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31, 1638—Connecticut. Thomas Hooker preaches a sermon based upon Deuteronomy 1:13 – “Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.” He declares, I.) “That the choice of public magistrates belongs to the people by God’s own allowance. II.) “The privilege of election which belongs unto the people, therefore, must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will and law of God. III.) “They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is their power, also, to set the bounds of the power unto which they call them.”
     On January 14, 1639, in Hartford, the first written constitution in America called the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” will embody these principles for the first time in human history.

31, 1699 – Scotland. Alexander Cruden is born in Aberdeen. His father William is a well-to-do merchant. The family is Calvinistic in theology. Alexander is the second of eleven children and will publish in 1737, the Concordance, which bears his name.

31, 1792 – England. This is the birthday of modern missions, for on this day William Carey will preach his famous sermon from Isaiah 42:2,3. It will be on this sermon that he will shout, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

31, 1813 – Virginia. In a letter to Richard Rush, Thomas Jefferson writes, “I have considered it (religion) as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less, the public had a right to intermeddle.” He has expressed his great approbation for the Sermon on the Mount, but has scorned the blood of Christ. When his records are examined following his death, it will be revealed he was a blasphemer, though he, like Voltaire, championed religious liberty.

31, 1843 – New York. At Utica, since the Methodist church has denounced “modern abolitionism,” and since there are slaveholders who are members of the Methodist Church, Orange Scott and other prominent abolitionists organize the Wesleyan Methodist connection of America. All slaveholders are excluded from this denomination. About six thousand join. Members are forbidden to join any secret society.

31, 1847 – Scotland. Thomas Chalmers dies. He was early sickened by a prevailing modernism that placed culture above piety and state support above independence. With four hundred and seventy preachers, he led a secession to found the “Free Church of Scotland.”
     He is the author of thirty-four volumes. While a professor in Edinburgh, he had as one of his students, Robert Murray McCheyne, and another, Alexander Whyte. His biographer, Rev. William Hanna states, “He received literary honors such as were never united previously in the person of any Scottish ecclesiastic.”

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