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Phillips Brooks, 
 
 A MEMORIAL. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031450327 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 THE 
 
 UNITED SERVICE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHURCHES OF BOSTON 
 
 AT THE 
 
 OLD SOUTH MEETING-HOUSE, BOSTON 
 January 30, 1893 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 J. STILMAN SMITH & CO. 
 
 3 Hamilton Place 
 
 1894 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 So soon as the announcement was made of the 
 death of Phillips Brooks, a general desire was felt 
 that a meeting of the clergy of all communions 
 might be held, to express their sense of his worth 
 and their grief at parting from one who is remem- 
 bered so fondly as a personal friend. 
 
 The arrangements for this meeting were made 
 that it might be held on Monday, the 30th of Jan- 
 uary, at the Old South Meeting-House. The pro- 
 prietors of the Old South Meeting-House gladly 
 opened it for this purpose. For such purposes, or 
 in the wish to have, a central place in which the 
 common thought and common purpose of Boston 
 may express itself, has this venerable meeting- 
 house been preserved. 
 
 The committee are glad to publish the addresses 
 made on this occasion in affectionate memory of 
 one whose voice has so often been heard on oc- 
 casions of public interest in this house, dedicated 
 to all the best interests of the town of Boston. 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY REV. A. A. 
 MINER, D.D. 
 
 Christian Friends : The great events of the 
 past week have deeply impressed the hearts of all 
 our citizens. Bishop Brooks was no doubt a loyal 
 son of his church, but he was much more. How- 
 ever strictly he may have conformed to the canons 
 of that church, his convictions and his sympathies 
 were by no means circumscribed thereby. They 
 overflowed all denomination limits as the mighty 
 river at its flood overflows its ordinary boundaries. 
 All men were to him as brethren of a common 
 Father, embraced by that Father in the arms of an 
 infinite and unalterable love. 
 
 While therefore his own church has honored 
 him by such fitting memorial service as seemed to 
 it good, it has been thought proper that other 
 churches, standing directly in the sunshine of God, 
 with no historic difficulties in the way, should, 
 through their leading representatives, bring to this 
 renowed temple, into which the suggestion of par- 
 tisanship cannot enter, their respective tributes of 
 reverence, of admiration and love. 
 
 The venerable Dr. Peabody will voice our peti- 
 tions. 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. S 
 
 The assembly then joined in prayer, led by Dr. 
 Andrew Preston Peabody, of Harvard University. 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. WM. F. WARREN, D.D. 
 
 It is fitting that on this occasion some words be 
 spoken touching the services of Phillips Brooks 
 to the cause of education. It should not be for- 
 gotten that before he became a preacher he was a 
 teacher, and that through life he was officially and 
 influentially connected with various institutions of 
 learning. 
 
 His own education was eminently American. 
 Observation and study in foreign lands came too 
 late to be assigned any large part in making him 
 the man he was. A graduate of the oldest school, 
 and of the oldest college of the country, he may 
 well be claimed as an example of what American 
 training of the older type, under favorable con- 
 ditions, could produce. 
 
 Of his services to Harvard University other 
 voices, abundantly qualified, have borne, and will 
 continue to bear, eloquent and grateful testimony. 
 
 His relations to the Boston Latin School were 
 equally precious to himself and to the school. 
 
6 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 First, for years as a pupil, then later as a teacher, 
 he was identified with it. When upon the two 
 hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its founding a 
 gifted son was needed to pronounce a fitting 
 commemorative oration, Phillips i Brooks was the 
 main towards whom all eyes converged. Those 
 of us who listened to the resultant discourse, 
 rejoiced that the hour had found its fitting voice, 
 the voice had its fitting hour. When, in the lapse 
 of time, the school shall look back on two hundred 
 and fifty more years of life, the facts which he 
 recorded and the sentiments he then expressed 
 will have an only augmented value. 
 
 The year which witnessed the advent of Phillips 
 Brooks as a pastor in Boston was the year of the 
 advent of Boston University. Each was a new 
 spiritual and social force. From the start each 
 recognized and understood the other. The things 
 which the great preacher emphasized were pre- 
 cisely the things for whose emphasizing the uni- 
 versity was founded. Many were the ways and 
 times in which he manifested his cordial interest 
 in the new institution. Sometimes it was by his 
 prayers, sometimes by his counsels, sometimes by 
 deeds of kindness to officers and students as they 
 might have need. A portion of our students were 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 7 
 
 members of his own flock. But these were not 
 the only ones to whom he was a father confessor 
 and a loving spiritual counsellor. How many he 
 may have assisted pecuniarily we may never know. 
 
