country for his violent and dramatic sermons which swayed thousands. His lurid admonition to the unregenerate that sinners would have to plow the hottest regions of hell with a shingle and two bobtailed rats is still remembered in Hamilton. Following his graduation from the Institution in 1824, he had introduced his revival methods among Baptist churches with great success. In 1835 he returned to the village to locate his family while he went out to preach wherever his services were requested. The large amount of property he was acquiring in the work of “saving souls” as well as his spectacular technique excited considerable comment and criticism among Baptists and non-Baptists alike. When he asked the local church in 1843 to grant him a letter of commendation that his standing might be assured in the denomination, the storm broke. Fiery Professor Maginnis, motivated by disapproval of Knapp’s preaching methods and for personal reasons, led those who objected to granting the letter. Out of this issue developed involved investigations and bitter discussions of Knapp’s character and behavior which were protracted over six months. When finally the church by a vote of 32 to 16 gave Knapp their approbation, all the faculty save Professor Taylor were found in the minority.
While the uproar was subsiding, Dr. Kendrick wrote ambiguously to a friend that the faculty had objected neither to Knapp’s success as a revivalist nor to the methods he employed so long as his meetings were “properly conducted.” The professors had tried to do their duty when the case was before the church and now that it was over they would “leave the whole affair with things that are behind.”*Some of the Trustees of the Education Society had “considered the propriety & practibility of forming a church in the Seminary” and a few months after the Knapp case the Board recommended that the faculty take such a step. Accordingly, in September 1845, they and their families withdrew in a body from the village church to establish their own on the Hill. Professor Taylor whose stand in the Knapp case had not differed from that of his colleagues had avoided the embarrassment by resigning in the spring.
The professors and their families, Deacon Seneca B. Burchard, President of the Education Society Trustees, and his wife, both of whom had also left the village church, and one student, gathered on a snowy Sabbath in Professor Raymond’s classroom, and formally orga-
*Nathaniel Kendrick to James Edmunds, New York, N.Y., Mar. 7, 1845.
