fully appreciated his sincerity, his energy, his singleness of purpose, his entire devotion to the cause he loved, and which he lived to serve.

"My first knowledge of Dr. Brooks," writes Dr. Atwood, "was gained from hearing him preach in the Baptist Church in Rochester, N. Y., during the session of the General Convention in 1859. I was at that time new to the ministry and the Universalist body. I had not heard more than a dozen of our preachers. The impression made on me by Mr. Brooks was powerful, but not altogether pleasant. The vigor with which he handled his theme, the corner into which he appeared to be driving the unsuspecting Baptist deacon who sat in a front pew, and the intimation I got from his tones, his manner, and his intellectual processes, that he was a foeman who gave no quarter, kept me at a respectful distance. A few years later I remember that some of us felt it a sort of invasion when he moved over from Massachusetts into New York. My first real acquaintance with him began not long after this, when I met him on the floor of the New York Convention. He caused no small stir in that body on two occasions—once when he submitted a resolution criticising the editorial conduct of the Christian Ambassador, and again when he attempted to carry the New York brethren over to the policy of transferring the powers of fellowship and discipline from the association to the convention. I opposed his 'centralizing' schemes, as we called them. But the transparent sincerity of the man, his loyal love of Universalism, and the absence of everything like personal animus from his motives, set him before me in a new light, and won my admiration. Subsequently I came to feel that he was right, as did most of those who resisted him in the beginning. It was in these conflicts that the true quality of E. G. Brooks was revealed to me. I saw that he was a man who loved the truth too well to be false to it for the sake of tranquillity. Yet the pain which it evidently gave him to wage a fight with his brethren disclosed the gentleness along with the justice of his spirit."

In July, 1867, Mr. Brooks received from Tufts College the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, and remembering the hesitancy with which it was accepted, I feel that I cannot do better than to transcribe here the following extract from his private record:

"As this book is the record of my ministry, it is but proper that I should here note the amazement with which I have the past week found

myself reported in the papers as having received from Tufts College the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. To no human being, I am sure, did any such honor ever come more unexpectedly than this has come to me. I wish I could feel that I deserve it. I am sorry to be compelled to feel that I do not. I have not the breadth of attainments that it ought to signify, and I shall never see it affixed to my name or hear myself called by it without feeling how very little I know compared with what, wearing such a title, I ought to know. Indeed, my sense of non-desert is so deep that there really seems to me a sort of mockery of what it should mean in my wearing the title; and could I do so without inviting the charge of affectation and making myself liable to the suspicion of taking a cheap way to obtain notoriety, I should feel as if I ought to decline it. As it is, I will accept it as an expression of the kind regard in which my brethren hold me, thankful that I have been able, under God, to commend myself to their confidence and respect; and while, for myself, I cannot but feel that I do not deserve it, and that there are many others who could wear it far more appropriately, to whom it should rather have been given, the pleasure I feel for my parents' sake and for the sake of my children, as they are gratified by its bestowal, seems somewhat to reconcile me to it. God help me to accept it as a new call to application and diligence, as a new occasion for regret that I do not know more, and as a fresh inspiration to effort to be more as a well-informed and faithful minister of the Lord Jesus. O, could it be effective to these ends or be a means of helping me to a new hold upon this title-loving city, might in time be glad that, though now so undeserved, it has been given to me. O Father, make it thus a means of good!"

The city pastor who finds his daily life crowded with responsibility and incident learns, too, that this very press of occupation precludes him from active participation in any other than the duties which pertain to his especial field of labor. Bound up within the circle of his own round of action, to this his influence is limited, while his opportunities for outside labor are necessarily restricted. And from this reason is it that the pastor of a country parish or a provincial pulpit has seemingly more direct influence upon the daily actions of his town or community, than has the same man transplanted to the broader field and larger labors of a city church. But none the less are his influence felt and his precepts heeded by those with whom he is brought in con

tact, and the busy life of the teeming city owes much of its success and much of its vital power to the quiet and unostentatious labor of the hundreds of Christian pulpits that rise within its limits, even though the devoted men who fill them are unknown save to a small proportion of its busy workers. "The Church could do nothing grandly," recently said Rev. Robert Collyer, "if the merchants, the sons of commerce, did not help her; and commerce could do nothing grandly without the Church;" and so it comes to pass that, by precept and example, by forceful words and earnest though quiet work, the faithful ministers of Christ help to shape the destinies and mould the thought of the great and growing cities of our land.

