Let us take another example. I have more than once called your attention to the story of the thief on the cross. There were really two of them. To one of them Jesus promised paradise. What became of the other? Both men were malefactors, but one of them believed in Jesus and became a saint at the last moment. Can anything be more immoral? Can anything be more arbitrary or fatalistic? If we wished to show that it made no difference how people lived, and that the only thing that saves is faith, which is as effective at the eleventh hour as at the first--we could not have invented a better argument than is furnished by this story in the gospels. Observe that the man magically saved, as this malefactor was, becomes meaner and more selfish after he is converted than he was before. He imagines that God is just waiting yonder to welcome him, and that heaven is being put in order for his reception,--while his crime sinks into a mere nothing in his eyes. Like the thief on the cross, he has not a single thought of his victims--not a single pang of remorse for the suffering he has caused. Conversion has made him callous. Whether his victims are saved or damned, he does not care. All his thoughts are centered upon his own future happiness and glory. But suppose the thief on the cross had said to Jesus when the latter invited him to paradise: "But, what about my victims, Lord? The men and women and children I have ruined and sent to their doom! How can I be happy in heaven, with my victims in hell--to whom I gave no chance in the last hour to believe and be saved? Hanging on the same cross with you, Lord, has made my heart a little more tender, and has awakened my conscience. I have become a better man since I met you. Let me then go where I can atone in some real way for my crimes. Let my heaven consist in serving the people I have wronged, until we can be saved together." If Jesus had only provoked _that_ for a reply from the converted thief! Compare with this puffed-up vanity and meanness of the malefactor converted by miracle, the glorious behavior of Othello in the presence of death. Jesus' company made the thief on the cross contemptible; Shakespeare's touch made Othello divine. As he is about to leap into the arms of death, Othello is not thinking of his soul, or of his future; his one and only thought is of his victim. He does not whine in the ears of heaven, nor does he beg to be saved from the punishment he deserves. He is no coward trying to sneak into heaven while his Desdemona lies in her blood at his feet. Listen to the words the great poet speaks by his mouth: Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!