OR,

AN IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT OF

THAT HAVE EXISTED IN THE WORLD FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE PRESENT DAY,

THEIR DOCTRINES, RELIGIOUS RITES AND CEREMONIES.

AS WELL AS THOSE OF THE

JEWS, MOHAMMEDANS, AND HEATHEN NATIONS:

TOGETHER WITH

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY;

A MISSIONARY GAZETTEER,

BY REV. B. B. EDWARDS,

THE WHOLE BROUGHT DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME, AND EMBRACING,UNDER ONE ALPHABET, THE MOST VALUABLE PART OF

CALMET’S AND BROWN’S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE; BUCK’S THEOL. DICTIONARY;

ABBOTT’S SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY; WELLS’ GEOGRAPHY OF THE

BIBLE; JONES’ BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

AND NUMEROUS OTHER SIMILAR WORKS.

DESIGNED AS A

COMPLETE BOOK OF REFERENCE ON ALL RELIGIOUS SUBIECTS

AND

FORMING

A CHEAP AND COMPACT LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.

ILLUSTRATED BY WOOD CUTS, MAPS, AND ENGRAVINGS ON COPPER AND STEEL

LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO & CO.

NEW YORK:

SHELDON, LAMPORT & CO

1856.

This document was scanned from an original copy of the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.

The text of this and other superb works are available on-line from:

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Reprint and digital file March 18, 2001.

Elias Boudinot was the chronicler of the apparent death and recovery of William Tennent, Jr, who was a close family friend. See our Log College Biography by Archibald Alexander, D.D. for this remarkable event. Needless to say, having an attending physician and someone of the stature of Dr. Boudinot involved, lends great credibility to the truth of the story presented !

Entry for Elias Boudinot, L.L.D.:

[ Page 261-262 ]

BOUDINOT, (ELIAS,. L. L. D.,) first president of the American Bible Society, was born in Philadelphia, May 2, 1740. His great-grandfather, Elias, was a Protestant in France, who fled from his country on the revocation of the edict of Nantes; his father, Elias, died in 1770; his mother, Catharine Williams, was of a Welsh family. After a classical education, he studied law under Richard Stockton, whose eldest sister he married. Soon after commencing the practice of law in New Jersey, he rose to distinction. He early espoused the cause of his country. In 1777, congress appointed him commissary general of prisoners; and in the same year he was elected a delegate to congress, of which body he was elected the president, in November, 1782. In that capacity he put his signature to the treaty of peace. He returned to the profession of the law; but was again elected to congress under the new constitution, in 1789, and was continued a member of the house six years. In 1796, Washington appointed him the director of the mint of the United States, as the successor of Rittenhouse: in this office he continued till 1805, when he resigned it, and, retiring from Philadelphia, passed the remainder of his life at Burlington, New Jersey. he lost his wife about the year 1808: he himself died, October24, 1821, aged eighty-one.

After the establishment, in 1811, of the Am. Bible Society, which he assisted in creating, he was elected its first president; and he made to it the munificent donation of ten thousand dollars. He afterwards contributed liberally towards the erection of its depository. In 1812, he was elected a member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to which he presented, the next year, a donation of one hundred pounds, sterling. When three Cherokee youths were brought to the foreign mission school in 1818, one of them by his permission took his name, for he was deeply interested in every attempt to meliorate the condition of the American Indians. His house was the seat of hospitality, and his days were spent in the pursuits of biblical literature, in the exercise of the loveliest charities of life, and the performance of the highest Christian duties. He was a trustee of Princeton college, in which he founded, in 1805, the cabinet of natural history, which cost three thousand dollars. He was a member of a Presbyterian church. By the religion which he professed, he was supported and, cheered as he went down to the grave. His patience was unexhausted; his faith was strong and triumphant. Exhorting those around him to rest in Jesus Christ as the only ground of trait, and commending his daughter and only child to the care of his friends, he expressed his desire to depart in peace to the bosom of his Father in heaven, and his last prayer was, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

By his last will, Dr. Boudinot bequeathed his large estate principally to charitable uses; 200 dollars for ten poor widows; 200 to the New Jersey Bible society, to purchase spectacles for the aged poor to enable them to read the Bible; 2,000 dollars to the Moravians at Bethlehem, for the instruction of the Indians; 4,000 acres of land to the society for the benefit of the Jews; to the Magdalen societies of New York and Philadelphia; 500 dollars each three houses in Philadelphia to the trustees of the general assembly, for the purchase of books for ministers; also, 5,000 dollars to the general assembly, for the support of missionary in Philadelphia and New York; 4,080 acres of land for theological students at Princeton; 4,000 acres to the college of New Jersey, for the establishment of fellowships; 4,542 acres to the American board of commissioners for foreign missions, with special reference to the benefit of the Indians; 3,270 acres to the hospital of Philadelphia to the benefit of foreigners; 4,500 acres to The American Bible Society; 13,000 acres to the mayor and corporation of Philadelphia, to supply the poor with wood on low terms; also, after the decease of his daughter, 5,000 dollars to the college, and 5,000 to the theological seminary of Princeton; and 5,000 to the American board of commissioners for foreign missions, and the remainder of his estate to the general assembly of the Presbyterian church.

How benevolent, honorable, and useful is such a chartable disposition of the property which God intrusts to a Christian compared with the selfish and narrow appropriation of it to the enrichment of family relatives, without any reference to the diffusion of truth and holiness in the earth? For such deeds of charity, the names of Boudinot, and Burr, and Abbott, and Norris, and Phillips will beheld in lasting, most honorable remembrance.

Dr. Boudinot published The Age of Revelation, or the Age of Reason an Age of Infidelity, 1790, also 1801; an oration before the society of the Cincinnati, [ A legion of Revolutionary War officers organized by Washington, Willison ed. ]1793; Second Advent of the Messiah, 1815; Star in the West; or an Attempt to discover the long-lost Tribes of Israel, preparatory to their return to their beloved city Jerusalem, octavo, 1816. Like Mr. Adair, he regards the Indians as the lost tribes.— —Allen; Panop. xvii. 399; xviii. 25; Green’s. Disc. ~78.