ly have the
gift of prophecy, but may bestow the profits of all his works to feed the
poor, and be ready to give his own body to be burned with as much
alacrity as he infers the everlasting burning of Roman Catholics and
Puseyites. Out of the pulpit he may be a model of justice, truthfulness,
and the love that thinketh no evil; but we are obliged to judge of his
charity by the spirit we find in his sermons, and shall only be glad to
learn that his practice is, in many respects, an amiable _non sequitur_
from his teaching.

Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is not
the slightest leaning toward mysticism in his Christianity--no indication
of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual communion with the
Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of Justification, and
dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an experience. He insists
on good works as the sign of justifying faith, as labors to be achieved
to the glory of God, but he rarely represents them as the spontaneous,
necessary outflow of a soul filled with Divine love. He is at home in
the external, the polemical, the historical, the circumstantial, and is
only episodically devout and practical. The great majority of his
published sermons are occupied with argument or philippic against
Romanists and unbelievers, with "vindications" of the Bible, with the
political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism of public events;
and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and practical exhortation, is
tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the
end. He revels in the demonstration that the Pope is the Man of Sin; he
is copious on the downfall of the Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with
satisfaction in turning a story which tends to show how he abashed an
"infidel;" it is a favorite exercise with him to form conjectures of the
process by which the earth is to be burned up, and to picture Dr.
Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being caught up to meet Christ in the air,
while Romanists, Puseyites, and infidels are given over to gnashing of
teeth. But of really spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death
of Christ as a manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of
sympathy with that yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus
weep over Jerusalem, and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive
them," of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which
passeth un