USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Trinity church in the city of Boston, Massachusetts : 1733-1933 > Part 5
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Trinity Parish had elected him to its rectorship on Octo- ber 9, 1842, a position which he held until July 1, 1868. He was consecrated bishop in Trinity Church on December 29, 1842.
In less than two months, on February 15, 1843, Bishop Gris- wold died. My father from his window saw the old man wading through the heavy snow toward Bishop Eastburn's house; he fell upon the steps. My father and others ran out, carried him into the house and laid him upon the parlor floor wrapped in his cloak; in a few minutes his heart which had carried him through many years of heavy work ceased beat- ing, and he fell asleep.
Bishop Eastburn now entered upon his duties as bishop of the diocese and rector of Trinity Parish; to the latter he gave a large part of his time and strength, usually preaching on Sunday morning, and making many pastoral calls. While he was faithful in confirmations, his office work was compara- tively light. In those days a bishop was not expected to be an administrator; the people of the parishes, being in a Congre- gational atmosphere, were rather independent in spirit and practice: there were but few missions in the diocese, and no diocesan societies. Apart from attending the General Conven- tion every three years, a bishop had little responsibility for the work of the general Church. The Missionary societies in New York carried on all their correspondence with the rectors,
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leaving the bishop serenely ignorant of the amounts of con- tributions, and the efforts to obtain them.
Had it not been for the assistants upon the Greene Foun- dation of Trinity Parish, the bishop would have been unable to retain both offices; and helpful as they were, they and the bishop did not always dwell together in unity. Trouble soon broke out. The Rev. John Lee Watson had been assistant for six years when Bishop Eastburn took charge. The bishop be- came suspicious that Mr. Watson was not in entire sympathy with the new regime and its order of service, and soon pro- tested to the vestry. But Mr. Watson was highly regarded by the people, and the bishop had accepted the rectorship know- ing well that Mr. Watson had been there six years and ex- pected to remain. Those were days of pamphleteering, when men sat at their desks and wrote extended arguments. Four pages of very fine print appeared from bishop to assistant, and assistant to bishop; then the vestry took a hand and a pam- phlet of forty pages followed with the result that in 1846 the Rev. Mr. Watson thought it expedient to resign.
The Rev. Thomas March Clark succeeded in 1847. He was at this time one of the leading young preachers in the Congre- gational Church. He once told me that as a Congregational minister he preached in the Old South Meeting House one Sunday, and the very next Sunday as an Episcopal clergyman in Trinity Church. He was a strong preacher, and while most clergymen of that day, including his chief, used the stilted aca- demic style of the Anglican communion, Mr. Clark used vigor- ous and sometimes racy English; in later years he was one of the most popular lecturers and newspaper writers. I have for- gotten most sermons preached to me in the last seventy years, but I can now recall his beautiful, sonorous voice, his striking illustrations, and his allusions so full of humor as to cause a smile even among the most strait-laced of the congregation. He was a man of tender sympathy, keen wit, intellectual cour-
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age, and even to his old age kept to the fore in intellectual in- terests : and yet was of the most simple, pastoral spirit. He must have been of great help to Bishop Eastburn in holding the loy- alty to the parish of the younger generation, who found the English manner and style of the bishop unreal. He served four years as assistant upon the Greene Foundation. Some years later, in 1854, he was consecrated Bishop of Rhode Island. He adorned that office for almost half a century, and was for many years the Presiding Bishop of the Church. Devoted to his young friend Phillips Brooks during his rectorship, Bishop Clark stood loyally by Brooks, when, elected to be Bishop of Massachu- setts, efforts were made to prevent his consecration. He pre- sented Brooks in the service of consecration, and took part in his burial in 1893. He lived on to present me at my consecra- tion, and died in September, 1903.
