of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their
minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that
Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or
1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare
the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen
psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as
accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the
circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education,
the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they
lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with
those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by
whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places
of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was
because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before
it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them.
In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no
deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism.
She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their
purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so
unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into
character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere.

Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is
not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity--no
indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual
communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of
justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an
experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith,
as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents
them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine