The Story of My Life Part 25

Rev. Ephraim Evans said:--

I have become a consenting party to your being solicited, at considerable sacrifice of feeling, to undertake a tedious journey at the most untoward season of the year, for the good of the common cause, and I sincerely tender, in common with my Brother James, my best thanks for your kind compliance, and my hearty wishes for your complete success. Indeed I feel most deeply that upon your success depends, under G.o.d, the prosperity or downfall of the Upper Canada Academy. Be a.s.sured that my most fervent prayers will be daily offered up for your health and safety, for a happy issue to attend your generous endeavours again to promote the interests of the Church of our mutual affection.

I entertain not the slightest hope of being able to procure such a Charter as we would be justifiable in accepting, or any support to the inst.i.tution from our own Legislature.

Rev. John Ryerson, writing from Hallowell, said:--

Your friends in Kingston (and all the Methodists there seem to be such) spoke much about you and your successful labours there.

Brothers Counter, Jenkins, and others, say they are resolved to have you for their preacher next year, on your return from England.

I hope and pray that good luck will attend your efforts. Everything depends on the issue of your mission. May the Lord give you favour in the eyes of the people, and good success in your vastly important work.

Rev. Joseph Stinson, writing from Kingston, said:--

We all feel very strange now that you are gone, but be of good cheer; we follow you with our sympathy and prayers. We doubt not but G.o.d--that G.o.d in whose cause you are making this additional sacrifice, will succeed your labour, and cause all things to work together for your good.

In a letter from London, England, Dr. Ryerson says:--

Mr. Lunn and other friends have arrived from Quebec, and have given me Canadian news, among other items the stations of various ministers: Rev. James Richardson and Rev. J. S. Atwood withdraw from the Conference, and Rev. Mr. Irvine goes to the States. The President and I remain at Kingston. I have been appointed, by a unanimous vote, the representative to the British Conference, and I am to present to Lord Glenelg an Address from the Conference to the King. On the 18th of June, 1836, the Upper Canada Academy was opened, and the Princ.i.p.al (Rev. M. Richey) inaugurated.

Dr. Ryerson added:--

I am to stay in Birmingham, at the house of a worthy and wealthy Quaker, by the name of Joseph Sturge.

At the general meeting of the Missionary Committee, held recently the resolutions of the Committee relative to the withdrawal of the Government grant for the work in Upper Canada were read. Dr.

Bunting rose and mentioned its restoration, and kindly and cordially mentioned me as the means of getting it restored. He gave a flattering account of my proceedings in the affair. I thanked him afterwards for his great kindness in the matter.

The labours and result of this, Dr. Ryerson's second mission to England, are given in Chapter xvi., pages 158-166.

CHAPTER XV.

1835-1836.

The "Grievance" Report; its Object and Failure.

Amongst the Committees of the House of a.s.sembly at this time was a useful one called the "Committee on Grievances." To this Committee was referred all complaints made to the House, and all projects of reform, etc. At the close of the Session of 1835, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie, as Chairman, brought in an elaborate Report which, without being read, was ordered to be printed. In that Report, Mr. Mackenzie endeavoured to create a diversion in his favour by showing that while Dr. Ryerson professed to be opposed to Government grants to religious bodies, yet he was willing to receive one for the Wesleyan Conference. The Report stated that:--

The "British Wesleyan Methodist Conference," formerly the M.E.

Church, received 1,000 in 1833, and 611 in 1834, to be applied ... "to the erection, or repairing of chapels and school-houses, and defraying the general expenses of the various missions."

This appropriation to the Methodists, as an Ecclesiastical Establishment, is very singular. In the year 1826 ... Dr. Strachan informed the Colonial Minister that the Methodist ministers acquired their education and formed their principles in the United States.... They appealed to the House of a.s.sembly, which inquired into and reported on the matter in 1828.

Upon another occasion they received a rebuke from Sir John Colborne ... in answer to the Address of the Conference requesting him to transmit to His Majesty their Address on the Clergy Reserves.

Since, however, a share of public money has been extended to and received by them, there seems to have been established a mutual good understanding.

To this Report, Dr. Ryerson replied to the effect--

That the grant was made to the British Conference in England (over which we had no control) and not to the Canada Conference; that the grant in question was made by Lord G.o.derich, as part of a general scheme agreed upon in 1832, to aid Missionaries in the West Indies, Western, and Southern Africa, New South Wales, and Canada, "to erect chapels and school-houses in the needy and dest.i.tute settlements;" that the Rev. R. Alder had come from England, in 1833, to establish separate and distinct missions from those under the Canada Conference with a view to absorb this grant; that when the Union was formed, in 1833, the missions in charge of the Canada Conference became the missions of the British Conference, and were managed by their own Superintendent; that the Canadian Missionary Society from that time became a mere auxiliary to the parent Society in England; that the Canada Conference a.s.sumed no responsibility in regard to the funds necessary to support these missions; and that, in point of fact, they had cost the British Methodists thousands of dollars over and above any grant received from Lord G.o.derich as part of the general scheme for the support of missionaries in the extended British Colonies.

Dr. Ryerson, in concluding these explanations, adds:--

We trust that every reader clearly perceives the unparalleled parliamentary imposition that has been practised upon the public by the "Grievance Committee," and their gross insinuations and slanders against the Methodist ministers.

In 1836, the Report of the Grievance Committee came up in the House again. On this subject Rev. John Ryerson wrote in March, 1836, to Dr.

