The Heart of the War; the War as a Challenge to Faith, Its Spiritual Causes, Its Call for a New Allegiance to the Prince of Peace
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Julian Kennedy Smyth was an American minister of the Church of New Jerusalem.
Background
He was born on August 8, 1856 at New York City, New York, United States, the son of Joseph Kennedy and Julia Gabriella (Ogden) Smyth. He came of colonial stock, which on the paternal side was Loyalist, and on the maternal, Revolutionary. An ancestor, Francis Lewis, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Julian's childhood years were spent in France.
Education
In America Julian was educated under private tutors in his parents' home, "Boscobel, " Fordham. As a student at Urbana University, Urbana, Ohio, however, he decided for the ministry, and went there in 1877 to the New-Church Theological School, then situated at Waltham, Massachussets.
Career
In 1877 Smyth began his ministry at Portland, Maine. In 1882 he was called to the Roxbury (Massachussets) Society of the New Church. During a ministry of sixteen years there he was also an editor (1894 - 98) of the New-Church Review, and published two books, Footprints of the Saviour (1886) and Holy Names (1891).
A visit to Palestine and Egypt in the year 1892 added to his vividness as an expositor of the Bible. In 1898, he undertook the pastorate of the New York Society, where he served for the remaining twenty-three years of his life. He was elected presiding minister of the state association in 1909, and, in 1911, president of the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the United States of America, serving in both positions to the end of his life. In the latter office he exerted a marked constructive influence throughout the Church he served. Even in the disturbing years of the World War, his energy and spirit brought unprecedented solidarity to the organization.
In connection with his parish he directed a mission, "Kennedy House. " He also found time for writing and published Swedenborg (1911), a stirring address he had delivered the previous year at the Swedenborg Congress in London; Religion and Life (1911), the best illustration of his varied powers as a preacher; and The Gist of Swedenborg (1920), with W. F. Wunsch.