This Day in Baptist History Past
March 25, 1768 – William Batchelder was born into the wealthy family of Ebenezer and Susanna Batchelder in Boston, Mass. His father was a deacon in the Congregational church, but in 1781 when William was 13, both parents died within a week of each other. The estate was left to be administered by a dear friend but soon after he died and William chose to live with a relative in New Hampshire; but being appalled with their lifestyle he left to live with his wealthy grandfather who owned an ironworks. William offended some other workers when he talked to a dying man about death and eternity and left so as not to cause trouble to become a cabin boy at 15, on a salt ship to Puerto Rico. The ship was attacked by a Bermuda privateer and William showed great bravery as the crew fought them off. Then the ship was driven by a storm into the Gulf of Mexico before finally arriving at Cape Francois. William and some others looking for salt overturned a small boat, had to swim a mile and he ended up separated from the others. He found a sailor, in a hut, who he had helped years before who had been shipwrecked in Boston who helped him find his ship. The captain then got sick and just before he died turned it over to the 16 year old boy. The owners rewarded him. He studied the Bible, became an ordained Baptist preacher, married Huldah Sanborn and pastored the Baptist church in Berwick, Maine and then a much larger one in Haverhill, Mass. on Dec. 4, 1805. He did not support the Judson’s when they left as Congregationalists, but was one of their strongest when they became Baptists. He died on April 8, 1818 saying, I see Glory!
Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 164-65. [William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1865), 6:320.]
Friday, March 25, 2011
Baptist Hymn Writers
Baptist Hymn Writers
Taken from “Tales of Baptist Daring,” 1961
When you hold our hymnbook in church and join with others in singing, you ought to know that the idea of singing hymns rather than singing only psalms first took shape in the musical soul and mind of a Baptist pastor in England.
It was Benjamin Keach who started the practice of congregational hymn-singing in English-speaking churches. Before his day, congregations droned out “The Psalms of David” in unexciting tunes sung in a slow tempo. Keach, a prolific writer, decided to do something about this. Accordingly he produced popular gospel hymns for his church congregation to sing. In 1691, he published a book of over three hundred hymns, called Spiritual Melody.
You see, when Baptists were under persecution, printed words could be dangerous to them, so they developed a technique of using verses as an aid to memory. They discovered that rhymed instruction was easy for the illiterate people in their churches to remember. Rather naturally, this practice grew into the plan of fitting their verses of rhymed doctrines to musical accompaniments. Thomas Smith, for example, wrote for his church a total of one thousand, one hundred hymns which contained a complete system of doctrine, experience, and practice. But it was Benjamin Keach who really started the plan of congregational singing. He was attacked for this supposedly heretical innovation, “carnal formalities,” they called it, and many members left his church because he insisted on encouraging the singing of hymns by the whole congregation. His idea caught fire, however, and though there was fierce doctrinal controversy, eventually all over the land people sang hymns in the churches with joy and thanksgiving.Not only did Keach’s writing get him into trouble with other church people, but also the government wanted to stop him from writing Baptist doctrine for children. He wrote a primer for children in which he taught Baptist beliefs. For this, the constables came one day to his home and arrested him.
Standing as a prisoner in the court at Aylesbury, on October 9, 1664, he held himself with dignity while Chief Justice Hyde roared at him: “Benjamin Keach, you are here convicted of writing and publishing a seditious and scandalous book; you shall go to prison for a fortnight and the next Saturday stand in a pillory for two hours from eleven o'clock until one with a paper upon your head with this inscription: ‘for writing and printing and publishing a schismatical book entitled, The Child Instructor or A New and Easy Primer,’ and the next Thursday to stand in the same manner and for that same time in the market of Winslow, and there your book shall openly be burnt before your face by the common hangman in disgrace of you and your doctrine, and you shall forfeit to the king’s majesty the sum of twenty pounds.”
However, in spite of the fact that Keach saw his books burned and that he suffered imprisonment, he continued to write the happy songs of Zion and to print his books for the children whom he loved. Through all the years since, Baptists have continued to write hymns, and some of the best-loved hymns were written by our Baptist fathers.
When at the close of the Lord’s Supper many congregations sing, “Blest Be the Tie that Binds Our Hearts in Christian Love,” they are singing a hymn written by John Fawcett, pastor of the Baptist Church at Wainsgate, England. He was a good and true pastor whom his people came to love very dearly.
