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the spirit of youth, the freshness of enjoyment into riper years, and 
even into old age.” 
He was elected a Fellow of this Society on 1st February 1847, 
and was also a member of the Geological and Antiquarian Societies. 
He received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Aberdeen. 
He was also a D.C.L. of Oxford. He died on 10th August 1881, 
at Morton House, near Edinburgh. 
Key. John Cumming, D.D. By the Rev. Professor Flint. 
The Rev. I)r. John Cumming, who died at Chiswick on the 4th 
of last July, was elected a Fellow of this Society on 21st February 
1853. The deceased was born in Aberdeen on 10th November 1810. 
He was educated in the Grammar School of his native city, and 
afterwards in King’s College, of which he became a graduate. 
At the early age of twenty-three he was called to the pastorate 
of the Scottish Church, Crown Court, Covent Carden, London, and 
the duties of this office he discharged for almost fifty years. 
The attractiveness of his preaching, his zealous opposition to 
Roman Catholicism, High Churchism, and Rationalism, and the popu- 
larity of the religious writings which flowed in rapid succession 
from his pen, not only gathered round him a large and influential 
congregation, but gained him a multitude of admirers in all parts 
of the kingdom ; while, at a somewhat later period, the definiteness 
and singularity of the conclusions to which he was led by his 
study of prophecy made him, perhaps, more talked about than any 
other man in the clerical world. 
The Hammersmith discussion of 1839 showed his readiness and 
skill in public debate. As early as 1840, in the preface to his 
edition of John Knox’s Book of Common Order, he advocated 
nearly the same changes in the public worship of the Church of 
Scotland for which Dr. Robert Lee contended in Presbytery and 
Assembly about twenty years later. It was about 1846 that he 
began to attempt to unfold the course of unfulfilled prophecy, and 
from about 1860 that his interpretations became startlingly definite 
and particular. The year 1868 was fixed on as that in which very 
marvellous events were to occur. It was not an uneventful year, 
yet when Dr. Cumming sought to show in 1870 that every incident 
