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AUGUST

    
19, 1646 --Scotland. At Edinburg, Alexander Henderson dies. He is without a doubt the greatest ecclesiastic in Scotland since John Knox. He has drafted the Solemn League and Covenant, and has helped draft the "National Covenant" of February 1638.
     As a young minister he was no less unpopular, for on the day of his ordination, the people fastened the church doors and he had to go through a window . . .. A year or two later, he went to hear Robert Bruce preach. He sat in a dark corner of the church in order to be hid, but even there the sharp arrows of his words pierced his heart as the preacher read, "Verily, verily I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." He will attribute this as the time of his conversion.

19, 1662 --France. Blaise Paschal dies at Paris. His attainments in mathematics are evidenced by his Essai Pour les Coniques written before he was seventeen years old, and he built a calculating machine in 1642.
     A Jansenist, his Provincial Letters were condemned at Rome, while here in Paris they have been burned by the public hangman. His convictions of the truth of the doctrines of grace have lead him to strengthen his friends of Port-Royal, a stronghold of Huguenots in their resistance to the signature of the formula of submission proposed by the assembly of the clergy.
     He has stood boldly a champion of freedom of conscience, of truth, and justice against the all-powerful Jesuits disregarding the fear of the Bastille or galleys, even though his body suffered utmost physical agonies.
     He has maintained the habit of acting as though what one believes will reduce the frowardness of his heart, but that actual faith is a gift of the grace of God, not through reason, but that God directly inspires faith in the heart, whenever it suits His pleasure.

19, 1677 --Massachusetts. "If you are heedless of your works, if you live at random according to your hearts desire, you may be sure you are no believer." --Boston Sermons

19, 1692 --Massachusetts. Five people condemned of witchcraft are loaded on a cart and hauled through Salem. One of them, Rev. George Burroughs, recent pastor at Wells, Maine, delivers such a moving prayer from the ladder that some spectators murmur against his execution. The order, however, is restored.

19, 1810 --United States. Francis Asbury, the Methodist evangelist writes in his Diary,
"Oh, what a prize: Baxter's Reformed Pastor fell into my hands this morning."

19, 1843 --Michigan. Cyrus Ingerson Scofield is born. He will be reared in Tennessee, but with the outbreak of the Great War, he will serve in the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. President Ulysses S. Grant will appoint him United States Attorney for Kansas. In 1879, he will be converted and in 1882 will be ordained to the Congregational ministry. He will leave behind the popular reference Bible that bears his name.

19, 1855 --France. The world's first conference of Young Men's Christian Associations convenes in Paris, and produces the test of membership since known as the "Paris Basis." It reads, "The Young Men's Christian Associations seek to unite those young men, who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour, according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be His disciples in their doctrine and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of His kingdom among young men."


 

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