true consolation for our misery that, night after night, through cumber, through pursuit of pleasure, through the time being taken up with these and other like things, we do so far forget our misery as to lie down without dealing with it; but only to have it awaken us, and take our arm as its own for another miserable day.  Yes; though never completely successful, yet this masterpiece of hell is sufficiently successful for Satan’s subtlest purposes; which are, not to make us forget our misery, but to make us put it away from us at the natural and proper hour for facing it and for dealing with it in the only proper and successful way.  But, wholly, any night, or even partially for a few nights at a time, to forget our misery—­no, with all thy subtlety of intellect and with all thy hell-filled heart, O Lucifer, that is to us impossible!  Forget our misery!  O devil of devils, no!  Bless God, that can never be with us!  Our misery is too deep, too dreadful, too acute, too all-consuming ever to be forgotten by us even for an hour.  Our misery is too terrible for thee, with all thy overthrown intellect and all thy malice-filled heart, ever to understand!  Didst thou for one midnight hour taste it, and so understand it, then there would be the same hope for thee that, I bless God, there still is for me!

Let us bend all our strength and all our wit to this, went on Lucifer, to make their castle a warehouse instead of a garrison.  Let us set ourselves and all our allies, he explained to the duller-witted among the devils, to make their hearts a shop,—­some of them, you know, are shopkeepers; a bank,—­some of them are bankers; a farm,—­some of them are farmers; a study,—­some of them are students; a pulpit,—­some of them like to preach; a table,—­some of them are gluttons; a drawing-room,—­some of them are busybodies who forget their own misery in retailing other people’s misery from house to house.  Be wise as serpents, said the old serpent; attend, each several fallen angel of you, to his own special charge.  Study your man.  Get to the bottom of your man.  Follow him about; never let him out of your sight; be sure before you begin, be sure you have the joint in his harness, the spot in his heel, the chink in his wall full in your eye.  I do not surely need to tell you not to scatter our snares for souls at random, he went on.  Give the minister his study Bible, the student his classic, the merchant his ledger, the glutton his well-dressed dish and his elect year of wine, the gossip her sweet secret, and the flirt her fool.  Study them till they are all naked and open to your sharp eyes.  Find out what best makes them forget even for one night their misery and ply them with that.  If I ever see that soul I have set thee over on his knees on account of his misery I shall fling thee on the spot into the bottomless pit.  And if any of you shall anywhere discover a man—­and there are such men—­a man who forgets his misery through always thinking and speaking about it, only keep him in his pulpit, and off his knees, and no man so safe for hell as he.  There are fools, and there are double-dyed fools, and that man is the chief of them.  Give him his fill of sin and misery; let him luxuriate himself in sin and misery; only, keep him there, and I will not forget thy most excellent service to me.