Book Review: Praying Hyde – Apostle of Prayer by E. G. Carre

A Personal Note: How This Book Found Me

Over the past ten years, I've been agonizing before the Lord in prayer about my longing to belong to a church—a true community of Believers where Christ is worshipped in Spirit and in truth. This heart cry has been a recurring theme in my life since losing regular fellowship with a local Body due to doctrinal and theological differences many years ago. As I agonized before the Lord over this matter yet again more recently, I distinctly heard the Lord whisper to my spirit: “It starts with you. You be the first to worship Me in spirit and in truth, and I will take care of the rest.”

I pondered those words deeply. Hadn’t I already been striving to do that? But then the Holy Spirit began to reveal to me how, over the past eighteen years of walking with Him, I had gradually grown calloused toward what I considered to be "small" sin issues—flaws that seemed minor to me, but were not small at all in the sight of a holy God. He gently reminded me of my grumbling, anger, bitterness, pride, idolatry, covetousness, fleeting lustful thoughts, and other recurring struggles that had begun to surface with greater and greater frequency. Though I would always confess my sins and plead for forgiveness, I had come to tolerate them more than I should have. I wasn’t taking the "axe to the root" with full resolve to be rid of them and press on toward the goal of Christian perfection—not sinless perfection, but the ongoing transformation of a sanctified life.

I had to repent of this and truly mean business with God. In His mercy, He placed in my hands the book Praying Hyde, which gave me a vivid picture of what a life wholly devoted to righteousness and spiritual worship looks like. This book showcased the life of missionary and evangelist John Hyde, whose early ministry was not marked by great spirituality or surrender. As a seminary graduate, he felt ready for the mission field because of his theological training. But a letter from a close friend of his father humbled him, awakening him to his desperate need for the Holy Spirit’s power. He realized that no amount of intellect, zeal, or human effort could bring a single soul to Christ without divine anointing. Then came a second revelation. Before he could lead others into a transformed life, his own life had to be transformed—purified from besetting sin. And finally, the Lord impressed upon him the reality that true ministry could never be sustained by preaching, programs, or great crusades—it must be birthed and upheld through prayer, travailing prayer before God.

Hyde came to understand that every spiritual victory had to be won first in the secret place, where tears and intercession paved the way for the visible fruit of revival. That revelation transformed him. He came to see that more could be accomplished on his knees than through all his activity. Those truths took hold of his life and produced one of the most extraordinary missionary testimonies in history. The power of one righteous intercessor—so surrendered, so consumed with God—that his prayers could shake continents, is beyond comprehension. And yet, how little of that spirit we see today.

I don’t think any book has ever convicted me so deeply or on so many different levels as this one. It stands, in my view, as one of the most powerful works ever written on prayer and the sanctified life. Since reading it, a new cry has been born in my heart: Oh God, help me! I repent of my prayerlessness, my selfishness, and my carnality. I long to live as this man of prayer lived while so closely reflecting the heart of Jesus.

My hope and prayer is that as you read the following brief introduction and selected excerpts from this remarkable book, you too will be stirred to seek out a copy and let it speak to your soul as it has to mine.

A Man Who Lived in the Prayer Room

Few biographies have stirred the soul of the Church like Praying Hyde. In the pages of this book, Captain E. G. Carre paints the portrait of a man whose hidden life with God changed the spiritual atmosphere of India and left behind a fragrance of Christ that still challenges Believers today. John Nelson Hyde was not a strategist or an orator; he was an intercessor whose very heartbeat seemed to echo the heartbeat of God. His secret was simple but world-changing—he learned to live on his knees. And through his tears, his groanings, and his unrelenting faith, entire regions were transformed by the power of prayer. Oh, that such men would rise again in our generation—men and women who would learn to prevail with God before they ever attempt to prevail with men.

Carre’s narrative opens with the scene that first revealed Hyde’s secret. A missionary newly arrived in India was invited by Hyde with the gentle but commanding words, “Come with me to the prayer room; we want you there.” Stepping inside, the visitor found several men lying prostrate before God. Hours slipped by unnoticed. When they rose, he testified that it was there he learned what real prayer is. Hyde then said simply, “Go and speak; that is your work. I shall go back to the prayer room again.”  To Hyde, public ministry was the overflow of secret communion.

A New Vision of the Master

In another scene, Hyde leads a fellow worker into deep meditation on the humility of Christ. He speaks of the astonishing truth that “Christ became a man”—and then, still lower, that “Christ became a slave for me.” As Hyde described the Savior washing His disciples’ feet, both men were moved to tears. Hyde wept quietly, whispering, “For me, for me.”  The story captures the essence of his spirituality: the cross was not a doctrine to admire but a revelation to imitate.

