283 – Oct. 10 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

A Blessed Baptist historian

October 10, 1779 – David Benedict was born to Thomas and Abigail near Stratford, New York. When David was 14 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker and for seven years labored in that trade. His ability secured an opportunity for the manufacturing and retailing business in that field, but his conversion to Christ at age 20 changed the course of his life.

In Dec. 1799 he was baptized in the Housatonic River and united with the First Baptist Church of Stratford. In 1802 he gave up the career of shoemaker and entered the academy of the Rev. Stephen S. Nelson at Mt. Pleasant, N.Y., and paid his way by tutoring other students. One of them was Francis Wayland, future President of Brown University. In fact David also graduated from Brown U. in 1806. He presented an oration on Ecclesiastic History at graduation. 

In 1808 he married the daughter of Dr. Stephen Gano. They were married for 60 years and had 9 sons and 3 daughters.  After graduation David became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pawtucket and continued there for 25 years.  America’s first Sunday school came into existence there. 

For many years David had collected material and he wrote the History of the Baptists in the United States, and to some extent in other countries.  Benedict traveled throughout the young nation on horseback, covering nearly four thousand miles. 

Dr. Benedict lived to the age of 95.  Up until his death on Dec. 5, 1874, his eyesight was unimpaired, and he was able to write clearly both day and night.  Baptists are indebted to David Benedict for preserving so well our Baptist annals for coming generations.

Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 420-21.

 

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188 – July 06 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

Johann G. Oncken

Se-Baptism does not satisfy German believers

On April 22, 1834, at Altona, across from Hamburg, Germany, Dr. Barnas Sears baptized, in the Elbe, Johann Gerhard Oncken and six others. Oncken, through the influence of Calvin Tibbs, a sea captain, had been led to adopt Baptist principles. Dr. Sears was destined to become distinguished among Baptists in America as an educator and author, but he is best known for this single event that took place thousands of miles away. Sears was born in Sandisfield, Massachusetts on Nov. 19, 1802, and as a youth was trained in the best schools and entered Brown University where he graduated with the highest honors of his class in 1825. He finished his theological training at Newton Theological Institution and was called to pastor the First Baptist Church of Hartford, Connecticut. After two years he became a professor at Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution until 1833 when he resigned so he could travel to Germany to further his training. Providentially God had been moving on the heart of J.G. Oncken concerning the necessity of believer’s immersion but there was no one to perform the ordinance. He had written to Baptists in England and one had suggested “Se-Baptism” (i.e. self-baptism), but Oncken could not accept this as being the will of God. How wonderful that God sent Dr. Sears at this time to meet the need. Upon his return Dr. Sears became President of Newton Theological Seminary. In 1848 he was elected secretary and executive agent of the Massachusetts Board of Education. He later was chosen as the Trustee of the Peabody Trust for the cause of the education in the South after the Civil War. He later moved to Staunton, Virginia and served the Baptist people there until his death on July 6, 1880.

Dr. Greg J. Dixon: adapted From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 276-77.

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130 — May 09 – This Day in Baptist History Past

“So He Slew Me with the Words of His Mouth”
Founder of Brown Universitry

Morgan Edwards was born in Wales, May 9, 1722. He was educated at Bristol College under Bernard Foskett, its first president. He was ordained June 1, 1757, in Cork, Ireland, where he labored for nine years. He returned to England and preached for a year in Rye, in Sussex, when, through the recommendation of Dr. Gill and others, on the application of the Baptist church of Philadelphia, he came to that city and church, and entered upon the pastorate May 23, 1761.
At age sixteen he broke with his Anglican heritage and embraced the principles of the Baptists. This cleavage could have been caused by the infectious enthusiasm of the young Baptist missionaries who were sent out in such large numbers that hardly a village in the eastern and western valleys of Monmouthshire was not visited.  When he was pastor of the Baptist Church of Philadelphia many years later, he reminisced in a sermon as follows:
I remember the time (and the place too) when I first gave myself up as a lost man; for then I was halting between two opinions about it.  Fearing it was so, made me uneasy, and hope it might not be so, kept me from yielding to it.  But this sentence stuck on my mind in a light that it was not wont to do, ‘I will by no means clear the Guilty!’ then said I, I am gone, for I am guilty: if I am not damned God must be a liar. So He slew me with the word of His mouth. Then this commandment came, and I died.  Then I knew what sort of thing despair was. And you cannot imagine what jolt I felt, when I learnt so much of the Gospel as to know it was possible for me to be saved, and that God might stand to His word, and not send me to hell.
He was the founder of Brown University, at first called Rhode Island College. It is well known that this enterprise was started in the Philadelphia Baptist Association in its meeting in 1762, and Morgan Edwards was “the principal mover in this matter,” as he was the most active agent in securing funds for the permanent support of the institution. To Morgan Edwards more than to any other man, are the Baptist churches of America indebted for their grand list of institutions of learning, with their noble endowments and wide-spread influence.

Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins Thompson /, pp. 189 -190
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122 – May 01 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

America’s victory over England secured England’s liberty too
1748 – Dr. John Rippon of England,in a  letter addressed to Dr. James Manning, president of Brown University, said: “I believe all of our Baptist ministers in town, except two, and most of our brethren in the country were on the side of the Americans in the late dispute….We wept when the thirsty plains drank the blood of our departed heroes, and the shout of a king was among us when your well bought battles were crowned with victory; and to this hour we believe that the independence of America will, for a while, secure the liberty of this country, but if that continent had been reduced, Britain would not have long been free.” Dr. Rippon was one of the most influential Baptist ministers in England during the 19th century. At the age of 17, Rippon attended Bristol Baptist College in Bristol, England. After the death of John Gill, he assumed Gill’s pastorate, the Baptist meeting-house in Carter Lane, Tooley Street, which moved in 1833 to the New Park Street Chapel in London, from 1773 at the age of 20 until his death, a period of 63 years. Rippon’s church was later pastored byCharles Haddon Spurgeon before moving to the Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant and Castle inSouthwark.
Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from: John T. Christian, A History of The Baptists (1922; reprinted., Nashville:  Broadman Press, 1926), 2:228
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77 – March – 18 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

Edward Payson Scott
The Power of Gospel music
1913 – Dr. Edward W. Clark passed away on this memorable day.  He and his wife were the ones that followed Edward Payson Scott to the music loving head-hunting Naga’s in Assam, India.  Payson went with a Bible and a violin in 1869, and the first twelve Naga’s that approached him changed their fierce attitude to joy as they heard him play, “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?”  However, it wasn’t a spear that killed him but the cholera, just a year later.  The Clark’s not only gained entry to the Naga’s but penetrated further South into an even more vicious head-hunting tribe, the Ao-Nagas and spent forty-two years in that land with only two furloughs.  Clark had been born in New York on Feb. 25, 1830.  Receiving Christ early in life as a farm boy, he looked forward to Christian service as he graduated from Brown University and then from seminary in Rochester, N.Y.  He married Mary Mead and served a short pastorate in Logansport, Indiana and became the editor of a Christian publication when he was asked to take charge of a mission printing press in Sibsagor, the ancient capital of Assam, India.  The accomplishments of Dr. and Mrs. Clark surely deserve to rank among those of the great missionary pioneers.  It was sometime before they could settle at Molung among fierce savages.  Clark found time to do a great deal of literary work.  He reduced their language to writing, translated some of the gospels, and printed many books for use in their schools.  His last work was the Ao-Naga-English Dictionary, upon which he worked the last seven years of his life.  He was honored with three honorary doctorates but considered his greatest honor to simply be called a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dr. Greg J. Dixon, from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson /, pp. 110.
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22 – January – 22 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

 

Brigade Chaplain for Gen. Washington

1805 – HEZEKIAH SMITH – BRIGADE-CHAPLAIN FOR GENERAL WASHINGTON AND ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF BROWN U. Pg. 29 – Hezekiah Smith died on January 22, 1805. He was born in April 1737 at Long Island, N.Y.  He graduated from Princeton in 1762. He went into the field of evangelism and went into the South where he traveled over 4,000 miles and preached 173 sermons in 15 months. He helped establish Rhode Island College which later became Brown University. In 1765 he established a Baptist church in Haverhill, Mass. and was publicly recognized Nov. 12, 1766 and served faithfully for forty years. He was one of six Baptist chaplains that served in the Revolutionary War and was brigade-chaplain for Gen. Washington. After his tour of duty he returned to the Haverhill church. He founded the Mass. Baptist Missionary Society, the first Missions Society in America and the deciding factor in the founding of the Warren Association also.
Dr. Greg J. Dixon; adapted from:  Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins Thompson

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357 – Dec. 24 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Nothing would stop him

 

 

 

1867 – Josiah Ripley Goddard and his wife Eliza Cushing Barker sailed for Ningpo, China. The 131 day journey was arduous, and the couple experienced much seasickness, but Josiah’s goal of serving in China was fulfilled. On Sept. 30, 1868 a baby boy was born, but Josiah’s lovely bride died the next day and the baby was soon to follow. This was the second wife that he had buried. His first wife, Emma Tripp, had died right after he had fought in the Civil War. He had enlisted soon after he had graduated from Brown University, his father’s alma mater. Josiah was the first born in the family of Josiah and Eliza Goddard, missionaries to Bangkok and Ningpo. He was born in Singapore on Sept. 7, 1840 as his parents were enroute to Bangkok. When Josiah Ripley was thirteen he was sent to America by his parents to live with a missionary widow, Maria Brown, but before the ship arrived she married Dr. William Dean, and they had moved away, and Worchester College where he was to train had closed its doors, and the young traveler was adrift on his own. It was not long before he received word of the death of his father in Ningpo, and then three years later his mother died, so he and his sister had to fend for themselves. They lived on corn meal mush for a long period of time. After Eliza died in Ningpo, Dr. William Dean and his daughter Fanny arrived for a visit from Bangkok. That visit culminated in the marriage of Josiah and Fanny. For more than thirty years he and Fanny labored in Ningpo. His crowning achievement was completing the work of his father in the translation of the Old Testament into the dialect of the area.  [This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 703-04. Francis Wayland Garland, Called to Cathay (New York: Baptist Literature Bureau, 1948), p. 67.]   Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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278 – Oct. 05 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Author of Soul Liberty in CT

