When we turn over the title-page and read the preface, the first sentence perfectly appals us; while others that occur in its three or four short paragraphs, are sufficient to tempt to great but deserved severity of remark. We are told, The following sermon was taken down by a reporter, and is now printed as corrected by the preacher.'

That is to say, the first time that Dr. Cumming preached before the Queen, he preached without notes; not only did he not read his sermon, but he did not deliver it memoriter; for, it is printed, not from his MS., but as taken down' from his lips; and it is corrected by him, but it is not said to be corrected by his copy. The impression the statement makes is obvious; whether intended or not, we shall not surmise. The whole thing, as we have put it, and as it seems to us the sentence must be interpreted, is either true or it is not; on either alternative, the cool, easy assurance of the man, and the tone in which the matter is told, strike us with inexpressible amazement.

If Dr. Cumming had done, what he certainly ought to have done, written his sermon, what need was there for a reporter? Why, in Scotland, the land of Sabbath sacredness, and of Sabbath observance, should that day be desecrated and profaned by the toleration of a person pursuing his trade, and earning his money by a secular act, in the very house of prayer and at the time of worship? The reporter does not seem to have been employed by any Pulpit' proprietor. We have often heard ministers complain of being exposed to this annoyance; and we have known some, in spite of their intense repugnance to the system, both as an injustice to themselves and a violation of the sanctity of the day, reluctantly consent to correct the report of a sermon, which, whether they did so or not, would be published, partly that neither themselves nor the truth might be misrepresented, and partly to have a hold on those whom they thus obliged, and so to be able to forbid future or frequent peculations. If any man were so absurd as to take down a sermon, which everybody would think was sure to have been written, and to offer his notes for the correction of the preacher for him to publish it, the answer is obvious- You have taken the trouble of a very unnecessary service, for the manuscript is already in long hand, and can become "copy" at any moment if I so choose.' We can understand a reporter stealing such a sermon, and hastening to send it forth on his own responsibility, and for his own profit; but Dr. Cumming's sermon-this corrected report of it-is published by his own bookseller, appears to be his own property, and takes rank with all his regular and authorized works. Did he, then, employ the reporter? Was it necessary for him to do so, in order that he might have a manuscript for the press?

Are we to understand that the man's nerve was such, that in the prospect of an exciting and untried position, he ventured to trust to his extemporary powers, and that it became necessary, therefore, to hire a penman to ply his trade in a Scotch church on a Sabbath morning, and to make such a person and such an act, there and then, part of 'the magnificent scenery of Dee-side?' This quotation will need to be explained. It is the next thing that we notice in the 'preface.' The preacher tells us, in a sort of patronizing tone towards her Majesty, that he cannot easily forget the impressive spectacle which he witnessed in the parish church of Crathie, when the greatest sovereign of the greatest nation upon earth, surrounded by the highest and the very humblest of her subjects, joined together in the worship of Him by whom kings reign and princes decree justice, and with whom there is no respect of persons. Amid the magnificent scenery of Dee-side, not the least magnificent was that assembly of worshippers.' As this sentence stands, it seems grammatically to mean if it means anything-that the assembly of worshippers' was a part of the magnificent scenery of Dee-side, or rather a piece of magnificent scenery' in the midst of it. What it intends to say most likely is, that amid certain magnificent scenery, the assembly' was not the least magnificent thing, or object. Even thus expounded, the epithet, we think, is not appropriate, while, with what we have already discovered, the 'magnificence' is sadly defaced. To think that one of the figures in the picture-the picture of an assembly of worshippers-was a man preparing his paper and pencils to take down an extemporaneous discourse!

Passing over some silliness about a joyous prophecy,' we come next to the following sentence: The forms of the English and Scottish Churches differ their doctrines are the same. The greatest divines of each admit that they are sisters. Their forms vary and change like the clouds in the sky; their doctrines remain like the stars, far above, fixed and shining for ever.' Now, can anybody tell what that means? For the sake of a supposed prettiness of figure, we have a statement directly contrary to fact. The 'forms' of the two Churches do not change like the clouds.' They may be capable of being changed; they may differ from one another as the shape of two clouds may differ; but as to saying that they actually do vary and change like the clouds in the sky,' it is all nonsense. They do no such thing. The forms of both have been pretty well fixed for centuries-a tolerably long time for a cloud!

We have dwelt thus long on the preface to the sermon, partly because this is professedly written by Dr. Cumming-words put down by his own pen, and not taken from his lips by that of

another; and partly, we suspect, from an instinctive repugnance to approach a discourse of which, after having read it again and again, we are compelled to confess-and we do so with mingled grief, mortification, and surprise-that we have hardly a single good word that we can conscientiously say.

And we are very reluctant to say what we feel of an opposite sort. We will not say it all. Having written so much of a general character, we will omit the minute notice of the sermon which we sat down to write, and content ourselves with giving a few hints of the matters on which we intended to have touched. The text chosen is Isaiah xlv. 22. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.' The manner in which the preacher proposes to deal with his subject, is stated in the following extract:

The direct and pointed appeal in this verse, thus suggests the pos sibility of men looking below Christ, or above Christ, or on either side of Christ, and so missing the salvation, the transmission of which is here plainly restricted to one channel, and declared to flow exclusively from one source. There may be many wrong ways-there is but one right. Yet all the wrong ways may be summed up in two. In a word, there are but three sorts of religion in the world. From the beginning until now all religions may be classified in one of three great categories or chapters. First-the religion of Man, whose language is, "Look to me, and be saved;" secondly, the religion of the Priest, whose language is, "Look to me, and be saved;" and there is, thirdly, the religion of God our Saviour, whose words are, "Look to ME, and be saved." Let me show that in neither of the first two is there any possibility of life. Each is a candidate for your acceptance, but only in the last is everlasting peace.'-P. 7.

