congratulates himself: The sayings and the discussion are in every mouth; and I stand acknowledged champion of the Church of Scotland. The Irish shillelah has cracked the cranium that presented its impenetrable thickness to the Scottishbattle-axe. In fact I have succeeded in what I sought-to paint a ridiculous party and make them ridiculous. The Scot argued with them; I laughed at them; a light wit has effected more than the powers of heavy argument.' What ground there is for all this vaunting on the part of Dr. Cooke and his biographer, we shall leave the reader to judge from the following narrative : In the year 1836, March 16th,' writes Dr. M'Intyre, and we give his paper in extenso, the Voluntary controversy, which had excited so much interest through the length and breadth of Scotland, and which was the harbinger of so many valuable results, reached Ireland, where the State must either do all or next to all, else, as was generally believed at that time, the most evangelical churches behoved to perish. A small association was formed on the Voluntary principle, at the first meeting of which several ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Synod, one Independent minister, and one from the late Associate Presbytery attended. The meeting was most harmonious and enthusiastic. After the lapse of a few weeks, it was agreed to hold a public one, and to invite some person from a distance to address that meeting. Dr. Ritchie of Edinburgh was invited, and consented to come. Accordingly, a soiree was fixed for the evening of the 16th March for his reception. This was too much in the teeth of the endowed party. Dr. Cooke of Belfast, believing that it devolved on him to guard the citadel, sent Dr. Ritchie a challenge. It was accepted. Of this challenge and acceptance those ministers who resided in the country knew nothing until they entered the room, and, therefore, were not prepared to do more than_address a few words to friends, as at the first meeting. Tea being ready, Dr. Cooke with his tail entered-a long and an experienced debater, up to all its tactics, aiming at victory, and never sticking to terms or straightforward and honourable discussion. He was a man of war from his youth. After a few preliminary addresses, too long for his taste, and in the report circumscribed and mutilated, when it became his turn to speak he obstinately insisted and ultimately succeeded in getting all to his own liking-so simple and inexperienced were the Voluntaries. Exhaust myself or exhaust my subject," was his demand. Nay more, although he was the challenger, he refused to precede the challenged. Although this was both unreasonable and unprecedented, yet it was granted. But this was not the only instance in which the Voluntaries were deficient in tact and forethought. They had not provided a reporter to take a single note for them; they were, therefore, wholly in the hands and at the disposal of their opponents. The published report was, therefore, their own manufacture. The publisher, the well-known catspaw of Cooke and his partisans, who took to himself the credit of getting up the report, behoved as a facile tool to obey his orders. What then could be expected from a report on so vital a question to the Irish Presbyterians in their circumstances? The fact was, Dr. Cooke saw he had got a “kinch," and he and his coadjutors resolved on making the best of it. 'At the time the discussion took place, Dr. Cooke was in open hostility with the Board of National Education (although long since he has changed), and as usual everything was popish which did not accord with his views at the time. This will account for many of his ungenerous sayings and allusions in the report. Whether Dr. Massie was the honoured instrument of his conversion is immaterial. One thing is certain, Dr. Massie gave him such a sound drubbing as he cannot yet have forgotten. He quailed before him, and without making a reply, as was reported at the time, took to his heels.* At Perth, he wanted the Sandy Row boys to cheer up his drooping spirits. Smarting under Massie's rod, no wonder he declined Dr. Ritchie's challenge afterwards in Edinburgh. "Scotland,” he said, Dr. Cooke spoke after Dr. Massie, but he had no documents to prove his statements. He pledged himself, however, to send them on returning home; but instead of the documents there came only a letter, which his own friends said did not meet the case, and which they declined at the time to publish. We have before us a full account of this meeting at Perth from one who was present; and he reports that while Dr. Massię was speaking, 'the Presb. Maga 1, 1872 "had no need of him. You have the report, answer it." "If Massie be of the seed of the Voluntaries, before whom you have begun to fall," said one of his wise men, "you shall not prevail against one of the same family, you shall surely fall before him." The result was, his wonted ambition forsook him; and he cast to the winds his often recited lines : "Twice he conquered, and twice he slew the slain." · Of Dr. Cooke, it has been said he never took the side when he was not sure of a majority, except in the above instance, and then he was defeated, and forced to make an inglorious escape. And not only so, he never took a side but with a careful look to his benefit. 