The Essays of "George Eliot" Part 3

A grave general accusation must be supported by details, and in adducing those we purposely select the most obvious cases of misrepresentation-such as require no argument to expose them, but can be perceived at a glance. Among Dr. c.u.mming's numerous books, one of the most notable for unscrupulosity of statement is the "Manual of Christian Evidences," written, as he tells us in his Preface, not to give the deepest solutions of the difficulties in question, but to furnish Scripture Readers, City Missionaries, and Sunday School Teachers, with a "ready reply" to sceptical arguments. This announcement that _readiness_ was the chief quality sought for in the solutions here given, modifies our inference from the other qualities which those solutions present; and it is but fair to presume that when the Christian disputant is not in a hurry Dr. c.u.mming would recommend replies less ready and more veracious.

Here is an example of what in another place {74} he tells his readers is "change in their pocket . . . a little ready argument which they can employ, and therewith answer a fool according to his folly." From the nature of this argumentative small coin, we are inclined to think Dr.

c.u.mming understands answering a fool according to his folly to mean, giving him a foolish answer. We quote from the "Manual of Christian Evidences," p. 62.

"Some of the G.o.ds which the heathen wors.h.i.+pped were among the greatest monsters that ever walked the earth. Mercury was a thief; and because he was an expert thief he was enrolled among the G.o.ds.

Bacchus was a mere sensualist and drunkard, and therefore he was enrolled among the G.o.ds. Venus was a dissipated and abandoned courtesan, and therefore she was enrolled among the G.o.ddesses. Mars was a savage, that gloried in battle and in blood, and therefore he was deified and enrolled among the G.o.ds."

Does Dr. c.u.mming believe the purport of these sentences? If so, this pa.s.sage is worth handing down as his theory of the Greek myth-as a specimen of the astounding ignorance which was possible in a metropolitan preacher, A.D. 1854. And if he does not believe them . . . The inference must then be, that he thinks delicate veracity about the ancient Greeks is not a Christian virtue, but only a "splendid sin" of the unregenerate.

This inference is rendered the more probable by our finding, a little further on, that he is not more scrupulous about the moderns, if they come under his definition of "Infidels." But the pa.s.sage we are about to quote in proof of this has a worse quality than its discrepancy with fact. Who that has a spark of generous feeling, that rejoices in the presence of good in a fellow-being, has not dwelt with pleasure on the thought that Lord Byron's unhappy career was enn.o.bled and purified toward its close by a high and sympathetic purpose, by honest and energetic efforts for his fellow-men? Who has not read with deep emotion those last pathetic lines, beautiful as the after-glow of sunset, in which love and resignation are mingled with something of a melancholy heroism? Who has not lingered with compa.s.sion over the dying scene at Missolonghi-the sufferer's inability to make his farewell messages of love intelligible, and the last long hours of silent pain? Yet for the sake of furnis.h.i.+ng his disciples with a "ready reply," Dr. c.u.mming can prevail on himself to inoculate them with a bad-spirited falsity like the following:

"We have one striking exhibition of _an infidel's brightest thoughts_, in some lines _written in his dying moments_ by a man, gifted with great genius, capable of prodigious intellectual prowess, but of worthless principle, and yet more worthless practices-I mean the celebrated Lord Byron. He says:

"'Though gay companions o'er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill, Though pleasure fills the maddening soul, The heart-_the heart_ is lonely still.

"'Ay, but to die, and go, alas!

Where all have gone and all must go; To be the _Nothing_ that I was, Ere born to life and living woe!

"'Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, Tis _something better_ not to be.

"'Nay, for myself, so dark my fate Through every turn of life hath been, _Man_ and the _world_ so much _I hate_, I care not when I quit the scene.'"

It is difficult to suppose that Dr. c.u.mming can have been so grossly imposed upon-that he can be so ill-informed as really to believe that these lines were "written" by Lord Byron in his dying moments; but, allowing him the full benefit of that possibility, how shall we explain his introduction of this feebly rabid doggrel as "an infidel's brightest thoughts?"

