-275-

NOVEMBER
 

16, 1855 --New Jersey. Stephen Grellet dies at Burlington. As a young man of seventeen, he entered the bodyguard of Louis XVI. In the revolution that followed, he and his brothers were captured and sentenced to be shot. Fortunately he escaped to Demerara in 1793 and came to New York two years later. As he was the son of a wealthy French nobleman he contracted the friendship of Alexander I of Russia and induced him to introduce selections from the Bible into Russian schools. He was a Quaker and had the opportunity of preaching before Pope Pius VII at which time he urged Protestantism upon him.

16, 1899 --Missouri. While preaching evangelistic services here, Dwight Lyman Moody's health breaks. He reaches home where he will be fatally stricken and will soon die.

16, 1946 --United States. The Union of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, and the Evangelical Church forms the Evangelical United Brethren Church. In 1968, the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren will merge to form the United Methodist Church.

17, 1624 --Germany. Jacob Boehme dies exclaiming, "I go to Paradise!” Though clerics oppose their efforts, the town authorities will nevertheless give him a proper funeral. His friends will erect a cross over his grave only to have a mob tear it down. He will influence George Foxe and the Quakers, as well as the German Pietists. He leaves behind him his Way To Christ along with twenty-eight other books and tracts.

17, 1668 --England. Joseph Alleine dies. He has been twice imprisoned for continuing to preach in spite of the Act of Uniformity of 1662. He has lived with constant threat of arrest. In 1672, his book An Alarm to the Unconverted Sinner will be published under the title, A Sure Guide to Heaven.

17, 1734 --New York. John Peter Zenger is imprisoned on the charge of publishing false and seditious libels. The Grand Jury will find no bill against him. James Alexander will object to the commissions of the judges because they "ran during pleasure and because they had been granted without the consent of council." Though Mr. Alexander stands at the head of his profession in New York, the angry judge will bar him.
     In the trial, Mr. Zenger will confess he has printed material in the newspaper founded to defend the common people against the tyranny of Governor William Cosby. The elderly Andrew Hamilton will come from Philadelphia to defend him and will justify his publication on the basis of its truthfulness. The Chief Justice will interrupt, "You cannot be admitted to give the truth of a libel in evidence."
     "Then," Mr. Hamilton will declare to the jury, "we appeal to you for witnesses of the facts. The jury have a right to determine both the law and the fact, and they ought to do so." Then he will add, "The question before you is not the cause of a poor printer, nor of New York alone; it is the best cause, the cause of liberty. Every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honor you as men who by an impartial verdict lay a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors that to which nature and the honor of our country have given as a right, the liberty of opposing arbitrary power by speaking and writing truth."
     The jury will give their verdict, "Not Guilty!" and Mr. Hamilton will receive from the common council of New York the franchises of the city for "his learned and generous defence of the rights of mankind and the liberty of the press."

17, 1808 --Ohio. When David Zeisberger was five years of age, his Moravian parents fled with him to Herrnhut. When they immigrated to Georgia, he was sent to the Moravian settlement at Herrendyk, Holland. He ran away to England when the discipline became too severe. Here, General Oglethorpe assisted him in joining his parents in Georgia. With his Moravian brethren he left Georgia in 1740 and became one of the founders of Nazareth and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
     In 1745, he turned his attention to the American Indians, studying first the Delaware and then the Onondaga tongues and later acquiring Mohican, Monsey and Chippewa.
     At the outbreak of the French and Indian War, he was forced to return to Bethlehem, though a sachem and keeper of records to the Six Nations, and an adopted member of the Monsey tribe.
     In 1755, he turned his attention to the Connecticut Indians and during the war with Pontiac, he was in charge of the Moravian Indians. At the close of hostilities, he accompanied them to Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.
     It was due mainly to his influence that the Delawares did not join the British during the American Revolution. In revenge, the Wyandottes in 1781 broke up Mr. Zeisberger's mission. He along with his fellow missionaries was tried at Detroit as an American spy but was acquitted. In 1782, however, nearly a hundred Christian Indians were massacred by settlers at Gnadenhutten, one of the several missions he founded. Mr. Zeisberger led the remaining Indians to the Clinton River in Michigan, and from there to New Salem, Ohio and finally in 1791 to his new settlement at Fairfield, Ontario.
     Today he dies at Goshen, Ohio, the site of the last mission he has founded.

 

Previous   Next