extraordinary aspects of his preaching, and of the pulpit from which he preached. Almost without exception, and entirely removed from the firmly established Anglican convention, M‘Neile never preached from notes; and always preached extemporaneously. His sermons routinely lasted 90 minutes; and were never measured, structured appeals to reason – they were outright, impassioned histrionic performances intentionally directed at the emotions of his audience: "I shall never go to hear Mr. M‘Neile again", said a religious friend of ours, returning from St. Jude’s. "Why not?”, we inquired. "Because", replied he, "if I agree with him, I must come away with feelings of ill-will against parties he has been assailing and who are quite as respectable and intelligent as himself; or, otherwise, I must come away with sentiments of anger towards himself for his intolerance, if I do not agree with him; and I do not choose to go to a place of worship with the liability of leaving it in such an unchristian-like state of mind in either case". M‘Neile's flawed hermeneutics M‘Neile was well known for his flawed hermeneutics; viz., his inaccurate interpretation of Biblical texts. He was renowned for both his inaccurate exegesis, and for his eisegetical projections of Biblical texts onto current events. For example, in July 1846, Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, visited Liverpool and, among other duties on 31 July 1846, he officially opened the Albert Dock and laid the foundation stone for one of M‘Neile's pet projects, the Liverpool Sailors' Home. Two days later, on 2 August 1846, M‘Neile preached a sermon, "Every eye shall see Him"; the text of which was immediately published. Within his sermon – regarded, overall, as a "most melancholy, wretched, and most degrading composition" – M‘Neile moved to speak of "The Prince in all his beauty", mapping Prince Albert's laying of a foundation stone onto a text from Isaiah (33:17) "Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty" There were many protests at his equation of "the Saviour of the world" with a "colonel of hussars" and his implicit assertion that Albert held "title-deeds to… divinity" (Anon, 1847h). It was clear his "fearful irreverence" – implying that "an earthly prince" visiting Liverpool had some link to "the awful coming of the Prince of Heaven and Earth to Judgment" – was something that "must be [immediately] apparent to every reverent mind"; and, further, that a "piece of gross and rank