William Henry Channing  William James Potter

William Henry Furness (1802-1896)

William Henry Furness was born in Boston, April 20, 1802, and died in Philadelphia, January 30, 1896. He was prepared for college at the Boston Latin School in intimate companionship with Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1820 he graduated at Harvard College; and with four classmates, who afterward won high distinction in the Unitarian ministry, he entered the new Divinity School. These five classmates—Furness, E. S. Gannett, Calvin Lincoln, E. B. Hall, and Alexander Young—maintained close companionship throughout their careers. Furness was long the sole survivor of his college class and the oldest graduate of his college. He finished his work in the Divinity School in 1823. In the sermon preached on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination he wrote:

I preached my first sermon in the fall of 1823 in Watertown, Massachusetts; and then for a few months I preached as a candidate for settlement in churches in Boston and its vicinity needing pastors. Kind and flattering things were said to me; but I put little faith in them, as they came from many relatives and friends that I and mine had in that quarter, and their judgment was biassed by personal affection. I was strengthened in my distrust when friends, fellow-students, and fellow-candidates were preferred before me. I never envied them their success... In May, 1824, I gladly availed myself of the opportunity that was offered me of spending three months in Baltimore as assistant to Mr. Greenwood.

It was this visit to Baltimore that brought about an invitation to spend a Sunday in Philadelphia, on his way home, and to preach for the society which Dr. Priestley had organized in 1796, and which had maintained its organization for twenty-nine years without a minister. The society at once invited him to become pastor. In the same sermon already quoted he wrote:

I was surprised and gratified when, upon the eve of my departure, I was waited upon by a committee of four or five. I have had a suspicion since—so few were the members of the church then—that this committee comprised nearly the whole church meeting from which they came; and they cordially invited me to return and become their pastor. As I had come a perfect stranger, and there were no prepossessions in my favor, I could not but have at the very first a gratifying confidence in this invitation… My ordination was delayed some months by the difficulty of obtaining ministers to come and take part in it. It was a journey then. But it is pleasant now to remember that with the two Wares, Henry and William, and Dr. Gannett, came one of the fathers, far advanced in years, the venerable Dr. Bancroft, of Worcester, to partake in the exercises of the occasion.

This installation took place January 12, 1825; and Mr. Furness continued minister of the society for seventy-one years. For fifty years he held the sole responsibility, and after 1875 he held the title of pastor emeritus. He never went to Europe, and his exchanges were very few. After he had written fifteen hundred sermons, he “stopped counting them.” Within three years of his coming to Philadelphia the congregation had so rapidly increased that a fine, commodious church was built, in which Dr. Furness preached until the conclusion of his active ministry. Combining a sunny temperament with winning manners, he dispersed prejudices and antagonisms by simply ignoring them. “He was,” says Dr. Ames, “a poetic man in a somewhat prosy city,” and so he did much to quicken the esthetic sense of the community, to promote taste for the fine arts, and to stimulate an interest in the enrichment of common and household life, even among thousands who never heard his name.

As a preacher and theologian, Dr. Furness occupied a unique position. All his work was profoundly individual. He entered his ministry at the time when the Unitarian controversy was at its height, but he could not be controversial. Dr. George Putnam wrote of him:

Other ministries have been more effective, as the multitude measures efficiency, dealing with large crowds, using more complex agencies, and touching society at more numerous points of interest and with intenser action; but within its own sphere it has dealt with a profoundness and fidelity nowhere else surpassed, with the soul’s greatest interest—uncompromising in its loyalty, but true and right always, taking the highest ground, always searching, quickening, soothing, sanctifying to heart and conscience, a lifelong dispenser of Sermons from the Mount.

Dr. Furness had every personal grace. His face was animated and attractive, his voice remarkable for sweetness and depth, his reading profoundly impressive, and his written style rhythmic. Though the opinions he advocated were unpopular, the simplicity and refinement of his manner and the devotional appeal in his conduct of the worship compelled even opponents to listen to him.

He was an untiring and enthusiastic student of the life of Jesus Christ in the four Gospels, unfolding in sermon after sermon the moral grandeur and spiritual beauty of the character of Jesus. No minister in Christendom did more to penetrate the heart and life of the Master and open its riches to the sympathy and acceptance of man. On the story of the four Gospels he dwelt with the earnest zeal and affectionate faith of a disciple and the enthusiastic appreciation of an artist. His studies found utterance, not only in his sermons, but in a succession of significant books. In 1836 appeared “Notes on the Four Gospels”; in 1838, Jesus and his Biographers; in 1850, The History of Jesus; in 1859, Thoughts on the Life and Character of Jesus of Nazareth; in 1864, The Veil Partly Lifted. In all these he set forth the historical validity of the Gospels and the naturalness of Jesus. “His greatest service,” wrote Mr. Chadwick, “was his substitution of the personal Jesus for the official Christ. No painter ever painted the Madonna with a more reverent hand.” He held the miracles of the New Testament to be historically true, but at the same time entirely natural events, showing what was possible to humanity at its best. His influence in these directions was probably out of all proportion with the amount of assent accorded to his thought. His spiritual genius was more apparent than his literary judgment.

Dr. Furness’s political attitude showed equal independence. He was one of the earliest and most outspoken of the friends of the slave. It has been said that he had but two themes—the man of Nazareth and the man of Africa. From the time in which he took part in the great anti-slavery meeting in New York in May, 1850, until the end of the Civil War, whoever entered the Unitarian church in Philadelphia was sure to hear an anti-slavery sermon. Yet he was not an agitator or reformer by choice. He simply could not hold his peace.

Dr. Furness was one of the first of American scholars to study German literature, and cooperated with his intimate friend, Dr. Hedge, in publishing translations from the most eminent prose-writers of Germany. The most considerable piece of work he did in this connection was the translation of Schenkel’s Character of Jesus. He was, too, one of the most skilful and devotional of hymn-writers. Whatever may become of his theological opinions, his hymns, such as “Slowly by Thy Hand Unfurled,” and “Feeble, Helpless, how shall I,” will be sung for many generations.

His old age was beautiful, because it was the tender evening of a bright and cheerful day. He seemed destined never to grow old, and continued working until the last day of his nearly ninety-four years.

Dr. Furness was married in 1825 to Miss Annis P. Jenks, of Salem; and they lived together almost sixty happy years. Their four children have done honor to their parentage.