St. Paul daily globe., 1893-01-30
Rev. DR.. Vail breaches on the
Dead Bishop From EX-
perience.
A Close Analysis OF His Char
acter and Methods Of
Thought.
Great in Many Respects, in
Others He Was Not Pre-
Eminent.
His Impress on the Minds of
His Hearers Will Be
Lasting.

Among the men who have recently
passed away, to many the sudden death
of Bishop Brooks will come with pc
culiar impressiveness. Certainly his
funeral presented rare spectacle, both
in showing the interest his life awak-
ened among the people of Boston and
the interest his words had among the
students of Harvard college, a thousand
of whom stood uncovered while the
body was carried along. When stu
dent [ heard Bishop Brooks every Sun
day afternoon for a long time-two
years or more and of course the con-
sideration of his death comes to me
somewhat as the memory Of a man
whose face and figure were very IA
miliar to me, and whose sermons l had
listened to on many occasions.
He was a man Of heroic physical size.
Fully six feet high, he was heavy in
proportion to his height. His face was
grave and kindly, and he ever held him
self in that perfect control that enabled
him always to make the most of all his
personal gifts. His voice was rich, mel
low and sympathetic. He always filled
the stage, an ability that was supposed
by some to belong to his heroic size.
This, however, was not the case. Booth,
with slender, 1.-THE form, had the same
characteristic-had it to such a degree
that wherever he stood was the center
OF the stage, just as the place where
The McGregor sat was always the head
of the table. That quality is the gift of
nature and has been called by
many names, but whatever it may be
properly called was possessed in emf
nent degree by Bishop Brooks. As
speaker, Judged by the rules of the elo-
cutionist, he had about
All the Vices of Delivery
he was rapid to a degree seldom seen in
a public speaker; he Was never COM
posed, never prepared to make the
most of his thoughts and points; he
rushed and ratified like heavy train
going down grade; and yet he was
man who commanded the most complete
attention.
Another fact that would make prom
inent is this. There is in the very at
mOSphere of the conditions surrounding
the boyhood and youth of Bishop Brooks
a subtle influence that makes the man
who is fully saturated with it more than
himself-yeS, it makes the man himself
and then adds much of what the nation
is and has been to his character, SO that
he really embodieS its early hardy man
hood. patriotism, eagernesS for knOWl-
edge, serious estimation of life. And
the one city that is able to give this SEN
tlment is Boston. 1t is able to do it be-
cause its people are not so much in a
hurry to crowd somebody over the en-
bankment in order to reach the main
chance in as some other cities of the
Union, and because life has been lived
within its environment that is good
enough to repeat-in the later lives and
sentiments of men.
Think what the past life of that city
was to you when you touched it for the
first time, when you said, las you stopped
under the old elm, Here the boys de-
Tended their skating ground, and over
there. in Fanueil hall, the orators have
moved the people at the approach of
every crisis from the days of Sam
Adams down to Wendell Phillips" And
little while after you see the towers
of the same old North church where
the friend of Paul Revere hung the
lantern. And out there in Cambridge
is the life of the minuteman and Wash
ington still seems a living person, and
Old Putnam is riding across the neck
to Charlestown. Indeed there is the
Embodim of Sentiments
the most patriotic, the records of orators
the most brilliant, the life of men the
most sacrificing that one touches in
that city. Is it any wonder, then, that
this boy was touched by the environ
ment of his boyhood? And enlarging
the view, is it a wonder that he seems
to us to touch and in certain way fill
out the development of religious move
ments that had their influence on New
| England in earlier times? 1t we go
| back TO those movements we shall find
| at the opening of the centuries
| two diStinctively liberal tendencies that
were Offset by the orthodoxy of En-
mons and Edwards, orthodoxy very
! strong and very aggressive, whose fund
| amental statement was enough to in
-dicate its character, and that fupda-
/ mental principle declared that a con-
dtion hopeful of salvation was indi-
Gated by willingness to be damned.
| The protest lad two spokesman, Chan
ming and Ballou. Claiming was the
cultured scholar; Ballou was the man
| of the people. Both dealt without fear
or favor with the conditions of the
! Stituency i'll his own way, and there was
often little sympathy between the con-
| StituencieS.
But another movement was a part or
continuation of the two That move
ment was called transcenden taliSm, and
| its two prophets were Emerson and
Theodore Parker. The very mention
of this movement is likely to produce
smile, and yet in most respects it was
| important beyond anything we may
think. Nor do l think it's meaning
hard to understand. These men said,
"A miracle performed in Palestine is no
evidence to u.s." and then they
Went One Long Stride
and they said if religion ever meant
| anything to the future times it must be
based on an endowment of our nature.
| Well, the established conclusion of the
Christian world is that this movement
was failure, but we are returning to
| its ideas, and Emerson and Parker
would find in every church today many
followers. Certain it is that all classes
who read at all, read Emereon, and
those of every school who read him find
| in him strength to the spiritual life.
| Brooks came as accomplishment to these
movements. He came as a successor in
| the orthodox church of New England
orthodoxy, and he comes IN the direct
| line of sympathy with the liberal move
ments of which [ have spoken. And,
coming as a representative of the liberal
! spirit, he seems to me to carry out the
| conclusion that ChannIng gave to the
! cultured and Ballou to the common peo-
pie in the great idea that the Creator is
kind Father, and that Christ is the
elder brother of race that is joined to-
| gether by the band of brotherhood; but
he seems to me also to carry out the
Idea of Parker and Emerson that the
machinery of proof is not needed, and
religion. if it exists at all. exists because
man is endowed with a capacity for it,
with faculty like conscience, like rea-
son, sense analogous, the bodily sense
of sight by which he lays hold of the
| eternal truths