James Galloway Cowan

“ Could we delay the cultivation of a grace necessary for heaven, if we knew that the time for acquiring it might so soon be over? Could we hazard the interests of eternity, if we knew that we were separated from them, not by a wide and lasting world, not by many, many years of forgetfulness in the grave, but only by a thin veil, through which they might even now be albut heard and seen, which the next moment might be rent in twain, which at the most, in a few short years, will be wholly taken away! ”

“ It is well not to love this world, to have realised its vanity and misery, to have broken the links that would bind us to it, to refuse to find our perfect joy in aught that belongs to it. It is well to yearn for deliverance from all that vexes and hinders and hurts; to desire ardently—even to pray earnestly and continually for—presence with the Lord, and all that that presence implies, in Paradise, in Heaven. But when by God’s grace we have come to this state, we are not perfect, we have not begun to be perfect. ”

“ Study the life of Christ—is your life like it: like it in humility, in self-denial, in labour, in fact, in hope, in aim? Examine yourselves. Are you cleansed from evil propensities—are you adorned with Christian graces—are you fit in person, in will, in desire, for a heaven full of holiness, whose employment will be the doing of God’s work, as angels do it, whose relaxation, if I may so speak, will be the contemplation and the praise of God? ”

“ Do you suppose it will suffice to think of these things when the doctor tells you you cannot recover; to send for the clergyman to teach and move you when the faculty of heeding is well nigh gone, to pray for you, if you are unable to pray for yourself, to sigh over your body, if, alas! the soul has fled? Or are you now more or less possessed with religious thought and feeling, sitting loose to this world, weaning yourselves more and more from it, nerving yourselves for the last hour, sighing over and confessing your sins, trusting to Christ’s mercy, aspiring to heaven, praying for acceptance? ”

“ This is to worship ignorantly an unknown God—a God Who does not accept intermittent worship, Who bestows pardon only on repentance and amendment of life, Who gives grace for use, Whose sacraments are meals to sustain life and strengthen for service, Whose Sabbath is a holy rest to refresh for holy work, in Whom we live, and move, and have our being, Whose glory is to be our constant aim, His presence our perpetual joy. ”

“ Are you worldly, sensual, ill-natured, proud, self-seeking? Have you any trace of these stains upon you? Are you wanting in obedience, in patience, in holiness, in love of God? You cannot enter heaven, it would close its gates against you, you would flee from it as a place of torment, while you are in such a state. Now, what are you doing, or attempting to appropriate Christ’s salvation, to secure God’s approbation, to qualify yourselves in character, in taste and desire for a purely spiritual, a gloriously holy heaven? ”

“ Eternal life has always been a free gift in Christ. Not for their merits or deservings does God love men; not by their own inventions or labours do they procure acceptance. The precious blood of Christ shed (in effect) before the foundation of the world, has ever been the fountain for sin; the intercession of Christ has ever been the means of reconciliation; the grace of Christ’s sanctified human nature applied by the Holy Spirit has ever been the leaven of regeneration, of conversion, of perfection in holiness and fitness for the inheritance of the saints in light. ”

“ How many so-called Christians, not only in their business or their pleasure, when they turn away their eyes from the manifested God, but even when they come up to the sanctuary, when they read the Bible, when they kneel in prayer or stand to praise, when they look Zionwards, when they are all attent, eyes and ears, yet see no sight, and hear no sound of Christ! The world which they have left is remembered, and stands before them in a life-like picture. ”

“ You are tempted to justify yourselves. You are not the unbelieving, and rebellious, and profane of our race. You recognise a God of providence and grace, a moral ruler of the world, a waiting Judge. To this God you say your prayers, His word you read, and reverence, and receive. To Him you dedicate at least several hours of each seventh day; by His commandments you order your daily life. You do no wrong to your neighbour by word or deed; you strive to purify and sanctify your very feelings and thoughts; you believe in a Saviour; you accept His salvation; you try to love Him ”

“ And how blinded are the senses, and how dead the feelings of the sinner, who does not feel the degradation of his state, but makes open display of himself before the crowd, and with a bold front and unshrinking touch, comes to the All-pure and All-holy to be healed! Learn, fellow sinners, from this poor woman, what your sin is, how defiling, how miserable, how sure to grow worse under human treatment. ”

“ But, oh! how little constraining is the influence of a Saviour who once visited the earth, of a Judge who shall by and by visit it! How dim is the remembrance of long past mercies! how distant is the prospect of heavenly consolations! Earth is now present with all its attractions and rewards. The world, the flesh, and the devil are now assailing and afflicting us with their many temptations. How can we resist the seen, and heard, and felt fascinations? ”

