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FEBRUARY
 

13, 1728 --Massachusetts. Cotton Mather dies. Some time ago, "I took my little daughter Katie into my study; and there I told my child, that I am shortly to die, and she must, when I am dead, remember everything that I said unto her.
            "I set before her the sinful and woeful condition of her nature and I charged her to pray in secret places, every day without ceasing that God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a new heart, and pardon her sins, and make her a servant of His.
              "I gave her to understand that when I am taken from her, she must look to meet with more humbling afflictions than she does, now she has a careful and a tender father to provide for her; but if she would pray constantly, God in the Lord Jesus Christ would be a Father to her and make all afflictions work together for her good.

            "I signified unto her, that the people of God would much observe how she carried her-self and that I had written a book about ungodly children in the conclusion whereof I say, that this book will be a terrible witness against my own children, if any of them should not be Godly.

           "At length, with many tears, both on my part and hers, I told my child that God had from Heaven assured me, and the good angels of God had satisfied me that she shall be brought Home unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and be one of His forever. I bid her use this, as an encouragement unto her supplications unto the Lord, for His Grace. But I therewithal told her that if she did not now in her childhood seek the Lord, and give herself up unto Him, some dreadful afflictions must befall her, that so her Father's faith may come at its accomplishment.
             "I thereupon made the child kneel down by me; and I poured out my cries unto the Lord, that He would lay His hands upon her, and bless her and save her, and make her a temple of His glory. It will be so; it will be so!
           "I write this, the more particularly, that the child may hereafter have the benefit of reading it."
            Of his four sons, only Samuel will grow to manhood. He will graduate from Harvard at sixteen years of age.

13, 1826 --(United States). The American Temperance Society is founded. It is the first national organization to advocate the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

14, 269 --Italy. A young pagan priest in Rome has been assisting the persecuted Christians. After having witnessed the horrifying treatment they have received under the Emperor Claudius II, he has decided to aid the church.
           Now, he himself has been seized and thrown into prison. He would likely to have been released after a short term, but while he has been imprisoned, Valentine has been converted. Tradition tells us he has prayed for the restoration of eyesight for the jailer's daughter --which prayer was heard; but even this has failed to deliver him. He will be clubbed to death today.

14, 1497 --Germany. Philip Schwartzerd is born to a master armor-maker, at Bretten in Baden. As a young man, he will change his name to the Latin form and will become known as "Melancthon." Both names mean "Black Earth."
       He will become the close friend of Martin Luther, and the scholar of the Reformation. He will be the architect of the "Augsburg Confession", and will write numerous works on doctrine, moral philosophy and even commentaries on parts of the Bible.
        He is the grandnephew of the celebrated Humanist, Reuchlin.

14, 1529 --Switzerland. The first evangelical church service is conducted in the cathedral at Basel, thereby firmly establishing the Reformation here.

14, 1689 --England. Katherine Hardward, wife of Matthew Henry, dies of small pox, while in childbirth. The child will live. They have been married but a year and a half.

14, 1750 --Scotland. Ebenezer Erskine having led in the founding of the "Associate Synod" after seceding from the Church of Scotland, finds himself and eight others excommunicated by the same Synod when it splits into two factions. Mr. Erskine ignores the same.

           An interesting story is told of his birth that his mother had fallen into a coma, and being presumed dead, she was buried. At this time she was carrying Ebenezer. Two "baser sort of fellows" had spied a ring on her hand and went to the graveyard that night to dig up her body and remove it. While they were in the process of cutting off her finger, she rose up --and the would-be robbers fled --while she went home.

14, 1892 --Germany. It is Sunday morning, and two men who have been commissioned by William I to restore the castle church at Wittemberg discover the body of Martin Luther. It had been solemnly laid to rest in the castle church.

15, 1727 --Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards is ordained to the Gospel ministry. He is twenty-four years of age. "From my childhood," he will write, "my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty in choosing whom He would to eternal life; and rejecting whom He pleased, leaving them eternally to perish and be everlastingly tormented in Hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God, and His pleasure . . ..”
               John Newton will one day be asked who was the greatest preacher he ever heard. He will answer, "(George) Whitefield." And when he is asked who was the greatest Divine, he will answer, "(Jonathan) Edwards."
                Mr. Edwards will teach Samuel Hopkins and Joseph Bellamy.

15, 1742 --Scotland. In Cambuslang, Scotland, the town of nine hundred people having been faithfully led by their godly pastor, McCulloch, the people pray for revival, and the "Cambuslang Revival" commences.

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