James Galloway Cowan

“ There are men and women who do make religion the one thing needful; who hold themselves in check by its restraints; who urge themselves on by its promises; who bask in its sunshine, and reflect its glorious image in their lives. There are men and women whose business is religion; who kneel long and often in prayer; who meditate day and night on the Bible; whose hearts ever leap to God; who grieve to forego an opportunity of holy communion; who never stop away from church because there are only prayers, or because their favourite preacher will not be in the pulpit, or because it is hot or cold. ”

“ Is your pure faith illustrated by a pure life? Do you make the best use of an Apostolic ministry? Are you growing in the spirit of which you were born again? Do you feel and sustain the communicated presence of Christ within you? When you go down from the sanctuary, does your life shine, as Moses’s face did, with the reflected glory of God? If not, talk not of your high privileges—your case would be better without them. When God ceased to wink at the errors and ungodliness of mankind, He began by punishing, and with much severity, the errors and ungodliness of the privileged Jews. ”

“ Do you act chiefly with regard to the praise of God, or the admiration of your fellow-beings? Do you feast on the expectation of heaven, or on that of some worldly joy or honour? Do you like, above all things, the thought of dwelling for ever where there will be no money-getting, no earthly indulgences, no flattery, no vain glory, no frivolity, no unseemliness, no rest from the praising of God, and the company of saints? ”

“ Into each of us this spark has been struck; in each of us it is to be fostered, and fed, and developed; to exhibit more and more what God is, and does; what we are, and have, and hope for, till we come unto perfect knowledge, and see all clearly. Men of the patriarchal age had but the one spark among them. The Jews had this spark become a little flame; and some of them, as David, Solomon, and Daniel, had each a torch lighted from it, and held near at hand to them, as by a guardian angel. We Christians, I say, have each in us a spark kindled. If we feed and fan it, it becomes a flame ”

“ You know, indeed, that much remains written against you; but you believe that much more has been blotted out; that God has been propitiated and reconciled to fallen man by the sacrifice and intercession of His Son; that wrath has been displaced by love; that the way of return is open; that the ears of mercy are unclosed; that the arms of grace are stretched out to unfold all those, who by birth inherited banishment, and were kept in exile by the fiery sword which turned every way and allowed none to pass to the paradise of bliss and the tree of life. ”

“ The very best of our fallen race, the Abrahams and the Pauls, who have most realised this service, and loved it, and laid themselves out to render it, have yet fallen short, very far short of the perfect offering. Many a time have they reluctantly laid the costly sacrifice on the altar; many a time, alas! have they substituted the lame, the halt, the lean, the blemished, for the firstling of the flock; many a due sacred journey has not been undertaken; many a holy service has been unperformed, or performed amiss; many an altar has been bare, without an offering. ”

“ Welcome want, welcome sickness, welcome death—anything rather than worldly prosperity, if it can only be obtained by renunciation of God’s enjoined service and idolatrous devotion to mammon. The world will laugh at such preaching, brethren, and call it foolishness; but the world is nothing to us. It is doomed to pass away with all the things in it which lure us to take thought; but you and I must live on to eternity, and how we are to live shall be decided by the master we serve—God or mammon. ”

“ Nineveh’s cry of wickedness provoked the Lord to threaten it with destruction within forty days; but when those forty days were expired there was no cry of wickedness to be answered; but a cry of repentance, a pledge of amendment, a nation’s voice and posture of worship. God did not change, but Nineveh did. The judgment was ready to fall; but there was no object for it to fall upon, and so it fell not. If the righteous ceases to be righteous, the promises made to his righteousness cannot be fulfilled; if the sinner becomes sinless, the sentence of sin cannot be executed upon him. ”

“ They will cease to be foolishness to you. You will choose them in every circumstance, as wisdom; you will feel religion to be the one thing needful; you will make it the business and the pleasure of your lives. The life of a Joseph, an Abraham, a Moses, a Job, a David, a Stephen, a Paul, will be found to be not simply possible, but desirable; the only life worthy of the name. Obedience will be easy; trust will expel care; love will cast out fear; selfishness will pass away; temptations will lose their power. ”

