Master the extinction of all hope; life and the way to life seem to
him treacherous phrases, he has eyes only for the gloom of death: "Lord,
we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?"

The absence of such a man from the first meeting of the disciples was to
be expected.[32] If the bare possibility of his Lord's death had plunged
this loving and gloomy heart in despondency, what dark despair must
have preyed upon it when that death was actually accomplished! How the
figure of his dead Master had burnt itself into his soul is seen from
the manner in which his mind dwells on the print of the nails, the wound
in the side. It is by these only, and not by well-known features of face
or peculiarities of form, he will recognise and identify his Lord. His
heart was with the lifeless body on the cross, and he could not bear to
see the friends of Jesus or speak with those who had shared his hopes,
but buried his disappointment and desolation in solitude and silence.
His absence can scarcely be branded as culpable. None of the others
expected resurrection any more than himself, but his hopelessness acted
on a specially sensitive and despondent nature. Thus it was that, like
many melancholy persons, he missed the opportunity of seeing what would
effectually have scattered his darkness.

But though he might not be to blame for absenting himself, he was to
blame for refusing to accept the testimony of his friends when they
assured him they had seen Jesus risen. There is a tone of doggedness
that grates upon us in the words, "Except I shall see in His hands the
print of the nails, _and put my finger_ into the print of the nails, and
thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe." Some deference was
due to the testimony of men whom he knew to be truthful and as little
liable to delusion as himself. We cannot blame him for not being
convinced on the spot; a man cannot compel himself to believe anything
which does not itself compel belief. But the obstinate tone sounds as if
he was beginning to nurse his unbelief, than which there is no more
pernicious exercise of the human spirit. He demands, too, what may never
be possible--the evidence of his own senses. He claims that he shall be
on the same footing as the rest. Why is he to believe on less evidence
than they? It has cost him pain enough to give up his hope: is he then
to give up his hopelessness as cheaply as all this? He is supremely
miserable; his Lord dead an