be beset with difficulties and threatened wit dangers for our adherence. If the same Apostle was afterwards one of those, who in the time of trial "forsook him and fled," the failure of his courage may prompt us to deplore the inconstancy and frailty of human nature, and its ignorance of its own insufficiency, even when its intentions are the best: and it may accordingly prompt us to "watch and pray that we enter not into temptation," or may have strength that we may be able to bear it; and especially to beseech our "holy and merciful Saviour," that he will "suffer us not," either" at our last" or at any intervening "hour," for any terrors or "for any pains of death to fall from Him."

2dly, The ignorance professed by St. Thomas, concerning the place whither our Lord was going, and the way which led to it, shews a dulness of apprehension, and a want of spiritual discernment, the result of those worldly prepossessions which clung generally to the Apostles during our Lord's ministry. They expected him to establish a temporal kingdom. And it is probable that St. Thomas, under the influence of this delusion, supposed it to be our Lord's intention to remove to some splendid earthly mansion, fit for the reception and abode of a powerful sovereign'. Careful attention

' Dr. Doddridge's Family Expositor.

to our Lord's own declarations might have dissipated the delusion; and enabled him to see clearly the spiritual nature of our Lord's pretensions, and the true tendency of his language. Taught by his error, let us endeavour to liberate our minds from those prepossessions and prejudices, which are apt to cloud and obscure their discernment of religious truth. Let us devote ourselves to a dispassionate, unprejudiced, and impartial contemplation of God's holy word. And profiting by the answer, which the blessed Jesus graciously returned to the Apostle's profession of ignorance, let us not fail to regard him as "the way, the truth, and the life;" the way to guide us, the truth to enlighten us, and the life to animate us, in our search after happiness; the avenue, by which alone any man can come into the Father's presence, whither he is gone before, and whither it behoves us to labour diligently to follow.

3dly, We pass on to the incredulity of our Apostle on the subject of our Lord's resurrection. Jesus had shewn himself to his disciples after his resurrection, and his disciples had related it to Thomas, "who was not with them when Jesus came." But how did he receive their relation? "The other disciples said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print

of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." Strange declaration! why should he refuse to believe? What room could there have been for mistake on the part of the other Apostles? What motive could they have had for misinforming and misleading him? Why should he doubt their capability of judging? why their veracity in relating? Rather, why should he not give full credit to their assertion of an event, which, wonderful as it was in itself, was at the same time at harmony with the wonderful works which he had continually seen his Lord perform, and agreeable to the promise of rising again from the dead, which he had repeatedly heard his Lord deliver? Did the fact related bely the assurances of divine wisdom? did it exceed the compass of divine power? Thus the incredulity of Thomas betrays a want of reliance on the discernment or integrity of his brethren, and a backwardness in admitting truth upon sufficient testimony, together with a want of faith in the perfections of his Lord, which, especially in a person possessed of his opportunities of forming a better judgment, cannot but be esteemed worthy of no inconsiderable degree of blame.

But it was productive of valuable results. One of these is the very narrative itself of the

occurrence; for it is a proof of the candour and sincerity, of the simplicity and fidelity, of the Evangelist, that he has recorded an event of this kind, little creditable as it is to one of the Apostles of our Lord, and little calculated to recommend to the world the testimony of the others. But so it is: and so we find it to be in other instances, that the sacred historians appear little solicitous of what may be the effect of their statements, whilst they state openly and distinctly the transactions, of which they were witnesses. Thus the meanness of the condition of the four first called Apostles, and the offensive character of that of Matthew; the ambition and intemperate zeal of the two sons of Zebedee, the worldly prepossessions of the twelve in general, and their mutual contentions for pre-eminence, the treachery of Judas, the denial of Peter, the desertion and flight of the rest, their subsequent "unbelief and hardness of heart," the dulness of apprehension which has been already noticed in Thomas, and now his incredulity and disbelief, are recorded in the Gospels without disguise or reserve. Whatever discredit they may have been calculated to bring on the Apostles and on their religion, whilst the narrators employ no means to aggravate the offence, they take no care to excuse or extenuate it, or to bespeak the indulgence of the reader in its behalf. A plain,

unadulterated, unmutilated statement of facts was the evident object of their labours: and conscious that they spake nothing but the truth themselves, they were contented to leave their testimony to operate as it might upon the minds of others.

In this respect the "doubtfulness" of St. Thomas "in our Lord's resurrection" may be thought to tend" to the more confirmation of the truth," as the Collect for the day express es it; by leading us to appreciate more justly and more highly the character of the sacred historians. But it has the same tendency in a more direct manner. The incredulous Apostle had declared, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." The benevolent Saviour had compassion on the weakness of the well-intentioned but ill-judging man: and accordingly at his next appearance amongst his disciples, after eight days, when "Thomas was with them," having first addressed them all in general with the gracious salutation "Peace be unto you," he turned in particular to the over-scrupulous unbeliever, and he saith unto Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach bither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing." Thus the