MR. SPURGEON, of London thus ventilates his skepticism in regard to the doctrine of the second Advent, and writes himself down among the scoffers of the last days: “Mr. Spurgeon having had sent to him some tract purporting to be written by himself, which predicted the end of the world as likely to come next year, the Rev. gentleman, at a meeting held in his chapel last week, thus energetically repudiated the authorship attributed to him: “You will hear of me in Bedlam when you ever hear such rubbish as that from me. The Lord may come in 1866, and I shall be glad to see him; but I do not believe he will, and the reason why I do not believe he will, is because all these twopenny-halfpenny false prophets say he will. If they said that he would not come, I should begin to think he would; but, inasmuch as they are all crying out as one man that he will come in 1866 or 1867, I am inclined to think he will not arrive at any such time. It seems to me that there are a great many prophecies which must be fulfilled before the coming of Christ, which will not be fulfilled within the next twelve months; and I prefer to stand in the position of a man who knows neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man cometh—looking always for his appearing, but never interfering with those dates and figures which seem to me to be only proper amusement for young ladies who have nothing else to do, and who take to that instead of reading novels; and for certain divines who have exhausted their stock of knowledge about sound doctrine, and therefore try to gain a little ephemeral popularity by shuffling texts of Scripture as the Norway gipsies shuffled cards in days gone by.” If Mr. S. is falsely accused of the authorship of a tract, he has certainly a right to correct the impression, and he may repudiate the foolish time-setting so common to Adventists who have erred from the faith;45but to make this the occasion of a general tirade against the doctrine, shows most clearly the unbelief that rankles in his heart. By so doing he places himself unmistakably in the catalogue of those of whom Peter speaks when he says, “There shall come in the last days scoffers, . . . saying, Where is the promise of his coming.” Mr. S. virtually asks this question by saying that we know nothing about it, and that there are at least many prophecies to be fulfilled first. He says he shall be glad to see the Lord coming. Time will soon test the sincerity of that assertion.