Phillips Brooks: The Failure Behind a Beloved Christmas Carol
The twenty-year-old teacher packed his books and walked out of Boston Latin School in humiliation. His students had driven him to resign midway through the year, and the headmaster told him that men who fail at teaching almost never succeed at anything else. The young man wrote to a friend that he did not know what would become of him. His name was Phillips Brooks, and God was just getting started.
The Failure That Almost Finished Him
Brooks had entered Harvard at sixteen and graduated with honors, so the collapse at Boston Latin cut deep. For months he drifted without direction. Then a quiet pull toward ministry grew stronger, and he enrolled at Virginia Theological Seminary. The awkward young man found his voice in the pulpit. Within a decade he was preaching to overflowing crowds in Philadelphia, and in April 1865 he preached while Abraham Lincoln’s body lay in state in that city. If a story of God turning a hidden failure into public usefulness stirs you, read next about Frances Ridley Havergal, whose weakest season produced her strongest hymns.
A Christmas Eve Ride to Bethlehem
In December 1865 Brooks sailed for the Holy Land. On Christmas Eve he rode on horseback from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, paused in the shepherds’ fields under the stars, and worshiped at the Church of the Nativity until nearly dawn. Three years later he needed a carol for the children of his Sunday school, so he reached back to that holy night and wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem. His organist woke in the night with the tune and called it a gift from heaven. If the way God pulls comfort from grief moves you, read next about Horatio Spafford, who wrote It Is Well With My Soul after losing four daughters at sea.
When God Orders Your Steps Through a Fall
Scripture promises, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down” (Psalm 37:23-24, NKJV). Brooks fell hard at twenty, and God used that very fall to turn him toward his calling. Your failure is a chapter and never the whole story. Place it in God’s hands, take the next faithful step, and trust Him to order the ones after that.
The failed teacher became a voice that still sings every Christmas. God wastes nothing.
And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.