January 26

Saint Timothy and Saint Titus, Pastors and Confessors

1564 The Council of Trent issued an official statement making a clear distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism.

1595 Antonio Maria Abbatini, music theorist and composer, was born in Tiferno, Italy (d. 1677/79).

1642 Johann Matthaeus Meyfart, hymnist, humanist, German theologian and poet, died in Erfurt, Germany (b. 9 November 1590, Jena). [German Wikipedia article]

1722 Alexander Carlyle, Scottish church leader, was born (d. 28 August 1805).

1744 Leopold Franz Friedrich Lehr, hymnist, died in Magdeburg (b. 3 September 1709, Kronenburg, near Frankfurt am Main). He was educated at Jena and Halle and worked as a tutor, serving the Halle orphanage. He was also active in Köthen, collaborating with the court preacher to publish the Köthnische Lieder. He was made assistant pastor at Köthen in 1740. [The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, comp. W. G. Polack (Saint Louis: CPH, 1942): 535–36]

1745 Peter Brunnholz (d. 1757), Lutheran pastor, arrived in Philadelphia. A Danish Lutheran, he was born in Schleswig and educated at Halle. He assisted Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, serving at Philadelphia and Germantown from 1745 to 1751 and at Philadelphia alone from 1751 to 1757. He was a cofounder of the Pennsylvania Ministerium.

1795 Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, German composer and ninth son of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), died (b. 21 June 1732).

1799 Samuel Gobat, missionary to Africa and later bishop in Jerusalem, was born in Cremine, Switzerland (d. 11 May 1879).

1809 Sheldon Dibble, missionary to Hawaii, was born in Skaneateles, New York (d. 22 June 1845).

1844 Albert L. Peace, church organist, was born at Huddersfield, England (d. 14 March 1912, Liverpool, England).

1859 Millionaire inventor of the reaper Cyrus McCormick (1809–1884) married Nettie Fowler, a devoted Christian. Following his death, Nettie used her enormous wealth to establish McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and to support the work of D. L. Moody, John R. Mott and countless missionaries to Asia.

1887 Frederick Roth Webber was born in Decatur, Illinois (d. 27 December 1963).He graduated from the Lutheran School of Theology (Maywood, Illinois) in 1914 and was ordained in Racine, Wisconsin, in June of that year, accepting a call from the First Lutheran Church (Beloit, Wisconsin). From 1915 to 1917 he was a missionary to stations and congregations in Wisconsin and Chicago. In 1918 he accepted a call from Faith Lutheran Church (Cleveland, Ohio) and remained there until 1937. He served on the Architectural Committee of the English District of the Missouri Synod, writing articles for various periodicals. In 1927 he published his magnum opus, Church Symbolism. He also wrote the three-volume History of Preaching in Britain and America. He spent much of his time with archeological research in England.

1894 Herman Hugo Hohenstein, pioneer in religious broadcasting, was born in Peoria, Illinois (d. 8 May 1961).

1905 Maria von Trapp, musical Austrian baroness, was born in Vienna, Austria (d. 28 March 1987).

1906 The Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the oldest Pentecostal denomination, convened its first General Assembly.

1915 Matthias Loy, president of Capital University (Columbus, Ohio) died (b. 17 March 1828, Cumberland Co., Pennsylvania).

1949 Peter Marshall (b. 27 May 1902), Presbyterian clergyman and chaplain to the U.S. Senate (1947–1949), died.

1971 Food for the Hungry was incorporated in Glendale, California.

1973 E. Stanley Jones (b. 1884), American Methodist missionary to India, died.