Bowen's Daily Meditations

The object is to show that Christ has much more than repaired the ruin wrought by Adam, in the case of all those who avail themselves of the salvation wrought out by him. Instead of the one throne where Death sat and swayed the destinies of man, there are now myriads, millions of thrones, on each of which a believer is to sit and give the universe a visible demonstration of what Christ can bestow upon the soul that comes to him.

First, he is to receive abundance of grace, and of the...

This is the utterance of the Spirit, and teaches, if language can teach anything, that the influences of the Spirit may be lost. His presence is as the existence of a heaven-born flame in the heart, which needs to be carefully watched and guarded, which, if its proper aliment be withheld, will die out. The language of Scripture from beginning to end, is perfectly consistent with itself, though the points that establish this consistency are not thrust conspicuously forward. Scripture is...

Romans 8:31 KJV
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

If God be for us, we are justified in making light of all our enemies. Any injury that they can do us is of little account, while we have this all-powerful ally.

This seems a mere truism; but it is really the language of an uncommon faith. He goes on to enumerate tribulation, persecution, distress, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword. Now, these things involve tremendous losses;...

If we owe much to the death of Christ, we owe much more to his life. It were little to give us the freedom of the universe, if in that universe we could not find Christ. It were little to give us immortality, if there were no Sun of Righteousness to make that immortality glorious and beautiful. It would be like discovering some unknown friend in his dying hour; we have hardly time to acquaint ourself with his amazing love, and to see the flash of his kindness illuminating our life, before he...

After all, there is nothing that men detest so much as a feeling of shame. We hear a great deal of calamities, bereavements, losses, sorrows, troubles, and numerous other synonyms; but all these are not near so odious to a man as a feeling of shame. There is not any calamity that men have not accepted in preference to a momentary feeling of shame. A feeling of shame in the mind of a man would make him insensible to the loss of his father, or of any other very dear friend; to the loss of...

It will hardly be denied by any reflecting person that it is reasonable to suppose that there is for every human being a particular line of procedure which commends itself to God as the best, and every deviation from which is a deviation from that which is best. When we consider how admirably God has organized man, how richly he has endowed him, with what authority he has invested him, and with what appliances he has surrounded him; when we consider what an infinitude of wise and good...

The idea is, that his anger is fugitive, his favor perennial. The contrast is between the words moment and life. The contrast is sustained in what follows: " Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning," even in the morning of a day, whose sun shall never go down. Paul renews it in the words, " Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." As the ages of our prospective existence unfold to us, the misery...

Before you are conscious of any strength in your heart, while you feel yourself exceedingly weak and utterly incompetent, even then you are to be of good courage. It requires very little true courage to be bold when there is the consciousness of strength. The courage that is well-pleasing in the sight of God, is the courage of faith; the courage of David, whose sling and stone were nothing, but who trusted simply in God.

Nothing is more essential to the Christian than good courage. He...

Imagine a number of men whose hearts are filled with bitterness against their sovereign, and, in a certain chamber, are industriously laboring at the construction of an infernal machine, to be exploded on some approaching day when the sovereign is to pass that way. The heart of this sovereign, say, is kindness itself. He receives information of what these men are doing. Disguising himself he comes among them, and succeeds in convincing them that he is friendly, and will prove a valuable...

And is this so difficult? Does your heart find itself competent to everything, rather than this? Oh, what a reproach to you! In fact, it is impossible to conceive of any more severe condemnation than that which you pass upon yourself, and day by day reiterate, while you continue not to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You are asked to take his righteousness in preference to your own, his wisdom rather than your own; his influence at the throne of God rather than your own. You are asked to...

The path of faith and that of well-doing are not diverse from each other; they are one. A man that is in the path of well-doing, and for whose deeds there is ever and anon dropping from the lips of God the expression, " Well done!" is already saved in an important sense. He has regained the footing from whence the world by transgression fell. He has certainly a large installment of salvation. But, it is faith that brought him into this heavenward path, and that enables him to continue...

We receive tidings of a treaty of peace between two nations lately belligerent. Anon, we receive intimations of another war possible. Rumors of wars never fail to agitate profoundly the general bosom of mankind. But there is a rumor of another war infinitely more dire than any, between man and his Maker. It is long since this war has broken out; for thousands of years it has been raging; and we see no signs of its immediate cessation. Men perceive not that all their other miseries proceed...

There was a new and wondrous trial of mankind, when Christ dwelt on the earth. The world is always saying, "If we had been in Eden, we would not have brought ruin on ourselves." By the coming of Christ the earth was, as it were, made into a new Eden for the occasion, and men were tried over again. It was no longer the question, " Will they sin?" But, " Will they receive God manifest in the form of man? How will they treat the most glorious and admirable being in existence, infinitely...

Christ says this for the purpose, as it were, of inducing us to consent to his departure. Having come into the world and constituted himself our good Shepherd, and accustomed us to lean on him for everything, we are rather confounded at the suggestion that he is to go away again. Seeing this, he gives us this reassuring promise. Whatsoever we ask of the Father, he will give it. Well, suppose we ask for Christ. He will be given. Not with the limitations of an earthly body. " If thou hadst...