As a preacher, Dr. Brooks was in the front rank of our ministers. As another has written:—
"He was entirely consecrated to his work, and in the pulpit he spoke as one having authority. His sonorous voice and majestic bearing were in perfect harmony with his clear and forcible presentation of his thought, and emphasized his urgent appeals to the conscience of his hearer. He was by nature an ardent reformer, and was always true to his convictions. He could not keep back the smallest fragment of what he believed to be God's truth. He early threw himself, heart and soul, into the anti-slavery cause, and during the war of the rebellion his clarion voice gave no uncertain sound."
He was a clear and vigorous writer. His two volumes, "Universalism in Life and Doctrine," and "Our New Departure," evince this. They are valuable additions to our church literature. He was one of our best organizers. Seldom absent from our conventions, and nearly always serving on executive boards and important committees, nearly every department of our church work received an impression from his hand. In 1867 Tufts College conferred on him the degree of D. D.
It has been truly said of him:—
"He was born into Universalism. He was cradled in its arms. He was taught it at his mother's knee. He believed it from his earliest conscious years. He never was influenced by any other faith. What he was it made him. Let no man say it is not the power of God unto salvation, while we can point to such examples of its influence in life and death. He has gone to that home which his faith made so real to many souls."
H. W. Smith.
Ebenr Fisher.
Rev. Ebenezer Fisher, D. D., has won honorable distinction in the Universalist Church. He was born in Charlotte, Me., Feb. 6, 1815, and died in Canton, N. Y., Feb. 21, 1879. His father was one of the pioneers of Eastern Maine, and the son passed his early years in a new country, in the midst of hardships incident to such a condition. With the exception of a single term at the Readfield Seminary, he had no advantages beyond what were afforded by the common schools of his native town. His early religious training was in the Orthodox church, against whose gloomy doctrines his whole soul revolted. When about sixteen years old a few Universalist books and papers were put into his hands, the perusal of which, in connection with the Bible, brought him "out of darkness into marvellous light," and he gradually formed the purpose to fit himself for the Christian ministry. He sought and obtained fellowship of the Maine Convention in 1840, and in 1841 settled at Addison Point, Me., until in April, 1847, he accepted a call to Salem, Mass., where his pastorate was eminently successful. In November, 1853, he removed to South Dedham (now Norwood), where he remained until 1858, when he was appointed President of the Theological School at Canton, N. Y., and thenceforth he gave his time, labor, thought, and strength to a work for which he proved himself peculiarly fitted. For more than twenty years he was the honored head of the first Universalist Theological School, and during that time one hundred and three students were graduated, who are now scattered over the country, and bearing testimony to his faithful teaching, his rare devotion to duty, his profound scholarship, and his eminence in all Christian virtues. However marked may have been the results of his labors in other fields, his work in the Theological School was the most important and conspicuous, and will be his most enduring monument. The degree of D. D. was conferred upon him in 1862 by Lombard University. Rev. I. M. Atwood, D. D., his successor as President in the Canton Theological School, thus truly and graphically presents him to us:—
"A grand man, made up in a large and noble fashion, with paternal benignity in his face and a note of sonorous warning in his voice, able, acute, aggressive, unmovable, the sturdy strength and wintry rigor of his nature relieved by a certain charm of tenderness which affected one like the scent of sweet flowers amid the majesty of the primeval woods; in his preaching a strain of deep sincerity which made the hearer feel the solemn reality of those things about which there is so much superficial prattle,—a great, brave, patient spirit, loyal to the truth, trustworthy as a star, and of such a breadth and strength of moral build as made him an imposing Christian force in the community,—such to our thought was Ebenezer Fisher, who fell asleep Friday morning, Feb. 21, 1879, having just passed his sixty-fourth birthday.