March 10: Today in Christian History

March 10, 673

Saint Agilbert, bishop of Paris, witnesses the charter of Clotilde’s Abbey of Bruyères-le-Châtel.

March 10, 1528

Balthasar Hubmaier “head and most important of the Anabaptists” is burned at the stake in Vienna after being condemned as a heretic by Roman Catholics.

March 10, 1747

John Newton, a sailor on a slave ship, is converted to Christianity during a huge storm at sea. He eventually becomes an Anglican clergyman, the author of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” and a zealous abolitionist. “That 10th of March is a day much to be remembered by me; and I have never allowed it to pass unnoticed since the year 1748. For on that day the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.”

March 10, 1851

Chicago Presbyterians expel some members who had passed resolutions against slaveholding and had threatened to leave the main body of Presbyterians if it persisted in compromising with slaveholders.

March 10, 1858

Death in New Haven, Connecticut, of Nathaniel Taylor, a prominent New England theologian who had modified the idea of freedom of will as taught by Jonathan Edwards to make it come more into line with experience. His New Haven church had experienced great growth and revival.

March 10, 1867

Baptism and first Communion of Chuang Ching-feng, a young Taiwanese Christian. At nineteen years of age he will die at the hands of a mob after unwisely trying to force his fifteen-year-old wife to go to church with him.

March 10, 1879

Death of Paul of Taganrog, who had given up a large inheritance and titles of nobility in order to make pilgrimages and eventually to settle at Taganrog and practice an ascetic lifestyle. He had been greatly admired by the common people who came to him for advice.The Russian Orthodox Church will declare him a saint.

March 10, 1880

After an eventful voyage during which an engine broke down, Commissioner George Scott Railton, assisted by seven young women, “invades” New York. Their hats are emblazoned with scarlet ribbon and gilt letters, reading “The Salvation Army.”

March 10, 1897

Death in Tokyo of Guido Verbeck. For ten years Verbeck had worked patiently at Nagasaki, building trust, teaching English (with the New Testament and the United States Constitution as his texts) and mastering the Japanese language. When his students became leaders of a new Japanese government, they invited Verbeck to Tokyo where his advice, language skills, and Western contacts proved so invaluable to Japan that the Japanese awarded him the Third Order of the Rising Sun.

March 10, 1977

Revival breaks out at Duranmin in Papua, New Guinea, while Diyos, principal of the Sepik Baptist Bible College, addresses a small assembly. Fifty listeners speak in tongues.