one] represent
the best intellect, the most cultivated minds, as well as the rich-
est families in Boston.

It is pleasant [says another] to see Phillips Brooks's audience
and to analyze it. I had expected that it was exclusively of the
more educated classes, but it is not ; from the place where I sat
last Sunday evening I could pick out easily enough the sewing
girls, the Boston clerks, the men of leisure and of study, the poor
old women with their worn and pinched and faded, but thoughtful,
earnest faces; and it was a dear sight, all those classes and con-
ditions of men riveted to the countenance of Phillips Brooks and
hanging on his lips.

It was not long before the popular verdict was rendered :
"Phillips Brooks's reputation is not to be church or city
limited. So thoroughly genial, strong-brained, and strong-
hearted a man will of necessity find a wider arena than can
be shut in by any lines which local whim or habit may
draw."

Somehow [says one observer] there is a feeling that he belongs
to the Church and not to the Episcopal Church; that he is too
large a man for the enclosure of any denomination; and that
a sketch of him in the " Congregationalist " is just as pertinent
as in the "Churchman."

And another writer sums up the situation with an air of
finality :

It is easy to see that Phillips Brooks has found his true sphere
in Boston, and those fond souls that dream of his return to Phila-
delphia, disappointed with his success here, may safely put away
that delusive hope. He has not been long in Boston, but Boston
knows how to improve her own advantages, and Phillips Brooks is
already a household deity in her complacent pantheon. Harvard
has taken him under her wing, and he is already one of her mag-
nates. Boston, secular Boston, quotes him familiarly and scarcely

iET. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 27

remembers that he ever lived out of sight of Bunker Hill. Phila-
delphia appreciated and valued him. Boston appropriates and
canonizes him with all the unapproachable honors of the "Cam-
bridge set, " and there is only one thing that Boston will never do
with him, and that is to spoil him as an honest, earnest, fearless
minister and man.

From Boston and the city churches the influence of
Phillips Brooks went forth at once into the suburban towns.
It soon became evident that he must belong to all the people
and occupy an interdenominational position, so far as was
consistent with his duties as the rector of Trinity Church.
Thus during the first years of his ministry in Boston we
find him preaching in Tremont Temple (Baptist), in the
Hollis Street Church (Unitarian), in Music Hall before the
Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Men's
Christian Union, in the Shawmut Church (Congregational) ;
also in the large Methodist Church in Charlestown, in the
Congregational Church in Salem, in the Harvard Church
(Congregational), Brookline, and in the Baptist Church in
Old Cambridge. But we find him also in Episcopal churches
in every suburb of Boston. Three times on every Sunday
he now preached as a rule, and as there were not Sundays
enough to go around he preached on week-day evenings, and
whenever he preached it was the event of the moment. All
this was not the manifestation only of ecclesiastical courtesy,
it was a personal tribute to the preacher. No other Epis-
copal clergyman was ever given a similar opportunity.

Among the manifestations of his larger ministry, a special
place must be given to the St. John's Memorial Chapel in
Cambridge. It had been one of the inducements held out to
him as a reason for coming to Boston, that this new and
beautiful chapel, built by the munificence of the late Robert
Means Mason of Boston, for the use of the Episcopal The-
ological School and for Harvard students, would be put at
his disposal. It had also been urged upon him by Dr.
Stone, its dean, and by Dr. Francis Wharton, one of its
professors, that he should have some official connection with
the school; but this proposition he does not appear to

28 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

have considered. On the third Sunday evening in January,
1870, he preached for the first time in St. John's Chapel,
a memorable occasion to the residents of Cambridge, for it
was the beginning of a practice to be continued full seven
years before it came to an end. On the third Sunday even-
ing in every month, during all this time, he was to be found
in the pulpit of the chapel, till his regular appearance
became a prominent feature of Cambridge life. From the
first Sunday that he preached till the last the chapel was
densely packed, and with such an audience as Old Cambridge
can furnish. The seating capacity was estimated at about
four hundred, but a hundred camp stools were provided in
the aisles and vacant spaces; the congregation, regardless
of ecclesiastical etiquette, accommodated themselves in the
spaces allotted to the clergy, around and beneath the pulpit,
and during the sermon the doorways were thronged with
eager hearers. Long before the service began people were
to be seen rapidly wending their way toward Brattle Street,
and were willing and glad to wait an hour in the church
in order to secure their seats. It was not an Episcopal con-
gregation, rather it was composed of those who profess and
call themselves Christians and of those who do not. Profes-
sors and students of Harvard College availed themselves of
the opportunity in large and increasing numbers. The spec-
tacle was an inspiring one at Trinity Church in Boston, but
hardly more inspiring or significant than that which the seat
of Harvard University afforded. If Cambridge had any
intellectual prestige or superiority to other academic centres,
it was represented fully in those audiences, who during these
years came to hear Phillips Brooks in the chapel of the
Episcopal Theological School.

This was the first approach of Phillips Brooks to the stu-
dents of Harvard College. He did not preach in Appleton
Chapel until 1873. In the meantime, from 1870, he took a
Bible class in the college, composed mostly of members of
the St. Paul's Society. Among his pupils who hold this
early relationship in grateful remembrance were William
Lawrence, now Bishop of Massachusetts, F. W. Tompkins,

mt. 33-36] TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 29

rector of Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia, and the young-
est brother, John Cotton Brooks, rector of Christ Church,
Springfield.

Quite as striking as this extension of his influence in
ecclesiastical or religious ways was his recognition in secular
Boston. He rose quickly to the place of a foremost citizen
of his native town, whose presence at every civic solemnity
or function seemed indispensable to its completeness. On
such occasions he took his part with dignity and gravity, yet
never without the sense of amusing incongruity in the formal
association with great men and distinguished citizens to whom
as a boy in Boston he had been accustomed to look up with
reverence. The child in him was perpetuated in the con-
sciousness of manhood's obligations. Thus in February,
1871, he was present at a meeting in Music Hall whose aim
was to awaken public interest in a scheme for the erection of
a museum of fine arts, "when a distinguished array of lead-
ing citizens occupied seats upon the platform." Among the
speakers were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edward Everett
Hale.

Mr. Brooks in his remarks maintained that this was a thing of
the people and for the people. He pictured clearly the state of
the popular mind with regard to an art museum. There was a
certain hardness and want of development in American character
on its aesthetic side; an art museum would awaken those large
ideas of life and nature which nothing but the art feeling can
awake, a boundless good, the new feeling of unworldliness, and
the artistic sense it would create. The passion of our people to
go abroad, when we have so much natural beauty at home, was
not strange; man needs man's as well as nature's work, and hence
Americans flock to the galleries of the Old World. He spoke of
what he gained as a Boston boy in the Latin School out of the old
room which contained the wonderful casts of Laocoon and Apollo.
He thought that an art museum would help every minister in
Boston in the effort to lift the people crushed by the dead weight
of worldliness to higher things. He spoke [says the reporter]
with more than his usual earnestness and eloquence, and was
frequently applauded.

