John Albert Broadus, the most distinguished clergyman and writer Kentucky Baptists have produced, was born near Culpepper, Virginia, January 24, 1827. At the age of sixteen years Broadus united with the Baptist church; and he shortly afterwards decided to study for the ministry of his church. He taught school for a time before going to the University of Virginia, in 1846, and he was graduated four years later with the M.A. degree. While at the University Broadus was greatly impressed by Professors Gessner Harrison, Wm. H. McGuffey, and E. H. Courtenay. In 1851 Broadus declined a professorship in Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, in order to become assistant instructor of ancient languages in his alma mater and pastor of the Charlottesville Baptist church. In 1857 it was decided to establish the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Greenville, South Carolina, and Broadus, James P. Boyce, Basil Manly, Jr., William Williams, and E. T. Winkler, were the committee on establishment. Boyce and Manly urged the curriculum system, but Broadus advocated the elective system so earnestly that he completely won them over. "So, as Mr. Jefferson had drawn a new American university, Mr. Broadus drew a new American seminary." The Seminary opened in 1859 with the members of the committee, with the exception of Williams, as the professors. Boyce was elected president, and Broadus occupied the chair of New Testament Interpretation and Homiletics. Twenty-six students greeted the faculty; and all were soon hard at work. After a few years, however, the Civil War came and the Seminary shortly suspended. During the war Dr. Broadus was a chaplain in the Confederate armies. At the close of the war work in the Seminary was resumed with seven students enrolled, Dr. Broadus having but one student in homiletics, and he was blind! The lectures he prepared for this blind brother were the basis of the work that made him famous, The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (Philadelphia, 1870), which is at the present time the finest thing on the subject, a text-book in nearly every theological school in Christendom. Dr. Broadus declined chairs in Chicago and Brown universities, and the presidency of Vassar College, in order to remain with the Seminary, the darling of his dreams. In 1873 he read his notable paper in memory of Gessner Harrison at the University of Virginia; and the next year he joined Dr. Boyce in Kentucky in the effort that was then being made to remove the Seminary to Louisville. His lectures before the Newton Theological Seminary were published as The History of Preaching (New York, 1876). In 1877 the Seminary was removed to Louisville, Dr. Boyce remaining as president and Dr. Broadus as professor of homiletics. From the first the Seminary was a success, it now being the largest in the United States. In 1879 Dr. Broadus delivered his noted address upon Demosthenes before Richmond College, Virginia, which is regarded as one of the very finest efforts of his life. In Louisville he became the city's first citizen, honored and beloved by all classes. In 1886 Harvard conferred the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon him; and later in the same year one of the most important of his books appeared, Sermons and Addresses (Baltimore, 1886). This was followed by his famous Commentary on Matthew (Philadelphia, 1887), which was begun during the darkest days of the Civil War, and is now considered the best commentary in English on that Gospel. Dr. Boyce died at Pau, France, in 1888, and Dr. Broadus succeeded him as president of the Seminary. In January, 1889, he delivered the Lyman Beecher lectures on Preaching at Yale; and some months later his Translation of and Notes to Chrysostom's Homilies (New York, 1889) appeared. In the spring of 1890 Dr. Broadus delivered three lectures before Johns Hopkins University, which were published as Jesus of Nazareth (New York, 1890). He spent the summer of 1892 in Louisville preparing his Memoir of James P. Boyce (New York, 1893); and A Harmony of the Gospels (New York, 1893), his final works. Dr. Broadus died at Louisville, Kentucky, March 16, 1895.

Bibliography. Life and Letters of John Albert Broadus, by A. T. Robertson (Philadelphia, 1900); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1909, v. ii).

OXFORD UNIVERSITY[14]

[From Life and Letters of John A. Broadus, by A. T. Robertson (Philadelphia, 1901)]

We had four and a half hours at Oxford, and spent it with exceeding great pleasure, and most respectably heavy expense.

At University College we saw a memorial of Sir Wm. Jones, by Flaxman, which I am sure I shall never forget—worthy of Sir Wm. and worthy of Flaxman. At Magdalen College we saw the varied and beautiful grounds, with the Poet's Walk, where Addison loved to stroll. At New College we visited the famous and beautiful chapel. (New College is now five hundred years old.) These are the most remarkable of the nineteen colleges. You know they are entirely distinct establishments, as much as if a hundred miles apart, and that the University of Oxford is simply a general organization which gives degrees to the men prepared by the different colleges. Then we spent one and a half hours at the famous Bodleian Library, the most valuable (British Museum has the largest number of books) in the world. Oh, the books, the books—the early and rare editions, the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the autographs of famous persons, and the portraits, the portraits of hundreds of the earth's greatest ones. Happy students, fellows, professors, who have constant access to the Bodleian Library.

SPURGEON

[From the same]

I was greatly delighted with Spurgeon, especially with his conduct of public worship. The congregational singing has often been described, and is as good as can well be conceived. Spurgeon is an excellent reader of Scripture, and remarkably impressive in reading hymns, and the prayers were quite what they ought to have been. The sermon was hardly up to his average in freshness, but was exceedingly well delivered, without affectation or apparent effort, but with singular earnestness, and directness. The whole thing—house, congregation, order, worship, preaching, was as nearly up to my ideal as I ever expect to see in this life. Of course Spurgeon has his faults and deficiencies, but he is a wonderful man. Then he preaches the real gospel, and God blesses him. After the services concluded, I went to a room in the rear to present my letter, and was cordially received. Somebody must tell Mrs. V—— that I "thought of her" repeatedly during the sermon, and "gave her love" to Spurgeon, and he said such a message encouraged him. (I made quite a little story of it, and the gentlemen in the room were apparently much interested, not to say amused.)

We went straight towards St. Paul's, where Liddon has been preaching every Sunday afternoon in September, and there would be difficulty in getting a good seat. We lunched at the Cathedral Hotel, hard by, and then stood three-quarters of an hour at the door of St. Paul's, waiting for it to open. Meantime a good crowd had collected behind us, and there was a tremendous rush when the door opened, to get chairs near the preaching stand. The crowd looked immense in the vast cathedral, and yet there were not half as many as were quietly seated in Spurgeon's Tabernacle. There everybody could hear, and here, in the grand and beautiful show-place, Mr. Liddon was tearing his throat in the vain attempt to be heard by all. The grand choral service was all Chinese to me.