In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, Dr. c.u.mming directs most of his arguments against opinions that are either totally imaginary, or that belong to the past rather than to the present, while he entirely fails to meet the difficulties actually felt and urged by those who are unable to accept Revelation. There can hardly be a stronger proof of misconception as to the character of free-thinking in the present day, than the recommendation of Leland's "Short and Easy Method with the Deists"-a method which is unquestionably short and easy for preachers disinclined to reconsider their stereotyped modes of thinking and arguing, but which has quite ceased to realize those epithets in the conversion of Deists.

Yet Dr. c.u.mming not only recommends this book, but takes the trouble himself to write a feebler version of its arguments. For example, on the question of the genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament writing's, he says: "If, therefore, at a period long subsequent to the death of Christ, a number of men had appeared in the world, drawn up a book which they christened by the name of the Holy Scripture, and recorded these things which appear in it as facts when they were only the fancies of their own imagination, surely the _Jews_ would have instantly reclaimed that no such events transpired, that no such person as Jesus Christ appeared in their capital, and that _their_ crucifixion of Him, and their alleged evil treatment of his apostles, were mere fictions."

{76} It is scarcely necessary to say that, in such argument as this, Dr.

c.u.mming is beating the air. He is meeting a hypothesis which no one holds, and totally missing the real question. The only type of "infidel"

whose existence Dr. c.u.mming recognizes is that fossil personage who "calls the Bible a lie and a forgery." He seems to be ignorant-or he chooses to ignore the fact-that there is a large body of eminently instructed and earnest men who regard the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures as a series of historical doc.u.ments, to be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that an equally large number of men, who are not historical critics, find the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the Scriptures opposed to their profoundest moral convictions.

Dr. c.u.mming's infidel is a man who, because his life is vicious, tries to convince himself that there is no G.o.d, and that Christianity is an imposture, but who is all the while secretly conscious that he is opposing the truth, and cannot help "letting out" admissions "that the Bible is the Book of G.o.d." We are favored with the following "Creed of the Infidel:"

"I believe that there is no G.o.d, but that matter is G.o.d, and G.o.d is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any G.o.d or not. I believe also that the world was not made, but that the world made itself, or that it had no beginning, and that it will last forever.

I believe that man is a beast; that the soul is the body, and that the body is the soul; and that after death there is neither body nor soul. I believe there is no religion, that _natural religion is the only religion_, _and all religion unnatural_. I believe not in Moses; I believe in the first philosophers. I believe not in the evangelists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes.

I believe in Lord Bolingbroke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I believe not in revelation; _I believe in tradition_; _I believe in the Talmud_; _I believe in the Koran_; I believe not in the Bible. I believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; I believe in Mahomet; I believe not in Christ. And lastly, _I believe_ in all unbelief."

The intellectual and moral monster whose creed is this complex web of contradictions, is, moreover, according to Dr. c.u.mming, a being who unites much simplicity and imbecility with his Satanic hardihood-much tenderness of conscience with his obdurate vice. Hear the "proof:"

"I once met with an acute and enlightened infidel, with whom I reasoned day after day, and for hours together; I submitted to him the internal, the external, and the experimental evidences, but made no impression on his scorn and unbelief. At length I entertained a suspicion that there was something morally, rather than intellectually wrong, and that the bias was not in the intellect, but in the heart; one day therefore I said to him, 'I must now state my conviction, and you may call me uncharitable, but duty compels me; you are living in some known and gross sin.' _The man's countenance became pale_; _he bowed and left me_."-"Man. of Evidences," p. 254.

