it with yearning hearts and be prepared for new turnings and decisions.
The mark of those who actually progress in their inner life, who have gone through turnings and conversions, is that they will say: “We have not gone very far, we are still a long way from the goal where inwardly we should be and where one leads a life that deserves to be called a new life.” At least the men of the Bible, who actually have felt something of a cleavage in their life, have this conviction. Of those who have given up the ground of their old existence and who have left behind the narrow gate, nothing is said in our stories of conversion. Among them there is not one who, to the end of life, has not been an expectant man, yes, actually become one by his conversion.
It is so, also, with the times. There are new times and old times. There are deep clefts. On this side lies an old, on the other a new, epoch. The French Revolution was, for example, such a cleft, the last great one from which we have come. One need only have read casually the thoughts and words of the men one hundred and one hundred and fifty years ago to see how profoundly they felt themselves standing in the dawn of a new age. But is it not true that today we no longer quite understand the enthusiasm of that time? We know, however, that the new time that then dawned was by no means really the new time. It was the new nineteenth century, that now in its turn lies closed before us as another “old time.” On the contrary, according to our wish and view, the new time ought just to begin. It is necessary and wholesome to remember that we are standing in a cleft which divides two times.
At such a moment one is so liable to be wrong. One turns passionately from the old that recedes from us and turns with enthusiasm to the new that is coming toward us. The much abused nineteenth century, out of which we have come, doubtless has its dark spots; its close proves it; but it surely has also much that is good and great. The reproach, that it did not really become the new time of which we dreamt when we stood at its cradle, is justified only when we are assured that the time which is now dawning is actually the new time—the time when salvation and truth will finally be brought to light. But will it be such a time? To ask the question, I think, is to answer it.
What do we mean by all this? Are we to imply that we are to bury all our hopes, to fold our hands and say: “Alas, a new time, another time, there will never be”? No, but rather say: “The really new man, the really new time for which we are waiting and of which the Bible speaks in sublime language, is unspeakably greater than, and wholly different from, anything that we may call new and other.” So great and so different is the new man and the new time for which we are waiting, that everything that appears among us as new and different is, in contrast to the truly new, again only the old; and that all changing from something new, which takes place among us, can be understood only as a parable of the change to the truly new. This truly new, really other, time is no more our time. It is, in no sense, man’s time; it is God’s time. The “time of refreshing before the face of the Lord.”
Because it is wholly God’s and not man’s time, it does not come in the coming and going of our time; God’s days and hours are not earthly days and hours. It is written that upon earth one can know nothing of them. “The day and hour no one knows.” Like a strange, dark land, God’s time lies over against our time. It is an undiscovered new continent that we cannot enter, excepting we have left behind us our time, man’s time, the time in which our whole terrestrial life runs its course. This time is no more time; it is eternity. And what else shall we say of eternity than that we know nothing about it save this: that in everything it differs wholly from that which we know here and now.
But now we may be tempted to ask: “Is there such a thing as this wholly different time? Why do we speak of this time, which is not time at all, when we actually know nothing about it?” But when we ask thus we begin to see that we must change our question and say: “Is there a time without eternity?” Whence comes this remarkable insight which enables us to perceive that all that is seen by us as new is not the really new, if this really new does not exist? Why can we not cease pushing restlessly forward, if there is not another shore over against us which we have not yet reached and yet must reach? Why must we forever think of this unattained, other, invisible haven? Why must we always be deprived of it, always see it ahead of us, always seek it? Why can we not come to an agreement with ourselves and with one another that there never will be anything but insatiable need and unrealized hope; and with this we shall rest satisfied? Why can we not accustom ourselves to the thought that there is no God; or, if there be a God, that He is and will always be far off and unapproachable? Why is it that something so remarkably great and full of hope reverberates constantly in the thoughts, concerns and wishes with which we look upon our lives and the lives of men generally? Can we think even of the shortest step that can and ought to be taken forward without, at the same time, if we are actually to succeed, turning to the All Highest, to the help and blessing of God, without which nothing can be done? “Without me ye can do nothing.” Why can we not cease to seek after that “which God does from the beginning to the end”? Is it perhaps, after all, too true, too great, too real?
Can we prevent eternity from shining and from speaking here and there into our time as though it were pacing beside us, step by step? Is it not the perfect, the wholly other, which, whether we like it or not, in spite of all the imperfect earthly on this bank of the stream, reaches into our existence? Do we not see, in all our doings, that we are brought to the point where we must say: “I am far from the best”? That which I actually would, I do not attain. Something wholly other and new should be reached in my life; and we must always pause and stand waiting for this new, other, better, that is beyond the border, if perchance it may come to us. Our whole life is spent in skirting this border line, the whole of our time is an expectation of a wholly other time, a waiting for eternity.
And, may I add: “Do we not see that it is just this point in our life, to which we are led again and again, and where we stand at the border, where we can only wait and hope, that is really the vital point from which the deepest impulses and the greatest virtue flow into us?” Is it not clear that the best in our lives is not knowledge and power, but our deep longing for redemption, the shame and unrest in which we must always press forward to something that is different from anything that we are and have. For we live not by the few answers which we know how to give to the questions of our existence, but by the quest for a wholly different answer, for the answer which God alone can give—that we, in the midst of the time of man, must await the Eternity of God; that we, in the midst of all imperfection, will be touched by the divine perfection, and by this we live. “God has set eternity into the heart of man.” This indicates need and unrest, but such need and unrest is salvation and blessedness. We must seek after eternity; but it may become clear to us, that this “must” means also a “can”—“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Thus we are in the midst of man’s time and cannot understand it without God’s time which is behind it and above it. Ever and anon we are tempted to think that there is no eternity; for what should mortal man wish to know of eternity. Yet out of our temporal and mortal state we cannot cease to look toward it. For there is not a moment in time that in its finiteness and limitations does not cry out for eternity. We are always before it as before the unintelligible, incomprehensible, and super-earthly; but we are, none the less, in the presence of it and must bow and pray before it.
Thus the two shores come together—that of time and that of eternity. We know that they are separated from each other; but no, they are not separated, because God has put eternity into the heart of man. We know that there never is a new, another time in the course of time; and yet we cannot cease to seek for it and wander toward it through time. We know that we are sinful, mortal men; and yet—are we only this? Are we not something wholly different, even children of God? To be sure, it is not yet made manifest what we shall be; but we know that if it shall be manifested, we shall be like Him. Again and again we must say: “World remains world.” War, sickness, death will never end; yet, contrary to appearance and experience, we cannot forbear to think of something wholly different—of a world of freedom and of righteousness, of peace and of life. We cannot cease believing that this new, other world it really the true, actual,
