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Hurst, John Fletcher (1834-1903), American Methodist Episcopal bishop, was born in Salem, Dorchester county, Maryland, on the 17th of August 1834. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1854, and in 1856 went to Germany and studied at Halle and Heidelberg. From 1858 to 1867 he was engaged in pastoral work in America, and from 1867 to 1871 he taught in Methodist mission institutes in Germany. In 1871-1873 he was professor of historical theology at Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey, of which he was president from 1873 till 1880, when he was made a bishop. He died at Bethesda, Maryland, on the 4th of May 1903. Bishop Hurst, by his splendid devotion in 1876-1879, recovered the endowment of Drew Theological Seminary, lost by the failure in 1876 of Daniel Drew, its founder; and with McClintock and Crooks he improved the quality of Methodist scholarship. The American University (Methodist Episcopal) at Washington, D.C., for postgraduate work was the outcome of his projects, and he was its chancellor from 1891 to his death.

He published A History of Rationalism (1866); Hagenbach’s Church History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (2 vols., 1869); von Oosterzee’s John’s Gospel: Apologetical Lectures (1869); Lange’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1869); Martyrs to the Tract Cause: A Contribution to the History of the Reformation (1872), a translation and revision of Thelemann’s Märtyrer der Traktatsache (1864); Outlines of Bible History (1873); Outlines of Church History (1874); Life and Literature in the Fatherland (1875), brilliant sketches of Germany; a brief pamphlet, Our Theological Century (1877); Bibliotheca Theologica (1883), a compilation by his students, revised by G. W. Gillmore in 1895 under the title Literature of Theology; Indika: the Country and People of India and Ceylon (1891), the outgrowth of his travels in 1884-1885 when he held the conferences of India; and several church histories (Chautauqua text-books) published together as A Short History of the Christian Church (1893).