The Reverend Phillips Brooks, priest and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts, is remembered today in the Episcopal liturgical calendar on the day of his death in 1894. He was born in Boston on December 13, 1835, where he lived most of his life. After graduating from Harvard in 1855 he maintained a lifelong connection to the university, often preaching at Appleton Chapel and acting as an overseer (though he turned down the invitation to serve as a professor of Christian ethics). He would take Harvard students to Europe when he travelled there, and students also served as pallbearers at his funeral.
In 1869 Brooks became the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, and over the next several years a grand new church building was raised, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and completed in 1877. It has been named as one of the Ten Buildings that Changed America in a PBS documentary. The novelist and historian Henry Adams, a second cousin of Brooks, wrote the novel Esther, about a young atheist who falls in love with Stephen Hazard, a clergyman involved in building a grand church. Hazard is assumed to be based on Brooks, and he and Esther become involved in an unfortunate relationship which ends when she refuses to marry him because marriage to an atheist would ruin his career. (Brooks himself never married either, though apparently there was no such affecting incident in his life).
Today, Brooks is most remembered as the author of O little town of Bethlehem, though in his own time it was his sermons which made him famous, published widely in periodicals and collected editions. His preaching reportedly brought thousands of people of all denominations to Trinity Church, and he is credited for inspiring the conversion of many, among them Helen Keller and the hymnwriter Eliza Scudder.
Several of Brooks' other hymns were written for special liturgical occasions, collected in Christmas Songs and Easter Carols (1910), though other verse by him has been included in hymnals over the years. Today's text was reportedly written on his last Sunday as rector of Trinity Church in 1891 before taking his seat as Bishop of Massachusetts.
As once I listened came a word,
I knew not whence, I could not see;
But when my waiting spirit heard,
I cried, God, here am I, send me!
I turned, I went; along the way
That word was food and air and light;
I feasted on it all the day,
And rested on it all the night.
I wondered: but when soon I came
To where the word complete must be,
I called the wonder by its name:
for lo! the word I sought was thee.
Phillips Brooks, 1891; alt.
Tune: SOLOTHURN (L.M.)
Traditional Swiss melody;
arr. The English Hymnal, 1906
The statue of Phillips Brooks pictured above (you can click to see it larger), by sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens, stands outside Trinity Church in Boston's Copley Square. A service of dedication for the memorial was held in February 1910, at which this hymn was sung. The statue is glowingly described in contemporaneous written accounts, many calling it a "characteristic" pose, "majestic," "heroic," and other such adjectives. Anecdotal accounts, however, suggest that not everyone agreed, and that many people present could not recall Brooks ever raising his hand like that while preaching, while others did not understand that the cowled figure behind him was supposed to be Jesus, and found it rather ominous and threatening.
Eight Years Ago: Phillips Brooks
Another Brooks Hymn: God will send the angels
God will send the angels to the earth anew,
Bringing joyful tidings, songs the whole world through;
They who first, at Christmas, thronged the heavenly way,
Then, beside the tomb-door, sat on Easter Day.
Refrain
Angels sing his triumph, as you sang his birth,
"Jesus Christ is risen!. Peace, goodwill on earth."
In the lonesome desert, where the Lord was tried,
There the faithful angels gathered at his side;
And when in the garden, grief and pain and care
Bowed him down with anguish, they were with him there.
Refrain
Yet the Christ they honor is the same Christ still,
Who, in joy and sorrow, did his Father's will;
And the tomb deserted shines just like the sky,
Since he passed out from it into victory.
Refrain
God has still these angels, helping, with the Word,
All God’s faithful children, like their faithful Lord;
Soothing them in sorrow, shielding them in strife,
Opening wide the tomb-doors, leading into life.
Refrain
Phillips Brooks, 1877; alt.
Tune: ARMAGEDDON (6.5.6.5.D. with refrain)
Luise Reichardt, 19th cent.;
adapt. John Goss, 1871
Hymnwriter Eliza Scudder was born today in Massachusetts in 1821. In childhood she was very close to her older sister Rebecca; this closeness lasted throughout their lives, and the sisters actually died on the same day in 1896.
Scudder was greatly influenced by the abolotionist movement and two of its leaders in particular: the philanthropist Gerrit Smith and the author Lydia Maria Child. It is believed that her association with Child led her away from the Congregational faith of her family and into an interest in the Unitarian Church (though it's not clear she ever formally joined it), which caused a break with many of her friends. Some years later she was drawn to the Episcopal Church through the preaching and then the friendship of Phillips Brooks, the popular rector of Trinity Church in Boston.
This flexibilty in her religious thought probably means that it's difficult to assign her hymn texts to any particular set of beliefs, and her hymns were indeed sung in several different denominations. Her short 1880 collection, Hymns and Sonnets, contained this text.
