Excerpt from Questions and Answers MARY BAKER EDDY          What did Jesus mean when he said to the dying thief, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise"?          Paradisaical rest from physical agony would come to the criminal, if the dream of dying should startle him from the dream of suffering. The paradise of Spirit would come to Jesus, in a spiritual sense of Life and power. Christ Jesus lived and reappeared. He was too good to die; for goodness is immortal. The thief was not equal to the demands of the hour; but sin was destroying itself, and had already begun to die, — as the poor thief's prayer for help indicated. The dying malefactor and our Lord were inevitably separated through Mind. The thief's body, as matter, must dissolve into its native nothingness; whereas the body of the holy Spirit of Jesus was eternal. That day the thief would be with Jesus only in a finite and material sense of relief; while our Lord would soon be rising to the supremacy of Spirit, working out, even in the silent tomb, those wonderful demonstrations of divine power, in which none could equal his glory.   Excerpt from "Questions and Answers" Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 70

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