Hope, Matthew B

Hope, Matthew B.

A distinguished Presbyterian minister, and professor at Princeton, was born in Pennsylvania in 1812, and was educated at Jefferson College in that state. He entered the theological seminary at Princeton in 1831, and, after completing his theological course, he also studied medicine, and received the appropriate degree from the University of Pennsylvania: his object, in this additional course of study, being the more completely to prepare himself for the missionary work. He was ordained as a missionary, and stationed at Singapore, India; but his health failing him, he returned home, after a stay of two years only. He was soon afterwards elected assistant secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Education. In 1846 he accepted the office of professor of belles-lettres in the College of New Jersey. In 1854 he was also made professor of political economy. During the fourteen years of his connection with the college, he continued in the diligent and thorough discharge of the duties of his professorship, with the exception of all interval of about fifteen months, the most of which was passed in Southern Europe, whither he had gone to seek some alleviation of a deeply-seated neuralgic affection. He died suddenly at Princeton, Dec. 17, 1859. He published a Treatise of Rhetoric (a syllabus for his college classes), and was a frequent contributor to the Princeton Review. — Presbyterian, Dec. 1859; Presbyterian Hist. Almanac, 1861, p. 90; Newark Daily Advertiser, Dec. 1859.