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JUNE

19, 1566 -- Scotland. At the Castle of Edinburgh, a son is born to Lord Henry Stuart, Earl of Darnley and Mary Stuart. He will become James VI of Scotland and James I of England. He and his son, Charles I will favor Roman Catholicism thereby alienating most of their subjects and thus paving the way for the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
     In December, he will be baptized with Roman Catholic rites. His sponsors will be Elizabeth, Protestant Queen of England, Charles IX, the Catholic King of France, and the Catholic Duke of Savoy.
     On July 29, 1567, he will be crowned James VI by the Presbyterians rather than the Papists, however, and on the same day, John Knox will preach so powerfully that Mary Stuart will as a result flee to England and will seek shelter from her cousin Elizabeth, her enemy.
     In 1563, James will join the Presbyterian church, but feeling Presbyterian pastors are too much inclined to favor democratic principles, he will declare, “The King is King in himself, and not by assent of his subjects.” It should be no wonder therefore that Andrew Melville called him an “Anglopistopapistical.”
     In 1589, he will marry Anne, daughter of the King of Denmark. Though a Lutheran, she will become a Roman Catholic.

19, 1623 --France. Blaise Paschal is born. As a young man he will be moved spiritually by letters from his sister Jacqueline. When his health is impaired by overmuch work, and almost finds himself paralyzed, walking only with the aid of crutches, he will go to Paris with his sister who will have a profound effect upon him.
       When his father dies, Mr. Paschal will plunge himself into worldly vanities in an attempt to drown his sorrow, but finding things of this world to be unsatisfying, he will feel an intense longing for salvation. On November 23, 1653, he will be made vividly conscious of the presence of God and will consider this the date of his conversion. He will become a Jansenist, which is a sect within the Roman Catholic Church that believes in the doctrines of Grace.

19, 1782 --England. Adam Clarke preaches his first sermon from I John 5:19 --“We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.”


19, 1785 --Massachusetts. Rev. William Hazlitt, an anti-Trinitarian, known as a “Socinian”, has arrived at Boston. He has been unfavorably received at Philadelphia. Here, he has joined himself to Rev. James Freeman, the “Reader” in King’s Chapel, the oldest Anglican Church in New England. The Rev. Mr. Freeman will soon show his distaste for the Trinitarian passages in the Book of Common Prayer. Today, King’s Chapel adopts a liturgy it has revised.

19, 1787 --Scotland. John Brown of Haddington dies. As a young man he was a herd-boy, a peddler, a soldiers and a schoolteacher. He has studied theology under Ebenezer Erskine and James Fisher of Glasgow. He leaves behind him his Self-Interpreting Bible.

19, 1834 --England. Charles Haddon Spurgeon is born in Kelvedon, Essex County. Both his father and grandfather were Independent ministers.

19, 1842 --England. Exactly six months from the day of her husband’s burial, Mrs. Robert
Haldane is laid in the same vault as her husband. They have been married fifty-seven years.

19, 1855 --England. Charles Spurgeon receives his first contribution for erecting the great Metropolitan Tabernacle.

19, 1878 --New Jersey. Charles Hodge dies. As a young man he studied abroad under Neander, Hengstenberg, and Tholuck. A Presbyterian he has taught some three thousand ministers at Princeton Seminary over the past fifty years, serving with Dr. Archibald Alexander during part of that time. Of his eight children, two sons, A. A. Hedge, and Caspar Wistar Hodge, along with a grandson, Caspar Wistar Hodge, Jr. will become professors at Princeton Seminary.
      According to his biographer, Mr. Francis Patton, “He lived in the midst of his children and grandchildren. And when the last moment came, they gathered around him. “Dearest,” he said to one of his daughters, “Don’t weep. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. To be with the Lord is to see Him. To see the Lord is to be like Him.”
     He leaves behind him a Commentary on Romans first issued in 1835. Later his Expositions on I and II Corinthians and Ephesians was published. At age sixty-nine, he published his Systematic Theology.
     His mother was of Huguenot extraction.

 

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