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ON THIS DAY: JULY
This month we remember, among others, a Scots born
professor, a famous musician and composer and a woman
who became the only Scot believed to have perished in
a Nazi concentration camp.
1 July: Serf
Serf seems chiefly to have been associated with the foothills
of the Ochils, where churches and wells are dedicated
to his memory, and where he is placed by the ancient chronicler
Wyntoun. The Perthshire village of Dunning is another
location which claims this fifth and sixth century saint,
but Auchtermuchty's motto Dum
sero srero (which is a pun on his name) and the
name of Dysart, plus a number of other parishes, even
as far away as Cardross, also show a historical link.
The legend of his receiving, nurturing and educating Kentigern,
who had drifted with his mother, Theneu or Enoch, in a
boat from Lothian, is focused on Culross.
Also on this day: James
S. Stewart who has been described as a most outstanding
modern Scottish preacher (John O'Neill). His much-studied
books of sermons grew out of ministry in parishes in Auchterarder,
Aberdeen and Morningside in Edinburgh, and it was while
still in the parish ministry that some of his most influential
books about the New Testament and about preaching were
written. Along with his still-studied and world-famous
volumes, he also found time to provide for the day to
day needs of ministers, as for example in what he published
for bible classes. Born in 1896, he became professor of
New Testament in the University of Edinburgh in 1947,
and was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland in 1963. He died on this day in 1990.
2 July: Helen
Wilson
Helen Wilson was born in Aberdeen in 1891. Following
a conversion experience at 21, she applied for training
as a nurse but was discouraged because of a disfigurement
caused by an early and serious accident. Having studied
at the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow, she went
as evangelist to China, but her vocation to care for
the sick found her running the Women's Mission Hospital
in Ichang. Returning to Scotland, she at last trained
as a nurse, to return to a China now suffering the results
of invasion. Interred, on release she remained in Hong
Kong, but went back to Ichang where under communist
rule she was arrested and tried. Near retiring age,
she insisted on remaining in Hong Kong to work with
refugees, tackling the problems of widespread malnutrition
and tuberculosis, with only rudimentary resources at
first but later expanded by means of a grant from the
World Council of Churches. This remarkable lifetime
of service was marked by a This
is Your Life programme on television in 1961.
At the age of 76 she married a missionary colleague
and settled in the North East of Scotland. She died
on this day in 1978.
3 July: Thomas
the Apostle
Thomas the Apostle is widely commemorated in
the world church on this day. He is mentioned in all
four gospels as one of the Twelve
and is mentioned in connection with three episodes:
his offering to die with Christ (John
11:16), interrupting Christ with a question that
gave rise to one of Christ's greatest sayings (John
14:5), and, as "doubting Thomas", reaching
to touch the wounds of his master after the Resurrection
(John 20:25). His name
is particularly associated with the spread of the gospel
to Syria and India, and there is a gospel which bears
his name.
6 July: Jan
Huss
Jan Huss was a Czech preacher, born about 1369, who
became influenced by the writings of Wycliffe, who had
applied scripture in a new way to the structures and
habits of contemporary life. Also an academic, his preaching
and teaching attracted controversy, both theological
and political. His work was De Ecclesia, critical of
the church of his day, and many of his beliefs were
to be espoused by later Protestants. He was much involved
in his nation's division over different papal claimants
and his stance ultimately led to his being burned at
the stake in 1415.
Also on this day: The
Treaty of Edinburgh was signed in 1560. Religious
reformations are rarely purely religious and what happened
at the Scottish Reformation was typical in being a mix
which included both doctrine and politics. The treaty
was really between the English and the French, but in
its freeing of Scotland from both French and English
troops it provided the political background for the
triumph of the Reformation. It also effectively ended
the 'Auld Alliance' between
Scotland and France and led to an end to the frequent
and costly wars between Scotland and England.
