t the chief
function they should be required to discharge in this mediation was the
forgiving and retention of sins, and that they were furnished with the
Holy Spirit to guide them in this mediation. Apparently this must mean
that the Apostles were to be the agents through whom Christ was to
proclaim the terms of admission to His kingdom. They received authority
to say in what cases sins were to be forgiven and in what to be
retained. To infer from this that the Apostles have successors, that
these successors are constituted by an external ordinance or nomination,
that they have power to exclude or admit individuals seeking entrance
into the kingdom of God, is to leave logic and reason a long way behind,
and to erect a kind of government in the Church of Christ which will
never be submitted to by those who live in the liberty wherewith His
truth has made them free. The presence of the Holy Spirit, and no bare
external appointment, is that which gives authority to those who guide
the Church of Christ. It is because they are inwardly one with Christ,
not because they happen to be able to claim a doubtful outward
connection with Him, that they have that authority which Christ's people
own.

But when our Lord thus appeared on the day of His resurrection to His
disciples one of their number was absent. This might not have been
noticed had not the absentee been of a peculiar temper, and had not this
peculiarity given rise to another visit of the Lord and to a very
significant restoration of belief in the mind of a sceptical disciple.
The absent disciple was commonly known as Thomas or Didymus, the Twin.
On various occasions he appears somewhat prominently in the
gospel-story, and his conduct and conversation on those occasions show
him to have been a man very liable to take a desponding view of the
future, apt to see the darker side of everything, but at the same time
not wanting in courage, and of a strong and affectionate loyalty to
Jesus. On one occasion, when our Lord intimated to the disciples His
intention of returning within the dangerous frontier of Judaea, the
others expostulated, but Thomas said, "Let us also go, that we may die
with Him"--an utterance in which his devoted loyalty to his Master, his
dogged courage, and his despondent temperament are all apparent. And
when, some time afterwards, Jesus was warning His disciples that He must
shortly leave them and go to the Father, Thomas sees in the departure of
his