Monthly Archives: February 2009

Jessie Penn-Lewis Preaches Holiness

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Jessie Penn-Lewis was born in 1861, in Wales to a Calvinist Methodist minister. Her family had moved into an old museum – and in the attic of the old tower Jessie “taught herself to read the Bible freely” by the age of four. “There were books, books, and more books everywhere” in the home.

She received little schooling due to ill health, and was married at the age of 19 to a young British civil servant, William Penn-Lewis (despite her brother warning the fiancé that he would be looking after an invalid for life). She was converted on New Year’s Day, 1882, and ministered in the Young Women’s Christian Association, which – in 1886 – took a vital Christian stand.

She is spoken of as having received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, testifying that the Cross must come first, in dying to self, to enable the believer to move on to Pentecost.

Her preaching ministry then took her around England and on to Scandinavia, Russia, Switzerland, Canada, the USA, and India. She spoke at conferences such as Mildmay and Keswick. She records the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the Australian Keswick Convention of 1891, speaking of people who were “drunk with the joy of the Lord”.

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She was also involved in the Welsh Revival of 1904-5, developing a close relationship with Evan Roberts, the principal evangelist of that revival. When Roberts suffered a mental breakdown in 1905 she and her husband welcomed him into their home where he lived for many years. He also co-authored several works with her.

She credits South African writer Andrew Murray as having had a profound impact on her, through his writings.

In her preaching and writing there developed a strong holiness theme … which placed emphasis upon the complete crucifixion of the ‘flesh’. Nevertheless, she was also invited to speak at the Keswick Convention in 1927 … where the doctrine of holiness is based more on the new nature ‘counteracting’ the old nature, rather than the ‘crucifixion’ view that she held in common with those of the Wesleyan tradition.

She established the Llandrindod Wells Convention in Wales and later the Matlock Conferences. She contributed regularly to “The Overcomer”, a quarterly with worldwide circulation, which she founded in 1908.

Her book, War on the Saints, became a best seller in Christian circles. She also wrote Spiritual Warfare and over a dozen other books, and at one time at least, she believed that the Great Tribulation began in 1906.

Jessie Penn-Lewis died in London on 15 August, 1927.

Not everyone thinks highly of Jessie Penn-Lewis. Some say that she developed an obsessive distrust of spiritual manifestations, such as were evident in the Welsh Revival and in the Sunderland Pentecostalism.

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

The Prayers of a Mother

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Mothers have often felt powerless to see good outcomes in their wayward children. History and the Bible attest to the effect of a woman’s prayers and the actions of a praying mum. Those who follow my daily Church History posts will recognise two mothers in particular who saw their prayers answered for their wayward sons.

Augustine Had a Praying Mother

The famous Christian leader and preacher from the fourth century, Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, did not start his life as a godly man. In fact he was immoral and a shame to his mother.

This caused great distress to his mother, Monica, even though she had great impact on his younger life. She was a godly woman who did not want her son consumed by sin, but hoped for him to serve God. Monica, however, had seen a vision, which she told to her son. She saw that one day he would become a Christian in answer to her prayers. The great Augustine that we remember was in fact the son of his mother’s prayers.

Despite Monica’s vision and her attempts to teach her son godly living, young Augustine pursued those things that appealed to his human mind. He dabbled in theatre, philosophy, rhetoric and heresy. Like many people today, he expected to find the ultimate truth from his personal explorations.

Profligate Living

Because Augustine’s notion of life was that people must find their own truth he also felt free to find his own morality. He had multiple mistresses. In fact he was so given to immorality he was later in awe of simple Christians who could resist the temptations which dominated him.

Now consider a son in such a state. His philosophy of life, intellectual pursuits and immoral lifestyle made him seem unreachable. Onlookers could have considered him a lost cause and a hopeless case.

But his mother did not stop praying for him. She had the assurance that came through her earlier vision, and she had God’s Word to assure her.

Praying Women in the Bible

Jesus gave a parable about a widow woman who deserved justice. Because she was of no social consequence an unjust judge dismissed her case. She was undeterred, but came back repeatedly to cry out for justice. In the end the unjust judge gave in to her demands and gave her justice, only to stop her pestering him.

