For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Jesus. Those are the words of Robert

Murray-Mashain, as some of you may know. He was a pastor in Scotland in the first

half of the 19th century. He was born in Edinburgh in 1813 and what's striking

about his life is that it was only 29 years and yet we still remember him. People

still remember his name. Some folks still read what he wrote. Read his annual

Bible reading plan that he designed. He died of typhus fever in 1843 and two

years later his friend and a fellow pastor named Andrew Bonar published memoir

and remains of the Reverend Robert Murray-Mashain, which in time came to be

published in over a hundred editions in just English. And in this memoir and

remains book by Bonar appears a letter that machine wrote to a friend. Let me

read two paragraphs to you from that letter. This is where the famous

machine quote comes from, but the context is rich. He says to his friend,

learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at

Christ. He is all together lovely, such infinite majesty and yet such

meekness and grace and all for sinners, even the chief, live much in the

smiles of God, bask in his beams, feel his all-seeing eye, settled on you in

love and rest in his almighty arms. Let your soul be filled with a heart

ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in

him. Let the Holy Spirit fill every chamber of your heart so that there will be

no room for folly or the world or Satan or the flesh. So for everyone look at

yourself. He said, ten looks at Christ and I suspect that Robert Murray-Mashain's

counsel for this friend was striking in his own day. But now, some 180 years

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