He was present as chaplain at the third reunion of the

3 o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Army of the Potomac in 1871, an occasion which brought
together Generals Meade, Hooker, Fairchild, Burnside,
Logan, Sheridan, and Pleasanton. In introducing Mr.
Brooks, General Meade spoke of the eminent services he had
rendered during the war, not only by his eloquence in the
pulpit, but by his ministrations in the hospitals to the sick
and dying. He attended a large meeting at Music Hall in
commemoration of Italian unity, and spoke, together with
Dr. Hedge and Mr. E. P. Whipple. He was the chaplain
of the Bunker Hill Monument Association at its meeting on
June 17, 1871, and in the fall of this year he officiated in
the same capacity, making the prayer at the laying of the
corner stone of Memorial Hall of Harvard University.
When the Grand Duke Alexis visited Boston in 1872, the
festivities were concluded with a banquet at the Revere
House, at which Hon. Robert C. Winthrop presided, and
speeches were made by the governor and mayor, by Presi-
dent Eliot, and by Messrs. Lowell, Dana, and Hillard. Mr.
Winthrop, who introduced Mr. Brooks, spoke of him as
already a power in the community, as welcome to social and
public occasions as he is valued as a pastor. Mr. Brooks,
in his remarks, dwelt on this feature in Russian history, how
all Russian life and government were everywhere pervaded
with religion, a religion different from ours, which had
yet a great work to do in the world. He described the
growth of the Grseco -Russian Church, claiming that the great
work it had done for civilization should be recognized.
America and Russia were the two young nations of the world
with none of the taint or stain of age. "The youth of the
guest was the fit expression of the hopefulness, the large
mysterious future which was before his country and his
dynasty."

In 1872 he preached the sermon before the Ancient and
Honorable Artillery Company at its two hundred and thirty-
fourth anniversary. The sermon, afterwards published, was
a notable one, from the text in Revelation xii. 7: "And there
was war in heaven." It was characteristic of Mr. Brooks
that though he hated war as an evil, and denounced its cru-

^ T - 33-361 TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 31

elty and inhumanity, yet when it came to representative

occasions, he took a different view and subordinated personal

feeling

B

Force has a divine mission. It was not to be invoked save
for divine tasks, never for the mere brutalities of selfishness, or
ambition, or jealousy, or worldly rage, or for tbe mere punctilios
of national dignity. So far as war bad justification in a princi-
ple it was this, that what men think and what men feel should
incorporate itself in action. Tbe late civil war was not tbe man-
ifestation of tbe military passion, but the passion of civil life,
the passion of home, tbe passion of education, the passion of reli-
gion. It was not war but peace that fought, strange as the para-
dox may seem. This was the claim by which our republic may,
with no unreasonable pride, boast to stand among nations as
Washington among men, First in war, first in peace ; first in war
because first in peace.

One other remarkable occasion at which he officiated was
known as the Peace Jubilee, when Boston commemorated in
1872 the reign of universal peace by erecting a vast tem-
porary edifice known as the Coliseum. Although the music
to be furnished by a choir consisting of several thousands of
voices, with a correspondingly large orchestra, was the prin-
cipal attraction, yet it was thought becoming at the formal
opening to have a religious service, and Phillips Brooks was
invited to make the prayer.

There were opportunities, however, to take part in civic
solemnities which he declined. Such was the invitation by
the city of Boston to deliver the oration on the Fourth of
July in 1871. He drew a distinction between the pulpit and
the rostrum, between the sermon and the oration or lecture,
invariably declining to lecture, in spite of the inducements
pressing and attractive which were offered him. The familiar
New England Lyceum still existed, and Mr. Redpath, its once
famous manager, knew well the value of Phillips Brooks.
There had been a time when Mr. Brooks would have welcomed
such an opportunity. It was one of his boyhood's ideals. That
he had come to some resolution to abide by the limitations of
the pulpit, if limitations they were, is most evident; in this
he was wise, and here lay also one source of his power, that

32 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

he confined and concentrated his energies in one direction.
For the ministry is the most jealous of all professions, and
the pulpit tolerates no rival. It would have been very easy
at this moment for him to have been distracted from his
profession, drawn off into lines of literary activity where
he must have excelled, because he had for them a native
aptitude. Thus he was received into literary circles in
Boston as a peer among men who had won world distinc-
tion. But when he was urged to domesticate himself in
Boston as a man of literature, as by the editor of " The Atlan-
tic Monthly," the invitation was declined and the temptation
put behind him. Whatever he did must have its close rela-
tion to preaching; it was the preacher who was speaking at
the civil functions which have been described; he could not
talk or write without preaching.

The services of Mr. Brooks were immediately demanded
in behalf of philanthropic institutions and charitable occa-
sions. Every movement for reform requested his assistance.
Without identifying himself with any special cause he gave
his support to every effort which aimed to secure the greatest
good of humanity. The list is a long one of organizations to
which he lent his presence and sympathy in these earlier
years, the Boston Fatherless and Widows' Society, the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Bos-
ton Humane Society, the Children's Friend Society, the Bald-
win Place Home for Little Wanderers, the Society for Dis-
charged Female Prisoners, the Idiots' School Corporation,
the Consumptives' Home, General Armstrong's Hampton
School in the South for the education of negroes. At reli-
gious anniversaries he was wanted, even the Free Eeligious
Society feeling that his presence would not be amiss in their
gatherings. Equally on special occasions in his own church
was he called to speak, before the Margaret Coffin Prayer
Book Society, the Episcopal Church Association, the Ameri-
can Church Missionary Society. It was with a peculiar f elici-
tousness and distinctive freshness and power that he met
these situations, as shown in the reports of his remarks which
invariably followed in the press.

