EVANGELIST’S DEATH

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 109, 1 February 1935, Page 13

EVANGELIST’S DEATH

Rev. G. H. McNeal, Sussex

The Rev. George H. McNeal, a Wesleyan minister known to many people in New Zealand, where he once con templated making bis home, died last month at Hastings in Sussex after an Illness of two days.' He was in the eleventh year of his appointment .as pastor of Wesley’s Chapel and superintendent of the City Road circuit, London ; John Wesley spent the closing 12 years of his ministry in the same charge. \ .

Mr. McNeal became a Methodist minister in England in 189 G, his first charge being as assistant to the late Rev. S. F. Collier in Manchester, ■where his gifts as an evangelist proved effective.

It was during his ministry in Manchester that Mrs. Ormiston Chant, of London, the well-known social reformer, in response to a solicitation by the late Rev. S. F. Collier, wrote for the benefit of the broken lives for which the Manchester Mission existed that beautiful hymn now printed in many collections, “Light of the world, faint were our weary feet with wandering far Years after, in reply to a New Zealander who inquired the origin of 'the hymn, Mr. McNeal wrote, inter alia: “I was In Mr. Collier’s office on the Wednesday morning when the letter and the draft of this newly composed hymn arrived. After reading it he passed it on jo me, asking, ‘What do you think of this new 1. mn?’ I replied, ‘You cannot tell whether a hymn is good or not until you have heard it sung by a great congregation.’ He said, ‘Put it on the hymn sheet for next Sunday, and we will sing it to the tune “Sandon”.’ It was an instant success.”

Mr. McNeal, who was an eminent authority on matters of Wesleyan character, recently produced an excellent brochure, a guide to the many historic : places associated with the father of Methodism in London, entitled “In the Footsteps of Wesley in London, Pilgrimages to Shrines,” a work which will be a monument through the years. It was intended that New Zealand should be the adopted country of the McNeal family, but the death of Mr. McNeal, sen., while farming and preparing a home in Hamilton in 1880, detained the mother and family, including George, in the Homeland.