" with them, to its beatitude for evermore.

84. Now, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of workmanship or
material, is, indeed, so far worse than these thefts by dishonest
acquisition, that there is no possible excuse for it on the ground of
self-deception; while many speculative thefts are committed by persons
who really mean to do no harm, but think the system on the whole a
fair one, and do the best they can in it for themselves. But in the
real fact of the crime, when consciously committed, in the numbers
reached by its injury, in the degree of suffering it causes to those
whom it ruins, in the baseness of its calculated betrayal of implicit
trust, in the yet more perfect vileness of the obtaining such trust
by misrepresentation, only that it may be betrayed, and in the
impossibility that the crime should be at all committed, except by
persons of good position and large knowledge of the world--what manner
of theft is so wholly unpardonable, so inhuman, so contrary to every
law and instinct which binds or animates society?

And then consider farther, how many of the carriages that glitter in
our streets are driven, and how many of the stately houses that gleam
among our English fields are inhabited, by this kind of thief!

85. I happened to be reading this morning (29th March) some portions
of the Lent services, and I came to a pause over the familiar words,
"And with Him they crucified two thieves." Have you ever considered
(I speak to you now as a professing Christian), why, in the
accomplishment of the "numbering among transgressors," the
transgressors chosen should have been especially thieves--not
murderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross violence? Do
you observe how the sin of theft is again and again indicated as the
chiefly antagonistic one to the law of Christ? "This he said, not that
he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag"
(of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a leader of sedition, and a
murderer besides,--(that the popular election might be in all respects
perfect)--yet St. John, in curt and conclusive account of him, fastens
again on the theft. "Then cried they all again saying, Not this man,
but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." I believe myself the reason
to be that theft is indeed, in its subtle forms, the most complete and
excuseless of human crimes. Sins of violence usually are committed
under sudden or oppressive temptation: they may be the