George Edward Day. 1815-1905. Memorial Address by Prof. Edward L. Curtis at the Yale Divinity School, December 17, 1905. N Sunday evening, July second of this present year, fell asleep the Rev. George Edward Day, D. D., Professor. emeritus of the Hebrew Language and Literature in the Yale Divinity School, in whose memory and to whose honor we are assembled here this afternoon. Prof. Day was born March nineteenth, 1815, and thus over ninety years of life were allotted to him, and it is a pleasure to relate that until the painful accident of breaking a limb, whereby he was confined to his room during the last fifteen months of his life, that his strength and vigor remained almost unimpaired. Of him it might have been said up to that time, as of the great lawgiver of Israel, that his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated, for, on the day of his mishap he read a paper before the New Haven Association of Congregational Ministers. His boyhood and college and seminary life were passed in New Haven, and also his last thirty-nine years; hence it might seem more fitting that one who was to the manor born should speak of him on this occasion and not one who had known him only during the fourteen years preceding his death: but President Dwight has already published a beautiful tribute to his worth, and my colleagues in the faculty thought it proper that one of the younger generation should honor his memory, and asked this service of me, and I confess a real pleasure in my task, because I had a strong affection for Prof. Day. He drew me to him by his kind and genuine spirit and by his profound loyalty to me, his successor in the chair of Hebrew. Prof. Day was the son of Gad Day and Roxanna Rice. He was born in Pittsfield, Mass., but the family moved, in his early youth, to New Haven. His father was a descendant of Thomas Day, the son of Robert Day who emigrated from Ipswich, England, in 1643 and was one of the first settlers of Hartford. I mention these genealogical facts because of Prof. Day's interest in them. When a young man he compiled a list of the descendants in the male line of his ancestor, Robert Day, which was printed in 1840 and then again in 1848. President Jeremiah Day of Yale College belonged to the same family. As a boy Prof. Day seems to have been, if not singularly precocious, yet a lad of more than usual promise and aptitude for study. He entered Yale College at the early age of fourteen. It is true that the requirements for entrance in 1829 were far less than at the present time. In Latin only were they approximately the same as now; in Greek much less; while nothing in the modern languages and in mathematics beyond arithmetic ; and nothing in English except composition and grammar, were required. The college course of study was also meagre compared with that of the present, and the young student Day felt its meagreness; and, since no German was taught in college, having found some one in New Haven competent to give instruction in that language, he persuaded some of his classmates, among them the late Prof. Dana, to join with him in its pursuit, and thus while a lad he laid the foundation for his later studies in German theological literature and revealed the linguistic bent of his mind. After his graduation from colleges came to Prof. Day what he told me was one of the greatest disappointments of his life. He had expected to teach in a classical school in Utica, New York, when, if I remember his statement correctly, the school for some reason was given up and he was obliged to look elsewhere for employment. This led him to take a position in the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, where he remained two years and became much interested in this work. The confidence which he inspired at that time, when only little more than a mere youth under twenty-one, is a high testimonial to his ability and character; for although he remained in the institution only two years, yet when he was visiting Ger many some ten years later, he was delegated by the board of directors of the institution to examine the schools of Germany for deaf mutes and to make a report upon their principles and methods of instruction, with a view especially of determining whether pupils should be taught to communicate by articulation or by signs. He did his work most thoroughly and well, sending back a report of some 140 octavo printed pages, which was so valuable and highly approved that when again, in later life, in 1859 Prof. Day was going abroad, he was asked again to study, in a similar way, schools in Holland and Paris. A printed report of over forty pages gives the result of these second investigations. After his connection with the New York Institution for the Instruction for the Deaf and Dumb, Prof. Day entered upon his theological studies, spending three years in our Divinity School. So fine was his scholarship that immediately upon his graduation in 1838 he was appointed an instructor in Biblical Literature in the School. It was at this time that in his ever present Christian zeal and desire to help the unfortunate, he taught the Amistad captives, a company of African slaves, who on a Spanish