GENESIS xv. 5-18.
"And He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven!" The
tent was changed for the sky! Abraham sat moodily in his tent: God brought
him forth beneath the stars. And that is always the line of the Divine
leading. He brings us forth out of our small imprisonments and He sets our
feet in a large place. He desires for us height and breadth of view. For
"as the heavens are high above the earth" so are His thoughts higher than
our thoughts, and His ways than our ways. He wishes us, I say, to exchange
the tent for the sky, and to live and move in great, spacious thoughts of
His purposes and will.
How is it with our love? Is it a thing of the tent or of the sky? Does it
range over mighty spaces seeking benedictions for a multitude? Or does it
dwell in selfish seclusion, imprisoned in merely selfish quest? How is it
with our prayers? How big are they? Will a tent contain them, or do they
move with the scope and greatness of the heavens? Do they just contain our
own families, or is China in them, and India, and "the uttermost parts of
the earth"? "Look now towards the heavens!" Such must be our outlook if we
are the companions of God.
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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.