tion. A multitude of men justify their attack by a multitude of reasons. Some find ground for opposition in the simple fact that such Societies exist; others impeach them because their existence is insufficiently manifest; while a third class finds fault that their existence is rendered too obtrusively apparent. Nevertheless, they not only survive, but multiply. The pleasures of memory and hope remain linked in spite of assault, and reproduce like unions elsewhere. It rests with us to examine whether they increase in spite of evils which demand their suppression; or whether they work a balance of benefit which entitles them to active support. Their leading assailant is a no less formidable polemic and authority than Archbishop Whately. In the Introduction to his treatise on Rhetoric, he devotes a paragraph to the demolition of Debating Societies. He considered that the tendency of these institutions is to encourage the hasty formation and hasty expression of opinion upon extensive and important subjects; and owing to their rapid multiplication, he predicted for the future a race of speakers, quick and superficial in thought, devoid of powers of application and research. Archbishop Whately once established by clear logical demonstration the non-existence of the first Napoleon. The members of these Societies would doubtless readily accord to the chain of reasoning by which he justifies his unfavourable opinion like logical perfection, were the conclusion as manifestly untrue. But it is impossible to watch the operation of these unions without detecting the evil of which he complains. It is useless to deny or ignore it. The tendency of those who have read M. Taine's English Sketches is perhaps to rate that evil too highly. That keen observer of British characteristics complains of our slowness and niceness in weighing arguments, and our diffidence of induction. These are national traits which those of us who are unimbued with 'blazing principles' will be loth to exchange for that faculty, possessed in an eminent degree by our Continental neighbours, of generalizing with rapidity and nimbly jumping to conclusions-a species of mental agility against which they have lighted for us a warning beacon in the flames of their own capital. The best answer to Archbishop Whately is that he exaggerates the extent of the evil he points out. It is evident that the temptation to superficiality arises in connection with the forensic discussion of every question. The like temptation presents itself to the writer for the press and the speaker in parliament. But it is the danger only of pre-eminent minds. The man of average powers soon finds that to command attention he must exhibit more than a cursory acquaintance with his theme. For the shoulders of the smatterer there is a lash in the undisguised heedlessness of his audience. Whately had doubtless in view the case of a youth whose talents could always command him a hearing, being beguiled, by the success attending a half-effort, from the full exertion of his powers. But a danger besetting one or two members of a Society cannot be said to outweigh the obvious advantages conferred upon the rest. Nor, judging from most of the programmes of these institutions that we have seen, do they deal with subjects of appalling magnitude! Take, for instance, the following scheme of work : essays to be written upon these and cognate subjects: The Public Press, The Indian Mutiny, Society in France, Novels and Novel-reading, Our Railways, the biographies of Cromwell, Lamb, Tennyson and Brougham; each essay to be followed by com * But not all Methodist Mutual Improvement Societies confine themselves to such ments on its subject and treatment. This literary bill of fare, which may be taken as a sample, is usually supplemented by the sweets of a concluding entertainment. For the auspicious occasion the association decks itself in a Joseph's coat of manycoloured attraction. Strains of music, recitations and jocund speech-making, unite with more material viands to regale the assembled guests, and the session expires, like the phoenix, amid mingling perfumes. Does this programme indicate a course perilous to the mental development of our rising youth? To unjaundiced minds its dangers must be difficult of perception; its advantages have already been pointed out. These institutions constitute educational agency now working in almost every township in the country, and administering a stimulus to intellectual activity that time alone can They may wander; they measure. an have wandered; but let the Church guide, and they need not stray. Wisely regulated and controlled, these Societies will abundantly justify their existence, by finding scope for the mental activity which an extended system of education is calculated to excite. 'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do: Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues. Nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, If this be true, it is a worthy effort to assist in removing the bushels from these hidden lights, and in enabling these debtors of nature to discharge their debts. HUGH MCNEILE, D.D. : THE Protestant Church has suffered great loss in the death of Hugh McNeile. The mourning must be brief over those whose fight is closed, for the enemy is still at the gates; and swiftly must each soldier of Christ pass from the side of a fallen comrade to front the foe, even as of old 'devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him,' but speedily went everywhere preaching the Word.' A catholic spirit is ever ready to recognize the worth of those who, in any section of the Church, have maintained and defended the pure Gospel truth alike against those who would graft thereon their own 'vain imaginings,' and those who boldly avow their hostility to 'God's word written.' Among the many who deserve the loving remembrance of all Protestant Churches is the Rev. Hugh McNeile, D.D., exDean of Ripon, who died at Bournemouth, January 28th, 1879. An able expositor of the Word of God, always putting prominently the Atonement and experimental religion; faithful to all the principles of the Reformation-claiming for the Scriptures supremacy as the rule of faith and practice; earnestly discharging all the functions of his ministry, and by his 'walk and conversation,' in his home and among his people, exemplifying the grand truths he preached; he uninflammable topics. The political questions alluded to in an earlier paragraph are sometimes discussed in our school-rooms or Class-rooms.