JAMES i. 12-20.
Evil enticements always come to us in borrowed attire. In the Boer War
ammunition was carried out in piano cases, and military advices were
transmitted in the skins of melons. And that is the way of the enemy of
our souls. He makes us think we are receiving music when he is sending
explosives; he promises life, but his gift is laden with the seeds of
death. He offers us liberty, and he hides his chains in dazzling flowers.
"Things are not what they seem."
And so our enemy uses mirages, and will-o'-the-wisps and tinselled crowns.
He lights friendly fires on perilous coasts to snare us to our ruin. And
therefore we need clear, sure eyes. We need a refined moral sense which
can discriminate between the true and the false, and which can discern the
enemy even when he comes as "an angel of light." And we may have this
wisdom from "the God of all wisdom." By His grace we may be kept morally
sensitive, and we shall know our foe even when he is a long way off.
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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.