 Of those whom he directed to our College of 
 Liberal Arts, one was a candidate for the Christian 
 ministry in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The 
 term bills of this young man he desired sent to 
 himself, and he paid them by his personal check. 
 A few years later I found the same young man 
 in Oxford University, but whether still a pensioner 
 upon the same bounty I did not learn. The case 
 is mentioned simply as one of hundreds that 
 illustrate the fruits of the man's goodness in help- 
 fulness to individual men. Too many philanthro- 
 pists and public teachers so lavish their love upon 
 humanity in general that they seem to have little 
 left for anybody in particular. It is, therefore, 
 refreshing whenever we find a man whose conspic- 
 uous philanthropy expresses and nourishes itself 
 in constant deeds of helpfulness to persons with 
 definite Christian names and definite Christian 
 needs. 
 
 How peculiarly warm was his interest in theolog- 
 ical students ! Who that heard it can ever for- 
 get the burning address he gave us at Andover, 
 
8 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 when four of our schools of theology — Andover, 
 Newton, Cambridge, and Boston — held there 
 some years ago a first reunion? How wise and 
 strong and fresh were his Yale lectures on preach- 
 ing ! But neither his Andover utterances nor yet 
 the fuller ones at New Haven are to me his most 
 memorable or most characteristic ones to can- 
 didates for the ministry. At both those semina- 
 ries the occasion was public, and some reference 
 had to be had to public conventionality and pub- 
 lic effects. Quite otherwise was it in the early 
 days of our Boston University School of Theology 
 — days when as yet it was housed in hired cham- 
 bers, and when again and again, on invitation of 
 our students, he came to hold with them an even- 
 ing conversation on preaching and on methods of 
 becoming preachers. 
 
 Here he was not a lecturer or teacher — he was 
 just a big, warm-hearted elder brother talking 
 back and forth with younger brothers, answering 
 their questions, kindling their aspirations, remov- 
 ing their bugbear difficulties, drawing on his own 
 experience with a simplicity and familiarity that 
 before they knew it drew them into like fraternal 
 freedom. I love to think of Phillips Brooks in 
 St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, but 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 9 
 
 I confess I mdre love to think of him in those 
 humble confidential conversations, far aloof from 
 the great world of men, but most near to God. 
 
 After understanding this interior relation of the 
 man to our students, one can easily comprehend 
 the significance of his preaching in its relation to 
 the school. It was a magnificent object-lesson, 
 running on year in and year out, illustrating in 
 the most impressive manner the dignity and 
 charm of the Christian life, the manliness and 
 power of the Christian ministry. To those stu- 
 dents the preacher was not the rector of Trinity 
 parish in the Protestant Episcopal Church — he 
 was the big brother of those evening conversa- 
 tions girding himself with divine strength and 
 showing them how to fulfil a divine call. Then 
 the abstractions of week-day scholastic instruc- 
 tion suddenly became concrete. Technique was 
 clothed upon with life. The admiring disciple lost 
 himself in the speaker. He identified himself with 
 him, prayed his prayers, thought his thoughts, 
 pleaded when he pleaded, argued when he ar- 
 gued, wrestled when he wrestled, triumphed when 
 he triumphed. 
 
 By the close of the service this living sympa- 
 thy of the ministerial pupil with the ministerial 
 
10 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 master had made the former for the time and in 
 the measure of his capacity a second Phillips 
 Brooks. It was in view of this tremendous 
 though almost unconscious power of spiritual as- 
 similation that I sometimes spoke of Mr. Brooks 
 as a most important member of our faculty of 
 theology. 
 
 Twenty years this direct and indirect personal 
 training, this potent moulding and inspiring of 
 younger brothers in the ministry, went forward. 
 Every year an average of score would go forth into 
 the world-field, fired by the ideals and stimulated 
 by the achievements of Phillips Brooks. They 
 have gone out into all the world. 
 
 They have been heard from in our great cities ; 
 they are scattered over the great valley of the 
 Mississippi; they are on the Pacific slope; in 
 Japan, China, India, Mexico, South America. 
 They toil among the most varied races and nation- 
 alities. They perpetuate his spirit and widen his 
 influence in the great human family beyond any 
 other agency whatsoever. They are his disciples 
 in a sense and to a degree applicable to no other 
 living men. They are the pupils who more than 
 any others are going to make the widening prog- 
 ress of the news of the great preacher's death a 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. II 
 
 widening progress of a sense of personal bereave- 
 ment until it encircles the globe. 
 
 Knowing what Mr. Brooks, the preacher, was to 
 our students and to the students in Cambridge, — 
 what he was to the world, — I could not feel like 
 congratulating him, still less myself, on his election 
 to the office and administrative work of a diocesan 
 bishop. At the top of the brief note I sent him I 
 wrote these words, " The will of the Lord be done." 
 I could love him and pray for him still. I could 
 be resigned to any clearly providential disposition 
 of him, but farther than this I could not go. I 
 almost chided myself that I could not share in the 
 general jubilee ; but now that the exactions of the 
 new and not absolutely congenial position have 
 so quickly and forever terminated his earthly 
 activities, I am sorely tempted to wonder whether 
 his call to the episcopal office was, after all, in 
 reality so clearly providential as I had tried to 
 think it. I will not decide, I will not reason about 
 it. But I must just a little wonder. 
 
