“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 the recollection that, during college life, his friend (though very far from vicious) had certainly never seemed to take any deficient interest in the affairs of this world, nor to exhibit any predilection for an ascetic life.  Indeed, he acknowledged that, after all, he could not sympathize with Mr. Newman’s extreme sensitiveness in relation to this matter. (See Phases, p. 205.)

Harrington answered, with proper gravity, “I am glad to find that any undue austerity of character—­of which, however, I assure you, upon my honor, I never suspected you—­has received so invaluable a corrective.  Still, it is obvious to remark, that, if the chief effect of this new style of religion is to abate any excessive antipathy which the New Testament has fostered, or was likely to foster, to the attractions of this life, it has, I conceive, an easy task.  I never remarked in Christians any superfluous contempt of the present world or its pleasures; any indication of an extravagant admiration of any sublimer objects of pursuit.  In truth, the tendencies of human nature, as it appears to me, are so strong the other way, that the strongest language of a hundred New Testaments would be little heeded.  Your corrective is something like that of a moralist who should seriously prove that man was to take care that his appetites and passions are duly indulged, of which ethical writers