Lindsley, Philip

Lindsley, Philip D.D., a Presbyterian minister, was born near Morristown, N.J., December 21, 1786, and graduated in the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1804. After teaching for some time, and completing his theological course, he was licensed in 1810. and went to Newtown, Long Island, where he preached as a stated supply. In 1812 he became senior tutor in Princeton College, and in 1813 was appointed to the professorship of languages, and chosen secretary of the board of trustees. To these offices were added those of librarian and inspector of the college, and in 1817, when he was ordained, that of vice-president. In 1824 he agreed to go to Nashville, solely induced thereto by the new and wide field of exertion which lay before him there. He continued more than a quarter of a century at Nashville, and his reputation as a teacher was so high in the South and West' that it was said that every university in those regions had solicited him to accept its headship. He was twice invited to preside over Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania, and was actually elected provost of the University of Pennsylvania in 1834. From this period he was successively moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, member of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, professor of ecclesiastical polity and Biblical archeology in the New Albany Seminary (Indiana), 1850. He removed from New Albany in April, 1853, and returned to Nashville, where he died May 23, 1856. Dr. Lindsley's works have been published entire, with an introductory notice of his life and labors by Leroy J. Halsey (Philadel. 1865, 3 volumes, 8vo). Their contents are as follows: volume 1, Educational Discourses; volume 2, Sermons and Religious Discourses; volume 3, Miscellaneous Discourses and Essays. — Sprague, Annals, 4:465.