USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Trinity church in the city of Boston, Massachusetts : 1733-1933 > Part 6
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Meanwhile the pews of old Trinity were filling; conserva- tive ladies, who were accustomed to shut and button their pew doors and pray in peace and isolation, found it difficult to keep the people out: the spirit of the parish was growing in favor of hospitality to strangers. To be sure the sexton Dillon had his own traditions, and told the newcomers that the poor must go up into the gallery. But how could he protect the pew owners and keep the number of strangers down? Brooks tells us: "Dil- lon's fertile mind discovered a way to reduce the number. He once came to the Vestry room to tell me of a method he had devised for the purpose. When a young man and a young woman came together, he separated them, and he expected me to approve the fiendish plan." In the afternoon, members of other churches of all denominations walked across the Com- mon, down Winter Street, and entered Trinity on the left of Summer Street.
The rector well knew that a parish could not be built up by their admiration of the preacher: there must be the steady upbuilding of a reasonable faith and loyal Church life. Hence he began immediately his Wednesday evening lectures, and sent to Philadelphia for the desk which he had used there. Throughout the winter on every Wednesday evening, groups of people walked across the ill-lighted Common, down the silent Winter and Summer streets, passed through a narrow alley beside the church, lighted by one flickering gas lantern, and entering a square, drab parish hall, sat on benches. Here, after a short service, Brooks expounded a parable, a miracle, or a paragraph taken from the Bible, for exactly thirty minutes. I often timed him; and learned afterward with what exactness he had laid out his plan, his subject and divisions. I have before me as I write a number of his notes in beautiful handwriting, all well ordered, and with evident movement of thought. Those were the years when, through Ecce Homo and Farrar's Life of Christ as well as Dean Stanley's work, the Scriptures, the Holy Land, the history of the Jews, and the incidents and meaning
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of Christ's life were gaining a significance and popularity un- dreamed of. Christian people of to-day have no conception of the stilted and unreal characters put over young people sixty years ago as patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. Brooks clothed all this material and thought in such warm and picturesque lan- guage that his people gained a fresh conception of the reality of the Gospel. Every thought led up to spiritual interpretations of the incidents, and young as well as old hung upon the famil- iar stories and facts, the spiritual truths, which he enforced, and could not forget them. The people at those lectures were the founders of the new and great Trinity.
On December 3, 1870, fourteen months after Brooks took charge of Trinity, the first meeting of the vestry to consider the question of removal was held. The new lot was bought in 1871. After a competition in plans for the new church at a proposed cost of $ 2 50,000, the plan offered by Henry Hobson Richardson was selected. Exigencies of the site, the soil, the foundations, and of the cost compelled many changes in the plan, especially a reduction of the height of the central tower. But the style and general plan were carried out in the con- struction.
With a vision of the new church in the somewhat distant future, rector and people gave themselves to the worship in the old church, and to meeting obstacles of removal and prepa- ration for wider opportunities. On the night of November 10, 1872, the fire alarm rang out which warned a frightened people of the great Boston fire. Starting on Chauncy Street, within two blocks of old Trinity, the flames swept toward the har- bor, then widened toward the north and enveloped the church with its solid granite tower. The rector had hurried across the Common and found the faithful Dillon and others trying to save what was hardly worth saving. Exhausted, they sat in a rear pew. Then as the fire waxed hotter, Dillon threw open the west doors as if the service were over and the congregation dismissed, and rector and sexton went out upon the street.
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Brooks wrote later: "Trinity burned majestically, and her great tower stands now, solid as ever, a most picturesque and stately view. She died in dignity. I did not know how much I liked the gloomy old thing."
The completion of the plans, the signing of the contracts and the laying of the foundations, the driving of the piles, went on apace. A high board fence surrounding the lot was built, which for four years the neighborhood looked upon as an almost permanent structure, seldom entering, but assuming that a great and worthy church was rising.
