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JULY

30, 1809 --Canada. At Kamouraska, Quebec, Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy is born. He will establish the first temperance society here and will be called “The Apostle of Temperance of Canada.” In 1858, he along with the congregation he will be pastoring in St. Anne, Kankakee County, Illinois, will leave the Church of Rome and align themselves with the Canadian Presbyterian Church.

30, 1864 --Georgia. This morning, General Johnston and General Hardee witness a shell as it strikes Bishop General Leonidas Polk. He dies instantly as the shell crashes through his chest. Eyewitnesses declare not one drop of blood could be seen. The sight is Pine Mount near New Hope Church, west of Marietta.
      Mr. Polk is the only bishop to be made a General in the Civil War. An Episcopalian,  he is taken to Augusta and is buried in St. Paul’s churchyard. He will later be buried in New Orleans at the Episcopal cathedral there.
 

30, 1956 --Washington, D. C. By joint resolution, the eighty-fourth Congress declares, “In God We Trust” to be the national motto.

31, 1547 --Scotland. With twenty-one French galleys under the command of Leo Strozzi, the garrison of St. Andrews is forced into surrender. John Knox will be consigned to the galleys as a slave. For nineteen months, Mr. Knox will endure great hardship, but will remain undaunted.
      When compulsion is applied to the reformer to make him show reverence to a figure representing the Virgin Mary, he will feign compliance as though he would kiss the idol, but snatching it up he will cast it into the sea exclaiming, “Let her swim!”

31, 1604 --England. In Essex County, John Eliot is born. As a young man he will serve as usher in the Grammar school of Rev. Thomas Hooker at Little Baddow, Essex. To escape the oppression of Archbishop Laud, he will sail for America and will become a missionary to the Algonquin Indians. Of his “Moheecan Bible” Cotton Mather will write, “Behold, ye Americans, the greatest honor that ever ye were partakers of, --the Bible printed here at our Cambridge; and it is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America from the very foundation of the world.” No people living today understand their language.

31, 1679 --France. King Louis XIV forbids Huguenots the right to hold any service while the archbishop or bishop is visiting the place.

31, 1889 --Scotland. At Edinburgh, Horatio Bonar dies. He has distinguished himself as a hymn writer having written “I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say.” A Premillenialist, he has pastored the Free Church in Kelso.
     On the day of his funeral in Canongate Churchyard, a young man spoke to his brother, Andrew, “It was about eight years ago I was led to Christ as I read your brother’s hymn, “I hear the words of love; I gaze upon the blood; I see the mighty Sacrifice, and I have peace with God.’”

 

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“Verily there is one spring and cause of the decay of religion in our day which we cannot but touch upon, and earnestly urge a redress of: and that is, the neglect of the worship of God in families, by those to whom the charge and conduct of them is committed. May not the gross ignorance and instability of many, with the profaneness of others, be justly charged upon their parents and masters, who have not trained them up in the way wherein they ought to walk when they were young; but have neglected those frequent and solemn commands which the Lord hath laid upon them so to catechize and instruct them, that their tender years might be seasoned with the knowledge of the truth of God, as revealed in the Scriptures; and also by their own omission of prayer and other duties of religion in their families, together with the ill example of their loose conversation, have inured them first to a neglect and then contempt of all piety and religion. We know this will not excuse the blindness or wickedness of any, but certainly it will fall heavy upon those that have been thus the occasion thereof; they indeed die in their sins, but will not their blood be required of those under whose care they were, who yet permitted them to go on without warning, yea led them into the paths of destruction? and will not the diligence of Christians, with respect to the discharge of those duties, in ages past, rise up in judgment against and condemn many of those who would be esteemed such now?”
-extracted from The Philadelphia Confession of Faith-

 

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