PRESENT TENSE.
This tense is generally used to express some condition on which a future action or event is affirmed. It is therefore erroneously considered by some grammarians, as an elliptical form of the future.
Singular. Plural. 1. If I love, 1. If we love, 2. If Thou love, 2. If you love, 3. If He love; 3. If they love.
OBS.—In this tense, the auxiliary do is sometimes employed; as, "If thou do prosper my way."—Genesis, xxiv, 42. "If he do not utter it."—Leviticus, v, 1. "If he do but intimate his desire."—Murray's Key, p. 207. "If he do promise, he will certainly perform."—Ib., p. 208. "An event which, if it ever do occur, must occur in some future period."—Hiley's Gram., (3d Ed., Lond.,) p. 89. "If he do but promise, thou art safe."—Ib., 89.
"Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain."—MILTON: Il Penseroso.
These examples, if they are right, prove the tense to be present, and not future, as Hiley and some others suppose it to be.