-195-

AUGUST

    
11, 1778 --England. Augustus Toplady who has penned the notable hymn, "Rock of Ages," dies in London. He is thirty-eight years of age. Just before he dies, he is seen to burst into tears and cry, "All is light, light, light ...Oh, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!"
     One day as Mr. Toplady was walking some distance from his home, a storm suddenly broke forth with fury. There was no shelter close by, but the Vicar found a large cleft running down a ledge beside the road. Here he took refuge. While contemplating upon the significance of the refuge provided for the saints in their Rock, the Lord Jesus Christ, he spotted a playing card lying on the ground. On the back of the six of diamonds, he penned,

 Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure.
 

11, 1848 --England. Sarah Flower will die of tuberculosis today. She has written the hymn, “Nearer, My God, To Thee." As it will become President McKinley's favorite, it will be sung at his request at his funeral in 1901. It will also be sung by the passengers aboard the Titanic as it sank beneath the waves in 1912.

11, 1890 --England. In Birmingham, John Newman dies in his eighty-ninth year. He leaves behind him the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," which he wrote in 1833 when traveling in a vessel loaded with oranges sailing from Salerno to Marseilles. The boat was becalmed for an entire week.
     In 1824, he preached his final sermon from Psalm 124:23 --"Man goeth to his work and to his labor until the evening." He has left Anglicanism for Romanism.

12, 1812 --New Jersey. Princeton Seminary opens with one professor and three students.
Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander was elected professor of didactic and polemic theology on June 2nd. Among those most influential in the beginnings of the seminary are Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, and Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College.
     Dr. Charles Hodge will be elected professor in 1822. In 1835, James Allison Alexander will join the staff as will William Henry Green in 1851. Caspar Wistar Hodge will come in 1860.

12, 1950 --Italy. Pope Pius XII issues an encyclical called "Humani Generis". In it he denounces "historicism" which tends to re-interpret Christian doctrines on the basis of an evolutionistic philosophy and "existentialism."

13, 662 --Turkey. At Shemari, Maximus dies on the shore of the Black Sea. In 648, Emperor Constans passed heavy penalties forbidding any discussion of the question of one or two wills. The Typus, as it is called, is aimed in favor of the Monothelite heresy which seeks its place between the orthodoxy of the Council of Chalcedon and the Monophysites who teach Christ had but one nature. The Monothelites question whether the two natures of Christ had each a will; or whether his human will was passive to the Divine will. Maximus has declared the document irreconcilable with the creeds of the Church. He has been arrested, as a result, but has remained firm refusing to hold communion with the Church of Constantinople declaring they have departed from the "four holy synods." Having rejected a compromise, he declared peace could be attained only by withdrawing the Typus. He has been delivered to the Prefect along with his disciples. These have been scourged, their tongues cut out, and their hands chopped off. Thus mutilated, they were sent to Lazica on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. They arrived five days ago. Maximus, separated from the others has also been sent here, and has remained constant. Within a few years, Emperor Constans II will himself fall a victim to the hatred he has inspired by such cruel proceedings.

13, 1522 --Germany. The Fraternal League is organized at Landau for the protection of the German nobility. It will begin the first war of religion to be declared in Germany. On August 27th it will issue a declaration of war against Richard Von Greiffenblau Zer Vollraths, Archbishop of Treves, and one of the most powerful enemies of the Gospel.

13, 1587 --Virginia. Sir Walter Raleigh has sent three small ships from Plymouth to Roanoke Island, with one hundred fifty settlers. Today, America's first Protestant service will be conducted.

13, 1667 --England. Jeremy Taylor dies at Lisburn. He leaves behind him his Holy Living and Holy Dying, which works will bless the saints for succeeding generations. Less known is his Life of Christ. Samuel Taylor Coleridge will call him "The most eloquent of Divines" and will inspire Charles Lamb to read him. But as Thomas Watson observes, "The best of men are only men at best," and Mr. Taylor is no exception: "Anabaptism" he has declared, "is as much to be rooted out as anything that is the greatest pest and nuisance to the public interest."

13, 1821 --Massachusetts. At New Bedford, Henry Martyn Dexter is born. A descendant of both the Pilgrims and the Puritans, he will become a Congregationalist. In 1854, he will draw up the "Nebraska Protest to Congress." It is an anti-slavery bill opposing the Missouri Compromise.

13, 1878 --Vermont. Elizabeth Payson Prentiss dies. She leaves behind her hymn, “More Love To Thee, O Christ."

 

Previous   Next