PHILLIPS BROOKS
(1835-1893)
hillips Brooks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13th, 1835, and died there January 23d, 1893. He inherited the best traditions of New England history, being on the paternal side the direct descendant of John Cotton, and his mother's name, Phillips, standing for high learning and distinction in the Congregational church. Born at a time when the orthodox faith was fighting its bitterest battle with Unitarianism, his parents accepted the dogmas of the new theology, and had him baptized by a Unitarian clergyman. But while refusing certain dogmas of the orthodox church, they were the more thrown back for spiritual support upon the internal evidences of evangelical Christianity. "Holding still," says the Rev. Arthur Brooks, "in a greater or less degree, and with more or less precision, to the old statements, they counted the great fact that these statements enshrined more precious truth than any other." Transition to the Episcopal church was easy; the mother became an Episcopalian, and Phillips Brooks received all his early training in that communion. But heredity had its influence, and in after-life the great Bishop said that the Episcopal church could reap the fruits of the long and bitter controversy which divided the New England church, only as it discerned the spiritual worth of Puritanism, and the value of its contributions to the history of religious thought and character.
Such were the early surroundings of the man, and the subsequent influences of his life tended to foster this liberal spirit. For such a purpose, Boston itself was a good place to live in: it was too large to be wholly provincial, and it was not so large that the individual was lost; and at that time it was moreover the literary centre of America. When Phillips Brooks entered Harvard, he came into an atmosphere of intense intellectual activity. James Walker was the president of the college, and Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, and Longfellow were among the professors. He graduated with honor in 1855, and soon after entered the Episcopal theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia.
The transition from Harvard to this college was an abrupt one. The standards of the North and South were radically different. The theology of the Church in Virginia, while tolerant to that of other denominations, was uncompromisingly hostile to what it regarded as heterodox.
When the War was declared he threw himself passionately into the cause of the Union. Yet his affection for his Southern classmates, men from whom he so widely differed, broadened that charity that was one of his finest characteristics, a charity that respected conviction wherever found.
No man, in truth, ever did so much to remove prejudice against a Church that had never been popular in New England. To the old Puritan dislike of Episcopacy and distrust of the English Church as that of the oppressors of the colony, was added a sense of resentment toward its sacerdotal claims and its assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy. But he nevertheless protested against the claim by his own communion to the title of "The American Church," he preached occasionally in other pulpits, he even had among his audiences clergymen of other denominations, and he was able to reconcile men of different creeds into concord on what is essential in all. The breadth and depth of his teaching attracted so large a following that he increased the strength of the Episcopal Church in America far more than he could have done by carrying on an active propaganda in its behalf. Under his pastorate Trinity Church, Boston, became the centre of some of the most vigorous Christian activity in America.