True Excellency by Jonathan Edwards

Worldly men imagine that there is true excellency and true happiness in those things which they are pursuing. They think that if they could but obtain them, that they would be happy. But when they obtain them, and cannot find happiness, then they look for happiness in something else, and are still upon the futile pursuit.

There is a transcended glory and an ineffable sweetness in Christ. Jesus Christ has true excellency, and so great an excellency that when you come to truly see Him, you look no further, but your mind rests there. You see that you had been pursuing shadows, but now you have found the substance. You realized that you had been seeking happiness in the stream, but now you have found the ocean.

The excellency of Christ is an object adequate to the natural cravings of the soul, and is sufficient to fill its capacity. Christ has an infinite excellency, such as the mind desires, in which you can find no bounds. The more the mind contemplates Him, the more excellent does He appear. Each new discovery of Christ makes His beauty appear more ravishing, and the mind can see no end to His excellency. There is room enough for the mind to go deeper and deeper, and never come to the bottom.

Christ's excellency is always fresh and new, and will as much delight us after we have beheld Him a thousand or ten thousand years, as when we have seen Him the first moment. The soul is exceedingly ravished when it first looks on the beauty of Christ. It is never weary of Him. His mouth is most sweet. Yes, He is altogether lovely.

This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend.

Song of Songs 5, verse 16.

Put the beauty of ten thousand worlds of paradises, like the Garden of Eden, in one. Put all trees, all flowers, all fragrances, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all loveliness, all sweetness in one. Oh, what a lovely and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less compared to our dearest well-beloved Christ than one drop of rain compared to the whole seas, rivers, and lakes of ten thousand earths.

Samuel Rutherford.