The Art of Being a Good Friend : How to Bring Out the Best in Your Friends and in Yourself

These pages show you how to transform your friendships into soul-nourishing relationships, bringing them from shallowness and frivolity to a deep communion of mind and heart - a communion that will become for you and your friends a means for emotional and spiritual growth.

If you're married, you'll find here new ways to appreciate the gift God has given to you in your spouse. If you already enjoy the blessings of other mature and spiritually oriented friendships, you'll discover innumerable ways to make them richer. Best of all, you'll learn how to seek friendship with God.

In The Art of Being a Good Friend you will also learn:

• How true friendship can give you a complete education in the art of living
• Whether you really have any true friends at all surprising ways to tell the difference between mere acquaintances and genuine friends
• Scripture's shrewd warnings about the pitfalls of socializing and its high view of friendship
• Why the wisest people through the ages have valued friendship so much
• Common ways you can unintentionally destroy friendships, and how to guard against those ways
• And much more, to bring your friendships rich blessings!

Born in Rothesay, Scotland, in 1868, Hugh Black graduated from Glasgow University in 1887. He spent his life in the service of God's people and gained fame as a pastor in Scotland and as a lecturer on homiletics in the United States. Even during his later service as a professor of theology, his pastoral vision remained warmly practical. He also wrote more than a dozen other books, including works on youth, work, and culture.