But it is possible to suggest certain advantages which belief without sight confers.
1. It gives us the assurance of a Eisen Christ.
^ Forty years ago a poet of genius, a man to whom this story of St. Thomas must, I think, have been almost as dear as it was to his great master, Dr. Arnold, conceives of a sudden awakening to the new and authentic tidings, " Christ is not risen." He speaks in lofty but kindly pity to the sad dupes of the now dis- credited faith; to the poor women who wept beside His tomb;
388 BELIEVING WITHOUT SEEING
to the daughters of Jerusalem who wept as they saw Him pass to His Cross ; to the simple men of Galilee who had stood gazing up into heaven as they fancied He ascended, and are now bidden to return to their boats and their nets ; to humble and holy men of heart in ages yet to be who have surrendered their souls to a gracious-seeming lie :
Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved: Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope We are most hopeless, who had once most hope, And most beliefless, that had most believed.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. As of the unjust, also of the just — Yea of that Just One too ! It is the one sad Gospel that is true, Christ is not risen !
This vision of the poet, awful as it is to a serious Christian, may set us all thinking to some purpose. It may lead us to commune with our hearts in our chamber, and be still. Let us probe our hearts, even if it pain us, with the question. What is the difference to me and to my friends or my children whether the Creed of Christendom is true or baseless; whether the morning greeting of Easter Day is, as throughout the vast Russian Empire, "Christ is Risen," or "Christ is not risen"; whether Jesus is or is not the Christ ; whether the death on the Cross was the unjust execution of a good man or the sacrifice of the Incarnate God; whether the cry "It is finished" was His last, as it was certainly His dying word ; whether, if He now speaks to us, He speaks, like any other of the departed, by His example and by His genius, or, with a claim which would be blasphemy if it were put forward by any other, speaks as a living King to the world, to the Church, and to each believing soul, " I am he that liveth, and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore." ^
2. It gives us the enjoyment of a living present Christ. For He has not, as some affect to think, left His people in this world of peril and trial, and taken His seat on the throne of His Father above, there enjoying a peerless but solitary glory — blessed in the full enjoyment of all heaven's honours and glury, but little con- cerned as to the happiness of His followers on earth. Far from it. His parting words are " Lo, I am with you alway, even to the
^ H. M. Butler, University and Other Sermons, 51.
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end of the ages." So He is ever in the midst of His Church, and with His own in this world. He walks in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks and holds their ministry in His right hand. He is the light, power, and healing virtue of the gospel. He enters with His people into all their trials and tribulations. He so overrules the divergent affairs of their lot, that all things work together for their good. He has been lifted up on the cross and to the sky, that He might attract all men unto Him. He is the great moral and spiritual magnet drawing the world of mankind from the serving of sin to yield to the power of grace. And as the magnet converts those bodies on which it lays hold into magnets, which in turn draw others, so does Christ magnetize men that they in turn may transform others, imparting to them like power. So by a power extending beyond the range of His actual presence and visibility we receive blessing from Christ, though we see Him not.
Here, then, lies the central lesson of this revelation of the Eisen Lord, the revelation of His spiritual presence, the revelation of man's spiritual sight. The truest, serenest, happiest faith is within our reach. We have not lost more than we have gained by the removal of the events of the Gospel history far from our own times. The last beatitude of the Gospel is the special en- dowment of the later Church. The testimony of sense given to the Apostles, like the testimony of word given to us, is but the starting-point of faith. The substance of faith is not a fact which we cannot explain away, or a conclusion which we cannot escape, but the personal apprehension of a living, loving Friend. And Christ still makes Himself known in His Church and in each believer's heart by words of peace. He is still with us the same as eighteen hundred years ago, unchanged and unchangeable, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.