Edward Traill Horn

Background

Horn was born at Easton, Pa. , in 1850, the son of Melchior Hay and Matilda Louisa (Heller) Horn. While he was still a boy the family moved to Catasauqua, where for years his father was president of a bank.

Education

After graduating from Pennsylvania College in 1869 and from the Philadelphia Theological Seminary in 1872.

Career

Horn was ordained by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania and served as pastor of Christ Church, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 1872-76, of St. John's, Charleston, S. C. , 1876-97, and of Trinity, Reading, Pa. , 1897-1911. While in Charleston he became the most influential Lutheran minister of the South Atlantic states.

He was president of the South Carolina Synod, 1882-84, of the United Synod of the South, 1887-91, of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, 1909-13, and of the General Council board of foreign missions, 1907-15. In 1910 he visited Europe. In 1911 he was made professor of ethics and missions in the Philadelphia Theological Seminary.

He was an efficient, urbane, scholarly clergyman and a distinguished liturgiologist. The publication in 1871 of a new edition of the General Council's Church Book first aroused his interest in liturgics and led him to make a careful study of the materials and principles on which the Church Book was founded. When he went to Charleston he threw himself whole-heartedly into the movement, begun in his old age by John Bachman and ably continued by Junius B. Remensnyder, to secure a common service for all English-speaking Lutherans. Horn himself, in the Lutheran Quarterly for April 1881, was the first to use the term "Common Service" as it is now understood.

He was secretary from 1886 till his death of the joint committee of the United Synod of the South, the General Synod, and the General Council which prepared the Common Service, and was likewise secretary of the sub-committee, consisting of Beale Melancthon Schmucker, George U. Wenner, and himself, which did the actual work. "The first and final preparation of material was in his hands. He held the balance of power in the Committee and used it with rare judgment and effectiveness. His were the initiative and the energy which pushed the project to completion, and his the taste and judgment which determined many of its details". The Common Service, first published in 1888 by the United Synod of the South, is now widely used in the English Lutheran churches of North America and has been translated into Telugu, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian. Horn also did much of the work on the Common Service Book (1917).

He developed a fatal disease of the heart. He died at Mount Airy, Philadelphia, and was buried at Reading. His wife and five of their children survived him.

Achievements

• He contributed to the Lutheran, the Lutheran Church Review, the Lutheran Quarterly, and the Memoirs of the Lutheran Liturgical Association. A number of his articles on liturgical subjects were of great influence and are of permanent interest. He was the translator of Wilhelm Lohe's Catechism (1893) and Three Books Concerning the Church (1908), and was the author of The Christian Year (1876), The Evangelical Pastor (1887), an Outline of Liturgics (1890, 1912), the sections on Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, and Philemon in the Lutheran Commentary, vols. IX and X (1896 - 97), and Summer Sermons (1908).

Works

More photos

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  • Outlines of Liturgics: On the Basis of Harnack in Zöckler's Handbuch Der Theologischen Wissenschaften

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Summer Sermons

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Annotations on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and the Hebrews

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The Church at worship,
  • The Christian year

Connections

On June 15, 1880, he married Harriet Chisolm of Charleston, by whom he had four sons and three daughters.

Father:

Melchior Hay Horn

1822–1890

Mother:

Matilda Louisa Heller Horn

1823–1903

Spouse:

Harriet Chisolm Horn

1861–1946

Daughter:

Harriet Emily Louise Horn

1885–1977

Daughter:

Mary Gregg Horn

1889–1952

Daughter:

Isabella Traill Horn

1884–1909

Son:

Robert Chisolm Horn

1881–1959

Son:

William Melchoir Horn

1882–1932

Son:

Edward Traill Horn

1887–1966

Son:

Melchior Hay Horn

1892–1893

References

• Who's Who in America, 1914 - 1915, Vol. VIII 8: A Biographical Dictionary Of Notable Living Men And Women In The United States