Joseph Medlicott Scriven Unsuspecting Hymnwriter

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This is the day that … Joseph Medlicott Scriven was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1819.

He entered Trinity College, Dublin, intent on following a career in the army – like his father.

Poor health prevented this.

He fell for a lovely young woman, but on the eve of their wedding she accidentally drowned. He never recovered from the shock. The Irishman began to wander, hoping to forget his sorrow. At age 25, he finally settled in Canada, where he worked as a school teacher.

As a committed Christian connected with the Plymouth Brethren his faith led him to do menial tasks for poor widows and the sick. He often worked for no wages and was regarded by the people of the community as a kind man, albeit a bit odd.

He later fell in love again and planned to marry a wonderful Canadian woman. But again, tragedy struck. His new fiancée, Eliza Roche, died after contracting pneumonia.

“With failing health and meagre income … he became greatly depressed” (Companion to Baptist Hymnal, by W. Reynolds, page 422).

In 1855, a friend visited an ill Scriven and discovered a poem he had written for his ailing mother in faraway Ireland. Scriven didn’t have the money to visit her, but he sent her the poem as an encouragement. He called it “Pray Without Ceasing.” When the friend inquired about the poem’s origins, Scriven reportedly answered, “The Lord and I did it between us.”

Scriven never intended for the poem to be published, but it made its rounds, and was set to music in 1868 by musician Charles Converse, who titled it “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” It has since become one of our greatest hymns.

And at the age of 67 Scriven was found drowned … “whether suicidal or accidental” no-one knows (10 August, 1886).

A monument is erected to his memory in Port Hope, where he lived and wrote his immortal hymn
What a Friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear;
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer …

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.

Baedeker Preaches Across Europe

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This is the day that … Frederick Wilhelm Baedeker was born in Germany, in 1823.

At the age of 25 we find him discharged from compulsory army training due to ill-health.

In 1851 he married, but, alas, his young bride died three months later.

Sick and distraught, Baedeker set sail on a French ship (which was nearly wrecked on the way) to Australia. He arrived “on crutches”.

Four years later a neighbour invited him to hear Lord Radstock, an evangelical Anglican, who was speaking at a series of meetings organised by the local Brethren assembly. He reluctantly consented to attend one meeting.

In Baedeker’s own words: “I went in a proud German infidel and came out a humble believing disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ambassadors for Christ, page 245).

His wife was also converted. For the next 40 years Baedeker preached the gospel across Europe … in Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Switzerland, Finland, and especially in Russia. Three times he crossed Siberia as far as the island of Sakhalin.

“Into every corner of Russia he penetrated with the gospel message. Permits were granted, through the influence of a Christian countess … which gave him access to all the prisons of Russia and Siberia …” (Chief Men Among the Brethren, page 145).

Thousands of Bibles and gospel portions, supplied by the British and Foreign Bible Society, were distributed.

But his ministry also took him into the homes of the aristocracy. Drawing-room meetings in palatial country homes would see him opening the Scriptures to “princesses, counts and barons”. Such meetings raised the opposition of the media and authors like Dostoevski and Tolstoy (Ambassadors for Christ, page 246).

“Forbidden by police to hold religious services in Riga, Baedeker obtained permission to lecture on ‘sin and salvation’!” (ibid, page 247).

Thousands packed into the hall night after night …

Despite this extensive missionary activity he lived most of his life in England, except when on evangelistic tours. He was a close friend of George Müller of Bristol and Lord Radstock, and was originally a member of the Plymouth Brethren (Open Brethren) but later worked as an independent. He worked with Radstock in the first St. Petersburg revival in 1874-1876.

During a two-day Brethren conference back in England, Dr Baedeker caught a chill and died soon after – 9 October, 1906 – at the age of 83.

To those who came to visit him during his last hours he would say: “I am going to see the King in His beauty” (Twelve Marvellous Men, page 20). And he surely did.

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.

Howell Harris Preaching in the Rain

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This is the day that … Howell Harris died, in 1773, “loyal to the last to the church whose sacraments he had been denied. His funeral was attended by 20,000 people.”

He was born in Wales on 23 January 1714, and early in life he decided to become a Church of England clergyman.

By the age of 17 he was “playing cards and drinking, dice-playing and gossiping,” and by his own confession, living “like a hypocrite.”

But on Palm Sunday, 1735, the vicar of the church he attended said: “If you are not fit to come to the Lord’s Table, you are not fit to come to church, not fit to live, not fit to die.” Thus began his pilgrimage to the Father’s House, and on 25 May of that same year he was able to rejoice in the knowledge of sins forgiven.

Although he became a member of the Established Church, he was never an ordained clergyman, and the more he sought the friendship of his non-Anglican brethren the more his church parted company with him.

