If you would have a single eye, you must have a single object, for this simple reason that you must have nothing else to engage your eye. If the Lord Jesus were your only object you would be more independent of all other influences, and you would be consciously more engaged with Him.
Oh! it is a fine moment for the soul when it knows that He is its object, and that while engaged with Him everything else is subject to Him. The ease with which we should move about, having this one transcendent object elevating our souls above any lower influences here; and at the same time leading us to acknowledge everything of Him which meets us on our way. How much happier we should be if our eyes only saw the Lord Jesus wherever we went. If an enemy or a hindrance were occurrent, even then my eye rested on the. Lord of Life and Power. And again, if it met with any one or thing belonging to Him, it were seen in, contact with him-submerged in Himself.
This perfect dependence upon Him, and the beautiful independence of others; the gracious thoughts of every one which are derived from a single-eyed engagement with Christ would be seen in us.
It is most blessed in any degree to realize, and as necessary to the spiritual life as the air we breathe, when once we get in any measure used to it—that Christ is all to us! You are frightened and baulked by that which is not Christ, and you are consequently not at home, or in communion with that which is not of Him. You do not make Him first, or give Him His due place when you are embarrassed, and consequently when you meet Him, and His hands are on the lock of the door, you will not rise and open to Him. (Sol. 5:55I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. (Song of Solomon 5:5)). But if you have not used Him when you needed Him, your heart has misgivings and distrust when He is beside you. The more we use any friend the more we know that we may use such a one, and when we hesitate to use him, when that one alone could help us, either through any doubt of his love, or of his ability, we surely cannot meet such an one next time with the same ease and self-possession.
Be assured that all our purposelessness arises from this; we do not use the Lord—the only One who could help us—the One who desires to help us, and therefore our adversaries baffle us, and more than this, when there is no adversary and the Lord comes by, we are like Peter, naked, in no state to go to Him, or we are in bed, and in no heart to receive Him.