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EZRA ABBOT 
 
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 THE 
 ^ UNIVERSITY } 
 
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 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. 
 
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