“ Is it only as some ideal being, some vague, distant, indifferent, easy person of the past, the present, or the future, that you think of Him; or is He more real and perceptible to you than the men and women around you—more in your thoughts than any one else—more feared than your earthly masters and rulers—more implicitly obeyed than your most revered earthly superior—more looked to than your most substantial earthly benefactor—more loved than the dearest earthly object of your affections? Is Christ in you the worship of your heart, the motive of your life, the centre and summit of your hopes? ”

“ How is it that the Object of supreme love and fear is to us but a shadowy and unintelligible name? How is it that we have no perception of the ever-present, ever-speaking, ever-acting, all-important Spirit? How is it that we have no intelligent or inquiring thought of the heaven which we are bidden to seek, and of the hell which we have to avoid; of the Master we are bound to serve; of the business to which life is an apprenticeship ”

“ What, my brethren, let me ask in all plainness, for I speak for God, and God’s representatives—the poor—what does religion cost you in this respect? Are you sure that you have left no Lazaruses to perish of hunger? no pining sick to die for want of the nutriment or attention which you could have afforded? no children to grow up in ignorance and blasphemy whom you could have maintained at school, and helped to make enlightened, serious, holy men and women? Have you looked to these things, yourselves? ”

“ But now, His holiness, His justice, and His truth are irrevocably pledged to banish and destroy transgressors. It can never be otherwise. Holiness cannot tolerate near unholiness: like Satan from heaven, like Adam and Eve from paradise, it must be cast out. Justice cannot acquit the guilty. Truth can never say, “Thou shalt not die,” to him to whom it has already said, “Thou shalt die.” There is no such forgiveness. If you transgress, you are a sinner; if you sin, you are condemned; if you are condemned, you must die. ”

“ Are you encouraged in every aim, every resolute resistance of evil, every patient submission to suffering, every fulfilment of duty, every pursuit of righteousness by the thought “Man has done it, the Man Whom I am required to imitate.” Do you think of Him as still retaining His manhood with all its experience, and acquired wisdom, and perfected obedience? Do you rejoice in such a Sympathizer, such a Mediator, such a Helper, such a Judge? ”

“ Is not it that we are not impressed with the responsibility of having this gift of knowledge? with the peril of folding up in a napkin a precious talent given us to use and improve? Is not it that we do not think seriously of the existence of God, of the possession of His Spirit, of the reality of heaven and hell, of the obligations of Christian service, of spiritual helps, and difficulties, and perils? ”

“ Have you not, all along, been dealing with the things of the Spirit too much as though they were things which you could perceive by observation, by investigating their evidence, by intellectually studying them? Have not you tried to learn religion as you would a human language, or a physical science? And have not your highest religious exercises, your searchings into the deep things of God, been the hearing of sermons ”

“ Religion, to be worthy of the name, must cost something; yea, and much—much thought, much feeling, much affection, much labour, much self-denial, much submission, much renunciation, much cheerful sacrifice of self and substance. The only limit to our offering is to be our capability; the only time when we may forbear to offer it, is when God gives us no opportunity. Hence it was, that the young man who would not sell all that he had, and give to the poor, and follow Christ whithersoever He went, could not be His disciple. ”

“ Through the ear we arrest the natural man, as the voice of thunder did Saul on his road to Damascus; we do not sanctify him; we do not show him the things of God; we only convince him that there is something which he has not rightly received, or taken into account, and we bid him go elsewhere, to the Spirit, for instruction and salvation. The only possible good that a sermon can do, is, by working on the feelings, or appealing to the understanding, or cross-questioning the conscience, to stir men up to say: “I will know more of this matter.” ”

“ Thus only does God change His word; thus only is there forgiveness with Him. The sinner must change his sin, for sinlessness; and then for wrath he shall have favour. But this change he cannot make. He cannot wipe out or undo the past; he cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean; he cannot repair the breaches in his soul; he cannot strengthen the things that are ready to perish. Vain, then, is his idle trust in the non-fulfilment of a published threat; and vain are all his efforts to avert that threat. While he is a sinner, God will not forgive him; and a sinner he can never cease to be. ”

