6X 
 
 59^5" 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mr. Albert G. Mason 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092458912 
 
LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRAHY 
 
 3 1924 092 458 912 
 
■rde-t:.-S^. 
 
 ^cZ/y^ ©^^^ 
 
LIFE AJNTD LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN 
 
 Professor in the Episcopal Theoloyical School in Camhrii 
 
 Wiit\i portrattfii anD BlUugtrattons; 
 VOLUME I 
 
 The: Phillit-s Broods Hou3E, Harvard 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. p. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 31 WEST TWENTY-THIED STREET 
 
 1901 
 

 L - r^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY 
 
 ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN 
 
 WILLIA]\I G. BROOKS, ELIZABETH W. BROOKS, JOHN C. BROOKS 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 a- 
 
 THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, NEW YORK 
 
 \ 
 
 l.l'^ 
 
 fit.«f TV\_ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The task of preparing the Memoir of Phillips Brooks has 
 been delayed by circumstances which could not be controlled, 
 until it is now more than seven years since the world was sud- 
 denly called upon to mourn his departure. There came a sad 
 interruption, in the death of the Rev. Arthur Brooks, in July, 
 1895, who had made such progress in the short time he had 
 been engaged on the biography that, had he lived, he would 
 soon have completed it. When the materials for writing the 
 life were placed in my hands, in the fall of 1895, I was occu- 
 pied with other work, and this was not finished tiU the fall 
 of 1897. From the moment that I was free to begin the 
 task, I have devoted to it all the time that could be spared 
 from my professional duties, and have labored to hasten its 
 completion, keenly aware that the popular interest in Phillips 
 Brooks impatiently demanded the appearance of the book 
 which shoidd teU to the world the story of the life by whose 
 greatness it had been so profoundly moved. 
 
 When I began to write, I supposed that my task would be 
 easier than I have found it. The study of the material con- 
 vinced me that I was dealing with a character singularly com- 
 plex despite its simplicity, a career wherein there were epochs 
 and distinct phases of development. There was danger of 
 doing injustice, or of failing to appreciate motives of action. 
 The full meaning of events and deeds did not at once appear. 
 Time was required before the insight was gained revealing 
 the relative significance of what was obscure. It was neces- 
 sary to search for further material, by correspondence and by 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 personal interviews with those who could give the information 
 desired. I had no theory of writing a biography when I 
 began, and I have none as I close, except to allow the material 
 to have its full weight upon the mind, to live as far as possible 
 in the life of the man whom I was seeking to know, and to 
 furnish to the reader what seemed interesting or important 
 as throwing light upon his character and work. 
 
 To this end, I have given greater space to his formative 
 years and to his earlier ministry than those who were familiar 
 only with the Boston ministry may think was necessary. But 
 he valued his early years, and cannot be understood without 
 them. Not only were the foundations of his greatness there, 
 but the ministry in Philadelphia and the experiences of the 
 civil war called forth a manifestation of power such as his 
 later years never surpassed. Philadelphia was always in his 
 consciousness, even when he seemed so identified with Boston 
 that people almost forgot that he had ever lived elsewhere. 
 
 In giving the account of his earlier career, it was possible 
 to go with minuteness into its incidents and approximately 
 to trace the extent of his influence. After he came to Bos- 
 ton, the life which had been steadily expanding assumed 
 mightier proportions. We may compare it to a river which 
 had burst its banks, overflowing the surrounding territory so 
 that the current could with difficulty be traced. Or, if we 
 may change the figure, his life grew more to resemble the 
 ocean in its uniform vastness and majesty, sometimes at rest, 
 and then again lashed into storms, but whose limits have be- 
 come invisible, or retreat as we attempt to measure them. So 
 different was the Boston life, and so complete in itself, that I 
 have made it the dividing line, and have devoted to it the 
 second volume. 
 
 To the friends of Phillips Brooks who have loaned impor- 
 tant letters or put at my disposal their intimate knowledge. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 vu 
 
 mucli of it too personal or too sacred to be told, I express my 
 gratitude, and to the many others who have aided me in vari- 
 ous ways : to the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Clark, Rt. Rev. Henry 
 C. Potter, Rt. Rev. A. M. Randolph ; Rev. Charles D. Cooper, 
 Rev. Charles A. L. Richards, Rev. George Augustus Strong, 
 Rev. W. F. Paddock, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Mr. Lewis H. 
 Redner, Miss Vinton, Miss Meredith ; Rev. E. Winchester 
 Donald, and the clergy associated with Phillips Brooks at 
 Trinity Church, — Rev. F. B. Allen, Rev. W. Dewees 
 Roberts, Rev. Roland Cotton Smith ; the wardens and 
 vestry of Trinity Church ; Mr. and Mrs. Lorin F. Deland, 
 Mrs. Henry Whitman, Miss Alice Weston Smith, Mrs. Burr 
 Porter, Miss Woods, Miss EUicott, Mrs. R. J. Hall ; Presi- 
 dent Eliot, who kindly afforded the opportunity to search the 
 records of the faculty of Harvard University, and the officers 
 of the Harvard Library ; the classmates of Phillips Brooks, 
 — Mr. George C. Sawyer, Mr. Edwin H. Abbott ; Mr. Henry 
 L. Higginson, Hon. George F. Hoar, Hon. John D. Long, 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, Mr. H. Winslow 
 Warren ; Rev. William R. Huntington, Rev. Charles C. 
 Tiffany, Rev. R. Heber Newton, Rev. Alexander McKenzie, 
 Rev. George A. Gordon, Rev. Lyman Abbott, Rev. C. W. 
 Duffield ; Rev. Professor Francis G. Peabody and Professor 
 George H. Palmer of Harvard, Mr. Horace E. Scudder, Mr. 
 M. A. De Wolfe Howe, and others ; the Dean of Canterbury, 
 Dr. Farrar, Lady Frances Baillie, Mrs. Margaret Mcllvaine 
 Messer, and other friends of Phillips Brooks in England. 
 
 I gratefully acknowledge my obligation to the Rt. Rev. 
 William Lawrence, for generous and constant sympathy 
 while the work has been in progress, for many valuable 
 suggestions he has offered, and for wise criticism ; and for 
 special aid, to Mr. Robert Treat Paine, Rt. Rev. W. N. Mc- 
 Vickar, Rev. Percy Browne, Rev. Leighton Parks, Rev. Wm. 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Wilberforce Newton. Rev. Charles H. Learoyd has read 
 the proof as it went through the press, on whose knowledge, 
 sound judgment, and literary sense I have relied. To the 
 Rev. Reuben Kidner, who has furnished the index, I am 
 under further obligation, for his unwearied interest, careful 
 search for information, and painstaking accuracy. 
 
 The representatives of the family of Phillips Brooks, at 
 whose request I undertook the work of writing his life, Mr. 
 William Gray Brooks and the Rev. John Cotton Brooks, 
 have imparted freely the knowledge which they alone could 
 give, placing also at my disposal the journals, note-books, and 
 other manuscripts of their brother, — in a word, the materials 
 for the Memoir. I have sought to use it to the best ad- 
 vantage, but have labored under an embarrassment of wealth. 
 With the representatives of the family I connect the Rev. 
 James P. Franks, whose association with Phillips Brooks 
 from an early period gave him opportunities of knowledge 
 which but few could possess. Mrs. Arthur Brooks devoted 
 her time to putting in order convenient for reference the 
 large amount of material her husband had collected, and thus 
 greatly simplified and reduced my labors. 
 
 Let me speak more particularly of Arthur Brooks, and of 
 what this biography owes to him. These two brothers were 
 singularly alike in their appearance, a resemblance which in 
 later years became so striking that, after the death of Phillips 
 Brooks, one might almost fancy that he had returned to the 
 world in bodily form. The resemblance is further seen in the 
 work they did, in the important positions held and the wide 
 influence exerted. From Williamsport, in Pennsylvania, 
 where Arthur Brooks began his ministry with great promise, 
 he was called to be the rector of St. James's Church, Chicago, 
 one of the most important parishes in the city. He accepted 
 the position, although a difficult one, for the church building 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 was in ruins, after the memorable fire. With such success did 
 he meet, that in his short rectorate the church was rebuilt and 
 the parish restored to its former eminence. In 1874 he was 
 called to be the rector of the Church of the Incarnation on 
 Madison Avenue in New York. This church, like St. James's 
 in Chicago, was among the most prominent in the city for its 
 large membership, its wealth, and social influence. Here 
 he remained till his death, constantly growing in the recog- 
 nition of his parish and of the whole city. He was not only 
 esteemed as a pastor and preacher, but commanded respect 
 for his high Christian character. Especially was he valued 
 for his administrative ability, and this, in conjunction with 
 his sound judgment in affairs, gave him a place of leader- 
 ship outside the bounds of his own parish. Two important 
 institutions of learning, Princeton University and the Uni- 
 versity of the City of New York, honored him with the 
 degree of Doctor of Divinity. 
 
 He inherited the family tradition of the importance of 
 education. As one of the trustees of the Philadelphia Divin- 
 ity School he took an active interest in promoting its effi- 
 ciency. 
 
 For five years [writes the Rev. John Cotton Brooks] he was the 
 chairman of Barnard College, and virtually its head in the most 
 trying time of its history. He looked over this great city, with all 
 its wealth of resources, and saw one unsatisfied need amid all its 
 fulness, and could not rest satisfied until that need was supplied. 
 " New York offers everything to a woman but an education ! " he 
 earnestly cried ; and then he set about getting her one. The 
 subscription papers for the site of the college and the correspondence 
 on the choice of the dean lie side by side with his sermons among 
 his papers to-day, and the rich, full girl's Ufe in the beautiful 
 building on Morniiigside Heights is sealed as with his seal, as it 
 bears also his family coat of arms upon its front. Since his death, 
 nearly half a million of dollars have come to the college directly 
 from what he has done and been for it. 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 In theology he was in harmony with his brother's attitude, 
 like him alive to the changes passing over the religious world 
 and in sympathy with the tide of advancing thought. A 
 volume of his sermons has been published, revealing his gift 
 of connecting theology with life. An address which he 
 delivered at Alexandria has also been published, where 
 he traces with clear appreciation the place and importance 
 of the Evangelical school in the history of the American 
 Episcopal Church. His wisdom and his sober judgment 
 made him a most admirable man with whom to take coun- 
 sel. The older brother appreciated this gift in the younger 
 brother, seeking his advice upon every step which he pro- 
 posed to take. From the time of Arthur Brooks's ordina- 
 tion there began a correspondence between the brothers, 
 made valuable by the confidence they had in each other. 
 Part of this correspondence only has gone into this Memoir, 
 since much of it was too personal for publication. For many 
 years it was their custom to make an exchange on the first 
 Sunday after Easter, when Phillips Brooks spent a week 
 in New York at his brother's house, who hastened back 
 from Boston to be with him. After the death of PhiUips 
 Brooks, among the many tributes paid to him in the pulpit 
 and in other ways, none had such deep personal interest as 
 the sermon delivered by Arthur Brooks at the Church of the 
 Incarnation. 
 
 Such was the man to whom the biography of Phillips 
 Brooks was originally entrusted. Amid the many and harass- 
 ing claims upon his time, he carried on a large correspond- 
 ence, for the purpose of collecting his brother's letters and 
 other information which could often only be secured by per- 
 sonal interviews. He carefully went through the large mass 
 of correspondence, detecting with an unerring eye whatever 
 was important. He was in the midst of these labors when 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 death overtook him. His work upon the biography, valuable 
 as it was, because enriched by his contribution of memory, 
 of insight, and above all by a brother's love, was left behind 
 him unfinished, and it was found necessary to begin the work 
 anew. In the process of travelling over the ground which 
 he had reviewed I have constantly been assisted by his rare 
 wisdom, and by the suggestions he has afforded. To him, 
 therefore, the completed book owes more than to any one 
 else. A sad pathos has been my inheritance in entering 
 upon his labors, in doing the work it should have been given 
 to him to perform. That he would have approved of my ap- 
 pointment to the task from which he was snatched has been 
 to me a help and inspiration, as well as a motive so to labor 
 that the biography of his brother should be in harmony with 
 his ideal. 
 
 There is still one other source of information to which 
 I have been indebted, which surely calls for a reference here. 
 When Phillips Brooks died, hundreds of sermons were 
 preached which commemorated his services to the world. 
 Articles innumerable were published in the newspapers, 
 the magazines, and reviews. It seemed as if every pulpit 
 in the land and every editor's sanctum were moved as by 
 an irresistible need to give expression of grief and of appre- 
 ciation. This was true not only of America, but of Eng- 
 land, India, China, Japan, and South Africa; wherever the 
 English language is spoken there his name was remembered. 
 No one who has not had the occasion or the opportunity to 
 review this mass of material can realize its extent. So 
 eager were people to read everything written about him, 
 that the slightest incidents, traditions, anecdotes, reports of 
 conversations, were welcomed and gained wide circulation. 
 Through all this I have conscientiously gone in order that 
 nothing should escape my attention. The impression gained 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 from the perusal is that the people went straight to the heart 
 of the man, knowing well the grounds of their gratitude and 
 love. There is a tone of authority about these utterances, as 
 of infallible and final estimate. They remain as a fixed point 
 of departure and of return by which the biographer of Phillips 
 Brooks must needs abide. Where no one man alone is com- 
 petent to pronounce a judgment, the voice of the people, of 
 the many who studied and spoke from such various points 
 of view, becomes the safest guide. And this verdict, it must 
 be said, was unanimous, with no dissenting opinion. Very 
 significant, also, is the large amount of poetry and verse 
 which the memory of Phillips Brooks inspired. For in poetry 
 more may be safely and truly said than would seem becoming 
 under the limitations of prose. 
 
 Much of the material appropriate to the biography has 
 already found its way into print, such as the " Letters 
 of Travel," " Letters to Children," and other letters of 
 Phillips Brooks, published in answer to pressing demands. 
 For the most part these are omitted, or dealt with in sum- 
 mary when required for the connection of the narrative. It 
 may be expecting too much to hope that no inaccuracies wiU 
 be found ; but the effort has been made to verify from the 
 sources whatever has been given. 
 
 I close my task with a feeling of gratitude that I have 
 been permitted to enter and to dwell in the inmost spirit 
 of Phillips Brooks in the confidential way permitted to a 
 biographer. The spirit of reverence with which I com- 
 menced my work has grown deeper at every stage of my 
 investigation. These words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor apply 
 to the character of Phillips Brooks : " There are some persons 
 in whom the Spirit of God hath breathed so bright a 'flame of 
 love, that they do all their acts of virtue by perfect choice and 
 without objection ; and their zeal is warmer than that it will 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Xlll 
 
 be allayed by temptation ; and to such persons mortification 
 by philosophical instruments, as fasting, sackcloth, and other 
 rudenesses, is wholly useless. If love hath filled all the cor- 
 ners of our soul, he alone is able to do all the work of God." 
 And again to quote from the same writer : — 
 
 There is a sort of God's dear servants who walk in perfect- 
 ness ; who perfect holiness in the fear of God ; and they have a 
 degree of charity and divine knowledge more than we can dis- 
 course of, and more certain than the demonstrations of geometry, 
 brighter than the sun, and indeficient as the light of heaven. But 
 I shall say no more of this at this time ; for this is to be felt and 
 not to be talked of ; and they who never touched it with their fin- 
 gers may secretly, perhaps, laugh at it in their hearts and be never 
 the wiser. All that I shall now say of it is, that a good man is 
 miited unto God, Kivrpov Khnpw crwai/'a?. As a flame touches a 
 dame and combines into splendor and glory, so is the spirit of a 
 man united unto Christ by the Spirit of God. These are the 
 friends of God and they best know God's mind ; and they only 
 that are so know how much such men do know. They have a 
 special unction from above. 
 
 There are other words of sacred authority which seem to 
 tell of Phillips Brooks, when used without reference to theo- 
 logical distinctions, but in their plain and human meaning ; 
 they are words which have been much in my mind as I have 
 been studying his life : Whom He did foreknow. He also did 
 predestinate to he conformed to the image of His Son; and 
 whom He foreordained, them He also called : and whom He 
 called, them He also justified ; and whom He justified, them 
 He also glorified. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Ancestry , , 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Birth and Early Life. — The Transition to the Episcopal 
 Church. — The Boston Latin School 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1851-1855. 
 
 Harvard College 68 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 September, 1855-October, 1856. 
 
 Experience as Usher in the Boston Latin School. — Re- 
 ligious Impressions. — Extracts from Note-Book . . . 100 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1856-1857. 
 
 Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Virginia. — Nature 
 and Extent of his Reading. — Extracts from Note- 
 Book 144 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1857-1858. 
 
 Second Year at the Alexandria Seminary. — Experience op 
 Life in Virginia. — Home Letters ......... 197 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1857-1858. 
 
 The Intellectual Preparation, the Moral Ideal, Con- 
 version. — Extracts from Note- Book ........ 217 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 1858-1859. 
 
 Last Year in the Theologicax Seminary. — Appointment ab 
 Teacher in the Preparatory Department. — The First 
 Sermon. — Ordination. — Call to the Church of the Ad- 
 vent IN Philadelphia 268 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1859. 
 
 Retrospect of the Life in Virginia. — The Evangelical 
 Influence. — Ur. Sparrow as a Teacher. — Theological 
 Essays. — Extracts from Note-Book 302 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 1859-1860. 
 
 First Year in the Ministry. — Church of the Advent, 
 Philadelphia. — Early Recognition of his Power as a 
 Preacher. — Extracts from Note-Book 330 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 1860-1861. 
 
 Beginning of the Civil War. — The Call to the Church 
 OF the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia 363 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 January to August, 1862. 
 
 The First Year at the Church of the Holy Trinity. — 
 Distractions of Parish Work. — The New Divinity 
 School. — Visit to Niagara 386 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 September to December, 1862. 
 
 The Civil War. — Lincoln's Proclamation. — The Family 
 Life. — General Convention of the Episcopal Church . 409 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 1863. 
 
 Death of George Brooks. — Parish Work. — Clerical Soci- 
 ety. — Threatened Invasion of Philadelphia. — Summer 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 IN THE White Mountains. — Protest against Bishop Hop- 
 kins's Bible Argument for Slavery. — Interest in the 
 Feeedmen. — Thanksgiving Sermon ......... 437 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 1864. 
 
 Call to a Professorship in the Philadelphia Divinity 
 School. — Extracts from Note-Book. — Speeches in Be- 
 half OF Negro Suffrage 481 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Phillips Brooks at the Age of Twenty-two. Photogravure. 
 
 Frontispiece 
 The Phillips Family of Andovek, ancestors of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Photogravure 16 
 
 The Phillips House at North Andovek, Interior .... 30 
 Phillips Brooks in his Junior Year at Harvard, at the Age 
 
 OF Eighteen. Photogravure 84 
 
 Theological SE>nNARY at Alexandria, Virginia, as it ap- 
 peared IN 1855 188 
 
 Facsimile of a Page from Note-Book, 1857 240 
 
 Church of the Advent, Philadelphia, Exterior .... 330 
 Church of the Advent, Philadelphia, Interior. Represent- 
 ing the chancel somewhat changed from its aspect in 1859 . . 376 
 Phillips Brooks and his Mother, from family group in 1862. 
 
 Photogravure 422 
 
 Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, Interior . . 448 
 William Gray Brooks, the father of Phillips Brooks. Photo- 
 gravure 520 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ANCESTEY 
 
 The founder of the Phillips family was the Rev. George 
 Phillips, who was born in 1593 at Raymond, Norfolk 
 County, England.^ He came to this country in 1630, land- 
 ing at Salem on the tweKth day of June. In the same 
 ship, the ArbeUa, came Governor John Winthrop, Sir Rich- 
 ard Saltonstall, Simon Bradstreet, Isaac Johnson, and others. 
 His age when he left England was thirty-seven, and for four- 
 teen years he served the colony. Shortly after landing he 
 lost his wife, worn out with the fatigues of the voyage, and 
 buried her by the side of the Lady Arbella Johnson, in whose 
 honor the ship which brought them had been named. Our 
 knowledge of George Phillips is slight, but the few details of 
 his career point to a man of no ordinary importance and in- 
 fluence. His unusual promise as a child justified his parents 
 in sending him to the University, where he became distin- 
 guished for his attainments. His highest proficiency was in 
 theology. He took orders in the Church of England, and 
 
 b 
 
 1 Among the allnsiong of Pliillips Brooks to his ancestors, there is one to the 
 ReT. George Phillips, given in his Letters of Travel, p. HO, He was writing 
 near the English neighborhood from which they had emigrated, and adds this 
 remark : " Perhaps I have got them a little mixed up, hut all those facts were 
 among the household words of our childhood." 
 
2 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 became "an able and faithful minister of the gospel," whether 
 at Boxsted, in Essex County, or at Boxford, in Suffolk, is 
 uncertain, owing to confusion among the chroniclers. He 
 got into difficulty on account of his nonconformist principles, 
 his friends supporting him on the ground that "he preached 
 nothing without some good evidence for it in the word of 
 God." When the storm of religious persecution grew dark 
 and threatening, he threw in his lot with the Puritans, who 
 sought relief in the emigration to New England. That he 
 was held in high esteem by his friends, is shown in the cir- 
 cumstance that the emigration exjDenses of himself and his 
 family were borne by tlie company, and it is also said that 
 he came at their solicitation. 
 
 On board the ship he assumed the office of pastor, jjreach- 
 ing daily and catechising the passengers. He was one of 
 those who signed his name to the famous Farewell Address to 
 the members of the Church of England, where it was spoken 
 of as a true church, to which went forth the affectionate re- 
 gards and well wishes of those who were in reality leaving its 
 fold. It was done in good faith, there can be no doubt. But 
 the Church of England which they apostrophized was not 
 identified in their minds with its organization or its worship. 
 They were rather invoking the angel of the church, the per- 
 sonification of its ideal purpose as they themselves conceived 
 it. In that church they had been born again, from it they 
 drew their faith, their Christian nurture. Within its fold 
 they left behind their friends and kindred. As to what 
 should be the true organization, discipline, and worship of the 
 church, their views were already formed, before they ap- 
 pended their names to the Farewell Address ; and when they 
 arrived at their destination, they were not slow in putting 
 them into execution. 
 
 The newcomers in Winthrop's fleet soon separated for the 
 purpose of establishing new plantations with independent 
 churches. One of these parties sailed up the Charles River 
 in 1630, and landing on its banks selected a spot for their 
 home, to which the name of Watertown was given in the 
 same year, 1630, by the Court of Assistants. Over the 
 
i83j] THE ANCESTRY 3 
 
 church at Watertown Mr. Phillips was placed at once as 
 pastor, at a salary of thirty pounds a year. In 1G31 he was 
 admitted a freeman, eighty acres being assigned to him, a 
 larger territory than to other freemen, in recognition of his 
 clerical rank, which also appears to have been exempt from 
 taxation. Here he labored for fourteen years, a man promi- 
 nent in town affairs, but especially devoted to the interests 
 of religion and the church. 
 
 It is difficult now to determine and distinguish his influ- 
 ence upon the colony as compared with other great leaders; 
 but that he exerted a deep influence in the formative process 
 of both church and state is clear. In the work of reor^an- 
 izing the church in New England he took a decided part. 
 His views were at first thought to be novel and extreme, but 
 they were ultimately accepted and became known as Congre- 
 gationalism. His ideas of church policy were illustrated by 
 his action when in 1639 Rev. John Knowles was ordained at 
 Watertown to be the associate or second pastor of the church. 
 Mr. Phillips, who must have ofiiciated at the ordination, 
 gave no notice to the neighboring churches or to the magis- 
 trates. This was independency, pure and simple, yet it was 
 regarded by many at the time as a "censurable anomaly," 
 for there were those in the colony who held to a Presbyterian 
 view of ordination, in which the clergy of other parishes 
 should share. On the other hand, he defied the princi- 
 ples of the Independents when he went to the First Church 
 in Boston and administered the ordinances in the absence 
 of its pastor; for it was a princijjle of Independency that it 
 denied this right to any minister except in the church over 
 which he was placed. These two features in Mr. Phillips's 
 ecclesiastical jjolity were still regarded, it is said, with mis- 
 givings, until the Rev. John Cotton came to Boston, "who 
 by his preaching and practice did by degrees mould all their 
 church administration into the very same form, which Mr. 
 Phillips labored to have introduced into the church before." 
 
 Mr. Phillips also denied the validity of his ordination by 
 bishops in the Church of England. When he assumed 
 charge of the church in Watertown, he stated to his congre- 
 
4 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 gation that "if they would have him stand minister by that 
 calling which he received from the prelates of England he 
 would leave them."^ If this seems to point to narrow- 
 ness and bigotry, yet on the other hand when Elder Browne 
 in his congregation maintained that the Church of Rome was 
 a true church, he was sujjported by his pastor. Something 
 of a storm or flurry happened in consequence, so that in 1631 
 the governor, the deputy governor, and others, went to 
 Watertown for a conference. Elder Browne was not con- 
 vinced, and the court took up the matter. The people of 
 Watertown were greatly divided in opinion. When the 
 governor offered the alternative to the church, of proceeding 
 in the case in their capacity as magistrates, or as members of 
 a neighboring congregation, Mr. Phillips selected the latter 
 method, guarding, it is thought, in a jealous way against 
 encroachments on the liberties of his church. Somehow a 
 kind of reconciliation was reached, and both sides agreed to 
 a day of humiliation and praj^er. 
 
 Mr. Phillips was not only jealous of the religious liberty, 
 but of the political. When Governor Winthrop and the 
 Assistants polled an order to tax the people without their 
 consent, Mr. Phillips, with Elder Browne, called them to- 
 gether and delivered their opinion that "it was dangerous to 
 submit to it." This view prevailed; for before another tax 
 was attempted it was decided that "two of every plantation 
 be appointed to confer with the court. "^ Such are some of 
 the pictures in the life of Rev. George Phillips which reveal 
 the man. He may not have been in advance of his age in 
 his views of religious liberty, but he was large-minded, with 
 more foresight, more alive than many of his contemporaries. 
 It was an age when what we call superstition still existed. 
 According to Governor Winthrop, there was at Watertown in 
 these early years "a great combat, seen by divers witnesses, 
 between a mouse and a snake; and after a lono- fio-ht the 
 mouse prevailed and killed the snake." But it was not the 
 
 1 Hubbard : History of New England, p. 186. Francis : Historical Sketch of 
 Watertovm, 
 ^ Bond : Family Memorials, ii. p. 873. 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 5 
 
 pastor of the church at Wateitown, it was the Rev. Mr. 
 Wilson, pastor of the First Church in Boston, who gave the 
 interpretation, that " the snake was the devil ; the mouse was 
 a poor contemptible people, which God had brought hither, 
 which should overcome Satan here and dispossess him of his 
 kingdom." ^ 
 
 For the rest, the Rev. George Phillijis was a good preacher, 
 versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, reading 
 through the Scriptures six times in the course of every year. 
 At his death, which was sudden, in the year 1644, he had at- 
 tained the age of iifty-one. He was lamented as one beloved 
 as well as respected. Winthrop said of him in his journal, 
 "a godly man, specially gifted, and very peaceful in his 
 place, much lamented of his own peojjle and others." His 
 first house in Watertown, it is supposed on good evidence, 
 stood near the Cambridge line on the road from Cambridge 
 to Watertown, on the left-hand side of the road and near 
 the ancient burying-ground. The inventory of his jiroperty 
 amounted to X553, "the study of books " to £71 9s. 9d. 
 
 George Phillips left a son, Samuel, nineteen years old at 
 his father's death, a graduate of Harvard College in 1C50. 
 The story that he was educated at the expense of the church 
 in Watertown, as a tribute of respect to his father, has been 
 questioned on the ground that his father left behind him 
 sufficient property to make such an act superfluous. This 
 Samuel Phillips was settled over the church at Rowley, in 
 Massachusetts, where "he labored with great acceptance " for 
 forty-five years, till his death in 1696. That his position was 
 an honored one is further evident from his appointment to 
 preach the election sermon before the General Court in 1678. 
 That his character was a strong one, leading him to speak 
 out, at the expense of persecution and imprisonment, is 
 shown, so it is said, "from his calling Randolph a wicked 
 man." Of his wife it is said that she was "an early seeker 
 for God, spending much of her time in reading the word and 
 in prayer, and taking great care of her children's souls." 
 She also, it is added, "knew the time of her conversion." In 
 
 1 Francis : Watertown, p. 20. 
 
6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 liis later years, Phillips Brooks paid his tribute to these an- 
 cestors at Rowley, visiting the old town for the purpose of 
 making their life more real to his imagination. It may seem 
 unnecessary to remark, but it has its significance in tracing 
 a Puritan descent, that his inventory amounted to ^£989. In 
 Mather's epitaph upon father and son, he is compared with 
 his father as his highest honor : — 
 
 Hie jacet Georg^ius Phillippi 
 
 Vii- incomparabilis nisi Samuelem genuisset. 
 
 This Samuel Phillips of Eowley had a son, George, who 
 graduated at Harvard in 1686, but left Massachusetts for 
 Long Island, where he died. Of him it was remarked by 
 some that "'in addition to his solid talents he possessed a 
 happy vein of wit and humor that rendered his company and 
 conversation always agreeable." But the verdict of others 
 was that while esteemed a good man, "he indulged too much 
 in wit and drollery to maintain well the dignity of his profes- 
 sion." He is mentioned here because he followed the profes- 
 sion of his father. There was another son, older than this 
 George, in whom the line of descent is to be followed. Sam- 
 uel Phillips of Salem, son of Samuel of Rowley, and grand- 
 son of George Phillips, became a goldsmith, instead of a 
 clergyman, but he married a clergyman's daughter, Mary 
 Emerson of Gloucester, who brought into the family a strong 
 intellectual and religious influence. She became the mother 
 of two sons, the elder of whom was the Rev. Samuel Phillips, 
 minister of the South Church in Andover, a man of "strik- 
 ing individuality and energy of character," who deserves a 
 fuller mention. 
 
 Samuel Phillips, then, of the fourth generation, was born 
 in 1689, and graduated from Harvard College in 1708. 
 With him begins the connection of the Phillips family with 
 Andover. At the age of twenty-two, in the year 1711, he 
 was ordained there, minister of the South Church or parish, 
 holding that office for sixty-two years. In appearance, as 
 represented by his portrait, there is dignity, the conscious- 
 ness of power, the sense of mastery of the situation, repose 
 also, security, as if he rested upon the rock of great convic- 
 
1 835] THE ANCESTRY 7 
 
 tions, a certain masculine aggressive quality, nothing intro- 
 versive, but the air of one who maintains and rejoices in 
 things as they are. He is the representative of the spirit of 
 the eighteenth century. He married Hannah White, daugh- 
 ter of the "worshipful John White of Haverhill." 
 
 When they went to meeting on Sunday, Madame Phillips 
 walked, leaning on her husband's arm, from the parsonage to the 
 meeting-house, Mr. Phillips having his negro man at his right 
 hand and Madame Phillips her negro maidservant on her left 
 hand. The family followed them in procession, according to age. 
 The male members of the congregation, who had been standing 
 outside, as soon as the minister's family appeared, hastened into 
 the meeting-house, and when the pastor entered, the congregation 
 arose and remained standing till he reached the pulpit and took 
 his seat. Also at the close of the service the congregation stood 
 until the pastor and family had passed out.^ 
 
 He turned his hourglass at the beginning of his sermon 
 and concluded it as the last sands ran out. He was a vigor- 
 ous fireacher, discussing fearlessly the issues of his time. 
 Many of his sermons were published as deserving a larger 
 audience.^ He was bold in reproving his congregation, 
 especially for that peculiar offence, common then, as it is not 
 unknown to-day, the tendency to be overcome by somnolence 
 in public worship. There had been an alarming earthquake 
 in 1755 ; this he improved in his discourse, as a warning to 
 those sleeping away great part of sermon time. But since 
 the glorious Lord of the Sabbath has given them such a shak- 
 ing of late, he hopes to see no more sleepers in sermon time.^ 
 At a time when Arminianism was coming into vogue, destined 
 to undermine the convictions of many regarding the tenets of 
 
 ^ Historical Sketches of Andover, p. 446. 
 
 ^ Here is the title-page of one of these sermons which were printed : — 
 
 " A Word in Season, or the Duty of People to take and keep the Oath of Al- 
 leg;iance to the glorious God. Exhibited in a Plain Discourse had (in part) at 
 Byfield on Septembers, 1720, by Samuel Phillips, M. A., Pastor to a Church in 
 Andover. Published at the request of many of the Inhabitants of Rowley and 
 Byfield. And recommended by many Ministers. 1 Kings xviii. 21. 
 
 " Boston : Printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green for John Phillips at his shop 
 on the South Side of the Town house. 1737." 
 
 ^ History of Andover, p. 440. 
 
8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 tte ancient Puritan creed, lie remained steadfast in adher- 
 ence to the Westminster Catechism, a decided, zealous Cal- 
 vinist, laboring by preaching and by writing to indoctrinate 
 and confirm his people in the faith ; but he also, it is said, 
 could be tolerant of those who differed from him ; he main- 
 tained "fellowship with the neighboring clergy of a looser 
 and dangerous creed." 
 
 An illustration is given of his attitude on the ethical issues 
 of life, of no slight significance as revealing the spirit of the 
 age. The records of the church in Andover contain cases of 
 discipline for immorality and drunkenness, as do the parish 
 records of so many of the churches in the eighteenth century. 
 There was another sin of rare occurrence, against which he 
 delivered a sermon, so entirely to the mind of his congrega- 
 tion that its i^ublication was requested. A certain member 
 of his i:)arish, of unblemished character, gentle and sensitive, 
 became despondent, fell into melancholia, and died by his own 
 hand. "His name," said the pastor, "as many think had 
 best be buried in oblivion, for he yielded to the temptation 
 of the enemy of souls, kej)t the devil's counsel concealed, nor 
 did any person suspect that he was under the said tempta- 
 tion, until, being missed, he was found hanging in his own 
 barn." The sermon appeared in print with "a ghastly 
 title-page, headed with skull and crossbones and bordered 
 with Idack. The preacher warned his hearers not to visit 
 the offence upon his innocent relatives. But the feeling in 
 the parish was so strong that he was refused burial in the 
 graveyard of the Old South Church, and was laid in a lonely 
 grave in the farm under an oak tree, and his name was no 
 more mentioned even in his own family." 
 
 For the rest, this Eev. Samuel Phillips left a deep impres- 
 sion on his people. He was specially diligent in commending 
 the usage of family devotions. Pie was a man orderly and 
 industrious in his habits, he had the Puritan habit of econ- 
 omy, carrying it so far as to blow out the candle when he 
 knelt for the evening prayer. Pie insisted on the punctual 
 payment of his salary, even though "he had means of his 
 own." He went to Andover too late to receive an assign- 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 9 
 
 ment of land in the town, but a large territory was given him 
 in what was then the wilderness of New Hampshire, in the 
 neighborhood of what is now Concord. But if he pursued a 
 close economy, he was also charitable, giving away one tenth 
 of his income. He had need of economy, for he educated his 
 three sons at Harvard College. He died in possession of a 
 considerable property, as the times then went. 
 
 These were his sons, — Samuel, the eldest, then John, and 
 WiUiam. John settled at Exeter, and will be alluded to 
 again; William went to Boston, where he became a prosper- 
 ous merchant. Both these sons accumulated large property, 
 they stood high in the people's regard, and were honored by 
 high offices, living not for themselves, but for the public 
 welfare. Much might be said of them, especially of their 
 religious purpose, but the line of descent of Phillips Brooks 
 is with the eldest son, Samuel (1715-1790). He remained 
 in Andover, in what is now North Andover, where he went 
 into business, and he too accumulated, as a true Puritan of 
 the time could not help doing, riches and wealth as well as 
 public honor. A letter to him from his father is preserved, 
 revealing the father's principles and methods, the secret also 
 to some extent of the son's success. It illustrates religion in 
 common life, amplifying the apostle's injunction to be diligent 
 in business, while serving the Lord. 
 
 Sept. 27, ITOS. 
 Andovbk, South Parish. 
 
 As to your trading, keep fair and true accounts and do wrong 
 to no man ; but sell as cheap to a child as you would to one that 
 is adult; never take advantage of any, either because of their 
 Ignorance or their Poverty ; for if you do, it will not turn to your 
 own advantage; but ye contrary. And as you may not wrong 
 eny person, so neither wrong ye Truth in any case whatever for 
 ye sake of gain or fi-om any other motive. Either he silent or 
 else speak ye Truth. 
 
 And be prudent, but yet not over timorous and over scrupulous 
 in ye article of Trusting, lest you stand in your own light. Some 
 people are more honest p'haps than you think for and it may be 
 wil pay sooner than you expect. Keep to your shop if you ex- 
 pect that to keep to you and be not out of ye way when customers 
 
lo PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 This Samuel PhilliiDS of North Andover graduated from 
 Harvard College in 1734, marrying Elizabeth Barnard, a 
 granddaughter of the Rev. John Barnard, who came as a 
 bride with "a considerable fortune." Mr. Phillips was 
 dowered with the title of Honorable in virtue of his member- 
 ship in the House of Repi-esentatives and in the Council of 
 the Commonwealth. It was he who built what is now the 
 old homestead in North Andover. But he entered it with 
 sadness, and it never resounded to him with the mirth of chil- 
 dren, for of the many whom God had given him only one son 
 survived, the others dying in infancy. His portrait is in 
 profile, besjDeaking a man subdued by affliction, yet it is also 
 a beautiful face, showing great refinement and tenderness of 
 character, a graceful, well-shajjed head, reappearing to some 
 extent, profile and form of head, in Phillii^s Brooks. 
 
 Samuel Phillips of North Andover, who built the old 
 manse, as it has been called, left one son, bearing the same 
 name, who is known as Judge Philliijs (1752-1802). He re- 
 presents the family in the sixth generation, and is the great- 
 grandfather of Phillips Brooks. It is impossible to speak of 
 him briefly, for his life was full to overflowing with purj)oses 
 and results accomplished, an extraordinary career marked 
 by an intense, unfailing activity. In his day he was one of 
 the foremost men, in church and state, good as well as great, 
 the full flower of Puritanism unveiling its inmost mood and 
 capacity. His Memoir, written by the late Dr. J. L. Taylor 
 of Andover Theological Seminary, and published by the Con- 
 gregational Board of Publication, is one long and elaborate 
 eulogy upon his virtues. It is difficult to see how it could 
 have been otherwise, for to speak of him was to praise 
 him. 
 
 We get the first picture of him as the solitary child in the 
 house at North Andover, the only surviving child of seven 
 children, tended with care and solicitude. The sadness of 
 the household brooded over him, making him i:>rematurely 
 grave and mature. That great truth to which Puritanism 
 gave additional emphasis, the sacredness of time, the neces- 
 sity of improving each passing moment, was of course 
 
1 835] THE ANCESTRY ii 
 
 instilled into liim from his infancy, but he learned the lesson 
 with an intensity surpassing his ancestors. In preparing for 
 college he went to Byfield Academy, then, in 1767, entered 
 Harvard, which had become the family tradition, as indis- 
 pensable as the church or the state for the development of 
 a noble life. When he graduated, it is interesting to note 
 that he was greatly concerned about giving an entertainment 
 or "spread " which should adequately represent his own and 
 the family dignity. To this request for money the father 
 readily responded that it should be all that he desired. His 
 standing as a scholar was among the highest in his class, for 
 his diligence had been unremitting and his natural ability 
 was great. At the Commencement he gave the Salutatory 
 Oration in Latin, according to the custom. But in those 
 days the students were not marked according to scholarship 
 alone ; there was a social standard, apparently of higher im- 
 portance, the relic of an aristocratic sentiment before the 
 levelling influence had prevailed of the French Revolution. 
 According to this standard, in a class of sixty in the year 
 1771, the largest class which had yet been graduated at Har- 
 vard, his rank was eighth. His father, dissatisfied equally 
 with his son at what seemed an injustice in the rank assigned, 
 came down from Andover to see the president of the college 
 and insist on the rectification of the mistake. A change was 
 accordingly made, and he was given the seventh place. In 
 his days the Institute was founded, and he became its first 
 president. Although he threw himself into college life with 
 great ardor, yet the religious question was most prominently 
 before his mind; the primary issue to be adjusted was his 
 personal relationship with God, the consciousness of whom 
 had waited upon all his years. There was anxiety and doubt 
 and struggle, till he entered into peace in 1770, joining the 
 church at North Andover, where his father was a deacon. 
 
 The romance of his life occurred in his college days. The 
 young woman of his choice was Phoebe Foxcroft of Cam- 
 bridge, to whom the only objection that could be made was 
 her age, for she was nearly nine years his senior. The father 
 and mother at Andover strenuously resisted, but things took 
 
12 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 their usual course ; the beloved and only son, with his deli- 
 cate constitution, became ill, the consent was reluctantly 
 given, and in 1773 the marriage took place. It was no mis- 
 fortune for the family when Phoebe Foxcroft entered it. She 
 brought with her accessions of character and intellectual gifts 
 as well as of wealth. In reality she was younger than her 
 husband in all relating to temperament and constitutional 
 vivacity. She had the cheerful mind and graces of manner 
 which offset his prevailing seriousness. She survived her 
 husband eleven years, to carry out after he was gone one of 
 the great purposes of his life. 
 
 The career of Judge Phillips was so full of attendance 
 upon purely secular affairs, that this aspect of it alone would 
 have sufficed to distinguish the lives of most of his contem- 
 poraries. "He had a primary agency in all the measures of 
 the state for nearly thirty years." In his personal affairs he 
 gave, says one of his eulogists, "incredible attentions to 
 business." The war for American independence began when 
 he was twenty-five. Already while in college he shared in the 
 growth of sentiment and enthusiasm precijntating hostilities. 
 In the early years of the war he strove with characteristic 
 energy and enterprise to overcome the chief lack embarrass- 
 ing the American army, by erecting a mill at Andover for 
 the manufacture of gunpowder. His many activities, his 
 posts of jiublic honor and trust, can onljr be briefly enumer- 
 ated, but the simple record is an astonishing one. In addi- 
 tion to the powder-mill, he owned and supervised a saw-mill, 
 and grist-mill, and a paper-mill. He had extensive shops for 
 the sale of merchandise in Andover and Methuen, over which 
 he kept a watchful eye. His many business interests flour- 
 ished, bringing him a large income. This would have been 
 enough, one might suppose, to occupy the attention of one 
 man, but in addition to all this he assumed large public re- 
 sponsibilities. He was a delegate from Andover to the Con- 
 stitutional Convention in 1779. In a select committee of 
 thirty-one he aided in preparing a "frame of government 
 and declaration of rights." When the Constitution had been 
 adopted he was elected into the Senate, where he continued 
 
1 835] THE ANCESTRY 13 
 
 for twenty years, and for fifteen years was its president. In 
 the famous Shays' rebellion he was appointed one of three 
 commissioners to deal with the disaffected and disappointed 
 party. For sixteen years he was one of the judges of the 
 Essex Court of Common Pleas. In the year before his death 
 he was elected lieutenant-governor of the Commonwealth of 
 Massachusetts. He was an overseer of Harvard College for 
 twenty years, receiving from it in 1793 the degree of LL. D. 
 He was one of the original members of the American Acad- 
 emy of Arts and Sciences. 
 
 But this combination of rare business capacity with high 
 statesmanship does not exhaust the catalogue of his useful- 
 ness in his day and generation. His supreme effort was 
 devoted to the cause of learning and of religion. As the 
 projector and practically the founder of the Phillips Andover 
 Academy, he is most widely and deservedly known. His 
 sense of the need of such an institution dates back to the 
 time when he experienced difficulty in preparing for college 
 at Byfield Academy. This devotion to the cause of learning 
 and high scholarship was inherited in his Puritan blood. It 
 had entered into Puritanism from the first as a constituent 
 element that the learning of its adherents should be the very 
 best, the widest, the deepest, the most thorough that could 
 be obtained. Judge Phillips embodied this aspiration, he 
 became the pioneer of the system which has given to America 
 its classical schools. It was in 1777 that he first moved in 
 the matter dearest to his heart. Here, we may believe, lay 
 the secret of his devotion to business, — an ideal purpose was 
 to be subserved. The rolling up of wealth was not an end in 
 itself. His father's fortune would be his own, he was the 
 heir of a rich and childless uncle. Dr. John Phillips, living 
 at Exeter. His disinterestedness is shown in his willingness 
 to dispossess himself of the property virtually his own. He 
 laid the scheme which he had devised before his father 
 and his uncle, calling for their contributions in order to its 
 achievement. To another uncle, Hon. William Phillips of 
 Boston, he appealed with equal success. The joint contribu- 
 tions of his father and his two uncles constituted the founda- 
 
14 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 tion of the Phillips Academy in Andover. Judge Phillips 
 was a young man of twenty-five when he conceived this great 
 plan of his life. He had his own fortune yet to make at the 
 moment when he was diverting the property that would have 
 been his into another channel. As his own means increased 
 he used them freely for the same end. He devoted his 
 energy, his time, his thoughts, to perfecting the organization 
 and constitution of the academy till its equipment should be 
 complete. His scheme embraced the purchase of the whole 
 territory of Andover Hill, so far as it was possible. To this 
 end he moved his residence from North Andover to the 
 southern parish, where he finally built the stately mansion 
 house, that until recently, when it was destroyed by fire, 
 faced the grounds of the Theological Seminary. Here he 
 was honored among the few by a visit from Washington in 
 his presidential tour of 1789. "The moment he left the 
 house, Madame Phillips tied a piece of ribbon upon the chair 
 which he had occupied during the interview, and there it re- 
 mained ever afterwards, until the day of his death, when she 
 substituted for it a band of crape." That house alone would 
 have borne witness to his great purpose, identified as it has 
 been for generations with the highest interests of theological 
 education. Judge Phillips himself had contemplated the 
 possibility of a theological professorship in connection with 
 the academy for the better maintenance of the ancient Puri- 
 tan faith, but when he died prematurely in 1802 this part of 
 his plan was carried out by his widow, Phcebe Foxcroft, with 
 the cooperation of her son, John Phillips, and the result was 
 the Andover Theological Seminary, the first institution of 
 the kind in ecclesiastical history, the model of the profes- 
 sional theological training which has since become in this 
 country universal. To this institution the wealth of the 
 Phillips family continued to flow from its numerous branches 
 and ramifications. The donors of houses and lands and of 
 foundations for professorships, whether men or women, either 
 bore the name of Phillips, or in the female line laid claim 
 to it.i 
 
 * " Lieutenant-Governor William Phillips of Boston, who was the honored Pre- 
 
^^3S] 
 
 THE ANCESTRY 15 
 
 There were other activities of Judge Phillips to which al- 
 lusion must at least be made. He was deeply possessed with 
 the power of religion. For many years it was his custom to 
 read to the people at noon on the Sabbath, during the inter- 
 mission between the services, from some favorite doctrinal or 
 devotional treatise. He made charitable donations for the 
 purpose of supplying the people of Andover with religious 
 books. Bibles, Testaments, and Psalters, the Westminster 
 Catechism, Dr. Watts's Divine Songs, Doddridge's Rise and 
 Progress and other works. Law's Serious Call, Mason on 
 Self Knowledge, Henry on Meekness, Orton's Discourse to 
 the Aged. In the old homestead at North Andover is still 
 preserved the library, almost exclusively composed of reli- 
 gious books, which he had collected. In his theology he ad- 
 hered firmly and strictly to the old Calvinism, fearful of the 
 least particle of infidelity, dreading modern philosophy, and 
 the "tendency to reduce the Christian religion to a mere 
 system of morality." But in some respects he was an inno- 
 vator. He saw that the system of life pastorates in the New 
 
 sident of the Board of Trustees for many years, added his frequent gifts while 
 he lived, and his legacy for the library and for the aid of indigent students at 
 his death. 
 
 " Samuel Abbot, Esq., of Andover, who united with Madame Phillips and her 
 son, in the founding of the Seminary, by endowing the Abbot Professorship 
 of Christian Theology, was a grandson of Samuel PhUUps, Esq., the goldsmith 
 at Salem. 
 
 " The wife of Moses Brown, Esq., of Newburyport, the founder of the Browne 
 Professorship of Ecclesiastical History, was a great-granddaughter of the Salem 
 goldsmith, also. . . . Mrs. Sarah Abbot, . . . who was the chief founder of 
 Abbot Female Seminary, . . . was a great-great-granddaughter of the same 
 Mr. Phillips at Salem." (Taylor : Memoir of Judge Phillips, p. .390.) 
 
 This Samuel Phillips of Salem, known as the goldsmith, was the grandson of 
 George Phillips of Watertown, the founder of the family. He was the ances- 
 tor also of the late Wendell Phillips. But one cannot trace this line of descent 
 without recognizing that in his wife, Mary Emerson, the Phillips blood had 
 been reinforced with some quality of rare and high value. 
 
 The identification of the Phillips family with the cause of education is incom- 
 plete without reference to the Phillips Exeter Academy, founded by Dr. John 
 Phillips, an uncle of Judge Phillips of Andover. He had intended to make 
 his nephew his heir. But when the nephew had once interested him in the 
 cause of education (he gave at his nephew's solicitation $.31,000 to Andover 
 Phillips Academy) he pursued the cause independently, founding and endow 
 5ng a similar institution at Exeter, New Hampshire. 
 
i6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [163° 
 
 England churches had outlived its usefulness, and he did ^ 
 
 what he could to prepare the way for its rejection. ,i 
 
 These were his characteristics as his biographer^ has , 
 
 summed them up : He seemed daily to hear the admonition, ^ 
 whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it loith thy might; he 
 
 was intensely methodical and careful; he was a prodigy of ; 
 
 activity ; he was an enthusiast for virtue; he had an intensely . 
 
 ethical vein, combining with it an impressive sedateness; he | 
 
 possessed profound humility ; he cheriished a special fondness » 
 
 for the young ; his Christian symmetry was completed by his j 
 rare estimate of the uses of wealth, as the handmaid of learn- 
 ing and religion. As we read his eulogy it is as though his 
 
 distinguished descendant were here living in st)me previous • 
 state of existence. When he died in 1802 at the age of fifty, 
 
 there was a deep widespread sense of grief as at some great ; 
 
 calamity. "The immense concourse" at his funeral, "the ■ 
 
 presence of so many distinguished civilians, the universal ^ 
 
 sensibility, and the impressive exercises with which her favor- i 
 
 ite son was liid in the tomb, made this a most memorable • 
 
 day for Andover; such as she had never seen before, and ! 
 
 will never see again." ' 
 
 In a letter written by Judge Phillips to his son, a year 
 before his own death, he refers to his ancestry, to the power 
 
 of ancestral prayer and example. These ancestors read the ! 
 
 Bible. They were remarkably constant in their devotions. j 
 
 To that he can testify in his own experience. " Who can \ 
 tell," he adds, "how many blessings the prayers of our pious 
 
 ancestors have procured for their descendants I Let us, my ' 
 
 dear son, be equally faithful, even unto death, to our God, ! 
 to ourselves, and to those who shall be born after us." 
 
 The son to whom these words were written was the Hon. j 
 
 John Phillips of Andover (1776-1820), the grandfather of \ 
 
 Phillips Brooks. He, too, followed and profited by the • 
 examiDle of his ancestors. There is the same record of his 
 
 earlier years, grave and studious, endowed with marked 1 
 
 ability, improving the time as though he were on some im- I 
 portant mission, as though he were the medium through 
 which some higher power were working. To Harvard Col- 
 
His Honor, Samuel Phillips, LL. D. 
 (1752-1S02) 
 
 Hon. John Phillips 
 
 (.776-1820) 
 
 Madam Phcebe Phillips 
 (1743-1812) 
 
 Rev. Samuel Phillips 
 (1590-1771) 
 
 Hon. William Phillips 
 (1722-1804) 
 
 Hon. Samuel Phillips 
 (1715-1790) 
 
 Hon. John Phillips, LL.D. 
 (1719-1795) 
 
 The Phillips Family of Andover 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 17 
 
 lege he went as a matter of course and of necessity. There 
 he distinguished himself as a scholar, taking many honors 
 by the way, and finally graduating with high rank, giving 
 the Salutatory Oration in Latin, as his father had done be- 
 fore him. He was not insensible by any means, nor were 
 his parents, to the social obligations of college life. He, 
 too, must entertain his class in a befitting manner when he 
 graduated. His father, among his almost countless activi- 
 ties, found time to arrange with the sou the particular fea- 
 tures of the entertainment, the number of college rooms 
 which should be engaged, while his mother superintended 
 and with her own hands assisted in the preparation of mate- 
 rials for the feast. But all this was subordinate to the 
 greater issue, the development of character, the personal in- 
 dividual solution of the soul's relation to God. The burden 
 of his mother's letters to him while in college, to which his 
 father added his weightier apjjeal, was the ancient injunction 
 which has come down through the ages; it was the endless 
 solicitude. Keep thy soul with all diligence, for out of it 
 are the issues of life. To these injunctions there was added, 
 soon after he left college, the motives which sprang from a 
 great bereavement in the loss of his only brother, a few 
 years younger than himself, — a boy of great beauty of per- 
 sonal appearance, rich in the affections, of singularly win- 
 ning manners, and of high intellectual promise. To his father 
 and mother it was a crushing blow, to him it became a strong 
 religious incentive to devote himself in more intense concen- 
 tration to the spiritual ideal of life. He joined the church in 
 Andover in 1796, and his career in life was grounded in reli- 
 gious principle. 
 
 It had been his father's wish that he should study law, and 
 he made arrangements to this end, entering upon his profes- 
 sional studies at Charlestown. But when this plan was aban- 
 doned in consequence of the failure of his health, he entered 
 into mercantile pursuits. His residence in Charlestown led 
 to his marriage in 1798 with Lydia Gorham, daughter of the 
 Hon. Nathaniel Gorham. From Charlestown he returned to 
 the old homestead at North Andover, and there he passed his 
 
1 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 remaining days. His was a quieter life than his father's had 
 been, for ill health reduced his activity. But there were the 
 same gifts, the same possibilities, could they have been util- 
 ized. He had the same devotion to public interests, he had 
 the power of enthusiasm which enveloped every great cause. 
 His services as an orator were often called for on public occa- 
 sions. He was one of the governor's aids, and a member of 
 the state Senate. But his crowning deed was the founding, 
 in connection with his mother, of the Andover Theological 
 Seminary. The idea had germinated with his father, after 
 whose death it was nourished and developed by his widow, 
 Phoebe Foxcroft-Phillips. In the legal document establish- 
 ing the seminary, her name comes first and is followed by 
 that of her son. 
 
 John Phillips died in 1820, prematurely, like his father, 
 having attained the age only of forty-five years. He trans- 
 mitted the gift, the capacity for religion, the spiritual capital 
 unimpaired, to his descendants. Among the large family of 
 children whom he left, the fifth in order of birth was Mary 
 Ann Phillii)s, in whose deep nature the example and teaching 
 of her ancestors found congenial soil for yet further growth 
 and expansion. She pondered all these things in her heart. 
 From his childhood to his death, the inexpressible tenderness 
 of Phillips Brooks for his mother was one of the deepest 
 characteristics of his being, as her influence was one of the 
 higher sources of his power. 
 
 II 
 
 When we turn to the Brooks family we are conscious at 
 once of a change or difference in the religious and social at- 
 mosphere. Like the Phillips family, it presented certain 
 characteristics of its own, handed down, substantially un- 
 changed from one generation to another. It was not as a 
 family marked by the transcendental idealism, the intense 
 devotion to religious or intellectual motives, that fusion of 
 the spiritual and ethical with the political and intellectual, 
 which was manifested with such overwhelming force in the 
 earliest stage of New England Puritanism. 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 19 
 
 The Brooks family may be taken as a type of those who 
 from the first had not any deep inner sympathy with doctrinal 
 and experimental Puritanism. As we trace the line of its 
 descent, it produced no great religious leaders, very few of 
 its members entered the ranks of the ministry, nor did Har- 
 vard College claim the same relative contingent as in the 
 Phillips family. They were rather rich farmers with the in- 
 herited English love for the land. They became identified 
 with trade, and counted in their numbers opulent merchants. 
 They were distinguished for their devotion to their country, 
 rising to high positions in the army or in the offices of the 
 state. They cultivated character in its phases of uprightness 
 and integrity, generosity and devotion to public interests, — 
 the basis of that confidence which they inspired among their 
 fellow citizens. They were honored, trusted, and loved in 
 each passing generation. 
 
 The founder of the family in this country was Thomas 
 Brooke, to whom the records of the town of Watertown show 
 that land was assigned as a freeman in 1636. The exact 
 year when he came to Massachusetts has not been determined. 
 As a freeman of Watertown he must have sat under the min- 
 istrations of the Rev. George Phillips. The coincidence is 
 worth noting which unites the two families at the beginning 
 of New England history. Thomas Brooke did not remain 
 long at Watertown. He is next heard of in Concord, where 
 he died. But before his death he purchased in connection 
 with his son-in-law a farm in the town of Medford, where the 
 Mystic River was a strong attraction. Henceforth the Brooks 
 family becomes identified with Medford, as Medford is to a 
 large degree identified with the fortunes of this family, fur- 
 nishing as it did a never-failing supply of representatives to 
 the General Court, selectmen, also, and heads of committees, 
 town treasurers, and afterwards benefactors in the building 
 of churches and schoolhouses. The history of Medford illus- 
 trates the activity of the Brooks family, their sterling integ- 
 rity, and the admiration and honor in which they were held. 
 
 Caleb Brooks was the son of Thomas Brooke of Concord. 
 He, in turn, left two sons, — Ebenezer and Samuel, — and 
 
20 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 these two sons married sisters, the daughters of Dr. Thomas 
 Boylston of Brookline. The family of Boylston was one of 
 high distinction in Massachusetts. It has ceased to exist as 
 a family, but the name is still perpetuated in the streets of 
 Boston and Cambridge, in the halls also of Harvard Univer- 
 sity, where their portraits by Copley are preserved, giving 
 them a place among the benefactors of learning. What- 
 ever force or distinction the family of Boylston possessed was 
 not lost when the male line of descent was extinguished. 
 The elder son of Ebenezer Brooks, who had married Abi- 
 gail Boylston, was called Caleb, and Caleb had a son, John, 
 who rose to be governor of Massachusetts, and who de- 
 serves a special mention. Governor John Brooks, LL. D., 
 was born in 1752, and died in 1825. His record is as fol- 
 lows : He was at the battle of Lexington in command of a 
 company, from which he rose to the rank of a major : he as- 
 sisted in throwing up the fortifications at Breed's Hill, and 
 in 1777 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel. In the battle 
 of Saratoga, at the head of his regiment, he stormed and 
 carried the intrenchment of the German troops. In the bat- 
 tle of Monmouth he was acting adjutant-general. He pos- 
 sessed the confidence and received the commendation of 
 Washington for his forethought and faithfulness. After the 
 war he followed with great success the profession of medicine, 
 but still retaining his connection with public life. He was 
 major-general of the militia of his company. He worked in 
 the convention for the adoption of the Constitution of the 
 United States. He was appointed marshal of the district and 
 inspector of revenue by Washington ; he was an adjutant-gen- 
 eral in the war of 1812, and he became governor of Massachu- 
 setts in 1816, holding the office for seven years. And further 
 he was scientific and skilful in his profession, with manners 
 dignified and courteous, laboring incessantly for the public 
 good, large and liberal in his views, of undoubted integrity 
 and patriotism, amiable and esteemed in private life, the 
 delight of friends and acquaintances. 
 
 In the last years of his life he joined the church in Medford 
 under the pastoral care of Dr. Osgood. Before he died he 
 bore his testimony : — 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 21 
 
 I see nothing terrible in death. In looking to the future I 
 have no fear, I know in whom I have believed ; and I feel a per- 
 suasion that all the trials appointed me, past or present, will re- 
 sult in my future and eternal happiness. I look back on my past 
 life with humility. I am sensible of many imperfections that 
 cleave to me. I know that the present is neither the season or 
 the place in which to begin the preparation for death. Our whole 
 life is given to us for this purpose, and the work of preparation 
 should be early commenced and be never relaxed till the end of 
 our days. To God I can appeal, that it has been my humble en- 
 deavor to serve Him sincerely, and wherein I have failed, I trust 
 in his grace to forgive. I now rest my soul on the mercy of my 
 adorable Creator through the only mediation of his Son, our Lord. 
 what a ground of hope is there in that saying of an apostle, 
 that God is in Christ reconciling a guilty world unto Himself, not 
 imputing their trespasses unto them. In God I have placed my 
 eternal all; and into his hands I commend my spirit. 
 
 It was Samuel Brooks, a brother of Caleb Brooks, who 
 had married Sarah Boylston, who becomes the direct ances- 
 tor of Phillips Brooks. He left a son of the same name, 
 and in the generation that followed there was a third Samuel 
 Brooks, who became the father of Edward Brooks (1733- 
 1781). It was this last who broke the family record by en- 
 tering the ministry of the church. But it must be remarked 
 that his clerical career was a failure from the received point 
 of view of his age. He was settled over the church in North 
 Yarmouth, Maine. There he got into difficulty with his 
 parishioners, who thus formulated the cause of disagreement : 
 " We humbly conceive that your preaching among us has not 
 been agreeably to Calvinistic usage and therefore disagree- 
 able to the foundation that we understood you settled with 
 us upon and also disagreeable to our sentiments, and there- 
 fore matter of grievance to us." After unsuccessful attempts 
 had been made to overcome the difficulty by means of coun- 
 cils, the Eev. Edward Brooks resigned his office, in a letter 
 which breathes in its conclusion a Christian spirit : — 
 
 I now request you would grant me a dismission from my rela- 
 tion to you as your pastor, so that I may be relieved from my 
 ordination vows to serve you in that capacity. May God sanctify 
 it to you and to me and all other dispensations of his Providence. 
 
22 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 May you under his divine direction and blessing succeed in getting 
 another pastor to he set over you vcho shall feed you with spiritual 
 knowledge and understanding, who shall preach the Gospel to you 
 in that plainness and sivqMcity in which it ivas left by Christ 
 your teacher and Lord. May peace be restored and established 
 among you, and may you be built up in faith and in holiness and 
 in comfort with eternal life. 
 
 The time when tliis correspondence took place was the 
 middle of the eighteenth century. A conflict was then in its 
 first stages between what was known as Arminianism and 
 the Calvinistic theology hitherto dominant for the most part 
 in New England. Arminianism was a tendency to assert 
 the dignity of man and his divine endowment, while Calvin- 
 ism laid the stress ujjon human corruption and inability and 
 the sole action of God in salvation. The Arminians denied 
 the Calvinistic tenets of election and total depravity ; they 
 asserted the freedom of the will ; they put in the foreground 
 character and morality, as the ends of religion. With their 
 opponents the supreme issue was the attainment of an experi- 
 ence in the soul binding it in conscious relationship with God 
 as the source of all good. The Rev. Samuel Phillips of the 
 South Church in Andover was contemporaneous with the 
 Rev. Edward Brooks, and was contending against the move- 
 ment which the latter represented, on the ground that it was 
 dissolving the Puritan faith and practice. These two men 
 were representatives of their respective families, and also of 
 tendencies and issues in human thought, in theology, and 
 in life, which were destined to a yet sharper conflict and finally 
 to end in a schism among the churches in Massachusetts. 
 This Rev. Edward Brooks, the only clerical member of his 
 family, did not take another parish after his release from 
 North Yarmouth, but retired to Medford, living on the spot 
 where the Brooks mansion now stands. 
 
 "A high son of liberty," as he was called, he took an active 
 part in the Concord fight in 1775, and afterwards served his 
 country as chaplain of the frigate Hancock, where he was 
 captured and taken a prisoner to Halifax. Returnino- to 
 Medford after he was set free, he did not long survive, dying 
 
1 83 5] THE ANCESTRY 23 
 
 there at tlie age of forty-eight, in the year 1781. In his de- 
 votion to his country he may have found consolation for the 
 humiliation of his dismissal from the service of the church. 
 His marriage to Abigail Brown of Haverhill was important, 
 for she was the direct descendant of the Rev. John Cotton, 
 next to Governor Winthrop the most famous man in the early 
 annals of New England. He had been a foremost leader of 
 the Puritans in England, and his coming to this country in 
 1632 from Boston in Lincolnshire was regarded as a signal 
 favor of the Divine Providence. Standing as he does at the 
 beginnings of American history, he has now passed into 
 a mythical greatness. In England, he had been so highly 
 regarded for his learning and scholarship, his ability and 
 brilliancy as a teacher and lecturer, that Williams, Bishop of 
 Lincoln, when he became Keeper of the Great Seal, asked of 
 King James that a man of so much worth and learning might 
 have liberty of preaching, though he was a Nonconformist. 
 He was a voluminous writer, the author, it is said, of nearly 
 fifty books, which were sent to England to be printed. 
 Among these his little book, "Milk for Babes," — a title 
 which has sometimes seemed like a misnomer to his descend- 
 ants, — was for a while bound up with the New England Cate- 
 chism. He was invited to take part in the deliberations of 
 the Westminster Assembly, but declined. It was he to whom 
 the General Court assigned the task of making an abstract 
 of the Mosaic Laws adapted for the use of the colony. But 
 his conception of a theocracy was too ideal, too rigid, to be 
 acceptable ; it magnified too much the power of the magis- 
 trate, giving to the state the absolute control of opinion, and 
 punishing heresy with death. Yet, on the other hand, he 
 sympathized with Anne Hutchinson and supj^orted her, when 
 the prevailing sentiment was against her ; but he was so great 
 a man that no action could be taken against him. After- 
 wards, however, he changed his opinion and took sides with 
 her opponents. Anne Hutchinson had said of him that he 
 was the only minister who was under "a covenant of grace," 
 but others of the same following compared him to a light in 
 a dark lantern, because he did not go far enough. Although 
 
24 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 he was famous for his Hebrew and other learning, yet in the 
 pulpit of the First Church of Boston, of which he was the 
 teacher, he was marked by great simplicity. His custom 
 was to expound the Scriptures in their order, and he was 
 halfway through his second exposition of the entire Bible 
 when he died. A monumental tablet was erected to him in 
 St. Botolph's Church in 1857, with a Latin inscription writ- 
 ten by Edward Everett, who had married one of his descend- 
 ants. Of this man, who has been called the Patriarch of 
 New England, Abigail Brown, who married the Rev. Edward 
 Brooks, was the great-granddaughter, as she was also the 
 great-grandmother of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 At the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the First 
 Church in Boston in the year 1880, Phillips Brooks was called 
 upon, as the descendant of the Kev. John Cotton, to speak 
 of his distinguished ancestor : — 
 
 I should like to say something of the impression which this 
 celebration of John Cotton makes upon one of his descendants. 
 My connection with my very great-grandfather is so remote that 
 I may venture to speak of him without hesitation. I am so full 
 of the pleasure in life, and so full of the sense that that pleasure 
 is very much increased by its being my happiness to live in Boston, 
 that I cannot but be grateful to him who had a great deal to do 
 with my living at all, and a great deal to do with making Boston 
 what it is for a man to live in. I am not sure that he would ac- 
 cept of his representative, I am not sure that if he saw me stand- 
 ing here and speaking any words in his praise, and knew exactly 
 where I was standing, there might not be some words rising to 
 his lips, that would show that neither I nor you were wholly what 
 he could approve. . . . John Cotton, in the life to which he has 
 passed, now looks deeper and looks wider, and we have a right to 
 enter into communion with the spirit of the man, and not simply 
 with his specific opinions or the ways in which he worshipped. . . . 
 It would be a terrible thing, it would narrow our life and make it 
 very meagre, if we had no right to honor and to draw inspiration 
 from any men except those we agree with and who would approve 
 of us. ... A man who stands as this man stands at the beginning 
 of the history of a nation or a town is an everlasting benefactor to 
 tlie town or nation. . . . And I tliank him, as a Cliurch of Eng- 
 land man, as a man loving the Episcopal Church with all my 
 heart, I thank liim for being a Puritan.' 
 
 1 Commemoration Services of First Cliurch in Boston, 1880. 
 
i83s] THE ANCESTRY 25 
 
 The wife of Rev. Edward Brooks, as was becoming in a 
 descendant of Eev. John Cotton, retained for the ministry 
 something of the ancient reverence, despite her husband's ex- 
 perience. But with their father's failure before them, it was 
 hardly to be expected that his sons should choose the ministry 
 as their profession. The stream of tendency in the Brooks 
 family returned to its earlier and wonted channel when the 
 two sons of Edward Brooks, who bore the names of Cotton 
 Brown Brooks (1765-1834) and Peter Chardon Brooks (1767- 
 1849), went into business and became successful merchants, 
 one in Portland and the other in Boston. When they were 
 still boys, or young men, they must have heard the echoes of 
 the controversy which was then advancing to sharp issues in 
 the New England churches. When the Eev. David Osgood 
 was called by the town and by the church in 1774 to be the 
 pastor in Medford, there were a few dissentient votes, and 
 among them was Rev. Edward Brooks and another member 
 of the same family. The ground of their opposition was the 
 Calvinistic theology of Dr. Osgood. In his confession of 
 faith before the congregation, he had maintained the doctrine 
 of God as the sovereign will of the universe, decreeing all 
 events and things, and as existing (though in a manner above 
 his comprehension) in a Trinity of persons — Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost, the doctrine also of total depravity, and in 
 a word the teaching of the Westminster Assembly, as con- 
 sonant with the Scriptures, the oracles of God. To this 
 teaching the members of the Brooks family were not only 
 opposed, but they did all in their power to make his settle- 
 ment in Medford impossible. It is to their credit, however, 
 that, when their resistance failed, a letter was sent to the new 
 pastor, signed by them, declaring that their opposition was 
 over, they acquiesced in the situation, and stood ready to 
 attend his ministry and aid him in his work.-' 
 
 Towns also, like families, perpetuate characteristics and 
 distinctive qualities. Andover and Medford may stand as 
 types of communities ; handing down through the generations 
 the dominant purpose of their foimders and influential men. 
 
 ^ Brooks : History of Medford, p. 24] . 
 
26 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 Dr. Osgood began his ministry as one of the stricter sort of 
 Calvinists, and ended it as one of the Liberal or Arminian 
 School which was to be known in its later days as Unitarian. 
 The influence of his predecessors in the church at Medford 
 had been in that direction. They had refused to recognize 
 the Separatists in the days of the Great Awakening, they did 
 not think it was necessary to call for a statement of religious 
 experience on the part of those joining the church. Even 
 Dr. Osgood carried with him the germs of liberalism at the 
 time when he was holding most stringently to the tenets of 
 Calvinism, for he believed that the Scriptures were addressed 
 to the human reason, and he would study the Bible for him- 
 self unbiassed by the decisions of others. Under the influ- 
 ence of these motives, under the subtle, imponderable influ- 
 ence of the age and his own community, he was changing 
 his attitude towards the "doctrines of grace," and during his 
 long and powerful ministry he was leading his congregation 
 with him. One of the lines of division at this time among 
 the Massachusetts clergy, years before the schism, was drawn 
 at the j)oint whether or not it was necessary to a minister's 
 work that he should have an interest in and have reached 
 conclusions about questions of theology. At the moment 
 when Andover was deepening its interest in theology and its 
 issues, Dr. Osgood was tending in the other direction. This 
 was the first dividing line. Dr. Osgood for a long time re- 
 fused to speak upon these questions, and it was generally as- 
 sumed in the early years of the nineteenth century (1806) 
 that he still belonged with the conservative school of the Old 
 Calvinists. But he is a strong man, as it has been said, who 
 can conceal his convictions. Dr. Osgood was not strong 
 enough in his later years to conceal the conclusions towards 
 which he had been gravitating. He had given up the doc- 
 trine of total depravity: "Men," he said, "are wicked 
 enough, but not totally depraved. Devils are not totally 
 evil. Li hell there are no barbers' shops; no devil there 
 dare trust his throat with another ; whereas, men on earth do 
 so trust each other safely." And again he had offered in 
 1819 a conundrum in connection with Mr. Wisner's appoint- 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 27 
 
 ment over the Old South Churcli in Boston : " Why will his 
 creed be like a lighted candle? Because the longer it lives, 
 the shorter it will be." And further to some one seeking a 
 private answer in regard to his theological positioia in the 
 year 1819, the same year in which Dr. Channing preached 
 his famous Baltimore sermon, he asked, "How far is it from 
 here to Andover Institution?" and was answered, "About 
 seventeen miles." "How far is it from here to the Cam- 
 bridge Theological Institution? " "About four miles." 
 "Well," said he, "I have been thinking that is just about 
 my theological position with regard to the two schools." ^ 
 
 Under these influences the sons of Rev. Edward Brooks 
 came in Medford, and thus passed over into the ranks of 
 Unitarianism. Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks, the younger son, 
 was a warm and generous sujjporter of the church at Medford 
 imder Dr. Osgood's ministry. The Phillips family and the 
 Brooks family, which had been in contact for a moment in 
 the earliest history of Watertown, were now coming together 
 again in a closer relationship. For Peter Chardon Brooks 
 of Medford and John PhillijDS of Andover were brothers-in- 
 law, having married sisters, the daughters of Mr. Nathaniel 
 Gorham of Charlestown. The contrast, but the resemblance 
 also, between these two men, is suggestive and striking. 
 While Mr. John Phillips was associated with his mother in 
 founding the Andover Theological Seminary, thus alienating 
 from his family the property which would have been his own, 
 Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks was giving his close attention to 
 business, with economy and perseverance joined with strictest 
 integrity, and laying the foundations of what came to be 
 thought a princely fortune. At his death in 1849 he was 
 reputed the richest man in Boston. Mr. John Phillips was 
 one of those who were interested in theology, and in the 
 maintenance unimpaired of the Puritan theological heritage. 
 He did not, indeed, share in those theological refinements 
 known as Hopkinsianism, though he gave his consent to their 
 recognition in the Constitution of the Andover Seminary. 
 But for theology his brother-in-law had no taste or sympathy. 
 
 1 Brooks : History of Medford, p. 245. 
 
28 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 The life of Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks has been sketched by 
 the late Eev. O. B. Frothingham, who was his grandson and 
 had access to his journals. ^ He presents him as the example 
 of the Unitarian layman of the period (1820-1850), industri- 
 ous, honest, faithful in all relations of life, charitable, public- 
 spirited, intelligent, sagacious, mingling the prudence of the 
 man of affairs with the faith of the Christian. But of him 
 and the men of whom he was a type, it is added that while 
 they possessed these high qualities, "integrity, conscientious- 
 ness, directness of dealing, reverence for learning and for 
 piety, punctiliousness of demeanor and urbanity," qualities 
 inherited from ancient Puritan ancestry, yet "they were not 
 reformers or ascetics or devotees. All idealists were vision- 
 aries in their esteem. Those who looked for a 'kingdom of 
 heaven' were dreamers." And further, "they went to church, 
 they had family prayers as a rule, though by no means uni- 
 versally. It was customary to say grace at meat. They 
 wished they were holy enough to adorn the communion ; they 
 believed the narrations in the Bible, Old Testament and 
 New."^ Of Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks more particularly, 
 "he was simply a merchant, coining money as he had oppor- 
 tunity, buying land, making investments, sending out cargoes, 
 negotiating bonds, pursuing a just course, yet he did his full 
 share of public good and left a name that his descendants are 
 proud to bear." At the root of the confidence he won in the 
 community lay character, for that is the basis of confidence, 
 which can be won and held only by character. 
 
 Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks kept a journal, as was then the 
 custom, but it was not a record of religious experiences. 
 Something of his inner life appears, however, in these daily 
 entrances. He keeps an account of his charities, felicitating 
 himself on the pleasure they give him, wishing that he could 
 be more generous and open-handed with his money, but ac- 
 knowledging that it costs him an effort to give. He explains 
 this infirmity as sjDringing from the fact that he had made his 
 money by assiduous effort. He frankly confesses to himself 
 
 1 Cf. Boston JJnitarianism, 1820-1850. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 93, 94. 
 
1835] THE ANCESTRY 29 
 
 that the evil of great wealth is the tendency to regard it as 
 an end rather than a means. Those who have inherited for- 
 tunes can part with tliem more easily for ideal ends. He 
 thinks that the possession of money rarely makes us better. 
 And yet he sees a virtue in this devotion to money-getting, 
 for it affords a stimulus and keeps men from idleness. But 
 honesty and integrity are everywhere apparent. He was not 
 a man that could do anything that was mean. He acknow- 
 ledged the claims of family relationship, and was moved by 
 cases of individual need. The element of gratitude to a 
 higher power is not wanting, but it does not seem to ojJerate 
 as a motive. There is religion here, but it is of a different 
 type from that of a doctrinal Puritan, with whom the future 
 world and its interests outweigh in importance the usages of 
 the existing order. Here the religion is mingled with the 
 business of common life, and no effort is made to disengage it 
 as something distinct from and above the medium of its 
 manifestation. 
 
 Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks is entitled to this special men- 
 tion because for a moment, and that an important one, he stood 
 in loco parentis to William Gray Brooks and Mary Ann 
 Phillips, the father and mother of Phillips Brooks. For 
 William Gray Brooks was a son of an older brother of Peter 
 Chardon Brooks, who bore the name of Cotton Brown Brooks, 
 and became a resident of Portland, Maine. He, too, was 
 a man of business capacity, with a high ideal of the duties of 
 citizenship and filling places of honor and trust in the com- 
 munity where he lived. When William Gray Brooks, his 
 son, who was born in 1805, had reached the age of nineteen, 
 he came to Boston to seek his fortunes and was hospitably 
 received by his uncle at whose house in Medford or in Boston 
 he was a frequent visitor. Here he met Mary Ann Phillips, 
 who was likewise a frequent and welcome visitor, for Mr. 
 Peter Chardon Brooks was also her uncle, having married her 
 mother's sister. To her the change from the old homestead 
 in North Andover, with its restricted income since her fa- 
 ther's death, and with its growing isolation, must have been 
 a delight and an emancipation. It brought her into social 
 
30 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1630 
 
 relationships with all that was most attractive and elevating 
 in the growing city of Boston. Her cousins, for Mr. Peter 
 Chardon Brooks was the father of a large family of sons and 
 daughters, were all richly endowed hy nature, each of them 
 opening up new avenues of influence and expansion for the 
 family. One of these cousins had married Edward Everett, 
 for a time a Unitarian minister, then distinguished as a 
 scholar, an orator, and a statesman. Another had married 
 Charles Francis Adams, the son and the grandson of Presi- 
 dents of the United States, and himself destined in his own 
 right to high honor, as the United States Minister to Eng- 
 land in the late civil war. Still another cousin was married 
 to Rev. N. L. Frothingham, who held the position of minis- 
 ter of the First Church in Boston, and in Dr. Channing's 
 opinion to be a Unitarian minister in Boston in those days 
 was the height of human honor and felicity. The sons also of 
 Peter Chardon Brooks, — Edward, Gorham, Peter Chardon, 
 Jr., and Sydney, inherited the enduring gifts of family de- 
 scent, energy, and enterprise, coupled with integrity, insight 
 into opportunities of wealth, and influence. Into relationship 
 with this family of social distinction and rich endowments 
 came Mary Ann Phillips, bringing with her equal gifts and 
 rare virtues, but possessing a distinct power and quality, 
 whose greatness was not yet revealed. As a young girl she 
 endeared herself to her relations by the earnestness of her 
 character and the sweetness of her disposition. 
 
D 
 
 O 
 
 W 
 X 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BIKTH AND EARLY LIFE. THE TRANSITION TO THE EPIS- 
 COPAL CHURCH. THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL 
 
 William Gray Brooks and Mary Ann Phillips were 
 married at the homestead in North Andover in 1833. On 
 coming to Boston they set up their new household at No. 56 
 j High Street, then a street of residences, but long since given 
 
 J up to business. Near by, on the corner of Pearl and High 
 
 streets, was the home of their uncle, Peter Chardon Brooks. 
 Fort Hill, in the immediate vicinity, since levelled and no 
 ji longer existing except in memory, was then a fashionable 
 
 ; centre of old Boston. The South End and the Back Bay 
 
 f were yet to appear, and the Public Garden was not dreamed 
 
 i of. The limit of the city was Boylston Street on the south 
 
 and Charles Street on the west. Tremont Street, bordering 
 j on the Common, Winter and Summer streets, and Temple 
 
 (■ Place were still occupied with private residences. Within 
 
 ' this district were the churches : the First Church in Chauncy 
 
 j Place, Dr. Channing's Church on Federal Street, and the 
 
 i Second Church on Hanover Street; the Brattle Street Church 
 
 ; was still convenient to its congregation, as was King's Chapel. 
 
 j: Trinity Church stood on Summer Street; and the new St. 
 
 i Paul's Church on Tremont Street, opposite the Common, was 
 
 \ then regarded as an architectural adornment of the city. 
 
 1 Into this modest household on High Street, with its un- 
 
 conscious accumulation of ancestral tendencies and forces, we 
 j are now privileged to enter. Three of the children were born 
 
 ! there, of whom Phillips Brooks was the second. His birth- 
 
 j day was December 13, 1835. His older brother was named 
 
 ' after his father, William Gray Brooks, Jr., and his younger 
 
 brother was named George, after the first Phillips ancestor. 
 In 1842 the family removed to No. 3 Eowe Street, a con- 
 
32 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1835 
 
 tinuation of Chauncy Place. The change was necessitated 
 partly by the encroachments of business, and in part by the 
 needs of a larger house for the growing family. Rowe Street 
 has since disappeared from the map of Boston, merged into 
 Chauncy Street, which includes also the extension of Chauncy 
 Place to Summer Street. When Rowe Street was finally 
 demanded by the expansion of trade, the family moved once 
 more and took up its abode in Hancock Street. In the home 
 on Rowe Street the three younger sons were born, Frederick 
 Brooks, Arthur Brooks, and John Cotton Brooks. 
 
 A marked characteristic of the Brooks household was its 
 intense family feeling, — a glad recognition of that mysterious 
 bond which unites the members in living organic relation- 
 ship. To this result its isolation contributed, for it did not 
 enter from the first the world of fashionable society, but 
 devoted its somewhat limited resources to its own interior 
 develoj)ment. The education of the children became the 
 supreme motive. The home life shut them xxp with the 
 parents as in some sacred enclosure, a nursery for great op- 
 portunities in the future. This family life was also extended 
 into the church, where the family met in its pew as a family 
 in the divine presence. It is one of the gifts of the much- 
 derided eighteenth century, this family feeling it bequeathed, 
 symbolized by the pewing of the churches, which to this later 
 age has seemed incongruous and sometimes threatens to dis- 
 appear. Great changes in civilization are sometimes trace- 
 able in what seem like trifling alterations in ecclesiastical 
 furniture. When the pew first appeared, and not without 
 remonstrance,^ it was a square high box, whose purpose was 
 manifest, not so much for the convenience of seating the con- 
 gregation, as for the exclusive use and distinct recognition 
 
 ' Pews were not tolerated at first in the meeting-honse at Medford. Their 
 origin dates May 25, 1R96, when a petition was presented by a prominent mem- 
 ber of the congregation for permissicm to build a pew, and the liberty was 
 given by the town. 
 
 But when another gentleman asked the same permission, the petition was 
 granted on the condition that he must take into his pew one or two persons, not 
 belonging to his family, whom the town may name. (Cf. Brooks : History of 
 Medford, p. 328.) 
 
^T. i] EARLY LIFE ^^ 
 
 of the family life. Then came the long pew, still, however, 
 with its high walls, from within which, when seated, the con- 
 gregation was not visible. Next followed the lowering of 
 these divisions, till the pew, while it still enclosed the family, 
 no longer separated it as by an impassable barrier, and the 
 congregation saw itself as a whole. If the same movement 
 continues, there may be a return to the use before the Eefor- 
 mation, when pews were unknown, and when also family life 
 in its higher and diviner capacities was yet to be revealed. 
 In these changes, if there has been a gain in one direction, 
 there has been a loss in another. The family has not been 
 strengthened, but rather weakened by the sociological tend- 
 ency of the age, whose drift is to set forth humanity as one 
 great whole. There were infelicities, of course, and limita- 
 tions in the family life, as it is presented, for example, in the 
 literature of the time. But in this family where Phillips 
 Brooks grew up, its nobler aspect was predominant and un- 
 sullied, the father and mother ruling with diligence and 
 unquestioned authority, while beneath their authority runs 
 the eternal principle of self-sacrifice, till they seem to live 
 only for the welfare of the children. They appear as inter- 
 ested, not so much for themselves in the increase of their 
 own joy in life or in their own cultivation, as in making 
 a larger life possible for the children whom God had given 
 them. 
 
 It need hardly be said that this was a religious family. 
 The usage of family prayer was rigidly observed, in the 
 morning before going forth to the work of the day, and again 
 in the evening at nine o'clock. The evenings were spent by 
 the whole family together around the common table in the 
 "back parlor," the father busy at the many literary tasks 
 which his interests and ingenuity imposed on his leisure; the 
 mother with her sewing, and with her deeper meditations, 
 and the boys at their books prei^aring the lesson for the next 
 day. Visitors came in occasionally for a call or to spend 
 the evening, but this was rare; the avocations of the family 
 were pursued without interruptions. There was abundance 
 of hilarity, and boisterous demonstration of the natural glad- 
 
34 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1835 
 
 ness with which the whole family was endowed, but the un- 
 dercurrent flowed in a deep-set channel of serious and direct 
 endeavor. This home for the children was interesting, but 
 not monotonous or dull. The boys did not fret at exclusion 
 from richer interests in the world outside or long to escape 
 the narrow routine. The evenings at home were made at- 
 tractive in some way, the newest books were read aloud, the 
 fulfilment of duty was in itself a pleasure. But the concen- 
 tration of parental love upon the children, undiluted by dis- 
 tractions without or by personal aims, must after all have 
 been the secret of the charm which bound the children to 
 their home. Such a sacrifice had its reward. The home be- 
 came to the children their choicest treasure, to which they 
 fondly reverted in after years, when its diviner meaning was 
 more apparent. When Phillips Brooks left home for the 
 first time he was followed by the letters which always assured 
 him that he was constantly remembered, and never at any 
 moment forgotten. He responded to this affection, by carry- 
 ing about with him the memory of the home circle as a pic- 
 ture stamped ujjon his soul in colors ineffaceable. At heart 
 he always remained a "child in the household" until father 
 and mother were withdrawn from the world. The vision of 
 that dear, unworldly, self-sacrificing life was always before 
 him at home or in his wanderings abroad, nearer to him 
 than any other experience. 
 
 More important than the fixing of the domicile was the 
 determination of the religious question and the choice of a 
 place of worship. The religious problem was sure to arise 
 and call for adjustment under ordinary circumstances. But 
 the situation in this family was peculiar, demanding that the 
 issue be thoroughly probed. The father was a typical repre- 
 sentative of the Brooks family with its devotion to affairs, its 
 predominant interest in this present world, religious also and 
 reverent in his inmost spirit, but not given to introversive- 
 ness or contemplation, nor seeking the assurance of some 
 deeper religious experience. He, too, like his ancestors, 
 illustrated and enforced the gospel of the secular life, the 
 faithful performance of duty, the quick recognition of every 
 
«T. i] EARLY LIFE 35 
 
 obligation. He was from the first what he always remained, 
 a true and genuine citizen, alive to civic and social relation- 
 ships, with a sympathy and appreciation for all things human, 
 with a gift for the manifold detail of life and an imagination 
 stirred by patriotic appeal. He watched with keenest inter- 
 est every change or movement affecting the interests of 
 Boston, he studied men in their relation to their times, and 
 his judgment was characterized by a sanity that was perfect 
 and rare. He had been brought under the influences which 
 were tending towards what was to be known as Unitarianism, 
 and was ready to identify himself with that movement, al- 
 though he was no controversialist, and nowhere expresses 
 himself as moved by a reactionary spirit towards the dominant 
 purpose of the ancient doctrinal Puritanism. But he iden- 
 tified himself with Boston, and those were the days when it 
 almost seemed as if Boston were identified with Unitarianism. 
 The mother of Phillips Brooks represented another and 
 different tendency. From her earliest childhood she had 
 been made familiar with the ancestral history of the Phillips 
 family, and more than others in her country home she had 
 pondered these things in her heart. She knew the work and 
 character of each generation of the family, finding no diffi- 
 culty in distinguishing from each other the many Samuels, 
 from Samuel Phillips of Rowley to Samuel who founded the 
 institutions on Andover Hill. She studied the letters and 
 other documents of her grandmother, Phoebe Foxcroft, who, 
 with her own father, had combined in planting the Andover 
 Theological Seminary ; she was no stranger to the purpose 
 for which that school of the prophets stood, — to maintain the 
 old faith in its purity and its integrity. Her mind was not 
 theological, but it was intensely religious, and her religion 
 moved in the grooves of the ancient piety. Her power of 
 feeling and emotion was the source of her knowledge, for she 
 was no wide, discvirsive reader. She had a deei? interior 
 life of the soul, whose phases were more real and vital than 
 the phenomena of the passing world. Religion to her was a 
 life in Christ and hidden with Christ in God. If her range of 
 interests seemed narrow in comparison with the large, genial. 
 
^6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1835 
 
 human outlook of her husband, yet her asjiiration, her ambi- 
 tion, had a world-wide scope, for she would have all men 
 everywhere brought under the control of her dominant pur- 
 pose. The subject that most absorbed her imagination was 
 foreign missions, about which she kept herself informed and 
 for whose success she hungered and prayed. She had, too, 
 a powerful will for the accomplishment of great ends, though 
 the sphere was restricted for its manifestation. The study 
 of her family history afforded her a picture of life, where 
 tragedies in the loss of children had saddened its successive 
 generations. She brooded over the letters which revealed 
 these unspeakable depths of human sorrow, with the infer- 
 ence that life was vanity apart from the knowledge and the 
 love of God. Something' of the sadness which had become 
 a family characteristic was written on her features, the face 
 of one subdued by the possibilities of infinite loss in an 
 uncertain world. 
 
 When the father and mother with these contrasted tenden- 
 cies and dispositions, which yet were supplementary to each 
 other, set up their home in Boston, they took the First Church 
 in Boston, then situated in Chauncy Place, as their place of 
 worship. Its situation was convenient; there also their uncle, 
 Mr. Peter Chardon Brooks, was an attendant, and the pastor. 
 Rev. N. L. Frothingham, was a near kinsman, having mar- 
 ried their cousin. Then also Mr. William Gray Brooks was 
 a lineal descendant in the seventh generation of that John 
 Cotton who had been the j^astor of this church at its founda- 
 tion, — a consideration of no slight importance. To have 
 gone elsewhere would also have seemed like a sundering of 
 family ties. The First Church, it may be added, was strong 
 in the number and character of its adherents ; it. was reputed 
 to be the wealthiest church in Boston ; its members were 
 also marked in an unusual degree by literary culture, and 
 by social and political prominence. 
 
 At this time, in 1833, the schism had been completed 
 between the Trinitarian and the Unitarian parties in the 
 churches of Massachusetts. Exactly when the lines were 
 sharply drawn which divided them is uncertain. Those who 
 
^T. i] EARLY LIFE 37 
 
 were afterwards to be known as Unitarians do not seem to be 
 conscious of any breach in their ecclesiastical relations or in 
 their religious faith. They did not at first wish to be known 
 as Unitarians, but rather avoided the name. They would 
 have remained if it were possible in fellowship with their 
 brethren, who retained the doctrinal tenets against which they 
 protested. Silent influences had been at work for several 
 generations, the spirit of the eighteenth century, in relaxing 
 the hold of many upon the doctrines of original sin, of elec- 
 tion and conversion, of future endless punishment, and finally 
 of the Trinity. But, when what is known as Ilopkinsianism 
 arose, a movement characterized by intenser and more logical 
 assertion of the Calvinistic theology, then the liberal school, 
 as it may be called, became more deeply conscious of the gulf 
 which divided them from their brethren. After Dr. Channing 
 had preached his famous sermon in 1819, at Baltimore, defin- 
 ing in a dogmatic fashion the principles on which the liberal 
 churches stood, the schism was practically completed, and 
 Unitariauism became a distinct ecclesiastical body. 
 
 Dr. N. L. Frothingham belonged in spirit to an earlier 
 generation than Dr. Channing. In his time, transcenden- 
 talism was not as yet, nor the literary renaissance whose mo- 
 tive was romanticism. He was well read and a good student, 
 an attractive preacher, but we may detect his type as a man 
 and as a thinker when we are told that he disliked Coleridge, 
 and Wordsworth, and Shelley. His religion was based upon 
 sentiment or feeling, but it was never allowed to degenerate, 
 as it would have been thought, into enthusiasm. No stress 
 was laid upon the intellectual process in its relation to faith; 
 speculative conclusions were disavowed in the interest of "a 
 lovely disposition and a virtuous purpose and a heart that is 
 right before God and man." These were the catchwords of 
 his religious teaching. In his comment uj^on his father's 
 preaching, the late Rev. O. B. Frothingham remarks: "It 
 was not calcidated to form heroic virtues, courage, boldness, 
 fortitude, consecration, self-surrender, sacrifice, passionate 
 enthusiasm, devotion to a cause that seemed righteous, but it 
 was relied on to foster the gentler qualities of trust, hope. 
 
38 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1839 
 
 patience, gratitude, submission, the love that casts out fear. 
 The building up of personal character in courtesy, diligence, 
 generosity, was the object, not the formation of correct 
 opinions." ^ 
 
 This earlier type of Unitarianism represented by Dr. 
 Frothingham had its creed, or at least its rule of faith. It 
 professed a deep reverence for Holy Scripture as the authority 
 for religious faith, and it held also to the person of Christ 
 as in some undefined but original manner the founder of an 
 absolute religion. It continued to speak of the work of the 
 Holy Spirit in the soul. It was anxious to assert the charac- 
 ter of God as the Father, in ways which should overcome the 
 thraldom of superstition and terror. But already changes 
 were threatening this moderate and sober attitude ; Dr. 
 Channing was preaching the validity of the natural reason 
 and conscience of man, as the foundation of religious author- 
 ity, rather than the letter and the text of Scripture, rousing 
 an enthusiasm for humanitj^ and leading in efforts for the 
 abolition of slavery. Theodore Parker was soon to follow, 
 and with him an era of religious controversy. 
 
 Dr. Frothingham in his pulpit of the First Church in 
 Chauncy Place was not insensible to these coming changes. 
 He discerned the signs of the times. He deprecated the tend- 
 ency to "the apotheosis of human nature" as leading man 
 to "the last delusion, the worshi}) of himself." In 1835, on 
 the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of his ordination, he 
 preached a sermon, wherein he gave an account of the reli- 
 gious movement in New England and of his own theological 
 position. "This," he said, "is known by the name of the 
 Unitarian controversy, and in so naming it, I believe that I 
 am giving utterance, for the first time in this desk, to that 
 party word." This abstention from the use of the name 
 Unitarianism he took to be the illustration of the attitude of 
 his people. But he went on to define his position, and that 
 of his congregation, in the years when the schism was in 
 progress : — 
 
 We silently assumed the ground, or rather found ourselves 
 1 Boston Unitarianism, pp. 41, 42. 
 
JET. 3] EARLY LIFE 39 
 
 standing upon it, that there was no warrant in the Scripture for 
 the idea of a threefold personality in the divine nature ; or for 
 that of atonement, according to the popular understanding of that 
 word; or for that of man's total corruption and inability; or for 
 that of an eternity of woe adjudged as the punishment of earthly 
 offences ; or indeed for any of the peculiar articles of that scheme 
 of faith which went under the name of the Genevan reformer. . . . 
 We have made more account of religious sentiment than of theo- 
 logical opinions.^ 
 
 The special interest here attaching to this sermon is that 
 the mother of Phillips Brooks may be supposed to have been 
 present when it was delivered, and if so a deeply interested 
 hearer, but already aware that she was far from being in 
 sympathy with the preacher's utterances. She had never 
 been identified with the Unitarian movement, although in 
 her uncle's family she enjoyed the society of those whose an- 
 tecedents differed so widely from her own. The church at 
 North Andover which her parents attended had indeed swung 
 into line with the liberal school in 1810, when the Eev. Bailey 
 Loring was ordained its pastor. He had been trained as an 
 Arminian, and the congregation was for the most part averse 
 to the rigid Calvinism, which was still accepted in the parish 
 of South Andover. Mr. Loring proved so attractive as a 
 preacher and pastor that for twenty -four years there was no 
 division in the congregation. But in 1834 the schism had 
 been manifested there by the creation of a new evangelical 
 church, as it was called, in which the dissentients from Mr. 
 Loring's teaching took refuge. Mrs. Brooks was therefore 
 familiar with the staple features of the controversy then going 
 on in the towns and villages of Massachusetts. She was at 
 this time twenty-seven years of age, already alive to the 
 coming responsibilities of training a family of children, and 
 more than ever inclined to look to the faith and examples of 
 her ancestors, as precedents which she preferred to follow. 
 She was not satisfied with the preaching of her kinsman and 
 pastor, Dr. Frothingham. The lines were being sharply 
 drawn in religious opinion, and she must have felt forced to 
 come to a decision. It was too much for her to be told that 
 
 1 Boston Unitarianism, p, 07. 
 
40 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1839 
 
 the religious faith of her ancestors, of her father and her 
 grandfather, who had founded the Andover Seminary for the 
 preservation and more vigorous maintenance of the system 
 known as Calvinistic, — that this faith had no warrant in 
 Scripture, as Dr. Frothingham had asserted in his commem- 
 oration discourse. The deep springs of her nature, her vast 
 capacity for loving devotion, her possibilities of boundless 
 enthusiasm, the intense and powerful will, the longing for 
 personal and immediate conscious relationship with God, the 
 desire to give herself in complete self-sacrifice to Christ as 
 Lord and supreme master, these deep religious instincts 
 found no satisfaction in the gentler but unheroic gospel, as 
 proclaimed by Dr. Frothingham. 
 
 It may have been the effect of the Unitarian atmosphere in 
 which she had moved, that in the readjustment of her ecclesi- 
 astical relations, she did not seek to return to the orthodox 
 party of the Congregational order. Or it may have been that 
 she was unwilling thus to defy the claims of society and 
 kindred with what would seem like a retrogressive step. Her 
 husband's feelings, too, were to be considered, as well as her 
 own. But there was the possibility of compromise in the Epis- 
 copal Church, where the old familiar gospel was preached, and 
 yet without the painful reminders of schism and contro- 
 versy. The Episcopal Church in Boston at this time was still 
 weak, just beginning to recover from the opprobrium of its 
 identification with the national Church of England. It pos- 
 sessed but three churches, Christ Church on Salem Street, or 
 the Old North Church as it was called. Trinity Church 
 on Summer Street, and the new St. Paul's, built in 1819, 
 on Tremont Street. To this latter Mrs. Brooks turned 
 her attention as affording the possibilities of a religious 
 home. 
 
 It might have seemed as though in throwing in her lot 
 with the Episcopal Church Mrs. Brooks was breaking vio- 
 lently and rudely with the Puritan traditions of two centu- 
 ries. Against its bishops and its liturgy, the Puritans had 
 made their protest, as unscriptural ; and this protest had 
 ripened into indignation when bishops became the agents of 
 
^T. 3] EARLY LIFE 41 
 
 the crown for enforcing the obnoxious Book of Common 
 Prayer. But all this had now become a thing of the remote 
 past, with which she was unfamiliar. It was to her mind a 
 greater break with the jjast, a more violent wrench to sacred 
 feelings of reverence, to be told that the creed of her ances- 
 tors had no warrant in Scripture. It was fortunate, there- 
 fore, for her that she came into contact with the Episcopal 
 Church at a moment when the type of religion and of reli- 
 gious life for which she yearned was represented ably and 
 eloquently by what is known as the Evangelical or the Low 
 Church School. This movement, or party, which dates back 
 in the Church of England to the time of Whitefield, was at 
 this moment in the fulness of its influence. The word "evan- 
 gelical" had come into use in the eighteenth century to de- 
 scribe that phase of religion which embraced certain ecclesi- 
 astical bodies, Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist, and 
 Barptist, in one common purpose, — the gospel of Christ, as 
 consisting in deliverance from sin and from penalty through 
 the atonement upon the cross. It was not primarily an intel- 
 lectual movement, whose aim was the adjustment of theolo- 
 gical tenets, but rather an intensely practical purpose. Its 
 adherents alike agreed in teaching the necessity of conversion 
 as the first step in the religious life. It enforced also the 
 cultus of an inward experience of the divine life in the soul, 
 magnifying the person of Christ as the motive power of 
 Christian development, through conscious union with whom 
 alone could salvation be secured. 
 
 It was a propitious moment for Mrs. Brooks that she turned 
 to the Episcopal Church when this teaching was heard in 
 many of its most influential pulpits. Dr. John S. Stone was 
 then the rector of St. Paul's Church, afterwards to become 
 the first Dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cam- 
 bridge. He was a representative and foremost champion of 
 the evangelical attitude. As a preacher, he was strong and 
 eloquent, one of the pulpit orators of his day, and with an 
 inspired gift of exhortation which moved deeply the hearts 
 of his hearers. His presence in the pulpit was in itself 
 almost a sermon, for he was a singularly handsome man and 
 
42 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1839 
 
 gifted witli a most winning address. Under his ministrations 
 St. Paul's Church prospered exceedingly, his influence was 
 great, and he was much beloved. 
 
 To Dr. Stone, then, Mrs. Brooks turned in her perplexity. 
 Many and long and anxious were the conversations which she 
 held with him, for the issues at stake were momentous. There 
 was the Prayer Book to be studied and explained, usages also, 
 and polity, for she was determined to accept nothing against 
 her conscience or reason. Then, also, there was the baptism 
 of the children to be considered, the two elder of whom had 
 received the rite at the hands of Dr. Frothingham. There 
 may have been some misgivings at this point, for the third 
 son George had been baptized by another minister who 
 adhered to the orthodox Puritanism. On these points. Dr. 
 Stone gave wise and Catholic guidance. The baptism should 
 be allowed to stand, and was not to be repeated, for it had 
 not been baptism into any particular form of Christianity, 
 but into the sacred name, and the usage had been followed of 
 invoking the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thus without 
 the consciousness of any abandonment of what was essential 
 in the worship of her fathers, Mrs. Brooks, together with 
 her sister, Susan Phillips, was admitted into the Episcopal 
 Church. This was in the year 1839, when Phillips Brooks 
 was but four years old, unable to remember any earlier asso- 
 ciations than those connected with St. Paul's, as the church 
 of his infancy. 
 
 The husband and father does not appear as sharing at this 
 time in the religious difficulties which his wife felt so keenly ; 
 but in his journal he has recorded the event of the transition 
 from the First Church to St. Paul's. 
 
 October 18, 1839. 
 
 We have made an important movement this month so far as to 
 change our place of religious worship. We have now attended the 
 Rev. Dr. Frothingham's church in Chauncy Place since we were 
 married, just six years ; but wife was never much pleased with 
 Mr. F. 's liberal style of preaching, and after a good deal of con- 
 sideration and reflection we concluded to change, and we have got 
 a pew at St. Paul's (Fpiscopalian), where Rev. Dr. Stone officiates. 
 It is at all times unpleasant changing our habits and places of 
 
^T. 4] EARLY LIFE 43 
 
 resort. For myself, I feel myself attached to the Unitarian 
 Church, having heen brought up to that doctrine ; but at the same 
 time I cannot say I have so much repugnance to the Ortliodox 
 sect as many have; the example of one of the best mothers would 
 forbid it. Being, therefore, as I myself say, indifferent, I gave 
 up my inclinations and prejudices for my old place of worship to 
 gratify that of my wife. Certain it is that women make religion 
 more a matter of conscience and the heart than men do. On 
 many accounts I regretted leaving Dr. Frothingham's church. 
 
 One may detect iu this extract the wife's influence, as 
 though her husband were trying to bring himself to her point 
 of view, but not altogether with success. He had acquiesced, 
 he had sought to persuade himself that her estimate of Dr. 
 Frothingham's preaching was the true one, but it is evident 
 enough that his dominant mood was one of regret at the 
 change. Again, a year later, he makes another entrance in 
 his journal on this subject : — 
 
 November 1, 1840 (Sunday). 
 Beautiful pleasant day. Attended church for the first time for 
 eighteen weeks, — a length of time, I can truly say, I never was 
 absent before since I was old enough to attend. It is now about 
 a year since we began to attend at the Episcopal Church. It was 
 quite a change to make both in the manner of the service and in 
 the matter and sentiment that are preached. But I cannot say I 
 regret the change on that account. Dr. Stone, the rector of St. 
 Paul's, is a sound preacher, and a good sermonizer, at times rather 
 too argumentative, but this ought not to be considered an objec- 
 tion of consequence. The morning service is rather long, and to 
 one not much interested is at times tedious, but the afternoon ser- 
 vice is a very agreeable one. But with these objections I feel no 
 wish to go back to the dull and dry services of the Unitarian 
 Church we left. 
 
 As the years go on the journal gives evidence of a deeper 
 personal interest in the church of his adoption. When Dr. 
 Stone resigned the charge of St. Paul's, it was to be suc- 
 ceeded by Eev. A. H. Vinton, who continued his work with 
 great power. The first appearance and sermon of Dr. Vinton 
 made an impression upon Mr. Brooks. He witnessed also a 
 confirmation service, and was struck with its beauty and sig- 
 nificance. On Christmas Day, 1846, he remarks: — 
 
44 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1846 
 
 The day has been more observed as a holiday than I have ever 
 before seen it in this city. Nearly all the places of business of 
 the merchants of India, Long, Central, and the other principal 
 wharves and tlie wholesale stores of Milk Street and vicinity were 
 closed throughout the day; the Insurance offices of State Street 
 also. St. Paul's Church was very crowded. The sermon was by 
 Bishop Potter of Pennsylvania, formerly Rector of the Church. 
 Among the auditors I noticed a clergyman of the Orthodox, Bap- 
 tist, and Unitarian societies, which shows that the bitterness of 
 sectarianism is giving way ; and no better proof of it can be want- 
 ing than the increase of the observance of this holy day. A very 
 diiferent feeling prompted the Puritans to enact a law that "any 
 found in the observance of Christmas should be fined live shil- 
 lings." This was about 1650. 
 
 A few months later there is this impressive entry in his 
 jom-nal: — 
 
 Sunday, May 30, 1847. 
 To record my thoughts of this day would be an utter impos- 
 sibility. My actions may be easier recorded, and may the thought 
 that they are also recorded elsewhere be a high motive to stimu- 
 late me to always keep the actions and feelings of this day in 
 view, never to lose sight of the principles which actuated me to 
 go forward as I did this day and join in the rite of confirmation 
 at St. Paul's Church. It is taking a great responsibility, and I 
 sliould say a fearful one, if I relied only on my own powers to 
 keep it. But there is a higher power to aid us, to assist us ; if 
 we but ask in faith, we shall receive the assistance needed. This 
 act is by no sudden impulse of feeling with me, but by the gradual 
 and long course of attention to the subject, and finally, by the 
 grace of God so operating on my heart as to view it as a duty 
 and an act of filial reverence and affection. The rite was per- 
 formed by Rev. Bishop Eastburn, and the class consisted of nine 
 persons, of whom I presume I was the eldest. In pursuing this 
 course I have been much assisted in advice by our rector, Rev. 
 Dr. Vinton, and for advice and encouragement no less to my dear 
 wife, who has been a member of this Church now seven years. 
 God grant that the union to both of us may be blessed, and that 
 hereafter we may walk together as one in Christ as our liead and 
 guide. 
 
 To this step Mr. Brooks refers again in his journal for 
 October 12, 1847, which was his birthday, as having made 
 the past year the most important in his life. The renewal of 
 
^T. 6] EARLY LIFE 45 
 
 the "vows made for me at baptism " gave him, as he says, a 
 deeper pleasure in life and an increased interest in all observ- 
 ances of religion. And again, on Christmas Day, 1847, he 
 writes : " Truly, the first Christmas I have ever spent as it 
 ought to be spent. For, though I have attended the services 
 of the Cluirch the past three or four years on that day, I have 
 never before attended that other and most comforting and 
 elevating accompaniment, the communion." 
 
 At the time when he took this step, Mr. Brooks had 
 reached the age of forty-two. The elder children must have 
 been present as thoughtful witnesses of the transaction, 
 Phillips Brooks being then a boy of twelve. We may also 
 picture the mother, now becoming anxious that her sons 
 should soon follow their father in this deed of self-consecra- 
 tion to the highest. To her it meant inexpressible depths 
 of religious feeling, gratitude, and hope, and yet the endless 
 solicitude. 
 
 The coming of Dr. Vinton to St. Paul's was a great event 
 in the Brooks family, destined to influence its fortunes in the 
 case of all the children, no less than the religious life and 
 belief of the parents. In the year 1842, when he began liis 
 rectorship, Phillips Brooks was six years old, and from 
 that time until he graduated from Harvard College and en- 
 tered upon the preparation for the ministry, he was under 
 the influence of this strong personality. Dr. Vinton had 
 a majestic appearance in the pulpit, the physical basis for 
 oratory. His voice corresponded with his appearance, strong, 
 rich, and full. As an imposing and manly representative 
 of the clerical profession, he was imaged in bronze upon the 
 Soldiers' Monument on Boston Common, in the act of blessing 
 the troops on their departure for the war. In the Episcopal 
 Church he stood as its foremost preacher, influential also in 
 its administrative councils. He, too, like Dr. Stone, was 
 of the evangelical school, enforcing the atonement of Christ 
 as the supreme doctrine of the gosjjel of deliverance, urging 
 also an inward conversion as the condition of its acceptance. 
 He was a man of an intellectual order, a logician, an earnest 
 apologist for the faith, keen to see the weakness or the 
 
46 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1842 
 
 inadequacy of an opponent's attitude. He had the evangelical 
 conception of the pastor's office. It was to him a great ideal, 
 which he had left the medical profession in order to serve. 
 He entered into close relations with the Brooks family, 
 becoming an integral part, as it were, of the life and career 
 of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Among the features of his ministry at St. Paul's, one of 
 the most important was a Bible class, where he explained 
 Christian doctrines, or commented on the Epistle and Gospel 
 for the day, or at times took up the books of Scripture. To 
 the sessions of this Bible class Mrs. Brooks went regularly, 
 going with a purpose, in order that she might better teach 
 her children. She gave to them in her own impressive way 
 what Dr. Vinton had given to her. In this task of teaching 
 her children religion she was diligent and indefatigable, 
 laboring with a concentrated purpose in season and out of 
 season, never for a moment forgetful of her mission, quick 
 to seize the passing moment which seemed fertile for oppor- 
 tunity, but withal gentle and alluring, and making religion 
 attractive. The children's earliest remembrance of her was 
 at their bedside, repeating to them Bible stories as they 
 were going to sleep. She did not relax her sense of religious 
 responsibility when childhood passed into youth. Even after 
 her sons had entered the ministry, she continued to watch 
 and guard them as if they were in danger of beguilement 
 with false doctrines. 
 
 On Sundays the rule was to go to church twice. It was 
 also the custom of the children to learn a hymn every Sun- 
 day, to be recited at the family gathering in the evening. 
 These hymns were mostly from the collection in the Prayer 
 Book, biit there were others. When Phillips went to college 
 there were some two hundred that he could repeat. They 
 constituted part of his religious furniture, or the soil whence 
 grew nrach that cannot now be traced. He never forgot 
 them. Then, too, for a time he kept a little Sunday journal, 
 or, more accurately, the "Sabbath Note-Book," prepared by 
 the Massachusetts Sunday-School Society, in which he re- 
 corded his time of rising, the chajDter from the Bible which 
 
^T. 3] EARLY LIFE 47 
 
 he read, the preacher and his text at morning and evening 
 service. This was for the year 1847-1848, when he was 
 twelve. 
 
 From the religious training of the household we may turn 
 to a few details of the more familiar domestic side of the 
 picture. Here is a glimpse of the mother with her young 
 children, in 1839, when Phillips had not long passed his 
 third birthday, in a letter to her husband, who was absent 
 from home. Among the messages of the children to their 
 father is one from Phillips, asking for a red-handled knife 
 and fork. 
 
 Boston, February 13, 1839. 
 
 ... I got your letter this afternoon, and I cannot tell you 
 how glad I was to hear from you. Oh, how much I have thought 
 about you, and wanted to see you, and talked about you to the chil- 
 dren. I shall be glad indeed when the three weeks are out. Still 
 I am very glad that you went, for I keep thinking how much good 
 the change is going to do you ; I shall expect to see you come 
 home a new man. I had meant to sjsend all this evening writing 
 to you, but as usual it is nearly 10 o'clock and I am just begin- 
 ning to write, for Uncle Brooks has just left, and he says he shall 
 come in very often in my "widowed state," so I shall be prepared 
 for his visits. I have not dared to name the party to him, or 
 rather I thought it best not to do so, till I knew something more 
 certain about it. Mrs. Frothingham has been in, but of course 
 said nothing about it. . . . My letter begins to look awfully, but 
 I am not going to make any excuse for it, for you say mine always 
 do, and I know you '11 say, or at least think so about this, but 
 then you will get all the longer one for it, because I can write so 
 much faster when / don't mind, as the boys say. 
 
 The boys have been very good. . . . They have given me so 
 many messages that I 'm sure I cannot deliver them all. One of 
 William's is that his saw is broken, and that he has laid it by for 
 you to mend it, when you get home, and that the "little boys " want 
 to ride with Mama and her pleasant man. Phillips says, "Tell 
 Papa I have learned to use a fork ; " and especially I want to ask 
 you if he may not have his hammer while you are gone, because 
 he is done breaking the basement now ; and he wonders why you 
 did not give it to him before you went away. William says you 
 must tell in the letter you write him whether Phillips may have 
 it again, and where it is. He says you must write his letter with 
 "book letters " or he cannot read it, that is, print it. I would 
 
48 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1839 
 
 advise you not to spend much upon toys for them, as I am more 
 for the useful for them. William says he hopes you will get him 
 a new book ; and Phillips says he wants you to bring him a red- 
 handled knife and fork; and I think their choice is pretty good. 
 I went to ride with them yesterday, as I proposed, into Washing- 
 ton Street, and had pretty good luck with my shopping; they 
 were delighted with their ride. ... I wonder where you will be 
 on Sunday. The next Sunday I want you to go to an Episcopal 
 Church if it is in your power, to please me. My conscience re- 
 proaches me greatly for my neglect in not putting the Bible in 
 your trunk, as I intended. . . . 
 
 The life of the children was diversified by visits to their 
 uncle's home in Medford, and especially in the summers to 
 the old homestead in North Andover, where the grandmother 
 was still living, venerated and beloved. Left a widow at a 
 comparatively early age, with the responsibilities of a large 
 family and the trials of a small income, she had maintained 
 herself in honor and dignity, making her home an attractive 
 spot, the centre of interest and devotion to the scattered and 
 expanding family, until her death in 1856. We get glimpses 
 of Phillips Brooks and his brothers in these summer migra- 
 tions, where tliey felt the charm of country life with its wider 
 opportunities for diversion. There they could fly their kites, 
 which they made in the shed attached to the house, encoun- 
 tering as their chief obstacle an insufficient amount of twine 
 for the loftiest flight. They got into mischief also by too 
 venturesome a spirit. Once they discovered a light wagon 
 at the side of the "yard," which they dragged out, and as the 
 ground sloped rapidly, the wagon wheels ran easily down the 
 incline until it crashed into the fence, destroying the shafts 
 and injuring the trap. Another remarkable exploit is re- 
 membered, when they j^ut up the blinds of an adjacent shop, 
 where everything was kept which could be demanded in a 
 village, and locked themselves in for the purpose of solvin"' 
 the rich mystery of its contents. The moment chosen for this 
 venture was the temporary absence of the owner of the shop, 
 who, in the simplicity of country life, did not realize how 
 keen might be the wits of boys from the city. But they 
 encountered their aunt's remonstrances and threats to cut 
 
JET. 6] EARLY LIFE 49 
 
 short their visit, and when they did go home they carried 
 with them to their mother a document complaining of their 
 misconduct. One of the earliest recollections of the oldest 
 brother was a great plan he conceived to hire a horse and 
 buggy and take "Philly" for a drive. As he was but five 
 years old and his younger brother not yet four, his scheme 
 met with a cold reception. The howling of the two boys 
 when the plan was negatived became historic in the family. 
 The summers at North Andover were not wholly given up to 
 recreation. The boys attended a "district school" for some 
 hours every day, and were also trained to work. 
 
 When he was four years old, Phillips was sent to a private 
 school on Bedford Street, kept by Miss Capen, where he re- 
 mained till he was old enough to be transferred to the gram- 
 mar school. An incident is remembered in connection with 
 this early stage of his education. He came home crying one 
 day because he had been told he must write a composition. 
 The family consoled and encouraged him, and the composi- 
 tion was furnished, it was understood, with extraneous aid in 
 its preparation. The subject was "The Elephant." There 
 is preserved also a letter sent by Phillips to his mother, when 
 he was in his seventh year. It covers a large page of fools- 
 cap, for he had not yet learned to write, with the exception 
 of his name, and his printing required space. The letter is 
 given here, but it lacks something of the impressiveness of 
 the original. It was regarded as a literary achievement, and 
 was known in the family as "Phillips' letter about the 
 pears." 
 
 Andover August 20th 1843 
 
 My dear Mother i ho 
 
 have got well enou 
 
 get down stairs no 
 
 oes the baby do and 
 
 George to. send 
 
 e to aunt Susan 
 
 ell her that i wa 
 
 see her grand 
 
 her sent us 
 
 pears but miss p 
 
 ) p 
 
 e 
 
 y ' 
 
 3 u 
 
 g 
 
 h 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 w. 
 
 
 h 
 
 w 
 
 1 
 
 i t 
 
 1 1 
 
 e 
 
 m 
 
 y 
 
 1 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 n 
 
 d 
 
 t 
 
 n 
 
 t 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 R 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 e 
 
 e 
 
 t 
 
 e r 
 
 s 
 
50 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1842 
 
 said that we must n 
 ot eat them but she s 
 aid that we might ask 
 you if we might eat 
 some of them will 
 you let us eat some of 
 them you can send us 
 word by Father wet 
 her we can eat some 
 how does aunt SUsan 
 do your affect 
 
 Friend 
 
 Phillips Brooks 
 
 The child is father of the man. A study of this letter dis- 
 closes some interesting particulars. In his seventh year, he 
 had not yet reached the consciousness of individual distinc- 
 tion, for he fails to use the capital I when referring to him- 
 self. But he uses capitals when referring to his father, his 
 mother, and his aunt. He pays some attention to punctua- 
 tion in the early sentences ; but when he plunges into the 
 heart of his subject he finds no use for it; it would only retard 
 him in his eagerness for expression. He begins his letter and 
 he closes it with courteous remarks and inquiries, but these 
 are subsidiary to his great theme. When he comes to treat 
 the subject of the pears, he manages to make it stand out 
 supreme; he fills out his sentences at the risk of overmuch 
 repetition in order to make his meaning clear. There are no 
 ellipses, no taking of the meaning for granted, no sacrificing 
 of clearness to elegance of expression. AVhen his treatment 
 of his theme satisfied him with its completeness, he must have 
 felt the abruptness of closing his letter at once, or he may 
 have been dimly conscious that his exigency looked like self- 
 ishness and did not fully represent him. He lets himself 
 down from the heights, by another polite inquiry after his 
 aunt Susan's health, which he had neglected to make in his 
 introduction. His aunt Susan Phillips formed an important 
 part of the household from the first, and was greatly endeared 
 to all the children. Their sportive humor and freedom led 
 them to speak of her as "Susan," or "Miss Susan," in imita- 
 
^T. lo] EARLY LIFE 51 
 
 tion of their parents' usage. She upheld the discipline of the 
 mother, and was equal to the emergencies of boyish criticism. 
 The devotion of the children to their mother is illustrated by 
 a Christmas present, with an accompanying letter, in 1846, 
 when Phillips was eleven years old. The excitement and 
 fulness of the moment may explain why the letter itself is in 
 the father's handwriting, who also contributed to the sen- 
 timents to be expressed. Only the signatures, still very 
 crude in their penmanship, were contributed by the boys. 
 
 Deae Mother. 
 
 Being sensible of the many kindnesses which you have bestowed 
 upon us and the interest you take in our studies, we feel thankful 
 to you for them, and wish you to accept the accompanying pencil 
 case as a Christmas gift from 
 
 Your affectionate sons, 
 
 Wm. G. Brooks, Jr., 
 Phillips Brooks, 
 G. Brooks. 
 Boston, Dec. 25, 1846. 
 
 There is a story of his childhood, of which the exact date 
 is forgotten, but it may appropriately be given here. As the 
 boys sat one evening in the back parlor about the table, with 
 their slates and pencils, getting ready for the next day, 
 Phillips played with his pencil, a new one, freshly sharpened, 
 putting it further and further into his mouth, until at last it 
 went down his throat. He asked his mother what would 
 happen if any one should swallow a pencil. She answered 
 that she supposed it would kill him. Phillips kept silence, 
 and his mother made no further inquiry. 
 
 After leaving the school kept by Miss Capen, he had gone 
 in 1843, at the age of eight, to the public grammar school, 
 known as the Adams School, then situated on Mason Street. 
 A schoolmate writes of him as he recalls him at this time : 
 "How well I remember a characteristic of his. When school 
 was out, we boys would be on the keen jump for the near-by 
 Common for games : ball, hockey, cricket, marbles, etc. Not 
 so Phillips Brooks. But to the right, down West Street, 
 across Washington, down Bedford, to his home, wended he 
 
52 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1843 
 
 his way. Never did I see him, to my recollection, go the 
 other way to the Common to mingle with us other boys in our 
 play." But if he was not active in the games of his school- 
 fellows, he yet gained the benefit which came from associa- 
 tion with them. The public schools of Boston were then 
 more homogeneous than they are now, but they possessed the 
 characteristics of public schools in that boys of all classes and 
 characters met together in them, high and low, rich and poor, 
 one with another. Any tendency towards class or other dis- 
 tinctions was subordinated, to the supreme inference that a 
 boy must stand and be measured by his own inherent worth. 
 In this there was a certain preparation for the coming man 
 and for the preacher, part of whose training lay in develop- 
 ing his insight into a wide and varied experience of men. In 
 the sensitive years of his boyhood, when his power of obser- 
 vation was most active, he was learning to study human souls 
 and the workings of human nature. To this may be traced 
 a certain feature in the man when he reached maturitj'. It 
 was a ruling desire with him to be regarded as in no way 
 exceptional ; he was sensitive as a child could be to anything 
 that was odd in behavior or expression; the word "queer 
 was his favorite expression for anything he encountered out 
 of the ordinary course of life or opinion. The levelling influ- 
 ence of the public school had done its work. 
 
 From the Adams School, he passed at the age of eleven, 
 in the year 1846, to the Boston Latin School, whose location 
 was then in Bedford Street. Previous to its transfer to Bed- 
 ford Street, it had its home in School Street, nearly oppo- 
 site City Hall. Among the reminiscences in which he in- 
 dulged many years later (1881), when he was making his 
 famous address at the dedication of the present Latin School 
 building, there is one that deserves a place in the history of 
 his boyhood: — 
 
 ^ I have always remembered — it seemed but a passing impres- 
 sion at the moment, but it has never left me — how one day, when 
 I was going home from the old Adams School in Mason Street, I 
 saw a little group of people gathered down in Bedford Street- 
 and, witli a boy's curiosity, I went into the crowd, and peeped 
 
 b 
 
/ET. ii] THE LATIN SCHOOL 53 
 
 around among the big men who were in my way to see what they 
 were doing. I found that they were laying the corner stone of 
 a new schoolhouse. I always felt, after that, when I was a 
 scholar and a teacher there, and ever since, that I had a little 
 more right in that schoolhouse because I had happened, by that 
 accident of passing home that way that day from school, to see 
 its corner stone laid. I wish that every boy in the Latin School 
 and High School, and every boy in Boston who is old enough to 
 be here, who is ever going to be in these schools, could be here 
 to-day. 
 
 The event was of sufficient importance to be mentioned in 
 the father's journal: "July 29, 1846. William and Phillips 
 were examined and admitted to the Latin School yester- 
 day. They have now been three years to Adams Grammar 
 School." 
 
 At the Latin School he remained for five years until his 
 preparation for college was completed. Mr. E. S. Dixwell 
 was the head master when he entered, and was succeeded by 
 the late Mr. Gardner in the last year of Phillips's attend- 
 ance. It may have been the case that he was not over dili- 
 gent as a pupil at first, or that the parents at home lamented 
 some lack of earnest devotion to his studies. For there is 
 a document preserved, a scrap of paper, recording a great 
 resolution : — 
 
 I, Phillips Brooks, do hereby promise, and pledge myself to 
 study, henceforward, to the best of my ability. 
 
 P. Brooks. 
 
 March 8, 1S4S. 
 
 He was twelve when he took this vow. A childhood of 
 unusual joy, gladness, and beauty was now yielding to the 
 "age of discretion." At this time he was growing rapidly. 
 When he was fourteen he had reached the height of five feet 
 eleven inches, weighing one hundred and thirty-three pounds. 
 These facts, and other minute incidents in his boy life, are 
 carefully recorded by the father, to whom the physical and 
 material aspects of life were always of importance, as if pos- 
 sessing some sacred quality. A classmate of Phillips Brooks 
 in the Latin School, who was also his lifelong and intimate 
 
54 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1848 
 
 friend, Robert Treat Paine, Esq., of Boston, recalls him in 
 his gait and manner at this time, carrying his height 
 awkwardly, leaning to one side as he walked, or holding to 
 his older brother's arm. 
 
 The boys in the Latin School published a small weekly 
 paper, one of whose issues has been preserved. Vol. I. No. 
 16, Dedham, June 7, 1848. The paper was named "The Eiv- 
 ulet," Eand and Motley, Editors and Proprietors (published 
 weekly). The advertisement of this organ of boyish opin- 
 ion has a mature business tone: "Published every Wednes- 
 day for the Proprietors, by H. Mann, opposite the Phoenix 
 House, High Street. We shall continue to deliver the pa^Jer 
 to subscribers, until direct orders are received from them to 
 the contrary." And again, "All communications should be 
 addressed to us through the Post Office at Dedham, post- 
 paid." The tone of the editorials on the third page is decid- 
 edly democratic. Here is a striking sentence: — 
 
 Ye who dislike the name of a mechanic, whose brothers do 
 nothing but loaf and dress, beware how you treat young men who 
 work for a living. ... In this century, no man or woman should 
 be respected, in our way of thinking, who will not work, bodily 
 or mentally, or who curls his or her lip with scorn when intro- 
 duced to a hard-working man. 
 
 Whether the boys who wrote the editorials had any actual 
 experience which wrought them up to a certain degree of in- 
 spiration, or whether it was something imagined or reported 
 to them, may be difficult to decide, but there is no doubt of 
 the prominence of the subject in their minds. Here is a 
 most impressive editorial entitled 
 
 WOULDN'T MARRY A MECHANIC. 
 
 A young man commenced visiting a young woman and appeared 
 to be well pleased. 
 
 One evening he called when it was quite late, which led the 
 girl to enquire where he had been. 
 
 "I had to work to-night," replied he. 
 
 " Do you work for a living ? " enquired the astonished girl. 
 
 "Certainly," replied the youug man; "I am a mechanic," and 
 she turned up her pretty nose. 
 
^T. 12] THE LATIN SCHOOL 55 
 
 That was the last time the mechanic visited the young woman. 
 He is now a wealthy man, and has one of the best of women for 
 his wife. The young lady who disliked the name of a mechanic 
 is now the wife of a miserable fool — a regular vagrant about 
 grog-shops ■ — and she, poor, miserable girl, is obliged to take in 
 washing, in order to support herself and children. 
 
 A letter written at this time, at the age of twelve, to his 
 mother, tells us little indeed, but it is his own, and not with- 
 out some elements of self-revelation. It is a family letter as 
 well, for George receives a communication in it, and William 
 adds a postscript. 
 
 Andover, June 13, 1848. 
 
 My deak Mother, — We were very glad to receive your letter 
 of yesterday, and I now take my pen to comply with your wishes 
 that I should write to you to-day. We have had a very pleasant 
 time so far and hope you will have an equally good one through 
 the whole of your visit. vSaturday afternoon we visited Judge 
 Stevens and enjoyed it very much indeed. All well there. I have 
 had very little of that pain since I came here and hope that it 
 will soon be entirely gone. Yesterday afternoon we went to Den 
 Rock and next Thursday if nothing occurs to prevent we shall 
 go to Lawrence. Grandmother says that our conduct has been 
 GOOD. Please tell Georgy, that I lost my big large hog knife 
 down in the pasture (sad to write). When we arrived. Judge 
 Stevens procurred us a conveyance in Spaft'ord's (excuse spelling) 
 Express in which we had a rather stormy ride. All here are well 
 and desire love to you all. Excuse bad letters and poor inditters 
 [sic]. "Don't let nobody see this letter." 
 
 Your dutiful son 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Brother Geo., — How did you like chatechising [sic] Sunday. 
 
 P. B. 
 
 Mt dear Father, — I send you the enclosed extract from the 
 Boston Daily Times to show that Mr. Gen Z. Taylor Esq is not 
 a Whig. 
 
 Yours etc. 
 
 W. G. Brooks, Jun. 
 
 Another incident of importance at this moment in the 
 family life was a letter written by Dr. Vinton at the mother's 
 
56 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1848 
 
 request to the three older boys. This letter was highly 
 valued, known in the family tradition as Dr. Vinton's letter, 
 and read to the younger boys also when they were ready to 
 receive it. It bears witness to the faithfulness of the pastor, 
 but even stronger witness to the mother's ^determination to 
 leave no stone unturned in order to the accomplishment of 
 her supreme and single purpose. Perhaps things were not 
 going in a way satisfactory to the deep yearning of her soul. 
 
 PoMFKET, August 28, 1848. 
 
 To William, Phillips, and George Bbooks: — • 
 
 My deak young Friends, — My letter may take you by surprise 
 since I gave you no intimation of my intention to write to you. 
 The purpose to do so, however, has been upon my mind for some 
 weeks, and its execution has been delayed partly by summary inter- 
 ruptions of business, and partly by the inconvenience of a sprained 
 ankle which made almost every sort of occupation troublesome. 
 As the time draws near which will carry me to Boston again 
 I feel the pressure of my intention more urgently, for I am not 
 willing that the opportunity should pass of addressing you a few 
 words of pastoral counsel just at the crisis when two of you are 
 about to enter a period of life which takes you out from my more 
 intimate care. I have been a watchful and gratified witness to 
 your fidelity in the Sunday School and in the catechetical exercises, 
 and my interest for one of you had been specially deepened by the 
 well-remembered sickness, by which our Heavenly Father brought 
 him almost down to death. I believe it lias been a blessed sick- 
 ness, my dear William, to others besides yourself, and I trust 
 tliat the solemn and holy purposes which it awakened in your 
 mind will never die. 
 
 You and Phillips are about entering upon a stage of life which 
 is full of danger, the forming stage of your character, — that of 
 young manhood. Its feelings are new, its temptations are strong 
 and different from any you have ever encountered. You will be 
 exposed to strange and unaccustomed influences on the one hand, 
 — ■ and on the other, you will be deprived of much of the salutary 
 restraint of your domestic life, and of the direct influence of the 
 Sunday Scliool. The danger always is to young men that they 
 will easily forget and perhaps despise the feelings of their earlier 
 days. One of the besetting sins of this period of life is 2^1'ide 
 which leads them to be heedless of advice and self-restraint, and 
 therefore they will be sure to fall unless God watches and holds 
 them with a father's care. I have indeed almost unbounded con- 
 
^T. 13] THE LATIN SCHOOL 57 
 
 fidence in the efficacy of a parent's prayers. I believe it clings 
 to the life of a young man and follows him where he least exjiects 
 it. The answer to such prayer seems almost omnipotent as it is 
 wholesome. 
 
 I know how earnestly such prayer has been continually ofEered 
 for you, and therefore I am very hopeful. Still, as you are free 
 agents it is in your power to frustrate its blessing, and it is the 
 peculiar temptation of young men that they do not feel its need. 
 If there be any one disposition of mind which I would wish you 
 to cherish and cultivate most of all, it is that of dependence upon 
 God. And that can only be kept alive by the habit of prayer and 
 reading the Bible day and night. Do not let anything of busi- 
 ness, study, or pleasure interfere with this. Be at home at the 
 Mercy Seat. It will give energy to your other pursuits. Re- 
 member the saying of Martin Luther '^ Bene 2>Tecdsse est bene stu- 
 duisse." It will be a safeguard against temptation, and a shield 
 in your greatest danger. 
 
 I do not know whether I shall be able to make arrangements 
 for a young men's Bible class this autumn, and if not, as you are 
 to leave the Sunday School, you will be in special danger of for- 
 getting its pursuits and its influences. But God is not bound to 
 such means alone, and He can edify you and bring your hearts to 
 Himself in a way that is independent of us. 
 
 My prayer and hope for you are that I may see you at an early 
 period consecrating yourselves to God in the open membership of 
 his Church, showing that you are not ashamed of Him, and that 
 you have experienced his renewing Grace. 
 
 You, my dear George, will yet by God's permission be for some 
 time in the school, where I shall often meet you, and where I hope 
 you will derive much good. May it be my joy at last, my dear 
 young friends, to meet you at the right hand of our Saviour is the 
 earnest prayer of your affectionate friend and pastor, 
 
 Alex'b H. Vinton. 
 
 The Latin School gave to Phillips Brooks the full benefit 
 of its famous training in the classics, as well as the taste for 
 their study. But it is in his literary work that the interest 
 chiefly centres, where we now begin to read the earliest 
 traces of his distinctive power. His essays are still preserved, 
 each one carefully written in his best style of penmanship. 
 His handwriting at this time closely resembles that of his 
 father, who cultivated penmanship as an art, studying the 
 formation of beautiful letters and in his leisure and idle 
 
58 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1849 
 
 moments designing letters of graceful kinds. The mother 
 was rather indifferent in this respect, writing rapidly from a 
 fidl heart, and only anxious to make her meaning clear or 
 to express her thought. That importance was attached to 
 these youthful literary efforts is seen in the fact of their 
 careful preservation in their original form, and also in a 
 complete copy of them in a blank book kept for the purpose. 
 The title-page of this book is a beautiful specimen of print- 
 ing, in which he must have taken lessons from his father. 
 It reads, "Compositions, written by Phillips Brooks at the 
 Public Latin School, Boston, 1850." 
 
 The subject of the first composition is "California," writ- 
 ten in 1849, the foremost subject in his mind, as it was then 
 stirring the popular imagination throughout the country. 
 We can imagine that he received some aid in conversation 
 with his father, whose journal at this time contains references 
 to the absorbing topic. The style is stiff and the manner 
 conventional. He begins with remarks on the art of mining, 
 and its difficulties, which have but little connection with 
 what follows. "The whole country of California," he adds, 
 "for the distance of many hundred miles in all directions, 
 seems to be filled with gold." The inexhaustible richness is 
 what moves his mind. His next subject was " Slavery," which 
 receives the same formal treatment, a review of its history 
 containing some facts gained from books, and a reference to 
 the action of Great Britain in the emancipation of slaves in her 
 dominions. It concludes: "And shall North America, that 
 land of freedom, withhold her consent from their humane 
 declarations ? Shall she whose sons fought and bled for their 
 own liberty refuse to do her utmost towards sujipressing this 
 infamous traffic which is destroying the liberties of so many 
 of our fellow men? " This was written in 1849, at the age of 
 thirteen. It shows what he was thinking about, and the feel- 
 ing was real. It has a prophetic quality. This composition 
 was marked 15 by Mr. Francis Gardner. "The Government 
 of the Thoughts," which follows, shows more freedom in the 
 treatment, containing one sentence which indicates that at 
 this early moment he had struck the method of his later 
 
.ET. 14] THE LATIN SCHOOL 59 
 
 work. The sentence is a familiar one : " Take, for instance, 
 the case of two men who begin life under the same circum- 
 stances, the first of whom far exceeds the other in talents, 
 but is inferior to the second in the government of the 
 thoughts, and in the end will it not be seen that the success 
 of the second far exceeds that of the former?" This paper 
 was marked 12. In the treatment of "The Evils of War," 
 we have a short and perfunctory performance of the school- 
 boy. But this is succeeded by a composition on "The Plea- 
 sures of Memory," which almost attains the maximum grade, 
 being marked 18 by Mr. Dixwell, the head master. 
 
