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poor one, but it would be a great error to consider that it was designed to do nothing at all for us toward this object, that it was to be wholly separated from eternity in our thoughts, and that we ought to think of the latter as if there were no such idea as the former in our minds, i.e. to entertain no conception of it at all. We are expressly commanded to think of ourselves as existing beyond the grave; but we cannot think of ourselves as existing except in time. Then it is evidently intended that we should carry our ideas of time beyond the grave; only using such salvos and qualifications as reason suggests should be used in such a case. If this is forbidden us, God has imposed an impossible duty upon us.

If any one will be at the pains to examine his idea of time, he will find it to be by no means an inferior, sensual, or narrow idea. It is not like the idea of this or that particular external object. There is an evident distinction between it and the whole class of ideas which come in through senses, which proves a higher source. And that which gives it this distinction, and proves this higher and supersensual source, is the idea of infinity, which is involved in our idea of time.

The idea of infinity, with which we find ourselves endowed, is a very remarkable and peculiar idea, for this reason, that, while it is undoubtedly a true and in some sort apprehended one, it is at the same time only a preliminary and incipient idea, vanishing while we are upon its very threshold, and launching us upon the unknown and unconceived. We cannot rid ourselves of this idea of infinity; we cannot think of anything at all, but we may imagine that thing repeated once, twice, three times, three thousand times, till we exhaust ourselves with numbers; and then we feel ourselves as far from the goal as ever. Thus space

widens on all sides of us into boundless space, and time stretches into an infinite time anterior and prospective. We cannot prevent the mind from exceeding the bounds of the objects and the sphere of its actual experience; because there is that in us which is ever growing and necessarily expanding, without capacity of check; and when we get to the very furthest horizon, we feel an action of excess or stretching over going on within our minds. But while we stretch over, we just stretch over, and no more. We cannot grasp that quantity and extent which lies beyond. It is unknown magnitude, unknown number. The idea of infinity is a true and an apprehended, but only an incipient idea, and Locke's distinction is a true one, in meaning, whatever defect there may be in his mode of expressing it, that we have an idea of infinity of space and time, but not an idea of space and time infinite. The idea of infinity,' he says, has something of positive in all those things we apply it to.

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When we would think of infinite space or duration, we at 'first step usually make some very large idea, as perhaps of 'millions of ages, or miles, which possibly we double and multiply several times. All that we thus amass together in our thoughts is positive, and the assemblage of a great number of positive ideas of space or duration. But what still remains 'beyond this, we have no more a positive and distinct notion of, than a mariner has of the depth of the sea; where, having let down a large portion of his sounding line, he reaches no 'bottom: whereby he knows the depth to be so many fathoms ' and more; but how much the more is, he hath no distinct notion ' at all; and could he always supply a new line, and find the plummet always sink without ever stopping, he would be something in the posture of the mind reaching after a complete and positive idea of infinity. In which case, let this line be ten, or one thousand fathoms long, it equally discovers what is beyond it; and gives only this confused and comparative idea, that this is not all, but one may yet go farther. So much as the mind comprehends of any space, it has a positive idea of; but in endeavouring to make it infinite, it being always enlarging, always advancing, the idea is still imperfect and incomplete.... For to say a man has a positive clear idea of any quantity, without knowing how great it is, is as reasonable as to say, he has the positive clear idea of the number of the 'sands on the sea shore, who knows not how many there be; 'but only that they are more than twenty. For just such a perfect and positive idea has he of an infinite space and duration, who says it is larger than the extent and duration of ten, one hundred, one thousand, or any other number of miles or years, whereof he has or can have a positive idea; which is all the idea, I think, we have of infinite. So that what lies beyond our positive idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity; and has the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea, wherein I know I neither can nor do comprehend all I would, it being too large for a finite and narrow capacity: and that cannot but be very far from a positive and complete idea, wherein the greatest of what I would comprehend is left out, under the indeterminate intimation of being still greater.'-Locke's Essay, book ii. ch. 17.

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Such is the idea of infinity which we find in our minds, and from such an account we first infer that this idea is a true, solid, and constitutional part of our minds, and not a fantastic and fictitious conceit; and next, that it is what may be called a mysterious idea, or one of which we have only an incipient apprehension; which very dimness and imperfection is a result of its rank, because it is dim, and is imperfectly apprehended,

only because it is out of proportion with the rest of our minds; because it is the threshold of a higher range of capacities, the border line where our limited reason mingles for an instant with, and just tastes the greatness of another form and other laws of conception. Let no one suppose, that because this idea is concerned with simple magnitude and quantity, that therefore it is not an idea of high rank; a man may think so for a moment, but the voice of nature will the next moment correct his fastidious criticism, and tell him that nature, reasonable and intellectual nature, admires magnitude. Whence it is, or how it is, we know not, but the very inner mind swells with the idea of extent and number, and feels in the contemplation of them a satisfaction to a certain innate ambition and high desire. The vastness of space, and the interminable lengths of time, fill us with awe, not only with reference to the objects and events there may be residing in them, but an awe excited by their own simple infinity. Every step in the world of magnitudes and extents is full of wonder, and the mind is subdued as in the presence of supernatural forms and powers.

We find, then, in our minds, an idea, such as Locke describes, a dim, indistinct, and mysterious idea of infinity; and that, consequently, we necessarily think of time as infinite. The inference is that we have in our idea of time something which is exponent of eternity, and adapted to represent it to our minds. The infinity of time is representative of eternity, so far as eternity is simply endless and boundless. You say that eternity is a mystery, and that therefore time is no exponent at all of it. But time is a mystery too; you do not think of that. We have not to go to another world for mysteries. Simple astronomical infinite time is a mystery; its quantity is incomprehensible; we have not, as Locke says, the idea of it. But a mysterious idea is, so far as we apprehend it, the fit exponent of a mystery -the mystery of eternity. We are let into the secret of infinity here, and something about eternity is already revealed to us in our natural reason.

