Here he quoted by name instances of industrious, frugal persons, whose savings having been stolen, they had lost courage and good habits of years’ standing, and had ended ill.  Then he gave them a simile.  These great crimes are like great trunk railways.  They create many smaller ones.  Some flow into them, some out of them.  Drunkenness generally precedes an act of theft; drunkenness always follows it; lies flow from it in streams, and perjury rushes to its defense.

It breeds, too, other vices that punish it, but never cure it—­prodigality and general loose living.  The thief is never the richer by this vile act which impoverishes his victim; for the money obtained by this crime is wasted in others.  The folly of theft; its ill economy.  What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the thief; acuteness, watchfulness, sagacity, determination, tact.  These virtues, coupled with integrity, enrich thousands every year.  How many thieves do they enrich?  How many thieves are a shilling a year the better for the hundreds of pounds that come dishonestly into their hands.

“In ——­ Jail (Mr. Lepel’s), there is now a family that have stolen, first and last, property worth eighteen thousand pounds.  The entire possessions of this family are now two pair of shoes.  The clothes they stand in belong to Government; their own had to be burned, so foul were they.  Eighteen thousand pounds had they stolen—­to be beggars; and this is the rule, not the exception, as you all know.  Why is this your fate and your end?  Because a mightier power than man’s has determined that thieving shall not thrive.  The curse of God is upon theft!”

Then came life-like pictures of the honest man and the thief.  The one with an eye that faced you, with a conscious dignity and often a cheerful countenance; the other with a shrinking eye, a conscious meanness, and never with a smile from the heart; sordid, sly and unhappy—­for theft is misery.  No wonder this crime degrades a man when it degrades the very animals; Look at a dog who has stolen.  Before this, when he met his master or any human friend he used to run up to greet them with wagging tail and sparkling eye.  Now see him.  At sight of any man he crawls meanly away, with cowering figure and eye askant, the living image of the filthy sin he has committed.  He feels he has no longer a right to greet a man, for he is a thief.

And here the preacher gathered images, facts and satire, and hurled a crushing hailstorm of scorn upon the sordid sin.  Then he attacked the present situation (his invariable custom).

“Not all the inmates of a jail were equally guilty on their arrival there.  A large proportion of felons were orphans or illegitimate children; others, still more unfortunate, were the children of criminals who had taught them crime from their cradles.  Great excuses were to be made for the general mass of criminals; excuses that the ignorant, shallow world could not be expected to make; but the balance of the Sanctuary is not like the world’s clumsy balance; it weighs all men to a hair.  Excuses will be made for many of you in heaven up to a certain point.  And what is that point?  The day of your entrance into prison.  But now plead no more the ill example of parents and friends, for here you are cut off from it.