parentage, at Amesville, Oneida County, N. Y., Sept. 8, 1812. His early advantages were rather moderate, but his thirst for knowledge made him superior to circum- stances, and he secured whatever he could by night study and the careful improvement of the intervals in his workuig hours, lie was converted at the age of eighteen, and avowed it at once as his purpose to enter the ministry. By teacliing country schools he saved enougli to partially defray the expenses of a collegiate education, and in 1 83(5 entered Alleghany College,whence he was graduated with honor in the year 1841, having held already, in his sophomore year, the appointment of tutor of mathematics. Immediately after graduation he was elected professor of mathematics in the college, and discharged the duties of that position for .several years, taking upon himself also the work of preaching ; he had been licensed to preach ill 1836. In the year 18-13, when Alleghany College was deprived of its assistance from Pennsylvania by an enactment withdrawing all appro- priation from the high schools of the state, Kingsley, then an ordained deacon in the Church, was appointed agent " for the peculiarly arduous and thankless task of raising funds for the endowment of his college." About this time, also, the future bishop first came prominently before the general public. lie had early entertained strong antislavery predilections, and in 18i3 was led to open a public discussion with the distinguished preach- ers Luther Lee (q. v.) and Elias Smith (q. v.), who had formeil the "Wesleyan" organization through disaffec- tion at the position assumed by the Jlethodist Episco- pal Church on the subject of the institution of slavery. In these discussions Kingsley proved himself in every respect the equal, if not the superior, of his antago- nists— " men by nature able, and by practice trained to the highest point of effectiveness b\' their zeal for truth, and laborious study of the whole ground of the contro- versy." From 18-i4 to 1845 he was also regular pastor in the city of Eric, where a deep religious influence ac- companied his ministrations. While here he had a pub- lic discussion with a Universalist minister, and also pre- pared his lectures on Prof. Bush's work on the Resurrec- tion, which were published afterwards under the title Kiiifjdqj on the Besia-rection (1845, and often). Prefer- ring work in the pulpit to that in the rostrum, he re- signed his place at Alleghany College in 1846, but the trustees refused to accept the resignation, and, at the most earnest entreaty of many of his friends, he was in- duced to continue his college relations, even at a consid- erable pecuniary sacrilice. Besides, however, discharg- ing the duties of his chair, he continued to labor faith- fullv as a preacher upon the adjacent circuits and sta- tions. In 1852 he was elected a delegate from his Con- ference to the General Conference, ami not only was he at the head of his own Conference delegation, but while in attendance, though a comparative stranger, received, in the election of bishops, some forty votes for this distin- guished office. By the next General Conference (1856) he was elected editor of the Wester-n Christian Advocate, successor of the celebrated late Dr. Elliott. In this place he displayed much editorial ability, and his paper be- came a powerful influence in the West. In 1860 he was recognised l)y the General Conference as the leader of the antislavery movement, and was chosen chairman of the Slavery Committee, and managed the (iiscussion on that subject with great taste. He was at that time re- elected editor of The Advocate, and at the breaking out of the war brought its whole support to tlie aid of the government. In 1864, the General Conference, then in session at Philadelphia, promoted liim to the high dis- tinction for which he had been a candidate in 1852, and he performed the duties of the position until the sum- mer of 1869, when he took an episcopal tour around the worlil, but died on his way homeward at Beirut, Syria, April 6, 1870. '-As a bishop, he met the highest expec- tatum of the Church. In the chair his decisions were clear and exact. In making tlie ajtpointments he man- ifested great sympatliy for the preachers and devotion
to the interests of the Chiurch. His ministrations were able and successful, and during the six j'ears of his epis- copal labor he gave himself wholly to the work of his great olHce. As a man, he was simple and imaffected in his manners, genial and social in his spirit. His intel- lect was strong, keen, and logical. He used a ready pen, and his descriptions were clear, concise, and graphic. His sermons were rich in doctrinal truth, and by their clear conception and earnest delivery held the attention of large congregations. His executive power was of a superior order, and each successive year his talents were mifolding" (^Conference Minutes, 1870, p. 294). The Rev, Dr. Robert AUyn, in his Peisonal Recollections of Bish- op Kingsley (Ceidral Christian Advocate, June 1, 1870), speaks of him as " a man genial, charitable, honest, ear- nest, slirewd and far-seeing, patient, careful, logical, and bold in defense and in attack. His square form, solid lips, and broad shoidders were an indication of the wres- tler, and his keen, quick eye was that of a master offence. While he was one of the most diligent of workers, he had just enough of tlie phlegmatic about his tempera- njent to make him the pluckiest of fighters. He always looked at a. point, antl not at half of the horizon, as many do when they preach or write. His eagle eye would see the mark, no matter how far away, and his steady hand could point the spear to hit it exactly. In his sermoniz- ing there was no attempt at profundity, or speculation, or rhetorical ornamentation, or even logical force; yet it had all these so far as they are of any account. It was em- phatically as the rain that cometh down from heaven — falling because the clouds are too full to hold it longer, and never caring on what place it may descend, or what it shall refresh. His thouglits were always clear, and his words exact and often picturesque. He was entirelj' indifferent to the api)lause of those to whom he spoke, and was so natural — commonly not graceful in all his manner, that a careless observer would be sure to be de- ceived into thinking him of less weight than he really had. Every v.ord he chose was a word to help convey his meaning, and he never added another for show ; hence a few, who looked for sound rather than sense, might midervalue his preaching ; but let a congregation hear him often, and become accustomed to the flash of his eye and the movement of his face as his thoughts came leaping from his heart, and as he attempted to clothe them in words, and they could not fail to be fas- cinated. He had a magnetic power to keep ]5cople awake and to instruct them, and to attach men to him which not many possess. Said he once, ' I cannot soar on the wings of fancy, I can only Instruct and convince.' ' " In a word," says Dr. ^\'iley, " his whole character was well rounded and symmetrical as his mind was rigorous- ly logical, and his frame robust, compact, and well knit together. He fiUcd with ability all places to which the Church called him, as pastor, ediu;ator, editor, and bish- op." Bishop Kingsley left in MS. form a series of lec- tures he delivered while professor at Meadville, in de- fence of the Orthodox doctrine. It is to be hoped that they will soon be brought out in book form. They cer- tainly would prove a great addition to our literature on those subjects. Since his decease his letters of travel have been published under the title of Roii7xl the World (Cincinnati, 1870, 2 vols. 12mo), prefaced by a memoir of the bisliop. (J. IT. W.)