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DECEMBER

21, 1795 --Scotland. Robert Moffat is born at Ormiston, in East Lothian, Scotland. As a pioneer missionary to Africa, he will translate the Bible into the Tswana language. He will be the father-in-law of David Livingstone and will influence him to go northward where no missionary has ever been.

21, 1807 --England. John Newton dies at the age of eighty-two years. His epitaph which he has himself penned reads, "John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, Preserved, Restored, Pardoned, and Appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy, near sixteen years at Olney in Buchs, and twenty-eight years in this church." Together with William Cowper he has authored the hymnal known as Olney Hymns.
     Mr. Newton's life has touched Thomas Scott, a cultured, scholarly, moral man who "didn't need a Saviour." Mr. Scott will succeed Mr. Newton in his church.
     Mr. Thomas Scott has touched a young man who was dyspeptic, melancholy, "too bad" for God to save, but Mr. William Cowper was converted and has written the hymn,

There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

Mr. Cowper will touch a man named William Wilberforce who will be inspired to free the slaves in the British Empire nearly one hundred years before the United States will free theirs.
     Mr. Wilberforce will touch Mr. Leigh Richmond, a vicar in the Church of England in the Channel Isles.
     And Mr. Richmond will know the daughter of a dairyman in an adjoining parish who has been unusually moved by the Spirit of God. He will write down her story and call it, The Dairy Man's Daughter. It will go into more than forty languages.

21, 1879 --Russia. Joseph Stalin is born today. His given name is Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, but will call himself "Stalin," meaning "Man of Steel." His father is a cobbler and a drunkard, and will die from wounds received in a brawl. His mother will send him to the orthodox seminary to study for the priesthood, but while there, he will fall in with rebellious students who will call themselves the "Russian Social-Democratic Party."
     In 1928, a law on Religious Associations will be passed by the Communist Party in Russia and will declare that a religious body can conduct services only after registering with the government. Registrations, however, will be denied for any excuse, and can be revoked according to the whims of the government officials. No instruction or activities will be permitted for children or young people. Sunday school, prayer groups, libraries, free trips and playground equipment will be forbidden. Pastors will be permitted to preach only in certain designated buildings which will be leased from the government. The following year, in 1929, Stalin will become Premier of Russia and will vent his rebellion against God and man, but deliberately starving to death millions of people through deliberate manipulation of food supplies. Millions more will be murdered in bloody "purges." In many villages, the people will be ordered to appear in a mass meeting where they will be asked point blank, "Are you with the godless, or the believers?" The latter will be marched to railway stations to be deported to Siberia in cattle cars.

21, 1883 --Ohio. In Cleveland, Charles Terry Collins dies. As pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, he was deeply moved by the presence of twenty-five thousand Bohemians living in the adjacent parish. They represented ten percent of all the Bohemians in the United States. He has therefore become the founder of the first Slavic mission in the United States.

22, 1560 --Spain. In Seville, Julian Hernandez is sent to the stake with other Christians. The bodies of Egidio and Constantino, who have died in prison, are also committed to the flames, as is an effigy of Pineda.

22, 1775 --Massachusetts. The Continental Congress, after long debate, carries a resolution authorizing George Washington "to attack Boston in any manner which he might deem expedient, notwithstanding the town might thereby be destroyed." Mr. John Hancock forwards the resolution adding, "May God crown your attempt with success. I most heartily wish it, though individually I may be the greatest sufferer."
     In repelling the accusation of inactivity, Mr. Washington responds, "It is not perhaps in the pages of history to furnish a case like ours: to maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy for six months together without powder, and at the same time to disband one army and recruit another within that distance of twenty odd British regiments, is more, probably than ever was attempted."
     "For more than two months past," he declares, "I have scarcely emerged from one difficulty before I have been plunged into another; how it will end, God, in His great goodness, will direct; I am thankful for His protection to this time."
     In describing his army, he declares, "They were indeed at first a band of undisciplined husbandmen; but it is under God, to their bravery and attention to duty that I am indebted for that success which has procured me the only reward I wish to receive, the affection and esteem of my countrymen."
      Before the Battle of New York next year, he will confess privately, "Such is my situation, that if I were to wish the bitterest curse to any enemy on this side of the grave, I should put him in my stead with my feelings" so pitiful was his army.
       Robert Morris will write from Philadelphia on February 1, 1777, "He is the greatest man on earth;" and William Hooper, representative from North Carolina, echoed from Baltimore, "Will posterity believe the tale? When it shall be consistent with policy to give the history of that man from his first introduction into our service, how often America has been rescued from ruin by the mere strength of his genius, conduct and courage, encountering every obstacle that want of money, men, arms, ammunition could throw in his way, an impartial world will say with you that he is the greatest man on earth. Misfortunes and the element in which he shines; they are the groundwork on which his picture appears to the greatest advantage. He rises superior to them all; they serve as facts to his fortitude and as stimulants to bring into view those great qualities which his modesty keeps concealed. I could fill the side in his praise; but anything I can say cannot equal his merits."
      The secret of his greatness is seen in his own words, "A character to lose, an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessings of liberty at stake, and a life devoted, must be my excuse."
 

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