DOUBT.

Thomas, the Doubter.

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 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' pulse 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.-MCNEILL.

How to Deal with the Doubter.

Turn away from the reason, and go into the man's moral life. I don't mean go into his moral life and see if the man is living in conscious sin, which is the great blunder of the eyes. I am speaking now of honest doubt. Open a new door into the practical side of man's nature. Entreat him not to postpone life and his life's usefulness until he has settled the problems of the universe. Tell him those problems will never all be settled; that his life will be done before he has begun to settle them; and ask him what he is doing with his life meantime. Charge him with wasting his life and his usefulness, and invite him to deal with the moral and practical difficulties of the world, and leave the intellectual difficulties as he goes along. To spend time upon these is proving the less important before the more important; and, as the French say, "The good is the enemy of the best." It is a good thing to think; it is a better thing to work; it is a better thing to do good. And you have him there, you see. He can not get beyond that. You have to tell him, in fact, that there are two organs of knowledge—the one, reason; the other, obedience. And now tell him, as he has tried the first and found the little in it, just for a moment or two to join you in trying the second. And when he asks whom he is to obey, you tell him there is but One, and lead him to the great historical figure who calls all men to Him; the one perfect life—the one Savior

of mankind-the one Light of the world. Ask him to begin to obey Christ; and, doing His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. —HENRY DRUMMOND.

Absurd Doubts.

A Christian once, in doubt and discouragement, considered the darkness which overspread her soul as a proof that she was finally cast away. She stumbled over molehills when she should have been removing mountains. To an old minister who was trying to comfort her, with impassioned emphasis she said: "Oh, I'm dead, deadtwice dead and plucked up by the roots!" After a pause,

he replied: "Well, sitting in my study the other day, I heard a sudden scream: 'John's in the well! John's fallen into the well!' Before I could reach the spot, I heard the sad, mournful cry: 'John's dead! Poor little Johnny's dead!' Bending over the curb, I called out: 'John, are you dead?' The lad replied: 'Yes, grandfather; I'm dead.' I was glad to hear it from his own mouth."

Many doubts are so absurd that the only way to combat them is by gentle ridicule.-SPURGEON.

Looking to Jesus.

When he saw the wind boisterous." It is a pity that we should ever get so keen-sighted as to see the wind. That is getting far too sharp on the temporal side of things. We ought to be blind to the wind. We ought to be deaf to its noise, and deaf to the roaring of the wave. If we would glorify God, and if we would show what

faith is in its essence, substance and outcomes, we must go on as we began, "looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith." But when he saw the winds. he gave up faith. As somebody says, he began to be sensible that it was after three o'clock in the morning, and a rather wild morning at that; and down he went quicker than I can take time to explain it. You have to forget all about what o'clock it is. You have to forget all about this nineteenth century. You have to forget all about your surroundings, if you would know God, and do His work, and serve the hour. There has to be a splendid inconsiderateness.-McNeill.

Better Trust.

Better trust all and be deceived,

And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that if believed

Had blessed one's life with true believing.

Oh, in this mocking world too fast

The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth;
Better be cheated to the last

Than lose the blessed hope of truth.

FRANCES A. KEMBLE.

Doubt and Darkness.

The sun is always there in the heavens-not only today, but in those past days "when the leaf was stamped in clay, and the rotting woodlands dripped." He was there in the heavens then. These clouds and fogs are

born of earth, and they do not in the slightest degree affect the fact that the sun in his splendor hangs up yonder. So with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is gracious. Blessed be our Rock. These fogs, these doubts, these mists, are born of earth and time and sin. If they must occasionally pass across our spirits, let us never allow them to cause us to say: "My God hath forgotten me; my way is hidden from the Lord." Let us never come to this, that because it is night with us, therefore the sun has dropped out of the sky. These mists do come to us, and they may last for eight days, and they may last for longer; but, as surely as the Lord lives, sunshine shall return. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."-McCNEILL.

The Definition of Doubt.

All religious truths are doubtable. There is no absolute proof of any one of them. Even that fundamental truth the existence of a God-no man can prove by reason. The ordinary proof for the existence of God involves an assumption, argument in a circle, or a contradiction. The impression of God is kept up by experience; not by logic. And hence, when the experimental religion of a man, of a community or of a nation wanes, religion wanes. Their idea of God grows indistinct, and that man, community or nation becomes infidel. Bear in mind, then, that all religious truths are doubtable-even those which we hold most strongly.

What does this brief account of the origin of doubt teach us? It teaches us great intellectual humility. It