From the nursery and school to the world of thought! From gruesome pictures and poetry of the enigma of eternity to the solution in systems of the philosophers and theologians. From Rist of the Thirty Years' War to Spinoza with imperturbable philosophic calm--such was the great change through which many a German child passed--Spinoza who won his deepest insight into life by viewing all things _sub specie aeternitatis_. Or from Rist to Schleiermacher, who unveiled the august mystery of humanness as eternity in the heart--as eternity internal, dynamic, living, present, not external, mechanical, fixed, and future. It was the great transition from orthodoxy to romanticism. Or else from all these men to _Friedrich Nietzsche_, him that was the godless one, who, in the end of the ages, also sang a song, a new song, of eternity. He both celebrated eternity in song and made no problem of it. He lived it and loved it as his first and truest love--plighted his soul's troth in unwavering loyalty: "Denn ich liebe dich, o Ewigkeit!" From dull and gloomy dreams and anxious fears did this eternity awaken him, from mortal ills did it redeem his life. Nietzsche had wistfully peered into the world's enigmatic darkness, his seeking and skeptical soul had chafed over the riddles and contradictions of life--no meaning, he cried, in this senseless play of life and death, truth and error; and only illusion and folly in all that men called joy and sorrow. There came to him, then, revelation of a new, of an eternal life. The present, with all the kaleidoscopic changes of life's little day, makes ready its own recurrence, each part of time being but a ring linked with the next, the whole becoming the ring of eternity, the true marriage ring of humanity--the seal and stay of an eternal bond between man and Ever-creative, Ever-reincarnating Life! Ich liebe dich, o Ewigkeit. Perfect love casts out fear. This is the eternity of love. The godless one would lead the German heart, and all hearts, from "_Donnerworte_" and "_Schwerte_," from the _fear_ of eternity to the _love_ of eternity. That is what Nietzsche would do. But is such an undertaking worth while in a day like ours? What does man care about eternity--his life so swift and short that he does not know on one day what he did or thought or wanted the day before? His treasures in time, will not his heart be there also, seeking its right and content there? Money ruling the world, time ruling money, why talk of eternity at all? A jolly hour, a sprig of mirth plucked by the way, is not that what the man of modern culture longs for, is it not enough to satisfy such longing as his? The earth overpopulated as it is with _Augenblicksmenschen_, as Nietzsche would say, and not with _Ewigkeitsmenschen_, why recall the love and hope of a long lost past?