LOOKING UNTO JESUS by James W. Alexander

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 3, 1881

LOOKING UNTO JESUS.

By James W. Alexander

I CONCEIVE it will be important to counsel all believers, especially those who are young and simple-hearted, to beware of perplexing their minds with the high points of this subject. Look at Christ. There fix the eye of your mind. Be not overmuch anxious to discern what belongs to one nature and what to the other. Fix your contemplation on this person. Behold him dying, behold him reigning. There is no danger of going astray when, in your common thoughts and prayers, your whole soul goes forth to a single undivided object, Christ. Are you feeling for his support and resting on his sympathy like a man? You do well; he is bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. Are you praying to him as God? You do well; you do no more than dying Stephen, who said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" "for he is God over all blessed for ever." If you wish the grand secret of religion couched in a single maxim; if you would learn how to be reconciled, and how to abide so; if you would be holy and happy, take this rule: Look to Christ. Just so much piety have you, as you have Christ in your thoughts. Study the person of Christ. As you would diligently traverse a great domain, every part of which you were bound to know, so set yourself to expatiate upon the character and personality of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Scriptures. Begin the New Testament, and never stop reading it over and over, with this very thing in view, to learn more and more of Christ. His own light will shine on his own glorious countenance, and as you read again and again, you will see its lineaments radiant with higher and higher illumination; each adorable feature will be more distinct and familiar; you will know it better, as the face of a friend, of a brother, of a Christ, for all other words come short; you will feel the fleshy tablet of your heart receiving the rays from this "shining in the face of Jesus;" and as you feel the reflection of this Sun of righteousness, you will own an unwonted glow. Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, you will be changed into the same image. The work of inward assimilation is going on. As you hold the soul by loving contemplation in these beams, the pencil of heavenly light is drawing Christ's image within you. The table of your heart is becoming his best and most cherished portrait. Desist not, then, from such study of his person as shall cause you day by day to be more reflective of his image.—Dr. James W. Alexander.