“What is the highest and noblest attribute of manhood?” Mr. Allison had asked of him during their conversation.

Markland did not answer the question.

“The highest excellence—­the greatest glory—­the truest honour must be in God,” said the old man.

“All will admit that,” returned Markland.

“Those, then, who are most like him, are most excellent—­most honourable.”

“Yes.”

“Love,” continued Mr. Allison, “is the very essential nature of God—­not love of self, but love of creating and blessing others, out of himself.  Love of self is a monster; but love of others the essential spirit of true manhood, and therefore its noblest attribute.”

Markland bowed his head, convicted in his own heart of having, all his life long, been a self-worshipper; of having turned his eyes away from the true type of all that was noble and excellent, and striven to create something of his own that was excellent and beautiful.  But, alas! there was no life in the image; and already its decaying elements were an offence in his nostrils,

“In the human body,” said Mr. Allison, “as in the human soul when it came pure from the hands of God, there is a likeness of the Creator.  Every organ and member, from the largest to the most hidden and minute, bears this likeness, in its unselfish regard for the good of the whole body.  For, as we have seen, each, in its activity, has no respect primarily to its own life.  And it is because the human soul has lost this likeness of its loving Creator, that it is so weak, depraved, and unhappy.  There must be the restored image. and likeness, before there be the restored Eden.”

The noblest type of manhood!  Never in all his after life was Edward Markland able to shut out this light of truth from his understanding.  It streamed through the little window, shining very dimly at times; but always strong enough to show him that unselfish love was man’s highest attribute, and self-love a human monster.

CHAPTER V.

While Mr. Markland was brooding over his own unhappy state, and seeking to shut out the light shining too strongly in upon his real quality of mind, Mrs. Markland was living, in some degree, the very life that seemed so unattractive to him, and receiving her measure of reward.  While he wandered, with an unquiet spirit, over his fields, or sat in cool retreats by plashing fountains, his thoughts reaching forward to embrace the coming future, she was active in works of love.  Her chief desire was the good of her beloved ones, and she devoted herself to this object with an almost entire forgetfulness of self.  Home was therefore the centre of her thoughts and affections, but not the selfish centre:  beyond that happy circle often went out her thoughts, laden with kind wishes that died not fruitless.