“Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight His path. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways plain: and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Luke iii. 4-6.
1 The Holy Baptist was sent before our Lord to prepare His way; that is, to be His instrument in rousing, warning, humbling, and inflaming the hearts of men, so that, when He came, they might believe in Him. He Himself is the Author and Finisher of that Faith, of which He is also the Object; but, ordinarily, He does not implant it in us suddenly, but He first creates certain dispositions, and these He carries on to faith as their reward. When then He was about to appear on earth among His chosen people, and to claim for Himself their faith, He made use of St. John first to create in them these necessary dispositions; and therefore it is that, at this season, when we are about to celebrate His birth, we commemorate again and again the great Saint who was His forerunner, as in today’s Gospel, lest we should forget, that, without a due preparation of heart, we cannot hope to obtain and keep the all-important gift of faith.
It is observable too, that, on the same day, just the fifth day before Christmas, we are accustomed to celebrate the feast of St. Thomas, who for a while incurred the sin of unbelief; as if our tender Mother, Holy Church, as an additional safeguard, would make an example of the great Apostle for our sakes, and hold him up to us, who now reigns with Christ in heaven, in the image of his earthly weakness, in order to force us to consider that certain dispositions of mind are necessary for faith, and how the want of them shows itself, and wherein lies its fault.
I think, then, that I shall be taking a subject suitable both to the season and the day, if I attempt to set before you, my Brethren, as far as time permits, how it is, humanly speaking, that a man comes to believe the revealed word of God, and why one man believes and another does not. And, in describing the state of mind and of thought which leads to faith, I shall not of course be forgetting that faith, as I have already said, is a supernatural work, and the fruit of divine grace; I only shall be calling your attention to what must be your own part in the process.
As to the account, given us in Scripture, of St. Thomas’s incredulity, its prominent points are these:—First, that when told by his brethren that our Lord was risen, he said, “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Now, here the question is, What was wrong in this? for the other Apostles had seen and touched our Lord, and appear not to have believed until they did. Secondly, that our Lord said to him on a subsequent occasion, after showing to him the evidence he desired, “Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.” Now why was it blessed to believe in Him without seeing, rather than to have that sight of Him which the other Apostles had when they believed?
The subject is a very large one: I shall attempt to follow out only one out of various trains of thought to which it gives rise.
Now, first, I think it will be granted by any one who knows Scripture well, that the doctrine laid down by our Lord on the occasion in question, He had expressed on other occasions and in other ways. For instance, He said, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not.” Elsewhere we read, “He wrought not many miracles then, because of their unbelief.” In these passages He implies that hardness of belief is a fault. Elsewhere He praises easiness of belief. For instance, “O woman, great is thy faith.” “Amen, I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel.” “Be of good heart, daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole.” “Thy faith hath made thee safe, go in peace.” “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” I might quote many other passages to the same effect, from the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul’s Epistles.
Now these passages cannot mean that faith is against reason, or that reason does not ordinarily precede faith, for this is a doctrine quite contrary to Revelation, but I think I shall not be wrong in understanding them thus,—that with good dispositions faith is easy; and that without good dispositions, faith is not easy; and that those who were praised for their faith, were such as had already the good dispositions, and that those who were blamed for their unbelief, were such as were wanting in this respect, and would have believed, or believed sooner, had they possessed the necessary dispositions for believing, or a greater share of the them. This is the point I am going to insist on: I am led to it by the Baptist’s especial office of “preparing the way of the Lord”; for by that preparation is meant the creating in the hearts of his hearers the dispositions necessary for faith. And I consider that the same truth is implied in the glorious hymn of the Angels upon Christmas night; for to whom was the Prince of Peace to come? They sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” By “good will” is meant, “good disposition”; the peace of the Gospel, the full gifts of the knowledge, and of the power, and of the consolation of Christian Redemption, were to be the reward of men of good dispositions. They were the men to whom the Infant Saviour came; they were those in whom His grace would find its fruit and recompense; they were those, who, by congruous merit, would be led on, as the Evangelist says, to “believe in His Name,” and “to be born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”