Another of the questions of life, the answer to which is classed by Herbert Spencer as among the "unknowable," is time; and of the same mind apparently is Thomas Carlyle, who says:

"The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called 'time,' rolling, rushing on—this is forever very literally, a miracle, a thing to strike us dumb."

All sorts of ideas have been advanced in all ages of the world as to the mystery of time, and even its very existence has been called into question, as witness the following;

"But the present has no duration and is not time at all. It is but the plane which, without thickness, divides past and future. Time then is not made up of past, present and future, but of past and future only; and, as these do not exist, time itself cannot exist."^[8]

But the only question that concerns us here, in our search for eternal conditions, is as to the duration of time. As to this, we may again refer to the reasoning of Orson Pratt; and we have, also, an additional and final assurance from the Lord, when He says, in speaking to Abraham:

"If there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal."^[9]

The inference is plain. If spirits always existed and always will exist, there never was a beginning and there never will be an end, of time.