l passions
on to a so-called religious platform; it is the anticipation of the
triumph of "our party," accomplished by our principal men being "sent
for" into the clouds. Let us be understood to speak in all seriousness.
If we were in search of amusement, we should not seek for it by examining
Dr. Cumming's works in order to ridicule them. We are simply discharging
a disagreeable duty in delivering our opinion that, judged by the highest
standard even of orthodox Christianity, they are little calculated to
produce--

"A closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame;"

but are more likely to nourish egoistic complacency and pretension, a
hard and condemnatory spirit toward one's fellow-men, and a busy
occupation with the minutiae of events, instead of a reverent
contemplation of great facts and a wise application of great principles.
It would be idle to consider Dr. Cumming's theory of prophecy in any
other light; as a philosophy of history or a specimen of biblical
interpretation, it bears about the same relation to the extension of
genuine knowledge as the astrological "house" in the heavens bears to the
true structure and relations of the universe.

The slight degree in which Dr. Cumming's faith is imbued with truly human
sympathies is exhibited in the way he treats the doctrine of Eternal
Punishment. Here a little of that readiness to strain the letter of the
Scriptures which he so often manifests when his object is to prove a
point against Romanism, would have been an amiable frailty if it had been
applied on the side of mercy. When he is bent on proving that the
prophecy concerning the Man of Sin, in the Second Epistle to the
Thessalonians, refers to the Pope, he can extort from the innocent word
[Greek text] the meaning _cathedrize_, though why we are to translate "He
as God cathedrizes in the temple of God," any more than we are to
translate "cathedrize here, while I go and pray yonder," it is for Dr.
Cumming to show more clearly than he has yet done. But when rigorous
literality will favor the conclusion that the greater proportion of the
human race will be eternally miserable--_then_ he is rigorously literal.

He says: "The Greek words, [Greek text], here translated 'everlasting,'
signify literally 'unto the ages of ages,' [Greek text], 'always being,'
that is, everlasting, ceaseless existence. Plato uses the word in this
sense when he says, 'The gods that live forever.' _But I must also
a