Born: Near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, April 11, 1851.
Died: Pinecliff, Colorado, June 20, 1933.

The author of the following sermon began preaching in 1876. He graduated from Oskaloosa College in 1879, and took up his first regular work in De Soto, Iowa. After three years he was called to Washington, Illinois. In 1884 he and his good wife were called by the Foreign Mission Board to take the work in Liverpool, England. At the same time, the State Sunday-school Board of Illinois urged them to give themselves to that work. But the church and college in Oskaloosa prevailed, and for most of the next fourteen years Oskaloosa was their home. For six years Bro. Haggard was pastor and for three years president of the college. After a short pastorate in Colfax, Iowa , he took the secretaryship of the Iowa Christian Convention, of which he is now president, and moved his family back to Oskaloosa. He was called to Drake University in November, 1898, to assist Dean Everest. In the following year he became dean of the College of the Bible, which position he now holds. Since his seventeenth year he has never been long absent from the schoolroom. He has held some large meetings, but is more didactic in his sermonizing than most evangelists. In 1900 he and his family crossed the Atlantic. On this trip he preached in Toronto, Canada, and twice in London. William Durban heard him on the theme, "The Other Cheek," and pronounced the sermon equal to the best he ever heard from Spurgeon or any of the English divines.

Bro. Haggard is widely known as a third-party Prohibitionist. This is a part of his religion. He is intensely missionary and a liberal giver for missions and educational interests. In the present religious discussions he is a conservative, but not a partisan. He would fight for the rights of his radical brethren as quickly as for his own. From his college days his friends have known and appreciated his fairness and the judicial turn of his mind. He is profoundly convinced that most of the "assured results" of Biblical criticism have no abiding foundations. They are beset by three fatal weaknesses. First, they have created as many difficulties as the traditionalists ever had. Second, outside of a handful of so-called experts, they can not be furthered from the rostrum or in the press. If accepted at all, they must be taken on authority-- authority as absolute as that of the popes in the Middle Ages. Dean Haggard does not believe that the new century will blindly surrender itself to authority, either political, philosophical or religious. Third, they are but one theory founded upon another theory. Theories founded upon facts have not always stood; how about one founded upon another theory? The results of criticism depend upon some theory of evolution. Each of these theories is now in conflict with important hostile facts. There can be but one outcome. When the popular theories of evolution surrender and square themselves with certain great facts, most of the " assured results" will lose their chief support. In Professor Sayce, of Oxford, and in certain German experts, Dean Haggard sees these changes already in progress. He believes that a well-founded theory of evolution would be a blessing, and that it is sure to come, and come soon.

Bro. Haggard is a very close student of the Scriptures. He is painstaking and methodical. He goes as near to the bottom of Biblical problems as possible. A few years ago he solved the problem of prayer direct to Jesus. While showing that it was according to the Scriptures, he took from. the Unitarians one of their greatest proof-texts--John xvi. 23. Later he solved the puzzling problem of the chronology of the time of the Judges by throwing the 450 years of Acts xiii. 19, 20 backward from the division of the land, instead of forward. Just now he is out with a correction of the text of Psalm cxxxvi. 15, and a convincing argument showing that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was not drowned. Yet he does not allow this plodding and digging to rob his sermons or his classroom work of the fire of enthusiasm or the pathos of the gospel. His classes are impressed with his powers of reason, but his unbounded faith is more impressive. While he is logical and argumentative and bold in his investigations, his faith is as warm as that of the mystic and as absolute as that of the Old Testament prophets.

The Haggards in England and America trace their lineage back to Sir Andrew Ogard, who came from Denmark and settled in England and was naturalized under Henry VI. in 1433. On page 86 of the "Genealogy and History of the Haggards" are found these words: "Rice Haggard, a noted divine, who was the author, originator and organizer of the original Christian (or so-called Campbellite) Church." Rice Haggard was a brother of the great-grandfather of Dean Haggard. The dean does not credit the above lines. He supposes they grew out of a very interesting fact which may be found on page 101 of the "Autobiography of Elder Samuel Rodgers:" These are the words of Rodgers: "Rice Haggard first suggested to Barton W. Stone the propriety of wearing the name Christian, as that given by divine authority to the disciples at Antioch." No one can read the preface to his compilation of hymns without feeling Rice Haggard's deep convictions on the question of Christian union. Thus it is manifest that Dean Haggard is in the fourth generation of reformers. His father was a preacher, and the brother of his grandfather was a pioneer of much ability.