Of his eminent son, THOMAS STARR KING, what can we say that most readers do not already know? and yet the man and his life will always bear noting and will never fail to be admired. He was born in the city of New York, Dec. 17, 1824. He early manifested singular aptitude for study and deep conscientiousness. His education was desultory, but with his quickness of apprehension he acquired Latin and French at an early age. At fifteen, on the death of his father, he became the head of the family, and worked for their support as a clerk and school-teacher. In the mean time he was an untiring student of metaphysics and theology. One of his historians, Mr. E. P. Whipple, writes of him:--
"He mastered the results of the great German and French critics of the Bible. To many of our present young students exegesis practically means _exit Jesus_; but King, in all his eager quest of truth, and dutiful acknowledgment of the service which the great German theologians had rendered to the rational interpretation of the Scriptures, never lost his original hold on Christ Jesus as the express image of God,--as the Son who reveals to us the Father,--as the ideal embodiment of a perfected Humanity. Such a person had a natural call to the ministry."
His first sermon was preached in Woburn, in the autumn of 1845. In the summer of the next year he was invited to the pastorate of the Universalist Church in Charlestown, then made vacant by the removal of the Rev. E. H. Chapin to Boston. He accepted the call, and enjoyed a busy and happy ministry there, until his urgent call to become the minister of the Hollis Street (Unitarian) Church in Boston. The first invitation he declined, and made a voyage to Fayal to recruit his health which had been impaired by his incessant labors. The invitation was renewed on his return home, and he was installed in his new place in December, 1848. This course on his part was not agreeable to many of his Universalist friends, but they had no doubt that it was conscientiously taken by him, and most of them always retained their good will and heart-fellowship for him. They knew that his work would be mainly in the right direction always; and they were not disappointed. As a public literary lecturer, he was among the foremost in the land.