“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 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.’”