“It often happens that we expect a very different reply to the query we make, from the one which in the end is received—­an answer in no way flattering to self-love, or in harmony with our life-purpose.  And when I answer you in the words of Him who, spake as never man spoke—­’I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ I cannot expect my words to meet your state of earnest expectation—­to be really light to your mind.”

“No, they are not light—­at least, not clear light,” said Mr. Markland, in rather a disappointed tone.  “If I understand the drift of what you have said, it is that the world has no truth but what stands in some relation to God, who is the source of all truth.”

“Just my meaning,” replied Mr. Allison.

A pause of some moments followed.

“Then it comes to this,” said Mr. Markland, “that only through a religious life can a man hope to arrive at truth.”

“Only through a life in just order,” was the reply.

“What is a life in just order?”

“A life in harmony with the end of our creation.”

“Ah! what a volume of meaning, hidden as well as apparent, does your answer involve!  How sadly out of order is the world! how little in harmony with itself!  To this every man’s history is a living attestation.”

“If in the individual man we find perverted order, it cannot, of course, be different with the aggregated man.”

“No.”

“The out of order means, simply, an action or force in the moral and mental machinery of the world, in a direction opposite to the right movement.”

“Yes; that is clear.”

“The right movement God gave to the mind of man at the beginning, when he made him in the likeness and image of himself.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“To be in the image and likeness of God, is, of course, to have qualities like him.”

“Yes.”

“Love is the essential principle of God—­and love seeks the good of another, not its own good.  It is, therefore, the nature of God to bless others out of himself; and that he might do this, he created man.  Of course, only while man continued in true order could he be happy.  The moment he obliterated the likeness and image of his Creator—­that is, learned to love himself more than his neighbour—­that moment true order was perverted:  then he became unhappy.  To learn truth is to learn the way of return to true order.  And we are not left in any doubt in regard to this truth.  It has been written for us on Tables of Stone, by the finger of God himself.”

“In the Ten Commandments?”

“Yes.  In them we find the sum of all religion.  They make the highway along which man may return, without danger of erring, to the order and happiness that were lost far back in the ages now but dimly seen in retrospective vision.  No lion is found in this way, nor any ravenous beast; but the redeemed of the Lord may walk there, and return with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.”