Bowen's Daily Meditations

The seven spirits and the seven stars have a relation to each other. It is the divine Spirit that is spoken of thus; and the intention is not to lower our conception of his divinity, but to exalt it. The Spirit is wholly wheresoever he is; but his manifestations are modified and affected by the exigencies of those whom he blesses with his presence. The unity of the Spirit shall be witnessed in its perfection, only when the different denominations of Christians flow together. He that hath the...

What mighty efforts, and how many, to obtain the regard of men: how rare the effort to obtain the regard of God! The admiring glance of God passes by the great and noble, the wise and prudent, the wealthy, the powerful, all the illustrious that shine as stars in the firmament of this world, and singles out some obscure person who is distinguished by no thing but a poor and contrite spirit, God looks to him and God alone. The mere possession of humility leaves him with out the slightest power...

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord; that is, humble yourself truly; for his eye is as a flame of fire; and no mere pretense of humility will pass current with him. He does not ask you to conceal your pride from the observation of men, but to mortify it. He does not ask you to be humble merely in your addresses to him; for he is ever with you.

In order to humble yourself, know yourself. Pride grows in the atmosphere of falsehood. It is only by dint of lying that a soul...

God is my Saviour; and inasmuch as he saves me by bringing me into blessed relations to himself, clothes me with the garment of his own unsullied righteousness, and makes me to bear his image, I may well speak of him as my salvation. This, like a thousand other passages of the Old Testament, teaches the divinity of Christ, and it is a marvel how any one can say that the evidences of this are chiefly confined to the New Testament. Every passage in the Old Testament that exhibits God as the...

The language of the highest faith is the language of the highest courage. Men that are bold enough to seek the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth, and who fear not that they shall ever know what fear is, may at any moment be reduced to a condition of the most abject timidity by the revelation of that God whom they have scorned to make their refuge and strength.

Fear is to be the everlasting portion of him who in this life refuses to fear. Men exclude from their attention...

Rights relating to property are carefully guarded by men.

They greatly resent any unwarranted use of what belongs to them. To touch their property is to touch them. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. Man sold himself to Satan and presumed to transfer the earth and the fulness thereof to the arch-apostate, and God so far allowed the bargain (for the punishment of man.) that Satan may be correctly styled the god of this world. " He that committeth sin is the servant of...

These robes are symbolical of their characters once defiled, now made pure by virtue of the faith which they have exercised in him who died on Calvary that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify us unto himself a peculiar people. Observe here that their agency is spoken of. It was, indeed, the blood of the Lamb that purged away the stains ; but they had something to do; they saw and loathed the impurity of their garments, they approached the fountain, and washed them white. Christ...

Almost all men are intent upon appearing better than they really are. If a man cannot be what he ought to be, he attempts at least to appear so. His days are spent in a fraudulent attempt to pass himself off as something better than he is. The same amount of energy devoted to the purification of his character, might result in something good. What watchfulness! What circumspection! What attention to circumstances! What study of men's characters! What perseverance! What self-command! Were...

We have here not two commandments, but one. Faith is naught without love; and love without faith is not the love that is here commanded. "Love believeth all things;" and faith " worketh by love," exhibits itself in love. Selfishness is the grand impediment-of love; but faith is that which gets the victory over selfishness, by showing a man his utter unworthiness and the perfect folly of living unto himself Faith makes us acquainted with the love of Christ, and in fact introduces it into the...

That is to say, carry on the life which Christ lived. In him love made its advent to the earth; and the prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, shows plainly that the idea of the Saviour was not that that divine love should take its departure with him from the earth, but that it should abide and have an inextinguishable life in his disciples, from generation to generation, until he should come again. This, then, is your vocation. To walk by faith, and to walk in love, let these...

Whatever constitutes, in our opinion, our chief ground of distinction, that is the thing in which we glory. Like the fabled jewel in the toad, so there is in almost every man, if we may believe him, a very wonderful jewel. He finds it in himself; though with respect to others the whole thing is a fable. But even if there were this diamond in a man's nature, the presence of self-esteem would turn it to carbon again. To pride yourself on any good is to lose that good. Virtue comes to you, not...

And he only; for "he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." Several important matters loom upon us in this little statement. One of the most unintelligible things, to the world, is the declaration so constantly made in the Scriptures, that man is without life. At the very beginning of human history, Satan introduced, as a substitute for God's doctrine that man would die in the day of his transgression, his own opposing doctrine that man would not...

In these words we read the future destinies of the world. When an Alexander arises and hurries through the world, snatching crowns on the right hand and on the left, and threatening to take unto himself all sublunary power, the people of God are told to fear not; the kingdom is for them, not him. So too when a Julius Caesar grasps at the sceptre of universal dominion. And when a Napoleon appears on the scene, they calmly wait to see him and his kingdom vanish. For they have looked with...

One of the greatest triumphs ever obtained by Satan, was when he induced men, from motives utterly unscriptural, and in connection with a system not Christian, to institute religious orders consecrated to poverty and external humiliation. In recoiling from this error, Protestantism has, it is to be feared, recoiled from the truth of which it is a perversion. The doctrine illustrating the spirituality of Christianity, voluntary sacrifice of position, wealth or ease, in order that the...