Believing Without Seeing

Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.—John 20:29.

1. These words of our Lord to Thomas add one more beatitude to those with which the Sermon on the Mount began. He had already taught to men the blessedness of humility, of meekness, of purity, of peace, not only in the beautiful phrases which we know so well, but chiefly by the example of His life. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.… Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.… Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called sons of God.” And now, when His earthly ministry is over, and when He is about to return to the majesty of His glory, He leaves as one parting benediction to those who love and follow Him, even to all who love and follow to the best of their powers the things that are good: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” The benediction of faith; it is one of the last messages of the Risen Lord to His Church, and it brings fresh consolation and strength from age to age in correspondence with the varying needs and perplexities of mankind.

2. What is blessedness? It is spiritual happiness. It is that deep calm of gladness which is spiritual in its origin and in its maintenance. This is the heritage of those who, not having seen, yet have believed. And it is the higher blessedness. It is contrastive. Thomas had insisted on sight as an aid to faith. The concession was granted to him. He saw the Risen One, and believing, cried in a passion of adoration, “My Lord and my God!” And he was blessed. Every one who believes is blessed. But his was not the supreme blessedness. “Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” That is the crowning blessedness. They have the noblest beatitude who have not seen, and yet have believed.

When Dr. Arnold was suddenly stricken with his mortal agony, he was seen, we are told, lying still with “his hands clasped, his lips moving, and his eyes raised upwards, as if engaged in prayer, when all at once he repeated, firmly and earnestly, ‘Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ ”1 [Note: B. F. Westcott, The Revelation of the Lord, 102.]

I

The Seen and the Unseen

That sense perception is at the basis of all our knowledge is one of those axioms with which we are all familiar, even though we have never read a word of philosophy. In the common language of daily life we are accustomed to assertions of assured knowledge, by a reference to the experience of one or other of our five senses. Two of them, those of sight and touch, are indeed the criteria which we apply to knowledge of all kinds. “It is evident,” or, “It is palpable,” are the two chief phrases which, through many variations, are the signs we use for certitude. If we wish to describe the illusory or doubtful, we invariably deny in some form or another that they can be seen or felt. They are imperceptible or intangible, unseen by the eye or unfelt by the hand, and as such are viewed with suspicion or rejected with incredulity. Tennyson has expressed a common conviction when he says, “Knowledge is of things we see,” and contrasts it with faith. To many the difference between faith and knowledge is the difference between the unknown and the known, and much of the agnosticism of the present day is largely due to this conception that the senses are not a means, but the only means of obtaining assured knowledge.

To certain types of mind, however, the limitations of sense perception are as remarkable as the range of their operations, and the conception of limiting knowledge to the impressions of sense, and the mind’s working on those impressions, is one which presents insuperable difficulties. They are quite conscious of the inestimable debt the mind owes to the senses, but they refuse to believe that the mind cannot pass into regions which are for ever beyond the reach of the senses, or that it cannot arrive at truth except as the object is presented to it by means of the senses. They are conscious that there is a region which is essentially metaphysical, in which the mind moves, not as it is guided or impelled by the senses, but by the laws of its own being, and that the goal at which it arrives by strict obedience to those laws is knowledge in the highest and best sense, even though inaccessible to sense perception. In some cases the goal arrived at can be tested by the senses, but whether tested or untested, the reality is the same. The discovery of the planet Neptune by the mind before it was brought within the range of telescopic vision, affords an illustration of what is here meant. It was the operation of the mind, working according to its own laws, that established the existence of Neptune, before the telescope discovered it. The mind, in fact, in this case aided the senses, instead of being aided by them. It is true that the mind was here working only on the data presented to it by the senses, but its working was based upon the assumption that a previous intelligence had been at work in the constitution of the universe, and that the working of that Mind was in harmony with the laws of our own minds. This, in fact, is scientific faith as distinct from scientific knowledge. It has been arrived at by means of sense perception, but it is none the less faith, as distinct from knowledge.