Here we have the remarkable psychological phenomenon of an "acute and enlightened" man who, deliberately purposing to indulge in a favorite sin, and regarding the Gospel with scorn and unbelief, is, nevertheless, so much more scrupulous than the majority of Christians, that he cannot "embrace sin and the Gospel simultaneously;" who is so alarmed at the Gospel in which he does not believe, that he cannot be easy without trying to crush it; whose acuteness and enlightenment suggest to him, as a means of crus.h.i.+ng the Gospel, to argue from day to day with Dr.

c.u.mming; and who is withal so nave that he is taken by surprise when Dr.

c.u.mming, failing in argument, resorts to accusation, and so tender in conscience that, at the mention of his sin, he turns pale and leaves the spot. If there be any human mind in existence capable of holding Dr.

c.u.mming's "Creed of the Infidel," of at the same time believing in tradition and "believing in all unbelief," it must be the mind of the infidel just described, for whose existence we have Dr. c.u.mming's _ex officio_ word as a theologian; and to theologians we may apply what Sancho Panza says of the bachelors of Salamanca, that they never tell lies-except when it suits their purpose.

The total absence from Dr. c.u.mming's theological mind of any demarcation between fact and rhetoric is exhibited in another pa.s.sage, where he adopts the dramatic form:

"Ask the peasant on the hills-and _I have asked amid the mountains of Braemar and Deeside_-'How do you know that this book is divine, and that the religion you profess is true? You never read Paley?' 'No, I never heard of him.'-'You have never read Butler?' 'No, I have never heard of him.'-'Nor Chalmers?' 'No, I do not know him.'-'You have never read any books on evidence?' 'No, I have read no such books.'-'Then, how do you know this book is true?' 'Know it! Tell me that the Dee, the Clunie, and the Garrawalt, the streams at my feet, do not run; that the winds do not sigh amid the gorges of these blue hills; that the sun does not kindle the peaks of Loch-na-Gar; tell me my heart does not beat, and I will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not divine. I have found its truth illuminating my footsteps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my tongue cleave to my mouth's roof and my right hand forget its cunning, if I every deny what is my deepest inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of G.o.d.'"-"Church Before the Flood," p. 35.

Dr. c.u.mming is so slippery and lax in his mode of presentation that we find it impossible to gather whether he means to a.s.sert that this is what a peasant on the mountains of Braemar _did_ say, or that it is what such a peasant _would_ say: in the one case, the pa.s.sage may be taken as a measure of his truthfulness; in the other, of his judgment.

His own faith, apparently, has not been altogether intuitive, like that of his rhetorical peasant, for he tells us ("Apoc. Sketches," p. 405) that he has himself experienced what it is to have religious doubts. "I was tainted while at the University by this spirit of scepticism. I thought Christianity might not be true. The very possibility of its being true was the thought I felt I must meet and settle. Conscience could give me no peace till I had settled it. I read, and I read from that day, for fourteen or fifteen years, till this, and now I am as convinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this book is the book of G.o.d as that I now address you." This experience, however, instead of impressing on him the fact that doubt may be the stamp of a truth-loving mind-that _sunt quibus non credidisse honor est_, _et fidei futurae pignus_-seems to have produced precisely the contrary effect. It has not enabled him even to conceive the condition of a mind "perplext in faith but pure in deeds," craving light, yearning for a faith that will harmonize and cherish its highest powers and aspirations, but unable to find that faith in dogmatic Christianity. His own doubts apparently were of a different kind. Nowhere in his pages have we found a humble, candid, sympathetic attempt to meet the difficulties that may be felt by an ingenuous mind. Everywhere he supposes that the doubter is hardened, conceited, consciously shutting his eyes to the light-a fool who is to be answered according to his folly-that is, with ready replies made up of reckless a.s.sertions, of apocryphal anecdotes, and, where other resources fail, of vituperative imputation. As to the reading which he has prosecuted for fifteen years-_either_ it has left him totally ignorant of the relation which his own religions creed bears to the criticism and philosophy of the nineteenth century, or he systematically blinks that criticism and that philosophy; and instead of honestly and seriously endeavoring to meet and solve what he knows to be the real difficulties, contents himself with setting up popinjays to shoot at, for the sake of confirming the ignorance and winning the heap admiration of his evangelical hearers and readers. Like the Catholic preacher who, after throwing down his cap and apostrophizing it as Luther, turned to his audience and said, "You see this heretical fellow has not a word to say for himself," Dr. c.u.mming, having drawn his ugly portrait of the infidel, and put arguments of a convenient quality into his mouth, finds a "short and easy method" of confounding this "croaking frog."

