Semitic Lanrnsses

SMITH, SAMUEL FRANCIS: American Baptist; b. in Boston, Mass., Oct. 21, 1808; d. there Nov. 16, 1895. He attended the Boston Latin School 1820 25; was graduated from Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1829, and from Andover Theolog­ical Seminary, Mass., 1832; was pastor of the First Baptist Church, Waterville, Me., 1834 42, and during the tame period professor of modern lan­guages in Waterville College; pastor of the First Baptist Church, Newton, Mass., 1842• 54; and editor of The Christian Review, Boston, 1842 48, and of the publications of the American Baptist Missionary Union, 1854 69. Though his fame rests upon the authorship of the hymn " My country, 'tie of thee " (written at Andover, Mats., in Feb., 1832, while a student in the theological seminary), and the missionary hymn " The morning light is break­ing " (written in the same year and place), he wrote many other hymns. Most of the pieces included in Lowell Mason's Juvenile Lyre (Boston, 1832), the first book of children's music, were his transla­tions from the German. He edited Lyric Gems,

being selections of poetry, with several original pieces (Boston, 1843); and in collaboration with Baron Stow The Psalmist (1843) which contained twenty­eeven of his own hymns, and is the most creditable and influential of the American Baptist collections of its period; also Rock of Ages, being selections of poetry, with some original pieces (1866); and he was the author of Life of Rev. Joseph Grafton (1848);

Missionary Sketches (1879); History of Neurton, Mass., Toran and City from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (1880); and Rambles in Miasionr fields (1884).

B:atsoaasrar: 8. W. Duffield, Erpliah $ymne. P• 380, New York, 1888; Julian, $ymROlopy, pp. 1083 84.

SMITH, SAMUEL STANHOPE: American Pres­byterian; b. at Pequea, Lancaster County, Pa., Mar. 16, 1750; d. at Princeton, N. J., Aug. 21, 1819. He was graduated from Princeton College, 1767;

483 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Smi~

was tutor there, 1770 73; first president of Hamp­den Sidney College, 1775; became professor of moral philosophy at Princeton College in 1779; and was president, 1794 1812. In 1786 he was a mem­ber of the committee which drew up the Form of Government of the Presbyterian Church. He had a high reputation as a pulpit orator and college presi­dent. He published Sermons (Newark, N. J., 1799); Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion, (Philadelphia, 1809); Lectures . . . on . . . Moral and Political Philosophy (Trenton, N. J., 1812); Prin­ciples of Natural and Revealed Religion (New Bruns­wick, N. J., 1815); (posthumous) Sermons, with Memoir (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1821).

BmmoaRAPay: W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pul­pit, iii. 335 345, New York, 1858; 1. W. Riley, American Philosophy; the early Schools, pp. 497 509, ib. 1907.

SMITH, SYDNEY: Church of England; b. at Woodford (7 m. n.e. of Charing Cross), London, June 3, 1771; d. in London Feb. 22, 1845. He was graduated from Oxford, 1792; took holy orders, 1794; was minister of Charlotte Episcopal chapel, Edinburgh, 1797 1802; canon of Bristol, 1828; and canon residentiary of St. Paul's, 1831. He was one of the most famous of English wits; but he was also a forcible, earnest preacher, and a sagacious critic and reviewer. He was the real founder of The Edin­burgh Review (1802 sqq.) and wrote for it some eighty articles which are among the best that appeared during the first twenty five years of its publication. Besides his Sermons (2 vols., London, 1809) he pub­lished Peter Plumley's Letters, and Selected Essays (1886), which did much to promote Roman Catholic emancipation; Sermons Preached at St. Paul's Cathedral, The Foundling Hospital, and Several Churches in. London, together with Others Addressed to a Country Congregation (1846); Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1850); and in 1848 appeared the fourth edition of his works in 3 vols.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lady Holland (his daughter), A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith. With a Selection from his Letters, ed. Mrs. Austin, London, 1855; S. J. Reid, Sketch of the Life and Times of . . . Sydney Smith, ib. 1884; A. Chevrillon, Sydney Smith et la renaissance des Wee lib&ales en Anpleterre au xix. sQcle, Paris, 1894; DNB, liii. 119 123.

