McCLINTOCK, JOHN (1814–1870), American Methodist Episcopal theologian and educationalist, was born in Philadelphia on the 27th of October 1814. He graduated at the university of Pennsylvania in 1835, and was assistant professor of mathematics (1836–1837), professor of mathematics (1837–1840), and professor of Latin and Greek (1840–1848) in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He opposed the Mexican War and slavery, and in 1847 was arrested on the charge of instigating a riot, which resulted in the rescue of several fugitive slaves; his trial, in which he was acquitted, attracted wide attention. In 1848–1856 he edited The Methodist Quarterly Review (after 1885 The Methodist Review); from 1857 to 1860 he was pastor of St Paul’s (Methodist Episcopal) Church, New York City; and in 1860–1864 he had charge of the American chapel in Paris, and there and in London did much to turn public opinion in favour of the Northern States. In 1865–1866 he was chairman of the central committee for the celebration of the centenary of American Methodism. He retired from the regular ministry in 1865, but preached in New Brunswick, New Jersey, until the spring of 1867, and in that year, at the wish of its founder, Daniel Drew, became president of the newly established Drew theological seminary at Madison, New Jersey, where he died on the 4th of March 1870. A great preacher, orator and teacher, and a remarkably versatile scholar, McClintock by his editorial and educational work probably did more than any other man to raise the intellectual tone of American Methodism, and, particularly, of the American Methodist clergy. He introduced to his denomination the scholarly methods of the new German theology of the day—not alone by his translation with Charles E. Blumenthal of Neander’s Life of Christ (1847), and of Bungener’s History of the Council of Trent (1855), but by his great project, McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature (10 vols., 1867–1881; Supplement, 2 vols., 1885–1887), in the editing of which he was associated with Dr James Strong (1822–1894), professor of exegetical theology in the Drew Theological Seminary from 1868 to 1893, and the sole editor of the last six volumes of the Cyclopaedia and of the supplement. With George Richard Crooks (1822–1897), his colleague at Dickinson College and in 1880–1897 professor of historical theology at Drew Seminary, McClintock edited several elementary textbooks in Latin and Greek (of which some were republished in Spanish), based on the pedagogical principle of “imitation and constant repetition.” Among McClintock’s other publications are: Sketches of Eminent Methodist Ministers (1863); an edition of Richard Watson’s Theological Institutes (1851); and The Life and Letters of Rev. Stephen Olin (1854).
See G. R. Crooks, Life and Letters of the Rev. Dr John McClintock (New York, 1876).