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 minutiæ 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 _καθισαι_ 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, _εις_, _τους αιώνας των αιώνων_, here translated ‘everlasting,’ signify literally ‘unto the ages of ages,’ αιει ων, ‘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 admit_ that this word is used several times in a limited extent—as for instance, ‘The everlasting hills.’ Of course this does not mean that there never will be a time when the hills will cease to stand; the expression here is evidently figurative, but it implies eternity. The hills shall remain as long as the earth lasts, and no hand has power to remove them but that Eternal One which first called them into being; _so the state of the soul_ remains the same after death as long as the soul exists, and no one has power to alter it. The same word is often applied to denote the existence of God—‘the Eternal God.’ Can we limit the word when applied to him? Because occasionally used in a limited sense, we must not infer it is always so. ‘Everlasting’ plainly means in Scripture ‘without end;’ it is only to be explained figuratively when it is evident it cannot be interpreted in any other way.”