Staunton Spectator

Eternity.—When creation began we know not. There were angels and there was a place of angelic habitation before the creation of man and of the world destined for his residence; and even among these pure spiritual essences, there had been a rebellion and a fall. How long these spirits had existed, and how many other orders of being besides, it is vain for us to conjecture, for conjecture could lead to nothing surer than itself. But of one thing we are certain—that, how far back soever we suppose the commencement of creation carried, let it be, not only beyond the actual range (if a definite range it can be said to have) of the human imagination, but even beyond the greatest amount of ages that figures, in any way combined, could be made to express; still there was an eternity preceding—an eternity from which this unimaginable and incomputable duration has made not the minutest deduction nor shortened by the subtraction of the longest possible periods of time. Before the commencement of creation, therefore—before the fiat of Omnipotence which gave being to the first dependent existence, and dated the beginning of time—in infinite and incomprehensible solitude, yet, in the boundless self-sufficiency of His blessed nature, feeling no want and no dreariness—Jehovah had, from eternity, existed alone!