He is remembered as the founder of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, and a remarkable revivalist. Thousands gathered to hear his open-air preaching. “Two thousand people once stood two hours in drenching rain unable to tear themselves away from the spell of Harris’ eloquence.”

It was he who influenced George Whitefield to take his pulpit to the fields.

At times he was subjected to the fury of mobs – especially at Bala in 1741. At Caerleon the angry crowd attacked, and Harris’ fellow preacher was blinded in one eye.

Arnold Dallimore describes him as “the greatest Welshman of that day and, indeed, as among the greatest men that Wales ever produced” (Biography of G. Whitefield, Volume 1, page 246).

This post is based on the work of my late friend Donald Prout whose love for books and Christian history led him to collate a daily Christian calendar. I continue to work with Don’s wife, Barbara, to share his life work with the world. I have updated some of these historical posts and will hopefully draw from Don’s huge files of clippings to continue this series beyond Don’s original work. More of Don’s work can be found at www.donaldprout.com.

Sir Robert Anderson

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This is the day that … Sir Robert Anderson was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1841.

It was at the age of 19 that he saw a change in one of his sisters … she had been converted at a revival meeting nearby.  “I cherished the thought,” he wrote, “that the next Sunday services in the kirk might bring me blessing.” It was at the evening service that Dr John Hall made the gospel plain.  “His sermon thrilled me,” wrote Robert Anderson later.  “Yet I deemed his doctrine unscriptural, so I waylaid him as he left the vestry and on our homeward walk tackled him about his ‘heresies’…”

There on the pavement that night the minister challenged him “to accept Christ or reject Him.”  To which Robert replied:  “In God’s name I will accept Christ.”   He could say, “I turned homeward with the peace of God filling my heart” (Sir Robert Anderson, by his son, page 19).

He threw in his lot with the Brethren, becoming a well-known author.  Some of his books deal with prophecy, some cross swords with the growing influence of modernistic (liberal) theology, and some, like The Lord from Heaven, are richly devotional.  His volume, The Coming Prince, (published in 1882), is a study of the Antichrist, and helped to popularise the dispensational interpretation of Scripture.

Having studied law and criminology, in 1888 he was appointed Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard.  It was the same year that ‘Jack the Ripper’ began his orgy of death.

A curious problem presented itself when I read Stephen Knights’ assertion that Sir Robert Anderson “was well advanced on the Masonic ladder” (Jack the Ripper, pages 178-179;  Sun Newspaper, 3 August, 1976).  And the implication was made that Anderson “covered up” Jack the Ripper’s obvious Masonic connections!

But in a recent volume, Inside the Brotherhood, by Martin Short, there is documented evidence (he gives the references) that Sir Robert was not a Freemason!  (page 41).

The biography of Sir Robert Anderson written by his son makes it abundantly clear that he was a Christ-exalting child of God who would have had no time for the Christ-excluding Masonic Lodge.

He died on 15 November, 1918.

William Walters – God’s Printer

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This is the day that … William Walters died, in 1907, on the Isle of Wight, where he was holidaying.

Born in Wolverhampton, England, about 1848, to godly parents, William grew up apprenticed to the printing trade.

Eventually he had his own little printing business – and he also issued some Christian publications.  These were almost entirely for the edification of Christians associated with gatherings in sympathy with the teaching of William Kelly … one of the pioneers among the Plymouth Brethren movement.

By the time he was 40 God began to “enlarge the vision” of William Walters.

“It became impressively evident that the full compendium of truth was not possessed by any one section of the church of God.  There were others who, loving the same Lord, were devout students of Holy Scripture …” (Publishing Salvation, pages 9, 10).

Thus it was he decided to print Scripture portions to be freely distributed.

God blessed the venture, so that on 6 February, 1888, he created the Scripture Gift Mission (S.G.M.), although that particular name was not settled upon for another four years.

For 18 years the saintly Bishop Handley Moule of the Church of England was president of S.G.M.  And the work of this great movement continues to this very day.

Keen to get the scriptures into the hands or ordinary folk Walters was an innovator. When William first put illustrations in his Bible materials in the 1890s, it was considered to be a radical idea.

William Walters played the oboe and wrote choruses.  Here is one (which may be sung to the tune Over the Sunset Mountains):
          Hope of my heart, Lord Jesus,
          my soul still thirsts for Thee,
          While waiting for Thy coming,
          my guide and strength still be;
          And though dark clouds may gather
          to hide me from Thy love,
          By Thine own power still draw me,
          and lift my soul above.

William Walters was buried in Norwood Cemetery … just near C.H. Spurgeon.  One had preached the gospel from the pulpit … the other from his printing press.