Mr. Linn was a man of large, active and muscular frame, a man of strong constitution and great physical endurance. He was possessed of more than ordinary intellectual endowments, a good preacher, and faithful in the performance of all ministerial duties. It was his custom to write out his discourses, but to preach without the use of his manuscript. He was noted for a remarkably clear voice, and was a speaker of great solemnity and impressiveness. He was social and cheerful in society, and capable of adapting himself to all classes of people and every variety of circumstances. His general tone was that of sobriety of mind, and of one who was observant of the proprieties of his profession. As in the case of many of the ministers of that day, his salary was inadequate to the support of his family, and he was under the necessity of devot ing considerable time to the management of his farm, and at certain seasons of the year of taking part in the labors of the same, and yet without remitting his regular preparation for the pulpit on the Sabbath. In his family, and in all his intercourse with his people and with his ministerial brethren, he habitually deported himself with christian dignity, kindness and propriety. His descendants are the Linns of Chambersburg, Williamsport, West Philadelphia, Pa., Springfield, Ohio, and elsewhere, all adherents of the Presbyterian church.

Rev. Charles Nisbet, D. D., First President of Dickinson College.

Dr. Nisbet was in many respects a truly great man. He was a man of strong natural abilities, of extensive reading and wonderful memory. He was called a walking library. He was the master of nine languages, a noted metaphysician, and a well read theologian. Of him no full account can be given in these hasty sketches, nor is it necessary, as we have his published biography by Dr. Samuel Miller, and sketches of him in Sprague's Annals and Davidson's Biographical Sketches of Synod of Philadelphia.

He was born in Haddington, Scotland, January 21, 1736, graduated from the University of Edinburgh at the age of eighteen, studied divinity for six years in the Divinity Hall, in

the same city, and was licensed, September 24, 1760, by the Presbytery of Edinburgh. While in the university he met all his expenses by performing the duties of a private tutor, and when in the Divinity Hall he did the same thing, chiefly by contributions to one of the popular periodicals of that day. The first two years of his ministry were spent as a stated preacher in Glasgow, but he was not there ordained or installed. He then received and accepted a call to the large and intelligent congregation of Montrose, and was there ordained and installed May 17, 1764. Here he married and labored with growing reputation as a preacher and sound theologian, and with great and increasing acceptance and usefulness to the people of his charge.

Not long after his settlement, Dr. Witherspoon was elected president of Princeton College, which position he at first declined to accept, and recommended Dr. Nisbet, who was then only in his thirty-first year, as the most suitable person known to him to fill that position.

Dr. Nisbet, like Dr. Witherspoon, belonged to the orthodox wing of the Church of Scotland, in contradistinction to the "moderate party" in that church, and, with Dr. Witherspoon, he took an active part in the deliberations and important discussions in the General Assembly. He was an earnest advocate of reform in the established church, and was especially opposed to the patronage act, and zealously advocated its repeal and the restoration to the churches of the right to choose their own pastors, the question which subsequently occasioned the disruption of the church.

He, also, like Dr. Witherspoon, was of the number of those who, though subjects of Great Britain, justified the course of the American colonies against the mother country, and hesitated not to give expression to his views, publicly as well as privately, in reference to that contest which resulted in their independence.

Some of Dr. Nisbet's speeches in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland have been preserved and have been pronounced models of eloquent discussion in a deliberative assembly, with perhaps the exception that, like most of his.

polemic efforts, they are notable for an excess of wit and sar

casm.

In 1783 Dickinson College was organized, and in 1784 Dr. Nisbet was chosen its first president, and his acceptance of the position was earnestly urged by Governor Dickinson, Dr. Rush and other friends of the institution, After much deliberation, and against the advice of many and of some distinguished friends, he gave notice of his acceptance of the same. He arrived in Philadelphia in June, 1785, and was the guest of Dr. Rush, and after visiting Dr. Witherspoon at Princeton, set out for Carlisle and reached that place on the fourth of July. He was received with great respect and attention, and on the following day was formally inaugurated as president of the college and delivered his inaugural discourse, the subject of which was, "The Relation Between Learning and Piety." It was published and was regarded as in all respects worthy of his high reputation for natural ability and scholarship. Dr. Nisbet brought with him his family, consisting of two sons and two daughters, he having already buried four children in Scotland.

