|
By Archibald Blue, Toronto
There is something in
heredity. Dr. Holmes of Boston evidently thought there was much in it,
as shown by his reply to the woman who asked when she ought to begin to
train her child. ''Begin a hundred years before he is born." He had a
leaning for the man with the family portraits, and for the man who
inherits the cumulative traditions of at least four or five generations.
But the philosopher seems to have had doubts, as in the case of poor
little Iris, whose glances off from the parental probabilities led him
to believe that the matter of hereditary descent two and two do not
always make four; ''sometime they make three, and sometimes five." That
bright and promiseful new writer, Neil Munro, also believes in heredity,
within limits. He goes the whole length when it concerns genius in
playing the national pipes. "To the make of a piper," he says, "go seven
years of his own learning and seven generations before. If it is in, it
will out, as the Gaelic old word says; if not, let him take to the net
or sword." He exemplifies it well, too, in John Fine Macdonald, though
in the chieftain's daughter the Lady Betty the fox was not there; ''it
was skipping a day, as the fox will do sometimes when the day before has
been good hunting." There are influences in a strain of blood, in
tradition and example, in thought, opinion and belief; and with man in
the individual and in the group it seems to me that there is a
continuity of qualities from one generation to another s definitely
marked and developed as are the characteristics of species and genera in
the lower orders of creation.
Buckle has remarked in
his History of Civilization that the doctrine of Calvinism has always
been connected with the democratic spirit, that it is a doctrine for the
poor rather than for the rich, that it stands for simplicity, in
external worship, and that its professors by the terms of their creed
are likely to acquire habits of independent thinking.
These traits are Scottish
and Presbyterian, and however they may have been preserved and
transmitted from father to son through ten generations, we know that
they are distinctive and vital.
But these are also
Baptist traits among men of every race who have accepted the principles
of Baptist faith—in Germany, in Austria, in Switzerland, in Russia, in
the Netherlands, and in England, as well as in America. And this
suggests agreeably with the view of Buckle, that there is more in the
mental bias than in the strain of blood.
How then has it come to
pass in two democratic countries contiguous to each other, that
relatively, to the whole population Baptists are weak in Canada and
strong in the United States, while the Presbyterians are strong in both
countries? In the United States in 1890, with a population of 62,622,
250, there were 1,278,332 Presbyterian and 3,712,468 Regular Baptist
communicants, being twenty in every 1,000 of the former and sixty in
every 1,000 of the latter. In Canada in 1891, with a population of
4,833,239, there were 83, 110 Regular Baptist and 173,904 Presbyterian
communicants, or seventeen in every i,000 of the former and thirty-six
in every 1,000 of the latter. It is an interesting question, this one of
differing relations, yet one not hard to understand.
There were few
Presbyterians or Baptists who left the United States to find homes in
Canada at the close of the war for Independence, because as a rule men
of both faiths had taken the popular side.
The Presbyterians were
largely Scotch from Ulster, who had come to America in the colonial days
because under the law in Ireland no one was capable of any public
employment, or of being in the magistracy of any city, who did not
receive the sacrament according to the English Test Act. They settled in
all the colonies from New Jersey to Georgia. In Scotland the people were
loyal because they enjoyed their own religion and there was no bar to
position, and those of them who had come to the American colonies sought
chiefly the regions of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia—far distant
from the Canadian lines. Yet one of their number, the Rev. John Bethune,
chaplain of the 84th regiment, who had endured imprisonment for his
loyalist opinions, came from North Carolina to Upper Canada in 1787 and
settled at Williamstown near Cornwall. The first Presbyterian church in
this province was built by him in 1796, a little more than 100 years
ago. He was the father of the late Bishop Bethune of Toronto. Another
Presbyterian minister, Rev. Jabez Culver, the father of Presbyterianism
in Norfolk county, had been a large landholder in New Jersey. It is said
that during the war his sympathies were on the side of the British, but
yielding to strong influence he joined Washington's army as chaplain. He
came to Norfolk with a large family in 1794, and built the first log
house in Windham. Three congregations were organized by him, one at
Turkey Point, one at Windham, and a third in Oakland. Mr. Culver was
ordained in 1760 in New Jersey.
