Bangs, William Mkendree

Bangs, William M'Kendree son of the Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., was born in New York, December i5, 1810, and graduated at 19 years of age at the University of Ohio with the highest honors. He was immediately offered a professorship in Augusta College, Ky., which he held for only one year, being impressed with the duty of entering the Christian ministry. In 1831 he entered the N. Y. Conference of the M. E. Church, and continued to labor, except when his feeble health compelled him to desist, till his death, Sept. 5, 1852. His logical powers were of the highest order, and his command of language rarely equalled. "Whether conversing familiarly with his friends, discussing some difficult abstract question, or preaching to a congregation, his style was remarkably adapted to the subject and the occasion. His sermons were clear, systematic, easy to be understood, neither encumbered by extraneous matter, nor disfigured by learned pedantry. They were characterized by a beautiful simplicity, and always bore the impress of a great mind." As a controversial writer he excelled greatly; his articles in the Methodist Quarterly Review, especially those of 1836 and 1837, in reply to the "Christian Spectator," and his reviews of Watson's Theological Institutes, are fine specimens of analytical as well as comprehensive thinking. — Minutes of Conferences, v. 211; Sprague, Annals, 7:773.