For everyone has all things in himself and sees all things
in another, so that all things are everywhere and all is all
and each is all, and infinite the glory.'[95]

This eternal world is about us and within us while we live here. 'Heaven
is nearer to our souls than the earth is to our bodies.' The world which
we ordinarily think of as real is an arbitrary selection from
experience, corresponding roughly to the average reaction of life upon
the average man. Some values, such as existence, persistence, and
rationality, are assumed to be 'real'; others are relegated to the
'ideal' Under the influence of natural science, special emphasis is laid
on those values with which that science is engaged. But our world
changes with us. It rises as we rise, and falls as we fall. It puts on
immortality as we do. 'Such as men themselves are, such will God appear
to them to be.'[96] Spinoza rightly says that all true knowledge takes
place _sub specie aeternitatis_. For the pneymatikost the whole of life
is spiritual, and, as Eucken says, he recognises the whole of the
spiritual life as his own life-being. He learns, as Plotinus declares in
a profound sentence, that 'all things that are Yonder are also Here
below.'

Is it then the conclusion of the whole matter that eternal life is
merely the true reading of temporal life? Is earth, when seen with
purged vision, not merely the shadow of heaven, but heaven itself? If we
could fuse past, present, and future into a _totum simul_, an 'Eternal
Now,' would that be eternity? This I do not believe. A full
understanding of the values of our life in time would indeed give us a
good _picture_ of the eternal world; but that world itself, the abode of
God and of blessed spirits, is a state higher and purer than can be
fully expressed in the order of nature. The _perpetuity_ of natural laws
as they operate through endless ages is only a Platonic 'image' of
eternity. That all values are perpetual is true; but they are something
more than perpetual: they are eternal. These laws are the creative
forces which shape our lives from within; but all the creatures, as St.
Augustine says in a well-known passage, declare their inferiority to
their Creator. 'We are lower than He, for He made us.' Scholastic
theologians interposed an intermediary which they called _aevum_ between
time and eternity. _AEvum_ is perpetuity, which they rightly
distinguished from true eternity. Christianity is philosoph