Ryerson, in London, as follows:--

The altercations and quarrels which have taken place in the a.s.sembly this session on the part of Peter Perry and W. L.

Mackenzie, especially about the "Grievance Report," have raised you much in the estimation of the people. The correctness of your views and statements are now universally acknowledged, and your defamers deserted by all candid men. Political things are looking very favourable at the present time. The extremer of the Radical party are going down headlong. May a gracious Providence speed them on their journey!

To Mr. Perry, Dr. Ryerson replied fully and explicitly. He said:

Mr. Perry has charged me with departing from my former ground in regard to an ecclesiastical establishment in Upper Canada. My editorials and correspondence with Her Majesty's Government will be considered conclusive evidence of the falsity of the charge, and will again defeat the attempts of the enemies of Methodism to destroy me and overthrow the Conference. Another cause of attack by Mr. Perry is, that amongst several other suggestions which I took the liberty to offer to Lord Glenelg, Colonial Secretary, was the appointment of a certain gentleman of known popularity to the Executive Council. Mr. Perry seemed to consider himself as a sort of king in Lennox and Addington, and appears to regard it as an infringement upon his sovereign prerogatives that I should be stationed so near the borders of his empire as Kingston. But many of his const.i.tuents can bear record whether the object of my ministry was to dethrone Peter Perry, or to break down the power and influence of a much more formidable and important personage--the power of him that ruleth in the hearts of the children of disobedience.[47]

_March 30th, London._--During his stay in England, Dr. Ryerson had been able to look upon public affairs in Upper Canada with more calmness, and more impartiality, than when he was there in the midst of them as an actor. In that spirit he, at this date, addressed a letter to the _Guardian_ on what he regarded as an approaching crisis of the highest importance to the Province. He said:--

It is not a mere ephemeral strife of partizans.h.i.+p; it is a deliberate and bold attempt to change the leading features of the Const.i.tution--a Const.i.tution to which allegiance has been sworn, and to which firm attachment has been over and over again expressed in addresses to the Governor up to 1834. Such being the case, it becomes every man who fears G.o.d and loves his country to pause, to think, to decide. I have told the Colonial Secretary, that whilst the Methodist Church asked for nothing but "equal and impartial protection," yet I believed the attachment to the Const.i.tution of the country and to the British Crown, expressed in pet.i.tions and addresses from the Methodist Conference and people of Canada, to be sincere, and that they would prove to be so in their future conduct. They had been falsely charged as being Republicans, but they had always repudiated this charge as a calumny. Nor would they be found among those who, like Messrs. Peter Perry and W. L.

Mackenzie, had recently avowed their intention to establish republican elective inst.i.tutions in the Province.

As to the charges of the "Grievance Committee" party, I can truly say that I have never received one farthing of public money from any quarter, and my humble support to my King and country is unsought, unsolicited, and spontaneous.

_May 21st--London._--At this date Dr. Ryerson wrote:--

During my exile here in England I have more and more longed for news from Canada, and cooling water to the panting hart could not be more refres.h.i.+ng than late intelligence from my dear native land has been to me. I can now listen with an interest and sympathy that I never did before, to the patriotic effusions of the warm-hearted and eloquent Irishmen, whom I have recently heard, respecting "the first flower of the earth, the first gem of the sea."

The news from Canada presents to my mind strange contrasts. A few years ago efforts were made to prove that the Methodist ministers were the "salaried hirelings" of a foreign republican power. Now efforts are being made to persuade the Canadian public that the same ministers are the salaried hirelings of British power, because they refuse to be identified with men and measures which are revolutionary in their tendencies. Our motto is "fear G.o.d and honour the King," and "meddle not with them that are given to change." Many who were influenced to take part in the former crusade have long since given proof of a better spirit; so it will be, I trust, with those who have now been hurried on into the present shameless and malignant opposition, against a cause which has confessedly been of the highest spiritual and eternal advantage to thousands in Upper Canada. I venture to predict that not a few of our partizan adversaries will ere long lament their madness of political idolatry and religious hostility. In the former case, Methodism survived, triumphed, and prospered; in the present case, if we are true to our principles and faithful to our G.o.d, He will again "Cause the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrain the remainder of that wrath."

FOOTNOTES:

[47] Dr. Ryerson's reply to Mr. Perry was afterwards reprinted as an election flysheet, headed "Peter Perry Picked to Pieces by Egerton Ryerson," and circulated broadcast in the counties. It resulted in Mr.

Perry being rejected as M.P.P. for Lennox and Addington in the elections of 1836. (See Chapter xxiii.)

CHAPTER XVI.

1836-1837.

Dr. Ryerson's Diary of his Second Mission to England

The following is from Dr. Ryerson's diary (which is incomplete) giving the result of his experiences and labours in England, during his second mission there.

_London, January 1st, 1836._--I am again in the great metropolis of the Christian world. My wife and I left our native land, and affectionate pastoral charge, on the 20th of November, 1835, and arrived here the 30th of December, after a voyage of tempest and sea-sickness. But to the Ruler of the winds, and the Father of our spirits, we present our grateful acknowledgments for the preservation of our lives. To our Heavenly Father have I, with my dear wife, presented ourselves at the commencement of this new year. O, may we through grace keep our vows, and henceforth abound in every Christian grace and comfort, every good word and work!

We have been most kindly received by the Missionary Secretaries and other brethren; the prospects appear encouraging for the success of our mission: another ground of thankfulness, increased zeal, and faithfulness.