LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. GIFT OF THE FAMILY OF REV. DR. GEORGE MOOAR Class ip ris* wfe \ 1 V ^^T^J^-N^ %l? 5 ^^Jt4 ^^TO^;a*e.^ *m ^c^; ^??s^ffl# sVn^v^ir^^v^wi^^wM.! ^P^.^brtte* KvVi, > w ivz^n?-' A^iT^*^^ 2FJK3 nss^fllf; --\ Jl \l\^fe^i-1 -.i:^ m^;^^^v x -fc^ ^ppjyj^^r' \ ., ^>TC rr,-r /*< fp ^X^IIFI^^C^V rv^t^'JiU^*^" -^ x , I 7>w- -" t* li ^^. -- v --^.-" - r, i r~v , V v. i ^,1,^,^. miS&fl^#':feS^^ *P ^% p<- : n/^r- ):^ -* - PST* sr ^ , . t>^^^^<^^^&^.^ W ^l l>* . ^%^,.:-^^r/^XrV !:t*\ V: V/// ^ X, AX^V^ ~\,^ -y ' -- ,v. ' 1--V* ^V^T SJ < f 'V^ "N? "^'^V'^ -tiVVVV'^ ^S;^ ^^^ ' ^KT^^v *; -'Hi^fci :-. ^^^S-^^^^K^^^ife^ ' i^^-^^.-^i EZRA ABBOT 1\ t>e sball fcnoto t&e tttttl), anfc tl)e tvtttl) gfjall matie pott free " THE ^ UNIVERSITY } r OF "fcik'fORNVL PUBLISHED FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL CAMBRIDGE CONTENTS. PREFACE 5 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 7 ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR C. C. EVERETT, D.D 9 ADDRESS BY REV. AUGUSTUS WOODBURY 16 ADDRESS BY REV. A. P. PEABODY 19 ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR JOSEPH HENRY THAYER, D.D. ... 28 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES : FROM ACADEMICAL AND LITERARY BODIES 61 FROM PERSONAL SOURCES 64 LIST OF HIS PUBLICATIONS 69 CORRECTION 74 JLOl PREFACE. BY a vote of the officers and Business Committee of the Alumni Association of the Harvard Divinity School, it was resolved that, in place of the usual address at the annual meeting of the Associa- tion, a service should be held in memory of the late EZRA ABBOT, Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity School of Harvard University. The service thus arranged was held June 24, 1884, in the First Parish Church, Cambridge. It consisted of devotional exercises, an introductory address by the President of the Alumni Association, the Rev. Augustus Woodbury, and addresses by the Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., and Professor J. Henry Thayer, D.D. At the conclusion of the service, it was unanimously voted by the Alumni that the Faculty be requested, to print the memorial addresses delivered on that day. By a subsequent vote of the officers of the Associa- tion, Professor C. C. Everett, D.D., was requested to permit his address, delivered at the funeral of Dr. Abbot, to be printed from the phonographic report. In accordance with these resolutions of the Alumni, the ad- dresses mentioned have been gathered and arranged in the order of their delivery. Owing to lack of time, Professor Thayer was obliged to omit portions of his essay at the memorial service. It is here printed in full. A list of Dr. Abbot's publications, so far as they are known, has been added, with various resolutions of academic and literary bodies and a few tributes from personal sources. The heliotype, made from a faithful likeness by William Aitken of Boston, will be to many a grateful feature of the book. This sheaf of kindly tributes is offered by the Alumni, through the co-operation of the Faculty, as a befitting memorial of a rare and much loved teacher. It is gratifying to know that by the kindness of Mrs. Abbot, who has generously given the large and valuable library of her husband to the Divinity School future students are to enjoy another memorial of Dr. Abbot which shall be a perpetual reminder of the ties which bound him to that institution. In recording this ample and welcome gift, the Secre- tary feels that he does not transcend the duties of his office in expressing the gratitude with which the Alumni will receive the announcement. S. J. BARROWS, Secretary of the Alumni Association of the Harvard Divinity School. EZRA ABBOT, eldest child of Ezra and Phebe (Abbot) Abbot, was born in Jackson, Waldo County, Maine, April 28, 1819; was fitted for college at Phillips (Exeter) Acad- emy; graduated at Bowdoin College in 1840, and received its degree of A.M. in 1843 ; removed to Cambridge in 1847 ; after some time spent in teaching, in pursuing private stud- ies, and in rendering service in the libraries of Harvard College and the Boston Athenaeum, was appointed in 1856 Assistant Librarian of Harvard College; and in 1872 Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Inter- pretation in the Divinity School. He was elected in 1852 a member of the American Ori- ental Society, and from 1853 its Recording Secretary; in 1861, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 1871 appointed University Lecturer on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament ; in the same year chosen a member of the New Testament Company for the revision of our English Bible. He was also a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, and of the Harvard Biblical Club. In 1 86 1, he received from Harvard College the honorary degree of A.M. ; in 1869 that of LL.D. from Yale College, and the same from Bowdoin College in 1878 ; in 1872 from Harvard College that of S.T.D. ; and he was tendered the degree of D.D. by the University of Edinburgh at its recent tercentenary, but passed away before the date of the cele- bration. He died at his home in Cambridge at 5.30 P.M., on Friday, March 21, 1884. SERVICE AT APPLETON CHAPEL. ADDRESS.* BY PROF. C. C. EVERETT, D.D. WE may realize the fact of our bereavement, as we gather to speak and hear words of eulogy of one whose loving presence would have made such words impossible. I shall strive to moderate my words by the thought of his shrink- ing modesty, and, so far as possible, make them such as would not offend his ear. It is pleasant to go back to the boyhood of Ezra Abbot, and to find even in his childhood the elements which united to make up his life. He was born in a thinly populated farming town in Maine. His mother died while he was still a child : his father lived a retired life, devoted to his books. The house stood in a wood a little way from the travelled street. Here, he learned that love of nature which followed him through life. From his father, doubtless, he got his love of retirement and books ; and it may be that his mother left him that light gayety of spirit which marked him as a child, his buoyant love of the things about him, of wander- ing in the forest in the pursuit of the natural beauty. As he grew in years, his love of study and his success in it became more marked. At Bowdoin College, where he graduated, he took an honorable position as a scholar. After that, he taught school in Maine. It is a striking coincidence that his partner in this labor died a few weeks ago. This work of teaching he most heartily enjoyed. Shrinking and retiring by nature, he was always fond of * Delivered in Appleton Chapel, Cambridge, at the funeral of Dr. Abbot, March 25, 1884, and phonographically reported. IO children ; and, here, he had children that were eager to learn, and returned his love with an answering love. It was about this time that Andrews Norton was publish- ing those works, which marked an epoch in the history of Biblical and theological science in our country. Ezra Abbot was, as I have said, shrinking and retiring ; but he was always bold in the matter of truth. He wrote a letter to Andrews Norton, expressing his delight in his work on the Trinity, stating that he had formed an index of it, and, if tradition is correct, taking issue with Prof. Norton in some point of interpretation. This tradition I have not been able to verify, but I think it has the likelihood of probability. Andrews Norton was delighted with the letter, and invited the writer to visit him ; and this was the introduction of Ezra Abbot to Cambridge. He first took the High School in Cambridgeport. This was probably the only work in his life that was distasteful to him, but he sweetened it by congenial labor. He made a catalogue of the library of the school, and the work was so perfectly done that it opened to him a career in what was for a time the occupation of his life. It procured for him an in- troduction to the force of the library of the Boston Athenaeum. Afterward, he was transferred to an honorable position in the Harvard College Library. He possessed many qualities that fitted him for the life of a librarian, his patience, his industry, his rapidity of work, his power of classification and .arrangement, his tenacity of memory. If his ideal was so high as to be unapproachable, it was nevertheless an ideal which brought inspiration ; and all the work done toward reaching that ideal was useful work. It was a delight to him that his work was among books, but still it was not the most congenial work. His leisure was occupied in the study of the New Testament, which, it seems, he began in his early youth. I speak of his leisure : this leisure was largely a mosaic made up of moments which others would have thrown away, but it was nevertheless leisure sufficient for his work. But it was doubtless with joy that he found himself trans- ferred to a labor more congenial, when he accepted the chair II of the newly founded professorship of the study of the New Testament in the Divinity School of Harvard University. Here, the great passion of his life found free scope. When I think of his devotion to the study of the New Testament, it reminds me of some movement in a grand musical com- position that at first is faint and fitful, but which gains power and continuity as the work proceeds, and at last swells out and controls the whole. At last, he was able to give himself wholly to the study of the New Testament. The work of teaching he always enjoyed. He brought to the students profound learning- that won their confidence, accuracy and clearness of teaching that instructed their minds, and a beauty of spirit that won their love. His work as a teacher occupied but a small portion of his time. The rest was given to independent study in his chosen line of work. Those familiar with the work of the Committee for the revision of the translation of the New Testament will know what his service was in that direction. It was in these years that he began to devote himself more and more to what became the specialty of his life : I mean the study of the textual criticism of the New Testament. While his power was recognized in all the departments of his chosen field, in this he stood, in this country at least, con- fessedly without a rival. All American scholars rejoiced in the lustre which his scholarship shed upon this country. As he had no equal here, it is doubtful if he had a superior any- where. When I consider his life thus devoted more and more earnestly, and more and more completely, to the object of his choice, I think that we must pronounce it to have been a happy one. I know that there are many who feel that indeed it might have been a happy life ; but that this life among books is happiness that is reserved for those whose natures are of such a sort that they can enjoy no other ; that there are natures, unlike the robust men and women about them, who because they have no other pleasures can afford to live upon this nutriment. This was not so with Ezra Abbot. The world opened to him many inviting paths. 12 Although he lived so much alone, there were none more fond than he of meeting those who were congenial to him, none more fond than he of the sports of life. That buoyant gayety that marked his childhood accompanied him to the very closing days of his life. I like to think of his eager pleasure upon the play-ground, his accuracy of hand and eye, equal to that accuracy of mind which served him in his study. I like even to recall his playful shout of victory or defeat. The love of nature which he learned in his forest home never left him. No poet watched with more joy than he for the first opening of the buds in the spring-time. None rejoiced more than he to trace the wild flowers to their secret home in the forest. His heart was not only a gay and buoyant heart, it was a loving heart. No one took more joy in his friends than he. It was a great thing for a man to be a friend of Ezra Abbot ; for his affection surrounded him with a halo that, coming from such a source, one was almost tempted to think might be real. He was a generous man. It was not so much that he was generous with his money, he was generous with that which scholars value more than money : he was generous with his time. He was generous with that which many scholars value more than time : he was generous with his work. It mattered very little, apparently, under whose name his work appeared or under what form. His enthusiasm was for his work ; and, when that was done, he was satisfied. If he had any special pride that can be called individual, any personal interest in the triumph of his work, I think it was the suc- cess and triumph of American scholarship. In that, I think, was his great pride rather than in anything that he had done. He was devoted to his duty. There was something noble in the manner in which he felt his duty ; in the way in which his feeble form could force itself to his accustomed place in the lecture room, until his own conscience absolved him from further work. The world, as I have said, opened to him inviting paths 13 in many lines. If he chose to devote himself to study, it was not because that was his only passion : it was because it was an all-absorbing, conquering passion, not because that was all he had, but because that was what he prized more than anything else. And so I repeat that we may call his life a happy one. I do not mean to unveil the sweet and sacred enjoyments of home. I do not forget his last years of weakness and suffering ; but still, in spite of all, I think we may give to his life that crown which I have named ; for it was the absorbing, the successful, the com- plete surrender of a man to the object of his passion. The work to which Mr. Abbot devoted himself was one which involved many pleasures of its own. We need hardly speak of the joy of accuracy, of the joy which every intel- lectual power finds in its fulfilment. There was much in the joy of mastery, especially in a nature so modest as his own. It was very interesting to see the hesitation with which he would speak upon any subject, no matter how much he had studied it, if it lay outside of his chosen path ; and to see the confidence with which he would speak, in spite of any authority, concerning any subject which he had made his work. I think we must admit that he liked the joy of combat. I think he found a joy in a certain kind of controversy. I think he liked to puncture conceit ; but his only weapon was facts, with, perhaps, sometimes that deli- cate irony which he knew so well how to use. He rejoiced in the companionship which his chosen work brought him, for it brought him very close to men whose whole spirit as well as whose whole occupation were in sympathy with his. Biblical science, the science of the New Testament, is becoming indeed a science. The textual criticism of the New Testament is, perhaps, in a special way scientific : even the interpretation of the New Testament is approaching this position. The result of this is that men do not stand within the limits of their special sects, twisting texts of Scripture to suit their special needs : they work together upon a common foundation and toward a common end. 14 Thus, Ezra Abbot rejoiced to find himself working conge- nially with men of the widest difference in habits of thought and belief. He enjoyed success. In spite of his modesty, he enjoyed recognition. He enjoyed this recognition of his work, when it was from some source whose judgment could be accepted as judicial. He cared nothing for any cheaper praise ; but, when the " well done " came from one who was entitled to pronounce the verdict, then he received it with a childlike and honorable joy. But his work brought him, indeed, nobler companionship than any I have named. It must be remembered that his work was the study of the New Testament. This book he studied not from without alone. He did not lose himself in the technicalities of his theme. He was a man who was saturated through and through with the New Testament. He knew all about it that any man can know : of its out- ward history, of its meaning, and further than that he was saturated with its spirit. The more he studied these out- ward expressions, this outward history, the more he seemed to catch the inner spirit. For a man like him it was a joy to live thus in the companionship of his Master, to make it the business of his life to understand his words, to draw as near as he could into sympathy with him. Such was the joy of his life. And yet, as we look upon his work, we feel how incomplete it was. Indeed, when we consider his spirit such as I have described it, and consider his work as he has left it, I think none of us who knew him with any intimacy feel as though one had left us who had passed the prime of life. He was approaching rapidly three- score years and ten ; and yet such was his buoyancy, his enthusiasm, such the condition of his labor, that I think we all feel as we should toward one who was smitten down in the very prime of life. For it seemed as if his materials were just being brought into that shape in which they could be put to the most effective use, as if moments were coming in which the labor of these years would at last reach a climax of fruition. Of course, at any moment there would be much before him to be completed ; but it seems to those who knew him as if it were a young man taken in the very midst of the freshness of his youth, before his work was accomplished. There may be some who think that, after all, a busy life among men, a stirring life that influences men and women, may be the best life. As I think of this life of Ezra Abbot, I am reminded of some piece of sculpture that has been wrought secretly and quietly until at last it has been com- pleted ; and then the screens are -cast aside, and it stands out, calling forth the exultation and delight of men. So his life was wrought out in secret. How few of those living very near him knew much about him ! They saw him pass and repass, and that was all. But, at last, it is completed. It stands forth before the eyes of men. Those who have seen him thus for years wonder to see its beauty, wonder at the appreciation and applause which comes to it from every land in which the New Testament is studied. They find it was a life that has borne rich fruits in the results of its labors, rich fruits in the recognition that it received. And the saintly lesson that may come from such a modest, earnest, self-forgetful life as this may outweigh the influence which many active, stirring men may add to the life that is about them. MEMORIAL SERVICE. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. BY REV. AUGUSTUS WOODBURY. Brethren, We come to this service with feelings both of sorrow and gratitude. Love and friendship are bowed down by the burden of personal grief. The world of sacred letters that large community of scholars who are engaged in searching, with the aid of the Spirit, the deep things of God and divine truth is touched with the sense of a great bereavement. The Christian Church by whatever name the different branches of the great vine may be known mourns the death of a devout and reverent disciple, who added to his rare wealth of learning the priceless riches of the wisdom that is from above. This University, beloved by all of us who have been blessed by its fostering care, sadly strikes from its roll of living instructors the name of one at whose feet the wisest have been glad to sit. Yet are we sincerely grateful that God gave to our friend and brother those gifts which he used so faithfully for the benefit of his fellow-men. Such lives as his make the world sweet and clean, and life itself more worth living. Those who came into personal companionship with him, as friend or pupil or fellow-laborer in the service of the truth, must ever cherish his memory with a feeling of thanks- giving for their association with this gentle and kindly spirit ; while those who only knew him through the enjoy- ment of the fruits of his learning must rejoice that he has lived to cultivate the wide field in which he was engaged, and bring its products to maturity. Truly, an abundant 17 harvest, in the growth of which he assiduously and unself- ishly labored, glad to know that not himself but others were to reap ! It is my province this afternoon to say but a few simple words of introduction. The associate of Dr. Abbot and the successor to his vacant chair in the Divinity School will speak at length of the character and services of the deceased scholar. An older member of our association, with ready sympathy with the studies and pursuits of this servant of God, will give voice to the sentiments of his brethren in the ministry. It suffices for me to express the profound appreciation which you must feel with myself of the value of this life which has ceased its activity upon earth to renew it in a wider and higher sphere of being. I can well remember when Dr. Abbot began his career at Cambridge in connection with the University. He seemed then fully equipped for any duty, and then as ever after- wards he was most generous and helpful to all who asked his aid. A faithful student then and always, his ceaseless diligence bore its fruits in after years in the unquestioned accuracy of the scholar. Let no one cast reproach upon American learning in the highest walks of literature and life. It would be enough if we could mention no other honored names among us that Ezra Abbot has lived and wrought. We make no narrow claim, for the republic of letters has no boundaries. But we would set him 'forth as an illustrious example of that liberal culture of mind and heart which an American university can afford, and which, in the spirit of American institutions, finds in superior attainments the superior opportunity of benefiting man- kind. For Dr. Abbot did not sit down to enjoy his gath- ered wealth, like a miser gloating over the treasure he had hoarded, but freely opened his coffers, and with lavish pro- fusion poured out his gifts to all who were in need. The value of his contributions to sacred learning is beyond com- putation. We may well believe that it will be more and more appreciated as successive generations come to know how faithfully this modest, thorough, accurate scholar has done his work. i8 That the spirit of an earnest and sincere faith aided Dr. Abbot in his labor we can confidently be assured. For here was no mere textual critic, dealing with the letter that killeth. The text was the medium and instrument, the form and record. But through them breathed the spirit of a warm and fervent piety, a devotion to divine truth rarely equalled ; and by the light which thus shone from his pure and trustful heart the text and the record were illumined as though by the divine glory. A tender and unselfish love made his home the scene of a serene happiness, and the communications of friendship an unalloyed delight. It is not for us to intrude upon the privacy of domestic sorrow. But, with full and appreciative hearts, we can express our cordial sympathy with those who mourn the bereavement of their best affections. Can such a man die ? Has God no further employment for this well-furnished mind and reverent spirit ? To have lived thus would be a sufficient crown and satisfaction to any one's ambition. But it is yet only the preparation for higher duties and serener joys. Still, the spirit searches the truth and sounds the deeps. Going forward in the heavenly ways, it must still make its eternal progress, changing but from glory to glory in its growth to holiness. Immortality becomes clearer to our spiritual vision, and heaven is nearer and brighter to our hope. For if because of him 'the life below is of greater value, because of him also the life above draws us to itself with stronger force. " Nor blame I Death, because he bare The use of virtue out of earth : I know transplanted human worth Will bloom to profit, otherwhere." ADDRESS BY REV. A. P. PEABODY, D.D. ON the list of Professors of Sacred Literature our Cata- logue bears but three names, the duties of the office having been, for more than thirty years after the resignation of the second Professor, annexed to those of the Professor of Hebrew. The three names are those of Andrews Norton, John Gorham Palfrey, and Ezra Abbot. The first two were my teachers ; the second, while I was nominally his pastor for more than twenty years, was much more truly my pastor, to whom I looked as a guide and exemplar in all that apper- tains to the Christian life and character. They are both well worthy of our commemoration, while we pay our special tribute to him whose recent departure from us has made us all mourners. Andrews Norton was, in the literal and best sense of the word, a sceptic, a wary inlooker into whatever claimed to be believed, one who sought adequate evidence, and rejected whatever lacked credentials. At the side of his risen Lord, he would have played the part of Thomas ; but, once con- vinced, no power of earth or hell could have shaken his loyalty. He was not deficient in sentiment or in creative imagination ; but he suffered himself to feel only what he first knew, he built only with materials that he had thor- oughly tested. He was a stout iconoclast as to many old beliefs, but an earnest seeker of the truth ; and to him the truth that he recognized was as the present God. None who heard him could ever forget either his bold, unsparing excision of whatever bore not the unmistakable stamp of genuineness in the sacred record, or the profound reverence with which he approached and handled what he regarded as divine oracles. I never have been in a more solemn place than his lecture-room ; and, if a student uttered so much 20 as a flippant word of comment or question, his indignant rebuke made it certain that the offence would never be re- peated. His argument for the Genuineness of the Gospels has lost none of its validity ; for he bases his reasoning on the admissions of those who claim a late authorship for the Gospels, throws over the first post-apostolic century a mas- sive bridge of circumstantial evidence, and then quietly fills in the chasm by substantiating the intervening testimony which he has already shown to be superfluous. As for him- self, I doubt whether he had a firmer conviction of his own being than he had of the life eternal and of the divine mission of him in whom that life is revealed and made manifest. Dr. Palfrey was a more ready believer ; but an intensely tender, keen, and imperative conscience would not surfer him to leave any vital question unexamined or any essential testimony unverified. He gave the most hospitable recep- tion to inquiry, to diversity of opinion, to honest doubt ; welcomed new light from whatever quarter, and bestowed unresting diligence on his work equally as a learner and as a teacher. With him, too, study deepened conviction and strengthened faith. A closer follower of Christ I have never known, nor have I ever seen years of infirmity and suffering irradiated as his were by what seemed open vision of things divine and eternal. My intimacy with both these worthily eminent men impressed strongly upon my mind, first, the necessity of special fitnesses for the office which they bore, and, sec- ondly, the tendency of that office, fitly borne, to intensify the faith which it implies. In the preparation for the work, I includ'e not merely the scholarly aptitude, the linguistic training, the conversance with the Hebrew language and Scriptures and with cognate dialects, the lack of which would of course denote utter and absolute unfitness, but equally a profound sense of the transcendent worth of these sacred records as the world's manual of truth and duty. This last requisite has its intel- lectual no less than its spiritual significance. No man is 21 a fit critic of that with which he is not in full sympathy. Bentley was the most learned man of his time ; but he made a fool of himself by his attempted emendations of the Para- dise Lost, simply because he had no poetry in his soul, and no knowledge of words or metres could bring his mind into relation with Milton's. A great deal of (so-called) Biblical criticism has been, for like reason, equally learned and worthless. Reliance has been placed on the critical feeling, which is always deserving of confidence when the feeling has reference to that which is under criticism, but otherwise is mere conceit and caprice. If the New Testament is an outgrown record of doubtful origin and still more ques- tionable authenticity, on the same plane with the Alcoran, the Vedas, and the legends of Buddha, it is not worth a professorship, or even a place among the elective studies of a divinity school which shall train men to preach each his own gospel. It is only for its religious validity and worth that it claims its essential and foremost place in the educa- tion of religious teachers ; and, so long as it holds that place, it should have for its interpreters those who regard it with reverence and love. Even questions as to its external his- tory cannot be fairly considered by one not thus disposed. An ignorant and stupid mind will of course believe just what it wants to believe. But he whose mind is alert and active will not let his faith rest on a plausible uncertainty. He will try the witnesses, and all of them, with the most careful research and thorough diligence, and the more so because he is deeply concerned and profoundly interested, just as an able and acute lawyer would employ double caution as well as industry in determining the validity of the title to his own estate. I would have inquiry free and thorough ; but it is worthy of notice that Christianity and its sacred books are the only subjects of intellectual and scholarly activity on which it is ever imagined that a deep personal interest is unfavorable to free and thorough inquiry. The interpretation of the New Testament, on the part of equally honest, single-minded, and devout critics, may take 22 legitimately two unlike directions, and may make Christi- anity either distinctly evangelical or preponderatingly Paul- ine in its type. It is maintained, on the one hand, that we have in the words and life of Christ the whole of his relig- ion, that he did not intend to transmit as religious truth aught to which he did not give utterance or expression, and that St. Paul's seemingly technical phraseology is but the mode in which he shapes the simple verities of the gospel to meet the cavils and objections of the Judaizing converts, in the same way in which we, in combating a religious system of the present day, should use many terms which we should not employ in the non-controversial treat- ment of our own beliefs. I think that our friends of the Augustinian theology will readily admit that their specific dogmas are not derived immediately from Christ, and would never have taken shape but for St. Paul. But they, in their own full right and on grounds that will admit of clear exposition and not unreasonable defence, maintain that, in accordance with Christ's own purpose, Christianity has in St. Paul's Epistles a fuller development than in the Gospels, and that these Epistles, therefore, are to be interpreted, not as the application to peculiar cases and circumstances of the truth recorded as in Christ's own words, but as teaching, on the authority of an inspired apostle, dogmas which would not have been necessarily inferred from the Gospels, had they been the only canonical scriptures. Critics of either school are so kept prolongedly under the word-fall from the lips of him who spoke as never man spake beside, and when they turn from his express record find themselves in such intimate converse with the greatest of his followers, in whom was pre-eminently the mind of Christ, that the course of study begun with a believing heart ought of necessity to issue in an ever firmer faith and an ever more loving disci- pleship. Dr. Abbot's method and work as a critic will be more particularly described by the one man whom those who knew them both could not fail to designate and welcome as his successor. In the few words that I have yet to say, I 23 want to speak of the spirit which Dr. Abbot brought to his office and of what his office did for him. His very name suggests special aptitudes. St. Paul's doctrine of heredity, implied in his mention of Timothy's grandmother, Lois, and his mother, Eunice, has had its manifold illustration in some of our old New England fami- lies, of which the membership is almost a credential. The various branches of the Abbot family have been singularly fruitful in lovers of the divine word, in men whose lives have been an interpretation of the gospel, in scholarly men, too, and often in those whose marked ability and learning would have been commemorated, had they not been cast into the shade by the more exceeding lustre of their piety. Dr. Abbot's deep personal interest in the Christian Script- ures must have given a tone to his early life as a student. We have testimony to the religious trend of his college course, in which a mind like his can have slighted nothing, yet must undoubtedly have levied a large tribute for sacred uses from almost every part of the college curricu- lum. There is reason to suppose that, had he remained near his native home, he would have been none the less a Biblical student, though with a restricted range of materials and opportunities. But the Providence which shapes men's ends so often without their forethought led him to Prof. Norton at the very time when the professor's waning life and unfinished work made a skilled and earnest assistant a special godsend, while his influence was adapted to intensify the already prominent traits of mind and heart of his des- tined successor, the heir equally of his intrepid research and of his reverent spirit. In every department of knowledge, the learner must be the asker. One finds only what he seeks ; and one's moral qualities and spiritual habitudes, so far as they are distinct and strong, are interrogative. Alongside of that which can nourish and satisfy them, they are questionings and crav- ings. They can find in the gospel a vast deal that would escape the eye of a mere linguistic student. Dr. Abbot brought to the New Testament a spiritual nature which 2 4 yearned for what it found there, which could assimilate and convert into its own substance the bread from heaven there bestowed, and which could only increase its hunger by feeding it. He wanted for himself what he read in Christ's earthly record. There was in him a rare blending of the stronger and the finer elements of character. He had a vigorous grasp and an unrelaxing hold on opinions once formed, on conclusions fairly reached. He was not satisfied with belief where knowledge was attainable, and in whatever admitted