66 "The old cock of the north Seldom took the side, 'After Dr. Cooke's conversion to the national system of education, the Rev. Mr. Gregg came down from Dublin to Belfast to call him to account, and to discuss the question with him. Cooke at first and in hot haste accepted the challenge, and insisted on a blow off at once without any pre-arrangement. Not so Mr. Gregg. "I am," said he, a slow coach; I must have time for preparation and prayer.' As much as to say: "You won't catch me in your trap, as you did the inexperienced Voluntaries." On second thoughts, Cooke began to see where he was. "There will be chairmen and reporters on both sides, and I shall not be at liberty afterwards to re-write, add, and subtract as I please." But that is not all. In the Voluntary discussion, he was the representative of the whole Protestant ascendency school. With Mr. Gregg it would have been different; Gregg would have been the ascendency man, and he the renegade, the humble Presbyterian teacher, and no clergyman at all. Besides, Dr. Cooke once proclaimed the banns between Presbytery and Prelacy; and were there now to be discord and animosity? This, he thought, would never do; and at the suggestion of well-beloved friends, as he said, the discussion with Gregg was declined. Moreover, Mr. Gregg was a political partisan on the same side with himself, and could talk ad infinitum and a good deal of illogical logic as well as he could. It may now be said that the first night of the discussion, so far as order was concerned, presented little reprehensible. On the second night, however, the supporters and assistants of Dr. Cooke, with their wonted vigilance, mustered strong. The apartment was filled in every corner, and among those present was a large proportion from Sandy Row, "Lovers of fun, a faction fight, Dr. Ritchie having first entered, took his seat to the left hand of the chairman. This was too much for Cooke's friends, who were seated around the foot of the platform on that side. When Dr. Cooke ascended the platform, much in the style of a late self-styled Christian gentleman, he gave Dr. Ritchie unmistakeable evidence, by the use of elbow, or shoulder, or both, that if he did not go to the other side of the chair, physical force would certainly be resorted to. This the first act elicited great cheering from his numerous supporters; and thus was given not only a prelude to the character which the meeting afterwards assumed, but clear evidence as to the sentiments of the applauders. Would the Voluntaries have cheered such an insult to their representative? Certainly not; [and yet they must have done this if they had packed the meeting, as Dr. Cooke affirmed.] Therein the printed report is at fault. Proof the second [that they did not pack the meeting] arising from the conduct of the chairman, the late amiable, gentle, pious, benevolent Dr. Robert Tennent, son of a godly Scotch Antiburgher minister who had been settled in the north of Ireland and spent his days there. The Doctor was countenance of Dr. Cooke was sallow, blue, and even green, and wore all the signs of intense agitation.' The friends of the Irish national system of education in Belfast hearing of Massie's defeat of Cooke, presented him with a handsome testimonial, greatly to the mortification of Cooke and his friends. moved to the chair on the first night of the meeting by the Voluntaries; yet so uproarious and reproachful even to such a man did the meeting on the second night become, that he was under the necessity of vacating the chair. If the Voluntaries had packed the house, would they have acted in this manner? Certainly not. Proof the third: when Dr. Cooke required a breathing, or to examine the slips of paper which his friends had prepared, alias the bullets which he was to shoot, one of whom was busily searching the Bible for texts, then went up the cheers, and Kentish fire continued till he was ready to start again. 'After Dr. Cooke had exhausted himself and his subject, Dr. Ritchie, when he commenced his reply, was treated in a different manner. In the middle of his sentences and paragraphs, he was interrupted by the uproar and Kentish fire, and also when about to look at his notes. He used spectacles. A voice shouted out: "Put on your spectacles." Then arose anew the uproar and Kentish fire in which the speaker's voice was drowned, and which continued in spite of the expostulation of the chairman, who, in entreating a hearing for Dr. Ritchie, quoted the memorable words, "Strike but hear." Another voice: "What's that on his finger?—a ring? Is it gold?" "I wish," said another, "I had a knife, I would cut it off." Except to a few, this rude remark was inaudible. Wait, boy," said one to his companion, “and let's hear him. He's a clever sort of man!" (Confusion and Kentish fire.) Thus was Dr. Ritchie treated at the Voluntary discussion in Glasgow.' 66 From the foregoing account, no one can be at a loss to gather how the Belfast Discussion was considered a triumph for the Church party. The rowdyism of the Orangemen, who were there to aid their orator, carried the day over argument. The Voluntaries were no match for these zealots in their coarse and cowardly tactics. But to call the Belfast Discussion a fair debate, or to affirm that there was a reasonable arrangement of the time of the speaker, or to say that a fair hearing was given to Dr. Ritchie, is altogether beside the truth. The Report bears on the face of it that it was manufactured in the interest of Dr. Cooke. Dr. Ritchie's speech of an hour and a half on the first evening is comprised in three pages, whereas Dr. Cooke's reply extends to fourteen pages, and the first twelve of these were spoken in an hour! On the second evening Dr. Cooke opened with a speech which occupies twenty pages, while Dr. Ritchie's is confined to a