PHILLIPS BROOKS &^;|>-:!:|"#y-' ■■■. M^my:$^^-'-': mm$my^- ■ BY WILLIAM LAWRENCE PHILLIPS BROOKS PHILLIPS BROOKS ( NOV 23 1958 BY V'^ WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D.D. ^^^ -^^ BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1903 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY WILLIAM LAWRENCE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published March, 1903 NOTE On the twenty-third day of January, 1 903, was observed the tenth anniver- sary of the death of Phillips Brooks. The Dioceses of Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts, over which, as one diocese, he had presided as Bishop, joined in a service of com- memoration in Trinity Church, Bos- ton. The multitude which gathered, crowding the church to the doors, the long procession of bishops and clergy, the presence of many other ministers and of representative citi- zens, bore witness to his living power vi NOTE and to the loyalty of the people to his memory. The address given at that service is in the following pages, published, with a few verbal changes since its delivery, at the request of the Stand- ing Committee of the Diocese of Mas- sachusetts. With all other interpreters of Phil- lips Brooks, I am under obligations to the Rev. Dr. A. V. G. Allen. WILLIAM LAWRENCE. Boston, February 12, 1903. PHILLIPS BROOKS PHILLIPS BROOKS TIME adjusts our vision and en- ables us to study men in new relations. The distant figure is often in better perspective and takes on truer proportions. The passage of even ten years throws into the back- ground many features once conspicu- ous, and reveals other deeper charac- teristics. With the rapid movement of life in these days, it is very seldom that at the end of ten years from his death a man is thus commemorated. This very fact suggests one rare feature in the character of Phillips Brooks, that 2 PHILLIPS BROOKS of calling forth the best emotions and grateful sentiments. To many of you present in this church, which is so associated with him, his personal presence is vivid. His majestic figure in this pulpit, the action of his body, the tones of his voice, the animation of his face, and the glow of his imagery all come back as if it were yesterday. Some of you would prefer silence, that you might recall precious memories and gather from the past treasures of sympathetic words and hopeful messages, which you feel are peculiarly your own. You would like simply to thank God for the gift of his life, enter again into communion with him through Christ, and go quietly home. There was that about his personality, a divine PHILLIPS BROOKS 3 possession, which kindled the faith of those who came in contact with him ; there was some subtle power in his companionship which those who have read his works, but who never met him, can never realize. There are others here, and many throughout the land, who, never hav- ing seen or heard him, have through his printed sermons reached deep into his thought and his interpretations of Christ, and who thank God for his message to them. He had no ambi- tion to add to the religious literature of the day. When, however, one realizes that over two hundred thou- sand volumes of his sermons and other writings are in the hands of the peo- ple and that many hundreds of thou- sands of his messages of all kinds are 4 PHILLIPS BROOKS scattered throughout the homes and libraries of America and England, one catches a suggestion of the breadth and depth of his influence and of the gratitude of the people for his life. There is an ambition higher than that of the creation of so-called permanent literature : it is that of making a con- tribution towards the spiritual wealth of the people, the kindling of high ideals, and the increase of the power of Christ. Such spiritual power en- tering into man and transmitted to others is permanent. If the passage of these short ten years has enabled us to study Phillips Brooks in better perspective, may it not be well to place on record some of the results of the study *? This, therefore, is what I ask of you, that PHILLIPS BROOKS 5 in the light of these ten years we consider some of the deeper elements in the life and thought of Phillips Brooks, — elements that had such power twenty and thirty years ago as evidently to affect the life and thought of to-day. No true friend of his would claim that he was the only representative of these elements, or that he was always the leader. Some of the conditions and powers were in the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, and his was a sensitive organization. With all this said, however, it is clear that he was one of the prophets of his time ; he spoke for God ; there were occa- sions when he stood on mountain tops and when his spiritual vision swept a horizon wider than that of his