AT HOME.
Phillips Brooks at home, of course, means Phillips Brooks in Trinity Church, Boston. Other than his church, home proper he has none, for he abides a bachelor.
And somehow it seems almost fit that a man like Mr. Brooks, a man so ample, so overflowing; a man, as it were, more than sufficient to himself, sufficient also to a mult.i.tude of others, should have his home large and public; such a home, in fact, as Trinity Church. Here Phillips Brooks shines like a sun--diffusing warmth and light and life. What a blessing to what a number! To what a number of souls, it would have been natural to say; but, almost as natural, to what a number of bodies! For the physical man is a source of comfort, in its kind, hardly less so than the intellectual and the spiritual. How that ma.s.sive, majestic manhood makes temperature where it is, and what temperature! Broad, equable, temperate, calm; yet tonic, withal, and inspiring. You rejoice in it. You have an irrational feeling that it would be a wrong to shut up so much opulence of personal vitality in any home less wide and open than a great basilica like Trinity Church. At least, you are not pained with sympathy for homelessness in the case of a man so richly endowed.
To be so pained would be like shivering on behalf of the sun, because, forsooth, the sun had nothing to make him warm and bright. Phillips Brooks in Trinity Church is like the sun in its sphere. Still, and were it not impertinent, I could even wish for Phillips Brooks an every-day home, such as would be worthy of him. What a home it should be! And with thus much of loyal, if of doubtfully appropriate tribute, irresistibly prompted, and therefore not to be repressed, let me go on to speak of Phillips Brooks as he is to be seen and heard Sunday after Sunday at home in Trinity Church.
Every body knows how magnificent an edifice, with its arrested tower yet waiting and probably long to wait completion, Trinity Church is. The interior is decorated almost to the point of gorgeousness. The effect, however, is imposing for "the height, the glow, the glory." Good taste reigning over lavish expenditure has prevented chromatic richness from seeming to approach tawdriness. It is much to say for any man preaching here that the building does not make him look disproportionate, inadequate. This may strongly be said for Phillips Brooks. But even for him it can not be said that the form and construction of the interior do not oppose a serious embarra.s.sment to the proper effect of oratory. I could not help feeling it to be a great wrong to the truth, or, to put it personally, a great wrong to the preacher and to his hearers, that an audience-room should be so broken up with pillars, angles, recesses, so sown with contrasts of light and shade, as necessarily, inevitably, to disperse and waste an immense fraction of the power exerted by the preacher, whatever the measure, great or small, of that power might be.
The reaction of this audience-room upon the oratorical instinct and habit of the man who should customarily speak in it could not but be mischievous in a very high degree. The sense, which ought to live in every public speaker, of his being fast bound in a grapple of mind to mind, and heart to heart, and soul to soul, with his audience, must be oppressed, if not extinguished, amid such architectural conditions as those which surround Phillips Brooks when he stands to preach. That in him this needful sense is not extinguished is a thing to be thankful for. That it is, in fact, oppressed, I can not doubt. There is evidence of it, I think, in his manner of preaching. For Mr. Brooks is not an orator such as Mr. Beecher is. He does not speak _to_ people _with_ people, as Mr. Beecher does; rather he speaks _before_ them, in their presence. He soliloquizes. There is almost a minimum of mutual relation between speaker and hearer. Undoubtedly the swift, urgent monologue is quickened, reinforced, by the consciousness of an audience present. That consciousness, of course, penetrates to the mind of the speaker. But it does not dominate the speaker"s mind; it does not turn monologue into dialogue; the speech is monologue still.
This is not invariably the case; for, occasionally, the preacher turns his n.o.ble face toward you, and for that instant you feel the aim of his discourse leveled full at your personality. Now there is a glimpse of true oratorical power. But the glimpse pa.s.ses quickly. The countenance is again directed forward toward a horizon, or even lifted toward a quarter of the sky above the horizon, and the but momentarily interrupted rapt soliloquy proceeds.
Such I understand to have been the style of Robert Hall"s pulpit speech.
It is a rare gift to be a speaker of this sort. The speaker must be a thinker as well as a speaker. The speech is, in truth, a process of thinking aloud--thinking accelerated, exhilarated, by the vocal exercise accompanying, and then, too, by the blindfold sense of a listening audience near. This is the preaching of Mr. Brooks.
