Finally. Here is the Cross as revealing and opening the true Paradise.--'This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.' We have no concern at present with the many subtle inferences as to the state of the dead, and as to the condition of our Lord's human spirit before the Resurrection, which have been drawn from these words. To me they do seem fairly to bear the broad and single conclusion that the spirits of the saved do enter at death into a state of conscious presence with their Saviour, and therefore of joy and felicity. But beyond this we have no firm ground for going. It is of more practical worth to note that the penitent's vague prayer is answered, and over-answered. He asks, 'When Thou comest'--whensoever that may be--'remember me.' 'I shall stand afar off; do not let me be utterly forgotten.' Christ answers--'Remember thee! thou shalt be _with Me_, close to My side. Remember thee _when_ I come!--_this day_ shalt thou be with Me.'
And what a contrast that is--the conscious blessedness rushing in close upon the heels of the momentary darkness of death. At the one moment there hangs the thief writhing in mortal agony; the wild shouts of the fierce mob at his feet are growing faint upon his ear; the city spread out at his feet, and all the familiar sights of earth are growing dim to his filmy eye. The soldier's spear comes, the legs are broken, and in an instant there hangs a relaxed corpse; and the spirit, the spirit--is where? Ah! how far away; released from all its sin and its sore agony, struggling up at once into such strange divine enlargement, a new star swimming into the firmament of heaven, a new face before the throne of God, another sinner redeemed from earth! The conscious immediate blessedness of the departed--be he what he may, be his life whatsoever it may have been--who at last, dark, sinful, standing with one foot on the verge of eternity, and poising himself for the flight, flings himself into the arms of Christ--the everlasting blessedness, the Christ-presence and the Christ-gladness, that is the message that the robber leaves to us from his cross. Paradise is opened to us again. The Cross is the true 'tree of life.' The flaming cherubim, and the sword that turneth every way, are gone, and the broad road into the city, the Paradise of God, with all its beauties and all its peaceful joy--a better Paradise, 'a statelier Eden,' than that which we have lost, is flung open to us for ever.
Do not trust a death-bed repentance, my brother. I have stood by many a death-bed, and few indeed have they been where I could have believed that the man was in a condition physically (to say nothing of anything else) clearly to see and grasp the message of the Gospel. There is no limit to the mercy. I know that God's mercy is boundless. I know that 'whilst there is life there is hope.' I know that a man, going--swept down that great Niagara--if, before his little skiff tilts over into the awful rapids, he can make one great bound with all his strength, and reach the solid ground--I know he may be saved. It is an awful risk to run. A moment's miscalculation, and skiff and voyager alike are whelming in the green chaos below, and come up mangled into nothing, far away down yonder upon the white turbulent foam. '_One_ was saved upon the Cross,' as the old divines used to tell us, 'that none might despair; and only one, that none might presume.' _'Now_ is the accepted time, and _now_ is the day of salvation!'