APRIL 28
BISHOP POORE BROUGHT VISION AND GREAT ABILITY TO SALISBURY (1220)
“I suppose you have hardly yet found how much of romance is mingled with your ideas of a married state. You will find real life much the same that you...”
Riggs, Stephen R. Mary and I; Forty Years with the Sioux. Chicago: W. G. Holmes, 1880.
God Is Nearer than We Can Express (1860)
What can there be so close as making and made? Nought twinned can be so near; thou art more nigh To me, my God, than is...
Events
1220
Work on Salisbury Cathedral begins under the auspices of Bishop Richard Poore.
Authority for the date: Dictionary of National Biography.1550
Death of Georg von Polentz. He had been the first Reformation bishop of Samland and Pomesania, a region in Prussia.
Authority for the date: http://dictionary.sensagent.com/georg+von+polentz/no-no/1721
In England an order in council is issued, denouncing “Hell Fire” societies whose members allegedly held meetings to ridicule religion and offer blasphemous toasts.
Authority for the date: Chambers’ Book of Days1848
John Bird Sumner is enthroned as archbishop of Canterbury. An evangelical, he had vigorously improved the diocese of Chester, consecrating over two hundred new churches; had voted for removal of restrictions on Catholics; and had written many books. In Records of Creation, he held that Moses' accounts of creation were credible and fit well with scientific findings. As archbishop he would deal even-handedly with the high and low church parties.
Authority for the date: http://www.historyhome.co.uk/people/sumnerjb.htm1862
Death of George Washington Bethune, hymn translator, Reformed church pastor, while preaching in Florence, Italy. He will be buried in September and his hymn “It Is Not Death to Die” will be sung at his funeral.
Authority for the date: http://archives.dickinson.edu/people/george-washington-bethune-1805-18621872
Frances Havergal, in Winterdyne, England, writes the words to the hymn “A Worker’s Prayer” aka “Lord, Speak to Me That I May Speak.” One stanza reads, “O teach me, Lord, that I may teach /The precious things Thou dost impart; /And wing my words, that they may reach /The hidden depths of many a heart.”
Authority for the date: http://www.hymnary.org/text/lord_speak_to_me_that_i_may_speak1911
Thousands of Genevans demonstrate for five hours against a religiously inspired ban on gambling. A shocked Karl Barth is appalled at their mindless slogans and comes out in support of the ban.
Authority for the date: Busch, Eberhard.Karl Barth. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005.1916
Death in New York City of Congregationalist clergymen and social gospel advocate Josiah Strong, who had sought to apply Protestant ideals to social problems. He had been a strong advocate of missions, believing that only redemption through Christ could change people’s behavior. His most influential book had been Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis.
Authority for the date: Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals.1920
Bolsheviks establish their power in Azerbaijan and will soon promote atheism and hostilities against religion, leading to persecution and suffering among people of all faiths.
Authority for the date: Anar Alizade, Christianity in Azerbaijan1939
Soviets arrest Natalya Ivanovna Sundukova, daughter of a priest, on grounds that she leads a counter-revolutionary church cell in Stalinabad. She will be imprisoned and eventually shot for counter-revolutionary activity, dissemination of Christian teaching among prisoners, and refusal to work for the atheist regime.
Authority for the date: Moss, Vladimir. Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia.1955
Christian and Missionary Alliance pilot Albert Lewis crashes his flying boat in a pass leading into Baliem Valley in what was then Netherlands New Guinea. Before his untimely death, ten thousand souls had been brought to Christ in part because of his supporting ministry.
Authority for the date: Bromley, Myron. “Al Lewis’s Last Flight.” Alliance Life. (November 7 1990).1973
Death at Toulouse of Jacques Maritain, a leading neo-Thomist philosopher.
Authority for the date: Standard encyclopedias.