But, as we have said, nothing in creation is in absolute rest; and therefore what we consider as resting has really some movement imperceptible to our senses—as, v.g., molecular vibrations—by which the duration of its supposed rest is intrinsically measured. In God’s eternity alone there is perfect immobility; but its duration cannot be measured by time, even as an extrinsic measure, because the standing duration of eternity has nothing common with the flowing duration of creatures. As local movement cannot measure divine immensity, so flowing duration cannot measure divine eternity; because, as the ubi of a creature never changes its relation to God’s immensity, so the quando of a creature never changes its relation to God’s eternity.
Continuity of time.—We will conclude with a few remarks on the continuity of time. That time is essentially continuous is evident; but the question has been proposed: What if God were to annihilate all existing creatures, and to make a new creation? Would the instant of annihilation be immediately followed by the instant of the new creation, or could there be an interval of time between them?
The right answer to this question is that between the annihilation and the new creation there would be no time: because there cannot be time without succession, and no succession without creatures. Yet, it would not follow that the instant of the annihilation should be immediately united with the instant of the new creation; in other words, the duration of the new world would not be a continuation of the duration of the world annihilated. The reason of this is that there cannot be a continuation of time, unless the same now continues to flow. For when one flowing now ceases to be, and another begins, the line of time drawn by the first comes to an end, and another line, altogether distinct, begins, and this latter cannot be a continuation of the former. If the English mail, for instance, reaches New York at a given instant, and the French mail at the same instant starts from Paris, no one will say that the movement of the French mail is a continuation of the movement of the English mail. Hence the duration of the movement of the one is not the continuation of that of the other.
Moreover, from what we have seen about the distinct lines of time described by distinct subjects of flowing duration, it is plain that even the durations of simultaneous movements are always distinct from one another, as belonging to distinct subjects; and accordingly, when one of the said movements ceases, the continuation of the others cannot be looked upon as its continuation. Hence, if the present world were annihilated, its duration would cease altogether; and the duration of a newly-created world would draw a new line of time quite distinct from that of the present world, though between the end of the one and the beginning of the other there would be no time. “The two worlds in question,” as Balmes remarks, “would have no mutual relation; consequently there would be neither distance nor immediateness between them.”[94]
Time is formally continuous. Formal continuity we call that of which all the constituent elements have their own formal and distinct existence in nature. In time such elements are those flowing instants which unite the immediate past with the immediate future. This continuity is essentially successive. It is owing to its successivity that time, as well as movement, can be, and is, formally continuous. For no formal continuum can be simultaneous, as we have shown where we refuted the hypothesis of continuous matter.[95] But let this suffice about time.
AN INCIDENT OF THE REIGN OF TERROR.
The close of the XVIIIth century found the good people of these United States in a most amiable mood. The consciousness of all they had achieved, by sustaining their Declaration of Independence in the face of overwhelming difficulties, produced a glow of national self-complacency that has thrown its glamour over the first page of our public annals, which—as history counts her pages by centuries—we are only now preparing to turn. Not until we were drawing near its close was the light of that agreeable illusion obscured by the shadow of a question whether the “glorious Fourth” was not like to prove, after all, a most inglorious failure.
Self-complacency is never an elevating sentiment, and seldom sustained by the merits upon the assumed possession of which it is based. But our people had many substantial virtues, sufficient to atone abundantly for their indulgence in a pleasant foible. Among these was the principle of gratitude, to which none but truly noble natures are subject. That they possessed it was proved by their promptness in hastening to relieve and comfort the French refugees whom the Reign of Terror had driven to our shores when it was devastating that fair realm across the Atlantic which had been the first to extend assistance and sympathy to us in the hour of need.
We have vivid recollections of sitting for hours—patchwork in hand—at the feet of a dear relative in the pleasant home of our childhood, listening to thrilling tales of those times, many of them connected with the French emigrants—of the cordial hospitality with which all the homes of her native city of Hartford, Conn., were thrown open to receive these interesting exiles; of the shifts the inhabitants devised and the discomforts they endured in order to provide comfortable shelter and sustenance for so many from means already impoverished by the drain of the conflict through which we ourselves had but just passed.