Samuel Davies Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A9BDD00684C7C9D4
Davies, Samuel (1723-1761), fourth president of Princeton, was born in New Castle County, Delaware. His parents could not afford to send him to college but were determined that he should be trained for the ministry. He studied in Samuel Blair's famous school at Fagg's Manor, Chester County, Pennsylvania, was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Castle when he was twenty-two, and was ordained as an evangelist to Virginia a year later.
In Anglican Virginia, where dissenters were subjected to constant vexations, he built up a strong Presbyterian membership and became the advocate and defender of their civil rights and religious liberties. He conducted services in seven houses of worship dispersed through five counties, riding horseback through fields and forests to minister to his scattered congregations. A sufferer from tuberculosis, ``he preached in the day and had his hectic fever by night,'' but was nevertheless ``resolved that while life and sufficient strength remained, he would devote himself earnestly to the work of preaching the gospel.'' As a principal founder and first moderator of the Presbytery of Hanover, which comprised all the Presbyterian ministers in Virginia and North Carolina, he was considered ``the animating soul of the whole dissenting interests in these two colonies.''
In 1758 Davies was elected to succeed Jonathan Edwards as president of the College, but declined election, partly because of a reluctance to quit his pastoral work in Virginia, partly because he knew that while a majority of the trustees had voted for his election, a minority shared his own belief that Samuel Finley, a member of the Board, was better qualified for the office. The trustees subsequently reelected Davies and persuaded him to accept. He took up his duties on July 26, 1759. Eighteen months later, on February 4, 1761, he died of pneumonia, in his thirty-eighth year, a few weeks after having been bled for ``a bad cold.''
During his brief tenure Davies raised the standards for admission and for the bachelor's degree, instituted monthly orations by members of the senior class (an important part of undergraduate education at Princeton for more than a century), composed odes to peace and to science which were sung at Commencement and drew up a catalogue of the 1,281 volumes in the college library ``to give Information to such who are watching for Opportunities of doing good; and to afford particular Benefactors the Pleasure of seeing how many others have concurred with them in their favourite Charity.''
Davies left his mark as scholar and patriot on his students, particularly the eleven members of the Class of 1760 whom he taught as seniors. ``Whatever be your Place,'' he told them in his baccalaureate address, ``imbibe and cherish a public spirit. Serve your generation.'' This they did. Among the eleven were a member of the Continental Congress, chaplains in the Continental Army, judges in Maine and Pennsylvania, the founder of a college in North Carolina, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Davies was long remembered as one of the great pulpit orators of his generation. Patrick Henry, who as a boy had frequently heard him preach, acknowledged Davies's influence on his own oratory. Davies's sermons went through four editions in the United States and nine editions in England, and for more than fifty years after his death were among the most widely read of any in the English language.
At Princeton, Davies was loved and respected; as one trustee wrote another, ``There never was a college happier in a president.''
Nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: "The Lord knows those who are his," and, "Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness." 2 Timothy 2:19
For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. Romans 6:14
What is it to be a Christian? - Samuel Davies
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Andrew Murray - The True Vine: Meditations on John 15:1-16 (1 of 15)by stack45ny714 views
@HermitintheRain rejoice, for you shall be filled. do you delight in the things that Christ delights in? do you love what Jesus loves? do you abhor what the Lord abhors? if so, it can only be by the mercy of the Father who through the Holy Spirit has caused your heart to be regenerated/repented/sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ that now pants after God as a hart does the water brooks.
Rejoice over the Lord who will perfect that which concerns you.
HermitintheRain 1 year ago
@HermitintheRain unlike the law of Moses which left every man to prove himself according to the works of the law, the law of grace that is in Jesus Christ is a standard that is greater to that law as the Light is to the shadow of it. yet the blessed difference is that the standard of perfection that Jesus commands us to have, is perfection that Jesus himself provides from himself to them who he calls his own. if you find your soul hungering and thirsting after his righteousness, rejoice
HermitintheRain 1 year ago
he who could not keep from falling under the curse of the law shall find the curse even greater to him that intends to walk after Christ. that is, if he intends to walk after Christ by the same means he intended to keep the law-by the flesh. the standard of the law was but the shadow of the perfect holiness and righteousness as found in Jesus Christ. to hope to be kept in the ways of Christ, it must be a gift of God as demonstrated and worked out by the Holy Spirit.
HermitintheRain 1 year ago