for the colored race until 1903, when failing health led him to resign. For this work, his intelligent sympathy, his broadmindedness and his gentle benignity of manner particularly fitted him; and during his administration the university was enlarged and strengthened in many ways.
His first published book was "The Bridal Ring" (1866). There followed "The Auld Scotch Mither and Other Poems" (1873); "Ingleside Rhymes" (1887); "Broken Cadences" (1889); "Hymns Pro Patria" (1889); "German English Lyrics" (1897); "Subduing Kingdoms and Other Sermons" (1881); "Atheism of the Heart" (1884); "Christ His Own Interpreter" (1884); "Esther Burr's Journal" (1900). He was a regular contributor to the "Independent" and the "Bibliotheca Sacra"; he was for some time the editor of the Pilgrim Press, and he wrote for many religious journals.
He was a member of the Sons of the Revolution, and the Society of the Cincinnati. He has always been in sympathy with the principles of the Republican party. His family traditions are of the early New England type, and include much that is finest and best in the old New England American life. As exercise he has enjoyed walking, driving and horseback riding. His mother's wishes greatly influenced his aim in life, and he names as the sources of his strong impulse to attain to what was best in thought and action, "the influence of his wife, and of Professor Park, Professor Phelps and Professor Shedd," who were his teachers at Andover.
The books in which he found especial inspiration were the Bible and Shakespeare. German and English literature were sources from which he derived great pleasure and profit. He enjoyed the human-heartedness of Dickens, and often read aloud from his novels in the family circle. The ideals expressed in Doctor Rankin's writings have found definite and attractive expression in his life and service. Sketches of his life have appeared in the various cyclopedias of biography and in Stedman's American Anthology, which contains selections from his poems.
Doctor Rankin's hymns show simplicity, directness, intensity and imagination. His personal qualities of gentleness, inspiring courtesy, and highmindedness combine with intellectual insight and spiritual beauty to make every verse pure and lucid. Hymns which he has written for special occasions and to help particular measures of reform, have been widely circulated. Perhaps no hymn has ever