“ I envy not the man—there is something unnatural, yea, and unspiritual, too, in him—who does not shrink from the first thought of death coming to himself or to those whom he loves. For death, in its best form, is a remembrancer of the wrath of God against the sinner, and it is in a sense a triumph—no matter that it is short—it is a defiling and withering touch—no matter that it shall soon be wiped away, and its blasting undone—of the foul and fierce enemy of God and holy man. ”

“ He knows that eternal life is the free gift of a God, Who is no respecter of persons; Who recognises no birthright, no personal merits; Who will have mercy on Whom He will have mercy: but that yet grace does not fall, as the rain from heaven, alike upon the barren and the fertile, the thankless and the thankful, the careless and the anxious, the indolent and the active; but is ever guided by a discerning and distinguishing hand, is ever bestowed upon righteousness. ”

“ How many, too, who honestly consider themselves zealous for God, are only serving Him in the bent of their natural inclinations, and taking no heed to Him, where self must be denied; like men of cold temperament, despising bodily indulgence, yet making a god of mammon; prodigals, inveighing against covetousness; destroyers of the temple of Baal, restorers of the calves of Bethel and Dan; saints in some things, devils in others!
O ye who boast of zeal, or claim to have it, take care that ye have it towards God, and that ye are constant in it! ”

“ Hence it may be that religion is to you but a name: it profits you not, it affords you no delight, it exercises no influence upon you. Would you know why? Because you have been but thronging and pressing, because you have had no real sense of your misery, have entertained no real desire to be relieved and blessed, and so have made no well-directed, persevering effort to touch Christ! You are, as you feel, no better, no wiser, than if there were no Christ, or you had never been near Him! ”

“ Review your past mercies, consider how God has been with you at all times, and has ever been doing you good. Call to mind what progress you have been able to make spiritual or temporal; what success has attended you; what friends have been given you; what dangers you have narrowly escaped; what sicknesses recovered from; what wounds been healed, what troubles overcome, what tears staunched. Have they not caused you, like Jacob, to increase from the solitariness and poverty of that passing over Jordan, to the riches and prosperity of the two bands? ”

“ Zeal, I maintain, is good—nay, is necessary; zeal, which makes one burn with the glowing thought of immortality, which rouses one to ardent work and holy contention; which finds, and must have, its vent in the speech; which shows itself designedly, that it may impress others, and set forth the glory of God. Only, I would have you judge of that zeal in others, and find it in yourselves; not in what Jehu did, but in what he omitted, and ought to have done ”

“ There is a manifestation of Christ to the world. He is ever speaking in their ears and showing Himself to their eyes. His Church, with its Bible, its means of grace and ministry, its duration and extension, besides being a standing miracle, the infallible credential of His divine authority, the proof of His wisdom and His power, is a very exhibition of Himself, mighty and eager to save. The Spirit, which is with and in that Church, declares Himself to be able and ready to enlighten, and persuade, and strengthen all, without exception, without delay, if only they will come to Him. ”

“ Thus Adam, fresh from the hand of God, full of knowledge and intelligence, and holiness and love, was left, it would appear—but with one commandment, the test of his integrity—to worship and glorify God as his own heart and mind dictated; while the Jews, coming out of Egypt, sunk in ignorance, given to idolatry, perverse in will and affections, were dealt with as babes, albut without mind and without heart. ”

“ Is it not, too, strangely perverse to admit, that those in separation are brethren, fellow-pilgrims, fellow-heirs, to hope to meet them in heaven, and to think, and feel, and live in perfect harmony with them for ever; and yet here not to be concerned that we never can give them the right hand of fellowship—cannot journey with them, and help, and make for the inheritance together—can never even meet them in prayer and communion—must let them be as utter strangers? In earthly matters none of this would be tolerated, could possibly be. ”

“ Shall he hate the world and flee from it? Shall he become a hermit, refusing to receive good, and to do good in his generation? Shall he give up his earthly calling, foregoing the temporal advantages which are held out to him; not exercising the powers which are entrusted to him; supposing that the God who put him into this world, and qualified him to fill a place in it, and stimulated him by pressing necessities, or by indwelling desires to seek profit or pleasure, nevertheless meant him to have nothing to do with the world ”

“ And herein he is the pattern of a true Christian. He is not so in love with death that he can see nothing in it to shrink from or fear, nothing to disturb him. He does not so hate this life as to hurry to be quit of it. With all its trials, and disappointments, and hindrances, and miseries, there is much in it which is dear to him, in which he finds delight, from which he is loth to part. God, too, is felt here, and seen by faith, and bestows appreciable blessings; here God’s work is to be done, here God’s glory to be promoted. ”

