The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-09-23
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

excuse. It was the first chance I have had since his coming to Birmingham.
 
 Now, I have had the pleasure of sup plying at the South Highland Presbyter- it are some of my close relatives and dear friends; and so I had just been waiting to have free Sunday to go out and sit under the preaching of the distinguished Scot whose name is known around the world as one of the greatest living pulpiteers.
 But l know few people who are less troubled about their rank and standing tran is the versatile minister who has filled some of the most influential pulpits in Europe and America and whose fame as evangelist runs wherever English is spoken. I said English, but believe me when John McNeiIl gets going good there is burr in his speech which shows his nationality as plainly as the brogue gives away the man from the Emerald Isle.
 ~f~SHe'S WHCu was q yCunS TldI and devoted to society, some charming matron would inform me that she was going to have a lovely visitor and that she was just sure I was going to fall in love with her, and mayhaps she would write and assure her coming guest that in me she would find her soul mate.; but when we met, somehow neither one Of us seemed to look upon the meeting with any special rapture
 l just state the above to set out tho fact that for months my friends had been telling me that must hear Dr. Mo- Neill. My kinsfolk were sure that I would be enthusiastic over his sermons, and my friends were confident that I would be greatly helped and entertained. have no reason to suppose that any one ever mentioned me to him or that my presence in his congregation would give him any special pleasure. Tn fact, went and he never even knew that had been.
 But so far as I am concerned I am willing to admit that my relatives and friends were right in thinking that John McNeill was going to make a deep inn pression on me by his preaching. had heard him at the famous cue at Bayview given by the Rotarians to the kiwanites, when he held his own in storytelling and repartee with our own Morris Bush and the inimitable Dr. Iacnhc If him as an after dinner speaker, when he proved to be the desert; but he is pre- eminently a preacher.
 Being guilty of having been born in Scotland and having learned that he had been at the Edinburg university, the Glasgow university and the Divinity Hall at Glasgow, and having had the full eight-years curriculum of Presbyterian ism, I had rather thought that I was about to run up against the real simon pure Scotch sermon with it's various heads and many subdivisions, and wondered whether, like Mrs. MacFadyn, "the sermon taster'' immortalized by Ian McLaren, in the Bonnie Brier Bush.
 
 and follow him in all of his notifications.
 But I proved to be but a poor fore ever was a preacher of note who cast aside the usual homletical dope of the seminAries. he did. I will not say that there was no head and tail to the ser mon. but will testify that while work ing to a plan he vas mighty cra..r m keeping any of the scaffolding fnom get t,nG in bis way his effort to reach the people. I'll go a bit further and say that it was so human and direct that soon forgot to keep tab on the outline. for I was too Interested in it's body to worry about it's skeleton
 
 At the seminaries much is said about pulpit manners. All 1 can say about John McNeill is that he must be a sore trial to the prime type of Presbyterian ism which is strong on order and expects its ministers to be stereotyped in their delivery. sat and chuckled as he walked through every known convention with an abandon which was truly delight full. I thought my friend George Stu art was an acrobatic preacher. but George alongside of John McNeill in &C., tion looks like . study in still life The first time ever saw John McNeill was when he was sitting in the lobby of the Tutwilef I had never seen his pie ture. No one had ever described his per- nn tn that he was in town, but would have been willing, if betting man. to have waged my last dollar that it was he His dress cried aloud of bonnie Scotland. and his face just radiated it. and when he spoke to an acquaintance I knew I had located my quarry. His speech betrayed him.
 l But to really know the man you must see him in what some of the old time peo- pie termed more realistically than ele- 1 gahtly, pulpit sweat Now while it may refer to physical exercise. it also carries with it the idea of spiritual ex- altation: and happy is the preacher who achieves it, for when he does he is more than apt to be in touch both with God and man. It is nbut another way of saying, "A preacher has on his preach ing clothes.'" meaning thereby that he is at his very best
 | The Old Testament was made as real as the Sunday newspaper, and Gideon l stood forth as life like as a twentieth century man. This is the unique power of Dr. McNeill. to take the Bible char acters and relate them to the life of the day My, how he did drive kome with pitilessness the modern trust in numbers and his obsession for statistics. With what pyiiAering sarcasm did he portray