RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Bartol Basedow
was ordained to the Congregational ministry at Berea, Ky., in 1885, and has held successive pastorates at Robbins, Tenn. (1885-87), Litchfield, O. (1887-90), Wellington, O. (1890-93), Shawmut Congregational Church, Boston, Mass. (1893-99), and First Congregational Church, Oak Park, 111. (since 1899). He is a corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research; a director of the Congregational Educational Society, of the Chicago Theological Seminary, of the Illinois Home Missionary Society, and formerly of the similar society in Massachusetts; a trustee of Berea College; and vice-president of the Congregational Sunday-school and Publication Society and of the American Peace Society. He is lecturer on applied practical theology at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was a delegate to the Triennial National Congregational Council in 1895, 1898, and 1904, and to the International Decennial Council of the same denomination in 1899. In theology he is a progressive conservative Congregationalist. He is associate editor of the Bibliotheca Sacra, and his writings, in addition to numerous sermons and works of fiction, include: The Psalms and Their Story (Boston, 1898); Old Plantation Hymns (1899); The Improvement of Perfection (Portland, Me., 1900); Faith as Related to Health (Boston, 1901); Consolation (1901); An Elementary Catechism (1902); The Old World in the New Century (1902); The Gospel of the Autumn Leaf (Chicago, 1903); A Shining Mark (Philadelphia, 1903); and Jesus of Nazareth, His Life and the Scenes of His Ministry (Boston, 1904).
BARUCH, APOCALYPSE OF. See Psetjdepigrapha, Old Testament, II, 10-11. Book of. See Apocrypha, A, IV, 5.
BASCOM, HENRY BIDLEMAN: Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; b. at Hancock, Delaware County, New York, May 27, 1796; d. at Louisville, Ky., Sept. 8, 1850. He was licensed to preach 1813; was appointed chaplain to Congress 1823; was president of Madison College, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, 1827-29; agent of the American Colonization Society, 1829-31; elected professor of moral science in Augusta College, Kentucky, 1832, president of the Transylvania University, Kentucky, 1842, bishop 1850. He was prominent in the organization of the Methodist Church, South, and from 1846 to 1850 he edited the Southern Methodist Quarterly Review. He published sermons and lectures and a volume upon Methodism and Slavery. His collected works were printed at Nashville (4 vols., 1850-56).
BASCOM, JOHN: Congregationalist; b. at Genoa, N. Y., May 1, 1827. He was educated at Williams College (B.A., 1849) and Andover Theological Seminary (1855). He was a tutor in Williams College in 1852-53 and professor of rhetoric in the same institution from 1855 to 1874. In the latter year he was chosen president of the University of Wisconsin, where he remained until 1887. He then returned to Williams College as lecturer on sociology, and four years later was
appointed professor of political science, holding this position until 1903. He is an adherent of the new theology of the Congregational type, and has written: Political Economy (Andover, 1859); Esthetics (New York, 1862); Philosophy of Rhetoric (1865); Principles of Psychology (1869); Science, Philosophy, and Religion (1871); Philosophy of English Literature (1874); Philosophy of Religion (1876); Growth and Grades of Intelligence (1878); Ethics (1879); Natural Theology (1880); Science of Mind (1881); Words of Christ (1883); Problems in Philosophy (1885); Sociology (1887); The New Theology (1891); Historical Interpretation of Philosophy (1893); Social Theory (1895); Evolution and Religion (1897); Growth of Nationality in the United States (1899); and God and His Goodness (1901).
BASEDOW, ba'ze-do" (BASSEDAU), JOHANN BERNHARD: German rationalist and innovator in educational methods; b. at Hamburg Sept. 11, 1723; d. at Magdeburg July 25, 1790. After a wilful boyhood he studied theology at Leipsic (1744-46), but followed his studies in very irregular fashion and hampered by poverty; he was tutor to a noble family of Holstein 1749-53; became teacher at the academy of Soro, Denmark, in 1753, and at the gymnasium of Altona in 1761; he was forced to retire from both of these positions because of his unorthodox views freely and offensively expressed in various publications (Praktische Philosophie fur alle Stande, Copenhagen, 1758; Philalethie : neue Aussichten in die Wahrheiten und Religion der Vernunft, 2 vols., Altona, 1763-64; Theoretisches System der gesunden Vernunft, 1765; Grundriss der Religion welche durch Nachdenken und Bibelforschen erkannt wird, 1764). After 1767 he abandoned theology for education. Influenced by Rousseau's Emile, he sought to devise a system that should be according to nature and dispense with the exercise of authority on the part of the teacher and with the necessity for work on that of the pupil. His views are set forth in his Vorstellung an Menschenfreunde und vermogende Manner uber Schulen, Studien, und ihren Einfluss in die offentliche Wohlfahrt, mit einem Plane eines Elementarbuches der menschlichen Erkenntniss (Hamburg, 1768; new ed., Leipsic, 1894) and his Elementarwerk (4 vols., 1774). He had remarkable success in enlisting sympathy and gaining patrons, and in 1774 was able to open an institution for the realization of his ideas, the " Philanthropin " at Dessau (described in Das in Dessau errichtete Philanihropinum, Leipsic, 1774). After four years he retired, having shown himself, by loose management and personal bad habits, utterly unfitted for the position. He spent the rest of his life in literary work and private teaching. His writings on theological and educational subjects number more than sixty; the former are crude and coarse, and grossly rationalistic; the latter ill-considered and impracticable, although some of his ideas as developed by others have been productive of good. He was well characterized by Goethe as a man who undertook to educate the world, but himself had no education at all.- Bibliography: ADB. ii, 113-124 (by his great-grandson,
Max Muller); R. Diestelmann, J. B. Basedow, Leipsic.
1897.
Basel