^ T - 33-361 TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON 33

Amidst these many appeals to his sympathy the cause of
children and of young people was most near his heart, or
seemed to be. The two organizations of the Young Men's
Christian Union and the Young Men's Christian Association
possessed him as if he were exclusively their own. And these
are included in the great scheme of educational institutions
with which from the first, and through all his later years, he
allowed himself to be identified as he did with no other cause,
his relations with schools and colleges and theological semi-
naries constantly increasing, and growing always more influen-
tial, tender, and intimate. One might think that this was a
compensation to him for his own exclusion from the work of
a teacher, which in his early life he had chosen for a profes-
sion. There was something extraordinary in the way in
which schools and seminaries and colleges looked to him as
the one man to give the fitting word for both scholars and
teachers. He knew how to address them from within their
own sphere. This could not have been unless he had shown
some special enthusiasm for the cause of education or in-
sight into its methods, and above all a sacred reverence for
the work it was doing. In great measure it was his by in-
heritance and by no effort of his own. But so it was that
from the time he came to Boston he proved the teachers'
ally and friend, and there was a spontaneity in the action of
educational institutions and agencies who sought his aid as
by infallible instinct. Thus in 1870 he was elected an over-
seer of Harvard College. In 1871 he was appointed on the
State Board of Education, in which capacity he visited annu-
ally the normal schools of Massachusetts. He went to Vassar
College where he made an address; to Andover where he
spoke to the pupils of the Abbott Academy on "Methods
of Instruction Human and Divine," "and the address was
like the author, noble, affectionate, and winning;" he was
chosen to make the address at the dedication of the new
building of the Bradford Academy, and his subject was "The
Personal Character of Force and Truth." He gave another
address at Mr. Gannett's School in Boston at its closing

exercises. As an overseer at Harvard, he was one of the
vol. n

34 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Board of Visitors at the Harvard Divinity School, and he
soon came into close relations with the Episcopal Theological
School in Cambridge. He still retained his position as a
trustee of the Philadelphia Divinity School, giving to it his
most loyal affection and support. In 1870 he went to Phila-
delphia to preach before its alumni. To these many ad-
dresses he brought the same careful and elaborate prepara-
tion. He was maturing his distinctive principle, which was
afterwards to appear in books in more impressive and final
form. He could not visit school or college, or come in con-
tact with the educational process in any of its stages, without
asking himself the fundamental question of his own youthful
preparation, How is the power of ideas to be brought to
bear upon the will? The question of education was only in
another form the problem of the pulpit. Thus in one of his
note-books he gives hints of the thoughts passing through his
mind :

The whole educational idea needs revision and is getting it.
All these years there have been a few influences called education,
but others have been doing a large part of the work. The man
at thirty, what has made him what he is? Now these are
things claiming recognition. The question is how far they can
be brought into the methods of a school, and how far a general
basis can be found common to all trades. There is hope of this
to some extent.

CHAPTER II

1869-1872

EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE AND FROM NOTE-BOOKS.
SOCIAL LIFE. THE SUMMER ABROAD. FORMATION OF
THE CLERICUS CLUB. DESTRUCTION OF TRINITY CHURCH
IN THE BOSTON FIRE

We have seen how Phillips Brooks was received in Boston,
what impression was made by his preaching, and how diver-
sified was his activity during the first three years of his min-
istry at Trinity Church. We now turn to the more personal
side of his life, to the impression Boston made upon him.
What hints may be gathered about the man himself, who,
while he threw a flood of light upon the souls of others, still
always remained in and with himself alone, guarding, as it
seemed, the shrine of his personality from the gaze of those
who fain would know him in conventional ways.

His manner at this time was marked by the signs of ex-
uberant vitality ; he appeared to have a larger degree of life
and of health than other men possess, and a boundless hope-
fulness. He went up and down on his missions or in his
social relations with a certain power of arousing or of excit-
ing all with whom he came in contact. His capacity for
trifling, his talent for nonsense, had not diminished by the
change from Philadelphia to Boston. In the photograph
which best represents him at this period there is a look of
profound inward peace and contentment, but withal an
amused smile, as the commentary on what he was observing.
It is the eye of one who, reading others and studying the
secrets of their hearts, does not impart the secret of his own
life in casual conversation. In this respect he could be
almost exasperating. Those who felt disposed to hold

36 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

serious discourse with him, such as they deemed becoming
to his office, were disappointed when a question called for
an answer revealing the inner life. He met them frankly
and with the utmost kindness, with so great charm of manner
that they felt drawn to him by an irresistible impulse; but
when they undertook to sound him upon opinions which
would betray his inward nature, he was like a young colt
watching for the first sign of harness or halter; in a moment
he had vanished in quick flight to the remotest corner of the
field, and to follow him, to come near him again, was impos-
sible. The passion for freedom, the refusal to be entangled
or betrayed until he knew his ground and was sure of abso-
lute sincerity, was his marked characteristic. But if one
would be content with an hilarity which played upon life and
shook together its various elements as in the pictures of a
kaleidoscope, then he would meet him upon more than equal
terms. His bearing seemed to indicate a man who had
never known sorrow or disappointment in cherished hopes,
to whom life appeared as enchanted ground, who wore the
crown of the victor, and possessed some subtle power of
transforming all situations into victories. And yet it had
been no slight experience which had transplanted him from
Philadelphia to Boston. Though he loved Boston with all his
heart, and had done so from his childhood, yet it was like
the love of a child for its home, to whom other homes may
appear more attractive, richer in the fascinations of life. It
took him several years before he ceased to hunger for Phila-
delphia. Intensely tenacious as he was of old friendships,
and slow in forming new ones, there was something almost
unnatural in severing the sacred ties which bound him to a
hundred homes in the city he had left behind. It looked
almost like disloyalty or treachery to the hearts which loved
him and sorrowed for his departure that he should begin at
once to create new ties in Boston homes, in a perfunctory,
ministerial manner. It was long before he entirely outlived
this feeling. Indeed he never quite outgrew it. Phila-
delphia remained the city of joy and beauty ; it stood for the
romance of life, the home of his immortal youth.

^ T - 33-3 6 ] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 37

Thus hardly had he reached Boston in the fall of 18G9,
when he returned to Philadelphia for a flying visit, lie
writes to Miss Mitchell, November 7, 18G9:

I am afraid I shall be dreadfully jealous of any one who steps
into my place at Holy Trinity in spite of my great desire to see
it filled, which is veiy unreasonable and womanly in me of course,
but natural. I am seeing my people and like them very much
indeed. There are many more young people among them than I
had supposed. I do not feel as much as I expected the embarrass-
ment of old associations.

Before Christmas he made a brief visit to Philadelphia,
and on his return he writes to Miss Mitchell, December 24,

1869:

My visit was very bright and pleasant. I cannot tell you how
pleasant it is to sink out of the strain and tension of this new
life into the long-tried friendship of my few kind friends. Two
weeks from to-night I shall be at your board again. Till then I
am impatient. We have had a Christmas Tree at Trinity this
afternoon, which went off very nicely. Christmas has been as
pleasant as strangers could make it.