 When he wrote " The Pleasures of Memory " he was 
 fourteen. Many other boys, and girls also, have written well 
 on this subject. There must be some law underlying human 
 growth which explains this tendency to be attracted by such 
 a theme. It marks the rise of what we call sentiment. It 
 coincides with the moment when youth stands trembling on 
 the verge of manhood. There is a sense of regret mingled 
 with the hope which looks for greater things in the future. 
 The hour has come when one begins to remember. All this is 
 commonplace, but it is very human. What strikes one in this 
 paper is that the thought of home is uppermost in his mind. 
 He will never lose the home feeling, for memory will preserve 
 it. In coming years he will be carried back to it again, to the 
 far-off scenes of his earlier days; will feel again "the plea- 
 sures which filled up the morning of his life before the world 
 and its cares had cast around him their fettering cares;" he 
 will "listen to each familiar voice, and speak each well-known 
 name; the joys and sorrows, the childish cares and pleasures, 
 of his youthful days will seem again to be his; the past is 
 to him even as the present. With the wanderer in a foreign 
 land will abide the memory of the home which he has left 
 behind him, of affectionate parents and of dearest friends. 
 Every association connected with that home will rise up be- 
 fore him to cheer him on his solitary way." But the moralist 
 and the preacher betray their incipient presence as he evolves 
 his theme. There is the possibility of evil memories to be 
 avoided. If the memories are of good and virtuous deeds, if 
 
6o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1850 
 
 we may look back upon a life unspotted and unstained, then 
 we shall acknowledge that the power of memory is indeed one 
 of the greatest, the noblest, and the highest blessings which 
 could have been bestowed upon mankind. 
 
 " The Pleasures of Memory" was followed, in the same 
 year, 1850, by another essay with a deep self-revealing qual- 
 ity entitled "Solitude." This essay was marked 19. He 
 was learning to rejoice in his solitary hours, when he was 
 holdino' communion with himself : — 
 
 o 
 
 There are lessons which he may have from others, but there are 
 lessons of which he himself must be the teacher and solitude the 
 school. . . . No man can rightly perform his duties here, without 
 many an hour of silent, solemn meditation and self-examination. 
 In the hours of solitude it is conscience that is the most active. 
 That still small voice which among the more busy scenes of life is 
 almost drowned now holds its sovereign sway. . . . And is there 
 no jdeasiire to be derived from solitude ? ... Is man his own worst 
 enemy, that he can derive no pleasure from communion with him- 
 self ? No ! the upright cannot fail to acknowledge that their 
 solitary hours are often the happiest in their lives. . . . To him 
 whose soul has been wearied by continual communion with the 
 world, in whose mind its pleasures and its amusements awaken 
 little else than satiety and disgust, how delightful it is to flee 
 from its busy scenes and to seek repose in solitude ; to feel that 
 no human eye can see, and no human voice can intrude to mar the 
 quiet and the peace with which the soul is surrounded. 
 
 The awakening of the intellectual life becomes more ap- 
 parent in the paper which follows, written in this same year, 
 before reaching his fifteenth birthday. Its title is "Books," 
 with the sub-title "Their Value, Good and Bad Influence, 
 Imperfections." This essay is not uninfluenced by the home 
 life, which was intellectual as well as religious. In his home, 
 the best books were read aloud around the table in the long 
 winter evenings. The mother was fond of poetry, the father 
 was alive to any book which was influencing the thoughts of 
 men. But there was careful scrutiny on the part of the 
 parents lest books should be introduced which were misleading 
 and dangerous in their tendency. There was freedom under 
 restraint. The boys were made aware of evil possibilities in 
 
^T. 14] THE LATIN SCHOOL 61 
 
 current literature. Especially was the mother on her guard 
 against any religious teaching which should run counter to 
 the principles she cherished as vital. It was a time of intense 
 religious feeling in Boston about the year 1850, — a breaking 
 away from received standards under the influence of the 
 transcendental movement. The effect of the home attitude 
 or of other teachers may be traced in this first attempt of 
 Phillips Brooks as a boy to speak on the subject of books. 
 
 This essay received, as it deserved, a high mark, falling 
 only one short of the maximum. It is characteristic of the 
 future man in many ways. His favorite illustration of the 
 sunlight of truth is here. There is a desire to get all the 
 aspects of the subject. There is earnest moral purpose, a 
 consciousness as if he were responsible for the well-being of 
 the whole world, and were aiming at nothing else ; the deter- 
 mination to secure the completest self-culture. At this mo- 
 ment we may imagine him as already a diligent reader ; but 
 though he was just beginning his career, and knew but little 
 of books, his imagination enables him to consider the whole 
 range of literature. We have seen the parents anxious lest 
 he should absorb the evil in his reading and warning him of 
 danger. That warning is received in docility. He will read 
 the best without prejudices, with close attention, but always 
 on his giiard, and his conscience may be trusted to as a safe 
 guide, making him sensitive to every departure from truth 
 and purity. 
 
 When he wrote his next essays he had passed his fifteenth 
 birthday. He must have been encouraged liy the high grade 
 his previous eiJort had received. He gives the rein to an 
 intenser enthusiasm, his vocabulary grows richer and fuller, 
 his confidence in his powers has increased. There is still 
 formality of expression and a certain old-fashioned conven- 
 tionality, the limited range of a schoolboy's information. 
 But his own thought and observation of life, whether gained 
 by books or by experience, are uttered with a deeper emjiha- 
 sis, with an intensity of conviction, as though he would have 
 been driven to speak by the impelling power of his own emo- 
 tion. One can discern that he is writing better than he 
 
6a PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851 
 
 knows. He is uttering sentiments which will be the staple 
 of his teaching as a mature man. It is unreal, for there is 
 no experience behind it, and yet it is prophetic, giving one 
 a reverence for the early stages of his growth. The compre- 
 hensiveness of his method is here, the desire to see both sides 
 of a question; as in his essay on "Selfishness," where he 
 endeavors to trace the good that has proceeded from it under 
 an overruling Providence, while yet condemning its baneful 
 influence in history. 
 
 An essay entitled "Independence must have its Limits" 
 marks more distinctly the emergence of the boy into a deeper 
 thoughtfulness and responsibility. The youthful laudation of 
 American independence gives way to the larger treatment of 
 an ethical distinction, which should govern nations as well as 
 individuals. He criticises the statement, "Independence is 
 our country's boast : " "If that independent spirit be carried 
 so far as to break the bond of union which binds nation to 
 nation and continent to continent, then where is our boasted 
 strength, where is our widespread commerce, where our na- 
 tional existence ?" He lays down the principle that absolute 
 independence is contrary to man's constitution, to the design 
 of God as written in the universal law of nature. He illus- 
 trates the dependence everywhere visible in the natural world, 
 the earth, the ocean, the mountain stream for the sources of 
 moisture, the whole vegetable creation also : — 
 
 Look abroad upon Nature's vast repository of the grand and 
 lovely and see how universal is the law of natural dependence. 
 The earth would be parched and dry but for the kindly showers ; 
 the mighty ocean would be empty but for the mountain streams 
 which fill it ; the lofty oak but for the moisture which the earth 
 supplies would fade and wither. See where yonder vine clings 
 for support to the majestic elm. Behold how each blade of grass, 
 as it raises its lowly head, renders up its tribute of gratitude to 
 that sun upon whose beams it depends for life and health. Hear 
 how with each morning's dawn, each evening's setting sun, Nature 
 with its thousand voices sends up her chorus of grateful depend- 
 ence to the Maker and Preserver of the earth. 
 
 And shall man liave no part in tliis universal law of depend- 
 ence ? Shall he be entirely independent of his fellow men ? No ! 
 he is bound to them by ties which no power on earth can break 
 
^T. 15] THE LATIN SCHOOL 63 
 
 asunder. So numerous are the bonds which bind together the 
 vast family of mankind that it is impossible for one man breaking 
 through them all to declare himself independent of his fellow 
 men. Man must regard the convenience and wishes of others as 
 well as of himself. Otherwise where would be that harmony 
 which is the very soul of a well-regulated societj'. No man in 
 passing through an excited crowd would expect to be free from 
 the influence of its motions; and so in passing through this 
 crowded and busy world, who will not receive his share of its 
 buffets and blows ? How much better will he fare who yields to 
 its motions than he who in stately and indejjendent dignity walks 
 regardless of mortals around him. 
 
 But in seeking to give to independence its proper limits, we 
 must not fall into the error of contracting those limits beyond 
 their proper sphere. We must have a will and a mind of our 
 own. We are not to bind our conscience to any man's creed, to 
 be led whithersoever he may choose. We have no right to "fol- 
 low the multitude to do evil." He deserves not the name of 
 man who dares not to think, to speak, and to act for himself. 
 "Let us, then, ever strive to be independent, but within due 
 limits, to act by ourselves and not always for ourselves alone." 
 
 From the discussion of indejDendence in the individual he 
 turns to the indej)endence of nations. China is made to 
 serve as an illustration of what befalls a nation when she 
 seeks to maintain herself apart from relations with other 
 countries. Instead of becoming really independent she falls 
 into a dependence which amounts to servitude. 
 
 If, when our fathers severed the chain of tyranny which bound 
 them to their fatherland, they had also rent in twain those other 
 ties of religion, commerce, and literature, which bind their interest 
 to hers, what would be our situation now ! If the young bird of 
 America in her earliest flights had scorned to receive aid from 
 others, would she have reached the glorious height to which she 
 has since attained ! In the words of our national song, — 
 
 Let independence be onr boast, 
 Ever mindful -what it cost ; 
 
 but with our thanksgiving for that independence, let there ascend 
 to Heaven a prayer that pride may not become a curse rather than 
 a blessing. 
 
 In an essay entitled "Doubt," from Shakespeare's lines as 
 a text 
 
64 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851 
 
 Our doubts are traitors ; 
 And make us lose the good we oft miglitwin 
 By fearing to attempt, 
 
 he exhibits his subtle capacity for qualification. Here is a 
 very mature sentence: "Salutary doubt is of the nature of 
 ]irutlent caution and has nothing in common with a shrinking 
 timidity which seems to be always treading upon the verge of 
 its own grave." In a word, we may say of all these essays 
 that they mingle boyish crudity with a prematurely wise 
 expression of great truths. They are remarkable as showing 
 the continuity of his years. They contain the germs of his 
 later method of work as well as his latest convictions. What 
 he thought and believed as a boy, he continued to believe 
 with the fuller power of his manhood. 
 
 The encouragement he had received from the high marks 
 given to his essays led him to compete for a prize when 
 unfortunately the subject assigned was "Mathematical Pur- 
 suits."" He records his failure with the words "^/i me mise- 
 ruin I " This essay is the most elaborate and ambitious of all 
 his attempts, containing some five thousand words. He here 
 gives full scope to his power for flue writing and well-turned 
 sentences. Illustrations and rich imagery abound. His whole 
 stock of boyish knowledge is summoned to his aid in describ- 
 ing and enforcing the value of mathematical pursuits. But 
 in this instance he deserved to fail. He had undertaken a 
 task for which his strong will and his desire to compass all 
 things was not equal. Perhaps there is such a thing as a 
 natural inability for mathematical j)ursuits. We know that 
 while he was in college he paid no more attention to this 
 branch of his education than was absolutely necessary. It 
 may have been that his failure to take the prize with an essay 
 on which he had spent so much force was a source of discour- 
 agement. At any rate, if he showed no interest in mathe- 
 matical pursuits in his college course, he had done his best to 
 rouse himself to a sense of their value. It was well for him 
 that he failed to take the prize, for it would have been a 
 greater failure if he had achieved it by rhetoric, without sur- 
 mounting the difficulty in his own experience. 
 
^T. 15] THE LATIN SCHOOL 65 
 
 He must have been working with great diligence at this 
 moment when he handed in his essay on "Mathematical Pur- 
 suits," for on the same day he sent in a poem entitled "The 
 Shipwreck." On the back of the envelope he has inscribed, 
 "Given in for Prize at the Public Lat. School. But unfor- 
 tunately failed. Ah me misenmi / " This poem is of course 
 a purely imaginative effort. What he knew he must have 
 gained mainly from reading the descriptions in the iEneid. 
 These he has reproduced with abundance of classical allu- 
 sions, he showing dependence on Pope, as a model for his 
 metre and rhyme. It is very high-flown and of course unreal, 
 but it is significant that in these first efforts, as a boy, as 
 well as in later manhood, he shows one common character- 
 istic, — the desire to enter through the imagination into every 
 phase of the higher human experiences, and to make them 
 his own. He was seeking even in boyhood to identify him- 
 self with humanity, and to gather up into himself its hopes 
 and its achievements. 
 
 At the distribution of the Lawrence prizes on the last day 
 of the spring term in 1851, Phillips Brooks received a prize 
 for good behavior only. He had competed for a prize of 
 another kind, in his essay on "Mathematics " and in his poem 
 "The Shipwreck," but had failed. His standing in his class 
 was high, but not the highest; his rank was third. He was 
 one of six, however, who took the Franklin medal when he 
 graduated, which stood for excellence in the final examina- 
 tions in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. In the order of 
 exercises at the annual visitation on July 12, 1851, his name 
 is set down for an English essay on "Socrates." His father 
 was present to hear him, and recalled in later years, when 
 his son had become known to fame, the enthusiasm with 
 which the essay was delivered. It was a brief essay, a wail 
 over the condemnation of the philosopher for corrupting 
 youth when it had been his aim to instil into their young 
 minds the doctrines of truth and right. 
 
 That he was moved on leaving the Latin School, and alive 
 to the significance of the transition as an epoch in his life, 
 is shown in the poem he wrote, "On Leaving School," Au- 
 
66 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851 
 
 gust 1, 1851. It contains seventy-three lines, mainly boyish 
 doggerel, rapidly written without revision, but with a vein 
 of seriousness beneath. The conclusion reads: — 
 
 How he [the Head Master] would fume and rage and scold and fret 
 
 And say he 'd never seen such scholars yet. 
 
 How oft we strove his gentle heart to tease 
 
 And very very seldom strove to please. 
 
 How joyed and sorrowed, laughed and played and wept. 
 
 How toiled and dug, and grubbed, and worked and slept, 
 
 How played tlie wise man and how played the fool, 
 
 There in the Boston Public Latin School. 
 
 But still however high thy course may rise, 
 Though murmured plaudits raise thee to the skies; 
 Though senates and admiring people praise, 
 Yet still forget not of thy younger days. 
 Think how 'mid muses' seats we used to roam 
 And made the Latin School our common home ; 
 How well we studied, strove our minds to store 
 With all the wealth of ancient classic lore. 
 And when our sad devoted fate was sealed, 
 Loud o'er our heads the Master's thunder pealed; 
 How Manual's rage and Delta's righteous fire 
 Brought down the Master's most tremendous ire. 
 
 What the Boston Latin School had done for Phillips 
 Brooks he himself has told ns, on the occasion of the dedica- 
 tion of its present building, after the lapse of thirty years 
 since he left it : — 
 
 I want to speak only a few minutes, if I can restrain myself so. 
 It is all very well to talk about the magnificence of this new 
 building. It is magnificent, and we are thankful for it; but to 
 me there is something infinitely sad and pathetic this morning in 
 thinking of our old Latin and English High Schoolhouse standing 
 empty and desolate down in Bedford Street. I cannot get it out 
 of my mind. I cannot, as I look around upon the brilliancy of 
 this new building, forget what that old building has done. I can- 
 not help thinking of it almost as a person, and wondering if it 
 hears what we are saying here. I cannot lielp thinking that from 
 the top of the old brown cupola it looks across the length of the 
 city and sees the pinnacles of this new temple which is to take its 
 place. I cannot help thinking that even through its closed and 
 dusty windows, it is hearing something of the triumphant shouts 
 
^T. 15] THE LATIN SCHOOL 67 
 
 with which its successor's walls are ringing. I cannot help won- 
 dering what it thinks ahout it all. 
 
 But when I know, letting that old schoolhouse stand before me 
 a moment in personal shape, — when I know what a dear and ear- 
 nest old creature it was, when I know how carefully it looked after 
 those who came into its culture and embrace, when I know how 
 many of us will always look back to it, through the whole course 
 of our lives, as the place where were gathered some of the deepest 
 inspirations that ever came to us, I cannot but think that the old 
 school is noble enough and generous enough to look with joy and 
 satisfaction upon this new building which has risen to take its 
 place. And as the old year kindly and ungrudgingly sinks back 
 into tlie generations of the past, and allows the new year to come 
 in with its new activities, and as the father steps aside and sees 
 the son who bears his nature, and whom he has taught the best he 
 knows, come forth into life and fill his place, so I am willing to 
 believe that the old school rejoices in this, its great successor, 
 and that it is thinking (if it has thoughts) of its own useful 
 career, and congratulating itself upon the earnest and faithful 
 way in which it has pursued, not only the special Tnethods of 
 knowledge which have belonged to its time, but the furposts of 
 knowledge which belong to all time, and must pass from school- 
 house to schoolhouse, and from age to age, unchanged. . . . 
 
 When the Duke of Wellington came back to Eton after his 
 glorious career, as he was walking through the old quadrangle he 
 looked around and said, "Here is where I learned the lessons 
 that made it possible for me to conquer at Waterloo." It was not 
 what he had read there in books, not what he had learned there 
 by writing Greek verses, or by scanning the lines of Virgil and 
 Horace, that helped him win his great battle; but there he had 
 learned to be faithful to present duty, to be strong, to be diligent, 
 to be patient, and that was why he was able to say that it was 
 what he had learned at Eton that made it possible for him to 
 conquer at Waterloo. 
 
 And the same thing made it possible for the Latin and High 
 School boys to help win the victory which came at Gettysburg, 
 and under the very walls of Richmond. It was the lessons which 
 they had learned here. It was not simply the lessons which they 
 had learned out of books ; it was the grand imprint of character 
 which had been given to them here.' 
 
 1 Cf. " Address at the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Latin School," in 
 Essays and Addresses, pp. 39.3 ff. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 1851-1855 
 
 HARVARD COLLEGE 
 
 In the fall of 1851, Philliiw Brooks entered Harvard Col- 
 lege, according to the custom of his ancestors. As he went 
 simply from Boston to Cambridge, it was not like leaving 
 home for college. The time from Saturday to Monday in 
 every week was s^Dent with his family. He attended still St. 
 Paul's Church, and was under the same parental and pas- 
 toral influences which had followed him through the Latin 
 School. While in some respects there was an advantage in 
 such a situation, yet it has deiirived his Memoir of a possible 
 home correspondence which would have thrown light on his 
 college days. These years in college would be almost a 
 blank so far as our knowledge of his development is con- 
 cerned were it not for the contributions of his classmates, or 
 for some of the papers he has left behind indicating the 
 character of his work. What can be told by a classmate is 
 in the nature of the case general in its character, especially 
 after the lapse of forty years. But what little is told pos- 
 sesses the deepest significance. 
 
 Harvard College in the decade of the fifties was still a 
 college among the many scattered through the land, and had 
 hardly yet begun to develop into a university. But it pos- 
 sessed the distinction of age ; its traditions ran back to the 
 settlement of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. It possessed 
 a distinction also in a corps of teachers such as would be a 
 signal honor to any university, some of them indeed of 
 world-wide reputation and of enduring fame. Literature 
 was represented by Longfellow, the natural sciences by 
 Agassiz and by Asa Gray; Benjamin Peirce was professor 
 of mathematics ; Sophocles and Felton stood for the classics, 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 69 
 
 and Bowen for metaphysics; Child and Lane and Cooke 
 were young men, then beginning their long and honored 
 careers as teachers in English, in Latin, and chemistry. 
 The president of the college from 1852 was Dr. James 
 Walker, who exerted a strong influence on the young men, 
 both in the pulpit and the classroom, whose high character 
 was recognized, admired, and imitated. 
 
 The total number of students in the college in 1851 was 
 304, and in all the departments, 626. The library in Gore 
 Hall contained 60,000 volumes. Attendance at prayers was 
 required twice every day and once at church on Sundays. 
 The hour of daily morning prayers was seven o'clock from 
 September to April, and six o'clock from April to the close of 
 the college j^ear. Three recitations were made each day with 
 sufficient intervals between for the preparation of lessons : 
 from eight to nine, from twelve to one, and from five to six. 
 The dinner hour was fixed by authority at one o'clock. It 
 was all very simple, the working regime easily mastered. 
 Discipline was indeed called for, and especially in relation to 
 that sphere where there should have been least, compulsory 
 attendance at the chapel services. These services might have 
 been less irksome if the police element in them had been made 
 less prominent. Their most apparent object was to rout the 
 students at an unearthly hour in the morning, and to ascer- 
 tain that they were still within the fold at the close of the 
 day. Phillifis Brooks was some months short of his sixteenth 
 birthday when he entered Harvard. At this age he had 
 nearly, if not quite, attained his full stature, according to 
 his father's record, weighing 161 pounds and measuring six 
 feet three and one half inches. During his Freshman year 
 he roomed at Mrs. Stickney's, on Hilliard Street; in his 
 Sophomore year at Miss Dana's, on Holyoke Street. When 
 he became a Junior he went into the college yard, having 
 room 15 in Massachusetts Hall, and in his Senior year room- 
 ing in 32 Stoughton. But few buildings then stood in the 
 yard; besides those mentioned, there were HoUis and Hol- 
 worthy, Massachusetts and University, in which latter was 
 the college chapel; Gore Hall the library, Dane Hall the 
 
70 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 home of the Law School, and the little building, which still 
 remains to mark the vast growth of Harvard, Holden 
 Chapel. Old Cambridge, as it was called, was still a pro- 
 vincial village, with many evidences of its colonial descent. 
 It was connected with Boston by an omnibus or stage, which 
 ran hourly during the day, but suspended its task at a rea- 
 sonable hour in the evening. To walk in and out of Boston 
 may have been a pleasure to some; it was a hard necessity 
 for others. The once familiar horse car, which in its time 
 rendered connection with Boston somewhat easier, made its 
 first appearance in 1855. For artificial illumination, ker- 
 osene oil had recently displaced the earlier method, and was 
 regarded as a great improvement. 
 
 Phillips Brooks threw himself with ardor and enthusiasm 
 into college life. To this remark there is but one exception, 
 he is not remembered as taking part in athletic sports. 
 These, to be sure, were still in their infancy; even baseball 
 had yet to be developed from simple rudiments. Cricket 
 was a favorite game, but for this he showed no interest or 
 aptitude. Those who remember him in college speak of his 
 physical inertness. He did not care much for walking — 
 it was hard to drag him out for a walk; nor did he seek 
 recreation in games of chance. It maj^ be that his rapid 
 physical growth had left him weak for the time^ and that 
 physical rest was what he needed. He had a very nervous 
 constitution, delicate and suscejstible to external influences. 
 Becavise he found no vent in games and sports, he threw him- 
 self with all the greater intensity into whatever of college life 
 came into his way. At the end of his Freshman year he 
 was one of the first to be elected into the Institute, at the 
 end of liis Sophomore year he was chosen for the Hasty 
 Pudding, in his Junior year he became a member of the 
 Alplia Delta Phi, and in his last year was among those 
 elected to the Phi Beta Kappa. In these societies he was 
 interested, but not taking them too seriously, making his 
 contributions of verses and essays as the occasion demanded.' 
 
 ^ Phillips Brooks was a member of the following societies at Harvard : Anon- 
 yma, Institute of 1770, Natural History Society, Phi Beta Kappa, Alplia Delta 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 71 
 
 He took his part in the Pudding theatricals, but his cast was 
 generally determined by his height and not by liis proficiency 
 as an actor. He was a Harvard man in every sense, reflect- 
 ing that peculiar quality with which Harvard stamps her chil- 
 dren, however difficult it may be of analysis or descrijjtion. 
 
 The course of study was simple, the classics predominating 
 in the first two years, while in the last two a student was at 
 liberty to give the preference to mathematics and the natural 
 sciences or to follow literature, English and classical. Phil- 
 lips Brooks chose the latter alternative. His record as a 
 student shows that he possessed the capacity for exact scholar- 
 ship, but also that he had no ambition to maintain a high 
 rank in his class. During his Freshman year he was ranked 
 fifth, but he was then just out of the Latin School, whose pre- 
 paration was so thorough that its boys were at an advantage 
 in Harvard, and did not need to work hard to maintain an 
 advanced standing. In his Sophomore year he seems to have 
 begun with an effort to maintain a high grade in all his stud- 
 ies. But for some reason he failed to do so, and at the end 
 of the year he was sixteenth in rank in a class of seventy- 
 one. Nor in the two following j^ears did his relative stand- 
 ing vary ; as a Junior he stood thirteenth, and with this rank 
 he graduated, his class then numbering sixty-six. He had no 
 taste for mathematics, as has been remarked. One may trace 
 his effort to overcome what must have been an aversion. It 
 was not for want of capacity that he did not conquer its 
 difficulties, but he lacked the interest to persevere ; when it 
 came to examinations he appears to have made up his mind 
 that the case was hopeless, and to have made little prepara- 
 tion for the final test. But, with this excejition, he showed 
 
 Phi, Hasty Pudding Clulj. The Anonyma was formed by his class of 1855 as a 
 debating- society. Of the five named the Alpha Delta Phi was the most liter- 
 ary, but the class, which was brilliant above the averag-e, did not take any of the 
 societies seriously. They found relaxation in the meetiugs and in the enjoy- 
 ment of social intercourse. They got their inspiration and mental training and 
 the art of clearly expressing their thoughts from such men as Dr. James Wallcer, 
 Professor Bowen, and Professor Child, and drank wisdom from tlie lips of Agas- 
 siz, Longfellow, Felton, Gray, Lovering, Peirce, Lane, &nd Cooke. (G. A. C, 
 From Notes and Queries in Boston Transcript.) 
 
72 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 peculiar power to succeed in any examination. Whatever 
 might have been his grade for the daily recitations, his mark 
 at an examination was apt to be a high one, not seldom the 
 maximum. This showed what he could do when he tried. 
 He evinced a taste for natural history, and did well in chem- 
 istry, but on the whole cannot be said to have been attracted 
 by the natural sciences. He read sufficiently to get the 
 results of the scientiiic process, but to its methods remained 
 more or less indifferent. Although he had a deep interest in 
 history, in its ordinary presentation he did not find what he 
 wanted. It was something more to him than the accurate 
 recital of human events. In its biographical form lay its 
 deepest charm. Hence, in this department, judged by the 
 college standard, he did not reach the highest excellence. 
 His grade is not as high as one might have expected in liter- 
 ary work, such as foreusics and themes. But as these were 
 coupled with elocution, the falling off: is less remarkable. 
 During his Sophomore year his mark in elocution was 100, 
 where the highest given was 140. He gave no sign of being 
 an orator. It is recalled of him in his college days, as it 
 was known of him in his later years, that he despised elocu- 
 tion, as begetting self-consciousness, at war with naturalness 
 and simj)licity. He could not have been wholly unattractive 
 or without impressiveness as a speaker, even though still 
 awkward and embarrassed by shyness. When he became 
 known as a puljiit orator, those who remembered him in his 
 college days were surprised. If they had looked for his 
 distinction in life, it had not been in this direction. The 
 college did what it could to prepare the students for pub- 
 lic life. Frequent exercises in declamation were required 
 during the Junior and Senior years. There was the Boylston 
 prize also, awarded for excellence on this groimd alone. 
 But it was difficult to cultivate the powers of elocution, 
 when any one assumed, as did Phillips Brooks, that it was 
 all a vain show, that if a man had something to say, he 
 would find out for himself how to say it. But it was a good 
 thing for him that he was forced to pay some attention to 
 the subject of public speaking while in college, as in the 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 73 
 
 Junior exhibition, long since abolished, but then a signal 
 honor, anticipating the awards of the Senior year. His 
 earliest delivery, as he stood on the platform in Harvard 
 Hall in the large lecture room on the second floor, was 
 identical in manner with his latest, marked by the same 
 extraordinary rapidity of utterance. This rapidity of speech 
 was something constitutional ; it was not adopted to cover 
 any natural defect of utterance, for he had none ; it was 
 simply the natural expression of the man. 
 
 Li what was then called intellectual philosophy he main- 
 tained a high standing, but not the highest, and the same 
 is true of rhetoric and logic. The history of abstract ideas 
 had no charm for him, nor the formal attempt to place laws 
 for the human mind in rhetoric or logic. The studies in 
 which he did excel were the languages. In Greek, he took 
 uniformly the highest mark, and was very close to the high- 
 est in Latin. French he seems to have played with, con- 
 tent in acquiring a good reading knowledge, but apparently 
 despairing of its refinements. For German, which he took 
 as an elective, he showed greater respect, and became able 
 to read it with comparative ease. It may have been that 
 in his devotion to Greek and to Latin he had in view the 
 possibility of a teacher's profession, but he had also a 
 genuine love and appreciation of the Greek literature ; he 
 read Greek for the pleasure it gave him, and continued to 
 do so when it was no longer a task of the schools. And of 
 Latin it may be said also that it had ceased to be with him 
 a dead language. This, then, was something positive among 
 the results of his Harvard training. We may say of him 
 that he could have been what is technically known as a 
 scholar; he had become possessed of the tools of learning; he 
 was competent to have added to the stock of human learning 
 by study and research. 
 
 But no overpowering influence bore him in this direction. 
 What stood in his way was his love of literature as the reve- 
 lation of man, the yearning to enter into the deeper experi- 
 ences of life, to know the world he lived in. He took his 
 college course easily, if judged from the scholastic point of 
 
74 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851 
 
 view, though he must have worked with some diligeiK 
 the prescribed routine to have maintained his rank, 
 he gave the impression of one who was not obliged to dr 
 in order to master his studies; he seemed to be at le 
 when others were working, and showed no anxiety les 
 should fail. No one, however, could have worked : 
 diligently than he in the chosen line he was following, 
 thorough training, his quick insight, his comprehensive 
 of mind, his capacity for mental concentration, enabled 
 to perform with ease and speed the required task, lea 
 him abundant leisure for discursive reading, the maste: 
 books, and above all the observation of life. One o: 
 classmates. Professor G. C. Sawyer of Utica, N. Y., 
 knew him in somewhat close association, says of him dv 
 his years at Harvard, that "his faculties were in cours 
 rapid, yet not too rapid development. He read largely 
 though not superficially, yet with an extraordinary s] 
 He was endowed with a marvellous gift of very ra] 
 taking in a printed page. He would lie on his bad 
 hours at a time, reading." He drew books from the 
 lege library or availed himself of other sources to si; 
 his need, but his record does not indicate him as an or 
 orous reader, to whom a book was a book, whateve 
 nature, nor did he range through many books out of 
 curiosity to know something of their contents. Yet ii 
 line of his reading he was pursuing an independent dev 
 ment, unshackled by prescription or authority. Gre! 
 were liis teachers and inspiring the influences around 
 still there was no dominating influence which controUei 
 thought or carried him away captive to some power other 
 his own. There were no literarjr men, no great boo' 
 which he came jirepared to swear allegiance. When h 
 tered Harvard with its large library at his disposal, hi 
 at first like a child wandering in its alcoves, hardly knc 
 what one book out of the large number he should c^ 
 to take from the shelves, wherewith to make his begin 
 The book that finally attracted him was the poems of ] 
 lace, one of the minor poets of the Elizabethan age. 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 75 
 
 and its companion volume, Lodge's and Clialkhill's poems, 
 which he next took out, were beautiful specimens of print- 
 ing and in most attractive bindings. The love of poetry 
 and of beautiful things to handle may be discovered in his 
 choice. In the decade of the fifties, there were many power- 
 ful writers of English, who were moulding the thoughts of 
 their generation. Carlyle was then at his best, Emerson also, 
 and Tennyson; George Eliot was beginning her career; Eus- 
 kin had come to his mission; Thackeray's great novels were 
 appearing year by year, and Dickens was fascinating the 
 world. But at first Phillips Brooks seems not to have heard 
 of them, or to be ready for them. He went to the older 
 writers, Walter Scott and Washington Irving. He appears 
 to have been particularly drawn to the writers of the eigh- 
 teenth century, Boswell's " Johnson," Johnson himself. Gold- 
 smith, Dryden, Swift, Leigh Hunt, Hume, and others. The 
 English poets of the eighteenth century and of the early part 
 of the nineteenth had their especial charm. But Wordsworth 
 was not yet among them. He read Shakespeare, and books 
 illustrating his age. He took up Lamb and Southey, but did 
 not at first discover Milton or Coleridge. The French Revo- 
 lution he studied with the aid of Thiers. There is evidence 
 of a strong taste for biography. He dipped into astronomy, 
 and read Lavater's "Physiognomy." In all this he was wan- 
 dering at his own sweet will. There was as yet no English 
 Department at Harvard. Professor Child's work lay in the 
 direction of Early English or of Anglo-Saxon. But his re- 
 cord of reading reflects credit on his own discernment. He 
 had found his way into the world's literature and knew what 
 he needed. There was a calming, cooling influence in these 
 writers of the eighteenth century, with their quaint world, at 
 such wide remove from the feverish desire for reforms, the in- 
 cessant agitation, the sentimental aspirations and vagaries, the 
 new interpretations of the age into which he was born. Here 
 lay something of the preparation for his life work. He 
 gained a picture of life in another age, which afforded a basis 
 for comparison and criticism when he should come to the 
 work of his own time. He learned to know and to honor the 
 
76 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 purely human amidst the disguises of past generations. 
 These writers of the eighteenth century harmonized admira- 
 bly with his favorite classics, Greek and Latin, reflecting 
 their influence and something of their outlook on human life. 
 
 But finally some books which were modern he also mas- 
 tered. Into that vast soul with its void yet to be filled, all 
 fresh as with the dews of the morning, and rich with un- 
 known possibilities, some utterances sank deeply and took 
 possession of the unoccupied ground. Carlyle's "Life of 
 Cromwell " was one of these. The influence of that book 
 never was lost. It created a deep interest in the names 
 which were associated with the Puritan struggle. From 
 that time he began to be at home with its personages, with 
 Milton and Baxter and Jeremy Taylor; he measured its 
 issues and grew stronger and clearer by their contemplation. 
 In after life it was his ambition to write a Life of Cromwell, 
 for which he made preparation by collecting materials in his 
 many visits to England. Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Wor- 
 ship " became a handbook for a time. His "French Revolu- 
 tion " he admired to the last, as a masterpiece of art, but for 
 "Sartor Resartus " he came to have a feeling of contempt as 
 a hollow and superficial cry. He read Emerson, but there 
 are no traces of an influence upon his mind, such as Carlyle 
 produced. The writer who exerted the strongest influence 
 was Tennyson. "In Memoriam " had been published in 1849. 
 From the time he read it, it kept running in his head; he 
 imitated its metres and its subjects in poetic efforts of his 
 own. 
 
 There were other opportunities than those offered by the 
 college, where a man's work might be recognized and re- 
 warded. Such societies as the Institute, the Hasty Pudding, 
 or the Alpha Delta Phi possessed a literary character, calling 
 on their members for occasional essaj's or orations. Into 
 these efforts he put his full strength, showing at times rare 
 gifts of expression, a large and rich vocabulary, with matu- 
 rity of thought and insight. One would say that he worked 
 well when he followed his own bent, and indeed required this 
 freedom of inclination in order to manifest his strength. In 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 77 
 
 college themes he did what was required, and that was all; 
 but in the occasional papers where he chose his own subject 
 and was in sympathy with his audience, free to give full 
 expression to his thought, his wit, or humor, he was unsur- 
 passed. 
 
 His first attempt of this kind still shows something of con- 
 ventionality, or indicates that he was drawing from resources 
 not furnished by his own experience. It is an essay entitled 
 "The Lecturer," read before the Institute in the earlier part 
 of his Sophomore year. He begins by glorifying popular 
 education, remarking that in the broad sense it is a thing 
 of to-da}r; that this present age has seen its rise and its un- 
 precedented progress. He goes on to speak of the lecturer, 
 claiming him as an "institution" of this modern age, an 
 important agent in the dii3:usion of knowledge, but peculiarly 
 a Yankee institution. "A Yankee, when first he won his 
 name, struck out for himself from the flint of his native 
 rocks two twin sparks, and gave to his children the double 
 heritage of whittling and lecturing." We need not here 
 rej)eat his justification of the lecturer. He was writing at a 
 time when our best thinkers did not feel it beneath them to 
 go out into the towns about Boston, creating a sensation by 
 their appearance. Emerson and Dr. Holmes and many others 
 were favorites with their audiences, and no doubt exerted 
 a great influence in this way. Boston was lecture-ridden 
 in those days. The father of Phillips Brooks comments in 
 his joiirnal upon the lecturers whom he hears, and the son 
 in the home circle must have been impressed with the im- 
 portance of this method of teaching. ^ But the Lyceum has 
 passed away, at least for the present. There was some- 
 thing artificial about it, and finally it became tiresome. 
 Journalism may have contributed to its extinction. But it 
 furnished a subject for Phillips Brooks in his first independ- 
 ent effort to try his strength. 
 
 ' The Mercantile Library offered a prize for the best report of its lectures, 
 and among the competitors were the father of Phillips Brooks and the late Sen- 
 ator Sumner. Mr. Brooks records in his journal his defeat, and also that the 
 prize was taken by " a Mr. Charles Sumner." 
 
78 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 His next attempt in this line of independent essay writing 
 is no more successful than the first. It was read in the 
 beginning of the Junior year before the Alpha Delta Phi, to 
 which he had recently been elected. He had evidently some 
 difficulty in finding a title for the material at his disposal. 
 His essay was finally called "September," after the month 
 in which it was read. But he had little or nothing to say 
 upon its natural beauties or characteristics. He begins at 
 once with a list of the distinguished persons who have been 
 born or who have died in September. He selects from these 
 three names on which he proposes to comment. They will 
 constitute so many dishes, from which to taste. Steele shall 
 be the one representing literature, Mohammed and Bossuet 
 shall stand for religion, and Pompey for the army. All 
 this is very artificial, as it need not be remarked ; but the 
 style is graceful, and he is speaking for himself. Moham- 
 med interests him. He regards him as an impostor, yet 
 seeks to get at the man, how far he was a genius, what 
 kind of a conscience he must have had. In this connection 
 he says : " It may sound like a paradox, but it is nevertheless 
 true, that the most weak-headed men are always the most 
 headstrong." Evidently, also, he had reflected upon the 
 strange career of Steele, whose life he summarizes effectively. 
 Beneath the formal defects of this essay may be discerned 
 the traces of jwwer. 
 
 When we come to the next essays, written at the age of 
 seventeen, we see Phillips Brooks at an important moment in 
 the history of his growth. The essays in the Latin School 
 were somewhat perfimctory, although with flashes of native 
 power or insight, but chiefly showing his large heart, which 
 even as a boy sought to embrace his whole world. His first 
 essays in Harvard show signs of embarrassment, where sub- 
 stance and form have not yet fully been harmonized. Now 
 there comes a series of essays, of which the faded manu- 
 scripts of four have been preserved, revealing his most dis- 
 tinctive characteristics, his knowledge, his jwwer of expres- 
 sion, his appropriation of truth by the imagination. That 
 was happening to him which happened to the leaders of the 
 
«T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 79 
 
 Renaissance in the fifteenth century, when, after a period of 
 long sechision in the nursery, as it were, of medisevalism, 
 they came forth and made the acquaintance of the larger 
 world of human life, the world as it really is, and not as it is 
 seen when looked at in the light of theory or provincial exclu- 
 siveness. Erasmus had collected in his "Adagia" the wis- 
 dom of the nations in all ages. Montaigne in his "Essays" 
 commented on the usages of different peoples, recognizing 
 that there were different ways of looking at life, but all of 
 them significant as expressive of life. If it was a critical 
 moment in the experience of these men, so was it also, and 
 much more, critical in the case of a youth to whom the world 
 was now opening up its significance. In the case of Erasmus, 
 Montaigne, and others, there had been induced a skeptical 
 mood, the conviction that there was truth in other lands than 
 the Christian, that the church had no monopoly of human 
 wisdom. Phillips Brooks was following in the same direc- 
 tion ; the duty was imposed on him also, of comparing other 
 worlds with his own, of adjusting the truth and the life of 
 other ages and peoples with what had come to him by tradi- 
 tion in a Christian household. He did not fall into skepti- 
 cism ; at least there is no trace of his having yielded the faith 
 of his childhood, but there is evidence of some long struggle 
 and absorbing effort before he measured for himself the 
 extent of the problem and worked out his own solution. In 
 these essays the man stands before us who throughout his 
 career showed such marvellous power in the interpretation of 
 life. Now and then he yields indeed to the spirit of the 
 mocker, as it was manifested in Rabelais, or indulges in 
 raillery. But that is not the final result ; beneath there lies 
 a deeper seriousness, the sense of the seriousness of life, — 
 that feeling which he had inherited from Puritan ancestors, — 
 too deeply ingrained a mood to be overcome. Yet with him 
 it changes its form, and becomes an intense consciousness of 
 life. lie was alive in himself at every pore of his being, and 
 no life or expression of life could he regard as alien to him- 
 self. It was in something of this spirit that he wrote these 
 later essays. They tell us what he had been doing with his 
 
8o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 time in college quite as much as do the marks he received 
 for recitation or examination. They were spontaneous pro- 
 ducts not called for by the college routine ; he gained nothing 
 by them for his college rank as a scholar, but he revealed 
 himself in his power to his contemporaries, and he also 
 revealed himself to his own soul. 
 
 These general remarks upon his later essays at Harvard 
 must be taken in place of any detailed analysis which would 
 do them justice. They are too long to be reproduced here, 
 each of them occupying an hour in the delivery, for they 
 were written to be read. The first of them is entitled " On 
 National Greetings and Sports as Hints of National Charac- 
 ter." It was read before the Hasty Pudding Club, December 
 27, 1853. It makes the impression of a wide knowledge of 
 the subject in the writer. He is bringing together the fruit 
 of all his reading. Much of his information was gained from 
 the "Essays " of Montaigne. There was another source over 
 which he had browsed to some purpose, — the now antiquated 
 "Library of Useful Knowledge," whose volumes covered many 
 departments of learning. Drake's "Literary Hours" was a 
 favorite with him, — a work published in 1804, and even 
 to-day an interesting book with its melange of poetry, criti- 
 cism, and romance. Another book contributing to the same 
 result was Sir Thomas Browne's "Vulgar Errors," or "En- 
 quiries into very many Received Tenents [sic] and commonly 
 Eeceived Truths." In addition to these sources of information 
 was the material derived from his reading of the classics, and 
 the study of Greek and Roman antiquities. The manners 
 and sports of the Jewish people he knew from his careful home 
 training in the knowledge of the Bible. His essay is in- 
 terlarded with quotations from various writers, Greek and 
 Latin, German and English. It might seem as if he were 
 making a display of his learning, if it were not that every 
 quotation told, and all combined to illustrate his theme. It 
 is noticeable that he makes no distinction between Judea and 
 Greece, Rome, Egypt, or China, nor gives any preference 
 to Christian greetings. There is no effort to distinguish 
 between religious and secular things ; all are alike significant 
 
MT. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 81 
 
 as manifestations of human life. What is still more remark- 
 able is the easy mastery of his materials. He does not pre- 
 sent his information in a stiff formal manner as something 
 apart from himself, which he has gleaned. He rather makes 
 the impression of an original observer, who had entered into 
 the spirit of other customs and usages and assimilated their 
 meaning, reproducing the information gathered from books 
 with a native power of his own, and giving it a deeper force 
 and reality from contact with his imagination. He has 
 turned the literature of knowledge into the literature of 
 power. A certain sense of humor underlies his treatment of 
 national manners, with an occasional touch of satire. Of the 
 Chinese he remarks that "they are not children, but dwarfs. 
 They were tied on at their birth like Indian papooses to the 
 backs of old prejudices and opinions, and have never been 
 allowed to travel faster than their mother squaws could 
 walk." But in the main the treatment of his subject is seri- 
 ous, — to illustrate how all that is distinctive in a nation 
 finds expression in its manners, or its mode of daily greeting, 
 whether it be religion with the Jew, or valor with the Roman. 
 At the same time he thinks a certain law runs through the 
 history of his theme. Salutations were at first simple and 
 natural expression, then they became complex and elaborate 
 and meaningless, and now they are showing signs of a return 
 to simplicity. That word "simplicity " was to represent to him 
 in his later life, as in his boyhood, the most efficient method 
 of attaining a great end. It was one of the catchwords of 
 his philosophy of life and religion. It is a constantly recur- 
 ring word in his early essays and in his later sermons. It 
 may be that in this devotion to simplicity he is reflecting the 
 influence of Carlyle, but if so the seed had fallen into good 
 ground to bring forth in its time a hundredfold. These 
 prophetic words of Carlyle found in him a great fulfilment : 
 "Veracity, true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these 
 alway. He that speaks what is really in him will find men 
 to listen though under never such impediments." 
 
 One other remark is suggested by this essay. He was 
 here combining in his own way those two things which are 
 
82 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 too often held apart, the outward form and the inner spirit. 
 These were tendencies in him which it is hopeless ever to see 
 perfectly reconciled, — the one coming from his father, the 
 other from his mother. But at this early age he had caught 
 the jirinciple, the psychological interest which binds them 
 together. The external form and symbol must be infused 
 with spirit, or it must lose its meaning and value. But also 
 sjjirit neglectful of the form may become an empty dream. 
 
 This essay was the first independent efTort of a boy of 
 seventeen wlio was seeking to understand the world in which 
 he found himself. That this purpose of interpreting the 
 world and human life constituted his deej^est interest is 
 shown by his returning to the subject in the following year, 
 when he read another essay of a similar kind before the 
 Hasty Pudding Club. In his first essay he had viewed man- 
 ners and sports as signs of national character. He now seeks 
 their bearing upon the individual man. He is trying to 
 enter the consciousness of other ages, to know what it was 
 like to have been a man of the ancient world or of the Mid- 
 dle Ages. His ideal would combine the freshness of the 
 early j'outh of the world with all its later accumulation of 
 worth. There is fascination for him in the chivalry of the 
 Middle Ages, and he is inclined to think this period of his- 
 tory has been too much maligned. He is not so sure that 
 the modern world is in all its aspects superior to antecedent 
 worlds. Hence his contrast of its feverish activity, its greed 
 for gold, with the calmness of an age that is gone. And 
 yet something of that calmness of spirit has descended from 
 the older world, and constitutes a restful element in modern 
 life. He is dealing seriously with great ideas and truths, yet 
 his touch is light and even playful. He compares the world 
 to a great toy, a kaleidoscope, whose constituents are like 
 little bits of glass of all sorts, sizes, and colors, shaken to- 
 gether at random. As they fall apart, or fall together, or 
 arrange themselves in gaudy stars or in sober colors and 
 more solid forms, we have the changing pictures of human 
 history. 
 
 That this desire to fathom the meaning of life in this 
 
MT. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 83 
 
 world, and if possible to get its formula, was his ruling 
 motive is shown in another long and elaborate essay, written 
 at the age of eighteen and read before the Institute, July 13, 
 1853. It deserves a brief summary. lie takes for his motto 
 words of Carlyle : " Men search for worlds in the heavens 
 above, while there are others as bright and nearer around 
 them on the earth." He now starts out with a new figure, 
 as giving a controlling unity to his experience. Every 
 thouglitful man he compares to an astronomer, pointing his 
 telescope in many directions. There is the telescoj>e of 
 memory which scans the past, or the telesco2:)e of hope for 
 discerning the future. There is the glass through which a 
 man looks inward. In the first part of his essay he is weigh- 
 ing the value of the past, as compared with the present, 
 holding the balance carefully lest on the one hand the past 
 should be overrated, or on the other hand, lest it be vmder- 
 rated in the absorption with existing things. The past, he 
 is inclined to believe, was as great in its way as the present. 
 Already he is beginning to outgrow the vast assumptions of 
 the American schoolboy. "The American," he remarks, 
 "is born with a consummate prejudice in favor of his birth- 
 place, and all that belongs to it. Unable to look back upon 
 a long array of historic wonders in his country's annals, he 
 naturally has recourse to the future, and declares that the 
 world shall yet see that there is no other nation on the face 
 of the earth which will be able to keep pace with his own, 
 and no race to be compared with him and his descendants." 
 With this ranting about the future, this tendency to wipe 
 out the past, as no longer worthy of consideration, he was 
 out of symjjathy. Humanity, as a whole and in all its his- 
 tory, had already become to him a sacred reality. 
 
 From this preliminary discussion, he turns to study the 
 various worlds within the world of human society. He treats 
 of the divisions among men, the laboring classes, the literary 
 and the aristocratic. There is an aristocracy of wealth, 
 which is the lowest; an aristocracy of birth, where "the man 
 of family takes the measure of his merits with his line of 
 ancestry. If he be poor, he wraps himself up snugly in hia 
 
84 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 coat-of-arms and makes the length of his lineage atone for 
 the scantiness of his purse;" and lastly, there is the aris- 
 tocracy of merit, the truly best, whose object is to raise, 
 rather than to crush, its inferiors. He defends the idea of 
 grades in society in order that there may be something to 
 look up to above the sordid plane of the many, examples in 
 the minor duties and decencies and refinements of life. "All 
 men are created equal, says the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, but it is a doctrine disproved by every birth. To 
 live in perfect equality has been tried and found impracti- 
 cal." But the true aristocracy of a Utopian world would 
 aim to elevate the whole. He concludes with words which 
 are personal : — 
 
 I am aware that the view which I have taken of these worlds has 
 been very superficial and very incomplete, but I do not pretend 
 to be a philosopher, though philosophers are the mushroom growth 
 of every soil, tilled or untilled, at the present time. They are 
 springing up in every corner of the land. They talk in philoso- 
 phical style of the philosophy of the present and the philosophy of 
 the past. Travelling with them is the philosophy of locomotion, 
 and a plain dinner the philosophy of consumjjtion. But is this 
 true philosophy ? They acknowledge that life is a grave problem, 
 but they prefer to guess at the answer rather than to work it out 
 by slow and labored reasoning. They would rather drop their 
 little buckets in the deep well, too deep for the ropes of their 
 ideas to reach the water, than to drink from the pure gushing 
 spring that starts from the surface of the ground. The true 
 philosopher is something very different from this. He is the real 
 astronomer, the mental Herschel, living with one eye always on 
 the heavens and the other on the records of past wisdom. The 
 philosopher is universal in his views. He is no mean contempti- 
 ble Janus with only two pair of eyes, but a perfect Argus with an 
 hundred pair of eyes all over, and looking in all directions, a 
 moral Gulliver who has visited every world, and who knows the 
 whole geography, the great and the little, the Brobdignag and 
 the Lilliput, of the human heart. 
 
 In 1854, while in his Junior year, he made his first en- 
 trance into print in the pages of the "Harvard Monthly," of 
 which he was one of the editors. The title of his article is 
 "The English Table Talkers." From a literary point of 
 
Phillips Brooks in his Junior Year at Harvard 
 
•/-/ /.v. 
 
/S.T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 85 
 
 view this is the most complete of all his early efforts. The 
 style has the free swing and graceful ease of his later work. 
 There is a tone of mastery and power ; he utters himself with 
 confidence as though he knew; and the whole paper is envi- 
 roned with a genial happy atmosphere. But what is more 
 important, this essay on "The English Table Talkers " reveals 
 him in his process of development. It was the direct fruit 
 of his reading, where he laid under contribution Walpole and 
 Selden, Johnson and Coleridge. In a short paper he could 
 not say much, nor does he attempt to illustrate. But his 
 characterization is keen and direct. It is not in this, how- 
 ever, that the significance of his essay chiefly lies, but rather 
 in his appreciation of the reason why table talk has so potent 
 a charm. He sees that Boswell's reports of Johnson's con- 
 versation are more interesting than "Rasselas" or anything 
 which Johnson wrote; that Selden's "Casual Remarks" are 
 interesting when his "Mare Clausum " may be dull. He 
 admires the enthusiasm, the perfect sanity also, which the 
 conversation reveals. Nothing pleases him more than this 
 sound judgment and prevailing good sense, particularly in 
 Coleridge. Of Boswell's "Johnson" he remarks: "It has 
 been the friend and companion of half the world ever since 
 it first appeared. . . . Everybody scolds at Boswell and 
 professes to despise him, calls him hard names, and then 
 reads his book over and over again." The j)oint which he 
 is mainly concerned with is this, that the secret of the 
 charm in all these talkers lies in their unveiling of them- 
 selves, so that we see the simple, natural, unaffected men, 
 — "the least artificial of men in their least artificial mood." 
 Those who are reserved and affected are yet desirous of 
 simplicity and naturalness in others. In simple, free, and 
 natural talk there lies an attraction which no other form of 
 human appeal can rival. ''^ Men like to be talked to better 
 than to be preached at; they prefer the easy-chair to the 
 pulpit." 
 
 He takes occasion in this paper, when speaking of Wal- 
 pole, to give an estimate of the value of letter writing. "He 
 was one of the greatest of letter writers, and, perhaps we 
 
86 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 may say, consequently not one of the greatest of men. There 
 is a talent needed in a good letter, as in any other good 
 thing, but it is never of the highest, and often of the lowest 
 kind. As a general thing we read letters to be interested 
 and informed, but not improved ; and so if interest and infor- 
 mation, but not improvement, are the result, we have no 
 thoughts of a complaint or breach of promise. Men do not 
 drop true genius into the j)ost office, or trust the evidence of 
 a great soul to the letter bag." This pronounced oi^inion 
 upon the value of letter writing formed at the age of eigh- 
 teen, he seems to have retained as a permanent conviction. 
 He wrote many letters full of interest and information, but 
 never with the intention of dropping the evidence of a great 
 soul into the post office. 
 
 The approbation of his fellow students for these gratui- 
 tous efforts, which cost him time and labor, was ratified by 
 the college judges, when, in his Junior year, he offered an 
 essay in competition for the first Bowdoin prize. The topic 
 assigned was the "Teaching of Tacitus regarding Fate and 
 Destiny." He had failed to take the prize in the Latin 
 School, when he wrote his elaborate eulogy on "'Mathemat- 
 ics," for which he had no taste; here was a subject suited to 
 his mind, where he could delve in the sources and draw his 
 own conclusions, reconstructing a distant age by his imagina- 
 tion, analyzing a personality, entering into the moods and 
 thoughts generated by the peculiar quality of the time. He 
 applies to Tacitus the principle of development, studying 
 first his earlier writings and then his later, in order to 
 observe whether his reflections upon life changed with his 
 advancing years and experience. He recognized that when 
 faith in the popular religion had been shaken, as it was with 
 Tacitus, so that the worship of the gods, and the gods them- 
 selves, had become an unreality, the mind must necessarily 
 be driven to vacillate between the two alternatives of chance 
 or fate, as the explanation of the movement of events. He 
 discriminated between the two schools of history : the one 
 seeking to confine itself to the narration of outward events ; 
 the other haunted with the problem, as it records the event, 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 87 
 
 why it should have taken the shape it did. This problem he 
 detects in the mind of Tacitus, forcing him at times to 
 remark on the mystery of life, but unable wholly to escape 
 from a dreary process wherein at one moment it seemed as if 
 blind chance was the last resort, or again, the belief seemed 
 rational that fate lay beneath the ordering of events. And 
 he also recognizes how Tacitus was oblivious of the new 
 religion, with its conception of a revelation, where Deity was 
 presented as the creator and omnipotent ruler of the world. 
 In this essay there is seriousness and intensity, and also a 
 religious feeling not apparent in his papers before the literary 
 societies. 
 
 When we turn from the literary influences to which he 
 was subjecting himself with a wisdom better than he knew, to 
 inquire what forces were acting upon his religious life, we are 
 met with reserve and an almost unfathomable silence. He 
 kept no religious journal to record his impressions or his 
 aspirations. His mother's religious teaching in the home 
 circle was now confined to the younger boys. It had con- 
 sisted mainly in the reproduction of Dr. Vinton's instruc- 
 tions to his adult Bible class, but accompanied with a mother's 
 fervency and her own peculiar emphasis. That had done its 
 work. When he entered Harvard, however, it could not 
 have been long before he felt the exj^ansion of his religious 
 horizon, in whose unaccustomed vastness many familiar land- 
 marks must have seemed to shift their relative positions. In 
 these years great changes were taking place in the religious 
 world. But New England differed widely in its peculiar 
 religious development from the mother country. Harvard 
 was a stranger to any such religious reformer as John Henry 
 Newman, who had convulsed Oxford as well as all England 
 in the forties. Phillips Brooks does not seem to have heard 
 while in college of either Pusey or Newman. Next to 
 Emerson, who to some extent was one of his religious teachers, 
 the most potent influence disturbing tlie familiar convictions 
 of the time was Theodore Parker. Since 1852 he had been 
 preaching in the Boston Music Hall. In 1852 he published 
 his "Ten Sermons of Euligion," and in 1853 his "Theism, 
 
88 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 Atheism, and the Popvdar Theology." He was at once the 
 delight of some, but the terror of the many. There was 
 sensitiveness on the subject in the Brooks household. The 
 mother was alarmed at the growth of his influence. Whether 
 Phillips Brooks listened at any time to Parker's preaching, 
 or had at this stage of his life read any of Parker's sermons, 
 is not known. But the picture is a striking one and offers 
 food for reflection, — the one great preacher was in the ful- 
 ness of his strength while his successor, who was to surpass 
 him in influence and to undo the negative tendencies of his 
 thought, was slowly growing up in the seclusion of Harvard. 
 
 It was the essence of Parker's teaching that the divine 
 revelation must be submitted to the tril)unal of human reason; 
 that all pvirporting to be divine, whatever its source, however 
 imposing the prestige of its authority, must come to this 
 tribunal for judgment and sentence. No external authority 
 must be allowed to overawe the soul of man which was made 
 in the divine image, with the capacities of the divine nature, 
 and endowed by the divine will with gifts and graces, insight 
 and supreme authority. This was the great clash and strug- 
 gle of the middle of the century. On the one side, Newman, 
 pleading with rare eloquence for the submission of the soul, 
 without examination, to external authority, and carelessly 
 adding to the burden thus to be received all the peculiarities 
 of a distant mediaeval exijerience; and on the other hand, 
 Parker, vehemently demanding the soul's emancipation from 
 obedience or even deference to any tradition, exalting the 
 capacity of the soul by its transcendental endowment to the 
 position of a supreme arbiter in matters of faith. Parker 
 was the embodiment of the spirit of transcendentalism, New- 
 man that of medisevalism, which was its antipodes. The 
 former best expressed the direction and tendency of American 
 religious thought; the latter was captivating many of the 
 choicest English spirits, for whom transcendentalism was an 
 impossibility, but who had no other alternative. 
 
 Out of this conflict there came that phenomenon so com- 
 mon in this period, what is called "religious doubt." It 
 affected young men in the universities wherever thought had 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 89 
 
 been awakened. It was illustrated in its most typical form 
 by the case of Stirling, who had fallen under Carlyle's influ- 
 ence, to the destruction for a time of his religious faith, and 
 leading to the abandonment of his calling as a minister of 
 the Church of England. Arthur Hugh Clough was another 
 signal instance of its working, who was in Boston in 1852, 
 and had been admitted to the friendship of Emerson and 
 Longfellow. But his poetry was not yet known. Tennyson 
 had illustrated this mood of religious doubt in his "In 
 Memoriam,"' with something more than an artist's power. 
 It was the case of those to whom it would be moral and intel- 
 lectual suicide to submit to Newman's gTiidance, while they 
 did not feel competent for themselves to sit in judgment upon 
 the issues of the traditional faith. To such as these Tenny- 
 son became for the time a religious teacher, as well as the 
 truest of poets. The opening words of the prologue of his 
 poem became an anchor to many inquiring spirits, who would 
 fain believe, but could not : — 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love. 
 
 Whom -we, tliat have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove. 
 
 There is no direct evidence, as by any confession of his 
 own, that the soul of Phillips Brooks was torn by this re- 
 presentative struggle of the moment. But there is indirect 
 evidence which points to some inward disturbance as though 
 the depths of his being were troubled. For one thing, he 
 delayed presenting himself for the rite of confirmation. In 
 the normal order of the church the proper age is from six- 
 teen upwards. His brother William had been confirmed at 
 eighteen, his younger brothers were confirmed at the same 
 age, and even earlier, with the exception of George. His 
 ancestors had gone through some religious experience while 
 in college, which ended in "joining the church " at the same 
 early age. But he continued to postpone the decisive act 
 during his years in college. He knew well his mother's 
 wishes; he was not unmindful of her prayers, her one con- 
 suming desire to see him kneeling at the Holy Communion, 
 
90 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 He was dutiful and obedient; his love for his mother was 
 as deep as the roots of his being. He could recall how his 
 father had taken the momentous step, when it must have cost 
 him no slight effort to do so. There is no trace of any effort 
 of his parents to hurry or to force the decision. If, as we 
 suppose, they refrained from so doing, they were wise. He 
 was not ready for confirmation, but he was waiting, and that 
 is all that can be said. That he had his thoughts upon the 
 subject is certain; beyond that it is impossible to speak. 
 There was but one religious society in the college, the Chris- 
 tian Brethren, in which one of his ancestors had been promi- 
 nent, but of this he was not a member. 
 
 It is not without its bearing upon this subject that the 
 scrutiny of his college essays reveals no tendency to dwell 
 upon the subject of religion. This is in contrast to his theses 
 written while in the Latin School. That his earlier boyish 
 efforts should have exjjressed a religious faith and acquies- 
 cence with the home teaching, in emphatic and even enthu- 
 siastic form, does not show, indeed, that it was premature 
 and unreal, but does show that a profound and independent 
 process was required before it became in the realest sense 
 his own; that when he returned to the formulas, so easily 
 accepted at first, it would be with a consciousness of appro- 
 priation, making them new, as if unknown before. We may 
 then only surmise, but cannot otherwise measure, the work- 
 ing of his spirit at this moment. There were depths in his 
 nature which had not been reached by the ministrations of 
 his pastor. There was a reconciliation to be accomplished 
 between what he had been taught by others and what he was 
 learning by himself. 
 
 Certain cliaracteristics of Phillips Brooks stand out with 
 prominence in his college daj^s. He was marked by a pro- 
 found reserve. He would not talk of himself or reveal his 
 inmost thoughts. He had manj' friends; he was greatly 
 admired ; his favor and f riendsliip were courted by many as 
 a prize. Something of the feeling toward him which showed 
 itself in lat(n' years in the extravagance of devotion already 
 existed. But to know him intimately was impossible. When 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 91 
 
 efforts were made to draw liim out, they invariably ended 
 in failure. He appeared to be frankness and simplicity, 
 but the inner citadel of his being was in his own posses- 
 sion. He became accustomed to these efforts to induce him 
 to talk about himself, and he learned to parry them, to throw 
 the inquirer oft' the track, or to turn the subject, and yet 
 without giving offence. Close as were some of his friends 
 he gave his full confidence to no one. This characteristic 
 reserve, which remained unbroken throughout his life, might 
 seem to call for some explanation. It was the symbol at 
 least of a great personality, capable of standing alone and 
 facing the world, when the time should come, in independence 
 and freedom. The sense of the sacredness of the inner life, 
 to be known only to God in its fulness, is here apparent, as 
 the motive of his being. Again, he identified himself with 
 his thought and his conviction to such an extent that he did 
 not exist apart from them. He was really giving himself 
 when others least suspected it, for it was done in impersonal 
 ways which did not suggest that he was imparting the inner 
 mystery of his being. There are some men, and notably 
 Shakespeare as the type, of whom but little or nothing is 
 known, because they have given themselves in their work. 
 That constitutes their biography, and therein lies the j)erson- 
 ality, which we lose, if we try to catch glimpses of another 
 type of character, where the man appears apart from the pur- 
 pose of his existence. 
 
 Another feature of Phillips Brooks was his power of obser- 
 vation. This was a gift which in his ease required no cixl- 
 tivation for its exercise. He saw everything which fell under 
 his gaze, and, like an artist as he was, he saw clearly and 
 distinctly. Everything made its distinct impression, to be 
 remembered and brooded over, till it should reappear in 
 some organic relationship when the opportunity for its set- 
 ting should come. He was receiving impressions when he 
 seemed most idle, always noting his impressions, never allow- 
 ing the slightest detail to escape him. The whole world of 
 college life came to a focus in his mental vision. From this 
 gift, and the exercise of it, he could not escape. Such was 
 
92 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 the impression he made in his college days upon those who 
 knew him best. 
 
 But in all this there was an unconscious burden of an ever- 
 increasing body of new impressions to be carried. What he 
 learned from books and teachers was much, and was most 
 important, but it was a small part, and always remained a 
 relatively small fraction, compared with what he gained from 
 the observation of life. When to this was joined his power 
 of imagination, the burden was increased. He was doomed 
 by this gift to read the thought and enter into the experience 
 of others, easily and naturally, it would almost seem by no 
 experience of his own. The word "imagination " is a difficult 
 word to define ; it has never been defined, but stands vaguely 
 to do duty for much that is incapable of analysis. In its 
 largest sense it is only another aspect of observation, a wider 
 range of its exercise and under more subtle, intangible condi- 
 tions. There is the knowledge of life and the world to be 
 gained from observation, whether of men or books; there is the 
 imagination, enabling one to enter a still wider experience. 
 To these must be added another factor. One must have the 
 world already in his own soul, seeing much through anticipa- 
 tion, or he remains blind with seeing eyes, and all experience 
 and observation become dead and unproductive labor. "The 
 knowledge of the world is inborn with the genuine poet, so 
 that he needs not much experience or varied observation to 
 represent it adequately." Such was the substance of the re- 
 ply of Goethe to Eckermann, when the latter was admiring in 
 "Faust" the marks of a careful study of life and the world. 
 Coleridge has also reached the same conclusion : — 
 
 I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 
 The passion and the life whose fountains are within. 
 
 So Phillips Brooks came upon the scene, with a rich world 
 of his own, his most rare endowment. We need not analyze 
 it or seek to detect its source. Something surely came from 
 his long line of descent, as if his ancestors for many genera- 
 tions had been preparing for his work. To his father and 
 his mother his indebtedness was more direct, in that com- 
 posite gift which united the love of the world that now is 
 
JET. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 93 
 
 with a deep principle of spiritual aspiration. The abounding 
 wealth of this endowment enabled him to read the outer 
 world and the human soul through the world within him, so 
 that he seemed at home in the universe without effort and 
 knew it by turning his gaze within, anticipating what others 
 gain by effort and most men never reach. 
 
 The manner of Phillips Brooks while in college is remem- 
 bered as quiet and undemonstrative, not particularly notice- 
 able in any way. Among his friends he displayed that fine 
 capacity for trifling which certainly did not diminish in his 
 later years. One of his classmates, Mr. G. C. Sawyer, 
 contributes this picture from memory : — 
 
 Phillips Brooks, though a quiet man in college days, was the 
 brilliant writer, taking prizes for English essays and doing the 
 best writing at all times in the various societies to which he be- 
 longed. At the same time it was, I remember, noticeable, how 
 outside of this literary vein so markedly brilliant, he did not, 
 except occasionally, let himself out in conversation. He was 
 playful, even boyish, at times bright and witty in his speech. He 
 distinctly refused, as in later years, to be drawn ; and I call to 
 mind one time when an importunate classmate, more obtrusive 
 than considerate, had forced him to a long walk for the too mani- 
 fest purpose of drawing him into literary or philosophic converse, 
 came back to the amusement of those of us who knew Brooks's 
 moods better, quite discomfited at having got from him little but 
 the persiflage which on occasions he understood so well how to 
 use. 
 
 Thus early in life he was distinguished by nothing more than 
 by a dislike of show and of putting himself or his opinions for- 
 ward. At the same time there never was a doubt in the minds 
 of his college friends or his instructors that underneath lay a rich 
 vein, so deep down that it promised when worked to be developed 
 into products of marvellous value. Even then he had, I may say, 
 his worshippers, who foretold great things of him. But then, as 
 afterwards, he was always noticeable for putting aside anything 
 that looked like adulation even from friends. His best efforts 
 seemed to come easily and naturally. 
 
 The lines of Wordsworth come to me in thinking of those 
 youthful days when with his great powers still in their formative 
 state, he went in and out among us, "moving about in worlds not 
 realized." 
 
94 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 How well I remember climbing up to his room in Stoughton, 
 uppermost story, late at night, and finding him stretched out on 
 a sofa, reading, his table covered with books which, with his 
 omnivorous capacity of rapidly going through, he had taken from 
 the library when preparing a Bowdoin essay. 
 
 When be graduated at Harvard in 1855 lie was but nine- 
 teen, his twentieth birthday being six months distant. He 
 was still a boy in feeling and manner. How he then appeared 
 to a timid Freshman, looking up to the Seniors with too great 
 deference, is told by one who sat at the same table with him, 
 observing the grace of his ways and fascinated by the won- 
 derful charm of his face. He would take the opportunity to 
 push dishes to the end of the table, where the Freshmen sat, 
 who would otherwise have failed to get their rightful share. 
 He took one of the Freshmen aside on one occasion, and 
 solemnly urged him to greater self-assertion. The college, 
 he said to him, really belonged to the Freshman class, who 
 were just entering and had their college life before them, 
 rather than to the Seniors, like himself, who had had their 
 day and were about to leave. ^ It is a slight incident, but 
 shows the inborn tendency to get at the reality of the situa- 
 tion, even if he must reverse the consecrated judgments of 
 tradition. 
 
 Whether he had thought of a profession to be followed 
 after leaving college, or how far he may have had the minis- 
 try in view, is uncertain. One of his classmates, whose 
 opinion of him is founded upon much familiar association, 
 thinks that already he had it in contemplation as a possi- 
 bility, and was not surprised when he learned of his decision 
 in the year following his graduation. But there was one 
 peculiar obstacle in the way, not to mention others, which 
 may have had its force upon his mind. In those days the 
 anti-slavery sentiment was fast ripening, and there were 
 many who were ready for revolt and separation, if the evil 
 and the disgrace could not be otherwise removed. The 
 great leaders of the anti-slavery movement were inclined to 
 blame the churches and the Christian ministry for their 
 
 1 This reminiscence is contributed by Dr. H. P. Walcott of Cambridge, Mass. 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 95 
 
 indifference to the cause of abolition, even if they were not 
 prepared to break with the Clmrcli alt(jgether, because in 
 that critical moment she came not to the help of the Lord 
 against the mighty. With this feeling Phillips Brooks had 
 deep sympathy. He has remarked that the attitude of the 
 clergy during the civil war had set back the church to such 
 an extent that the evil would not be overcome for a srenera- 
 tion. If he thought of the ministry as his calling in life, it 
 may have been only because in his childhood he had felt its 
 attractive appeal to his imagination. He was now aware that 
 the prevailing sentiment among young men of his age was 
 that the church did not offer the prospect of the highest use- 
 fulness or the widest influence. There is no evidence that 
 any decision had been reached. If his college life had con- 
 tributed no other direct preparation than the cultivation of 
 a high ideal of character, the manifestation of a moral pur- 
 pose as evidenced by a life uusjjotted from the evil that is 
 in the world, it had done the most important work in fitting 
 him for his sacred calling. He left this impression on the 
 mind of his classmate Sawyer, who, when reading a tribute 
 recently paid by Mr. Gladstone to the character of Arthur 
 Hallam, was so imjjressed with its verisimilitude in the case 
 of Phillips Brooks that he offered it as a contribution to this 
 Memoir : — 
 
 Arthur Hallam's life at Eton was certainly a very happy life. 
 He enjoyed work, he enjoyed society ; and games which he did 
 not enjoy he contentedly left aside. His temper was as sweet as 
 his manners were winning. His conduct was without a spot or 
 even a speck. He was that rare and blessed creature, anima 
 naturaliter Christiana.. 
 
 We may sum up the years of his college life, in their su- 
 perficial aspects, or as vouched for by the few documents that 
 exist. He had fitted himself for teaching in certain lines, 
 especially the classics. He was possessed of some of the 
 tools of modern learning, a reading knowledge of German 
 and of French. He had acquired the taste for literature 
 and had already entered into its spirit for himself, reading 
 primarily to admire and in a mood of deepest reverence- 
 
96 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 He had given evidence of his power, impressing his contem- 
 poraries, some of them at least, with the conviction of his 
 coming greatness, of some high vocation in reserve for him. 
 The resultant of his experience had been to make him a 
 humanist, of an exalted type, but a humanist in so far as he 
 recognized the sacredness and beauty and joy of the secular 
 life. Those tendencies which he inherited from his father 
 were at this time uppermost. But there was another inherit- 
 ance from his mother and his stricter Puritan ancestry, the 
 God-consciousness, with which he must reckon in the future. 
 Signs of its existence and presence were not wanting; its 
 latent force may have deterred him from too easily making 
 the formal profession of the Christian life. To reconcile 
 these two in organic divine relationship was to be the work 
 of his life, but as yet his mission was not revealed to him. 
 The transitions of life are mysterious, never fully accounted 
 for after all our pains. Phillips Brooks himself must be 
 their best exponent in his own exjierience. In the world he 
 carried within himself, these transitions were in the fore- 
 ground. He studied himself in order to read other men. 
 He paused at these halting-places and landmarks, and rever- 
 ently sought to read their deej^er meaning. In a sermon 
 entitled "The Sacredness of Life," we are getting glimpses 
 of his autobiography. "He asked life of Thee, and Thou 
 gavest him a long life, even for ever and ever," was his text. 
 
 We, too, ask God for life ; every struggle for self-support, every 
 shudder at the thought of dying, every delight in existence, is a 
 cry for life. We may not mean it for a prayer. We may not 
 turn it Godward. With us, as we utter it, it may be a mere vague 
 cry into the darkness, but God hears it as a cry to Him. . . . When 
 we first take the life which He gives us, we do not know what 
 it is. Its depth, its richness, only opens to us gradually. Only 
 gradually do we learn that <God has given to us not merely the 
 power of present being and present enjoyment, but that, wrapped 
 up and hidden in that. He has given us the power of thinking, 
 feeling, loving, living, in sucli deep and lofty ways that we may 
 be in connection with the great continuous unbroken thoughts and 
 feelings and movements of the universe. The life which He has 
 given us is in its capacities not merely a thing of tliis moment. 
 It is a part of the life of the universe. It is eternal life. , 
 
^T. 15-19] HARVARD COLLEGE 97 
 
 The unconscious infant lives in a mere animal existence, and 
 later, when the strong and healthy boy begins to grow conscious 
 of the delight of life, it is pure life, life simply as a fact, life not 
 with reference to the deeper powers it contains or the far-off 
 issues with which it has to do, that gives him such hourly delight 
 in living. There comes back to many of us, I am sure, the ring- 
 ing verse in which Browning has made this very David, when he 
 was a boy, sing in the presence of King Saul of this pure con- 
 sciousness of joy in the mere fact of being alive : — 
 
 Oh, the wild joys of living ! . . . 
 
 How good is man's life, the mere living, bow fit to employ 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy 
 
 In his placing of a bright unquestioning boyhood at the begin- 
 ning of every man's career, does it not seem as if God had meant 
 to indicate that this sense of life as a blessing in itself must be 
 the basis out of which all the sense of the special blessedness of 
 special events in life must grow, as if He meant to have us take 
 life as a whole and thank Him for our creation before we looked 
 deeper and saw what were the true purposes of life? But by and 
 by the time for that deeper look must come. . . . The thoughts 
 and anxieties and duties of a man come crowding up into the life 
 of a light-hearted boy. Care for things to which he was once all 
 indifferent, hopes of things about which he once never dreamed, 
 ambitions and desires of influence and power, the delight in half- 
 discovered faculties, and, as the crown of all, conscious religion or 
 the realized relationship with God, the love of and the obedience 
 to Christ, all these become his one after another. . . . See him at 
 forty, rich in all these, the earnest, thoughtful, religious man, 
 full of associations with the world and with his fellow man and 
 God. This is the same being with the boy who played in simple 
 health and thoughtlessness thirty years ago. How have all these 
 things come to him? Have angels come down one by one, each 
 bringing one of these new gifts and put them one by one into his 
 life ? Have they not rather opened one by one out of that life 
 itself, called out by God, urged out by the half-blind desire to be 
 all that it had within itself the capacity of being, but certainly 
 coming forth out of the very substance of the life itself, and there- 
 fore having been in the life from the beginning ? There never was 
 the moment when the hand of God touched Shakespeare's lips and 
 bade him be the poet. Never a time when as a new endowment a 
 breath from Heaven gave to St. John the capacity to be a saint; 
 never a day when the nature of Raphael was filled with genius. 
 These things were in these men from the beginnings of their lives. 
 
 1 Cf- New Starts in Life, and Other Sermons, pp. 108 ff. It was written in 
 
98 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1851-55 
 
 When he was writing this sermon, in 1882, he was surely 
 contemplating in the retrospect his own early manhood and 
 the transition to it from his youth. He makes his appeal to 
 the young men before him, who expect to become religious 
 some day, but are not so now. What can they do now, in 
 anticipation of that coming change? This much at least, 
 they can keep their hands pure, and guard their sense from 
 the least taint of impurity. In this way they will be faithful 
 already to what unguessed deeper life God has in his inten- 
 tions for them. "No man is living worthily who is not faith- 
 ful already to the future life which he does not yet under- 
 stand, but which he knows must come. Your bodies are the 
 temi^les of the Holy Ghost, says Paul. Before the God has 
 accepted the temple, the temple must feel the influence of his 
 promised coming and keep his empty courts clean for him." 
 He admits that out of the substance of our sins, the mercy of 
 God can make a new life. In every man's youth, be it as 
 pure as it may, there will be enough for God to forgive. But 
 he warns them of the years of dissipation and idleness, which 
 rest like an incubus on men when they make their first 
 effort to be Christians. He condemns as a base heresy the 
 notion that one must go through wickedness to get goodness. 
 It was the summary of his own experience when he said, 
 "Keep your life jjure, that some day God may make it 
 holy." 
 
 In the Order of Exercises for Commencement Day, July 
 17, 1855, the name of Phillips Brooks appears with a "Dis- 
 sertation — Eabaut, the Huguenot Preacher." In a short 
 paj^er, occupying some five minutes in the delivery, it was 
 not possible that much should be said, nor was the subject, 
 unfamiliar as it must have been to most of his audience, 
 calculated to evoke the eloquence of the speaker. The con- 
 ventionality of the occasion, the perfunctory character of his 
 performance as a piece of college routine were unfavorable 
 circiunstances for one who revelled in the sense of freedom, 
 demanding natiu-alness and spontaneity as the conditions of 
 
 1882, fet. 47, .-ind preached in Trinity Chnrch, Boston, M.irch 19, 1882, and in 
 St. John's Memorial Chapel, Cambridtje, February 24, 1884. 
 
/ET. 15-19J HARVARD COLLEGE 99 
 
 his best utterance. Nor does he seem to have been greatly 
 interested in the subject assigned to him, or to have made any 
 special study for its treatment. lie took Eabaut as 11 sjjecimen 
 of a man, living under the i)ower of a great belief. What he 
 says of him would apply with equal force to a hundred others 
 that might easily be named. He simply used the name as a 
 peg whereon to hang his own reflections. Rabaut was strong 
 because he had a belief which had come down to him from 
 the past. He saw 
 
 how the years gone by were made for him, how century sent down 
 to century its lessons and its meanings, and how he, the heir of 
 all the ages, had a right to his inheritance, to the enlightened 
 belief, which had been so long ripening for the world. This 
 belief filled his life and made him what he was. It taught him 
 to grasp the present and to see the good of his own wrecked age. 
 Through this belief he looked into the future and became a pro- 
 phet, to warn of the impending ruin for which a corrupt court and 
 faithless philosophers were preparing. Such was the Pope of the 
 Huguenots, as he was called, le pasteur du Desert. 
 
 It is, then, a noble thing for a man to have something noble to 
 believe. It gives him strength. It makes him such a man as 
 Paul Rabaut. Without his genius, without his great mind, any 
 man may have his great belief, his simple, earnest trust in what 
 to him is truth. There were many greater minds in France, but 
 there was not one greater moM. . . . These are the lives that teach 
 the world to live. These are the characters that stand along the 
 street of daily life, looking quietly down like great statues upon 
 the business and the bustle, the duties and the works, of the world 
 which has come after them, and perpetuating their lesson of faith 
 forever. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SEPTEMBER, 1855-OCTOBEK, 1856 
 
 HIS EXPERIENCE AS USHER IN THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL. 
 RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS. EXTRACTS FROM HIS NOTE-BOOK 
 
 After graduating from college, Phillips Brooks made a 
 successfiJ api^lication for the position of usher (teacher) in 
 the Boston Latin School, and began his work there in Sep- 
 tember, 1855, not yet having reached his twentieth birthday. 
 In this it might seem as though he were only taking the line 
 of least resistance. His high rank as a classical scholar in 
 college made such an opening possible without further pre- 
 paration. He would also be at once in possession of an 
 income, — a consideration weighing with him in view of the 
 younger brothers who were following, whose education must 
 have been a strain on the family resources. It may have 
 been a matter of no small pride that he would be able so 
 early to take care of himself. In the meantime, also, while 
 gaining experience, he would be able to look about him and 
 decide at his leisure upon his vocation in life. 
 
 But all this, while it may have some truth, is hypothetical. 
 The actual fact seems to be that he had already made up his 
 mind that hi.s true calling was to be a teacher. The evidence 
 that this was his decided preference will appear more fully 
 in later chapters. Here, at least, it may be partly antici- 
 pated by reference to a remark made in his later years, when 
 he told a friend that the scheme of life he had laid out for 
 himself on leaving college was to teach for a while in the 
 Latin School, in order to gain experience, and then to go 
 abroad for study in order to fit himself for a professorship, i 
 
 1 From a conTersation with Kev. James P. Franks of Salem, a very dear and 
 lifelong friend. 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL loi 
 
 It must be assumed, then, that he had deterinined upon 
 teaching as his vocation and not merely as a temijorary 
 expedient. The decision must have been reached, after all 
 the deliberation of which he was capable, that the work of 
 a teacher was the highest to which a man could be called; 
 that it was the simplest, the most natural, the most powerful 
 mode also for serving one's fellows, and of exerting a deep 
 and enduring influence, — a most real and genuine calling. 
 He inherited the love of teaching from his mother, who 
 was the first and most successful teacher of all her children, 
 so instilling the rudiments of truth in their minds that they 
 could not escape its permanent influence. His mother was 
 born to be a teacher. But she in turn inherited from her 
 father the conviction of the vast influence in the hands of 
 one who was set to mould the mind and the character of the 
 rising generation. We go back still further, to her grand- 
 father. Judge Phillips of Andover, the founder of the acad- 
 emy, or Dr. Phillips, an uncle, the founder of the Exeter 
 Academy. The love of teaching ran in the blood of the 
 Phillips family. The love of country and of religion, of 
 pure homes and high morals, the preservation in its integrity 
 of the Puritan mission to the world, all these concentrated 
 as so many motives in the one conviction that upon the 
 teacher devolved the highest duty and privilege, — the main- 
 tenance and the advancement of what was most essential and 
 most real in human living. There was something of the 
 enthusiasm in New England in the days when it was planting 
 its schools and nourishing the vocation of the teacher that 
 we perceive in another new world in the remote past, — the 
 age of Charlemagne, when men were first awakening to the 
 necessity of schools and of teachers, in order to the salvation 
 of government and society. So Phillips Brooks had in him 
 the making of an Alcuin, who in the dawn of mediseval civi- 
 lization became a power behind the throne and the church, 
 to whom all subsequent ages acknowledge their debt of grati- 
 tude. Like Alcuin, he came to his work with enthusiasm ; 
 he had, as we say, the highest ideal of what an educator 
 should be, that is, the highest ideal he was then capable of 
 
I02 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 conceiving. Had he continued in this calling, he, too, might 
 have left his stamp upon methods of education, for his ideal 
 would have expanded to meet the advancing claims of the 
 higher education in all its directions. All his life long he 
 had the deepest sympathy with teachers of every kind and 
 grade. Nowhere was he more sought and valued than in 
 schools and colleges and institutions of learning. 
 
 But now, on the very threshold of his career, he met with 
 failure. So complete it seemed and so final that we can 
 only adequately explain the situation hy regarding it as some 
 providential interference, which blocked the way and shut 
 him out by some irreversible decree from any further attemjjt 
 to pursue his favorite vocation. It was as if the world spirit 
 had already fastened upon him for its own, and resented the 
 possibility of his loss to its own mysterious purpose. He did 
 not see it at the time, perhaps he never fully acquiesced in 
 the verdict of the power, not his own, that makes of men 
 what they do not contemplate, that carried him away and 
 bore him aloft, but first took him into the wilderness till it 
 had been shown him what he must do. 
 
 The failure of Phillips Brooks as a teacher in the Latin 
 School was so conspicuous, and he was so widely known to 
 a large circle of acquaintances in Boston, so great tilings also 
 had been expected of him, that it was naturally a subject of 
 much comment at the time, and could not be forgotten in 
 after years. At first it had been an occasion of commisera- 
 tion. But when he became distinguished as the unrivalled 
 preacher it was still referred to, and used to point a moral. 
 Some incidents connected with it have occasionally found 
 their way into print. How his failure was regarded at the 
 time is sliown in the following remarks of Charles Francis 
 Adams, Esq., now the president of the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society. The occasion of the remarks was a meeting 
 of the Historical Society shortly after the death of Phillips 
 Brooks, when his name was commemorated as one of its 
 members : — 
 
 I cannot remember the time when I did not know Phillips 
 Brooks. He was my second cousin, for his father and my niotlier 
 
/ET. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 103 
 
 were cousins-german. So, at almost the first school I ever 
 went to, — a little dame school kejjt in a small wooden house 
 then standing on Bedford Street, innnediately in the rear of 
 Church Green, as the enclosure on Summer Street was called 
 whereon stood the New South meeting-house, in which Dr. Alex- 
 ander Young then ministered, — in this antiquated little woodeji 
 edifice, long since removed, Phillips Brooks and I learned our 
 letters ; hoth of us, I take it, then being about the age of five or 
 six. Some eight or ten years later, I next met him at the Boston 
 Latin School, where he was one year in advance of me. Later on 
 we were in college together ; he still a year ahead, graduating in 
 1855. Of liim at Cambridge I retain a distinct and pleasant re- 
 collection, for we were in many of the same societies, and he had 
 already evinced that peculiar facility of written expression in 
 which afterwards he won renown, and he was always chosen as 
 a matter of course to deliver society orations and read literary 
 papers. He belonged to a class singularly ^^rolific in young men 
 of ability and interesting character, many of whom. Barlow, 
 Agassiz, Lyman, Dalton, and, above all. Brooks himself, sub- 
 sequently achieved distinction. Unless my recollection deceives 
 me, his room-mate was Edward Barry Dalton, with whom in 
 after years at the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac my 
 relations were most intimate, — a man who stands out clear and 
 distinct in memory as one than whom few of finer or nobler char- 
 acter were encountered at a period and amid scenes which brought 
 fine and noble characters rapidly to the front. And now, looking 
 backwards through a vista of nearly forty years, that two such 
 young men as Edward Barry Dalton and Phillips Brooks should 
 have been among the friends of my youth makes me think better 
 of myself, for, after all, the saying, "Tell me who your friends 
 are, and I will tell you who you are, " has truth in it. Those 
 were indeed golden, precious days, — those days passed in the June 
 sunshine of the college gromids with young men who seemed in no 
 way unusual in our every-day eyes, but who in fact were filled, as 
 the result soon showed, with infinite possibilities, the Bayards and 
 Sidneys and Bossuets of the fast-coming years, — days I failed, 
 as under like circumstances we all of us always fail, to appreciate 
 at the time, and so grasp them and delight in them as they 
 pass. . . . 
 
 After Brooks graduated, he became one of the ushers at the 
 Boston Latin School, then presided over by Francis Gardner, — a 
 man whom many here will remember, rough and harsh in exterior, 
 but not without a kindly side for those whom he liked. To those 
 he did not like a harder and less charitable man it would not be 
 
I04 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 easy to find; and those who knew both Francis Gaj-dner and 
 Phillips Brooks would feel instinctively at once that Francis 
 Gardner could never have taken kindly to Phillips Brooks. The 
 former was ingrained a schoolmaster, the latter was born a 
 preacher ; nor in saying this do I utter an ill word against either 
 calling. 
 
 While Phillips Brooks was thus earning his living as usher at 
 the Boston Latin School and waiting for the future to reveal it- 
 self to him, I was studying law in the office of Richard H. Dana, 
 with whom Francis Edward Parker, formerly, as was Dana also, 
 a member of this society, was associated as j^artner. Parker was 
 then a member of the Boston School Committee, and as such head 
 of the sub-committee having charge of the Boston Latin School ; 
 at which he, too, in his earlier post-graduate days had held the 
 position of usher. I soon learned that Phillips Brooks was in 
 trouble. The master complained that the usher had in him no 
 single element of a successful school-teacher, — that he was un- 
 able to maintain order among the boys in his room, and, in short, 
 that the good of the school peremptorily required an immediate 
 change. The change accordingly was decided on, and Brooks's 
 resignation called for. But the young man selected to take his 
 place was not immediately available, and a question arose as to 
 what was to be done during the intervening time, — a period per- 
 haps of two or three weeks. Moved, probably, more by the 
 humor of the thing than by any other motive, and not unwilling 
 to try my hand in a new field, I suggested to Mr. Parker that I 
 should make the experiment of taking charge of Brooks's room 
 until the new master came. The idea struck Parker favorably, 
 and he proposed it to Mr. Gardner. Years before I had been in 
 Mr. Gardner's classes, and he saw fit to receive the suggestion with 
 favor, though at first somewhat amused by it, as he had never 
 looked on me as a possible instructor of youth ; but I am led to 
 believe that he expressed his conclusions in terms not necessarily 
 complimentary to either Brooks or myself, intimating in his usual 
 rough way tliat any change, no matter what, could hardly fail to 
 be for the better. He thought, however, that in common decency 
 the opportunity should be given Brooks to remain until his suc- 
 cessor appeared, though he hardly believed he would do so. But 
 in this Master Gardner was mistaken. Phillips Brooks, though 
 both discouraged and cut to the quick by his failure, did wish to 
 remain until his successor appeared ; and as my services were thus 
 dispensed with, I never occupied an usher's chair. 
 
 Now comes the point of my reminiscence. Shortly after this, 
 as I was told at the time and have since seen no occasion to dis- 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 105 
 
 believe, Phillips Brooks — humiliated, discouraged, utterly broken 
 down, indeed, by his complete failure at the threshold of life, not 
 seeing well or at all in what direction to turn or to apply his 
 hand — went despondently to some man in his family acquaint- 
 ance of assured success, and in the depth of his disappointment 
 and mortification asked him for advice, • — could he suggest any 
 way in which it would be possible for him, the recent graduate 
 and the future great preaclier, to earn a living! . . . 
 
 This experience of Phillips Brooks, the memory of which I do 
 not doubt he carried with him to the end, — and he, too, I fancy, 
 like myself, though for other reasons, felt a sense of satisfaction, 
 approaching relief, when that gloomy, ugly Latin School edifice 
 in Bedford Street was levelled with the ground and a thorough- 
 fare made to occupy the site where it stood, for it recalled no 
 pleasant memories to either of us, — that early, mortifying Latin 
 School experience, I say, Phillips Brooks doubtless carried freshly 
 with him to the grave. 
 
 In order to understand more clearly this critical incident 
 in the life of Phillips Brooks, and in order to draw any 
 moral from it, if there is any to be drawn, it seems fitting 
 that the story should be fully told, and the nature and the 
 causes of his failure explained. When lie began to teach 
 in the Latin School, he had the good fortune of being assigned 
 the charge of one of the younger classes. But soon after a 
 change was made and the Third Class in the school was placed 
 in his care. This class had already made for itself a reputa- 
 tion for mischief and turbulence. Not that they were worse 
 boys than those in the other classes, but there had entered 
 into the life of the class as a whole a certain evil spirit of 
 disorder which for some reason had failed to be exorcised in 
 its initial stages. This evil had increased until it led the 
 class captive as by some mood which it could not control. 
 Before Phillips Brooks took charge of it, three of its teachers 
 had been routed and obliged to leave. The teacher who fol- 
 lowed Brooks, to fill out the vacancy for the year, confessed 
 himself so wearied by the frequent resort to corporal punish- 
 ment as a means to order that he was obliged to betake him- 
 self to the White Mountains for the summer in order to 
 recuperate his strength. To this class, then, Phillips Brooks 
 was appointed, with no experience in dealing with boys, 
 
io6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [185S-56 
 
 hardly more than a boy himself, with no backing from the 
 head master, and left to fight his battles alone. A set of 
 boys which had already routed three of its foes, as teachers 
 were by them regarded, was too accomplished in the forms of 
 mischief, too versatile in expedients, for any amount of tact 
 on the part of the new teacher, even had he possessed that 
 quality. It did not take them long to find out that they had 
 another victim at their mercy. 
 
 We can imagine the young teacher in his trying position. 
 He had grown up without himself requiring severe discipline 
 as an incentive to duty. Through college years, sjDoutaneity 
 and self -direction had been his motives. He was a fine clas- 
 sical scholar, interested in his work of imjjarting what he 
 knew, and presupposing an interest in his pupils. Perhaps, 
 too, his sense of humor, his quick appreciation of foolery in 
 all its forms, was an obstacle in the existing situation. He 
 was embarrassed by shyness, which is the accompaniment of 
 genius before its powers have been tested. He had one per- 
 sonal peculiarity, an element receiving full consideration in 
 the minds of his boys, who were not sure how much he could 
 see. The familiar eyeglasses were not then so common as 
 they are now. These were some of the circumstances making 
 the case a hopeless one from the first. 
 
 We may now go more closely into the situation. The 
 forms of mischief were varied and exhibited great ingenuity. 
 The thermometer, which hung in the classroom, was plugged 
 with snow, and when the mercury had descended to freezing- 
 point, the boys began to complain of the cold, and the room, 
 already warm, was made insufferable by the addition of fuel 
 thrown upon the fire. Then the windows were thrown open 
 and the opposite process begun, till the thermometer, rein- 
 forced with snow, called for a reversal of tactics. One of 
 the boys, a fair-haired, innocent-looking youth, watching his 
 opportunity, threw a handful of shot in the teacher's face, 
 but when the teacher lifted his eyes from his book he saw 
 only the raised hand which had thrown the shot, in the 
 accustomed attitude of one who wished to ask some question 
 about his studies. Another of the boys purchased matches 
 
MT. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 107 
 
 of the kind which snapped when stepped upon. These were 
 prepared by cutting off the heads, and distributed upon the 
 floor, and even placed under the teacher's desk, so that no 
 one coukl move without eliciting an explosion. When the 
 teacher threatened punishment to the next boy that stepped 
 upon a match, it was unfortunate that the next exj^losion 
 went off under his own desk, as the boys were not slow in 
 reminding him, when he undertook to carry out his threat. 
 It happened one morning that as he looked up, after saying 
 the opening prayer, he saw the boys furnished with eyeglasses 
 made from strips of tin gathered from the waste barrel of a 
 neighboring tinshojj. He was locked into the room with his 
 class, and was obliged to let a boy down from the window to 
 the ground to clean out from the keyhole the obstructions 
 with which it had been plugged. 
 
 Under these circumstances, he might have devoted himself 
 to the work of a detective; possibly it was his duty to have 
 done so, not resting until he had unearthed the offender and 
 administered condign punishment. There were teachers who 
 would have done this with success, for it was not impossible. 
 In another classroom a marble had been thrown at the 
 teacher's head, which struck the blackboard behind him. 
 The teacher at once marked the spot where the marble struck, 
 and the spot where its motion stopjDed. The calculation of 
 the angle of incidence and reflection then traced the marble 
 to the point where it started. We can hardly imagine Phil- 
 lips Brooks engaged in such an operation; yet he might 
 have pursued an investigation into the source whence the 
 matches had been obtained, giving his days to the inquiry 
 until the problem was solved. 
 
 One is surjJrised that things like these should have been 
 encountered in the Boston Latin School. Since those days 
 there has been a change in the methods of teaching, in the 
 relative attitudes, too, of teacher and pupil. A teacher like 
 Mr. Gardner, once so indispensable, is no longer the ideal of 
 an educator of boys. Mr. Gardner came to fulfil the need of 
 his time. It was in Boston as elsewhere in the rural dis- 
 tricts of New En£;land : the teacher was regarded as an heredi- 
 
io8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 tary enemy. Under these conditions, teachers great and 
 successful in tlieir way were developed. In the backwoods 
 of the remote country we read of a teacher who had acquired 
 a formidable reputation as an invincible disciplinarian for 
 turbulent district schools. He was sent for, far and near, to 
 take up the work of those who had failed. There was no 
 school where at least he did not succeed in maintaining order. 
 That was about all that he attempted, and by long study and 
 much practice he had become au adept. His method was a 
 simple one. When he entered the schoolroom for the first 
 time, he was on the alert, watching for the slightest symptom 
 by which boys unconsciously reveal themselves. But if symp- 
 toms were wanting he did not wait for an overt act. Fasten- 
 ing on one of the older boys, whom he thought competent to 
 be a ringleader, he himself created an opportunity which 
 would beget ill temper and resistance. Then, as the phrase 
 is, he went for him, taking the boy at a disadvantage, floor- 
 ing him, giving, as he always admitted, such a well-directed 
 blow as to make him unconscious. This done, he commanded 
 the other boys to carry him from the room, and from that 
 time there was no further question of his ascendency. It 
 was brutal, perhaps, but it maintained order, which is the 
 first preliminary of education. 
 
 Mr. Gardner also was a man of experience in dealing 
 with turbulent boys. To his mind, there were men who 
 could manage them and men who could not. For himself, 
 he never failed. He never was so absorbed in mental piro- 
 cesses that his faculties were not on the alert in view of pos- 
 sibilities of turbulence and revolt. Instances of his success- 
 ful dealing with emergencies are remembered by his pupils. 
 On one occasion, a boy who had been summoned to his desk 
 to receive corporal punishment snatched the rod from his 
 hand as it was about to descend, and throwing it upon the 
 floor, started to leave the room. Mr. Gardner suffered the 
 disadvantage of losing a moment in stooping to pick up 
 the rod, then rushed for the offender, whom he pinned in the 
 doorway just in time, and then and there administered the 
 full discipline which outraged justice demanded. Mr. Gard- 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 109 
 
 ner was also an enthusiastic athlete, surpassing in this respect 
 his pupils, keeping his body flexible and in condition to 
 compete with any antagonist. Phillips Brooks had neglected 
 this training, so indisiDcnsable at that time for a successful 
 teacher. Mr. Gardner had the Spartan temperament and 
 the Spartan theory of life. The work of a teacher from his 
 point of view included the inevitable conflict. He educated 
 his boys in manliness and courage, for he himself was an 
 example. He was a good teacher also in other ways. But 
 it ought to be said that no experienced or successful educator 
 in our own day would have placed an inexperienced young 
 man like Phillips Brooks in such a position. It even aj)pears 
 to us like an act of cruelty or injustice. As the head master 
 it was his duty to have brought the turbulent Third Class 
 to order and submission. But he did not so regard it. A 
 teacher, to his mind, was born, not made. As PhilliiDs 
 Brooks had felt called to be a teacher, let him take the 
 vacant place and see what he could make of it. It might be 
 even an act of kindness to set him at a point of danger in 
 order to develop his power or to test his strength. It was 
 like giving him an opportunity where he might win high 
 reputation. 
 
 Such in substance is the episode in the life of Phillips 
 Brooks, so far as external appearances go. He had in him 
 the making of a great teacher. But he was also at a great 
 disadvantage from his youth, from his lack of experience, 
 and placed in a position where his own inexperience was 
 confronted by the experience of a class of boys who studied 
 him as so much material for the ajjplication of their trained 
 and versatile wits. From the first, the normal relationship 
 between teacher and pupils did not exist. Nor did he have 
 the backing of the head master, as he ought to have had. 
 He was left to stand alone. Had he been older, had he stood 
 at the head of the school, feeling the full sense of responsi- 
 bility, could he have instituted his own methods of governing 
 and teaching, he might have reversed the situation. But on 
 Mr. Gardner's methods he was doomed to failure. The case 
 was an abnormal one, anomalous, and yielding no other 
 
no PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 moral than this, that some "daemonic " influence, as Goethe 
 called it, dominated the crisis. It is well that the story 
 should have been told, if only to reach this conclusion. The 
 boys were at fault, but not wholly so; for through^ some 
 inadvertence, at some moment in their career, the spirit of 
 mischief had not been exorcised when it was still in its 
 infancy. They became the victims of some one's incompe- 
 tency. But here our investigation must stop. Long since 
 they have repented of their mischief, as the teacher after- 
 wards freely owned that he had forgiven them. Phillips 
 Brooks also made mistakes. He punished one boy who had 
 committed no fault. AVhen he had become Bishop of Massa- 
 chusetts, as he was moving in his majestic dignity across 
 Boston Common, he met this boy in his path, then a mature 
 man occujiying a post of trust and influence. Neither of 
 them had forgotten the incident. Looking down upon him 
 the Bishop made a certain ajDpeal for forgiveness: "Tell me 
 now," he said, "that I did not make a mistake by punishing 
 the wrong boy?" "Yes, you did make a mistake, you 
 punished the wrong boy," was the answer; "but so many 
 punishments I have lost, which I deserved, that I ought to 
 be grateful for that one, which I did not deserve." 
 
 One more word should be said for Mr. Gardner. He was 
 inwardly disappointed and grieved over the failure. He 
 liked Phillips Brooks and appreciated him. When he told 
 him that a man who had failed in teaching could not succeed 
 in any other line, that did not mean necessarily that he was 
 trying to make the failure worse than it was. It may have 
 been his peculiar way of showing sympathy, his way of in- 
 dicating how deeply he deplored the catastrophe. As for 
 Phillips Brooks, he took away with him from his experience 
 a wounded sinrit. The misery of it all was that it could not 
 then be explained or interpreted. The new day in education 
 was only dawning; in the light of the old regime he must 
 be judged. But he harbored no grudge against Mr. Gardner. 
 His time came at last to review the situation under auspices 
 most favorable and impressive. When, in 1885, he was 
 appointed to make the address on the occasion of the two 
 
/ET. I9-2 0] THE LATIN SCHOOL iii 
 
 hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Latin School, 
 he reviewed at length its history, and its successive masters 
 came up for study and for judgment. Then he paid his 
 tribute to Master Gardner : — 
 
 Think of him, O my fellow students, as he sat upon his plat- 
 form or moved about the hall among our desks thirty years ago ! 
 Tall, gaunt, muscular, uncouth in body ; quaint, sinewy, severe 
 in thought and speech; impressing any boy with the strong sense 
 of vigor, now lovely, now hateful, but never for a moment tame, 
 or dull, or false; indignant, passionate, an athlete, both in mind 
 and body — think what an interesting mixture of opposites he 
 was ! He was proud of himself, his school, his city, and his times ; 
 yet no man saw more clearly the faults of each, or was more dis- 
 contented with them all. He was one of the frankest of men, 
 and yet one of the most reserved. He was the most patient 
 mortal and the most impatient. He was one of the most earnest 
 of men, and yet nobody, probably not even himself, knew his 
 positive belief upon any of the deepest themes. He was almost 
 a sentimentalist with one swing of the pendulum, and almost 
 a cynic with the next. There was sympathy, not unmixed with 
 mockery in his grim smile. He clung with almost obstinate con- 
 servatism to the old standards of education, while he defied the 
 conventionalities of ordinary life with every movement of his rest- 
 less frame. Can you not see him as we spoke our pieces on the 
 stage, bored ourselves and boring our youthful audiences, and no 
 doubt boring him, with the unreality of the whole preposterous 
 performance ? Can you not see him in his restlessness taking 
 advantage of the occasion to climb and dust off the pallid bust of 
 Pallas, which stood over the schoolroom door, and thundering 
 down from his ladder some furious correction which for an instant 
 broke the cloud of sham and sent a lightning flash of reality into 
 the dreary speech ? Can you not hear him as he swept the gram- 
 mar with its tinkling lists aside for an hour, and very possibly 
 with a blackboard illustration enforced some point of fundamental 
 morals in a way his students never could forget ? Can you not 
 feel his proverbs and his phrases, each hard as iron with perpetual 
 use, come pelting across the hall, finding the weak spot in your 
 self-complacency, and making it sensitive and humble ever since? 
 He was a narrow man in the intensity with which he thought 
 of his profession. I heard him say once that he never knew a 
 man who had failed as a schoolmaster to succeed in any other oc- 
 cupation. And yet he was a broad man in his idea of the range 
 which he conceived that his teaching ought to cover. He made 
 
112 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 the shabby old schoolhouse to blossom with the first suggestions of 
 the artistic side of classical study, with busts and pictures, with 
 photographs and casts ; and hosts of men who have forgotten every 
 grammar rule, and cannot tell an ablative from an accusative, nor 
 scan a verse of Virgil, nor conjugate the least irregular or regular 
 verbs to-day, still feel, while all these flimsy superstructures of 
 their study have vanished like the architecture of a dream, the 
 solid moral basis of respect for work and honor, for pure truth- 
 fulness, which he put under it all, still lying sound and deep and 
 undecayed. 
 
 The life of Francis Gardner was not without a certain look of 
 pathos, even in the eyes of his light-hearted pajjils. As we 
 looked back upon it after we had left him, we always thought of 
 it as sad. That color of pain and disappointment grew deeper in 
 it as it approached its end. It was no smug, smooth, rounded 
 satisfactory career. It was full of vehemence and contradiction 
 and disturbance. He was not always easy for the boys to get 
 along with. Probably it was not always easy for him to get 
 along with himself. But it has left a strength of truth and honor 
 and devoted manliness which will always be a treasure in the 
 school he loved. The very confusion and struggle always after 
 something greater than itself make it a true typical life of the 
 century in which he lived. We look into his stormy face upon 
 our walls, and bid him at last rest in peace. 
 
 A series of letters has been preserved, written by Phillips 
 Brooks to Mr. George C. Sawyer, who had become a teacher 
 in the Exeter Phillips Academy, which cover the period dur- 
 ing which he was an usher in the Latin School. In these let- 
 ters, where we touch his correspondence for the first time, we 
 have his account, such at least as he chose to give, of his 
 experience. When the correspondence opens he had been 
 teaching only a few weeks, and found the task agreeable. 
 
 Sunday, September 23, 1855. 
 Dear Topey, — I got your kind letter in the course of time, 
 though as it was directed merely to my humble self, who, though 
 an A. B., am not very generally known among the P. O. officials 
 of our city, I did not hear of it till it had been lying almost a 
 week in the office. Please address all future favors to the care 
 of Charles Brooks & Co., and I shall not have to wait so long for 
 the feast of wisdom. I heard some time since from Barlow of 
 the success of your application, and beg now to offer my late con- 
 gratulations upon the budding glories of your tutorship. We 
 
JET. 19-20'] THE LATIN SCHOOL 113 
 
 shall soon see our whole country waking up to a vast improvement 
 in the classical and moral education of its youth. Barlow has 
 gone to New York, and I heard very unofficially yesterday that he 
 had got some most excellent situation there. I meet still wander- 
 ing members of the great class roaming up and down the streets, 
 trying to look as if they were hard at work, and as if they liked 
 it too. Sanborn I saw a week ago at the "club," and this 
 morning I had a distant view of him returning from Church with 
 the great Theodore. . . . You must prepare to see a great 
 change in the youth of our city the next time you come to Boston. 
 There is more intelligence and brilliance in their faces, and if you 
 meet a Latin School boy you will at once know him for one who 
 has had the best instructors, and who knows ever so much, prob- 
 ably a good deal more than his master, for some of them are 
 pretty sharp and have come very near sticking me very often on 
 strange rules in out-of-the-way corners of the grammar of whose 
 existence I was profoundly ignorant. So that sometimes I have 
 to fall back on my authority and shut their mouths with the ijjse 
 dixit of a schoolmaster. 
 
 But seriously, I like the life. Isn't there a sort of satisfaction 
 and pleasure in knowing that you are doing, or at least have the 
 chance of doing something. At Cambridge it was all very well, 
 but we had only ourselves to work on. Here we have some 
 twenty, thirty, or forty on whom we can bring to bear the author- 
 ity and influence of a superior position and see what we can make 
 out of them, and watch all their workings. You think this is a 
 funny way for me to talk, but I really think so. 
 
 So late as the 20th of October lie found his life in the 
 Latin School a pleasant one. The troubles had not yet 
 begun. 
 
 Boston, Saturday evening, October 20, 1855. 
 
 Deae Top, — I must beg your forgiveness for not having an- 
 swered before now your kind letter which I received a good while 
 ago. I have been busy a great deal of the time, and when not 
 busy old habits have come back again and made me very lazy. 
 Everything is working on in the quiet, regular way in which it has 
 settled for the winter. The wheels of school-keeping are getting 
 better greased and running smoother every day. Last Tuesday 
 was Exhibition at Cambridge, and I went out with my heart full 
 of class feeling to greet any or all of the class of '5.5, Aristocrat 
 or Democrat, with the proper degree of affectionate ardor. There 
 
 1 The Rev. Theodore Parker, then preaching- at Boston Music Hall. 
 
114 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 were but few, however, on whom to lavish this feeling. It was 
 the meanest exhibition I ever saw. The "Advertiser " of Wednes- 
 day said as much. was there with his head full of med- 
 icine, dissecting, amputation, and all sorts of horrid things. 
 Speaking of medicine, Dalton was here the other day on his way 
 to New York, whither he goes to study the healing art with his 
 brother, who is a professor there. I received this afternoon a 
 very unexpected note from Dr. Walker, anxiously inquiring whether 
 I ever gave him a copy of my Commencement part, begging, if I 
 did not, to do so at once. He says he can find all but mine. 
 The reason probably is that I never took the trouble to copy it. 
 I shall have to revive unpleasant associations again. ... 
 
 I was perfectly terrified at the terrible assault last Tuesday 
 made by on my inoffensive self. Ghosts of old unpaid as- 
 sessments and long since eaten and digested socials were digged 
 out to terrify and haunt me, till I paid some marvellous sums 
 which alone could quiet their ravenous rage. 
 
 I did honestly mean when I began this letter to be serious and 
 imposing, moral and perhaps metajthysical before I was done. 
 You see what has come of it. Sic transit the glory of golden in- 
 tentions, one more paving-stone for hell. I am doing my share to 
 keep the infernal streets in good repair. I hope you have better 
 reason to be satisfied with yourself than I have with your humble 
 servant and true friend, 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 The troubles in the Latin School have now begun , as will 
 be seen by the following letter. The young teacher gives 
 his oi^inion of the Third Class in verj' emjjbatic language : 
 "They are the most disagreeable set of creatures without 
 exception that I have ever met with." The letter closes 
 with a touch of despondency. 
 
 Boston, Sunday evening, December 9, 185.5. 
 Dear Top, — I find in my desk a letter from you dated just a 
 month ago to-day, and I think that it is about time that it was 
 answered. I would have written before, but I supposed from 
 wliat you said in it that I sliould have seen you in vacation. I 
 was really very sorry indeed that I was not at home when you 
 called here. I should have enjoyed seeing you very much indeed, 
 but we must wait now. Thanksgiving week I spent in getting up 
 a competent knowledge of the French tongue for the instruction 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 115 
 
 of a class which had been studying it for about two years. I did 
 it and have got along with it for about a week, but it is pretty 
 slipshod work, and I shall try to slip it and teach something 
 where I can feel that I am on firmer ground. We have a vacancy 
 at our school, and S. Wright, B. S. Lyman, H. Walker, and 
 others of the class of '55 applied, but failed. Dimmock, a friend 
 whom you may remember meeting at my room at C, got the 
 place. ... I had a letter the other day from Dalton, who seems 
 enjoying himself in working hard at New York. He sends good 
 news of Barlow, who is earning his $1800 and keeping straight at 
 present. I hear of you as a great favorite among the beauty (is 
 there much of it ?) at Exeter. Take care of yourself, I beg you, 
 and if anything serious should happen, just send me word and a 
 card. I saw Sanborn yesterday at F. W. Clarke's, where he has 
 been laid up sick, but I believe he is getting better now. Every- 
 thing is fearfully stupid here to stupid folks like me who are not 
 fond of gayety, and I am sure I can't think what to write unless I 
 go into sentiment or morality, to neither of which I feel much in- 
 clined after examining, with the aid of a key and my limited know- 
 ledge of French, thirty-five exercises from my class. They are 
 tlie most disagreeable set of creatures without exception that I ever 
 Tnet ivith. I have a distinct recollection of writing you a remark- 
 ably brilliant letter last time, and you will have to let the merits 
 of that atone for the deficiencies of this. I am really ashamed of 
 it, but am tired, sick, cross, and almost dead, so good-night and 
 good-by. From your friend ever, 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 During the month of January the troubles had culminated 
 and things were at their worst. He fancies that he sees a ray 
 of light, in some slight improvement, but it was a delusion : — 
 
 Boston, January 19, 1856. 
 Dear Top, — I feel a little blue to-night, and so I am retired 
 here inflicting myself on my friends, and I come now to you and 
 wish you with all my heart a very Happ}' New Year. I am very 
 much obliged to you for your last letter and the sympathy which 
 you express with the laboring ruler of my rebellious subjects. I 
 have had very considerable trouble, but matters have lately been 
 getting a little better. Things have settled down into a strong 
 feeling of quiet hate, which is eminently conducive to good order 
 and rapid progress. In all my experience of schoolboys and 
 schoolmasters I cannot recall a single teacher who was honored 
 with such an overwhelming share of deep, steady, honest unpopu- 
 larity as is at tliis moment the lot of your harmless and iuofien- 
 
ii6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i^SSS^ 
 
 sive friend. I believe they consider me just now as a sort of 
 dragon with his claws cut, a gigantic ogre who would like to eat 
 them, but has n't the stomach to do it. If I should adopt youi 
 plan of weekly receptions I should deem it safe first to procure 
 a complete suit of chain armor to be privately worn so that not a 
 heel might be exposed to the assassin's knife of some bloody mem- 
 bers of the Third Class of the Public Latin School. It may be 
 needful to explain that I have changed my class. The one I had 
 before were splendid little fellows ; these are tough old sinners 
 with the iniquity of some sixteen springs, summers, autumns, and 
 winters on their grim hoary heads. I am teaching them French 
 which they don't, Greek which they won't, and Virgil which they 
 
 can't understand or appreciate. Take , , , and 
 
 , select from each his " essentials, " combine and digest them 
 
 well, and you will get a good idea of the qualities and pleasing 
 characters of my charming charge. I rejoice that you come on 
 
 so well. Made virtute. Go on and prosper. is living a 
 
 little down in Street. I see him now and then. I went to 
 
 walk with him and the other Sunday, and felt quite like an 
 
 atheist. The idea of asking me whether I have read any books! 
 I work like a dog in school and out, and the Lord knows where it 
 is going to end. You must excuse this very selfish letter. It is 
 a great relief and pleasure to talk with you even on paper and on 
 so poor and trite a subject as a discomfited usher. Let me hear 
 from you when you can, and if you know of a profitable school 
 anywhere in the country just drop a line to your downtrodden 
 friend, P. B. 
 
 The bitter, unequal struggle at last was over, and the giant 
 escaped from the toils. There was a touch in it of tragedy. 
 The letter which follows has its pathos, though his habitual 
 reserve will not allow him to express what he feels. His 
 deeper reflections he keeps to himself. 
 
 Boston, February 14, 1856. 
 Deak Top, — Excuse my answering your letter so soon. I have 
 just received it from the post. You will be surprised to hear that 
 I have left the Latin School and am at present doing nothing. I 
 resigned my situation a week ago yesterday without having formed 
 any particular plans of future operations and am at present adrift. 
 The situation had become very disagreeable, and I had been gradu- 
 ally coming to the conclusion that it didn't pay. I have not yet 
 regretted the step or seen how under the circumstances I should 
 have done differently again. During the first three months I was 
 there I enjoyed it much ; but as I told you my situation was con- 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 117 
 
 siderably changed, and I thought at last it was test to cut the 
 matter short at once, and so I did. I don't know yet what I shall 
 do. I may go at once to some profession, or I may get private 
 pupils here or elsewhere for a time and live on so. I will let 
 you know when I am settled anywhere. I am glad you still like 
 your place; may it continue pleasant and profitable. I am study- 
 ing pretty hard, reading French and Greek and Latin five or six 
 hours a day. I like this well enough, but it will not do to go on 
 so, and I am open at present to proposals of all kinds whatsoever. 
 ... I have seen Charles Adams and Stephen Perkins to-day. 
 They urge me to write to Barlow to ask what is the chance in try- 
 ing my lot in New York. I may and may not. When do you 
 have a vacation again? You mustn't miss seeing me the next 
 time you are in Boston. May I ask what salary you get in your 
 present post ? Excuse the small size of my slieet. I have crowded 
 my writing to correspond. Let me hear from you to-morrow or 
 next day. I am Your friend, P. 
 
 This is his father's comment in his journal on his son's 
 failure. It tells the story briefly : — 
 
 February 8, 1856. 
 An occurrence took place to-day that has given us some anxiety, 
 that of son Phillips's inability to maintain his position as usher in 
 the Latin School. It was entirely for the want of discipline. 
 He was not enough of a disciplinarian to maintain the necessary 
 good order, and he was put at the head of a class of thirty-five 
 boys that were rowdy and unruly and had already had two mas- 
 ters who had left them. Not receiving the necessary assistance 
 and advice from the Principal, I was obliged to advise his resig- 
 nation. The class of boys were from fifteen to seventeen years of 
 age, and he is but twenty. The task was too much for him, and 
 he is now looking for work. 
 
 The following letters of Brooks to Sawyer cover the 
 waiting period, from the time of his resigning from the 
 Latin School until his decision about his future had been 
 reached. It will be seen that his mind was vacillating and 
 that his mood was despondent. But the letters need no 
 comment. 
 
 Boston, March 5, 1856. 
 Deae Top, — - 1 was glad to get your last note, though I had no 
 intention in mine which provoked it of hurrying you up so fear- 
 fully. My remark that I should expect an answer in one or two 
 
ii8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 days was purely incidental. I think it probable at present that 
 its principal object was to fill out a spare corner of the sheet. I 
 am a good deal at leisure just now, being engaged only two hours 
 a day with a couple of pupils whom I instruct together m the 
 simplest English branches, and who pay tolerably well. How long 
 this will last I don't know. I have engaged for a year, but with 
 liberty to break off at any moment. My odd time I spend a good 
 deal in reading and studying, so that it does n't hang heavy on my 
 hands at all. But then there is the old bread-and-butter objec- 
 tion that this isn't quite making my fortune, and that something 
 must be done, so meanwhile I am waiting and looking for that 
 mysterious "something" which is to be. I do not think it im- 
 probable that I may give up all thoughts of teaching and go to 
 studying my profession in the fall. I have n't yet decided what 
 it will be. Perhaps you can guess. I have just entered into a 
 conspiracy with Charles for an hour's attack on Schiller his " Wal- 
 lenstein " every afternoon beginning at this present date. . . . 
 
 Your friend, P. 
 
 Boston, Monday evening, June, 1856. 
 
 Dear Top, — Your letter came some time ago, but I have really 
 been so busy doing nothing ever since that I have not had time to 
 answer it, and now that I have set out and got a clean pen and 
 new filled my inlistand I don't seem to have very much to write 
 about. What was that you said about going out West, and what 
 has come of it, anything? Perhaps this won't find you at Exeter. 
 If so I hope the Dead Letter Office officials will be edified by its 
 perusal. ... I am doing just what I was when you saw me 
 last, no more. I needn't say no less, for that would be barely 
 possible. I have not yet any possible plans for the Fall, but 
 shall not study a profession. I don't know exactly what will be- 
 come of me, and don't care much. ... I had a walk with San- 
 born yesterday afternoon. He ridiculed me when I attempted to 
 give him on your authority a piece of news, — that Morton was 
 
 engaged. I met this afternoon. He is very weak. He 
 
 had apparently lost what little brains he ever had, and was in 
 hopeless search of them. Bob Paine with all his family are going 
 
 to Italy in the Fall for a year or two. I sat next to at 
 
 the theatre the other evening, and what with him and the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream I had a pretty tolerably hard time of it. 
 I recollect part of your letter was quite literary, but not being in 
 that mood to-niglit you must excuse any attempt of the kind on 
 my part. I wish I was fifteen years old again. I believe I might 
 
^T. 19-ao] THE LATIN SCHOOL 119 
 
 make a stunning man, but somehow or other I don't seem in the 
 way to come to much just now. Shall you stay at Exeter another 
 year ? If not, what will you do ? I am astonished at your taking 
 such shams as mine for letters, but if you are contented it 's all 
 right. I think if the P. 0. department knew what was in them 
 they would certainly let them pass with a one cent stamp. I 
 have a slight suspicion that I am getting incoherent, and a moral 
 certainty that I 'm sleepy, and so good-night, and write soon. 
 
 P. B. 
 
 Boston, July 2, 1856. 
 
 Dear Top, — I believe I am owing you a letter, and as my 
 urchin is sick this morning and has consequently suspended his 
 need of my instructions I have an hour to spend to gratify your 
 craving for an epistle. The world here has not been very event- 
 ful since I wrote you last, that is to say, the somewhat narrow 
 world in which I prefer to move. I have been to Cambridge two or 
 three times lately, — once to the Seniors' Pudding Benefit, which 
 was not much; secondly, to the Juniors' play and Strawberry meet- 
 ing soon after, which was excellently done, that is to say the play, 
 and the strawberries big, sweet, and plenty of them ; thirdly, I 
 went to Class Day, that is to say, I was out for an hour or two 
 in the afternoon. It passed off perhaps as well as could be ex- 
 pected of the class of '56. They had their exercises in the church, 
 which I hear was crowded. As to the quality of the performance, 
 a profound silence prevails. A good many of the great class were 
 there. . . . Dalton was down and spent the next Sunday with 
 me. So you have settled into the armchair for life, deliberately 
 given away your existence for the next generations. I hope San- 
 born's visit, of which I believe you spoke in your last, had no 
 hand in summarily settling your fate by the magic of his enthu- 
 siasm and advice. I wish you with all my heart a happy life in 
 the dictatorial chair, and if it shall ever be in my fate to see little 
 hungry youths around me begging for crumbs of Greek which my 
 exhausted stock is incapable of giving, I shall know where to 
 turn for the best supply that the country affords. As for myself, 
 my plans and life are quite as unsettled now as when I used to 
 devote spare half hours to thinking of them now and then up in 
 Stoughton. Shan't you be down to Commencement, which I 
 believe comes a fortnight from to-day ? No doubt a great many 
 of us will be there, and it will be very pleasant. . . . Have you 
 gone Kansas-mad? Sanborn, I believe, is quite rabid. I heard 
 the other day of his giving $100 to the cause. . . . You must 
 excuse the looks of this scrawl, but it is really an immense relief 
 
I20 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 to be able to write now and then without the fear of criticism 
 before your eyes, without caring what sort of a show the thing 
 makes, but trusting humbly to your indulgence to your friend, 
 
 Phillips Bkooks. 
 
 These letters to his college friend, covering the six months 
 after his resignation from the Latin School, call for a brief 
 comment. They have a nonchalant tone; they are couched 
 in the familiar dialect of a college student, who has not yet 
 recovered from the thraldom of college conventionalities. 
 They show how deeply and completely he had entered into 
 the spirit of college life. It had been to him a time of 
 emancipation from the strict law of the household, when he 
 had felt and enjoyed his independence, when the joy of life, 
 the mere pleasure of living, had been a sort of intoxication 
 of his spirit. He had seen college life in all its phases, 
 associating with all sorts and conditions of men, watching 
 what is called the Bohemian temjjerament, while inwardly 
 scorning its lower manifestations and its false conception of 
 life. His identification with the standards and fashion of 
 the college world was the more complete because of his quick 
 sensibility to external influences. His reserve would have 
 prevented him from showing the deeper, more serious pur- 
 pose within, even had that purpose begun yet to stir his 
 spiritual nature. He was struggling against the temjjtations 
 of youth, fighting his battle with the passions of his nature, 
 and the strength of the conflict was greater in projDortion to 
 his greater capacities for good and evil. But even this con- 
 flict he disguised, wearing his mask so well that to some who 
 knew him his life at moments seemed like a rudderless ship, 
 whose sails hung idly, flapping with the breeze, as though it 
 were uncertain what his decision would be. No stronc and 
 avowed religious consecration kept him from falling, but 
 rather the habit of Christian nurture, the unconscious virtue, 
 the respect for moral traditions. His fall came, or what 
 corresponds to it, when he was first put to the test of actual 
 life and succumbed in the struggle with a class of turbulent 
 boys. Although he had chosen the calling of a teacher in 
 sincerity and with a high ideal of its possibilities, yet he still 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL lai 
 
 lacked the highest inward fitness and the consecration, for he 
 was postponing the deeper spiritual issues of life. 
 
 It is difficult to speak upon this jsoint in the absence of 
 any definite confession of his own. One who read himself 
 as he did, and was so alive to all that was passing within, 
 could not have been unaware of a great issue postponed. 
 But we encounter here a reserve so deep that it is impossible 
 to do more than surmise. This much seems to be clear, that 
 he had not been consciously reached by the religious teach- 
 ing at St. Paul's Church, and to a certain extent was in 
 revolt against it. While in college he had listened with a 
 critical mind. He is still remembered as he sat in the fam- 
 ily pew. No. 60. His favorite place was at the end of 
 the pew, and there crouched down with his head between 
 his shoulders, hardly visible, one could not tell whether or not 
 he were paying attention to the preacher. But it is evident 
 that he heard, and from some of the teaching dissented. The 
 Christian life, as presented by the Evangelical school, of 
 which Dr. Vinton was a distinguished representative, called 
 for a renunciation of much which he knew or believed to be 
 good. The conventional denunciation of the intellect as a 
 dangerous guide, and of wealth as a thing to be avoided, the 
 condemnation of the natural joy in life and its innocent 
 amusements, the schism between religion and life, — against 
 all this he inwardly protested. If this was what devotion 
 to the law of God demanded, he was not ready to make the 
 sacrifice of his will. 
 
 In this interval of waiting. Dr. Vinton, meeting his father, 
 sent word to Phillips to come and see him. His father 
 replied that Phillips would not then see any one, but that 
 after he got over the feeling of mortification in consequence 
 of his failure he would come. His first step toward recovery 
 was to consult, not Dr. Vinton, but Dr. Walker, the Presi- 
 dent of Harvard College. To him he had listened occa- 
 sionally in the college chapel on Sunday evenings, and for 
 his character as a man and bis power as a preacher he 
 felt the deepest veneration. Dr. Walker was a veritable 
 cjonfessor to souls by an inward divine appointment, a rare 
 
122 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 man, who had the confidence of Harvard students. The 
 details of this interview we do not know, but only this, 
 that Dr. Walker advised him to studjr for the ministry. 
 President Eliot, at that time a tutor in the college, was on 
 his way to Dr. Walker's, and recalls how he met Phillips 
 Brooks at the door coming from the interview. He was 
 struck by his appearance : his face was of a deathly white- 
 ness, the evidence of some great crisis. Once again in 
 Phillips Brooks's life President Eliot saw him under a simi- 
 lar situation, — in 1881, when he called to decline the offer 
 of a professorship at Harvard. Then again his face was 
 strangely white, under some extraordinary emotion, and 
 President Eliot remembered the vision of 1856.^ 
 
 The six months which elapsed after his leaving the Latin 
 School are seen, in the light of these letters to his friend 
 Sawyer, to have been a dreary and gloomy period, when the 
 depression of his spirit reached its lowest degree. He read 
 and studied, mainly classical writers, and kept ujj his read- 
 ing of German, perhaps from habit, or the necessity of doing- 
 something, or as though there were still some possible pro- 
 spect in the future of his becoming a teacher. He wandered 
 through the streets of Boston, meeting now and then a class- 
 mate or college friend. He kept a list of the names of his 
 class, jotting down against each name what occupation he 
 had found or what profession he was planning. The mortifi- 
 cation of failure rested like an incubus on his proud and sen- 
 sitive spirit. It might have been better for him if he could 
 have gone away from home to make a fresh start in life, 
 when college experience would have relapsed more quickly 
 into its true perspective. He was still hanging about the 
 place of the gay assemblage when the guests were gone and 
 the lights were out. We can hardly exaggerate the trial he 
 was passing through. He had made his first essay at real 
 
 1 " ' President Walker encouraged me in choosing- the ministry, but he was 
 not enthusiastic ; he was not an enthusiastic man, liut he was distinctly encour- 
 aging. He did not tell me that I could not preach because of my stammering, 
 for I never did stammer, you know.' And then we laughed over the utterly 
 groundless traditions that were in circulation at different times as to his per- 
 sonal habits." (Extract from a private Utter.) 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 123 
 
 life and had been defeated. He had been shut out from his 
 Eden by a stern decree; a flaming sword confronted him, 
 which turned every way to keep him from his chosen voca- 
 tion. In his desperation he had resolved to give up all 
 ambition for himself, to be content with the lowest and 
 humblest place at the feast of life. He said to himself that 
 if he could not be first he would be last, — Aut C'cesar 
 aut mdlus. He was deeply impressed by reading a popular 
 book which had then just appeared, Souvestre's "Attic 
 Philosopher " (Un Philosophe sous les Toits, Journal d'un 
 Homme Heureux), the story of "a man who in the midst of 
 the fever, the restlessness and ambition wliich racks society 
 in our time, continues to fill his humble part in the world 
 without a murmur, and who preserves, so to speak, the taste 
 for poverty. With no other fortune than a small clerkship, 
 which enables him to live within the narrow limits sepa- 
 rating competence from want, our philosopher looks from 
 the heights of his attic upon society as upon a sea, of which 
 he neither covets the riches nor fears the wrecks. Too insig- 
 nificant to excite the envy of any one, he sleeps peacefully, 
 wrapped in his obscurity." He was so impressed with the 
 lesson of the book that he wrote a short story, working up 
 the experience of the sisters Frances and Madeleine, in his 
 own way, with a conversation upon it, in which different 
 s^jeakers express their judgments upon life. 
 
 He had not yet begun to keep a journal, but he now wrote 
 down some of his thoughts upon detached sheets of paper. 
 The need of expression was imperative, and there was no one 
 to whom he could go to unburden himself; he hardly knew 
 as yet, indeed, what the burden was which he was carrying. 
 In walking the streets of Boston he was as much aloue as 
 if he had been in the desert, for the waste of his experience 
 was a veritable Horeb, as with the prophet receiving a 
 revelation within the soul. He is communing witli himself 
 and with God as he wrote, though his comments assume a 
 literary form from force of habit. There is reserve here, 
 even to himself ; but as we read we become aware that we are 
 listening to the cry from the depths, su.vpiria de jjrofundis, the 
 
124 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 first faint breathings of an awakening soul, the confessions of 
 an inquiring spirit. 
 
 THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF . 
 
 How pure in heart, how true in head, 
 
 With what divine affections bold. 
 
 Must be the man whose soul would hold 
 An hour's communion with the dead 1 
 
 These, I think, are exactly the feelings with which we should 
 approach the study of a life which has heen lived here on earth. 
 I think that in our democratic grouping of mankind we recognize 
 too little the individualities of individual human natures. We 
 read too little the infinite variety of the human mind. I think 
 the man never yet lived who could fully, sympathetically, and 
 understandingly appreciate any other man. Each mind and soul 
 in the fulness of its powers and its weaknesses, its capacities and 
 its deficiencies, is more or less a riddle unread and unreadable by 
 every other mind and soul. The Amsterdam idiot, with all his 
 idiocy, has more in him than Plato or Bacon or the wisest with all 
 their wisdom could comprehend ; if nothing else, his idiocy itself 
 was something, if not beyond, yet unalterably out of the range 
 of tlieir intellects. Let us respect then in studying the life of 
 this God-given individuality ; let us own our weakness and in- 
 capacity for the study ; let us bring with us here so far as we 
 may, so far as an earnest desire and a humble resolution may en- 
 able us to do, that pureness of heart and trueness of liead which 
 we need in holding, as we do now, an hour's communion with 
 the great dead, in trying to weigh and gauge the life of a man 
 whom God sent here to do his work on earth, and has taken back 
 again to Himself after that work is over, to weigh and gauge it 
 infallibly. 
 
 Mind, intellect, we can measure only by original thought. 
 Knowledge may show a man's application, wealth may declare 
 his industry, power may prove his tact (his smartness, we call it 
 here) ; this alone can establish the depth and worth aard power of 
 his mind. If Plato or Aristotle were to come on earth to-day 
 just as they left it some twenty centuries ago, you or I could take 
 them to school ; we could teach them new facts in science, new 
 truths in religion, new events in history, new lessons in worldly 
 wisdom, but would we therefore boast of greater intellect, truly 
 speaking, greater knowledge, than Plato or Aristotle ? Our pupils 
 would take our teachings even from our lips, but how soon we 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 125 
 
 should find that they had passed into them with a power that tliey 
 never had in us ; that what we had learned and taught as new 
 they were using as gods, and our facts and truths, events and 
 lessons, growing pliant in those old hands, would melt and mould 
 in purer and stronger shapes of symmetry and truth. Most gen- 
 erally the work is not thought of nor its need deplored till the 
 worker comes to do it. The marble slept cold and stiff for geo- 
 logical ages in Pentelicus before the Parthenon was built. 
 
 It seems sometimes as if the world had to come back every lit- 
 tle while and prove its first principles. Those primary truths 
 which are constantly in use grow, as if by friction, smooth and 
 tame and dull. Men build their heavy structures of religion, 
 policy, and law on what they honestly and earnestly believe a firm 
 foundation, and then taking their foundation for granted they for- 
 get it for a while and go on with their superstructure. But the 
 world's little or large waves are beating, heard or unheard, down 
 below, till some son or son's son dreams that the basis which his 
 father laid is safe and sound after all, and he goes down and tries 
 it again and once more begins the bulky work. The world comes 
 forever back to Pilate's question. What is truth? What do I 
 believe, and why do I believe it? It has proved that our fathers 
 were mistaken about the planets ; let us see whether they knew 
 about the soul. These investigations are occasional, and (it is both 
 a good and a bad sign) they seem to grow more frequent. Is 
 not one going on now? There was one in Luther's time, another 
 in the later mythologists', and still another in the prophets' ; all 
 were more partial and more reverent than this last. 
 
 How often we are made to feel that there is very much in us 
 which our nearest friends do not and cannot know. I do not 
 think there is a man living, however base or weak or dull or com- 
 monplace, who does not in some waking moment of his dim life 
 feel, perhaps with no more fulness than we may suppose an infant 
 to enter into man's life, that he has more in him than he dares 
 or cares or is able to show out, more of feeling, good or bad, more 
 of power, more of manhood. How little we know of ourselves! 
 How we are forever making discoveries in our own characters, 
 tearing off disguises, tearing down old idols, tearing to pieces old 
 rules and canons which were once like Heaven's truth to our blind 
 hearts. Then we are always or often (not often enough) finding 
 in ourselves new capacity and appreciation for goodness and beauty 
 and truth, new rooms for knowledge and new desires to fill them. 
 We think we have no taste for music and sweet sounds, till in 
 
126 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1^55-56 
 
 some moment when we least expect it, some simple melody will 
 till our hearts and dim our eyes and make us in a moment better, 
 purer men. We have looked at art all our days and smiled at 
 the enthusiasm of others, till some sweet face in a picture sends 
 its beauty into our souls, and we have gained, knowing or unknow- 
 ing it, a new joy forever. We do not know ourselves. And 
 when I profess my ignorance of what I am, shall another 2)i'etend 
 to teach me? Knowing far more than any one else knows of me, 
 and knowing that I know it, I tliink we may learn from it a les- 
 son of self-dependence or rather of independence of others ; for 
 here may we not see one of the secrets of man's need and craving 
 and demand for a God, for something to trust to. I and you 
 know neither ourselves nor each other ; every day we feel it more 
 and more. But not to he all unknown we may find one who 
 knows us both ; and while in self-distrust and mutual ignorance 
 we are separated from each other, let us rest with Him and make 
 through Him a surer union for ourselves. We may love God not 
 only because He made us and guards us and supports us, but also 
 because He knows us, and thus our love to Him will be essentially 
 different in kind from that which any human creature has ever 
 excited, or can ever excite, in any other. The fulness of know- 
 ledge, where no richer or deeper can be hoped, will be to know 
 then, just as we may feel or find comfort in the feeling that we 
 are known now. 
 
