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PREACHER AND
PRAYER
E. M. BOUNDS
Washington, Ga.
Three things make a divine—prayer, meditation,temptation.—Luther.
If you do not pray, God will probably layyou aside from your ministry as he did me, toteach you to pray. Remember Luther’s maxim,“To have prayed well is to have studied well.”Get your text from God, your thoughts, yourwords.—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 withthe mower—that is, to be used only so far as is necessaryfor his work. May a physician in plague-timetake any more relaxation or recreation than is necessaryfor his life, when so many are expecting his help in acase of life and death? Will you stand by and seesinners gasping under the pangs of death, and say:“God doth not require me to make myself a drudge tosave them?” Is this the voice of ministerial or Christiancompassion or rather of sensual laziness and diabolicalcruelty?—Richard Baxter.
Misemployment of time is injurious to the mind.In illness I have looked back with self-reproach on daysspent in my study: I was wading through historyand poetry and monthly journals, but I was in mystudy! 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. Studythe honor and glory of your Master.—Richard Cecil.
Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulnessdepends on this, for your sermons last but anhour or two; your life preaches all the week. If Satancan only make a covetous minister a lover of praise, ofpleasure, of good eating, he has ruined your ministry.Give yourself to prayer, and get your texts, yourthoughts, your words from God. Luther spent hisbest three hours in prayer.—Robert Murray McCheyne.
We are constantly on a stretch, if noton a strain, to devise new methods, newplans, new organizations to advance theChurch and secure enlargement and efficiencyfor the gospel. This trend of theday has a tendency to lose sight of