breth- 6 PHILLIPS BROOKS ren. He was an interpreter of the i truth to the spiritual experiences of men; he was a leader among those even who marched in the van ; and his leadership was greatest in the strength, simplicity, and beauty of his own character. In the first half of the nineteenth century, and even into the second half, there was no conception of the unity of the universe. As the stars were aloft and separate from all re- lations to the world, so to a great degree was God from man. The natural man had nothing in common with the spiritual man; there were two classes of men — the sinners and the saints. The two natures of Christ were not only sharply defined and fixed, but even separated, as in the PHILLIPS BROOKS 7 effort to determine what he did and said as God and what he did and said as man. The Atonement was a trans- action as separate from man as the proceedings of a judicial court are from the people. Theology had as little relation to life as dogma had to ethics. The members of the Church were the elect; all others were given over to the uncovenanted mercies of God. Under these conditions Phil- lips Brooks was educated, although the rich piety and sympathy of his home tempered somewhat the rigor of contemporary thought. In the very texture of his life, in- wrought through generations of prayer and piety, was faith in God. From childhood he lived in the very pre- sence of God ; pure in life, rich in 8 PHILLIPS BROOKS imagination, throbbing with spiritual aspirations, he brooded over the prob- lems of God, the Atonement, and the relation of Christ to his Father and to man. His conception of an infinite, lov- ing, heavenly Father, a merciful Sa- viour, and a world of men, women, and little children would not adjust itself to the prevailing theology. He recognized in the break of the liberals from the old standards a healthy reac- tion, and he sympathized with much in it : but that did not for him meet the situation ; there was something provincial, limited, and sectarian about it all. He held back from close rela- tions to the Church, and sustained a deep reserve on religious questions. German thought was as yet unknown PHILLIPS BROOKS 9 to him. As he was brooding and searching among the Hbraries, Cole- ridge and Wordsworth fell into his hands; then Maurice and Tennyson, Bacon and the ancient philosopher Philo, Bushnell and Robertson. With one and another of these his poetic instincts were aroused; his imagina- tion leaped at the revelations, and there opened to him a new heaven and a new earth, bound together, in- terwoven by the eternal principles of God's love and righteousness. His possession of these truths was not so much by the reason as by the spir- itual apprehension of the whole man : he laid hold of them, reveled in them, dreamed them, and lived them. He had worshipped God and prayed to God, — now he discovered that he 10 PHILLIPS BROOKS was living in God. The world had seemed to be the reality, and God the distant spirit. Now God was to him the only reality; the spirit was life, and Nature with all her beauty was the radiant expression of God's glory. The whole universe was the living, throbbing expression of his power and love ; all were bound to- gether in a common purpose, with God as their centre. The world was not Satan's, but God's ; it was his from the beginning. His spiritual sympathies turned to man's relation to God. The theology of Calvinism ran in his blood. He faced the problems. Was man the child of Satan, or of God ^ Was man by nature given over to sin only to become God's child by some pro- PHILLIPS BROOKS ii cess of conversion or the acceptance of some theory of the Atonement'? The answers came to him clearer and clearer as his thought matured. Man was by his very birth the child of God ; sin was the intruder. Men through their sin estranged them- selves from the Father, as did the prodigal; therein were the horror and punishment of sin. But in his very nature man was from God, made in his image, akin to his substance or nature. The eternal fatherhood of God was the burden of his preaching. From the beginning Christ Jesus was of God and with God — very man, very God. From the very essence of his loving fatherhood, God sent forth his Son, who took upon himself the form of man and lived among men. 12 PHILLIPS BROOKS It was the oneness of the spiritual na- ture of man with God that enabled each to know the other. " We talk about men's reaching through Nature up to Nature's God. It is nothing to the way in which they may reach through manhood up to manhood's God and learn the divine love by the human." ^ " A brute race could have seen no Incarnation. . . . ' Because we are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts.' Because we are sons, his Son himself could take our nature upon