 Reading Pope's Homer seems to me to be an entirely different 
 thing from reading the Greek (even with my slight knowledge of 
 the tongue as I and my lexicon spell it out together). It seems 
 another poem, as different as the two men, as far apart as blind, 
 old, grave, majestic Homer, wandering and singing years ago, and 
 little, crooked, snarling, fanciful, and withal conceited Alexander 
 Pope coolly sitting down to do him into English ages after. Both 
 are poems, but they are not the same poem at all. If Pope had 
 been less of a poet I think we should have got more of Homer in 
 his version. Thus Churchill and Cowper I think show the old 
 minstrel better, though they give less new poetry than Pope. 
 
 Are not the most valued and the most valuable results of virtue 
 in many cases exactly those things for which as ends it should 
 not be sought, and for whose sake if sought it will never be 
 reached ? They are what virtue is willing to bestow as free gifts, 
 l)ut what she will not degrade by turning them into mere hire- 
 ling's wages. Purity is strength, but the purity which is sought 
 for its strength is pure no longer. 
 April, lS5(i, 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 127 
 
 RUTH. 
 
 Sweet Moab gleaner on old Israel's plain, 
 
 Thy simple story movetli like a power. 
 Thy pure calm face looks from the ripened grain 
 Wherein thou gleanest, on our toil and pain, 
 And in the light of thy soft eyes again 
 
 Our dead lives bud and blossom into flower. 
 
 O, lives like thine, sweet Ruth, are holy things. 
 Rich, simple, earnest in their wealth of duty ; 
 God's love forever to their music sings, 
 His angels shield them with their sheltering wings. 
 His spirit, trutli and trust and comfort brings, 
 And God himself smiles on their godlike beauty. 
 
 How many men, and not useless or unnecessary men either, 
 seem bmn merely for the development or exhibition of others. 
 They make no show, carry no glitter with themselves, but others 
 coming near catch a brilliance that was not in them before, or 
 that was so deep within them as not to be seen without, and the 
 dull become glorious and the stupid bright. Such are the men 
 for hard-working, necessary, thankless posts, — school-teachers, 
 spies, confidential agents, etc. 
 
 How much power is lost or impaired in this world by being in 
 the wrong hands. I suppiose every man has often felt that he has 
 capacities in him which another man would turn (perhajis only 
 from their combination with other qualities) to honor, or profit, or 
 power of some kind, yet feeling all the while that in their own 
 hand these selfsame capabilities are lying and probably will 
 always lie unused. If this he so may we not suppose that we all 
 possess, though they be not useful in us, all the germs or seeds, if 
 not of all capacities, yet of many more than we are in the habit of 
 using every day, and so hope that in a fuller and completer estate 
 of being, when that which is in part shall be done away, this par- 
 tialness of our own development and use may become obsolete, and 
 we may awake and know ourselves, our powers, our abilities, our 
 uses, and rise to new lives, new aims, new ends of being? 
 
 Most men read other men's lives as they would spell out a 
 language of whicli they are ignorant, but which somewliat resem- 
 bles their own. With the lielp of a word here aiul tliere, which 
 looks a little like one with which they are familiar, they go bun- 
 
128 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 gling, stumbling, doubting tlirough, reading a little, guessing at 
 more, and letting the rest go altogether. Let such pray for a 
 moral gift of tongues, a mental Pentecost which shall teach them 
 the strange language in which their neighbors' lives are written. 
 No one can ever know how far he is a fair specimen of his race, 
 how well he embodies its average endowments and may serve as a 
 sample to judge humanity. We may hope that we are none of us 
 so, — an average man ; a sample human must be a miserable 
 creature. 
 
 The attempts to control and change belief by arbitrary com- 
 mands, which appear so absurd and impossible as they were at- 
 tempted at the time when the Keformation was going on, are per- 
 haps not so strange after all, or rather the strangeness and false 
 judgment lay not so much in the thing undertaken as in the man- 
 ner in which the attempt was made. It has been done for ages, 
 by Popes and Saints, by direct, open, undisguised undoubting 
 dictation. It is doing now, and has been doing ever since, by 
 ministers and writers, by the quieter, but scarcely less arbitrary 
 demands of personal influence, social custom, apparent logic, and 
 blind individual reverence. Now the error of those who attempted 
 this same tiling and failed in the sixteenth century, as King Henry 
 VIII. in England and others elsewhere, would seem to be that, 
 living in a clianging age, their age was a little in advance of them, 
 they were passing from the old to the new way of receiving belief, 
 they still clung to the old way of impressing it, and hence arose 
 the trouble. 
 
 How strangely at times we wake up to a new meaning or a new 
 beauty in an old, dry commonplace that has been growing rusty 
 on the lips of men for years, — one of those didactic heirlooms 
 that father has handed down to son through long generations of 
 stupidity. We have received it as stupidly as any before us, 
 either stupidly thinking that we felt its force, or as stolidly 
 scorning it as trite and lifeless. But sometimes a thought will 
 come like an angel to the pool ; oui- souls are troubled, and the 
 old dead axiom finds its place as a living working thing; light 
 breaks from its eye ; its heart begins a human beating, its tong-ue 
 is loosed, and the dumb spealcs oracles. It is only another instance 
 that man may hold power in his hands and not know it, another 
 proof of life and energy that is passing for death all around us, 
 because we are so far from perfect that we cannot make use even 
 of all our imperfections. 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 129 
 
 "Take up thy bed and walk; " the sick man hoard; 
 One moment prostrate at the Saviour's feet, 
 And then obedient to the Master's word 
 Went praising Jesus up the Jewish street. 
 
 Speak to our souls which long have lain, God, 
 Crushed with the palsy of our mortal sin ; 
 
 O, bid us rise and lift our grievous load, 
 
 And we will labor up the toilsome road, 
 
 Till heaven's wide gates receive the wanderers in. 
 
 With how much clearness and precision we can often trace the 
 steps by which a man has mounted to some leading principle, the 
 mental ladder by which he has climbed to some great idea. The 
 materials lie in everybody's hands; the only difficulty is in the in- 
 genuity necessary for building them into shape, and the strength 
 of head which is required to mount without dizziness from stage 
 to stage. Every man must build his own ladder. We cannot 
 use each other's. And it depends upon a man's own clearness 
 and soundness of head whether, having reached the summit, he 
 can cast off the steps by which he mounted, or needs them still to 
 rest his eye on them for confidence and support. 
 
 Some leading, settled, authoritative truth is a treasure to a 
 man. The mind probably does not know what it needs while it 
 is without it, but it soon feels that it is stronger and firmer the 
 moment that it is gained. A thought once fully examined and 
 weighed and approved, whose soundness is acknowledged, whose 
 value is unquestioned, whose place is fully established, becomes 
 from that moment a standpoint for the soul; other thoughts come 
 to its confessional for approval or advice ; like a magnet it draws 
 the scattered fragments of other thoughts around it, binding them 
 to itself and to each other, giving them a part of its own life, its 
 own power, its own truth. Under such a thought the soul's gov- 
 ernment is firm, energetic, full of life, for it has a prerogative 
 and a preestablished authority like a king's; and then if that 
 kingly thought dies, with no other full grown and ready to succeed, 
 an interregnum must ensue, and be, as always, vacillating, weak, 
 and witless. 
 
 A stranger's thought is to no one like his own. He may adopt 
 it and cherish it and call it his, but his blood is not in its veins 
 nor the stamp of his likeness on its features. Not that we may 
 not have the same thoughts for the beacon or the basis of our lives, 
 
I30 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 but it must be natural and home-bred for each. You must not 
 borrow it from me, nor I from you. Because it serves your life 
 it is no sign either that it will or will not serve mine. Tliat we 
 must try for ourselves; and if we find it will not serve, then 
 away with, it, not as useless, but as useless for us. I may grant 
 the beauty in which your soul as well as your body is dressed, but 
 that soul garment of yours would fit and would become me not a 
 whit more than your body's clothing. Another, lesson of independ- 
 ent thought. I must have and must demand not only beauty 
 and sublimity and power, but fitness and adaptability as well. 
 
 When we admire the noble sentiments and high tone which 
 pervade Homer and the old Tragedians and the other idols of 
 classic learning, do we often ask ourselves, — How far we admire 
 simply for its antiquity what we are meeting every day embalmed 
 in modern commonplace and looking on with indifference ; how 
 far it is the rarity and strangeness of the treasure found in such 
 an age and place that pleases us, and not its own beauty and 
 worth which delight us ; how far we are treasuring in the desert, 
 because it is in the desert, that same water which to-morrow we 
 shall pass unheeded in the swollen stream ? 
 
 A spark of original thought, a gleam of an idea which is his 
 own, which he does not know to have visited another being, 
 strengthens a man's feeling of individuality, but weakens his sense 
 of race. It is an inspiring, ennobling, elevating, but not a social 
 thing. But what a kindly power, what a warm human family 
 feeling, clusters around a thought which we find common to one 
 mind, and to some old mind which was thinking away back in the 
 twilight of time. The common idea binds us to that dead man 
 with a friendship of the soul as warm and full and free as any 
 which holds us to our living companions. So when we recognize 
 a common impulse, or rule of life, or instinct of love and hate, 
 we must feel humanity in its spirit bearing witness with our 
 spirits that it is the offspring of a common divinity. When I 
 find the great and poor, and wise and weak, of all ages, just such 
 in some point as I am to-day, I cannot be an atheist. Hence the 
 value of books. What a power is in tliem ! What cosmopolites 
 they are and make of us ! Hence the beauty and the use of a 
 perfect biography, the perfection of a perfect book. It consoles 
 our weaknesses, for it casts them on humanity ; it destroys our 
 boasts and vanities, for it shares them with mankind. It makes 
 us happier, purer, truer men by making us more human. To 
 make a perfect biography a man's own self-knowledge ought to be 
 
JET. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 131 
 
 united to a stranger's calm, impartial, disinterested judgment, a 
 thing not likely to be seen on earth. 
 
 Is it likely that there have been giants in any days, — giants, I 
 mean, in the sense in which . men are so fond of using the text in 
 reference to their fathers, that is, intellectually ? Do not succes- 
 sive discoveries and revelations of the weakness and wisdom, the 
 institutions and writings and customs, of different ages teach us 
 that the allotment and measurement of genius to mankind has 
 been pretty fairly made ? Dropping out of view all that regards 
 the wholly undevelojjed talent, the "mute inglorious Milton" 
 part of the question (which has both the advantage and disadvan- 
 tage of being utterly unsusceptible of proof either way, and whose 
 force may consequently be turned both ways), making due allow- 
 ance for the filial reverence of the young world delighting to 
 vaunt and magnify the intellect of the old, do they make on the 
 whole so unequal a show ? While we disclaim alike the power of 
 old simplicity or modern science to create mental strength, we 
 must also deny alike their influence to destroy it. They may hide 
 it, they may turn it out of nature's channel into others unprofit- 
 able for effect or for dis^jlay, but all this power of circumstance 
 will, like almost all long-continued powers, work itself at last to 
 an average. We may recognize what it is, or what is something 
 far more powerful than it, what is nature and what is art, what 
 is man and what is dress, and then find that genius is no comet 
 sent at startling epochs to frighten and perplex mankind, but the 
 warm steady living glow of an incessant sunlight flowing forever 
 down from God's own throne above, to the world which He loves 
 and watches forever here below. 
 
 The general distrust of the long-undoubted opinions of our fore- 
 fathers, which is one of the strongest characteristics of the habit 
 of thought of the present day, is shown nowhere more distinctly 
 than in the freedom with which the old verdicts of history which 
 have long been held and reverenced as settled facts are criticised 
 and examined. Bloody Mary has been the stereotyped phrase 
 which has wrapped like a winding sheet the reputation of Eng- 
 land's persecuting queen. "Obstinacy, bigotry, violence, cruelty, 
 malignity, revenge, tyranny, " such has lieen the long indictment 
 which Hume has drawn against her, and which a whole Protestant 
 world has been found ready to endorse. But what a life hers 
 was ! How much there is in that life if not to excuse, yet to ex- 
 plain it. The world was against her from her girlhood up, and it 
 was not strange that her Tudor spirit, with its family obstinacy 
 
132 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 and jealousy and spite, set her at last against the world. She 
 had seen her mother, an humble Christian, a devoted wife and a 
 good woman, insulted and divorced to make room for a long line 
 of pretty favorites with half her sense and half her virtue. Her 
 father had disowned her, her nation had disinherited her, her 
 nobles had conspired against her. Forbidden the usual life of a 
 young princess, she had been left to brood over her wrong, to feed 
 on her own melancholy thoughts, and to make a new life out of 
 that religion which she reverenced all the more as the religion of 
 her persecuted mother. And what a deep true pathos there is in 
 the sad story of her love, her marriage, and her wedded life. 
 What a faith it gives us to believe that the coldest human heart 
 is not too cold for love to live in, when we see the poor weak 
 fondness, the womanly devotion, the complete self-sacrifice with 
 which the stern Mary Tudor gave her whole life and soul and 
 being up to the cold, haughty, selfish, despicable Philip. How 
 she follows him with her doting eyes, gives up for him all hope 
 of popularity, all dreams of personal advantage, all care for her 
 nation's interest, cheats herself and makes herself ridiculous 
 before the world in her vain desire to bind him more closely to 
 her by an offspring. Private life may show more amiable, more 
 rational, more pleasing pictures of love, but it can show none more 
 devoted, more whole-souled, more true. And the cold king cast 
 it all otf and left her ; drew through her heart the riches of her 
 kingdom, and then when the stream was dry, broke the heart from 
 which he drew it, and she died, disappointed, disconsolate, broken- 
 souled, a poor wasted worn-out thing. Earth never saw a sadder 
 sight. Who will dare to say that, if called to live her life, he 
 would have made better work of it than she did? 
 
 I may learn from the general indifference with which I am apt 
 to regard the private acts of other men outside of the narrow 
 circle of a few friends, that my deeds and words are not matters 
 of such interest to them as I am sometimes apt to dream, that 
 they comment upon them for a moment and then forget what is 
 of infinite importance to me forever. And so I may begin to 
 ponder less upon how my conduct strikes them and more on how 
 my duty urges me. And heeding them less in the present, I may 
 also lieed my own past less. "Let the dead past bury its dead." 
 Good or bad, it is gone now, and I have only to read its lessons 
 as far as I may learn to profit and grow by them ; as we solemnly 
 and sadly close the eyes and draw the veil over the face of some 
 dear dead friend, and go out into the world, to live by his advice 
 and his memory a better and purer life. 
 
«T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 133 
 
 The realization of a fact, with whose terms we have long been 
 familiar, is like meeting and knowing face to face a man whose 
 portrait has been before us for years. We knew the features 
 perfectly, we had perhaps even caught the general expression of 
 the face, but there is a power in the man himself which no picture 
 can have ; there is life and human energy ; and we feel that we 
 are in the presence of a power that we had not known before. 
 
 Is it not almost time for some men to learn that their incessant 
 railing at earthly riches and power and learning are doing far 
 more harm than good, that men are really convinced on reasonable 
 grounds that these things are good, worthy objects of ambition 
 and endeavor, and that if they had higher and worthier advantages 
 to offer, their way to recommend them must not be to decry and 
 depreciate what little good man already possesses? Such men 
 may thank merely the weakness of their cause and of themselves 
 that their efforts are not productive of more serious effects. Once 
 convince men that wealth, power, and learning are mean and 
 despicable and wrong, and you have crowned inefficiency and igno- 
 rance, brutality and stupidity, as the monarch of our race forever. 
 
 The choice of a profession is to a great extent the choice of a 
 life, for nothing can be more different than the habits, associa- 
 tions, relations of life into which the different professions cast us. 
 By one single decisive act all these are to be settled for all the 
 future. Up to the time of choice all have been general, common 
 to us with all young learning men, but now the broad, clear, open 
 road breaks and separates ; its paths diverge in every direction 
 and bear all manner of appearances at their starting. Which 
 shall we take ? And first one word as to the importance and the 
 difficulty of the choice. Whatever be our selection we shall prob- 
 ably never know it if we are wrong. Our dissatisfaction in the 
 pursuit which we have chosen will not prove that another would 
 have suited better. And as to trying them all and so satisfying 
 ourselves of the wisdom of our choice, it is impossible simply be- 
 cause we have only one short life and not three or four to live. 
 And again men who have made the choice years ago are little 
 more qualified to assist us than we are to help ourselves. Each 
 has tried only his own pursuit, and is unqualified, except on the 
 general grounds which we all possess, to speak of the pursuits of 
 others. If he has wasted his life in trying to test them all, he is 
 probably all the less qualified to speak of either. Again the con- 
 viction of the wisdom of my neighbor's choice will not assist me 
 in making mine. I may be sure that he is wise and right in 
 
134 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 going to the bar, and yet know all the while perfectly well that 
 the most foolish thing I could do would be to stupidly follow him 
 there, walking in his steps because they are his steps, not because 
 they mark the pathway for which I was made. It is no place for 
 fashion. A wise man may follow his neighbors in the cut of his 
 coat, or the style of his manners ; no one but the rankest fool will 
 give up his life to be moulded and modelled by their hands. We 
 must cast off then, once for all, all regard to the preferences or 
 prejudices of our friends if our selection is to be at all a wise 
 one. If I am to choose a life for myself, which I am to live 
 and for which I am to answer, let the choice be really mine, let 
 me say to my advisers ; I receive your advice, but no dictation. 
 Without presumption or vanity, humbly, earnestly, and firndy, I 
 claim my own human and divine right to my own life. Likewise 
 we nuist regard not at all those professional prejudices which, 
 magnifying one pursuit, would make it the test of capability for 
 success in all. I have heard an excellent schoolmaster say (or 
 heard of his saying) that lie never knew a man who failed in 
 teaching to succeed in anything else. I humbly believe it was the 
 schoolmaster and not the man who spoke. I have failed myself 
 most signally in teaching school, but I am not yet quite ready to 
 acknowledge myself wholly unequal to all this wide world's work. 
 
 "The professions" as the term is generally used are three: 
 Law, Medicine, and Theology. The protection of a man's rights, 
 of his body, and of his soul, the three great barriers which, 
 while he is hedging and ditching and tilling in his busy, bustling 
 fields, are keejiing out the desti'oying waters that would waste him 
 and all his together. Law, the pledge of man's social being, the 
 common friend that takes man's hand and placing it in his neigh- 
 bor's bids him trust in social honor, integrity, and justice, embody- 
 ing at once the sternest workings of human vengeance and the 
 ])urest and most merciful spirit of human love, drawing its charter 
 from the holiest source, — God's eternal law, and making that 
 charter the blessed agent for smoothing the world's rough roads 
 alike for the clumsy feet of human governments and the humblest 
 steps of common men who cannot but jostle each other in tlie 
 rugged way, — Law, — so often made powerless by debased human- 
 ity, is almighty in the inherent <liversity of its nature. And Medi- 
 cine, man's humbler but his truer friend, more immediately visi- 
 ble in the good it gives, standing by the sick-bed where the poor 
 man lies tossing with his fever, wiping his clammy brow, moisten- 
 ing his parched lips, soothing and calming the racking of his ex- 
 hausted frame, man's first visitor and his last, the most direct, the 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 135 
 
 most efficient, the most apparent, of his benefactors all through his 
 life. And Divinity, the most revered of professions or the most 
 despised, which is either everything to man or worse, far worse 
 than nothing, either the most solemn and the most Godlike of 
 truths or the most fearful and devilish of lies, whose very perver- 
 sions and disgraces and abuses show its native worth, the nearest, 
 dearest, most familiar of messages from God to man, which men 
 reverence while they sneer at, and honor and worship in its nature 
 when they most shudder and shrink from the dresses, all soiled 
 and stained and of the earth, with which it sometimes claims that 
 it is clothed, — surely, looking at the three thus in their purest 
 and whitest abstraction, this last is not unworthy. 
 
 "Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and 
 life has been a very serious thing ; there has been no playing at 
 skittles for me in either. I never mistook jileasure for the final 
 cause of poetry; nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have 
 done my work, so far, as work, not as mere head and hand work 
 apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of 
 that being to which I could attain, and, as work, I offer it to the 
 public ; feeling its faultiness more deeply than any of my readers 
 because measured from the height of my own aspiration, — but 
 feeling also that the reverence and sincei'ity with which the work 
 was done should protect it in the thoughts of the reverent and 
 sincere." 
 
 These words are taken from Mrs. Browning's preface to the 
 first American edition of her poems. They contain the English 
 poetess's own introduction of the fruit of her life's work to a 
 strange nation to which she comes asking for sympathy and re- 
 spect, for admiration not of herself, but of what she admires and 
 of what the devotion of her own life has convinced her is worthy 
 of devotion of the life of every living man. In these few lines 
 we have the key to the spirit of every poem in the volumes which 
 they introduce. We say of every poem, and say it consideringly. 
 For there is no poet that we can recall through the whole range 
 of our English poetry who has so distinctive a character, and who 
 lives so constantly in that character, as Mrs. Browning. The 
 great reality, sincerity, and significance of all life is what is 
 always weighing on her heart and pressing at her lips, and when 
 poetry for a moment unveils the heart or opens the lips, it is this 
 which always breaks forth into verse. Knowing then thus much 
 of the general aim and scope of Mrs. Browning's works we may 
 settle one or two points at once. She will not be a pojiular, that 
 is, a people's favorite. You will not find her books well worn and 
 
136 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 read in the homes of common men, for common men, in spite of 
 all that we may wish and hope and dream, are not yet ready for a 
 spirit like this. They dimly catch faint glimpses of it at happy 
 moments when the God that is in them hreaks forth, and is hardly 
 seen hefore it dies back again, and all is so dark that we begin to 
 doubt again as before, whether it is there at all ; but they do not, 
 and we must own cannot, yet make a life of it and fill their exist- 
 ence with its power and energy ; and till they can do this, and 
 have been doing this for some time, they cannot relish the poetry 
 in which this life is the all in all. 
 
 Again, this kind of poetry, we may judge, will not find great 
 favor with those persons who object to seeing the poet in his 
 works, who admire Shakespeare because there is not Shakespeare, 
 but universal manhood in his poems. Now Mrs. Browning is her- 
 self in her poetry from the first line to the last. Devotion and 
 sincerity like hers are personal, individual things, belonging to 
 each man and each woman apart from all other men and women, 
 coinciding, if they coincide at all, by accident and not by agree- 
 ment. Individuality then, a distinct refined personal character, is 
 stamped on all her works. The strength of her thoughts is strong 
 because they are peculiai-ly her own, no less her own because 
 otliers have thought the same. 
 
 The "Sonnets from the Portuguese," read consecutively and 
 carefully, are most beautiful. They give us new, fresh, ever more 
 intimate views of their author's character and experience. Then 
 read in connection with them Mr. Browning's dedication of his 
 "Men and Women " to his wife, and you have the other side of 
 tlie picture. The whole is complete. We see the deep love of 
 two souls as capable of the best and truest love as any two that 
 breathe. 
 
 Shelley at the age of seventeen writing " Queen Mab " seems to 
 me, whatever we may think of the religion, the politics, and the 
 ethics of that poem, to be one of the most remarkable sights on 
 which we can ponder. It is not merely a boy of genius, like Chat- 
 terton or Byron or Keats. It is a boy man with all a boy's fire 
 and young strength and young zeal and all a man's earnestness of 
 purpose and belief. I must say the blasphemy, for we must use 
 the word, of that strange poem has done more to make me a Chris- 
 tian than many a wise homily. How he stands with his young 
 face intent to seize all the great converse of God and Nature which 
 is ever speaking between Earth and Heaven. And O, how sad to 
 see him catching only Nature's half of the dialogue and thinking 
 earnestly, indignantly, that ho has heard the whole, and then with 
 
.ET. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 137 
 
 all the martyr spirit of a Huss, madly crying to religion and gov- 
 ernment, and commerce and marriage and God, that they are utter 
 lies. I do not envy the man who can read the poem and, through 
 all his horror at the sacrilege, and disgust and disapproval of the 
 false morality, false logic, false history, and false hopes that fill 
 it, not feel a thrill of honor and pity and love for the poor, pure, 
 world- wretched man who wrote it. How many men there are 
 who have no truer light than he, but who can be content in dark- 
 ness, which he could not, who want only his depth of feeling and 
 height of genius to be what he was. 
 Thursday evening, August 14, 1856. 
 
 Of the "Revolt of Islam " it seems to me to be the purest con- 
 ception and embodiment of his creed as conceived and embodied 
 by the purest soul that ever believed in the power of mere human 
 love and joy and virtue to regenerate the world. And the great 
 answer to his theory seems to be just where he was too pure to 
 find it, in his own purity. Laon and Laone hardly lived in the 
 earth, or even the stuff of which Laon and Laone might be made, 
 outside of the mind of Shelley. The creed then which they could 
 make, and which should then guard, guide, and comfort them, was 
 a creed for them, not for mankind. Not that Christianity is less 
 pure than Shelley's love-and-joy religion. The purity that was 
 in him I take to be precisely that which is in the religion of 
 Christ ; only, the gi'eat common sea of love and peace and joy 
 for man he had heaped into two separate mountains for his own 
 private disappointments, disgusts, and cruel persecutions to pass 
 through. The soul then which Christianity has made strong 
 enough to separate Shelley the pure, honest lover of truth and 
 virtue may make this poem, I think, a most blessed purifying, 
 elevating book. I know but two pieces in contemporary poetry 
 so fine as the plague in the tenth canto. Shelley's error through- 
 out seems to me too low an estimate of man's actual and too high 
 a faith in man's (unaided) possible. 
 
 The last sentence to the "Prometheus Unbound" should surely 
 forever entitle the aspirations and longings of that poem for a 
 purer world to respect and reverence. We may mourn that his 
 mind could look only to man's own help to work out man's per- 
 fection. We may wonder how he could find a reality in human 
 goodness to which all his life, outside himself, was ever giving 
 the lie, which he could not attribute to divine beneficence, which 
 was always speaking to him in Nature as it spoke to no other 
 living soul ; but if purity of heart, and earnestness of purpose, and 
 perfect poetry of life and hopes and universal being be things to 
 
138 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 honor and revere, then we must give to Shelley full honor and 
 esteem. How beautiful is the report which the spirit of the hour 
 brings of the renewed world at the end of the third act, and all 
 the chorus of fresh, natural joy that burst from glad-souled Earth 
 and moon and sea and spirits in the noble melody of the fourth 
 act. " The Cenci " seems less his than either of his four great 
 works, though the Shelley in it needs more study to show itself in 
 it than in either of them. Who would not give months of our 
 common, stale, dead days for one of his fullest, happiest, richest, 
 silver, spirit-crowded days ? Of Mrs. Shelley I know nothing 
 except from her notes to his poems. She seems a most disagree- 
 able sort of body. 
 
 "If I were one whom the loud world held wise! " 
 So speak 'st thou, Shelley, in thy bitter scorning. 
 And turn'st thy pale, strong face to watch the dawning 
 
 Of wisdom on that world's cold, dull, gray skies. 
 
 A cloud rose-fleecy o'er the horizon lies 
 
 With angel sounds from Bethlehem's blessed morning; 
 O could thy soul but hear the mystic warning 
 
 As thy rapt gaze sees its pure beauty rise! 
 
 man alone claims not man's fullest growth; 
 
 As in their pledging, lovers break the token. 
 Each keeping half in witness of their oath, 
 
 Till each fulfil the word that each hath spoken. 
 So Heaven holds pledge of manhood's plighted truth; 
 
 O kneel and pray God take thy fragment broken. 
 Wednesday, August 20, 1850. 
 
 The laws, especially those of early nations, consist much less 
 of commands than of prohibitions. Man is more ready to do the 
 good which is in him than to leave undone the evil. I think it 
 is more to his credit than if the reverse were the case; this shows 
 a want of self-restraint ; that would argue positive malignity, and 
 predilection for the wrong. 
 
 The great analogies of nature are fossilized in the language of 
 mankind. The clear stars give a name to the clearness of an eye; 
 the ruddy roses to the blushing of a cheek ; and even in more lofty 
 moral things, tlie purity of the evening sky, the fresh nakedness 
 of morning, the calm beauty of summer, and the stern majesty of 
 winter give us terms and titles for the pureness, the energy, the 
 calm devotion or majestic duty of men's lives. The fullest, ricli- 
 est, and yet the truest of figurative language is what the tongue, 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 139 
 
 untaught but capable of eloquence, learns among the woods and 
 brooks and birds. 
 
 Humanity has no sterner judge than human nature ; mankind 
 no stricter master than man. The great difficulty of the contem- 
 porary historian is to judge rightly where the tidemark of time 
 will run, how high the waves will rise, what must be covered and 
 what points will stand out to tell future men where the firm 
 ground of his age once stood. All that is to be remembered must 
 group round these points; all that can make its mark on them 
 will tell. The greatness of the memory of things often differs 
 much from the greatness of their reality in kind. The great gla- 
 ciers that went crushing and crashing and crumbling over our con- 
 tinent uncounted ages ago are known and remembered to-day by 
 a few faint scratches on a few old rocks. No historian' will be 
 perfect till he shall have fully learnt the perspective of history. 
 Then he will be an artist with his art complete. 
 
 We speak with enthusiasm of originality, but too seldom dis- 
 tinguish between its different kinds, between originality as a habit 
 and originality as a life. One sparkles out here and there in a 
 strangeness of thought or oddity of action, is often entertaining, 
 sometimes awakening and so improving, but not generally very 
 estimable. The other is a genuineness and self-reliance of the 
 whole man. There may be no thought or act which has not been 
 thought or done over and over again by men before. The pecul- 
 iarity consists in its being home-bred and original over again, 
 after all its triteness, with this new man ; and in its new 
 strength he is strong. 
 
 For the individual can only prove affinity to Godhead in that 
 he bows to it and worships it. (Goethe, Aus meinem Leben, — 
 Die KrOnung Joseph II.) 
 
 "It is a noble sight to see an honest man cleave his own heart 
 in twain and fling away the baser part of it." (Reade, Never 
 too Late to Mend, vol. i. p. 51.) 
 
 Let us cultivate and reverently cherish the honest indignations 
 of our nature, for they are tlie life and fire that is in us. God 
 has given them, and the man is most happy who has them the 
 warmest, the truest, the least wrenched by prejudice, the least 
 dulled by sense and sin. 
 
I40 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 The mind that never consciously repeats itself, that finds fresh 
 thoughts and feelings always prompt when fresh occasions rise, 
 never having to go back and take old dresses and recut, refit, and 
 make them over to suit new needs, is blessed of God. It is hard 
 to have to look to old emergencies to meet the new exigencies of 
 life, demanding of the past not only memories and teaching which 
 it owes us, but also the present powers and present resources which 
 the present ought to furnish. 
 
 With what care we should cherish each waking thought that 
 bears a trace of nobleness or purity or strength, tend, foster, and 
 watch it, "for by so doing many have entertained angels un- 
 awares." It may be our angel. We may soon see its bright 
 wings unfold and the bright smile of heaven spread over its face, 
 and it may take our hands and lead us over the rough, hard road, 
 giving us hope and strength and purpose, when without it all would 
 have been despondency and weakness. 
 
 In these youthful musings intended for no eye but his 
 own, where lie first betrays the evidence of some inward 
 religious experience, it does not appear that he was con- 
 fronted by si^eculative or intellectual difficulties, but mainly 
 with a moral issue, where a great act takes the precedence, 
 — the submission and consecration of the will. We may 
 speak of this moment as the beginning of his conversion, for 
 he liked the word and used it. It was said of Lacordaire, 
 that "on the day of his conversion he was already at heart 
 a priest." Phillips Brooks was struck by the passage when 
 he read it, for of him also it was true, that from the begin- 
 ning of his conversion, he was already at heart, however 
 imperfectly he may have realized it, consecrated to the work 
 of the Christian ministry. Beyond this statement of a vague 
 purpose slowly maturing it is not possible to go, in seeking 
 to determine the time and the motive of his cboosing the 
 ministry as a profession. It may be that the idea had flitted 
 before him in childhood under his mother's influence, who, 
 above all other things, desired that this should be his calling. 
 The impressive picture upon the boy's fancy of Dr. Vinton in 
 the pulpit may have led him in half-unconscious ways to feel 
 that he would like to follow the same profession. There are 
 possible allusions to this preference while he was still in the 
 
^T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 141 
 
 Latin School. But when he entered Harvard, and his soul 
 opened up to the richness and complexity of the problem of 
 life, such a vision seems to have faded away, if indeed it 
 had ever taken any deep hold of his imagination. Some of 
 his classmates and friends in college were surprised when 
 they learned of his choice of a profession, but others were 
 not. There are traditions of talks with his fellow students, 
 to whom it seemed like throwing one's self away to enter the 
 Christian ministry. This fear he undoubtedly shared him- 
 self, and it left its influence upon him. It was a new and 
 fresh surprise to him all his life long that the ministerial 
 profession instead of reducing or limiting the range of full 
 and diverse human interests was a perpetual enlargement of 
 the scope of one's being. He never spoke to young men on 
 this subject in later years without telling them how full and 
 free, how inexpressibly rich, was the clerical calling. But 
 all this was yet to come to him in the slow course of years. 
 That the reverse might be true was the danger that haunted 
 him in this first crisis of his religious experience. 
 
 There is the tradition of conversation with a classmate, as 
 they took a long walk together one Sunday afternoon. His 
 friend represented to him how the church and the clergy 
 were holding aloof from the great humanitarian movement 
 which called for the abolition of slavery. To represent to 
 PhiUips Brooks, in whose blood was the Puritan motive 
 and the transcendent desire for reforms which should benefit 
 humanity, that the church was no longer in sympathy with 
 these reforms, or was lagging behind in the race, was a forci- 
 ble appeal to throw in his life with the more direct humani- 
 tarian crusade against the evils of the time. But against 
 this appeal, which made its impression, there was some inward 
 protest; it could not be the whole truth; and despite his 
 misgiving, he persisted, listening to other voices, to some 
 inward caU as yet dimly interpreted. 
 
 One other incident in this waiting period from February to 
 October, in 1856, remains to be mentioned. He went at last 
 to call upon Dr. Vinton, to ask what steps should be taken 
 by one who proposed to study for the ministry. According 
 
142 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1855-56 
 
 to his own report of the conversation at a much later time, 
 Dr. Vinton said to him that it was customary to have received 
 confirmation before becoming a candidate for orders, and 
 also remarked that conversion was generally regarded as a 
 prerequisite for confirmation. To this Phillips Brooks re- 
 plied that he did not know what conversion meant. But Dr. 
 Vinton was a wise man, of great experience in the cure of 
 souls, a man also who could rise above the conventionalities 
 of religion or translate into his own dialect the manifestations 
 of the religiovis life, however diverse or inadequate their 
 expression. He approved of the plan to study for the minis- 
 try, and recommended the seminar}^ of the Protestant Epis- 
 copal Church at Alexandria in Virginia as the place where 
 the preparation should be made. Phillips Brooks seems to 
 have left home suddenly for Virginia some weeks after 
 the term had opened. Beyond his father and mother, he 
 took no one into his counsels. To one who remonstrated 
 with him for his want of confidence in not telling his friends 
 of the step he contemplated, he wrote in reply: "Please let 
 all that matter drop. I said scarcely anything to any one 
 about it but Father and Mother. Consider me here at the 
 seminary without debating how I got here." The only light 
 thrown on this event is a short note by Dr. Vinton, without 
 other importance than that of a contemporary voice in the 
 silence ; — 
 
 Temple Place, October 31, 1856. 
 My dear Sib, — Not hearing of Phillips's call on Monday 
 I supposed that he might have postponed his departure till my 
 return. 
 
 His note reached me at Pomfret, but too late for an answer by 
 the time that he named. If he has gone will you forward to 
 him the enclosed notes to Dr. Sparrow and Dr. May ? I am glad 
 to be once more at home with my family to resume regular duties. 
 Congratulating devoutly yourself and Mrs. Brooks on the an- 
 swer to your prayers for your dear son, and praying with you that 
 he may be a. burning and shining light in the ministry to which 
 he is called, I am very faithfully 
 
 Your friend and pastor, Alex. H. Vinton. 
 
 Wm. G. Brooks, Esq. 
 
«T. 19-20] THE LATIN SCHOOL 143 
 
 These are the words with which Phillips Brooks closed the 
 brief record of his thoughts on the eve of his departure for 
 Virginia : — 
 
 "-4s we pass from some experience to some experiment, 
 from a tried to an untried scene of life, it is as when we tv,rn 
 to a new 2)a,ge in a book we have never read before, but whose 
 author we know and love and trust to give us on every page 
 words of counsel and purity and strengthening virtue.^' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 1856-1857 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA. NA- 
 TURE AND EXTENT OF HIS READING. EXTRACTS FROM 
 HIS NOTE-BOOK 
 
 "It is the five years after college which are the most deci- 
 sive in a man's career. Any event which happens then 
 has its full influence. The years which come before are too 
 fluid. The years which come after are too solid." This 
 deliberate utterance of Phillips Brooks, in speaking of his 
 friend Richardson, the eminent American architect,^ im- 
 poses a certain obligation on his biograj)her. He could not 
 have thus spoken of Richardson if he had not been aware of 
 the importance of these years in the history of his own life. 
 For this reason, the story of his experience in the Latin 
 School has been given at some length, as well as what is 
 known of the time which elapsed between his resignation as 
 an usher there and his departure for Virginia. For this 
 reason it seems necessary to trace with some minuteness the 
 career of the theological student when he was laying the 
 foundations of his future greatness. The materials for this 
 portion of his life are most ample, as will appear in the 
 course of the narrative. 
 
 For some reasons, not quite easy to explain, there is often- 
 times embarrassment and even trial connected with the tran- 
 sition from college to the theological seminary. Into this 
 trial there enters a sense of shame, the mauvaise honte, it 
 might almost be called, which is peculiar to Christianity as 
 compared with other religions. The Mohammedan or the 
 Buddhist is not troubled in this way when making his 
 
 1 Gf. The Harvard Monthly, for October, 1880, and Essays and Addresses, by 
 Phillips Brooka, p. 485. 
 
MT. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 145 
 
 prayers, and indeed is quite willing to be seen of men; 
 whereas Christianity, and Protestantism more particularly, 
 cultivates the inwardness of religion, and even the conceal- 
 ment of professions or of acts of devotion, the shutting of the 
 door to the secret prayer, whose influence, however, is to be 
 seen openly. 
 
 The theological student seems to defy this sentiment. He 
 is separating himself from other men for a religious j)ur- 
 pose. It appears like ostentation, as though he proclaimed 
 himself more religious than his fellows. To enter a theo- 
 logical school somewhat resembles the admission to a monas- 
 tery in the Middle Ages, and something of the surprise and 
 obloquy which attached to the one attaches to the other. 
 Then there is the further difficulty that in this case the culti- 
 vation of religion is connected with one's future support, so 
 that the question rises in the student's mind, and he is sure 
 also in the minds of his quondam companions, whether he is 
 sincere, or may not be thinking of the material gains of life. 
 There is an artificial standard set up for behavior, till a 
 young man becomes sensitive and self-conscious. How will 
 this or that act or remark strike those without, and who are 
 watching his career to see if there is any change. He has 
 mingled freely with his college mates, as one of them, with- 
 out distinction; has been popular with all alike, or has been 
 at liberty to choose his companions ; now he is to be shut up 
 with a few with whom he is to be identified. He wonders 
 what kind of men he shall encounter. 
 
 There are other difficulties also of a grave kind. The 
 college world is more universal in its tone and aspiration ; its 
 teachers seek for truth and may address a wide, almost world- 
 wide constituency. But the theological teacher is regarded, 
 and too often it is true, as working in the interest of a sect; 
 and if he speaks his voice is rarely heard outside his own 
 communion. The student, who has hitherto been free, must 
 now study and learn to defend, and, if need be, shout for 
 the shibboleths of a party. Young men who have hitherto 
 been united in a common aim become conscious of the sense 
 of separation. There is a feeling that it is not natural, or 
 
r46 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 that a man may be lowering and reducing himself to a 
 smaller man by the change. Then again, the call to the 
 ministry is more apt to come to the sons of unworldly fami- 
 lies, where the aim has not been social ambition or the 
 amassing of riches. These may be lacking in the breeding 
 of the man of the world, the savoir-faire upon which young 
 men so often place too great a stress, as a canon of judgment. 
 It is true that to-day, as of old and always, not many wise 
 men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are 
 called ; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world 
 to confound the wise, and weak things to confound the 
 mighty, and base things and things which are despised God 
 hath chosen to do his peculiar work. 
 
 Por these and other reasons there are prejudices about 
 theological seminaries against which a young man must con- 
 tend who is called to the ministry. He may be looked down 
 upon by his old associates; he may even be in danger of 
 looking down upon himself. If he be greatly gifted he will 
 be regarded by some as queer, or as throwing himself away 
 where he will not be appreciated. His social standing may 
 be affected. His future is uncertain. Intellectual endow- 
 ments of the highest order, which would meet with success in 
 the world of affairs, are not always sure of recognition in the 
 world of religion. They may even prove a disadvantage. A 
 good voice and a good appearance with agreeable manners 
 sometimes constitute in the ministry a sort of stock in trade, 
 so that he who is without them suffers in comparison. The 
 race in the ministry is not always to the strongest. 
 
 These considerations are mentioned here because Phillips 
 Brooks was alive to them when at last he made up his mind 
 to go to a theological seminary. He had determined at least 
 to give it a trial; it is doul)tful if his determination at first 
 went further than this. There had been among friends and 
 acquaintances those who thought he was throwing himself 
 away, and plainly told him so. He was more afraid for him- 
 self that he should deteriorate and become content with some 
 lower standard, by restricting his field of vision or action. 
 He was afraid that the reason which he gloried in as the 
 
^T. ao 2i] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 147 
 
 highest endowment of man must be abdicated at the call of 
 authority, as the primary condition of theological study. 
 But while his fears and uncertainties were great, he possessed 
 already two supreme qualifications, — safeguards against all 
 dangers. One was humility. He had discarded ambition 
 and was willing to be no one ; he only asked to be useful in 
 some ordinary or even obscure way. There was also ripen- 
 ing within him the consciousness that he was called by God, 
 and that in this conviction he could not be lessened or 
 restricted, but must be enlarged to the uttermost. Let the 
 reader turn to his Sermons for his own commentary on his 
 inward mood as he left home to begin the study of his pro- 
 fession : — 
 
 With regard to that time [the period of professional prepara- 
 tion], I think that all of us who have seen many men will bear 
 witness that it is just there that many men grow narrow, and 
 from being broad in sympathies, large, generous, humane, before, 
 even in all the crudity of their boyhood, the moment of the choice 
 of their profession seems to make them limited and special, shuts 
 them up between narrow walls, makes them uninteresting to all 
 the world outside their little work, and makes all the world out- 
 side their little work uninteresting to them. . . . Where shall 
 the larger spirit come from ? The spirit of an act comes from its 
 motive. There must be a larger motive then. And the largest 
 of all motives is the sending of God, the commission of Him who 
 is the Father of us all. . . . The true salvation fi'om the sordid- 
 ness and narrowness of professional life comes only with a pro- 
 found faith that God sent us to be the thing that we are, to do 
 the work that we are doing.-' 
 
 It must have been an exciting and busy moment in the 
 Brooks family when Phillips left home for the first time. 
 The short note of Dr. Vinton's indicates that he, too, was 
 moved. This was the mother's first call to this peculiar ex- 
 perience. When it came a second time, in the case of her 
 son George, she spoke in a letter to Phillips of the pain it 
 gave her, and how it had reminded her of his departure 
 from home. The love which ruled the household and bound 
 it together was intensified by this event, so common, so 
 1 Vol. Tiii. p. 12. 
 
148 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 familiar, and yet ever new. We may speak of these things 
 because no one could attach more importance to them than 
 Phillips Brooks. From his childhood he recognized the 
 "mysticity," as it has been called, which broods over meet- 
 ings and partings. But he was young, not yet twenty-one; 
 it was like going to a new world; he was to see on the 
 way for the first time, with his own eyes, the places he 
 had long heard of and had been eager to see, the larger 
 cities of his own country. He had in him the making of 
 a traveller, and this was his first experience. His face was 
 set towards the future, and beneath it all was the convic- 
 tion, weak indeed, and yet growing, that God was sending 
 him. 
 
 From the time of his going to the theological seminary 
 there dates a voluminous correspondence with the family at 
 home. Every week, and sometimes oftener, he wrote to his 
 father or mother, or to his older brother. This was regarded 
 as in the nature of a fixed engagement. When the corre- 
 spondence begins there was lamentable failure on all sides, 
 except the father's, to date the letters. Perhaps the mother 
 was the chief offender, to whom moments of space and time 
 were subordinate to spiritual and eternal issues. Phillips 
 himself was often careless, heading his letters, "Monday 
 evening," or the day of the week, as the case might be. 
 The evil consequences of this neglect soon began to be mani- 
 fest; the father remonstrated, Phillips himself complained, 
 and after the first year's correspondence this negligence was 
 in a measure overcome. The handwriting of the son at this 
 time, though closely resembling his father's, was not equal 
 to it in grace or legibility. It was uneven in its character, 
 sometimes open and full, sometimes crabbed and small. The 
 letters which here follow describe without the necessity of 
 comment the external incidents in his first year at the theo- 
 logical seminary. The first one was addressed to his brother 
 William, and was written on the day of his arrival at Alex- 
 andria, November 7, 1856, giving his impressions of his 
 new home : — • 
 
/ET. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 149 
 
 As the weary traveller paces the well-worn deck of the good 
 steamer George Washington on its hillowy course from Washing- 
 ton to Alexandria, he sees on a lofty hill which rises behind the 
 latter beautiful town a large white brick building. Well, that 's 
 just where I am to-night. If you go to the engraving which 
 hangs beside your Shakespeare and look at the building with the 
 cupola, in the third story, counting the basement, just to the left 
 of the largest tree which intercepts the building, you will see a 
 window. There 's where I am writing. Not that it 's my room. 
 It belongs to one of about forty new-made friends who have 
 taken me in for the evening. My lordly apartment is a garret 
 in an old building called the Wilderness about fifty rods behind 
 this. Its furniture at present consists of a bedstead and a wash- 
 stand. I looked in for a moment, threw down my carpet bag, 
 and ran. I suppose I 've got to sleep there to-night, but I'm 
 sure I don't know how. There seem to be some fine fellows here. 
 They are very hospitable, and would kill me with kindness if I 
 would stand it. They are about half from the North and half 
 from the South. I 'm in a perfect wilderness of names, for 
 they 've been introducing me all around and I shan't know half 
 of them again. I have seen the head, Dr. Sparrow, who is a 
 thin, tall gentleman, with not much to say. So Buchanan is our 
 next President. The South is a mean and a wretched country at 
 best, so far as I have seen it. The line seems marked most plainly 
 where the blessing ceases and the curse begins, where men cease 
 to own themselves and begin to own each other. Of course there 
 is nothing of the brutality of slavery here, but the institution is 
 degrading the country just as much. All the servants are slaves. 
 Those in the seminary are let out by their masters for so much 
 a year, paid of course to the master just as you 'd pay for a horse 
 hired. Everything seems about half a century behind the age. 
 There is no enterprise, no life. It takes forever to get a job 
 done at all, and fifty forevers to get it done decently, even in the 
 littlest things. They 've got a gong at the hotel at Alexandria, 
 but they don't know how to ring it, and so they go about the house 
 at meal times banging away at it like a drum, with a perfectly 
 hideous noise. I had a stunning time in New York : saw most of 
 the lions, and almost walked my feet off all over the city. Whom 
 did father vote for? Baltimore disgusted me with Fillmore. I 
 passed through there while the fight was raging, and heard the 
 whole town in an uproar. Philadelphia I liked very much, so far 
 as I saw it. Washington is a sort of a skeleton affair, splendidly 
 laid out and about half grown. The public buildings strike me 
 
150 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 as decidedly shabby. The Potomac is a splendid river ; we can 
 see it plainly from the seminary, as also the Capitol and monu- 
 ment, etc., at Washington. The seminary has about 100 acres 
 of ground, mostly covered with oak and hickory. The cedar and 
 locust trees are very plenty in this neighborhood. I had to get 
 ray watch put twenty minutes back in Washington, which con- 
 vinced me that I was getting some way from home. It is about 
 three miles to Alexandria, and a very pleasant walk. I am a 
 stronger Fremont man than ever, since seeing Buchanan and Fill- 
 more States, and know nothing that I would not do to change the 
 result. The only hope now is that he will make things bad 
 enough to call forth a louder and wider indignation at the next 
 election. I really want to tell you all about the place, and so I 
 do. I had a game of "base " this afternoon with my new friends, 
 but they evidently didn't think much of my performances. 
 Don't let mother worry too much. You may give her a kiss on 
 one cheek for me and let George, if he is very anxious, on the 
 other. Tell George not to wait for a special answer to his letter 
 before writing again, for I have a crowd to write to while he has 
 only one, and I mean each letter for so many of the crowd as care 
 to read it. I went with Edward Dalton through all the horrors 
 of his place when I was in New York, and saw some lovely opera- 
 tions. It is a splendid study. I am really ashamed to write 
 more, although I should like to very much, and so say good-night, 
 and am going over to the Wilderness, to lie awake and think of 
 you all. Give my best love to Father and Mother, and believe 
 me Ever your affectionate brother, 
 
 Phillips. 
 
 Friday raoming'. 
 The mails don't go from here but once a day, and this won't 
 start from Alexandria before to-morrow morning. I have slept 
 over night in my cheerful hole, and am rejoicing this morning in 
 a cold and a cramp. They have the least idea of New England 
 comfort down here of any place I ever saw. I am in the room 
 of a son of Bishop Potter, who seems to be a splendid fellow ; at 
 any rate he's mighty handsome. 'Tis an awkward thing this 
 living in a garret. Please tell Father that since 1846 Alexandria 
 has not been in the District of Cohnnbia,. It was then given to 
 Virginia with all on the west of the Potomac, which is now called 
 Alexandria County. 
 
 A week later, November 14, 1856, he gives his impressions 
 In a letter to Mr. G. C. Sawyer : — • 
 
/ET. 20-2I] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 151 
 
 Fairfax County, Va., Friday, November 14, 1850. 
 I don't know whether or not you will be surprised to get a let- 
 ter from me dated in this funny, out-of-the-way place. It depends 
 upon whether or not you have heard of my having settled down 
 into what I suppose is to be my life, theology. . . . It is just a 
 week ago to-day that I reached here, and I have hardly yet got set- 
 tled. I received your letter some weeks before I left Boston, and 
 was so busy getting ready to be off that I really had not time to 
 answer it then, but now I am looking for everybody whom I have 
 any claim to write to, for an answer to a letter is a perfect boon 
 in this remote place. You will find on consulting your map the 
 dirty little city of Alexandria, about seven miles down the river 
 Potomac from Washington, and about two miles back from the 
 river behind Alexandria, on a high hill in the woods, stands this 
 institution. It is a lonely, desolate sort of a place, with about forty 
 students, of whom as yet I know two. It is beautifully situated, 
 overlooks the river and Washington, to say nothing of that little 
 mudhole, Alexandria. I am beginning to buck into Hebrew 
 pretty slowly, and like it extremely. It is the queerest old lan- 
 guage I ever saw. I live almost entirely by myself, see little 
 or nothing of the other students, who seem to be an extremely 
 good but not particularly interesting set of young men. I ima- 
 gine they don't think much of me. The course here is three 
 years. I suppose I shall stay that time. The country and 
 weather here is glorious. I never saw such moonliglit nights in 
 all my life. But the people are wretched, shiftless, uninterest- 
 ing, lazy, deceitful. I suppose it is one of the best ])laces to see 
 the sad efEects of slavery on the white population, degrading and 
 unmanning them. I don't feel much like saying anything of the 
 election [of Buchanan]. The people around here are delighted 
 with the result, and crowing and exulting as if they had saved 
 the land. There are crowds of slaves about here ; very many of 
 them, however, are hired from other parts of the State, and from 
 other States, of their masters. They are a jolly-looking set of 
 people. ... I have spent considerable time since I have been 
 here over in Washington sight-seeing. There is ever so much to 
 look at, and next month, when Congress is sitting, it will be very 
 lively. At present it is dull enough so far as company is con- 
 cerned. I have just been invited to join a students' party in 
 a sailboat to-morrow, down the river to Mt. Vernon, and am 
 going, but expect it will be mighty slow. It is as unlike college 
 as anything can be. . . . And now having said all I can think 
 of about myself, as usual, I can give you half a page. How goes 
 Greek and Latin and the great profession? Are you settled to 
 
152 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-5? 
 
 it for life, or may you not some day find your way into a greater 
 and better profession? Let me know what you are about. It 
 takes so long for letters to go and come that I shall expect you 
 to answer this posthaste as soon as you receive it, particularly 
 when you consider my state of dreariness off here in the Virginia 
 woods. I saw Sanborn shortly before I left Boston, and had a 
 long walk with him one Sunday afternoon. He was still hopeful 
 about election. I wonder how he feels now. He said that if 
 Buchanan was elected he went in dead for a dissolution of the 
 Union. Did you see the account of the riot in Baltimore on 
 election day? I came tlirough there on that day, and the whole 
 city was in an uproar. I stayed there about an hour, and was ear- 
 nestly importuned to vote, in spite of non-residence and everything 
 ■else, many times. I shan't go near Mr. James Buchanan's in- 
 -luguration, although it is so near. 
 
 A few words about the political situation in these years 
 1856-1869 may throw light upon the allusions in the letters 
 which will follow. In 1856 the Republican party had held 
 its first National Convention, when John C. Fremont had 
 been its nominee for the presidency. Phillips Brooks was 
 not yet old enough to vote, but he understood the issues, and 
 was a strong partisan supporter of Fremont. Buchanan, 
 the candidate of the Democratic party, was elected mainly by 
 the Southern States, the only Northern States voting for 
 him being Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. 
 It was therefore upon the South that the new administration 
 dej)ended. In its first year, 1857, the famous Dred Scott 
 decision had been made by the Supreme Court, to the effect 
 that a negro, according to the Constitution of the United 
 States, was not a citizen, but was property which might be 
 carried as such to any part of the territories subject to Con- 
 gress. This decision had created consternation in the North, 
 for it made void the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had 
 allowed Missouri to come into the Union as a slave State, but 
 had made the line of the southern border of Missouri the 
 limit, north of which slavery should be prohibited. South of 
 that line slavery was to be allowed to extend as each new State 
 might determine. In 1857-1858 the excitement ran high 
 over the case of Kansas, whether it should become a free or 
 a slave State. Each side poured its colonists into the Terri- 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 153 
 
 tory preliminary to the final vote which should determine its 
 fate. In 1858 the free state constitution had been adopted 
 by a large majority, constituting a great victory for Northern 
 sentiment. John Brown of Kansas had taken part in this 
 attempt to prevent the introduction of slavery, and carried 
 out of himself by the fervor of his hatred for slavery, he had 
 gone to Virginia with the object of creating an insurrection 
 in order to the liberation of the slaves. On October 17, 
 1859, he seized the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry. 
 His purpose was defeated; he was arrested, and after a short 
 trial condemned. His execution on the gallows took place 
 December 2, 1859, where he died with great dignity. These 
 years saw events rapidly moving towards civil war. Lincoln 
 was beginning to be known; he had engaged in debate with 
 Douglas, who represented some attempt at compromise of the 
 issues of freedom and slavery, while Lincoln committed him- 
 self to the cause of freedom. In 1857 a severe financial 
 depression began which caused great suffering. The Con- 
 gress which Phillips Brooks looked in upon at Washington 
 was engaged in lowering the tariff as a means to financial 
 prosperity. 
 
 These events as they happened were prominent in his mind 
 during the time that he was studying theology in Virginia. 
 What was going on in the country at large was reproduced 
 on a smaller scale among the students in the seminary at 
 Alexandria, who were about equally divided in sentiment 
 regarding the questions of the day. 
 
 During the first year of his residence at the seminary, 
 judging from his letters, he was restless and discontented and 
 chiefly anxious to get away. It was the familiar malady of 
 homesickness. The change was too great for him from the 
 home and centre of the Puritans to a country which held in 
 no respect the Puritan traditions, where manners and cus- 
 toms were strange and repugnant. He felt keenly the differ- 
 ence also between the standards of Harvard College and the 
 instruction offered by a small school poorly endowed, where 
 he was also without books or periodical literature to enable 
 him to feel in contact with the larger world. We may listen 
 
154 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 to him now as he speaks confidentially his mind, in language 
 often too strong, a defect surely calling for allowance under 
 the circumstances. The letters tell us much, but are far 
 from revealing the full situation, as will be seen before he 
 closed his course of study. If he seems to speak too severely 
 of the Alexandria seminary, yet he afterwards took it to his 
 heart, as having furnished him with the most important 
 experience of his life. If he makes fun of it, that was his 
 way of admiring, also, for he applied the same rule all his 
 life to whatever he came in contact with. And again, he 
 was laid up twice with illness : once soon after he reached 
 Virginia, by a lame foot, and then by trouble with his eyes, 
 which for some weeks prevented his using them. All these 
 things combined made the family at home anxious, and led 
 his mother to propose a visit to Washington in order to see 
 the real situation. With this introduction we return to the 
 letters : — 
 
 Tuesday eTening-. 
 My dear Father, — I have this evening been blessed with 
 a score of lettei-s, receiving them at once, — one which ought to 
 have got here last night, containing fifteen dollars, whose recei^Jt 
 I hereby acknowledge and thank you for very mucli. I have not 
 tokl you more about things because I can't. It 's the most shift- 
 less, slipshod place I ever saw. The only stated expense is $100 
 per annum for board in commons. We all dine together in a 
 large low room down cellar. It seems cheap, but I assure you 
 it 's quite as much as it 's worth. Besides that we have expenses 
 for fuel, some articles of furniture, lights, washing, and sundries. 
 I have as yet got half a cord of wood for .$3.00. I think I shall 
 have to get a new stove, and if I do shall burn coal. It 's 
 cheaper. Foi- washing I pay .$2.00 a month. I have not yet 
 bought a lamj). but burn candles at present. Have bought no fur- 
 niture excepting a pair of curtains for .f 1.00. The instruction here 
 is very poor. . . . All that we get in the lecture and recitation 
 rooms I consider worth just nothing. . . . My last letters have 
 been so long that I am really getting a little short for matter. 
 Ask William if he considers my ten pages answered by his brief 
 though excellent epistle of last week. I went to church four 
 times on Sunday, besides twice to ju'ayers. Was n't that pretty 
 well? . . . Tell Mother I would send her a lock of my hair 
 with pleasure, but the fact is I got it cut last Saturday in Wash- 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 155 
 
 ington, and besides that I can't spare any. I can't find a look 
 long enough to cut. . . . 
 
 From your Phillips. 
 
 P. S. Tell Mother not to feel too bad that this isn't ad- 
 dressed to her. When she sends me fifteen dollars I '11 write her 
 a stunning letter. 
 
 Monday evening, November 25, 1856. 
 Dear Bill, — I must really beg your pardon for having neg- 
 lected for so long to answer your letter, but I rather thought 
 you 'd write again, and I thought I 'd lump them and answer them 
 together, but I think now that I won't wait any longer, but write 
 you a few lines to-night, just to let you know I haven't forgotten 
 you. You seemed quite in the dumps when you wrote. Have you 
 got over them ? I wish you could get into my comfortable posi- 
 tion for a few minutes and then see how you would feel. If that 
 didn't teach you to be contented with your lot nothing would. 
 When are you coming on here, — at Christmas time, or do you 
 wait till inauguration? Why can't you come at Christmas, and 
 we can have great times. I wrote to Mother this morning. Tell 
 her not to worry about my sickness, for though not very cheeiful 
 work there 's nothing dangerous about it, and I am a good deal 
 better to-night. I hope you '11 have a jolly Thanksgiving Day. 
 I spent mine in Washington, and this sickness is to pay for it. 
 ... I thank you very much for the Tennyson which came in my 
 box. If you didn't read the copy you sent me you 'd better get 
 another and read it right away. I am ashamed to stop here, but 
 my position is painful, all cramped up here, and it is so hard to 
 write with my foot up in another chair that I must really break 
 ofi to-night. 
 
 Tuesday morning. 
 I will add a few lines this morning to the shabby letter that 
 I wrote last night. I feel a good deal better to-day, and if it 
 wasn't rainy, I might possibly get about a little. I tell you it 
 takes down a man's spirit to be cooped up in this desolate sort of 
 a way. ... Of course you won't expect any news from this out- 
 of-the-way hill; at any rate I've none to give. I do nothing 
 all day but study, and see no one from morning to night. I am 
 
 rejoiced to hear in Mother's letters that Mrs. is coming to 
 
 stay at Dr. May's this winter. I .shall be glad to see anybody 
 that I ever saw before. I don't think I have spoken to a lady 
 since I left the Old Colony depot in Boston, and liardly expect to 
 before I get back there again. Will you kindly lay all the defi- 
 
156 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 ciencies of my letter to the circumstances of my situation, and as 
 soon as I am well I will try to do a little more creditably. In 
 the meanwhile let me hear from you, and believe me 
 Your affectionate brother, 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 Tell Mother that the doctor has just been here and says that 
 all is going right. I shall be out to-morrow or next day. P. B. 
 
 Tuesday evening, November 26, 1856. 
 
 Dear Top, — I need hardly say that the piece of news of 
 which I was made the confidant in your last letter took me almost 
 completely by surprise. I did not expect it. None of those swift- 
 footed rumors which will always get the start of facts in such 
 matters had breathed a whisper of it in this far-off place. The 
 truth stood before me in a flash with all its startling suddenness. 
 Top Sawyer was engaged ! If it had come from any other source 
 I would n't have believed it, but I see no corner now for a doubt 
 to crouch in, and I must yield to conviction that it must be true. 
 But really it is something more than a mere duty matter to offer 
 you my most sincere congratulations on this event. I do indeed 
 rejoice in your prospects of a happy life, and most earnestly wish 
 you joy in all the circumstances of your new connection. These 
 are not mere form words. I do honestly congratulate you, and 
 thank you for your confidence in trusting your secret to me. In 
 general I am not good at secret-keeping, but yours shall be most 
 religiously preserved till you give me leave to divulge. From 
 present appearances it will be some time before I have a chance 
 to reciprocate your confidence, but when the time comes you may 
 depend on my doing so. I welcome you most heartily into the 
 family. My genealogical knowledge is not sufficient to trace the 
 connection of Miss Gorham's to our race. I have written inquiries 
 home, and you shall have the result. My maternal grandmother, 
 who died in May last in North Andover, Mass., was a daughter 
 of Honorable Nathaniel Gorham of Charlestown, and that must 
 be where the cousinship comes in. Will you present my respects 
 to Miss Gorham as a relation ? 
 
 I am laid up at present, and have been for the last week, with 
 a lame foot, which makes things pretty cheerless in this strange 
 place. I hope to be out now by day after to-morrow. I am work- 
 ing on pretty well in the Hebrew. We begin with Conant's edi- 
 tion of Gesenius's Grammar, and soon begin to read in Genesis. 
 . . . The immense plans of labor and study which I find laid out 
 in your letters are rather startling to one who has not yet wholly 
 laid aside the habits of a not very active college course. 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 157 
 
 The impudence with which a man of your penmanship finds 
 fault with anybody else's writing is merely contemptible. I hope 
 I said nothing in my last to make you think that I dislike my 
 station here. I do like the place, the studies, and the profession 
 very much, and better every day. Our friends who were to have 
 sailed in the Lyonnais had a narrow escape. Did Sanborn write 
 you anything about my coming here ? If so will you tell me 
 what ? I have my reason for wanting to know ; that is, if there 's 
 no harm in your telling me. . . . Write soon, and you shall have 
 a speedy answer from Your friend, 
 
 Phillips Bkooks. 
 
 November 28, 1856. 
 Dear William, — ... Last Friday evening Professor 
 
 gave a party to our class, and I went as a sort of duty matter 
 because he called at my room while I was laid up. There were 
 twelve students and three ladies, the latter being apparently rather 
 a scarce article in these parts. We stayed from 7.30 till twelve, 
 and altogether it was not remarkably pleasant. 
 
 I have not got an armchair yet. I bought one and paid for it 
 in Alexandria, but could not get a man to bring it out for two 
 days, and so the storekeeper in true Virginia style sold it over 
 again, and then seemed to think it a particular favor when he con- 
 sented to refund the money. I am getting a new stove, which 
 will be a saving in the end, for the little trap I found here burns 
 an enormous quantity of wood with very little heat. ... I am 
 very sorry to hear from Mother that you think you cannot come 
 on at Christmas. I wish you could, and hope still you can, for 
 I think there would be much about here that you would enjoy 
 seeing. . . . 
 
 There had been suspicions rife at Alexandria and in the 
 seminary of a threatened insurrection among the negroes, 
 which had led to some manifestations of ill feeling on the 
 part of the Southern students against those who came from 
 the North. The latter had probably been active in teaching 
 the negroes to read and write, or had held religious services 
 for them. 
 
 Thursday evening, December 18, 1856. 
 Dear Father, — • . . . The affair of which I spoke in that 
 letter, although it seems pretty certain that it was all a ground- 
 less panic, is having a bad effect. It has excited much jealousy 
 among the Southern students and the town people against the 
 
158 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 Northerners. One Northern student, who has held a meeting 
 once a week for the servants of the seminary and the neiglibors, 
 has received notice that it nmst be given up, or he will have to 
 suffer. . . . Another, who has preached some in the neighborhood, 
 has been informed that there was tar and feathers ready for him 
 if he went far from the seminary. And in general they have 
 been given to understand that their tongues were tied and they 
 were anything but free. A pretty style of life, isn't it? . . . 
 Most truly and affectionately, 
 
 Phill. 
 
 Tbe late Kev. E. C. Matlack, who was at this time a 
 member of the seminary, writes of this affair : — 
 
 The "dear old seminary " was not a very comfortable place 
 then for anti-slavery men, such as a few of us were, especially 
 if we exercised and claimed the right of free speech. When one 
 of our fellow students was notified that he would be "tarred and 
 feathered " if he did not leave, Phillips stood nobly by him, and 
 declared that the men of the North must all leave together and 
 publicly declare their reasons for withdrawing, unless they were 
 assured of protection and the liberty of free speech. A petition 
 was sent to the faculty, and what we asked was granted ; and even 
 public discussions were allowed in "Prayer Hall." Slavery was 
 thoroughly reviewed in its political, moral, and religious aspects, 
 and leading Southern men frankly acknowledged that they had 
 known but little of the animus of the institution [slavery] until 
 they heard these discussions ; their views and feelings were greatly 
 modified. 
 
 The Christmas holidays were spent in Virginia, but were 
 enlivened by a visit from his mother and his brother Wil- 
 liam. Just before they were to start, however, he tele- 
 graphed them not to come, and in a letter following the tele- 
 gram he explained what he fears they may have regarded as 
 a strange proceeding on his part. The letter shows one 
 striking personal peculiarity, his great susceptibility at this 
 time to the influence of the weather. Nor does he seem to 
 have outgrown it until several years later. Most of his let- 
 ters contain allusions to the weather; there may have been 
 something conventional in these, or inherited, for his father 
 always notes the weather in his journal. But there was 
 something more, — a very sensitive constitution responding 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 159 
 
 to every change in atmospheric conditions, made miserable, 
 even, and incajDable of work by a hopelessly rainy day. The 
 next letter shows an abnormal sensitiveness to the cold for a 
 boy who had lived in Boston : — 
 
 Monday evening, December 23, 1856. 
 
 Dear Fateler, — I am afraid a telegraphic dispatch which I 
 sent you early this morning, advising Mother and William not to 
 come, reached you too late to accomplish its purpose. 
 
 I will explain the reasons of what may seem to you a strange 
 proceeding. In tlie first place we are having a spell of the cold- 
 est and most disagreeable weather imaginable. The river is frozen 
 tight, and all communication between Alexandria and Washington 
 is cut o£E by a very uncertain line of omnibuses which run only 
 once or twice a day. The roads are rough and stiff with ice, 
 so altogether you see it is not a time to think of coming here. 
 Again, Congress adjourns on Wednesday till after the New Year, 
 and as I suppose William's principal object was to be present at 
 their sittings I did not wish him to be disappointed. I am in 
 hopes he may have seen it in the papers, and so of himself deter- 
 mined not to come. And then the state of the river precludes 
 all chance of a visit to Mt. Vernon, which I sujspose was another 
 of his principal inducements. The cold did not set in till yester- 
 day, or I should have sent before. I hope they got the message, 
 and will not think it wrong or strange that I sent. I have not 
 engaged their rooms, but shall be on hand at the cars to-morrow 
 night, if it is possible to get to Washington. If they do not 
 come, then I shall stay one night at W., so as to be on hand 
 Wednesday morning. Willard's and the National are the same 
 price, and the former is slightly the better house. Mr. Wise, 
 whom I asked about it, thinks he may get me some rooms, and 
 will try to-morrow. You see, I consider it an equal chance that 
 they do or do not come, and make arrangements for both chances, 
 though /or their sake I must say I hope they won't. I think I 
 may have something from you at the telegra^jh office to-morrow 
 morning. To-night is colder than ever. I think my last must 
 have quieted any fears you had about insurrections, etc. There 
 is now no danger at all, and it seems pretty sure that there has 
 been none, though at one time it looked very much like it. I 
 feel very anxious to know whether Motlier and William are com- 
 ing or not, and shall use every human effort to be at the cars to 
 see. I am just going to make a call at Dr. May's. 
 
i6o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 Eleven p. M. 
 Mr. Wise has been here ever since seven o'clock, so I have 
 not been able to make my call. A snowstorm has come up and 
 the ground is white with snow. Yours, P. B. 
 
 The most memorable circumstance connected with the visit 
 of his mother, which she undertook despite his warning, was 
 that he made his first communion on Christmas Day, kneel- 
 ing by his mother's side at St. John's Church in Washing- 
 ton. He had not been confirmed, but from this time it must 
 be inferred that he was "ready and waiting." 
 
 Tuesday morning-, January 27, 1857. 
 Dear Father, — Your letter of the 22d reached me in good 
 season last night, and I write now to acknowledge and thank you 
 for the $20 which it enclosed. It is quite sufficient for all my 
 immediate wants. I have just had a chance, as one of the stu- 
 dents is leaving the seminary, to buy a few of his things at some- 
 thing of a bargain, and so I thought it best to get them, although 
 it will leave me immediately not quite so well in pocket as I 
 should otherwise have been. I have got and paid for a stove 
 and wood for the rest of the winter, a lamp and armchair, etc., so 
 that I am now rather more comfortable. It has been stinging 
 cold here. Thermometer as low as four degrees below zero and 
 the snow piled in drifts about the building. It seems to have been 
 a tremendous storm all over the country. . . . Did you ever eat 
 tomato pies ? They alternate with boiled rice, which is troubled 
 with water on the brain, as our daily dessert. We have a good 
 many novelties in diet. Last night a new dish made its appear- 
 ance which looked like a flapjack that had tried to be a loaf of 
 brown bread and failed in the attempt. Personal investigation 
 was useless, and we had to apply to the menial, who answered our 
 question with, "Them, sir! Yaw, sir, them's flickers," and so 
 they are still called, an awful mystery shrouding their nature and 
 genealogy. . . . 
 
 He was now taking stejjs to become a candidate for or- 
 ders, which seems to have been urged as a matter of impor- 
 tance by Dr. Vinton. There is apparently some reluctance 
 still to take the decisive action committing him to the 
 ministry as a profession. At least he sees no reason for 
 immediate action. 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 161 
 
 February 2, 1857. 
 
 Deak Fathee, — Yours of the 26th just received, and as you 
 desire I shall mail this to-morrow, enclosing, if I can get it, the 
 necessary certificate from Dr. Sparrow. I suppose you under- 
 stood me to say, what at any rate I meant to say, in my former 
 letter, that if it is not necessary that my name should be pre- 
 sented now, and if it will occasion no delay to postpone it, 1 
 should Tnuch prefer that it should be put ofE for a time. I should 
 think that Dr. Vinton would really be able to tell. However, I 
 leave the whole matter to you and him. I suppose you will have 
 no difficulty in getting the certificate of my graduation from Dr. 
 Walker, and shall be much obliged to you for taking the trouble. 
 I don't understand your constant slurs which I receive from all 
 quarters upon the quality of my writing paper. It is the very 
 best I can get, and costs well. . . . The weather here is still 
 cold and the travelling execrable. I have had to go to Alexan- 
 dria to-day and had hard work to get back again, through ditches, 
 puddles, and snow banks. 
 
 Inauguration time is getting pretty near now, and nothing would 
 give me greater pleasure than to have you come on and see the 
 Capitol steps desecrated. I wish you would come, for I think 
 you would enjoy it, and find a great deal to see. If this sort of 
 weather lasts, however, there is no great inducement for any one 
 to come from the North to the South, for in all my Northern 
 experience I never saw so much disagreeable winter weather as I 
 have seen the last three weeks. Everything is wholly unprepared 
 for it, poor houses, mean wood, wretched stoves, etc. I had to 
 give up all idea of getting my room warm, till I found a new 
 stove, which answers capitally, but has left me a little short in 
 pocket. I am in hopes now soon to have a chance to engage a 
 room in the new hall, though we shall see nothing of the furni- 
 ture till the river opens in the spring. Love to all. 
 From your affectionate son, 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Thursday noon. 
 Dr. Sparrow has been sick, and I have only just now been able 
 to get the certificate. I enclose it in a hurry in this letter. 
 We have just had our first recitation to him. 
 
 February 8, 1857. 
 Dear Top, — ... I have just been told that there 's a man 
 in Exeter who sells books at miraculously low prices. I "heard 
 tell " that he asked only 37^ cents per volume for Little & 
 
1 62 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 Brown's English Poets. How is this? When is your independ- 
 ent school going to start, and where ? If a reference to " a well- 
 known and distinguished clergyman " will help your prospects, 
 my name is at your service. If the customary allowance is made 
 for ministers' sons you may count on the proper number of little 
 Brookses in years hence. What a winter we have had! Rain, 
 hail, and snow, snow, hail, and rain ever since Christmas. The 
 sunny South is all a humbug. I like my situation here quite 
 well — work pretty hard, read considerably, and live really quite 
 a pleasant life. ... I am egregiously unpopular, but try to bear 
 it with proper meekness. I have been reading Herodotus, partly 
 for the Greek and partly for the story. I have been much inter- 
 ested in liim. Dalton writes by fits and starts ; from all other 
 college communication I am cut off. Dalton writes me on Chan- 
 ning's authority that is certainly engaged. 
 
 Eheu fugaces, Postume, 
 Postume, labuntnr anni. 
 
 I read "Aurora Leigh " as soon as it was out, and need not say I 
 was enthusiastic, as I have been over almost everything that Mrs. 
 Browning ever wrote. It is a great book, the book of the year 
 beyond all question, so far as poetry or light literature, if it be 
 liaht. ffoes. 
 
 Your stories of plays at the Pudding come to me like memories 
 of good dinners that I ate and digested long ago. I shall hope 
 to see something of the kind next summer when I am on, till then 
 Hebrew and moral philosophy must be my diet. Hebrew is a 
 tough old tongue, as independent as these thirteen United States, 
 so tliat no little previous knowledge of any other language helps 
 one out at all in his dealings with it. Inauguration is now close 
 at hand. Will you come and see the old wretch crowned? I 
 can put a bed, and knife and fork, at your service, and bid you 
 welcome. . . . Your friend, 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 As tliG months went by he does not seem to have become 
 more reconciled to his situation. Pie now intimates a desire 
 to leave the seminary at Alexandria, and try his fortunes else- 
 where in the two years that remain of his jireparation for 
 the ministry. He also admits that if he were not twenty-one 
 he should call himself homesick. 
 
MT. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 163 
 
 Theological Seminary, Monday, March 16, 1857. 
 Deab Father, — ■ I have been meaning to write to you for a 
 good while, but have kept putting it off for one reason or another. 
 I want in the first place to thank you for the last money that you 
 sent me, whose receipt I have already indirectly acknowledged 
 through a letter to George. This is such an out-of-the-way place, 
 where one has to buy all the books he wants, very different from 
 Boston or any city where you can get at libraries or borrow 
 books. The library here is really worth just nothing at all. It 
 is pretty much like all the rest of the seminary, which seems 
 poorer and poorer to me every day. I really begin to have serious 
 doubts whether it will be worth while for me to come back here 
 for two more years, whether it won't be better to study at home, 
 if this is really the best seminary in the country. . . . Dr. 
 Sparrow is so out of health that we seldom see him, and when we 
 do he is too unwell to exert himself at all. However, there are 
 three or four months still left of this year, and it will be time 
 enough next summer to think whether to come back here or not. 
 We are having all kinds of weather just now, three snowstorms 
 within the last week, but the snow melts right away, only leaving 
 its traces in the very muddy roads. I wrote William a very 
 long letter the other day, whose length I was rather ashamed of 
 after it was sent, but I thought as he had scolded so about the 
 meagreness of my last one it was just good enough for him to 
 get too much of this. The recitation bell will ring in a few 
 moments, so I must break off here, remaining affectionately 
 
 Your son, Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Monday evening, April 6, 1857. 
 Dear William, — Yours is just received, and now that I have 
 two good long ones of yours on hand I don't know that I can do 
 better than to give a piece of this evening to answering them, 
 particularly as I feel a little blue; if I wasn't twenty-one years 
 old I believe I should say homesick, to-night. It is a bleak, 
 chilly, windy night ; we have been seeing snow again this after- 
 noon with hail and sleet. I was in hopes that we were done 
 with that sort of thing for this winter, but this Virginia is a 
 wretched place. Have you seen how the Virginia papers are 
 owning up to its decay and deadness, and trying to patch up all 
 kinds of excuses and remedies for it ? What a gay life you seem 
 
 to be living. How came you to be invited to ? Wasn't I 
 
 invited? How was the spread? I was very glad to see George's 
 letter. Just to dream of forty-two barrels of maple sap in a week ! 
 How it goes to the heart ! Why, I have my doubts whether the 
 
1 64 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 whole annual produce of Fairfax County, Virginia, could fill any- 
 thing like that number of barrels, including all branches of agri- 
 culture from turnips down to darkies. I wrote to him last week, 
 and hope to get an answer with something of the Green Mountain 
 smell about it before long. So you are still doing the gentleman. 
 It rather drags, doesn't it? You know I tried it for some 
 six months about a year ago. I am glad you are improving the 
 time by getting over your supercilious contempt for some of the 
 great writers of the time. I refer of course to your successful 
 attack upon Thackeray's "Shabby Genteel Story," which I believe 
 everybody allows to be one of the poorest of his books. How- 
 ever, if you prefer to begin at that end, why, I have no objec- 
 tion, and hope that you will become reconciled to the "New- 
 comes " and "Vanity Fair" in time. I have n't been yet to 
 any of our new President's levees, but mean to. Think some of 
 going this week if he has one. In fact, I have hardly been in 
 Washington since the inauguration. I am waxing rather lazy, 
 that is for me, and get off of the hill very little. Alexandria is 
 still there I believe, and bids fair to "dry rot at ease " till the 
 next earthquake. I had no intention of raising so much comment 
 about my forthcoming lecture. It is a very little affair, and if 
 delivered at all will probably draw an audience of somewhere be- 
 tween twenty-four and twenty-five uninstructed Virginia farmers, 
 but it is very doubtful now, several of its predecessors having 
 been delayed, whether it will come off at all, as this term will 
 probably be up before my turn arrives. My subject is still fluc- 
 tuating between the immortal George and the everlasting Ben, to 
 which have been lately added as candidates for the treatment 
 of my oratory the notorious Captain J. Smith and the obscure 
 N. Bonaparte of Paris, France. Any further counsel from you 
 will be most acceptable in the premises. I have n't read Irving's 
 " Washington " yet, as miscellaneous literature is not the most 
 abundant thing in the world here in the seminary. No one having 
 yet offered to lend or give it to me I must defer its perusal till 
 next summer. Speaking of literature, we have been lately try- 
 ing to get up a reading-room here, but it rather drags. We have 
 succeeded, however, in getting some forty dollars subscribed, but 
 men don't care much about it, and wouldn't miss it if they never 
 saw a review or newspaper all the year. Still we have got a-going, 
 have the English reviews, "Blackwood," "Putnam," "House- 
 hold Words," etc., and a number of radical Southern newspapers. 
 To counteract this all your Boston papers which you send me are 
 regidarly filed and hung up consi)iouously in the face of the fire- 
 eating brethren. So you must consider each two cents expended 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 165 
 
 as a direct attack upon the "peculiar institution " in its own 
 stronghold, and act accordingly. The future of our country hangs 
 upon your action (p'r'aps). In this connection I would state that 
 I have received, and am, I hope, duly grateful for, your "Even- 
 ing Gazette," which came some time since, as also for a "Tran- 
 script," received last night. This being their hnal destiny, how- 
 ever, it is perhaps as well not to mark the passages referring to 
 the notorious Decline and Fall of the Old Dominion in ink ; pencil 
 will do. To our Southern, and particularly our Virginia friends, 
 it may seem a trifle too much like "twitting upon facts." Chase 
 sent me an "Advertiser " some time ago with a capital article upon 
 "Our Retiring President," using poor Frank up deliciously. Did 
 you see it ? I regretted being obliged to return it with nothing 
 better than the Catalogue of the Theological Seminary of Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 Your synijjathetic condolences on the fast-depreciating condi- 
 tion of my wardrobe are most gratefully acknowledged. I assure 
 you that all the supports which I can draw from moral sources, 
 from philosophy or ethics, promise to be necessary to sustain me 
 under my present and impending shabbiness. Not the least evil 
 is a growing indifference to personal appearance, which I have 
 been obliged to guard against by withdrawing from circulation 
 some of the most desperate articles, and bestowing them ujion 
 greasy and grateful children of Africa, who are here the common 
 recipients of everything, from kicks to coats, that white people 
 won't put up with. . . . From your brother, 
 
 Phill. 
 
 Theologicai, Semtnakt, Friday evening, May 8, 1857. 
 
 Dear Father, — I really cannot help feeling every day, as I 
 told you a good while ago, that this seminary is not what it 
 ought to be or what I want. The whole style of instruction and 
 scholarship is so very different in thoroughness and accuracy of 
 detail from what I have been used to in other subjects that I 
 can't but feel it disagreeably every day. . . . 
 
 Now in these circumstances I can't look forward very cheer- 
 fully to two more years here. I must feel every day that I 
 might do more and better than I am doing; that eitlier study in 
 Boston or at some other seminary would be far preferable. New 
 York, from what I can learn, is not far in advance of this. I 
 am thinking strongly of Andover. It is the most full of life, 
 and is in reality the place from which almost all the theology of 
 this seminary comes at second-hand. Please let me know what 
 you think of it, for I must confess I am strongly drawn to it. 
 
1 66 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 Of course you will do what you please about showing tliis. I am 
 urged very strongly to go down next week to the Viiginia conven- 
 tion at Petersburg, and if my funds will allow, may perhaps do 
 it. I am told it is just the place to see Virginia and Vii'ginia 
 society under the best advantages. Much love to all. 
 
 Your affectionate son, Phillips. 
 
 The theological seminary at Andover was then famous 
 among the schools for the ijrojjhets. Professor Edwards A. 
 Park was the elocjueut teacher of theology ; the late Dr. G. T. 
 Shedd, a man of deep and wide culture, and a j'rofound 
 thinker, held the chair of Church History; and the late Dr. 
 Austin Phelps , charmed the students with his stimulating lec- 
 tures on sacred rhetoric and pastoral care. When such 
 tilings could be had, Phillips Brooks was restless to be with- 
 out them. An appeal was made to Andover, but instead of a 
 courteous welcome there came for weeks nothing but silence. 
 There is an allusion to the work which he is driven to do for 
 himself in order to keep up his habits as a student. What 
 this work was, how important and how thorough, will be 
 shown. At present we follow him in his complaints: — 
 
 Monday, June 1, 1857. 
 Dear Father, — I will try to write some this morning, 
 though it is getting on to recitation and I haven't much time. 
 AVe have now got to work again after a week's vacation while 
 some of the men were gone to Petersburg to convention. I did 
 iiot go, but spent the week very quietly and pleasantly here. I 
 received some time ago your letter telling me what Dr. Vinton 
 said about leaving here. I have not decided anything more yet. 
 Have pretty nearly given it up. One of my friends here (I 
 haven't got but two) wrote to Andover, as he was thinking some- 
 what of going there, to make inquiries, about six weeks ago, and 
 
 in a very gentlemanly way has never answered his letter. 
 
 If I could see my way clearly to use the third year profitably, I 
 think I should come back here and crowd the next two years into 
 one, which could be done without the least difficulty by a little 
 study. As for this year, if it had not been for somethino- done 
 outside our regular course, I should not have known what^study 
 was. I shall pack my books and other things in boxes and leave 
 them here, so that they can be sent to me in case T should deter- 
 mine not to return myself. I am sorry to say that they have 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 167 
 
 lengthened the term here to the 10th or thereabouts of July. 
 But I do not think I shall stay to see it through. I shall he 
 very glad to get rid of the public examination, for I have had 
 about enough of that sort of thing heretofore. I think now that 
 I shall start about the 1st of July, and probably see Boston by 
 Saturday, the evening of the Fourth. But it 's a good way ahead 
 yet. We have not yet had any weather warm enough to trouble 
 us seriously, but I suppose we must expect such very soon now. 
 The country is looking gloriously, and it being the first spring that 
 I ever really spent in the country 1 have enjoyed it very much. 
 There are rumors of strawberries around, but I have not yet so 
 much as laid my eyes on any of them. With much love to all, 
 From your affectionate son, P. B. 
 
 Friday, June 5, 1857. 
 
 Dear Father, — ■ I received your letter the other day just 
 after I had sent off one to you. Of course I was half in fun 
 about what I said in Arthur's letter about not going to Petersburg 
 because I was poor. I merely meant that I thought the money 
 would be better spent in books, etc. 
 
 There is nothing of strict importance to communicate since 
 Monday. They have been having a pretty little riot in Wash- 
 ington, but we have heard nothing of it over here. A stormy 
 day to-day, and fires, — I hope the last of the season. 
 
 As to your other inquiry about how much more money I should 
 need, — I have got in all bills great and small, and as near as I can 
 tell it will be (including the $70 for board) about $110. This 
 leaves a liberal allowance for travelling expenses, and if I go 
 straight through, and nothing happens, I may bring some of it 
 home again. . . . When you send, I suppose a draft on Alexan- 
 dria would be the safest way. I still expect to start from here 
 the first week in July. 
 
 Excuse the hastiness of this note. The dinner bell has rung 
 and the potatoes are limited. Love to all. 
 
 Your affectionate son, P. B. 
 
 Friday eTening, June 19, 1857. 
 Dear Father, — I received yours of the 18th enclosing the 
 check for $112, which I acknowledge and thank you for by the 
 earliest opportunity. This makes, I believe, $285 received in 
 various ways from you since I left Boston. Unless some unex- 
 pected emergency arises I shall need no more till I am in Bos- 
 ton again. When that will be remains quite doubtful. Prob- 
 ably not quite so soon as I thought at first. I shall certainly 
 
i68 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 sjjend three weeks from to-day with you, but probably not two 
 weeks, though I should like to, as it is the first Sunday in the 
 month. I shall come right through when I start, making it as 
 near twenty-four hours from Washington to Boston as possible. 
 
 We are having some pretty warm weather, though not a great 
 deal of it. There is almost always a thunderstorm towards 
 night, by the help of which and not a great deal of exertion we 
 manage to keep tolerably comfortable. I have not been off the 
 hill for the last six weeks, but shall get down to the little old city 
 to-morrow after my money. Tell Mother I allow the whole force 
 of her wardrobe argument against arriving in Chauncy Street 
 on Saturday night, but probably can't get home early enough in 
 the week, without spending Sunday on the road, to make much 
 difference. . . . 
 
 Dr. at length answered my friend Dr. Eichards's letter 
 
 the other day in a very short, and very stuffy, and to my ideas 
 very ungentlemanly note. He didn't encourage our going to 
 Andover at all, said we should be obliged to attend the college 
 chapel, etc. Bishop Potter's son wrote a letter here the other day 
 about a new seminary that his father is going to start in the fall 
 in Philadelphia. I think from all I can hear that it is going to 
 be much better than this. It can't be worse. ... It will of 
 course be somewhat more expensive living in a large city, but I 
 have an idea that by some kind of teaching that might be made 
 up, — private pupils or something of that sort. If I find that 
 I can learn anything about it in Philadelphia I may stop there 
 some little time as I go on. When I spoke of putting these two 
 years here into one, I had no idea of studying less than three 
 years. My idea was that the last year might be spent to better 
 advantage somewhere else than in doing here what might have 
 been all done the year before. 
 
 Your affectionate son, P. B. 
 
 June 28, 1857. 
 Dear Top, — ... I believe that I iTiust own that you did 
 " write last " as I see stated in the Catalogue of your seminary 
 which I received the other day, and for which please accept my 
 thanks. I had some little hesitation in recognizing in the "Pro- 
 fessor of Ancient Languages " my former modest and unassuming 
 classmate, but the pencil marks against the name convinced me, 
 and I was obliged to acknowledge his title, merely wondering 
 whether he had been born to his new greatness, or achieved it, or 
 perhaps had it thrust upon him. I am still studying theology, — 
 that is to say, I am still in the theological school, and have been 
 
/ET. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 169 
 
 studying, but at present I can do nothing but sit and look at the 
 backs of the books on my shelves and try in that way to imbibe 
 whatever theology the heat may cause to soak through their 
 extremely stupid-looking bindings. 
 
 It is most melancholy hot here. My impression is that the 
 State of Virginia is rather thin-skinned, and the central fire that 
 keeps up an incessant bubbling and boiling under our feet comes 
 some hundreds of miles nearer here than anywhere else. . . . 
 I am in doubt whether I shall come back here next year, but 
 rather think that I shall conclude to. Of course you will keep 
 on at Exeter. 
 
 I expect to leave here for Massachusetts in about ten days. 
 When does your vacation come ? Of course you will be at Com- 
 mencement. I suppose we shall see a good many of the dear old 
 faces there. If you are in Boston any time after the 10th of 
 July I shall be at home (41 Chauncy). ... I have been trying 
 to see if there was any particular point in your last letter that 
 required especial answer, but it is such egregiously bad writing 
 that I find it next to impossible to decipher. All I can discover 
 is some satirical allusion to " Calvinists " and " Churchmen " in 
 connection with Sylvester Judd. The last charge I am willing 
 and ready to stand, with all the consequences and deductions that 
 you can logically deduce from it, but the first, the Calvinist part, 
 I emphatically reject as not only not implied in the second, but 
 entirely inconsistent with it. 
 
 What are you up to this summer? I expect a quiet three 
 months in or near Boston, reading a little theology and a good 
 deal of other things. I beard from Dalton not very long ago. 
 He is fast ripening into a genuine Medical. I have some little 
 hopes of seeing the mountains in August. 
 
 And so, dear Top, till I see your face again I am as ever, 
 
 Your friend and classmate, P. 
 
 These letters of Phillips Brooks show the difficulty he en- 
 countered in being transplanted from one social climate to 
 another. The roots of his life struck deep into the soil, and 
 to remove them from the familiar ground whence they had 
 drawn their nourishment caused serious discomfiture. The 
 depth of his affections, strength, and intensity of the feeling 
 of home, reverence for his own past, the power of Harvard 
 College over his imagination, his exacting intellectual stan- 
 dard, the moral sense which rebelled against human slavery, — • 
 these were so many distinct forces which combined to make 
 
lyo PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 this transition most hard to endure. But by the close of his 
 first year away from home, he had begun to take root in the 
 new soil ; the process of wilting had been survived ; though he 
 did not fully realize it, the sap of a new life was circulating 
 in his veins. He writes, as we have seen, to his friend Saw- 
 yer that the probability is that he will return to the Alexan- 
 dria seminary to complete his preparation for the ministry. 
 He had made friends in his new home, who were a strong 
 counter-attraction to the forces of his college life. Among 
 these were two who may be mentioned here, Richards ■' and 
 Strong,^ who stood by his side to the end, in the intimacy 
 and devotion of a sacred friendship. These friends visited 
 him in Boston in the summer of 1857, where they were wel- 
 comed by his parents and became household names in the 
 family. Mr. Kichards had received a medical diploma, and 
 in his capacity as a physician was peculiarly grateful to the 
 mother, who felt a sense of relief that Philli^^s would be 
 looked after if he were ill. She had an anxious heart, quickly 
 alarmed at the rumor of any insult to the body. 
 
 We have seen how Phillijjs Bt-ooks commented upon the 
 new situation in Virginia. From these and other friends we 
 may learn what Virginia thought of him, what impression he 
 made vipon the students with whom he came in contact in the 
 theological seminary. The Kev. George Augustus Strong 
 writes : — ■ 
 
 My recollections of Phillips Brooks date back to the theo- 
 logical seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where we first met as 
 students in the autumn of 1856, nearly thirty-seven years ago. 
 He came later than the rest of us, two weeks after term-opening, 
 and, as all the good rooms were taken, was forced to make the 
 most of poor chances and the least of his inches in a cramped 
 room in the attic. He received callers in a posture one fancied 
 at first glance must be peculiar to Boston. The absurdity of 
 putting an innocent stranger in a cell he could n't stand up in 
 worked promptly in his favor, and better quarters were soon found 
 for him. . . . 
 
 ' Rev. Charles A. L. Richards, now rector of St. John's Church, Providence. 
 - Rev. Georg-e Augustus Strong-, for some time Professor of English Literature 
 in Kenyon College afterwards rector of Grace Church, New Bedford, Mass. 
 
^T. 20-2I] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 171 
 
 We were classmates, and were together much of the time from 
 start to finish. He never tooli very liindly to Hebrew, but as a 
 classical scholar none matclied him. . . . The Greelt of the New 
 Testament Epistles as he dealt with it "rejoiced like Enoch in 
 being translated. " His rare gifts as a writer told their story in 
 his earliest essays. The style had the grace of the after sermons, 
 a nameless quality that made some of us feel we must retire and 
 begin over again. There was much of the same trouble with tlie 
 thought ; it never seemed like yours or what might come in time 
 to be yours. The only cheering thing about it was that it sur- 
 prised the professors. There was some dull comfort in liearing 
 Dr. Sparrow say, "Mr. Brooks is very remarkable;" and when 
 the time came for wi-iting tentative sermons, the last year of the 
 three, the sense of not being cut out ourselves for his kind of 
 work, precisely, grew almost encouraging. One sometimes won- 
 ders how those "parsonet " sermons would strike one now. They 
 were a kind of revelation to us, tlien, and our judgments were 
 as crude as our styles. We called them thouglitful, earnest, 
 strangely suggestive, and as perfect in structure as if shaped by an 
 art instinct, obeying a hidden law.^ 
 
 The Rev. Charles A. L. Richards writes, in a tribute paid 
 to Phillips Brooks after his death : — 
 
 It was in October, or perhaps November, of the year 185G 
 that I first met Phillips Brooks. The term had already begun 
 at the Alexandria seminary. That first introduction was in the 
 dark passageway of a building which, I believe, is no longer 
 standing, tlie main building of the seminary group. It was a 
 very plain, brick structure, three stories high, with three entries, 
 having a front and rear room on both sides of each. The front 
 rooms looked ofE over two or three miles of broken country, to 
 the Potomac. Ten miles away to the left lay the city of Wash- 
 ington. The front rooms in one entry were occupied at this time 
 by students whose names it may be interesting to mention. 
 Among them was Henry Wise, the son of the fiery cross-roads 
 orator, then Governor of Virginia. After a brief career in Phila- 
 delphia and in Richmond he died of consumption early in the 
 war. Winslow Seaver, after some years in our ministry, went 
 over to the Methodists, hoping for a warmer climate, but upon 
 a prolonged experiment, finding the temperature about the same, 
 and the quality of tlie air inferior, returned whence lie had set 
 out. The Appleton brothers of Philadelpliia, whose external 
 
 1 Remembrances of Phillips Brooks by Two of his Friends. Boston. Printed 
 for the Members of the Clericua Club, 1803. 
 
172 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 resemblance covered much distinctness of character, confronted 
 Lucius Bancroft of Providence, and Cln-ist Church, Brooklyn ; a 
 man from whom the greatest things were expected, so devout was 
 his character and mature his attainments. The name of one other 
 occupant of the rooms escapes me. There was one, however, 
 somewhat more a man of the world than any of us, who presently 
 accepted the charge of the obscurest parish in western Pennsyl- 
 vania, to pass from there to Troy, to Boston, and after a few 
 years more to New York, where he is now favorably known of all 
 men as the Bishop. My brother, George Augustus Strong, and I 
 had opposite back rooms in the third story, and Brooks, coming 
 late, and finding tlie best places taken, was billeted in an attic 
 room above us, where he could not stand at his full height. It 
 was already as great, perhaps, as afterwards, but his frame was 
 spare and did not fill out to its full proportions for some years. 
 
 There were no very recent Harvard men then in the seminary, 
 and Phillips Brooks came to us unheralded. I do not know that 
 there had been much to say of him. He had stood well in his 
 class, but had made no exceptional mark. He had taught school 
 for a few months, not altogether successfully. He made no im- 
 mediate impression on us. He was modest, quiet, reserved, with 
 rather more of the Massachusetts frostiness than he exhibited in 
 later years, after contact with various men. He was in the class 
 of which my brother was a member. It was through my brother 
 that presently I came to know him well. A little later a new 
 hall was built, some distance back of the main building; those 
 who chose drew lots for the occupancy of one of its dozen rooms. 
 Brooks, Thomas Yocum, now of Staten Island, my brother, and 
 I were among the fortunate ones, and were henceforth thrown 
 a good deal together by our mutual neighborhood and our slight 
 isolation from the other students. 
 
 The seminary life was simple and primitive. Many of us 
 sawed our own wood, made our own fires, and did nearly all of our 
 own chores. The driver of the mail wagon did our few errands 
 and made our few purchases at Alexandria, some four miles dis- 
 tant. Our clothes were not always of the latest cut, nor in the 
 freshest condition. We took our meals, abundant but not luxuri- 
 ous, in a basement, half under ground. There were coveted seats 
 by the stove door, where one could turn around from the table and 
 toast bread, giving the breakfast or the tea a relish. Adjoining 
 the dining-room was Prayer Hall, a large uncavpeted room, with 
 a desk and long wooden benches for its only furniture. The ceil- 
 ing was low, the walls were whitewashed; I think no picture of 
 any sort relieved their blank surfaces. Here some of the recita- 
 
^T. 20-2I] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 173 
 
 tions were said ; here we met for prayers and for a weekly ga- 
 thering known as faculty meeting, when a professor made a few 
 remarks bearing on the cultivation of spiritual life, and the other 
 professors — there were hut three — took wp their parable in turn 
 and emphasized the lesson. The talk was devout, earnest, tend- 
 ing to be pietistic, but mainly useful and simple. Another even- 
 ing in the week a debating society met in the same place, when 
 papers were read, topics discussed, and criticism offered. Those 
 criticisms were always frank, not always palatable. A student 
 with limited intelligence, but a rich voice and showy delivery, once 
 became conscious of something lacking, and asked a classmate to 
 tell him frankly why, with his effective presence and striking elo- 
 cution, he made no more impression as a speaker. The reply was 
 overwhelming and convincing. "Why, So and So, you don't know 
 enough. You don't study enough. You are too noisy. Perhaps 
 if j'ou 'd take more load on your cart it would not rattle so." 
 
 I do not remember that Phillips Brooks took any part in our 
 debates, made any cutting comments, or displayed any of the 
 extemporaneous power which afterwards distinguished him. But 
 from the first his writing stamped him as no common man. It 
 had the ease and charm of a master. The words were choice and 
 simple, the phrases idiomatic, the sentences brief and lucid, the 
 cadences musical, the thought fresh and ripe, the feeling real. 
 Some of us had fancied we knew how to write tolerable English, 
 but we learned our error, and took at once a lower room. We 
 recognized an art which had become nature, or a nature which 
 anticipated the gains of art. We saw that what we achieved by 
 care and painstaking, he far surpassed without conscious effort. 
 There may have lingered something still of the overluxuriance of 
 springtime, but it was a graceful luxuriance, not a wasteful and 
 ridiculous excess. Harvard severity of taste had already nipped 
 some straggling shoots and repressed some exuberances. Brooks 
 loved to tell how Professor Child had damped his pristine ardor. 
 He had begun a college composition by an elaborate flourish of 
 trumpets, and had carefully inserted a purple patch of which he was 
 not a little proud. What was his consternation, when the paper 
 came back, to find at the close of his labored introduction the 
 pencilled comment, "Begin here." "I might have been a toler- 
 able writer," Brooks used to add, "if I had not been so cruelly 
 disheartened at the outset." 
 
 It was an uninspiring life for the most part which we led at 
 the seminary, something very unlike the eager throbbing life of 
 our great theological schools to-day. Dr. Sparrow was a broad, 
 open-minded man: an essentially great man he appeared to some 
 
174 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 of us. To Brooks I know he seemed such. But feeble health 
 and a certain sluggish atmosphere around him had tamed his en- 
 ergies. Virginia was fifty years behind the outside world. "I 
 know it and am glad of it, " said one of her sons in those days. 
 A few men, who were ready for the awakening touch, Dr. Spar- 
 row set thinking for themselves, but a good many of the students 
 slumbered on in spite of him. Dr. May was a saintly man, 
 whose conscience did not extend into the sphere of scholarship; it 
 did not invade the province of church history. His sense of 
 fidelity as a teacher was not disturbed by his cutting the leaves 
 of a new text-book in the very presence of the class who were 
 reciting from it. It was to be presumed that he was too familiar 
 with the theme to need special acquaintance with any new presen- 
 tation of it. Dr. Packard, who still survives at a great age, was 
 an old-fashioned scholar, who knew what had been said upon the 
 knotty points of his Greek and his Hebrew, but reserved his own 
 opinion, holding it in such delicate equipoise as to avoid biassing 
 the minds of his students by any definite hint of it, unless a ques- 
 tion involving orthodoxy came before him, when the scales gently 
 descended on the accepted side. There were no lectures to sup- 
 plement the text-books. The recitations were hardly calculated 
 to impart knowledge ; they seemed designed rather to betray 
 how little we had acquired. There was much fervor and piety 
 among us, less enthusiasm for scholarship. Good men were not 
 sensitive to failures in the classroom. There was little serious 
 thinking, little outside reading, either in theology or literature. 
 The library was small, merely, I think, a dumping-place for the 
 collections of departed Virginia ministers. . . . 
 
 Still, with whatever imperfect apparatus and unstimulating 
 atmosphere, those who had a mind to work worked on in their 
 own lines with neither encouragement nor opposition. There was 
 a vast deal of idleness, much frivolous bustle, some party strife 
 and windy disputation. But it was a free and secluded life, full 
 of precious leisure to those who knew how to get the sweets of it. 
 Thoughtful men, whose springs were in themselves, enjoyed the 
 judicious neglect, found time to meditate, to browse on the off- 
 shoots of their own mind, and put out roots after their own fash- 
 ion. Brooks employed his opportunity. I do not think that he 
 was then characterized by the wonderful industry that utilized in 
 some way every moment of his later years, but he had already his 
 rai-e facility, and was a faithful student in and out of the re- 
 quired course. He had brought from college a sound knowledge 
 of Greek and Latin, and used it in a very consideralile amount 
 of reading in the Church Fathers, of whom by some unexplained 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 175 
 
 accident there chanced to be in the library the Abb(? Migne's edi- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 I do not think that Brooks in any way took our hearts by 
 storm or extorted an immediate admiration except for his ability 
 as a writer. He was liked, as others were. There was no special 
 brilliancy in his talk, there was no visible superiority in his char- 
 acter to that of others about him. His piety was real, but not 
 demonstrative. When he offered prayer at any of our meetings 
 you could not but feel that God was very near and living to him. 
 In his most serious moments there was no appalling gravity about 
 him. He was not perpetually prying into his own soul or ours. 
 He was alive and growing and took it for granted his fellows 
 were, without stopping to pull up their roots or his own to see. 
 He was very human then and always. I do not remember that 
 he told good stories in those days. Certainly he enjoyed them. 
 A quiet humor bubbled up through all his talk. Some of our 
 happiest moments were after the midday meal, when he would 
 often stray into another student's room for a cup of digestive 
 coSee. His notion of that beverage implied a cup filled with 
 lumps of sugar to the brim, the strong decoction being poured into 
 unoccupied cracks or spaces. Or it might be tea made in a large 
 mug covered with a red tomato-shaped pincushion. ... It is 
 still affirmed by survivors of that potent brew that tea cannot be 
 made without a pincushion on top to flavor it. As it was imme- 
 diately after a meal, we were naturally hungry, and Maryland 
 biscuit, a much kneaded or beaten bread, was in demand. As we 
 were all poor and living on very modest allowances, such de- 
 bauches were not things of every day. There were those who 
 insisted that Brooks, with his reckless consumption of sugar, per- 
 manently impoverished us. 
 
 That such trifles come to the front in my memory shows how 
 eventless were our days. It was understood that we were always 
 welcome at the houses of the professors. Once or twice a year, 
 perhaps, we used our privilege. It was our chief dissipation. 
 As the chairs were pushed back from the tea-table, we sat in our 
 places, family prayers followed, and the discreet did not linger too 
 long after the benediction. The roads were dark, the mud deep, 
 the dogs loud-mouthed, the neighbors were scattered and we saw 
 little of them. It was pure cloistral life for the most part. In 
 one of Brooks's letters in the year that he outstayed me at the 
 seminary, he writes of "another winter's mental and moral bleak- 
 ness on that poor hill, " and in another occurs a revealing sen- 
 tence, "When are you coming to see us? Leave your intellect 
 behind; you won't need it here." 
 
176 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 The churchmanship of the time and place was not advanced. 
 It was a bold step when some of us ventured to secure the elec- 
 tion of Dr. Coxe as preacher before the students on some annual 
 occasion. It was doubted if the professors would confirm this 
 choice, and it was undoubted that they looked a little askance 
 upon the promoters of it. The ritual was simple to barrenness. 
 The music was a repeated martyrdom of St. Cecilia. A some- 
 time chorister may be permitted to say so. It was not uncom- 
 mon for the professors to appear in the chancel in their overcoats, 
 and lay down gloves and muffler in the font or on the commun- 
 ion table. The architect of a new chapel of a nondescript form 
 of Gothic had ventured to relieve the dead level of the pews by 
 a modest trefoil or poppy-head rising at the end of each, a little 
 above the rest. A lively imagination might see a foliated cross 
 in them. Bishop Meade had such an imagination. Bishop 
 Jolms had winked at them, but the elder Bishop would not trifle 
 with his convictions. He arrived to dedicate the building. He 
 inspected it the night before. A carpenter was summoned and 
 every poppy-head was laid low before the opening service. The 
 erring excrescences were treasured in memoriain in the rooms of 
 wailing students. Yet the number of extreme ritualists proceed- 
 ing from the Virginia seminary, strange to say, is small. 
 
 I am trying to give the atmosphere, the local color, of the life 
 in which Phillips Brooks, with some slight impatiences, yet with 
 substantial happiness, passed nearly three years. It grieves me 
 that of our close companionship through two of those years so 
 few direct details come back to me. I recall occasional walks 
 with him, his laugh at my exhilaration in one brisk winter tramp 
 when the keen air went to my head like wine, and he was glad he 
 had been with me all the morning, and was therefore sure I was 
 not tipsy. He cared very little for exercise at any time, and 
 being in rugged health felt no need of it. Some of us made a 
 business of a game of ball daily, to which the seminary bell rang 
 out a summons, but I do not think he joined us. In the summers 
 among the mountains he would do a little tramping, but he never 
 scorned a saddle nor a seat in a wagon if it came his way.* 
 
 The Rt. Rev. A. M. Randolph, Bishop of Southern Vir- 
 ginia, was in his middle year in the seminary when Phillips 
 Brooks entered it. A warm friendship sprang up between 
 them, which continued to exist despite the alienations of the 
 civil war, growing stronger to the end. Bishop Randolph 
 
 1 Remembrances of Phillips Brooks by Two of his Friends, pp. 1-14. 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 177 
 
 furnishes other reminiscences of their days together in the 
 seminary : — 
 
 I recall his first appearance a few weeks after the opening of 
 the session in the literary society, composed of all the students. 
 He rose to read his essay, which occupied about twenty minutes. 
 The essay was a description of the character of tlie Greek in 
 Roman times as the soil upon which the seed of Clu-istianity fell, 
 his intellectual cleverness that made him the admiration of his Ro- 
 man masters, and his fickleness and his lack of moral seriousness 
 which made him an object of tlieir scorn. And yet Christianity 
 redeemed the Greek, gave him a religion of seriousness, of pro- 
 found convictions, of moral and spiritual strength and victorious 
 faith, which anchored him, and made a man out of him, and saved 
 him and all that was good in civilization from extinction. This 
 was the line of thought in the essay. When he sat down we all 
 felt that a beautiful mind was among us, and, better than that, a 
 modest gentleman of singular purity and strength and symjiathy. 
 Whenever he read an essay in any public gatherings or in the class- 
 room, the first impression was deepened, and before the year was 
 over he was without a rival among us as a writer of beautiful 
 English and a poetical thinker. We felt the charm of originality 
 in his thought and the sympathy in his voice, which, notwithstand- 
 ing the rapidity of his utterance, — a defect he always recognized, 
 — seemed the best vehicle for the expression of his ideas and his 
 feelings. It was a helpful lesson to us in making the distinction 
 between genuine originality and paltry imitations of it. 
 
 It fills out the picture of Phillips Brooks at the seminary 
 to get the impression of one of his teachers, the venerable 
 Joseph Packard, who was then Professor of Biblical Interpre- 
 tations. The following extract is from an article entitled 
 "The KecoUections of a Long Life," in the "Protestant 
 Episcopal Review," April, 1897: — 
 
 Phillips Brooks came here as a communicant from Dr. Vin- 
 ton's church, and I first saw him as he got out of a carriage at 
 the seminary gate. He handed me a letter from Bishop East- 
 burn, who, knowing my brother very well, wrote to me instead of 
 to Dr. Sparrow, the dean, as was the proper thing. He was 
 ordained deacon in our seminary chapel by Bishop Meade in 
 June, 1859. He was taller than any of these three great men, 
 and, not being so stout, looked even taller than later on. I re- 
 member bringing him out once in my carriage, and he could not 
 
178 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 comfortably sit up in it, and it leant very much to his side. He 
 asked me for the post of assistant librarian, which was, however, 
 given to some one else, but he was afterwards made teacher of the 
 Preparatory Department at a salary of four hundred ($400) a 
 year. ... He was always very courteous and docile, though 
 then a profound thinker ; never captious or critical in class or in 
 questions or discussions, as some smart, half-trained young men 
 are apt to be. He did not believe in demoniacal possession, I 
 remember, but he never said anything against it. He wrote an 
 essay for me on St. John, 6th chapter, strongly combating Wise- 
 man, who maintained the Roman Catholic view. 
 
 The letters of Phillips Brooks during his first year in the 
 seminary give us one aspect of his character. But neither 
 these nor the reminiscences of his friends give us the whole 
 man. There is fortunately a third source, to which we may 
 turn for information, where he reveals himself in self -commun- 
 ings, as he had begun to do in those waiting months of anx- 
 iety and depression, before he made up his mind to study 
 theology as a possible opening in life. 
 
 From the moment that he reached Virginia, he began the 
 practice of keeping note-books. They can hardly be called 
 journals, in the ordinary sense; they are not exactly com- 
 monplace books, although occasionally he jots down items of 
 information which strike his mind as valuable. As he gives 
 these books no name, we may call them note-books. They 
 are his "notes of the mind" or rather "notes of the soul," 
 for they contain the evidence of intellectual and religious 
 growth. But this is a religious life of no ordinary kind. It 
 does not assume the familiar aspect of religious meditation 
 or self-examination. Sentiment and feeling do not predomi- 
 nate, but rather an intellectual and ethical tone. It is a record 
 of thoughts that came to him by the free grace of the divine, 
 and not the result of any effort of his own. So he seems 
 to regard them, as if floating down to him from the open 
 heavens, the gift of God to his soul. 
 
 When he went to the theological seminary he seems to 
 have made a determination to do hard and thorough work. 
 He had a misgiving that his years in Harvard had not been 
 improved to the utmost. It was therefore a sore exiserience 
 
ffT. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 179 
 
 when he found that the instruction offered in the seminary 
 was not such as he had been used to, or thought it did not 
 offer direction or valuable result. He underrated its value : 
 the routine, the teaching which seemed spiritless and second- 
 hand, was, after all, an essential condition of his growth, even 
 with its inaccuracy or limitations of insight. He came to 
 see this clearly enough at a later time. His mood of dis- 
 satisfaction was real, deep, and slow to yield, yet there was 
 in it an advantage or blessing in disguise. It forced him to 
 work for himself, to take his theological education in a mea- 
 sure into his own hand. He was free to inquire for himself; 
 he had leisure to read and ponder, above all to study himself. 
 If a theological seminary offers that opportunity, it is, for 
 those who can appreciate it, accomplishing one of the highest 
 purposes of education. 
 
 The first thing which impresses one in turning over these 
 note-books is the capacity shown for high scholarship. If 
 that had not been so evident in his college years it is evident 
 now. In his classical proficiency, he had attained a source 
 of power for the enlargement of his life. The moment had 
 come when Greek and Latin were no longer dead languages, 
 but were at his disposal, as means of entering into other 
 worlds of human experience. It was a thrilling moment in 
 his life when this revelation flashed over him, turning what 
 had before been labor and drudgery into keenest pleasure, 
 into the consciousness, as it were, of new faculties. Thus in 
 the first few months after he reached the seminary, we find 
 him reading Herodotus and ^schylus, and among Latin 
 writers, Plautus, Lucretius, and Lucan; of ecclesiastical 
 writers, Augustine, Tertullian, and the Venerable Bede. 
 Tertullian attracted him with a singular charm, as though he 
 found in that vehement, passionate soul something akin to 
 his own moods. From all these writers he was making ex- 
 tracts, sometimes in the original, or translating as an exercise 
 for the mastery of the language. Schiller's "WaUenstein" 
 also attracted him, and he was tempted to try his hand in 
 translation. He kept up his French by reading Saint 
 Pierre's "fitudes de la Nature." So great is the interest he 
 
i8o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 shows in this line of linguistic study that one might imagine 
 he had not wholly resigned his original purpose to make him- 
 self a scholar. He had special qualifications for such a work 
 in his gift for language, in the pleasure which it gave him to 
 study the origin of words and the minuter shades of their 
 meaning, or to make forcible translations, to turn the Greek 
 or Latin idiom into strong and racy English. 
 
 Next to the study of the classics and early ecclesiastical 
 writers comes his devotion to English literature. He was 
 reading so many books during his first year in the seminary 
 that one marvels at first how he found time for the required 
 tasks of daily recitations. Coleridge (his poetry and Bio- 
 graphia), Wordsworth and Shelley, Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Robert Browning and Mrs. Browning, Ralph Waldo Emer- 
 son, Cowley, Waller, Henry Taylor, Landor, Keats, Southey, 
 Johnson, Piers Plowman, Chaucer, Barry Cornwall, Whit- 
 tier, Sir Thomas Overbury, Ossian, Pope, Swift, Charlotte 
 Bronte, Kingsley, Holmes, Dryden, Chatterton, Lowell, Car- 
 lyle, Cowper, Shaftesbury, Ruskin, Jones Very, — the Salem 
 mystic, — these are the authors into whom he is dipping at 
 will, from whom also he is making extracts in his note- 
 books. The quotations he copies reveal the character of his 
 mind, becoming his own mental furniture. There is disclosed 
 here a veritable hunger to know the best thought of the 
 world. 
 
 There is another decided taste revealed in his reading, 
 
 his love of books descriptive of ancient peoples and their 
 customs. In this list are found Layard's "Nineveh and its 
 Remains," Heeren's "Nations of Antiquity," Becker's "Gal- 
 lus" and "Charicles," Wines's "Lectures on the Ancient 
 Hebrews," Kane's "Arctic Explorations," Josephus' "Jewish 
 Wars," Prideaux's "Connections," — a book then much in 
 vogue, but now forgotten. In one country in particular was 
 he then interested, — India, which he had long dreamed of 
 visiting. When at last, in 1883, he stood upon its shores, 
 he felt, as he said, that he had reached home. The sources 
 of his present information were "Asiatic Researches " by Sir 
 AVilliam Jones. He mentions also in his reading Stirling's 
 
^T. ao-ai] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY i8i 
 
 "Cloister Life of Cliarles V.," Prescott's "Ferdinand and 
 Isabella," and Coxe's "House of Austria." 
 
 There are traces of Engiisli theological reading, as in Bishop 
 Butler's "Sermons," Milman's "History of the Jews," Hey- 
 lin's and Fuller's histories of the English Church, Heng- 
 stenberg's " Christology, " Olshausen's Commentary, which 
 yielded many suggestive hints; and for religious and devo- 
 tional reading, Kingsley's "Sermons for the Times" and 
 Huntington's "Sermons for the People." This is indeed 
 meagre compared with his other lines of reading, but must 
 be supplemented by his study of the Church Fathers and by 
 the work of the classroom with its familiar and antiquated 
 text-books, his study of the Old Testament in Hebrew and of 
 the New Testament in Greek, and another work now hardly 
 known, Knapp's "Systematic Divinity." Now and then, but 
 rarely, he jots down in his note-book some item gained from 
 his teachers. 
 
 The note-books indicate that in his reading he kept his 
 eye upon one incidental object, the accumulation of ideas, 
 of pithy phrases, or epigrammatic statements, and above all 
 of similes and comparisons. These he put down in con- 
 densed form, as so much material for future use. The rich 
 and graceful style, the literary wealth and suggestiveness, 
 the abounding metaphors, — these features which marked 
 his writings came by the hard effort of years of preparation. 
 He had indeed a native gift in this direction, but it had been 
 cultivated to the utmost of his ability. There are many hun- 
 dreds of similes collected here, which afterwards reappeared 
 in his preaching. In this study of the simile as an art, we 
 may see a philosophical method, as well as the practical bent 
 of one who had wished to be preeminently a teacher. He 
 quotes from Olshausen's "Commentary on Romans" a pas- 
 sage that met his own approval : — 
 
 Men are wont to say that parables prove nothing. Neverthe- 
 less comparisons often teach by depth of meaning infinitely more 
 and better than all abstract arguments, seeing they are devised 
 from nature, the mirror of the glory of the unseen God, living 
 demonstrations, as it were, of the Most High God himself. 
 
1 82 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 The picture given in this outline of Phillips Brooks's read- 
 ing, during his first year in Virginia, indicates but faintly 
 the wealth of its result, as embodied in the quotations in his 
 note-book. Everything that he quoted seems to be richer 
 and deeper in its suggestiveness because an expression of his 
 ovpn personality, or takes on a new and larger meaning. 
 We are watching here in the springtime of a great genius, 
 admitted to gaze into the secret process of the making of a 
 rare soul. But of this process, the books that he browsed 
 over do not form the largest part. They were the conditions 
 under which his spirit was taking wings for its independent 
 flight. He was becoming conscious of the possession of crea- 
 tive power. His soul grew stronger within him, and despite 
 the depression shown in his correspondence he had moods 
 of inward joy and triumjjh. The most suggestive fact in 
 this connection is that he constantly sought expression for 
 the exhilaration or the tumultuous excitement of his spirit 
 by writing verse. The first impression made by reading the 
 note-books is that poetry, and not preaching, might have 
 been his vocation. He was awakening to the beauty of out- 
 ward nature; his soul thrilled at some exquisite landscape; 
 there was a perpetual consciousness of the glory of sunrise 
 or sunset: he watched the brooks, and meditated on the mean- 
 ing of flowers and fields, of all that met his vision. Words- 
 worth was doing his part in this dawning revelation of the 
 spiritual significance of the natural world, and Shellej' also, 
 of whom he was a constant reader. But they brought their 
 message to a soul preordained for its reception. From his 
 childhood, and througli all his years, the simple, elementary 
 consciousness of being alive and on this earth, the open eye 
 for the special revelation given in the coming of each new 
 day, the delight in observing the power of the sun to beautify 
 and glorify the creation, — these simplest of the natural sen- 
 sations never lost the novelty of their charm, as if each 
 new day was a fresh miracle, as if each day he saw the won- 
 drous phenomenon for the first time. In his sermons will be 
 foimd the ever-recurring allusion to the sun as the symbol of 
 the spiritual life, in aU the varieties of its manifestation. 
 
^T. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 183 
 
 The amount of verse that he wrote while at the seminary 
 is enough to fill a considerable volume. lie might have done 
 something as a poet had he given himself to it, making it his 
 highest consecrated task. But as it is, it must be regarded 
 as a secondary or subordinate gift, — the manifestation in- 
 deed of a poet's soul and creative capacity, but never utilized 
 to the utmost. If it had been his vocation, he would have 
 been compelled to pursue it with jealous care, studying, as 
 he did not, the form it must assume in order to perfection. 
 His verses seem to have taken shape in his mind, then to 
 have been rapidly written without much effort at correction^ 
 or when he did correct rarely improving upon his first utter- 
 ance. He did not study the laws of metre or of rhyme. He 
 was writing for his inward satisfaction, under some compul- 
 sion to give form and restraint to his emotion. He was fond 
 of producing couplets in order to the epigrammatic expression 
 of an idea, or for the cultivation of a forcible style. 
 
 In his last year in the seminary (1859), he delivered an 
 address upon poetry to the Howard School, near Alexandria, 
 from which we may learn how he regarded his own produc- 
 tions. The expanded title of this address was "Poetry — the 
 Power and the Purity of the Young Man's Life." He falls 
 back upon the word wonjTrj^ as constituting the essence of 
 poetry, — the poet is the man who makes something. He 
 treats in the first place of what he calls verse-writing, con- 
 scious as he was of the large amount he had produced : — 
 
 But first, in brackets, let me say one word about this same 
 much-abused verse-writing. I am going to venture the broad 
 assertion that all men may be, and ought to be, poets all the 
 time. Evidently I do not mean by this that we ought individ- 
 ually to be raving with that rhyme-madness of which we have 
 so much already. But yet it seems to me there are times when 
 it is good for any man to perpetuate a page or two with lines 
 ending similarly. There are moods of mind and circumstances 
 of condition when utterance, and utterance in that particular form 
 which we call verses, is eminently healthy. But note the distinc- 
 tion between general and special poetry. There is a good deal of 
 poetry that is perfectly justifiable to write, but utterly inexcusable 
 to show when written, — verses, like the papers in lost pocket- 
 
1 84 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 books, of no possible value except to the owner, yet of real gen- 
 uine use to him. They help him to establish his identity, to 
 prove his right to old hopes and thoughts and fancies, to his 
 whole past self. But found in a stranger's hand they are simply 
 proof positive that he has no right to them. Up to this mark, 
 then, of poetry for private use, it does seem to me well that every 
 man once in his life at least should come. There are dumb hands 
 feeling around us that, like the mesmerizer's fingers, must now 
 and then find us impressible, and charm us into a dream. There 
 are times when the dullest souls among us fledge unguessed-of 
 wings and turn to sudden poets. There are brooks whose singing 
 is contagious, and sunrises which turn all live men into Memnon 
 statues. We find poems written in the world that we cannot help 
 reading and singing. Out of as prosaic a car window as your 
 road can boast, I saw God write a gorgeous poem this very morn- 
 ing. With a fresh sunbeam for a pencil, on a broad sheet of level 
 snow, the diamond letters were spelled out one by one till the 
 whole was aflame with poetry. I could have defied the deadest 
 soul in that hot car to have looked out of that window and not 
 heard that song of the Almighty sing itself within his brain. 
 
 So much for our parenthesis. If any one of you has written 
 poetry by stealth and is ashamed of it, don't show it; but if it 
 came from the heart, thank God, who put it in your heart to write 
 it. Keep it so long as it can sing itself to you. Only don't show 
 it, least of all publish it. You break the spell as soon as any one 
 but yourself sees it.^ 
 
 The poet, he calls the "widest man on earth." "Poetry 
 is the sense of beauty." "This jDoet poem, this creator power 
 of making a world of beauty in the soul out of the beauty of 
 the earth outside of us, is what makes one young man stronger 
 and purer than his fellows." This power to make something 
 which otherwise would not have been "comes the nearest to 
 being superhuman, to getting outside the chafing humanities, 
 the weaknesses, the limitations, the hard harness of routine." 
 Others can alter, only the poet can create. "The true poet 
 should live before he dares to write." The words of Milton 
 are quoted: "He who would not be frustrate of his hope to 
 write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be 
 a true poem: that is, a composition of the best and honor- 
 ablest things." 
 
 ^ Essays and Addresses, p. 237. 
 
^T. ao-2i] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 185 
 
 One of the most important features of the note-books is 
 the intimations they contain of a profound conception of the 
 scheme of things, wrought out by an isolated student in much 
 inward perturbation with no assistance from his teachers. 
 When Phillips Brooks left home for the theological semi- 
 nary, he provided himself in advance with these books, in 
 anticipation of the service they would render. When he 
 reached his new abode, and found himself among strangers, 
 in an inconvenient room, with a bed too short for him, with 
 no "armchair" or any of the comforts and conveniences of 
 life, with only the light afforded by a tallow candle, he sat 
 down at the earliest moment to his self-imposed task and 
 continued the work of registering his thoughts. He had 
 become conscious of the power of thought as shown in the 
 reflections he had recorded before leaving home, while he 
 was still suffering from disappointment. He divided his 
 note-book in two equal parts, the first for the purpose of 
 holding remarks of others worth coj^ying, hints and sugges- 
 tions from his reading, stray bits of information, all the 
 items in short for a miscellaneous commonplace book. In 
 the second half he wrote down the thoughts which were his 
 ovsTi. It is worth mentioning that he filled out the second 
 half of the book long before the first, and went back to 
 encroach upon the empty pages with the ideas that were 
 coming thick and fast. At first he set over against each 
 thought the day when he recorded it. But after a few 
 months the thoughts were so many that he ceased to give 
 the date, content if he could catch the images that floated 
 through his mind. 
 
 The first of these thoughts is dated November 14, 1856, 
 one week after reaching Virginia : — 
 
 For our virtue should not be a deed or a work, but a growth, — 
 a growth like a tree's, always rising higher from its own inner 
 strength and sap ; not a work like a building patched upon by for- 
 eign hands, with foreign substance, and so when done unreal, for- 
 eign itself, and not our own. Or it should be like a statue worked 
 slowly out of the hard old grain of the native stone ; not like a 
 painting, a cheat of foreign color with all its artificial beauties 
 of perspective, foreshortening, and shadow. 
 
1 86 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 Then comes a stanza in whidi he gives the impression 
 made upon him by his first introduction to theological learn- 
 ing:— 
 
 How vain is our knowing unless we can feel 
 
 How little mere study alone can reveal. 
 
 How the slow waves of learning creep page after page, 
 
 Like the wearing of torrents, an inch in an age. 
 
 Two weeks elapse before he makes his second entry : — 
 
 December 1, 1856. To many minds a ceremony or a form comes 
 with all the force of a principle or a fact. Not "what man has 
 done man may do, " but what inan has done man must do is their 
 creed, which cramps their limbs and chills their blood and makes 
 them fail of the little good they are seeking. For no man by 
 sheer imitation has yet reached his pattern. Even if in native 
 power he is more than equal to the task, and so in outward deeds 
 even excels his example, the flush and glow of original achieve- 
 ment, which made the model a living, warm, breathing thing, is 
 wanting to the copy which is cold and stifi and dead. 
 
 December 2, 1856. For a noble principle or thought, like the 
 widow's barrel and cruse, is never dry. We draw on it for our 
 daily life, we drink of its power in our weakness, and taste its 
 power in our despair; but God's blessing is on it and the fulness 
 of his truth is tilling it, and so it never fails. We come back to it 
 in our next weakness or our next despondency, and find it thought- 
 ful and hopeful as ever, till the famine is over, and, kept alive 
 and nurtured by its strength, we come forth to gather new harvests 
 of great thoughts. 
 
 The following verses were written December 3, 1856, and 
 seem to have been the result of two depressing influences: 
 the coming of winter with the falling of the leaves, which 
 affects his susceptible constitution, and this combined with 
 the circumstance that in theological study he is mainly con- 
 cerned with dead authors, and not in communion with the 
 voices of the living present : — 
 
 How earth's dead leaves are crumbling wherever we walk, 
 How dead voices answer our voice when we talk, 
 How cold hands are clasping our hands while we tread. 
 And the footsteps beside us are steps of the dead. 
 
^T. 20-2I] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 187 
 
 The life we are living has been other men's breath, 
 The deatli we are dying reechoes their death, 
 Our old earth wheels in cycles from death into life, 
 And weds dead unto dying as husband to wife. 
 
 From this mood he rallies, at the voice of duty, in two 
 lines which are vigorous and in contrast with his depression. 
 He can turn again to the dead text-books : — 
 
 And the cold grasp of duty embraces delight. 
 
 Like the rough rocky bay where the waters lie bright. 
 
 The same day closes with what comes as near the conven- 
 tionality of religious self examination as he ever allowed him- 
 self to approach. He is putting himself to the supremest test 
 of character which can be conceived. The idea embodied 
 here may have some other original suggestion than from Lis 
 own mind, but with him it is new : — • 
 
 December 3, 1856. Suppose a single day of perfect sincerity, a 
 day with no falsehood, no sham, but only purest truth, when a lie 
 should be an impossibility and a cheat unheard of from the rising 
 to the setting of the sun. How earth's eyes would open before 
 that day was done ! What golden shrines it would pull down and 
 show the hideous gibbering idol that grins within ! What Esau- 
 skins it would tear off, what good men it would turn to knaves and 
 knaves to very devils ! How long before the noon of that day 
 men would go crying for the rocks and hills to fall on them and 
 hide them from a sincere world and themselves ! But oh, it is 
 cheering to think that there are characters which would show 
 brighter for that day, characters that would stand like unruined 
 ruins, hung over with moss and ivy, and heaped in rubbish of old 
 dead forms and dry ceremonies, which would shake off all this 
 defilement, to stand out in their simple, honest, beautiful, native 
 beauty, in the clear light of the world's truest day.' 
 
 This next series of extracts might be made the subject for 
 theological comment. They show a departure from the pre- 
 vailing Evangelical methods of dealing with sin and the con- 
 science. The stress is here laid upon the freedom of the will, 
 and God's grace is conceived as lying within the soul. 
 
 ^ This thoug-ht reappears in one of his most powerful sermons entitled the 
 " Law of Liberty," Seriuuns, vol. ii. pp. 189, 190. 
 
i88 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 There is aspiration after the highest ethical result, but it is 
 more than aspiration, for the will is concerned as the direct 
 fountain of man's being, and to bring truth and reason to 
 bear upon the will is conceived as the greatest problem. Not 
 a problem so much for theology, though that is implied, but 
 the issue of life. Carlyle had seen the issue, but he refrained 
 from dealing with the practical question, — how truth is to be 
 brought to bear upon the will in order to moral transforma- 
 tion. Phillips Brooks here appears as taking up the subject 
 where Carlyle has left it. These extracts also reveal to some 
 extent the process of his conversion. He has realized that 
 the primary, fundamental preparation for the ministry is that 
 a man must have himself first become what he will strive to 
 help others to be. There is something unique in these con- 
 fessions of a soul. 
 
 December 6, 1856. Wholly deprecating any morbid weakness 
 over the past, I still say that we are too much afraid to look the 
 lives we have been living in the face. We are ashamed and 
 shrink from owning and claiming our past selves. They have 
 been weak and wicked, and we, whose their wickedness and weak- 
 ness really are, have not the manliness to bear the shame. We 
 turn with a shudder from the poor offspring of our lives, and say 
 with Hagar, Let me not see the death of the child. Oh, if we 
 can only hear God's angel calling, "Fear not, for I have heard 
 the voice of the lad where he is," "Arise, lift up the lad, for I 
 will make him a great nation, " and we do arise and take our old 
 poor weak lives in our hands and go forth to train them by God's 
 strength into richness and power. 
 
 December 6, 1856. The old Persians thought that their sacred 
 fire must be always kept, but only the purest wood in its purest 
 state was good enough to keep it alive. Let us imitate their care. 
 Any great thought or great fervor that is in us let us reverence 
 and preserve, but let not base word or thought or act come near 
 it, though it be to preserve its life. Better cease to think nobly 
 than cease to think purely. Better that the ark should fall than 
 that profane hands should hold it in its place. 
 
 December 7, 1856. The danger with a cherished idea is simply 
 the same as with a graven image, that it will cease to become 
 a symbol and become a god, that our minds, long bent down to 
 
JET. 20-21] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 189 
 
 the thought however great, will become stiff and strong in its 
 bending and no longer spring uj) to the Father of thoughts. . . . 
 The purest reason, which is the purest religion, turns to ration- 
 alism, which is idolatry. For reverence is the eyelash that lets 
 us endure the sun, which lost, we must make up our minds to 
 darkness for the rest of our lives, and give up forever all thoughts 
 of the vigor and health and pure richness of life which sunlight 
 only gives. 
 
 December 8, 1856. Practically are we not too apt to forget 
 that Theology and Law are professions, but Religion and Justice are 
 universal duties and lives ? — precisely as Medicine is a profession, 
 but health is not, for it is a universal care. For a profession is 
 only the organized head of a great interest ; not the embodiment 
 or absorption of that interest at all, only the symbol of its great- 
 est purity, not itself in any sense. 
 
 December 9, 1856. If a sense of duty were made the measur- 
 ing requisite of mental strength, if just in proportion as a man 
 earnestly recognized the work there was to do on earth his share 
 was measured out to him, and mind and strength was given him 
 to do it, how with a will and a stir earth's labor would go on. 
 This is ivhat we need, to bring the ivill to meet the power. There 
 is enough of both, but they lie in different hands, and oh, how 
 often the men who hold the power stand like savages on some new- 
 found golden coast, holding out their priceless treasures, and proud 
 and eager to barter them for some childish trinket or poor worth- 
 less toy. 
 
 December 10, 1856. For local heresies are little things and the 
 mind is weakly empty that fills itself with care for them. They 
 look like fearful things as they hiss and spit their little venom at 
 our feet, but wait till some true jsrophet come, and his very rod 
 cast upon earth shall breed great issues that shall swallow them 
 all up. 
 
 December 14, 1856. To walk through evil into good is one of 
 those hard trials which are never worth the risk. The chance is 
 that we shall stop short in the evil. True we gain wondrous 
 strength if we succeed, and if men's path lay always in that way 
 we might be sure of strong men, as the Indians are of braves. 
 But only an overstrong man now and then struggles through, and 
 comes out glowing from the struggle purer and stronger for the 
 work, like John Rogers, v/ho, Fox tells us in his "Book of Mar- 
 
I90 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 tyrs, " " with no cry of pain washed his hands in the flames as il 
 they had been cold water." 
 
 December 20, 1856. If a thought comes and offers its service 
 question it like a man. What can you do ? Ai'e you a worker ? 
 Can you sow and dig and build ? Are you a schemer ? Can you 
 scheme, divine, invent ? Are you a teacher ? Can you show us 
 better ways to live and better ways to die ? Are you an artist ? 
 Can you clothe our lives with more beauty, making them know 
 more of holiness and purity and love and God ? Ask these ques- 
 tions, and let no thought enter your service that cannot answer 
 them freely and well, and the mysticism of thought is gone and 
 the thinker is the most practical of men. 
 
 This next paragraph is very personal. He was conscious 
 of some inward difference from his teachers or his fellows in 
 his way of interpreting theology and life, as they too were 
 beginning to be aware that a man of different mould had 
 appeared among them. And yet he would fain have been 
 regarded as entirely one with them. The world, as he after- 
 wards wrote, resents anything mysterious or exceptional. 
 
