August 10

"And he said, Jesus, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom."—Luke 23:42 (R.V.).

"TWAS a thief," Robert Browning writes, "said the last kind word to Christ." And what an overflowing reward his service had!

In the morning the robber was out of Christ—far from God and far from righteousness, the helpless captive of sin, the child of despair and death.

At noon the robber was in Christ—remembered graciously by the Saviour of the lost, redeemed with an everlasting redemption, endowed with the new heart and the right spirit.

In the evening the robber was with Christ—gazing on the lilies which bud and bloom in paradise, safe at home with his good Shepherd and his stainless King.

What a crowded and memorable day this was in his history! So much was pressed into these few hours. Such a glorious and unprecedented transition they brought—from the "land that's full of pits and snares and that's desolate and dry" to the "garden full of flowers, all planted row by row."

Out of Christ, in Christ, with Christ—nature, grace, glory—in the far country, and then under the Saviour's wings, and then beside the Lord on His throne: are these the three stages in my spiritual biography? are these the three halting-places in my pilgrim march? I know the first only too well. Am I growing more and more familiar with the second? Is it my joy to look forward to the third? "I ask not the favour accorded to Paul," Copernicus said, "I seek not the grace bestowed upon Peter, but I beg the mercy granted to the thief on the cross."