Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/326

292 eternity itself. And, in fact, the argument goes to prove that nothing can be eternal—that eternity is an impossible fiction. It is strange that exception should be taken to an "infinity of finites," seeing that the most familiar processes of algebra furnish illustrations; for every diverging series presents the idea of infinity made up of finite terms. Dr Samuel Clarke, although he loved to tread on slippery ground, abandoned the above scholastic argument as absurd. The ground of his objection does not, however, appear quite correct. He says, the misconception arises from regarding finites as "aliquot parts of infinity, whereas they are disparate," or, as the geometrician would term them, incommensurable quantities—finite being the same to infinite, as a point to a solid, or a line to a surface. On the contrary, a unit of time and infinite duration are commensurable quantities, though the proportion is indeterminate, just as the finite terms of a series and the series itself are not disparate, although we cannot determine the sum of the series. It is not at all necessary to have recourse to such recondite reasoning. The argument, when stated in its most general terms, bears its own refutation in the face of it. It tacitly assumes a certain definition to be true, and then asserts that it is not true — that it involves a contradiction.

The following scholastic argument is similar to Hall's, but somewhat more complicated and startling. It is taken from Hick's Lectures on Theology:—