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. With such the Lord is not angry. If they really wish to know what is true, and to do what is right; if they really are, as St. Paul says, 'feeling after the Lord, if haply they may find him;' then the Lord will give them light in due time, and shew them what they ought to believe, and give them the sort of proof which they want. All such he treats as he did Thomas, when he said, in his great condescension, 'Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.'