you think the millennium has commenced?"

"I do."

"The beginning must be very small. The light hid under a bushel. Now
I have been led to expect that this light, whenever it came, would
be placed on a candlestick, to give light unto all in the house."

"May it not be shining? Nay, may there not be light in all the seven
golden candlesticks, without your eyes being attracted thereby?"

"I will not question your inference. It may all be possible. But
your words awaken in my mind but vague conceptions."

"The history of the world, as well as your own observation, will
tell you that all advances toward perfection are made with slow
steps. And further, that all changes in the character of a whole
people simply indicate the changes that have taken place in the
individuals who compose that people. The national character is but
its aggregated personal character. If the world is better now than
it was fifty years ago, it is because individual men and women are
becoming better--that is, less selfish, for in self-love lies the
germ of all evil. The Millennium must, therefore, begin with the
individual. And so, as it comes not by observation--or with a 'lo!
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 tr