Phillips Brooks did not wish that this grand church should be for the
people of Trinity only. The galleries were made free, and the rented
pews could be occupied by strangers after a stated hour. He said, "Such
a church as this has no right to exist, or to think that it exists, for
any limited company who own its pews. It would not be a Christian
parish if it harbored such a thought. No, let the world come in. Let all
men hear, if they will, the truths we love. Let no soul go unsaved
through any selfishness of ours."
This year Mr. Brooks was made a Doctor of Divinity by Harvard
University. He had already been one of her overseers for several years.
In 1881 the beloved Dr. Andrew P. Peabody resigned his office as
preacher at Harvard, and the President and Fellows naturally turned to
Phillips Brooks as the one of all others who could win and hold the
students to a higher spiritual life. He was chosen preacher to the
university, and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals.
Dr. Brooks loved his Alma Mater, and hated to refuse, but Trinity Church
and Boston could not spare him. When he gave his answer, President Eliot
says, "He was very pale and grave, and he spoke like a man who had seen
a beatific vision which he could not pursue."
More and more, however, Phillips Brooks became a part of the higher life
of Harvard. The religious work at the college is divided among six
preachers. In each half-year, for two or three weeks, a minister
conducts morning prayers, preaches Sunday evenings, and each forenoon is
at Wadsworth House, to talk with any students who may choose to come.
These were precious seasons to Phillips Brooks: for he loved young men,
and they loved him. The Rev. Julius Ward tells of a letter written by
Dr. Brooks to the father of a freshman, in which the warm heart of the
preacher exclaims. "What dear, beautiful creatures these boys are!"
For twenty-two years Phillips Brooks did his grand work in Trinity
Church, and, indeed, in the whole city and the whole land. He said, "No
man has come to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his
life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him He gives him for
mankind."
When the Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon of Boston remarked to Dr. Brooks,
after hearing his twentieth anniversary sermon, that he had also heard
him preach his ninth, he replied, "Twenty years is a long time in a
man's life, and I cannot expect more than another twenty;" and then with
a serious but eager look, added, "And then I hope something better will
come."
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!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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