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I. THE FIRST PASSAGE is in vers. 24, 25.

1. His distinction. "One of the twelve." Twelve rare stones once burned in the breast-plate of the High Priest; a glorious mass, the richest symbol of value, honour, and glory. The twelve apostles were like these gems. There was no duplicate stone, no duplicate apostle, and one could never be mistaken for another. Thomas was a man of pronounced individuality. His very unbelief was all his own. But with all their diversities these twelve live stones were all wrought into one symmetrical whole, the Priest carried them all on his heart.

2. The disapproving mark set against his name. "Thomas... was not with them." In this we recognize the spirit of rebuke. We are obliged to read it in connection with his title. He was not one of "the seventy," but "one of the twelve." What, after all, was the great wrong? That is a merely negative charge. Men generally think that simply not to do a thing is, at any rate, to be harmless. But in the sight of God few things are negative. Not to do right is to do wrong. Christ cries, "He that is not for Me is against Me." The law reserves its loudest thunders for negations. "Curse ye Meroz." Why? "Because they came not up to the help of the Lord." And Christ's most fearful formula of condemnation is, "Inasmuch as ye did it not." Thomas might have said, "I hinder no other man; if I do no good, I do no harm, for I simply do nothing." Nothing!

(1) The disciples were drawn together by love. If not orphans in fact, they were in feeling, and their hearts would say, "We must be all in all to each other now; let us cling closer and closer." Did they cling? All were together that night but one.

(2) They would be drawn together in worship. Allow that their faith was weak, it was not yet quite a thing of the past. A child does not cease to be a child because it is suffering from fever; the instinct which makes it natural for life to seek its source, and for God's child to fly to God in trouble, was working in them still. "But Thomas was not with them."(3) They met from the habit of meeting as Christ's appointed witnesses. But Thomas "was not with them."

3. There is no explanation of his absence.

(1) It seems fair, however, to ascribe it to his constitutional unbelief. To him doubtless it looked like stark lunacy to think that Christ could be alive again. "I will not be taken in again; I will not love any more," said poor Southey when his child died; so in spirit said Thomas now.

(2) Connected with, and consequent on, his unbelief, there might be the most dismal apathy. He wanted no companion but his own forlorn thoughts, and therefore he would not go. It is like saying, "Because I am hungry, I will take no food; because I am caught in a storm, I will seek no shelter," &c. Where was the melancholy man? Did he lie flung upon the floor all night; or had sorrow put on the mask of levity, and did he laugh? Did he try to walk off the agony of his grief, striking away to the hills of Bethlehem, or to the groves of Olivet, or to the ghostly wilderness, where once the scapegoat wandered, or to the haunted solitudes of the Dead Sea shore? Wherever he stumbled along, he would say, "I did once think that He was the Redeemer of Israel! It is all over now!"

4. Hear what he says after the meeting. "Old Father Morris," says his American biographer, "had noticed a falling off in his little village meeting for prayer. The first time he collected a tolerable audience, he took occasion to tell them something 'concerning the conference meeting of the disciples' after the Resurrection. 'But Thomas was not with them.' 'Thomas not with them!' said the old man in a sorrowful voice; 'why, what could keep Thomas away? Perhaps.' said he, glancing at some of his auditors, 'Thomas had got cold hearted, and was afraid that they would ask him to make the first prayer; or, perhaps,' he continued, looking at some of the farmers, 'he was afraid the roads were bad; or, perhaps,' he added, after a pause, 'he thought a shower was coming on.' He went on significantly summing up common excuses, and then with great simplicity and emotion he added, 'But only think what Thomas lost, for in the middle of the meeting the Lord Jesus came and stood among them!'" After the meeting, "the other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord." While they told their tale with burning words and eager gestures, he stood unmoved. Mary Magdalene said that she had seen the Saviour. "Ah, no doubt you are an excellent woman, but you have been deceived, you are so imaginative." Then Peter said, "I have seen the Lord." "I am sure you think so, but you must be in error." Then John said, "But indeed I have seen the Lord." "That is good evidence for yourself, but it does not convince me." Then Bartholomew and others would say, "We have seen the Lord, and five or six others have told you so. Do you think we have conspired to tell a falsehood?" "No, my brethren, far from it; yet I have known such things in the world as for five or six persons to be mistaken. I feel that your witness deals with such improbabilities that I cannot receive it." At last he declared downright, "Except I shall see," &c.

II. THE SECOND PASSAGE is in vers. 26-29.

1. The meeting renewed. Like the first, it was on the first day of the week, a fact not easy to account for except on the theory of a special law of Christ. He gave the first and second Sunday the sanction of His presence, leaving the interval to pass in silence, looking as if He meant to make the day stand out with sharp relief, as the day which was to have Sabbatic benediction.

2. The absentee returned. Thomas, as a true man, could not remain an absentee. It is hard for like not to fly to like. Everything in grace, like everything in nature, will sooner or later "go to its own company," and so did Thomas.

3. How the unbelief was dealt with: as the affliction of a true disciple. Unbelief has many varieties. There is the unbelief of —

(1) The indifferent — that says, "What is truth?" That is, Who knows? Who cares? What does it matter?

(2) The vain — that which delights to air itself in public; which is thought to be the mark of the thoughtful, or of the original, or of the heroic.

(3) Of one who has indolently allowed unbelievers to think for him; who has caught it as a cold is caught, simply by standing about in draughts.

(4) Of temperament. Some persons must sift evidence before they commit themselves. The term "sceptic" is from a root that means "cover," or "shade," and would in old time have been applied to a man who shaded his eyes with his hand in order to look into a thing narrowly and intently, determined not to be mistaken about it. It may therefore be fitly applied to a man of doubting temperament; but while it points to this, it also includes the idea of a shadow over the mind, and a tendency to take dark, uncertain, unhappy views of things.

(5) The unbelief of Thomas was from the last-named cause. Christ called His disciples "children." Here was the serious and critical illness of a child. Is a child less loved when ill than when well? He knew that the sceptical nature of this man went along with simple, noble, self-renouncing love.

4. Jesus, in dealing with it, revealed His forgiving love. Infirmity given way to and persisted in deepens into sin. It was a sin not to believe after he had heard the Master say, "Let not your heart be troubled," &c., and after hearing His repeated foreshowings of His resurrection. It was sin to set up his own single decision against the evidence of his ten tried companions, and not to be satisfied with mental conviction and to demand in such a case as this the report of his fingers. With patient pity, Christ sought the poor wanderer, and with unspeakable tenderness brought him back.

5. The confession made. What was the immediate occasion of this cry? The offer was indeed made to the doubter, of the very tests he asked for. But Thomas did not accept this challenge; his had been a perilous venture to dare, and now he drew back from the edge of the precipice up to which he had come. The stubborn spirit melted in the flash of a moment, and the bold unbeliever became a little child. Touch was not thought of now. Christ was fully revealed. Love has sharp sight and quick responsiveness; in the new light, yet mingled with a sense of mystery, he recognized the Lord of his heart; with wonder, with tender and exquisite ecstasy, and with adoring prostration of soul, he cried, "My Lord and my God."

(C. Stanford, D. D.)

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KJV: But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

WEB: But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, wasn't with them when Jesus came.