When Thomas came back to his brethren, they met him with the witness
that they had seen the Lord, and he met them as they had met the
witnesses that brought the same message to them. They had thought the
women's words 'idle tales.' Thomas gives them back their own
incredulity. I need not remind you of what I have already had occasion
to say, how much this frank acknowledgment that none of these, who were
afterwards to be witnesses of the Resurrection to the world, accepted
testimony to the Resurrection as enough to convince them, enhances the
worth of their testimony, and how entirely it shatters the conception
that the belief in the Resurrection was a mist that rose from the
undrained swamps of their own heated imaginations.
But notice how Thomas exaggerated their position, and took up a far
more defiant tone than any of them had done. He is called 'doubting
Thomas.' He was no doubter. Flat, frank, dogged disbelief, and not
hesitation or doubt, was his attitude. The very form in which he puts
his requirement shows how he was hugging his unbelief, and how he had
no idea that what he asked would ever be granted. 'Unless I have
so-and-so I will not,' indicates an altogether spiritual attitude from
what 'If I have so-and-so, I will,' would have indicated. The one is
the language of willingness to be persuaded, the other is a token of a
determination to be obstinate. What right had he--what right has any
man--to say, 'So-and-so must be made plain to me, or I will not accept
a certain truth'? You have a right to ask for satisfactory evidence;
you have no right to make up your minds beforehand what that must
necessarily be. Thomas showed his hand not only in the form of his
expression, not only in his going beyond his province and prescribing
the terms of surrender, but also in the terms which he prescribed.
True, he is only saying to the other Apostles, 'I will give in if I
have what you had,' for Jesus Christ had said to them, 'Handle Me and
see!' But although thus they could say nothing in opposition, it is
clear that he was asking more than was needful, and more than he had
any right to ask. And he shows his hand, too, in another way. 'I will
not believe!'--what business had he, what business have you, to bring
any question of will into the act of belief or credence? Thus, in all
these four points, the form of the demand, the fact of the demand, the
substance of the demand, and the implication in it that to give or
withhold assent was a matter to be determined by inclination, this man
stands not as an example of a doubter, but as an example, of which
there are too many copies amongst us always, of a determined
disbeliever and rejecter.
So I come to the third point, and that is: