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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 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, coming and abiding world, in comparison with which the world that we have before our eyes will be blown away as sand and dust.

Do I say too much? Do I say more than is true? Yes, surely, I say too much, I say more than is true so far as we look at ourselves, think of ourselves, of that which is before our eyes, of the ordinary, small, miserable, commonplace man, whom we all are. He does not stand before God, he flees before Him; he does not believe in eternity, he does not live in the fear and adoration of the Lord. And, therefore, seen from his standpoint, the world always remains as it is. But I do not say too much and do not say anything that is not true, when I think of Him in whom this eternal, incomprehensible and true (though contrary to appearance) revelation is given unto us: Christ Jesus. While we are what we are, poor, small, sinning, dying, commonplace people, who each moment forget the eternity which we are approaching, He came and took our forgetfulness of eternity upon Himself and bore it, took it for us upon Himself and carried it for us; for us He thought of God, became for us, through struggling and suffering, obedient unto death, yes unto death on the cross, and by death He broke through into eternal life.

If it is true that God has put eternity into the heart of man; if it is more than a distant wishing and hoping; if it is so true that we can live and die by it, then it is true only in Jesus Christ. In Him the opposite shores come together, in Him that which is divided becomes united, in Him time and eternity meet. In Him God, who is hidden from us and of whom we of ourselves can know nothing, is revealed as the Father.

Hence everything depends upon this, that Jesus Christ speaks to us men who pass on with the fleeting times. There are men and times to whom Jesus Christ becomes manifest. They are not yet new times and new men in the final sense; but they are the times and the men that, in the midst of the old time and of the old condition, point and aim toward the really new time and the really new men who hear the word of the eternal love of the Father, the word of the forgiveness of sins, and know the one thing besides which there is nothing else. There are times and men that have to do with eternity, because they have learnt to look upon Him who has brought to light eternity in the midst of time. Life for such men does not flow smooth and easy. He, who has received eternity into his heart, must seek to understand “what God does from the beginning to the end.” That means unrest, conflict, and pilgrimage. But there is rest in this unrest, there is victory in this struggle; this pilgrimage has a goal and an end. For God has set eternity into the heart of man, and how could God leave those without an answer who at His behest are seeking Him?

If such a time ever dawns—and why should it not dawn? Let it bring what it will in other respects, it will be a new time (yet with all reserve be it said!), a year of salvation and refreshing, a year in which peace and truth and righteousness will come to light, even though it be a time of heaviness. Let us pray God that He send us such a time and make us men of such a sort. If we earnestly pray for it, the new time has come through such praying; for how could we earnestly beseech Him, if He had not already heard us, had He not already set eternity into our hearts through His Spirit?