Free Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs by Charles Spurgeon

think only of Christ.
    Some not only unduly practice retrospection and introspection, but they carry much too far a sort of circumspection. They look all around them: they look upon their past, and their present, and their fears and their doubts, and from all these things they judge their condition, and decide their state of mind. You recollect Peter. He cried to his Lord, "Bid me come unto thee on the water." He receives permission. Down the side over the boat goes Peter. To his intense surprise he is standing on a wave. Peter had never done such a thing before in his life as walk on the water. He might have kept on standing on the wave and he might have walked all the way to Jesus, if he had kept his eyes on his Master until he reached him. The waters would have borne him up as well as a granite pavement; but Peter began to look at the billows, and he listened to the howling of the wind, and then to the beating of his own heart; and down he went; and then he had to cry to his Master. "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee": thou canst walk the waters all the way to the golden shore if thou canst but stop thine eyes to all things else. Surely I may use the text as an illustration of that closing of the eyes. "Let thine eyes look right on." "I understand that," says one, "for I trust. But you cannot look with your eyelids." What can that mean? Remember that you can shut your eyes with your eyelids to a great many things, and so cease to see them; and in the matter of faith-sight a great many things are best not seen. So, when you would otherwise see the danger and all the difficulties and the doubts, do not look with your eyes, but look with your eyelids. Not to look at the difficulties at all is all the look they deserve. Let your eyelids shut out the view which would create distrust. Do not see, do not feel, "only believe." Believe Christ, and believe nothing else. "Let God be true but every man a liar." If all the sins thou hast ever done should come rolling up like Atlantic billows, and if all the devils in hell should come riding on the crests of those waves howling as they come, take no notice of them. Christ has said he that believeth in him hath everlasting life; believe thou in him, and thou hast the everlasting life as surely as Christ is the Christ of God. Draw down the blind and see nothing, know nothing, believe nothing but the living word of the living Savior. "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee." When thou closest thine eyes to consider, thou canst see a good deal with closed eyes, but still look thou right on to the one and only trust.
    You must also let your eyes look right on, dear friends; for if you begin to look two ways at a time you will miss the Lord Jesus, who is your way. Under the Jewish law no man who had a squint was allowed to be a priest. He is described as one who had "a blemish in his eye." I wish they would make a similar law with regard to spiritual sight in preachers nowadays, for certain of them are sadly cross-eyed. When they preach free grace they squint fearfully towards free-will; and if they look to the atonement they must needs see in it more of man than of Christ. See how they look to Moses and to Darwin; to revelation and to speculation! A great many people would fain be saved, but they squint: they look a little towards sin, and the flesh, and the world, and they make provision for personal gain, and personal ease. In this case they fail to see Christ's strait and narrow way of the denial of self, and the crucifixion of the flesh. If thou wouldst have salvation, "Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee." Look not a little this way and a little that way, or thou wilt never run aright. "I could believe that I was a Christian," says one, "if I felt more happy. I could trust Christ if I felt my nature
changed." That is a squint which ruins the faith-look. That is