GRIFFIN, EDWARD DORR: American Presbyterian, president of Williams College; b. at East Haddon, Conn., Jan. 6, 1770; d. at Newark, N. J., Nov. 8, 1837. He was graduated at Yale in 1790, studied theology under Jonathan Edwards, and began to preach at New Salem, Conn., in Jan., 1793. In 1795 he became pastor of the Congregational Church at New Hartford, in 1801 associate pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Newark, and pastor in 1807. He was professor of rhetoric at Andover Theological Seminary from 1809 to 1811. In 1811 he became pastor of the Park Street Church, Boston, but returned to his former pastorate in Newark in 1815. In 1821 he was elected president of Williams College. On resigning this office in 1836 he returned to Newark. He achieved success and distinction as preacher, educator, and author. His principal works are: Lectures Delivered in the Park Street Church (Boston, 1813); The Extent of the Atonement (New York, 1819); and The Doctrine of Divine Efficiency Defended (1833).

Bibliography: W. B. Sprague prefixed a Memoir to the Sermons, 2 vols., Albany, 1838, of. idem, Annals of the American Pulpit, iv. 26-43, New York, 1858; R. E. Thompson, in American Church History Series, vol. vi. passim, New York, 1895.

GRIFFIS, WILLIAM ELLIOT: Congregationalist'; b. at Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 17, 1843. He was educated at Rutgers College (A.B., 1869), after serving in the Civil War with the Forty-Fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers during Lee's invasion of his native State. In 1870 he went to Japan for the purpose of organizing schools, and was successively superintendent of education in the province of Echizen (1871) and professor of physics in the Imperial University of Tokyo (1872-74). Returning to the United States in 1874, he was graduated from Union Theological Seminary (1877), and served as pastor of the First Reformed Church, Schenectady, N. Y. (1877,86), Sbawmut Congregational Church, Boston (1886-93), and the First Congregational Church, Ithaca, N. Y. (1893-1903), but in 1903 he resigned from the active ministry to devote himself to authorship and lecturing. He was a member of the committee of the Boston Congregational Club to erect a Pilgrim memorial at Delfshaven, Holland, and has traveled extensively in that country. In theology he is liberal, and distinctly subordinates doctrine to personal belief in Christ. He has written The Mikado's Empire (New York, 1876); Japanese Fairy World (Schenectady, N. Y., 1880); Asiatic History; China, Cores, and Japan. (New York, 1881); Corea, the Hermit Nation (1882); Corea, Without and Within (Philadelphia, 1885); Matthew Calbraith Perry (Boston, 1887); The Lily among Thorns (1889); Honda the Samurai (1890); Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations (New York. 1891); Japan in History, Folk-Lore, and Art (Boston, 1892); Brave Little Holland and What she Taught us (1894); The Religions of Japan (1895); Townsend Harris, First American Envoy/ in Japan (1895); Romance of Discovery (1897); Romance of American Colonization (1898); The Pilgrims in their Three Homes (1898); The Student's Motley (New York, 1898); The Romance of Conquest (Boston, 1899); The American in Holland (1899); America in the East (New York, 1899); Verbeck of Japan (Chicago, 1900); The Pathfinders of the Revolution (Boston, 1900); In the Mikado's Service (1901); A Maker of the New Orient (Chicago, 1902); Young People's History of Holland (Boston, 1903); Sunny Memories of Three Pastorales (Ithaca, N. Y., 1903); Dux Christus: An Outline Study of Japan (New York, 1904); Japan in History, Folk-lore and Art (1906); Japanese Nation in Evolution (1907); and The Fire-fly's Lovers and Other Fairy Tales of Old Japan (1908).