Watts’ philosophical works exhibit him in the same light as his theological. They are marked by a vivid disposition to analysis and speculation, and by that elevated reverence of thought which appertains to all his writings. Instance his “Inquiry Concerning Space; whether it be Something or Nothing, God or a Creature.” Most minds are quite unequal to such discussions, and many regard them as unwise, irreverent, and dangerous. They are a kind of intellectual Matterhorn which certain daring spirits assault from age to age—the origin of evil, liberty, and necessity—the nature of substance, and time, and space. It would surely be a dangerous and a doubtful doctrine to teach that such questions are only the territories or hunting-grounds of the bold masters of sceptical negations. It does not derogate from the greatness of Isaac Watts to admit that he was neither a Joseph Butler, a William de Leibnitz, nor a Jonathan Edwards; but in his mind such studies became means of usefulness. He fashioned Alpenstocks for climbers among those higher mountain ranges, through which he had himself travelled. In such studies a reverent mind may at once enlarge the understanding while learning the limitation of its powers. A wise guide will here, too, guard against the dangerous _crevasse_, while he hath himself The secret learned To mix his blood with sunshine, and to take The wind into his pulses.[53] Johnson quotes a passage from Mr. Dyer, charging Watts with confounding the idea of space with empty space, and that he did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter, being extended, could not be without space. But in reply to this, it may be remarked that this is the whole question, and extended matter falls rather beneath the denomination of substance. It appears certainly the case that Watts, in his discussion, deals with infinite space, or say, certainly, indefinite space—that is, extension abstracted from phenomena. Such space Sir Isaac Newton reverently regarded as the sensorium of God. Newton was so essentially reverent even in thought that it was not possible for him to indulge an idea which was capable of depraving religious conceptions; but all minds, even religious minds, have not been equally reverent. Hence some have gone on to regard space as the immensity of God, as a property of God. But it would follow from this that as space is extended, so God, too, must be extended; and whatever tends to conform God with nature, or to place Him in contact with it, in any other way than as in relation to His wisdom and His will, is essentially unscriptural, and it is a dangerous proclivity below which yawn the fearful gulfs of Pantheism and Atheism. In these discussions our writer anticipated many of those shadows which in the course of a few years were to project themselves over the whole domain of philosophy and theology; and, indeed, only a