the earth.

"But," he adds, "some one may ask, 'What was God doing before he
made the heaven and the earth? for, if at any particular moment
he began to employ himself, that means time, not eternity. In
eternity nothing transpires--the whole is present.' " In
answering this question, he cannot forbear one of those touches
of rhetoric for which he was so celebrated: "I will not answer
this question by saying that he was preparing hell for priers
into his mysteries. I say that, before God made heaven and earth,
he did not make any thing, for no creature could be made before
any creature was made. Time itself is a creature, and hence it
could not possibly exist before creation.

"What, then, is time? The past is not, the future is not, the
present--who can tell what it is, unless it be that which has no
duration between two nonentities? There is no such thing as 'a
long time,' or 'a short time,' for there are no such things as
the past and the future. They have no existence, except in the
soul."

The style in which St. Augustine conveyed his ideas is that of a
rhapsodical conversation with God. His works are an incoherent
dream. That the reader may appreciate this remark, I might copy
almost at random any of his paragraphs. The following is from the
twelfth book:

"This then, is what I conceive, O my God, when I hear thy
Scripture saying, In the beginning God made heaven and earth: and
the earth was invisible and without form, and darkness was upon