William Marcus DILL MACKY

DILL MACKY, WILLIAM MARCUS (b. Lisfannan, Ireland, 8 June 1849; d. Neutral Bay, NSW, 15 Oct 1913). Presbyterian minister in New South Wales.

William Dill Macky, son of Ulster farmers William Macky and Susannah (née Dill), both descendants of clerics and seventeenth century Scots colonists, was educated in arts and theology at Magee Presbyterian College (1866-73). He was called to Draperstown Church in Londonderry where he developed a reputation as a Protestant fighter and formed his habit of carrying a revolver during sectarian controversies. He migrated with his family to Sydney in 1887 and was called to the venerable Scots Church, Sydney, where he remained until his death.

Dill Macky was a chaplain to the forces (1892-1904), president of Christian Endeavour (1898) and editor of its journal, Roll Call, the second president (1900) of the new Evangelical Council of New South Wales, a Presbyterian Church committeeman, and moderator of his state's General Assembly in 1899. He was on the executive of various mission societies, city missions, and the Temperance Alliance, and ministered to the Sydney Hospital and the Seamen's Mission.

A fervent evangelical, his prayer was sincere, his preaching was forceful and extempore, and his readings from Scripture were expressive and reverential: crucial passages being repeated slowly for emphasis. His retiring address as moderator in May 1900 called Sydney's bubonic plague outbreak, a Divine visitation against 'the shameless violation of the Sabbath, the impurity which stalks through our streets', gambling and intemperance. Dill Macky fervently believed in the Second Coming of Christ. He addressed clerics on this in his home and persuaded packed meetings by his arguments juxtaposing the Scriptures and historical events.

In 1899 he was appointed lecturer in systematic and biblical theology at St Andrew's College, University of Sydney, and in 1901 was made honorary DD by the Presbyterian Theological Faculty of Ireland. However in 1907, a majority of his theological students protested that he taught the Shorter Catechism and Westminster Confession (1648) catechetically, and read verbatim from Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology (1871-73), a conservative exposition of the Westminster Confession, all of which, they asserted failed to equip them to counter modern rationalism. An investigating committee of the General Assembly asked Dill Macky to teach at first year only. He resigned, claiming that the Bible—every word of which was inspired by God's spirit in the sense used in the Westminster Confession—was its own defence. He claimed a faction wanted him removed for his militant Protestant views. Certainly he boasted of the religious instruction he gave at Fort Street School: 'I have no fear that the children in my class will ever become Roman Catholics'.

Dill Macky's Protestant militance, nurtured in Ulster. and fostered by Sydney Orangeism, burst forth around 1900. In June 1901 he formed the Australian Protestant Defence Association which grew to 22 000 members and 135 branches by 1904. Its journal, the Watchman, sold 20 000 issues of anti-Catholic invective weekly. Dill Macky stumped the state in 1904, provoking stone-throwing, gun-shots, and causing the Riot Act to be read. Protestant sectarian animosity aided the conservative's victory at the 1904 state poll. He saw Catholicism as anti-Christ, and as a system that conspired to seize disproportionate social and political power in Australia. Admired as the Protestant champion of his day, he was given six testimonials, two totalling £1000 each.

Dill Macky died of cancer in October 1913 and was buried with Masonic and Orange rites, in the presence of his wife Ellen, their eight children and 2000 mourners.

R Broome, Treasure in Earthen Vessels. Protestant Christianity in New South Wales Society, 1900-1914 (Brisbane, 1980); Messenger, 16 Aug 1907; Susannah Dill Stevenson family papers (ML); SMH, 9 May-12 June 1907, 16, 18 Oct 1913

RICHARD BROOME