PSALM lxii.
Here are two symbols by which the psalmist describes the confidence of the
righteous. "_He only is my rock._" Only yesterday I had the shelter of a
great rock on a storm-swept mountain side. The wind tore along the
heights, driving the rain like hail, but in the opening of the rock our
shelter was complete.
And the second symbol is this: "_He is my high place._" The high place is
the home of the chamois, out of reach of the arrow. "Flee as a bird to
your mountain!" Get beyond the hunter's range! Our security is found in
loftiness. It is our unutterable privilege to live in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. Such is the confidence of the righteous.
In this psalm there is also another pair of symbols describing the
futility of the wicked. The wicked is "_as a bowing wall._" The wall is
out of perpendicular, out of conformity with the truth of the plumb-line,
and it will assuredly topple into ruin. So is it with the wicked: he is
building awry, and he will fall into moral disaster. He is also "_as a
tottering fence._" The wind and the rain dislodge the fence, it rots at
its foundations, and one day it lies prone upon the ground.
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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.