2348 - -BC- According to Archbishop James Ussher's Old Testament chronology, the Great Deluge ("Noah's Flood") began on this date.
1742 - In New York, David Brainerd, 24, was approved as a missionary to the New England Indians by the Scottish Society for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge (SPCK). Brainerd worked heroically from Apr 1743 to Nov 1746, before advancing tuberculosis forced him to relinquish his work. (He died in October 1747.)
1807 - Anglican missionary Henry Martyn wrote in his journal: 'With thee, O my God, there is no disappointment; I shall never have to regret that I loved thee too well.'
1820 - English poet and Oxford Movement leader John Keble, 28, penned the words to the hymn, "Sun of My Soul" ("Sun of my soul, Thou Savior dear, It is not night if Thou be near....").
1864 - British Jewish statesman Benjamin Disraeli declared in a speech: 'Man is a being born to believe, and if no church comes forward with all the title deeds of truth, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination.'
© 1987-2008, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church