It is, perhaps, not generally known that Mr. Brooks practices two distinct methods of preaching: one, that with the ma.n.u.script; the other, that without. The last time that I had the chance of a Sunday in Trinity Church was Luther"s day. The morning discourse was a luminous and generous appreciation of the great reformer"s character and work. This was read in that rapid, vehement, incessant manner which description has made sufficiently familiar to the public. The precipitation of utterance is like the flowing forth of the liquid contents of a bottle suddenly inverted; every word seems hurrying to be foremost. The unaccustomed hearer is at first left hopelessly in the rear; but presently the contagion of the speaker"s rushing thought reaches him, and he is drawn into the wake of that urgent ongoing; he is towed along in the great mult.i.tudinous convoy that follows the mighty motor-vessel, steaming, unconscious of the weight it bears, across the sea of thought. The energy is sufficient for all; it overflows so amply that you scarcely feel it not to be your own energy. The writing is like in character to the speaking--continuous, no break, no shock, no rest, not much change of swifter and slower till the end. The apparent ma.s.s of the speaker, physical and mental, might at first seem equal to making up a full, adequate momentum without multiplication by such a component of velocity; but by-and-by you come to feel that the motion is a necessary part of the power. I am told, indeed, that a const.i.tutional tendency to hesitation in utterance is the speaker"s real reason for this indulged precipitancy of speech. Not unlikely; but the final result of habit is as if of nature.
Of the discourse itself on Luther, I have left myself room to say no more than that Mr. Brooks"s master formula for power in the preacher, truth plus personality, came very fitly in to explain the problem of Luther"s prodigious career. It was the man himself, not less than the truth he found, that gave Luther such possession of the present and such a heritage in the future.
In the afternoon, Mr. Brooks took Luther"s "The just shall live by faith," and preached extemporarily. The character of the composition and of the delivery was strikingly the same as that belonging to morning"s discourse. It was hurried, impetuous soliloquy; in this particular case hurried first, and then impetuous. That is, I judged from various little indications that Mr. Brooks used his will to urge himself on against some obstructiveness felt in the current mood and movement of his mind.
But it was a noteworthy discourse, full and fresh with thought. The interpretation put upon Luther"s doctrine of justification by faith was free rather than historic. If one should apply the formula, truth plus personality, the personality--Mr. Brooks"s personality--would perhaps be found to prevail in the interpretation over the strict historic truth.--W.C. WILKINSON _in The Christian Union_.
XLI.
SAINT JOHN AND THE ROBBER.
A LEGEND OF THE FIRST CENTURY.
There is a beautiful legend Come down from ancient time, Of John, the beloved disciple, With the marks of his life sublime.
Eusebius has the story On his quaint, suggestive page; And G.o.d in the hearts of his people Has preserved it from age to age.
It was after the vision in Patmos, After the sanctified love Which flowed to the Seven Churches, Glowing with light from above:
When his years had outrun the measure Allotted to men at the best, And Peter and James and the others Had followed the Master to rest,
In the hope of the resurrection, And the blessed life to come In the house of many mansions, The Father"s eternal home;
It was in this golden season, At the going down of his sun, When his work in the mighty harvest Of the Lord was almost done;
At Ephesus came a message, Where he was still at his post, Which unto the aged Apostle Was the voice of the Holy Ghost.
Into the country he hastened With all the ardor of youth, Shod with the preparation Of the Gospel of peace and truth.
His mission was one of mercy To the sheep that were scattered abroad, And abundant consolation, Which flowed through him from the Lord.
O, would my heart could paint him, The venerable man of G.o.d, So lovingly showing and treading The way the Master had trod!
O, would my art could paint him, Whose life was a fact to prove The joy of the Master"s story, And fill their hearts with his love!
At length, when the service was ended, His eye on a young man fell, Of beautiful form and feature, And grace we love so well.
At once he turned to the bishop, And said with a love unpriced, "To thee, to thee I commit him Before the Church and Christ."
He then returned to the city, The beloved disciple, John, Where the strong unceasing current Of his deathless love flowed on.
The bishop discharged his duty To the youth so graceful and fair; With restraining hand he held him, And trained him with loving care.
At last, when his preparation Was made for the holy rite, He was cleansed in the sanctified water, And p.r.o.nounced a child of light.
For a time he adorned the doctrine Which Christ in the Church has set.
But, alas! for a pa.s.sionate nature When Satan has spread his net!
Through comrades base and abandoned He was lured from day to day, Until, like a steed unbridled, He struck from the rightful way;
And a wild consuming pa.s.sion Raised him unto the head Of a mighty band of robbers, Of all the country the dread.
Time pa.s.sed. Again a message Unto the Apostle was sent, To set their affairs in order, And tell them the Lord"s intent.
And when he had come and attended To all that needed his care, He turned him and said, "Come, Bishop, Give back my deposit so rare."
"What deposit?" was the answer, Which could not confusion hide.
"I demand the soul of a brother,"
Plainly the Apostle replied,
"Which Christ and I committed Before the Church to thee."
Trembling and even weeping, "The young man is dead," groaned he.
"How dead? What death?" John demanded.
"He the way of the tempter trod, Forgetting the Master"s weapon, And now he is dead unto G.o.d.
Yonder he roves a robber."
"A fine keeper," said John, "indeed, Of a brother"s soul. Get ready A guide and a saddled steed."
And all as he was the Apostle Into the region rode Where the robber youth and captain Had fixed his strong abode.
When hardly over the border, He a prisoner was made, And into their leader"s presence Demanded to be conveyed.
And he who could brave a thousand When each was an enemy, Beholding John approaching, Turned him in shame to flee.