GARDINER, FREDERIC: Protestant Episcopalian; b. at Gardiner, Me., Sept. 11, 1822; d. at Middletown, Conn., July 18, 1899. He studied at Hobart College, Bowdoin College (B.A., 1842), and the General Theological Seminary, New York City, from which he was graduated in 1845. Ordered deacon in 1845, he was advanced to the priesthood in 1846. He was minister and rector of Trinity Church, Saco, -Me., 1845-47, curate at St. Luke's, Philadelphia, 1848, and rector of Christ Church, Bath, Me., 1848-54. He spent the years 1854-56 in Europe, then became rector of Trinity Church, Lewiston, Me., for a year. From 1857 to 1865 he was in charge of his father's estate at Gardiner, and at the same time rector of St. Matthew's, Hallowell, Me., besides assisting Bishop George Burgess in his tentative theological school at Gardiner. In 1865 he accepted a call to the professorship of the literature and interpretation of the New Testament at the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary at Gambier, O., but resigned two years later, and after being a general missionary in the diocese of Massachuset* for a year, was assistant rector of Trinity Church, Middletown, Conn., 1867-68. From 1869 to 1882 he was professor of Old Testament and Christian evidences in Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn., and from the latter year until his death was professor of the literature and interpretation of the New Testament in the same institution, also. serving as librarian throughout this period. He wrote The Island of Life, an Allegory (Boston, 1851); Commentary on the Epistle of St. Joule (1856); Harmony of the Gospels in Greek (Andover, 1871); Harmony of the Gospels in English (1871); Diatessaron, The Life of Our Lord in the Words of the Gospels (1871); The Principles of Textual Criticism (1876); The Old and New Testaments in their Mutual Relations (New York, 1885); Was the Religion of Israel a Revelation or merely a Development! (1889); and the posthumous Aids to Scripture Study (1890). He wrote also the commentary on Leviticus for the American edition of Lange's commentary (New York, 1876), and on II Samuel and Ezekiel for Bishop C. J. Ellicott's Old Testament Commentary for English Readers (London, 1883-84), besides editing Chrysostom's "Homilies on Hebrews" for The Nicene and Post-Nicene Library of the Fathers, xiv. (New York, 1890).
GARDINER, JAMES: A colonel of Scottish dragoons famous for his remarkable religious experience; b. at Carriden (17 m. w. of Edinburgh), Linlithgowshire, Jan. 11, 1688; killed at the battle of Prestonpans Sept. 21, 1745. At fourteen he became an ensign in a Scottish regiment in the service of Holland. In 1702 he exchanged to the English army and distinguished himself in the campaigns of Marlborough. Until Judy, 1719, he led a career of notorious licentiousness. Then while
waiting for an appointment with a dissolute woman, he picked up a Christian book (Watson's Christian Soldier according to Doddridge; Gurnall's Christian Armour according to Carlyle); suddenly a blaze of light illuminated the paper, and, looking up, Gardiner saw what he took for a vision of Christ on the cross and thought he heard him speak. He now forsook his old ways, and thereafter led an exemplary Christian life.
Bibliography: P. Doddridge, Some Remarkable Passage, in the Life of . . . Col. J. Gardiner, London, 1747 (very often reprinted, e.g., Edinburgh, 1848); idem, Sermon on the Death of Col. Gardiner, ib. 1747; DNB, u. 414-416.
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