"_Ye have seen the end of the Lord: that the Lord
is very pitiful, and of tender mercy._"
--JAMES v. 7-11.
And so we are bidden to be patient. "We must wait to the end of the Lord."
The Lord's ends are attained through very mysterious means. Sometimes the
means are in contrast to the ends. He works toward the harvest through
winter's frost and snow. The maker of chaste and delicate porcelain
reaches his lovely ends through an awful mortar, where the raw material of
bone and clay is pounded into a cream. In that mortar-chamber we have no
hint of the finished ware. But be patient, even in this chamber of
affliction the ware is on the way to glory!
And so it is with the ministries of our Lord. He leads us through discords
into harmonies, through opposition into union, through adversities into
peace. His means of grace are processes, sometimes gentle, sometimes
severe; and our folly is to assume that we have reached His ends when we
are only on the way to them. "The end of the Lord is very pitiful, and of
tender mercy." "Be patient, therefore," until it shall be spoken of thee
and me, "And God saw that it was good."
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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.