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, but this did not make him worthless. On the contrary, as he sat by the fire in his English home in the mid-nineteenth century, his hands kept busy, whittling out useful objects, such as shoehorns. His mind was active, too.
Called on to preach from time to time in a rural English church, William Walford composed sermons in his head to deliver on Sundays. He memorized a huge amount of the Bible which he quoted verbatim in his sermons. Some of his folk thought he had memorized the entire Scripture, cover to cover. William also composed lines of verse. And he prayed.
Thomas Salmon, a New York native, spent some time in Coleshill, Warwickshire, England, where he became acquainted with William. He tells this tale of what happened one day, while he was visiting the blind pastor:
“…He repeated two or three pieces which he had composed, and having no friend at home to commit them to paper, he had laid them up in the storehouse within. “How will this do?” asked he, as he repeated the following lines, with a complacent smile touched with some light lines of fear lest he subjects himself to criticism. I rapidly copied the lines with my pencil, as he uttered them, and sent them for insertion in the Observer if you should think them worthy of preservation.”
The Observer did consider them worth preserving, and they were published on this day, September 13, 1845, becoming a beloved hymn.
Beyond the fact that he was blind and the few details recorded by Thomas Salmon, we know little of William Walford. But his hymn, Sweet Hour of Prayer has touched hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides of the Atlantic, expressing the genuine joy he found in prayer.
Sweet Hour of Prayer
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
The joys I feel, the bliss I share,
Of those whose anxious spirits burn
With strong desires for thy return!
With such I hasten to the place
Where God my Savior shows His face,
And gladly take my station there,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
Thy wings shall my petition bear
To Him whose truth and faithfulness
Engage the waiting soul to bless.
And since He bids me seek His face,
Believe His Word and trust His grace,
I’ll cast on Him my every care,
And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
May I thy consolation share,
Till, from Mount Pisgah’s lofty height,
I view my home and take my flight:
This robe of flesh I’ll drop and rise
To seize the everlasting prize;
And shout, while passing through the air,
“Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer!”
1865
Robert J. Thomas was haunted by the thought of Korea. A Welsh missionary to China, he knew that the people of the “Hermit Kingdom” needed the gospel. But Korea, observing how westerners had mistreated China, closed its doors to foreigners. Burning with evangelistic zeal, Robert felt he must do something about the people’s ignorance of eternal life.
On this day, September 13, 1865, he arrived on the coast of Korea and began to learn what he could about the people and their language. By his action, Robert became the first Protestant missionary to the ancient land, whose name means “chosen.” Roman Catholics, however, had converted many Koreans starting in the late 1700s. They were so successful that in 1863 eight thousand were slaughtered by a government that feared foreign influence.
Lacking Korean language material, Robert handed out tracts and New Testaments in Chinese. He soon had to return to China, where, the following year, his wife died.
In 1866, Robert learned that an American boat, the General Sherman, was going to try to establish trade relations between Korea and the United States. He offered to accompany the boat as an interpreter in exchange for a chance to spread the gospel.
That August, the General Sherman sailed up the Taedong River toward Pyongyang. Robert tossed gospel tracts onto the river bank as the ship proceeded.
Korean officials ordered the American boat to leave at once. The Americans defied the warning. They paid for their arrogance with their lives. The schooner ran aground and stuck fast in the muddy bottom.
The Governor of the province, Pak Kyu Su, attacked the ship. When the Koreans tried to board, waving machetes, the Americans opened fire. Over the next two weeks, the Americans held the Koreans off, killing twenty and wounding many more. By September 3, the Koreans were fed up. They launched a burning boat down river at the General Sherman to set it afire. Now the Americans had to dash ashore or burn to death.
As the sailors fled from the boat, the Koreans killed them. Robert had to flee with the rest. True to his mission, he leaped from the boat carrying a Bible. “Jesus, Jesus!” he cried in Korean to the attackers, offering them the Bible. His head was whacked off with a stroke of a machete according to one account, but others think he pleaded for his life and was beaten to death. We may never know the truth, nor if Robert tried to prevent the Sherman’s foolish defiance of a sovereign power and its butchery of civilians. Seemingly Robert’s efforts had been in vain.
But God worked in the heart of the man who killed Robert. Convinced by Robert’s beaming face that he had killed a good man, he kept one of the Bibles, wallpapering his house with it. People came from far and near to read its words. A church grew. A nephew of Robert’s killer became a pastor.
Today 40% of South Koreans are Christians and the nation has some of the largest congregations in the world but the North remains largely closed to the gospel.