of doubt his beliefs were brought into as close kindred with knowledge as the means of inquiry rendered possible. He had strong confidence in his own opinions, for the sufficient reason that he had omitted no means within his reach for forming and verifying them. But among these means, and no less availing than the critical apparatus at his full command, were those tentacles of heart and soul, which could not but lay hold on the great truths of religion which it is their very nature to apprehend, and which must of necessity fasten on all that is vital in the gospel, if it be indeed the record of a veritable theophany. The tenderness, gentleness, sweetness, simplicity, modesty, which made his life lovely, were cognitive faculties in his special department. They brought him into relation with Jesus Christ. They revealed to him else hidden depths of meaning in the Saviour's teachings and life. They multi- plied for him points of receptivity for the informing and pervading spirit of the Divine Master. These traits, which sometimes exist in so loose and fluent a form as to be feelings rather than principles, -were in him solidified, yet without being chilled, by rigid, conscientious integrity. His spiritual insight and sympathy might open meanings to him else unperceived ; but they could not warp his judgment or modify his decision, as to matters of evidence or interpretation. He could see in a text of Scripture what he would have preferred not to see ; and, in such a case, he would have reported precisely what he saw, without the slightest reserve or qualification. With his religious opinions as firmly fixed as those of any fallible 25 man ought to be, and with these opinions held as precious and cherished elements of his own interior life, they were never his reasons for the exegesis of a disputed text, still less for his preference of a disputed reading. This perfect impartiality was of peculiar worth in the textual criticism of the New Testament, which may be re- garded as his specialty. It may be safely said that, in all his printed discussions of the various readings of disputed texts, it would be impossible to find an instance in which his theological predilections have been suffered to affect the statement of evidence as derived from manuscripts, ver- sions, and quotations, or in which one who had reached a different conclusion from his could impeach his perfect fair- ness in dealing with the authorities on which the decision rests. There were yet other traits, not expressly spiritual, which bore their part in fitting him for his work. Though long practice perfected the gift, nature must have endowed him with a singularly clear and keen mental vision. Not every mind not every able and vigorous mind can train itself as his mind was trained to trace minute distinctions, to dis- criminate where differences are almost infinitesimal, to mark the slightest deviation from the equipoise of balanced testimonies or arguments. There are eyes of the under- standing that are natively microscopic, while none the less telescopic. Such eyes the Biblical critic needs, conversant as he ought to be equally with minutiae which, except in the sacred records, would be insignificant, and with truths broad and vast as the universe. I cannot but trace also an aptness for Dr. Abbot's work in the native vein of wit and humor, which cropped out so gladsomely in his rare and brief seasons of relaxation. Wit and wisdom are close of kin. Wit depends on the quick and delicate perception of likenesses and differences between words and their respective meanings. It is precisely the same faculty in its more serious exercise that constitutes the acumen, skill, divination of the accomplished critic ; and the coincidence of these two phases the mirthful and 26 the grave of the same faculty, is on record in not a few remarkable instances, including even that grim Coryphaeus of Apocalyptic and prophetic interpretation, Joseph Mede, and that sternest of moralists, John Foster. Dr. Abbot's was a place of privilege no less than of ser- vice. It was good for him to be thus intimately conversant with the Divine Humanity whose record was at once his work and his joy. As we look back upon his life, we see that he grew constantly into the image so familiar to his study and contemplation. His virtues were those of the Beatitudes. In his lowliness of spirit, he had no ambition to shine; yet his light shone far, because it was so pure and bright that it could not be hidden. While he was the cynosure of admiring love for those in his nearer circle, none came within the sphere of his influence who did not feel in him the irresistibly attractive power of an unselfish soul, consecrated to the service of God and man. His light shines on, none the less bright now that he has gone, and that we can number up the tokens of benignity, kind- ness, and helpfulness, strown all along his life-way, which he never made known, but which are recalled at this time in cumulative memory and with loving gratitude. When we consider his constant professional engagements, his extended correspondence, the large amount of his own finished work, it gives us a new sense of the elasticity of time to find how many there were who were enriched by his painstaking generosity, enabled through his aid to ren- der valuable contributions to the cause of sacred literature, indebted to him for materials and for their efficient use, dependent on him for the completeness, correction, revision of what, but for him, would have failed in great part of its destined purpose, services for which there was no earthly inducement, often not even due recognition, but rendefed only in the Master's name and in the Master's spirit. Then, too, we cannot but remember the burden of fre- quent and long bodily infirmity, sustained with more than submission, with a cheerful courage that kept the spirit strong and brave, kind and helpful, too, under the close im- 27 pending shadow of death, the outward man perishing while the inward man was renewed day by day. Such a body, wan, wasted, lingering so long on the very brink of the grave; such a soul, full of light and love and peace, what so sure pledge can we have this side of heaven of those words of the Lord, " He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" ? ADDRESS. BY PROF. JOSEPH HENRY THAYER, D.D. THE embarrassment besetting any one presuming to speak publicly in commendation of a man whose modesty and reserve were extreme is augmented on the present occasion by the fact that he has already been commemorated, ten- derly and truthfully, by both tongue and pen. Not that the last word about Ezra Abbot has been spoken : admiration for scholarship and love for guileless excellence must per- ish before that time comes to us who knew him ; but, when summoned by those who did not enjoy this privilege to tell them what it was which entitles this feeble and secluded scholar to an exalted place among great men, we are half- disconcerted by the summons for the moment. There are America'n authors whose books can be reckoned up by the score, and their circulation by scores of thousands of cop- ies. The largest work which Dr. Abbot wrote is an essay rather than a treatise, a monograph barely exceeding one hundred pages, known and prized by few persons except scholars. There are American teachers whose quickening words are heard annually by hundreds that spread their fame through the length and breadth of the land. Prof. Abbot spoke year after year to less than a score of pupils. There are American scholars in whom wealth of learning is so wedded to skill in public address that the great multi- tude confess the enchantment of their words. Dr. Abbot probably never made an unpremeditated public speech in his life, and was physically incapable of making himself easily heard in a crowded assembly for half an hour. Yet the eloquent speaker, the successful teacher, the voluminous writer appear but as ordinary men by the side of the excep- tional gifts and achievements of this retired, erudite, labori- ous, disinterested Christian scholar. 2 9 The glimpses given us of his childhood disclose in a rudi- mentary stage many of those qualities which distinguished his mature years, but his precocity seems to have been quite free from the pertness which generally renders youthful prod- igies repulsive. At nineteen months, he knew his letters ; and, when in church the usual sedative of a book was given him, he broke out in self-forgetful exclamations of joy at some success in deciphering. At five, he is promoted into the first class in reading, although, to equalize his diminu- tiveness with the average stature, he is required to stand upon the bench. At seven, he has finished his arithmetic, and gained the name of being wonderfully fond of books. He is found reading Rollin's Ancient History, and declares it to be very interesting, a pleasant incident for lovers of Rollin to come upon. Under the primitive regulations of the frontier school which he attended, the pupils were left to set their own les- sons, making them longer or shorter as ability or pleasure dictated. On one occasion, he instigated a bright compan- ion to offer the whole of "old Murray" at a recitation. Recitations of this sort taxed the power of the teacher more than that of his pupil. The hearing of them was accordingly delegated to some of the older scholars. Once, having asked the miss that sat next him how to spell " mosquito!' and been answered by the nimble-witted little ignoramus, "You can spell it a dozen ways," our infant philologer sets himself to work and tabulates just twelve different spellings with their several vouchers. In these early days, too, he gets access to Shakspere and Scott, and finds them more entertaining than play. But he is not a bit priggish : enters into all the childish games with all a child's glee ; can run faster than any other boy in the school except one ; is an expert at catching trout ; a capital story-teller, and such good company generally as to prompt the cousin, at whose father's house he was accustomed to stay when the severity of the winter in Maine forbade him to take his three-mile walk to his home, to pray for rough weather. Once, when the two take refuge under a bridge from a 30 thunder-shower, he holds forth upon electricity, and con- cludes his lecture with the consolatory assurance that, if they are struck and not killed, but only stunned, they will revive on falling into the water. In the routine of farm-life, he generally reads while he rides his loaded horse to and from the mill ; yet he is enter- prising in agriculture, fond of experiment, dissatisfied with himself unless he accomplishes as much as his more robust and less studious associates. Having exhausted the scanty resources for getting an education which the vicinity of his home affords, he is sent to continue his studies with his mother's brother, the Rev. Abiel Abbot, of Peterboro. The reverend gentleman, like all the lad's other teachers, is so impressed with his " won- derful accuracy of knowledge " and his eagerness for books that he adds his advice to that of the rest, and induces the father to surrender his cherished hope of having his son follow his own calling, and to consent to his entering Phil- lips Exeter Academy and preparing for college. His fellow- students at Bowdoin soon recognized his superiority, and predicted for him the distinction as a scholar which he afterwards gained. A living instructor recalls the admi- ration stirred in him as the young student (in the familiar- ity of the academic life of .those days) put to him a casual question about a passage in Livy, and thus gave him the sight of a text-book the margin of which was crowded with scholarly annotations in a chirography like copperplate. His room-mate, still surviving, gives an interesting account of the avocations of the young recluse, for such the average, easy-going collegian esteemed him : his botanical strolls of a Saturday afternoon through the fields and woods ; his volun- tary excursions, too, into fields of literature not traversed by the college curriculum. The De Officiis is one of the books these unfledged critics read and annotate together, and then exchange their copies ; and, in the repeated discussions they hold respecting the accuracy of the renderings in our English New Testament, it is interesting to learn that the late Prof. Henry B. Smith, then a tutor at Bowdoin and after- wards associated with Dr. Abbot although, alas ! only in name upon the American Board of Revisers, is frequently called in as umpire. But biographical details belonging to his subsequent ca- reer as a teacher, a librarian, a professor, must be passed over, that I may not weary your patience in speaking of his work as a Biblical scholar. For his early interest in the sacred Scriptures, he seems to have been mainly indebted to his mother, a woman of an active mind, who followed keenly the discussion of the theological questions which stirred New England thought in those days, whose little collection of works on controver- sial divinity is believed to have shaped the doctrinal prefer- ences of her son, and whose personal thirst for knowledge at first hand may be inferred from the fact that in her young maternal life cut off at the end of seven years she learned Greek, that she might read for herself the writings of the apostles in their vernacular. No wonder the son of such a mother used to spend the intermission between the Sunday services in studying his Greek Testament ; used to translate from the original, as he conducted the devotional meetings in college ; read the same precious book in after years as he sat in his pew awaiting the opening of public worship ; travelled with a copy of it in his pocket ; could quote it almost at pleasure, and refer an inquirer often to the very chapter and verse where a desired passage was to be found. Dr. Abbot's learning in all its vastness centred in, radiated from, was tributary to the Sacred Record. Com- mend me to the man of one book, especially if that be the Book of books ! When Dr. Abbot began to write on textual subjects, the time was not in all respects propitious. The curiosity which sacred criticism had aroused in its earlier stages had mainly died away. Its results, as familiarized to clerical minds by the current reprints of Griesbach's text, had elicited the confession on all hands that, as respects the substance of our sacred records, there is little to choose between the latest 32 printed copy and the oldest manuscript exemplars. The peculiarities of the latter, therefore, were rendered by this admission more and more matters of antiquarian interest. The average student cared little about them. By the unin- structed public, on the other hand, they were regarded with disfavor. For, to the ordinary Christian believer, his Eng- lish Bible was the final authority. Its language was ac- cepted, exactly as it stood, with unquestioning deference. Every jot and tittle of its text carried to his mind the au- thority of a u Thus saith the Lord." Its very words could hardly have been more sacred had they been taken down as they fell from the lips of our Lord and his apostles, and printed to borrow the phrase of Bentley respecting the Greek text of Stephens by an angel acting as compositor. Indeed, little more than twenty-five years have yet elapsed since, as will be remembered, our National Bible Society after having devoted three years and a half, by a committee under the supervision of such judicious Biblical scholars as Prof. Edward Robinson and Samuel H. Turner, to rid- ding our current English Bibles of the twenty-four thousand or more variations, chiefly of a typographical nature, which had crept into them found itself compelled to revoke its action, under clamoring charges of " tinkering up " the sacred text and "debasing the standard." And the prevalent senti- ment of the times in the scholarly world, even, may be judged of from the nai'vete of the statement of Alford, who, in publishing the first edition of his Greek Testament, con- fesses that he gives only a "provisional text, the one best suited to the intended use of his edition under present cir- cumstances "; one "which may be regarded as an experi- ment how far the public mind in England may be disposed to receive even the first and plainest results of the now ad- vanced state of textual criticism." In New England, to be sure, the ignorance on textual subjects was less dense; but its jealousy was intensified by the circumstance that theological feeling ran high, and that the passages of special interest to the textual critic were the battle-ground of the champions of the rival doctrinal sys- 33 terns then dividing the community. The question of the truth or falsity of Orthodoxy seemed, to the average dis- putant of those days, to turn on the number of unequivocal proof-texts, more or less, that could be brought forward on the one side or the other. Anything which called in question the validity of a passage for use as an orthodox argument was looked on with suspicion and dislike. The very names of Wetstein, Griesbach, and the rest became odious. Proba- bly not a few persons of that day supposed them to be the names of men who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and repudiated the "faith once delivered to the saints." Any one interested in exposing the dubiousness of a doctrinal read- ing hitherto accredited was suspected of covert hostility or partisanship, as though he created the facts which he made known. Such suspicions Dr. Abbot took no pains to shun. The first results of any considerable magnitude of his critical studies were given to the world in connection with the publications of Prof. Norton, confessedly one of the fore- most and most inflexible advocates of what was known as "liberal Christianity," little as he liked the name of " Unitarian." Appended to the first volume of Mr. Norton's Translation of the Gospels, with Notes, published (in 2 vols., 8vo. in 1855) under the editorial supervision of the author's son and Dr. Abbot, is an extended Table prepared by the latter, exhibiting the various readings adopted in that translation in preference to those followed in the Common Version ; and, throughout the volume of notes, there are scattered evidences of his scholarly vigilance which abun- dantly warrant the commendation passed by a contemporary who professed to "know something of the diligent and con- scientious pains spent by the editors, by day and by night, for many months in the work." Similar care was expended by him upon the second edition of Norton's Statement of Reasons for not believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, a book which appeared the next year, equipped with copious indexes prepared by Dr. Abbot, and .enlarged with many references and notes from his hand, more especially one 34 extending to nearly fifty closely printed pages, and devoted to a consideration of the various readings in certain pas- sages supposed to have a bearing on the doctrine of the Trinity. In the animated discussions, also, which a few years later engaged the religious journals of this part of the State over the sermon on the Trinity preached by one who then held the Plummer Professorship in our Univer- sity, Dr. Abbot took part on the Unitarian side ; restricting himself, however, in the main to matters of history and Biblical interpretation. About this same time, he reprinted and furnished with notes and an appendix Orme's Memoir of the Controversy respecting the Three Heavenly Witnesses. More than once, too, 'if I mistake not, in the ten or twelve years intervening between this time and the first assembling of the American Committee for the Revision of our English Bible, he participated, through the columns of the New York Independent and perhaps of other journals, in doctrinal controversy involving some point of textual or patristic learning.