extremes oppression will drive men: how often those that are far from being bad men are drawn to take up arms out of motives of friendship, and from particular situations and connexions, which, as it were, impel them to it ;-whoever takes in all these circumstances in the present case, will not be inclined hastily to pronounce concerning this criminal, that he had been a profligate person. He might have come to this tragical end by this one wrong action and op position to the laws and whatever violence or injustice he might have committed, it appears that he sincerely repented of it, and acknowledged his punishment to be no more than he deserved. "We (says he) receive the due reward of our deeds."

As he was a Jew, he must have heard many things of our Saviour: it was hardly possible it should be otherwise: for all the nation was in expectation of the Messiah, and paid attention to Jesus. And he appears well acquainted with his character in that reproof of his fellow-prisoner; "This man hath done nothing amiss." Nay, we seem to be authorized to conclude from these words that he believed him to be the Messiah. For as our Lord all along assumed that character, and was now

suf

suffering death for not giving up his preten sions to it, but persevering in them; if the man had not been persuaded that it really belonged to him, he must have thought that he did much amiss, and was very blameable in pretending to it.

I trust then, that it is not going further than the circumstances of the case authorize, and will bear us out, when I say, It is probable that, with many others of his countrymen, he had attended upon Christ; had seen his miracles, and heard his divine discourses, and been much impressed with them; but had been diverted from these better pursuits by that rash act and attempt, whatever it was, that had now brought him to the cross, and so infamous an end: when, during his imprisonment having had full leisure, and his unhappy situation turning him to serious thoughts; and comparing what he had before known and heard of the holy Jesus with what he now saw, viz. his speech to the women that bewailed him as they were going to Mount Calvary, his patient and meek demeanour yet uncommon greatness under his sufferings, his prayer for his enemies as they were nailing him to the cross, and

the

the like, he became fully convinced that he was the Messiah, their great promised prophet and Saviour of the world.

I would not willingly go beyond the truth into the contrary extreme, in vindication of a character that has been so much misrepresented.

But it seems to me that, besides this humility and just sense of his own sinfulness and demerits before God, we perceive the marks of pious and good dispositions, which could not have sprung up all at once, but must have flowed from long reflection and habit. Such is that his remarkable faith and owning of Jesus to be the Messiah, at a time when he was expiring together with himself upon the cross.

He must have had just sentiments of the great God, and a noble confidence in him, and a full persuasion that virtue was the only way to his favour, who could believe Christ to be the distinguished object of it, and apply to him as such in that his forlorn perishing condition, when his chosen disciples gave up all hope and expectation from him.

We have no grounds, then, to conclude him to have been a man of an abandoned character, as is commonly supposed, from the crime

VOL. II.

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for

for which he suffered; much less that he continued impenitent, as the other criminal, till the hour that they were put upon the cross.

II.

His request to our Saviour is, "Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom," in Barλeige σov :—not into thy kingdom, as we translate it, the kingdom which God had destined for him and promised him; but a kingdom not of this world, and of which he often made mention in his discourses. And this further renders it probable, that this man had been a hearer of those discourses, which makes him so ready in preferring such

a request.

He desires to be a partaker of the happiness reserved for the Messiah and his followers, in the promised favour and blessing of God. And which he is so far from thinking to be lost by death, that he reckoned it the way to

it.

So much juster sentiments did this man entertain of heavenly things and the kingdom of Christ, than did our Lord's apostles at this time. For we find them, after his resurrection, asking him, "If he would at that time

restore

restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts i. 6.) meaning a kingdom of temporal grandeur and felicity in this world.

But solitude, and suffering, and the long expected near approach of death, are great teachers. They strip the world and the things of it of their splendid glare and allurements, and show them in their true colours :-how empty and void of all real satisfaction to a rational being who looks beyond them! He had formerly heard, with little emotion, our Lord declaring that what he had to give was eternal life at the last day. Having done with all earthly hopes, he now reflected upon and relished what he had heard. And our Lord's apostles soon became better instructed in this school of adversity.

This man aspires to no honours in that future heavenly kingdom, (which showed how well fitted he was for it,) where the least favour and admittance is infinitely above all human desert:-all he desires is to be remembered by Jesus, not to be overlooked and forgotten by him.

III.

Let us next attend to our Lord's answer to

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his