Redner always insisted that the hymn tune was “a gift from heaven,” and those who have learned to love its exquisite strains are more than willing to believe it!
Phillips Brooks, though he never had a family of his own, possessed a boundless love for children. That, perhaps, is one reason why the Christmas season so fascinated him, and why he wrote so many Christmas carols for children. One of these is famous for its striking refrain, “Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight.” “The voice of the Christ-child” is the title of another Christmas carol. He also wrote a number of Easter carols, among them, “God hath sent His angels.”
But Phillips Brooks not only made a strong appeal to children; it was not long before the great and learned men of America began to realize that a great preacher and prophet had risen among them. There was need of such a spiritual leader, for Unitarianism had threatened to engulf all New England.
In its beginnings this movement was merely a protest against the stern and forbidding aspects of the Christian religion as it had been exemplified in New England Puritanism. It grew more and more radical, however, until the deity of Christ was denied.
The old-fashioned religion of “Christ and Him crucified” was all but forgotten in the intellectual circles of New England when a young man thirty-four years of age began preaching in Trinity church, Boston. He was preaching Jesus Christ, but he was presenting Him in a new and wonderful light. Crowds began to fill the church. Even sedate old Harvard was stirred.
That was the beginning of the ministry of Phillips Brooks in Boston, a ministry that made him famous throughout the land. It marked the turning point in religious tendencies in New England, and perhaps was the most potent factor in checking the spread of the Unitarian doctrine. Brooks was later elevated to a bishopric in his Church. He died in 1893.
It is said that when a little girl of five years was told by her mother that “Bishop Brooks has gone to heaven,” the child exclaimed, “Oh, mamma, how happy the angels will be!”
The Story that Never Grows Old
I love to hear the story
Which angel voices tell,