a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God.

_Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are weary
with the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Give
me the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, "Speak, for thy
servant heareth." Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart. Let me get used
to the sound of Thy Voice, that its tones may be familiar when the
sounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thy
speaking Voice. Amen._

VII

_The Gaze of the Soul_

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.--Heb. 12:2

Let us think of our intelligent plain man mentioned in chapter six
coming for the first time to the reading of the Scriptures. He
approaches the Bible without any previous knowledge of what it contains.
He is wholly without prejudice; he has nothing to prove and nothing to
defend.

Such a man will not have read long until his mind begins to observe
certain truths standing out from the page. They are the spiritual
principles behind the record of God's dealings with men, and woven into
the writings of holy men as they "were moved by the Holy Ghost." As he
reads on he might want to number these truths as they become clear to
him and make a brief summary under each number. These summaries will be
the tenets of his Biblical creed. Further reading will not affect these
points except to enlarge and strengthen them. Our man is finding out
what the Bible actually teaches.

High up on the list of things which the Bible teaches will be the
doctrine of _faith_. The place of weighty importance which the Bible
gives to faith will be too plain for him to miss. He will very likely
conclude: Faith is all-important in the life of the soul. Without faith
it is impossible to please God. Faith will get me anything, take me
anywhere in the Kingdom of God, but without faith there can be no
approach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, no
communion, no spiritual life at all.

By the time our friend has reached the eleventh chapter of Hebrews the
eloquent encomium which is there pronounced upon faith will not seem
strange to him. He will have read Paul's powerful defense of faith in
his Roman and Galatian epistles. Later if he goes on to study church
history he will understand the amazing power in the teachings of the
Reformers as they showed the central place of faith in the Christian
religion.

Now if fa