Grant us your peace, down from your presence falling
As on the thirsty earth cool night-dews sweet,
Grant us your peace, to your own paths recalling,
From distant ways, our worn and wand'ring feet.
Grant us your peace, through winning and through losing,
Through gloom and gladness of our pilgrim way,
Grant us your peace, safe in your love's enclosing,
Who o'er all things in heav'n and earth hold sway.
Grant us your peace, that like a deep'ning river
Swells ever onward to a sea of praise;
Jesus, of peace the only Source and Giver,
Grant us your peace, O Savior, all our days!
Eliza Scudder, 1880; alt.
Tune: EIRENE (11.10.11.10)
Frances Ridley Havergal, 1871
The Episcopal calendar of saints remembers former Bishop of Massachusetts Phillips Brooks (December 13, 1835 - January 23, 1893) on this day. Born in Boston, he graduated from Harvard in 1855 and was ordained in 1859. He first served two churches in Philadelphia, where he was known for his anti-slavery views and for a widely-circulated sermon he delivered shortly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
In 1869 he was named rector of Trinity Church in Boston, where he stayed intil 1891, when he accepted the post of bishop, which he was only to hold for 15 months. He once claimed that the theme of all his sermons was from John 10:10 -- "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly." His funeral service packed the huge sanctuary at Trinity, and more than 10,000 people who were not able to get in waited outside in Copley Square.
His great fame was largely due to his renowned preaching; several volumes of his sermons were published as well as smaller books of quotations, marking him as quite a celebrity. If he had been born a hundred years later he'd have had his own television show. Since he never married, there has also been some speculation about his personal life.
Though it's now a bit out of season, it would be foolish not to remember his most familiar hymn today, a Christmas carol known and sung around the world.
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet over thy streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together,
Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing and anthems ring,
And peace to all on earth!
How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings sent from heav’n.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
Where children pure and happy
Pray to the blessèd Child,
Where misery cries out to thee,
Born of a mother mild;
Where charity stands watching
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our God, Emmanuel!
Phillips Brooks, 1867; alt.
Tune: ST. LOUIS (8.6.8.6.7.6.8.6.)
Lewis H. Redner, 1868
When writing this text, Brooks must have been remembering his own trip to the Holy Land, where on Christmas Eve, 1865, he assisted with the midnight service in Bethlehem. The fourth verse is sometimes omitted in hymnals, and I'd imagine that many churches sing even fewer verses than that in crowded Christmas services, but the entire text is worth preserving. Lewis Redner was the organist at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia when Brooks was the rector there, and he wrote the tune the night before it was sung in worship for the first time on Christmas Day, 1867.
Phillips Brooks wrote a few other verses and hymn texts, but not many. In 1903, a small collection titled Christmas Songs and Easter Carols was published, though none are as well-known as O little town of Bethlehem, the first selection in the book.
Eliza Scudder (November 14, 1821 - September 29, 1896) was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and lived in the eastern part of that state for most of her life. Her uncle was Edmund Hamilton Sears, author of It came upon the midnight clear, and he included today's hymn in a book of his own before it was published in any hymnals.Unlike many other hymnwriters, she was not associated with one single denomination; she was a Congregationalist for a time, then associated herself with the Unitarians. A number of her hymns were included in Longfellow and Johnson's Hymns of the Spirit in 1864. Still later she was captivated by the preaching and ministry of Phillips Brooks at Trinity Church in Boston and became an Episcopalian. (Continuing an inadvertent Christmas theme, Brooks wrote O little town of Bethlehem.)In 1880 Scudder published Hymns and Sonnets, a small collection of her work.Thou Grace Divine, encircling all,A shoreless, soundless sea!Wherein at last our souls shall fallO love of God most free!When over dizzy heights we go,Thy strong hand guides our eyes,The other leads us safe and slowO love of God most wise!And if we turn us from thy face,And wander wide and long,Thou hold’st us still in thine embrace,O love of God most strong!But not alone thy care we claim,Our daily path to win,We know thee by a dearer Name,O love of God within!And filled and quickened by thy breath,Our souls are strong and free,To rise o’er grief and fear and death,O love of God, to thee!Eliza Scudder, 1857; alt.Tune: MANOAH (C.M.)Gioacchino Rossini; adapt. Henry Greatorex, 1851I'm not exactly sure where in composer Rossini's work this tune is found, but hymnal editors of the mid-nineteenth century liked to adapt melodies from the work of secular composers (operas, oratorios, chamber music, etc.) into hymn tunes. There are very few of these that we sing anymore, but MANOAH has survived better than most, even though it's a bit of a waltz.
I will be looking further into the hymns of Eliza Scudder; though I like and have sung this one I'm seeing some other interesting ones as well.