Our great advance in knowledge is due to our walking by faith as well as by sight. Experience has shown us that what is conforms to reason, and we therefore conclude that whatever conforms to reason exists, whether it has come within the range of sense perception or not. If the senses have not yet discovered it, we search for it with the belief that sooner or later we shall find it. The atomic theory prophesies the existence of elements which have never come within the range of sense perception, and recent discoveries have simply filled up the places which were vacant, and revealed what faith had already perceived. Science has shown us that what is ought to be, and it cannot escape creating the suspicion that what ought to be actually is, whether we perceive it or not. The distinction between faith and knowledge, therefore, is imperfectly described as the difference between the unknown and the known; it is more accurately described as the difference between anticipated and realized knowledge. Knowledge is not only of things we see, but of things we foresee. The mind may anticipate the senses and believe even where the senses cannot see. If this is true in the sphere of the physical, the presumption is that it is equally true in the metaphysical sphere.

1. What is the value of the evidence of the senses?

(1) The best answer is to consider what must have been the impression left upon the mind of the Jew when for the first time he saw Jesus of Nazareth, with His attendant followers, passing through the streets of Jerusalem. To answer this we must try to place ourselves in his position. Let us, for example, suppose that we were to see passing through one of our streets an excited crowd of men, women and children of the middle and lower classes. Let us imagine ourselves listening to the discordant acclamations of a multitude, many of whom we might perhaps know to be ignorant, and some to have led immoral lives. Let us dismiss from our fancy all those picturesque surroundings of eastern buildings, of palms and of flowing coloured garments, with which the magic of Christian art has invested such a scene. These representations of the past, so far as they are real, have for us of the present day a certain charm—just because of their strange and foreign aspect—which they could not have had for those whose lives were spent among such scenes. Let us eliminate from our conception of such an incident the majestic harmonies in which Christian musicians have rendered the Hosannas of the crowd. In other words, let us suppose ourselves looking at and listening to something unhallowed by those associations which of necessity give fascination to the far-off past, and let us consider ourselves face to face with the bare, unadorned, unsensational realities of the present. Let us go a step further. Let us imagine the central figure in such a scene to be one not distinguishable by his dress or, it may be, by any special form or comeliness from those about him—one whose place of birth and station in life and opportunities for education are known to us, and are not in our opinion such as to warrant us in looking for any special refinement of manner or display of learning on his part. And, lastly, let us suppose that all we have ourselves heard of his teaching has led us to regard that teaching as, to say the least of it, an innovation on the divinely-given statutes of the past. Let us try then to put ourselves in the position of the Jew of our Lord’s time, and we must, in all fairness, confess that there was much in his special surroundings that was not favourable to a ready belief in the Divine mission of the Galilean peasant.

(2) And yet the evidence of the senses has its value, and it is no light one. The change that came over the Apostles after the Resurrection has an ever accumulating force, ceaselessly advancing. As we read the Epistles, does it not strike us that the writers are living in what the world may count a dream, but is to us the opening of a new view of human life, a realization of what prophecy had foretold? They who went about the world preaching the Gospel to every creature, having given up everything that the world counts dear, facing danger of every sort, tempests, cold and hunger, prisons and suffering, and death, did they not show an intense conviction, such a conviction as has never in the world’s history been surpassed, and a conviction lasting for long, long years, showing itself in their every act and deed? Now this conviction rests on what they had seen.

The evidence of things seen is always evidence. I was asked this question in the city a few days ago: There stands the Cross on the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral. How did it get there? It is a question you had better ask your sceptical friend next time he argues with you. I would far rather have to uphold the position in a free debate that the reason why that Cross, the old gallows—and it was nothing more than the old gallows—is brandished in triumph over the biggest city in the world was because the Person who died on it rose again than have to defend any other explanation in the world, for, as a matter of fact, there is no other explanation. Why did a body of Jews, the most conservative race in the world, change their sacred day from Saturday—not to Friday—oh no, not to Friday—but to Sunday? There is no explanation, except that the Person who died on the Friday rose on the Sunday. Why did a body which called themselves “The Christians” celebrate for nearly two thousand years in their Eucharist, which is their thanksgiving service, the tokens of a shameful death—“body broken, blood shed”? There never has been any explanation except that something happened so glorious, so transfiguring, that it changed the shameful death into a badge of glory.1 [Note: Bishop A. F. W. Ingram, Secrets of Strength, 57.]

