Howard, Bezaleel, Dd

Howard, Bezaleel, D.D., a Unitarian Congregational minister, was born at Bridgewater, Mass., Nov. 22, 1753. He entered Harvard College in 1777, and, after graduation in 1781, engaged in teaching, pursuing at the same time a course of theological study. In 1783 he was appointed tutor at Harvard. In November 1784, he was called as minister to the First Church and Society in Springfield, Mass., and was ordained April 27, 1785. He continued in this position until September 1803, when impaired health obliged him to discontinue his work; but his resignation was not accepted by the Church until Jan. 25, 1809, when his successor was ordained. In 1819 he associated himself with a new Unitarian Church which had been formed from members of his old congregation, and he continued with them till his death, Jan. 20, 1837. In 1824 Harvard College conferred the degree of D.D. upon him. The Rev. Daniel Waldo, in a sketch of Dr. Howard (in Sprague's Annals of the Am. Pulpit, 8, 181 sq.), says that the theological views of Dr. Howard had been Armenian until his latest years, when he came to believe "the sole supremacy of the Father. He, however, held to the doctrine of the atonement, in the sense of propitiation or expiation, with the utmost tenacity; and he regarded the rejection of it as a rejection of Christianity. His views of the character of the Savior were not, perhaps, very accurately defined; he seemed to regard him as a sort of eternal emanation from Deity; not a creature in the strict sense, on the one hand, nor yet the supreme God on the other." He published a sermon delivered at the ordination of the Rev. Antipas Steward (1793). (J. H. W.)