and, if we got the chance, we should not take it. Thomas did not thrust in his finger. Thomas did not thrust his hand into the side. How could he? Do not you see there is a rudeness and an essential indelicacy about unbelief, and we never are so conscious of it as when faith is strong and clear, and the vision of the Lord present and immediate to our hearts. What a rude, boisterous, indelicate thing it would have been for Thomas to be prodding with his finger into those blessed wounds. He could not, even when he got the opportunity he demanded. He virtually said, "Blessed Master, less will do;" and less will need to do for you and me. The Lord might come and stand before you, but it is not His way. For various reasons it is expedient for us that He should go away, and stay away. But He has given us great helps and great encouragements. He did this for Thomas for very wise and necessary reasons. You and I had to be helped to and confirmed in The Faith on the testimony of these men. This narrative has what the divines call great evidential value. We are "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; and this is enough for us all. When the Lord did this for Thomas, He virtually did it for you and me. Do not ask foolish, hurtful, morally impossible evidences to clear away your unbelief.

I said before, Thomas really wanted to believe, and he swung now into the region of faith with great celerity and with splendid emphasis. Perhaps, while I have been speaking, you have been saying, "Ah, yes, how like I am to Thomas." I beg your pardon; wait a little, wait a little. You are not simply a Thomas, my dear friend, because you say, "Well, if I could see Him just as He was, and if I could put my hand into the prints of the nails, then I would believe. Yes, I am very much like Thomas." That is not the sign of being Thomas. Thomas was not always sitting in petulance and heaviness, asking for these evidences. We

are not Thomases unless we can ring out like a triple peal of bells from an old steeple, "My Lord and my God!"

"Hallelujah, 'tis done,

I believe in God's Son,

I am saved by the blood
Of the Crucified One!"

Let me hear our emphatic testimony of simple faith in Christ before I will allow you to say, or allow myself to say, that we are Thomases. Let me feel your pulse, as we can feel Thomas's here. You see that he swung round splendidly, and he came up out of the darkness all the brighter for having been for a time down there. So with you and me. Even these eclipses shall tell for our benefit if we come out of them, if we allow the Lord to shine in upon us, and if we come back to the simplicity of faith in His name.

ture.

It is a remarkable thing that out of the mouth of Thomas came a testimony to the essential Godhead and divinity of that Man of Nazareth that you find nowhere else in ScripThomas looks poor in the early part of the story. It is easy for us to stand beside him there and say, "I am just like Thomas." Not long ago, on a very tired and spent Monday, I, your minister, flung myself down upon the sofa in weariness and spentness of body and mind, and my little three-year-old girl came and stood beside my shoulder and said, "Oh, I am as big as father!" Yes, because father was down; but when father pulled himself to his feet she only came up to his knee. And we are as big as Thomas when he is lying down prostrate and spent and groaning. When Elijah is lying under the juniper-tree you are another Elijah. But when these mighty saints take to their feet I rather think they come above us. And when Thomas does come to his feet he reveals his splendid proportions. "My Lord and my God." Not Gabriel before the throne ever did or ever could utter a more splendid testimony to the essential, eternal, uncreated Godhead and divinity of our Jesus than Thomas did when the Lord shone out upon him.

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;

Tho' round its base the rolling waves be spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

Oh, may it be yours and mine, while we are here amid the mire and mists and storms of earth, to have our heads up in heaven, from whence also we are looking for the Saviour, Christ the Lord. Let us rest on the many infallible proofs, and soon we, too, shall see greater things than these.

And so the Lord says to him, "Thomas, because thou hast seen, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." That may serve us for a word when we sit at the table, at a sacrament and ordinance in which the Lord once more is, I may almost say, condescending to our craving after the material, doing Himself, so to speak, what He can to give us something tangible to grip and hold, and something to help us to simpler and to firmer faith.

Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face;

Here do I touch and handle things unseen;
Here grasp with firmer hand th' eternal grace,
And all my weariness upon Thee lean.

May God bless to us for the confirming of our faith this Word preached, and this ordinance now to be dispensed! Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

HOW DANIEL PROSPERED.

A Sermon

PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE CHURCH,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

Daniel vi. 10 to 28..

THE sum and substance of all I have to say is, that Daniel's temporal prosperity comes clearly and manifestly from his spiritual fidelity. "So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius," says the closing sentence. And thereby hangs a sermon; and it is worth preaching it in London. It is worth while preaching it to such an audience as this, and more especially to the younger portion; and, if I may say so, the portion that is approaching to grave manhood, to matured age -those, in a word, who are just in the thick of this business. What business? The business of finding out in our own experience how this religious profession of ours is going to tell either for or against our material advancement. Or, to put it the other way, how our conduct in the world, our necessary engagements in its commercial and other pursuits and competitions-is going to tell for or against the wholehearted fidelity with which we shall believe in the Lord our God. All that is vividly illustrated in this crisis in which Vol. II.-No. 15.

this Jew found himself when he was far away from home. How are we standing? We profess Daniel's faith; only, with this difference, that we ought really to have a more open vision of God and the verities of eternity than Daniel had. For heaven has been more widely opened since his day to the open eye of a believer's soul. It is obvious that, looked at aright, all the difficulty, all the strain and stress that we find ourselves under in this world, because we profess the faith and fear of the God of heaven, who to us has revealed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, are meant to develop and not at all to hinder, much less to destroy, that faith and fear. The Christian life is a progress, as it has well been said, through antagonism. How vividly is Daniel an illustration of that somewhat modern way of describing the old, old text, "Fight the good fight of faith, and lay hold on eternal life." Progress by resistance and antagonism of the keenest kind.

"When Daniel knew," says the verse. That describes the whole crisis-"When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house and his windows being opened in his chamber towards Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime." It is obvious to remark here. that, in the case of Daniel, there had been a progression in the trials through which he had come, and he stood this last one so well because he had stood the others. My dear brother or sister, perhaps while I am speaking to you, you feel that this rather describes an unreal experience as yet to you. You have not just yet found that you are in some perilous place, with all heaven on the one hand and all hell on the other hand, with only one step, the taking of which will land you in either of