(3) But the evidence of the seen goes only a certain way. For what is sense but the medium through which we converse with this visible and lower world, with its phenomena, its motions, its operations, and its changes? The sphere and ken of sense is scanty and limited; it reaches only to the outer surface, beyond which sense cannot penetrate. Sense needs the reason to be its interpreter and guide; for, with all its confidence, sense is blind. Without the higher light of reason, the laws, principles, causes, and conditions of all it sees, handles, and knows, are unknown. And yet the reason in its sphere is bounded too. A world of intellectual objects, the phenomena of a higher but not the highest sphere, are within its ken. The unseen and the Eternal are beyond its gaze: and of these, except by another faculty higher than sense or reason, supernatural in its substance and its acts, which comes in to perfect both, we know nothing. It is not by sense or by reason, but by faith, elevating both, that the truths of the Kingdom of God are known and believed.

There is no slight amount of peril in matters of religion in demanding more evidence than can actually be given. Men formerly used to say, “Write the Gospel—the Divine message—in letters of fire along the sky, and I will believe.” They say now, “Give me mathematical demonstration—make the whole thing as plain as a problem in geometry—and then it will be impossible for me to withhold my assent.” But this has to be considered, that we have hardly the right to require the Creator to give us the amount of evidence that we think fit to ask for. What He will do in this way, is surely for Him and not for us to settle. And if He should give, as He does, sufficient evidence to make unbelief inexcusable—sufficient evidence to enable us to believe, if we are not determined to disbelieve—I do not see what we have to complain of.2 [Note: G. Calthrop, In Christ, 213.]

To a man who wrote to him saying that he was dying of an incurable disease, and could not accept the Christian faith, Bishop Creighton replied: “There can be no convincing proof of anything that affects our inner character. What ‘convincing proof’ have you that your wife loves you or your child? Yet you believe it, and that belief is more real to you than anything that you know or can prove. Religion must be a matter of belief, not of proof. It depends on a consciousness of the relation between our soul and God. Immortality depends on the knowledge of the meaning of our soul’s life which we obtain from looking at it in the light of God. The more we find our soul, the more readily do we see God in the person of Jesus Christ. Look back upon your own life, your growth, the traces of Providence, the presence of God’s love. Do you think that all this wonderful process can come to an abrupt end?”1 [Note: Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 253.]

(4) The evidence of sense is not always applicable. Religion is not a proposition to be proved like a problem in Euclid. As to mathematical demonstration, the subject, in the nature of things, is not capable of it. Were it a matter for the head alone it would be different; but the heart is concerned in the matter. You have the two factors—the head and the heart—to deal with; and in the case of religion, there is no possibility of so binding the heart down, by any conceivable process whatever, that it should not be capable of resistance if it should choose to resist.

The following is from the pen of a well-known London physician and scientist of the present day, one who for many years was a Catholic:—“What men of science ‘want’ in order to believe in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is this. In one word, it is proof, or evidence—what we can prove by experiment, inductive reasoning, and verification that we know. As Bithell says, ‘The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification, therefore he nurses no illusions, does not say he knows when he does not and cannot know and follow the evidence whithersoever it leads him.’ If I had been St. Thomas I should have wanted (1) the death-certificate of a medical man who had watched the case to the end; (2) proof that the doors were not only ‘shut,’ but locked and bolted on the inside; and (3) I should have carefully examined the wound in the side to ascertain whether heart, lungs, liver, or any other vital organ had been perforated, and whether what I saw was an apparition, or a spirit, or a body with ‘flesh and bones,’ and if the latter, I should have said, ‘This was never a dead body.’ It is seriously doubted by some writers whether either Lazarus or Christ was really dead, and some believe that, in the case of Christ, restoratives were administered by the women in the sepulchre. There is no evidence that would satisfy a lawyer or scientist either (1) that Jesus Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, or (2) that Jesus Christ Himself rose from the dead, and that afterwards His crucified body, with its wounds, entered a room the doors of which were shut.”1 [Note: M. Fuller, In Terrâ Pax, 94.]

2. After all that the senses can do there remains the unseen, and faith must make its venture. All the greatest works of man have been works of faith; and those who have had most insight, and have followed the guidance of that insight till it led them to great truths, are the men who have taken the leading part in the history of our race. It is faith that incites the soldier and sailor to noble acts, faith in their commander. Perhaps the grandest discovery made by man was the opening of a vast continent; and it was faith that led Columbus across the untried and unknown seas. This is the natural view of faith, and St. Paul, tracing the history of the saints of old, marks how the animating principle of life to them was faith. And what led God to choose the Israelites as the nation through which He would reveal Himself to the world was the readiness of their faith, their adherence to the promises and their continued trust, through all the ages of countless trials—the long years of their waiting, ever filled with the “great cloud of witnesses,” who without seeing yet believed, into whose possessions we have entered, as the children of a higher faith, and disciples who have learnt at the feet of a greater Master—of the ever-growing host of which it may be truly said in the words of the text, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

From the soft south the constant bird comes back,

Faith-led, to find the welcome of the Spring

In the old boughs whereto she used to cling,

Before she sought the unknown southward track:

Above the Winter and the storm-cloud’s wrack

She hears the prophecy of days that bring

The Summer’s pride, and plumes her homeward wing

To seek again the joys that exiles lack.

Shall I of little faith, less brave than she,

Set forth unwillingly my goal to find,

Go home from exile with reluctant mind,

Distrust the steadfast stars I cannot see,

And doubt the heavens because my eyes are blind?

Nay! Give me faith, like wings, to soar to Thee!2 [Note: Louise Chandler Moulton.]

II

Faith in the Unseen

Faith in the unseen is not an abrupt experience, unconnected with the experience of the senses. It is true that morality and religion cannot be treated in the same way as the physical sciences. They have their own data, which are not material but spiritual. If they are realities, however, they must be intelligible; they must follow similar laws to those which reign in the material realm, or at any rate they must follow law, and not be the result of chance. In the sphere of morals the good must be the reasonable; actions must be justifiable. In the sphere of religion, beliefs must be reasonable; the data upon which they are founded must be consistent with the working of the Divine mind, as that is already known to us in other spheres.

1. Faith in the unseen is belief in more than we can see.—It is quite true that “faith cometh by hearing.” Faith, that is to say, is the proper correlative of testimony. But the evidence of testimony is not sufficient to command assent, even in the affairs of this world, unless the mind brings something of its own to co-operate with it. In belief it is at least approximately true, that “we receive but what we give.” The element which the mind contributes to the formation of religious belief must be sought for in the depths of our moral being. Faith, then, may be described as the product of the outward evidence on which it rests, and the inward conditions which dispose us to admit it. It follows that if the product be constant, the two factors will vary in an inverse ratio; or, in other words, that the moral element requisite to produce religious conviction must be at least strong enough to supply the deficiencies in the external evidence.

“Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.” So spake our Lord. What, then, did Thomas believe? He believed much more than he saw. Had he merely believed in the resurrection, there would have been no blessing attaching to such faith. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” It is the vision whereby faith contemplates the unseen that is the real source of blessing. When St. Thomas heard the words which showed how Jesus had all along been reading his heart, he at once accepted the fulness of the Divine truth. He exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!”

St. John illustrates this higher condition of mind that believes without seeing. When he came to the grave of Jesus, whither Mary Magdalene had summoned him and Peter, “he saw and believed.” Apparently all that he saw was the empty sepulchre, and the place where the dead body had lain. No vision of angels greeted him, nor did the Lord of death appear. A form rose up before him, as he looked, but it was the Lord of life with the light around Him of the days that had gone. The empty sepulchre could have told him little, but Jesus coming thither through the years told him much. Words that had bewildered found their explanation now. The enigma of the life and death found their solution at last. Not thus could he have seen, had not the habits of his mind prepared him. Candid, gracious, pure, truth-loving, sympathetic with the Divine purpose, free from prejudices and open-minded, the perceptive capacity was able to take the place of sight. And so thought, reflection, reasoning, imagination, all blended in a process at once mental and spiritual, by which, as by a higher vision, he saw what the eye could not see, yet not less clearly and distinctly.

