The supreme hour of Christ’s passion was devoted to two convicts. Let us stand a moment around that cross and hear the message it speaks to us. Does it not say, “The law must be executed”? for Jesus refused to accept the challenge to come down from the cross, and one of the malefactors by His side said they were receiving a just penalty for their crimes. Does it not also say, “There is redemption for the penitent thief”? for when one cried, “Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom,” the answer came swifter than light and sweeter than the murmur of the evening zephyrs, “To-day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.” Christ gave them both the same chance. One died in stubborn rebellion and was lost. The other turned in humble supplication and was instantly transformed from a criminal to a Christian. When heaven lifted up her gates for the King of Glory to come in, and He swept through the celestial portals, He took with Him the penitent thief as a first sheaf of the harvest of prison redemption. The great poets have as their theme the loss and redemption of the immortal soul. Homer sings the wrath of Peleus’ son in the “Iliad,” and shows how one sin destroyed a building that many virtues support. Virgil sings the wandering of Anchises in the “Æneid,” and describes how youth sails afar, while maturity seeks out ports of peace. Dante sings of the soul’s stain by sin in the “Divine Comedy,” and preaches its purification and perfection. Milton sings of man’s first disobedience and the fruit of the forbidden tree in the “Paradise Lost,” and “justifies the ways of God to man” in the victory of “Paradise Regained.” Tennyson sings of the error that ruins the soul in the “Idylls of the King” and beholds the Divine Friend, whose ceaseless efforts recover the undimmed glory. Victor Hugo sings of the sin which defaces the divine image and which sears the conscience in “Les Miserables,” and exhibits the melting mercy and lasting love which recover the pristine splendor. That book is unique among the world’s literature in showing that in the heart of the meanest man is a nucleus of good around which a noble character may be grown. Victor Hugo could never have written this immortal work had he not known Jesus Christ. Jean Valjean, the youthful criminal, after nineteen years, emerged from the prison with a heart as cold as marble and a will as hard as granite. Tides of revenge tossed through his soul like billows in a storm. Society has robbed him, and now he will rob society. The inhumanity of man has all but quenched the last spark of the divine within him.