PSALM cv. 1-15.
"Count your blessings!" Yes, but over what area shall I look for them?
There is my personal life. Let me search in every corner. I have found
forget-me-nots on many a rutty road. I have found wild-roses behind a
barricade of nettles. Professor Miall has a lecture on "The Botany of a
Railway Station." He found something graceful and exquisite in the midst
of its soot and grime. So I must look even in the dark patches of life,
among my disappointments and defeats, and even there I shall find tokens
of the Lord's presence, some flowers of His planting.
And there is my share in the life of the nation. "Ye seed of Abraham His
servant, ye children of Jacob His chosen." There are hands that stretch
out to me from past days, laden with bequests of privilege and freedom.
Our feet "stand in a large place," and the place was cleared by the
fidelity and the courage of the men of old. I have countless blessings
that were bought with blood. The red marks of sacrifice are over all my
daily ways. Let me not take the inheritance and overlook the blood marks,
and stride about as though it were nought but common ground. Mercies
abound on every hand! "Count your blessings!"
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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.