To his brother Arthur, who asked him as the year 1869
was closing whether he was satisfied that he had done right
in coming to Boston, he answered that he would prefer to
wait and tell him at the end of another year.

His correspondence with Miss Mitchell, which runs through
the first five years after his coming to Boston, enables us to
trace the external events of his life with the advantage of
his own comment. But he rarely goes much beneath the
surface of things, and the extracts from this correspondence
which follow need to be supplemented from other soui'ces, in
order to a completer knowledge of the man.

Oh, that they would get a rector ! The sight of the parish the
other day convinced me how much they needed one to step in just
now and take the loose reins. All is ready to run as steadily and
vigorously as ever, but Avith a little longer delay there will be
degeneracy and dropping to pieces, which will be hard to repair.
McVickar cannot come, and they will not settle on him; why
can't they call Willie Huntington? (December 31, 1869.)

38 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Trinity is doing beautifully, the church is full, the lecture on
Wednesday evenings is crowded, we are just starting a mission,
our collections have doubled what they were, the people have a
mind to work. There is no opposition worth speaking of to the
idea of a new church, and we shall get it very soon. If anybody
says that I am disappointed in Boston, tell them from me it is
not so. I knew just what to expect, and I have found just what
I expected. Last Sunday evening I preached for the first time at
Cambridge at the new chapel. It was crowded mostly with stu-
dents, and all went off very well. I am to go there once a month.
(January 20, 1870.)

The thing that dissatisfies me most this winter is the way I
have had to live and work. I have read nothing for three months,
and though I have had a very pleasant time indeed, yet three
months is a big slice to take clean out of one's life and give away.
But things will be better in this respect by and by, and mean-
while I am getting a whole shelf full of books that I mean to read
in that golden day which is always just ahead when I have leisure
enough. (January 24, 1870.)

The dreadful certainty of some people grows terrible to me, and
the more sure I grow of what we ought to do and of what we are
in the world for, the more dreadful it seems to have dropped
anchor in the midstream and fancy we are at our journey's end.
As to "where they will bring up " I 'm sure I don't know, but I
fancy somebody does. . . . " I see my way as birds their trackless
way. I shall arrive. What time, what circuit first, I ask not.
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive. He guides me and
the bird. In His good time." (January 27, 1870.)

I have been dining at Mr. Charles Perkins's. Mr. and Mrs.
Brimmer, Longfellow, and Tom Appleton were there. It was
pleasant and easy. The Perkinses have endless pictures and art
things of all sorts. Mr. Appleton I like exceedingly, for he is
not merely bright, but generous and kind and simple. (February
10, 1870.)

I find my winter's record runs into a dreadful statement of
whom I have seen, not what I have read or what I have done.
It has been a winter of acquaintance-making. I know some five
hundred people that I did n't know in October, and that is all.
Except as a very general sort of basis for future work it is not
very satisfactory. Lent is just upon us, and while it is a time
that one would like to spend with a people that I know better
than I yet know these Trinity folks, yet I shall enjoy it with

mt. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 39

them. We are to have our usual services, just as we used to at
Holy Trinity, and besides, I have undertaken what I expect to
be very much interested in, a Bible class for Lent in college at
Cambridge, where there are a good many young men who desire
it, and who came and asked me for it. ... I can't tell you
how much I am depending on my next visit to Philadelphia. . . .
I am writing on Monday morning, when I am giving myself a
little indulgence after a hard day yesterday. (February 28,
1870.)

Have you read Emerson's new volume [Letters and Social
Aims]? How delightful it is! I speak not from the point of
a Bostonian, but with the mouth of absolute humanity. Is n't
it delightful to have a creature so far outside of all our ordinary
toss and tumble, describing life as if it were a smooth, intelligi-
ble, well-oiled machine, running along without noise on the
planet Jupiter, and seen by him with a special telescope and then
described to us, instead of being this jarring, jolting, rattling old
coach, which almost drives us crazy with its din, and won't be
greased into silence? It 's a capital calm book to read at night
before you go to bed, but I don't think it would go in the morn-
ing right after breakfast, with the day's work before you.
(March 9, 1870.)

This is Tuesday. Do you remember the old Tuesdays ? For
five years I think we hardly missed once, when we were all in
town, of going to Race Street, and eating our dinner together,
with a long talk afterwards. How completely that is over now.
Mrs. Cooper gone, and Cooper in Palestine; and Strong and
Richards, who were part of us for a while, in Kenyon and Provi-
dence; and I here. You hold the field alone. Now and then of
a Tuesday it all comes over me with a little swash of blue.
(March 22, 1870.)

Last night I had my Cambridge class again. There were fifty
young men there. I am intensely interested in it. It is the
most inspiring and satisfactory teaching in the world. (March
29, 1870.)

Have you read Disraeli's new novel? I like it ever so much.
It is full of such swell people. One lives with dukes and
duchesses in a way that delights me with mild snobbishness.
(May 26, 1870.)

Have you read Kent Stone's story [The Invitation Heeded] of
his conversion? As an appeal it seems to me powerful, as an
argument weak. It may touch some people strongly. Poor fel-

40 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

low ! there is something dreadfully sad in a man telling himself
and the world over and over again that he is happy, as he does
for so many hundred pages. (June 8, 1870.)

On June 28 he sailed for Europe, where he had planned
to spend the summer in a pedestrian trip through Switzer-
land and the Tyrol. He landed at Cherbourg, and after a
few days at Paris went to Geneva, to be joined there by his
friend Cooper. They were disturbed by rumors of war be-
tween France and Germany, but were soon out of reach of
telegraph, and for some days knew nothing of the truth.
They first realized the existence of war by its interference
with the Miracle Play at Ober-Ammergau, which Brooks had
counted upon seeing, the one great human interest for which
he sighed in the midst of the wonders of nature. As to the
war, he regarded it as wicked and unnecessary. His sym-
pathies were with Germany, while France seemed to him in-
solent and arrogant beyond herself. After some four weeks
of tramping in Switzerland, face to face with Mont Blanc,
Monte Rosa, the Matterhorn, the Jungfrau, he went down
into Italy and thence into the Tyrol, which was new to him.
Almost every day saw a good many miles of walking accom-
plished. He was a restless traveller, uneasy unless at work
and seeing something new. His interest and enthusiasm in
natural scenery were excited to the highest degree, but he
never failed to be touched by the contact of nature with
humanity. The scenery he describes as gorgeous, the towns
as picturesque. Ischl "is one of the most beautiful spots on
the face of the earth." "We drove through the valley of
Salza, till far up among the hills we came to the very beau-
tiful watering place of the Austrians, Bad Gastein. It is
lovely as a dream, just a deep mountain gorge, with a wild
cataract playing down through it and splendid mountains
towering above." Here stray rumors reached him of the
terrible war, with the unexpected defeat of the French, which
had thrown all Europe into confusion. Of Meran he writes
to his brother Frederick : " Cleveland is pretty, but this is
prettier. A lovely old valley with vineyards at its bottom,
and running up to the tops of the high hills that shut it in.

