Original Foreword (1920)

Edward McKendree Bounds was born in Shelby County, Missouri [on] August 15, 1835, and died August 24, 1913, in Washington, Georgia. He received common school education at Shelbyville and was admitted to the bar [as a lawyer] soon after his majority. He practiced law until called to preach the Gospel at the age of twenty-four. His first pastorate was [the] Monticello, Missouri Circuit. It was while serving as pastor of Brunswick, Missouri, that war was declared, and the young minister was made a prisoner of war because he would not take the oath of allegiance to the Federal Government. He was sent to St. Louis and later transferred to Memphis, Tennessee.

Finally securing his release, he traveled on foot nearly one hundred miles to join General Pierce’s command in Mississippi, and was soon after made a chaplain of the Fifth Missouri Regiment, a position he held until near the close of the war, when he was captured and held as prisoner at Nashville, Tennessee.

After the war, the Rev. E. M. Bounds was pastor of churches in Tennessee and Alabama. In 1875, he was assigned to the St. Paul Methodist Church in St. Louis, and served there for four years. In 1876 he was married to Miss Emmie Barnette at Eufaula, Ala., who died ten years later. In 1887, he was married to Miss Hattie Barnette, who, with five children, survive[d] him.

After serving several pastorates, he was sent to the First Methodist Church in St. Louis, Missouri, for one year and to St. Paul Methodist Church for three years. At the end of his pastorate, he became the editor of the St. Louis Christian Advocate.

He was a forceful writer and a very deep thinker. He spent the last seventeen years of his life with his family in Washington, Georgia. Most of the time, he was reading, writing, and praying. He rose at four AM each day for many years, and was indefatigable in his study of the Bible. His writings were read by thousands of people, and were in demand by the church people of every Protestant denomination.

Bounds was the embodiment of humility, with a seraphic devotion to Jesus Christ. He reached that high place where self is forgotten and the love of God and humanity was the all-absorbing thought and purpose. At 76 years of age, he came to me in Brooklyn, NY, and so intense was he, that he awoke us at three o’clock in the morning, praying and weeping over the lost earth. All during the day he would go into the church next door and be found on his knees until called for his meals. This is what he called the “business of praying.” Infused with this heavenly ozone, he wrote Preacher and Prayer,' a classic in its line, and now gone into several foreign languages, read by men and women all over the world. In 1909, while the Rev. A. C. Dixon was preaching in Dr. Broughton’s Tabernacle, Atlanta, Georgia, I sent him a copy of Preacher and Prayer by Bounds. Hear what he says:

This little book was given me by a friend. I received another copy at Christmas from another friend. “Well,” thought I, “there must be something worthwhile in the little book, or two of my friends would not have selected the same present for me.” So I read the first page, until I came to the words: “Man is looking for better methods: God is looking for better men. Man is God’s method.” That was enough for me, and my appetite demanded more, until the book was finished, with pleasure.

This present volume is a companion work, and reflects the true spirit of a man whose business it was to live the gospel that he preached. He was not a luminary, but a SUN, and takes his place with Brainerd and Bramwell as untiring intercessors with God.

—H. W. Hodge, 1920”

' Preacher and Prayer was later published as Power in Prayer, also in this volume.

2 Homer W. Hodge, whom Bounds discipled for 8 years, edited and published Bounds’ manuscripts posthumously. (See Preface.)