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       THE NEW TIME

      God hath set eternity into the heart of man, without which he could not find out what God does from the beginning to the end.—Ecclesiastes 3:11.

      Perhaps today we understand anew what the Bible tries to tell us through the word “eternity.” At any rate we are more ready to listen when it speaks of eternity, than we were in the years and decades before the war. Eternity is not time—in no sense of the word. It is neither the infinitely vast sum of all times, nor is it the so-called new, better time that, after the passing of all bad times, will finally come to be. Eternity is eternity; and by that we mean that it is beyond, hidden from all times, separated from them by a gulf that (at least from an earthly point of view) once for all divides eternity and time. This gulf can never be bridged by progress and development. For faith, which actually carries us across the abyss, has naught to do with progress and development or with any other upward struggle and effort of man. Faith comes from God—“God has set eternity in the heart of man.”

      Perhaps we understand this saying a little better today. For we all have come out of a time in which men have tried, of their own might, to put eternity into their hearts. But today, through grievous sacrifices, we have been taught, more clearly than ever, that all these attempts of men have utterly failed. We do not say that even we will not listen when one speaks to us of the possibilities of progress and development, of the dawning of a new time. But the brightest and best of all times is none the less time; and time is not eternity—no time as such will arise and turn out of the way and course of all time. He who actually waits for eternity, tarries for eternity, tarries and waits, whether he knows it or not, for the end of times. Upon this let us meditate together.

      Men speak much today of new times that are about to break in upon us. Gladly, oh so gladly, would we all leave the previous and present order and enter into a world and life of a new order. Gladly would we make a new beginning, as if we were crossing a broad river into a new and better haven. There always is something similar to such a crossing and new beginning. There are clefts in the life of a time as a whole, or of a man, which divide and separate the former from the latter; the old ends, the new begins. But, if we are candid, we must say: “The real, the new, the wholly different life and existence which we actually want and seek is not the new life that begins on the other side of the cleft or with a change of direction.” One may begin a new period in life and yet continue to live the old life. Even after conversion we have only apparently crossed the stream to the other bank. In fact those who claim to be converted, separate from the old world, are still living in the same surroundings in which they lived before conversion. In truth, after the deepest experience of a change in life the other shore to which we belong lies still ahead of us. We can only look toward 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

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