Jesus used that woman’s situation to show that persistent prayer will be heard by God, who is much more willing to help than that unjust judge was.

“And he spake a parable to them to show that men should always pray and not give up; Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubles me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge said. And will not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night to him, though he bear long with them?” Luke 18:1-7

Powerful Powerless Prayers

Even though a woman may feel powerless and unable to demand obedience from her son or justice from her society, yet she can pray powerful prayers which God will answer. This makes the powerless woman into a powerful woman of God.

That’s what happened for Monica, as she prayed for Augustine. She not only prayed herself, but she enlisted the prayers of others, tearfully determined to see her son saved.

One person Monica asked to pray with her was a bishop who comforted her with confidence in her prayers. The bishop said to her: “Leave him there, and only pray to God for him; he will discover by reading what is his error, and how great his impiety. …. Go, live so; it cannot be that the son of those tears will perish.”

While Monica was praying for her son, Augustine came under the powerful preaching of godly Ambrose in Milan. After Augustine was converted he said of Ambrose, “I was led to him unknowingly by God, that I might knowingly be led to God by him”.

Jacob DeShazer’s Mum

Jacob DeShazer was an American airman in World War II who was shot down returning from a bombing raid over Japan. He had not come to faith in God, but his mother prayed for his soul.

On the very night that Jacob leaped from his plane to parachute into enemy territory his mother woke from her sleep with the sense of falling. She did not realise that her experience had a connection with her son, but she prayed. And she continued praying for her boy, as she had done before.

DeShazer ended up in solitary confinement in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp. While others were shot, his life was spared. And eventually he turned his heart to God and asked for a Bible. Once he received it he devoured God’s Word, reading it through multiple times and cross-referencing events to see that the Old Testament prophecies of Jesus were truly fulfilled in his life.

DeShazer came to faith and later returned to Japan as a very effective missionary.

God Answers the Prayers of a Mother

Mums, you may feel that you are powerless as your children head off to lives which you want to save them from. But you are not powerless. God listens to your prayers. God will hear and answer, as you press in and claim the lives of your sons and daughters.

I encourage you to do what Augustine’s mother did. And do what DeShazer’s mother did. Cry out to God for the soul of your child and confidently expect God to answer. He will.

Constantine Imposes Christianity on Rome

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Constanine the Great was born Flavius Valerius Constantinus, at Naissus, Serbia (so states Christian History Magazine, No. 27, page 23). But the year? “Probably 272”, however others put the range as from 274 to 288. His father was Constantius Chlorus, a Roman officer, and his mother was Helena, a concubine and a woman of inferior birth.

Emperor Diocletian had sought to frustrate the power of the Praetorian Guard by dividing the Roman Empire into four empires governed by tetrarchs. However this situation quickly led to rivalry among the various tetrarchs.

Constantine’s father was made the new Emperor of the West, on the resignation of his own father.

During that process Constantine recognised the weakness of Diocletian’s system, and when he became Western Emperor, or Caesar, on his father’s death, he sought to keep out of the rivalry.

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However the situation deteriorated after the death of the Easter Emperor, Galerius and Constantine found himself compelled to fight for his throne against Maxentius. Having been reluctant to engage in war over several years, Constantine made haste to confront his opponent, despite his weaker forces. His men were more highly disciplined and gained the advantage in several battles as he marched toward Rome for battle with Maxentius.

Their armies clashed at the famous Battle of Milvian Bridge, October 28, 312. (See the post for October 28, 2007)

According to two Christian writers, Constantine had a dream on the eve of that battle which convinced him to adopt a Christian emblem – and wage war with his rival, trusting in the Christians’ God. He had his men decorate their shields with the sign of the Cross.

Despite being heavily outnumbered Constantine won and Maxentius drowned in the Tiber River. Constantine became the new Emperor – and he professed Christianity. He quickly proclaimed the Edict of Milan, jointly with the tetrarch Licinius, early in 313, which approved Christian worship. The persecution of Christians which had been a reign of terror under Diocletian and Maximian was now ended. Christians were released from prison and from the mines. Many who had abandoned the faith to avoid persecution now returned, repentant.

Constantine also convened the great Council of Nicea in 325AD, where over 300 bishops gathered to deal with the Arian heresy.

