in 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 Gcd 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 everything 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' 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.

the

There is another kind of evidence by which the Resurrection becomes certain. Not the evidence of senses, but the evidence of the spirit: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 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 phi losophers; 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 life ever 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 re quiring evidence. The love of St. John himself never could discover a resurrection; but it made a resurrec tion 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, or 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 be gun 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 conclu sions 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 exist. ence 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 spirit-life.

MARK XIV. 41, 42.

XXII.

[Preached May 8, 1853.]

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.”

Ir is upon two sentences of this passage that our attention is 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 trial-hour

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