A memorial service was held at the same hour in the First Baptist Church, near by.
After the Lord's Prayer, in which all joined, the hymn beginning,—
"O God, our help in ages past,Our hope for years to come,Our shelter from the stormy blast,And our eternal home;"
"O God, our help in ages past,Our hope for years to come,Our shelter from the stormy blast,And our eternal home;"
"O God, our help in ages past,Our hope for years to come,Our shelter from the stormy blast,And our eternal home;"
"O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home;"
was sung. Copies of it had been distributed among the people. Three cornetists led the singing.
It was an hour never to be forgotten. Eyes unused to tears were wet that day.
The funeral procession of fifty carriages then moved towards Mount Auburn, across Harvard Bridge, through a line of thousands of people. Places of business throughout the city were closed, and the bells upon the churches and public buildings in Boston and other cities were tolled.
When the head of the procession reached Beck Hall, Cambridge, the university bell began tolling, with the old bell in Harvard Hall, and the bells of Christ Church, chiming,—
"Heaven's morning breaksAnd earth's vain shadows flee."
"Heaven's morning breaksAnd earth's vain shadows flee."
"Heaven's morning breaksAnd earth's vain shadows flee."
"Heaven's morning breaks
And earth's vain shadows flee."
Two thousand college students, standing several deep, with heads uncovered, were formed in two lines from the University building to the West Gate. Through their ranks, entering from Harvard Street, the body of their beloved preacher was borne. "Never in all our college life," writes Dr. McKenzie, "has there been a burial like his."
From the college grounds the procession moved to Mount Auburn, where the brothers, John and Arthur, conducted the services. Flowers, which the dead bishop loved, lay everywhere upon the pure, white snow,—lilies, roses, carnations, and sheaves of wheat. The fence about the family lot was hung with ivy and violets tied with purple ribbon.
The crowd drew aside to let three weeping women look into the open grave, before the dirt fell upon the coffin.They were three sisters,—servants who had long ministered in the bishop's home, and whose devotion had been repaid by constant appreciation and kindness.
The world went back to its work, but we are never the same after a great life has touched our own. Phillips Brooks said in his sermon on "Withheld Completion of Life," "The ideal life is in our blood, and never will be still. We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are. Every time we see a man who has attained our human ideal a little more fully than we have, it awakens our languid blood and fills us with new longings."
All who ever knew or heard Phillips Brooks will forever strive after his unselfishness, his courage, his thoughtfulness, his eagerness to make the world better.
Bishop William Lawrence, who succeeded Phillips Brooks, wrote of him in the March-April, 1893,Andover Review, "When all has been said about his eloquence, his mastery of language, and his tumult of thought, we are turned back to the thought that the sermons were great because the man was great. His was a great soul. He stood above us; he moved in higher realms of thought and life; he had a wider sweep of spiritual vision; he was gigantic. And yet he was so completely one of us, so sympathetic, childlike, and naturally simple, that it was often only by an effort of thought that we could realize that he was great. Kingly in character, we buried him like a king."
Memorial services were held in scores of churches; in Boston, in Lowell, in Worcester, in New York, in Maine, in Rhode Island, and elsewhere. At the old South Church in Boston, Protestants and Roman Catholics united in the service.
The Rev. Dr. Philip S. Moxom of the First Baptist Church well said of Phillips Brooks, "He was a loyal Episcopalian in the very best sense in which a man can be loyal to the church of his choice; but he was not and could not be confined in the Episcopal Church. He belonged to no church or party or sect; rather he belonged to all churches and parties and sects in so far as they represent elemental truths and express elemental sympathies. The Congregationalists claimed him, the Unitarians claimed him, the Baptists claimed him, the Methodists claimed him; and the claims of all were just, because beneath all these names and party badges is the common human heart and the one universal church of God; and to that human and that church of God, Phillips Brooks belonged." The next generation will not remember the rush of his voice in the pulpit, or the warm clasp of his hand, or his kindling eye, but his influence will go on forever.
As he himself said, "He whose life grows abundant grows into sympathy with the lives of fellow-men, as when one pool among the many on the seashore rocks fills itself full, it overflows, and becomes one with the other pools, making them also one with each other all over the broad expanse."
For such a life there are no seashore limits; no limits of time or space. His words will have fulfilment. We shall "see him in the morning."
Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton's Famous Books
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Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton