Hatch, EDWIN

Hatch, EDWIN, a learned theologian, born at Derby, 4th September 1835. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and at Pembroke College, Oxford, and took a second-class in classics in 1857. After some years of teaching as professor of Classics at Trinity College, Toronto, and rector of Quebec High School, he returned to Oxford as vice-principal of St Mary Hall in 1867, a post which he held till his resignation in 1885. He was appointed rector of Purleigh, Essex, in 1883, and next year reader in Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. The Grinfield lectureship on the Septuagint he held from 1880 to 1884. His articles on such heads as, 'Ordination,' 'Priest,' &c., in Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, had already attracted wide attention, when his profoundly learned and admirably argued Bampton Lectures, in 1880, on The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches, firmly established his reputation both in England and Germany as one of the ablest and best-equipped theologians of the time. The book struck a blow at the roots of High Church claims, and proved to be more easily denounced than answered. It had the honour to be translated by Harnack. In 1888 he delivered a course of Hibbert Lectures on Greek Influence on Christianity. Hatch was made D.D. by Edinburgh in 1883; published in 1887 The Growth of Church Institutions, a profoundly learned book, though written in a bright and popular style; Essays in Biblical Greek in 1889; and had made considerable progress with his projected Concordance to the Septuagint when his career was cut short by untimely death, at Oxford, 10th November 1889. A collection of noble religious poetry, Towards Fields of Light (1889), and a volume of striking sermons, The God of Hope (1890), appeared posthumously, the latter with a brief biographical sketch by his brother. See Dr Sanday in the Expositor for February 1890.