He preached to overflowing congregations at Trinity, at the Young Men's Christian Union, the Moody Tabernacle, Appleton Chapel at Harvard, and elsewhere. He did not seem to realize that men crowded the house to hear him. To a brother minister in a Boston suburb, where he frequently preached, and where every inch of standing-room was utilized when he came, he remarked, "Grey, what a splendid congregation you have!"
He was extremely modest. When invited to furnish some data for his college class record, he wrote, "I have had no wife, no children, no particular honors, no serious misfortune, and no adventures worth speaking of. It is shameful at such times as these not to have a history, but I have not got one, and must come without."
Phillips Brooks was as great in pastoral work as in preaching. He said in his "Lectures on Preaching," delivered at the Yale Divinity School, in January and February, 1877, "The preacher needs to be pastor, that he may preach to real men. The pastor must be preacher, that he may keep the dignity of his work alive. The preacher who is not a pastor grows remote. The pastor who is not a preacher grows petty.... Be both; for you cannot really be one unless you also are the other."
He visited his people, both poor and rich. Two young men had attended Trinity Church for a time, and then ceased going. They roomed at the top of a high building in a plain quarter of the city. One day, answering a rap at their door, they beheld the majestic figure of Phillips Brooks. "Well, boys," he said, grasping them cordially by the hand, "you did not expect to see me here, did you?"
Indeed, they did not, for they supposed that the rector did not know them even by sight. They went regularly to Trinity after that friendly visit.
A physician tells this story, which has appeared in the press. He said to a poor woman whom he had visited, "You don't need any more medicine. What you need now is nourishment and fresh air. You need to get out."
"But I have nobody to leave with the children," was the reply.
"Well, you must manage to get out somehow," was the response.
The doctor dropped in a day or two later to see how the poor woman had "managed." She had told her troubles to the man who bore many burdens cheerfully, Phillips Brooks; and he was there caring for the children while the poor mother took the air.
Dr. Brooks loved mission work. Like Charles Kingsley, he was always very close in heart with the poor and the laborers. He said, "It is not wealth simply in itself,—it is the pride of wealth, the indifference of wealth, the cruelty of wealth, the vulgarity of wealth, in one great word, the selfishness of wealth, which really makes the poor man's heart ache and the poor man's blood boil, and constitutes the danger of a community where poor men and rich men live side by side." He was especially interested in St. Andrew's Church on Chambers Street, which was under the care of Trinity. Here one of the first, if not the first, girls' clubs in the country was organized, to which Dr. Brooks delighted to speak of his travels abroad. The Vincent Hospital, the Guild Hall of St. Andrew's, hung with pictures, gifts from him, the Kindergarten for the Blind,—all were dear to his heart.