DECEMBER 27
Johann Arndt Pointed the Way to Pietism (1555)
“For the Christians, conversion was something that must be voluntary and individual, obtained primarily through preaching and example, and this is how...”
Brandmüller,Walter. “Christianity and Islam in History.” Frontpagemag.com.
Adversity has a purpose (1807)
How various are our wants from the first moment of our existence; we are brought into the world with difficulty and shou...
Events
537
The Hagia Sophia, a cathedral designed by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, is consecrated by Patriarch Menas in Constantinople. The innovative design is not only original but beautiful.
Authority for the date: http://www.hagiasophia.biz/history-2.htm1065
Death of Ferdinand I, “the Great,” king of Castile and León. He had maneuvered shrewdly to increase his territory and gain influence over some of Spain’s Muslim occupiers, whom he had forced to pay tribute.
Authority for the date: Britannica.1603
Death in Warwick, England, of Thomas Cartwright, a Puritan author, educator, controversialist, and preacher who had frequently attacked practices of the Church of England as unbliblical, especially its manner of governance and its selection and appointment of clergy.
Authority for the date: Dictionary of National Biography.1637
Japanese rebels, among whom are many Christians, defeat a large samurai force dispatched by the governor of Nagasaki. Early the following year, shogunate warriors will defeat the rebels and force them to retreat to Shimabara. Beseiged there, they will succumb after a lengthy and valorous defense.
Authority for the date: Wikipedia.1840
George Duffield Jr. is ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in New York. He will be remembered as an eminent hymnwriter. His most famous hymn will be “Stand up, Stand up for Jesus.”
Authority for the date: Hatfield, Edwin. The Poets of the Church. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Company, 1884.1846
Friederich A. Craemer, operating a Lutheran mission in Michigan, baptizes his first Chippewa converts.
Authority for the date: www.lutheranhistory.org.1855
Death of Josiah Conder, a journalist and editor who wrote scholarly Christian books and produced a popular Congregational hymnal. Among his own hymns were “Day by day the manna fell,” “How shall I follow Him I serve?” and “The Lord is King! Lift up Thy Voice.”
Authority for the date: Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary Handbook.1868
Phillips Brooks’s Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” is first sung at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square where he is rector. A choir of thirty-six children sings it from freshly-printed leaflets to a tune composed the night before by the church’s organist Lewis Redner.
Authority for the date: Ernest K. Emurian, Stories of Christmas Carols.1937
Death of hymnwriter Cyrus Nusbaum in Wichita, Kansas. His most famous hymn begins “Would you live for Jesus and be always be pure and good...”
Authority for the date: www.hymntime.com.