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that he was a man cautious in receiving evidence, and most rigorous in exacting satisfactory proof, but ready to act upon his convictions when once made, even to the death. Love, elevated above the common love of man, in the one-heroic conscientiousness and a most rare integrity in the other— who impeaches that testimony?

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Once more: any possibility of interested motives will discredit evidence. Ask we the motive of John or Thomas for this strange tale? John's reward-a long and solitary banishment to the mines of Patmos. The gain and the bribe which tempted Thomas-a lonely pilgrimage to the far East, and death at the last in India. Those were strange motives to account for their persisting and glorying in the story of the resurrection to the last! Starving, their gain, and martyrdom their price.

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The evidence to which Thomas yielded was the evidence of the senses-touch, and sight, and hearing. Now the feeling which arose from this touching, and feeling, and demonstration, Christ pronounced to be faith: "Thomas, because thou hast seen, thou hast believed." There are some Christian writers who tell us that the conviction produced by the intellect or the senses is not faith: but Christ says it is. Observe, then, it matters not how faith comes whether through the intellect, as in the case of St. Thomas through the heart, as in the case of St. John-or as the result of long education, as in the case of St. Peter. God has many ways of bringing different characters to faith: but that blessed thing which the Bible calls faith is a state of soul in which the things of God become glorious certainties. It was not faith which assured Thomas that what stood before him was the Christ he had known: that was sight. But it was faith, which from the visible enabled him to pierce up to the truth invisible: "My Lord, and my God." And it was faith which enabled him through all life after, to venture every thing on that conviction, and live for One who had died for him.

Remark again this: The faith of Thomas was not merely satisfaction about a fact: it was trust in a person. The admission of a fact, however sublime, is not faith: we may believe that Christ is risen, yet not be nearer heaven. It is a Bible fact that Lazarus rose from the grave, but belief in Lazarus's resurrection does not make the soul better than it was. Thomas passed on from the fact of the resurrection to the person of the risen: "My Lord, and my God." Trust in the risen Saviour-that was the belief which saved his soul. And that is our salvation too. You may satisfy yourself

about the evidences of the resurrection; you may bring in your verdict well, like a cautious and enlightened judge; you are then in possession of a fact, a most valuable and curious fact: but faith of any saving worth you have not, unless from the fact you pass on, like Thomas, to cast the allegiance and the homage of your soul, and the love of all your being, on Him whom Thomas worshipped. It is not belief about the Christ, but personal trust in the Christ of God, that saves the soul.

There is another kind of evidence by which the resurrection becomes certain. Not the evidence of the senses, but the evidence of the spirit: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” have believed." There are thousands of Christians who have never examined the evidences of the resurrection piece by piece: they are incapable of estimating it if they did examine: they know nothing about the laws of evidence: they have had no experience in balancing the value of testimony: they are neither lawyers nor philosophers: and yet these simple Christians have received into their very souls the resurrection of their Redeemer, and look forward to their own rising from the grave with a trust as firm, as steady, and as saving, as if they had themselves put their hands into His wounds. They have never seen-they know nothing of proofs and miracles- yet they believe, and are blessed. How is this?

I reply, there is an inward state of heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart: purity is credible to a pure mind: life is credible to a spirit in which ever life beats strongly: it is incredible to other men. Because of that such men believe. Of course that inward state could not reveal a fact like the resurrection; but it can receive the fact the moment it is revealed without requiring evidence. The love of St. John himself never could discover a resurrection; but it made a resurrection easily believed, when the man of intellect, St. Thomas, found difficulties. Therefore "with the heart man believeth unto righteousness," and therefore "he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself," and therefore "faith is the substance of things hoped for." Now it is of such a state, a state of love and hope, which makes the Divine truth credible and natural at once, that Jesus speaks: "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed."

There are men in whom the resurrection begun makes the resurrection credible. In them the Spirit of the risen Saviour

works already; and they have mounted with Him from the grave. They have risen out of the darkness of doubt, and are expatiating in the brightness and the sunshine of a day in which God is ever light. Their step is as free as if the clay of the sepulchre had been shaken off: and their hearts are lighter than those of other men; and there is in them an unearthly triumph which they are unable to express. They have risen above the narrowness of life, and all that is petty, and ungenerous, and mean. They have risen above fear they have risen above self. In the New Testament that is called the spiritual resurrection, a being, " risen with Christ :" and the man in whom all that is working has got something more blessed than external evidence to rest upon. He has the witness in himself: he has not seen, and yet he has believed: he believed in a resurrection, because he has the resurrection in himself. The resurrection in all its heavenliness and unearthly elevation has begun within his soul, and he knows as clearly as if he had demonstration, that it must be developed in an eternal life.

