DWIGHT, TIMOTHY: 1. Eighth president of Yale College; b. at Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752; d. at New Haven, Conn., Jan. 11, 1817. He was graduated at Yale in 1769 and was tutor 1771-1777. For more than a year he was chaplain in the army during the Revolutionary War. From 1783 to 1795 he was at the head of an academy in Greenfield, Conn., and from 1795 till his death president of Yale, where he exerted an influence decisive for many years in the history of the college. His sermons in the college chapel constituted a system of divinity, and were published under the title Theology Explained and Defended (5 vols., Middletown, Conn., 1818; often reprinted). The work teaches a moderate Calvinism with an avoidance of extreme statements and metaphysical refinements. Besides minor publications he also wrote The Conquest of Canaan, a Poem in Eleven Books (Hartford, 1785); Greenfield Hill, a Poem in Seven Parts (New York, 1794); and Travels in New England and New York (4 vols., New Haven, 1821-22). The last-named work is a storehouse of facts, shrewd observations, and quaint comments. President Dwight was the author of the familiar hymn "I love thy kingdom, Lord."

F. H. FOSTER.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The leading Memoir is by his son, Sereno Edwards Dwight, in Theology Explained, New York, 1846. Consult also: J. Sparks, Library of American Biography, vol. xiv., Boston, 1855; W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, ii. 152-165, New York, 1859; X C. Tyler, Three Men of Letters, pp. 69-127, ib. 1895.

 

2. Twelfth president of Yale College, grandson of the preceding; b. at Norwich, Conn., Nov. 16, 1828. He was educated at Yale (B.A., 1849), the Yale Divinity School (1850-53), and the universities of Berlin and Bonn (1856-58). He was tutor in Greek at Yale from 1851 to 1855 and professor of New Testament Greek in the Divinity School from 1858 to 1886. In the latter year he was elected president, and held this position until 1899. He was a member of the American committee for the revision of the English version of the Bible and for several years was one of the editors of The New Englander. He has written Thoughts of and for the Inner Life (sermons; New York, 1899) and Memories of Yale Life and Men (1903), and prepared the American edition of Meyer's commentary on Romans (New York, 1884), several other Pauline Epistles and on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1885), and the Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude (1887), as well as of F. Godet's commentary on the Gospel of John (1886).