 On Thursday last we saw the manly form of 
 Phillips Brooks for the last time before the altar 
 at Trinity. In some respects it was a spectacle 
 unspeakably sad, in others it was a scene full of 
 holiest inspiration. All of us doubtless felt the tug 
 
12 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 and strain of the conflicting emotions. To me the 
 experience was the more impressive from the fact 
 that the last time I had seen him at the same altar 
 the same familiar ritual for the burial of the dead 
 filled all the place where we were sitting. And 
 his was the tender and manly voice which, over 
 the bier of a professor of Boston University, 
 poured forth those cadences of grief and hope and 
 Christian triumph. Now his turn had come to lie 
 there still and silent in his casket, and after the 
 intoning of the same collects and Scriptures, be 
 borne forever away from the scene of his highest 
 triumphs, the shrine of his holiest earthly affec- 
 tion. Never can I forget the significance of the 
 hour. 
 
 Probably the best representation of Phillips 
 Brooks' own ideas of education is to be found in 
 his lecture on John Milton as an educator. I re- 
 gret that I did not have the pleasure of hearing it. 
 Any one, however, who is familiar with Milton's 
 masterly tractate on this subject, and with the 
 character and tastes of Dr. Brooks, can have little 
 difficulty in understanding the spiritual affinities 
 of the two men and the common demands they 
 would make of every educational system. Espe- 
 cially in his conception of Christian citizenship and 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 1 3 
 
 of the training requisite for it, was Brooks em- 
 phatically Miltonic. 
 
 In conclusion, does not Milton give us the fit- 
 ting word with which to close this tribute to our 
 translated friend, when in his own grand numbers 
 he asserts, 
 
 " Of all this earthly grossness quit. 
 Attired with stars, he shall forever sit 
 Triumphing over death and chance and time "? 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. JOSHUA P. 
 BODFISH, D.D. 
 
 I first met our deceased and honored friend 
 thirty years ago, when he was rector of Trinity 
 Church in Philadelphia. He had already acquired 
 fame as a preacher, and was the most popular 
 clergyman in the city. We lived in the same 
 house, and were on friendly and familiar terms. 
 His noble and generous qualities won my admira- 
 tion, and I was proud of his friendship. No 
 attachments are more lasting than those formed in 
 early years. I often think of the scenes in Trinity 
 Church, where I often assisted him by reading the 
 service when he was to preach, of the great 
 
14 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 crowds of cultivated and eager listeners who 
 seemed spellbound when hearing his matchless 
 eloquence ; and when we reached home, after one 
 of his famous sermons, I would speak of it in 
 terms of praise, he seemed all unconscious of 
 doing anything remarkable. He seemed to be 
 wholly without vanity or self-complacency, and 
 wholly unaffected by the excessive laudation he 
 everywhere received. And then you know what 
 a minister, when he is young, handsome, unmar- 
 ried, and popular, as was our friend, has to endure 
 in the form of feminine devotion ; how youth and 
 beauty worship at his shrine, how he will be idol- 
 ized and beset with well-meant attentions from the 
 fair sex, until a young man's head is in danger of 
 being turned. He had all this in the most intense 
 form, but I often admired the way he repulsed 
 them ; without being uncivil or ungentlemanly he 
 made them feel that they bored him, and that he 
 had matters more serious to attend to. He was 
 noble, generous, simple in manners, and devoted 
 to his work. These traits distinguished him 
 through his whole life. 
 
 We never agreed on many theological points. 
 He expressed his sorrow that I was inclined, as 
 he said, to the High Church wing, while he was 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 1 5 
 
 inclined in the opposite direction; still he re- 
 spected the opinions of every one, and this proved 
 no bar to our friendship. Not long since, having 
 occasion to call on him in his library, after our 
 business was despatched he detained me and 
 seemed inclined for an old-time chat. He com- 
 menced to speak of the wonderful influence of 
 the Roman Catholic Church upon the masses of 
 society, and expressed his appreciation of many 
 things he saw, although he did not approve of our 
 action in other matters, but all in such a kindly 
 and considerate tone that no one could take 
 offence. I only said to myself he sees things 
 from the outside and I from the inside. Some 
 truths are like stained-glass windows, — to behold 
 their beauty must be looked at from the inside. 
 I never heard him, either in private or public, 
 speak of the Catholic Church or any religious 
 body but in terms of respectful consideration. 
 He was content to work on for the benefit of man- 
 kind according to the best light he had, and allow 
 others to do the same, rejoicing whenever or 
 wherever he saw good accomplished, no matter 
 who was the author. And as to the prevalence of 
 religious forces, as he expressed it, he believed in 
 " natural selection and the survival of the fittest." 
 
