The Phillips Brooks Society was established by vote of the MBS Trustees on Tuesday, May 18, 2004, at their Semi-Annual Meeting held at Andover Newton Theological School.  Its purpose is to honor and celebrate those who intend to remember MBS in their estate planning.

The Society was named in honor of Phillips Brooks, the famous preacher and teacher of Boston's Trinity Church, Bishop in the Episcopal Church, and a distinguished Trustee of the Massachusetts Bible Society from 1890-1893.  He was also the author of the beloved Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem.

Brooks once said, "How carefully most men creep into nameless graves, while now and again one or two forget themselves into immortality."  It's a reminder that planning only for our own success ensures that we are forgotten when our lives and whatever successes we have thus earned come to their end.  It is in forgetting ourselves and working to ensure the success of others that we are remembered.

The Massachusetts Bible Society has sought to live up to the wisdom of its former Trustee and hope that some of our partners will see fit to live out that call to "forget themselves into immortality" by remembering MBS in their estate planning.  

Within the past few years, MBS has received gifts from the estates of Louise Boardman, Helen West, Ruth Miller Gates, and Angela Markert.  We are blessed to have these wonderful saints, whose gifts help ensure that the Massachusetts Bible Society will remain a leader in biblical education in our third century just as we have been since 1809.

For further information or to indicate your intention to become a member of the Phillips Brooks Society, please contact us at admin@massbible.org.