Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: April 7th

" When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." ― Isaiah 59:19.

The position of the church in the world is like that of the low countries. Its ground is all recovered ground; dyke’s compass it about; and against these the mighty ocean mutters, dashes, rages, as its mood may be. The law of all waters is opposed to its existence; Pacifics, Atlantics and Antarctics, seem ever to be uttering a protest against it. Anon, they, or their representative waters, arise in strength and precipitate themselves upon it. A flood is always ready for the Church; at every moment she is threatened with a deluge that shall sweep her away. Yet she unaccountably continues to exist. She has no visible strength; no appreciable resources; and the enemy is at a loss to understand how she is enabled to keep her footing thus from generation to generation.

When the enemies of Judea invaded and overran that land in the early days of its history, it pleased the Lord to raise up by the mighty operation of his Spirit some bold deliverer, around whose banner the people rallied, and by whose wisdom, courage and faith, the land was freed from the hostile flood. So also are great periods of jeopardy and deliverance found in the history of the Christian Church. In these latter times the enemy has come into the Church like a silent and peaceable flood, intending no harm; and has crept very gently into the valleys and stolen imperceptibly up the glens, and spread itself by amiable and conciliatory advances over the plains of the Church’s territory; assuming to enrich and to bless, but really involving all in one dead glassy mantle of brine. The Church is led to believe that she has no enemies; it is announced that there are scarcely any assaults made upon the dyke’s; but the fact is that the enemy is within, and has undertaken to constitute itself the Church.

How many and how diversified have been, of late, the doctrines inculcated in hostility to the fundamental principles of Christianity, by persons holding positions in the Church, and using the most approved language of piety. How complete is the evidence that avarice, the idolatry of this age, is diffused through the length and breadth of the Church. How quietly have we settled down into the idea that the standard of conduct given to the primitive disciples, and in each gospel embalmed in the undying words of Christ, is not a standard with which we have anything practically to do. How much is it considered a matter of course that the unlimited promises of the New Testament should be treated as curiosities of literature, and not at all as the appropriate means designated by God for perpetuating in the Church, Elijah’s, Daniels and Paul’s.

And the greatest evil is that all our conceptions being cast in the mould of a vitiated standard, we remain without the power of perceiving how much our standard is vitiated. If the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? Our hope is with him who hath promised to lift up a standard in the critical hour, and who will lift up on some conspicuous and inviolable summit, whither the people may flee from the rising deluge of iniquity, and find themselves safe beneath the banner of God. If foremost men are needed, it is easy for the great Head of the Church to raise them up. If the hearts of princes are in his hand to turn them as he will, how much more the hearts of those who are avowedly his own. He will revive his work. In the midst of wrath he will remember mercy.

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