The Story of My Life Part 46

I have long been impressed with the conviction that Canada could not prosper under the element of agitation. I supported the Union of the Canadas with a view to their civil tranquility. I believe my expectations will be realized. In our new state of things I desire not to be considered as standing in an att.i.tude of hostility to the Church of England, any more than to any other Church. I have wished and resolved to leave civil and ecclesiastical party politics with the former bad state of things. Travelling, observation and experience, have been a useful school to me, and time will do justice to the merits or demerits of my motives and conduct.

On the 22nd of December, Mr. Kent replied to Dr. Ryerson:--

Do not think that I wish to meet you coldly. I would gladly fling away the weapons of strife. The warfare in which I am engaged, and which I dare not decline, is literally embittering my existence, and pressing upon me very severely. I am not aware that I have in any way personally attacked you, or ever by name, since the commencement of my editorial career. I should hail a day of concord with overflowing joy. I should rejoice to see your powerful, acute, and vigorous mind exerting itself in a manner that we should all consider serviceable to the cause of loyalty and the Protestant religion.

From a glance at your letters, I fondly hope that some gleam of light is breaking in upon us all. My firm conviction is that the doctrine of the apostolical succession will be the bond of union and the cementer of differences, now apparently impossible. You must have studied the question--and how can your vivid and clear mind elude its force? Must there not be some one apostolical mode of conferring the ministerial functions, or must it be open to all, and Quakerism be right? I do not think I have been the a.s.sailant.

The _Guardian_ is outrageously personal and unscrupulous in its misstatements.... I am far from thinking that I am meek and gentle enough; but I have carefully excluded personalities,--though I readily concede that my course of argument, which pervades all I write or select, has been to cut away the ground from under the feet of every denomination in the province, outside of the Church.

The papists, I firmly believe, are meditating some grand movement all over the world; and it would be glorious indeed if Protestants could find a common centre of union. But what can I, in my humble way, do? I dare not drop the necessity of the apostolical succession,--though I might dwell less upon it, and avoid, as much as possible, as I always have done, to mix it up with offence to other denominations. Yet, as I before intimated, the a.s.sertion and maintenance of it, in the simplest and least controversial manner, must ever provoke hostility. It is an endless subject to get upon....

I shall be very happy to call on you at an early opportunity, and obtain, or rather revive, the pleasure of your personal acquaintance. It would be the happiest Christmas I ever spent, if it witness the extinction of long theological enmities, and the dawn of an era of Christian concord and love.

On the 29th December, Dr. Ryerson wrote a private note again to Mr.

Kent. He said:--I was glad to learn by the last _Church_ that you will give my remarks a place in your columns, and that you cordially and elegantly respond to the general spirit and design of them....

I have had a correspondence with the Editor of the _Guardian_ in reference to the mode of conducting it, in regard to the Church of England, and in some other respects. I am happy to be able to say that he has at length yielded to my reasonings and recommendations, and will, I have no doubt, conduct the _Guardian_ in accordance with the general views expressed in my communications to you.[116] To-day's _Guardian_, as you see, presents a visible and agreeable improvement in the points referred to.

I blame you not for your strict and high principles as a churchman, but I do not think that you do now make sufficient allowance for difference of forms and ceremonies in the common faith of Protestantism. I think you should allow as much as Archbishop (Lord Keeper) Williams has done, and as much as is involved in the pa.s.sage quoted by him from Irenaeus.

Why should we be "unchurched" any more than the continental churches?

Mr. Kent, in reply to Dr. Ryerson (31st December), said:--

I trust you will think that in the remarks which I have made on your letter in _The Church_, I have met your overtures in a pacific and cordial spirit. I am sure that my remarks will be much more acceptable to churchmen, so far as such remarks are friendly to you, than they will be to others not belonging to our pale. I have not consulted a soul about what I have written, nor have I shown your pleasing reply to my first note to any one save good and safe Mr. Henry Rowsell; though I should like to show it to Rev. H. J.

Grasett, and Bishop Strachan. You need never be afraid of what you say to me in confidence.... It is certainly much more consistent in you (provided only you get rid of Mr. Wesley's authority, and then, by the way, you destroy your genealogy and succession) to call yourselves a Church, than to be of the Church and not in it.... You are said to possess some fine old Divinity works. You cannot have read them without some approximation to our Church.

You are not in the position of the continental Churches. No constraint is upon you. You can get Episcopacy, if you desire it.

