here, and lo! there'--men are not conscious of its presence. Yet be
assured, my friend, that the time is at hand; and that every one who
represses, through the higher power given to all who ask for it, the
promptings of self-love, and strives to act from a purified love of
the neighbour, is doing his part, in the only way he can do it,
toward hastening the time when the 'wolf also shall dwell with the
lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the
young lion, and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead
them.'"

"Have we not wandered," said Mr. Markland, after a few moments of
thoughtful silence, "from the subject at first proposed?"

"I have said more than I intended," was answered, "but not, I think,
irrelevantly. If you are not happy, it is because, like an inflamed
organ in the human body, you are receiving more blood than is
applied to nutrition. As a part of the larger social man, you are
not using the skill you possess for the good of the whole. You are
looking for the millennium, but not doing your part toward hastening
its general advent. And now, Mr. Markland, if what I have said be
true, can you wonder at being the restless, dissatisfied man you
represent yourself to be?"

"If your premises be sound, your conclusions are true enough"
answered Markland, with some coldness and abstraction of manner. The
doctrine was neither flattering to his reason, nor agreeable to his
feelings. He was too confirmed a lover of himself to receive
willingly teaching like this. A type of the mass around him, he was
content to look down the dim future for signs of the approaching
millennium, instead of into his own heart. He could give hundreds of