Wesley’s piety and genius and popularity flowed from his early life like a majestic river. Bounds’ has been dammed up, but now it is beginning to sweep with resistless force and ere long he will be the mighty Amazon of the devotional world.
Henry Crabbe Robinson said in his diary when he heard Wesley preach at Colchester, “He stood in a wide pulpit and on each side of him stood a minister, and the two held him up. His voice was feeble and he could hardly be heard, but his reverend countenance, especially his long white locks, formed a picture never to be forgotten.” The writer of these lines gave up his pulpit in Brooklyn in 1912 to Rev. E. M. Bounds just ten months before his death. His voice was feeble and his periods were not rounded out. His sermon was only twenty minutes long, when he quietly came to the end and seemed exhausted.
Wesley had sufficient money and to spare during all his career. Bounds did not care for money. He did not depreciate it; he considered it the lowest order of power.
Wesley died with “an eye beaming and lips breaking into praise.” “The best of all is God with us,” Bounds wrote the writer of these lines. “When He is ready I am ready; I long to taste the joys of the heavenlies.”
Wesley said, “The World is my parish.” Bounds prayed as if the universe was his zone.
Wesley was the incarnation of unworldliness, the embodiment of magnanimity. Bounds was the incarnation of unearthliness, humility and self-denial. Wesley will live in the hearts of saints for everlasting ages. Bounds eternally.
Wesley sleeps in City Road Chapel grounds, among his “bonny dead,” under marble, with fitting tribute chiseled in prose, awaiting the Resurrection. Bounds sleeps in Washington, Georgia, cemetery, without marble covering, awaiting the Bridegroom’s coming.
These two men held ideals high and clear beyond the reach of other men. Has this race of men entirely gone out of the world now that they are dead? Let us pray.
Homer W. Hodge
Brooklyn, N. Y.