Rand, Asa

Rand, Asa an American Congregational divine, born at Rindge, N. H., Aug. 6, 1783, was educated at Dickinson College, where he took his degree in 1806, studied for the ministry, and was ordained at Gorham, Me., Jan. 18, 1809, as pastor of a Congregational Church. In 1822 he undertook the editorial care of the Christian Mirror at Portland, Me., and held this until 1825, when he took the principalship of a female seminary at Brookfield. In July, 1826, he accepted the editorship of the Boston Recorder, the Youth's Companion, and the Volunteer, the last a religious monthly. His health, which had for some time been failing, and had originally forced him from the ministry, finally compelled him also to leave the editorial chair, and he connected himself with a book-store and printing-office at Lowell, Mass. He finally went back to editorial work, and started the Lowell Observer, a weekly paper. In 1835 he again began to preach and address public audiences. He took up the slavery question and spoke in behalf of abolition in Maine and Massachusetts. From 1837 to 1842 he preached in Pompey, N. Y., then became pastor of the Presbyterian church in Peterborough, N. Y., the home of the celebrated abolitionist Gerritt Smith. His last years Mr. Rand spent at Ashburnham, Mass., where he died Aug. 24, 1871. He was, while at Gorham, a frequent writer for the religious quarterly published at Portland for 1814-18, and, besides occasional sermons, put in print a volume of Familiar Sermons: — a Review of Finney's Sermons: — New Divinity Theology, a vindication of the same: — and a Letter to Dr. Lyman Beecher. See Sprague, Anals of the Amer. Pulpit, vol. i.