In 1772, Fawcett received a call to go to a famous church in London and felt led to accept the call. After his goods were packed and he was ready to move to the big city, his people came around him with their farewells. So great was their weeping that his heart melted as he realized their great affection for him. Neither he nor his wife could endure the sadness expressed by these people as they thought of losing their pastor. Finally, under tense emotion, he said: “Well, I shall stay here. You may help me unpack my things, and we shall live for the Lord lovingly together.”
After this moving experience he wrote the beautiful lines:
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
When we are called to part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
One of the great hymns which Americans have loved and which at one time was considered to be our national anthem, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” was written by a Baptist pastor, Samuel Francis Smith, whose home still stands in one of the suburbs of Boston. Smith was a student in what is now Andover Newtown Theological School, where his ability to translate languages was well known. In fact, before his death at eighty-six years of age, he had mastered fifteen different languages and was about to begin the study of Russian. A traveler returning from Germany brought home many German song books and gave them to the young Smith to see whether or not some of the songs might be suitable for translation into English. In going over them Smith’s eye fell upon the tune now known as “America,” but which really was first chosen by the English for use with the words, “God Save the King.” Under sudden inspiration, Smith reached down into the wastebasket in his seminary room, pulled out a scrap of paper, and within a half-hour’s time had written the words:
My country ‘tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the pilgrims’ pride!
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring!
This hymn was first sung on the Fourth of July, 1832, in the city of Boston in the Park Street Church, located opposite Boston Common on the site which came to be known as “Brimstone Corner.” It was this same Samuel Francis Smith who wrote the hymn which moved the foreign mission society to save the Lone Star Mission in India.
Many Baptists fervently sing the hymn written by John Henry Gilmore, entitled “He Leadeth Me”:
He leadeth me: 0 blessed thought!
0 words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
Still ‘tis God’s hand that leadeth me.
Dr. Gilmore had just finished conducting a prayer meeting in the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia where he had spoken on the Twenty-third Psalm. When he returned to the house where he was a guest, the discussion of God’s guidance continued. Subsequently he wrote: “During the conversation the blessedness of God’s leadership so settled upon me that I took up my pencil and wrote the hymn just as it stands today, handed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it without my knowledge to the Watchman and Reflector.” The hymn has remained a very popular one and has brought blessing to many thousands. Dr. Gilmore was the son of the governor of New Hampshire. He was a graduate of Brown University and of Newton Theological Institution. He wrote this hymn in 1862.
John Bunyan also was a hymn writer, but only one of his hymns has been given a place in our Baptist hymnbook. Strangely enough, the Anglican (Episcopal) Church which persecuted John Bunyan has now placed this hymn in its official hymnbook.
Bunyan’s love of singing is reflected in what he wrote in The Pilgrim’s Progress. “The pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose windows opened towards the rising sun. The name of the chamber was Peace, where he slept ‘til break of day, and then he awoke and sang.” The lines of the hymn are as follows:
He who would valiant be
‘Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent
To be a pilgrim.
Who so beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound,
His strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might,
Tho’ he with giants fight;
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.
Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Us with thy Spirit,
Know we at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies, flee away!
I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.
Bunyan wrote his hymn originally for Valiant-for-truth in his The Pilgrim’s Progress. Before it was revised by the hymnbook editors, the first stanza read:
Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent
To be a pilgrim.
Baptists have not only contributed writers for the words of hymns, but also composers who have created the melodies. One of the best-known Baptist American hymn composers was William H. Doane, who as a young man joined the Baptist Church in Norwich, Conn. His love of music developed at an early age, and when he was only six years old he was often called upon to sing in public. He joined the church choir at the age of ten. He played the contrabass when he was thirteen and became an organist when he was sixteen. He composed the music for such hymns as, “Rescue the Perishing,” “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” “Pass Me Not, 0 Gentle Savior,” “More Love to Thee, 0 Christ,” “Take the Name of Jesus With You,” and scores of others.
A Baptist hymn in which both the author of the words and the composer of the music were Baptists is the well-known “Saviour, Thy Dying Love Thou Gavest Me.” The author was Sylvanus D. Phelps and the composer was Robert Lowry.