1 6 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 This is what I call practical religious liberty, and 
 ought to satisfy any one of us. It seems to me 
 as though the English language has been ex- 
 hausted in the last few days to find fitting terms to 
 express the admiration and love of those who 
 knew him best, and that the tribute my poor 
 words can offer is too feeble to express the 
 admiration I feel for his noble character and my 
 grief at the loss of such a friend. But I think we 
 can all find in him qualities that we may well strive 
 to imitate, and that his example will be stimulat- 
 ing and helpful to us in the battle of life. In 
 thinking of him, I cannot think of him as the 
 bishop, but as the friend of my early manhood ; 
 and that there was in him something exceptionally 
 good and great, the present assemblage of distin- 
 guished ecclesiastics of different communions all 
 uniting to do him honor is sufficient proof. 
 
 In conclusion, I wish to add a few words from 
 the Most Rev. Archbishop Ryan, of Philadelphia, 
 which I take from a tribute published in a Catholic 
 paper which I received this morning. The arch- 
 bishop says : " His truly broad, catholic heart and 
 splendid luminous intellect have left their impres- 
 sion for good on the whole country, and people of 
 all denominations will mourn his loss." 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 1 7 
 
 " What Cardinal Newman said of the Anglican 
 Church after he became a Catholic may be said of 
 men like Dr. Brooks in our own age, — that though 
 they possessed not in its plenitude the 'deposit 
 of faith,' they were yet ' bulwarks against in- 
 fidelity ' in the amount they did possess, and loved 
 and acted out in their daily life." 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 It has been impossible to sit here and see the 
 interest which everybody, literally everybody, 
 has taken in this meeting, without feeling that 
 nothing could have given him so much pleasure. 
 That for the first time since Boston was Boston, 
 every section of the Christian Church should be 
 authoritatively represented in one church with one 
 purpose, that this should be in memory and honor 
 of him, would have given him the greatest pleas- 
 ure. And as it fell upon me and Dr. Miner, as 
 two of the senior ministers in active service, to call 
 the preliminary meeting and to make arrange- 
 ments for this meeting, one of us is the proper 
 person, perhaps, to say this : to say that every 
 human being who has been addressed, down to 
 
1 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 the humblest boy who has been asked to take an 
 errand about this plan, has gladly said, " Yes, if 
 I can do anything in memory of Bishop Brooks." 
 The tears started to my eyes when a cabman, 
 as he opened the door for me the other day, said, 
 " Our dear bishop is dead ! " The man very 
 •likely had never heard him say a word, and yet 
 had a feeling that he had lost a personal friend. 
 
 I cannot but hope that this meeting is auspicious 
 for the future. I have lived in Boston long enough 
 to know what is the absolute catholicity of the 
 ■church of Christ. I have lived in Boston long 
 enough, I have lived in my profession long enough, 
 to know that the lines of sect which are called 
 "denominations" are matters of entire indifference 
 to the great body of Christians; that they are 
 only maintained by experts who know how prop- 
 erly to pull the wires and to make the figures 
 move. If, on an occasion like this, when our 
 hearts are all beating together, we can all meet 
 together in this building which, as Dr. Miner said, 
 is not tinged by any name of party or sect, why, 
 this is a blessing, and it seems to indicate what the 
 future is to compass. Certainly the enemies of 
 Christ are united ; they manage to work together 
 when there is any work for them to do ; and I 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 1 9 
 
 cannot but hope that an occasion like this may- 
 suggest to us who are here, each of us fighting 
 the devil as best he knows how, what may be the 
 advantage of union in this great conflict. 
 
 My own relations with Dr. Brooks have been so 
 manifold that I have found it impossible, when I 
 have had to speak or to write of him, to confine 
 myself to any single strain of remark. I turned 
 over, the other day, files of letters which I have 
 received from him in the last twenty years. 
 Whether it was some starving man here whom he 
 wanted to care for, or whether it were some enter- 
 prise which would hold its place in history and 
 would be remembered for a thousand years, he 
 always addressed himself to it in this same spirit, 
 always with the eternities present, hard upon him, 
 and always giving word to the voice of the eterni- 
 ties. I said yesterday that I did not think he un- 
 derstood in the least what the rhetoricians call' 
 " the preparation of a speech." I have stood on 
 the platform with him, I suppose, a hundred times, 
 and I do not think he ever came to a public ad- 
 dress with anything like what the men of the col- 
 leges would call " the preparation " for an address. 
 But, on the other hand, he never insulted an au- 
 dience by standing before them without having 
 
20 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 made the most absolute and adequate preparation. 
 The preparation he had made was to ask himself, 
 " Where is it that this business touches the kingdom 
 of God; where is it that this business is going 
 to help forward our morning prayer, 'Thy will 
 be done ; ' where is it that this business, industrial 
 education, teaching of boys, the Associated 
 Charities, — where is it that this business has to 
 do with faith and hope and love?" He had 
 thought with prayer, he had thought with most 
 careful inquiry, how it was that the eternities had 
 to do with the affair he had in hand, and then, 
 when he stood before the audience, he spoke of 
 that foundation, and we knew we were standing upon 
 a rock, and we blessed and thanked the man who 
 had led us there. That, I think, was the secret 
 of his unequalled power. 
 
