“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 the deep, and not mentioning what day thou createdst them; this is what I conceive, that because of the heaven of heavens—­that intellectual heaven, whose intelligences know all at once, not in part, not darkly, not through a glass, but as a whole, in manifestation, face to face; not this thing now, and that thing anon; but (as I said) know all at once, without any succession of times; and because of the earth, invisible and without form, without any succession of times, which succession presents ’this thing now, that thing anon;’ because, where there is no form, there is no distinction of things; it is, then, on account of these two, a primitive formed, and a primitive formless; the one, heaven, but the heaven of heavens; the other, earth, but the earth movable and without form; because of these two do I conceive, did thy Scripture say without mention of days, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  For, forthwith it subjoined what earth it spake of; and also in that the firmament is recorded to be created the second day, and called heaven, it conveys to us of which heaven he before spake, without mention of days.

“Wondrous depth of thy words! whose surface behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O my God, a wondrous depth!  It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love.  The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; O that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it:  for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto thee.”