1224 - The Franciscans (founded in 1209 by St. Francis of Assisi) first arrived in England. They were originally called "Grey Friars" because of their gray habits. (The habit worn by modern Franciscans is brown.)
1718 - The Collegiate School at New Haven, CT, changed its name to Yale. (Congregationalists, unhappy with an increasing religious liberalism at Harvard, had founded Yale, the third oldest college in America, in 1701.)
1734 - English revivalist George Whitefield wrote in a letter: 'Pain, if patiently endured, and sanctified to us, is a great purifier of our corrupted nature.'
1794 - Blount College -- the first American nondenominational institution of higher learning -- was established in Knoxville. (It later became the University of Tennessee.)
1819 - Birth of Canadian hymnwriter Joseph Scriven. The accidental drowning of his bride-to-be the night before their wedding led to a life of depression; yet he also authored the hymn of comfort, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."
© 1987-2009, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from
Almanac of the Christian Church
