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from me without speaking.

At first I

hardly knew what to make of it. But I soon saw that the coldness of the assembly was for my benefit, and, as quickly as we could, Mrs. Young and I went home. The treatment we received at that reception was but a hint of what was to follow. Door after door to homes where we had been welcome guests were shut against us. My parishioners cut me on the street. The feeling was that I had disgraced myself and the church and all my fellow ministers by officiating at the funeral of one whom they regarded as a felon and a traitor. It would seem as if a clergyman should be immune wherever he might have performed the sacred rites of his holy office, but business interests were imperilled by the slave insurrections, and politically as well as commercially the excitement ran very high.

"It was soon necessary for me to leave Burlington. While I was not actually driven out of my parish, I was ostracized socially, and made to feel that, for the good of the church, I must go. I was thirty-six when I left the parish in Burlington, and went out into the world, not knowing whither. For a time it seemed as if I must give up the ministry, but eventually I was called to another charge, and since my life has gone on as smoothly as most lives do. My 'persecution,' as people call it, is only interesting (if it has interest) as a side-light upon New England character in the early '60's, and as an example of what may come into the life of an honest minister."

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THE IDEAL MINISTER OF THE

AMERICAN GOSPEL

T was Oliver Wendell Holmes who

I1

said of Phillips Brooks, "I believe

he is to stand as the ideal minister of the American gospel, which is the old world gospel, shaped, as all gospels are, by their interpreters, by the influences of our American civilization." This masterly interpretation of Brooks's life was made when he was in the height of his career as rector of Trinity Church. To the parish as well as to the minister, there fore, may well enough be accorded the credit of powerful formative influence in the evolution of latter-day American Christianity.

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