the present. Such is the constitution of human nature."

"I shall not be at the trouble," replied Harrington, "to defend the
inconsistencies of the Christian; but your system, I fear, is
essentially a brutal theology, and, I am certain, a false philosophy.
All the analogies of our nature cry out against it. All, even with
regard to the 'present,' as you call this life, man is perpetually
living for and in the future. This 'present' (minute as it is) is
itself broken up into many futures, and it is these which man truly
lives for, when he is not a beast; and not for the passing hour. It
is not to-day, it is always to-morrow, on which his eye is fixed; and
his ever-repining nature perpetually confesses its impatient want of
something (it knows not what) to come. The child lives for his youth,
and the youth is discontented till he is a man; every attainment and
every possession pails as soon as it is reached, and we still sigh for
something that we have not. It is simply in analogy with all this that
the Christian and every other religion says (absurdly, if you will,
but certainly with a deeper knowledge of human nature than you), that,
as every little present has its little future for which we live, so
the whole present of this life has its great future, which must, all
the way through, be made the supreme object of forethought and
solicitude; just as we should despise any man who, for a moment's
gratification to-day, perilled the happiness of the whole of to-morrow.
If Christians are inconsistent in this respect, that is their affair;
but I am sure their theory is more in accordance with the constitution
of human nature than yours." He might have added, that there is nothing
in the New Testament which forbids to Christians any of the innocent
pleasures of this life: the Christian may lawfully appropriate them.
His system does not constrain him to hermit-like austerity or Puritanic
grimace. He may enjoy them, just as a wise man, who will not sacrifice