BROOKS, PHILLIPS (1835-1893), American clergyman and author, was born in Boston (Mass.) Dec. 13, 1835. Through his father, William Gray Brooks, he was descended from the Rev. John Cotton; through his mother, Mary Ann Phillips, a woman of rare force of character and religious faith, he was a great-grandson of the founder of Phillips academy, Andover (Mass.). Of the six sons, four entered the ministry of the Prot estant Episcopal Church. Phillips Brooks prepared for college at the Boston Latin school and graduated at Harvard in 1855. After a short and unpleasant experience as a teacher in the Boston Latin school, he began to study for the ministry in the theological seminary at Alexandria (Va.), where he did some teaching in the preparatory department. In 1859 he was ordained deacon and became rector of the church of the Advent, Philadelphia. In 1860 he was ordained pricst, and in 1862 he became rector of the church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia. During the Civil War he upheld with nobility and power the cause of the North and the negro. In 1869 he was made rector of Trinity church, Boston, where he preached Sunday after Sunday to great congregations, until he was consecrated bishop of Massachusetts in 1891. Although he felt compelled to decline the professorship of Christian ethics at Harvard, he was for many years an overseer and preacher of the university, his influence upon the religious life of the students being deep and wide. After a brief but great episcopate of months, he died, unmarried, Jan. 23, 1893.
Phillips Brooks was a tall, well proportioned man of fine phy sique. In character he was pure, simple, endowed with excellent judgment and a keen sense of humour, and quick to respond to any call for sympathy. When kindled by his subject it seemed to take possession of him and pour itself out with overwhelm ing speed of utterance and richness of metaphor. His sympathy with men of other ways and thought, and with the truth in other ecclesiastical systems, gained for him the confidence and affection of men of varied habits of mind and religious traditions, and was thus a great factor in gaining increasing support for the Episcopal Church. His various volumes of sermons were widely read as were the Bohlen lectures on "The Influence of Jesus" (1879). He was the author also of some verse including the favourite Christ mas hymn, "0 Little Town of Bethlehem." The best biography is by A. V. G. Allen (190o condensed ed., 1907). M. C. Ayres, M. A. D. Howe and W. Lawrence are the authors of shorter monographs. See also Lyman Abbott Silhouettes of My Contemporaries (1921) ; L. 0. Brastow Representative Modern Preachers (1904) ; H. C. Potter Reminiscences of Bishops and Arch bishops (1906) ; and L. P. Powell Heavenly Heretics (1909).