it is no marvel if we sometimes wish, like Thomas, to see the prints of the nails, to know whether Christ be indeed our Lord or not.  Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt.  Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the evil.  But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to say—­I must and will know the truth.  That did not John.  Brethren, John appealed to Christ.  He did exactly what we do when we pray—­and he got his answer.  Our Master said to his disciples, Go to my suffering servant, and give him proof.  Tell John the things ye see and hear—­“The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached.”  There is a deep lesson wrapped up in this.  We get a firm grasp of truth by prayer.  Communion with Christ is the best proof of Christ’s existence and Christ’s love.  It is so even in human life.  Misgivings gather darkly round our heart about our friend in his absence; but we seek his frank smile, we feel his affectionate grasp:  our suspicions go to sleep again.  It is just so in religion.  No man is in the habit of praying to God in Christ, and then doubts whether Christ is He “that should come.”  It is in the power of prayer to realize Christ, to bring him near, to make you feel His life stirring like a pulse within you.  Jacob could not doubt whether he had been with God when his sinew shrunk.  John could not doubt whether Jesus was the Christ when the things He had done were pictured out so vividly in answer to his prayer.  Let but a man live with Christ anxious to have his own life destroyed, and Christ’s life established in its place, losing himself in Christ, that man will have all his misgivings silenced.  These are the two remedies for doubt—­Activity and Prayer.  He who works, and feels he works—­he who prays, and knows he prays, has got the secret of transforming life-failure into life-victory.

In conclusion brethren, we make three remarks which could not be introduced into the body of this subject.  The first is—­Let young and ardent minds, under the first impressions of religion, beware how they pledge themselves by any open profession to more than they can perform.  Herod warmly took up religion at first, courted the prophet of religion, and then when the hot fit of enthusiasm had passed away, he found that he had a clog round his life from which he could only disengage himself by a rough, rude effort.  Brethren whom God has touched, it is good to count the cost before you begin.  If you give up present pursuits impetuously, are you sure that present impulses will last?  Are you quite certain that a day will not come when you will curse the hour in which you broke altogether with the world?  Are you quite sure that the revulsion back again, will not be as impetuous as Herod’s, and your hatred of the religion which