Dr. Phelps was born at Suffield, Conn., and after graduation from Brown University and Yale Divinity School, he served for twenty-eight years as pastor of the First Baptist Church in New Haven. He began writing hymns during his college years and was the author of a great many poems. The hymn, “Saviour, Thy Dying Love Thou Gavest Me,” is a great favorite among Baptists, for it portrays the sacrifice of Christ as the atonement for sinners and suggests a grateful return to love and loyalty to Christ on the part of the redeemed. The closing verse is a prayer for undying devotion and a life of humble service to this crucified Lord.
But there also have been women among the Baptists who have been able writers of hymns. Many a person caught in temptation must be thankful to Mrs. Annie Sherwood Hawks who wrote the beautiful hymn, “I Need Thee Every Hour.”
I need thee every hour,
Stay thou near by;
Temptations lose their power
When thou art nigh.
Her interest in hymn writing started when she became a member of the Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, N. Y., where Dr. Robert Lowry, the hymn composer, was then pastor. He encouraged Mrs. Hawks in her hymn writing and he wrote the music to the words of this hymn. This hymn spontaneously sprang out of her heart while she was doing her daily housework. As she moved about in the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room, she was conscious of needing Christ’s presence with her even as she engaged in routine domestic duties. The hymn promptly found wide use and has made for itself a secure place in Christian worship.
A voluminous writer of hymns and poems was Miss Anne Steele, out of whose tragic life was born the beautiful hymn:
Father, whate’er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign will denies,
Accepted at thy throne of grace,
Let this petition rise:
Give me a calm, a thankful heart,
From every murmur free;
The blessings of thy grace impart,
And make me live to thee.
Let the sweet hope that thou art mine
My life and death attend;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey’s end.
She was an invalid from her childhood and at times a great sufferer. “When she was twenty-one years of age, the young man to whom she was engaged to be married was drowned while in bathing, the day before the wedding was to take place. Yet, heartbroken, she did not yield to despair but made herself a ministering spirit devoting her life to deeds of love and mercy. Many of her hymns, written to lighten her own burdens, give beautiful expressions to the sweetness of her Christian character and the depth of her Christian experience.”
Her journey’s end was crowned as she had desired. Weeping friends gathered around her deathbed and at “the happy moment of her dismission, she closed her eyes and said with dying lips, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ She gently fell asleep in Jesus.”
There are few Christians who have not been melted into a fresh sense of devotion by singing the beautiful hymn:
My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;
For thee all the follies of sin I resign;
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.
This song was written by a Baptist preacher, Dr. Adoniram Judson Gordon, who was pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston.
Copied from http://www.baptistpillar.com/bd0633.htm
Taken from “Tales of Baptist Daring,” 1961
When you hold our hymnbook in church and join with others in singing, you ought to know that the idea of singing hymns rather than singing only psalms first took shape in the musical soul and mind of a Baptist pastor in England.
It was Benjamin Keach who started the practice of congregational hymn-singing in English-speaking churches. Before his day, congregations droned out “The Psalms of David” in unexciting tunes sung in a slow tempo. Keach, a prolific writer, decided to do something about this. Accordingly he produced popular gospel hymns for his church congregation to sing. In 1691, he published a book of over three hundred hymns, called Spiritual Melody.
You see, when Baptists were under persecution, printed words could be dangerous to them, so they developed a technique of using verses as an aid to memory. They discovered that rhymed instruction was easy for the illiterate people in their churches to remember. Rather naturally, this practice grew into the plan of fitting their verses of rhymed doctrines to musical accompaniments. Thomas Smith, for example, wrote for his church a total of one thousand, one hundred hymns which contained a complete system of doctrine, experience, and practice. But it was Benjamin Keach who really started the plan of congregational singing. He was attacked for this supposedly heretical innovation, “carnal formalities,” they called it, and many members left his church because he insisted on encouraging the singing of hymns by the whole congregation. His idea caught fire, however, and though there was fierce doctrinal controversy, eventually all over the land people sang hymns in the churches with joy and thanksgiving.Not only did Keach’s writing get him into trouble with other church people, but also the government wanted to stop him from writing Baptist doctrine for children. He wrote a primer for children in which he taught Baptist beliefs. For this, the constables came one day to his home and arrested him.
Standing as a prisoner in the court at Aylesbury, on October 9, 1664, he held himself with dignity while Chief Justice Hyde roared at him: “Benjamin Keach, you are here convicted of writing and publishing a seditious and scandalous book; you shall go to prison for a fortnight and the next Saturday stand in a pillory for two hours from eleven o'clock until one with a paper upon your head with this inscription: ‘for writing and printing and publishing a schismatical book entitled, The Child Instructor or A New and Easy Primer,’ and the next Thursday to stand in the same manner and for that same time in the market of Winslow, and there your book shall openly be burnt before your face by the common hangman in disgrace of you and your doctrine, and you shall forfeit to the king’s majesty the sum of twenty pounds.”
