Phillips Brooks Quotes on Christ, Preaching, Prayer and Life
Phillips Brooks preached at Trinity Church in Boston from 1869 to 1891 and drew some of the largest congregations in America. He wrote the words of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and his Lectures on Preaching are still read by ministers. His sermons are long and flowing, but every page or so he sums up a whole truth in one sentence, and those sentences are what people remember.
Many Brooks quotes online come without a source, and some are paraphrased. Every quotation below is copied exactly from his books in TheWay Library, with the book and the sermon or lecture it comes from, so you can read each one in its setting. For his life story, see who was Phillips Brooks. For a guide to his books, see Phillips Brooks books.
His most famous words
These lines come from "Going Up to Jerusalem," a sermon on Christ setting His face toward the cross. The old scan of this page is damaged in a few words, so the quotation leaves those out.
Do not pray for easy lives. … Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! … But you shall be a miracle.
Twenty Sermons, Going Up to Jerusalem
Every true life has its Jerusalem, to which it is always going up.
Twenty Sermons, Going Up to Jerusalem
On preaching
Brooks gave eight lectures on preaching at Yale in 1877. His definition of preaching is the most quoted thing he ever said.
Preaching is the bringing of truth through personality.
Lectures on Preaching, The Two Elements in Preaching
The sermon is truth and man together; it is the truth brought through the man.
Lectures on Preaching, The Making of the Sermon
The preacher's instinct is that which feels instantly how Christ and human need belong together, neither thinks Christ too far off for the need, nor the need too insignificant for Christ.
Lectures on Preaching, The Two Elements in Preaching
Never be afraid to bring the transcendent mysteries of our faith, Christ's life and death and resurrection, to the help of the humblest and commonest of human wants.
Lectures on Preaching, The Two Elements in Preaching
First, seek always truth first and timeliness second, — never timeliness first and truth second.
Lectures on Preaching, The Ministry for Our Age
He ended the lectures with the worth of the soul, which he thought was the secret of every good ministry:
First of all, before a man can value the souls of other men, he must have learnt to value his own soul.
Lectures on Preaching, The Value of the Human Soul
On God's love
Brooks believed that people come to love God the way children come to love their parents: by knowing they are loved first.
The real reason why men do not love God is that they do not really believe that God loves them.
The Light of the World and Other Sermons, The Priority of God
Everywhere God is first; and man, coming afterward, enters into Him and finds in God the setting and the background of his life.
The Light of the World and Other Sermons, The Priority of God
And no man ever asks God to come into his heart and holds his heart open to God, without God's entering.
The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, A Whitsunday Sermon
When God bids us rejoice with Him in the salvation of a soul, it is a revelation to us of what a precious thing a soul must be.
The Light of the World and Other Sermons, The Joy with God
On Jesus Christ
Christianity is the bringing of God to man, and of man to God.
Sermons, The Soul's Refuge in God
Jesus the Friend, the Teacher, the Patriot, is always first Jesus the Son of God.
The Influence of Jesus, On the Social Life of Man
We must think of Jesus as a soul, undergoing experiences, living a life all through those years, or else the Gospels are a very dead and barren book.
The Influence of Jesus, On the Social Life of Man
You feed on Christ and then go and live your life, and it is Christ in you that lives your life, that helps the poor, that tells the truth, that fights the battle, and that wins the crown.
The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, Christ the Food of Man
Health, companionship, life itself, these are no longer indispensable when Christ has shown us God.
Sermons, The Symbol and the Reality
In a sermon on the man with two talents, Brooks imagines Christ speaking to the person who feels small and overlooked:
Behold yourself in me, and see that you are not insignificant.
Twenty Sermons, The Man with Two Talents
Preaching in London in 1883, he found the glory of Christ in what He gave up:
The glory of Christ is in His willing surrender of that which belonged to Him, and which He might have always had and enjoyed.
Sermons Preached in English Churches, Sermon XI: The Willing Surrender
No man in this world has a right to all his rights; that is the paradox which states our truth.
Sermons Preached in English Churches, Sermon XI: The Willing Surrender
On the cross
Christ was crucified with man that man might rejoice in being crucified with Christ.
Sermons, A Good-Friday Sermon
The cross was Christ's supreme utterance of His longing that all men might be rescued out of sin and brought to holiness.
Sermons, Christ's Wish for Man
Every time any man humbly takes God's forgiveness, enters into Christ's service, begins a godly life, that man becomes a new witness to this world of how strong and good the Saviour is.
Sermons, The Purpose and Use of Comfort
On comfort and hard times
Brooks's first book of sermons opens with comfort. He believed God comforts us to make us strong, and that He cares about troubles of every size.
Indeed, there is one view in which no trouble of man is great enough, and then there is another view in which no trouble of man is too small, to be worthy of touching the heart of God.
Sermons, The Consolations of God
The duty should open into joy, but it may fail of joy and still be duty.
Sermons, The Withheld Completions of Life
The man who gives himself to other men can never be a wholly sad man; but no more can he be a man of unclouded gladness.
The Influence of Jesus, On the Emotional Life of Man
Good is it when a man, sweeping around some sudden corner of his life, sees looming up before him a truth which he has not known before.
The Light of the World and Other Sermons, Deep Calling unto Deep
We know no more of the real depth of our own lives than a child who crosses a frozen lake knows how deep the lake is.
The Law of Growth, and Other Sermons, Chapter XI: Go into the City
On purpose and duty
Brooks had little patience with a drifting life. He wanted every Christian to have something worth living for.
No man finds less tolerance to-day than the aimless man, the man whose life lies and swings like a pool, instead of flowing straight onward like a river.
The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, The Symmetry of Life
The essence of heroic life is the apprehension by any man of the idea of a cause, and the abandonment of his life to that idea.
The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, The Heroism of Foreign Missions
That comes only when a human life, capable of a justice like God's, made just by God, glows with His justice in the eyes of men, a candle of the Lord.
The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons, The Candle of the Lord
The sermons printed after his death say the same, often more plainly.
Here is strength waiting for work. Here is work waiting for strength.
New Starts in Life, and Other Sermons, Chapter I: New Starts in Life
Whatever a man does, no matter how secular he chooses to call his action, he may do it in the name of Christ.
The Law of Growth, and Other Sermons, Chapter VI: Christ Our Life
There is such a thing as a soul gorged with blessing and not fed.
New Starts in Life, and Other Sermons, Chapter I: New Starts in Life
On one another
We live and die not only to God but to each other.
Sermons, All Saints' Day
The one only place where all can meet, and every soul claim its relationship with every other soul, is before the throne of God.
Twenty Sermons, Standing Before God
Still and forever the Church is the great Christian power, and the epistles of the Lord are human hearts.
Seeking Life, and Other Sermons, Chapter VII: Living Epistles
Reading Brooks for yourself
These lines are best read in the sermons they come from, where Brooks builds up to them slowly. If you want to start with one book, choose The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons. If you preach, read Lectures on Preaching. And if the "easy lives" passage caught you, read the whole sermon in Twenty Sermons. All ten of his books in the library are on the Phillips Brooks author page.