Such were the early surroundings of the man, and the subsequent influences of his life tended to foster this liberal spirit.  For such a purpose, Boston itself was a good place to live in:  it was too large to be wholly provincial, and it was not so large that the individual was lost; and at that time it was moreover the literary centre of America.  When Phillips Brooks entered Harvard, he came into an atmosphere of intense intellectual activity.  James Walker was the president of the college, and Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, and Longfellow were among the professors.  He graduated with honor in 1855, and soon after entered the Episcopal theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia.

The transition from Harvard to this college was an abrupt one.  The standards of the North and South were radically different.  The theology of the Church in Virginia, while tolerant to that of other denominations, was uncompromisingly hostile to what it regarded as heterodox.

When the War was declared he threw himself passionately into the cause of the Union.  Yet his affection for his Southern classmates, men from whom he so widely differed, broadened that charity that was one of his finest characteristics, a charity that respected conviction wherever found.

No man, in truth, ever did so much to remove prejudice against a Church that had never been popular in New England.  To the old Puritan dislike of Episcopacy and distrust of the English Church as that of the oppressors of the colony, was added a sense of resentment toward its sacerdotal claims and its assumption of ecclesiastical supremacy.  But he nevertheless protested against the claim by his own communion to the title of “The American Church,” he preached occasionally in other pulpits, he even had among his audiences clergymen of other denominations, and he was able to reconcile men of different creeds into concord on what is essential in all.  The breadth and depth of his teaching attracted so large a following that he increased the strength of the Episcopal Church in America far more than he could have done by carrying on an active propaganda in its behalf.  Under his pastorate Trinity Church, Boston, became the centre of some of the most vigorous Christian activity in America.

His first charge was the Church of the Advent, in Philadelphia; in two years he became rector of Holy Trinity Church in the same city.  In 1869 he was called to Trinity Church, Boston, of which he was rector until his election as bishop of Massachusetts in 1891.

It is impossible to give an idea of Phillips Brooks without a word about his personality, which was almost contradictory.  His commanding figure, his wit, the charm of his conversation, and a certain boyish gayety and naturalness, drew people to him as to a powerful magnet.  He was one of the best known men in America; people pointed him out to strangers in his own city as they pointed out the Common and the Bunker Hill monument.  When he went to England,