slave trader had successfully revolted against their captors and brought the vessel to the United States, and pending the negotiations between Spain and this country for their return to Africa, were detained for some time in New Haven. Forty years later Prof. Day had the pleasure of welcoming a Christian African lad on his way to Fisk University whose mother had been taught by one of his old African pupils. After completing his term of service as instructor in the Divinity School on December second, 1840, Prof. Day was ordained to the Christian ministry as pastor of the Union Church and Society of Marlboro, Massachusetts. The sermon on that occasion was preached by Dr. Leonard Bacon, and the young man, only twenty-five years old, was consecrated, after the prayer, with the old hymn which reads: O touch his lips with living fire, Grant him to soothe the widow's grief, Long may his life be spared to guide And the admonition of this hymn Dr. Day realized for the term of seven years at Marlboro. His people never forgot his fidelity as a Christian pastor and when some fifty years later the church received from him a handsome copy of the Revised Bible, the moistened eyes of the aged members gave testimony to the large and warm place he ever held in the affections of his people. His pastorate was signalized by no extraordinary events. Only two seem to have made a deep impression upon the present clerk of the church. These were two days of fasting and prayer, one occasioned by the death of President William Henry Harrison, and the other voted on account of the low state of spirituality in the church as evinced by the lack of the revival of religion that neighboring churches were enjoying. This latter appears to have done much good, since quite a large number shortly after united with the church on confession. A sermon preached also upon the day of the annual state fast in 1842 was published by the request of the congregation. In this Prof. Day gave expression in no uncertain terms to his abhorrence of African slavery. From Marlboro he was called to the Edwards Church at Northampton, Mass., where he had a delightful ministry for three years and is today held in tender remembrance by the few of his old parishioners now living. One of these writes of him under recent date: "He was dearly beloved by the Edwards Church as a spiritual, faithful, devoted pastor and preacher. He was one of the most genial of men, sympathetic and won the love of old and young and entered into the home life of us all as an old friend. After he left and as long as he lived he kept up his real interest in our welfare, and he left with a love which followed him all his life." During the days of the ministry at Northampton the gold fields of California were discovered and we have a printed copy of an address of Prof. Day's to a mining company that went from Northampton to California, who, before they left home, "desired that the counsels of God's Word be brought before them and the protection and blessing of heaven be invoked on their behalf." This was the temper of the life of New England fifty years ago. Religion was a concern of every home and household. Prayer was invoked upon every enterprise. Man's eternal destiny was a subject of no less thought than his temporal welfare. In such a state of society and religious feeling Prof. Day filled the ideal of a pastor and preacher : but his larger life work was to be found in the sphere of theological teaching. By instinct Prof. Day was a scholar. The real passion of his soul was for learning and he never flagged in its pursuit while either at Marlboro or Northampton. During his service in the former place he spent some months abroad in theological study; and at the latter this vivid picture in printed reminiscences has been left of him in his study: "There he sits by the hour patiently plodding, with careful fingers removing daintily the earth from around some Hebrew root of verb or noun to find a priceless gem, the exact shade of sense and beauty to enrich his sermon and his people next Sabbath." No wonder then that Prof. Day the scholar was discovered and that the call in 1851 came to him to be the Professor of Biblical Learning and Literature in the Lane Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Cincinnati, Ohio. There he was the successor of the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, D. D., the husband of the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Prof. Day was then in his prime, just 36 years of age, and entered at once with enthusiasm upon his work. The field of his instruction was a broad one: the exegesis of both Old and the New Testament; the drill of students in both Greek and Hebrew. But while he thus was obliged to perform the work now ordinarily assigned to two or more professors, he filled his position so well and won such distinction as a teacher and scholar that after a professorship of fifteen years he was called to the chair of Hebrew Language and Literature at Yale. Marietta College also worthily conferred upon him in 1856 the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In this connection it may be well to speak of Prof. Day as a |