third of that number. The remaining nine pages are almost wholly occupied by Dr. Cooke; one page being sufficient to hold what was spoken by Dr. Ritchie ! On its publication, the glaring inaccuracy of the Report was instantly challenged. The Belfast Voluntary Church Society unanimously declared: 'That this Report contains a gross misrepresentation of the above discussion; that many of Dr. Ritchie's statements are misrepresented, while many of his arguments are entirely suppressed; and that in the deliberate opinion of this committee, the publication of the above pamphlet, as a correct Report of the discussion, is a gross and scandalous imposition upon the public.' The chairman of the meeting at which this resolution was agreed to, and who avowed himself ready to vouch for its truth, was a ruling elder in Dr. Cooke's congregation. Dr. Ritchie, some months afterwards, published a letter to Dr. Cooke, in which he reviewed the Report, and handled him with caustic severity. This exposure of the Report was most withering to those who had manufactured it, and showed that, in its account of Dr. Ritchie's speeches and the other speeches on the Voluntary side, there were the grossest perversions and the gravest omissions. Those who have read the documents connected with the discussion, and which we have named, will fully appreciate the following passage from Dr. Ritchie's letter in reference to the Report: 'I am heartily tired of quoting individual instances of incorrectness, deficiencies, misrepresentations, gross, and I fear wilful. I almost repent that I submitted to individualize; I wish I had kept by my first resolution on having glanced over it. I felt much as did a minister to whom his beadle brought "The Porteous Act," which the State enjoined its pensioned priests to read from the pulpit on the first Sabbath of every month for a twelvemonth. Grippin' it wi' tangs, and puttin' it on the fire, he said, "Filthy thing, I'd scorn to file my fingers wi' thee!" And yet Dr. Porter still affirms that the Report is an 'authentic Report!!' Of the speeches of Dr. Cooke, which are given in it with much care and fulness, we may just say, that if you take away their egotism, their rhodomontade, and their NO. I. VOL. XVI. NEW SERIES.-JANUARY 1872. B 'splendid' rhetorical flourishes, you will have a very small residuum of argument. The following sentence is quite sufficient to show the logical calibre of this Goliath of the compulsories: If the Legislature exercise an acknowledged right to endow laymen for lay service, I put all logic to defiance to prove that it may not endow the clergy for clerical service;' that is, the right to pay one man for one thing implies the right to pay any man for anything!!! The man who could maintain this was not likely to feel, in any circumstances, that he was answered. A. O. THE REV. TIYO SOGA. THE Magazine has been affectingly burdened with obituaries of ministers of the word,' able and eminent, who have been removed from our Church during the past year. This first number for 1872 opens its pages to receive a tribute to the memory of a most noticeable herald of the cross, the Rev. Tiyo Soga, who died at the Tutugha (Somerville), British Caffraria, beyond the Kei, on the 12th of August last, aged forty-two years. 'Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?' The mourning in Southern Africa has reached Europe, and North America also, through their missionaries in that far-off land. Our model missionary standard-bearer is fallen, and each of the survivor-band trembles to snatch up the banner, exclaiming, 'My Father, my Father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof! Now the voice of lamentation is heard over Caffreland; even the heathen are dimly conscious that they have lost a friend, whose like they may not see again. In token of their sorrow, they are seen in mourning, wearing rushes round the brow. The chief-paramount Kreilli, too, shares the grief, saying, 'What an unfortunate man I am! No sooner have I a missionary who has the confidence of white man and black man, than he is taken from me.' 'What is my sin against God, that He has done this thing to me?' The suddenness of the event makes it all the more sorrowful. The deceased was out vaccinating some of his people only two days before. The signs of approaching dissolution struck observers the following day, when messengers were despatched to summon together his brethren of the presbytery. Brother Cumming had left him that same week seemingly better, but Tiyo ka-Soga'* was gone before the soonest arrived. Everything concerning a man of intellect and culture, of rare Christian power • Tiyo, son of Soga, in native phrase. and usefulness, unexpectedly withdrawn from the noblest service of the Church in the high places of the field, has a value of its own; and everything about him is invested with an interest as unique as that of the lofty character to whom it relates. Tiyo Soga was born of Caffre parents, in the year 1829, hard by our old Chumie station. The family was heathen. The father, Soga, was a chief counsellor among the Gaikas, as the grandfather Iotello had been before him. His mother, soon after Tiyo's birth, professed Christianity, and continues a worthy disciple unto this day. When a child, he was taken to his maternal grandfather's kraal, on the Buffalo river, where he first heard the gospel, from the lips of the Rev. John Brownlee, of the London Missionary_Society, at what is now King William's Town, where this venerable man of God still lives. On Tiyo's return home, his