The Scriptorium Daily

Category: Blog

  • Peloubet’s Notes

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Francis Nathan Peloubet (1831-March 27, 1920) decided the most strategic thing he could do as a pastor was to train Sunday School teachers how to teach the Bible to their students well. So he travelled and lectured, wrote books and articles about it, and networked inter-denominationally to support the Sunday School movement any way he…

  • “My Son, Give Me Thy Heart” (J. H. Sammis)

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    To thee, who from the narrow road In sinful ways so long hast trod, How kindly speaks thy Father, God, “My son, give Me thy heart.” “My son!” O word of mighty grace, That children of our mortal race, With sons of God may take their place — “My son, give Me thy heart.” How…

  • Happy Birthday, Dawson Trotman

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Dawson Trotman (born March 25, 1906, died 1956) was the founder of the Navigators, a Christian ministry that is famous for Scripture memorization and one-on-one discipleship. Both of those emphases seem to have flowed directly from the personal charisma of Daws, as his friends called him and as his biography is entitled. Converted as a…

  • Divorce, Deeper Sunday School, and Destructive Criticism

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    R.A. Torrey
    in

    Q. What do the 27th and 28th verses of First Corinthians 7 mean? i.e., do they release one in such a case from Matthew 5:32? A. They certainly do not. They simply teach that if a man is not under obligation to a wife through having one living, he has a right to marry, and…

  • Fanny Crosby “Beheld the Wondrous Love”

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Fanny J. Crosby (born March 24, 1820, died 1915) was the prolific blind hymn-writer who captured the ethos of late nineteenth-century evangelicalism and set it to music. We had to wait until just a few years ago for a substantive critical biography of Crosby: In 2005, Edith L. Blumhofer published Her Heart Can See: The…

  • Gregory Illuminated Armenia

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    Fred Sanders
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    Gregory the Illuminator is the man who persuaded the king of Armenia to renounce idolatry and accept Christianity. That was in the year 301, making Armenia the first nation to become officially Christian. According to Armenian legends, the gospel had come to them long before that official conversion, though. Supposedly, Thaddeus, one of the 70…

  • How Jonathan Edwards Died

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    Fred Sanders
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    On March 22, 1758, Jonathan Edwards died in Princeton, New Jersey, from complications that set in after a smallpox vaccination. It was a surprising turn of events, right when Edwards thought he was starting an exciting new phase of his life’s work. He had moved to Princeton just a few months before, to assume the…

  • Blessed Saints, Blessed Savior, Blessed Trinity (Watts)

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    The Scale of Blessedness is the title of an Isaac Watts sermon which starts from Psalm 65:4, “Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts,” and launches out into an exploration of the idea of blessedness itself. Rung by rung, Watts climbs the…

  • John Newton Accidentally Called Out For Mercy

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    Fred Sanders
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    March 21, 1748 is the day that John Newton (1725-1807) would look back on and commemorate for the rest of his life as the beginning of his conversion. But it wasn’t much of a conversion, in some ways: He was pumping water out of a storm-damaged ship somewhere in the Atlantic and expecting to die…

  • It’s a Neighborly Day in this Beauty Wood

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    Fred Sanders
    in ,

    Today is the birthday of Fred Rogers (March 20, 1928-2003), whose first name was not Mister, but whose middle name actually was McFeely, and who actually wrote the line, “It’s a neighborly day in this beauty wood.” Mister Rogers cranked out that sweater-wearing, sneakers-changing, trolley-riding show of his for 33 years. It was so slow-paced,…

  • Today Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath, Died (1711)

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    Fred Sanders
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    Thomas Ken (1637-1711), bishop of Bath and Wells, was one of the non-juring bishops who stayed loyal to the Stuart line during the reign of William and Mary. His greatest work is probably his Practice of Divine Love, a kind of extended devotional treatment of the Catechism of the Church of England. The sub-section of…

  • Thomas Ken Does the Math on the Plenitude of Godhead Trine

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    Fred Sanders
    in

    Thomas Ken (1637-1711), Bishop of Bath, his mind fully stocked with the prayer in Ephesians 3:14-19, wrote a poem that applies the prayer to himself: I Bow my knee to God on high, Father of Filial Deity, To whom the blessed owe their birth, Inhabiting or heaven or earth, That from his gracious glories He…