EDWARDS AMASA PARK, D.D., LL.D.

By Rev. GEORGE ROBERT WHITE SCOTT, Ph.D., D.D., of Newton, Mass. PROFESSOR PARK was a member of the New-England Historic Genealogical Society for twenty-nine years, having been enrolled 4 January, 1871. His interest in matters for which the Society was founded, and his eminence as an historical writer and student of genealogy, were manifested in many ways and particularly in the several biographies from his pen.

Only a cursory sketch of his life can here be given. He was born in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, December 29, 1808. The lustre of his fame is reflected back on his ancestors. Yet his distinction is also the resultant of the Puritan blood in his veins, coming from both sides of his descent, and his own forming quality. Tracing back his family lineage, we find one Richard Park who came to this land as early as 1635, and chose Newtowne, now Cambridge, as his home. His name, and that of his wife Sarah, appears in the records of the First Church in Cambridge under the date of 1636. In 1647, Richard removed to what is now known as Newton. Nathan Park, who descended from Richard, married Ruth Bannister and lived in Northbridge, Massachusetts, for a time, where their son Calvin, the immediate ancestor of the subject of our sketch, was born in 1774. Calvin was "an excellent scholar, a clear careful deliberate thinker, an admirable counselor." He died in 1847. His wife, Abigail Ware of Wrentham, Massachusetts, traced her ancestry back to Robert Ware of Dedham. The mother of the great professor at Andover was tall of stature, dignified in manner, a woman of wit and wisdom, lover of poetry and the Bible, and somewhat strenuous in the training of her children. In naming the son for Jonathan Edwards, the parents seemed to aid Providence in making him a theologian second only to his illustrous namesake. Edwards, the son, could not remember the time when he did not attend school. He read books which, to-day, do not seem to be ex

hilarating for boys, such as "Edwards on the Affections," Fuller's "Life of Pearce," Dr. Hopkins's "Life of Mrs. Antony," Doddridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," Law's "Serious Call," "Pilgrim's Progress," "Life of Brainard," and especially the sermons of Dr. Emmons, whom he often heard preach during his visits to his grandfather Ware at Wrentham. It is reported that at ten years of age he successfully passed an examination on the five points of Calvinism. He entered Brown University before he was. fourteen years old, and though he had classmates who became noted, as Dr. Barnas Sears, Senator Lafayette S. Foster of Connecticut, Bishop Burgess of Maine, and Judge Ezra Wilkinson, he easily stood first. He declined to deliver the valedictory because President Messer had done him an injustice, and partly, it seems, on account of the expense, the charge then for the valedictory oration being fifty dollars. The studies in college which interested young Park the most were Mental Philosophy and Rhetoric.

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After graduation at Brown, in 1826, he taught in a classical school at Weymouth Landing. While there, after great searching of heart, he formed the purpose of entering the ministry. "If," he said, "I could not preach honestly, I could not do anything honestly; if I could do anything honestly I could preach honestly." A realistic "touch of clerical depravity" removed in measure the feeling of his unworthiness to be a minister. One day, when the church he attended was empty, and he had tremblingly entered the pulpit, almost terrified by the sanctity of the place, he saw a quid of tobacco on the pulpit floor. "That," he afterwards said, was the first intimation that I ever had that a minister was not perfectly holy." He studied theology for a year with his father, who had resigned his professorship at Brown and become pastor of the Congregational Church at Stoughton, Massachusetts. During that year Edwards gave special attention to the Unitarian Controversy, the result of which was a notable article published in the "Spirit of the Pilgrims." Though seemingly appointed to an early death, Park entered Andover Theological Seminary in 1828, and graduated in 1831. He partly recovered his health during the course, in working out a scheme of mechanical labor in the "Stowe Cabin," some of which he concluded was "dolorous," since, while laboring assiduously at something, the purpose of which was at first withheld by the foreman, it turned out to be a coffin. The discovery of this fact, he remarked, interfered with the exhilarating effect of the exercise.

His years at Andover were intellectually and spiritually stimulating. He was President of the Porter Rhetorical Society, and received the principal appointment on Anniversary day. In his essays and addresses during the three years, he gave evidence of that remarkable power of statement which led one to say of him, "His style is a model of compactness with crystalline clearness. His reasoning reminds one of the method of the great jurists, and

whether one accepts his theology or not, one must revere his transcendant ability." His fondness for the country led him to decline. pastorates in Boston and Lowell, and a professorship in the Theological Seminary at Bangor, Maine, and to accept a call to Braintree, Massachusetts, to be the associate of the Rev. Doctor Richard Salter Storrs, the elder. He was ordained there December 21, 1831. The son of the old minister at Braintree seeing Park one day about that time, coming up the gravel walk to the parsonage, was struck with his slight tall form, his chiseled features, fine then as if wrought in marble, his piercing eyes and his impressive and animating voice." Park was only two years in Braintree, compelled by ill health to retire; but while there he attracted large congregations, and gained thus early the reputation of being a preacher of brilliant parts and wide intellectual range.

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In 1835, he became professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Amherst College, and there added to his fame as a pulpit orator, being named as the "most marvellous occasional preacher in America.' It was considered by the faculty and students " a great eclipse over all the college life at Amherst when his grand presence and subjugating yet exhilarating intellect were withdrawn from these circles," by his going, in 1836, to Andover, there to fill the Bartlett Professorship of Rhetoric. It was as natural for him to go there that waters should lapse from the hillside to the sea-as that trees should bourgeon and bloom in the spring."

