"Look to Me"

I always love to hear how Charles Spurgeon first came to believe:

“I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now, had
it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday
morning while I was going to a certain place of worship. When I could go no
further, I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist
Chapel. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had
heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made
people's heads ache; but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I
might be saved, and if they could tell me that, I did not care how much they
made my head ache.

The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed
up, I suppose. At last, a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or
something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now, it is well that
preachers should be instructed; but this man was really stupid. He was
obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say.

The text was,

"LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE

EARTH."

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There

was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. The preacher began
thus—"My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, 'Look.' Now
lookin' don't take a deal of pains. It ain't liftin' your foot or your finger; it is
just, 'Look.' Well, a man needn't go to College to learn to look. You may be
the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn't be worth a thousand a
year to be able to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.

But then the text says, 'Look unto Me.' Ay!" said he in broad Essex, "many of you are
lookin' to yourselves, but it's no use lookin' there. You'll never find any
comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-andby.
Jesus Christ says, 'Look unto Me.' Some of you say, 'We must wait for the
Spirit's workin.' You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The
text says, 'Look unto Me.'

Then the good man followed up his text in this way:
"Look unto Me; I am sweatin' great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am
hangin' on the cross. Look unto Me; I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I
rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sittin' at
the Father's right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! Look unto Me!” When he
had gone to about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes or so, he
was at the end of his tether.

Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, "Young man, you look very miserable." Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made
from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good
blow, struck right home. He continued, "And you always will be miserable—
miserable in life, and miserable in death,—if you don't obey my text; but if
you obey now, this moment, you will be saved." Then, lifting up his hands, he
shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, "Young man, look to Jesus
Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothin' to do but to look and live."

Spurgeon said, “I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he

said —I did not take much notice of it —I was so possessed with that one
thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only
looked and were healed, so it was with me. I had been waiting to do fifty
things, but when I heard that word, "Look!" what a charming word it seemed
to me! Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There
and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment
I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most
enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith
which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, "Trust
Christ, and you shall be saved." Yet it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered, and
now I can say,—

‘Ever since by faith I saw the stream, Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming

love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.’”