Lansing, Dirck Cornelius, Dd

Lansing, Dirck Cornelius, D.D.

an eminent Presbyterian minister, was born of a distinguished family at Lansingburgh, N.Y., March 3, 1785. He graduated from Yale College in 1804. While in college he was converted, and immediately felt impelled to preach the gospel. He studied theology under Reverend Dr. Blatchford of Lansingburgh, and was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Columbia in 1806. In the autumn of that year he went to an untried field and visited from house to house over a circuit of twenty-five miles, and soon gathered a church where the town of Onondaga now stands, and continued pastor for eight years. Then, on account of failing health, he retired to a farm, preaching as he was able till he became pastor at Stillwater, where he remained two and a half years, and two hundred converts were added to the Church. In 1816 he supplied the Park Street Church in Boston, Mass., and such an interest was awakened in his preaching that in a few weeks more than eighty persons were converted. He next accepted a call from the First Presbyterian Church in Auburn, N.Y. Here he remained twelve years, and his own enthusiasm kindled a corresponding feeling in the hearts of those who heard his preaching and saw his labors, and more than a thousand souls were converted and added to the Church. During a part of the time he occupied the chair of sacred rhetoric in the Theological Seminary. In 1829 he took charge of the Second Presbyterian Church in Utica, and in a short time five hundred persons were converted under his ministry. In 1833 he was installed pastor of a Free Church in New York city, then worshipping in Masonic Hall, but was obliged to retire in 1835 on account of ill-health. For the next ten years he labored chiefly as an evangelist in central and western New York, and one year in Illinois. In 1846 he returned to New York city, and took charge of a feeble church in Chrystie Street. In 1848 he assumed the care of the church on Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, where his labors were crowned with great success, but, his health giving way, he was obliged to leave in 1855. In the spring of 1856 he removed to Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, Ohio, where he supplied the Vine Street Congregational Church. For fourteen weeks he preached twice each Sunday, until the second Sunday in December, when he suddenly failed. This was his last sermon. He died at Walnut Hills, March 19, 1857. Dr. Lansing projected the Auburn Theological Seminary, and by his personal efforts secured an endowment of $100,000. He was a member of the original board of trustees of Hamilton College. He published Sermons on Important Subjects (1825). See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 3:407; Nevin, Presb. Encyclop, s.v.