I started this year with the aim of reading two pages per day from Isaac Ambrose’s Looking Unto Jesus. That pace would allow me to finish the work in just over eleven months. Well, I finished it in less than one.

It was just too good to put down.

Never before have I read such a warmth in meditation on the beauty of Christ. Looking unto Jesus (Heb. 12:2) has taken on a fresh fullness. A section of Ambrose’s conclusion is worthy of mention and prolonged meditation:

If I had but one word more to speak to the world, it should be this; Oh! let all our spirits be taken up with Christ, let us not busy ourselves too much with toys, or trifles, with ordinary and low things, but look to Jesus.

Surely Christ is enough to fill all our thoughts, desires, hopes, loves, joys, or whatever is within us, or without us; Christ alone comprehends all the circumference of our happiness; Christ is the pearl hid in the large field of God’s word;

Christ is the scope of all the scripture:

all things and persons in the old world were types of him;

all the prophets foretold him,

all God’s love runs through him,

all the gifts and graces of the Spirit flow from him,

the whole eye of God is upon him,

and all his designs both in heaven and earth meet in him.

Oh! how should all hearts be taken with this Christ? Christians! turn your eyes upon the Lord: “Look, and look again unto Jesus.” Why stand ye gazing on the toys of this world, when such a Christ is offered to you in the gospel?

If there be any heaven upon earth, thou wilt find it in the practice and exercise of this gospel duty, in “Looking unto Jesus.”

And all God’s people said, “Amen.”