1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pressensé, Edmond Dehault de

PRESSENSÉ, EDMOND DEHAULT DE (1824-1891), French Protestant divine, was born at Paris on the 7th of January 1824. He studied at Lausanne under Alexander Vinet, and at Halle and Berlin under F. A. G. Tholuck and J. A. W. Neander, and in 1847 became pastor in the Evangelical Free Church at the chapel of Taitbout in Paris. He was a powerful preacher and a good political speaker; from 1871 he was a member of the National Assembly, and from 1883 a senator. In 1890, he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. Pressensé laboured for the revival of biblical studies. He contended that the Evangelical Church ought to be independent of the power of the state. He died on the 8th of April 1891.

He founded in 1854 the Revue chrétienne, and in 1866 the Bulletin théologique. His works include: Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l'église chrétienne (6 vols. 1856-1877; new ed. 1887-1889), L'Église et la révolution française (1864; 3rd ed., 1889), Jésus-Christ, son temps, sa vie, son œuvre (against E. Renan, 1866; 7th ed. 1884), Les Origines, le problème de la connaissance; le problème cosmologique (1883; 2nd ed. 1887). See T. Roussel, Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de Pressensé (1894).