7 July: Palladius
According to some Palladius is one of the better documented
early missionaries, who seems to have worked first in
Ireland (having come from Gaul) and then north of the
Tay and in the Mearns. Names including 'Paldy' (including
Aberfeldy) testify to his presence. Some associate him
with Logie Airt near Stirling. Some suggest he was sent
by the Pope himself (in the early decades of the fifth
century) but others believe that there was another Celtic
missioner and it is to him that these place names testify.
12 July:
Erasmus
Erasmus was born in Rotterdam about 1466. A
scholar, he has been regarded as perhaps the most influential
figure of the flowering in Europe of literature and
knowledge that we know as the Renaissance. Originally
an Augustinian canon and priest, he travelled over much
of Europe teaching in Paris, at Oxford and Cambridge
and elsewhere. He had little time for the dry scholasticism
and pedantry which was current in church circles, and
greatly contributed to the new understanding of scripture
and doctrine which lay behind the Reformation, giving
rise to the observation that: "Erasmus laid the
egg and Luther hatched it". His sources were the
early church fathers and the Bible itself, where he
went behind the Latin translations of the day to the
original languages, publishing a Greek New Testament
in 1516. A man of deep faith, he was not a controversialist,
which meant that both sides could both claim and challenge
him. He died in Basle on this day in 1536.
13 July:
Silas
Silas, the apostle Paul’s travelling companion
on his visit to Macedonia and Corinth, is widely commemorated
in the world church on this day. In Paul’s letters
to the Thessalonians, he is associated with Timothy.
Silas may possibly be identified with Silvanus as Peter’s
amanuensis in first Peter.
16 July:
Lady Glenorchy
Lady Glenorchy was born in 1741 in Galloway.
After a serious illness she had a conversion experience
and after her husband's death devoted her life to the
spread of the evangelical cause, holding services for
rich and poor and influencing many to enter the ministry.
She was behind the setting up of chapels in both Scotland
and England, the first in Edinburgh giving a pulpit
to Presbyterian, Episcopal and Methodist clergy alike.
In 1772 she founded another chapel, which became the
Church of Scotland congregation known as Lady
Glenorchy's, whose history is now incorporated
both in Holy Trinity Church in Wester Hailes and in
Greenside Church in central Edinburgh. This new chapel
was to serve those who could not be incorporated within
the existing buildings of the established church for
reasons of space but it was to keep its independence.
A school was also built. Horatius Bonar (click
here for more information) was brought up in the
congregation (his brother was the session clerk). She
died in 1786.
17 July: Adam
Smith
| Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy in
1723 and went on to become professor of moral philosophy
at the University of Glasgow. His times were known
as the Scottish Enlightenment
and huge contributions were made by Scots in both
the world of ideas and in practical fields. Many
of these thinkers found much encouragements and
insight from their association with the Church,
and Smith was no exception. His contribution was
to give a new face to the science of economics,
and one that has influenced political decision-making
up to the present day. His great work The
Wealth of Nations is still central and has
resulted in his being given the title of father
of economics. He died in 1790. |
Portrait bust of Adam Smith
|
Image courtesy of Fife College and Glenrothes College,
soon to merge as The Adam Smith College, Fife, to visit
their website click
here. Please note this
link will take you out of the Church of Scotland website
and open a new browser window.
Also on this day: Jane
Haining was the only Scot who perished in a Nazi
concentration camp. Of a Dumfries-shire farming family,
following secretarial work in Paisley she felt called
to work with Jewish missions.
Images of Jane Haining
|
She studied at the Glasgow Domestic
College, trained as a teacher and as a missionary,
and served from 1932 as matron of the girls home
of the Scottish Jewish Mission in Budapest. As fascism
spread, the Church of Scotland urged her to come
home. Her response was: "If these children
need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they
need me in days of darkness." Despite the opportunity
to escape, she remained in Hungary, and would be
found weeping as she sewed the yellow star on the
clothes of her Jewish charges. |
She went with her girls to Auschwitz, tattooed with the
number 79467, where most probably on this day in 1944
she was gassed along with them.