His work [The Grammar of Assent] included an analysis of the mind of believer and unbeliever and of the differences between them. He drew attention to the subtle personal appreciation, on the part of the religious mind, which made it find so much more evidence for Christianity in the acknowledged facts of its history than the irreligious mind could see. The general outcome of this portion of the book was to show the important place held by antecedent conditions among the reasons convincing the believer. And among these conditions were the experiences and action of the individual mind. The religious mind instinctively and by degrees accumulated evidences of which the irreligious mind—reasoning on different principles—remained wholly or partially unaware. The action of the will and of moral dispositions was gradual. Moral defect must in the long run lead the mind to miss the deepest grounds of belief. But this was something very different from insincerity. To quote a sentence written by Newman on the subject to the present writer, “The religious mind sees much which is invisible to the irreligious mind. They have not the same evidence before them.”

Newman did not deny that one reasoned rightly, the other wrongly. He did not deny that there might be responsibility for the false principles which led to unbelief—for the failure of the unbeliever to recognize the deeper principles which a Christian thinker adopts (as he phrased it a little later) “under the happy guidance of the moral sense.” But he did away with the old contrast to which Protestants as well as Catholics had long been accustomed, between believer and unbeliever as men looking at and apprehending precisely the same evidence, which was so obviously cogent that only a man whose will was here and now perverse could disbelieve. He substituted a far subtler analysis in which circumstances and education played their part in the power of mental vision on the particular subject: in which the appreciation of reasons was personal, and gradual; religious earnestness aud true principles being necessary not only to the acceptance of the reasoning for Christianity, but to its adequate apprehension.1 [Note: Wilfrid Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, ii. 247.]

One must have King-recognizing eyes

To recognize the King in mean disguise.2 [Note: Jalaluddin Rumi, in A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom , 19.]

My soul, do not pray for too little. Do not imagine that mere things will make thee blessed. No outward contact with any visible beauty would satisfy thee for an hour. The unseen alone will content thee. The things that belong unto thy peace are not worlds of space. They perish but thou remainest, they all wax old as a garment, and as a vesture shall they be folded up, but thou art the same. Ask that which is invisible, eternal, commensurate with thyself—love, sacrificial love, love even for the loveless. Ask the pain of beholding pain, the joy of seeing joy, the hope of bringing hope. That is to touch the print of the nails, for that is to bear in the spirit the marks of the Lord Jesus.3 [Note: G. Matheson, My Aspirations.]

2. Faith in the unseen is believing what we have never seen at all.—“Now faith is the substance (the assurance, R.V.) of things hoped for, the evidence (proving, R.V.) of things not seen.” That is to say, it is the faculty which reaches to that which is beyond the sense, yet which apprehends it as certain—as being as certain as the things which we see.

Men have never seen God. The astronomer said, “I have swept the heavens with my telescope, and I have not found God.” He looked for God as for a star, and could not find Him. A voice spoke from those heavens which the astronomer did not hear, and it said, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” And thousands upon thousands of trustful souls who would never look for God through a telescope have found Him with their hearts, and they face the fight of life every day bravely, knowing that He goes down to the battle with them; they lie down to rest at night feeling there is One who neither slumbers nor sleeps; if they are out in the raging tempest they sing, “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms”; if they go through places of danger and terror they hear a voice say, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee”; and while the learned astronomer says he cannot find God, these simple souls say, “’Tis blessed to believe.”

One of the most interesting and romantic discoveries of last century in the realm of astronomy was the detection of the planet Neptune, the outermost of those “wanderers” which circle round the sun. Until the year 1846 the furthest planet known was Uranus, discovered by Sir William Herschel some fifty years before this date. Study of the movements of Uranus showed variations from the path which, on the known data, it ought to follow; and these variations could not be accounted for by the attraction of any of the inner planets upon its mass. Two astronomers, one in England, and one in France, began almost simultaneously to investigate the problem presented by its perturbations. By long and arduous calculations involving profound mathematical research, they found that the facts presented by the variations of the known planet could be explained by the presence of an unseen neighbour beyond it, of a certain mass and following a particular path. They knew that nothing else could account for the phenomena with which they had to deal. Although they had not seen another planet in the telescope or demonstrated its existence beyond doubt until their researches were confirmed: yet they believed in its existence. They saw it “as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain.” They “felt its movements trembling along the far-reaching line of their analysis.” And when they finished their calculations and indicated the spot in the heavens where the new member of the system would be found, the observers pointed their telescopes to the skies: and at the very place foretold the “new planet swam into their ken.”1 [Note: See Ball, The Story of the Heavens, ch. xv.]