Initially Constantine allowed Licinius, the sole surviving tetrarch appointed by Diocletian, to keep his power. Constantine married his sister to Licinius. However Licinius conspired against Constantine and 10 years of fighting ensued until Licinius was executed.

Constantine was then the sole and undisputed supreme ruler of the Roman Empire. He moved the capital of the Empire from Rome to Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople.

As part of his on-going support for Christianity, Clergy were exempted from taxes, Sunday was set aside as a day of worship … and his dear mother, Helena, made a trip to the Holy Land, where she found “the true cross” and a host of other relics.

Among his other achievements, he had Crispus, his eldest son, executed, and Fausta, his wife for 20 years, drowned in a hot bath! (Miller’s Church History, page 202).

He issued coins dedicated to the ‘sun god’ – and he was baptised by an Arian bishop shortly before his death on 22 May, 337.

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

John Duncan Missionary to the Hungarian Jews

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John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan died, on February 26, 1870. He was not really a rabbi, but such was the nickname by which he became known.

John Duncan was born to humble, pious parents, in Gilcomston, Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1796, his father, John, being a shoemaker. Young John was the only child of his parents to survive infancy. He was a sickly child and a bout of smallpox rendered him permanently blind in one eye. His biographer describes him as “a delicate, dreamy, clever, engaging, affectionate, high-spirited and occasionally passionate boy, sometimes crying bitterly under the severity of paternal discipline, sometimes abruptly laughing aloud at the brightness, or at the humour, of his own hidden thoughts”.

Duncan spent time in atheism, despite the faith of his parents. The cogent reasoning and prayers to the “Great King” by his lecturer, Dr Mearns, gave Duncan a logical acceptance of the existence of God.

Trained for the Presbyterian ministry, and licensed to preach on June 24, 1825, it was not until the following year that he was genuinely converted, due to the personal work of Rev Dr Caesar Malan of Geneva, who visited Aberdeen on an evangelistic tour. Duncan was at that time in a state of mental depression.

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In 1828 Duncan enjoyed an additional spiritual touch on his life, which he referred to as his “second conversion”, due to its profound impact. He had become stale in his faith and struggled with that until he came again to strong conviction and soundness of belief.

In 1830 he was given 10 months as minister at the Chapel of Persie, from which his reputation as a profound, deeply-taught preacher of God’s Word began to spread. Thus he was given the post of English Assistant to the Rev Robert Clark of the Duke Street Gaelic Chapel with the duty of leading an English-speaking congregation on Sunday afternoons. And from there he was promoted to his own church, Milton Parish Church, which was built for him through a Church Building Association which had started in Glasgow.

Duncan married Janet Tower, of Aberdeen, in 1837, and she proved a valuable helpmate. However, just over two years later she died in 1840, following the premature birth of their child.

There was great interest in Scotland at that time for the winning of Jews to Christ. Duncan was strongly motivated in that direction and so, after about a decade of ministry in Glasgow, Duncan was selected to mount an evangelistic endeavour to the Jews in Budapest, Hungary. He attended to that task in the years 1841-42, ably assisted by his second wife. The Archduchess of Hungary had long been praying for the help of a man of God in her city, so was delighted to have Duncan at his work.

This was the most fruitful and happy season of Duncan’s life and ministry. Duncan’s excellent knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, customs and beliefs fascinated the Jewish community and gave him ready access to them. Among his converts were Alfred Edersheim and Adolph Saphir; both of whom became outstanding Presbyterian theologians.

Duncan later became Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages in New College, Edinburgh. Previously, in 1839, he had applied for the post of Dean of the Hebrew Chair of the University of Glasgow, but was unsuccessful. Dr Duncan occupied this chair for twenty-seven years from 1843 till his death in 1870.

“His students did not get much Hebrew instruction, but they were inspired by his spirit, so eminently godly” (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, page 673).

Biographer A. Moody-Stuart tells of Duncan’s strong Calvinistic views – “his aversion to Arminianism was intense” (page 192).

And the rather quaint story is told of his second marriage. Some years following the death of his first wife, Duncan married a widow named Mrs Torrance. But it nearly misfired. When the cab arrived to take him to the wedding, he was not to be found. “His niece found him in bed sound asleep with a Hebrew book in his hand” (Moody-Stuart, page 118).

