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Purpose in Prayer

E M Bounds

Introduction

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company

      London      and      Edinburgh

      Copyright, 1920, by

      FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

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      INTRODUCTION

      Edward McKendree Bounds was born in Shelby County, Mo., August 15, 1835, and died August 24, 1913, in Washington, Ga. He received a common school education at Shelbyville and was admitted to the bar soon after his majority. He practiced law until called to preach the Gospel at the age of twenty-four. His first pastorate was Monticello, Mo., Circuit. It was while serving as pastor of Brunswick, Mo., that war was declared and the young minister was made a prisoner of war because he would not take the oath of allegiance to the Federal Government. He was sent to St. Louis and later transferred to Memphis, Tenn.

      Finally securing his release, he traveled on foot nearly one hundred miles to join General Pierce’s command in Mississippi and was soon after made chaplain of the Fifth Missouri Regiment, a position he held until near the close of the war, when he was captured and held as prisoner at Nashville, Tenn.

      After the war Rev. E. M. Bounds was pastor of churches in Tennessee and Alabama. In 1875 he was assigned to St. Paul Methodist Church in St. Louis, and served there for four years. In 1876 he was married to Miss Emmie Barnette at Eufaula, Ala., who died ten years later. In 1887 he 6 was married to Miss Hattie Barnette, who, with five children, survives him.

      After serving several pastorates he was sent to the First Methodist Church in St. Louis, Mo., for one year and to St. Paul Methodist Church for three years. At the end of his pastorate, he became the editor of the St. Louis “Christian Advocate.”

      He was a forceful writer and a very deep thinker. He spent the last seventeen years of his life with his family in Washington, Ga. Most of the time he was reading, writing and praying. He rose at 4 a. m. each day for many years and was indefatigable in his study of the Bible. His writings were read by thousands of people and were in demand by the church people of every Protestant denomination.

      Bounds was the embodiment of humility, with a seraphic devotion to Jesus Christ. He reached that high place where self is forgotten and the love of God and humanity was the all-absorbing thought and purpose. At seventy-six years of age he came to me in Brooklyn, N.Y., and so intense was he that he awoke us at 3 o’clock in the morning praying and weeping over the lost of earth. All during the day he would go into the church next door and be found on his knees until called for his meals. This is what he called the “Business of Praying.” Infused with this heavenly ozone, he wrote “Preacher and Prayer,” a classic in its line, and now gone into several foreign languages, read by men and women all over the world. In 1909, while Rev. A. C. Dixon was preaching in Dr. 7 Broughton’s Tabernacle, Atlanta, Ga., I sent him a copy of “Preacher and Prayer,” by Bounds. Hear what he says:

      “This little book was given me by a friend. I received another copy at Christmas from another friend. ‘Well,’ thought I, ‘there must be something worth while in the little book or two of my friends would not have selected the same present for me.’ So I read the first page until I came to the words: ‘Man is looking for better methods, God is looking for better men. Man is God’s method.’ That was enough for me and my appetite demanded more until the book was finished with pleasure.”

      This present volume is a companion work, and reflects the true spirit of a man whose business it was to live the gospel that he preached. He was not a luminary but a SUN and takes his place with Brainerd and Bramwell as untiring intercessors with God.

      H. W. HODGE.

      8 My Creed leads me to think that prayer is efficacious, and surely a day’s asking God to overrule all events for good is not lost. Still there is a great feeling that when a man is praying he is doing nothing, and this feeling makes us give undue importance to work, sometimes even to the hurrying over or even to the neglect of prayer.

      Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth still to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on Him.

      —James Gilmour of Mongolia.

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