MATTER AND ITS PROPERTIES. 409 



must be its condition at the distance of forty miles from 

 the earth ? According to known laws, certain phe- 

 nomena of refraction have led us to set these bounds to 

 the matter constituting our globe : but it may exist in 

 such a state of tenuity, that no philosophical instrument 

 constructed by human hands could measure its refracting 

 power ; and who shall declare with certainty that matter 

 itself may not be as far extended as we suppose its 

 influences to be ? 



" Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth ? de- 

 clare if thou knowest it all. 



" Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven ? Canst 

 thou set the dominion thereof in the earth ?" 



A cheerless philosophy, derived from the transenden- 

 talism of the German schools, by an unhappy metaphy- 

 sical subtlety, and grafted upon what professes to be a 

 positive philosophy, but which is not so, is spreading 

 amongst us, and would teach us to regard all things 

 as the mere exhibition of properties, a manifestation 

 of powers ; it believes not in a material creation. 

 The grandeur of the earth, and the beautiful forms 

 adorning it, are not entities. Yonder exquisite specimen 

 of the skill of man, in which mind appears to shine 

 through the marble, that distant mountain which 

 divides the clouds as they are driven by the winds across 

 it, those trees, amid whose branches the birds make 

 most melodious music, this flower, so redolent of per- 

 fume, so bright in colour, and so symmetric in form, 

 and that lovely being who, a model of beauty and 

 grace, walks the earth an impersonation of love and 

 charity blended, making, indeed, " a sunshine in a 

 shady place," are not realities. Certain forces combine 

 to produce effects, all of which unite to deceive poor 

 man into the belief that he is a material being, and 

 the inhabitant of a material world. There may be 

 ingenuity in the philosophy of this school ; its meta- 

 physics may be of a high order; but it evidently 



