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Fiske, Nathan Welby

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Fiske, John, D.D.

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an eminent Congregational minister, was born April 17, 1798, at Weston, Mass. He graduated at Dartmouth College 1817; was chosen tutor 1818, in which position he remained two years, and then entered the Theological Seminary at Andover. In Nov. 1823, he went to Savannah, and preached among the seamen and others not belonging to any church. He was chosen professor of languages in Amherst Collegiate Institution (afterwards Amherst College), 1824. A few years after, he was transferred to the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy, which he held until his death. In 1846, on account of ill health, he sailed (Nov. 5) for Palestine, and died in Jerusalem May 27,1847. Mr. Fiske published a translation of Eschenburg's Manual of Classical Literature (1836), which went through three editions, and was stereotyped for the fourth ed. (1843). A volume of his Sermons was published in 1850, and also Memoirs of N. W. Fiskce, with Selections from his Sermons and other Writings, by Heman Humphrey, D.D. (Amherst, 1850). The New Englander (Feb. 1850. p. 70) speaks of his sermons as follows: They are eminently suggestive. Some of them, like that on the analysis of conscience, are fine specimens of philosophical analysis. Some, like that on the wonderfulness of man's mental constitution, and that on the fearfulness of man's mental constitution, lead the reader over a track almost untrodden by sermonizers, and yet presenting grounds for most powerful appeals. No thinking mind can fail to be enriched by the attentive reading of these discourses. They belong in many respects to the class of bishop Butler's sermons; yet with the bishop's strong reasoning and clear analysis of principles, they have much more of the direct and powerful application of the truth to the conscience, and are more imbued with the very essence of the doctrines of the cross."