t of them, even in their fragmentary state, a well-articulated system
might be made. He brought to his age the living message of a man upon
whom the best light of his age had shone.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

Something of the same sort may be said concerning Phillips Brooks. He
inherited on his father's side the sober rationalism and the humane and
secular interest of the earlier Unitarianism, on his mother's side the
intensity of evangelical pietism with the Calvinistic form of thought.
The conflict of these opposing tendencies in New England was at that
time so great that Brooks's parents sought refuge with the low-church
element in the Episcopal Church. Brooks's education at Harvard College,
where he took his degree in 1855, as also at Alexandria, and still more,
his reading and experience, made him sympathetic with that which, in
England in those years, was called the Broad Church party. He was deeply
influenced by Campbell and Maurice. Later well known in England, he was
the compeer of the best spirits of his generation there. Deepened by the
experience of the great war, he held in succession two pulpits of large
influence, dying as Bishop of Massachusetts in 1893. There is a
theological note about his preaching, as in the case of Robertson. Often
it is the same note. Brooks had passed through no such crisis as had
Robertson. He had flowered into the greatness of rational belief. His
sermons are a contribution to the thinking of his age. We have much
finished material of this kind from his own hand, and a book or two
besides. His service through many years as preacher to his university
was of inestimable worth. The presentation of ever-advancing thought to
a great public constituency is one of the most difficult of tasks. It is
also one of the most necessary. The fusion of such thoughtfulness with
spiritual impulse has rarely been more perfectly achieved than in the
preaching of Phillips Brooks.

THE BROAD CHURCH

We have used the phrase, the Broad Church party. Stanley had employed
the adjective to describe the real character of the English Church, over
against the antithesis of the Low Church and the High. The designation
adhered to a group of which Stanley was himself a type. They were not
bound together in a party. They had no ecclesiastical end in view. They
were of a common spirit. It was not the spirit of evangelicalism. Still
less was it that of the Tractarians. It was that which Robertson had
manifested