Thomas.

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"Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way ? " — John xiv. 5.

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THOMAS. HENRY MELVILL GWATKIN

"Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way ? " — John xiv. 5.

SOME common ideas about our Lord's disciples are strangely mistaken. We set them down as arrant cowards because they all forsook him and fled, though they had just offered to throw away their lives for him by trying to fight five hundred Eoman soldiers. We read something about love in St. John, and straightway transfer to him the gentleness which more properly belongs to St. Paul, quite forgetting the terrible sternness of his quiet words. So when we read that Thomas doubted, we set him down as one of our sceptics who will not believe till they have seen

a miracle with their own eyes. Now Thomas was just what some of our triflers would like to be thought — a sober truthful man who insists on facing the facts he sees before he goes a step further. Such a man is slow to move : no passing enthusiasm can stir him, only the gravest sense of duty. And faith is none the worse for counting the cost before it gives itself to Christ. When Wellington saw a man turn pale as he marched up to a battery, " That is a brave man. He knows 1 Brantham, April 17, 1898. 131

132 THOMAS his danger, and faces it notwithstanding." Such a man is Thomas when we first hear him speak. When the others try to hinder our Lord from going into Judaea, where the Jews had sought to stone him, it is Thomas who answers with quiet courage. Let us also

go, that we may die with him. So in the supper chamber, when our Lord speaks of going away ; while Peter breaks in impatiently, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now ? Thomas reasons it out soberly, Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way ? Now what was such a man likely to be doing after the crucifixion ? It is a striking touch of nature in the Gospels, that while the chief priests understood our Lord's words about rising again the third day, his own disciples never realized them at all. That be far from thee, was the thought of their heart when he spoke of suffering to come. They clung to the earthly presence, and were confounded when it was taken away from them. Thomas must have felt even more keenly than the others the awful reality that Jesus whom they loved was dead. There was no glossing over that fact. It had cost him more than it would have cost a lighter nature to give up all for Christ ; and here it had all ended in hopeless disappointment. Then in the dawning of that first glorious Easter morning comes the news that the great stone is rolled away, and the sepulchre is empty. Away fly Peter and John to see for themselves, with Mary of Magdala following. The two disciples were convinced by what

THOMAS 133

they saw, Mary by the well-known voice which spoke to her; and when the Lord had been seen first of Cephas, then of the Twelve that night, all doubting was for ever silenced among them. They knew that the thing was true, and that the Lord they loved was risen indeed, and is alive for evermore. Yet there was one heart still comfortless. Thomas was not with them that night of gladness. Such a man as he, who never cared to go a step further than he could see clearly, would prefer to wrestle alone with sorrow. In vain they told him, We have seen the Lord. He was too true to pretend belief when he was not convinced. The print of the nails and the gash of the spear were hard facts which as it seemed no hearsay stories could undo. Nothing but the touch of his own hands could assure him that it was indeed the Lord. All this looks very like the Pharisees asking a sign from heaven ; but it is not really so. Would those Pharisees have believed, if they had got their sign ? But Thomas means what he says. He is open to conviction, but sees only one sign that seems convincing. Facts needed facts to overcome them, and this was the only test he could think of. He is not really insisting on a sign of his own choice ; only forgetting the chief part of the evidence before him. He is too bewildered to look behind that single scene on Golgotha. Signs of love, signs of power, signs of prophecy, go for nothing before that single fact of death. He never asks, Ought not the Christ to

« 134 THOMAS have suffered these things ? We must not take too literally the words of such a man at such a time, as if positively nothing but actual touch would convince him. So he fancied : but there was one who knew him better. Next Sunday the risen Lord took Thomas at his word. " Eeach hither thy finger and see my hands, and reach hither thy hand and put it into my side; and become not faithless, but believing." He was not faithless yet ; but here was the test. Can you imagine that he needed to do as he had said ? Not he, when once he sees the well-known form, and hears the well-known voice again. Up he springs, his own words flung to the winds, and every doubt dispelled for ever, with his adoring confession, My Lord and my God. It is the climax of the Gospel of St. John. He has led us from confession to confession, steadily upward from Nathanael to Peter, from Peter to Martha, and now from Martha to these culminating words of Thomas. With these he stops, as though his work was done when the loftiest confession of all burst out from the soberest and most cautious of the Twelve. And to these words of Thomas all Christian life

must come. We know well enough what we ought to do. What can be simpler than to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? But where in the wide world shall we find strength to do it ? It is not enough to hear of Christ, or to confess him along with others as our Lord and our God. The belief of others will do you no good, for

THOMAS 135 no truth is truly yours till you have made it yours by labour and toil, and found its echo in your own heart. You are not truly Christ's till you let the world drop out of sight, and take him for your own with the apostle's cry, My Lord and my God. Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and on earth there is none that I desire beside thee. This is the cry which the Saviour delights to hear ; and in it you shall find for yourself a never failing well of life, and a never failing stream of blessing for those around you.

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