Educator, born in New York, Mar. 11, 1796, of English parents; graduated at Union College, 1813; studied medicine and began practice at Troy, but having joined the Baptist church (1816), devoted himself to the ministry; studied theology one year at Andover; was tutor in Union College 1817–21; pastor of the First Baptist church at Boston, Mass., 1821–26; became president of Brown University Feb., 1827, having previously filled for some months the professorship of Mathematics and Natural History in Union College; retired from the presidency in 1855, and was for fifteen months (1857–58) acting pastor of the First Baptist church at Providence, and was highly distinguished as a pulpit orator. Died at Providence, R. I., Sept. 30, 1865. He was the author of several volumes of sermons and addresses; “Elements of Moral Science” (1835); “Elements of Political Economy” (1837); “Limitations of Human Reason” (1840); “Thoughts on the Collegiate System of the United States” (1842); “Elements of Intellectual Philosophy” (1854); “Life of Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D.” (2 vols., 1853); and other works. His “Life” was written by his sons Francis and H. L. Wayland (2 vols., 1867), also by Prof. J. O. Murray of Princeton (Boston, 1890).

Personal

  The personal appearance of Dr. Wayland is stately and majestic, well befitting the noble intellect within. The whole aspect of the man is such as would arrest attention in the largest assembly. He is, in stature, a little above the medium height, square built, and massive. His head has been spoken of as one which a sculptor might have taken as a model for Jupiter; and the dark piercing eyes gleam out from beneath bushy black brows, which in their turn are surmounted by a broad forehead, overtopped by iron-gray hair.

  He had a religious horror of waste. He once expressed the opinion that, in the millenium, people would so conduct their cooking, and all their household arrangements, as to secure perfect economy. All these things, which would have been petty if their end had been selfish accumulation, were ennobled by the object which he had in view. It was by economy that he was enabled to practice benevolence. He was never wealthy. Those who thought otherwise were deceived by the largeness of his donations. During many years he gave away more than half of his entire income. After his salary as president ceased, the amount of his contributions was necessarily diminished. With his later years he inclined to bestow his benefactions without the intervention of a society, “seeking out the cause that he knew not,” and enhancing the value of the gift by the sympathy which accompanied it.

  As an orator, Dr. Wayland cannot, in the popular sense of that word, be called great; yet, if to have the gift of speaking with fluency and elegance, and of stirring an audience to the very depths of emotional feeling is eloquence, he certainly possessed that quality in a remarkable degree.

  Dr. Wayland does not appear to us to have been at all a man of genius, nor was his own education of a large or liberal type. The faults and the excellences of his character were strongly marked. He was hampered by a narrow creed; but his deep religious earnestness went far towards atoning for its imperfections. He was not a very learned man; but he had to the highest degree the power of using the learning he possessed. He was a born teacher and administrator; and he had those qualities which gain the confidence and conciliate the good-will of young men,—an honest simplicity of character, a hearty hatred of all pretence, an inflexible will, and an untiring perseverance…. He was emphatically a genuine man, honest, straightforward, sagacious, and sincere,—a man of great simplicity, and of too much real dignity of character ever to need any of that false dignity which small men in high places are wont to assume. He cured his ministerial dyspepsia by sawing Deacon Lincoln’s wood, and he dug his own presidential garden, and was not afraid to be seen going home from the presidential study with his boys on his back.

  One of the leaders in the religious thought of America…. The greater part of Dr. Wayland’s life was spent in the work of education. Yet he was none the less on that account a leader in religious thought. It was religious thought mainly as to the practical working of Christianity, not as to its dogmatic statements. He had no theory of education which admitted of any divorce between it and religion, nay, between it and the Christian faith. He was distinctively a religious teacher all his life, in the classroom, on the platform, through the press, and in the pulpit. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, moulded the religious thinking of his pupils, and so ultimately that of wide circles in England. The same may be said of Dr. Wayland in America.

Educator

  But extraordinary as were Dr. Wayland’s mental endowments, his greatness and his influence were more conspicuously moral than intellectual. His imperial will, his ardent love of the simple truth, his tender sympathy for the oppressed and the suffering, his generosity to the poor, his unconquerable love of soul liberty, his hatred of spiritual despotisms, his unflinching devotion to duty, his sublime unselfishness, his spirit of unquestioning filial obedience to God, his abiding faith in Jesus Christ and him crucified, these were the great elements of his character, the impelling forces of that splendid intellect, and the sources of his mighty power. He believed with all his soul that life is made up of duties, duties to man and to God. This idea he was ever holding up in all possible lights, and impressing on his hearers with all his power. It lent shape and coloring to all his instructions as professor, and to all his acts as president, lifted the college to a lofty plane, and gave earnestness and purpose to the lives of his pupils…. As his moral power predominated over his intellectual, he was more successful both in investigating and in teaching moral than intellectual philosophy.

  As a teacher, Dr. Wayland had preëminent gifts. If he did not, like Socrates, follow up his pupil with a perpetual cross-examination, he set before himself the same end, that of eliciting the pupil’s own mental activity. He aimed to spur him to the work of thinking for himself and of thinking soundly. He had a spice of humor in his nature, and this lent an additional zest to his terse, colloquial expressions in the classroom. The truth that there is nothing new under the sun, as far as the essential traits of man are concerned, he embodied in the saying that “human nature has very few new tricks.” On one occasion he had listened with his usual patience to the persistent questioning of a pupil as to how we know a certain intuitive truth or axiom. At length, his previous answers not having silenced the inquirer, he broke out with the emphatic response: “How? by our innate inborn gumption.” In these amicable conflicts with his pupil, he never took unfair advantage or contended for victory. On the contrary, he seemed desirous, as he really was, to do full justice to every objection, and in alluding to writers who differed from him, to speak of them with personal respect.

