The Good News of God eBook

as he did into the penitent thief; and let us hope (we cannot of course be certain, but we may hope) that God will take care of it, and make it conquer, as he did in the penitent thief.  Let us hope that God’s light will conquer their darkness; God’s strength conquer their weakness; God’s peace, their violence; God’s heavenly grace their earthly passions.  Let us hope for them, I say.

When we hear, as we often hear, people say, ’What a noble-hearted man that is after all, and yet he is going to the devil!’ let us remember the penitent thief and have hope.  Who would have seemed to have gone to the devil more hopelessly than that poor thief when he hung upon the cross?  And yet the devil did not have him.  There was in him a seed of good, and of eternal life, which the devil had not trampled out; and that seed flowered and bore fruit upon the very cross in noble thoughts and words and deeds.  Why may it not be so with others?  True, they may receive the due reward of their deeds.  They may end in shame and misery, like the penitent thief.  Perhaps it may be good for them to do so.  If a man will sow the wind, it may be good for him to reap the whirlwind, and so find out that sowing the wind will not prosper.  The penitent thief did so.  As the proverb is, he sowed the gallows-acorn, poor wretch, and he reaped the gallows-tree; but that gallows-tree taught him to confess God’s justice, and his own sin, and so it may teach others.

Yes, let us hope; and when we see some one whom we love, and cannot help loving, bringing misery on himself by his own folly, let us hope and pray that the day may come to him when, in the midst of his misery, all that better nature in him shall come out once and for all, and he shall cry out of the deep to Christ, ’I only receive the due reward of my deeds; I have earned my shame; I have earned my sorrow.  Lord, I have deserved it all.  I look back on wasted time and wasted powers.  I look round on ruined health, ruined fortune, ruined hopes, and confess that I deserve it all.  But thou hast endured more than this for me, though thou hast deserved nothing, and hast done nothing amiss.  Thou hast done nothing amiss by me.  Thou hast been fair to me, and given me a fair chance; and more than that, thou hast endured all for me.  For me thou didst suffer; for me thou hast been crucified; and me thou hast been trying to seek and to save all through the years of my vanity.  Perhaps I have not wearied out thy love; perhaps I have not conquered thy patience.  I will take the blessed chance.  I will still cast myself upon thy love.  Lord, I have deserved all my misery; yet, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

Oh, my friends, let us hope that that prayer will go up, even out of the wildest heart, in God’s good time; and that it will not go up in vain.

SERMON XXXII.  THE TEMPER OF CHRIST

Philippians ii. 4.