EDMOND DEHAULT DE

PRESSENSE (1824—1891)  , French Protestant divine, was born at Paris on the 7th of January 1824 . He studied at Lausanne under Alexander Vinet, and at Halle and Berlin under F . A . G . Tholuck and J . A . W . Neander, and in 1847 became pastor in the Evangelical Free Church at the chapel of Taitbout in Paris . He was a powerful preacher and a good political speaker; from 1871 he was a member of the National Assembly, and from 1883 a senator . In 1890 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences . Pressense laboured for the revival of biblical studies . He contended that the Evangelical Church ought to be independent of the power of the state .

He died on the 8th of_April 1891 . He founded in 1854 the Revue chretienne, and in 1866 the Bulletin theologique . His

works include: Histoire des trois premiers' siecles de l'eglise chretienne (6 vols . 1856—1877; new ed . 1887—1889), L'Eglise et la revolution francaise (1864; 3rd ed., 1889), Jesus-Christ, son temps, sa vie, son ceuvre (against E . Renan, 1866; 7th ed . 1884), Les Origines, le probleme de la connaissance; le probleme cosmologique (1883; 2nd ed . 1887) . See T . Roussel, Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de Pressense (1894) .