Neither does the Church of England stand relatively towards you, as the Gallican Church towards the Huguenots. You admit the purity of our doctrine, and do not consider our discipline unscriptural. If you were to read Bishop Stillingfleet on Separation, I think you would open up new trains of thought. I just became so staunch an Episcopalian, from viewing the matter extrinsically of Scripture and history, and was led to conclude, from the nature of things, that there can be but one valid ministry.

You are certainly a _Prospero_. You have waved your magic wand over the _Guardian_. I saw it in an instant, and saw that you had done it. I purposely, in my editorial, abstained from all allusions to our confidential intercourse, or I would have thanked you for this exercise of your healing influence.

It is by no means an unpleasing marvel that you and I, on the last day of 1841, should be conversing so pleasantly and amicably. I trust that peace and amity will flourish still more!

Do me the favour to accept a slight New Year's gift at my hands.

Dr. Ryerson wrote a reply to the strictures of _The Church_ newspaper, and on the 26th addressed a private note on the subject to Mr. Kent, in which he said:--

... The great difference between us seems to be that I value what I hold to be the cardinal doctrines, and morals and interests of Christianity, above either Churchism or Methodism. So that those interests are advanced, either through the Church of England, or Church of Scotland, or any other Protestant Church, I therein do rejoice and will rejoice. You make the Church of England first of all--essential to all--all in all; and that all who are not in the Church of England are enemies to the Church of Christ, "strangers to the covenants of promise, and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel." ... It is true you have exempted me by way of compliment; but no intelligent man would wish to hold his religious intercourse and standing on the tenor of a compliment; and that too at the expense of his ecclesiastical connexion and general principles. If I cannot but be viewed as an enemy of the Church of England as a Methodist, it is a poor compliment to tell me that I am friendly to it as a man. I do not understand the hair-splitting casuistry which separates the man from the Christian....

I believe in your perfect sincerity and personal disinterestedness and kindness, but I must say that you do not appear from the last _Church_ to suppose it possible for a man to think in a different channel from yourself without endangering his t.i.tle to the skies, or to common sense, and without absolutely forfeiting his claim to orthodox Christianity. I refer not all to your maintenance of apostolic succession, but to your unqualified reprobation of the motives, feelings, and character of all who are not of your own fold. How different are the sentiments and spirit of Bishop Onderdonk's essay in support of the "Divine Right of Episcopacy"

from those of your articles in the last _Church_? Now, though we may be without the attributes of what you believe to be a scripturally const.i.tuted Church, we are not without the attributes and feelings of men.... The apparatus of the Church of England is surprisingly powerful when spiritually, rightly, and comprehensively applied; but to build your structure like an inverted pyramid, and to rouse every one not of you into warfare against you, does not appear to me to be sound in theory, or wise in practice.

Mr. Kent, in a private reply, dated 3rd February, said:--

I have read your letter over so as to prepare my remarks. In doing this I antic.i.p.ate no trouble. On the contrary, I hope to strengthen my position and give greater weight to my axioms respecting the duties of Churchmen in withholding aid from all religious societies unconnected with the Church. I find, however, that your tone of remark is excessively warm and indignant; and, deeming from the tenor of your conversation on Thursday last, that you have doubts on your mind respecting church government, and feeling convinced that if ever you are led to subscribe to the indispensable obligations of episcopacy, ... you will admit the validity of my reasons for acting and writing as I do--under all these circ.u.mstances I feel bound to ask you to meditate whether you will not withdraw your letter. I give you my sacred honour that I do not dread its effects. But I feel this, that should you ever experience and avow a change of opinion in reference to the matters that are now engaging your attention, it will be brought up against you by your enemies, and may altogether prove a constant embarra.s.sment.

Should you withdraw it, I will only mention the matter to Mr.

Grasett, who has already seen it. Should you determine on its insertion, it shall appear next Sat.u.r.day.

Dr. Ryerson did not withdraw his letter, and it appeared in _The Church_ of February 5th. The personal correspondence, however, ended here.

In accounting for his decided opposition to a church establishment in Upper Canada, Dr. Ryerson said:--

Before I was twenty years of age I had read Paley's Political Philosophy, including his chapters on the British Const.i.tution and a Church Establishment; Locke on Government, and especially Blackstone's Commentaries, particularly those parts on the Rights of the Crown and the Rights of the Subject. From Paley I learned that a Church Establishment is no part of Christianity, but a means of supporting it, and a means which should be used only when the majority of the people are of the religion thus supported. From Blackstone I learned that the Church of England is the Established Church of England and Ireland, but not of any colony, except under one or more of three conditions, none of which existed in Upper Canada. Upon the grounds, therefore, furnished by Blackstone and Paley, I opposed the erection of a Church Establishment in Upper Canada, without touching the question of a Church Establishment in England.

