“T know,” said he, “I have given you a hard task. We can all gabble the Lord’s prayer, but how few have ever prayed it:! But at least try, my poor soul, and I will set yon an example. I will pray for my brother Robinson and my brother Hawes, and I shall pray for them all the more warmly, that at present one is a blaspheming thief and the other a pitiless blockhead.” The next day being Sunday, Mr Eden preached two sermons that many will remember all their lives. The first was against theft and all the shades of dishonesty. I give a few of his topics: the dry bones he covered with flesh and beauty. The tendency of theft was to destroy all moral and social good; for were it once to prevail so far as to make property insecure, industry would lose heart, enterprise and frugality be crushed, and at last the holiest turn thieves in self-defence. Nearly every act of theft had a bane ful influence on the person robbed. Here he quoted by name instances of industrious, frugal persons, whose sav ings having been stolen, they had lost courage and good habits of years’ standing, and had ended ill. Then he gave them a simile. Those great crimes arc like great trunk railways. They create many smaller ones: some flow' into them, some out of them. Drunk enness generally precedes an act of theft; drunkenness always follows it; lies flow from it in s!roams, and per jury rushes to its defence. It breeds, too, other vices that pun ish 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 in this crime is wasted in others. The folly of theft; its ill econo my. What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the thief-acuteness, watchfulness, sagacity, determination, tact. These virtues, coupled with integrity, enrich thou sands every year. How many thieves do they enrich? How many thieves arc a shilling a year the better off for the hundreds of pounds that come dis honestly into their hands? “In gaol (Mr Lcpel’s), there is now a family that have stolen, first and last, property worth .£IB,OOO. The entire possessions of this family are now- two pair of shoes. 