However, in spite of the fact that Keach saw his books burned and that he suffered imprisonment, he continued to write the happy songs of Zion and to print his books for the children whom he loved. Through all the years since, Baptists have continued to write hymns, and some of the best-loved hymns were written by our Baptist fathers.
When at the close of the Lord’s Supper many congregations sing, “Blest Be the Tie that Binds Our Hearts in Christian Love,” they are singing a hymn written by John Fawcett, pastor of the Baptist Church at Wainsgate, England. He was a good and true pastor whom his people came to love very dearly.
In 1772, Fawcett received a call to go to a famous church in London and felt led to accept the call. After his goods were packed and he was ready to move to the big city, his people came around him with their farewells. So great was their weeping that his heart melted as he realized their great affection for him. Neither he nor his wife could endure the sadness expressed by these people as they thought of losing their pastor. Finally, under tense emotion, he said: “Well, I shall stay here. You may help me unpack my things, and we shall live for the Lord lovingly together.”
After this moving experience he wrote the beautiful lines:
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
When we are called to part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
One of the great hymns which Americans have loved and which at one time was considered to be our national anthem, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” was written by a Baptist pastor, Samuel Francis Smith, whose home still stands in one of the suburbs of Boston. Smith was a student in what is now Andover Newtown Theological School, where his ability to translate languages was well known. In fact, before his death at eighty-six years of age, he had mastered fifteen different languages and was about to begin the study of Russian. A traveler returning from Germany brought home many German song books and gave them to the young Smith to see whether or not some of the songs might be suitable for translation into English. In going over them Smith’s eye fell upon the tune now known as “America,” but which really was first chosen by the English for use with the words, “God Save the King.” Under sudden inspiration, Smith reached down into the wastebasket in his seminary room, pulled out a scrap of paper, and within a half-hour’s time had written the words:
My country ‘tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the pilgrims’ pride!
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring!
This hymn was first sung on the Fourth of July, 1832, in the city of Boston in the Park Street Church, located opposite Boston Common on the site which came to be known as “Brimstone Corner.” It was this same Samuel Francis Smith who wrote the hymn which moved the foreign mission society to save the Lone Star Mission in India.
Many Baptists fervently sing the hymn written by John Henry Gilmore, entitled “He Leadeth Me”:
He leadeth me: 0 blessed thought!
0 words with heavenly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
Still ‘tis God’s hand that leadeth me.
Dr. Gilmore had just finished conducting a prayer meeting in the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia where he had spoken on the Twenty-third Psalm. When he returned to the house where he was a guest, the discussion of God’s guidance continued. Subsequently he wrote: “During the conversation the blessedness of God’s leadership so settled upon me that I took up my pencil and wrote the hymn just as it stands today, handed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it without my knowledge to the Watchman and Reflector.” The hymn has remained a very popular one and has brought blessing to many thousands. Dr. Gilmore was the son of the governor of New Hampshire. He was a graduate of Brown University and of Newton Theological Institution. He wrote this hymn in 1862.
John Bunyan also was a hymn writer, but only one of his hymns has been given a place in our Baptist hymnbook. Strangely enough, the Anglican (Episcopal) Church which persecuted John Bunyan has now placed this hymn in its official hymnbook.
Bunyan’s love of singing is reflected in what he wrote in The Pilgrim’s Progress. “The pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose windows opened towards the rising sun. The name of the chamber was Peace, where he slept ‘til break of day, and then he awoke and sang.” The lines of the hymn are as follows:
He who would valiant be
‘Gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent
To be a pilgrim.
Who so beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound,
His strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might,
Tho’ he with giants fight;
He will make good his right
To be a pilgrim.
Since, Lord, thou dost defend
Us with thy Spirit,
Know we at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies, flee away!
I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day
To be a pilgrim.
Bunyan wrote his hymn originally for Valiant-for-truth in his The Pilgrim’s Progress. Before it was revised by the hymnbook editors, the first stanza read:
Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There’s no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent
To be a pilgrim.
