September 7
1643 Demise of Leonard Euler, a notable mathematician and a dedicated Christian apologist, in St. Petersburg. He had. He had to face mockery at the hands of Voltaire and of Frederick the Great for his belief.
1722 Repose of Elie Neau, a French Huguenot, who had fled to the New World because of persecution. Later he ran a school for slaves in the United States.
1724 The American congregation of Dunkards – German Baptists – gathers in Philadelphia for the first time.
1785 Formation of the Sunday School Society under the leadership of Robert Raikes in London, to provide weekly Christian schooling for the poor. Its rapid spread inspired the founding of the American Sunday School Union in 1824.
1807 English missionary Robert Morrison, brings Protestant Christianity first to China. The Catholics had already reached China in the 16th century with the Jesuit Matteo Ricci in 1582.
1823 Samuel Marsden loses his life in a shipwreck while sailing to the Maori of New Zealand as a missionary.
1833 Repose of Hannah More, a Christian play writer, Sunday school leader, and philanthropist.
1845 The first Hebrew synagogue is built (in the Mississippi Valley) in St. Louis, Missouri.
1860 Passing away of Starets (meaning “Elder”) Macarius, who had translated many Greek texts of the Church Fathers into Russian, and thus made the Optina Monastery well known.
1864 Sir Michael Costa’s oratorio Naaman has its premier at the Birmingham Festival in England, where Mendelssohn’s Elijah was performed for the first time nineteen years earlier.
1901 Laying of the foundation for Ida Scudder’s mission hospital at Vellore, India. It is one of the most famous medical colleges in South India today.
1929 The Lutherans of Betafo-Ambohimanarina, Madagascar, unite in a prayer vigil for a confrontation between Pastor Daniel Rajaofera and a local sorcerer that is to take place the next day. As it turns out, the sorcerer fails badly and many idolaters burn their idols on September ninth.
1958 The first cathedral of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the U.S. and Canada was dedicated in Hackensack, NJ. The American archdiocese for this branch of Orthodoxy was created the previous year by Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Yacoub III.
1964 Death in Chicago of Luigi (Louis) Francescon, a pioneer in the Italian Pentecostal movement, and an international missionary who participated in the formation of Pentecostal fellowships in Argentina, Brazil, and the US.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy: www.studylight.org