Dr. Ryerson in a letter to a friend, thus refers to his early experiences in regard to the Church of England:--

Although I had no opportunity of attending the service of the Church of England until I was nearly twenty years of age, I made the Homilies and Prayer Book, with the Bible, very constant companions of travel and subjects of study. I drew my best pulpit ill.u.s.trations from them, at the very time that I was controverting the pretensions of the leaders of that Church to exclusive establishment and supremacy in Upper Canada; and, in so doing, I had the sympathies and support of a large portion of the members of the Church of England, in addition to the unanimous support of the members of other religious denominations. I felt that I was preaching the Protestant Reformation doctrines of the Church of England; and throughout life I have loved the Church of England with all its faults, only second to that of my own church. I declined the offer of ordination in the Church of England [page 206] several months after I commenced preaching on a Methodist circuit, simply and solely upon the ground that I was indebted to the Methodists for all the religious instruction and influences I had experienced. I believed that I would be more useful among them, though my life would be, as then appeared, one of privation and labour. During the first four years of my ministry, my salary amounted to less than one hundred dollars per annum, and during the next twelve years (after my marriage) my salary did not exceed six hundred dollars a year, including house rent and fuel.

In a letter written on the 28th October, 1843, to the Editor of the _Guardian_ by Dr. Ryerson, he says:--

It is still, as it has long been, the position with the Editor of _The Church_ and writers of his school to represent the efforts of other Churches to maintain their own equal rights and privileges as hostility to the Church of England.... Who proposed peace, and who has perpetuated war--aggressive war? [page 292.] ... Who is it that proclaims bodies prior to his own in Western Canada as "Dissenters," and seeks by every species of unfair statement and insinuation to injure and degrade them--both politically and religiously--and substantially maintaining that Civil Government itself is an appropriate Providential instrument to put down "dissent." For one, I have as yet been silent under this provocation, insult, and proscription.

Circ.u.mscribed must his views be who does not perceive that "Puseyism,"

both in a religious and civil point of view, will soon become a far more important question for the consideration and decision of the inhabitants of Western Canada than that of the seat of Government, or than even that of the University. And the day is hastening apace, when it will be a prime matter of inquiry with them to determine ... whether they will quietly consent to have their civil rights and liberties placed in any form in the hands of men who regard the great majority of their Christian fellow-subjects as unbaptized heathens and aliens in a Christian country. Such is the issue to which _The Church_ is bringing matters in Western Canada.[117]

In a journey from Kingston to Toronto by stage, which Dr. Ryerson made in February, 1842, Bishop Strachan was a fellow pa.s.senger. Dr. Ryerson thus speaks of the agreeable intercourse which he had with the Bishop on that occasion:--

For the first time in my life I found myself in company with the Lord Bishop of Toronto. He was accompanied by Mr. T. M. Jones, his son-in-law, and Mr. Jarvis (Indian Department), very pleasant companions, nor could I desire to meet with a more affable, agreeable man than the Bishop himself. It would be unpardonable to introduce remarks ... of one's neighbours ... into travelling notes in any form, but there has been something so peculiar in the relations of "John Toronto" and "Egerton Ryerson," that I must beg, in this instance, to depart from a general rule. Conversation took place on several topics, on scarcely any of which did I see reason to differ from the Bishop. He spoke of the importance to us of getting our College at Cobourg endowed--that an annual grant was an insufficient dependence--that as the clergy reserve question had been settled by law, we had as much right to a portion of the clergy lands as the Church of England--that as we did not desire Government support for our ministers, we ought to get our proportion appropriated to the College, as religious education was clearly within the provisions of the Clergy Reserve Act. Valuable suggestions, for which I thanked his lords.h.i.+p. I took occasion to advert to what had excited the strongest feelings in my own mind, and in the minds of our people generally--namely imputations on our loyalty to the Government and laws of the country. The Bishop, with his characteristic energy, said that what he had written on the subject he could at any time prove--that he never represented or supposed that the Methodist body of people were disaffected; nor had he represented or supposed that those preachers who had been born and brought up in the country were disloyal; but he was satisfied that such was the case with the majority of those who used to come from the United States. I felt that the whole matter was one of history, and not of practical importance in reference to present interests; and I was much gratified in my own mind to find that the real question, as one of history, was the proportion of preachers who formerly came from the United States, and the character and tendency of their feelings and influence; for no preachers have come from the United States to this country these many years, and we have none but British subjects in the Canada Conference.

