ocean, have sailed entirely round the world, as a man may
march in a circle, and come round by the contrary side of
the circle to the spot he set out from. The circular dimen-
sions of our world, in the widest part, as a man would
measure the widest round of an apple, or a ball, is only
twenty-five thousand and twenty English miles, reckoning
sixty-nine miles and an half to an equatorial degree, and
may be sailed round in the space of about three years. ^*

A world of this extent may, at first thought, appear to
us to be great; but if we compare it with the immensity of
space in which it is suspended, like a bubble or a balloon in
the air, it is infinitely less in proportion than the smallest
grain of sand is to the size of the world, or the finest particle
of dew to the whole ocean, and is therefore but small; and,
as will be hereafter shewn, is only one of a system of worlds,
of which the universal creation is composed.

It is not difficult to gain some faint idea of the immensity
of space in which this and all the other worlds are suspended,
if we follow a progression of ideas. When we think of the
size or dimensions of a room, our ideas limit themselves to
the walls, and there they stop. But when our eye, or our
imagination darts into space, that is, when it looks upward
into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any walls
or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our
ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately re-
news itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in
the same manner, what beyond the next boundary? and so
on till the fatigued imagination returns and says, there is no
end. Certainly, then, the Creator was not pent for room
when he made this world no larger than it is; and we have
to seek the reason in something else.

If we take a survey of our own world, or rather of this,
of which the Creator has given us the use as our portion in
the immense system of creation, we find every part of it,
the earth, the waters, and the air that surround it, filled,

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