260 – Sept. 17 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

 

It’s not the length but the depth that counts

Henrietta Hall Shuck, raised in a godly home, sailed on Sept. 17, 1835, with her husband Lewis for missionary service in China, along with twenty-two other missionaries. She was but a teen bride, the daughter of Col. Addison Hall of Merry Point, Virginia. Henrietta was saved in a Baptist camp meeting and baptized at thirteen years of age. At sixteen she moved to Richmond Virginia where she met Lewis Shuck who was studying theology and later married. After leaving Boston their ship stopped at Calcutta, India and then on to Amherst in Burma where the Shuck’s were able to visit the grave of Ann Judson, whose life had provided great inspiration for Henrietta. Finally they reached Singapore where they would study the Malay language, and then it was on to Canton, China, and to Hong Kong to minister, after it was ceded to the British in 1841. Within four months, two chapels had been built and dedicated and before long there was a third.  By Sept. of 1844 there were thirty-two boarding students. On Nov. 26, Henrietta became very ill. The doctors could not save her, and in the early hours of the following morning, she fell asleep in Jesus.  Only ten years after she had begun her work for her Lord whom she loved, her work on earth was over. It’s not the length, but the depth of our work that really counts for Christ. “Her life was like a glorious meteor, and her light still shineth.”[Majorie Dawes, Great Baptist Women (London: Carey Kingsgate Press Limited, 1955), p, 75.  Dr. Greg J. Dixon: From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 509-11.

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223 – August 11 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

 

“…And he That Loveth Son or Daughter More Than Me is Not Worthy of Me.”

Helen Maria Griggs was saved, baptized and joined a Baptist church in Brookline, Massachusetts on August 11, 1822. When a small girl Helen had been very sick, and her mother had prayed that if God spared her life that she would give her without reservation unto God’s will. When Helen told her mother that God had called her to go to Burma, her mother was fully willing for the Lord’s direction. However the Board had never sent a single lady out alone. But the Lord of the harvest was working behind the scenes, and Francis Mason, a student at Newton Theological Institution met Miss Griggs.

He too planned to go to Burma, and after a courtship of nearly five months, they were married on May 23, 1830 and their honeymoon was spent on board ship as they sailed the next day for Burma. Their trip took 122 days before they arrived at Calcutta. Mrs. Mason’s health provided problems for the missionary couple, but whenever possible, she labored beside her husband. She became proficient in the Burmese and Karen languages and was able to teach and write in both. But the matter of leaving her children came to pass after a furlough in the States. Many in the homeland criticized Mrs. Mason, and she was charged with having “no more affection than a Sandwich Island mother.” Editors of Christian periodicals had to go to her defense, and in a short time a drastic change for the better took place in public opinion.

Four years later when Mrs. Grover Comstock left for Burma and parted from her children, an announcement was made in the newspaper under the caption, “The Noble Mother.” The Lord took Helen to Himself at forty years of age on Oct. 8, 1846.

Dr. Greg J. Dixon: From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 330-31.

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196 – July 14 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

196 – July 14 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

Posted: 13 Jul 2014 07:57 PM PDT

A Person can die and not be afraid”

John Taylor Jones was born at new Ipswich, New Hampshire. When he was about 15 years old, he received Christ as Savior and joined the Congregational Church in Ashby, Mass. During his biblical studies, he had a change of thinking concerning the mode and subjects of baptism and in 1828 he was baptized by Pastor Malcom and joined the Federal Street Baptist Church in Boston.

On July 14, 1830 he married Eliza Grew, and within seven months, they were on their way to Burma as missionaries. After their arrival Jones threw himself into the work with great zeal and soon became proficient in the Burman and Taling languages. He was especially drawn to the Talings, a tribal people, and he departed for Siam (Thailand), where there seemed to be a great opportunity to reach this group.

