Benjamin
Rush
1745?-1813
—
A leading
educator . . . helped started five universities and colleges including the first
College for Women . . . Called the “Father of American Medicine," he personally
trained 3,000 students for their medical degrees and made numerous discoveries
. . . Founder of America’s first Abolition Society . . . For 40 years he was a
national leader in the Abolition movement . . . On his death, the newspapers of
the day and the surviving founders said he was one of
our three most notable founders, ranking him in prominence with George Washington
and Benjamin Franklin.
In 1791, he founded
“The first Day Society” that grew in to today’s Sunday Schools.[10]
He
started America’s first Bible Society . . . The original constitution of the society
that he authored stated that 1.) With the Bible every individual could discover
how to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, 2.) Argued
that if every individual owned a Bible and studied and obeyed it, that all our
social problems including crime, slavery, etc. would diminish.[10]
In an effort to print Bibles faster and cheaper, he and the Society
came across Stereotyped printing, an early form of mass production, with the result
that with the help of President James Madison, and an act passed by Congress,
Dr. Rush able to obtain Stereotype plates enabling him to publish America’s first
mass-produced Bible.[10]
"The Gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation of life. Happy they are who obey them in all situations."[1]
"I believe that the greatest discoveries of science have been made by Christian philosophers, and that there is the most knowledge in those countries where there is the most Christianity."[9]
The
Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, George W. Corner,
editor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), p. 166:
" My only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendent love of God
manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the Cross. Nothing but His
blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come
quickly!"[42]