Baptists have not only contributed writers for the words of hymns, but also composers who have created the melodies. One of the best-known Baptist American hymn composers was William H. Doane, who as a young man joined the Baptist Church in Norwich, Conn. His love of music developed at an early age, and when he was only six years old he was often called upon to sing in public. He joined the church choir at the age of ten. He played the contrabass when he was thirteen and became an organist when he was sixteen. He composed the music for such hymns as, “Rescue the Perishing,” “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” “Pass Me Not, 0 Gentle Savior,” “More Love to Thee, 0 Christ,” “Take the Name of Jesus With You,” and scores of others.
A Baptist hymn in which both the author of the words and the composer of the music were Baptists is the well-known “Saviour, Thy Dying Love Thou Gavest Me.” The author was Sylvanus D. Phelps and the composer was Robert Lowry.
Dr. Phelps was born at Suffield, Conn., and after graduation from Brown University and Yale Divinity School, he served for twenty-eight years as pastor of the First Baptist Church in New Haven. He began writing hymns during his college years and was the author of a great many poems. The hymn, “Saviour, Thy Dying Love Thou Gavest Me,” is a great favorite among Baptists, for it portrays the sacrifice of Christ as the atonement for sinners and suggests a grateful return to love and loyalty to Christ on the part of the redeemed. The closing verse is a prayer for undying devotion and a life of humble service to this crucified Lord.
But there also have been women among the Baptists who have been able writers of hymns. Many a person caught in temptation must be thankful to Mrs. Annie Sherwood Hawks who wrote the beautiful hymn, “I Need Thee Every Hour.”
I need thee every hour,
Stay thou near by;
Temptations lose their power
When thou art nigh.
Her interest in hymn writing started when she became a member of the Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, N. Y., where Dr. Robert Lowry, the hymn composer, was then pastor. He encouraged Mrs. Hawks in her hymn writing and he wrote the music to the words of this hymn. This hymn spontaneously sprang out of her heart while she was doing her daily housework. As she moved about in the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room, she was conscious of needing Christ’s presence with her even as she engaged in routine domestic duties. The hymn promptly found wide use and has made for itself a secure place in Christian worship.
A voluminous writer of hymns and poems was Miss Anne Steele, out of whose tragic life was born the beautiful hymn:
Father, whate’er of earthly bliss
Thy sovereign will denies,
Accepted at thy throne of grace,
Let this petition rise:
Give me a calm, a thankful heart,
From every murmur free;
The blessings of thy grace impart,
And make me live to thee.
Let the sweet hope that thou art mine
My life and death attend;
Thy presence through my journey shine,
And crown my journey’s end.
She was an invalid from her childhood and at times a great sufferer. “When she was twenty-one years of age, the young man to whom she was engaged to be married was drowned while in bathing, the day before the wedding was to take place. Yet, heartbroken, she did not yield to despair but made herself a ministering spirit devoting her life to deeds of love and mercy. Many of her hymns, written to lighten her own burdens, give beautiful expressions to the sweetness of her Christian character and the depth of her Christian experience.”
Her journey’s end was crowned as she had desired. Weeping friends gathered around her deathbed and at “the happy moment of her dismission, she closed her eyes and said with dying lips, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth.’ She gently fell asleep in Jesus.”
There are few Christians who have not been melted into a fresh sense of devotion by singing the beautiful hymn:
My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;
For thee all the follies of sin I resign;
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.
This song was written by a Baptist preacher, Dr. Adoniram Judson Gordon, who was pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston.
Copied from http://www.baptistpillar.com/bd0633.htm
The Laodicean Church
This Day in Baptist History Past
March 18, 2011 – The Laodicean church – a composite. It was a sad day, but few seemed to care. There would have been many tears if the deceased had suffered as a martyr, but she had died gradually from a multitude of maladies. Primarily the diseases were atrophy, apathy, and unconcern. Few were there to mourn her passing. Though martyrdom has claimed its thousands as Satan appeared as a “roaring lion,” his modern approach as an “angel of light” has destroyed its tens of thousands. The obituary read as follows: “First Community Center – alias, First Baptist Church. The formerly well-known deceased was born in revival. Her parents, Gospel Truth and Prayer, rejoiced at her birth. She grew into maturity as sons and daughters were born again and went into surrounding states and around the world as missionaries. Her grand-children in foreign lands benefited by her assistance as well. Her demise had been gradual and it took an autopsy to reveal the causes of death. The coroner discovered the following maladies. The artery that called for a proper diet of spiritual milk and meat had been clogged with entertainment. The obstruction of her prayer artery had choked the blessings of the power of God. The artery of evangelism had been clogged with disinterest. When Dr. Evangelist was called he was mocked. It was thought that a new name was needed so the name “Baptist” was dropped and a Community name adopted. It was suggested that the hymns of Zion be replaced with a modern sound, and three square meals a week have been replaced, in some instance with only one. And now they even have a Sat. eve. snack. Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 150-52. [C.F: Vance Havner, It is Time (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1953), p. 70.]