 December 21, 1856. Yes, Originality is a fine thing, but first 
 have you the head to bear it? Can you walk under it without 
 reeling and staggering about the world, catching at every weak 
 support to keej} you steady, with a whole pack of little minds 
 hooting and jeering and pelting you with mire all the way ? Ajid 
 have you the heart for it ? Can you wear it within as well as 
 without, be warmed to the core with the fire of its life ? It is 
 so easy to be a .lohn the Baptist as far as the wilderness and 
 goat's hair and leathern girdle and the locusts and wild honey 
 go, but the glowing heart to speak from and the holy words to 
 speak are a different thing. It is with new forms and styles as 
 with new-found gold. We may strike a nugget and be rich men 
 at once in our California, but the average chance is tliat it will 
 be better in the long run for you and me to stay at home and 
 work as our fathers work, counting that very work a fortune in 
 itself. Besides, it is dangerous, this trifling with novelties. It 
 requires hazardous experiments before we can be at all sure that 
 they will answer our purpose. We have been told to strike the 
 blood upon the lintels and two side posts, that the angel of death 
 may see it and pass by. Is it quite safe to try if wine and water 
 will not do as well ? 
 
«T. 2o-aiJ THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 191 
 
 January 1, 1857. How we grow more and more to see that 
 it is the will and the feelings, far more than any thought, upon 
 which almost all our life and loved opinions rest. How much of 
 our faith is obstinacy, how much of our devotion sentiment, how 
 much of our religion pride ; how much working strength there is 
 in a blind determination and how little in a clear-eyed thought. 
 How our will comes out at once, full-fledged and strong, shak- 
 ing its baby defiance at argument in its cradle, while our thoughts 
 are poor callow, frightened things, weak and fluttering before 
 anything that dares to show a trace of manly power. Mohammed 
 knew all this and built Mohammedism upon sentiment and will, 
 and stamped the marks of shrewd sense upon it when he forbade 
 the Islamite to dispute on his religion. And how even a fresh 
 thought will fossilize into a mere dead will, how it will be crushed 
 by great creeds till its life and essence are gone out of it, as the 
 bloom and smell of a flower pressed in some heavy book. We 
 must change and air our ideas if we would keep them pure and 
 strong. 
 
 January 11, 1857. A noble cause cannot of itself make a man 
 noble. We must desjjair of growing great, unless we can feel that 
 we are given to the cause to work for it, and not it to work for 
 us. In the old torch races of Pan, the rule was that each runner 
 should hold his torch as long as it kept its light, but when he 
 flagged he must hand it to another who stood ready girded to 
 follow up the race. And so it must be with us. We must re- 
 cognize the great end of all this panting and running and toiling, 
 not that you or I should reach the goal, and be rich or honored in 
 men's mouths, but that the torch of truth that was put into our 
 hands when we started should reach the people at the end all 
 alight with truth as when we took it. Let it be our hands, if we 
 can, that bring it there, and then the honor shall be ours ; but 
 that must not be our end, and when we see it sinking and going 
 out, let no petty conceit or unfledged pride keep us from giving it 
 to a fresher and stronger man, with a hearty Godspeed to run 
 the next stage of the same great journey. Thus we win a broad- 
 ness and deepness and fulness of character that sinks all little 
 human ventures like the sea. 
 
 February 6, 1857. What has become of all that blessing of 
 Christ which He left with his people on earth on that "first day 
 of the week, when the doors were sluit where the disciples were 
 assembled for fear of the Jews, and Jesus came and stood in the 
 midst, and said unto them, Peace be unto you " ? Has it with- 
 
i92 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 ered in the scorching heat of the world's fiery hopes and more 
 fiery fears, and rage and scorn and ignorance and pride ? Or is it 
 still bright with the everlasting freshness of its miraculous youth, 
 making humble hearts more holy, and holy lives more happy 
 wherever there is a clear eye, or better still a clear heart, to see 
 its beauty and great power of making blessed ? When He sent it 
 on earth in a few weak men's hands and it floated down on weak 
 men's breath, as centuries before the hope of Israel had drifted in 
 a bulrush cradle down the Nile, till some unthinking and unknow- 
 ing hand could take it up and nurture it and make it strong and 
 noble in the high places of the land. He sent it with a power to 
 insure its life, the everlasting power of comfort to the wretched 
 and riches to the poor, and his own holy power to the weak, so 
 long as there should be poor, weak, and wretched men and women 
 on his earth. 
 
 February, 1857. In spite of all the mischief that over-credu- 
 lous delusion has always done, I still say we need more faith upon 
 earth. We have not the trust that we ought to have in God and 
 nature, in human hopes and dreams and bright stray thoughts 
 that have wandered from their homes in heaven, with its light and 
 glory and unproven truth still glorifying them, and come and ask 
 us to take them in from the cold world where they feel strange, 
 and shelter and cherish them while they shall lighten our hearts 
 and homes. We turn them away, for we do not believe in them. 
 We do not trust to poetry or art, to our neighbors or ourselves. 
 "Lord, increase our faith." For faith is strengthening and in- 
 vigorating in its simple exercise. It is better to have trusted 
 and been cheated than never to have trusted at all, better, that 
 is, for our souls, if we have tlieir welfare at all in care. I would 
 trust in human goodness and purity and truth as I do in the yearly 
 return of May, a day or two later perhaps, one or two more cold 
 storms or dead dull frozen days in one year than another, but sure 
 to come at last, unable in any event to fail of coming as long as 
 this world is this world and nature what it has always been. 
 
 It is not for us to make our lives artistic, we can only make 
 them true. If we give ourselves to a weak attempt to build them 
 for effect, to place ourselves where some critical observer might 
 stand and fashion them to suit his point of viev,', we shall surely 
 make them wretched failures. It is not thus that nature works. 
 There is no studied symmetry, no measured perspective, no con- 
 scious foreshortening in her great original. All this is left to the 
 observer's eye, and nature declines to be accountable for the pow 
 
^T. ao-2i] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 193 
 
 ers, or infirmities, or refinement, or clumsiness of liis vision. All 
 she does is to grow to perfect truth and ripeness in each separate 
 part, to give each flower its perfect hue, each hill its perfect slope, 
 each tree its perfect development of graceful form, each living 
 thing its perfect healthfulness of animal life, its perfect power of 
 speech, or song, or speed, or it may he rich simple existence. Just 
 this then is our duty by our lives. Give them room to grow to 
 truth, and they will grow to symmetry; give them leave to ripen, 
 and they will richen too. Let each day's commonest act be an 
 act that has an aim and does it, and it shall make us wonder to 
 see us dignified by that aim and cured of all its commonness, tak- 
 ing its place of its own true instinct in the true, fresh, glowing 
 pictures of om' life. 
 
 It is hard to feel with what a force the philosophy of Lucretius 
 must have come home to the educated Roman of his time. The 
 perfection of a theory, in the symmetry of its parts, its perfect 
 self-consistency, its broad pretence of freedom from prejudice and 
 the old superstition whose claims pressed heavier and heavier 
 every day upon the enlightened mind, it stood and challenged 
 admission to the heart of every thinker and scholar and patriot 
 of Rome. The mind of the intelligent Roman of the Christian 
 era was like the poor man's house in the Scripture. The unclean 
 spirit, stained vnih the growing foulness of the mythology, was 
 at length gone out, and he walked through dry places seeking rest. 
 And finding none, he returned to the house where his old gods had 
 stood, and found it empty and garnished. But his heart craved 
 the sympathy and company of some thoughts, great or mean, and 
 so when he found materialism and atheism and the soul's mor- 
 tality made beautiful in the sweet singing of Lucretius, he took 
 to himself this new spirit, more wicked because more faithless than 
 his old self, and it entered in and dwelt there. It was not long 
 before it had done its work, and the last state of that man was 
 worse, because it had less faith, less hope, less manly trust in 
 Heaven than the first. 
 
 In the great temple where the singers of old are sleeping their 
 quiet sleep, where Homer's gray tranquillity, and Shakespeare's 
 still, calm forehead, and Milton's peaceful, sightless face lie, un- 
 disturbed, as if they looked on inner sights and listened to some 
 inner voice, while the noisy, heedless world is wrangling and 
 chattering and fighting without, above each minsti'el's tomb hangs 
 the harp to which he sang, still strung and tuned for singing. 
 But well may men tremble, as they walk through the temple and 
 
194 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 stand and look and think upon the dead, to take down their harps 
 and draw presumptuous hands across their strings. Yet let us 
 look with indulgence and hope when, in the strength of young 
 poetry, some hand is timidly readied to touch those old chords and 
 try if perhaps the old music that lies in them may answer to an- 
 other than its master's call, and creep forth once more to make 
 the world happier and hetter again, as it did of old. 
 
 We must learn the infinite capacity of truth to speak to every 
 human mind, and of every human mind to hear, and more or less 
 completely understand, the truth that speaks. It may come like 
 a poor and shamhling thing, and impart in its stammering Galilean 
 tongvie the great message that it has to give, but all the multitude 
 will catch the words, and whatever may be their tribe, Romans, 
 Medes, Parthians, and Jews, shall hear in their own tongue, like 
 that Whitsunday congregation, tlie wonderful works of God. Let 
 us then reverence our neighbor's way of finding truth. If by his 
 life and faith we can clearly see that he is finding it indeed, let 
 us not turn away because he hears it in another tongue than ours. 
 The speaker is the same. If he can read in a stormy sky, or a 
 sunny landscape, lessons for which we must go to books and ser- 
 mons, so much the better for him. 
 
 When we gain a victory moral or mental, when we subdue a 
 passion or achieve a thought, let the conquest be decisive. Let 
 the question be settled, the idea mastered, the doubt decided for- 
 ever. Let there be no fear of future difficulty. If the serpent 
 lie across our path and we must kill it to pass, let the blow be 
 struck straiglit and strong; let us lift the body and see that it be 
 really dead, lest when we pass this way again to-morrow it may 
 lift its foul head and hiss and frighten us from the pathway out 
 among thorns and briers, wandering from our way, torn and tired 
 with our struggles, ashamed of the wretched shiftlessness which 
 is only a specimen of our moral and mental lives. 
 
 There lies in earth a secret note to which her harmony should 
 be and was at first attuned, but from which her degenerate discord 
 wanders. Her slow ear has forgotten that old first note, and she 
 chants her daily song unconscious of the wandering of her voice, 
 till, once in an age, some great soul comes and reaching forth a 
 master's finger touches life's keynote, and all earth trembles when 
 she hears the harmony, and knows at one sudden shock how far her 
 mortal song lias strayed from the old angel's anthem from which 
 she learned it first. 
 
/ET. 20-2I] THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 195 
 
 It is the marvellous profusion of suggested poetry that im- 
 presses us most in the old classic poets. All around in the wonder- 
 ful perfections of symmetry and grace that they have given us, we 
 can see the rough or half-shaped materials of new beauty as beau- 
 tiful as theirs, as we may still walk through the old, deserted 
 workshop of the Acropolis, and count the blocks halfway wrought 
 centuries ago, which might have found a place in the great citadel. 
 
 Until we have learned the universal language of human sym- 
 pathy, how can we hope to speak so that all may hear us, and 
 be drawn to us by what they hear ? While we speak thus, each in 
 the selfish tongue of our own interest or jaassions, our words will 
 come sealed to the ears of our fellows, and all the consciousness 
 that we are heard and understood by others, or the sweeter feel- 
 ing that the world is better for our words, will all be lost. 
 
 The world claims of us, as Nebuchadnezzar did of the Chal- 
 deans, not only to solve, but first of all to discover her problems. 
 The man who has learnt thoroughly what it is that is wonderful 
 and inexplicable, where the hard questions lie, in the constitution 
 and habit of the world and of his fellow men, even if his steps 
 have been very few towards the explanation of those wonders, has 
 reached not a little knowledge of men and things. 
 
 Indulgence to well-meaning error we may allow to a right de- 
 gree in the heart ; our care must be that it does not climb thence 
 into the head. The passage lies in the will; here we must keep 
 our guard, lest from enduring evil as intending well we come to 
 choose it as itself good. 
 
 To these passages written at the age of twenty-one, when 
 he was in the throes of the regenerating process, may be sub- 
 joined a passage from his book, "The Influence of Jesus," 
 where, after many years had gone by, he could calmly note 
 the way by which he had been led : — 
 
 Who of us has not bowed his will to some supreme law, ac- 
 cepted some obedience as the atmosphere in which his life must 
 live, and found at once that his mind's darkness turned to light 
 and that many a hard question found its answer ? Who lias not 
 sometimes seemed to see it all as clear as daylight, that not by 
 the sharpening of the intellect to supernatural acuteness, but by the 
 submission of the nature to its true authority, man was at last to 
 conquer truth; that not by agonizing struggles over contradictory 
 
196 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1856-57 
 
 evidence, but by the harmony with Him in whom the answers to 
 all our doubts are folded, a harmony with Him brought by obe- 
 dience to Him, our doubts must be enlightened ? ' 
 
 The summer of 1857 was passed with his family in the 
 home on Chauncy Street, Boston. As the first home-coming 
 after so long an absence, we can imagine what it must have 
 been to the family, and especially to the mother. His father 
 met him at the railway station and bore him home in tri- 
 umph. Almost immediately upon his arrival, he hastened 
 to take the long-deferred step, in the language of the Church, 
 of ratifjdng his baptismal vows. He was presented by Eev. 
 Edward L. Drown, and confirmed by the Rt. Rev. Manton 
 Eastburn at St. Mary's Church, Dorchester, Sunday, July 
 12, 1857. The place may have been chosen partly for con- 
 venience, partly because of relations, his vmcle, Mr. John 
 Phillips, residing there. At this time six months had elapsed 
 since his twenty-first birthday. Among his mother's papers 
 found after her death was this memorandum : — 
 
 Sunday, July 12, 1857. 
 
 Tliis lias been a most happy day in which I have witnessed the 
 Confirmation of my dear son Phillips, aged twenty-one, at Dor- 
 chester. 
 
 I will thank God forever that He has answered my lifelong 
 prayers in making him a Christian and His servant in the ministry. 
 
 Oh, how happy tliis makes me ! May God continue to bless 
 my dear boy and make him a burning and shining light in His 
 service. 
 
 ' Tke Influence of Jesus, p. 231. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 1857-1858 
 
 SECOND TEAR AT THE ALEXANDRIA SEMINARY. EXPERT- 
 ENCE OF LIFE IN VIRGINIA. HOME LETTERS 
 
 In the family at home during the summer were his older 
 brother William, engaged in business in Boston, and the three 
 younger children, Frederick, Arthur, and John. George, 
 the third son, was away, living on a farm for the purpose of 
 a scientific as well as practical study of agriculture. Fred- 
 erick, who was the fourth son, was now fifteen, studying in 
 the Latin School, and preparing for Harvard College. Be- 
 tween him and Phillips a romantic affection now began to 
 exist. Phillips interested himself in the Latin School work 
 again, giving to his brother the benefit of his own experience, 
 almost assuming the responsibility of a teacher, as is shown 
 in the many and minute directions he offers and the enthusi- 
 asm he manifests over any victory gained. Arthur and John 
 were known in the family as the "little boys; " they too were 
 at work over their books, with the example to incite them of 
 the older brother. The summer was not an idle one. To do 
 work of some kind was the law of the family. It was the 
 custom of the father when he came home in the evening to 
 ask the boys what they had been doing through the day. 
 Phillips had known what it was to have idle days, when he 
 had nothing to report. On these occasions, as he confesses, 
 he sought to keep out of his father's way. 
 
 But the love of study for its own sake, and for the plea- 
 sure it gave, had now been established. He began another 
 note-book in August, which contains many extracts from his 
 reading. Very interesting these notes are to read, as well 
 as significant of his mental tastes and of his development. 
 The works of Lord Bacon attracted him, seen in the quota- 
 
198 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 tions he makes, some in Latin and some translated, from the 
 "Novum Organum," the "Nova Atlantis," the "De Sapientis 
 Veterum." This latter work was peculiarly suggestive, as 
 falling in with his own tendency to see in the Greek my- 
 thology an allegorical presentation of philosophical truth. 
 He kept up his German by reading Schiller. To his favorite 
 authors, Tennyson and Carlyle, were added Browning and 
 Matthew Arnold, whose poetry he was now reading for the 
 first time and with whom he was greatly captivated. He 
 read Montaigne's "Apology for Eaimond de Sabonde," which 
 left an enduring impression, though he did not accept its 
 principle. Among other books were Charles Kingsley's "The 
 Saint's Tragedy," Mrs. Jameson's "Characteristics of Shake- 
 speare's Women," Colton's "Lacon," then a work much in 
 vogue, and throughout the summer he was browsing over 
 Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture," impressed by Bus- 
 kin's larger generalizations. He quotes this sentence from 
 Ruskin, as one which had given him food for thought : 
 "Landscape seems hardly to have exercised any strong in- 
 fluence as such on any pagan nation or artist." We can 
 trace the influence on his later thought of lines like these 
 from Matthew Arnold's "Obermann:" — 
 
 Neither made man too much a God, 
 Nor God too much a man ; 
 
 or a verse from Tennyson : — 
 
 Oh, the deep mind of daiintless infancy. 
 
 From Bulwer, whom he took for his lighter reading, he made 
 suggestive extracts, finding in his occasional remarks a keen 
 observation of life. 
 
 In everything that he read he found some material for his 
 note-book. As he sat in the accustomed family pew at St. 
 Paul's, listening again to Dr. Vinton, who could hardly have 
 been aware of the thoughts that were stirring in the mind of 
 his youthful auditor, ho heard with a deeper appreciation 
 than when in college. Under date of September 20, 1857, 
 he gives him credit for this comparison, "As a cord is 
 always steadiest when it is stretched to its fullest tension ; " 
 and again, "A truth strikes his mind as a bullet strikes the 
 
^T. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 199 
 
 rock, with no effect but just to flatten and bruise and dull 
 itself." 
 
 Two things are apparent as we review his line of reading, 
 that he kept in view old and standard authors, as having a 
 close relation to a true development, while on the other hand 
 he read the books that every one else was reading, and so 
 kept himself in sympathy and contact with his own time. 
 He does not seem to be reading anything at random or be- 
 cause it lay near his hand, but he knew what was valuable or 
 what it was important that he should possess himself of, as 
 by some subtle instinct of an awakening soul. Whatever he 
 read he appropriated, and made his own by this habit of 
 writing it down for himself. In many of these quotations it 
 almost seems as if he were speaking and not the author, while 
 in other extracts we may trace the formative hints which ulti- 
 mated in their fulness in his preaching. There is visible also 
 a moral purpose, showing that the conscience was touched Ijy 
 his reading no less than the mind. A few of the extracts 
 will illustrate these remarks : — 
 
 When a man moralizes, it is a sign that he has known error. 
 Ends which make the poetry of deeds. (Buhver.) 
 
 You remember, too, the famous Nativity by some Neapolitan 
 painter, who had placed Mt. Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in 
 the background. In these and a hundred other instances, no 
 one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity involves the highest 
 truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented, if once allowed 
 as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every aspect 
 and independent of all time and locality. (Ruskin.) 
 
 All things that are worth doing in art are interesting and in- 
 structive when they are done. There is no law of art that conse- 
 crates dulness. The proof of a thing's being right is that it has 
 power to obey the heart, that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. 
 (Ruskin.) 
 
 And striving to live that our sons and our sons' sons for ages 
 to come might still lead their children reverently to the doors 
 out of which we had been carried to the grave, saying, "Look : this 
 was his house; this was his chamber." (Ruskin.) 
 
 Towards the end of the summer, when preparations were in 
 order for returning to the theological seminary, he made some 
 effort to find another jjlace of study. He had given up the 
 
200 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Philadelphia Divinity School as among the possibilities, but 
 had heard of the Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown, 
 Conn., and wished to know what it was like. He wrote to 
 his friend George Strong, who was somewhere in Connecti- 
 cut, to meet him at the hotel, or if there were none, at the 
 town pump, in Middletown, for the purpose of reconnoitring 
 the opportunities the school afforded. The project came 
 to nothing. He had already struck root in Virginia, and 
 had formed friendshijjs too valuable to be sacrificed. So in 
 the fall of 1857 to Virginia he returned. His summer at 
 home had given him a deeper appreciation of its sacred ties. 
 He continued to write regularly as before, and sometimes 
 several letters a week, to father or mother, or to his brother 
 William, — letters which indicate the strength of the home- 
 consciousness and its prominence in his mind. The year 
 1857 was one of financial depression and distress, the most 
 severe trial to business interests the country had known. 
 His father felt the strain, as is shown by his frequent allu- 
 sions to the subject in his letters to his son. 
 
 Theological Seminary, Wednesday evening, October, 1857. 
 
 Dear Father, — I will write a few lines to-night just to say 
 that I am well, for there really isn't anything else to say. We 
 are away out of the world here, and only accidentally now and 
 then get hold of a newspaper to let us know that everybody is 
 failing all around. I haven't seen Charles Brooks & Co. an- 
 nounced yet. Please let me know when you go, for it would be 
 a little startling to see the first announcement of it in the "Inde- 
 pendent's " list. I see the Boston hanks have suspended. I got a 
 letter from William last night, but he was most wonderfully chary 
 of all news of the crisis. But it was a very interesting letter, and 
 please tell him he shall hear from me as soon as I feel equal to 
 writing him an answer worthy of it. I wrote a long letter to 
 George the other day. When do you expect him home? We 
 have just been having a quiet private tea, four of us, up in Dr. 
 Eichards's room. I imagine Mother would have laughed some, and 
 perhaps been shocked a little, at the primitiveness of some of our 
 arrangements. 
 
 I assure you, Father, that when I began this letter I had no 
 mercenai-y views. But Dr. Richards has just been in in great doubt 
 how in the present state of things to send on the subscription price 
 
^T. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 201 
 
 for the new "Atlantic Monthly" for our reading room. May 
 I ask you to subscribe (or get William to) for it at Phillips & 
 Sampson's, and consider the amount remitted to me. I went 
 
 this afternoon to call on Miss , though I hesitated a little, as 
 
 her father, of the house of & Co., has just failed for be- 
 tween $200,000 and $300,000. I understand that he hasn't 
 really lost much though, having handed over the greater part of 
 
 his property to some time before. Shabby ! It is snapping 
 
 cold here to-day. Winter is right on us. Tell William the 
 raglan makes a decided sensation on King Street, Alexandria. 
 . . . Much love to all. 
 
 Your affectionate son, Phillips. 
 
 You can hardly imagine how disagreeable it is to get back 
 again among Southern men after New England. Shopkeepers, 
 railroad men, omnibus drivers, everybody, is above his business 
 and takes your ticket or sells you your goods as a personal 
 favor. 
 
 Friday, November 20, 1857. 
 Deae William, — ... I took the liberty of addressing to 
 you a few words in father's letter the other day on a subject 
 which I thought might possess a melancholy interest, the engage- 
 ment of Miss . I fear it is an overtrue tale. Read a little 
 
 Tennyson and get over it the best you can. We have had snow 
 here. What do you think of that for us, the balmy ? To-day it 
 is clear, bright, and cold as one could wish. Night before last 
 Thalberg, Vieuxtemps, and Max Strakosch astonished the people 
 of Alexandria with a concert. We had the "Carnival of Venice " 
 and "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town" and "Coming thro' the 
 Eye " in the old style, in a little garret-looking hall on Cameron 
 Street, where all the fashion and intelligence ... of the dead 
 little town were assembled. I walked six miles, three there and 
 three back, and was fully repaid. "The season " in Virginia is in 
 full blast now. I have been to one big party and two little ones ; 
 each only equalled in stupidity by the other. What should you 
 think of the prettiest young lady in Fairfax Co. congratulating 
 you upon your name and telling you that P. S. Brooks, the un- 
 justifiable homicide, was her ideal of a man? A little tough per- 
 haps ! . . . Tell our brother G. that if I ever owed him a debt 
 of gratitude which it would be presumptuous to hope ever to pay 
 it was when he forgot (?) to fulfil his promise, and let me know 
 of our magnificent cousin's presence in Washington. It saved me 
 an expenditure of care and cash which it makes me shudder to 
 contemplate. ... I went to see Miss , but she was out. 
 
io2 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 By the way, she is quite the belle this winter, and has cultivated 
 ringlets during the summer which make her look prettier than 
 ever. They give a reception there every Thursday night with 
 "babble and revel and wine" (so to speak), which is attended 
 by all the (Alex.) world, including of course your most obedient. 
 ... I am happy to infer from sundry allusions of our brothers 
 that the Tennyson fever still continues, with some symptoms also 
 of the Browning distemper. I quite pride myself on my convert. 
 Suppose you proceed and try your hand on George. Have you read 
 the first number of Thackeray's new novel, "The Virginians"? 
 It opens well, but I am sorry he has put it a hundred years ago, 
 and sorrier still that he has located it in this corner of the world. 
 He seems to have been studying up on Virginia, and has all the 
 old families, the Washingtons and Randolphs and Fairfaxes, in 
 the first number. How capital Lowell's verses are in the "Atlan- 
 tic." I am still in doubt whether to go to Cincinnati at Christ- 
 mas. Dr. Richards's eyes have cut him o£E from work, and I 
 shouldn't wonder if he went home within a week. So that if I 
 go I shall go on with Strong. But I don't believe I shall go at 
 all. 1 have a sort of half invitation, which I suppose I could 
 easily ripen into a whole one, to spend the vacation at the guber- 
 natorial mansion in Richmond. 
 
 Monday, December 7, 1857. 
 Dear Father, — I received a line from you in William's let- 
 ter of Saturday and also a few words from Mother. Much obliged 
 for William's letter. Tell him I will answer it one of these days. 
 I had given up before I got yours all thoughts of spending Christ- 
 mas anywhere excei)t just here, and shall pick a quiet bone very 
 contentedly with Mrs. Bland. Dr. Richards has gone home, and 
 Strong is going in aliout two weeks, but I have definitely declined 
 his invitation. As to Governor Wise, I don't think it is hardly 
 safe to trust myself much farther into the State of Virginia after 
 the last article in the last number of the "Atlantic." But really 
 I don't feel as if I could spare the time to be away even if nothing 
 else prevented. So here I stick. Everything here goes on qui- 
 etly. Congress meets, I believe, to-day, though considering that 
 it is only eight miles off, I feel quite ashamed of knowing so lit- 
 tle of what is going on in Washington. I haven't been up there 
 for six weeks. I am sorry that you have given up your idea of a 
 visit there this winter, but suppose I must submit with the best 
 grace I can to what is making everybody submit just now. Has 
 
 Mr. really swindled ? Alexandria stuck-upiness has had to 
 
 give in to the times, and they take one dollar bills (when they can 
 
^T. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 203 
 
 get them) without regard to the law. They have also issued ones, 
 twos, and threes, and also sixes, sevens, eights, etc., dating them 
 ten yeai's back to avoid the laws which have been passed within 
 that time. . . . 
 
 Your affectionate son, Phillips Brooks. 
 
 December 17, 1857, 
 
 Dear Father, — • I received your letter last night, and you will 
 no doubt be inclined to lay it to some selfish motives on my part 
 that I answer it so punctually. Well, perhaps you are right, for 
 I must own that I am in want of a little money and should be 
 obliged greatly if you could send me a few dollars. I know that at 
 twenty-two I ought to be earning it myself, but it is n't my fault 
 that I am twenty-two, however much the other part may be. I 
 am getting very economical. You see I have given up expensive 
 paper, and I wear patched shoes and old clothes in a style most 
 admirably befitting my income. Just now I am rather on the 
 sick list, having been laid up a day or two with a sort of neuralgia 
 that has tied my face up in a hard knot and tucked the ends in in 
 a most vexatious style. I am getting much better, however, and 
 except for a good deal of weakness and general good-for-nothing- 
 ness, am pretty near myself again. Vacation begins next week, 
 and then I shall have time enough to recruit. . . . The "Atlan- 
 tic, " with its belligerent article, reached here without being inter- 
 cepted, and I put it into the Reading-Room with a good deal of 
 curiosity as to what would come of it. In a day or two it was 
 missing, removed, no doubt, by some of our liberal-minded Southern 
 friends. I had the satisfaction of inquiring for it in jxiblic, but 
 so far it has not been heard from. It was a good article, and it 
 seems to me it was well to publish it, for as matters are now, 
 everybody has got to take his place on one side or the other of the 
 great question, and it is all nonsense to pretend to be neutral about 
 it. It is amusing to see how the Southern weathercock has turned 
 
 on Douglas. Miss told me, "What a pity that he has joined 
 
 the Black RejJublicans. " Evidently her views were not very clear 
 as to what the B. R. were or what Mr. Douglas had done. I 
 have not been to Washington yet, and shall have to wait now for 
 your money before I have a look at the wise body. 
 
 Your affectionate son, P. B. 
 
 Friday, December 18, 1857. 
 Dear William, — As I still continue to be laid up more or 
 less, and my eyes hinder me from reading, I don't know that I can 
 employ a lialf an hour better than by writing a little to you, bu*" 
 
204 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 you must excuse the looks, tor I shall have to write the greater 
 part without looking on. I have had a good deal of trouble 
 with my eyes this term, and have feared now and then that they 
 would fail me altogether. Just now I am shut off from them 
 almost entirely, and you can imagine how stupid it is. Otherwise 
 everything here is just as it has always been. Virginia gets no 
 more prosperous and if possible a little more wretched every day. 
 Just now they have patrols out to look after unruly slaves, which 
 it seems is an annual custom about Christmas time, — a pleasant 
 little way of keeping up the festival. I think if you had lived 
 here for one year you would approve as heartily as I do of the 
 capital anti-slavery article in the last "Atlantic." I wonder wlio 
 wrote it. Our fire-eating friends here apparently find it a hard 
 morsel to digest. Much obliged to you for Douglas's speech; 
 there is no knowing but there may be some little good in him 
 yet. I got last night a paper of December 2. I am not par- 
 ticular to keep very close up with the times, but I like just to be 
 within a week or so. . . . 
 
 A few glimpses into the family circle where these letters 
 were eagerly welcomed will show more clearly than we have 
 yet seen those formative influences in the life of Phillips 
 Brooks which were more potent than any others. The father 
 and the mother appear in the numerous letters written to 
 Phillips in Virginia to be deeply concerned that the older 
 boys, who are now making their start in life, should be gov- 
 erned by high principle, by sincere devotion to the highest 
 ideals of conduct. This parental anxiety and sense of re- 
 sponsibility followed Phillips in every letter he received from 
 home. It was not taken for granted that because he was 
 studying for the ministry he had outgrown the necessity of 
 a father's care or the saving influence of a mother's love. 
 He was still a child, to be watched over and warned and 
 stimulated to greater exertion. At this time WiUiam, the 
 older son, was, as has been said, engaged in business, and the 
 three younger children were doing well at school, diligent in 
 study and ambitious to excel. The chief anxiety was felt 
 regarding George, the third son. He had just returned 
 from a summer experiment at farming, intending to pass the 
 winter at home. Both father and mother were very fond of 
 George, as were all his brothers. He was a manly fellow, 
 
MT. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 205 
 
 singularly attractive, good company at home, but there was in 
 his case, as in Phillips's, some hitch in his inner experience. 
 He had not yet gone forward for confirmation and manifested 
 no interest in religion. Phillips is appealed to to exert his 
 influence upon him, and to write to him, in hopes that George 
 will be moved by his appeals. Here are a few extracts from 
 his mother's letters during those autumn months of 1857 : — 
 
 October 20, 1857. 
 My dbAB Philly, — I am thinking of you continually and we 
 cannot be done missing you, and it is so cheering to get news of 
 you. I wish I could look into your room and see if you look com- 
 fortable, and how you have arranged your clothes. ... I hope 
 you will find some pleasant friends among the new students. Also 
 I hope you will improve this pleasant weather to walk a good deal 
 and enjoy this beautiful weather. . . . Have you written to 
 Georgey since you left us ? . . . I have the good news to tell 
 you that he is intending to come home soon. . . . The thought 
 of having him at home is delightful, and he seems very happy at 
 the thought of seeing us again. Father seems very glad to get 
 him home again so soon. . . . Write again soon, and tell us all 
 about yourself, and what you are doing this year in your studies. 
 You don't know how much we think and talk of you, and desire 
 your well-doing in every respect. Keep very near to your Sav- 
 iour, dear Philly, and remember the sacred vows that are upon 
 you, and you will surely prosper. Good-night, my dear Philly, 
 and pleasant dreams. Whether waking or sleeping, never forget 
 
 Your ever loving Mother. 
 
 The father writes these two letters : — 
 
 October 27, 1857. 
 My dear Son, — ... A letter from George to-day mentions 
 receiving one from you which he seems very thankful for. I hope 
 you have not forgotten my request about writing to him and your 
 example and influence upon him. . . . Your request about the 
 magazine I have cheerfully complied with. [The reference is to the 
 first issue of the "Atlantic Monthly," which was an Important 
 event in the Brooks household.] It is beautifully printed. . . . 
 Let me know your opinion of it. . . . You ask about the "times." 
 Bad enough, no improvement, I am sorry to say, and I cannot 
 see a prospect of any before spring. . . . Will has been edified 
 to-day listening to Caleb Gushing at Faneuil Hall expounding De- 
 mocracy and upholding the administration and Southern principles 
 
2o6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 and doctrines. Election comes off next Tuesday, and did I not 
 consider it the indispensable duty of every citizen to vote, I should 
 dodge the question. . . . Write often, and remember you are 
 never for a moment forgotten in the family circle. Improve your 
 time faithfully in your noble calling, and that you may improve 
 is the constant prayer of your 
 
 Affectionate father. 
 
 Boston, Wednesday, November 4, 1857. 
 
 Deak Phillips, — At my desk in Dock Square I vrill remind 
 you by a letter of home, and just let you know what we are about 
 and what I know you will be glad to hear. I shall let William 
 tell you of the election yesterday. It was Banks all over, all 
 through, and all round. ... I was much inclined to throw away 
 my vote, but like a good citizen I went to the polls and voted for 
 the unsuccessful candidate, which was in fact throwing away my 
 vote. So much for politics, poor business in the most successful 
 times. 
 
 Mother has been at her good deeds for you to-day, making up 
 a sweet package to send by George Sampson. . . . He offered to 
 take anything for you, and Mother has taken up with it. You 
 have a good Mother, Phillips ; value her while you have her, and 
 God grant you may never feel the want of one. 
 
 It is evident from the following j'^ssage of the same letter 
 that the father did not encourage Phillips in his dissatisfac- 
 tion with the Virginia seminary. He was more contented 
 there in his second year, but the father thinks it necessary 
 to give him some advice upon the point. 
 
 I also hope you are enjoying your studies and your situation 
 and your advantages. Although perhaps you would change them 
 somewhat, still they are great, and I want you to feel that you 
 ought to make the most of them. I am glad you find some more 
 agreeable companions, and that you still enjoy the companionship 
 of Richards and Strong. 
 
 Presume you received the magazine [the "Atlantic Monthly "] 
 from here. It is variously criticised, as you see in the papers. 
 For myself I am disappointed with it ; it was not up to the mark. 
 
 The package of sweet things was not sent after all. The 
 mother took it to Joy Street, hut George Sampson had not 
 room for it in his trunk. Her labor of love was lost, and 
 she writes, "You could not have felt half so disappointed as 
 
mr. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 207 
 
 I did." The mother, also, it will be seen, sympathized more 
 deeply with her son in his dissatisfaction at the seminary 
 than did his father. 
 
 November 12, 1857. 
 
 Mr DEAREST Phillips, — ... I would give a good deal that 
 you were here with Georgey. We are indeed glad to welcome 
 him home again, and he is somewhat petted, I confess, and if you 
 were here you should be petted too. He has altered very little and 
 is as clever as ever. . . . The boys are doing very well in their 
 school. Fred stands at the head of his division, Arthur second, 
 and William is faithful in drilling Master John, who gets along 
 nicely. 
 
 How much I would give to look in upon you, Philly ! We feel 
 very sorry that you do not find things improved upon last year. 
 I am sure I don't see what can be done to mend matters. I 
 don't see what the professors can mean by allowing things to be 
 in such a dronish state. ... I wish you would think, Philly, to 
 date your letters ; mine had no date whatever. . . . Oh, I am so 
 sorry you did not get that box. . . . Do write soon, for we are 
 always longing to hear from you. Good-by, dear Philly; take 
 good care of yourself, get along as well as you can, and never for- 
 get that your very best friend is 
 
 Your devoted Mother. 
 
 These next extracts from the father's letters refer to his 
 son's twenty-second birthday, and also touch upon practical 
 points, — the son's sensitiveness in asking for money and the 
 critical situation in the South, of which Phillips had given 
 a hint in his account of the reception accorded to the new 
 "Atlantic Monthly " in the Virginia seminary: — • 
 
 Boston, December 12, 1857. 
 . . . Without recurring to my family genealogy I think that 
 I may assume that to-morrow is your birthday. How fast they 
 come ; and the older you grow, my dear son, the faster they will 
 flee along. The best present that we can give you is the wish 
 that every succeeding one may be happier than its predecessors. 
 Improve them all, that they may be looked back upon as mile- 
 stones in your journey that you have passed safely and pleasantly. 
 You will soon be taking your station, and God grant that station 
 may be one of eminence and to be well filled, be it ever so high. 
 Our hopes and good wishes are with you, my son, and let them all 
 be more than realized. I know you will strive to gratify us. 
 
ao8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 To-morrow is the Sabbath, and we shall think much of you. 
 Your birthday was Sunday, I well recollect. 
 
 BosTOjr, December 21, 1857. 
 . . . Your request for money was very reasonable, and I wish 
 you would not feel so bad about asking when you want. I should 
 feel better pleased if you would tell how much, for I never know 
 how much to send. I think you have grown very economical, not 
 that I think you were ever extravagant. ... I note your re- 
 marks on politics, etc. All very well to keep posted on such 
 matters, but I want you to be aware (for I am afraid you are not) 
 of the importance of acting discreetly on all matters between the 
 North and the South, remembering it is a delicate subject on both 
 sides. I do not think it was wise or discreet in the "Atlan- 
 tic Monthly " to publish such an article in such a magazine, but 
 they must abide by the result. Standing here on Northern soil, 
 it is all well enough, but I can see how the South would view it, 
 and I wish to impress it earnestly upon you not to enter into the 
 discussion there. It can do you no good, and may do you much 
 harm, if not positive evil. You know I have expressed this be- 
 fore, but the tenor of your letter impresses me with the idea that 
 you are too regardless of consequences. ... It was a very small 
 and despicable act to remove the magazine from the room, and 
 shows the weakness of their cause; but after the fact was well 
 known, there I should leave it in a Christian spirit, and I believe 
 it would do them more harm than good. / sluill depend 07i your 
 axt'uig discreetly and cautiously in the matter. 
 
 A great tide of love was sweeping through the mother's 
 soul as she wrote the letter that follows. Her power of lov- 
 ing, deep and strong and enduring, constituted one element 
 of her greatness, and this characteristic descended to her son, 
 to be manifest when the time had come. 
 
 Boston, December 19, Satm'day evemog. 
 My very dear Child, — I have stolen away from the parlor, 
 and the girls and the boys, and the closing Saturday night cares, 
 into the nursery to write to you ; to send you my wishes for a 
 happy Christmas, and the enclosed ten dollars for a Christmas 
 present, and I sincerely wish it was in my power to double it. 
 You must take it as a gift of love from your mother, who loves 
 you ten thousand times more than she can ever tell you, or than 
 you can ever know. As Christmas Day returns again I shall think 
 very much of the pleasant one I spent with you last year, and 
 
/ET. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 209 
 
 especially of the happiness and gratitude I felt on first taking com- 
 munion with you. Oh, it was a happy day, and my heart was 
 full of gratitude that I had lived to see my child confess his Sav- 
 iour before men. God grant that as long as life shall last, he 
 may be his faithful disciple and devoted servant. And althougli 
 we shall not be with you this year, Philly, I want you to e,njoij 
 the day, and think of us, and therefore I want you for my sake 
 to go into Washington to church, and, oh, when you take commun- 
 ion, remember your mother. And after church I want you to 
 go to Willard's or sonieivhere, and get a good Christmas dinner, 
 with some of my prese?it, and then when the children are enjoying 
 their 7'oast turkey, they can think that Philly has some too. Now, 
 Philly, won't you do all this /or me? — and I shall think of you 
 on that day as doing it, and enjoying a part of my present. We 
 shall think and talk much of you on that day, and miss you, and 
 long to have you with us, and I know you will think of us. 
 
 I thank you a thousand times for the letter I received from you 
 this week, and how can you say there is nothing in it, when it is 
 full of kind words to me? 
 
 I have just written as far as this, and William has brought in 
 a letter from you to your father, saying you have been sick, and 
 are in need of money. So I am very glad to send you my gift, 
 and father will send you some more; and I want you to use my 
 sum for any little thing you may need if you are not well ; and I 
 would get some apples to keep in your room. I don't want you 
 to feel so badly as you seem to feel about asking for money when 
 you need it ; for we know you are very prudent, and grow more so, 
 and that you of course inust have it ; and we should feel very anx- 
 ious if we thought you were without any so far away from us. 
 So do always let us know, without feeling bad, whenever you need 
 it, won't you? And it troubles me very much to think you have 
 been sick, and perhaps are so now, and you have not had anybody 
 to take care of you. Oh, if I could have been there. Was it 
 from a bad tooth? if so I would have it taken out. Haven't you 
 suffered dreadfully ? Do take care of yourself, as you say, in the 
 vacation, and recruit. I hope you have not had rheumatism. I 
 think you had better put on your thick winter underwaists and 
 socks, and all your thick things. Do take care of yourself, and 
 depend on it I think a great deal about you. . . . Philly, I will 
 say how much you have improved in your character and in your 
 letters the last year. We both notice it, and I believe you will 
 be a blessing and honor to us in our future years. May you be a 
 faithful laborer in Christ's vineyard, and then we shall feel that 
 all the money you have ever had has been ivell invested. 
 
2IO PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 George says you must write to him in your vacation. Does it 
 begin on Monday, and how long ? And now, Philly, be sure and 
 do as I request on Chi'istmas Day, and I hoj^e you '11 enjoy your 
 church and your dinner, and we shall think of you. And write 
 soon and tell us if you get this safely, and how you do, and all 
 about your Christmas. And now, my dear child, good-night, with 
 many kind wishes for a happy one, from your dear, devoted 
 
 Mother. 
 
 To this, and to the letter from his father, Phillips wrote in 
 reply, deeply moved, and for once yielding his profound and 
 almost invincible reserve. He explains why it is he has not 
 yet spoken the words his parents must have long yearned to 
 hear, but he can write when he cannot speak. His exjjla- 
 nation throws light upon a feature of his character which to 
 the last baffled his friends : — 
 
 Christmas Eve, 1857. 
 
 Deab Father (and Mother, too, for the mail to-night has 
 brought so much to thank you both for that this note must be a 
 joint affair), — First there is the composite letter of Saturday, 
 enclosing your Christmas presents, which the post office seems to 
 have delayed so as to reach me just in time. I shan't begin to 
 thank you both for your kindness, for in my utter inability to say 
 how much I feel it I should never know where to stop. It is 
 only a piece of the long series of goodnesses that I have been 
 grateful or ungrateful for, for the last twenty-two years. If I 
 ever can do anything to give pleasure or credit to you, a big part 
 of the gratification to myself will be in feeling that you are grati- 
 fied, and are so adding to your other kindnesses that of taking 
 my own efforts to help and improve myself as payment for your 
 long labor to help and improve me. You may have thought it 
 a little strange now and then that I haven't said this by word of 
 mouth, but the truth is I can write what I feel deeply much 
 easier and better than I can say it ; but the feeling, I at least 
 know, is none the less deep for that. Let this explain a great 
 deal of what you may have fancied is coldness in all my life, and 
 more particularly in my new profession. In truth I do thank you 
 sincerely for your holiday remembrances, and they will certainly 
 make Christmas a great deal merrier to me. 
 
 Then next, there is another letter from Mother with a great 
 deal of anxiety about my eyes. They have troubled me a great 
 deal and do so still, though not quite so much. I don't know- 
 just what to lay it to, perliaps hard work, perhaps not, but you 
 
^T. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 211 
 
 may depend on my being very careful of them, and doing and 
 sparing them all that I can see to be necessary. I would like 
 much to follow your suggestion about Christmas in Washington, 
 but before I got your letter I had accepted the kind invitation of 
 a lady here to see a real old-fashioned Virginia Christmas at her 
 house, and shall have to keep my engagement. I am rather 
 doubtful how I shall enjoy it, but it will do no harm to try. You 
 shall have the result. My face trouble is all gone, and I am as 
 chipper as a bird. Vacation works off slowly and pleasantly. 
 There is hardly anybody here, and I see nothing of those that 
 are, keeping clear of Alexandria and pretty close to my room. 
 So you needn't worry about my state, mentally or bodily. Of 
 course pecuniarily now I am rolling in luxury. It is rather late 
 for "Merry Christmas," but the happiest of Happy New Years to 
 all. Tell George the way he gets off from writing letters in di- 
 recting other people's is shabby. Once more, with many thanks 
 for your kind and welcome gifts, I am 
 
 Your affectionate son, Phillips. 
 
 This letter has been endorsed in his mother's handwriting, 
 "A dear letter. Mother." His father at once replied: — 
 
 December 30, 1857. 
 
 Deak Phillips, — ... I will say a few words in acknow- 
 ledgment of your very acceptable letter of this week, written on 
 Christmas Eve. We were much pleased with it. . . . You were 
 not forgotten on Christmas Day, I assure you, and we truly wished 
 you had been amongst us. . . . Dr. Vinton gave an excellent 
 discourse, and the day being pleasant but cold, we had a very 
 large audience, not a vacant seat to be seen. We wanted you at 
 the Communion Table with us. . . . Your Mother has gone this 
 afternoon to the exhibition of the Chauncy Hall School to please 
 John. I looked in there as I came along, and found the Tremont 
 Temple crowded, and there was Jack on the front settee with his 
 feet on the front bar, as contentedly listening to the speaking as 
 you can imagine. It has been a great time for him, and he put 
 in it heart and soul, as much as some Latin School boys I have 
 seen when iSocrates was the theme. ^ . . . 
 
 I have scratched this in haste after the labors of the day, but 
 if it serves to remind you of the love and affection of your Fa- 
 ther, the end is accomplished. 
 
 ^ A reference to his graduation from the Latin School, when he took Soi;ratL3 
 as the subject of his orati<ni. 
 
212 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 All at home send love, and I wish you could have seen how 
 delighted your Mother was with your last letter. 
 
 Yours affectionately, W. G. B. 
 
 How his mother felt on reading the letter of Phillips which 
 broke the long reserve is seen in her reply : — 
 
 January 11, 1858. 
 My dear Phillt, — I thank you for that letter ; it is a trea- 
 sure to me, it is so full of love and kindness. It tells us all we 
 want to know, that you realize your parents' deep interest in you, 
 and that you promise us the richest reward you can give us, — • 
 tliat of bringing us honor in after life. And also you have con- 
 vinced us that you have a warm and kind heart, and that your 
 heart is in your profession. Not that I have ever doubted it, for 
 I have always felt that you are too sincere and true-hearted to 
 dare undertake so holy a calling except with your whole heart ; 
 but I 've sometimes wished you would make it doubly sure to me 
 by assuring me of it yourself, and I 've felt you owed it to your- 
 self to do so. But, my dear Philly, this letter satisfies me 
 entirely on that point, and I cannot tell you the delight it gives 
 us. Father almost shed tears as he read it. 
 
 The last half of the second year at the seminary presents 
 no incidents, and the letters which have been preserved are 
 few. Complaints about the situation are not so strenuous as 
 at first. He was working hard, determined that the time 
 should be fruitful in some result. Washington had besrun to 
 lose its charm, though he visits it occasionally and was pre- 
 sent to hear Douglas make his famous speech in Congress. 
 Hon. Edward Everett, his kinsman, was at this time lectur- 
 ing through the country, everywhere making an impression 
 by his oratory, but Phillips failed to hear him when he came 
 to Washington. Mr. Everett was not in sympathy with the 
 New England abolitionists, a reason for the warm welcome 
 given him in the South, as for the coldness which it bred to- 
 wards him in his native State. The letters from home are 
 at this time more interesting than those which Phillips sends 
 in return. His father's in particular are characterized by 
 the concrete interest with which all life, secular and religious, 
 was invested in his eyes, while his mother's are full of the 
 inexpressible love and yearning, repeating and reiterating 
 
^T. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 213 
 
 the one great burden of her soul. The spring of 1858 wit- 
 nessed all over the country a mysterious religious awakening, 
 only to be compared in depth and extent with the Great 
 Awakening of the eighteenth century. It did not originate 
 with the working of any machinery which revivalists use, but 
 rather with the Spirit, like the wind that bloweth, coming 
 and going at its pleasure. Every church felt the effect of 
 the deep religious interest spreading as by a silent contagion. 
 It was felt at Alexandria in the seminary, as it was at St. 
 Paul's Church in Boston. There had been some strain in 
 the relations between Dr. Vinton and his parish, but it was 
 overcome by the prevailing religious mood of the hour, and 
 he had never been so powerful in the pulpit. Every after- 
 noon during Lent the church was filled with attentive lis- 
 teners. But George Brooks was not yet among those who 
 felt the religious impression. Both the father and the mother 
 lament his indifEerence, while they admire his manliness and 
 succumb to his attractions. For the rest, his mother enu- 
 merates with pride how the younger boys are winning honors 
 in their respective positions at school. "You must not think 
 I 'm proud, Philly, but it is only the gladness of a mother's 
 heart to see her children promising as they grow into men." 
 The father writes January 8, 1858, and his advice about the 
 seminary was admirable : — 
 
 Remember what I have often told you about the seminary that 
 after all, dull as it is, the most depends on your individual exer- 
 tions, and these I know never will be allowed to rust with you. 
 I wish other things were equal, and that you found it more plea- 
 sant and congenial. 
 
 The lecture season has not been so successful as usual, I am 
 told ; it has been overdone ; as an instance, the Lowell lecttires do 
 not draw for tickets now. If Mr. Everett should be in your 
 vicinity, you had better go and see and hear him. We have be- 
 gun to read Livingstone's Travels in Africa at the evening table. 
 . . . Do you go to Washington much? a rowdy place I should 
 not advise visiting much! What a disgraceful drunken scrape 
 that was last week among them ! 
 
 One incident which his father records may be mentioned 
 for the interest it roused in the family, in which Phillips 
 
214 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 shared. "I have been upon some business to-day that I 
 thought you would be glad to avail yourself of when you 
 returned, ■ — this is purchasing a share in the Boston Athe- 
 naeum. I have long wanted one for myself and all you chil- 
 dren as you grow up, and hope you will enjoy it." 
 
 The letters from home meant much to the absent student, 
 more perhaps than he fully realized at the time. They riv- 
 eted more strongly the ties which bound him to it ; they kept 
 his heart young and fresh, and open to all good influences. 
 Take these words from a letter of his mother's, written in 
 the early part of the year 1858, which might be paralleled in 
 almost any letter she wrote : — 
 
 My deakest Philly, — I perfectly long to see you, and I 
 must write you a line to tell you so. Sometimes I get to thinking 
 so much of you it seems as if I could not wait till next June before 
 I lay eyes on you again. But the time will soon pass, and we shall 
 soon l)egin to count the weeks instead of the months. In the 
 meantime be sure you are not forgotten. We talk about you, and 
 remember you at table and in the evenings, and especially when- 
 ever we go into your chaniber, which has all your pictures and 
 fixings just as you left it. I never enter it without thinking of 
 you. 
 
 And again, the father regrets that Phillips could not have 
 been with the family on the last Sunday evening when the 
 boys recited hymns. This was a beautiful custom, which 
 called from each one of the children the learning of a new 
 hymn every Sunday, and its recital before the assembled 
 family. In a little book carefully kept by the father, there 
 was a record of the hymns each child had learned, beginning 
 with William, who had the advantage of age, and had learned 
 the greatest number, followed by Phillips, who came next, 
 and the record tapering down with the diminishing years, 
 until John is reached, with a comparatively small number at 
 his disposal. Most of them were from the old edition of 
 the Prayer Book, then bound up with a metrical selection 
 of Psalms and a collection of two hundred and twelve hymns. 
 These hymns Phillips carried in his mind as so much mental 
 and spiritual furniture, or as germs of thought; they often 
 
^T. 21-22] LIFE IN VIRGINIA 215 
 
 reappeared in his sermons, as he became aware of some 
 deeper meaning in the old familiar lines. 
 
 The political situation in the spring of 1858 was full of 
 excitement, indicating that the trend of sentiment in the 
 country was against Buchanan's administration. The ques- 
 tion was before Congress whether Kansas should be admitted 
 as a state into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution, 
 so called from the place where it had been drawn up, — a con- 
 stitution which recognized slavery, and had never been sub- 
 mitted to the people of the Territory. It was a great event 
 when Mr. Douglas, the rival of Mr. Lincoln, committed him- 
 self by a speech against the proposal to adopt this constitu- 
 tion : — 
 
 Tuesday morning, March 23, 1858. 
 
 My dear Father, — I have just returned from Washington, 
 where I spent the greater part of last night, from seven till 
 eleven, standing on a very little bench in a very large crowd, lis- 
 tening to Douglas's anti-Lecompton speech in the Senate. You 
 have seen it, I suppose, in the papers. It wasn't a very great 
 speech, hut as I had never heard him I was glad to have the 
 opportunity. I never saw such a crowd before. It was almost 
 impossible to get in, and once in, it was utterly out of the ques- 
 tion to get out again. Toombs replied in a fiery speech. 
 
 Mr. Everett was lecturing in Alexandria last week, and every- 
 body is admiring him. I did not hear him. 
 
 We have been having spring and summer weather, but to-day 
 winter is back again, with snow and cold. The flowers are out in 
 the woods. 
 
 The following letter to Mr. George C. Sawyer reverts to 
 the failure in the Latin School, but no longer with the sense 
 of soreness. It is a satisfaction to get this clear statement 
 of his own in regard to the ideal of a teacher : — 
 
 March 28, 1858. 
 Dear Top, — It was a pleasant surprise for me a day or two 
 ago to see your once familiar handwriting on a letter again, of 
 which (the handwriting, not the letter) excuse my sayhig that I 
 can't see that it improves much with accumulating years and 
 honors. So you are to be the Cato of New York Utica, and come 
 tlie yjse dixit to Boys 80, Girls 40, to say notlung of sulwlued 
 ushers and meek-eyed female assistants cowering at the eye of the 
 
2i6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Principal. I wish you success with all my heart. My own fail- 
 ures in teaching school gave me at least some idea of what kind 
 of work it was, and while I left it with a firm conviction that it 
 was just the wrong thing for me, I had a feeling that somewhere 
 in space there must be an ideal schoolmaster, cut out to the pat- 
 tern of the teacher's chair, who would like teaching and whom 
 teaching would like, my own difficulty having been rather in this 
 very last. If you are the happy man who has thus found his 
 place, then go ahead, and I wish you all good luck. If perchance 
 there be a good parish in Utica, with intelligent people, and plenty 
 of work to do, and a present need of a young clergyman who can 
 live on nothing-a-year-and-find-himself, prithee let me know. 
 
 Meanwhile another year is quietly slipjjing through my fingers 
 here, and I am just now dolefully trying to catch the end and tie 
 a knot in it, so that it shall not slip away entirely. I get up 
 every morning and read theology all day, and go to bed to get up 
 and read, and so on again the next day. It is a good place to 
 fMss time, and a pretty good place to sjiend it, getting a fair 
 though not exorbitant amount for your money. . . . What' a 
 great success the "Atlantic " is! New books are scarce. Plenty 
 to hear, such as it is, in Washington, but a night or two in the 
 crowded Senate Chamber have quenched my longing for that sort 
 of thing, and I stay at home pretty commendably now. We have 
 had an easy winter of it ; one or two days as cold as human 
 charity, but mostly mild and pleasant. Excuse this rambling 
 scrawl ; say the proper thing to anybody who cares for me, and 
 now you have found the way, do write soon again. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 1857-1858 
 
 THE INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION, THE MORAL IDEAL, 
 CONVERSION. EXTRACTS FROM HIS NOTE-BOOK 
 
 From this sketch of Brooks's life during his second year iu 
 the seminary we turn to his intellectual activity. The mate- 
 rials for forming a judgment are so abundant as to defy any 
 eifort to make the picture complete. Out of all the years of 
 his life, this second year at Alexandria stands forth supreme. 
 In no other year did he receive so much from the world, 
 from books, from life, or from himself; in no other year did 
 he leave so marvellous a record of his genius. The stamp of 
 maturity and finality is on his work. It was work that ho 
 was doing for himself with no other guide than his divinely 
 inspired instinct. He had come to the full possession of 
 himseK in the greatness of his power. He was still destined 
 to grow and expand, but every germ and principle of the 
 later expansion is here revealed. 
 
 Before trying to give some conception of his intellectual 
 activity, if we may call it intellectual purely when heart and 
 will were intensely alive and in organic fusion with the rea- 
 son, it is important and necessary to premise that he did the 
 required work of the classroom in a conscientious spirit, so 
 as to win the approbation of his teachers. It is difficult to 
 see how he accomplished it, when he was living at the same 
 time in another world of his own, where his genius was ran- 
 ging far and wide beyond the imagination of his associates. 
 But he did accomplish it, reading with his class selected parts 
 of the Old Testament in Hebrew, though never with any en- 
 thusiasm for the language, the Greek New Testament, Eccle- 
 siastical History, and Systematic Theology. This was the 
 
2i8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 routine of study wliicli constituted a background for the pic- 
 ture of his development, most important surely, as he well 
 understood ; but it was also that which he received in com- 
 mon with others, and calls for no further comment. 
 
 It may serve to give some conception of the extensiveness 
 of his original work if we furnish a list of the books he was 
 reading, with extracts from which he enriched his journal. 
 In later years, when he carried the heavy pressure of profes- 
 sional life, there was no opportunity to record his reading or 
 its results. This constitutes another reason for giving with 
 some detail the nature of the work he was doing now. 
 Among the Greek books which he not only read, but studied, 
 were: Plato's Phajdo; Plutarch's De Oraculorum Defectu; 
 Xenophon's Memorabilia; the tragedies of Sophocles, — 
 Antigone, CEdipus Tyrannus, CEdipus at Colonus; and of 
 Ji^schylus, — the Agamemnon, the Choephori, and Eumenides; 
 and the Encheiridion of Epictetus. He read Clement of 
 Alexandria, Origen, Philo with special interest and attention, 
 Eusebius, and Chrysostom. His list of Latin works in- 
 cludes: Cicero's De Senectute and the Tusculanffi; Lucan's 
 Pharsalia; Tertullian's De Prsescriptione Haereticorum, Apo- 
 logeticus, De Corona Militis, De Fuga in Persecutione, De 
 Idolatria, and De Carne Christi ; Cyj)rian's Epistles; Augus- 
 tine's De Vera Religione; Boethius' De Consolatione Phi- 
 losophise, on which he mused in deep sympathy ; Paulinus 
 Nolanus' Ennodii Carmina; Petrarch's De Remediis utriusque 
 Fortunae; and Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinse. He also 
 read Horace, Seneca, and Tacitus, Lactantius, Ambrose, and 
 Jerome. Of works in English, the list is a long one : Bacon, 
 Milton, Beaumont and Fletcher, Bolingbroke, Lord Shaftes- 
 bury, George Herbert, Carlyle, Bulwer, Kingsley, Holmes, 
 Robert Browning, Mrs. Browning, Ruskin, Tennyson, Henry 
 Taylor, Landor, Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, Mrs. Jameson, 
 Emerson, Whittier, Boyle, Aubrey de Vere, Keats, Chaucer, 
 Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Hooker, Butler, Isaac Taylor, 
 and James Russell Lowell. Other books were: South's Ser- 
 mons, Pope's Eloisa, Walton's Complete Angler, Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall, Bunsen's Ilippolytus and his Age, Bledsoe 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 219 
 
 on Social Progress, Warburton's Divine Legation, Henry 
 Ward Beecher's Life Thoughts, Cambridge Essays, Kyle on 
 Prayer, Thorndale on the Conflict of Opinions, Thornwell's 
 Discourses on Truth, Francis Newman's Theism, F. W. 
 Faber's Guide to Holiness, and the English reviews, nota- 
 bly the Quarterly and Blackwood. The reading of Lewes's 
 Life of Goethe led him to take up Goethe's writings; he 
 studied Faust, and continued to read Schiller and to exercise 
 himself in translation of the striking passages of both writers. 
 In French, he read Rochefoucauld's Maxims, Rousseau, 
 Cousin, and the Essays of Montaigne. 
 
 One distinctive characteristic of Phillips Brooks now be- 
 comes apparent, although traces of it may be seen in earlier 
 years, — his capacity of being quickly roused into a glowing 
 enthusiasm, of blazing up into a consuming fire, under the 
 contact of ideas or truths presented to his mind. For truth 
 with him did not rest with an appeal to the intellect, but 
 stirred his whole being, his emotional nature, and ended in 
 the will, where it buried itself deeply, calling for action or 
 for deeper consecration. He did not have at this time any 
 outlet for the force within, such as afterwards came through 
 the pulpit, where he poured forth his aroused, excited soul. 
 One resource he had which deserves mention, — he found 
 relief in poetry. It was his custom at this time, whenever 
 he had been deeply moved, to attempt expression in the son- 
 net. We may take these sonnets, of which there is a large 
 number, as criterions of judgment, enabling us to determine 
 the books or the authors who contributed chiefly to the ex- 
 pansion of his being. They were not intended for publica- 
 tion, they were written rapidly, and as with his other verse, 
 if he did not succeed in attaining just the expression he wished 
 when they first took shape, he did not better them when he 
 attempted any polish or revision. To some of these sonnets 
 he attached importance, as reminders of great and rare expe- 
 riences. Such were those written after reading the trage- 
 dies of ^schylus and Sophocles. He repeated them before 
 the students at Alexandria, with an introduction to each, giv- 
 ing a brief sketch of the movement in each tragedy. Once 
 
220 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 again, and not long before his death, he turned back to these 
 sonnets of his youth, finding, it may have been, some inward 
 pleasure in the visions and experiences of life they recalled. 
 He read them again, before a club in Boston, where he was 
 called upon to furnish the subject for discussion. They are 
 here given with the preface to them as he reviewed them in 
 his last days : — 
 
 Reading once, many years ago, the three great Tragedies of 
 iEschylus, which together make a magnificent Trilogy, I was led 
 at the end of each to express in verse the total impression which 
 it made. I hope these verses may not seem altogether too serious 
 and too solemn for the club. 
 
 The first play is the Agamemnon, full of the prophecies of the 
 Trojan captive Cassandra, foretelling the woes that were to fall on 
 the great captain of the Greeks. I finished it on a bright sum- 
 mer day, and these verses were written at the close : — ■ 
 
 The story 's ended: Fling the window wide; 
 
 Let the June sunlight leap across the room. 
 
 How like a spirit it comes through the gloom. 
 And draws the old black tragic veil aside! 
 
 All day the passion of the Argive queen. 
 All day Cassandra's fate-words, half unsung, 
 Like a dark storm-cloud o'er my soul have hung. 
 
 With choral tlumders breaking through between. 
 We 've heard the tale a human life can tell ; 
 
 Come, hear the stories Nature's heai't can speak, 
 Hear June's rich rhythms die adown the dell. 
 
 And each tree's chorus grander than the Greek! 
 Cassandra-thoughts, witli more than Loxian spell, 
 
 Come singing to us from the mountain's peak! 
 
 The second play, the Clioephori, has the story of Orestes aven- 
 ging the death of Agamemnon. It is heavy with the thought of 
 yet greater tragedy to come. The feeling as one ends it is of 
 suspense and dread, as if it were good to pause awliile before the 
 next curtain should be raised : — 
 
 As one that travels through the mountain's gloom. 
 And sees the jioaks above him stern and stark. 
 And midnight's myriad ej'es adown the dark. 
 
 And all earth listening as for voice of doom, 
 
«T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 221 
 
 Arrived at length beneath some friendly roof, 
 Turns his tired footsteps to the cheerful liglit, 
 Yet, pausing, gazes once more down the night, 
 
 And sees the slow storm darkening all aloof ; 
 
 So pause we here and gaze a moment back 
 
 Where we came journeying this sad summer's day 
 
 Hear the low thunder roar along its track, 
 See tempest clouds that stoop above our way. 
 
 The night is deepening. Rest we here a space 
 
 The dark fate-journey of old Pelops' race! 
 
 The last play is the Eumenides, taking its name from the Furies, 
 who pursue Orestes. It ends with the departure from Athens 
 of the Furies, who have been disappointed of their victim. As 
 they go, they seem to leave the air and earth clear for better 
 things : — ' 
 
 So Fate hath fallen aiid the virgin fled : 
 The slow procession fadeth out of sight, 
 The Athenian chorus in their stoles of white. 
 
 The Fui-ies, solemn-faced, with bended head, 
 
 Now a dim line across the distance goes. 
 
 Like faint wave-margin on some far-off shore, 
 One moment trembles and is seen no more, 
 
 And earth lies smiling in a sweet rejjose. 
 
 But up the darkness where they vanished, came 
 
 The sunrise angels of a holier day — ■ 
 
 Up all the horizon steps of kneeling Flame. 
 
 Hark ! Peace and Mercy singing on their way ! 
 Faith, Hope, and Charity, new steps like these 
 In those old footprints of the Eumenides. 
 
 So the Trilogy ends; the last of its Tragedies being the 
 greatest.^ 
 
 Another of these sonnets, insjiired by the study of Greek 
 tragedy, is on the Antigone of Sophocles : — 
 
 ^ " I am quite sure," writes the Rev. W. Dewees Roberts, assistant minister 
 at Trinity from 1888, "that Mr. Brooks copied those sonnets as late as when 
 I was at Trinity. I was not surprised to find the hook upon his desk after his 
 death. He told me at one time that if lie were to find himself in charge of a 
 school he should insist upon the writing of verse as one of the school exercises. 
 He took me to task upon making fun of young men who thought they could 
 write verse, and said he knew of nothing which would give a man a better com- 
 mand of English than to practice himself in the writing of verse.'* 
 
121 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Unwept, unwedded, on my destined way — 
 
 So sang Antigone, and passed in tears ; 
 
 So sings slie still as down the listening years 
 Goes the fair victim of proud Creon's sway, 
 And now this dreary morning while I read, 
 
 And hear her tear-drops through the tender Greek, 
 
 My heart goes back along her path to seek 
 How nature triumphed e'en while Fate decreed. 
 Still lies the brother's corpse beyond the gate, 
 
 Still comes the virgin with the scattered dust, 
 And these dark hours grow queenly with the state 
 
 Of beauty throned amid the hapless just. 
 Page turns on page, and still my soul can see 
 New Truth in Life, taught by Antigone. 
 
 The influence upon him of the Greek tragedies at so im- 
 pressible a moment of his life may be detected in his preach- 
 ing. Among the passages of Scripture selected at this time 
 for future sermons is this: "For I was alive without the law 
 once; but when the commandment came, sin revived and I 
 died," with the reference to Sophocles' QEdipus Colonus, 
 
 393 : ot' ovKiT eljxi, TfjviKavr' ap ei//.' avyp. 
 
 Taking the sonnets as an index of his mind or of the power 
 exerted on him by the authors he studied, a foremost place 
 must be given to the Greek and Latin fathers whom he 
 read with diligence. In doing this, he wr ' in a sphere alone 
 by himself, with no patristic guides or giusses, with no dis- 
 cussion in the classroom, or with those conversant with the 
 subject. To a certain extent he found companionship in 
 Isaac Taylor's "Ancient Christianity," or with Bunsen in his 
 genial and profound study of "Hippolytus and his Age." It 
 is evident that he read the Fathers for the exercise of his 
 linguistic power, and for the pleasure they afforded in coming 
 into contact with their thought at first hand. But the son- 
 nets which he wrote on Tertullian, Origen, and Jerome 
 show him to have experienced a deeper attraction for the 
 men in themselves as he came to know their spirit. Thus of 
 Origen he writes : — 
 
 O Adamantine Scholar, dreamer, sage. 
 
 And Christian, nobler name than all the rest, 
 
MT. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 223 
 
 What sadness is there in thy lifelong quest 
 Of sense mysterious in the sacred page ! 
 
 Thy life was like the morning when the day, 
 With wealth of beauty crowding into hlrth, 
 Breathes her warm heart upon the sleeping earth, 
 
 And dawns in mists that noon will melt away. 
 
 Nothing shows better the generous quality of his nature 
 than his ability to sympathize even with Jerome, of whom it 
 has been said that, in his anxiety to fulfil his tluty toward 
 God, he failed signally in his duty toward man : — 
 
 Stout monk of Bethlehem, this life of thine 
 Proves some strange power beneath thy dreamy creed, 
 As signs of secret springs our eyes may read 
 
 On the bleak sand-plain in the lonely pine. 
 Those foes of thine, the feeble and the strong, 
 
 Jovinian, Rufin, John, and all the rest, 
 
 Who stirred such anger in thy saintly breast. 
 Perhaps were right, who knows ? perhaps were wrong. 
 
 But right or wrong, in faithless times like these 
 'Tis well to see how faith could give thee power 
 
 To bind earth's chances with thy will's decree, 
 And grasp the reins of every wayward hour; 
 
 Till Cyril stood beside thy dying bed, 
 
 And saw bright angels bear the blessed dead. 
 Theological Seminaby of ViKcrNiA, 1857. 
 
 He had begun reading TertuUian in his Junior year at 
 the seminary. That among the Fathers this was his favorite 
 is shown in several ways. He not only read his more impor- 
 tant treatises, and made many extracts, but he made out Latin 
 analyses of his De Anima and De Prsescriptione Hsereti- 
 corum. Two sonnets upon TertuUian are evidence that he 
 sympathized with the humanity of that noble but erratic man, 
 whose spirit was always beating in inward tvmiult, and torn 
 with contradictions. He took him as he was, saint and here- 
 tic commingled, whose fire was always alive whether by wood 
 or straw as fuel. 
 
 There is evidence of an underlying philosophical system 
 which at this early age Phillips Brooks was beginning to 
 create for himself. He was seeking for some principle which 
 should give unity to his thought and life. For abstract ideas 
 
224 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i«57-58 
 
 as such, for purely speculative conclusions in themselves, he 
 felt no attraction, nor had he use for them unless he saw in 
 them some practical relation to real life in the world. His 
 mind had an introversive tendency, as shown by his musings 
 upon life, however manifested — whether in nature, in him- 
 self, or in a common humanity; but through his musings 
 runs a practical aim. He was a voracious devourer of ideas, 
 searching everywhere for thoughts, but always asking him- 
 self the question, — What should be done with them, how were 
 they related to life? Yet of what are caUed philosophical 
 systems he was not a student, nor are there traces in his note- 
 books of any desire to get at the history of philosophy. He 
 studied Plato's Phsedo, translating into his best English its 
 finest thoughts. But he seemed to have fastened on this 
 particular dialogue because of its close connection with the 
 mystery of life. It was to Socrates the man he was most 
 powerfully attracted, rather than to the siDeculations of Plato. 
 From his boyhood it had been Socrates who moved his admi- 
 ration. Two of his sonnets are devoted to Socrates, — evi- 
 dence that his spirit was stirred within him, as he discerned 
 more clearly the meaning of his life. 
 
 It looks as if he felt instinctively, as Goethe had felt, that 
 too close a study of speculative philosophy would turn him 
 in a direction alien to his genius, or imjJede his true develop- 
 ment. He was wrestling with the same eternal issues that 
 underlie the philosophy of Kant or Hegel, but he does not 
 turn to them for guidance. The problem was his own, and 
 must be met in his own way. Although in his isolation his 
 opportunity for books was limited, yet if he had inclined to 
 the study of speculative philosophy, German or other, he 
 would have managed to get the books that he wanted and 
 must have. But life appealed to him in its concrete or his- 
 torical manifestations rather than in the condensed algebraic 
 formulas of speculative thought. It was then by no accident 
 that he turned to Lord Bacon ; and in passages, sometimes 
 copied, sometimes translated, which give the motives of the 
 Baconian philosophy, we may also see the motives and the 
 aspirations of his own soul : — 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 225 
 
 For that is true philosophy which renders most faithfully the 
 voices of the world, and is written, as it were, at the world's 
 dictation; and is nothing else hut its image and reflection, and 
 adds nothing of its own, hut only repeats and resounds. (De 
 Sapientia Veterum.) 
 
 Again he quotes from Bacon a saying which must have 
 been to him a rule of guidance: "Interpretation is the 
 natural and genuine work of the mind after obstacles are re- 
 moved." In this direction lay in part the original power of 
 Phillips Brooks. As Bacon came to the interpretation of 
 the world and of life in the freshness of a great and rare 
 opportunity, when the obstacles of the scholastic philosophy 
 had been swept away, so too was he coming to it in the same 
 way, with an overpowering imj)ulse to interpret the world he 
 lived in. In some manner he had freed himself from shac- 
 kles, the world was open to him, the learning he had acquired 
 called for interpretation. His own life, his experience, the 
 results of his incessant observation, the lessons also of his 
 childhood, the teaching of the church, the word of Scrip- 
 ture, — all these were open before him, thoughts were crowd- 
 ing in upon him, and through the note-book sounds the 
 perpetual comment which the reality demands : — 
 
 But to one who thinks rightly on this matter, natural phi- 
 losophy is, after the word of God, the surest cure of superstition 
 and likewise the most excellent nourishment of faith. And so it 
 is well given to religion for her trustiest handmaid : since the one 
 shows the will of God, the other shows his power. (Bacon, Nov. 
 Org., i. 89.) 
 
 Empiricists, like the ants, only heap up and use ; rationalists, 
 like spiders, spin webs out of themselves ; but the bee is between 
 the two, she draws material from the flowers of the garden and 
 field, but yet turns and digests it by her own ability {propria 
 facuUate). (Nov. Org., i. 95.) 
 
 The first qualities of things {qualitates elementales) we cannot 
 know, and in most matters it is waste of time for us to seek them' ; 
 the second qualities of things, their evident virtues and effects 
 and operations in this world of ours, these are what the true 
 philosophy of daily life seeks out. 
 
 The way does not lie in a plain, but has its ascending and de- 
 scending, its ascending to axioms, its descending to operations. 
 (Nov. Org., i. 103.) 
 
226 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 But there was something more gained from Bacon which 
 harmonized with his own boundless enthusiasm, and for which 
 also the study of Philo had prepared him, — the conviction 
 that even material pursuits, such as commerce and trade, may 
 have spiritual ends, existing for the children of God, and 
 the agencies of a divine light. The world was becoming to 
 his imagination a vast storehouse filled with an infinite 
 wealth. Rightly used, these agencies would uplift humanity, 
 gradually restoring to mankind the original Eden from which 
 it had been driven. 
 
 Sic itaque videbis, commercium nos instituisse, non pro auro, 
 argento et gemmis, non pro sericis aut aromatibus, neque pro aliis 
 quibus vis rebus crassis, sed tantum pro creatura Dei prima, luce 
 scilicet : luce, inquam, in quacunque tandem tensae regione pro- 
 rumpente et germinante. (Bacon, Nova Atlantis.) 
 
 Itaque sperandum omnino est esse adhuc in natui'se siuu multa 
 excellentis usus recondita, quEe nullani cum jam inventis cogna- 
 tionem habent aut jsarallelisnuim ; sed omnino sita sunt extra vias 
 phantasiae ; quae tamen adhuc inventa non sunt ; quae proculdubio 
 per multos seculorum circuitus et ambages et ipsa quandoque pro- 
 dibunt, sicut ilia superiora prodierunt; sed per viam quam nunc 
 tractamus, propere et subito et simul reprsesentari et anticipari 
 possunt. (Nov. Org., i. 109.) 
 
 But the great and radical difference of mind so far as concerns 
 philosophy and the sciences is this : tliat some minds are strong 
 and ready to note the differences of things, others to note the 
 similitudes of things. For minds that are persistent and quick 
 to fasten tlieir thoughts can both pause and delay in all the nicety 
 of distinctions ; but lofty and discursive minds both recognize and 
 compose even the slightest and most general resemblances ; but 
 both minds easily fall into excess by seizing on either the grades 
 or shadows of things. (Nov. Org., i. 55.) 
 
 For the old age and maturity of the world ought surely to be 
 taken for antiquity, and these belong to our time and not to that 
 younger age of the world in which the ancients lived. For that 
 age is in respect to us ancient and elder, but in respect to the 
 world itself new and younger. (Nov. Org., i. 55.) 
 
 A syllogism is made of propositions, a proposition of words, 
 and words are tlie counters (tessera) of ideas ; and so if the ideas 
 themselves (which is the basis of the whole matter) be confused and 
 rashly deduced from fact, there is no firmness in the structures 
 
MT. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 227 
 
 which are built on them. The only hope then is in a true induc- 
 tion. (Nov. Org., i. 14.) 
 
 This error is peculiar and perpetual in the human intellect, 
 that it is moved more by affirmations than by negations, while 
 it ought to bestow itself fairly and in turn on each; nay, on the 
 contrary, in establishing every true axiom, the force of a negative 
 instance is greater. (Nov. Org., i. 46.) 
 
 The human understanding is like a mirror unevenly inclined to 
 the rays of objects, which mixes its own nature with the nature 
 of what it reflects, and distorts and spoils it. (Nov. Org., i. 46.) 
 
 For there is in man a certain ambition of intellect, no less 
 than of will, especially in high and lofty minds. (Nov. Org., 
 i. 65.) 
 
 When the human mind has once despaired of finding truth, all 
 things become altogether weak. (Nov. Org., i. 67.) 
 
 Sunt res quae nomine carent, ita sunt et nomina quae carent 
 rebus. (Nov. Org., i. 6.) 
 
 Pessima enim res est errorum apotheosis. 
 
 There are deserts and wastes no less of times than regions. 
 (Nov. Org., i. 78.) 
 
 From another ancient writer once widely read (Mori, Dis- 
 sert. Theol.) he borrows a sentence, which shows how his 
 mind was burrowing beneath the surface of things : — 
 
 Uno verbo, historiam, quae illis occasionem monendi et phi- 
 losophandi prsebere poterat, metaverunt in ipsam admonitionem et 
 fhilosofhiam. 
 
 Coleridge was prominent among the writers with a phi- 
 losophical purpose who most influenced Phillips Brooks. He 
 read the Aids to Eeflection, the Biographia Literaria, and 
 the Friend; he lingered over Coleridge's jDoetry. What 
 Coleridge had done for others he was doing now for him, 
 emancipating from the false or worn-out logic of custom- 
 ary system, revealing the deejjer meaning of the articles 
 of the Christian faith, enlarging the conception of religion, 
 restoring to reason its true place in the broken harmony be- 
 tween faith and knowledge. His first question as to the more 
 difficult or recondite doctrines of the church had been not 
 whether they were true, but what did they mean; what con- 
 victions or aspirations were they originally meant to express, 
 or how did they reveal the spiritual psychology of man. 
 
228 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 With this question in view, Coleridge had travelled over the 
 field of Christian theology, — the Incarnation, the Trinity, 
 Original Sin, and Atonement. The greatness of Coleridge 
 has been obscured by many deficiencies and much weakness, 
 but his influence has been vast; he has had great pupils, 
 who have sat at his feet and never wearied of singing his 
 praise. Archdeacon Hare called him a "true sovereign of 
 English thought," and in this encomium Bushnell joined, 
 whose influence in this country and in England has been 
 greater than any other American since Jonathan Edwards. 
 What he did for Bushnell he did for Tulloch, in Scotland, 
 and for F. D. Maurice. It was one great gift of Coleridge to 
 his students, said Maurice, that he showed "how one may 
 enter into the spirit of a living or departed author, without 
 assuming to be his judge." Into this teaching Phillips Brooks 
 was entering, and throughout his career rejoiced in the 
 manifold riches it brought him. 
 
 The combination in Coleridge of jjoetry and theology with 
 the pure reason was at once a fascination and a thraldom 
 bringing with it a large liberty. Part of the charm of Cole- 
 ridge was due to his Neoplatonic teachers, and this charm was 
 felt by Phillips Brooks, who came with a foreordained fitness 
 to appreciate it, — the charm of Spenser and Raleigh and 
 Shakespeare, of the age of the Renaissance before the Refor- 
 mation. But Phillips Brooks was drinking at the fountain 
 head whence proceeded this vast stream of infinite and per- 
 petual joy, when he had turned — who can tell why ? — to the 
 writings of Philo, who first brought together Jewish theology 
 and Greek philosophy, studying Moses under the influence of 
 Plato. Philo became a teacher to him, as he had been to 
 the early Christian church at Alexandria, or to later heathen 
 teachers, or still later to St. Augustine in the process of his 
 conversion. Over none of his favorite authors had Phillips 
 Brooks bent in more rapt contemplation than Philo. The 
 influence of this ancient thinker, who stands at the dividincr 
 of the worlds, is at once apparent, and continued to be felt 
 in later years. To his excited mood he gave expression in 
 this sonnet : — 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 229 
 
 PHILO JUDiEUS, DE MUNDI OPIFICIO. 
 
 A great Jew's mind with Genesis to read, 
 Searching Creation for the mighty cause, 
 Seeking deep meanings in the old Hebrew hiws 
 
 Somiding dry cisterns with his thirsty need. 
 
 What though we call him Mystic ? Sucli as he 
 Must live while life's deep mystei'y shall last, 
 The voiceless future and the half-learned past. 
 
 Strange sounds we hear and wandering sights we see. 
 
 Yet even while he dreamed, the Jewish throng 
 Was dragging Stejihen to his cruel death, 
 
 And Saul's wild energy was waxing strong 
 
 With Paul's new confidence of Christian Faith. 
 
 The sun had risen, but his blinded sight 
 
 Still searched the darkness, longing for the light. 
 Theological Seminaby of Vihoinia, 1857. 
 
 The same influence is apparent at this moment of awaken- 
 ing in the question which haunts him continually, — What is 
 the origin of the thoughts now coming to him thick and fast, 
 in ahnost bewildering confusion and light ? He cannot be- 
 lieve that they have their source in his own mind; they seem 
 rather like angelic visitants. There is a tinge of Neopla- 
 tonism in the verses he writes, as he seeks the answer to his 
 perturbed inquiry. 
 
 Among the more modern theological books which he was 
 reading, apart from the greater masters in English theology. 
 Hooker and Butler, these two may be mentioned as having con- 
 tributed to his development, — Bushnell's "Sermons for the 
 New Life" and Maurice's "Theological Essays." These 
 books, as they now stand in his library, show the marks of 
 hard usage. To Bushnell he was moved to indite a sonnet. 
 But it would be impossible here adequately to represent the 
 variety of the sources from which he was drawing, without 
 reproducing the entire contents of his note-books. They 
 give the impression of some great tree, some monarch of the 
 forest with many roots extending deep and wide beneath the 
 ground, each root with many minute ramifications pushing 
 in every direction in the search for life. Somehow he gives 
 the impression of being greater in his totality than the sources 
 
230 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-5S 
 
 from which he draws; he has the wider outlook of a later 
 age, yet a man to whom the great spirits of the world are 
 contributing of their best in order to his equipment. What- 
 ever he quotes becomes his own, assuming a new significance 
 because he quotes it. These hundreds of quotations, so care- 
 fully written out, each credited to its author, with volume 
 and book and page, constitute a rich "adagia" whose prin- 
 cij^le of unity and affiliation is the awakening life of a rare 
 and great soul. 
 
 We turn from the manifestation of his activity in learning 
 from others to the native working of his own mind. His 
 thoughts are jotted down, with no reference to any system or 
 principle, but one can discern running through them certain 
 strong lines of direction or tendency. And in the first place 
 he is rejoicing with an intense self-consciousness in this 
 strange gift of thought, which is to him a novel experience, 
 his own newly gained power; his own, and yet he is haunted 
 with the feeling that it is not his own. His attitude is that 
 of one receiving a divine revelation, — the word of God 
 coming to his soul in diverse ways, through the imagination, 
 through feeling, and above all through the conscience. Are 
 not these thoughts visitors to his soul, angelic messengers of 
 God? He recalls the old Montanist analogy used by Tertiil- 
 lian, — the lyre whose strings are played upon by the Holy 
 Spirit. This comparison recurs to his mind as he reads the 
 divine revelation which is witnessed by outward nature, by 
 the history of humanity, by the consciousness of the life of 
 God within the soul. His sensitiveness to spiritual impres- 
 sions is everywhere apparent. Because of some inward en- 
 dowment there is a certain unity running through them, and 
 he transmutes these impressions into an appeal to the will. 
 So it was that the myriad voices which speak of God were in 
 his soul tuned to harmony, a vast and infinite orchestra, God 
 and angels and men and the life of nature blended in spiritual 
 melody, and while he listens he seems to be filled with a holy 
 joy; but it alternates with moments of depression, as though 
 he were at times overcome with the unspeakable wealth, the 
 magnitude, the majesty, of the vision. Yet it is to him a 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 231 
 
 vision, something revealed, and not his own creation. These 
 verses where he speaks of thoughts as something apart, and 
 not generated by his own intellect, betray a Neoplatonic col- 
 oring, as if they were links in the chain of mediation between 
 earth and heaven. 
 
 Upon the brow God lays his hand 
 
 Of angel thoughts descending. 
 To lead our steps through mortal land 
 
 Their holy influence lending. 
 
 "Go forth," he saith, "and guide anew 
 My children's weak endeavor; 
 Make them more pure and strong and true, 
 More calm and constant ever." 
 
 And may we know these thoughts that come 
 
 And bring our Father's blessing, 
 Descending from our father's home 
 
 Our Father's peace possessing. 
 
 There is a light upon their face 
 
 That tells of that they dwelt in, 
 A perfect light of holy grace 
 
 With holy feiwor melting. 
 
 And memories of the heavenly hymn 
 
 Around their lips are playing ; 
 We hear its echoes faint and dim. 
 
 Its praising and its praying. 
 
 And deepest yearnings evermore 
 
 For joys they left behind them, 
 Are tempting God-ward till we soar 
 
 And rise to heaven and find them. 
 
 Thoughts come and fold their wings 
 
 Above us for a space ; 
 
 Then seek their heavenly place 
 
 Ere we can feel the grace 
 Of half the holy message that they bring. 
 Of half the heavenly anthem that they sing. 
 
 There is a tendency to personify nature also, to think of 
 
232 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 the earth as alive and conscious and sympathetic with the 
 life of man, who walks its surface. Thus the earth as it rolls 
 on its course is watching the career of humanity, noting 
 success or failure in the great scheme of things of which it is 
 a part. Thus he can sympathize with the earth in its task, 
 its faithfulness, its weariness, the sad monotony of its career. 
 He would fain converse with it as with a gigantic animal, 
 some faithful beast of burden, closely connected with man as 
 the horse with its rider. In the long journey the earth is 
 counting the weary years as it yearns for its final destiny 
 and repose : — 
 
 Smile on, Old Earth, and dream that now 
 
 As then thy God beside thee 
 Has laid his hand upon thy brow, 
 
 And holds thy hand to guide thee. 
 
 Sleep on, Old Earth, dream on to-night, 
 
 Sleep blessed till the morrow, 
 Man's strife will wake with moi-nhig light, 
 
 Man's sinning and man's sorrow. 
 
 But happy dreams like thine, Old Earth, 
 
 Like God's own sunlight o'er thee, 
 Shall light thy way along the path 
 
 That lies so rough before thee. 
 
 He is also given to personifying time in its passing years, as 
 though it, too, were a living entity, growing old and weighted 
 with infirmity, the conviction of failure and of sin. His 
 study of the classic Greek language and literature had 
 given him an insight into the ancient mythology, — a sym- 
 pathy so living and deep that at times it seemed a vehicle 
 for his own emotions. He entered into the religion of nature, 
 whose elementary essence is habitual and permanent admira- 
 tion, the reverence for the mystery of things. Tender emo- 
 tion mingled with fear marks his outlook upon the phenom- 
 ena of day and night, the rising and the setting sun, the 
 coming and going of the seasons. Each new day is an ever- 
 recurring miracle, each sunrise as fresh and novel a scene 
 as when viewed by the first man for the first time. Each 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 233 
 
 morning God is calling upon the slumbering earth to rise 
 and do his will. "Morning still chases morning and even- 
 ing flies from evening round the world." "Each new science 
 is only a new chord in the harp of earth's harmony, each 
 new thought only a new strain in earth's everlasting song of 
 praise." Prayer and prophecy are the uplifted hands of 
 earth, yearning for the heaven that is to come. 
 
 Every sunrise and sunset gives us a new insight into the old 
 belief that the East and the West were blessed lands, with golden 
 rivers and bright hills and warm clear skies and everlasting ver- 
 dure. How our souls go out into those magic lands, and meet 
 there the old Greek souls who wandered there for beauty, led by 
 a depth of feeling for its worth such as no souls but Greek have 
 ever known. 
 
 How some morning comes to us with a sense of the marvellous 
 beauty of our earth, such as morning after morning all the days 
 of our life have failed to give us. How sometimes a June day 
 will seem to have hoarded all the warmth and light and loveliness 
 of the six thousand Junes since first the seasons were losing no 
 ray of sunlight, no glow of the old warm noons, keeping them 
 close from winter's cold, and now at last pouring them down upon 
 our happy life as we cannot think that any life has felt them in 
 the years gone by. And how sometimes a thought seems to have 
 hoarded all the wealth and worth of all our thoughts since think- 
 ing first began. How we recognize the moment for which all the 
 moments that went before were made. 
 
 The fearful powers of nature ! Why have not you and I, poor 
 human worms, some weak power over fire and water, and air and 
 cold and heat, enough to make us fear and tremble at ourselves 
 each hour? 
 
 The still blue sky that has looked in sorrow and in care these 
 six thousand years on sinning, anxious earth. 
 
 Who did not know by long experience the certainty and rich- 
 ness of God's daily power and love could have imagined that the 
 faint gray hue that we saw this morning dimly dividing between 
 the blackness of heaven and the blackness of eartli could have 
 widened and deepened and brightened in these few short hours 
 into perfect day, opening all the great depths of heaven's room, 
 painting all the landscape of earth's loveliness, warming and 
 waking and cheering the cold, dead, dreary hearts of men ? 
 
234 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Nature is man's best teacher of modesty and of humble doubt 
 as well as trust of his powers. This is her lesson for him every 
 hour. So long as each day's wisdom and study is perplexed and 
 put to shame by each night's sleep and dreams, let us cease to 
 wonder at what we know, let us stand in silent awe at what we 
 feel, at what we are, and what we dimly discern around us. 
 
 "Though we now read the hymn to Demeter, " says Grote, "as 
 pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it was composed, it 
 was genuine and sacred history." So pass the deep beliefs and 
 earnest realities of antiquity into modern tastes and pleasures. 
 But truly it was a noble groundwork of a faith. The great Mater 
 Dolorosa of the gods and her long anguish and final exaltation, all 
 bound to daily human life, which recognized her as the giver of 
 rijje corn-fields for their hunger, and in the solemn mysteries as 
 the sower of deep seed thought for earnest life. How the hymn 
 opens with that sweet scene of nymphs gathering the crocus and 
 lily on the plain ; then Pluto rising from his realm, and the 
 frightened Proserpina borne off with only thin-veiled Hecate and 
 King Helios to see. Then the divine mother made human by 
 her woe in her weary search for her lost daughter, till she comes 
 and sits there, " in the cool shade above her, where grew the deep 
 darkness of olives." Then the beautiful daughters of Celeus 
 coming, in the pure homeliness of the old life, to fill their pitchers 
 at the spring, — "Four, such as goddesses are, yet having the 
 bloom of the maiden ; " their hurried bringing of the old nurse 
 home to their good mother Melaneia. The simple lambe, cheat- 
 ing a smile from the sad face with her drollery of rustic mirth, 
 the little Demophoon given to the stranger's care, her gracious 
 acts discovered by the mother's anxious watchfulness. Then as 
 the goddess stands discovered, the interest brought home and 
 made an heirloom to Eleusis by the commanded temple and the 
 promised grace. Then the change from the household to the 
 skies, tlie long sad year of fruitless fields, afflicting men and 
 gods. "Many a well-bent plough the steers dragged in vain 
 through the corn-lands. Many the seed of white barley on the 
 earth that was fruitlessly scattered." The late restoral of Per- 
 sephone ; the happy bringing back of Ceres to the sky ; the kindly 
 lesson of husbandry and worship that made Eleusis thence a 
 blessed place forever. How the old story must have twined 
 around the city's life, while processions aaid ceremonies and creeds 
 thenceforth made the old mytli forever new, the wonderful ca- 
 dence of the old hymn beating the measure of Eleusinian life all 
 througli the years. Truly humanity yearns for the divine, is 
 drawn by its beauty to the beautiful, catches, while it dreams of 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 235 
 
 the grand, holy, righteous powers of nature, something of their 
 grandeur and holiness and truth. 
 
 A score of other passages might be quoted to illustrate 
 how closely allied his spirit was with the life of organic na- 
 ture. He was quick to see any analogy between the life 
 of the spirit in man and the phenomena of the outer world. 
 He makes an extract from the De Kesurrectione of Tertul- 
 lian, which for this reason must have impressed him, that it 
 connects the resurrection of the body with the process of 
 nature : — 
 
 The whole, therefore, of this revolving order of things bears 
 witness to the resurrection of the dead. In his works did God 
 write it before He wrote it in the Scriptures ; He proclaimed it 
 in his mighty deeds earlier than in his inspired words. He first 
 sent Nature to you as a teacher, meaning to send Prophecy also 
 as a supplemental instructor, that, being Nature's discipile, you 
 may more easily believe Proj^hecy, and without hesitation accept 
 it when you come to hear what you have already discovered on 
 every side; nor doubt that God, whom you have discovered to be 
 the restorer of all things, is likewise the reviver of the flesh. (De 
 Res., xii.) 
 
 Truly there was a clearness and a power in those old eyes and 
 ears that have died out of ours. We hear no voices on the sum- 
 mer wind ; no merry faces laugh up their beauty tones from the 
 sunny sea; no Dryads flit away before us down their forest jjaths. 
 To us the black cloud is a black cloud, and not a power ; the clear 
 sky only a clear sky, and not a smile ; our sun is not a god, our 
 stars no happy choirs of singing graces, making night day with 
 the sweet chorus of their perfect loveliness. We have learnt a 
 moral beauty of ethics and of faith, found cheer in sorrow and 
 gladness in despair, but we have lost the daily beauty that fills 
 earth now just as it filled it then. No Aurora, rosy-fingered, 
 brightens our daily morning, no Vesper, pensive-faced, draws 
 calmly on our night. Yet beauty is no foe to faith nor merry- 
 hearted fancy to the soberness of sterling thought. The boy is 
 very weak that dares outgrow his boyhood fully as he grows a 
 man. It will be a happy day for man when lie once more has 
 eyes to see the wondrous beauty and perennial youth of earth, 
 that is his mother and sister in the love of God. 
 
 It was inevitable that in one of his Puritan descent, whose 
 
236 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 blood was filled with moral purpose, there should be closely 
 related to this love of nature an ethical ideal, taking the 
 precedence, and bending even the beauty and glory as well 
 as the order of the natural world to the illustration of a rigid 
 unbending moral aim : — 
 
 We believe in the same power of Nature to join a broken life 
 as to unite the pieces of a broken bone. Error, ignorance, care, 
 pride, or prejudice has struck our life and it has yielded to the 
 shock, but bring the jagged ends together and leave them to the 
 quiet influence of time, and Nature's moral laws will do their 
 silent work, and our life rise up to do its part again among the 
 busy lives of men. 
 
 While this morning sunrise is rosy with the memory of last 
 night's sunlight, while noon looks longingly down the eastern sky 
 that it has travelled, and onward to the night to which it hastens, 
 while month links in with month, and season works with season 
 and year joins hand with year in the long labor of the world's 
 hard life, there is a lesson for us all to learn of the unity and 
 harmony of our existence. Let us take the lesson, and, with it 
 in our hearts, go out to be more tolerant, more kindly, and more 
 true in all the social strivings of our fellow men. Let us carry 
 it back with us to history, and forward with us in our dreamings 
 of the years to come. It will make us better and stronger. 
 
 Let there be no delay, but let there be no hothouse forcing of 
 our powers. If Nature is twenty years building our bodies, let 
 us grudge no needful time to build our minds. If she is content 
 to spend the slow months of a long sunny spring and summer in 
 painting the flower's petal and an insect's wing, which the quick 
 decay of autumn is to make as if it had not been, let us shrink 
 from no length of labor, or minuteness of finish, or conscientious 
 thoroughness of every part of every work that is entrusted to our 
 hands, vindicating by an earnest life of patient toil our right to 
 the great privilege of duty. 
 
 Some purity and peace will evermore 
 Break in upon our life of care and sin. 
 
 As heedless ears that pass the church's door 
 Catch fragments of the swelling psalm within. 
 
 He was occupied with the problem of the relation between 
 humanity and its outward environment. Great as is his love 
 of nature, yet his interest in humanity and human history is 
 greater. He will not admit for a moment that man is a blot 
 
JET. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 237 
 
 upon the landscape or that the deeds of man disfigure nature. 
 Here is a passage from his note-book, incorporated afterwards 
 in his lecture on Poetry, which may be taken as a speci- 
 men of many similar utterances. Nature was after all more 
 beautiful for the human thoughts it suggested than for itself 
 alone. He felt the weight of the ideas and institutions of an 
 earlier time, but he did not fly to nature in the manner of 
 Rousseau, moved by some transcendental principle as a mode 
 of escape from them. He would reconcile himself to them 
 in some other way, by penetrating to their genuine human 
 quality as manifestations of the human soul. 
 
 Every earthly scene is imperfect, as Eden was, without man's 
 presence. Hill and trees and clouds, waves on the seashore, 
 willows by the river's side, fields with their hroad green beauty 
 stretching out of sight, lack with all their loveliness one element 
 of poetry, gain it only when a human home stands in their midst, 
 and the signs of human work are seen among them. Man may 
 mar the beauty of their first creation, spoil or soil them with his 
 clumsy efforts to turn them into use, or even in mere human 
 wantonness take pleasure in turning the usefulness that God has 
 given them into uselessness ; but, in spite of all this, earth gains 
 more from human life than she suffers from human mischief. It 
 gives a point and purpose to her life, gives her that without which 
 all life is death. Step now inside the little world that you and I 
 are carrying within us. Here, too, there is deficiency till man 
 comes in. The beauty of dumb nature may be there, the gran- 
 deur of abstract truth, the delicacy of refined imagination, but 
 unless there be among them all some home of sympathy where our 
 fellow man may have a dwelling, where he may live the true ruler 
 of all the nature around him, the true centre of all the worlil 
 there, acknowledged and served by it as such, unless we feel for 
 one another as well as live for one another, we have, consciously 
 or unconsciously, a deep want within, poets are things we do not 
 comprehend, and poetry, no wonder, is jargon to our eyes.^ 
 
 In the development of a life, it is generally true that the 
 intellect first takes the lead, coming first to maturity, to be 
 followed by the growth of the moral sentiment, which comes 
 latest to its full strength and indeed continuing to grow 
 after the intellect has become stationary and even retrograde, 
 
 ^ Cf. Essays and Addresses, p. 245. 
 
238 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 If we apply this generalization to Phillips Brooks, we find 
 him at this time in the full possession of his intellectual 
 strength, rejoicing in the power of the divinely given reason, 
 discerning the principles which were to guide his future life. 
 Yet is it also the case that the moral nature was now asserting 
 itself, qualifying and conditioning every intellectual conclu- 
 sion. In the main, however, the principle holds true that in 
 these earlier years the intellect kept the ascendency, for a 
 great work was to be done through the critical function in 
 order to adjust his own individual reason with the reason of 
 humanity. That problem he never lost sight of throughout 
 his life. It had first confronted him in college; he is still 
 seeking for its solution, as may be seen in the extracts that 
 follow : — 
 
 We may judge pretty well what claim our thoughts have to our 
 hospitality and regard by considering how they present them- 
 selves to us. We may judge of thoughts as of other guests. If 
 they come frankly up, and strike boldly at our doors, and bid us 
 admit them and welcome them for the message that they bring, 
 ready to speak freely with us, ready to be questioned, ready to 
 claim and prove kindred to other thoughts which we have taken 
 to our heart in other days, • — then we may take them by the hand 
 and lead them in and grow stronger for their presence. But if 
 we find them "climbing up some other way," creejjing in thief -like 
 in the dark niglit or busy day, when no one can see or no one will 
 notice, or imposing upon us with false pi'etences of tlieir name 
 and value, shrinking from scrutiny, dark, mysterious, with the 
 look of a concealed secret always on their forehead, then the less 
 we have to do with them the better ; our minds will be more 
 healthy when they are away, for then we shall at least know what 
 guests we are harboring, and not tremble at the look of our own 
 thought when we meet it face to face in the heart's chamber. 
 
 Oh, for more capacity to learn of all that has truth to teach. It 
 will truly be a gain when we can join each thought we meet by 
 chance along our ways, as we sometimes talk an hour with a 
 traveller who happens to be going a mile or two upon our road ; 
 and despite of difference of taste or habits, enter for a little while 
 into his life, learn what he is doing for our conmion world, and 
 recognize in him a fellow laborer, doing, perhaps in widely dif- 
 ferent ways, the same work that we are doing. Our thoughts 
 will be stronger and freer for this chance meeting with a stranger 
 
MT. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 239 
 
 thought, and when our roads part and we bid him farewell for- 
 ever we shall carry some truth off with us for a memento of the 
 meeting, which, as we use it years after and miles away, shall 
 make us bless that journey and that chance companionship. 
 
 Our gradual learning of our powers is in truth a blessed thing. 
 Suppose that we woke with one sudden thrill to our sense of logic 
 or of thought, breaking with a flood of thought all at once from 
 a purely animal into the full noon of intellectual being! How 
 could the body or mind endure it; how could the weak machinery 
 of our physical existence be strong enough for the endowment of 
 each nerve with reason, each sense with sentiment, the great sys- 
 tem of life with the deep consciousness and joy of living? 
 
 Oh, for a wider life where flower 
 
 With more of breath gains more of bloom ; 
 
 With more of peace since more of power. 
 And more of rest since more of room. 
 
 The trains of thought, that are strong cords to bind the loose 
 bundles of our life together. 
 
 One single thought has power to keep our strength alive. 
 
 Our best and strongest thoughts, like men's earliest and rudest 
 homes, are found or hollowed in the old primeval rock. In some 
 cleft of truth we find shelter, and all the strength that has been 
 treasured up in meeting the storms of centuries is made available 
 for our protection. Not till our pride rebels against the archi- 
 tecture of these first homes and we go out to build more stately 
 houses of theory and speculation and discovery and science, do 
 we begin to feel the feebleness that is in us, how doubt makes the 
 joints of our structure weak, and prejudice sjjoils all its fair pro- 
 portions, and our ignorance is stronger than our skill at every 
 step. 
 
 After all, how it is in a few great tracts of hard granitic truth, 
 the deep accumulations of dead years, that this whole modern 
 world of ours rests, waiting for the manifold change of time. In 
 their clefts and ridges lies the alluvium of modern theory and 
 thought, wherein we plant and tend the bright flowers and sunny 
 fruits of our daily life ; but when we would found a sj'stem- 
 structure that shall stand, how we dig deep till we find the solid 
 rock and build on that ; when we would start a fountain that 
 shall quench our soul's deep thought, how we pierce down to the 
 gushings of the living streams that flow between its strata; when 
 we would read the moral history of our earth, how we find it writ 
 ten in the piled stones of those dark foundations. 
 
240 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Life beams warmer and brighter now than it did then, because 
 our new science and ethics and tastes and faith are so many aids 
 to help its free burning. Our gain is just that whicli our fathers 
 made wlien they discovered chimneys and began to use them, in- 
 stead of letting their smoke out as their fathers had done by a 
 hole in the roof, or suffering it to drift about and settle in black- 
 ness on their furniture and ceilings. 
 
 The autobiograpliical quality in these utterances entrusted 
 to the note-books is sometimes so veiled by an impersonal 
 objective manner as to be hardly apparent; at other times 
 we are aware of the personality behind them, thrilling with 
 excitement under new discoveries that enlarge the bounda- 
 ries of his intellectual life. In the latter case he does not 
 appear as a pioneer iu search of new thought, but the mental 
 growth which is the sign of advancing life is mediated by 
 entering more deeply into the meaning of familiar truths that 
 have been waiting to be understood. His ruling idea is that 
 history contains the material with which the intellect must 
 deal, and the agency or coin we must offer in order to trans- 
 fer it into our own being \s faith. Of things new and old in 
 the past, freely offered to the reason and soul of man, there 
 is this condition only for their reception : Believe and thou 
 shalt have them for thine own. At this time as through all 
 his later life the secret of power was to enter, and ever more 
 deeply, into the meaning of old familiar things. In this lay 
 the principle of progress : — 
 
 How sometimes with a touch of vulgar circumstance we wake to 
 a thought that we have been thinking, or a faith that we have been 
 feeling, for long years and known it not ; how the phenomena of 
 our life are torn aside, and we look deep down into its substance 
 on whose broad bosom all our hopes and plans and loves have been 
 built all through these years of hating, planning, lovino-, hoping 
 when we were proud and conscious of the living, but knew nothintr 
 of the life. For thought and faith lie too deep within us for our 
 blind eyes to see or our weak hands to grasp them. 
 
 The great thing in reading a noble book, or talking with a 
 noble man, or thinking on a noble name in history, is to get our- 
 selves within the sphere of the nobleness that we are dealing with 
 Its scope is large, and at its outer borders, just within which onlv 
 (ve perhaps can hope to creep, the beating of the great heart at 
 
■=s^ 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 241 
 
 the centre may be barely sensible to us. But we shall find that 
 those faint thi-obbings, that die almost away before they reach our 
 distance, yet come to us with a kind of power that we never 
 dreamt of before we entered in and began to be, however weakly, a 
 part of the genius and the goodness we love. We are feeling now 
 what we only saw before. It is all the difference between stand- 
 ing on the rocks and wondering at the great white waves, and 
 finding ourselves cast helpless among them, a part of the wild 
 tumult, feeling our weakness overpoweringly in the fury of their 
 strength. 
 
 There is truly something for us to tremble at in our individ- 
 uality. We are born alone, we die alone, and from birth to 
 death how much we live alone. How little the words and deeds 
 and courtesies of daily life have power to bind us to our neighbor. 
 How little we know of him ; how little he knows of us. 
 
 It is worth losing or ruining a party or a nation now and then, 
 if thereby a great fame and a great man be given to the world. 
 
 One is struck with the persistent use of analogy or com- 
 parison in these quotations, how it lends ornament to his 
 thought and quickens interest in his statement, but above all 
 confirms, as though it carried with it the nature of argument 
 and solid proof. It seems to be assumed that there can be 
 no clear insight until the appropriate analogy has been dis- 
 covered. There is some mystery in this use of analogy, but 
 it points to the unity of life, to the conviction that the divine 
 will has ordered the creation in harmony with and for the 
 reinforcement of the spiritual man. This was the dawning 
 conviction in the soul of Phillips Brooks, which was to con- 
 stitute in ever-increasing degree the strength of his man- 
 hood, the principle that all life is one great harmonic chorus 
 appealing to the individual soul to join in the universal 
 strain. In connection with this employment of analogy is 
 his constant tendency to personify truth, to speak of abstrac- 
 tions, as some would regard them, as living entities. It may 
 be the sign of a poetic temjjerament, or the coincidence with 
 that beautiful feature of ancient thought, which viewed the 
 world in all its agencies as alive, and as adumbrating a higher 
 life in the eternal heavens. However it may be, it appears 
 as a constituent element in the formative process which we 
 
242 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 are here seeking to trace. The word "truth " like the word 
 "life" is already one of the great recurring words in his 
 vocabulary. Truth is a deity residing in a temple where 
 men may worship. Access to this sacred shrine is the remedy 
 for controversy, for which already the youthful student has 
 realized his distaste : — 
 
 Truth lives and thrives in her fair house of Learned Theory. 
 But its grand, pillared front is too high, its wide doors too rich 
 and ponderous ; her form as she moves within too fair and proud 
 and queenly for common men to dare to come and enter her great 
 gates and ask to learn of God and Nature and their own humanity 
 from her lips. Rather will they stand without forever, looking 
 from far away upon the towers of her wondrous home and see the 
 great Mistress walking with a few bold scholars through the green- 
 ness of her trees, deeming it all a thing in which there is no part 
 for them. So then, fair Truth, that she may claim her right to 
 govern fi'om her readiness to help all men, lays by her gorgeous 
 robes, takes the plain white mantle of most simple faith, comes 
 down from her great house, and goes along the crowded street and 
 close lanes of poor men's homes, with a lesson and a smile for 
 each, a soothing touch for the sick child's forehead, a helping 
 word for the poor workingwoman, a passing look that makes the 
 strong man's heart more strong and happy, long after she has 
 passed back to her house. 
 
 Controversies grow tame and tiresome to the mind that has 
 looked on Truth. It was a happy life enough when the ground 
 was yet uncleared, and on its daily hunt of pride or pleasure it 
 (the mind) went out glowing in the morning, and came home at 
 night-time tired with its sport. But one day when it comes home 
 the place is changed ; a god has been there and the gloom is 
 gone, the woods have passed away, the weeds are burnt, the 
 coverts broken up, and in the broad bright plains stands the temple 
 of truth, looking north, east, south, and west, and lighting where 
 it looks. Henceforth it must be a life of worship, of daily going 
 in and out and doing service at the altar. There are victims to 
 be offered and incense to be burnt, there are days of work and 
 nights of prayer, till the heavens sliall be no more and Truth's 
 temples fall when the truth itself shall come. 
 
 We do not understand our life. Truth has laid her strong piers 
 in tlie past eternity, and the eternity to come, and now she is 
 bridging the intervals with this life of ours. ... It seems to us 
 
/ET. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 243 
 
 that she is building on the water and we stand smiling in idiotic 
 self-conceit at her folly and delusion, . . . till some morning 
 when we come to look and jest as usual, lo, there, looming up 
 before us, is the great headland that she saw all the time, and 
 was all the time striving to reach, but which our eyes could not 
 see and our hearts denied. 
 
 These theological debatings, how many of them are just like 
 children fighting about the nature of the sun ! Why ! are we 
 not daily all through life's journey trusting ourselves to bridges 
 whose supporting piers are away down beneath the water, believ- 
 ing in their strength without a doubt, wondering or complaining 
 when by chance one of them trembles or swerves a hair's breadth 
 in the storm? We walk the bridge of life. Can we not trust its 
 safety on the great resting-places of God's wisdom that are hid 
 from us in the depths of the two eternities ? 
 
 Truth keeps no secret pensioners; whoe'er 
 Eats of her bread must wear her livery too. 
 Her temple must be built where men can see; 
 And when the worshipper comes up to it. 
 It must be in broad noonlight, singing psalms 
 And bearing offerings, that the world may know 
 Whose votaries they are and whom they praise. 
 
 We talk of harmless error; no error is harmless. If it does no 
 other evil we cannot reckon the injury that it does by merely fill- 
 ing the place of truth, . . . crowding out of the world some part 
 of the honesty and truthfulness and sincerity of which, God knows, 
 the world is bare enough already. 
 
 Our journey before us to truth is long and slow and hard, 
 streams to cross and hills to climb and pathless fields to find our 
 uncertain way along. 
 
 These extracts are representative, showing that one domi- 
 nant motive running through almost every page of these 
 closely written note-books is intellectual. Hardly a note 
 that does not indicate the birth of a great mind into a world 
 of fresh thought. There is a tone of mastery and sense of 
 power, the realization that he was stepping into a rich herit- 
 age. And yet closely accompanying this attitude, there is 
 another mood, never far away, lurking in the corners of his 
 mind and demanding reconciliation with the abounding 
 
244 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 activity of reason, till it threatens to gain the supremacy, — 
 the issue of the conduct of life. To this end everything 
 seems finally to converge. His mind was brooding upon the 
 meaning of it all, how the learning, the rich treasury of 
 thoughts, the constant access to the temple of truth wherein 
 he worshii:)ped, should serve some practical end. He will 
 not allow that thought ends with itself. He does not collate 
 ideas for the purpose of comparison or discussion; the 
 contents of his note-books were his deepest secret, on which 
 he never spoke with his friends. But in his incessant mus- 
 ings by himself he revolves the issue of life and how thought 
 and truth are related to it. How ideas are to be brought 
 into organic relationship with the will is still his problem, as 
 it had been when he first became aware of his intellectual 
 power. 
 
 A moral ideal was now before him to whose increasing 
 demands he yielded himself as to the laws of his being. He 
 records his conviction that "duty is more than doctrine," 
 that behind the question, What is to be known, lies the deeper 
 question. What is to be done? He thinks that one may over- 
 load himself at the start in life with the hard belief in all 
 the paradoxes of thought and theory, and thus enfeeble the 
 simple truth that is needed for every day's support: — 
 
 A fresh thought may be spoiled by sheer admiration. It was 
 given to us to work in and to live by. There is more of clearness 
 in our eyes than of skill and readiness in our hands. It is be- 
 cause every thought sliould minister to the work of life that it 
 deserves and claims our reverence. It will give its blessing to 
 us only on our knees. From this point of view, thought is as 
 holy a thing as prayer, for both are worship. 
 
 We need new standards of usefulness and use. There is a 
 duty incumbent on us to recognize and be grateful for the slight- 
 est wedge that began the work of opening up our life. Faith and 
 faculties both need strengthening; conscience can help the first, 
 long earnest daily care helps the second. 
 
 New thoughts entering the world come as settlers to take pos- 
 session of a new c^iuntry. The old primary patriarchal truths 
 are doing their work in the centres of our being, but there is con- 
 stant discovery of new tracks of territory in human life, where 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 245 
 
 ground is to be broken. Life is developing the energies of 
 thought, while thought is working out the richness that lies hid 
 in life. 
 
 Every past deed becomes a master to us ; we put ourselves in 
 the power of every act. A deed simply conceived and planned 
 belongs still to the heritage of thought, but when it passes into 
 act there comes a personality to it, we gain ownership in it, and 
 men will give us credit for its good and bold us responsible for 
 its ill. 
 
 Good morals are good taste. 'T is well to know 
 
 No life is beautiful that is not good ; 
 It is increase in beauty when we grow 
 
 From what we would be into what we should. 
 
 Even in the old superstitions, the amulets and charms, saints' 
 medals and saints' bones, bits of the cross and thorns from the 
 crown, there was some power of strength in weakness and safety 
 in alarm, because there was belief in them, and belief always 
 ministers to power. 
 
 In the long years when great principles are busily clothing and 
 arming themselves for their work, our short-sighted weakness 
 thinks them idle. 
 
 Profusion, but no waste ; this is the law that Nature reads us 
 everywhere, and this law must also prevail in all the great econo- 
 mies of life. Some great true principle must inspire our work. 
 There must be no stint of labor where labor will tell for our neigh- 
 bors' happiness, but no wasteful extravagance of it where it will 
 not profit. Our study must regulate itself by the principle of 
 profusion that is not waste. And so most of all must om faith. 
 We have belief enough to buy all needful truth. That must be 
 our first care. Then if there be any left we may spend it after- 
 wards as taste and conscience lead. But it is at once foolishness 
 and wickedness so to lavish it upon the luxuries of metaphysics 
 and of science that when we come to the providing of gi'eat 
 household truths, religion, morals, and the practical sense whose 
 needful offices fill up each day, we must stint them of the profu- 
 sion that is their due. 
 
 It is a very happy but not at all a merry thing to pass from 
 another's mastery, and so more or less another's responsibility, into 
 our own. 
 
 We carry all our interests with us, if we did but know it, into 
 all our work. There is not enough of us, mind, heart, or brain, 
 
246 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-5^ 
 
 to make many men of, hardly enough to make one well. Every 
 scene and thought and habit weaves itself with every other to 
 clothe our life. 
 
 Remember we are debtors to the Good by birth, but remember 
 we may become debtors to the Bad by life, and both debts of 
 service and allegiance must be paid alike. The God of justice 
 will recognize the obligation we have incurred to Satan as fully as 
 our debt to Him, and demand of us to pay it with the dreadful 
 recompense of guilty conscience and polluted life and years of fear 
 and cares even to the uttermost farthing. 
 
 How hard it is while all conspire 
 To make the lower seem the higher, 
 
 The baser seem the better part. 
 To keep a mind unconquered still, 
 A purpose true, a steadfast will, 
 
 A conscious peace of head and heart. 
 
 If we could find some soul so pure that we might say of its 
 life, Here is a spirit that has made the flesh its helper and its 
 slave, not its partner and its lord, then we might test our own 
 life by that soul's working, know that deeds of which he was 
 capable were pure and holy, unstained by fleshly corruption. But 
 no human life can give us such a test. By approximation only 
 can we make such use of human lives. We must use our truth 
 the other way. This deed must be deed for carnal and not 
 saintly minds, because I find what spirituality there is in me, 
 what energy of spirit there is in all our human race, protesting 
 against it, shrinking from it, growing weak or dead when it has 
 yielded to its power. 
 
 He was meditating constantly upon all the fundamental 
 appearances of things, the sun and the sunlight, the hills and 
 the mountains, the rocks and their crevices, the ocean, the 
 waves, the tide, the green fields and the rivers; all the phe- 
 nomena in the life of man, his toil, his suffering, his evil and 
 sin ; but the aspiration also, — the hunger and the thirst for 
 good ; the city streets, the traffic, the cares of business, coun- 
 try lanes, the flowers, the sabbath bells, the churches; the 
 Christian festivals and the divisions of time, the lapse of 
 ages, the roll of past centuries, the great works of the past, 
 the hopes of the present, human progress, its faith, its hopes 
 and fears. He is impressed with finding that in past ages 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 247 
 
 there were always the same doubts, the same mysteries, that 
 oppress humanity to-day, but meanwhile the world jjro- 
 gresses. God meant it so to be, that each succeeding age 
 should draw new strength and use from its doubts and sense 
 of the mystery of the things. The idea of perpetual growth 
 is the ruling idea of religion and moral culture. 
 
 He meditates upon study and its relation to the coming 
 years. It is simply putting the human powers at interest, in 
 order to draw their accumulations hereafter. The thought 
 of death, its meaning, its relation to life, is constantly before 
 him. There are unuttered thoughts in every man that give 
 unconscious motive to action, like the Jewish name of God 
 which was not pronounced. All historical facts and situa- 
 tions become parables with a wider ajiplieation. Thus he 
 muses over TertuUian's challenge to the ancient world which 
 has lost its faith in the worship of the gods of Olympus : 
 "Quid ergo colunt, qui talia non colunt? " A new and 
 higher reverence must always await the decline of the old 
 faith. The crusades of the Middle Ages j)oint to the con- 
 stant necessity of spiritual search for Christ in his native 
 land and country. One reason why men cling to the old 
 machinery after it is useless is their dread of the first cost 
 of introducing the new. It is shiftless housekeeping to fill 
 the attics with rubbish, thinking it may some time be useful. 
 He meets in Coleridge the familiar passage which speaks of 
 every man as born a Platonist or an Aristotelian. He does 
 not apply it to himself, or ask which he may be, but he com- 
 ments on the deduction how all the great questions of the 
 mind are broader than they seem, how great men are bound 
 most closely to their race. The daily questions of interest 
 or truth win wider scope, and are part of the development of 
 eternity. He resents the theory as false that we ought not 
 to criticise faults in our neighbor's life, unless we have the 
 purity and truth in ourselves we demand in him: — 
 
 It is false because it ignores that self-criticism which every 
 honest man is far readier to bring in judgment to his own heart 
 than to his brother's life. A true man's ideal once worthily set 
 up, it is as much a sin against that standard to overlook another's 
 
248 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 failure as to flatter and disguise our own. In no malignant, or 
 envious, or unworthy sense, our own imperfection is ever crying in 
 our ears that our neighbors are imperfect too. 
 
 He is wondering why the great truths that possess the 
 power of remaking the soul for a higher life should become 
 trite and lose their appeal : — 
 
 We may make it a rule that whenever there is triteness, there 
 is some lack of truth; some falsehood, open or concealed in 
 speaker or hearer, wherein the triteness and tediousness consist. 
 If when a man is preaching what the whole gospel of nature and 
 revelation forbids us to believe untrue, we yet find it dry and 
 tame, it may be well for us to pause and ask for the seat of the 
 untruth we may be sure there is somewhere. It may be in him. 
 The words he says may be tinged with the insincerity of the mouth 
 that says them. ... Or it may be in us, for our frivolity may 
 be so estranged from earnestness or moral truth that it does not 
 even know its own footstep. ... Or again it may be in circum- 
 stances and relations. For there is a truth of time as well as a 
 truth of purpose and fact. But one thing is certain : the trite- 
 ness must be in some falseness somewhere, for truth is never trite. 
 We pray the prayer and read the Bible of the old fathers with as 
 much fresh comfort and delight as we see the old sun rise every 
 morning. 
 
 In passages like this we may discern the preacher gather- 
 ing strength and conviction for his task of making the old 
 truth live as new. Throughout these note-books, indeed, the 
 consciousness of an invisible audience to whom he is speaking 
 is always present. He rarely writes out a thought entirely 
 for his own satisfaction in the love of expression, without 
 this waiting presence of others upon whom he is urging it 
 by its rhetorical clothing or its most forcible presentation. 
 It is a singular conjunction of deep personal utterance, with 
 an absolutely impersonal form of expression. The veil of 
 reserve is over his spirit, even when he is most completely 
 embodying himself. It almost seems as if he regarded him- 
 self even in these private records as merely a channel of 
 communication, giving to others what he has received. 
 Nothing stops with himself, nor any thought or emotion ends 
 in himself. He was the lyre on which the Spirit was playing. 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 249 
 
 There is one passage which is most emphatic, however, in 
 communicating his secret : — 
 
 If we talk with any weak companion that we meet of religion, 
 of friendship, and truth, then friendship will cease to be beautiful 
 and religion to be holy, and truth will turn to falsehood, the trust 
 and honor of our life be turned to doubt and baseness. In course 
 of time we come to the knowledge of this mental domestic econ- 
 omy, learn to keep our heavy plate and fine apparel carefully 
 cupboarded, till some guest come to our table whom we can hon- 
 estly wish to honor, not bringing forth all our little wealth for 
 every idle loiterer that saunters to our door and sits down unbid- 
 den to eat our hard-earned bread. Then when a true guest comes, 
 we have at least some extraordinary show of welcome to make 
 him, and can bring out our little hoarded stock and spread our 
 board as best we can, and say, Sit down; my best is bad, but in 
 that it is my best, and in that I have treasured it so long, you 
 will not refuse to do it honor now. 
 
 This hoarded stock, which he was reserving until the fit- 
 ting honored guest might come, is displayed, though by no 
 means in its completeness, in the passages like these that 
 follow : — 
 
 I believe in these things because I know that they have helped 
 my race. I look to them as I look to the sun with a faith that 
 all the centuries of sunlight forbid me to disown. I hear them 
 from the Bible claiming my allegiance, as from all nature I hear 
 God's voice demanding that I should give reason room to grow to 
 trust and love. 
 
 Homer is no more ancient to us than he was to Chapman ; nay, 
 these two hundred years, while they have been busy making Chap- 
 man obsolete, have been bringing Homer nearer to us every day ; 
 and two centuries hence his Greek will be as much the world's 
 vernacular as now. Immortality has once thought to take a great 
 man's memory out of Time's careless keeping to her own; thence- 
 forth the coming and going o2 years and languages and men is 
 nothing to it. It lives, like the stars, above the accidents of 
 mortal change. 
 
 When Solomon's great temple to the Lord was done, he brought 
 in the things which Iiis father had dedicated. We build our 
 temples of duty and devotion to the Lord our God. We suit 
 them to our growing needs, to the changing demands of new 
 times and seasons ; but with our new modes and means of worship. 
 
250 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 we may set up in them too our fathers' holy things, their true 
 old faith and fervent prayers, the fragrant memory of their good 
 lives, the censers with the incense of their praise still about them. 
 So their dead worship shall give life to ours, so with our Christian 
 prayers shall mingle the noble conservatism that treasures up a 
 Christian past. 
 
 Our hope is in this Christian Radicalism which, through the 
 myriad shows and semblances of Christian life, goes down directly 
 to the root of things, and clings to Charity, and says, Lo, out of 
 these shall grow a Christian church for all the world, and out of 
 them a Christian experience for me. 
 
 The awakening to an old truth may be worth more to us than 
 the discovery of a new. For in spite of our dulness and dead- 
 ness to it, it has still been slowly ripening our nature for its recep- 
 tion and the final heart-acknowledgment of its truth. This 
 preliminary process we do not feel, but when the day of our 
 awakening comes, then old dreams half remembered take at once 
 their pi'oper places, and we recognize the growth that has been 
 going on within us and now has brought this precious truth to 
 birth. 
 
 Every identification that a man can make of himself with his 
 race is so much power gained. He multiplies his life eight hun- 
 dred millionfold. The world was made, and sun and stars or- 
 dained, and salvation sent to earth for him. The history of the 
 race becomes his experience, the happiness of the race his glory, 
 the progress of the race his hope. 
 
 Any want of energy we make allowance for, any want of truth 
 we all scorn ; any cowardice we pity, any falseness we despise. 
 It is manhood's testimony that man was made to be true more 
 than to be strong, to keep a soul that temptation could not sway 
 rather than a nerve that danger could not daunt. We learn the 
 proper programme of man's growth, — through truth to j)ower: 
 I am right and so I will be strong ; but not through strength to 
 trueness, — I am strong and so I will declare that I am right. 
 
 There are truths which the moral state feels that it must have, 
 but which it still discredits, — truths with ungracious ofiices, the 
 common executioners, as it were, who live in darkness till their 
 lielp is needed in the last resort. . . . Such is the old stern truth 
 that pain and death must follow human sin, and suffering is 
 linked to crime by crime's own nature and the charter of our life. 
 
 Such false humility is out of place. In spite of all our feeble- 
 
JET. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 251 
 
 ness, it must be, not what the worhl can do for me, but what I 
 can do for the world. Surely God never meant that conscious 
 weakness should lessen conscious duty. All nature, all life, all 
 gospel truth, is full of the other lesson, that the more we measure 
 ourselves against the world the more we shall see that, little as 
 we are, there is still great work for us to do in it. There is but 
 one thing weaker than the helplessness that comes of pride, and 
 that is the uselessness that comes of shame. 
 
 I believe that every thought accepted by intellect and con- 
 science and which we intend some time to accept in heart and life 
 stands less and less chance of such acceptance every day. . . . 
 The longer you mean to be a Christian without being one, the 
 worse your chance of Christianity becomes. 
 
 The vessels that we call empty are full to overflowing of 
 earth's common air, and the hearts that seem to us most dull and 
 vacant have their true share, we may remember, of true humanity, 
 human motive, human prejudice, and human faith. Thinking thus 
 we may win for them something of that active regard which, re- 
 cognizing in them powers like our own, wills, hopes, capacities of 
 truths, may go on to feed their hopes with noble aims, point their 
 wills to worthy deeds, and fill their souls as full of truth as they 
 are able to contain it. 
 
 There is a little letter (let us believe it is genuine) written by 
 the old church father Hilary of Poitiers, to his daughter Abra, just 
 fifteen hundred years ago. We turn the page from his great 
 treatises and commentaries that he wrote for churches and Chris- 
 tian scholars, and it is as if we saw the old man himself laying 
 aside for a few moments his hard work, and sitting down to a 
 fresh parchment for a few words to his little daughter. He tells 
 her in a simple parable that a Christian father might write, and 
 a Chi'istian daughter read to-day, how he wished to send her a 
 gift, and heard of one who had a pearl and robe of costly beauty ; 
 how he was told of their wonderful perfection, — that the robe 
 should never soil and never grow old, that the pearl should bless 
 its owner with unfading youth and beauty; how he begged them 
 for her, and was told that she had only to be worthy of them and 
 they should be hers. (Paris ed., 1845, ii., p. 547.) 
 
 Let us think there is some noble economy we do not under- 
 stand that makes you and me as necessary for our places here on 
 earth as Paul and Moses were for theirs. Unless we learn to feel 
 our lives essential we shall never live them well. If the world 
 does not need my work, there is little enough of motive in myself 
 
252 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 to work for: why not let all this long toil and weariness and 
 weakness rest ? 
 
 Through the darkness of church history comes here and there 
 the light of some Christian life, proving by its positive assertion 
 the reality and power of our religion, so that no negative evi- 
 dence of corruption and debasement or reigning sin can make us 
 doubt it again. There is positive proof in the single sunbeam of 
 the existence of the sun. 
 
 There is something holier and stronger and more immortal, 
 something harder to conceive of, harder far to reach, that lies 
 back of hope and faith and fear and reverence and love. As be- 
 hind the sun and clouds and silent stars lies the great eternity of 
 space, so behind this man's or that man's living or thinking or 
 enjoying lies the incomprehensible mystery of life. 
 
 Surely it shows a weak and false sense of the nature of true 
 power that the great church rulers had to forge for pious use such 
 scores of miracles about their saints. . . . We have outgrown 
 the need of miracles like those. A moral miracle is growing 
 more and more the test of saintship. 
 
 One great evil of the sin that we are full of is that it takes 
 away our right to be indignant when other people sin, and so in 
 time our standard of thought is lowered to their scale. 
 
 A community is not safe or happy unless among its storehouses 
 and dwellings and schools there is a church somewhere ; and in 
 our little world within there is a want that will be felt till we 
 have built a sanctuary there. 
 
 There are moments in the midst of life that have a power 
 almost as marvellous as death. . . . These little deaths that we 
 die daily catch some of the wonder of the death that we say so 
 often we are all to die. We reach one of the change points of 
 our life, we pass from world to world; there in the old world 
 behind us our kind friends make our graves and lay our old dead 
 bodies in them, and sit and think of what we were and how we 
 passed away; while in this new world before us we take to our- 
 selves new ends and aims of life, new hopes, new fears, a new 
 existence with its organs of growth and work and rest ; yet feel 
 for years the retribution of the old life we lived so basely, weak- 
 ening our strength and strengthening our weakness sadly. 
 
 You tell a child that he does not see solidity or surface or even 
 outline, that these are only the induction of his own mind. He 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 253 
 
 is startled and will not credit you at first, but the crude doubt 
 grows within him ; you cannot stop the train of thought you have 
 started; and unable to discover the true point and pause tliere, he 
 goes out from the healthy realism of his childhood into the vague 
 idealism of a false philosophy. 
 
 Our souls are tethered : round and round 
 One central point we wander still, 
 Like some poor lamb that feeds his fill, 
 
 And never knows that he is bound. 
 
 Give us this day our daily bread, we pray, 
 
 And give us likewise, Lord, our daily thought, 
 That our poor souls may strengthen as they ought, 
 
 And starve not on the husks of yesterday. 
 
 Living a life that men shall love to know 
 
 Has once been lived on this degenerate earth. 
 And sing it like some tale of long ago 
 
 In ballad-sweetness round their household hearth. 
 
 No book has made itself fairly the possession of the race until 
 it has made itself an unconscious necessity of men's life. . . . 
 Almost every man has some book which is . . . not his master 
 or his slave or his friend alone, but part of his own self. . . . 
 This kind of book we do not study. . . . We know the blessing 
 that it brings from the good it has done us all our days, and we 
 go to it morning and night for our supply. 
 
 Age is so apt to sneer when youth pronounces a judgment upon 
 it. Is it then so sure that youth may not judge of age as age of 
 youth ? The one sees by hope, the other by memory ; the one by 
 faith, the other by experience ; the one by the direct light of his 
 own fresh nature, the other by the reflected light of his own dead 
 years. I believe that a man of thirty knows more of what he 
 will be at sixty than of what he was at twelve. 
 
 We overlook too much the common daily blessings that religion 
 brings. Not least among these is the faculty of finding joy in 
 little things, recognizing their divine bestowal, finding still higher 
 blessedness in living out our gratitude to God. 
 
 Tliere comes a culture out of this religious life. From the 
 silent Bible reading, from the heart's meeting with the wonders 
 of the life divine, there comes a trueness and fineness, a manliness 
 and a womanliness that courts never give. 
 
2 54 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Any wayward fancy, any headstrong will, any false instinct, 
 any vagrant hope, bring them to the throne steps, and if they will 
 not kneel, then clear your heart of them forever. They are not 
 worthy of your brotherhood, for they disown the Master that you 
 serve, and you betray that Master's trust in trusting them. 
 
 Crown the truth supreme in every department and office of your 
 soul. Set it on the thi-one with all the majesty of kingliness 
 about it. Stand it in your temples and let the incense of your 
 daily prayers rise up in all the beauty of God's holiness about it. 
 Make it your guide and friend in all your hourly business, truth 
 uf design and truth of expectation, truth of plan and purpose and 
 labor, truth of taste and judgment, of time and place, let them 
 blend to make your whole life true and worthy of his service who 
 is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Whoever will not bow 
 before this monarcli you have crowned, let him be rebel to you. 
 
 We do not speak alone ; all honor and virtue of antiquity bear 
 witness to our truth, all its struggles for a purer life, all its cling- 
 ings to a truer faith. And the future sends its voice to plead for 
 us, all the hopes of posterity, all the longings of our race, all the 
 dim glimpses of truth yet to be revealed and blessing yet to be 
 attained. . . . The whole world with its histories and hopes 
 reasons with every soul, and adjures it to judge wisely and be 
 firm and true. 
 
 Many men have found a blessing and gone in and enjoyed it, 
 other men may search their footprints and find where they went 
 in. But while the careless crowd goes streaming by, and notices 
 neither the footprints nor tlie entrance, it is no thankless office if 
 we can hang some signboard of invitation where it shall catch the 
 heedless eye. We gain something of the prophet's inspiration if 
 we stand in the doorway and cry, Ho I every one that thirsteth, 
 to the thirsty thousands as they pass. 
 
 If there be a true and righteous God, then from our human needs 
 we may reason out our faiths and hopes and from our human 
 capacities infer our duties. God we may be sure will leave no real 
 need of our nature unappeased, He is too good and merciful for 
 that ; and He will overlook no capacity unfulfilled, for He is just 
 and righteous, all seeing and all wise. So from my need of truth 
 and life, I argue a gospel and an immortality ; so from my power 
 to believe and pray, I know my duties of worship and of faith. 
 
 It is a dictate of our simple sense that the work that men are 
 not to see need not be polished for men's eyes ; we shape it with 
 rough hands and put it to its silent use and then forget it. But 
 
JET. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 255 
 
 we must remember, too, that it is hidden from our sight as well as 
 from our neighbors ; and when we are thus laying the foundations 
 of a faith that we hope to build to grace and truth, it is best to 
 think how any flaw in them must be seen now, or never ; how this 
 part cannot meet our daily scrutiny and care, but being done now 
 once for all, must stand as its strength will bear it, bearing tlie 
 whole structure's fate upon its own. 
 
 It was his method in composition to state his subject in 
 condensed form, and then to expand or enforce it by such 
 appeals as were at his disposah Some of his representative 
 thoughts detached from their exposition are here given : — 
 
 The wider grows our knowledge, our thought, our perception, 
 the wider grows our store of axioms. There is no mystery but 
 waits to have an axiom, to be self-evident so soon as man's mind 
 grows broad enough to grasp it. 
 
 There is something wrong about a man that needlessly plucks 
 o£E a new leaf-bud from a forest tree, even if it be where no 
 human steps would have been sheltered by its shade and no human 
 eye charmed with its beauty. 
 
 The mind that is thoroughly in earnest feels that the accept- 
 ance of the truth may be as much a falsehood as its rejection. 
 Demanding truth in the inward parts it is ready to call every 
 character that lacks that inward truth false, no matter under 
 what banner of orthodox profession or noble pretence it may take 
 its place. 
 
 The foundations lie deep and broad, and we call them truths ; 
 the structure rises fair and graceful to the sky, and we call that 
 system. Time strikes the structure and it falls, but there are the 
 old foundations too strong and deep for time to touch them, and 
 on them rise new structures age after age. 
 
 There are two kinds of benefits that we may leave for men to 
 thank us for: we may set up new wonders in the museum of know- 
 ledge, or we may merely make the doorway wider and access 
 easier to the already crowded halls. 
 
