THE CONCEPTION OP THE GREAT REALITY. 



243 



of a cat when fully formed, certain fcrnmncnt records on our 

 brain are made use of for forming new concepts on other 

 ■subjects, so it may be that we shall be employed to eternity in 

 working out other plans of the Great Eeality, when His new 

 thoughts touch upon those particular traits which find a 

 sympathetic response in our personalities ; we shall in fact carry 

 with us vestiges of numbeiless completed creations, each one of 

 which will beautify and intensify our personalities. Does not 

 this conception open up a wonderful vista of our noble 

 inheritance in the great scheme of creation, and how we, when 

 carrying out His wdll, are truly offsprings from the Great 

 Eeality ? 



In conclusion, let us once more realise that to the Great 

 lleality neither time nor space exists as an objective, the 

 heginning and end coalesce ; a million years is coincident with 

 a moment of time, and we can then perceive the fallacy of the 

 stock argument that " The belief in omniscience necessitates a 

 belief in fatalism." The future is present to the spiritual ; 

 though to our senses a million years is almost unimaginable, 

 .and every moment of that time events are subject to the free- 

 will action of man, yet to the spiritual there are no such limits ; 

 the creation of the world and its future dismemberment, the 

 birth of each one of us and our death, must be at the same 

 moment. We can therefore understand how the Great Eeality 

 is cognizant at this very moment of what will be taking place 

 millions of years hence without in any way interfering with the 

 free-will of those who live and act during that period ; in fact to 

 the spiritual the present includes the whole of past eternity and 

 overlaps future eternity. The spiritual which had no beginning 

 .and will have no end, is always in the present and comprises 

 tveryiuliere, the here and the now being the only realities. 

 When we have once grasped this we begin, perhaps for the first 

 time, to penetrate the meaning of those mysterious words of 

 Christ :— 



" Verily, verily, I say unto you before Abraham was I am " 

 i^iycD it/jbi). 



Discussion. 



The Chairman. — We have to thank the lecturer for this 

 •exceedingly interesting and very valuable appeal to our thoughts 

 and to our imagination to realize one of those profound conceptions. 

 I do not know that they are not altogether unrealizable ; but the 

 nearer we get to them the better it will be for our metaphysical 



