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Zimc, Space, anb 3nvi6tble Morlb?. 



By W. D. Barbour. 



Part I.-TIME AND SPACE. 



THE twin mysteries of time and space may well be regarded 

 as modern discoveries. Primeval man interpreted them by 

 the immediate things of sense. The stars were brilliant 

 gems, and the planets wandering stars. Sun and Moon were gods, 

 because of material benefits conferred. Space was hmited by 

 sight, and time by lunations, seasons, and history. The Infinites 

 were there just as now, but imagination was feeble, and conceptive 

 power wanting. Yet knowledge increased, the mind grew, the 

 horizon dilated, and by slow degrees greater distances in space, 

 and longer ages in time, were brought within the compass of 

 thought. In the light of limitations such as these, our interpreta- 

 tions of old or primitive writings necessarily require considerable 

 modification. Unfortunately, the same phraseology which expressed 

 the ancient limited conception of the infinite in time and space, 

 expresses also ours. The words are the same, but the applied 

 meanings are incomparably different. Slowly, even reluctantly, 

 have translators, students, and commentators, allowed for the 

 absence of that knowledge and mental development which the 

 present age so amply enjoys. Thus the phrases " everlasting," 

 " without end," " for ever and ever," " eternal," " evermore," 

 "immortal," " beginning and end," "all the earth," "the whole 

 earth," " under the whole heaven," " the heavens," etc., embody 

 meanings indefinitely larger to us, as compared with those under- 

 stood by our forefathers, five hundred, to say nothing of five thou- 

 sand years ago. Reason suggests that such phrases, however 

 susceptible, more or less, of infinite meanings, were not spoken, 

 or written, " over the heads " of the people to whom they were 

 addressed, but were rather directed to the level of their limited 

 comprehensions. Such considerations should not be overlooked 

 in our study of the Biblical stories, aUke of " Creation," and of 

 other natural phenomena. 



Just as the revelations of Geology burst the shackles of the 

 human imagination, which, until the present century, shut up alf 