The bright prospects with which he entered upon the duties of the college were soon over-clouded with disappointment and affliction. Soon after his inauguration he and several members of his family were prostrated by a violent and lingering fever, which led to his disability and confinement for several months, from which his recovery was very slow and gradual. The effect of this long illness was very depressing and discouraging to him, so much so, as to lead him to resolve to return to his native country, and in October to tender his resignation to the trustees of the college. Providentially he was led to postpone his return until the next spring, because the winter season was unfavorable to a sea voyage. In the meantime his health had been regained, and with restored health came back increase of courage and disposition to re-engage in the work which he had resigned. On May 10, 1786, the Board to which he had tendered his resignation and by which it had been very reluctantly accepted, unanimously reelected him president of the college. He resumed his official

duties and pursued them with unabated vigor and manifold labors from year to year until the winter of 1804, when he took a severe cold, which led to inflammation of the lungs, and which, after three weeks of severe sickness and much suffering, terminated his useful and valuable life, January 18, 1804, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He died as he had lived, a firm believer in the doctrines of grace, and with a triumphant faith in a glorified Redeemer.

Dr. Nisbet, in the judgment of many of his best qualified pupils, was not only a man of a very high order as to natural abilities, but in love of knowledge and in solid and varied learning, as excelling most of the learned men of his age.

He was not only at home in both the ancient and modern languages, and well read up in the literature of these languages, but was a man alike distinguished for his acquirements in sacred and secular knowledge.

tures.

As president of the college, he at once prepared and delivered to his classes four separate and distinct courses of lecOne in Logic, one in Mental Philosophy, one in Moral Philosophy, and one in English Literature, including special reviews of the principal Latin and Greek classics.

In addition to these several courses in the college, he prepared and delivered to graduates of the college, who desired to study for the Christian ministry, a course of four hundred and eighteen lectures in systematic divinity, delivering five lectures each week of the course extending through two years. These lectures were all fully written out and read with great deliberation, so as to allow the students time for making full notes of the same. Besides these, he had also a course of twenty-two lectures in Pastoral Theology.

As yet the college had no buildings; and Dr. Nisbet is said. to have taught his classes and delivered his lectures for a time in a room at the Barracks. At the time Lee's army invaded the State, in 1863, all the buildings at the Barracks were burned except the Guard House, which still stands.

As a theologian, Dr. Nisbet was a thorough Calvinist of the old school. He was a great admirer of the Westminster standards, considering them the best exposition of the system of

doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures which the Christian church had produced.

As a preacher Dr. Nisbet had great and peculiar excellence. He was never known to use notes of sermons in any form in the pulpit. His sermons were usually full of thought and instruction, and often striking and deeply interesting. His matter was uniformly solid and clearly stated, and never failed to fix and reward the attention of those who were serious and thoughtful and who cared more for sound scriptural and theological instruction than for the ornaments of rhetoric and mere empty declamation. His manner of speaking was calm and dignified, his style was remarkably clear and direct, and always adapted to please and interest intelligent and serious hearers.

With all his talents and learning, wit and sarcasm, he was simple and tender as a child in worldly matters and in social relations. His chief deficiencies were his accustomed proneness to express his opinions at all times without reserve, his disposition to indulge in satire and ridicule, his fixed Scottish. habits and prejudices, and his want of flexibility in the way of accommodating himself to the requirements of his new position and to the state and necessities of a new country. He had been a devoted student from his boyhood, and an omnivorous reader of books. He was remarkable in youth for physical

*The Old Guard House was built by the Hessian prisoners during the Revolutionary War. This building is the only one left as it was in 1785.