Background
William Henry Furness was born on April 20, 1802, in Boston, Massachusets. He was the son of William and Rebekah (Thwing) Furness.
abolitionist clergyman theologian
William Henry Furness was born on April 20, 1802, in Boston, Massachusets. He was the son of William and Rebekah (Thwing) Furness.
Furness attended a “dame’s school” and the Latin School with his lifelong friend R. W. Emerson. He graduated in 1820 from Harvard and in 1823 from the Divinity School.
After several months of preaching, Furness was called in the summer of 1824 to the Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, where he was ordained and installed January 12, 1825. This church, founded by Dr. Priestley in 1796, had never previously had a pastor.
The congregation grew rapidly under Furness’s leadership and after three years a commodious house of worship was built which lasted through his ministry. In 1875, he became pastor emeritus, but continued to preach to his own people and elsewhere as long as he lived.
In his work of translation, he was associated with his friend Rev. F. H. Hedge, whom he assisted in the preparation of Prose Writers of Germany (1849).
Furness was one of the first American scholars to study and translate German literature, his most important translation being Daniel Schenkel’s Character of Jesus Portrayed (1866), to which he added copious annotations. He also translated much German verse, of which his Schiller’s Song of the Bell (1850) is probably the best. He was a hymn- writer of considerable merit, a collection of his best hymns being found in A. P. Putnam’s Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith (1875).
Although a participant in the Unitarian and the slavery controversies, Furness never aroused antagonisms because he criticized ideas rather than persons.
It has been said that Furness's life had two major interests. The first was the anti-slavery cause which he championed as early as 1824 until the close of the Civil War, in defiance of violence and social ostracism.
His other interest was the study of the life of Jesus. As a student of the Jesus of history rather than the Christ of theology, he was a pioneer in pointing out the distinction between the two. He believed that Jesus represented humanity at its best, that the Gospels were historical documents, and that the New Testament miracles were wholly natural events.
Furness's circle of friends embraced those of all sects and creeds, prominent among whom was the Catholic Bishop of Philadelphia. He was a poor denominationalist and thought in terms of principles rather than of organization.
Furness was married in 1825 to Annis Pulling Jenks of Salem, Massachusets, who died in 1884. Of their four children, two sons and a daughter survived them.
One son, Horace Howard Furness, 1833-1912 attained distinction as a Shakespearian scholar.
3 March 1767 - 19 April 1836
23 January 1777 - 5 April 1814
1 April 1798 - 17 January 1831
14 December 1799 - 20 June 1880
13 August 1802 - 10 June 1885
1828 - November 1908
1833 - 13 August 1912
12 November 1839 - 27 June 1912
1827 - 1867
