learned Theists who considered going so far an abuse of reason, and warn
us that 'its extension beyond the assigned boundaries, has proved an
ample source of error.' But what the 'assigned boundaries' of reason
are, they don't state, nor by whom 'assigned.' That if there is a God he
must have _some_ form is self-evident and why Mr. Collibeer should be
ostracized by his less daringly imaginative brethren, for preferring a
spherical to a square or otherwise shaped Deity, is to my understanding
what God's grace is to their's.

But admitting the unfitness, and absurdity, and 'blasphemy' of such
conceptions, it is by no means clear that any other conceptions of the
'inconceiveable' would be an improvement upon them. Undoubtedly, the
matter-God-system has its difficulties, but they are trifles in
comparison with those by which the spirit-God system is encompassed;
for, one obvious consequence of faith in bodiless Divinity is an utter
confusion of ideas in those who preach it, as regards possibilities and
impossibilities.

The universe is an uncaused existence, or it was caused by something
before it. By universe we mean matter, the sum total of things, whence
all proceeds, and whither all returns. No truth is more obviously true
than the truth that matter, or something not matter, exists of itself,
and consequently is not an effect, but an uncaused cause of all effects.

From such conviction, repugnant though it be to vulgar ideas, there is
no rational way of escape; for however much we may desire, however much
we may struggle to believe there was a time when there was nothing, we
cannot so believe. Human nature is constituted intuitively or
instinctively to feel the eternity of something. To rid oneself of that
feeling is impossible. Nature or something not Nature must ever have