*t. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 41

Old castles and modern chateaux looking down from every
side, and in the midst this queer old town, with peasants in
their picturesque Sunday clothes strolling back and forth
over the ridge that crosses the little Adige, and an Italian
sky and sunlight over everything." From Meran to Inns-
bruck, then over the Stelvio Pass, "the grandest in Europe,"
till they came to Bormio, "as pretty a little spot as there is
to be found anywhere."

One of the chief drawbacks he experienced in travelling
was the shortness of the beds. He writes to Frederick, "You
and I are too long; you will have an awful time with the
beds when you come into these parts." He speaks of having
escaped from bed at an untimely hour, "because I could not
stretch out straight or make the narrow bedclothes come
over me." He was in Paris on the 28th of August, having
met with no obstacles in getting there, though under constant
apprehension. The city was still gay, even when the Prus-
sians were believed to be only two or three days distant and
the memorable siege was impending. Again he was in Paris
on the 5th of September, "too busy and exciting a day to
write ; there was a bloodless revolution, and we went to bed
last night under a republic. I saw the whole thing, and
was much interested in seeing how they make a government
here."

Meran, Tyrol, August 14, 1870.

My dear "Weir, Cooper and I have been spending a week
among the Dolomite Mountains in the very heart of Tyrol, and
we have wished so often that you were with us that I have been
much put in mind of you all the week, and now that we have
climbed up into this nest of vineyards for Sunday, I am going to
do what I have meant to do ever since we got among the hills,
and write a report of myself. The hills have been too many for
me. They have piled in by the hundreds and buried my best
intentions of letter-writing, hills of all sorts, big and little,
Swiss and Tyrolean, grassy and snowy, with glaciers and without
glaciers, each sort always fiercer than the sort before it, and last
of all these wonderful Dolomites, perhaps the most wonderful
thing in the way of mountains that I have ever seen. They lie
in a vast group to the east of the Great Brenner road and to the
south of the Puster, that which runs through Tyrol from west to

42 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

east. The great Ampezzo road into Italy runs right through their
midst. They shoot up singly or in vast groups and ranges, sheer
masses of rock, black, red, or dazzling white, three, four, five thou-
sand feet into the sky, with tops indescribably broken into spires
and towers and castles, with great buttresses against their sides and
acres of snow upon their sloping roofs. Between the groups, right
from their very feet, start down the most exquisite steep, green
valleys overrunning with luxuriant cultivation, with picturesque
villages clinging to their sides, and wild brooks brawling along
their bottoms. From valley to valley you climb over steep mead-
owy passes standing between two of the giants at the top.
Everywhere grand views are opening of the great Marmolata,
which is the King of all these mountains with his miles of snow.
The constant contrast of wild, rugged majesty with the perfect
softness and beauty of the valleys is very fascinating. The moun-
tains get their name, oddly enough, from a certain M. Dolomieu.
He didn't make them, but some years ago he first discovered
what they were made of. I believe it is some peculiar prepara-
tion of magnesia. I wonder if some day a metaphysician, or, if
the materialist people are right, a physician, of the future finds out
at last what this human nature of ours is made of, whether the
whole race will be named over again for him and we shall all
have to be called by his name forever and ever. How the moun-
tains must have laughed, or frowned, at the poor little Frenchman
who said, "I have found out that you are magnesia, and so you
must be called Dolomites eternally."

These southern Tyroleans are very interesting people. There
is a pleasant mixture of German and Italian in their character,
as there is in their dress and language and look. They are very
cheerful and very industrious, the men handsome and many of the
young women pretty. Their beds are short and the bread is
awful, but they always give you your candle with a "May you
sleep well," and tell you that dinner is ready with a "May you
dine well, " that makes the footboard seem a little softer and the
bread not quite so musty. If you are unfortunate enough to
sneeze, the whole country takes off its hat and " God bless you "
resounds from every Dolomite in the land. Here on Sunday they
are sunning themselves in the pleasant gardens of the Meran,
looking as picturesque as possible with their tall hats and red
jackets and big green suspenders and great embroidered belts and
bare knees and black breeches. They are thoroughly hospitable,
and help a fellow out with his imperfect vocabulary by generally
knowing just what he wants, or at any rate what it is best for him
to have. If you could see the route that Cooper and I have come

*t. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 43

over, you would know that a very little German can go a great
way in Tyrol.

Meanwhile this disheartening war goes on, and we hear of it at
intervals in the mountains. These Austrians hate hoth sides so
thoroughly that any news of hattle is welcome to them because
one side is beaten and some of their enemies are killed. The
great hattle of last week and the unexpected rout of the French
has changed the look of things. With Paris in his rear already
sizzling with revolution and the Prussian cavalry afront of Metz,
it does seem possible that this war may be the suicide of the
wretch who has brought it on with all its horrors so needlessly
and wickedly. It seems to me that nothing could make one so
despondent about human nature and the world who was inclined
that way as just such a war as this coming at this time of the
day in history.

Cooper sends you his love and wishes you had been with us
among these Dolomites. The poor fellow is groaning over a
letter in the next room. He and I are alone now. Newton was
with us for ten days, and I liked him exceedingly. We go hence
by Innsbruck, then by the Finstermunz and Stelvio passes into
Italy. Then through the Engadine north again, and I go to
Paris if I can get there. I sail on the 10th of September. I
hope to find at Innsbruck the letter you promised me from the
Pictured Rocks. I hope you have had a good summer. God
bless you always. 1 P. B.

The following extracts are from Mr. Brooks's letters to Miss
Mitchell after his return from Europe :

I got in New York Stanley's new volume of Essays, some of
which I have seen before, but all of which are interesting.
There is an essay on the "Religion of the Nineteenth Century"
which is the best statement I have seen of the characteristics and
prospects of what we call the "Broad Church " movement. Do
read it. His views about Church and State I can't agree with,
but it is the only strong ground on which an Englishman can put
the question, and for all Englishmen must have weight. What
capital English he always writes? I send you a number of the
Harvard boys' paper with an account of Mr. Hughes's visit to
them, which was very pleasantly done. I missed seeing him at
Mr. Fields's by my Pennsylvania visit. (October 17, 1870.)

