Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, LL.D., one of Kentucky's most prolific writers for the public prints, was born at Cabell's Dale, near Lexington, Kentucky, March 8, 1800. He was the son of John Breckinridge, President Jefferson's Attorney-General. He studied at Princeton and Yale, and was graduated from Union College in 1819. Breckinridge then read law and was admitted to the Lexington, Kentucky, bar in 1823. He practiced law for eight years, during part of which time he was a member of the Kentucky legislature. Realizing that Kentucky would oppose the emancipation of the slaves, in which he heartily believed, Breckinridge decided to quit the law and politics for the church. He studied theology and became pastor of the Second Presbyterian church in Baltimore, which pastorate he held for thirteen years. In 1845 Dr. Breckinridge was elected president of Jefferson College (now Washington and Jefferson College), at Washington, Pennsylvania, but two years later he resigned the presidency of the college in order to accept the pastorate of the First Presbyterian church of Lexington, Kentucky. In 1848 Dr. Breckinridge was elected superintendent of public instruction of Kentucky; and in 1853 he became professor of theology in the Danville Theological Seminary, which position he held until his death. He was chairman of the Baltimore national convention of 1864 which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. Dr. Breckinridge's writings include Travels in France, Germany, etc. (Philadelphia, 1839); Popery in the XIX. Century in the United States (1841); Memoranda of Foreign Travel (Baltimore, 1845); The Internal Evidence of Christianity (1852); The Knowledge of God Objectively Considered (New York, 1858); and The Knowledge of God Subjectively Considered (New York, 1859). These two last named works, of enormous proportions, are Dr. Breckinridge's greatest theological and literary productions. He also published Kentucky School Reports (1848-1853). While a resident of Baltimore he was one of the editors of The Literary and Religious Magazine, and of its successor, The Spirit of the Nineteenth Century, in both of which publications he carried on many bitter and never-ending discussions with the Roman Catholics concerning theological and historical questions. He was also editor of The Danville Quarterly Review for several years. A complete collection of Dr. Breckinridge's books, debates, articles, and pamphlets, upon slavery, temperance, Popery, Universalism, Presbyterianism, education, agriculture, and politics, would form a five-foot shelf of books.
Bibliography. History of Kentucky, by R. H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882); Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1887, v. i).
SANCTIFICATION
[From The Knowledge of God Subjectively Considered (New York, 1859)]
The completeness of the Plan of Salvation seems to be absolute. The adaptedness of all its parts to each other, and to their own special end—and the adaptedness of the whole and of every part, to the great end of all, the eradication of sin and misery; exhibits a subject, the greatest, the most intricate, and the most remote of all in a manner so precise and clear; that the sacred Scriptures, even if they had no grace and no mercy to offer to us personally, might justly challenge the very highest place as the most stupendous monument of sublime and successful thought. What then ought we to think of them, when all this glorious intelligence is merely tributary to our salvation? The end of this infinite completeness, only to pour into our polluted and thoughtless hearts, inexhaustible supplies of grace—that we may be extricated from a condition utterly hopeless without that grace ... and be brought to a condition unspeakably blessed to us and glorious to God? Yet this is the overwhelming conclusion to which every just consideration of them forces us to come; the conclusion to which the imperfect disclosure which has now been attempted, of a single point in this divine system, wholly compels us. In this deep conviction, therefore, and as the conclusion of all that has now been advanced, I venture to define, that Sanctification is a benefit of the Covenant of Redemption—being a work of grace, on the part of the triune God, wherein the elect who have been Effectually Called, Regenerated, Justified, and Adopted, are, through the virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ, by the indwelling of the Word and Spirit, through the use of the divine ordinances, and by the power of God with them, enabled more and more to die unto sin, to be renewed in the spirit of their mind, and to live unto righteousness, in an increasing conformity to the image of God, to his great Glory, and their growth in holiness.
[CAROLINE L. HENTZ]
Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, novelist, was born at Lancaster, Massachusetts, June 1, 1800. When twenty-four years of age she was married to N. M. Hentz, a Frenchman, then associated with George Bancroft in conducting the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts. Two years after her marriage her husband was elected to the chair of modern languages in the University of North Carolina, and this position he held until 1830, when he removed to Covington, Kentucky, where he and his wife conducted a private school. Covington was the birthplace of Mrs. Hentz's first literary work. The directors of the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, had offered a prize of five hundred dollars for the best original tragedy founded on the conquest of the Moors in Spain, and Mrs. Hentz submitted De Lara, or, the Moorish Bride, which was awarded first place, but the prize was never paid the author. De Lara was later published and successfully produced on the stage. This encouraged Mrs. Hentz to write another tragedy, entitled Lamorah, or, the Western Wild, a tragedy of Indian life, which was staged in Cincinnati and published at Columbus, Georgia. Her Constance of Werdenberg was written at Covington. After two years at Covington, Mrs. Hentz crossed the Ohio river and opened a school at Cincinnati. Her novel, Lovell's Folly, was written there. In 1834 she removed to Alabama, and this State was her home for the subsequent fourteen years. Her first widely successful novel, Aunt Patty's Scrap-Bag (Philadelphia, 1846) was followed by her generally accepted masterpiece, Linda, or, the Young Pilot of the Belle Creole (1850). Now came in rapid succession her other works: Rena, or, the Snow Bird (1851); Marcus Warland (1852); Eoline; Wild Jack; Helen and Arthur; Ugly Effie; The Planter's Northern Bride (1854); Love after Marriage (1854); The Banished Son; Robert Graham (1856); and Ernest Lynwood (1856), her last book and by some critics regarded as her best. Mrs. Hentz began her literary work in Kentucky, as indicated above, and, though the claim of Kentucky is rather slender upon her it is, nevertheless, legitimate. She died at Marianna, Florida, February 11, 1856.
Bibliography. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1888, v. iii); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, Georgia, 1909, v. vi).
BESIDE THE LONG MOSS SPRING