Power Through PrayerBounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Religion
Power Through Prayer
Bounds, Edward M. (Edward McKendree)
Prayer -- Christianity
God found one of the men he was looking for in David Brainerd, whose
work and name have gone into history. He was no ordinary man, but was
capable of shining in any company, the peer of the wise and gifted ones,
eminently suited to fill the most attractive pulpits and to labour among
the most refined and the cultured, who were so anxious to secure him for
their pastor. President Edwards bears testimony that he was "a young man
of distinguished talents, had extraordinary knowledge of men and things,
had rare conversational powers, excelled in his knowledge of theology,
and was truly, for one so young, an extraordinary divine, and especially
in all matters relating to experimental religion. I never knew his equal
of his age and standing for clear and accurate notions of the nature and
essence of true religion. His manner in prayer was almost inimitable,
such as I have very rarely known equalled. His learning was very
considerable, and he had extraordinary gifts for the pulpit."
No sublimer story has been recorded in earthly annals than that of David
Brainerd; no miracle attests with diviner force the truth of Christianity
than the life and work of such a man. Alone in the savage wilds of
America, struggling day and night with a mortal disease, unschooled in
the care of souls, having access to the Indians for a large portion of
time only through the bungling medium of a pagan interpreter, with the
Word of God in his heart and in his hand, his soul fired with the divine
flame, a place and time to pour out his soul to God in prayer, he fully
established the worship of God and secured all its gracious results. The
Indians were changed with a great change from the lowest besotments of
an ignorant and debased heathenism, to pure, devout, intelligent
Christians; all vice reformed, the external duties of Christianity at
once embraced and acted on; family prayer set up; the Sabbath instituted
and religiously observed; the internal graces of religion exhibited with
growing sweetness and strength. The solution of these results is found
in David Brainerd himself, not in the conditions or accidents but in the
man Brainerd. He was God's man, for God first and last and all the time.
God could flow unhindered through him. The omnipotence of grace was
neither arrested nor straitened by the conditions of his heart; the
whole channel was broadened and cleaned out for God's fullest and most
powerful passage, so that God with all His mighty forces could come down
on the hopeless, savage wilderness, and transform it into His blooming
and fruitful garden; for nothing is too hard for God to do if He can get
the right kind of a man to do it with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account