While the physical fabric was in the building, the rector, by his preaching, was intent upon the upbuilding of the spirit- ual life of the parish. Those four years were a season of test - ing, a dwelling in desert and wilderness in the hope of a prom- ised land. They were in some respects the most interesting and fruitful years of Phillips Brooks's life. The parish work and Sunday school met in different places; Emmanuel Church was at his service for baptisms, marriages, funerals, and other special services. The Sunday services, morning and afternoon, were in Huntington Hall of the Institute of Technology ; and one would have had to look far to find a place less suited for worship and preaching. It was, however, diagonally opposite the site of the new church, and thus drew people to that vicin- ity. From an aesthetic and ecclesiastical point of view, the hall was forbidding. From the sidewalk the people, aged and chil- dren, walked up fifty steps to the hall doors, which opened di- rectly into the faces of the congregation. The floor, with stu- dents' chairs, inclined upward toward the rear. The walls were cold and bare except for a deep frieze whereon were stencilled drawings of chemists and physicists at work in their labora- tories. Large windows let in floods of blinding sunlight. The platform was bare except for Brooks's familiar lectern, which he had rescued from the fire, and a large table for the Lord's Supper. By all standards of art, psychology, and tradition, wor- ship was impossible in such a place. No knee could be bent in
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prayer. Within four years there would be left in the people no sense of reverence, no mysticism, no sentiment in behalf of worship or of a church as the beauty of holiness. Mean- while, across the street these same people were building a church which in a unique way embodied all these things. The anticipation of the church, with the preaching, character, and leadership of Phillips Brooks, held the people, and the parish increased in strength. In very fact, the unusual conditions cre- ated a sense of friendliness, democracy, and solidarity which broke down the conservative traditions of old Trinity. The hall was open to all who would climb the stairs.
Brooks himself was more free to express his fast develop- ing thought and theology, and to speak more directly as man to man than from a formal pulpit. He was in the fullness of his physical vigor. He had caught the atmosphere of Boston of that day, had become familiar with the trends of thought, the prejudices and side currents. He had talked and heard men and women, boys and girls, talk and had learned much from them. He had studied and read. His notebook was beside him in those days, and while his parish organizations lagged for lack of a home, he had time to gather his thoughts and prepare an arsenal of material for the sermons of the coming years. He was thirty-eight, his hair untouched with silver, his whole great frame alert, his eye piercing into the center of the con- gregation, which when he announced his text, he already had in the hollow of his hand. Sermon followed sermon, the text of which a few months or years before had caught his imagi- nation, and had been jotted down. "There was great joy in that city"-the city that has heard the Gospel. "Come and see"-the appeal to the skeptic to come and test Christian- ity. "Some said that it thundered"-the profound and the superficial explanation of things.
His people moved along week by week, month by month, dropping opinions, prejudices, and what were thought essen- tials of the Creed; questioning, and then catching a new reve-
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lation from a book or preacher. Under these conditions some of Brooks's sermons were epoch-making. Men and women could recall the day and the language in which he opened door after door and let in the light. When he began with the text: "Men's hearts failing them for fear," his people were alert: they were the men. When he gave out the words: "One thing I know," his people who had lost much, but had held on to one or two facts of personal experience, and thereby saved their faith, listened.
As the rush of words, thought, and conviction gained in- creasing force, one could almost hear the walls of tradition, orthodoxy, and partisanship fall down. The atmosphere be- came tense and electrified. The great Scotsman, Principal Tul- loch, after hearing him once, wrote home: "I could have got up and shouted."
These were years also when his reputation as a preacher was expanding, and the pressure to preach here and there throughout the country was strong. He used to refuse to scat- ter his power and become a "star" preacher. He stayed by his people, built up his congregation and parish, and by a third Sunday sermon or others in the week preached to thousands in the cities and villages about Boston.
During these four years, the building committee, with the rector, architect, contractors, and builders, was hard at work. As the lot was of exceptional shape and more land was pur- chased, and as the church with parish house and cloisters was unique, there were constant changes in plan and detail. The financial problem too was a difficult one. The sale of the Sum- mer Street lot and the payment on insurance had to be heavily supplemented by subscriptions and special taxes on each pew. Robert Treat Paine and Stephen G. DeBlois heard much grumbling and criticism from some pew owners for the way in which they were assessed; but the leadership of the rector and his enthusiasm, the pride in the old parish, pressed through obstacle after obstacle. Brooks had insisted upon free galleries
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in the new church, which would involve a loss of expected in- come. The mural paintings must at least be begun. The chapel and parish rooms had been completed and in use for some time. Everyone was determined, however, that the church should be completed at the earliest possible date, that its first service should be that of consecration, and that for this the church should be free of debt. Hence, in the last hurried days, when the interior staging was coming down and the church was being cleaned and carpeted, a final call for $60,000 was gratefully met, and on February 9, 1877, the church stood ready for consecration.
On its exterior, the west end lacked its two side towers and porch, which were built some years later ; and the interior was much more severe than it now is. As the choir of those days, a double quartette, sang from the west gallery the organ was there. Looking toward the chancel there was simplicity, if not severity itself. The chancel was approached by carpeted steps and the chancel floor was carpeted; there were no choir stalls, nor organ, nor stone or marble of any sort. Where the lectern now stands was a platform with simple rail on which stood the Philadelphia desk which the rector had saved from the old chapel; and on the other side was a large reading desk facing the congregation. Within the chancel rail stood simply the Lord's Table with a chair at each end. The church as a whole expressed the character and temper of Phillips Brooks and his sympathetic friend Henry Hobson Richardson. They were both men of gigantic size, of broad outlook, of historic sense, and of vivid imagination. In order to build this Chris- tian church in a new country they had for their style of archi- tecture gone back through the Gothic period, nearer to the source of the Church, to the Romanesque with its unity of design and its true proportions. Richness and color were ex- pressed in its mural paintings and windows. Unity and com- prehensiveness with beauty were the notes. The simplicity of early Christian worship appealed to Brooks. Here were no
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altar, no high screen separating priest from people, no devices for a scenic adoration. The Lord's Table stood in the center of the chancel where the faithful knelt all around it to join in the Holy Feast and receive in their spirit their Lord and Mas- ter as they received the consecrated bread and wine. The bap- tistry beside the chancel gave evidence of the other sacrament. The whole congregation was before the preacher-for did not Holy Writ say that faith comes by preaching ?- and the simple desk and platform enabled the preacher, unhidden by wood or stone, to stand and bear witness before all. Later, the poor acoustics of that position led to the building of a temporary pulpit made of timber hung with maroon velvet, from which Phillips Brooks preached. After his death the permanent pul- . pit, in memory of Robert Treat Paine, was erected in its place.
Trinity Church struck a new note of architecture in this country, and its style was followed, imitated, and often vul- garized, throughout our cities and towns. It was criticized by the ecclesiastically minded, and indeed the Gothic has met with wider approval. The church however stands firmly and successfully as a noble type of Christian architecture and house of worship.
On February 9, 1877, came the great day of consecration by Bishop Paddock assisted by Brooks's old friends and over one hundred of the clergy. From that day on for fourteen years Phillips Brooks led his people by his preaching, work, and life. They were years of intense activity, of consecration, of power and ever widening influence. Here is a description of such a Sunday as went on week after week, year after year.
