Diinglison.] "^2 [October. 



Crowds of intelligent and admiring hearers thronged his services. 

 Members of other denominations held pews or sittings in the church 

 as well as in their own ecclesiastical houses. Strangers in the city 

 in great numbers waited upon his ministry. He was known, ad- 

 mired, sought, welcomed, and honored among all denominations of 

 Christians for his catholicity of principle, his faithful and eloquent 

 preaching, and his services to every good cause in which Christians 

 united, and to which he conscientiously trained his people. Few 

 ministers have filled a wider sphere in the cause of general Chris- 

 tianity in our city, while none were more faithful to their own im- 

 mediate theology and church." 



"Whilst his reputation was thus culminating in Philadelphia, he 

 was energetically aifording his powerful aid -to every scheme for the 

 promotion and diffusion of general literature and science, and for the 

 good of his fellow-man. Early and prominent among these was the 

 "Athenian Institute," the object of which was to establish a course 

 of lectures, to be delivered gratuitously by literary gentlemen of Phi- 

 ladelphia, and which, for a time, was eminently successful. The 

 first course was given in the winter of 1838, and the last in that of 

 1842. Large and intelligent audiences assembled together to listen 

 to the diversified discourses, of which none were more popular than 

 those of Dr. Bethune. 



In the different reunions of the respectable members of the Board 

 of Directors of the Institute, he was placed in intimate intercourse 

 with the first literary and scientific gentlemen of the city, by whom 

 his sterling qualities were at once appreciated, and his claims to be 

 regarded as a true lover of wisdom cheerfully conceded. 



It was not long before he was proposed as a member of this So- 

 ciety. He was elected in April, 1839, and, whilst he resided in 

 Philadelphia, assisted, whenever he was able, in its proceedings. 



After the meetings of the Society, a small band of five congenial 

 spirits were in the habit of adjourning to each other's houses for the 

 purpose of farther social communion ; and for years these occasional 

 unions of 'Hhe five" were maintained; until, indeed, the removal to 

 other spheres of usefulness of two of its honored members, the 

 lamented subject of this notice, and Professor A. D. Bache, and the 

 subsequent death of two others, Dr. Robert M. Patterson and Judge 

 Kane, left the writer solitary and alone, and dissolved one of the 

 '' most quiet, joyous, and instructive meetings," as it was happily 

 designated by Judge Kane in his obituary notice of Dr. Piobert M. 



