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JUNE

 7, 1593 --England. John Penry, a Welshman, is sentenced as a Non-Conformist, being guilty of having separated himself from the Church of England. Archbishop Whitgift is the first to sign his death warrant. “Take my poor desolate widow and my mess of fatherless and friendless orphans with you into exile;” he asks a company of believers in London who are likely to be banished and their goods confiscated; “you shall yet find days of peace and rest, if you continue faithful.” And today as the sun is going down, he suffers martyrdom on the gallows, thus ending his days, “before (he) is come to the one-half of (my) years in the likely course of nature.”

7, 1649 --England. Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, both Independents, preach before Oliver Cromwell and Parliament at Christ’s Church. This is a day of Thanksgiving.

7, 1780 --Connecticut. Presbyterians have supported the cause of independence, the American Revolution being the application of the principles of the Reformation to civil government. Captain Huck of the British Militia has burned the library of the Presbyterian minister at Williams Plantation in South Carolina, and has burned every Bible in which the Scottish translation of the Psalms is bound.
     Today, as the British retreat here, a British soldier puts his gun to the window of the house belonging to Rev. James Caldwell, the Presbyterian minister, and who is known to have inspired the people here with his patriotic zeal. Mrs. Caldwell is sitting with her children, one of which is nursing, when she is fatally shot through the breast. Time is scarcely allowed to remove her children and her corpse before the house is set ablaze. The Presbyterian meeting house along with the houses and barns of the village are burned.
     This winter, the Presbyterian Church at Newark, New Jersey will in similar manner be burned.
 

7, 1854 --New York. The first international convention of the Young Men’s Christian Association of the United States and British Provinces meet in Buffalo.

7, 1891 --England. This Sunday morning, Charles Spurgeon will preach his last sermon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

7, 1913 --Michigan. The Methodist Church in Pelagon, Michigan will have a new song introduced today, which has been composed in the parsonage of their pastor, Rev. George Bennard. “The Old Rugged Cross” will be so widely received this day will be dubbed, “Old Rugged Cross Day.”

8, 1647 --Massachusetts. At Cambridge, the Massachusetts General Court has called a synod in September 1646. At that time, Mr. John Cotton of Boston, Mr. Richard Mather of Dorchester, and Mrs. Ralph Partridge of Duxbury were requested to prepare a “model of church government.” Today the Cambridge Synod reconvenes, but a raging epidemic has taken many lives including Mr. Thomas Hooker.
     On September 15, 1648, it will begin its third session. The result will be known as the “Cambridge Platform—a platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the Word of God and agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New England To Be Presented to the Churches and General Court for Their Consideration and Acceptance in the Lord.”
      The last article reads, “If any church, one or more shall grow schismatical rending itself from the communion of other churches or shall walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the Word; in such case the magistrate (Joshua, 22) is to put forth his coercive power as the matter shall require.”
     In all, twenty-nine churches in Massachusetts send delegates, Concord excepted, and two from New Hampshire, as well as “good-will observers” from Plymouth, New Haven, Connecticut. These are Congregational churches.

8, 1797 --Scotland. Peter Mark Roget, with a French Protestant background, is studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He has been stricken with tuberculosis and his mother entreats him to “try Godbalk’s Vegetable Balsam.” In two days his mother will write that it has “God be thanked, caused so great a change in his complaints that yesterday he ate some rice pudding and a little beef.”
       He will be one of twelve to graduate from a class of four hundred students and be awarded with the M. D. Degree.
      His research will lead him to the invention of motion pictures, but in May 1852, his chief work will be published that will crown him with lasting fame: his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases.

8, 1820 --Burma. Adoniram Judson will be arrested in Burma for preaching the Word of God.

8, 1841 --Wales. John Elias dies. His funeral will be attended by ten thousand people at Llanfaes in Anglesey. This is his sixty-seventh year and he has written, “I am now even in my sixty-seventh year learning; and see greater need of knowledge daily.” He has often brought his Bible to the table at mealtime.


 

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