Bowen's Daily Meditations

God is represented to us as the God of all patience and consolation, the God of peace, the God of hope, the God of grace, the God of comfort, all expressions denoting his relations to his people, and designed to reveal him to them as the all-sufficient and inexhaustible fountain of peace, patience, and comfort. As often as the word comfort is mentioned, and how often it is! our thoughts should be spontaneously turned from the petty, the misnamed comfort of earth, to the infinite Comforter....

Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, says Christ, Except a man forsake all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. Give us this day our daily bread. We are crucified unto the world and the world unto us.

Naturally, we grasp at all. We embrace with our hands all that we possibly can, and embrace the rest with our desires. What we are not able to inscribe with our name as possessor, we inscribe with our name as candidate....

We are here called upon to observe the providential wisdom and faithfulness of God, shown in his care of the good. "We are not merely to glance at these good ones, but to keep our eye upon them; for though God's providence may, for a season, appear to be adverse to them, yet at the end it will be found that he has led them carefully by his all-righteous hand. Not that they will die in affluence, in splendor, or in great worldly honor; but they shall exhibit their sure trust in God by a...

The reference here would seem to be to the efforts made to intimidate the followers of Christ, by penal enactments, sanguinary edicts, or by popular violence. The early Christians were summoned before magistrates and commanded to renounce the faith they had embraced or had shown themselves ready to embrace, by some unequivocal act of homage to a heathen divinity or to the image of the emperor. Satan made himself as terrible as possible, saying, " Cast away your confidence, or I will tear you...

Men of this world look with ineffable scorn upon the customs, sentiments and language of those whose chief pleasure is in celebrating the dying love of Christ, crucified for sinners. They detest, they loathe the language of many of our hymns; for example, such lines as these:

" Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood

Shall never lose its power,

Till all the ransomed church of God...

Of the fear here so honorably spoken of, suffice it now to say that it is not by any means a sentiment that repels from God, but on the contrary one that draws to God. They that fear the Lord, in the honorable and Scriptural sense, are they who are powerfully affected by the promise here given. To the great majority of men, alas, to many who assume the name of Christians, the promise here recorded possesses no charm. Their spirits are no way stirred within them by the prospect of being made...

The law of God is written in our hearts, when it is the best expression of our desires, the best description of our tastes and affections, the best enunciation of our resolutions, the true exponent of our faith, the most conspicuous thing in our memories. It is written in our hearts, when our words give utterance to it in thousand fold modulation; when our acts embody it; when our influence is its influence. When Christ abides in our heart by faith, then is the law written in our hearts....

God considered that this life of ours is very short, very fugitive, and that crowd it as he might with expressions of his kindness, he never would be able to give anything like a sufficient revelation of his love. So he resolved to take time beforehand, a great deal of it, and fill all heaven and earth, from the very beginning on continuously, with the manifestations of his love to the creature that was to live in this our day, was to hover for a little about the middle of this century, and...

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but out of them all the Lord delivereth them. If worldly men are competent to effect the deliverance, the Lord accomplishes it by them. If saints are needed, saints are employed. If the impediments cannot be removed in this way, if supernatural aid is necessary, then the angels receive their commission. If an army of these invincible ones are needed, they are sent, and under the guidance of their leader they encamp around about the imperiled...

The life that now is. Covetousness reading this begins to glow with delight; it exclaims, " This is the very thing I seek; 'the life that now is;' and of course 'that which is to come.' Religion is a good thing after all; I will give myself to it at once." But the promise is not to thee, covetousness; it is to godliness. It is to the soul in which covetousness is dead; to the godly soul, which says, " One thing is needful;" whose affections are set on things above; which looks upon the favor...

There is an erroneous idea of submission abroad in the world. Quite likely, the error obtains in the Church to some extent. There are many things in our condition here to which we are simply called to submit. God has placed them, and woe to him who would seek to displace them. But there are other things which have been placed in our way expressly that we might enter into conflict with them and overcome them. There are difficulties placed in our path, to give us opportunities of evincing what...

It is a great moment in a man's life when he ascertains that he does not know God. The next step is to ascertain that one ought to know God. After this a man may still go knocking at many wrong doors; but let us hope that he will at length reach the right door, even the Bible, and conclusively set himself to seek God therein.

If we want to know what it is to seek diligently, we need no dictionary; we need only look around us; in every community there are men who seem to have assigned...

" Art thou able, Christ, to slake the thirst of my soul? Dost thou know what strength of desire there is in me? Consider what seas of goodness have, in the providence of God, been poured upon me without in the least diminishing the force of aspiration within me. Whatever is given, seems only to stimulate my imagination and send it soaring a higher flight. Thus it would appear that in the very nature of things I never can know satisfaction. Give me everything that I can now conceive of, and...

Keep that which is good, in it; that which is evil, out: thoughts, feelings, purposes, imaginations, desires. Especially, keep God's word in it. Quench not the Spirit. Cherish a memory for what is good. Be as a gardener; be as a banker.

For the mind is God's wonderful gift.

As our thoughts, so our words and acts.

As our thoughts, so our future life.

Be as the pilot.

Thermopylae.

Our peace easily destroyed by unwatchfulness.

God looks at the...