. Like him from whom I have derived some of
my sentiments, I have found that they tend to make me a happier man.
The Christian, like yourself, looks upon every thing with a jaundiced or
distorted eye, and is apt to underrate the claims and pleasures of
this present scene of our existence. I can truly say that I now enter
into them much more keenly than I could when I was an orthodox
Christian. I can say with Mr. Newman, I now, with deliberate approval,
'love the world and the things of the world.' The New Testament, as
Mr. Newman says, bids us watch perpetually, not knowing whether the
Lord will return at cock-crowing or midday; 'that the only thing
worth spending one's energies on, is the forwarding of men's salvation.'
Now I must say with him, that, while I believed this, I acted an
eccentric and unprofitable part."

"Only then?" said Harrington. "You were fortunate."

"He says, that to teach the certain speedy destruction of earthly things,
as the New Testament does, is to cut the sinews of all earthly progress;
to declare against intellect and imagination, against industrial and
social advancement."

My gravity was hardly equal to the task of listening to the first
part of Mr. Fellowes's speech. To hear that the common and just
reproach against all mankind, but especially against all Christians,
of taking too keen an interest in the present, was in a large measure
at least founded upon a mistake; to find, in fact, that there was some
danger of an excessive exaggeration of the claims of the future,
which required a corrective; that the Christian world, owing to the
above pernicious doctrine, might possibly evince too faint a relish
for the pleasures or too diminished an estimate for the advantages of
the present life; that, their "treasure being in heaven," it was not
impossible but "their heart" might be too much there also,--there,
perhaps, when it was imperatively demanded in the counting-house, on
the hustings, at the mart or the theatre; all this, being, as I say,
so notoriously contrary to ordinary opinion and experience, seemed to
me so exquisitely ludicrous that I could hardly help bursting into
laughter, especially as I imagined one of our new "spiritual" doctors
ascending the pulpit under the new dispensation, to indulge in
exhortations to a keener chase, of this world, and "the things of
this world." I found afterwards similar thoughts were passing through
Harrington's mind, rendered more whimsical by t