The Lord had a great work of translation ready for him which he completed in Oct. of 1843. It has been extolled as one of the great Asiatic translations of the New Testament. During his last visit to New York, Jones is quoted as saying, “There is one thing that distinguishes Christianity from every false religion. It is the only religion that can take away the fear of death. I never knew a dying heathen in Siam, or anywhere else, that was not afraid, terribly afraid, of death.”

He went on to say that there was nothing that struck the Siamese people with greater astonishment than when his dying wife said to her Siamese maid shortly before her death, “I am not afraid to die.” For weeks after her death, the Siamese people came to him and asked, “Teacher is it really true that a person had died and was not afraid to die? Can it be possible? And when he assured them that it was, they would say, “Wonderful, wonderful, that a person should die and not be afraid.”

Dr. Greg J. Dixon: From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 288-89.

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192 – July 10 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

Native warriors melted in her presence

 

Mrs. M.B. Ingalls has been called “The Queen of female missionaries” by Dr. S. F. Smith. She

sailed for Burma as the second wife of Rev. L. Ingalls. The couple was transferred from the

Arracan Mission and labored as a team until the death of her husband on March 14, 1856.

 

She remained on the field and the most remarkable success followed her labors-in some respects unparalleled in the history of the Burmese Missions. Mrs. Ingalls remained for forty-six years longer in Rangoon and Thonze. She endured two fires that destroyed nearly all of her personal property, but she continued on.

 

She returned twice to America to raise support and stirred great interest in missions. It took her two years to regain her health. Over great protests she returned to those that she loved.

 

While she was in charge of a lonely station, she was holding an evening class in her bungalow when a chief of a hostile tribe and his warriors burst in upon her. She diverted their attention by telling stories about America. The chief listened with scorn.

 

She also told stories about the Colt revolver that her late husband had given to her. Again the chief listened with scorn and then suddenly picked up a piece of paper and stuck it on the wall and said, “Shoot.” Her heart trembled, she didn’t know what to do but she fired It not knowing whether it was even loaded. Thankfully it was, and she got a bulls eye, right through the center. The Natives, with a whoop, rushed from the place.

 

In April 1890 she showed a group of ladies in America a placard that the “Dracoit” had nailed to the door of her chapel offering $10,000 for her head.” Believing that she was immortal in the hands of God, Mrs. Ingalls served the Lord faithfully amid great dangers. We honor her as one of the great soldiers in the Lord’s missionary army.

 

Dr. Greg J. Dixon: From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, 282-83.

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190 – July 08 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

His heart remained in Burma

Rev. and Mrs. J.G. Binney sailed in Nov. 1843 to Burma to open a training school for the Karen a Baptist training school to prepare native men for the gospel ministry. They were sent out by by the Triennial Convention in Philadelphia.

When the need became apparent, because of the successful evangelism of the Karen people in Burma, for a training school for native ministers, The Triennial Convention turned to J.G. Binney as the man to head up such an effort. To Dr. Binney this was a dream come true. He and his wife Juliette sailed in Nov. 1843. A school was opened in Maulmain with thirteen adult students, all converts from heathenism. After five grueling years, Mrs. Binney’s health broke and they were forced to return to the States, where Dr. Binney pastored for a brief period, and then became President of Columbian College, but his heart was still in Burma.

They sailed again for Burma in 1859. The school was now moved to Rangoon and opened with 80 students. Dr. Binney carried the full load as he preached, translated, and published. Strength weakening, he was again compelled to leave Burma.

On furlough his health improved and he began to pastor a church in Savannah, Georgia. Joseph Getchell Binney was the third child in a rather affluent family in Boston, having been born in Dec. 1807. He contracted whooping cough at the end of his first year that affected him the rest of his life.

His father, through a foolish business move lost his modest wealth and left the family, not to return until the death of Joseph’s mother when he was ten, when his grandmother moved in to take his mother’s place.

