This week in Christian history: Battle of Lake Peipus; Bakht Singh arrives in Bombay; William Thomson dies
William M. Thomson dies – April 8, 1894
This week marks the anniversary of when American missionary William McClure Thomson, best known for his widely read book The Land and the Book, died in Colorado at the age of 87.
A native of Ohio, Thomson became a missionary as an adult and did decades of ministry work in Syria, which at the time was controlled by the Muslim-majority Ottoman Empire.
In 1859, Thomson published the first edition of his best-selling The Land and the Book. The work offered a detailed description of the customs, topography and culture of the Holy Land.
“Hardly any Bible lover in Great Britain or America would count his library reasonably complete or himself well furnished for Bible study or Bible teaching unless he had access to Dr. Thomson's The Land and the Book,” wrote the Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull in 1902.
“And young people think more of the Bible if they have the privilege of reading that book as they read or study the Bible. All realize more fully since that book was written the value of the land of which it tells, as throwing light on the Book of books which it treats.”
