ST. THOMAS’S DAY

Evening Star, Issue 20980, 19 December 1931, Page 2

ST. THOMAS’S DAY

In the ecclesiastical year this day falls on Monday. At first glauco it seems odd that the great sceptic among Christ’s disciples should have his commemoration day so close to Christmas, the festival of joy and the Incarnation. Possibly it is thus intended to illustrate how an eclipsed faith recovered itself, discerned Divinity veiled in human form, and entered into a joy that kept life brave and buoyant through all its after years, But, however that may be, the observance of St. Thomas’s Day is one that should make a special appeal to our time. Yet for some reason or other the Church seems shy of St. Thomas. One rarely sees a church dedicated to him. We have no end of St. Paul’s and St. John’s, and St. Matthew’s and St, Luke’s, and others, but we can hardly recall, seeing anywhere a St. Thomas’s dhurch. There is not one among all the ecclesiastical edifices in Dunedin. And, if there be one in the dominion, we have not come across it. And that is characteristic of Christendom, we believe. St. Thomas is rarely honoured by having a church or cathedral called after him. It is a little difficult to understand why he should thus bo neglected, especially in this age, for among all the apostles and saints there is none whose character is so akin to it as St. Thomas, We might show this in many particulars. We will confine ourselves, for the most part, to two —his melancholy and his doubts. •» » * * The melancholy of St. Thomas. He was a man who looked at the darker side of things. He was inclined to believe only in what the senses reported. He kept the shadowy side on the road of life. His hope lacked wings. It could not rise above the solid earth. And even there it could not believe that the best is yet to be. “He came to the facts of life with an antecedent prejudice; he uniformly expected from the banquet an inferior menu.” And, of course, ha got from life just what lie brought to it. Yet his melancholy had a dash of courage in it. When his Master proposed to go again into Judea His other disciples said he would be killed if Ho. did. That did not scare Thomas. “ Let us go,” he said, “ and die with Him.” So his outlook upon life was at once dark and desperate. He saw the worst but did not flinch. He braced himself to brave it. We think Thomas is a typo of our time. He approaches nearer to its temper and spirit than any of the other apostles. For is not melancholy one of the most characteristic features of our age? *** * • . Some of us have seen Albert Durer’s great engraving, ‘ Melancholia.’ The central figure is a wingpd, woman—the genius of knowledge and toil. In an hour of pause she sits. in. meditation, her head lasting on her hand, ,feho is looking forth in resolute but infinite sadness into life 1 and the world. Her eyes see, but see nothing of the things around her. Her arm rests on a book, and her hand holds the compasses. The instruments of the artisan, the geometer, the alchemist lie at her feet, where also sleeps a great wolfhound. Over In head is a squared window. Close by hangs an hourglass, whose sands are half run, and a bill. Seated on' a millstone leaning against the house is a small winged boy with tablet and pencil. Far off the sea is seen with towns and castles on the shore. The sun has set, and a fiery comet, whose rays fill the whole sky, menaces the world below. But over it arches a rainbow, and across it flits a,bat with outstretched wings hearing a scroll on wheih is inscribed ‘ Melancholia.’ It is over four centuries since Durer executed this immortal work. But it has a far deper significance for our age than for his. It depicts for us in fine imaginative form the world of knowledge and of labour to-day. The predominating spirit over these is melancholia. In the world we are bewildered by our achievements of thought. The discoveries of science threaten to destroy us. The late war warned ns of such a possibility. Yet we see the weariful nations piling up the dim outlines of a greater doom in their preparations for another. They are obsessed by fear, and know not litr.v to solve the problems that we have created for ourselves. In Carlyle’s grim imagery: “We sit like apes round a fire in the woods, and know not how to feed it with fresh sticks.” Or, as years ago Arnold put it in more musical form: Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb; .Silent they are, though not content, And wait to see the future come; Silent while years engrave the brow, Silent the best are—silent now. •» * * * Or if wo turn from the world of thought to the industrial I this brooding melancholy is still more pronounced. In Durer’s imagination the central figure is surrounded by the instruments of toil and the achievements of civilisation, but she is evidently oppressed by the poor results which the centuries have given to

