1765 English poet and hymnwriter William Cowper observed in a letter: ‘How naturally does affliction make us Christians!’

1827 Slavery abolished in NY

1831 Baptist clergyman Samuel Francis Smith penned the American patriotic hymn,’America’ (‘My Country, ‘tis of Thee’). Smith was unaware that the tune, ironically, was also that of England’s national anthem: ‘God Save the Queen’!

1840 Birth of American sacred composer James McGranahan. His most enduring melodiesinclude CHRIST RETURNETH, MY REDEEMER, NEUMEISTER (‘Christ Receiveth Sinful Men’) and SHOWERS OF BLESSING.

1870 Birth of James Moffatt, Scottish New Testament scholar. Moffatt translated theNew (1913) and Old (1924) Testaments into the colloquial English of his day. They were first published together in 1935.

1918 Altar dedicated at full-scale replica of Stonehenge at Maryhill, Wa

1970 American Presbyterian missionary Francis Schaeffer observed in a letter: ‘Ifstandards are raised which are not really scriptural,… it can only lead to sorrow. If we try to have a spirituality higher than the Bible sets forth, it will always turn out to be lower.’

1973 In audience with Italian cyclists, Pope Paul VI praises athletes who
“offer the magnificent show of a healthy, strong, generous youth”

Religious Observances

RC : Feast of St Bertha, abbess

RC : Mem of St Elizabeth of Portugal, queen/widow, (opt)

July 4

On this day in 973, Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg from 923, died. Twenty years later he would become the first person canonized by a pope.

July 4

Bertha, widow, abbess (of Blangy in Artois) [BLS]
Bolcan [BLS]
Elizabeth Lusitania [MR]
Finbar, abbot [BLS]
Laurianus, bishop, martyr [GTZ: Bourges]
Martin, bishop (of Tours), confessor (Translation, Ordination) [HCC, PCP (Paris), in red; WTS (Bruges), sometimes in red]
Odo, bishop (of Canterbury) [BLS]
Othelric, bishop, confessor [GTZ]
Procopius, abbot (at Prague), confessor [GTZ: Prague, Gnesen, Meissen]
Sisoes, anchorite [BLS]
Ulric, bishop (of Augsburg) confessor [common]

Feast Day:

St. Finbar, abbot.

St. Bolcan, abbot.

St. Sisoes or Sisoy, anchoret in Egypt, about 429.

St. Bertha, widow, abbess of Blangy, in Artois, about 725.

St. Ulric, bishop of Augsburg, confessor, 973.

St. Ode, archbishop of Canterbury, confessor, 10thcentury.

TRANSLATION OF ST. MARTIN

That the Church of Rome should not only celebrate the day of St. Martin’s death (November 11), but also that of the transference of his remains from their original humble resting place to the cathedral of Tours, shews conclusively the veneration in which this soldier-saint was held. (See under November 11.) The day continues to have a place in the Church of England calendar.

In Scotland, this used to be called St. Martin of Bullion’s Day, and the weather which prevailed upon it was supposed to have a prophetic character. It was a proverb, that if the deer rise dry and lie down dry on Bullion’s Day, it was a sign there would be a good gose-harvest—gose being a term for the latter end of summer; hence gose-harvest was an early harvest. It was believed generally over Europe that rain on this day betokened wet weather for the twenty ensuing days.

BISHOP WATSON

Richard Watson was eminent as a prelate, politician, natural philosopher, and controversial theologian; but his popular fame may be said to depend solely on one little book, his Apology for the Bible, written as a reply to Paine’s Age of Reason. A curious error has been, more than once, lately promulgated respecting this prelate. At a telegraphic soiree, held in the Free-trade Hall, Manchester, during the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at that city, in 1861, it was confidently asserted that Bishop Watson had given the first idea of the electric telegraph. The only probable method of accounting for so egregious an error, is that Bishop Watson had been confounded with Sir William Watson, who, when an apothecary in London, conducted some electrical experiments in 1747, and succeeded in sending the electric current from a Leyden jar through a considerable range of earth, or water, and along wires suspended in the open air on sticks. But, even he never had the slightest idea of applying his experiments to telegraphic purposes. In his own account of these experiments, he says: ‘If it should be asked to what useful purposes the effects of electricity can be applied, it may be answered that we are not yet so far advanced in these discoveries as to render them conducive to the service of mankind.’

Bishop Watson was elected professor of chemistry at the university of Cambridge in 1769; and he gives us the following statement on the subject: ‘At the time this honour was conferred upon me, I knew nothing at all of chemistry, had never read a syllable on the subject, nor seen a single experiment in it!’ A very fair specimen of the consideration in which physical science was held at the English universities, during the dark ages of the last century. After studying chemistry for fourteen months, Watson commenced his lectures; but in all his printed works on chemistry, and other subjects, the word electricity is never once mentioned!