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rence, to be my Lord, do thou help me! Remember me in that invisible world to which thou goest, and, in that wide dominion, be there my Saviour!" What a wonderful exhibition of the power of faith! a sinner dying on the cross rests all his hope for eternity on the power of the Saviour dying on a similar cross by his side; and expires with no other confidence than that which he had newly and instantly placed on Him whom he saw speedily a corpse before him. Yet with a few circumstantial features of difference, this is the character of our hope, whoever we are, and in whatever circumstances. If we are heartily and really Christians, we must take the same low ground of confession and humiliation; and we have no other hope of beholding the glory of God in heaven, but that this same crucified Jesus will mercifully remember us now He has come to His kingdom.

The same unmerited agony and humiliation which wrought on the mind of the thief, is at this moment the confidence, and the only confidence of the whole believing Church. The faith which Christ had wrought by His Spirit in the heart of the penitent thief, was met by Him with the most gracious assurance of help. The Lord of life and glory, who hath the keys of death and of hell, said to him, "Verily, I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.' The transitions which the mind of the thief underwent must have been rapid and extraordinary. He had experienced, within a few hours, the new sensation of repentance, and humiliation, and confession,- the discovery of Christ as a Saviour, and the earnest application to Him, on account of his dying, perishing soul; and now

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he was permitted to experience all the joy of a present salvation,-the assurance from the omnipotent Redeemer that his soul was safe for eternity. We cannot altogether appreciate what was the joy of this man's mind, till we ourselves shall be on the verge of eternity, and realizing, in the agonies of death, the assurances of a triumphant faith, and looking out, with ardent anticipation, to the things which are invisible; but if we know anything of the reality of forgiveness, and of a good hope, originating in our having fled for refuge to the Redeemer, we may form some notion of the change in the poor man's state of heart. Oh, what hours of wondrous delight must have been the remaining hours that he hung upon the cross! With what feeling of abhorrence he would now look back upon a life of ignorance and sin. With what disgust would he consider the wilful indulgence of the corrupt passions of the heart. With what elevated devotion he would approach his God, now discovered through the Redeemer as a reconciled God. With what delight would he now contemplate the real value of his immortal nature, and the glorious occupation of knowing, loving, adoring, and obeying God, to which, through an entire forgiveness, he was raised; and rise superior to the sentence of death in his agonized and bleeding body. In such wondrous contemplations the remaining hours of his painful struggle would be absorbed and as his natural strength failed, his natural eye grew dim in death, and the prayer and the praise faltered upon his thirsty lips, with what intense ardour of soul would he anticipate the privilege of following the already departed Saviour into the promised Pa

THE ALL-SUFFICIENT SAVIOUR.

radise and when the soldiers came to break his legs, how thankfully would he receive the blow which terminated the sense of sin and suffering for ever, and dismissed him from the body of sin, and humiliation, and death, to realize all the joys of forgiveness, and perfected holiness, with Christ in heaven.

And this is the glorious fact by which the almighty Saviour has been been pleased to adorn the period of His own wondrous humiliation : - A poor wretched sinner, without a particle of hope, is led by Him to the knowledge and to the experience of His gracious salvation. Lost as the man was in sin, his life of probation wilfully and desperately thrown away, and the grave about to close on him and on all hope for ever, the Redeemer put forth His mighty arm,—mighty to save, and snatched him as a brand from the burning; gave him power to become the son of God; gave him repentance, gave him faith, gave him the pleadings of earnest prayer, and then answered that prayer by the bright, unequivocal assurance of complete salvation :"This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

This is the salvation on which we must rely, and not hesitate to believe that it was the purpose of our blessed Redeemer, who died for us, thus to brilliantly exhibit and illustrate all the riches of His mercy for our encouragement: and we need it all. It requires no small encouragement before we are brought to lay hold, with assurance, of the hope set before us in Christ's atoning death; before we can renounce our native unbelief, and cherish the unquestionable conviction that, through that death, and that only, we, after the moment of our

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death, shall be with Christ in Paradise. Let us take, then, the practical lesson which this event teaches.

1. It shews us the sovereignty of Divine grace. This event is an instance, or specimen, of that system of mercy under which we are placed; and intended to teach us how sovereign is the Lord of Hosts in the application of the mercy of salvation to our lost souls. Two men hung on the cross by His side when the Redeemer was crucified. Neither of them, as far as we know, had the least moral recommendation of character to His regard, and not one more than the other; yet, in the exercise of a holy sovereignty, He leads one by His spirit to seek Him in repentance and faith, while the other remains a railer and a blasphemer. And here we learn that He hath "mercy on whom He will have mercy." It would have been no injustice to these men to leave them both to the deserved consequence of their transgressions. It is no injustice to him who died impenitent, that the merciful Redeemer changed the heart, and the hope, and the eternal state of the other, and made him a child of grace, and an heir of glory. And this is the nature of the election made in Scripture. It. is the merciful choice of some out of a multitude of deservedly condemned sinners to inherit eternal life: it is the rescue of some when all deserved to perish it is the leading the chosen objects of grace, the vessels of mercy, in a way consistent with their moral constitution, to inquire, to believe, to repent, and to ask assistance; and then the ensuring to them the joys of eternal life. But in this act of sovereign selection, there is no regard to the previous life. It may be a dying thief, as well as a decent

member of society. The election is in the mind of God, antecedent to the merits of the life: as in the case of Jacob and Esau, -the purpose of God, according to election, is before the children have done either good or evil. It is God, as a good and wise sovereign, doing what He will with His own and to this we should bow without reserve. Let us only be satisfied with the scripture revelation of the goodness of God as a God of love, and we shall humbly and readily commit to the Maker and Governor of the world the right of choice as to the vessels of mercy whom He prepares unto glory.

We learn here, also, the freeness of this grace:- -Christ did not come to "call the righteous, but sinners to repentance:" and the Scriptures labour, as it were, to impress on our minds this essential feature of God's mercy; and to shew us how widely the door is opened, and how full an encouragement is administered to poor guilty creatures of mankind to return to God.

hours of His dying, was the forgiveness of a notorious criminal, expiring as a victim under the rod of public justice. It was a notorious malefactor whom He led to penitence, and faith, and prayer; and to the assured hope of an entrance, that day, upon eternal happiness. This is the idea which He has associated with His atoning death, that we may see His mercy, not only in the abstract, but in the application,—the real efficiency of the imputation of guilt to Him, to remit it to the malefactor in whose stead He stood, and that we may ascertain how free it is, how rich the grace, how abundantly suited to the utmost depth of our necessities. The distinction between us and a dying thief is far less than we are aware of; not such as to make us to require a less valuable atoning sacrifice than he; and such a case as his was singled out expressly to prevent the worst and the most discouraged from doubting that there is mercy for them, if they will but come in sincerity, acknowledging the justice of their own condemnation, and saying, from the depth of their hearts, "Lord, remember me, and bring me in mercy to thy kingdom." It warrants any one who begins to awaken to the sense of his guilt, and to inquire after the hope of forgiveness, and eternal life, to say, "A thief, who was ending his life upon the cross, found mercy of the Lord, when he turned to Him sincerely and asked it; then there is mercy now for me: to delay will be

It is one of the extraordinary features of our lost state, that we hate the freeness of the mercy which God has offered to us; and labour to misrepresent it, that we may narrow the door of hope and comfort both for ourselves and others; and under this influence we shrink from this glorious example of Divine grace. Had the crucified Jesus called forth from the crowd the most devout and correctly living Pharisee in Jerusalem, and said, "This night shalt thou be with_sinful,—to doubt will be sinful. Let me in Paradise," we should have been better satisfied; and then we might have been more warranted in our endeavour to qualify the doctrine of grace, but it is not so. The example with which Christ illustrated the

me go, as he went, to a crucified Saviour, in godly sincerity, and lost as I am, I may yet be with Him in Paradise."

There has been on this passage of Gospel history, a remark often re

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peated, that one thief was saved in order that none may despair; and only one, that none may presume. It is a remark unwarranted by the passage. Such a remark may minister salutary caution to those who presume on a death-bed repentance; but it is a remark which goes to limit the lesson of encouragement which was here inculcated: it eats out the pith and substance of this glorious pattern of mercy. The salvation of one, and the passing by of the other, may teach us the awful sovereignty of God in the choice of the objects of His mercy; but it was never intended, surely, to limit the encouragement which Gospel grace imparts. We are taught here that salvation is wholly of grace; wholly irrespective of human merit; and any comparison of the merits of one thief with the other, will only darken the case, and encourage those false and self-righteous views which we are always too prone to cherish. Manifestly this instance of mercy was permitted, to assure our lost race how free and unconditional are the mercies of salvation to all who "Whoever will, let him come and take of the waters of life freely." We have no right so to limit this stupendous instance of grace, as only to allow sinners not to despair, and to warn them against presuming: this is to rob the whole transaction of its peculiarly comforting and encouraging character. Surely we speak more in accordance with the spirit of the deed, when we say, it was recorded to teach the guilty and perishing children of men to throw aside that diffidence which haunts them, to doubt no longer, and to come to the Redeemer as able and willing to save unto the uttermost; and to come to Him, not merely

