Well, welcome back to five minutes in church history.

Last week we looked at faith in Times of Plague Part 1.

Well, this week is Part 2.

Last time we were in the 16th century talking about Martin Luther. This time we're going not too far back, just about

a hundred years or so back, to 1918 and the 20th century to talk about Francis Grimke.

We've talked about him before on five minutes in church history.

He was born in the American South in 1850 as a slave. He was emancipated at the age of 15 at the end of the Civil War. He made

his way north, studied in Pennsylvania and then he went over to New Jersey and was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary from

1875 to 1878.

The importance of those three years is that they were in fact the last three years that Charles

Hodge taught at Princeton. So that is to say that Grimke was one of the last

students of Princeton to have Charles Hodge for all three years of the theology curriculum.

Grimke spent most of his ministry as pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

He died in 1937.

Well we've all heard by now of the Spanish flu of 1918.

Grimke lived through it and he published and preached and then published a sermon entitled Some Reflections,

growing out of the recent epidemic of influenza that afflicted our city.

It was preached on November 3rd, 1918.

It is full of all sorts of insight

on how a Christian can respond to a plague.

But let me just focus on two issues with you.

One, and I'll just read what Grimke has to say.

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