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Scriptures, nor attend divine worship; that he had no closet for prayer, and no Sabbath school nor Bible class instruction. It is not improbable that his parents were irreligious in their feelings, conduct, and conversation; and that the statutes, the Sabbath, the worship, ordinances, and people of God were disesteemed by them, and hence by their son. Temptations to sin were, it is likely, multiplied about his path, so that he sat in the seat of the scorner, and went with her whose steps take hold on hell. It is not strange that he was ruined. For, parents, the children committed to your care may be as well tempered as any since the Fall; and you may have them baptized into the name of the Holy Trinity; you may store their minds with sacred texts and divine hymns; you may take them to your closet, and cause them to kneel by your side, and lay your hand on their head while you pray; you may warn and entreat and persuade, ten thousand times, with a heart full, even to tears; you may place them in the care of devoted teachers; and having done this, send them from you to some other village or country, with a Bible in their trunk and a letter of advice in their pocket, and accompany them with your supplications, and send after them serious and heavenly messages by almost every mail; and after all, you must either be ignorant of the world they are in, or grow indifferent to their welfare, or feel an unwonted confidence in the oversight which a covenant-keeping God will take of them, else you will lie awake till midnight through apprehension that your son will become a Barabbas, and your daughter a Mary Magdalene! Still, after all this fidelity on your part-the Lord grant it may not be less than has been supposed-there is ground of hope that your sons will be as olive plants, and your daughters as polished stones, but this hope is not founded on their goodness nor on yours, but on the covenant of a faithful God showing mercy to thousands of them that love him and keep his commandments. It is no wonder that the thief was ruined; presuming, as we may, that he was a neglected, spoiled child. And that he was so, is easy to be believed from our acquaintance with men like him. For, some time since, it was my lot to spend a portion of the Sabbath for three years in the instruction of prisoners; and they were, as far as could be ascertained, generally men whose religious education was much if not entirely neglected in their youth.

Let us now return from this digression to the dying malefactor. He had broken the law, had received a most ignominious sentence and was suffering its execution. How many times he had transgressed, we know not; how much he had suffered from the stings of a guilty conscience, we know not; how many hearts of friends his conduct had riven, how many hopes blasted is not in the record; but one thing, worth more to him than the universe, we do find there, namely "Lord, remember me, when thou comest into thy kingdom."

WHEN THOU COMEST INTO THY KINGDOM!

He set a time.

We should expect to hear him say as his companion did, "If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us; thou art in the same condemnation; remember us, therefore, while hanging here; ease our pains; let us go down from these crosses. But

of this he says nothing. He has a larger request; so large, one would think he had met with that text, "Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it." Else how could he imagine that the Son of God would be mindful of him just at the moment of completing the great work of redemption on which the eyes of Heaven and hell had been so intently fixed, and returning home to his Father's house and bosom, escorted by the twenty thousand chariots of God and twelve legions of angels, and 'overwhelmed with hallelujahs and hosannas, as the everlasting gates lifted up their heads that the King of glory might come in. How, amidst this throng, this joy, and the unnumbered recollections which came like a flood into the Redeemer's soul, could he, a poor, wretched, despicable and guilty thief think to be, and pray to be remembered at such a moment, by such a personage-a personage in whose sight whole nations are dust? It would seem to be unparalleled presumption, and yet it was not presuming too far-for his stained soul was washed white in the blood then falling from Immanuel's veins, the angels sung Heaven's anthem for a penitent sinner; and that same sinner went that same afternoon to the realms of the blessed whither Jesus himself had just gone; and there he was welcome, and there he has been welcome for more than eighteen hundred years, a king and a priest unto God, not for an instant forgotten by his Savior amidst the multiplied cares of a universe whose government rests on his shoulders! Oh! the compassion of God, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

Let us now for one moment glance at the ground we have gone over. In the first place, we found the transactions of Calvary interesting beyond all parallel. In the second, we found the penitent thief was not guilty of idolatry in praying to his fellow sufferer, the Lamb who was slain, because he was that wonderful being, "God manifest in the flesh." In the third place, we found that the remembrance for which the dying malefactor petitioned, though a great favor, was not too much to be expected from Him who came into the world to save sinners, even the chief. In the fourth place, we supposed this criminal's moral and religious education to have been defective, both because such is the fact with that class of persons in our day, and because, too, God is pleased to crown the fidelity of parents with his blessing. In the last place, we spoke of the return of Christ's spirit to Heaven, and of the thief's departure a short time after; and there they have been, and there they are now, and there they ever shall be, world without end. Who of us would not be there also? That we may be prepared at length to join them, allow me to remark,

1. We cannot be saved without a knowledge of Christ crucified. The thief's soul had been lost if he had not met with the Savior at

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the place of execution, or had not in some way been led to an acquaintance with him who was "lifted up." The immortals in this land, who know little or nothing of Jesus, are in extreme danger of perishing; and the millions of heathen are in a darkness that may be felt. "Arise, O Sun of Righteousness, arise." 2. We must have faith in Christ's ability and willingness to save, and feel our need of his almighty help. The multitudes on Calvary had opportunity to be acquainted with Christ's character and their own, but they did not believe, and were not saved. The thief believed and was saved. We have often heard of Jesus. Do we believe in Him? If not, we are on the verge of perdition; for he that believeth not is condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on him.

