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NOVEMBER
 

3, 1414 --Germany. John Huss enters the city of Constance. Here the Archbishop of Constance will imprison him in his castle for seventy-three days separating him from his friends. He will be chained day and night, poorly fed and tortured by disease, yet he will not be tried for the first time until June 5, 1415.

3, 1640 --England. King Charles has forcibly convened the Long Parliament on account of his financial straits. Though its leaders are Anglican, they are strongly Puritan in spirit. Petitions have poured in calling upon them to institute ecclesiastical changes including the "Root and Branch Petition" signed with fifteen thousand signatures. This petition asks that episcopacy be done away "with all its dependencies, roots and branches."

3, 1675 --Massachusetts. A law is passed stating that any person found at a Quaker assembly should be fined or be committed to jail.

3, 1783 --England. Robert Raikes in the Gloucester Journal, the newspaper he has inherited from his father, informs his readers about the foundation of the Sunday school. Today is his first mention of it. "Some of the clergy in different parts of this country, bent upon attempting a reform among the children of the lower class, are establishing Sunday Schools for rendering the Lord's Day subservient to the ends of instruction, which has hitherto been prostituted to bad purposes."

3, 1784 --New York. Thomas Coke and his friends arrive here today.

3, 1803 --Germany. Karl Gottlieb Pfander is born. He will become a missionary to the Mohammedans. His father is a baker. When in 1835 the Russian government forbids all missionary work except those works that are associated with the Greek church, Mr. Pfander will have to leave Shusha, and will go first to Constantinople, and after returning to Shusha, he will go to India.

3, 1816 --Connecticut. Timothy Dwight, being ill, preaches his last sermon. His text is Matthew 5:16 --"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven."

3, 1879 --Massachusetts. In Northfield, the Northfield Seminary for Young Women is opened for classes. They are at first held in the dining room of the home of Dwight Lyman Moody.

4, 1631 --Massachusetts. Seeking relief from the oppression of Archbishop Laud, John Eliot arrives in Boston Harbor.

4, 1676 --Massachusetts. "Whatever is done against the order that God has constituted is done against God." --Boston Sermons

     George Bancroft observed, "New England", it was affirmed, "was a religious plantation, not a plantation for trade." "We all came into these parts of America" reads one of the two oldest American constitutions, "to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity and peace." Consequently, they were most careful to promote habits in the young that would promote chastity. Men and women lived in social intimacy and were genuinely pure. "Of divorce," writes one noted historian, “I have found no example . . .. Divorce from bed and board, the separate maintenance without the dissolution of the marriage contract, --an anomaly in Protestant legislation that punishes the innocent more than the guilty, --was abhorrent from their principles. The sanctity of the marriage-bed was protected by the penalty of death; a penalty that was inexorably enforced against the adulteress as well as her lover." The youthful woman whom affection and promise of marriage betrayed into a compromising position was censured, pitied, and forgiven, but the law compelled her seducer to marry her whom his selfishness had humbled.
     They opposed wigs, and denounced the femininity of long hair. They disliked the symbol of the cross as a carry over of Romanism, and would not allow the celebration of Christmas being Roman in its origin as "Christ's Mass."
     They prohibited frivolous fashions in dress, and frowned upon silk hoods and tiffany scarves. They extended the sleeve to the wrist and limited its width to half an ell, or twenty-two inches.
     The courts of Massachusetts respected in practice the Law of Moses.
     Beggary was unknown and theft was rare. "Musicians by trade and dancing schools" found no place here. One might dwell here "from year to year, and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar." Cruelty towards animals was treated as a civil offence.
     "The Puritans," said Burleigh, "are over-squeamish and nice, yet their careful catechising and diligent preaching lessen and diminish the Papistical numbers." And George Bancroft states, "that the English people became Protestant is due to the Puritans."
 

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