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Yates, Andrew, DD.D..

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Yates, John Austin, D.D.

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a (Dutch) Reformed minister, was born at Schenectady, N. Y., Jan. 10, 1772. He graduated with honor at Yale College in 1793; studied theology under Dr. John H. Livingston, and was licensed in 1796 by the Classis of New York. In 1797 he was made professor of Latin and Greek in Union College, and held this chair until 1801, when he became pastor of a Congregational Church in East Hartford, Conn., After thirteen years of efficient service (from 1801 to 1814), he again accepted a professorship in Union College (mental and moral philosophy), which he held eleven years (from 1814. to 1825), and for eleven years more was the principal of a high-school at Chittenango, N. Y. (to 1836). From that time until his death he devoted himself with untiring zeal and great usefulness to the assistance of no less than thirteen feeble churches.. During his life as a teacher, he was constantly engaged in preaching wherever he was wanted. He was the chief instrument in founding a mission among the Indians at Mackinaw, about 1823. He organized a Church at Chittenango, and was its pastor while he had charge of the high school. His death was the result of illness contracted in his missionary labors. His last effort was the establishment of a Mission Church among a poor people at Day, or Sacondaga, Schenectady Co., N.Y., of which his sister, an aged and benevolent lady, was the chief supporter. But ten days before its dedication, and on a Sabbath, Oct. 13, 1844, he died without a struggle. His epitaph is inscribed on the bell of the little church, which is only one of the many monuments of his apostolic spirit and toils. At East Hartford his pastorate was greatly blessed with revivals and constant ingatherings. There he began, and at Schenectady continued, to teach theology to young men, of whom thirty entered the ministry of Christ. Among these were president Wayland, of Brown University; Dr. Mark Tucker, of Wethersfield; and Dr. B. B. Wisner, of Boston. Dr. Yates was an accurate scholar, a thorough theologian, an effective evangelical preacher, an accomplished college professor and officer, a man of great public spirit and Christian enterprise. He was in the best sense a Christian gentleman, and "a good minister of Jesus Christ." His publications consisted of a few occasional Sermons and fugitive pieces. He preferred to let his active- works speak for him, for he was not ambitious of distinction. "I allow myself to do nothing," said he, "for the purpose of being superior to my neighbors. Ambition is a bad motive; the Bible does not appeal to it." The dew falls silently, nobody hears it, but the fields feel it. The attraction of gravitation makes no noise." So he lived and died, a happy Christian, and "a workman that needed not to be ashamed." Dr. Sprague has given an unusual space to his memory in his Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 9:126-138; see also Corwin, Manual Of the Ref. Church, p. 2 25, 276. (W. J. R. T.)