18 July:
Enoch or Theneu
Enoch or Theneu daughter of an early king of
Lothian. Found pregnant, she was to die by being hurled
down Traprain Law, a hill near Haddington in East Lothian,
in a cart, but this failed. She was then cast off in
an open boat, landing at Culross just as her baby, to
become Saint Kentigern, was born. Baptised by Serf,
she moved to Glasgow with her son and died there. She
gives her name to a modern Scottish charity for the
care of abused women.
20 July:
Margaret of Antioch
Margaret of Antioch after whom Margaret of Scotland
was named, is a kind of female counterpart to St George.
Possibly the same person as St Pelagia or St Marina,
various legendary events are attributed to this fourth
century virgin martyr, who became popular in the eastern
and later in the western church, hers was one of the
'voices' heard by Joan of Arc. There are numerous old
parish dedications to her but only one in Scotland,
that of Dalry, Ayrshire.
22 July: Richard
Cameron
Richard Cameron was born in Falkland in Fife circa 1648
and studied at the University of St Andrews. A teacher,
he became drawn more and more to the covenanters, who
were uncompromising in opposing the state’s imposition
of episcopal government. Ordained in 1679 in Holland,
he returned to lead an independent party known variously
as the Society Men, the Hill-men or the Cameronians. They
met in conventicles (field preachings) in the wilds of
the South West of Scotland. A most able evangelical preacher,
whose recorded sermons still retain a freshness, he was
involved in the Sanquhar
Declaration that virtually
declared war on the King and his policies. He and his
followers were hounded, Cameron with his brother and others
to be killed in 1680 at the skirmish of Ayrsmoss, near
Muirkirk in Ayrshire. The Cameronian regiment that helped
secure the presbyterian establishment at the 'Glorious
Revolution' of 1688 to 1689 was to bear his name (a name
yet revered) and to have many of his supporters among
its early ranks.
23
July: Susannah Wesley.
Susannah Wesley (1669 to 1742), wife of the Rev Samuel
Wesley, rector of Epworth, Lincolnshire, to whom she bore
19 children (nine dying in infancy), was a woman of deep
and tenacious faith. By her example and her careful instruction
of her children, she typified the observation that: "The
hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." One
son, John, the founder of Methodism, was by his evangelical
preaching to have the world as his parish, while Charles,
his brother, was in many of his 9000 hymns to: "teach
the world to sing" - and to sing about God’s
redemption in Christ. It has been said with much truth
that Methodism really began in the Epworth Rectory and
with a great Christian mother.
24 July:
William Penn
William Penn who died on this day in 1718 was the distinguished
politician who, having obtained grants of considerable
territory in North America, gave his name to Pennsylvania,
where he established religious toleration. The son of
an English admiral who had captured Jamaica from the
Dutch, he was rusticated from Oxford because of his
non-conformity with the Anglicanism of the Restoration.
After travel abroad and some legal studies, largely
as a result of a sermon, he became in 1665 a convinced
Quaker. He was to suffer for it, being imprisoned for
a time in the Tower for his beliefs (where he wrote
No Cross, No Crown).
His connections, he remained friendly with James, later
to be James VII and II, plus his ability, helped save
him from overmuch persecution. Ever an advocate for
toleration, he returned to itinerant preaching in the
1690s. When Pennsylvania was declared a crown colony
he came back to England. He also wrote Primitive
Christianity (to some extent identifying Quakerism
with early Christianity) and many other works. No building
in Philadelphia 'city of brotherly love' is allowed
to be higher than his huge statue atop the City Hall
Tower – a tribute to a big man in 'Quaker City'.
25 July: James
the Great
Statue of James the Great
|
James the Great the Apostle, is
widely commemorated in the world church on this
day. Brother of John, their joint zeal attracted
the nickname of 'sons of thunder'. The first apostle
to be martyred, he was beheaded by Herod Agrippa
in 44AD. There is a tradition that his body was
taken to Santiago da Compostela in Spain, a place
of pilgrimage to this day.
