Born today in 1898 was Norman Vincent Peale (above), the minister and author of the bestselling, The Power of Positive Thinking, which told its readers to ‘stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding’. Peale’s philosophy of success, which wowed readers in the US, was also a big influence on Donald Trump, whose family attended his church in New York.
‘I find the Apostle Paul appealing, and the Apostle Peale appalling.’ Adlai Stevenson, US presidential candidate in 1952
Joachim Neander, the German pastor and hymn writer, died of tuberculosis at the age of 30, today in 1680. He is famous for his enduring hymns, still sung by congregations 300 years after their creation, and also for lending his name to the Neanderthals. The remote valley in which he first sang his hymns was later named after him. When it was quarried for limestone in the 19th century, the 40,000 year-old fossilised skeleton of an ancient hominid was found in the floor of a cave. It was named after the valley, and thus after Joachim Neander.
Praise to the Lord,
The Almighty, the King of creation;
O my soul, praise him,
For he is thy health and salvation:
Come ye who hear,
Brothers and sisters draw near,
Praise him in glad adoration.
Hymn by Joachim Neander
William Carey, a shoemaker and Particular Baptist minister who became the first Baptist misisonary, preached a famous sermon today in 1792, calling his listeners to evangelism. His most famous line from the sermon, which has been used as a call to mission ever since, was ‘Expect great things of God; attempt great things for God.’ His Calvinist congregation was unmoved, as their theology said that God had chosen who was going to be saved before time began, so evangelism was a pointless insult to God’s sovereignty. But in a few months, a mission society had been set up, and Carey sailed for India as a missionary the following April.
In the Western Church, today is traditionally celebrated as the Visitation, when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Elizabeth’s greeting of Mary includes a phrase which centuries later was included in the Ave Maria (‘Hail, Mary’) prayer: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’
Today in 1767, Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol, was consecrated Bishop of Cloyne. He was an unlikely choice, as he was newly returned from a Grand Tour of Europe, on which he had devoted himself to enthusiastic shagging and equally enthusiastic spending on works of art. To complete the CV, Fred was also agnostic about the Almighty’s existence. A year later he was promoted to become Bishop of Derry, where he amused himself by making the most ambitious curates strip off and race naked around the city walls for the prize ecclesiastical jobs – a marathon that was hugely popular with the parishioners. King George III famously called him ‘that wicked prelate’.
Image: Library of Congress