* Naturally enough, therefore, when the spirit of the times is considered, together with the sharpness and skill which characterized our friend as a disputant, his name may have passed, with many who had no personal knowledge of him, as that of a wary and learned yet partisan and pugnacious disputant.f If such was the man any members of the revising body or, I may add, any other Christian scholars at any time expected to meet in Dr. Abbot, there was in store for them a most agreeable disappointment. His physical character- istics, even, his slight frame, mild eye, tenuous voice, his quietness of manner, his intellectual courtesy, all the more conspicuous because of his occasional absorbed forgetful- ness of some petty punctilio of conventional etiquette, his deferential attention to what others might say, his delicate * See Appendix, List of Publications. t A similar misjudgment, arising from his theological associations, seems to have biassed Dr. Tregelles's estimate of his exhibition of authorities concerning the text in John i., 18: see Home's Introduction, etc., nth ed., vol. iv. (Introduction to the New Testament, edited by S. Prideaux Tregelles), p. 780, seq. , note, and compare Dr. Abbot's re-examination of the passage in the Bibliotheca Sacra for October, 1861, pp. 840-872. or THE UN1VER8IT 35 i ! 7 Y I avoidance of everything offensive in his manner of opposing them and in the statement of his own views, above all his conspicuous desire to bring out the whole truth on a point of controversy, whether the disclosure made for or against his own position, soon convinced all that they were asso- ciating with a model Christian scholar. The discussions around the revision table naturally involved in due course the passages which had played a prominent part in the Unitarian controversy. But there, as elsewhere, debate moved on such a level as to call out no suggestion of a disputant's personal faith ; while so thorough was Dr. Abbot's mastery of critical details, so impartial his method of handling them, that by common consent he was once and again requested to give the evidence, sustaining a conclusion reached by the company, its form for trans- mission to the revisers across the ocean. Minute details are evidently out of place here. Persons interested in such discussions will find themselves rewarded by examining his essays on the much controverted texts alluded to, as they have been given to the public in the pages of the Bibliotheca Sacra, the Unitarian Review, the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, and the Appendix to Norton's Statement of Reasons, already mentioned. His more striking characteristics, however, as a critic may be briefly specified. Foremost among them stands a quality which may, per- haps, be called originality, originality not in the sense of inventiveness, a sense in which it has but a very limited or doubtful application to a science busied mainly with the collection and presentation of evidence, but originality as opposed to the practice of borrowing knowledge at second- hand. He brought forward no hearsay testimony, but held a personal interview with every witness he summoned, heard and sifted his story in private before adducing it as evidence. It may surprise some persons that this practice should be mentioned as an especial merit : it is so obviously the dic- tate of honesty that its neglect might seem to savor of inveracity. But so numerous, are the testimonies, and rec- 36 ondite and cumbersome and difficult of access to the average scholar and dubious of interpretation often when found, that the practice of taking the statements respecting a text or a Father, which are given by the laborious collectors from Mill to Tischendorf, has become far more common than it is excusable. ,Dr. Abbot's practice was the reverse. He used not the eyes of others but his own. Even in his last illness, he politely declined a friend's offer to ascertain for him the evidence of a certain Father respecting a passage in debate, and requested that the book be brought him from the library. As might be anticipated, his next characteristic was accuracy. Indeed, that accuracy which scholars came to count upon in everything bearing his name was largely secured by this practice of going to the primary authorities for himself. Editors and critics, through the decades, have blindly copied one another, and been liberally aided by the inadvertence and ignorance or what is quite as dangerous the fancied wisdom of the printers, till the number of errors respecting the authorities professedly cited is almost incredible. Dr. Abbot's labors contributed nothing to mul- tiply, little or nothing, I believe, to perpetuate on the con- trary, very much to expose and correct these errors. In printing an article of importance, it was his practice to test the type-setter's accuracy, not by his manuscript, but by re-verification. The services rendered by Dr. Abbot in correcting oversights in the work of others, as well as by avoiding the like in his own, have been many and great, and, it gives me pleasure to add after an inspection of his copy of Scrivener's Introduction, are not, as I believe, wholly ended. A third excellence conspicuous in Dr. Abbot's work as a critic is its thoroughness. His research was almost unlimited. It was his standing maxim to "go to the bottom " of a sub- ject. Any confusion or conflict of testimony made and kept him uneasy till he had cleared it up. Hours, days, yes, the leisure sometimes of weeks, has he spent in settling a claim to priority, the accuracy of a reference, the meaning of an 37 abbreviation, even the correct spelling of a name. The hope of untying some critical knot would kindle his zeal to a white heat. The patience of his exploration, its in- genuity, its fertility, its quickness in detecting and adroit- ness in pursuing any clew, were marvellous ; and the fresh spontaneousness of his joy at discovery as contagious as it was charming. A dubious reading was to him a summons to study. A question which "baffled him at the moment was not dismissed, but kept standing. He sought infor- mation indefatigably. More than once, when the libraries of this country have failed him, has he sent to Europe for some needed book. More than once has he availed himself of the courtesy of foreign librarians and scholars in shedding light on some obscurity. Outstanding requests of the sort, to be complied with as opportunity may offer, are probably still in the hands of other explorers besides the enterprising expert with whom it was his pleasure to labor in preparing the Prolegomena to Tischendorf s Greek Testament. This thoroughness of research resulted in a corresponding affluence of treatment. Not only does he do clean work within the precise field of discussion, taking his reader with him through every nook and hollow and thicket wherever anything adverse may by possibility be thought to lurk, but he gives him incidentally and on the way a deal of informa- tion about matters respecting which perhaps he has first stirred his interest. Hence, it comes to pass that his essays are replete with erudition, and often gladden a scholar by giving him, packed away in a foot-note, results for which he has long sought. Again, Prof. Abbot's critical work is characterized by good judgment. He avoided the indiscriminateness which often mars the results of hasty or one-sided investigators. He was well aware of the many and delicate considerations to be taken into account in making up a wise decision con- cerning certain kinds of critical evidence. What weight, for instance, is the supposed testimony of a certain Father entitled to in a given case ? To answer the question, the genuineness of the works attributed to him must be deter- 38 mined, the trustworthiness of their extant text, the validity of apparent quotations or allusions involving the passage in question when tested by the context or other parts of his writings, his general habit in quoting Scripture, his personal history and characteristics, his known opinions, and his rela- tions to the doctrinal disputes and ecclesiastical parties of his day. The ability to reach a correct decision on a ques- tion involving many particulars of this sort is something quite other than the ability to translate ancient tongues and ransack indexes. Dr. Abbot's friends may note with satis- faction that his expressed opinions respecting the character of the Speculum falsely ascribed to Augustine, the ungen- uineness of the homilies on the Acts which bear the name of Chrysostom, the untrustworthiness of Primasius as a supposed representative of the Old Latin version, and other points, are becoming the accepted opinions with critical scholars. But, quite independent of any particular opinions he may have expressed, there is a general calmness and dis- creetness and equipoise characterizing his discussions, which mark him as a man of singularly well-balanced judgment. Once more and above all, Prof. Abbot as a critic exhibits conspicuous candor. With all his caution, it is plain to every reader that he is a man of positive opinions, which he does not mean to disguise. But, in the advocacy of them, he evidently studies to be scrupulously fair. He is not engaged in making out a case. He does not write like a man who has made up his mind in advance what conclu- sion he will reach, and is merely engaged in looking up facts to support it. History with him is not dogmatics in disguise. Nor does he so far play the partisan as to leave the mention of counter-evidence to the advocates of the other side. When he searches an author for evidence affecting a disputed reading, he gives us all the evidence he finds. If his opponent is thereby enriched, he rejoices with the rejoicer. He makes it a matter of religion to. avoid everything like approximation to that suppression of the truth which is only falsehood in disguise. Well do I re- member his sad shake of the head when a certain prominent 39 disputant, on being proved to have misplaced his confidence in authorities, kept silence instead of making frank con- fession. And after reading a recent over-confident defence of the received text in I. Tim. iii., 16, he exclaimed, "I will demolish his argument ; but I must first send him three or four witnesses in his favor, which he has overlooked." In short, for a happy union of all the qualities which go to make up a masterly textual critic, this country certainly never furnished his equal ; and it is doubtful whether the world has seen his superior. When his opportunities and the resources at his command are considered, his achieve- ments are surprising. By the aid of the printed editions only of the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, together with those other generally accessible helps which are all our western world can command, he was able to expose the untenableness of the arguments of a foreign critic, who, speaking from actual inspection of both documents, contro- verted the opinion of Tischendorf and other palaeographers respecting the relative age of the two. In the same essay, too, he makes known several minor palaeographic facts, which, it is believed, had previously escaped notice. And the quality of his work may be judged of from the estimate put upon a sample of it by Prof. Hort, unquestionably the most acute and learned critic of England. In the preface to the Dissertation which the latter published in 1876 on the reading "only begotten God" in John i., 18, a disser- tation, by the way, which advocates the opposite conclusion from that defended by Dr. Abbot, he says, " Only once has the evidence been discussed with anything like adequate care and precision ; namely, in a valuable article contributed by Prof. Ezra Abbot to the American Bibliotheca Sacra of October, 1861." That discussion Dr. Abbot supplemented at considerable length, in 1875, in connection with the work of revision ; and, although the reading "God " still receives the preference of such critics as Tregelles and Westcott and Hort in England, Harnack and Weiss in Germany, there is reason to believe Prof. Abbot's arguments to have had influence in leading Tischendorf to return to the reading 40 "Son," after having adopted the other in one form of his text ; while the revisers as a body on both sides of the water decided, as you know, to let our current English version here remain unchanged. The independence and thoroughness of his investigations, the reiterated consider- ation he gave his problem before publishing the solution which seemed to him satisfactory, rendered him tenacious of his conclusions. That they might not commend them- selves at sight to the majority even of students did not disturb him. But when an expert, by independent study, reached an opposite result, as, for example, in the case just mentioned, he at once reopened for himself the problem and set on foot researches with a view to settle the obscure or variable factors in the evidence, that, if possible, he might win for his argument the only satisfac- tory token of conclusiveness ; namely, the conversion of him that is of the contrary part. But it is of the character of his work rather than of his conclusions and their fate that I would speak. The perusal of one of his thorough and impartial discussions stirs within the reader an impatient craving for more work from him of the same sort. It is not probable that any new manu- script evidence will come to light of such a nature as to change in any important passage the concurrent decision of critics of the school of Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort. It would be an immense benefaction, therefore, if a student could have a complete and trustworthy statement of the present state of the facts in reference to passages still under debate. Such^i impartial and exhaustive ex- hibition, even when it did not go far toward closing the discussion, would be invaluable as a basis for further study. A service of this sort, it is known possibly to some of you, Dr. Abbot had hoped to render in a series of essays to be appended to a manual edition of the Greek text. But the execution of the project was indefinitely postponed, partly on account of the engrossing character of the work contrib- uted by him to the Prolegomena of Tischendorf's larger edition, and partly in consequence of the appearance of 41 Westcott and Hort's text and the turn which that has given, for the time to critical discussion. In what is known as the department of " Higher Criti- cism," Dr. Abbot published but a single essay, one, but a lion. It was originally read, in part, at a public meeting of the " Ministers' Institute," held in Providence, R.I., in October, 1879, and is devoted to discussing "a few important points " only, in the external evidences for the genuineness of the Gospel ascribed to John. The selection of the points and the handling of them were largely governed by the anonymous work entitled