MARSH, JAMES
(19 July 1794, Hartford, VT-3 July 1842, Colchester, VT). Education: B.A., Dartmouth College, 1817; B.D., Andover Seminary, 1822. Career: Tutor, Dartmouth College, 1818-20; professor of Oriental Languages, Hampden-Sydney College, 1823-26; president, University of Vermont, 1826-33; professor of moral and intellectual philosophy, University of Vermont, 1833-42.
James Marsh spent most of his adult life as president and professor at the University of Vermont. He is credited with helping to create a good atmosphere at the university for students and teachers, but he is best remembered for his philosophical influence. Although he was converted in 1815 during a revival;" he was suspicious of certain forms of revivalism and publicly condemned an evangelical preacher in 1836 who had, in his view, sacrificed reason to emotion. Favoring an approach to religion that balanced heart and intellect, he was attracted to the European romantic movement and played an important role in bringing such thinkers as Coleridge and Herder to the attention of the American public. In 1829 he brought out an edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, including an influential introduction, that helped shape Ralph Waldo Emerson's thought.
Marsh's career, brief though it was, suggests the appeal of romanticism to some Congregationalists. That appeal was to find its ablest spokesman a few year's after Marsh's death in the person of Horace Bushnell*.
Bibliography
A: An Exposition of the Course of Instruction and Discipline in the University of Vermont (Burlington, Vt., 1829); "Preliminary Essay," accompanying his publication of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (Burlington, Vt., 1829).
B: AAP 2, 692-704; DAB 12, 299-300; DARB, 291-92; NCAB 2, 40; Joseph Torrey, The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh (Burlington, Vt., 1843); John J. Duffy, "From Hanover to Burlington: James Marsh's Search for Unity," Vermont History, 38 (1970), 27-48; Douglas McCreary Greenwood, "James Marsh and the Transcendental Temper" (Ph. D. thesis, University of North Carolina, 1979).
James Marsh spent most of his adult life as president and professor at the University of Vermont. He is credited with helping to create a good atmosphere at the university for students and teachers, but he is best remembered for his philosophical influence. Although he was converted in 1815 during a revival;" he was suspicious of certain forms of revivalism and publicly condemned an evangelical preacher in 1836 who had, in his view, sacrificed reason to emotion. Favoring an approach to religion that balanced heart and intellect, he was attracted to the European romantic movement and played an important role in bringing such thinkers as Coleridge and Herder to the attention of the American public. In 1829 he brought out an edition of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, including an influential introduction, that helped shape Ralph Waldo Emerson's thought.
Marsh's career, brief though it was, suggests the appeal of romanticism to some Congregationalists. That appeal was to find its ablest spokesman a few year's after Marsh's death in the person of Horace Bushnell*.
Bibliography
A: An Exposition of the Course of Instruction and Discipline in the University of Vermont (Burlington, Vt., 1829); "Preliminary Essay," accompanying his publication of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (Burlington, Vt., 1829).
B: AAP 2, 692-704; DAB 12, 299-300; DARB, 291-92; NCAB 2, 40; Joseph Torrey, The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh (Burlington, Vt., 1843); John J. Duffy, "From Hanover to Burlington: James Marsh's Search for Unity," Vermont History, 38 (1970), 27-48; Douglas McCreary Greenwood, "James Marsh and the Transcendental Temper" (Ph. D. thesis, University of North Carolina, 1979).