In his treatment of infidels, we imagine he is guided by a mental process which may be expressed in the following syllogism: Whatever tends to the glory of G.o.d is true; it is for the glory of G.o.d that infidels should be as bad as possible; therefore, whatever tends to show that infidels are as bad as possible is true. All infidels, he tells us, have been men of "gross and licentious lives." Is there not some well-known unbeliever, David Hume, for example, of whom even Dr. c.u.mming's readers may have heard as an exception? No matter. Some one suspected that he was _not_ an exception, and as that suspicion tends to the glory of G.o.d, it is one for a Christian to entertain. (See "Man. of Ev.," p. 73.)-If we were unable to imagine this kind of self-sophistication, we should be obliged to suppose that, relying on the ignorance of his evangelical disciples, he fed them with direct and conscious falsehoods. "Voltaire," he informs them, "declares there is no G.o.d;" he was "an ant.i.theist, that is one who deliberately and avowedly opposed and hated G.o.d; who swore in his blasphemy that he would dethrone him;" and "advocated the very depths of the lowest sensuality." With regard to many statements of a similar kind, equally at variance with truth, in Dr. c.u.mming's volumes, we presume that he has been misled by hearsay or by the second-hand character of his acquaintance with free-thinking literature. An evangelical preacher is not obliged to be well-read. Here, however, is a case which the extremest supposition of educated ignorance will not reach. Even books of "evidences" quote from Voltaire the line-

"Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer;"

even persons fed on the mere whey and b.u.t.termilk of literature must know that in philosophy Voltaire was nothing if not a theist-must know that he wrote not against G.o.d, but against Jehovah, the G.o.d of the Jews, whom he believed to be a false G.o.d-must know that to say Voltaire was an atheist on this ground is as absurd as to say that a Jacobite opposed hereditary monarchy because he declared the Brunswick family had no t.i.tle to the throne. That Dr. c.u.mming should repeat the vulgar fables about Voltaire's death is merely what we might expect from the specimens we have seen of his ill.u.s.trative stories. A man whose accounts of his own experience are apocryphal is not likely to put borrowed narratives to any severe test.

The alliance between intellectual and moral perversion is strikingly typified by the way in which he alternates from the unveracious to the absurd, from misrepresentation to contradiction. Side by side with the abduction of "facts" such as those we have quoted, we find him arguing on one page that the Trinity was too grand a doctrine to have been conceived by man, and was _therefore_ Divine; and on another page, that the Incarnation _had_ been preconceived by man, and is _therefore_ to be accepted as Divine. But we are less concerned with the fallacy of his "ready replies" than with their falsity; and even of this we can only afford s.p.a.ce for a very few specimens. Here is one: "There is a _thousand times_ more proof that the gospel of John was written by him than there is that the _??aas??_ was written by Xenophon, or the Ars Poetica by Horace." If Dr. c.u.mming had chosen Plato's Epistles or Anacreon's Poems instead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica, he would have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and would have furnished a ready reply which would have been equally effective with his Sunday-school teachers and their disputants. Hence we conclude this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal _in majorem gloriam Dei_. Elsewhere he tells us that "the idea of the author of the 'Vestiges' is, that man is the development of a monkey, that the monkey is the embryo man, so that _if you keep a baboon long enough_, _it will develop itself into a man_."

How well Dr. c.u.mming has qualified himself to judge of the ideas in "that very unphilosophical book," as he p.r.o.nounces it, may be inferred from the fact that he implies the author of the "Vestiges" to have _originated_ the nebular hypothesis.