  Dr. Wayland carried the function of the teacher beyond the mere mental discipline of studies pursued. The preparation of his pupils for actual life measured for him his responsibility as a teacher. He brought, perhaps, less of learning to the class-room than some of his contemporaries. He was never spoken of as a learned man in philosophy, or ethics, or political economy. He had mastered the essential principles in all these departments of knowledge, and was abundantly equipped for teaching them. But his class-room was made the place where constant lessons were given on the conduct of life, which, unlike Mr. Matthew Arnold, he made the whole and not a fraction of it.

General

  It is seldom that we have met with sounder views, or with sentiments more just and liberal on some important topics, than are contained in these discourses [“On the Duties of an American Citizen”]…. The above extracts will serve as a specimen of Mr. Wayland’s mode of thinking and writing, although it would not be fair to judge of the entire merits of his discourses, from the very imperfect outline, which we have here presented. As an exhibition of strong powers of intellect, united with a wide reach of inquiry and liberality of sentiment, few performances of a similar kind are worthy of higher commendation. We object to nothing but some of the author’s remarks on the Romish church, which would have been more applicable three centuries ago, than at the present time.

  We are bound to declare, that the preceding remarks have been suggested by the defects of Dr. Wayland’s book, considered as a manual of instruction. In other respects, it presents many of those features, which have gained for the author’s work on Ethics a well merited popularity. The arrangement and division of the subject are almost faultless. We find the same closeness and severity of argument and equal conciseness and purity of style. The author avows, that he has not aspired to originality, and of course the leading opinions are those maintained in the ablest works of the English Economists. But the order and expression are varied to advantage, and some of the maxims are made to rest on a novel and satisfactory train of reasoning. Sometimes, indeed, the writer forgets that his work is addressed to youthful pupils, to whom a more lively manner would have imparted a deeper interest in the subject, and an abundance of examples and facts have reconciled to abstract and dry inquiries. The great fault of the work is its want of American character,—of adaptation to our peculiar circumstances and institutions. Practically considered, few principles of the science, as they appear in most treatises, are universally true. We have shown, that they must be cautiously reduced to practice, when the attendant circumstances are different from those, which the author or discoverer had in view. Dr. Wayland has hardly attempted to state the exceptions to the rules, or to limit the enunciation; and the usefulness of his book in this country is proportionably diminished.

  Few works which have so little ornament are as attractive and agreeable as those of this able thinker. They have the natural charm which belongs to the display of active, various and ready strength. Everything that proceeds from his pen has a character of originality.

  Dr. Wayland’s volume of “Sermons” recently issued well sustains his reputation as a thinker and a preacher. They are characterized by the analytical power, the clearness and force of statement, and, in general, by the soundness of logic, which we are accustomed to expect from him. Though the topics are suited to any pulpit, they are often treated in a manner peculiarly adapted to a university pulpit. The preacher does not forget the character of the audience before him, and avails himself of every fair opportunity of applying the doctrine he discusses to what may be supposed to be their condition and wants. His discourses consist of serious and earnest expositions of his views of Christian truth, and could not fail to be impressive and edifying, especially to those who concurred with him in opinion. It is well that the head of a university thus should occupy the highest place of instruction in it, and to the authority of his office add that of a spiritual guide.

  He has a vigorous and logical mind, and writes with clearness and energy. He has a wide range and strong grasp of thought, and a power both of intellectual construction and analysis. His deep religious convictions, and his sensibilities to moral beauty, save his writings from the dryness which is apt to characterize the productions of minds of so much logical acuteness.

  The writings of Dr. Wayland are, in respect of style, models of pure, crystalline, Anglo-Saxon simplicity.

  Dr. Wayland’s admirable treatise on ethics.

  Besides the great ability and thoroughness conspicuous in all his writings, Dr. Wayland has shown true independence in thought and action.

  Dr. Wayland’s “Sermon on the Moral Dignity of the Missionary Enterprise” remains unequalled for grandeur of thought and style. Its periods roll on as if fraught full with the glory of a regenerated world. It sent a glow of zeal and joy through the Christian hearts of the land, and, if we remember aright, was reproduced in other tongues.

  Seventy-five bound volumes, written and published by Dr. Wayland during his life, including discourses, reviews, lectures and magazine articles, attest the industry of the man. All are replete with thought and varied information, and, it is believed, have accomplished the purposes for which they were designed. The works, however, on which his reputation will rest as a vigorous and original writer, are his “Moral Science,” “Political Economy,” and “Intellectual Philosophy”—works which still retain their place as text books, both in this country and in Europe.

  Dr. Wayland was a man of remarkable power and originality of thought, and his tastes and studies inclined him to the pursuit of fundamental truths. His style was a reflex of his mental traits, clear, cogent, and direct. His greatest work was his “Elements of Moral Science,” which has long been a standard text book.

  In general it may be said of Dr. Wayland’s authorship that it was controlled by a dominant aim to secure practical results. Toward the end of his “Political Economy,” he has a short section “On consumption for the gratification of desire,” which seems to be almost purely an ethical discussion. Indeed, one charm which the study of Political Economy had for him was his view that in some of its bearings it was closely related to Moral Science. His books never wandered into any region of speculation. They show no wide reading, never suggest learned authorship. In fact, he had read more widely than his works would show. But they one and all move with practical purpose to a practical end. Their direct, lucid, serious style is fitted to this end, and to reach it seems to have been his only ambition in the field of authorship.