SMITH, THOMAS: Free Church of Scotland; b. at Symington (31 m. s.e. of Glasgow), Lanarkshire, July 8, 1817; d. at Edinburgh May 23, 1906. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1839 was ordained a missionary to Calcutta. Until 1858 he was engaged chiefly in teaching in the Gen­eral Assembly's Institution and after 1843, when be joined the Free Church, in the institute of the latter denomination. He was long an associate editor of the Calcutta Christian Observer, and for ten years edited the Calcutta Review. For a short time during the Mutiny he was chaplain of the Black Watch, and it is especially noteworthy that he was the first to organize the system of zenana missions in India. In 1858 he returned to Scotland; was minister of Cowgatehead Free Church, Edinburgh (1859  80); and professor of evangelistic theology in New Col­lege, Edinburgh (1880 93). He wrote Medimval Missions (Edinburgh, 1880); Anselm of Canterbury (1882); Alexander Duff (London, 1883); Memoirs of James Begg (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1885 88); and Euclid, his Life and System (1902); translated the

Clementine Recognitions for the Ante Nicene Fathers (Edinburgh, 1867) and G. Warneek'a Modern Missions and Culture (1883); and edited the letters of S. Rutherford (1881).

SMITH, WILLIAM ANDREW: Methodist Epis­copal, South; b. at Fredericksburg, Va., Nov. 29, 1802; d. at Richmond, Va., Mar. 1, 1870. He professed religion at seventeen years of age, pre­pared for the ministry, and was admitted into the Virginia Conference in 1825. In 1833 he was ap­pointed agent for Randolph Macon College, then in its infancy. He then filled many of the most im­portant stations in his conference until 1846, when he was called to the presidency of Randolph Macon College. This position, as well as that of professor of mental and moral philosophy, he filled with great acceptability and efficiency until 1866, when he moved to St. Louis, Mo. After serving here as pas­tor of Centenary Church for two years, he became president of Central College, located at Fayette in that state. At the eventful general conference of 1844 he took a specially prominent part; and in the celebrated appeal of Rev. Francis A. Harding, and in the extrarjudicial trial of Bishop James Osgood Andrew, he won a national reputation for delibera­tive and forensic eloquence and for rare powers of argument and debate. He was a hard student and an earnest thinker. The vigor and clearness of his intellect, his candor, independence, energy, and unquestioned ability, caused him to stand in the front rank of the leading minds in the Methodist­Episcopal Church, South. His Philosophy and Prac­tice of Slavery (Nashville, 1857) attracted wide at­tention as one of the ablest presentations of the southern side of the slavery question ever published. BIBLIOGRAPHY: A biographical sketch by Bishop J. C. Granbery is embodied in the Minutes of the denomination for 1870.

