time: the refreshing river 



present to it as a process." A process, but not a progressive process. 

 Where time brings no irreversible change, time is not important. It 

 is strange how close to scientific thought theological thought has 

 often been, for here we are reminded both of the seventeenth-century 

 doctrine of the "general concourse," the upholding of the world by 

 divine power without which everything would, it was thought, fly 

 back into chaos again; and of the relations now understood between 

 time and thermodynamic irreversibility. But for neo-platonic and 

 hence christian mysticism, just as the sensible world is but a shadow 

 of the intelligible, so action is a shadow of contemplation, suited only 

 to weak-minded persons. This leads to what even Inge calls the 

 heartless doctrine that to the wise man public calamities are only 

 stage tragedies. It leads no less to the view that all such calamities 

 are punishments for sin, since any action must be wrong. The medi- 

 aeval saint and visionary, Angela of Foligno, congratulated herself on 

 the deaths of her mother, husband and children, "who were great 

 obstacles in the way of God." 



What a profound difference there is between this ascetic Graeco- 

 Indian indifference to time, and the unsophisticated messianism which 

 runs through most of the prophetic writings of the Hebrews, and on 

 into the early Church, forming its other principal current. Here there 

 is an intuition of time's irreversibility, the accomplishment of perma- 

 nent gains, the belief in progressive change. Thus in Isaiah: "The 

 voice of one that crieth. Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the 

 Lord, make straight in the desert a high way for our God. Every 

 valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made 

 low; and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places 

 plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall 

 see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."^ Or again: 

 "The Lord God will come as a mighty one, and his arm shall rule 

 for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him."^ 

 Or "Declare ye the former things, what they be, that we may consider 

 them, and know the latter end of them; or show us things for to 

 come."^ Or Jeremiah: "And they shall come and sing in the height 

 of Sion, and shall flow together unto the goodness of the Lord, for 

 com and wine and oil, and for the young of the flock and the herd; 

 and their soul shall be as a watered garden, and they shall not sorrow 

 any more at all. Then shall the girls rejoice in the dance, and the 

 young men and the old together; for I will turn their mourning into 

 1 Ch. 40, V. 3 fF. 2 Qi^^ ^Q^ y iQ 3 cj^ ^j^ y^ 22. 



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