'And after eight days, again His disciples were within, and Thomas with
them. Then came Jesus.'--JOHN xx. 26.
There is nothing more remarkable about the narrative of the
resurrection, taken as a whole, than the completeness with which our
Lord's appearances met all varieties of temperament, condition, and
spiritual standing. Mary, the lover; Peter, the penitent; the two
disciples on the way to Emmaus, the thinkers; Thomas, the stiff
unbeliever--the presence of the Christ is enough for them all; it cures
those that need cure, and gladdens those that need gladdening. I am not
going to do anything so foolish as to try to tell over again, less
vividly, this well-known story. We all remember its outlines, I
suppose: the absence of Thomas from Christ's first meeting with the
assembled disciples on Easter evening; the dogged disbelief with which
he met their testimony; his arrogant assumption of the right to lay
down the conditions on which he should believe, and Christ's gracious
acceptance of the conditions; the discovery when they were offered that
they were not needful; the burst of glad conviction which lifted him to
the loftiest height reached while Christ was on earth, and then the
summing up of all in our Lord's words--'Blessed are they that have not
seen and yet have believed!'--the last Beatitude, that links us and all
the generations yet to come with the story, and is like a finger
pointing to it, as containing very special lessons for them all.
I simply seek to try to bring out the force and instructiveness of the
story. The first point is--