He was saved at twenty, united with the Congregational church, entered Yale to prepare for missionary service, and became a Baptist upon examining the subject of “baptism” in studying for a debate. He was baptized in 1830. On July 9, 1877, he resigned his church that he might return to his first love.

However, he never made it back, and he died on Nov. 26, and was buried in the Indian Ocean.

Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 281-82.

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114 — April 24 – This Day in Baptist History Past

Adoniram Judson
Comfort in affliction
1827 – Little Maria Judson, the infant daughter of Adoniram and Ann Judson, missionaries to Burma, died on this date, just a few months following the tragic death of her dear mother.  In a letter to Ann’s mother Rebecca Hasseltine, dated April 26, 1827, Adoniram tried to comfort her, the best he knew how with the following words:  “My sweet little Maria lies by the side of her fond mother…an affection of the bowels,) proved incurable.  She had the best medical advice; and the kind care of Mrs. Wade could not have been, in any respect, exceeded by that of her own mother.  But all our efforts, and prayers, and tears, could not propitiate the cruel disease.  The work of death went forward; and after the usual process, excruciating to a parent’s feelings, she ceased to breathe… at three o’clock P.M. aged two years and three months.
We then closed her faded eyes, and bound up her discolored lips, where the dark touch of death first appeared, and folded her little hands-the exact pattern of her mothers on her cold breast.  The next morning, we made her last bed, In the small closure which surrounds her mother’s grave.  Together they rest in hope, under the hope tree, (Hopia) which stands at the head of the graves; and together, I trust, their spirits are rejoicing, after a short separation of precisely six months.  Thus I am left alone in this wide world.  My father’s family and all my relatives, have been, for many years, separated from me, by seas that I shall never pass.  They are the same to me as if buried.  My own dear family I have actually buried: one in Rangoon, and two in Amherst.”…What remains is for me to follow where my Savior reigns.”
Dr. Greg J. Dixon, from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson /, p. 166.
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99 – April – 09 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

Justus Vinton
A husband and wife team
1834 – On this day Justus and Calista (Holman) Vinton were married.  They met at the Hamilton Bible Institute at Hamilton, NY where they had both gone to prepare themselves for the service of Christ.  Justus had been born on Feb. 17, 1806, in Wilmington, CT.  He received Christ at age ten and called to preach at fourteen, and in 1826 he entered the Bible Institute in Hamilton, NY. Calista was born on April 9, 1807 and at 16 she contracted an illness and was near death.  She requested to be baptized before she died, so they put her on a sleigh and took her to the river on a cold day in March and Pastor Grow baptized her.  From that day on she began to recover.  They sailed for Burma in July arriving in Maulmain in December.  Vinton conducted services on board the ship and led the captain, the steward and a number of the sailors to Christ.  Having studied the Karen language in school, the Vinton’s immediately began to evangelize among the Karens from village to village, which they continued for the next twenty-five years.  They took a furlough in 1848 to allow for Mrs. Vinton’s health and to give Mr. Vinton an opportunity to stimulate the mission cause, which he did.  After they returned to the field, war broke out and a Burmese evangelist in Rangoon asked them to come to assist the work there.  The mission directors back home disagreed so Vinton  resigned.  Through great privations they saw unusual results.  In one 20 month period Vinton baptized 441 converts.  Vinton died in 1858 with jungle fever.
Dr. Greg J. Dixon, from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson /, pp. 144.
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62 – March – 03 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

The Ship the missionaries

sailed on.

