NEHEMIAH ix. 6-11.
"Thou hast performed Thy words: for Thou art righteous." Frances Ridley
Havergal kept a journal of mercies. She had a record book, and she crowded
it with her remembrances of God's goodness. She was always on the look-out
for tokens of the Lord's grace and bounty, and she found them everywhere.
Everywhere she had communion with a covenant-keeping God. The Bible became
to her more and more the history of her own life and experience. Promise
after promise told the story of her own triumphs. She appropriated the
goodness of God, and she set her own seal to the testimony that God is
true.
Many a complaining life would be changed into music and song by a journal
of mercies. Many a fear can be dispersed by a ready remembrance. Memory
can be made the handmaid of hope. Yesterday's blessing can kindle the
courage of to-day. That is the purposed ministry of "the days that have
been." We are to harness the strength of their experiences to the tasks
and burdens of to-day; and in the remembrance of God's providences we
shall march through our difficulties with singing.
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John Henry Jowett was born in Halifax, England in 1864. Jowett's father had arranged for him to begin working as a clerk for a lawyer in Halifax, but the encouragement of his Sunday school teacher, Mr. Dewhirst, turned Jowett's heart toward the ministry.
After theological training at Edinburgh and Oxford, Jowett assumed the pastorate of the Saint James Congregational Church. His six effective years of ministry brought him to the attention of the Carr's Lane Church in Birmingham, England, on the death of their pastor. For the next fifteen years the church grew and prospered. Their pastor's vision led them to increase their efforts to bring people to Christ. In 1917, the mayor of Birmingham said the church had changed the town with "crime and drunkenness having decreased."
Jowett came to America for the first time in 1909 to address the Northfield Conference founded by D. L. Moody. While in America he preached twice at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. The church immediately asked him to come as its pastor. Jowett refused, having received a petition, signed by more than 1,400 members of his church in England, begging him to stay. The Fifth Avenue Church called him again, and then a third time. Finally Jowett concluded that this was God's leading for his life. He assumed the pastorate in 1911.
Although his preaching style was not dynamic (he read all of his sermons), the depth of his knowledge, the clarity of his language, and the power of his life commanded respect. Attendance at the church which had dropped to 600 on Sunday morning rose to 1,500. Lines up to half a block long formed, waiting for unclaimed seats. Jowett began preparing his Sunday sermons on Tuesday, following a meticulously detailed schedule.
When G. Campbell Morgan resigned the Westminster Chapel in London in 1917, Dr. Jowett once again crossed the ocean to take a new church. This would be his final pastorate. Declining health forced him to give up preaching in 1922, and his death in 1923 took from the world one of its most gifted and dedicated preachers.