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In September of 1836 he married Anna Maria Edwards, granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards, and there in that now well known brick house on Andover Hill, facing the seminary grounds, the two lived together for fifty-seven years. Mrs. Park was a model wife and mother, cultured and courteous, charming in looks and ways, "lovely in her youthful comeliness; lovely all her life long in comeliness of heart." She died October 7, 1893.

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Park's homiletical lectures were regarded as simply marvellous in the exhibition of eloquence. He increased the number of students, and left on them the impression of the majesty and beauty of the preacher, and stimulated the feeblest to try to become the greatest in his profession. Above all, he illustrated his teaching by his own. preaching. Dr. Storrs, the younger, late of Brooklyn, who heard many of his sermons during his student days, said they were as carefully planned as were the bastions of any fortress." It used to be the wish of students who had perhaps smarted under his criticism, to find in his own plans some weakness or incongruity, some want of concinnity in parts, or some failure to enforce his theme; but they never succeeded. Each part was in its just relations, and the whole was as completely organized as were the members of any sentence. The style of expression was perspicuous, energetic, with images suggested in a word, sometimes, or a half sentence; fine as a cameo, vivid and lustrous as a picture; with passages of a marvellous literary charm, which beguiled the enchanted attention.

Park was of marked personal appearance, of commanding presence; walking in Boston or in other cities he attracted, as did Webster, the attention of the crowds. It was, however, in the pulpit that he looked the king of men, as he was the king of preachers, especially to students and upon great occasions. He was the embodiment of Quintilian's conception of the real orator, being both strong and good. He was tall, of fine form, with a Napoleonic countour of head and a face of classical regularity and power; with eyes beautiful in repose, strangely grand when kindled with intense joy or fullest flame in accord with the uttered thought. His voice was flexible, musical and clear, capable of expressing the tones of mirth or the cadences of passion. In the pulpit he never indulged in anything approximating levity, and seldom made a playful allusion; but in the lecture room, in debate and in private, his wit was abundant. It was full of mind. It was, to use his own words in reference to the wit of Dr. Emmons, a masculine and serene thing; the recreation of the judgment, the jubilee of reason.' Andover students love to repeat his wonderful stories and witty sayings. It has been my privilege to be a frequent visitor at his home, to have him as my guest, and to journey with him. His talk rippled with poetry and anecdote, with description of places and men. A more charming companion one could not have found for the tour of the world."

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After filling the chair of Sacred Rhetoric for eleven years, Professor Park in 1847 became Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, the successor and choice of Professor Woods, who taught in Andover thirty-eight years. The middle room in the old chapel was the arena of Park's greatest triumphs as a teacher. He was vigorous, persuasive, witty and eloquent, learned and progressive. He knew young men, he divined their thoughts, and he understood how to excite and embolden them. He was unexcelled in keen analysis and lucid definition. Political debates were tame in comparison with the lively discussions of dullest doctrines, the questions and answers during recitations, and the examinations at the end of the year, lasting eight hours, not a moment of which was dull. The body of his theological lectures was arranged most carefully in heads and subheads, and was dictated slowly, and every word written down by students; but the illustrations and amplifications were extemporaneous, drawn from the incidents of the day, his wide reading and travel, and his large experience with pupils.

We cannot name in detail the scope and character of his theological teaching. It is not for us to attempt to compass its extent, or mention the elements which distinguished his system or differentiated it from the schemes of other theologians. He was always a strenuous Hopkinsian. "If he had been passed through all mills of the universe and ground into particles finer than the dust of diamonds, every particle would still have shown, to the end, the tone and ten

dency of what to him was 'consistent Calvinism.'" It may be sufficient at this time to say that he summoned every student to active thinking, and trained common minds to do dextrous work. Professor Palmer of Harvard, fine instructor himself, said he "was the greatest teacher I have ever known."

Professor A. V. G. Allen, of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, and the author of the elaborate Life of Phillips Brooks, in a letter to Professor Park, wrote these significant words: "It was your signal gift and rich endowment to be such a teacher as to command the unbounded devotion of your pupils. Such a teacher comes but rarely, a gift of heaven, yet also the result of ages of preparation. Such a teacher in theology you were to us, unexampled in the power of creating a deep interest in the subject, giving us an insight into the many fine and subtle distinctions of theological inquiry, giving us also a firm grasp on essential things, opening up the vast range of the field to be explored, and then impressing our minds so powerfully and vividly with the form and eloquence of the presentation, that each lecture left its indelible stamp on the mind, and each succeeding lecture was eagerly anticipated as a great and blessed privilege."

In 1842, owing to a serious affection of the eyes, Professor Park had a leave of absence lasting eighteen months, during which he studied German customs and manners, educational movements and theology. He came into close touch with the greatest German scholars and formed life friendships, becoming intimate with Tholuck, Paulus and Hengstenberg, Kahnis and Julius Müller, Luthardt, Dillman and many others.

His famous debate with Professor Hodge of Princeton, growing out of his great sermon on "The Theology of the Intellect and the Theology of the Feelings," marked the master intellect; as did also his pamphlet, in later years, on the Andover Creed, a work showing a legal mind of the first quality.

In 1862-3 he spent sixteen months in Germany, where he received great physical and intellectual benefit. In 1869-70 he travelled in England and on the Continent, in Greece and Palestine. His diary of this journey, which I have been permitted to read, will, I trust, some day be published, since it shows the great professor in the light of a keen observer of events, a student of men, a lover of art, and a most brilliant narrator of incident and describer of scenery.

During his days of teaching he did a surprisingly large amount of literary work as editor of the Bibliotheca Sacra during forty years, associate editor until his death, and as author of several elaborate biographies, sermons, pamphlets and papers. He was a hard student from early boyhood to his closing days. That severely plain but attractive study on Andover Hill was the room where he was sure to be several hours each day. He did not, however, separate him