Supernatural Religion, which had reached a seventh edition that year. A review of the discussion cannot be given here. Suffice it to say that for learning, for caution, for candor, and I am ready to add for conclusiveness, it is unsurpassed by anything which the protracted controversy over the Fourth Gospel has produced on either side of the water. As respects its main object, it is, I think, as decisive a piece of reasoning as Baur's famous essay to prove the unity of the Gospel. That object is not to show that Justin held the "modern Orthodox faith " respecting the "inspired authority" of the Gospel, strange misconception, but to throw some light upon the question whether the apostolical memoirs to which Justin Martyr appeals about the middle of the second century were or were not our four Gospels. "To throw some light" upon it, I say, not to discuss it fully, for even that would require a volume, as Dr. Abbot states, but to show the falsity of the reasonings by which the author of Supernatural Religion and those who agree with him attempt to uphold the contrary opinion. The subject of Justin's quo- tations has already been ably discussed by Norton, Semisch, Westcott, Drummond, and others ; but, for lucidity and neatness of execution, Dr. Abbot's essay has never been surpassed, while, for learned research, it makes a distinct addition to the work of his predecessors. And the argument throughout is characterized by a clear- headed good sense, which, alas ! is sometimes missed in 42 productions exhibiting no mean learning. Nothing can well be more felicitous or conclusive than the way in which after a detailed exposition of the fallacy of the common assumption that, because Justin's quotation of our Lord's words respecting the new birth differs from the exact language as given in John it cannot have been derived from that Gospel he clinches his argument by adducing nine quotations of the passage by Jeremy Taylor, which exemplify all the peculiarities of variation from the common text on which the writers of the Tubingen school have laid such stress, and which, by parity of reasoning, prove that the eminent English divine must have used many apocryphal Gospels. The essay was republished, I believe, in England ; and the commendation it called forth from specialists was abun- dant and emphatic. Prof. Mangold of Bonn, for instance, although he stands openly among those who oppose the genuineness of the Gospel, says, in a review of Dr. Abbot's essay,* "Abbot has accomplished (in the reviewer's opinion) the main task of his (second) inquiry. That Justin knew and used the Fourth Gospel is established ; also, that he employed it as being in his view a genuine writing of the apostle John." . . . Let me quote a few additional sentences from another notice of the essay by a German professor (Beweis des Glaubens for 1881, p. 94 seq.). The reviewer remarks : " The unfounded, crude, and hasty character of his opponent's representations is triumphantly exposed, with a rare wealth of patristic learning and an expert's familiarity with the recent literature. The manner in which he demonstrates, both from the ecclesiastical and the gnostic writers of the second century, that the genuineness of John's Gospel is universally acknowledged, is established beyond contra- diction in the conviction of the Church of that period, has an effect quite overpowering." In relation to Justin's quo- tation, the essay is declared to " give evidence of remarkable acuteness and a thoroughly sound judgment " ; and the *See Getting isc he gelehrte Anzeigen (Stiick i, 2, p. 48), January, 1881. 43 notice closes with the hope that this " robust scholarship may give birth to many other offspring, characterized by the like fulness of maturity and consummate beauty of form." Dr. Abbot knew no man knew better that the last word in the debate respecting the genuineness of this Gospel has not yet been spoken. Indeed, he says : " To treat the historical evidence with any thoroughness would require a volume ; to discuss the internal character of the Gospel in its bearings on the question of its genuineness and historical value, would require a much larger one." Of the first volume, he has given us but a fragment ; of the second, he has left, I am sorry to believe, not a line. Not to dwell upon other services rendered by him to the cause of Biblical criticism, as in the revision and com- pletion of Hudson's Concordance, and in the assistance given to the authors of Mitchell's Critical Handbook and Schaff's Companion, etc. (works which owe a large part of their fulness and accuracy in the treatment of the history of the New Testament text to his vigilant supervision), special mention must be made of the fact that his chief labor for years past has been expended on that monumental work the first half of which is now receiving the enthusiastic welcome of scholars, the Prolegomena, namely, to the eighth edition of Tischendorf's larger Greek Testament. So delicate was the task of preparing it, and so scanty the materials for the purpose left by Prof. Tischendorf at his death, that for a year and a half his literary executors endeavored in vain to find some German scholar at once competent and willing to undertake the work. At length, an adventurous young American studying in Leipzig was persuaded to take charge of the enterprise, emboldened thereto by the promised assistance of Dr. Abbot, who had previously declined the honor of acting as primary. The consummate industry and skill exhibited in the portion just published have caused him to be created a Licentiate of Theology for honor ; and to receive the unusual, if not quite unprecedented, distinction, for a native of this country, of 44 having his name enrolled among the teaching staff of the University of Leipzig. Yet this indefatigable and successful young scholar would derive as much pleasure as any of us from the acknowledgment that no small part of the surpassing excellence of the work is due to the departed one, whose name he has justly associated with his own upon its title-page. Every page of it passed under his critical eye, both in manuscript and in proof. During the last seven years of his life, he gave to it, and to the portion yet to be published, unstinted labor. For it all he neither received nor desired compensation. Nay, out of his limited private resources, he contributed hundreds of dollars toward defraying the frugal expenses of his fellow-laborer; and he devoted almost his last hours to preparing and sending out as he had done once and again before an appeal to the friends of sacred literature for funds to enable Dr. Gregory, who probably has a better acquaintance with New Testament palaeography than any other man living, by personally inspecting the manuscripts of Europe and the East, to give that account of th.e contents and value of the hundreds of minor authorities which the labors of all his predecessors have failed to furnish and which the students of New Testament criticism are impatient to receive. More helpful, to the majority of students, probably, than Prof. Abbot's critical labors, were his bibliographical. His first publication of this class, however, printed more than thirty years ago (1853), was not intended for general circulation. It is a volume of less than two hundred and fifty octavo pages, containing a catalogue of the Library (which consisted at that time of about sixteen hundred volumes) belonging to the High School of this city, with which school, when he began to prepare the work, he was connected as a teacher. It is 'primarily a subject-catalogue, the subjects being distributed, according to their philo- sophical or scientific relations, into thirty-one classes, several of which have in turn numerous subdivisions, and in all of which the entries are alphabetical. The preface gives 45 evidence that the delicate and complicated subject of cata- loguing, so far as it was at that time understood, had been thoroughly studied by him. It was no mechanical list of titles which he prepared ; but he was governed in his work by an educative aim, which the very moderate size of the collection enabled him to carry out, even as the inexperience of those for whom the catalogue was prepared made it of chief moment. "It is hoped," he remarks, "that the use of a classed catalogue may promote the formation of those habits of investigation and research which are essential to success in the pursuit of truth. . . . When the curiosity of the student is excited, it is most desirable that he should have every facility for pursuing the inquiries to which he is led, that he may thus be encouraged to examine and think for himself." It is not difficult for one who inspects this thorough piece of work to trace many features of the system which, some five years later, Dr. Abbot devised for our University Library (to the staff of which he had in the interim been added), and which, by the introduction into the card cata- logue of an ingenious combination of the classed or scientific and the alphabetical arrangement, "gave," as an adept has said, " to Harvard College Library the first plan ever made for a complete alphabetical catalogue." * His next publication in this department was a work of far more general and permanent interest. It appeared at first (in 1864)! as an appendix to Mr. Alger's History of the Doctrine of the Future Life, and was subsequently issued separately. It is a classified and chronological Catalogue of Works relating to the Nature, Origin, and Destiny of the Soul, provided with notes and alphabetical indexes : two appendixes give titles of the more remarkable works relating to Modern Spiritualism and to the Souls of Brutes. * Mr. Cutter, in the Report of the Bureau of Education, on the " Public Libraries in the United States," p. 540. tDr. Abbot's Preface is dated Jan. i, 1862, but Mr. Alger's book is believed to have been printed and ready for publication in January, 1859. It is reviewed at length and the bibliog- raphy also ! in the Christian Examiner for January, 1861. There is reason to fear, too, that in giving the year 1864 upon the title-page, the publishers allowed themselves to follow the pernicious practice of post-dating a book which was actually put on sale two or three months earlier, if we may judge from the notices of it to be found in the journals for November and December of the preceding year. 4 6 The preparation of it was a task which he at first supposed he could despatch "in three or four months," but which in the end occupied more than three years. In the prosecution of it, he explored not only the various public and several private libraries of this vicinity, but spent a number of days at the Astor Library in New York, and even ransacked the collection of a leading antiquarian bookseller, who had for many years made a specialty of works on the immortality of the soul. And deeming it, as usual, of great importance to speak as far as possible from actual inspection of the works noted, he sent to Europe for several of special rarity and value, as he did when engaged in another biblio- graphical labor soon to be mentioned. Some idea of the extent of this catalogue may be gained from the fact that the most comprehensive work of the kind previously extant namely, the Bibliotheca Psychologica pub- lished in 1845 by the distinguished bibliographer, Grasse contains only about ten hundred and twenty-five of the more than five thousand three hundred titles given by Dr. Abbot. And the scrupulous pains expended on it is as noticeable as its compass. The very orthography and punctuation no less than the language of the titles have been preserved ; and, besides the place and date of publication, we have given to us the size of the book, the standing of its author, the date at which he flourished, and the place where his work may now be consulted, so far as the contents of ten Ameri- can collections and two English libraries (the Bodleian and the British Museum) are concerned. But most interesting of all are the brief notes, to be found on every page, and containing choice bits of pertinent bibliographical, literary, religious, and historical knowledge. The book in short affords a succinct history of opinion on the important topic to which it relates, and is indispensable to one who wishes to study that subject in any of its bearings. A man so thoroughly versed in such matters as Mr. Allibone, after having read it through from the first title to the last, pronounced it "one of the marvels of bibliography." And the characteristics of the author, as disclosed by it, almost 47 justify the description of him given by a reviewer at the time as "a gentleman of miraculous perseverance, astute- ness, and accuracy" (Christian Examiner for 1861, page 27). Dr. Abbot's third great bibliographical labor, though from its nature lacking the symmetry and completeness which characterize the model work just described, is ser- viceable to a far larger number of students, in fact, to every one in this country who takes interest in Biblical studies. I allude, of course, to the editorial additions which he, in conjunction with the late Prof. H. B. Hackett, contributed to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Of the more than thirteen hundred additions * with which, according to a hasty count, the American edition has been enriched, upwards of a thousand bear the initials of the American editors, of which more than four hundred were from the pen of Dr. Abbot. Many of them, to be sure, are devoted to correcting oversights, supplying omissions, supplementing information, a kind of work making com- paratively little show, but for which a student or a teacher who wishes trustworthy statements is often inexpressibly grateful. To get an impression of the delicate, vigilant, scholarly character of this kind of revision, the admirable article on the New Testament may be consulted (an article covering more than thirty double-columned pages), or that upon the Septuagint, or upon the Authorized Ver- sion, or upon the Gospel of John. This last-named article also, with its more than two pages of added references to literature, affords a good specimen of the bibliographical enrichment for which the work is indebted to our friend. The like may be found under the head of " Gospels," and to some extent under every one of the several Biblical books ; while such articles as " Demon," " Demoniacs," " Messiah," and those on the various apocryphal books, show by the comments with which the added titles are interspersed that the writer has subjected those subjects to special and independent study. In brief, to the careful scholarship of these two American * Of course not all separate articles. 4 8 Professors we are indebted for what is unquestionably the most accurate and serviceable work of its kind for the gen- eral student in any tongue. Moreover, to Dr. Abbot's special vigilance in reading every one of the 3652 pages in proof, the exceptional typographical accuracy of the work is largely due. He also greatly augmented its serviceable- ness by appending an index of the principal passages of Scripture illustrated, as well as by multiplying cross- references. I have dwelt so long upon Dr. Abbot's pre-eminent ser- vices as a textual critic and bibliographer that perhaps some persons may infer that he was a mere specialist, a man thoroughly versed in one or two narrow departments of knowledge, but acquainted with little besides. The in- ference would do him great injustice. He was well aware, indeed, of the necessity of concentration as the condition of valuable achievement ; used to deplore the current pro- pensity among workers in the realm of thought, as in the world of things, to attach more value to quantity of produc- tion than to quality. Hence, he did not cultivate the foible of omniscience. And he became so noted for his attain- ments in the particular and somewhat recondite branches of learning to which his best known publications relate that his broad general scholarship was often overlooked. But he took a lively interest his life long in many departments of thought with which his name is seldom associated. As a boy, he surprised one evening his companions in the little local lyceum by reading them a poem of his own composi- tion ; and in religious poetry, especially, he was a connois- seur. His youthful interest in wild flowers he never out- grew ; and he delighted to make excursions for them, and to replenish the little nursery of them which he successfully kept up in the corner of his grounds. His enthusiasm over the starry heavens was so great as, in the language of an early friend, to take the chill off the air of a winter night. Good books of every sort he was a genuine lover of. And the choice collection he has gathered give abundant 49 evidence of having been intelligently used. Many of his intimates, even, seem not to be aware of the fact that to him we are indebted for what are probably the most accurate editions extant of Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying, the text of Pickering's edition having been carefully revised and corrected, and the numerous quotations from ancient authors verified and referred to their sources. The purchase of a rare edition, the appearance of a new and attractive manual, though it were but a Hebrew grammar, would prompt him to take up a study anew. " Oh that I were only thirty years old ! " he exclaimed, on hearing that a rudimentary