time: the refreshing river 



process more profoundly than any other scientific law, it immediately 

 brings up all the "first and last things" of theology, from the creation 

 to the last judgment. It has been a godsend to theologians filled with 

 pessimism about human affairs, and delighted to find scientific backing 

 for their despite of nature — "the heavens shall perish . . . they shall 

 all wax old as doth a garment." That arch-reactionary neo-Platonist, 

 W. R. Inge, the former Dean of St. Paul's, devoted an entire book to 

 demonstrating that since the universe is steadily approaching a state 

 of thermal equilibrium and immobility, therefore {a) all evolution 

 and human progress is an illusion and {b) men should return to what 

 he calls the "philosophia perennis" of Christianity, the conviction that 

 all man's good lies in another life.^ 



"We have here no continuing city, neither we ourselves nor 

 the species to which we belong. Our citizenship is in heaven, 

 in the eternal world to which even in this life we may ascend 

 / in heart and mind."^ 



"So far as I can see," he goes on, "the purposes of God in 

 history are finite, local, temporal, and for the most part individual. 

 They all seem to point beyond themselves to the 'intelligible 

 world' beyond the bourne of time and place. ... In so far as 

 the modern doctrine of the predestined progress of the species 

 is only a spectral residuum of traditional eschatology, I think we 

 must be prepared to surrender it."^ 



We might leave these stately passages to summarise Inge's position, 

 were it not for another remark elsewhere in the same book which 

 breathes the very spirit of the ecclesiastical department of the bour- 

 geoisie: 



"Those who throw all their ideals into the future are as 

 bankrupt as those who lent their money to the Russian or German 

 governments during the war."* 



^ God and the Astronomers (London, 1933). Cf. also The Fall of the Idols (London, 

 1940). I confess that the general level of the argument in these books, though not its 

 trend, reminds me of the well-known story in which a lecturer was giving a popular 

 talk on the subject of the second law of thermodynamics and its implications. As soon 

 as the meeting was thrown open for discussion, a member of the audience rose and 

 said, "How long, sir, did you say it would be before tlie universe ran completely down?" 

 The lecturer replied that he had said seven hundred million years. His questioner heaved 

 a deep sigh of relief and said, "Thank God. I thought you had said seventy million 

 years." 



^ Ibid., p. 137. ^ Ibid., p. 172. * Ibid., p. 28. 



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