 It is the misfortune of preachers that they hear 
 tach other preach very little ; it is the good for- 
 tune of men who have been long in the profession 
 that they hear each other speak on those occasions 
 which connect themselves with active and private 
 life. Brooks led this community as he did be- 
 cause never on such an occasion did he descend 
 to any of the frivolities of talk ; never did he speak 
 of the superficial, of the outside ; he always " sub- 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 21 
 
 soiled." He struck at the bottom, and you knew 
 when you were listening to him that you were 
 hearing something which you would never forget. 
 Of those central truths the New Testament gives 
 us so many expressions, and it is, I think, very 
 pathetic, as it is very remarkable, how well these 
 expressions fit him. If anybody said to a per- 
 son who knew him, "Whom do you know who 
 is ' first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to 
 be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, with- 
 out partiality, and without hypocrisy'? " he would 
 say, "Oh, you are talking about Brooks." Who 
 is it "who bears his brother's, burden, and so ful- 
 fils the law of Christ"? Who is it "who takes 
 no thought what word he shall speak," but knows 
 that it is the Holy Spirit which shall teach him 
 what to say? They will celebrate his memory 
 elsewhere, but nobody can celebrate it as we cele- 
 brate it, we ministers of Boston. If we have a 
 sorrow that they do not have, we have a satisfac- 
 tion and a joy, because so many of us say confi- 
 dently, " He has been my friend, and he shall be 
 my friend always." 
 
22 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. PHILIP S. MOXOM. 
 
 It is a sacred privilege and honor to be per- 
 mitted to say a word in tribute to the man whose 
 death has made not only a city, but also a Com- 
 monwealth and a nation mourners. It is fitting 
 that we should come together, ministers of all de- 
 nominations and sects and parties, and should for- 
 get our differences in the common sentiment of 
 the hour. For we all believe in our hearts that 
 we stand for the Kingdom of God ; and this man 
 stood, as few men have stood, for the Kingdom 
 of God. We believe that we stand, each ac- 
 cording to his own idea and his own conviction, 
 for the gospel of Christ ; and this man stood, as 
 few men have stood, for the whole breadth and 
 sweetness and power and universality of the gos- 
 pel of Christ. I shall be tempted, by the enthusi- 
 asm of my own admiration and love for Phillips 
 Brooks, to say more than I ought to say. Let me 
 then just note two or three of the chief marks of this 
 man, two or three of the characteristics that made 
 him great, that made him greater than we know 
 to-day, and that will make him seem greater to 
 us ten years, twenty years, hence, than any of us 
 fancies him to-day. 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 23 
 
 The first of these was his extraordinary and per- 
 vading and masterful sense of God. I have never 
 known a soul in which it was so complete, in which 
 it so penetrated all his thinking, all his philosophy, 
 all his conception of hfe, all his conception of his 
 fellow-men, all his sense of the relations of men in 
 their work, and all his sense of the possibilities of 
 human life. He lived in the thought of God ; he 
 lived in that divine atmosphere which pulsed in 
 his heart, thrilled in his nerves, and poured itself 
 into the electric utterances of his speech. And this 
 constant, abiding, pervading sense of deity — this 
 sense of Godhood in the world, in the life about 
 him, in his own soul, as well as in the heavens above 
 him — gave him a great courage. No man more 
 frank and brave than this man ever spoke to his 
 fellow-men. It gave to him a great joyousness, 
 so that his speech was always luminous with de- 
 light, with inspiration, with a sense of the good in 
 the world and the good in humanity. And it 
 gave him a wonderful humility. This is the limi- 
 tation of most great men, that they are more or 
 less conscious of their greatness. Have we ever 
 met a man so great, so admired by all people as 
 he was, who was so utterly unconscious of him- 
 self, who never betrayed, even in the intimacies of 
 
24 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 private conversation, the thought reflected back 
 upon self; who spoke straight out from his soul 
 in his slightest casual word, as truly as he did in 
 the great prophetic utterances which thrilled and 
 moved the hearts of a vast multitude? 
 
 The next thing that we mark was his sense of 
 humanity, inseparable from the former, pervasive 
 of all his thinking and of all his planning. He 
 believed in humanity because humanity came from 
 God. And his sense of humanity manifested itself 
 in a marvellous sympathy. I do not mean simply 
 that the word "sympathy" was a common thing in 
 his speech ; Phillips Brooks never needed to say 
 that he sympathized with men. There was an 
 effluence, subtle and powerful, from his person- 
 ality, that touched the highest as well as the low- 
 est; and though men felt that this man stood 
 always for himself and the best that was in him- 
 self, yet the boys in the streets and the men in the 
 stables and the poor people in obscure homes, as 
 well as the wise and the cultivated and the wealthy 
 and the learned, all felt that this man belonged to 
 them. His was a sympathy that flowed out from 
 his nature, that was a quality of his very being, 
 and so brought him into touch, into community, 
 into vital union with his fellow-men. His sense 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 2$ 
 
 of humanity was manifest also in his consuming 
 love, — a love that did not advertise itself in 
 phrases, but showed itself in the kind and quality 
 of his work, in his willingness to serve, and in 
 the bountifulness with which he gave himself on 
 all occasions to all men. There are great and 
 good men who reserve themselves for special oc- 
 casions and for special opportunities, but Phillips 
 Brooks would go to a little chapel where, perhaps, 
 he would never be heard again, and speak to a 
 handful of people who craved his inspiration, with 
 the same purpose and the same pouring out of 
 the best that was in him with which he would go 
 into St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey. It was his 
 passion for men, to do them good, to lift them up, 
 to fill them with life, to make known to them the 
 God that was in him and in the world and all 
 about him, and to let the pulse of the divine 
 power which he felt smite upon the nerves and 
 hearts of other men. 
 
 Consequently, he was also a great idealist. His 
 sense of God and his sense of humanity together 
 gave him a conception of human nature that ex- 
 alted it. He believed in the redemption of the 
 world ; he believed that humanity is on the march, 
 and he joined in the march with this great confi- 
 
26 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 dence, this sublime assurance in the triumph of 
 good, the perfect redemption of humanity. So 
 this man, moved by these great passions, these 
 great, all-possessing ideas, gave himself, poured 
 himself out as an illimitable fountain of service to 
 his fellow-men. And, alas ! why are we here to- 
 day? Is it not a strange thing that we are here 
 to speak in memory of Phillips Brooks, the man 
 who gave us such a sense of life that we felt him 
 through all the city? And now he is gone, and 
 we shall see him no more. Shall we not reflect 
 sadly and with compunction that the very lavish- 
 ness of his giving stimulated unconscious extrava- 
 gance in demanding, so that all this community and 
 all this people laid their claims upon him, and he 
 honored them till the tension grew so strong that, 
 at last, the strong man broke and he was laid low, 
 a sacrifice to service, his life as truly given for his 
 fellow-men as any life that was ever laid on the 
 altar of sacrifice, from the day of Calvary to now? 
 Can there be a higher tribute to any human soul 
 than just this consciousness that pervades all our 
 hearts to-day ? How wonderful it is ! We have 
 forgotten everything that divides us, and remem- 
 ber only the thing which unites us. Is it not a 
 prophecy which shall have its fulfilment in the 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 27 
 
 accomplishment of the very ends for which he 
 labored, — when we shall indeed all be one, one 
 in our faith in the ever-living and ever-loving God, 
 one in our faith in the ever-living and guiding 
 Jesus Christ, one in our sense of the divine origin 
 and divine destiny of all humanity, and so one in 
 the purpose and the hope which shall have their 
 culmination and fulfilment in the redemption of 
 the world? 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. E. WINCHESTER 
 DONALD. 
 
 Recognizing as I do that I have been asked to 
 appear on this platform simply from the accident 
 of my official connection with the church for all 
 time to be associated with the name of Phillips 
 Brooks, I think I can best meet the temper of the 
 audience if I give the larger portion of my time to 
 another. But I am struck by the fact that we are 
 met here in the Old South Meeting-House. If we 
 go back to the date of the erection of this vener- 
 able and venerated edifice, we shall come upon a 
 spirit and temper in the Congregationalism of the 
 time which would make impossible anything like 
 this assembly. And if we go back also in the his- 
 
28 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 tory of the Episcopal Church to the date of the 
 erection of this building, we should not find in the 
 Episcopal Church of those days a temper and 
 spirit which could produce a man like Bishop 
 Brooks. So it is that this gathering marks the 
 substantial and promising progress that has been 
 made in the church of Jesus Christ toward that 
 larger sympathy which at last shall make all our 
 divided churches one. 
 
 Some years ago Alexander Balmain Bruce, who 
 is known, I dare say, to all the ministers present 
 as the author of three strong books, " The King- 
 dom of God," " The Humiliation of Christ," and 
 "The Training of the Twelve," — a man with 
 strong, clear, Scotch intellect, — was delivering a 
 course of lectures in Union Theological Semi- 
 nary, New York. He came down to my house 
 one evening full of an enthusiasm that could not 
 be repressed, because he had heard, on the pre- 
 vious Sunday, three sermons by Phillips Brooks. 
 He had gone to Mr. Brooks' brother's church in 
 the morning, out of a mild curiosity ; had broken 
 an engagement with a friend to hear a minister of 
 his own church in the afternoon, that he might 
 again hear Mr. Brooks ; and he had broken still 
 another engagement in the evening also to listen 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 29 
 
 to a clergyman of his own church, that he might 
 hear Mr. Brooks preach once more. When I 
 asked him, " How does he compare with your 
 great preachers in Scotland and in England ? " he 
 said, with a homely and yet a very striking figure, 
 " It is this way : Our great preachers take into 
 the pulpit a bucket full or half full of the word of 
 God, and then, by the force of personal mechan- 
 ism, they attempt to convey it to the congregation. 
 But this man is just a great water-main, attached 
 to the everlasting and exhaustless reservoir of 
 God's truth and grace and love, and streams of 
 life, by a heavenly gravitation, pour through him to 
 refresh every weary soul." 
 
