You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is devil-born.
I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who touched a jarring lyre at first, But ever strove to make it true:
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He fought his doubts and gathered strength; He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length
To find a stronger faith his own; And power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone,
But in the darkness and the cloud, As over Sinai's peaks of old, While Israel made their gods of gold, Although the trumpet blew so loud.
That which saved Thomas was his deep, strong friendship for Christ. "The characteristic of Thomas," says Ian Maclaren, "is not that he doubted,--that were an easy passport to religion,--but that he doubted and loved. His doubt was the measure of his love; his doubt was swallowed up in love." If friendship for Christ be loyal and true, we need not look upon questioning as disloyalty; it may be but love finding the way up the rugged mountain-side to the sunlit summit of a glorious faith. There is a scepticism whose face is toward wintriness and death; but there is a doubt which is looking toward the sun and toward all blessedness.
Thomas teaches us that one may look on the dark side and yet be a Christian, an ardent lover of Jesus, ready to die for him. But we must admit that this is not the best way to live. No one would say that Thomas was the ideal among the apostles, that his character was the most beautiful, his life the noblest and the best. Faith is better than doubt, and confidence better than questioning. It is better to be a sunny Christian, rejoicing, songful, happy, than a sad, gloomy, despondent Christian. It makes one's own life sweeter and more beautiful. Then it makes others happier. A gloomy Christian casts dark shadows wherever he goes; a sunny Christian is a benediction to every life he touches.