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MAY

 14, 1752 --Massachusetts. In “Northampton, in the county of Hampshire, state of Massachusetts”, Timothy Dwight is born. His father, Timothy Dwight, is a major in the army, and his mother is the third daughter of Jonathan Edwards.
     Young Dwight will serve as Chaplain in the Revolutionary Army and after the war will become President of Yale College. His Theology: Explained and Defended is a four-year cycle of doctrinal sermons he preached Sunday mornings.
     In 1802, nearly one-third of the Yale student body will be converted. Benjamin Sillman, a tutor, will write, “Yale is a little temple: prayer and praise seem to be the delight of the greater part of the students.” As a result, Yale will enter into her statutes that “any student holding a heresy after the second and third admonition will be expelled.” This is part of what is known as the Second Great Awakening.
     Among his students are Lyman Beecher, the father of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Taylor, the theologian of New England Awakenings.
     As a theologian, he has argued sinners perish because they have freely chosen evil. He will leave behind him his Conquest of Canaan, Triumph of Infidelity, and the hymn, “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.”

14, 1754 --Massachusetts. In Grafton, in the county of Worcester, John Leland is born. He will begin preaching here in 1774. The farmers will make a cheese weighing thirteen hundred pounds and will send it by the hand of Mr. Leland, as a present to President Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Leland will make use of the occasion, and of the unusual cheese to proclaim the Gospel, and will preach seventy-four times in four months.

14, 1948 --Israel. The Jewish Provisional Government proclaims Israel to be a State. Open war with the surrounding Arab states will result and will last the next several months.

15, 1548 --Germany. In order to re-establish religious unity in Germany, Emperor Charles V assembles the Imperial states and demands their submission to the Augsburg Interim or to return to the “old faith.” The Interim, though taking Protestant views into account, it does not hide the Roman faith and worship. Only Protestants are compelled to accept the Interim.
     On June 30th, it will become Imperial law.

15, 1570 --England. Because Queen Elizabeth continues to grant asylum to French and Spanish Protestants fleeing their respective country, on account of persecution, the Pope’s Bull of Excommunication is today found nailed to the door of the Bishop of London. It forbids her subjects to recognize her as sovereign, and as it declares her to be cut off as the “minister of iniquity,” these governments consider themselves at liberty to assassinate her.

15, 1622 --Holland. In Amsterdam, Petrus Plancius dies. As a devout Calvinist he has accused Arminius of heresy, and is credited with having turned twenty-five thousand people to embrace Protestantism.
     In 1578, while preaching at Meenen, he was suddenly attacked and escaped with his life only by swimming across the Leye River. At Ypres, his library was burned.
     When Parma captured Brussels in March 1585, he left the city with the retreating Dutch soldiers himself being dressed in a soldier’s uniform.
     He was one of the greatest geographers of the seventeenth century, and was one of the leaders in founding the first great commercial establishment in the Dutch Republic, and which merged to form the Dutch East India Company in 1602.

15, 1819 --Massachusetts. Stephen West dies. He served as military chaplain at Hoosac Fort in  1757, and in the following year was invited by the commissioners for Indian Affairs in Boston, to succeed Jonathan Edwards in the mission at Stockbridge. From 1759 to 1775, he preached to the Indians in the morning and to the white settlers in the afternoon. Since then, he has confined his labors to the settlers.

15, 1889 --Ohio. At Cleveland, five principal youth organizations within the Methodist Church meet today and merge into the “Epworth League.”

15, 1931 --Italy. Pope Pius XI issues an Encyclical entitled, “Quadragesimo anno” in which he asserts the right of ownership of property, the right to a fair wage, and condemns Socialism and Communism.
 

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