(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
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Martin Ruter, the son of Job and Sarah Ruter, was born in Charlton, Massachussets, but at the age of eight went with his parents to central Vermont, where he lived in the towns of Bradford and Corinth. Here he came under fervid Methodist influence; his father's house was a stopping place for itinerant ministers, and for a time Martin boarded in the home of Margaret (Appleton) Peckett, who had been a housekeeper for John Wesley.
As early as 1820 Transylvania University conferred upon him the degree of D. D. , said to have been the first awarded to an American Methodist. The incident created a furor in Methodist circles, since a degree after one's name was considered an adornment comparable with gold and costly apparel.
When Martin was fifteen years old he delivered an exhortation to a throng of people at a quarterly meeting which so impressed the presiding elder, John Broadhead, that he took the boy with him as an assistant on the circuit. The next year, in spite of his youth, Ruter was admitted to the New York Conference on trial. He was ordained deacon in 1803, and elder in 1805, becoming that year a member of the New England Conference.
In the meantime he had labored with noticeable success on circuits in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and had had a year of missionary service in Montreal, Canada. Until 1816, when he was stationed at Philadelphia, his ministry was to churches in New England. During this period he came to be held in increasingly high esteem for both his spiritual and intellectual qualities, and rose to a place among the leaders of the denomination, being sent to the General Conference for the first time as early as 1808.
After 1818, when he was put in charge of the Wesleyan Academy, New Market, N. H. , the establishment of which by the New England Conference he had fostered, his major work until almost the end of his life was that of furthering the educational interests of the denomination.
He stayed at New Market two years and was then chosen by the General Conference of 1820 to open the western branch of the Book Concern at Cincinnati. Following eight years' successful management of this enterprise, he was appointed first president of Augusta College, Augusta, Ky. The desire to be directly engaged in the work of evangelization was ever uppermost with him, and in 1832 he resigned to undertake a pastorate in Pittsburgh, but two years later was persuaded to accept the presidency of Allegheny College, which had recently come under Methodist control.
A preacher at fifteen, he himself had had little schooling, but by persistent private study he had become a broadly, if not a deeply, learned man. He had a good command of the French language, acquired when he was in Montreal; he was well versed in the classics; his knowledge of Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac was such that he was called to the professorship of Oriental languages at Cincinnati College in 1821, and in 1824 he published An Easy Entrance into the Sacred Language: Being a Concise Hebrew Grammar, Without Points. He had an aptitude for mathematics, published The Juvenile Arithmetick and Scholar's Guide; Wherein Theory and Practice Are Combined (1827), and taught astronomy. In addition he prepared a primer, a speller, and a small treatise on the conjugation of French regular verbs.
He published a church history in 1832, based on the works of George Gregory, a second edition of which appeared in 1834 under the title A Concise History of the Christian Church. He resigned the presidency of Allegheny in June 1837 to superintend missionary work in Texas. In less than a year, having labored indefatigably and laid a foundation "which, had there been no other service of his lifetime to his church, would have assured him a permanent place as a maker of Methodism in America" (Smith, Martin Ruter, post, pp. 103-04), he died of typhoid pneumonia, a martyr to his devotion. He was buried in Washington, Tex. , on the banks of the Brazos; later his body was moved to Navasota, where in 1901 a shaft of Vermont granite was erected as a memorial.
Martin Ruster proved himself an able administrator and set high educational ideals. His reputation for both learning and goodness gave prestige to the institutions with which he was connected. He was one of the founders of Augusta College in Kentucky. He edited or wrote more than a dozen books, the most influential of which, "History of the Christian Church" (1832), long used as a textbook in Methodist Conferences.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Ruter was married in June 1805 to Sybil Robertson of Chesterfield, N. H. She died in 1808. He married his second wife, Ruth Young of Concord, N. H. , in April 1809. They had seven children.