Image courtesy of The Confraternity of Saint
James website, to visit the website click
here. Please note this link will take you
out of the Church of Scotland website and open
a new browser window. |
27 July:
Robert Bruce
Robert Bruce (circa 1554 to 1631) of Kinnaird
was educated for the law and could have obtained a high
position within it but he turned to the church to become
the minister of St Giles, Edinburgh. He was a prominent
preacher and was for some time a favourite of James
VI. Earlier influenced by Andrew Melville, Bruce did
much to create a reformed stability, not least with
his notable sermons on the Lord’s
Supper which still stand as a felicitous alliance
of doctrine and application. Held in very high regard,
he was twice Moderator of the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland. However, unwilling to be subservient
to the king, Bruce suffered banishment both to France
and also, on return, within Scotland where he mostly
had to live on his estate of Kinnaird near Airth.
28 July: Johann
Sebastian Bach
| Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685 to 1750), a devout German Protestant, according
to many remains one of the world’s greatest
musicians and composers, especially of religious
and organ music. Belonging to a notable musical
family, he was an accomplished violinist, harpsichordist
and organist. Devoted to music from earliest days,
he walked from Saxony to Lubeck to hear Dietrich
Buxtehude play. Bach held many varied high appointments
in a variety of places in Germany but is perhaps
most associated with Weimar and Leipzig. Bach was
regarded by some as a prolific composer of cantatas,
of organ music, of the great passions, of concertos,
and much else, Bach defined music as: "an agreeable
harmony for the honour of God and the permissible
delights of the soul." |
Image of Johann Sebastian Bach
|
Bach, who influenced Mozart and many others, was described
by Beethoven as: "the immortal god of harmony."
29 July:
Olaf of Norway
Olaf of Norway, also called Olave, was the warrior-king
of Norway who, himself converted in England while fighting
the Danes, largely at sword point converted his own
nation. Harsh in his rule and arousing opposition he
was killed, appropriately in battle, in 1030. Nonetheless
his shrine at Nidaros (Trondheim), which became the
centre of an archdiocese that included Orkney and Shetland
(where there are several dedications to Olaf), became
a centre of mediaeval pilgrimage.
Also on this day: William
Wilberforce (1759 to 1833) who died on this day
was
William Wilberforce
|
another fighter, but on a different
front. Many remember him for his political campaign
against the slave trade and slavery (abolished 1807
and 1833 respectively). But in this as in other
matters, eg the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act
of 1829, this Anglican and Hull minister of parliament
was activated by a strong evangelical faith that
emerged from his study of the New Testament. A strict
Christian, he strove for a reformation of manners,
for Sunday observance, for missionary activity in
India, as well as other causes, and was a founder
of the Church Missionary
Society and of the Bible
Society. |
30 July:
Robert Baillie
Robert Baillie was one of those in the seventeenth
century who opposed the imposition of episcopal governance
on the Scottish Church. Minister at Kilwinning, he was
a member of the 1638 Glasgow Assembly which re-established
presbyterianism and became a chaplain to the covenanting
forces. He was one of the Scots commissioners to the
Westminster Assembly (his diaries record this event,
along with providing information about other aspects
of church and society of the time) and published several
books of a topical kind. When a second attempt to make
the Scottish Church episcopal was undertaken, he again
opposed this vehemently. He was professor of divinity
and principal of the University of Glasgow, a scholar
who knew 13 languages. He died in 1662, deeply disappointed
at the eclipse of presbyterian government.
31 July:
Horatius Bonar
Horatius Bonar who died on this day in 1889 was
of a family which produced many notable ministers. In
his own day, Bonar was noted for his preaching, for
his best-selling devotional works, for his editing of
religious periodicals, for his extensive correspondence,
and as a leader (later to be Moderator) in the Free
Church. Today his fame rests with his hymns, which have
a simplicity, a directness, and a warm appeal, like
Here, O my Lord, I see Thee
face to face, I heard
the voice of Jesus say, Glory
be to God the Father, and many more. He has been
well described as the: "prince of Scottish hymnwriters."
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