Looking unto Jesus

From Isaac Ambrose’s book, Looking Unto Jesus:

In [the] knowledge of Christ, there is an excellency above all other knowledge in the world; there is nothing more pleasing and comfortable, more animating and enlivening, more ravishing and soul contenting; only Christ is the sun and center of all divine revealed truths, we can preach nothing else as the object of our faith, as the necessary element of your soul’s salvation, which doth not some way or the, either meet in Christ, or refer to Christ; only Christ is the whole of man’s happiness, the Sun to enlighten him, the Physician to heal him, the Ark to support him, the Rock to sustain him under the heaviest pressures… Only Christ is that ladder between earth and heaven, the Mediator between God and man, a mystery which the angels of heaven desire to pry and peep and look into (1 Pet 1:12). Here is a blessed subject indeed; who would not be glad to pry into it, to be acquainted with it? “This is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent” (John 17:3). Come then, let us look at the Sun of righteousness. We cannot receive harm but good by such a look; indeed by looking long on the natural sun, we have our eyes dazzled and our faces blackened. But by looking unto Jesus Christ, we shall have our eyes clearer and our faces fairer… As Christ is more excellent than all the world, so this sight transcends all other sights; it is the epitome of a Christian’s happiness, the quintessence of evangelical duties, looking unto Jesus.”

(Isaac Ambrose: Looking Unto Jesus, Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications 1986/1658, 17-18).