Bowen's Daily Meditations

Mine! All mine! All the revelation of thee in the Bible is the revelation of my God. Thy wisdom is all for me. So is thy power. So is thy goodness. So is thy truth, thy purity, thy justice; thy time is for me, thy eternity for me ', thy works' for me. Thou sittest on the throne of the universe for me; pervadest all space for me; arrangest all thy plans for me.

Many millions of millions of miles away, but a star to thine eyes, is a sun huge in mass, dazzling in splendor, weighty in...

" Let there be an understanding between us. Let us talk over the points of difference between us, and see if we cannot come to a settlement. If you have any fault to find with me, state it. If I am not what you would have me be, put your objection into words. Be explicit. You alienate yourself from me, shun my paths, avoid all approaches to communion with me, shut up my word, look coldly on my people, and if you can possibly get anything else to think of, no matter how contemptible it be,...

Who is this beloved of the Lord? It is one who believes in the love that God has toward him. We have not to bring about the love of God towards us; but to recognize that love. Peter had a great idea of his own love to Christ; " though all men forsake thee, yet will I not forsake thee;" but John was content to speak of himself as the beloved of the Lord. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us. His love to us is as our faith in his love, and in our own unworthiness. "...

The context informs us what that prayer is in which we ought not to allow ourselves to faint. The prayer is that God would be pleased to judge between his people and the world. The world denies the claim of the righteous to be considered the children of God. The one great need of the Church is, that God should bear testimony unto the word of his grace, and rebuke the nations with a voice they, can but hear, saying, ' Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm." The Lord Jesus taught...

He will, thou prophet of the living God! More happy art thou in this thy strong and well-warranted persuasion than if a tiara of the most effulgent diamonds were set upon thy brow, to light up the chamber of thy darkness. Didst thou always know this? Couldest thou from the beginning look thus serenely along the paths of life, conscious that betide whatever might, thou shouldst enjoy the manifested presence of thy God?

Perhaps not. Perhaps there was a period in thy life when thou hadst...

Is it at all unreasonable to suppose that the contemplation of God will yield us greater more precious results than the consideration of anything or of everything in this world that he has made? You are wrapt up in the study of mineralogy, or botany, or conchology; and have no time to spare for the cultivation of your acquaintance with God. The sight of a little shell has wonderful power to awaken all your faculties: and you have no rest till you have ascertained its characteristics, traced...

Poor man, says the world. But no, says the believer; he is to be pitied who boasts of any other portion than this. If the Lord be not thy portion, will any portion that thou hast continue? Let it be power like that of Napoleon, wisdom like that of Socrates; fame like that of Bacon, imagination like that of Scott, wealth like that of the Bourbons; let it be beauty, or valor, or wit, or industry; let it be troops of friends, or one most loving heart; let it be what it may, it is a contemptible...

This modest text is supported by a bolder and more eloquent one in Isaiah. " Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him." Those that waited for the Messiah, and at length beheld him, found the promise of these texts verified in their experience.

But we have not in this dispensation bid farewell to the attitude of waiting. The great and precious things bestowed upon us, do not hinder...

God hath said, " Thou shalt not kill," But thou hast done more than this. Imagine thyself in the presence of some pure and spotless inhabitant of heaven, clad in perfections that enable him to ' smile at any difficulty however gigantic, and resplendent with the glory of God. Imagine thyself as sailing him in his purity, wisdom, love, power, and glory; and stripping him of all his perfections one after another, and finally precipitating him to earth, a poor depraved sensual rebel. Cease now...

For the devices of man only increase my malady. The utmost they can do is to conceal a plague spot here and a plague spot there; but concealment is not abatement. What is my pride the better for all their prescriptions? What have they done for my self-will? For my unbelief, slothfulness, irritability, prayerlessness, impulsiveness? I come to thee, Lord. He that created me, and whose creation I have spent my days in marring, can alone restore to me his image, and make me to walk in the health...

We should greatly err if we understood this word " blessed' as teaching that the man who trusteth in God will pursue a path of tranquil enjoyment and exemption from sorrow. He is blessed because he is enabled to pursue the path, the only path, that leadeth unto everlasting life. Because the favor of God is his. Because Christ forsaketh him never. Because the Spirit of God dwells in him. Because he has grace to seek the welfare of his fellow-men. And he is blessed because of the peculiar...

The position of the church in the world is like that of the low countries. Its ground is all recovered ground; dyke's compass it about; and against these the mighty ocean mutters, dashes, rages, as its mood may be. The law of all waters is opposed to its existence; Pacifics, Atlantics and Antarctics, seem ever to be uttering a protest against it. Anon, they, or their representative waters, arise in strength and precipitate themselves upon it. A flood is always ready for the Church; at every...

There is a fight that is good; a warfare that is eminently laudable. It is lamentable to see how easily men err in deciding what is worthy, what is not worthy to enlist their noblest energies. A question of unspeakable importance; ― for what boots it that you undergo hardships, surmount difficulties, make the most incredible sacrifices, exhibit the most brilliant valor, or the most consummate skill, if the cause in which you have embarked be one not worthy of your energies and sufferings?...

It is regarded as one of the saddest facts in our condition, that the objects which interest and attract us, have no power to perpetuate their own attractiveness; and the mind obtaining what it passionately sought, and by degrees getting accustomed to its particular features of beauty, loses day by day something of its own delight in them. Fascination can get no victory that is not stolen from it again by time. And this is said to be an inevitable, Nemesis-like fact in our finite condition....