SMITH, WILLIAM ROBERTSON: English crit­

ical theologian and Semitic scholar; b. at New Farm,

near Keig (22 m. n.w. of Aberdeen), Aberdeenddre,

Nov. 8, 1846; d. at Cambridge Mar. 31, 1894."Tie

was educated by his father and at Aberdeen

University (1861 65), New College (the

Life. Free Church theological hall), Edin­

burgh (1866 70), and the universities of

Bonn and Gbttingen (summers of 1867 and 1869),

while in 1868 70 he was also assistant to the pro­

fessor of natural philosophy in Edinburgh Univer­

sity. In 1870 he was appointed professor of oriental

languages and Old Testament exegesis in the Free

Church College at Aberdeen, and five years later he

became a member of the Old Testament revision

company. It was during this period that a crisis

occurred in Smith's career when he was invited to

prepare articles on Old Testament criticism for the

ninth edition of the Encyclopwdia Britannica. The

very first articles (" Angel " and " Bible ") aroused

a storm of protest, and on the unfavorable report of

an investigating committee, in 1877, Smith demand­

ed formal trial. His activity as a teacher practically

ended in the following year; his entire series of

articles for the encyclopedia were held to impair

belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures; and in

1881 he was suspended from his professorship. He

had meanwhile delivered at Edinburgh and Glasgow

Smith THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG 484

6nethen

two series of lectures which were published as The

Old Testament in. the Jewish Church (Edinburgh,

1881) and The Prophets of Israel (1882). In 1881 he

was invited to become editor in chief of the Ency­

dopmedia Britannica, to which he had continued to

contribute, and for which, besides his editorial

duties, he now prepared a series of additional ar­

ticles. He did not, however, permit his Semitic

studies to languish, but spent the winter of 1879,80

in Egypt (also visiting Syria and Palestine) and the

following year in Egypt and Arabia. In 1883 he was

appointed to the Lord Almoner's professorship of

Arabic at Cambridge, where he was elected a fellow

of Christ's College in 1885, and in 1886,89 he was

chief librarian of the university. In the latter year

he was chosen Adams professor of Arabic, a dignity

which he held until his death: In 1888 91 he had

been Burnett Lecturer in Aberdeen, the three courses

being the religious institutions of the Semites, their

religious beliefs, and the historic significance and in­

fluence of their religion. Failing health, however,

forbade him to publish more than the first series,

Lectures on the Religion. of the Semites: Fundamental

Institutions (Edinburgh, 1889).

Smith maintained that Semitic religious concepts

were common to all primitive peoples, and that these

concepts were to be deduced from the data of known

popular religions, the outworking of this theory be­

ing best seen in his Kinship and Marriage in Early

Arabia (Cambridge, 1885) and in his Religion of the

Semites. It was, indeed, in these two books that his

scientific work reached its acme. His study of

primitive Arab life, both as recorded in literature and

as observed at the present day, led him to identify

it, in all essentials, with that of the

Theory early Semites as a whole. As the basis

of Semitic of the most primitive Arab social organ­

Religion. ization he assumed matriarchy, with

exogamous polyandry and a totemistic

clan system, and for this he sought parallels among

the Hebrews and Arameans. His underlying

ethnological theories, however, need much investi­

gation and revision, and his comparative method,

operating with analogies, often gives his hypotheses

only the support of phenomena first recorded

at a late period. Nevertheless, the Kinship and

Marriage represents an amalgamation of scattered

data into a system of culture history never be­

fore attained in Semitic science. In the Religion of

the Semites Smith sought to ascertain the original

significance of the earliest religious institutions,

maintaining that the history of ancient religions

must be based essentially on ritual, sacrifice, and

religious law, and thus seeking to prove that religion

was the common possession of the prehistoric Semitic

race. Here again, however, the precautions already

noted must be observed. He held that the conserver

of religion was the tribe united by the consanguinity

of all its members, personality being merged in com­

munism. At this period there is an animism which

makes little distinction between beings and things.

The tribal god is considered the physical source of the

tribe, and thus a member of it. To the earlier matri­

archy corresponds a mother goddess, beside whom

arises a father god with the development of patri­

wchy. As the tribe expands in power, the tribal god

gains prestige and is regarded as king. With the rise

of kingship comes an exaltation of law, the king often

being the source of law and being in duty bound to

safeguard it. The concept of the tribal god thus

receives an ethical content, that of justice. This

ancient trital religion was crystallized in fixed in­

stitutions, particularly in sacrifice, and its cardinal

concept was " sanctuary," which Smith compared

with the Polynesian taboo and regarded as especially

affecting sacred places. Side by side with this re­

ligion of the nomadic Semites Smith posited the

Baal cult of the agricultural Semitic peoples, Baal

being, according to him, essentially a fertility deity.

This double system was reflected by the Semitic

sacrifices, those to Baal being a tribute of the prod­

ucts of the field, and those to the tribal god being an

animal victim which was eaten (its blood being

devoted to the deity), thus renewing and strength­

ening, by eating the same sacrificial victim, the blood

kinship within the tribe as well as between the tribe

and the tribal deity. This kinship, however, could

be secured only if the sacrificial victim was itself

akin to the tribe, so that the victim was the totem

of the tribe, which might be killed only for the sacri­

ficial mead. From such a meal Smith deduced his

theory of sacrifice. Gradually the communal meal

and the offering became blended, and the sacrifice

even became (notably in India) a means of actually

controlling the deity. On the other hand, his theory

of the basis of human sacrifice is untenable, nor can

all the phenomena of Semitic religion be derived, as

he fancied, from a single source; while it is also

problematical whether all the concepts of a primitive

religion can be coordinated in a fixed system. ..~

(RUDOLF STfE.)

