lusions."

* * * * *

XL.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

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 multitude 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 massive, 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. B