 As I walked down Commonwealth Avenue the 
 other day, a little girl came running to me and 
 said, " You're not Mr. Brooks ; you're only our 
 new minister. Kiss me ! Mamma says Mr. 
 Brooks won't kiss me any more." 
 
 The man who could win this tribute from the 
 hard-headed Scotchman, this sweet and delicate 
 tribute from the little maiden on the street, cannot 
 be a less great man than all these united tributes, 
 which come from every quarter, testify that he 
 was, and — shall we not say it? — that he is. 
 
30 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. PERCY BROWNE. 
 
 The death of our great friend has united the 
 hearts of our city in a spiritual experience which 
 must be recognized as demanding a deeper ex- 
 pression than that of admiration for his genius or 
 interest in the details of his life. That admiration 
 and interest we all share; but the beat of the 
 city's heart in this great meeting tells of a nobler 
 feeling, which recognizes in the Hfe and work of 
 Phillips Brooks one of God's great opportunities 
 for reaffirming and restating those eternal truths 
 and realities which underlie all life, uniting us all 
 to God and to each other. While we admire the 
 special powers of the man, his divinely filled man- 
 hood is calling us not to admiration, but to par- 
 ticipation, is calling us away from that unworthy 
 conception of our own nature which would forbid 
 our claiming as our own the ideal of character so 
 manifest in him. To admire him as a spiritual 
 phenomenon representing any spiritual reality, 
 power, or opportunity which is denied to the least 
 of God's children, would be a repudiation of his 
 life-long teaching, and a desecration of his memory. 
 If we applaud in him any quality of spiritual and 
 moral character as something which we cannot 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 31 
 
 hope to attain ; if the men of Boston are thinking 
 of that great soul as showing us a humility which 
 we all cannot show ; lifted into a trust in God's 
 love which we cannot make our own ; spending 
 his life in a self-forgetfulness and brotherly help- 
 fulness too great for us to aspire to ; living a life 
 of daily righteousness towards God and towards 
 his fellow-men too mysterious or arduous for the 
 weakest of us to try to realize in our smaller 
 spheres ; if, to-day, we are content to estimate the 
 spiritual and moral greatness of Phillips Brooks 
 as, in any sense, constituting a vicarious manhood 
 for the men of this city in whose worst prodigals 
 he saw his Father's image and the possibilities of 
 renewed sonship to God, then our plaudits miss 
 the mark, and are but pagan incense, which all 
 who know the meaning of his life should be the 
 first to repudiate in his name. 
 
 That he was an intellectual phenomenon we must 
 admit ; but that which we revere and love most in 
 him — his achievement in the region of character 
 — did not separate him from us, as genius without 
 the noble qualities of character always separates a 
 man from his less endowed brothers. His conse- 
 crated manhood drew us close to him, because we 
 saw in it the setting forth of what we knew in our 
 
32 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 souls we too could hope to be. He kindled in 
 thousands of hearts respect for the high possibili- 
 ties of their own nature. Those possibilities which 
 we saw realized in him never discouraged us, but 
 seemed to say to us all, " You, too, can be as I 
 am." In his self-forgetfulness he never said that, 
 nor thought of himself as representing the supreme 
 type of manhood ; but, from what we knew him 
 to be, there came to us that inspiring assurance. 
 Thousands felt their deepest nature responding to 
 it in a way which made life seem new and beauti- 
 ful to them. And all our hearts are united to-day, 
 as the heart of one man, in a grief which is not a 
 wail over a world impoverished by his death, but 
 rather a thanksgiving for his life which has re- 
 vealed this world as God's world, and has shown 
 us that we too may live in it as sons of God. 
 
 And we must recognize also that the deep feel- 
 ing of our community, which culminates in this 
 representative meeting, once for all clears our 
 Boston from the charge of being a sceptical and 
 atheistic city. It is a movement which shows 
 Boston to be distinctly on the side of the God and 
 the righteousness so manifest in the man whose 
 character inspired us all. The fact that his death 
 has united all its citizens in a consciousness of fel- 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 33 
 
 lowship with his God-inspired character, proves it 
 beyond controversy. If all the scepticism, cyni- 
 cism, frivolity, and baseness of Boston's worst 
 men could be gathered into some one personality 
 endowed with incomparable genius, with an intel- 
 lectual equipment which would enable him to pro- 
 claim, in our city, for more than twenty years, his 
 gospel of desecration and ruin, — when he died, 
 however men might admire his genius, do you be- 
 lieve that man, woman, or child would rise up /and 
 follow his departure, as the whole city has followed 
 that of Phillips Brooks, claiming him as its true 
 representative man, and claiming, too, a share in 
 the divine realities which made him what he was ? \ 
 We meet to-day, not to applaud a man of 
 genius, but to claim brotherhood with a true son 
 of God, who walked in our midst, a revealer of 
 God and of the possibilities of our own nature. 
 We honor him not by applauding him as a wonder, 
 but by opening our souls to a fuller reception of 
 the Divine Power which made him truly great. 
 