After parting with the Bishop at Cobourg, in a.n.a.lyzing the exercises of my own mind, I found myself deeply impressed with the following facts and considerations:--

1. That the settlement of the clergy reserve question had annihilated the princ.i.p.al causes of difference between those individuals and bodies in this province who had been most hostile to each other.

2. That how much asperity of feeling, and how much bitter controversy might be prevented, if those most concerned would converse privately with each other before they entered into the arena of public disputation.

3. That how much more numerous and powerful are the reasons for agreement than for hostility in the general affairs of the country, even among those who differ most widely on points of religious doctrine and polity.[118]

FOOTNOTES:

[114] I have already on pages 41 and 206 mentioned the overtures which were made to Dr. Ryerson by the late Bishop Stewart of Quebec to induce him to enter the ministry of the Church of England. See also page 97.

[115] "From 1841 to 1843 the editorial management of _The Church_ was a.s.sumed by Mr. John Kent, who had been a valuable contributor to its pages from the commencement. The excitement, however, amid the clash and din of party strife was too much for him, and the paper came back to its first editor, who held it again ... for nearly four years.... It gradually lost ground, and died out ... in 1856. Memoir of Bishop Strachan by Bishop Bethune," page 159.

[116] From Dr. Ryerson's letter to Rev. J. Scott, Editor of the _Guardian_, I make the following extracts:--I take the liberty to mention two or three things that I have seen in the _Guardian_ which have caused me some pain and concern. I refer to your mode and style of controversy with "_The Church_." During, and since my late tour to the West, I have heard several preachers and some others allude to it, and nearly all in terms of regret. I set down the questions as they occur to my own mind.

1. We have no controversy with the Church of England as a Church Establishment. We have disclaimed opposing, or doing anything to disparage the Church Establishment in England.... 2. Then on the subject of church polity. Your articles, especially the series ent.i.tled "Dissent, etc., No Wonder"--were put forth as a defence.... But which of our inst.i.tutions did they defend? The burden of them went to prove that the Church of England is unscriptural in its polity, union with the state, etc. Suppose all this were true, would it prove that our own Church is apostolic and Scriptural? To prove that our neighbours are black, does not prove that we are white. We do not profess to build up ourselves upon the ruin of any body else, or to be "foragers" upon others, although we readily accept members of other churches when they offer themselves. To prove that Presbyterian ordination is valid (as did the valuable series of articles copied by you from the _Wesleyan Magazine_, and Powell, on Apostolic Succession) defends our ordination.

To prove that the Church of England is wrong and rotten from beginning to end cannot be a defence of ourselves. It may, indeed, please some of our friends; but it also tends to prove that we are settled enemies to the Church of England in all its forms and features, as well as in its union with the state.

Far be it from me to look upon the things I have mentioned as characteristics of the _Guardian_; I look upon them as blemishes, and as drawbacks from its usefulness--objects which I know are scarcely less dear to your heart than life itself. If we narrow our own foundations by such sweeping denunciations against the Church of England, and strictures on persons without our communion, ... we multiply our opponents, and reduce the circulation of our journal within the circle of our own members.

I am sensible of my own errors, deficiency and unworthiness; but I have felt that I should not do my duty to you as a brother beloved, and one from whom I have received too many proofs of regard, and so much aid in my labours, without thus telling you what was in my heart.

Rev. Mr. Scott at first felt aggrieved and disappointed on receiving this letter and a personal correspondence between him and Dr. Ryerson ensued, which, however, ended satisfactorily. In a letter to Dr.

Ryerson, written in 1864--23 years afterwards,--Mr. Scott thus recalls the reminiscence of his career as Editor of the _Guardian_. He says:--My esteemed friend: You and I have not always thought alike (and what is manliness worth that is not independent enough to disagree?) but as age advances I have an increasing pleasure in recalling to mind the years, when you were Superintendent of old Adelaide street Church, and I was your supplementary helper,--in joint intercession with the humbled at night--in the damp bas.e.m.e.nt, and during the day pursuing the penitents in dirty taverns, and the dens of dirtier March [now Lombard] street, the sainted Mrs. S. E. Taylor praying for us; and Christ won many souls.

Since then what progress Scriptural Christianity--Methodism--has made in Canada! I trust that when you repose in the tomb, and I am beneath some quiet sod of loved Canada, we shall meet those again for whose salvation we laboured. In the words of an ancient wish: May your last days be your best days! Mr. Scott entered the ministry in 1834; and died at Brampton, May 5th, 1880, aged 77.

[117] In this connection see the significant conclusion of the note on page 291.