him." ^ " I am the light of the world — a thousand subtle, mystic miracles of deep and intricate relationship be- tween Christ and humanity must be ^ Sermons^ vol. v. p. 51. ^ Ib,y vol. i. p. 240. PHILLIPS BROOKS 13 enfolded in these words; but over and behind and within all other mean- ings, it means this : the essential rich- ness and possibility of humanity and its essential belonging to divinity." ^ The truth of the Incarnation was the central truth of his life, thought, and preaching. For him it solved the pressing problems of life and nature, and knit the universe, God, and his creation into living unity. It was this fundamental truth, bound up as it is in the fact of the divine sonship of man, that led him to his belief in the value of the hu- man soul, which, you remember, marked the climax of his Lectures on Preaching. With the movement of science the individual was losing 1 Sermons, vol. v. p. 4. 14 PHILLIPS BROOKS his value. Phillips Brooks threw himself just then into that breach with all his power, and affirmed the essential value of the individual. This gave him the evangelical element in his message ; this emphasized the direct responsibility of each soul to God, and enabled him while preach- ing to the larger world to bring his words home to the conscience and aspirations of each man, woman, and child within sound of his voice. It was this, too, that made him a source of inspiration to all workers in the uplifting of the down-trodden. He had very little interest in preach- ing upon the methods and work of social service, deeply as he was in- terested in those who were carrying them out. His mission was to reach PHILLIPS BROOKS 15 the deeper motives and strike the springs of enthusiasm, not so much for humanity in the abstract as for men, God's children ; and through his preaching the springs gushed forth. He had an unwavering belief in the presence of the Holy Spirit brooding over, guiding, and energizing in the midst of men and of Christ's Church. The Spirit was in the world to-day as really and as evidently as at Pen- tecost or in the Middle Ages. The Spirit was revealing truth from every source of thought and life. He was the Spirit of Truth. Hence Phillips Brooks had unbounded confidence in the Church, if only she would keep ear and heart open to the voice and influence of the Spirit. Thus he was led to his faith in the Trinity, not as i6 PHILLIPS BROOKS the description of God (for what mor- tal can describe God?), but as the description of what we know of God. " I should," he said, " count any Sun- day's work unfitly done in which the Trinity was not the burden of our preaching. For when we preach the fatherhood of God, we preach his divinity ; when we point to Christ, the perfect Saviour, it is a divine Re- deemer that we declare ; and when we plead with men to hear the voice and yield to the persuasions of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, into whose com- fort we invite them, is divine. The divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this is our gospel. By this gospel we look for salvation. It is a gospel to be used, to be believed in, and to be lived by ; not merely to be PHILLIPS BROOKS 17 kept and admired and discussed and explained." ^ Believing as he did in God, and in all men as the children of God, he al- ways had before him the ideal man- hood, the ideal church. He broke away from the conception of the Church as a body of men separate, set apart from their fellows as the re- ligious and the saved, the body of the elect. On the contrary, " The Church is no exception and afterthought in the world, but is the survival and preservation of the world's first idea, — the anticipation and prophecy of the world's final perfectness. The Church of Christ is the ideal human- ity. Say not that it leaves out the superhuman. I know no ideal hu- ^ Sermons y vol. i. p. 228, i8 PHILLIPS BROOKS manity that is not filled and pervaded with the superhuman. God in man is not unnatural, but the absolutely natural. That is what the Incarna- tion makes us know." ^ The sacraments of the Church are therefore the symbols of the recogni- tion of the fact that each child is a child of God and hence a member of his church, and also of the contin- ual gift of Christ to those who feed on him and his strengthening power. "The unity of his believers to the end of time is still to have the secret of its existence in the personal rela- tion between each of them and him. To help this invisible relation to real- ize itself and not to be all lost in the unseen, the gracious kindness of the 1 Quoted in the Lifey vol. ii. p. 659. PHILLIPS BROOKS 19 Master provides two symbols which thenceforth become the pledges at once of the personal believer's be- longing to the Lord and of the be- longing of believers to each other. The sacraments are set like gems to hold the Church into its precious unity." ^ Those of you who have witnessed the baptism of an infant by him, who have perhaps followed him to the cradle of a dying child, re- call the tenderness of his voice, the deep emotion and the reality of the rite. Beneath the words sounded the note of deep conviction and love. It was no defense of an empty rite but the conviction of a vital truth that prompted his words upon the baptism of a dying child : " Baptism is the ^ Sermons, vol. v. p. 179. 