Today in History (December 27):
Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist
870 Aeneas of Paris, bishop of Paris from 858 to 870, died. He is best known as the author of one of the controversial treatises against the Greeks called forth by the encyclical letters of Photius. His comprehensive _Liber adversus Graecoa_ deals with the procession of the Holy Ghost, the marriage of the clergy, fasting, the "consignatio infantium," the clerical tonsure, the Roman primacy and the elevation of deacons to the see of Rome. He declares that the accusations brought by the Greeks against the Latins are "superfluous questions having more relation to secular matters than to spiritual."
1555 Johann Arnd(t), devotional writer, was born in Edderitz near Ballenstedt am Harz (d. 11 May 1621, Celle). He was the most influential devotional author the Lutheran Church has produced. Educated at the universities of Helmstedt, Wittenberg, Strasbourg and Basel, he became pastor at Badeborn, Anhalt, in 1583. In 1590 when the territory became Reformed, Arndt was deposed for insisting that he as a Lutheran of the unaltered Augsburg Confession had the right to retain the exorcisms at Baptism. He then served as pastor in Quedlinburg (where he influenced Johann Gerhard), Brunswick and Eisleben and finally (1611) as general superintendent in Celle. His _Four_ (later _Five_ and _Six_) _Books on True Christianity_ and his _Little Garden of Paradise_ have perennial and universal appeal. They have rarely been out of print in the original and have been translated into many languages. Influenced by Luther, he stands solidly in the Lutheran mystical tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages and demonstrates great skill in incorporating what is good from various medieval and post-Reformation sources into his thought. Speaking to a situation where "every one is very willing to be a servant of Christ, but no one will consent to be His follower" (_True Christianity_, I, Preface, 3), he combines theological orthodoxy with a profound concern for the practical development of the Christian virtues. In the field of theology he helped to fix the place of the doctrine of the mystical union of the believer with Christ in the Lutheran dogmatic tradition.
1719 Joshua von Kocherthal, early Lutheran pastor in New York, died. He was born Joshua Harrsch ca. 1669/70 in or near Bretten, Germany, and was a pastor at Landau, Palatinate. After the French invasion of 1703 he visited London in 1704 to investigate the feasibility of emigration to America. He reached New York on 31 December 1708 with about fifty followers. He returned to Europe in 1709 and led some ten shiploads of Palatines to America in 1710, settling them along the Hudson River in East Camp and West Camp.
1742 Henry Melchior Muhlenberg was recognized as the duly appointed pastor of the Lutheran churches in America at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Philadelphia. By preaching and faithful pastoral and missionary work, he soon began building churches and establishing congregations in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
1784 In Baltimore, Maryland, at the first general conference held in America, Francis Asbury was ordained the first American bishop of the Methodist Church. He took the title of "bishop" against the wishes of John Wesley.
1797 Charles Hodge, the leading American Reformed theologian of the nineteenth century, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Having studied theology under Archibald Alexander, Hodge began teaching at Princeton Seminary in 1820. With the exception of two years (1826-1828), he remained at Princeton the rest of his life. During a half-century of teaching and writing, Hodge instructed over three thousand students. He held a high view of verbal inspiration and biblical inerrancy. In 1825 he founded the _Biblical Repository_, later renamed the _Princeton Review_, and was editor for over forty years. A voluminous writer, Hodge's most important work was his three-volume _Systematic Theology_ (1872-1873). Before his death in 1878 he was considered by some "the greatest American Calvinist theologian since Jonathan Edwards."
1800 Sir John Goss, composer, was born at Fareham, Hants, England (d. 10 May 1880, London, England). Goss composed mostly church music. He was organist at Saint Paul’s from 1838 onward. Queen Victoria knighted him in 1872. In 1876 Cambridge University awarded him a Doctor of Music degree. He also held the post of Professor of Harmony at the Royal Academy of Music for almost half a century.
1809 John Edgar Freedom, Presbyterian missionary to India, was born in New York City (d. 13 June 1857). Educated at Princeton College and Seminary, he was sent as a missionary to India by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in 1838. He was at Allahabad till 1849, spent time in the U.S. from 1850 to 1851 and returned to India in 1851. He worked at Mainpuri, then went to Fategarh (Farrukhabad) in 1856. He was killed by Sepoys at Cawnpore.
1835 August Rohrlack, Missouri Synod secretary, was born in Neu-Ruppin, Prussia, Germany (d. 26 November 1913). He joined the Breslau Synod in about 1852, then studied at the Leipzig mission school. J. K. Wilhelm Löhe arranged for his coming to America in 1858, and he was an assistant preacher near Detroit, Michigan. Ordained in 1858, he became an itinerant preacher in Wisconsin, then a pastor successively in Portage and Loganville, Wisconsin; an itinerant preacher along Lake Superior; and a pastor at Oshkosh (1865) and Reedsburg (1869–1909), Wisconsin.