We have none of us seen Christ in the flesh. At times we judge ourselves disadvantaged thereby. But no! Christ says we are supremely advantaged. We are blessed with a distinctive blessedness. We have really lost nothing by not being alive when Christ was incarnate here. Oh, how we should like to have seen Him! If we could have basked in His smile, or heard His voice, or even felt the rustle of His seamless robe as He flitted past us on the highway! Had we seen we would indeed have believed! Ah! so we reason. But it is a meaner faith which is so inspired. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” What is true of believing Christ is true concerning all the spiritual objects of faith. God. The heavenly home. Any spiritual truth. The quality which draws down beatitude is a faith which is independent of materialistic props.1 [Note: D. T. Young, The Crimson Book, 55.]

Faith is—not sight,

It boasts not of the sun at noonday bright,

While groping in the starlight haze of night.

Nor Dogma proud,

Fierce vaunting of all Truth in accents loud,

Beguiling with bold words th’ unthinking crowd.

Nor Science known,

Seated in queenly rubes upon her throne,

Meting the boundless with her clasped zone.

Nor Certainty,

The overweening claim that Truth must be

What we forecast from what we hear and see.

Faith does but muse

With heed upon the data she must use,

Nor Likelihood’s fair claim durst she refuse.

Faith does but think

That walking on the Infinite’s dread brink,

She dare not mete its chain by one small link.

Faith does but feel

That what she deems all dimly, may be real,

On her blind guess she will not set Truth’s seal.

Faith doth but hope

She shall see clear—whereas she doth but grope—

When earth’s dark vistas widen to heaven’s scope.

She doth but will

The healthful impulses she would instil

May, by heaven’s prospering, all good fulfil.

She can but trust

Her wistful craving for the True and Just,

Not only may be realized but must.1 [Note: John Owen.]

3. Faith may even be believing that which seems contrary to sense.—For there is in the heart of every human being an eternal opposition between the merely sceptical understanding and the spiritual faculty, between that which demonstrates and that which believes, between the mind which we share with the animal and the spirit which we believe we specially derive from God. These two are opposed one to the other. And that in us which says, “This must be so, this shall be so!” is a higher faculty than that which says, “How is this so? Why is this so?” and the act of faith on which our morality, our religion, our higher forms of being and living rest, is that by which we assert the supremacy of the one of these above the other.

No help in all the stranger-land,

O fainting heart, O failing hand?

There’s a morning and a noon,

And evening cometh soon.

The way is endless, friendless? No;

God sitteth high to see below,

There’s a morning and a noon,

And the evening cometh soon.

Look yonder on the purpling west

Ere long the glory and the rest.

There’s a morning and a noon,

And the evening cometh soon.2 [Note: J. V. Cheney.]

III

The Blessedness of Faith in the Unseen

Our Lord does not tell us why they are blessed who believe without seeing. He simply says they are blessed. This makes a marked difference between this blessing and those others which form the preface to the Sermon on the Mount. There in each case reasons are given; a specific reward is spoken of as bestowed upon each grace. The merciful are blessed, for they shall obtain mercy. The pure in heart are blessed, for theirs is the Vision of God, the All Holy and Pure. The peacemakers are blessed, for they shall be called the sons of God, who is the true Author of peace. The meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth; what has been called “the harvest of a quiet eye” is theirs; it is a reward that no man can take from them. And so on all through. But no special reward of faith is spoken of in the text. It is not said that the faithful and trusting soul is blessed, for it shall receive the consolations of hope and of assurance. We might, indeed, have expected that our Lord would have given us some such promise. The Psalmist had sung of the blessings of trust with no uncertain voice: “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” More than one of the beatitudes take up the words of the Psalms, and fill them with a larger and a more gracious meaning; but there is no exact counterpart in the words of our Lord for the words of the Psalmist about faith. The blessing of faith in the New Testament is something higher than the temporal prosperity of which the pious Hebrew poet spoke as the lot of the faithful and the just; it is rather that abiding and deepening sense of God’s mercy and truth for which we daily pray. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Faith is its own reward; and the law of faith is this: “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given.”