As the worshippers enter the west door and wait to be shown seats, the organ in the gallery overhead is heard. The galleries are already packed with people. Promptly at half past ten all the doors are opened, and the waiting crowd surges up the aisles, entering the pews, and up into the chancel, sitting upon the cushions of the Communion rail and on the chancel
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steps, and lining the walls wherever there is room to stand. The people have come in all sincerity and reverence to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The rector and his assistant enter quietly from the side, and kneel for prayer, as do the people. The organ is silent, then with the rustle of movement, the whole congregation stands, and the rector's voice, "The Lord is in his holy temple," is heard. There is something that touches one's humble spirit, as without processional the service begins and the Confession is repeated. Morning Prayer over, the rector retires to the rob- ing room and exchanging his surplice for the preacher's black gown, enters, kneels at the chancel rail, mounts the pulpit steps during the last part of the hymn; he looks wonderingly at the people, feeling their needs and hopes; turns the pages of his manuscript over; then again gazes intently at the peo- ple. The hymn over and the people seated, the preacher in a quiet voice gives out the text; then in a stronger voice repeats it, so that all may hear; then he and the people with him "are off." There is no other fitting expression: the torrent of thought, imagination, illustration, conviction, and passion is let loose ; from that moment to the end preacher and people are united in one intense purpose, to give and to receive the message of the Gospel of that day.
To quote Ambassador Bryce: "There was no sign of art about his preaching, no touch of self-consciousness. He spoke to his audience as a man might speak to his friend, pouring forth with swift, yet quiet and seldom impassioned earnest- ness the thoughts and feelings of his singularly pure and lofty spirit. The listeners never thought of style or manner, but only of the substance of the thoughts. They were entranced and carried out of themselves by the strength and sweetness and beauty of the aspects of religious truth and its helpful- ness to weak human nature which he presented. There was a wealth of keen observation, fine reflection, and insight both
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subtle and imaginative, all touched with warmth and tender- ness which seemed to transfuse and irradiate the thought itself."
He was Phillips Brooks transfigured through the power of his Master, speaking with sincerity and love for his Master. Step by step he leads the people on: the words and phrases of his sermon have been so burnt into his memory in the writ- ing that he is comparatively free of his manuscript. Then, as he comes to the close and the final tender appeal, his voice, full of emotion, is modulated, while the expectant listeners strain to hear the last word. There is silence, silence that can be felt. Without ascription and with little other than a whis- pered word, "Let us pray," preacher and people pray that the message will abide with them. The hymn and benediction follow. Without recessional hymn the people move silently down the aisles, through the doors, and spread throughout the city.
The afternoon service was much the same. The church was packed, but with a larger proportion of strangers. I once asked him how he could preach with the same enthusiasm to the same people Sunday after Sunday. "Oh," was his answer, "I can't do my warden much good: he is a saint already; but it is the unknown stranger in the back of the church waiting for the Gospel that interests me." Yet the warden was as de- pendent on the message as was the stranger.
Then toward evening, he picked up the manuscript of his morning sermon and took carriage or train to a suburban town or a neighboring city to preach a third time.
For many years, his morning sermon, except on the first Sunday of the month when the Lord's Supper was adminis- tered, was from manuscript. In the afternoon he preached a sermon of two or three years back; for he had no artificial qualms about repeating sermons. "A good sermon, like a good poem, may be read again and again," he was wont to say. In later years he gave up his manuscript, and prepared his
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sermons as he did his Wednesday evening lectures-working out his framework most carefully on one sheet of paper, al- ways of the same size, easily filed, which he folded and put in his breast pocket; though he never looked at it after entering the pulpit, the fact that it was there gave him confidence.
These details from the shop are of value as are the study of the methods of an artist. And the finished product, the sermon of Phillips Brooks, was as unconscious and graceful a unit of expression as the work of a masterly painter or sculptor.
