RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Whately Whiston
1867), having meanwhile engaged in teaching, 1862- 1864; was ordained an evangelist and went to India in 1867, being stationed at Rawal Pindi, 1868-69, and at Lodiana, 1869-83; was professor in the theological seminary at Saharanpur, 1883-88; returned to America and was district secretary of the American Tract Society in Chicago, 1889-98, for two years managing the bookstore of the society; in 1898 he resumed his work in Lodiana. He is the founder of the Nur Afshan “ Light Disseminator ”’ (1872), a weekly paper in the Hindu language, of which he was editor for twenty-one years. He also edited, in his capacity of secretary of the World’s Congress of Missions at Chicago, 1893: Missions at Home and Abroad: Papers and Addresses presented at the World’s Congress of Missions ... (New York, 1895), as well as Woman in Missions: Papers and Addresses Presented at the Woman’s Congress of Missions . . . 1893 (1894). He is the author of The Comprehensive Commentary on the Qurdn (4 vols., London, 1882-86); Zainab the Panjabi (1893); Islam, or, the Religion of the Turk (1894); The Moslem Controversy (1905), and a number of lesser works on related subjects. He has also translated a number of works in English on religious subjects into the native languages of North India.
WHICHCOTE (WHITCHCOTE, WHICHCOT), BENJAMIN: One of the leaders among the Cambridge Platonists (q.v.); b. at Stoke (11 m. n.e. of Shrewsbury), Shropshire, May 4, 1609; d. at Cambridge May, 1683. He was admitted a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1626 (B.A., 1629; M.A. and fellow, 1633), and was ordained in 1636. He was appointed Sunday afternoon lecturer at Trinity College, a post which he held for twenty years, and through the work done there was best known to his contemporaries. In 1643 he was preferred to the college living of North Cadbury in Somersetshire, but in the following year was recalled to Cambridge as provost of King’s. The date of this appointment may be said to mark the rise of the new movement, of a type distinct from either the Puritan or the High-church, and one which gave alarm to the Puritan leaders. There was all the more cause for this alarm in that Whichcote spoke not for himself alone, but represented, as he molded, the thought of a younger and more progressive generation. In fact, it was as a teacher that he showed his power. Though Smith and Cudworth and More looked back to him as their intellectual master, he never appeared as an author in his lifetime. In 1649 he resigned the living of North Cadbury, and was presented to that of Milton in Cambridgeshire, which he retained till his death. At the Restoration he was ejected from his headship, but adhered to the church when the Act of Uniformity (see Unirormity, Act or) was passed, held the cure of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, from 1662 until the church was burned in the great fire of 1666, and that of St. Lawrence, Jewry, from 1668. Four volumes of his sermons were published at Aberdeen in 1751, and his Moral and Religious Aphorisms, London, 1753. Throughout these his conceptions of human nature, of religion, and of the Church are seen to be in distinct contrast to the modes of thought prevailing
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when he first formulated them; a broader and more philosophical spirit is evident in them. ‘ God hath set up two lights to enlighten us in our way: the light of reason, which is the light of his creation; and the light of Scripture, which is after-revelation from him. Let us make use of these two lights; and suffer neither to be put out.’”’ In this one phrase he takes a higher range of thought than had been reached by any earlier English Protestant theologian, with possibly the single exception of Hooker. His Platonic temper is shown in the way in which he took up the idea of religion in its full breadth, moral and philosophical, and brought it into affinity with all the powers of humanity, showing that Christianity was unique, not in rejecting and casting aside, but in interpreting and completing what is otherwise good in man. It is in this realization of the unity of all the moral forces which govern civilization, this expansion and elevation of the whole conception of religion and of the moral rights of human nature, that Whichcote’s great service to his age lay.
Brpuidcrapuy: The funeral sermon by Archbishop Tillotson was published London, 1683. Consult further: The literature under CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS, especially the works of J. Tulloch and E. T. Campagnac; B. F. Westcott, in A. Barry, Masters of Theology, London, 1877;
E. George, Seventeenth Century Men of Latitude, New York, 1908; DNB, Ixi. 1-3.
WHIPPLE, HENRY BENJAMIN: Protestant Episcopal bishop; b. at Adams, Jefferson County, N. Y., Feb. 15, 1822; d. at Faribault, Minn., Sept. 16, 1901. He was educated at private schools, but, prevented by ill-health from entering college, engaged in business and in politics for several years; took a theological course under W. D. Williams; became deacon, 1849; priest, 1850; was rector of Zion Church, Rome, N. Y., 1850-57; of the Church of the Holy Communion, Chicago, IIl., 1857-59; and became bishop, 1859. He was a founder of Seabury Divinity School, of St. Mary’s Hall, and Shattuck Military School, at Faribault, Minn. He devoted a great deal of time and energy to the Indians, and was an authority on all Indian problems, often being called in to the aid of the government. He was the author of Five Sermons (New York, 1890); and Lights and Shadows of a Long E'piscopate (1899, new ed., 1902).
BrBuioGRAPHY: Besides the autobiographic Lights and Shadows, ut sup., consult: W. S. Perry, The Episcopate in America, p. 145, New York, 1895.
WHISTON, WILLIAM: Mathematician and Arian theologian; best known to-day as the translator of Josephus; b. at Norton (16 m. w. of Leicester), Leicestershire, Dec. 9, 1667; d. at Lyndon (20 m. e. of Leicester), Rutland, Aug. 22, 1752. He was educated by his father (a clergyman who had been converted from Presbyterianism), at a school at Tamworth and at Clare Hall, Cambridge (B.A., 1690). He was ordained deacon in 1693, and then gave private lessons at Cambridge; but because of ill-health he exchanged teaching for the position of chaplain to John Moore, bishop of Norwich, and later (1698) received from Moore the vicarage of Lowestoft-cum-Kissingland, Suffolk, where he proved himself faithful and energetic in the per-
Whiston Whitby