 We can conceive how the mind that never felt a dovibt should 
 be intolerant. But oh, we who have labored so, where none could 
 see, to make our own faith sti'ong and true can sympathize with 
 every other soul still suffering in that labor. 
 
 Every new sympathy according to its fulness makes us richer 
 by more or less of a neighbor's life. In the infinite sympathy of 
 
256 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 heaven, the whole depth of high angelic life shall inspire every 
 glorified existence. 
 
 Now and then we seem to catch some glimpses of that ideal 
 world, which Philo thinks God made in his own thought, before 
 he made this world of sea and land we live in. 
 
 Much of our principle and knowledge lies by us all unemployed, 
 not a treasure because not a use, not truly ours because rendering 
 us no true aid as a comfort. 
 
 Your professed and habitual disputant is going wrong because 
 he is mistaking his carriage for his house. He is taking the argu- 
 ments which were given him to ride to truth in and living in them 
 as truth itself. 
 
 The deepest feelings may find vent in surface talk : the depths 
 of the ocean are mangled by the sharp and cruel rock, the foun- 
 tains of the great deep stirred, and there come a few foam bubbles 
 on the smooth surface of the wave. 
 
 All mental carelessness lessens our capacity of faith, makes us 
 not only less believing but less able to believe, destroys, as far as 
 it can, our power to rest on testimony for truth. 
 
 His heart is like tliat stable at Bethlehem, eighteen hundred 
 Christmases ago, one day a place for beasts to dwell in, the nest 
 changed to a holy place forever, by the new hope and salvation 
 that has found its birthplace there. 
 
 God is as willing that you should read your lesson in the sun- 
 light as in the storm. He would as gladly see you find conversion 
 in the truth that "God is love" as in the solemn warning that 
 our "God is a consuming fire." 
 
 After every sin comes the same voice crying, Adam, where art 
 thou ? and still the sinner nrast answer to the call, and to the 
 same confession and sentence and punishment as of old, except 
 that now the old dim hope is clearer. 
 
 We mistake the order of our worthy human aims. We would be 
 strong and true at once, and think that we shall win truth by 
 striving after strength, instead of knowing that we shall gain 
 strength just in degree as we become more true. 
 
 We strive too much to rival our dead selves. No deed of 
 ours should copy any former deed, but be always looking back to 
 the ])erfect model of principle and truth from which all our acts, 
 if they be worth repeating, have sprung. 
 
mr. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 257 
 
 Epigrammatic sentences, couplets, terse statements of great 
 truths, are interspersed everywhere. He had great faith in 
 the possibility of turning convictions and belief into axioms. 
 One is reminded of the Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius and 
 Epictetus, or the Pensees of Joubert. But it is all done 
 hastily, without revision, without view to publication, on the 
 principle "no day without a line." 
 
 You and I go out to-night and look at the heavens all aflame 
 with stars and call it beauty; but the wise man in his tower 
 studies these same bright heavens and proclaims it law. 
 
 If I knew that I had fathomed all the love or all the wisdom 
 of God, how faith and reverence and trust would fall away from 
 a being that such powers as mine could grasp. 
 
 In earth's great armory hang each man's arms and the commis- 
 sion that contains his labors. Is it manly to let them hang there, 
 and not take them down and be at work? 
 
 The soul can travel fast. A moment's sunlight builds the 
 bridge for it to leap to heaven, up the shining stairs, and then 
 come back to earth. 
 
 Earth stands mortgaged to him by God's word that says. Blessed 
 are the meek. What need to vex himself or his inheritance ? 
 
 It is always in this world so much more respectable and safe to 
 sneer and to despise tlian to admire and to praise. 
 
 Remember that no doubt that daunted you along the way has 
 any right to trouble your conviction when the truth is found. 
 
 Through the deep cuts of human toil, the rich brains of human 
 genius go flashing on their way. 
 
 We have no more right to confound doubt and disbelief than 
 mystery and falsehood. 
 
 The gracious mercy that binds omnipotence a willing servant to 
 every humble human prayer. 
 
 These constant forces, faith, conscience, religion, are every- 
 where consciously or unconsciously at work. 
 
 Only by an identification of duty and delight will life grow up 
 into manly grace. 
 
 We know God's glory only by God's grace, as it is sunlight 
 helps us see the sun. 
 
258 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 I think there are truths on earth which are to us what Paradise 
 Lost would have been to Cicero. 
 
 Faith could once shake mountains ; mountains now shake 
 faith. 
 
 Every unworthy affection makes us less able to love worthily 
 in future. 
 
 The dear becomes the beautiful ; the true grows to be holy ai> 
 we love it more. 
 
 A man whose character spoke with authority the words oi 
 wisdom his great mind conceived. 
 
 Earth has grown rich with the unredeemed pledges of the ages 
 of mankind. 
 
 Earth's old beliefs, old as the truths they cherish 
 Young as the youngest heart that thinks them true. 
 
 We reduce life to the pettiness of our daily living; we should 
 exalt our living to the grandeur of life. 
 
 That age is noblest that can keep the light 
 
 With which youth blessed it, when it gained the sight 
 
 Of earth's beauty and divinest night. 
 
 Vice claims a wideness goodness never wins, — 
 Endemic virtues, epidemic sins. 
 
 A boy's yearning for fame grows into a man's care for repu- 
 tation. 
 
 We must answer for our actions; God will answer for our 
 powers. 
 
 It makes life seem so purposeless and yet so full of purpose 
 when we think of death. 
 
 There is a necessary limit to our achievement, but none to our 
 attempt. 
 
 And like faithful watch-dog guardians, 
 Eound our passions stand our fears. 
 
 Eemember we are builders, not architects, of history and life. 
 
 The mainspring of all moral life, —the belief that there is in 
 us a rea power over the future to turn a false to a true, a mean 
 to a noble, an unholy to a pure. 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 259 
 
 There is one other princij)le underlying any seeming lack 
 of method, the fragmentariness, the wide discursive reading, 
 the severe studies and deeper meditations of which these note- 
 books of Phillips Brooks are the evidence or the expression. 
 That principle is the value of the human soul. It is this 
 which gives unity and system to the mass of quotations and 
 reflections. He heard much in the Virginia seminary, from 
 teachers and students, of the love of souls as the motive of 
 the Christian ministry. He had heard it, from his childhood, 
 in the teaching of his mother, or in the pulpit of St. Paul's, 
 where Dr. Vinton proclaimed it. It was the great motto 
 of the Evangelical school. Unconsciously to himself, it had 
 become the motive of his own life. But he followed his own 
 method in achieving that motive for himself as a conscious 
 possession. Before the human soul could be loved, it must 
 be known. To this end he had turned to literature and to 
 history as constituting together the biography of man. He 
 wandered up and down its highways, he turned into its by- 
 paths ; but wherever be went, from great writers or those less 
 known, heathen and Christian, ancient and modern, he never 
 failed to extract judgments of value, unsuspected revelations 
 of the beauty, the dignity, the greatness, the worth, of the 
 human soul. He saw also the dangers with which the soul 
 of man was surrounded, the sin, the evil, the curse, and the 
 tragedy of life. He gathered a new and larger conception of 
 what the salvation of such a soul must mean. 
 
 But to know thoroughly the human soul, he must enter into 
 all its great experiences, its deep convictions, study its for- 
 mulas, and somehow make them its own. He did not under- 
 take the task as a reformer, sifting experiences and choosing 
 those agreeable to his mood. To sit in judgment upon the 
 records was not for him, but rather, assuming that all was 
 genuine, to enter into its meaning. The experience of the 
 race was to be his experience. His object is to penetrate here 
 and there, wherever the way is open, into the secret of the life 
 of man. But whether he always understands or not, whether 
 he can appreciate what he has been called to appropriate as 
 his natural heritage, that is another question. He is willing 
 
26o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 to wait. It was in the sequence of this method that he seems 
 to have come to the person of Christ and His place in his- 
 tory. He did not reach it first, for he was ^ireoecupied with 
 a natural theology, was following humanity in its quest for 
 God, or was laying the foundations of the moral and spiritual 
 life in the instincts of the soul as revealed in life or litera- 
 ture. To this end he studied not so much himself primarily, 
 as he studied man in order to the knowledge of self. As he 
 pursues his search, he comes to Christ as the greatest figure 
 in the records of human life. It begins to be apparent to him 
 that all life centres in Christ, and finds there its fullest ex- 
 jiression. As he made his journeys backward and forward 
 from home to the seminary, he learned to recognize the 
 approach to a great city by the convergence, when yet miles 
 away from it, of all the roads as to some natural centre. He 
 applies the figure to the relation between Christ and human- 
 ity. This figure became not only an illustration, but an argu- 
 ment carrying additional weight to his reason. 
 
 I take my Plato and sit down and read, and think how true is 
 truth, how pure is purity, how great and deep the human mind 
 may grow. I take up Homer, and the years are singing round me, 
 and the truths of Troy-time, grown truer ever since, are linking 
 me to human nature and divine. I read La Place, and Nature's 
 riddle grows no less a mystery, but more a thing of fellowsliiij 
 with mind, and God who made it. . . .1 open my New Testa- 
 ment, and native purity and truth melt in the holiness of Jesus' 
 life. What I sought is found. I grow the safer as I grow wiser 
 now. Safety and wisdom fade away in love. "I am the resur- 
 rection and the life. " 
 
 In the midst of our Christian experience there will come such 
 transfiguration time. We walk with Christ and see the miracles 
 He does, live in His constant presence that surrounds us with 
 His constant love ; but we see Him poor and despised, He is not 
 of the noble, nor His cause of the nobilities of the world. But 
 some day he taketh His disciples apart and is transfigured before 
 them. On some hilltop of prayer, where it is good to be, they see 
 his own heavenly glory come down to clothe their Lord. His 
 countenance grows bright with everlasting love. His raiment is 
 pure and white in the eternal truth ; Moses and EHas come to 
 talk with Him, the deep sympathy of law and gospel is made 
 
^T. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 261 
 
 plain and clear, and the disciples fall upon theiv faces and worship 
 the Master they have loved so well. Henceforth their faith is 
 not to be shaken. They know whom they have believed, for they 
 have seen His glory. Such blessed seasons come to us. Whoever 
 else may waver, our doubting time is over. The memory of this 
 labor shall be with us as we look on Calvary. We have heard 
 the voice from out the cloud attest Christ's sonship and our duty, 
 — This is my beloved Son, hear Him. We go down with new 
 trust in God, new faith in Jesus, new sympathy with heaven, 
 new hope for man, to begin again our walk of quiet daily Chris- 
 tian duty, to see the daily miracle and feel the daily blessing, to 
 strive and struggle to the end, to keep the memory of that trans- 
 figuration we have seen to help our struggles and sustain our 
 hopes, to be nearer to Jesus, now that we realize how near He is 
 to God. 
 
 Still after each denial the Lord Jesus turns and looks upon the 
 recusant, as Jesus looked from the judgment seat upon Peter. 
 Still we go out in bitterness, as he went out and wept. All we 
 know of Jesus cries shame on our betrayal ; the faith that has 
 strengthened us upbraids our weakness. The skies frown down 
 impatient scorn upon our cowardice ; the whole beauty of nature 
 is vexed by the impurity of our sin ; the whole truth of the uni- 
 verse sees in our shame-struck faces the consciousness of our base 
 lie. 
 
 The old blindness of the Jewish council hall is on us still. 
 "Art thou the Son of God? He said I am." And then they 
 cried, "What need we any further witness? for we have heard 
 from his own mouth? " We can stand anything but that. The 
 patient life of doing good may bring reproach, the preaching in 
 the temple may stir up here and there a priest and scribe, the 
 miracle by the highway side may make men wonder through their 
 scorn and scorn the more for wondering ; but when this last great 
 Christ- voice comes, " I am the Son of God, " when this humanity, 
 that made men worship in spite of all their sneers, stands up here 
 in its crown of thorns with bleeding face and meek hands folded 
 over the mock sceptre of their derision, and claims its great divin- 
 ity — then the wild jury-mob's forbearance fails. This god-like 
 claiming to be God, the great divine asserting his divinity, this 
 heavenly master laying hold once more of the heaven that is His 
 eternally — • Ay ! those scribes and priests and elders, they were 
 right. What need of further witness ? for we ourselves have 
 heard from his own mouth. 
 
 Then comes the old doubting question. Art thou greater than 
 
262 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-5^ 
 
 our father Abraham ? Down to the standard of earth greatness 
 and fame, down to our ancestral prides and boastings, down to 
 liumanity's pattern-lives we bring divinity for judgment. Our 
 father Abraham is dead, can this new teacher live ? Can the God- 
 head that he claims be greater than the great faith and truth and 
 virtue of our father ? And so divinity grows weak to us, as it did 
 to the Jews. We lose the strength and great convictions of it by 
 our faitldess questions. We begin to call the new pretension that 
 has come down from heaven and claims a being and a power be- 
 fore and high above our human idols, — we call it blasphemy. 
 We scorn it from our temples and our streets, we lead it to the 
 Calvary of denial and rebuke. 
 
 We long to see the holy land and walk where Jesus walked. 
 Oil, is there not a holy land of duty all around us ? May we not 
 daily tread the same paths of holiness and sorrow, joy and love, 
 that Clirist lias trodden, and see His footprints on them still? 
 Yes, there are Bethanys and Capernaums and Calvarys for us to 
 visit every day. God grant us grace to bring away with us the 
 lessons that they teach. 
 
 "Our fathers did eat manna and are dead." To every heart's 
 experience comes its time of desert journeyings. There comes to 
 feed its hopes and faiths the daily gift from heaven; its fields lie 
 white with blessing every morning, it gathers strength from the 
 nourishment God gives it, but it wins no immortality. It eats 
 its manna in the wilderness, and the years pass by and it dies. 
 But new and better years come on, and they bring tlie new bless- 
 ing with them, from heaven too, but with more of heaven's wealtli 
 of life. The Christ is sent. "I am the bread that came down 
 from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live forever." 
 We look back now and see how the manna came from God, and yet 
 our fathers died. We come more heartily to feast of this new 
 bread of immortality. God bless it to our souls. 
 
 Until we come to a cordial feeling that every new discovery we 
 make of a new attril)ute, a new grace, a new glory anywhere in 
 God's nature, gives room for new joy and exultation in us who as 
 liis children have been called to share that nature, until with this 
 feeling in our hearts we go daily to new study of the life of God, 
 go to it for our daily joy and exultation, hojjing, believing that 
 we shall find tliem there, until we thus claim our heritage, we are 
 not heirs ; until we cry Our Father, and feel our filial trust, the 
 blessing of God's gracious fatherhood is never ours. 
 
 That he was looking forward to his future work as a preacher, 
 
MT. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 263 
 
 while still engaged in his preparation for the ministry, may 
 be inferred from the homiletic form into which many of his 
 thoughts were cast. No sooner did he receive a thought 
 than he occupied himself with the form it must take. The 
 thought and its fitting expression are never divorced. It is 
 interesting to note also the passages of Scripture running in 
 his mind, which he wrote down as texts for future sermons. 
 That they stood for vital trains of thought is evident from 
 the circumstance that sermons were ultimately written upon 
 them all. 
 
 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. (Ps. ex. 
 3.) Willingness the first Cliristian step. 
 
 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them 
 into the world. (John vii. 18.) A comparison of the Christian's 
 mission with a part of Christ's. 
 
 Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not kno^vn 
 me, Phillip? (John xiv. 9.) 
 
 And many that believed came and showed their deeds. (Acts 
 xix. 18.) 
 
 Faith which worketh by love. (Gal. v. 6.) 
 
 Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief. (Mark ix. 24.) 
 
 For he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. (Heb. xi. 27.) 
 
 For their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves 
 being the judges. (Deut. xxxii. 31.) 
 
 Who is he among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the 
 voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light ? 
 (Is. 1. 10.) 
 
 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the 
 manifestation of the sons of God. (Kom. viii. 9.) 
 
 For our God is a consuming fire. (Heb. xii. 29.) 
 
 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter 
 into his glory? (Luke xxiv. 26.) 
 
 Shall a man make gods unto himself? and they are no gods. 
 (Jer. xvi. 20.) 
 
 Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. (Heb. 
 xii. 14.) 
 
 Whosoever is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. 
 (Luke vii. 28.) 
 
 If any man be in Christ he ia a new creation. (2 Cor. v. 17.) 
 
 For I was alive without the law once, but when the command- 
 ment came, sin revived, and I died. (Rom. xvii. 9. Sophocles, 
 CEdipus Coloneus, 393.) 
 
264 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 Thus saith the Lord, If it be marvellous in the eyes of tlie 
 remnant of this people, shall it also be marvellous in mine eyes .'' 
 (Zech. viii. 6.) 
 
 They said unto him. Master, vi'here dwellest thou? He said 
 unto them, Come and see. (John i. 38.) 
 
 O that I knew where I might find him, that I might come 
 even to his seat. (Job xxiii. 2.) 
 
 And if any man say unto you. Why do ye this ? ye shall say, 
 The Lord hath need of him. (Mark xi. 3.) 
 
 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
 must put on immortality. (1 Cor. xv. 53.) 
 
 Ye worship ye know not what : we know what we worship. 
 (John iv. 22.) 
 
 Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you. 
 (John xii. 36.) 
 
 Out of weakness were made strong. (Heb. xi. 34.) 
 
 In that day shall be opened a fountain for sin and for unclean- 
 ness. (Zech. xiii. 1.) 
 
 Be ye holy, for I am holy. (1 Pet. i. 16.) 
 
 It would have been unpardonable to have detained the 
 reader so long by this effort to present Phillips Brooks, at 
 the age of twenty-two, in his intellectual and spiritual develop- 
 ment were it not justified by the necessity of knowing the 
 man as he was in himself. Throughout that wonderful 
 career, during which for thirty years and more he exerted 
 an almost unexampled spell over thousands and hundreds of 
 thousands of his fellow men, it was felt that he had some 
 secret of power which he did not or could not impart. That 
 secret is here revealed, so far as the eternal mj-stery of human 
 things will allow, in this story of what must be called his 
 conversion. It is a conversion so deep, so thorough, as to 
 find its precedents only in the conversion of an Augustine or 
 a Luther. Like those great forerunners he had been brought 
 up in the Christian faith, but when he came to years of 
 maturity, it was evident that this antecedent process, valuable 
 and indispensable, had only led him to the brink of a gulf 
 which must be bridged by supernatural power. In any eon- 
 version there is something which can never be told, which 
 surpasses human power fully to conceive or describe. Augus- 
 
 -■&'- 
 
/ET. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 265 
 
 tine could never make clear to himself or his readers exactly 
 how the issue was accomplished. At some critical moment 
 he had heard in the garden the voice of a child, saying, Take 
 and read, "ToUe et lege." The world is never tired of 
 studying the strange experience of Luther in the monastery, 
 when from the dread of the justice of God he passed to an 
 assurance of the love of God. The conversion of Phillips 
 Brooks resembles these conversions in another respect, while 
 yet it differs from them as the nineteenth century differs from 
 the fourth century or the sixteenth. In the souls of great 
 men, the issues of the age in which they live come to their 
 focus. The conflict within the soul of Augustine was no 
 other than the conflict between the heathen and the Christian 
 world, when on the one side was presented the wealth of 
 heathen culture, heathen aims, and heathen aspirations; and 
 on the other the grace of God that is given but never de- 
 served. Augustine sanctioned the abandonment of a cul- 
 ture that could no longer redeem from sin, acquiescing in the 
 condemnation and banishment of that attractive earlier world. 
 In the case of Luther, the spirit of medisevalism was at 
 war with the rising tide of individual freedom, which meant 
 emancipation from the house of spiritual bondage into the 
 glorious liberty of the children of God. With Phillips 
 Brooks the emergency was no less sharply distinguished. A 
 new world had been revealed to him, of which Augustine and 
 Luther did not dream. He was reading, as in an open book, 
 the new revelation in the world of outward nature, as it had 
 been exploited by the labors of science or by the insight of 
 great poets. The conception of humanity anticipated by 
 Herder and Eousseau, now become a recognized reality, had 
 been unfolded in its deeper significance, in its details and as 
 a whole, and laid before him, by the researches of many stu- 
 dents, as never hitherto in any age. And again, the great 
 body of modern literature, that had been produced with such 
 marvellous fertility, a consequence indeed of the Protestant 
 Eeformation, still waited for its adjustment with Christian 
 faith. In these directions he could not wander without mak- 
 ing the effort to bring them into unity, to reconcile them with 
 
266 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1857-58 
 
 faith in God and obedience to the divine will. In a word, 
 the product of the centuries since the Eeformation, in which 
 must be included the opening up of the history of humanity 
 and the bringing together of dissevered worlds, was handed 
 to him with the injunction to make it all subservient to some 
 higher unifying truth. He loved it all; it was no question 
 any longer of abandonment, but of reconciliation and appro- 
 priation in some deeper way. 
 
 In this process he struggled, haunted by doubts and nega- 
 tions, by disintegrating influences, whether bred by science 
 or by literature, — the substitution of impersonal law for 
 a righteous intelligent will, the worship of humanity in 
 the place of Christ, the fatalism in literature which was 
 paralyzing moral effort and inducing moral degeneracy. To 
 be true to himself, to renounce nothing which he knew to be 
 good, and yet bring all things captive to the obedience of 
 God, was the problem before him. He hesitated long before 
 he could believe that such a solution was possible. His 
 heart was with this rich, attractive world of human life, in all 
 the multiplicity and wealth of its illustrations, until it was 
 revealed to him that it assumed a richer but a holier aspect 
 when seen in the light of God. But to this end, he must 
 submit his will to the divine will in the spirit of absolute 
 obedience. Here the struggle was deep and prolonged. It 
 was a moral struggle mainly, not primarily intellectual or 
 emotional. He feared that he should lose something in 
 sacrificing his own will to God's will. How the gulf was 
 bridged he could not tell. He wrote down as one of the 
 first of the texts on which he should preach, "Thy people 
 shall be willing in the day of thy power," with the comment 
 that "willingness is the first Christian step." Thus the con- 
 version of Phillips Brooks becomes the representative process 
 of the nineteenth century. So far as the age has been great, 
 through science or through literature, its greatness passed 
 into his soul. The weakness of his age, its sentimentalism, 
 its fatalism, he overcame in himself when he made the abso- 
 lute surrender of liis will to God, in accordance with the 
 example of Christ : "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." All 
 
vET. 21-22] INWARD DEVELOPMENT 267 
 
 that he had hitherto loved and cherished as the highest, in- 
 stead of being lost was given back to him in fuller measure. 
 To the higher standard he had now raised there rallied great 
 convictions and blessed experiences, the sense of the unity 
 of life, the harmony of the whole creation, the conscious- 
 ness of pure joy in being alive, the conviction that heaven 
 is the goal of earth. He was submitting himself in the spirit 
 of a childlike docility to receive every lesson which the 
 divine Instructor of humanity would impart. To use again 
 the familiar metaphor, he was like a lyre played upon in 
 quick responsiveness by the spiritual forces in the universe, 
 whether in nature or in the history of man, anxious to miss 
 no chord of the heavenly harmony. Out of this process was 
 born the preacher, who in turn was to play upon humanity 
 as a lyre, evoking from it the same response which his own 
 soul had rendered back to the choir of the immortals. Be- 
 neath the indescribably rich contents of his mind and heart, 
 there was a deeper simplicity. There was but one rule to 
 follow, he must be the man that he ought to be, and was 
 made to be, to do always the thing that he ought to do, and 
 then labor to bring the world which he loved to his own 
 standards. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 1858-1859 
 
 LAST YEAR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. HE BECOJIES 
 A TEACHER IN THE PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT. HIS 
 FIRST SERMON. ORDINATION. CALL TO THE CHURCH OF 
 THE ADVENT IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 As Phillips Brooks was about to leave Virginia for the 
 long summer vacation, lie admits that the second year in the 
 seminary has been a happy one. He was filled with joy at 
 the thovight of going home, and sends word to his mother to 
 be on the doorsteps to meet him. 
 
 June 27, 1858. 
 Dearest William, — ... It is getting so warm here (a 
 perpetual ninety degrees in the shade) that I really feel as if I 
 ought not to stay here longer than is absolutely necessary. . . . 
 It is pleasant to think of only four more days here. I shall en- 
 joy of all things a day or two with you by the shore of the "much 
 resounding sea " [Newport]. . . . Let me warn you that you 
 must expect to see a very shabby representative of our name next 
 Saturday night. My exhausted wardrobe is not adapted to the 
 exigencies of a gay watering place, so you need not own me when 
 I come if you object. ... I have enjoyed the year here much 
 better than the last, have seen a good many pleasant people, like 
 Virginians and hate Virginia more than ever. Shall he right 
 glad, I tell yon, to see Chauncy Street again. . . . Next Monday 
 or Tuesday tell Mother to be out on the steps at Number 41. 
 Your affectionate brother, Phill. 
 
 The summer of 1858 was for the most part spent at home 
 in the familiar way, the family gathering in the evenings 
 about the table in the back parlor. Phillips devoted much 
 of his time to his younger brothers, who were now looking up 
 to him as an example, wondering at the new life upon which 
 he was soon to enter. He went with them often to the me- 
 nagerie, and enjoyed it probably more than any of them. 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 269 
 
 With Frederick, who was to enter Harvard College in the 
 fall, he took up again his college text-books; he was not yet 
 entirely weaned from that early preference for teaching which 
 had led him to devote his energies to the Latin and Greek 
 classics while in college. His note-books also attest his 
 continued interest in classical studies, filled as they are with 
 quotations from Latin and Greek authors. 
 
 One letter has been preserved, where he gives an account 
 of his vacation. It is a characteristic letter, reticent about 
 things which are uppermost in his consciousness, represent- 
 ing himself as having passed his summer in idleness. The 
 letter is written to his friend George Strong : — • 
 
 Saturday morning, August 28, 1858. 
 
 Deae Geokge, — ^ . . . I have been passing a quiet vacation. 
 About half the time in Boston and half in the country. We 
 have had a perpetual east wind ever since I got home, and it 
 has n't dared to be hot for half an hour since last June. Now 
 and then I take a great coat and shawl and spend a day or two at 
 Nahant, just to see what Dr. Kane's life up among the walruses 
 was like. Meanwhile I have prospered bodily, having abandoned 
 all thoughts of mental culture till I get back to the literary atmo- 
 sphere of the seminary. I have adopted from twenty to twenty- 
 five pounds that was n't mine when I got home. At present I 'm 
 not quite easy under it. It isn't fully naturalized yet, but I am 
 gradually taming it into a useful part of the body politic. . . . 
 I had a letter from Paddock last week. He is well, not doing 
 much, enjoying himself, and has got a sermon written. How is 
 yours ? Will you take my turn and preach the first Wednesday 
 after we get back ? On my part pen has not touched paper on 
 more serious duty than this note to you since I left the South. 
 My first text is waiting for me somewhere, I 've no doubt. Mean- 
 while I 'm waiting for an impulse. I heard also the other day 
 from Dr. Sparrow. He wrote to enclose me an advertisement for 
 insertion in the "Christian Witness." He says "the prospects for 
 next year are excellent, never better." What a broad margin 
 that leaves ! The preparatory department there has had an en- 
 dowment, and they mean to enlarge it. But it is like committing 
 suicide with six weeks' provisions still on hand to be talking of 
 the seminary now. Let it drop. I am annoyed at your reading 
 three volumes of Motley ! Why, that is more than one a month. I 
 wish Boston coolness had something of the energy of Cincinnati 
 
lyo PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 heat. My book work has been very scattered. I got through 
 Livingstone's Africa, but couldn't find it the fascinating book 
 it has been called. I have just finished a book that has held me 
 very close ever since I began it, that is Lewes's "Life of Goethe." 
 I had always rather shrunk from it, till I took it up quite by acci- 
 dent, and liked it so much I found, or made, time to put it right 
 through. Have you ever read it? Have you read the new 
 "Atlantic " ? "The Autocrat " we think is capital. The book- 
 stores here are in fine trim and full of temptations, but I have to 
 go through them with the idea that they are somebody's library, 
 and it 's no use for me to think of owning any of their trea- 
 sures. . . . 
 
 The allusion to his having read Lewes's "Life of Goethe," 
 and read it with interest, which is all that he vouchsafes to 
 say concerning it when he writes to his friend, is far from 
 expressing all that it meant to him. He must have i^aused 
 at every step in the story of Goethe's development, gaining 
 light upon the path he himself was treading. From the " Life 
 of Goethe " he turned to his books, appropriating from him 
 whatever could affiliate with his own ideal. He wrote down 
 the things which Goethe had said as no one else could say 
 them, — the final expressions he had given to the thoughts of 
 men. He studied the process by which Goethe was made, 
 catching from him the secret of a true culture. Because 
 there was in himself the making of a hero, he recognized a 
 hero when he saw him ; for " heroic eyes are always proud to 
 recognize heroic proportions." Something of the inspiration 
 which Goethe left with him is visible in these extracts : — 
 
 It is never well to put ungenerous constructions when others, 
 equally plausible and more honorable, are ready ; and we shall do 
 well here to follow the advice of a thoughtful and kindly writer, 
 to employ our imagination in the service of charity. 
 
 Our strength is measured by our plastic power. . . . Bricks 
 and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make 
 them something else. 
 
 Make me feel what I have not yet felt, make me think what I 
 have not yet thought, then I will praise you. But shrieks and 
 noise will not supply the place of pathos. 
 
 Art, says Lewes, enshrines the great sadness of the world, but 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 271 
 
 is not itself sad. . . . Goethe could not write "Wertber " before 
 he had outlived Wertherism. 
 
 Aujourdhui rhomme desire immensdment mais il veut faible- 
 ment. 
 
 The shout of freedom rouses them to revolt ; no sooner are they 
 free than the cry is "Whom shall we obey? " 
 
 The roll of drums has this merit at all events, that it draws 
 men from their library table to the window, and so makes them 
 look out upon the moving, living world of action, wherein the 
 erudite may see a considerable sensation made even by men unable 
 to conjugate a Greek verb in Greek letters. 
 
 Das Muss ist hart, aber beim Muss kann der Mensch allein zeigen 
 wie 's inwendig mit ihm steht. Willkiirlich leben kann jeder. 
 
 Ein unnutz Leben ist ein frilher Tod. 
 
 I have a purer delight than ever when I have written something 
 which well expresses what I meant. 
 
 The happiest thing is that I can now say I am on the right 
 path, and from this time forward nothing will be lost. 
 
 Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt. 
 
 The student of history knows how discoveries are, properly 
 speaking, made by the age and not by men. 
 
 Wie das Gestirn 
 Ohne Hast 
 Aber ohne Rast, 
 Drehe sich jeder 
 Um die eigne Last. 
 
 The difference between knowing the mountain gorges by the 
 map and book, and knowing them from having been lost among 
 them, and having wandered fearfully among them with death 
 staring down at you from every peak. 
 
 He notes the homage which Goethe pays to Christianity 
 when writing to Eckermann, and how Schiller, writing to 
 Goethe, confirms this tribute : — 
 
 Let mental culture go on advancing, let science go on gaining 
 in depth and breadth, and the human intellect expand as it may, 
 it will never go beyond the elevation and moral grandeur of Chris- 
 tianity as it shines forth in the Gospels. 
 
272 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 I find in the Christian religion virtually the foundation of the 
 highest and noblest; and the various manifestations of the same 
 in life appear to me only therefore so repugnant and insipid, 
 because they are failed representations of the highest. (Extract 
 from letter of Schiller to Goethe.) 
 
 There was much in common between Goethe and Phillips 
 Brooks, but the contrast is also striking. Like Goethe, he 
 shunned the study of philosophy, with its critical analysis of 
 abstract ideas, preferring to draw his own conclusion from 
 things in the concrete, from the world of life and of human 
 history. He was like him in feeling the fascination of 
 Greek literature and art. But he differed in having come 
 under the influence of Philo, who, in that plastic moment 
 when the Jewish mind first experienced the influence of Greek 
 thought, had gained the higher spiritual vision which after- 
 wards inspired the early Alexandrian fathers, and ultimated 
 in the conquest of the intellectual world of the early centuries 
 by the Christian faith. The similarity goes further: in the 
 perfect symmetry of the human body, the beautiful face upon 
 which men were never tired of gazing ; and again in this, 
 that, like the great German, he was soon to rise like a star in 
 the heavens, to be followed to the end of his life with what 
 almost seemed like adoration, to stand upon an exalted pin- 
 nacle without losing his balance till God should remove him. 
 What he admired in Goethe finds expression in the sonnet 
 which he wrote at this moment, a parallel in his own character 
 and history : — 
 
 Two days with Goethe ! How the great wise man 
 Ripened with slow strength from the glorious boy ! 
 Each new experience of grief or joy 
 
 Lending its life to vivify the plan. 
 
 That earnest search of Nature and her truth. 
 That generous sympathy with human kind, 
 That kingly friendship with a kindred mind, 
 
 That age aglow with all the fire of youth ! 
 
 Once in long ages God sends such a soul, 
 
 The Homers, Shakespeares, Goethes of the world, 
 
 To stand for Earth's great landmarks, while seas roll. 
 And thunders war, and heaven's high bolts are hurled. 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 273 
 
 Men learn their greatness with the gradual years, 
 Seeing them dimly through the Earth's faithless fears. 
 
 But while lie was writing the sonnet he entrusts to his note- 
 book the proof of divergence from Goethe : — 
 
 "We know that we exist," says Goethe, "when we recognize 
 ourselves in others. " Nay, we do not fairly know of our existence 
 till we recognize ourselves in God. Gradually as we study the 
 divine nature, there comes out from it impulse after impulse that 
 enters into our own hearts and finds some impulses akin to itself 
 doing the blind work there. Gradually we catch some glimpse 
 within ourselves of God's image in humanity. . . . We leave 
 the pagan theology that makes God but a great man, and rever- 
 ently study the divine to learn of it what truth and beauty God 
 has planted in the human. 
 
 And again, in close conjunction with his extracts from 
 Goethe he gave a place to the words from St. Bernard : — 
 
 It is the glory of a single life to live the life of an angel, while 
 occupying the body as of a beast. 
 
 On the 1st of October he returned to Virginia. The last 
 year in a theological seminary is apt to be a disturbed and 
 broken one, in consequence of the vision of possible parishes 
 and of calls to churches, the writing of sermons, ■ — the per- 
 turbation which comes from the close approach to the reality. 
 It was so in this case. For some reason, which is not given, 
 he had made up his mind not to return after his ordination 
 to Boston, or Massachusetts. He had probably discussed the 
 question with his father, who writes to him, as if he under- 
 stood his feeling : "I do not wonder you avoid Massachusetts." 
 One may surmise that he had not yet got over the sense 
 of failure and mortification about the Latin School, or that 
 he thought he should make a better start where it was not 
 remembered against him. But there may have been other 
 reasons. It was certainly wiser that he should begin his 
 ministry away from home. The question now arose as to 
 his transfer as a candidate for orders to some other diocese ; 
 it was also necessary that he should get permission from the 
 Bishop of Massachusetts to be ordained in Virginia with his 
 
274 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 classmates, even if he were not transferred. Upon this he 
 had set his heart. These questions, and others similar to 
 them, are recurring in the home correspondence throughout 
 the year. The problem how to approach the bishop so as 
 to win his consent was turned over in the letters that passed 
 between him and his father. 
 
 An event occurred soon after his return to Virginia which 
 may seem of slight importance, but was in reality of deep 
 significance. He was invited by the faculty of the theological 
 seminary to take charge of the new preparatory department, 
 where students were to be trained for admission to the study 
 of theology. It was constantly happening that men were 
 presenting themselves as candidates for the ministry whose 
 classical training was deficient, who had not been to college, 
 or who were advanced in years and felt the need of some pre- 
 paratory work before entering the seminary. The j)reiiar- 
 atory department was not intended as a short cut to the 
 ministry, but was in danger of becoming such. When that 
 result was manifest in later years, the experiment was aban- 
 doned. It was then a signal mark of confidence and esteem, 
 a recognition of his scholarship and of his character, when 
 Phillips Brooks was asked to take charge of so important a 
 work. That he felt it to be so, and in this feeling had the 
 sympathy of his parents, is seen in the following extracts 
 
 from his correspondence : — • 
 
 October 5, 1858. 
 
 Dear Father, — ^ . . . I have just come from Dr. Sparrow's 
 study, who has been proposing tliat I shall take charge of the pre- 
 paratory school, if they do not determine to settle on a man who 
 is here, now applyiu.; to be permanent teaclier. And the Dr. 
 tokl me he had no idea they would take him. So I think I may 
 be pretty sure of the place, and shall probably he at it within a 
 week. Ho did not speak definitely as to the salary, but assured 
 me it should be made satisfactory. Something unexpected may 
 turn up, but if everything works right I shall be pretty well ])ro- 
 vided for tliis year. I will write you as soon as it is settled. 
 . . . Dr. Sparrow intimated that his hint to me in vacation 
 alwut the school, wliich w-as all he felt at liberty to give, was 
 intended to start me off at once to Virginia. Great love to all. 
 Write often to Your Affectionate Son, Phillips. 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 275 
 
 Saturday morning-, October 9, 1858. 
 Dear Father, — I have time for only a word to-day to tell 
 you about "the school." I have made an engagement to teach 
 Latin and Greek two or three hours per diem, and sliall begin on 
 Monday. I am to have $300 and board, equal to $400 in all. 
 Not very large pay, but all they can afford to pay, and as much, 
 I suppose, as I had any right to expect. At any rate it will be 
 enough to cover my expenses through this year. Dr. Sjjarrow 
 told me that if after ordination I would stay here a year or two 
 he would promise me a very handsome salary. You don't catch 
 me doing that, though. One year more of the South will be 
 enough for me. Mother's letter came last night. Much love to 
 all at home. Everything goes on well. I am at my first sermon. 
 Very truly Your affectionate son, 
 
 Phillips. 
 
 These letters brought back from his father and mother 
 warm congratulations. To justify himseH in their sight as 
 one on whom their labor had not been wasted was no slight 
 thing in his eyes. This first incident in his career of triumjjh 
 is indeed so slight compared with what is to foUow that it 
 may seem unnecessary to mention it. But to him it meant 
 much in many ways. It was the highest honor which the 
 seminary could bestow. It meant success in that very line 
 wherein he had seemed to fail when he made his first experi- 
 ment in teaching. It gave him confidence. It reversed the 
 sentence of Master Gardner of the Latin School. This 
 time he did not fail. The testimony of those who had the 
 privilege of knowing him as a teacher bears witness to his 
 singular success as a teacher, his power of gaining his pupils' 
 confidence and love, his helpfulness in creating interest in 
 their work. Whether it was wise for him, however, to have 
 taken this additional work may be doubted. It interfered 
 with his reading to some extent, and the year was not so 
 rich in results as the previous year had been. These are 
 some of his references to his work as a teacher : — 
 
 This playing scholar and teacher at the same time doesn't give 
 much time for letter-writing. I have been at it for a week now. 
 I have a class of about thirteen, who are ])reparing for tlie semi- 
 nary. At present they are all laboring through the Greek and 
 
276 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 Latin grammars, and some of them are reading Virgil. It takes 
 two or three hours a day, and when we get thoroughly going, will 
 probably require more. So you see putting this and our regular 
 seminary work together, it makes a pretty busy day for me. Be- 
 sides this, I have been at work on my first sermon, and it comes 
 pretty hard. 
 
 October 16, 1858. 
 The "class" comes on finely. . . . They are in Sallust and 
 the Greek Reader, which I think is doing pretty well for men 
 that never touched the languages before. I have got one of them 
 ready and got him into the seminary this week. 
 
 February 3, 1859. 
 
 I could not but be struck to-day in our Virgil class with the 
 contrast of the heaven of tlie iEneid with the heaven of the Re- 
 velation. "Solemque suum, sua sidera movunt, " says the poet 
 (iEneid, vi. 641). "And the city hath no need of the sun, neither 
 of the moon, to shine in it ; for the glory of the Lord did lighten 
 it and the Lamb is the light thereof " (Rev. xxi. 23). So speaks 
 the Evangelist of what he saw on the Lord's Day in Patmos. 
 Once get the Bible idea of Deity and we feel that it needs some- 
 thing more than a new earth to make a heaven. 
 
 There are other circumstances connected with this moment 
 in his life wliicli mark it as important. He was now passing 
 into his own independent career, and no longer need look to his 
 father for his maintenance. We have seen that it was hard 
 for him to call upon his father for money, and how the father 
 and mother were distressed that such should be the feeling. 
 Most gladly was the money always sent, nor was it any incon- 
 venience or hard limitation upon his father's resources. But 
 the time none the less had come when he should be independ- 
 ent, and he knew it. The home correspondence shows that 
 the moment had arrived which in some families, especially 
 his own, created a strain upon both sides, as the inevitable 
 approached. For himself he still continued to call upon his 
 parents for advice when he was his own best adviser. He 
 was now twenty-two, within a few months of his twenty-third 
 birthday. To the parents lie was still a boy, to be watched 
 over and guarded from harm, whether of soul or body. 
 Slowly did they relinquish the sense of responsibility. His 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 277 
 
 mother was the first to yield, though her solicitude for his 
 welfare never ceased. But habit had a stronger hold upon 
 the father. He writes to him that he is willing he should act 
 for himself in the matter of deciding upon the invitation to 
 take charge of the preparatory school. In other ways the 
 father clung to the old relationship of masterful authority, 
 handed down in Puritan households. Years afterwards, he 
 entered it into his journal that he had not been consulted 
 about an important event in the life of his son, and did not 
 know what his decision would be. 
 
 The mother of Phillips Brooks was also passing through a 
 trial of her own, in consequence of his reserve in speaking of 
 that which lay nearest to her heart. Her loving letters to 
 him met with no response. Those letters display such an 
 intensity and depth and wealth of love that they cannot even 
 now be read without emotion. One is apt to take such love 
 for granted, like the divine love which all receive but few 
 acknowledge. It can truly be said of Phillips Brooks that 
 no lack of appreciation or affection for his mother caused this 
 seeming neglect. But it was impossible for him then to 
 answer such letters as his mother wrote. To the love which 
 poured itself forth as a mighty river, he was far from indif- 
 ferent, but it begot in him a mood of which silence was the 
 only expression. Neither then nor at any later time in his 
 life did he ever give himself freely to any one. He did not 
 speak of himself, except very rarely, in the note-books which 
 were intended for his eye alone. What he gave, he gave in 
 impersonal ways. He could act and do, leaving others to 
 interpret him from his deeds, but about his inner life or his 
 religious experience he was dumb. Yet it was with this life 
 of the feelings that his mother dealt almost exclusively in her 
 letters. He was like her in that he had the same great lov- 
 ing soul, boundless in its capacity for affection, whose outlet 
 was at last to be found in preaching. But he could not 
 respond in a letter. 
 
 The father's letters were those of a man of affairs, con- 
 versant with the world, in one way more interesting than the 
 mother's, because they were rich with the interest of actual 
 
278 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 life. They could be answered by the son without committing 
 himself to any utterance regarding his inner life. When a 
 young man is entering upon life, the father naturally steps 
 forward as his guide, with practical suggestion, while the 
 mother recedes for a moment into the background. But this 
 moment passes away, and the mother resumes her ascendency. 
 It seems to have been so in the case of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 At last ho broke his reserve, the accumulated silence of a 
 year, in this letter to his brother : — 
 
 Saturday evening, November C, 1858. 
 Dear William, — Somehow I feel a little like writing to you 
 to-night. Tliat Kilhy Street corner promise stands up before me, 
 and makes me shudder that I have n't kept it more before. Here 
 I am one month into my last year of study (make up your mind 
 that tliis letter is going to be all about myself, and forgive it 
 aocoi'dingly). Somehow the work I am at begins to look very 
 different and strange to me. Do you know I feel as I never felt 
 before, to find myself here within eight months of the ministry ? 
 Wlietlier it is this getting at sermon-writing that makes me feel 
 more than ever how weak I am to go about the world's greatest 
 work, I certainly do feel it fearfully to-night. But yet I tell 
 you. Bill, I can't recall many pleasanter hours than those that I 
 have S])ent in writing my two or three first poor sermons. It 
 seems like getting fairly hold of the plough, and doing some- 
 thing at last. I always have been afraid of making religion pro- 
 fessional, and turning it into mere stock in trade when I approached 
 the' work, but I have never felt more deeply how j^ure and holy 
 and glorious a thing our Christianity is, what a manly thing it 
 is to he godly, till I sat down to think how I could best convince 
 other men of its purity and holiness. I do enjoy the work, and 
 with all my unfitness for it, look forward to a hap])y life in trying 
 to do it. Somehow I have never been quite frank with you; as 
 much with you as anybody, but not thoroughly with any one, I 
 think. But I am beginning to own up more fairly to myself. 
 Every day it seems as if the thing I have got to do stood up 
 plainer before me and forced me into frankness. My ideas of a 
 minister are a different thing from what they were two years ago, 
 poor and unworthy enough yet, but I think growing purer and 
 more worthy. It seems to me every day more and more as if 
 it were treason to liis work for him to neglect any part of his 
 whole nature that is given to tliat work, and so I tliink the broadest 
 mental outline, and the deepest moral truth, and the purest spiritual 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 279 
 
 faith are more and more the demands, one and all of which Christ 
 makes of his workmen, growing to perfect men and so to perfuct 
 Christians, to the measure of the statui-e of the fulness of Christ. 
 I have just been writing a sermon on that subject, the " Manliness 
 of Faith." 
 
 I have undertaken this year to preach plain sermons to a small 
 congregation of from fifty to seventy-five people at one of the 
 stations near the seminary, and feel that I am better for the 
 work, more and deeper in sympathy with simple, honest men, and 
 a clearer light into what common men's minds are doing, and 
 how they may be taught to do better and nobler things. 
 
 How are you coming on ? I wish I could see you all for this 
 evening. I don't know what has set me off into this letter to- 
 night. I happened to feel like it, that 's all. Excuse it if you 
 don't like it, and forget it. Don't quite forget, though, that there 
 is such a creature as P. B. getting ready for work off here in 
 the woods. Only eight months more, and I shall be at it. I 
 hope these months have magic in them to get me ready. Excuse 
 the " I-ness " of this letter from your affectionate brother, 
 
 Phill. 
 
 This letter, read to the family, was answered by the father, 
 who also takes the occasion to refer to the circumstance 
 of his having written his first sermon, and to ask that it may 
 be sent to him for his perusal. 
 
 Boston, Saturday afternoon, November 13, 1858. 
 My deae Son, — ... I want to acknowledge to you my 
 satisfaction and pleasure for that letter received this week from 
 you to William. It was so exactly what I have been wanting to 
 hear from you so long, it breathed the spirit which I have so long 
 wished and prayed for in you, and I am confident you will here- 
 after feel happier in your own mind. Do go on, my very dear 
 son, and cultivate that feeling, prayerfully and strongly. I am 
 pleased, too, that you find your situation at the seminary pleasanter 
 and more to your satisfaction. ... I would not be so selfish as 
 to lead you to think that I am expressing only my own feelings ; 
 by no means ; we all rejoiced at it, and your mother was exceed- 
 ingly gratified. It was a family letter, and only considered as 
 such. Do write so often, my dear son, and express your feelings 
 freely. You cannot imagine how it would gladden your parents' 
 hearts. Did you ever think of my request for the MS. of the 
 first sermon ? I will not urge it if you have objections, but I 
 should like to see it, and if you wish it, it shall be sacredly kept 
 
28o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 private. If you knew how much and how often you are in our 
 thoughts and our prayers, you would feel a stronger bond of sym- 
 pathy with home. Not that I think you are deficient in that 
 feeling, but it would be stronger. 
 
 In response to this request, the first sermon was sent to his 
 father, and soon after the following letter. It is character- 
 istic that he should have written "private" above the text, 
 where it still appears, legible though faded. Other allusions 
 in the letter are to Dr. Vinton's resignation of St. Paul's 
 Church, Boston, an event which greatly moved the Brooks 
 family, as it did also the whole congregation. 
 
 Novembei- 16, 1838. 
 
 Dear Father, — Did you get the sermon I sent you ? I sent 
 it because you asked for it, not because I thought it worth your 
 reading. Will you tell me how it struck you ? How it woidd have 
 struck you had you heard a strange young man, of six feet four, 
 preach it in your own pulpit, what you would have said about it 
 when you first got home ? Be indulgent with it, it is my first, 
 and my others have been very different. 
 
 My dear Father, I nuist come to you for money. I have been 
 running up a few little bills and find I cannot get along till the 
 1st of January, when my little salary falls due. . . . Can you 
 let me have say $15 or so, for washerwomen and wood-sawyers, and 
 some of that tribe. The school comes on well, takes a good deal 
 of time, but is not unpleasant work. I have hung Dr. Vinton, 
 tell William, and he looks well. I feel more and more obliged 
 to William for his present every day. How is he now ? 
 
 I had a letter the other day from Dr. Richards, and he acknow- 
 ledged your kindness in sending him Dr. Vinton's farewell. He 
 is doing well, and likes Great Barrington. Dr. Sparrow, too, 
 desires me to thank you for the copj' you sent him. I am very 
 glad you sent it. Glad you have got Bancroft. Write me how 
 you like him. Dr. iS. (between you and me) has hinted a wish 
 that I might stay here next year and take charge of the Prepara- 
 tories, and be assistant in the cliapel. I liave also a sort of 
 glimpse of a parish in Philadelplua. This is all between us. No 
 knowing what either will come to. 
 
 I am writing sermons still, and enjoy it, although it is a very 
 different thing from what it will be when I have a people to 
 preach to. I look forward to that time with impatience, though 
 with fear. Please return my sermon when it is convenient; no 
 hurry. I shall never preach it again just as it is, but may use 
 
^T. 2 2-23] THE FIRST SERMON 281 
 
 parts of it. Love to all. I thought much of you yesterday 
 keeping Thanksgiving. Why doesn't George write? Good- 
 night. Your affectionate son, 
 
 Phillips. 
 
 Words of commendation about sermons, especially from 
 near friends and relations, are not easy to estimate. But 
 enthusiastic admiration it is difficult to conceal, and its tone 
 cannot be mistaken. The first sermon did not elicit any 
 enthusiasm from his father or his mother. One might say 
 of it, as the expression goes, that it was "well received " 
 or "gave good satisfaction." The father writes to him: — 
 
 Boston, November 29, 1858. 
 My deae Son, — ... The same mail brought me the MS. 
 sermon, for which I am much obliged, and have been much gratified 
 and pleased with reading. It is very good and sound, and Mother 
 likes it because it is so "much gospel." . . . The sermon, I 
 noticed, you marked private, and I promised to consider it so, and 
 have done it, reading it only to Mother and aunt Susan. As you 
 did not mention it in your letter to William, I did not show it to 
 him. None of them recognized the direction on the envelope. 
 Presuming you would wish it returned, I shall do so by this mail, 
 and again thank you for sending it to me. 
 
 His mother had hoped to have chosen the text for his first 
 sermon, but she acquiesced in his decision to choose for him- 
 self. She writes him with reference to it : — 
 
 Boston, Saturday eTening, Norember 20, 1858. 
 Mt precious Phillips, — More precious than ever. I have 
 delayed writing to you, for I have hardly known how to tell you 
 how happy I feel since the receipt of some of your last letters. I 
 thank you for writing so freely, and what beautiful texts you have 
 chosen ; they breathe all of Christ. You know I wanted to choose 
 your first text, but I am satisfied. The simplicity wliich is in 
 Christ, — how beautiful ! I know you have preached pure, simple 
 gospel, and that is enough for me. I have lived to see my prayer 
 granted, that my child might preach Christ. I am happy. . . . 
 We are all feeling deeply interested in you and praying for you, 
 my dear child, at home as you are nearing your work. And your 
 younger brothers, Phillips, seem to think and feel a great deal 
 about you. They are watcliing you, and I thank you for tlio 
 example you are setting before them. You know you iiave great 
 
28a PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 influence over them. ... My heart is with you much, very 
 much, this winter, particularly evenings when I know you are 
 writing your sermons. It must he a delightful work to feel your- 
 self pleading for Christ. May you he strong and fearless tor 
 
 And now, my dearest Philly, I must say good-night. How I 
 wish I could look upon your face to-night! God keep you and 
 hless you, and continue to make you a blessing to the world and 
 to your devoted and happy Motheb. 
 
 And now it is time to turn to this first sermon. When he 
 wrote it, he had gained the leading principles whose exposi- 
 tion was to form the work of his life. lie was ready and 
 anxious to speak. His first utterance gives us the man. The 
 text was 2 Corinthians xi. 3, —"The simplicity that is in 
 Christ." 1 Simplicity was the ideal of his college life, so that 
 he was keeping the natural unity of his days when he chose 
 it for his first sermon. But between the college essay which 
 advocated simplicity and the last year in the seminary there 
 had been a vast development. As a sermon, when looked at 
 from the point of view of a congregation, it could hardly be 
 called a success. It is doubtful, for example, whether his 
 father when he read it quite saw his drift or purpose. He 
 himself said of it freely in later life that it was defective in 
 two ways, — "it was lacking in simplicity, and had nothing 
 in it of Christ:" — 
 
 I well remember the first sermon that I ever achieved. The 
 text was from 2 Corinthians xi. 3, "The simplicity that is in 
 Christ," and a cruel classmate's criticism of it was that "there 
 was very little simplicity in the sermon and no Christ." I am 
 afraid that he was right, and I am sure that the sermon never 
 was preached again. Its lack of simplicity and lack of Christ no 
 doubt belonged together. It was probably an attempt to define 
 doctrine instead of to show a man, a God, a Saviour.' 
 
 ^ It is a small point, but it is wortli mentioning^, that the size of the sermon 
 paper upon which lie fixed for his first sermon was S inclies by C)^. From this 
 he never varied in after life. He became accustomed to think upon paper of 
 this size, and had liis note-books made to order of the same size. His sermons 
 were written from the first rurrenfe cal.amo, and contain few or no erasures. 
 He preserved throughout an even bandwriting- with no traces of haste, despite 
 tbe rapidity and the intensity of his mental movements. 
 
 ^ " On the Pulpit and Popular SkeiJticism," in Essays and Addresses, p. 74. 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 283 
 
 The sermon has what is apt to be the defect of every first 
 sermon, it is overloaded with material, and undertakes to say 
 too much. But that was inevitable; he was making his niani- 
 festo and could afford to omit nothing. He had told his father 
 that he should not preach it again, and there is no evidence 
 that he did. But he also said that he might use certain 
 parts of it, and this he did, making the first half of it his 
 graduating thesis. In this form it has been published, the 
 first essay in the volume called "Essays and Addresses," 
 issued after his death, with this title, "The Centralizing 
 Power of the Gospel." As it stands as an essay in this 
 volume it is word for word the first half of his first sermon. 
 
 The audience who listened to it in the chapel of the Vir- 
 ginia seminary, his teachers and his fellow students, must 
 have had sensations difficult to describe. The text was a 
 familiar one, and the idea it contained had formed the stajjle 
 of many exhortations in prayer meetings or in Sunday ser- 
 vices. Indeed, it was the burden of the Evangelical teach- 
 ing of the day. For that reason he must have chosen it. He 
 had always a way of taking those texts which parties or 
 schools regarded as their strongholds in Scripture, giving 
 them a new meaning, and a larger interpretation which all 
 men could receive. But in order to estimate his peculiar 
 treatment of an over-familiar passage, we must revert for a 
 moment to the religious situation of the hour. In the decade 
 of the fifties, there was in America but little theological 
 activity, no free inquiry in theology, outside of certain circles 
 in New England; and no attempt to defend by intellectual 
 processes the conviction upon which the Evangelical faith was 
 resting. Indeed, there had grown up a certain mistrust of 
 the intellect, as though its existence were rather a dangerous 
 thing to the simjilicity of Christian faith. The teachers in 
 the Virginia seminary impressed upon the students the im- 
 j)ortance of subordinating the intellect to faith. The favorite 
 text ujoon which they relied as their sanction for their coun- 
 sels was one where St. Paul urges his hearers "to bring 
 every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." 
 This was interpreted as meaning the sacrifice of the intellect. 
 
284 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 It was customary to speak much and often on the pride of 
 the intellect as the greatest foe to faith. To preach Christ 
 was to renounce intellectualism, ideas, theories, and specula- 
 tions. 
 
 It was further characteristic of the decade of the fifties, 
 and of the succeeding years, that within the church the test 
 applied to intellectual suggestion or criticism was not whether 
 it was true, but whether it was safe. Criticism was beginning 
 to disturb the minds of many in regard to the nature of 
 inspiration ; whether it extended to the words or only to the 
 thought. Was there a difference between inspiration and 
 revelation ? What was the nature and extent of the atone- 
 ment, and was it a vicarious sacrifice? There was a general 
 feeling that safety lay in avoiding the discussion of these and 
 other questions. A sense of fear was the prevailing mood in 
 strict theological circles, lest young men should accept princi- 
 ples endangering the safety of the creeds. Young men were 
 accustomed to listen in those days to eloquent monologues of 
 the elders, brought to perfection by frequent repetition, in 
 which it was demonstrated how unsafe it was to make any 
 departure from accepted oijinions in theology. One step 
 downward involved another, until the Christian faith would 
 entirely disappear. Such, it was pointed out, had been the 
 experience in New England. Such would be the result of 
 following German guides. Salvation, it was assumed, de- 
 pended upon holding "sound views." Phillips Brooks was 
 accustomed to these expressions of anxiety at Alexandria, 
 and also at home. His father and mother feared that he 
 might be idd astray by the glittering light of false opinions. 
 
 But there were some notable exceptions among the leaders 
 of the Evangelical school. Dr. Sparrow, the teacher of 
 theology in the Virginia seminary, was one of these. He 
 was absolutely without fear as he contemplated the situation, 
 willing to meet boldly every skeptical objection, tracing it to 
 its origin, seeking to weigh its force, and ready to admit the 
 truth even under hostile disguises. The only thing that Dr. 
 Sparrow feared was Romanism and Romanizing tendencies in 
 the church. These constituted a real danger, and to his 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 285 
 
 mind the only danger, and this because the Romanizing ten- 
 dencies could not be dealt with 1 y reason. They were in- 
 stincts or dreams, which avoided the appeal to reason and 
 were not amenable to its laws. It was a foe in the dark, 
 insidious, pleasing to the natural man, and beguiling unstable 
 souls. When he was once told that some people called him 
 one-sided, because he fought only in one direction, seeing the 
 danger from Romanism, but not the danger from skepticism, 
 he replied with a fine scorn that he was surprised that any 
 intelligent man should think otherwise. Skepticism was a 
 rope of sand, but Romanism was an evil that dissolved the 
 fibres of a manly spirit. With Dr. Sparrow, Phillips Brooks 
 was becoming intimate in his Senior year at the seminary. 
 Many were the evenings spent in his study, when the subject 
 of conversation was theology. He knew how to understand 
 and to sympathize with the thoughts germinating in the mind 
 of his pupil. Again, Dr. Sparrow was a strong advocate 
 of the freedom of the will, while most of his contemporaries 
 held the Calvinistic or Augustinian tenet, that the will was 
 powerless to initiate or to contribute to conversion. These 
 differences in Dr. Sparrow's attitude were prophetic of 
 changes in the Evangelical party of the Episcopal Church. 
 Those who feared skepticism drew nearer to the High Church 
 party, and at moments became its allies. Those who were 
 afraid of Romanism welcomed the advent of the open mind 
 and of free inquiry in theology. 
 
 Such is a very brief outline of the situation when Phillips 
 Brooks came to his first sermon. Into that sermon he man- 
 aged to import the convictions which for years had been 
 gathering headway in his soul. His utterance is constructive 
 and positive; negations are absorbed in large affirmations. 
 He shows no sign of having reacted against the familiar 
 Evangelical teaching, but has rather appropriated and en- 
 larged its central truth. As we read, we must bear in mind 
 that the feeling of the hour when he was speaking has greatly 
 changed in the lapse of a generation, and that to this change 
 he himself has contributed in most powerful measure. The 
 first clear note which he strikes is the deep conviction that 
 
286 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 all roads lead to Christ, all the great positive valuable lines 
 of human activity. It is very striking to find the affirmation 
 of this truth in the first sentence of his first sermon, for it 
 is the key to his theology and to his life. Nor had he 
 reached it without a struggle. It was the summary of his 
 own experience, and of his efforts to adjust in harmony the 
 conflicting impulses in his own being. He had not seen it 
 when he was in college. He had feared that if he became a 
 Christian or a Christian minister, it meant the sacrifice of 
 the rich and ennobling influences of literature, the with- 
 drawal from the large human directions of the intellect and 
 the imagination. When he left home to begin his study for 
 the ministry, it was with the words of some friend or class- 
 mate ringing in his ears, that Christianity meant the lessen- 
 ing of a man, the narrowing of the range of human interests. 
 He may have seen something of this in those whom he knew, 
 and have feared it in himself. He had determined to know 
 for himself whether it was true. It had burst upon him as 
 by divine revelation, that all life was a unity, and that Christ 
 was the glory and perfection of humanity. All truth, all 
 reality, in whatever sphere manifested, in literature, art, or 
 science, all the positive acquisitions of man in the long range 
 of history, all great events and movements, had their affilia- 
 tion with Christ. As he was making his journey on the rail- 
 road from Boston to New York, from New York to Phila- 
 delphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and was watching for 
 the approach to great cities, he saw the sign in the central- 
 ization of life, how the roads converged toward the invisible 
 centre. He grasped it as an illustration, an analogy, an ar- 
 gument. It went into his note-book, and was worked over in 
 different forms and finally reappeared in his first sermon. 
 
 His subject was Christ as the centralizing power in the 
 spiritual life. The plan of his sermon required him to show 
 that this central force involved all the activity of the human 
 soul, the intellect, the affections, and the will. But to deal 
 with this threefold division adequately in one short sermon 
 was beyond his jjower. When he changed his sermon to an 
 essay, it dealt mainly with the intellectual powers in their 
 
JET. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 287 
 
 relation to the salvation of the soul. He gave his assent to 
 the doctrine so often reiterated by his teachers that the dan- 
 ger to religion from the human intellect was grave and 
 momentous, but hardly had he done so, vi^hen he diverged 
 from the beaten pathway of a safe timidity, which argued that 
 it was necessary to suppress or sacrifice the intellect in order 
 to faith, and boldly asserted the need and the possibility of 
 consecrating the intellect to Christ. His words are so char- 
 acteristic that be must speak for himself : — 
 
 The Intellect, coming up to say, "Lord, teach me." There 
 is no truth from which even man's theoretical adherence hangs 
 aloof as it does from this of the necessary submission of the whole 
 intellectual manhood to the obedience of Christ. God's plan has 
 all the wonderful simplicity that makes His natural world so 
 grand. In the centre of our life stands the grand Christ-truth 
 He has set up, the single fountain out of which all sin and all un- 
 cleanness are to drink for healing. Every step that is not towards 
 the fountain is towards the desert. Our work here, as every- 
 where, is with the tendencies of things. Let us understand this 
 matter. God has ordained this world and another, and this world 
 is a striving after that. Only one door stands open to connect 
 the two: "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life." Now if God 
 seriously meant man might reach that Way and Truth, He gave 
 him no faculty that might not struggle for it. There is no sine- 
 cure in the soul's economy. Every power has its work to do, 
 every capacity its gift to fill it, every motive its wheels to turn 
 or shaft to drive in achieving finally the soul's great work: and so 
 the fullest manhood of man's best development is sanctified by 
 God's purpose of man's salvation. But when one coward faculty 
 breaks ofE from the hard struggle, ignores the Cbristhood that 
 says, " By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, " begins 
 to play with a theory instead of living by a truth, forthwith the 
 "simplicity that is in Christ " is marred and mangled by the 
 multiplicity that is in man. 
 
 God's ban lies upon no fair exercise of the faculties of labor if 
 they be but exercised as He directs. His whole omnipotence is 
 pledged to make every Christian effort of those faculties effectual 
 and strong. All heaven is working for us if we will, as the little 
 child digs his well in the seashore sand and then the great ocean 
 comes up and fills it for him. And here lies all solved before us 
 the problem of profane and sacred study. Looking to this divme 
 simplicity of the scheme of life, to Christ that saves, to God that 
 
288 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 blesses, no study is profane. Looking away from that central 
 truth of Christ, there is no profaner work than Bible study. So 
 long as the intellect owns allegiance, so long its work is full of 
 piety and purpose, its whole development is a training of the 
 soul that is an heir of glory, against its coronation day. Books 
 become sacraments, schools are temjjles, and the mental life grows 
 holy because its triumphs are sacrifices to the everlasting truth of 
 Christ. If this be so, then how it brands the atheism that would 
 substitute the frivolity of culture or the pedantry of etliics for 
 this divinity of truth, that would go back from a gospel to a law, 
 from a law to an instinct, from an instinct to a dream, disowning 
 its birthright claim to the higher Christian portion. 
 
 What he says upon the will and the heart, as alike with 
 the intellect bringing their allegiance to Christ, is equally 
 emphatic and is drawn from his own experience. In his case, 
 it had been the submission of the will and of the heart that 
 had overcome the dreary sense of the fragmentariness of 
 life: — 
 
 See how the new faith is the resurrection of the life, how the 
 new purpose that concentrates every power in the work of Christ 
 binds the whole human nature closer to the Truth and closer to 
 its race. It binds it closer to the Truth. Theories and schemes 
 and ceremonies grow tame and dead to the man who has looked 
 the gospel in the face. What ! with this new gravitation that 
 I feel drawing me, and drawing all creation, to the centre of our 
 life, shall I turn away to the little forces that would drag me off 
 to little aims ? Shall I trifle with this new power of believing ? 
 For all moral carelessness lessens our capacity of faith, makes us 
 not only less believing but less able to believe, destroys as far as 
 it can our power to rest on testimony for truth. It is not only 
 that some drops are sjjilled, but the cup itself is broken into use- 
 lessness. And most of all, we are conscious that it is growing 
 harder and harder every day for us to believe ; the conviction that 
 once brought faith inevitaljly does not bring it now, and the faith 
 when it comes does not bless us, as it once did, with trust and 
 peace. This is what the soul that has once felt the simplicity of 
 Christ dreads most of all, for it breaks that simplicity into the 
 old fragmentary life again. "Give me a hope that points where 
 my life's hope is pointing, a light that shines to lead me Christ ■ 
 ward. Let me ignore the system and the church, the teacher 
 and the book, that will not give me these." This is the soul's 
 new cry. This must be the world's cry if it ever sees salva- 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 289 
 
 tion. Our hope is in this Christian radicalism, which through 
 the myriad shows and semblances of human life goes down di- 
 rectly to the heart of things, and seizes Faith and grapples Hope 
 and clings to Charity, and says, "Lo, out of these shall grow a 
 Christian Church for all the world, and out of these a Christian 
 experience for me." Is there not something solemnly heroic in 
 this one central purpose standing thus calmly in the midst of the 
 feverish anarchy of the world's million hopes and schemes? So 
 men were bartering and selling and eating and drinking, and the 
 noonday hubbub was loud and wild in Jerusalem of old, while the 
 great agony of Calvary was working out the world's redemption. 
 
 And one other great conviction finds expression in the first 
 sermon. It is only hinted at, in a few brief sentences, while 
 the long process leading up to it could not be described. 
 That process went back to his schooldays, when he first began 
 to feel the revelation of himself to himself, through his know- 
 ledge of human history and the ways of man in this world. 
 All through his college years, this identification of himself 
 with humanity had been increasing. The gospel which had 
 come to him had been meant for the race ; what had been 
 given for the race had been intended for him. Here lay the 
 groundwork of so much that was distinctive in his preaching 
 and in a great measure the secret of his power. He came to 
 men as if he were indeed one of them, speaking forth from 
 the heart of a common humanity : — 
 
 This new Christian simplicity is not perfect till it recognizes 
 the world's hope in its own. Then there comes the true "liberal- 
 ity " of our religion. The man begins to identify himself with 
 the race, and wins a share in its collective faith and power. He 
 multijDlies his life eight hundred millionfold. The world was 
 made, and the sun and stars ordained, and salvation sent to earth 
 alike for humanity and him. The history of the race becomes his 
 experience, the happiness of the race his glory, the progress of 
 the race his hope. He begins to say, " We shall do this and thus, 
 win new secrets from nature and new truth from God, " for this 
 man goes hand in hand with humanity down the highways of its 
 life, till they stand together before the throne of God In heaven. 
 He says of Christ's truths, "I believe in these things because I 
 know that they have helped my race. I look to them as I look 
 to the sun, with a faith that all these centuries of sunlight forbid 
 
290 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 me to disown. I hear them from the Bible claiming my alle- 
 giance, as from all nature I hear God's truth demanding that I 
 should give reason room to grow to love and faith." 
 
 In this first sermon then we have the evidence of a marvel- 
 lous maturity. These truths which he proclaimed had come 
 to him by solitary meditations, or to speak more truly, and 
 as he was accustomed to speak, these thoughts were the 
 winged messengers of God to his soul. He had not indeed 
 yet reached the truth in all its fulness as he was ultimately 
 to proclaim it, but he had achieved his method and laid the 
 foundation for the unfolding of his power. 
 
 His Senior year in the seminary, as has been said, was a 
 full one, but not so favorable to the direct work of theologi- 
 cal preparation as the preceding years. In addition to his 
 studies and recitations, he was teaching Latin and Greek 
 two or three hours every day ; he was writing sermons ; and 
 with another member of his class he was taking charge of 
 the Sharon Mission, some three miles from the seminary. 
 There were other similar stations in the vicinity, where stu- 
 dents officiated by reading service and extempore preaching. 
 There was a natural suspicion in the audiences who waited 
 on these young preachers that the presentation of the gospel 
 was not their sole aim, but that they were exercising their 
 gifts by way of practice ; somewhat as practice in a hospital 
 is related to the education of the student of medicine. But 
 the people good-naturedly submitted to the process, and in 
 their turn must have grown critical regarding the ability and 
 prosjjects of the successive candidates to whom they listened. 
 The common name given to them was practisers, with the 
 emphasis on the second syllable. There is a tradition that 
 Phillips Brooks was not successful in these ventures ; indeed 
 he is said to have made a total failure on his first attempt, re- 
 ceiving as his only encouragement the advice to try it again. 
 But he himself appears to have been encouraged, and writes 
 of his efforts to his brother Frederick, after a few weeks' 
 experience: "You know I was never much of a speaker. 
 Lately I have been cultivating the extempore address, and, 
 
MT. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 291 
 
 though no orator as Brutus is, it goes pretty glib. I expect 
 to preach so a good deal." 
 
 It was while he was thus engaged one Sunday at the 
 Sharon Mission that two strangers appeared in the congre- 
 gation, who had come for the purpose of listening to him. 
 The following brief entries in his diary tell the story : — 
 
 Sunday, March 6, 1859. A. m., at Chapel. Communion. Dr. 
 Packard preached. P. m., at Sharon. I spoke (present 50). 
 Evg. at Sharon. I spoke (present 40). Met Yocum out at 
 Sharon, also Messrs. Reed and Remington, who after aft. ser- 
 vice made me an offer of the Church of the Advent in Phila- 
 delphia in behalf of the vestry. 
 
 Monday, March 7, 1859. A. m. Called oh Dr. Sparrow 
 about Advent. Afterwards received call from Mr. Reed and 
 Mr. Remington. Wrote to Bp. Eastburn for leave and to Dr. 
 Vinton for advice. Also wrote to Father. Held no recitations 
 in the forenoon. 
 
 Tuesday, March 8, 1859. Rain and headache all day. 
 
 The headache may have been the result of the excitement 
 into which he was thrown by the unexpected incident ; and is 
 strangely in contrast with the composure waiting upon many 
 similar incidents in after years. His constitution, as has 
 been noticed, in early life was sensitive and susceptible in 
 the highest degree, and nervous excitement was quickly fol- 
 lowed by nervous exhaustion. A circumstance illustrating 
 this peculiarity of his physical constitution he once related to 
 a friend, to the effect that after his first day's exjjerience as 
 an usher in the Latin School, he attempted to take a walk, 
 but found himself so exhausted after a few minutes that he 
 was unable to continue it. He poured himself with all the 
 intensity of his being into whatever moved him. He after- 
 wards learned to economize his power, but at this time he 
 writes of this week of excitement through which he was pass- 
 ing: "I haven't passed such a week before for three years," 
 and again: "I have just been driven crazy this last week, 
 between a need of thinking and these recitations that don't 
 leave a minute to think in." In the letter which he wrote to 
 his parents the day after he received the call, the excited 
 condition of his mind may still be felt : — 
 
292 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 Monday morning, March 7, 1859. 
 
 Dear Father and Mother, — I have written two letters 
 already this morning, one to Bishop Easthurn and one to Dr. 
 Vinton, and now I ought to write to you and tell you all ahout 
 them. You can imagine my surprise yesterday on being waited 
 upon by two gentlemen who evidently came on business. They 
 were a committee of the vestry of the Church of the Advent in 
 Philadelphia, and came to bring me a call to become their rector 
 in July. It took me by surprise, as I had for some time dismissed 
 the matter from my mind, but we talked it all over, and they are 
 very urgent. This morning I had a long talk about it with Dr. 
 Sparrow. He was in Philadelphia last week, and they saw him 
 there, and he discussed it all over with Dr. Vinton. He proposed 
 my doing this: I must first get Bishop Eastburn's consent, as I 
 am his candidate. I have written to him. It 's doubtful, and if 
 he does n't agree it finishes the whole. If he is willing, when 
 the call comes officially I can offer to modify it by agreeing to 
 supply for three or six months, so as to try the working of things 
 on both sides, and leave the door open for either at the end of that 
 time. I left it so with the committee, and am to write to them 
 just so soon as I hear from the bishop. Meanwhile I have writ- 
 ten to Dr. Vinton, who has taken great interest in the matter, for 
 advice, and shall look anxiously for his answer. Dr. Sjiarrow 
 thinks it is a call that ought not to be rejected, and his advice 
 was sti'ongly for my taking it at least temporarily. I know it is 
 a place of great responsibility and hard work, but I believe the 
 sooner one breaks into it the better. The gentlemen who came to 
 see me were kind and cordial, would not think of my saying 
 "No," said the vestry were unanimous, and that when they had 
 once called a man they were bound to stand by him well. It is 
 not a large church, seats about five hundred, about one hundred 
 and fifty communicants, good building, large Sunday-school, and 
 everything in good working order ; slight debt on the church, which 
 is being paid off regularly ; salary at first $1000, but soon to be 
 raised as the church prospers ; at any rate enough to live on 
 decently. Well, there it is, — of course it is on my mind all the 
 time, and I wish I could talk it over with you. I want to find 
 my place and my work, and I think there are some signs that 
 this is it. Write me what you all think about it. Dr. Bedell's 
 assistantship has been filled. Dr. Vinton told Dr. Sparrow that 
 he had planned for me for his own assistant, but I believe it 's 
 better to take a small church and have it all one's own, and feel 
 more master of its work. I will write to you, when I hear from 
 the bishop and Dr. Vinton. Love to all. Excuse this selfish 
 letter. Yours affectionately, Phillips. 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 293 
 
 The call created as much interest and excitement in the 
 quiet household on Chauucy Street as it did in the soul of 
 Phillips Brooks. It was regarded as a family affair; his 
 father, his mother, his brothers, participated in the discus- 
 sion as by divine right. The solidarity of the family life 
 found beautiful and impressive illustration in the letters that 
 came and went. The father must needs satisfy himself by a 
 visit to Philadelphia, by a personal inspection of the parish 
 and conversation with its officers. There were many difficul- 
 ties to be considered and overcome. Among these was Dr. 
 Vinton. He had left Boston in the fall of 1868, after a min- 
 istry of sixteen years, to become the rector of the large and 
 important parish of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, which 
 occupied a new and imposing edifice in the most fashionable 
 part of the city. The church was one of the strongest in the 
 country, and when it looked for a rector it had called the 
 man who was universally conceded to be the foremost preacher 
 in the Episcopal Church. It had been a severe strain on St. 
 Paul's Church, Boston, to sever the tie which bound it to Dr. 
 Vinton. Especially had the pain of parting been felt by the 
 Brooks family. The boys had grown up under him, none of 
 them escaping his influence. When he went to Philadelphia, 
 he had the intention of making Phillips Brooks his assistant 
 in his new parish. Already was the old deferential relation- 
 ship between a boy and his pastor passing into the relation 
 of a friendship to which the disparity of years was no bar- 
 rier. When PhiUips received from his brother a photograph 
 of Dr. Vinton, to hang in his room in the seminary, he was 
 so elated that he dismissed his class and proceeded at once to 
 the task of placing it in position. He had begun to be proud 
 of his acquaintance with him, looking up to him as a great 
 man, who had lent inspiration to his life. If Dr. Vinton 
 wanted him for his assistant minister it complicated the ques- 
 tion of his accepting the Church of the Advent. Dr. Vinton 
 had advised him to wait for a few weeks before giving his 
 answer ; and he writes to his father with reference to it : — 
 
 He wants me to come and make him a visit and see the ground. 
 His object comes out in the last part of his letter. He wants an 
 
294 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 assistant, but his church is n't settled enough to make any arrange- 
 ment yet, but he wants me to wait in order, as he intimates, to be 
 ready for an offer of that place as soon as he can projjose it. So 
 here I am all adrift. It 's out of the question to put off my an- 
 swer. The church is waiting now, and the doctor does n't seem 
 to remember that a poor deacon can't carry things with quite as 
 high a hand as the first preacher in the church. I must choose 
 now between Dr. V. 's assistantship and the Advent, and if I choose 
 Advent then good-by to all the Doctor's friendliness in future. 
 
 There is a tone of excitement and confusion in these let- 
 ters, a certain timidity and dread of making a mistake, as he 
 is about to enter on real life in the great world. But one 
 issue he keeps clear, — he is positive that it is better to take 
 an independent position at the start, to be the rector of a 
 church of his own. In this respect he was not mistaken, at 
 least for himself. But so momentous also seemed the task of 
 assuming the complete charge of a church at his age (he was 
 twenty-three years old) that he hesitated to write an actual 
 acceptance to his call until an agreement had been reached 
 by which he left the parish and himself at liberty, in case 
 there should be failure or disappointment on either side. It 
 may be that he recalled again how once before he had con- 
 fidently accepted a position from which he had been obliged 
 to resign. There is no over-confidence now. When he 
 agreed to go to the Church of the Advent, it was understood 
 to be an engagement of three months only. When that time 
 had expired, the vestry of the church were at liberty to give 
 him a permanent call as they might see fit. 
 
 Meantime another difficulty had been successfully over- 
 come. He was a candidate for orders in the diocese of Massa- 
 chusetts. Bishop Eastburn might decline to give consent to 
 his leaving the diocese while he was in deacon's orders. The 
 bishop was cautiously approached on the subject and with 
 considerable trepidation, as one who held in his hands the 
 making or the marring of a young man's career. The letter 
 of Bisho]) Eastburn is so characteristic that it is given in 
 full. The bishop, it should be said, was a stanch defender 
 of the principles of the Evangelical school, their unflinching 
 advocate in season and out of season. He lacked flexibility. 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 295 
 
 but did not lack in courage. He was an Englishman by birth 
 and proud of his descent ; he had the defects of his national- 
 ity, but also its surpassing merits. He gave relief to the 
 fears of the anxious candidate, while at the same time he 
 bore his familiar protest in behalf of Evangelical truth : — 
 
 Boston, March 10, 1859. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I have just received your note in reference 
 to the invitation from the Church of the Advent, Philadelphia. I 
 had been counting with pleasant anticipation upon your services, 
 during your term of deacon's orders at least, in this diocese, 
 where we need well-educated and intelligent men, of sound Evan- 
 gelical principles, to labor in bringing souls to our dear Lord and 
 Saviour. But if you are persuaded that you hear the voice of 
 God in this application, calling you to that particular field of 
 labor, I should of course shrink from interposing any obstacle, 
 and I cheerfully give my consent. 
 
 Should you carry out your intention of being ordained in 
 Virginia, I shall be obliged if you will let me know after the 
 ordination of the time and place at which it took place, as I 
 have to record it among the ordinations of this diocese. 
 
 My sincere prayer is that wherever you may be placed in the 
 great vineyard you may be found faithful, always and everywhere, 
 to that Master whose gospel you have in trust, and may at last 
 receive the crown of life. 
 
 I am very sincerely yours, Majjton Eastburn. 
 
 So the great issue of his life was determined. The way 
 was clear for him to begin his ministry in Philadelphia. He 
 had gone to the theological seminary as an experiment, un- 
 certain what the result would be. These years of quiet and 
 seclusion had done their work, resolved the tentative mood 
 into a glowing enthusiasm for the work to which he now 
 believed himself to be called. How he regarded the prospect, 
 and in what spirit he would enter upon his ministry, is told 
 in a plain, strong letter to his brother: — 
 
 Theological SEnnNARV, Thursday evening-, March 17, 1859. 
 
 Dear William, — . . . As to Advent, let me be frank. I 
 
 feel, I believe, more fully than you can the responsibility and 
 
 labor of the place. I know, too, more deeply than you can my 
 
 own deficiencies, and yet I have engaged to go there, at least for 
 
296 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 a temporary supply. One thing I am sure of, — it was not ac- 
 cepted from any ambitious desire of occupying a conspicuous or 
 responsible place. I am going honestly, as I believe, in a sincere 
 feeling that I ought to go, in an earnest conviction that there is 
 work there to be done, and that by a strength above my own I 
 shall be helped to do it. The ministry, my dear William, has 
 been growing a new thing to me this year ; and most of all this 
 direct presentation of a field of work has, I believe, sent me outside 
 of myself to look for direction and for strength where it is pro- 
 mised to us all. I believe I am going at last in humility to tell 
 the Bible story to those people. I have told them that that story 
 was all I liad to bring, in all its simplicity and truth, and I hope 
 to find strength to tell it plainly and distinctly at least. You 
 know, and I know, that Dr. Vinton's would be a place of far more 
 prominence and promise of future eminence and brilliant calls, but 
 I am going to this church, meaning if God prosper my work there 
 to make it my field for years at least. Dr. May said, "The 
 moment I heard of it I said you ought to go, " and Dr. Sparrow, 
 though a less outspoken man, freely and fully said he believed 
 that this call pointed out my path of duty. Of course in all this 
 I have weighed the solid facts. From what experience I have 
 had, I do not feel afraid of two plain sermons in a week. I have 
 gained considei'able facility in extempore speaking, and shall do 
 that nuich. The other work, visiting, etc., I am unused to, but 
 do not look forward to with dread. They are kind and simple 
 people, and ready and anxious to make their minister's life a 
 pleasant one. So much to-night. Write me again soon. 
 
 Good-by, Phill. 
 
 He had decided to begin his rectorship of tlie Cliurcli of 
 the Advent on the second Sunday in July, 1859, for the 
 parish wanted him at once. But this would deprive him of 
 a vacation after a hard year's labor, as the seminary year 
 ended with the first week in July. Some vacation he must 
 have, so argued his father and his anxious mother. He was 
 to lose his summer at home ; he therefore applied for a leave 
 of absence in order that he might have a month with his 
 family and recuperate his strength as it could be doue no- 
 where else so well as at home. And this home-coming now 
 meant so much to him. Somewhat as a conqueror would 
 he come. He had retrieved the failure which had occurred 
 three years before. Then the world looked blank to him, 
 
MT. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 297 
 
 without opening or opportunity. Now he had twice received 
 important recognition, first as a teacher, associated with the 
 faculty of the seminary as a quasi-member, and he had also 
 received what young men would regard as a flattering call to 
 a city parish. He took a humble view of these things, for 
 he had received a lesson in humility which had struck deep 
 within him. Compared with the recognition of a world, 
 which was soon to follow, these first triumphs in his career 
 seem small. Birt to the father and the mother, and the boys 
 at home, it looked quite otherwise. Above all, he was now 
 going home for the last time as a boy, to talk things over in 
 the old familiar way, before the official routine and the ways 
 of life had given him a place among men. There is one more 
 letter before the long boyhood yields to a man's responsi- 
 bilities : — 
 
 March 26, 1859. 
 
 Dear Father, — I must limit myself to a line, to tell you 
 what the chances are of my imposing upon your hospitality pretty 
 soon. I have just had a talk with Dr. Sparrow, and he is so 
 anxious that I should be here at the last of the term, to prepare 
 the preps, for examination, that he says if I go away at all (and 
 it '11 be very hard to get his assent to that) I must go at once. 
 The chance seems to be tliat I can get the month of April, and if 
 you '11 leave the latch- string out the first of tlie week after next, 
 probably I '11 pull it. He is going to propose it to the faculty, 
 and there is a great deal of doubt still whether there will be any 
 man found to take my place, — so you see it 's all uncertain, but 
 p'r'aps. Many thanks for your kind letters about Advent. I 
 received their official call the other day. Have n't answered it 
 yet. It is to the rectorship, but I shall only offer to supply for 
 three months. 
 
 Nothing from Dr. Vinton. He is mad no doubt. I 'm sorry, 
 but it can't be helped. Tell Mother to be getting ready for an 
 appetite, and if I don't come, William and George and Fred and 
 Arthur and John can dispose of it for me. Love to all. 
 
 Phill. 
 
 He started on his journey Friday, the first day of April, 
 stopping by the way in Philadelj^hia, where he called on Dr. 
 Vinton and also met the vestry of the Church of the Advent. 
 On the following Sunday, he went to Holy Trinity to hear 
 
298 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 Dr. Vinton, and in tlie evening he was among the congrega- 
 tion of the church that was soon to be his, listening to a ser- 
 mon by Dr. Odenheimer. Tuesday morning, he reached 
 Boston, where he remained for the mouth. It was the season 
 of Lent, and he records his attendance upon many services at 
 St. Paul's, where the Eev. Lucius W. Bancroft was officiat- 
 ing, at prayer meetings held in St. Paul's and at old Trinity, 
 and finally at an evening communion on Maundy Thursday 
 at the Church of the Advent. He seems to have been eager 
 to hear preaching, for he went often to hear Dr. Kirk at 
 Ashburton Place, and was fortunate in hearing Professor 
 Park of Andover, whose occasional appearance in Boston 
 pulpits was an event of importance. He went out to Cam- 
 bridge, meeting his classmates Abbot and Chase, and hear- 
 ing Professor (now Bishop) Huntington in the college chapel. 
 In the intervals of religious services he spent much of his 
 time at the Boston Athenaeum, making up for lost opportu- 
 nities, revelling in the many new books on its tables. He 
 went often also with his brothers to the menagerie, which 
 was a source of perennial interest. At last he overtaxed his 
 strength, and again for a third time sprained his ankle, from 
 which it was many weeks before he finally recovered. Still 
 lame, he started for Virginia, and found himself in the theo- 
 logical seminary on the 1st of May. 
 
 The great event was his ordination to the deaconate. The 
 necessary credentials from the standing committee of the 
 diocese of Massachusetts were brought to Alexandria by his 
 father, who had determined to be present on the solemn 
 occasion, with the many other visitors attracted to the hill by 
 the sacred festivities. The last week before his ordination 
 was crowded with engagements. He records the examina- 
 tions of the preparatory department by the professors as 
 "finishing all the business." He himself was examined at 
 a special examination, by Dr. May in church history and 
 Hooker, and by Dr. Sparrow in the Articles. Among 
 others who were present as visitors was Mr. Remsen of the 
 Church of the Advent, Bishop Payne (missionary bishop to 
 Africa), and Rev. Dr. Tyng of St. George's Church, New 
 
JET. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 299 
 
 York. He found time to show his father all attentions, who 
 with his quick eye for men and events keenly enjoyed all that 
 came under his observation. He was proud of his father, 
 and writes home that he made a fine impression. Thursday, 
 June 30, was the Commencement Day, when in the presence 
 of Mr. Remsen his future church warden, his father, the 
 large audience, and all the ecclesiastical dignitaries, he 
 delivered his thesis on "The Centralizing Power of the 
 Gospel." The next day, Friday, was Ordination Day, 
 which was ushered in with a prayer meeting at eight o'clock 
 in the morning. Then came Bishop Meade of Virginia. At 
 nine o'clock was the interview appointed when the young 
 candidate for orders should hear what the bishop had to say 
 to him. Bishop Meade was held in highest reverence in 
 Virginia as the founder of the theological seminary, a great 
 preacher as well as administrator, and a leader in the coun- 
 sels of the Evangelical school in the church. The services 
 in the chapel began at eleven o'clock, and the sermon was 
 preached by the Rev. Mr. Gibson of Petersburg, Va. Those 
 who were ordained with him were Messrs. Kidder, Paddock, 
 Strong, and Townsend. 
 
 The next day, Saturday, he started for Fredericksburg, 
 Va., to pay a visit to his friend, the Rev. A. M. Randolph 
 (now the Bishop of southern Virginia), who was then recently 
 married, and had offered him his pulpit for the following 
 Sunday, when the new deacon should preach his first sermon. 
 Bishop Randolph has contributed this account of the memo- 
 rable day : ^ — 
 
 He was ordained a deacon in the seminary chapel on Friday 
 the last week in June, 1859, and the next day I had the pleasure 
 of welcoming him in my home in Fredericksburg, Va. On Sun- 
 day, he preached for the first time in the morning, and again at 
 night at St. George's Church. The good people of Fredericks- 
 burg refer with pride to the fact that his first sermons were 
 preached there, and some of the older members of the congrega- 
 tion, who innocently regarded St. George's as the centre of churcli 
 influence in Virginia, and if of Virginia, necessarily so of the 
 world, might have supposed that their enthusiastic verdict of him, 
 1 The texts from which he preached were Matt. xxvi. H, and EphesianB W. 13. 
 
300 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1858-59 
 
 that he was the best young preacher they had ever heard, was the 
 foundation of his success and his wide reputation throughout 
 America and England. 
 
 In thinking of my impression of the two sermons and of the 
 way they were spoken, and also of the impression made upon the 
 many intelligent people who listened to them, I am reminded 
 of these characteristics of his preaching, which all who ever 
 heard him will recognize, — a singular absence of self-conscious- 
 ness, a spontaneity of beautiful thinking, clothed in pure English 
 words, a joy in his own thoughts, and a victorious mastery of 
 the truth he was telling, combined with humility and reverence 
 and love for the congregation. I have heard him often since, and 
 the impression was always the same. He was unspoiled and un- 
 spotted by the world, especially by that most dangerous and insidi- 
 ous of all the world forces, the praise of men. 
 
 The story of the ordination and of the last impressive week 
 at the theological seminary may fitly close with a letter from 
 his father, written at Philadelphia, where he stopped on his 
 journey home and while the scene was still vivid which had 
 so deeply moved him : — 
 
 Philadelphia, Sunday evening, July 3, 1859. 
 
 Dear Phillips, — I arrived liere about 10.30 o'clock last 
 night, being detained at Wilmington some time, as the cars ran 
 over a man and killed him instantly ! He had been recognized 
 when we left. 1 am at this splendid house, and half inclined to 
 take up my summer quarters here. Splendid indeed! I went to 
 Advent (Church) this A. M. Mr. Smith did not preach, some- 
 body else; and he announced that the rector-elect, Mr. Burns (!), 
 who had just been ordained, would commence his duties next 
 Sunday. I sat with your warden ; he and Mr. Remsen were on 
 the lookout for me. Was introduced to a goodly number of 
 vestrymen, and they were all anxious to have you get along. 
 They seem to have the right spirit and the most friendly disposi- 
 tions. It was sacrament day. A very pretty church; "a gem of a 
 church inside, " as you called it ; very neat ; a very good and well- 
 appearing congregation, and a very flourishing Sunday-school, 
 which I also attended. . . . 
 
 I hope you have had a good Sunday. How much I have thought 
 of you, and prayed for you. I can hardly realize the events of the 
 past week. They have been too great and too delightful to my 
 feelings, Phillips, to be yet fully realized. I do thank God for the 
 many things I have seen and heard, and for you, my dear son, that 
 
^T. 22-23] THE FIRST SERMON 301 
 
 you have given your friends such good impressions as were ex- 
 pressed to me at the seminary. Depend upon it, my heart has been 
 gladdened and made happy beyond what I dare express or can 
 express. I only wish your anxious and loving mother could have 
 been with me and seen all I did, also. At times I have thought 
 it too much to realize. You pei'haps little thought when you 
 were having that last meeting in Strong's room, and the music of 
 your voices sounded in my ears so sweetly, I was in spirit with 
 you. And to-day, while kneeling at the chancel rail where you 
 are to assist in dispensing the elements of the communion, how 
 full my heart was, and how earnestly I prayed that you might 
 have the power of the Holy Spirit showered upon you, to be 
 faithful and devoted in all your great and responsible duties in 
 that sacred place. This last week I shall never forget. That 
 ordination day will remain foremost among all the scenes of my 
 future life. God grant I may see more such. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 1869 
 
 EETKOSPECT OF THE LIFE IN VIRGINIA. THE EVANGELICAL 
 INFLUENCE. DK. SPARROW AS A TEACHER. THEOLO- 
 GICAL ESSAYS. EXTRACTS FROM NOTE-BOOKS 
 
 When Phillij)s Brooks said, "It is the five years after 
 college which are the most decisive in a man's career, any 
 event which happens then has its full influence," his own life 
 was before him as he wrote. Indeed, his own life was always 
 before him as a book wherein he read the ways of God with 
 a man in this world. He was always turning it over with 
 himself, seeing deeper spiritual meanings in all that had be- 
 fallen him. Every event in his childhood was to the end fresh 
 in his memory, — his college life also, his experience in the 
 theological seminary. He was wont to browse over the signi- 
 ficance of the fact that for these three years he had been 
 isolated from the world in an almost monastic seclusion. He 
 was now on the eve of bursting on the world's vision as some 
 marvellous phenomenon, with an unexampled career of power 
 and of conquest, — a phenomenon curious and inexplicable, 
 so it seemed, a source of perjDetual wonder as well as of re- 
 freshment and delight. The importance then of these few 
 years must be the apology, if any is needed, for dwelling 
 still a moment longer on their creative influence, on their 
 relation to the history of a man with whom life was a per- 
 petual sacrament, a never ceasing transmutation of things 
 material into things spiritual, before whose inward altar the 
 sacred lamp was always burning. 
 
 In the first place, then, it was good for him, and a divine 
 ordering of events, that he should have gone to the theolo- 
 gical seminary of Virginia. During his first year there he 
 is seen as restless, discontented, even bitter in his criticism 
 
.ET. 23] THE RETROSPECT 303 
 
 and anxious to get away. When he left for home at the end 
 of the first year, he packed up everything in his room in the 
 expectation of not returning. But this restlessness, this 
 denunciation of his surroundings, was for the most part the 
 result of a subjective struggle, or it may be the birth pangs 
 of a great soul awakening to the spiritual life. It was not 
 the fault of his environment. He saw this as clearly as any 
 one at a later time. The seminary was by no means perfect, 
 indeed was lacking in many ways, and those essential ones. 
 But no seminary in this country or elsewhere, no provision 
 for training a theological student, could have met his case. 
 No teachers could have been found wise enough to direct his 
 course. He had his own way to follow in self -education and 
 self-direction. Indeed, he might well be grateful to what 
 education he did receive there that it did not prove, as edu- 
 cation sometimes does, "the grave of a great mind." He 
 was left to himself ; no superior intellect dominated or over- 
 awed; he traversed the fields of theology for himself and 
 drew his own conclusions. He recorded at this time the 
 ideal vision of a perfect teacher, but must have known, as he 
 did so, that such a teacher did not exist, nor was it desirable 
 that a yovmg man should have so easy and final a solution of 
 the problems of life. But the passage is significant as point- 
 ing to his sense of intellectual isolation : — 
 
 A man that you could come to with the results of your specula- 
 tion, come to him confidingly and truthfully, and say, Here, see 
 what I have done ; take and try what truth, what reality, or what 
 solid stuif there is about it ; weed out for me the weak ; test how 
 much strong remains, how strong it is, what use it is good for ; 
 try it unsparingly and thoroughly, for you are wiser and more 
 trustworthy than I. 
 
 There is one passage in his note-book which may be quoted 
 here, as giving something of his outlook during his second 
 year of study, though it must not be regarded as his complete 
 or final estimate : — 
 
 These things may be true or false that we are saying and 
 believing every day about the daily points that are always coming 
 up for us to think or speak about. We cannot but fear that very 
 
304 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 many of them are very far indeed from truth; but still it is well 
 for us to believe them, and to say them, too, for it is these words 
 and faith that really make a life for us which otherwise we could 
 not have. It will not do to turn our whole existence into a pru- 
 dent suspense. We must be ready to say promptly and firmly, 
 Yes, this is right and that is wrong, this is wise and that is fool- 
 ish, and this is strong and that is weak. Then, when we reach 
 the end of each stage of our journey, and look curiously back to see 
 what sort of work we have made of it, we shall see something 
 more than a bare, broad, safe plain. There will be marks of our 
 labor all over it, a well dug here, a fort raised there, a garden 
 or two planted, and a forest or two cleared away, — much work 
 clumsily, no doubt, and rudely done, perhaps some few trees felled 
 that should have been left standing, and some few wells dug 
 where a wiser head might have told us there was no water to be 
 had ; but on the whole, the field is better for our toil, it will be 
 easier for future travellers ; and we too are better for it, and the 
 rest of our journey will be easier to us for the health and muscle 
 that this early work has given us. 
 
 When he speaks of belief in the above extract from his 
 note-book, and of believing things that may be true or false, 
 he uses the word "belief " manifestly in the sense of assent to 
 authority. The word belief has always carried these two 
 meanings, assent on the one hand where a man receives 
 on the authority of another, and on the other hand inward 
 conviction which sjirings from insight and appropriation to 
 one's spiritual needs. We are touching here a very difficult 
 questioif which in those years when Phillips Brooks was pre- 
 paring for the ministry confronted every thoughtful mind, — 
 a question by no means finally answered even after the lapse 
 of nearly half a eentmy. Its full discussion here is of course 
 impossible. But if we may interpret Phillips Brooks's atti- 
 tude as partially disclosed in these words above quoted, he 
 appears as acquiescing in many theological statements of 
 whose nature he was not certain. The church might be com- 
 pared to some vast mansion with its surrounding estate, 
 built in generations long gone by, and adapted for use and 
 convenience in the age when it was built. In this mansion 
 the later generations were still abiding, finding it habitable, 
 though not always convenient or in every respect suited to 
 
^T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 305 
 
 the needs of a later age. But it was better to dwell in it as 
 it was than to destroy and rebuild from the foundations. 
 "It will not do to turn our whole being," he writes, "into a 
 prudent suspense, for in the meantime we should be home- 
 less and without the things that make for life. But it is pos- 
 sible in this mansion, or the estate where it is planted, to make 
 some changes or improvements, adapting it to the demands 
 of a larger and fuller life." 
 
 It will be interesting for a moment to com2:)are this posi- 
 tion with the different attitudes taken by leading ecclesiastics 
 or theological parties contemporaneous with the middle of the 
 nineteenth century. The leaders of the Oxford Movement, 
 Newman and Pusey, and many others were confronted with 
 the same problem. They had maintained that the true anti- 
 dote for the doubts and denials which distracted the church 
 was to assert the binding and final authority of dogmas or 
 doctrines which had been set forth in one j)articular and 
 remote age of the church. Thus they studied with an anti- 
 quarian zeal that distant age when there was great conflict of 
 opinion in the ancient church, — the age of the Arians and 
 semi-Arians, the Nestorians, Eutychians, Pelagians, Monoph- 
 ysites, and others. The dogmas which were then proclaimed 
 in the fourth and following centuries by councils or other 
 ecclesiastical authority they declared to be final statements ; 
 the very words and expressions, ipsissirna verba, then used 
 were to be retained and enforced as having a sacred and 
 infallible meaning and value. The leaders of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, who followed with deep interest the Oxford 
 Movement, saw that this position was untenable. They too, 
 indeed, respected the theological opinions and decisions of 
 the ancient church, but they recognized, as the Oxford leaders 
 did not, that these decisions were couched in the language 
 and fashion of a bygone period, adapted for the time when 
 they were set forth, but not necessarily suitable in every case 
 to the changed conditions of modern life. What was needed 
 in order to overcome the doubts and difficulties whieli beset 
 belief was to proclaim a living authority within the church, 
 capable now, as then, of reasserting, reforming, or modifying 
 
3o6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 statements of truth, and recognizing the changes required by 
 human develo^jment. Only let men be accustomed to admit 
 the existence of such an absolutely infallible authority, resid- 
 ing at Eome, and doubts would disappear, and opposition to 
 dogmas would give way to a docile disposition, willing to 
 accept whatever the church deemed right to enforce. The 
 influence of this attitude of the Eoman Catholic Church 
 finally told upon Newman and upon hundreds of the clergy; 
 thousands of the laity also, who had been trained by Newman, 
 abandoned the church of their fathers and entered into sub- 
 mission to the Latin obedience. ^ 
 
 This was the question which Phillips Brooks also con- 
 fronted, but he solved it in his own way. He seems to have 
 known nothing, as has been observed, of Pusey or of New- 
 man. There is no allusion to them in his note-books, nor 
 did he ever take the slightest interest, so far as is evident 
 from his reading or his writing, in their attitude or teaching. 
 Nor did he ever feel any interest in the Eoman Church; that 
 issue for him was forever closed by the Protestant Eeforma- 
 tion. His interest in history was deep and vital, but it was 
 the history of humanity as a whole, not of any one section of 
 it, — humanity in its whole career, not in any segment of that 
 career cut off and segregated from the whole. But he be- 
 lieved in authority, as strongly and devoutly as any devotee 
 of Eome. It was the authority of humanity to which he 
 deferred, that human race of which he formed a part, and by 
 his identification with which he became a stronger man, mul- 
 tiplying his personality a thousandfold. He believed in 
 development as did Newman when he wrote his famous 
 treatise, or as Eoman controversialists believed it. But he 
 did not believe that development stopped with the Eeforma- 
 tion, or that it continued to go on only in the Latin Church. 
 He regarded that part of humanity which broke with Eome 
 in the northern nations and races as carrying on a hio-her 
 development, whose manifestations and results appealed to 
 
 1 For a clear statement of the question at issue between Rome and the Hig-h 
 Church Anglican School, see Ward's Life and Times of Cardinal Newman, 
 vol. i. chap. ix. 
 
^T. 23] THE RI!TR0SPECT 307 
 
 his soul with the voice of supreme authority. The utterance 
 of that higher voice of humanity, as it had found expression 
 in the standards and formularies of the Church of England 
 or of its daughter, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
 United States, commended itself to him as in the nature of 
 the case likely to be rational and true. Others had lived in 
 and found it true for them ; the presumption was in its favor 
 that it was true for him. 
 
 What, then, did he mean when he said that many of the 
 things we are saying and believing may possibly be far from 
 the truth? Too much importance, of course, should not be 
 attached to a casual utterance like this, at an early age, and 
 not intended or revised for publication. Indeed, it would 
 have been unjust to him to put in print what he never de- 
 signed for that purpose, unless it could be shown that it 
 threw light upon his development. It must be remembered 
 that at this time both parties in the Episcopal Church were 
 freely criticising its standards, nor was either jDarty quite con- 
 tented with all and everything contained in the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer. The High Church party was experiencing dif- 
 ficulty with those forms of doctrine which had been fixed at 
 the Reformation. Newman before he left the church had 
 found himself unable to hold the Thirty-Nine Articles in the 
 natural, historical meaning. He had put a forced interpre- 
 tation upon them in Tract XC, which reversed the meaning 
 of those who wrote the articles, giving them another meaning 
 in harmony with the decisions of the Council of Trent. Upon 
 this forced interpretation Pusey and Keble and other repre- 
 sentatives of High Anglicanism continued to stand, the only 
 condition on which they could remain in the Church of 
 England. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Low Church or Evangelical 
 school was beginning at this time to find difficulties in the 
 Prayer Book. For although it had been drawn up in the age 
 of the Eeformation by those with whom they were in entire 
 agreement, yet it was impossible even for reformers like 
 Cranmer or Eidley entirely to free themselves or their work 
 from traces of pre-Keformation opinions and customs. The 
 
3o8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 reformers did not put forth a new book in the common 
 prayer, but revised old manuals, and in so doing unintention- 
 ally allowed phrases and usages to remain which were not 
 in harmony with their well-known principles. These scat- 
 tered, unintentional, accidental reminders of an old order, 
 the High Anglican school had dragged into prominence, and 
 in proportion as they did so their opponents of the Low 
 Church or Evangelical school began to desire that they 
 should be eliminated from the Book of Common Prayer. It 
 is probable that these were some of the many things that 
 Phillijis Brooks thought might be far from the truth. They 
 were afterwards known as "Romanizing germs." There was 
 a division among the Evangelicals as to the best method to 
 be followed. Some said agitate for a revision in order to 
 make the Prayer Book less objectionable, others said continue 
 to use it, putting upon these unwelcome phrases a truer inter- 
 pretation than the words seemed to convey and in better 
 harmony with the teaching of Scripture. Among these latter 
 was Phillips Brooks. He sympathized with the difficulties 
 felt by his co-religionists, as we shall see more fully here- 
 after, but he never became an agitator for the revision of 
 the Prayer Book. 
 
 There was one point upon which for a moment he appar- 
 ently felt some difficulty, — the subject of infant baptism. 
 The difficulty may now seem remote and unreal, but at that 
 time it constituted the C7nix of many of the Evangelicals. 
 When one turns it over in connection with the attitude of the 
 historical schools in the Episcopal Church, its emergence as 
 a subject of confusion and annoyance is easily explained. 
 The High Church school, standing for solidarity as the great 
 end to be achieved by the church, found no trouble with 
 infant baptism, but rather emphasized and gloried in it as the 
 manifestation of the principle of collectivism when the uncon- 
 scious child was committed to its future career, without its 
 knowledge or consent, without the faith and repentance, 
 which the rite seemed to demand. They spoke much of a 
 miraculous change wrought in the child by the operation of 
 the water conjoined with the action of the Holy Spirit, which 
 
.ET. 23] THE RETROSPECT 309 
 
 they called regeneration. The Evangelical school stood for 
 individual freedom, placing the deepest stress upon individual 
 faith as the sole condition of conversion. They did not go so 
 far as to advocate the abandonment of infant baptism, but 
 they denied, some of them at least, the possibility of any 
 supernatural change, and regarded the baptism of the child 
 as its dedication to God and its admission into the church. 
 Others called it a covenant between God on one side and the 
 parents and the child on the other. Many volumes and 
 hundreds of tracts have been written on this jjoint, which 
 have now lost their interest. What Phillips Brooks came to 
 hold on this subject may be found in a small treatise of his, 
 written in 1880, on "Baptism and Confirmation." But in 
 the year 1859, as will be seen from this letter, he demanded 
 some treatment of the subject, not to be found in the current 
 text-books : — 
 
 Theological Seminary, February 18, 1859. 
 
 We 've just begun to study Hodges on Infant Baptism. It 
 looks like a discouragingly safe book, probing all the sure points 
 conclusively, and leaving a poor heretic like me (and you, Rev.) 
 as rudderless as ever on all the rest. Did I say I was all right 
 on I. B. ? I take it back. 
 
 Did you ever see Gresley on Preaching? Get it, if you want 
 the nearest finite approach to the eternal stupidity. 
 
 It was not without some effort that he adjusted himself to 
 the time-worn formularies of religious experience or of the- 
 ological opinion. There is no sign of any violent reaction 
 against them, but there is evidence of dissatisfaction with the 
 existing theological conditions. Under these circumstances 
 he found aid and comfort in the teaching of Dr. Sparrow, the 
 Professor of Theology. Thus he writes of him in his second 
 year in the seminary: "He is a splendid man, the only real 
 live man we have here, clear as daylight and fair and candid, 
 without a particle of dogmatism or theological dry rot." 
 
 Many years after, in 1886, at the request of Dr. Packard, 
 one of the professors in the theological seminary of Virginia, 
 he wrote a letter giving his impressions of Dr. Sparrow as a 
 theological teacher. The letter has an autobiographical value, 
 and may be given here : — 
 
3IO PHILLIPS BROOKS [i8S9 
 
 Santa Ffe, New Mexico, May 9, 1886. 
 
 Dbak De. Packard, — Your request that I would write you 
 some of my impressions of Dr. Sparrow as a teacher and a 
 preacher found me very busy in Boston, and I have brought it 
 with me to this distant place. Let me try to write something, 
 that I may not seem to be wholly unmindful of your wish. 
 
 It is easy to say of men who have not much accurate knowledge 
 to impart that they are men of suggestion and inspiration. But 
 with the doctor clear thought and real learning only made the 
 suggestion and inspiration of his teaching more vivid. I have 
 never looked at Knapp since he taught us out of it. My im- 
 pression of it is tliat it is a very dull and dreary book, but it 
 served as a glass for Dr. Sparrow's spirit to shine through, and 
 perhaps from its own insignificance I remember him more in con- 
 nection with it than in connection with Butler's Analogy. His 
 simplicity and ignorance of the world seemed always to let one 
 get directly at the clearness of his abstract thought, and while I 
 have always felt that he had not comprehended the importance of 
 the sjjeculative questions which were just rising in those days, 
 and which have since then occupied men's minds, he unconsciously 
 did much to jn-epare his students' minds to meet them. 
 
 His intellectual and his spiritual life seem to me, as I look 
 back upon him, to have been mingled in singular harmony and to 
 have made but one nature as they do in few men. The best 
 result of his work in influence on any student's life and ministry 
 must have been to save him from the hardness on the one hand, 
 and the weakness on the other, which purely intellectual or purely 
 spiritual training would have produced. His very presence on 
 the hill was rich and salutary. He held his opinions and was 
 not held by them. This personality impressed young men who 
 were just at that point in life when a thinker is more to them 
 than the results of thought, because it is of more importance that 
 they should learn to tliink, and not that they should merely justify 
 their adherence to their inherited creed. 
 
 With all liis great influence I fancy that he did not make young 
 men his imitators. There has been no crop of little Dr. Spar- 
 rows. That shows, I think, the reality and healthiness of his 
 power. The church since his day has had its host of little dog- 
 matists, who thought that God had given his truth to them to 
 keep, and of little ritualists, who thought that God had bidden 
 them save the world by drill. Certainly Dr. Sparrow is not re- 
 sponsible for any of them. He did all he could to enlarge and 
 enlighten both. He loved ideas, and did all that he could to 
 make his students love them. 
 
MT. 23'] THE RETROSPECT ' 311 
 
 As to liis preaching, I have not very clear impressions. I 
 remember that his sermons sometimes seemed to us to be remark- 
 able, but I imagine that a theological student is one of the poorest 
 judges of sermons, and that the doctor had preached too much to 
 students to allow him to be the most effective and powerful 
 preacher to men. 
 
 Upon the whole he is one of the three or four men whom I 
 have known whom I look upon with perpetual gratitude for the 
 help and direction wliich they have given to my life, and whose 
 power I feel in forms of action and kinds of thought very dif- 
 ferent from those in which I had specially to do with them. 
 
 I am sure that very many students would say the same of Dr. 
 Sparrow. 
 
 I hope that you are well and happy, and I am, dear Dr. 
 Packard, Faithfully yours, 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Whatever help by way of suggestion and inspiration was 
 afforded by Dr. Sparrow, ^ yet the ultimate solution of theo- 
 logical problems was made by Phillips Brooks himself and in 
 his own distinctive manner. These extracts from his note- 
 book convey hints of the constructive process through which 
 his mind was passing. The first was written soon after he 
 reached the seminary, and is dated December 18, 1856 : — 
 
 After all the young man's chafing at the constraint, we shall 
 pretty generally find that it is with theories as with country 
 roads, they may take us a little out of our way, but if they reach 
 our point at last, it will be the easiest and altogether the shortest 
 way to keep by them, gaining, in the smoothness and pleasantness 
 which the road-builders have made ready for us, much more than 
 we lose by not taking a straight line across rough new fields and 
 through thick woods and over unbridged swamps and streams all 
 along the way. True, no road must take us from our aim and 
 end ; hut to most points of human interest, or moral duty, or of 
 mental worth we can find at least a footpath where some toiling 
 traveller has broken his way before ; and here and there perhaps 
 has cast aside a stone or broken off a wayward bough that those 
 who afterwards should follow him might find the way more easy 
 or more straight. 
 
 ^ Cf. Walker's Memorials of Dr. Sparrow, 1876, for much interesting infor- 
 mation concerning him. 
 
312 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 It is a noble and beautiful thing to feel ourselves growing out 
 of our own contempts; to recognize each day that something 
 which we have been weakly despising as mean and poor is high 
 and pure and rich in worth and beauty. 
 
 There was another thought much in his mind and finding 
 frequent expression, which was to become one of his ruling 
 ideas, — that truth had many aspects, that what failed to 
 bring one man strength or consolation might to another be 
 the source of joy and peace. To condemn another man's 
 belief or to sneer at it was madness : — 
 
 Poor feeble creatures in a feeble world, we each must catch 
 what is most comfort to his feebleness. Believe in mine for me ; 
 I will lielieve in yours for you. Surely we each have quite enough 
 to do to hold our own, without this cruel folly of saying to an- 
 other, "Your comfort is a cheat, your hope a heresy, the earnest 
 life that you are living all a lie." If you can give him something 
 better, do it in God's name. If you can only sneer away his 
 peace and pleasure you belie your manhood when you do it. 
 
 Surely we might make more allowance for the roads we walk 
 in if the great ends we aim at are the same. Our paths through 
 life are like the great tracks men map out on the seas. They say 
 they go the same way that the ships of old have gone ; they mean 
 they seek the same harbor, round the same headlands, shun the 
 same quicksands, read the same silent constant stars. But the 
 waves they plough have changed a myriad times ; the great unrest 
 or circumstance has broken into confusion the unquiet road they 
 travel, but they call it still the same, because by the same great 
 eternal sureties, it points them to the same old haven. So by 
 the sure witness of faith we pass over the restless path of human 
 accident to the great truth harbor that we seek. 
 
 You have a rock down somewliere in your soul, and that is the 
 rock for you to build on. Beware how you borrow a fragment of 
 some other man's and plant it on your sandy places and try to 
 build on that. Dig deep, dig well, dig till you find the proper 
 basis of your own strength. 
 
 These extracts may prepare the way for coming still closer 
 to his religious experience and to his theological attitude. 
 The supreme effort which he was making, which threw also 
 
^T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 313 
 
 into the shade all other difficulties, was to trace the connec- 
 tion between ideas and principles, theories and theological 
 distinctions, — the connection between these and the actual 
 life of the human soid ; to show how they ministered to the 
 growth of a man in righteousness of character. Confronted 
 as he was with doctrines and dogmas, whose acceptance was 
 regarded as important, he asked for their nexus with the 
 human will, or with the reason and the feeling that led as 
 motives to the action of the will. In his impatience and 
 weariness, when no answer was forthcoming, it was not to be 
 wondered at that he should think of much of this material 
 imposed upon him as "theological dry rot," useless and cum- 
 bersome because without life or relation to life. He heard, 
 as we have seen, much from his teachers about the sin of intel- 
 lectual pride and how it was necessary to subject the intellect 
 to the obedience of Christ. He took up the challenge, and 
 in so doing reversed the position. It seemed to him that the 
 sin of intellectual j^ride lay in holding theories and opinions 
 which could show, and aimed to show, no organic relation with 
 Christ as the Saviour of the soul and redeemer of the world. 
 At this point it was well for him that he was called by the 
 routine of seminary teaching to look into these theories and 
 doctrines for himself, ascertain their real meaning, and if 
 possible draw from them some nourishment for his soul's 
 health. It was sometimes said of him in after life, by those 
 who professed to be theologians, that he seemed to be almost 
 color blind to theological distinctions, as though he had some 
 inborn deficiency for recognizing the value of theology as 
 such, some native incapacity for making a plain and satisfac- 
 tory theological statement. The criticism, it may be said here 
 in passing, was without foundation. It would be more true 
 to speak of him as a theologian, versed in the intricacies of 
 theology as a system, knowing his way easily from one de- 
 partment to another. So well was he indoctrinated that he 
 made no technical mistakes ; never contradicted any formal 
 teaching of creeds or articles or formularies; never erred 
 through ignorance, or made a theological blunder; never 
 asserted as a new truth what had been condemned by any 
 
314 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 reputable authority as untrue. He was quite aware of Lis 
 proficiency in this respect, little as he may have valued it. 
 When his friend Dr. Vinton once remonstrated with him, 
 urging him to read more of the old writers in theology, — it 
 was after he had won fame as a preacher, — he replied that 
 he knew beforehand all that they had to say. 
 
 The evidence for the truth of these statements, aj)art from 
 that contained in his published writings, is shown in the 
 work he did in the theological seminary of Virginia. He 
 was a diligent student of ecclesiastical history, with such aids 
 as he could command, with an eye to the meaning of events, 
 but more particularly interested in the history of Christian 
 doctrines. There remain a number of his essays written at 
 the seminary which bear witness to his insight, the value and 
 maturity of his judgments. Everything that he touched in 
 the line of history shows the exquisite balance of a sound com- 
 mon sense, — that rarest of gifts. Among them are essays 
 on the church at Alexandria, and on the schism between the 
 Greek and the Latin churches. Slight as these essays were, 
 they still record his independent judgment; they have force 
 and directness, and they have that peculiar stami> which 
 marks them as his, so that we would recognize them as his by 
 the tone of thought and style. The essays he wrote on the 
 style of the New Testament Greek, and on the prevalence of 
 the Greek language in the time of Christ, show the capacity 
 of a scholar. He put under contribution to these tasks his 
 classical reading, in which he made further independent 
 research, going to the sources. He made also preparation 
 for an elaborate study of the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which 
 speaks of the promised Child, for whom the months are wait- 
 ing, for whom the earth purifies itself to give him welcome. 
 He made out an extensive list of the literature of the sub- 
 ject, the ancient Fathers, the commentators on Virgil, theolo- 
 gical writers from the sixteenth century down, many of them 
 obscure, but none unimportant for a thorough investigation. 
 When we read these things, one is almost tempted to think 
 that he would have shone as a scholar more than as a preacher. 
 They have the promise of great results. 
 
^T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 315 
 
 But it is the theological essays which he wrote that are 
 most important, as showing his peculiar gift of theological 
 insight and interpretation. The list of subjects indicates 
 to some extent the range of his inquiries, — Theories of 
 Causation, the Doctrine of the Fall, the Incarnation, the 
 Creeds, the Articles, the Sacraments, and one essay in par- 
 ticular which seeks to answer the question why Christianity, 
 seeing that it possesses such complete internal and external 
 evidence, should not have taken a stronger hold upon the 
 world. His answer is characteristic, that it has done and 
 is still doing all that could have been expected from it, so 
 that the result of its working in the world confirms its 
 divine origin and gives it the promise of the future. In 
 these essays on theological subjects it is noteworthy that 
 he finds no difficulty with the miracle. That question was 
 already in the air, — scientific men, literary and religious 
 writers in England and America, scholars in Germany and 
 France, the world's "freethinkers" as they were called, 
 having already abandoned the miracle, as incapable of proof, 
 or as impossible in the nature of things, or as a discredited 
 superstition. But there is not only no trace that he was 
 haunted by misgivings on this point ; there seems, on the con- 
 trary, evidence that he built on the miracle as the foundation 
 of much of his enthusiasm. Nor is this surprising in view 
 of his enthusiasm for humanity, since the miracle stood to 
 him for the greatness of humanity, for the impossible deeds 
 that it will attempt and perform. On this point he never 
 changed his conviction. 
 
 These theological essays must have satisfied the heart of 
 Dr. Sparrow. They reflected the Evangelical teaching he had 
 received, and no fault could have been found with any utter- 
 ance that he made. Dr. Sparrow is said to have remarked 
 that he recognized in him a pupil who needed none of his 
 instruction. He had indeed been grounded in these things 
 under the tuition of his mother and of Dr. Vinton ; but Dr. 
 Sparrow's influence may be also seen, holding him to a 
 rational inquiry into their deeper meaning. Thus he seems 
 to have freely accepted the leading truths which are known as 
 
3i6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 Evangelical. He finds that the Thirty-Nine Articles revolve 
 around the doctrine of justification by faith as their central 
 theme, and that the errors which the Articles condemn spring 
 from their denial of this central conviction. The Articles 
 are not a string of fragmentary utterances, but are grouped 
 into unity by a great common belief. He studied the deeper 
 issues of the Pauline theology, — the distinction between 
 gospel and law, — asking anew for the purpose served by the 
 law, and why it was that Jewish and Christian churches 
 should be tempted by the shallowness of the Pelagian heresy. 
 He writes on the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, taking for 
 a text the words of Bishop Butler and confirming their truth : 
 "By the general prevalence of propitiatory sacrifices over 
 the heathen world, the notion of repentance alone being 
 sufficient to expiate guilt appears to be contrary to the 
 general sense of mankind." 
 
 But in all these essays, while he reaches and maintains the 
 accepted positions, yet there is a difference of tone and of 
 emjihasis, a quality which is his own. He searches for anal- 
 ogies in heathen thought, and in the experience of the pre- 
 Christian world, until he felt sure that ruling ideas in Chris- 
 tian theology must in their origin have struck their roots in 
 the life and confession of humanity, uncontrolled by an ex- 
 ternal conventional authority. Not only in regard to the 
 idea of sacrifice, but of the doctrines of the fall and of the 
 incarnation, does it hold true that they were believed by the 
 race of man ; and especially was the Incarnation — • the union 
 of God with man in some divine human being: — longed for 
 and earnestly desired, even anticipated in crude ways in the 
 heathen world. As such, these doctrines form part of the 
 necessary experience of man; they reveal the characteristic 
 essence of the human soul ; they are not the badges of bond- 
 age, but the conditions of human freedom, by which the race 
 has risen to the realization of its divine heritage. 
 
 Again, he takes up the subject of creeds. He speaks of 
 the protest against them by so large a part of the religious 
 intelligence of the country on the ground that they are merely 
 fetters of the intellect, that they binder mental liberty and 
 
^T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 317 
 
 progress. He admits that they have been abused among the 
 cold intellectual races of the north, creating a kind of intel- 
 lectual idolatry quite as far astray as the sensual image wor- 
 ship of the southern races. But he does not think this 
 danger is so great as some picture it. The presentation of 
 truth in clear and sharply defined propositions, as in a creed, 
 has a value for the mind in its first activity. It satisfies a 
 certain human natural desire for clearness, and overcomes 
 the natural distrust of vagueness. " Without the creed each 
 man must have the original force in himself to select and 
 build his own position, deriving no help from others' previous 
 endeavors, with no historical ground to build upon and no 
 historical support to look to. It is demanding of ordinary 
 minds an originality which we have no right to presuppose." 
 But even granting that men had this ability, yet the rejection 
 of the creeds "is taking out of truth the social elements that 
 God in setting up his church infused so strongly in it." 
 
 The most liberal Christianity among us, — practically what 
 have we seen its rejection of formal confessions of faith amount 
 to ? Its masses, its men that correspond to those who in the style 
 of much-abused servility give in their matter-of-course assent to 
 old systems of doctrine, have simply rejected that assent, to say 
 as servilely and with quite as little candid judgment, "I believe 
 in this or that preacher or divine." Servility has been trans- 
 ferred from systems to individuals, and liberality has but bound 
 the new freeman in a closer and more unquestioning adherence to 
 his sect or some traditional leader of that sect. A creed does for 
 theology what the balance did for chemistry, it changes it from 
 pure guesswork to a science. It does not give doctrines less or 
 greater weight. It only puts them into shape and lets us see 
 really what their weight among men is. There may be false 
 balances and true ones, but the general notion of the balance, the 
 weighing of quantity by laws derived from their own peculiar 
 nature, is one that we cannot throw away without going back to 
 guesswork, which is itself but a system of balances false in an 
 infinite variety. 
 
 It is important to mention these theological essays by 
 Phillips Brooks, for they represent an element in his train- 
 ing. They were required tasks, to be sure, in a field where 
 
3i8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 liis native interest did not lie. But he could do these things 
 and do them well, when he strove even better than most. 
 Still the temper of his mind was undogmatic. He did not 
 reject dogma, but he found little place for it in the pulj)it. 
 He could sympathize with those who disowned it, for they did 
 so because it seemed without connection with life. When- 
 ever he touched dogma, it was to connect it with life. But 
 that large body of religious opinions which exists as a world 
 by itself, the object of an antiquarian's curiosity, he left to 
 itself, and passed by quickly on the other side. 
 
 There is another reason why it was well for Phillips Brooks 
 that he went to the theological seminary in Virginia, rather 
 than elsewhere, to make his preparation for the ministry, 
 lie might have gone to other schools holding the same theo- 
 logy, but at Virginia he received the Evangelical influence 
 in its purest, but also in its most intense form. For one 
 most distinctive external mark of that j)eculiar type of 
 religious culture was the stress it placed upon the feelings 
 and the emotions. This was the characteristic by which 
 it was known in the Episcopal Church. Among the colder 
 and more reserved people of New England, religious devo- 
 tion and the ahandon of the pious instincts were in com- 
 parative abeyance as contrasted with the warmth and depth 
 of religious devotion in the South. Into this atmosphere 
 Phillips Brooks was suddenly plunged when he found himself 
 in the Virginia seminary. He has left on record the first 
 impression he received and the inference he drew for his 
 guidance : — 
 
 I shall never forget my first experience of a divinity school. 
 I had come from a college where men studied hard, but said 
 nothing about faith. I had never been at a prayer meeting in 
 my life. The first place I was taken to at the seminary was the 
 prayer meeting; and never shall I lose the impression of the 
 devoutness with which these men prayed and exhorted one another. 
 Their whole souls seemed exalted and their natures were on fire. 
 I sat bewildered and ashamed and went away depressed. On the 
 next day, I met some of those men at a Greek recitation. It 
 would be little to say of some of the devoutest of them that they 
 
/ET. 23] THE RETROSPECT 319 
 
 had not learned their lessons. Their whole way showed that they 
 never learned their lessons ; that they had not got hold of the 
 first principles of hard, faithful, conscientious study. The boiler 
 had no connection with the engine. The devotion did not touch 
 the work which then and there was the work, and the only work, 
 for them to do. By and by, I found something of where the 
 steam did escape to. A sort of amateur preaching was much in 
 vogue among us. We were in haste to he at what we called our 
 work. A feeble twilight of the coming ministry we lived in. 
 The people in the neighborhood dubbed us parsonettes.^ 
 
 To combine the highest and the broadest intellectual cul- 
 ture with the vi'armest devotion of the heart became from 
 this moment a constitutive element in the ideal of Phillips 
 Brooks; in other words, to reconcile the theology of the in- 
 tellect with the theology of the feelings. He accepted the 
 prayer meeting, and the prayer meeting left its permanent 
 impression upon him. It helped to overcome that reserve 
 which, however invincible in his relation with individuals, 
 disappeared entirely when he went into the pulpit. No 
 preacher ever poured forth the content of his soul to a con- 
 gregation more fully than he; it may be doubted if in this 
 respect he was ever surpassed in the history of preaching. 
 But the first steps towards this emancipation of himself from 
 himself were learned in the prayer meeting. One of his 
 fellow students could bear this testimony about him : — • 
 
 Another more sacred thought of him goes back to the class 
 prayer meeting, held each week in one of our rooms. We had 
 never heard such prayers, so fervent, trustful, simple, so full of 
 what we should not have guessed was in him till he testified 
 beside us on his knees. He had learned a lesson which the books 
 could not teach, worth more to him and to those he knelt with, 
 then and afterwards, than the cultured scholarship he l^rought 
 from Harvard, or the systematic theology (more or less of it) that 
 Alexandria gave us. When he stood on the steps of Independence 
 Hall at the close of the war, with the bowed multitude before him, 
 and again in the great tent in Cambridge on Commemoration 
 Day (vivid memories both to me), the many realized, as the few 
 in the class meetings did, part of the tru.th of a character which 
 
 ' Lecture on Preaching, delivered before the Yale Divinity School, 1877, 
 p. 44. 
 
320 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 has left a deeper impress on minds and hearts than any other of 
 our land and time.^ 
 
 These verses from his note-book, the very first entry made 
 after reaching the seminary, are his comment on the impres- 
 sion received at the first prayer meeting, when he witnessed 
 the outburst of Christian feeling as never before : — 
 
 For feeling is a teacher; every dream 
 
 That makes us purer makes us wiser too, 
 And every beauty coming on a beam 
 
 Of God's sweet smilight brings new truth to view. 
 
 And feeling is a ivorker; at the base 
 
 Of earth's deep action, lies earth's deeper thought; 
 And lower still than thought is feeling's place 
 
 Which heaves the whole mass duly as it ought. 
 
 There comes a culture out of this religious life. From the 
 silent Bible-reading, from the heart's meeting with the wonders 
 of the life divine, there comes a trueness and fineness, a manli- 
 ness and a womanliness that courts can never give. 
 
 This endowment of our nature which we call feeling — a 
 word which has no synonym and for which there is no substi- 
 tute — had come to Phillips Brooks by inheritance in an ex- 
 traordinary degree. It was a talent which he improved and 
 employed to the utmost, but it was originally given him by 
 free grace as to the man that had already ten talents. Only 
 one who has had the privilege of poring over his mother's 
 letters to her son can realize how rich and wonderful was the 
 gift she had transmitted. His father wrote to him when he 
 had important news to communicate, and very interesting his 
 letters were. But the mother wrote when her heart was full 
 to overflowing, and was impelled to pour forth her love. Her 
 letters are very much alike, for words failed her to express 
 adequately the depth and intensity of her emotion. Very 
 simple sometimes and beautifully familiar do her sentences 
 
 1 Tlie Rev. George Augustus Strong in Remembrances of rhillipx Brooks by 
 Two of /lis Friends, p. 54. Rev. C. A. L. Ricliai-rls also adds : " His piety was 
 real, but not demonstrative. When he offered prayer at any of our meetings 
 you could not hut feel that God was very near and living to him " (p. 11). 
 
JET. 23] THE RETROSPECT 321 
 
 sound, — the language of a mother's love which knows no 
 bound. She longed for him, she thought of him every hour 
 and minute of the day, she counted the weeks and the days 
 till she should see him ; sometimes she was so impatient that 
 she feared that she could not wait for his coming, but must 
 fly to him. It was this element in Phillips Brooks that 
 formed one large constituent in the secret of his strength. 
 Those who knew him can bear witness to the truth of this 
 statement that his capacity for deep feeling was like the 
 ocean in its majesty ; ideas, experiences, the forces of life, 
 that appealed to him roused him as a whirlwind, in waves 
 of inevitable power, and feeling became a torment until it 
 had found expression. But this feeling found its freest 
 expression in the pulpit alone, going forth to the great 
 congregation. 
 
 This vast capacity and power of feeling upon which the 
 world of human life in all its scope and variety was always 
 playing, as upon some mighty organ, quick also to respond 
 to the slightest touch, was seen in his power of prayer, awing 
 the souls that listened, and was something exceptional in 
 the manifestation of a human soul. But it is characteristic 
 of his note-books that they contain no formal utterance of 
 prayer, such as had been customary in the religious journals 
 of his ancestors. He did not write down a petition. It would 
 have been for him unnatural and artificial. Such things 
 must be reserved for the living moment. Yet as we read 
 these notes, intended for no eye but his own, they sound like 
 one who is thinking in the presence of God and with the 
 sense of divine communion. 
 
 It was here that poetry came to his relief. He made it a 
 rule not to let a day pass without writing verse. Most of it 
 he wrote, as has been remarked, rapidly, without revision, not 
 putting much thought into it, but using it as the vehicle and 
 outlet of his feelings. For the most part it became the ex- 
 pression of the simple human emotion in view of the ordinary 
 operations of the natural world, — • the emotions that all men 
 feel, but by which he was so impressed as to feel the need 
 of utterance. It was the sign of recognition, of responding 
 
322 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 love or gratitude or joy. At the critical points of his life his 
 aroused feelings turned to jjoetry, as the adequate setting of 
 his inward mood. When he left the Latin School for col- 
 lege, he wrote a poem, and again when he was leaving Har- 
 vard. When he read great books he was moved to poetry. 
 When he finished his first sermon, he left on record a poem, 
 or rather a hymn, and the hymn is the form which his 
 prayer assumed : — 
 
 And so this sermon is my first ; 
 
 At last my hand has grasped the plough; 
 And all my life, or blest or curst, 
 
 Is opening wide before me now. 
 
 Well, let it come. With bended head 
 
 I tm'n this sermon to a prayer ; 
 Lord, thou hast marked my path to tread, 
 
 go with me and help me there. 
 
 In thy strength, not in mine I stand. 
 Thy words and not mine own I speak. 
 
 In thee my weakness waxeth grand 
 And I am strong that was so weak. 
 
 So pass this sermon if it must ; 
 
 1 think it pleads the truth of God. 
 I pray some soul may gather trust 
 
 To tread the path the Saviour trod. 
 
 Let other sermons follow too. 
 
 My way is marked, my path is clear, — 
 
 A hope to win, a work to do, 
 
 In strength of faith, in spite of fear. 
 
 O God, whose name my soul has named, 
 O make them pure and all thine own. 
 
 That so I may not be ashamed 
 
 When I shall stand before thy throne. 
 October, 1858. 
 
 Phillips Brooks was profoundly impressed with the mis- 
 sionary spirit which prevailed among the students at Alex- 
 andria as nowhere else to an equal extent in the Episcopal 
 
MT. 23] THE RETROSPECT 2^3 
 
 Church at that time. Since 1835 the graduates of the 
 seminary had begun to go forth to foreign lands, Bishop 
 Boone to China, Bishop Payne to Africa, Dr. Hill to Greece, 
 till fifty-five years later there were enrolled over thirty mis- 
 sionaries. The history of missions knows of no greater sacri- 
 fices or loftier heroism than is recalled to the Virginia 
 seminary by its martyrs for Christ. Especially the mission 
 on the west coast of Africa meant an almost certain early 
 death, or else permanent injury to the health, to all who ven- 
 tured into its pestilential climate. But as devoted men fell, 
 others rose up to follow them. Almost every year witnessed 
 the enthusiasm of the students carried to the highest point as 
 they bade farewell to classmates. It was so with the class of 
 which Phillips Brooks was a member. His diary shows how 
 deeply he was moved, as also a hymn written for the occasion 
 of the departure of a friend for China. If the call had come 
 to him it would have satisfied the aspirations of his mother, 
 who never wearied of holding up the examples of great 
 missionaries to her children, as the noblest the world could 
 offer. But the Spirit called him to another work, where 
 heroism and self-sacrifice were to be illustrated, before his 
 life was over, in ways as real and potential as those of the 
 missionary in a foreign land. There is no gradation in these 
 things of a more or less divine, of a lower or a greater glory 
 of God. One cannot help reflecting that if Phillips Brooks 
 had become a foreign missionary, to Africa for example, fol- 
 lowing in the steps of Hoffman or Minor or Savage, what an 
 incalculable loss the church would have suffered. And yet 
 foreign missions remain the most striking test of the reality 
 of the life and faith of a church. It was the crowning glory 
 of the Evangelical school in the Episcopal Church that it 
 was the first to recognize and respond to this test of a living 
 faith. 
 
 The intellectual part of his being was in the ascendency 
 during these years in Alexandria. But his intellectual 
 strength is so fused with emotion that they seem to merge into 
 one. The profound and subtle mind with its flashes of in- 
 sight penetrating to the core of things and lighting up the 
 
324 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 obscure corners of existence was indebted for its power to 
 the feeling which gave him an universal human sympathy. 
 He came into knowledge through sympathy, and feeling 
 was a source of knowing, for it enabled him to enter into 
 experiences, not his own in one sense, but to become his own 
 through the power of imagination. No experience of human- 
 ity was alien to him. 
 
 But he had not yet sounded the lowest depths of his soul, 
 or yet fully realized the greatness of his purpose. He saw 
 vistas before him, endless in their long drawn-out mystery, 
 to whose furthest limit he had not yet reached. He hints at 
 them, in the daily remarks he confides to his note-book. 
 What he wants is some principle of unity; he is still haunted 
 with the unpossessed secret process by which intellect and 
 feeling shall be transmuted into fuel for the will. He has 
 visions of Christ in some moment of transfiguration, and 
 would fain penetrate more closely into the strange bewilder- 
 ing mystery of his power. 
 