Now this is the higher and nobler kind of faith-a faith more blessed than that of Thomas. "Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed." There are times when we envy, as possessed of higher privileges, those who saw Christ in the flesh we think that if we could have heard that calm voice, or seen that blessed presence, or touched those lacerated wounds in His sacred flesh, all doubt would be set at rest forever. Therefore these words must be our corrective. God has granted us the possibility of believing in a more trustful and more generous way than if we saw. To believe, not because we are learned and can prove, but because there is a something in us, even God's own Spirit, which makes us feel Light as light, and Truth as true-that is the blessed faith.

Blessed, because it carries with it spiritual elevation of character. Narrow the prospects of man to this time-world, and it is impossible to escape the conclusions of the Epicurean sensualist. If to-morrow we die, let us eat and drink to-day. If we die the sinner's death, it becomes a matter of mere taste whether we shall live the sinner's life or not. But if our existence is forever, then plainly, that which is to be daily subdued and subordinated is the animal within us: that which is to be cherished is that which is likest God within us—which we have from Him, and which is the sole pledge of eternal being in the spirit-life.

XXI.

THE IRREPARABLE PAST.

"And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.”—Mark xiv. 41, 42.

It is upon two sentences of this passage that our attention it to be fixed to-day-sentences which in themselves are apparently contradictory, but which are pregnant with a lesson of the deepest practical import. Looked at in the mere meaning of the words as they stand, our Lord's first command given to His disciples, "Sleep on now, and take your rest," is inconsistent with the second command, which follows almost in the same breath, "Rise, let us be going." A permission to slumber, and a warning to arouse at once, are injunctions which can scarcely stand together in the same sentence consistently.

Our first inquiry therefore is, what did our Redeemer mean? We shall arrive at the true solution of this difficulty if we review the circumstances under which these words were spoken.

The account with which these verses stand connected, belongs to one of the last scenes in the drama of our Master's earthly pilgrimage: it is found in the history of the trialhour which was passed in the garden of Gethsemane. And an hour it was indeed big with the destinies of the world, for the command had gone forth to seize the Saviour's person: but the Saviour was still at large and free. Upon the success or the frustration of that plan the world's fate was trembling. Three men were selected to be witnesses of the sufferings of that hour: three men, the favored ones on all occasions of the apostolic band, and the single injunction which had been laid upon them was, "Watch with me one hour."

That charge to watch or keep awake, seems to have been given with two ends in view. He asked them to keep awake, first that they might sympathize with him. He commanded them to keep awake that they might be on their guard against surprise: that they might afford sympathy, because never in all His career did Christ more stand in need

of such soothing as it was in the power of man to give. It is true that was not much: the struggle, and the agony, and the making up of the mind to death had something in them too Divine and too mysterious to be understood by the disciples, and therefore sympathy could but reach a portion of what our Redeemer felt. Yet still it appears to have been an additional pang in Christ's anguish to find that He was left thoroughly alone-to endure, while even His own friends did not compassionate His endurance. We know what a relief it is to see the honest affectionate face of a menial servant, or some poor dependent, regretting that your suffering! may be infinitely above his comprehension. It may be a secret which you can not impart to him: or it may be a mental distress which his mind is too uneducated to appreciate: yet still his sympathy in your dark hour is worth a world. What you suffer he knows not, but he knows you do suffer, and it pains him to think of it: there is balm to you in that. This is the power of sympathy.

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We can do little for one another in this world. Little, very little, can be done when the worst must come; but yet to know that the pulses of a human heart are vibrating with yours, there is something in that, let the distance between man and man be ever so immeasurable, exquisitely soothing. It was this, and but this, in the way of feeling, that Christ asked of Peter, James, and John: Watch-be awake: let me not feel that when I agonize you can be at ease and comfortable. But it would seem there was another thing which He asked in the way of assistance. The plot to capture Him was laid; the chance of that plot's success lay in making the surprise so sudden as to cut off all possibility of escape. The hope of defeating that plot depended upon the fidelity of apostolic vigilance. Humanly speaking, had they been vigilant they might have saved Him. Breathless listening for the sound of footsteps in the distance: eyes anxiously straining through the trees to distinguish the glitter of the lanterns; unremitting apprehension catching from the word of Christ an intimation that He was in danger, and so giving notice on the first approach of any thing like intrusion that would have been watching.

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That command to watch was given twice-first, when Christ first retired aside leaving the disciples by themselves; secondly, in a reproachful way when He returned and found His request disregarded. He waked them up once and said, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour ?” He came again, and found their eyes closed once more. On that occasion not a syllable fell from His lips; He did not waken

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