But Mr. Maurice, as it appears to us, does not at the very outset do justice to this idea of time; and his mistaken conclusion seems to follow very naturally from this mistake at the outset. He acknowledges, indeed, that we have an idea of infinity and of infinite duration, but he speaks of it more as if it were a grotesque, fictitious, and fanciful conceit, than a solid, true, and noble part of our minds. He says,

'I cannot apply the idea of time to the word eternal. I feel that I cannot. Every body feels it. What do the continual experiments to heap hundreds of thousands of years upon hundreds of thousands of years, and then the confession, "after all we are no nearer to eternity," mean, if not

this? Do they not show that we are not even on the way to the idea of eternity? Might we not just as well have stopped at the hundredth year, or the first? But this trifling becomes very serious and shocking, if there is a great and awful idea of eternity which our Lord would teach us, which belongs to our inmost selves, and which we are flying from by these efforts to get it into another region.'-Letter of Mr. Maurice in Dr. Jelf's Pamphlet, p. 6. I am met with the complaint, that there is a simple, natural, admitted meaning of the word "eternal" which every one understands, and which I am trying to get rid of. I ask for that simple, natural, admitted meaning, and I find it full of the strangest complexities and incoherences; one which cannot be set before simple people, without the most extraordinary devices to make it intelligible; devices which utterly fail, by the admission of those who resort to them.'—Ibid. pp. 13, 14.

He throws aside our idea of infinity as in itself a low absurd and mean idea; it is full of complexities and incoherences;' he sees in the representations of it that we make to our minds only extraordinary devices;' as if the whole were a mere Chinese trick and puzzle. Undoubtedly the idea of infinity is a dim and indistinct idea, and we find in pursuing it apparent complexities and incoherences. But will any sane person deny on proper reflection, that the idea of infinity is a true, a lawful, and a grand idea of our intellectual nature? Undoubtedly we heap hundreds of thousands of years upon hundreds of thousands, and yet are no nearer to eternity;' but is infinite number a fictitious and mean idea? And because this idea of infinity falls short and owns its deficiency, is it not, as far as it goes, true knowledge, true perception? Do we apprehend no truth whatever, in any way whatever, in any degree whatever, when we have the idea of infinity in our minds? Are the ideas of infinity and nothing identical? Is it absurd to speak of an idea of infinity at all? Certainly this is not the case. All are conscious of the possession of a truth, a majestic truth, in this idea, though we feel ourselves but on the threshold of it, and cannot by possibility grasp that of which it tells us the existence. If Mr. Maurice, however, will not acknowledge any truth in our idea of infinity at all, it is no wonder that he should deny that our idea of time is any exponent of eternity; for our idea of time can only be such an exponent as involving the idea of infinity.

Upon this radical mistake rises the objection of Mr. Maurice to the term endless,' or 'never ending,' as applied to a future life.

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'Here we have your meaning of Eternal and Everlasting. You are not really pleading for either of the words which our translators have used. You are measuring both by a compound "endless or never ending" which they have not used at all. Now thus it seems to me you bring us under the conditions of Time in the most mischievous way. The "measures of duration" which you try to escape, by speaking of an absolute duration, may be used-are used in Scripture-to raise us above notions of Time.

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"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last; "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;" "which is, and was, and is to come," are forms of speech which do not chain us to a beginning or an end, to yesterday or to-day, to the past, to the present, or the future; but teach us of One who is living in these "measures of duration," and is not confined by them. But mere negative words, such as "endless," "never ending," start from a ground of Time; when I predicate them of God, I make him a mere negation of Time; I conceive of Him just as the Magians did, as "Time without Bounds."'-Maurice's Letter, pp. 7, 8.

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The argument in this passage, as far as we can make it out, supposes that time is essentially limited in our idea of it; from which it follows that if we think of it as endless, we are entertaining a negation of time.' If this is not his supposition, we cannot conceive what he means by saying that 'endless time,' that time without bounds' is a negation of time! Is an infinite quantity of brick or stone, a negation of brick or stone? Is an infinite quantity of time a negation of time? If this is his supposition, we need not say how erroneous it is.

We have appealed to the idea of the infinite in our minds, as the true and intended guide in forming our notion of eternity, and referred Mr. Maurice's mistaken conclusion, on the subject before us, to his mistaken estimate of this idea. We do not mean to say, however, that this idea is of itself at all an adequate exponent of eternity. There is undoubtedly a great defect in an image of eternity which represents it as, however infinite, consisting of successive spaces of time. And this defect, though it cannot be remedied,-for we cannot think of time except under the mode of succession,-ought to be remembered in applying our idea of infinity to eternal duration. But this defect in the idea does not exclude it altogether as an exponent to us of eternity, but only qualify it. The elements of infinite duration have to be disposed in a different way from that in which we find the elements of present time to be; but the infinity itself of that duration is still truly represented to our minds by our idea of that time as infinite. And upon this basis the definition of eternity accepted in the middle ages was formed-Interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. It is the definition given by Boëtius, and adopted by Aquinas. Here first comes the idea of pure endlessness, infinity of duration. That is the leading and primary idea; eternity is vita interminabilis. But inasmuch as an infinite duration, going on, as present time goes, by a succession of moments, each in turn leaving the other behind; inasmuch as the arrangement of past, present, and future is obviously unsuitable to eternity, this point is next looked to; it is added that the contents of the interminable life' have the mode not of succession but of simultaneity, and that the whole of infinite duration is possessed at once-tota simul.

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