And another story of his eccentricities (of which there are many) is that when asked if he would like another cup of tea – “having drained his cup 14 times, he replied, ‘No, thank you, I never take more than two cups of tea’” (page 117).

His strength waned in his later years and in January, 1870 his heart weakness significantly reduced his strength. From that time he ceased to attend the College. He passed away peacefully on the morning of February 26.

On his deathbed he said to his biographer, “I have been at the point of death. But I found that the one great mysterious death of Calvary was all I needed” (page 151).

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

Freedom and God’s Law

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The concept of freedom seems contradictory to the idea of law. But the two are intrinsically linked so you cannot have true freedom without God’s Law. And to attest to that fact I have a quote from an ancient man of God and a phrase from the Bible which you need to be aware of.

Remember the Galley Slave

In my previous posts about the Galley Slave Analogy I created a fictitious analogy to illustrate how everyone is in fact a slave, but one form of slavery provides freedom, while the other consumes us.

What I am sharing here is another aspect of the same principle, but this time I am being more Biblical in my reference point. Instead of a fictitious illustration that represents a truth, I want you to see what God has said in Holy Writ.

God’s Law Frees People While Man’s Law Enslaves

We think of law as most often applied to deal with the guilty. Laws are put in place to define prescribed behaviour and to provide punishment for those who do not comply with the legal requirement.

Man’s law, then, ascribes guilt and prescribes punishment. Man’s law enslaves. It enslaves because it imposes restrictions. It also enslaves because it imposes punishment, which may well be imprisonment or loss of liberty.

God’s law, on the other hand, actually sets people free. So God’s law must be looked at with fresh eyes. Do not try to understand God’s law by seeing it as just another form of man’s law. There is something supernatural and dynamic about God’s law when it is applied in our lives.

Good Success

God’s Law is so amazing that simply meditating on it causes a person to be successful in their endeavours. That’s what God told Joshua and it proved to be true in his life as a national leader and military commander.

When Joshua took over leadership of the nation of Israel, after Moses’ death, God promised him that meditating on God’s Law would bring him success that was good.

“This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate therein day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Joshua 1:8

Restored Life

God’s Law has another amazing power. It rebuilds a person’s life, including their internal, unseen dimensions. King David had much to say about the important qualities of the “Law of the Lord“. The longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119, makes frequent reference to God’s Law.

In Psalm 19 David declares that God’s Law actually “restores our soul”. It has the effect of putting people back together again.

“The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.” Psalm 19:7

John Wycliffe and God’s Law

John Wycliffe is regarded as the earliest reformer. In the late 1300′s he gave the English their first Bibles, in their own tongue. He also challenged the unqualified authority of Popes and Bishops, declaring that only God’s Word, the Bible, is the ultimate authority. Men are fallible, even if they have achieved high office. God’s Word is reliable and divinely powerful.

John Wycliffe spoke of God’s Law as something that brings us our ultimate hope. It has a unique role in human affairs. That role is not of setting up the “do’s” and “don’ts” but of freeing people from God’s Judgement.

This is how Wycliffe put it: “God’s law, without which no one could be justified.”

Wycliffe saw God’s Law as the means by which people receive Justification, instead of the sentence of Death.

The Law of Freedom

Imagine a law being described as the “law of freedom”. That’s how the Apostle James described God’s Law that is at work in Christians. In the language of some Bible translations the term is the “law of liberty“.

“Whoever looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, not being a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” James 1:25

“So speak, and so act, as they that will be judged by the law of liberty.” James 2:12

Biblical Liberty

The Greek word used in the original text for the law of liberty describes the kind of freedom which God’s Law brings to us.

A person who is at liberty is one who is: unrestrained (to go at pleasure), that is, (as a citizen) not a slave (whether freeborn or manumitted [released from slavery]), or (generally) exempt (from obligation or liability).

People who have come under God’s Law enjoy that kind of freedom. It is the freedom of a citizen of heaven, who has access to God’s presence, can come boldly to God’s throne of Grace, is not enslaved to sin, shame, guilt, fear or demonic oppression, and is exempt from the impositions that weigh upon others.

This kind of liberty is described elsewhere in the Bible as “glorious liberty” (Romans 8:21).

