The Faith that Makes Faithful Author:William C. Gannett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ' I HAD A FRIEND.'' Our Bible is a book of lives. It is a book of men praying rather than a book of prayer, of men believing rather than a book of beliefs, of... more » men sinning and repenting and righting themselves rather than a book of ethics. It is a book, too, of men loving : it is full of faces turned towards faces. As in the procession-pictures frescoed on rich old walls, the well-known men and women come trooping through its pages in twos and threes, or in little bands of which we recognize the central figure and take the others to be those unknown friends immortalized by just one mention in this book. Adam always strays with Eve along the foot-paths of our fancy. Abram walks with Sarah, Rebecca at the well suggests the Isaac waiting somewhere, and Rachel's presence pledges Jacob's not far off. Two brothers and a sister together lead Israel out from Egypt. Here come Ruth and Naomi, and there go David and Jonathan. Job sits in his ashes forlorn enough, but not for want of comforters,—we can hardly see Job for his friends. One whole book in the Old Testament is a love-song about an eastern king and one of his dusky brides; although, to keep the Bible biblical, our modern chapter-headings call the Song of Solomon a prophecy of the love of the Christian Church for Christ. Some persons have wished the book away, but a wise man said the Bible would have lacked, had it not held somewhere in its pages a human love-song. True, the Prophets seem to wander solitary,—prophets usually do; yet, though we seldom see their ancient audience, they doubtless had one. Minstrels and preachers always presup- pose the faces of a congregation. But as we step from Old Testament to New, again we hear the buzz of little companies. We follow Jesus in and out of homes; children cluster about his feet; w...« less