Thomas Say

“ This special grace, this loving intimacy He reserved for Thomas in preference to all the others; and what other conclusion can we arrive at except that Thomas was especially dear to Him? He indeed reproved the incredulity of Thomas in the words: "Be not faithless, but believing;" and again: "Because thou hast seen Me, Thomas, thou hast believed;" but He does not say that this incredulity or this faith concerned His resurrection. ”

“ Sir Thomas has become a more thoughtful man—he is breaking up, so people say. His wife has found a measure of comfort at the only true Fountain, for her religion is now the substance—it was once only the shadow. ”

“ But to thee, demon, and thy son, which follows thee—I say—for now I have been sent for your sakes—but why make many words about your nature and origin, which you know yourselves and are nevertheless impudent? Judas Thomas, the apostle of Jesus the Messiah, who has been sent hither out of much love and kindness, commands you, Go out in the presence of all the people here and tell me of what family you are! ”

“ As a preacher he excelled in distinct and powerful exhibition of the truth; whatever he had to say came fresh from his own independent thought, went straight to the heart of the subject, and made an immediate impression on his hearers. The untimely death in 1868 of his eldest son Thomas, a promising advocate at the Scottish bar, caused him intense grief, from which he never fully recovered. ”

“ What should I say?
— Since Faith is dead,
And Truth away
From you is fled?
Should I be led
With doubleness?
Nay! nay! mistress.
I promised you,
And you promised me,
To be as true
As I would be. ”

“ And if this oath of yours, Master Rich, be true, then I pray that I never see God in the face, which I would not say, were it otherwise, to win the whole world." Then recited he to the court the discourse of all their communication in the Tower according to the truth, and said: "In good faith, Master Rich, I am sorrier for your perjury than for mine own peril, and you shall understand that neither I nor no man else to my knowledge, ever took you to be a man of such credit as in any matter of importance I or any other would at any time vouchsafe to communicate with you. ”

“ When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ”

“ That raileth reckless to every man's shame;
Say he is rude that cannot lie and feign,
The lecher a lover, and tyranny
To be the right of a prince's reign.
I cannot, I: no, no, it will not be.
This is the cause that I could never yet
Hang on their sleeves that weigh, as thou mayst see,
A chip of chance more than a pound of wit. ”

“ To religious minds this scientific inversion of solemn truths seems, and is, sacrilege; but Thomas's numerous critics in the Church have always brought precisely this charge against his doctrine, and are doing so still. They insist that he has reduced God to a mechanism and man to a passive conductor of force. He has left, they say, nothing but God in the universe. The terrible word which annihilates all other philosophical systems against which it is hurled, has been hurled freely against his for six hundred years and more, without visibly affecting the Church ”

“ What has modern thought, as developed at the end of the nineteenth century, to say to a Scottish eighteenth century inquiry into human mind that finds its root in a postulated sense of reality, which must be taken as finally authoritative when it is recognised in its genuine integrity? How do faith and doubt now stand finally related, as compared with their relations when Reid opposed Hume? Is there still room for philosophical argument founded on the divine inspirations of the Common Sense, under, for instance, our transformed conception of the universe as an evolution? ”

“ God has spared you for summat better; turn over a new leaf, man, at once. He’ll give you strength for it if you’ll ask him. Come now, draw your chair to the table, and have a cup of tea and a bit of muffin; it’ll do you good.”
“Ned,” said Thomas, sadly, “I can’t take meat nor drink in your house. I’ve abused you behind your back scores of times, and I can’t for shame take it.”
“Nay, nay, man; never heed what you’ve said against me. You see you’ve done me no harm. I’m none the worse for all that folks can say against me; so draw up your chair, you’re gradely welcome to your tea.” ”

“ To prove that perpetual wealth should be no evil token, you say first that for princes and prelates, and every man for others, we pray all for perpetual prosperity, and that in the common prayers of the church, too.
Then say you secondly, that if prosperity were so perilous and tribulation so profitable, every man ought to pray God to send others sorrow. ”

“ "They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris," chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.
"Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?" inquired the duchess.
"They go to America," murmured Lord Henry. ”

“ For I see no man who will confess, for very shame, that he desireth riches, honour, renown, and offices of authority only for his worldly pleasure. For every man would fain seem as holy as a horse. And therefore will every man say—and would it were so believed, too—that he desireth these things, though for his worldly wealth a little so, yet principally to merit thereby through doing some good with them. ”

“ An untried faith is a dead faith, being alone. Faith without trial finds no scope for demonstration, or evidence of its existence. Thus, it is written, "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God: thou doest well; the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, 0 vain man, that faith without works is dead? ”

“ I’ve seen crippled children packed away on a slide plum helpless and come back home on foot as spry as a wren and never a scar on their flesh. They’ve got knowing ways off yonder to Warm Springs where the doctors and nurse women, to lend a hand, straighten out the twisted little bodies of many a crippled child. They do say it is a sight to the world how them little crippled fellers can cavort around in the salty waters in no time, playful as minner fish in a sunny mountain brook. And they never shed a drop of their life’s blood. ”

“ But the merriest was this Shore's wife, in whom the king therefore took special pleasure. For many he had, but her he loved, whose favor, to say the truth (for sin it were to belie the devil) , she never abused to any man's hurt, but to many a man's comfort and relief. Where the king took displeasure, she would mitigate and appease his mind. Where men were out of favor, she would bring them in his grace. ”

