I have lately astonished some of my friends with the information, that William Lyon Mackenzie was originally an advocate of the Clergy Reserves--that is, of state endowment for religious purposes--a fact which makes his fatal plunge into treason the more to be regretted by all who coincide with him on the religious question.

In Lindsey's "Memoirs" we read (vol. 1, p. 46):

"A Calvinist in religion, proclaiming his belief in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a Liberal in politics, yet was Mr. Mackenzie, at that time, no advocate of the voluntary principle. On the contrary, he lauded the British Government for making a landed endowment for the Protestant clergy in the Provinces, and was shocked at the report that, in 1812, voluntaryism had robbed three millions of people of all means of religious ordinances. 'In no part of the constitution of the Canadas,' he said, 'is the wisdom of the British Legislature more apparent than in its setting apart a portion of the country, while yet it remained a wilderness, for the support of religion.'

. . . "Mr. Mackenzie compared the setting apart of one-seventh of the public lands for religious purposes to a like dedication in the time of the [early] Christians. But he objected that the revenues were monopolized by one church, to which only a fraction of the population belonged. The envy of the non-recipient denominations made the favoured Church of England unpopular.

. . . "Where the majority of the present generation of Canadians will differ from him, is that on the Clergy Reserves question, he did not hold the voluntary view. At that time, he would have denounced secularization as a monstrous piece of sacrilege."[15]

How much to be regretted is it, that instead of splitting up the Clergy Reserves into fragments, the friends of religious education had not joined their forces for the purpose of endowing all Christian denominations with the like means of usefulness. We are now extending across the entire continent what I cannot help regarding as the anti-Christian practice of non-religious popular education. We are, I believe, but smoothing the road to crime in the majority of cases. Cannot something be done now, while yet the lands of the vast North-West are at our disposal? Will no courageous legislator raise his voice to advocate the dedication of a few hundred thousand acres to unselfish purposes? Have we wiled away the Indian prairies from their aboriginal owners, to make them little better than a race-course for speculating gamblers?

Even if the jealousy of rival politicians--each bent upon self-aggrandizement at the expense of more honourable aims--should defeat all efforts in behalf of religious endowments through the Dominion Legislature, cannot the religious associations amongst us bestir themselves in time? Cannot the necessity for actual settlement be waived in favour of donations by individuals for Church uses? Cannot the powerful Pacific Railway Syndicate themselves take up this great duty, of setting apart certain sections in favour of a Christian ministry?

The signs of the times are dark--dark and fearful. In Europe, by the confession of many eminent public writers, heathenism is overspreading the land. In the United States, a community of the sexes is shamelessly advocated; and there is no single safeguard of public or private order and morality, that is not openly scoffed at and set at nought.

Oh, men! men! preachers, and dogmatists, and hierarchs of all sects! see ye not that your strifes and your jealousies are making ye as traitors in the camp, in the face of the common enemy? See ye not the multitudes approaching, armed with the fell weapons of secular knowledge--cynicism, self-esteem, greed, envy, ambition, ill-regulated passions unrestrained!

One symptom of a nobler spirit has shown itself in England, in the understanding lately suggested, or arrived at, that the missions of any one Protestant Church in the South Sea Islands shall be entirely undisturbed by rival missionaries. This is right; and if right in Polynesia, why not in Great Britain? why not in Canada? Why cultivate half-a-dozen contentious creeds in every new township or village? Would it not be more amiable, more humble, more self-denying, more exemplary--in one word, more like our Master and Saviour--if each Christian teacher were required to respect the ministrations of his next neighbour, even though there might be some faint shade of variety in their theological opinions; provided always that those ministrations were accredited by some duly constituted branch of the Christian Church.

I profess that I can see no reason why an endowment should not be provided in every county in the North-West, to be awarded to the first congregation, no matter how many or how few, that could secure the services of a missionary duly licensed, be he Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist, Disciple--aye, even Anglican or Roman Catholic. No sane man pretends, I think, that eternal salvation is limited to any one, or excluded from any one, of those different churches. That great essential, then, being admitted, what right have I, or have you, dear reader, to demand more? What right have you or I to withhold the Word of God from the orphan or the outcast, for no better reason than such as depends upon the construction of particular words or texts of Holy Scripture, apart from its general tenor and teaching?

Again I say, it is much to be deplored that Canada had not more Reformers, and Conservatives too, as liberal-minded as was W. L. Mackenzie, in regard to the maintenance and proper use of the Clergy Reserves.

It was not the Imperial Government, it was not Lord John Russell, or Sir Robert Peel, or Lords Durham and Sydenham, that were answerable for the dispersion of the Clergy Reserves. What they did was to leave the question in the hands of the Canadian Legislature. It was the old, old story of the false mother in the "Judgment of Solomon," who preferred that the infant should be cut in twain rather than not wrested from a rival claimant.

I would fain hope that the future may yet see a reversal of that disgrace to our Canadian Statute Book. Not by restoring the lands to the Church of England, or the Churches of England and Scotland--they do not now need them--but by endowing all Christian churches for the religious teaching of the poorer classes in the vast North-West.

[Footnote 15: Mackenzie afterwards drew up petitions which prayed, amongst other things, for the secularization of the Clergy Reserves, but I judge that on that question these petitions rather represented the opinions of other men than his own, and were specially aimed at the Church of England monopoly.]