Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"The only ground for us to take is simply the broad ground that error is not punishable at all. Error is not guilt. The guilt of error is the fallacy and fiction which has haunted good men's minds."

Again he said, "Insincerity (whether it profess to hold what we think is false or what we think is true), cant, selfishness, deception of one's self or of other people, cruelty, prejudice,—these are the things with which the Church ought to be a great deal more angry than she is. The anger which she is ready to expend upon the misbeliever ought to be poured out on these."

"The noblest utterance of hopeful tolerance in all that noble century," said Dr. Brooks of the Pilgrims, "was in the famous speech in which John Robinson, their minister, bade loving farewell to his departing flock at Leyden, in which occur those memorable words, 'I am verily persuaded, I am very confident, that the Lord has more truth to break out of His holy word.'"

"At the consecration of Trinity Church," says the Rev. Julius H. Ward, "he invited prominent Unitarian clergymen, and at least one layman, to receive the communion." And yet Phillips Brooks's one gospel message, in which he believed and spoke, was the power of Christ unto salvation.

"Of the Episcopal Church," he said, "there are some of her children who love to call her in exclusive phrase The American Church. She is not that; and to call her that would be to give her a name to which she has no right. The American Church is the great total body of Christianity in America, in many divisions, under many names ... as a whole bearing perpetual testimony to the people of America of the authority and love of God, of the redemption of Christ, and of the sacred possibilities of man....

"The church which to-day effectively denounces intemperance and the licentiousness of social life, the cruelty or indifference of the rich to the poor, and the prostitution of public office, will become the real church of America. Our church has done some good service here. She ought to do more.... She ought to blow her trumpet in the ears of the young men of fortune, summoning them from their clubs and their frivolities to do the chivalrous work which their nobility obliges them to do for their fellow-men. She ought to speak to Culture, and teach it its responsibility."

Five volumes of Dr. Brooks's sermons have been published and read widely: one in 1878; another in 1881, "The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons,"—the first sermon was preached in London, and attracted wide attention; in 1883, "Sermons in the English Churches;" in 1886, "Twenty Sermons," dedicated to the memory of Frederick Brooks, his brother; and in 1890, "The Light of the World and Other Sermons," dedicated to the memory of his "brother, George Brooks, who died in the great war."

The Rev. Frederick Brooks, who was the talented young pastor of St. Paul's Church in Cleveland, Ohio, was drowned by falling one dark evening through the Charlestown draw of the Boston and Lowell Railroad bridge. The last inspiring talk which he made was at one of the Temperance Friendly Inns in Cleveland, where he encouraged us with his words of sympathy and interest.

Phillips Brooks wrote two other books, "Lectures on Preaching," and the "Bohlen Lectures," on "The Influence of Jesus." Besides these he has written several Christmas carols of extreme beauty, and some pamphlets. All his books have gone through many editions, and, like Spurgeon's, have been read by thousands.