of
the Logos as even that exalted plane is, it is yet abundantly clear
from what we see there that to Him the record must be far more than
what we call a memory, for all that has happened in the past and all
that will happen in the future is _happening now_ before His eyes just
as are the events of what we call the present time. Utterly
incredible, wildly incomprehensible, of course, to our limited
understanding; yet absolutely true for all that.

Naturally we could not expect to understand at our present stage of
knowledge how so marvellous a result is produced, and to attempt an
explanation would only be to involve ourselves in a mist of words from
which we should gain no real information. Yet a line of thought recurs
to my mind which perhaps suggests the direction in which it is
possible that that explanation may lie: and whatever helps us to
realize that so astounding a statement may after all not be wholly
impossible will be of assistance in broadening our minds.

Some thirty years ago I remember reading a very curious little book,
called, I think, _The Stars and the Earth_, the object of which was to
endeavour to show how it was scientifically possible that to the mind
of God the past and the present might be absolutely simultaneous. Its
arguments struck me at the time as decidedly ingenious, and I will
proceed to summarize them, as I think they will be found somewhat
suggestive in connection with the subject which we have been
considering.

When we see anything, whether it be the book which we hold in our
hands or a star millions of miles away, we do so by means of a
vibration in the ether, commonly called a ray of light, which passes
from the object seen to our eyes. Now the speed with which this
vibration passes is so great--about 186,000 miles in a second--that
when we are considering any object in our own world we may regard it
as practically instantaneous. When, however, we come to deal with
interplanetary distances we have to take the speed of light into
consideration, for an appreciable period is occupied in traversing
these vast spaces. For example it takes eight minutes and a quarter
for light to travel to us from the sun, so that when we look at the
solar orb we see it by means of a ray of light which left it more than
eight minutes ago.

From this follows a very curious result. The ray of light by which we
see the sun can obviously report to us only the state of affairs
which existed in that lumi