"_Lest thou forget._"
--DEUTERONOMY iv. 5-13.
That is surely the worst affront we can put upon anybody. We may oppose a
man and hinder him in his work, or we may directly injure him, or we may
ignore him, and treat him as nothing. Or we may forget him! Opposition,
injury, contempt, neglect, forgetfulness! Surely this is a descending
scale, and the last is the worst. And yet we can forget the Lord God. We
can forget all His benefits. We can easily put Him out of mind. We can
live as though He were dead. "My children have forgotten Me."
What shall we do to escape this great disaster? "_Take heed to thyself!_"
To take heed is to be at the helm and not asleep in the cabin. It is to
steer and not to drift. It is to keep our eyes on the compass and our
hands on the wheel. It is to know where we are going. We never
deliberately forget our Lord; we carelessly drift into it. "Take heed."
"_And keep thy soul diligently._" Gardens run to seed, and ill weeds grow
apace. The fair things are crowded out, and the weed reigns everywhere. It
is ever so with my soul. If I neglect it, the flowers of holy desire and
devotion will be choked by weeds of worldliness. God will be crowded out,
and the garden of the soul will become a wilderness of neglect and sin.
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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.