124 THE LAPSE OF TIME. 



their general aspect very like the latest, as long or 

 longer, as full of the memorials of eventful circumstance, 

 of constant change dominated by and springing from 

 the operation of unchanging laws. As the time is 

 absolutely incalculable which the theory of evolution 

 requires to account for the highest forms of life upon 

 the earth, so the time which all these considerations 

 leave open for the work is absolutely beyond calculation. 

 The theory cannot ask for more than the facts make it 

 possible to offer. 



We hear men sometimes dwell on an expression which 

 they fancy to be Scriptural, ' that there should be time 

 no longer 1 ;' as if time by any possibility could ever 

 come to an end ! It is a pity that they should com- 

 pletely misinterpret the passage on which their opinion 

 fancies itself to be grounded. It is a still greater pity 

 that they should use the language of rational human 

 beings, without being at the pains to determine whether 

 their words have any intelligible meaning : for certainly 

 to the human mind any beginning or end of time is 

 wholly inconceivable. Language itself will not bear 

 with the conception, unless it be consistent to speak 

 of a time when time was not, of a time when time will 

 be no more. 



There is a poem, and a sweet one, by the present 

 Poet-Laureate, in which the murmuring brook is made 

 to speak the language of the moralist, and to proclaim 

 the transitory nature of all human affairs, by a com- 



1 Revelation x. 6, Authorised Version. 