In the volume from which the last extract is taken, even the hardihood of a.s.sertion is surpa.s.sed by the suicidal character of the argument. It is called "The Church before the Flood," and is devoted chiefly to the adjustment of the question between the Bible and Geology. Keeping within the limits we have prescribed to ourselves, we do not enter into the matter of this discussion; we merely pause a little over the volume in order to point out Dr. c.u.mming's mode of treating the question. He first tells us that "the Bible has not a single scientific error in it;" that "_its slightest intimations of scientific principles or natural phenomena have in every instance been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true_," and he asks:

"How is it that Moses, with no greater education than the Hindoo or the ancient philosopher, has written his book, touching science at a thousand points, so accurately that scientific research has discovered no flaws in it; and yet in those investigations which have taken place in more recent centuries, it has not been shown that he has committed one single error, or made one solitary a.s.sertion which can be proved by the maturest science, or by the most eagle-eyed philosopher, to be incorrect, scientifically or historically?"

According to this the relation of the Bible to science should be one of the strong points of apologists for revelation: the scientific accuracy of Moses should stand at the head of their evidences; and they might urge with some cogency, that since Aristotle, who devoted himself to science, and lived many ages after Moses, does little else than err ingeniously, this fact, that the Jewish Lawgiver, though touching science at a thousand points, has written nothing that has not been "demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true," is an irrefragable proof of his having derived his knowledge from a supernatural source. How does it happen, then, that Dr. c.u.mming forsakes this strong position? How is it that we find him, some pages further on, engaged in reconciling Genesis with the discoveries of science, by means of imaginative hypotheses and feats of "interpretation?" Surely, that which has been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true does not require hypothesis and critical argument, in order to show that it may _possibly_ agree with those very discoveries by means of which its exact and strict truth has been demonstrated. And why should Dr. c.u.mming suppose, as we shall presently find him supposing, that men of science hesitate to accept the Bible, because it appears to contradict their discoveries? By his own statement, that appearance of contradiction does not exist; on the contrary, it has been demonstrated that the Bible precisely agrees with their discoveries. Perhaps, however, in saying of the Bible that its "slightest intimations of scientific principles or natural phenomena have in every instance been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true," Dr. c.u.mming merely means to imply that theologians have found out a way of explaining the biblical text so that it no longer, in their opinion, appears to be in contradiction with the discoveries of science. One of two things, therefore: either he uses language without the slightest appreciation of its real meaning, or the a.s.sertions he makes on one page are directly contradicted by the arguments he urges on another.

Dr. c.u.mming's principles-or, we should rather say, confused notions-of biblical interpretation, as exhibited in this volume, are particularly significant of his mental calibre. He says ("Church before the Flood,"

p. 93): "Men of science, who are full of scientific investigation and enamored of scientific discovery, will hesitate before they accept a book which, they think, contradicts the plainest and the most unequivocal disclosures they have made in the bowels of the earth, or among the stars of the sky. To all these we answer, as we have already indicated, there is not the least dissonance between G.o.d's written book and the most mature discoveries of geological science. One thing, however, there may be: _there may be a contradiction between the discoveries of geology and our preconceived interpretations of the Bible_. But this is not because the Bible is wrong, but because our interpretation is wrong." (The italics in all cases are our own.)

Elsewhere he says: "It seems to me plainly evident that the record of Genesis, when read fairly, and not in the light of our prejudices-_and mind you_, _the essence of Popery is to read the Bible in the light of our opinions_, _instead of viewing our opinions in the light of the Bible_, _in its plain and obvious sense_-falls in perfectly with the a.s.sertion of geologists."

