preached by the good little antiquarian who elaborately proved, and
pathetically enforced on reluctant auditors, the duty of a proper
devotion to the festivities of the season. However, every one must
like the complexion of your theology, though its counsels on this
subject do not seem to me of urgent necessity."

"Perhaps," said Fellowes, "I ought rather to have said that
Christians inculcate, theoretically, a contempt of the present life,
while, practically, they enter as keenly into its pleasures as the
'worldling,'"--uttering the last word with an approach to a sneer.

"You may be sure," said Harrington, "I shall leave the Christian to
defend himself; but if the case be as you now represent it, your new
religious system seems to be superfluous as a corrective of any
tendencies to Christian asceticism, and can do nothing for us. It
appears that your Reformation was begun and ended before your
'spiritual' Luthers appeared."

"Not so," said Fellowes, "for the eagerness with which the Christian
pursues the world, while he condemns it, is, as Mr. Greg has
recently insisted, gigantic hypocrisy': it is founded on a lie. They
say this world is not to be the great object for which we are to
live and in which we are to find our happiness; we say it is: they
say it is not our 'country' or our 'home'; we say it is: they say
that we are to live supremely for the future, and in it; we say,
for and in the present; that if there be a future world (of which
many doubt, and I, for one, have not been able to make up my mind),
we are to hope to be happy there, but that the main business is to
secure our happiness here,--to embellish, adorn, and enjoy this our
only certain dwelling-place,--and, in fact, to live supremely for