Verbeck, Guido Herman Fridolin

VENN, HENRY: Church of England; b. at Barnes (a suburb of southwest London) Mar. 2, 1724-25; d. at Yelling (12 m. w.n.w. of Cambridge) June 24, 1797. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, 1742, but changed to Jesus College (B.A., 1745-46; M.A. and fellow, 1749); was ordered deacon, 1747, and ordained priest, 1749; held several minor curacies; became curate of Clapham, 1754; vicar of Huddersfield, Yorkshire, 1759, whence he removed, in 1771, to become vicar of Yelling. Henry Venn stands alongside of the foremost workers in the Christian ministry in England of the eighteenth century. He was upon intimate terms with Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon, and his sympathies were broad and Evangelical. At Huddersfield he leavened the irreligious mass of the working population with Gospel truth, and was among the first to carry the Gospel with success to the manufacturing classes. He was an indefatigable preacher, delivering often eight o; ten sermons a week. His most popular work was The Complete Duty of Man (London, 1763 and often). He wrote also Mistakes in Religion (1774, etc.), a collection of essays on the prophecy of Zacharias (Luke i. 68-79); and many sermons, including one on the death of Whitefield (1770).

Bibliography: John and Henry Venn, The Life and a Selection from the Letters of . . Henry Venn, London, 1834, new ed., 1870; J. Telford, A Sect that Mooed the World, ib. 1907; DNB, lvili, 207-208.

VERBECK, var-bek' (originally VERBEEK), GUIDO HERMAN FRIDOLIN: Missionary in Japan; b. at Zeiat (5 m. e. of Utrecht), Holland, Jan. 23, 1830; d. at Tokyo, Japan, Mar. 10, 1898. He was the fifth of the eight children in a well-todo household, was educated at the Moravian school in Zeist, graduated from it in 1848, and studied then at the Polytechnic Institute in Utrecht and became an engineer. For a short while he worked in the foundry at Zeist. In 1852 he emigrated to America, had a brief experience of foundry and engineering work, but after a serious illness turned definitely to the foreign missionary service, entered Auburn Theological Seminary in 1856, and graduated with the class of 1859. He was ordained by the presbytery of Cayuga Mar. 22, 1859, received as a member of the Reformed (Dutch) classic of Cayuga the next day; married Apr. 18, 1859, and sailed from New York May 7, 1859. He went out as a missionary of the Reformed Dutch church to Japan, and entered the harbor of Nagasaki on Nov. 7, 1859. In his student days he had mastered German, French, and English, and to these he quickly added Japanese, and that not in any halting fashion, but so completely that he spoke it better than moat natives. He identified himself with the Japanese, and as he had come before the opening of the country to Western influences he witnessed those changes which have brought Japan into the family of progressive nations, and was himself an important agent in rendering the transition easy and radical. His first work was Bible distribution, as he was not allowed to preach to the Japanese; indeed it was death to a Japanese to become a Christian. In 1860 he was principal of a school for foreign languages and sciences in Nagasaki, attended by samurai, whom he influenced religiously as well as intellectually, and thus he formed the men who a little later were to play a prominent part in new Japan. The school became famous, and gave him personally such a reputation that in 1889 he was summoned by the government to Tokyo to help it solve its eduSational problems. When the Imperial University at Tokyo was established he naturally was made the head of it. From 1863-78 he was attached to the Japanese senate. Under the pressure of his multifarious and heavy work, teaching, preaching both in Japanese and English, translating books on law and political economy, on international law, and other topics, consulting with government officials, dealing with foreigners and natives, living in short a full life although never robust, he broke down in 1878 and came to America for recuperation. He returned the next year and resumed work. He taught in the union theological seminary in Tokyo and in the school for nobles, and took part in Bible translation. He could not be restrained; there was so much that he could do that he was perpetually working beyond his strength. On May 16, 1889, he had a slight attack of paralysis on his right side. He kept on and died in the harness.

He was commonly spoken of as "Verbeck of Japan," and thus his devotion to that people was set forth, but also the curious fact that having left Holland a minor and having failed to obtain naturalization in the United Staten while a resident

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of that country, he could not be naturalized there later, whereas in. Japan there was no way in which a foreigner could be naturalized. Consequently he, was in a sense a man without a country. In 1891 he applied to the Japanese government to be made a citizen, and in reply the government in view of his services took him and his family under its protec tion and gave him the right to travel freely through out the empire in the same manner as the subjects of the same, and to sojourn and reside in any locality. Verbeck with Samuel Robbins Brown (q.v.) and James Curtis Hepburn (q.v.) formed the triumvirate who are held in grateful memory by the Japanese people. They spent their lives in the service of that people, and brought to them the knowledge of Western science and above all of Christianity.

Bibliography: W. E. Griffis, Verheck of Japan, New York, 1900; C. C. Creegan, Pioneer Missionaries of the Church, pp. 90-101, ib. 1903; R. E. Speer, Servants of the King, pp. 75-87,ib.1909.