converts with tlie sword, is not from above but from beneath. Any form of Christianity which burns men at the stake, in order to promote its own success, carries about with it the stamp of an apostasy. That is the truest and best religion which does most to spread real, true peace.
We should observe, for another thing, in these verses, the remarkahle evidence which our Lord supplied of His own resurrection. He graciously appealed to the senses of His trembling disciples. He showed them "His hands and His side." He bade them see with their own eyes, that He had a real material body, and that He was not a ghost or a spirit. " Handle Me and see," were His words, according to St. Luke : " a spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see Me have." Great in- deed was the condescension of our blessed Master, in thus coming down to the feeble faith of the eleven Apostles ! But great also was the principle which He established for the use of His Church in every age, until He returns. That principle is, that our Master requires us to believe nothing is contrary to our senses. Things above our reason we must expect to find in a religion that comes from God, but not things contrary to reason.
Let us lay firm hold on this great principle, and nev- er forget to use it. Specially let us take care that we use it, in estimating the effect of the sacraments and the work of the Holy Ghost. To require people to believe that men have the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, when our eyes tell us they are living in habitual care- lessness and sin, or that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are Christ's real body and blood, when our senses tell us they are still bread and wine, — this is to require more belief than Christ ever required of His disciples. It is to require that which is flatly contra- dictory to reason and common sense. Such requisitions