absorbing disunions, would be indifferent; if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God.  Perpetuity of discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to decomposition.  Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in, a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an a priori probability.  That all other assumptions than that of His true and eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the rational views of deity, we all now see and believe; but the direct proofs of this are more strictly matters of revelation than of reason:  albeit reason too can discern their probabilities.  Wise heathens, such as Socrates and Cicero, who had not our light, arrived nevertheless at some of this perception; and thus, through conscience and intelligence, became a law unto themselves:  because that, to them, as now to any one of us who may not yet have seen the light, the anterior likelihood existed for only one God, rather than more; a likelihood which prepares the mind to take as a fundamental truth, “The Lord our God is one Jehovah.”

Next; Self-existence combined with unity must include the probable attribute, or character, Ubiquity; as I now proceed to show.  On the same principle as that by which we have seen Something to be likelier than Nothing, we conclude that the same Something is more probable to be every where, than the same Nothing (if the phrase were not absurd), to be any where:  we may, so to speak, divide infinity into spaces, and prove the position in each instance:  moreover, as that Something is essentially—­not a unit as of many, but—­unity involving all, it follows as most probable that this Whole Being should be ubiquitous; in other parlance, that the one God should be every where at once:  also, there being no limit to what we call Space, nor any imaginable hostile power to place a constraint upon the One Great Being, this Whole Being must be ubiquitous to a degree strictly infinite:  “HE is in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”

Such a consideration (and it is a perfectly true one) renders necessary the next point, to wit, that God is a Spirit.  No possible substance can be every where at once:  essence may, but not substance.  Corporeity in any shape must be local; local is finite; and we have just proved the anterior probability of a One great Existence being (notwithstanding unity of essence) infinite.  Illocal and infinite are convertible terms:  spirit is illocal; and, as God is infinite—­that is, illocal—­it is clear that “God is a Spirit.”

We have thus (not attempting to build up faith by such slight tools, but only using them to cut away prejudice) arrived at the high probability of a God invested with His natural qualities or attributes; Self-existence, Unity, the faculty of being every where at once and that every where Infinitude; and essentially of a Spiritual nature, not material.  His moral, or accidental attributes (so to speak), were, antecedently