Soon after the completion of the church, Brooks moved from his apartment at the Kempton, on Berkeley Street, to the rectory built for him by Richardson. One could not mis- take this: for with a design caught by Richardson from an old Dutch house in Albany, it expressed in its lines the sim- plicity, the friendliness and hospitality of its occupant. Here in his beautiful, ample study with its great fireplace he wel- comed everybody. To be sure, there was a room in the parish house called his office where he did some official business, but his real home, office, place of work, of friendliness and hos- pitality, was his study which was ever open. How he ever ac- complished what he did was always a source of wonder. He could not brook a secretary, and until he was bishop had none: he wrote all his letters in his beautiful flowing hand. He despised postal cards, and returned them in the envelope with his answer; he esteemed illegible handwriting of a cor- respondent as supreme selfishness. He wrote every word of his sermons and notes, and yet he gave the impression to friends and other callers of a carefree, kind, and sympathetic man who threw his whole thought into the little problem put before him in such a way that stranger, tramp, guests of dis- tinction, and bereaved or defeated men and women went out conscious and happy that in him they had a friend. Only un- reality, hypocrisy, or falsehood could stir his anger, sometimes his humor. For of humor and wit he had abundance. These kept him calm and wise in difficult situations, and with his
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sympathy made him the adored of children. In them he de- lighted, and they in him. His gigantic size never repelled but always attracted them. He was six feet four inches tall and weighed three hundred pounds.
On Monday mornings his intimate friends dropped in to talk over the Sunday past or the sermon to come. Once a month the "Clericus Club," a larger group, met in the study: to him it was "The Club," from which he was never absent. Addresses, dinners public and private, sermons in distant cities or col- leges, committees (at which he chafed ), and all sorts of inter- ests claimed him. He was a founder of the "Church Congress" and was always at its meetings, for he believed that its free speech was essential to the health of the Church. He preached in churches of all denominations, and his Good Friday eve- ning sermon in the Old South for his friend Dr. Gordon was an annual event. He was one of the first in the Episcopal Church to introduce the Watch Night Service at Trinity, and the Maundy Thursday evening Communion. In 1878 he yielded to the pressure of his friends and people, and published his first volume of sermons, which had a remarkable sale. This was followed from time to time by others, and after his death more volumes were published. Over two hundred thousand of these volumes were sold, and other messages of his went in printed form to hundreds of thousands over the world.
None of these interests, however, could take the place of his first love, the pastoral care of his people. Heavy as was his work, he kept up the routine parish calls to the close of his rectorship; and to the call of a sick or bereaved parishioner he responded immediately. He liked people; he walked the streets, looked in the shop windows, smiled at the passing children as they gazed at his huge frame. He was human, yet he possessed a dignity, a sacredness of personality, which held at a distance the trivial questioner or the inquisitive stranger.
Three months after coming to Boston, he preached at the
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invitation of his old friend, dean of the Episcopal Theologi- cal School, Dr. John S. Stone, in St. John's Memorial Chapel, and continued to do so one Sunday evening in each month for several years. His sermon was usually that which he had given in Trinity the same morning. The chapel was packed with Cambridge people, professors, and students. Soon he was also claimed by Harvard and preached occasionally, then more frequently, in Appleton Chapel, conducting daily morn- ing prayers. At that time the Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody was the beloved College pastor. Upon his death President Eliot, for the Harvard Corporation, asked and pressed Brooks to take that office ; his decision was perhaps the most difficult practical problem of his life. The appeal of the work with college men struggled with that for his own people and the larger public. Finally deciding to remain at Trinity, he was the more ready to give a larger fraction of his time and strength to the Uni- versity, of which he had become an overseer. He was influen- tial in abolishing the system of compulsory prayers and in promoting the at that time unique system of college preachers. He was a member of the first Board of Preachers, and contin- ued in the service of the University for many years. During six weeks of the year his week-day mornings were given to con- ducting prayers, and then to personal conferences with the students who pressed in to see him and place their problems before him. When his turn as preacher on Sunday evenings came, Appleton Chapel was crowded to the doors with num- bers of the faculty and students. The untested powers of youth kindled his imagination; their unconventionality interested him, and their ingenuous desire to get at the truth inspired him to help them. For years he was the recognized spiritual leader of the University. At the invitation of Yale University he delivered a course of lectures on preaching which were of marked note at the time, had a great circulation in this coun- try, England and beyond, and still remain a standard book for every man who hopes to preach.
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