After all, the case of Thomas is not an uncommon one. Some people are so strangely constituted that they distrust, every- body, regard all men as liars, and will believe nothing except they can see it all, and work it all out for themselves. They have a rooted dislike to receive anything on trust, or from the testimony of others, and must always go over the ground for themselves. In people of this kind, though they know it not, there is often a vast amount of latent pride and self-conceit ; and it is almost ludicrous to observe how entirely they forget that the business of daily life could never go on, if we were always doubting everything which we could not see for our- selves. Nevertheless they exist in the Church, and always will exist ; and the case of Thomas shows what trouble they bring on themselves.
Two things must, in fairness, be remembered, which form some slight extenuation of Thomas's unbelief. For one thing it does not appear that any one of our Lord's Apostles ever un- derstood, up to the time of our Lord's crucifixion, that he was really going to be crucified, buried, and rise again. Simple a3 these great facts appear to us now, it is perfectly certain that they formed no part of the creed of the Apostles, so long as our Lord was with them. This may seem astonishing, but it is true. They believed that Christ was the Messiah, but they did not realize a crucified Messiah. Of these Apostles, I would re- mind the reader, Thomas was one. Does not all this throw a little light on his extraordinary scepticism about the reality of the resurrection ? For another thing we must remember, that Thomas, like all Jews, had a firm belief in the reality of spirits and ghosts, and the possibility of their appearing. Even after this, when Peter was delivered from prison, and came to the house of John, surnamed Mark, the disciples said, " It is his angel." (Acts xii. 15.) May we not therefore conceive it possible that Thomas, overwhelmed and confounded at the astounding news that Christ had been seen, would cling, with his character- istic incredulity, to the notion that the Apostles had only seen Christ's spirit or ghost ? That they had seen something he did not dispute, but that what they had seen was the real material body of his Lord, he could not bring himself to believe. These things are worth considering. I do not for a moment excuse or defend Thomas. I only remind those who condemn him whole- sale, and can find no words strong enough to use about his un- belief, that it was not quite so easy for a pious Jew, brought up and trained as Thomas had been, to receive at once the resurrection of our Lord as a proved thing, as it may appear at first sight to an English mind.
Musculus remarks, how extraordinary the unbelief of Thomas seems, when we consider that he not only had heard our Lord frequently foretell His resurrection, but had actually within a few weeks seen Lazarus raised from the dead at Bethany 1
Bengel remarks, " No doubt Thomas seemed to himself to be