Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/128

114 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