But it is possible to suggest certain advantages which belief without sight confers.

1. It gives us the assurance of a Risen 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 discredited faith; to the poor women who wept beside His tomb; 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.”1 [Note: H. M. Butler, University and Other Sermons, 51.]

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 glory, but little concerned 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 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 Risen 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 endowment 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.

A manifold enjoyment of Christ is a large component of this blessedness. The believer draws such pure delight from the Lord in whom he trusts. How grandly St. Peter states it: “Whom having not seen ye love.” The loving of Christ is such unalloyed pleasure. None can know the rapture save only they who experience it. “In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice” And how splendid the quality of the joy; “with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Joy in Christ! Joy that cannot be spoken! Joy shot through with glory! Is not this blessedness? The so-inclusive enjoyment of Christ is a rich element in the believer’s blessedness.1 [Note: D. T. Young, The Crimson Book, 63.]

3. It gives us the light and power of the Holy Spirit. We have not only an outward testimony; we have an inward witness beyond all that was ever bestowed on man before the day of Pentecost—the full illumination of the Kingdom of God. Before the ascension of our Divine Lord, we read that even Apostles knew not the Scriptures. Cleophas and his fellow “hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel”; and the eleven, at the hour of His ascension, asked, “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” They knew Christ after the flesh, and their faith was as yet obscure. Therefore our Lord said to them, “It is expedient for you that I go away”; for you the withdrawal of My visible presence is needful. “For if I go not away, the Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you; and when he is come, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance.” “The spirit of truth shall be with you and in you” for ever. And on the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost fell upon them, and His illumination filled their inmost soul: their whole intelligence was enlightened, a fountain of light sprang up from within, and truths already known were unfolded with new and deeper meanings. They saw the full mystery of the Kingdom of God, of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; of the love of the Father in the gift of His Son, of the Son in giving Himself to be made man to suffer and to die; of the Holy Ghost, who was already upon them and within them. They perceived that their Divine Master had ascended to sit down upon His Father’s throne, crowned with power, to possess His Kingdom; and the whole earth to them was lightened with His glory.

“Where is your God?” they say;—

Answer them, Lord most Holy!

Reveal Thy secret way

Of visiting the lowly:

Not wrapped in moving cloud,

Or nightly-resting fire;

But veiled within the shroud

Of silent high desire.

Come not in flashing storm,

Or bursting frown of thunder:

Come in the viewless form

Of wakening love and wonder;—

Of duty grown divine,

The restless spirit, still;

Of sorrows taught to shine

As shadows of Thy will.

O God! the pure alone,—

E’en in their deep confessing,—

Can see Thee as their own,

And find the perfect blessing:

Yet to each waiting soul

Speak in Thy still small voice,

Till broken love’s made whole,

And saddened hearts rejoice.1 [Note: James Martineau.]

4. It transfigures our character. The sense of transfigured character goes far to constitute this blessedness. He who believes thereby gains the secret of holiness. Faith is evermore the root of noble character. The man who believes becomes. His nature, already regenerated, is eternally being “changed from glory to glory.” Is not this a large portion of Christian blessedness? Belief in manifested God secures Godlikeness.

All faith is incomplete that is the confession of our want of knowledge and our need for help, but the most complete faith is that which lifts the whole nature, vibrates the whole man, which is felt at heart, and shown in action. When faith begins with the easy acceptance of some statements, or from admitting certain arguments, there is danger that it ends there; but when one is guided upwards by a wish for higher life and help, when the spirit is crying out for a living God, and when the yearning is so strong that we are willing to dispense with proof, and to reach out our inward hand humbly to take a gift from God, there is very little danger that any part of our life shall escape from our religion. We cannot take the mind and leave the heart in sin, nor can we take these two and leave the conduct of our daily life; and that complete sacrifice is what has value before God.

