(no subject)
This is a way one could get a vague idea of how long eternity is:
You have often seen the sand on the seashore; how fine its tiny grains are. And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, and a million miles wide, extending to the remotest space, and a million miles in thickness. Now imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on a bird, scales on a fish, hairs on animals, or atoms in the vast expanse of the air. Now imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny individual grain of that sand; how many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square inch of that mountain; how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all of it. Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time, not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended.
Even if the mountain rose again after it had been all carried away; if the bird came again and carried it all away again, grain by grain; if that mountain rose and fell like the sun as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time, the mere thought of which makes our very brain spin dizzily, eternity would have scarcely begun.
You have often seen the sand on the seashore; how fine its tiny grains are. And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, and a million miles wide, extending to the remotest space, and a million miles in thickness. Now imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on a bird, scales on a fish, hairs on animals, or atoms in the vast expanse of the air. Now imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny individual grain of that sand; how many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square inch of that mountain; how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all of it. Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time, not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended.
Even if the mountain rose again after it had been all carried away; if the bird came again and carried it all away again, grain by grain; if that mountain rose and fell like the sun as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time, the mere thought of which makes our very brain spin dizzily, eternity would have scarcely begun.