but the doubt did not last long, for while they were in the heat of rapid words, a strange, silencing awe fell upon them all-they looked up, and there stood the Lord Himself.

The whole history of the evidence connected with it is given

in the appendix to Dr. Westcott and Dr. Hort's Greek Testament.

XI.

Two Passages from the Life of Thomas the Apostle.

THE

John xx. 24-29.

HE first passage to which attention is directed is given in the Gospel by John

XX. 24, 25.

I.

His rare distinction. 'Thomas, one of the twelve.' Twelve rare stones once burned in the breast-plate of the High Priest. It was a glorious mass-'a mass of deep, living, throbbing, pulsing, splendrous, triumphant, manycoloured beauty.' As the priest slowly moved along, there shot and shifted over it and from it in every direction rays of blinding, flashing, stinging light. It was the richest symbol of value, honour and glory.

The twelve apostles were like these gems. There was no duplicate stone, there was no duplicate apostle, and one could never be mistaken for another. As each stone had its own

different place, its own different hue, and its own different inscription, with its own mystic potency, so it was with the apostles. Each one was himself, and had his own marked characteristics.

Thomas was a man of pronounced individuality. His very unbelief was all his own, and quite unlike that of his companions. Theirs was to a great extent the unbelief of intellectual dulness and prejudgment-of those who were slow to receive new ideas, and who found it next to impossible to travel in any new lines of thought. But he was a born sceptic; that is, he was a natural doubter, he was constitutionally slow to believe, quick to criticise, curious to examine.

But with all their diversities these twelve live stones were all wrought into one symmetrical whole, the Priest carried them all on His heart, and bore the weight of them all. Just then they might have been pronounced, by one counted a judge of gems, not to be of the first water-only poor, mean, worthless imitations; but they were 'precious in the sight of the Lord, and honourable.' The twelve were to be Christ's witnesses; the twelve were to sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel'; the twelve were to be honoured with the work of building up the kingdom of Christ from its very foundations; therefore it was that in the hieroglyphics of the

Apocalypse, as described by the seer, we read that 'the walls of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.' Thomas is introduced

as one of the twelve.'

2. The disapproving mark set against his name. 'But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.' In this emphatic note we recognise the spirit of rebuke. The report 'not with them,' means, 'then he ought to have been.' We are obliged to read it in connection with the announcement of his illustrious title 'one of the twelve.' He ought to have been with them, because, by the grace of God, he was what he was-not one of the noteless and average disciples, like the travellers to Emmaus, not one of the unremarkable, not one of the seventy,' but 'one of the twelve.'

What, after all, was the great wrong to be complained of, if not with them'? That is a merely negative charge. Men generally think nothing of a negative. They are apt to think that simply not to do a thing is, at any rate, to be harmless. But in the life of a soul, and in the sight of God, few things are purely negative. Not to do right, is to do wrong; not to encourage, is to discourage; not to move, is to be still. Not to do what we ought to do; not to give what we ought to give; not to say what we ought to

say; not to bear what we ought to bear; not to be what we ought to be; any one of these things is sin.

Christ cries, 'He that is not for Me is against Me; he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad.' The law reserves its loudest thunders and its sternest frown for what man calls negations. Curse ye Meroz,' said the angel, 'curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof.' Why? Because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.' In the predictive pictures of the final day given by Christ Himself, the most fearful formula of condemnation runs in the words, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not.' Apply the principle to the present case. The disciples met in holy fellowship on the first day of the week. 'Thomas was not with them.' What of that? He might have said at the time, 'I hinder no other man; if I do no good, I do no harm. No one can swear that I do wrong, for I simply do nothing.' Nothing!

The disciples were drawn together by love. Christ had said just before His departure, 'I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.' If not orphans in fact, they were in feeling; desolate they were as children are when the ears are deaf in death that once woke at their faintest stir in the night, and the faithful arm that once saved them from want is smitten so that it cannot