Those Christians are blessed who need to leave their simple views of childhood’s faith no more than the field-lark does her nest—rising right over it to look at God’s morning sun, and His wide, beautiful world, singing a clear, happy song, and then sinking straight down again to their heart’s home. But those are not less blessed who, like the dove, lose their ark for a while, and return to it, having found no rest for the sole of their foot save there. They have a deeper experience within, and carry a higher and wider message to the world. The olive leaf in the mouth, plucked from the passing flood, is more than the song at coming daylight. It is as Paul’s “Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory,” compared with the children’s “Hosanna.”1 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 24.]

What, after all, is this “faith” which above all things we who have even a grain of it must desire to hold forth to others? “This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.” It is a power, not a mere belief; and power can be shown only in action, only in overcoming resistance. Power that shall lift us one by one above temptations, above cares, above selfishness; power that shall make all things new, and subdue all things unto itself; power by which loss is transmuted into gain, tribulation into rejoicing, death itself into the gate of everlasting life;—is not this the true meaning of faith?2 [Note: Caroline Emelia Stephen.]

Yes, Master, when Thou comest Thou shalt find

A little faith on earth, if I am here!

Thou know’st how oft I turn to Thee my mind,

How sad I wait until Thy face appear!

Hast Thou not ploughed my thorny ground full sore,

And from it gathered many stones and sherds?

Plough, plough and harrow till it needs no more—

Then sow Thy mustard-seeds, and send Thy birds.

I love Thee, Lord; and if I yield to fears,

Nor trust with triumph that pale doubt defies,

Remember, Lord, ’tis nigh two thousand years,

And I have never seen Thee with mine eyes!

And when I lift them from the wondrous tale,

See, all about me hath so strange a show!

Is that Thy river running down the vale?

Is that Thy wind that through the pines doth blow?

Could’st Thou right verily appear again,

The same who walked the paths of Palestine,

And here in England teach Thy trusting men

In church and field and house, with word and sign?

Here are but lilies, sparrows, and the rest!

My hands on some dear proof would light and stay!

But my heart sees John leaning on Thy breast,

And sends them forth to do what Thou doth say.1 [Note: George MacDonald.]

Believing Without Seeing

Literature

Bernard (J. H.), Via Domini, 165.

Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 104.

Butler (H. M.), University Sermons, 43.

Calthrop (G.), In Christ, 205.

Carpenter (W. B.), The Son of Man among the Sont of Men, 117.

Carter (T. T.), The Spirit of Watchfulness, 111.

Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 106.

Hardy (E. J.), Doubt and Faith, 104.

Henson (H. H.), The Value of the Bible, 182.

Hoare (E.), Fruitful or Fruitless, 110.

Ingram (A. F. W.), Secrets of Strength, 52.

Jeffrey (J.), The Personal Ministry of the Son of Man, 276.

Jones (W. B.), The Peace of God, 138.

Little (J.), The Day-Spring, 146.

Macnutt (F. B.), The Inevitable Christ, 35.

Magee (W. C.), Growth in Grace, 107.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects, i. 197.

Martyn (H. J.), For Christ and the Truth, 128.

Pearse (M. G.), The Gentleness of Jesus, 77.

Ryle (H. E.), On the Church of England, 125.

Stanford (C.), From Calvary to Olivet, 157.

Stone (D.), The Discipline of Faith, 131.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ii. (1862) No. 337; New Ser. xiii. (1876) No. 1001.

Williams (T. R.), Belief and Life, 99.

Wright (D.), Waiting for the Light, 34.

Young (D. T.),The Crimson Book, 53.

Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 180 (Frankland); lii. 52 (Gore), 307 (Barton); lv. 230 (MacEwen); lix. 243 (Scott Holland); lxii. 428 (Henson); lxvi. 262 (M‘Murtrie); lxix. 102 (Mackintosh), 140 (Lyttelton).

Church of England Pulpit, lvii. 218 (Inge).

Church Pulpit Year Book, ix. (1912) 82.