Bxsraoan"a:: DNB, liii. 160 162. in the British Museum Catalogue, ax., are entries of pamphlets concerning the trial and the views of Smith, but they are controversial and add little to knowledge of his life. Consult on the trial H. W. Moncrieff, Hist. of the Case of Professor W. Robertson Bmith, Edinburgh, 1881; H. F. Henderson, The Religious Comroroeraies of Scotland, chap. xi., Edinburgh, 1905.

SMYRNA. See ASIA MINOR, IV.

SMYTH smaith (SMITH), JOHN: English Sepa 

ratist, generally considered the founder of the Gen­eral Baptists; d. in Amsterdam Aug., 1612 (buried Sept. 1). He studied at Christ's College (he is iden­tified by the principal authorities with a John Smith

who was graduated B.A., 1576; M.A., 1579). He was cited before the university authorities for preaching on Ash Wednesday, 1586, in favor of a strict observance of the Sabbath; was preacher or lecturer at Lincoln, 1603 05; after nine months of consideration and perplexity he left the Church of

England, and became pastor of a Separatist con­gregation in Gainsborough,1606. For further notice of his work see BAmsTS, I., 1.

Smyth's publications were A True Description out of the Word of God of the Visible Church (1589; several

times reprinted); The Bright Morning Star, or the Res­olution and Exposition of the twenty second Psalm, Preached publicly ire Four Sermons at Lincoln (Cam­bridge, 1603; the only known copy is in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge); A Pattern of True Prayer, a Learned and Comfmrtahle Exposition

466 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Emit'

$nethen

or Commentary upon the Lord's Prayer (London, 1605

and 1624; apparently the first edition has disap­

peared); The Differences of the Churches of the

Separation (n.p., n.d., probably 1608 or 1609; it

called forth a reply from Ainsworth, 1609); Par­

allels, Censures, Observations (1609; a reply to

Richard Bernard and Ainsworth); The Character

of the Beast (1609; in controversy with Richard

Clifton on infant baptism); A Reply to Mr. R. Clif­

ton's 'Christian Plea' (1610). The library of York

Minster possesses a unique tract which contains

(1) An Epistle to the Reader by T. P. [Thomas Pig­

gott]; (2) The Last Book of John Smith, Called the

Retraction of his Errors and the Confirmation of the

Truth; (3) Propositions and Conclusions concerning

True Christian Religion, Containing a Confession of

Faith of Certain English People, Luring at Amster­

dam, in 100 Propositions; (4) The Life and Death

of John Smith (reprinted in Robert Barclay's Inner

Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth,

pp. i. xvi., following p. 117, London, 1876).

BtnLxoaaAPHY: Edward Arber, The Story o) the Pilgrim

Fathers, pp. 131 140, London, 1897; T. Crosby, Mist. of

the English Baptists, i. 91 99, 265 271, ib.1738; J. Ivimey,

Hist. of the English Baptiste, i. 113 122, ii. 503 505, ib.

181130; J. Clifford, The English Baptists, app. x., xm.,

London, 1881; H. M. Dexter, The True Story of John

Smyth, the Se baptist, Boston, 1881; A. H. Newman,

Hist. of Antipedobaptism, pp. 378 393, Philadelphia, 1897;

DNB, liii. 88 70.

SMYTH, JOHN PATERSON: Church of Ireland;

b. at Killarney (44 m. w.n.w. of Cork), County Kerry,

Feb. 2, 1852. He was educated at Trinity College,

Dublin (B.A., 1880), and was ordered deacon in 1880

and advanced to the priesthood in the following

year. He was curate of Lisburn Cathedral (1881­

1883), and of Harold's Cross, Dublin (1883 88); and

incumbent of Christ Church, Kingstown, until 1902.

Since 1902 he has been vicar of St. Ann's, Dublin.

