Hurst was born on August 17, 1834, in Salem, Dorchester County, Maryland. He was the son of Elijah and Ann Catherine (Colston) Hurst. His grandfather, Samuel, born in Surrey, England, settled in Maryland about 1780, and in 1781 enlisted in the Continental Army.
John attended the district school and in his eleventh year entered the academy at Cambridge, the county seat. In 1850 he enrolled as a student in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. , from which he was graduated on July 13, 1854.
He also studied theology at the universities of Halle and Heidelberg.
He taught for a few months in the Greensboro Academy, Maryland, and was then appointed professor of belles-lettres in the Hedding Literary Institute, Ashland, Greene County, N. Y. After teaching here for two years, he went to Germany. In October 1857, after a tour of the Continent, he returned to the United States. The following year he was admitted to the Newark Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on trial, was ordained deacon, April 10, 1860, and elder, in 1862. His first pastorate was at Irvington, N. J.
After serving at Passaic, at Elizabeth, and at Factoryville, Staten Island, in 1866 he accepted the appointment as theological tutor in the Methodist Mission Institute, at Bremen, Germany. In 1867 it was decided to move the Institute to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where, in October 1868, it was reopened as the Martin Mission Institute. Hurst taught in the Institute until the spring of 1871, when he returned to the United States to accept the chair of historical theology in Drew Theological Seminary, at Madison, N. J. Bishop Randolph S. Foster resigned as president in November 1872, and on May 14, 1873, the trustees elected Hurst as his successor.
Since the opening of the Seminary in November 1867, the salaries and other current expenses had been provided for by the annual interest payments accruing on Daniel Drew's personal bond for $250, 000. In 1876, Drew suffered severe business reverses, and the seminary had to look elsewhere for necessary funds. Largely through the indefatigable efforts of President Hurst it was able to continue its work, and an ample endowment was secured. On May 12, 1880, at the General Conference held in Cincinnati, Hurst was elected bishop, and in the autumn of that year he resigned as president of Drew. For the next twenty-one years his duties as bishop required his presence in almost every part of the United States. During this period he presided at 170 Conferences and Missions, 157 of these having been held in forty-five different states of the Union, and thirteen in nine foreign countries.
As a leading Methodist educator it seemed to Hurst that there was a distinct need for a postgraduate university to be located in Washington, D. C. , under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1890 he purchased a site for such an institution, of which, on May 28, 1891, he was elected chancellor. It was chartered in 1893 as the American University, but was not opened until 1917. During Hurst's tenure of a little more than a decade as chancellor he secured a large endowment.
From the very beginning of his ministerial career he proved that he had a ready and effective pen. His first important book was his History of Rationalism, originally published in 1865, but issued in revised form in 1901. It was the product of a decade of careful study in Europe and in America, and it revealed both breadth of scholarship and cogency of expression. Unlike Lecky, Hurst endeavored not only to list the different phases of rationalism, but also to give a discussion of the basic factors involved. In 1896 he published his Literature of Theology, which gave unmistakable evidence of his attainments as a bibliographer, and in 1897-1900, he brought out his two-volume History of the Christian Church. The prevailing opinion among church historians with reference to this last work of Hurst was well expressed by S. M. Jackson: "It is the fruit of long-continued study and the use of the most recent literature. Those who may make their acquaintance by means of it with church history may rely upon it that they will not have to unlearn what they here acquire. " Among his other publications are Martyrs to the Tract Cause (1872); Life and Literature in the Fatherland (1875); Theological Encyclopædia and Methodology (1884), with G. R. Crooks; Indika; the Country and the People of India and Ceylon (1891); Short History of the Christian Church (1893), which was translated into German and Spanish; and Hist. of Methodism (7 vols. , 1902 - 04). On April 6, 1902, he suffered a slight apoplectic stroke, and on May 4, 1903, after a short illness, he died.
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On April 28, 1859, he was married to Catherine Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. William and Anna (Vroman) La Monte of Charlotteville, N. Y. On March 14, 1890, his wife died, and on September 5, 1892, he was married to Ella Agnes Root of Buffalo, N. Y.