On comparing these two pa.s.sages, we gather that when Dr. c.u.mming, under stress of geological discovery, a.s.signs to the biblical text a meaning entirely different from that which, on his own showing, was universally ascribed to it for more than three thousand years, he regards himself as "viewing his opinions in the light of the Bible in its plain and obvious sense!" Now he is reduced to one of two alternatives: either he must hold that the "plain and obvious meaning" of the whole Bible differs from age to age, so that the criterion of its meaning lies in the sum of knowledge possessed by each successive age-the Bible being an elastic garment for the growing thought of mankind; or he must hold that some portions are amenable to this criterion, and others not so. In the former case, he accepts the principle of interpretation adopted by the early German rationalists; in the latter case he has to show a further criterion by which we can judge what parts of the Bible are elastic and what rigid. If he says that the interpretation of the text is rigid wherever it treats of doctrines necessary to salvation, we answer, that for doctrines to be necessary to salvation they must first be true; and in order to be true, according to his own principle, they must be founded on a correct interpretation of the biblical text. Thus he makes the necessity of doctrines to salvation the criterion of infallible interpretation, and infallible interpretation the criterion of doctrines being necessary to salvation. He is whirled round in a circle, having, by admitting the principle of novelty in interpretation, completely deprived himself of a basis. That he should seize the very moment in which he is most palpably betraying that he has no test of biblical truth beyond his own opinion, as an appropriate occasion for flinging the rather novel reproach against Popery that its essence is to "read the Bible in the light of our opinions," would be an almost pathetic self-exposure, if it were not disgusting. Imbecility that is not even meek, ceases to be pitiable, and becomes simply odious.

Parenthetic lashes of this kind against Popery are very frequent with Dr.

c.u.mming, and occur even in his more devout pa.s.sages, where their introduction must surely disturb the spiritual exercises of his hearers.

Indeed, Roman Catholics fare worse with him even than infidels. Infidels are the small vermin-the mice to be bagged _en pa.s.sant_. The main object of his chase-the rats which are to be nailed up as trophies-are the Roman Catholics. Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan; but rea.s.sure yourselves! Dr. c.u.mming has been created. Antichrist is enthroned in the Vatican; but he is stoutly withstood by the Boanerges of Crown-court.

The personality of Satan, as might be expected, is a very prominent tenet in Dr. c.u.mming's discourses; those who doubt it are, he thinks, "generally specimens of the victims of Satan as a triumphant seducer;"

and it is through the medium of this doctrine that he habitually contemplates Roman Catholics. They are the puppets of which the devil holds the strings. It is only exceptionally that he speaks of them as fellow-men, acted on by the same desires, fears, and hopes as himself; his _rule_ is to hold them up to his hearers as foredoomed instruments of Satan and vessels of wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are "no shams," that they are "thoroughly in earnest"-that is because they are inspired by h.e.l.l, because they are under an "infra-natural" influence.

If their missionaries are found wherever Protestant missionaries go, this zeal in propagating their faith is not in them a consistent virtue, as it is in Protestants, but a "melancholy fact," affording additional evidence that they are instigated and a.s.sisted by the devil. And Dr. c.u.mming is inclined to think that they work miracles, because that is no more than might be expected from the known ability of Satan who inspires them.

{86a} He admits, indeed, that "there is a fragment of the Church of Christ in the very bosom of that awful apostasy," {86b} and that there are members of the Church of Rome in glory; but this admission is rare and episodical-is a declaration, _pro forma_, about as influential on the general disposition and habits as an aristocrat's profession of democracy.

This leads us to mention another conspicuous characteristic of Dr.

c.u.mming's teaching-the _absence of genuine charity_. It is true that he makes large profession of tolerance and liberality within a certain circle; he exhorts Christians to unity; he would have Churchmen fraternize with Dissenters, and exhorts these two branches of G.o.d's family to defer the settlement of their differences till the millennium.

