DEUTERONOMY viii. 1-10.
"And thou shalt eat and be full, and thou shalt bless the Lord thy God."
Fulness is surely a more searching test than want. Fulness induces sleep
and forgetfulness. Many a man fights a good fight with Apollyon in the
narrow way, who lapses into sleepy indifference on the Enchanted Ground.
Men often sit down to a full table without "grace." Pain cries out to God,
while boisterous health strides along in heedlessness. Yes, it is our
fulness that constitutes our direst peril. "This was the iniquity of
Sodom, _fulness_ of bread and abundance of idleness."
And so our tests may come on the sunny day. A nation's supreme tests may
come in its prosperity. The sunshine may do more damage than the
lightning. The soul may falter even in Beulah land, where "the sun shines
night and day."
Prayer must not, therefore, tarry until sickness and adversity come. We
must "pray without ceasing" in the cloudless noon, lest we are stricken
with "the arrow that flieth by day." We must seek the eternal strength
when no apparent enemy crouches at our gate, and when our easy road is
lined with luxuriant flowers and fruit.
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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.