HURST, JOHN FLETCHER: Methodist Episcopal bishop; b. at Salem, Md., Aug. 17, 1834; d. in Washington, D. C., May 4, 1903. He was educated at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. (A.B., 1854), where he taught classics for two years (1854-56), after which he studied theology at the universities of Halle and Heidelberg (1856-57). He was then a pastor in the Newark (N. J.) conference of his denomination from 1858 to 1866, after which he was professor of theology in the Mission Institute of the Methodist Episcopl Church for the training of German ministers for his denomination, first at Bremen (1866-69), and later at Frankfort (1869-71), where the institution was removed in 1869. Returning to the United States, he was professor of historical

theology in Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J., from 1871 to 1880, and president of the same institution from 1873 to 1880. In 1880 he was elected bishop of his denomination. In 1898 he was elected chancellor of the American University, Washington, D. C. Besides translating K. R. Hagenbaeh's History of the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2 vols., New York, 1869); J. J. Van Oosterzee's Apologetical Letters on John's Gospel (Edinburgh, 1869); Romans in J. P. Lange's Commentary (New York, 1870); and a number of the moral essays of Seneca (in collaboration with H. C. Whitney, 1877), he was the author of a large number of works, among which special mention may be made of the following: History of Rationalism (New York, 1866); Martyrs to the Tract Cause (1872); Outlines of Bible History (1873); Outlines of Church History (1874); Our Theological Century (1877); Bibliotheea Theologica (1883); Short History of the Reformation (Cleveland, O., 1884); Theological Encyclopadia and Methodology (New York, 1884); Short History of the Early Church (Cleveland, 1886); Short History of the Mediwval Church (1887); Short History of the Modern Church in Europe (1888); Short History of the Church in the United States (1890); Indika, the Country and the People of India and Ceylon (New York, 1891); Short History of the Christian Church (1893); The Literature of Theology (1895); History of the Christian Church (2 vols., 1897-1900); and History of Methodism (7 vols., 1904).

Bibliography: A. Osborn, John Ftetder Hurst, New York, 1905.