ian world looks
with such a pleasing interest."

"A time to be ushered in by proclamation, I suppose?"

"How, and when, and where it is to begin, I am not advised," said'
Mr. Markham, smiling. "All Christians expect it; and many have set
the beginning thereof near about this time."

"What if it have begun already?"

"Already! Where is the sign, pray? It has certainly escaped my
observation. If the Lord had actually come to reign a thousand
years, surely the world would know it. In what favoured region has
he made his second advent?"

"Is it not possible that the Christian world may be in error as to
the manner of this second coming, that is to usher in the
millennium?"

"Yes, very. I don't see, that in all prophecy, there is any thing
definite on the subject."

"Nothing more definite than there was in regard to the first
coming?"

"No."

"And yet, while in their very midst, even though miracles were
wrought for them; the Jews did not know the promised Messiah."

"True."

"They expected a king in regal state, and an assumption of visible
power. They looked for marked political changes. And when the Lord
said to them, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' they denied and
rejected him. Now, is it not a possible case, that the present
generation, on this subject, may be no wiser than the Jews?"

"Not a very flattering conclusion," said Markland. "The age is
certainly more enlightened, and the world wiser and better than it
was two thousand years ago."

"And therefore," answered Mr. Allison, "the better prepared to
understand this higher truth, which it was impossible for the Jews
to comprehend, that the kingdom of God is within us."

"Within us!--within us!" Markland repeated the words two or three
times, as if there were in them gleams of light which had never
before dawned upon his mind.

"Of one thing you may be assured," said Mr. Allison, speaking with
some earnestness; "the millennium will commence only when men begin
to observe the Golden Rule. If there are any now living who in all
sincerity strive to repress their selfish inclinations, and seek the
good of others from genuine neighbourly love, then the millennium
has begun; and it will never be fully ushered in, until that law of
unselfish, reciprocal uses that rules in our physical man becomes
the law of common society."

"Are there any such?"

"Who seek the good of others from a genuine neighbourly love?"

"Yes."

"I believe so."

"Then