But one thing seemed to me fit to be said, and I say it again, and entreat you to carry it home with you, and live by the light of it all the year round.
Do you wish to be powerful? Then look at Christ upon his cross; at what seems to men his weakness; and learn from him how to be strong. Do you wish to be wise? Then look at Christ upon the cross; and at what seemed to men his folly; and learn from him how to be wise. For sooner or later, I hope and trust, you will find that true, which St. Buonaventura (wise and strong himself) used to say,—That all the learning in the world had never taught him so much as the sight of Christ upon the cross.
SERMON XXXV. THE ETERNAL MANHOOD
(First Sunday after Easter.)
John xx. 29. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
The eighth day after the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared a second time to his disciples. On this day he strengthened St. Thomas’s weak faith, by giving him proof, sensible proof, that he was indeed and really the very same person who had been crucified, wearing the very same human nature, the very same man’s body.
‘Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.’ You have not seen. You have never beheld with your bodily eyes, or touched with your bodily hand, as St. Thomas did, the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet you may be more blessed now, this day, than St. Thomas was then. We are too apt to fancy, that, to have seen the Lord with our eyes, to have walked with him, and talked with him, as the apostles did, was the greatest honour and blessing which could happen to man. We fancy, perhaps, at times, that if the Lord Jesus were to come visibly among us now, we should want nothing more to make us good: that we could not help listening to him, obeying him, loving him.
But the Scriptures prove to us that it was not so. The Scribes and Pharisees saw him and talked with him; yet they hated him. Judas Iscariot, yet he betrayed him. Pilate, yet he condemned him. The word preached profited them nothing, not being mixed with faith in those who heard him. Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, came and preached himself to them; declared to them who he was, proved who he was by his mighty works of love and mercy, and by fulfilling all the prophecies of Scripture which spoke of him; and yet they did not believe him, they hated him, they crucified him; because they had no faith.
You see, therefore, that something more than seeing him with our bodily eyes is wanted to make us believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; something more than seeing him with our bodily eyes is wanted to make us blessed. St. Thomas saw him; St. Thomas was allowed, by the boundless condescension and mercy of the Lord Jesus, to put his hand into his side. And yet the Lord does not say to him,—See how blessed thou art; see how honoured thou art, by being allowed to touch me. No; our Lord rather rebukes him for requiring such a proof.
There are those who will not believe without seeing; who say, I must have proof. What I hear in church is too much for me to believe without many more reasons than are given for it all. Many people, for instance, stumble at the stumbling-block of the cross, and cannot bring themselves to believe that God would condescend to suffer and to die for men. Others cannot make up their minds about the resurrection. It seems to them a strange and impossible thing that Jesus’ body should have risen from the grave and ascended to heaven, and that our bodies should rise also. That was the great puzzle to the Greeks, who thought themselves very learned and cunning, and were great arguers and disputers about all deep matters in heaven and earth. When St. Paul preached to them on Mars’ Hill, they heard him patiently enough, till he spoke of Jesus rising from the dead; and then they mocked; laughed at the notion as absurd. And we find that the Corinthians, even after they were converted and baptised Christians, were puzzled about this same matter. They could not understand how the dead were raised, and with what body they would come.