On This Day in Church History
A real event from the story of the church on each calendar day, told with its setting and what came of it, and quoted word for word from sources published before 1931.
The Last Diary Entry of James Hannington
October 29, 1885 · Busoga, near Uganda
The setting
James Hannington was an English clergyman who became the first Anglican bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa. In 1885 he set out by a new route toward Uganda, where a young king had just come to power and was suspicious of foreigners coming from the east.
The story
On October 21 Hannington was seized and held prisoner. He kept a tiny pocket diary. He was sick with fever, plagued by vermin and close to despair, but he kept reading the Psalms and recording how they held him up.
On October 28 he wrote that he was comforted by Psalm 27, and that evening by Psalm 28. On Thursday, October 29, he wrote what turned out to be his last entry. His biographer judged that the 29th was almost certainly the day he was killed.
“I can hear no news, but was held up by Psalm xxx., which came with great power.”
“I don't know what to think, and would say from the heart, 'Let the Lord do what seemeth to Him good.'”
What happened next
Hannington and most of his men were killed. His biographer wrote that the Church Universal mourned him. The church in Uganda went on to grow, even through the persecution that followed.
Why it matters: Scripture can hold a believer up in the darkest place, even when rescue does not come.
Source: E. C. Dawson, James Hannington, First Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa (1887), Chapter XXIII, pp. 459–461. Public domain.
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Other days
October 16
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1555 · Oxford, England
October 19
Disaster at the Surrey Gardens Music Hall
1856 · London, England
October 20
Wesley and the Wednesbury Mob
1743 · Wednesbury and Walsall, England
October 24
First Communion on Aniwa
1869 · Aniwa, New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
October 28
The Battle of the Milvian Bridge
312 · Rome, Italy
October 29
The Last Diary Entry of James Hannington
1885 · Busoga, near Uganda
October 31
Luther's Ninety-Five Theses
1517 · Wittenberg, Germany
November 5
The Patons Land on Tanna
1858 · Tanna, New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
November 6
Jonathan Edwards Writes "A Faithful Narrative"
1736 · Northampton, Massachusetts
November 10
"Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?"
1871 · Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika
November 11
The Mayflower Compact
1620 · Cape Cod, Massachusetts
November 12
Müller Opens His Second Orphan House
1857 · Ashley Down, Bristol, England
November 14
Samuel Seabury Consecrated America's First Bishop
1784 · Aberdeen, Scotland