December 2nd the Episcopal Church remembers Channing Moore Williams. On his gravestone some Japanese friends placed this touching epitaph: “During his fifty years in Japan he taught Christ’s ways and not his own.” So: In all things, may we seek Christ’s ways, not our own ways, to the glory of God.
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About this commemoration:
Bishop Williams, a farmer’s son, was born in Richmond, Virginia,on July 18, 1829, and brought up in straitened circumstances by his widowed mother. He attended the College of William and Mary and the Virginia Theological Seminary. Ordained deacon in 1855, he offered himself for work in China, where he was ordained priest in 1857. Two years later, he was sent to Japan and opened work in Nagasaki. His first convert was baptized in 1866, the year he was chosen bishop for both China and Japan. After 1868, he decided to concentrate all his work in Japan, following the revolution that opened the…
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