May 24
1089: Demise of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1543: Passing away of Nicolas Copernicus, the most acclaimed Polish astronomer, who taught the world that the Sun and not the earth, as believed till his date, is the centre of the universe (heliocentrism) and that the earth is revolving around the Sun, and not the Sun around the earth. Copernicus was also a member of the administrative body of the cathedral of Frauenburg.
1575: Stephen Gerlach, a Lutheran scholar, presents the ‘Augsburg Confession’ to the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II for consideration, as a part of the attempts to find out common grounds for a union between the Orthodox and Lutheran churches.
1607: Captain John Smith and the colonists of Jamestown conduct their first celebration of the Eucharist, thought to have been presided over by John Hunt, an Anglican priest.
1738: Conversion of John Wesley at the Aldersgate Chapel in London. Wesley, the English founder of Methodism, later reflected in his journal about this day, “I felt my heart strangely warmed…”
1768: Demise of pastor and hymn-writer Joseph Hart, whose funeral was attended by twenty thousand people. Hart, who had left his Christian upbringing, became an opponent of Christianity. However, he returned to Christ at forty years of age, and became such a fervent preacher that great crowds gathered to hear him; he also wrote many hymns.
1830: Alexander Duff, who suffered two shipwrecks while sailing to Asia, arrives in India and advances Christian education in Calcutta.
1844: Samuel F. B. Morse, the New York University professor who invented the telegraph, demonstrates invention to the world. The first message he sent over telegraph to Baltimore, was a Bible verse, “What hath God wrought” (Numbers 23:23). During the initial years of struggles to patent and to finance the invention, he wrote, “The only gleam of hope, and I cannot underrate it, is from confidence in God… Here is my strong confidence, and I will wait patiently for the direction of Providence.”
1859: Madame Caroline Miolan-Carvalho performs Charles Gounod’s “Ave Maria” for the first time in public.
1861: Demise of Mary Webb in Boston, who in spite of being bound to a wheelchair from the young age, had founded one of the first women’s missionary societies in America and had coordinated the activities of two hundred local societies.
1870: Repose of Jackson Kemper in Wisconsin, the Episcopalian Bishop who had spent much of his life evangelizing on the American frontier and among the Indians of the Midwest.
1872: Consecration of Gilbert Haven as a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. While he strongly positioned himself against discrimination, he was opposed by many racists.
1879: Passing away of William Lloyd Garrison in New York City; he was well known as a speaker, writer, editor, and as the founder of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. He formulated his anti-slavery arguments based on the Bible.
1930: Frank C. Laubach, a Congregational missionary, wrote in a letter, “As one makes new discoveries about his friends by being with them, so one discovers the “individuality” of God if one entertains him continuously.”
1949: Communist forces denounce Zhu Youyu as an imperialist agent, although he had served his nation both as an Episcopal bishop and as an organizer of medical relief during the Sino-Japanese war.
1950: The Northern Baptist Convention formally changes its name to the American Baptist Convention Boston, during an annual gathering in Boston. The denomination changed its name once more in 1972, and came to be called the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org