sible. _The laws of nature and physical science tell you that my
interpretation is correct_; you shall not die. I can tell you by my own
experience as an angel that you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
("Apoc. Sketches," p. 294.) Again, according to Dr. Cumming, Abel had so
clear an idea of the Incarnation and Atonement, that when he offered his
sacrifice "he must have said, 'I feel myself a guilty sinner, and that in
myself I cannot meet thee alive; I lay on thine altar this victim, and I
shed its blood as my testimony that mine should be shed; and I look for
forgiveness and undeserved mercy through him who is to bruise the
serpent's head, and whose atonement this typifies.'" ("Occas. Disc."
vol. i. p. 23.) Indeed, his productions are essentially ephemeral; he is
essentially a journalist, who writes sermons instead of leading articles,
who, instead of venting diatribes against her Majesty's Ministers,
directs his power of invective against Cardinal Wiseman and the
Puseyites; instead of declaiming on public spirit, perorates on the
"glory of God." We fancy he is called, in the more refined evangelical
circles, an "intellectual preacher;" by the plainer sort of Christians, a
"flowery preacher;" and we are inclined to think that the more
spiritually minded class of believers, who look with greater anxiety for
the kingdom of God within them than for the visible advent of Christ in
1864, will be likely to find Dr. Cumming's declamatory flights and
historico-prophetical exercitations as little better than "clouts o'
cauld parritch."

Such is our general impression from his writings after an attentive
perusal. There are some particular characteristics which we shall
consider more closely, but in doing so we must be understood as
altogether declining any doctrinal discussion. We have no intention to
consider the grounds of Dr. Cumming's dogmatic system, to examine the
principles of his prophetic exegesis, or to question his opinion
concerning the little horn, the river Euphrates, or the seven vials. We
identify ourselves with no one of the bodies whom he regards it as his
special mission to attack: we give our adhesion neither to Romanism,
Puseyism, nor to that anomalous combination of opinions which he
introduces to us under the name of infidelity. It is simply as
spectators that we criticise Dr. Cumming's mode of warfare, and we
concern ourselves less with what he holds to be Christian truth than with
his