34 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 ADDRESS OF REV. GEORGE A. GORDON. 
 
 I cannot but recall now the utterance which Dr. 
 Brooks made on this platform a year ago, when 
 General Armstrong had been struck down and was 
 lying within the deep shadow of death. Bishop 
 Brooks, who made the last speech of that after- 
 noon, rose and said he felt like sending greetings 
 and congratulation to General Armstrong that he 
 had lived such a happy, such a successful life; that 
 the ends for which he had lived he had so largely 
 realized, and that he was going hence, if so God 
 pleased, with the ineffable satisfaction of having 
 served his generation with power, and having left 
 his example among the great civilizing and enno- 
 bling forces of the world. I feel like gathering up 
 the affection and the honor and the love of this as- 
 sembly, and of the city we represent, and sending 
 it on after him in greeting and congratulation that 
 he is now on wider courses of service, with vaster 
 prospects of life, and with a sublimer conscious- 
 ness of power. He would value most our felici- 
 tation that God had been so good to him, in his 
 environment, in his birth, in his training, in the 
 sphere of his influence, in the city to which he 
 made his appeal, in the brethren among whom he 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 35 
 
 lived, in the kingdom of God in which it was his 
 honor to serve ; he would value most our sense of 
 the great goodness of God to him in all that he 
 was permitted to experience and share and ac- 
 complish. 
 
 I have felt, sitting here and listening to the ad- 
 dresses, the force of one remark which he made to 
 the theological students at New Haven in 1877, 
 when he said that he was constantly embarrassed 
 by one thought : that they might conclude from 
 his advice that it was a complex, an infinitely dif- 
 ficult, thing to make a sermon. He contended that 
 it was the simplest thing in the world. Given a 
 cultivated mind, and a heart full of the love of God 
 and man, and then the free utterance of the inward 
 force, that is the secret of it all. Phillips Brooks was 
 the simplest of men. He was ruled by the Christian 
 conception of life. The ideal given in Christianity 
 swayed him, and held its sceptre over his entire 
 nature. The secret of his greatness is thus plain. 
 
 There is one thing more of which I have been 
 thinking while listening to the warm and adequate 
 personal tributes to his memory, and that is the 
 importance which he attached to what he called 
 the four concentric circles in which every Christian 
 man, and especially each Christian minister, stands. 
 
36 PHILLIPS BROOKS. 
 
 The first and the widest circle is humanity ; he was 
 interested in man as man. And the second circle 
 was religious humanity; he was interested in all 
 the religions of the world. He saw, with marvel- 
 lous insight, the measure of truth that they contain, 
 he recognized with genuine sympathy their power, 
 and with profound gratitude did he thank God for 
 them. And the third circle was Christianized 
 humanity — the community of all those who with 
 sincerity claim the Lord Jesus Christ as master, 
 of whatever name. And then at the centre of all 
 and closest to his heart was his own type of Chris- 
 tianity. Phillips Brooks was a member, a priest, a 
 bishop, of the Episcopal Church ; he loved its glori- 
 ous traditions, its historical continuity, its room for 
 variety of theological opinion. This great man 
 loved his own church ; it received his warmest and 
 happiest life ; he was a loyal son of it. In all his 
 noble catholicity of spirit, it must never be forgot- 
 ten that he was profoundly loyal to his own section 
 of the church. No man ever dared hint to him 
 that he was not : if he did, it was resented as a 
 personal insult. There was first, then, the form 
 of Christianity which he preferred above all others ; 
 then the common Christianity circling that ; then 
 the great circle of religious humanity sweeping 
 
PHILLIPS BROOKS. 37 
 
 round that, and the final horizon — the hill-tops, 
 as he called them — of mankind. 
 
 Frederick the Great said of one of Luther's great 
 hymns that it was " the grenadier march of Al- 
 mighty God." The same might be said of Phillips 
 Brooks' eloquence : it was the grenadier march of 
 Almighty God. And he evermore kept step with 
 it, and he is keeping step with it as it sounds forth 
 in that other sphere, in that higher world. We fol- 
 low him with our reverent love, and we turn to the 
 God and the Christ and the eternal world that 
 made him all that he was, in profounder faith and 
 in personal assurance that what he was so surpass- 
 ingly, we too, under the influence of the same 
 spirit, may ultimately become. And we shall see his 
 face again, when we stand in the multitude that no 
 man can number, gathered out of every kindred 
 and people and tribe and tongue on the face of 
 the whole earth, around the throne of God and the 
 Lamb, and participate with him in that glorious 
 and endless worship of Almighty God. 
 
arV16892 
 
 Phillips Brooks, 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 3 1924 031 450 327 
 
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