-EDITOR. lived and wrought for over fifty years as a Clergyman of the Church of England. From Ireland, burdened with a history of Romish rule, have come men who shone brightly as faithful exponents of Protestantism and zealous denouncers of the Papacy. Ireland gave to the cause of Christ HUGH MCNEILE. He was born in July, 1795; the son of Alexander McNeile, of Ballycastle, Antrim, whose ancestors were Scotch settlers of the reign of James I. Until fifteen years of age he was educated in his father's house, when, by the display of more than ordinary mental powers, he attracted the interest of a wealthy relative, who made Hugh his protégé, intending to train him for a high position in the Law and in Parliament. He was sent to Dublin University, where he won academical honours, thence passing to Lincoln's Inn, where he served all his terms, finally graduating as B.A. at Trinity College. Four or five years were then spent in travelling with his uncle, General McNeile, whose heart was set upon his nephew, for whom his fancy pictured glowing prospects at the Bar and in the House. Just at this time, however, Hugh's mind and heart were touched by the preaching of a godly Minister. From law books he turned to the study of standard theological works. He became convinced of sin, and sought and found the Sin-bearer. From that time a change came over his intentions respecting the future. Hitherto his own inclination had harmonized with the wishes of his friends in the choice of a profession; his uncle had promised to make him his heir; in his studies he had been fairly successful, but now he felt that all these prospects must be set aside, and that his gifts must be devoted wholly to the cause of Christ. It was not without a struggle that this decision was arrived at and maintained; he had to disappoint and grieve his friends, to give up position and prospects for an uncertainty; but his resolution was formed and could not be changed. Thus early did he manifest that 'courage of opinions' which afterwards so markedly characterized him in his work, whether done in the pulpit, on the platform or by the press. Ordained as a deacon in 1820, he was appointed assistant to the Perpetual Curate of Stranorler, near Raphoe, on the banks of the Finn. The young Preacher soon began to attract hearers beyond the bounds of his parish; the solemn earnestness of his sermons was powerful in its influence upon all the neighbourhood. Among those in whom the Word wrought conviction of sin and newness of life was a young man named Robert Lovett, who was spending his college vacation in the neighbourhood, Lovett becoming afterwards the Minister of the Marbœuf Chapel, Paris. When McNeile was supplying for the Hon. and Rev. Gerard Noel, in Percy Chapel, Mr. Henry Drummond went to hear him, and immediately after the service made the Preacher the offer of the living of Albury, in Surrey. Eventually the offer was accepted, and early in 1822 he entered his new sphere, taking with him as his wife a daughter of the great theologian, Dr. Magee, Archbishop of Dublin. The twelve following years were spent in his little parish, and in Albury, as in Ireland, his ministry was very successful: the empty church became crowded to overflowing, many coming regularly from the neighbouring parishes to listen to his earnest appeals and practical teaching. As might be expected, he was frequently called from quiet parish work to preach and speak in the Metropolis, delivering at one time a series of Popular Lectures on the Prophecies belonging to the Jews, in the Church of St. Clement Danes, Strand, which, though given on week days, were very well attended. About this time he came into connection with Edward Irving through his friend and patron, Mr. Drummond. Kindred spirits in their love and study of Scripture prophecies, they held delightful converse concerning the deep things of God's Word; at one season gathering in Mr. Drummond's house, with about twepty others, drawn from various Churches, among them Joseph Wolff, the Jewish Missionary, and for eight days' searching the Scriptures' together. For several years these conferences were held, until Irving wandered away from Evangelical belief into the peculiar views with which his name has been identified, thereby separating himself from McNeile, who, in opposition to the earnest desire of his patron, refused to go along with Irving. McNeile said of the matter: 'I have carefully observed what has been going on. I have been thrown into close contact with some of the leaders of this affair. I have been sedulously pressed to join it both by male and female entreaties, and by the awful intelligence, oracularly repeated, that God Himself had declared that I would do so.' Here was the second crisis in his life once he had given up fortune for Christ, and now he had to stand almost alone against the most powerful influences