Bishop Edward Thomson [pp. 129-133]

THE
LADIES' REPOSITORY.
MA[RCH, 1865.
REV. EDWARD THEOMW0N, D. D., LL. D.
BY REV. HERMAN M. JOHNSON, D. D.
ISHOP THOMSON is a native of England.
He was born at Portsea, in October, 1810.
His father belonged to the substantial middle
class of English society. Wre have never heard
that he laid claim to nobility as convention determines rank; the son certainly never went
ransacking the herald office for symbols of ancestral renown to add an empty dignity to the
name, content rather with the consciousness of
the stamp which Nature had given, as a truer
patent than any which kings can confer. Yet
we see among the various coats-of-arms that
have celebrated the name of Thomson, one
which, if it were the republican fashion, we
are sure he would not disdain to wear. It is
useless to blazon it here in its jargon all unintelligible till translated, and then insipid; but
we can not forbear to give certain of the mottoes as embodying sentiments which are his undoubted inheritance, and seeming, ill a word,
to portray the character. What better than
this-industria murus-could express his untiring devotion to duty and that quiet trust
which characterize him, that, having done his
dutty, a man had no further need of triple walls
of brass to protect him? Or this-optima est
veritas-as an index to his reverence for the
chief of virtues-truthfulness of life, in word
and act? Or who could read this-suum cuiqute without catching a picture of his little
bark gliding quietly through storms of faction
which often prove disastrous to others, with
never a thought of intermeddling? And if ingenuity were seeking to devise a form of words
to symbolize the qualities of his luminous style
and his simplicity and transparency of character, it should be satisfied with this-in lumine
lucem. But the man who was born to be a
VOL. XXV.-9
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
the latter half of the nineteenth century, has
no need to seek for antiquarian gewgaws to
embellish the miter.
The name is obviously of Saxon or Danish
origin, and it is equally obvious, we think, that
there is, from one side or the other, a marked
infusion of Gallo-Celtic blood. The family estate was such as to place them among the
wealthier of the middle classes, and to enable
them therefore to give to the children every
reasonable advantage of culture.
In 1819, when Edward was in his ninth year,
his father emigrated to this country, and two or
three years later settled his family in Wooster,
Wayne county, Ohio-a region at that time
sufficiently rude, and, we are apt to suppose,
having very few advantages for education. Yet
we find scattered here and there through the'
new country very respectable academies. It
was in Ohio, in a little log school-house, that
Francis Glass wrote his Life of Washington in
Latin, and filled the minds of all the youths
around him with a burning enthusiasm for
classic learning. It was in such an institution,
at an earlier day, in the wilds of Kentucky,
that noble man of God-a chief among his
equals as well as over the natives-James B.
Finley, obtained, in addition to a good English
education, a respectable knowledge of the rudiments of Latin. It was in a Kentucky academy, also, our worthy Missionary Secretary
received his school training. The early emrigration made the preaching of the Gospel and
good schools their first care. What schools
Mr. Thomson found for his children in Northern Ohio, when he first came there, we are not
particularly informed; we only know that the
subject of this memoir was well inducted into
the elements of the sciences and classical literattire, and especially in Latin he might be said
to be a good scholar. His subsequent reading