“ Are you putting off concern; heedless of thought and preparation for meeting God? Are you calculating upon being able to think and feel aright when you will, to ask and obtain pardon for all that is wrong, to be excused for all deficiencies in a moment, to do the work of life on a sick-bed, to satisfy God with the dregs of the cup of life, to become a passive recipient of the necessary holiness which God bids all acquire actively? ”

“ Some of you are almost exclusively pleasure seekers; others, careless creatures of the present; others intent upon business, or profit, upon obtaining power, or knowledge, or fame; either reaping a worldly harvest now, or sowing for a future worldly harvest. Others are divided in care and desire between this life and the next. Others are in theory, and in much practice, living above this world, using it but not abusing it, in it but not of it. Put the question to yourselves, all and each of you. Do you feel your life to be such a vapour, that it is in momentary risk of vanishing away ”

“ No! there was nothing which should make God respect and choose us before others; and we have done no work for which we can claim reward. God is no respecter of persons. It is impossible, by any mere natural deeds or efforts to please Him. We have all sinned and come short of His glory. We all sin, and deserve wrath every day. But Christ, Who would have all men to be saved, Who has died for all, and risen again for all, and sent down His Holy Spirit ready to justify, to sanctify, to bless all, has nevertheless made the bestowal of His grace conditional. ”

“ And shall you who feel such shame for worldly ignorance, shall you who make such efforts to gain secular knowledge, who are ever widening your minds, and storing up in them as much as they will hold, who delight in growing wiser and more learned, who will study unwearily, and exercise all your intellect, and consume I know not what time, in unravelling the worthless mystery of some enigmatical line in a poem of fiction—shall you contentedly pass over the difficulties, and remain ignorant of the mysteries which meet you in nearly every verse of the Word of God? ”

“ We know the force of such an exhortation in earthly things. We know by experience how light is the labour which leads to rest, how possible it is to smile through present tears at the prospect of coming joy; what pains, and self-denials, and dangers, and encounters, are readily embraced by those whom ambition prompts, and approval cheers, and reward awaits. Nothing is too hard to bear, nothing too dear to relinquish, nothing too formidable to meet, nothing too much to do ”

“ Provided we guard against the grave error, so prevalent in the last century, of despising and condemning all religious zeal, it is well to entertain this suspicion—of ourselves, I mean—till we have proved it to be false, or by repentance and amendment have made it false. For who does not know how much a proud, carnal, selfish, ill-tempered man or woman may do in the service of self, which has the appearance of zeal for God? What pious labours men will undertake, if they happen to be in the path of their natural inclinations! ”

“ Bring yourselves, brethren, to believe this, to feel the reality of it, to be sure that the moment your body falls asleep in Jesus your spirit is wafted to Paradise, and begins to rest consciously on Christ, and to company with the spirits of the just departed. Then, though the nearness of death may for the moment awe you—because it is the antechamber which leads directly into the presence of so much holiness and glory—it will have no power to fill you with dismay, no undesirableness to make you shrink from it. ”

“ But God has never been indifferent to the way in which men receive His free gifts. He at first created man for His own glory, and He has redeemed, and would sanctify him for His glory. He made man to love Him, to depend on Him, to render Him the grateful homage of a free-will service, to reflect His own glorious attributes of holiness and love. The sin of Adam and Eve was not that they ate of a particular fruit reserved from them, but that they frustrated the end for which they were created ”

“ Cast all your care upon Him. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. See Him by faith Who is invisible to natural eye. Lean on Him Whom the arm of flesh cannot touch. ”

“ Terrible is death to many, awful to all—undesirable even to the saint—and only tolerable because not so much of the soul’s immediate gain as of the body’s future hope. For if it were proposed to us to choose for eternity between perfect disembodied bliss, and very imperfect bliss in the body, there is no one, I conceive, who knows the capabilities of the body, both of rendering to God and receiving of Him, who would not prefer, and I think rightly, life in the flesh to life out of it. ”

“ Much must it have informed their worship, much must it have increased their faith. Power did it give them to proclaim hereafter that they knew in whom they had believed, patience to endure for His sake, in His strength; peace in persecution, comfort in sorrow, hope amidst otherwise confounding terrors and dismay, that they had actually experienced Christ’s salvation from destruction; that the experience had been vouchsafed them as a pledge of His constant care; that they had been told, on its account, to trust—never henceforth to be fearful, and of little faith! ”

“ A clean heart, a renewed mind, lively faith, heavenly peace, joy in the Holy Ghost,—if these are not yours, do you not know why? It is because you never asked for them, or, at least, never asked with that appreciation, that earnestness which alone prevails with God. God is willing to give them. God has promised to give them. He stands ever ready to fulfil His promise. ”