Another young clergyman of promise, the Rev. John Cotton Smith, became assistant in 1852. On fire with the Gospel, he preached with eloquence of a very different type from that of his predecessor. His sermons had a poetic and imaginative note. In his pastoral work, as well as in the pulpit, by his breadth of outlook and open mind he was in many respects the complement of the bishop, and, like Mr. Clark, helped to hold and lead the younger generation. Lacking, however, a sense of humor, he could not endure with serenity some of the little au- tocratic ways and biddings of the bishop: the inner councils of the two were not always happy, and in 18 59 Mr. Smith accepted a call to the rectorship of the Church of the Ascension, New York, from which Bishop Eastburn had come seventeen years before. Here he became a power in spiritual leadership and breadth of thought in New York and beyond.
During the next three years the Rev. Alexander G. Mercer was assistant upon the Greene Foundation, serving with faith- fulness, and giving support to his chief.
The services of Trinity Church, indeed of almost all the parishes in the diocese, were, as compared with those of to-
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day, infrequent and simple. We must remember that the home was the center of religious life: family prayers were com- mon; the children were taught to pray, and the table talk often turned on religious subjects. Social life centered in the homes of friends and neighbors: there were no parish houses, and usually but one parish society, the Women's Missionary So- ciety.
On a Sunday morning the Sunday school met in the church or chapel. Each class occupied one or two pews, and the teacher, leaning over the back of the pew in front, taught the class as best he could. At half past ten the congregation assembled in their pews in the church, for families went as families, and occupied the pews which they owned or rented. Of strangers there were few, and they were diverted to the galleries. The religious habits of Boston were settled, and the people in those times knew to what parish they belonged. The organ was in the gallery in the rear of the church, and the choir, a quar- tette or double quartette, was far above the congregation, which joined in singing the hymns. The canticles and Te Deum were the property of the choir. The rector entered the chancel by a door at the side, and went to the reading desk, which was a large piece of furniture holding prayer books, hymn book, and Bible. Facing the congregation, he knelt in silent prayer while the people, having each offered his silent prayer on en- tering, sat waiting in their pews. There was no processional, but a reverent and dignified silence, broken by the clergy- man speaking the opening sentences, followed by the "Dearly Beloved Brethren," and the rest of Morning Prayer. Then came the Litany and the Ante Communion service. During the next hymn, the rector retired to the robing room to exchange his surplice, which was very ample and long (cassocks being un- known), for a preacher's black gown. He mounted the pulpit steps while the choir and congregation were still singing, knelt in silent prayer, and then, the hymn being ended, he gave out his text and preached, always from a manuscript ; for
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sermons without notes were unknown or associated with laziness or a great orator. There was no invocation or prayer before the sermon; after the ascription, he went back to the chancel, gave out another hymn, and after a collect and bene- diction retired to the robing room while the organ played. The congregation then dispersed.
The Lord's Supper was administered on the first Sunday morning of each month, after the Morning Prayer, the Litany being omitted. There may have been two or three parishes in the diocese which had an early celebration of the Holy Com- munion; indeed the word "celebration " was rarely used, and a fasting Communion was almost unknown. Those people went to the Lord's Supper once each month with a deep sense
、 of responsibility. On the preceding evening, the communi- cants went to a lecture of preparation for the Lord's Supper ; in their private morning prayers they had asked for an increase of God's Spirit. After the Prayer for Christ's Church Militant, the non-communicants and the children, of whom there were many in the family pews, quietly went out. When the com- municants stood and the rector read the long exhortation and short charge, there were an intensity of spirit and a con- centration of attention which were most moving. There was too a consciousness of spiritual power in the large company which, with the reception of the consecrated bread and wine, lifted the character of each communicant and of the whole parish. After the benediction, they went out upon the street and to their homes a vital and spiritual people.
The parish expenses were defrayed by the systematic pay- ment of the pew taxes or rentals, which came to the people once a month with their other bills. This method released the parish from the continual taking of collections. At the monthly Communion service alms were asked and given for the poor of the parish, and on the third Sunday morning of the month there was a collection for some special purpose,
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foreign, or domestic or diocesan missions, the aged clergy, and the widows and orphans of the clergy.
In most of the parishes there was a Wednesday or Friday evening prayer and a lecture, for the saints' days, coming at ir- regular intervals, were found to be inconvenient; these week- day services drew larger congregations than is customary to- day on saints' days. Rectors whose time is now broken by a multiplication of services for a few of the elect, who, yielding to parish social demands have become purveyors of amuse- ments for young people and games for boys' clubs, may well envy their predecessor who, under former conditions, had time to prepare his sermons and lectures, and call afternoons and evenings upon his people as their pastor and spiritual counsellor.
