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 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