1. He was a great sinner; he was at once the common enemy of God and man. He was a thief, and therefore lived in open defiance of one of God's express commandments; he was a thief, and therefore waged war against the established order of human society. Such a course of life was in itself

calculated to harden his heart, and make him inaccessible to all holy influences. The very consciousness of his condition was adapted to confirm him in his rebellion. It is this that makes great criminals always so difficult to reclaim; they labour under the idea that they have gone too far on the road to ruin to retrace their steps; they can hardly believe it possible to regain the favour of God, or the regard of man. For this reason theologians have supposed that fallen angels constantly add to the number of their transgressions; they know that they have no hope of redemption, that their condition is irreparably ruined, that they have only a terrible looking forward for eternal retribution; and hence they abandon themselves to a course of open and daring rebellion. Such, then, was the condition of this dying thief; so great were his crimes, that the mercy of man was denied him, and had he looked to himself alone, he could never have dared to seek the mercy of God. But he came in contact with Christ, the power of God, and that power proved sufficient to rescue him from the lowest depths of sin and misery.

2. He was in the agonies of death.

was come,

Though he might have looked forward to many hours of suffering before his final dissolution, still he knew that his end Most of us know by experience how difficult it is to attend to matters requiring thought and reflection, when we are suffering from bodily ailment. The pain we suffer then distracts the mind, and makes it incapable of attending to anything else. But what, if in addition to bodily suffering, the mind should be agitated by the terrors of approaching death; how much more difficult would it be to exercise our mental powers! The thief was precisely in this condition; the awful tortures of the crucifixion made his body writhe with pain; for of all modes of putting criminals to death, crucifixion was the most lingering and painful; and the nearness of death-death after such a life as he had led-over

whelmed his soul with fear. But the power of redeeming love laid hold on him even then, plucked him as a brand out of the fire, and enabled him in the midst of the most fearful sufferings, and in the prospect of still more fearful sufferings, to make a successful appeal to Him that was mighty to save.

3. The condition of our Lord at that moment was not peculiarly adapted to inspire his faith. There had been a time when our Lord performed wonderful miracles, which drew after Him crowds of admiring followers. He had given substantial proofs on many

occasions that the powers of nature were subject to His authority and control; He had spoken to the storm, and it had ceased to rage; He had commanded devils, and they had come out of men; He had looked upon all manner of incurable diseases, and they had been instantly healed; nay, He had even compelled death itself to render back its victims. No wonder that many should under such circumstances believe in Him; the wonder is that all did not believe in Him; the conclusion arrived at by Nicodemus was inevitable-"We know that thou art a teacher sent from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." But how altered His condition now! His power seems to have departed from Him, His enemies have had the upper hand of Him, He is doomed to suffer the ignominious death of a malefactor. The passers by revile Him, and wag their heads; the heartless rulers deride Him, saying, “He saved others, himself he cannot save; the cruel soldiers mock Him as an impostor. But, notwithstanding these adverse appearances and humiliating circumstances, the penitent thief caught a glimpse of His divine glory, and that inspired within him a living faith, which secured the salvation of his soul.

Should anyone, therefore, ask how this sinner was saved, the answer is plain enough; he was saved in the only way that a sinner can be saved, he was

saved by faith, he was saved by simple trust in the mighty Saviour. It has been well said, that this thief was the only man in the whole world at that moment, who thoroughly believed in the divinity of Christ; for even His own disciples had deserted Him, and confessed themselves disappointed in the hopes. they had formed concerning Him; and this shows what great difficulties his faith had to contend with. Salvation then comes by faith, and by faith alone; and there are no conceivable circumstances under which saving faith may not exist.

There are some truths suggested by the circumstances accompanying the thief's salvation, which deserve our earnest attention. We are reminded,

1. That a man may be saved with very little knowledge of theology. You sometimes meet people who have doubts concerning others, as regards the adequacy of their religious knowledge; they wonder in fact whether they know enough to be saved. Now, what do these people mean? What they generally mean is this; that if others are not acquainted with those religious dogmas which they believe, and if they do not moreover accept them as God's truth, there is little or no hope of their salvation. But nothing can be more preposterous than this, nothing can be a clearer proof of bigotry and narrow-mindedness. Nowhere does the Bible connect salvation with any system of

theology, with any peculiar creed, or with any religious sect; but with personal faith in the

Saviour. 'He that believeth in him is not condemned." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." What right then has any man to magnify his own religious opinions, and force them upon others as truths essential to salvation, and consign those who receive them not to eternal ruin ? It is the height of presumption, it is the most unwarrantable assumption of infallibility. I don't suppose this thief had the slightest acquaintance with the the elementary principles of Christian theology; I don't suppose he could have answered the simplest questions touching original sin, the nature of the atonement, or the work of the Holy Spirit; I don't suppose he ever heard of the doctrines which enter into our conception of an orthodox creed. No; his faith did not consist in believing this and that about the Saviour; it was: simple belief in the Saviour himself. All he knew was that our Lord was divine, that He had power to save him; hence the confident appeal he made to His compassion.

But some of you may ask, How came he to know the bare fact that Christ was the Saviour of mankind? The evangelists give us no information on this point; so we are left to form our own conjectures. It is quite possible that he may have