Grace Toward the Prodigal

One of the book’s most unforgettable threads follows a young Brahmin named J. N., a brilliant student drawn to Christ but repeatedly ensnared by drink. When he returned in shame after each fall, Hyde never reproached him. He “received him as did the father his prodigal son.”  Even after the youth stole his clothes to sell for liquor, Hyde only smiled and said, “The Father evidently desires me to spend my hot weather in the plains, for I have no warm clothes left.” On a later occasion the lad found Hyde on his knees praying for him. Hyde rose, embraced him, and said tenderly, “I have just been praying that God would send you back to me, and see—He has answered me!” Few scenes in missionary literature better portray the heart of Christ in human form.

The Doctor’s Diagnosis

Carre records that Hyde’s years of travail left their mark on his body. When examined by a physician, it was discovered that his physical heart had shifted from its normal place, leaning to the right side of his chest. The doctor warned he might live only six months. Hyde’s calm reply was, “Then I shall be with the Master.”  His very frame testified that intercession had become his life’s pulse.

When Differences Were Settled by Prayer

In one memorable incident, Hyde became troubled about another minister and began to pray critically, saying, “O God, Thou knowest that brother—” but a divine hand seemed laid upon his lips with the rebuke, “He that toucheth him toucheth the apple of Mine eye.”  Convicted of judging, Hyde changed his prayer to thanksgiving, recalling every virtue in his brother’s life until his entire prayer-season became praise. Later he learned that, while he praised, God had blessed that very pastor. Carre comments, “While we bless God for any child of His, He delights to bless that one.”  From then on Hyde would rather pray than argue, preferring unity born in prayer to victory in debate.

The Blanket Incident

Another missionary tells of a bitterly cold night when Hyde knocked on his door asking for a blanket. The man, weary and irritated, snapped, “Where are your own blankets?”  Hyde explained that a drunken lodger had taken them to sell for drink. The brother scolded him sharply for having lodged such criminal men. Hyde called him by name and answered gently, “Ah, J— ! J— ! If the prodigal had come back to you, you would have taken a stick to him!”  That simple, Christlike reproof pierced the man’s heart and transformed his spirit forever. The next day conviction overwhelmed him. In tears he sought Hyde’s forgiveness.

The Tenth Soul

Perhaps the most touching of all is the story of the Punjab village mission. Hyde and two Indian evangelists had preached all day with no visible results. Hungry and weary, they were ready to leave, but Hyde refused. He was waiting on the fulfillment of a promise. At last a family welcomed them in, and nine members came to Christ. Darkness fell, the road was dangerous, and the others pleaded with Hyde to depart. Yet he stood gazing back at the cottage and murmured, “What about that one?” Moments later the father returned with a boy who had been out playing. Hyde asked the lad about his faith; the boy confessed Christ clearly. Hyde sighed with contentment and said, “That is the ten.”  Only then did he climb into the cart. Carre closes the scene with a prayer: “Lord, teach us at whatever cost to satisfy Thy great heart of love, broken over wandering sheep.”

One Who Learned to Praise Instead of Criticize

Hyde’s secret was not grim determination but overflowing love. He looked for “whatsoever things are lovely” in others and magnified them until the faults faded. Carre writes that Hyde “saw grace in God’s little ones and thus supplied the atmosphere of praise in which God’s love was free to work in all its fullness.” Though naturally shy and melancholy, he became “one of the most joyous souls I have ever met,” proof that communion with Christ can transfigure temperament itself.

Legacy

Through these vignettes, Carre’s biography reveals not a superhuman mystic but a man wholly surrendered to the Spirit. Hyde’s greatness lay not in his preaching but in his praying, not in public acclaim but in private travail. His life teaches that revival is born in the secret place and that souls are won not by eloquence but by love carried to the cross.

Conclusion

Praying Hyde: Apostle of Prayer is more than a missionary biography; it is a call to the altar of intercession. Every story—whether Hyde refusing human praise, forgiving an insult, waiting for the last soul, or turning criticism into praise—points back to one truth: the heart of Christ still beats in His praying saints. Hyde’s desire was never that men should emulate him, but that through his life they would be stirred to emulate Christ.

Carre’s simple narrative carries a rare anointing. It leaves the reader, as one of Hyde’s companions once said, “longing not so much to talk about prayer, but to pray.”

Small Warning: This book will "break" you before it remakes you, and the process isn't instantaneous. Be ready for the journey...