CURRENT LITERATURE.
From Patmos to Paradise. By the Rev. John Cumming. (Black- wood.)—It is a pity that Thackeray, who, we believe, first set the example of 'these alliterative titles by his "From Comhill to Cairo," is not alive to see his last imitator, From Patmos to Paradise! What inconceivably bad taste! However, the title is the most noticeable thing about the book. Dr. Cumming's method of interpretation, a method which really claims for the interpreter much of the insight of the seer, is sufficiently well known, and in this volume he follows the familiar path. To see the fulfilment of the Apocalypse in history is surely, if the Apocalypse means anything, reasonable and necessary; but these efforts to make the figures of the book correspond exactly with dates and events and persons are the most unedifying, as they are the most hopeless, of tasks. Can Dr. Cumming be really serious when he says that another solution (he has mentioned the one which had some meaning in the second century, x,i7siros) of the much-disputed "number of the Beast" may be found in the final vote of the Vatican Council?—
Number of Fathers in favour of the Dogma of Infallibility 638 Number of Fathers in favour with modifications 62 Number of Fathers who declined to C01.0 70 The Pope, in favour of it 1 666
Number of Fathers against the Dogma 88
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