Burder, George

Burder, George was born in London May 25 (O. S.), 1752. About 1773 Mr. Burder became a student in the Royal Academy; but shortly afterward he began to preach, and at length determined to relinquish his profession of artist, and to devote himself to the Christian ministry. In 1778 he became pastor of an Independent Church at Lancaster; in 1783 he removed to Coventry, during his residence in which city he took an active part in the formation of the London Missionary Society; and in 1803 he accepted a call to the pastorship of the Congregational Church in Fetter Lane, London, and also to undertake the office of secretary to the London Missionary Society and editor of the Evangelical Magazine. The duties of these offices were performed by Burder with much zeal and talent, until increasing years and infirmities compelled him to resign them. He died May 29, 1832. lis numerous publications consisted chiefly of essays and sermons. Of these, the Village Sermons, of which six volumes appeared at various times between 1799 and 1812 (new ed. Lond. 1838, 8 vols.), and which have been repeatedly reprinted and translated into several European languages, are perhaps the best known. Of forty-eight Cottage Sermons, Sea Sermons, and Sermons to the Aged, written for the Religious Tract Society for gratuitous distribution or sale at a very cheap rate, the aggregate circulation during his life amounted to little short of a million copies. Among his other publications were Evangelical Truth defended (1788, 8vo): — The Welsh Indians, or a Collection of Papers respecting a People whose Ancestors emigrated from Wales to America in 1710 with Prince Madoc, and who are said now to inhabit a beautiful Country on the west Side of the Mississippi (8vo, 1799): — Missionary Anecdotes (1811, 12mo); see the Memoir by Henry Forster Burder, D.D. (Lond. 1833). See Morison, Missionary Fathers, 268; English Cyclopedia, s.v.