American ethico-political writer, born on the 19th of November 1833, in Montrose, Susquehanna County, PA; graduated in arts at Yale in 1855; studied theology in Andover, Heidelberg and Halle; took episcopal orders on his return home; rector of parishes in Darien, CT, and South Orange, NJ, from 1861 to 1864; retired to his home near Montrose (1864–1877); pastor at Friendsville, PA (1877–1881); lecturer on Christian Evidences at the Episcopal Theological Seminary from this year until his death on the 8th of December 1885. Defective hearing secluded Dr. Mulford from very active life, and his heart was sore over the ravages of the Civil War. His meditations were profound, and he sought to find the divinest philosophical sanctions for the state. His contribution to that end was a remarkably analytical, elevated and exhaustive book, The Nation: The Foundation of Civil Order and Political Life in the United States (1870; new ed., 1876). To this he added The Republic of God (1881), a learned and acute effort to relate Christian dogma to philosophical thought. Mr. Mulford was a broad-churchman, steeped with German thoroughness and dialectic, and full of generous ardor. Although his style is involved and compact, his books are a treasury of suggestion and learning in the interests of a sounder and larger political and Christian life.