 There is the old city child's difficulty in thinking of his city 
 as a whole. He knows this street and that street, but never 
 recognizes the organic town standing surrounded by others like it, 
 acting as an individual with concrete purposes and thoughts. I 
 do not know that other children have this difficulty, but it always 
 troubled me. And there is something of the same kind, I think, 
 to moat of the minds new born into the world of thought when 
 they try to conceive of each man's separate life. 
 
 There comes out to this truth not the great and grand and 
 mighty, but, as they came when Jesus was to pass, the poor and 
 halt and blind. Now and then its ministers, like the disciples in 
 the Gospel, would order the clamorous suppliants away, but the 
 Christ voice speaks as then, "Let them come, for to them I was 
 sent ; " and the gracious hand is outstretched and the healing 
 done. 
 
 There is something holier and stronger and more immortal, 
 something harder to conceive of, harder far to reach, that lies 
 back of hope, and faith, and fear, and reverence, and love. As 
 behind the sun, and clouds, and silent stars, lies the great 
 eternity of space, so behind this man's or that man's living, or 
 
«T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 325 
 
 thinking, or enjoying, lies the immensity of life, that we try to 
 measure by these planets that God has stationed in it. 
 
 There is one magic word somewhere, if we can find it, with 
 which we can tame these truths, as the old magicians subdued the 
 spirits to their will. Called by that word they come to our con- 
 fessional and tell their secrets. Tlie power that was in them 
 passes into us, and we become their masters, as they once were 
 ours. They go to do our bidding in humility, and own our sov- 
 ereignty now by that magic word. 
 
 In the midst of our Chi'istian life there will come such trans- 
 figuration times. We walk with Christ and see the miracles He 
 does with his constant love, but we see Him poor and despised; He 
 is not of the noble, nor his cause of the nobilities of the world ; 
 but some day He taketh his disciples apart and is transfig-ured be- 
 fore them ; on some hilltop of prayer, where it is good to be, they 
 see his own heavenly glory come down to clothe their Lord ; his 
 countenance grows bright with everlasting love, his raiment is 
 pure and white as the eternal truth; Moses and Elias come and 
 talk with Him, the deep sympathy of law and gospel is made 
 plain and clear, and the disciples fall upon their faces and worship 
 the Master they have loved so well. Henceforth their faith is not 
 to be shaken. They know whom they have believed, for they 
 have seen his glory. Such blessed seasons come to us. What- 
 ever else may waver, our doubting time is over. The memory of 
 this Tabor shall be with us as we look on Calvary. We have 
 heard the voice from out the cloud attest Christ's sonship and 
 our duty, — "This is my beloved Son, hear Him." We go down 
 with new trust in God, new faith in .Jesus, new sympathy witli 
 heaven, new hope for men, to begin again our walk of quiet daily 
 Christian duty, to see the daily miracle and feel the daily bless- 
 ing, to strive and struggle to the end. 
 
 1858. 
 
 He was looking forward with a mingled sense of joy and 
 of terror, of confidence and yet of reverential awe, to the 
 work he was soon to begin. Visions of the profession of a 
 teacher, which had been his first vocation, seem to have faded 
 away for the moment. Life was very rich and full in its 
 promise ; he had a deep inward gladness of soul which was 
 incommunicable, — the feeling of his days before him, — but 
 there is no trace, not the slightest, of any sense of superiority, 
 
326 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 no consciousness of gifts that raised him above other men, no 
 expectation of distinction or renown which if not satisfied 
 would beget the soreness of disappointed ambition. His out- 
 look was in humility of spirit. There was a consciousness, 
 however, of inward harmony which now began to be reflected 
 in the symmetry of his person. The hajjpiness within was 
 stamped upon the features, in place of a certain anxious and 
 inquiring look which some of the early photographs display. 
 
 His love of the beautiful had found no opf)ortunity in the 
 study of art, but there is evidence of its existence. He was 
 mainly content with the beauty of nature, or as it found 
 interpretation in poetry. His capacity for the appreciation 
 of art, inspired and fed as it had been by Ruskin, was only 
 waiting till the time should come for its gratification. It 
 may seem like a trifle to mention that the chief ornament of 
 his room at the seminary was an engraving of Evangeline, 
 sent him by his brother William, who knew the pleasure it 
 would give. That face has lost something of its charm by 
 the frequency with which it was soon encountered in so many 
 households. But its connection with Longfellow's poetry as 
 well as its intrinsic beauty and its popular recognition made 
 its a])pearance something even of an event in American life. 
 He writes to his brother that it has created a sensation in the 
 theological seminary of Virginia. 
 
 At this time he was looking forward to marriage as in 
 some beautiful, diviner way the complement and completion 
 of his being. He felt no call to a celibate life. He chroni- 
 cles the marriages of his friends without comment; he was 
 waiting till his time should come. To one of his friends who 
 asked him for the demands and conditions he would make, he 
 replied, in a humorous way, that in the first place she must 
 be small ; in the second place she must be beautiful ; in the 
 third place she must not know too much, and he added in 
 the fourth place, as if an afterthought, she must of course 
 be good.i He was rather exigent in his demand for personal 
 beauty of form and figure, as though an injury had been 
 
 ' The Rev. Georg:e Au^justus Strong has communicated this incident, as also 
 many others, to this biography. 
 
^T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 327 
 
 done him where it was wanting. His letters contain many 
 aUusions of this kind after the manner of all young men. 
 This is a specimen : — 
 
 I received the other day an invitation to dinner from one of the 
 nabobs of Alexandria, which, as I afterwards found, I owed en- 
 tirely to his having been rather intimate with Uncle Brooks ^ and 
 his family when he was at college in Cambridge thirty years ago. 
 Of course I went, and had a very pleasant time. So you see our 
 rich relations do us some little good sometimes after all. He 
 lives in great style, keeps a grand house, sets a splendid table, 
 and has one of the prettiest girls (age about eighteen years one 
 month, I should say) for a daughter that I ever saw. 
 
 She is the prettiest girl I have seen in Virginia, and that 
 is n't saying much. But she is really quite stunning, dark hair 
 and eyes, fine oomiilexion, dresses tastily, lively, full of fun, and 
 cordial on first acquaintance, as all Southern ladies are. 
 
 Thus he writes in his letters ; but how sacred was his ideal, 
 and with what divine purity he looked upon the human face 
 in the beauty of its appeal, must be sought in his intimate 
 journal, where poetry again becomes the vehicle of his 
 aspiration : — 
 
 Along the noisy city ways 
 
 And in this rattling city car, 
 On this the dreariest of days, 
 
 Perplexed with business, fret, and jar. 
 
 When suddenly a young sweet face 
 Looked on my petulance and pain. 
 
 And lent it something of its grace, 
 And charmed it into peace again ! 
 
 The day was just as bleak without, 
 
 My neighbors just as cold within, 
 And truth was just as full of doubt, 
 
 The world was just as full of pain. 
 
 But in the light of that young smile 
 
 The world grew pure, the heart grew warm, 
 
 ^ The late Peter Chardon Brooks, Esq., of Boston, who was his father's own 
 uncle, and his mother's uncle by marriage. See ante, p. ii7. 
 
328 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859 
 
 And sunshine poured a little while 
 Across the darkness of the storm. 
 
 I di<l not care to seek her name, 
 
 I only said, God bless thy life ; 
 Thy sweet young grace be still the same. 
 
 Or happy maid or happy wife. 
 
 1858. 
 
 And here is a genuine and beautiful love song, which it will 
 not wrong him to print : — ■ 
 
 • We sit together in our soul's high window, dearest, 
 
 That looks upon tlie street of human life. 
 Within, our happy home ; without, the world thou fearest, 
 Within, our peace; without, men's angry strife. 
 
 Look out ! see how strange eyes look here upon us. 
 How poor they think our dwelling and how cheap; 
 
 They dream not of our godlike joys and honors. 
 The rich, ripe fields of blessing that we reap. 
 
 Nay, close the curtain ; it is wrong, my sweetest. 
 That they should see the love they do not know, 
 
 Our love, the purest, darling, and completest 
 God ever trusted to our earth below. 
 
 Sit here, my love, with all the world behind us, 
 Sit hand in hand, nor dare to speak a word, 
 
 'T is wronging God to share what he consigned us 
 With every outcast of the human herd. 
 
 So sit we by the soul's sweet fireside, fairest; 
 
 The days go by as light winds kiss the flowers. 
 They seek through all earth's sweetest and earth's rarest 
 
 A love so sweet, a love so rare as ours. 
 1858. 
 
 And so the period of his preparation ends and the work of 
 his life begins. The long stretch of his life was before him, 
 the seemingly endless years. It is often a characteristic of 
 the young that they dwell upon death and its meaning, more 
 even than those who approach old age, or are bearing the 
 
^T. 23] THE RETROSPECT 329 
 
 burden and heat of the day. It was so with him. He was 
 wont at this time to ponder upon the awful secret, as throw- 
 ing light upon the meaning of life. But he made no effort 
 to bring before his imagination the intervening years. It 
 was of these, however, that his father and mother were 
 thinking, and more particularly his mother, as she forecast 
 the future in the great anxiety of her love. Her one jjrayer 
 for him was that he should lead the rest of his life according 
 to this beginning. It is not possible for the young to look at 
 things from the point of view of those who are older. It may 
 have been so with him. And yet the refrain of the letters 
 his mother wrote must have lingered in his mind, — the 
 earnest invocation to be faithful to the end in order that he 
 might receive at last the crown of rejoicing before God : "Be 
 thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of 
 life." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 1859-1860 
 
 FIRST YEAR IN THE MINISTRY. CHURCH OF THE ADVENT, 
 PHILADELPHIA. EARLY RECOGNITION OF HIS POWER AS A 
 PREACHER. EXTRACTS FROM HIS NOTE-BOOK 
 
 Phillips Brooks began his ministry on Sunday, July 10, 
 in the Church of the Advent, Philadelphia. Although he 
 was unknown, and the Church of the Advent was not included 
 in what are called the prominent city churches, yet somehow 
 the indefatigable representatives of modern journalism dis- 
 covered him, and the tone of the report indicates that some- 
 thing unwonted had occurred. "Our usual pulpit sketch on 
 Saturday," said the "Philadelphia Press," of July 15, 1859, 
 "will be of a sermon preached last Sunday morning at the 
 Advent (Episcopal) Church, York Avenue and Buttonwood 
 Street, by Rev. Phillips Brooks, a young gentleman who on 
 that occasion entered upon his ministry. Mr. Brooks is 
 quite youthful in his appearance, but evinces talents that are 
 quite likely to render his services highly acceptable to the 
 people of his prospective charge." 
 
 The following account in the "Press" of the next day is 
 headed "A Sermon on the Law of the House," by Rev. Phil- 
 lips Brooks : — 
 
 The Advent Church (Protestant Episcopal), York Avenue and 
 Buttonwood Street, has been without a rector since some months 
 ago it was left by Rev. Mr. Bean. Mr. Phillips Brooks, a 
 young gentleman of fine attainments, having lately been invited 
 to oconpy this pulpit, preached with so much acceptance that by 
 the urgent and we believe the unanimous request of the congre- 
 gation, he last Sunday morning entered upon his labors there in 
 a more permanent way. In all probability his rectorship of the 
 

 CHURCH OF THE ADVENT, PHILADELPHIA 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 331 
 
 Advent Church will be established at no distant day. His read- 
 ing of the morning lessons was not without marks of the modesty 
 and distrust of self, natural to one of his youthful appearance in 
 entering upon duties of so responsible a character ; yet his manner 
 upon the whole was graceful and quite indicative of adaptation to 
 the solemn office to which he has been called. His text was read 
 from the forty-third chapter of Ezekiel, and twelfth verse, to 
 wit: "This is the law of the house; upon the top of the mountain 
 the whole limit thereof round about shall be holy. Behold this 
 is the law of the house." 
 
 The sermon which followed was delivered in good style, and 
 bore marks of preparation which would not have compared un- 
 favorably with the productions of some of his more experienced 
 brethren in the ministry. 
 
 This was the preface to a report of some length devoted to 
 the sermon. Evidently the writer of the account was im- 
 pressed as by something unusual, but he holds himself in 
 restraint as a becoming attitude towards so young a man, and 
 is cautious in view of his responsibility to the public. There 
 is also a slight tone of kindly patronage, and there are some 
 inaccuracies, as when he draws on his own imagination for 
 the details of the original connection of Mr. Brooks with the 
 Church of the Advent. But these are slight blemishes com- 
 pared with the importance of possessing the report of an eye- 
 witness. As to the sermon itself, it need only be said that it 
 was so far unusual that it sounded a new note in preaching ; 
 it enforced the ethical as the highest demand of Christianity, 
 urging character rather than religious experience or than 
 devotion to dogmas. It had the tone of sincerity and reality, 
 and these combined with the charm of the preacher produced 
 the unusual impression as of something of moment that had 
 taken place. It is remarkable that the writer of this account, 
 in describing an occasion which he deemed important, should 
 have failed to allude to the rapidity of utterance, which we 
 may presume marked the delivery of the sermon. 
 
 The following letter of Mr. Brooks was written on the day 
 when this report of his first sermon was published. The 
 tone of it does not indicate that the first Sunday at the Advent 
 had marked any signal success : — 
 
332 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 Philadelphia, Saturday, July 10, 1859. 
 Dear William, — I suppose you have kept pretty well posted 
 on my movements, so that there isn't very much to write you in 
 the way of news. I am living very quietly here, still at the 
 Ashland House, but have engaged a room into which I hope to 
 go next week, so please say to everybody, and remember for your- 
 self, that any letters written on Tuesday next or after must be 
 directed to No. 701 Vine Street, Philadelphia. It is a very 
 pleasant room, looking out on Franklin Square. You can find it 
 on the side-board map on the corner of Vine and Seventh, third 
 story, front room. I am glad father gave you such a pleasant 
 account of his seminary visit. I wish you could have been there. 
 I think we could have done a trifle better for you than we did on 
 Christmas, '56. Father made a great impression, and was much 
 talked of after his departure. Tell him so. It is tolerably lone- 
 some work here, and I get a trifle blue sometimes. My vestry 
 and people are very kind. To-morrow is my second Sunday. I 
 see the "Press " of this morning has a mangled report of my last 
 Sunday's sermon. Tell father his friend Mr. West just sent to 
 me for his address, and I presume is going to send him a copy. 
 Don't take it for granted that I said just what the paper says I 
 did, for a good deal of it is misunderstood, and considerable I 
 can't understand or trace myself. Well, good-by for the present. 
 I wish you were here. I wish I had somebody just to speak two 
 words to, — somebody, I mean, that wouldn't look all the while 
 quite so much as if they were talking to "the minister." Make 
 it up the best way you can by writing, all of you. Much love to 
 all and to yourself. Phill. 
 
 Mr. Brooks himself when alluding to these first Sundays 
 at the Advent, many years afterward, recalled a circumstance 
 of which there is no hint in his letters at the time. When 
 the Rev. Leighton Parks, rector of Emmanuel Church, hu- 
 morously complained to him that he was drawing away his 
 congregation, as of all the other churches in Boston, to the 
 new Trinity Church, he said to him, "Parks, we all of us 
 have to go through this." He then went on to say that he 
 had engaged to supply the Church of the Advent for three 
 months, leaving them at liberty to call him as rector at the 
 expiration of this time. But one Sunday evening as he was 
 going home from church with one of the vestrymen, he said 
 to him that jjerhaps he had better leave at once and not wait 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 323 
 
 till the three months were out. All that his companion could 
 say in reply was, "Well, as long as you have begun, you had 
 better stay out the time for which you were hired." 
 
 But the young minister was really succeeding, as is seen by 
 these letters to his father : — 
 
 Philadelphia, August 6, 1859. 
 
 Dear Father, — I have been meaning all the week to answer 
 your last letter, but somehow it has been a busier week than com- 
 mon. It is the first time I have written two sermons in a single 
 week, and tben I have been round seeing the people pretty exten- 
 sively. I preach twice to-morrow (1 John iii. 3 and Rev. xxii. 
 17). Next week I expect to have pretty easy. Paddock is 
 coming down to spend a few days with me, and will stay and 
 preach for me on Sunday the 14th. I am looking forward to his 
 visit with a good deal of pleasure. . . . Everybody is very kind 
 and pleasant, and I like the church very much. The congregations 
 keep up well. Last Sunday evening it was crowded. ... As 
 to your question about remaining here, I don't consider it at all 
 certain yet. I like the people, and I know they want me to re- 
 main, and I do not tbink tbe work would be more than I can do. 
 The only question is whether I had better undertake at once fully 
 as much as I can do. I feel I need for tbe present a good deal 
 of time for study. I need to be taking in as well as letting out, 
 and if I feel that this place will occupy me so fully as not to 
 allow of that I shall not feel as if I ought to keep it. One of my 
 three months is gone already, and I am no more fixed in my mind 
 than I was at first. I want to talk with Dr. Vinton when he 
 gets back to town. ... I am fully settled at last, books up and 
 all came in good order. Now and tben I buy a new one, and my 
 library is slowly growing. . . . Mr. Remsen sent me a big bun- 
 dle of stationery tbe other day, enough to last me for three or 
 four ordinary lives. This paper and envelope are part of it. . . . 
 My people live all over creation, the only rule being that nobody 
 shall live anywhere near tbe church and no two anywhere near each 
 other. Your affectionate son, 
 
 P. B. 
 
 October 5, 1859. 
 I hope things are prospering at Advent. They are just be- 
 ginning to collect their quarter's rents and let new pews, which 
 they do the first three Monday nights of every quarter. Mr. Reed 
 tells me be let five or six pews last Monday evening. Last Sun- 
 day night we had the largest congregation we have had yet, the 
 
334 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 church full, except one or two of the chancel pews. I preached 
 all clay and shall next Sunday. The week after that, I have one 
 supply engaged. I am rather dreading preaching in Dr. Vinton's 
 big church next Sunday afternoon. I am going to preach my last 
 Sunday evening's sermon (Matt. xxv. 28). I have not sent in 
 my acceptance yet, but have let them understand that it is coming. 
 Next Sunday completes my three months, and I concluded to wait 
 till after that. ... I don't exj^ect to preach so much hereafter 
 as I have thus far. I begin to know more of the ministers and 
 shall be able to get more exchanges. 
 
 I hear nothing from Fred ; presume things are going smoothly 
 out at Cambridge, and he is covering himself with glory the way 
 his elder brother didn't when he was there. Tell him Advent 
 will be wanting an assistant by the time he is ready. 
 
 October 17, 1859. 
 
 Yesterday was glorious, bright, clear, fresh, and bringing full 
 houses. I preached at Dr. Vinton's in the afternoon, and had 
 the big house full ; got through it pretty well. I think he will 
 be back by next Sunday. In the morning I preached my intro- 
 ductory as permanent rector of the Advent. Text, "Holding 
 forth the word of life." At last I can look on myself as fairly 
 fixed, and it is a comfortable satisfaction to find it so. The more 
 I see of the place, the more I feel it is just the place I want, and 
 I hope things are going to prosper there. We are still renting 
 our seats slowly but steadily, and growing up, I think, in every 
 way. ... I like Philadelphia more and more, though I hardly 
 see anybody outside of my parish. 
 
 October 22, 1859. 
 
 Last night I got a note from one of Dr. Vinton's vestry, say- 
 ing he was going to be away another Sunday, and asking me to 
 preach for him again. So I shall fill the great man's place for 
 the third time. 
 
 November 10, 1859. 
 
 I heard from Bishop Eastburn the other day, sending me my 
 transfer to this diocese, and I handed it in to Bishop Potter yes- 
 terday, so that now my settlement here is complete. 
 
 November 23, 1859. 
 In the morning at 10.30 we have service (Thanksgiving), when 
 I shall preach on (Ps. xlvii. 7), that is, if I can only get up at 
 some preposterous hour in the morning to get my sermon done. I 
 have worked on it so long to-day that I am sick and tired of it, 
 and shall be sure of at least one thankful moment to-morrow, 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 335 
 
 when I get through preaching it. . . . To-day I got a long-pro- 
 mised present of a dressing-gown from the ladies of the Advent. 
 Slippers, I understand, are to follow. 
 
 Things are going on much as usual down at the Little Brown 
 Church. Last Sunday evening we had the biggest congregation I 
 have seen there yet. 
 
 The "Episcopal Recorder," published in Philadelphia, 
 made a kindly though formal reference to Mr. Brooks's work, 
 and in the same connection mentioned the Rev. H. A. Wise, 
 Jr., who had just assumed the charge of the Church of Our 
 Saviour, in West Philadelphia. Mr. Wise was a Virginian, 
 and a graduate of the theological seminary at Alexandria. 
 
 New Cleeical Friends. — We have had the pleasure recently 
 of adding several to the list of divines in our city and its vicinity. 
 The Church of Our Saviour, West Philadelphia, enjoyed the min- 
 istrations of its rector, the Rev. Mr. Wise, for the first time on 
 Sunday last. He comes into our midst with good recommenda- 
 tions from those with whom he was formerly connected, and we 
 are not sui'prised to learn that the impression he produced was 
 eminently favorable to his success. In the Church of the Advent 
 we hear good accounts of the present incumbent, the Rev. Mr. 
 Brooks, who has commenced his work earnestly and zealously, and 
 is listened to by large and increasing congregations. 
 
 It was the custom in those days for the clergy to make 
 frequent exchanges, and Mr. Brooks writes to his brother 
 that he has succeeded in arranging an exchange with Mr. 
 Wise for the Sunday, November 27, 1859. "Next Sunday 
 Advent is to have supplies; in the morning Rev. H. A. Wise, 
 Jr., who has just come and is exciting a great sensation here. 
 I consider it a great card to have insured his first exchange." 
 In connection with this circumstance he related another inci- 
 dent to the Rev. Leighton Parks many years after, in order 
 to show that he had experienced the mortification arising 
 from the lack of pulpit fame. He had already become known 
 to the Church of the Holy Trinity, but his reputation ap- 
 parently had not yet extended to West Philadelphia. He 
 had preached there in the Church of Our Saviour on the 
 morning of the Sunday mentioned, and was about to close 
 
2^6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 the service from the chancel when he noticed a member of the 
 congregation anxiously approaching through the main aisle 
 with some message for him. And the message was this: 
 Was he to preach again at the evening service? When the 
 messenger was told that the exchange was only for the morn- 
 ing, he replied, "Will you please give notice that Mr. Wise 
 himself will preach in the evening?" 
 
 But the final verdict on his preaching was yet to be de- 
 livered. Since he arrived in Philadelj)hia, Dr. Vinton had 
 been absent most of the time, on his summer vacation and in 
 attendance on the General Convention. Although Mr. Brooks 
 had preached several times in the Church of the Holy Trinity, 
 Dr. Vinton had not yet heard him. But now he was again 
 at home, and Mr. Brooks writes, December 30, 1859, to his 
 father : " Christmas evening. Dr. Vinton preached at Advent 
 an old St. Paul's sermon, 'My yoke is easy, and my burden 
 is light.' He seemed much pleased with the look of things 
 among us. In the afternoon I preached for him, with him 
 sitting in the chancel, looking up to me as he used to look at 
 Perry. ^ It is the first time I have ever performed in his 
 presence." It was not long after this that Dr. Vinton, meet- 
 ing the Rev. George Augustus Strong, asked him what they 
 thought of Brooks in the Virginia seminary. Mr. Strong 
 replied that they had a very high opinion of him there. 
 "Well," said Dr. Vinton, "I should think so. He preaches 
 better sermons than I did at his age, or have ever preached 
 since." There was no better judge of preaching than Dr. 
 Vinton, nor was it easy for him to say such things. He 
 also added, "He is an orator." It was Dr. Vinton's opin- 
 ion, expressed on more than one occasion, that a great 
 part of the power of Phillips Brooks's oratory lay in his 
 voice. 
 
 In the first year of Mr. Brooks's ministry there occurred 
 an event, important in itself, but fraught with special signi- 
 ficance for him and for his work. In the pocket diary which 
 he kept, he has written these words without comment, enclos- 
 
 1 William Stevens Perry, late Bishop of Iowa, at that time assistant minister 
 at St. Paul's, Boston. 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 337 
 
 ing them, however, in a border of black lines, as if a sign of 
 mourning: "Friday, December 2, 1859, 10.15 A. M. John 
 Brown hung at Charlestown, Va." The story need not be 
 told here, only the fact may be mentioned that Pliillijjs 
 Brooks was strangely moved. He talked on the subject with 
 his friend, Mr. Wise, the son of Governor Wise of Virginia, 
 under whose administration the execution took j^lace, and 
 while they differed sharply in their judgments, their friend- 
 ship was not disturbed. To his brother he writes : — • 
 
 Vine Street, Saturday evening, December 3, 1859. 
 
 Deak William, — . . . Well, poor old Brown's gone. What 
 a death for such a man. It makes me mad to hear the way some 
 of our Northern conservatives talk about him. I believe Governor 
 Wise himself does him more justice than they do. 
 
 As to his being crazy, of course excessive lack of prudence, 
 judgment, and foresight, which every one admits that he showed, 
 is craziness in its very definition, and so every rash man is crazy; 
 but his heroic devotion to what he thought was right is surely 
 not to be confounded with the craziness that he showed in judging 
 wliether it was really right and best. What do people say about 
 it all in Boston ? 
 
 December 9, 1859. 
 
 Wise took tea with me last night, and for the first time we 
 had a long talk about Harper's Ferry troubles, John Brown, etc. 
 Of course we didn't coincide, but it gave us both a chance to 
 define our positions, and I was pleased to find him not quite so 
 radical as I had thought. He is drawing great crowds here, and 
 preaching splendid sermons. 
 
 The response to these remarks came from his father, who, 
 while he had no sympathy with slavery, was yet averse to any 
 agitation of the subject. He had evidently taken alarm at 
 the tone of his son's comment; perhaps he had misgivings 
 about the Phillips blood. He had already seen enough of 
 his son to know that he was more pronounced than himself 
 in his opposition to slavery, and in one of his letters had 
 described to him a recent meeting in Faneuil Hall, where 
 "your friends the anti-slavers mustered in force, and your 
 kinsman Wendell Phillips ^ expressed a wish that the 
 
 ' See ante, p. fi. Wendell Phillips and Phillips Brooks were alike lineal 
 descendants of Samuel Phillips of Salem. 
 
338 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 prayer ' God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ' 
 should be changed to read, ' God damn the Commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts.' " Now he wrote to his son more emphat- 
 ically : • — • 
 
 I see you allude to the Harper's Ferry affair. All well enough 
 to have your private opinions on all such matters, but I must beg 
 of you don't carry such things as politics into your pulpit. Leave 
 all such at 701. . . . Let others trumpet the exploits and vir- 
 tues of "old Brown." 
 
 These first years of his ministry in Philadelphia were full 
 to overflowing in rich interests, in deep, inward satisfaction, 
 and in a certain exultant joy. He found his work to be 
 sometliing greater, more delightful and beautiful even, than 
 he had anticipated. He had been received by his congrega- 
 tion with open hearts and hands ; they could not seem to do 
 enough to show their gratitude. Mr. Remsen in particular 
 became his close friend, often calling on him, and having him 
 at his house, and, what was especially useful, sending him 
 the new books as they appeared, for he was connected witli 
 the publishing house of Lippincott & Company. " Of course 
 my devoted people," writes Mr. Brooks, "have done their 
 duty in the way of Christmas presents, and I am crowded 
 up with the usual amount of books, pencil-cases, watch-cases, 
 handkerchiefs, and useless little trifles of every description. 
 I think I have enough handkerchiefs on hand to last me well 
 through an average lifetime." 
 
 His small pocket diary, faithfully kept, presents an attrac- 
 tive picture of the young minister in his first parish. His 
 mornings he gave to reading and to study and to the writing 
 of sermons; his afternoons to visiting his parishioners and 
 making calls uf)on the sick, and rarely was at home to tea. 
 His conscientiousness in the performance of every duty is 
 aj^parent. But there were already many demands on his 
 time. The clergy of the city made him welcome, calling 
 upon him as clerical etiquette required, and thus increasing 
 his social duties. But he was constituted to enjoy society, 
 and to meet people was his chief recreation. He had many 
 
JET. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 339 
 
 friends in the city and vicinity, some of them his fellow 
 students in the seminary, among whom were Mr. Strong, 
 who was at Wilmington, Mr. Paddock, and Mr. Yocum at 
 Germantown. With Mr. Wise his intimacy increased desj)ite 
 the divergence in their political opinions. They called upon 
 each other often, and kept late hours. He often remarks in 
 his diary after Mr. Wise had been spending an evening with 
 him, " Walked part of the way home with Wise." Mr. Strong 
 came from Wihnington frequently to see him, and he made 
 visits there in return. He was very dependent on his friends, 
 and at times when he felt his isolation and loneliness, he 
 earnestly besought their iDresence. This hungering for the 
 communion of friendship breaks out in every letter to Mr. 
 Strong, with whom he kept up a correspondence. One of 
 these letters is a specimen of many. When he found he was 
 to spend Christmas alone he writes to him : — 
 
 December 23, 1859. 
 . . . You shall come just when you please, and do just what 
 you please, and be lord of your own Christmas, with no one to 
 bully you or make you preach. You shall wear a cravat of any 
 color you please, and have your own pick of any seat in any syn- 
 agogue in town. You shall attend any worship you prefer, from 
 the Roman Catholic Cathedral down to the " Progressive Friends, " 
 from the Orthodoxy of the Advent to the wildest heterodoxy of 
 High Churchmanship and Unitarianism. You shall smoke ma- 
 nillas in the vestry, and think of what you please in sermon time. 
 Only come, and let us have a Christmas together. 
 
 His relations with Dr. Vinton had now become very close. 
 He frequently called on him, and Dr. Vinton responded in 
 returning his calls. He dined with him often, and whenever 
 there was any social function at Dr. Vinton's house, he was 
 sure to be there. In this way he became acquainted, as he 
 writes, "with the upper ten of Philadelphia," receiving many 
 invitations which he was unable to accept. He was also mak- 
 ing new friends, among whom was Dr. Weir Mitchell, the 
 eminent physician, and destined to eminence as a man of let- 
 ters. Dr. Mitchell found him out a few weeks after he went 
 to Philadelphia, and the intmiate friendshiji then commenced 
 
340 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 was sundered only by death. There was another friend, the 
 Eev. Charles D. Cooper, many years his senior, then rector 
 of St. Philip's Church. Among all the clergy of Philadel- 
 phia, his heart went out from the first most strongly to 
 Mr. Cooper. He was much at his house, and before long it 
 became a fixed custom for him to go there every Sunday 
 evening, after his service in church was over. He often 
 spent the night, and lingered after breakfast the next morn- 
 ing. To Mr. Cooper's open house came others also. Dr. 
 Vinton and the Mitchells, Mr. Strong and later Dr. Richards, 
 who was to be called before long to be rector of the Church 
 of Our Saviour. It was the rendezvous for a set of clergy 
 of kindred minds. The warm heart and sober judgment of 
 Mr. Cooper made him a valuable friend of Phillips Brooks, 
 who in turn repaid his goodness by a singular devotion, which 
 will appear later in their correspondence. Philadelphia of 
 course was also a centre for visiting clergy; his old friends 
 stopped as they were passing through the city, and now and 
 then there were convivial evenings when Strong, Richards, 
 Potter, Paddock, and others lived over again the familiar 
 life at the seminary. 
 
 In the midst of these engagements runs the constant refer- 
 ence to the sermon he was writing. He was indefatigable in 
 this dutj% writing his two sermons every week except when he 
 found relief by an exchange with some brother clergyman. 
 He delighted in this part of his work, but it was not an easy 
 task, nor did it ever become so. He labored over his ser- 
 mons. At this time he was still sensitive to the influence of 
 the weather. A rainy day made it almost impossible for him 
 to work. On one occasion he records that he was obliged to 
 give up a sermon he was writing because of the incessant 
 pitiless rain. His constitution had not gained as yet its full 
 strength; he often complained of being "terribly tired" after 
 a Sunday's work. He found relief, however, in what was 
 then a custom, but has since fallen somewhat into desuetude, 
 making it a rule to "exchange pulpits" as often at least as 
 once a month. It was regarded as a clerical courtesy to invite 
 a newcomer to every pulpit in the city. Of this custom he 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 341 
 
 took full advantage. It had many merits: it bound the 
 churches together, it made the clergy known, but it was only 
 possible when there was homogeneousness in the manner of 
 conducting the service and when the organization of parishes 
 was a simple one. 
 
 What is called "church work" was then hardly known or 
 had not been invented. A minister was thought of not so 
 much as ministering at the church's altar, as proclaiming 
 a gospel from the pulpit. There was no complexity in the 
 organization of a parish; besides the wardens and vestry, the 
 sewing circle, and the Sunday-school, there were no guilds, 
 or societies, or committees to be superintended. There was 
 of course the standing difficulty with the choir, and to this 
 the Church of the Advent was no exception. At times, Mr. 
 Brooks grew weary with the incessant demands of the endless 
 routine. Thus he writes to a friend: "The everlasting 
 whirligig of visiting and sermon-writing keeps up its revolu- 
 tions; no weddings, not even a baptism to break the mono- 
 tony. But it's a pleasant life." He speaks of his first 
 experience with a sewing circle : — 
 
 You would have been amused to see me presiding at the first 
 meeting of my sewing circle the other day, to choose officers, etc. 
 The way women won't be bound by parliamentary rules is very 
 funny. 
 
 The ritual of the church was also simple in those days, nor 
 had the movement known as ritualism yet begun. The min- 
 ister faced the congregation in the reading of the service, the 
 boy choir was almost unknown, and in the pulpit it was the 
 prevailing custom to wear the black Geneva gown. It created 
 a commotion when soon after the new rector came the 
 "black gowns " were stolen from the vestry. It did not then 
 occur to them that the suri^lice might be used as a substitute, 
 and immediately they were replaced. The Morning and the 
 Evening Prayer constituted the Sunday service, with the 
 administration of the Lord's Supper on the first Sunday of 
 the month. But the great attraction was the sermon, — an 
 ideal indeed capable of being abused, but in its higher form 
 the presentation of the gospel of a great deliverance. 
 
342 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 Phillips Brooks, both as a boy and as a man, attached im- 
 portance to the commemoration of days that constituted land- 
 marks, birthdays, Thanksgiving Days, any day that stood for 
 the deeper experiences of life. It was with a sense of sadness 
 that he now realized that the time-honored New England 
 Thanksgiving Day, in all its joy and glory, was for him a 
 thing of the past. He would no more go home as a boy to 
 join the family at the dinner table, where the sense of family 
 feeling found its highest expression and sanction. In this 
 respect he resembled his mother. It was hard for her to be 
 reconciled to the fact that there was to be henceforth a gap 
 at the table. She pleaded with him to come, but the demands 
 of his parish made it impossible. He had his Thanksgiving 
 sermon to preach, his congregation wanted it, and he ac- 
 cepted the inevitable. He writes to his brother an account 
 of the day in Philadelphia : — 
 
 Friday evening, November 25, 1859. 
 
 Dbae William, — Well, Thanksgiving's over. We had a 
 turkey that showed they understood their guest, and I tried to do 
 the conscientious justice that the day demanded. I think I suc- 
 ceeded. For the rest, the day passed off very pleasantly. We 
 had a very good church full in the morning, and in consideration 
 of their eagerness I gave them a short sermon. No politics. I 
 suppose our Boston pulpits echoed on that day. Of course you all 
 had the merriest of times at home. It 's four years back, but I 
 can remember just how you used to do Thanksgiving Days at 
 home. People have n't learned the true Puritan style here yet, 
 but it is human instinct, and I think we succeeded pretty well 
 yesterday. 
 
 In this connection may be inserted a description of a fam- 
 ily Thanksgiving dinner, which he wrote while at the Virginia 
 seminary to his brother George. It gives the picture of the 
 boys at home in a vivid way. But it is also the picture of a 
 thousand New England homes. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day, 1857- 
 Deae Gkobge, — ■ As nearly as I can calculate you are at this 
 moment (I have made all due allowance for difference of longi- 
 tude) sitting down to tlie turkey and plum pudding. Allow me 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 343 
 
 to take my slice with you, making my own welcome, and finding 
 a seat where I can. What a stunner of a fowl ! See John mea- 
 suring it solemnly with his eye and trying to make out whether 
 he or it is the biggest. We won't quarrel about drumsticks. 
 You shall have one, and I the other. What a pity the beast 
 wasn't a quadruped! To think of having dined only yesterday 
 on cold mutton with rice for desert, and now — my eye ! do just 
 look at that cranberry sauce. How quiet Pistols is! No matter; 
 he is busy, and fast getting beyond the speaking point. Hullo, 
 my plate 's clear; another piece of turkey, if you please. Don't 
 look frightened. Thanksgiving only comes once a year. Gra- 
 cious ! Do look at Fred. Now do be a little moderate, my dear. 
 Don't you see how hard Arthur is trying to keep up with you? 
 The poor boy will kill himself. Here comes the pudding. Father 
 of course proposes to have it saved till to-morrow. He has done 
 it every Thanksgiving Day, I can remember, for the last twenty- 
 five years. But you don't! We finish it now if we never eat 
 again. We never have any supper, you know, on Thanksgiving- 
 Days, and we shall be all right by breakfast time. . . . Well, 
 dinner 's over, and Pistols is laid up on the sofa, and John's jacket 
 just covers the small of his back, and Fred is trying to look as if 
 he had n't eaten too much, and Father is looking for somebody to 
 go to walk with him. You had better go, and I will leave much 
 love to all and take the next train of thought for Virginia. O 
 reservoir! Your loving, busy brother, 
 
 Phill. 
 
 Many of these home letters contain allusions vchich indi- 
 cate how strong was the tie binding him to home and family. 
 He had been so strongly moored to that home in early life 
 that it had become a part of his being. As he grew into 
 manhood, he could not jjut away these things. He may not 
 have been peculiar in this respect, but the feeling was deep 
 and intense with him, and it is necessary to make it promi- 
 nent to give the man in his full proportions. All through 
 his life, so long as the home still existed, his heart leaped up 
 at the thought of it. The tie of blood relationship had in it 
 something for which no friendship was ever a substitute. 
 Thus he writes, and his words may be taken as a specimen 
 of many of his letters: "I feel kind of homesick this even- 
 ing, sick of seeing nothing but these stranger faces ; and it 
 would be a treat to look in at the red-clothed back parlor 
 
344 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 table for an hour or two." Still he was happy in his work. 
 In this same letter, February 9, 1859, he says: "Things are 
 going much as usual down at Advent, quietly and pleasantly. 
 The church is well filled and most of our desirable pews are 
 rented. I don't think I could have happened upon a more 
 satisfactory little place if I had had my pick out of all the 
 country. I have been here seven months to-morrow." 
 
 But a small cloud was now rising which portended change 
 and evil for the Church of the Advent. The congregation 
 was contented with its rector, and the gentlemen who had 
 visited Sharon Mission, near the seminary, to hear him had 
 been justified in their report that he was the man for the place. 
 Never in the history of the church had the attendance been 
 so large. All would have been well but for the appearance 
 one Sunday of two mysterious strangers who came to listen 
 to the preacher. He had been only seven months in the 
 parish, and yet his reputation had spread beyond its bounds. 
 These two strangers were gentlemen from Cincinnati, who 
 came prepared to give him a call from St. John's Church, 
 which they represented, empowered to act after hearing him. 
 Already had he declined one call from St. Stephen's Church, 
 in Ilarrisburg, without hesitation, feeling sure that he was 
 rightly placed. But this call from St. John's Church, Cin- 
 cinnati, made vacant by the departure of Rev. Dr. Nicholson 
 to St. Paul's in Boston, became known to his congregation 
 and was reported in the daily papers of Philadelphia. It 
 caused disturbance in his parish and in the city. He was 
 obliged to consider it, for the call was a pressing one, and a 
 petition came from the vacant parish with a large number of 
 signatures, and with a statement that every man, woman, and 
 child would sign it if necessary. The Rev. Dr. Dyer of New 
 York, who was the adviser of the Evangelical clergy under 
 such circumstances, recommended strongly his acceptance. 
 It meant of course a large increase in his salary, and he had 
 already found himself somewhat hampered by the meagreness 
 of his income. But he was not inclined to move from his 
 position. With this conviction the family at home also coin- 
 cided, whom he had at once consulted. So the call was 
 
ALT. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 345 
 
 declined, but it had begotten as a result uneasiness and uncer- 
 tainty about the future at the Church of the Advent. They 
 met the emergency as best they could, oiiEering their rector 
 such additional attractions as were in their power. Most of 
 the congregation were persons of limited means, but they did 
 what they could. The women at once employed themselves 
 in carrying out long-needed reforms. At their expense the 
 vestry of the church was repainted, recarpeted, and new furni- 
 ture was added. The men grappled with the long-standing 
 debt of 18000. If this were paid some $500 would be set 
 free to add to the salary. In a few months nearly $6000 
 were conditionally subscribed. 
 
 There is one other incident which must be mentioned be- 
 fore we close the year's record. The story of his call to Cin- 
 cinnati had found its way into the newspapers. From this 
 moment he had become a subject of interest to the city, and 
 henceforth his actions were never again to be free from a 
 certain publicity, — the penalty he was to pay for his great- 
 ness. At first, as he long afterwards remarked to a friend, 
 he looked eagerly when his name was in print to see what 
 was said of him, but this feeling changed, and he became 
 grateful when he found that he need not be disturbed. There 
 was at this time, connected with the daily papers in Phila- 
 delphia, a certain individual who watched closely the ways of 
 the clergy, a self-constituted censor, who feared that they 
 were moved by mercenary considerations. In particular he 
 had his eye, for what reasons it is not known, upon Phillips 
 Brooks and Dr. Vinton. His tone in chronicling the event 
 of the call to Cincinnati is somewhat severe, and although it 
 had been declined he still continued to read his lecture. The 
 deeper suspicion and distress of his mind had not been 
 allayed : — 
 
 Another Call. — The Rev. Phillips Brooks, rector of the 
 Advent (Protestant Episcopal) Church, York Avenue and Button- 
 wood Street, has received and since peremptorily declined a call 
 extended to him by the Church of St. John, Cincinnati, which is 
 said to be the largest and wealthiest church of that denomination 
 west of the Alleghany Mountains. He was receiving a salary of 
 
346 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 one thousand dollars where he is now stationed, having entered 
 upon his duties tliei'e but a few months ago, direct from the 
 seminary. The pecuniary complexion of the "call" which he 
 has just declined was an improvement upon this of fifteen hundred 
 dollars. Since his declination, however, his own congregation 
 have, without his knowledge, themselves made an advance oi five 
 Mindred dollars. . . . Ministerial calls were once regarded as 
 having a tincture of the supernatural about them, which placed 
 their propriety above the vulgar scrutiny of criticism. However 
 this may have been sustained by facts in times past, the public 
 opinion, even of the Christian community, is rapidly becoming 
 heretical on this subject. Nor is it to be wondered at, when 
 rich congregations flatter themselves that the finest of the minis- 
 terial flocks can be rendered subservient to their beck and call by 
 approaching them as if they were no more adverse to looking out 
 for lucre and Number One tlian other people. Why does not some 
 independent Boanerges treat this growing heresy with the gospel 
 thunder it demands ? Let us have the true gospel ethics on this 
 subject. 
 
 Mr. Brooks was ordained to the priesthood on Whitsun- 
 day, in the morning, at the Church of the Advent, in the 
 presence of his own congregation and of his father and 
 mother and brother George. He magnified the importance 
 of such days, and this was a great day for him. Bishop 
 Bowman preached the sermon, Dr. John A. Vaughan pre- 
 sented him, and Bishop Alonzo Potter administered the 
 sacred rite. In the evening he preached, and his mother 
 listened to him for the first time. His brother George was 
 also an attentive hearer, drawing his own conclusions. 
 George had not yet been confirmed, and this delay was the 
 heaviest burden his mother carried. A few extracts from 
 his mother's letters written during the first year of his min- 
 istry may find here a fitting place. They describe an essen- 
 tial part of his inner life, as they also reflect his mother's 
 feelings : — 
 
 Thank you, my dear child, for the joy you have given me in 
 devoting your life to the service of Christ. It was the desire of 
 my heart from your birtli, and I gave you up to Him, and I thank 
 Him for accepting my offering. My dear Philly, when I hear of 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 347 
 
 your faithful labors in the ministry, I thank God, and feel that I 
 have not wholly lived in vain. 
 
 I suppose you feel gratified that you have had those two calls, 
 Philly; but don't let it make you proud. Keep humble like 
 Jesus, . . . plead mightily for Christ. 
 
 Father is very happy in your success, and I wish you could 
 know how glad it makes your mother's heart. 
 
 April 3, I860. 
 We hear fine accounts of you as a preacher, but especially as a 
 pastor. That is the best of all. I wo aid rather you should be 
 faithful to every soul in your charge, that you may be able to ren- 
 der a good account at the last day, than to have the praise of 
 men, for that will make you proud. Beware of it, Philly; I trem- 
 ble for you. Spiritual pride would destroy all that is worthy in 
 you. 
 
 I cannot tell you how it delights me to hear pleasant things 
 about you so frequently, and to hear the best things too, that you 
 are devoted and earnest. I had rather hear you praised for holi- 
 ness than for talent, though of course that is unspeakably precious 
 when used in God's service. But, my dear Philly, let no human 
 praise make you proud, but be humble as the Master you serve, 
 and never forget what an honor it is to be the servant of Christ. 
 ... I heard of an excellent sermon you preached a few Sundays 
 ago on the text, Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant. 
 Preach Christ faithfully. 
 
 You seem to be longing for the time to come ; but, my dear 
 child, you cannot long to come home more than we all long to 
 have you, and most of all your mother. I am beginning to count 
 the days, almost the hours. You shall have your own little room 
 again and find yourself at home once more. 
 
 The intellectual life which during the years in the seminary- 
 had found its record in note-books was now recorded in his 
 sermons. They became the receptacle for the deeper moods 
 of his spirit, the exultant feeling and the impassioned will. 
 There was no longer time, amid the pressure of work, to 
 note down at his leisure the results of his reading or the 
 comments on the books he read or studied. But the habit of 
 reading and of study had become a permanent one. The 
 gift he possessed of going quickly to the heart of a book was 
 now invaluable. At this time he was reading Robertson's 
 
348 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 sermons with a sympathy and eagerness which those cannot 
 understand who to-day read them for the first time, when 
 much of their thought has become diffused as an atmosphere. 
 Bushnell's writings he continued to read; but he remarks that 
 he is not entirely in agreement with him. Much as he gained 
 from both, he became no imitator, for he was formed in a 
 different mould and found ample scope in the creative activity 
 of his own powers. He laments that he had discontinued the 
 practice of writing verses ; he fears that his life may be sink- 
 ing to prose; if he had only the words to speak, he is sure 
 that they would be better than any he has yet uttered. But 
 his verdict upon the work of his first year in the ministry is 
 given in verse : — 
 
 I wrote in verse from time to time, 
 
 With artful thought or stilted pen, 
 Wlien sense was servant unto rhyme, 
 
 As angels serve presumptuous men. 
 
 I hope that truth has grown more true. 
 
 And reverence grown more sincere, 
 And duty garnered strength anew. 
 
 In these last harvests of the year. 
 
 I think that God has given me looks 
 
 A little deeper into things 
 That once were words in folded books. 
 
 But now are truths existence sings. 
 
 He followed with sympathy his brother Frederick, as he 
 entered Harvard College, communing with him more freely 
 in his letters than with others, because they stood to each 
 other almost as teacher and pupil, — a relationship which 
 bespoke naturalness and simplicity and reality. Thus was 
 he moved to write these lines on Harvard, when Frederick 
 became an undergraduate : — 
 
 I love thee : every stone is dear 
 
 With some strange dearness it has won; 
 
 God bless thee, Harvard, year by year, 
 God bless thee till thy work is done. 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 349 
 
 For thou hast work that waits to do, 
 To build our country's scholar youth; 
 
 God make thee fit, God make thee true. 
 Increase thy faith in all His truth. 
 
 Brother, my heart is all with thee ; 
 
 Go, ripen to the perfect man ; 
 Let month by month successive see 
 
 The working of God's gracious plan. 
 
 Some extracts from the note-book of this year, which con- 
 tains but few entries as compared with previous years, will 
 be seen to throw light upon his attitude, as also they indi- 
 cate that he has attained a greater maturity and firmness. 
 The undogmatic character of his mind is here apparent, the 
 capacity for fine distinctions and for the discernment of re- 
 lations not obvious. He is living beneath the surface of 
 ordinary thought, and is especially impressed with the ram- 
 ifications and mutualities of truth in all its varied aspects. 
 
 The great good of reading history or biography is to get a 
 glimpse of men and nations and ages doing their duty; the great 
 gain to be got from it is a deeper worship and reverence for duty 
 as the king and parent of all human life. 
 
 What a relief the purely intellectual is sometimes! Stripping 
 ofB pride and prejudice, and dogmatism which is the growth of 
 them, keeping the soul at rest for a little while ; just for a little 
 while letting the mind be master and pursue in purest dominion 
 its own peculiar way. It does rest the tired soul and give it time 
 for refreshment. 
 
 I count much on the feeling that we still own to whenever we 
 read a noble thought, though it were written a thousand years 
 ago, and has lain silent where we find it ever since, that as surely 
 as it is genuinely true and noble, it will yet take in the world, and 
 men shall yet hear and feel it, though it be not till years and 
 years after we are dead. 
 
 Is not all positiveness of necessity partiality ? To say, " This 
 is true, I know it, " and leave no room for the limitations and 
 qualifications that we cannot know, for all those outside influences 
 of unseen truth which we must be working on and drawing from 
 this fact that we have found, — is there not some folly here ? Is 
 
350 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 not the true wisdom something like this ? I know so far as it 
 goes this truth is sacredly and wholly true, but that very truth 
 forbids me to believe that it has not developments and ramifica- 
 tions reaching far out into the universe of associated truth with 
 which it is connected. Now I know, and I prize my knowledge 
 as the gift of God and hold it sacred; but "I know in part," I 
 wait till that which is in part shall be done away. 
 
 We are apt to forget that every life has many minute ramifica- 
 tions in addition to the few which biography can trace. (Cf . Mas- 
 son's Life of Milton, i. p. 477.) And so has not every thought 
 and every doctrine countless "minute ramifications " that we never 
 trace ? We are, indeed, very little masters of the thoughts we 
 think, hardly more than the biographer is master of the life he 
 writes. And yet all these "ramifications " are real full-blooded 
 relationships, connecting this thought of ours with other thoughts 
 and other families of thoughts, binding this doctrine of ours to 
 unguessed doctrines, and it may be unguessed heresies ; and by 
 and by this relationship begins to work, and we find ourselves in- 
 volved in all the family tangle of the households into which our 
 hearts have wedded. 
 
 "In such a scene as this (the gigantic and luxuriant nature 
 of Church's Heart of the Andes) man, with his little red-roofed 
 speck of distant hut and even at his wayside worship before the 
 crucifix, dwindles into puny insignificance." So says an English 
 paper. But no. Hut and crucifix are expressions of truth nobler 
 and purer than the sensuous beauty of tropical tree miracles and 
 snow-topped mountains. The truth of home and the truth of 
 worship, they are gi'eater in the least expression of them than 
 Nature's grandest glory or highest tribute to her Maker's praise. 
 They are conscious, intelligent, spiritual ascriptions, doing intel- 
 ligent and conscious duty ; and so material beauty can but borrow 
 soul from such as they, and so must always be insignificant with- 
 out them. 
 
 The world ruled and managed so often by its little and not its 
 greater men. Is it not the same principle that reappears when 
 a weaker and not a stronger motive settles our conduct, when a 
 slighter and not a more weight}' argument, or when a whim and 
 not an argument at all, decides our belief ? 
 
 How fortunate that ideas are not confined in their development 
 to the developing capacity of the mind that first conceives them. 
 That need furnish only the conception, hard, arid, it may be, in 
 the first discerner's mind, capable only of hardness and aridity. 
 
^T. 23-24] THE EARLY MINISTRY 351 
 
 But another mind gifted with the power of development, which 
 next to creation is the greatest power God gives to man, catches 
 up the new conception, takes it home, and gives it its own 
 warmth, and so it buds and blossoms into forms of beauty that 
 we never dreamt of, and tliat the man who first conceived it 
 dreamt of still less. Truly God's ways of making men do their 
 own and others' work are thousandfold. 
 
 It seems sad and strange to see how now and then in history, 
 now and then even at the present day, must come protests of the 
 soul against the Christian church. It is not strange if we look 
 at it rightly. I do not think that it is even sad. It is the best 
 and purest part of human nature crying out against the false hu- 
 manities that have fastened themselves upon a system whose di- 
 vinity they cannot cloak, but whose efficacy they deform. I do 
 not think that it is sad, for in it I see a new wonder of the care 
 of God, that has arrayed against the possible falsifications of His 
 truth, the inherent truth and earnestness of moral life ; because I 
 see in it new room to think that the church thus cared for, whose 
 purification has thus been thought worthy of the wisdom of Omni- 
 potence, has surely high and holy work to do on earth, and till 
 that work be done I shall live to do it. I look on it as I look 
 on the divinity of government, made more certain by the earnest 
 remonstrances against governmental baseness, which are God's 
 means to fasten governmental purity upon the earth. God's 
 evident care proves to me that both shall be perpetual and ulti- 
 mately pure. 
 
 Beginning to allow ourselves insincere pretensions of belief is 
 like beginning to take opium ; it is a pleasant and a soothing 
 thing at first ; it even girds us with gorgeous visions and gives 
 the soul a little elysium for a while. But you have to increase 
 your dose every day, you have to stifle your nature more continu- 
 ally under its control ; and after all, there comes at last that ter- 
 rible rebellion of your nature, your soul protesting against the 
 violence you do it, and a whole hell within of groanings that you 
 do not dare to gratify, desolations that you cannot comfort, and 
 a ruined moral nature wreaking its awful vengeance on you, the 
 moral agent who has ruined it. 
 
 It is a sad sign for a man when in his religion he has con- 
 sciously to repeat himself, to go back after old impressions and 
 vamp them up for new ones. The freshness of spiritual expe- 
 rience, not necessarily every impression unanticipated and wholly 
 
352 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1859-60 
 
 new, but at least each one newly suggested, not laboriously re- 
 called. 
 
 The power of drawing comfort and strength from thoughts 
 seems to be not primarily at work, but developed by natural 
 growth. The consciousness of such a power comes later with 
 fuller and harder and yet no very extraordinary mental culture. 
 But the ability to regulate and use that power marks the consum- 
 mate self-mastership that is brought only with a perfectly ripened 
 moral and mental nature. 
 
 "As a Christian, humiliation before God was a duty the meaning 
 of which he knew full well; but as a man moving among other 
 men, he possessed in that moral seriousness and stoic scorn of 
 temptation which characterized him a spring of ever present 
 pride, dignifying his whole bearing among his fellows and at 
 times arousing him to a kingly intolerance." (Said of Milton, Ma^s- 
 son, i. 237.) The two perfectly compatible, and their compat- 
 ibility solving many a problem which I have often felt, and which 
 seems to be at the bottom of much uncharitableness on both sides 
 at the present time. 
 
 Oh, wlien the heart thoroughly and heartily blesses another out 
 into a noble work, how its blessing bounds back upon itself ! God 
 help my brotlier ' s energy ! and I am more energetic myself for 
 good. God help his courage! and straightway I have won a por- 
 tion in his hope. God deepen and refine his holiness and truth! 
 and I find a blessing from God making me more true and holy in 
 my own poor heart. 
 
 He was reading at this time Quinet's "Histoire de mes 
 Idees," and quotes this passage as expressing his own expe- 
 rience : — 
 
 Ce que j'ai aim^ je I'ai trouv^ chacque jour plus aimable. 
 Chacque jour la justice m'a paru plus sainte, la liberty plus belle, 
 la parole plus sacr^e, I'art plus r^el, la reality plus artiste, la 
 po^sie plus vraie, la verity plus po^tique, la nature plus divine, 
 le divin plug natural. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 1860-1861 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. THE CALL TO THE 
 CHURCH OF THE HOLT TRINITY IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 During the month of August Mr. Brooks was in Boston 
 for his holiday, enjoying every moment of his leisure with his 
 own peculiar intensity. It was the rest, however, of activity, 
 for he could not be inactive. He preached at St. James', 
 Eoxbury, and at St. Mary's, Dorchester, creating the same 
 strange impression of his power that had been felt at once in 
 Philadelphia. Much of the time was spent in North Ando- 
 ver at the old Phillips homestead. Frederick was now a 
 Sophomore at Harvard, Arthur was in the Latin School, 
 carrying off the prizes which his older brother did not win, 
 and John, the youngest, was a boy of eleven. Phillips occu- 
 pied his old room in the house on Chauncy Street, which his 
 mother kept as he had left it when he first went from home, 
 allowing nothing to be changed. To this home he returned 
 with the consciousness of power and success, and the con- 
 viction of greater results to be achieved. A photograph of 
 the whole family was taken at this time, before death had 
 made any breach in its ranks, the father and the mother in 
 the centre with the boys grouped around them. Phillips was 
 among them in an idle, careless pose, his eyes cast down with 
 an amused expression, his face turned to one side, giving 
 the beauty and symmetry of his head. The record of these 
 days at home shows him at his familiar haunts whenever he 
 had the opportunity, — the Athenaeum and the Public Library. 
 He also wrote his sermon to be preached on the first Sunday 
 after the vacation should be over. This was one of his char- 
 acteristics to be ready for duty, and to make his preparation 
 
354 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 some time in advance. It gave the false impression, how- 
 ever, that he did not require to work as others, for when they 
 were in the toils of anxiety about their work he was free, and 
 seemed to have nothing to do. 
 
 When he returned to Philadelphia on the first Sunday in 
 September, he found the same large congregations awaiting 
 him, but he remarked that they were mostly strangers. He 
 returned to take up his work with new vigor and enthusiasm. 
 The year that now followed was prolific in sermons, each 
 week seeing the completion of two ; he was determined, if he 
 could help it, not to repreach an old sermon. In addition to 
 new sermons on Sunday, he gave a weekly lecture in the 
 church on Wednesday evenings, and on Saturday evening he 
 met a large Bible class, composed of members of his congre- 
 gation. To his Sunday-school he gave a large part of his 
 time and interest, speaking of the pleasure it was to him to 
 look upon their young fresh faces. He made special pre- 
 paration for their anniversaries, and excelled in talking to 
 children. He pressed his friend Mr. Strong into their ser- 
 vice, by getting him to write special hymns for their use. 
 The church was full of life and interest, shown by the heroic 
 efforts to raise the debt which harassed and crippled it. 
 
 He was at last making some systematic effort in the line of 
 physical exercise. In college, as we have seen, he took none, 
 nor during his years at the seminary. Both his father and 
 mother urged its importance. His frequent illnesses at 
 Alexandria may point to some physical weakness, at least he 
 had not yet attained that physical strength and endurance 
 which marked him in later years, when he did not know 
 what illness was, or what it was to be tired. But in this 
 second year in the ministry, as in the first, he frequently com- 
 plains of being "fearfully tired." The Sunday work, the 
 writing of the sermons, even the Bible class exhausted his 
 strength. In the midst, too, of all his friends he alludes to 
 his loneliness and to a sense of depression. When he got 
 back to Philadelphia he speaks of being troubled with " blue 
 spots " as he thinks of home. In many of the letters he 
 writes he opens with apologies for delay. These things are 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR :is^ 
 
 mentioned because they disappeared so entirely from his later 
 years, when he was in the fulness of his power, that it seems 
 surprising they should ever have been. Beneath the changes 
 there was a great moral effort. He had resolved upon regu- 
 lating his life in little things and in minor details upon some 
 ideal of conduct, — the provision of things beautiful in the 
 eyes of all men. 
 
 At this time the moral resolve began to be apparent. 
 Despite the fact of producing two sermons a week, his hand- 
 writing does not deteriorate, but improves. It had always 
 been good, though often showing the signs of haste and at 
 times illegible. Now it was becoming uniform and graceful, 
 even artistic. He reads his brother Frederick a vigorous 
 lecture on the defects of his handwriting : " My dear brother, 
 what 's the use of letting your handwriting go to wrack and 
 ruin in this desperate way? I get a good many shameful 
 looking letters, but I think I 've hardly had one more per- 
 fectly outrageous in its jjenmanship than this of yours. Ex- 
 cuse my saying so, but it 's the truth." 
 
 When he reached the age of twenty-five on the 13th of 
 December, 1860, he records his weight as one hundred and 
 ninety-five pounds. Biit with his great height, he still gave 
 the impression of being slender in his figure. As his form 
 began to fill out with the additional weight, there came a 
 new and unexpected ease and grace of manner, which seemed 
 in keeping with the inward spirit. There was now apparent 
 an exquisite physical symmetry and a manly beauty, which 
 called for comment and description as much as did his power 
 in the pulpit. There was here the physical basis of oratory, 
 but there was something more, — the outer man became the 
 reflection of the inward grace and endowment. 
 
 He had hardly been a year in the ministry when already 
 he was known to more than local fame, as evidenced in the 
 demand for his services. While still in deacon's orders he 
 had been called to churches in Cleveland, in Harrisburg, Pa., 
 and in Cincinnati. Hardly had he begun his second year in 
 the Advent when other loud and pressing calls were received, 
 which it was at least necessary he should consider. There 
 
356 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 was one from Providence, K. I. Then came Governor Gibbs 
 of the same State, bearing a call from Trinity Church, New- 
 port, followed by a committee who urgently advocated his 
 acceptance. Still a third call came from San Francisco, with 
 the tempting salary of five or six thousand dollars, inwardly 
 appealing to him, because then, as for many years after, he 
 felt a strong desire to throw in his lot with the upbuilding of 
 a new country. Thus from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, 
 from Newport to San Francisco, had his fame extended. 
 There is something to be marvelled at here in the rapidity 
 with which the knowledge of him travelled. It was not done 
 by advertising as in the newspapers, for there is a limit to 
 what advertisement of a formal kind can do, and his fame 
 had spread faster and further than could be accounted for by 
 such methods. He had in some mysterious way touched the 
 very springs and sources of human life. When the ear heard 
 him, then it blessed him. People were talking of him, and 
 spoke of him to one another, in ways that impressed the ima- 
 gination of those who had not seen or heard. The impression 
 thus made upon the most sensitive of all modes of human com- 
 munication moved more quickly and surely to its end than 
 postal facilities, or the power of steam and electricity. One 
 of the things which the historian Kanke noted about the post- 
 ing of Luther's theses on the eve of the Reformation was the 
 almost inconceivable swiftness with which the knowledge of 
 the fact spread throughout all Germany. So it is when any- 
 thing happens of vital moment which it concerns humanity to 
 know, or when some new prophet arises and God is again vis- 
 iting his people. But the message was not new, it was the 
 old burden, the Eternal Gospel in its moving, living appeal. 
 These invitations to other more attractive and possibly 
 more extended spheres of influence, Mr. Brooks had declined 
 under the feeling that, for the present, his duty called him 
 to remain where he was. But soon there came a call louder 
 and more peremptory, to which he long refused to listen, and 
 then at last accepted. Already in the fall of 1860 there 
 were rumors that Dr. Vinton was to leave Philadelphia. At 
 first they took the form that he was to return again to 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 357 
 
 Boston. So insistent was the rumor that it became neces- 
 sary to deny it publicly before his congregation. But there 
 was something in the rumor; he was not contented with his 
 position; domestic reasons made a change necessary, and 
 before long it was known that he had decided to resign the 
 Church of the Holy Trinity to accept a call to St. Mark's 
 Church in New York. Again he appears as a factor in the 
 career of Phillips Brooks, when he recommended him as his 
 successor to the parish he was leaving. Whether he had 
 recommended him or not, Mr. Brooks would probably have 
 been called to the vacant parish. He was already well known 
 to its people. If Dr. Vinton had been intentionally prepar- 
 ing the way for him to the charge of the church when he 
 should leave it, he could not have labored more directly to 
 that end than by the frequent invitations he gave him to 
 preach in his own pulpit, and in other ways to associate him 
 with the parish. Not only had he preached there frequently, 
 but the congregation of Holy Trinity formed a large part of 
 his audience at the Church of the Advent. It had become 
 the fashion in Philadelphia for people to wend their way to 
 the neat little church on the corner of York Avenue and But- 
 tonwood Street. " Crowds from all parts of the city flocked 
 to hear his sermons, and it was not an unwonted sight on a 
 Sunday evening to see the streets in the neighborhood of the 
 church filled with carriages." All through the year 18G1 
 the question was pending whether Phillips Brooks would 
 leave the Church of the Advent for the large Church of the 
 Holy Trinity. In April, 1861, Dr. Vinton preached his 
 farewell, and Mr. Brooks was immediately invited by a 
 unanimous vote to take the vacant place. 
 
 It was in the spring of this year, 1861, that the civil war 
 began. Events had been rapidly consolidating toward this 
 calamity from the time of Lincoln's election. Mr. Brooks 
 had recorded in his diary for November 6, 1860, this sen- 
 tence, with a line drawn about it isolating it from other sen- 
 tences to make it appear as prominent on the page as it 
 loomed up significant to his mind, — "Abraham Lincoln 
 chosen President of the United States." For the next four 
 
358 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 years his letters, his sermons, his public addresses, show how 
 the awful tragedy and its issues entered and quickened his 
 personality. His letters became a chronicle of the war. 
 They contain notliiug new ; he had no special source of infor- 
 mation. There are thousands of such letters, but these have 
 value as coming from him. So far as they are used in this 
 narrative, it will be, not to supjDlement histories of the war, 
 nor to revive its painful memories, but as part of the story of 
 a life, sinking its individuality in the national purj^ose, till 
 the soul of the nation seemed to pass into his own. He 
 emerged from this experience with a deeper devotion to the 
 cause of humanity. He received its teaching as a message 
 to himself, fusing all his powers into one intense and con- 
 secrated endeavor. 
 
 In one sense the war gave him his opportunity, — an ade- 
 quate opportunity for revealing the greatness which was in 
 him. He was roused by it to the highest pitch of enthu- 
 siasm; he became its representative and mouthpiece to the 
 city of Philadelphia, as did no other of its citizens, till finally 
 he spoke to the country at large in a way to be compared for 
 its eifectiveness with the speech of Lincoln at the battlefield 
 of Gettysburg. 
 
 These letters which follow cover the first year of the war, 
 and also the time when he was considering the transition 
 from the Church of the Advent to the Church of the Holy 
 Trinity. From some points of view they tell but little; they 
 give only what he was willing to give. The inward experi- 
 ences which lay behind are reserved for other occasions. 
 They are characteristic letters; a certain boyish tone runs 
 through them ; they indicate a spirit full of happiness, for 
 whom a future with richer results is waiting. The glory and 
 joy of life, the pleasure simply of being alive — this consti- 
 tutes their charm; amid all their reticence this was some- 
 thing he could not conceal. 
 
 Philadelphia, September 17, 1860. 
 Dear Father, — I was very glad to get yours on Saturday. 
 How good the little photograph is ! There it is upon my mantel- 
 piece now. There has been an immense putting of the Brookses 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 359 
 
 on to paper within the last month. My "group " is much admired, 
 and sets off the room finely. 
 
 Things are looking well down at the church. Our congrega- 
 tions are larger, and what vacant pews are still left are fast 
 renting. The vestry are ahout instituting a movement by which 
 they hope to be able to secure the payment of the church debt 
 within two or three years. If they can do it, it will add $500 to 
 our regular income. . . . 
 
 I have n't quite got over my vacation yet, but have blue spots 
 every now and then, wishing I was safe at home in the back 
 parlor among the boys and huckleberries. I can only keep saying 
 "one of these days " and keep up my spirits. 
 
 I am counting on Fred's visit in the winter, and mean not to 
 be disappointed about it. It will do his health good. I have no 
 doubt he can find enough to see here to employ him for a couple 
 of weeks. Don't think of not letting him come. He isn't much 
 at teasing himself (witness the couch), so I must do it for him. 
 Love to all abundantly. 
 
 September 27, 1860. 
 
 Deae George, — Your politico-fraternal letter has arrived. I 
 am glad to see your enthusiasm keep up so well, and that every- 
 thing promises so well to warrant it. You may be sure that if 
 Colonel Curtin's election rests on my vote he will be our next gov- 
 ernor, and then, of course, Honest Abe is our next President. I am 
 regularly assessed and my name on the voting list. . . . Every- 
 body is talking politics, and it is the exception when there isn't 
 at least one political procession within hearing. There go the 
 caps and capes and torches, up Franklin Street, through the rain. 
 
 The wigwam up at Sixth and Brown is open every evening, and 
 you can't get into a street car without being reminded that it 's 
 within a few weeks of Old Abe's election. No danger of a man's 
 forgetting to vote in such times as these. Almost all Advent go 
 with the i-ector. I don't know but one or two Democrats among 
 them, and hardly a Bell man. 
 
 But enough of politics till after election. Then we '11 send a 
 crow back and forth, and I 'd be glad to have you stop a week 
 with me as you come on to inauguration. 
 
 I am safe at work again ; lost seven pounds already since my 
 return. Are you at the retorts still? 
 
 Phtladelphia, Saturday evening-, November 4, 1860. 
 Deae Father, — Many thanks for your kind letter of a day 
 or two ago. I had been thinking of writing to you all the week. 
 
36o PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 but have not been very well; not sick, you know, but out of sorts 
 and not able for any work, headachy and so forth. I am going 
 to break my rule and preach an old sermon for the first time to- 
 morrow. It has been wretched weather, and now it 's pouring 
 horribly. I enjoyed the little glimpse I had of uncle John last 
 Sunday, all the more for its being so unexpected. ... I am 
 very sorry that the prospect of getting home at Thanksgiving 
 seems so slight. Perhaps I may accomplish it some time this 
 winter. At any rate I depend on Fred's visit as soon as his 
 vacation opens. 
 
 To-day I had a visit from Governor Gibbs of Newport, R. I., 
 who came on to offer me Trinity Church in that place (the one 
 Mr. Mercer had). I have not given a positive answer, but presume 
 the look of things will forbid my entertaining any call. What do 
 you think of it ? They offer $2000 and a house. Not much of 
 a congregation in winter and a full church in summer. Dr. Vin- 
 ton advises me not to go. I don't think much of it. I am kind 
 of pledged, though not in so many words, to see the Advent out 
 of debt before leaving. They have almost $6000 of the $8000 
 subscribed, and most of it is with a sort of understanding that 
 things are to remain as they are for the present. 
 
 I enclose what pretends to be a sketch of a sermon of mine, 
 which appeared in the " Press " this morning. I think there is no 
 vanity in saying that the reporter has made a wretched jumble of 
 it. It was n't much of a sermon, but it was better than that. 
 Still, you may like to see his account. 
 
 Friday evening, December 7, 1860. 
 Dear William, — There will be no time to-morrow, so you 
 shall make sure of it to-night. Right into winter again and 
 everything as disagreeable and bleak as it can be. Everybody 
 blue, and prospects generally discouraging. What a time you had 
 in Boston, Monday ! I see Sanborn was in the thick of it. I 
 don't believe in John Brown, but I don't believe either in that 
 way of choking down free speech. It looks too much like the 
 way they have of doing things down in South Carolina. What 
 do people up there say about the message? Poor old J. B. [Pre- 
 sident James Buchanan.] He 's on his last three months luckily. 
 
 December 21, 1860. 
 
 Dear William, — . . . You '11 get this in plenty of time to 
 
 wish you all a Merry Christmas. I would give a good deal to 
 
 have a share in the family turkey, but it is no use. I am going 
 
 to eat mine at Dr. Vinton's. I wonder if it 's really a whole 
 
JET. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 361 
 
 year since last Christmas. How they do go! Since the last 
 time I wrote I have had another birthday. You know I am a 
 quarter of a century old. It went off quietly, and I felt inclined 
 to say very little about it. The Newport matter has been up 
 again. Last Sunday there was a committee on here, and they 
 came to see me on Monday. Mr. Abbot Lawrence and Dr. 
 Ogden of New York. I sent them home again on Tuesday. 
 They represent things in a pretty bad way there. I tried to get 
 them to call Dr. Richards. 
 
 So the Union 's gone if South Carolina has the right to go; 
 but I believe we shall see brighter times yet, and don't believe 
 the country five years hence will repent of the Republican victory 
 of 1860. Do you? 
 
 Saturday, January 6, 1861. 
 
 Dear "William, — • It 's late Saturday night, and I 'm just home 
 from Bible class, pretty tired, but you shall have your letter 
 before you go to bed. Till Massachusetts secedes, and the postal 
 arrangements are stopped, you may depend upon me pretty regu- 
 larly. Yesterday, Fast Day was pretty generally kept here. 
 Almost all the churches were open. We had service at Advent, 
 but not sermon. I understand Dr. Vinton preached a great 
 sermon. . . . 
 
 Chase (of the "Advertiser ") was here the other day. He spent 
 Sunday, and returned a week ago. It was all Cambridge over 
 again while I saw him. He represents things out there [at C] 
 as being in rather a bad way. Strong is to preach to-morrow at 
 Medford in answer to a call there. I presume you will see him. 
 He preached for me last Sunday morning. To-morrow morning I 
 am going to preach a New Year's sermon from Exodus xiv. 19, and 
 in the evening repeat a sermon which I preached some time ago, 
 from Is. XXX. 15. Somebody sent me to-day a paper with some 
 verses on an old sermon of mine which I believe you read last 
 summer. They are in the " Protestant Churchman " of Decem- 
 ber 15. Have you any idea who wrote them ? 
 
 Have you read the " Glaciers of the Alps " ? I am reading it 
 and like it. "Friends in Council " is an old favorite of mine, and 
 its mate "Companions of my Solitude." . . . 
 
 Friday evemng, February 8, 1861. 
 Deae Father, — I have been wanting to write ever since my 
 return, but this week has been overcrowded with all kinds of busi- 
 ness, and I have had no time. Fred wrote a day or two ago 
 and told you, I believe, all about our journey and arrival. Since 
 
1,61 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 then the parish has been feasting him to his heart's content, 
 and I think he has been enjoying himself to his heart's content. 
 He is n't very enterprising in sight-seeing, seems to prefer the 
 armchair and fire, and I have n't had much time to go about 
 with him, but I believe he is getting along pretty well with the 
 Lions. 
 
 But what I wanted particularly to say is that we expect you to 
 come on after him next week. You need it, and so do we. 
 Make your plans to spend Sunday, the 17tli, with us, and you shall 
 get a hearty welcome and all the enjoyment I can scare up. 
 Now, father, don't disappoint me about this. Fred and I 
 have both set our hearts upon it, and wlien I saw the man at the 
 Continental the other day he looked just as if he had a room all 
 ready and waiting. Don't disappoint me, but let me know as 
 soon as possible just when I may expect you. I count upon your 
 coming. Don't let it fail. Fred isn't inuch of a traveller aiid 
 will be all the better for your escort home. 
 
 There is no news here. The parish seems to be going on 
 smoothly, at any rate the houses are still full and the people 
 apparently interested. 
 
 Monday, February 25, 1861. 
 Dear William, — What do you think of the President-elect's 
 sudden run from Pennsylvania hospitalities ? Next week at any 
 rate is close upon us, and then "we shall see what we shall see," 
 in the words of the late guest of the Continental. I saw "Abe " 
 on Thursday. He is a good-looking, substantial sort of a man, 
 and I believe he '11 do tlie work. At any rate it 's a satisfaction 
 to have an honest man there, even if he can't do much. The 
 tumult increases about Dr. Vinton's going off. With the reason 
 he gives, I think he is right in going. I don't see how he could 
 do otherwise. Father will tell you what the talk is about his 
 successor. There again "we shall see what we shall see." What 
 a splendid day it is to-day, and was yesterday ! We seem to 
 have skipped winter here, and blundered right into the midst of 
 spring. Why can't you run down and enjoy it with us? 
 
 Philadelphia, March 2, 1861. 
 Dear Father, — I have n't done thinking of your flying 
 visit and dwelling on the enjoyment of it. This week has been 
 a very busy one ; all the better no doubt for that, as it has n't 
 given me a chance to be homesick or low-spirited. It hasn't 
 given me time either to think much about Holy Trinity. That 
 whole matter is in status quo. I have not seen Dr. Vinton since 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR n,6i, 
 
 he left us at the Continental; don't know whether he has sent in 
 his resignation. Certainly they will not make any call at pre- 
 sent; so that my interest in it or anybody else's is only jjrospec- 
 tive. 
 
 I thank you for your kind interest and advice about it. I feel 
 the force of all you say, and have no hesitation in saying that if 
 that call or any other one were made to me now, I should have 
 no difficulty in deciding against it. What may turn up to change 
 my mind I can't say, but I don't anticipate anything. If I 
 were inclined to change and for a larger parish, there is none 
 certainly that offers so many inducements as the Holy Trinity. 
 But I have been thinking lately that if I made any change it 
 would be probably for a smaller and not a larger field. Advent 
 looks all bright, but there are some discouraging things about it. 
 Still, I shall probably stay there for the present. You shall hear 
 when I know more about things. 
 
 Saturday, March 9, 1861. 
 
 Deae William, — ... I am expecting Barlow from New 
 York, who was in our class in college, to come down for a few 
 days to make me a visit. He will be here early Monday morn- 
 ing. As for this afternoon, I am tired. I have begun to go to 
 gymnasium every day, and for the present always come home 
 pretty well used up. I do it as a kind of duty matter, and believe 
 that it has done me good already. Do you want to know how 
 matters do at the Holy Trinity? Dr. Vinton's resignation has 
 been accepted. Their charter requires them to nominate a new 
 rector a month before election. I was nominated last Monday 
 evening, and as mine was the only nomination and was unanimous, 
 it implies an election. Several of their vestry have called to see 
 me. As to going I am in doubt. There are some strong rea- 
 sons why I should, and others apparently why I should not. I 
 don't think the increased salary is any object with me, for I have 
 plenty, as much as I ever want to spend, where I am. 
 
 But the prospect of being settled at once, and probably for life. 
 In a field as large and pleasant and promising as any that one 
 could find is certainly to be thought of. Though a large parish 
 it is not a hard one to work, and has a noble and efficient set of 
 men about it. As to Advent, the look of things this spring 
 makes me often fear some other man could do their work better 
 than I am doing it. Here 's a whole letter on this one selfish 
 point; but it 's on my mind and you must excuse it. Let me 
 hear what you think of it. 
 
 Yours affectionately, Phill. 
 
364 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 Tuesday eyening-, March 12, 1861. 
 
 My dear Fred, — I have just got your note of Sunday even- 
 ing, and confess I hardly know what to write in reply. It is just 
 what I have hoped and prayed for, ever since that Sunday evening, 
 and yet we have so little faith that what we desire most often 
 takes us by surprise. At present, my dear Fred, I can do no 
 more than thank God for you with all my heart that He has led 
 you to a decision which I know is to be to you only the beginning 
 of a happiness and reality in life that you have never known be- 
 fore. I know you have not come to the decision lightly, and I 
 am certain that having decided it in faith and prayer the blessing 
 of God will be abundantly upon it. 
 
 I think I understood and sympathized fully with the difBculties 
 that seemed to be over your mind during the conversation that we 
 had, and I believe that if they have been removed it has been only 
 by the Spirit of God leading you directly into the truth of Christ. 
 God bless you, my dear Fred, and help you in the life you are 
 beginning. 
 
 You will feel more and more as you go on in it that the 
 Christian life is the only true life for one to live. I do hope and 
 pray for you that you may grow stronger and stronger in this 
 your first resolve, and so get deeper and deeper into the truth 
 you have begun to love. Excuse the desultoriness of what I have 
 said. It all amounts to this: I thank God for you, and bid you 
 Godspeed. Won't you write me soon again and tell me more? 
 I promise you my warmest interest and sincerest prayers. God 
 bless you and help you. 
 
 Your brother, Phill. 
 
 March 25, 1861. 
 
 Dear William, — Three weeks already since the new Presi- 
 dent came in. I hope we are going to see something done by 
 and by. What do they say in Boston about Fort Sumter ? 
 Pretty hard, is n't it ? 
 
 We have been back in snowstorms again this last week. Yes- 
 terday, though, was a magnificent day. Everybody out and 
 churches full. ... A week ago yesterday Dr. Vinton preached 
 for me an old Boston sermon, "Remember Lot's Wife." Advent 
 is still prosperous. Yesterday we started a branch Sunday-school 
 a few squares from the church. We began with sixty scholars 
 and ten teachers. I think it will work. 
 
 As to Holy Trinity I have about concluded not to go, and 
 have signified as much to Dr. Vinton. I think there are many 
 reasons why I ought to go, but I don't see how I can properly 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 365 
 
 leave Advent just now. I enclose you a paragraph that was 
 handed to me yesterday, cut from the Sunday "Dispatch," — a 
 
 "flash " paper of this city. It shows how absurdly the thing has 
 been talked about here. Have you read "Elsie Venner " ? How 
 well it closes and what a smart book it is all through. I see the 
 
 "Recreation" man is announced to write for the "Atlantic." 
 We shall have something good there. 
 
 Monday evening, April 2, 1861. 
 
 Deae Feed, — I am sure you know that it is neither neglect 
 nor indifference that has kept me from answering your last let- 
 ters more promptly. I hope you know something of the pleasures 
 they have given me and of the interest, greater than I can begin 
 to express, which I feel in this great work which God has done 
 for you. It is only that the class of Lent has kept me so unceas- 
 ingly busy that I have not had time before now to sit down 
 quietly and write to you. 
 
 Does n't it seem wonderful always to look back on the way 
 that God has led us, and to trace back his guidance ever so far 
 before we began to have any idea that we were under it ? How 
 completely it makes one feel that the whole work is in God and 
 not in us, from first to last that He has done it and not we. And 
 how much more than satisfied we are that it should be all His 
 doing. What a happy confidence it gives us that as He began it 
 in spite of our indifference, so He can carry it on in spite of our 
 feebleness. I am thankful that you can wTite and feel as you do 
 in beginning the new life. God grant that you may grow in 
 grace abundantly and fast. William wrote me the other day of 
 what you had told him. I know the warmth and feeling with 
 which he spoke would give you pleasure. When is your confirma- 
 tion? Ours is not till near the last of April. I expect about 
 fifteen candidates. The Holy Trinity matter is still unsettled. 
 Good-by. God bless you. 
 
 Monday, April 9, 1861. 
 Deae William, — Spring is slow in coming, and here we are 
 all getting a little weary waiting for her. Easter Day was tlie 
 most perfect day we have had yet. Yesterday was way back 
 in February again. I am beginning to look Bostonwards again. 
 Summer is not so very far off:, and the other day I had a letter 
 from Mr. B. T. Reed, asking me to preach three Sundays in June 
 at his new chapel in Lynn. I returned word that I could n't 
 do that, but, if he wished, would come on and preacli the second 
 Sunday (the 9th) of .June. So you may look for me al)Out that 
 time to be on your hands for a week or so. It will make a 
 
2(>e PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 pleasant trip, and the $20 that they give will pay expenses. 
 Next Sunday I spend at Elizabeth, and shall run up to New 
 York the first of next week, hut can't get further that time. I 
 exchanged yesterday morning with Dr. Stevens at St. Andrew's, 
 and saw Bancroft there in church. The Holy Trinity matter is 
 fast approaching a settlement. They gave a call last Tuesday 
 evening, backing it with a long six-page letter from the congrega- 
 tion full of reasons why I ought to come. Since then I have been 
 down with visits from them urging my acceptance. But I am 
 not changed in my mind to stay, and have a rough draft of a let- 
 ter in my drawer now, which will be copied oil and sent nest 
 week. 
 
 PHIIiADELPHIA, April 9, 1861. 
 
 To THE Vestry of the Church of the Holy Trinity : 
 
 Gentlemen, — Your secretary has communicated to me the 
 vote passed at your meeting of last Tuesday evening, by which I 
 am invited to become the rector of your church. 
 
 I need not tell you that I have endeavored to give the call that 
 earnest, calm, and prayerful consideration which it deserves. I 
 have felt its importance, and you know I have not dealt with it 
 lightly. 
 
 I feel confidence in thinking that most of the members of your 
 body already know and appreciate the motives under which I have 
 arrived at the decision which I ought not to delay in announcing 
 to you. 
 
 The condition of my present parish and the circumstances of 
 my connection with it constitute the great reason which has 
 brought the question to a settlement, and which compels me now, 
 acknowledging with all my heart the kindness and consideration 
 which has marked your proposal and all the intercourse that has 
 accompanied it, to decline the call to the rectorship of the Holy 
 Trinity. 
 
 I trust that it is unnecessary for me to say how deep an inter- 
 est I feel in the parish for which you act, and how earnestly I 
 pray for its prosperity, and how confidently I look to see it do, 
 under God, a great work in our Master's cause. 
 
 Accept, gentlemen, personally the assurance of my warmest 
 regard and kindest wishes. And believe me very sincerely. 
 
 Your friend and servant, Phillips Brooks. 
 
 Sunday afternoon, April 29, 1861. 
 
 Dear Father, — Excuse my seeming neglect of late. I have 
 been very busy and have not found the time to write. What 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 367 
 
 times these are ! Is n't it great to see people in our degenerate 
 days willing to go to work for a principle as our people are doing 
 now? How splendidly old Massachusetts is doing. She has evi- 
 dently got the old blood left in her yet. The feeling here is just 
 as deep as ever. Not quite as much noise, but everybody doing 
 what they can. Our lecture room at Advent has been a tailor's 
 shop for the last week, with the ladies making clothes for the 
 volunteers. This morning a company attended service at Advent 
 and had an appendix to the sermon for their benefit. To-night 
 there is to he a baptism in Advent of two young men who are 
 ordered off to-morrow, and cannot wait till confirmation time. 
 Everything now has something to do with the war. 
 
 Wise left town last Monday ; his furniture has been sent off, 
 and he will probably never return. He made himself somewhat 
 obnoxious before leaving, and was turned out half shaved from a 
 black barber's shop on Monday morning because he used his 
 tongue too freely. His church is in a quandary. 
 
 We see people here from Baltimore every day. I met a lady 
 last night just from there, who said that half the city would 
 rejoice to have a U. S. army of 30,000 men come and occupy 
 the city. Why don't they do it? The administration will be 
 forced to do it yet by the strong popular pressure. You have 
 asked once or twice about the Holy Trinity and my reasons for 
 not going there. I had but one real reason, ■ — I could n't see 
 that I could leave Advent. If I had been wholly free I should 
 have gone, and think from the peculiar nature of that parish I 
 could have got along. I don't know what they will do. At pre- 
 sent they are all adrift. They say that they can settle on nobody. 
 The names mentioned have been Dr. Butler, Nicholson, Dr. 
 Cummings, and Mr. Eccleston of Staten Island. The last seems 
 now to have the best chance. None of the others can possibly 
 get a vote of the vestry. Dr. Vinton preaches his farewell this 
 afternoon. I am to read for him. He goes on Wednesday or 
 Thursday. Mrs. Vinton went some time ago. The war fever 
 has overshadowed all these church excitements. I had an offer 
 yesterday to go to San Francisco, to Grace Church, salary from 
 $5000 to $6000. If ever I move, I am not sure but that would 
 be a good direction, but for the present I said I could n't think 
 of it. 
 
 I congratulate you on your membership of the "Historical," ^ 
 and them on their new member. I know you will enjoy it, and 
 it certainly is an honor to be associated with such men. How the 
 genealogical fever will grow on you ! 
 
 ' The Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
368 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 But I only meant to write a note. Franklin Square you 
 wouldn't know. It is a drill yard from morning to night, and 
 at this moment there is a whole company on the sidewalk oppo- 
 site to 701. 
 
 Philadelphia, April 29, 1861. 
 
 Dear William, — The war is inevitable, and let it come. I 
 repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the 
 matter. Gentlemen may cry. Peace! Peace! but there is no 
 Peace ! the war is actually begun. We are in the midst of re- 
 cruiting and drilling and arriving and departing of troops. We 
 see the Massachusetts men as they pass through on their way to 
 Baltimore, and in a few hours we hear of their being bruised and 
 beaten and killed in a city that claims all the benefits of being on 
 our side. There can be but one party in the North now. There 
 is but one in Philadelphia. The excitement is intense. Several 
 young men of my congregation have enlisted and are going on 
 high religious motives. Who dare say that it is n't his duty to 
 go when the duty is so urgent and the cause so sacred? 
 
 Of course nothing else is talked of here, and it 's hard to fix 
 down to work of any kind. I was in New York on Monday, and 
 things were the same there. 
 
 I still expect to go on in June. I should have preferred to 
 take a later Sunday, but the one I chose seemed to be the only 
 one consistent with my work here. Everything goes well at 
 Advent. They have just voted to raise my salary to $2000, be- 
 ginning next month. Our confirmation has just been fixed for 
 the 15th of May. Till then I shall be pretty busy. 
 
 I shall think of you all to-morrow afternoon, and though miles 
 away, my heart will give to Fred the warmest of welcomes into 
 the church. 
 
 Saturday, May 4, 1861. 
 
 Deab William, — War still ; quieter just now, but yet, as we 
 all think, a fight certainly coming. How your last letter bubbled 
 and boiled with patriotism ! Is n't it a grand thing to see how 
 the mind of the whole country has risen up to the demand of the 
 times? Doesn't it prove what, in a long time of peacefulness we 
 are apt to forget, that the heroic qualities are true elements in 
 human nature, and will always be developed with the recurrence 
 of any exigency that calls for their exhibition and employment ? 
 Does n't it renew and enlarge our faith in our race ? 
 
 But I 'm not going to write war again. To be sure, there 's 
 little else. It 's hard to get away from it in sermon-writing or 
 letter-writing. 
 
MT. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 369 
 
 Dr. Vinton has gone. He left Thursday. I sliall miss him 
 very much, for I have seen a great deal of him, and valued his 
 society and intimacy very much indeed. I have liked him more 
 and more with all that I have seen of him. And it will make 
 Philadelphia quite a different place to have him out of it. He 
 gave me his study table that used to be in Temple Place, and it 
 stands now between my front windows. The Holy Trinity is 
 still without a prospect. I am to preach there to-morrow after- 
 noon. 
 
 May 13, 1861. 
 
 Deab George, — • It has n't been neglect but business. Will 
 you forgive me and let me write as freely as if I was answering 
 all in good season your kind letter of ever so long ago ? I hope 
 by this time, long before this, you are yourself again and hard 
 at work among the Medfordites, and I hope the work is prospering 
 and you enjoy everything about the place as much as ever. By 
 the way, I expect to look in upon you in three or four weeks. I 
 have promised to preach at Lynn on the second Sunday in June, 
 and you may have your manillas ready any time in the preceding 
 week. Wliat of the war? Isn't it grand? Your enthusiasm is 
 no doubt as great as ours, and your confidence as strong that just 
 the thing our land has been needing for ever so long to clear it, 
 first of its corrupt government and ultimately of the hateful curse 
 of slavery, has come about at last. The seminary is broken up 
 and probably Northern students will never be on its roll again. 
 Sparrow and Packard have gone South, May has returned North. 
 The Northern money that has gone into those buildings is sunk. 
 ... At Advent all goes much as usual. I have been busy getting 
 ready for confij-mation, which comes next Wednesday evening. 
 There are twenty-seven or twenty-eight candidates. 
 
 Saturday evening-, May 18, 1861. 
 
 Deae William, — The sermon is just done, so you must ex- 
 cuse a very late note and a very short one. My next one I hope 
 to deliver in person, for it is only two weeks now before I shall be 
 on my way in your direction, unless Jeff Davis is in Philadelphia 
 before that time, in which case, as he may like to attend service 
 at Advent and hear what we think of him there, I should have to 
 stay and tell him. 
 
 I had a letter from Father the other day full of red-hot war 
 spirit and making much of Governor Andrew. It seems after all 
 the "Courier " said that his was an election quite fit to be made. 
 How well our Yankee general Butler comes out too. Massa- 
 chusetts is ahead yet in the war. 
 
370 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 Last Wednesday evening we had our confirmation at Advent. 
 Bishop Potter officiated, and the church was crowded. There 
 were thirty-one candidates. It is encouraging to feel that some 
 work is doing. I have enjoyed this last year exceedingly, and if 
 I can only feel that the people get as much good as I do pleasure 
 out of our connection, I shall be well satisfied. 
 
 Lots of love to all, and tell them to look out for me. 
 
 June 26, 1861. 
 
 Deae Fathek, — I have been meaning to write to you since 
 my return, but have been pretty busy without accumulating any- 
 thing. We are in the midst of the hot term, many people gone 
 and going out of town, and things pretty generally stagnated. 
 At such a time one cannot work with full spirit, and I am looking 
 forward to getting away again for vacation, three weeks from 
 next Monday. 
 
 The people of Holy Trinity are going about the country hear- 
 ing ministers. They are anxious to hear Dr. Huntington [now 
 Bishop of Central New Yoi-k]. I have told them I don't think 
 there is any chance of getting him, but they are set on trying, and 
 so I have promised to ascertain for them how they can hear 
 him. . . . 
 
 Things don't seem to get ahead much in the war, do they? 
 This new talk about compromise I am convinced will come to 
 nothing, but it is a bad symptom, and ought to be stopped. I am 
 glad to see that Massachusetts has come down handsomely with 
 ten more regiments. 
 
 Philadelphia, Saturday, June 29, 1861. 
 
 Dear William, — How hot it is ! Don't expect much to-day, 
 for it 's the last hot day of a long hot week, a two-sermon week 
 too, so that I feel myself pretty considerably written out. Sixty 
 pages a week, the thermometer at 80°, is trying work. 
 
 Has Boston quite recovered from my visit, and settled down 
 again into its normal quiet ? Your New York trip has come 
 since ; I am glad to hear that you enjoyed it. Sorry to hear you 
 speak so cheerlessly of Dr. Vinton's new position. I am afraid 
 that he has made a mistake. I am in hopes now that Dr. 
 Richards will be called to Wise's parish. The vestry went on to 
 hear him last Sunday and were much pleased. It will be very 
 pleasant for me if they call and he accepts, — two peradventures. 
 
 Another blunder down South yesterday in the death of Cap- 
 tain Ward. One of tliese days, perhaps, we shall do something 
 to brag of, but we don't seem to have done it yet. What will 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 371 
 
 Congress do is the question. People are getting dreadfully poor 
 here, and even ministers are beginning to economize. Where will 
 it end? 
 
 July 2, 1861. 
 
 Deab Father, — Many thanks for your kind letter, also for 
 the trouble you took in finding out about Dr. Huntington. I 
 have not forgotten that this is the birthday of our Eldest Hope. 
 Twenty-seven, is n't it? Offer him my best congratulations and 
 my heartiest wishes for twenty-seven more happy new years. 
 Wise's old parish have been on to hear Dr. Richards, and have 
 concluded to call him. The call will be given this week. I hope 
 he will accept. We are all to have service on the 4th (July) by 
 Bishop Potter's recommendation. 
 
 From his mother : — 
 
 Boston, July 2, 1861. 
 My dearest Philly, — To-day is William's birthday, when 
 I had my first child, and I have been living all day in the past. 
 How full my thoughts and my heart have been of Willy and you 
 in your baby days. How many recollections crowd upon me when 
 I look back upon all the way the Lord has led me and realize 
 how solemn it is to live. We naturally live so much in the pre- 
 sent that it is good for us sometimes to turn back to the past. 
 It does not make me feel sad but solemn when I think how much 
 of my time is past and how short the journey now. I only 
 desire to travel it well and peacefully, until we and the children 
 God has given us shall safely reach heaven and dwell with our 
 blessed Saviour forever. Oh, bliss unspeakable ! . . . Good-by, 
 my dear child, for a little longer. You '11 be soon among us 
 again. Dinna forget. 
 
 Your devoted and loving Mother. 
 
 Saturday, September 14, 1861. 
 
 Dear William, — ^When is the great battle coming? Every- 
 body says now before another week is over, but I believe McClel- 
 lan knows what he is about, and won't fight till he 's ready, and 
 then will whip them terribly. Philadelphia brags loudly of her 
 son and has forgotten Patterson in her delight over McC. 
 
 How comfortably the traitors are getting housed in Lafayette. 
 Boston has contributed nothing yet. You must have some old 
 " Courier " men that you would like to spare that you could send 
 to keep our precious townsmen company. 
 
 Monday morniug. 
 
 What hot weather again; yesterday was oppressive, and with 
 three services I feel pretty well used up this morning. I am 
 
372 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 quite in the old rut again now, and everything is going pretty 
 much as usual. I hear nothing from Holy Trinity, though I un- 
 derstand they have made no arrangement yet. I preached there 
 on the 8th, but their head men were all out of town. 
 
 They say there was a great movement of troops from here yes- 
 terday towards Washington. 
 
 Monday morning, September 1(), 1861. 
 
 Dear Feed, — I think the upshot of your last letter as near 
 as I can make it out is. Will I subscribe to the " Harvard " ? 
 Of course I will. I am anxious as far as it is possible in this 
 benighted region to keep up with the literary and sesthetic pro- 
 gress of our land. So put my name down, and as soon as you 
 will write and tell me what the subscription price is, I will trans- 
 mit the funds, to be returned, of course, if the machine doesn't 
 run a full year under its new engineering. I must make one 
 condition, and that is that I am to be kept informed monthly what 
 articles I am esjjecially to warm up over, as emanating from the 
 lineal successor of its first editors. 
 
 They say the great battle has got to come this week. I hope 
 and think that we are ready for it, and from all that we can hear, 
 believe tliat under McClellan we may look for, as he says, "no 
 more Bull Run affairs." 
 
 Friday, September 27, 1861. 
 
 Dear William, — We are just through the President's Fast 
 Day, and I have never seen a week day kept as it has been. 
 Our stores almost without exception were closed; the churches 
 thronged. We had service at Advent in the morning, and in the 
 evening and afternoon joined with Mr. Cooper's and Dr. Newton's 
 congregations for union services. The churches all three times 
 were overflowing, and unable to hold all that came, and so it was 
 with all the churches, I believe, all over town. 
 
 I had no sermon, only a short address. The only restraint was 
 a feeling that I could not speak out as fully as I wished on the 
 one great sin which is beyond doubt the chief reason of this 
 calamity being on us, and wliich has got to be removed before the 
 calamity can be lifted off. It is useless to talk round and round 
 it, when we know and are sure that slavery, its existence in the 
 South and its approval in the North, is the great crushing, curs- 
 ing sin of our national life and the cause of all our evils. I 
 spoke of it freely yesterday, and so far as I know without giving 
 offence. 
 
 How strange this continual mismanagement is ! What is ham- 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 373 
 
 pering our soldiers and statesmen ? Another defeat and another 
 brave man useless out in Missouri, and all ajiparently for want of 
 foresight and prudence. Here 's a iioble letter about the war and 
 the country. Well, you '11 excuse it, for there is n't much worth 
 thinking or talking of besides in times like these. 
 
 October 1, 1861. 
 
 Dear Fathek, — I have meant to answer your last letter be- 
 fore, but have been pretty busy. I got last night the "Tran- 
 script " with its cut at . He deserved it, and more too. The 
 
 man who can insult a Northern congregation nowadays by stand- 
 ing up and laying the whole blame of these troubles on the North 
 deserves all the dislike and distrust he gets. 
 
 We are just beginning to be stirred up here about the election 
 of an assistant bishop. Bishop Potter has called a convention 
 for the 23d, and the choice is very doubtful. Drs. Butler, Good- 
 win, May, Morton, and Leeds seem to be the promising names. 
 Dr. Stevens would stand a good chance except that his loyalty is 
 spotted. ... I have received the first number of the new volume 
 of the "Harvard " [magazine], with Fred for one of the editors. 
 He seems to be holding up his end of the family rope well. 
 
 How bold we are getting in Virginia, taking possession of 
 deserted hills and shooting down our own men ! Things look 
 badly in Missouri too. What splendid October weather we are 
 having. 
 
 Friday, October 11, 1861. 
 
 Dear William, — ... This is a big week in church matters 
 here, meetings of societies, etc. Dr. Tyng has been making some 
 splendid speeches, taking the black bull by the horns every time 
 he could get a chance, but I won't touch on that as we both 
 vented our Abolitionism abundantly last week. Dr. Vinton is 
 here, but returns to-day. I was in hopes to have kept him over 
 Sunday, hut he is inexorable. By the way, the Holy Trinity call 
 is coming the 1st of November, I understand, and Mr. Coolidge 
 having left Providence at last I can have that parish if I want 
 it. Between the two the choice is I shall stay at Advent. . . . 
 
 Colonel Wilson's regiment went through here the other day, 
 and created a great deal of attention. It was called the best 
 equipped regiment that has passed through Philadelphia. We 
 have had a terrible week of rain, but this morning has cleared off 
 gloriously, and everything is looking beautifully. I am just going 
 out to try to secure some of the Bishops and other Big Boys here 
 to preach for me on Sunday. 
 
374 PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 October 29, 1861. 
 
 Mt dear William, — Another defeat and another butchery. 
 Where are we drifting to, and when is the tide to turn ? I 
 have n't a doubt that it will turn, but it is tedious waiting for it, 
 and meanwhile we are losing time and men. Have you read the 
 poem called the "Washers of the Shroud " in the last "Atlantic " ? 
 It seems to me very fine. 
 
 We have been busy and excited this week in the choice of a 
 bishop. The papers have told you, no doubt, that Dr. Stevens 
 was elected. I voted against him, and was sorry that he was 
 elected simply because I do not think in the present state of 
 things, and with the prospects that are before us, any man of 
 Southern sympathies and connections, even though he may be just 
 now professedly loyal, ought to become the mouthpiece of a North- 
 ern diocese. However, he is an able and a good man, and I shall 
 hope the best of his administration. It was a very long and 
 excited canvass. 
 
 There is nothing new in my own church relations. I have had 
 an interview with the Holy Trinity people in reference to their 
 giving a new call, and have discouraged it, at least until they have 
 made trial of one or two persons who have been for some time 
 before them. What will be the upshot of it I can't tell. 
 
 Friday, NoTember 8, 1861. 
 
 Deak William, — ... I went to hear your senator last 
 night, Charles Sumner, on the War. He was n't very great. 
 He has grown fat and clumsy, and has not the same fire that he 
 used to have. Where is the fleet ? Are we ever to hear from it, 
 or has it drifted out into infinite space or gone over to secession or 
 gone down Armada fashion in one of these gales ? I have faith still, 
 but things look badly, especially in Missouri. What a pity that 
 Fremont's removal came just at this time, though, independently 
 of that, no doubt it was a good move, or rather it was a bad one 
 ever to jiut him there. . . . 
 
 Monday, November 18, 1861. 
 
 Dear Father and Mother, — I have resigned the Advent 
 to-day, and shall accept the Holy Trinity to-morrow. You will 
 not think it strange that I have not written you about this before. 
 I wanted to have it fixed and settled before I troubled you with 
 it again. 
 
 The call from the Holy Trinity came two weeks ago, and since 
 then I have been in a wretched state, weighing my desire to stay 
 with the Advent people against my apparent duty to go and work 
 this larger field. I never want to pass another such two weeks. 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 375 
 
 I went on a week ago to-day and passed two days with Dr. Vin- 
 ton. After coming back from there the matter has had much 
 serious and prayerful thought, and has resulted finally in a clear 
 conviction that I ought to go. The Advent people are very much 
 hurt and very indignant about it. I am sincerely sorry to leave 
 them, more so than I can tell, but what can I do ? 
 
 And now about the details. My resignation is to take effect 
 after the first Sunday in Advent. I have n't the heart to go 
 right to Holy Trinity the next Sunday, and so shall accept then 
 to begin the 1st of January. Most of the intervening time I 
 shall spend with you in Chauncy Street, if you will take me in. 
 I say "most " because I may be kept here a few days after I leave 
 Advent to make arrangements about moving, etc., and also be- 
 cause I have partly promised to spend the second Sunday in 
 December w;th Dr. Vinton. At any rate I shall be at home to 
 keep George's birthday and Christmas. 
 
 To THE Vestet of the Church of the Advent: 
 
 Gentlemen, — I hereby resign to you the rectorship of your 
 church. 
 
 This charge was accepted by me in response to your invitation 
 in September, 1859 ; since that time I need not say how sincerely 
 and constantly I have rejoiced in the relations of perfect harmony 
 that have existed between us and in the evident blessing of God 
 upon our joint labors. Never has any rector been privileged to 
 minister to a people more kind and earnest and sympathizing, or 
 to rely upon the help of a vestry more united, more cordial, and 
 considerate in every stage of his intercourse with them. After 
 such an experience I cannot try to tell you how deeply I feel the 
 painful necessity of severing our connection. I believe you all 
 know that it has not been an easy task or one determined on with- 
 out earnest, long, and prayerful thought. 
 
 But I have been led to see it as my duty to accept a field of 
 labor which has been opened, and kept open, before me by the 
 Providence of God. I shall go to that field in answer to my 
 Master's call, and because I sincerely feel the summons comes 
 from Him. 
 
 For the Church of the Advent I feel a love and care that time 
 can never weaken. I pray for its continual prosperity, and I look 
 with much desire for the permanence of the many close friend- 
 ships I have formed among you. 
 
 To the vestry I render my most hearty thanks for all their 
 sympathy and hel]j, for their kind seconding of all my efforts and 
 anticipation of all my wants, and though our official relation 
 
376 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 ends, I prize their regard, and beseech for each of them the 
 blessings temporal and spiritual that our Father can bestow. 
 
 It is my wish that this resignation should take efiect alter t 
 first Sunday in Advent. 
 
 With sincerest regards and strong affection, I am, dear brethren, 
 Your friend, Phillips Bkooks. 
 
 Philadelphia, November 18, 1861. 
 
 There are circumstances connected with Mr. Brooks's resig- 
 nation of the Church of the Advent which are not mentioned 
 in the foregoing correspondence, or receive only a slight allu- 
 sion. It is evident that the event was a painful one to him 
 as it was also to his congregation. It was inevitable, but 
 perhaps it would have presented a more ideal aspect if in 
 leaving his first parish he had been leaving it also for work 
 elsewhere than in Philadelphia. For there was here a cir- 
 cumstance capable of the usual misinterpretation, that he was 
 leaving one parish because it was poor for another because 
 it was rich. But for nearly a year he had kept the question 
 under consideration. Although he had once formally de- 
 clined the call, yet the exigent demands of the larger church 
 would not aUow him to refuse. Some things also had become 
 more apparent as the months went by. His church was 
 crowded with worshippers, but they brought no strength to 
 his parish ; they came to listen, but they did not rent the 
 vacant pews. He was in reality ministering to the congre- 
 gations of other parishes. If he was to speak as his soul 
 moved him to do, he needed a stronger vantage ground, a 
 more prominent position. If he must preach to crowded 
 churches, as seemed to be even then his destiny, it was better 
 to preach in a church with fifteen hundred hearers than in 
 one with five hundred. A power outside himself seemed to 
 be arbitrating the issue for him. In the spirit of humility 
 and of obedience he acquiesced, but with no sign of ambition 
 for self, or spirit of conceit and self-sufficiency. 
 
 It was a hard and bitter experience for the Church of the 
 Advent. He seemed to belong to them as by the divine 
 right of discovery. They had found him as he preached in 
 the Sharon Mission near Alexandria, and from afar had 
 
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^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 377 
 
 descried his power while all the world was in ignorance. To 
 them he had given the first fresh devotion of his ministry, 
 endearing himself to them by no ordinary faithfulness, going 
 in and out among them as their very own. They too in 
 return had given him of their best; there was nothing they 
 would not do, or attempt to do, to show their affectionate 
 appreciation. But they were paralyzed by these efforts, one 
 after another, in such rapid succession, to rob them of their 
 treasure. In the case of the Church of the Holy Trinity they 
 were tempted to stand upon their rights, to aj)peal to eccle- 
 siastical law, to refuse absolutely to let him go. 
 
 The change of a clergyman from one parish to another is 
 so familiar and commonplace a circumstance that it would 
 hardly seem to deserve here more than a passing mention. 
 But this was a case which probed the issue involved in the 
 relation of j)astor and people to its deepest source. In the 
 early history of New England the principle had been tacitly 
 sanctioned that the relationship could be sundered only by 
 death. Such also had been the understanding in the ancient 
 church when the principle had been embodied in the canon 
 law. But it had been found an ideal too high for realization 
 in this imperfect world. In the ancient church it had passed 
 into abeyance, surviving as a relic in the order of bishops 
 only, and even there it was eventually overcome. The Puri- 
 tan churches had also failed to maintain it, one of Mr. 
 Brooks's ancestors, the Hon. Judge Phillips of Andover, 
 being among the first to advocate a change in the rale. But 
 when it came to Phillips Brooks's case, the call to leave the 
 Church of the Advent for the Holy Trinity, the ancient prin- 
 ciple began to be seen in all its pristine force and beauty. It 
 seemed to the Church of the Advent as though the tie bind- 
 ing minister and people were so sacred that it was wrong 
 and even sacrilege to attempt to break it, — a sin against 
 both God and man. But much also was to be said for the 
 Church of the Holy Trinity. From the time when Phillips 
 Brooks first preached there, soon after his ordination, he 
 had so won their hearts that they had at once fixed upon him 
 as their rector in case Dr. Vinton should leave. It had been 
 
378 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 a mistake, his preaching there so often, if he were not free to 
 become their minister when they should call him. Already 
 he was as dear to them as to his own parishioners, • — the only 
 man upon whom they could now unite, when Dr. Vinton had 
 left them. While they recognized the difficulties to be en- 
 countered in detaching him from his devoted peojjle at the 
 Advent, yet none the less did their claim upon him seem the 
 stronger. At great expense they had erected their noble 
 church in the most commanding position in the city, the 
 centre of its life and growth. The large building had at once 
 been filled with a congregation composed of prominent and 
 influential citizens ; its social distinction and prestige was the 
 highest. If they felt that these circumstances constituted 
 any part of their claim, yet they did not give them a fore- 
 most place. There were those watching the proceeding who 
 ventured to assure the young minister that if he accei^ted the 
 call, he would be regarded as mercenary in his motives or 
 ambitious of social recognition. But to the credit of both 
 the claimants it must be said that such arguments as these 
 were only faintly urged. Already the high character of Mr. 
 Brooks, apart from his genius and other endowments, made 
 such things seem out of place. 
 
 It had been left by the vestry of the Holy Trinity Church 
 to one of its members, the Hon. G. W. Woodward, a judge 
 of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, to draw up the docu- 
 ment which should present its cause. To the preparation of 
 this document, Judge Woodward bent his powers as an able 
 lawyer, reviewing the situation in all its aspects. It was a 
 masterly paper, and could not have been without its influ- 
 ence. It made its impression on the mind of Mr. Brooks, 
 but nevertheless he declined the call. These events took 
 place in the month of April, 1860. Six months and more 
 went by, and the Church of the Holy Trinity was still unable 
 to unite upon any one as its minister, so long as its mind and 
 heart were preoccupied with Mr. Brooks. In November of 
 this same year the call was renewed. Then the Church of 
 the Advent was alarmed, for the danger was now felt to be 
 real and close at hand. They had no great jurist among 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 379 
 
 them like Judge Woodward to advocate their cause, but they 
 were not without resources of their own, of equal if not 
 superior force, in making their last defence and appeal. 
 They did not allude to the possibility of any sinister motives 
 as having any connection with the case ; they simply fell back 
 upon the eternally human as the strongest foundation ; they 
 pointed out in simple, but most pathetic ways the divine 
 hand, the voice of the Spirit in all these human affairs. 
 
 No more moving appeal than they offered could be con- 
 ceived. They knew their man; they had not sat in vain 
 under his teaching. They recalled to his mind their situation 
 as a parish when two years and a half ago they had called 
 him to be their minister. They were then in a depressed 
 condition ; half of the pews in the church were unoccupied ; 
 their number of communicants sadly reduced; their revenue 
 far below their current expenses. Under these circum- 
 stances, the calling of a rector was to them a matter of vital 
 importance, for a mistake meant failure and ruin. Then as 
 a church they had prayed for the divine guidance. Was it 
 not in answer to this prayer that one of his fellow students 
 at Alexandria, who happened to be in Philadelphia, had men- 
 tioned the name of Phillips Brooks to one of their vestry, a 
 seemingly chance occurrence, but mentioned in such a way 
 that it could not be forgotten ? He mentioned it to others of 
 the vestry, and so strong was the impression borne in upon 
 their minds that a committee was appointed to go and see 
 him. They recalled to his mind how this committee had 
 gone to visit the little mission house to hear him preach, or 
 rather talk, to the poor people to whom he ministered, the 
 impression made on them, and the conversation that followed 
 in the garden near the humble place where they had found 
 him ; the return of the committee and their report to the con- 
 gregation, and then the immediate and unanimous call. The 
 first sermon and the impression it made upon the people to 
 whom he was yet an entire stranger, — this they also recalled 
 to him; then the almost immediate increase in the congrega- 
 tion, continuing to increase during all the time of his minis- 
 try; the earnest and crowded audiences listening to the 
 
38o PHILLIPS BROOKS [i 860-61 
 
 truth as it fell from his lips. They spoke of the large num- 
 ber added to the communicants of the church; they reminded 
 him of his Sunday-school, with its hundreds of eager chil- 
 dren's faces. In all this, so the argument ran, was there to 
 be seen the evidence of some divine supernatural call. And 
 here they rested their case. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Church of the Holy Trinity 
 was not without a similar conviction, and equally strong, that 
 a divine and supernatural hand was now directing him to 
 arise and depart from the smaller, more limited field, in 
 which he could not be suffered any longer to remain. If he 
 ministered effectively to a congregation of five hundred, was 
 it not a divine opening when he was invited to minister, and 
 surely with equal efficiency, to a congregation of more than 
 twice that number? A letter came to him from a gentleman, 
 a member of the vestry of the larger church, which tells the 
 same simple story, making the same human, pathetic appeal, 
 as had the members of his own congregation. He had heard 
 him when he first preached at the Church of the Holy Trinity 
 soon after his ordination, and had then been captured, mind 
 and heart, by the young stranger, and his soul had gone out 
 to him as to a son. He wrote that the opinion, under the 
 influence of that first sermon, expressed at the moment by 
 those with whom he talked was that Phillips Brooks must be 
 the successor of Dr. Vinton. He urged upon him the un- 
 usually large number of young people who made up their 
 congregation, who listened to him as they would to no other. 
 Here he himself was virtually interested, for he was the 
 father of young children growing up in their beauty and 
 innocence, for whom his one desire was that they should be 
 brought to their Saviour. And of such families there were 
 hundreds looking to him in the waiting church. 
 
 When the call to Holy Trinity was repeated, it came to 
 Phillips Brooks with a renewed force. It had become evi- 
 dent that he was not to be allowed to remain in peace where 
 he was. He had said but little in his letters of the motives 
 for his final decision. But this was one of them, the desire to 
 feel that he was permanently fixed where he could do his work 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 381 
 
 to advantage. That part of the city where he then ministered 
 was changing, and the trend of the population was away from 
 his neighborhood. To follow the population and build else- 
 where was only to divide his church, for it was needed where 
 it was, to minister to those who would remain. But he was 
 distressed at the thought of leaving his parish; he was dis- 
 tracted in mind and sore at heart when he betook himself to 
 Dr. Vinton for advice. That visit determined the question. 
 When he returned from New York, he sent in his resigna- 
 tion of the rectorship of the Church of the Advent. When 
 Dr. Vinton heard of the decision he wrote : — 
 
 New Yokk, November 20, 1861, 
 St. Mabk'h Rectoky. 
 
 My deae Brooks, — Your letter has set me rejoicing. The 
 Lord bless your decision is and shall be my prayer. 
 
 Nothing could give me more pleasure than to be at my old 
 place Sunday, but our communion keeps me at home. I have 
 written to Mr. Coffin proposing the Sunday following, the third 
 anniversary of my first sermon in H. T. [Holy Trinity]. If that 
 plan is agreeable to you, I shall come. 
 
 I suppose you mean to go to Boston in December. Remember 
 my house is your home always in your joassing and repassing, and 
 you contract no obligation, but confer one thereby. When if ever 
 it should be inconvenient to us I will tell you. 
 
 And now may the Lord bless and keep you, and make His face 
 to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. 
 
 Yours affectionately, Alex. H. Vinton. 
 
 But the chronicler for the "Daily Press," apparently the 
 same who had kept track of Mr. Brooks from the time when 
 he went to Philadelphia, was disappointed at this decision, 
 and gave utterance to his feelings : — 
 
 The Philistines have triumphed ! Holy Trinity rejoiceth ! Ad- 
 vent mourns and refuses to be comforted. Last week we men- 
 tioned the fact that overtures were being made by the vestry 
 of Holy Trinity to rob the Church of the Advent on old York 
 road of its pastor. . . . Mr. Brooks, acting as a man should do, 
 declined the sordid bid. They called again, and still he replied 
 nay. They then proposed to relieve Advent of an incumbrance of 
 several thousand dollars, provided Mr. Brooks accepted. This 
 we regret to learn that gentleman has done, so that the poor of 
 
382 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 Advent are left to wander without a shepherd, that the aristo- 
 cratic attendants upon Holy Trinity may be accommodated. . . . 
 If he can reconcile the change with his own conscience and God, 
 we have nothing to say. But the finger of suspicion will long 
 point at him as one guided in his holy calling by temporal in- 
 terests. This and more he will have to encounter. The cold- 
 blooded aristocrats of Holy Trinity will treat him with frigid 
 dignity, nothing more. Advent and her people took him to their 
 bosoms, and warmed his every labor by cheering smiles of approval. 
 
 During this trying time when he was still at the Church 
 of the Advent, before his resignation should take effect, 
 came Thanksgiving Day with its holy memories. He could 
 not join his family at the sacred feast, but at least he could 
 keep festival by bringing to the altar the best offering of his 
 genius. The Puritan feeling in which the day had found 
 its origin stirred within him. One essential quality in the 
 life of man was gratitude. Unless a man could give thanks 
 for the mercies of creation, as well as of redemption, he 
 missed the meaning and the value of life. But how to inter- 
 pret the dark hour when a great nation was involved in all 
 the horrors of a fratricidal war, so that gratitude to God 
 might be still recognized as the undercurrent of its being 
 — that was the problem he had to face. He took for his 
 text the verse of a familiar Psalm : " I will sing of mercy 
 and of judgment " (ci. 1). The sermon was reported in the 
 daily newspapers with the brief preface: "The neat little 
 Church of the Advent, York Avenue above Buttonwood, was 
 filled to the utmost capacity yesterday morning." The ser- 
 mon has a historical interest as a picture of the hour : — ■ 
 
 I suppose there is not one here who has not thought more than 
 once this morning what a peculiar tone and spirit there is in this 
 Thanksgiving Day. Nine weeks ago to-day we met here under 
 the proclamation of the President to hold our Fast Day services. 
 We came then with a sense of disaster and distress. We came 
 sadly and penitently to confess our sins, and to beseech God to 
 remove His judgments from us. The troubles that brought us 
 together then have not ceased ; the fears that we felt then are still 
 upon us, and the same perplexities which surrounded us then bring 
 us together again to-day to thank God for His mercies. 
 
 It cannot be under such circumstances that our fast should bo 
 
^T. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 383 
 
 entirely forgotten. The shadow of that day will give color to 
 this God's two hands — His hand of blessing and His hand of 
 caution — are laid on us together, and if we sing at all to-day it 
 must he a double strain, like that which David announces in our 
 text, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment." 
 
 Monday morniiifj, November 25, 1861. 
 
 Deae William, — I thank you most sincerely for your kind 
 note of sympathy and congratulation. Yes, my race at the Ad- 
 vent is up next Sunday, and you can't imagine how blue it makes 
 me. But I am rejoiced the thing is settled, and now long to 
 have the parting over. They are beginning to feel more kindly 
 about it, though they have not yet accepted my resignation, having 
 twice refused to do so, and referred the matter to Bishop Potter. 
 But as he fvilly approves of my course and has told them so, I 
 think they will make no more difficulty, but accept it at their next 
 meeting to-morrow night. Meanwhile you can imagine it is 
 pretty hard work to keep on laboring just as before. I preached 
 yesterday morning. In the evening I had Bishop Hopkins of 
 Vermont. 
 
 Have now only two sermons more to write: one for Thanks- 
 giving and my farewell for next Sunday evening. As to coming 
 home you will see me either two weeks from last Saturday or two 
 weeks from to-day. I am coming for a quiet little rest and for 
 the joy of seeing you all. Mother wants me to preach while I 
 am in Boston. Tell her she must excuse me once more. I want 
 to drop o£E work altogether for these few weeks, and she must let 
 me sit alongside of her and listen to Dr. Nicholson. 
 
 Excuse this long letter all about myself. I have been so busy 
 about my own affairs lately that I have grown vilely selfish. 
 With much love, 
 
 Tour affectionate brother, Phill. 
 
 On December 6 he started for Boston, staying for a few 
 clays in New York with Dr. Vinton. It was his wish, his 
 intention, during his absence from Philadelphia to refrain 
 from preaching. How well he kept his purpose is shown by 
 the records of his Sundays during the month of December. 
 On the 8th he preached in the morning at Trinity Church, 
 New York, and in the afternoon at St. Mark's, for Dr. Vin- 
 ton. On the 15th he was with the Rev. George A. Strong 
 in Medford, preaching for him at Grace Church, morning and 
 
384 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1860-61 
 
 evening. On the 22cl, and this was a memorable day for 
 him and his family, he preached at St. Paul's Church, 
 Boston, in the church to which he had gone as a child since 
 he was three years old, with his family in the old pew. No. 60, 
 in the broad central aisle. His text was St. John iv. 28, 
 29: "Come, see a man who told me all things, that ever 1 
 did; is not this the Christ?" In the evening he preached 
 at St. Mary's, Dorchester, where his uncle, Mr. John Phil- 
 lips, resided. On the 29th he preached for the first time in 
 Trinity Church, Boston, while Bishop Eastburn read the 
 service. In the evening of the same day he preached at St. 
 James', Eoxbury. It was on the 13th of December that he 
 kept his twenty-sixth birthday. 
 
 One would like to know what judgment his parents passed 
 upon his preaching as he stood before them, or what Bishop 
 Eastburn, the stalwart Evangelical divine, thought of the 
 unfamiliar utterance as he listened from the chancel. The 
 father was a severe critic of preachers as they passed before 
 him in review at St. Paul's. He admired the slow deliberate 
 oratory of Dr. Vinton, whose massive voice corresponded 
 with his imposing figure. He had also at first been greatly 
 impressed with the delivery of Dr. Nicholson, whose render- 
 ing of the service, solemn and emphatic and with rotund 
 sonorous voice, he thought the finest he had heard. It must 
 have seemed to him as though his son defied every rule of 
 oratory, or was incapable of classification according to ac- 
 cepted principles. Indeed, the new preacher gave his audi- 
 ence no time to think about his voice, whether it were fine or 
 not; there was a rush of sentences, one tumbling after an- 
 other, and the audience had all it could do to follow, for 
 somehow he made them intensely eager to follow and to catch 
 each spoken word, as though something essential would be 
 lost if their attention should be diverted. There must have 
 been surprise and even amazement at something so novel, so 
 unlike anything they had ever heard before. Not only was 
 the preacher's delivery unfamiliar, but his thought was new; 
 the old familiar thought of the gospel was in his sermons, but 
 it came with a new meaning and force, stripped of the old 
 
^T. 26] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 385 
 
 conventionalities of expression. It was the case of a prophet 
 returning to his own country. There is some evidence that 
 he failed to receive at once the recognition and the honor 
 which had been accorded him in his adopted city. When he 
 first preached at Dorchester, one who heard him thought the 
 congregation was rather amused than impressed with the 
 rapid manner, the stiunbling over sentences, the occasional 
 entanglement of words from which he extricated himself with 
 difficulty. There is a tradition also that his uncle, when he 
 first heard him, did not feel sure that he would succeed as a 
 preacher, but thought him a young man possessed of genius. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 JANUARY TO AUGUST, 1862 
 
 THE FIRST TEAK AT THE CHURCH OF THE HOLT TRINITY 
 IN PHILADELPHIA. DISTRACTIONS OF PARISH WORK. THE 
 NEW DIVINITT SCHOOL. VISIT TO NIAGARA 
 
 The first duty incumbent on Mr. Brooks in his new posi- 
 tion was to make the acquaintance of his parishioners, and 
 to gather up the lines of work into his own hands. He 
 studied his parish as if it were a business enterprise, reveal- 
 ing himself as an administrator of affairs, with a minute 
 knowledge of every department of work, its actual condition 
 and the possibilities of its extension. It was his aim to make 
 the parish realize some high ideal of usefulness for the city 
 and for the church at large. 
 
 During the first six months of his rectorship he was so 
 absorbed and his time so occupied with these pressing de- 
 mands that he found little or no opportunity for study. It 
 must also be said that during these months the record he 
 kept of his work shows that he wrote but two sermons. He 
 fell back upon his old sermons, but he also was driven into 
 extemporaneous preaching as the only method possible under 
 such heavy pressure of engagements. If his soul had not 
 been so full of enthusiasm, or his preparation for the minis- 
 try had not been so thorough, he could not have met as he 
 did the increasing demands for high work in the pulpit, 
 which his very success was creating. For the moment he 
 utters no complaint, though he must have inwardly groaned 
 as he contemplated the situation. During these months, his 
 diary, faithfully kept, shows him making and receiving calls, 
 morning and afternoon and evening of every day in every 
 week and month. The rich and generous hospitality of his 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 387 
 
 congregation seemed to know no bounds and recognize no 
 limits of time. It was one long ovation to the new rector. 
 No occasion was complete without him, and the social festivi- 
 ties for which his presence was desired were innumerable. 
 
 But still further, his position as the rector of Holy Trinity 
 Church and the successor of Dr. Vinton entailed other and 
 wider responsibilities. Although a young man of twenty- 
 six, he was taken at once into the confidence and councils 
 of the mature and venerable men, who were charged with 
 duties to the church at large, the leaders of the Evangelical 
 party who at that special moment felt that a crisis was im- 
 pending in the church, which called for strenuous efforts if 
 the faith was to be maintained. From this time he was a 
 constant sjDcaker at meetings and anniversaries of the Ameri- 
 can Church Missionary Society, the Evangelical Knowledge 
 Society, and to these was now to be added a third, the Evan- 
 gelical Education Society. In this same year, 1862, which 
 saw the birth of this latter society for promoting the educa- 
 tion of an Evangelical clergy, the first steps were also taken 
 for the establishment of a new divinity school in Philadel- 
 phia. The seminary at Alexandria having been closed in con- 
 sequence of the war, and its professors and students scattered, 
 the need was felt for a central school of theology, which 
 should perpetuate its policy, but with greater advantages 
 than Alexandria had possessed. Bishop Alonzo Potter of 
 Pennsylvania has the honor of being its founder, a wise and 
 statesmanlike ecclesiastic, who saw the need and sought to 
 divert the wealth of the diocese into this new channel. As 
 the rector of Holy Trinity, Mr. Brooks became one of the 
 overseers of the new divinity school, giving freely of his 
 time to the many preliminary meetings which the new enter- 
 prise demanded. Dr. Vinton was now often in Philadelphia 
 to be present at these meetings. Thither also came Dr. 
 John S. Stone, the former rector of St. Paul's, Boston, 
 under whose direction the Brooks family bad entered the 
 Episcopal Church. 1 With these men, and the name of Dr. 
 Heman Dyer must be mentioned with them, though many 
 
 1 See ante, p. 42. 
 
388 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 years his senior, Phillips Brooks now associated on equal 
 terms. They welcomed him for his high position, and the 
 social influence he re2)resented, but chiefly for that fascinat- 
 ing eloquence which gave a new and potent charm to the 
 cause so dear to them. His accession to the cause was 
 simply invaluable. These older men must even then have 
 recognized some difference in the presentation of the truth as 
 they held it, but they were wise and large-hearted, penetrat- 
 ing beneath the surface and recognizing that at heart, and in 
 all the essential quality of the gospel, he was at one with 
 them. From this conviction they never wavered. 
 
 Such were among the first results of the change from the 
 Church of the Advent to the Church of the Holy Trinity. 
 Other even greater results were to follow, — his prominence, 
 not only in tlie church, but in civic affairs, till he came to be 
 one of the foremost citizens of Philadelphia. It was charac- 
 teristic of him then in his youth, as throughout his life, that 
 he met those new and larger obligations with all the gravity 
 of age, throwing himself into every sijeech he made on repre- 
 sentative occasions, so that the occasion should not fail through 
 any fault of his. He took his part in the deliberations of the 
 hour, never failing in his duty to be present at any appointed 
 meeting. He was now eagerly sought after for such special 
 events as ordinations and consecrations of churches, because 
 thus early his presence and the word as he spoke it were felt 
 to be necessary in order to the fitness of these solemnities. 
 It was almost too much for any man to be called on to endure 
 with safety. But the admiration, the adulation which now 
 went forth towards him, the enthusiasm his presence created, 
 he seemed to regard as a shadow from which he would fain 
 escape. If he was i?r this world of great social and eccle- 
 siastical functions he was not of it. Those who knew him 
 well can bear abundant witness to another peculiarity, life- 
 long and most impressive. He was only too glad to leave 
 the scene of his greatness, to get once more with a few well- 
 chosen friends, as though the honor and applause which came 
 to him were unimportant compared with the privileges which 
 friendship brought, and he were tacitly entreating those whom 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 389 
 
 he claimed as friends to forgive and to forget these acciden- 
 tal distinctions of popularity and fame as having no intrinsic 
 significance. It is an almost uniform record how, after every 
 public function, he hastened away to this social communion. 
 Sometimes it left the impression that he was hardly responsi- 
 ble for or but slightly related to his work in the puljjit, while 
 that which constituted the value of life was to be found in 
 social fellowship. To make the quick transition from the 
 spiritual exaltation of the pulpit to the ordinary converse of 
 life, which to many is slow and difficult, was easy for him 
 and seemed to be essential to his happiness and peace of mind. 
 There is a contrast here, not easy to harmonize, that while 
 others were still too deeply moved with what he had been 
 uttering to think of anything else, he appeared to have for- 
 gotten it or to regard it as an ordinary circumstance in the 
 routine of life. To those who knew him best, the impression 
 was not misleading or injurious. Beneath the contrast lay 
 the principle by which he had reconciled the antagonism of the 
 ages, the antagonism which he himself had felt so strongly in 
 his early years. He had inherited the double portion, — the 
 love of the human equally with the divine. He was bearing 
 testimony to the truth of his own experience, that the joy of 
 living, the pleasure of social converse, the talk which turned 
 upon little things, the wit and the humor natural to man, were 
 not incompatible with religion ; that to turn from one to the 
 other, or always to be ready for either, was only to recog- 
 nize the divine purpose in God's creation, the unity of man's 
 existence in a world which was temporal while yet conjoined 
 with the eternal. He may seem to have carried his defiance 
 of conventional religious manners to an extreme, but, if so, 
 he may have felt that the singular power which he exerted 
 in the pulpit was a source of danger to him, unless it were 
 counterbalanced by the healthy participation in the joy of 
 common life. He attached a mystic importance to the social 
 fellowship, regarding it as the reflection of some aspect of the 
 eternal reality, of things as they are, in themselves and in God. 
 The social side of his life, therefore, in Philadelphia, must 
 be viewed as an important factor in his history. He seemed 
 
390 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 to be making up for lost years of seclusion in college and in 
 the seminary. He went to social receptions whenever he was 
 invited, and they were many. Philadelphia hospitality, which 
 needs no commendation so well is it known, was offered to him 
 without stint or limit. In his congregation there were charm- 
 ing households which were opened to him as homes. Go 
 where he might, he was more than welcome. Life seemed to 
 be a perpetual social ovation. The impression which the 
 records of these days present is that of perfect unalloyed hap- 
 piness, almost too great for this lower world. In the list of 
 these social engagements some stand out more prominently 
 than others, among them the dinners at Mr. Cooper's every 
 Tuesday evening, the Wednesday evenings after service at Dr. 
 Weir Mitchell's or elsewhere, the Sunday midday meals with 
 Mr. Lemuel Coffin, who was now to Mr. Brooks what Mr. 
 Remsen had been at the Church of the Advent, — a man of 
 great goodness and simplicity, upon whose unfailing sympa- 
 thy and support he could always rely. 
 
 The following letter gives his first impressions as he enters 
 upon the duties of his new position. It is characteristic, and 
 touching also, that he calls at once for a visit from his father 
 and mother. 
 
 Saturday, January 11, 1862. 
 
 Dear William, — It will be a chance if I don't ask you before 
 I finish what the rent is, and how many boarders you keep. I 
 liave spent all tliis week in asking this question of all sorts of 
 people all over town and am sick now of the very sight of a 
 boarding-house. I am still at Mr. Cooper's, but hope to hear to- 
 night that I can have some rooms at which I have been looking, 
 and which I have promised to take if they are vacated within a 
 week. I am impatient to get settled, for until I do I cannot 
 actively begin my parish work, and am at present doing little 
 more than preaching for my new people. I like them more and 
 more the more I see of them. Tliey are kind, cordial, and full 
 of will to work. There is a good deal of disagreeable fashion- 
 able life among them, but many of them are earnest and devoted 
 peo])le. My first Wednesday evening lecture came off last 
 Wednesday night. The lecture room was thronged, but both then 
 and last Sunday there were many strangers on whom I cannot 
 permanently count. I am not amhitious of a crowd, and am sat- 
 
MT. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 391 
 
 isfied to have the church well filled. All the pews but five or six 
 are taken. The news to-day looks something more like work — 
 two expeditions off. Oh, for a blow somewhere to make this 
 monster stagger! We are having the meanest weather, rain or 
 snow alternately, with fogs and mist and damp. Lay to this and 
 my unsettled state the wretchedness of this letter. 
 
 February 3, 1862. 
 
 Dear Father, — I thank you for the letter which I got on 
 Saturday. I am getting to feel at home in my new quarters, and 
 not to be quite so much surprised at letters directed to 1533 
 Locust (Street). The rooms are all that I desire and the house 
 apparently a pleasant one. 
 
 All is going swimmingly at the new church. Mr. Coffin (the 
 "Remsen " of the new concern) tells me he rented the last sitting 
 on Saturday, and the church is all taken now for the first time. 
 Yesterday I began my plan of having evening service once a 
 month, with a service for the children instead of the regular after- 
 noon service. It went first-rate; both afternoon and evening were 
 overcrowded. Our Wednesday evening lectures are always much 
 more than full. So you see that we are doing well and have 
 every reason to hope for the future. Dr. Vinton was here last 
 week and seemed to think things looked prosperous. . . . 
 
 I want you and Mother to make yoiu" plans to come on here in 
 the spring; Mr. Coflin is very anxious you should stay with him. 
 I don't see but what it would be a good arrangement. 
 
 As to George's coming, let it be whenever you please, only let 
 me know of it beforehand, that I may find him out a room. . . . 
 Write soon and often. 
 
 Yours affectionately, Phillips. 
 
 February 8, 1862. 
 
 Deae William, — What do you think of Fort Henry ? ' 
 Does n't it seem as if we were really going to have something to 
 crow about one of these days ? Now if the Elements will only be 
 done fighting against us, we shan't have much trouble in driving 
 the thing through. 
 
 Everything with us is going as quietly as if there were no war. 
 I am getting easy in my new seat, and have about all the reins 
 picked up and fairly in my hands for the long drive. Our 
 church is very full and all rented. They are beginning to whisper 
 
 ' The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by General Grant, which gave 
 the Union armies possession of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, the high- 
 way to the Southern States of Alabama and Mississippi. 
 
2,9^ PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 of enlargement, but it won't be done so long as we owe $60,000. 
 Last Sunday I began the experiment of an afternoon children's 
 church, postponing my regular afternoon service till the evening. 
 It succeeded perfectly ; both services were overcrowded, and I am 
 going to keep it up now the first Sunday of every month. To- 
 morrow I am going back to Advent for the first time. Dr. Butler 
 has disappointed them, and I am going to take charge of their 
 Sunday-School Anniversary in the afternoon and to preach for 
 them in the evening. It will feel queer; some of them didn't 
 want me to come, but I think probably the best way to break down 
 that feeling is just by going. How I always write about nothing 
 but myself. You must excuse it, but I am so busy I don't have 
 time to pick up news about other people. 
 
