Philips Brooks – death, Jan. 23, 1893

1. God hath sent His angels to the earth again,
Bringing joyful tidings to the sons of men;
They who first at Christmas thronged the heavenly way,
Now beside the tomb door sit on Easter day.

Refrain

Angels, sing His triumph as you sang His birth,
“Christ the Lord is risen, peace, goodwill on earth!”

2. In the dreadful desert, where the Lord was tried,
There the faithful angels gathered at His side;
And when, in the garden, grief and pain and care
Bowed Him down with anguish, they were with Him there.

3. Yet the Christ they honor is the same Christ still
Who, in light and darkness, did His Father’s will;
And the tomb, deserted, shineth like the sky,
Since He passed from out it, into victory.

4. God has still His angels, helping at His word,
All His faithful children, like their faithful Lord;
Soothing them in sorrow, arming them in strife,
Opening wide the tomb doors, leading into life.

Philips Brooks died this date, 1/23/1893.  He was an Episcopal preacher and hymnist who later was the bishop of Massachusetts.  Brooks, born 12/13/1835, Boston, was a steadfast abolitionist.  As a pastor and evangelist (known to substitute for D. L. Moody) he became known as an outstanding preacher.  He is best remembered for writing the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

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Ray Palmer – Death, Mar. 29, 1887

My faith looks up to Thee,
Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior divine!
Now hear me while I pray, take all my guilt away,
O let me from this day be wholly Thine!

May Thy rich grace impart
Strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire!
As Thou hast died for me, O may my love to Thee,
Pure warm, and changeless be, a living fire!

While life’s dark maze I tread,
And griefs around me spread, be Thou my Guide;
Bid darkness turn to day, wipe sorrow’s tears away,
Nor let me ever stray from Thee aside.

When ends life’s transient dream,
When death’s cold sullen stream over me roll;
Blest Savior, then in love, fear and distrust remove;
O bear me safe above, a ransomed soul! 

Ray Palmer died 3/29/1887, at Newark, New Jersey.  Palmer attended Phillips Andover Academy (he and Oliver Wendell Holmes were classmates there) and Yale University.  He taught at a young ladies’ school (New York) and at a ladies’ college (Connecticut).  Later Palmer was ordained a Congregational minister (1835) and pastored in Bath, Maine and Albany, New York.

Palmer wrote the above lyrics about the time he graduated from Yale (21 years of age).  It is said that Mason (a couple of years later) met Palmer on a street in Boston, and asked him to write something for a new hymnal.  Palmer gave him these words.  Mason is reported to have told Palmer, “You may live many years and do many good things, but I think you will be best known to posterity as the author of “My Faith Looks Up to Thee,” a correct prophesy.  Song has been translated into over twenty (20) languages.  Ray was born 11/12/1808, at Little Compton, Rhode Island.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D. – death, Oct. 7, 1894

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main, –

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

Before thee lies revealed, —

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

 

Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: –

 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D., died this date, 10/7/1894, at Boston, Massachusetts.   Holms published several works in the medical field, but is more remembered for his poems such as “Old Ironsides,” “The Last Leaf,” and the above.  Holmes was born 8/29/1809 (same year as President Lincoln) at Cambridge, the son of a minister.

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Samuel L Brengle – Sanctified, Jan. 9, 1885

We are now becoming what we shall ever be – lovers of God and the things of God, or haters of God and the things of God.

– Samuel Logan Brengle, Resurrection Life and Power (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, LTD, 1925), 34.

 

…Every thoughtful studious, prayerful Christian becomes his own theologian…but his theology is really limited to those article of faith which vitalize his life, guide…his conduct, mold his spirit…purify his nature and kindle his hope for the future.

– Samuel Logan Brengle, Resurrection Life and Power (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, LTD, 1925), 40.

 

A spiritual leader is one who lives in the Spirit, who dwells in such constant and intimate closeness with God, that he and his Lord commune with each other…and when God speaks he rises up and follows.

– Samuel Logan Brengle, Resurrection Life and Power (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, LTD, 1925), 65.

 

…minister…too busy to patiently wait on God in secret prayer…too busy discussing the breadth of phylacteries to give time to self-examination and solemn secret worship and adoration of the Lord.

– Samuel Logan Brengle, Resurrection Life and Power (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, LTD, 1925), 86.

 

Oh, that we may be so filled with the Spirit that we may arouse wholesome fear in the hearts of men…

– Samuel Logan Brengle, Resurrection Life and Power (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, LTD, 1925), 97.

Samuel Logan Brengle was filled with the Holy Spirit (his “personal Pentecost” this date (1/9/1885) in Boston.  He became the greatest voice for holiness with the Salvation Army.  

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Phillips Brooks – birth, Dec. 13, 1835

“The Sky Can Still Remember”  (stanza 3)

O angels sweet and splendid, throng in our hearts and sing
The wonders which attended the coming of the King;
Till we too, boldly pressing where once the shepherds trod,
Climb Bethlehem’s Hill of Blessing, and find the Son of God.

Phillips Brooks born 12/13/1835 in Boston, Massachusetts.  He was a minister whose people sent him abroad for a year.  His schedule brought him to the Holy Land and on Christmas Eve, brought him to Bethlehem.  The little town (seen in 19th century “lighting”) helped him produced his simple but so loved Carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”   Brooks, who never married, loved children and they him.  After his death a story was told of a litttle girl’s reponce to her pastor being in heaven.  She is said to have said to her mother, “Oh mama, how happy the angels will be.”

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