really seek them. It says,

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that we may be saved from despair; not merely from an uncertain and transient gleam of hope; but that we may realize, in the forgiveness of sin, in the total blotting-out of transgression, the consciousness that we are the children of God, and "joint heirs with Christ." Then mark the power of this grace :-Wherever it saves it sanctifies: it saves by sanctifying: there is no other salvation in the Gospel; and in this way it defies the calumnies of its enemies. We see some evidence of the operations of a gracious influence on this man's mind. Experience teaches us what are the moral habits of gross and notorious offenders:- Full of pride, and hardness of heart, and self-sufficiency, and their tongues full of reviling. But how different, in a short time, are the habits of this individual:- He is brought to a voluntary confession of the justness of his sentence, and to an open rebuke of the companion of his guilt, and a religious abstinence from indulging in the sin of others round him, and to an open and earnest application to that Saviour whom they crucified. All the evidences of a new heart which, in such a moment, could have been given, he gave; and they were not given by him to win for him a pardon and a release from men; they were the rather calculated to aggravate the severity of his judges, and, if possible, to increase his punishment. This was a holy change; and while the operations of the grace that forgives are so holy and so sanctifying, why should we suspect them, or limit their influence on our hope? If both the malefactors had been so saved by a sanctifying influence, how could this have led the wicked to presume? As well might we say, that the unlimited promises

of the Gospel are unholy in their tendency; and that from the fear lest we give undue encouragement to sinners, we must keep back the fact, that yet there is room in heaven; and that ultimately an innnumerable company of guilty sinners shall be redeemed unto God, and shall fill the courts of glory. The presumption does not lie in believing the saving and sanctifying grace of Christ, in all its freeness and fulness, but in daring to invent a salvation of our own instead, which is to save us from punishment, while it leaves us the slaves of iniquity. If we would be saved, there is but one way it is coming to God in Christ for a whole and not a partial salvation. It is coming as the thief came: it is feeling our lost case in all the humiliating depth of our necessity; looking back upon our way; looking into our hearts; looking at the facts of our condemnation; and perceiving how totally lost we are in ourselves, and how utterly unable to renew ourselves to repentance, and calling upon God; much less to remove the overwhelming load of guilt already recorded against us : and then it is coming to the once crucified but now exalted Saviour, to forgive our sins, to justify our persons, to renew our hearts, to sanctify our lives, and make us "meet for the inheritance of His saints in light." This, and nothing short of this, was the grace applied to the dying thief, or he never would have been with Christ in Paradise, where nothing entereth that defileth; he never would have seen the Lord. If, therefore, this case is rightly considered in all its bearings, there is nothing in it whatever which would tend for a moment to encourage men to sin that grace may abound. It has only one

object to give them, in near and intimate connection with the Redeemer's atoning death, a practical illustration of the perfect freeness, irrespective of all claim to merit, on the part of man;

the perfect freeness with which it saves, that is, justifies and sanctifies a perishing sinner.

Let us come then, to the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness; let no unscriptural caution keep us back. We are perishing in our sins, we are on the verge of eternity, and the curse of God is on us, as long as we are not found by faith in Christ. Let us not then delay, nor expect to make ourselves more fit to come to Christ: let us come in the belief that there is for us a complete salvation,— and that God is to us a reconciled God; and let us come to it as it warrants us to come, for a complete salvation,-salvation both from the guilt and the power of sin. The same Redeemer lives, and with the same heart of love that dictated and sustained Him in His sufferings. He is not now on the cross, though even there He wrought such miracles of mercy; but He is on the throne, and all things are under His feet, and all hearts are in His hand. All we want for present and eternal peace, is the realizing belief which filled the heart of the penitent malefactor; and till we have that, we never can be happy. Let us then be encouraged to take our lives and our hearts of sin to Him who is able to save, and ask Him to do for us all that conscience tells us that we need. May He give us grace here to carry us blamelessly through life, and remember us in that day when He comes in the glory of His eternal kingdom.

Φωνη τεθνηκοτος.

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