(1873), The Scriptural Idea of Man (1883), and Teachings and Counsels (1884). Dr Hopkins took a lifelong interest in Christian missions, and from 1857 until his death was president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (the American Congregational Mission Board). He died at Williamstown, on the 17th of June 1887. His son, Henry Hopkins (1837–1908), was also from 1903 till his death president of Williams College.
See Franklin Carter’s Mark Hopkins (Boston, 1892), in the “American Religious Leaders” series, and Leverett W. Spring’s Mark Hopkins, Teacher (New York, 1888), being No. 4, vol. i., of the “Monographs of the Industrial Educational Association.”
Mark Hopkins’s brother, Albert Hopkins (1807–1872), was long associated with him at Williams College, where he graduated in 1826 and was successively a tutor (1827–1829), professor of mathematics and natural philosophy (1829–1838), professor of natural philosophy and astronomy (1838–1868) and professor of astronomy (1868–1872). In 1835 he organized and conducted a Natural History Expedition to Nova Scotia, said to have been the first expedition of the kind sent out from any American college, and in 1837, at his suggestion and under his direction, was built at Williams College an astronomical observatory, said to have been the first in the United States built at a college exclusively for purposes of instruction. He died at Williamstown on the 24th of May 1872.
See Albert C. Sewall’s Life of Professor Albert Hopkins (1879).
HOPKINS, SAMUEL (1721–1803), American theologian,
from whom the Hopkinsian theology takes its name, was born
at Waterbury, Connecticut, on the 17th of September 1721.
He graduated at Yale College in 1741; studied divinity at
Northampton, Massachusetts, with Jonathan Edwards; was
licensed to preach in 1742, and in December 1743 was ordained
pastor of the church in the North Parish of Sheffield, or Housatonick
(now Great Barrington), Massachusetts, at that time a
small settlement of only thirty families. There he laboured—preaching,
studying and writing—until 1769, for part of the
time (1751–1758) in intimate association with his old teacher,
Edwards, whose call to Stockbridge he had been instrumental
in procuring. His theological views having met with much
opposition, however, he was finally dismissed from the pastorate
on the pretext of want of funds for his support. From April
1770 until his death on the 20th of December 1803, he was
the pastor of the First Church in Newport, Rhode Island, though
during 1776–1780, while Newport was occupied by the British,
he preached at Newburyport, Mass., and at Canterbury and
Stamford, Conn. In 1799 he had an attack of paralysis, from
which he never wholly recovered. Hopkins’s theological views
have had a powerful influence in America. Personally he was
remarkable for force and energy of character, and for the utter
fearlessness with which he followed premises to their conclusions.
In vigour of intellect and in strength and purity of moral tone
he was hardly inferior to Edwards himself. Though he was
originally a slave-holder, to him belongs the honour of having
been the first among the Congregational ministers of New
England to denounce slavery both by voice and pen; and to his
persistent though bitterly opposed efforts are probably chiefly
to be attributed the law of 1774, which forbade the importation
of negro slaves into Rhode Island, as also that of 1784, which
declared that all children of slaves born in Rhode Island after
the following March should be free. His training school for negro
missionaries to Africa was broken up by the confusion of the
American War of Independence. Among his publications are a
valuable Life and Character of Jonathan Edwards (1799), and
numerous pamphlets, addresses and sermons, including A
Dialogue concerning the Slavery of the Africans, showing it to be
the Duty and Interest of the American States to emancipate all their
African Slaves (1776), and A Discourse upon the Slave Trade and
the History of the Africans (1793). His distinctive theological
tenets are to be found in his important work, A System
of Doctrines Contained in Divine Revelation, Explained and
Defended (1793), which has had an influence hardly inferior
to that exercised by the writings of Edwards himself. They may
be summed up as follows: God so rules the universe as to produce
its highest happiness, considered as a whole. Since God’s
sovereignty is absolute, sin must be, by divine permission, a
means by which this happiness of the whole is secured, though
that this is its consequence, renders it no less heinous in the
sinner. Virtue consists in preference for the good of the whole
to any private advantage; hence the really virtuous man must
willingly accept any disposition of himself that God may deem
wise—a doctrine often called “willingness to be damned.” All
have natural power to choose the right, and are therefore responsible
for their acts; but all men lack inclination to choose
the right unless the existing “bias” of their wills is transformed
by the power of God from self-seeking into an effective inclination
towards virtue. Hence preaching should demand instant submission
to God and disinterested goodwill, and should teach the
worthlessness of all religious acts or dispositions which are less
than these, while recognizing that God can grant or withhold
the regenerative change at his pleasure.
The best edition of Hopkins’s Works is that published in three volumes at Boston in 1852, containing an excellent biographical sketch by Professor Edwards A. Park. In 1854 was published separately Hopkins’s Treatise on the Millennium, which originally appeared in his System of Doctrines and in which he deduced from prophecies in Daniel and Revelation that the millennium would come “not far from the end of the twentieth century.” See also Stephen West’s Sketches of the Life of the Late Reverend Samuel Hopkins (Hartford, Conn., 1805), Franklin B. Dexter’s Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College and Williston Walker’s Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901). (W. Wr.)
HOPKINS, WILLIAM (1793–1866), English mathematician
and geologist, was born at Kingston-on-Soar, in Nottinghamshire,
on the 2nd of February 1793. In his youth he learned
practical agriculture in Norfolk and afterwards took an extensive
farm in Suffolk. In this he was unsuccessful. At the age of
thirty he entered St Peter’s College, Cambridge, taking his
degree of B.A. in 1827 as seventh wrangler and M.A. in 1830.
In 1833 he published Elements of Trigonometry. He was distinguished
for his mathematical knowledge, and became eminently
successful as a private tutor, many of his pupils attaining
high distinction. About 1833, through meeting Sedgwick at
Barmouth and joining him in several excursions, he became
intensely interested in geology. Thereafter, in papers published
by the Cambridge Philosophical Society and the Geological
Society of London, he entered largely into mathematical inquiries
connected with geology, dealing with the effects which
an elevatory force acting from below would produce on a portion
of the earth’s crust, in fissures, faults, &c. In this way he discussed
the elevation and denudation of the Lake district, the
Wealden area, and the Bas Boulonnais. He wrote also on the
motion of glaciers and the transport of erratic blocks. So ably
had he grappled with many difficult problems that in 1850 the
Wollaston medal was awarded to him by the Geological Society
of London; and in the following year he was elected president.
In his second address (1853) he criticized Élie de Beaumont’s
theory of the elevation of mountain-chains and showed the
imperfect evidence on which it rested. He brought before the
Geological Society in 1851 an important paper On the Causes
which may have produced changes in the Earth’s superficial Temperature.
He was president of the British Association for 1853.
His later researches included observations on the conductivity
of various substances for heat, and on the effect of pressure
on the temperature of fusion of different bodies. He died at
Cambridge on the 13th of October 1866.
Obituary by W. W. Smyth, in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. (1867), p. xxix.
HOPKINSON, FRANCIS (1737–1791), American author and
statesman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 2nd of October
1737. He was a son of Thomas Hopkinson (1709–1751), a
prominent lawyer of Philadelphia, one of the first trustees of
the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania,
and first president of the American Philosophical Society.
Francis was the first student to enter the College of Philadelphia.
