$40 AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING SPACE. SECT. VI. A Review and Recollection of the Argument. BUT whither has this track of reasoning led me ? What is this most common and most strange thing which we call space at last ? This wonder of nature, or this imaginary, being ? This real mystery. which is so universally known, and so utterly un- knowable? Is it neither nothing nor something? Is it neither mode nor substance ? Is it neither a creature nor God ? That's impossible : Surely h must be ranked under one of these names : All these can never be renounced and denied concerning space: That would be most absurd indeed. What have we learnt then by all this train and labour of argument, but the weakness of our own reasoning ? We seem to be urged on every side with huge improbabilities, or glaring inconsistencies : We are lost and confounded in the most familiar and common things we can speakof : There is scarce any idea more universal and familiar than that of empty space; all mankind seem to agree in their idea of it : And yet after all our philosophy and toil of reason- ing, shall it be said that we know not whether it be amere nothing, or whether it be the trueandeternal God ? Fruitless toil indeed, and astonishing ignorance ? Puzzling difficulties attend the ar- gument on every side, and a shameful perplexity and darkness hang heavy upon the boasted reason of man, whilehe is labouring with all the powers of his soul to resolve this entangled theme. We enter into the abyss of space, infinite and eternal space, and our thoughts are lost and drowned in it. . Let us liestill here and muse a little, and give a loose to our wonder and our shame, Are the eternal God and a mere empty nothing so near a-kin to one another, that we cannot see the dif- ference between them ? that we are not able to tell whether space be God, or whether space be nothing ? This we know and are sure of, upon the most substantial and uncontroulable proofs and evidences, that there is a first cause and mover of all things ; there is a self-existent being which needs no cause ; and there is an eternal and all-wisemind : There is a- conscious and almighty power which made all things; there is a God. He is the supremesubstance, the most necessary gnd substantial of all beings, as being at the greatest distance from nihiilily or nothing. Our belief of this doctrine is too well founded, and too strongly supported to be ever weakened..by any airy debates about empty space. And yet has this empty thing, or rather this empty nothing, surnamed space, such sort of pro- perties and powers as to resemble godhead ? Are the widest ex- tremes so near together ? Is a mere non entityso like the infi- nite being, the most perfect substance, in any properties, that we cannot distinguish the one from the other ? Can the absence of all things, or an empty nothing, ever look like so substantial e being, as to be mistaken for God ? Or can the great God, is
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