Biography of Ethan Smith
Ethan Smith (no relation to Joseph Smith) was a New England Congregationalist clergyman. Born in 1762 into a pious home in Belchertown, Massachusetts, Smith abandoned religion following the early deaths of his parents. After a prolonged inner struggle, he joined the Congregational Church in 1781, and shortly thereafter began training for the ministry. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1790, though finding "but little of the spirit of religion there."
After serving congregations in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, Smith accepted an appointment as "City Missionary" in Boston and also served as a supply pastor for vacant pulpits. "He was a warm friend of what he accounted pure revivals of religion; though he was careful to distinguish the precious from the vile" in matters of religious experience. Smith enjoyed a "robust constitution and vigorous health" and continued to preach until within two weeks of his death. At eighty his sight "became very dim, and he was no longer able to read, though he never became totally blind. So familiar was he with the Bible and Watts, that it was his uniform custom to open the book in the pulpit, and give out the chapter and hymn, and seem to read them; and he very rarely made a mistake, to awaken a suspicion that he was repeating from memory."
Besides View of the Hebrews, Smith published A Dissertation on the Prophecies (1809), A Key to the Figurative Language of the Prophecies (1814), A View of the Trinity, designed as an answer to Noah Webster's Bible News (1821), Memoirs of Mrs. Abigail Bailey, Four Lectures on the Subjects and Mode of Baptism, A Key to the Revelation (1833), and Prophetic Catechism to Lead to the Study of the Prophetic Scriptures (1839). Ethan Smith died in Royalston, Massachusetts in 1849.
Smith lived in Poultney, Vermont, the same town as Oliver Cowdery, who later served as Joseph Smith's scribe for the Book of Mormon. Ethan Smith also pastored the Congregational church that Cowdery's family attended from 1821 to 1826 while he was writing View of the Hebrews.
Read more about this topic: View Of The Hebrews
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