Preacher and Prayer

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Preacher and Prayer, by Edward M. (Edward McKendree) Bounds
E. M. BOUNDS Washington, Ga.
Three things make a divine—prayer, meditation, temptation. — Luther.
If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry as he did me, to teach you to pray. Remember Luther’s maxim, “To have prayed well is to have studied well.” Get your text from God, your thoughts, your words. — McCheyne.
The Christian Witness Co. Chicago
Copyright 1907 by E. M. BOUNDS. Copyright now owned by THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS CO.

Recreation to a minister must be as whetting is with the mower—that is, to be used only so far as is necessary for his work. May a physician in plague-time take any more relaxation or recreation than is necessary for his life, when so many are expecting his help in a case of life and death? Will you stand by and see sinners gasping under the pangs of death, and say: “God doth not require me to make myself a drudge to save them?” Is this the voice of ministerial or Christian compassion or rather of sensual laziness and diabolical cruelty? —Richard Baxter.
Misemployment of time is injurious to the mind. In illness I have looked back with self-reproach on days spent in my study: I was wading through history and poetry and monthly journals, but I was in my study! Another man’s trifling is notorious to all observers, but what am I doing? Nothing, perhaps, that has a reference to the spiritual good of my congregation. Be much in retirement and prayer. Study the honor and glory of your Master. —Richard Cecil.


Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, for your sermons last but an hour or two; your life preaches all the week. If Satan can only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, of pleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry. Give yourself to prayer, and get your texts, your thoughts, your words from God. Luther spent his best three hours in prayer. —Robert Murray McCheyne.