20 PHILLIPS BROOKS solemn, grateful, tender recognition, during the brief moments of that in- fant's life on earth, of the deep mean- ings of his humanity. It is the human race in its profoundest self-conscious- ness welcoming this new member to its multitude. Only for a few mo- ments does he tarry in this condi- tion of humanity ; his life touches the earth only to leave it; but in those few moments of his tarrying, human- ity lifts up its hand and claims him, . . . appropriates for him that re- demption of Christ which revealed man's belonging to God, declares him a member of that church which is simply humanity, as belonging to God."^ The Lord's Supper was to PhiUips ^ Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 43 and 44. PHILLIPS BROOKS 21 Brooks the great high feast of Christ, the Head of humanity. It belonged, then, not to any one body of Chris- tians; no single denomination had a right to restrict it ; it belonged ideally to all humanity and practically to every man who claimed Christ as his Mas- ter and Saviour, and who tried to live in Christ's spirit. Each denomination held it in trust for Christ and his fol- lowers. Hence his welcome, given never in his own name, but in ac- cordance with what he believed to be the law as well as the spirit of his church, to all Christian people to par- take of its blessings. Whether Christ himself appointed three orders of the ministry was to him of little moment as compared with the great truth that in the unfolding of 22 PHILLIPS BROOKS the life of the Church the ministry had evolved through the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit and under the leadership of Christ. To him the ministry was therefore di- vinely ordered and guided. In this short and very imperfect sketch of the deeper features of his faith I may have seemed to try to do what Phillips Brooks always claimed was impossible, — disentangle a man's faith, beliefs, and aspirations from the other elements of his life. Such, of course, has not been my purpose. His beliefs were interwoven with the very texture of his whole life and character. There was no scrap of his creed that did not have its vital relation with his life, and no little act of each day that did not have its vital relation PHILLIPS BROOKS 23 with some of the deepest truths of his faith. This, then, is what I have been try- ing to set forth as the first great con- tribution of Phillips Brooks to the religious thought of his day. First, the realization of the unity of the uni- verse — God, man, and nature inex- tricably interwoven, spiritual and ma- terial, a living organism, working out God's purpose. And bound up in the first, the unity of man, divine and human, spiritual and physical, the in- dissolubility of his personality. Those who are young and who have been educated in these thoughts can have no conception of the relief, light, and exhilaration that they brought to the past generation ; they were the dis- pelling of darkness by the light of the 24 PHILLIPS BROOKS rising sun. The scriptures took on a new meaning ; the thought of how the whole creation groaned and travailed until the coming of Christ was a reve- lation; the sympathy of nature and man in the Incarnation touched the hearts of children, and ten thousand of them caught up his carol and burst into song : — " For Christ is born of Mary, And gathered all above. While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love. O Morning Stars, together Proclaim the holy birth! And praises sing to God the King And peace to men on earth.'* Such a conception of the unity of God's universe may sometimes seem to touch the borders of pantheism; PHILLIPS BROOKS 25 error is but the over-emphasis of truth. The Christian faith has, however, al- ways been safeguarded by the concep- tion of personaUty, the personaUty of God and of man. You recall the emphasis of Phillips Brooks upon the vital worth of per- sonality in the preacher : " Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men. It has in it two essential ele- ments, truth and personality How- ever the gospel may be capable of statement in dogmatic form, its truest statement is not in dogma but in per- sonal life. Christianity is Christ." ^ It was this truth of the unity of man's personality that gave to the peo- ple of his day a new and more Chris- tian conception of the relation of man 1 Lectures on Preachitig, pp. 5 and 7. 