When Jowett preached in the sermon class at Airedale College, Dr. Fairbairn said to his students: "Gentlemen, I will tell you what I have observed this morning: behind that sermon there was a man."
That man grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with the churches, until he became one of the princes of the pulpit.
Jowett was born in Halifax in 1863. He taught school for a while and then resolved to study law. On the day before his articles were to be signed (to begin his legal work), he met his Sunday School teacher in the street and told him what he was going to do. Mr. Dewhirst said: "I had always hoped that you would go into the ministry."
Jowett decided to enter the Congregational ministry. After his training in Edinburgh and Oxford, he was called in 1889 to St. James Church in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This was a church with a seating capacity of more than a thousand and from the first Jowett preached to large crowds. His fame soon spread and, on the death of Dr. Dale in 1895, he became his successor at Carr's Lane, Birmingham.
He wisely did not attempt to match Dale's stride. The difference between the two men was well expressed thus: "Dale's congregation could pass an examination in the doctrines and Jowett's in the Scriptures."
Jowett confessed that he had been in danger of mere prettiness in preaching but carrying on Dale's work had proved his deliverance. Dr. Lynn Harold Hough compared Dale to a great Cathedral and Jowett to the marvellously-embroidered communion cloth on its altar. "I was interested in the rare art which hid from sight the fact that it was art at all."
He was invited to become minister of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. He declined the call twice but when it was repeated the third time in 1911 he felt it his duty to accept it.
The church was crowded long before the hour of Jowett's first service. Reporters crowded the side galleries, expecting to find a sensational preacher with dazzling oratory and catchy sermon topics on current events. Instead they found a shy, quiet little man, bald-headed and with a cropped white moustache, who spoke in a calm, simple manner.
He remained in New York until April 1918 when he felt it his duty to return to England. He was called to Westminster Chapel, London, to succeed G. Campbell Morgan. Preaching to 2,500 people twice a Sunday and a weekday service proved too much for his health, which had never been robust. He resigned in 1922 and died in December 1923, at the age of sixty.
In a letter to a friend Jowett wrote: "If the pulpit is to be occupied by men with a message worth hearing, we must have time to prepare it."
No one can read his sermons and notice the variety of illustrative matter from literature and life without feeling that he was preparing all the time. His mind was like a notebook, instinctively recording what he saw in books and life, and bending it not only to the use of the artist in words, but to those of an apostle of the truth, an evangelist of love.