If, for example, the reader is
convinced that it is more probable matter is mutable as regards _form_,
but eternal as regards _essence_, than that it was willed into existence
by a Being said to be eternal and immutable, he at once becomes an
Atheist--for if matter always was, no Being could have been before it,
nor can any exist after it. It is because men in general are shocked at
the idea of matter without beginning and without end, that they so
readily embrace the idea of a God, forgetting that if the idea of
eternal matter shock our sense of the _probable_, the idea of an eternal
Being who existed _before_ matter, _if well considered_, is sufficient
to shock all sense of the _possible_.
The man who is contented with the universe, who stops at _that_ has at
least the satisfaction of dealing with something tangible--but he who
don't find the universe large enough for him to expatiate in, and whirls
his brains into a belief that there is a necessarily existing something
beyond the limits of a world _unlimited_, is in a mental condition no
reasonable man need envy.
Of the universe, or at least so much of it as our senses have been
operated upon by, we have conceptions clear, vivid, and distinct; but
when Dr.
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