The Necessity of Prayer [antikvár]

FOREWORD Edward McKendree Bounds did not merely pray well so that he could write well about prayer. He prayed because the needs of the world were on his heart. He prayed for many years about subjects which the easy-going Christian rarely thinks about and for objects which men of lesser faith are always ready to call impossible. Teaching arose from his yearly solitary prayer vigils which can be equaled by few men in modern Christian history. He wrote divinely about prayer because he him-self was divine in its practice. As breathing is a physical fact to us, so prayer was a reality for Bounds. He took the command, "Pray without ceasing" as literally as nature takes the law of the reflex nervous system which con-trols our breathing. Real textbooks about prayer were the fruit of this daily spiritual exercise. Brief articles for the religious press did not come from his pen, though he had been experienced in that field for years. Books, not pamphlets, were the product and result. He was hindered by poverty, humility, and loss of his reputation, yet his success was not entirely kept until his death. In 1907 he gave the world two small editions. One of them was widely circulated in Great Britain. The years leading up to