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 true enough"
answered Markland, with some coldness and abstraction of manner. The
doctrine was neither flattering to his reason, nor agreeable to his
feelings. He was too confirmed a lover of himself to receive
willingly teaching like this. A type of the mass around him, he was
content to look down the dim future for signs of the approaching
millennium, instead of into his own heart. He could give hundreds of
dollars in aid of missions to convert the heathen, and to bring in
the islands of the sea, as means of hastening the expected time; but
was not ready, as a surer means to this end, to repress a single
selfish impulse of his nature.
The conversation was still further prolonged, with but slight change
in the subject. At parting with his neighbour, Markland found
himself more disturbed than before.
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