Introduction

Biography

Worcester was the son of Tho­mas Wor­ces­ter, and hus­band of Eli­za­beth Cal­len­der Po­mer­oy.

He stu­died at the Law­rence Sci­en­ti­fic School of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, giv­ing at­ten­tion es­pe­cial­ly to an­a­to­my, phys­i­o­lo­gy, che­mis­try and re­lat­ed sub­jects.

He gave much time and thought to the stu­dy of Cor­res­pon­denc­es, or the re­la­tion of the world with­out to the world with­in, and the use of Scrip­tures of na­tur­al ob­jects as sym­bols of spi­rit­ual life. Lat­er his thought was giv­en to more con­ser­va­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible.

Worcester was a min­is­ter of the New Je­ru­sa­lem Church for 45 years. He al­so served as:

• Pastor of the New­ton So­cie­ty (1857–1900)
• General Pas­tor of the Mas­sa­chu­setts As­so­cia­tion
• Vice-pre­si­dent and pre­si­dent of the Ge­ne­ral Con­ven­tion of the New Church in Am­er­ica
• Principal of Wal­tham New Church School
• President of New Church Theo­lo­gic­al School (1881–94)
• Member of the New­ton School Board

Worcester held Sun­day ser­vices in the stu­dy near his sum­mer home at In­ter­vale, in the New Hamp­shire moun­tains. Here friends and stran­gers from a dist­ance as­sem­bled for wor­ship, and went away re­freshed and up­lift­ed with the Pro­mise of Peace.

Works

In ad­di­tion to re­vis­ing ma­ny trans­la­tions of Swe­den­borg’s works, Wor­ces­ter pro­duced:

• Physiological Cor­res­pon­denc­es (Bos­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts: New-Church Un­ion, 1889)
• Correspondences of the Bi­ble (Bos­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts: New-Church Un­ion, 1905)
• Genesis and Ex­o­dus
• Matthew’s Gos­pel