III. But some of you will be ready to say that that is just where your difficulty lies. You do really desire to be going forward, and to be making progress, but it seems as if you could not. You are like a person in a nightmare, who wishes to run, but cannot. Let us then consider what is God’s great instrument, whereby He imparts progress to the soul. On this subject this text is quite decisive, for it shows that God’s great instrument is the view of the Lord Jesus Christ through faith. In the passage to which I have already referred in 1 John, iii. 2, we find that the perfect view of the Lord Jesus will lead to perfect likeness, so in these words the partial view leads to progressive likeness. When the view is perfect the likeness will be perfect too; now that the view is imperfect, only as through a glass, the likeness is imperfect likewise. But still it is growing more and more; for ‘we all,’—not merely special Christians, who have attained what they call ‘the higher life,’—‘beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.’ Now I believe it is impossible to press this too strongly on all those who desire holiness, for there is a perpetual tendency in every one of us to turn the eye inward on ourselves, instead of keeping it fixed on Him. Some are occupied with what they feel, or do not feel, or wish to feel, or wish they did not feel; and some by what they do, or mean to do, or think they ought to do,—till the whole mind becomes bewildered, and the whole soul entangled. Remember that you may be entangled by your religious efforts, as well as by your sins: nothing indeed entangles people more than confused and mistaken religion. So that if you really want to be like Him, you must sweep away all your entanglements like so many cobwebs, and, just as you are, look straight at Him. For example, you say you do not feel sin, and you do not feel anything like the sorrow for it that you know you ought to do. I have no doubt you are perfectly right, and it is very sorrowful, very sinful, and very sad. But how is it to be overcome? I know of only one way, and that is a very simple one, too simple for many of you,—and that is a look: you must behold Christ. Remember the case of the Jews. Nothing yet has melted their hearts: their great national afflictions have utterly failed: but in God’s time there will be a change. We shall see those people mourning,—so mourning that they will be led with broken hearts to the Fountain open for sin and for uncleanness. And what will be God’s instrument for producing such a change? By what means will He effect it? By a look: a simple look! You find it described in Zech. xii. 10: ‘They shall look on Me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for him.’ That one look will accomplish more than 1800 years of bitter, and most afflictive, discipline. And it is just the same with ourselves. One look at our loving and living Saviour