. Life and letters of Phillips Brooks . low him to refuse. Some things also had becomemore apparent as the months went by. His church wascrowded with worshippers, but they brought no strength tohis parish; they came to listen, but they did not rent thevacant pews. He was in reality ministering to the congre-gations of other parishes. If he was to speak as his soulmoved him to do, he needed a stronger vantage ground, amore prominent position. If he must preach to crowdedchurches, as seemed to be even then his destiny, it was betterto preach in a church with fifteen hundred hearers than inone wi
. Life and letters of Phillips Brooks . low him to refuse. Some things also had becomemore apparent as the months went by. His church wascrowded with worshippers, but they brought no strength tohis parish; they came to listen, but they did not rent thevacant pews. He was in reality ministering to the congre-gations of other parishes. If he was to speak as his soulmoved him to do, he needed a stronger vantage ground, amore prominent position. If he must preach to crowdedchurches, as seemed to be even then his destiny, it was betterto preach in a church with fifteen hundred hearers than inone with five hundred. A power outside himself seemed tobe arbitrating the issue for him. In the spirit of humilityand of obedience he acquiesced, but with no sign of ambitionfor seK, or spirit of conceit and self-sufficiency. It was a hard and bitter experience for the Church of theAdvent. He seemed to belong to them as by the divineright of discovery. They had found him as he preached inthe Sharon Mission near Alexandria, and from afar had. JET. 24-25] BEGINNING OF CIVIL WAR 377 descried his power while all the world was in ignorance. Tothem he had given the first fresh devotion of his ministry,endearing himself to them by no ordinary faithfulness, goingin and out among them as their very own. They too inreturn had given him of their best; there was nothing theywould not do, or attempt to do, to show their affectionateappreciation. But they were paralyzed by these efforts, oneafter another, in such rapid succession, to rob them of theirtreasure. In the case of the Church of the Holy Trinity theywere tempted to stand upon their rights, to appeal to eccle-siastical law, to refuse absolutely to let him go. The change of a clergyman from one parish to another isso familiar and commonplace a circumstance that it wouldhardly seem to deserve here more than a passing this was a case which probed the issue involved in therelation of pastor and people to its deepest source. In th
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