the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
" Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood." - Revelation 5:9.
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
Be saved, to sin no more."
Religion in some sober and decorous form, (they say) we revere; but this canting Methodism with its absurd vocabulary, ringing the changes on such expressions as - Lamb, bleeding Lamb, wounded side, dying love, fountain filled with blood, lover of my soul, precious Redeemer, - this insane and driveling piety we cannot away with. They would flee away from a prayer meeting, where these and similar expressions were uttered in hymns or prayers. Suppose, as they fled from such a place, the apostle John should meet them, seize them by the hand and hurry them into a chamber of such stupendous dimensions that it was impossible for any finite eye to discover either the walls or the ceiling; bathed in an unearthly radiancy; redolent with odors issuing from golden vials; inter penetrated with the seraphic melody of countless golden harps, and the harmonious chants of myriads of voices; and should bring to their notice that these beatified myriads were engaged in adoring the same being whom those Christians were praising, and addressing him, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, in the very same - the identical language that they had found so offensive in that first assembly. Would this suffice to convince them that the wrong taste, the fallacious judgment, the insanity are on their part rather than on that of the psalm singing Christians?
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