y shall have
done, they will have demonstrated that it has boundaries, seeing they
have discovered them; but, if they have not thoroughly explored the
universe, they can not say that it is infinite, because they do not
know. The very utmost, then, which could possibly be asserted on the
matter would be, not that the universe has no boundaries, but that man
has never reached them. As in the case of ocean soundings, if we can not
find bottom, we are not therefore to conclude that there is none, but
that our line is not long enough, or our lead not heavy enough to reach
it.

It were a logical absurdity to say, that the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts--that any number of finite parts could compose an
infinite universe. Each sun or planet is a finite object, and any
possible number of them can be counted in a sufficient time. It is
impossible that any number can be infinite; for we are not using the
word infinite here in the loose sense in which it is used by
mathematicians, when they speak of an infinite series; that is, a series
which, though it has no end, has a beginning; but in the strict sense of
something having neither beginning nor end. A beginning of the universe,
either in space or time, is the very thing the Atheist denies.

The same objection applies to the allegation, that infinite space is
full of ether, air, gas, nebulae, or any other kind of matter. It is an
assertion incapable of proof; and therefore thoroughly unscientific; as
all Infidel theories are. But if it could be proven that every part of
space accessible to our telescopes is full of an ether whose undulations
transmit light, as we believe it can, that would be only a proof of the
finitude of matter. That ether consists of parts whose movements can be
measured and numbered; and no possible multitude of such parts can
amount to the infinite.

While reason thus enables us to show this dogma of the infinity of the
universe to be theoretically improbable, and logically irrational,
science has lately taken a more decisive step, and demonstrated it to be
actually false. The universe has boundaries, and we have seen them. The
proof is simple, and easily demonstrable. That broad band of luminous
cloud which stretches across the heaven, called the Milky Way, consists
of millions of stars, so small and distant that we can not see the
individual stars, and so numerous that we can not help seeing the light
of the mass; just as you see the outline