God’s Law Sets You Free

Man’s laws are punitive, repressive, spiteful, vengeful and controlling. To be under man’s law is to be in a most unhappy position. Men use human legal systems to oppress, exact punishment, get even, and so on.

But God’s law has power to set men free! Oh to be under God’s law and not man’s!

The Law that is in mind here is not the Old Testament law of “touch not, taste not”, but the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 12:2). When you put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Saviour you are Justified before God, as if you never sinner. Therefore the legal requirement of the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament Laws given through Moses is satisfied. You are then made free from the “law of sin and death”.

Did you see that, the law sets you free!

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:2

Let’s here it for God’s perfect law of liberty, that makes us free, gives us good success and restores our very life! Without God’s Law we have no hope!

Susanna Wesley Defends Her Kitchen Ministry

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Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley, wrote to her husband in defence of her ministry! It was February 25, 1712. John Wesley was only 9 years old at this time and it was 30 years before Susanna’s death.

When Susanna’s husband, the Rev Samuel Wesley, was absent, attending Convocation in London, his good wife decided to invite the parishioners to the Epworth rectory for instruction and prayer.

The rectory had been destroyed by fire three years earlier and not completely rebuilt. The Wesley’s were poor all their lives, keen to serve the Lord rather than acquire wordly comforts.

Susanna already had her husband’s blessing to read sermons and pray with her own children on Sunday afternoons, but then she realised that the whole congregation needed more spiritual input too. Some were hungry to join in her family time, and so she allowed them to come.

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Initially there were about 30 people attending to hear her devotional readings, and Samuel was delighted with that outcome.

Samuel Wesley is remembered as a wonderful man. He is described as “a learned man, a comprehensive thinker, a racy writer and speaker, a brave worker, a manly soul, hasty, impetuous, hot, but loving, liberal, and true”.

Susanna Wesley was described by her husband as “the best of mothers”. Samuel wrote to his children telling them to honour “the wholesome and sweet motherly advice and counsel which she has often given you to fear God”.

Susanna gave each of her children a specific day and time when she would be available exclusively for them.

Trouble erupted after a year of this public ministry in the rectory kitchen, due to the arrival of a new curate. (A curate is a minister in training who assists a minister as part of his final preparation for leading a parish himself.)

Visits to the kitchen in the rectory at Epworth had become extremely popular and this seemed to be the cause of the problem. Susanna did this public ministry, albeit in her own home, without asking the Bishop’s permission! And women did not do such things in the 18th century!

The curate, Rev Inman, wrote a letter to Samuel complaining of these gatherings. After all, his morning services were far outnumbered by the 200(!) who gathered to meet in Susanna’s kitchen. “These are Susanna’s figures – and she was never accurate!” (Susanna, by R.L. Harmon, page 78). Her practice was to read a sermon selected from her husband’s library shelves.

Inman referred to the gathering in offensive terms, as “a pestiferous gathering of Dissenters”.

Samuel wrote to Susanna from London to restrain her abounding ministry to the parishioners. It seems, however, that he wrote to rebuke her only in deference to the authority of his superiors. It also seems that he was happy for her resolute reply, sufficient to answer the Bishop and allow her to continue her ministry.

Susanna’s reply reveals something of what he had written, and the wisdom of this incomparable lady of the rectory, and the inspiration she was to her future evangelist sons.

Susanna pointed out the great effectiveness of the meetings on life in the parish. “It is plain, in fact, that this one thing has brought more people to church than ever anything did in so short a time. We used not to have above twenty or twenty-five at evening service, whereas we have now between two and three hundred, which are more than ever came before to hear Inman in the morning”.

After explaining that “the salvation of souls” might be sought, not only in the pulpit but in “common conversation” and that she did not think there was “one man among them who could read a sermon without spelling a good part of it” and how the crowd often “begged” her to continue, she closed with this “piece-de-resistance”…

“If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command, in such full and express terms, as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Samuel relented … and the meetings continued!

Another post on Susanna Wesley can be found at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/ministry/church-history/susanna-wesley-raises-children

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

Amanda Smith the Colored Evangelist

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Amanda Jane Berry Smith died, on February 24, 1915. She was born into slavery on a farm in Long Green in Maryland, USA on January 23, 1837. She was the oldest daughter in a family of thirteen children. Her father was able to buy his freedom, with funds raised by selling products he made in his spare time. He then continued raising funds until he had purchased his wife and his five children born in slavery.