The Baptists, who were
chiefly of English and Welsh stock, had or- organized churches in nearly
all the colonies. They appeared in Massachusetts in the early days of
the Puritan theocracy ; they founded the colony of Rhode Island on the
principles of liberty of concience and the complete separation of church
from state; they became a power in Virginia, where the cavaliers had set
up a state church after the English model and persecuted the Baptist
missionaries with intense rigor and severity. It is a fact in contrast
worth noting that down to he Revolution all the colonies excepting
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Rhode Island had a, church established by
law or custom, and on several occasions the Baptists had to appeal to
the Crown against their colonial oppressors for redress of their
religious grievances. "Hence in the Revolution," Dr. Armitage says in
his History of the Baptists, "they were to fight a double battle; one
with their political enemies on the other side of the sea, and the other
with their religious tyrants on this side. The colonies were not about
to begin a revolution for religious liberty ; that they had
but the Baptists demanded both, and this accounts for the desperation
with which they threw themselves into the struggle, so that we have no
record of so much as one thorough Baptist Tory,"-which latter was only
another name for loyalist in American politics of the time. Five years
before the outbreak of the Revolution there were less than it hundred
Baptist churches in all the colonies, many of which were so small that
one pastor supplied several of them lying many miles apart, preaching to
them only at long intervals of time, while others were dependent on
occasional visits from missionaries. The number of members was probably
less than 10,000. During the war, however, there was a large increase of
churches, and the membership at the close was about 35,000, which in the
next ten years was more than doubled, and nearly one- third of the whole
was in Virginia.
It was in this state that
the contest for religious freedom was waged, and after a struggle that
lasted ten years the Presbyterians and Baptists accomplished the defeat
of a measure which prescribed a general assessment on all taxable
property for the support of teachers of the Christian religion. In
strict truth the Presbyterians were at first divided, the clergy
favoring the measure provided it should respect every human belief, and
the laity choosing to support their own ministry, as they had always
done. ''Of the Baptists," Bancroft says, "alike ministers and people
rejected any alliance with the state ;" and when the matter was dealt
with in the general convention of the Presbyterians the same sentiment
prevailed, and they prayed the Legislature that the bill concerning
religious freedom might be passed into a law as the best safeguard then
attainable for their religious rights. As passed in both houses of the
Legislature, the statute declares No man shall be compelled to
frequentor support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever,
nor shall suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, opinion
in matters of religion shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect
civil capacities. The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights
of mankind.
This statute became an
example to all other states in the Union, and every oppressive law
concerning religion either fell into disuse or was gradually repealed.
Such was the influence of the two Churches of Calvinistic faith in
shaping the policy of the new Republic in a matter which has been of the
keenest interest to free men in every land and in every age—the right of
every man to soul liberty.
In Canada the Baptists
are strongest in the Maritime provinces, where they now number more than
50,000 communicants. Their career in those provinces began at an early
date, for among the many families who migrated from the New England
colonies after France for the last time had renounced her claims to
Acadia by the Peace of Paris, there were a few Baptists. One small
church moved in a body from Swansea to Massachusetts in Trantramar, now
Sackville, to New Brunswick. This was in 1763, the year of the treaty,
but it is stated that some came to Newport three years before. About the
same time missionaries from New En gland began to visit other parts of
the country, but the only churches organized prior to the end of the
American war of Independence were those of Horton, or Wolfville, in
1778, and of Lower Granville in 1780. During the next twenty years only
eight Baptist churches appear to have been founded—two in 1791, one in
1795, and five in the last year of the century—and as nearly all the
loyalist refugees had come in just after the close of the war it is safe
to infer that there were not many Baptists among them.
In Lower Canada
missionaries from Vermont visited a settlement of Loyalists from
Connecticut near the boundary, and the first Baptist church in that
province was founded in 1794. A little later several churches were
founded throughout the Eastern Townships by missionaries sent out by the
Baptist Missionary Society of Massachusetts.
