REV. MR M'NEIL AT THE UNIVERSITY.

Evening Star, Issue 8548, 22 June 1891, Page 2

REV. MR M'NEIL AT THE UNIVERSITY.

At the request of the University Christian Alliance, the Rev. Mr M'Neil conducted a special meeting for students in the chemistry room of the University on Saturday morning. There was an excellent attendance of the students, all of whom seemed to enter into the spirit of the meeting with great heartiness. Mr M'Neil did not speak from any particular text, but, drawing largely from his own university life and experience, dealt in a very pointed and practical way with some aspects of Christianity of special interest to students. After pointing out and illustrating from his own experience that God’s blessing was not only a great spiritual help, but was of practical service when the examination day came, he urged his hearers not to allow their studies to crowd God and the Bible out of their daily life. As they advanced in their University course the temptation to do this would become increasingly strong; but he had never said a truer thing in his life than this; that so surely as they deprived God and God’s Word of a place in their lives so surely would they suffer actual, positive, irremediable loss. Addressing specially the Christian students, he said : “You find it hard uphill work to be true to Christ in the face of the sneers and jeers and taunts of your fellow-students, Do you know the reason, brothers? It is because you are only half trusting Jesus. You are graduating for the H.H. degree the diploma for the Half-and-half Christian. Now, 1 want you to enter this morning for a far higher degree than you have yet tried for, I want you to graduate for the 0.0. degree from the King’s College—the diploma for the Out-and-out Christian.” “ The real reason ,” he continued, “ why so many students remain in the service of sin is because they haven’t the grit to come out for Christ, It’s the truly manly men in the University—the men with back-bone in them—who have the courage to stand up and declare themselves followers of Jesus. It’s easy enough to go with-the stream—a jelly-fish can do that; but it takes a salmon to go against it. In answer to the question Why am I a Christian ? Mr M'Neii said that one of the most powerful motives that influenced him in coming to Christ was the intolerable meanness of a life of siu. It was of the very essence of meanness to live as a pensioner on the King’s bounty, and yet not to live for the King. He had liked the service of sin very well. He admitted it was very sweet; but the wages were very bitter, and he did not want to have to try and sneak out of the wages when pay-day came. He hated the thought of being a crawling, creeping thing on God’s earth; be wanted to be able to stand erect before God and man, and to do that a man had to quit his meanness and give himself up to God’s service. In conclusion, he urged all who bad not yet settled the great business of salvation to pat their case, bad as it was, into the bands of the great Advocate, who had never been known to lose a case, and who would not refuse to undertake even the worst of cases,

This meeting, although got up in an altogether unpretentious fashion, will certainly be a memorable one in the history of the University. The fine, manly presence of the speaker; his evident familiarity with and fellow-feeling for the peculiar difficulties of a student’s life; his wonderful faculty for apt, and, at times, very humorous illustration ; his almost matchless power of dramatic effect and life-like description ; and, above all, the vein of deep, spiritual earnestness that ran through-all he said —all combined to make the address most powerful and impressive; and the memory of Saturdays meeting will remain in the minds of his hearers long after Mr M'Neil has departed from our shores. An effort will almost certainly be made to induce Mr M'Neil to give the students another opportunity of hearing him; but whether this effort is successful or not Mr M'Neil may rest assured that he carries with him wherever ho goes the warmest wishes for his welfare, and their earnest prayer that God will abundantly bless him in the noble work in which he is engaged.