 The absorbing duties of liis parish did not prevent him 
 from following still with deep sympathy each stage of his 
 younger brother's career at Harvard. Frederick Brooks was 
 now preparing to follow in Phillips's footsteps by competing 
 successfully for the Bowdoin prize. The relations with this 
 younger brother show what he might have been as a teacher 
 had not his desire to follow that profession been rudely 
 checked. One thing is clear, that the religious reserve 
 which once made it impossible for him to speak on the sub- 
 ject of personal religion was now broken down. This pecul- 
 iarity so marked among the New England people — the 
 unwillingness to intrude within the sacred shrine of another's 
 personality — had its roots in the reverence for individual 
 freedom, nourished as it had been by generations of training 
 in the Calvinistic theology. We may believe that it was no 
 easy thing for Phillips Brooks to conquer this reserve, and 
 urge upon Frederick the choice of the ministry as a pro- 
 fession. 
 
 1533 Locust Street, February 8, 1862. 
 
 Dear Fred, — I thank you for your note of Friday. There 
 was n't much of it, but it was first-rate what there was. I must 
 steal a few moments this morning to answer it. Glad to hear of 
 you all at home so very busy. I rejoice in it. It 's good for all 
 of us. We '11 rest by and by. 
 
 I am glad you are going in for the prize. "What is your sub- 
 ject and tell me something of your treatment of it? As to the 
 length that always used to be specified in the yearly Catalogue at 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 393 
 
 so many (twenty-four, I think) pages of the "North American 
 Review." You can easily make a calculation hy copying a few 
 lines from the " Review " in your usual hand, how much that 
 will come to in MSS., and I think it is well to come about up to 
 the mark. 
 
 I had read your articles in the last " Harvard Magazine " be- 
 fore your note came. I like them both. If I made any sugges- 
 tion it would be this, and in view I'ather of college writing in 
 general than of any fault I see specially in yours. Almost all 
 college writing is unsystematic. I remember the horror I used 
 to have of anything like a scheme or skeleton before I began an 
 essay. But I have long since found my error. Let your essay 
 be a whole something, and not a lot of disjecta membra, all good, 
 perhaps, but with no organic unity. I am convinced that the 
 difference between good and bad essays lies not between skeleton 
 and no skeleton, but between two kinds of skeletons and ttvo ways 
 of putting on the meat. I want to feel the bones when I read a 
 man, just as when I shake hands with him. As to style and all 
 that, what a capital paper that is of Mr. T. W. Higginson's, 
 "To a Young Contributor, " in the last "Atlantic " ! That seems 
 to say all that can be said on that point. Write me all about the 
 progress of your work. One other word, Fred, and very seri- 
 ously. Have you ever thought about your profession? It is 
 almost time to choose. The ministry of Christ needs men ter- 
 ribly; so much to do, so few trained and cultivated men to do it. 
 What do you say ? Write to me about this too, and be sure that 
 all you say shall be to me alone. 
 
 Good-by. God bless you. Phill. 
 
 A few months later Frederick Brooks was honored by an 
 election into the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, and writes 
 to Phillips for advice in regard to the proper thing for a Pud- 
 ding oration. Upon that point the older brother could speak 
 with the force of experience, and con amove : — 
 
 I can only tell you what was the thing in my opinion seven 
 years ago. What new standards a later generation may have set 
 up I can't say. Not local, I should say first of all; that is, not 
 local in its subject or substance. A local allusion here or there 
 of course is a matter of taste, and is well just according as it is 
 well done. 
 
 Light or heavy ? I should say rather not heavy than light, if 
 you see the distinction; there is one. If the best class of Cantabs 
 
394 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 are what they used to be, they have a secret contempt always for 
 a mosaic of puns and prettinesses, such as is often set before them 
 for an oration. Take a good earnest subject. Treat it earnestly 
 without preaching and pleasantly without trifling. 
 
 When is it to come oil? Please write me word that I may 
 make my plans if possible to be there. I bid you welcome into 
 our little fraternity, and shall be glad to sit with you at our musty 
 board and glory once more in my silver spoon. 
 
 Friday, February 21, 1862. 
 
 Dear William, — ... How the good news comes in ! It 
 takes one's breath away — this hearing of place after place going 
 the way of all rascality before the Union arms. We are all 
 jubilant here, and are going to have a great time to-morrow. I 
 am likely enough to have the mayor for a vestryman, and so am 
 going to dine with the celebrities at his house. 
 
 I am mourning over the loss of George's visit. I had been 
 depending on it. I do wish some of you could get on here this 
 winter. I want to show you my parish. It is the liveliest and 
 noblest church I ever saw. I met last night at a party Lieu- 
 tenant Fairfax, of Mason and Slidell notoriety. He is a capital 
 fellow. I had a very interesting talk with him, and he has pro- 
 mised to come and see me. I hope to know him well. I am 
 visiting my new parish industriously; have made about one hun- 
 dred calls since I took charge, and have two hundred left. I am 
 all adrift in a sea of new faces. Give lots of love to all, and 
 let 's hurrah together for each new victory. 
 
 Monday eTeiiing, March 3, 1862. 
 Dear Father, — How long it is since I have written to you ! 
 But if you could have seen my life this last two months I am sure 
 you would forgive me. What with sermons, and lectures, and 
 meetings, and dinings-out, and making five or six hundred new 
 acquaintances, the time has gone very pleasantly, but very hur- 
 riedly. I find the new parish all that it was promised. There 
 is a very great deal of wealth and luxury, but also a large amount 
 of intelligence and refinement as well as of earnestness and de- 
 votion. The church is all taken up, and we are slowly providing 
 for our debt by the sale of pews. Some $3000 has been sold 
 since I took charge. The contributions in these two months are 
 something over $2000. Then we are doing a large work among 
 the poor, over two hundred of them being in our classes and 
 societies. Our meetings are all overcrowded, especially our 
 Wednesday evening lectures, for which our lecture room is much 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 395 
 
 too small. I tell you this to let you see that in spite of the 
 " Sunday Dispatch " there is something worth while going on in 
 Holy Trinity. We hope to do more when we get thoroughly 
 used to each other. 
 
 My new rooms are delightful and the house is pleasant. I do 
 most sincerely hope that you will be able to run on in the spring 
 and give your boy a look. I had an old St. Paul's face in my 
 congregation the other day, Mr. Amos A. Lawrence. He came 
 to see me after the service. How well the war goes on, but now 
 the elements are against us once again, and I am afraid the great 
 Virginia "Advance " will suffer from this frightful weather. 
 
 I rejoice in George's prospects, though I am much disappointed 
 not to get his visit. I hope it is the opening of great things for 
 him. 
 
 I am very well, never better in my life ; a little blue and tired 
 now and then, but on the whole happy and prosperous. 
 
 Tell Mother I am sorry that she writes so little. Love to 
 aunt Susan and the rest. Affectionately, 
 
 Phillips. 
 
 His mother's letters were not so frequent as when he was 
 at Alexandria. She was at this time concentrating her inter- 
 est and anxiety upon George, the third son, who had not 
 yet been confirmed. For years she had been praying and 
 working for this great consummation, and George, who had 
 reached the age of twenty -three, gave no sign of an awakening 
 to the things of religion. But his mother was also deeply 
 stirred, as was every member of the family, by the reports 
 which were brought to Boston through friends who had been 
 visiting Philadelphia, and who went with great expectations 
 to hear the young preacher. The universal praise and 
 homage he seemed to be receiving gave his father and mo- 
 ther a sense of disquietude lest some injury should be done to 
 his character. His mother now wrote: "I am glad you are 
 prospering so well in your church. I hope you will always 
 be faithful and Minhh. Sometimes, I fear, Philly, that the 
 praises of your friends will make you proud, for you are 
 human; but do not let it. Remember how humble your 
 Master was." His father was also moved to warn him 
 against the evils of flattery. "You are in a dangerous situa- 
 tion for a young man, and I cannot help warning you of it. 
 
396 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 Keep your simplicity and your earnestness, above all your 
 devotion to your Master's cause, and don't let these flattering 
 demonstrations you see about you withdraw you from them. 
 Keep on in the even tenor of your ways, so that when there 
 is a lull in the excitement it will find jou the same." To 
 these appeals he responds : — 
 
 Wednesday, March 12, 1862. 
 Deae Father, — I was very glad to get your letter and have 
 just time to answer it before I go to lecture. I thank you for 
 your congratulations and also for your cautions. I hope my let- 
 ters have not looked as if I were getting conceited. You must 
 let me know just as soon as they do. Seriously, though, there is 
 so much to humble one every day in the sense of the imperfections 
 with which the work is done, that it seems to me there is but 
 little chance for a man to get puffed up with the mere outward 
 manifestations of success. I am abundantly and devoutly thank- 
 ful for all the fruits I see, but they are so out of proportion to the 
 needs and capacities of the field that there is enough to humiliate 
 as well as to elate. 
 
 Thursday niorning, 13th. 
 
 I didn't get through my letter after all, but was interrupted 
 and occupied all the rest of the evening both before and after 
 lecture. How the news comes in this morning from the war ! It 
 seems rather hard to understand as yet. Either there is a gen- 
 eral cave of the great rebellion, or else they are laying deeper 
 plots than ever before. We shall see in a few days now. What 
 a narrow escape we had in the Merrimac affair. . . . 
 
 Yours affectionately, Phillips. 
 
 He was now launched on the stream of a great and grow- 
 ing popularity, which was to gain new momentum with each 
 increasing year. His mother discerned the coming great- 
 ness. She writes to him : " What a delightful work you 
 are engaged in, and you seem so happy in it! No wonder. 
 How different it seems from my life's work, so humble and 
 so laborious. But far be it from me to complain, while God 
 is honoring me in letting my children preach his glorious 
 gospel. I wish He would call every one of them for his ser- 
 vants." But she was not unconscious that she had some share 
 in the result, that the contribution she had made to his moral 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 397 
 
 and religious training was vital and indispensable. She 
 encloses a short extract from a newspaper, which may have 
 more than one application : a prospective look for him, as 
 well as retrospective in her own case : — 
 
 It is often a matter of surprise that distinguished men have 
 such inferior children and that a great name is seldom perpetu- 
 ated. The secret of this is often evident : the mothers have beeix 
 inferior, — ^mere ciphers in the scale of existence. All the splen- 
 did advantages procured hy wealth and the father's position can- 
 not supply this one deficiency in the mother, who gives character 
 to the child. 
 
 A communication written for the " Christian Times," a 
 church paper published in New York, under the date May 18, 
 1862, gives a picture of one of these impressive services in 
 Holy Trinity Church. It is entitled 
 
 A SUNDAY IN PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 In comparison with the endless whirl and confusion of New 
 York, the quiet of the Sabbath seems ever to reign over Phila- 
 delphia. The Quaker stillness has not gone any more than the 
 Quaker architecture, so prim and so pleasing in its uniform white- 
 ness of steps and shutters, and the plainness of house fronts ; or 
 the Quaker marvels of cleanliness, rendering even the pavements, 
 like the well-scoured floors of Yankee homesteads, fit to serve as 
 tables for meals. And when the Lord's Day comes, as was the 
 case with the pleasant one we lately spent here, how sweet the 
 bridal of the earth and sky in their Sabbath rest. It was a per- 
 fect day of spring, fitted for high and holy thoughts and deeds ; 
 and at its close, as we looked down upon the sight of seventy-nine 
 persons — young, middle-aged, and old — renewing in the pre- 
 sence of a vast congregation their vows of baptism in solemn con- 
 firmation, we felt that it was indeed a high privilege to spend 
 such a Sunday where such sights were to be seen. The place was 
 the stately Church of the Holy Trinity ; and the earnest and elo- 
 quent rector whose first fruits were thus presented to the Lord of 
 the harvest was the Rev. Phillips Brooks. Surely his was an 
 enviable position that day, when at eventide there came forth 
 such numbers as these to attest his devotedness and success. 
 Particularly gratifying was the gathering of the poor as well as 
 of the rich in that throng about the chancel. ... As the newly 
 confirmed turned slowly away from the chancel, the choir, the 
 
398 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 best we ever heard in Philadelphia, gave expression to the deep 
 feeling of many hearts as they rendered most exquisitely the 
 hymn, 
 
 Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 
 Let me hide myself in Thee. 
 
 Another account is furnished by a visitor from New York, 
 who also attempts a pen portrait of Mr. Brooks. Of such 
 portraits there were many, differing from each other, as men 
 differ in their vision and judgment, but alike significant of 
 the conviction that the thrilling presentation of the message 
 was somehow connected with the personality of the preacher. 
 
 Our Sunday [writes this correspondent of the "Christian 
 Times "] was spent both morning and afternoon in attendance 
 upon the ministry of the clerical prodigy of our church, the Rev. 
 Phillips Brooks. And in truth it is no common sight, even in 
 this precocious age, to see so young a man ministering with such 
 ability and acceptableness to a congregation that will rank among 
 the most numerous and influential in the land. ... In appear- 
 ance he is tall and commanding, but not over-graceful; his style 
 of elocution is rapid even to discomfort, many of his glowing 
 periods being lost through the quickness of their utterance. His 
 composition is marked by striking originality and comprehensive- 
 ness. His analysis is clear and simple ; his diction dainty, yet 
 fluent. A rich vein of gospel truth runs through his discourses, 
 and an earnest desire to win souls was apparent in those we heard. 
 The morning text was Rev. xxii. 11: "He that is unjust, let him 
 be unjust still." . . . The afternoon discourse was a complete 
 and most satisfactory analysis of the character of St. Peter. 
 Whether due to Mr. Brooks's personality or the character of the 
 people, we noticed that the church was as well filled in the after- 
 noon as in the morning, — a statement that could hardly be pre- 
 dicated of any of our own churches. 
 
 There is still another newspaper version of these first 
 months in the new rectorship. It is evidently from the same 
 hand that had welcomed him to the Advent, that dismissed 
 him from there with suspicion of his motives, and now uses 
 its ojiportunity to misrepresent the situation. The story of 
 the slippers invented by this writer, which gained a wide cur- 
 rency and was thought amusing, had no foundation in fact. 
 The report from the same source of his engagement in mar- 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 399 
 
 riage was untrue, but it travelled far and wide, causing em- 
 barrassment to himself and to his friends at home. This was 
 the paragraph as it appeared in a Philadelphia paper : — 
 
 Parson Brooks of Holy Trinity Church is a lucky fellow. It 
 was a good move in the parson to vacate the Advent and to take 
 up his abode with the aristocratic denizens of the West End. 
 The ladies of Holy Trinity adore Brooks. They declare he is a 
 love of a man, and picture his good qualities with a good deal of 
 vim. Notwithstanding Brooks is pledged in marriage to a lady 
 in New York, our fair damsels are in no way dismayed. How 
 Brother Brooks resists the attentions so liberally bestowed upon 
 him by our beautiful daughters we cannot comprehend. But 
 report says he is gradually caving in. Brother Brooks has been 
 the fortunate recipient of one hundred and fifty pairs of slippers, 
 numberless collars, hemstitched handkerchiefs, neckties, and those 
 articles generally found in a gentleman's furnishing store. 
 
 Thus early had Mr. Brooks become subject to that petty 
 personal criticism, which he afterwards spoke of as one of the 
 most insidious of the attacks made upon a clergyman's inde- 
 pendence. The report that he was engaged to be married 
 was so widespread and persistent that at last his father wrote 
 to know the truth regarding it. In his business way he gave 
 him advice, — ■ not to be in a hurry, to consider and weigh the 
 matter carefully, to take time, nothing would be lost by 
 waiting, keep his freedom and independence a while longer; 
 he would be better pleased if it were postponed for the pre- 
 sent. As Mr. Brooks felt no call to the single life, he may 
 have been contemplating the possibility of marriage, but 
 there was no truth whatever in the reports of his engagement. 
 He promised to let his family know whenever so great an 
 event in his experience was imminent. 
 
 In the spring of this year, 1862, his father made a visit to 
 him to see with his own eyes the situation. He found his 
 son complaining that under such heavy pressure of duties and 
 responsibilities, social and ecclesiastical, no time was afforded 
 for study. The life he was leading was unnatural, and could 
 not go on at such a pace without disaster. An arrangement 
 was made by which he secured a room at the church, where 
 
400 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 he could retreat and be with himself. It was something 
 gained, but his feeling of readiness to be at the beck and call 
 of every one who wanted or needed him was the great 
 obstacle to be overcome. His strongest desire was to be a 
 student ; he was distressed at the way things were going, but 
 there was a conflict within and without. For the time being 
 the practical administration of his large parish claimed his 
 attention and his strength. 
 
 Saturday, March 22, 1862. 
 
 Dear William, — I leave off a few minutes in the middle of 
 a sermon that I may not fail of my duty to you again. . . . 
 Things slip along so quietly here that there is little or no news 
 to tell. The church is going finely, quite as promising as ever. 
 We are selling our pews rapidly now that all are rented, and 
 there is no chance for newcomers except to buy. Our Lent ser- 
 vices are well attended. I have removed our Wednesday evening 
 lectures from the lecture room to the church, and last Wednesday 
 evening we had the church full. I hope there is good doing. 
 
 I am at work now on a sermon for to-morrow night before the 
 anniversary of the Children's Home, which is to be held in our 
 church (text Matt. xxv. 40). I am ashamed to say it is the first 
 sermon since my Introductory which I have written since I came 
 to Holy Trinity. 
 
 Wendell Phillips has been lecturing here this week. I could n't 
 hear him. He has made quite a sensation. What do you think 
 of the war now? It seems to be "Marching On." I wish they 
 would let McClellan alone, to give him a chance. He knows 
 what he is about. 
 
 I am beginning to look forward to next summer vacation. I 
 hope to have a good long one, as they are talking of going to 
 work to partially finish the church. I am going to give most of 
 it to the White Mountains. Are you ready ? 
 
 Affectionately, Phill. 
 
 Vestry Room, CmrKCH of Holt Tkotitt, 
 Philadelphia, Saturday, April 5, 1862. 
 Dear William, — I have been trying to write a sermon this 
 morning, but can't do it. It is so doleful and gloomy outside 
 that I can't get up any kind of zest within, and they must put up 
 with an old sermon for to-morrow night. We were in May yes- 
 terday, and are back in March to-day. A dull cold rain with 
 nothing to cheer it up. Not even good news from the war. When 
 are they coming? I have faith, plenty of it, in McClellan, but I 
 
MT. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 401 
 
 do wish he 'd do something; still we shall see what we shall see 
 to-day or to-morrow, I trust. 
 
 I hope to go off for a week after Lent is over. I mean to run 
 down to Washington to see how things look there, that is, unless 
 our army is driven back before that time, and Jeff is throned in 
 the capital. In that case look for me in Boston instead. The 
 church still goes on busily and pleasantly. There is work enough 
 to do, — more than I anticipated, — but it is pleasant work, and 
 perhaps when I have been longer at it and got it a little more 
 systematic there won't be so much. Our Confirmation is fixed for 
 the 18th of May, and I am just beginning to get ready for that. 
 
 When his mother heard of his plan to go to Washington, 
 she protested with all a woman's heart. She was nervous 
 about the dangers he would encounter; she had heard alarm- 
 ing rumors of diseases contracted by those who had made 
 these flying visits. 
 
 AprU 29, 1862. 
 
 Dear Father, — I have been to Washington and got back 
 safe. No cholera, no typhus, no anything. I had a very in- 
 teresting time, saw all there was to be seen, and although there 
 is no army in that region now, yet the forts and camps and the 
 general look of the country on the other side of the Potomac are 
 very interesting. Our old seminary is a hospital now, and the 
 place is terribly altered. The woods are all cut down, fences 
 gone, and the roads completely obliterated. The whole country 
 for miles around is trodden down with a perfect desolation. 
 Everybody in Washington seems sure of ultimate success, and the 
 news of this morning is certainly a great step forward. . . . 
 
 Affectionately, Phillips. 
 
 Saturday, May .3. 1862. 
 Dear William, ■ — Great news this week. New Orleans and 
 Fort Macon taken. McClellan pressing on to Yorktown, and 
 Father coming on to Philadelphia. Next week, what with his visit 
 and the occupation of Richmond by our troops, promises to be 
 quite an eventful time. I am rejoiced that father is coming just 
 now. The city is looking its very best, and this spring air is 
 glorious. I want him to see our church before it begins to break 
 up for the summer. So start him off if he is n't off already. . . . 
 
 Saturday morning', May 17, 1862. 
 My dear William, — I got your congratulations on Norfolk, 
 written on the outside of your last letter. Perhaps before this is 
 
402 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 sent I may have to write "Richmond" on the envelope. Isn't 
 it great the way things are going and the way the war will be 
 over by Independence Day ? What do you think of Hunter's 
 proclamation ? 
 
 I have been very busy lately, looking forward to Confirmation. 
 It comes to-morrow afternoon. I have eighty names on the list. 
 After this week I hope to have rather more leisure. 
 
 We are in the midst of most magniiicent spring weather. 
 Warm and bright and beautiful. 
 
 May 31, 1862. 
 
 Deab William, — I have just seen Dr. Vinton off for New 
 York. He has been spending several days here, and I have been 
 with him a good deal. I shall quite miss him. This has been our 
 Convention week — the city flooded with white cravats and the 
 cliurch in a tumult with great long-winded debates that never 
 seemed to come to anytliing. Still it went off very well. I am 
 glad that Father enjoyed his visit here. I am sure we all did 
 exceedingly. 
 
 How the boys are carrying everything before them at school. 
 . . . Congratulate them for me, and tell them to take care. 
 There is sucli a tiling as overdoing it. 
 
 So Banks is where he was six months ago ! Somebody has got 
 bad mismanagement to answer for there. Who is it? Stanton? 
 And Corinth is evacuated and Richmond will be taken in a week 
 or ten days. What a time your governor has been in. I liked 
 liis letter to Stanton, but he seems to have been a good deal 
 scared afterwards. 
 
 The great event in the spring of 1862 was the movement of 
 General McClellan from his winter quarters and his advance 
 upon Richmond. His inactivity had sorely tried the faith 
 and patience of the peojjle, but it was then considered the 
 orthodox attitiule to believe in him. The popular imagina- 
 tion had made him a leader and a hero, and it resented any 
 criticism which detracted from his supposed merit or saw any 
 defect in his method. In this feeling Mr. Brooks also 
 shared, as is shown in his letters, which reflect the picture 
 of the moment, with its hopes of a great immediate victory 
 which should bring the war to an end. While this victory 
 was still deferred, other events sustained the popular faith, 
 though their relation to the end of the war seemed remote, 
 ■ — the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, the battle of 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 403 
 
 Shiloh, and the taking of Corinth (May, 1862), which gave to 
 the North the greater part of the Mississippi River, threat- 
 ening the South with the loss of Tennessee, Alabama, and 
 Mississippi. General Grant was now first heard of in the 
 West. His name had not yet become familiar to the people, 
 but the battle of Pittsburg Landing revealed his character and 
 method, — the record of killed, wounded, and missing was 
 24,000. While these events were occurring, Mr. Brooks 
 made his first visit to Niagara Falls. 
 
 Monday evening-, June 16, 1862. 
 My dear William, — I am late this week, but you must lay 
 it down to the press and rush consequent on getting home from 
 a week's absence. All last week I was away on a Niagara trip. 
 Mr. Coffin, my warden, was with us. We left early Monday 
 morning, and went to New York, where we spent the day, and at 
 five o'clock took the Hudson River cars for Albany. You know 
 how beautiful that ride is, but I had never been over it before, 
 and enjoyed it intensely. We spent the night in Albany at the 
 Delevan House, and the next morning were off early by the N. Y. 
 Central, for the Falls. The ride across New York State was not 
 particularly interesting, and we were glad to get to the Suspen- 
 sion Bridge in the evening. We went at once across, and up to 
 the Clifton House, where for the first time in my life I found my- 
 self on other than Uncle Samuel's Farm. It was dark when we 
 got there, and so I slept all night with the roar of the cataract, 
 which I had not yet seen, preparing me for the morning sight. 
 When I woke up, full in the view from my room window, there 
 it was ! Greater than any dream I ever formed of it. More 
 wonderful and awful than any sight I had supposed our world 
 could furnish. Of the next two days I can't tell you much. 
 They were spent in an incessant wandering, learning the miracle 
 from every point of view, — under the falls and over the falls, up 
 the river and down the river, from the Bridge and the Island and 
 the Tower, and what is after all the view I remember most 
 vividly, — that grand sweep that you see from the front piazza of 
 the Clifton House. We went everywhere, and got ourselves full 
 of the glory and beauty of Niagara. The most wonderful thing 
 to me, I think, was the color, both of the falls and of the river, 
 its changes, and depths, and brilliancy. I never knew what 
 water was before. The last day of our stay was at the Cataract 
 House, though we had been over on that side before. On Friday 
 
404 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 afternoon we left for Philadelphia, coming by way of Buffalo, 
 and Elmira, and Williamsburg, and Reading, over the famous 
 Catawissa road whose scenery is more marvellous than any railroad 
 in the land. It was a splendid day's ride on Saturday, reaching 
 home about seven in the evening. Nov.- you have got my last 
 week in full. 
 
 I shall leave here two weeks from to-day and probably com.e 
 right to Boston. I have about given up the idea of going to 
 Newport. I don't care much about it, and want to have as much 
 time as possible at home before I go to the mountains. So look 
 for me probably two weeks from to-morrow morning, and then 
 "What Larks! " AfEectionately, 
 
 Phill. 
 
 The impression made upon him by the vision of Niagara 
 was so vivid, and his whole nature so deeply stirred, that he 
 burst into song once more, as in his days at the seminary. 
 These lines from the sonnet which he was moved to write 
 express the feeling which the experience created. The mes- 
 sage to his soul was an incentive to higher moral consecra- 
 tion : — ■ 
 
 I would not be the thing which I have been, 
 
 Christ, whose truth once spoke from winds and seas. 
 
 Hast thou not still for wretchedness and sin. 
 
 Some message speaking out of scenes like these? 
 
 After six months of hard labor in his new position, he left 
 Philadelphia on the 30th of June for his well-earned vaca- 
 tion. To this he had looked forward with the eagerness of a 
 schoolboy, to whom the holiday is the most real part of his 
 existence. Something of this feeling inhered in Phillips 
 Brooks throughout his life. Hitherto his vacations had been 
 spent chiefly at home or in the vicinity of Boston, varied by 
 excursions to the old homestead in North Andover, where his 
 grandmother and his mother's sisters still resided. This 
 year his holiday was a more elaborate one ; he made his iirst 
 visit to the White Mountains. On the way to Boston he 
 stopped at Newport, si:)ending a week with one of his parish- 
 ioners. While there he heard the evil news of the defeat of 
 McClellan before Eichmond. Reaching Boston on the 8th 
 
^T. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 405 
 
 of July, he began at once to take lessons in riding. He felt 
 the necessity for some more agreeable form of physical exer- 
 cise than the gymnasium, which he had abandoned aftei' a 
 short trial in Philadelphia. For some reason he did not like 
 walking, or at any rate could not be induced to practise it 
 as a regular mode of exercise. Each day that he sjDent in 
 Boston records a ride on horseback. He went out to Cam- 
 bridge on Commencement Day, the 16th of July, meeting 
 his classmates, revelling in the associations of those years 
 when his spirit had first awakened to the richness and ful- 
 ness of the intellectual life. The Phi Beta Kappa oration 
 was delivered by George William Curtis, and the dinner fol- 
 lowed in Harvard Hall. Then there came a week at Pom- 
 fret, Conn., with Dr. Vinton in his summer home, where 
 there was much theological talk, inevitable where Dr. Vinton 
 was present. Here, too, he preached as he had done at 
 Newport; from preaching it was imjDossible that he should 
 escape. 
 
 Returning to Boston he spent several days with his family, 
 in the dear familiar way, the last time that the family would 
 meet as an unbroken whole. Already the mother's heart 
 was heavy with anxiety, for George Brooks was intend- 
 ing to enlist as a soldier. The future looked dark, after 
 McClellan's defeat with heavy slaughter; but Boston was 
 girding itself anew to the fearful task, no longer under 
 any illusions about McClellan, or fond anticipations that the 
 end of the struggle was near. Instead of dreaming of an 
 easy victory over the South, it began to look as though the 
 South might prolong the contest indefinitely, if not finally 
 secure its independence. A great meeting had been held at 
 Faneuil Hall, to aid in the work of enlistment, where Edward 
 Everett was one of the speakers, and Phillips Brooks was 
 present to hear. The excitement was intense, and under 
 these motives, that the need was pressing and that the call 
 had come to him, George Brooks enlisted as a soldier. 
 
 With his friends Richards and Strong Mr. Brooks left 
 for the White Mountains on August 4, to make the tour, 
 not so common then as it is now, when it was a notable 
 
4o6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 event in the lives of the three friends. The lessons in horse- 
 back riding proved of practical service. But he did his share 
 of mountain-climbing with the others, going up Mount Sus- 
 pense and Mount Hayes to get his first view of the billowy 
 mountain tops in what seemed like an ocean of mountains. 
 His headquarters were at the Glen House. He notes in his 
 diary the effect upon him of the extensive views and the 
 exquisite landscape. In the course of their wanderings the 
 party was increased by the arrival of his friend, Mr. Cooper, 
 from Philadelphia, and of his brother William, from Boston. 
 Here is his record for the day in which the trip culminated : 
 
 August 12. Tuesday. Six A. m. Started on a great trip. 
 Climbed Madison, crossed its two summits, dined between Madi- 
 son and Adams, climbed Adams, crossed Jefferson and Clay, and 
 arrived at Tip-top House (Mt. Washington) at 12.30 A. m. 
 Tired out. 
 
 Wednesday, 13. Walked down Washington by carriage road ; 
 spent the rest of the day at the Glen, resting. 
 
 In the " Kemembrances of Phillips Brooks by Two 
 Friends," already referred to, Mr. Richards has given some 
 interesting details of this exhausting tramp : — • 
 
 Starr King's exuberant volume, his rhapsody on the "White 
 Hills," had just been issued, and inspired us to do what was then 
 rarely done, what was known as " going over the Peaks, " though 
 strictly it was going over the northern Peaks from Madison to 
 Washington. There were no defined paths, no "painted trails," 
 and guides were few. We secured a man, a farmer in the sum- 
 mer and hunter in the winter, from the neighborhood of the Glen 
 House, who was said to know the way. At half past six one fine 
 July morning, we started from the hotel, went a couple of miles 
 or so on the road toward Gorham, then struck across the valley 
 and up the mountain side. It was very steep, with much fallen 
 timber flung helter-skelter, in the fashion known to mountaineers 
 as "Jack Straws." Lifting ourselves over a huge log, we would 
 sink to our middle in deep beds of moss. The sun was fierce, the 
 air close, the black flies vigilant. It was discouraging for fair 
 pedestrians to be told on reaching timber line, after six hours' 
 severe labor, that they had walked from the road perhaps a mile 
 and a half. 
 
 For the first part of the day Brooks took his share of the work 
 
MT. 26] HOLY TRINITY CHURCH 407 
 
 as well as any of us. We had reached open rock and fresher 
 air. It was blowing half a hurricane ; we had meant to make 
 two days' leisurely work of the trip, camping at the base of Jeffer- 
 son. But our guide insisted that the wind was too high, and 
 the temperature too low, to make camping safe for heated and 
 tired men. We must push forward. It was sunset as we stood 
 on the peak of Jefferson, and saw the Carter Mountains rimmed 
 with prismatic colors across the Great Gulf. There was still two 
 or three hours of good work before us. Somewhere here. Brooks, 
 who in those days needed double rations and had only been pro- 
 vided for on the scale of smaller men, began to flag. He could 
 go no farther. He implored us not to wait for him, but to leave 
 him anywhere under the shelter of a rock, with a shawl, for the 
 night. It is needless to say that nobody would hear of this. 
 Spui-red on by our entreaties, he would struggle on for a few 
 minutes and then fling himself exhausted down for a long rest. 
 Night came on; we lost our way. The guide and the compass 
 expressed different opinions. At last we guessed what was the 
 trouble with Brooks; some of us fortunately had an egg or two in 
 reserve ; by careful feeding and patient resting he presently gained 
 a little strength ; the moon rose, the wind was in our favor, get- 
 ting under our packs and boosting us up the last stiff climb, and 
 at a little after midnight we reached the Tip-top House. We 
 threw ourselves on the office floor, for every bed was taken, and 
 we found oilcloth as slumberous as feathers. Afterwards with 
 my brother, on the Alps, Brooks showed much endui'ance, going 
 anywhere afoot and tiring lighter men. 
 
 The remaining days in tte White Mountains were spent 
 at North Conway. The ascent of Kearsarge was made on 
 foot; other expeditions followed, some of them laborious, and 
 the result was finally a sjirained ankle, which brought his 
 tramp to a close. Twice before, while in Virginia, the same 
 accident had hajopened. He returned at once to Boston, 
 where he was confined to the house, whiling away the time 
 till he should be able to walk, before he returned to his work 
 in Philadelphia. He read Max Miiller on the "Science of 
 Lang-uage," Henry Kingsley's novels, Taylor's "St. Clem- 
 ent's Eve," Theodore Winthrop's "Edwin Brothertoft," Mrs. 
 Putnam's "Tragedy of Success," Browning's "Colombe's 
 Birthday," — most of it light reading, but indicating his 
 tendency to read v/hat every one else was reading. As soon 
 
4o8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 as lie was able to walk, he made his way to the Athen»um 
 Library, and haunted the bookstores. Boston always stirred 
 him with a desire to buy books; he now gratified his incli- 
 nation, making many additions to his library, which was 
 already assuming large proportions. On the 11th of Sej)- 
 tember he went back to his parish. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1862 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR. LINCOLN'S PROCLAMATION. THE FAMILY 
 LIFE. GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 
 It would seem as if Mr. Brooks should have been left un- 
 disturbed in his large parish, after accomplishing the removal 
 to it from the Church of the Advent with so much difficulty. 
 But soon after his return he was "approached" with refer- 
 ence to St. Paul's Church, Brookline, near Boston, then 
 vacant by the removal of Dr. Stone to the Philadelphia 
 Divinity School. The invitation to one of the most beauti- 
 ful of the suburbs of Boston could not have been without 
 its attractions: an exquisite church built by Upjohn, and 
 regarded as one of his most successful works; a parish 
 strong and devoted, which counted among other members 
 the Lawrences, the Amorys, and the Winthrops, — a quiet 
 rural parish, free from the excitement and rush of the large 
 city, with ample opportunity for the intellectual culture he 
 hungered for, near his family also, in the midst of all dear 
 associations. The call to Brookline was the first intimation 
 that Boston was beginning to feel the strength of its claim 
 upon one of its own children. This opportunity declined, 
 New York put in its case. In the fall of this year, 1862, 
 there came an invitation to the rectorship) of Christ Church 
 on Fifth Avenue. Plere too the opportunity was represented 
 to be great, as undoubtedly it was. Dr. Heman Dyer, who 
 knew more about the openings in the church for growth and 
 influence than any one else, but who knew quite as well the 
 situation in Philadelphia and the feeling towards Mr. Brooks 
 in his new parish of which he had been the rector not yet a 
 year, advised the acceptance of the call to New York. He 
 
4IO PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 probably reasoned tliat the young preacher was destined in 
 the nature of the case eventually to turn up in the metropolis, 
 where all things great must centre, and if he was to come 
 there ultimately he might as well come there at once. But 
 this call was also declined promptly and without much con- 
 sideration. There were causes of dissatisfaction in Mr. 
 Brooks's mind with his position in Philadelphia, as will be 
 seen hereafter, but these would only have been aggravated by 
 exchanging it for New York. 
 
 Mr. Brooks had evidently returned to Philadelphia with 
 the determination to rescue all the time at his disposal for 
 the purpose of study and of sermon-writing. He now kept 
 his room at the church every morning, bent on systematic 
 reading, and almost every week records his written sermon. 
 This year and the two following years were fruitful in ser- 
 mons. He was not a prolific sermon-writer. Many clergy- 
 men could count up at the close of their ministry more 
 written sermons than he has left. His sermons cost him 
 prolonged effort; above all they demanded moods of creative 
 activity, which were not continuous. Such a creative period 
 was that from 1862 to 1865. During these years he lived at 
 high intellectual tension, while his whole being was wound 
 up to the greatest activity as he followed the events of the 
 war. To those who knew Philadelphia in those days, there 
 was nothing more wonderfid in all his career than the utter- 
 ances he poured forth so richlj% apparently without effort, 
 Sunday after Sunday, never disappointing his vast congrega- 
 tion or falling below himself. One of his youthful hearers, 
 who was then a student in the University of Pennsylvania, 
 and who heard him frequently, the Kev. William Wilber- 
 force Newton, has described the scene : — 
 
 After these days when the young preacher was a power, 
 throned like a king in the pulpit, which had been built for his old 
 friend and pastor, Dr. Vinton, and when the boys, whose eyes 
 like those of Balaam were opened, were now in college, looking 
 forward to their own coming ministry, how many and how helpful 
 were the hours stolen from routine duties, when sitting by the 
 door of the church on Rittenhouse Square, they listened to the 
 voice and drank in the full, deep inspiration of that nobly 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 41 1 
 
 anointed nature. Many a Sunday afternoon when the wide doors 
 of that church were thrown back, and the crowds flocked out into 
 the open air, it seemed to those listeners coming out into the 
 street again as if the very heavens were on fire, not because the 
 sun was setting across the Schuylkill, but because the preacher had 
 projected a light into the open sky of the heavens, — the light of 
 the mystic, the light of the prophet, the light which never was on 
 Eea or land. 
 
 Even at this early moment in his history the recognition 
 of his character, of his transparent honesty and sincerity, 
 had won the confidence of his hearers to such an extent that 
 anything he might say in the pulpit gained an increased 
 force from the weight of his personality. Even if he said 
 but little, or repeated what was familiar, or stammered under 
 the consciousness of lack of preparation, yet he still exerted 
 a charm by his appearance ; the mysterious force of his inner 
 being went forth undiminished to fascinate those who listened 
 to him. A clergyman who went to hear him for the first 
 time became convinced as the address proceeded that the 
 preacher was unprepared, and was struggling with great 
 difficulty, talking somewhat at random if not incoherently. 
 But as he came away after the service was over he heard 
 around him the usual plaudits of delight and satisfaction. 
 Afterwards when he came to know Mr. Brooks he asked 
 him if he had been right in surmising that on this occasion, 
 which he recalled, there were not some lack of preparation. 
 The answer was that up to the last moment before going to 
 church he had depended on Dr. Vinton to preach for him. 
 But Dr. Vinton had felt indisposed, had left him in the 
 lurch, telling him it would be good discipline for Lent; and 
 struggle as he might, he found he could not get into the sub- 
 ject he had hastily chosen for his address. 
 
 The autumn months of 1862 were the darkest in the 
 whole history of the war. McClellan had been outgeneralled, 
 his large army defeated with immense loss of life, while the 
 Southern forces, gaining new hope and energy, had begun to 
 act on the offensive, carrying the war into the North and 
 threatening the capital. The prospect of bringing the war 
 
412 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 to an end by the capture of Richmond vanished into the 
 remote future. If it was to be done at all, it could only be 
 accomplished by the conquest of the whole Southern terri- 
 tory, the Northern army gradually closing in upon the Con- 
 federate capital from the west and south as well as from 
 the north. To do this, required not only the indefinite pro- 
 longation of the war, but must be attended by an af)palling 
 slaughter of human lives. The total loss in the engage- 
 ments between the two armies which had ended in the defeat 
 of McClellan (June 26-July 2, 1862) was 36,000 men, and 
 this was but a foretaste of greater destruction yet to come. 
 It is not to be wondered at that the country trembled at the 
 prospect, or that many in the North who had hitherto suj)- 
 ported the war should draw back, seeking some compromise 
 by which the slaughter, too terrible to be contemplated, 
 might be averted, even at the expense of Southern independ- 
 ence. The Brooks family had now yielded up one of its 
 members as a contribution to the great cause, and all the 
 more intense was its sympathy, its agony, as the melancholy 
 situation became more evident. The spirit with which 
 George Brooks had enlisted is indicated in a j^assage from 
 a letter to his mother : " One thing you may be sure of, I 
 shall try to do all my duty to my God and my country. Do 
 not fear for me, but do as you promised you would, and as I 
 hope I have done myself : commit me entirely to God, keep- 
 ing trust in Him and the blessed Saviour whatever may 
 ha^jpen." 
 
 At this time President Lincoln was contemplating his 
 Proclamation of the Emancipation of the slaves. It was to be 
 a war measure and justified solely on that ground, not on 
 any principle of the inherent wrong and evil of slavery. The 
 object of the war was the preservation of the Union. If it 
 would embarrass the South in the prosecution of its purpose 
 to free the slaves, then the act of Emancipation would be 
 justified. On political grounds it might have been ques- 
 tioned whether such an act would be constitutional. As 
 a war measure, put forth in an emergency, it assumed a 
 different asjject. 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 413 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had turned the question over in his mind, 
 not as a reformer, but as a statesman. He saw clearly that 
 such a proclamation would unite the North and stimulate its 
 energy to pursue the conflict. The reformers who demanded 
 the abolition of slavery on abstract principles of right would 
 be appeased, while others who were indifferent to the moral 
 issue would regard it as an effective stroke for the accom- 
 plishment of the great end, the integrity of the nation. To 
 have put forth his Proclamation immediately after the dis- 
 astrous defeat of the Northern army before Richmond would 
 have been impolitic, — ■ a cry of distress or an acknowledg- 
 ment of inability on the part of the Union forces to cope 
 with the enemy on equal terms. He therefore held back his 
 Proclamation until some victory of Union arms should consti- 
 tute a more fitting opportunity. On September 22, 1862, 
 the public announcement was made that on the first day of 
 January, 1863, the slaves should be declared free in every 
 part of the country at war with the United States. With 
 this Proclamation, Phillips Brooks was inspired to a more 
 complete identification of himself with the issues of the 
 war. 
 
 Notwithstanding the duties and burdens of his large 
 parish, he not only wrote frequently to his father and main- 
 tained his custom of sending every week a sort of family let- 
 ter to his older brother, but he enlarged bis correspondence 
 to include his younger brothers, George and Frederick. His 
 attitude was that of one always conscious of his membership 
 in the family as if it were still his most important relation- 
 ship; he was one of the home circle on a temporary absence. 
 He had not outgrown the child life in becoming a man. In- 
 deed, the sense of the dearness and beauty of the home life 
 grew stronger as he now contemplated it from a distance. 
 After the enlistment of George Brooks, the two brothers came 
 into the closest mutual confidence. 
 
 The prospect of the war was of course the uppermost theme 
 in the long correspondence. The letters of Phillips Brooks 
 are in harmony with the popular sentiment in regard to 
 McClellan. That was one of the leading traits of his char- 
 
414 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 acter all his life, that he never failed to share in these 
 popular convictions, sheathing his critical faculty where the 
 people's faith was concerned, clinging even to those faiths 
 when evidence was against them, and reluctant to let them 
 go. He found it hard to give up his faith in McClellan, 
 thinking that if he had only been let alone he might have 
 done the great things which were expected of him. 
 
 Philadelphia, Septemter 12, 1862. 
 
 Dear William, — - Safe back again, settled down in my old 
 place, and finding it hard to realize that it was only yesterday 
 evening that we were all grouped around the back-parlor table, 
 eating our pears, and John his apples. We had a very pleasant 
 night on the Sound, but did not get to New York till eight 
 o'clock, and bad to wait till the ten o'clock train for Philadelphia, 
 so that I did not arrive here till the middle of the afternoon. 
 Found everything here a good deal excited ; troops starting o£E for 
 Harrisburg under the governor's orders, and some people trying to 
 make out that Philadelphia is in danger. Of this latter, however, 
 there is no fear, and business, with the exception of the with- 
 drawal of a great many men for military service, goes on as usual. 
 Every one is counting much on the heavy rain of last night, which 
 has made a tremendous flood, and it is hoped has hemmed in the 
 enemy between impassable rivers. At any rate everybody here is 
 confident and full of faith in the government and in McClellan. 
 
 Tell Fred tbat I met Dr. Mitchell at Newport, and came on 
 with him. . . . He gave me an account from Dr. McClellan, the 
 general's brother, of the general's behavior during his late sup- 
 pression and of his relations to Stanton,^ which I promised him 
 not to repeat, but which sounds very reasonable, and certainly 
 makes General McClellan out to be a very noble man. 
 
 So vacation 's over, and we 're back at work again! Have n't 
 we had a nice time! Next summer we '11 do it over again. 
 
 Philadelphia, Monday evening, September 1.5, 1862. 
 Dearest Mother, — I feel homesick to-night, and you shall 
 have the advantage, or the disadvantage, of it in the shape of a 
 letter. Besides, I want to congratulate you on the good news 
 which we have been getting all day, and which has relieved a great 
 many anxious minds in Pennsylvania.^ All has been very excited 
 
 ^ Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War. 
 
 ^ The collapse of Lee's inva.sion of Maryland, which threatened the city of 
 Philadelphia if it were successful. 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 415 
 
 since my return — troops ofE for Harrisburg all the time, and every- 
 body drilling. It is hard to think that we have been in such 
 danger as some people imagine, but no doubt all the precautions 
 taken were wise, and the enthusiasm they have stirred up will do 
 much to help on enlistment. Almost all the able-bodied men of 
 my church are off to Harrisburg. 
 
 I am comfortably fixed in my rooms again, and for the present 
 am the only boarder in the house. I rather like it ; have my 
 meals alone and when I please, and am generally more independ- 
 ent than when the house was full. That wedding came off on 
 Saturday morning. All went well; fee $20. Yesterday I 
 preached all day ; very good congregations, although the excite- 
 ment was intense, and made the day a very distracted one. I 
 went home after service, and took tea and spent the evening at 
 Mr. Cooper's. My church is wholly done and very beautiful. 
 The painting is splendidly executed and all in good taste. Every- 
 body seems to like it. The people are still largely out of town, 
 and our congregations yesterday were much made up of strangers. 
 
 My ankle has given no trouble, and seems perfectly well. I 
 suppose George has gone into camp to-day. I shall depend on 
 seeing him as he goes through here. My warmest love to him, 
 and please send me his camp address. . . . Give lots of love to 
 everybody, and keep twice as much for yourself from 
 
 Your affectionate boy, Phillips. 
 
 His interest in the war would have led him to accept a 
 chaplaincy if it had been offered to him. He expected an 
 appointment, but why it failed to be made does not appear. 
 His father was aware of the plan and dissuaded him from it. 
 But these paternal remonstrances were made in the expecta- 
 tion that the son would obey his own sense of duty. 
 
 Philadelphia, Friday evening-, September 19, 1862. 
 
 Deae Father, — I am much obliged to you for your letter of 
 Tuesday which I was very glad to get. It seems so much more 
 than a single week since I got back here. . . . We are still 
 sending off to Harrisburg and Hagerstown, though it would seem 
 as if the necessity were about over now. Very many of my con- 
 gregation have gone, and I suppose I shall have to preach almost 
 entirely to the females for the present. A great many families 
 are still out of town. We shall not be fairly under way again 
 till the middle of next month. 
 
 So the rebels, as we hear to-night, have got off again in 
 
41 6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 Virginia. I am sorry for it, for I have been in hopes that they 
 were going to make an end of them in Maryland. Then Harper's 
 Ferry was a bad business, and so is this which we hear to-day 
 from Mumfordville. Still McClellan has won a victory, and we 
 are a little nearer the end than we were. I heard yesterday that 
 I was to be asked to the chaplaincy of a new regiment now rais- 
 ing here. If I am I think I shall go. I should like very much 
 to see George in his camp life. I mean to write to him as soon 
 as I get his address. Give my love to him, and tell him the 
 Volunteer Refreshment Saloon is in full blast. We are having 
 warm weather, but it is very pleasant, and people look so much 
 more cheerful these last few days that we begin to feel as if we 
 might get through one of these days after all. Please write soon 
 again. Your affectionate son, 
 
 Phillips. 
 
 It was a question much discussed, concerning wLicli also 
 opinion in the North was greatly divided, whether the object 
 of the war was to abolish slavery, or rather primarily to 
 maintain the union of the States in national integrity. Upon 
 this point Phillips Brooks did not take sides, but rather 
 combined the two attitudes in one issue. Although the 
 question was brought before him while he was in college, 
 whether it was not a duty to bring about the abolition of 
 slavery by any methods or at any cost, even at the expense 
 of civil war, yet he never quite threw in his lot with the 
 school of Northern abolitionists, though even then he had a 
 certain subordinate sympathy with their position. At least 
 he did not join their ranks as he might have done, or contrib- 
 ute to the agitation which ultimately resulted in war. His 
 father was one of many in Boston at the time who, while 
 they looked upon slavery as an evil to be got rid of, preferred 
 to keep the question in abeyance for fear it would lead to 
 disrupting the Union. Such had been the attitude of Daniel 
 Webster, — • a willingness to make sacrifices, to postpone 
 action, to effect compromises, rather than force the issue. 
 The process of years, the growth of sentiment, legislative 
 expedients, the unknown and unexpected element in human 
 affairs, — they would trust to these for relief rather than con- 
 tend for the abstract principle involved in the issue of human 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 417 
 
 slavery. Upon this point Phillips Brooks now appears as 
 diverging distinctly and emphatically from his father's atti- 
 tude. In his father's position lay the latent principle that 
 the unity of the State was higher and more sacred than any 
 other cause. To this his son added the conviction that the 
 life of the State demanded the abolition of slavery as the 
 first condition of national unity. Hence he hailed with 
 enthusiasm the Proclamation of Lincoln, on September 22, 
 which foretold its downfall. The devotion to moral princi- 
 ples and ideal truths ran in the Phillips blood. But there 
 was no tendency thus far in Phillips Brooks to any extreme 
 or doctrinaire advocacy of such principles. His distinguished 
 kinsman, Wendell Phillips, could denounce the Proclamation 
 of Lincoln, even though it was to accomplish the desired 
 end, because it was not grounded on the abstract truth that 
 human slavery was an evil which in the nature of the case 
 could not and should not be tolerated. Phillips Brooks was 
 gTateful that the exigencies of the State created an occasion 
 which justified the State in accomjDlishing the purpose in 
 its own way. Whether the abstract moral principle were 
 proclaimed or not by the State was a question not affecting 
 the reality. 
 
 Friday evening, September 26, 1862. 
 Mt dear William, — What a week this has been in the his- 
 tory of the country, — the greatest in one point, I believe, since 
 the country was born. We have heard the Proclamation of 
 Freedom promised from the President's chair. I am sure for 
 once we may go with the "Tribune " and say, God bless Abraham 
 Lincoln. What do they say about it in Boston? Our troops are 
 fast coming back to Philadelphia, who have been off to the Border 
 and into Maryland, for the protection of the State. They have 
 done well, and deserve the welcome they are getting on their re- 
 turn. What is it about aunt Susan going o£E ? ^ I have heard 
 nothing of it. It comes pretty hard to buckle down to work 
 again in times like these. 
 
 1 His mother's sister, Miss Susan Phillips, who volunteered her services as a 
 nurse, and was for some time in a hospital in Annapolis. She was a member of 
 the family, residing for the most part with her sister, and gre.ntly beloved bv 
 all the children. 
 
41 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 Friday evening, September 26, 1862. 
 
 Deak Father, — I have just received your letter and mother's 
 in the same envelope, and I ought to write and say that I have 
 heard nothing more as yet about the chaplaincy, and do not know 
 that I shall. I am all ready to go, and if I get the invitation I 
 probably shall go, but I may not get it after all. I will let you 
 hear of it as soon as I do. 
 
 I am sincerely glad to see the President's Proclamation. We 
 have been getting ready for it for a year. It remains to be seen 
 whether we are wholly ready for it now. If we are as I hope 
 we are, then it is the greatest and most glorious thing our land 
 has ever seen. We have broken off at last our great iniquity and 
 may go on our way with some hope of a blessing. I have just 
 returned from attending the funeral of our friend, Dr. Mitchell's 
 wife. She died very suddenly on Sunday of Diphtheria. I came 
 on with him and her, from Newport, on my return from Boston. 
 
 To this letter his father replied : — 
 
 I do not go into the raptures you do over that Emancipation 
 Proclamation. It may be a very good thing, it tnay do a vast 
 deal of good, but that remains to be proved ; and it may prove a 
 mere nullity. One thing is certain, it was a measure of great 
 responsibility for the President to undertake. 
 
 There are but few allusions to the fortunes of the war in 
 the letters written at this time by the mother of Phillips 
 Brooks. After her son George had enlisted the war was to 
 her more than ever "a war to be abhorred by mothers." But 
 the inward agony was assuaged by an event which in her mind 
 counted for more than any earthly victories or defeats. That 
 event was the confirmation of George at Trinity Church, 
 Boston, September 28, 1862. To the end of her life she 
 sacredly observed the day as her crown of rejoicing, the 
 signal mark of God's great goodness. For many years she 
 had prayed and agonized and waited for this result. She 
 could not know happiness until it had been accomplished. 
 She had availed herself of every appeal that she could bring 
 to bear ; for years she besought Phillips in her letters to use 
 his influence, but all seemed in vain. She continued to 
 hope, to pray, and to struggle, and when after the long delay 
 the consummation was attained, it threw into the shadow of 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 419 
 
 the unimportant all other events and circumstances, even the 
 sad parting when he embarked for the war. She could let 
 him go with composure, for the one transcendent issue of life 
 had been met ; he had been reborn into the spiritual, and had 
 become the child of God. To reproduce the picture is here 
 impossible. It was for years the tragedy of the mother's 
 life. The scene is too sacred to unveil, — the long sorrow 
 and inward bemoaning followed by the inexpressible joy and 
 gratitude. But something of the story may be told, for more 
 than any other incident in her life it reveals the mother as 
 she continued to live in the character, the preaching, the one 
 absorbing purpose of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 George Brooks was born in 1838, and had nearly reached 
 the age of twenty-four before his mother could rejoice in his 
 second birth. His name recalls the founder of the Phillips 
 family in America. He was greatly gifted, carrying himself 
 with the consciousness of power, attractive in his personal 
 appearance, where manly sincerity was stamped. He was 
 good and kind in all his relationships, with a singular mix- 
 ture of sweetness and strength, which made him a favorite, 
 and more particularly at home with father and mother and 
 brothers. If any one son was a favorite with the parents 
 more than another, it was he. Their hearts went out to him 
 aU the more because of the discouraging failures he encoun- 
 tered in finding a career, — disappointments which he bore 
 without complaint and with no diminution of courage. He 
 did not go to college, for he had no taste for the classics, 
 without which a college course was then impossible. Nor 
 was he attracted by literary or professional pursuits, although 
 not without a native capacity for literary expression. He was 
 practical, scientific in his turn of mind, a man who wished to 
 deal with outward nature on the closest terms. His natural 
 inclination was towards an outdoor life. Above other call- 
 ings he preferred the life of a farmer, with its simplicity and 
 independence, its naturalness, as most befitting a man in this 
 world. Twice he made the experiment of farming, in Ver- 
 mont and in New York, but only to realize that there was no 
 opening for him in that direction. He would have found 
 
420 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 what he was searching for in the great ranches of the West, 
 but this opportiuiity did not then exist. From agriculture he 
 turned to chemistry, as bringing him close to the secrets of 
 nature, entering the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard, 
 where he graduated with high distinction in 1861. But again 
 he was doomed to disapj^ointment before securing a perma- 
 nent position. An opening had at last presented itseK 
 through the influence of his brother in connection with the 
 chemical firm of Powers & Weightman, in Philadelphia, 
 where he might have had ample scope for the exercise of his 
 native gifts, when he felt the call to join himself to the 
 service of his country. On August 12, 1862, he enlisted in 
 Company A of the 45th Regiment, in command of Colonel 
 Charles K. Codman. The regiment included in its ranks 
 young men of the best blood and highest culture in Boston, 
 raised as it was under the auspices of the Independent Com- 
 pany of Cadets, — the bodyguard of the Governor of Massa- 
 chusetts. The chaplain was the Eev. A. L. Stone, the pastor 
 of the Park Street Church. 
 
 Such were the few external circumstances in the life of 
 George Brooks. It is in his spiritual history that the highest 
 interest centred. When Bishop Eastburn announced that 
 he would hold a special confirmation service for those about 
 to leave for the war, George' was among those who had pre- 
 sented themselves for the sacred rite. The long impenetrable 
 reserve yielded at last. Why he had delaj^ed, why he had 
 allowed year after year to go by without taking the decisive 
 step, he did not, perhaps could not, tell. Phillips had gone 
 through a similar experience. When his mother had called 
 upon him to write to George or to talk with him in those 
 anxious years, he had made no response, for he had hardly 
 yet reached for himself the lecognition of the spiritual as 
 the highest interpretation of life. But now when the whole 
 family was moved by the greatest event as yet in its history 
 as a family, he overcame the natural reluctance to intrude 
 upon a brother's reserve, and wrote to him from the White 
 Mountains, where he was spending the vacation, an urgent 
 appeal to make the supreme act of self -surrender. It was 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 421 
 
 not only a great moment in the life of George Brooks, but of 
 Phillips as well. From this time the last barriers which 
 hindered the full flow of the feelings seem to disaj)pear. The 
 tone of his letters changes ; they are less formal, marked by 
 free expressions of deeper and stronger affection ; his sense 
 of the united consciousness of the family life grows more 
 intense. The response of George Brooks to his brother's 
 appeal was written just after his confirmation : — 
 
 Camp Meigs, October 2, 1862. 
 
 Since you have been gone, Phill, I have reproached myself over 
 and over again for having allowed your Conway letter to go un- 
 answered, and for not having met you more heartily and unre- 
 servedly when you spoke to me of the same matter. I want you 
 to believe me when I say that it was simple reserve and not a 
 want of interest or determination not to discuss the subject. 
 
 What you have said to me I have thought much of, and feel it 
 has aided me greatly to see my way clearly, as I hope I now do. 
 
 I have become convinced that with my mind in its present 
 state it is my duty to hesitate no longer, but to confess Christ at 
 once, to place myself determinedly among His followers, and to 
 trust in His grace for strength to continue His servant and fol- 
 lower. I feel that I can trust only in Him for salvation, and 
 know that He will accept me if I do thus acknowledge and trust 
 in Him. 
 
 And I was most thankful for the opportunity of publicly con- 
 fessing Him, which the bishop gave us at Trinity Church last 
 Sunday morning, and trust that I may be aided to maintain by 
 word and deed the profession I made there. 
 
 The religious influences in our company are really verj^ great, 
 and as we now start it seems as if we should be able to withstand 
 the contrary influences of camp life. We have a company prayer 
 meeting Monday and Friday evenings, and Captain Sturgis has 
 instituted morning and evening prayers, to be conducted by him- 
 self or one of the other commissioned ofiicers. 
 
 Please excuse me for writing so long a letter. Next time I 
 will write less and more promptly. Please answer me soon, very 
 soon. Your affectionate brother, 
 
 George. 
 
 Phillips wrote at once to his mother after receiving her 
 letter, telling of George's confirmation: — 
 
 I can write you but a line to congratulate you on the good 
 
422 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 news of your last letter, but I do congratulate you and rejoice 
 with you with all my heart. I know how much you have desired 
 and prayed for it, and I know the granting of this prayer will 
 give you faith to trust God for all the rest as concerns George. 
 I have just written to him. I shall think of you on Sunday. 
 
 The Sunday on which his thoughts were to be with his 
 mother was to witness the first communion when George 
 would kneel at his mother's side, as Phillips had done on 
 a day ever afterwards memorable to her. When she was 
 greatly moved she put on record her feelings. There are but 
 few of these memoranda; they all relate to the important 
 spiritual incidents, the spiritual victories, in her history as 
 a wife and mother : — 
 
 September 27, 1862, Saturday evening. This has been a blessed 
 day indeed to me, when my dear George has told me that he has 
 decided to be confirmed. How good God has been to me ! I will 
 praise Him for it throughout Eternity. Oh, the wonderful way in 
 which God has led him ! How strange are all the steps out of dark- 
 ness into light ! Praised be his blessed name forever and ever. 
 
 Mother. 
 
 September 28, Sunday morning, six o'clock. What a happy 
 Sunday has dawned upon me. My dear George has been con- 
 firmed. All my prayers are at length answered, — the summit 
 of my wishes attained. How good God has been. Let my trust 
 and faith in Him never waver again. M. A. B. 
 
 September 28, 1862, Sunday evening. What a happy, blessed 
 day this has been to me! My dear George, for whom I have 
 prayed and longed and agonized for so many years, has to-day 
 confessed his Saviour in Trinity Church, at the age of twenty- 
 three years, before he leaves us for the war. My desires and 
 prayers have been granted. My eyes have seen the blessed sight 
 so ardently longed for. I want never to lose the vivid impression 
 of that beautiful scene. ... I will never cease throughout Eter- 
 nity to praise Him for this last great mercy, and for all the won- 
 derful works He has done in my family. Four of my dear chil- 
 dren are now safe in His fold, and oh, may the dear remaining 
 ones be speedily brought in ! And for this, and all this goodness, 
 I will praise his blessed name forever and ever. 
 
 October 5, 1862, Sunday morning. Blessed be God for this 
 long-desired and blessed day, in which I hope to take the Com- 
 
Phillips Brooks and his Mother, from Family Grot/p, 1S62 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 423 
 
 munion with my dear George. God has heard all my desires, and 
 my groanings were not hid from, Him. Oh, forever praised be 
 His blessed name. Let me never forget this day and all God's 
 goodness to me. Mother. 
 
 October 5, 1862, Sunday evening. 'T is done, the great trans- 
 action's done. Oh, happy day! I have had the infinite joy of 
 taking the Holy Sacrament, side by side with my dearest George. 
 God has at last in His own good time answered my prayers and 
 accepted the offering of my child, which I have for so long laid 
 on His altar, and I have been able to say to-day : Here, Lord, am 
 I and the child Thou hast given me. How great and good God is 
 to answer my prayers so wonderfully, and to make the poor dead 
 heart of my child to seek his blessed Saviour ! This blessing shall 
 never grow old. It shall always be fresh as on this blessed day, 
 and I will never forget to praise Him for it. I will begin now to 
 sing my eternal song of praise on earth that I hope to sing with 
 all my dear children, and the heavenly choir, before the throne 
 throughout eternity. 
 
 And now I will commit him to the care of his Covenant God, 
 who will never forsake His child who has fled to Him in time of 
 danger. May He ever be near him, shield him in the day of 
 battle, surround him with His blessing, and bring him safe through 
 every danger to his dear home and anxious friends again. And 
 the praise shall be His forever. But if he fall in battle or die 
 e'er my eyes behold him again, oh, may his Saviour grant him 
 an abundant entrance into His heavenly kingdom, to dwell with 
 Him in glory forever. 
 
 Heavenly Father, wilt Thou grant a mother's prayer for Thy 
 dear Son's sake. Amen. 
 
 After his enlistment George had gone into camp at Kead- 
 ville, and it was not until November 10 that he sailed with 
 the 45th Eegiment for Newborn, N. C, where General Burn- 
 side was then in command. Before he sailed his mother 
 took opportunity for that converse with him which had 
 hitherto been denied her. Of this she made a memorandum, 
 partly for her own satisfaction and partly as a record of the 
 family life, to be preserved for the children : — 
 
 November, 1862. Georgey said a great many precious things to 
 me on leaving me, which are a very great comfort to me. 
 
 I told him I thanked him for having always been so good and 
 kind a son He said, "Not a tenth part so good as I should have 
 been." 
 
424 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 I said to him I felt he would sometimes long for an oppor- 
 tunity to go to church. He said, "I have begun to long for that 
 already." I said, "We will always pray for each other." He 
 said, "Yes, I want you to be sure and pray for me." 
 
 I said to him I wished if ever he found he was near to dying, 
 he would try to send me some message, telling me where his trust 
 was. He said, "You might be just as sure about that if I could 
 not. I want you to feel perfectly at ease about me if anything 
 should happen to me; I should feel so myself." I said I 
 should if I could be sure where his trust wouk^ ^le. He assured 
 me it would be in Christ altogether; it could not be anywhere 
 else. 
 
 I said to him how much he had lessened the agony of going 
 away by his having become a Christian. He said, "I never 
 would have gone away without religion." 
 
 These are some of the things he said, and they are everything 
 to me. His whole manner was so beautiful and pleasant and 
 kind and calm, it was very comforting to me. 
 
 God bless and keep the dear child, and bring him back to us 
 in safety. 
 
 The last Sunday evening he was with us he asked for "the 
 hymns " we are in the habit of repeating, and for "the Everlasting 
 Memorial, " which he always repeated to me, and then asked me 
 to give it to him. What a change! God be thanked. 
 
 Mother. 
 
 In October Mr. Brooks went to New York in order to see 
 for the first time the Protestant Episcopal Church assembled 
 in General Convention. His impressions were unfavorable, 
 for he was at this moment meditating a great purpose dawn- 
 ing slowly within his soul, — that it was the duty of the 
 church and of a Christian minister to sustain, by sympathy, 
 by act, and spoken word, the government of the country 
 struggling in mortal throes. But on these points the sym- 
 pathies of the bishops, clergy, and lay delegates of the 
 Episcopal Church were greatly divided. The Bishop of 
 Michigan, in his opening sermon, had declared that the in- 
 troduction of politics into a religious synod would be "high 
 treason against God." 
 
 Kesolutions offered declaring the sympathy of the church 
 with the government were tabled. The alleged reason, 
 whether it were the dominating sentiment or not, for refusing 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 425 
 
 to act was tliat the diurch was a purely religious organiza- 
 tion, and in that capacity knew nothing of the State or its 
 concerns. There was also a feeling that if the Convention 
 refrained from any action, the reconciliation would be easier 
 with their Southern brethren when the war should be over. 
 It may be said in explanation of this attitude of the Ei^is- 
 copal Church that its membership was, to a large extent, in 
 the Democratic party, with whom the question of state rights 
 was the chief political issue involved in the war. There 
 were many who conscientiously held that any State had a 
 right to secede from the Union, and that the action of the 
 government in attempting to restrain such a step was un- 
 constitutional. The Episcopal Church during the war, and 
 for some years preceding, had become a house of refuge for 
 those who disliked political preaching, such as began to be 
 heard in the churches of Puritan descent. With this feeling 
 was associated another tendency, inherited from the Church 
 of England, an unwillingness to follow what seemed like 
 doctrinaire methods, or the advocacy of abstract truths which 
 justified extreme conclusions if they could be logically de- 
 duced from ideal principles. England had got rid of slavery 
 within her dominions by a commercial transaction, — the 
 payment of the slaveholders for their property. To this 
 result she had been moved by the influence in Parliament of 
 great reformers, like Clarkson and Wilberforce, who had de- 
 nounced human slavery as a wrong to humanity. In freeing 
 the slaves by purchasing them she seemed to admit the right 
 to hold men in slavery, and treated them as property, but 
 she had also in a peculiarly English way extinguished the 
 evil and wiped out its disgrace from her domain. 
 
 But all this was impossible in America, where the question 
 had assumed a different form. Commercial interests on a 
 large scale were involved in the issue of human slavery. 
 What at one time, when the Constitution was adopted, seemed 
 like an evil which would soon disappear by peaceful means 
 had become stronger instead of weaker. The agitation in 
 the North for the abolition of slavery had made the South 
 more determined in its adherence to the peculiar institution, 
 
426 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 leading its defenders to maintain that it had the sanction of 
 the Bible. The conflict had therefore become inevitable, and 
 it was alike inevitable that sympathies should be divided. 
 For a time it seemed doubtful which way the General Con- 
 vention representing the Episcopal Church would move. As 
 the days went on, the party which stood for sympathy with 
 the government grew stronger and bolder. The politics 
 which had been so deprecated had had their influence upon 
 the delegates. The time was drawing near for the annual 
 elections, and the Hon. Horatio Seymour, candidate for the 
 governorship in New York, was a member of the lower house. 
 It would damage the Democratic party and its candidates in 
 New York and elsewhere if the Episcopal Church should 
 refuse to speak, for such refusal would be interpreted as 
 sympathy with the rebellion. Eesolutions at last were passed, 
 very moderate in tone, almost colorless, but they answered 
 the purpose. In the House of Bishops, despite its outward 
 decorum, there was more aggressive activity as well as a 
 clearer conception of the situation than in the lower house. 
 It had fallen to the lot of Bishoj) Hopkins of Vermont, as the 
 presiding bishop, to draft the Pastoral Letter, wherein the 
 bishops, according to custom, address the church at large. 
 After he had read to the bishops the letter he had prepared, 
 in which the vital issues of the hour were studiously waived. 
 Bishop Mcllvaine of Ohio arose and presented another let- 
 ter, which was offered as a substitute, and accepted by the 
 bishops, committing the Episcopal Church to sympathy with 
 the government in the prosecution of the war. Bishop 
 Mcllvaine deserves to be remembered in this connection. He 
 had been one of the three commissioners sent to England for 
 the purpose of explaining the situation, and conciliating 
 English sentiment in high circles toward the North. The 
 other members of the commission were the late Henry Ward 
 Beecher, who could speak to the English nonconformists, 
 and Archbishop Hughes of New York (Roman Catholic), who 
 could reach his own communion. No better man could have 
 been chosen than Bishop Mcllvaine for reaching the throne, 
 the English nobility, and the Episcopate of the Church of 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 427 
 
 England. But Bishop Hopkins was not a man to submit 
 quietly under this condemnation of his attitude. He pub- 
 lished a protest against the Pastoral Letter of the House of 
 Bishops, which was sent broadcast through the country. All 
 this was at a moment when the depression throughout the 
 country in consequence of Northern defeats was at its lowest, 
 when to many the prospect seemed almost hopeless. Of this 
 and other things Mr. Brooks speaks in the following letter to 
 Kev. George A. Strong: — 
 
 Philadelphia, Wednesday, October 15, 1862. 
 
 Mt dear George, — By some strange mistake, I am up an 
 hour before my time this morning. I know I saw it was almost 
 eight by my watch, and now that I am up and dressed, behold, it 
 is only a little after seven. You must have the benefit (?) of this 
 unpleasant occurrence. 
 
 I reiterate the sentiment of my last letter. How hard it is to 
 get to work again after the "Hills." Can you get up any interest 
 in your parish when all the time you are wishing yourself so many 
 miles away? Let 's go give our parishes to the winds, and preach 
 to Bears and Wildcats and Willises and Calhaines up at Gorham 
 and the Glen. 
 
 I went on to New York last week. You did n't. Perhaps 
 you 're none the worse for it, for the sight of that Convention 
 was n't calculated to increase respect for our Mother the Church. 
 It was n't very interesting to see those old gentlemen putting 
 their heads together to make some resolutions that would please 
 the Union people and not hurt the feelings of the dear rebels. It 
 is a miserable business, and they won't satisfy either side. I had 
 a pleasant time enough, staying at Dr. Vinton's. I saw lots 
 of old seminary faces, Tyng, and Homans, and Jones, and Mar- 
 shall. . . . 
 
 Charles (Richards) and I dined yesterday, according to our 
 Tuesday custom, at Cooper's. He (Charles) seemed well and 
 cheerful; much more so he is for this summer's trip. He and I 
 exchanged last Sunday. How I wish I had you within exchan- 
 ging distance ! 
 
 Do you know, we started the idea last night, and almost talked 
 ourselves into it, that we four (you and Charles and Cooper and 
 I) should all pull up stakes in the East, and go to California, and 
 evangelize the country there. What do you think of it ? Will 
 you go ? It is more than a fancy with some of us. To me it has 
 some very great attractions. 
 
428 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 Philadelphia, Saturday, October 24, 1862. 
 Deak William, — I don't quite like your last letter, it 's too 
 blue. I own that we are in the darkest moment of the war and 
 that our elections and some others do look wretchedly, but isn't 
 our cause just as good as it ever was, and does n't it seem as if 
 all through the war there had been a design of Providence to put 
 off the settlement so that when it did come it might be thorough ? 
 Certainly if we had conquered at the first Bull Run, we should 
 have been only too likely to have put things back on essentially 
 the old basis, on some Crittenden compromise or something of 
 that kind, and in a few years had the whole work to do over. 
 We hope for better things than that. I agree with you perfectly 
 about the Convention. Its shilly-shallying was disgraceful. It 
 was ludicrous, if not so sad, to see those old gentlemen sitting 
 there for fourteen days, trying to make out whether there was a 
 war going on or not, and whether if there was it would be safe 
 for them to say so. However they may represent the learning of 
 the church, they certainly don't represent its spirit. Some few 
 men, however, stood out well, Vinton and Goodwin and Clark- 
 son, Randall and others, and the House of Bishops has put out a 
 capital letter, written by Bishop Mcllvaine. I am going to read 
 it to my people to-morrow morning. . . . No, don't give up the 
 old church yet. She 's got a thick crust of old-fogyism, but 
 she 's all right at the core, and I hope will show it yet. 
 
 Philadelphia, October 2.3, 1S62. 
 Dear Fred, — The two provocations I have had from you 
 lately, the letter and the Catalogue, certainly deserve some 
 acknowledgment. I am much obliged for both. I am sorry, 
 though, to hear you write so blue about your Senior year, and the 
 country, and the war, and everything in general. As to your 
 Senior year, that certainly is going all right. At any rate, it is 
 going fast enough if that is all you want. One quarter of it is 
 gone already. Class Day will be here before you think of it. 
 As to the country and the war, things certainly are at their black- 
 est now, a great deal blacker than when we ran from Bull Run. 
 Because then we all meant to be up again and do it. Now we 
 are beginning to ask whether we shall, or not. With such a 
 chance for work and every day now worth a million to the coun- 
 try, how we are halting and waiting and letting another of these 
 terrible winters come over us ! When will it end ? But I am 
 getting about as blue as you were. I feel just as you do about 
 George. I feel the same respect for the character he is show- 
 ing, the same joy in this last crowning step that he has taken. 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 429 
 
 May God bless and keep him, and bring him safe back to us 
 again. 
 
 How about the new President at Cambridge ? I hope the old 
 place will prosper under him. How do you like him ? I see that 
 our first scholar. Barlow, has been made a brigadier-general. He 
 is a very smart fellow. No more now. Keep up your spirits as 
 well as you can. Let us be trustful and hopeful. 
 
 The reference in the letter to the Rev. George A. Strong 
 about going to California as a more desirable place of work 
 was no mere passing idea, leaving his mind as it had entered 
 it. It shows that he was not entirely satisfied with his posi- 
 tion. There was in him something of an heroic purpose, a 
 desire to do the work of an apostle in laying new foundations. 
 For many years he continued to feel that some such work 
 was higher than the work he was doing. Further evidence 
 of this feeling of uneasiness is given in this extract from 
 a letter to his brother William, written November 8, 1862 : 
 "It seems almost wrong to be going on with parish work 
 here when there is so much of a more stirring kind going on 
 everywhere, but I have not succeeded in getting a place as 
 chaplain, and with this parish on my hands do not think I 
 have any right to give up the ministry and go into the 
 ranks." His only way of contributing to the war was by 
 committing the pulpit to its support. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day of this year was a memorable one be- 
 cause of his resolution to speak his mind fully on the subject 
 of slavery, despite the conservatism of the General Conven- 
 tion, — to commit himself and his congregation so far as it 
 was in his power to the support of the nation. His text was 
 Zechariah xiv. 6, 7: "And it shall come to pass in that day, 
 that the light shall not be with brightness and with gloom: 
 but it shall be one day which is known unto the Lord ; not 
 day, and not night : but it shall come to pass, that at evening 
 time there shall be light." Of this sermon he speaks in his 
 letters : — 
 
 Philadelphia. November 21, 1862. 
 Deae William, — ... I believe in the removal of McClel- 
 lan because, much as he has done for us, he seemed to be incapable 
 
430 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 of doing the last great thing, putting out the rebellion by an ear- 
 nest, vigorous campaign, and, much as I like him, I think no man 
 ought to be allowed to stand between us and peace by victory, 
 which is our great object now. There was a capital article in 
 last week's "Independent " called "The Three Periods," which I 
 wish you would get and read. I am just beginning to think about 
 a Thanksgiving sermon. It is a hard thing to write this year. 
 Not that there are not enough things to be thankful for, but they 
 are so different from the usual, and lie so out of the usual range 
 of observation, that it is difficult to put them in a shape that will 
 bring them home to people. My text is going to be from Zecha- 
 riah xiv. 6, 7. 
 
 Have you read Cairnes on "The Slave Power " ? It seems to 
 me a most masterly and exhaustive treatment of the subject. 
 
 Then there is another book (now I am talking of Books) which 
 I have been intensely interested in, and which I know you would 
 like. It is "Westcott's Introduction to The Study of the Gos- 
 pels, " published by Gould & Lincoln. Get it and read it. 
 
 Do you remember the Rev. , a second advent minister 
 
 who held forth from your pulpit a year or two ago ? He is here 
 now, and came to me a day or two ago with a very earnest appeal 
 for the use of my church to preach his peculiar views. , I found it 
 hard work to refuse him, he was so terribly in earnest about the 
 importance of what he had to say, but I did. I didn't want my 
 congregation stirred up with a set of doctrines in whose reliability 
 and practicalness I have no faith. 
 
 I was never so busy or so full of enjoyment in my work. My 
 church is going nobly. Congregations good, especially Wednesday 
 evenings, when our lecture room is crammed and we have most 
 delightful meetings, at least to me. How the people like them I 
 don't know, except from their coming in shoals. 
 
 Friday, December 5, 1862. 
 We had an anti-slavery sermon at Holy Trinity on Thanks- 
 giving which does n't seem to have done any special harm. The 
 church was very full, and I had the satisfaction of alluding in 
 
 praise to the Bishops' letter before that old rebel, , who was 
 
 present. What do you think of the President's message? It 's 
 badly put together, but a very plain, straightforward, understand- 
 able document, it seems to me. If all our government was as true 
 as he is, we should see different success, but with Washington 
 full of corruption and treachery no wonder if it takes us two or 
 three times as long, and costs us two or three times as much, as 
 it ought to. 
 
«T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 43 1 
 
 A greater tenderness and outflow of the affections accom- 
 panied the expansion of soul and intellect, as he was now 
 assuming the burden of a prophet and reformer. Henceforth 
 he was to be identified with the war for freedom and national 
 unity as a leader of the people, to whom they would look as 
 to a tower of strength. And yet it was a characteristic of 
 him at this time, as throughout his life, that he did not allow 
 himseK to be carried away by any one issue to the neglect 
 of other duties or relationships. He did not lose his self- 
 possession or allow his individviality to be absorbed in the 
 special advocacy of the great cause which lay close to his 
 heart. Men are apt to lose their personal attractiveness 
 when they become reformers, identifying themselves so com- 
 pletely with their burden that they cease to be interesting 
 because they lose their interest in other things. He still 
 maintained his interest in every phase of life, preaching from 
 Sunday to Sunday, as if there were no mortal conflict wag- 
 ing; brooding over religious and theological questions, as the 
 main staples of human existence; alive to all social duties 
 and living for his friends, as though friendship were the only 
 thing that made life worth the living. More particularly did 
 his heart go forth to the members of his own family, to his 
 brother in his distant camp in North Carolina, to his mother 
 as she struggled bravely with the sorrows of parting with her 
 son. The force of blood relationship took stronger hold of 
 his imagination ; there was to be found in it a depth, a sense 
 of rest and peace and of consolation, to which he reverted 
 with profound satisfaction. 
 
 Friday, November 7, 1862. 
 Deae George, — So you are off. I have just seen in the 
 papers an account of your departure, and though it is your week 
 to write, will write a welcome to reach you at Newbern. I wish 
 you could have come through here, for to think of you on the 
 "billowy" such a day as this isn't pleasant. I can only trust 
 that it isn't very uncomfortable, and that your voyage will not be 
 a long one. How strange it seems for two of us to be in corre- 
 spondence at such queer places. It did n't look much like it when 
 we used to be growing up so quietly in Chauncy Street. If your 
 experience is like mine you will find yourself wondering about 
 
432 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 your own identity sometimes ; wondering whether you are your- 
 self or whether you aren't somebody else. The best way when 
 you get into such a condition is to go to work and reassure your- 
 self by writing a long letter to some member of the family (me, 
 for instance), and so get yourself back where you ought to be as 
 one of the Brooks Boys. 
 
 It looks now as if there were work cut out for you to do on your 
 arrival in North Carolina. The papers this very morning tell of 
 an expedition from Newbern of 12,000 men, probably to Golds- 
 boro. I hope something will come of it all. McClellan seems 
 to be pushing on slowly but certainly in Virginia, and altogether, 
 in spite of the elections, things look better. 
 
 I have just heard from Father, but with no special news. He 
 gives me an account of your last furlough at home, and says that 
 although Mother feels your going terribly, yet she bears it nobly. 
 . . . Good-by, my dear fellow. May God bless and keep you. 
 Your affectionate brother, Phillips. 
 
 Philadelphia, Tlianksgiviug Day, November 27, 1862. 
 
 Deak George, — You haven't forgotten that this is Thanks- 
 giving Day, I am sure, and are idealizing your camp fare into 
 turkey and cranberry sauce down on the banks of the Trent. 
 How strange it is to think of you over there in the desolation of 
 North Carolina. Dr. Kane used to say that there were three per- 
 fectly forlorn places in the world, — Greenland and Jersey and 
 North Carolina. You have got into one of them, but I rejoice 
 to see how bravely you are making the best of it. Father sent 
 me on your journal, and I enjoyed every word of it, and quite 
 envied you your voyage. I had full accounts from home of your 
 fearful perils down in the harbor, and threw up my hat (figura- 
 tively) in sympathy when I heard you were fairly off. 
 
 Of course your eyes are all where ours are, — on Burnside. 
 What a job he has in hand. Everybody has great faith in him, 
 though Philadelphia is sore about the removal of her jset son, 
 McClellan. Things certainly look more encouraging and hope- 
 ful ; and next Thanksgiving Day I trust we may be all safe at 
 home, rejoicing in victorious peace. 
 
 Things at home seem to be going on pretty much their usual 
 course. I had a long letter from Mother the other day. They 
 all miss you terribly there. My own impression, strengthened 
 every day since I first left the paternal roof, is that we have one 
 of the happiest homes the world can show. Don't you begin to 
 think so ? 
 
 I shall think ever so much of you on Sundays ; glad you have 
 
MT. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 433 
 
 got so capital a chaplain. I hope his work will he much blessed. 
 Remember, too, won't you, that there is work for every Christian 
 in the Regiment to do. 
 
 Now I must stop and be o£E to church to preach my Thanks- 
 giving sermon. I have made it as hopeful as I can, and surely 
 there is enough to give thanks for in such times as these. . . . 
 Good-by. God bless you. Phill. 
 
 His brother Frederick was contemplating the ministry as 
 his profession, and writes for information on that very sensi- 
 tive subject of theological seminaries. Mr. Brooks was still 
 alive to the defects from which he had himself suffered in 
 his theological training. But he was now interested in the 
 new Divinity School at Philadelphia as one of its overseers, 
 where he hoped that something more adequate for the needs 
 of theological students would be provided. He also thought 
 it a mistake to plant these schools in the country, where men 
 were isolated from life. On these and other grounds he 
 recommended his brother to come to Philadelphia. 
 
 November 24, 1862. 
 
 Deab Feed, — ■ . . . As to seminaries. Do you ask with 
 reference to yourself at all ? For you, if you should decide to 
 turn your studies toward the church (and how it would delight 
 me!), I should not hear of any plan but one — -viz., to come on 
 and chum with me and study at the Philadelphia seminary. 
 Nothing else would I think of for a moment. It would make my 
 very lonely life here happy, and give a new color to a great many 
 things that are pretty desolate sometimes. So that is settled. 
 For anybody else, I should still say, Philadelphia. First, it is a 
 city, and Gambler is in the woods. Secondly, it is new and fresh, 
 and though as yet very inchoate (I mean the seminary of course), 
 yet it promises well. I will send you one of its circulars. Our 
 present corps of professors is only temporary, and it is the firm 
 resolve of the overseers to fill the place as soon as it is in active 
 operation with young live active men. Gambier is a good school, 
 I believe, but it has all the disadvantages, as well as the advan- 
 tages, of shutting young men engaged in theological study up to 
 their own exclusive society. That state of things I saw on the 
 whole at Alexandria to be narrowing and deadening in its influ- 
 ence. I ought to warn any young man coming from Cambridge 
 that he must be prepared to find either seminary in its scholastic 
 tone very inferior to his Alma Mater. I am sorry it is so. A 
 
434 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 student will get in either place little more than a skeleton of 
 study in his classroom, and will have to flesh it out by his own 
 enterprise. He would find but little stimulus in the rivalry and 
 emulations of the men with whom he would be thrown. I sup- 
 pose it is so with all the seminaries of all our churches. 
 , All this about seminaries, not a word to-day of politics or war. 
 Good-by. God bless you. Phill. 
 
 Philadelphia, Monday, December 15, 1862. 
 
 Dear Fbed, — I am shocked to see the date of your letter is 
 two weeks ago to-morrow. These weeks go so terribly fast that 
 to keep pace with them is wholly out of the question. You must 
 make me one big excuse out of the constant pressure of parish 
 work, and let it cover all my deficiencies. Who can write about 
 anything else except the war in these days of suspense ? Things 
 look more promising, I think, than at any moment since the war 
 began. At any rate, we do seem at last to be upon the very 
 brink of a decision, and in spite of croaking the country will be 
 ready to strike the last great blow at the rebellion with the Eman- 
 cipation cudgel on the first of the new year. All this if things 
 go right at the Rappahannock. . . . 
 
 As to seminaries, I agree with you fully as to the inadequate 
 conception of its nature with which so many of our young minis- 
 ters rush into clerical life. Our ministry is full of such now, and 
 our seminaries are getting ready to contribute lots more. The 
 evil is partly necessary. No man can wholly estimate a work so 
 entirely of its own kind till he has tried it. But all this only 
 makes it the more necessary that we should have the right men as 
 far as we can. Your place is in the church. I say it with as 
 much confidence as any one man has a right ever to use in speak- 
 ing of another's duty. And if your place of labor is in the 
 church, T say then with perfect certainty that your place of pre- 
 paration is here, living with me and studying in our school. And 
 what a joy it will be to me to have you, how it will light up my 
 solitary life, I cannot Scij. 
 
 Affectionately, Phill. 
 
 The j^ear 1862 closed with a deep and widespread depres- 
 sion among the people. The fall campaign had been vm- 
 favorable to the Union arms. The loss also of life had been 
 enormous. At the battle of the Antietam, September 7, 1862, 
 where the Union force was defeated, 22,000 men had per- 
 ished, and of these, 12,000 belonged to the Union army. 
 
^T. 26] THE CIVIL WAR 435 
 
 Burnside had been defeated near Fredericksburg on the Rap- 
 pahannock, December 13, 1862, with a loss of 12,000, and 
 a Confederate loss of 4000. Again, in Eastern Tennessee, at 
 the battle of Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862, where the 
 Union army under the command of Thomas and Sheridan at 
 least held its own and repelled the assault of the Confeder- 
 ates, out of 80,000 men engaged, 23,000 was the number of 
 the killed and wounded. The situation was appalling, and 
 as yet the beginning of the end was not visible. The fall 
 elections, always a barometer to indicate the public feeling, 
 had been discouraging to the Republican party. The father 
 of Phillips Brooks wrote to him, December 13, 1862, under 
 a sense of depression and anxiety. His words must not be 
 taken literally; they represent the desponding, almost de- 
 spairing mood of the hour : — • 
 
 And now what think you of the war? That evacuation of 
 Fredericksburg, what means it ? We feel very blue here indeed, 
 I assure you — a sad, desponding feeling. If Burnside will lay 
 by and back down under that defeat, he is a different man from 
 what I was led to expect. Where are we? What is to be done? 
 Massachusetts has lost many noble men in this battle, — Willard, 
 Dehon, Fuller, and I know not how many more. It is too bad. 
 With all this slaughter and defeat I am almost in favor of inter- 
 vention from abroad or compromise at home. . . . 
 
 I have just heard of the death of Samuel Phillips, as pure and 
 conscientious a young Christian as we had among us. He was at 
 home quite recently, from having been at Port Royal on the Educa- 
 tional Commission. He returned there not well, and died of a 
 bilious fever, another victim of the war, but not of battle. His 
 brother John has just returned from South America ; he is to go 
 into the war, and has enlisted in the cavalry regiment: two 
 boys that have sat before us at church so many years as to be 
 one of us. 
 
 Your Mother is anxious about George. He has endeared him- 
 self to us doubly by his absence and the character he has shown 
 since he has been in his new position. Pray for him, my dear 
 son. 
 
 On the last day of the year Phillips Brooks wrote to his 
 brother George, at Newbern, N. C. : — 
 
436 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1862 
 
 Wednesday afternoon, December 31, 1862- 
 
 Deak George, — I hear of you back in Newbern again, and 
 thank God with you for your safety and His care over you. It 
 has been an anxious time with all of us since your expedition 
 started. We have watched the papers anxiously and heard the 
 reports of success with an immense relief. I have not written be- 
 fore because I supposed of course your address was changed, and 
 that anything sent in the old way would fail to reach you. . . . 
 
 So another Christmas has gone over. I don't know how it 
 went with you, but with me it was hardly Christmas. We had 
 our service in the forenoon ; then I went down to my friend Mr. 
 Cooper's and ate a pleasant family dinner, and came home and 
 sat before my fire in the evening, and thought of you and all the 
 folks at home. They seem to have had a very quiet time of it. 
 I have had a batch of letters from them, and they all seem to be 
 under a cloud. It has n't been to any of us the merry holiday 
 time that it was last year, and yet I wonder if we mayn't all 
 hope that we are all better for what we have been through since 
 that last Christmas time, and more able to appreciate and under- 
 stand the full meaning of what we celebrate, — the birth of Christ 
 into this world that needs Him so much. 
 
 Since I wrote you we have had one more disappointment in 
 Virginia with that terrible loss at Fredericksburg of so many 
 noble men. But there are things to hope in too. Down in the 
 Southwest there is a brighter look, and if the winter's work can 
 be the recovery of that vast region, it will well be worth while. 
 To-morrow we shall have the Emancipation Proclamation, and 
 then it would seem as if every soldier in our armies could stand 
 firmer and fight and endure with a complete trust in his cause. 
 
 I presume now that you are looking forward to a winter in 
 Newbern. I want very much to do something to make the winter 
 ])leasanter or easier for you, but I feel so ignorant about the 
 needs of camp life that I should probably send you just the wrong 
 thing. Can't you think of anything which I could send you for 
 Christmas which you could find useful? books or clothes or com- 
 forts of any kind, or money ? If you possibly can, I should thank 
 you and be happier. Won't you try? 
 
 A Happy New Year to you now, my dear fellow, and God 
 bless and keep you. 
 
 Your brother, Phill. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 1863 
 
 DEATH OF GEORGE BROOKS. PARISH WORK. CLERICAL 
 SOCIETY. THREATENED INVASION OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 SUMMER IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. PROTEST AGAINST 
 BISHOP HOPKINS 'S BIBLE ARGUMENT FOR SLAVERY. IN- 
 TEREST IN THE FREEDMEN. THANKSGIVING SERMON. 
 
 The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lin- 
 coln on the first day of the New Year, 1863, was an event of 
 the highest spiritual importance to Phillips Brooks. As he 
 interpreted its meaning, the war had for its purpose a moral 
 issue. God was in the struggle. In the tragic scene that 
 was enacting, there was now to be visible evidence afforded 
 of a progressive movement in human affairs. The doctrine 
 of human progress, of an increasing purjjose in the life of 
 humanity, he had hitherto gathered from the records of his- 
 tory. Now it was to be made visible before his eyes. A 
 deeper faith, a vaster enthusiasm, a stronger sense of the 
 reality of spiritual things, the concentration of the will on 
 the great issue, in the confidence that God's will was thus 
 subserved, — such were the motives that now entered more 
 deeply into his soul. He was taking a great step forward 
 in his own experience. A new consecration came to him, 
 greater power and authority marked his utterances. He had 
 no longer any misgivings about the ultimate result of the 
 protracted struggle. The tone of despondency disappears, to 
 give way to an inward exultation. The failure of this or 
 that leader, disasters and defeats, were no ground for depres- 
 sion. He had completely vanquished the lower mood in 
 which he had trusted to any one man to become the saviour 
 
438 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 of tlie country. Tlius to his father he writes on the 15th of 
 January: "I cannot feel as blue about the war as you do. 
 Nor is it time to look out yet for the effects of the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation. Military success is the first thing we 
 want. We have h^d it already in Tennessee, and we shall 
 see it yet at Vicksburg." This was written nearly six 
 months before General Grant won his victory there. When 
 Burnside was removed he wrote, "There is this comfort at 
 least, that the more we try and find to be the wrong ones, 
 the nearer we must be coming to the right one all the time." 
 He had no longer any illusions about McClellan. "What 
 did you think of Lincoln's letter to McClellan that came out 
 in the court martial and was published in the papers of this 
 morning [January 17]? It looks as though Old Abe was just 
 as good a general as the young Napoleon after all." 
 
 Wednesday morning', January 7, 1863. 
 Monday I had to be on hand at our "Soldiers' reading room " 
 at a little reception to General McClellan. I saw considerable of 
 the general, and am not a stronger McClellan man for having seen 
 him. He doesn't look like a great man. His face doesn't 
 show, either, special refinement. He is pleasant and affable, and 
 the soldiers collected to greet him were very enthusiastic. He 
 looks like a good, sensible, bright engineer and not much more. 
 
 He was now to be called into another experience, which 
 hitherto had been far away from him. His father unex- 
 pectedly appeared in Philadelphia on his way to the South, 
 summoned by tidings of the dangerous illness of George 
 Brooks. But even before the father had started on his sad 
 journey the end had come. The telegram that his brother 
 had died of typhoid pneumonia on February 10 reached 
 Phillips on the 16th, and he started at once for home. There 
 in the darkened house they waited for a week in silence, no 
 word reaching them from the father, who was slowly mak- 
 ing the journey home with the body of his son. With these 
 days of waiting was afterward associated the lines of Tenny- 
 son, the prayer for the ship bearing the loved remains : — 
 
 Sphere all your lig-hts around, above ; 
 Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 439 
 
 Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now. 
 My friend, the brother of my love. 
 
 While they waited at home, Phillips Brooks wrote a ser- 
 mon on the text (Luke xxiv. 18), "Art thou only a stranger 
 in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come 
 to pass there in these days? " There came also a letter from 
 the chaplain of the 45th Regiment, who had ministered to 
 George Brooks in his illness, giving an account of the last 
 days. The letter, which was addressed to his congregation 
 and read before them, brought comfort and consolation to the 
 bereaved family : — 
 
 Newbekn, N. C, February 12, 1863. 
 Mt dbab People, — There are few scenes on earth that reveal 
 more visibly the glory of the Divine presence and the power of 
 sustaining grace than the deathbed of a Christian. It has been 
 my privilege to watch over the decline and the departure of one 
 of God's dear ones in our regiment the past week. George 
 Brooks, one of our own Boston boys, a member of Company A, 
 recruited under Captain Russell Sturgis, Jr., now our major, was 
 taken ill of t5rphoid fever about a week ago. From the first he 
 expressed his entire resignation to the Divine will. He enjoyed 
 tlie constant presence of Jesus at his side. When I asked him 
 daily, "Is your Saviour near to you to-day? " the look upon his 
 face had a radiant answer before his lips could speak. All 
 through his sickness that faithful Presence cheered and sustained 
 him. He was never dejected, he never murmured. He would 
 say but little, as his lungs seemed congested, but by gasps and 
 whispers one day he told me, holding my face down close to his, 
 so that he could make me hear his lowest word, — he told me that 
 he never had had full assurance of his pardon and acceptance till 
 he became a soldier. He said that in the battle of Kingston, 
 under that terrible fire of the enemy, his Saviour came to him as 
 never before, declared His presence, revealed His love, and held 
 his soul in His hands. As the hour of death drew on, he seemed 
 to have three burdens of prayer. The first was quickly disposed 
 of. He prayed aloud, "Oh, Lord, keep me, hold me fast, leave 
 me not, let me not go ! " and then all thoughts of himself seemed 
 to be at an end. Shortly after, his lips moved again and audibly, 
 and his second burden was laid down at the Divine feet: "My 
 God, spare my country ! oh, save my dear native land ! " For a 
 few moments silence succeeded, and the voice of prayer was heard 
 once more, the last earthly articulation of that tongue, though 
 
440 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 his consciousness continued till his last breath, some fifteen min- 
 utes later. This last burden was borne up on the old familiar 
 petition, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is 
 in heaven." His own soul, his country, the Israel of God, these 
 three interests he thus commended in his last utterances to the 
 faithful Promiser. 
 
 How could a Christian life close more appropriately and trium- 
 phantly ? He was a fine, manly fellow, his eye very dark and 
 bright ; a swarthy face, with a brilliant set of teeth and a pleasant 
 smile; a pleasant companion and an agreeable and valued friend. 
 He was, as you would infer, a brave soldier, and in the battle- 
 field suffered no tremor to disturb nerve or spirit. His body is 
 to be embalmed and sent home, but his memory is already em- 
 balmed in our hearts, and will be fragrant as long as Christian 
 patriotism shall be honored on earth, as long as Christian friend- 
 ship shall endure in heaven. If any man ever doubted the 
 sufficiency of the gospel of Christ to transform, sustain, and ele- 
 vate a human life, and help it meet its last and greatest need, let 
 him look upon such a scene, and his skepticism nmst vanish like 
 mist before the sun. One's faith becomes more settled and im- 
 movable after such an exhibition of the truth and tenderness of 
 Jesus. 
 
 Let your prayers hover constantly over the pillows of our sick 
 and wounded. The touch of loved fingers is far away, but your 
 intercessions may be as the shadow of an angel's wing to faces 
 growing white under the signature of death. 
 
 Ever and constantl}' yours, A. L. Stone. 
 
 These brief entries in the diary tell the remainder of the 
 story : — 
 
 Friday, February 27. 1863. Father arrived at six A. m. with 
 dear George's body. A sad day; making arrangements for the 
 removal to the house. It was brought to the house and put in 
 the front parlor in the afternoon at six o'clock. 
 
 Saturday, February 28, 1863. In the morning making ar- 
 rangements for the funeral. P. m. With William and Fred at 
 Mount Auburn to see about the grave. 
 
 Sunday, March 1, 1863. Second Sunday in Lent. Terrible 
 storm all day. At home till afternoon. Then at Public Garden 
 greenhouse to order flowers. 
 
 Monday, March 2, 1863. George's funer:il at eleven o'clock. 
 Services at St. Paul's. Bishop Eastburn officiated. 5.30 p. m. 
 started by Norwich cars for New York. 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 441 
 
 On reaching Philadelphia Phillips Brooks wrote at once to 
 his mother. In this letter we look into his soul at a moment 
 when, touched by sorrow, the veil is withdrawn, revealing 
 the man in his transparent simplicity and entire devotion. 
 Extracts from other letters follow, written under the same 
 inspiration. It was an event at this time in the spiritual 
 history of the family when Arthur, at the age of seventeen, 
 came forward for confirmation. It seemed like the voice of 
 George from the open heavens. 
 
 Tuesday afternoon, March 3, 1863. 
 Mt deakest Mother, — I am back here again and trying to 
 collect myself to go to work again to-morrow morning. Ever 
 since I left you my thoughts have been with you all at home, and 
 I feel like a stranger here among the things that were so familiar 
 only two weeks ago. These two weeks seem to me like a strange 
 sort of dream, and it is hard to realize that such a change has 
 come over our family life since the last time I was sitting here 
 at my desk. And yet I find it hard to be sad or mournful about 
 it. I cannot think that George himself, as he looks at us, wishes 
 us to be sad or mournful. I have been looking over and over 
 again, all last night and this morning, the whole life that we 
 have lived with him. I cannot remember one moment whose 
 memory is painful to me. I cannot recall a single quarrel that I 
 ever had with him, and I suppose the other boys would say the 
 same. I cannot bring back one look that was not all kindness, or 
 one act that was not pure and good, or one word that was not 
 bright and truthful. I envy him his life and death. I would 
 gladly lie down and die to-night if I could look back on such a 
 spotless life as his, and find my faith as simple and secure for the 
 future as his was. How beautiful his religion was. He has 
 taught me for one, as I never knew before, what Jesus meant 
 when he told of "receiving the kingdom of God as a little child." 
 Such a perfect trust as his I know is in the power of any of us to 
 reach as he reached it, and yet I do not dare to expect it ever 
 perfectly for myself, but am determined to live and pray and 
 struggle for it, and shall rejoice if I can have a seat at last some- 
 where in sight of the perfect happiness and glory which he is in 
 to-day and will be in forever. My thoughts of home will always 
 be different now. I shall always think of George as there among 
 you. I do not care about Mount Auburn. I don't care ever to 
 go there again, till I am carried as he was yesterday. I want to 
 think of him as being about the old house and always one of your 
 
442 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 group, making it happier and holier by his memory and influence, 
 just as lie always made it beautiful and bright when he was in the 
 body. And I want to feel him there too, helping me and making 
 me fitter for every duty with his own courage and cheerfulness 
 and blessed faith. 
 
 I find work enough waiting for me, and shall go about it happily, 
 but always looking for the time when it will be all done, and we 
 shall be with Christ and him. 
 
 God bless you all. 
 
 Phill. 
 
 Saturday, March 7, 1863. 
 Deak William, — ... I have been living in a hurry since I 
 got back here, and my sermon has been very much delayed and 
 not finished till very late. It has come rather hard to buckle 
 down to work again, and I am scarcely yet fully at it. The re- 
 collection of those days at home is with me always, especially that 
 last Sunday, two weeks ago. I have been looking all over my old 
 papers and getting together all the papers that I ever received 
 from George. He always wrote so simply and directly that they 
 bring back wonderfully the times in which he wrote them. In 
 Woodstock, and at the drugstore, and at home, and later in the 
 vessel and at Newbern. There are two or three about his hopes 
 of getting a place with Powers & Weightman here, and the last 
 thing he says is that as I seem not to have despaired he will keep 
 on hoping and trust to its coming to something one of these days. 
 Mr. Powers called to see me the other day; he was much inter- 
 ested in George, and told me, what I did not know before, that he 
 was looking out for him for the charge of one of his laboratories, 
 but finding he had gone into the war concluded to wait and say 
 nothing about it and have a place for him when the war was over. 
 His overseer. Dr. Aur, was very much taken with George when 
 we visited the Laboratory together three years ago this spring. 
 I see little chance now of my leaving after Lent. I have had my 
 confirmation put ofE till the 1st of May. In June I am asked 
 to deliver an address at the Commencement of Kenyon College in 
 Ohio, and may go. 
 
 Philadelphia, March 23, 1868. 
 My DEAR William, — I mail you herewith a copy of the 
 West Philadelphia Hospital paper which contains Mr. Stone's 
 letter about George. I received a note from the chaplain asking 
 my consent to its publication. It had come into his hands by 
 some means through Dr. Vaughan. Although I would not have 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 443 
 
 put it in myself, I felt that I had no right to refuse consent, and 
 you will find it there. It will do good, I trust. Tell Mother I 
 have had the dear boy's picture framed, and there it stands right 
 in front of the table where I sit and of the door by which I enter. 
 It hangs across the southwest corner of the room ; between two 
 windows, framed in black walnut and gilt. I have been busier 
 this week than I remember for a great while. Next week is 
 busier still, but all the while I am thinking of my stay at home 
 and of George and his life and death. ... 
 
 Easter Monday, April 6, 1863. 
 I know how glad you all must be at Arthur's confirmation. 
 The fruit of George's life and death, which has begun to show 
 itself so soon, will never cease to be seen. . . . 
 
 "When the time for which George Brooks had enlisted, had 
 expired, and his comrades returned from the war, there came 
 among them one of his intimate friends, who brought to the 
 bereaved parents a further account of his last days, and still 
 further evidence of his high character and Christian faith. 
 His father writes to Phillips (September 22, 1863) : — 
 
 We had a long call last evening from George's particular friend 
 and bunkmate, Thompson. He gave us a great deal about George ; 
 much that was new and much that no one else could give, all 
 about his early sickness, which was much what we had before. 
 
 Of his strictly religious course he knew all, and said a great 
 deal; said George always went through the Prayer Book services 
 on Sunday, and got him to accompany him. Kept tlie days and 
 read the lessons appropriate. His reliance on his Saviour and his 
 trust was as strong as one's could be. He knew several of the 
 hymns George was in the habit of repeating, and particularly 
 the "Everlasting Memorial." Says he talked a great deal of his 
 brothers and very often got out all the photographs. "Had a 
 good deal to say of his brother Phillips." He was a precious boy, 
 and all these things only make us more sensible of our loss. 
 
 The work outside of the parish now becomes so extensive 
 and prominent that it might seem as if the duties and routine 
 of the parish minister must be neglected. But the parish 
 occupied the foremost place then as always. He not only 
 worked hard himself, but stimulated others to work. Con- 
 nected with the Church of the Holy Trinity there was a 
 
444 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 night school, held in the chapel on week-day evenings, a 
 mothers' meeting, and an outside Bible class, taught by 
 ladies connected with the parish. He was not contented to 
 know of their existence, but he gave to them his personal 
 presence and oversight. He continued to hold a weekly 
 Bible class of his own on Saturday evenings, he preached or 
 lectured every Wednesday evening in the church to large 
 congregations, and he always gave a preparatory lecture for 
 the monthly communion. On the first Sunday of each month 
 came children's church in the afternoon. To the anniver- 
 sary of the Sunday-school he gave special attention. Most 
 carefully did he prepare his candidates for confirmation, not 
 only in a series of lectures, but making it an obligation to 
 call upon each candidate for personal conversation. Each 
 week he tried to rescue as much time as possible for reading 
 and study. Each week as a rule he records the writing of a 
 sermon. For this, two mornings were generally apjDropriated, 
 but it sometimes happened that the sermon was begun and 
 completed on Saturday. So great was the demand for his 
 services that rarely a Sunday passed that he did not preach 
 three times, very often reading the service twice in addition. 
 If he found himself disengaged on Sunday evenings, he went 
 to church somewhere a third time for the purpose of hearing 
 others preach. In the spring of this year, 1863, he was 
 busily engaged in soliciting subscriptions for the purchase of 
 a neighboring church in order to make it a chapel for Holy 
 Trinity. It would involve an extension of his own labors, 
 but he proposed to call an assistant minister to his aid. 
 Of this enterprise, which was accomplished before Easter, 
 he writes, "The people have gone into it heartily as they 
 seem to do into every good work they get hold of." To those 
 who looked on he appeared to carry his work with ease ; there 
 was an air of spontaneity about his preaching, as though it 
 came withovit effort or anxiety. He contributed to this im- 
 pression by giving himself so freely to outside calls for his 
 services. But there was another side to the picture. He does 
 not complain, but he admits his fatigue : — 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 445 
 
 Saturday evening-, May 2, 1863. 
 It 's late Saturday night, and I have come home tii'ed from my 
 communicants' meeting, but I must write my lettei- before I go 
 to bed. You have no idea how fatiguing tliis work of speaking 
 in public is. It does n't look like much to talk for half an hour 
 to a room full of people, but it very often leaves one tired out 
 mind and body, and good for nothing. Thursday we had our Fast 
 Day service. Last night our confirniation class met for its lec- 
 ture, and to-night our communicants had their meeting, so that 
 we have had services for tlu'ee successive days, and I feel but 
 little ready for the hard work of to-morrow. Still it is a plea- 
 sant labor, and I always have strength given me somehow when 
 the time comes, so I have given up worrying about the future and 
 just do one thing at a time. I like the work more and more 
 every day, never more than since I came back from my last stolen 
 visit home, and everything about the church is so encouraging that 
 I certainly must not complain. But I shall be glad of a little 
 vacation this summer. I am depending on it, and now it is only 
 two months off. No news to-night from Hooker. Oh, if he 
 might only be successful and open the way to a victorious close to 
 this fearful war. I do not want it to end any other way, but I 
 long to see it reach its great result. Our churches were crowded 
 on Fast Day, and the people seemed to be in the spirit of the day. 
 I did not preach a sermon, but just said a few words extempore, 
 a brief report of which you will find in the " Press " for yester- 
 day morning. 
 
 The service in his church on Fast Day alluded to so casu- 
 ally was marked by unusual solemnity and impressiveness. 
 "The congregation," said the "Press," "listened with the most 
 profound attention, and apj^arently gave a sincere and hearty 
 response to his remarks." The burden of his prophetic soul 
 was the sin of slavery. "It was not timely or proper to 
 preach, but woukl it not be a mockery before God to say 
 that we have sinned, we have broken Thy laws, we have pol- 
 luted Thy Sabbath and received in vain Thy grace, without 
 alluding to the greatest sin of all, — the blackest stain upon 
 our country and the cause of all the ruin and bloodshed and 
 affliction that have been visited on our land, — the black sin 
 of slavery ? Have we not that duty to perform, to pray for 
 the removal of that great crime, that dark spot upon our 
 country's history? And was this all? Were there not here 
 
446 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1^63 
 
 among us persons whom we meet daily in social intercourse, 
 who give not even a faltering support to the administration of 
 the laws, who are not using the means that God has given 
 them for the suppression of rebellion and treason ; men who 
 deprecate the extermination of the evil that has caused all 
 our troubles? Was it not as much our duty to pray for the 
 rebuke of those traitors in the North as for the discomfiture 
 of the openly declared enemy in the South ? It was the duty 
 of the congregation to cultivate that firm unwavering loyalty 
 to the government that would recognize no distinction between 
 the open foe and the secret enemy." 
 
 It was no easy task for the preacher to make an impas- 
 sioned appeal like this. In view of the sitviation and the 
 public sentiment in Philadelphia at this time, even in his 
 own congregation, it called for the same courage and inspira- 
 tion which moved the soldier in the field of battle. The 
 stress and tension of these multiplied labors, with his spirit 
 in tumultuous excitement until his strong will should see its 
 travail accomplished, was relieved by the delightful social 
 environment in which his days were passed. It was a repeti- 
 tion of the story of the preceding year, as given in the last 
 chapter, only the friendships were grown more intimate, 
 richer, and stronger with time. Clerical society in Phila- 
 delphia gained additional attraction at this time by important 
 accessions. Among these were the Rev. Treadwell Walden 
 and the late Rev. E. A. Washburn. Mr. Walden became 
 the rector of St. Clement's Church, where the unusual tone 
 of his preaching, and its suj)erior character, combined with 
 his impressive power as a speaker, drew many interested 
 hearers to swell his congregations. Dr. Washburn, who in 
 his day was foremost in the ranks of American scholarship 
 as well as an interesting and powerful preacher, was also 
 specially welcomed by Mr. Brooks, who discerned in him at 
 once the type of a man to be admired and followed. Thus 
 he writes : — 
 
 I have just had a call from a capital New England man, Dr. 
 Washburn of Hartford, Conn., who has just come here to take 
 charge of St. Mark's Church. He is a Cambridge man, of the 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 447 
 
 best kind of our ministry. He will be a great addition to our 
 number of interesting men here. 
 
 This was Phillips Brooks's first contact with a new school 
 of preachers and theologians which was to become known as 
 the Broad Chnrch, — a name originating in England in the 
 decade of the fifties. Those who were affiliated under this 
 designation had at first claimed the title of Catholic in con- 
 tradistinction from the Oxford and Evangelical schools. It 
 is difficult to describe them as a class, for so far as there was 
 agreement among them in opinion, it had been reached in- 
 dependently, under the influence of current tendencies in 
 thought and scholarship. One common characteristic be- 
 longed to them : they were fearless men unterrified by the 
 discoveries of science or the results of Biblical criticism. 
 They had not shared in the panic caused by the famous 
 "Essays and Reviews; " they refused to join in the cry that 
 "the church is in danger!" Rather did they see a larger 
 opening for true religion in the fruits of an awakened intellec- 
 tual activity. They held with Hooker and Bishop Butler 
 that the human reason was the God-given faculty for verify- 
 ing the divine revelation. They aspired after a larger free- 
 dom, and were interested in all methods for bringing the 
 influence of the church to bear more directly upon the people 
 in the upbuilding of Christian character. In a word, they 
 were the new generation of Christian thinkers. There had 
 come to them alike an inspiration from Coleridge and from 
 Maurice, from Arnold and from Stanley. They found satis- 
 faction in Kingsley and in Robertson and Bushnell, begetting 
 a new enthusiasm for proclaiming the gospel of Christ and 
 the kingdom of God. With these writers Phillips Brooks 
 was familiar and in deep sympathy. Hitherto he had walked 
 almost alone, emerging from the school at Alexandria with a 
 consciousness of a want of sympathy with his teachers, while 
 yet holding with deep conviction to the sovereign Lordship 
 of Christ over every human soid. With his new friends he 
 took counsel, interested to know l)y what divine paths God 
 had led them into the larger room. There were others of a 
 similar spirit whom he met at this time in Philadelphia, 
 
448 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 forming with tliem friendships wbieli were as enduring as 
 life, among them Bishop Clark of Rhode Island, and Dr. 
 Harwood, rector of Trinitj- Church in New Haven. It would 
 be a mistake to suppose that these men were united by any 
 party shibboleth or sought to accomplish any partisan aim. 
 But they did have a common sj^mpathy in the open mind, in 
 their belief in free inquiry, in their emancipation from the 
 shackles of traditional interpretation. They had an interest 
 in literature as well as theology ;, they looked upon the state 
 as sharing in a divine life as well as the chiu'ch, and they 
 refused to narrow the chui-ch to any one ecclesiastical denom- 
 ination. If they had a common motto it was this : Where 
 the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 
 
 Among the phases of the larger ministry, to which Phillips 
 Brooks was impelled by some irresistible call, was his effort 
 to overcome the indifference, even the avowed hostility, towaid 
 the government in its prosecution of the war. That such 
 sentiments toward Lincoln and his administration did exist 
 in Philadelphia is evident ; ^ but it should also be said, in 
 order not to create anj^ misimpression, that the same apathy 
 or hostility might be found in other Northern cities, in New 
 York and in Boston. To determine its relative proportion, 
 or whether society in Philadelphia was more widely and 
 deeply aft'ected by disloyalty than elsewhere, is a question we 
 are not here called upon to discuss. That Phillips Brooks 
 rose up in his might to defend the war and to put disloyalty 
 to flight does not indicate that, in his judgment, Philadel- 
 f)hia called for his protest more than other places. Thus he 
 writes March 23, 1863: — 
 
 I have been away two days this week preaching in New Jersey. 
 It was disheartening to see the state of pnblie feeling there, the 
 apathy or opposition to the administration that ha« made that 
 little State disgraceful. But surely things are looking very much 
 better everywhere. It seems as if tlie more we suffer the more 
 we must feel ourselves committed to finish completely the great 
 work we have undertaken. 
 
 1 Ct. rhillips Brooks, by M. A. De Wolfe Howe, in " The Beacon Biosjra- 
 phies,'^ pp. 2(1, 27. 
 
CHURCH OF THE HOLV TklNlTV, PHILADELPHfA, INTERIOR 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 449 
 
 How the situation in Philadelphia appeared to an eye- 
 witness, who was in sympathy with Mr. Brooks in his effort 
 to overcome the apathy and disloyalty of the city, is shown in 
 this extract from a letter by the late Kev. R. C. Matlack: — 
 
 When Mr. Brooks became rector of the Church of the Holy 
 Trinity in 1862 he found very few anti-slavery men among our 
 clergy, and a strong secession sentiment pervading society which 
 was well represented in his new church. A writer of the day 
 said, "Society was in sympathy with the rebellion." Party 
 spirit ran so high that old friends would not recognize each other 
 in the street. The "Palmetto Flag" was published here, and 
 openly sold on the street. The "North American" of November, 
 1862, declared, "The Union feeling in Baltimore is stronger at 
 this time than it is in Philadelphia." The "Press " in November, 
 1862, said, "In Philadelphia we see men diligently comforting 
 one another, consulting together, gathering strength, and quietly 
 combining to undermine and destroy the nation. All the splen- 
 dor of brilliant society and the fascinations of social intercourse 
 are combined to accomplish this woeful purpose." A leading 
 society man said that "unmixed society ordered matters, and 
 that all gentlemen would soon be of their way of thinking. 
 The President was vulgar, the administration was vulgar, and 
 the people who urged the war were of the common sort, who 
 would shortly receive a merited castigation from the gentlemen of 
 the South, whom the herd was vainly endeavoring to deprive of 
 their Biblical, heaven-derived, constitutional, natural, carnal pro- 
 perty." 
 
 The Union League (Club) was founded to counteract this bane- 
 ful influence of society. I accompanied Phillips Brooks to the 
 opening meeting (February, 1863), and he made one of those bold. 
 Union speeches for which he became famous, although his parish 
 was a new organization, heavily in debt, and he was in danger of 
 losing some of his most important members by his decided action. 
 When most pulpits were silent and some adverse, his gave forth 
 no uncertain sound. His manly, courageous utterances did much 
 to turn the tide of society in favor of the abolition of slavery 
 and the preservation of the Union. 
 
 To these reminiscences may he added the comment on Mr. 
 Brooks's attitude by the Eev. C. A. L. Eichards, who stood 
 by his side in those days of trial : — 
 
 Through those tremendous years Brooks was foremost m all 
 patriotic work. The times tried men, as in the fires, of what 
 
450 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 stuff they were; his stood the proof. The times demanded heroes 
 even in civil life. It needed manhood in those days to withstand 
 the pressure of those who would fain have ignoble peace. Phila- 
 delphia was close to the border, and Southern sympathizers — ■ 
 there was a pithier word in common use — abounded. Faction 
 ran high. Brooks did not defy it. He quietly disregarded it, 
 went his ways in spite of it, took his heroism naturally, not 
 tragically, as if men were always true and brave. In the pulpit, 
 on the platform, he was earnestly and eloquently on the side of 
 the nation, appealing to what was noblest and loftiest in her 
 sons. . . . Presently both the educated and the illiterate rabble 
 discovered that they were dealing with that unusual thing, a man ; 
 less uncommon at that crisis than at some other periods, but none 
 too common in the ministry, certainly then ; one whom they could 
 not anger into indiscretion, nor threaten into subservience, nor 
 tempt to unworthy surrender; a man of the fibre of an old-time 
 prophet, with a message to be uttered whether the people heeded 
 or refused it ; whether they brought wreaths to crown, or stones 
 to stone him ; whether they would build him a pedestal, or dig 
 him a grave. I despair of making the young men of to-day un- 
 derstand what it cost in those days to be lord of one's own soul. 
 Through that weary time, what an overflowing reservoir of mortal 
 force, of hope, of courage, of high resolve. Brooks was to all of 
 us. Then, as ever, his presence was an inspiration. There were 
 dark days, — days when, as we met on a street corner, after some 
 bloody reverse of our armies, he could only wring my hand and 
 say, "Isn't it horrible? " and pass on gloomily; days when it was 
 easy to take counsel of one's meaner fears and cry for peace at 
 any price, and try to patch up any miserable cabin of refuge from 
 the storm which beat upon our hearts. But his heart never 
 flinched or quailed. His light ever shone out clear. 
 
 One of Mr. Brooks's courageous utterances has already- 
 been referred to, in the address on the national Fast Day. 
 It is a painful task now that these events have long gone by 
 to recall them again to memory. But to omit them in a bio- 
 graphy of Phillips Brooks would be an injustice to the man, 
 for in a great measure he was roused by them to assert the 
 heroic proportions of his nature. The war with its issues 
 came at the moment when he was beginning his ministry, 
 and helped to make him great. He went forth out of himself 
 to become identified with a moral purpose, or rather the 
 moral purpose entered into his soul, taking possession of all 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 451 
 
 his powers. He forgot seK and his own interests in his 
 devotion to the nation's life and prosperity. There was here 
 an enlargement of his whole being, creating the sense of power 
 and making him equal to the greatest emergency that can 
 befall a nation. He seems to assume the burden of the war 
 as if it were his own, and he were a leader raised up by God 
 to speak to the people and lead them forth from bondage. 
 He became a representative man, taking his place in the 
 foremost ranks, and though still a youth in years, exhibit- 
 ing the capacity for leadership, in wisdom and gravity, in 
 directness and power, and with enthralling eloquence. People 
 had become familiar with the ideas, and mode of urging 
 them, of the older men who had long been before the country. 
 But here was youthful enthusiasm combined with freshness 
 of view, yet also with maturity of judgment. The struggle 
 to which he was called might have seemed an unequal one, 
 but when once committed to it, he threw into the balance 
 that unique quality in his nature, which he did not under- 
 stand and cannot be described, — the gift of oratory, 
 strangely moving men even against their will, a mysterious 
 accompaniment of his personality never failing him, but 
 always at his call when the moment came for speech. He 
 does not appear greatly to mind the inevitable opposition he 
 encountered, the scorn and contempt expressing itself in bit- 
 ter language. In a letter dated June 6, 1863, he refers, a 
 rare thing with him, to the criticism he is meeting: — 
 
 I have nothing particular to tell you to-day about myself, and 
 so I will let you see what other people say about me by enclosing 
 a slip from our Copperhead journal which some kind friend has 
 just sent me. Isn't it terrible to think of this fearful plot to 
 fill the churches and schools with New England radicals, and 
 gradually seize on all Philadelphia, and make another Boston of 
 it. I suppose a part of our plan must be to get possession of the 
 financial institutions ; so just hold yourself in readiness to come 
 on and take a radical cashiership as soon as things are ready for 
 it. This sort of feeling is very strong here, and is making a 
 pretty hard fight, but it can't stand. The world moves. Vicks- 
 burg is not ours yet, but everything looks promising, and perha]iK 
 we do not know how near we are to the end. At any rate the 
 
452 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 conviction is stronger every day that, long or short, there 's nothing 
 to be done but fight it out, and "put down the rebellion." 
 
 A victory of General Eobert E. Lee, the commander of the 
 Confederate forces, over the Army of the Potomac in May, 
 1863, left the North unprotected, and General Lee de- 
 cided to carry the war into Pennsylvania. At first it was 
 hard to realize that the State was actually in danger of inva- 
 sion. Men refused to believe it. The Quaker sentiment, 
 always a large contingent in the city founded by William 
 Penn, now met the test of its strength and value. War may 
 be wrong and a great evil, the duty of non-resistance may have 
 its place among the Evangelical precepts, but when a great 
 city is in danger of invasion, it is necessary that something 
 should be done to repel the invaders. This letter describes 
 the situation as it appeared to Phillips Brooks : — ■ 
 
 Saturday, June 27, 1863. 
 
 Deae Father, — I suppose you must be wondering a little 
 what is the state of mind in this poor betlireatened city. I wish 
 you could be here and see how dead and apathetic men can be, 
 with an eneTuy almost at their doors. I don't think that Lee is 
 coming to Philadelphia, but there certainly is threatening enough 
 of it to make us get ready if he did come. Nothing is doing 
 here at all. Yesterday the Union League decided that it might 
 be well to get up a regiment, but as yet, so far as I can learn, not 
 more than 2000 men have gone from Philadelphia, and the men 
 who are protecting the line of the Susquehanna are New Yorkers 
 and New Englanders. I am ashamed of Philadelphia and Penn- 
 sylvania, and proud as usual of New England. Of course all 
 our town talk is of the invasion. We do not think that Phila- 
 delphia is very likely to be their aim. Evidently they are trying 
 to delude us, and will more likely strike either at Pittsburg or at 
 Baltimore. Some timid people here are a good deal scared. I 
 will let you know if there is any danger. I see George's Regi- 
 ment is after this- new raid. How much hard life and terrible 
 work the dear boy has escaped. I think of him always, I see 
 Mr. Stone's letter is in the "Recorder " this week. I don't 
 know how it got there. 
 
 Good-by — one week more (unless I am kept here by danger of 
 a capture) and I am with you. Love to Mother. 
 
 Yours affectionately-, 
 
 Phill. 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 453 
 
 Sunday P. m. 
 There is a little more excitement here. The rebels are at 
 York, and the women and children are coming down from 
 Harrishurg. 
 
 At the time when this letter was written, he notes in his 
 diary for Saturday, June 27, 1863: "Lee's army is at 
 Carlisle, only one hundred miles from Philadelphia, and yet 
 the city is perfectly quiet and a terrible apathy is keeping 
 everybody idle, just waiting to be taken." And again on the 
 following Monday, June 29: "Meeting of the clergy of all 
 churches to offer their services to the mayor." This last 
 remark is illuminated by a reminiscence of Dr. Richards : — 
 
 From Cooper's study proceeded one movement that the chroni- 
 cle of those crowded years should not quite lose from view. The 
 enemy was at the gate. Lee's army had invaded Pennsylvania, 
 was before Harrishurg, was threatening Philadelphia. The 
 Quaker City was carrying non-resistance to its last consequence, 
 was folding its hands and shaking in its shoes, and waiting for 
 Providence or the general government to come to its rescue. It 
 was a panic of stupor akin to a dumb ague. Brooks, Cooper, and 
 the rest of us, assembled on a Monday morning in Cooper's 
 study, waxed hot at the local inaction. If laymen would do 
 nothing it was time for the clergy to move. We did move on the 
 moment. We drew up a paper offering our services for the pub- 
 lic defence. We would not take up arms, but we could shoulder 
 shovels and dig trenches. Several clerical meetings were in ses- 
 sion that noon, and we sent delegates to rouse them. With 
 Brooks and the venerable Albert Barnes at the head of the pro- 
 cession we stormed the mayor's office, a hundred or more strong, 
 and asked to be set at work on the defences of the city. We 
 retired, bought our spades and haversacks, and waited for orders. 
 The example served its purpose. The sting stung. The city 
 bestirred itself, and the peril passed without our being called into 
 service. But Brooks and Albert Barnes were ready, and I trust 
 some of the rest of us. 
 
 As the situation still seemed uncertain, Mr. Brooks wrote 
 home that he did not feel at liberty to leave his post for the 
 annual holiday : — 
 
 July 4, 1863. 
 The fact is, I don't like to leave here while tilings are just 
 in the present condition; not that I think there is any danger 
 
454 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 of their coming here, but people are a good deal excited, and till 
 the terrible battle of this week is over, and its results well con- 
 firmed, I shall not leave. It will probably be only a short delay, 
 and I will write you next week just as soon as I see my way 
 clear to getting ofi'. Everything to-day looks promising; we are 
 going to beat and bag their army, I believe, and then the war is 
 about over. I am sorry to shorten my vacation, but I must not 
 leave just now. 
 
 The events of these weeks culminating in the fierce and 
 sanguinary battle of Gettysburg, Pa., where 50,000 men 
 were lost out of 170,000 engaged, are told in the entries in 
 his pocket diary, which, brief as they are, thrill with the 
 excitement of the moment. 
 
 Saturday, July 4, 1863. 8.15 p. m. Services in Holy 
 Trinity. I read and made a short address. All the forenoon 
 down town. Great news of Lee's repulse by Meade. Dinner at 
 Dr. Mitchell's (Weir) with Cooper and Richards. Evening at 
 Union League. Still good news. 
 
 Sunday, July 5, 1863. Fifth Sunday after Trinity. I read, 
 spoke, and administered the communion. During the communion 
 service news came of Lee's rout, and I announced it to the con- 
 gregation. God be praised. 
 
 Monday, July 6, 1863. Evening. Started for the battlefield 
 under the auspices of the Sanitary Commission. Arrived at 
 Baltimore about four o'clock the next morning. 
 
 Tuesday, July 7, 1863. Spent all day making arrangements 
 and trying to get off to Gettysburg. Started in freight train at 
 seven o'clock P. M., and spent the night in the cars, arriving at 
 Hanover at seven o'clock the next morning. 
 
 Wednesday, July 8, 1863. Almost all day at Hanover. 
 Cooper with sick headache. Left for Gettysburg at five o'clock 
 p. M. Arrived about seven. Cooper, Kent Stone, 'and I slept 
 in loft of a tar-shop. 
 
 Thursday, July 9, 1863. A. M. At Sanitary Commission. 
 Tent near the depot. Then all over the battlefield. 
 
 Friday, July 10, 1863. All day at the hospital of the Second 
 Division of the Fifth Corps, distributing clothes and writing 
 letters for the men. Very tired at night. 
 
 Saturday, July 11, 1863. Walked with Cooper to the hos- 
 pital of the Pennsylvania Reserves. P. M. Among the rebel 
 prisoners in the Third Corps. Terrible need and suffering. 
 
 ' Rev. .Tames Kent Stone, a son of the Rev. Dr. John S. Stone, who went to 
 the battlefield in search of the hody of his brother. 
 
^T. ay] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 455 
 
 Sunday, July 12, 1863. All day among the rebel prisoners 
 in the Third Corps Hospital, p. m. Went into Gettysburg and 
 spent the night at Professor Stevens'. 
 
 Monday, July 13, 1863. All day travelling to Philadelphia. 
 Arrived about 10.30 p. m. 
 
 In these brief records one is struck with his desire to be 
 of practical service in the simplest of ways. Those who know 
 what healing power he carried with his presence can appreci- 
 ate what it meant when he went through the wards of the 
 hospital. It is also beautiful to note that in this awful hour 
 he knew no discrimination between Northern and Southern 
 soldiers. His affection seems to have gone out to the 
 latter. 
 
 While these events were transacting, Frederick Brooks 
 was graduating from Harvard College. He had rivalled 
 Phillips in taking the Bowdoin prize, he had surpassed him 
 in his class-day appointment as odist, a distinction which 
 the older brother would have valued. He had made up his 
 mind to study for the ministry, but for some reason, which 
 he found difficulty in explaining, he did not wish to begin at 
 once his theological studies. Meantime he was casting about 
 for some temporary employment until his difficulties should 
 be overcome. Under these circumstances he came to his 
 brother for advice. The letters written by Phillips Brooks 
 to Frederick are full of wise caution and suggestion. He 
 did not seek to inquire too closely into his brother's state 
 of mind, but respected his reserve. He was afraid that if 
 Frederick became engaged in other work, even temporarily, 
 he might be lost to the ministry. He suggested that his un- 
 willingness at once to enter a theological school sprang from 
 a mood he had himself experienced, — "the temporary disgust 
 with college which everybody feels about class day," and 
 reminded him how different his life would be in the theo- 
 logical seminary from the Cambridge work : — 
 
 I do not believe you would see your way any clearer a year 
 hence into the ministry than now. I believe the hesitations and 
 doubts you feel belong to every inception of so great a work, and 
 are best met by earnest investigation and prompt decision. 
 
456 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 When Frederick still found himself unable to reach a 
 decision, Phillips wrote to him again, urging the ministry, 
 dissuading him from enlisting as a private in the ranks, for 
 which he was manifestly unfitted, but reluctantly acquiescing 
 in the plan that he should try the Sanitary Commission as a 
 kind of missionary work : — 
 
 Every day I have more and more forced upon me the immedi- 
 ate need of the right sort of ministers in the church, earnest, in- 
 telligent, and loyal men, who will help to make the church some- 
 thing of the large, liberal, progressive (or if you please, truly 
 conservative) power that it ought to be. Can you, have you, a 
 right to postpone, with the chance of its never being resumed, 
 this which you have settled on as the great duty of your life ? 
 
 This correspondence is a beautiful one, disclosing the 
 reverence and confidence of the younger brother, and on the 
 other side the large heart, anxious to be of service, studying 
 the situation as if it were his own. He finally writes to 
 Frederick, suggesting that he is tired with the long strain of 
 college years, and invites him to join his party, in the sum- 
 mer, in a trip through the White Mountains : — 
 
 You are just out of college ; you need relaxation. Will you not 
 accompany us to the White Mountains this summer? Richards 
 and Strong and Henry Potter (Bishop Potter's son, a nice fellow) 
 and I have a plan of spending three weeks in August in tramping 
 and sightseeing among the Hills. We shall all be truly glad to 
 have you join us. Don't say, "They 're strangers," and turn off 
 disgusted. They won't be strangers for a half day. They 're 
 not men you '11 mind at all, and we '11 have a tiptop time. Now, 
 my dear boy, say you '11 go, won't you? We shall start about 
 the first of August. Make your mind and body ready for it. 
 Of course I shall claim the privilege of paying all the expenses 
 for us two. Write soon ; send me a copy of your Ode, and say 
 you '11 go. 
 
 The formal year which begins on the 1st of January does 
 not correspond with the reality in the life of a student or a 
 city pastor. Nor does the ecclesiastical year correspond 
 more closely. The year of work and of actual life begins 
 with the fall, and ends with the comino- of the foUowins: 
 summer. This sense of the division of time stamped by the 
 
JET. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 457 
 
 university and the professional school upon the experience 
 of youth continued to abide with Mr. Brooks throughout his 
 ministry. His work for the year was done when he had 
 gathered in harvest, or taken stock as it were in the candi- 
 dates who presented themselves for confirmation. Then he 
 turned his face homeward as from an enforced absence, to 
 luxuriate in the sense of freedom from care and responsi- 
 bility, but also in quiet to abide with himself, and, apart 
 from the scene of his labors, to review his experience, to draw 
 lessons of wisdom for the year that was to follow. And 
 throughout his ministry the summer vacation meant to him 
 not only the opportunity of recreation and escape from labor, 
 but the period when he replenished his intellectual and spirit- 
 ual store, feeding directly from the jiastures of life. Any 
 account of his work to be at all adequate must follow him 
 in his summer wanderings from year to year. 
 
 Thus on the 16th of July in 1863 he returned to his home 
 in Boston, where he remained with his family for a few 
 weeks before making another tour of the White Mountains. 
 The incidents of each day are briefly recorded. The first 
 thing was to turn to Mount Auburn on a visit to the new- 
 made grave. He began again to ride horseback. He was 
 often at his old haunts in the Athenaeum, looking into books, 
 making acquaintance with ecclesiastical painting or modern 
 art, so far as the limited opiDortunity afforded him in the art 
 gallery allowed. Through the more ample income now at 
 his disposal he was able to become the owner of the books 
 which most interested him. He mentions the purchase of 
 new bookcases to accommodate his increasing acquisitions. 
 That he still retained his classical bias is shown in tlie entry 
 for one of the days when he had been lounging in a book- 
 shop: "Bought books, Livy, four volumes, 15.00; Liddell's 
 'History of Home,' $6.00; Middleton's 'Life of Cicero,' 
 $1.75." 
 
 Since he was last at home a change had been made by his 
 father's family in their church relations ; they had given up 
 their pew at St. Paul's Church and migrated to Trinity 
 Church, then situated on Summer Street. Eeligious life nt 
 
458 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 Trinity might be very different from what it had been, less 
 profitable than in the palmy days at St. Paul's, when Dr. 
 Vinton was its rector, but it was not disagreeable at least, and 
 that was a gain. The mother of Phillips Brooks found no 
 satisfaction in the new style of preaching then coming into 
 vogue among the Evangelical school. It differed from the 
 older, simpler style represented by Dr. Stone and Dr. Vinton, 
 in the importance it attached to a minute study of the words 
 of Scripture, in the finding of concealed or unobserved truths 
 by the close scrutiny of tenses and cases. The Bible was 
 becoming no longer an open boolj which the wayfaring man 
 miglit read with ease, but a complicated network calling for 
 concentrated effort in order to unravel the intricacy of its 
 meaning. The preacher seemed to be engaged in an inter- 
 minable argument built upon remote premises which only the 
 initiated could follow; and if once the clue was lost, it seemed 
 impossible to regain one's way. The doctrine of the second 
 coming of Christ almost became the leading tenet of belief, 
 calling for elaborate investigation to determine whether it 
 preceded or succeeded the millennium. From these pecul- 
 iarities the pulpit of Trinity Church at least was free, even 
 if it were dull. Trinity Church had also gained for the fam- 
 ily a sacred association in the pictures photographed upon 
 the motlier's heart of George presenting himself at its altar 
 for confirmation. 
 
 At the invitation of Bishop Eastburn, Mr. Brooks preached 
 at Trinity Church on the afternoon of Sunday, the 26th of 
 July. It was midsummer, and the congregation was so small 
 as to seem almost invisible. This was not the first occasion 
 of his preaching at Trinity, and the meagre attendance may 
 have been owing to the circumstance that no announcement 
 had been made that he was to preach. But there was one 
 present who made the occasion the subject of reminiscences 
 in later years. He had called on Bishop Eastburn in his 
 house on Tremont Street opposite the Common, and in the 
 course of the conversation asked the bishop where he should 
 go to church the following Sunday. The bishop answered : 
 "I think you had better go to my church, for I shall have 
 
^T. ay] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 459 
 
 there a young man from Philadelphia named Brooks, who is 
 esteemed to be somebody, and I want you to hear him 
 preach." 
 