26 PHILLIPS BROOKS to death and to the Hfe to come. There was aroused in all who heard him a new sense of the dignity and the re- sponsibiUty of manhood and a serene confidence in God's regard for man. Through this truth we are brought naturally to the second contribution of Phillips Brooks to the thought and life of his day; it sounds common- place now, almost unworthy of men- tion, so thoroughly has it become a part of the texture of our life. I mean his complete confidence in God as the God of truth, and in Christ as indeed the Truth. Some of you have no conception of the dread that from time to time was felt by Christian people at the discovery of truths which might be antagonistic to the Christian faith. PHILLIPS BROOKS 27 When some new and bold statement of science was made, almost the whole Christian world shuddered at its pos- sible result. It was a time, many- thought, for the strengthening of the old defenses. The recent death of Archbishop Temple has reminded us of the extreme sensitiveness of the Church at the publication of the " Es- says and Reviews." Frankly, there was a latent and very deep spirit of scepticism in the Church, which dis- trusted the truth, and which mistrusted as to whether the fundamental belief in God and Christ were the truth. The dominating spirit of the nine- teenth century, the restless search for truth, continued to rise, however, and the two forces were bound to meet. Young men were looking for lead- 28 PHILLIPS BROOKS ers, for prophets who were above the smoke of the battle. Among others, and, for some of us, above others, was heard the voice of PhilHps Brooks. His message was that God is truth and righteousness and love. What- ever truth is discovered, and from whatever source revealed, it is of God. Man must keep mind and heart ever open to new revelations of God. He had little sympathy with the efforts so to interpret the truths of science as to patch up and adjust the scriptures and articles of faith from time to time. He had too much confidence in the essen- tial spiritual truths beneath the state- ments of the faith of the Church. He had no patience with that man or church who was timidly asking of present thought, "Is it orthodox?" PHILLIPS BROOKS 29 The vital question was, " Is it true^"^ And as Christ is Light, the Church and men cannot hide behind dog- mas and tradition, but must come forth and speak and reason in the light. His own verse reveals his atti- tude : — <« 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. "2 Having, therefore, this complete confidence in the truth, and living in communion with the God of truth, 1 Essays and Addresses y p. 196. 2 Lifey vol. i. p. 243. 30 PHILLIPS BROOKS fired as he was with the love of God and of men, he was impelled to preach and speak with all the abandonment of a man who is clear as to his cause, and the end of the battle, but per- fectly regardless of the present results either to himself or to his fellows. It was this that gave him that posi- tive and assertive power. Men com- plained that he did not reason with cool logic, but that he swept them along with him by the power of his conviction and his personality. It is true; for highly as he esteemed the reason, he always felt that other qual- ities entered into the discussion of truth — moral and spiritual qualities ; and because of his possession of these he made them the reinforcement of his argument. This confidence in God PHILLIPS BROOKS 31 as the God of truth was also the se- cret of what some felt to be his dan- ger, — that of entering into the camp of the enemy. He had nothing of the latent scepticism and timidity which feel that truth must necessarily be contaminated by contact with error or that Christ is compromised by the recognition of truth embedded in er- ror. He had such confidence in his own faith in Christ that he had no hesitation in recognizing, ay, rather welcoming gladly, any ray of truth from whatever source it came. He believed so firmly in his Church, too, her creeds and standards, that he was confident that she would with him welcome truth from the agnostic, the Calvinist, the Unitarian, or any other sincere truth - seeker. To speak in 32 PHILLIPS BROOKS glowing eloquence of the character and the personal faith of James Free- man Clarke, a Unitarian and one of the spiritual leaders of Boston, was the most natural thing in the world. It never occurred to him that in so speaking he would be held respon- sible for the theology of Dr. Clarke, from certain features of which he dif- fered fundamentally. His object was the glad recognition by the Church of a character full of love, purity, and self-sacrifice, and by such recognition