<S70 GEORGE PARK FISHER. 



GEORGE PARK FISHER (1827-1909) 



Fellow in Class III, Section 3, 1891. 



George Park Fisher was born at Wrentham, Mass., August 10, 1827, 

 the son of a country lawyer. He graduated from Brown University 

 in 1847, and studied theology at Yale Divinity School and Andover 

 Theological Seminary, graduating from the latter institution with 

 the class of 1851. With plans already formed for the career of a 

 scholar and teacher he continued his theological studies at Andover 

 and in Germany. In 1854 he was ordained to the ministry of the 

 Congregational Church, and became college pastor and Livingston 

 professor of divinity in Yale College, in 1861 he was transferred to 

 the professorship of ecclesiastical history in the Yale Divinity School. 

 When in 1901 he retired to become professor emeritus, his active 

 service as a professor at Yale had covered 47 years. He received 

 honorary degrees from Brown, Edinburgh, Princeton (both LL.D 

 and D.D.), and Harvard, and had the distinction of receiving three 

 lionorary degrees (A.M., D.D., and LL.D.) from Yale. 



He died at Litchfield, Connecticut, December 20, 1909, in his 

 eighty-third year. 



Professor Fisher's life was occupied with Christian theology, with 

 church history, and with the public affairs of the Congregational 

 denomination. Several of his best known books had to do with 

 questions of apologetics and the more general aspects of Christianity, 

 as the titles indicate, "Faith and Rationalism," "The Grounds of 

 Theistic and Christian Belief," "The Nature and Method of Revela- 

 tion." His disposition and mode of thought was that of a moderate 

 and free conservatism, and an urbane, but insistent, tolerance. Heart- 

 ily contemptuous of everything which savored of obscurantism or ran 

 counter to the plain facts of science or history, he was a loyal and 

 devout believer in the doctrines of Protestant Christianity. From 

 the active and bitter controversialism of the Massachusetts churches 

 in which he was reared, and from New England scholasticism as exem- 

 plified in Professor Park's theology, he turned away to the milder 

 type of Connecticut orthodoxy. This moderate position and his own 

 wise and statesmanlike temper gave him great influence in the Con- 

 gregational body in a period of change; his part in preventing reac- 

 tionary forces from gaining control was large and his service of lasting 

 effect. 



