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JUNE

 9, 68 --Italy. Emperor Nero dies. As a young man, he is credited with poisoning his mother and his teacher. When as Emperor he determines to renovate the slums of Rome, he set fire to that part of the city, and as he was a fiddler who would travel up and down the coast challenging other fiddlers at their trade, he is said to have “fiddled while Rome burned.” When he is challenged with having set fire to the city, the Emperor accused Christians with having set the blaze. As a result, revolt broke out and Nero saw an opportunity to instigate the first great persecution against the Church. He would tie Christians to stakes in his garden and set them on fire at night in order to “light up’” the evening. The Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul fell victims to this great persecution.
      When the city rose in revolt against him, the Emperor ordered his freedman to murder him in order to prevent his capture. Dying he exclaims, “The world is losing a great artist.’

9, 597 --Scotland. On the island of Iona, Columba dies. Yesterday while at work upon the Psalter, he reached the end of a page with the words, “They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.”—Psalm 34:10. ‘Here,” he said, “I must stop;” and said he would leave the rest for his cousin, who was his successor, to finish.
     This Sunday morning, when the monks enter the church, they find him lying on the floor before the altar. With a feeble effort he tries to raise his hand in blessing, and passes away.
     He was born in Donegal, Ireland and has labored in the New Hebrides and on the Scottish mainland, though he was centered his missionary activity here at Iona. He came from the Celtic Church of Britain, and under his direction at Iona, the Word of God was copied, as were other books. He has had such an impact, that for many generations, all kings of Scotland will be brought to Iona for burial beside this great preacher.

9, 1549 --England. By act of Parliament, the Book of Common Prayer is brought into exclusive use in the Church of England. It is known as the First Prayer book of Edward VI, and is a complete service book for public worship. It is the first of its kind to be produced by any church and to be set forth under one cover. The Litany contains a portion for deliverance from the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and omits the invocations formerly addressed to Mary and to other saints. Thomas Cranmer has guided in the decision of arrangement of the services. It makes use of Medieval Latin rituals, the Lutheran forms, though he has labored to remove the distinctive traces of Lutheranism, and lastly, it makes use of Greek Orthodox liturgies.
     The Continental reformers will pronounce it unsatisfactory, and therefore it will be rewritten in 1552 as the Second Prayer book of Edward VI. It will omit the name of Mary in the thanksgiving for the saints and the sign of the cross in consecration, confirmation, and matrimony. Luther’s service of 1533 influences the First Prayer Book; Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer influence the Second Prayer book. It will nevertheless be outlawed for fifteen years under the Puritan Commonwealth, but will be re-instated for use after the Restoration.
     In 1662, it will again appear. This time it will have nearly six hundred additional changes.

9, 1558 --Belgium. A sermon preached by Adriaan Van Haemstede in Antwerp will produce violent persecution of the local Calvinists and will result in a price of three hundred Caroline guilders being put upon his head.

9, 1717 --France. Madame Guyon dies at the age of sixty-nine. A mystic, she has influenced her own generation but will influence generations to come.

9, 1732 --Georgia. King George II erects the country between the Savannah and the Altamaha and from the head-springs of those rivers due west to the pacific, into the province of “Georgia,” and placed it for twenty-one years under the guardianship of a corporation “in trust for the poor.” On one side of the seal, two figures are represented as reposing on urns emblematic of the boundary rivers and have between them the words “Georgia Augusta.”
     No rum will be allowed in the colony—only beer and wine. No ownership of slaves will be allowed, nor is there outright ownership of land. Though the colony is open to Jews, it will nevertheless be closed to “papists”and “lawyers,” the latter being considered “the pest and scourge of mankind.”
     Parliament will show its good-will by contributing ten thousand pounds to the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
     General James Oglethorpe, known in England as a prison reformer, is the “father of the Commonwealth of Georgia,” “the place of refuge for the distressed people of Britain and the persecuted Protestants of Europe.”
     On February 16, 1734, the praise of the colony of Georgia will be echoed in London: “Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed. Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions.”
     “Slavery,” declares General Oglethorpe, “is against the Gospel as well as the fundamental law of England. We refused as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime.”
     One will write, “The name of slavery is here unheard, and every inhabitant is free from unchosen masters and oppression.” And, another affirms, “The purchase of negroes is forbidden for slaves starve the poor laborer.”

9, 1790 --England. At the age of fifty-five years, Robert Robinson dies, “soft, suddenly and alone.” He has penned the famous hymn,

  “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy Praise . . ..”

     He has been awakened in his heart through the preaching of George Whitefield in a sermon on the text: “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”—Matthew 3:7. Two years later he was converted through the preaching of John Wesley.

9, 1826 –Connecticut. At New Haven, Jedidiah Morse dies. He is the editor of the Panoplist with which he has united Congregationalists against the in-roads of Unitarianism. He is one of the founders of Andover Theological Seminary, the New England Tract Society, and the American Bible Society. His eldest son, Samuel will invent the telegraph.

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