Thursday, June 26, 2025

It is the 26th of June 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

There is certainly a theme this week that was not planned… shall we call it, men of a certain time and place- from Henry Venn Sr to Eliphalet Nott- we stay in the 18th century (and tomorrow, if I can find a certain book I’m trying to track down the story will stay on theme). It’s another of those names that you may have come across in passing but not placed in a particular tradition or context.

He was Philip Doddridge- another English giant of the 18th century in England when you could divine most people into the camp of “Church of England” (which we can call Anglican- in America they are sometimes called “Episcopal”) or as “Dissenters”- these were generally Protestant Christians uncomfortable with particular doctrines in the church of England or with tis relationship to the crown. The early English colonists- some of them “Puritans” all fit into the larger camp of “dissenters”.

Doddridge’s family may be forgiven if they weren’t keenly aware of the theological particulars around the time of his birth on this, the 26th of June in 1702. Philip was the 20th child of Daniel and Elizabeth Doddridge, but of the twenty, only one other, a girl, had survived infancy. In fact, they believed Philip to be stillborn, and it was not for the attentiveness of an assistant who saw the baby twitch that he may not have been given the attention necessary for him to grow up. But tragedy was never far from your Philip- his mother died when he was eight and his father when he was 12. He was sent to live with the uncle for whom he was named and then stayed in the parish home of a local Presbyterian minister.

He had shown enough promise that a local Duchess, she of Bedford, offered to pay his way through school and into Anglican orders. But even as a teenager, he felt that he was more in line with the dissenters than the established church. He would enroll at the Kibsworth Academy- a school for training non-Anglicans. Young Philip was so promising that he stayed on as an instructor and was ordained, eventually taking a call to Northampton, where he was the pastor and head of an academy, later known as the famous Northampton Academy.

He lived an extraordinarily full life for someone who would die before his 50th birthday. He was perhaps most famous for three things: his hymns, a particular book, and a commentary.

Doddridge was friends with a local dissenter, Isaac Watts, known as the father of modern English hymnody, who encouraged Doddridge, a poet in his own right, to compose gospel songs that could be written and printed to sing in response to his sermons. And while he was no Watts, or Wesley of Newton, he was of this age and has some 400 hymns to his name- the most famous being “O Happy Day, that Fixed My Choice”, “Awake My Soul Stretch Every Nerve”, and “Hark the Glad Sound the Savior Comes”.

His most famous book is “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul”- it reads like an extended apologetic and evangelistic tract. Over 30 brief sections (my copy is 260 pages), he walks through the basic argument that “religion” is inescapable and that the “progress” is made when one starts with the doctrine of sin and then into the doctrines of grace and then into the Christian life and a preparation for dying well. There’s little in it that hasn’t been done since, but in its day, it was especially useful. It was the book William Wilberforce read that he insisted affected his conversion and his work to end the British slave trade.

Doddridge’s commentary, called “the Family Expositor,” would have a similar influence. It was a multivolume commentary and translation of the New Testament. Beginning with a harmony of the Gospels, he gives the text from the King James, his own expanded text in more colloquial language, footnotes for difficult passages, and each passage ending with what he calls “improvements,” which is a devotional reflection on the text. It was very popular with families for home worship and developments- and least anyone think of it as a less than erudite piece of scholarship for its time- Jonathan Edwards, the premier north American theologian/philosopher of his day references this work by Doddridge more than 400 times in his own New testament making it the most used book, we know of, by Edwards. Huis Rise and Progress, as well as Family Expositor, can be found for free at archive.org, and his hymns at Hymnary.org. Philip Doddridge, born on this day in 1702 and always frail from his earliest days, died in Portugal, sent there to ease his tuberculosis, in 1751. He was 49 years old.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Paul’s description of the Christian life in Romans 7:

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of June 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows today as the 51st anniversary of the first UPC barcode being used at a store… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who knows the end times, and it also began with that- the mark of the beast was introduced on this day in 1974. I'm Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.