was not delicate enough; but still, it was a fact. People generally believed in what was a gross mistake that there was something in the body, the earth, the air, the sea, so corrupt that annihilation was the only thing to which it ought to be subjected. Everything that was made six thousand years ago was marked by absolute and glorious perfection. But it was a material world. Adam and Eve were just as the beings of the present day, with this the only exception - that sin and mortality were not in them till they violated the law of the Creator, and brought death into the world. There was no reason, physiologically considered why a single individual should die. It had been admitted to him by the most accomplished physiologist, 80 years of age, that there was no reason in nature why man should die. He told this gentleman there was a moral law which accounted for it "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." the person referred to said it was a fact, but that; but that he was physiologist and not a Christian. But was did the sceptics researches teach them? - but that for sin having entered into the world, man might have lived for ever. Now, the instant that Christ came and the earth had undergone its last baptism of fire, he believed that literally this orb would appear amid the orbs of the universe, the most beautiful and the most intensely interesting of all. Dr. Cumming next referred to the "Essays and Reviews", and combatted the statement of the Rev. B. Wilson, that there were scientific errors in the Bible. The passage in Genesis "God stretched out the firmament" and another in Job, speaking of the sweet influences of the Pleiades" were especially dwelt upon. In references to those influences, the learned doctor remarked that it was now a generally accepted theory that Alcyone, one of the stars of the Pleiades was the centre of the stellar universe. He also reverted to the passage in Peter, "And the heavens shall pass away with great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." Had Peter written burn instead of melt, the chemists would have said he did not know science. But when he said melted, they knew he was perfectly right.
The lecturer then dwelt upon the vision of Heaven as beheld by John in the isle of Patmos. Having come to the period of the "first resurrection" he only wished to state the two theories of the Millenium were prevalent. One was held by certain divines, who alleged that the present Christian (illegible text) was to go on extending in greater beaty and radiance and influence till it was lost in the moontide of glory of a thousand years. They said that an extension of the gospel, the spread of missionary labours, the progress of literature and science were the instrumentalities with which it was to be brought about; that it was not an extinct economy, but was to be ushered in by a baptism of fire; by the resurrection from the dead of all the dead in Crhist that sleepeth; by a change of all the living that would then be found and who were believers; and that the Saviour would in some way - he knew not how - was to be -
