To be suddenly shown his error, smote him with a painful sense of humiliation.
"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.