he believed that the Church is always the richer. It was, too, this complete confi- dence in the God of truth that made him the interpreter and the exemplar of tolerance. Through life he thought much over the bigotry of some of the PHILLLPS BROOKS 33 champions of the faith, of their perse- cution of the seekers for truth, and of the nerveless quaUty of some of those who were called most tolerant in his day. There was a feeling abroad that depth and strength of religious con- viction necessarily created a spirit of intolerance, and that the true road to charity was through the broad path of indifference to truth and creed. His studies of the character of Christ had shown him how mistaken this assumption was, for no one was ever more convinced of the truth or more positive in his statements of his faith than was Jesus, and none ever lived so tolerant of the sincere con- victions of others. As was his habit, Phillips Brooks took the position not of defense but of offense. The two 34 PHILLIPS BROOKS essentials of a tolerant spirit were, as he put them, " first, positive con- viction; and, second, sympathy with men whose convictions differ from our own." ^ " We want to assert most positively that, so far from ear- nest personal conviction and gen- erous tolerance being incompatible with one another, the two are neces- sary each to each." ^ With him, how- ever, no discussion reached its true plane until it had struck the level of personality and religion. " True tol- erance consists in the love of truth and the love of man, each brought to its perfection, and living in perfect harmony with one another ; but these two great affections are perfect and in perfect harmony only when they are ^ Tolerance, p. 7. 2 /^^ p^ ^^ PHILLIPS BROOKS 35 orbed and enfolded in the yet greater affection of the love of God." ^ " I have tried to show not merely that a man may be cordially tolerant and yet devoutly spiritual, but also that a man cannot attain to the highest tolerance without being devoutly spiritual."^ " The hope of tolerance lies in the ad- vancing spirituality of man." ^ " We may adjust relations as we will; we may decide just how far we can coop- erate with this or that heretic. ... It is all surface work. . . . Only a deeper vitality, a richer filling of our spirits with the spirit of God; an assurance of the possible divineness of the hu- man life by an experience of how richly it may be filled with divinity, — ^ li. p. 25. 2 /3^ pp^ ^5 an^j ^j^ »/^. p. 57. 36 PHILLIPS BROOKS only this can make us be to our breth- ren and make them be to us all that God designed."^ It was this same confidence in God, the truth, that kept him serene during the apparent victories of doubt and scepticism. Throughout his active life in the ministry, the attitude of the Christian world towards nature, the scriptures, and man was revolution- ized ; even now our memories and imaginations can scarcely grasp the change. Phillips Brooks stood to many as the leading interpreter of evangelical truth ; hundreds of people who felt themselves sinking into un- belief turned to him with the despera- tion of drowning men. All this time his attitude was changing, he was ^ lb. pp. 109 and 1 10. PHILLIPS BROOKS 37 thinking and living his faith out to its conclusion ; nevertheless, so firm was his hold upon the deeper spirit- ual truths, so strong his grasp upon God, so close his sympathy with Christ, that he guided and, in spite of himself, even carried others while he moved also himself; and always un- ruffled, serene, and full of hope. For if God is the truth, then whatever the present troubles, the truth will be re- vealed and will prevail. The man of God must be a man of hope. So in their sorrows and losses he became to the people the interpreter of the God of comfort. Never weak, always positive, he led the mourner away from self to higher thoughts and larger responsibilities. Another contribution of Phillips 38 PHILLIPS BROOKS Brooks was the emphasis of the natu- f ralness and healthiness of the religious I life. We need not recall the theology I of the last century, the natural man at enmity with God, children by the fact of their birth shut out of the kingdom, religion a supplement to life, artificial, conventional, the fabrication of adult morbid brains. We need not remind ourselves either that the truth of man's divine sonship had already begun to be preached in some quarters. It was the work of Phillips Brooks to take that truth of man's divine sonship, therefore man's simple natural instinct for God, of the religious man, as the most manly, most human man — up- lift it before the people, iterate and reiterate it until even the dullest could comprehend, while the more spiritual PHILLIPS BROOKS 39 leaped and embraced it as one of the revelations that they had longed for. His work was to bring before men the typical man, Christ Jesus ; for his was the simplest, most natural, most healthy life, because from beginning to end it dwelt in God. That the subject of his first sermon should be "The Simplicity that is in Christ" was an almost foregone conclusion. The motive of the Christian was of the simplest : " Religion is the life of man in gratitude and obedience and con- sequent growing likeness to Jesus Christ." ^ How familiar it all sounds to us now I It was new and fresh then. " Christianity seeks not to cramp man's nature, saying to him constantly ' Thou shalt not,' but it leads on, up to ^ Essays and Addresses, p. 40. 