and all, there it is, in our own lives, in the lives of our sons and daughters, and in the lives of multitudes of other men and other men’s sons and daughters besides ours.  Every day you will be taken in, and you will stand by and see other men taken in with the present penny for the future pound:  and with the poor pelting hundred under your eye for the full, far-extending, and ever-enriching shire.  Lucifer is always abroad pressing on us in his malice the penny on the spot, for the pound which he keeps out of sight; he dazzles our eyes with the gain of the hundred till we gnash our teeth at the loss of the shire.

   ’He hath in sooth good cause for endless grief,
   Who, for the love of thing that lasteth not,
   Despoils himself for ever of THAT LOVE.’

3.  ’What also if we join with those two another two of ours, Mr. Sweet-world and Mr. Present-good, namely, for they are two men full of civility and cunning.  Let these engage in this business for us, and let Mansoul be taken up with much business, and if possible with much pleasure, and this is the way to get ground of them.  Let us but cumber and occupy and amuse Mansoul sufficiently, and they will make their castle a warehouse for goods instead of a garrison for men of war.’  This diabolical advice was highly applauded all through hell till all the lesser devils, while setting themselves to carry it out, gnashed their teeth with envy and malice at Lucifer for having thought of this masterpiece and for having had it received with such loud acclamation.  ‘Only get them,’ so went on that so able, so well-envied, and so well-hated devil, ’let us only get those fribble sinners for a night at a time to forget their misery.  And it will not cost us much to do that.  Only let us offer them in one another’s houses a supper, a dance, a pipe, a newspaper full of their own shame, a tale full of their own folly, a silly song, and He who loved them with an everlasting love will soon see of the travail of His soul in them!’ Yes, my fellow-sinners, Lucifer and his infernal crew know us and despise us and entrap us at very little trouble, till He who travailed for us on the tree covers His face in heaven and weeps over us.  As long as we remember our misery, all the mind, and all the malice, and all the sleeplessness in hell cannot touch a hair of our head.  But when by any emissary and opportunity either from earth around us or from hell beneath us we for another night forget our misery, it is all over with us.  And yet, to tell the truth, we never can quite forget our misery.  We are too miserable ever to forget our misery.  In the full steam of Lucifer’s best-spread supper, amid the shouts of laughter and the clapping of hands, and all the outward appearance of a complete forgetfulness of our misery, yet it is not so.  It is far from being so.  Our misery is far too deep-seated for all the devil’s drugs.  Only, to give Lucifer his due, we do sometimes, under him, so get out of touch with the