Now we do not know how certain expressions may affect others, nor will we pretend that our internal sense and perception of things are any rule for others, but it does so happen, that our taste is offended and hurt by the flippant, and somewhat vulgar familiarity, as it seems to us, of such a sentence as the possibility of men looking below Christ, or above Christ, or on either side of Christ.' We shrink from this language, as if we experienced the infliction of a wound. It lacerates our religious sensibility. It grates on the holy and the reverential within us, on all, in fact, with which we would desire to approach the statement of a divine truth, and the contemplation of a divine thing. But the sermon is full of this. We have never suffered so much-positively suffered-in reading any equal number of pages, from frequent and gross violations of taste. We have read the absurdities of ordinary men,-we have heard improprieties from others on ordinary occasions, but we could smile at such things, or pass them by ; but in a book like this-a dis

course delivered in such a presence-which will be read by thousands who never read sermons-and which will, to them, be the mirror in which they will see reflected the mind of professedly evangelical men, the number of passages which are ridiculous, or worse, has filled us with many painful emotions, previous respect and estimation of the author, and solicitude for the interests of truth, contending together, while he was continually calling forth, as we read on, shame, indignation, contempt, or grief.

The proposed divisions of his subject do not appear to us quite accurate. Instead of three sorts of religion, that of man, of the priest, and of God, it seems to us both more simple and more correct to say that there are two :-the true, revealed by God; the false, originating with humanity;-that of man and that of the priest being varieties of the latter. Indeed, we do not clearly perceive, after all Dr. Cumming's statements and illustrations, what the religion of man, as distinguished from that of priest, is, according to his conception of it, but that of the philosopher, or the moralist, which is just the variety we have specified. But the whole thing is trashy and superficial.

We cannot go on. We are engaged in a most repulsive and disagreeable work, which nothing but a sense of critical justice, and a feeling of loyalty to sacred literature and to evangelical truth, could render tolerable. It is irksome in the extreme. We hasten to justify our indignant condemnation of what, perhaps, is not worth the displeasure it has provoked, by a few specimens of its preposterous paragraphs. We turn over the leaves and take them at random. We have not made a single mark in the margin to aid the eye-it was not necessary; no page can present itself without something offensive being seen. The very first words contain what pierces to the quick.

"All have sinned," is the verdict of God on mankind. To our original sinfulness we have added many actual transgressions. There is no exception. From the loftiest to the lowliest of men we are sinners-miserable sinners. The wasting and destroying curse which evermore follows sin, has entered the royal palace, and the noble hall, and the humblest cot. It is felt in cabinet, in congress, in senate, in divan.'-P. 5.

DIVAN!

Once he [man] was a glorious temple-inlaid with holiness-vocal with songs, and replete with happiness; but now all is changed-the altar fire is quenched; and in the place where the cherubim and the glory were, there are reptiles and serpent passions holding their ceaseless carnival.'-Pp. 7, 8.

Reptiles and serpent passions,'-an absurd mixture of the literal and the figurative. Ceaseless carnival,'-stuff.

If, then, the unfallen Adam could put forth no wings that could carry him to God's dwelling-place, and set him on a level with God,— surely the fallen Adam, with less strength, with less holiness, must try in vain to reach God's throne, or recover his lost place. It is to attempt to be himself a God,-to reach the throne he hopes to secure by his merits, and to retain the glory of the achievement, wholly and for ever to himself. This is futile. When man, by any combination of his muscles, can lift himself from the earth, or when he can walk upon the untrodden sea, or soar to distant stars, and bring home the secrets of heretofore unexplored worlds,-when man can raise himself from the dead, and from his own grave, by some inherent spring of life within him-then and only then will we listen to and weigh man's bidding; "Look unto me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth."*

There is nothing in man, or by man, or belonging to man, or bearing the superscription and the image of man, either in Paradise, or on Sinai, or on Olympus,-in the forum, in the academy, or the Stoa-in the palace, the school, or the hut,-that has in it any redeeming power, any regenerating or life-giving energy whatever.'-Pp. 8, 9.

'SINAI and OLYMPUS'!- the forum, the academy, or the Stoa'!! What could the simple parishioners of Crathie' make of all this? But it was preached before her Majesty,' and, of course, an educated court would understand it? They would-and him too.

But now for the climax :

"It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;" à fortiori, "It is not in man that walketh to save his soul."

The true type of man's effort to save himself, it seems to me, is found in the remarkable biography of Paracelsus. It is stated of him, that he spent or wasted his life in efforts to discover the elixir of immortality, of which, it was supposed, if man were to partake he would live for ever. He made the discovery of alcohol; he thought that in it he had found the long-sought elixir. He resolved to put it to the test; he drank of it copiously, but, instead of living for ever, he perished of the poison he had drank on his own floor.-P. 10.

So much for the religion of man. The religion of the priest is called, most offensively, we confess, to us, as a matter of taste, Churchianity. There are, no doubt, many truths uttered in relation to it, but the composition is still vicious-everything seems at once flippant, stilted, and strained. We take a few specimens:

The whole Bible tells us that a church without Christ is a body without a head; a robe, without the Divine wearer; the richly-chased cup, but without the wine.

I cannot see that there is any more chance of being saved by a Church, than there is of being saved by a College, or by a Royal Exchange.-P. 11.