who could endure a hell for a short time.

The logical consequence was to make dying the chief end of living. Who
cannot remember being told to despise the present, to consider how
brief it is, like a cloud before the dawn of the endless day? It was
compared to the short waiting outside some door beyond which was
warmth, cheer, and unending bliss. So that the pious soul thought of
life only in terms of waiting, watching, enduring. Piety became
positive only in prospect, negative in the present.

To say to a man, be patient with wrong and oppression to-day and you
will be prospered tomorrow, is to teach him to compound a felony, to
wink at the despoiling of the earth by the iniquitous for the
consideration of a title to the riches of heaven. It is to lose sight
of the fact that unless the life finds itself now it never will find
itself, that to dwarf a soul to-day is to dwarf it forever.

"Then," says the practical man, "this means that we can ignore the
future; we must make the most of the present; get all you can; keep all
you get; the whole purpose of life is to make a good living, to enjoy
yourself." This is only the swing of the pendulum away from the old
thought. The ideal of the present day is material advantage. The
chief end of man is to make money. If once he was the slave of an
unjust order, he now is the slave of an unworthy appetite.

Living only for wealth or for wages is not living at all. Who knows
less of life than the slave of modern commercialism, the man who lifts
his eyes no higher than the pay roll, or the ticker tape? It is better
to be the victim of a delusion that gives some happiness, that gives
some fortitude, and to live the simple life of the poor than to be the