Article November 7, 1914 Issue

Passing of Time

M. G. KAINS, M.S.

In the popular acceptation, the meaning of the word "time" is a sense of transition due to the rotation of the earth on its axis and to its revolution around the sun. If it were possible for these motions to cease, people on this planet would have no natural means of determining time, for there would be continual day on the sunny side of the earth and continual night on the other side. There would also be no seasons, due to the motion of the earth around the sun. From what we know of the motions of other planets in our solar system, our day is different in duration from that of Mars, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter,—the other known members,—because they revolve at different rates and have orbits which also differ in traveled, and therefore in duration, from that of our earth. In a still more striking way, time may be seen to differ in its measurement as we go farther out into the universe and pass beyond the bounds of our planetary system to the vast deeps of space. Our daily measure is not the measure of any other planet or star which moves at a different rate in its axial revolution, upon which depends its own day; and our yearly measure is not the same as that of any other stellar body whose orbit or whose rate of travel is different from that of ours.

At first glance, all these various lengths of day of the different heavenly bodies seem strange to us who have been accustomed to calculate time by only two measures, our own twenty-four hour day and our approximately three hundred and sixty-five day year. We cannot at first, or even perhaps for some time, appreciate the fact that they are all of trivial importance compared with the great universal day, or, as we term it, eternity. In this day they have no part. They do not affect it in the slightest way. The universal day exists, calm, serene, profound, untouched, unsullied by the million million varying days of all stars of space, for the cannot touch or know or measure the eternal, even though they all live and move and have their being in it.

The transient times of all these countless worlds and stars and suns pass away; but strange and almost impossible as such a statement appears to the imagination, infinite time, eternity, never began and will never end. Indeed, from the eternal standpoint, transient time does not exist even now; and therefore the phrase the passing, or the passage of time, though familiar, is incorrectly used, for time from the eternal standpoint always remains stationary, and we are in it now.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Passing of Time

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access