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Bowen's Daily Meditations
Devotional: March 10th

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"Blessed are the peace-makers." - Matthew 5:9.

Christ is the Prince of peace. Peace on earth is the object of the Messiah’s mission, said the angels in their song. His followers are accordingly sons of peace. They have peace with God, and they are pacificators; they follow peace with all men. Their great object is to induce men to lay aside their hostile ties, and renounce their resentments. This is their vocation in the world. They seek to extend the empire of their Master; but as that empire (and that alone) is peace, they seek no other victory than that which consists in bringing them one to another in holy concord.

Yet Christ said, I came not to bring peace, but a sword. His word, launched into a family, comes often like a thunder bolt, riving and shattering the harmonies that had before existed. It is like fire, and like a hammer.

The word of Christ is stern in its opposition to all that is incompatible with true peace. Peace with sin, is what it ever must make war upon. If we are peace-makers, it is by means of the gospel of peace. We seek to make men acquainted with the cruel facts of their present captivity to sin, and alienation from God; to tell them of the peace of God which passeth all understanding; to bring them into sweet accord with the great author of their being; to have them moulded by the Holy Spirit into ’ a peace-loving disposition; to enfranchise them from pride, selfishness, covetousness, unbelief, malice, uncharitableness, moral weakness, and the other natural enemies of peace. Some that are near and dear to them may turn against them, and the manifestation of bitterness on the part of these may seem to belie the claim of the gospel to be a pacificator; but that manifestation only affords scope for an exhibition of long-suffering, kindness, gentleness, and tender interest - in a word, for the exhibition of a heaven-born peace,

A sea of opposition has ever raged around the good - some times more, sometimes less fiercely. But, like the coral islands - whose serene unruffled lakes, stately palms, and quiet tenements present a wonderful contrast with the reef-broken angry ocean around - the elect of God, the friends of the gospel, have peace with God, follow peace with all men, and exhibit the fruits of righteousness, even when persecuted by the world.

Commune with yourself touching this thing, and ask, " Am I a peace-maker? Do I love well the things that make for peace? Does it grieve me to behold men unacquainted with the Prince of Peace? Do I make manifest in my own life that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost? Do I understand and observe the precept to speak evil of no man? When I hear of strife between those who should be friends, does it grieve me as though I heard of the breaking out of the cholera in their families? And, as the physician feels that he has a mission among the sick, do I arise at the report of strife, and hasten on an embassy of peace to the conflicting parties? In a word, am I a merchant with much balm of Gilead, seeking to dispose of it among all, and to assuage the desolating enmities of the world? And is my constant prayer this, that God would teach me how I may most thoroughly subserve the cause of peace in the world?’’

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