outrages these conditional arrangements that have wisely been ordained, and which conditions require to be studied and obeyed to ensure progressive knowledge of truth.

The Bible does not say that the human mind is free, it asserts that free will is self-will, and that self-will is the true Satan of Divine will. The Bible teaches that existence is only given to be maintained under conditions which necessitate that everything shall be interdependent, and can exist only in relation of one thing to another.

"Nothing," says Bunsen in his "Signs of the Times,” "has been created (generated?) and subsists as an end in "itself for its own sake, but every single thing lives in "relation to the whole, but that whole subsists only by the "free surrender of the individual for the common good."

The express declaration in the Bible, is radically opposed to the theological assumption of man's free will. The condition of existence is, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, "and him only shalt thou serve." The banishment of all governing necessity from mental conditions, to make room for the assumed free or unconditioned self-existence of the human mind, is the root of the mischief in sacerdotal theisms.

It is false to say that Deity has bound nature fast in fate, and left free the human will. King Solomon controverts this with other lies of the serpent, and says, that in human affairs, the battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift, but that time and chance snatch the prizes, crowns, and champions' belts from the grasp of the gladiators in the great battle of life. Theologians correct Solomon in this in their conventional style of slip slop, and contend that the King means to say, that the battle and race are not "ALWAYS" to the strong and swift, and thus by the distortion of a sentence, or direct interpretation of a word, they go on forging false notes, and make the Bible maintain the very opposite of what it really teaches. "Ye are all forgers "of lies," said Job to his theistical friends, and physicians of no value for unhappy beings, are ye all.

At page 447, Dr. Cumming contends that it is fatalism for a Mahometan to submit to inevitable destiny when he

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sits down and says passively, "It is the will of Allah, God's "will be done." This resignation of the Moslem is said to be either the stillness of mental stagnation, the calmness of iron nerves, or the stupor of opium, and in short, anything you like to call it, but the pious resignation of the orthodox Christian, who patiently obeys the command of "Be still, "and know that I am God."

There is no clear definition given of this distinction between the submission to inevitable destiny of the orthodox Christian and that of the poor Mussulman. Neither is any explanation afforded of the discrepancy apparent between the orthodox parson's doctrine of free will and this Bible's injunction to submit and surrender that will to the inevitable fate pre-ordained by Deity.

And now we arrive at Dr. Cumming's idea of what the human conscience is. At page 137, it is contended, that if religion is not made the law of the conscience, in addition to life in heart and intellect, it is but discordant noise; but yet, before he has laid down this axiom, he speaks of conscientious duty in the following style :

"—a religion that may seem to you at first blush a true "and scriptural religion, namely, the religion of conscience. "But this religion is not the religion of God, and will not "endure. It is a powerful type of religion, and, in its place, a form of it that we must respect. One always must respect the man who is conscientious, even when he is wrong.

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Further on he remarks:

"Now wherever there is the religion of conscience, its "whole leverage is terror, it drives to duty, it scares to what " is right, it torments you if you neglect to pray, it threatens

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you if you fail in the least service, it is most repulsive, its "duties are drudgery, its service is slavery, it dreads the "devil, and fears not God! It is not the religion of "Christ, it is not the religion that will endure." Then he asks, "What is the religion that will endure?"

The answer is an attempt at comparative theological anatomy that includes, in man's intellectual action, part of

his involuntary system, (thus,)—" the religion of the head, "with its roots in the intellect, the religion of the heart, "its roots striking down there also, the religion of the con"science, its law, its atmosphere, its motive power, but all "three inspired and taught by the Holy Spirit of God."

The confusion of idea here is really ludicrous. First of all conscientious religion is damned, and then included with approbation in another scheme, because being tripartate, it may bear some analogy to trinity. Conscience is a state of the mind, and thus a breach of the conditions of mental health, tending to destroy its existence, is necessarily attended with pain or misery. Dr. Cumming calls this repulsive, terrorism, drugery, and what not. This is one of the effects of eating the fruit of theological evil. Mind is cut up into three departments, one of them is made the heart, wholly an involuntary organ, and then this is called the orthodox religion of Christ!

