O Little Town of Bethlehem

O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM 253 254 Words by Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) hillips Brooks came from a long line of Puritans tracing back to John Cotton (1585-1652), a highly regarded New England minister. Brooks’ parents, like many Puritans, became associ- atedP with the Episcopal Church in America and raised their children in this denomination. Brooks’ home life was strict and religious, yet full of love. Three of Brooks’ five brothers, like him, went on to be ordained as ministers in the Episcopal Church. Brooks prepared for college at the Boston Latin School, America’s oldest public school, and graduated from Harvard University in 1855, when he was just 20 years old. After an unhappy experience as a teacher at the Boston Latin School, Brooks decided to study for the ministry at Virginia Theological Seminary. When he graduated in 1859, he was appointed to a position at a small church in Philadelphia, the Church of the Advent. His teaching began to draw attention, and by 1861, he was sent to a larger church in the same city, the Church of the Holy Trinity. He remained there until 1869, providing moral strength to his congregation throughout the American Civil War and its aftermath. Brooks upheld the cause of the North and passionately opposed slavery. He, along with thou- sands of others, was devastated by the news of Abraham Lincoln’s death in 1865. When Lincoln’s body was carried through Philadelphia en route to Illinois in a funeral procession, Brooks delivered a now famous eulogy on the great character of Lincoln. On the question of whether or not Lincoln was an “intellectual man,” Brooks said the following: “You are unable to tell whether in the wise acts and words which issue from such a life there is more of the righteousness which comes from a clear conscience or of the sagacity that comes from a clear brain. “It is the great boon of such characters as Mr. Lincoln’s that they reunite what God has joined together and man has put asunder. In him was vindicated the greatness of real goodness and the goodness of real greatness. The twain were one flesh. “This union of the mental and moral into a life of admirable simplicity is what we most admire in children; but in them it is unsettled and unpractical. But when it is preserved into manhood, deepened into reliability and maturity, it is that glorified child-likeness, that high and reverend simplicity, which shames and baffles the most accomplished astuteness and is chosen by God to fill his purposes when he needs a ruler for his people, of faithful and true heart. Such as he had who was our President.”1 Interestingly, Brooks’ portrayal of Lincoln would prove to be an accurate description of his own life. And his words give insight into his sincere love for children, an affection that would largely characterize his life. 255 Later in 1865, Brooks traveled to the Holy Land. Likely, he was in need of a retreat from war-torn America. In a letter to his father, Brooks tells how on Christmas Eve, he traveled on horseback from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.2 He rode to the field outside Bethlehem in which the angelic announcement to the shepherds is said to have taken place, and he witnessed shepherds still “keeping watch over their flocks.” That evening, he attended a five-hour (10 p.m. to 3 a.m.) service at the Church of the Nativity. A few months later, while in Rome, Brooks wrote a letter to the “dear children” in the Sunday schools of his church in Philadelphia. In the letter he recalls his time in Bethlehem: “I wish I could be with you in the Sunday-school. For of all my friends in America there are none by whom I should be more sorry to be forgotten, or whom I should be more sorry to forget, than the circle who make up our schools and classes. I do not mind telling you (though of course I should not like to have you speak of it to any of the older people of the church) that I am much afraid the younger part of my congregation has more than its share of my thoughts and interest. I cannot tell you how many Sunday mornings since I left you I have seemed to stand in the midst of our crowded schoolroom again, and look about and know every face and every class just as I used to; nor how many time I have heard one of our home hymns ringing very strangely and sweetly through the different music of some far-off country. I remember especially on Christmas Eve, when I was standing in the old church at Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born, when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices that I knew well, telling each other of the ‘Wonderful Night’ of the Saviour’s birth, as I had heard them a year before [at his home church]; and I assure you I was glad to shut my ears for a while and listen to the more familiar strains that came wandering to me halfway round the world.”3 By all accounts, it was this Christmas Eve experience that began to stir the now famous song “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in Brooks’ heart. How fitting that the song was written for the children of whom he recalled so fondly when he was there. However, three years passed before the song that had been “singing in the soul of Phillips Brooks”4 was finally written down for the Christmas service of the Sunday schools at his church. Apparently, verse-writing was a regular habit with Brooks and was likely due, in large part, to an old family tradition.5 Every Sunday as a child, Phillips and his brothers had to recite a new hymn before the assembled family. According to Alexander Allen, a Brooks’ biographer: “In a little book, carefully kept by the father, there was a record of the hymns each child had learned, beginning with William, who had the advantage of age, and had learned the greatest number, followed by Phillips, who came next, and the record tapering down until John is reached, with a comparatively small number at his disposal. Most of them were from 256 the old edition of the Prayer Book, then bound up with a metrical selection of Psalms and a collection of two hundred and twelve hymns. These hymns Phillips carried in his mind as so much mental and spiritual furniture, or as germs of thought; they often reappeared in his sermons, as he became aware of some deeper meaning in the old familiar lines.”6 By the time Brooks went to college, he had some 200 hymns memorized. “His own mind and heart were stored with hymns to such an extent and in such a way that they were one of the real influences of his life.”7 Perhaps these hymns reminded Brooks of his happy childhood and served to cultivate in him a desire to write new hymns. His Christmas and Easter carols in particular reveal that “he entered into those festivals with a child’s enthusiasm and joy.”8 Brooks never married nor had children of his own, so he “took to his heart the children of others.”9 Though he was a man of towering physical presence, more than 6 feet 6 inches tall, “he not only loved children dearly, but liked to be their comrade and to get down on the nursery floor and romp with them.”10 Surely, it pained Brooks to leave his church family in Philadelphia, but by 1869, Brooks’ “lean- ings toward his native town and the urgency of repeated calls from there” led him to accept a position at Trinity Church in Boston.11 Brooks’ reputation as an “extraordinary orator” continued to spread, and he became “one of the most respected and accomplished ministers of the 19th century United States.”12 By 1891, Brooks was elected as the sixth Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts. But he did not hold this position for long. After a brief illness, he passed away in January of 1893. His death was a major event in Boston, and people of every denomination mourned the loss of a great man. Here is one tender account of how a child responded to news of his death: “The morning after this great-lover of the Christ-child went Home, the mother of a little girl of five, who had been one of his special favorites, entered the room where the child was playing, and holding the little face between her hands, said tearfully, ‘Bishop Brooks has gone to heaven.’ ‘Oh Mamma,’ was the reply, ‘how happy the angels will be!’”13 Music “St. Louis” by Lewis Henry Redner (1831-1908) When Brooks wrote down his hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in 1868, he asked Lewis Redner, his church organist and superintendent of Sunday school to set it to music. Redner gave the following account of his composition: “As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, ‘Redner, have you 257 ground out that music yet to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”?’ I replied, ‘No,’ but that he should have it by Sunday.

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