Amanda was an enterprising young lady. She taught herself to read by cutting out large letters from her father’s newspapers then asking her mother to make words for her to read. “I shall never forget how delighted I was when I first read: ‘The house, the tree, the dog, the cow.’ I thought I knew it all.”

Amanda’s parents were devout and the father read the Bible to his family each day. Amanda was converted at the age of 13, during a revival at a Methodist Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania.

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Her own words were that she was “a poor coloured servant girl sitting away back by the door” when a young white women entreated her with tears to accept Christ. “I was the only coloured girl there, but I went. She knelt beside me with her arms around me and prayed for me…”
She felt the Lord’s touch at her conversion. “I went to get up, but found I could not stand. They took hold of me and stood me on my feet. My strength seemed to come to me, but I was frightened. I was afraid to step. I seemed to be so light. In my heart was peace, but I did not know how to exercise faith as I should. I went home and resolved I would be the Lord’s and live for him. All the days were happy and bright.”

She married at the age of 17, but her husband, although ‘religious’, turned out to be a drunkard. He joined the Union Army during the Civil War and never returned. She later married James Smith, a deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who also became indifferent to things spiritual. But Amanda’s faith kept growing.

A sermon on holiness by a Presbyterian evangelist, John S Inskip, was indeed a “second blessing” to her. Gone were her fears of ‘white people’. “I would rather be black and fully saved than white and not saved”, she said.

She began to preach. Invitations came from across the United States – and even England. “In 1876 she was invited to speak at a Keswick Conference”, then to Scotland, India and Burma. She was not, emphasises one biographer, a feminist or an agitator for women’s ordination. “The thought of ordination never once entered my mind, for I had received my ordination from Him who said, ‘Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you …”

Smith became a legendary personality in her own time. This was achieved by her published works, mostly as letters to such periodicals as Wesleyan/Holiness, Methodist Episcopal, and African-American Methodist, from the 1870s until her death. Her book “An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist: Containing an Account of Her Life Work of Faith, and Her Travels in America, England, Ireland, Scotland, India, and Africa as an Independent Missionary” was published in 1893 and sold widely.

Amanda Smith died in 1915 in a suburb of Chicago, where she had spent her last years heading up an orphanage for black children. She was 78 years of age.

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

Finding Time by Making Time

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In a previous post (Finding Time for Important Things) I pointed out that the things we think are priorities in our lives are actually “imagined priorities”. Our Real Priorities can easily be determined by what we spend our life doing.

When you give your time, energy and life over to a bunch of mundane things that you don’t want to eat up your life, you are actually giving them the right to eat up your life. Your imagined priorities are fake, since you never get around to them.

A Life Consumed

Most people do not live their life, but they simply burn it up in the fire of activities they are trapped in. Most people get caught in useless cycles which steal, kill and destroy their potential and destiny. Time, talent, energy, creativity, potential, significance and the like, get burned up in some very ordinary things, such as the job, bills, domestic routine, trivial friendships, daydreaming, amusement, cheap entertainment, trivial activities, pointless processes, and so on.

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Stop Worshiping the Ordinary

People worship very ordinary things with all their time, energy and mental and emotional faculties. They throw away decades of their life trying to empty the “IN” tray, only to have it filled up by others who don’t care about how they consume other people’s lives.

When people submit to that routine, pacing the treadmill of mundane chores, they give up all the “important things” and make the ordinary into their life obsession.

Work Will Finish You

I recently heard someone comment on the vanity of trying to get the job done. They were not talking about the importance of completing our tasks, but about the overall sense that work consumes us and never says “Thank You!”

All your endeavours to get on top of things is futile. The painting will need to be done again. The yard will need to be mowed again. What has been done will have to be re-done at some time. The customers will need new products. The current designs will need updating. The latest model will one day be insufficient for the task. And so it goes.

Work will never yield to your efforts. So don’t get excited about spending your life on the work that presents itself to you.

As one of my friends put it recently, “The Work Will Finish Us! We Will Never Finish It!”

