Trinity College School - Record Yearbook (Port Hope, Ontario Canada)

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6 TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD It was in June 1901, by the way, that his name came up for prominent consideration as Bishop-Coadjutor of Minnesota. Bishop Henry Codman Potter in recommending Doctor Alsop and Charles Henry Brent said of the latter: His traditions are those of a modern high churchman with singularly large and noble conceptions of the relation of the church to humanity. I know no man in the American Church who is, in some of the highest respects,-character, competency for leadership, enthusiasm, directness, personal attractiveness, and high spiritual qualities,-Mr. Brent's superior. No more words are needed to emphasize the man Charles Henry Brent had become by 1901 and to indicate the high regard in which he was held by high dignitaries and leaders of the Church at that time. In the summer of 1902 the young Bishop sailed out to his island diocese, joining at Suez, the Governor-General, William Howard Taft. It was to a big and pioneer task that he set forth. The next few years in the Philippines clearly made manifest to all the caliber of the young missionary bishop the Church had sent out to the new island-empire of the United States. As a matter of fixed policy, Bishop Brent confined his work inthe Philippines to the Army, official circles, and the Moros and Igorots. His was a hard assignment, but in short order he was vxdnning men to goodness and to Christ on the basis of their com- pelling beauty and by the contagion of his 'own manly idealism. General John J. Pershing and General Leonard Wood were con- firmed by Bishop Brent in Manila, but two of a host of Army and government officials who were led into the Church's fellowship by Bishop Brent. In the Philippines, Bishop Brent not only gave: he also re- ceived. He tells us that it was among the pagan peoples that I learned that equality before God of all men, which I count to be the chief treasure I have honestly made my own in my life time. His experience with the Moros and Igorots was simply an ad- vanced course in what he had begun to learn in the slum-sections of Boston. Expanding Interests The strength of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines be- fore the recent war, during it, and the surety of its revived vigor in the years at hand is testimony to the inspired leadership and energetic labors of Bishop Brent. During the years of his episco- pate 11901-19183 hospitals, churches, schools for boys and girls, mission-stations, and a great cathedral-center were established, the Bishop always building boldly for a large future. It was while resident in the Orient, on the frontier of Chris- tianity, that the desperate need for a united Christendom impinged forcibly on Bishop Brent's still forming mind. Here it was that

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 5 and in college he distinguished himself not only as a gifted and apt scholar but as a formidable athlete. The Right Rev. Dr. Sweatman, the Bishop of Toronto, ordain- ed him to the diaconate in 1886, the next year elevating him to the priesthood. His first position was curate and organist at St. John's Church, Buffalo, where he remained a year. Then he became curate on the staff of St. Paul's Church tnow Cathedral: in Buffalo, in charge of St. Andrew's Mission which at that time was located on Spruce Street. He attempted to place candles on the altar and Bishop Coxe objecting, he departed for Boston where he remained from 1888 until 1891. During the Boston years he lived at the mission-house of the Cowley Fathers where, under the guidance of Fathers Hall, Osborne and Torbet, he learned the lessons of the ordered life. One of his duties was to minister to St. Augustine's Colored Mission. In 1891 Bishop Phillips Brooks placed Father Torbet and the future Bishop Brent in charge of an abandoned church in the south end of Boston which they revived under the name of St. Stephen's Church. Brent was at this time 29 years old. For ten years he remained at St. Stephen's with Father Torbet, serving as rector only the last two months. The years at St. Stephen's were important and valuable ones for the young churchman. His humble, inconspicuous work in a struggling parish in a crowded neighborhood of underprivileged people proved good schooling for his naturally aristocratic mind. These years deepened not only his ideas of religion but also his insight into human character. It was in these years that he began tc learn a truth which undergirded his whole life, thought, and activity, namely, the essential value of every man, of whatever race or color or creed. Mingling with the loafers on Boston Com- mon helped his heart to grow deeper and his blood to flow warmer.. He came to know people, all sorts of people. It was during these hidden years that Charles Henry Brent forged him- self into the man who received one day in the autumn of 1901 a tele- gram from San Francisco informing him of his election by The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church as Missionary Bishop of the Philippine Islands. Missionary Bishop It is interesting to note that only a few days before receiving notification of his election as Bishop of the Philippines, W. S. Rainsford was considering Charles Henry Brent as the best man for the associate with himself at St. George's Church, New York City. He is, of course, a High Churchmanf' said Rainsford to his senior warden, J. Pierpont Morgan, but he is not as high as when he sought 'the order! He is a man of God. He is in sympathy with the present time. His eyes are in the front of his head, and not in the back. He can preach. He loves men and understands them. And he is a democrat .

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TRINITY COLLEGE SCHOOL RECORD 7 he pledged himself to labor for the cause of Christian unity all the days of his life. I His Philippine Islands ministry was frequently interrupted by trips back to the United States. Bishop Brent always enjoyed the rest and leisure of these long sea-voyages which gave him opporttmity for reading, meditation, and writing. The young missionary leader was sought as their leader by many home dioceses during these years. In 1908 he declined a call to become Bishop of Washington. Two times more he was called and two times more he refused. He was also elected to and declined the bishopric of New Jersey. It was during the first decade of the new century that Bishop Brent rose into national and international prominence. The priest, who not so many years before had seriously considered entering the monastic life, was at this time, equally at home in the hut of a Moro savage or a diplomatic embassy. And it was during this period that we witness Bishop Brent more than winning his spurs as a diplomat and statesman. The greatest evil in Filipino society, Bishop Brent and the government soon discovered, was opium, and to its extirpation Bishop Brent directly bent his efforts. Within a year after the official party of the island governor-general had assumed their duties, a commission had been appointed to investigate the use of and traffic in opium and the laws regarding such use and traffic in Japan, Formosa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Burma, Java, and the Philippine Islands. Major E. C.Carter, U.S. Army, Dr. Jose Albert and Bishop Brent comprised the commis- sion. The commission assembled August 13, 1903, at Manila and gathered data until February 5, 1904. Then, from February 8, 1904 until March 15, 1904, the committee sat daily from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m., and finally presented its report. Briefly, the plan recommended was for opium to become a government monopoly immediately, this to become prohibition, except for medical pur- poses, after three years. But the work of this opium commission was but introductory to the great International Opium Conference at Shanghai during February 1909, over which Bishop Brent sat as president, which was dominated by his leadership and vision, and which was by him singlehandedly brought to a happy outcome. Bishop Brent also acted as chief commissioner of the American delegation to this meeting. He again served as chairman of a United States delegation to an international opium conference in 1911 and 1912 at The Hague. First World War By the outbreak of the World War, Bishop Brent was a world- renowned figure, a friend of national leaders in many countries, a citizen of the world, a foremost leader in the affairs of his Church. Though he was an ardent lover of peace, he accepted