He has also been chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant

of Ireland since 1889 and professor of pastoral the­

ology in Trinity College since 1902. He has written

How we got our Bible (London, 1886; 18th ed., 1906) ;

The Old Documents and the New Bible (1890); How

God Inspired the Bible (1892); The Divine Library:

Suggestions how to Read the Bible (1896); The Bible

for the Young (3 vols., comprising Genesis, Exodus,

Joshua, Judges, Prophets and Kings, and Matthew;

1901 08); The Preacher and his Sermon (1907); and

Gospel of the Hereafter (1910).

SMYTH, SAMUEL PHILLIPS NEWMAN: Con­

gregationalist; b. at Brunswick, Me., June 25,

1843. He was educated at Bowdoin College (A.B.,

1863) and at Andover Theological Seminary

(graduated, 1867). In 1863 he was an assistant

teacher in the Naval Academy at Newport, R. I.,

and in 1864 65 was lieutenant in the Sixteenth Maine

Volunteers. From 1867 to 1870 he was acting

pastor of the Harrison Street Chapel (now Pilgrim

Church), Providence, R. I., after which he was

pastor of the First Congregational Church, Bangor,

Me. (1870 75), and of the First Presbyterian

Church, Quincy, Ill. (1876,82). In 1882 he be­

came pastor of the First Congregational Church,

New Haven, Conn., becoming pastor emeritus

in 1908. He has written The Religious Feeling:

A Study for Faith (New York, 1877); Old Faiths

X. 30

in Net, Lights (1879); The Orthodox Theology of To day (1881); The Reality of Faith (sermons; 1884); Christian Facts and Forces (1887); Personal Creeds (1890); Christian Ethics (1892); The Place of Death in Evolution (1897); Through Science to Faith (1902); Light in Dark Places (1903); Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism (1908); and Modern Belief in Immortality (1910).

SHAPE, ANDREW: Participant in the Ban­gorian controversy (see HoADLY, BENJAMIN); b. at Hampton Court (13 m. s.w. of London) in 1675; d. at Windsor Castle Dec. 30, 1742. He was edu­cated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge (B.A., 1693; M.A., 1697; D.D., 1705); became lec­turer at St. Martin's, London, and chaplain to the sixth duke of Somerset, by whom he was made rector of St. Mary at Hill and St. Andrew Hubbard in 1706; he became chaplain to Queen Anne and afterward to King George I.; then headmaster of Eton in 1711, in this period attacking Benjamin Hoadly, one of his Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717) passing through many editions; his part in the controversy caused the loss of the king's favor and the position of chaplain; he was made prov­ost of King's College, Cambridge, 1719, and was vice chancellor of the university, 1723 24; became rector of Knebworth, Hertfordshire, 1737, and the same year changed to West Ildesley, Berkshire, holding this position till his death. His sermons were collected, Forty five Sermons on Several Sub­jects (3 vols., London, 1745); he also edited the Ser­mons of Dean Robert Moss (1732).

B:BLtoaasray: DNB, liii. 203, where references to scatter­ing notices are found.

SNETHEN, NICHOLAS: Methodist Protestant; b. at Fresh Pond (now Glen Cove), Long Island, Nov. 15, 1769; d. on a journey from Cincinnati May 30, 1845. In 1794 he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and served for four years in Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine; preached in Charleston, S. C., 1798 99; and during 1800 was traveling companion of Bishop Asbury (q.v.); he was secretary of the general conference of 1800, and a member of the conferences of 1804 and 1812, taking a prominent part in the measures for the limitation of the prerogatives of bishops; he retired to his farm at Longanore, Md., 1806, but in 1809 reentered the ministry, serving in Baltimore, Georgetown, and Alexandria, and acting also part of the time as chaplain of the house of representa­tives; in 1829 he removed to Indiana, and, when the Methodist Protestant Church (see METHODISTS, IV., 3) was organized, united with it, preaching and traveling in behalf of it till his death; he became one of the editorial staff of The Methodist Protes­tant in 1834; in 1836 took charge of the college of the denomination which was founded in New York City, which enterprise, however, was a failure; in 1837 he returned to the west to take charge of the Manual Labor Ministerial College started at Lawrenceburg, Ind., which also failed, and he then took up his residence in Cincinnati, where he continued to live. His principal publications were A Reply to O'Kelly's Apology (1800), and Answer to O'Kelly's Rejoinder (1801); Lectures on Preaching (1822); Essays on