William D Longstaff – death, Apr. 2, 1894

“Take Time to Be Holy”

 

Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;
Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.
Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.

 

Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone.
By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall see.

 

Take time to be holy, let Him be thy Guide;
And run not before Him, whatever betide.
In joy or in sorrow, still follow the Lord,
And, looking to Jesus, still trust in His Word.

 

Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul,
Each thought and each motive beneath His control.
Thus led by His Spirit to fountains of love,
Thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.

  

William D (Dunn) Longstaff died (4/2/1894) at Cambridge Terrace, Durham, England.  He was a friend of Dwight L Moody and Ira D Sankey.  He was also was friends with William Booth (founded Salvation Army) and some of his hymns seem to have been published in the Army’s War Cry.

  
Longstaff, who was born 11/26/1822, at Durham, England was the treasurer of the Bethesda Free Chapel in Sunderland.

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Sabine Baring-Gould – death, Jan. 2, 1924

“Onward, Christian Soldiers”   (stanza 2,5)

At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.

Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the church of Jesus constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise, and that cannot fail.

Baring-Gould died this date 1/2/1924.  He is said to have written 30 novels and a 16 vol. Lives of the Saints.  He was born 1/28/1834.

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Martin Rinkart – death, Dec. 8, 1649

“Now Thank We All Our God”   (stanza 2)

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

Martin Rinckart died 12/8/1649, Germany (born 1586).  He was a Lutheran who began pastoring at 31 in Eilenburg, Saxony, his home community.  Between the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the Plague of 1637 Rinckart buried some 5,000 victims – holding as high as 50 funerals a day.

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Martin Wells Knapp – death, Dec. 7, 1901

How much better to be possessors of the Maker of gold and silver instead of the metal!

   – Martin Wells Knapp Christ Crowned Within (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Press, 1886), 78.

 

Doubt has its root in an unwilling heart.

   – Martin Wells Knapp Christ Crowned Within (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Press, 1886), 96.

 

As the chisel blows no longer are permitted to fall upon the statue that is perfected; so temptation’s strokes can never come again upon those who, in heaven, are “complete.”

   – Martin Wells Knapp Christ Crowned Within (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Press, 1886), 161.

 

Do you love to be corrected when in the wrong and do you take such correction kindly? 

   – Martin Wells Knapp Christ Crowned Within (Cincinnati: God’s Revivalist Press, 1886), 177.

 

Martin Wells Knapp died 12/7/1901 (11 PM, Sat.), Cincinnati, Ohio

Founded God’s Revivalist; oldest Christian magazine (with still same name) in America Founded God’s Bible School (1901)

Also wrote: Revival Kindlings, Out of Egypt into Canaan, and his classic Impressions

 

 

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Charles F Weigle – death, Dec. 3, 1966

“Waiting on the Lord”       (refrain and stanzas 2,3)

 

The power! the power!
Gives vict’ry over sin, and purity within;
The power! the power!
The pow’r they had at Pentecost.

 

Waiting on the Lord, giving all to Jesus;
Waiting on the Lord, till from sin He frees us;
Waiting on the Lord for the heav’nly breezes;
Waiting in the upper room.

 

Waiting on the Lord, longing to mount higher;
Waiting on the Lord, having great desire;
Waiting on the Lord, for the heav’nly fire;
Waiting in the upper room.

 

Charles Frederick Weigle died this date in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the city in which he had worked some years with Tennessee Temple Schools.  Weigle was born in LaFayette, Indaina (11/20/1871), attended Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (now a part of University of Cincinnati) and went on to preach and to write some 1000 songs.  See also “I Love to Walk with Jesus,” “Living for Jesus” and “No One ever Cared for Me Like Jesus”

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Isaac Watts – death, Nov. 25, 1748

“Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed?”  (stanzas 1,3,5)

 

Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

Refrain

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day!

 

Was it for crimes that I had done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity! grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!

 

Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.       (Underlining -eab)

 

Isaac Watts died this day in England, his native land.  He is known for many worshipful hymns and, of course for, “Joy to the World.”  The average reader may be unaware that Watts also wrote, Logick (1725)  Knowledge of the Heavens and Earth (1726)  Philosophical Essays (1733)  The Improvements of the Mind (1741) all used for decades at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Yale!

 

Watts is said to have rhymed so much as a kid that his dad wanted it stopped to which Isaac replied “O father, do some pity take

                                                And I will no more verses make.”

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C. S. Lewis – death, Nov. 22, 1963

What God begets is God…What God creates is not God.

            – C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1945), 5.

 

…God has no history.  He is too completely and utterly real to have one.        

            – C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1945), 17.

 

When He said, “Be perfect,” He meant it…It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.  We are like eggs at present.  And you cannot go in indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad.

             – C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1945), 42.

 

It cost God nothing, as far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him the crucifixion.

            – C. S. Lewis, Beyond Personality (NY: Macmillan, 1945), 55.

 

Clive Staples Lewis died this date. He had taught at Oxford (1924-1954) and Cambridge (1954-1963) universities. In his early thirties, Lewis was converted to Jesus Christ. He is best known for his children’s classic The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), and for Screwtape Letters, Miracles,and Mere Christianity.  Lewis was born 11/29/1898, Belfast, Ireland.

 

 

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Oswald Chambers – death, Nov. 15, 1917

How does Jesus Christ teach a man to forget sin?  By forgiving him.  How does a pagan teach a man to forget sin?  “Ignore it, think no more about it, realize yourself!”

                – Oswald Chambers, Workmen of God (NY: Grosset and Dunlap, 1938), 34.

 

God grant we may understand the power of a holy worker for God.  I don’t mean a holiness worker; what we need is holy workers–there is a big difference.

– Oswald Chambers, Workmen of God (NY: Grosset and Dunlap, 1938), 109.

 

Oswald Chamber died this date, Cairo, Egypt.  He was a son of a Scottish Baptist pastor who was converted after hearing Spurgeon preach. For three years he worked as a traveling missioner for the Pentecostal League of Prayer (non-tongues group founded by Reader Harris). Late he was principal of the League’s Bible Training College in London. He taught briefly at God’s Bible School, Cincinnati, Ohio, teaching R.G.Finch while there. Chambers in Egypt after two years of working as a YMCA chaplain among the desert troops. His most important book is his classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest still in print and available in several languages.

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Phineas F. Bresee – death, Nov. 13, 1915

…The Nazarene…taught that the law of greatness was service, and the world looked and has seen that is true.  That a man is great because of birth or inheritance, or becasue he exercises power, is but a surface thought.

– P. F. Bresee, Sermons from Matthew’s Gospel(Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, nd), 70.    

 

Bresee died this date in 1915.  He founded the Church of the Nazarene.  E. A. Girvin wrote his biography, Phineas F. Bresee A Prince in Israel, Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1916.

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John Milton – death, Nov 8, 1674

“On the Late Late Massacre in Piedmont”

 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Ev’n them who kept the truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,

Forget not: in thy book record their groans

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks.  Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heav’n.  Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O’er all th’ Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple Tyrant that from these may grow

A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

 

John Milton, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) poet of England died 11/6/1674 in London.  He is best known for Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671) but this is a good sonnet of his.  Milton was a philosopher, hynmist, poet, and theologian. 

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