rsonal
to one's self, putting Him to the test in life, trusting His death to
square up one's sin score, trusting His power to clean the heart and
sweeten the spirit, and stiffen the will. It means holding the whole life
up to His ideals. Aye, it means more yet; something on His side, an
answering look from Him. There comes a consciousness within of His love
and winsomeness. That answering look of His holds us forever after His
willing slaves, love's slaves. Paul speaks of the eyes of the heart. It is
with these eyes we look at Him, and receive His answering look.

There are different ways of looking at Jesus, degrees in looking. Our
experiences with Jesus affect the eyes of the heart. When this same John
as an old man was writing that first epistle, he seems to recall his
experience in looking that first day. He says "that which we have _seen_
with our eyes, that which we _beheld_."[1] From seeing with the eyes he
had gone to earnest, thoughtful _gazing_, caught with the vision of what
he saw. That was John's own experience. It is everybody's experience that
gets a look at Jesus. When the first looking sees something that catches
fire within, then does the inner fire affect the eye and more is seen.

You have been in a strange city walking down the street, looking with
interest at what is there. But all at once you are caught by a sign that
contains a familiar name, and at once a whole flood of memories is
awakened.

The little Jericho Jew peering down from the low out-reaching sycamore
branch was full of curiosity to see the Man that had changed his old
friend Levi Matthew so strangely. But that curiosity quickly changes into
something far deeper and more tender as Jesus comes to abide in his own
home.

That lonely-lifed, sore-hearted woman on the Nain road looked with
startled wonder out of those wet eyes of hers as Jesus begins talking to
her dead son. What love and faith must have been in her looking as Jesus
with fine touch brings her boy by the hand over to her warm embrace again!

We are Changed.

Looking at Jesus _changes us._ Paul's famous bit in the second Corinthian
letter has a wondrous tingle of gladness in it. "We all with open face
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are changed from glory to
glory."[2] The change comes through our looking. The changing power comes
in through the eyes. It is the glory of the Lord that is seen. The
glorious Jesus looking in through our looking eyes c