 

1772 – Stephen Smith Nelson was born to Thomas and Ann Nelson of Middleboro, Mass. His conversion to Christ was at age fourteen and he was baptized by William Nelson, a near relative, and became a member of the Baptist church in his home town, whose pastor was the celebrated Isaac Backus, the great advocate of religious liberty. Stephen graduated from Brown U. in 1794, and continued his studies under Dr. Samuel Stillman, the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Boston. At 24 he was licensed to preach, and after filling the pulpit at Hartford Conn., he was ordained in 1798. The church met in several places including the old courthouse, and though it was crude in appearance, and they had rough furniture, they experience the remarkable presence of God, and more than one hundred converts were baptized into the church. Nelson took an active part in preparing “The Baptist Petition,” a remonstrance addressed to the Conn. Legislature, supporting absolute soul liberty, which was accomplished in 1818, with the disestablishing of the state church. He was also one of those appointed by the Danbury Baptist Association to write a congratulatory letter to Thomas Jefferson which was answered with the famous “Wall of Separation” quote which we still here about today. Nelson ended his life in Amherst, Mass., preaching to feeble and destitute churches. He always enjoyed a fruitful ministry wherever he preached. He died at 82 years of age in 1853. [Wm. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter and Bros., 1865), 6:366. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. 545-46.] Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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243 – Aug. 31 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

A Baptist by Conviction

 

1817 – Rev. Adoniram Judson, Sr. and his wife Abigail were immersed by Dr. Thomas Baldwin into the membership of the Second Baptist Church of Boston, Mass. They were the parents of Adoniram Judson, Jr. who was the renowned missionary to Burma. The elder Judson had graduated from Yale in 1776 and held strong to Puritan theology, especially repudiating Unitarianism and the Arian heresy that was rampant at that time. He became the pastor of a conservative Congregational church in Malden, Mass. During his brief ministry there, liberalism spread to the church family, and he was “dismissed” from the church. In time the Lord opened another place of service, but again he had to endure the trial of his son, and namesake, embracing agnosticism at Brown University. After Adoniram, Jr’s conversion to Christ, and later embracing Baptist convictions on his trip to the mission field, Adoniram, Sr. also came to the same conclusion concerning believer’s baptism, and rejected his pedobaptism, and resigned from the Congregational ministry. He continued to live faithfully as a Baptist until the Lord called him home in his seventy-fourth year. [Courtney Anderson, To The Golden Shore (Boxton: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), pp. 3-11. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp.476-477] Prepared by Dr. Greg Dixon

 

137 — May 17 – This Day in Baptist History Past

Geo. Cole Stebbins

“Must I Go, and Empty-Handed?”

This was written by Charles Carroll Luther, who was born on May 17, 1847, at Worcester, MA, after attending Brown University and graduating in 1871, and becoming a journalist. In 1877, he heard a minister named A. G. Upham tell a story about a young man, about thirty years old, who was about to die. The man had been a Christian only for a month, most of which was spent on a sick bed, and was sad because he regretted having had so little time to serve the Lord, saying to a friend, “I am not afraid to die; Jesus saves me now. But must I go empty handed?”

After Luther penned the words, he gave them to George Coles Stebbins (1846-1945). Stebbins, who was at Providence, RI, engaged in meetings with George F. Pentecost at the time, provided the tune (Providence) that same year or the next and published the song in the 1878 Gospel Hymns No. 3, which he, Ira David Sankey, and James McGranahan compiled. Stanza five of the original was used for the chorus. Luther later became a minister in the Baptist Church at Worcester beginning in 1886, moving to Mansfield, PA, to do evangelistic work for a while. After serving at the First Baptist Church in Bridgeport, CN, from 1891 to 1893, Luther returned to evangelism, being associated with the Baptist Mission Board of New Jersey, produced about 25 hymns, and compiled Temple Chimes, a book of hymns and gospel songs, before his death at Farmingdale on Long Island, NY, on Nov. 4, 1924.

“Must I go, and empty handed,”
Thus my dear Redeemer meet?
Not one day of service give Him,
Lay no trophy at His feet?

Refrain

“Must I go, and empty handed?”
Must I meet my Savior so?
Not one soul with which to greet Him,
Must I empty handed go?

Not at death I shrink or falter,
For my Savior saves me now;
But to meet Him empty handed,
Thought of that now clouds my brow.

Refrain

O the years in sinning wasted,
Could I but recall them now,
I would give them to my Savior,
To His will I’d gladly bow.

Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I. (Thompson and Cummins) pp. 201-202