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Quote of the day

“But you will say, what is the need of all this discourse touching the danger of seamen we are met together for another purpose to give thanks unto God...”

Neill, Edward Duffield. Memoir of Rev. Patrick Copland. New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 1871.

Devotional

Prayer Revealed Christ (1893)

We all know how it is, all along, with the life in which we are living. Sometimes the sky which is above us, which is al...

Events

246

(probable date) Cyprian is baptized in Carthage on Easter eve. He will become a bishop and leading theologian, renowned for writing the treatise On the Unity of the Catholic Church.

Authority for the date: New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.

1506

Pope Julius II lays the foundation stone of the second building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Authority for the date: http://whatwasdone.com/Person.php?&Name=Pope_Julius_II

1521

Luther makes his bold declaration, “Here I stand!” at a second hearing before emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms.

Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.

1587

Death in London of John Foxe, author of The Actes and Monuments of the Church (first published in 1563), better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

Authority for the date: Britannica

1753

Sophronius is consecrated Bishop of Irkutsk and Nerchinsk. Years earlier, at being made a monk, he had received a vision saying, “When you become bishop, build a church dedicated to all saints”—which he did. He will be considered an Orthodox saint.

Authority for the date: http://orthodoxwiki.org

1784

Thomas Charles’s career as a Church of England clergyman ends when he is dismissed as curate of Llanymawddwy because of his support of Methodists. He will be influential in establishing Welsh schools and the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Authority for the date: Larsen, Timothy T., David W. Bebbington, and Mark Noll. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. IVP Academic, 2003

1894

Nine hundred Syrian Sunday-school children assemble in Beirut to witness the unveiling of a column dedicated to female education which Christian missionary Sarah Huntington Smith had inaugurated on that site fifty-nine years earlier. The children represent Muslims, Druzes, Jews, Maronites, Catholics, Greeks, Armenians, and Protestants. Among the speakers is Alice Bisney, a daughter of Smith’s first student.

Authority for the date: The Church at Home and Abroad. (October 1894) 301.

1905

Eleven Catholics are murdered for their faith in Yanjing, Tibet. Their killers read a message from the Dalai Lama threatening death to Christian converts who will not return to Buddhism.

Authority for the date: Paul Hattaway, China’s Christian Martyrs

1909

Mattiya Leonard Kamungu becomes the first Anglican priest of the Chewa people in the diocese of Nyasaland. He will be misunderstood by both Europeans and his own people as he tries to walk a line between European paternalism and African expectations. He dies in 1913, possibly poisoned, and will be considered a martyr.

Authority for the date: Dictionary of African Christian Biography.

1929

Death in Hankow, China, of Eduard L. Arndt, pioneer Lutheran missionary.

Authority for the date: http://www.lutheranhistory.org/collections/fa/m-0005.htm

1989

Chinese Communist forces attack Catholic Christians at Youtong, beating hundreds, some so severely they are left unconscious. They knock out the eyes of a nun, and take other Christians into captivity. Pei Guoxin and Dong Zhouxiao will be beaten to death in detention.

Authority for the date: Paul Hattaway, China’s Christian Martyrs. p. 461

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