Missionaries from New
York state came into Upper Canada, and two or three churches were formed
in Prince Edward and Northumberland counties before the close of the
century,—one in Hallowell, it is said in 1794, and one in Haldimand in
1798. No authentic account of the former is available, and in the
records of sixty years ago its name is not found. The latter has
completed its first century and is still ill
life, although it has been weakened by migration. Its founder was Reuben
Crandell, a young Baptist preacher who came from Saratoga county in New
York state in J785. Other missionaries from the same state came over a
few years later, and stations were established northward and Westward as
settlement advanced ; but I do not find that any adherents were of the
Loyalist class. In the Niagara peninsula, where a few pioneer
settlements were established not long after Canada became a British
province, missionaries were sent over from the Shaftesbury Association
in New York state, and it is claimed that services were held by them
where the village of Beamsville now stands during the first year of the
Revolutionary war. Indeed it is claimed in the Year Book that the
Beamsville Baptist church was organized in 1776, but I do not know upon
what authority. Dr. Fyfe, writing in 1859, said it was formed about the
year 1804, under the labors of two ministers from the Shaftesbury
Association. The church at Boston, in the township of Townsend, Norfolk
county, was formed in the same year, but not regularly organized until
1805, when it was joined to the Shaftesbury Association also. Its
constituent members were settlers from the American side, but they do
not appear to have been Loyalists. In the township of Charlotteville, in
the same county, where a number of U. E. Loyalists settled in 1793-8, a
Baptist church was organized in 1804, known as the Vittoria church. The
founder was Titus Finch, a pious soldier who had fought under Sir Henry
Clinton. Having got his discharge in Halifax he moved into one of the
back regions of Nova Scotia, where nearly all the settlers were
Baptists, and soon after joining them he was ordained to the ministry.
He migrated to Charlotteville, near Turkey Point, in 1798, and was the
first clergyman who came there to reside. His meetings were held each
Sunday in different parts of the settlement. He preached in houses and
barns without any reward, depending on the farm he worked for support.
He was uneducated, as were many others of the pioneer preachers, but be
vas a student of the Bible. In his humble sphere he endeavored to do all
the good in his power, and many of the young people joined his church,
which he served as pastor for more than a quarter of a. century. I am
not sure that any members of the Vittoria church had been Baptists in
their old home in the American colonies; but it is a curious
circumstance that many of the early Baptist churches in Norfolk county
'were at first Free-will or Arminian, which is quite consistent with
Buckle's theory if it is the fact that they were Loyalists. In every,
case however, they have become extinct, and have been succeeded by
Regular Baptist churches.
Many of the pioneer
settlers in the Lake Erie counties had come over from New York, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, not because they were Loyalists but because
they had received good reports of the country, and the missionaries
followed in the tracks of the pioneers. But for large numbers ot those
people Upper Canada was only a halting place in the movement to the New
West, and the churches which had been planted had in the course of time
to depend for sustenance and growth upon the more stable population
which flowed in at a later day from the Mother Land and countries of the
European continent, few of whom were Baptists when they came to us.
This brings me to a new
phase in the development of Canada, when the real life of our country
began. When the long wars which had -desolated Europe were brought to an
end on the field of Waterloo, and when Bonaparte was an exile on St.
Helena, never again to break the peace of the nations, men who had long
been awaiting the call of Patriotic duty throughout all parts of Great
Britain and Ireland began to take ship and come to America. It was a
long voyage in the days before steam navigation, and it needed pluck and
spirit to leave home with its associations to go out into a land they
knew not, where there were no friends to welcome them and only a great
forest to be subdued. They were the pick and flower of the emigrating
class of the old land, for the most part a well built, clean-blooded,
God-fearing folk, as Ian Maclaren has said so feelingly of the men of
bonnie Glenalder. Those people came to Canada by the tens of thousands,
many settling in the Maritime provinces, and some in Quebec ; but the
great bulk of them came into our own province, and they became the real
founders of it, as their sons today are the bone and sinew and soul of
it. Englishmen and Irishmen did not all come to Canada ; in far too
large numbers they found their way into the United States. Still many
came, and in various sections they make up a well-pronounced
majority—splendid type of men from the south of England and the north of
Ireland. But with the Scotchmen—and with the Highland folk in
particular, although many had been cleared out to make room for sheep
walks and deer forests—it was different. These preferred Canada, and up
the Ottawa valley, in the midland regions, in the great counties of
Huron, Bruce, Grey and Simcoe, and in the whole south-west of the
province, they constitute a much larger proportion of the whole
population than do Scotchmen in the British islands. And so it has come
to pass that the Presbyterians are strong in Canada. A. B. |
