"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." "It will be in vain, then, for man to hope for any real good in this life, except he keep the commandments," said Mr. Markland. "All in vain," was answered. "And his keeping of them must involve something more than a mere literal obedience. He must be in that interior love of what they teach, which makes obedience to the letter spontaneous, and not constrained. The outward act must be the simple effect of a living cause." "Ah, my friend!" sighed Mr. Markland. "It may be a true saying, but who can hear it?"