1557 HT: Christian History Institute When Cicely Ormes of St. Lawrence, Norwich, England, was twenty-one years old, she recanted her Protestant beliefs under pressure from a Catholic magistrate. Miserable at her apostasy, she then wrote a letter repudiating her recantation. Arrested a year later, the magistrate said she might go free if she would promise…
1871 HT: Dan Graves The Swiss evangelist and hymn writer Cesar Malan always liked to speak a word for Jesus. One day, while visiting England, he spoke to a young women at his table, saying that he hoped she was a Christian. Charlotte Elliott bristled. She would rather not discuss that question, she said. Malan…
1816 HT: Christian History Institute David Nasmith is famous as the founder of the first Protestant city missions. Here is the first extant letter in which he indicated his desire to be of use for God’s kingdom. It was written on this day 21 September 1816 when he was seventeen years old. “May He who has the hearts…
1565 HT: Dan Graves The Huguenots were converted out of Catholic France when preachers brought Bibles and the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and justification by faith from Switzerland. Growth of this Reform church was rapid in Gallic lands. Within a hundred years it had won a million and a half converts. Some French leaders saw…
1630 HT: Dan Graves George Herbert‘s ordination on this day, 19 September 1630, was a step of peace and resignation to the will of God. Friends said he was throwing away his talents. At one point in his life, he would have agreed with them. Well-educated, skilled in rhetoric, he had wrestled with God in poetry…
1575 Death of Swiss reformer Heinrich Bullinger. He had succeeded Zwingli at Zurich and because of the hospitality he extended to English exiles, had gained influence with the English Puritans. 1868 HT: Dan Graves Despite the African heat, Walter Gowans shivered. He was miserable; malaria had laid him low. Seeing the desperate need of the…
1672 HT: CHI Staff In 1650, Master Stephen Bowtell, a London publisher and bookseller, published a book of poems titled THE TENTH MUSE Lately Sprung up in AMERICA, OR Severall Poems… The book is a milestone in English and American literature. For one thing, The Tenth Muse contained the first verses by an American that could stand beside England’s…
258 HT: Dan Graves Cyprian was born into a wealthy home around 200. He studied rhetoric, showed a strong gift for debate, and opened a school to train students in public speaking. To demonstrate the best techniques, he sparred in front of his class with philosophers and Christians. When he was about forty-five, the arguments…
1541 John Calvin receives an uproarious welcome on his return to Geneva, whose authorities had banished him three years earlier. 1816 Robert Moffat is ordained and set apart with eight other missionaries to work in South Africa. He becomes a notable translator and the father-in-law of David Livingstone. 1845 HT: Christianity.com William Walford was blind,…
1729 HT: Christianity.com “I went to see a man that had one foot in the grave; but I found a man that had one foot in heaven!” So wrote one of John Fletcher‘s visitors after visiting the godly preacher who had become gravely ill by his strenuous efforts for the kingdom of Christ. Born in…