The realm of immediate or personal knowledge is a narrow circle in which these bodies move the realm of knowledge derived through faith is as wide as the universe, and old as eternity.

Simpson contrasts two epistemic “realms”: what a person can know directly through immediate experience (“personal knowledge”) versus what is received through faith. The first is pictured as a small, bounded orbit—limited by the senses, time, and individual circumstance. The second, “derived through faith,” is described as expansive and timeless, reaching beyond what can be verified firsthand to encompass ultimate realities (God, eternity, moral order) that religious belief claims to disclose. The rhetoric elevates faith not as a substitute for knowledge but as a mode of access to a larger horizon of meaning, implying that restricting oneself to only the immediately knowable impoverishes one’s understanding of the universe.