Two thousand college students, standing several deep, with heads
uncovered, were formed in two lines from the University building to the
West Gate. Through their ranks, entering from Harvard Street, the body
of their beloved preacher was borne. "Never in all our college life,"
writes Dr. McKenzie, "has there been a burial like his."
From the college grounds the procession moved to Mount Auburn, where the
brothers, John and Arthur, conducted the services. Flowers, which the
dead bishop loved, lay everywhere upon the pure, white snow,--lilies,
roses, carnations, and sheaves of wheat. The fence about the family lot
was hung with ivy and violets tied with purple ribbon.
The crowd drew aside to let three weeping women look into the open
grave, before the dirt fell upon the coffin. They were three
sisters,--servants who had long ministered in the bishop's home, and
whose devotion had been repaid by constant appreciation and kindness.
The world went back to its work, but we are never the same after a great
life has touched our own. Phillips Brooks said in his sermon on
"Withheld Completion of Life," "The ideal life is in our blood, and
never will be still. We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath
the thing we are. Every time we see a man who has attained our human
ideal a little more fully than we have, it awakens our languid blood and
fills us with new longings."
All who ever knew or heard Phillips Brooks will forever strive after his
unselfishness, his courage, his thoughtfulness, his eagerness to make
the world better.
Bishop William Lawrence, who succeeded Phillips Brooks, wrote of him in
the March-April, 1893, _Andover Review_, "When all has been said about
his eloquence, his mastery of language, and his tumult of thought, we
are turned back to the thought that the sermons were great because the
man was great. His was a great soul. He stood above us; he moved in
higher realms of thought and life; he had a wider sweep of spiritual
vision; he was gigantic. And yet he was so completely one of us, so
sympathetic, childlike, and naturally simple, that it was often only by
an effort of thought that we could realize that he was great. Kingly in
character, we buried him like a king."
Memorial services were held in scores of churches; in Boston, in Lowell,
in Worcester, in New York, in Maine, in Rhode Island, and elsewhere. At
the old South Church in Boston, Protestants and Roman Catholics united
in the service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account