Bowen's Daily Meditations

Abandon the idea that you must recover yourselves from your backslidings and then approach God. Perhaps you think that you could then approach him with some confidence. But does God forget? And will he look complacently upon your mended piety? He will look with just as much disgust upon the patched robe as upon the rent robe. But further you ought to know better than to entertain such an heretical notion as that you are able to recover yourself from your backsliding. Could you do that you...

You are exempt from the necessity of bringing lambs and heifers to the altar; but the aim of the gospel is to lead you to do what the law could not induce men to do, consecrate your own body to the Lord, bringing it daily to the altar, and devoting it to the execution as well as the enduring of his will. You are ever ready to yield it unto death as Abraham was his son; but the angel of the Lord ever interposes and says, God has some work for this body to do; see to the doing of that and come...

Does not this word " slothful" accurately characterize the habit of mind of most professors of religion? While we behold them diligently in the pursuit of worldly good, laboring untiringly on in the acquisition of wealth; while we see them exercising circumspection, vigilance, forethought, sagacity in their temporal vocation, and giving to it the best energies of their nature, we see them indolent and sluggish in all that relates to their heavenly calling. They read the newspapers with a...

The additional words " from henceforth," give this passage a specific and prophetical meaning. Neglecting these at present, we may consider the great unquestionable truth that there is for the Christian a blessedness in death. Not but that there is something better than death. Death is one of the enemies of Christ that must be put under his feet, and his saints shall one day get the victory over it, and, undergoing a change at his advent, live on eternally. In the meantime however, death is...

When the sinner turns from the error of his way, submits to God and gives himself to the service of Christ, he thinks that he will never fail to enjoy the tokens of his Father's favor. The change in himself is immense. He is now day and night intent upon doing the will of God, whereas formerly he recked not of it; he checks within himself a hundred impulses that formerly had full sway. He naturally expects that perpetual successes shall wait upon him in his efforts to do good. And at first,...

Unhappily, it is when men most need to be watchful, when the flame of heavenly grace is flickering in its socket, that they are least disposed to be watchful. We find that as men advance in holiness, make great attainments, ascend far up above the region in which ordinary believers walk, that they become watchful to an amazing degree. A habit of argus eyed watchfulness is in fact, itself, the evidence of a great victory over the enemy of the soul. When men have declined from grace, and when...

Hast thou considered well, O John the son of Zebedee, the beloved disciple, what is implied in these words of thine? These words fly in the face of all human philosophies, and give a picture of the world such as all the world is sure to abhor. They will laugh thee to scorn, with thy description of mankind as being without life save as they find it in Christ. For thy words, if they mean anything, declare that all the world have become obnoxious to the everlasting wrath of God, and are going...

By life the Scripture means, true life, life in union to God, in the image of God; life with bliss and purity. An eternity under conditions like those that belong to the life of sinful man, were utterly undesirable. True life includes everything desirable, and the entire universe of God is just one of its perquisites. They that believe in Christ have Christ. They that have Christ have life. They that have life, have it eternally. They that have eternal life may know that they have it, and...

The meaning is not. Be thou faithful all thy days; but, have thou that faithfulness which characterizes the martyr disciple, leads him to count not his life dear unto himself, and enables him at any moment to lay it own freely in the service of his Master. The expression does not refer to length of service, but to entireness of consecration. Be thou unrebukably faithful in all possible situations and circumstances.

Christ requires of every disciple that he should have the spirit of a...

If we are created anew, we are created unto good works. The world ought not to be angry with God for creating men anew; for he is creating them for this among other things that they may tread in the footsteps of 'their Divine Master and abound in good works to their fellow-men. The world, how ever, is irritated at the proposition that men need a special creation in order to become competent to bestow good gifts. It professes to be able to point to men, who have spent for tune, time, health,...

The farmer could not make a greater mistake, than to suppose he would gain by not scattering his seed in the field. To keep the seed is to deprive it of its value; to cut oneself off from the blessing that might have been expected ; and to inflict the greatest wound upon the future. No, scatter it; throw it away and let it go to naught, apparently, and be long lost, if need be, and forgotten; in its appointed time it will come up loaded with treasures which it has gathered from the secret...

He will perfect my happiness. " My people shall be satisfied with my goodness." He will perfect his own image in me. He will make me perfect in wisdom; perfect to know and to do his will; perfect to glorify the Redeemer; perfect in beauty and in strength.

The thought of humanity being again clothed with perfection is something altogether wonderful. It was a light thing to call a world into existence out of nothing; but to take a nature that had become earthly, sensual, devilish, and...

In manifold ways, Christ reveals unto men that he is willing and ready to enter into relations with them; and to those who have already some knowledge of him, he gives many a token that he is ready to enter into more intimate and hallowed relations with them. He does not wait, that men should seek him; he does not send word that he is waiting for them; he comes to them. He does not merely come: he stands and knocks.

The door is for the purpose of excluding enemies, and those whose...

Amidst the mutations of character, the fluctuations of time, and the vicissitudes of events, the soul longs for something that does not and that cannot change, to which it may attach itself and thus find compensation for all the mutabilities of which It is compelled to have experience in this world. There needs of course something else besides immutability in order to constitute an object worthy of our earnest attention and heart-felt confidence. We cannot desire immutability where there is...