The Symmetry of Life: The Sermonic Insights of Phillips Brooks

Abstract

This article focuses on the sermon “The Symmetry of Life” by Phillips Brooks (1881), a late-18th-century American clergyman who was known for the depth and inspirational quality of his sermons. To set the context for consideration of the sermon, I discuss the religious journey of young men as presented in Striking Out (Capps 2011b) and my related article on Ernest Thayer (Capps 2015b); my psychobiographical study of young clergymen (Capps 2005) and employment of Levinson’s (1978) life structure model in my interpretation of Brooks’s young adulthood; the implications of preaching and the sermon structure for pastoral counseling (Capps 1980); and William James’s (1987) positive view of Brooks. Following brief commentaries on Brooks’s preaching style (Scarlett 1950) and a presentation of the sermon itself, I note several parallels between the implicit developmental model presented in the sermon and Levinson’s developmental model. I conclude with a brief discussion of Benjamin Franklin’s (1964) empirical study of the potential impact of George Whitefield’s preaching and the methodological implications of this study for pastoral theology.