1 Cf. Letters of Travel, by Phillips Brooks, for fuller details of this and other
journeys abroad.

44 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

I am reading Huxley's new "Lay Sermons." How clever it
is, how much the man knows, and how brilliantly he writes. But
it is like most Small Books on Great Subjects, most books for the
people that popularize science. It is patronizing and mince-
meaty, and he is particularly belligerent about the theologians in
a way that does not do credit to his discrimination or temper.
... It does not seem as if it could be only a year ago that I
preached my last sermon in Holy Trinity, and we all travelled
together to New York the next morning. It seems a half dozen
years at least. My first year here in Boston has been on the
whole successful. I have done as much with Trinity as I had any
right to expect to do, and we are on a footing now to do more.
But it has not been the pleasant life that the old one was, and
while there has been much to enjoy, there has been more anxiety
and worry than ever was of old. But I dare say I shall like
it better. Meanwhile don't think I am blue. (November 10,
1870.)

I don't feel theological this morning. It is too near Christ-
mas, which always upsets theology entirely. I have never been
able to write a Christmas sermon yet that was in the least a
theological satisfaction to me or anybody else. So we '11 put the
questions on the shelf till next week. I am so glad that Christ-
mas is coming, and yet I hardly know why. This is the only
day whose associations have much power over me. I don't care
a great deal about Anniversaries, but Christmas, with its whole
spirit, into which we all seem to slip so easily year after year, is
exceedingly beautiful to me, and, as I go about the streets, the
details in these few days beforehand, which are vulgar enough in
themselves, men mounting up spruce boughs in churches and
men carrying home turkeys by the legs, all give me ever so
much pleasure. And I like it more and more as I get older.
(December 23, 1870.)

The smallpox was prevailing in Philadelphia, and Mr.
Brooks writes to Miss Mitchell, inviting her to Boston :

"We will take good care of you in our cold-blooded sort of way,
and when the pestilence is over, you shall return to your home
with an increased measure of that respectable dislike with which
Bostonians are always gratified to think that the rest of the coun-
try regards them. Have you read Dickens's "Life," and isn't
he a disagreeable person and isn't it an ill- written book? (Jan-
uary 6, 1871.)

'jet. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 45

The Lecture (Wednesday evening) didn't go very well. The
night is stormy, and though I don't care much for a full audience
for the name of the thing, I need it for inspiration, and when I
see a small audience I lose the impersonalness of the thing. I
think of individuals and that always puts me out. I was talking
about the visit of Zebedee's children and their mother to Josus,
and am much interested in the subject. But it never is yet the
same thing talking in Trinity that it used to be in the old time
speaking from the dear old platform. (January 11, 1871.)

I have been quite stirred upon the subject of prophecy in writ-
ing a sermon for last Sunday on Cephas. I am quite convinced
that there were two Isaiahs. . . . Queer people come to consult
me here. To-day there was a man who had been to England and
got into some set of fanatics there and come home calling himself
a Christadelphian. To-morrow, like as not it will be a skeptic
of the widest incredulity. (January 18, 1871.)

One evening this week I had my Cambridge boys, the fifteen
senior members of the St. Paul's Society, in at my room to spend
the evening with me, a noble set of fellows, manly and true, and
helped instead of hurt by their religion. I take great pleasure in
them. (February 3, 1871.)

Aren't you glad that Paris is taken? I was reading last
night one of Robertson's Lectures on Poetry, with its extravagant
glorification of war, which is so amazing in a right-minded man
like him. It seems to have been the last remnant of brutality
in a nature which had been almost everywhere cultured and refined
far above it. But who can look at the last ten years on both
continents and not call war horrible? Let us trust this one is
over. Good must come of it, horrible as the process is. Who-
ever was to blame for it, we surely can't help being thankful that
Prussia and not France is to be the master in Europe. (February
13, 1871.)

This is one of the evenings when I wish myself in Philadelphia ;
not that anything particular is the matter with Boston, but I
have an evening to myself and I am tired of reading, and there is
nobody in particular that I can go and see without its being a visit,
which I don't feel up to. Nobody's house where I can go and
smoke and be pleasantly talked to, and answer or not, as I please.
I know one such house in another town where I don't live any
longer. But I am not there, and I must make the best of it.
(March 7, 1871.)

46 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

As to English Church matters, I am thoroughly content with
the Voysey decision, and I think the Convocation debate about
(Vance) Smith disgraceful. It is published in full in the " Guard-
ian." Bishop Wilberforce is worse in his way than any . . .
can be. The American bishops too, it seems, went with them.
(March 15,1871.)

I am having a very good time, with plenty of loose reading and
the days only half long enough for what I find to do. This even-
ing I have been reading Tyndale's new book of Alpine stories,
which is very charming, bringing back the fascination of that
wonderful country and exciting one as all such accounts of ven-
turesome climbing unaccountably do. The style is charming, and
the man, with his splendid health and enjoyment of nature and
his current of sentiment, is delightful. (July 25, 1871).

Are all Hutton's Essays like the one which I have just been
reading, republished by Dr. Osgood in New York ? It is on the
" Incarnation and the Laws of Evidence, " and shows a breadth
and purity and devoutness of mind which gives one great delight.
I would rather have a Unitarian read it than any book I know;
and if one thinks that Broad Churchmanship is necessarily hard

or indifferent of the Whately or the style, nothing could

better convince him otherwise than the warmth and earnestness
of this little book, which has so evidently come out of a man's
soul. (August 10, 1871.)

The summer of 1871 was spent in Boston. He seems to
have adopted the rule, though it was not invariable, of taking
the alternate summers abroad. Throughout the summer he
preached regularly at Trinity Church in the morning, and at
St. Mark's, West Newton Street, in the evening. Both
churches were free to strangers, and it is needless to say were
filled.

The summer still continues very beautiful, cool and pleasant,
and I have enjoyed the leisure of the town exceedingly. But I
am already looking forward and counting on my visit to you in
the fall. I shall enjoy it immensely, and you will be obliging
and talk to me as much as I want to know. From that I shall
take the fresh start into another winter which everybody needs,
and which is mainly what one loses by keeping at work all sum-
mer. "All life is tidal," as Tom Appleton said to me on the
street just now, and went on to tell me how the other creatures as

at. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 47

well as we needed ebb and flow and got it somebow at regular
periods of their life. So I shall be high tide about the last of
October. (August 13, 1871.)

