I.

TIME.

A BALLOON GOES UP; A STONE FALLS TO EARTH; WHY? ONE FORCE IN NATURE--G R A V I T Y.

The science of theology and medicine are necessarily very closely allied, both having to do with the saving of men from the consequences of wrong living; and it follows that in religion and medicine we are always seeking for realities; searching the truth; seeking the ultimate, spiritual and physical facts upon which to base our theories, and from which to proceed in making our demonstrations of health and wholeness. And since our demonstrations must and will be complete or incomplete just in proportion to the completeness of our grasp of the realities, the importance of the search for truth becomes apparent; the very first thing we have to do is to penetrate through all the appearances of life, and ascertain the differences between what is really true and what is only apparently true; for there is often a vast difference between the appearance and the reality. The sun appears to rise and set, and to go around the earth; but it does not. A balloon goes up; and a stone falls to the earth; in appearance there are two forces at work, but in reality there is only one--gravity. The reality behind the going up of the balloon and the coming down of the stone is the same. And to seek for the realities behind the appearances of life; behind its goings up and comings down, its goings out and comings in,--that is science, and that is what we are going to try to do.

The first of the realities with which we will deal is Time. It is the fashion with some metaphysical writers to assert that there is no time; but the arguments advanced in support of this claim are superficial. Time is not an entity having substance, but it is an existing reality, nevertheless. Time is not an idea; a fiction by which we measure and record the motions of the heavenly bodies; time would go on just the same and at exactly the same rate if the heavenly bodies were motionless. Do not misunderstand me in my use of the word “time.” Many people suppose that time began when man began, and must end when man ends as a mortal and physical being, and that the periods before and after the earth life of the human race are to be called eternities; in other words that there can be no time except so long as there is a mortal man to measure it; but this is erroneous. Days, weeks, months and years must have gone on before man came on earth, just as they do now; and if man disappeared from the earth, they would still go on. If the earth ceased to revolve around the sun, and to turn on its axis, the succession of the seasons and of day and night would cease; day would be continuous on one side of the earth, and night upon the other, but hours and minutes would go on just the same, and if the sun, moon, planets, stars and all else were to disappear and be succeeded by black, silent, formless chaos, hours and minutes would go on forever. Clocks do not make time; an hour would have the same duration if there were no clocks. In eternity there must still be time; time is duration in eternity. Eternity is endless time.

Time can never end. If you try to think of a point at which time should end, you can only think of it as a point beyond which there must be still more time. Also, then, time can never have had a beginning; for if you try to think of a point at which time began, you can only think of it as a point beyond which there must have been still more time. Do not say that endless time is unthinkable; you can very easily think endless time, if you do not try to think of the end of it. You cannot _comprehend_ endless time, for that means to contain it in your mind, or to go around it; but you can know what it is, and you can know that it is.

Time is; and we must use it, whether we will or no. And the use we make of present time decides the use we shall be able to make of future time; just as the use we made of past time has fixed our place in present time. The use we make of today decides the use we shall be able to make of tomorrow. To be strong and wise is to be able to use time well; and to use time well is to become continually stronger and wiser. Success, growth and development are only attained by the right use of time; and we are failures today in exact proportion as we have erred in our use of time past To know the right use of the present moment is therefore of immense importance; and to have the will to make the right use of it is more important still. If man can--and will--make the right use of every moment of time, he must certainly become a being of marvellous power and wholeness. Oh, the wasted time! The misspent time! The lost time!

We close this chapter, then, by claiming the demonstration of our first fact; that time is a reality.