40 PHILLIPS BROOKS freer air and wider space, wherein the soul may disport itself. It is God we follow ; obeying God is freedom." * His appeal was constant for the sim- ple, natural, richer life. " Pray for and work for fullness of life above every- thing; full red blood in the body; full honesty and truth in the mind, and the fullness of a grateful love for the Saviour in your heart." ^ We can clearly see how this truth led up to his conception of sainthood, so different from that which has often prevailed in the Church, so different from that which was in the Church when he began to preach. " The spir- itual life of man in its fullest sense is the activity of man's whole nature un- ^ Address at Johns Hopkins University. ^ Life^ vol. ii. p. 178. PHILLIPS BROOKS 41 der the highest spiritual impulse, viz., the love of God." ^ Men of strength and power, not nerveless and effemi- nate creatures, are the true types of saintliness. " I would present true sainthood to you as the strong chain of God's presence in humanity, running down through all history, and mak- ing of it a unity, giving it a large and massive strength able to bear great things and to do great things too." ^ Phillips Brooks was a prophet of God, a preacher of Christ to men. He is claimed, and by right, as the spir- itual guide of people of all churches and of no church. His message and influence passed over all denomina- tional boundaries. Thousands out- ^ Essays and Addresses , p. 2 1 . ^ Sermonsy vol. i. p. 177. 42 PHILLIPS BROOKS side of his own church looked to him as their religious interpreter and pas- tor, and he gratefully accepted the ■fact. He had, as we have seen, very little interest in efforts for Christian unity by adjustments or ecclesiastical treaties and alliances. His whole tem- per and his faith in the reality of spir- itual powers compelled him to empha- size the unity of the spirit. " No," he said, " the real unity of Christendom is not to be found at last in identity of organization, nor in identity of dogma. Both of those have been dreamed of, and have failed; but in the unity of spiritual consecration to a common Lord." ^ No one church, therefore, can claim him as exclu- sively hers. He belonged to the ^ Tolerance i p. 55. PHILLIPS BROOKS 43 Christian world of the nineteenth cen- tury. To say, however, that he was in- different as to ecclesiastical relations and that his hold upon his own church was simply one of accident is to do him injustice and to misun- derstand his whole conception of the Church; for he believed that it was only by standing where one is, by certitude and conviction, that one can really sympathize with and under- stand others. It is only the loyal pa- triot who can understand the patriot- ism of other peoples; it is only the faithful Christian of firm conviction who can have true tolerance for the sincere beliefs of the heathen ; it is only the loyal churchman who can really and intelligently sympathize with the 44 PHILLIPS BROOKS earnest members of other churches and with those who claim no church. His quickness and frankness in pointing out the weaknesses in his own church arose, as he himself said again and again, from a deep sense of loyalty to her; the friend who cannot be frank with his friend is no true friend. And he had that confidence in the Church which assured him that she would gratefully welcome the sympathetic and honest correction. He was at home in his church. He was perfectly conscious that he could be at home in no other. His whole temperament, his grasp of the historic significance of the Church, his conceptions of the Christian life and religious culture, his sense of propor- tion and of spiritual unity, his love PHILLIPS BROOKS 45 of order, his conservative instincts, his artistic and poetic temperament, were satisfied in the Episcopal Church. To him a church with elaborate creeds was a house of bondage, and a church without creed was unthinkable; he de- manded a creed so fundamental and so simple that in the stress of history- it could hold the Church to the deep truths of the faith and at the same time could be continually filled with fresh spiritual