DwiGHT. Because of this recommendation, in 1817, these gentlemen 

 were appointed each to a professorship in the University of North Caroli- 

 na — 'Dr. Mitchell to the chair of Mathematics then vacated by Dr. Cald- 

 well's elevation to the Presidency, and Dr. Olmsted to the chair of Chemis- 

 try, then first established at the University. After spending a short time 

 at the Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts, and receiving a 

 license to preach the Gospel from an orthodox Congregational Association 

 in Connecticut, Dr. Mitchell reached Chapel Hill on the last day of Janu- 

 ary, 1818, and immediately began to discharge his duties as a professor — 

 a labor from which he ceased only by reason of death. In the discharge 

 of these duties he exhibited an energy, a vigilance, an intelligence, a good 

 common sense, a self denial, an attention to minute particulars, and a suc- 

 cess rarely surpassed or even equalled. During the thirty'uine-and-a-half 

 years of his connection with the University his absences from his post on 

 account of sickness, visits to the seat of government, attendance on eccle- 

 siastical bodies, and from all other causes, did not occupy, on an averag<^, 

 more than three days in a year. Indeed, it may be safely stated that, 

 throughout that entire period, his days and his nights, in term time and 

 in vacation, were devoted to his professorship. No one of the hundreds of 

 Students who have been connected with the University during the last 

 generation will be able to recall the memory of his absence from morning 

 and evening prayers but as a rare exception to a general rule. 



Dr. Mitchell preached his first sermon in the College Chapel shortly 

 after his arrival there, and his last in Salisbury, North Carolina, when on 

 his way to the scene of the labours that cost him his life. He was ordain- 

 ed to the full work of the Christian Ministry by the Presbytery of Orange 

 in Hillsborough, North Carolina, in the fall of 1821. During his long 

 ministry there were very lew weeks in which he did not declare to his fel- 

 low men the will of God for their salvation. He always and most heartily 

 acknowledged that this Kosmos, with whose varied phenomena he was very 

 conversant, was created and controlled by a personal God, whose wisdom, 

 power, goodness, and holiness he set forth with no little skill, and often 

 with a very striking originality. This he did during a time wherein too 

 many of his associates in the investigation of Nature indulged in si-ecula- 

 tions, and clothed them in language, that ignored the existence of an au- 

 thoritative revelation concerning Creation and Providence. His minute ac- 

 quaintance with the Archaiology and Geography of the Holy Scriptures 

 rendered his exposition of them at times luminous in a remarkable de- 

 gree, and, most deeply interesting. For the redemption of the one race of 

 mankind, from the abyss of sin and misery into which the fall of Adam had 

 plunged it, he looked only to the mystery of the Cross inwrought by the 