Indigenous Church Method

1854 – On this date Mrs. John Sydney (Martha Foote) Beecher, was buried at sea as they were returning from the field of Burma where they had labored among the Karens.  Though Beecher’s heart was broken, he continued on in his laborers though with another mission’s agency.  With failing health he was forced to journey to England for treatment in September of 1866, however he died on Oct. 21, 1866.  Among other things he had established a Christian school in Burma besides being an able replacement for Elisha Litchfield Abbott who he replaced in 1846.  Abbott, born in New York in 1809, after being trained at the Hamilton Theological Seminary, in Hamilton, N.Y, became one of the highlights of missionary activity because of his work with the Karens of Bassein, Burma from the time he left for that field in 1836 until after the death of Mrs. Abbott in 1845.  At that time, with consumption coming on him, he left for the states with his children.  It was apparent to him that if he was to return to the field he would have to have an assistant.  Abbott did return to Burma in 1852 but died on Dec. 3, 1854.  It was Abbott who established the indigenous method of missions.  He founded fifty self-supporting churches among the Karens.  But it was during his first return to America that he met the young man Beecher and was able to influence him to follow in his footsteps.  Beecher had planned to go west to our own nation but said that he couldn’t make a decision until consulting Martha Foote who was in Chicago, and knew that letters could not transfer between them before Abbott left.  However the next day a letter came from Martha declaring that if he ever decided to go to an Eastern field, “I should lay no obstacle in your way.”  Beecher accepted that as the Lord giving him the clearance to go to Burma.
Dr. Greg J. Dixon, from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson /, pp. 88.

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352 – Dec. 18 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

They settled the Wild West

 

1878 – Was the founding of the Hordville Baptist Church in Hordville, Nebraska. The church was never very large. At its peak the membership never rose to more than 107, but from its membership, and other surrounding churches, the Lord called preachers, missionaries, and evangelists. One such church, the First Baptist Church of Oakland, NE, produced Dr. Ola Hanson, who became known as the “Apostle to the Kachins,” a large tribe in the hills of northern Burma. After reaching the Kachins, he reduced their language to writing, translated the entire Bible, and established a number of   Baptist churches. This story begins with the long procession of ox trains on the Oregon Trail, slowly winding their way towards the west coast that carried many sturdy pioneers who were motivated by spiritual convictions. A host of those who were traveling, were  Swedish. When spiritual awakenings had taken place in Sweden, a large company of the converts had embraced Baptist convictions, and particularly upon these the wrath of the Lutheran Church was vented. Because of this a great emigration of these new converts of  Swedish Baptists came to America, many of which settled in Iowa and Nebraska because our government gave free land to those who were willing to settle in the Wild West. Few of us today can imagine the hardships of these dear people as they inched their way across the prairie to where they would stake out their cabins and a church house. Prairie fires, blizzards, dust storms and plagues of grasshoppers to destroy their crops. But this suffering caused reliance on God, and produced Ola Hanson and the other men of God.
[This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 690-92. Carl J. Seaquist, Conference Churches by the Oregon Trail (Privately published, 1947), p.10.]
Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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313 – Nov. 09 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

We need submission to His commission

 

1844 – Dr. Jonathan Going went home to be with the Lord. Dr. Going, along with Rev. John Mason Peck founded the American Baptist Home Mission Society in 1832, whose goal was to promote the preaching of the gospel in North America. Going served as the corresponding secretary of the mission from 1832 to 1837. In 1838 he assumed the position of President of Granville College in Ohio. Jonathan was born to Jonathan and Sarah Going of Reading, Vermont, on March 7, 1786. He entered Brown University in 1805. As a student there he fell under deep conviction over his sins and received the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior and was licensed to preach by the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, while Stephen Gano was the pastor. This was during the time that the missionary fires were first beginning to burn hot in America. William Carey had gone to India in 1793. The Judsons and Luther Rice along with other Congregational missionaries had left our shores in 1812. The Judsons and Rice were converted to Baptist views on the ship as they sailed for Burma, and then Rice returned to create the first Baptist mission agency in 1814. Going had returned to Vermont to pastor and then to Worcester, Mass. where he had great success before his health broke. He took a leave of absence and with Peck went on a buggy trip through Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri before returning with the burning desire to evangelize the west. Someone has said concerning the Lord’s command that “There is no such thing as foreign missions or home missions. The real concern is submission to His Great Commission. [William Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 1:457. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 612-13.]   Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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