054. Timothy Dwight

Dwight

1752-1817 Biographical Note

Timothy Dwight was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1752. He graduated from Yale in 1769, served as chaplain in the army during the Revolutionary War and was chosen president of his university in 1795. He died, after holding that office for twelve years, in 1817. Lyman Beecher, who attributed his conversion to him, says: “He was of noble form, with a noble head and body, and had one of the sweetest smiles that ever you saw. When I heard him preach on the harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved, a whole avalanche rolled down on my mind. I went home weeping every step.”