3. Jesus saves the humble and penitent, however great may be their guilt. He came to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance; he came to seek and save the lost. His blood is a fountain which cleanses from all sin.

"The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day;

And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away;"

for "this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."

"Dear dying Lamb! thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,

Till all the ransomed church of God

Be saved, to sin no more."

4. The thief is the only instance in the Bible of conversion at the hour of death, that none should despair, and that none should presume.

5. God is a sovereign. One thief was taken, the other left. And what if he save some of you and leave others to perish? Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

6. The last remark is, men err in their efforts to be remembered or immortalized. So universal and strong is the desire of being remembered, that God employs it as a motive to a righteous life, when he says, "The just shall be in everlasting remembrance." For it pains us to believe that in a few years the wave of oblivion will roll over our memory and leave not a wreck behind. Hence youth circulate their place-books to give and receive memorials of each other. May I ask my young friends, are your names in the book of God's remembrance, and do you wish them written there? We write our names in the Family Bible that they may be handed down to the millennial day; but turn first to the twenty-third chapter of Luke, the forty-second verse. Have we adopted and offered as our own that prayer, "Lord remember me?" Are our names enrolled in the Family Register of Heaven; and do we

wish them written there? And you, who obtain the portrait or miniature of your friend, that it may be hung in your hall or worn. at you heart, tell me, do you carry the image and likeness of God in your heart, and is your name engraven on the palms of his hands? And to those who are ambitious of numerous acquaintances and friends, that their memory may fill a large place, let me say, One friend is enough if that friend be God; and for the truth of this I appeal to the glorified thief, was not that one Friend of yours enough for you? Hearer, have you such a friend? And have you not seen mortals lying on a bed from which they never arose, give to the dear ones weeping around them some keepsake, with the injunction "Remember me?" But do you recollect whether they committed their soul to Christ with the prayer, "Lord, remember me." One writes a book, or plants a tree, or erects a pillar, or builds a city, for a memorial, but praying for no remembrance in Heaven, his name is neither in the book of life, nor on the tree of life, nor on any pillar or wall in the city of life. My friends, are yours there? Those who would be remembered for ever must be good. Let them espouse the cause of the poor, the neglected, the oppressed and the dying. Jesus secured for himself an eternal weight of glory in giving his labors and his blood for the salvation of the lost; and the disciples who in this resemble their Master shall be with him to behold and reflect his glory through infinity and to all eternity.

Have we, permit me to ask again, offered the prayer of the thief? We are sinners as well as he; do we pray as well? Have we been sensible of our guilt and danger? Has the plague of our hearts been seen and lamented; have the terrors of the Lord taken hold of us, and the arrows of the Almighty drunk up our spirits? In our distress have we prayed to him and found pardon and peace? Those who are prayerless now while on earth, may desire hereafter that God would forget them. He does not, however, forget even his enemies; his eye is, and will be, on them, his voice will terrify them, and his hand fill the cup of their woe to overflowing, as they are dashed on the rocks of dark damnation. remembers those who forget him.

God

Let it be our daily prayer that the Lord would remember us in mercy and in our every need. When we walk in darkness and see no light; when temptations from without assail us like a tempest, and our corruptions within rage like a storm; when we tread on thorns and the old serpent wraps his folds around us, Lord, remember us, then, for thou wast thyself tempted and art able to succor. When our friends betray and forsake us, and those most dear are dying and dead; when we are homeless strangers in a strange land; when our garments wax old, and the last of our oil and meal are mingled, and the sticks gathered to bake it, that we may eat it and die; Lord, remember us, then, for thou wast thyself the homeless, destitute, and forsaken Man of Sorrows. And when we reach the end of life's journey, when death meets us on

his pale horse, and presses his cold hand on our hearts till they can beat no longer, and our bodies return to the clay, and our spirits to God who gave them, O Lord, remember us in that trying hour, for thou wast thyself "cut off out of the land of the living." And when that morn rises in which the sleep of the dead is broken by the archangel's trumpet, and the funeral knell of this world is tolling on the shores of eternity; when we stand before the great white throne subjected, for every action, word and thought, to the searching eye of the omniscient and holy God, and the assembled nations tremble to hear the dread decision which consigns them each to Heaven or Hell; then, O Lord, remember thy unworthy servants with the favor which said, "To-day shalt thou be with

me in Paradise."

SERMON CCCCXLI.

BY REV. JACOB LITTLE,

GRANVILLE, OHIO.

OBEDIENCE.

Children obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise. That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And fathers provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.— EPH. VI., 1-4.

RIGHT and obligation correspond to each other. If children are under obligation to obey, it is the right as well as the duty of parents to command. The text enjoins the duty of obedience. Parents are directed to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The admonition of the Lord, is such instruction and reproof as is agreeable to the divine will.

ture of the Lord is that discipline or government which the Lord requires.

Before giving reasons why parents should exact, and children render, obedience, I will notice three preliminary questions:

1. On whom is this duty of requiring obedience binding?

The text makes it binding on parents; and if on them, by implication, it is binding on teachers, masters, guardians, and all such as for the time being occupy the place of parents. If the duty of obedience is binding on children, it is binding on scholars, appren

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