I bave been reading Browning's new poem, and I couldn't help
feeling vaguely all the while that there was a sort of story in it
of the way that other men lose their wives nowadays, only not
always with the better fruit of widowhood. The poem seems to
me, by the way, very fine and beautiful, more tender and human,
than almost anything that Browning has ever given us before.
(August 22, 1871.)

Miss was staying at the Vintons' (at Pomfret), and when

I was coming up, as I had to do on Wednesday, to attend a funeral,
I had the privilege of her company all the way to town. She
was delightful, full of brightness and information and fun, not
in the least formidable to people of imperfect cultivation, with
all that is best and apparently nothing of what is worst in
women. . . .

On Thursday I had an hour with Mrs. , which was as good

as a walk in the Alps for freshness and healthfulness. There is
nothing like her in Boston, and remember we are to have an
evening there when I am with you in Philadelphia whatever else
may fail. (September 7, 1871.)

Have you read Joaquin Miller which is brilliant in color and
very picturesque sometimes, and not by any means our great poet
yet. (September 16, 1871.)

The old round of parish duties, which I have gone to afresh
every autumn for twelve years, has opened again, and I have been
rather surprised at myself to find that I take it up with just as
much interest as ever. I suppose that other men feel it of their
occupations, but I can hardly imagine that any other profession
can be as interesting as mine. I am more and more glad that I
am a parson.

I wonder if the autumn is as splendid with you as it is here.
I spent last night at Waltham (at the country house of Mr. R. T.
Paine), and this morning got an hour's walk before I came into
town. I never saw anything lovelier than the woods, just touched
with autumn color. The whole of September has been a perfect
month, and next month when the glory of it is beginning to fade
I shall get over it again with you in Philadelphia. (September
25, 1871.)

It is very good of you to think so kindly of my visit. It was
a very delightful time to me, and if you really enjoyed it all I am

48 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

truly glad. How delightfully lazy it was, and Boston seems so
driven and hurried. People here seem possessed to do something
without much care for what they do. The mere passion of rest-
lessness is in the Yankee blood and partly in the East winds.
(November 11, 1871.)

I have two of your letters to one of mine, which is a good deal
more than it was worth, but is very pleasant to me. I do not find
that people ever are troubled at getting more than their deserts.

It is my birthday and I am thirty- six years old. It seems a
little strange but not unpleasant, and although I have had a pretty
time indeed so far and would be glad to go back and do it all
over again, yet I am not miserable that I cannot, and I am still
rather absurdly hopeful about the future. To have passed out of
young manhood altogether and find myself a middle-aged man is
a little sobering, but I only hope that all the young fellows who
come after me will have as good a time as I have had. . . . We
have been seeing the Russian Grand Duke, who appears to be a
fine, manly, sensible fellow. (December 13, 1871.)

It is rather strange how freshly and delightfully the Christmas
feelings come back year after year. And yet it is ten years ago
the first Sunday in January, 1872, since I became your minister
at Holy Trinity. I have had an awfully uneventful life. Things
happen to other people, but not to me.

I am ashamed to look back over any day, though I was never
busier in my life. It seems made up of such wretched little
details, and yet I wouldn't be anything else but a parson for the
world. I wonder often that the work keeps up such a perpetual
freshness when the days are so monotonous.

I know nothing of the grace of sickness. It seems to me ter-
rible, the whole idea of suffering, but even more of weakness and
weariness. (January 16, 1872.)

Last Sunday I spent at New Haven, and enjoyed it exceed-
ingly. Stayed with Dr. Harwood, who is a fine, studious Broad
Churchman; preached for him in the morning, and in the evening
preached in his church for the Berkeley Association of Yale Col-
lege. The church was crowded, and Congregational professors
sat in the chancel. I had never seen Yale College before, and
was interested in its size and life. It is not equal to Cambridge,
but it is a great college still. . . . Have you read Lightfoot's
"Commentary on Philippians" ? Do get it and read the "Essay
on the Christian Ministry." It does seem to me to finish the
Apostolic Succession Theory completely. (January 19, 1872.)

*t. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 49

The California plan is not settled yet, but I think I shall go.
. . . Though it would he folly to talk about being run down, I
am conscious of having been on the strain rather too long. I
have preached twice every Sunday, and generally three times, since
I got home from Europe, a year ago last September. I am preach-
ing badly, and the trip will do me more good now than at any
other time. (February 7, 1872.)

I don't think that parsons really are so bad. I suspect that
they are human, and I see but little evidence practically of Apos-
tolic Succession, but I think there are not many who would
refuse to see a smallpox patient, or who would give up parish
visiting because the smallpox was in town. . . . McVickar was
here on Sunday and preached a good hearty sort of sermon for me
in the afternoon. They are talking about him for St. Paul's
here. I went out on Sunday evening to preach the first of a
course of sermons for the St. Paul's Society at Cambridge.
Going there is one of the most interesting things I have to do.
(February 21, 1872.)

I get so tired of talking with tongue and pen that I don't feel
equal to hearing myself in one unnecessary word. To-day, for
instance, I have preached a Price Lecture, and attended two
funerals, and carried on a Mission meeting among our poor folk,
and had a regular Wednesday Evening meeting (lecture). I am
sure that I shall hear my own dreary voice reading the service in
my dreams. Do go and hear Miss Smith and tell me about her.
The old Methodist idea of perfection, which I fancy has always
more or less believers, is just now quite a favorite notion. There
are several meetings held here in its interest. I have just got a
note from Rev. Copley Greene, who wants me to dine to-morrow
with Rev. John Hubbard, who is a great believer in it ; and Mr.
Boardman of the " Higher Christian Life, " Bishop Eastburn, and
Dr. Vinton, and Willie Newton are to be there, a jolly dinner
party. ... I have been looking through Hawthorne's "Italian
Diary, " an interesting book that it would have been wicked to
publish, if it had not been the work of a man who took delight in
dissecting himself in public. (March 6, 1872.)

I am very busy. My Confirmation class is to be large, and
gives me much thought, but it is very interesting. Last Sunday
Dr. Harwood preached for me in the morning, and preached well.
He gave a noble sermon to the College boys at Cambridge in the
evening. (March 22, 1872.)

I have been reading a new book, which is a rare thing with me

VOL. II.

5 o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

nowadays. This one delights me exceedingly. It is Dr. Sears'
book on St. John (The Fourth Gospel, the Heart of Christ).
Do get it and enjoy it. It is so rich and true and wise. All
that he has written before is excellent, but this is best of all. I
have a copy of his "Regeneration, " which you gave me once. . . .
Have you read the " Life of Hookham Frere ? " It is very in-
teresting. Some of his translations are wonderfully well done.
(March 28, 1872.)