The supreme moment of life when, face to face with some stern question of duty or of principle, it is ours to act the man or play the craven, is always invested with the gloryhalo, which may be attained or lost as we elect to wear or spurn the crown. But not to this season alone is praise or blame to be awarded. The lesser cares, the petty annoyances of life which meet us at every turn test our manliness as they try our patience, and present countless opportunities for victory or defeat. Our daily cares are indeed our everpresent attendants. They jostle us in the street, they greet us in the office, they press upon us in the home. Happy he who, recognizing that these very cares are but a part of his necessary life-test, is able to walk upright, press they ever so hard upon him, and to so use every burden that is given him to bear as a means by which to prove his own rectitude and his power of manly endurance.

When pressed upon by crafty and designing questioners— the haughty and bigoted Pharisees, the specious and hypocritical Herodians-there, near the Susan gate, in the great court of the Temple, the Lord Christ felt tightening about him that net-work of hate and duplicity with which his relentless enemies had been for months encircling him, he showed no fear, betrayed no anger, but valiantly accepted the petty annoyances of these scoffing schemers in the same

spirit of divine manliness that shone through the tears of Gethsemane and glowed above the tortures of Calvary. Close about him thronged the eager questioners, anxious to entrap and crush him. "Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's!" came back the ringing answer of this poor street preacher to the crafty questioning of those who hoped by his response to prove him either a traitor or an apostate; and his words silenced their questions, unmasked their hypocrisy, and frustrated their venomous plans. Victorious thus over the annoyances, the sophistries, the petty malice of his enemies, he stands before the ages a pattern and example-the one pre-eminent who could use the thronging cares, the harrying troubles of life but as helps and stepping-stones to the higher plane of being, whereon he stands transfigured in all the regal dignity of a sublime resignation and fortitude, the uncrowned King of Men.

It

Looking at the lives of those who, once active in the world's work, have passed away from earth, while we speak of some special labor or extol some pivotal moment of their lives, we fail too often to remember the patient endurance, the uncomplaining sacrifice, the unruffled calm that marked their daily walk, and which, helping them to bear with serenity the little woes of life, rendered possible the special work and the supreme moment which the world remembers. was this simple yet dignified acceptance of life's daily duties, this minute attention to all the minor details of life, this willing helpfulness whenever asked or needed, that gave to Elbridge Gerry Brooks the strength of will, the energy of purpose, the judicial calmness of decision and action, and above all, the entire loyalty to principle which marked his life on earth, and which, all unconsciously, but surely and permanently, set its seal upon the man, and was communicated, in many a way and through many an unsuspected channel into the hearts and lives of those who labored with him or listened to his words.

CHAPTER X.

"If the grand prophecy of our faith is ever to be accomplished, the comsummation is to be reached, under God, only as we and those like us fight the battle." Our New Departure.

Noël, noël ! was-haile to Christ the King!" Again and again the glad shout echoed from quarter to quarter and from tent to tent, as beneath the fair sky that arched the hills of Thrace the crusading armies kept the Christmas feast eight hundred years ago. From every quarter and from many a tent fluttered in the orient breeze the banners of the Christian host, while far to north and far to east the proud city of Constantine lifted to the blue, spire, minaret and gilded dome. First again since the days of the Roman Cæsars the East and the West were met together, and peaceful in words, but warring in heart, gazed at each other in doubt and mistrust across the embattled walls of Constantinople. Here, mighty upon her seven hills, rose the imperial city around whose statued squares and crowded arcades clustered the thronging memories of centuries of power and renown, and, above all, of that princely convert whom the flaming cross of the Milvian Bridge turned from paganism to Christ; there, encamped upon the environing hills and near to the Cosmidion-where to-day still stand the battered walls and crumbling towers, grim relics of the ages gone, beneath the hundred crescents of Stamboul— glistened the tents of the crusaders. 'Harassed in Hungary by an open foe, and tricked at Philippopolis by a pretended ally, the great army under the lead of Godfrey of Bouillon had forced its way to the very gates of Constantinople, and now demanded from the crafty Alexios the keeping of his kingly word. So to the Frank and the Byzantine came the holy Christmas-tide in the year of grace 1096, when as the shouts