 |
| Roland Bainton lectured about Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight when we lived at Yale Divinity School. He heard Timothy Dwight the Younger lecture, and we heard Bainton. |
Timothy Dwight - kelmed from the Cyber Hymnal Website:
Timothy Dwight the Elder-
1752-1817
 |
Born: May 14, 1752, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Died: January 11, 1817, New Haven, Connecticut.
Buried: Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut.
|
Dwight was a man for all seasons: an ordained Congregational minister, grandson of preacher Jonathan Edwards, personal friend of American President George Washington, and Army chaplain. He began reading the Bible at age four, and secretly learned Latin despite his father’s prohibition. In 1785, he published the 11-volume Conquest of Canaan. In 1787, he received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Princeton University. In 1795, he became president of Yale University (where, like his grandfather Jonathan Edwards, he matriculated at age 13). He helped found the Andover Theological Seminary—the first seminary in New England—in 1809. Dwight died of cancer after serving as president of Yale University for 22 years.
Sources
Hymns
'via Blog this'
---
http://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume34/GOT034245.html
Singing With Understanding: "I Love Thy Kingdom Lord"
Dennis C. Abernathy
White Oak, Texas
White Oak, Texas
Stonewall Jackson held prayer meetings in his classrooms at Virginia Military Institute, so Timothy Dwight held revivals in the chapel of Yale. Dwight was the head of the institution from 1795 to 1817. There was also a second Timothy Dwight who became President of Yale and he is noted for changing from a college to a university.
During the tenure of the first Timothy Dwight at Yale College, Tom Paine's infamous book The Age of Reason was sweeping the country. Yale, like other colleges, had become infected with the "free thought" of Paine, Rousseau, and the French Revolution. It is estimated that there were no more than five who professed to be Christians on the entire Yale campus. Dwight took to the chapel pulpit with his Bible in hand and his dynamic leadership ignited a spiritual revival which soon spread to other New England campuses as well.
Timothy Dwight was truly one of the illustrious names in early American history. He served for a time as chaplain with George Washington in the American Revolutionary War. He could do a good job with almost anything he undertook. He was a farmer, preacher, editor, poet, legislator, orator, businessman, and educator. One of his pupils summed him up as "interested in everything" and his knowledge was "boundless." But Timothy Dwight's main interest was in the furtherance of learning and the advancement of Christianity.
While teaching oratory, literature, and theology, preaching to his students, and managing business affairs at Yale, Dwight also undertook the editing of a collection of Isaac Watt's hymns. He also wrote thirty-three original hymns. All but one have practically been forgotten, but this one stands out today as the only hymn written in America during the two centuries after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, that is still in common use.
All of Timothy Dwight's accomplishments seem more amazing when it is realized that for the last forty years of his life he was unable to read consecutively for more than fifteen minutes a day. His defective eyesight had been caused by a case of small-pox, and the pain in his eyes is said to have been agonizing and constant.
|