The bishop was beginning to feel the weight of his years and work, and from time to time expressed a wish to be re- leased from the rectorship that he might give his full strength to the diocese; but the diocese was still unable to pay his whole salary.
As I recall those years, Bishop Eastburn is to me a rather pathetic figure; for he was often at my father's house, and he received me as a postulant when, a year after my graduation from Harvard, I called upon him to offer myself for the minis- try. He was even then a man of fine presence, virile, upstanding, outspoken, with courage and a very tender heart ; but he was still an Englishman to the core, unconsciously unable to adapt himself to New England conditions: and he had brought with him from England a hostility to anything that smacked of ritualism, High Churchism, or Puseyism. From several direc- tions, social and ecclesiastical, the edges of his temperament were continually rubbed and frayed. I can see him now re- turning from his afternoon ride on horseback. In those days most gentlemen in riding wore a tall hat, a frock coat, and straps under the feet to hold their pants from riding up. But
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Bishop Eastburn, having left his horse after his ride at the Charles Street stable, walked up Beacon Street wearing a sort of jockey cap, a shooting jacket, and yellow leggings, carry- ing his crop and lash under his arm as jauntily as an English jockey. The conventional citizens, seeing him, asked why the bishop should dress in that queer way; and the answer came: "He is an Englishman." The fathers of boys in those days were trying to keep their sons from smoking, which was associated with barrooms. How disconcerting, then, was it to have the bishop after confirming in some rural parish, after dining with the wardens, proceed to light a cigar and smoke it in the pres- ence of the very boys upon whom he had laid hands. How could parental discipline be sustained?
Bishop Eastburn had convictions and courage which, ad- mirable as they were, led him into frequent disagreements with some of the clergy and laity, especially of the Church of the Advent, Boston, which was introducing ritual and teaching from the Puseyites of England of the sort the bishop had been taught to abhor. His correspondence with the officers of that parish fills a pamphlet of 123 pages. In a letter to the clergy of the diocese, published in the Christian Witness of Decem- ber 5, 1845, Bishop Eastburn said: "On Nov. 23, I visited the ch. of the Advent, for confirmation, and there observed, to my inexpressible grief and pain, various offensive innovations upon the ancient usage of our Church. In the form of the Communion Table; in the decorations of golden candlesticks, and of a large wooden cross, by which it is surmounted; and in the postures used in front of it by the Assistant Minister. ... I perceived with sorrow superstitious puerilities ... . Were these novelties nothing more than childish, they would be on that account sufficiently objectionable to call forth my censure ... but chiefly do I consider these innovations .. . be- cause of their pointed and offensive resemblance to the usages of that Idolatrous Papal Communion against which our own Prayer Book so strongly protests." Such missives did not make
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for peace, and some of his closest friends, both clergy and lay, urged him to desist; but his sense of duty was clear and strong. And of course such harassments affected his ministry as rector of Trinity Church.
He was a man of simplicity, and yearned to reach the hearts of the people. His sermons were carefully prepared and beau- tifully written almost like copperplate, but his sermonic style was verbose and sometimes bombastic. After the congregation had listened to the vigorous English of an assistant, the Rev. Mr. Clark or Cotton Smith, their sense of humor was aroused by such passages as these: "We are now assembled in a sacred edifice where we periodically meet together; where we have regularly met in the past; similar buildings stand in various parts of the metropolis." Or: "Our Lord and Redeemer was about to go into Galilee.to commence his ministry among the people. He had been brought into acquaintance with a man named Philip: and happening just at this time to fall into com- pany with this man, commands his personal attendance upon him during his intended journey." Such phrases were repeated at the Sunday dinners after service, and in the afternoon the boys and girls repeated them to their friends in the sonorous voice of the preacher.
