He was a man of profound learning, and it is astonishing that one
so constantly occupied with the duties of an engrossing profession
should have found the time for such close and thorough general reading.
He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible in the
highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a
school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia
Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of
which he drafted. He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest
abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the
assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to
make men infidels.
He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the good old age
of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to render additional
luster to his name by achieving the highest distinction as a statesman.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
VALENTINE MOTT.
Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of
August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in
the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three.
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