work in Assyriology was announced for pub- lication ; " for it seems as though a student might get a tolerable mastery of a science lying as yet in so narrow compass, and then keep pace with its growth." The unex- plored fields of knowledge, whether in the intellectual realm or the physical, piqued his curiosity ; and he was impatient at any apparent indifference or timidity on the part of those responsible for research. Though removed as far as possi- ble alike by constitution and by mental habit from every- thing visionary or whimsical, he was outspoken in the opinion that the alleged phenomena of Spiritualism (for instance) have not yet received from physicists due scrutiny, whether we consider the accumulated testimony of credible witnesses on the one hand, or have regard for the public welfare on the other. The terrific tortures inflicted by stub- born unbelievers in the insensibility of somnambulists ; the easy-going incredulity of conceited scientists, who exclaim " Impossible !" and turn away in contempt from phenomena which call for serious study ; the indifference of the great majority to the same until they reappear perhaps a genera- tion or two later under some foreign indorsement, humili- ating facts like these in the history of science were often adduced by him in proof of the truth that bigotry and nar- rowness and barbarity are not the exclusive prerogatives of theologians. In short, when you had once convinced him that you were not consulting him as an authority on any given subject, 50 you could be pretty sure of eliciting from him precious information concerning it. On the other hand, it was amusing sometimes to see an inquirer, thinking to use him as you would a dictionary, put to him a question in the hope of running off at once with an answer in a single sentence, and receive an elaborate exposition of his problem in its causes, origin, relations, suggestions, which convinced the luckless questioner that there are more things in heaven and earth than he ever dreamed of. Other particulars of Dr. Abbot's life and services I must content myself with little more than an allusion to. Not all his work was done for scholars or was concerned exclusively with the intellectiial aspects and relations of truth. For a series of years, he was an efficient teacher in the Sunday-school connected with this church,* and gave to the work much more time than what was needed for preparation for the weekly hour with his class. That class was equipped with copies of the New Testament in several tongues, with note-books and the various helps by which he knew so well how to lead pupils to look at a subject thoughtfully and on all sides. Many a careful and some- times extended paper would he write out at home in answer to some question which he could not satisfactorily dispose of on the spot. And, by the way, it was in this school that, if tradition is to be trusted, he was once covered with confusion in consequence of his inability to answer a ques- tion. One morning, so the story runs, before the opening of the session, while many were standing around, he was asked by a professional man "who was to preach that day." He replied that he did not know, and was over- whelmed by the rejoinder, "Good! I am glad at length to have discovered something that you do not know." His interest in the school did not terminate when his health compelled him to end his active connection with it. Indeed, the last bibliographical work of his life, I believe, was done upon the catalogue of its library. *This address was delivered in the church of the First Parish in Cambridge. Of Dr. Abbot's personal worth and Christian character, any one who knew him may safely be called upon to speak. He regarded himself as constitutionally hasty, but his friends never discovered the infirmity. His amiability and sweet- ness were equal to his scholarly unselfishness and his mod- esty ; and all, I believe, were unsurpassed. His guileless and outspoken language in controversial discussion pro- voked, on two or three occasions, the animadversion of his opponents. But these strictures called out from him in- stantly such explanations and regrets as more than effaced the misjudgment. In one of the most recent instances where his tone in controversy is sharply censured in a work of extensive use in scholarly circles, the author subsequently, in a private letter, confesses himself "unfeignedly sorry," "asks [Dr. Abbot's] forgiveness," and promises "to take an early opportunity of unsaying his words." Respecting his religious belief, I am going to venture to let him speak for himself, merely premising, by way of explanation, that in recent years he has often admitted me into his counsels and placed in my hands the extended letters with which he not infrequently favored his corre- spondents. One of these correspondents across the water, on receiving from Dr. Abbot some spontaneous suggestions on matters of criticism touched upon in a book he had just published, desired in his reply to know something more of our friend's position and calling, adding that he knew simply from the D.D. which he had somewhere seen attached to his name that he was by profession a clergyman. In response to this desire, Dr. Abbot wrote the sentences which I am about to quote. I ought to apologize, perhaps, for giving them publicity. In fact, I should have been at a loss until this hour to explain how it was that I took the wholly excep- tional liberty of extracting them. But something about them impressed me, as I trust it will impress you ; and, on this occasion, something surely will be pardoned to the spirit of admiring friendship. Dr. Abbot writes (under date of Oct. 22, 1882) : "I am not one of those who deem it of little importance what a man 52 believes ; but it seems to me that the power of religion over the heart and life depends far more on the earnestness and depth of conviction with which a few sublime truths are held fast than on the length of the creed. I am a layman, and have not had the advantage of instruction in any theo- logical school ; but I have been interested from my youth in the study of theology, simply because it seemed to me to embrace the subjects of deepest interest to man, to occupy itself with the very highest objects of human thought. " So far as I know my own heart, I have studied the New Testament and the early Christian writings, as well as those of modern theologians, with an earnest desire to ascertain the truth. In pursuing my inquiries, I have always endeav- ored to make myself familiar with the writings of the ablest exponents of conflicting opinions, especially of opinions opposed to those toward which I felt myself inclining, and have tried to estimate fairly the force of their arguments. While I have always, as far as possible, gone to the original sources, and followed Dr. Routh's excellent maxim of verify- ing references, I have read Pearson and Bull, Grabe and Waterland, quite as carefully as Whiston and Whitby, Clarke and Jackson ; Meier and Dorner as faithfully as Martini and Baur ; Pye Smith and Stuart and Canon Liddon, as well as Belsham and Channing and Norton. " I believe with all my heart in the divine origin of Chris- tianity, that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the event in human history which immeasurably transcends all others in importance. In him and him alone do I find God fully revealed as the Father of all ; in him and him alone do I find fully realized on earth the divine life, the life of union with God, which constitutes the ideal of humanity. In his teaching concerning God and man, in the inspiration which flows from his life and death of self-sacrificing love, and in his manifestation of the love and mercy of God, I find the highest conceivable motives to a life of holiness, of absolute consecration to God and the service of humanity. In these days, when the thick darkness of a dreary scepticism over- shadows so many minds, leaving no object of worship, of 53 supreme love and gratitude and devotion, and no hope of a life beyond the grave, I am impressed most deeply with the surpassing grandeur and inestimable value of the great truths which all disciples of Christ, of whatever name, hold in common ; and I can only lament the fact that speculative differences on questions interesting indeed, but compara- tively unimportant, some of them on subjects which tran- scend the powers of the human mind, should break the bond of brotherly affection and sympathy which ought to bind together all who acknowledge Christ as their Master, and sincerely strive to walk in his steps." To the success of this Christian's endeavor to walk in his Master's footsteps, striking testimony has been given within these last few weeks. Three* separate correspondents have summed up their estimate of the man as follaws : " I have often thought and sometimes said that I never saw any one who seemed to me to show more vividly in his life the life of Jesus " ; "I never knew," writes another, " I never knew a man more Christlike than dear Mr. Abbot " ; and yet once more, " He translated to my mind the character of Christ." What grander eulogy could be desired ! How does the glory of the matchless critic and bibliographer, the scru- pulous editor and reviser, the unrivalled " corrector of errors and collector of facts," disappear by reason of that glory which excelleth ! The glory of the terrestrial is one, the glory of the celestial is another. When we consider the feeble health of Dr. Abbot, and the fact that it was only during the last twelve years of his life that he was permitted to devote himself to Biblical studies as his main business, while even during those years he was adjusting himself to the demands of a new position and was giving much time to his duties as a member of the New Testament Revision Company, we are struck with his literary productiveness. His writings remain to stimulate to diligence, to thoroughness, to candor, to unflinching loyalty to the truth. Nor those writings alone which openly bear his name. His unstinted generosity, his gratuitous 54 services, so numerous that they cannot easily be reckoned up, for he kept no record of them, so unobtrusive that often they are rather to be suspected than demonstrated, have caused him to enter less as a name than as a force into the Biblical scholarship of recent years. As with the dew and the light, his beneficent working is misjudged, if its results are looked for in isolated and palpable products. There are scores of scholars, I verily believe, to-day who are doing better work more thorough and careful and conscien- tious because Ezra Abbot has lived. There are scholars who by him have had their vision opened to higher fields of investigation, and their zeal kindled to enter upon them. Has his influence ended ? Is it to be restricted to the indirect and diffused persuasiveness of a mere pattern of scholarship, incalculably useful though that be ? For one, I would fain hope not. A review of his life shows us what a blessing was conferred upon the world when he was made a scholar instead of a farmer. All honor to the discernment of those who rescued him for Exeter and Bowdoin and Cambridge and Christendom ! Thanks and honor to those who opened the way for him to that special department of study for which his exceptional gifts and his personal tastes best fitted him ! Sir Humphry Davy, you remember, on being asked which of his discoveries was in his judgment the greatest, replied Michael Faraday. But what if that quarter of a century which intervened between Dr. Abbot's coming to Cambridge and his taking his seat in a professor's chair had been given without dis- traction to Biblical studies ! We should not to-day be deploring the termination of a career just as it was reaching the period of ripe fruitage. Our bereavement would not get additional poignancy from the spectacle of unfinished tasks of prime importance which no survivor can worthily take up. What if Mr. Norton, on summoning to Cambridge the young stranger who wrote him that memorable letter, had been able at once to make him master of the leisure and the books necessary for the prosecution of the studies for which his volunteer researches proved him to have rare apti- 55 tude ! What an inestimable gain, if our friend could only have given himself to his life's work wholly and on the spot, instead of squandering his precious strength and mental powers for twenty-five years in teaching school and cata- loguing books ! Nay, further: after the Bussey professorship had been created for Dr. Abbot, and he had been prevailed upon to assume the chair, the wasteful expenditure did not cease. It took on, rather, another form. To a mind of very delicate adjustment, quick to detect differences non-existent to the careless perception, seeing significance and consequent importance in trivialities which the ordinary student holds as of no account, coursing to and fro along new lines of suggestion, to a mind of this class, the work of teaching is seldom congenial. To compel such a mind to plod along by the side of an average understanding is like " making a plough-horse of Pegasus." Daily perhaps twice a day to interrupt the studies of such a mind, to distract its atten- tion from its kindred investigations, to force it to expend its nervous energy in the attempt probably futile, possibly exasperating, certainly impoverishing - to impart its life to different clay, is wasteful prodigality. This prodigal expenditure of our intellectual resources we are used to in this country : indeed, it is almost unavoidable in the earlier stages of a nation's life. But it is far more deplorable than the burning down of the primeval forests by the frontier settler that he may clear the ground for his cabin and potato-patch. Intelligent educators are waking up to its extravagance. Dr. Abbot's career is a most impressive protest against it : yes, an appeal for the intro- duction of a different system, which seems to me to be more effective than a volume of argument. It is as affording the opportunity of seconding that appeal that this hour, I confess, has for me its main interest. Speaking broadly, there may be said to be three depart- ments of intellectual activity ; namely, the increase of knowl- edge, the formal impartation of knowledge, the general diffusion of knowledge among the multitude. The explorer, 56 the teacher, the popular writer or lecturer, are familiar representatives of these three distinct functions of the intellectual life. Now, it is coming to be recognized more and more that these three functions cannot wisely be com- bined, that division of labor increases efficiency and pro- motes productiveness here as elsewhere. The Christian minister of to-day does not undertake, as his predecessor did two or three generations ago, to turn his house into a theo- logical seminary. The student of theology, the student of medicine, the student of law, nowadays wisely betakes himself to a centre where he can come under the influence of specialists whose exclusive business it is to teach. But the work of teaching is engrossing and exhausting : it seldom leaves the instructor either time or strength for original research. Indeed, that man passes as an enter- prising teacher who, while treading year after year his monotonous round, keeps abreast with the progress of discovery in its relation to his own department. Only a limited acquaintance with the career of noted instructors will enable us to recall one man and another from whose hand the sceptre has departed for want of even this degree of enterprise. That now and then an exception should occur, like our deceased friend, only proves the contrary state of things to be the rule. One of his acquaintances, himself a prominent New Testament teacher and scholar, in a letter written shortly after Dr. Abbot's death, utters reflections with which that event has burdened many a lover of Biblical learning. " It is surprising," he writes, "it is surprising and strange, indeed, that such a man should have been left in the position of Assistant Librarian of the Athenaeum and Harvard Col- lege Libraries for so many years. . . . What a pity that, to men who can be scholars such as he was, the colleges and schools offer positions only as working teachers ! " Now, the obvious remedy for this grievous evil consists in putting men of the sort into different positions ; and, as such positions do not now exist, in creating such positions, in creating places to be filled by men whose primary, if not 57 sole, duty it shall be to extend the boundaries of knowledge. Such men. furnished already with the present results of Biblical scholarship, should make it the business of their life to solve some of the many and multiplying problems of Biblical science. Fellowships we now have (and rejoice in) which enable their holders to prosecute study beyond the line which marks the goal of the average student. But these fellow- ships are given to young men, whose aim is not to increase the common stock of knowledge, but to get a broader acquaintance with it ; whose destiny it is not to become original investigators but to qualify themselves for the teacher's chair. The class of men I now have in mind are men of a higher grade and maturer attainments, men who (if possible) shall have won for themselves already among experts recognition as scholars, and whose province it shall be to augment the store of knowledge from which the teacher draws his materials. In a word, is it not time that investigation were recognized as a distinct and legitimate vocation in a well-appointed seat of learning ? Even in the older countries of Europe, where the univer- sities have gathered to themselves the inheritance of centu- ries, where it is an acknowledged duty of the government to promote and subsidize learned research, and where, as is the case particularly in England, a wealthy and well-manned religious establishment furnishes many a post of com- parative leisure, with ample facilities for study at hand, more liberal assistance in the prosecution of original research has been repeatedly emphasized of late as one of the pressing wants of the period. Is it not time its claims in the department of theology met with recognition on this side of the water ? Obviously, from its very nature, the vocation can never be self-supporting. Indeed, even the work of teaching is, as we know, chiefly dependent for its maintenance upon State patronage or private endowment. But the investigator must be lifted above the anxieties and interruptions in- separable from a scanty or uncertain provision for earthly 58 wants. He should be able, in addition, to command every extant facility for the successful prosecution of his chosen task. And I need not remind you that the time is especially opportune for such an endowment of Biblical research as I am pleading for. The dominion of purely speculative theology is ended. The historic sciences and historic methods are gaining their legitimate supremacy. The existing unsettled state of theological opinion is due in no small measure to the working of the historic spirit. The disfavor with which even dispassionate and conservative statements of the results of historic research as applied to the Scriptures have been received in circles which have prided themselves on their enterprise in speculation is evi- dence of the prevalent ignorance of the Bible as an historic book, and calls for the increase as well as for the dissemina- tion of knowledge. The teachers themselves have need of being taught in this matter. And who can overlook the new field for exploration, full of promise for Biblical history, antiquities, philology, which the rising Oriental studies are opening ? Indeed, the experts tell us that there is not even a satisfactory Hebrew lexicon extant, notwithstanding the recent multiplication of manuals ; and New Testament lexi- cography, although in a better condition, looks forward with expectancy to the results of the years of research devoted to the Septuagint and later Greek by the corps of explorers now supported by the munificence of the Clar- endon Press. Shall America have no other part in these beneficent researches than that taken by some hard-worked professor who, like our lamented friend, does the work of two, and prosecutes researches at his own charges ? Do you tell me of the light esteem in which theology is held in these days ? But a profession is respected that makes itself respectable. Not the least of the inestimable benefactions which Ezra Abbot conferred upon this our University consisted in going in and out here as a living witness that Christian theology has valid claims upon the largest learning and the keenest intellect, is entitled to the 59 most absorbing allegiance of head and heart and life of the noblest and most gifted of men. Should he, perchance, have been occasionally without due honor among his own literary household, he has done much to render Harvard University better known and more highly esteemed abroad. His neighbors, even, may have known him only by sight ; but there is mourning because of him in the high places of European scholarship to-day. Has he died without issue? at least, till some other man of the like exceptional gifts and with the like per- sistency of application, and favored by others equally skilled in the discerning of spirits, shall work his toilsome and tardy way to the like elevation of scholarly beneficence. It is for us, his survivors, his friends and the friends of sacred learn- ing, alumni of the school which he served and adorned, graduates and friends of the University whose honor he has done so much to augment and to spread, it is for us to answer the question. When we consider that in Cambridge and its immediate vicinity a scholar has access to the largest store of books collected in any single locality on this continent, that four of the University's theological endowments antedate the organization of the Divinity School, that it was an express aim of the founders of that school to encourage " the seri- ous, impartial, unbiassed investigation of Christian truth," and that in furtherance of this avowed aim it differs from almost all other theological schools in exempting not its pupils only, but its professors as well, from a required assent to the distinctive doctrines or practices of any denomination of Christians ; and to that extent exempts an explorer from everything having a tendency to swerve or to restrain him unconsciously in his endeavor to ascertain the facts, and all the facts, and nothing but the facts, when we consider these things, I submit that the privilege of the hour rises in the case of the friends and patrons of theological science here to the dignity of an obligation. But you are ready to ask, perhaps, whether I do not forget that the clergy are an impecunious race. I reply, in 6o the words of the apostle, " All things are yours." A clergy- man who has established himself in the confidence of his parishioners as a man of learning, good sense, piety, and disinterested benevolence, finds himself in command of pe- cuniary resources for every good enterprise, the extent of which will often surprise him. I verily believe, brethren, you have but to speak, and the thing is done. In justice to others, I ought frankly to add that this proposal is made without concert or conference. If any one, accordingly, think it to be unwise, on me alone let the responsibility fall. But I earnestly cherish the hope that the endowment suggested will commend itself to all as a needed subsidy to theological science, and especially as a monument, alike fitting and lasting, in honor of Ezra Abbot. MEMORIAL TRIBUTES. FROM ACADEMICAL AND LITERARY BODIES. AT a meeting of the Faculty of the Harvard Divinity School, held May 2, the following resolutions were adopted : Whereas, by the recent death of Professor Ezra Abbot, the Faculty of the Divinity School has been deprived of a most beloved and hon- ored member, we, his surviving associates, in the desire to place on record some expression of our sense of loss, hereby resolve, First, That in him the School has lost a teacher of unsurpassed fidelity, patience, clearness, and benignity; the fraternity of Biblical scholars has had. taken from it one who, for thoroughness, accuracy, learning, and candor, had no superior ; and all who knew him have been bereaved of a most generous, helpful, self-sacrificing friend. Second, That we record our devout and grateful acknowledgments to the Father of lights for our departed brother's birth, his laborious, fruitful, and disinterested life, his Christlike gentleness, humility, and faith, and for his tranquil and believing death. Third, Lamenting our personal loss, the loss to the School and rising ministry, the loss to all lovers of thorough scholarship, the loss to the interests of Biblical learning throughout Christendom, we offer our special sympathy to those who are most poignantly bereaved in his death. The following communication from Rev. A. A. Livermore, Pres- ident of the Meadville Theological School, was addressed to ProfessorC. C. Everett, D.D., Dean of the Faculty of the Harvard Divinity School : Professor C. C. EVERETT, D.D. : A meeting in commemoration of your beloved associate, the late Dr Ezra Abbot, was held in the chapel of the Theological School on Tues- day last, the 25th inst. After the usual introductory exercises, addresses were made t>y A. A. Livermore and G. L. Gary, Professors, and J. Heddaeus, S. Hamlet, and H. T. Lyche, students, on the life, character, and labors 62 of Dr. Abbot, and the invaluable services which he had rendered to sound learning and Biblical criticism and interpretation, and the exem- plification of a pure and beautiful Christian spirit. At the close of the exercises, a unanimous vote was passed that the writer should communicate to the family of the deceased and the Fac- ulty and students of the Cambridge Divinity School the expression of the sincere sympathy of the School here for the bereavement which they have respectively suffered, and the great loss which we all have suffered, in the decease of one of our greatest scholars and best men. A. A. LIVERMORE. MEADVILLE, PA., March 29, 1884. At a meeting of the American New Testament Revision Com- pany, held at the Bible House, New York, Friday, April 25, 1884, the following minute was unanimously adopted : In the death of Professor Abbot, the New Testament Revision Company are summoned a third time, since the completion of their work, to mourn the departure of one of their number. With their asso- ciates of the Old Testament Company, they would reverently bow to the divine appointment, and thoughtfully take to heart its admonitions. The secluded life of Dr. Abbot, and his singularly modest and retiring disposition, rendered him almost, if not quite, a stranger to every one of us till we entered on our work together in these rooms. In general deliberations respecting matters of business, and particularly in those discussions, alike animated and delicate, which involved our relations to the English Revisers and the University Presses, his voice was heard but seldom. Yet, whenever he spoke, his characteristic clear- ness of apprehension, his accurate and complete recollection of facts, his judicial impartiality and dispassionateness, and, above all, his per- sonal willingness to become anything or nothing, if so be the Word of God in its purity might have the freer course, seldom failed to become manifest. His sphere of conspicuous service, however, was the Revision work. Always one of the first in his place at the table and one of the last to quit it, he brought with him thither the results of careful preparation. His suggestions were seldom the promptings of the moment. Hence, they always commanded consideration, often secured instant adoption. Well versed in the resources of our ancestral tongue, possessed of an ear for its rhythm, and trained to a nice discrimination in his use of it, he rendered appreciable service in securing for the new translation certain felicities of expression to which its critics, amid their clamorous censure of its defects, have hitherto failed to render due recognition. But it was in questions affecting the Greek text that Dr. Abbot's exceptional gifts and attainments were pre-eminently helpful. Several of his essays on 63 debated passages, appended to the printed reports of our proceedings which were forwarded from time to time to t]je brethren in England, are among the most thorough discussions of the sort which are extant, won immediate respect for American scholarship in this department, and had no small influence in determining that form of the sacred text which will ultimately, we believe, find acceptance with all Christian scholars. To his distinction as a scholar, Dr. Abbot added rare excellence as a Christian. Such chastened sweetness of disposition, such disciplined ^regard for the sensibilities of his associates, such studied generosity in debate, such patient deference when overruled, such magnanimous equa- nimity in victory as were habitual with him, were never surpassed among us. Differing from the rest of us as he did in some of his theological tenets, his Christlike temper rendered him a brother beloved, and lends a heavenly lustre to his memory. We, his survivors, desire to place on record our affectionate tribute to his worth, and to offer to his bereaved kindred a tender expression of our sympathy. At the meeting of the American Oriental Society, held May 7, 1884, the following minute was adopted, and ordered to be spread on the record: The American Oriental Society desires to put on record its sense of the great loss sustained by the world of scholars and by this Society in the death of Ezra Abbot, D.D., LL.D., Professor of the Criticism and Interpretation of the New Testament in the Harvard Divinity School, for more than thirty years the faithful Recording Secretary of the Society, who has won for himself, as a student of the textual and histor- ical criticism of the New Testament, an enviable reputation for exact and broad scholarship, and has made contributions of enduring value to the department of learning to which he was devoted. C. H. TOY, Recording Secretary. At a special meeting of the Harvard Biblical Club, held in Boston, May 10, 1884, in memory of their late associate, Dr. Ezra Abbot, the following minute was adopted: By the death of Professor Ezra Abbot, D.D., LL.D., the Harvard Biblical Club has been deprived of one of its original, most useful, and most valued members. His constancy in attendance in spite of accumulating bodily infirmi- ties, his keen and broad interest in everything pertaining to the Sacred Scriptures, the thoroughness of his research, the extent and accuracy of his knowledge, the clearness and candor of his discussions, his modest 6 4 estimate of himself, and his generous appreciation of the efforts of others, render his name for us the synonyme of scholarly and Christian worth, an associate to be beloved, a scholarly example to be imitated, a loss to be deplored, a memory to be reverently cherished. GEORGE H. WHITTEMORE, Secretary. At a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, the following minute was passed : The Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis desires to put upon record its deep sorrow at the death of Ezra Abbot, one of the founders of the Society, constant in his devotion to its interests, a scholar whose contributions added not only to the value of the Society's work, but also to the resources of New Testament study throughout the world, a man whose purity and nobleness won him the love of all his fellow-members. H. G. MITCHELL, Secretary. The above minute was adopted by a rising vote. FROM PERSONAL SOURCES. The circumstance that the present Memorial will find its chief circulation among the personal friends of Dr. Abbot will secure indulgence, it is hoped, for the insertion of a few of the tributes to him uttered in correspondence. Several of the letters which follow were written in acknowledgment of the official notifica- tion of Professor Abbot's decease. Extracts from others are but specimens of the words of appreciation and sympathy which his death called forth, in many cases, too private in their nature to appear in print. [Professor John A. Broadus, D.D., Louisville, Ky.~\ I ask permission to express to the Faculty of the Divinity School of Harvard College my deep sense of loss in the death of Dr. Ezra Abbot. As myself a student and teacher in matters pertaining to the New Testament, I have long recognized that, in the text-criticism and in the literary history of the New Testament, he was facile princeps among American scholars. In breadth and exactness of general Biblical information, he had few equals in the world. His patience and minute accuracy in research commanded universal admiration. His readiness to give unstinted help to the literary enterprises of others was some- thing rare and beautiful. His conscientiousness in investigation and candor in stating the views of all parties showed a noble Christian 65 character; and the spirit of true scholarship is seldom so completely exemplified. In a single interview with him some ten years ago in his study, I was much attracted by his easily pleasant and quietly cordial ways. Alas ! we could ill afford to lose him. May the aspiring young scholars of our country be stimulated by the loss, not to attempt to fill his place, but to find and fill well their own places in the ranks of Biblical learning. [Thomas Chase, LL.D., President of Haverford College, Penn.~\ A man of vast stores of erudition in many fields, and in New Testament criticism without a peer in America and without a superior in Europe, he was a modest gentleman, a generous friend, and a humble and devout Christian. The whole world of scholarship feels a common loss with the University in this sad and great bereavement. [Ex-Chancellor Howard Crosby, D.D., New York.} It is greatly to my regret that my duties in New York will prevent my attendance at the funeral of Dr. Ezra Abbot. His exact and extensive scholarship and his lovely Christian character endeared him to us all, and made all scholars his debtors. In many years of close intercourse with Dr. Abbot, I never saw him other than the most modest of men, while all looked up to him as ultimate authority in the matter of Biblical criticism and research. His loss is a national one, for no scholar ever shed more lustre on the American name. [Professor Timothy D wight, D.D., New Haven.'] . . . Those who knew Dr. Abbot, whether they knew him little or much, for a longer time or a shorter, have but one remembrance of his honest, earnest, sincere, manly, beautiful Christian life. They all lovingly tell the same story ; and they all grieve that they themselves have lost such a friend, and that the world has lost out of its life such a man. [Professor A. C. Kendrick, D.D., LL.D., Rochester, 7V.K] I am distressed at the tidings which your letter conveys to me of the death of Professor Abbot. It is the death of a great man whom we could ill afford to lose from the ranks of our American and the world's Biblical scholarship. For eight years I sat by his side in our Revision meetings nearly every month ; and I never found him wanting in learn. 66 ing, candor, modesty, gentleness, and excellent scholarly and practical judgment. To know him was to love him, and to name him was to praise. {Professor Howard Osgood, D.D., LL.D., Rochester, N. K] . . . From the first hour of my meeting Dr. Abbot in the college yard some fifteen years ago, my heart has gone out to him ; and I have sat at his feet to learn from him with great delight. The noblest qualities of manhood strength, firmness, tenderness, humility, entire self-forget- fulness when serving others was concerned were in him joined with the noblest qualities and attainments of the scholar. He has been and will be a lofty model for the scholars of America. Of learning that was simply marvellous, of firm opinions, he was, above all things, fair to others, the soul of honesty, and utterly devoid of the pride of scholarship. {Professor M. B. Riddle, D.D., Hartford, Conn.} How great a loss this death is to your University and to American scholarship the public will soon be told, though few will fully under- stand how much the language of the occasion means. To Professor Abbot's friends, the loss seems irreparable. No one was ever brought into close relations with him in professional studies without learning much from him; but, whatever the failure to profit by his immense learning, few can have failed to love him for his unselfishness, his warm desire to promote the advance of others, his sweetness of character and purity of motive. It is a great grief to lose such a man out of the circle of one's friends ; but it remains a privilege to have had him for a friend during years of common labor. {Ex-President T. D. Woolsey, D.D., LL.D., New Haven, Conn} . . . My acquaintance with him during our Revision work gave me profound respect for him as a man as well as a scholar. ... He was indeed a most admirable man, and one whom it has been a great privi- lege to know. I think his kindness to everybody who wanted his help was unsurpassed by that of anybody I ever met with. . . . He has had my full confidence, admiration, and respect beyond most men I ever knew. {Dr. Oskar von Gebhardt, Gbttingen (now of Berlin)} . . . Der Verlust, den die biblische Wissenschaft durch diesen Todesfall erlitten hat, ist ein unersetzlicher. Das empfinden mit mir alle welche auf diesem Gebiete arbeiten. Die personliche Bekannt- schaft des verehrten Mannes war mir versagt ; aber durch brieflichen 6 7 Verkehr hatte ich auch seine personlichen Eigenschaften schatzen gelernt. So rufe auch ich ihm aus bewegtem Herzen nach : Have, pia anima ! [Dr. Caspar Rent Gregory, Leipzig.'] ... In thanking you for the sad missive announcing the death of Professor Ezra Abbot, I shall not endeavor to swell the general tribute to his unequalled learning, but will only say that it has been my rare privilege to enjoy the benefit of his self-sacrificing devotion of that learning to further the work of others, and that his death deprives me of a constant and proven guide, counsellor, and support. [Professor Dr. Adolph Harnack, Giessen.~\ Indem ich fiir die giitige Anzeige des schmerzlichen Verlustes, welchen die Harvard University in dem Ableben Ezra Abbots erlitten hat, bestens danke, spreche ich zugleich meine herzliche Theilnahme aus : der Name Ezra Abbots wird in der Geschichte der biblischen Wissenschaft unverganglich sein. [Professor W. Sanday, D.D., Oxford.} I must write a few words to thank you for your kindness in inform- ing me of the death of Dr. Ezra Abbot, and to add one more to the many tributes of respect and sorrow which I know that that sad event will call forth. My own personal debt to Dr. Abbot is no slight one. I owe to him not only kind and encouraging words which came just at a time when such words are most valued; but I have also on my shelves more than one substantial proof of his generous consideration for younger workers in the same field. I am indebted to him for making me better acquainted with much admirable work which I am afraid might otherwise have escaped me. But the best gift that Dr. Abbot could leave behind was that of his own example and character. These were deeply impressed on all he wrote both in private and public. A more complete absence of all that was insincere and meretricious I do not think it has ever been my lot to meet with, or a more single- minded desire for truth and conscientious endeavor to obtain it. For clearness, accuracy, and precision of detail, I do not think he can have had a rival on either side of the Atlantic ; but it was evident that they were qualities which were moral as much as intellectual. My sense of his loss is compounded of gratitude and admiration, and of the deepest regret that such a career should be closed. 68 {Professor B. F. Westcott, D.D., Cambridge.} The news of Dr. Ezra Abbot's death reached me at Edinburgh, and added an element of sadness to a commemoration which was full of the highest hope and faith. . . . It is the simple truth to say that (as far as I know) no scholar in America was superior to him in exactness of knowledge, breadth of reading, perfection of candor, and devotion to truthfulness of judgment. All that is said in the two most interesting papers in the Christian Register of his self-sacrifice is justified by my own experience. No eye was keener than his, and no one could be more ready to place all his powers at the service of others with spontaneous generosity. Such men effect far more than they know, and far tnore than their friends know. They keep the tradition of scholarly unselfishness fresh and vigorous. They help us to know a little better the force of the great life by which we are sustained. They teach us to take to ourselves the most cheering of promises, and to ' win our souls in patience.' Of the extended tributes paid to Dr. Abbot in the public journals, the chief, it is believed, will be found in : The Daily Advertiser of March 22. The Christian Register of March 27 and April 3. The Independent of March 27, April 3, and April 10. The Nation of March 27. The Literary World, Harper's Weekly, the Library Journal, and the Christian Intelligencer of April 5. Unity (Chicago) of April 16. The Unitarian Review and the Andover Review for May. LIST OF HIS PUBLICATIONS. 1848. Use of the word " Deus " in Plautus and Terence, Christian Examiner for November, pp. 389-406. 1852. Notice of Tischendorf's Greek Testament (Editio Lipsiensis Secunda, 1849) in the Bibliotheca Sacra (Andover, Mass.) for July, pp. 623-628. 1853. A Classed Catalogue of the Library of the Cambridge High School, etc. pp. xvi, 239. Cambridge : John Bartlett. 1854. Note to an article in the Christian Examiner for July, dis- cussing a passage in Justin Martyr's Dial, with Trypho, ch. 1 06. 1855. He edited with notes or appendixes A Translation of the Gospels with Notes, by Andrews Norton. 2 vols. Bos- ton : Little, Brown & Co. 1856. Edited with notes or appendixes (especially pp. 432-82) A Statement of Reasons for not believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, etc., by Andrews Norton. Second Edition. Boston : American Unitarian Association. Three articles on "The Blood of God," Acts x., 28 (in opposition to the Rev. S. W. S. Button), in the Christian Register for March 22, April 19, April 26. Article on "God was manifest in the flesh," I. Tim. iii., 16, Christian Register for March 29. 1857. Articles on MacWhorter's Yahveh Christ, in the Christian Register for February 14 and March 21. 1858. Strictures on Philip Buttmann's Greek Testament (Teubner, 1856), in the Bibliotheca Sacra for October, pp. 877-882. Three articles on (the Doxology in) Rom. ix., 5, in the Independent for October 14, October 28, November 18. 1859. Article on " The Doxology in the Lord's Prayer," in the Daily Advertiser for March 29. Article on " Dr. Holmes and the Independent," in the Christian Register for June 18. Notice of Alford's Greek Testament, Vol. I. (New York, Harper & Brothers), in the Christian Examiner for July, pp. 142, 143. 1860. Communications to the Christian Register f rom January 21 to March 3, respecting Dr. Huntington's discussion of the Doctrine of the Trinity. Republished as a part of the volume entitled The New Discussion of the Trinity. Boston, 1867. Notice of Lamson's Church of the First Three Centuries, in the Christian Examiner for July, pp. 465-471. Revised and enlarged the " Pronouncing Tables of Greek and Latin Proper Names" and of "Scripture Proper . Names " for Worcester's large Dictionary of the Eng- lish Language. 1861. "A Glimpse of Glory " (extracts from Meditations, etc., by Andrew Welwood). An article in the Christian Register for July 27. Article on the reading "only begotten God," in John i., T 8, with particular reference to the statements of Dr. Tregelles, Bibliotheca Sacra for October, pp. 840-872. 1863. " Statement respecting the New Catalogues of the College Library," addressed to the " Gentlemen of the Commit- tee [appointed by the Board of Overseers] for the Exami- nation of the Library," and privately printed July 10. 1864. "Literature of the Doctrine of a Future Life," etc. (pp. xii, 224), appended to Alger's Critical History, etc. New York : W. J. Widdleton. Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living, a revised and corrected edition on the basis of Pickering's, the quotations veri- fied, references filled out, etc. Little, Brown & Co. Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying (edited in the same manner as the above). Little, Brown & Co. Contributed (from p. 572, line 10 from bottom, to p. 574, 2d paragraph) to Dr. F. H. Hedge's Review of Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine in the North American Re- view for April, p. 567 sqq. 1865. Notes to the Revised and Enlarged Edition of Lamson's Church of the First Three Centuries. Boston : Reissued with additional notes by Henry lerson. London, 1875. 1866. Edited with notes and an appendix a new edition of Orme's Memoir of the Controversy respecting the Three Heavenly Witnesses, I. John v., 7. New York : James Miller. 1867-70. Co-operated with Prof. H. B. Hackett in preparing the American edition (Hurd & Houghton) of Smith's Dic- tionary of the Bible. 4 vols. 1868. Notice of Prof. C. E. Stowe's Origin and History of the Books of the Bible, in the North American Review for July, pp. 307-314. 1869. Assisted in editing and printing Dr. George R. Noyes's (posthumous) Translation of the New Testament from the Greek Text of Tischendorf. Boston : American Unitarian Association. 1870. Assisted in the preparation of Charles F. Hudson's Greek and English Concordance of the New Testament, and added an appendix and supplement (containing a collation of Tischendorf's eighth edition). Assisted also in editing and perfecting the subsequent editions down to that of 1882. 1872. Examination of the distinction between a\rtu and cpwrdw as given by Trench in his Synonyms of the New Testament, North American Review for January, pp. 171-189. " On the Comparative Antiquity of the Sinaitic and Vatican Manuscripts of the Greek Bible " (in opposition to the view of Rev. J. W. Burgon), Journ. of Amer. Orient. Soc., Vol. X., pp. 189-200. Cf. p. 602. 1875. "The Late Professor Tischendorf," an article in the Unita- rian Review, etc., for March, pp. 217-236. On the reading " an only begotten God," or " God only begotten," John i., 18. Article (first privately printed for the American Bible Revision Committee) in the Unitarian Review, etc., for June, pp. 560-571. " The Late Dr. Tregelles," an article in the New York In- dependent for July i, 1875. (Reprinted at Plymouth, Eng.) 1876. On the reading "Church of God," Acts xx., 28. Article (first privately printed for the American Bible Revision Committee) in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, pp. 313-52. 1877. Article on the American Oriental Society (reviewing the controversy between Messrs. Whitney and Miiller) in the Bibliotheca Sacra for July, pp. 557-562. Privately p printed (for the American Bible Revision Com- mittee) note on John viii., 44. 1878. Article on "Ancient Papyrus and the Mode of Making Paper from It," in the Library Journal for November 72 (exposing the current errors respecting the nature of the plant and the preparation of writing material from it). 1878. Article "Septuagint" in Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, etc., Vol. IV., pp. 181, 182. Article on " The New Testament Text : The Imperfection of the Greek Text of the New Testament from which our Common English Version was made and our Present Resources for its Correction," Sunday School World (Phil.) for October. Republished in Anglo-American Bible Revision, New York, 1879. PP- 86-98. Reply to Rev. Dr. John A. Todd's strictures on the Greek Text of the New Revision. Article in the Christian Intel- ligencer for November 2 1 . 1879. "Reply to the Letter of Dr. [John A.] Todd." Two articles in the Christian Intelligencer for April 17 and April 24. " I. John v., 7, and Luther's German Bible." Article in the Christian Intelligencer for May 15. 1880. "The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evi- dences." Boston : Geo. H. Ellis, pp. 104. 1881. "The Gospels in the New Revision." Three articles in the (Phil.) Sunday School Times for May 28, June 4, June ii. That of May 28 was reprinted in Dr. Kennedy's Ely Lectures on the Revision. Appendix ii. (London, 1882.) Notice of Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek Testa- ment in the Sunday School Times, November 5. Re- printed in large part in the Ely Lectures (as above), pp. 161-165. Article on Dr. Gregory's Prolegomena to Tischendorf's last critical edition of the Greek Testament, in the Final Issue (April-July) of the Harvard Register, pp. 322, 323. 1882. " On the Construction of Titus ii., 13," in the Journal of the Society of Biblical Lit. and Exegesis for June and December, pp. 3-19. Also " On the Construction of Romans ix., 5," ibid., pp. 88-154. (Cf. Journal, etc., for June and December, 1882. p. 160 et seq.) Article "Bible Text: The New Testament" (by Tischen- dorf and Gebhardt) in the Schaff-Herzog Cyclopaedia, revised and supplemented. 1883. "A New Authority on Demonology." Article in the Inde- pendent ivi March i. 73 1883. "An Exegetical Note " (on Matt, xxii., 14). In the Chris. tian Register im February 22. 1884. " Recent Discussions of Romans ix., 5," in Journal of the Soc. of Biblical Lit. and Exegesis for June and December, 1883* pp. 90-112. "Prolegomena, Pars prior," to the eighth larger edition of Tischendorf's Greek Testament, his name being asso- ciated with that of the author, Dr. C. R. Gregory, upon the title-page. 1884. (Posthumous) Extract from a private letter to Dr. Isaac H. Hall : Gerhard von Mastricht (not van Maestrichf) the proper spelling of the name of the Greek Testament editor designated by the letters " G. D. T. M. D." In the Unitarian Review for August, pp. 169-173. His aid in the preparation of many other publications is acknowledged by their authors. Among them may be mentioned : Barrows, S. J., The Doom of the Majority. Boston, 1883. Bissell, Dr. E. C., The Apocrypha, etc. (in Lange). Gary, Prof. Geo. L., Introduction to the Greek of the New Testa- ment. Andover, 1878. Huidekoper, F., Judaism at Rome. New York, 1877. Huidekoper, F., Indirect Testimony to the Genuineness of the Gospels. New York, 1879. Mitchell, Dr. Edward C., Critical Handbook, etc. London Relig- ious Tract Society (also Andover, Mass.). Schaff, Dr. Ph., History of the Christian Church. Revised Edi- tion. Vol. I., 1882. Schaff, Dr. Ph., Companion to the Greek Testament, and the Eng- lish Version, 1883. Schodde, George H., The Book of Enoch, etc., 1882. The following titles were discovered too late to be inserted in their proper place in the preceding list : 1874. A Report on the Bucknell Library, Crozer Theological Seminary. Philadelphia : James B. Rodgers & Co. 1877. A Review of Smith & Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biog- raphy, etc., Vol. I., in the Nation for Dec. 27, p. 399, sq. OF THE UNIVERSITY ) OF / 4^Urofti*ii CORRECTION. FROM more exact information, received since the preceding pages were printed, it appears that the statement (on page 43) respecting Professor Abbot's invitation to take charge of the Prolegomena goes too far. He was, at one stage, the choice of certain of the executors, and (although he never received the formal invitation) was approached upon the subject ; but, even had he not instantly declined, his distance from the press would have been regarded as fatal to the arrangement. (See the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1876, p. 181.) J. H. T. l\^jmx- j WF W,^^ SfefeJ^vV Wf' ^$g&^ "7&fe 'W/ v'vi- -?A MS?* ^m i'V* : ; WSM -t mmm vV ;**.* lf^l/^l ^jW^Ji:,^" "% -m J-^^ lim.,^.ss -\ ^rJ L " i^M IX^ ^V* I X-^^^*^. / f \S* ^V .-". ^ : ^Si H. \>C^ W^; JI^.'A=ltel5^l^ ^^a^t* ^ ;*.? ^V-w t^ ^ : -v-^JV :'Tr y *'- .-.A'- 1 ? pafc^SSsiaSW^-iiHarhtS 1 ^^-^^^fewC:-; *^ m^-^^M&S^^^m iW^fe^ Mf^^^^^VtS >i M^^HkK^V, ?>%^K, ^3^MkCr^ S^^tiMS^i^k^ :^^