“ Your doubts, Thomas, always most stubbornly assert themselves just as they are about to crumble. Thomas, I bid you be not faithless but believing—and I know you will believe, even with a whole heart."
When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees before the morontia Master and exclaimed, "I believe! My Lord and my Master!" Then said Jesus to Thomas: "You have believed, Thomas, because you have really seen and heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will believe even though they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mortal ear." ”

“ Sensitive and shy, Thomas guarded himself from the world by a fine, dry irony, which slightly veiled the poet both austere and ardent in his passion for beauty and the homely things of earth. His lofty, melancholy spirit burned in an eye fastidiously grave. ”

“ The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. ”

“ When I recall Thomas's whole bearing and conduct I cannot for a moment accept the conclusions arrived at by him, whatever may be the present appearance of the facts he goes upon. Facts are like faces—capable of a thousand expressions and meanings. Were you satisfied entirely with Thomas's behavior in the talk you had with him? ”

“ He lived so far above the range of little minds, the trivialities of everyday life, social gossip, and the like, seemed to shrink from his presence. One always felt the touch of noble thoughts, and the longing for high endeavor where he was. I lived over again in these long, quiet drives, with the silent Thomas, those last few months, when, with my innocent child's heart, I sunned myself in his presence, unconscious of the rare charm and fascination that drew me to him. ”

“ Whatever cruelties or indignities the unprovoked insolence of unlimited authority might inflict upon him, it was his duty to submit in humble silence; and if his master smote him on one cheek, he was to turn to him the other also. This, with "Thomas, was not a mere form of words run through with, and then forgotten. In all my experience, I have never known a man over whom his creed appeared to hold so powerful a control. ”

“ Therefore, it is from his conception of this summum bonum as from a centre of illumination, that we may trace the characteristic qualities alike of Thomas and his work. His faith, his piety, and his intellectual nature are revealed in his thought of supreme felicity. Man’s chief good being the ground of the system, the thought and study which Thomas puts upon the created universe and upon God, regarded both as Creator and in the relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, conduce to make large and sure and ample this same chief good of man. ”

“ Like his great teacher Albert, Thomas was respected even more for his piety than for his learning. Not long after his death, people began to speak of him as a saint. Though he was the most learned man of his time, he was considered to have given an example of heroic virtue. ”

“ Thomas, I wish you may not all live to repent your handiwork, and to find, when too late, that you are like the countryman who brought up a young wolf, which no sooner grew strong enough than it began to tear his sheep to pieces. ”

“ Sir Thomas told me it was an entertainment more surprising and pleasant than can be imagined, to see an inhabitant of neither world, without hand to lift, or leg to move, scarce tongue to utter his meaning, so keen in biting the whole world and making bubbles at his exit. ”

“ What was most remarkable and uncommon of all, at the same time that he obtained the confidence of the overseer, Thomas had succeeded in gaining the good will of his fellow servants. There never lived a kinder-hearted, better tempered man. There was nothing he was not ready to do for a fellow creature in distress; he was ever willing to share his provisions with the hungry, and to help the weak and tired to finish their tasks. Besides, he was the spiritual guide of the plantation, and could preach and pray almost as well as his master. ”

“ But observant eyes see more than they look for. And Thomas, who took pains to visit and know the most untouched parts of England and Wales, and who drank to the dregs the considerable literature which can feed such curiosity, though he still loved nature, was undeceived about man and, as a corollary, about himself. It dawned upon him that man's need is nobler impulses rather than choicer circumstances, that the soul seeks a mood and should not be put off with hopes and desires, for we can only possess that which we can truly appreciate. ”

“ But if I did not believe it, if I believed him to have been in the past all that his opponent has said; even if I believed that, only last evening, spurned, driven from his child, penniless and hopeless, he had yielded to the weakness which has been his curse all his life—even if I believed that, still I should demand that Henry Thomas, repentant and earnest as you see him now, should be given his rightful opportunity to become a man again. He is poor, but he is not—shall not be—friendless. ”

“ And the consummate fashioning faculty, the devout and intellectual temperament of Thomas, are writ large in his treatises. His work has unity; it is a system; it corresponds to the scholastically creative personality, from the efficient concord of whose faculties it proceeded. The unity of Thomas’s personality lay in his conception of man’s summum bonum, which sprang from his Christian faith, but was constructed by reason from foundation to pinnacle ”

“ No man was more active than he, in revivals. He would go many miles to assist in carrying them on, and in getting outsiders interested in religion. His house being one of the holiest, if not the happiest in St. Michael's, became the "preachers' home." These preachers evidently liked to share Master Thomas's hospitality; for while he starved us, he stuffed them. Three or four of these ambassadors of the gospel—according to slavery—have been there at a time; all living on the fat of the land, while we, in the kitchen, were nearly starving. ”

“ Hitherto men have seen in S. Thomas nothing but the pious cenobite, or, at best, the saintly and profound theologian, who theorises in his cloister, scarce deigning to bestow a glance on the age in which he lives. But if we study the real facts of his history, if we put his works in connection with his actions, we see in him one of those active and impressionable minds which keep an anxious watch over the ideas of their time, either to array against them all the fulness of their power, as a dam against their disorderly movements, or to dash into their midst and to master them by guiding them. ”