Nevertheless, the bishop, consecrated in spirit, always a gentleman, dignified and a bit pompous, met duty after duty, confirmed and ordained, knelt by the bedside of the sick, and won the loyalty of those who found in him a tender heart and loyal Churchman. His wife, who had become mentally ill, was taken to an asylum, and he passed his evenings by the fire- side alone:
Fortunately, the next assistant upon the Greene Foundation, the Rev. Henry C. Potter, had such regard for the bishop's finer characteristics, and such a sense of humor, that the two could work happily together, and gradually the assistant took over most of the parish duties. Their first dinner together was char- acteristic: at its close the bishop rather hesitatingly offered his
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new assistant a cigar, saying as he did so: "Mr. Potter, I pre- sume you do not smoke," for Henry Potter's father, Bishop Alonzo Potter, was a leader in campaigns against wine drink- ing and smoking. As the cigar was accepted, Bishop Eastburn remarked with great satisfaction: "I was afraid that you had inherited the detestable prejudices of your father."
Henry Potter did the parish a great service in bringing into it by his preaching and teaching a fresh conception of the relation of the Church and the Christian faith to society. Hitherto, the Evangelical note of individual salvation had been emphasized. Potter was an Evangelical, but he was alsotouched with the social message of the Gospel, and by a liberal and modern spirit unconsciously prepared the way for the mes- sage of the next rector, Phillips Brooks.
In April, 1868, Potter accepted a call to the rectorship of Grace Church, New York. In July, Bishop Eastburn resigned his rectorship, and gave himself to his diocesan work. Four years later, on September 12, 1872, this high-minded, humble, and often misunderstood bishop fell asleep, and was buried from Trinity Church.
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IV REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. Ninth Rector of Trinity Church 1869-1891 BY RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D.D. Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893-1927
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middle age or well along in years. On the other hand, he was a Boston boy, a Latin School boy and a Harvard graduate. Three years before, when he was only twenty-nine years old, Har- vard had called him back to offer the prayer on the great day of commemoration of the graduates who fell in the Civil War, and his prayer at that time had made a more marked im- pression than James Russell Lowell's Commemoration Ode. His father was a Brooks of Medford, of the best Massachusetts stock, and his mother was a Phillips of Andover, than whom there was nothing finer. The former a Unitarian and the latter a stanch orthodox Congregationalist, they had compromised on the Episcopal Church, St. Paul's Church on Tremont Street, where, under the rectorship of Dr. John S. Stone, they heard the Gospel liberally and evangelically interpreted. There Mr. and Mrs. Brooks with their six boys worshipped; at this time four of them had entered the ministry or were headed toward it, and one had died in the Civil War. Would these influences bring Phillips Brooks back to Boston? Could he allow them to outweigh his present great work?
Without him as their leader the wardens and vestry saw a desolate future for Trinity. Their clear duty was to call him and bring every legitimate influence to bear to induce him to come. The wardens talked with him while he was on a visit at Newport; Mr. Robert C. Winthrop and a host of others wrote to him; his father and brothers urged his acceptance; and, more than all, his mother wrote: "I must tell you how glad I should be if you should decide to accept it, how pleasant it seems to think of getting you back again, how much I hope you will come. Trinity is certainly a great field for usefulness. It needs a powerful man to make it a live Church, and I be- lieve you are peculiarly fitted for the work, and I humbly re- joice that I have such a son to give to it."
Early in September came his answer declining the call. The senior warden, Mr. George M. Dexter, wrote him: "Yours put- ting an end to all our hopes, came duly at hand." " ... What we
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shall do I have not the least idea." His mother wrote: "We are all stunned and saddened. We have indulged the proud hope of seeing you change wasted and suffering Trinity into a fruitful field." Two days later she wrote again: "Remember you are a Boston boy yet, and owe her a debt. I pray you may be able to pay it in my lifetime."
And so the disappointed and wounded parish limped through the dreary winter of 1868-1869, some of the officers and people nourishing the forlorn hope that Brooks might reconsider and come. But there was no apparent ground for their hopes; his uniform answer to questions was: "I am not the man for Trinity."
