John Cotter Macdonnell

“ The effort, which was loudly applauded, placed his fame as a parliamentary orator quite as high as his reputation as a preacher. Lord Salisbury stated publicly that he had heard from the greatest authorities that they considered it the finest speech ever delivered by any living man in either house of parliament. Although Magee was an active member of convocation, he intervened only at intervals in parliamentary debates, and then always with effect. ”

“ His faith was too robust to tolerate artificial aids to Christian virtue or belief. Yet his sincerity attracted the two extremes of thinkers, the unquestioning believer and the honest intellectual sceptic. ”

“ In 1865 he was elected Donnellan lecturer at Trinity College. A year later (1866) he was also appointed dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin, and he divided his time between the two deaneries of Cork and Dublin. The Church Congress was held in Dublin in 1868, and Magee's opening sermon in St. Patrick's Cathedral, on the ‘Breaking Net,’ was one of his greatest successes in the pulpit. In the same year he preached before the British Association at Norwich on ‘The Christian Theory of the Origin of the Christian Life,’ and a few months later he was promoted, on the recommendation of Mr. ”