Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Burgess, Henry
BURGESS, The Rev. Henry, LL.D., of Glasgow, was born in 1808, and educated at the Dissenting College at Stepney, where he obtained a high standing in Hebrew and classical learning. After ministering to a Nonconformist congregation, he received orders from the Bishop of Manchester in 1850. He held the perpetual curacy of Clifton Reynes, Bucks, from 1854 to 1861, was for some years editer of the Clerical Journal and the Journal of Sacred Literature, and is known as the author of some translations from the Syriac language, including two volumes of the "Metrical Hymns and Homilies of St. Ephrem Syrus, with Philological Notes and Dissertations on the Syrian Metrical Church Literature," 1835, and a translation of the "Festal Letters of St. Athanasius," 1852, a work which, after being long lost in the original Greek, was recovered in an ancient Syriac version, and edited for the Oxford "Library of the Fathers" by the Rev. H. G. Williams. Dr. Burgess's other works are, "The Bible Society vindicated in its decision respecting the Bengal New Testament," 1836; "The Country Miscellany," 2 vols., 1836–37; "Truth or Orthodoxy: to which shall we Sacrifice?" 1848; "Poems," dedicated to the Marchioness of Bute, 1850; "The Amateur Gardener's Year-Book," 1855; "The Revision of Translations of Holy Scripture;" "Luther, his Excellences and Defects," 1857. His later works are "The Reformed Church of England in its Principles and their Legitimate Development," 1869; "Essays, Biblical and Ecclesiastical, relating chiefly to the Authority and Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures," 1873; and "Disestablishment and Disendowment," 1875. Dr. Burgess also prepared the second edition of Kitto's "Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature." He ceased to be editor of the Clerical Journal at Christmas, 1868, after having conducted it for fourteen years. His principal modern work is "The Art of Preaching and the Composition of Sermons," 1881. In 1861 he was appointed by the Lord Chancellor to the vicarage of St. Andrew, Whittlesea, near Peterborough, in recognition of his services to theological learning. Dr. Burgess is Ph.D. of Göttingen.