bsorbing thought, the mind feels
that these three thousand years are in truth no longer past than the
last beat of the pulse. It throbbed--the throb is gone; their pulse
throbbed, and it seems but a moment since, for to thought, as to the
sun, there is no time. This little petty life of seventy years, with
its little petty aims and hopes, its despicable fears and
contemptible sorrows, is no more the life with which the mind is
occupied. This golden disc has risen and set, as the graven marks of
man alone record, full eight thousand years. The hieroglyphs of the
rocks speak of a fiery sun shining inconceivable ages before that.
Yet even this almost immortal sun had a beginning--perhaps emerging
as a ball of incandescent gas from chaos: how long ago was that? And
onwards, still onwards goes the disc, doubtless for ages and ages to
come. It is time that our measures should be extended; these paltry
divisions of hours and days and years--aye, of centuries--should be
superseded by terms conveying some faint idea at least of the
vastness of space. For in truth, when thinking thus, there is no
_time_ at all. The mind loses the sense of time and reposes in
eternity. This hour, this instant is eternity; it extends backwards,
it extends forwards, and we are in it. It is a grand and an
ennobling feeling to know that at this moment illimitable time
extends on either hand. No conception of a supernatural character
formed in the brain has ever or will ever surpass the mystery of
this endless existence as exemplified--as made manifest by the
physical sun--a visible sign of immortality. This--this hour is part
of the immortal life. Reclining upon this rug under the
chestnut-tree, while the graceful shadows dance, a passing bee hums
and the nightingale sings, while the oak foliage sprinkles the
sunshine over us, we are really and in truth in the midst of
eternity. Only by walking hand in hand with nature, only by a
reverent and loving study of the mysteries for ever around us, is it
possible to disabuse the mind of the narrow view, the contracted
belief that time is now and eternity to-morrow. Eternity is to-day.
The goldfinches and the tiny caterpillars, the brilliant sun, if
looked at lovingly and thoughtfully, will lift the soul out of the
smaller life of human care that is of selfish aims, bounded by
seventy years, into the greater, the limitless life which has been
going on over universal space from endless ages past, which is goin