Back to Priorities

The stuff that consumes your life probably does not deserve to eat up as much of you as you let it do. Your job and your workload could probably be scaled back with little real effect. But you may well have become so emotionally and energetically locked in to what you are doing that you let it simply eat you up.

So let’s get back to your priorities. Look again at those things you say are “important”. If they really should be important, how about taking time out of those things that are eating you up, and making time for those important things!

The only way to find time for important things is to take time off lesser things that you have allowed to gobble up your years. Remember, those things are never going to be conquered. Once you are dead and gone there will be others being eaten up by the never ending list of things to do.

So harness your life and set some new priorities, not by writing a list, but by changing what you do to fit something new in.

Go on. I know you can do it!

Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg Converts the Tamils of India

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Bartholomew Ziegenbalg died on February 23, 1719.

Born in Saxony in 1682 and raised in the university town of Halle, Germany, Ziegenbalg became a pioneer Protestant missionary to India, and the first to translate the Scriptures into an Indian language … some 80 years before the more famous William Carey.

This young German had been converted at the age of 17, and fired with Christian zeal by the Pietist movement within the Lutheran Church.

It was King Frederick IV of Denmark who saw the need to send missionaries to the fledgling Danish settlement of Tranquebar, on the southeast coast of India (in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu). August Francke, who was the leader of Pietism at the University of Halle, recommended Ziegenbalg as one of two men for the task.

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On 9 July, 1706, at the age of 22, Ziegenbald arrived at the Coromandel Coast in South East India with Heinrich Plütschau; the pair being the first protestant missionaries to India and encountering opposition both from Roman Catholicism and ungodly merchants. But within eight months Ziegenbalg was able to converse in the native Malabar Tamil tongue, within 10 months of his arrival he was baptising the first five converts, and on 14 June, 1707, he laid the foundation stone of his church “in spite of official jeers and opposition.” By 14 August, 1707, he could write that “63 persons gathered for worship and another to be baptised tomorrow”.

Ziegenbalg took keen interest in the new printing technology emerging in Europe. He preferred the printed word to the spoken sermon. He began writing books on Tamil language, dictionaries and manuals on printing.

After 2 years in India Ziegenbalg had compiled Biblithece Malabarke, a list of 161 Tamil books he had read, describing the content of each book.

However all was not clear sailing for this enterprising and gifted missionary. Militant Hindus opposed the work of the missionaries and the local Danish authorities did not want unrest in their new settlement.

In 1708 opposition reached its height, and Zeigenbalg was imprisoned for four months, charged with encouraging rebellion by converting the natives. But “the converts multiplied.” In October, 1708, free from prison, he commenced his translation of the Tamil New Testament, a task that was completed in three years.

Ziebenbalg found the weather a further challenge, added to the religious and official opposition. He wrote, “My skin was like a red cloth. The heat here is very great, especially during April, May and June, in which season the wind blows from the inland so strongly that it seems as if the heat comes straight out of the oven”.

In 1709 Ziegenbalg asked that a printing press be sent from Denmark and he sent back drawings of Tamil type faces he needed made into printing blocks. When the Tamil type blocks arrived in 1712 they were too large, so Ziegenbalg had locals caste smaller type blocks, from cheese tins.

The first press and paper came through the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in London, arriving in 1713, but the printing hand sent with the press ran away. Ziegenbalg then recruited and trained a German soldier to print his first book in India, in Portuguese.

Ziegenbalg was further assisted by Johanne Adler, a printer who arrived in Tamil Nadu in 1713 and who set up a type-making factory near Tranquebar to supply Ziegenbalg’s press. In 1715 a paper mill was set up in the village. And then Adler began making printing ink as well. Ziegenbalg’s printing ambitions were ready to be met, locally.

In 1716, the press produced the first English language book printed in Asia; “A Guide to the English Tongue”. Next year, the press produced a Portuguese ABC book.

Ziegenbalg and Plütschau encouraged the indigenous Indian Christians into positions of leadership. In 1733 they ordained the first Indian pastor, whom they had converted from Hinduism.

When Ziegenbalg died, at the age of 36, he left behind 350 converts, a missionary seminary, a grammar and lexicon of nearly 60,000 Tamil words, and the entire Bible in the Tamil language, along with Luther’s Catechisms, and other works translated into Tamil. We might add that he brought to India a respect for Christian missionaries, and an example for others to follow.

