THE CONCEPTION OF THE GREAT REALITY. 



the whole tragedy will be acting titer e in the presence of the 

 Great lieality ; when we have fully grasped this, ^\Q ret^ognise 

 tl'at omniscience is synonymous with omnipresence, and we 

 appear to have here an insight into that Great Book wherein 

 are registered every thought, word and deed which in the 

 direction of the Eeality has helped to nourish, or, in the 

 direction of the shadowy, has tended to starve the iKr>ionoJity 

 of each one of us, for we know that every word we utter or 

 that has been uttered from the beginning of the world and 

 every motion of our brain connected with thought, is indelibly 

 imprinted upon every atom of matter. If our sense of percep- 

 tion were greatly increased we need not go to Palestine to see 

 on the rocks there the impressions of the image of Christ and 

 His disciples or the words they uttered as they passed by, but 

 any stone by the wayside here would show His every action 

 and resound with every word He uttered. In fact, every 

 particle of matter on this earth is a witness to that which has 

 happened, every point in space and every moment in time 

 contains the history of the past in the smallest minuti^. 

 The here embracing all space and the nov: embracing all time 

 are the only realities to the Omniscient. 



Let us once more change the scene and we may grasp even 

 more clearly that Time is not a reality, but is only a mode or 

 condition under which our material senses act. A tune may be 

 played either a thousand times slower or a thousand times 

 quicker, but it still remains the same tune, it contams the same 

 sequence of notes and proportion in time, the only characteristics 

 by which we recognize a tune. And so in the same way with 

 our sense of sight, an event may be drawn out to a thousand 

 times its length or acted a thousand times quicker, it is still the 

 same scene. An insect vibrates its wings 10,00(J times in a 

 second and must be cognizant of each beat, whereas we have 

 seen that we, with our senses of sight and hearing, can only 

 appreciate at the most respectively seven and twenty vibrations 

 in a second as separate beats. That insect must therefore 

 be able to foUow the life of a plant or a flash of light- 

 ning under the conditions of a microscope magnifying several 

 thousand times compared with our vision. The whole life of 

 some of these insects extends over a few hours only, but is to 

 them as full of detail as our life of 70 years, but to them there 

 is no day or night, the sun is always stationary in the heavens, 

 they can have no cognizance of seasons. If, on the other hand, 

 we take the converse of this, we may conceive conditions under 

 which the power of appreciation might be reduced to only one 



