RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Whitefield Whiton
missionary activity among the Indians. He gained
the retention of the posts at Waiilatpu and Clear-
water, but had not enough time to secure the assistants he desired. During his return journey he acted as guide and physician to a large emigrant caravan, and on reaching Walilatpu he resumed his missionary labors. In 1847, however, an epidemic of measles among the Cayuse caused so large a number of fatalities that Whitman and the other missionaries were believed to be using black magic against them; and the Indians accordingly attacked the mission and killed him and fifteen others.
Apart from his importance as a missionary, Whitman was the man who, above all others, roused popular interest in Oregon and thus largely promoted its settlement. On the other hand, there appears to be little evidence for the common belief that he discovered a plot of the Hudson Bay Company to obtain Oregon for England by colonizing it from Canada, and that his trip of 1842 was to secure American immigrants to forestall such action. Equally fictitious is the story that, when reaching Washington to expose this plot, he found the United States about to exchange Oregon for the fisheries of Newfoundland, and that his representations prevented this exchange and thus secured the retention of the territory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. Barrows, Oregon; the Struggle fer P1ssession, Boston, 1884; J. G. Craighead, The Story of l 1rcus Whitman, Philadelphia, 1895; O. W. Nixon, How Marcus Whitman saved Oregon, Chicago, 1895; idem, Whitman’s Ride through Savage Lands, ib. 1905; W. A. Mowry, Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon, New York, 1901; W. I. Marshall, History vs. the ‘‘ Whitman saved Oregon ”’ Story, privately printed, Chicago, 1904; -C. W. Smith, A Contribution toward a Bibliography of
Marcus Whitman, Seattle, 1908; M. Eells, Marcus Whitman; Pathfinder and Patriot, ib. 1909.
WHITON, JAMES MORRIS: Congregationalist ; b. at Boston, Mass., Apr. 11, 1833. He was educated at Yale College (A.B., 1853), and, after being rector of Hopkins Grammar School, New Haven, Conn. (1854-64), was pastor of the First Congregational Church, Lynn, Mass. (1865-69), and of the North Congregational Church in the same city (1869-75); principal of Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Mass. (1876-78); pastor of the First Congregational Church, Newark, N. J. (1879-85), and of Trinity Congregational Church, New York City (1886-91); acting professor of ethics in the Meadville Theological School (1893-94), and acting pastor of the Congregational Church at Haworth, N. J. (1898-1901). He has been a member of the editorial staff of The Outlook since 1897. He has been chairman of the Executive Committee of the New York State Conference of Religions since 1899. In theology he is a ‘“ conservative-liberal’’ with a “ monistic basis.” He is the author of Latin Lessons (Boston, 1860); Greek Lessons (New York, 1861); Select Orations of Lysias (Boston, 1875); Is Eternal Punishment Endless? (New York, 1876; maintaining that endless punishment is not decisively revealed in the New Testament, thus raising a question as to his further fellowship in the Congregational body, which was decided in his favor by a council at Newark, N. J., in 1879); Six Weeks’ Preparation for Reading Cesar (Boston, 1877); Essay on the Gospel according to Matthew (1880);
Whitsitt Wickedness
Beyond the Shadow, or the Gospel of the Resurrection (New York, 1881); The Evolution of Revelation (1885); Three Months’ Preparation for Reading Xenophon (in collaboration with his daughter, 1885) ; The Divine Satisfaction (1886); Turning Points of Thought and Conduct (1887); The Law of Liberty (1888); New Points to Old Texts (1889); What of Samuel? (1890); Gloria Patri, or Talks on the Trinity (1892); Reconsiderations and Reenforcements (1896); Miracles and Supernatural Religion (1903); and Interludes, Ethical, Social and Theological (1910).
WHITSITT, WILLIAM HETH: Baptist; b. near Nashville, Tenn., Nov. 25, 1841; d. at Richmond Jan. 20, 1911. He was educated at Union University (1857-60), dropping his studies during the Civil War to become private, later chaplain, in the Confederate Army (1861-65). He then studied at the University of Virginia (1866-67), later taking a course at the Southern Baptist Seminary (1867— 1869), as well as at Leipsic (1869-70) and at Berlin (1870-71); he was pastor at the Mill Creek Church, Nashville, Tenn. (1865-66), and for part of the year 1872 was pastor of the Baptist church at Albany, Ga., when he received an appointment as professor of Biblical introduction and ecclesiastical history in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, of which he was president from 1895 to 1899. About 1880 he saw for the first time materials which led him to believe that among English antipedobaptists immersion was not in use till 1641. Publication of statements embodying these materials educed assaults upon him as not supporting his denomination, and these were intensified by the publication of his Question in Baptist History (Louisville, 1896). Feeling it best for the institution over which he had presided that he should retire, he did so and for two years held no office. The publication of his articles and his book occasioned a sharp controversy respecting the right and duty of a historian in a denominational school to exercise an untrammeled freedom in the expression of conclusions as to historical facts. After 1901 he was professor of philosophy in Richmond College, Va. Besides being an associate editor of Johnson’s Universal Cyclopedia (1894), he wrote History of the Rise of Infant Baptism (Louisville, Ky., 1878); History of Communion Among Baptists (1880); Origin of the Disciples of Christ (New York, 1888); Life and Times of Judge Caleb Wallace (Louisville, 1888); Annals of a Scotch- Irish Family—the Whitsitts of Nashville, Tenn. (1904); and Genealogy of Jefferson Davis (1908).
WHITSUNDAY. See Pentecost, II.
WHITTINGHAM, WILLIAM. Sce Srernuoxp, THOMAS.
WHYTE, ALEXANDER: Free Church of Scotland; b. at Kirriemuir (14 m. n. of Dundee), Forfarshire, Jan. 13, 1837. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen (M.A., 1862) and at New College, Edinburgh (1862-66); was assistant minister of Free St. John’s, Glasgow (1866-70); then assistant minister, and, later (1873), minister of Free St. George’s, Edinburgh; and, in 1909, became professor of New-Testament literature and