Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Henry Holcombe, DD – 1762-1824 – Searching for Truth at a Very Young Age – PART ONE

Thomas E Kresal Admin · 1 hr NOVEMBER 2, 2019

Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Henry Holcombe, DD – 1762-1824 – Searching for Truth at a Very Young Age – PART ONE

In sketching the character of the subject of the following memoir, it is not our intention to bestow on him unmerited praise, but simply to bring to view those peculiar traits of character which rendered him dear to his friends, terrible to the enemies of truth, and eminently useful to the world at large. Whatever is said, then, is not in the spirit of eulogy, but simply that his principles and practice may be duly made known and appreciated, and that he may yet speak, by these records, though his voice is hushed in the stillness of the tomb. We will give, therefore, partly in our own language, but mostly in the language of others, a few outlines of his history.

Henry Holcombe was the son of Grimes and Elizabeth Holcombe, and was born in Prince Edward county, Virginia, September 22, 1762. While he was yet a child, his father removed with his family to South Carolina, where, to use his own words, “at eleven years of age, he completed all the education he ever received from a living preceptor.”

This fact is worthy of particular notice, when considered in connection with his intellectual endowments, and the extent of his acquisitions in after life. Even the poor and indifferent means of instruction within his reach were taken from him at a period too early to admit of a presumption that he could have derived much profit from their employment.

Nature must, therefore, have endowed him with a mind rich in its own resources, and vigorous, even in its youth, else he could not have extended his researches as successfully as he did into the sublimest and deepest mysteries that can occupy the attention of a rational man. She was thus bountiful to him: she taught him to think, and led him, even in boyhood, to fix his thoughts on the noblest of her works. At an age when children, less favored by nature, are amused with toys and trinkets, he delighted to dwell on the grandeur and magnificence of those countless orbs with which she has gilded the immensity of space. His soul seems to have been placed, almost on the very day of its creation, far onward in that track which leads from truth to truth, from wonder to wonder, and from glory to glory, up to the throne of the great Jehovah.

Thomas E. Kresal from: J. H. Campbell, Georgia Baptists: Historical and Biographical, 1874, pp. 184-185

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