But the love thus taught is the love of the _clan_, which is the correlative of antagonism to the rest of mankind. It is not sympathy and helpfulness toward men as men, but toward men as Christians, and as Christians in the sense of a small minority. Dr. c.u.mming's religion may demand a tribute of love, but it gives a charter to hatred; it may enjoin charity, but it fosters all uncharitableness. If I believe that G.o.d tells me to love my enemies, but at the same time hates His own enemies and requires me to have one will with Him, which has the larger scope, love or hatred? And we refer to those pages of Dr. c.u.mming's in which he opposes Roman Catholics, Puseyites, and infidels-pages which form the larger proportion of what he has published-for proof that the idea of G.o.d which both the logic and spirit of his discourses keep present to his hearers, is that of a G.o.d who hates his enemies, a G.o.d who teaches love by fierce denunciations of wrath-a G.o.d who encourages obedience to his precepts by elaborately revealing to us that his own government is in precise opposition to those precepts. We know the usual evasions on this subject. We know Dr. c.u.mming would say that even Roman Catholics are to be loved and succored as men; that he would help even that "unclean spirit," Cardinal Wiseman, out of a ditch. But who that is in the slightest degree acquainted with the action of the human mind will believe that any genuine and large charity can grow out of an exercise of love which is always to have an _arriere-pensee_ of hatred? Of what quality would be the conjugal love of a husband who loved his spouse as a wife, but hated her as a woman? It is reserved for the regenerate mind, according to Dr. c.u.mming's conception of it, to be "wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment." Precepts of charity uttered with a faint breath at the end of a sermon are perfectly futile, when all the force of the lungs has been spent in keeping the hearer's mind fixed on the conception of his fellow-men not as fellow-sinners and fellow-sufferers, but as agents of h.e.l.l, as automata through whom Satan plays his game upon earth-not on objects which call forth their reverence, their love, their hope of good even in the most strayed and perverted, but on a minute identification of human things with such symbols as the scarlet wh.o.r.e, the beast out of the abyss, scorpions whose sting is in their tails, men who have the mark of the beast, and unclean spirits like frogs. You might as well attempt to educate the child's sense of beauty by hanging its nursery with the horrible and grotesque pictures in which the early painters represented the Last Judgment, as expect Christian graces to flourish on that prophetic interpretation which Dr. c.u.mming offers as the princ.i.p.al nutriment of his flock. Quite apart from the critical basis of that interpretation, quite apart from the degree of truth there may be in Dr.

c.u.mming's prognostications-questions into which we do not choose to enter-his use of prophecy must be _a priori_ condemned in the judgment of right-minded persons, by its results as testified in the net moral effect of his sermons. The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system, believe that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of holy dispositions, the subduing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire that the will of G.o.d-a will synonymous with goodness and truth-may be done on earth. But what relation to all this has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Christian in the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is the wild beast in the shape of the great red dragon, and two thirds of mankind the victims-the whole provided and got up by G.o.d for the edification of the saints? The demonstration that the Second Advent is at hand, if true, can have no really holy, spiritual effect; the highest state of mind inculcated by the Gospel is resignation to the disposal of G.o.d's providence-"Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; whether we die, we die unto the Lord"-not an eagerness to see a temporal manifestation which shall confound the enemies of G.o.d and give exaltation to the saints; it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual communion with his nature, not to fix the date when He shall appear in the sky. Dr. c.u.mming's delight in shadowing forth the downfall of the Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle of Gog and Magog, and in advertising the pre-millennial Advent, is simply the transportation of political pa.s.sions on to a so-called religious platform; it is the antic.i.p.ation of the triumph of "our party," accomplished by our princ.i.p.al men being "sent for" into the clouds. Let us be understood to speak in all seriousness.

If we were in search of amus.e.m.e.nt, we should not seek for it by examining Dr. c.u.mming'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 G.o.d, 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. c.u.mming'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. c.u.mming'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 _?a??sa?_ the meaning _cathedrize_, though why we are to translate "He as G.o.d cathedrizes in the temple of G.o.d," any more than we are to translate "cathedrize here, while I go and pray yonder," it is for Dr. c.u.mming 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, _e??_, _t??? a???a? t?? a?????_, here translated 'everlasting,' signify literally 'unto the ages of ages,' a?e?

??, 'always being,' that is, everlasting, ceaseless existence. Plato uses the word in this sense when he says, 'The G.o.ds 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 G.o.d-'the Eternal G.o.d.' 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."