Two weeks later he preached a Christmas sermon at the Church of the Incarnation, New York, for his brother, Dr. Arthur Brooks. This was the day of all days which he loved. He enjoyed giving and receiving Christmas gifts.
He said in his sermon, "One of the very wonderful things about our human life is the perpetual freshness, the indestructible joy, that clings forever about the idea of birth. You cannot find the hovel so miserable, the circumstances and the prospects of life so wretched, that it is not a bright and glorious thing for a child to be born there.
"Hope flickers up for an instant from its embers at the first breathing of the baby's breath. No squalidness of the life into which it came can make the new life seem squalid at its coming. By and by it will grow dull and gray, perhaps, in sad harmony with its sad surroundings; but at the first there is some glory in it, and for a moment it burns bright upon the bosom of the dulness where it has fallen, and seems as if it ought to set it afire.
"And so there was nothing that could with such vividness represent the newness of Christianity in the world as to have it forever associated with the birth of a child.
"It is a strange, a wonderful, birth.... I do not care to understand that story fully. It is enough for me that in it there is represented the full truth about the wondrous child of Christmas Day. He is the child of heaven and earth together. It is the spontaneous utterance of the celestial life. It is likewise the answer to the cry of need with which every hill and valley of the earth has rung, that lies here in the cradle....
"The humble birth of Jesus in the stable of the inn at Bethlehem was a proclamation of the insignificance of circumstances in the greatest moments and experiences of life."
A few days later, Jan. 14, 1893, Bishop Brooks took cold at the consecration of a church in East Boston, and a soreness of throat resulted. Five days later, Thursday, he seemed somewhat ill, and went to bed. A physician came, but no alarm was felt. Sunday night the throat grew diphtheretic, and the bishop became delirious. Monday morning, Jan. 23, at 6.30, Phillips Brooks ceased to breathe.
His last words, spoken to his brother William and the faithful servants and nurse who stood by the bedside, as he waved his hand, were, "Good-by; I am going home. I will see you in the morning."
The sad news could scarcely be believed. The great, strong man, bishop for only a year and three months, had fallen in his very prime. Men's faces were blanched, and women wept. The poor and the rich had a common sorrow. Even children felt the bereavement. A little five-year-old girl was told by her mother that "Bishop Brooks had gone to heaven."