e a
quicker relish for the pleasure of sin?

_Will._ All this is true enough, indeed; but I never saw it in this
light before.

_Stock._ As I passed by the Grayhound last night, in my way to my
evening's walk in the fields, I caught this one verse of a song
which the club were singing:

"Bring the flask, the music bring,
Joy shall quickly find us;
Drink, and dance, and laugh, and sing,
And cast dull care behind us."

When I got into the fields, I could not forbear comparing this song
with the second lesson last Sunday evening at church; these were the
words: _Take heed lest at any time your heart be overcharged with
drunkenness, and so that day come upon you unawares, for as a snare
shall it come upon all them that are on the face of the earth._

_Will._ Why, to be sure, if the second lesson was right, the song
must be wrong.

_Stock._ I ran over in my mind also a comparison between such songs
as that which begins with

"Drink, and drive care away,"

with those injunctions of holy writ, _Watch and pray, therefore,
that you enter not into temptation_; and again, _Watch and pray that
you may escape all these things_. I say I compared this with the
song I allude to,

"Drink and drive care away,
Drink and be merry;
You'll ne'er go the faster
To the Stygian ferry."

I compared this with that awful admonition of Scripture how to pass
the time. _Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not
provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof._

_Will._ I am afraid then, master, you would not much approve of what
I used to think a very pretty song, which begins with,

"A plague on those musty old lubbers
Who teach us to fast and to think."

_Stock._ Will, what would you think of any one who should sit down
and write a book or a song to abuse the clergy?

_Will._ Why I should think he was a very wicked fellow, and I hope
no one would look into such a book, or sing such a song.

_Stock._ And yet it must certainly be the clergy who are scoffed at
in that verse, it being their professed business to teach us to
think and be serious.

_Will._ Ay, master, and now you have opened my eyes, I think I can
make some of those comparisons myself between the spirit of the
Bible, and the spirit of these songs.

"Bring the flask, the goblet bring,"

won't stand very well in company with the th