From the introduction:
The life of Rev. Martin Wells Knapp was so unique and striking and many-sided, so beautiful in its simplicity, so fruitful in noblest achievements, that it fully deserves a permanent place among the biographies of great souls, the saints of God...
This book will be helpful in many ways. First, it gives us an inside view of the Divine workshop in which God fashioned His precious servant, and fitted him to be a chosen instrument for the accomplishment of great good. Here are the furnace-fires of affliction, the anvil of suffering, and the hammer of pain, the rasping and polishing tools of trial and commingled defeat and success, sorrow and joy, out of which there came this giant fitted for achievement and storm and battles.
Again, this story will inspire hope in the breasts of the obscure and humble. How few start under more unpromising skies, or end their earthly career in such radiance of sunset glory!
This biography also will illustrate the tremendous power of a truly Christian woman's influence. It rarely falls to the lot of any man to have such a prayerful, sanctified mother, and two such sanctified wives as God gave to Brother Knapp. They, and Bessie Queen and Mary Storey all sanctified, were potent forces in the inner life of this receptive and appreciative soul. Bessie's contributions to this book will be the gems of the whole. I here acknowledge my indebtedness to her account of his last days.
Lastly, the book affords a remarkable illustration of the power of faith and prayer and the transforming influence of the sanctifying baptism with the Holy Ghost in a life. Who can account for the transformation of the timid boy depicted in these pages into such a courageous great-heart, or explain the worldwide influence of the humble country circuit-rider, whose early death was mourned around the globe, save on the principle of the Pentecostal enduement of power from on high and the heart-cleansing baptism with the Holy Ghost? This humble man blazed in the sky of Christian thought like a star of the first magnitude. Leave out the permanent factor of an abiding and indwelling Christ and the overshadowing influence of the Holy Ghost upon him, and an explanation of his remarkable career is impossible. No one would be so quick as he to give God all the glory. He shall have it all...
May his God be ours, and a portion of his spirit rest upon each of us! May the perusal of these pages prove a blessing to many hearts!
The Table of Contents are as follows:
Chapter 1: ONE OF GOD'S SURPRISES
Chapter 2: HIS PARENTS, BIRTH, AND BOYHOOD — ANCESTORS
Chapter 3: GOING TO COLLEGE — FINDING HIS LIFE COMPANION, AND THROUGH HER FINDING GOD
Chapter 4: MARRIAGE — ENTERING THE MINISTRY — EARLY PASTORAL EXPERIENCES — SANCTIFIED
Chapter 5: THIRD AND FOURTH PASTORATES — REVIVAL EXPERIENCES
Chapter 6: A LIFE OF FAITH — REVIVAL WORK — TRIED AND TEMPTED AND TRUE — BOOKS AND REVIVALIST
Chapter 7: GOING DOWN INTO THE DEEPS
Chapter 8: THE FURNACE SEVEN TIMES HEATED
Chapter 9: TRIAL AND DELIVERANCE
Chapter 10: LIFE'S WORK AND DEVELOPMENT IN CINCINNATI
Chapter 11: GREATNESS IN SERVICE
Chapter 12: A POTENT INFLUENCE
Chapter 13: A GROWING POWER
Chapter 14: COURAGE TO VENTURE
Chapter 15: WITHDRAWING FROM THE METHODIST CHURCH
Chapter 16: LEANING HARD ON GOD AND PERSECUTED FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS' SAKE
Chapter 17: NEARING HOME
Chapter 18: EMANCIPATION — TRANSLATION
Chapter 19: LIFE AFTER DEATH THROUGH A HOLY INFLUENCE
Chapter 20: OUTPOURINGS OF SYMPATHY AND SORROW
Chapter 21: A STREAM OF HOPEFUL SORROW
Chapter 22: THE HERO PROMOTED