drawing him towards perversions of the truthperversions which a less acute mind and less faithful heart might not have detected. The position was a difficult one, but McNeile remained true to his convictions: he saw his patron go from him, he witnessed the establishment of an Irvingite Church within his parish, and some were drawn from his congregation by the new teaching; but he remained firm, and in after years was devoutly thankful for the grace of God enabling him, as he said, 'to detect the beginnings of error, and from that moment to resist the influences of associations long cherished, at the last being compelled to break off all communication with men much beloved, rather than compromise his own convictions of the truth of God.' Clergymen of McNeile's stamp were rare in those days, and it need not be surprising that a man of such strong and firm convictions, so earnest in denouncing worldliness and religious apathy while insisting on experimental and practical godliness, should have drawn down upon himself the undisguised contempt of many of the Clergy and the suspicion of others. He held on his way despite all, quitting himself like a man. Towards the close of 1834 he passed from the little rural parish of Albury to that of St. Jude, Liverpool. The Church of England was not in the ascendant in Liverpool at that time, and within the Church the Evangelicals were not at all popular; so McNeile speedily found that he not only had to fight against Socinians and Roman Catholics outside, but also against a loose and worldly spirit within his Church. But he yielded nothing to the dictatorial spirit which opposed him. He fought tenaciously against an attempt made to exclude religious instruction from the Day-schools, and succeeded in gaining a victory over the governing body, from whom the proposal had come. The Church of St. Jude soon became crowded, Sunday after Sunday, with people eager to listen to the earnest, faithful Preacher, whose grave, practical and experimental exposition of the Word-breaking at intervals into appeals of almost overwhelming power-wrought conviction in the hearts of many. In 1848 Mr. McNeile and his congregation removed from St. Jude's to St. Paul's, Princes Park, which had been built for him by his congregation at a cost of twelve thousand pounds. Several years before this a proposal was made to present him with a testimonial, but he requested that it might take the shape of a memorial which should be as widely beneficial as possible, and that no personal benefit should accrue to him therefrom. The memorial funds were therefore devoted to the establishment of four scholarships in the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, and an exhibition tenable at Oxford, Cambridge or Dublin. In 1860 he was appointed Canon Residentiary of Chester, and in 1868 was preferred to the Deanery of Ripon. He seemed to infuse new life and vigour into the ecclesiastical establishment of the latter city: instituting evening services in the choir of the Cathedral which were eagerly attended, the Dean frequently officiating himself and preaching the old truths with quenchless zeal. In 1874 he suffered two great blows. One of his sons, a deputy Judge in Bengal, was on a visit to the Dean, and while out fishing in the Ure, was carried away by one of the sudden freshets to which that river is subject, his body being found seventeen miles down the river, eleven days after. The suspense and grief threw a deep shadow over the sympathizing city; but the grace of God which had sustained the stricken father in all the sorrows of his life, was still his comfort. that the event was one which could not be passed by without notice: the position and influence of the Marquis being so powerful, while the building of a Roman Catholic church almost beneath the shadow of the Cathedral, was a call for a vigorous protest against the rival creed. Mr. McNeile was not the man to shrink before the demand all his zeal for Protestant truth and all his hatred of Romish error were aroused, and he issued an address to the people of Ripon in the following terms: 'A change from the Church of England to the Church of Rome is a very great change. Many of you are not aware how great, for although you know something of what it is a change from, you do not know what it is a change to. You do not know what strange dogmas must be embraced, what unproved miracles must be believed, what liberty of thought and action must be relinquished, what political subserviency and social prostration must be accepted, in order to become a subject of the Pope. It is every way desirable that you should be informed on this subject, and I feel it my duty to do what in me lies to supply you with the needful though painful instruction......Romanism is not a rejection, but a corruption of Christianity. It professes to receive all the fundamental truths of the Word of God, but they are intermingled with, and contradicted and practically superseded by, traditions of men. Discrimination is indispensable.' The instruction necessary to this discrimination was furnished in a series of sermons, delivered to crowded congregations, which bore directly upon the teaching and claims of Romanism; or, as the Dean put it, 'not to judge individuals, but to expose a system; not to find fault with persons who are absent, but to instruct those who are present.' The introduction of new features in the Cathedral services distasteful to the Dean, together with increasing feebleness, led to his resignation of his office in 1875, to the great regret of all who had profited by his ministry. Thoroughly evangelical, Mr. McNeile strongly denounced the perversions of doctrine and ceremonial intro |