 On Sunday morning, therefore, I went to Trinity Church, 
 which, the reader will remember, was the old Trinity in Summer 
 Street, then a quiet quarter, still retaining many roomy houses 
 occupied by old Boston families. Entering its gray portals I 
 perceived that I might sit where I liked, for there was scarce 
 anybody in the church. . . . When the time for the sermon 
 arrived, a person who had been sitting silent in the chancel, 
 muffled in a black gown, emerged — or rather projected himself ■ — 
 in the direction of the pulpit. A tall, thin figure rushed up the 
 pulpit steps. Before fairly reaching the top of them a voice 
 called out the text, and instantly broke into a speech of most 
 astonishing rapidity, quite beyond anything I had ever experi- 
 enced or imagined of human utterance. ... As soon as I recov- 
 ered from my surprise, and the mind could catch its breath, so 
 to speak, and begin to keep up with the preacher's pace, I per- 
 ceived that what I was hearing was a wonderful sermon, such as 
 would oftenest be called brilliant, perhaps, but is better described 
 as glowing and lambent. The text was the verse of St. Paul 
 about seeing now "through a glass, darkly; but then face to face," 
 and the discourse contained material for a score of sermons, so 
 rich was it in high thought and apt illustration and illuminative 
 turns of phrase. I fancy that in those days Dr. Brooks used 
 illustrations more profusely than in later years. . . . Possibly 
 I myself might find that sermon too ornate for my maturer taste, 
 but I know the impression it then made upon me was not of over- 
 ornamentation, but of thought intrinsically and aboundingly rich, 
 and I believe that if it shall see the light among any forthcoming 
 collection of Bishop Brooks's literary remains, I shall gain from 
 reading it the same impression that it produced so many years 
 ago. 
 
 The writer of this account was impressed with the contrast 
 between the few hearers who listened to Phillips Brooks on 
 that midsummer day in 1863 and the thousands afterwards, 
 in the glorified new Trinity, who dwelt on every note of his 
 voice, — between the young Brooks who was thought to be 
 somebody and the man who became the successor of Bishop 
 Eastburn. But ajDpearances are deceitful. In Mr. Brooks's 
 diary for the following Monday, it reads, "Mr. George 
 
46o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 Dexter [the senior warden] called to talk about my coming to 
 Trinity Church." It took six years before this result should 
 be accomplished, but it is interesting to note how long the 
 parish had kept him in view. 
 
 On the second day of August he started on his trip to the 
 White Mountains, accompanied by his brother Frederick, by 
 Mr. Richards, and by Mr. Stille.^ In the course of his tour 
 he met his friends the Coopers, the Ashhursts, the Lapsleys, 
 and the Mitchells. The tour was interspersed with rowing 
 and bathing, and occasional resorts to horseback riding. 
 There was mountain climbing ; from the Glen they went up 
 Mount Washington, and came back to North Conway. 
 
 A few days were spent in Boston after his return from the 
 mountains, during which he wrote a sermon in order to be 
 ready for his first Sunday in Philadelphia. When he reached 
 Philadelphia on the 5th of September he records his arrival 
 with a sigh, "So vacation's over!!" He returned to find 
 the city "quivering with excitement." The time for the fall 
 elections was near. Governor Curtin, the Republican candi- 
 date for governor of the State, was opposed by Judge Wood- 
 ward as the Democratic candidate. Not only did excitement 
 run high in political circles, but in ecclesiastical also, for 
 things were happening which roused the indignation of the 
 Episcopal clergy. The story is now a curious one merely, 
 relating to the action of Dr. John Henry Hopkins, the 
 Bishop of Vermont, and referred to here because of Phillips 
 Brooks's connection with it. 
 
 Bishoi) Hopkins had resisted the action of the General 
 Convention in 1862, when it gave its approval to the war and 
 its support to the government. This he considered intro- 
 ducing politics into a sacrosanct assembly, and therefore a 
 profanation of holy things. He had written a book, the 
 "American Citizen," wherein he presented his views of 
 political duties and relationships. He had been wont to 
 travel over the country, delivering lectures on these topics, 
 for his diocese was small and poor, obliging him to resort to 
 
 ' Professor C. J. Sti\U, the accmnpHshed teacher of history in the University 
 nt Pennsylvania, and one of his parishioners. 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 461 
 
 these and other measures to raise funds for his various under- 
 takings. Among his distinctive views, he held that the Bible 
 sanctioned slavery, an opinion to which he had given expres- 
 sion in his "American Citizen." But although slavery was 
 a divine institution, yet he thought it should be abolished, 
 and that this was the destiny reserved for it. His connection 
 with Pennsylvania was a close one, for he had lived many years 
 in Pittsburg, and was widely known throughout the State by 
 clergy and laity. He was very acceptable as a preacher, and 
 was often called upon to perform Episcopal duties in the State 
 at the request of Bishop Potter. The Democratic party in 
 Pennsylvania now proposed to make use of him in the heated 
 canvass between Curtin and Woodward. Six gentlemen of 
 Philadelphia had requested his permission to republish his 
 well-known views on slavery, which he had given in a tract 
 issued in 1861, and known as the Bible view of slavery. 
 The original motive in writing this tract had been to cool 
 down if possible the fiery zeal of the abolitionists. When he 
 was thus approached. Bishop Hopkins gave his assent to the 
 reissue of the tract, and in June, 1863, it had been reprinted 
 by the Society of the Diffusion of Political Knowledge in 
 New York. Soon after it was taken up and circulated by 
 the Democratic clubs throughout the country, but chiei3y in 
 Pennsylvania as an electioneering pamphlet. 
 
 It was manifest that such a proceeding could not go un- 
 challenged without committing the Episcopal Church in 
 Pennsylvania to a tacit approval of this extraordinary docu- 
 ment. The clergy of Philadeljihia were called together by 
 Bishop Potter, a protest was drawn up and entrusted to a 
 committee who should procure signatures to it. Of this 
 committee Mr. Brooks was a member, and by no means an 
 inactive one. Indeed, he was so prominent that he was in- 
 correctly suspected and accused of being the author of the 
 protest. But he did what he could to procure signatures for 
 it, directing circulars with his own hand to be sent broadcast 
 throughout the State. The protest was signed by one hun- 
 dred and sixty of the clergy, a very large majority of those in 
 the diocese. This prompt and decisive action may have had 
 
462 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 its influence on the election. At any rate Governor Curtin 
 was reelected by a majority of 20,000; Judge Woodward 
 was defeated, and withdrew from Holy Trinity Church. It 
 had been he who had done more than any one else to induce 
 Mr. Brooks to become its rector, when he was in serious 
 doubt as to his duty. 
 
 Saturday evening, October 3, 1863. 
 I have just got home from our monthly communicants' meet- 
 ing. It is the first lecture we have had since I 've got back, and 
 somehow it has used me up. I have been at work all day on 
 my sermon for to-morrow night (1 Cor. ix. 26). Last Sunday 
 afternoon I went out and preached to our colored regiment at 
 Cheltenham. It was new sort of work, but I enjoyed it. They 
 are splendid-looking fellows. To-day they have been parading 
 through the city, and seem to have surprised everybody by their 
 good soldierly looks. Nobody talks about anything now but the 
 election. We flatter ourselves that Pennsylvania is of considerable 
 importance this fall, and we feel quite sure that she is coming out 
 all right. Curtin will no doubt be elected by a handsome ma- 
 jority. Have you seen what a stir has been raised up by Bishop 
 Hopkins's slavery letter and by our clerical protest against it. It 
 may look to you like something of a tempest in a teapot, but I 
 can assure you that the letter was doing a great deal of harm, and 
 that our remonstrance has been widely welcomed. One of the Cop- 
 perhead papers the other day did me the honor to assume that I 
 had a good deal to do with it, and read me a long lecture on the 
 modesty becoming young clergymen. I had no connection with It 
 beyond signing it. 
 
 The father of Mr. Brooks was anxious to get a copy of 
 Bishop Hopkins's tract, for he was given to collecting histori- 
 cal documents. His son writes in reply: "Did you see that 
 Bishop Hopkins has replied to our Protest? His answer is 
 very angry and very silly. I am sorry that I cannot get a 
 copy of his first pamphlet. I have not got one myself. They 
 are hard to get hold of now." To his brother he gives 
 further particulars regarding the recent election : — • 
 
 October 17, 1863. 
 Dear William, — I have just come home from a long horse- 
 back ride. Congratulate me. We have been gone all day, and 
 
/ET. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 463 
 
 the parish has had to take care of itself in the meantime. Mr. 
 Cooper and I took the cars early this morning to Norristown, 
 seventeen miles out of town, where Yocum met us ¥/ith horses, 
 and we put off over the country, which is magnificent in its 
 autumn fires. I wish you could have been with us. I rode a big 
 gray mare, and though not up to Robin she certainly put me 
 through well. What do you think of last Tuesday? Twenty 
 thousand majority isn't to be sneered at here, and Ohio has done 
 better still. It is worth another victory of our armies thus to 
 have conquered disloyalty here at the North, and to have got our 
 heel on the neck of the Copperhead. 
 
 If you had been here I think you would have been as much sur- 
 prised as I have been at the radical character of this campaign 
 which has just closed. And it has been not merely Republican, but 
 anti-slavery ; not merely anti-slavery, but abolition all the way 
 through. If this war had n't done anything else so far, at any 
 rate it has made us an anti-slavery people, and begun the end of 
 this infernal institution. As it is. Three cheers for Pennsylvania ! 
 and may she do ever so much better next year. I spent Tuesday 
 night at the League House, and have seldom seen such an excite- 
 ment as there was when the news came in and the result gradually 
 became certain. Judge Woodward has resigned his seat on my 
 vestry, and advertised his pew for sale. I am sorry, for he is a 
 very pleasant man, and has been one of my kindest friends. I 
 presume we shall get along without him, but I wish he could have 
 stayed among us. . . . Your rector. Dr. Huntington, preached 
 for me yesterday morning, — a splendid sermon. In the evening 
 a better one still before the divinity school, in my church. I 
 recongratulate you on such a man for your minister. 
 
 A new and difficult problem in American social life had 
 been created when the Emancipation Proclamation of Mr. 
 Lincoln had produced its inevitable effect. Thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of negroes were now thrown adrift: 
 free indeed, but unaccustomed to the use of freedom; hitherto 
 cared for, with no sense of responsibility for their mainte- 
 nance, and now obliged to seek their own support; ignorant, 
 untrained, unfit for the burden placed so suddenly upon them. 
 To have shirked this problem after his enthusiastic advocacy of 
 the abolition of slavery would have been unworthy in the last 
 deo-ree. Mr. Brooks was among the very first to recognize 
 the importance of immediate and extensive action. His in- 
 terest in the colored people seems at this time the foremost 
 
464 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 object in his mind. He became an active member of the 
 Freedmen's Relief Association. He makes mention of fre- 
 quent visits to the negro regiment in camp near Philadel- 
 phia, watching them on parade, addressing them at their 
 Sunday services. He took special pride in a colored Sun- 
 day-school under the superintendence of Messrs. Ritter and 
 Clay at the corner of 13th and Race streets. This entry in 
 his diary for November 3, 1863, illustrates how deep was his 
 interest, but the brief expression "I spoke" needs great ex- 
 pansion to do justice to its force: "Reading all the forenoon 
 about Port Royal and the Freedmen's Relief work. Dined 
 at Cooper's with the usual party. Evening meeting at Con- 
 cert Hall in behalf of the freed negroes. I spoke." 
 
 These speeches in Philadelijhia seemed to excite equal 
 interest in Boston, for his father writes to him two days 
 afterward : " I noticed by the papers to-day that you were 
 engaged in the cause of freedom night before last, and 'made 
 a powerful address with marked effect upon the audience.' " 
 Much of the information which fed his enthusiasm on this 
 subject came from his brother Frederick, who had gone to 
 Washington in connection with the Sanitary Commission, in 
 order to see a life of practical service in the world before 
 entering the ministry. Mr. Brooks was anxious to see the 
 Episcopal Church identified with this philanthropic work. 
 He writes to his brother : " How strange this monopoly by 
 Unitarians of all the philanthropy of our time is ! It comes 
 partly of Orthodox neglect and partly of Unitarian asser- 
 tion. It will be part of your work to give it a practical 
 refutation." 
 
 It goes without saying that this devotion to their interests 
 by Phillips Brooks was gratefully recognized by the colored 
 people in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Their worship of him 
 as their champion and hero would show itself in amusing 
 ways, as at evening parties and receptions, when it was 
 understood that no one could expect much attention from the 
 colored waiters if Phillips Brooks were present. Long years 
 afterward, his acts of kindness to the colored people in 1863 
 were gratefully remembered. After his death a monument 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 465 
 
 to his praise was set up in these resolutions of the Bethel 
 Literary and Historical Association of Washington, D. C, 
 which may be introduced here as showing more distinctly the 
 nature and value of the service he had rendered than any 
 contemporary document : — 
 
 Resolved, That we the members of the Bethel Literary and 
 Historical Association of Washington, D. C, spread upon our 
 minutes the sense of the great loss that has come to them in the 
 death of that eminent servant of God, the Right Reverend 
 Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts. 
 
 It will be the pride and duty of others to elaborate in stately 
 and measured words a eulogy of this saint and scholar, humani- 
 tarian and great preacher ; to portray his many high and great 
 qualities. Be it ours to bring the sobs and lamentations of a 
 race he loved so well and served so faithfully, and thus demon- 
 strate that however destitute we may be of the higher possession of 
 intellectual gifts, we are not poor in that loftiest and finest atti- 
 tude of the heart, — gratitude. 
 
 We thank God for the example of a life so useful and exalted, 
 and so thoroughly consecrated to high aims and noble purposes, 
 which gave him that clear vision to see the right, and the great 
 heart to sympathize with the woes of our race ; making him eyes 
 to the blind and strength to the feeble. We recall with thanks- 
 giving his noble and brave words for freedom and enfranchisement 
 in the dark days of the war, the prominent part he took in open- 
 ing to us the door of the street cars in Philadelphia, which up to 
 that time had been closed against us, and this at the risk both of 
 personal violence and social ostracism. 
 
 His majestic form we shall no longer see, his kindly voice we 
 shall no longer hear, yet his memory will be to us strength and 
 inspiration in our march to that higher manhood and wider 
 influence which he so nobly represented. 
 
 As Thanksgiving Day approached in 1863, Phillips Brooks 
 was preparing himself to give expression to a nation's grati- 
 tude, interpreting the nation to itself, lifting it up to some 
 higher mount of vision whence it could discern the way it 
 had been led through the years of darkness, of inexpressible 
 agony, and of untold sacrifice. This capacity for being great- 
 est on great occasions has already been noted. It had shown 
 itself in college when he gathered himself up for examina- 
 
466 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 tions with the highest success. It was a natural peculiarity 
 of his constitution now to be consecrated to the highest end. 
 He summoned himself and examined himself as the day 
 approached in order to be ready with the lesson of the hour. 
 Already he foresaw the beginning of the end. The victory of 
 General Meade at Gettysburg, and the capture of Vicksburg 
 by General Grant, in July, followed by the advance of Grant 
 and the significant results at Chattanooga in November, 
 jiointed to one conclusion, ■ — the object of the war had been 
 really gained, however long the time which must elapse before 
 its full acknowledgment. The war should have ended here. 
 
 Again the great Church of the Holy Trinity was crowded to 
 its utmost capacity, seats were placed in the aisles and many 
 were standing, as the preacher announced his text : " There- 
 fore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no 
 more be said. The Lord liveth, that brought up the children 
 of Israel out of the land of Egypt ; but. The Lord liveth, that 
 brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, 
 and from all the lands whither he had driven them : and I 
 will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their 
 fathers " (Jeremiah xvi. 14, 15). The next day, November 
 27, 1863, came the request for the publication of the sermon, 
 signed by some sixty names of the leading citizens of Philadel- 
 phia. It was immediately issued with the title "Our Mercies 
 of Eeoccupation." There are some features of this sermon 
 which have now only an historical interest, but even in treating 
 these the sentences glow with the splendor of the preacher's 
 deep conviction, his exuberant vitality, his rich imagination. 
 He could not refrain from mentioning Bishop Hopkins by 
 name, his Bible argument for slavery, and also the clerical 
 protest against it. He laments that the Christian church did 
 not take the lead in the protest against slavery. "Year after 
 year the church stood back while they who fought the battle 
 went out from her, and the whole movement against slavery 
 became not only unchurchly but openly infidel, disowning all 
 interest in every presentation of that Christianity of whose 
 spirit and operation it was nevertheless of itself the legiti- 
 mate result." He rejoices that in the Episcopal Church, the 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 467 
 
 most conservative of all conservatisms, the clergy of the 
 diocese of Pennsylvania had given utterance to their con- 
 demnation of the Bible argument for slavery in a manner 
 which no man could mistake. 
 
 As name after name was added to that Protest, as the assent 
 came in so unanimously from every direction, — from the mission 
 chapels in the hills, from the cathedral churches in the city, from 
 the seats of our schools and our seminary, and above all, thank 
 God, from the honored dignity of the bishop's chair [Et. Rev. 
 Alonzo Potter], made dear by our love for him, who we pray may 
 long sit in it to do true things like this, — it seemed to me as if 
 every new assent wiped from the vesture of the church we love 
 some stain of her long compliance, and gave promise of the day 
 when she shall stand up in her perfect and unsullied excellence, 
 and, wreathing her venerable beauty with an ever fresh and ver- 
 dant love for all God's truth, be such a church as there is not in 
 the land. 
 
 There were those who rejoiced that slavery was disappear- 
 ing, but "o«M' rejoicing," they said, "is for the white man; 
 it is not for the negro we care." To this the preacher 
 replied : — 
 
 It is for the negro we care. It is our fault, and not his, that 
 he is here. It is our fault, inherited from the fathers, that has 
 kept in most utter bondage, and most cruel bondage too, genera- 
 tion after generation of men who have proved themselves the most 
 patient, long-suffering, affectionate, docile race of servants that 
 ever lived, and who now, in the little glimmering of a chance 
 that is given them, are standing between us and the rebels, fight- 
 ing battles, receiving wounds, dying deaths, that belong more to 
 us than to them, fighting splendidly, working faithfully, learning 
 eagerly, enduring endlessly, laying hold on a higher life with an 
 eagerness that has no parallel in savage history. 
 
 He warns his congregation against the fragments of old 
 prejudices still clinging about them : — 
 
 Let us get rid of these. If the negro is a man, and we have 
 freed him in virtue of his manhood, what consistency or honor is 
 it which still objects to his riding down the street in the same car 
 with us if he is tired, or sitting in the same pew with us if he 
 wants to worship God ? Brethren, the vi'orld is not all saved yet. 
 There are a few things still that "ought not to he." 
 
468 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 But the great charm of the sermon, its literary power as 
 well as its irresistible human appeal, lay in the application of 
 its subject, the Mercies of Keoccupation. The preacher 
 grasped the fundamental principle of life, which gives fasci- 
 nation and jjotency to the world's highest literature, that the 
 reoceupation, after the loss and deprivation with its accom- 
 panying struggle to regain, is greater than was the first occu- 
 pation. He aj)plied this truth in various ways. 
 
 When this war began you know how heavy the air was with 
 gloomy prophecies of the ruin that was to come upon us here at 
 home in the derangement of labor, in the scarceness of supplies, 
 in the stoppage of business, in the insecurity of property. The 
 war is almost three years old, and industry was never richer, 
 homes were never happier, trade never paid so well, harvests 
 never crowded the bursting barns more fully than in the abundant 
 prosperity of this battle-autumn. . . . This prosperity is not like 
 other prosperity. ... It has made many, a man, careless and 
 utterly tlioughtless before, take his unexpected fortune with some- 
 thing like reverence, as if he took it directly out of the open hand 
 of the Almighty. This is the first reoceupation. We enter this 
 year into our barns of plenty, and so much of the solemnity of 
 the time clings about them that we tread their floors as if we 
 trod a churcli's aisle. ... I know the exceptions as well as you 
 do, — the sickening frivolity, it is worse than that, the foolhardy 
 impiety, that is daring to desecrate these solemn times with the 
 flaunting of its selfish finery and the wretched display of its new- 
 made money. Every dollar made in these war times ought to be 
 sacred. A man who is coining money out of his country's agony 
 must feel like a very Gehazi. Is it a time to receive money and 
 to receive garments and oliveyards and vineyards and sheep and 
 oxen? . . . But there is a better side, — there is great sanctifica- 
 tion of ordinary life and ordinary blessing by the extraordinary 
 light that falls on them out of the supreme interests of our time. 
 The best prosperity of our country in years to come will be that 
 which has shared in the transfiguration of these sacred times, . . . 
 which has roused itself, as, when God had been speaking words of 
 blessing to him in Bethel, Jacob waked out of his sleep, and said, 
 "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." 
 
 He turns to the reoceupation of the national territory. He 
 thinks it strange that men should talk of the slowness or 
 ineffectiveness of the war in view of what has been gained by 
 the victories of the past year. " It is hard to keep up with 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 469 
 
 telegrams that tell us day by day of the progressive occupa- 
 tion by the power of the government. . . . The great river, 
 which is the lordly West, flows open with the light of the 
 Union on it from source to sea. . . . The vast domain west 
 of the Mississippi with all its untold possibilities; those two 
 States, Kentucky and Tennessee, constituting the keystone of 
 our broad arch, the sweep of Union victory has reclaimed for- 
 ever to freedom. ... In our own fair State we have a tale of 
 reoccupation too to tell. The silent graves on that hill front 
 at Gettysburg are voieeful with the promise that, come what 
 will, our Northern soil has felt the last footprint of the 
 oppressor and invader. . . . This reoccupation is to be 
 greater, to make the region which it gives us more distinctly 
 our own, than it was by the first occupation. The nation is 
 just coming to its inheritance. . . . Those who come after 
 us will look back and see that the work of this year was of 
 greater moment in the history of the world than that of any 
 revolutionary year. They will see that those years inevitably 
 came to be nothing without the completing process of these." 
 
 But infinitely more important than the mere reoccupation of 
 territory is the resumption by this American people in a higher 
 sense, the full occupation of the government of their fathers, the 
 reentrance into the principles and fundamental truths of the nation- 
 ality which they inherited, but which up to the beginning of this 
 war they had not begun worthily to occupy and use. . . . More 
 than fourscore years ago this nation declared itself free and inde- 
 pendent, — the new ground of a new experiment in national, social, 
 and individual life. . . . How very partially that bright announce- 
 ment has been fulfilled. We have never half claimed our inde- 
 pendence. In our timid regard for foreign opinion, in our blind 
 regard for foreign methods, . . . we have only very slightly 
 made our own the high privilege of independent life. Believe 
 me, it will not be the least of the blessings that God send us, if by 
 any means, by a development of our own powers, by new exigen- 
 cies leading us into the necessity of untried methods, by the indi- 
 viduality of suffering, ... by the terrible disappointment which 
 discovers the shallowness of loud-mouthed European philanthropy, 
 by the selfishness of the old worlds that will not, or the blindness 
 of old worlds that cannot, see how grand and holy a task a younger 
 world is called to do, — if by any means He gives us out of the 
 isolation of our national struggle a larger entrance into the inde- 
 
470 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 pendent life, the separate and characteristic development of gov- 
 ernment, art, science, letters, practical religion, and social charac- 
 ter, which is the wide domain into which He led our nation, and 
 whose splendid size it has taken us almost a hundred years to find. 
 
 There is another reoccupation in the circumstance that 
 party lines in the republic have been broken, and that loyalty 
 to the country has taken the place of all other issues. But 
 the highest of all the reoccupations which by God's grace vfc 
 have been permitted to make this year is the reoccupation of 
 the disused duties and privileges of justice, liberty, and hu- 
 man brotherhood. 
 
 You do not expect me, I do not think you want me, to stand 
 here to-day without thanking God that the institution of African 
 slavery in our beloved land is one big year nearer to its inevitable 
 death than it was last Thaidssgiving Day. On that day certain 
 hopeful words were spoken from this pulpit which grojied about 
 in the darkness and timidly thought they saw the signs of light. 
 To-day, will any man or woman blame us, as we stand in the 
 anticipation of certainty, and cry above the opened grave of 
 slavery, that only waits till its corpse be brought to it with the 
 decency its reverend age demands. Thank God ! thank God ! the 
 hateful thing is dead ! I am speaking solemnly ; I am speaking 
 earnestly; I am speaking as a man whose heart is too glad for 
 utterance, in the washing from his country's robe, even though it 
 be in the red water of her children's blood, of such a stain as she 
 has worn before the nations through these years of her melancholy 
 beauty. What has done it ? Not the Proclamation of last New 
 Year's Day, though we ought to thank God, as not the least mercy 
 of these times, that we have had a man to lead us, so honest and 
 so true, so teachable at the lips of the Almighty, as to write 
 those immortal words that made a race forever free. Not any 
 public document, not any public act, has done the work ; nothing 
 but the hand of God, leading back His chosen people into the land 
 of universal freedom, into which he led the fathers, and out of 
 which the children went so woefully astray. Which God is greater, 
 — He who led the fathers in, or He who leads the children 
 back ? At any rate, the Lord grant us to be truer to the new 
 charter of emancipation than (we own it with sbamefacedness and 
 contrition) we have been to the declaration of freedom and human 
 equality which the fathers wrote. 
 
 This analysis, these extracts, do scant justice to a sermon 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 471 
 
 which was a masterpiece of inspired oratory. The mighty 
 torrent of the feelings, the impassioned will lashing itself 
 against its barriers in order to bring up the congregation to 
 its own high vantage ground, the clear intellect which dis- 
 cerned the issues of life, all these conspired, working at their 
 best and fullest, to make the utterance great. The soul of 
 the preacher expands beyond itself to become the mouth]3iece 
 of the national life. He goes outside his own jjersonality, or 
 rather identifies it with the soul of the nation. In the ambi- 
 tion, in the capacity thus to identify himself with a life that 
 was larger than his own, lay the foundations of the greatness 
 of Phillips Brooks. 
 
 The sermon was at once recognized as something more 
 than a sermon, an event in the history of the times. The 
 knowledge of it spread widely and rapidly, forging another 
 link in the chain which bound the country to the man in love 
 and reverence. But from this public recognition of the ser- 
 mon one may turn aside for a moment to follow its effect in 
 the home circle, where its echo resounded in quick succession. 
 ^^ I ivant" wrote his father, "a dozen copies of that sermon. 
 Don't let your modesty stand in the way; I ivant them and 
 at least that number." Happy and proud in the conscious- 
 ness that he had now evidence indisputable of the greatness 
 of his son as a citizen as well as a preacher, the father sent 
 the sermon to his kinsfolk and acquaintances. He had only 
 heard of it when he asked that copies should be sent him, and 
 had not read it. After he had read it, he wrote, "I should 
 have two years ago repudiated much of its doctrine, but now 
 go almost the whole of it." Those to whom he sent it were 
 not all of one mind about its doctrine. He collected their 
 testimony and sent it to his son : — 
 
 Dr. Eeyiaolds says he lias read it aloud twice, and admired it. 
 He says it has converted his wife, as she has always thought the 
 war was unnecessary and had not viewed it so much in regard to 
 the sin of slavery. But she is convinced by your argument. 
 Wendell Phillips says it is "first-rate." He has read it once, and 
 was to take it again to-day as his Christmas sermon. "Capital," 
 he says, and he was glad to see the names of Phillips and Brooks 
 so well connected in a good cause. Edward Everett says — 
 
472 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 what? A friend had previously said he liked it for its manly 
 and independent tone and its argument, although it went further 
 than he could go in some respects. He spoke very handsomely 
 about it. When I went home I found a note from him, of which 
 I will give you a copy. . . . 
 
 Summer Stbeet, December 24, 1863. 
 My dear Sib, — I beg you to accept my best thanks for the 
 copy of your son's sermon on Thanksgiving Day, which you have 
 kindly sent me. I heard much of it while in Philadelphia from 
 some members of his church, and the perusal of it has more than 
 confirmed the expectations of it raised by them. With sincere 
 congratulations to you and Mrs. Brooks on his rapidly growing 
 usefulness and fame, I remain, dear sir. 
 
 Your kinsman and friend, 
 
 Edwakd Everett. 
 
 I sent one to my friend Robert C. Winthrop, also. So much 
 for the sermon; not quite yet, however; Dr. Dalton [a classmate 
 of Pliillips Brooks at Harvard] is extravagantly well pleased with 
 it, and says he shall buy a lot to send to his friends. 
 
 It was announced in the last " Witness " that you were to 
 preach at Tremont Temple next Sunday morning. I wish it were 
 so, and so do many others, if I was to judge from the inquiries 
 made. Yesterday the bishop sent his warden (Mr. Dexter) to me, 
 to say he wanted you to preach all day at Trinity. I had to dis- 
 ajjpoint them all. 
 
 Christmas afternoon, 1863. 
 
 Among other letters acknowledging the sermon was one 
 from the Rev. N. L. Frothingham, pastor of the First 
 Church in Boston, then situated on Chauney Street. He 
 and Mr. Everett were kinsmen in the same degree to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Brooks, both having married sisters, who were 
 daughters of Peter Chardon Brooks. For a year or two after 
 their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Brooks had continued to attend 
 his church. 
 
 January 7, 1864. 
 
 My dear Mr. Brooks, — I have just been listening to the 
 "Mercies of Reoccupation, " a rich and noble discourse that 
 justifies all the high praise everywhere accorded to the preacher. 
 
 Iliad long been desirous of having a "taste of his quality," 
 and liere is a full and great draught. 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 473 
 
 I cannot help writing this line to congratulate you and your 
 good wife in having such a son to rejoice in. 
 
 Yours very truly, N. L. Feothingham. 
 
 Another kinsman, Dr. Nathaniel Hall, pastor of a church 
 in Dorchester, also writes a letter of congratulation : — 
 
 DoECHESTER, December 24, 1863. 
 My deak Cousin, — I thank you for allowing me the privilege 
 and pleasure of reading your son's sermon. I have just finished 
 the reading of it, and I cannot refrain from expressing to you 
 something of the high gratification, I may say the admiration 
 which have followed from it. My heart is in fullest sympathy 
 with it all: that you can believe. And it is truly a noble utter- 
 ance, full of truth, full of beauty, full of true eloquence and a 
 holier than patriotic fire. I cannot tell you how much I like it, 
 how much I feel like thanking and honoring in my heart him who 
 thus feels and speaks. Heaven's blessing be upon him more and 
 more, and may his dear life be spared to be more and more the 
 blessing which I am sure it must be to others. It is the first 
 taste of him (so to speak) I have had, though I have heard 
 through others of his gifts and graces. I can well believe, from 
 this word you have kindly caused to reach me, all that I have 
 heard. It has the savor of true life, and of a holy, consecrated 
 power. . . . Give my love to your good wife, and please accept, 
 both of you, the congratulations and good wishes which belong to 
 this holy season from, 
 
 Your affectionate cousin, 
 
 Nathaniel Hall. 
 
 The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop acknov^ledges the sermon, 
 but to him as to Mr. Everett it was hardly the utterance with 
 which he could sympathize. His letter expresses the hope 
 that it will not be long before Phillips Brooks comes to 
 Boston as the rector of one of its churches. At a later time 
 they were to stand in the intimate relations of a sacred 
 friendship when this hope should be realized. "Oh, that we 
 had him at St. Paul's!" was the exclamation of another 
 reader of the sermon. 
 
 The notices of the sermon in the newspapers outside of 
 Philadelphia, in New York and Boston, while giving an 
 abstract of it and expressing admiration, agree in comment- 
 ing upon the fact that such a sermon should have been deliv- 
 
474 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 ered by an Episcopal clergyman, and in the wealthiest, most 
 fashionable church in Philadelphia. One attentive observer 
 who was studying the effect of the sermon mentions, as a 
 circumstance to be noted, that the congregation left the 
 church in subdued silence. If it had been any one else but 
 Phillips Brooks it might have been called an heroic, coura- 
 geous act. But he seems to have been under no such impres- 
 sion. It was not he who had offered himself for voluntary 
 martyrdom, with the possibility of being driven from his 
 post. The honors of martyrdom belonged to others, minis- 
 ters in country parishes or in weaker city churches where 
 tenure of position was not strong, who spoke out their minds 
 and then saw their congregations depleted or were called 
 upon to resign. That was not to be his fate. 
 
 The sermon had a large circulation, being placed for sale 
 in the principal bookstores of the large cities. In a letter 
 to his brother he gives the reasons which led him to print 
 it : first, because of the list of men who asked for it. But 
 "besides this, I found mj^self so misreported, represented to 
 have said such horrid, radical things, that I thought I had 
 better print in self-defence to show how very moderate I was. 
 Of course, as we all say, the sermon was written ' wholly with- 
 out view to publication.' " 
 
 Saturday, November 28, 1863. 
 
 Dear William, — So you think my letters are not as jolly as 
 they used to be, — not so jolly as Fred's are now? I presume 
 you 're right. I used to have the spirit to go at a letter as a 
 literary performance and try to write a good one. Now you have 
 just to take what there is left of me after my work is over and 
 the sermon done. Still I don't think I am any less jolly than I 
 used to be; you don't find me so in summer, do you? I am per- 
 fectly happy, and everything goes with such lovely smoothness that 
 I should be a rascal to be anything but happy. 
 
 Hurrah for Grant ! What a magnificent victory we have had 
 at Chattanooga. It lighted up our Thanksgiving Day gloriously. 
 Now if Meade only does n't get into mischief, and if Bragg is 
 really scattered, then the figlit is over ; a little more fighting per- 
 Iiajis, but we see daylight, and God be praised ! Thanksgiving 
 was a lovely day and everyliody in good spirits. Everybody went 
 to church. Ours was crowded, pews and aisles. I dined at Mr. 
 
JET. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 475 
 
 Cooper's, and went in the evening to a party given to General 
 Wild, a Massachusetts man, and a splendid fellow. Before next 
 Thanksgiving the thing will be over, and Uncle Abe will have 
 been elected for another term. 
 
 The fall of 1863 was a productive one in sermon-writing, 
 despite the growing multiplicity of engagements and the ex- 
 haustion waiting upon public sjDeeches, which, while they cre- 
 ated with apparent ease such boundless enthusiasm, were yet 
 accompanied by inevitable reaction. Only rarely do we get 
 hints of his reading, but these are important. He mentions 
 without comment Eenan's "Vie de Jesus," and he is study- 
 ing the writings of Pascal. That he was not quite satisfied 
 with himself, or was inwardly groaning under the burden, 
 may be inferred from a letter where he gives a full account of 
 a week's work in order to show how his time was occupied: — 
 
 1533 Locust Street, October 31, 1863. 
 Dear William, — If there is any cheerfulness in my letter to- 
 day, it will have to come from inside, and not outside the house. 
 It is raining as hard as Philadelphia only knows how to rain, and 
 all the curtains up hardly give me light enough to write by. 
 Fortunately my sermon is done, or it would be hard to keep it 
 from turning into a very gloomy homily on such a day as this. 
 What shall I write about ? Suppose I give you my biography for 
 a week, so that you can know pretty much what all my weeks are. 
 Weil, Monday morning I got up pretty tired with Sunday's work, 
 and went down town after breakfast, as I generally do nowadays, 
 to do up my limited business, paying bills, shopping, etc. At 
 one o'clock I went to one of our hospitals to see some Boston men 
 who had found me out, and sent to me to help get their dis- 
 charges ; sick and wounded they needed help and sympathy bad 
 enough. Then all the afternoon I went about making calls in my 
 parish, and spent the evening studying in my room. Tuesday I 
 had a funeral to attend, which took me almost all the morning ; 
 then I went, as I always do on Tuesdays, and dined at Mr. Cooper's 
 with Strong and Richards, and spent the evening at Dr. Mitch- 
 ell's. Wednesday was vay morning to receive visitors at my 
 study in the church on all sorts of business, religious and secular, 
 from men begging money to men joining the church. Then I 
 went out and made some more calls, and in the evening made an 
 address to a Christian Work Association in St. Philip's (Mr. 
 Cooper's) Church. Thursday I went to work on a sermon which 
 
476 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 I am to preach to-morrow night hefore the Bishop White Prayer 
 Book Society. It did n't go very well, and I labored over it all 
 the forenoon. I went and dined at Mr. Ashhurst's, and in the 
 evening, after making one call, settled down hefore my fire and 
 read and studied till twelve o'clock. Friday I went at the ser- 
 mon again, and, with lots of interruptions which kept taking me 
 away, worked till dinner time. After dinner made a few calls, 
 and went and took tea with a new parishioner, whose wife, by the 
 way, is a sister of Mr. Whitney, the superintendent of St. Paul's 
 Sunday-school in your city, a Mrs. Lewis. Home by nine o'clock, 
 and at the sermon again for an hour. This morning, being sick 
 and tired of the poor old sermon, I got up and finished it off 
 before breakfast, and since breakfast have got ready my lecture 
 for to-night, and my sermon for the children to-morrow after- 
 noon. Pepper that over with lots of people coming to see me on 
 important business, and you have my week's work. It is about a 
 type of all, a quiet, humdrum, and not unpleasant life, with an 
 extra sensation now and then. All this letter about myself! 
 You must excuse it, but you told me once to write about myself, 
 and so it is your own fault. 
 
 Among the other demands upon his time, not here alluded 
 to, was the attendance upon frequent meetings of a committee 
 appointed to prepare a Sunday-school service book. The 
 interest which he felt in children and in his various Sunday- 
 schools led him to appreciate the importance of such a task. 
 In the singing of children he took great delight. It was part 
 of his duty as a member of this committee to pass judgment 
 not only upon the hymns to be selected for the new service 
 book, but also on the tunes, and to the importance of both 
 these requirements he was alive. However limited may have 
 been his knowledge of music, he knew what he liked, and was 
 not slow in expressing his opinion. Mr. Lewis H. Redner 
 of Philadelphia, who was the organist of Holy Trinity Church 
 as well as a personal friend of its rector, writes of Mr. Brooks 
 in this connection : — 
 
 I don't think that Brooks had any theoretical knowledge of 
 music, neither was he much of a singer ; but when a strain of 
 music pleased him it impressed him so that he was constantly 
 singing it. He was a member of the committee appointed by 
 Bishop Alonzo Potter in compiling tlie first Sunday-school Chant 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 477 
 
 and Tune Book. The committee met regularly at my house for 
 two winters, selecting hymns, tunes, chants, etc. Brooks used to 
 loll in a hig chair in my library, reading some storybook, and 
 every now and then he would rouse himself up at a certain tune, 
 and say, "I like that," and the tune that Brooks liked was gen- 
 erally a good one. When the little book was published he was 
 over the water. I mailed him a copy of tlie book, and he wrote 
 me afterwards that he walked around the walls of Jerusalem, sing- 
 ing from it Miss Muloek's Christmas carol "God rest ye. Merry 
 Gentlemen " to the tune I had composed. 
 
 I differ with those who think that Brooks was insensible to the 
 charm of music. A man of his heart and genius could not be, 
 but he was fond of simple music. I remember meeting him in 
 London in the summer of 1866, and he was wild with delight 
 over the two new hymns and tunes just published and being sung, 
 "Jerusalem the Golden" and "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God 
 Almighty. " 
 
 However fully his time might be occupied, or his mind 
 absorbed, and his imagination fascinated by the rich sugges- 
 tiveness of his life there was no diminution of interest in his 
 Boston home. He writes still as if a boy in the family with 
 all the others, as though neither death nor absence made any 
 change in the dear familiar circle. Great changes were 
 gradually taking place there. George would no longer re- 
 turn. Frederick had left, and the mother had been called 
 again to her loving but painful task of packing the boxes in 
 preparation for his departure. Arthur was now in his first 
 year at Harvard. Only John, the youngest son, was left at 
 home. It was consolation indeed that all the children were 
 doing well and sustaining the honor of the family. "We 
 are a small figure indeed," so writes his father to Phillips, 
 "since Fred left; only Will and Mr. John at the table. It 
 is lonesome indeed after our long table we have enjoyed so 
 many years. We look forward now to Sundays when Arthur 
 comes home. By the way, I will not tell you what Professor 
 Peabody says of him for fear you and Fred would be jealous." 
 
 Saturday evening-, December 5, 1863. 
 
 Dear Father, — I feel moved to write you a little letter to- 
 night, not because I have anything very particular to say, but 
 because I was so glad to get yours the other day, and would like 
 
478 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 just as soon as you please to get another. Fred seems to have 
 completely cut me out of any epistolary reputation that I used to 
 have, and I suppose I must submit. I should like to see some of 
 those wonderful letters of his. Do keep them and have them 
 bound. I am rejoiced to hear such good accounts of Fred. Mr. 
 Lewis, the manager of our branch of the Sanitai-y Commission, was 
 in Washington the other day, and told me on his return that he 
 had seen Fred, and that he was hard at work. He said his work 
 was the most troublesome and vexatious that fell in the way of 
 the Commission, and that he was doing it with a great faithfulness 
 and acceptance, in other words, I suppose, just as a Brooks Boy 
 ought. Good for him. I came pretty near going down there 
 this week on the Freedmen's Committee, but was kept at home to 
 attend to a wedding, and some one else took my place. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher has been here this week, and spoke to a 
 tremendous crowd at the Academy of Music. I went of course. 
 It was very curious to hear him applauded and see him petted by 
 all the old fogies of Philadelphia. Mr. Everett has been here 
 too, dividing his time between the loyalists and the Copperheads 
 with beautiful impartiality. I was invited to meet him on Thurs- 
 day evening at tea at Mr. Hazlehurst's. 
 
 All is going on at this church as usual. One pew offered for 
 sale immediately after Thanksgiving Day, and four applicants to 
 buy it at once. We are weeding out fast, and I have now an 
 almost entirely loyal church with not an inch of room to rent. 
 
 The month of December brought to Phillipis Brooks more 
 than its share of anniversaries to be kept. After Thanks- 
 giving came his own birthday on December 13, and the 
 birthday of George followed on the 18th. Christmas was 
 the great day of the year. But as if all this did not suffice, 
 he added the night of December 31, keeping it by a vigil 
 in the church. For some reasons it would have been well if 
 he had not counted so closely the revolving years. To one 
 who hoarded life as the richest of treasures, there was danger 
 of too intense and ever present consciousness of its flight. 
 There was a mixture of mirth with the memory of old associa- 
 tions as he came up to the festivals. But the mirth predomi- 
 nated while the sadness lurked in the rear. Yet he noted 
 too curiously whether the celebration of the feast was ade- 
 quate, whether he had risen to or fallen short of its demands. 
 There is a touch of depression in these following letters as in 
 
^T. 27] THE NATIONAL CRISIS 479 
 
 others which have preceded them, on which his brother had 
 commented. They said at home that Frederick was writing 
 the more interesting letters. For some reason he was not at 
 ease in his mind. 
 
 Monday morning-, December 14, 1863. 
 Dbak William, — I am twenty-eight years old. The melan- 
 choly day is over ! I stood it as well as I could, but it depressed 
 me of course, and I feel a little exhausted after it this morning. 
 Still I had a very nice day yesterday. Dr. Vinton spent the day 
 with me and preached twice, and did his very best both times. I 
 never saw him in better case or heard him preach better. He is 
 spending a few days here. ... I had my salary raised the other 
 day. It is to be $4000, commencing with the 1st of January. 
 The parish has been gradually getting stronger and stronger, and 
 I am glad they feel able to do their duty by their beloved rector, 
 at a time when living is so high. 
 
 On the 18tli of December he wrote to his father: "The 
 approach of Christmas is making me homesick. Oh, that I 
 could be with you. Let us remember our last Christmas 
 together two years ago. . . . To-day is George's birthday. 
 Not a day passes that I do not think of George. Oh, to be 
 as good as he was and some day to be what he is." 
 
 Saturday, December 26, 1863. 
 
 Dear William, — How did your Christmas go off ? Ours was 
 splendid. I gave Mother the account of it yesterday down to 
 dinner time. I dined and spent the evening quietly at Mr. 
 Cooper's, with Richards and Strong. To-night I have a Christ- 
 mas tree for the children of a little negro Sunday-school which I 
 started a few squares from my church. We have got about a 
 hundred of the funniest little darkies there that you ever saw. I 
 wish you could be with us. They sing like larks. Speaking of 
 birds, I had a cuckoo clock sent me for a Christmas present. Do 
 you know what they are ? It has two doors just over the clock 
 face, and whenever the hour strikes, two little cuckoos appear and 
 tune up. It 's very pretty. Next week we have a big festival 
 in church for all our Sunday-school, and are expecting a great 
 time. I am glad you liked my sermon. I send you with this the 
 
 criticism on it of , one of our great Copperheads, which 
 
 appeared in the "Age " a day or two ago. I have just been reading 
 over Dudley Tyng's famous sermon of seven years ago. What a 
 brave thing it was to do ! Thank God anybody can do it now. 
 
48o PHILLIPS BROOKS [1863 
 
 So Christmas passed, and then came watch meeting on the 
 last day of the year, which was kept at Mr. Cooper's church, 
 where he was present and made an address. The deeper 
 seriousness in the tone of his correspondence, of which his 
 brother William had complained, becomes more intelligible 
 when we learn that he had made up his mind to resign his 
 charge of the Church of the Holy Trinity, in order to accept 
 the professorship of church history in the Philadelphia Di- 
 vinity School. He must have had the change in contempla- 
 tion for several months, although no allusions are made to it 
 in his diary or in his letters. While Dr. Vinton was in 
 Philadelphia, he may have discussed the subject with him. 
 The first allvision occurs in a letter to his brother Frederick, 
 dated December 20, and on the 26th he mentioned his 
 resolution as formed to Mr. Coffin his senior warden : — 
 
 I have decided [he writes to Frederick], although the decision 
 is not mentioned yet to any one, and you are to accept it in perfect 
 confidence and not mention it to any one, not even in writing 
 home, to give up my parish, and take the professorship of eccle- 
 siastical history in the Divinity School. ... I shall make the 
 change in a month or two. Kemember, you are not to mention it 
 to anybody. Let me hear what you think of it. 
 
CHAPTEE XV 
 
 1864 
 
 CALL TO THE PHILADELPHIA DIVINITY SCHOOL. EXTRACTS 
 FROM NOTE-BOOK. SPEECHES IN BEHALF OF NEGRO 
 
 SUFFRAGE 
 
 The election to the chair of Ecclesiastical History in the 
 Philadelphia Divinity School would not have been made, it 
 is safe to say so, without the knowledge of Mr. Brooks, or 
 if the trustees of the school had not been encouraged by his 
 tacit approval. Indeed, it is not impossible that he should 
 have made the suggestion. As one of the overseers of the 
 school, interested in its work, his desire in the matter could 
 hardly fail to be apparent. The subject had been in his 
 mind for some time before he mentioned it, or before the call 
 was formally extended to him. A certain unusual soberness 
 or even tone of depression in his home letters indicates that 
 he was absorbed with the gravity of some great decision. 
 Upon this point, therefore, as revealing the character of 
 Phillips Brooks, it is necessary for a moment to dwell. 
 
 It must be assumed that he knew his own mind when he 
 decided to accept the call. At this moment he was at the 
 height of his popularity and success in Philadelphia; his 
 church was thronged with eager hearers ; no cloud so big as a 
 man's hand was visible on his horizon. If some prominent 
 citizens had left his church because of his anti-slavery teach- 
 ing, yet many others were waiting, anxious to become pur- 
 chasers of any vacant pews. His power as a preacher, or as a 
 platform speaker on special religious or philanthropic occa- 
 sions, was widely recognized, his services were in constant 
 demand, and whenever he spoke he never failed to rouse the 
 enthusiasm of his audience to the highest pitch. It had 
 become almost a commonplace in the newspaper reports to 
 
482 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 say that the speech of the occasion was by Phillips Brooks. 
 Everywhere he went, there was a strange curiosity to see, 
 as well as to hear him. Even at this early moment he 
 seems to have taken the lustre off from other guests or speak- 
 ers who might be associated with him. There was something 
 strange in it all, and dilBcult to be accounted for, but it was 
 very real and genuine. 
 
 When we ask, then, why he should have been willing to 
 abandon such a position for the comparative insignificance 
 of a chair in a theological seminary, just starting into exist- 
 ence, with only a handful of students and where a meagre 
 salary was offered, hardly more than a third of what he was 
 receiving, we have asked the leading question, whose answer 
 must give us the man as he really was in himself, and not 
 as he appeared to the world. The strongest tendency of his 
 nature was at this time an intellectual one, could he have 
 been free to give full play to his choice. It had been his 
 ambition when he left college to fit himself for a chair in 
 some higher institution of learning. This purpose appears 
 in his college course, giving unity and solidity to his college 
 career, even though he does not seem to have been a hard 
 student, or so spoke of himself in his after years. In reality 
 he was laboring directly, as by a true instinct, for the mas- 
 tery of the implements of learned investigation. Greek, 
 Latin, and German had been the studies on which he con- 
 centrated his strength. His enthusiasm mounted to the 
 highest point when he began to discover the world of hu- 
 manity, by coming at first hand, and not through the imper- 
 fect medium of translations, to the thought and life of the 
 ancient writers. Great as were his later triumphs through 
 the gift of speech, they never eclipsed the memory of that 
 earlier triumph. Then he had become conscious of his 
 power. Scholarship he saw was a means to some greater 
 end, opening the way into a deeper knowledge of life. 
 He saw that each man must come for himself direct to the 
 sources of knowledge, gaining the conviction which comes 
 from the immediate contact of mind with mind, if he would 
 add to the world's possessions. For the sciolist who pre- 
 
^T. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 483 
 
 tends to knowledge, or makes a display at second hand, he 
 had a feeling of contempt. It also became more and more 
 apparent to him that history was the one study on which all 
 other learning was based. It gave him a deeper interest in 
 theology that it was connected with the world's history and 
 the experience of man. To find out what that connection 
 was, to enter into the thoughts and experiences of man as 
 man, reading it in dogmas or in institutions, was to study 
 the history of the church. Thus far his preaching had been 
 in that line, the fresh interpretation of formulas that seemed 
 outgrown, or commonjilace, or had become so familiar as to 
 lose their meaning. But at every step he took he felt the 
 need of a more extensive and thorough learning; and for 
 that learning which was insight and power and profound self- 
 satisfaction, which brought him also close to the heart and 
 mind of God, he thirsted, as a traveller in a dry and thirsty 
 land where no water is. 
 
 But it was not only the satisfaction of his own mind he 
 sought. He never would have been content to have rested 
 there. What he gained he must impart. To be a teacher re- 
 appeared before him as the highest, most desirable, the most 
 natural, calling of a man in this life. He did not wholly 
 like the publicity of the life he was now leading. To do 
 some great work, but to do it quietly without ostentation, 
 to come in contact with other minds in the intimate rela- 
 tions of teacher and pupil, to act quietly as a leavening in- 
 fluence till the whole should be leavened, — this if he had 
 any ambition was his. It could be done in the teacher's 
 chair better than in the pulpit. Other men might be found 
 who could guide the activities of large churches, but the men 
 with a divine calling to become teachers were rare. He 
 dared to believe or to hope that he was one of these. It was 
 in his blood, too, the mysterious appeal of an inherited 
 ancestral force which had wrought great things for the cause 
 of education, — the Phillipses, who had formed the academies 
 at Andover and Exeter ; who had combined to impoverish 
 the family in order to establish a theological seminary. His 
 heart rejoiced at the thought of a school, a college, above 
 
484 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 all a theological seminary. And here the opportunity was 
 at his hand, the opportunity of a lifetime, the one depart- 
 ment of study he most coveted in a higher institution of 
 learning, in his own church and under auspices most favor- 
 able. He could not have had any doubt in his own mind 
 what his decision should be. These letters to his father and 
 brother tell briefly but clearly the situation : — 
 
 Thursday moming, January 7, 1864. 
 
 Deae Father, — I want to write to you about a very impor- 
 tant matter (to me), probably one of the most important I shall 
 ever have to meet. It has been vaguely in prospect for some 
 time, but not in such a state that I could speak about it until 
 now. You know we have a new Divinity School just starting 
 here, with great promise of success. A gentleman in New York 
 lias just endowed a Professorship of Ecclesiastical History, and I 
 have received the appointment to the chair, and have decided to 
 leave the Holy Trinity and accept it. You may be sure I have 
 not settled this in a hurry. I want you and Mother to under- 
 stand just exactly what are my reasons for such a decision. 
 
 In the first place the great need of the church (you surely know 
 it) is for ministers. And any one who can go to the root of that 
 difficulty, and help to train the right sort of men, is doing a better 
 and more fundamental work than any mere parish minister could 
 do. Then the great need of our seminaries is young men for pro- 
 fessors. We have always had old men. We want younger ones, 
 and I have got youth and energy, if nothing else, to give. Again, 
 the parish is much more easily provided for than the chair. 
 Any man they choose to call will take the Church of the Holy 
 Trinity, with its splendid congregation and its $4000 a year. 
 There are not a great many, certainly none with families, who 
 can afford to come to the obscure professorship at $1800 a 
 year. 
 
 Then a more personal reason. I need it for myself. In the 
 whirl of this life which I am living now I get no time for study. 
 Everything is going out, nothing is coming in, and I find myself 
 needing a quieter and more studious life. I shall both do more 
 and get more good in my professor's chair. 
 
 These are the reasons why I have decided on the change. I 
 hope you will approve of them and of my step. I hate to leave 
 the parish. It never was more perfectly prosperous or more dear 
 to me than it is to-day, but I don't see how to help it. I ought 
 to go. It will involve a great change in my way of life. The 
 
^T. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 485 
 
 endowment is only $30,000, yielding $1800 a year. I must get 
 along on that. I shall go to West Philadelphia to live, and settle 
 into a much quietex" and less conspicuous existence than I have 
 been living. I shan't mind that. 
 
 Bishop Potter approves the step. Nobody knows it in the 
 parish yet but Mr. Coffin, who is very sorry, but perfectly friendly. 
 Let me hear what you all think. 
 
 Yours lovingly, Phill. 
 
 Saturday morning, January 9, 1864. 
 
 Dear "William, — ... I have not been able to write a ser- 
 mon this week. The matter of which I wrote Father and Mother 
 the other day, my leaving the church for the Divinity School, has 
 kept me very anxious and unsettled, and put steady writing out of 
 the question. I am more and more decided to go. My parish is 
 very dear to me, — I did not know at all how dear until I began 
 to think of leaving it ; but this other work is so important, so im- 
 mensely needs aid and can find so few to undertake it, that I 
 seem very much inclined to think it is my duty to accept the call. 
 What do you think of it? I am delighted at your thoughts of 
 coming on. If I change my position, I may not be able to offer 
 you as sumptuous a reception as I otherwise should, but you shall 
 have the warmest welcome that ever brother had. Don't come 
 just yet, for the city and country are miserable in their winter's 
 dress, but come towards spring, when horseback is possible and 
 the country is glorious. But come whenever you can. You can 
 never miss a welcome. You are certainly right about "Jean 
 Ingelow." It is a great book. I wonder who she is. 
 
 There was consternation in the Church of the Holy Trinity 
 when it became known that the inclination of Phillips Brooks 
 was to abandon the pulpit and become a professor in a theo- 
 logical seminary. It may be different in the Episcopal 
 Church in this respect from what it is in other churches. 
 Among Presbyterians and Congregationalists it has some- 
 times been regarded as an honor to be called from high 
 places, from large and wealthy churches, to such positions. 
 A call to Andover or to Princeton is a call to go up higher, 
 no matter how great or rare may be a man's success in the 
 pulpit or in parish ministrations. But if a Phillips Brooks 
 had appeared among them, it may be doubtful what would 
 have been the verdict in regard to his duty. At any rate, in 
 the Episcopal Church the traditions were not in favor of 
 
486 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 such a translation. Mr. Brooks had said that a parish is 
 much more easily provided for than a teacher's chair. The 
 congregation of the Holy Trinity were unanimous in their 
 conviction that the reverse was true, that many could be 
 found to fill the teacher's chair, while few, indeed, if any, 
 could be found to succeed him as their rector. Among the 
 many letters that now poured in upon him there was not 
 one that sustained him, or encouraged him to maintain his 
 decision. In some of the letters there is manifested almost 
 a feeling of indignation against him that he could be so ob- 
 livious to the divine will and the manifest tokens of divine 
 aj)proval. Again, as in the earlier years of his life, the 
 world spirit rose before him, and seemed to bar the way 
 with its flaming sword to the tree of life. It took the 
 shape of earnest protests and pathetic appeals from his con- 
 gregation as a whole and from its individual members. And 
 Phillips Brooks was so constituted as to find it impossible to 
 resist these appeals. When it came to a moral principle to 
 be advocated or any truth enforced, he had no dilficulty. 
 But when it was a question of other things, or of how he 
 should act when there was a choice of paths to be followed, 
 each of which promised the highest sj^iritual vantage, then 
 he was very much at the mercy of his friends, and followed 
 what seemed the loudest call. 
 
 It is strange, however, to find that he does not value, or 
 seem to be aware of, the gift of speech with which he had 
 been endowed. In none of his letters or in private records 
 does he give any sign that he values the possession of this 
 power which the world seems to value beyond all other gifts. 
 He must have known it, but he held it low in comparison 
 with the reality he was asjjiring after. To be a scholar, to 
 penetrate to the very core of human learning and throw new 
 light upon the march of humanity through the ways of life, 
 that was the thing he coveted and prized; for that, too, he 
 dared believe that he was fitted. But this is not the world's 
 estimate. It has not greatly cared for its scholars, who by 
 laborious efforts of a long life have contributed some slight 
 accretion to the store of real knowledge. It has not heaped its 
 
JET. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 487 
 
 highest honors upon an Origen or a Jerome. But those who 
 have enthralled it by the charm of the spoken word, these 
 are remembered and commemorated down through the ages, 
 as though the voice of their eloquence was still resounding, 
 as though they were types of the divine voice appealing to 
 men, evidence that God was speaking to the world and man 
 had been compelled to listen and obey. Chrysostom and 
 St. Bernard, Savonarola and a few others, take rank with 
 inspired singers, with great artists, with the masters of litera- 
 ture. Into this small circle of the great world's favorites 
 he was entitled now to enter, and yet for the privilege of 
 doing so he does not greatly care. But at least he was com- 
 pelled to listen to the world's judgment and finally acquiesce 
 in its decisions. Here is the protest which came from the 
 vestry of the Church of the Holy Trinity : — 
 
 January 12, 1864. 
 Resolved, That the vestry of the Church of the Holy Trinity do 
 hereby present their warm, affectionate, and earnest remonstrance 
 to the Rev. Mr. Brooks against any action which would terminate 
 their close and endearing connection with him, and deprive the 
 people of this church and this city of such an element of power as 
 he now possesses ; and they add their own warm desire that both 
 with reference to his own usefulness and to their spiritual welfare 
 and that of others, the rector will see fit to decline the position 
 which it is proposed to offer him. 
 
 James S. Biddle, 
 
 Secretary of the Vestry. 
 
 It is impossible to do more than refer to the many per- 
 sonal appeals he received from individual members of his 
 congregation, — pathetic, affectionate appeals not to desert 
 them, resolutions adopted by the numerous societies in the 
 parish, which owed their origin to his impulse, declaring 
 that they could not go on without him. It would have been 
 very difficult to resist this pressure had there been no other 
 argument against the proposed change in his life. But there 
 were also other ways of shaking his confidence in his new 
 purpose before it should have ripened into a final deci- 
 sion. His friend, Mr. Stille, then provost of the Univer- 
 
488 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 sity of Pennsylvania, offered suggestions tending to under- 
 mine his faith in the relative greatness of the opportunity 
 open to the professor's chair as compared with the pulpit: — 
 
 Washington, T>. C, January 13, 1864. 
 Mt dbab Fkiend, — I hope you will not think that I have 
 gone in very strange quarters for arguments against your "transla- 
 tion, " but I was so struck with the sensible, judicious, and wise 
 views of Dr. Bellows on this subject that I begged him to write 
 to you. ... I wish you could hear Dr. Bellows talk about it; 
 he does not hesitate to say that he would consider your withdrawal 
 now a public calamity, although he cannot say how far the calamity 
 may be compensated for by activity in the proposed sphere. He 
 tells me in general terms that he considers a theological profes- 
 sorship a complete extinguisher of that sort of influence which 
 you wield so wonderfully, and which you expect to extend by going 
 into the new sphere. He tells me that Mr. , who both be- 
 fore and after he held the appointment of professor at 
 
 exercised great influence, wilted away during his incumbency. 
 Bishop Clark of Rhode Island, who is here, . . . authorizes me to 
 say that in his opinion the proposed change would be most unfor- 
 tunate in every way. Professor Bache will write you on the 
 matter. . . . 
 
 Sincerely and affectionately yours, 
 
 C. J. Still^. 
 
 Washington, D. C, January 13, 1864. 
 Rev. Me. Beooks: 
 
 Deae Sie, — My friend Mr. Stilld has conversed very freely 
 with me in regard to the danger of his church in losing the valued 
 services of its rector, by his transference to a professorship in 
 a new theological seminary about to be opened in Philadelphia. 
 Having watched with interest and admiration the successful pulpit 
 career of said rector, I take the liberty of saying, as a friend to 
 the Christian pulpit, that it would in my judgment be a great 
 error if any man of high pulpit gifts should imagine that he could 
 serve the Christian pulpit in any way half as effectually as by 
 illustrating the power and graces of Christian eloquence in the 
 pulpit itself. Every earnest and attractive minister does more to 
 make his profession attractive to young men by exhibiting the 
 work itself before their eyes than the best teacher or professor 
 could do by unfolding the learning or the rules by which the 
 neophytes are fashioned. The truth is that preachers, like poets, 
 are born, not made, and that a true-born preacher is one of the 
 rarest of Heaven's gifts, and can least of all be spared from his 
 
^T. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 489 
 
 peculiar vocation. . . . Let me, an older, not a better soldier of 
 the cross, beg you to consider very seriously how you can forsake 
 a career you have shown yourself fully competent to continue 
 with usefulness and success for the untried field proposed to you ; 
 where I should fear that the loss of freedom, incitement, and 
 direct contact with practical life might stop some of your sources 
 of intellectual and spiritual supply and freeze over the genial 
 current of your soul. It is only as a preacher addressing a 
 preacher in the common interest in the highest of all professions 
 that I venture to intrude these lines upon you. 
 
 Very truly yours, H. W. Bellows. 
 
 Professor A. D. Bache also wrote to him from Washing- 
 ton, moved by the ajjpeal of Mr. Stille : — 
 
 I know that the general argument of a geometrical progression 
 in the professor's action is a specious one, but if the intensity of 
 the action upon a congregation is compared with that possible 
 upon the general run of pupils, I do not think the direct useful- 
 ness is in such a ratio. I have no doubt you will succeed as a 
 teacher from the chair and give that its full value, but as a wan- 
 derer over many points of the United States I must bear testi- 
 mony to more remarkable deficiencies rather than successes among 
 preachers, and intend no flattery by the expression that in 
 classes of minds such as you have to deal with, there cannot be 
 greater success in giving good and full impressions than under 
 Providence has been allotted to you. It is a class of ministerial 
 effort so rare that it cannot be too highly appreciated and cannot 
 be replaced. I feel most earnestly desirous that such ministra- 
 tions should not be lost to our communion, and would beg a most 
 earnest consideration by you before changing your position. 
 
 Inquiry was made into actual cases, whose history was 
 known, and whose circumstances were parallel, where suc- 
 cessful j)reachers with large congregations had abandoned 
 the pulpit in order to teach in theological seminaries. Here 
 was a precedent of a most discouraging character which was 
 sent to Mr. Brooks by a leading member of his parish : — 
 
 Dr. some thirty years ago left one of the most active 
 
 and influential churches in this city for a professorship in 
 
 Seminary under a great pressure from his co-presbyters. Within 
 two years he told me that, though at the time he thought he was 
 
 doing right, it had been the mistake of his life. The 
 
 Presbyterian Church was destroyed and sold in consequence. 
 
490 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 Arguments like tliese must have carried weight. Perhaps 
 also the old, never forgotten failure in the Latin School did 
 not tend to increase his confidence. Meanwhile during these 
 critical days no further pressure came from the Divinity 
 School, or those who represented it. They had perpetrated 
 a daring act and then seem to have timidly withdrawn from 
 the conflict, leaving their nominee to struggle alone. His 
 fellow clergy did not encourage him. The following letter 
 was from an Episcopal clergyman much older than himself, 
 whose opinion carried weight in the community. Its plain 
 speech and matter-of-fact manner were at least calculated to 
 dampen one's ardor : — 
 
 Philadelphia, January 11, 1864. 
 
 Mv DEAR Brother, — Don't accept the professorship. Par- 
 don my freedom in talking with you; it is my way. I say, don't 
 accept it. It seems to me that your peculiar talent as a preacher 
 makes it a real call of God to you to be in a position in which 
 you can exercise that talent to His glory. Do not the crowds 
 who attend your ministry and who would not attend other men 
 show that your mission is to them ? What right have you to leave 
 those whom God sends after you? Did the Saviour do so when 
 the five thousand came to Him in the wilderness? Did He 
 not feed them by such power as he had ? Your case is peculiar 
 enough to make it quite evident that you have a call in this direc- 
 tion. Whenever any man has extraordinary success in any given 
 line of Christian duty, it is a mark that God intends him for it. 
 How do you know that you will he so favored in any other place ? 
 Are there not a great many men who can take the history chair — 
 is there one who can stand in your shoes ? There can be no doubt 
 that there is not one. 
 
 If you cannot visit, don't visit. Let the congregation under- 
 stand that you will make no more visits, except to the sick, the 
 troubled, or the dying. Let these be the terms upon which you 
 will preach. If after a year you find it will not do, then give up 
 preaching for a professorship. ... I am sure you ought not to 
 take this professorship. Moreover, to be as plain as truth, I 
 don't think you the man for it, although I believe you could fit 
 yourself for anything. I know I ought not to write in this way 
 to you, for I have not been thrown with you enough to take the 
 privilege of intimacy. But I seem to be speaking for the Lord, 
 who, I think, says, "Keep to Holy Trinity Church." 
 
^T. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 491 
 
 But this was not all; a step yet greater was taken, when 
 the congregation of the Holy Trinity was summoned as a 
 synod to consider the question, — their first meeting in such 
 a capacity. They came to the place of assembly prepared to 
 make great sacrifices if only they could retain their minister. 
 Already it had become widely known in the parish that 
 there was one thing they could do, — they could refrain from 
 calling upon him during certain hours of the day, thus 
 leaving him leisure for study, and they could excuse him 
 from the necessity of making calls in the parish beyond what 
 necessity demanded. These concessions they gladly made. 
 It is also interesting to note that Phillips Brooks's great 
 friend, Dr. Vinton, had become entangled in dark suspicions, 
 and took the opportunity to clear himself of any complicity 
 with the transaction. This was the letter sent by the con- 
 gregation to their rector : — 
 
 The congregation of the Church of the Holy Trinity, having 
 learned with deep emotion and regret that the rector, the Rev. 
 Phillips Brooks, has entertained a proposition that he should he- 
 come Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Divinity School in 
 West Philadelphia, have assembled in general meeting to express 
 the painful surprise with which they have received this announce- 
 ment, and to take such action as may be deemed advisable, with 
 a view to avert from the parish so great a calamity as the dissolu- 
 tion of the happy relations at present existing between themselves 
 and their beloved rector. 
 
 The congregation are perfectly aware that the only mode in 
 which they can hope to succeed in retaining the services of Mr. 
 Brooks, and avoiding the evils likely to arise from a second 
 change of rectorship in so short a period of its existence, is to 
 produce the conviction on his mind that the usefulness of Mr. 
 Brooks to the Episcopal Church in this diocese, viewed in any true 
 and comprehensive light, requires that he should remain in his 
 present position rather than accept the vacant professorship. The 
 congregation do not for a moment doubt the imperative necessity 
 of the increase of the number of earnest, cultivated, and active men 
 in the ministry of the Christian church, nor the great importance 
 of sustaining the Philadelphia Divinity School, as an agency for 
 supplying the acknowledged need, and confidently hope that this 
 church may prove a valuable aid to this institution in future 
 years, nor are they insensible to the high appreciation of charac- 
 
492 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 ter and services of our rector which has led to his nomination. 
 We are none the less convinced, however, from an experience 
 extending through the last two years, that the true sphere of use- 
 fulness for our pastor is at the head of this parish. During his 
 occupancy of this position, every day's experience has confirmed 
 our belief in the peculiar fitness of Mr. Brooks for preaching the 
 gospel. His talents seem to us to qualify him in an unusual 
 degree for success, not merely as a preacher, but for the develop- 
 ment of those great schemes of church work without which no 
 parish can live or prosper in any sense. His efforts during his 
 incumbency to establish Trinity Chapel and extend the missionary 
 work, and to undertake all those varied labors by which a true 
 Christian life manifests itself in a parish, have met with wonder- 
 ful success ; due in a great measure, it seemed to us, to the sym- 
 pathetic ardor and enthusiasm of his character, combined in a 
 wonderful and most unusual degree with the wisdom and judg- 
 ment which has marked all his plans. 
 
 His great popularity and success as a preacher, particularly in 
 the case of those persons of culture and position who have seldom 
 heretofore attended the public services of our church, lead us to 
 the belief and conviction that his influence in extending the power 
 of the Christian church, and in bringing into its fold many who 
 may hereafter become through his agency active and earnest 
 ministers of the church, cannot be overrated. We do not hesitate 
 to avow, as our deliberate opinion, that in this way he will exert 
 a far greater influence in increasing the power of the church, and 
 filling the pulpit with ministers of the highest qualifications, than 
 he could possibly do by efforts within the very limited circle of 
 any theological school. 
 
 Finally we conceive that Mr. Brooks's present position enables 
 him to exercise an immense influence for good as a citizen, which 
 we should be blind and ungrateful not fully to recognize. In 
 view of all these considerations, and of many others equally obvi- 
 ous, which we cannot here enumerate, it is impossible that we 
 should consent to sever the tie which his ability, devotion, and 
 earnest interest have formed between us, and thereby entail a 
 sorrow which we cannot contemplate without the deepest emotion. 
 
 In considering this subject, it seems proper for us respectfully 
 to request that our rector shall set apart certain hours daily, say 
 from ten A. m. until three P. m., or such other hours as he may 
 select, exclusively for his own study, during which he shall be 
 free from any interruption by the congregation, who shall be pro- 
 perly notified of this arrangement. 
 
 Resolved, That a copy of tliis minute as an expression of tlie 
 
^T. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 493 
 
 earnest and unanimous wish of the congregation of Holy Trinity 
 Church be furnished to tlie Rev. Mr. Pliillips Brooks, by a com- 
 mittee to be ajjpointed by the chairman. 
 
 By January 16 the question was decided, and tlie congrega- 
 tion was again summoned in formal conclave. The meeting 
 was opened with prayer by Mr. John Bohlen. The follow- 
 ing is part of the minutes : — 
 
 Mr. L. Coffin read to the congregation a letter from Dr. A. 
 H. Vinton, contradicting a report that he had been instrumental 
 in the nomination of the Rev. Mr. Brooks to the professorship at 
 West Philadelphia. 
 
 Mr. Coffin then announced to the congregation that Mr. Brooks 
 had declined the nomination, which information was received 
 with great demonstrations of gratification. 
 
 Mr. Bohlen offered the following resolution, which was unani- 
 mously adopted : — 
 
 The congregational meeting of the Church of the Holy Trinity, 
 the first ever convened, assembled for consultation in view of the 
 apprehended danger to the congregation which the resignation of 
 the rector would cause, are now called upon, instead of the action 
 proposed before they assembled, to render devout thanks to 
 Almighty God, the giver of every good and perfect gift, that He 
 has been pleased to avert from us this threatened danger, and to 
 renew our assurance of confidence in, and thanks to, our beloved 
 rector, whose ministrations are now to be continued, we trust for 
 many years, to the congregation. 
 
 We humbly and devoutly render thanks to the Giver of all 
 good, for His continued favor to us, and we desire to assure our 
 rector of the sincere joy which his determination has caused us ; 
 to give him our thanks for the fidelity, earnestness, ability, and 
 purity with which he has preached to us the precious gospel of 
 our Redeemer; and to pledge to him the cooperation of the con- 
 gregation in all good works for the spread of the gospel within 
 and without our limits, and our trust that we will by our own 
 faithfulness to our God and Saviour, His gospel, and our own 
 duties give him to see the fruits of his labors, and the good 
 which by the Holy Spirit he has been, and may yet be, enabled to 
 do to the cause of religion at large. 
 
 On motion of Mr. C. J. Stllle it was resolved that a copy of 
 the above resolution shall be transmitted to the rector, and also 
 to the vestry for record in the minutes. 
 
 Mr. Whelen stated to the congregation that during the discus- 
 
494 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 sion of this subject by the committee, it had been determined to 
 recommend that the rector be requested to set apart certain hours 
 daily, say from ten A. m. until three p. m., or such other hours 
 as he may select, exclusively for his own study, during which he 
 should be free from any interference by the congregation. 
 On motion the meeting was then adjourned. 
 
 John M. Read, Chairman, 
 Edward S. Whelen, Secretary. 
 Philadelphia, January 16, 1864. 
 
 So it was decided that Phillips Brooks should remain in 
 the pulpit and not be lost in a professor's chair. The whole 
 event is full of significance. Those familiar with his his- 
 tory will look forward to another crisis in his life, when 
 seventeen years later he was called to the professorship of 
 Moral Philosophy in Harvard University. Then he went 
 through the same severe struggle for the second and the last 
 time. In each case his own natural preference was against 
 the decision that was rendered. So late as 1881 he had not 
 finally abandoned the ideal of his youth to be a teacher. It 
 was a great sacrifice which the world was demanding when it 
 asked that he should give up the instincts and high ambition 
 of the scholar, for no less than this was involved in the essen- 
 tial limitations of the pulpit. No one knew better than he 
 what those limitations were, or mourned more deeply that he 
 must submit to them, when the last and final decision was 
 accomplished. But meanwhile he was not fully convinced 
 that the demands of the pulpit, or of his own personality as a 
 preacher, reqviired so complete and absolute a sacrifice. In 
 this there was an element of hope and of greater power. He 
 still kept the two ideals before him as not radically incom- 
 patible. Opinion will differ as to whether he took the right 
 course of action, in this critical moment, when his life was 
 still before him. When the call to Harvard came it was 
 different, for many years had then passed over him, and what 
 he might have done with ease at first was then more difficult. 
 The wider consensus of opinion will acknowledge with grati- 
 tude the action of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Phila- 
 delphia, by which the unexampled preacher was saved to the 
 church, to the country, and to the world. But there may be 
 
^T. 28] THE DIVINITY SCHOOL 495 
 
 some who will lament that the teacher's chair lost not only 
 an ornament, but that scientific theology and the scientific 
 interpretation of ecclesiastical history then suffered a loss 
 which can never be repaired. Few men with such gifts of 
 insight and sympathy, natural endowments, and acquired 
 training in scholarship, ever went to the work of a teacher 
 with better prospects of success. His decision to remain 
 with his church is thus alluded to in a letter to his bro- 
 ther : — 
 
 1533 Locust Street, Saturday, January 22, 1864. 
 Dear "William, — . . . I am settled down after my little 
 promise of distm'bance, and parish work is going on pretty much 
 as usual, except that by an understanding with my people I ex- 
 pect to get more time for my own study, and to get rid of what I 
 hold to be very unnecessary work, the spending the best part of 
 the day in running about making calls. 
 
 It was while the question of his call to the Divinity School 
 was still pending that he was induced to consent to the pub- 
 lication of a volume of his sermons. Dr. Vinton had given 
 his approval to the scheme. Arrangements had been made 
 with the firm of Lippincott & Company, the making of the 
 book had begun, and half of its pages were stereotyped, 
 when he concluded to withdraw it. The subject is alluded 
 to in the family letters, but vaguely. His father was strongly 
 opposed to the project. Mr. Brooks explained that in view 
 of his narrow income in the Divinity School, he should find it 
 necessary to depend upon his pen, and for this reason he had 
 made the venture. Whether it was the urgency of the pub- 
 lishers, or the wishes of his congregation that he should offer 
 to the public a volume of his sermons, is uncertain. Perhaps 
 it was wiser that the book was withdrawn. A few copies 
 were bound up, to give to intimate friends, and at some ex- 
 pense to himself the venture terminated. This subject and 
 other points of interest are mentioned in the following letter 
 to his father. He speaks of a visit to him by the boys, the 
 two youngest brothers, Arthur and John, in which he took 
 great delight. He has a large project on hand to raise an 
 endowment for the new Divinity School. 
 
496 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 1533 Locust Stebet, Saturday, March 12, 1864. 
 Dear Father, — I write in haste, knowing that I ought to 
 have written before, but then I am always in haste now. Yours 
 was received, and was very welcome. About the book you must 
 say no more. Of course I pay the cost. It won't be much, I 
 don't know just how mucli yet; Lippincott has not made his cal- 
 culations yet, but I can stand it. I haven't got boys in school 
 and in college, and though I am not doing a smashing hardware 
 business, I am getting a salary quite sufficient for my wants, and 
 can afford it very well ; so no more on that subject. 
 
 The boys' visit still lingers like the odor of an old pipe or an 
 old Andover MS., just which you please. I like the first better 
 than the second. You like the second better than the first. At 
 any rate it was very pleasant, and I like to think of it. I hope it 
 did them as much good as it did me. We are in the midst of 
 Lent, and hard at, work. My church goes on beautifully, was 
 never so harmonious and so active. I am making it my winter's 
 work to endow a "Holy Trinity Professorship" in the new Di- 
 vinity School. It will take $30,000. I have $15,000 already 
 subscribed, and see my way clear to at least $.5000 more. Money 
 was never so easy to beg as when men are pouring it out in all 
 directions very freely. 
 
 Dr. Butler has just been nominated to the chair in the school 
 which I declined. 
 
 Affectionately, Phillips. 
 
 As to the endowment of a chair in the Divinity School, 
 there was no difficulty. The congregation of the Church of 
 the Holy Trinity quickly and gladly resi^onded to the appeal, 
 felicitating themselves as they did so, it may be, on having 
 escaped the danger of losing their rector. He was calling 
 for their gifts, who would have preferred to give himself, to 
 the cause of theological education, and there was no alterna- 
 tive but to resjiond. When the fund had been raised it was 
 to be presented on the condition that the rector of Holy 
 Trinity should have the right of presentation to the new pro- 
 fessorship. This was no slight contribution to a cause so 
 near to his heart, though a pale negation compared with his 
 defeated purpose. 
 
 Mr. Brooks was now at liberty to improve the time at his 
 disposal, when his mornings were left free for study, and he 
 no longer was expected to make the rounds of his large par- 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 497 
 
 ish in annual visitations. Whether he was quite contented 
 with the new situation is another question. The trouble had 
 its origin, not merely in the invasion of his working hours 
 by those who were anxious to see him, but quite as much in 
 the reverse attitude, — an invasion by those whom he was 
 anxiovis to see. Even thus early in his ministerial life, it 
 was almost an axiom with him that the man who wanted to 
 see him was the man whom he wanted to see. He had to 
 struggle against himself when he shut himself up to work. 
 There was a contradiction in his nature, this insatiate de- 
 sire for knowledge and determination to get at its deeper 
 sources, and on the other hand this strong attraction to be 
 with people, to enter into the present life of humanity by 
 reading the revelation which every hviman soul presented to 
 him. It was an unsettled question which was the most im- 
 portant study, as bearing upon the mission of the preacher. 
 He wanted both, and without both he felt he could not live. 
 He possessed to an extraordinary degree the gift of observa- 
 tion. He noticed everything that came under his gaze; he 
 was reading and studying while meeting people, or walking 
 the streets, or at an evening party, or in the unbounded 
 pleasure he felt in the society of intimate friends. Nothing 
 escaped him ; a casual remark might have for him the hint 
 of a sermon ; from a conversation he could extract what others 
 would require a book to teach. If he were to be a master of 
 human learning, the authoritative expounder of theological 
 science that he wished to be and was capable of becoming, it 
 would have been easier if his life had been ordered for him 
 in the cloisters of a theological school. But then he would 
 have missed also something vital, — the living book of human 
 life, in which he became an expert, so as to have no sviperior. 
 There was here an unavoidable conflict. Meantime he has 
 undertaken the double task, and will do the best he can to 
 give to each an imjjartial hearing. 
 
 He now laid out for himself a course of reading and study. 
 The subject which he chose was Mohammedanism. He made 
 himself familiar with the literature of the subject, buying 
 the available books in English, French, and German, and for 
 
498 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 a year or more pursued liis inquiry. He also returned to 
 his practice of keeping a note-book, wherein he recorded re- 
 flections on his reading, and disclosed also the process of his 
 mind as the subject opened before him. It is important to 
 dwell on this point for a moment, not only as giving a 
 glimpse of the student, but still more because of the sig- 
 nificance at this particular moment of his life of the topic 
 on which he had fastened. Why should he have selected 
 Mohammedanism? In many respects it was a wise choice, 
 for one may learn as much of Christianity in its essential 
 meaning by studying the workings of a religion which denied 
 its fundamental postulates, as by poring over the letter and 
 text of General Councils against which Mohammed was pro- 
 testing. How has a religion worked in practice which is 
 based upon a denial of Christian convictions such as the 
 Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement? Wherein 
 lay the secret of Mohammed's unquestioned power? What 
 motive did he supply when invoking the human will? What 
 light does the Koran throw upon the method of the Christian 
 revelation ? Such were some of the questions he kept before 
 him. 
 
 But the choice of topic is significant for other reasons, 
 which may be partly suggested here, but can only be fully 
 seen in his later development. He was studying the working 
 of the will, as the vital element in man, in relation to life 
 and religion. That inquiry which he had raised in his own 
 mind when beginning his theological studies in Virginia, 
 how to turn truth into motive power for the will, again stood 
 out before his imagination as he sought to understand the 
 power of the joreacher. Where lay the secret of what we 
 call power? This power he must have been conscious that 
 he possessed, as he was not aware in those bewildering days 
 of his humiliation when he had turned to the ministry uncer- 
 tain whether he were fit for its exercise. 
 
 There was in Phillips Brooks an inborn admiration for 
 power when exercised on a vast scale, that power which 
 moves others simply by its natural quality, — ^the greater 
 manifestations of physical force, the gift by which the orator 
 
^T.28] TFIE POLITICAL REFORMER 499 
 
 sways the wills of his audience, the subtle quality constitut- 
 ing the hold of art or literature on the imagination. Into 
 the secret of power he sought to penetrate. But above all 
 he loved to feel it, to experience the answering sensation it 
 awakened, to stand, for example, as close as he could to the 
 engine of an express train passing him at its highest speed, 
 as though that were the index of the power within him. He 
 rejoiced in the exercise of power whenever he witnessed it. 
 Once, many years later, when he was asked what he would 
 rather have been if he had not become a clergyman, he an- 
 swered, in a jocular mood, that he would like to have been 
 the captain of a great ocean steamer, or, better than that, a 
 young girl in her teens, awakening to the consciousness of 
 her beauty, and without effort subjecting to her sway those 
 who came into her presence. 
 
 It was this feature in the constitution of Phillips Brooks 
 that drew him under the spell of Carlyle. He was a close 
 student of other literary teachers in his own age, Kuskin and 
 Tennyson, Browning and Coleridge, but Carlyle spoke to 
 what was deepest in his nature, — that ingrained admiration 
 for the application of power. Like Carlyle he i-ejoiced in 
 the appearance of the strong man in history. "Heroes and 
 Hero Worship " was one of his manuals. Among the heroes 
 whom he most admired was Cromwell. To Martin Luther 
 he was drawn by the same deep instinct, as the one man who 
 by the power that was in him had overthrown the papacy and 
 the domination of the mediaeval church. He had struck then 
 an interesting vein of history when proposing to inquire into 
 the rise of Mohammedanism, the source of its power, its 
 manifestations, and the causes of its decline. 
 
 His note-book indicates that his research was governed 
 by this inquiry. Now that he was studying history with a 
 special object in view the task was simplified, so that many 
 books were read and assimilated. He took large books, and 
 was not content till he had gone through them. He called 
 it a study of Mohammedanism ; in reality it was a study of 
 Christian history, in the strangeness of its development. He 
 was penetrating beneath the surface of familiar traditional 
 
500 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 interpretations, Protestant, Anglican, or Roman; lie was 
 judging of men and events and institutions for himseK, and 
 drawing his own conclusions. Clearness of insight, sanity, 
 and common sense, comprehensive views, the capacity for 
 large generalizations, with the ability to detect the weakness 
 of false generalizations, mark his steps as he proceeds. He 
 sits in judgment on the teachers whom he had revered. He 
 finds that Carlyle overstates and colors his facts, while others 
 labor under rancor and prejudice. These mark the two ex- 
 tremes in the method of studying the Arabian prophet. He 
 is not satisfied wholly with Savary's "Abrege de la Vie." 
 Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" he read faithfully, alternating 
 in his condemnation and his praise : " How strangely bitter 
 without a bitter word, how malignant with its seeming cour- 
 tesy to Christianity, is that fiftieth chapter of Gibbon ! " He 
 appreciates Eenan's subtle and ingenious comments, but 
 thinks him guilty of overstatement. Foster's "Mohammed- 
 anism Unveiled " he read with curious interest because of 
 its point of view, drawing much from it despite his repug- 
 nance to its methods. He went through Milman's "Latin 
 Christianity" with admiration; it was then a fresh book 
 which all were reading. Many hints he gained from Neander, 
 Gieseler and Hase, and other German church historians, from 
 Stanley also in his "Eastern Church," from Maurice's "Ee- 
 ligions of the World;" and he did not neglect studies in 
 reviews. He browsed over Weil's "The Bible, the Koran, 
 and the Talmud," and his "Mohammed der Prophet, sein 
 Leben und seine Lehre." Of Sprenger's "Life of Moham- 
 med" he remarks that "for careful, thoughtful fact-telling it 
 is worth all the rest together." He would give a good deal 
 if he could get hold of another promised work of Sprenger's, 
 a chronological history of the Koran which will trace the 
 religion philosophically in its growth, for it would give 
 what he can nowhere find. Sale's "Koran with Notes and 
 Preliminary Discourse," Gagnier's "La Vie de Mahomet," 
 Washington Irving's "Mahomet and his Successors," Bou- 
 lanvillier's "Life of Mohammed," these also were put under 
 contribution to the total picture in his mind. The list of 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 501 
 
 books he consulted was not of course exhaustive ; there were 
 many to which he had not access, but it is sufficient to show 
 how widely he studied his subject. 
 
 In this course of study, which continued through the year 
 1864 and the first half of 1865, his mind and whole nature 
 was expanding. It became the foundation of later historical 
 studies. He realized his valuable gift of the historical imagi- 
 nation, which enabled him to see things as they were, to live 
 in them and reproduce them. The same power by which he 
 read the men of his own time helped him to know the per- 
 sonages whom he encountered in history, till he thought of 
 them as personal acquaintances and friends. He recognized 
 the romantic interest in history, quickly detecting the pic- 
 turesque possibilities which make it live to the imagination. 
 He was haunted by the strange, mysterious personages that 
 flitted over the scene, whose motives he could not fathom. 
 He was tempted to indulge in reconstructions, — how things 
 would have gone if there had been the slight change in their 
 antecedents so easily conceivable. 
 
 It is curious to ask if the Jews had accepted Mohammed 
 and Jerusalem had continued the Kebla, how far Islamism and 
 Judaism could have coalesced. 
 
 The deficiency in the theistic idea of the Mohammedans, 
 says Neander, was a lack of intimate power of connecting between 
 the human and the divine, robbing Islam on its Hebrew side of 
 any power such as came from a Messiah, and on its Christian side 
 making it impossible to acknowledge a Trinity. 
 
 It made the doctrine of the infinite sublimity of God its basis, 
 as Gieseler says, but in a way so one-sided that an absolute de- 
 pendence of man on God resulted from it, and ideas of a likeness 
 and an inward union between God and man, and consequently the 
 fundamental principles of all the higher morality, found no place 
 in the system. 
 
 Nothing could convince us like the extreme accuracy of Spren- 
 ger's "Life," etc., how human Mohammed was, and how divine 
 his descendants thought him. 
 
 Among the picturesque scenes which strike the imagination 
 are the conversation of Mohammed with the Nestorian monk at 
 Bosia; Heraclius, the Roman emperor, receiving Mohammed's 
 letter, and putting it under his pillow ; Chosroes, the Persian king. 
 
502 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 receiving his and tearing it up ; Mohammed in the first violent 
 attack of his last illness addressing the tenants of the graves. 
 
 The fine picture of the idols, questioned at the last day vrhether 
 they or the idolaters were to blame, and the fault cast on the 
 idolaters. 
 
 The Arabs when charged with stealing give for an excuse the 
 hard treatment of Ishmael; they are only getting their rights. 
 Subjective character of sin; its influence by habit. 
 
 Converted slaves become freedmen. 
 
 The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is borrowed from the 
 Koran. 
 
 When Mohammed expelled the images from the holy house, 
 among the banished gods was a Byzantine virgin painted on a 
 column, holding her child in her arms. 
 
 The whole story of the sacrifice of Isaac is told of Ishmael 
 with very great particularity. 
 
 Take these figures, the " Sun " of Christianity and the " Moon " 
 of Mohammedanism, and do not their relations in many ways sus- 
 tain the metaphor ? 
 
 The nobleness of Mohammed's last days. 
 
 Why may we not say this about Mohammed ? What was true 
 in his faith he believed truly, but it was not his ; he found it in 
 the spirit of his people and his time. What was untrue was his, 
 but he never believed it wholly and truly. There was always a 
 mixture of imposture in it. Thus in him, as ever, the eternal 
 difference of truth and a lie is vindicated. 
 
 The state of the Christian church, with its infinite sects and 
 heresies, when Mohammed appeared would seem to explain much 
 of his perplexity in reducing its doctrine to shape. His epitome 
 of it is in many points certainly remarkable. 
 
 It is a striking fact tliat the two great powers of the Papacy 
 and Islam should have arisen together, reached their meridian 
 grandeur together, and together have declined, with the rise of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 Look at the Neoplatonism of Ghazzaly, the Plotinus of Islam 
 — • how it repeats Alexandria at Mecca, and shows us the eternal 
 sameness of error. 
 
 Ever this new faith touches with the old. It is not a new 
 faith; it is the old. It is another Judaism, more human, less 
 divine. It is the neo- Judaism of decay ; and Moliammed is to 
 Moses what Plotinus is to Plato. 
 
 Why should a prophet with miraculous powers have suffered hard- 
 ship ? Jamaly, a mystical poet, gets over this difficulty by repre- 
 senting his life as an allegory. It was a play acted in reality. 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 503 
 
 and expressive of the nature of God and the laws of tlie universe. 
 Not so untrue, O Jamaly, of this man's or any man's life. 
 
 The affinities of Islam with modern Unitarianism, their at- 
 tempted reunion, and especially that strange story of the visit of 
 Servetus to Africa. 
 
 See Leslie's Works, i. 207, for the celebrated address of the 
 English Unitarians, in the reign of Charles II., to Ameth Ben 
 Ameth, ambassador from the Emperor of Morocco. "Ce qui 
 distingue le Socinianisme de la religion Mahometane est si im- 
 perceptible qu'il n'y a que des int&ets humains qui puissent 
 retenir dans sa secte un Socinien bien instruit." 
 
 This too is striking. "The heretical sects of Christianity uni- 
 formly incline towards Mohammedanism ; the heretical sects of 
 Mohammedanism generally found to incline toward Christianity." 
 
 I gather from his story this, — that he was at first a religious 
 enthusiast of the practical order, truly, humbly, earnestly at- 
 tempting the work of reforming the national faith; that his 
 enthusiasm was strong enough to overbear personal difficulties and 
 disgraces and make him unselfish in the consciousness of a mis- 
 sion; that he deduced at that time from the Christianity and 
 Judaism with which he came in contact a scheme of faith wonder- 
 fully simple and true when compared with many of the Christian 
 heresies of his time. The change comes with the Hejirah. He 
 loses with the unexpected access of power, first, his intentness, 
 second, his simplicity and singleness of action, third, his unselfish- 
 ness. Passion of power and self-indulgence sweep him unstably 
 into their control, but the better spirit is underneath all the time 
 and will occasionally burst out. The Koran comprises the record 
 of both spirits, and its personal aspects must be judged by his 
 history. All his powers were made weak with unsystematicalness 
 and instability. 
 
 What shall we make of the opposite accounts (cf . , for instance, 
 Renan and Carlyle) of the amount of belief of Moslems in Islam. 
 What but this, — that although the amount of special faith in 
 Mohammed and his teaching was but slight and confined to a few, 
 the truth of Islam, its central and more general truth, was needed 
 and seized in a more personal faith by the people who were by 
 God's training ready for it. Mohammed has done vast harm. I 
 should dishonor God if I did not believe that Islam had done 
 good. 
 
 Where did this sublimity come from into the Koran? 
 
 "The East became too strait for them, notwithstanding its 
 spaciousness. 
 
504 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 And their souls became straitened within them ; 
 
 And they considered that there was no refuge from God, 
 
 Otherwise tlian by having recourse to Him." 
 
 This is Cliristianity, come it whence it will. 
 
 These extracts from his note-book, while they have an 
 intrinsic vahie, are given here chiefly because of their signifi- 
 cance as hints in his theological development. The effect 
 upon him of these studies was more important than he could 
 have known at the time, continuing to manifest itself long 
 after he had dropped the subject. To know any line of 
 investigation thoroughly is to have put one's self in rela- 
 tion with other branches of inquiry, so that one is able to 
 adjust his position in reference to other issues. He was 
 now sounding the depths of theology for himself, its pro- 
 blems were before him, — the relation of the will of God 
 to the nature of God, the definition of humanity and its 
 affinity with God, the mode of the divine revelation when 
 God is speaking with man, the place of the book in the his- 
 tory of revelation, the spirit of a true worship of God, the 
 significance of character as the medium of divine communi- 
 cation, the value of the sjjecial doctrines or the creeds of the 
 church, above all the person of Christ in the accomplishment 
 of human salvation. As we cannot appreciate our own 
 things without knowledge of the things of others, so we can- 
 not understand our own religion without the knowledge of 
 other religions. To get the differentia between Mohammed- 
 anism and Christianity is to enter more deeply the Christian 
 sphere. In these inquiries he also kept in view one distinct 
 purpose of his own, which was to become the unifying princi- 
 ple of his method, — the nature and source of power, how it 
 was to be fed, how ideas and truths and beliefs were to be 
 transmuted into power. 
 
 That he was already on the right road for the solution of 
 his problem was shown by an address which he delivered in 
 the spring of this year before the Evangelical Education 
 Society, then recently organized. At a moment when the 
 feeling was rife that the Christian ministry could no longer 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 505 
 
 compete with other agencies for the amelioration of society, 
 he maintained that the pulpit possessed a vast advantage in 
 that it could bring to bear the power of personality, the 
 mightiest force conceivable, in cooperation with the moral 
 appeal. Behind this utterance, which left an impression on 
 those who listened of an unwonted message for the hour, 
 there was an increased inward preparation of which he did not 
 speak, the secret of which he could not yet reveal. He was 
 to wait for years before he was ready to give the message in 
 all its fulness. 
 
 In many ways this year 1864 was most prolific in the 
 spiritual history of Phillips Brooks, when all the conditions 
 of life, of theology, and of religion were coming together in 
 a focus. In some respects they were greater than what fol- 
 lowed, because he was now in the glow and beauty of what 
 seemed immortal youth, the freshness of the morning of 
 divine revelation. At this time, also, he was outgrowing what 
 had seemed like physical weakness, springing from the sus- 
 ceptibility and delicacy of his nervous constitution. His 
 portrait reveals the inward happiness and satisfaction of his 
 whole being, a face whose beauty shone with the light of a 
 growing holiness, — that quality which is the " absolute har- 
 mony of inward desire with outward obligation." The in- 
 ward consecration to a perfect obedience brought him into 
 loving relationship with God and man. This inner life of 
 his manhood hid with Christ in God he carefully shielded 
 from observation, but it was revealed unreservedly in the 
 pulpit. He took the world of humanity into his confidence, 
 however reserved in his private conversation. 
 
 If there had been traces of depression in his home corre- 
 spondence in the previous year, they have now disappeared. 
 There is, to be sure, the same sensitiveness to the weather, 
 the invariable comment on the day or the season as bright or 
 dark; he even dreads a long railway journey. But for the 
 rest, there is the freedom and light-heartedness of a buoyant, 
 happy youth. Life was constantly growing richer and fuller, 
 bringing new friendships and expanding in every direction. 
 Among those whom he met for the first time were Bishoj) 
 
5o6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 Mcllvaine of Ohio, and his family, with some of the mem- 
 bers of which he maintained afterward a close friendship. 
 He met the late Elisha Mulford, rector of a quiet parish in 
 New Jersey, deeply interested in following the war, and al- 
 ready maturing in his mind his work entitled "The Nation," 
 and the Kev. William R. Huntington, rector of All Saints' 
 Church in Worcester. 
 
 The year was rendered richer and happier in other ways. 
 He was reading Greek with his young friend James P. 
 Franks, afterwards the rector of Grace Church, Salem, and 
 between the two there was an intimate friendship. Then his 
 brother Frederick came at last to the Divinity School, bring- 
 ing with him, as it were, part of the old home in Chauncy 
 Street, Boston. Through Frederick he entered into closer 
 relationships with the theological students, making them his 
 friends, eager to know how their minds were turning in that 
 day of changes in religious thought. 
 
 His interest in humanity and in human personality shines 
 out more and more distinctly. He liked to meet people. It 
 was an event with him to know Mr. Goldwin Smith, who was 
 then visiting Philadelphia. He had another peculiarity in 
 that he liked to listen to public speakers and lecturers. 
 Earlier in his life he recorded his conviction that the lecturer 
 has a great opportunity. When a man of ability and repu- 
 tation gathers himself up for a public utterance, he seems to 
 have felt it not only a duty, but a privilege to be there to 
 listen. In this respect he resembled his father, whose way 
 it was to learn from living men ; for the man and his mes- 
 sage were intertwined as if in organic relation. Thus he 
 listened to many lecturers, to his kinsmen, Edward Everett 
 and Wendell Phillips, to Eichard H. Dana, and to Henry 
 Ward Beecher. All through his life he kept this practice, 
 sitting as a pupil at the feet of the living personal oracle. 
 It seemed to stimulate his mind and all his powers as no 
 book could do. But he was engaged in an inward process 
 while he listened, putting things together which others sepa- 
 rated, making studies in every failure as well as in every 
 success. 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 507 
 
 The chief event in the history of the war was the appoint- 
 ment of General U. S. Grant, in the spring of 1864, to the com- 
 mand of all the forces of the United States, with the title of 
 lieutenant-general. With the approval of General Grant, the 
 movement of an army of 60,000 men was accomplished under 
 General W. T. Sherman, through the Confederate States from 
 the mountains to the sea, from Atlanta, which was captured, 
 to Savannah; then northward to Charleston in South Caro- 
 lina, and thence further northward to Goldsboro, in North 
 Carolina, thus isolating Richmond from the South. General 
 Grant himseK now initiated the last stage of the war, but a 
 year was yet to elapse before the final surrender of the South- 
 ern capital. In the months of May and June came the ter- 
 rible battles of the Wilderness, of Spottsylvania, and of Cold 
 Harbor, in which perished 70,000 men. Activities on a 
 vast scale were projected in the Northern cities, under the 
 auspices of the Sanitary Commission, for the purpose of 
 assisting the government in the care of sick and wounded 
 soldiers. The great fairs in Philadelphia and New York, 
 Boston and elsewhere, were gigantic undertakings, rousing 
 popular enthusiasm, and tending to unify and solidify the 
 Northern sentiment. These things and others of a similar 
 character were prominent in the mind of Mr. Brooks as the 
 home letters testify. He continued to write home every 
 week; but at this time the letters from his mother were rare. 
 
 Philadelphia, March 12, 186i. 
 Among other sensations comes our great fair. Immense pre- 
 parations are making, and people are talking about $500,000. 
 Dr. Bellows and Bishop Clark spoke at a sensation meeting on the 
 subject the other evening at the Academy of Music. All the 
 girls are making afghans and all the men are begging money, and 
 the whole thing promises splendidly. Come and see it. What do 
 you think of the Richmond atrocities, — " The Barbarism of Slav- 
 ery " as your worthy senator called it, — of whom, by the way, I 
 think more than you do. Wliat an accursed system it is with all 
 its fruits in crops and character, both black. Are n't you glad of 
 Chase's noble letter of withdrawal? Of course "Wendell Phillips 
 and the Commonwealth will blaze away, but I believe in Old Abe 
 still, just as I did that night at the Academy. By the way, I am 
 
5o8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 to appear on their boards again next week at a meeting in behalf 
 of the poor wretched Cherokees. How well Boston is doing for the 
 loyal Tennesseeans. I am glad you have got Edward Everett at 
 your good work. It is pleasant to see people working up their old 
 waste material. We are getting ready for confirmation, which is to 
 come about the middle of May. Don't forget the Holy Trinity. 
 
 Easter Sunday, A. M., March 27, 1864. 
 
 You were very considerate in thinking that I should be pretty 
 busy this past week. So I was, but it is over now, and I don't 
 know how I can keep this half hour of Easter Sunday before it 
 is time to go to church better than by a few words with you. 
 What a glorious Easter Day it is ! Yesterday up to midnight 
 all rain and mud. This morning bright and fresh and glorious. 
 Truly, the world itself keeps Easter Day. I have enjoyed Lent 
 very much indeed. Have had my regular two services a week, 
 and this last week services every day. Thursday evening we 
 had the communion service. To-day I am going to preach on 
 Acts xsv. 19. 
 
 I am going on to New York next week if I am not kept here 
 by an impending wedding. At any rate I am to exchange with 
 Ewer of Christ Church, Sunday after next. In May I am going 
 to Pittsburg and perhaps further West ; and between now and then 
 I am going on to Washington to preach in the Hall of Represent- 
 atives by the invitation of Mr. Channing, their chaplain. So you 
 see I am pretty well used up this spring. Besides this I have 
 got a sermon to write for the Anniversary of the Sunday-school 
 Union in May. Now you certainly can't complain that I haven't 
 told you enough about myself in this letter. Every paragraph 
 has begun with "I." 
 
 Tuesday eYeniug, April 12, 18C4. 
 
 I am just back from New York, called home rather sooner 
 than I had expected, to attend a funeral. You must forgive my 
 neglect of last Saturday. Dr. Vinton's is no place to write let- 
 ters from ; in fact, it is not a nice place for anything but just 
 to talk and talk and talk. Very nice for that. I enjoyed my 
 visit ever so much, but still am rather glad to get back again to 
 work. The New York fair is fine, particularly the collection of 
 pictures, which is the finest I ever saw. That is the great ob- 
 \ect of attraction. What a great place New York is. 
 
 Saturday afternoon, April 23, 1864. 
 Oh, if I were only in Boston. Three months yet to wait. 
 But if you '11 always write as good letters as your last one was, 
 they '11 go off pretty fast, and I shan't mind them much. It 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 509 
 
 was one of your very best. And then I have got Father's and 
 Mother's visit of week after next to look forward to, — that is 
 my great sensation now. If I can make them enjoy themselves 
 they certainly shall. They will be here right in the glory of our 
 spring weather. Tell them to let me know as soon as they can 
 just what day they '11 be here, so that I can secure them a good 
 room. We are busy in the church now. Last Sunday afternoon 
 we had our Sunday-school Anniversary. The church was loaded 
 with flowers and children, and everything went off very happily. 
 
 I am sorry Fred could not stop. I should like to have seen 
 the boy. I am very glad he has made up his mind to come here. 
 Dr. Butler has accepted the professorship which I did n't take, 
 and will be just the man for it. 
 
 Saturday, May 7, 1864. 
 
 The visit is in progress ! The Folks are here ! Philadelphia 
 rejoices and swelters as if it were July. Another of my seasons 
 of haunting the Continental has begun. I dine there every day 
 and get on familiar terms with the man at the office. They 
 arrived yesterday afternoon in very good condition, and after din- 
 ner I brought them up and carried them all over the church and 
 brought them to my rooms. 
 
 We are almost listening to-day for the cannon on the Rapidan. 
 The greatest tight of the war is going on, and God only knows its 
 issue. Before you get this we shall be either close on peace, or 
 way back with half the work to do over again. But we '11 do it, 
 either now or ten years hence, whenever God wills. . . . 
 
 Great expectations had been raised when General Grant 
 took command of the army in front of Richmond. The 
 month of May, however, proved to be one of the most fearful 
 months of the long struggle. Even Grant did not meet with 
 success. It began to look as if Richmond were never to be 
 taken. In his diary Mr. Brooks records the fleeting impres- 
 sions of those days of suspense and horror : — 
 
 May 7. Grant moving against Richmond. Great suspense 
 and anxiety for him. 
 
 May 8. Good news from Grant. 
 
 May 11. Great excitement all day in receiving news from the 
 army in Virginia. 
 
 May 12. Good news from Virginia. Grant is driving Lee. 
 
 May 16. All day doubtful whether to go to the Army. Had 
 to give it up at last. 
 
5IO PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 Saturday, May 21, 1864. 
 
 I suppose the good Pa and Ma are safe home by this time, 
 and have told you of our meeting in Broadway. I came hack 
 here on Thursday, and settled down to work. Next Monday I 
 am off again to Pittsburg, where I shall spend the week of Con- 
 vention. Fred, I suppose, is still at Fredericksburg. I am so 
 glad he has gone. It will be a great pleasure and a good thing 
 for him. I have heard nothing from him. I am writing my 
 sermon for the Sunday-school Union. It will be preached to- 
 morrow night. I do not know how it will go. I have told 
 them plainly that it is their bounden duty to teach the children 
 of the country the duty of loyalty and the sin of slavery, that if 
 they shirk that duty they will be in part responsible for some 
 future generations having to go through this fearful education 
 some day again. It will be printed unless they think it is too 
 radical. I will send you a copy. 
 
 Our hopes are all in front of Richmond, and there has been 
 nothing yet to dampen them. God grant there may not be. I 
 am sicker and sicker at heart every day for this fearful loss of 
 precious life. It must bring something. We have not got 
 Richmond yet, nor shall we have immediately. We must be 
 patient. It will come in time, we must believe. Meanwhile we 
 can do nothing but wait and pray. 
 
 Our winter's work here is pretty much over. The people are 
 beginning to go out of town, and the church work is finished. I 
 sent Mother our report yesterday. Last Sunday was our confir- 
 mation at the church and the chapel. We had large classes at 
 both. 
 
 While he was in Pittsburg, attending the Episcopal Dio- 
 cesan Convention, he delivered his sermon on the Prayer 
 Book. It had been written as one of a series, first given in 
 St. Mark's Church in New York, and again delivered in 
 Grace Church, Providence. The movement known as Ritu- 
 alism was then in its early stages, seeking for its sanction in 
 the Book of Common Prayer. The plea urged in its behalf 
 was the need of some strong, tangible protest against the 
 unbelief, the skepticism, the prevailing materialism of the 
 age. Mr. Brooks called attention to another and a better 
 way. His text was from Exodus xxv. 22 : "And I will com- 
 mune with thee from above the mercy seat." He maintained 
 that what the skepticism of the day needed is not new proof of 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 511 
 
 abstract truths, but new demonstrations of their personal 
 power ; not more study, but more prayer. The Prayer Book 
 furnished an antidote to secularism in the thought of the 
 Fatherhood of God, making an atmosphere so pure that in it 
 secularism cannot thrive. The Prayer Book made truth 
 evident, not so much by the clearness with which it defines it, 
 as by the light with which it fills it. It turns the stories of 
 the Bible into the parables of common life. The only way 
 to make men orthodox as to special beliefs was to make the 
 great Christian truths self-demonstrated by the vigor with 
 which they shape themselves into Christian duty and Chris- 
 tian life. The Prayer Book is full of doctrines, and yet 
 fills them through and through with the interest of human 
 life. It never tells men what to believe without telling them 
 what blessing will come from such a belief. He urged a 
 more intellectual study of the Prayer Book, and a higher 
 intellectual estimate of its value. It had in it the eternal 
 power of the Bible to meet all ages, and to suit the newest 
 circumstances of the newest age the best. 
 
 But the convention at Pittsburg was a grievous disappoint- 
 ment to Mr. Brooks in its failure to adopt a strong anti- 
 slavery position. "The anti-slavery resolutions presented by 
 Dr. Goodwin were supplanted by Dr. Van Deusen's substi- 
 tute. Shameful!" So reads his diary. In a letter to his 
 brother he recurs to the subject. Pittsburg would not per- 
 haps have looked to him so dark, if it had not corresponded 
 with some inner mood of shame for the defeat of his cherished 
 ideal. 
 
 June 4, 18&4. 
 I have been to Pittsburg and am home again. Congratulate 
 me. I had so many things to do at home that I was obliged 
 to give up my plan of going further West. Pittsburg is a hor- 
 rible place, black and muddy, the filthiest hole on earth. I am 
 scarcely clean yet after it. The ride there was magnificent. We 
 went the first day to Altona, where we spent the night, and 
 early the next morning crossed the Alleghanies. Cooper and I 
 were fortunate enough to make interest with the railroad agent 
 and rode on the engine over the mountains. It was very grand 
 indeed. Our Convention was a shameful failure. We asked that 
 
512 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 body of Christian ministers and laymen to say that treason was 
 wicked and slavery a sin. They declined, and substituted some 
 feeble platitudes done up in wretched rhetoric which meant nothing 
 and said it. I was ashamed of my church. Never mind ; the 
 salvation of the country does not depend on the Episcopal Church, 
 and glad as I should have been to see her as a body on the right 
 side now, she will have to come there by and by when it will be 
 no honor to herself. Oh, how I hate this miserable conservatism. 
 I almost cried for the church at Pittsburg. 
 
 I have been very hard at work since my return upon my ser- 
 mon. Everybody is crazy about our fair. It opens next Tues- 
 day. It will be very fine and make a million dollars. 
 
 Neither at this time, nor at any time in his life, did Mr. 
 Brooks take an interest in ecclesiastical conventions. He 
 attended them, but it was a burden to his soul. To escape 
 for a moment from their dreary sessions in the glad con- 
 verse with a friend, sitting down on the doorstep of the build- 
 ing where the ecclesiastical process went on, seems to have 
 been almost essential to enable him to endure them at all. 
 In later years he strove to overcome this repugnance, sub- 
 mitting patiently, keeping his place without intermissions, 
 and occasionally taking part in the discussions. But even 
 so, it was all a thing apart from the spirit within him. 
 
 As the summer approached, he was looking forward eagerly 
 to the return to his home, as though he had been an impatient 
 exile. 
 
 Saturday, June 18, 1864. 
 
 You must engage three horses, not two. Two weeks from next 
 Tuesday afternoon at five is the time. Where shall we go? You 
 are expected to be our guide. Before that time, perhaps, we 
 shall have hui-rahed for Richmond, and thanked God for Grant. 
 Everything certainly looks full of promise, and 't is hard to see 
 how we can fail. 
 
 I had a letter from Fred this morning at White House, expect- 
 ing to start off for James River. He is a good specimen of a 
 Brooks Boy. I am going to spend Sunday, a week from to- 
 morrow, in Elizabeth, N. J., then come back here for a week, and 
 be off the Fourth. I hope it is n't wrong to travel on the glorious 
 anniversary, but I feel so anxious to get home that I feel it 
 wouldn't be very wrong to travel on Sunday to get there. We 
 have liad Old Abe with us this week at the Fair. He was look- 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 513 
 
 ing well and seemed to enjoy himself. I heard liim speak, and 
 shook hands with him. Isn't it good to think that we are going 
 to have him for our next President ? 
 
 Our Fair is a great success. It is incessantly crowded, and is 
 making an immense amount of money. The whole city is alive 
 with it, and I think it is going to do good in more ways than one. 
 It keeps people's loyalty alive and their sympathies active. We 
 are having a glorious summer so far, scarcely any warm weather 
 yet, good weather for fighting and for sermon-writing. I hope 
 also for bank-lettering. 
 
 This is my last regular letter to you before I come home. 
 Do you realize it, old fellow ? Hurrah ! 
 
 Before leaving Philadelphia he preached an ordination 
 sermon, June 30, at Grace Church, from Revelation xxii. 
 13: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, 
 the first and the last." A writer for the "Press," comment- 
 ing at this time on his preaching, says: "There is some- 
 thing so genuine in Mr. Brooks's sermons that we no more 
 feel that we are praising him when we are admiring them 
 than we do when we admire ripe fruit, and pluck and eat it 
 with relish and feel refreshed by it, that we are praising the 
 soil out of which it grows. His sermons remain in the mind, 
 not as pictures of plants in a parlor or conservatory, but as 
 the plants themselves, with all their life and greenery and 
 fragrance." 
 
 The first month of his vacation was spent with his family 
 in Boston, and the routine of happy days went on as in pre- 
 vious years. He rode horseback through the suburbs; he 
 indulged in fishing and in bathing at the beaches in the 
 vicinity of Boston. He went out to Cambridge to see his 
 brother Arthur in college, and attended the Commencement 
 of the Harvard Divinity School, listening to an address by 
 the late Dr. Hedge. He visited the old homestead in An- 
 dover, with his mother ; he gave a few days to Dr. Vinton 
 at Pomfret in Connecticut. All the time he could com- 
 mand was given to the Athenaeum, where he sat a voracious 
 reader of all the new books on its tables, and renewed his 
 familiarity with its theological alcoves, lest anything in its 
 shelves should escape his notice. Again, he was at the 
 
514 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 bookshops, recording purchases for his library in his diary. 
 One new incident was important to him, as to so many others 
 at that time in Boston and elsewhere, — the Great Organ, as 
 it was called, which had been recently placed in Music Hall. 
 He was fond of the organ as a revelation of the power of 
 musical sound. The month of August was spent campying 
 out in the lakes of Maine, where he was accompanied by his 
 friends Cooper and Strong. He speaks with enthusiasm 
 of the glorious campfires in the evening. Bu.t, as on pre- 
 vious occasions, he did not linger in the scene of enjoyment 
 until the last day of his vacation should expire. He re- 
 turned to Boston on August 25, with five days remaining 
 before he must return to work, and in those days again he 
 wrote his sermon to be preached on the first Sunday after 
 his arrival in Philadelphia. He could not have done this if 
 already in spirit he were not present in his parish. 
 
 The routine of parish life began on the first Sunday in 
 September : the writing of sermons, and his studies in com- 
 parative religion of which he began to see the scope when he 
 looked into tlie meaning of Islam. He resumed his reading in 
 Greek with Mr. Franks, his place on the musical committee 
 with Mr. Kedner and the Eev. Mr. Walden. Although he 
 had been excused from making calls on his parishioners, yet 
 he did not abuse his freedom, but rather was stimulated by 
 it to greater diligence in parochial duties. He gives a 
 backward glance as he nerves himself to a greater year of 
 work, to the achievements of a greater success than he had 
 yet realized. Among minor incidents was the change of his 
 rooms from Locust Street to 1333 Spruce Street. 
 
 1333 Spruce Street, Saturday evening, September 3, 1864. 
 
 The church is all ready to open, and a variety of little altera- 
 tions have resulted in a very decided total of improvement. The 
 people are largely out of town still and we shall have thin houses 
 to-morrow. It rains to-niglit. 
 
 Here I am talking away about myself as if I did n't care any- 
 thing about the splendid news from Sherman to-day. Is n't it 
 glorious ? A few more steps like this, and we shall have peace 
 earlier than the Copperheads could bring it, and a better one than 
 they want to see. 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 515 
 
 I 've had a splendid vacation. The best part of it what I 
 spent at home. 
 
 To his father, who had been guilty of some lapse from his 
 own strict rules regarding the necessity of observing the con- 
 ditions of time and space, he sends a reprimand : — 
 
 Philadelphia, tjeptember 12, 1864. 
 
 Deae Father, — Once there was a gentleman in Boston, and 
 he had a son who was a minister in Philadelphia, and he used to 
 upbraid his son and tell him he was an unpractical, unbusinesslike 
 fellow whenever he got a letter from him which didn't have the 
 date in full, and all about the place it was written in, and all 
 that. But one day the minister in Philadelphia got a letter from 
 the hardware merchant in Boston, enclosed in the envelope with 
 the queer direction which you will find with this. And after 
 that the minister did just as he pleased about the dates, and all 
 that, of his letters, for he thought he had got the practical, syste- 
 matic, businesslike merchant pretty fairly. Don't you think he 
 had? 
 
 I was glad to get your letter anyway, unlikely as I was to 
 receive it with that direction. William's has just been brought 
 in. I judge from both that things are going on in the old smooth, 
 nice way at home. I wish I were there very often. 
 
 People are slowly getting back. The church is filling up, yes- 
 terday it was quite full. People were evidently expecting a poli- 
 tical sermon, but they didn't get it. I read the Proclamation 
 and all the Thanksgivings I could find. Mr. Coffin is still away, 
 so that the church doesn't really seem like itself. 
 
 As to the seminary [his father had asked him what his ex- 
 penses were while at the Virginia seminary] : board there was 
 $100 per annum. It cost me that for two years. The last year 
 the board was covered by my teaching in the preparatory depart- 
 ment. My expenses outside of the board I think were $100 a 
 year. I lived cheap there. 
 
 The new rooms are first-rate. Everything goes smoothly and 
 I am very happy. Love to all. 
 
 Your affectionate son, Phill. 
 
 The Thanksgiving Day above referred to was a special 
 occasion appointed by President Lincoln on September 11, 
 to commemorate the victories of Sherman and Thomas, the 
 capture of the important city of Atlanta, which closed the 
 campaign in the West, and the beginning of Sherman's 
 
5i6 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 march to the sea. The entire Union army of some million 
 of men was now at liberty to concentrate its strength on the 
 reduction of Richmond. The chief political event in the fall 
 of 1864 was the reelection to the presidency of Abraham 
 Lincoln. McClellan was the rival candidate, and in Phila- 
 delphia had a large following. There was a small party in 
 the country, composed of extremists, who were dissatisfied 
 with Lincoln because he had not assumed a more definite at- 
 titude in regard to slavery. These cast their votes for Fre- 
 mont. Mr. Brooks, although inclined to extreme views in 
 regard to slavery, and recognizing the object of the war to 
 be its extinction, yet also kept in view the maintenance of 
 national unity as a high spiritual aim, and on this ground 
 was an ardent supporter of Lincoln. These events found 
 mention in his weekly letters to his brother. 
 
 Philadelphia, September 19, 1864. 
 I had a full but very pleasant day yesterday. Read and 
 preached in tlie Holy Trinity in the morning. In the after- 
 noon went out to Camp William Penn, and addressed two regi- 
 ments of colored troops who leave for the front this week, and 
 in the evening preached at Cheltenham, near the camp, where I 
 spent the night with some parishioners of mine at their summer 
 place. I had a splendid audience of negroes. They are a noble- 
 looking set of fellows. What do you think of politics and the 
 election ? People here seem very confident that Lincoln will carry 
 Pennsylvania by a very large majority, — 60,000, I have heard 
 cool, well-informed people say. May it be so. We shall see next 
 month. The McClellan men had a great demonstration on Satur- 
 day night ; they were out in immense numbers and looked formida- 
 ble. I believe it is going to be a hard fight. I had an application 
 the other day to speak at some church anniversaries which are to 
 come off in Boston next month. I would like to come on of 
 course, but don't want to speak, so I declined. 
 
 Saturday eTening, October 1, 1864. 
 Again before Richmond. Let us hope and pray on still that 
 more may come of this new move than of any before. At any 
 rate we have a great deal to rejoice and be thankful about iu 
 Sheridan's splendid campaign. I dined the other day with an 
 English clergyman, and saw in perfection the superciliousness 
 and self-conceit which has characterized the most chivalrous and 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 517 
 
 philanthropic of people all through our war. I don't want to 
 see another Englishman till we can hold up the argument of a 
 free, united country, and point to it and just say, "There!" 
 Everybody here who ought to know seems very certain of a tri- 
 umphant reelection for Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 Saturday evening, October 29, 18G4. 
 While I write the city is all alight and noisy with the great 
 Copperhead procession; the streets are blocked up with it. I 
 have been ever so long getting home from an errand uptown, 
 through endless crowds of the unwashed who were cheering for 
 the rebels M. and P. most vociferously. Well, wait till after the 
 election, and then let us see. Our men are working hard and 
 are very confident, and say there is no chance excejjt of one result. 
 Last night Fred and I went to hear your townsman, Mr. Dana. 
 He made a capital speech, and was followed by Governor Brough 
 of Ohio, who is a brick of the biggest size. I see you have been 
 enjoying Philadelphia eloquence in Boston. Mr. is a Cop- 
 perhead, who sold his pew out in my church last year, because he 
 said he wasn't black enough to go there. He is a pompous old 
 humbug, and his orations are great fun here. Dan Dougherty is 
 a "broth of a boy," a great favorite with the crowd, and a very 
 effective speaker. 
 
 The State of Pennsylvania went Eepublican by about 
 15,000 majority, instead of 50,000 as was expected. This 
 was in the state election. Then came the national election 
 on November 8, to which there is this allusion in the diary : — 
 
 Tuesday, November 8, 1864. 
 Election Day. Nine A. m. Voted for Lincoln and Johnson. 
 Cooper called, and I went with him and Yocum to see how the 
 election was progressing. Dined at his house with Strong and 
 Yocum, and in the evening we all went to the League to hear 
 the news, and to National Hall, where George Francis Train was 
 speaking. 
 
 The Union candidates are triumphantly elected. Thanh God! 
 
 Saturday evening", November 12, 18(>4. 
 What a great week this has been; we shall not forget it soon. 
 I feel too much impressed with its grandeur to go o£E into rap- 
 tures about it. Enough that it has saved our country, and you 
 and I will have to thank God for it all our lives. Old Massa- 
 
51 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 chusetts did splendidly. I am prouder of her than ever. Oh, 
 if all the country were as true. And yet no part deserves re- 
 proach. All have done well. Surely Pennsylvania has shown 
 that she is all right. Now we can look ahead and hope. We 
 have thought and talked of little else than the election all this 
 week. Sermons for to-morrow have been crowded into corners. 
 It seemed as if all we could do was to sit still and be thankful. 
 I am going down to Washington on Monday on Freedmen's work, 
 principally to see our schools there, preparatory to another meet- 
 ing in their behalf week after next. I wish you and Arthur could 
 be with us again to give eclat to the occasion. 
 
 Nothing new in church matters, except that our organist has 
 resigned and we are fast getting into a muddle about music. 
 Does that interest you ? 
 
 The relation between minister and organist had hitherto 
 been of the happiest kind, and Mr. Brooks was most unwill- 
 ing that it should be severed. When Mr. Eedner, tired with 
 his onerous labors during the week, and with his Sunday 
 work of superintending a Sunday-school and teaching a 
 class of young men, proposed to resign his position as organ- 
 ist, Mr. Brooks wrote to him in urgent protest : — 
 
 Sunday evening, November 5, 1864. 
 
 My dear Redner, — I cannot go to bed without speaking to 
 you again about the organ. I believe the wardens have seen you, 
 but I do not know whether you have given them an answer. 
 Whether you have or not, I beg you before it is too late to think 
 of it again. The vestry does not meet until to-morrow evening. 
 The more I think of it the more certain I feel that we are plunged 
 into a sea of troubles by your leaving. I do not plead the plea- 
 santness of our personal connections. You know all that I feel 
 about that so well that I rejoice to know that I need not speak 
 more about it ; but I plead for the good of the church and so for 
 our Master's cause. I felt to-night that your music was just 
 what we wanted. Is not your call to the organ as evident and 
 divine as any minister's can be to the pulpit? Can you abandon 
 it and do right ? 
 
 Let me speak plainly. I fear you have some idea of a dissat- 
 isfaction in the church and that it is influencing you. I tell you 
 honestly that I believe that there is no chance, not the slightest, 
 of securing music which will be to our people what yours lias 
 been. I think it is just what we want. 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 519 
 
 I know the pressure of your Sunday work. But even if you 
 give up your morning class, I think you ought not to let go the 
 ministry of the organ. 
 
 If you go, I owe you for the past a debt too large to tell you. 
 But you must not go. My dear friend, do look at it solemnly in 
 God's sight and decide for Him and us to stay. May He direct 
 you. 
 
 Your sincere and anxious friend, P. B. 
 
 Mr. Brooks was still a young man under thirty, but lie 
 stood before the community and the nation as a resjjou- 
 sible, influential leader. He was the champion of national 
 unity, and as such took to his heart the army and its leaders, 
 and especially Lincoln, its commander in chief, revering 
 them as the servants of a divine cause. It is impossible to 
 describe the activity he displayed in the service of the sol- 
 diers in and near Philadelphia. He made himself their 
 pastor, or was constituted such by them, visiting constantly 
 their camp and their hospitals, preaching to them as oppor- 
 tunities were given, baptizing them and preparing them for 
 confirmation, giving himself as freely in their service as 
 though no other duty was incumbent on him. But partic- 
 ularly was he interested in the negro soldiers, and above all 
 in the caiise of the freedmeu. He felt the burden and the 
 gravity of the situation. He was studying in advance the 
 problem of reconstruction, which would become the issue 
 when the war was over. His eloquence was due in some 
 measure to the fact that his soul was expanding with the 
 hour, so that he poured forth his convictions with all the 
 power and freshness of new truth. In his sermon before the 
 American Sunday-School Union, in June, 1864, he had urged 
 that the children be taught the sacredness of national life, 
 and the hatred of slavery as wrong in itseK, as well as an 
 evil which hindered the development and consolidation of the 
 nationality. In his sermon on Thanksgiving Day, 1864, he 
 took what was then regarded as most extreme ground in 
 advocating that emanciimted slaves should be put in posses- 
 sion of the ballot. This sermon was one of his great utter- 
 ances. He was speaking to the whole country, as no one 
 
520 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 else was speaking, when lie stood on that day in the pulpit of 
 the Church of the Holy Trinity. The air was full of excite- 
 ment. Eepresentatives of the newspapers were present, who 
 would send his words broadcast over the country. Again the 
 observers watching the scene were struck with the contrast 
 between the richly appointed church, with its soft cushions, 
 the dim religious light from the stained-glass windows, the 
 unintrusive tones of the organ soothing the worshippers to 
 reverie, the cultivated, fashionable congregation, and the 
 church filled with the vast crowd long before the service be- 
 gan, waiting in eager exjiectancy, and on the other hand the 
 thrilling uncompromising words of the preacher. It seemed 
 all out of place in an Episcopal Church. He began by giving 
 a history of the war in a brief summary. "The devil of 
 slavery had kissed the strong shoulders of the Republic, and 
 the serpents sprung from her defiling lips were preying upon 
 her life. It was agony to tear them off, but it was death to 
 let them remain. Despite our anguish, we had taken cour- 
 age to rid us of the abomination." Such were some of the 
 sentences which made the hearers shudder as they listened. 
 Then the speaker came to the social position of the negro, 
 attacking the prejudice against color, rebuking with righteous 
 indignation the Street Car Directory of Philadelphia, plead- 
 ing with pathos mixed with satire, and most solemnly, for 
 negro suffrage. " We ought to make, not to be made by, the 
 spirit of the times," he said, when alluding finally to the 
 opposition, in church and state, to the cause of the fullest 
 freedom for man. 
 
 In a letter to his father he speaks of this sermon, and of 
 other similar efforts he was making to create a sentiment in 
 behalf of the full emancipation of the negro, which could 
 only be accomplished by giving him the right of suffrage : — 
 
 Wednesday, November 23, 1864. 
 Dear Father, — ... To-morrow is Thanksgiving Day. I 
 have been busy all day on my sermon. It is from Ps. cxviii. 27: 
 "God is the Lord, which hath showed us light: bind the sacrifice 
 with cords, even unto the horns of the altar." It is what some 
 people call Politics; what I call National Morals. . . . We had 
 
William Gray Brooks 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 521 
 
 a great Freedmen's meeting at Concert Hall on Monday evening. 
 It rained torrents, but the hall was full. I sent William a 
 "Press " with the report, but beg you most earnestly not to believe 
 that I said all the foolish and contradictory things which the 
 reporter there puts in my mouth. Next Monday I am going to 
 Pittsburg to speak before a meeting of the same chai-acter. The 
 western part of our State has done nothing, and we want to wake 
 it up if we can. I had a most interesting visit in Washington, 
 though it was very short; but I saw at once the magnitude and 
 the feasibility of the great work we have undertaken. . . . Lots 
 of love to all. 
 
 Your affectionate son, Phill. 
 
 In the midst of this excitement, when the tension of his 
 being was at the strongest, he comments to his brother on the 
 inevitable birthdaj^, — the 13th of December. Although it 
 could have been only a mere casual suggestion entering his 
 mind lightly and then forgotten, yet the coincidence may be 
 noted that he puts the limit of his years at fifty-eight. 
 
 Philadelphia, December 12, 1864. 
 Deab. William, — I am twenty-nine years old to-morrow, just 
 think of it ! How we are getting along. Well, there are very 
 few fellows who get to be as old as we are and have such a good 
 time generally all the way along. We had a nice time before we 
 went to school, a nice time at school, and a nice time since we 
 left. Let us hope the rest of our time, till we are fifty-eight and 
 sixty, will go as smoothly as the past, and then we can say Good-by 
 to the world as to a very kind old friend. What splendid cold 
 weather ! Philadelphia actually feels like Boston this morning. 
 Yesterday was a horrible day. Rain and sleet overhead, slosh 
 and mire under foot. I preached at the chapel in the morning 
 and at the church in the afternoon, and at the evening was at a 
 meeting for a Colored Sunday-school, — a good full day, you will 
 see. Fred was with me, in good spirits, taking the world easily 
 and apparently having a good time. I was out at his room last 
 week. It looked comfortable and he seemed very much at home 
 there. He seems to like the fellows at the seminary, and he is 
 making himself a good name there. Why don't we hear from 
 Sherman ? Is he stuck there in the depths of Georgia, or thun- 
 dering at the gates of Savannah? We must wait and see, but let 
 us hope for the greatest and the best. 
 
 His father also remembers the birthday, and writes to him 
 
522 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 that he was not forgotten at home, and that his mother was 
 full of thoughts about him. His father was becoming anx- 
 ious lest his son should carry his "radicalism," as he calls it, 
 too far. At this time, also, his mother had her misgivings, 
 but they sprang from another cause, and will be alluded to 
 hereafter. An extract from his father's letter gives the atti- 
 tude of sober conservative men, in Boston and elsewhere, in 
 regard to negro suffrage : ■ — • 
 
 Boston, December 13, 1864. 
 Mt dear Son, — ... We have seen the notices of your 
 Thanksgiving sermon in the "Independent " and the "Anti-Slavery 
 Standard." You seem to be in favor with the radicals of that 
 stamp. Don't go too far. It will require all your best judg- 
 ment and caution to know just how far to go. Remember you 
 occupy a prominent position and your course will be watched. 
 Don't make it too much "one idea," or you will split on the rock 
 so many ministers have before you, of making your situation as 
 a minister of the gospel a secondary matter. How thoroughly 
 has Ward Beecher done this ! Do you suppose his congregation 
 go to hear him as a Christian minister ? No, it is all for his 
 allusions and quaint expressions upon his one idea, and they are 
 followed up by aj^plause. It is sad to see the house of God and 
 the pulpit so debased. Cheever is another instance; how essen- 
 tially has he lost his character as a Christian minister. Are you 
 not going too fast to advocate the entire freedom and equality of 
 the negro, even to the right of suffrage, as I understand from 
 those notices that you do ? I cannot believe that it is best or 
 advisable to introduce another foreign element into our elections ; 
 it certainly cannot raise the standards of our right of suffrage or 
 the character of our candidates. Let us keep the ballot box as 
 pure as we can. However you may argue the point of the races 
 being intellectually equal, yet politically to my mind there is 
 no question. I hope I shall never live to see it, and for the sake 
 of my children I hope it will never be done. Don't go too far. 
 How many good causes have been injured, nay ruined, by that. 
 Go on in aid of the Freedmen as much as you please, but such a 
 measure as that is not to their aid in the present stage of 
 affairs. . . . 
 
 Yours affectionately, Father. 
 
 To this letter Phillips replied soon after. The allusion 
 to "Miss Susan" (Phillips), his aunt, is interesting, for it 
 
^T. 28] THE POLITICAL REFORMER 523 
 
 throws light on the characteristics of the Phillips family. 
 When the call came for help she went forth where she was 
 needed. It was part of the humor among the children to 
 imitate their elders in speaking of her, now as "Susan" and 
 then as "Miss Susan." 
 
 Philadelphia, Monday, December 19, 1864. 
 
 Mt deae Father, — Thanks for your note. You seem quite 
 troubled about my radicalism. Don't let it disturb you. There 
 is no danger. I certainly think the negro ought to be free, and 
 I am sure he is going to be. And I think he ought to vote, and 
 am sure he will in time ; but neither of these things is the subject 
 of my preaching, except on rare occasions. I trust I know my 
 work too well for that. I preach what I was ordained to preach, 
 — the gospel, nothing else ; but as a part of the gosj^el I accept 
 the rebuking of sins, and public sins as well as private. One of 
 these days Utah will try to come in with all her shameful customs 
 and institutions, and then I shall preach against Polygamy. I 
 know not how to work on any other system. My Thanksgiving 
 sermon is not going to be published. It is radical, but quiet, 
 calm, and I think Christian. I did not see the notice in the 
 "Anti-Slavery Standard." 
 
 I wish you had been with me the other night. I went out to 
 preside at a Sanitary Commission meeting at Germantown. One 
 of the sjjeakers was a Rev. Mr. Whittaker, just from Annapolis, 
 and before I knew it he was in the midst of a glowing tribute to 
 "Miss Susan." He laid it on thick. Painted her as an angel, 
 as she is almost, and closed up by saying that she was sister to 
 the venerated founder of the great Phillips Academy at Andover. 
 That would make her out about how old? You can tell. . . . 
 
 Affectionately, Phill. 
 
 Saturday, December 24, 1864. 
 
 Dear William, — A Merry Christmas to you. I hope you 
 will get this in time for Monday's turkey, so that you will be able 
 to tell Everybody in the family Circle how much the Exiles think 
 about them and wish that they could be at home among you. 
 
 I am surprised at the way in which both you and Father pitch 
 into me for over Radicalism. I thought nobody could outgo you 
 two now. Do you know that our conservative brother Frederick 
 endorses my position ? I tell you we must come to it. Repub- 
 lican government does not know such a thing as an unvoting sub- 
 ject. It has no place for Obeyers and Supporters who are not 
 
5^4 PHILLIPS BROOKS [1864 
 
 Governors and Directors too. "We have got either to eradicate the 
 Negroes or to integrate them. The first we can't do, the second 
 we must. Next week I go to Pittsburg again. 
 
 I have had an application from the Church Home in Boston, 
 but it will be impossible for me to spend a Sunday there. 
 
 In his speeoh at Pittsburg on the 29t]i of December he 
 gave himself loose rein, speaking out his full conviction veith 
 glowing earnestness. What he said briefly in his Thanks- 
 giving sermon, he now enlarged upon, and urged with all his 
 power, — the necessity of giving the negro the ballot in order 
 to the completion of his freedom ; the responsibility resting 
 upon the North to provide the possibilities of the amplest 
 education ; the crisis at hand when, vmtrained and unaccus- 
 tomed to care for himself, in his ignorance and laziness, he 
 might become a menace to the country unless the people 
 should give him the conditions of essential manhood; the 
 faith in the negro, as ready to respond with gratitude and 
 devotion, and as having already shown the capacity and the 
 promise for a great future. The address was extempore, and 
 no record of it has been kept beyond the report in the news- 
 papers. We may believe that it did the true work of a 
 speech, and that the deep impression on the large audience 
 resulted in creating a new conviction and purpose. 
 
 On the last day of the year he kept the watch meeting at 
 Mr. Cooper's church, where he made an address. And so 
 was ushered in the great year in the divine grace of 1865.