Ziegenbalg is credited for not only printing the first English book in Asia but also writing the first Tamil dictionary.

Ziegenbalg married in 1716 and at the same time official opposition lessened with the arrival of a friendlier governor. He set up a seminary to train the native pastors.

Another contribution from Ziegenbalg is seen in his keenness to reach the marginalised. He reached out to the untouchables and others whose place in the caste system restricted them. He sought to elevate them socially, as equals in the gospel. He also started the first school for girls, so they could be given opportunities previously denied them.

We are told that on his deathbed he shaded his eyes and cried out: “How is it so bright, as if the sun shone in my face …”

Upon his death in 1719 he was buried at The New Jerusalem church in Tranquebar, which he and his associates completed the previous year.

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com

James Russell Lowell the American Writer

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James Russell Lowell was born, in New England, USA on February 22, 1819.

He is described as “a poet, essayist, publicist, humorist, scholar and diplomatist” (Cyclopaedia of English Literature, Volume 3, page 799). DP notes: None of the books consulted tell me whether he professed to be a Christian – or not!

His father was a Unitarian clergyman in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and young James received a thorough education in Cambridge and Boston, graduating from Harvard College in 1838. But during his last year a spurned love led him to drastic action. “There was no measure to Lowell’s bitterness and rage. We have his miserable confession that he put a loaded pistol to his head but was too cowardly to fire.” (ibid, page 800). Later he married Maria White, and after her death nine years later (in 1853) he remarried.

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Two years after graduating from Harvard he was awarded the Bachelor of Laws degree by Harvard’s Law School. With a keen interest in literary pursuits he abandoned his legal career and sought to be a poet.

Lowell is associated with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, being in that group of authors sometimes called the Fireside Poets or the Schoolroom Poets. These poets displayed a conservative approach to verse and strong moral values.

His attempts at poetry show that, while quite capable, he was less naturally talented than he may have wished. His works are accused of being at times ‘forced’, in his efforts to express poetic qualities. Despite that criticism he succeeded as a poetic voice to the people of America. His sentiments at times piqued the hearts and minds of fellow Americans and spoke clearly to them even if not at the literary standard purists might aspire to.

As part of his literary pursuits he was appointed Professor of Modern Language at Harvard, succeeding Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Numerous books and articles flowed from his brilliant pen – one of them being a protest at the United States war with Mexico in 1845. It was a poem of 90 lines called, “The Present Crisis”. Garret Horder converted this poem into a hymn (about 1896), by piecing together 16 of Lowell’s lines. And the result is still found in many church hymnals –

Once to every man and nation
 Comes the moment to decide,
 In the strife of truth with falsehood,
 For the good or evil side;
 Through each choice God, speaking to us,
 Offers each the bloom or blight,
 Then the man or nation chooses
 For that darkness or that light…

Another significant work from Lowell is his 1848 “The Vision of Sir Launfal”, about one of King Arthur’s knights who went in quest of the Holy Grail, and in which Lowell teaches that true charity is greater than the casual gifts of the well-to-do. The book was extremely popular and used as a school text for many years, as it taught selflessness as a key to the success people seek. It was reprinted annually for more than half a century.

Lowell happily used vernacular language in his works, helping to elevate common speech as a worthy tool of artistic expression. Lowell’s The Biglow Papers ranks among the first American political satire. His public odes were praised by such as Henry Adams, William James, and William Dean Howells. Lowell was an effective diplomat during the period of America’s emergence as a world power, due to his personal charm, and he was one of America’s finest letter writers.

Following the Civil War Lowell became an increasingly public figure. His ambassadorial roles were to Spain from 1877-1880 and to the Court of St. James in England from 1880-1885. Following those appointments Lowell lived much of his time in England and wrote some of his most admired works.

Henry James said of Lowell, “He was strong without narrowness; he was wise without bitterness and bright without folly.”

James Russell Lowell died on 12 August, 1891. Since then his life and works have been generally discarded, despite the many worthy contributions he made in his own generation.

Find hundreds of succinct Church History posts at: http://chrisfieldblog.com/topics/ministry/church-history

This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com