March 18, 2011 – The Laodicean church – a composite. It was a sad day, but few seemed to care. There would have been many tears if the deceased had suffered as a martyr, but she had died gradually from a multitude of maladies. Primarily the diseases were atrophy, apathy, and unconcern. Few were there to mourn her passing. Though martyrdom has claimed its thousands as Satan appeared as a “roaring lion,” his modern approach as an “angel of light” has destroyed its tens of thousands. The obituary read as follows: “First Community Center – alias, First Baptist Church. The formerly well-known deceased was born in revival. Her parents, Gospel Truth and Prayer, rejoiced at her birth. She grew into maturity as sons and daughters were born again and went into surrounding states and around the world as missionaries. Her grand-children in foreign lands benefited by her assistance as well. Her demise had been gradual and it took an autopsy to reveal the causes of death. The coroner discovered the following maladies. The artery that called for a proper diet of spiritual milk and meat had been clogged with entertainment. The obstruction of her prayer artery had choked the blessings of the power of God. The artery of evangelism had been clogged with disinterest. When Dr. Evangelist was called he was mocked. It was thought that a new name was needed so the name “Baptist” was dropped and a Community name adopted. It was suggested that the hymns of Zion be replaced with a modern sound, and three square meals a week have been replaced, in some instance with only one. And now they even have a Sat. eve. snack. Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 150-52. [C.F: Vance Havner, It is Time (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1953), p. 70.]
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Robert Lowery-Baptist Pastor and Hymn Writer
This Day in Baptist History Past
March 12, 1826 – Robert Lowry was born in Philadelphia. Even though his parents were faithful Presbyterians and at 17 Robert came under conviction and was converted to Christ, his study of God’s Word caused him to be convinced of believer’s immersion. Thus, he was baptized on April 23, 1843, by Dr. George B. Ide, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. Dr. Ide began discipling young Robert and he began helping in a Sunday school in a destitute part of the city. Believing that God had called him to preach he entered the newly formed college at Lewisburg, Penn. (now Bucknell University), and graduated in 1854, as valedictory. Following graduation he was ordained and called to pastor the First Baptist Church of West Chester, Penn. In 1861 he was called to the Bloomingdale Baptist church of New York City. The same year he went to the Hanson Place Baptist Church of Brooklyn. In time he was induced to return to Lewisburg where he accepted a professorship at the college and the pastorate of the Baptist church. After six years he retired to Plainfield, N.J. but he ended up organizing a church there. At each of these churches Dr. Lowry erected new buildings, but his greatest gift was hymn writing. He wrote “We’re Marching to Zion”, “Christ Arose”, “What Can Wash Away My Sin?” and “All the Way My Savior Leads me.” While in Brooklyn he composed his celebrated hymn “Shall We Gather at the River?” It was a hot July in 1864, a very severe epidemic was raging, many were passing over the river of death. The pastor wrote: “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, Gather at the river, That flows by the throne of God” Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 139-40. [C.F: Lewis Edwin Theiss, Centennial History of Bucknell University 1846-1946 (Williamsport, Pa.: Grit Publish Co. Press, 19460, p. 151.]
