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NOVEMBER
 

4, 1698 --France. Claude Brousson, the Huguenot leader of the "Church in the Desert", dressed in the ordinary garb of a pastor, walks slowly to the scaffold. He is engaged in prayer --his eyes and hands are lifted toward Heaven. He mounts the platform and stands forth to say a few last words to the twenty thousand people who have gathered to witness his martyrdom. But his voice is stifled by the roll of twenty drums that continue to beat until the execution is over.
     He is condemned to have his bones broken upon the wheel while he is alive, and then he is to be strangled; the sentence, however, is committed into strangulation first, and the breaking of his bones afterward.

4, 1716 --England. This Sunday, John Gill will be baptized and will receive the Lord's Supper. This evening, he will preach his first sermon to a group assembled in a private home for prayer. His text will be the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.

4, 1740 --England. Augustus Toplady is born at Farnham, in Surrey. He will bitterly oppose the Arminianism of John Wesley. An able proponent of Calvinism, he will pen the hymn "Rock of Ages."

4, 1771 --Scotland. At Irvine, James Montgomery is born. When he is eighteen years of age, he will be sentenced to three months imprisonment and a fine of twenty pounds for publishing a poem entitled, "The Bastille" which is framed in a woodcut representing Liberty and the British lion. He will make no profession of faith until he is forty-three years old and will then align himself with the Moravians. He will write such hymns, as "Angels, From the Realms of Glory," "The Lord is My Shepherd, No Want Shall I Know," "In the Hour of Trial", and "Prayer Is the Soul's Sincere Desire."

4, 1847 --Germany. At Leipzig, Felix Mendelssohn dies between 9:15 and 9:30 this evening. His parents were Jews who became Lutherans. In 1837, Mr. Mendelssohn married Cecile Jeanrenand, a minister's daughter.
    Mr. Mendelssohn has died as a result of mental strain brought on by the abrupt news of the death of his sister, Fanny, to whom he was very devoted. The anguish has brought on a stroke, which he suffered yesterday.
     He is noted for having composed the Oratorio "Elijah" said to be the greatest oratorio since Handel composed "The Messiah." Due to his mastery of the organ, he is called, "The Father of the Organ." His first public performance as a Pianist occurred when he was only nine years of age. At the age of ten, he began to compose music. He has written the soprano solo "Hear Ye Israel" for Jenny Lind the Swedish opera singer, who in the height of her career in opera left the stage to dedicate her talents to singing oratorios. When she is questioned as to her reasons for leaving the stage, she will reply, "When every day it made me think less of the Bible what else could I do?"
     His "Reformation Symphony" was written in celebration of the tercenterary of the Augsburg Confession and uses Luther's "A Mighty Fortress" in the last movement.
     He is thirty-eight years old and has often declared of his numerous oratorios, "The Bible is always the best of all."

5, 1414 --Germany. The Council of Constance opens and will conduct forty-five plenary sessions.

5, 1604 --England. In Northampton, Thomas Shepard is born. In 1635 he will arrive in Boston, Massachusetts and will take an active part in the synod at Cambridge that will end the antinomian controversy.
     As a young man, he will hear a sermon based on the text, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." He writes, "The Lord so bored my ears as that I understood what he spake; the secrets of my heart were laid open before me, and the hypocrisy of all the good things I thought I had in me, as if one had told him all that ever I did --of all turnings and deceits of my heart." The sermon was preached by John Preston.
     For eight months he will be in the Slough of Despond before he comes to trust Christ.
 

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