look to them to pay his
bills, keep close to their company, walk in their foot-prints, and at
night borrow their oil, and it was only in this poor dependent way that
Little-Faith managed to struggle on to the end of his dim and joyless
journey.

It would have been far more becoming and far more profitable if Christian
and Hopeful, instead of falling out of temper and calling one another bad
names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried to tell one another
why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small, and how both their own
faith and his might from that day have been made more. Hopeful, for some
reason or other, was in a rude and boastful mood of mind that day, and
Christian was more tart and snappish than we have ever before seen him;
and, altogether, the opportunity of learning something useful out of
Little-Faith's story has been all but lost to us. But, now, since there
are so many of Little-Faith's kindred among ourselves--so many good men
who are either half asleep in their religious life or are begging their
way from door to door--let them be told, in closing, one or two out of
many other ways in which their too little faith may possibly be made
stronger and more fruitful.

Well, then, faith, like everything else, once we have it, grows greater
by our continual exercise of it. Exercise, then, intentionally and
seriously and on system your faith every day. And exercise it habitually
and increasingly on your Bible, on heaven, and on Jesus Christ. And let
your faith on all these things, and places, and persons, work by love,--by
love and by imagination. Our love is cold and our faith is small and
weak for lack of imagination. Read your Psalm, your Gospel, your Epistle
every morning and every night with your eye upon the object. Think you
see the Psalmist amid all his deep and divine experiences. Think you see
Jesus Christ speaking His parables, saying His prayers, and doing His
good works. Walk up and down with Him, observing His manner, His look,
His gait, His divinity in your humanity, till Galilee and Jerusalem
become Scotland and Edinburgh; that is, till He is as much with you, and
more, than He was with Peter and James and John. Never close your eye a
single night till you have again laid your hand on the very head of the
Lamb of God, and till you feel that your sin and guilt have all passed
off your hand and on upon His head. And never rise without, like William
Law, saluting the rising sun i