labour. The world is growing sadder in its very increase of the conditions which should make for happiness. Over it broods the fiery comet which Disastrous twilight sheds, and, with fear of change, Perplexes nations, while high in heaven the bat darkening the rainbow flies with the Apocalyptic scroll ‘ Melancholia.’ It is surely not an untrue picture of the industrial world of to-day. We must not be misled if wo are told that never were people gayer or the avenues of pleasure so plentiful and so crowded. May not that be the very proof of the sombreness of life? The craze for pleasure. WHat is it but an effort to escape from oneself—from the melancholy that broods at the heart. In Ibsen’s great play there is a suggestive colloquy; Helmer: Hayc you not been happy here ? Norah: I have never been happy. I thought 1 was, but I was never really so. Helmer: Not—not happy? Norah: No; only merry. There is a mighty difference between being happy and merry. The latter abounds, but, probed to its deeps, it will be found that most of the merriment of our time is but a mask to hide the melancholy that broods upon the soul. « * * * What was the cause of tho melancholy of Thomas? It was partly temperamental and partly sceptical. Ho was, as wo have seen, naturally inclined to take dark views of life. Of two evils he might bo expected to choose both. Novcrthless, he hold on to Christ. Ho was drawn to Him by love. But ho concluded that his Master in going to Jerusalem was going to His death. And His death meant the end of everything. There was, therefore, no future for him or anybody else. But, believing that, even in spite of that, Christ was tho nearest approach to his ideal of truth and righteousness, he would rather perish with Him than accept life without Him. Here, again, Thomas is the type of class of men and women of our time. There are those who believe with Thomas that their own hope and the world’s hope is bound up with the ideals of life that Christ’s exemplified and the teaching that He imparted. But their Christ is merely human. He came to an end at Calvary. And now Far hence Ho lies In tho lone Syrian town, . And on His grave with shining eyes The silent stars look down. Like Thomas, they demand scientific evidence hefora they will believe, and because, in the nature of the case, this cannot bo given they reject tho supernatural in Christianity. But the essence of faith is that it is a venture. It can only be proved by tho venture. If it could be demonstrated as we demonstrate a proposition in Euclid there would be no moral value in it. But faith is the test not of the soundness of our reasoning, but of tho quality of the heart and will. Light takes its colour from tho medium through which it passes. So does faith. Says Mark Rutherford: “ Faith is not belief in fact, demonstration, or promise. It is sensibility to tho due influence of the fact, susceptibility to all the strength that is in the fact, so that we are controlled by it.” This is tho meaning of Christ’s saying to Thomas: “ Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.” There is • something deeper than sense perception of the truth —something in their inner souls that jumped to meet it before it was proved to tho senses or demonstrated in tho court of logic. Thus was it with all the great heroes of faith. “ Abraham,” says our Lord, “ rejoiced to see my day.” Ho had a vision of a better world to be in tho future. “He saw it and was glad.” So of the others. They did not see tho promises fulfilled; but they greeted them afar off. They fc’ i they were" right, and were bound to be in spite of appearances to the contrary.

Now for those who do not go on to the confession of Thomas, who do not believe in Christ as the revelation of the Fatherhood of God and tho life eternal, .inevitable disillusion awaits them. Many of them render noble sorvLc in tho world, working for political and social reforms with a selfsacrifice " it ; '.nines most church folks. But sooner or later the weary weight of this unintelligible world begins to oppress them. Such a man, e.g., was Keir Hardic, a brave and daring soul, of whom wo wrote on this page last week. But ho found the creed St. Thomas, short of its final confession, no match for the masterful forces arrayed against him. We see the same issue being reached by such people today, The belief that there is no other world than this, and that our little life is rounded by an eternal sleep, is producing domestic and social results that bewilder serious minds. Putting aside tho comparatively small number of these, wo have, on the one hand, an intellectual and cultured class, to whom a future life is cither unbelievable or of no practical concern. And on the other wo, have tho great mass of people to whom the God of whom Christ spoke means nothing, and life after death of no value compared with-the life that now is. flho main business is to get tho most out of the present and let the future go hang. So we see spreading out in over-widening circles tho results of tho loss of that robust faith which transformed Thomas from a sceptical, melancholy man into a joyous and adventuring apostle. “ Our cynicism, our lawlessness, our swagger attitudinising, our profane cleverness, our substitution of the appeal, of economic determinism for the appeal of righteousness, our blurring of ethical distinctions, our shallow and showy sentimentalism —these are the precise phenomena one would expect to find in a society which has allowed the moral dignity of its individual members to bo dethroned by their indifference to any life beyond this one.”