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Prophecy and its Approaching Fulfilment. To a crowded audience on each occasion, the Rev. Dr. Cumming delivered two lectures on the 18th and 19th of November in the St. Leonards Assembly Rooms. The title of the lectures was as here stated, and the chairman at both lectures was the Rev. W. N. Tilson-Marsh. So impressively eloquent was Dr. Cumming at all times as to be listened to with almost breathless attention, and so it was in the present case. He commenced by saying there was a important distinction which should never be forgotten in the exposition of prophecy. When he spoke of the truths of Christianity, he did so with the greatest of dogmatism, but when he spoke about things which were difficult of comprehension, then he must speak with the reserve which one ought to have in talking in talking(sic) of things on which good men frequently differed. He knew that unless a man were born again he could not see God; but he only thought that the first vial was poured out in 1792, that the second vial was poured out in 1848, and that we were now on the eve of stupendous events verging on the close of the present dispensation. In his first position he knew he was right, but in his second conclusion he might be wrong. All that he had to do was to submit to them as Christian and rational people that they would compare God in history with God in prophecy. Alluding to some of the newspaper reports concerning him, the lecturer combatted the notion that he was a prophet, and had prophesied the end of the world in 1867. If he were a prophet he would produce his credentials, but that he could not do; he therefore denied that he was a prophet. He only attempted to interpret prophecy. The misapprehension had arisen from the silly resort of worldly people who did not like to hear that the world should be changed. The New Testament taught that we knew not at what day and hour the Son of Man would appear. That to the world was a mystery, and if one spoke of it the cry was raised “Does he not speak in parables?” And yet he would appeal to everyone who read his Bible if that Bible did not teach us to look to the magnificent future, and thus bring back hope and joy to the troubled spirit? There were certain things in unfulfilled prophecy which were hard to understand, but there were also some of which there could be no mistake. It was absolutely certain that this earth would not be annihilated, but that it would be changed and purified by fire, as stated in the third chapter of Peter, wherein we look for a new heaven and a new earth; not another earth. The present earth had the remains of a beauty which no one could fail to prize, but it also had the evidences of a shock, that every aching frame and every grey hair pointed to as actual and historical. All that was was(sic) wanted was not extinction, but substitution; and so we looked for a reparation in the “new heaven and new earth; wherein dwelleth righteousness” . . . It was not a question of doubt that our earth was to undergo a baptism of fire, just as it had under its baptism of water. . . But then his audience might say “What an awful -