I have perfected my plans for Europe now. The 27th of June
is the day, and Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are the places,
with possibly a little of Scotland thrown in. Judge Gray goes
with me. We shall represent to Norwegians that we are insig-
nificant specimens of the American size, and I shall tell them that

they ought to see two giants we have at home, called and

, if they want to see the true grandeur of the American pul-
pit. (April 6, 1872.)

I was very much disappointed that Weir refused to go. I
had dared to hope that he might look favorably upon our plan.
... I suppose it is one of the small compensations that my
lonely life brings with it, that having nobody but myself to pro-
vide for, I can now and then get a chance like this. A few
of the folks of Trinity surprised and embarrassed me a little
the other day with a check for $3300 to go with. A week ago
my friend Edward Dalton died in California. Did you ever see
him? He married a cousin of Mary McBurney's. He was one
of the noblest and best and bravest men I have ever known, and
death has not often come nearer me than in his loss. His life
for the last three or four years has been one of the saddest things
I ever knew of. Wife, child, and health all went at once, and
it has been a mere fight for life, as brave and cheerful as possible,
ever since. (May 25, 1872.)

Somehow my visits to Philadelphia, delightful as they are,
always go off in such a rush and whirl and hurry that when I
come away I have a sort of feeling that with all the pleasant time
I haven't got exactly what I went for, the quiet, placid time I
used to have, especially of evenings when I dropped into your
house on my way home. I suppose it is necessary that one should
feel that his time is not limited before he can enjoy it thoroughly.
At least it is so with me. I hate to be hurried. That will be
one great advantage of heaven. . . . We shall have plenty of
time for all that our hands find to do. I sometimes have suspi-
cions that if I could live for five hundred years I might come to
something and do something here. All is going on beautifully

^ T - SS^ 6 ! EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 51

about the new church. Some of the people of their own notion
got up a subscription to buy an extra piece of land, and in a few
days raised $75,000, and are going on now to make it a hundred
thousand, so that the church will be really something very fine.
We shall have in all something pretty near half a million to put
into it. ... I am getting up a sermon for the Ancient and Honor-
able Artillery Company, one of the queer old Puritan organizations
before which every Boston minister preaches some time in his
career, and is not thoroughly initiated without. (May 30, 1872.)

It is a terrible week in Boston. The Jubilee is going on with
flash and bang all the time. ... It is wonderful what a row
this jubilee is making. There is not a corner to be had in any
hotel, and the Enormous Barn which I see from my window is
thronged all day with folks curious to see what the big noise is to
be. I like to see a crowd and expect to enjoy this very much,
but it is all very funny and sensational, and the primness and
classicism of Boston turns up its stiff nose at it. . . . We have
chosen Richardson of New York for our church architect, the
best of all competitors by all means. He will give us something
strong and good. (June 11, 1872.)

The summer of 1872 was spent abroad in northern
Europe. Mr. Robert Treat Paine accompanied him and
was with him for a month; after that he was alone, de-
pendent on acquaintances made in travelling. His brother
Frederick was in Europe at the time, but naturally preferred,
as he was making his first visit to the Old World, to see it in
his own way. They met in London, and then separated.
Mr. Brooks's summer included several weeks in Norway,
where he was enchanted with the scenery and impressed with
the broad daylight, which enabled him to read a letter on
the street at eleven o'clock at night. From Norway he
passed to Sweden, where he speaks of seeing Prince Oscar.
He was delighted with Stockholm ; he went to Upsala for its
university and cathedral, and to meditate upon Scandina-
vian mythology. From Sweden he went to Finland and
thence to St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow, recalling
historical associations, commenting on ways and customs,
drawing his own inferences, but especially interested in the
churches, which he made it a rule to attend on every possible
occasion. He returned from Russia to Berlin, stopped at

52 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1869-72

Copenhagen and Hamburg, then went to Paris, where he met
his brother, and together they sailed for home.

An incident occurred while Mr. Brooks was in Sweden,
to which he makes only the briefest allusion in his " Letters
of Travel," his meeting with Prince Oscar, brother of the
reigning king, and who soon after acceded to the throne as
King Oscar II. A fuller account of this meeting is given
by Rev. Percy Browne, from a conversation with Mr.
Brooks :

When Brooks was approaching Christiania he heard that Prince
Oscar was to come on board the steamer on which he was travel-
ling. As the ship anchored, the royal barge drew near amidst a
thunder of salutes from the forts. When the Prince reached the
deck he stood for a moment between the sailors drawn up on either
side of the gangway, and noticing Brooks, who modestly stood
behind the sailors, said in excellent English, waving his hand
toward the city, "Is it not a loyal people? " The Prince then
retired to the end of the ship roped off for his exclusive use.
At midnight, Brooks was smoking a last cigar before turning in,
sitting on a part of the deck far removed from the royal en-
closure, when a tall man wrapped in a cloak drew near. It was
the Prince. He said in English, "Will you oblige me with a
light ? " When he had lit his cigar he sat down and entered into
a long conversation, asking many intelligent questions about
America, especially about the Judiciary, the method of adminis-
tering justice in the Courts, etc. Brooks said he spoke like a
man conscious that he had come to a position of great responsi-
bility, and anxious to learn all that might be of use to him. The
next day the Prince disembarked. Before leaving the ship, as he
stood at the gangway, he reached over the line of sailors behind
which Brooks was standing, and shaking hands with him, said,
"Au revoir. The earth is round and we '11 meet again."

A few extracts from his note-book give us an idea of the
deeper moods of the traveller, in this summer of 1872 :

As we travel, it seems sometimes as if ninety-nine hundredths
of the people in this world had so hard a time, could find so little
in their lot to enjoy. The reassurance must come from consider-
ing that joy in mere life, often dumb, brutish, and unconscious,
but very real, which every creature has, the luxury of mere exist-
ence to which we cling, for which we slave, and which we really
do enjoy.

*t. 33-36] EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON $3

As we travel, this impresses us much, I think, the uniform-
ity of nature under all the endlessly various changes of men and
their ways and customs, always the same sky and ground and
grass. It is a striking picture of the universality of the primary
and simple emotions and affections, beneath the changing aspects
of men's more complicated life, this sight everywhere of the
simplest signs of the simplest emotions. The child's smile,
curiosity, love, rage, give us the same idea.

This terrible longing to fasten and confine sacredness to local-
ity; this passion of holy places. We refine it and elevate it, but
it is to be feared that many of its worst effects are latent in the
most beautiful features of our Anglican religion. (Moscow,
August 18, 187