now Christian mother had prevailed with his father to get him and two older brothers to the Chumie school, which was kept by the late Rev. William Chalmers, of happy memory. His kind missionary had influence with the Rev. William Govan to board and educate him, for well-nigh two years, at the Free Church Seminary, Lovedale, where that able teacher gave him an excellent English education. He was now in his seventeenth year. The Caffre War of 1846 had broken out and desolated the missionary settlements in Caffraria. The Rev. Mr. Govan returned to this country, taking Tiyo along with him. At the close of that year, John Henderson of Park took the foreign exile under his wing, by means of his faithful guardian, who was now settled over the Free Church at Inchinnan, and to whom all the outlay on Tiyo's account was repaid by that princely philanthropist, who had him sent to the Free Normal Seminary from the close of 1846 until early in 1848. Then it was that John Street Church, Glasgow, took him up with Mr. Henderson's full approbation, with a view to his future usefulness among his own countrymen. When thoroughly satisfied of Tiyo's personal piety and blameless life, the Rev. Dr. Anderson publicly baptized him; and on the first opportunity thereafter, he partook of the 'holy supper' in church fellowship. This was early in 1848. John Street Church bore his expenses at the 'Normal,' and otherwise, until the autumn of that year, when he set sail for his native shores, a catechist under the auspices of the Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church, and salaried by them accordingly, at £25 per annum, which the John Street Juvenile Missionary Society joyously paid. He arrived at the Chumie in February 1849. Until September of that year, he used all diligence in his work-now evangelist, then local catechist, again interpreter-chiefly around the Chumie, and occasionally at Igqibigha.' The writer, early in 1849, commenced the new station at the confluence of the Keiskamma and Gxulu rivers, hence called Uniondale; commemorative, besides, of the recent union of the United Secession and Relief Churches. Thither Tiyo's services were transferred by appointment of presbytery. Here he unbent his youthful energies in a new and ample field, whether of private study, or public school, or among the kraals of his heathen countrymen, where he was listened to, loved, admired by all. It was soon his minister's delight to see him and his sister Tausi, the first family to occupy a neat burnt-brick cottage in the mission square. Sudden as the earthquake, the war of Christmas 1850 engulphed this fair field of gospel promise! Tiyo had been left in charge of the station, in the absence of his minister, who was removing his beloved wife and little ones to the Chumie for greater safety, meaning himself to return forthwith, to work, and, God willing, wait the end; little surmising the advantage that was to be taken of his absence by the chief Anta, who, defiant of his brother Sandili, the paramount chief,—also of local friendly chiefs,-pillaged Uniondale, and compelled Tiyo and his sister to flee under cloud of night, and fall back on the Chumie, alongside of the missionary and his family, bringing with him a handful of books that had survived the wreck of his minister's library. The only alternative now open to the missionary of Uniondale was to repair to Scotland with his family, in what, alas! turned out to be the vain endeavour to repair the damage done by the war to the health, and eventually to the life, of his beloved helpmeet. Then it was that he proposed to Tiyo to accompany them, and resume his studies at College and Hall, and return to Caffreland an ordained missionary. This was the joy of Tiyo's heart. He submitted the proposed step to his father's judgment. Soga, elated at this instance of deference to his feudal authority and parental heart, said, 'Go, Tiyo! Niven knows to do what is right. You have always been a missionary's man; be so to the end.' Through various dangers and delays, the pilgrim band reached Port Elizabeth, and embarked for London, where they arrived in July 1851, when the National Exhibition burst in all its glory upon the gaze of the Caffre missionary student, and his youthful countryman Seyolo. So apt a pupil was he in the dead languages, that he was ready for the senior Latin at Glasgow College in November of the same year 1851; and at Logic, next session, Professor Buchanan told the writer that he had pronounced him to be the second-best essayist in the senior division of that large class, and thanked the returned missionary for having sent him such a capital student. With similar proficiency and approbation, Tiyo passed through University and Theological Hall, on to licence and ordination, having been allowed to enter on the five years' study of divinity in the midst of his College course. He was one of the seven' who were ordained in John Street Church, the Rev. Dr. Anderson giving the characteristic charge. The Rev. Dr. Edmond has photographed the occasion in one of his finest lyrics. None of these seven missionaries remain in the field now, although the Rev. Tiyo Soga is the only one of them who has died. Before leaving for Caffreland, Mr. Soga married Miss Burnside, eldest daughter of a much-respected burgess of the city of Glasgow, who still survives. The chivalry of our faith, as well as a happy congeniality of disposition, adorned this domestic union. Each rejoiced in the other, as one that had found great spoil.* * A missionary's wife said of this union |