faith.

No doubt faith is better than questioning, but there may be honest
questioning which yet is intensely loyal to Christ. Questioning, too,
which is eager to find the truth and rest on the rock, may be better
than easy believing, that takes no pains to know the reason of the hope
it cherishes, and lightly recites the noble articles of a creed it has
never seriously studied. Tennyson, in "In Memoriam," tells the story
of a faith that grew strong through its doubting.

You say, but with no touch of scorn,
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gathered strength;
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own;
And power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinai's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Although the trumpet blew so loud.

That which saved Thomas was his deep, strong friendship for Christ.
"The characteristic of Thomas," says Ian Maclaren, "is not that he
doubted,--that were an easy passport to religion,--but that he doubted
and loved. His doubt was the measure of his love; his doubt was
swallowed up in love." If friendship for Christ be loyal and true, we
need not look upon questioning as disloyalty; it may be but love
finding the way up the rugged mountain-side to the sunlit summit of a
glorious faith. There is a scepticism whose face is toward wintriness
and death; but there is a doubt which is looking toward the sun and
toward all blessedness.

Thomas teaches us that one may look on the dark side and yet be a
Christian, an ardent lover of Jesus, ready to die for him. But we must
admit that this is not the best way to live. No one would say that
Thomas was the ideal among the apostles, that his character was the
most beautiful, his life the noblest and the best. Faith is better
than doubt, and confidence better than