March 12, 1826 – Robert Lowry was born in Philadelphia. Even though his parents were faithful Presbyterians and at 17 Robert came under conviction and was converted to Christ, his study of God’s Word caused him to be convinced of believer’s immersion. Thus, he was baptized on April 23, 1843, by Dr. George B. Ide, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. Dr. Ide began discipling young Robert and he began helping in a Sunday school in a destitute part of the city. Believing that God had called him to preach he entered the newly formed college at Lewisburg, Penn. (now Bucknell University), and graduated in 1854, as valedictory. Following graduation he was ordained and called to pastor the First Baptist Church of West Chester, Penn. In 1861 he was called to the Bloomingdale Baptist church of New York City. The same year he went to the Hanson Place Baptist Church of Brooklyn. In time he was induced to return to Lewisburg where he accepted a professorship at the college and the pastorate of the Baptist church. After six years he retired to Plainfield, N.J. but he ended up organizing a church there. At each of these churches Dr. Lowry erected new buildings, but his greatest gift was hymn writing. He wrote “We’re Marching to Zion”, “Christ Arose”, “What Can Wash Away My Sin?” and “All the Way My Savior Leads me.” While in Brooklyn he composed his celebrated hymn “Shall We Gather at the River?” It was a hot July in 1864, a very severe epidemic was raging, many were passing over the river of death. The pastor wrote: “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, Gather at the river, That flows by the throne of God” Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 139-40. [C.F: Lewis Edwin Theiss, Centennial History of Bucknell University 1846-1946 (Williamsport, Pa.: Grit Publish Co. Press, 19460, p. 151.]
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Mexican Baptists
This Day in Baptist History Past
March 23, 1894 – Ramon A. Tolosa was born to a Roman Catholic family in El Salvador. However he was plagued with a fear concerning eternity and would often cry out to God in his distress. The Lord answered Ramon’s cries through the witness of a friend, questions were answered from the Bible until early in the morning on Feb. 5, 1916 when Ramon received Christ as Savior. On March 6 he was baptized and became a member of the First Baptist Church of Santa Ana, El Salvador. His growth in grace was rapid and the church sent him to the Baptist Theological Seminary in Saltillo, Mexico. After graduation he served as an assistant pastor in San Salvador and in Tampico. In June of 1923, he married Miss Lula Jackson and the two labored in organizing the First Baptist Church of Madero City where he was ordained on Oct. 7, 1924. In 1925 they moved to La Junta, Colorado where Ramon pastored the First Mexican Baptist Church until August of 1929. From there the Tolosas went to Michigan to work with the Mexican people in several cities which resulted in their organizing the First Mexican Baptist Church in Saginaw with forty-five charter members. By 1937 the congregation had saved $3000, the Northern Baptist Home Mission Society loaned them $3000 more and a new facility was dedicated on Dec. 12 the same year. Because of liberalism Ramon withdrew from the Convention. But due to the reversionary clause which had been written into the deed which allowed the property to revert to the denomination if sold, it was seized by the denomination. It mattered not that the loan had been repaid. Ramon died on Nov. 3, 1978.
Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 160-61. [C.F: This Day in Baptist History II by David L. Cummins and E. Wayne Thompson 2000 Bob Jones University Press, Greenville, S.C.]
March 23, 1894 – Ramon A. Tolosa was born to a Roman Catholic family in El Salvador. However he was plagued with a fear concerning eternity and would often cry out to God in his distress. The Lord answered Ramon’s cries through the witness of a friend, questions were answered from the Bible until early in the morning on Feb. 5, 1916 when Ramon received Christ as Savior. On March 6 he was baptized and became a member of the First Baptist Church of Santa Ana, El Salvador. His growth in grace was rapid and the church sent him to the Baptist Theological Seminary in Saltillo, Mexico. After graduation he served as an assistant pastor in San Salvador and in Tampico. In June of 1923, he married Miss Lula Jackson and the two labored in organizing the First Baptist Church of Madero City where he was ordained on Oct. 7, 1924. In 1925 they moved to La Junta, Colorado where Ramon pastored the First Mexican Baptist Church until August of 1929. From there the Tolosas went to Michigan to work with the Mexican people in several cities which resulted in their organizing the First Mexican Baptist Church in Saginaw with forty-five charter members. By 1937 the congregation had saved $3000, the Northern Baptist Home Mission Society loaned them $3000 more and a new facility was dedicated on Dec. 12 the same year. Because of liberalism Ramon withdrew from the Convention. But due to the reversionary clause which had been written into the deed which allowed the property to revert to the denomination if sold, it was seized by the denomination. It mattered not that the loan had been repaid. Ramon died on Nov. 3, 1978.
Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 160-61. [C.F: This Day in Baptist History II by David L. Cummins and E. Wayne Thompson 2000 Bob Jones University Press, Greenville, S.C.]
