And with much penetration Traherne tells us that Eternity is not an endless addition of "times "—a weak infinite series of durations, but rather a Reality in which all true realities abide, and which retains in a present now all beginnings and all endings.[51] Eternity is just the real world for which we were made and which we enter through the door of love.
It is a spiritual world within,
A living world and nearer far of kin
To God than that which first He made.
While that doth fade
This therefore ever shall endure
Within the soul as more divine and pure.[52]
[1] See my Studies in Mystical Religion, chap. xix.
[2] Book III. lines 51-55.
[3] Book III. lines 194-197.
[4] Book I. line 18. Since this chapter was written, Alden Sampson's Studies in Milton (New York, 1913) has been published. His valuable chapter on "Milton's Confession of Faith" reveals in Milton a very wide acquaintance with the ideas which I have been tracing, and shows by a vast number of quotations how frequently the poet used these ideas sympathetically.
[5] Francis Quarles' "My Beloved is Mine."
[6] George Herbert's poem "Man."
[7] Francis Quarles' "Light."
[8] Centuries of Meditations (London, 1908), iii. 16. For details of his life and for the story of the discovery of his writings, see the Introduction to The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne (1903) by Bertram Dobell.