It is a stock objection of immaterial psychologists, against the teaching of phrenology, that the separation and classification into different groups of the organ of the mind is fallacious, because based upon what they call the professional prejudices of mere physiologists, whose anatomical pursuits are said to have led them astray. Nevertheless, as just witnessed, these immaterialists see no objection to the construction of a departmental theory of their own, which certainly has antiquity in its favour, if that is any recommendation, since we derive from antiquity the truly valuable suggestion of ancient Chinese savans, that the seat of human intelligence is to be found in man's viscera. Thus it is customary with the immaterialists to dissect human nature in their sermons into three lots, viz., head, heart, and conscience; they urge that there may be three religions, one for each separate division, but that any one of the three taken singly, or even two together, are not genuine, the whole three must go together to constitute the orthodox faith. At page 442, is to be found the following definition of faith:

"Faith is to the Christian what sense is to a natural man,

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"and the objects believed on, are as real to faith as the objects seen and heard are to sense and hearing."

And on the following page :

"Nature has left us the faith (knowledge?) that concludes "in discoveries of science. Grace is ever ready to give us "the faith (knowledge?) that is, the substance of things "hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

As the above passages stand, they are direct evidence that knowledge and faith are not compared, but contrasted, as usual in theology; for the character given to knowledge is that it consists of concepts derived from material or natural processes, testifying through the media of the senses to the judgment seat of the sensorial mirror of the mind, whereas faith is indeed admitted to be a matter that depends upon some evidence, but of absolute or supernatural things beyond all sensational consciousness. There is, however, nothing said in the Bible to controvert the idea that faith, or the substance of realities not now clearly perceived, is other than actual knowledge obtained by the quickening of the perceptive and reflective faculties of the mind owing to the intelligence of the believer or seer being elevated above the ordinary standard by corresponding exaltation of the conditions of his existence, that is, by an elevation or change in his natural, not into a preternatural, condition.

It was not in the fire, the whirlwind, or the earthquake, that Elijah perceived the message of Deity. It was as if the voice was uttered in a whisper, and thus it was not until his refined and elevated condition of intelligence was made to vibrate to the whisper of a "still small voice," that the listening and wondering prophet covered his face, and bowed his head in awe and reverence.

At page 152, an answer is given to the question: :

"What is salvation?" It is, "Not the personal safety "of the believer, which is secured at his own death, but "the universal restitution of earth, soul, and body."

The notion is, that the immaterial mind or soul being existent per se, and immortal, goes at once after death to some theological locality called heaven, leaving the body of

dust behind it for some subsequent mysterious conjunction. So it is gravely stated, that when a Christian dies he goes to Christ, it is not Christ that comes to the believer. The term "Christ" here used, means Jesus of Nazareth, as if he individually had been the only revelation of the Anointed One in the Son of Man, and as if he continued to be the only individual son of the Universal Father. And this in defiance of the statement in the Bible, that as many men as are guided by the Spirit of God, they (that is, so many) are the sons (plural) of God. It requires to be borne in mind, that every important word or phrase used in this Bible has a different meaning in sacerdotal theism to that which it bears in secular vocabularies; ex. gr., the term "Son" has various meanings in theology, all more or less differing, like a Chinese character, according to its position in the scale of sacred writings; secularly, however, "Son" has only one meaning.

At page 191, an explanation is offered of the metaphorical expression-" The dead that sleep in Christ." It is said, "This refers to the dead dust that is laid in the grave."

The apostle, however, does not say so; this is only our eminent Greek scholar's rendering into the vernacular of a dubious phrase. The passage apparently alludes to the temporary withdrawal from human consciousness of men supposed to be dead, but who are, in relation to mundane affairs, as if in a condition analogous to hybernation or sleep. The actual dead have perished, for there is no living Father of dead children; the living sons are not dead, they are actually living, though in relation to human conditions as though they were dead.

At page 241, there is recorded the Rev. Lecturer's wish that he could think that the souls of the lost are annihilated, and the question is there asked :—

"What is the opposite of everlasting life?" The reply given by the essayist, for self and brother parsons, is, "Everlasting punishment."

He admits that the proper antithesis of everlasting life ould be everlasting annihilation; but theologians practically