Especially notable in the smaller works were Ms. Greenleaf and her usual partner, the soprano Molly Quinn, in “Iste Confessor”; and the lone bass, John Taylor Ward, in “Ab Aeterno Ordinata Sum,” a showpiece that took him to the very bottom of his range.

St. Thomas has stated, as his considered opinion, that the impossibility of creatio ab aeterno cannot be proved.

Hoc ente supremo posito, omnia lucidissima se praebent intellectui; illo Deo optimo—quem non possumus, perspectis illis altissimis, non adorare—sublato, admittendae sunt essentiae rerum ab aeterno reales sine actuali existentia; atque proinde quid non-individuale est reale in se, quod tamen concipi non potest nisi objective in mente.”98.Cf.

A process ab aeterno is at least as unimaginable as the process of creation ex nihilo; if it be not altogether inconceivable to boot.

Therefore we are driven back upon a process ab aeterno with every stage of evolution always simultaneously represented in one part or other of the whole.