Smith, Samuel Stanhope. On the Love of Praise: A Sermon, delivered Sept 23, 1810, being the Sunday preceding Commencement. New-Brunswick: J. Simpson and Co., 1810. First Edition. [9362]
Removed, no wrapper, 8 x 5, 36 pages, brief pencil markings. Good. Pamphlet.
Smith followed Witherspoon as President of the College at Princeton. In this piece he has two main points - first, that the love of praise “is a laudable and useful principle of action,” and second, “as it may be corrupted, and possess a dangerous influence on the heart.”
Samuel Stanhope Smith (1751-1819), b. Pequea, Pennsylvania; d. Princeton, New Jersey. A graduate of Princeton College (1769), he was the first alumnus to become its President (1795-1812). He was a preacher in Virginia after graduating college, and founded two academies that became Hampden-Sydney College and Washington and Lee University. Strongly influenced by Scottish realism, he was a proponent of the separation of church and state, a radical doctrine which he shared with his Princeton classmate James Madison. Smith became professor of moral philosophy at Princeton, was son-in-law to President Witherspoon, and succeeded Witherspoon as the President of Princeton upon the former's death in 1795.