Baptist Stalwarts
This Day in Baptist History Past
March 22, 1720 – John Gill, one of the long line of pastors of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, was ordained to the gospel ministry. He was born in Nov. 1897 and died on Oct. 14, 1697, sixty-three years before Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s birth. Spurgeon was a very young man when he became pastor of this church, that under his ministry, became the largest and most renowned church in the world at that time. Others that preceded him were Benjamin Keach and Benjamin Stinton, before Gill, and John Rippon, Joseph Angus, and James Smith prior to Spurgeon. Every preacher is different, but all have stories ascribed to them that in reality happened to those that went before them. Who hasn’t heard the one about the woman who Spurgeon allowed to cut off a portion of his tie because she didn’t like it, and then suggested that he allow her to let him cut off a portion of her tongue because he had something against her? However an 1849 periodical called The Baptist Memorial relates that the exact anecdote had taken place in 1769, and Rev. John Gill was the pastor. Gill was not known for his humor, but apparently even he could enjoy a good laugh. Spurgeon had a keen sense of humor. One wrote of him, “What a bubbling fountain of humor…I have laughed more…when in his company…than during all the rest of my life…He had the most fascinating gift of laughter I ever knew in any man, and he had also the greatest ability for making all who heard him laugh with him. He was a good example of the words of Solomon: A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones [Pr 17:22].
Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 157-59. [C.F: Enoch Hutchinson and Stephen Remington, The Baptist Memorial (New York: Z.P. Hatch, 1849, p. 30.]
March 22, 1720 – John Gill, one of the long line of pastors of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, was ordained to the gospel ministry. He was born in Nov. 1897 and died on Oct. 14, 1697, sixty-three years before Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s birth. Spurgeon was a very young man when he became pastor of this church, that under his ministry, became the largest and most renowned church in the world at that time. Others that preceded him were Benjamin Keach and Benjamin Stinton, before Gill, and John Rippon, Joseph Angus, and James Smith prior to Spurgeon. Every preacher is different, but all have stories ascribed to them that in reality happened to those that went before them. Who hasn’t heard the one about the woman who Spurgeon allowed to cut off a portion of his tie because she didn’t like it, and then suggested that he allow her to let him cut off a portion of her tongue because he had something against her? However an 1849 periodical called The Baptist Memorial relates that the exact anecdote had taken place in 1769, and Rev. John Gill was the pastor. Gill was not known for his humor, but apparently even he could enjoy a good laugh. Spurgeon had a keen sense of humor. One wrote of him, “What a bubbling fountain of humor…I have laughed more…when in his company…than during all the rest of my life…He had the most fascinating gift of laughter I ever knew in any man, and he had also the greatest ability for making all who heard him laugh with him. He was a good example of the words of Solomon: A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones [Pr 17:22].
Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 157-59. [C.F: Enoch Hutchinson and Stephen Remington, The Baptist Memorial (New York: Z.P. Hatch, 1849, p. 30.]
Monday, March 21, 2011
This Day in Baptist History
March 21, 1820 – Adiel Sherwood was ordained to the gospel ministry, by the Bethesda Baptist Church, in Greene County, Georgia, Jesse Mercer, pastor. Adiel was born in Ft. Edward, N.Y., on Oct. 3, 1791, to Col. and Mrs. Adiel Sherwood. His father served under Gen. Geo. Washington in the Rev. War and had amassed much wealth, but his fortune was lost, and young Adiel had to work to earn his way through school, which included Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He spent a year at Andover Theological Seminary where he met Luther Rice, the returned missionary partner of the Judson’s. Under his influence he became a part-time city missionary and field rep. for the Mass. Baptist Missions Society. In 1818, at age 27, suffering with TB, he traveled to Georgia. He became effective as an educator, itinerant preacher, revivalist/evangelist, church planter and pastor of Baptist churches. He had great ability in organization. He served as professor of Columbian College in Wash. D.C., helped found Mercer Institute, and was President of Shurtleff College in Alton, IL. But he was most outstanding in the pulpit. In 1827 in Eatonton, Georgia, revival fell and continued in the Ocmulgee Assoc. in the fall of that year, under his powerful preaching, 4,000 responded to prayer. In a year there were not less than 15,000 additions to the churches by baptism. He traveled through forty counties in GA, preaching 333 sermons while maintaining his pastoral duties. In 1865 Dr. Sherwood moved to Missouri to live out the rest of his days. He died on Aug. 19, 1879, in his eighty-eighth year. He had been preaching for almost three score and ten years. Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 156-57. [C.F: Julia L. Sherwood, Memoir of Adiel Sherwood, D.D. (Philadelphia: Grand and Faires, 1884), p. 170.]
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