Broad Street, Oxford.
Your correspondent MR. GILL (Vol. v., p. 175.) suggests an inquiry as to the probable extent to which St. Paul was acquainted with the writings of Aristotle. His letter reminds me of a similar question of still greater interest, which has often occurred to me, and to which I should like to call your readers' attention, "Whether St. Paul had read Plato?" I think no one who studies the 15th of the First Epistle to the Corinthians—that sublime chapter in which the Apostle sets forth the doctrine of the Resurrection—and who is also familiar with the Phædo, can fail to be struck with a remarkable similarity in one portion of the argument. I allude especially to the 36th verse of the chapter, and those immediately following, "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die," &c. The reasoning, as almost every Christian knows, is based on analogy, and tends to show that, as in the vegetable world life springs from death, the seed dies, but out of it comes the perfect plant; so the dissolution of our present body is only a necessary step to the more glorified and complete development of our nature. In the Phædo, sect. 16., Socrates is represented as employing the same argument in defence of his doctrine of the immortality of the soul. In the course of his discussion with Kebes and Simmius on this subject, a consideration of the phenomena of animal and vegetable life leads him to assert the general conclusion, "ἐκ τῶν τεθνεώτων, τὰ ζῶντά τε καὶ οἱ ζῶντες γίγνονται," and he then proceeds to demonstrate the probability that in like manner the soul will not only survive the body, but reach a higher and purer condition after its death. Wetstein, whose abundant classical illustrations of the sacred text are alluded to by your correspondent, refers to little else than verbal parallelisms in his notes on this chapter, and does not quote Plato at all; nor do I remember seeing any edition of the Greek Testament in which the coincidence is pointed out. Perhaps some of your correspondents can elucidate this subject; it is one of great interest, and when pursued in the reverent and religious spirit indicated by MR. GILL, can hardly fail to prove a source of profitable investigation.
JOSHUA G. FITCH.
My edition of the Platonic Dialogues is that of N. Forster of Christchurch, Oxford, dated 1745. In it the section I refer to is numbered 16; but in Stallbaum and some other editors, the arrangement is different, and the passage occurs in section 43.
SIR ALEXANDER CUMMING.
(Vol. v., p. 257.)
I have in my possession a manuscript consisting of copies of various letters, and other memorials of Sir Alexander Cumming. It is of his own period, but whether of his own handwriting I cannot say.
They are clearly the compositions of a person of an unsettled intellect; but we may collect from them the following facts:—His captain's commission was dated May 29, 1703; he was called by his mother, a few days before her death, both Jacob and Israel. This is further explained when he relates that Lady Cumming, his mother, set out from Edinburgh the first of the "Borrowing Days," towards the end of March, 1709.
"The three last days of March are called 'the Borrowing Days' in Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would wish to borrow three days from the month of April, in exchange for those three last days of the month of March. This lady was seventeen days in her journeys upon the road, and lived ten days after her arrival in London. She died on the Monday se'nnight in the morning after she came to London. On the Thursday before her death she called her son, Captain Cumming, to her bed-side, and gave him her blessing in the terms of the prophet Isaiah, to which she referred him, and gave him her own new Bible to read over on the occasion, and to keep for her sake. But this Bible was lost, with other baggage, taken by the French towards the end of the campaign, 1709. Colonel Swinton, this lady's eldest brother, was shot at the battle of Malplaquet, and died upon the field of battle."
The lady travelled attended by her daughter Helen Cumming, and her servant Margaret Rae.
But I see we have been wrong in writing the name Cumming with two m's. He writes it invariably Cuming. This would appear of little moment, but the change a little diminishes the probability of the writer's favourite notion, that the Hebrew word Cumi is in some way obumbrated in his patronymic Cuming.