“ No perpetual upraising of the soul in prayer; no delight in public worship; no frequent yearning for the communication of Christ through His appointed ordinances; no eager searching of His Word for light, and guidance, and comfort, and encouragement! What, again, are the strivings of the many to attain a heavenly character; to do the work which God has given them to do; to put aside the old man, with his affections and lusts; to walk in holy obedience? ”

“ Are we to be indifferent to truth and error? Are we to frequent Romish chapels or Dissenting conventicles with as little compunction as though they were our proper sanctuaries? Are we to promote the schemes of other communions, by contributing to them out of our substance, or by lending our names or presence to them? No, brethren, we are not to confound Jew and Samaritan, nor to regard the schismatic building on Gerizim, as equally an approved sanctuary with the temple at Jerusalem. We are not to gather professors of different sects together ”

“ Paradox though it seem, the Christian religion often bids us both remember and forget the same thing; and it does so in this case. We are to remember the success which has attended us hitherto in the attempt to serve God, both to prompt our gratitude for the past, and to encourage us to persevere, as having hope that we may prevail. We are to forget it, so as not to presume on our goodness; not to rest satisfied with aught we have done, or to count ourselves as having in any measure attained to what God requires of us. ”

“ But the wilderness has a limit; its limit is what we call death. To the faithful, that bourne is like the Jordan,—when they have crossed it, they shall be in the promised land, the land that floweth with milk and honey, where God’s abiding, glorious temple is set up; wherein there remaineth rest and joy for the people of God. Whoso entereth that land, shall be ever with the Lord, enjoying His most complete and satisfying presence. “Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.” This prayer shall then be realised. ”

“ We must have Christ for our audible teacher, and angels for our prompting fellow scholars, and the eternal records for our books, and all time spread out before us as a map, before we can learn perfectly, what we are to spend this life and exercise the Spirit of knowledge in acquiring in part. And even then, as I said before, there are things which we shall not be able to grasp, or fathom, or perceive thoroughly. We shall never see God the Father visibly; we shall never comprehend altogether a Being without beginning or end; we shall never be omniscient or omnipresent. ”

“ Why were fallen angels not redeemed? Why is man not perfected without trial? How can finite beings be infinitely rewarded or punished? These, and the thousand other curious questions, which perverse man is ever asking, are inquiries which He forbids and baffles—which we may be sure provoke His displeasure.
Check we, then, brethren, our wandering fancies, by the thought that we are to know only in part; and that the only part which we are to know is, that which concerns our duty, and hopes, and fears; and our intelligent service and worship of Him. ”

“ To accept this faith in its integrity, is to set one’s seal to the testimony that God is true; to reject deliberately one article of it, no matter how small, how apparently unimportant, is to make God a liar, inasmuch as it is to refuse as false what He has offered us as true. Common duty then, and ordinary fear lest we should become blasphemers, render it imperative that we should most anxiously inquire what is the true faith, and then most implicitly receive its every article. We may not choose (heresy means choice) what we will believe, and what reject. ”

“ Theirs was the ignorance of men enabled to be wise, and responsible for wisdom: it was the corrupt misconception of what was palpable and easy to conceive aright. Human pride, false tradition of their own invention, self-interest, wilful short-sightedness, or, at the best, culpable contentedness with low and imperfect doctrine, had caused them to utter, perhaps to conceive, only half a truth, when it was in their power to know the whole truth. ”

“ There is no forgiveness with God, the Father, apart from Christ, the Saviour. There is no forgiveness, for the Saviour’s sake, to those who do not belong to the Saviour. You must not go to the Father and plead, while you continue in your sin, that, since One has died for sins, there is no longer any such thing as sin. You must not suppose that holiness, and justice, and truth are set at nought in all other cases, because they have been maintained in one. ”

“ In this world there is no greater enjoyment than to associate with a band of fellow-countrymen, journeying towards the same place, with kindred tastes, and tempers, and hopes. Oh! what then shall be the blessedness of association in heaven with the whole body of the saints? Think of being associated in the presence, and favour, and adoration of God, with holy angels; with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; with David, and Daniel, and Mary, and John, and Paul; and all the others whose praise is in the Gospel! Think of meeting, in heaven, with all the primitive Christians and martyrs ”