Jackson, William (l),born in 1732, was one of the earliest ministers of the Reformed (Dutch) Church in New Jersey. He began his studies for the ministry with the Rev. John Frelinghuysen, whose daughter he married in 1757. The church at Bergen, N. J., which was the first of any denomination in the state, had exist- ed ninety years ^vithout a pastor, being unable to procure one from the mother country. In 1753, in union with the Church on Staten Island, a call was made upon Mr. Jackson which bound him to go to Holland, complete his studies, and obtain ordination from the Classis of Amsterdam. These churches were to pay him £100 for his support while absent. Four years and three months elapsed before his return in 1757, when he assumed full pastoral charge, dividing his services equally between the two congregations. These facts show both the tenacity of Church life and the devotion of the people to the idea of a thoroughly educated ministry. The Coetus and Conferentie trouijles, which had so long rent the churches, and which grew out of this very question of an educated ministry, were finally adjusted in 1771, through the great exertions of Dr. John H. Livingston (q. V.) and his associates, and both Mr. Jackson and these churches rejoiced in the consummation. See Re- FOKMED Dutch Chukch. His ministry lasted thirty- two years (1757-1789), when he became insane. He died in 1813. ]\Ir. Jackson's literary and theological attainments were attested by academic degrees confer- red by Yale, Columbia, and Princeton colleges. He was celebrated as a pulpit orator, preaching in the Dutch language. His voice was commanding, and his popu- larity Avas such that " in Middlesex and Somerset coun- ties he was estimated as a field-preacher second only to Whitefield. On one occasion, at the Raritan church, the assembly was so large that he had to leave the pul- pit and take a station at the church door to deliver his sermon," and the throng outside was greater than that which tilled the building. His ministry was useful, ac- ceptable, and crowned with great and permanent bless- ings. One of his five sons, the Rev. John Frelinghuy- sen Jackson, was for many years the pastor of the Re- formed Dutch Church at Harlem, New York, where he died in 1836, at the age of sixty-eight years. He was a laborious, faithful, and devoted minister, and distin- guished for his pecuniary liberality. — B. C. Taylor's An- mils of Classis ami Township of Bergen; Corwin's Man- ual of the Reformed Church, p. 120. (W. J. R. T.)
Jackson, "William C2)> an English divine, broth'
JACKSON
12i
er of Cyril Jackson, born in 17o0, was educated at West- minster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He obtain- ed the degree of D.D. in 1799, and became, after havmg been preacher at Lincoln's Inn, canon of Christ Church, regius professor of Greek in 1«11, and bishop of Oxford. He died in November, 1815. He pubhshed some of his sermons (1784-180-1). See Rich, BiUiotheca A mericanu Xova, i, 317.
Jackson, •William, D.D. (3), a Congregational minister, was born in Cornwall, Conn., Dec. 14, 1768. M the age of sixteen, when about commencing his stud- ies preparatory for coUege, his mind became deeply im- pressed with religious truth, and he at once decided to ilevote his life to the ministry. He entered Dartmouth CoUege in 1786, and graduated in 1790. For a time he taught a school in Wethersfield, Conn., but, finding that his services were needed in the Church, he commenced linally the study of theology under Drs. Spring and Emmons. In 1793 he was licensed to preach, and he performed ministerial labors first near his home, and af- terwards in New Jersey. A call which had been given him by the Congregational Society at Dorset, Tt., in 1793, when feeble health obliged him to decline, was re- newed three years after, and this time accepted. He v^as ordained Sept. 27, 1796. In 1837 he was obliged to ask his people for an assistant; and though his task had thus been made easier, his health continued to fail him, and he died Oct. 15, 1842. In 1837 Middlebury College, of which he had been a corporation member for several years, conferred on him the doctorate of divinity. Dr. Jackson jiossessed a mind of high ordw, sanctified by earnest devotion to the interests of the Church. " Dr. Porter, late of Andover, the companion of his youth, and particular friend in college, said of him, ' He is the only minister of his age who has kept up with the times.' His mental enterprise and panting for progress never left him." — Dr. J. Maltby, in Sprague, Ann. of the A mer- ican Puljnt, ii, 340.
Ja'cob (Heb. Yadkob', 'Zp'S^,supplanier, from nj^!?, to l)ite the heel [to which signification there is allusion in Gen. xxv, 26 ; xxvii, 36 ; Hos. xii, 3] ; Sept. and N.T. 'IaKw/3; Josephus 'IfiKw/Soc, which latter is identical with the Greek name for "James"), the name of two men in the Bible.
1. The second-bom of the twin sons of Isaac by Ee- bckah (B.C. 2004). In the following account of his his- tory, we largely avail ourselves of the statements in Kit- to's. Smith's, and Fairbairn's dictionaries.
1. His conception is stated to have been supernatural (Gen. xxv, 21 sq.). Led by peciUiar feelings, Rebelcah went to inquire of the Lord (as some think, through the intervention of Abraham), and was informed that she was about to become a mother, that her offspring should be the founders of two nations, and that the elder should serve the younger — circumstances which ought to be borne in mind when a judgment is pronounced on her conduct in aiding Jacob to secure the jirivileges of birth- right to the exclusion of his elder brother Esau. He was born with Esau, when Isaac was 59 and Abraham 159 years old, probably at the well Lahai-roi.