thought and interpreted by new revelations of the truth. Peo- ple who did not know or understand him sometimes said that he was res- tive in the Church and unsympathetic with its life. There were times when he was restive under certain limited conceptions of the Church, and he was occasionally unsympathetic with cer- 46 PHILLIPS BROOKS tain popular features of what are sometimes called churchly thought and habits; but he never had any- other thought than that in the Church he was happy and at home. Of course he was there by right, and his loyalty to her and to what he firmly believed were her historic principles never wavered. To those ministers, laymen, and theological students who turned to him with their doubts as to whether they had a right to remain in the Church, and who quoted the language of this or that churchman of the day, his unfailing answer was, "Why do you listen to him *? No one man or group of men is the authoritative in- terpreter of the Church's standards. Look to your Prayer Book ; what do PHILLIPS BROOKS 47 you find there ? Study it, interpret it by the history of the Church, and then and not till then make your deci- sion." No churchman of his genera- tion had a deeper, more intelligent, more loyal devotion to the Prayer Book than Phillips Brooks. It was to him as were the scriptures, not a book of legal bondage, but of spirit- ual liberty. That his influence among Christian people of all names was enhanced by the fact that he was in the ministry of the Episcopal Church, and of no other body, is evident. For that position gave him a standing ground well apart and disassociated from the theological differences of New England. He was saturated with New England's theo- logical thought, and could interpret 48 PHILLIPS BROOKS Protestant America to herself; at the same time, his official position asso- ciated him with what was finest in the history of Enghsh-speaking peo- ples. It was only natural, therefore, that he who represented in so noble a way the highest traditions of the Church in England, and in his own country, should be consecrated a bishop. The wonder to us now is that any one should have thought differently. It is not strange, however, that his posi- tion should have been misunderstood by some; that is usually the lot of great men. And there are always those who are not conscious of the Church's historic comprehension of different types of thought. Looking back now, however, we see how nat- PHILLIPS BROOKS 49 urally he takes his place in the line of great bishops who have enriched the historic life of the Church. One more feature in the charac- ter of Phillips Brooks I mention, and with some hesitation, for it can best be illustrated by a leaf from my ex- perience as his successor in the epis- copate. When it became my duty to follow him in the visitation of the churches, I found, of course, a deep sense of personal bereavement among all the people and an abounding loyalty to his memory. Rising, however, well above these sentiments, and dominat- ing them, were a spiritual temper in the people, a religious enthusiasm, and a consecration to Christ. Through his episcopate Massachusetts had been 50 PHILLIPS BROOKS lifted Godward. This, it seems to me, was the cHmax of his powers, the finest illustration of his lifelong character, — that of turning men from himself to Christ, from the preacher to the Master. During his life he received such adulation as has been the lot of few men ; and since his death he has been held in tender memory by thou- sands. His name is still heard in the homes, the colleges, the jails, and hospitals ; but whenever his name is I spoken, whenever his figure comes 1 to memory, there is always in the I background, uplifiied, dominant and ; living, the form and spirit of his I I Master, Christ; the eye and thought I instinctively turn from one to the I other. Through the pure and simple char- PHILLIPS BROOKS 51 acter of Phillips Brooks we look steadfastly into the infinitely richer, purer, and more glorious character, his Master, Jesus Christ. \ Electroty^ed and printed by H. O. Hoitghto7i <5r» Co. Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. DATE DUE ^Mf^^^ m-m^m ^ ^^ii^m^i^^mf^' GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. ^p William latorcnce, £). £)♦ i6rao, cloth, 50 PHILLIPS BROOKS. A Study, cents, 7iet. Postage extra. ROGER WOLCOTT, Illustrated with Portraits. i2mo, ;$i.oo, 7iet. Postpaid, $1.11. LIFE OF AMOS A. LAWRENCE. With extracts from his Diary and Correspondence. With Portrait and Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 5i-5o. VISIONS AND SERVICE. Discourses delivered in Collegiate Chapels. i6mo, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY Boston and New York Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 012 01027 5024