The Reality of Prayer

EDITED BY HOMER W. HODGE

The Spiritual Life Books

By EDWARD M. BOUNDS

A rich, exceptionally helpful addition to Doctor Bounds’ books, which deal with the place and significance prayer has in the life of the believer.

Possessed of a wonderfully full knowledge of Holy Scripture, a man of unswerving faith and mystical insight, Mr. Bounds writes with a certitude, confidence and joyous anticipation of the eternal felicity awaiting the faithful believer.

“Mr. Bounds has the gift of insight, and with this a faculty for selecting words to express precisely that which responds to the heart-hunger of those who are seeking spiritual enlightenment.”

—Sunday School Times.

With irrefutable logic backed by the testimony of Holy Scripture, it shows the Arch Enemy of mankind to be a Person—actual, literal, ever active for the destruction of human souls. Indicates whereby Christian believers can withstand his assaults and how they may finally triumph.

Foreword

During the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century and a score of years of the twentieth, there lived and died three great men of God whom I knew—men whom God has doubtless numbered among the foremost of His heavenly host. The first was Edward McKendree Bounds, author of this present volume and the other “Spiritual Life” Books. The second was Claud L. Chilton, minister for many years in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and a musical composer of religious music of considerable note. The third, Clement C. Cary, preacher and editor, lost his life in an automobile accident in 1922. The fourth was Dr. B. F. Haynes, minister, editor and author, who died in Nashville, in 1923.

What Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan, was to Strong, Arrowsmith and Spurstow; what John Wesley was to Whitefield, Fletcher and Clark, Bounds was to Chilton, Cary and Haynes. What David Brainerd’s Journal did for Cary, Martyn, McCheyne, Bounds’ books can do for thousands of God’s children. He was a man who lived ever on prayer ground. He walked and talked with the Lord. Prayer was the great weapon in his arsenal, his pathway to the Throne of Grace. None who read what he has written can fail of realising that Edward McKendree Bounds talked with God, as a man talketh to his friend.

Homer W. Hodge.

Flushing, N. Y.

Contents

I. Prayer—A Privilege, Princely, Sacred . . . 9

II. Prayer—Fills Man’s Poverty with God’s Riches . . . 18

III. Prayer—The All-Important Essence of Earthly Worship . . . 28

IV. God Has Everything to Do with Prayer . . . 34

V. Jesus Christ, the Divine Teacher of Prayer . . . 46

VI. Jesus Christ, the Divine Teacher of Prayer (Continued) . . . 56

VII. Jesus Christ an Example of Prayer . . . 69

VIII. Prayer Incidents in the Life of Our Lord . . . 80

IX. Prayer Incidents in the Life of Our Lord (Continued) . . . 87

X. Our Lord’s Model Prayer . . . 97

XI. Our Lord’s Sacerdotal Prayer . . . 102

XII. The Gethsemane Prayer . . . 112

XIII. The Holy Spirit and Prayer . . . 122

XIV. The Holy Spirit Our Helper in Prayer . . . 133

XV. The Two Comforters and Two Advocates . . . 143