1817
Once when young Timothy Dwight did not show up for dinner, his parents went looking for him, fearing tragedy. They found him under an apple tree, surrounded by Indians. Four-year-old Timothy was instructing the American natives in the catechism. The boy, grandson of colonial preacher, revival leader and educator Jonathan Edwards, would himself become a preacher, an educator and revival leader.
When Timothy died on this date, January 11, 1817, it was at New Haven, Connecticut. He had been there as President of Yale College for more than twenty years. When Dwight became President in l795, students and faculty had drifted far from the Christian faith upon which the college was founded. One Yale student, Lyman Beecher, reported that the college was in a most ungodly state. The college church was neglected; the students were wild and skeptical.
Timothy fired all of the faculty members who favored the anti-Christian ideas of French rationalism. Subsequently, about one third of the student body were converted to Christianity. What was the secret of his amazing influence? For one thing, he answered skeptical ideas head on. His first debate class asked for permission to argue the question “Are the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament the word of God?” This was against college rules, but Timothy assigned the topic anyhow. Every student chose to argue that the Bible was not God’s word. With a devastating array of fact and logic, Timothy shredded their arguments. He preached on the subject for six months in the chapel (he also served as college chaplain), and lectured on “Evidences of Divine Revelation.”
Apologetics was but one of Timothy’s lecture series. He also taught ethics, literature, logic, metaphysics, oratory, and theology. He did all this despite ill health and crippling migraine headaches. As if that were not enough work for a sick man, he wrote articles and poems, some of which exposed the errors of French rationalism. In addition, he wrote hymns, including “I Love Thy Kingdom Lord.”
“I love Thy kingdom, Lord,
The house of Thine abode,
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.”
Under Timothy, Yale caught the spirit of the Second Great Awakening. One tutor, writing how campus life had changed, said “Yale College is a little temple. Prayer and praise seem to be the delight of the greater part of the students…”
Today we see skepticism and moral error taught in our colleges. If Yale President Timothy Dwight were living, he would likely insist that faculty members, administrators, and students must make a personal commitment to Jesus Christ and His commandments. Then higher education would again mold honesty and character in the students who are tomorrow’s business and government leaders; and once again there might be a Great Awakening in America.
1857
HT: Christian History Institute
LATE IN THE 1830s Arabic readers began to encounter books printed with a beautiful new typeface, “American Arabic.” Some were Arabic classics and others were Christian works. This Arabic font, admired by everyone involved in Arabic printing, became the standard for a century. Its designer was the American missionary-printer Eli Smith.
Eli Smith was born in Connecticut in 1801. Trained at Yale and Andover Seminary, he became a missionary with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. His superiors rushed him to Malta to replace Daniel Temple as printer of Arabic material, not even allowing him time to marry. Smith found the printing house in disarray, no Arabic fonts available, his services unneeded because Temple was not leaving, and the whole plan a big mistake.
What he did next surprised his mission board. Without their leave, in defiance of the direct orders of his boss, he left for the Middle East. His reasoning was simple. If he did not know Arabic, he would not be able to oversee high-quality Arabic productions. If his press produced faulty work, Muslim readers would hold Christianity in contempt. He immersed himself in Beirut’s culture, learned Arabic, and even lived on a farm so that he could acquire an everyday vocabulary. When the board demanded he return, he protested that six more months would have made him truly proficient in the language.
As a result of his studies, when he took over the press at Malta, he produced high quality work. His decision to print Arabic classics as well as Christian material led to a renaissance in Arabic culture. Arabic fonts of the time were clumsy and used more paper than necessary. Smith studied hundreds of examples of Arabic writing before designing the American Arabic font.
Once settled, he married, not once, but three times. His first wife, Sarah Lanman Huntington, lived only three years after their marriage, and the second, Maria W. Chapin, just a year, but the third, Henrietta S. Butler, outlived him.
In addition to his printing tasks, Smith preached almost daily, learned Turkish and other useful languages, and accompanied several expeditions to the Near East to identify Bible sites and to plan evangelization. His knowledge of Arabic was indispensable to the success of these missions. He also wrote a book in Arabic on the Holy Spirit.
Smith’s greatest undertaking was translating the Bible into Arabic. He worked at the task during the last eight years of his life. His perfectionism was so high that he only fully completed a few books. On this day, 11 January 1857, he died of a painful cancer, leaving Cornelius V. A. Van Dyck to finish the translation.
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