The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1866-12-01 00:00:00

APOCALYPTIC " HEDGING."

The Saturday Reties. hes the following remarks upon Dr
Cummings prophecies

Dr. Cumming s reputation for twenty years has
depended upon the coming of a great cataclysm in
1666. The great year has nearly gone, so now he
says that when he said '66 he meant 'US; and there is
no 'maroon whatever why, when '6B comes and goes, he
should not say that he meant "Why, sir," as Mr.
Oebaldieton said to his poetic son, "you do not under-
stand the beggarly trade you have chosen." A shrewd
prophet never thinks of prophesying anything too
soon or too precisely. He always leaves an elastic
margin of time, or else he takes care to clothe his
oracle in conveniently ambiguous phrase. There is an
Oxford story that some candidate for the degree oi
bachelor of divinity, when Ile had to compose his
Latin disputation, went the night before to the college
Library and fished out an old treatise on the Millen-
ium. This be very accurately and very diligently
copied out. The writer proved that the great event
must occur almost immediately. The next morning
the candidate, running his eye over the bsok. suddenly
perceived that it had been printed about 1660. No-
thing daunted, he appended a condo dog sentence,
"Si his calculationibus ducentos annos arldamus "
then it will appear indisputably that the Millennium is
close at hand. Dr. Cumming is evidently going to
imitate the style of this admirable disputant, only he
begins modestly by adding two, instead of two hun-
dred to his original calculations.

Noticing the relnarke of the press, Dr Cumming, under
the head of "A Word for Oneself,. writes the following to
The Times

Sir,—Perhara you feel—and fairly feel—that it is
not your duty to correct contemporaries. But your
wonted sympathy with, and constant support of,
fair play may tempt you to give this insertion at your
con venience. Almost all the evening, and, if I may
judge from extract., the weekly papere also, have
copied a report, spreading over some thirty lines, of a
!sermon I preached last Sunday evening week. Who
made this report I cannot ray; but this I can confi-
dently assert,—it is from beginning to end a transla-
tion of what I uttered into the opposite. They assert
that I fixed the consummation of all things and the
end of the world in this year 1866. I neither said nor
meant it. I merely took the opportunity of stating
that twenty years ago Elliott and the greatest writers
on prophecy, starting from A.D. 532 or from A.D. 606,
have taught that we may expect this very year the
final judgement of the Papacy, no far as providential.
But all of us expect it is not to be utterly destroyed
till He come whose right it is to reign. The earth, I
believe, is to be transformed, not annihiliated.
I have stated in a work published in 1865, called
" The Lest Warning Cry," and illustrated by halo.rical proofs in a work which Nisbet will publish in a
few day. entitled "The Sounding of the Last Trum•
pet, that the great prophetic epochs, on the fairest and
moat reliable data, expire in 1807. In one of these I
have written:—

I adhere to the solution I have given of the exhaustion of
the great chronological epochs of prophecy u alike most
probaole and most imtilled by Induction from event.. llow
1100 n after 1867 the Redeemer will return and take the king•
dom and reign over all the earth I cannot say
^ - •

Ido not c,nopl.wn of abuse; I expect it. Hut Ido
complain of putting into my mouth words I never
uttered; and to you, as the great redresser of wrong-
doing, I appeal—l hope in this instance successfully—
for an opportunity of putting right thee the paper, I
have had sent to me have, it may be, unintentionally
- I am, Ml', your obedient servant, JOHN
CUMMING.