Meanwhile Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, rejoiced and flour- ished. Every department of work and worship was stimu- lated by the decision, and Brooks himself preached buoyantly. That very Christmas of 1868, responding to an offer from the Sunday school organist that if Brooks would write a carol, he would compose the music for it, he threw his thought back to his visit in Palestine two years before, and in Holy Trinity on Christmas Eve the carol rang out: "O little town of Beth- lehem."
But something had happened. He was unaware of it, and so were others. He had preached once in Trinity, Boston: he had been in his old home and had breathed again the spiritual and intellectual air of New England. He missed something in Philadelphia. Problems of faith and life were being discussed at home and in Harvard College which did not press before him in Philadelphia. Some inner voice whispered to him that he might help his own people in New England to meet the problems. His mother's words may have haunted him. But there was no sign anywhere of a change of sentiment.
The officers of Trinity, however, were undaunted. In Janu- ary Mr. Winthrop wrote reopening the question, and while Brooks responded that he saw no possibility of changing his decision, his tone was different from that of the autumn. In
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May he preached the Diocesan Convention sermon in Phila- delphia, and his stay there seemed assured.
In June Mr. Dexter went to Philadelphia, and on his return a sudden meeting of the vestry took place. On July 6, Phillips Brooks was again called, and at the end of the month accepted.
On Sunday, October 24, after a rectorship of eight years, he preached his last sermon in Holy Trinity, and on the very next Sunday preached his first as rector of Trinity, Boston, from the text, St. John Ix. 4, 5: "I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh when no man can work."
Although the congregation on that Sunday was exception- ally large for Trinity, and the welcome of the loyal people was warm, the cheerless condition of the parish, the feeble Sunday school, the lack of young people and of parish activities must have given him a chill. Indeed, he was personally a stranger in his home city except to his immediate family and a few of his old friends, for he had known Boston only as a boy and student. He had failed as a teacher in the Boston Latin School, and after a few months had been forced to resign. Since then his life had been in Alexandria, Virginia, and in Philadelphia. Sensitive as he was to affection and understanding, his letters back to Philadelphia were often those of homesickness; and keen shafts of humor at the provincialism of the Bostonese gave him an outlet of expression.
In his deeper thought, however, he was convinced that his decision was right. His Philadelphia life, away from the criti- cism and partiality of family and boyhood friends, the Civil War, the exhilarating Church atmosphere of that day and the great congregations, had developed certain of his powers as a man and preacher. New England was different: provincial in a way it was true, but its intellectual life, its culture, had per- meated the country ; it was still a power. There were opportu- nities for spiritual leadership near the sources of the coming thought which might open up opportunities for the preacher.
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And so he settled down for his life work. In the first two years he wrote very few new sermons: he preached his old ones; but in his week-day evening addresses he gave his fresher thought ; he read and studied; he observed, and in talk and on the street got his bearings, so that when he was really settled in the work he could think and speak confidently. He was averse to scat- tering his interests, but concentrated his thought and strength upon his work as preacher and pastor: he was first and always the rector of Trinity Parish, of which from beginning to end he was very proud, ever loyal to its best traditions. Parish prob- lems came thick and fast; the leading one soon became domi- nant. How was it possible for old Trinity to do the work it ought to do in its present church and on its down-town site? He had doubtless asked and answered that question to himself before accepting the call, but he said nothing for two or three months. Then its answer became clear enough to him and a few counsellors to broach the question to the parish, and to lead their thoughts and anticipations to the Back Bay. For on the west of the Public Garden, the gravel of Needham's Hills had been hauled and dumped into the "Back Bay," which was now a desert of dirt, dust, mud, and wind. Streets had been laid out upon the city map, and could be recognized as mere gravel on a level four feet higher than the lots. One large unnamed square was evidently going to be a center of population and traffic, a plaza for great buildings. After much study and discussion the parish bought the eastern lot which, surrounded by streets, offered ample approach and light and which, facing the square, would give the church dignity and offer an open view of the west front tothe public. Inthe proposed plan for removal there were many questions to be settled, legal and practical, and an act of the Legislature was needed ; a generally conservative and timid temper, and a small but rather hot minority of opposi- tion had to be overcome. There was also much money to be raised in addition to that which might accrue from the sale of the old lot and church.
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