more than all add weight to the promise of his resurrection, he had shown that life itself was in his power, restoring it in various instances, in one when it had been so long extinguished that the putrefaction of the animal fluids must have taken place.

These wonders had been performed to confirm the purest doctrine, and had been accompanied with the most unblemished life. This extraordinary personage had predicted his own death, the manner of it, and many of its circumstances; all which the apostles had seen exactly verified in the event. Even when he hung upon the cross in agonies, -agonies of body, and stronger agonies of mind, which might more have shaken the faith of his disciples, Nature bore witness to her Lord in awful signs of sympathy; the sun, without any natural cause, withdrew his light; and in the moment that he yielded up the ghost, the earth shook and the rocks were rended.

From this series of wonders, to most of which he had been an eye-witness, had not St. Thomas more reason to expect the completion of Christ's prediction at the time appointed, than to shut his ears against the report of the other ten, of whose probity and veracity in the course of their attendance on their common Lord he must have had full experience? Cases may possibly arise, in which the intrinsic improbability of the thing averred may outweigh the most positive and unexceptionable evidence; and in which a wise man may be allowed to say, not, with Thomas, "I will not believe," (for a case can hardly be supposed in which testimony is to be of no weight) but he might say, "I will doubt: " but where ten men of fair character bear witness, each upon his own knowledge, to a fact which is in itself more probable than

its opposite, I know not upon what ground their tes

timony can be questioned.

Such was the case before us.

Where then can we

look for the ground of the apostle's incredulity, but in the prejudices of his own mind? Possibly he might stand upon what he might term his right. Since each of the other ten had received the satisfaction of ocular demonstration, he might think he had a just pretence to expect and to insist upon the same. He had been no less than they attached, he might say, to his Master's person, -no less an admirer of his doctrine, no less observant of his precepts, -nor less a diligent though distant copier of his great example; not less than the rest he revered and loved his memory; he would not less rejoice to see him again alive; nor would he with less firmness and constancy, provided he might be indulged with the same evidence of the fact, bear witness to his resurrection, nor less cheerfully seal the glorious attestation with his blood: but for what reason could it be expected of him to believe, upon the testimony of the other ten, that for which each of them pretended to have received the immediate evidence of his own senses? He never would believe that his kind Master, who knew his attachment,

whose affection he had so often experienced, if he were really alive, would deny the honour and satisfaction of a personal interview to himself alone of all his old adherents.

If these were the apostle's sentiments, he did not fairly weigh the evidence that was before him of the fact in question; but made this the condition of his believing it at all, - that it should be proved to him by evidence of one particular kind. Did he ask himself upon what evidence he and the Jews his contem

poraries believed in the divine authority of the laws of Moses? - upon what evidence they received as oracular the writings of the ancient prophets?

A general revelation could never be, if no proof might be sufficient for a reasonable man but the immediate testimony of his own senses. The benefit of

every revelation must in that case be confined to the few individuals to whom it should be first conveyed. The Mosaic institution could have been only for that perverse race which perished in the wilderness through unbelief; and the preaching of the prophets, for those stubborn generations which refused to hearken, and underwent the judgments of God in their long captivity. These examples might have taught him that the advantage of ocular proof is no mark of God's partial favour for those to whom it may be granted. Were it not unreasonable to suppose, that Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Job, and Daniel, who saw the promises of the Messiah only afar off, were less in the favour of Heaven than they who lived in later times, when the promises began to take effect?

Religious truth itself, and the evidence of religious truth, is imparted, like all other blessings, in various measures and degrees, to different ages and different countries of the world, and to different individuals of the same country and of the same age. And of this no account is to be given, but that in which all good men will rest satisfied, that "known unto God are all his ways," and that "the Judge of all the earth will do what is right." Every man, therefore, may be allowed to say that he will not believe without sufficient evidence; but none can without great presumption pretend to stipulate for any particular kind of proof, and refuse to attend to any other, if that which

he may think he should like best should not be set before him. This is indeed the very spirit of infidelity; and this was the temper of those brethren of the rich man, in our Saviour's parable, who hearkened not to Moses and the prophets, and yet were expected to repent if one should arise from the dead: this is the conduct of modern unbelievers, who examine not the evidence of revelation as it actually stands, but insist that that sort of proof should be generally exhibited which from the nature of the thing must always be confined to very few. The apostle Thomas, in the principles of his unbelief, too much resembled these uncandid reasoners. Yet let them not think to be sheltered under his example, unless they will follow it in the better part, by a recantation of their errors and a confession of the truth full and ingenuous as his, when once their hearts and understandings are convinced.

From this summary view of the evidence that St. Thomas might have found of our Lord's resurrection, before it was confirmed to him by a personal interview, -and from this state of the principles upon which alone his incredulity could be founded, it may sufficiently appear that the reproof he received was not unmerited; and we may see reason to admire and adore the affectionate mildness with which it was administered.

The same thing will still more appear, when it shall be shown, that in the belief of any thing upon such evidence as was at last exhibited to Thomas of our Lord's resurrection, there can be no merit; and for this plain reason, that a belief resulting from such evidence is a necessary act of the understanding, in which the heart is totally uninterested. An assent to full

and present proof, from whatever that proof may arise, -whether from the senses, from historical evidence, or from the deductions of reason, an assent, I say, to proof that is in itself complete and full, when the mind holds it in immediate contemplation, and comprehends and masters it, arises as necessarily from the nature of the understanding as the perception of external objects arises from the structure of the organs to which they are adapted. To perceive truth by its proper evidence, is of the formal nature of the rational mind; as it is of the physical nature of the eye to see an object by the light that it reflects, or of the ear to hear the sounds which the air conveys to it. To discern the connection between a fact and its evidence, a proposition and its proof, is a faculty fixed in the nature of the mind by God; which faculty the mind is pretty much at liberty to employ or not, and hath a strange power of employing it in some instances perversely; but when it is employed aright, when proof is brought into the mind's view, either by its own fair investigation or by the force of external objects striking the bodily organs, assent and conviction. must ensue. The eye may be shut; the ear may be stopped; the understanding may turn itself away from unpleasing subjects: but the eye, when it is open, hath no power not to see; the ear, when open, hath no power not to hear; and the understanding hath no power not to know truth when the attention is turned to it. It matters not of what kind the proposition may be to which the understanding assents in consequence of full proof; the completeness of the proof necessarily precludes the possibility of merit in the act of assenting. Now this was the case of Thomas, and indeed of all the apostles, -not with respect to