Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada 9780773566521

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The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada

Presbyterianism was not only the largest and most influential Protestant denomination in the Maritimes during much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - it was also one of the largest and most influential Protestant denominations in Canada. While the important role of religion in shaping the history and culture of Canada has gained recognition in recent years, the Reformed, or Presbyterian, faith has generally not fared as well as other denominations in terms of serious historical study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses the situation by examining the development of Presbyterianism in the Maritimes from its roots in Scotland to Church Union in 1925. Contributors from a variety of disciplines provide fresh and fascinating explorations of the significance of Presbyterianism in such areas as education, literature, social influence, and missionary outreach. CHARLES H.H. scoBiE is Cowan Professor of Religious Studies, Mount Allison University. The late G.A. RAWLYK was a professor in the Department of History, Queen's University.

McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Religion

Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. SERIES ONE

G.A. Rawlyk, Editor 1 Small Differences Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815-1922 An International Perspective Donald Harman Akenson 2 Two Worlds The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario William Westfall 3 An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839-1918 Marguerite Van Die 4 The Devotes Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France Elizabeth Rapley 5 The Evangelical Century College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression Michael Gauvreau 6 The German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods James M. Stayer 7 A World Mission Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for a New International Order, 1918-1939 Robert Wright 8 Serving the Present Age Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada Phyllis D. Airhart 9 A Sensitive Independence Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881-1925 Rosemary R. Gagan

10 God's Peoples Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster Donald Harman Akenson 11 Creed and Culture The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750-1930 Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, editors 12 Piety and Nationalism Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850-1895 Brian P. Clarke 13 Amazing Grace Studies in Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States George Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll, editors 14 Children of Peace W. John Mclntyre 15 A Solitary Pillar Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution Joan Marshall 16 Padres in No Man's Land Canadian Chaplains and the Great War Duff Crerar 17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America A Critical Analysis of U.S. and Canadian Approaches P. Travis Kroeker 18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917-1981 Robert K. Burkinshaw

19 Through Sunshine and Shadow The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874-1930 Sharon Cook 20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844-1994 Brian }. Fraser 21 The Lord's Dominion The History of Canadian Methodism Neil Semple 22 A Full-Orbed Christianity The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900-1940 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau

23 Evangelism and Apostasy The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico Kurt Bowen 24 The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827 to 1905 Eldon Hay 25 Methodists and Women's Education in Ontario, 1836-1925 Johanna M. Selles 26 Puritanism and Historical Controversy William Lament

SERIES TWO

In memory of George Rawlyk Donald Harman Akenson, Editor Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640-1665 Patricia Simpson Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience Edited by G.A. Rawlyk Infinity, Faith, and Time Christian Humanism and Renaissance Literature John Spencer Hill The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada Charles H.H. Scobie and G.A. Rawlyk, editors

Thomas McCulloch (1776-1843) (Courtesy of the Atlantic School of Theology, Halifax, Nova Scotia)

The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada EDITED BY CHARLES H.H. SCOBIE AND G.A. RAWLYK

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1997 ISBN o-7735-i6oo-x Legal deposit second quarter 1997 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper Publication of this book has been made possible by grants from the Edwards Charitable Foundation, the McLean Foundation, the Ebbutt Memorial Trust, and the Crake Foundation. McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from the Canada Council's Block Grant program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: The contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada (McGill-Queen's studies in the history of religion) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-7735-i6oo-x 1. Presbyterian Church - Maritime Provinces - History 2. Maritime Provinces - Social conditions. I. Scobie, Charles H.H. II. Rawlyk, George A., 1935-1995. III. Series. BX9OO2.M37C65 1997 285'.27i5 C97-9OO2O1-X

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in io/i2Palatino.

Contents

Preface ix Introduction xiii SCOTLAND AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES

1 Scottish Presbyterianism Transplanted to the Canadian Wilderness 3 WILLIAM KLEMPA

2 The Kirk versus the Free Church: The Struggle for the Soul of the Maritimes at the Time of the Disruption 19 BARBARA C. MURISON EDUCATION

3 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education: Teaching Science in Maritime Universities 35 PAUL A. BOGAARD

4 Schooling/Credentials for Professional Advancement: A Case Study of Pictou Presbyterians 54 B. ANNE WOOD

viii

Contents

LITERATURE

5 Thomas McCulloch's Fictional Celebration of the Reverend James MacGregor 73 GWENDOLYN DAVIES

6 George Patterson: Presbyterian Propagandist 79 ALLAN C. DUNLOP THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

7 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness": The Open-Air Communion Tradition in Nineteenth- and TwentiethCentury Cape Breton 93 LAURIE STANLEY-BLACKWELL

8 Presbyterian Revivals 118 JOHN WEBSTER GRANT CHURCH AND SOCIETY

9 The Antislavery Polemic of the Reverend James MacGregor: Canada's Proto-Abolitionist as "Radical Evangelical" 131 BARRY CAHILL

10 Strikes, Rural Decay, and Socialism: The Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia Grapples with Social Realities, 1880-1914 144 MICHAEL BOUDREAU

11 From Sectarian Rivalry to National Vision: The Contribution of Maritime Presbyterianism to Canada JOHN s. MOIR

160

MISSIONS

12 John Geddie: The Canadian-Australian Connection 175 STEWART D. GILL

13 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes: Comparison and Contrast 190 GEOFFREY JOHNSTON

Notes 207 List of Contributors 259 Index 261

Preface

In recent years increasing recognition has been given to the contribution of religion to the history and culture of Canada, and not least of the Maritime provinces. The Reformed or Presbyterian faith has undoubtedly been a major influence in the region, though Presbyterianism has generally not fared as well as other denominations in terms of serious historical study. John Moir's volume Enduring Witness, however, published to celebrate the centenary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1975, represents an important contribution, and it has stimulated further studies of which some are reflected in the endnotes of this volume. The present work seeks to make a further contribution though clearly much remains to be done. It is based on a selection of papers read at a major scholarly conference, "The Contribution of Presbyterianism to Atlantic Canada," held at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, on 18-20 November 1994. The conference, which was co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies and the Canadian Studies Programme at Mount Allison University, featured two keynote addresses that also served as the Ebbutt Lectures for 1994: Dr William Klempa, principal of the Presbyterian College, Montreal, spoke on the Scottish background of the Presbyterianism that was transplanted to Atlantic Canada, while Dr John S. Moir, emeritus professor of History, Scarborough College, University of Toronto, examined the contribution of Presbyterians from the region to the new Dominion of Canada. These were followed by nineteen other papers by scholars from across Canada, and one from as far away as Australia.

x

Preface

The conference was made possible by an "Aid to Occasional Scholarly Conferences in Canada" grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, by a grant from the Edwards Charitable Foundation, and by a grant from the Canadian Studies Programme of Mount Allison University. The Ebbutt Memorial Trust provided support for the two Ebbutt Lectures and for publication; the McLean Foundation and the Crake Foundation also gave grants towards the cost of publishing the proceedings. Thanks are due to the members of the planning committee, which I chaired - Dr Paul Bogaard, Ms Mary Craig, Ms Elizabeth Craig, Dr Terry Craig, Ms Cheryl Ennals, Dr William Godfrey, Dr Colin Grant, Dr Eldon Hay, Dr Willis Noble, Ms Alice Smith, and Dr Nancy Vogan, and especially to Dr William Hamilton, former head of the Education department at Mount Allison, who chaired the committee in the initial stages and continued to serve as a member and to offer valuable assistance after his retirement. Many of those who attended the conference urged that a selection of the papers that were presented be made available to a wider audience. When McGill-Queen's University Press expressed interest in such a volume Dr George Rawlyk and I agreed to act as joint editors. This happy collaboration was brought to an end by Dr Rawlyk's death in December 1995 from complications following an automobile accident. George's passing is indeed a tragic loss not only to his family and a wide circle of friends, but also to the world of historical scholarship. In accordance with the provisions of his will, Dr Jane Errington of the department of History, Royal Military College of Canada was entrusted with the responsibility of seeing through to publication the various projects in which George was engaged. I am grateful to her for her assistance and encouragement in the final stages of the editorial process. Thanks are due also to Robin Hamilton who assisted with preparing the manuscript for submission to the press. I would be remiss if I did not thank Philip J. Cercone, executive director of McGill-Queen's University Press for his interest and encouragement, and Joan McGilvray, coordinating editor, for her work in seeing the volume through to publication. The picture of Thomas McCulloch which serves as the frontispiece is reproduced by kind permission of the Atlantic School of Theology, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Mr Eric B. Brown of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia provided the photograph of the portrait. The photograph of Dr George Patterson on page 85 is reproduced by courtesy of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia (1^-3183); it is copied from an image found in J.P. MacPhie, Pictonians at Home and Abroad (Boston: 1914),

xi Preface

facing page 54. The picture of a "Late 19th-century Communion Service at Mira, Cape Breton," on page 99 is reproduced from William Calder, "Communion Memories, The Seven Sayings of the Cross (Halifax: Nova Scotia Printing Co. 1894), courtesy of the Maritime Conference Archives of the United Church of Canada. This volume is offered both as a contribution towards understanding the role of Presbyterianism in the Maritimes, and as an incentive to further research and publication in this important field. Charles H.H. Scobie

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Introduction

It is sometimes forgotten that Presbyterianism was not only the largest and most influential Maritime Protestant denomination during much of the century preceding Church Union in 1925 but also one of the largest and most influential Canadian Protestant denominations. In 1871 Presbyterians made up 15.8 percent of the total Canadian population of 3,689,257. In 1921 the Presbyterian percentage had increased slightly to 16.0 - 1,409,407 members and adherents out of a total Canadian population of 8,788,483. In Maritime Canada in 1871 a little more than 30 percent of the Prince Edward Island population of 94,021 were Presbyterians of one kind or another, 25.5 percent of the Nova Scotia population of 387,800, and 13.6 percent of New Brunswick's 285,594. In 1921, Presbyterians made up 29.3 percent of Prince Edward Island's population, 20.9 percent of Nova Scotia's, and 10.6 percent of New Brunswick's. The contrast between the 1921 and the 1991 census figures is striking. According to the 1991 census 2.4 percent of all Canadians are Presbyterians, in Prince Edward Island 8.6 percent, in Nova Scotia 3.5 percent, and in New Brunswick 1.4 percent. In 1925 approximately two-thirds of Canadian Presbyterians entered into union with Methodists and Congregationalists to form the United Church of Canada. For the next three decades the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada struggled to survive, and though its membership increased in the '505 and '6os, since then it has shared in the general decline in membership of mainline Canadian Protestant churches. Over the same seventy year period the population of

xiv Introduction

Canada increased dramatically from 8.7 million in 1921 to 26.9 million in 1991. Thus the century or so before Church Union in the Maritimes, with respect to its Protestant culture, may be accurately described as the Presbyterian century. It was a century characterized by an amazing and perhaps unrivalled group of Presbyterian leaders - men like James MacGregor, Thomas McCulloch, William Dawson, Donald McDonald, George Grant, George Pollack, and Daniel Miner Gordon, among many others. These men were religious and intellectual giants. It should not be surprising, therefore, that most of the essays in this volume deal with the so-called "Golden Age" of Maritime Presbyterianism. It is unfortunate that there is no chapter dealing with Presbyterianism in Prince Edward Island; one paper was commissioned but it was not presented at the conference. This is obviously an omission - especially when actual Presbyterian numerical strength is taken into account. While some Huguenots were to be found among the early explorers and settlers of the region that became the Maritime provinces of Canada, the Reformed or Presbyterian faith that eventually established itself there was overwhelmingly of Scottish origin (with some contributions from Irish Presbyterianism). Early influences from the colonies to the south virtually ceased after the American Revolution. William Klempa's discussion of Scottish Presbyterianism and of the culture with which it was bound up (chapter i) therefore provides essential background for understanding the developments that took place within the Maritimes. The history of Scottish Presbyterianism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was characterized by what many find a bewildering series of divisions and subdivisions. What follows is a brief overview of the divisions of Scottish Presbyterianism that were transplanted to the Maritime provinces, and of the subsequent reunions of Presbyterians on both sides of the Atlantic. The appended chart (page xix) is somewhat simplified on the Scottish side, but it does illustrate all the branches of Presbyterianism that are referred to in this volume. The earliest form of Presbyterianism to appear in Nova Scotia did not derive from what is variously known as "The Church of Scotland," "the established church," or simply, "the Kirk," which had been re-established as the national church of Scotland in 1690, but from the "Secessionist" churches. While various factors were at work, the main issue that gave rise to the secessions was "patronage," the practice, restored in 1712, whereby either the local landowner or the

xv Introduction

Crown controlled the appointment of ministers. This was perceived as subjecting Christ's Church to state control, and the First Secession under Ebenezer Erskine in 1733 sought to establish a church entirely free from such interference. As frequently happens with splinter groups, the Secessionists themselves divided a few years later over the issue of an oath that burgesses were required to take acknowledging "the true religion presently professed in this realm." Those who saw no harm in the oath were known as "Burghers"; they formed the Associate Synod. The more radical "Anti-Burghers" condemned the oath as tantamount to recognizing the established church and formed the General Associate Synod. It was the Burgher Secessionists who were first in the field and were able to organize the Presbytery of Truro in 1786. The Anti-Burghers were not far behind, but when the great AntiBurgher pioneer minister James MacGregor (1759-1830) arrived in Nova Scotia in 1786 he refused to join the Presbytery of Truro. The advent of two more Anti-Burgher ministers made possible the formation of the Presbytery of Pictou in 1795; subsequent additions to its roll included the multi-talented McCulloch (1776-1843) in 1804. By 1817 however, these two groups united to form the "Secession Synod of Nova Scotia." The established Church of Scotland was later in responding to appeals for help from Scottish settlers and little was accomplished until the formation of the Glasgow Colonial Society in 1825; it was not until 1833 that synods were organized in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick under the auspices of the Church of Scotland. The most significant event in Scottish church history in the nineteenth century was "the Disruption" of 1843 when about one-third of the ministers and members left the established church over the patronage issue and formed the Free Church of Scotland. The efforts of both Free and established churches to inform and influence Presbyterians across the Atlantic are critically assessed in Barbara C. Murison's study "The Struggle for the Soul of the Maritimes at the Time of the Disruption" (chapter 2). Once again the Scottish division was mirrored in the Maritime provinces with a majority of the Church of Scotland ministers in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island defecting to form a Free Synod of Nova Scotia in 1844, and a minority of those in New Brunswick doing likewise in 1845. The folly of these Canadian divisions is often remarked upon in light of the fact that the Church-state issues that gave rise to such passionate debate in Scotland did not apply in the Canadian situation. It has to be remembered, however, that there were also significant theological differences, with the "Moderates" promoting a

xvi Introduction

rational religion generally adhering to the established church, while the Free Church was strongly "evangelical." Nevertheless after mid-century the movement for Presbyterian reunion in Canada gathered steam. The Secession Synod of Nova Scotia joined with the Free Synod of Nova Scotia in 1860 to form the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America; the Free Synod of New Brunswick was added in 1868 so that this body then represented all the "free" churches. The two synods of the established church united in 1866. These two bodies, along with two corresponding ones from the Canadas, joined in 1875 to form "the Presbyterian Church in Canada." Progress was understandably slower in Scotland where it was not until 1900 that the Free Church united with the United Presbyterian Church (which had gathered up earlier Secessionist groups) to form the United Free Church. The abolition of patronage in 1874, and the passing of declaratory articles in 1921 assuring the freedom of the Church of Scotland in spiritual matters (reaffirmed in a key Court of Session ruling in 1995), made possible the union in 1929 of the United Free Church and the established church to form "the Church of Scotland" that could claim to be both national and free. (In both the union of 1900 and that of 1929, however, there were minorities that refused to enter the union and continued their separate existences.) As Klempa points out one of the results of the Scottish Reformation was to instill in the Scot a devotion to education. That devotion was transplanted to Maritime Canada where it manifested itself in various forms, beginning with the remarkable contribution of McCulloch. In "The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education: Teaching Science in Maritime Universities" (chapter 3), Paul Bogaard looks at the work of McCulloch and of another notable Presbyterian educator, Sir William Dawson (1820-99), and provides a critical assessment of whether the contribution that they and others made, especially to science education, can be regarded as in any way distinctively Scottish or Presbyterian. Anne Wood, in her study "Schooling/Credentials for Professional Advancement: A Case Study of Pictou Presbyterians" (chapter 4), examines the influence of Pictou Academy in the development of a meritocratic, "credentializing" form of schooling, and underlines the distinctively Scottish and Presbyterian contribution to this system that allowed Presbyterians to dominate the professions, especially education, in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. Scottish Presbyterians prided themselves on a well-educated and literate ministry, and it is not surprising that Presbyterian clergy were among those who took the lead in literary endeavours. Here McCulloch was once again a pioneer. While he is best known for his satirical

xvii Introduction

"Mephibosheth Stepsure Letters/' Gwen Davies focuses on his celebration of his senior colleague James MacGregor in two less familiar tales (chapter 5). MacGregor also featured in the literary output of his grandson, George Patterson, though Allan C. Dunlop's study "George Patterson: Presbyterian Propagandist" (chapter 6) focuses primarily on his work as journal editor. One of the most distinctive features of the life of the Presbyterian Church was the open-air communion tradition that was transplanted from the Scottish Highlands to Cape Breton in the early nineteenth century. In " Tabernacles in the Wilderness': The Open-Air Communion Tradition in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Cape Breton," Laurie Stanley-Blackwell analyzes the form and function of this tradition, and suggests reasons for its decline and demise in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In their heyday these gatherings were sometimes accompanied by intense outpourings of emotion and by other phenomena usually associated with religious "revivals." Few would associate "revivalism" with the Presbyterian Church but in his study "Presbyterian Revivals," John Webster Grant examines a series of nineteenth-century Presbyterian revivals in the Maritimes, especially within the more evangelical Free Church. Here again, however, for a variety of reasons, the fire had subsided by the end of the century. The approach of Presbyterians in the Maritimes to questions of social reform has generally been perceived as cautious and conservative. Barry Cahill, however, highlights a neglected example of quite the reverse in his discussion "The Antislavery Polemic of the Reverend James MacGregor" (chapter 9), demonstrating how, at least in the earlier period, an evangelical theological position was quite compatible with radical social and political views. Michael Boudreau focuses on a later period following the reunion of Presbyterians in 1875 (chapter 10), and demonstrates the emergence in Nova Scotia after 1900 of a minority approach that can be viewed if not as an example of the radical social gospel, then at least as "progressive" and not incompatible with an evangelical creed. John S. Moir looks at the remarkable contribution of Presbyterians from the Maritime provinces to the Canada united in 1867. In this period preoccupation with divisions imported from Scotland gave way to a vision of a united and Christian Canada. Interest in overseas missions arose comparatively late on the Presbyterian scene; the first Scottish Presbyterian missionary in modern times was Alexander Duff who was sent to India in 1829. In Canada interest in mission work was promoted within the Secession Synod of Nova Scotia by John Geddie (1815-72) who went on to become their

xviii Introduction

first missionary in 1846. Stewart Gill assesses the contribution of this pioneer missionary to the New Hebrides whose life and work spanned both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (chapter 12). Geoffrey Johnston considers all three Presbyterian mission fields started from Maritime Canada, those in Trinidad, Korea, and the New Hebrides, seeking to provide a profile of Presbyterian missionaries prior to 1925, and describing the world they presented to their home constituency. In such a volume, not every aspect of the Presbyterian experience in Maritime Canada over a 2oo-year period can be adequately covered. It is hoped that other scholars, including some of the authors represented in this book, will write major monographs dealing with various aspects of the Maritime Presbyterian experience. Charles H.H. Scobie G.A. Rawlyk

SCOTLAND

MARITIMES

Chart i Presbyterian Divisions and Reunions in Scotland and the Maritimes

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Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

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i Scottish Presbyterianism Transplanted to the Canadian Wilderness WILLIAM KLEMPA

This essay explores the transfer of religious and cultural life from Scotland to the Maritime provinces of Canada and traces both their continuity and distinctive Canadian development. During the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth centuries, large numbers of Scottish emigrants came to Maritime Canada. They established settlements, transformed the landscape, and began to create a new nation. Communities grew and churches and educational institutions were established. At the same time the settlers maintained close links with the homeland. The society, culture, and religion that were established in the Maritimes became the foundation of many Canadian values and an important source of Canadian identity. What was transferred or transplanted? It was not the Presbyterian religion alone, for a vital religious tradition, especially of the Calvinist sort, never exists in isolation. Presbyterianism in Scotland was intimately and inextricably bound up with national life and in this respect it was true to its Calvinistic roots. Max Weber, Richard Tawney, Ernst Troeltsch, and others have reminded us that Calvinism did not withdraw from the world but by contrast encouraged engagement with it.1 George E. Davie, in his important study of Scottish intellectual life The Democratic Intellect, "sees the distinctive life of the country not in its religion alone but in the mutual interaction of religion, law and education."2 In the 1707 Act of Union that united Scotland and England, three Scottish institutions survived: the Church, the legal system, and the educational system. After 1707 the Presbyterian General Assembly

4 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

became a surrogate Scots Parliament. The involvement in Presbyterian church government of the laity, many of whom at the General Assembly level were lawyers, made this possible.3 These three institutions became the rallying points for Scottish national life and identity. Wherever Scots settled they brought a culture that was shaped by them. The transfer or transplanting of Scottish religion and culture to British North America was facilitated by the kind of emigration that took place. As early as 1621 Sir William Alexander, a Scot, was granted a charter for the land between the St Croix River and the Gulf of St Lawrence known as New Scotland or Nova Scotia. The settlements did not succeed and a 1632 treaty surrendered all Scottish claims to France. It was not until the 17605 and 705 that the first major movement of Scots to British North America began. In the Maritimes, Scottish settlement increased after the close of the American Revolution and consisted mainly of Highlanders. It is estimated that at least 15,000 settlers came in the first wave of Scottish emigration in the period from 1763 to 1815.4 This was followed by more waves of emigrants: 170,000 emigrants in the period 1815-70; 80,000 from 1870 to 1900; 246,000 from 1900 to 1918; and 191,000 from 1919 to 1930. In 1871 the number of people of Scottish origin in Canada was 549,000, constituting 15.7 percent of the Canadian population. In Atlantic Canada the percentage was much higher: in 1871, 33.7 percent of the people in Nova Scotia were Scots and over 40 percent on Prince Edward Island.5 Bernard Bailyn has drawn a helpful distinction between two kinds of emigration across the Atlantic which he has called "metropolitan" and "provincial."6 The metropolitan model was made up mainly of single men, with few women and families, usually from the Thames Valley of England. The provincial type was composed of families, including children, who left in groups or as parts of communities from northern England and Scotland. In her fine study of the Glengarry settlement, Marianne McLean has concluded that the Glengarry emigrants "fit this provincial model perfectly."7 A similar conclusion can be drawn regarding Scottish emigration to Atlantic Canada. The provincial type of emigration ensured a high degree of social, moral, religious, and cultural transfer and continuity. Let us consider the religious and cultural transfer by looking first at the religious aspect. Although the Ecclesia Scoticana, the Kirk of Scotland, traces its history back some sixteen hundred years to the mission of St Ninian ^3.360-430) centred at Whithorn, and then to that of St Columba (521-97) centred on the island of lona, the Scottish Reformation of the sixteenth century was a watershed that, probably more

5 Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

than any other event, determined the character of the modern Scot.8 Although the Reformation came rather late to Scotland, it proved to be a popular revolution that attracted the support of persons of every class who were discontented with the state of religion and the political intrigue in the nation. John Knox, leader of the reform, introduced a moderate form of Calvinism to Scotland. Calvinism is a slippery term and its meaning needs to be defined. By it I mean a system of theological belief, closely but not exclusively associated with the Genevan reformer, John Calvin, embodied in The Institutes of the Christian Religion and the confessions and catechisms of the Reformed Churches. There are different kinds of Calvinism: moderate Calvinism, scholastic Calvinism, hyper-Calvinism, and even what Christopher Lasch has described as a Calvinism "without a Calvinist theology/'9 Calvinism has been compared to a disease and Ralph Waldo Emerson was fond of employing this comparison. "I knew a witty physician," he said, "who found the creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was a disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound he became a Unitarian."10 Knox's familiarity with the Reformation in Geneva, in his view "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the Apostles,"11 and his friendship with Calvin himself made him a convinced Calvinist. Calvinism became so identified with Scotland that when the eighteenth-century wit the Reverend Sydney Smith spoke of Scotland as "that knuckle-end of England - that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur,"12 few missed his meaning. In accordance with the Calvinistic pattern of reform, the Reformation of 1560 was first a reformation of doctrine set out in the twentyfive articles of the Scots Confession. Opening with the ringing affirmation "We confess and acknowledge one God alone, to whom alone we must cleave, whom alone we must serve, whom only we must worship, and in whom alone we can put our trust,"13 the confession proceeded to explicate the main heads of Calvinist teaching: creation, humanity's fall from its original dignity and perfection, Christ's work of redemption, election out of "mere grace," and the true marks of the Church, namely the preaching of the Word, the right administration of the sacraments and ecclesiastical discipline, and the authority of the Bible. The same heads of doctrine or loci may be found in Thomas McCulloch's posthumous work Calvinism, the Doctrine of the Scriptures or a Scriptural Account of the Ruin and Recovery of Fallen Man.14 The second area of reform concerned polity. Central to Presbyterian polity was the doctrine of a laity equal to the clergy that permitted government of the Church by ministers, elected elders, and deacons.15

6 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

This form of church government had a distinct appeal to the self-confident and literate burgesses. The Calvinism that received such a welcome reception in Scotland was not merely an imitation or replica of the Calvinism of Geneva. A flexible creed, Calvinism proved to have the ability to adjust itself to a different environment and to assimilate new ideas. There sprang up on Scottish soil a peculiarly Scottish form of Calvinism. Presbyterian church government is not strictly democratic. John Calvin thought that the best form of government was a combination of "aristocracy/' or rule by those who are qualified, and "democracy," or rule by the people. Accordingly Presbyterianism is a representative form of government in which ministers, called by God, qualified for their office, and elected by the people, and elders, also called by God and elected by the people to represent them, meet together in deliberative assemblies at the Session, Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly levels. At the same time, Presbyterian congregations, especially of the Secessionist and Free Church varieties, were imbued with the democratic spirit and functioned, in Alexander D. Lindsay's phrase, as "the school of democracy."16 The reformed Kirk of Scotland proved to be popular with the majority of Lowlanders, won their admiration, and gradually gained their allegiance. Knox was not only a religious but also a social reformer; in fact, the modern distinction would have been lost on him. The Reformation of 1560 instilled in the Scot a devotion to education through the establishment of parish schools. In rural districts the minister or reader was to teach the children; in every burgh there was to be a schoolmaster; each town of a superintendent was to have a college, and the universities were to be reformed. The patrimony of the Church was to be drawn upon for the schools as well as for the support of ministers and the poor. The greed of oppressive landlords was condemned and a plea was made for the poor. Peter Hume Brown has spoken of the provision for "the poor and unable," the regulation of the life of households, and even the determination of "the career of such as by their natural gifts were specially fitted to be of service to Church or State."17 These provisions of Knox's Book of Discipline could not be put in place because of a lack of funds. The Kirk also set about the task of reforming morals. There can be no question that moral reform was needed but, as sometimes happens, a new broom sweeps too clean. The sins of greed, pride, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy are difficult to define and are harder to deal with, so the sins that were singled out for attention tended to be sexual. "Open almost any volume of Kirk Session minutes," Anne Gordon has written, "and the words fornication, ante-nuptial fornication and

7 Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

adultery were almost sure to leap out at one because these sins kept Sessions constantly busy, in the belief that they were doing the Lord's will."18 Fines were levied when the party was found guilty of these and other offences and the money was placed in the fund for the poor. Callum Brown has noted that fornication became the bread and butter of Session business with fines passing to the parochial fund for the poor, "The lascivious regularly providing for the needy."19 Sexual sins were a ready, regular, and reliable source of funds. Sessions took their responsibilities seriously. All-too-vigilant elders and willing informers played their parts. This prompted the nineteenth-century English historian Henry T. Buckle to say that the Inquisition has only been seen twice in its glory, once in Spain and once in Scotland.20 Let us now look at the character of the Presbyterianism that was transferred from Scotland to Atlantic Canada. We must always remember that it was first and foremost people who were transplanted and not ideas. Yet those who left Scotland were shaped in particular ways. They were formed first by the Bible and second by the form of Calvinism embodied in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Shorter Catechism. Alex C. Cheyne has observed that since the seventeenth century Scottish theology has always been like an ellipse with two foci: Holy Scripture, which all Presbyterians acknowledged as the Church's "supreme rule of faith and life," and the Westminster Confession of Faith, its "principal subordinate standard."21 Wherever Presbyterians went their Christianity was shaped by these two foci. The Scottish Reformation established the centrality of the Bible and the Scottish people became a people of the book. To say this is not to engage in Protestant sloganeering by denying that for the medieval church the Bible was important. It is a travesty of the truth to hold that medieval Scots did not know or care about the Bible. To be sure, George Buchanan refers to priests in the early 15005 who objected to the New Testament since they believed it was a book written by Martin Luther. The Bishop of Dunkeld boasted: "I thank God, that I never knew what the Old and New Testament were! Therefore ... I will know nothing but my portuise [breviary] and my pontifical."22 But these men were exceptions to the rule. Even if few people read the Bible, as it was not available in the vernacular, most people would have had a familiarity with parts of it through the services of the Church, wall-paintings, carvings and stained glass, and biblical drama and pageants. The great achievement of the Reformation was that it "rigorously separated the new Bible in the people's language from the Church and set it above the Church."23 As a result of the Reformation the Bible came to acquire an important place in Scottish history and experience.24 "Faith hath both her

8 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

beginning and continuance by the Word of God/' Knox asserted.25 After the Reformation the Bible did for all classes in Scotland what the classics did for European culture during the Renaissance period: its discovery and dissemination constituted a revolution. Wherever there were schools the Bible was the principal textbook. Church and Parliament combined to encourage people to buy a Bible and learn to read it. The Bible played a prominent part in Sunday church services in praise - the singing of the psalms and biblical paraphrases - and in prayer. Sermons were based on an "ordinary/' a biblical passage dealt with exhaustively over one or more Sundays. From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century there was also generally a Bible exposition or "lecture." The preaching of the Word was prominent in the worship service; the Word, heard and read, was regarded as the means by which the Holy Spirit reached men and women in order to bring them to God. Scottish culture was steeped in the Bible. Anyone who is familiar with Sir Walter Scott's novels will have some sense of his familiarity with the Bible. The same is true of Robert Burns. He prized the Bible highly, and no more realistic or tender picture of family worship exists than in the celebrated stanzas of the Cotter's Saturday Night. The Bible came to gain "a quite unique hold on the Scots imagination and mind."26 This love of the Bible was brought to the new world. Daniel C. Harvey notes that though at the outset in Nova Scotia schools were rare and formal education almost unknown, still the settlers were people of the Book. "In their churches and societies they congregated, old and young alike. There they debated long on baptism and the sacraments, free-will and predestination. In watching over themselves and their neighbours they found both excitement and relaxation. In studying the Bible for rules of conduct or grounds of controversy, they assimilated its language and were saved from intellectual stagnation."27 George Patterson notes that James Davidson, the first schoolmaster in Pictou, collected the children on Sunday for religious instruction at the schoolhouse in Lyons Brook, thereby establishing the first Sabbath school in the county, and probably in Nova Scotia, long before Robert Raikes began the Sunday School movement.28 Bibles in English and Gaelic were made available to passengers on emigrant ships. Both the Glasgow and Edinburgh Bible Society maintained close links with Scottish settlers in Canada. In the context of migrations and uncertainties of moving from one land to another, the Bible offered consolation and encouragement. Gwendolyn Davies has aptly characterized Thomas McCulloch's Mephibosheth Stepsure as

9 Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

having "a hoe in one hand and the Bible in the other."29 McCulloch's masterpiece of Canadian humour is replete with biblical references. The second focus of the ellipse was the Westminster Confession of Faith, which replaced the Scots Confession in 1647 and became the dominant confessional document. Its influence, especially through the catechism, has been tremendous. One is reminded of Robertson Davies's remark that a knowledge of the Shorter Catechism always stood him in good stead in the university common room when theological issues were the subject of discussion.30 John Watson, in his study The Scot of the Eighteenth Century, put it well when he said that the Catechism so toughened the Scots intellect "that there is no problem it will not face, and no question on which it has not made up its mind."31 Though the Church of Scotland went through several secessions, each of the seceding bodies retained the Confession and the Catechisms and were guided by them. A liberalizing movement in the eighteenth century - associated with scientific discoveries, the rise of rationalism, and the distaste for "enthusiasm" - began to undermine the dominance of the Westminster form of Calvinism. This liberalizing movement began with a dispute regarding the Marrow of Modern Divinity, a seventeenth-century book written by an English Presbyterian barber-surgeon and rediscovered by Thomas Boston, which became a subject for debate and discussion. Its central emphasis was the universal offer of salvation and the view that the atonement is effective for all who believe. The General Assembly condemned the Marrow teaching as antinomian. Furthermore, it prohibited all ministers from recommending the Marrow of Modern Divinity and required them to warn their people against it. A small group of ministers, among them Thomas Boston and Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine who later established the Associate Presbytery, called themselves Marrow men and did not depart from Westminster Calvinism but rather from what they regarded as a legalistic perversion of it, then prevalent in the Church of Scotland. The Marrow divinity represented a warm, evangelical Calvinism. According to James Walker, "Boston and the Marrow men, first of all among our divines, entered fully into the missionary spirit of the Bible; were able to see that Calvinistic doctrine was not inconsistent with [missionary] aspirations and efforts."32 Archibald Bruce, the teacher of Duncan Ross and McCulloch, was thoroughly permeated with the Marrow teaching. During the nineteen years of his professorship (1787-1805), Bruce taught over 150 students, 17 of whom went to North America as missionaries.33 It was this warm, missionary, evangelical Calvinism that came to Atlantic Canada by way of the Secessionist missionaries.

io Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

Davie has used the felicitous phrase "the democratic intellect" to describe what has distinguished Scottish civilization and constitutes its enduring contribution to the world.34 Davie thinks that this is found in an educational system that combined the democracy of the Presbyterian system of church government with the intellectualism of the advocates and emphasized expertise in metaphysics as the condition of the open door of social advancement. I want to use Davie's phrase as a way of getting at the Scottish contribution and to look first at the democratic legacy that we in Canada owe to Scottish Presbyterianism. At the time of the 1560 Reformation Knox contended for an autonomous ecclesiastical jurisdiction that would not be exercised at the discretion of the civil authority. In this respect the creation of a General Assembly was crucial. Without it, the Scottish Church was in danger of falling permanently under the domination of the civil authorities, as had occurred in England. According to George D. Henderson, the General Assembly was "peculiarly symbolic of spiritual independence."35 It asserted its separateness from the state and to begin with met without the warrant of the crown. When William Maitland, secretary of state, questioned the right of the Assembly to meet without the queen's permission, Knox responded: "Take from us the liberty of assemblies and you take from us the Gospel."36 During the next two and a half centuries either the whole Church or zealous parties within it struggled to ensure spiritual independence and religious liberty. In the beginning the struggle concerned the question of royal supremacy. Andrew Melville's interview with James VI of Scotland in Falkland Palace is well known. Melville expressed the deepest concerns of Scottish Presbyterians when he pulled the sleeve of the king, called him "God's sillie vassal," and reminded him: "There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the King and his Kingdom the Kirk, whose subject King James the Sixth is, and of whose Kingdom not a king, nor a head, but a member."37 James VI, later James I of England, attempted to gain control over both the civil and religious jurisdictions. This was resisted by the Scottish nation, which in 1638 adopted a national covenant that asserted the freedom of the Church from civil control and rejected the imposition of the Anglican liturgy, decreed by the king, until the General Assembly had ruled on the innovation. The covenant was only a partial victory, for it took half a century, until the Glorious Revolution of 1688, before this position was vindicated and the struggle against royal tyranny was in some measure successful. Uprisings by the Protestors or Remonstrants who represented the extreme wing of the Covenanters were put down by government

ii Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

forces - during what were called the "killing times/' from 1660 to 1688, it is estimated that as many as 18,000 lost their lives.38 This period has burnt itself into the collective memory of Scottish Presbyterians and when Knox College, Toronto, moved the statue of Margaret Wilson, one of the covenanter martyrs, from a prominent place in the rotunda, General Assembly decided that it should be put back. Apparently, in the eyes of some, it was like hiding a war memorial. Presbyterians who are normally against idolatry seem to lapse into it when the Covenanters and the covenanting heritage are involved. If, to begin with, the struggle was against royal power, during the next two centuries it was focused on the resistance to the civil encroachments of the English Parliament. Civil intrusion into church affairs took place through patronage, the system whereby landowners, town councils, and the Crown presented or selected ministers in the Church of Scotland. Patronage had been abolished a number of times but it kept creeping back. In the settlement of 1690 heritors and elders were given authority to nominate a minister to the congregation for its approval or disapproval, and in the case of disapproval the reasons were to be submitted to the presbytery, which made the final decision. Then in 1712, in violation of the 1707 Treaty of Union, patronage was restored, probably as a sop to Jacobite sympathizers. Patronage served as a device to ensure the social and even political correctness of ministers. Its restoration was followed by vigorous congregational resistance, an insistence on the role of the elders, and the demand for the "pure" presbyterianism of a congregational call in which all adult male members, and in many Burgher and later some Free Church congregations, adult female members, voted on the minister. Patronage was responsible for more social turmoil, disputes, and riots than any other single piece of legislation. When disputes arose and all legal means had been exhausted, resistance took the form of nailing up the church door or forming a human chain at the door or church gate to prevent the presbytery from proceeding with the ordination and induction of a minister. The military, usually the cavalry, was called in and violence was sometimes the result.39 When disputes arose, many parish churches remained vacant for years while the heritors patiently and placidly pocketed the stipends. The number of disputed settlements is difficult to determine. Callum Brown estimates that from 1712 to 1874 between a third and a half of Scotland's parishes experienced a disputed settlement.40 Presbyteries were sometimes too much in sympathy with the people and, more often, too afraid of them to ordain or induct unwanted presentees. To solve this problem General Assembly passed an act in

12 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

1732 appointing riding committees to induct or settle a minister when local presbyteries, out of sympathy or fear, refused. Dissatisfaction regarding the act resulted in the first Secession of 1733 led by Ebenezer Erskine. In 1761 the Relief Church was established by Thomas Gillespie, minister of Carnock, who had been deposed in 1752 for opposing patronage. The anecdote is related that he returned from the 1752 General Assembly and told his wife that he was no longer the minister of Carnock. "Well, Thomas," she said, "if we must beg I'll carry the meal poke."41 At considerable sacrifice, ministers and people left the established Church and formed Seceder or Relief Church congregations. These churches were fractious and divided and subdivided into Burgher and Anti-Burgher, New Licht Burghers, Old Licht Burghers, New Licht Anti-Burghers, and Old Licht Anti-Burghers. The Moderates, who were the beneficiaries of the patronage system, easily came to terms with it. Tories in politics, they insisted on obeying the law and were indifferent to the scruples of the popular clergy and to the wishes of the people; they cared for no "high flying."42 William Robertson, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, who was the undisputed leader of the Moderate Party from 1752 to 1783, said "There can be no society where there is no subordination." But the Moderates also supported patronage because they believed it produced a ministry of a higher calibre than the popular call could. Congregations did not always know what was best for them, they argued, and the implication was that the patron did. The Popular Party, also called the High Flyers and later the Evangelicals, also came to terms with patronage even though they opposed it and sought to undermine the system from within. They were the loyal opposition within the Church of Scotland and were in the majority. The Seceders were the disloyal opposition outside the Church of Scotland and would not have any dealings with it. There were other state encroachments. In 1736 the Porteous Riot occurred in Edinburgh, with subsequent civil and ecclesiastical strife. Captain Porteous had fired on a mob who were trying to rescue a smuggler and some people were killed. Porteous was sentenced to death but, when he was granted a stay of execution, an infuriated mob broke into the Tolbooth jail, dragged him to the Grassmarket, and hanged him from a dyer's pole. Thereupon the civil government decreed that a proclamation be read from the pulpit on the first Sunday of each month for a year demanding information regarding the names and whereabouts of the perpetrators. Ministers were placed in a difficult position - many disobeyed but most complied. To many members this preposterous order was a blasphemous sacrilege and

13 Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

they refused to take communion from any minister who "put Caesar above Christ/' eventually leaving the established church. Eleven seceding congregations were formed from those who dissented. The situation was not without its humour. One ministerial wit, before reading the proclamation, told his congregation to withdraw from the kirk, for though the law required that he read it, they were not bound to listen to it, on which they left in a body. In commenting on the Porteous incident Henry Grey Graham observed that Henry Buckle was quite wrong to speak of the Scots as a priest-ridden people. The reverse, Graham said, is nearer the truth. Ministers were a "people-ridden clergy."43 The people were not going to be tyrannized by church or by state: with their pugnacious piety they were too independent for that. A culture of complaint and dissent developed. Some, such as William Robertson, did not think that this was such a bad thing as it channelled all the malcontents into these dissenting churches. The first missionaries to Nova Scotia were predominantly from Secessionist groups. They had been reared in this tradition of dissent and therefore had a strong commitment to and passion for democracy. While the Moderates were politically conservative, the Secessionists were politically radical. "It is one of the paradoxes of eighteenth century Scottish thought," Daiches has observed, "that humane, enlightened and progressive thinkers tended to be politically conservative while the opposing Calvinists with their hell-fire sermons and stern belief in election and predestination, were socially much more radical."44 The Moderates were terrified by the French Revolution. Archibald Bruce, McCulloch's teacher, was a staunch defender of the French Revolution and its objectives. He recognized it as a movement designed to overthrow a tyrannical system and give free expression to more democratic and liberal ideas. As professor of theology and minister of a small Anti-Burgher congregation in Whitburn, he wrote pamphlet after pamphlet (his collected works run to nine volumes) expressing these radical political views. When printers did not accept his works he set up a printing press in his manse. The resentment over patronage led to a century and a half of conflict which peaked in the Ten Years Conflict before the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843. In the 18305 the Evangelical party in the church had gained the upper hand and in 1834 was successful in passing the Veto Act giving congregations the right to veto the patron's selection of a minister. This was a half-measure which was not likely to succeed, and in 1838 it was rejected by the civil courts. The 1843 Disruption and the formation of the Free Church, when over four hundred ministers left the established church, was the result. "I

14 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

am proud of my country/' Francis Jeffrey, a member of the Court of Session and editor of the Edinburgh Review, said. "There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done." This sacrifice, Lord Henry Cockburn said, formed "the most honourable fact in the whole history of Scotland."45 This momentous event had its repercussions at home and abroad. About one-third of the ministers and perhaps half of the lay members left the national church. It left the Auld Kirk greatly weakened for only a minority stayed with it. As a rhyme from the period went: "The wee Kirk, the Free Kirk / The Kirk wi'out the steeple / The auld Kirk, the cauld Kirk / The Kirk without the people." The events in Scotland were watched with keen interest in British North America. The Disruption left over four hundred pulpits in the established church vacant and this created a revolution in the ministerial job market. Ministers abandoned their charges in Nova Scotia and returned to Scotland eager to occupy the empty pulpits. "Set not thy trust in parsons," Cockburn had written.46 The truth of this important warning was borne out in the Age of Disruption. At the 1846 Free Church Assembly in Edinburgh, the Reverend James Begg reported on his trip to Canada and the United States at the request of the Colonial Committee: I arrived at Halifax after a tolerable passage, and proceeded across Nova Scotia to Pictou, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Pictou is in the midst of a vast district, peopled to a great extent by Scotsmen, or, I should rather say, by Highlanders. It is a very destitute district - destitute, chiefly because six ministers left the district all at once at the disruption here, to come across the Atlantic to Scotland in the discharge of their duty - a difficult one of course - (a laugh) - of taking possession of vacant watchtowers, deserted alike by ministers and by people, and thus, in a twofold sense, vacant (Hear, hear, and loud laughter).

He went on to say that the state of religion in Nova Scotia was not so high as one could desire and he added that one would not expect it to be high under the ministrations of such parsons. One man said to him, "You see, sir, they at one time were on our side, but Satan took them up to an high mountain, and showed them across the Atlantic, empty manses, good stipends and comfortable glebes, in Scotland, and said, these things will I give thee - and they fled from us."47 Begg blamed the ministers who went out at the time when Moderatism ruled, and felt that what the Highlander said of his parish minister was true of many ministers of the colonies: "Now Donald, have you a minister here?" "No," he replied; "we have nae minister; we have

15 Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

just a Moderate."48 As we might expect, his audience greeted this anecdote with great mirth and applause. It reflected the obligatory party rhetoric, somewhat exaggerated since most Moderate ministers were not as incompetent and heterodox as we are sometimes led to believe, and, if we might judge by the likes of Alexander Spark, John Cook, and others, many Moderates were fine ministers. The ecclesiastical divisions of the homeland were transported to British North America and in 1844 a number of ministers in sympathy with their colleagues in Scotland left to establish the Free Church on Canadian soil. Under the influence of these new ministers the Kirk Synod of Nova Scotia, which included Prince Edward Island, severed its relationship with the Church of Scotland and adopted the title "Synod of Nova Scotia adhering to the Westminster Standards." Four years later it became the Synod of the Free Church of Nova Scotia. Only two Kirk ministers remained faithful to the Auld Kirk. In New Brunswick only three ministers out of thirteen withdrew to form a Free Church. "Disruption without cause" has been the usual judgment. George Monro Grant deplored this senseless division and said that Presbyterianism in Canada was weakened by it. In fact, however, there was a revitalization of Presbyterianism in Canada. George Lewis reports a conversation in John Redpath's home in Montreal where someone complained to him that they received the dregs of the Scottish ministry and if they continued with the Church of Scotland they would "get nothing but the dregs of the dregs." "The universal sentiment amongst my countrymen whom I met at Mr. Redpath's was," Lewis said, "that nothing could save the Presbyterian Church from merited extinction but some such event as the disruption."49 Redpath, Lewis reports, regarded the Disruption as the greatest blessing that had befallen Presbyterianism in Canada since it was first planted in the colony.50 There can be no question that the Free Church in Canada went from strength to strength. In 1875 the Synod of Nova Scotia had 131 ministers while the Kirk had 35. Let us look now at the second aspect of the "democratic intellect" - that is, "intellect" not understood in a narrow way but more broadly as culture. Hugh Trevor-Roper has claimed that "At the end of the seventeenth-century, Scotland was a byword for irredeemable poverty, social backwardness, political faction. Its universities were the unreformed seminaries of a fanatical clergy."51 His analysis has been quoted often and usually with approval. Yet what he says simply does not accord with the evidence. Medicine (Sir Robert Sibbald), law (Viscount Stair), and mathematics (John and James Gregory) represent three areas of remarkable Scottish activity and achievement towards the end of the seventeenth century. To be sure

16 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

it was not until the eighteenth century that Scotland became distinguished for its learning. Yet this did not happen in a complete vacuum. The developments in the seventeenth century laid foundations solid enough for the universities to build on and to achieve what they did in the eighteenth. The Calvinist and Presbyterian contribution to the Scottish Enlightenment has been minimized by historians such as Buckle and Christopher Smout. Daiches, in an important essay on the Scottish Enlightenment, refers to a recent scholar who spoke of the movement from "Calvinist dependency and particularism" to a commitment to independence and universalism, and Daiches comments, "But the trend of most recent scholarship is to look further back, into the seventeenth century to see the roots of the movement and to see the Scottish Enlightenment as a natural development of an earlier phase of Scottish culture."52 Alexander Broadie of Glasgow University has gone even further and claimed that eighteenth-century moral philosophers such as Hutcheson, Hume, and Reid were in important respects merely reviving an intellectual tradition that flourished in Scotland two centuries earlier, a tradition that goes back to Buchanan and Knox and to their teacher, John Major.53 Stewart S. Sutherland, in an insightful essay entitled "The Presbyterian Inheritance of Hume and Reid," argues convincingly for the hypothesis that Hume, Reid, and the Common Sense philosophers must be seen in the context of a Calvinist Presbyterian background.54 Norman Kemp Smith, an editor of Hume's Dialogues, spoke of the "Calvinist environment" in which Hume wrote, particularly in his early years, before the Moderates had established themselves in the Church of Scotland.55 There was a strand in Scottish intellectual life that prevents us from regarding the Moderates of the eighteenth century as a new departure. There was no "complete breach with the past"56 - the Scottish Enlightenment emerged out of a Calvinistic background. This view has been argued strongly by David Allan in his recent study Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment, where he has shown that there was far more continuity between Calvinism and the Scottish Enlightenment than earlier historical scholarship allowed.57 The eighteenth century witnessed major intellectual and artistic advances so that Scotland became for a brief period the cultural leader of Europe. The centres of this Enlightenment culture were Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. Edinburgh was described as "a hotbed of genius" and William Smellie, the Edinburgh printer and antiquary, records a remark by Mr Amyat, King's chemist: "Here I stand at which is called the Cross of Edinburgh, and can, in a few minutes, take fifty men of genius and learning by the hand."58 After some sniping at

17 Scottish Presbyterianism in the Canadian Wilderness

Presbyterian fanaticism, Voltaire added, "today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening."59 From 1720 on there was a remarkable burst of scholarly achievement: Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart in philosophy; William Robertson and David Hume in history; William Cullen, Joseph Black, and James Hutton in science and medicine; Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, and John Millar in social theory; Hugh Blair and George Campbell in rhetoric and belleslettres; Adam Smith in political economy; John Home in drama; and Henry Mackenzie in literature, to name only a few. The Moderate literati led by William Robertson gained control of the church and leading universities. They promoted the Enlightenment by means of the writing, teaching, preaching, and political activity of its ministers. All but two of the nine men of letters were Presbyterian ministers and all but one was a Moderate born within three years of lyzo.60 The Moderates have been lampooned - their sermons were compared by Thomas Chalmers to a winter's day, "they were cold, clear and short," and it has been said they let "sleeping dogmas lie."61 Yet as Calvinists they were convinced that the Kirk must be involved in the secular world if it was to have an influence on it.62 Sher has pointed out that the two most important institutions for the dissemination of knowledge and beliefs - the Church of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh - were dominated by the main figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. If Scotsmen were initiators in literature and philosophy, they were equally pioneers in the field of the physical sciences: William Cullen and John Hunter in pathology; Joseph Black and John Leslie in chemistry and mathematics; James Hutton in geology; and James Watt in engineering are notable names in the history of these disciplines. In Brown's summary statement: "In view of her various achievements in so many fields, therefore, it can hardly be gainsaid that the latter half of the eighteenth century was for Scotland 'the period of her most energetic, peculiar and most various life.' "63 Through churchmen and scholars such as McCulloch the ideas and ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment played a significant role in Atlantic Canada, particularly in the sphere of education. McCulloch was a student at the University of Glasgow at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment and the literary, philosophical, and scientific ferment of the period had a profound influence on his intellectual development. He probably entered the university between 1790 and 1792, since we know that he inscribed his name, as was the custom, in the Album in 1792. He did this in the logic class that was normally given in the third year of the university course.64

i8 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

McCulloch's achievements in the founding of Pictou Academy, the establishment of a Theological Seminary, and as the first principal of Dalhousie University have been duly chronicled by scholars. What Harvey has said of his contribution is worth quoting: "he established a library, a museum and philosophical apparatus in Pictou; before the Mechanics' Institute was founded in Halifax to the same end, he initiated a series of intellectual movements that have not yet spent themselves; and he moulded a generation of fellow Scots who as journalists, teachers, lawyers, scientists and clergymen made no small contribution to the intellectual awakening of Nova Scotia."65 This contribution, repeated later in Lower and Upper Canada and then in the West, gives us some idea of the immense part that Scottish Presbyterians played in the development of Canadian life and culture. In 1803 the General Associate Synod in Scotland received the following petition: "We are without the means of grace. We have no ministers, few books, little knowledge ... Providence has directed us to you ... Send us your speedy help! ... O Scotland overcharged with ministers ... Would that half of thy gospel ministers were transported, and planted in the wilderness! Then it would rejoice and blossom as the rose."66 The prayer of this petition was answered, if not immediately, then in the years to follow. During the next century Scotland sent not only its ministers - always too few, of course - but also its people, tens upon tens of thousands, and a Presbyterian Church was planted in the wilderness. The wilderness blossomed as a rose. There were thorns, of course, as there always are with roses but the rose grew, blossomed, and flourished. It is fitting that this enormous debt to Scottish Presbyterianism be acknowledged as well as the great debt to other lands, churches, and peoples. "Others have laboured, and [we] have entered into their labour" (John 4:38).

2 The Kirk versus the Free Church: The Struggle for the Soul of the Maritimes at the Time of the Disruption B A R B A R A C. MURISON

In the spring of 1844, less than a year after the Disruption of the Church of Scotland, the first official Free Church deputation visited British North America. It received (according to one of its members) an "enthusiastic reception."1 In the words of one witness, "the great mass of the piously-disposed Presbyterians of all the Provinces" were "heartily with the Free Church." The field was open and the Free Church had only to go in and take possession.2 Kirk sympathizers described the Free Church deputation rather less enthusiastically. In their view, it had entered British North America on a mission of destruction, carrying "the firebrands of controversy" to the wilds of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; it brought division and disruption to colonial presbyteries and synods. Such were the Free Church "sins committed beyond the Atlantic."3 In the summer of 1845, over a year after the visit of the Free Church representatives, the first official Church of Scotland deputation embarked on a tour of British North America. The members were received, claimed the Missionary Record of the Kirk, with "respect and affection";4 their audiences were "attentive and immensely large."5 On the deputation's return, one member declared that the great majority of the people and the great majority of the ministers adhered to a synod in connection with the Church of Scotland. The editor of the Missionary Record enthusiastically reported that the deputies had removed much prejudice from the minds of the colonists and confirmed an attachment to the Church of Scotland which would not easily be diminished.6 The Free Church found such pronouncements laughable. It

20 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

condemned the Kirk deputation for shameless and ill-based boasting and insisted that "simple Highlanders" had been rounded up as congregational fodder for the deputation to address: the "enthusiastic crowds" alleged to have greeted the deputation's arrival in places such as Saint John, New Brunswick, were present simply because "when the steamboat arrives, many of the people are in the habit of going down to meet it."7 Clearly we have a case here which any science fiction aficionado would recognize: parallel universes. Radically different pictures were presented by Kirk and Free Church. Our sources offer diametrically opposed views of the impact of the deputations on Maritime Presbyterianism.8 This paper will attempt to sort out fact from wishful thinking in analysing the reactions of ministers and laity to the visits of the rival emissaries in the critical years of 1844 and 1845.9 Immediately upon the stirring events of May 1843, when over 450 ministers left the Church of Scotland, the Free Church made arrangements to send representatives across the Atlantic. The choice of initial deputies (the Free Church planned a whole series of deputations) included the Reverend Dr Robert Burns of Paisley who, in his capacity of secretary of the Glasgow Colonial Society, had for twenty years been "the life and soul of the Canadian mission."10 Although the deputation's itinerary originally involved only the United States, there quickly came requests to extend the visit northwards. Burns was happy to comply and he spent four weeks in the province of Canada followed by two weeks in the Maritimes. There were sermons, speeches, conferences, and receptions. Everywhere he went, Burns spoke with passionate conviction of the reasons which had led to the Disruption of the Church of Scotland. His message involved direct attack on what the Free Church called the "Residuary Establishment" and the use of combative sermon texts." This was not just an explanation of its position, but also a call to decisive - and divisive - action in the colonial theatre, despite the fact that the patronage issues in Scotland were essentially irrelevant in British North America. Indeed, Burns refused to preach in pulpits offered him on condition that he preach sermons of a wishy-washy neutrality.12 We may compare this with the timing and the approach of the Kirk deputation. It was not until 1845, with the initial shock of the exodus over, that the Kirk's General Assembly was prepared to act, no doubt spurred on by the high claims made by Burns regarding the success of his own mission. It appointed a deputation 'of three to proceed to British North America. This distinguished group included the Reverend Dr Alexander Simpson of Kirknewton, a leading Evangelical but

21 The Kirk versus the Free Church

nonetheless a man who stayed firm in his commitment to the Kirk in 1843. Also included were the Reverend Dr John Macleod of Morven, on the Sound of Mull, a native Gaelic speaker nicknamed "the High Priest of Morven" because of his commanding height, and the Reverend Norman Macleod of Dalkeith, nephew of the Reverend Dr John Macleod. Although still in his early thirties Norman Macleod was a rising man in the Kirk and he too was fluent in Gaelic.13 Taking the spiritual high ground, the deputation resolved not to volunteer explanations of the Disruption, but to give them, if required, without "acrimonious expression." As Norman Macleod confided in a letter home, "I avoid all personalities, all attacks, and give all credit to my opponents."14 The Church of Scotland deputation attempted to heal wounds, a very different approach from that of the Free Church. During his fortnight in the Maritimes, Burns visited Halifax and its neighbourhood, the Pictou area, and Prince Edward Island. The Kirk deputation, in a similar period of time but with three ministers to cover the ground, visited these same areas. In addition it spent two weeks in New Brunswick, which Burns had lacked the time to tour but which had received visits from other Free Church deputies in the meantime. Neither deputation visited Cape Breton or Newfoundland. We should at this point consider the differing accounts which we have of reactions to competing deputies in the most important of the areas visited.15 The city of Halifax, which Burns reached by steamer from Boston on the morning of 18 May 1844, had two Kirk congregations, St Andrew's and St Matthew's, and one Free Church congregation, St John's. The Reverend John Martin was the senior minister in these churches, having been inducted to St Andrew's in 1821. He was a long-time correspondent of Burns and was influential in the Halifax committee of the Glasgow Colonial Society. He had for years urged the Church of Scotland to get beyond the "stiff and rigid maxims of an old-established church," and to adapt its approach to the "condition of an infant and growing community" in the colonies.16 The evangelically minded Martin appeared to be a natural sympathizer for the Free Church. Yet it was he who, at the January 1844 meeting of the Halifax presbytery, moved against the transmission of an overture to the next meeting of the Nova Scotia Synod to declare the connection with the Establishment ended.17 He had spent too many years defending the Church of Scotland against other Presbyterian comers, and invested too much effort in attempting to gain Establishment rights for the Kirk in Nova Scotia, to abandon the cause at this point.18 Moreover, he was minister of a fine church in the centre of Halifax, "elegantly

22 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

finished, with the very best materials, and at a very great expense"; the average attendance was about six hundred and pew rents were "as high, if not higher, than in any other place of Worship in Halifax."19 Martin had no desire to invite discord in his large and affluent congregation, and so St Andrew's Church was not open to Burns on the occasion of his tour. Burns's official report simply stated that the (unnamed) ministers of the two older Scots Churches "did not encourage" the deputation from the Free Church, although, he added, many of their people subscribed to Free Church funds and took an interest in the cause.20 St Matthew's was the oldest Presbyterian church in Halifax; it had begun life as "Mather's church" and had gradually been transformed over the years from Congregational to Presbyterian. This church, like St Andrew's, was located in the centre of Halifax and possessed a large and influential congregation. Lieutenant governors frequently graced its pews and many leading merchants attended. Pew rents were high and there was some truth to the joke that a man's credit in Halifax was rated by his seating in St Matthew's.21 From the Free Church point of view, the reactions of the people of St Matthew's to Burns's visit were highly significant - and by no means predictable. This congregation was exceedingly independent in its attitudes, no doubt a reflection of its Dissenting roots. In 1833, it had thought it "inexpedient" for its minister, Rev. John Scott, to accept an invitation to join the newly organized Kirk synod, and it did not authorize him to do so until i84O.22 When Scott passed on to his session meeting a request he had received that Burns preach in St Matthew's, he also presented them with a note from the chairman of the church committee of management to the effect that, since there might be "some difference of opinion in the congregation," the "most prudent choice would be to decline." Yet on Burns's arrival a meeting of elders and congregation was held and the decision was reversed; Burns took the morning service in St Matthew's the day after his arrival.23 The Novascotian announced on the following day that all audiences for Burns on the Sabbath (he preached three times, in different locations) had been "large and attentive," but Burns's diary suggests otherwise: "crowded houses, except the morning." Clearly the congregation of St Matthew's was divided in its opinions.24 Their minister, on the other hand, supported the Kirk: he had vacated the chair at the January meeting of the Halifax presbytery in order to support Martin in opposition to the overture for ending the connection with the Establishment.25 What of St John's? When Burns landed at Halifax, he was greeted by the minister of the most recently formed Presbyterian congregation

23 The Kirk versus the Free Church

in the city. The Reverend Ralph Robb had been in Nova Scotia for less than a year. The colonial committee of the Kirk had made arrangements to send him out in the spring of 1843 an^ he sailed immediately after the Disruption to take up the charge of St John's Church, Dutch Town, in the east end of Halifax.26 Robb had aligned himself with the Free Church before he left Scotland and was thus the first Free Church minister to reach British North America. Nonetheless, Mr Scott of St Matthew's introduced him to the Presbytery of Halifax in September 1843; it was duly agreed that Mr Robb, "one of the ministers of the Free Protesting Church of Scotland be admitted a member of this court."27 No doubt the thinking at this stage was that divisions in Scotland need not be introduced into the colonies. Burns preached several times in St John's on this visit to Halifax and held public meetings there. He was especially impressed with the response from the young men of Halifax, many of them "settled in business, or preparing for business," and possessed, in his view, of a "fine spirit of attachment to the Free Church." He addressed the Young Men's Association of St John's and was much gratified with the response.28 In Halifax the Free Church had much appeal for younger, upwardly mobile members of the middle class, who might hope to attain the socially advantageous position of elder or deacon more rapidly in a recently formed Free Church than in the two older Church of Scotland congregations. The latter were less open to the excitement of Burns's message, particularly in St Andrew's, where there was a forceful minister who certainly did not fit Burns's dismissive comment on Church of Scotland pastors as "stiff, dry, formal, and worldly minded."29 Two other elements of Burns's approach in Halifax are worthy of comment. First, he was given the opportunity to preach his strong message in the Baptist Church and in the Old and New Methodist Chapels. As he had on the other parts of his tour, he suggested that the general principles of which he spoke - the Headship of Christ and the resistance to state intrusion in church matters - had relevance for all evangelically minded Christians, and he spoke approvingly of "our dissenting friends." The Free Church hope was that it would be not merely "another fragment; but a point of union for many churches."30 Deliberate appeals were also made to Secession Presbyterians; given the history of friction in the Maritimes between this group and the Glasgow Colonial Society, it was indeed fortunate, from Burns's point of view, that the redoubtable Dr McCulloch, his old-time foe, had died in Halifax a few months before Burns arrived.31 Second, to note Burns's main lay contacts while he was in Nova Scotia is instructive. At the first public meeting Burns held in Halifax,

24 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

well-known Reformers were on the platform: William Young, Speaker of the House of Assembly; Hugh Bell, a member of the Legislative Council; and MPPS Joseph Howe and George Young. This was more than a formal politeness. Howe moved the resolution expressing the meeting's approval of the proceedings and principles of the Free Church and pledging aid to Dr Burns in his mission. Bell moved the vote of thanks and expressed his entire agreement with Burns, and before Burns finally departed from Halifax, he dined with the Speaker.32 In the public mind, therefore, the Free Church was likely to be associated with Reform political principles. Burns left Halifax in June 1844; a month later the Nova Scotia Synod resolved by a majority of 11 to 4 to discontinue its connection with the Church of Scotland. Burns's visit had certainly had some impact on the vote, although it was not the only factor.33 When the official Church of Scotland deputation finally arrived in Nova Scotia, therefore, on \ July 1845, there were major repairs to be done. In the city of Halifax the deputies concentrated their efforts on St Matthew's and St Andrew's, where services were held "on eight or nine separate occasions";34 no services were held in Baptist or Methodist places of worship. Furthermore, Free St John's was totally ignored; it might not have existed so far as the accounts of the deputation visit in the Missionary Record of the Kirk were concerned. (In fact, the synod meeting of the Free Church began there while the Kirk deputation was still in the city.) Likewise, the Missionary Record of the Free Church maintained a frosty silence regarding the Kirk descent on British North America. Suppressio veri was the order of the day.35 It is evident that Halifax lay sympathizers with the Kirk had pulled themselves together in the aftermath of the shocks of 1843 and 1844 and of Burns's corrosive visit. Shortly before the Church of Scotland deputation arrived and in anticipation of its visit, a lay association in connection with the Church of Scotland was formed at Halifax, with the Halifax brewer Alexander Keith as chairman. Keith, a Conservative in politics and a key member of the Halifax "merchantocracy," had a central role in looking after Simpson and the two Macleods during their visit: he "behaved like a prince" to the reverend gentlemen.36 The Church of Scotland deputation moved in higher social circles than did that of the Free Church, and it was gratifying for Simpson to be able to report on his return that the deputation had received "every attention from the highest civil authorities"; the governors of all the provinces visited were most obliging in their attitude.37 Kirk ministers had, on many occasions in the past, proved themselves "firm friends to the Government";38 now the Kirk reaped the benefit. It seems that the Kirk deputation had a substantial restorative effect

25 The Kirk versus the Free Church

on Church of Scotland support in Halifax. To be sure, additional Free Church deputies had followed Burns to Nova Scotia in 1844 and 1845, but St Matthew's and St Andrew's stood firm, even if some individual members suffered turmoil over their allegiance.39 From Halifax both deputations travelled the hundred miles to Pictou, traditional heartland of Nova Scotia Presbyterianism. Here Burgher and Anti-Burgher Secessionists had fought between themselves until (and after) the union of 1817; here Secessionists and Kirk supporters had disputed bitterly in the 18205 and 18305. As Burns noted, the area had been "torn to pieces" by political strife, in which the main element was religious differences. The days which Burns spent in Pictou convinced him that the Free Church had a particular mission there, as "an angel of peace to heal divisions."40 It is difficult, however, to view the descent of the combative and choleric Burns in quite these terms. Burns had no great opinion of the Highlanders who formed the backbone of the population of this area and he possessed a very basic disadvantage in that he knew no Gaelic.41 On the other hand, the state of ministerial supply in the area provided substantial advantages for him; of the eight ministers in the presbytery, one had declared for the Free Church and four had already returned to Scotland to labour in the "home vineyard,"42 and no replacements had been sent. Burns was presented, therefore, with an excellent opportunity to castigate these men as the deserters of their congregations and as seekers after personal gain.43 He could also use their pulpits, as he did in the case of St Andrew's Church in the town of Pictou, vacant through the departure of the Reverend Robert Williamson.44 Here was a large congregation (2300 according to the census of 1841) and a commodious church very nearly paid for. Burns wrote compellingly in his report of the glowing prospects at St Andrew's for a Free Church minister, whose stipend would surely be increased over the £175 in local currency paid to the departed Kirk minister and who "would soon be furnished with a manse." The Free Church, it appeared, might deride materialism in Kirk ministers but could appeal to (modest) material prospects in the case of its own.45 Moreover, when the Church of Scotland Synod met in July, ministers with Free Church sympathies who attended were allocated travelling expenses by the Free Church colonial committee, and, as loyal Kirk ministers bitingly reported, "expectations [were] cherished with respect to a considerable annual allowance ... from the Church of their choice." In contrast, the Kirk had withdrawn its travel grant for synod attendance in i84i.46 Material considerations, then, had significant weight in the making of decisions by both ministers and congregations at this time; it

26 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

would be a mistake to see the Disruption solely in terms of theological arguments. Any church represented a substantial investment; any change in affiliation might well result in lengthy and acrimonious litigation. In the case of St Andrew's, Pictou, Burns noted that the church trustees ("a few gentlemen in the town"), in whom control of church property was vested, were hostile to him, although the elders were friendly47 He was sure that "the great mass of the people" were with the Free Church, but it is difficult to see on what this certainty was based. In 1845 the Kirk deputation also visited St Andrew's. Dr John Macleod of Morven had gone on before his colleagues and preached several times in Gaelic before they arrived, and the general wisdom of selecting two out of three deputies from a Highland background became apparent when Norman Macleod was deluged with questions about his aunts and uncles as he entered the church.48 Ultimately, St Andrew's Church did not become Free. Although it had been deserted by its Kirk minister in 1843 and had lost perhaps as much as one-third of its congregation by 1846, it remained in connection with the Church of Scotland.49 A separate Free Church was formed in Pictou in 1846, but Burns's stated belief that "the Free Church of Scotland is the only existing Church which has the power of taking possession of a position so important as this" proved illusory.50 Realistically, the Free Church had more to hope for in the neighbouring settlement of New Glasgow, where its "excellent friend" the Reverend John Stewart was settled.51 Burns noted the good condition of the church (in which he preached and held a public meeting) and the excellent manse and schoolhouse.52 However, Stewart had carried only about half of his congregation with him when he left the Church of Scotland. The division in St Andrew's, New Glasgow, was on similar lines to that of St Andrew's, Pictou, with elders and trustees at loggerheads: all the elders except one were with their minister, but all five trustees continued to adhere to the Kirk. An expensive lawsuit followed; the trustees were confirmed in possession and Stewart's congregation had to raise funds to erect Knox Free Church.53 The Kirk deputation was thus able to preach in St Andrew's, New Glasgow, in 1845, and the financial implications of schism were brutally clear. From Pictou both deputations sailed for Prince Edward Island. Burns, now accompanied by two Gaelic-speaking ministers, took Charlottetown by storm - or so he alleged. He claimed that there "was not even a shadow of opposition to the Free Church" except for the incumbent minister of St James's Church, the Reverend Angus Mclntyre, who was on the point of leaving for Scotland.54 It was simply a matter of taking possession. Moreover, the senior Church of

27 The Kirk versus the Free Church

Scotland minister on the island, Rev. John McLennan of Belfast, was, according to Burns, standing by the interests of the Free Church; he now travelled to meet the deputation and presided at the meeting of the congregation of St James's. "No doubt of their all joining the Free Church," was Burns's enthusiastic verdict on this meeting.55 The third member of the Church of Scotland presbytery of Prince Edward Island, the Reverend Hugh Ross of Georgetown, had only recently joined the Kirk after problems in his Secessionist congregation at Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. Now, in 1844, he abandoned the Kirk for the Free Church, becoming the first Moderator of the Free Church Synod of Nova Scotia.56 Burns also envisaged attracting support in Charlottetown from the Methodists, in whose church he preached, and from Secessionist Presbyterians. He commented favourably on the local Secessionist ministers and hinted at rosy prospects for union between the Secessionists and the Free Church.57 The problems in accepting uncritically Burns's version of events are sufficiently demonstrated by considering the developments of the following months and the reactions to the Kirk deputation. The Charlottetown congregation had, by the spring of 1845, declared its adherence to the Church of Scotland; a committee of pewholders and trustees applied to the colonial committee for a minister.58 McLennan, "our excellent friend" according to Burns, was not quite as "excellent" as Burns supposed; although a Free Church deputy stayed with McLennan on a visit to the island late in 1844 and was certain McLennan's congregation held Free Church principles,59 McLennan remained in the Church of Scotland. Unfortunately, he was absent in Newfoundland, attending to the needs of the Church of Scotland congregation at St John's, when the two Macleods and Simpson arrived in Prince Edward Island.60 Despite the fact that the island was "entirely without a minister belonging to the Synod," the Kirk deputation's visit was well organized and well received. Prominent laymen smoothed the way and the governor of the island, Sir Henry Vere Huntly, was sympathetic.61 At a humbler level, the Macleods met people from Morven as they walked around Charlottetown; just as in Pictou, they were able to exchange information about mutual friends and acquaintances.62 Public worship was held in St James's, Charlottetown, and visits were made to the church at Georgetown, to McLennan's church at Belfast, and elsewhere. Meetings were held and "full explanation given," and the congregation of St James's presented an amicable address to the Kirk deputation.63 Everywhere it went on the island the deputation was accompanied by the eccentric Rev. Donald McDonald, an ordained Church of Scotland minister who, while connected with no church court, professed

28 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

the warmest support for the Kirk and put his churches at the deputation's disposal. Burns had made no mention of McDonald's sect, with its 3,000 followers, 21 churches and 21 prayer meetings.64 The Presbyterian situation in Prince Edward Island was clearly a great deal more complex than Burns had suggested and opposition to Free Church ideas was obviously more than a "shadow." In the case of New Brunswick, Burns claimed lack of time had prevented a visit. The explanation is plausible, given that Burns's tour of the Maritimes had come at the end of a long and tiring visit to the United States and Canada; he had spent longer than anticipated in Canada and had to write a letter of excuse to his congregation in Scotland when Robb persuaded him to stay in the Maritimes until the departure of the next steamer.65 However, Burns was by no means certain that a New Brunswick visit would have ensured progress for the Free Church at the synodical level; he suggested that ministers in the New Brunswick Kirk Synod who had held sound evangelical principles prior to the Disruption had abandoned them since, for material considerations. The synod was "thirling itself voluntarily" to the Church of Scotland, because of an act of the provincial legislature which placed all churches and glebes of the Presbyterian clergy in the province formally in connection with the Established Church.66 When the New Brunswick Synod met in September, 1844, no deputy from either Kirk or Free Church in Scotland had yet visited the province. The question of continuing the connection with the Church of Scotland was "unanimously decided in the affirmative." The Church of Scotland agent from Nova Scotia who was present at the meeting reported witnessing a delightful scene of "harmony and good feelings," despite trifling differences on minor points.67 Once again such rhetoric is deceptive. The protest of the Reverend Angus McMaster of Black River against the synod resolutions had not been admitted because of a technicality;68 and another minister, the Reverend William Henderson of St James's, Newcastle, was reported to be having second thoughts about adhering.69 The Reverend John Turnbull, minister on the south-west Miramichi, had indicated his disaffection with the establishment months before the synod met; at meetings of the Miramichi Presbytery in January and April, he had complained about the use of the term 'Established Church' in a call to a new minister at Chatham, and announced his intention of referring to the synod the whole question of the New Brunswick act relative to the incorporation of the Presbyterian Church.70 Shortly after the synod met and affirmed its loyalty to the Kirk, two Free Church deputies, the Reverend Patrick Millar and the Reverend John McMillan, arrived in New Brunswick. They were warmly

29 The Kirk versus the Free Church

received in Saint John by the Reverend J.M. McGregor, a licentiate of the Church of Scotland who was teaching there and had been unsuccessful in his bid to fill a church vacancy in the south-east Miramichi area in i84o.71 These deputies did not possess the reputation and charisma of a Dr Burns, but they did their best to spread the Free Church message and to stir up the Church of Scotland congregations thoughout the province. In Saint John prospects seemed promising, given the recent problems of the two Kirk congregations there. St Andrew's Church had already been split; Irish Presbyterians had recently withdrawn and acquired a minister of their own from the Synod of Ulster and it was in this new church that one of the deputies preached.72 The Reverend Andrew Halket, minister of the remaining congregation of St Andrew's, was loyal to the Church of Scotland. So, too, was the Reverend William Wishart, minister of St Stephen's Presbyterian Church, although it was unlikely that the Kirk would remain loyal to him for long: he had recently decided that baptism was not an ordinance of the Christian Church and had refused to administer it.73 The deputies formed the opinion that some Free Church support did exist in these congregations, but ascribed the failure to act to the influence of the leading men in the congregation, the "fear of losing property which some of them hold in the buildings," and, more vaguely, the "general spirit of worldliness" in the city of Saint John. In other areas of the province the Free Church deputies had some success. After conferences with them, three New Brunswick ministers, Turnbull, the Reverend Andrew Donald, and the Reverend Andrew Stevens, formally withdrew from the Church of Scotland Synod and formed a synod "adhering to the Standards of the Westminister Confession," with Turnbull as Moderator.74 The licentiate, McGregor, later joined them, perhaps hoping to improve his job prospects.75 It is clear, then, that although the situation in New Brunswick was not as serious for the Kirk as that in Nova Scotia, there were still significant repairs to be done by the Church of Scotland deputation when it arrived by steamer at Chatham, New Brunswick, at the end of July 1845. As elsewhere on their tour, the members found support at the highest social levels. The timber baron Alexander Rankin, MPP, came to Charlottetown to escort them to Miramichi and accompanied both Simpson and Norman Macleod on their visits to outlying congregations. This "zealous, intelligent, and kind friend," as Simpson termed him, was unswerving in his support for the Kirk, and, significantly, exercised a semi-feudal influence over his workforce.76 After some days together in the Chatham and Newcastle area, the deputation split up. Simpson made an excursion to Burnt Church and

30 Scotland and the Maritime Provinces

Tabisintac with Rankin and then proceeded to Fredericton and Saint John. The Macleods went north to Bathurst, but were prevented from visiting the congregations on the Bay of Chaleur by a carriage accident which injured John Macleod. They returned to Miramichi, from where Norman Macleod went south to Richibucto with Rankin. Finally, the two Macleods proceeded via Fredericton to Saint John, rejoining Simpson on 5 August. There was the by-now-familiar round of services and public addresses given and received. At Saint John the editor of the Morning News was impressed by the "masterly manner" in which Norman Macleod explained the genesis of the Disruption and defended the Establishment. However, he had to admit that a Free Church deputy, "arguing upon the same data, and upon the same groundwork," had reached exactly opposite conclusions at a meeting in the town a few months before. The editor could only glumly conclude that there was obviously a great deal of enthusiasm on both sides, and "As to ourselves, we have no knowledge of the facts."77 It should be obvious that acquiring a knowledge of the "facts" of the Disruption, and of the "facts" of ministerial and lay reactions to the visits of the various deputations from Scotland in the years 184446, is no easy task: immense amounts of source material are available for this period, but the difficulties of dealing with the bulk of this material have been demonstrated. The Burns Report, in particular, requires very careful handling. Burns undoubtedly had a powerful impact, particularly among English-speaking Presbyterians. He succeeded in exploiting effectively certain ministerial feuds and congregational divisions. However, the facts do not bear out the judgements he trenchantly expressed in his report. There are also problems with the analyses provided by later Free Church deputies and by Free Church ministers in the colonies.78 We also find exaggerations made on the part of the Church of Scotland, both in the official reports of the 1845 deputation and in the correspondence of its ministers. However, the Kirk approach was obviously milder and less confrontational; and perhaps in part because of this the Kirk version of events has been judged less credible than that of the Free Church: indeed, it has frequently been ignored altogether. Secondary works on this period underestimate both Kirk ministerial numbers in the Maritimes on the eve of the Disruption and Kirk adherence after it, ministerial and lay, particularly in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. In New Brunswick, by contrast, the advance of Free Church ideas has been underestimated.79 Moreover, the almost exclusively ministerial nature of the evidence on both sides conceals the existence of a powerful laity exercising

31 The Kirk versus the Free Church

substantial influence on decisions. Most colonial ministers were, in practical terms, in a "voluntarist" relationship with their congregations; the small subventions which some ministers received from the colonial committees in Scotland hardly rendered them independent.80 Trustees and elders - the Keiths, the Rankins, et al. - wielded a great deal of influence in colonial Presbyterian churches and many had substantial property interests at stake in this conflict. They were present at the meetings of the ecclesiastical courts; their opinions could not be ignored and the fissures which opened up among the laity were as important as the fissures in the ministry, although less well documented. Furthermore, politics and religion had long gone hand in hand in the Maritimes. Although Burns deprecated that involvement he - and the Free Church - were inevitably drawn into local disputes. The patronage he received from Howe and the Liberals and from certain sections of the colonial press inevitably provoked a pro-Kirk reaction, the strength of which should not be ignored. The generalizations made by ministers regarding the attachment of "the mass" of colonial Presbyterians to one side or the other also require careful consideration. The sending home of bonds to the respective colonial committees promising financial support for a minister, invariably cited as proof of adhesion to the cause, became almost a competition; but such bonds were often little to be relied on and there simply were not the resources to support a double system of Presbyterian ministers (or triple, if there was a Secessionist minister in the area) by what was, essentially, a system of voluntary contributions. Common sense suggests that some Maritime Presbyterians simply wanted a Presbyterian minister - of whatever stripe. Equally, we may assume that curiosity brought some people to services and meetings conducted by both deputations; there were people like the Scots Wesleyan who wrote to the newspaper to explain the basis of his admiration for the Free Church: he was excited by signs of spirituality in other churches and, as a Scot, he was interested in the good that might come to Scotland from the religious revival manifested by the Disruption.81 Whatever good came to Scotland (and this is a matter for debate), it is difficult to see a great degree of good resulting from the Disruption in the "colonial Zion". This paper has suggested that the report of the demise of the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in the aftermath of 1843 has been much exaggerated; and the report of its continued overwhelming success in New Brunswick has been almost equally embellished. Whatever the despatches from the battlefield, neither side in this conflict had carried the day. In the end, any victory was Pyrrhic.

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Education

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3 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education: Teaching Science in Maritime Universities PAUL A. B O G A A R D

Presbyterians have been characterized as strongly supportive of education and are recognized as having played a substantial role in establishing higher education in Canada. Some of the earliest and most vivid examples have arisen within the Maritime provinces. The contributions of such individuals as Dr Thomas McCulloch (1777-1843) and Sir William Dawson (1820-99) are sufficiently well known and were of such magnitude to demonstrate the substantial role played by Presbyterians. Their respective careers provide powerful narratives of the struggle to establish institutions of higher learning through the middle decades of the nineteenth century.1 These were formative decades for academies, colleges, and universities settling into distinct roles, for the various Presbyterian factions moving toward a united front, and for the Maritimes confronting the possibilities of confederation. Recounting the stories of McCulloch and Dawson reminds us these developments were unfolding simultaneously and illustrates how deeply they were interwoven. Educated at Glasgow University and ordained in the Secessionist Church, McCulloch helped mould the character of education in Nova Scotia as the founder and principal of Pictou Academy and the first president of Dalhousie College. In the early decades of the nineteenth century McCulloch's efforts to gain support and recognition for Pictou Academy served to crystallize the objectives of higher education in this British colony. The story-line of his struggle2 illustrates the difficulties to be overcome in their implementation. In the second half of the nineteenth century Dawson3 was to demonstrate

36

Education

the solid foundation of a Pictou Academy education (completed at Edinburgh University) both in his accomplishments in Nova Scotia and in his long tenure, from 1855 to 1893, as principal of McGill College. The threads of both these lives were interwoven with the Scottish tradition in higher education and the Presbyterian ethos of Nova Scotia's Pictou County. From Pictou county, settled largely by Scottish Highlanders, McCulloch found himself pitted against the English-dominated governing establishment of Halifax. The latter enjoyed a comfortable alliance with the Anglican hierarchy and its own academies already established in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and Fredericton, New Brunswick. McCulloch's struggle to establish an academy in Pictou and seek for it the financial support and degree-granting status already accorded to King's College in Windsor were to be swept up in the political manoeuvring of the Halifax elite. Would the Anglican monopoly in higher education be maintained or would it be replaced by McCulloch's ideal of a more liberal and practical education - an education accessible to all? At stake was the very practical consideration of who was to benefit, who would have access, and who would exercise control and carry the financial responsibility. For a brief period Pictou Academy did receive support from the public purse, but not consistently and never adequately. Although it was never given degree-granting status students found they could readily complete their degrees back in Scotland. After 1832 the academy was forced to revert to the status of a grammar school. Even so the curriculum provided there had been remarkably advanced. It was drawn from McCulloch's Scottish education, moulded by a gifted teacher, and enhanced by his determination to seek out and record the natural history of New Scotland. The institutional status of Pictou Academy may have been precarious but McCulloch himself was easily one of the most popular lecturers and public speakers of his day. The general public's fascination with "the new science"4 encouraged McCulloch in the 18305 to inaugurate a series of public lectures on natural philosophy with various pieces of "philosophical apparatus" used to demonstrate the principles of this foundational science. McCulloch's own academic status was confirmed by a surprising turn. Despite his long-standing struggle with the governing power of Halifax, he was appointed to the presidency of Dalhousie College when it finally opened its doors to students in 1838. Still, the complex balance of political will, financial resources, sectarian infighting amongst Presbyterians, and the available numbers of students remained so precarious that when McCulloch died in 1843, nascent Dalhousie College closed its doors for another twenty years.

37 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

Dawson was able to build upon many of the changes available to his generation. Growing up in Nova Scotia where he could take advantage of a Pictou Academy education, Dawson completed his degree and his advanced education in Scotland. When he left for Edinburgh University in the 18305 there were as yet no educational alternatives in the British North American colonies for Dissenters from the Anglican Church. On his return to Nova Scotia Dawson amply demonstrated he had inherited McCulloch's determination to work towards establishing public education (he became superintendent of education) and his tireless recording of the region's natural heritage. For Dawson this led to his publishing Acadian Geology, and the beginnings of an international reputation for this survey of the Maritimes' remarkably complex geological record. It was in 1855, as well, that he sailed to Montreal to be installed as principal of the still-struggling McGill College. By the last decade of the century McGill had become a full university and had achieved an international reputation, partly through Dawson's own voluminous (if frequently controversial) contribution to geology, and largely through the benefactions that allowed McGill to forge ahead in magnificent physical facilities and to draw together a faculty that included Ernst Rutherford (whose experimental work at McGill and thereafter at Manchester and Cambridge led physics into a revolutionary twentieth century as surely as did Einstein's theoretical work). It is not surprising the careers of McCulloch and Dawson are well known. Teasing out even a little of the thread of their lives suggests how tightly interwoven each was with the beginnings of higher education in Canada. In the first half of the nineteenth century, McCulloch articulated some of the earliest and most powerful arguments for a liberal education and for accessibility to such an education, anywhere in Canada. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Dawson's McGill was arguably the first university in Canada to achieve international standing. Both of these men were Scottish-trained Presbyterians. But it is also true that most of the best-known accomplishments of McCulloch and Dawson were in science and science education. Their reputations, public lectures, institutional strengths, and intellectual offspring were all (or in large part) in science. And this at a time when fascination with and expectations for science were rapidly increasing, although its institutional role (especially in higher education) was still in its adolescence. These two played a significant role not just in the initial formulation of science within educational institutions but also in its maturation.

38 Education

The pre-confederation colonial colleges McCulloch and Dawson helped to launch became post-confederation Canadian universities. One driving force behind this transformation was the role science played in these maturing institutions. More broadly Suzanne Zeller has argued that "The idea of creating a nationality out of several colonial peoples dispersed over a vast territory began to appear feasible only in the light of the scientific progress of the age, which suggests the influence and authority with which Victorian science informed Canadian thought by the i86os."5 This was possible, according to Zeller, because: Victorians saw science emerge from a peripheral leisure-class activity to become the fundamental basis of industrial society ... Science became the gauge by which Canadians assessed what their country and, through it, they themselves could one day become ... [and because] Science provided nineteenthcentury colonists with not only the practical means to dominate their physical surroundings but also an ideological framework within which to comprehend the experience of doing so.6

It is something of this ideological framework we shall attempt to explicate in this essay, following the examples of McCulloch and Dawson in whose work it is embodied. It will allow us to ask to what extent their being "Presbyterian" was incidental to their contributions, or helped to form and characterize the impact for which they are so well-known. It should allow us to clarify the ambiguity of whether theirs was a "Presbyterian contribution" or a contribution by two who happened to be Presbyterians. ASSESSING THE "PRESBYTERIAN" CONTRIBUTIONS

There is little need to assess whether, as Presbyterians, McCulloch and Dawson made contributions to higher education - their contributions were exemplary. There may be something to be gained in assessing the extent to which their contribution was characteristically "Presbyterian," though recent investigations of the place of science in the founding of Maritime colleges and universities suggest we should be cautious about distinctive doctrinal differences.7 Can one gauge whether Presbyterian background and doctrinal faith left distinguishing marks on their contributions? The same could be asked about their Scottish background. It has been argued that Canadian universities, especially the earlier Englishspeaking ones from the University of Toronto east, are characterized by

39 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education their being modelled on Scottish universities. Lord Dalhousie, it has often been noted, wanted the new Dalhousie College to be organized on the model of Edinburgh - as opposed to the Oxford model evident at the early Anglican institutions. There are other examples of Scottish influence, but to assess how typical this was requires a broader range of examples. If we could compare across all the colleges-becoming-universities in the Maritimes, for instance, we would be in a stronger position to gauge the influence of Scottish-style organization and curriculum. What we can make of a characteristically "Presbyterian" influence is likely a deeper and more difficult question. Again, a broad range of comparisons should help, especially because it could provide contrasts among the diverse religious and denominational foundations evident in Maritime institutions. We already know that Pictou Academy and Dalhousie College reflect to a considerable extent the influence of Presbyterians (just as this could be said of Queen's and Manitoba College, further west) but does this mark something distinctive about the education provided at these institutions, or does this indicate only that in their theological courses one would expect to find Presbyterian doctrine? One particularly helpful source is the recent book by Michael Gauvreau - his 1991 study The Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression. This is an extended attempt to portray something of the character of doctrinal faith as it impacted education, and what is more it is characterized in terms of the scientific ideals of the day. Gauvreau argues that the evangelical creed found within both Presbyterianism and Methodism is inherently "Baconian." In his words: In the colleges of English Canada, Baconianism was not merely one element shaping religious thought, it was the only one considered compatible with the supremacy of biblical religion and the activist task of evangelization. The inductive method was not used or intended to give rise to an intellectual or scholarly culture devoted to the systematizing of truth. Rather, it anchored a theology of history regarded as popular and diffuse, and served as the tool of clergymen who considered themselves preachers and missionaries above all.8 The claim is that a specific attitude toward science, an inductive methodology, and an expectation of practical usefulness can be seen in the "educational imperative furnished by Baconianism."9 The significance of this reference to Francis Bacon is that it delineates one set of claims and assumptions about science and distinguishes it from the alternative set of objectives and expectations

40 Education

associated with Isaac Newton. Bacon and Newton were two of the most influential participants in the early stages of modern science, in the i6oos. Two centuries later their names had become icons for these two alternative approaches that adherents argued science should follow - alternative ideological frameworks. Bacon had been influential not so much for his own scientific work as for the impact of his writings beginning early in the seventeenth century, heralding the new science and its methods. If one kept to the factual information nature offered, the collecting and organizing of this information could lead to firmly grounded knowledge of this world which in turn could contribute to a profound improvement in our human condition. Hence Baconianism came to be identified with an emphasis upon the collection of facts, a focus upon particulars, the use of inductive method, and the practical applications that are expected to flow from this approach. Scientific subject areas that in the nineteenth century were typically of this sort include the "natural history" aspects of botany, zoology, entomology, and geology. By contrast it was not just Newton's writings but the success of his new scientific practice that came to be identified with the new science throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His experimental work broke substantial new ground in a number of directions and his theoretical writing established all of natural philosophy on mathematical principles - more specifically all physical change in terms of locomotion was drawn from three underlying laws, as though deduced from Euclidian axioms. Newtonian science became the hallmark of all physical science, and Newtonianism came to be identified with the systematization of truth, drawing upon principles, use of deductive method, and the theoretical understanding that flows from these. Scientific subject areas that in the nineteenth century were typically of this kind were the "natural philosophy" inherent in celestial mechanics, physics, and to some extent chemistry. Gauvreau is correct I think in portraying the Baconian alternative as a set of imperatives for how these nineteenth-century educators could have a hand in building their institutions, for that is how ideological frameworks function. I do not argue with his characterization of Baconianism, but we will examine more closely how it served as an "educational imperative" for either Presbyterians or Methodists Gauvreau identifies factions of both as evangelical - in their attempt to establish colleges and universities in the Maritimes. EXAMPLES

OF THE BACONIAN IMPERATIVE

What Gauvreau provides is a kind of criterion to use - this Baconian imperative. It should help us to gauge the extent to which this

41 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

imperative directed attempts by evangelical Presbyterians, and also by Methodists, to establish higher education, especially by comparison with other Maritime institutions that may have arisen from different imperatives. Is this Baconian imperative clearly reflected in the practice and attitudes of those who established our institutions of higher education? At first glance it fits well the two examples already introduced, and Dawson and McCulloch are not unique in this respect. There is as a third example the case of James Robb who began his career in Fredericton at about the same time McCulloch was opening Dalhousie.10 The King's College that had been established by royal charter in Fredericton had for years been in the hands of only one or two professors, neither of whom had much training in science. In what seems to have been a desperate attempt to salvage something of this institution, two young professors were hired in 1837. Still Anglican, the principal of King's had inquired at Oxford, but had been advised to seek new appointees from one of the Scottish universities.11 Of the two drawn to new positions in Fredericton the better known was Robb, a Presbyterian, educated at Edinburgh and keenly interested in natural history. Robb collected samples of flora, fauna, and mineral resources from all over New Brunswick and was convinced this was necessary for the province's advancement. These are all signs of a thoroughgoing Baconian and seem to fit Gauvreau's criterion. We shall return to Robb for a closer look at what imperatives motivated his work at King's College, especially at the stage some years later when it was transformed into the non-denominational University of New Brunswick. We first should review the cases of McCulloch and Dawson to see how well they fit Gauvreau's criterion. Recall those elements in Dawson's story that are relevant: a son of Presbyterian Pictou County, brought up through Pictou Academy, and receiving his higher education back in Scotland, he led McGill University to world-class standing and himself became a world-class geologist. In background and profession (especially in terms of the style of geology and the antiDarwinian stand for which Dawson became famous) he was clearly an eminent Baconian. Our earliest example however is McCulloch, and to the extent that there was no one of comparable stature and influence of his generation he has presented a powerful model of the Scots Presbyterian determined to provide for the highest calibre of education. The relevant elements of his story include: educated in Scotland, a Presbyterian missionary to Nova Scotia, and founder of the academy that helped to launch Dawson and so many others. He anticipated Robb's interest in natural history by at least twenty years.

42 Education But let us pause to look more closely. There is the McCulloch we have noted, who with his sons created collections that were acclaimed by John J. Audubon himself, and who warned against overreliance upon the classics (as was typical at the two Anglican institutions), urging a "liberal education" more in keeping with the populace of early nineteenth-century Nova Scotia, an education that would lead to more useful and productive lives. This is a well-worn image of McCulloch and unmistakably Baconian. But there is also the McCulloch with a more Newtonian cast. This is an image of McCulloch known to have taught the classics, logic, and moral philosophy; later on he took upon himself instruction in Hebrew and theology. But George Patterson, in his history of Pictou County, insists the one subject McCulloch taught throughout his academy years was natural philosophy,12 that is until he was named president of Dalhousie in 1838. Then he restricted himself to moral and mental philosophy and it was the job of James Mclntosh to teach mathematics and natural philosophy. Natural history would have to wait. Ten years earlier when McCulloch began impressing Halifax audiences with his public lectures it was not to topics of natural history that he turned but to demonstrating the principles of chemistry and natural philosophy. Anne Wood quotes McCulloch's own words, that "these principles are the primary objects of science,"13 and in this (that is to say, in his public lectures and academy teaching) as Wood concludes, "McCulloch remained traditionally Newtonian."14 There are, then, two images of McCulloch. The first fits quite comfortably with Gauvreau's claim that Baconianism characterized the educational aims of evangelical Presbyterians, but the second does not. To teach natural philosophy was to teach a college-student version of Newton's own Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. It was taught through mathematics and demonstrated with what was called "philosophical apparatus." Practical application played no role here; it was taught as the deduction of theoretical truths. A description of Pictou Academy has been preserved, written by Joseph Howe who visited the institution in 1830. "It is divided into four large apartments; having the Laboratory and class room on the ground floor, the Museum and Library in the upper story. On entering the Laboratory you find yourself surrounded by philosophical apparatus ... bottles containing chemical compounds ... but the Museum offers the richest treat that can be had within the Province."15 The laboratory and museum, in Howe's description, capture just the ambiguity we face in these two images of McCulloch and his subsequent influence on higher education. Does the "educational imperative" followed by McCulloch match that of the museum (i.e.,

43 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

Baconian) or the roomful of apparatus and chemicals (i.e., Newtonian)? To resolve this ambiguity we must broaden our range of examples and can begin by following McCulloch's next step, to the presidency of Dalhousie College. The aspirations for Pictou Academy and thereafter the establishing of Dalhousie University are the only clearly Presbyterian cases we have in the Atlantic region. There were Presbyterian seminaries but no degree-granting institutions of higher education. In fact Pictou never made it to full degree-granting status and Dalhousie only got on its feet after decades of difficulties. McCulloch played a significant role in both, but the results were stormy and uneven. Dalhousie built his college in 1820 but it did not open its doors to students until 1838 when McCulloch was made president. After McCulloch died in 1843 Dalhousie was only opened for a short while during the next twenty years, and then only at a high school level. Throughout this fifty years of struggle leading up to its full awakening as a university in 1863, Presbyterians were making their "contribution" felt. In Peter Waite's first volume of The Lives of Dalhousie University these machinations are carefully detailed. He notes that George Monro Grant (himself a product of Pictou Academy, a Presbyterian minister and governor of Dalhousie, and later to be president of Queen's) "used to say that in the Presbyterian religion all the splits were made in Scotland and all the unions in British North America."16 From the founding of his academy in 1816 McCulloch had been caught up in the cross-currents of rivalry between his own aspirations for Pictou and those of King's College in Windsor (the latter an Anglican transplant from loyalist New York City, firmly under the guard of the political power in Halifax), with McCulloch offering what looked like a Dissenters' refuge. But at the same time McCulloch and his closest support within Presbyterian ranks were "Secessionist" and so constantly vying with the Kirk. Even in 1838, when the climate had changed sufficiently to coax McCulloch into helping bring Lord Dalhousie's dream to life, there was sufficient distrust amongst Presbyterian factions to weaken the attempt. That Dalhousie finally found firmer footing in 1863 is not just because of arrangements made with the Presbyterian Seminary in Truro, but because Presbyterians throughout Nova Scotia finally found a way to join together in their support of this provincial university. The irony is that Presbyterianism, while characterized as a denomination supportive of education, through its factional strife had helped to ensure that Dalhousie was the last of the Maritime universities to secure lasting support. On the other hand when it was re-established

44 Education

in 1863 it was with both public and Presbyterian support, and together with the advantages of being located in Halifax, Dalhousie has been a leader in Maritime higher education ever since. DOES THE BACONIAN IMPERATIVE PRODUCE B A C O N I A N INSTITUTIONS?

We have, then, at least this one case within the Maritimes of Presbyterians playing a key role in establishing an institution of higher education. But what of our narrower question - to what extent does Dalhousie University exemplify McCulloch's Baconian interests or the Newtonian side of his teaching? Looking at the era of McCulloch's presidency Waite reproduces for us the official Dalhousie timetable for the autumn of 1838 as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Latin, 8 - 9 am Prof. Romans Greek, 10 - 11 am Greek & Latin, 12 noon to i pm Prof. Romans Algebra, 10 - 11 am Prof. Mclntosh Logic, 11 - 12 am Dr. McCulloch Rhetoric, 1-2 pm Mathematics, 8-9 pm Prof. Mclntosh Moral Philosophy, 10 - 11 am Dr. McCulloch Natural Philosophy, 12 noon to i pm Prof. Mclntosh17

The Baconian fields of natural history - geology, botany, entomology (the "inventory" sciences Suzanne Zeller calls them)18 - are completely absent. The curriculum was language and mathematics leading to Newtonian natural philosophy. Is this curriculum peculiar to the case of Dalhousie? How many other cases are there within the Maritimes with which we might compare? The two earliest Anglican attempts to initiate higher education were the King's Colleges at Windsor, Nova Scotia, and at Fredericton, New Brunswick. Both were established by Loyalists in the late eighteenth century and both were still struggling to provide such an education when Dalhousie began offering the curriculum cited above. At the end of the same decade the Baptists launched their own institution in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, the Methodists in Sackville, New Brunswick, and the Catholics as well in Halifax, Antigonish, and throughout New Brunswick. St Mary's College in Halifax, like all of the Catholic colleges, was committed to a classical curriculum illustrated by this list of classes reported for 1859:

45 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education Greek, Latin, French Natural and Moral Philosophy Astronomy, Geometry Algebra, Mensuration Book Keeping, Arithmetic Belles Lettres, Composition Elocution, Drawing and Vocal Music19

This list predates the organizing of public school systems by only a decade or two, and it looks as if St Mary's in the 18505 is providing some of what soon became secondary curriculum. Beyond that the similarity to Dalhousie is striking despite differences in the imperatives motivating the establishment of these institutions. The same was true for each of the institutions we have mentioned (as we shall see later) with natural philosophy invariably playing a prominent role, and natural history present only secondarily, if at all. RECAPTURING IDEOLOGICALFRAMEWORKS

Can we discern anything of the attitudes toward this apparent practice? Fortunately some written comments have survived from most Maritime institutions and we will consider a sampling from each. We have already mentioned Robb and his interest in natural history while at the Anglican college in Fredericton. One of his two colleagues was responsible for mathematics and natural philosophy. In a "Synopsis" published for the college in 1838 the importance of mathematics was emphasized, and with it came a description of what was called "mixed" mathematics: "Mixed Mathematics embrace the several divisions of Mechanical Philosophy, or the investigation of the mechanism of the universe: comprising Statics, Dynamics, Hydrodynamics, Pneumatics, Optics, and the phaenomena of Heat, Electricity, and Magnetism, together with Astronomy."20 The expectations expressed in this synopsis are clearly Newtonian. By 1841 Robb's colleague was replaced by William Brydon Jack, later to be president after this King's was transformed into the University of New Brunswick. In the debate of the mid-i85os during which a commission was appointed to recommend the future course of this institution, submissions were made by both Jack and Robb. To the query whether the college should be teaching practical applications Jack replied: "I wish it to be borne in mind that the factory and field-work are the means chiefly available for useful practice ... Science must ever be regarded as the root which nourishes and supports the tree of Industry ... whatever information we may attempt to give in the way of Arts or

46 Education

Professions should be as something superadded to the general principles of science."21 This was the professor of natural philosophy speaking, focusing in this unmistakably anti-Baconian way upon general principles. But his colleague Robb (responsible for teaching the more Baconian subjects) also responded and reflected a similar attitude: "His excellency seems to think that Chemistry, Natural History and Botany ... might be taught... These are actually taught at present. [But] a special course in the subject of any one Art could only be usefully offered to those who had already mastered the general principles of Mathematical and Physical Science. Art will always be futile, and always hence foreward unsuccessful, unless its foundations are broadly based upon Pure Science."22 It is evident that, even in so far as natural history was taught, the priorities were clearly upon the general principles of pure science. Meanwhile, at the other King's in Windsor, the first chair in science - as always, the professor of mathematics and natural philosophy - was joined in 1857 by Henry How, professor of chemistry and natural history. We find, however, as with Robb, that despite his responsibility for natural history, in his own opening address How warned: "Before proceeding to ... Natural History, the student should prepare for the task by attending to Natural Philosophy and Chemistry." And at the encaenia four years later: "how necessary it has become, and ... as regards the training of the mind it is advantageous, to add a study of Physical Sciences to the other indispensable elements of education."23 These were of course the two institutions established by loyalist Anglicans, often chastised for following the Oxford model. The Oxford model entailed a thorough grounding in the classics, but it also typically included mathematics leading invariably to Newtonianstyle natural philosophy. Unhappily, imitating Oxford also meant that all associated with the institution (students, professors, and governors) had to be confirmed Anglicans. It is well known that Secessionist Presbyterians were not the only ones frustrated by this barrier to the education of their own sons and clergy. The Baptists in frustration established an academy of their own, and soon thereafter the college at Wolfville we now know as Acadia. One factor that helped nudge the Baptists into action was the refusal to appoint the Reverend E.A. Crawley to Dalhousie when it opened in 1838. Ostensibly it was over Crawley's heavy-handed demand for emphasis on the classics. What has been lost in the telling of that story is that Crawley would also have recommended, in addition to classics, chairs in moral philosophy, mathematics, and

47 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

natural philosophy.24 This was the curriculum with which Acadia began when Crawley threw his energies into that institution. Far from being dependent on the Oxford model, in its early years Acadia seems to have been more directly influenced by Baptist seminaries in the United States, and particularly Colby College and Brown University. And by the i86os Acadia was able to attract a science professor with training at Harvard. William Elder only stayed a few years, but in an exchange with his students reprinted in the Christian Messenger Elder reminded them: "A knowledge of scientific methods is of great value in itself, as well as in the aid it gives the student in mastering other branches of this college work. The careful study of the laws of the universe confers upon the thoughtful and reverent mind a splendid culture and enables us to see that, despite conflicting opinions, there are in reality no questions of moment at issue between Science in its highest development, and evangelical Religion."25 If this is not sufficiently clear in its rejection of the evangelical-creed-as-inherently-Baconian, let us turn to the effort amongst Methodists to provide their own academy in Sackville, New Brunswick. In the case of the Wesleyan Academy at Mount Allison, the privilege to grant degrees was a little longer coming, with Fredericton debating what to do with their own college let alone whether to grant these Methodists' demands. Much of this was made public in a series of editorials in the Provincial Wesleyan, usually identified with Humphrey Pickard, then principal of the Wesleyan Academy and soon to be first president of Mount Allison Wesleyan College: "But what is needful to begin with is a sufficient number of natural objects, and a sufficiently extensive apparatus to illustrate the leading principles of the several departments of natural Science; an introduction to which is all that can be attempted in a College course, without substituting certain easy flash studies, included in the inductive Sciences which are feeble developers of mind, for the difficult, deductive Sciences which are mind educators of the highest class."26 It should be emphasized that this is coming from an evangelical Methodist clergyman exactly the type referred to by Gauvreau as imbued with Baconianism. Not only have we seen a very different set of expectations emerge from the comments out of Anglican and Baptist institutions, but here we find the strongest sentiments of all in citing the pedagogical value of the Newtonian over the Baconian - the difficult but essential education gained by deducing the structure and laws of the universe from first principles versus feeble developers of mind. To bring this survey full circle we return to Dalhousie. In 1863 the future of Dalhousie was placed in the hands of six professors, two of whom were devoted to science. The professor of natural philosophy

48 Education

was McCulloch's own son, Thomas Jr, who is said to have depended upon "philosophical apparatus" brought down from the Presbyterian College in Truro.27 The other was George Lawson who actually held a Ph.D. from Giessen. What is remarkable is that despite a rapidly growing reputation for his work in botany Lawson was appointed as Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy. And to substantiate what significance we can place on the titles of such professorial chairs, we have this from Lawson's obituary in the Dalhousie Gazette: In 1863 on the reorganization of Dalhousie College, Dr Lawson resigned his chair at Queen's College and accepted the Professorship of Chemistry and Mineralogy here. From that date until the present, for a period of thirty two years, he has conducted the chemical department in this college. He has had no assistance whatever, and his appliances have been meagre. Nevertheless, he always gave well illustrated courses of lectures ... In addition to the work of this chair, he also for many years conducted a class in botany, entirely without remuneration from the Board of Governors.28

The obituary goes on to say Lawson lectured in chemistry and botany to the Halifax Medical College, had a hand in organizing the Halifax Technical Institute, and during his time at Dalhousie "published thirty-one botanical papers, four on chemical subjects, and one in zoology," and was active in agricultural education. Clearly it would be misleading to suggest that Baconian work in botany and zoology was not being done. (Although it could be argued that Lawson's botanical concerns were increasingly aimed at refining the "theoretical" explanations made possible by Darwin's new claims for evolution by natural selection.)29 But within the curriculum which was proving to be so remarkably uniform across the Maritime universities, the subjects within the range of natural history did not just rank behind the importance granted to natural philosophy, they were as often denied any place at all. Where there were resources beyond those required for natural philosophy, they were invested in chemistry. Only thereafter might opportunity open up for the inventory sciences however practical their application. One last example is provided by James Gordon MacGregor, grandson of a Presbyterian clergyman. A student at Dalhousie in the late i86os, MacGregor won a Gilchrist Scholarship, which was to take him to Edinburgh, Leipzig, and finally to London to complete a Ph.D.30 He returned to Dalhousie as the last person ever named to the chair in natural philosophy. Soon thereafter, in 1877-8, J.J. MacKenzie was appointed to the new chair of experimental physics, signalling an end to the tradition that a mathematical and theoretical approach to physical

49 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

science was sufficient, and acknowledging that an experimental approach (and the practical applications of which this was the harbinger) was inescapable. Dalhousie, like every other university in the Maritimes, turned its resources to experimental science, opened up laboratories, and before the end of the century added schools of applied science and engineering. SHIFTING

IMPERATIVES

Newtonian ideals were being transformed, within the physical sciences, into practical applications. And during the same period of this transition the Baconian fields had matured beyond collecting and taxonomy. Between Darwin and the rise of cellular biology (and before the end of the century, genetics), the life sciences became theoretical, thereby earning a lasting place for themselves within higher education. The result of this, clearly evident in the curricula of all the Maritime universities, is the shift away from natural philosophy to experimental physics. Both the similarity in curriculum and this shift of imperatives in the later nineteenth century are evidenced in the accompanying chart (page 50). The changing of the guard from MacGregor to MacKenzie at Dalhousie marks the last time any professor in the Maritimes was named to a chair of natural philosophy and within ten years even the designation "experimental" was dropped - all others are simply designated chairs of physics. Comparable shifts are evident across the sciences. Professors of chemistry are evident throughout the nineteenth century, although there is in this same transition period, roughly the 18705, a typical linking of chemistry with geology or mineralogy. The latter is telling since it seems to reflect a shift from general fieldwork in geology to a more technical competence in chemically analyzing minerals. Then in the 18905 two developments ripple across all Maritime universities: one is the development of "applied science" or what soon will come to be known as engineering; the other is the rise of the life sciences not just an expansion of zoology and botany, but the underlying science with its new-found theoretical underpinnings that appears as chairs of biology. REASSESSMENTS

Among the sciences as taught within Gauvreau's focus upon "the colleges of English Canada," we have found little evidence of a Baconian imperative. This is evident in the curriculum and chairs provided at

Chart 2 Changing Role of Science Professors 18505

i86os

18705

188 os

18905

KING'S AT WINDSOR ist sci prof Natural Philos 2nd sci prof 3rd sci prof

Natural Philos Chem & Nat Hist

Natural Philos Chem & Nat Hist

Natural Philos Chem & Geology

Natural Philos Chem & Geology

Natural Philos Chem & Geology Biology

KING'S/UNB FREDERICTON ist sci prof Natural Philos Chem & Nat Hist 2nd sci prof 3rd sci prof

Natural Philos Chem & Nat Hist

Natural Philos Chem & Nat Sci

Natural Philos Chem & Nat Sci

Natural Philos Chem & Nat Sci

Physics Chemistry Natural History

Natural Philos

Natural Philos

Natural Philos Chemistry

Experm Physics Chemistry Geology

Experm Physics Chemistry Geology

Physics Chem & Mineral Zoology

Natural Philos

Natural Science

Chemistry

Chem & Mineral

Chem & Mineral

Chem & Geology Physics

Natural Science

Natural Philos

Natural Philos

Natural Philos

Chem & Exp Phys

Chem & Exp Phys

Natural Philos

Nat Phil & Chem

Natural Philos Chemistry

Natural Philos Chemistry

Physics Chem & Botany Geology

18405

DALHOUSIE

ist sci prof 2nd sci prof 3rd sci prof ACADIA ist sci prof 2nd sci prof MOUNT ALLISON

ist sci prof ST FRANCIS XAVIER

ist sci prof 2nd sci prof 3rd sci prof

These are the scientific fields specified for each professorial chair in the Calendars for each institution (abbreviated here to fit chart) cross-checked against what other archival records indicate was actually taught. No Maritime university appointed more than three professors to teach science during this period, not counting engineers (who began being added in the 18903), physicians lecturing on medicine, nor those who taught math only.

5i The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

each institution, and is even more clearly reflected in their own words. The Newtonian alternative that is present in every Maritime college, especially during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, gives no evidence of a peculiarly Presbyterian contribution to higher education. What of the claim that these origins, at least, were peculiarly Scottish? The well-known examples with which we began reflect Scottish background and Scottish education, but the overall pattern is not convincing. The initial emphasis on Newtonian style natural philosophy is not particularly Scottish. Where an element of natural history is also included, it is not always of Scottish origin. Edinburgh, and Glasgow too, had been justly famous for their medical training, which typically included the study of chemistry and botany. This was the background of McCulloch and Robb, but by the time chemistry was becoming a necessary feature of university curricula in its own right, it was most often brought to the Maritimes from Germany or the United States. One could make as good a case for an influence from the United States, especially the network including Brown University and Colby (both Baptist), and Wesleyan in Connecticut (whose founding president was educated at Brown). Brown was the presidential seat of Francis Wayland, who authored texts widely used in the Maritime colleges, who served on the commission that recommended the reorganizing of the University of New Brunswick, and whose own institution had its influence through Crawley at Acadia and indirectly through the Pickards at Mount Allison. Adding to that the transplanting of Anglican institutions by the Loyalists at the end of the eighteenth century, the only overtly Scottish influence is seen to be limited to those few initial cases. Like Presbyterianism it is not absent and not insignificant, but only readily identifiable through the efforts of a few key individuals. The evangelical creed, both Presbyterian and Methodist, may have had an impact on the Maritimes, but in our examination there is little evidence to suggest their "educational imperative" was furnished by Baconianism. Presbyterians in particular certainly played a crucial role in the rise of higher education, especially in the well-known cases of the Pictou Academy and Dalhousie University. But there is nothing in the evidence we have considered to suggest a distinctively Presbyterian style or content to higher education. These institutions seem no more or less Baconian than any of the others. In fairness to Gauvreau, he does suggest at one point that, "Because it emphasized careful methods of inquiry and a rigid attention to the collection of data, rather than to the formulation of hypotheses, both evangelicals and their utilitarian opponents lauded Baconianism as inculcating

52 Education

sound attitudes to knowledge and encouraging wide participation in science. In evangelical circles, Baconianism became a rhetorical structure promoting caution and reverence rather than a philosophical theory or a guide to scientific practice."31 The emphasis here is away from educational institutions and toward a wider style of scientific practice. Moreover it recognizes that for evangelicals Baconianism had become "a rhetorical structure/' which could well have been the case without it having any real impact on their vision of higher education, or being reflected in the curriculum embraced by these early colleges. In a recent study of the rise of universities in Ontario Brian McKillop observes a kind of transition, similar to what has been evidenced above, reflected in "the shifting authority of the disciplines" in the 18705 and i88os.32 But looking backwards from this vantage point McKillop remarks that "Pre-Darwinian science in North America was severely Baconian in its anti-speculative empiricism."33 At least for what was demanded inside higher education in the Maritimes, McKillop 's remark is seriously misleading. The transition to the newly applied sciences was from natural philosophy, not from natural history. On the other hand a case might be made that the science practised outside colleges and universities had been characteristically Baconian. The practical utility of inventory science had proven itself in grasping the resources of this new land. But it was either practiced by amateurs or paid for from government coffers for exclusively practical reasons. Inside universities the opposite conditions prevailed. Science was taught by those who saw themselves as professional educators, preserving and transmitting theoretical understanding. Only when the laws and principles of Newtonian physics, and of chemistry, began to lead the way for industrial applications (instead of following after them), and when the otherwise practical thrust of inventory science had developed its own theories (which we can date roughly with McKillop as post-Darwinian), does this picture change. By this point all the colleges, whatever the doctrinal convictions that had motivated their origins, were transformed into universities and swept up into a now-familiar style of higher education. What we have not addressed is the deeper issue that arises from this kind of cross-comparison. We can distinguish the imperatives directing Presbyterians (or any of the other religious factions which so characterize life in the nineteenth-century Maritimes), and we know they result each in its own institution of higher education, at least one under each denominational banner. And yet there is a striking similarity across all these institutions in what professorial chairs were funded, what curriculum was taught, and in the attitudes of the prac-

53 The Presbyterian Contribution to Higher Education

titioners themselves responsible for this curriculum. Even when they undergo the substantial changes evident late in the nineteenth century, it is a change similar across the board and almost in lock step. If the religious convictions of those involved played a significant role, it must have been from out of the similarity in the imperatives shared by Presbyterians and the other religious denominations, and not their differences.

4 Schooling/Credentials for Professional Advancement: A Case Study of Pictou Presbyterians B. A N N E WOOD

Educational credentials are such an integral aspect of schooling that today we rarely reflect on their meaning, on their cultural significance, or on their historical roots. Randall Collins characterizes credentials as cultural goods that individuals and ethnic groups use as weapons to obtain and monopolize economic positions and to gain advantage over other groups. Thus credentialism is a type of cultural currency whose value increased and became more abstract as the educational system became more elaborate. He concludes that the rise of a competitive system for producing an abstract cultural currency in the form of educational credentials has been the major new force shaping stratification in twentieth-century America. Beginning with the internal organization of schools themselves, credentials have permeated the occupational structure, from elite professional monopolies on down, and have been the decisive impetus to the elaboration of super-complex bureaucracies in all spheres ... the permeation of educational credentials into the occupational world has shaped the major issues of stratification in recent decades.1

In the 18905 Fred Yorston, president of the Montreal Standard, wrote a satirical description of his student days (1883-4) at Pictou Academy, which culminated in an account of the dreaded convocation ceremony. He depicted this ritual of credentialism as "one of the most lasting memories of the old Academy days." The students first assembled in the office of Alexander H. MacKay, who since 1873 had been principal of Pictou Academy. After they had proceeded to the

55 Schooling/Credentials

platform everyone waited for MacKay to rise. He coughed, paused for silence, then fumbled with a batch of certificates.2 The principal began to read out the names, beginning with the lowest. Many of these students did not dare to appear so he set aside their certificates. MacKay then proceeded to those who had attained first in a subject; an extra slip of paper was handed the student to paste in a special book. At last the highest aggregate marks were reached. With a benevolent smile "which he has saved up perhaps for a whole term, [the principal] hands the winner his certificate, and so with much general applause and shuffling of feet and chairs, the proceedings came to an end."3 By the i88os credentialism affirmed attendance at a school and legitimized the authority of administrators to rank-order and to certify their student population. It was assumed that the school had the power to devise instruments, such as school examinations, to undertake this rank-ordering task. MacKay justified examinations to the public of his day in the following terms: what is the use in every one going up to examination? ... It showed the student how much he really knew of the work he had been studying during the term. It showed the teacher where the weak point in his method might be looked for. It showed parents, guardians, and those interested the teachersf] estimate of the work done. But especially was it useful in giving the student a drill in the rapid and accurate expression of his thoughts on paper, an art without which no amount of knowledge and study can make a successful man at a modern competitive examination. One day of examination was therefore of more value to the dullest as well as the brightest student, than a week of the ordinary school routine ... [The disposition to shirk] examinations ... might always be taken as characteristic of a man whose future career as a student might be expected to be a failure ... no wise student should feel that in the loss of a coveted prize his work for the term was a failure ... The great prizes are to be won in the long battle of life afterwards.4

The fact that MacKay had to justify the examination system and the competitive individualism it was fostering demonstrated that credentialism had not necessarily won over all the Nova Scotian public by 1884. But the government left little time for debate. The next year the Council of Public Instruction (CPI) recommended a bill entitled "Act to encourage Academic Education,"5 which used Pictou Academy as a model to force centralization on all county academies. Every county town was encouraged to establish and maintain an academy or high school that would be free of charge to qualified students from all parts of the county. The teachers, standards of admission, courses of

56 Education

study, equipment, and design of building were to be prescribed by the CPI. Provincial grants and teachers' salaries were now to be based on the qualifications of the teachers (accredited at the academic level) and on the number of students in stipulated high school subjects. Strict regulations were to prevail over entrance examinations, set by the CPI and based on subjects of the provincial course of study for the common schools (drafted also by MacKay at the invitation of the superintendent of education). Annual inspections were to be conducted to ensure compliance with the regulations and annual reports were required of each county academy. A minimum number of students (including licensed teachers who were encouraged to attend academies to upgrade their qualifications) had to pass each annual examination in order for the provincial grant to be allocated.6 In 1886 only Pictou and Halifax were able to fulfil the conditions for the maximum grant. As Superintendent David Allison noted, Pictou Academy "continues to show an output of results, second in quantity and quality to that of few, if any, of the High Schools of the Dominion."7 Why and how did MacKay and his Scottish Presbyterian forebears attain this degree of domination over provincial schooling? Using Pictou Academy as a case study this paper will examine the early history of credentialism. In contrast to current sociological interpretations it will argue that school credentialism was derived from Presbyterian cultural values and from pre-industrial professional requirements; that political contexts as well as religious schisms affected the credentializing process; and that it had significant effects on school policy, on students, and especially on the domination in Nova Scotia of Presbyterians in key administrative, political, and professional positions of power. Two features of Presbyterian culture were intimately connected to schooling at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Presbyterian government was conducted by a system of four ascending judicial courts, namely sessions, presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies, which required Presbyterian ministers and church elders to acquire abstract understanding of doctrinal and social issues in order to arrive at expert judgments and to exert sophisticated leadership. John Calvin developed this form of church government especially to deal with discipline and with moral order in the community. Both he and John Knox, founder of Scottish Presbyterianism, considered learning to be closely related to Christian life and they advocated the establishment of schools and the widespread use of printing presses to disseminate Protestant doctrine.8 Presbyterians considered a professional ministry to be fundamental to the establishment and maintenance of authority in the community.

57 Schooling/Credentials

In this respect they were equalled only by the professions of law and medicine in Georgian Britain. As Thomas W. Heyck observes, these three professions recognized that organization was required to maintain standards and to prevent invasion of their professions by untrained or unsuitable candidates. Members quickly assumed the social discipline of their group in order to gain status and autonomy. Heyck distinguishes professionals from the Victorian middle class. While both shared values of hard work, duty, and styles of behaviour, professionals sought to rise above commercial and industrial people and to become a kind of "new gentry."9 Their chief means to this vertical mobility was through acquisition of higher credentials, in the case of Presbyterian ministers, through college education. The professional status of a Secessionist10 minister and even occasional practising physician, such as the Reverend Thomas McCulloch, newly arrived at Harbour settlement in north-eastern Nova Scotia in 1803, did not guarantee either community authority or provincial respect. These had to be earned. In McCulloch's case he used a variety of means to gain status and moral authority. He was called to Harbour Presbyterian Church, but he also began a school in his home in 1806 that became so successful after the passage of the 1811 Grammar School Act that students came from all over the Maritime provinces, from the eastern seaboard, and from the West Indies to attend. By 1817 fifty-three boys were attracted to McCulloch's school, whereas eleven other grammar schools in the province only had seventy-eight students combined. Even as early as 1806, however, McCulloch and his Presbyterian colleagues were planning a liberal arts college to train both a native ministry and a new professional class. By 1815 the Pictou subscription society had enough members to be able to submit a memorial for a charter to the House of Assembly. The purpose of their school was "for providing those means of instruction in those branches of education, which are not taught in the Provincial Grammar Schools, ... to promote the means of a liberal education for persons of every religious denomination, who wish to improve their minds by literary studies."11 Because of its college aspirations and the possibility of higher educational opportunity for Dissenters, extreme Tory members of the Nova Scotia Council objected to the memorial because the proposed academy would encroach on the established monopoly of King's College, founded in 1789 at Windsor and restricted to Anglicans after exclusivist clauses were added to its Royal Charter in 1802. At issue ostensibly were two cultural systems of education. King's College was designed to train a local aristocracy for political leadership based on family privilege and membership in the established

58 Education

church. McCulloch's college, with its meritocratic admission standards and Scottish university program of studies, was designed to construct an alternative professional ideal. When denied degreegranting status McCulloch sent three of the academy's first graduates to Scotland where, after examination in 1824 by Glasgow University professors in the fields of Latin, Greek, logic, mathematics, and moral as well as natural philosophy, they were granted the degree of Master of Arts.12 Nineteenth-century professional credentialism was beginning to break down eighteenth-century church and family privilege. McCulloch's justification for his liberal arts program and his emphasis on professional training drew on philosophical tenets of Scottish Enlightenment thought and on Presbyterian notions of selfdiscipline and rational church government. Good laws were needed to protect life and property and to promote public utility; the complexity of modern society required equity in law enforcement; the health of society required distinct office and appropriate training for surgeons; qualified clerics needed a thorough education and ability to communicate knowledge. "In every place where the apostles preached the gospel with success, they introduced the order of the church ... they ordained elders and enjoined that established rules should be in future observed; so that the only call to preach the gospel is the call of the church ... a connexion of means and ends pervades the whole Christian system."13 McCulloch believed that if liberal education was more widespread among the population of Nova Scotia there would be less appeal of illiterate or enthusiastic (a Victorian code word for Methodist or evangelical) clergymen. There would be more respect and status accorded to professionals. Liberal, evolutionary reform and increased bourgeois political power were envisaged. By the 18203 McCulloch's moral authority and the success of his institution were so apparent that two groups joined forces successfully to discredit him and to change the nature of Pictou Academy by 1832. The extreme Tory members of council, fearing the rise of a Dissenter party led by McCulloch that would threaten their monopoly of provincial affairs, blocked the annual grants to the academy thereby placing its management in jeopardy. Scottish evangelical leaders within the Church of Scotland were concerned about the increasing hegemony of Pictou's Secessionist Anti-Burgher Presbyterians. The latter had broken from the Scottish established church in 1747 over issues of state control of Presbyterian appointments and of civil oaths forced on the Presbyterian clergy by town burghers. The voluntarism of the Secessionists, their supposed "republican" tendencies, their old-fashioned Calvinistic emphases on the "elect," predestination,

59 Schooling/Credentials

and strict control of communicants, were broadcast by Church of Scotland missionaries, who were increasingly sent to outlying districts by the newly-formed Glasgow Colonial Society (GCS) in Scotland. By 1826 the Church of Scotland campaign against the Secessionists was so successful that it had captured the allegiance of Cape Breton Highland immigrants. Addressing these settlers in Gaelic, rather than in English, employing charismatic rather than rational forms of rhetoric, and promising immediate aid in the form of ministers, catechists, and Presbyterian literature, these evangelical GCS missionaries and their highly organized Scottish office staff campaigned for common schooling rather than for professional training programs. Above all they questioned McCulloch's authority and claimed that his "pretended seminary at Pictou was improperly founded; that the Teachers of that Institution were not possessed of sufficient learning and ability to educate ministers; that ministers could not be properly licensed nor ordained at Pictou; that the young men who proceeded from the Academy at Pictou had not requisite learning for Ministers, and should therefore be discountenanced by and rejected by every vacant settlement."14 Highlanders treasured their past traditions and connection to the established church; talk of increased rights for Dissenters and of professional training for talented "lads o' pairts" did not at first meet their cultural expectations for the New World.1^ The long-term moral-cultural order that the Church of Scotland activists had in mind, however, was little different from that of McCulloch's. Led by George Ramsay, Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia and subsequently ninth Earl of Dalhousie, the Kirk party laid the cornerstone of Dalhousie College in 1818. It was also planned as a Scottish non-sectarian university and had a chair of theology added in 1821 in direct opposition to McCulloch's divinity class established the previous year. Lack of funds, however, prevented implementation of more than a fine building until 1838, when, ironically, McCulloch was asked to be the first president of Dalhousie College. Developments in Scotland continued to affect Nova Scotian Presbyterians. In 1843 the evangelical party within the Church of Scotland forced their cultural policies to a final denouement; their Disruption from the established Church of Scotland led to the formation of the Free Church in Scotland and in British North America. When Robert Burns, the GCS leader who organized much of the propaganda discrediting Pictou Academy, came to Pictou in 1844 now as a Free Church campaigner, he deplored the political squabbling that surrounded Pictou Academy. "One melancholy result of this strife has been the utter prostration of a valuable literary institution, the

60 Education

academy of Pictou, which, with proper management, in the spirit of love, might become the means of great good both in a literary and theological view. We felt a strong impression, that the Free Church of Scotland was specially called to this quarter, in the character of an angel of peace, to heal divisions, and to unite the Presbyterian body into one firm phalanx."16 Pictou's political skirmishing also revealed the issues important to Presbyterian interest groups, their nuances of cultural order, and the goal of power or cultural hegemony to which they were striving. Politics and religion overlapped in contestating moral/political authority in the community. Before there could be widespread public acceptance of their key professionalizing tool, credentialism, the matter of leadership needed to be settled. At the classroom level lecture notes of McCulloch's students give some inkling of his strategies to win moral authority over them. George Reny Young, for instance, was impressed with the principal's clear exposition and use of plain language; he recognized McCulloch's wide-ranging and accurate knowledge. Students were required to master the facts of the lecture and they had assigned readings to help them understand the material. Frequent reviews and pointed questions in class also helped clarify their thinking.17 Young concluded, significantly, that not only did he gain a deeper insight into human nature but the moral philosophy class helped him regulate his own conduct - a Presbyterian goal. In contrast to the tutorial methods of Oxford University and of King's College, Nova Scotia, McCulloch's pioneering college relied on lectures, review, and examinations. Two surviving sets of McCulloch's lecture notes on moral philosophy and epistemology convey typical devices used by theorists to organize subject matter onto universal planes - a necessary step towards a professional body of knowledge and the possibility of a standardized system of credentialism. McCulloch drew clear distinctions between sensation and perception; he gave definitions for logic, consciousness, generalization, judgement, and modes of reasoning. Terms, logical definitions, or propositions were thoroughly explained. The eleven classical types of argument were outlined. Reference was made to Francis Bacon's four types of illogical judgment.18 It was no wonder that the Reverend James Ross, Principal of West River Theological Seminary in 1850, claimed that the logic and moral philosophy classes were the bedrock of McCulloch's teaching. The power of Pictou's theological professors to transform students' outlook from familial/experiential onto universal/abstract planes; to build moral cultural norms into communities by means of their Presbyterian professional authority; and

61 Schooling/Credentials

to create rational institutional structures embodying their Presbyterian values was considerable by mid-century. McCulloch's providential/universal mentality was most clearly conveyed to students and to the community at large through his natural philosophy classes and in his public science lectures delivered to communities throughout the Maritimes in the 18205. They demonstrated an inductive form of thinking. From individual objects and circumstances, McCulloch explained, man first induced the materials of knowledge (genus) and then proceeded to a knowledge of an abstract truth or principle (species). McCulloch, like his Scottish Common Sense forebears, gave the scientific method ^ high priority for utilitarian rather than for metaphysical or research reasons. They believed that facility in ordering the flux of human experience as well as natural phenomena into general principles of understanding, classification, or social action became the characteristic of a liberally educated person and led to rational social development. Scottish Presbyterians valued this systematic scientific method because it complemented their Presbyterian theology, which stressed good order in church and in state as well as an integrated approach to all aspects of society. As Jerry Pittman notes19 science for Nova Scotian Protestants at that time had religious significance; nature's order and underlying unity revealed God's divine presence, implying a wise and benevolent Designer. The "two-theologies" tradition, which Christians generally believed, drew on revealed religion (revelation through the Bible) and on natural theology (reasoned interpretation of God's creation). It was understood by all Protestants, however, that Bacon's inductive method restricted science to the visible world and its description and classification. Reason, granted a greater role in grasping religious truth by Presbyterians, still was limited by the carnal mind. Church courts and their disciplinary procedures were marked characteristics, therefore, of Presbyterianism. McCulloch also recognized the potential of his scientific, liberal educational program, along with a meritocratic system of credentialism, to allow Dissenters into the ranks of the professions. Students' newly developed intelligence, by enlarging the sphere of usefulness, amplifies also the pleasure of doing good. Besides, education communicates a dignity of the human character, which neither rank nor wealth is sufficient to purchase; and it may be further observed, that, in this province, it presents prospects well calculated to concentrate the energies of your minds upon literary studies. The present state of the learned professions affords extensive scope to men of talents and literature ... this province now exhibits many proofs of a desire for

62 Education literary improvement; and very soon, in this as in other countries, ignorance will find its own station; and natural abilities cultivated by literary studies, raise their possessors to the first rank in society and to the principal offices of honour and profit.20

By 1831, as a result of their rigorous, four-year academic program at Pictou Academy and constant examination by their professors, by Presbyterian examiners, and by visiting dignitaries such as the lieutenant-governor, graduates began to attain the positions of distinction McCulloch desired for them. Jotham Blanchard, in his petition to the colonial secretary for a permanent grant and degree-granting status, could point to the widespread provincial and denominational support of over fifty graduates of Pictou Academy. Many had achieved advanced "stations in life," and had become members of the House of Assembly or were key government administrators throughout the Atlantic provinces. A number of graduates were teachers, eleven were Nova Scotian barristers, and eleven others were Presbyterian clergymen.21 Their Pictou Academy credentials had won them professional status and important positions of power. According to T. W. Acheson these were the same aspirations New Brunswick Calvinist religious leaders had in Saint John; they "directly challenged the existing order in an effort to force it to accommodate them. The issue for the Presbyterians was a share in the social and political establishment of the city and province. Under the banner of Scottish nationalism, they claimed an equal place with the Church of England in the imperial order."22 Although the term "credentialism" was not used by these ScottishCanadians, its function was clearly understood by all Presbyterians; schooling provided them with an institution that they could mould in the direction of their cultural sense of order. School credentials also were beginning to provide their students and theological graduates with a competitive edge over other denominations with respect to access to political power, to professional monopoly, and to moral authority in community affairs. In order to solidify their position and further to control the direction of schooling in Nova Scotia, Presbyterians began to dominate all educational positions in north-eastern Nova Scotia during the 18405 and 18505. In 1841 the legislature distinguished combined common and grammar schools from academies, giving the latter a separate board of trustees. Shortly thereafter the provincial school committee began to receive complaints about Presbyterian control of teaching appointments and of the allocation of salaries in various counties. The petitioners wanted higher authorities to intervene. Residents of

63

Schooling/Credentials

Antigonish, for instance, complained that their well-qualified (Roman Catholic) sons were refused teaching positions and "the place filled by strangers brought from Pictou and other places. That the latter were principally young men from Pictou intended for the Presbyterian Church, who merely took the situation for a year or two until the profits of it enabled them to prosecute their studies in some of the colleges. That in this manner the office of Schoolmaster here has been made a convenience for the purpose of forwarding the interests of these young men and of those of the same profession of religion here."23 There was equal objection in 1853 from a Church of England minister with a parish in Albion Mines, outside of New Glasgow: "Every presbyterian minister in the county, I believe, is ... Commissioner of Schools, they constantly attend and examine these Schools."24 Now that an Episcopalian church was established at Albion Mines, the Reverend Joseph Forsythe claimed that he should be given a voice in school affairs. When J. William Dawson, a Pictou Academy graduate who was appointed Nova Scotia's first superintendent of education in 1850, encouraged teachers to form teachers' associations, he began to receive a range of reports on the types of meetings and reactions of teachers to this new form of collegiality Daniel MacDonald, secretary of the Durham Teachers' Association, reported on the agenda of their five meetings. Topics included new historiographical interpretations of the Bible, public meetings on Dawson's proposed school legislation, the importance of practical education and of scientific agriculture, the office of the teacher, the study of history and geography, and the future prospects of Nova Scotia. All of these topics were reflections of Presbyterian post-millennial cultural values, which stressed progressive improvement on earth.25 MacDonald allied this to the importance of professional counsel and collegial unity fostered by the association, which also helped to improve teachers' qualifications and to bring them a higher status in the eyes of the community. The professional ideal was being disseminated across the province via these teachers' associations. They were important policy precursors for a provincial system of free schooling and meritocratic credentialism. Dawson and his Free Church successor, the Reverend Alexander Forrester, in their Normal and Free School campaigns also promoted another form of Scottish school culture. David Hogan calls it the "affectionate authority"26 form of discipline advanced by evangelicals all over the western industrialized world. Dawson and Forrester derived their model of this experience-centred elementary schooling from David Stow's Model School in Glasgow. Teachers trained by Normal and Model Schools, which used a variety of concrete aids

64 Education

and catechetical teaching methods, were considered more effective in implanting internal forms of conscience in the student and in encouraging self-development. The institutions established a new form of specialization in teaching, or division of labour, promoted by Adam Smith and subsequent Scottish political economists as a more efficient/moral polity.27 However in clearly distinguishing the two levels of schooling and embedding different cultural values in each, school policy makers were on the one hand creating a form of credentialized contest mobility28 at the high school level, and on the other, ideals of universal availability of schooling at the common school level. They were constructing social class divisions based on Scottish notions of a hierarchy of merit, thereby providing opportunity for vertical mobility through schooling to talented rural youth. In 1855 Dawson left Nova Scotia to take up the position of principal of McGill University. He believed that Scottish Canadians should lead the way in a higher type of citizenship that would promote the development of British North America. "Gradually there will grow up in the glens of the Laurentian territory," he speculated, "a race of hardy Canadian hill-men, who, if sufficiently leavened by the elevating influences of Christianity and education, will be of inestimable value to the country, both in peace and [in] war."29 The energy and force of character of these "elect" would meet the physical difficulties they would encounter in the development of the country and a "national sentiment" would be created. Suzanne Zeller calls this new Canadian vision "an imaginative idealization of reality. The perceived powers of science lay at the very root of this leap of faith and lent to it an aura of inevitability ... At its core lay a growing popular interest in the study and control of nature, and a concomitant faith in recognized 'experts' in this field of knowledge."30 Significantly, "character" was allied to "expertise"; meritocratic culture was justified now on moral as well as on political/scientific grounds. By mid-century, therefore, not only was the design of a credentialized system of schooling for Nova Scotia on the drawing-board but myths of Scottish-Presbyterian pre-eminence that would justify their continuing dominance over the construction of the system were being promulgated. This was just prior to Presbyterian initiatives in 1856 to re-open Dalhousie College, which had closed the year of McCulloch's death in 1843. Dawson saw a draft of a report in the Presbyterian Witness of a meeting by the three Presbyterian groups with Dalhousie's board of governors to discuss the formation of a provincial university. He and other Pictou Academy alumni quickly took the lead in bringing this proposal to fruition. He wrote the Honourable William Young, Liberal Premier of Nova Scotia whose two

65 Schooling/Credentials

brothers had attended Pictou Academy, to propose that Young open negotiations with the Presbyterians or with other churches to allow them access to Dalhousie's buildings, and he suggested sharing of teaching staff and free scholarships to students in return for the privilege of establishing endowed chairs for their professors. Young set up a committee, chaired by another Pictonian, the Honourable Adams Archibald, who was strongly supported by a third, the Reverend George M. Grant, newly inducted minister of St Matthew's Church. The Congregationalists co-operated with the three Presbyterian groups and negotiations led to the re-organization of Dalhousie College in 1863. The Reverend James Ross, also a Pictou Academy graduate who now was a professor at Truro Divinity Hall, was appointed Dalhousie's second president following in the footsteps of his mentor, McCulloch. Three of six seats on the board of governors were given to the newly-formed (1860) Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America, which comprised the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia and the Free Church of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. In turn the Presbyterians endowed three chairs and were allowed to appoint three professors (including Thomas McCulloch, Junior, who had also been at Truro Divinity Hall). The Dalhousie curriculum emulated the elder McCulloch's Scottish-Pictou program. Ross demanded that natural philosophy and natural history, chemistry, logic, and moral philosophy be included as well as Latin, Greek, and modern languages. At the first convocation of the college in 1864 a library was inaugurated through the enthusiasm and fund-raising skills of Grant, who in 1877 would become principal of Queen's College in Kingston, Ontario.31 Although Dalhousie College was styled as a secular, provincial university, because Presbyterians assumed a heavy financial obligation they were given a large measure of power to institutionalize their cultural values. Their denominational influence was concealed by the provincial structure of this centralized institution. With the passage of the Education Acts of 1864-6, the people of Nova Scotia became aware of the meritocratic Scottish school system which Pictonians had helped to construct. The Normal School received $4,700 and the superintendent of education $1,600. Dalhousie College's provincial supremacy was secured with its $3,000 grant. The denominational colleges, which had been created by Dissenters after withdrawing their support for Pictou Academy because of its feuds in the 18205, were each allocated $1,000; they now included King's (Anglican), Acadia (Baptist), St Mary's (Roman Catholic), St Francis Xavier (Scottish Roman Catholic), Mount Allison (Methodist), and Pictou Academy. The CPI, composed of members of the

66 Education

executive council and the superintendent of education, now administered an educational system largely designed by Dawson and Forrester. The latter was shocked, therefore, to find himself superseded by his junior Baptist colleague at the Normal School, Theodore H. Rand, as the new superintendent of education. Margaret Conrad observes in retrospect, Despite its unpopularity in certain quarters, Rand's appointment demonstrated [Dr Charles] Tupper 's shrewdness in handling difficult issues of public policy. It was popular with the Baptists who were strongly represented in the ranks of the Conservative Party and who harboured a grudging sense that Presbyterian influence had undue weight at provincially funded institutions such as the Normal School and the recently resuscitated Dalhousie College. It also satisfied Conservative partisans who saw Forrester as an unregenerate Liberal who had actually campaigned against Tupper in the Cumberland election of i857.32

What were the consequences of this Scottish-Canadian cultural domination of Nova Scotia's schooling? In the first place Pictou Academy students began in disproportionate numbers to garner the scholarships and bursaries at Dalhousie College, especially after 1880 when another former student of Pictou Academy, George Munro, donated more than $350,000 in exhibitions (scholarships) and bursaries for students as well as endowing chairs. Beginning in 1870 Dalhousie launched its subsequent professionalizing emphasis by organizing a medical faculty that year and a school of law in 1883. J. Gordon MacGregor, grandson of Pictou's Presbyterian founder, the Reverend James MacGregor, assumed Munro's first chair of physics in 1879. Two Pictou Academy teachers in the i86os and early 18705, Herbert Bayne and John J. McKenzie, were the first Nova Scotians to obtain doctorates in science at German universities. They subsequently became professors of chemistry and physics at Dalhousie. In 1881 Pictou Academy students won $1,000 in matriculation prizes; two won exhibitions of $400 for two years and two others tied for first place for the $150 Munro bursaries. The effect of these matriculation prizes was to make MacKay, now principal of the academy, emphasize even more drill methods of teaching, examinations, and public displays of students' marks and grade levels.33 He solicited prizes from alumni, for instance a $25 prize in 1882 from Major General Laurie of Oakfield, who in the i86os had regularly inspected the Pictou militia. Since 1877 a silver cup had been awarded to the top prize-winner at the academy. In 1887 a gold medal was awarded to the competitor with the highest marks in the winter term, the second-place finisher

67 Schooling/Credentials

receiving the silver cup. By means of his classroom strategies and through public displays of individual examination results, prizes, scholarships, and bursaries, MacKay institutionalized what had previously been informal procedures of gate-keeping. Grading and class (rather than individual) programming of students completed the efficient implementation of the school's credentializing function. Once again outside critics questioned the domination of Pictou Presbyterians. "Cecil," writing in 1882 in The Morning Herald (Halifax), stated that it was not surprising that a greater number of mature students now chose Pictou Academy's fourth-year class; its curriculum was designed to gain their entry into Dalhousie College. He questioned whether this necessarily meant that Pictou Academy was the best training school in the province and why it alone of all similar institutions received $1400 in annual grants. Intimating that this sum had "very much the appearance of a bribe, or especial [sic] inducement, to Pictou County to support the late leader [Hon. Simon Holmes, Pictou Academy student in 1849] and his colleagues in the recent election ... considered in connection with what the Presbyterian body already enjoys of public money invested in Dalhousie College, induces one to believe that in this Province justice has her blind eye turned in the direction of those institutions which are under the especial patronage of our Presbyterian brethren."34 In a later defence of Pictou County's leadership an 1884 lead editorial in the same paper noted that of four junior exhibitions and seven bursaries awarded students in Nova Scotia, six were given to Pictou Academy students and none to students from the academies at Wolfville, Mount Allison, or Windsor. More than half of all the prizes were awarded to students from Pictou County alone. Few of the sixteen other academies taught French (only eight), French authors (five), or Greek.35 Robert Anderson notes that by this date (i88os) a large number of Scottish leaders came from a wide social range (as in Nova Scotia) and he speculates that liberal social theory with its myth of the "lad o' pairts" could be used by educational reformers (such as MacKay) as a justification for their remodelling of the system along class lines that reinforced structural inequalities. He suggests that "liberal social theory legitimated a competitive, individualist society: if the social hierarchy was open to merit, and genuine talent could always reach the top, then middle-class social domination was felt to rest on ability rather than [on] privilege." In an industrial age meritocracy was held to be necessary because there was supposedly limited opportunity. Anderson also judges that the general level of middle-class culture by the 18705 was higher in Scotland than in England and that there was little gulf between the classes. In the i88os, as a result of the secondary

68 Education

school reforms in Scotland, "the educational ladder was inviting and most efficient in small and medium-sized towns [such as Pictou], where the secondary school was likely to be free and the elementary schools less overwhelmed by the task of drilling basic education into the industrious masses."36 There was a cost to bear, however, for this meritocratic Scottish model of secondary schooling. In the 1891 student population at Pictou Academy, for instance, only 16 percent of the first-year class was promoted, only 21 percent of the second-year class, and only 14 percent of the third-year class. While a brilliant student - such as Henry Munro, who succeeded MacKay as superintendent of education for Nova Scotia in 1926 - took only four years to pass all levels of schooling at Pictou Academy, 41 percent of the fourth-year students took two years to complete the required twenty examination papers. At the lower levels attendance patterns varied according to the domicile of the students. For instance in the third-year class 79 percent of the students from outside Pictou County (33 in number) remained at the academy for only two years, whereas 72 percent of those from Pictou Town (10) were in attendance for five or six years. A similar "holding pattern" for Pictou Town students (37) existed in the second year; 86 percent of them attended for four to six years and only 8 were promoted. Although half of the 279 students in 1891 were from Pictou Town, their promotion rates (12 in year one; 8 in year two; 2 in year three; 3 in year four) demonstrated that they were not given any special advantages over their rural counterparts as far as promotion was concerned. Male students appeared to dominate the rolls of the upper classes (5 females in class four and 16 in class three). In the second, first, and special fine arts classes, on the other hand, females predominated by 59 percent, 62 percent, and 96 percent respectively.37 The holding pattern for adolescents and the gate-keeping function of secondary schools for access to universities and to the professions were by this time well established. The long-term effects of this meritocratic, credentializing form of Scottish schooling were noted in a 1935 survey of Canadian education which Fred Clarke portrayed as having "a common countenance" of graded structure, drill, and overemphasis on examinations. As a result, he concluded, "many Canadian schools at present seem to succeed in imposing upon the pupil a severe demand for sheer laboriousness with a very low demand for genuine, spontaneous, intellectual effort. The effect of such a condition in dulling the finer sensibilities, in retarding the growth of real powers, and in encouraging a heavy and conformable mediocrity, needs no emphasis."38 Was this a result of overzealous administrative regulation, as Yorston hinted in his satirical

69 Schooling/Credentials

account? This paper suggests that it was instead the side-effect of the professional aspirations of Scottish Canadians, whose evangelical school culture cultivated individualistic ideals, rational institutional structures, and efficient use of private networks to gain power in key areas of public administration,^ leaving behind in Pictou and other Canadian towns those who could not jump through the credentializing hoops they had constructed.

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5 Thomas McCulloch's Fictional Celebration of the Reverend James MacGregor GWENDOLYN DAVIES

In Tom Stoppard's 1993 play, Arcadia, the playwright juxtaposes the wildness, romanticism, and irregularity of early nineteenth-century "picturesque" landscape gardening against the serenity, orderliness, and gentleness of the parks and pathways shaped by eighteenth-century exponents of the sublime and the beautiful. "Your drawing is a very wonderful transformation," notes Lady Croome in the play as she regards the plans for the reshaping of her grounds at Sidley Park in 1809: Here is the Park as it appears to us now, and here as it might be when Mr Noakes has done with it. Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman's garden here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring nor a stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch. My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge, which I am assured is superior to the one at Kew, and for all I know at Peking, is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars.1

Her gardener, Mr Noakes, assures her that "Irregularity is one of the chiefest principles of the picturesque style," but Lady Croome remains dubious about the merits of a grand plan that sees the symbolic refinement of the gazebo replaced by a rustic hovel in the wilderness occupied by a solitary, ruminating hermit. As one of the modern commentators in Arcadia notes, "The history of the garden says it all."2 In 1730 Sidley Park is "Paradise in the age of reason." By

74 Literature 1760 everything has gone. And by the time that Richard Noakes enters the play in 1809 "to bring God up to date/' "the decline from thinking to feeling/' from the Enlightenment to Romanticism, has taken place. There is much in the conflict of cultures in Arcadia to recall the literary essays and the times of Thomas McCulloch (1776-1843), for despite his seeming removal from the preoccupations of Sidley Park in Arcadia, he was a child of the rational Enlightenment thrust into the subjectivity, irregularity, and romanticism of the Napoleonic Age and the settlement of British North America. His 1821-23 "Mephibosheth Stepsure Letters," the literary essays that earned him a reputation as the founder of Canadian humour,3 are perhaps the least characteristic of McCulloch's works in illustrating his preoccupations as a citizen of the Romantic era. Focusing on themes of social responsibility and the foibles of human nature, they remain an outstanding example of the satire and the eighteenth-century sketch form so effectively used by Enlightenment writers from Benjamin Franklin to Dean Swift (to whom William Blackwood compared McCulloch). Rather it is McCulloch's lesser-known 1826 immigrant tales, Colonial Gleanings: William and Melville, and his 1833 unpublished "Morton/Robert" story, that best reflect McCulloch's nineteenth-century literary preoccupations. Often dismissed as moral parables, these works are in fact grounded in events of current history and adopt conventions of current landscape description. They reflect the economic difficulties afflicting the Lowlands after Waterloo as thousands of demobilized soldiers flocked back into a depressed post-war economy. They catch the dislocation of the weaver class made redundant by new technology. They highlight a sense of cultural fragmentation as Scottish immigrants try to re-establish themselves in the harsh climate and undeveloped landscape of Nova Scotia. They echo one of the most popular themes of the Romantic era, given precedence by William Blake and William Wordsworth, as they juxtapose the moral and social degradation of the city (in this case, Halifax) against the spiritual and restorative possibilities afforded by the country. And they bring into their exploration of the Scot in the wilderness a sense of the historicity that informed in the "Old Country" the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott. Always proud of his covenanting ancestry, McCulloch saw in Scott's Old Mortality (1816) a challenge to his own sense of worth and justice. In the tales of Melville, Auld Eppie, "Morton," and the later unpublished Days of the Covenant, he wrote against what he saw as Scott's denigration of the Scotch Worthies. His design was, as he noted of Auld Eppie, "to vindicate where he [Scott] has misrepresented and also to render

75 McCulloch's Fictional Celebration of MacGregor contemptible and ludicrous what he has laboured to dignify."4 To that end McCulloch turned in Melville and the "Morton/Robert" tale to a contemporary archetype of the principles and conduct that he saw epitomized in his covenanting ancestors, and, in the process, celebrated in his fiction his colleague and spiritual father, the Reverend Dr James MacGregor of East River in Pictou County. In approaching MacGregor's figure in his writing McCulloch fell back on certain stock conventions of the period to highlight both the challenge of MacGregor's task in the new world and the valour with which he met it. Melville and "Morton" are both immigrant stories. The former was published by Oliphant's of Edinburgh in 1826 with William, a novella written "for the information of those parents and children who found their hopes of happiness upon the acquisition of wealth in foreign lands."5 A Secessionist Presbyterian theme is established early in Melville by references to Melville's Cameronian neighbour in Scotland, the weaver, Andrew Welwood, and by explanations of Melville's ancestral burden. His great-grandfather, a member of the Episcopal Church, betrayed and condemned William's covenanting ancestor described in the first story in Melville. Unlike Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 speaker in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, who assumes responsibility for the guilt of his ancestors and tries to expiate that guilt in the telling of his story6 Melville flees from his sense of guilt by immigrating to Nova Scotia. He is the archetypal industrious apprentice, and like Morton in the 1833 story written years later by McCulloch, he ascends the professional ladder in Halifax by earning the respect of his employer, eschewing the card-playing, gambling antics of his fellow clerks, and saving his money. However like Morton, Melville is of a shallow religious disposition and it is only when the two protagonists independently enter the dark forest of the Nova Scotian wilderness that they face a spiritual challenge that alters their lives. Religious art of the Middle Ages frequently depicted the Christian lost in a spiritual wilderness as surrounded by forest and beast, a motif reiterated by Hawthorne in his 1835 story of the dark side of the soul, "Young Goodman Brown." McCulloch moves Melville and Morton, his spiritually vacuous men of the Romantic age, into the symbolic black forest of the undeveloped hinterland lying between Halifax and Pictou. Rational men, they find themselves among the irregularities, gloominess, and impenetrability of a wilderness as abhorrent to their sense of orderly taste as the conversion of Sidley Park is to Lady Croome in Stoppard's Arcadia. As Melville stumbles, lost in the duskiness of the wilderness, he scrambles over "numerous windfalls and rocks," forces his way "through the underwood," and eventually emerges on "the summit of a precipice."7

76 Literature The language and the perspective of the wilderness scenes in Melville and "Morton" reiterate the conventions of picturesque landscape description found in travelogues, novels, and poems in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Morton's experience is little different from Melville's. Sent to Pictou on a business venture in the 1833 story, he is overwhelmed by "the gigantic provocations of nature lowering in majesty," the elevations that disclose only vast tracts of forest, and the stillness that breeds troubled thoughts of the grave.8 Challenged and disconcerted in each case by the tumultuousness of a landscape that deconstructs their sense of the sublime and the beautiful, Melville and, later, Morton find in a hermit and a hermitage - stock devices in picturesque landscape gardening of the Romantic era as described in Stoppard's play - solace for their troubled souls. In Old Nelson Melville finds a worldly military man who has retreated to the wilderness with his Scriptures and his family to discover the sanctity of grace. In "honest Robert Marshall" in the Morton story, Morton discovers in this godly Scots weaver living in his forest hut an exemplar of all that is holy and charitable. In each case the pious hermit figure is the agent of bringing to the protagonists, Melville and Morton, their spiritual saviour, MacGregor, for in this wise old man of the cloth they find the stimulus for the awakening of their souls. In the 1826 story of Melville, MacGregor is at first introduced by the McCulloch narrator as disregarding "fatigue" and outbraving "danger, that the lost sheep of the desert might be returned to the fold."9 However it is in the fictional Christian debate between MacGregor and Melville that the religiosity of the wise old man is allowed to unfold. In the piety and rectitude of MacGregor in the story emerges a reincarnation of the historical Covenanters' integrity and self-sacrifice that McCulloch so clearly admires. Melville's hasty denunciation of MacGregor re-emphasizes his role as a foil figure to the clergyman. However, he is not destined to repeat the folly of his great-grandfather, for in the New World he eventually accepts the Secessionist values that his ancestor in Scotland once betrayed. McCulloch's letter to MacGregor from Newcastle, England, on 6 April 1826 notes delightedly about Melville that "I have published the tale which I read to you so that you see you are figuring away among your old friends."10 Having negotiated Colonial Gleanings: William and Melville through the presses of Oliphant's in Edinburgh in January 1826, McCulloch clearly saw his tale as cementing bonds between the old Secessionists and the new, between the Old World and Nova Scotia. By contrast McCulloch's 1833 story of Morton and Robert Marshall provides a more historical overview of MacGregor's role in opening

77 McCulloch's Fictional Celebration of MacGregor

the Secessionist Church in Nova Scotia. Written three years after MacGregor's death it was composed, as McCulloch indicates to his potential publishers in Scotland in December 1833, "expressly for the purpose of commemorating the work of that good man Dr MacGregor"11 by placing in perspective his enormous contribution to the development of the church. Moreover, as McCulloch turned his thoughts to the history of the Covenanters in 1833 while working on his novel The Days of the Covenant, the synergy between MacGregor's life and that of the early Secessionists was no doubt reinforced for McCulloch. By stressing MacGregor's challenges from British authority, his ministry to the hearths of humble Scots settlers eager for instruction, his physical endurance as he travelled through storm, winter, and distance to sleep on only a bundle of hay, and his unceasing piety and patience, McCulloch "vindicated his ancestors" by creating in his fictionalized MacGregor a symbol of holiness worthy of their suffering: During the preceding period the clergyman's exertions to do good were without intermission. The whole district of Pictou was his home: on sabbath he preached to the assembled settlers and then on the other days of the week following them to their homes he taught them from house to house. The poverty of a hut never impeded the instruction of its inmates. The very scantiness of their fare he converted into religious improvement. Midnight would find them collected around him in eager listening and then perhaps a little straw laid before the fire proved his couch till morning. Few men have excelled him in capacity of converting incidental circumstances to the account of religion. Few have exemplified such zeal in the profitable use of his talent and his success evinced the value of religious conversation from the lips of kindness. In his presence whether the young talked of amusement or the old of business their thoughts finally flowed in the channel of Christian improvement. Occasionally also he traversed Nova Scotia and the adjacent provinces gladdening the wilderness with the tidings of salvation. There as well as in Pictou the blessing from above rested upon his labours: wherever he had been the prospect of his return was joyfully hailed.12

Morton's sighting of a crimson-clothed British soldier in the dell just before MacGregor's Secessionist sermon is to take place filled him with historical memories of "a Covenanter's scene and reminded Morton of those times when the intrusions of cruelty interrupted the outpourings of mercy. But there was neither the sound of the trumpet nor the alarm of war: there was no Claverhouse to stain the beauty of holiness with the blood of the saints."13 Such deliberate historical evocations of the killing times speak of McCulloch's intention to cast MacGregor in a Covenanter mode in the

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Morton story, as do references to the simplicity of his garb as representing "primitive times." Into the "precipitous steeps/' "rugged projections of rock" and "picturesque" appearances of the forest, scenes that MacGregor is shown to seek out, MacGregor infuses compassion, learning, an appreciation for natural history, and biblical grace. This point is reinforced in the story by McCulloch's frequently giving to MacGregor passages from the Psalms that emphasize that the works of the Lord are to be found in nature and the seasons. Where nature exists crudely, rudely, and wildly in its archetypal romantic form in the story, replete with ruins and tragic deaths, MacGregor moves with a sense of order, harmony, grace, and the gentleness of the beautiful and sublime. The "young gentleman" to whom he speaks in the Morton story may try to disguise the "bare rock" and "dense growth" of the wilderness with "flowering creepers" and a "rustic bench,"14 but the artifice of his educated standards of taste cannot hide the "doubt brooding in darkness"15 that identifies his soul. No such ambiguity surrounds MacGregor. For him sublimity is not just rationalized but heaven-inspired. By juxtaposing the calm voice of this man of God against the chaotic wilderness of doubt, McCulloch brings a vision of order to the untamed hinterland. The voice of MacGregor is the voice of God, a bulwark against the symbolic wilderness of the spirit and the literal wilderness of Nova Scotia.

6 George Patterson: Presbyterian Propagandist A L L A N C. D U N L O P

George Patterson was born at Pictou on 30 April 1824, son of Abraham and Christina Ann (MacGregor) Patterson. His paternal grandfather, John, came out on the "Hector" and is recognized as the "Father of Pictou." His paternal grandmother, Ann, was a daughter of Matthew Harris, a member of the Philadelphia Company which brought the first white settlers to the Pictou area in 1767. His mother was a daughter of Reverend Dr James MacGregor, pioneer Presbyterian missionary to the Pictou area in 1786. Patterson was a youth of six when MacGregor died.1 No doubt he retained childhood recollections of the venerable MacGregor but one suspects the major influences on his life were Reverend John McKinlay2 and Dr Thomas McCulloch, both of whom taught Patterson at Pictou Academy. One historian has suggested that McCulloch "drew adrenaline from the vitality of his hatreds,"3 but between these many battles he conducted one of the best schools in the province. Pictou in Patterson's formative years was an area of vitality and growth, with a population of 1,600, second in size to Halifax only. In 1827 the General Mining Association commenced its coal mining operations at Albion Mines and Jotham Blanchard's Colonial Patriot became the first newspaper to appear outside Halifax since 1787. As a teenager Patterson may even have been present for the first run of the locomotive the "Samson" in 1839. His emerging intellectual interests would have been challenged through his membership in the Pictou Literary and Scientific Society. At home over porridge two themes would dominate - Presbyterianism and politics. Such was

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the cultural milieu he pondered as he rested, his books about him, at his New Glasgow home on 19 April 1878. It had been eighteen months since Patterson left his pastorate at Salem Presbyterian Church, Greenhill, Nova Scotia,4 and removed his family and his house to Lavinia St, New Glasgow. He had entered his fifty-fifth year and there lay behind him a significant contribution to his Presbyterian Church. Through his writings and service on boards and agencies of the church, he had supported and overseen many important initiatives. There is however a sense of "if only" in Patterson's entire career. He was, as his letter to Reverend Peter Gordon MacGregor suggests, restless and adrift: I have always felt a deep personal interest in missions. When a young man I seriously considered the question of going to the Foreign field, and as far as the sacrifices required were concerned would have been ready to go. But the only Foreign mission we had then was the New Hebrides and whether right or wrong I never could see that I was adapted for the kind of work required of a missionary there, and on the other hand it seemed that always that there was a work at home to which I seemed called both by adaptation of gifts and circumstances in Providence.5

There is pathos in that admission. It evokes the words of a writer: "I see a hand you cannot see, it beckons me away. I hear a voice you cannot hear, it bids me no more stay. "6 But he could never quite reach out to the unseen hand, never quite respond to the call to foreign service. Life's choices are not always easy. Even less so for a teenager pondering a vocation. In May 1841 Patterson, just turned seventeen, received a missive from the Reverend John Campbell urging him to enter the ministry. Campbell was passionate, blunt, and not too charitable: The business of the Medical profession is not to be envied. A lawyer is now a contemptible character. The profession is crowded with boobies and (?). I never scarcely knew ever a lawyer of principle. If you wish to cultivate science and literature you can do so in the ministry. The most learned men in the world are ministers. I beseech you then do not throw away your talents by entering any of these low employments such as merchants, lawyers & printers.7

While Campbell's arguments may have been convincing they may also have overestimated Patterson's economic circumstances. There is no doubt his family was of comfortable means but funds to study abroad would have to be found. Over a three-year period, 1843-6,

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Patterson overcame this financial concern by serving as first editor of the Pictou Eastern Chronicle. In the Chronicle office he also tutored John Geddie in the operations of the printing press.8 His writings made an impression both throughout the province and within the Presbyterian Church. Even after he had determined to study for the ministry and departed for the University of Edinburgh, there is a hint of a torn soul agonizing over the pull of journalism, politics, and the cloth. The fall of the James William Johnston administration in Nova Scotia elicited this diary entry on Valentine's Day, 1848: "I had drawn my pen if not my sword against the system which has now come to an end. It is with no small satisfaction I heard of its winding up." Two weeks later his diary noted "the access to power of Howe and his friends. Hurrah! I for one echo from the old world the acclamations now ringing throughout Nova Scotia."9 In May 1849 it had been six months since Patterson had returned from his studies and he must have been wondering if he was going to receive a call. On 12 May (his call to Salem Church, Greenhill came eight days later) he penned a letter to George Young, author, journalist, and member of the legislature for Pictou County, outlining his views on the state of journalism in Nova Scotia.10 Thus encouraged, Young, aided by his brother William, also a member of the legislature, commenced a three-year campaign to lure Patterson from the pulpit into the editor's chair of a newspaper they proposed to establish in Halifax. In essence Patterson had proposed a small "L" liberal, large "P" Presbyterian publication. William Young was leery of the proposition, and spoke with the voice of practical experience. "You will do wisely in giving it such a form as will encourage the sympathies of your Presbyterian friends without making it a religious paper, which I would not recommend."" George was not as easily deterred. He again wrote Patterson mentioning a starting salary of £250, double Patterson's ministerial stipend, and then resorted to flattery: "This is a field better fitted for your talents than the duties of a rural parish, not that I undervalue these, far from it. But you have a pen which ought to give you a wider destiny."12 By then however Patterson had been settled in his new charge for three months and as events would transpire another editor's position beckoned. The Board of Foreign Missions of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia recognized the need for promoting work in foreign fields. Four years previously, and then only by a single vote, the synod had approved the venture into foreign missionary work and the individual to undertake the task. In Geddie they had found a unifying candidate,13 although Rev. Thomas Trotter publicly labelled him as unsuitable.14 Geddie's designation service at Pictou took place

82 Literature on 3 November 1846 and the first of his many letters from the New Hebrides arrived in Nova Scotia in 1848. Many felt these missives merited a wider circulation than that provided by the general press. At the synod meetings in July 1849, Rev. John McCurdy, Miramichi, requested synod to "appoint a committee to superintend the publication of a cheap monthly periodical to give information respecting our domestic and foreign missions and other matters pertaining to the church." The synod demurred, arguing that "the object would be more likely to be secured without the direct interference or decision of the Synod."15 The Board of Foreign Missions moved into the void and approached Edward M. MacDonald of the Eastern Chronicle for quotes for the publication. By 30 October the fledgling had a name The Missionary Register of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia - an editor, James W. Dawson, Pictou, a proposed press run of 1000, or one copy per five families, and a policy of gratis distribution in the first year of publication. Less than a month later Patterson was appointed joint editor with Dawson.16 In November a publication statement was struck: "Agreed that the editors be requested to publish all papers having the authority of the Board; but that the insertion of other communications or articles be discretionary with them (the editors); subject however, to an appeal to the Board."17 The first issue of the sixteen-page magazine appeared in January 1850. It contained an opening article by McKinlay, an unsigned message from the editors, comments on home missions, correspondence with Geddie, and an historical article on the early church in Nova Scotia by Rev. John Waddell.18 The succeeding issues varied only slightly from this format - home missions had the lead articles and a youth report would be added, historical articles appeared on a regular basis, and new features included reports and listings of fund-raising efforts and obituaries of leading church members. The meetings of synod were extensively covered in immediately subsequent issues. By May 1850 Patterson was sole editor and the price of the monthly was cut from 2s. to is. 3p. - about $.25 per year. As editor Patterson had to walk a fine line. In 1850 he was aged twenty-six, and along with Isaac Murray the youngest member of a synod whose average age was forty-five. A familiar and timeless debate - whether resources should go into home or foreign missions - constantly agitated synod meetings. In June 1850 the synod minutes report that "a long and interesting discussion followed, chiefly in reference to the publication of the Missionary Register, the propriety of its continuance and the best means of rendering it self-sustaining."19 The following year Patterson threatened to resign unless the printer could ensure a more regular publication of the magazine.20

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In May of 1852 the Missionary Register published comments by Geddie that were critical of fellow missionary Isaac Archibald who had recently resigned. This resulted in the board instructing the editor not to publish anything that reflected upon the missionaries until they had reviewed such material.21 Patterson tendered his resignation but apparently was persuaded to remain as three years later he was still attempting to sever his connections with the publication.22 Of some interest is the fact that in 1855 the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia also decided to publish a journal. There is a significant difference in approach and content between the two journals. The first issue of the Monthly Record of the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia appeared in January 1855 and was published by "a number of the friends of the Church in Halifax." The subscription rate for the sixteen page journal was 25. 6pv payable in advance, and the journal carried paid advertising. By the fifth issue "and the adjoining Provinces" was added to the masthead of the publication. The publishers frankly acknowledged they did not wish to assume those outside of Nova Scotia would automatically support the journal - an indication perhaps of the independent nature of the Church of Scotland. The publication had a heavily Scottish content with little comment upon events in the Maritimes. These early issues thus seemed to contradict the prospectus that outlined the objectives of the new publication: The pages of this periodical will be devoted to the diffusion of general religious intelligence, - and more especially to the latest and fullest information relating to the Ecclesiastical, Educational, and Missionary undertakings of the Church of Scotland, at home and abroad. While avoiding controversy as much as possible, the editors will feel themselves called upon to correct any misstatements or misapprehensions prejudicial to the interests of their Church, and to use every effort for the extension of her influence in this and adjoining Provinces. They will also avail themselves of vacant space for the introduction of devotional articles, in order to render the publication suitable for Sabbath reading.23

Even as the Church of Scotland took its first tentative steps in publishing, the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia was contemplating an expanded journal. The Missionary Register would continue to appear but an expanded publication of forty-eight pages was considered. "Of this edition the last 16 pages will be the same as the Register. The remaining 32 pages will be occupied with articles of general or passing interest to the Church - with a selection of devotional and family readings, and a summary of religious intelligence."24 The magazine would sell for 55 (possibly a reflection on the fact the Register had never yet

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paid expenses) and be entitled The Christian Instructor and Missionary Register of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia. Published in Halifax by James Barnes, also publisher of the Presbyterian Witness, the first issue appeared in January 1856. The monthly cost for 1300 copies of the Missionary Register was £6 53. and for 900 copies of the expanded journal £12 155. Patterson now received an honorarium of £20 per annum.25 By 1859 Patterson had too much on his plate - his congregational responsibilities, his public church business, "not to speak of the labours of authorship, (all) have prevented him giving that attention to the periodical which he would have desired."26 The fact the periodicals were not self-sustaining also bothered Patterson. He tendered his resignation for the third time in i85827 but as of December 1859 he was still editing the expanded journal. The synod too was concerned. The Reverend William McCulloch moved that it "issue a distinct declaration respecting the existing connection between such periodicals and the Church, and how far the Church is responsible for the views which they contain."28 With the union in 1860 of the Free Church of Nova Scotia and the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia to form the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America, the two church periodicals were amalgamated with the Free Church publication, the Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record of the Free Church of Nova Scotia, eventually to be titled The Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America. What is surprising is that periodicals that commenced with the avowed purpose of chiefly promoting foreign missions not only succeeded in that objective but also became an informative and even lively source with which to measure the state and health of the church at home. While Patterson might assert that "the lives of most ministers is of such a calm and uniform tenor, as to present few materials for biography/'29 the periodicals he edited and the publications he began to author seem to contradict his contention. The Presbyterian Church tended to be proudly cautious and conservative. An interesting insight into the collective psyche of the Presbyterian community of the period is summarized in the Missionary Register as it reported upon a proposal to synod to permit congregations that wished to do so to use a new psalmody: It should be observed that the discussion of the subject did not turn upon the merits of the book in question; the greater number of those who opposed or hesitated to permit its introduction confessed that they either had not seen, or had very superficially examined it. The main hinderance was found to be the dread of innovation which is so powerfully felt and manifested in Presbyterian

85 George Patterson

Dr George Patterson, 1824-1897. "He looked out with a broad and clear intelligence upon all that was going on in church and world." (Courtesy Public Archives of Nova Scotia, ^3183)

communities. This spirit is to be revered as conservative of the best interests of the church, and of human society at large. The capricious humours of an hour or a day are thus kept back from the hallowed precincts of that religion which is of hoar antiquity.30 Patterson had a sharp eye for a good story and used it effectively to promote and encourage support for foreign mission work. Consider this snippet from the Register:

86 Literature In the notices of sums received by the Treasurer during the past month will be found six shillings and six pence from Mrs Jackson, Cape John Road. This sum constitutes the legacy of a poor widow, who in giving, gave her all, and although it be comparatively a mite, it is yet the widow's mite. It was given on her death bed, and doubtless with her dying prayers in behalf of the mission at Aneiteum. When reminded of her own necessities and what comforts the sum might procure for her last hours, she resolutely refused to suffer one fraction of it to be taken for any such purpose, exclaiming, "Give it all - it is little enough."31

Frank and emotional letters to the editor began to appear in the Register, certainly a sign the journal was being read by its subscribers. Roderick MacGregor, New Glasgow, son of Dr MacGregor, was horrified at a proposal that the synod purchase mortgages in order to create an endowment or investment fund for the West River Seminary. He warned of the potential for lawsuits and then queried: "Does the Master and Head of the Church sanction or approve of the Church begging money to buy and sell mortgages? to oppress the poor, and turn some of her own members on the highway, houseless and penny less [sic]? Does he approve of the Church striving to be rich in the world's goods? anxious to become money brokers?"32 Surprisingly even book reviews could lead to controversy. Extracts from Patterson's A Few Remains of the Life of the Reverend James MacGregor, D.D. led to a lengthy exchange in the periodical throughout 1860 on the proper interpretation of the "Imprecatory Psalms." His Memoirs of Rev. James MacGregor while welcomed by one reviewer also drew this caution: "There can be no question that the work will reach a second edition, and in the prospect of such a likelihood, it would be well if some inaccuracies of style were corrected, and probably a number of comparatively trifling incidents and anecdotes, and one or two personalities deleted. "33 Writing from the Kirk manse in Middle Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia, Rev. John Sprott added his humble observations: In reading Dr. McGregor's Memoir, we have a few of the privations, labors, and toils of ministers in a young country, and the hard struggle that the Highlanders made to obtain the services of sanctuary. In the life of Dr. McGregor we have an impressive example of ministerial fidelity, which ought not to be lost on his successors. When the book treats on these topics it is valuable, but less interesting when it travels over the battle ground of the last generation in Pictou and views some controversies long forgotten and dead, and ought to have had no resurrection. I would like to see the book reviewed by an impartial and able writer.34

87 George Patterson

The old Kirk prelate may have been attempting to offer some small comfort to Patterson who had been assailed in the Kirk periodical the previous year. The Monthly Record for April-May 1860 carried an eight-page, unsigned review of the Life of McGregor that excoriated its author and defended the Church of Scotland. "We did not expect that Mr. Patterson would be able to tell us much that we did not know before." Of the subject of the biography he observed: "Not many out of Pictou will care to know more than they already know of the Rev. Dr. McGregor." Patterson's style evoked this barb: "Mr. Patterson, in attempting to be philosophical has just got into deep waters, and flounders pitifully." "The fact is, that in a literary point of view, the book is one huge blemish from beginning to end, and would disgrace a scholar." "We hope Mr. Patterson's vanity will not lead him to inflict another book upon us." Pausing for breath the reviewer continued in the next issue to defend the Church of Scotland against "bold and broad insinuations ... made against the character of the clergymen of that Church who ministered in the County of Pictou." Men who "have been resting in quiet repose, beyond the reach of the tongue of slander or the voice of calumny." The reviewer then apparently tried to balance the scales of calumny by observing that "it is well known that the good doctor (MacGregor) never went on a journey without a flask of rum in his pocket and that almost invariably the first thing he offered a friendly visitor was a glass of some cordial." In closing the writer added "In reviewing this book, we have been obliged to use the language of severity. In it an attack has been made not only upon our Church but upon the personal character of individuals whose memory at the present day is revered by thousands."35 The acrimonious nature of the review may help to place in context the Kirk dictum: "Fear God, vote Tory, and hate the Antiburghers."36 Patterson had demonstrated that as an editor he was not one to avoid controversy and he used his position to bring major issues to the fore, thereby encouraging debate throughout the entire church and not simply within the confines of the church courts. The journals served not only to inform church members in some detail of issues and events within the church but also to democratize the debate by permitting ordinary church members access to the journals to express opinions that they might otherwise have been reluctant publicly to advance within the restrictive confines of congregation and community. He also was prepared to carry articles that made those in the pews uncomfortable. The question of ministerial stipends is a good example. One issue of the Register observed: "It is almost like drawing teeth to get an increase in salary."37 The article continued that

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Chart 3 Presbyterian Journals

while subscriptions of £125 might be promised, often £30 less was raised. A new minister could pay £65 just to obtain a horse, wagon, sleigh, and necessary accoutrements to discharge his congregational responsibilities. A writer even queried: "Is it true, as I have been repeatedly told, that the produce brought to the minister's family is often of an inferior quality?"38 By 1860 Patterson needed a respite. In the decade of 1850 he had married and supported a growing family that by 1865 numbered eight children. His eighteen-acre farm, "Sunnyside," and his congregational boundaries, which encompassed 100 square miles and contained no families totalling 600 individuals, offered a full challenge. A Sunday service with an average attendance of 350, a Sunday School for 200 youth, and annual visits to every household left little time for

89 George Patterson

literary diversions. Even a man of thirty-six at the end of the 18505 must have felt pressured. Yet during the 18503 he edited the Missionary Register, published an additional four pamphlets, and authored two books totalling 800 pages. The journals would survive his departure for he had laid a solid foundation. Today although often overlooked by scholars, these religious periodicals offer the most comprehensive and intimate opportunity to examine and comprehend the evolution of the church in this decade of political turbulence and religious intolerance. Both contemporaries and later generations recognized the contribution of this author/preacher. In 1900 a colleague described Salem as a venerable place "because a good and great man had stood for over a quarter century, a tower of strength and a beacon of light to a better life." However the most tangible recognition for Patterson may lie in the fact that Salem, his only congregation, has given more men to the Presbyterian ministry than any other church in Canada.39

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The Life of the Church

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7 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness": The Open-Air Communion Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Cape Breton LAURIE STANLEY-BLACKWELL

INTRODUCTION

The outlines of Cape Breton's open-air communion tradition are familiar to most historians of Canadian religion. The subtleties of its form and function are not. This annual celebratory gathering was much more than an historical curiosity. It was an elaborate composite of cultural meanings, religious beliefs, and social relations. In fact it qualifies, to borrow the terminology of the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, as a "paradigmatic human event."1 As Leigh Schmidt's finely crafted study, Holy Fairs, vividly demonstrates, a close examination of the open-air communion invites the historian into such lush terrain as religion, foodways, gender, rituals, and dress behaviour.2 The historically rich tradition of the open-air communion, very much rooted in Scottish Highland Presbyterian culture, was carried intact from the Highlands to Cape Breton during the early nineteenth century. Between 1840 and 1890 the so-called "sacramental season" "the Sacramaid" or "Comanachadh" - was a dominant symbol in the lives of Cape Breton's Presbyterians. It was both the social event and spiritual highlight of the year, a time when people "ate, drank, and courted," as well as "prayed, meditated, and covenanted."3 During the 18505 these summer gatherings, held between June and October at central locations, attracted thousands of people, sometimes numbering as high as 6,000. By any standard the volume of people who attended some of the mid-nineteenth-century communions in

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Cape Breton was astounding. As late as September 1892 the communion at Mira drew some 5,000 to 6,ooo.4 The largest religious gathering ever assembled in Cape Breton occurred at Whycocomagh in July 1853. No fewer than 8,000 people attended; 200 boats were anchored in the bay and 500 horses were tied in the woods.5 It probably set a Canadian record.6 By the early twentieth century the "Sacramaid" in many congregations in Cape Breton had become shortened, more regulated, its spiritual intensity vitiated. The fine balance embodied in this tradition - between the sacred and profane, the recreational and regenerative - was shattered. Although it still remained "the great social occasion of the year" in many rural communities, the "golden age" of the open-air communion in Cape Breton had passed.7 THE PILGRIMAGE

OF FAITH

The archetypal communion season in Cape Breton was a five-day religious festival that began on Thursday. It followed a fairly wellestablished pattern of events and each day had its special name. Offering a feast of scripture, prayers, singing, and sermons, the sacramental season was crammed with religious activities. At South Gut, St Ann's, in July 1891, no fewer than seventeen services were held over the five-day period.8 Cape Breton's Presbyterians anticipated this event with a mixture of excitement and dread. Several weeks in advance, before the arrival of tramping pilgrims and rattling wagons crowded with whole families, spiritual preparations commenced. Family worship was more rigorously observed. Elders busied themselves visiting and catechizing church members and clergy instructed intending communicants on the nature and aim of the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. These activities were structured to prolong and intensify community piety for several weeks before the "Sacramaid." The impending communion season spurred on other activities, namely the paying of bills, mending of interpersonal disputes, and accounting for one's conduct to the Sessions. Customarily one month before the Lord's Supper, communicants accused of misconduct were called before the Sessions to "answer charges."9 This annual event was a powerful incentive to put one's spiritual and worldly affairs in order. But more importantly these preparations constituted a symbolic public cleansing and communal reconciliation. The community had to be purified "so as a whole it would not profane the Lord's Supper."10 The open-air communion tradition also required elaborate logistical arrangements. According to custom "the homes would be open

95 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

and prepared for all the people who attended these services."11 To do anything less was a serious breach of the ethics of hospitality. For the "women folks" this meant a marathon of house cleaning - not just their own houses but the Lord's. There were floors and benches to be scrubbed and communion bread to be baked. The church was usually treated to its annual whitewashing at this time. Much more onerous for the women, especially those living near the church grounds, was the cooking and baking. They prepared vast quantities of food for the visitors who had to be well fortified to endure the physical rigours of five days of lengthy sermons and services. Most households slaughtered a sheep or lamb and stocked up on supplies of oatcakes, biscuits, pies, and loaves. "I remember," recalled the Reverend Charles MacDonald, "one woman who made bread. She got a barrel of flour before the Sacrament started at North River. She made bread of the barrel of flour, and it was said, when the Sacrament was over, there was nothing left but a grain."12 In Framboise the "sacramental season" was marked by the baking of molasses cookies known locally as "communion biscuits."13 For the women the sacramental season was synonymous with hard work. Reflecting on his turn-of-the-century childhood in Seal Cove, Cape Breton, Angus Hector MacLean recalled: "On such days many people called at our home for lunch, and the yard would be full of buggies and horses ... Mother cooked as fast as she could, and then she and the girls served one table after another. The dining table seated about ten people, and I can recall five tables being served."14 These generous, often costly expressions of hospitality also extended to lodging. Arriving without formal invitation the guests would encamp in local houses, often overflowing into barns and tents. In some households it was not uncommon to have a dozen visitors sleeping on the kitchen floor. One contemporary account suggests that forty and even more sometimes lodged in one house.15 The American journalist Charles H. Farnham placed the figure as high as fifty to seventyfive.16 The local manse was also besieged by guests. It is reported that one Cape Breton manse during the summer communion season of 1897 entertained and fed at least thirty people.17 THE C O M M U N I O N OF SAINTS

The first day of the sacramental season was ostensibly a time for fasting and spiritual preparation. Fasting was a private action; only the most devout abstained from food until the afternoon, when they partook "only in slight refreshment."18 Although this day consisted of at least two religious services, it never attracted the crush of worshippers

96 The Life of the Church

who gathered for the Sabbath communion. In fact the Fast Day was clearly losing status by the i86os,19 By the turn of the century it was abandoned by some congregations, a casualty of the growing shift from the five-day communion to a more abbreviated three-day variant. The Friday service, "The Ceist," often known as "The Men's Day/' was regarded in Cape Breton as "the greatest day of the five except the Sabbath day."20 During much of the nineteenth century the attendance at this service was usually "very large."21 This well-anticipated day of testimonials was "generally held in the open air." It offered an opportunity, "the one in the year - to open out, explain and have explained" the spiritual perplexities pondered throughout the year.22 One visiting minister, writing in 1876, testified to the popularity of the Ceist: "There can be no doubt that these services have a powerful influence on the mind and heart of the great mass of our Gaelic congregations at the Communion season."23 Although preaching was traditionally provided in both languages during the communion season, "The Men's Day" was "generally in Gaelic only."24 The Friday service was dominated primarily by the "Na daoine," noted "old Christian inquirers" who offered searching commentary on the "marks" or "tokens" of genuine grace.25 The traditional Ceist was completely unrehearsed and extemporaneous and the "Men" displayed a formidable self-knowledge, citing not only scripture but evidences of grace drawn from their own experiences. These personalized expositions could last "a greater part of the day" for there was no fixed number of participants.26 At Grand River's Ceist in 1890 fourteen "spoke to the question."27 That same year twenty-two "Men" delivered addresses at Mira's Friday service.28 Although the tradition of the "Men" originated in Ross-shire and Sutherland, this lay brotherhood emerged as a significant force in the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton.29 Initially, owing to the dearth of ministers, they functioned as lay preachers and lay catechists. During the sacramental season the "Men" travelled, sometimes walking eighty or a hundred miles, from one communion to the next, presiding over the Ceist and conducting prayer meetings during the sacramental season. In many cases these religious luminaries enjoyed a status "superior to that accorded the minister" and they commanded a respect bordering on veneration.30 Numbering among these godly laymen were several individuals who achieved the status of celebrities at Cape Breton's nineteenthcentury Ceists. Despite their individual idiosyncrasies Cape Breton's "Men" shared many striking similarities. Few were formally educated and many could not read. Nevertheless they were renowned for their acquaintance with scripture and their retentive memories, often

97 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

repeating whole chapters with impressive accuracy. The "Men" were also celebrated for their godliness. They were gifted with oratorical powers, often leaning towards an allegorical, cryptic form of verbal expression - "a peculiar way of conceiving and expressing religious truths" was the way the Reverend John Murray phrased it.31 Most importantly they were blessed with a deep personal familiarity with the workings of grace. This first-hand knowledge, it was popularly believed, endowed the "Men" with special spiritual insights and gave the words drawn from the depths of their own experience both experimental authority and power. According to the Reverend Donald MacOdrum, "when they opened their lips, young and old recognized that these men had been 'in the secret place of the Most High.'"32 The "Men" shared other similarities. In many instances some physical trademark - such as Angus McLeod's shock of silver hair, Donald MacAulay's half-closed eye, Angus McLean's mane-like tresses, or Hugh Ferguson's involuntary cries - heightened their mystique. Another extraordinary bond was the "affection" they commanded from young people during the nineteenth century: "Some how they mastered the secret of influencing the young. "33 Later reminiscing as an elderly man, one worshipper mused: "I never saw a man I loved as I loved Duncan (Ban). I was then wild and careless, but I was never happier than when listening to his presentation of the story of the cross."34 M.D. Morrison also testified to their potent impact on young impressionable minds, recalling from his early boyhood "vivid recollection of one or two of these men ... and of the sense of adoration that overwhelmed me as one succeeded the other in throwing the multitude into ecstatic raptures."35 The designation "The Men's Day" deserves some explanation. The term the "Men" served a double purpose: first it differentiated between this class of laity and the clergy; second it highlighted the patriarchal bias of the communion season. The Ceist was clearly monopolized by men; in fact women were "not allowed to speak at the Ceist."36 Margaret MacPhail's novel Loch Bras D'Or depicts the fate of a much-troubled woman who, challenging this taboo, rose nervously to her feet to exclaim: "I have no one to speak for me." "Woman sit down! ... You have but to listen and derive solace and knowledge from the speakers, men who are moved by the holy spirit" was the thundering rebuke. MacPhail, whose fiction closely echoed reality, describes the unforgiving stares, from men and women alike, who acted as "if a dog had come into the church and barked."37 They regarded the young woman's actions as a shameful effrontery, a violation of the male-dominated code of the Ceist.

98 The Life of the Church Inherent in the sacramental season was a patriarchal bias and a clear division of labour and prescribed etiquette; women did not participate fully or creatively as equals. One cleric aptly summed up the situation when he reported that the women assisted in their "own sphere" with "their Mary-like conversation" and their "Martha-like hospitality."38 Saturday, the so-called "preparation day/' was devoted to two services, one in Gaelic and one in English. Normally in the afternoon or evening candidates for first communion presented themselves to the Session for examination. They were interrogated about their knowledge of doctrine, performance of religious duties, and experience of saving grace. On this occasion much weight was placed on "correct views" and the personal recommendations of an elder.39 Withholding sacramental privileges was not an arbitrary act. Adultery, lying, contumacy, drunkenness, dancing, poor church attendance, and unresolved personal disputes were grounds for rejection or suspension of a communicant's privileges. Communicants who were sanctioned by the Session received tokens. These small lead coins, impressed with a scriptural verse or the initials of the minister, were the outward symbols signifying full fellowship with the church and eligibility to sit at the "table" on the morrow. Before nightfall the communion table(s) and benches were set out in readiness for the Sabbath. The climax of the five-day festival was the communion Sabbath. The first three days were preparatory, all part of an incremental process of spiritual self-examination, a crescendo of religious activities culminating in the Sunday sacrament. This important ceremonial observance was a solemn act, a token of divine grace, an affirmation of religious fellowship, and a memorial of Christ's sacrifice. The Sunday service drew the largest crowd of the season. As early as nine o'clock worshippers started assembling, and for almost two hours, "as far as our eyes could see," there was a steady swollen stream of foot travellers, buggies, carts, and horses.40 Sometimes two women rode one horse, but in many more cases the man occupied the saddle while the woman sat behind him.41 They came in all ages but the most purposeful in their gait were the elderly pilgrims with their walking staffs who had "been to many a sacrament."42 Many of the sacramental-season pilgrims, who looked forward to these events of fellowship, worship, and commemoration, made a complete tour of these communions on the island. They covered vast distances, sometimes up to forty miles, to attend a single communion. Invariably people travelled in clusters, for the very act of pilgrimage was "a corporate endeavour, an opportunity for fellowship, conviviality and shared devotion."43

Late nineteenth-century communion service at Mira, Cape Breton. William Calder, Communion Memories, The Seven Sayings of the Cross (Halifax: Nova Scotia Printing Co. 1894). Courtesy of the Maritime Conference Archives of the United Church of Canada.

too The Life of the Church

Often if the communion was situated near a body of water, the pilgrims also arrived by boat. In August 1852, at Mira's first communion season, the Mira River was studded with flats and boats of all dimensions bearing "thousands of Worshippers."44 A fleet of twenty-one boats "full of people" was observed at St Ann's open-air communion in 1889.45 At least two crowded schooners conveyed people from the opposite shore of the harbour. Those visitors headed to the Whycocomagh, Boularderie, and Little Narrows communions could always avail themselves of steamship connections on the lakes. When the Sabbath service began at eleven o'clock the focal point was the "tent." Originally a Highland tradition, the "tent" was a portable booth-like structure that sheltered officiating clergy, sometimes numbering as many as four. Although plain this roofed enclosure with its wide, open window functioned as a dais, focusing attention on the ministers and signifying their honoured position in the Sabbath service. In front of the tent there were customarily seats for the members of Session and the precentor(s). Positioned nearby were one or two long narrow trestle tables covered with white linen. The communion table used at West Bay's summer "Sacramaid" in 1864 allegedly extended forty to fifty feet.46 The table at Loch Lomond was smaller, approximately twenty-five to thirty feet.47 Along each side were several low rough benches arranged so that the communicants faced each other. The communion site also featured several posts or stumps fitted with small collection boxes for the reception of coin contributions.48 The physical setting of these celebratory gatherings was charged with symbolism. During the sacramental season in the Highlands, for example, parishioners gathered in the open air, usually in a deep romantic "dell," a locality deemed analogous to the site of the original "tabernacle in the wilderness."49 The same formula was used in Cape Breton. "The Ferry" on the Mira River was regarded as the ideal communion site. It was situated in a sheltered glen at the head of a small bay, and the level green tract where the worshippers congregated was enclosed by overarching spruce and juniper trees.50 The location not only accommodated thousands, it was also "remarkably well adapted for sitting and hearing."51 In this natural setting worshippers were urged to revel in visions of the Ark in the wilderness and to envisage Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the "other ancient patriarchs, who laid their victims on the unhewn rock for an altar, and burnt their incense under the shade of a green tree."52 These were stimulating thoughts and the setting at Mira, filled with the fragrance of summer, fed the senses and the emotions. At Whycocomagh the open-air services were conducted on a hillside, sheltered from the wind by a thick barrier of trees, the hill

ioi "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

resembling both in form and acoustic properties a natural amphitheatre. Its proximity to the Bras d'Or Lakes heightened its symbolic appeal. The "feast on the grass near the Lake" was redolent of "that other Feast, held nearly nineteen hundred years ago on the east side of the Sea of Galilee."53 The same principles operated at other communion sites. For example a "beautiful" amphitheatre-shaped "nook" near the harbour served as the setting of St Ann's summer "Sacramaid."54 At Boularderie the Lord's Supper was staged in a "lovely hollow encompassed by trees," while at Middle River a "beautiful grove" of maples and elms fulfilled the same purpose.53 These divine trysting places had a spiritual as well as a poetic power for they accentuated the supernatural character of the "Sacramaid." Over time they became vested with occult significance. They were sanctified by "many a precious season" and for some worshippers became the cherished sites of their own "spiritual Israels" where they had "received the first impressions of religion, and [where] Christ made himself known to their souls."56 The "old men and women," in particular, were fond of the open-air tradition and these natural, almost atavistic settings, preferring to meet outside even when the weather was inclement.57 Equally symbolic were the seating arrangements of the participants at these sacramental gatherings. Occupying the "space of honour" close to the "tent" were the elders and precentors.58 As a group these "experienced saints" presented a fascinating Rembrandt-like tableau of faces and postures.59 With sunburned necks, weathered visages, and out-thrust bearded chins, they clustered around the "tent." Some sat on chairs while others rested on the grass, often leaning on their staffs. They were ensconced there, one observer noted, "as if this were their place by right, and by the courteous consent of the reverential younglings all around them."60 Seated beside this privileged group, within the restrictive shadow of the "tent," were their wives, the women often dubbed "Mothers in Israel."61 Fanning out from this core of saintly souls were their children and "children's children to the third and fourth generation" seated on the hillside, tier on tier, upward and around. Although stumps or stones occasionally proved serviceable, most people sat upright on the grass; a reclining position was discountenanced. At the edge of the gathering, marking its furthest parameters, were the carriages, wagons, carts, and horses, tied to trees and the occasional fence. The audience at the open-air communion constituted a fascinating microcosm of community life. The positioning of the worshippers made tangible a number of cleavages. The young and the old "kept pretty distinct," for the elderly congregated nearest to the "tent."62

io2 The Life of the Church

Positions reflected states of grace and the dichotomy between communicants and adherents, for the "visible saints" were planted in close proximity to the "tent" while those of "lesser degrees of piety made concentric circles there-about."63 These distinctions were even more sharply drawn at Black River in 1914, where the communicants were allocated seats specially installed in front and on each side of the "tent."54 The moral scenery at Cape Breton's open-air communions revealed yet a third, linguistic-based distinction, for the outdoor communion was conducted almost exclusively in Gaelic while English-speaking worshippers repaired to a nearby church or barn for separate services. Even at the sacred climax of Sabbath-day communion service, linguistic distinctions were preserved. At some sacramental gatherings the English-speaking participants took communion in the church. In other instances they were served separately in the open air. For example there were individual sittings for both linguistic groups at Big Baddeck's open-air communion in the fall of 1869. The attire of the worshippers during the Sabbath service merits discussion, for the unrelieved!y black homespun reflected meaning and social values. Cape Breton's mid-nineteenth-century communionseason clothing code dictated inconspicuous dress, forbidding both adornment and colour.65 Outsiders invariably commented on the sombre garb of the worshippers. They were not, as one visiting cleric remarked, "tricked out in the newest style."66 In 1885 Farnham described a monochromatic blur of black straw sunbonnets, kerchiefs, and shawls.67 This prevailing style of dress had an important signification. The ubiquitous black and the negligible differences in the garb of various social classes and of the young and older women reflected and reinforced the communal aspect of the "sacramental season." It was a time when social distinctions were suspended. Within this context clothing was not meant to affirm class hierarchies and divisions. In fact the sameness in dress was a vivid expression of the aspiration for solidarity, uniformity, and homogeneity. To appear in sartorial finery at the Cape Breton sacramental season during the mid-nineteenth century was more than a fashion faux pas. It was a brazen act of differentiation and self-affirmation, an affront not only to God but also to tradition and community. What drew many Cape Breton Presbyterians to sacramental gatherings was the feast of sermons - sermons that were "performed" as well as "preached."68 The "Action Sermon," delivered at the Sabbath communion service, was an animated address disclosing the central truths of redemption. During the mid- to late nineteenth century these sermons were highly evangelical. Farnham was particularly

1O3 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

struck by the preacher's singular style of delivery, with its characteristic long pauses, whining repetition, "majestic slowness," and "slow swaying motion from side to side."69 Among Cape Breton's most celebrated nineteenth-century Gaelic preachers, the Reverend Peter McLean, the Reverend Dr Hugh McLeod, and the Reverend John Rose reigned pre-eminent. Judging from published accounts Mcleod's sermon oratory was "intensely realistic," physical, and fervent. There was always eager anticipation when the "Doctor" was slated to give the "Action Sermon." He strove deliberately to excite the spiritual passions of his listeners and stir them into a swaying movement. According to one of his colleagues, he "used to push on till the strong crying of the people stopped him."70 Cape Breton's sacramental season audiences were legendary for their stamina during the marathon of sermons. At Whycocomagh's communion in September 1860, a torrential rain failed to deter worshippers who remained at the Sabbath service until shortly after five o'clock. At an open-air communion at Strathlorne in August 1872, the Reverend J.H. Mackerras of Queen's College, Kingston, witnessed worshippers sitting in the incessant rain for two hours. "For five hours and twenty minutes," he marvelled, "that multitude sat upon the soaking sward as if glued to it."71 Cape Breton Presbyterians were also renowned for their exacting standards for preaching. The Reverend Duncan B. Blair of Barney's River found them extremely discriminating listeners. "They are not," he wrote "easily satisfied with everything that is presented to them in the shape of preaching. It will not do to send either a Boy or a Booby to preach to such people."72 The Reverend John Neil of Toronto made a similar observation, noting that they would "not tolerate poor preaching." To his amazement he discovered that Cape Breton's Gaelic-speaking Presbyterians scorned translated English sermons masquerading as Gaelic. Linguistic hubris, Neil concluded, accounted for their insistence that "they will not have an English sermon warmed over in a Gaelic oven, but their spiritual food must be kneaded by Gaelic hands, baked over a Gaelic fire, before it will be acceptable to a Gaelic taste."73 Documentary evidence indicates that Cape Breton's nineteenthcentury communion seasons occasionally produced an intense spiritual rapture among participants. Accounts of dramatic outpourings of emotion such as weeping, loud cries, and prostration stand in dramatic apposition to the stereotype of the dour, undemonstrative Scot. The sacramental gatherings at Mira frequently witnessed emotional outpourings. Such thrilling scenes were not limited to Mira. At the communion at Sydney Mines in August 1853, "deep feeling" was registered with tears and "bitter cries."74 Accounts from the 18705 are

1O4 The Life of the Church

even more melodramatic. At the Mira communion in July 1870 there was an overpowering response. At the Monday service, after the minister delivered some parting words, there were "cries of mercy, which might be heard at a considerable distance. Several were prostrated and could not leave the place for some time."75 Some people eventually had to be led away. The Ceists also generated considerable emotional involvement. At one late nineteenth-century Ceist some of the male spectators responded to the discourses of the various "Men" with loud exclamations of assent and satisfaction. The women, in contrast, expressed themselves more physically, their bodies swaying rhythmically, their cheeks streaming with tears.76 Despite the frequent rapturous responses during the sacramental seasons, the actual communion service did not involve wholesale participation. Only a fraction of those who attended the communion season approached the table on this "day of privileges."77 For example at the ceremony held at Boularderie in August 1839, only 60 of a total of 2,000 participated, while during the Whycocomagh communion of 1855 attended by 4,500 parishioners, only 200 communicants were recorded.78 Following the practice of their Free Church counterparts in Scotland, the mid-nineteenth-century Cape Breton ministers exercised stiff fencing procedures. Many communion-season worshippers drew back from the sacrament in horror, convinced of their own unworthiness and fearful of incalculable injury to their souls. Although this pattern was briefly interrupted in the early 18705 during a period of intense revival activity, the traditional timidity associated with sitting at the Lord's table lingered on well into the twentieth century. As late as 1904 the Presbytery of Sydney estimated a ratio of slightly more than one communicant per family; in at least seven congregations there were more families than communicants.79 These statistics fell far below the national norm. Throughout the nineteenth century the majority of those who came forward were the "older persons, and well aged."80 Some of the clergy found the widespread reticence and scrupulosity discouraging. They suspected less-than-lofty reasons at work, claiming that few worshippers were willing to assume the commitments of a godly life. Other explanations, however, merit consideration. For example many Scottish Presbyterians rated the Lord's Supper as a much more solemn ordinance than Baptism. The infrequent dispensation of the Lord's Supper also magnified its solemn and awful characteristics. As a consequence timidity stemmed from an acute sense of disqualification and the preciousness of the privilege. There was also a pronounced age bias inherent in the Highland communion tradition which regarded sitting at the Lord's table as an honour belonging to

1O5 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

the aged. Among mid-nineteenth-century Highlanders, even twentyfive was regarded as "a very early age at which to partake of the Lord's Supper."81 When Neil MacOdrum of Mira became a communicant in his mid-twenties and shortly thereafter an elder, his elevation in status was greeted as a "rare thing," an "unheard of thing."82 Communicants approached the communion table with mingled awe and gladness, deeply sobered by the prospect of performing the "most solemn business that can be transacted on earth."83 As the goblet of wine and the plate of bread were gravely passed by the elders along "that very long table," the communicants sat silently, downcast and solemn faced, in penitent poses; the women's heads were draped with black shawls.84 The face-to-face seated posture of the participants at the table was a "forceful symbol of a community feasting together."85 During the actual dispensation of communion, a hush was said to fall over the audience as they watched. It was an eloquent stillness signifying a collective sense that this was a transcendent moment: "God was in this place ... how it was none other than the house of God - how it was the gate of heaven."86 Even the youths who lurked "on the outskirts of the congregation" were seen standing "in awe for that time."87 All eyes were trained on those people who were bold enough to venture first to the Lord's table. During the heyday of the temperance movement, even the zeal with which certain communicants quaffed the wine was closely monitored: "Any who raised his head and tossed it back would be noted."88 The traditional outdoor "Sacramaid" in Cape Breton was a lengthy event. The service seldom drew to a close before four o'clock in the afternoon. Much more typical were those communion exercises that finished by four-thirty or five o'clock.89 It is recorded that Boularderie's communion in 1830 concluded just short of six o'clock. During the serving of the "tables/' which were filled and emptied several times, communicants were continually reminded of the gravity of their partaking of the sacraments, and the ceremony concluded with the "directions" of the minister, again exhorting the communicants to continue on the narrow path of morality and spirituality. The Reverend Hugh McLeod warned his listeners against relapses and alerted them to the stratagems of Satan. Satan, he remonstrated, "is never more busy than after a Sacrament," lying in "wait for your soul communicant when you leave the banqueting house."90 On Monday, the day of thanksgiving, there were usually services in both languages; the English service was held in the church while the Gaelic was at "the tent." In the interval between services a visitation of the congregation was occasionally held, during which the minister, elders, and managers related details about the discharge of their duties.

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Following the Monday services the Session often concluded official business, totalling the offerings collected over the five days and disbursing funds for wine and placement and removal of the tables. The day was sometimes extended by a round of baptisms. According to Schmidt the conjunction of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper during the communion season enhanced the richness of communal rituals, adding yet another dimension to the symbolic pilgrimage of faith.91 For some of the worshippers the Monday "farewell service" was an emotional time. According to Mary and Nelena Patterson, who were interviewed in the early 19805 about Framboise's five-day communions, "It was sad, sad - everybody used to cry."92 Hence the use of the term "Sad Day" in Whycocomagh.93 For many travellers the Monday departure did not mark a sharp halt to the varied pleasures of the communion season. The return trip afforded additional opportunities to socialize, to mull over the scriptural truths revealed, and to trade in gossip gleaned during the five days. Even centenarian Neil Mclntosh of Framboise, during his two-day homeward journey on foot, made "several calls on friends and acquaintances on the way."94 For the clergy Monday signified the end of an arduous schedule of activities. The sacramental season could be taxing, even for the spiritually fit. The Reverend Alexander Ross confessed that the communions left him "physically and mentally exhausted."95 Often he required several days to recuperate before heading off to the next communion; it was not uncommon for there to be three or four in close succession. The preaching agenda of the Reverend Peter McLean of Stornoway, during his historic visit to Cape Breton in 1866, vividly illustrates the hectic pace. During one sacramental season he preached twice on Thursday, once on Friday and Saturday, twice on the Sabbath, and again on Monday.96

"THE DAY OF D A Y S " : THE SACRAMAID AND IDENTITY In the lives of Presbyterian Cape Bretoners, the open-air communion fulfilled several important functions. In one sense this tradition was a utilitarian response to the harsh economic realities of early nineteenth-century Cape Breton. Even as late as the i86os, many Presbyterian churches were small and unfinished, completely inadequate to the demands of large-scale gatherings. But logistics are only a partial explanation for the popularity of the nineteenth-century open-air communions. It is abundantly clear that Gaelic-speaking Cape Bretoners were "fond of large gatherings."97 But what rationale lay behind this "fondness"?

ioy "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

First the open-air communion in Cape Breton, well into the i88os, mitigated the isolation imposed by geography, demographic dispersion, and poor communications. Second these ceremonial events were an expression of culture and "religious familialism."98 In both the literal and figurative sense they were family reunions. By prescribing behaviour to a certain extent and by re-enacting rituals from a shared cultural past, participants at Cape Breton's open-air communions symbolically restated core values and basic kin and religious loyalties. Although a mixture of prayer and religious and kinship feasting, this tradition was also a venue for matchmaking. McPhail states that "many weddings took place after these gatherings."99 These endogamous marriages helped further to solidify group integrity. These seasonal assemblages were an important vehicle for fostering "communitas" and "in-group marriages," strengthening the sense of cultural belonging and self-identification,100 and serving as a vital ritual for "cultural maintenance."101 The open-air communion also served as a public forum for highlighting and validating lines of demarcation within the group.102 There were clearly articulated boundaries between men and women, young, old and middle-aged, adherents and members, and grace and non-grace. These differences were brought into focus and given ritual expression. Equally significant was the institutionalized distinction between English and Gaelic speakers. In this latter sense the open-air communion was both an expression of community identity and an overt statement of Scottish Highland ethnicity; by linking religion to ethno-linguistic heritage, this tradition doubly reinforced the participants' sense of identity. The historic associations of the open-air communion also cemented group membership. For many Presbyterian immigrants this recreation of Highland culture was a common thread from their immediate past. However the sense of historic continuity and community generated by this event stretched back even further. Many devout Presbyterians regarded these open-air communions as condensed reenactments of the drama of the persecuted Covenantors who had sought the safety of secluded glens for their forbidden worship.I03 The Scottish immigrants who came to Cape Breton with their own story of persecution and expulsion felt a special identification with the Covenantors, and the open-air communion celebrated renewed links with their origins and an emotional consonance between their present and their distant past. Food and the rites of hospitality also played an integral role within the framework of these open-air communions. In all societies food

io8 The Life of the Church

and food sharing, both on a physical and a spiritual plane, have symbolic significance.104 During Cape Breton's communion season the sharing of food reinforced kinship interaction, further enhancing the sub-themes of family and fellowship inherent in the ritual and theology of the Lord's Supper. Travelling journalists unattuned to the region and its traditions invariably condemned the material costs and burdens of these "religious raids," failing to appreciate the underlying dynamics of a society where food was an essential medium for hospitality.105 Food was also the main component in a system of "ordered obligations" that balanced debts and favours, hospitality given and hospitality received.106 Implicit in the tradition of communion season hospitality was the principle of reciprocal exchange that also served as connecting tissue. In short it assured community interaction, reinforced group membership, and strengthened the bonds of mutuality. The importance of the "Sacramaid" as a faith-enhancing event should not be discounted. Religious revivalism was usually manifested only during the sacramental season and these "times of refreshing" were often scenes of "great experiences," sometimes marking the "beginning" or "climax" of a spiritual awakening.107 While these "experiences" were intensely personal, they were realized in a context that was vibrantly communal. During the mid-nineteenth century Presbyterian clergy in Cape Breton faithfully catalogued the telling signs of heightened piety demonstrated in the aftermath of the annual sacramental gatherings: "deep concern for the salvation of the soul," "remorse for sin," "brokenness of heart and spirit," "love to another," "family worship where formerly neglected," "meetings for prayers," "intense thirsting after the ordinances of religion," and "a visible outward amendment in life and conversion."108 In short the sacramental gathering had the potential to be an "awesome, powerful and transformative" spectacle.109

"GREY-HEADED PILGRIMS":

THE C O M M U N I O N SEASON IN D E C L I N E By the first decade of the twentieth century the tradition of the openair communion in Cape Breton was in the throes of extensive revision.110 For example the frequency of communions tended to increase, staged in some congregations biannually, in a few even quarterly.111 Several Presbyterian congregations moved quite early in this direction. As early as 1862 Sydney Mines dispensed the Lord's Supper biannually.112 By 1875 Sydney Mines, Sydney, Mira, Glace Bay, and Port Morien all observed communion twice a year.113 By 1902 even smaller

109 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

communities such as Port Morien had adopted a triannual format for the "Sacramaid."114 Some of the changes were more radical, for several congregations took deliberate steps to cancel the outdoor communion altogether. For example in the 18703 Sydney Mines discontinued its outdoor communion. By the late i88os Strathlorne abandoned the practice of dispensing the Lord's Supper out of doors under the trees and adopted the new arrangement of administering the sacrament in the church only.115 Outdoor communions continued into the twentieth century in communities such as St Ann's, Framboise, Boularderie, Loch Lomond, and River Denys. However by 1896 Middle River's communion was moved indoors, although the five-day format was retained."6 Similarly by 1903 the congregation at Marion Bridge decided to hold the Gaelic communion service in the church instead of outside as before."7 Presbyterians in Ingonish reached the same decision by at least 1903; Whycocomagh also moved in this direction in 1905-"8 In Loch Lomond the annual outdoor "Sacramaid" ceased with the construction of Calvin Presbyterian Church in 1911."9 Other churches made innovative compromises. For example the MacTalla reported that in August 1894 all communion season services at Little Narrows, save for the Gaelic sacrament, were confined to the church.120 In 1903 the Presbyterian congregation at Gabarus effected a strange reversal, staging Gaelic services, including communion, in the church, while English-speaking participants met at the "tent."121 The same practice was adopted by the Boularderie congregation in 1907. The Session minutes reveal that this decision was prompted by the dictates of time.122 Glace Bay experimented with an even more unusual permutation. During its summer sacramental season of 1888, Gaelic worshippers were accommodated in the local Baptist church while their English-speaking counterparts met in the Presbyterian church.12? Other changes were directed at the duration of the communion season, as some congregations at the turn of the century moved to delete the "fast day" and the "day of thanksgiving."124 By 1895 neither River Inhabitants nor Baddeck had Thursday or Monday services.125 In effect their foreshortened communion season was a miniature, often pallid re-enactment of the old tradition. Even the familiar accoutrements of the outdoor communion underwent modification. The mid-nineteenth-century sacrament had featured one table, necessitating a succession of sittings, which prolonged the service. But by the turn of the century various Kirk Sessions agreed to enlarge table accommodation so that "one Table Service" would often suffice.126 In August 1907 the Margaree Sessions, seeking

no

The Life of the Church

a more "convenient" and "briefer" method for dispensing the Lord's Supper, resolved to implement "one sitting."127 Some of these changes were not dictated by convenience, but by the advances of the temperance and hygiene movements. For example as congregations relinquished the open-air format, the conventional single common goblet was retired and supplanted by the use of individual cups. The congregation of Margaree embraced this new practice in 1905, while St Ann's, Port Morien, Grand River, and Catalone followed suit in 1910, 1911, 1915, and 1919 respectively.128 Although presented with an individual communion service in 1914, the Boularderie congregation stalled its adoption for ten years. As a temporary expedient they used two goblets, before acquiescing to the recommendations of the Department of Health.129 In 1899 the Session at Marion Bridge unanimously agreed to use unfermented wine for communion.130 The elimination of the old custom of using wine and a common cup was more than cosmetic. In effect it fundamentally altered the old symbolic meanings of serving one another "from hand to hand" and of pouring wine at the Lord's table.131 Even the lead tokens were discarded, replaced by a system of printed cards. Port Morien effected this change in 1911, although congregations such as Boularderie postponed the adoption of paper tokens until the 1930S.132 By the opening decades of the twentieth century, Cape Breton's sacramental season had deviated from its common standardized pattern. It now had many guises as its general form found a great variety of expressions among many different congregations. It is important to note that during the early twentieth century, certain rural areas of Cape Breton struggled to preserve the traditional "Sacramaid." For example, Loch Lomond, Grand River, and West Bay perpetuated the custom until at least 1912.133 Framboise also continued to celebrate its five-day outdoor communion. In September 1906 over 1500 people assembled at the "tent" for English and Gaelic services.134 At Black River the traditional open-air service also persisted. Here in June 1915, after "some consideration," both English and Gaelic services were staged outdoors.135 But the residual retention of this religious and social institution in rural Cape Breton into the twentieth century barely disguised the fact that the outdoor Gaelic communion was a doomed tradition. The decline of the open-air "Sacramaid" was also reflected in the changed deportment of some of its participants. Admittedly there were lapses in behaviour at the mid-nineteenth-century communions. However on the whole, public behaviour seems to have been pious and respectful. The Reverend A. Ross insisted in his memoirs: "I

in "Tabernacles in the Wilderness" never knew anything of the kind which Robert Burns describes in his 'Holy Fair.'"1?6 By the 18708 there were clearly visible signs that inroads were being made into the sanctity of the communion season. American journalist Charles Dudley Warner, author of Baddeck, and that Sort of Thing (1874), claimed that the communion season had become marred by "carousing, drinking, and of other excesses."137 Although Warner had a journalistic propensity for anecdote and caricature, additional evidence gives weight to some of his criticisms. For example in September 1876, The 'North Sydney Herald railed against the "driving about, walking to and fro, laughing and swearing" at some of these gatherings.138 The Herald exclaimed: "It is high time that these outdoor gatherings, relics of persecution days, were abandoned."139 Such antics became more commonplace in the i88os. According to Farnham the communions were increasingly scandalized by young people flirting, exchanging notes, throwing motto candies, huddling at the back of the crowd, wandering among the horses and buggies, and conversing in undertones.140 He cited one instance when young men had stashed some firecrackers and a whisky bottle in a nearby wagon. Another example clearly symptomatic of the "Sacramaid's" declining spirituality was the unwillingness of participants to endure the discomforts of the past. In July 1889 the people attending Boularderie's open-air communion fled from the rain and sought shelter in a nearby church for the Gaelic service.141 Further evidence of a tradition under assault can also be adduced from changes in attire, for later accounts describing this event alluded to the presence of parasols, sunshades, umbrellas, or weather-proofs, comforts that to an earlier generation had connoted physical and spiritual effeteness. Late nineteenth-century photographs of outdoor communions also testify to the presence of blankets at these later communions. For young people the late nineteenth-century communion had lost much of its spiritual mystique. Nevertheless the event retained its social function and served principally as a forum for courtship.142 The communion also served as a vast public stage for parading fashion and status, particularly for the young women who had returned home from the "Boston states" for a summer visit. The fact that these visits were usually timed to synchronize with the annual "Sacramaid" testifies to this tradition's tenacity among an increasingly scattered people. However, at the communions in the 18805 these young expatriates were conspicuous in their bonnets and pin-back dresses, exhibiting signs of another world, of the city and modernity.143 The sombre, monochromatic attire of worshippers of an earlier generation was now punctuated by flashes of colour and finery. Even the former

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taboos against wearing new church-going attire had been relaxed for "everything new made its appearance at the Sacrament time."144 Ministers became increasingly disillusioned about the spiritual merits of the sacramental gatherings. Some clergy suspected that the expatriates on their summer visits had become a conduit for doctrinal havoc. "Errors are brought among us chiefly by men that return from the United States" exclaimed one Cape North minister and his elders.145 Equally distressing was the fact that "fun" and revelry rather than spiritual edification were uppermost in the minds of the younger participants.146 Many Presbyterian clerics feared that these crowded gatherings, which offered a host of temptations, had become "debased" by horsetrading, trysts, flirtations, commingling, and even tippling. In August 1901 a tavern keeper from Louisbourg boldly commercialized the event by squatting with his wares in the woods near the communion site at Mira.147 According to MacTalla Mira's sacramental seasons "for a number of years" had been degraded by "a lot of misbehaviour and disorder ... due to the corrupt exchange of drink."148 The litter of bottles near communion sites left conspicuous evidence of less spiritual and more spirituous preoccupations. No example better illustrates the despirirualization of the open-air season in Cape Breton than the childhood memories related in MacLean's God and the Devil at Seal Cove. At one turn-of-the-century communion, he found himself as a young boy scrambling gleefully on his hands and knees "between the rows of people" where he harvested "a bonanza" of motto candies, which had been tossed around by the "young swains."149 This was not an isolated incident. At another openair service these notorious sugar candies were so prolific that they created a hail-like din as they careened off the parasols of worshippers.150 Evidently the open-air communion of the early 19005 deviated from its early nineteenth-century predecessor, but what explains this phenomenon? One obvious response is to postulate a connection between the modified communion tradition and a rapidly transformed Cape Breton. During the late nineteenth century this region underwent farreaching economic and technological changes. Equally significant were the demographic shifts manifested in rural depopulation, internal migration, and out-migration.151 The Presbyterian communion rolls for this period offer sober commentary on the attrition of rural communicants with such telling phrases as "Boston" or "removed west."152 All these changes were bound to have a significant impact on the character and tradition of the inhabitants of Cape Breton: they bore directly on the whole process of cultural transmission. By the late nineteenth century there were strong forces reshaping Cape Breton and the crest of change carried the communion season

H3 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

tradition in a new direction. However this explanation for the attenuated state of the open-air "Sacramaid" is incomplete, for some of the alterations were the deliberate handiwork of the clergymen themselves. Throughout the closing decades of the nineteenth century Presbyterian clergy increasingly stigmatized the open-air communion as an old-fashioned contradiction of the "fashions of the living age."153 However their aversion to this established custom went much deeper. In the late 18705 there was obviously a movement afoot to regulate the open-air communions. In August 1878, for example, several members attending a meeting of the Presbytery of Richmond and Victoria tabled a resolution condemning "large gatherings of people on Sacramental occasions."154 The issue proved so contentious that it resurfaced at a synod meeting several months later where the Reverend Alexander F. Thompson of Mabou, teamed with the Reverend John Maclean of Broad Cove, particularized on the "evils" and "abuses." In their minds the sacramental gatherings should be reviled, not glorified: "In days gone by these meetings were no doubt very useful, but their usefulness has ceased."155 The Reverend Murdoch Stewart of Whycocomagh, backed by fellow apologist the Reverend Kenneth McKenzie of Baddeck, took the defensive, claiming that reported abuses were "extremely exaggerated."156 This conflict highlighted an interesting breach, for it pitted Stewart and McKenzie, two veteran Gaelic-speaking preachers, against Thompson and Maclean, two young and recently ordained ministers; it is doubtful that the latter were fluent Gaelic speakers. The dichotomy also starkly revealed that a new generation of clergy in Cape Breton devalued the open-air communion. They did not regard themselves as conservators of tradition, but as promulgators of reform. Throughout the i88os the injunction "Let all things be done decently and in order" became the popular axiom among Cape Breton's Presbyterian clergy.157 In 1889 more drastic measures were taken against the open-air communions when the Victoria and Richmond Presbytery stipulated that henceforth "so far as practicable, the communions be held in contiguous congregations on the same Sabbath."158 This decision marked a sharp break from the past, when communions were scheduled expressly to avoid conflict with those in other congregations. The policy of simultaneous communions in adjacent parishes effectively curtailed the size and population base of sacramental gatherings. But even in its truncated form the open-air summer communion elicited criticism from its detractors. One Presbyterian Witness correspondent observed in August 1897: "some of our ministers are of opinion that part of the attendance might well be

ii4 The Life of the Church

dispensed with, as a number are drawn by the desire of seeing friends ... and some by even less worthy motives."159 The next logical step was to bring the communion indoors, into a more controlled and ordered setting. The adoption of the indoor communion as the liturgical ideal entailed a dramatic reorientation in values and ritual forms. Whereas the open-air communion emphasized lay fellowship, historic continuity, and communal life, the indoor communion would give symbolic prominence to approved doctrine and ministerial authority.160 A similar strategy of clerical intervention transformed the Ceist as ministers increasingly inserted themselves into this so-called "people's own democracy festival."161 Although "speaking to the question" was traditionally the privilege of the "Men," an account of Cape North's 1874 communion season indicates that several ministers, as well as three laymen, spoke at this event.162 The spontaneity of the Ceist was further neutralized by the growing tendency for the Clerk of Sessions to "select a question" in advance for the Friday service.163 The most devastating blow to the "Men's" influence was the Maritime Synod's decision to replace the traditional Gaelic lay catechist with a probationer, that is, a divinity student. Engendered by a fear of losing control to lay leadership, this development had drastic repercussions for the "Men," many of whom had honed their preaching talents and consolidated their influence as catechists. Its ultimate impact was to curtail the participatory aspects of the communion season and to dethrone the "Men" as a force at the "Sacramaid" and relegate them to a minor role.164 According to Murray there was more than a tenuous link between the decline of the open-air communion in Cape Breton and the demise of these "venerable patriarchs." "Our open air communions in Cape Breton," he stated categorically, "began to lose their interest to our people, when the prayerful, humble, holy and spirit-taught men who came out from Scotland in the early part of the last century, began to pass away."165 Sentimentalism notwithstanding, Murray failed to acknowledge the fact that church policy had effectively thwarted the emergence of a new generation of "Men" to carry the torch of tradition. Why did certain Cape Breton Presbyterian clergy in the late nineteenth century become so antagonistic towards the open-air communion? Why were they so eager to rein in and ultimately suppress this tradition? In part their antipathy mirrored the ascent of industrial capitalism and its new cultural interpretation of time.166 The five-day annual religious festival, rooted in the seasonal rhythms of pre-industrial times, was an increasingly anomalous presence in a world governed by clocks and convenience, work schedules and economic output.167

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Evidence indicates that by the late nineteenth century many clergymen also recoiled from the sensuality, spontaneity, and physicality of earlier outdoor communions.168 This response was undoubtedly symptomatic of the widespread clerical abandonment on several denominational fronts - Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian - of traditional revivalism. Whereas earlier clergy such as Hugh McLeod regarded emotional fervour as the barometer of success at an open-air sacramental gathering, late nineteenth-century clergy prided themselves on maintaining order, reason, and restraint. These became the new watchwords for Cape Breton's "solemn season."16^ In July 1884 the Reverend Donald MacDougall of West Bay boasted that there was "no wild excitement in our meetings."170 The MacTalla's accounts of later sacramental gatherings reflected the growing popularity of this new ideal. Of the Framboise communion in August 1894 it was recorded: "We were very pleased to see the pilgrims, and especially because they were so polite, so orderly, and so sober."171 The Little Narrows' communion in July 1894 was described thus: "Although there was a large crowd gathered they were all on their knees politely and staidly, and there wasn't any misbehaviour seen the whole day."172 Order and sobriety were the moral imperatives of a new generation of Cape Breton clergymen, many of whom formed the front ranks of the temperance movement.173 As a group they condemned the more recreational aspects of religion and the traditional conjunction of solemnity and festivity. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they stepped up their crusade against the "dancing and frolicking" linked to various church fund-raisers such as tea meetings, picnics, and bazaars.174 In September 1915 the Orangedale Session declared war against dancing and card parties. Session officials were outraged that some church members had "since our last Communion time promoted, participated and associated in these amusements."175 In channelling their congregations towards moderation and conformity, Cape Breton's Presbyterian clergy were hardly a small, isolated band of moralistic reformers. They were foot-soldiers in a larger international movement towards regulating popular behaviour and "gentrifying" public celebrations.176 Although inspired by pious intentions these new cultural forms were alien to the social fabric of the Gaels and hence were assimilationist. The decline of the open-air communion in Cape Breton was also a concomitant of Gaelic's demise. Throughout the nineteenth century there was a lamentable shortage of Gaelic-speaking clergy in Cape Breton.177 Periodically there were poignant appeals to redress this shortcoming, but some of the discussions at synod meetings indicate that such requests did not enjoy a sympathetic hearing.178

ii 6 The Life of the Church

Gaelic-speaking Cape Bretoners, discouraged by the inaction of the synod in recruiting fluent clergy, looked hopefully to their own home-grown ministers to fill the vacuum. But here again they were disappointed as their young men returned from the theological college in Halifax fluent in Greek and Hebrew, but their Gaelic rusty from disuse.179 It is evident that the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton was not an active agent in stemming Gaelic's decline. In fact its role was somewhat ambiguous, given the striking fact that religious services during the nineteenth century, even in Gaelic-speaking strongholds, had a bilingual format.180 For example although the communicants at Cape North's sacramental season in 1874 were uniformly Gaelic speaking (there was not even an English "table"), an "action" sermon was preached in English all the same. Twenty years later, even in this Gaelic stronghold, the signs of linguistic assimilation were visible. One correspondent to the MacTalla harangued: "They leave the house of worship as soon as the English service is over as if they didn't have a word of Gaelic in their heads."181 The underlying causes of the erosion of the Gaelic language among the younger population in Cape Breton are a much-debated topic.182 For most of the nineteenth century Cape Breton's Gaelicspeaking culture was protected through shared religious affiliations, endogamous marriages, and relative isolation. However the thick weave of kith and kin began to unravel as rural youth sought enlarged economic opportunities outside their own communities during the late nineteenth century.183 In the coal-mining towns they were exposed to ethnically, religiously, and linguistically plural environments. In these new settings "ethnicity became less a way of life than a symbolic attachment."184 The erosion of vernacular culture and the loss of Gaelic, however gradual, must have weakened the vital connection between religion and ethnicity and further accentuated the irrelevance of the open-air communion in the early twentieth century. By then this annual event was increasingly viewed as a gathering for "old women" and "old grey-headed men," "dear old faces, weather-beaten with the storms of three-quarters of a century. "l85 That basic perception was the reality, for "old men and women" - especially those who still retained their Gaelic - figured most prominently at the open-air communions by igoo.186 Gaelic's decline was probably also a contributing factor in the devalorization of the Ceist and the "Men" among the new generation of young Cape Breton Presbyterians. In fact according to Angus Hector MacLean, the Ceist was now pejoratively styled "the old man's day."187 By the first decade of the twentieth century the open-air communion had lost many of its communal and participatory aspects.

ii7 "Tabernacles in the Wilderness"

Furthermore this landmark, which at one time cemented friendships, strengthened faith, and fostered a "strong class of Christians," had become fragmented in its form and no longer generated consensus.188 Christian fellowship and communal festivity, which had once been combined "almost as equals," had lost their equipoise within this tradition.189 Formerly two sides of the same coin, they were now regarded as two very different kinds of currency. In many ways the open-air communion ceased to be a meaningful, culturally-shared tradition. It had become an event, where old people acted out historic rituals, where young women came "busked in all their modest finery" and young men often cavorted.190 As such it made visible a social, cultural, and moral conflict between the young and the old. It also made apparent a tradition dismantled by the clergy, eroded by loss of heritage, and reshaped by new values and imperatives. In the larger sense these changes reflected the decline of collective identity and shared meanings and world-views among Cape Breton Presbyterians. Into the 19203 the "good old Highland custom" persisted in Cape Breton but only in those rural Gaelic-speaking areas where the "old order" still prevailed.191 Boularderie, for example, celebrated its last outdoor "Sacramaid" in 1921.192 Ironically enough in the more urbanized areas Presbyterian clergy found themselves bemoaning the extinction of the "fast day" and the decline in lay involvement as they strove to recover the vanished atmosphere and special character of the "old time out door sacraments."193 Although certain elements of the tradition, such as the Ceist, were retained, many of the simple and symbolic components, "the sort of things out of which such a grand thing as community was created," were irretrievably lost.194

8 Presbyterian Revivals JOHN W E B S T E R G R A N T

When I suggested to a few people that movements of religious revival among the Presbyterians of Atlantic Canada might be a fruitful subject for research, the typical reaction was one of disbelief that Presbyterianism and revival could be mentioned in the same sentence. On this point there seemed to be little difference between members of the Presbyterian and United Churches. Nor was this scepticism entirely without justification. Presbyterians, in Atlantic Canada as elsewhere, have not typically been known for evangelistic fervour. A verdict of 1855 was, "It is still night to the church, a night of danger, a night of weariness, a night of weeping."1 In 1868, a year marked by a number of revivals, a prominent evangelist was no more positive: "We have lived in a revival time and yet have been cold in heart and sluggish in progress."2 Presbyterians lamented that evangelism was left largely to Methodists and Baptists,3 while outsiders complained that Presbyterians were cold and unwelcoming.4 Of a widespread and persistent desire for revival, however, there could be no doubt: "O! that the praying people of our churches were more earnest in their supplications to Him with whom is the residue of the Spirit, for a work of revival and an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in its awakening and sanctifying influence, both on our colleges and our congregations, our ministers and students, and especially upon the Professors of our Colleges and Theological Institutions."5 When signs of revival appeared on any part of the globe they were reported with eager relish. Most of the reports were from Britain or the United States, but others came from Russia, from Turkey, or from

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almost any other country. Revivals were times when "the things of eternity [were] clothed with peculiar solemnity" and as such were a necessary part of the operations of the Holy Spirit.6 Despite a general - and accurate - impression that religious fervour was usually the exception rather than the rule among the Presbyterians of Atlantic Canada, leafing through the religious press turned up an impressive number of references not merely to the desirability of revival but to its actual occurrence. Any thought I might have had of compiling a list of awakenings was quickly dispelled by the uneven nature of the evidence, not to mention the horror with which a consistent Calvinist would have greeted any attempt to quantify the operations of the Holy Ghost. How was I to define a religious revival? Sometimes the word "revival" implied no more than a series of meetings with apparently fruitful results. At other times it referred to a movement that swept through whole countrysides. Especially in areas of Gaelic tradition, every communion season had the potential of becoming a full-fledged revival. On any definition the list of revivals was long and impressive. Among those that have come to my attention the earliest was reported from Musquodoboit in 18247 and the number grew well into the twentieth century. Geographically they ranged from Cape Breton to northern New Brunswick and from Truro to Prince Edward Island. Virtually all branches of Presbyterianism were represented. Even within the Auld Kirk of Scotland, despite its reputation for moderatism, there was talk of revival among the staid Tories of Pictou,8 considerably more than talk among the followers of Donald MacDonald on Prince Edward Island,9 and active support from none other than the ultra-liberal George Monro Grant.10 It would be difficult to think of a place within an area of significant Presbyterian strength where the roll call of revival was not being called at one time or another. Port Morien, Georgetown, Red Bank, River John, Fall River, Truro, and many more were scorched, and sometimes more than scorched, by the flames of revival. Although religious revivals varied greatly in intensity, some were so spectacular that they remained for a long time in public memory. An awakening in New Mills, New Brunswick in 1860, although unusual in some respects, illustrated some of the possibilities for excitement that lay dormant in Maritime communities.11 The movement began when several young women attending a dance were suddenly struck by a sense of the enormity of their sin. They immediately sent for a pious elder, who meanwhile had heard what seemed like heavenly music and risen from his bed. He was immediately summoned to the scene of revelry, and before long revival was sweeping through

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the community like wildfire. Special meetings were called and over a ten-day period "all work was nearly suspended." A striking feature of this revival was a depth of feeling that drove people to fall prostrate suddenly to the ground, sometimes in the course of a meeting or even when they were on their way home.12 These collapses were preceded by a period of "agony" and followed by the coming of a deep sense of peace. The greatest miracle of all was that the contagion spread even to the respectable. More typical than reports of marvels were sober accounts of people deeply affected by the revival spirit. At New Glasgow in 1875 an observer "saw in the inquiry room muscular, strong, healthy men who had lived godless lives so completely broken down like little children, and overcome with weeping, that for a little while they could not speak to me."13 The meetings there seem to have borne fruit, for the local churches reported 180 new members at the next communion.14 At nearby Springville interest at the next communion was so intense that meetings were held every night for a week.15 At Goshen, as in many other places, the revival was noted as having had a special attraction for the young.16 All this sounds sedate and sober but elsewhere the emotional temperature could be considerably higher. The preaching of Peter MacLean of Whycocomagh was regularly accompanied by physical effects that included "unconsciousness of surroundings, prostrations of the body, cries of alarm, fear and distress, followed by exclamations of joy, gladness, and the praise of God."17 Revival was the work of the Holy Spirit and one could never be sure where or if it might break out. It is important to emphasize this element of unpredictability for it was one of the axioms of Presbyterian belief. Although one could never rule out the possibility of surprise, however, in practice certain traditions tended to be more receptive to revival than others. Except among the McDonaldites of Prince Edward Island, revival was unusual in the Church of Scotland once it had lost most of its evangelical wing with the Disruption that produced the Free Church in 1843. Although James MacGregor's visits to an area were usually followed by revivals/8 a more general attitude was probably represented by Thomas McCulloch's advice to Mrs Sham that "before running about the country, pretending to convert poor industrious folk she had better show a little Christianity at home, lessening the miseries in which her idleness, ill-management and ill nature had involved her family."19 The Covenanters had led many stirring sessions in Scotland, but their Nova Scotian successors seemed more concerned with doctrinal correctness than with ecstasy. Nor do we hear of any revivals from Newfoundland, where Presbyterians were scarce and Methodists had established a virtual monopoly.

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This leaves the Free Church, within whose ranks the streams of revival first began to flow freely. By calling upon evangelicals to make a difficult choice the Disruption of the Church of Scotland stirred among its supporters a tremendous amount of emotional energy. No one harnessed this energy more effectively than Isabella Gordon Mackay, whose Edinburgh Ladies' Association sponsored missionaries to Cape Breton,20 and it was these missionaries who set in motion the first waves of revival on the island. Peter MacLean and Hugh McLeod, the two best known for their spiritual power, had already won their spurs in Highland awakenings. MacLean, of whom it was said that revival followed wherever he went, had preached on the island of Lewis before emigrating in i837.21 McLeod had already had considerable Scottish experience when recruited for Mira in i850.22 McLeod was the publicist of the movement; his descriptions of a revival at Mira were so positive that they could awaken doubts in a sceptic's mind. He must have been an effective evangelist, for a visitor - presumably Robert Murray of the Presbyterian Witness - declared that he would have travelled from Halifax just to observe the revival at first hand.23 According to McLeod the interest of the congregation was gradually aroused, "showing itself in the bible Class, the Sunday School, and the prayer meeting, as well as in public worship." After the July communion, at which five ministers assisted, interest became more intense. McLeod continued: "From that time the work has been progressing far and near" without abatement, and the great concerns of eternity are realized as they have never been before ... I have seen the Lord's work in Ross-shire and other parts of Scotland, in Ireland, and in the United States, and I must say that in no congregation have I seen anything so general, so deep, and so thorough, as I have seen in my own charge here. Religion is the only thing which engages the attention at all. Every week more than thirty prayer meetings are held, and the voice of prayer and praise may be heard in every dwelling. Those awakened ranged in age from thirty to above sixty, although most were between twenty and thirty.24

Without effective preaching these scenes of revival would scarcely have been conceivable, but the preaching was far from the whole story. A feature of Free Church obituaries of the early nineteenth century was the almost unfailing mention of influences on the deceased.25 Those celebrated in obituaries had been converted in Highland awakenings, retained hallowed memories of a leader of revival such as the evangelical Grant of Ferintosh, or were avid readers of Thomas Boston's Human Nature in Its Fourfold State.26 They had held important positions as elders, catechists, or Sunday School

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teachers. Especially in Cape Breton they had often held strategic posts in the school system.27 In Scotland some had belonged to an unofficial elite of religious leaders known as the "Men."28 Evangelically inclined lay persons could wield enormous influence, especially in conjunction with sympathetic ministers. There was also another factor, difficult to measure but not to be discounted. This was an expectation on the part of many people that revival was the natural culmination of religious interest. Salvation may have been for some an object of anxious questing; for others it may have begun as no more than a vaguely envisaged possibility. In any case both Laurie Stanley and Gordon MacDermid have called attention to the fact that revivals caught on more readily in parts of Cape Breton where settlers had already been affected by evangelical influences than where preachers had to work from scratch.29 In a sense one does not need to ask how revival came to take hold in Cape Breton. It was potentially there all along, only waiting for a spark to set the tinder ablaze. The Cape Breton awakenings did not constitute the only thread of revival. Already in 1826, well before the Disruption, McDonald was promoting his own brand of revival among the Highland settlers of Prince Edward Island. According to Grant's classic description, "the great characteristic of the people is their jerking, and shouting when especially excited, and the man that can so excite them they consider to be the holiest. As you may suppose, strong lungs, emphatic statement, and 'unction' are pretty sure to bring out the works. For though Macdonald regarded them as signs of the Spirit, they are physical and nervous entirely, though generally connected with highly wrought religious feelings."30 McDonald was eccentric in his theology, and extreme in his readiness to cultivate bodily manifestations. Yet the ingredients of his revivalism were by no means novel and many of them would have been familiar to Scottish Highlanders. The New Mills accounts introduce some unfamiliar elements, though unfamiliar only to Atlantic Canada. The shakings, prostrations, and cries had been standard features of a religious awakening that swept northern Ireland in 1859, coinciding with a massive surge of religious interest in the United States.31 How are we to account for this remarkable coincidence, especially in a largely Scottish community like New Mills? The answer seems to lie in the power of the press. The Presbyterian Witness ran articles on the revival practically every week. At New Mills the minister, Angus McMaster, was well informed on the revival, and it is a fair inference that he had seen to it that others were informed and in a measure made more receptive. In any event, although McMaster was absent in another part of his

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congregation when revival broke out, he announced a communion season as soon as he returned.32 During the mid-i86os signs of revival were largely limited to the old Free Church-predominated areas in Cape Breton, where there had been a significant revival at Mira and Sydney Mines in 18^2-^.^ Almost every week, however, the Presbyterian Witness featured exciting developments elsewhere: in the British Isles; on the continent; in mission areas; in the United States; and among the Maritime Methodists and Baptists. It seemed for a time that everyone was affected except Maritime Presbyterians. Then, here and there, signs began to suggest that something was brewing. By early 1874 revival was beginning to engulf Prince Edward Island.34 In January 1875 what was to be the most extensive awakening to affect the region began in Antigonish, where Protestants were scarce but embattled.33 It moved on to New Glasgow and River John, where even the Kirk was prominently involved and where Grant gained a name for himself as a revivalist.36 Tongues of flame reached out to Sherbrooke and St Mary's in one direction and to Tatamagouche and Wallace in the other.37 Colchester became a story of its own as the revival spread from Stewiacke in one direction and through Great Village in another.38 In 1869-70 Mira and Port Morien, where religious excitement was never far below the surface, experienced what came to be called the "great revival."39 Then the revival lost its momentum, and by the end of 1875 it was practically over. After several years during which it seemed that little remained of the old revival spirit beyond a few embers that occasionally flared up, it showed renewed vigour in 1884. Most conspicuous in some of the burnt-over districts in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, it also affected some new areas in Cape Breton and elsewhere.40 Most of the notes sounded were familiar, recalling earlier awakenings, but there were differences as well. It was not without significance that a stir in eastern Nova Scotia preceding the revival of 1875 began at a YMCA convention, for the Y was known for its impatience with traditional models of evangelism.41 It laid an unaccustomed emphasis on the involvement of a wider spectrum of Protestant denominations. Methodists and Baptists, who were often first in the field, set many precedents that Presbyterians would follow. As time went on revivals were increasingly deliberate in their planning and predictable in their patterns. By the i88os leadership was often handed over to specialists, a number of whom had themselves been converted in the revivals of the i86os and thus represented the second generation of a tradition. Notable among them were William Meikle and John Gerrior from Pictou County42 and Robert G. Vans,

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who did much of his work in Prince Edward Island,43 while Duncan MacGregor of the Presbyterian Witness staff offered constant encouragement.44 Although the intention of the revivalists was to carry on a venerable tradition, the influence of Dwight L. Moody and his song leader Ira D. Sankey was evident in their approach. Meikle must have surprised some old-timers when he preached from a tent that he had had specially constructed, although a tabernacle very similar in principle had been a regular feature of Highland communions.45 To my suggestion that there might be something worthy of study in movements of revival among the Presbyterians of Atlantic Canada the usual initial reaction, as I have indicated, was that almost by definition there could have been no such thing. Some people now reluctantly admit, "No doubt Methodist revivalism eventually affected even the Presbyterians." So closely had Methodism and revival become linked in the popular mind that the phrase "Methodist revival" rolled off the tongue with a certain inevitability. Nor does this stereotype rest on a complete misapprehension, at least for the Moody era and thereafter. Yet the suggestion that there was anything particularly Methodist about revival would have astonished Presbyterians of an earlier era. They would have had difficulty in conceding that Arminians could be genuine evangelicals at all and thus promote true revivals. Baptists and even many Anglicans they might admit, but Methodist revival was almost bound to be spurious. Maritime Presbyterians rejected American stereotypes of revival because they treasured an indigenous tradition of their own, deeply embedded in Scottish memory, where it was associated with resistance both to moderate clergy and to grasping landlords. It had a long and honoured history in Scotland, where accounts of great awakenings at Cambuslang, the Kirk'o'Shotts, and elsewhere were passed from one generation to another.46 Scottish evangelicalism had much in common with Methodism but could claim priority of origin and was regarded by Presbyterians as constituting the original evangelicalism. Moreover Presbyterians saw themselves as part of an international movement. Contacts were frequent not only with Ireland, Wales, and English nonconformity but with countries much further afield. Thanks to recent historians we are well informed about an active network that not only kept English evangelicals and New England Puritans in regular touch but reached out to include Huguenots and German Pietists.47 What mainly distinguished the evangelical tradition based on Calvinist theology was the conviction that any true revival must be the work of the Holy Spirit. "I candidly confess," wrote McLeod, "that I have no great confidence in much of what is called revival work in

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this country. Many there are who think that they can get up a revival whenever they like. And so they can, for what they call a revival is altogether the work of man." Although a genuine revival usually created a considerable stir, "a little excitement" brought about by high pressure meant little in itself.48 The test, Robert Murray wrote sceptically of a current campaign, "was that holiness must show its fruits in the family circle, in the Church, and in the market place."49 As Presbyterians reckoned, reliance on the Holy Spirit and insistence on practicality necessarily went together. Whatever else it might imply, dependence on the Spirit was not demonstrated by inactivity. In current terminology, it called upon the Christian to be "pro-active." In practice every religious awakening was preceded and accompanied by intense cultivation of the vineyard. The means employed had to be appropriate, and the test of appropriateness was that they were appointed by God and laid down in Scripture.50 The Westminster Confession of Faith declared that "the saving of souls is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word; by which also, and by the administration of the sacraments and by prayer, it is increased and strengthened."51 Reliance on anything else would be an attempt to lift oneself by one's bootstraps. Consequently a genuine revival, whatever startling manifestations might accompany it, would always make sense. Thomas Nicholson, reporting on those overcome by prostration at New Mills, was careful to insist, "Every utterance which they make in that state is perfectly coherent. They are there with all the powers of their souls dealing with the realities of eternity."52 By the late nineteenth century outside influences, mainly from the United States, had considerably modified the traditions of religious awakening that Calvinist settlers had brought to the New World. In the Maritime provinces, however, these traditions had not been forgotten and continued to affect expectations of revival. At Fall River it was insisted in 1872 that "no special means had been brought into play."53 On Prince Edward Island it was said to be "a noteworthy feature that in this revival work, there was no departure from the time honoured Presbyterian doctrine and practice."54 At Red Bank, when Meikle pitched his gospel tent, a revival nearly doubled the membership of the church. Yet we are assured once again, "there was no pressure to draw them in other than the conviction of sin and the power of the Saviour's love."55 We may take these claims to continuity with some grains of salt, but it is likely that the traditional Calvinist approach to revival retained its vigour in Atlantic Canada longer than in any other part of North America. Of the revivals that once formed a major component of the Presbyterianism of Atlantic Canada, scarcely a memory remains, and those

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whose scepticism aroused my curiosity about the tradition are not likely to be easily persuaded of its significance for today. The approaches to evangelism of the churches that came together in 1875 to form the Presbyterian Church in Canada offer few helpful precedents for evangelism today, at least not without considerable modification. The Seceders were suspicious of revival, while the Kirk had little talent for it. The Free Church was most successful, but it rested on certainties - often lending themselves to fanaticism and moral tyranny that no longer carry conviction. Later revivals were outwardly the most successful of all, but their carefully engineered rallies left little room for the dependence on the Holy Spirit that had been a hallmark of earlier awakenings. It was perhaps inevitable that they should pass like a summer cloud, although we must not forget their rich fruits. Despite their limitations the various brands of Presbyterianism offer precedents that call for serious reconsideration by Presbyterian, United and other churches. The basic orientation of both churches today is Arminian or even Pelagian, issuing in an almost exclusive concern for programs we have essentially chosen for ourselves. This is not entirely regrettable for the Arminian impulse has inspired a great deal of useful activity and helped to deliver us from the temptation, inherent in many interpretations of Calvinism, of assuming that what has been correctly thought is practically as good as done. Yet we need the balancing conviction, illustrated many times in the story of Scottish revivals, that we are challenged to do everything precisely because everything has already been done to us. Without this conviction we are likely to put our faith in sloganeering or gimmickry, both of which disappoint us when the slogans prove hollow and the gimmicks fail to deliver. Only the Holy Spirit can revive us, as generations of Presbyterians have never wearied of repeating, but the Spirit has typically operated through thoughtful people who have wrestled forcefully. Helping to nurture a distinctive regional character may have been the most important contribution of Presbyterianism to Atlantic Canada. This character, which allowed for many variations in detail, was typically pious without being obscurantist, serious without being humourless, and activist without being shallow, although it was often too stubborn to mix readily with other ingredients. It could be seen at its most uncompromising in William John MacKenzie, who, on his way to opening a mission in Korea on his own initiative, spent a night on the open prairie rather than travel by rail on the sabbath.56 In Grant the same impulse expressed itself in commitment to a liberal education. Less spectacular but not less significant was the impact of a steady stream of theologs and dedicated lay people who fanned out

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through the region and beyond it. Most of these were, in one way or another, products of religious revivals or had been greatly stimulated by them. The revivals proved in most cases to be ephemeral, but they stamped an impression on the Presbyterianism of Atlantic Canada that is, I trust, still recognizable today.

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Church and Society

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9 The Antislavery Polemic of the Reverend James MacGregor: Canada's Proto-Abolitionist as "Radical Evangelical" BARRY CAHILL

INTRODUCTION: BLACK LOYALISTS AND BLACK SLAVES At the beginning of chapter three of The Black Loyalists (1976), where James Walker deals with "The Bondage of Dependence, 1783-91" that is, the period between immigration to Nova Scotia and exodus to Sierra Leone, when the free Black refugees oscillated between captivity and impoverishment - he observes that among the province's slaveholders was "the Reverend James Logon [sic: Lyon], Nova Scotia's first Presbyterian minister." The only Black person residing in the New England Planter township of Onslow in 1771 was the teenaged boy slave of Rev. Lyon. (Lyon left Nova Scotia the same year and afterwards became a militant patriot at Machias.) Walker conspicuously omits mentioning another Presbyterian minister whose arrival in Nova Scotia from Scotland in 1786 occurred in the midst of the period under discussion, and who was to become in barely two years' time the prime mover in the attack on slavery in British North America.1 The Reverend James MacGregor (1759-1830) was not only a true child of Ebenezer Erskine's 1733 Secession from the Kirk,2 but also a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, who "brought to Nova Scotia the cultural baggage of his Scottish education. "3 MacGregor matriculated at the University of Glasgow - not Edinburgh, as is wrongly assumed - in 1779, the year after Scotland's decisive "Negro Case" had judicially abolished slavery in a land where, unlike England and its overseas empire, domestic slavery had never taken root.4 How far

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contemporary Scottish law and jurisprudence had advanced beyond the horizon of their English and colonial counterparts was well illustrated by Nan Wilson in her seminal 1970 article,5 which Walker cites - though in connection with the English myth of judicial abolition rather than the Scottish fact. It is the Scottish fact that provides the transatlantic comparative context in which to place the attack on slavery, launched within months of his arrival by the young "Gaelic Missionary from the Antiburgher Presbytery of Glasgow to Pictou, Nova Scotia."6 It is a measure of the perverseness of the 19705 historiography of African-Nova Scotians of the 17805 pre-exodus period that the Canadian historian Walker had nothing whatsoever to say about MacGregor 's antislavery activism. But the American historian Robin Winks7 wrote three pages on him who "had focused attention on slavery far more sharply than had been done in any of the other colonies, and until his death in 1830 ... continued to speak out for Negro equality in the Pictou area." Nor has MacGregor's radical - one might even say militant - antislavery attracted favourable attention, or any attention at all, from historians of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, most of whom have been his fellow clergymen. It was not mentioned by the Reverend James Robertson in his history of the Secession Church, the publication of which coincided with the centenary of the Burgher-Anti-Burgher breach, and which incorporated MacGregor's own unfinished memoirs in toto.8 Nor is it mentioned in Enduring Witness, the authoritative centenary history of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Though the fact that the first Anti-Burgher minister in Nova Scotia, the Reverend James Murdoch, married the daughter of a prominent slaveholding New England merchant in Halifax is undoubtedly relevant, it is pure anachronism to assert that "Canadian Presbyterian involvement in the slavery issue had been almost entirely a Free Church concern."9 However true this observation may be of Ontario, it does not apply to that older part of Canada that is Nova Scotia. It was among the missionary clergy of the Secession Church to Nova Scotia that the issue of slavery was brought forward more than fifty years before the Free Church came into existence. No Free Churchman in mid-nineteenth-century Ontario played a more prominent role in the field of antislavery work than did MacGregor in late eighteenth-century Nova Scotia. Presbyterian Church historians, however, seem collectively to have been more embarrassed by his pointed criticism of a slaveholding moderator of the Burgher presbytery which MacGregor, a doctrinaire Anti-Burgher, steadfastly refused to join - than edified by his strong antislavery stance.

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MacGregor 's attempt to shame the senior pastor of Truro Presbytery into examining his own attitudes and behaviour was not viewed as disinterested fraternal correction designed to restore the moral integrity of the church. Even MacGregor himself in later years, when the ecclesiastical political landscape had altered beyond all recognition, was embarrassed by what he came to view as a youthful indiscretion. He omitted all but the most oblique references to the slavery controversy from his unfinished autobiography, which he began to compose in the 18205 - years after Black slavery had ceased to be tenable in Nova Scotia, and the Anti-Burgher Presbytery of Pictou (1795) had united with the Burgher Presbytery of Truro (1786) to form the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia (1817). Slaveholding by clergymen, nevertheless, was the chief issue concerning which MacGregor 's "intransigence left him isolated from religious brethren" for the decade between his arrival in 1786 and the formation of the Presbytery of Pictou in 1795.10 This article will analyse, within the context of a sharp disagreement between the moderator of the Burgher presbytery and a noncommunicating Anti-Burgher missionary, not only the genesis and aftermath of the slavery controversy, but also the rationale and structure of MacGregor's antislavery polemic. The controversy was undoubtedly an effect of "the 1747 division of the Secession Church in Scotland into Burgher and Anti-burgher factions carried over into Nova Scotia,"11 where the breach was articulated in a war of words between the slaveholding Burgher minister's partisans and the AntiBurgher abolitionist. The article will also attempt to assess MacGregor's significance as an ideological or "conscientious abolitionist,"12 and to address the question whether MacGregor's private-cumpublic attack on a slaveholding minister gave impetus to the movement towards the abolition of slavery in Loyalist Nova Scotia, where "'to keep slavery' was looked upon as a distinct mark of respectability."13 It will also suggest that the attack on slavery was a reflex of MacGregor's ethical rigour - his having been "raised in the bosom" of the strict Anti-Burgher wing of the Secession Church - and that it rationalized his decision not to unite with the Burgher Associate Presbytery of Truro. The young colonial missionary took the view that the scandalous practice of slaveholding by clergymen betrayed the moral turpitude of Burgher polity. It must have seemed to MacGregor that those very ministers of the Secession Church who were safely out of Scotland were prepared either to hold slaves themselves or to condone the practice, despite its having been condemned "in explicit terms" by a "recent [1778] decision of the chief court in Scotland [Court of Session]."14

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GEORGE PATTERSON'S "SLAVERY CONTROVERSY" Though the majority of Black slaves were held in Annapolis and Shelburne Counties, George Patterson's soi-disant "slavery controversy" covered a triangle inscribed by greater Halifax County, which comprised the districts of Halifax proper, Colchester, and Pictou. MacGregor, barely two years in Pictou, caused a sensation in Truro by the publication in Halifax in the summer of 1788 of his elevenpage diatribe, A Letter to a Clergyman Urging him to set free a Black Girl he held in Slavery.'15 The town was already in a distracted state thanks to the publication, three months earlier, of an even more incendiary pamphlet compiled by two disbarred American Loyalist emigre attorneys who were aiming at nothing less than the impeachment of the assistant justices of the Supreme Court.16 Though it may have been pure coincidence that MacGregor's pamphlet was published in the interim between the first two of the three unsuccessful attempts in Nova Scotia (1787, 1789, 1808) to enact regulatory "Negro Bills," the pamphlet was perhaps most remarkable for being addressed to an anonymous, elderly "clergyman," whose identity was an open secret: the Reverend Daniel Cock of Truro. Parson Cock (1717-1805), a Burgher minister who had served in Scotland before emigrating to America in 1770, had been the minister in the Scots-Irish Planter township of Truro for nearly twenty years, and was the author of the 1784 petition from the Pictou Highlanders that resulted in MacGregor's being dispatched to Nova Scotia.17 MacGregor's exhortation to Cock, in which he denounced slaveholding Presbyterian ministers as no more enlightened than Roman Catholics/8 was the first and only antislavery imprint in pre1800 Canadian literature: "That Protestant, Presbyterian ministers," MacGregor wrote, "who of all others should keep farthest off from her, should be found publicly committing fornication with the Great Whore, drinking themselves drunk, and stupefying their consciences with their filthy wine! But blessed be God, though hand join in hand, the Negroes shall be free."19 The chronology of the slavery controversy has not been definitively established. All that can be known with a high degree of probability is that sometime early in 1788 Cock received from MacGregor a private letter containing strictures on slaveholding. Scarcely had Cock consulted with the elders of his own session - not to mention the other members of presbytery - than the letter was made public by its author, who published it in a revised and enlarged form with neither the knowledge nor the permission of its addressee. The letter,

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which MacGregor arranged through his agent in Halifax to have published in pamphlet form20 and "printed in quantity,"21 is wrongly alleged to have been published by the king's printer, Anthony Henry. The evidence of typography and layout suggests rather that the pamphlet was published by the Boston Tory newspaper proprietor John Howe.22 The latter published and subsequently edited the NovaScotia Magazine, which carried no fewer than ten articles and poems against slavery in 1790 and i/gi,23 thus providing a forum for disseminating British antislavery literature, of which MacGregor's pamphlet was the first indigenous product. The publication of MacGregor's pamphlet, wrote his grandson Patterson,24 "excited great attention. The members of the Truro Presbytery25 were very indignant, as well as many of their friends, but many throughout Colchester not only read it with deep interest, but cordially approved of its contents." So agitated were the detractors of the pamphlet that on one occasion the Reverend James Munro [Monroe], a recently immigrated itinerant Kirk minister, "coming in among the brethren with a few copies in his pocket, and letting them know what they were, had his coat tail torn in a scramble for them."26 MacGregor had not been ordained by the antislavery Anti-Burgher Presbytery of Glasgow - the clerk pro tem of which, MacGregor's "good friend" the Reverend John Buist,27was also an abolitionist - in order to consent to membership in a proslavery, Burgher presbytery in a colonial mission field where slavery was too solidly entrenched. MacGregor made it clear from the moment of his first meeting with Cock and his Burgher associate, the Reverend David Smith of Londonderry, that he had not the slightest intention of joining their fledgling presbytery. MacGregor's antislavery polemic must therefore be placed in the context of his decade-long struggle against Burgher latitudinarianism, and flesh must be placed on the bare bones of Susan Buggey's provocative thesis, that "publication in Halifax in 1788 of MacGregor's rebuke to Cock ... and the Reverend David Smith's reply on Cock's behalf, formalized MacGregor's split with the Presbytery of Truro."28 As MacGregor's heuristic involved playing devil's advocate with his interlocutors, his antislavery arguments are perhaps less important in themselves than in the context of the circumstances which gave rise to them. Before becoming a pamphleteering abolitionist MacGregor exploited the prestige and meagre resources of his position as resident missionary at Pictou in the interest of emancipating slaves. "The question of the slave trade," wrote Patterson, "had just previously to the Doctor's leaving Scotland begun to agitate the public mind of

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Britain. He had entered heart and soul into the discussion."29 Patterson's somewhat gingerly treatment of the subject divides neatly into two parts - MacGregor's acquired emancipationism (redemption of slaves) and his native abolitionism (slavery controversy) - separated by Patterson's appropriation of Thomas Chandler Haliburton's explanation of how "the question of slavery was afterward settled in Nova Scotia." Patterson did not imply that MacGregor's interest in slavery commenced with the slavery controversy, nor was he so disingenuous as to pretend that no slaves were held at Pictou.30 The slaveholders were not the Highlanders of course, but the Planters who had brought Black slaves with them from their American homeland. Prominent among them were the brothers Matthew and Dr John Harris, originally of Pennsylvania, both of whom were to figure prominently in MacGregor's efforts to extinguish slavery in Pictou, and who had been scarcely less conspicuous as patriots during the American Revolution.31 MacGregor was determined to do what he could not only to extinguish the slave commerce between Pictou and Truro, sixty-four kilometres to the south-west, but also gradually to abolish slavery in Pictou itself. His preferred methods for counteracting the institution were encouraging manumission - gradual emancipation through "upgrading" to indentured servantship - and, where necessary, redeeming the slaves from their condition as real estate. At least on Patterson's interpretation, the redemption of slaves preceded and perhaps underlay the slavery controversy. MacGregor interceded, for example, with Matthew Harris on behalf of a Black slave girl whose redemption MacGregor purchased for £50, with most of his first year's stipend going towards the down payment. He also persuaded Harris to manumit a mulatto man after a period of indentured service. The "Black Girl" of MacGregor's pamphlet was the daughter of a Black slave woman whom Cock received as a gift from someone in Cornwallis, a New England Planter township where he ministered as an itinerant until the arrival in August 1785 of the Reverend Hugh Graham, a Burgher minister from Scotland. Cock later sold the mother; "the daughter he seems to have obtained by purchase."32 MacGregor took the view that by accepting and holding slaves Cock was scandalizing those whose consciences were weaker than his own: "Surely when the Reverend Mr , a good minister, does it," MacGregor was to ironize, "there cannot be any harm in it."33 In this respect MacGregor may have been purposely articulating the antislavery views of "the Antiburgher party in Colchester," who looked to him for leadership.34

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The New-Light Baptists, who could make little headway against the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian hegemony sustained by the clergy of the "aggressively mission-oriented Secession Church,"35 were as opposed to Black slavery as the Burgher Presbyterians and Congregationalists were tolerant of it. The biographer of Samuel George William Archibald, who was born in Truro in 1777, communicated the following oral tradition: "During the time Parson Cock owned a black female slave, and one or more other slaves were held in Truro, a Baptist minister from the United States preached at Truro and spoke against human slavery, maintaining that the soul of a slave was more precious than a million of money. Coming out of the meeting young Archibald remarked in the hearing of the minister, 'That is strange doctrine you have been preaching, for Dr. John Harris bought a slave the other day, body and soul, for ten pounds.'"36 Making allowances for recension and some inevitable refraction, it is clear that the "Baptist minister" could only have been Henry Alline, who preached three or four days in Truro in August 1782 and who was made to feel altogether unwelcome by the proslavery Cock and Smith, whom he did not identify but described as "two poor dark ministers."37 The most significant difference between MacGregor and Alline was that a visiting antislavery evangelist would receive even shorter shrift from slaveholding or proslavery Burgher presbyters than would a young missionary of their own church, however hostile he was to slavery.?8 In his celebrated history of Pictou County, published eighteen years after his two-volume biography and editio princeps of MacGregor, Patterson revisited the subject of Cock's outreach to the Pictou Presbyterians before MacGregor's arrival among them. They viewed themselves as having been under Cock's pastoral ministry. Yet when Patterson realized that he could not completely avoid mentioning the slavery controversy, he forbore naming Cock and described him innocuously as "a clergyman in a neighbouring district."39 Patterson implies that MacGregor's attempts to confront slavery in Pictou precipitated his attack on the slaveholding clergyman in Truro. Perhaps if Cock's opponents within the session at Truro40 had not joined in the controversy between MacGregor and the presbytery, nor been his strong supporters, the slavery controversy would not have ignited. Had MacGregor himself been a member of or at least reconciled to the presbytery, he might still have written a private letter condemning the moderator's domestic economy of slaveholding, or perhaps read it at a sederunt, but he would not have published it in a manner and forum calculated to attract the widest possible audience along the Halifax-Truro-Pictou axis.

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MACGREGOR'S ANTISLAVERY RATIONALE "The Letter," wrote bibliographer Marie Tremaine, "is a violent harangue... well-seasoned with personal abuse"41 - a judgement with which Robin Winks concurs.42 Even MacGregor himself is said to have explained in "subsequent letters ... that his strong language was meant to apply to the acts of buying and selling our fellow men, and not to Mr. Cock personally, and that in what he had said he did not refer to his motives."43 This rationalization - Cock after all did commit acts of buying and selling humans, regardless of how benign his motives - is undermined by MacGregor's having conceded that Cock disapproved of the "cruel and murderous treatment" endemic in the international slave-trade, while doing everything in his power "to make all men believe the slave trade lawful." MacGregor's criticism of Cock's hypocrisy reflected the strategic priorities of the Anglo-Scottish abolitionists, who believed that the slave-trade and slave commerce generally had to be ended before the institution of slavery per se could be effectively attacked. Consenting "in one instance to the buying and selling of man" declared one's "approbation of the whole of the slave trade, ancient and modern." Slaveholding implied the de facto lawfulness of the slave-trade in which Cock had participated personally by acquiring slaves and disposing of one. Patterson resisted the implication that Cock was guilty of the greater sin: "It may indeed, be objected, that he [MacGregor] confounds slave trading and slave holding, but both involve the same principles."44 Of greater hermeneutic interest than MacGregor's restatement of the conventional proslavery rationale is his antislavery exegesis of scripture - nine passages are cited or quoted - a heuristic that was only just being introduced into English anti-slave trade discourse by radical abolitionists such as Granville Sharp (who had made his scholarly reputation as a biblical critic). Its novelty was such that as late as 1800 the celebrated antislavery brief of Solicitor-General Ward Chipman of New Brunswick was silent on Scripture, whereas his much less well-known (and unpublished) proslavery brief of 1805 commences with a scriptural defence of the institution.4? MacGregor's exegesis and biblical theology are scarcely more interesting than his choice of texts: i Corinthians 6:2 is emended from "Know you not that the saints shall judge the world?" to "Know you not that these slaves shall judge the world?" - a variant that neither the koine original [hagioi] nor the apparatus criticus (nor presumably the Gaelic) supports.46 Nor did MacGregor confine himself to sacred literature; he quotes the Augustan essayist and critic Joseph Addison's tragedy, Cato (act 2, scene i), to demonstrate that a

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slaveholding clergyman possessed less civic virtue than Cato Uticensis, a statesman of the late Roman Republic: "Shall a heathen say/ - in Cato's judgment, / A day, an hour of virtuous liberty / Is worth a whole eternity of bondage'?"47 The last four pages of the Letter are taken up with MacGregor's restatement and rebuttal of the four "objections," containing the substance of all that he could conceive to be said in favour of slavery. The first argument might be categorized in twentieth-century terms as eugenicist, the second as social Darwinist, the third as analogical, and the fourth as hermeneutic: i. "Their colour may be improved as an argument to shew the propriety of enslaving the Negroes"; 2. "You plead that it is better for them to be slaves than to be free"; 3. "The example of the Jews is plead[ed] in favour of slavery"; 4. "Many think that the slave trade is fully authorized from Gen. ix. 25: Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants48 shall he be unto his brethren." MacGregor's development of the "slave of slaves" motif in his lengthy and remarkable counter-exegesis of Genesis 9:25 led him to the deontological insight that "the master is by much the greater slave of the two"49 - an idea deriving from David Hume, who was strongly opposed to slavery and whose essay Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations anticipated many of the arguments of the AngloAmerican abolitionists.50 MacGregor concluded his exegesis of Genesis 9:25 by asserting, "As far as I see, Reverend Sir [Cock], you are under the necessity of renouncing every thing amiable, divine or human, before the curse of Canaan entitle you to enslave your fellow creatures."51 Though the argument from Scripture was conventional, MacGregor stated the Christian case against slavery by disproving the first proposition, through which Chipman was to attempt to establish the "general position - That Slavery is neither unlawful inhuman or unjust": namely, "That it [slavery] is agreeable to the will & law of God as revealed in the sacred scriptures."52 Chipman did not appreciate that the scriptural basis of the proslavery rationale had completely disintegrated in the face of MacGregor's full frontal assault upon it some twenty years earlier. Towards the end of the pamphlet MacGregor observed with lacerating irony, "That the laws of Great-Britain, France, Pennsylvania, &c. abolishing slavery, laws which are the envy of neighbouring states, are most iniquitous and oppressive, incapacitating the inhabitants from performing the glorious duty of chaining, whipping and killing innocent men." The reference to Great Britain is accurate only with respect to Scotland, while the reference to monarchical France, where influential abolitionists such as Marquis de Lafayette were being courted by their English opposite numbers, is somewhat

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obscure.53 The reference to Quaker Pennsylvania is understandable. The Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, which was the first of its kind in the United States, came into existence in 1775 and helped to secure passage of "the Act for the gradual abolition of slavery" in i78o.54 Statutorily incorporated in 1789 as "The Pennsylvania Society for promoting the abolition of slavery and for the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage and for the improving the condition of the African race," the following year this body (under the presidency of Benjamin Franklin) sent to Congress the first petition for the total abolition of slavery." MacGregor's great expectations of American independence were shortly to be destroyed by article I, section 9, subsection t of the Constitution, which effectively lifted the ban on the importation of slaves imposed by the Continental Congress as early as April 1776 - three months before the Declaration of Independence.56 MacGregor supposed that his coming from the strict Anti-Burgher wing of the Secession Church conferred on him not only moral authority - even superiority relative to Burgher Seceders - but also a competitive edge in any controversy with clergymen-slaveholders. As mere sophists, they were intellectually inferior to him, though Cock was also a product of the Scottish universities. The onus was on Cock to cease and desist from holding Black people in slavery, not on MacGregor to refrain from urging him to let his people go. For some reason, however, there has always been more sympathy for the ageing Burgher clergyman who held the Black girl in slavery and refused to set her free, than for the Black slave girl herself. It is conveniently forgotten that Cock was not only a slaveholder but also a slave-dealer: having received the girl's mother as a gift, he subsequently sold her. In any event "Deal MacGregor," as the Black slave came to be known from MacGregor's "equitable redemption" of her, endured in Cock's household until the end of his life. The senior pastor of Truro Presbytery died in 1805 in his eighty-eighth year. "It is commonly said by those who knew the facts of the case," concluded Patterson,57 "that it had been well for his family, if she had never been admitted into it."

C O N C L U S I O N : THE A T T A C K O N S L A V E R Y IN B R I T I S H N O R T H A M E R I C A MacGregor's Letter, despite being his first published work and one of the very few imprints collected by Patterson for republication in A Few Remains, does not yet have a place in the canon of literature of The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Nor has it played a role in exogenous MacGregor scholarship, the principal exceptions being the

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earliest of the biographers - Patterson himself - and the latest, Susan Buggey, who understatedly observes in her DCB article that "[a] great deal has been written about MacGregor. The vast majority of these writings are based on George Patterson's Memoir."5** She might just as well have said that they were selectively derived from the Patterson archetype, to which they are all conspicuously inferior. The slavery controversy, from which Patterson, to his eternal credit, did not shrink, is likewise conspicuous by its omission from all of these writings. One can only assume that the authors, including Patterson's son, Judge George Geddie Patterson, held a view of the innocuousness of Black slavery not far removed from Cock's. Patterson pere, however, took the somewhat more historically and legally sound view, deriving from Haliburton, whose history was published near the end of MacGregor's life, that the judicial attack on slavery in Nova Scotia led to gradual abolition through continuing emancipation.59 Though Patterson was too astute and honest a scholar to attempt evasion of the slavery controversy in any biography of MacGregor, the latter's radical abolitionist persona did not commend itself either to his contemporaries or to Presbyterian posterity generally. Cock was the lesser of two evils; MacGregor the greater - a simple case of moral relativism and situational ethics carried to their logical extreme. Among contemporary historians of religion in Canada, it is only George Rawlyk, viewing MacGregor from the perspective of the radical evangelical "paradigm" and "ethos," who draws attention to MacGregor's antislavery as common ground between Presbyterians and New Lights.60 One possible reason why MacGregor's role as the precipitator or catalyst of the attack on slavery in British North America is not yet a recognized integral part of Presbyterian history is that there has never been a tradition of Negritude within the Presbyterian Church. While there was both an African Baptist and an African Methodist Church, there was no African Presbyterian tradition - no evangelical mission, no ethnic-ecclesial community, no indigenous ministry; only an activist white clergyman invincibly opposed to slavery. The controversy did not concern the free Blacks, the majority of whom four years later went off in search of the promised land in West Africa, but Black slaves of those white pre-Loyalist Americans secure that the New Testament nowhere forbids slavery. Even in the context of MacGregor's own ministerial career the attack on slavery is viewed as something of a regrettable aberration, a youthful/aw* pas. A striking exception to the denial of unassimilable history in favour of anodyne myth was the 1936 sesquicentenary commemoration of MacGregor's arrival in Pictou - a joint public celebration by

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church, state, and university in which MacGregor was praised by fellow clergy for having been "ahead of his time in many ways. He was one of the first to denounce slavery as an institution in a country that called itself Christian."61 "This latter issue," declared the moderator of the Synod of the Maritime Provinces, is of more than academic interest. When we recall that Mr MacGregor evidently formulated these [antislavery] views close to the year 1786, and when we remember the state of public opinion on the question which prevailed at that time, and for many years afterward, we realize that Mr MacGregor held advanced and enlightened views on the subject. He gave to his views practical effect at personal expense and sacrifice and suffered the loss of friends who differed from him. This provides a colourful interlude in his life which gained him wide publicity in his day and renders him still an object of interest.62

Generally speaking, however, MacGregor's antislavery stance has not rendered him an object of interest; it has not been viewed as a positive or constructive feature of his "radical evangelicalism" because it tended to undermine the peace, order, and good government of the church. The extent of the impact on MacGregor's posthumous reputation is implicit in the fact that the unimportance of the slavery controversy was long argued from silence - despite the Machiavellian role that it played in presbyterial politics at the time and the long shadow that it cast over the thirty-year prehistory (1786-1817) of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia. Despite its dire impact on Presbyterian internal relations - the Presbytery of Truro appears not to have been functioning at all between 1788 and 1792 - publication of MacGregor's Letter in Halifax created a matrix for the incipient judicial assault on slavery. This is a matter of aetiology, not merely an instance of the historian's fallacy of teleology. So long as Black slavery continued to be socio-ethically and religiously acceptable, it remained legally defensible. Once the public attack on slavery had begun within the Presbyterian Church and within the ministry, it became increasingly difficult to sustain slavery as a socio-economic institution having the force of customary law. Winks63 goes so far as to assert that Chief Justice Thomas A.L. Strange (1790-7), Attorney-General Sampson Salter Blowers,64 and MacGregor "between [sic] them capitalized on public indifference and hostility to slavery to stifle it by the turn of the century." By contriving to place the scandal of ministerial slaveholding and slavetrafficking directly on the public agenda, MacGregor may also have contributed indirectly to the second unsuccessful attempt by the House of Assembly, in 1789, to enact a Negro Bill, which might have

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had the incidental effect of limiting the further extension of Black slavery in pre-exodus Nova Scotia.65 Though Cock did not do as he was urged by setting free the Black girl he held in slavery, MacGregor's pamphlet was a triumphant exercise in liberation theology avant la lettre. The apostle and evangelist of the abolition of slavery in Nova Scotia, MacGregor was a Presbyterian Alline. "Something of the complex relationship of radical evangelicalism and the moderate evangelicalism of Scots Presbyterianism, especially in the Maritimes," writes Rawlyk, "may be discerned by examining Alline's experiences and the early career of that very gifted man, the Reverend James MacGregor."66 I submit that the slavery controversy not only defined MacGregor's early career, but also qualifies him as a radical evangelical - no less than any New Light, Baptist, or Methodist preacher who opposed Black slavery. The spirit of the Lord was upon MacGregor no less than upon the New Light proto-evangelist to proclaim liberty to captives, and to demonstrate that for Cock to hold a Black person in slavery was to reject the commandment of God for the sake of his tradition. Slaveholding clergymen had themselves to be re-evangelized, so that they could repent and believe that slavery was a sin against the gospel. Only then could antislavery lawyers and judges begin their efforts to convince government and society that it was also a crime against humanity.

io Strikes, Rural Decay, and Socialism: The Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia Grapples with Social Realities, 1880-1914 MICHAEL BOUDREAU

From its formation in 1875 the Presbyterian Church in Canada maintained an active involvement in social reform. By advocating prohibition, prison reform, the abolition of prostitution and gambling, and the need for improved educational facilities for the young, Presbyterians assumed a prominent position in the social reform movement. One challenge, however, to which the Presbyterians failed to devote their full attention during the period from 1880 to 1914, was the amelioration of the poor social conditions facing Canada's working class. Nowhere does this apparent indifference reveal itself more clearly than in Nova Scotia. An examination of the relations of the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia with the province's working-class community from 1880 to 1914 reveals two patterns of events concerning the denomination's approach to solving social problems. The period from 1880 to 1900 witnessed the growth of tensions between the church and the working class not only over the issue of strikes, which the church opposed, but also over the best means to effect social reform. This acrimony resulted in an increasing sense of alienation by workers towards the church they suspected of neglecting their welfare. From 1900 to 1914, with urban-industrial expansion, out-migration from rural communities, and the appearance of socialism, the church became more vocal about Nova Scotia's growing social malaise. The Presbyterians' response to this situation signalled the emergence of conservative and progressive strains of the social gospel within the denomination. The rise of the social gospel in the last two decades of the nineteenth century provided Canada's Protestant churches with a bold

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new path to follow in their efforts to administer social reform. Long regarded by historians as the preserve of Protestant churches in central and western Canada, the reform ethos of the social gospel also permeated the attitudes and pronouncements of Nova Scotia's Protestant denominations. In its essence the social gospel decreed that the principal goal of Christianity was to reform society as a whole and establish the Kingdom of God on earth.1 Social gospellers, according to William G. McLoughlin, hoped to combine science and religion to "uplift the masses" rather than leave them to the mercy of laissezfaire individualism.2 In adopting the social gospel Canadian Protestants did not abandon their evangelical creed. Rather, as Michael Gauvreau has asserted, the social gospel consisted of an association between evangelicalism and moral and social reform.3 As John Moir aptly notes the social gospel did not appear as a unified philosophy at a single moment in time or place. Instead it took shape among different individuals and churches in response to issues specific to each denomination.4 A study of how the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia grappled with social realities between 1880 and 1914 will serve to underscore Moir's contention. Ernest R. Forbes' article, "Prohibition and the Social Gospel in Nova Scotia," is the best known scholarly treatment of the social gospel in this province. Labelling prohibition as the "mid-wife" of Nova Scotia's social gospel movement, Forbes does not probe beyond this issue to discuss the broader range of concerns associated with the new reform doctrine espoused by the social gospel.5 Although the temperance crusade did command an enormous amount of attention from Nova Scotia's Protestant denominations, it will not be addressed here. Instead a plethora of other social ills that troubled the religious leaders of Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church - notably strikes, rural decay, and socialism - will constitute the main focus of this study. It is within this context that the key role played by Presbyterians in Nova Scotia in the dissemination of the social gospel surfaces. Most Nova Scotia Presbyterian social gospellers can be described as "conservative." Their emphasis upon personal and ethical issues, combined with a social strategy based upon legislative reform of the social environment, placed them closest to traditional evangelicalism. For the purposes of this discussion those ministers who actively called upon the state to intervene in society to improve socio-economic conditions and who supported the efforts of the working class to advance their lot, will be labelled "progressive."6 In this way they manifested their belief that the "true" function of the church was to defend the oppressed. Moreover the "radical" social gospel, which endorsed a social salvation that would remove all vestiges of

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the social evil and thus fundamentally transform society, did not exist within the Nova Scotia Presbyterian denomination.7 Nevertheless, as this paper will demonstrate, conservative and progressive manifestations of the social gospel did emerge in the post-igoo period within the province's Presbyterian Church. Genuine Christian benevolence and a certain degree of denominational self-interest lay at the heart of the social gospel's emergence in Nova Scotia. The shift towards the social gospel by some Presbyterian ministers at the dawn of the twentieth century may be seen as an effort to maintain the denomination's importance within society. As Ramsay Cook has stated social gospellers across the country argued for a church that preached a message responsive to the needs of ordinary working people in order to prevent them from rejecting organized religion.8 In Nova Scotia in the midst of a rising tide of materialism and growing discontent among their working class membership, a few prominent Presbyterian ministers espoused the social gospel in the hopes of curing the province of its social ills and ensuring that their church and Christianity remained central features in their parishioners' lives.9 They recognized that stagnation, not change, was the enemy of Christianity in a progressive world. Workers in Nova Scotia encountered significant socio-economic changes between 1880 and 1914. The organization of trade unions in the 18805 and 18903 brought together legions of the province's workers in strikes to express their anger over worsening living and working conditions. The impact of industrialization and the consolidation of monopoly capitalism at the turn of the century swelled the ranks of working men and women and compounded the hardships they endured. As these changes were felt throughout the province, Presbyterian ministers faced the problem of dealing with the grievances of the working-class members of their congregations. Throughout the period from 1880 to 1914, the Presbyterian Church formed the largest Protestant denomination in Nova Scotia. Over this twenty-four year span the Presbyterians comprised an average of 23.7 percent of the province's population.10 In 1901 22.3 percent of Nova Scotia's population could be classified as working class, which included such occupations as miners, carpenters, longshoremen, domestics, and unskilled labourers." By 1911 the total percentage of workers in the province had grown to 33.8, underscoring the impact of industrialization upon the expansion of Nova Scotia's working class.12 Social concerns within the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scoria assumed an urban and a rural expression. While strikes evoked a negative response from most Presbyterians, other socio-economic issues

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helped to foster a social gospel spirit within the church. Rural decay prompted segments of the church's rural constituency to articulate a remedy, inspired by the conservative social gospel, to this crisis. Similarly the apparent attraction of socialism for many workers served as the catalyst for a few urban-based Presbyterian ministers to adopt the progressive social gospel to help reverse the downward trend of socio-economic conditions. The social gospel within Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church was "conservative" in tone but "progressive" in substance. Moreover those ministers who adopted the social gospel saw it as a natural extension of their social reform activism. The dividing line between social reform and the social gospel was the emphasis that the social gospel placed upon improving both the physical and the spiritual welfare of society as a whole. The increasingly combative nature of the Canadian labour movement in the last two decades of the nineteenth century elicited a harsh rebuke from the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia. The church's major periodical during this period, the Presbyterian Witness, led the attack on strikes. In 1880, with an eye to the frequent reports of labour walkouts and related violence in Great Britain and the United States, the Witness contended that "Public opinion, and still more powerful agencies, should be brought to bear upon working men so as to prevent these ruinous experiments in coercing the employers of labor."13 Strikes were to be opposed because of the suffering they brought to bear on innocent members of society who did not participate in such actions. According to the Witness: "Strikes are in the main foolish and costly luxuries to all concerned. The wage earners lose their wages; the employers suffer derangement of business; shop-keepers lose customers; the public have to pay larger prices for commodities affected by the strike."14 The interests of one class it seems could not override the collective interests of society. The negative attitude of the Witness towards strikes stood in direct opposition to most workers' outlook on this issue. For labour, lacking a strong political voice in the province, strikes became a way publicly to express its grievances. The Provincial Workmen's Association (PWA) in particular did not view strikes as unnecessary evils, but as the essence of labour's struggle against the strong arm of capitalism. Meeting in Truro on i April 1887 for their fifteenth annual yearly meeting, the Grand Council of the PWA confirmed that its membership, are not now, nor have they been, advocates of strikes, as a means of settlement of disputes, so long as a more peaceable method was available. At the same time they are not now, nor have they been, afraid to face the music when the

148 Church and Society alternative was an ignominious and unconditional surrender. The council unhesitatingly admits that strikes are bad, aye, almost unutterably bad, and yet they hold that there are some things far worse than even a strike, and one of these is for workmen tamely and meekly to submit to imposition, injustice and fraud without murmur, and without complaining ... It is bad to strike and be pinched with hunger, but many times worse to submit to be plucked by grasping capitalists, without a fight for fair treatment.15

This defiant attitude stood as a primary example of the fundamental difference of opinion between the Presbyterian Church and some members of Nova Scotia's working class, from 1880 to 1900, over the best means to enact social reform. While the provincial church hoped to cure the ills of society by reforming the individual, as traditional Protestant evangelicalism dictated, several elements within labour felt that only through collective action, to fight for the reform of society as a whole, could their lives be significantly improved. The Witness responded to the growing sense of alarm by proposing a solution to the problem posed by strikes. The word of God, the Witness argued, should prevail as the ultimate guide for preventing strikes. Hoping that the time would come when capital and labour would resolve their differences or turn to a "judicious third party," the Witness suggested in 1890 that the "Golden Rule" guide the actions of both sides. The "Golden Rule" decreed that before resorting to drastic measures men and women should "do unto others what you desire done unto yourself."16 Miners, however, advocated their own version of this "Golden Rule," which denoted the collectivist spirit within this segment of the working class. At its sixteenth yearly meeting in 1895 the Grand Council of the PWA resolved that "until the time comes when the essence of the Golden Rule shall permeate the minds of men and masters, and dominate their wills, there may be such divergence of opinion between them that only the argument of a strike may bring them to [a] reasonable conclusion."17 Organized labour remained, as is evident from this resolution, committed to its support for strikes as a "necessary evil" to obtain concessions from their employers. The Witness's emphasis upon the individual in the prevention of strikes formed part of the Presbyterian Church's traditional evangelical approach to salvation and social reform. Like most evangelical denominations the Presbyterian Church sought to instruct individuals on how to ensure their personal salvation and entrance into God's kingdom. This evangelical fervour could and did overflow into "enthusiasm for the improvement of society."18 However several ministers and members of the Presbyterian Church in Nova

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Scotia narrowly interpreted this calling and focused solely on individual conversion as the first and possibly the only step towards a wholesale reform of society. Yet this concern for the social and spiritual welfare of the individual became the foundation of the "conservative" and "progressive" strands of the social gospel that emerged within Nova Scotia Presbyterianism after the turn of the century. The social gospel, either conservative, progressive, or radical, did not establish a strong niche within the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia from 1880 to 1900. Rather than directing their efforts towards reforming society as a whole, as the social gospel dictated, many within the denomination concentrated on saving the individual to improve society. A few of its ministers though, specifically the Reverend John Macintosh, deviated from the norm. Writing in 1895 in the Theologue, a publication of the Presbyterian College in Halifax, Macintosh noted that the church had lost the confidence of the working masses for not speaking out on social and political issues.19 To rectify this situation and to ensure that the church continued to be an important part of workers' lives, Macintosh recommended that the church insist upon a "considerate treatment of employees by employers, on the duty of society to the dwellers of tenement houses, on the evil of monopolies which can crush the poor when they so will, [and] the necessity for honesty on the part of labour." After all, as Macintosh defiantly concluded, was it not "the bounden duty of every minister to be a reformer," to ensure a "higher life" for all?20 Macintosh was driven by the nineteenth-century "soul-winning impulse" of evangelical Christianity towards systematic efforts to relieve the miseries of the poor.21 As the twentieth century unfolded and social problems multiplied, the traditional evangelical approach to social reform within the Presbyterian Church persevered. At the same time ministers like Macintosh began to question how the church could "exert her healthful influence in the solution of these vexed social problems and still not alienate men from the Christ which is preached."22 Out of this debate arose the acceptance by some Presbyterian clergy of conservative and progressive variants of the social gospel as the precise means to eradicate Nova Scotia's social ills and keep the church a prominent institution in the province. Both groups of social gospel advocates concentrated upon the spiritual and physical improvement of society, but the progressives went one step further in calling upon the state to assist their efforts to enrich the moral and social fibre of Nova Scotia. The onslaught of industrialization and urbanization in the early years of the twentieth century intensified Nova Scotia's social

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malaise. Amherst, Halifax, and Glace Bay, for example, witnessed massive population growth to coincide with the increase in industrial production.23 In dealing with the social and moral problems wrought by this upheaval, the Presbyterian Church, while not in the vanguard of the social gospel movement in Nova Scotia, did play an active role in its development. Moreover the fact that a few ministers embraced the social gospel notion of reforming society as a whole in order to establish the Kingdom of God on earth underscores the ability of the church to modify its evangelical ethos to grapple with pressing social conditions. Thus the social gospel did appear in Nova Scotia prior to 1914 in relation to social issues other than temperance. The denomination's efforts to deal with the challenges posed by rural decay and socialism reveal that the Presbyterian Church did not cut itself off entirely from the problems of Nova Scotia's labourers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the Presbyterian Church in Canada was extremely worried about the decline in the country's rural population. The subsequent rise in the number of people in the nation's cities and the social problems that it created, especially the proliferation of crime and working-class slums, compounded the dilemma.24 The fortieth annual meeting of the church's General Assembly in 1913 pointed out the dire consequences for the church if it did not act to remedy this situation: "Her own life and prosperity depend upon its solution. Not a few of her congregations have sunken from self-sustaining to augmented charges, and these to mission stations. In seeking, therefore, unselfishly to serve the rural communities, she will find that she is strengthening herself and holding fortresses that had all but fallen into the enemy's hands."25 Population figures reinforced the church's concern. From 1901 to 1911 the percentage of Canadians residing in rural areas declined from 62.4 to 54.4 percent of the total population. In Nova Scotia the figures stood at 71.8 percent and 62.6 percent respectively, representing a total loss of 23,981 people from rural centres in the province, with 33 percent of rural churches reporting a decline in their membership.26 The availability of jobs in cities, the decline in the economic viability of farming and other village crafts, and the lack of social entertainment in the countryside contributed to the rural exodus.27 Writing in 1920 on the state of the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, the Reverend John Murray commented that the emigration of young people from farms to towns and from Cape Breton to western Canada and the United States stunted the church's growth. If they had stayed at home, Murray believed, the Presbyterian population would have been "two or three times as great as it is."28 As the

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number of abandoned farms in Nova Scotia increased, so too did the distress of the Presbyterian Church. The Presbyterians more than any other Protestant denomination in Nova Scotia had the largest stake in solving the problem of rural decay. Using the Pictou County area as a representative example will illustrate this point. Among the forty-three churches within the county, twenty-seven were Presbyterian. Of this number, nineteen were located outside of the county's four towns.29 As the largest Protestant denomination in rural Nova Scotia the Presbyterian Church could not easily ignore rural decay. The dwindling number of people in rural areas, the Witness reported in 1913, had forced the closure of several churches across the province, reducing the church's stature within rural communities and depriving it of a rich source of candidates for the ministry.30 As well the church viewed the problems of the city as a direct result of rural decay. The Presbyterian Church devoted its attention to improving the socio-economic conditions of the countryside in order to stem the tide of rural depopulation and in turn to lure people "back to the land," and so, some hoped, back to the church. The church concentrated on three strategies to bolster rural life: economic, social, and educational. The future survival of the rural way of life, it was felt, rested with the economic improvement of the farming sector. To this end the Witness urged the promotion of "cooperative action in buying and selling and the application of scientific and business-like principles to matters of production." The church also encouraged a general spirit of co-operation, one of the hallmarks of the social gospel, to sustain the prosperity of the rural community. Once attained with the aid and close supervision of the "country minister," an "intelligent rural population" would appear.31 Rural unity, which the church tried to re-establish, was the key to stabilizing the community. The social needs of the rural areas also had to be diversified in order to keep residents content with their lives. Therefore local pastors were encouraged to "recognize the responsibility resting upon them to provide recreation and entertainment that will be conducive to the uplift and permanent welfare of the community."32 Some Presbyterians saw the presence of a strong community social life as one way to maintain a healthy religious life. In helping to foster social events, especially the "old-time singing school," the church intended to reassert its leadership role in rural society and maintain its position as an institution "central to the life of the community."33 The hectic pace of the city afforded little opportunity for recreation, especially among the working class. Those disaffected by this fact of city life, the church

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believed, would return to the countryside if the constant boredom of village life no longer existed. Rural ministers began to discuss with their parishioners the evils of the city, with particular attention given to young "girls." Often lured to Halifax or Sydney by "designing men" on the promise of fame and fortune, most ended up, according to the Witness, as innocent victims of the "white slave trade."34 The efforts of ministers to keep these young girls in their rural homes and away from the city were a direct extension of the church's wish to see the the family unit, the fundamental basis of rural society, stay intact. Rather than dealing directly with the effects of urbanization, the Presbyterian Church set out with its rural reform programme to remove part of the root cause of urban blight. The church felt compelled to tackle the social problems of the city to the extent that they adversely affected rural communities. Presbyterians did not abandon the gospel in their rural reform initiative. On the contrary the word of God was crucial to creating a rural environment in which "righteousness shall be exalted and virtues flourish, by setting before men high ideas of life and duty and building up strong and noble characters."35 To do so the church tried to improve the conditions of contemporary life rather than only preparing individuals for the afterlife. This change in emphasis for the church can be attributed to its concern over the decreasing number of members in its rural congregations. The loss of rural membership, the "chief strength of the church," left it "high and dry." As a matter of "self-defence" and in order to preserve its prominence in the countryside, the church had to regain its lost members.36 The Presbyterian Church's adoption of the social gospel, albeit "conservative" in tone yet "progressive" in substance, was partly a response to its perceived loss of strength and influence in the lives of its rural parishioners. The church's fear of losing touch with the rural masses carried over into the urban setting. Troubled over the spread of socialism at the turn of the century, a few Presbyterian ministers embraced the social gospel and addressed the socio-economic problems of the working class within urban-industrialized Nova Scotia. The rise of socialism alarmed most Presbyterian leaders. Looking beyond the province the Witness noted in 1905 that socialism had become a serious "phenomenon" in the world.37 Although socialism did not establish a strong foothold in Nova Scotia the Presbyterian Church viewed its existence as a real threat.38 As the Witness warned its readers, "The thing to be feared is that the church should be willing to exist as if she had no message to the masses of mankind - those who labor and are heavy-laden."39 As the province's labourers continued to agitate for a recognition of their rights and improved social

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conditions, the church linked part of this unrest and a decline in working-class membership to the presence of socialism. In 1907 the Reverend James Carruthers of Halifax alluded, in a speech before the city's YMCA on the church's attitude towards socialism, to the fact that a "large congregation" of people may be found milling about the streets instead of attending regular worship services.40 The time had come for the church to speak out on this new "opium of the masses." The Presbyterian Church's response to socialism followed two lines, representing the division within the church over the adoption of the social gospel. One faction in the church viewed socialism as a force with which it could not work. The other, more progressive segment welcomed its arrival as a way to jolt the church out of its lethargy concerning the alleviation of working-class poverty. One element of commonality did exist between these two views. The church did not respond to socialism as a result of vicious attacks upon it from socialist ranks, but because of a desire to speak out on the worsening social conditions in Nova Scotia and to regain some of its working-class membership. Those within the Presbyterian Church who did not see socialism as beneficial still endorsed the church's evangelical tradition. Speaking in Glace Bay in November of 1909, the Reverend A.F. Thompson outlined his opposition to socialism. Labelling it an "impossible" and "cowardly system inasmuch as it promises more than it performs," Thompson declared that socialism was not the ultimate cure for every evil in society.41 Instead, Thompson continued, people should look to God and themselves and not socialism, which smothered the individual, to improve their social and moral conditions. Thompson then concluded by arguing that in order for people to be strong enough to stand on their own they must maintain a staunch allegiance to the church and their Christian faith: "The religion of Christ is the best remedy for all evils and when the spirit of Christ takes hold of the heart of capitalist and worker alike there will be very little progress made with the Socialist propaganda."42 For Thompson little common ground existed between Christianity and socialism; followers of one could not be followers of the other. R.A. Watson, a student at the Presbyterian College in Halifax, shared Thompson's views. Writing in the Theologue in 1910, Watson described the crucial point dividing socialism from Christianity as socialism's resolve to create "a new earth," not "a new heaven."43 Watson firmly believed that the panacea for society's ills lay not with fostering a perfect environment, but with "creating strong personalities born of the spirit of God" who would in turn transform society.44 Watson did concede that Christianity sided with socialism

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in "declaring that justice, righteousness and love must reign supreme" in the world. Beyond this, however, members of the church such as Thompson and Watson found few traits shared by Christianity and socialism. Those Presbyterians who supported the reform impulse of socialism can be labelled progressive social gospellers. As the Witness asserted in 1908, "A Christian people need not be afraid of Socialism. On the contrary they may well encourage and welcome it in the name of their Lord and Master."4? In agreeing with the Witness's argument several urban ministers supported socialism as an excellent means to unveil the province's social ills and to bring people together in a cooperative effort to reform society to make it more Christ-like. As long as socialism remained in accordance with the fundamental law of Christianity, to "do to others as you would have others do to you," little conflict would arise between it and the church.46 This statement was an attempt to show support for labour's cause and to make Christianity and the church more relevant to the lives and needs of working people.47 The leading advocate of the progressive social gospel in Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church was the Reverend William H. Smith of the Falmouth Street Presbyterian Church in Sydney. The presence of a strong and combative labour movement, coupled with social and economic inequality, made Cape Breton a breeding ground for socialism.48 A working-class environment characterized by frequent industrial accidents, the prevalence of child and female labour, and poor housing and sanitation, confronted Smith on a daily basis.49 In a series of articles in the Witness Smith brought these problems to the forefront in an effort to persuade his colleagues to unite in the face of this crisis. Smith did not want workers to adopt socialism at the expense of discarding their Christian beliefs. In order to prevent this he hoped to change the church's attitude towards dealing with labour's social grievances. Announcing that the "masses are going over to socialism" to seek co-operative solutions to their problems, Smith urged the church to devise an agenda to eliminate socio-economic disparity and to preach God's message to both labour and capital.50 He proposed that the church lobby for provincial legislation guaranteeing sanitary homes, work shops, and factories, higher wages, and improved recreational and educational opportunities for all workers.51 The use of the state as an agent for social improvement formed an integral part of Smith's social reform designs. Smith's scheme spoke directly to the main problem facing the church in its relations with the working class. As Rev. Donald M. Gillies of St Paul's Presbyterian Church in Glace Bay noted,

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Presbyterians had to counteract the belief so widespread among workers that the church did not care about their problems.52 Gillies believed that the local churches should combine their resources to alleviate working-class unemployment by operating soup kitchens and bread lines modelled on the examples set by the Salvation Army in London and New York.53 Smith wanted the church to be able to reassert its hold on the "masses." According to Smith, "The Church that stands for fair play, justice in economic and industrial life, that takes the burden of the suffering and the suppressed upon her soul and reaches out with the gospel of love in the interests of all will have no difficulty in reaching or holding the masses."54 His views represented a move away from the traditional Presbyterian evangelical emphasis on preparing the individual for the world to come, to a progressive, non-radical social gospel approach to social reform. For Smith the church had to look beyond the individual to society as a whole and concentrate on reforming the present world. In the process it could solidify the Kingdom of God on earth to "condition the process of [social] improvement."55 Other Presbyterian ministers echoed Smith's arguments. Commenting in the Theologue on the ever-increasing poverty in Halifax and Sydney, Reverend Thomas Stewart, professor of church history and practical training at the Presbyterian College, warned that the church "dare not be indifferent" to this fact of urban life.56 To do so, he argued, would only allow this situation to worsen and widen the gulf between the church and the working masses. In his thinking about urban misery Stewart went a step beyond what Smith had proposed. To help those most in need was crucial, but for Stewart only to check the "symptoms" would not "cure" the disease: "The miseries and injustices of life, the drunkenness, gambling, oppression, the grasping and cruel greed, are symptoms which may be alleviated by surface treatment, but can be permanently cured only by reaching the heart disease of which they are the result."57 Stewart saw the active involvement of the church in society as the way to destroy the root of social ills. Above all, he declared, a minister, especially if he presided over a rural parish, must know the troubles of the city and warn young people of the perils awaiting them should they decide to leave. He must also be concerned with all that affects the physical and spiritual lives of his parishioners.58 It was of primary importance for both Smith and Stewart to demonstrate to the working class that the church had an active interest in solving their problems outside the weekly Sunday sermons. The Reverend John W.A. Nicholson of the St James Presbyterian Church in Dartmouth added his voice to the cause of Smith and

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Stewart. A man who refused to accept old dogmas simply because they were judged "sacro-sanct and hallowed with age," Nicholson favoured notions advanced by socialism if they led to constructive social reform.59 One memorial to Nicholson described him as a man who "[i]f he believed a cause was right he would be its champion regardless of the disfavour he might bring upon himself."60 Noting the acute suffering in his parish of one family with five children who struggled to survive on the father's measly salary of $9 a week, Nicholson called upon the government to "provide more sanitary and wholesome dwellings" for the city's working-class population.61 Of these three ministers Nicholson perhaps best articulated their growing desire to have the state join the campaign for social reform. While advocating state intervention all three men also felt strongly that the church must be more "creative" in its own efforts to reform society under the "direction of the divine Overseer." Although they did not represent the views of the entire Presbyterian leadership, clergymen like Smith, Stewart, and Nicholson plotted a new path for the denomination to follow in coping with the demands for social reform. By combining the word of God with cooperative efforts to reform society, which included state involvement, these ministers' actions indicate that progressive elements of the social gospel, couched in a conservative tone, did penetrate the ranks of Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church. Although the Presbyterian Church had not reached the point of calling for a complete transformation of the established social order, as had some "radical" social gospellers in the post-war period, at least one progressive group within the church in Nova Scotia was sensitive to workers' denunciation of the Christian Church's tactics for solving social problems. These ministers in turn made a conscious effort to work with labour to attain social reform. Indeed, their willingness to support socialism confirms this conclusion. Most Presbyterians, however, were reluctant to identify with such an extreme movement. Their desire to adhere to a conservative evangelical approach to social reform had not wavered, and the gap between the Presbyterian Church and labour over how to effect social reform remained. When the First World War began, the social gospel, even that of the conservative and progressive variety, was not widespread among Nova Scotia's Presbyterians. Nevertheless the creation in 1908, by the Maritime Presbytery, of the Board of Temperance and Moral and Social Reform represented a gradual shift among Presbyterians in the Maritimes to support the working class in their attempts to advance their material conditions, and to extend a spirit of co-operation throughout society. Upon its foundation the board expressed

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its "cordial sympathies with workingmen in all their just and worthy efforts to improve the conditions under which they live and labor, and [pledged] to do all in its power to prevent the employment of children in mines, shops and factories, of adults for undue long hours and for more than six days in the week, conditions associated with the sweating system; and [promised to] urge all ministers to promote the Golden Rule alike by employers and employees."62 In 1911 the board recognized that urban problems demanded the attention of the entire church and called upon Presbyterians to lend their support to this end.63 The presence of Smith as one of the board's conveners no doubt influenced the focus of this statement. The outlook of progressive clergymen like Smith, Stewart, and Nicholson can hardly be said to represent the attitude of the entire Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia. Their views do however demonstrate the fact that the social gospel did emerge in the province prior to 1914. In conjunction with the Board of Social Service and Evangelism, Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church initiated several schemes to combat social hardships facing the province's workers. In 1913 the Presbyterians opened a "redemptive house" in Sydney to shelter the city's homeless female labourers and prostitutes.64 Also in 1913 the Presbyterian Church, in association with the Methodist Church, conducted an investigation of the social conditions in Sydney in order to pinpoint the areas that demanded the church's immediate attention.65 Similarly, by 1908 presbyteries within the church began independently to discuss social issues. The Presbytery of Inverness, declaring itself to be wide awake to the seriousness of social problems and economic conditions, held a conference to debate the matter from "several sides." In addition to conducting a general study of the various socio-economic problems in Nova Scotia, the conference considered the importance of the following question to the church's future direction: "Taking the world as it is today, my parish as it is, and God and men as they are, what are the ways we ought to work as a church ... so as to apply Christianity to modern life and bring about more satisfactory material conditions for our people?"56 The need for a more practical role for the church and Christianity in modern society and to seek solutions to the province's worsening "Social Crisis," lay at the crux of this conference. Following this gathering in 1909 the Presbyterian College held a "post-graduate week" session to discuss the social aims of Jesus. Ministers and theological students presented a series of papers on such topics as how to identify and solve social problems and the efficacy of socialism. A consensus soon arose that the church must take a "deep and practical interest" in the social and political life of the

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country, and only through mass co-operation could society be brought out of its present difficulties and "unbecoming conditions."67 A movement towards a more collectivist approach to social reform had begun within certain segments of the church. The emergence of the social gospel in Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church was cautious. From 1880 to 1900 the church maintained a staunch opposition to strikes. Until at least 1900, when the church spoke out on social issues, it offered little in the way of practical advice or help to deal with these problems. Instead the majority of the church's ministers remained loyal to the evangelical tradition that saw saving the individual and preparing him or her for entry into God's kingdom as the best means to enact social reform. In this way these ministers and some of their followers expressed their dedication to the ideal of responsibile citizenship. Strains of dissent from this tradition did emerge, however, prior to the turn of the century. Voicing a concern for the need to seek a comprehensive reform of society for the good of all, this minority opinion provided a foundation, albeit a small one, for other ministers to build upon in the new century. As the twentieth century dawned cracks began to appear in the church's traditional evangelical approach. Issues such as rural decay and the rise of socialism pushed some Presbyterians towards a closer examination of social conditions beyond the local congregational level and an adoption of the conservative and progressive social gospel. The problems facing rural Nova Scotia forced the church to become more involved in alleviating socio-economic pressures. The denomination stood united in its belief that rural out-migration was a serious problem for itself and for society in general. It also reached a consensus over which steps to take to overcome this threat to a stable rural community. The emergence of socialism exposed the chasm within the Presbyterian Church concerning social reform. The worsening social conditions of the province's working-class districts and the church's perception of a rapid spread of socialism within these areas consolidated two factions within the church. The majority group opposing socialism continued to favour a stricter form of evangelicalism that meant reforming the individual and thus his or her environment. The competing minority that welcomed socialism as a positive force with which to work for fundamental changes to society formed the urbanprogressive social gospel faction. Socialism played an important role in the adoption of the social gospel by some Nova Scotia Presbyterians. Faced daily with the misery of urban slums and a decline in working-class membership,

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ministers such as Smith, Nicholson, and Stewart concluded that only by taking an active role in improving the physical and spiritual welfare of society could the church establish the Kingdom of God on earth while continuing to serve a useful purpose in people's lives. The rise of the social gospel in Nova Scotia's Presbyterian Church did not signal an abandonment of the denomination's evangelical creed or a profound shift towards secularization. Instead it represented an innovative and evangelical-inspired response to a series of social crises. It also underscores the fact that the social gospel existed in Nova Scotia beyond the realm of prohibition. The complexity of Nova Scotia's social problems and the fervent desire of the social gospel advocates within the Presbyterian Church to overcome them made certain that, for some, the social gospel would not be confined to only one area of concern.

ii From Sectarian Rivalry to National Vision: The Contribution of Maritime Presbyterianism to Canada J O H N S. MOIR

Just two days before the British North America Act transformed the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the United Canadas into the Dominion of Canada on i July 1867, the Presbyterian Witness of Halifax, unofficial mouthpiece of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces, hailed the challenge that Confederation offered for Canada's future: "Never was there a finer field than the New Dominion for the Pulpit, the Press and the Schoolmaster."1 The sequence in which the Witness listed religion, journalism, and education - those three pillars of a new nationalism - reflected the two-fold vocation of the paper's editor, the Reverend Robert Murray. More importantly, however, it was a Victorian conviction that, despite the manipulations by politicians, the Confederation of the British North American colonies was essentially another mighty work of God, and one that carried both a challenge and a heaven-given mandate to citizens of the new nation to create a Christian Canada.2 Six months later the same editor welcomed the new year by explaining the new Canadian state and nationality in terms of the "glorious future which Providence seems to mark out for us."3 Like church union in 1925, Confederation was widely greeted with the crusaders' battle-cry, "Deus vult!" For Maritimers the ideal of national unity presented by Confederation stood in stark contrast, but not in conflict, with the provincialism that had characterized the previous century. As for Presbyterianism in the Maritimes, its history during the eighteenth century had been marked by factional and denominational conflict that has been voluminously recorded.

161 From Sectarian Rivalry to National Vision

Retrospectively George Monro Grant blamed Scottish immigrants who brought old world divisions that "so blinded them to the perspective of truth that they were led to divide on petty issues ... which had no meaning in Canada." Because of this, Grant later wrote, "Presbyterianism in Canada was for some decades distracted and weakened."4 These Maritime traditions of religious separateness are not, of course, a Presbyterian monopoly but Presbyterian particularism in these provinces did enrich Canadian religious history with amusing but revealing anecdotes. Recall once more that sainted AntiBurgher, James MacGregor, who managed to avoid contact or co-operation with Burghers for almost a quarter-century after his arrival in Pictou.5 Despite the rivalries that divided Burgher, Anti-Burgher, Kirk, and Free Church for three generations, Maritime Presbyterians remained more faithful to Calvinistic principles than the Presbyterians of central Canada who moved closer to Arminianism around the middle of the Victorian era. The conservative Calvinism of another Pictonian expatriate academic, Sir William Dawson, may be representative of the slower progress of that revolution in the Maritimes but perhaps the rigidity of Dawson's personal theology only reflects the time gap between his generation and Grant's, even though their careers are parallel in so many other respects. In the half-century between the creations of the Synod of Nova Scotia in 1817 and the Canadian Confederation in 1867, the process of Presbyterian indigenization in the Maritimes advanced despite interference by the Glasgow Colonial Society in the 18205 and by the Free Church Disruption of 1843. Addressing the Synod of the Maritime Provinces in the 18705, a delegate from the Church of Scotland Synod offered high praise for the work of both the Free Church and Secession Church, two rivals that the Kirk had thoroughly despised short years before.6 Perhaps the achievement of responsible government by the Maritime provinces had brought a sense of self-assurance and an awareness of broader horizons, for even Joseph Howe, that supposedly unregenerate anti-confederationist, had announced in 1864, "I am not one of those who thank God I am a Nova Scotian merely, for I am a Canadian as well."7 To the Nova Scotian, comments Thomas C. Haliburton, "the province is his native place, but North America is his country."8 The attitude of Murray's friend Grant towards the confederation movement was simple, "the sooner the better" - Grant was a centralist and he publicly opposed provincial rights.9 As John Webster Grant has shown, the political unification of the colonies in 1867 was not only "the crucial moment" in the complex

162 Church and Society

process of the emergence of Canada as a nation, but also a decisive factor in promoting denominational church unions to provide the necessary bureaucratic structures to meet the challenges of transcontinental territoriality.10 A united Presbyterian Church for Canada had already been suggested before Confederation,11 but the momentum towards union gained speed and urgency after 1867. The last hurdle in the race to territorialize Presbyterianism in the new Dominion was cleared by the Presbyterian union of 1875. The Maritime and central Canadian Presbyterian unions of the Secession and Free Churches in 1860 and 1861 had already fused two dynamic groups possessing a zealous interest in missions and in moral reform. These two theological components dominated the negotiations leading to union in 1875, and they would continue to dominate and shape the character of post-i875 Presbyterianism. The Church of Scotland, always an anomaly in the colonies and dependent on its mother church for personnel and financial support, had marked time while British North American Presbyterianism advanced rapidly in the generation before Confederation. To the union of 1875 the Kirk in the Maritimes brought 35 ministers, but the Synod of Nova Scotia contributed 131 ministers and 6 overseas missionaries, four times as many clergy as the Kirk - a higher ratio than was the case between the two comparable bodies in the central Canadian provinces. This union of transcanadian Presbyterianism was the logical corollary and religious equivalent of Confederation, and like the political confederation the event was as much a conclusion as it was a starting point in history. By the 18705 a new generation of Maritime Presbyterians had already arisen, prepared to make its particular contribution to national development. As a group it was a clerisy - an educational (in the broadest sense) family compact - and one of the most important exports of the Maritime provinces to the rest of Canada. This generation cared much less for those imported Scottish divisions and quarrels of the past. For most Presbyterians Scotland continued to be the romantic subject of atavistic nostalgia, but it was not their home. Those young Presbyterian Victorians in the Maritimes now focused their primary attention on Canada. They were ready, even anxious, to meet the challenges and capitalize on the possibilities presented by the prospect of a united and national Presbyterian Church. Their new and transcontinental church would be God's instrument to build a righteous and exalted nation. When that union of Canadian Presbyterianism was consummated in June 1875, Murray's Witness said fervently, "Thank God for it."12 The "deep wounds made in the old fights" had too long delayed union, and if Maritime Presbyterians

163 From Sectarian Rivalry to National Vision

were not yet fully brethren at least they were now "allies" who could march forward side by side into the promised land. Canadian Presbyterian union had ended the historic Scottish connection, noted the editor, and now, he said, "There is glorious work to be done for our master in Canada." This new generation shared more than their Maritime birthplace and their common faith in the superiority and covenanted responsibility of Presbyterianism. Products of a stable rural society, they shared the rich heritage of Maritime culture. They had attended the same schools and colleges and upon graduation as many as possible made their pilgrimage to the holy land of North Britain and its universities. Summer breaks were occupied with the grand tour of those sister seats of learning in Germany, where courses by famous and progressive scholars were attended. Other aspects of German culture were avidly absorbed at beer garden parties and on hiking trips through mountain scenery. For the youthful Canadians these shared experiences in Britain and on the continent established a fraternal bond, but many of these future Presbyterian ministers also encountered culture shock of a more drastic kind. The undersides of Europe's industrial cities were big, crowded, dirty, unhealthy, and immoral. The contrast between those dark, satanic cities and the open spaces, invigorating, salubrious air, and stable, comfortable life of rural Maritimia created an indelible crise de conscience among the young Canadian pilgrims. The fourteenyear-old Daniel Miner Gordon reported to his family back in Pictou, "I had no idea what a stir there was in one of these large cities before;... thousands pass you whom you do not know." Visiting Barony Church the young man found it crowded "as if by people just out of the workshops." Even the pleasure of ice-skating was less than at Pictou, because of the crowds.13 In the four decades between that 1875 union and the onset of World War I, these younger Maritime Presbyterians made a decisive contribution to the pulpits, press, and classrooms of Canada. During these two generations the Maritime provinces exported their most important resource, namely leadership in the form of their talented offspring who carried with them a moral idealism that they popularized through public life, the classroom, literature, and music. Their crusade reinforced those same concerns for mission and reform held by their brother clergymen in the central provinces, but their obvious self-dedication to the crusade for a Christian Canada earned those Maritimers recognition as the "moral tutors to the nation."14 A quarter-century after the Presbyterian union George Grant declared, "There has been a marked improvement in the Presbyterian Church all along the line

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since 1875. The union is telling powerfully on Christian life and thought. The Presbyterian Church in Canada ... is assuming something of the attitude of a national Protestant Church."15 Grant also alluded to those "attempts to suppress legitimate differences of opinion" that had involved him in the defence of his friend and fellow Kirkman, Daniel James Macdonnell, against the charges of heresy brought in 1877 and 1878 by the ultra-orthodox inquisitors in the Free Church wing of the new denomination. Soon after Grant became principal of Queen's University, the same former Free Churchmen who had attacked Macdonnell as the embodiment of Kirk moderation proposed to strip Queen's of its faculty of theology. This brought the comment from a New Brunswick friend that the troublemakers were "Would-be Popes." The same correspondent suggested five months later that, "it may take Centuries or Milleniums to get [rid of] Calvinism and replace it with Genuine Christianity."16 It was Grant's Canadianism, however, not his institutional churchmanship, that marked him out as the most influential and vocal of those Maritime Presbyterians who held a national rather than an Ontario vision of Canada's destiny.17 Like their central Canadian counterparts Maritime Presbyterians were concerned with the nation's relationship to the British Empire and to the United States, with the demographic and economic development of their young nation, and with the myriad issues that were later grouped under the umbrella term, social gospel. Differences that can be seen between the two regional groups involved relations with the Roman Catholic Church and with their giant neighbour to the south. In the case of relations with the Roman Catholic Church, for example, Grant's eulogy of the late Archbishop Thomas Connolly in 1876 contrasted the religious peace of Halifax with the "dismal strife" in other cities, such as Toronto, thereby implying that central Canada needed more of the spirit of the Maritimes.18 He disagreed with the violent anti-Vaticanism of central Canadian Presbyterians on the issues of the Manitoba schools and the Jesuits' estates, and in the latter case he refused to support the Equal Rights Association in which many of the Presbyterian clergy from Quebec and Ontario were leaders. There was also apparently less fear of and animosity towards the United States in the Maritimes than in central Canada. Perhaps this was because of the bloodier experience of colonial residents in the two Canadas at the hands of American invaders, a fact that explains much of the strident and exclusivist loyalism of the post-i8i2 era in those provinces. As a Maritimer, however, Grant's pole stars were always pragmatism and the potential of Canada.19 He opposed discriminatory legislation against Chinese immigration on the grounds

165 From Sectarian Rivalry to National Vision

that, "Our mission is to Christianize the world." "We have to reclaim half a continent, and throw the doors wide open that millions may enter."20 Thanks to a trip to the Canadian west in 1872 as secretary to Sir Sandford Fleming's railway survey party, Grant also developed a genuine interest in the development of that vast region. A transcontinental railway would, he was convinced, bind Canada into a nation, and that cross-Canada journey also gave him a greater appreciation of both the potential and problems of the West than most federal politicians, including his friend and admirer Sir John A. Macdonald, ever exhibited.21 In the autumn of 1883 Grant delivered a sermon at Old St Andrew's Church in Toronto on "Patriotism" as inculcated by the Bible. The Globe reported that the sermon was "much admired," and it offered readers a synopsis of Grant's philosophy of nationalism. "Are we Canadians alone to be lacking in patriotism?" demanded Grant. "If so, it is not because we have not a country to be proud of." Genuine Canadian patriots were to be found in every region of British North America - from Newfoundland to the Pacific coast. "In every portion of the Dominion there are ties binding children to their native soil. What should be our aim? To make it thoroughly Christian, and be it remembered that no country can exist which has not the cohesion of faith, and that there is no faith worth having except that in Christ. The Church of the future will be apostolical, historical, and national."22 Underpinning Grant's nationalism lay the Maritime tradition of political and religious stability, reinforced by the Kirk's theological moderatism. Canada's mission was "to make the world the home of freedom, of justice and of peace," and the instrument to achieve this goal was, by the mandate of heaven, the British Empire, "the highest secular instrument the world had ever known."23 Grant was an enthusiastic Canadian and an enthusiastic imperialist for whom these were complementary, not conflicting, loyalties. Dual loyalty, in his own words, constituted "the half-way house of the empire."24 Imperial cooperation, rather than imperial federation or even independence, was a necessity for the exercise of stewardship over God's gifts because faith, noblesse, and richesse required it on principle. The motto of a Christian Canada was axiomatic - social justice exalts a nation. Typical of his generation of Maritime Presbyterians, Grant was liberalizing - but not in the theological sense. At the 1880 meeting of the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance he protested against the exclusion of those churches whose declaration of faith did not include double predestination. The Westminster Confession was not to be taken as final and unalterable, because Christ is more important than the church. At

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that same meeting Grant publicly espoused the theory of evolution and called for "a wider scholarship and a more fearless thought" on doctrinal matters.25 Twelve years later, when the alliance gathered in Toronto, Grant repeated on an international platform the same concern about the injustices of the wage system that he had been expressing to Canadians for a generation. As an outspoken social gospeller Grant attacked the existing social order as unjust to the working class whose need for freedom of contract and freedom to organize justified the existence of trade unions and strikes. Profit-sharing, fair wages, and decent housing were Grant's answer to the "wage question," and looking straight at certain American ministers who preferred the "righteousness" of free enterprise, he warned them that an irrelevant church is a dead church.26 This was a message he had often given to the merchants in his Halifax congregation a generation earlier,27 and one that he also delivered to his own church's General Assembly in his moderatorial sermon in 1892. Grant's awareness, appreciation, and hope for national development had been fully awakened by the 1872 trip with Fleming, and he encapsulated his feelings the following year in his book Ocean to Ocean, a phrase used by the Maritime Presbyterian in 1875 to describe the purpose of the union of Canadian Presbyterianism. The first page of the book verbalizes Grant's personal dream regarding Canada's future as "the Greater Britain," and the book closes with expressions of loyalty to Canada's "distinctive mission" and gratitude to the Creator: "Thank God, we have a country."28 The success of Ocean to Ocean soon brought Grant more opportunities to praise and popularize Canada in print. In 1879 Scribner's Monthly accepted his proposal to write a series of articles on Canada, to be illustrated by Notman and Sandham Company of Montreal. The publishers were very pleased with the first three articles and the series was expanded to more but shorter articles because the illustrations of Canada were taking up so much space.29 One year later Grant was approached by the Chicago publisher H.R. Belden with an invitation to edit a new popular illustrated periodical called Picturesque Canada.30 Grant was given full control of the project and could write as much of the text as he wished, but it was to Murray that he entrusted the articles on the Maritime provinces. The success of Picturesque Canada is today a matter of Canadian literary and artistic history. Less known than the periodical was one of Grant's last literary excursions - his chapter outlining the religious history of Canada in the two-volume study Christendom Anno Domini 1901, produced by another Canadian, William D. Grant.31

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Seven years after the publication of Ocean to Ocean, Gordon, former classmate of Macdonnell and Grant's friend and successor as principal of Queen's, became Fleming's secretary on a similar trip that changed the course of his life too. Gordon, like Grant, was a native of Pictou, a graduate of Pictou Academy, a student at Glasgow University, a travelling companion of Macdonnell in Europe, a prominent actor in the 1875 union movement, and a moderator of General Assembly. "Like Grant," adds his biographer-daughter, "he had the vision of a greater Canada and an abiding faith in the beneficent influence of the British Empire."32 He too wrote an account of his transcontinental voyage - Mountain and Prairie, published in 1880, is a sequel for Ocean to Ocean, avowedly intended to excite and enlighten Canadians about "the great Northwest." Mountain and Prairie calls on the Presbyterian Church to extend its home missions beyond Manitoba, so it was no coincidence that James Robertson was appointed superintendent of western Canadian Presbyterian missions in 1881, the year following the appearance of Mountain and Prairie. For Gordon "The call of the West... [was] the uncompromising voice of duty."33 In 1882 he moved to Winnipeg and three years later was serving as a front-line chaplain during Kiel's second rebellion. In that tragic episode Gordon's sympathy lay entirely with the Indians misled by Kiel. The rebellion, Gordon hoped, would awaken the Christian churches to their duty to native North Americans. The Maritime vision of a greater Canada assumed a more institutional form when the Round Table group was formed in 1894 by some members of the Synod of New Glasgow. The club included Grant, Robert Falconer, Walter Murray, and Clarence Mackinnon - all Maritimers - plus Trinidad-born but Maritime-rooted Arthur Silver Morton, later professor of church history at Pine Hill and Knox Colleges, and finally Alfred Gandier, Maritimer by adoption because he served a Halifax church and had married Falconer's sister.34 Their meetings, three or four per year, were supposedly more social than intellectual affairs, but most members already shared numerous characteristics including postgraduate education in Scotland and Germany, university teaching experience, and in the case of Grant, Falconer, and Murray, university or college appointments that the other three received in later years. These modern knights of the Round Table also shared Grant's liberal view of theology - Mackinnon, for whom evangelism was a social crusade, espoused evolution and higher criticism, and his orthodoxy was further suspect because of an article he published in the Presbyterian College's journal, The Theologue, in 1899. Falconer

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and his brother James, whose father was a friend of Grant, had studied at Edinburgh with Mackinnon. Robert was also Gordon's colleague and neighbour for seven years at the Presbyterian College, Halifax, where Falconer displayed the same dedication to duty that carried first Grant and then Gordon to Queen's. Falconer's sense of national mission was intensified when his subsequent appointment as president of the University of Toronto provided him with a public platform far larger than Halifax could offer.35 Like his fellow Maritimer James Frederick McCurdy, founder of biblical studies at the University of Toronto,36 he was both a nationalist and internationalist - "a citizen of a larger world" for whom that citizenship itself carried a Christian obligation.37 Falconer was the vocal opponent of every social evil and the originator of a settlement house where student volunteers could fulfil their moral obligations. His planned programme of Canadian studies at Toronto constituted, to use his own words, "a national service." The founding of The Theologue in 1889 had already provided Maritime Presbyterian leaders an opportune sounding-board with which to promote their vision of Canada's future. During the next quartercentury the periodical carried articles by Gordon, Murray, Gandier, Morton, Mackinnon, and Robert Falconer, who had been instrumental during his student days in founding the journal. All of them held teaching positions in the college at some time, but with few exceptions all surprisingly confined their contributions in The Theologue to matters of ministerial training and the ministerial life, seldom venturing into the politico-theological sphere. A new feature in The Theologue in 1902 was an anonymous occasional column entitled "The Round Table," but the writer limited himself to comments on the business of faculty members and church leaders. An unsigned article entitled "Our Forests" (environmental issues were a popular theme in Murray's Presbyterian Witness), turns out to be a plea for a mission to lumberjacks.38 Over the years Falconer contributed numerous book reviews that displayed his liberal theological leanings, and his theologically progressive colleague John Currie provided an encomium for Ritschlianism.39 By the end of the century, however, The Theologue's contributors were becoming excited about the church union movement. As early as 1899 Gandier defended denominationalism against organic union. He based his argument on the proposition that "nature abhors uniformity"40 - words he may have regretted when he led the staff and most of the students of Knox College across the Toronto campus to the United Church's new Emmanuel College after church union in 1925. Brother-in-law Falconer later suggested in The Theologue that, as a "new people,"

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Canadians needed a "national Evangelical church" to meet the challenge of the peopling of the West.41 Another proponent of a broader Canadian nationalism was Murray, poet laureate of the new national vision but never a member of the Round Table. Born in Earltown in 1832, he moved to Halifax in the early 18505 to study theology at the Free Church College, but while still a student was made editor of the Presbyterian Witness in i856.42 He occupied that post until his death in 1910 and during those years made the Witness into the Maritime voice of the new national vision. His theologically-based editorials supported the gamut of Canadian concerns - home missions for Canada's west, temperance, Sabbatarianism, conservation of resources, prison reform, and votes for women. Murray had high praise for Grant's brand of patriotism embracing loyalty to both Canada and Britain, and for Gordon's demand that the nation's schools inculcate patriotism in the heart.43 His insistence that Canada welcome "the homeless of every nation under Heaven" is, however, vitiated by his explanation that the exclusion of Asians was neither Christian nor wise because Asians were needed for "servile purposes" to free Canadians "for duties that may require loftier minds and better education."44 Today Murray is remembered primarily as a writer of hymns, including an additional verse of "God save the Queen." That verse reads, "Our loved Dominion bless / With peace and happiness / from shore to shore; / And let our Empire be / United, loyal, free, / True to herself and Thee / for evermore." His addition can be found in the United Church-Anglican 1971 Hymn Book, but inexplicably it was omitted from the Presbyterian Church's 1972 Book of Praise. Both hymnals include Murray's better-known composition "From Ocean unto Ocean," inspired by his own train trip across Canada, a hymn that blends nationalism and covenant theology in such phrases as, "Our land shall own thee Lord," and "Thyself in us reveal." Again, however, the Book of Praise inexplicably omits the third verse which combines evangelization and multiculturalism in the lines, "Till all the tribes and races / that dwell in this fair land, / adorned with Christian graces / within thy courts shall stand." In the last decade of Queen Victoria's rule, Grant's espousal of symbiotic imperial and national loyalties brought him front and centre on the Canadian public stage. He could not remain silent after 1891 when Goldwin Smith propounded his Darwinian continentalist heresy, predicting the inevitability of Canada's annexation by the United States in his volume Canada and the Canadian Question. Before the publication of Smith's book, however, one small incident offers a foretaste of the clash of personalities between the two men. In a letter

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to Grant late in 1879, Macdonnell discussed the possibility of Smith becoming chancellor of Queen's University. In two pages of minuscule scribbled queries, Smith had commented adversely about the university, calling it "a completely relig.[ious] College." Macdonnell warned Grant against such an appointment, concluding "After all, perhaps, it is as well to have some one else, for you are not always sure where you will find Goldwin Smith."45 Donald Creighton has described Grant's writings as "the most effective rejoinder" made to the continentalism of Smith,46 and Frank Underhill, who once called Smith's volume "the most pessimistic book that has ever been written about Canada," characterized Grant's response as "temperamental as much as intellectual."47 After Grant's death a friend recounted an incident in Kingston when a person, unnamed but certainly resembling Smith, made a fervent pro-annexation speech. At its conclusion Grant rose and made a short and scornful rebuttal. "Can there be [any defence] for the man who would prostitute the honor of his country for gain?" he demanded. Immediately the whole audience rose spontaneously and sang the national anthem.48 Smith nevertheless had the last if feeble word in his controversy with Grant about the nation's destiny under God. When Grant published a highly critical article about Smith in The National Review, Smith told Grant it constituted "a portrait of a man drawn by an evidently unfriendly hand." "I am content to share with the University of Oxford the burden of your reprobation and contempt. We go henceforth different ways."49 It is debatable whether Smith and Grant had ever concurred when discussing Canadian identity and freedom. Grant's sudden death in 1904 produced a wave of appreciative eulogies for this Nova Scotian who had been the adviser of prime ministers and politicians - Sir Oliver Mowat, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir MacKenzie Bowell, D'Alton McCarthy, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier - and the confidant of Lords Lome, Stanley, Devonshire, and Aberdeen. It was Aberdeen who embraced Grant's concept of imperial cooperation and Canadian nationalism by supporting Canada's claims against the American "bully" in the Alaska Boundary dispute. Among the tributes to Grant, Kingston's Board of Trade remembered him as "a Kingstonian, a Canadian, and an Imperialist," and as "the man who might himself have well claimed the motto, 'Canada First.' "5° The Synod of Toronto and Kingston hailed the late principal as an advocate of Confederation and Presbyterian union whose greatest monument was "the men who received from him their mental and spiritual enfranchisement... and who will seek to perpetuate what was best in his work for Church and Country." "His pen and voice

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have helped to break down racial, political, and religious walls of partition which divide men who should dwell together in unity/' said the Toronto Presbyterian Association.51 Such high praise was fully deserved by Grant. His passing was certainly a major event in the westward dissemination of that Maritime vision of Canada because it initiated a series of important academic promotions with lasting national and denominational consequences. At Queen's Grant was replaced by Gordon, and Gordon's place at the Presbyterian College, Halifax, was now filled by Robert Falconer. Five years later Falconer became president of the University of Toronto and Mackinnon replaced him as principal in Halifax, while in 1914 Morton moved from Knox College to the new University of Saskatchewan. The network of Maritime Presbyterian influence - that clerisy of nationalist educators - reached new frontiers just before Canada was plunged into the Armageddon of World War I. The last word on the contribution of Maritimers to a new vision of Canada can be left to Underbill, that remarkable apostle of Canadian nationalism. "It has struck me," he wrote, "how often the best exponents of the imperial idea in Canada have come from the Maritime provinces: men such as Grant and Parkin among intellectuals; such as Howe, Tupper, Foster, Beaverbrook among the men of affairs."52 The clerisy of Presbyterians who articulated, expounded, and defended the concept of undivided and indivisible loyalties to province, to country, and to empire during the half-century preceding World War I, had first announced their vision of Canada in those Atlantic provinces previously racked by sectarian rivalry. Then through the public forum, the press, the pulpit, and the classroom, they carried their message westward to the rest of Canada. The full extent of their influence in the process of nation building has yet to be thoroughly examined, and to be acknowledged by their intellectual heirs.

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Missions

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12 John Geddie: The Canadian-Australian Connection STEWART D. GILL

"His candour, perseverance, orderly methods, unshakeable faith in Christ - qualities both Scots and Reformed - remain imprinted in the characters of many of the people in the church he pioneered."1 Thus John Garrett sums up the life and work of John Geddie (1815-72). How important were "Scots and Reformed" characteristics in forming a Scottish culture overseas in the nineteenth century? If Geddie's cultural background was Scottish then it was transplanted Scottishness that flourished in the New Scotland of the Maritimes. In 1985 Angus Calder noted: "Dialectically, our religious heritage accounts for all distinctiveness in our culture: Hume and Burns, reacting thoroughly against Calvinism, may tower over orthodox contemporaries, but who can read Byron, or Carlyle or Stevenson or MacDiarmid or Grassic Gibbon without perceiving their various assaults on orthodoxy as fresh modulations within Knox's tradition?"2 He went on to call for historians to come to grips with "Covenanting Calvinism" and "Missionary Scotland." Recently Graham Walker and Tom Gallagher have devoted a book to this subject.3 They write that "Covenanters and missionaries are not just historical artifacts; they are symbols of certain enduring expressions of national pride."4 It is in this light that Geddie can be seen; coming from a Calvinistic background he became a missionary and a great icon of mid-nineteenthcentury Scottish-Canadian Presbyterian enterprise overseas. Geddie has long been honoured as a missionary statesman in the Maritime provinces. However he is also remembered in the land of his death, Australia. Through his work in the New Hebrides he

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inspired not only Canadian but also Australian Presbyterians to get involved in world mission. Geddie left for the New Hebrides in 1846 while the Australian Presbyterian churches did not become involved until the years 1869-72. This paper attempts to put Geddie in the context of world mission in the mid-nineteenth century, when he commenced his work, and to look in particular at how he may have inspired the Australian church to get involved in the mission. The paper will look at his background, which has been well covered by previous albeit dated biographical studies.51 will also consider how he was perceived by the various Australian Presbyterian publications reporting on missionary work. In recent days there has been much interest on the part of historians in looking at transatlantic links between evangelicals. It is becoming increasingly clear that as the nineteenth century wore on these links were just as important in the transpacific context, and the life of Geddie, who was born in Scotland, migrated to the Maritimes, and served in the New Hebrides, transcends both oceans. BACKGROUND

Geddie was born in Banff, Scotland, on 10 April 1815 and died at Geelong, Australia on 14 December 1872. Few of these years were spent in either Scotland or Australia yet his Scottish heritage was to have a tremendous bearing upon his life, and his Australian links were to have an impact upon the development of Presbyterian missions. He was born at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in a Scotland that was on the verge of economic depression but that had also recently experienced a religious awakening. Geddie's family was affected by both. His father, John Geddie, had been influenced by the religious awakening that accompanied the preaching of James and Robert Haldane, with the result that the family left the Church of Scotland to worship in the independent chapel in Banff. Both Haldanes had been deeply influenced by the Anglican evangelicals Charles Simeon and Rowland Hill but were also in the mainstream of a developing indigenous Scottish evangelicalism flowing out of the 1742 Cambuslang Revival. Those involved in this movement were attempting to resist the increasingly liberal theological trends in Scottish mainstream religion by a return to "heart religion."6 The Haldanes used their wealth actively to plant independent chapels and to encourage lay preaching. This was an important departure in Scottish evangelicalism as leadership shifted from ordained ministers to lay preachers. A measure of

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their success is the response of the Church of Scotland. In 1799 the General Assembly issued a pastoral letter: There have risen among us a set of men whose proceedings threaten no small disorder to the country. They assume the name of missionaries, as if they had some special commission from heaven; they are going through the land as universal itinerant teachers, and as superintendents of the ministers of religion; they are introducing themselves into parishes, without any call, and erecting in places Sunday Schools without any countenance from the Presbytery of the bounds or the minister of the parish; they are committing in these schools the religious instruction of the youth to ignorant persons, altogether unfit for such an important charge; and they are studying to alienate the affections of the people from their pastors, and engaging them to join their new sect, as if they alone were possessed of some secret and novel method of bringing men to heaven.7

Many of the Baptist and Congregational churches in Scotland owe their origin to the work of the Haldanes, as do the mission halls under lay leadership in fishing villages such as Banff. In 1816 the Geddie family migrated to Pictou, Nova Scotia, where John Geddie senior continued as a clock maker and the family joined the Prince Street Presbyterian Church. In a history of Pictou we read a description of a Presbyterian worshipper: Every week day, when he is not away, the form of a bewhiskered man, now no longer young, may be seen going down the "road from John Patterson's home to his wharf" and with slowing steps. His mind is on pounds and shillings, on profit-and-loss and on pine, fish, ships, mortgages, rents, notes-ofhand and accounts. Figuratively, he has his ledger under his arm and his daybook in his hand. But on the Sundays after 1805, he always turns west on Church Street. Then he has, in fact, his Bible under his arm and his Shorter Catechism in his hand and his mind is on Pre-destination, Election, Salvation and Original Sin, on Heaven and Hell, for he is on his way to Prince Street Church.8

The process of transformation from Scot to Nova Scotian began to take place. Many of the divisions in Nova Scotian society were Scottish in origin. The religious divisions that had existed in Scotland between the established Church of Scotland and the Secessionists were transferred to Nova Scotia, where they caused rancour in the Presbyterian churches, in politics and education. The first ministers of Pictou were Secessionist and there were initially no divisions as even Church of Scotland settlers were willing to attend Secessionist services. When

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Church of Scotland ministers arrived old divisions were revived as there was an unwillingness to give way on matters such as communion and church government. As the divisions were not doctrinal there was much interchange between members of the different congregations, but the ministers remained apart. This changed in 1817 with the union of the Truro (Burgher) and Pictou (Anti-Burgher) Presbyteries in order to form the Secession Synod of Nova Scotia (a union that did not take place in Scotland until 1847), but it did not altogether obliterate the differences between the Kirk and Secessionists who continued to predominate. Presbyterian polity embodied representative and responsible government within a clearly defined structure, and this often led to extensive discussion, dissension and fragmentation. Sometimes this had a positive as well as a negative effect, raising the level of education in the community as new and creative ideas flourished. Geddie was educated at Pictou Grammar School and Pictou Academy under the leadership of Thomas McCulloch who was the leading Secessionist minister in the colony but also one of the leading political reformers.9 During his formative years Geddie read widely in missionary literature, especially from the London Missionary Society. At the age of nineteen he made a public confession of faith and enrolled in McCulloch's theology courses. George Patterson in his biography of Geddie, writing in the best tradition of nineteenth-century Protestant hagiography, portrays him growing up as a saint, full of piety: "Gentle as a girl, and guileless as a child, Johnnie Geddie, as he was generally called, except when the title was prolonged 'little Johnnie' excited the kindest feelings of all, while his blameless character and unquestioned piety won their best esteem."10 Geddie was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Pictou on 2 May 1837. After preaching in several congregations he was called to Cavendish and New London, Prince Edward Island, on 13 March 1838 where he was ordained. Geddie's chief desire was to undertake overseas missionary work but at this stage no British colonial mission was actively involved in it. He was instrumental in stirring up interest in such a project through his own church and by persuading other congregations. Finally through his initiative and overtures to the Presbytery of Prince Edward Island and the Synod of Nova Scotia, a board of foreign missions was appointed with Geddie as the secretary. In July 1845 Geddie was chosen by the board as its missionary and the New Hebrides as its field. He spent the next year preparing, learning numerous skills which he thought would be useful for a missionary to have: how to use a printing press, how to build a house and a boat, and how to identify and treat tropical diseases. On 3 November 1846 Geddie and

179 John Geddie

his wife, Charlotte Leonora Harrington MacDonald, and two children set sail from Halifax. They spent eight months in Samoa learning the linguistic principles of the Polynesian languages, then settled in July 1848 in Aneityum. THE B E G I N N I N G S IN THE NEW H E B R I D E S

The New Hebrides, known after independence in 1980 as Vanuatu, is an archipelago in the South Pacific located between New Caledonia and the Fiji Islands, covering an area of 14,763 square kilometres. The first contact with Europeans in the New Hebrides was in 1606 when Pedro Fernandes de Quiros took possession of Terra Australia del Espiritu Santo - now the island of Espiritu Santo - the largest island in the archipelago, in the name of the Trinity, the Catholic Church, St Francis, St John of God, the Order of the Holy Ghost, and King Phillip III of Spain. De Quiros named the place where he landed Vera Cruz and the river that flowed nearby the Jordan River, and he noted the site of a city to be called the New Jerusalem. Although de Quiros described the island of Santo as "the most delicious country in the world, the Garden of Eden, the inexhaustible source of glory, riches and power to Spain" he only remained there for thirty-five days.11 Later European visitors to Vanuatu included the French explorer Louis Bougainville in 1768 and the British explorer James Cook in 1774. Cook named the islands the "New Hebrides" but noted that the islands were a difficult area for European settlement.12 This attitude became a challenge to Christians in Britain who had been re-awakened by the Evangelical Revival, out of which the London Missionary Society was formed in 1795. It catered to Evangelical churches that adhered to the practice of infant baptism and it chose the Pacific as its first sphere of influence. On 24 September 1796 it sent out its first thirty missionaries aboard a ship called the Duff. Eighteen of these missionaries landed on Tahiti, ten on Tonga, and two on the Marquesas Islands.13 The first convert of the LMS work in the Pacific was King Pomare II of Tahiti who requested Christian baptism in 1812, and who was deemed to be a suitable candidate for baptism by the missionaries in 1819. He was not a model convert, as the missionaries found it difficult to curb his drunkenness and homosexuality.14 The first European missionary to arrive in Vanuatu was the Reverend John Williams.15 He had worked with the LMS in what is now known as French Polynesia, and in 1818 had settled on the island of Raiatea. King Tamatoa of Raiatea became a Christian under his ministry, and subsequently the number of Christians multiplied. Williams

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was such an effective missionary that he gained for himself the title "Apostle of Polynesia." Williams believed that the most effective evangelists to Pacific islanders were other Pacific islanders. Therefore as he moved westwards across the Pacific, visiting the Cook Islands, Niue, Tonga, and Samoa, he used Polynesians as missionaries to fellow Polynesians. The policy of using Polynesians as teachers worked well since throughout Polynesia the various languages are very closely related; someone from Tahiti could make himself understood to a person from Samoa. After a furlough in Britain in 1834 where Williams published his Narrative of Missionary Enterprises, which sold 38,000 copies in five years, he returned to the South Pacific and in 1839 set out in the Camden to evangelize the southern islands of Vanuatu, taking with him Polynesian teachers as co-workers. This expansion into Melanesia proved to be more difficult than the previous Polynesian work, for the linguistic diversity of Melanesia is enormous with Vanuatu alone having approximately 115 separate languages. Furthermore on many Melanesian islands malaria, against which the Polynesians and Europeans have no immunity, is endemic. When Williams made his voyage to Vanuatu he took with him twelve Samoan teachers whom he planned to use as pioneers of the Christian mission in these islands. On 18 November 1839 his ship entered Port Resolution, Tanna. Three Samoans named Lalolangi, Salamea, and Mose, together with their wives, were left on the island after being promised protection by the local chiefs. The Camden then sailed for Dillon's Bay, Erromanga, where four men went ashore: Williams, James Harris, Captain Robert Morgan, and a naturalist named Cunningham. While on the beach Cunningham saw hostile islanders and called for Williams to run. Harris was clubbed to death. Williams hesitated momentarily, then ran for the water and not the boat, ducking under the water to escape the clubs, but to no avail. Cunningham and Morgan were able to escape. The ship's crew was unable to assist in any way and Williams and Harris were taken away by the Erromangans and eaten. William's martyrdom aroused a great response in the Anglo-Saxon Protestant world. The New South Wales governor, Sir George Gipps, sailed to Erromanga in the frigate favourite in February 1840 to retrieve the remains of Williams and Harris. He received some bones which were later interred with dignity and honour on Samoa; however it is doubtful that they were actually the bones of Williams and Harris.16 In April 1840 the Camden returned to Port Resolution and two married teachers were placed there to accompany the three Samoans and

181 John Geddie

their families who had begun work there in November 1839. The ship then proceeded to Dillon's Bay, Erromanga, where two single Polynesian men were settled, and then to Aniwa where two married couples began work. Of the original party at Port Resolution, two of the five men as well as two of the wives died of malaria. The two single men on Erromanga were almost starved to death and were later relocated by the LMS to the Isle of Pines, in New Caledonia, where they were murdered. The teachers on Aniwa were later withdrawn because of sickness. Not all Polynesian missionaries' work was in vain. On the island of Aneityum in 1842 the first success came. Four Polynesian teachers named Apolo, Simeona, Pita, and Apaisa established a church of approximately forty people. These Polynesian missionaries were relatively well received initially, however the purpose of their coming was not properly perceived. Naseve, an Aneityumese high chief, commented: "We led the teachers up to a native house some distance inland and gave it to them to live in, thinking they were just going to live a few days among us, but the vessel sailed away from our island immediately and left the teachers."17 By 1848, with the arrival of the first white missionary on Aneityum, church attendance had substantially dwindled. This missionary was Geddie, whose Presbyterian Synod of Nova Scotia was closely associated with the Scottish Secession churches that, along with the Scottish Relief and Congregational churches, had supported the work of the LMS. The mission was born at the request of and in cooperation with the LMS but its Presbyterian ethos made it distinct.18 The concerns of the earliest Presbyterian missionary were "to convert, then educate to 'raise' the converts by schooling them and forming them into churches governed by properly elected Kirk Sessions, with clear disciplinary procedures."19 This reflects what Malcolm H. Campbell has stated: "The establishment of the Presbyterian Missionary work in Vanuatu had three main aims: to preach the Gospel; to teach not only the Christian faith but also literacy and numeracy; and to heal. "20 The foundation that the Geddies laid down eventually led to independence for Vanuatu. It has recently been argued that the training provided by the Presbyterian Church helped the Vanuatuan people to regain the independence of which they had been deprived through European colonization. Once a European power took control of a colony, a European-educated elite was necessary to drive out the colonizing power. The Presbyterian missionaries from the earliest days aided this move towards independence as they sought to recruit local people to take up leadership in the mission.

i8a Missions

Geddie arrived with two other families, Mr and Mrs Thomas Powell and Mr and Mrs Isaac Archibald. Archibald was a qualified teacher, especially sent to train local people as teachers. However due to an act of immorality with an island woman, Archibald left the mission and worked with the local sandalwood traders, and the Powells withdrew to Samoa in 1849 following a severe attack of malaria. The Reverend John Inglis joined Geddie in 1852 and they worked together for over twenty years. They began village literacy classes and elementary education in the local language, and education was largely catechetical. Geddie's work was very successful and by 1859 there were no heathens on the island.21 After conversion the missionaries concentrated upon educating the islanders, seeing the work of education as complementary and necessary to the work of evangelism. Although Geddie and Inglis worked in education and church matters, Inglis specialized in education and especially teacher training while Geddie's main concern was pastoral work. These pioneer missionaries were assisted in their educational work by Polynesians. Following the footsteps of the LMS, from the very beginning Geddie was committed to training his own local native teachers to work alongside European missionaries. Even before Inglis arrived on Aneityum Geddie had started training local teachers. As the work of the mission spread teachers were continually used to convert and then educate people in new areas. The first building that the mission erected in a village was one used as a school from Monday to Friday and as a church on Sunday. This policy of sending islander teachers ahead of the European missionaries has attracted much criticism. For example Graeme Kent writes: "It is difficult to avoid the impression that at this time some of the European missionaries were rather like a prizefighter's second, urging their principal into the ring while they stayed safely outside the arena."22 Although there is some truth in this statement, the missionaries sent islanders to new areas for logical reasons, namely they believed them to be able better to prepare the way for the gospel, because of their affinity with the people to be reached. In some way the Aneityumese teachers sent out by Geddie and Inglis were more pioneers than teachers. Like European missionaries their first task was to learn the language of the people among whom they settled. At this time example was more important than schooling. Inglis wrote: As soon as they land among them they keep the Sabbath; they worship God, morning and evening; they are peaceable, industrious, well-behaved men and women. They are like a bodyguard to the missionary; in times of danger they protect him and his family and his all. They are his eyes, his ears, his feet, and

183 John Geddie his hands; they inform him of what is going on; they carry out his suggestions and his plans; they supply him with the only skilled labour, beyond his own, that can be obtained; they build his house and man his boat, and without them in the midst of heathenism, he would often be helpless indeed.23

Geddie came to appreciate the usefulness of the native teachers and the central role that they could play in the evangelizing process. He wrote that "The history of missions on these islands without their valuable aid will be a history of failures and disasters."24 He went on, "It is they who lead the way in the battle against heathenism, and it is our honour to follow."25 In 1860 he approached both the sending agencies, the Scottish and Nova Scotian churches, for advice about the formation of presbyteries in order to allow more self-government for the church. The response however was disappointing; such a step was considered rather premature,26 and white missionaries continued to dominate. Rufus Anderson, the Boston secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the mid-nineteenth century, warned that "A foreign missionary should not be a pastor of a native church." The goals on the mission field according to Roland Allen were self-support, self-extension, and self-government.27 Geddie probably more than the other Presbyterian missionaries promoted this approach. For example Inglis noted that in his translation work with Geddie they had "not only given the natives the Bible, but [had] taught them to read it, and, what is perhaps more difficult, [had] succeeded in teaching them to pay for it."28 Inglis returned from Scotland in 1863 with copies of the Aneityumese New Testament which were sold for four shillings each. An abridged edition of Pilgrim's Progress, edited by Charlotte Geddie, was also published. Some Psalms and hymns were also translated and published, as were the First Catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and they were bound together in one volume. This sold for three shillings. Eventually all the books were being paid for by the manufacturer of Arrowroot. Geddie was always more hopeful than Inglis so far as self-support was concerned. When Inglis advocated the establishment of a secular agent to carry on business for the benefit of the natives, Geddie countered with the suggestion that two native merchants be set up, one on each side of Aneityum. Nothing came of the proposal but Geddie wrote hopefully that "if it succeeded, it would be a step towards the independence of the natives, and also tend to develop the resources of the island. "^ In the early period, under Geddie and Inglis, the new church in Vanuatu was genuinely self-extending in many ways, especially so

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Missions

on Aneityum because of Geddie's influence. Inglis noted: "Perhaps in nothing have the South Sea missions been more characteristic than in the extent to which they have employed native agency. And in none of those missions has this principle been more fully carried out than in the New Hebrides Mission. On Aneityum every convert, so far as it was practicable, was made a missionary."30 Increasingly, however, Geddie's views were not heard and the role of the teachers did not expand in the way anticipated. As a result a constant theme of mission reports was the need for more European missionaries.-31 Pessimism about the worth of the teachers' work tended to increase and unfortunate conclusions were drawn. Alexander Don wrote in 1918: "Many theorizers think that these natives can be trained to be good teachers and preachers. One in a thousand may, but the ordinary native of the New Hebrides never will."32 David Bosch has portrayed this drift in Protestant missions from independence to a kind of "benevolent paternalism."33 GEDDIE AND OTHER

EUROPEANS

It is often claimed that the missionaries regarded every other European in the Pacific as an enemy.34 Williams set the tone for the missionary attitude to European traders in the Pacific. He was in favour of commercial activity but came to denounce the trading vessels as "the very arks of Satan."35 Initially Geddie also looked upon the traders with considerable favour, but this state of affairs changed with time. Eventually Geddie levelled a number of serious allegations against the sandalwood traders - they were licentious womanizers, they stirred up the heathen against the missionaries, they treated the natives like dogs, and either through callousness or negligence they introduced killing diseases to the Melanesians.36 Brian Stanley has written: Formulations of the case that the Western Missionary movement was an integral part of the broader process of Western imperial expansion vary greatly in their degree of sophistication. Very few treatments of the subject by professional historians, even those of avowedly Marxist sympathies, present the relationship in terms of a crude conspiracy ... It is, however, the less sophisticated presentations of the theme by theologians, church leaders and journalists which are the more influential in shaping popular understanding of the past. The belief that 'the Bible and the flag' went hand in hand in the history of Western imperial expansion is fast becoming established as one of the unquestioned orthodoxies of general historical knowledge, and no amount of specialized historical monographs by academic historians is likely to

185 John Geddie affect substantially the received views of those unfamiliar with the world of historical scholarship.37

Some Marxist historians portray missionaries generally as imperialists at prayer but the truth is far more complex. At best the Presbyterian missionaries were somewhat reluctant imperialists, more interested in keeping the French at bay than promoting British imperialist interests. In opposing French expansion they appealed to religious, nationalistic, and humanitarian sentiments. Geddie saw "Romish Missions" as "the precursors of French aggression."38 The Presbyterian missionaries' fears with respect to French annexation were closely linked to the antipathy they felt for Roman Catholicism. John G. Paton, who gained a prominent position in the history of Australian Presbyterian missions, has also gained some notoriety as being a promoter of the British imperial ideal while his nemesis was seen to be Geddie. Neil Gunson has written: John Gibson Paton (1824-1907), Reformed Presbyterian missionary on Tana from 1858 to 1862 and missionary of the Presbyterian Churches of Australia on Aniwa from 1866, is bound to become a more controversial figure as historians assess his role in questions concerning the expansion of the British imperium: control over labour traffic and agitation for annexation. It is already widely accepted that he used methods of political agitators in his campaigns for political action; that he cut the facts to fit his preconceived views and opinions. Nor, his detractors argue, was the heroism of his self-image as real as that of some of his Presbyterian missionary contemporaries who lamented the readiness he showed in associating himself with the prestige (and punitive power) of the gunboat.39

Geddie vehemently opposed such strong-arm tactics and opposed Paton on the floor of the Presbytery of Sydney. However as Garrett notes, "For the mission, the episode marked a turning point in the direction of a 'theology of imperialism'; a semi-religious conviction of national destiny and duty was superadded to obedience to the gospel."40 Paton became the great publicist of the missionary enterprise in Australia and New Zealand and his views came to dominate as he began a paternal campaign to protect the interests of the Vanuatuans against the labour traders and French Roman Catholics. AFTERMATH

When the naturalist John Macgillivray visited Aneityum in 1853 he recorded, "I satisfied myself that the stories regarding the missionaries,

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originating from sandalwood traders and others, grossly maligned two good men devoted to the service of their divine master."41 In 1848 when Geddie arrived on Aneityum it was to evangelize what was probably already a decaying society. The Polynesian teachers who had arrived in 1841 had not been able to effect any significant breakthrough, probably because of their ill health. Even for the period 1848-52 missionary success was by no means spectacular. The general native response to Geddie at this time - with noteworthy exceptions - consisted of interest in the missionary's supply of Western goods coupled with the belief that Christianity was suitable for Europeans but Melanesians possessed their own religion. Geddie's careful approach to evangelism meant that there was no violent confrontation with heathenism - a contrast to the situations that developed under the more rigorous tactics adopted by Paton on Tanna and the Reverend George and Mrs Ellen Gordon on Erromanga. Geddie combined gentleness and firmness in gathering around himself a small but growing group of converts. Finally in May 1852 the first church in Melanesia was established as fifteen natives were baptized and thirteen adults were admitted to the Lord's Supper. The Christianization of these natives had been achieved while there were still sandalwooders on the island and before Inglis arrived. Motives are difficult to establish and no doubt there existed a strong desire to be aligned with the God of power in order to obtain temporal blessings. At this stage the continued good health of the Geddies and their new converts, as intermittent as this often was, played a significant role. The fact that the crops continued to grow and fish continued to be caught, in spite of the wrath of the natmasses, or spiritual forces, also aided the cause of the mission. The period from 1852 to 1859 saw the rapid decline of heathenism and the consolidation of the church. Much was achieved: the church expanded, schools came to dot the island, teachers were sent to neighbouring islands to open up new work, the language was acquiring a written form, the population was growing, fear of natmasses was on the wane, and what the missionaries might have called "sanctified commerce" was being encouraged. There were some heavyhanded attempts at promoting Christian virtues but more often than not Geddie was at the forefront of trying to curb some of the clumsier attempts. Many of the more objectionably immoral features of heathen culture were controlled or eliminated - widow strangulation, the ill-treatment of women, abortion, infanticide, cannibalism, and the almost perpetual state of warfare. The tragedies of 1860-2, notably the epidemic that destroyed onethird of the population, changed this state and had such a devastating

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impact on Aneityumese society that, for the most part, the next ninety years witnessed decline and an overall lack of direction. Aneityumese society stagnated as there was a corresponding increase in European supervision and paternalism - a trend that became more exaggerated as the new liberal theology emphasized civilization rather than salvation. The battles against labour traffic and French colonialism tended to entrench this attitude still further. The infant church was faced with a number of related problems - tragic depopulation, a general loss of spiritual fervour, the threat of labour recruiters and French imperialism, and an increase in mission control. The old heathen society was dead but the new Christian society was stumbling in its infancy, its growth stunted. Throughout the i86os and 18703 there were admirable and even heroic attempts to regain what had been lost but the golden age did not return. Aneityum in the i88os gives the impression that it was living off the spiritual momentum of the 18505. The work of elders, deacons, and teachers failed to expand in the new circumstances. Even when native pastors were finally ordained, they did not sit on the mission synod and did not have the same status as European missionaries mission control continued by default. On the whole the Presbyterian missionaries of Vanuatu lacked a coherent and consistent grasp of missionary methods. The exception was Geddie who from the beginning attempted to establish an independent work. GEDDIE AND AUSTRALIA

Geddie spent his final few years commuting between Australia and the New Hebrides as he worked on his translation of the Bible. His visits bore fruit as many were encouraged by the stories he told of the mission.42 When he visited Melbourne and Sydney in 1863 he concluded that, "The Churches of Australia are likely to become eminently missionary Churches. Their nearness to the Mission field, and the fact that they are so often visited by missionaries, will keep the subject of missions always before them. The people have generous hearts and much wealth, and are always ready to make a liberal response to every good cause presented to them. We are all much indebted to the kind attention of the friends of missions to us during our sojourn here."43 As Geddie noted it was inevitable that the distances involved would eventually reduce the roles undertaken by the Canadian and Scottish churches, and increase the responsibilities of the Presbyterian churches in the various Australian colonies. The Victorian church adopted Paton as its missionary in 1866, along with the Reverend

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James Cosh, both of Scotland. Meanwhile the church in New South Wales adopted the Canadian Reverend James D. Gordon in 1868. Gordon left the mission two years later after coming to premillennial views of eschatology and a more independent approach to ecclesiology. In 1872 he was tomahawked to death on Erromanga. Geddie himself was never adopted by an Australasian church, nevertheless his work was an inspiration to Australian missionaries. The first missionary to be trained in Australia was the Reverend Daniel Macdonald who married Elizabeth Geddie, a daughter of the pioneer missionary of Aneityum. Macdonald worked on Efate from 1872 until his retirement in 1907. A church was planted there when six men were baptized in 1875 and despite depopulation it continued to grow. Macdonald, known as "fighting Mac," continued in the tradition of his father-in-law, attempting to battle against the natives who lived in fear of the spirits; the labour traffickers; French planters who were a law unto themselves; his fellow missionary Peter Milne who differed with him over the right word for "God" and jurisdiction over certain islands; and, later, biblical critics who rejected the historicity of the book of Genesis. It was not until 1948 that Geddie's dream was fulfilled and the Presbyterian Church of the New Hebrides was made independent and self-governing, although the district missionaries still tended to make the important decisions until the mid-1970s. CONCLUSION

On Saturday 14 December 1872 Geddie died in Geelong. The Geelong Advertiser noted: "This gentleman, so well-known among ecclesiastical circles is one of the pioneer missionaries of the South Seas."44 The paper noted the next day that his funeral was attended by a small but sincere group of mourners as most of the eminent Presbyterian ministers in the state turned up to pay their last respects. I believe that if Geddie had been from Scotland and the Church of Scotland then his approach to missions and the native people might have been quite different. What was important in shaping his approach was his attachment to the radicalism and independence of the Secession. His interest in missions he obtained from his parents who had been affected by the awakening brought about by the Haldanes at a time when the Kirk was dismissive of missionary enterprises. His readiness to defend the rights of the Vanuatuans came from his own experience in North America in a church that was independent from the imperial ideal. His "Presbyterian culture" was not dominant in Scotland and the radicalism that had developed out of the need to be

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on the defensive against the established Church of Scotland made him sympathetic to the exploitation of other cultures. It was his combined Maritime-Scottish-Secessionist approach that made him so successful as a missionary. It might be said that the halcyon days of the New Hebrides mission were the days of John Geddie, and as such he deserves the title "the father of the mission."45

13 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes: Comparison and Contrast GEOFFREY JOHNSTON

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is to establish a profile of the typical Maritime Presbyterian missionary before 1925; the second is to describe the world they presented to their home constituency. I have selected the three mission fields that were started from Atlantic Canada - the New Hebrides (1846), Trinidad (1868), and Korea (1898). My principal sources are the Presbyterian Witness before 1875 and the Presbyterian Record after 1875. I have also used biographies where available because biographies were often based largely on material published in the church magazines. This paper is part of continuing research in the missionary history of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. THE MISSION FIELDS

First a few words about the mission fields themselves. The earliest was an initiative of John Geddie, the first missionary to be sent, supported, and directed by a colonial church. The Geddies and teacher Isaac Archibald and his wife left Halifax at the end of November 1846 and arrived in Aneityum in July 1848. The Archibalds lasted only a few years but Geddie remained in the islands, with one break, until just before his death in 1872. In all, the Maritime church sent or supported a dozen missionaries in the New Hebrides. Connections with Australia were established early on and as other fields opened up the Canadian church decided that the islands, now called Vanuatu, were better suited to be an Australasian mission field. The

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Canadian missionaries on the field would continue, but no new ones would be appointed. The three men there proved to be quite enduring; the last one died on his way home in 1914. The Woman's Missionary Society (Eastern Division) continued a small grant for leadership training but the personal connection with Vanuatu had ended. The second field, Trinidad, was an initiative of a Pictou man, John Morton, who was the minister in Bridgewater, NS. Morton contracted diphtheria and his doctor prescribed a Caribbean cruise as part of his convalescence. "The price of oak staves," he said, "took us to Trinidad." While the captain was contracting his normal business Morton went exploring.1 He was taken by the plight of the East Indians, who were contract labourers brought from north India to provide labour for the expanding sugar frontier. They were distinct in language and culture from the Creole population that preceded them, and the existing churches had done little for them. Morton urged his church to act but nothing happened until he offered to go himself. At about the same time as the Mortons arrived the Trinidadian government began to offer a grant of land to Indians in lieu of return passage to India. It was a popular offer and as the Indians settled down in the new world the Canadians were on hand with the gospel and literacy. The mission eventually expanded beyond Trinidad to other islands where the Indians were numerous, most notably to Guyana in 1885 but more permanently in 1896 with the appointment of James B. Cropper. Until 1925 Trinidad received fifty-three missionaries and Guyana another eighteen, almost all of whom were Maritime men and women. The West Indian mission was not very romantic but it was very significant. For almost a century it was the major bridge by which the immigrants and their children made the transition to life in the western hemisphere. The Korean field was also the result of an individual initiative. In this case it was William J. McKenzie, from Cape Breton, who went to Korea on his own in 1893. He died two years later but his example led to the establishment of an official mission in 1898. The entry into Korea brought the Canadian church in touch with one of the major additions to the Christian faith in the twentieth century. The mission grew so rapidly that it bankrupted the Foreign Mission Committee, East, forcing a merger with the Western Division in 1914. The list of Korea missionaries, most of whom were Maritimers, is impressive: forty-three men and women, plus spouses, between 1898 and 1925. Many of them remained on the field until the outbreak of the Second World War, and some went back after 1945.

192 Missions THE

MISSIONARIES

Who were these people? The Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1924, (Appendices, 116-128) gives 173 names, including spouses. Of these I have some information on all but 46. My sample consists of 127 men and women, appointed or married to appointees, between 1846 and 1924. The information is not always complete. I might know where a person was born but not when, or vice versa. I might know their birth and death, but not their education. The missionaries were a remarkably uniform group of people. To begin with about two-thirds of them were Maritimers. Nova Scotia led the pack with slightly over half, followed by New Brunswick at 10 percent, Prince Edward Island at 5 percent, and Newfoundland at i percent. Eleven people came from Britain or the West Indies, but some of the latter, most notably Harry Morton, son of John Morton, were missionary children. Five people came from Quebec and twenty-two from the rest of Canada. Only five of the twenty-seven non-Maritimers were appointed to one of the Maritime fields before the merger of the two mission committees in 1914. Finally, four people came from the United States, one of whom was a spouse. Second almost all of them came from small towns or villages. Only 13 percent of the people for whom this information is available came from major centres, and that counts Campbellton with one person and Sydney with two. Halifax led this list with five names, of which three were spouses. The two appointments were Marion Outhit (Trinidad 1912) and John Grierson, one of the pioneer party to Korea. Saint John offered two, Alexander F. Robb and his sister Jennie, both to Korea, and St John's one. The rest came from various cities across Canada. Third, although I say this with hesitation because I am relying on inference rather than direct evidence, they came from reasonably well-established families. When social class is mentioned the father's name is given, as if people were expected to recognize it. More persuasive is the fact that they were all quite well educated and thus probably from families for whom education was important. For the earlier appointments, to the New Hebrides, the situation is murkier, because education in Nova Scotia was still in process of formation. Geddie for example went to the Pictou Academy and studied theology with Thomas McCulloch. Morton went to the Theological Hall in Halifax as did most other ministers - Dalhousie and Pine Hill appear with monotonous regularity. Of the twenty-five West Indians for whom information is available twenty received all or part of their

193 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes

education in Halifax. Six of eleven Vanuatuans studied in Halifax, and six of fourteen Koreans. The people educated "away" in the Korean case tended to be the later appointments. Apart from Halifax people seem to have gone to the nearest college. Milton Jack and Alexander R. Ross went to McGill and Presbyterian College; Jack came from the Chateauguay valley and Ross from St Lambert, a village on the south shore across the St Lawrence from Montreal. On the other hand Robb went to Halifax. For the women the pattern is quite different. No women were appointed to the New Hebrides. The first in a long series of women appointed to Trinidad was Annie Blackadder (1876), a graduate of Truro Normal School. Nineteen women were appointed to Trinidad, all of them teachers; fourteen had gone to Normal School and five had degrees. The earliest degree holder was Outhit, with a master's degree from Dalhousie. The last in the series is Constance Young (1924) who went on to have a very distinguished career, receiving an honorary degree from Mount Allison University. The central focus for women in Trinidad was education, but they often did district work on the side. In Korea the women were more diversified; two were doctors, three were nurses, and nine were teachers, of whom five held degrees. The other nine women held a miscellany of qualifications. All the appointed women but one had some kind of professional training, as did many of the wives. A number of the men had also studied abroad. Two New Hebrideans went to Princeton to study medicine. Choice varied for the later appointments; most went to the United States but a few preferred Scotland. The total number is small, with only five people having gone beyond basic professional qualifications. Fourth the missionaries were quite young. Almost all of them were on their first or second jobs. Some of the women had taught for a few years and some of the ministers had some parish experience, but the average age at appointment was twenty-eight for the New Hebrides, twenty-nine for Guyana and Korea, and just under thirty for Trinidad. The Trinidad figure is inflated by two men in their forties, one of whom had been a missionary in India before going to Trinidad. Fifth length of service tended to be either long or short. The clearest case is Guyana where eleven people served fewer than five years and one served for over forty. The Methuselah of the mission was Cropper, who lasted for forty-nine years and died in the pulpit of Burns Church, Georgetown. In the New Hebrides six people served fewer than five years and two fewer than ten. On the other hand three stayed more than forty years. Only one, Geddie, falls in between. The pattern is similar in Trinidad; half the missionaries served fewer than

194 Missions

five years, while eight out of thirty-one men (25 percent) and four out of 19 women (20 percent) stayed for more than thirty years. Adella Archibald was there for forty-six years. In Korea things were different; the men were fairly evenly spread with a tendency to long service, and the women were bunched at the short and long ends, rather like the West Indians. The reasons for leaving the field were fairly uniform. Some of the women married. Two of the Korean appointments, Catherine Mair, and some years after her death Miriam Fox, married Luther Young, the founder of the Canadian work among Koreans in Japan. But the most common reason was health. People died on the job, especially in Vanuatu and Guyana. Some, like Geddie, died shortly after leaving the field while others left the field for medical reasons and went on to have long and sometimes distinguished careers in Canada. I suspect that health was in some cases a convenient excuse. In 1901 75 percent of the Canadian population lived in centres of fewer than 5000 people. The rural origin of so many missionaries is therefore nothing strange. The missionaries were very normal people; they came from the middle stratum of society, and were young, educated, and enterprising. Being a missionary was for some a life-long calling, while for others it was part of a career that included many other things. Apart from their interest in living in another country they are hard to distinguish from any other member of the "better sort of people." The missionaries spent a fair amount of time writing home to friends and family or to editors of the church papers. In the earlier years letters written originally for private consumption showed up in the Presbyterian Witness. In these letters missionaries talked about what they were doing and about the society around them, for Canadians a major source of information about the other side of the world. THE W O R L D "AWAY" The New Hebrides

Beginning with the New Hebrides, the first point to note is that the people of Vanuatu were examples of the triumph of the gospel. They were a people who had moved from "degraded savagery" to the beginnings of "Christian civilization." Samuel F. Johnston wrote from Fiji on his rather roundabout trip from Nova Scotia to Melanesia, I have seen much here to shew me the power of the gospel, and the benign influence it exerts over the world. About a fourth of the inhabitants of these

195 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes islands are now Christians nominally. And a larger portion of those who are heathen are much influenced by the gospel, and much changed from what they were. It is a sad thing to be a heathen. No person can possibly fully realize this until he sees heathen people - naked, cruel, bloodthirsty, ignorant, wicked, degraded ... I saw a chief who cut the tongue out of another chief, and roasted and eat [sic] it in his presence, and then clubbed and ate the poor man ... Such is man without the gospel. But with the gospel things are very different. In some towns family worship is observed night and morning by almost every family ... Many of them spend their evenings in reading the Scriptures. They have weekly prayer meetings well attended ... I have seen a man in the woods, before eating a yam ask a blessing over it. When away from home, wherever they are, they have prayer together before they go to sleep.2 Johnston's horror stories have probably lost nothing in the telling. Geddie, who was fortunate enough to see the formal conversion of Aneityum, is more matter-of-fact. The effects of the gospel on this Island are now on many points very obvious. The superstitions, abominations and cruelties of Heathenism are either past or rapidly passing away. War is no longer heard of, and good feeling and friendly intercourse seem now to be firmly established among those who from time immemorial were deadly foes. The last act of cannibalism took place about two years ago, and I do not hazard much in saying that cannibalism will never more be practised on this Island. The strangulation of widows may, I think, be numbered among the things that were; the Christians of course do not practice it, and the Heathen are afraid, for the horrid practice has been denounced by all the men of influence on the Island. Infanticide, which was practised to some extent, has about disappeared, now that the value of human life is becoming better understood. Feasting and dances are confined to the Heathen, and are of rare occurrence; and those who profess Christianity are ashamed of these things.3 Geddie and his colleagues were cautious about what had been accomplished. While they often praised the unsung heroes and martyrs of the mission - Polynesian and later Vanuatuan teachers - they were careful to point out that these men were new to the faith, and the Polynesians, like the Canadians, were strangers to the islands. In 1854 John Inglis, Geddie's Scottish colleague on Aneityum, wrote in the Witness:

196 Missions [Native Agency] is a subject on which Mr Geddie and I have bestowed a good deal of attention, and on which our opinions perfectly correspond. To us it appears that there are three causes which will always render Samoan and Rarotangan teachers comparatively inefficient on these islands; these are the climate, the languages and the presence of foreigners. It may appear strange, but the teachers suffer greatly more from the sickness peculiar to the islands than the missionaries. The languages spoken in these islands are [very] different from any of the Malay dialects ... The presence of foreigners on these islands presents so many temptations for trading and other secularising pursuits as greatly lessens their usefulness as teachers.4

The teachers were useful and at times indispensable, but they never became more than junior staff. Mention of foreigners brings us to the second point, that the missionaries were not the only Europeans in Vanuatu. There were French Catholic missionaries, but they did not stay very long. More serious rivals were the sandalwood traders, since sandalwood was much in demand in India and China, both for decorative articles and for incense. The trees grew on a number of the islands and as long as supplies lasted the trade was very profitable. But most of the people who operated it were, according to the missionaries, of dubious moral fibre. "The sandalwood traders have not proved uniformly bad or unfriendly: at times indeed they rendered no little service to the Mission. But their general influence has been most baleful, introducing strong drink, propagating diseases, at times ruthlessly robbing and murdering the natives, exciting deep hatred and distrust, jealously availing themselves of every opportunity of thwarting Missionary effort."5 The first generation of missionaries, Geddie and his colleagues, regarded the sandalwood traders in much the same way as their successors regarded the men who ran the labour traffic. The earliest references to contract labour appear in the late sixties. "The Polynesian labour question is creating a great deal of interest in this Colony at present. There are difficulties between masters and labourers constantly occurring. People here take very different views of the matter, some maintaining that the system is calculated to do good to the natives, while others as strongly oppose it. The missionaries all think that it is fraught with many evils to the natives and little or no good."6 According to Steel the traffic began with a raiding expedition to secure labour for Peru in 18637 In the same year a citizen of Sydney, Robert Towns, sent a schooner called the Don Juan to the New Hebrides to secure labour for cotton plantations he was starting in Queensland, and others followed suit. In September 1867 the New

197 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes

Hebrides mission prepared a long statement sharply critical of the practice, and Steel submitted it to the governor of New South Wales in February 1868. Some attempt at regulation was undertaken by Queensland the same year, but the missionaries still felt obliged to publish, in Britain in 1871, a pamphlet entitled "The Slave Trade in the New Hebrides." Imperial legislation was passed in 1872, but the traffic continued. Hugh Robertson, the missionary in Erromanga, began a sustained polemic in The Record in 1880, "To many of these men, especially to those who were brought out of heathen darkness by means of our own labours, I am deeply attached, and were it not for those wretched slavers our hearts would be greatly cheered among them. But oh! these so-called labour vessels are an immense curse and drawback. May this miserable traffic soon be abolished!"8 The missionary critique of the labour traffic rested on three points. The trade employed nefarious means, it tended to take the most promising young men and bring them back demoralized and worldly, and, more than disease or warfare, contract labour was responsible for the depopulation of the islands. Far more than all other causes put together do we charge the infamous "Queensland labour Traffic" falsely so-called with having killed out the life of the New Hebrideans. Within the islands, every scheme and device possible is resorted to in order to evade the spirit and letter of the law and regulations, and added to this is the fact that it is not families, not the old and infirm who are carried away from their homes and friends, but the strong, clean skinned, healthy, robust young men in the bloom and vigor of manhood, the very flower of the islands.9

Depopulation in the Pacific was a major feature of life in the nineteenth century. James Gordon was musing about the question on his way around the Cape of Good Hope. At first he thought a drop in population was a consequence of miscegenation, but later came to the conclusion that, in the Pacific at least, the principal cause was venereal disease.10 In the last quarter of the century depopulation became a major theme in missionary literature. Statistics from the period are no more than best estimates, but they all point in the same direction. Robertson estimated that the population of Erromanga had fallen from 3000 in 1872 to 1000 in 1907. It was a calamity that he accepted with a kind of sorrowful resignation: "Poor people! Theirs seems to be the doom of all dark races - to the bush and back to the wall again."11 But it was not just "the doom of all dark races"; the British Empire had failed the Vanuatuans.

198 Missions

Missionaries were usually cautious in their relations with the representatives of empire. In July 1854 Geddie opened his new church and married eleven couples. This great event was witnessed by some 900 people, among whom were the commander and some of the officers of HMS Torch. The commander insisted on decorating the church and grounds with a vast quantity of flags. "As the occasion was extraordinary" said Geddie, "and not likely again to occur, I did not interfere with Lieut. Crimmo, but left him to suit his own taste in the flag department."12 The flag incident was a pecadillo, and Geddie chose neither to question nor to applaud the imperial presence. But events involving the men-of-war were not always so amicable. 1861-62 was a bad time for the missionaries on Tanna. A civil war led to the abrupt departure of the two missionaries, John G. Paton, a Scot, and John W. Matheson, from Nova Scotia. Considerable property was lost in the process, and the missionaries seem to have asked for imperial support. Paton acted as interpreter for Lt Wiseman in command of the Curacao when the vessel called at Tanna. The upshot of the visit was the shelling of a village. Nobody was killed in the attack, but three men died when a shell exploded later. In February 1866 the Witness published a letter containing an extract minute of the New Hebrides mission thanking Wiseman for the "kind and courteous manner" in which he had received their memorial about loss of life and property, and commending him for his "wise, judicious and vigorous, yet humane policy." The editor commented, "We are convinced that it was an ill-advised and disastrous movement with which Missionaries should have nothing whatsoever to do ... We ... solemnly protest against the steps taken by the Missionaries in invoking the power of the sword."13 Geddie, who was not in the islands at the time, dissented vigorously from the action of his colleagues.14 Geddie's view prevailed; the mission should keep the imperial presence at arm's length. A generation later the missionaries had to deal with the future government of the islands. The first generation had been content to leave the existing system in place, duly reformed. The situation at the end of the century was more complicated. Not only had Europeans been depopulating the islands by means of contract labour, they had also been taking over broad tracts of Vanuatuan real estate and enticing labour by unfair means.15 In January 1901 the mission sent a delegation to the Australian government to protest the behaviour of French settlers in Efate. "If they (the members of the delegation) were not missionaries, they would advocate British annexation as the only way out of the troublous state of affairs that had been brought about at the island, but in the meantime

199 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes

an independent authority to investigate was imperative."16 The minister's response was courteous but cautious. The upshot of imperial rivalry in the New Hebrides was cautious and curious, a bizarre compromise called Condominium, under which the Vanuatuans managed to live for some seventy years. The missionaries did not think much of it. Citing Quarterly Jottings, a magazine of the mission, Ephraim Scott, editor of the Record wrote, "Elemental justice is denied, or avoided by every legal subterfuge. Native Christians and leaders are being persecuted and imprisoned on trumped-up charges ... Is not great [sic] Britain lost to all sense of probity and chivalry in continuing a partnership without demanding of France immediate, strict and undeviating fulfilment of her treaty obligations?"17 The New Hebrides then was presented as a triumph of the gospel, but it was something of a consolation prize, partly because of the failings of the people, and partly because of the failing of the empire. The same themes of the redemption of a backward people and the blessings of the empire are worked out in a different way in Korea. Korea The Canadians arrived in Korea in the last days of independence, and were not very impressed by what they found. In 1903 Bessie Robb wrote a long paper for the Pictou Presbyterial which portrayed traditional Korean society in an adverse light. The Government is nominally an absolute monarchy, but the King is really manipulated by a set of powerful officials, and there is a constant struggle going on for first place in the King's favour and many ups and downs in official ranks. Bribery and corruption have become fine arts in this "Land of Morning Calm," as the natives call their country. In fact they are the foundation of the whole political system ... Socially the people are divided into the "yangban" or aristocratic class and the common people. The former scorn any kind of work and divide among themselves the official appointments throughout the country ... These appointments are usually bought, the purchaser reimbursing himself out of the extra taxes and so called presents he squeezes out of the people ... The people are quite accustomed to this system and regard it as right and proper within limits.18

If the limits were exceeded the populace could always riot. But the riot Robb spoke of was one in favour of an upright official who wanted to resign on grounds of ill health but whom the people wanted to stay. "This gentleman," said Robb, "is an example of what a Korean may become." He was an aristocrat who became a Methodist,

20O

Missions

studied in the United States, visited Europe, and kept abreast of the world by reading English newspapers. He had difficulty in the civil service, for the reigning conservatives did not like progressive ideas. But he survived, "once by the courage and quick wit of his devoted wife, an earnest Christian and a very charming Chinese lady." The spiritual and social redemption of Korean women was the main thrust of this paper. Her description of Korean family life was more than a little caustic. The best of everything goes to the lords of creation as a matter of course. The boys are all sent to school and given as good an education as can be had in the district, but no one ever dreams of sending a girl to school until the Christian missionary suggests such a possibility ... A Korean woman never goes out with her husband unless there is something to be carried. Then he may take her to carry a heavy burden on her head while he stalks majestically along a few feet or a few yards in advance ... The Korean men may or may not work hard, but the women almost invariably do. Everything has to be done in the hardest possible way, without any of the labour saving devices of the West.

But conversion made a big change: "One could almost pick out a Christian woman anywhere. The dull heavy dispirited expression gives way to one of bright activity as the soul wakens within."19 Because they had no schooling women were "shut up to the grossest superstitions," to sacrifices to the ancestors and the spirits. The world of the Korean peasantry was crowded with spirits, which were the cause of sickness. Men and women shared this belief and consequently Western medicine had an obvious opening. Kate MacMillan was the first of a series of Canadian women who served in Korea as doctors. She arrived in 1901 and spent twenty years at Hamheung, where most of her work was general practice. "Perhaps the skin and eye cases predominate. In the skin we have from the tiny boil to the ulcer of many years standing which has destroyed nearly the whole limb and which is so foul that it is very hard indeed to dress; and as in the skin cases so in all diseases we have from the simplest to the most serious and urgent."20 Redemption was both physical and spiritual in Korea, as it was in Vanuatu, though Victorians would not have put it that way. The people in the South Pacific spoke of civilization; in Korea they talked about change. And they recognized that they were not the only social transformers in the country. In 1905 Japan invaded Korea, and annexed it in 1910.

2oi Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes The Koreans saw Japan defeat a European nation and take its place among the first class powers of the world. They saw Japan taking possession of their country, and realized their weakness and utter helplessness to prevent it. Once they considered their nation superior to Japan. Now they saw themselves far outstripped, and credited it to the Western learning that Japan had imbibed ... The old Korean dynasty is gone. Alien officials are everywhere. New laws and new regulations are in force. The Postal and Telegraph systems have been extended and improved. New and better roads have been made, and the railways extended. Many good reforms are being introduced and some not so good.21 As the last sentence indicates, by 1913 at least one missionary was becoming ambivalent about the Japanese occupation. At first they were quite positive22 but as time went on, the few references to the Japanese occupation became more cautious. By 1919 The Record had become sharply critical of Japan's "human rights record" particularly in connection with the independence movement in which Christians played a large part.23 Most of the copy on this subject came from central Canadians, but the Nova Scotians seem to have been equally proKorean. In December 1920 Duncan M. Macrae described a funeral. The deceased, Cho Young Sin, was a young man from a Christian family who was in jail for political reasons. While in prison he contracted influenza and then pleurisy. By the time the prison officials agreed to let him go to hospital, it was too late. The body was returned to Hamheung for burial. It was a memorable night in Hamheung city, the night the body arrived by train. The entire population seemed to be gathering at the station. The police force was out in strength. As the casket was being carried on the shoulders of young men from the train one cry of "Aigo!" (alas) rent the night air. It was midnight as the procession lined up on the march to the home. On the way the Christians sang "Nearer my God to Thee," "Jesus Loves Me" and other hymns. The policemen tried to stop it, but on they sang. Young Cho's funeral was a memorable one. On that day the police force from surrounding districts were called in. People came from far and near to the funeral. A small brass band in the city volunteered to play the funeral march to the grave. A beautiful flower hearse was prepared. After a short service at the home the funeral procession marched through the streets of the city toward the academy campus adjoining the church. We had not gone far when the police seized the bandmen. Every man in the funeral line held steady, the young people leading and singing hymns. The streets were packed with people.

2O2

Missions

The funeral went ahead as planned, with the chief of police naturally in attendance. MacRae continued, "I was glad the chief of police and all his staff were present to hear what type of young man was being sacrificed to their oppression."24 The Japanese occupation was seen as a mixed blessing, and its shortcomings became increasingly prominent as the years went by. A significant difference between the Korean missionaries and the Vanuatuan is the attitude to converts, and especially to Korean or Vanuatuan colleagues. We have noted the caution expressed by the Vanuatuan missionaries, both about the teachers and about the society as a whole. By contrast the Korean missionaries spoke in glowing terms of their colleagues. By 1914 A.H. Barker could speak of "Kim Moksa" as a colleague without having to draw attention to their equality. Collegiality soon spread beyond the district level. A Presbytery of Korea was established in 1907. It grew into a General Assembly and in 1917 an anonymous missionary described it as a Korean body. "The Moderator was a Korean. Most of the committee work was done by Koreans. Most of the speaking on the floor was done by Koreans. From now on the foreign missionary must be content to play a decreasingly prominent part in church life and assume a relation more and more advisory. We look forward to the time when the control of Korean institutions will be entirely in the hands of Koreans."25 The West Indies

The West Indian missionaries had the same kind of optimism about their converts. In 1904 J.D. MacKay, a missionary in Guyana, published a twelve-part romance about a destitute Brahman called Jugmohun. Jugmohun stumbled upon the recruiting agents in Calcutta by accident and signed on for British Guiana. He prospered as a contract labourer, was reunited with his childhood bride, took up a piece of land when his indenture was over, and became a Presbyterian and lived happily ever after. MacKay's story is a readable and reasonably accurate reflection of the views of the members of the Canadian mission Indians in the West Indies.26 MacKay is unabashedly pro-East Indian. Although the story has a few scoundrels among the contract labourers, Jugmohun himself was a paragon of virtue. To begin with he was handsome: he had "the graceful figure, light brown skin, long narrow face, and refined features of the youth. There was also a certain pride of bearing: and through the lustrous black eyes, veiled by long lashes, one caught at times glimpses of the spirit of a distinguished ancestry."27

203 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes

In Guyana he proved to be an industrious and intelligent worker, not given to participation in protests, and a great saver. He remained faithful to Daulat, his childhood wife, for the first seven or eight years in Guyana. When Daulat showed up at another plantation, he bought out her indenture and took her back to his home in the barracks. "With mingled feelings Jugmohun showed her his household treasures over which she was to preside. And with a delicacy of insight and appreciation that revealed the refinement of her nature, she entered into possession. Her skillful fingers soon made the place a model of neatness and cleanliness."28 John Morton, addressing the General Assembly in Canada in 1900, made the point a little more bluntly. "The people among whom we labour in Trinidad, Demerara and St Lucia, are our fellow citizens in the British Empire, a fact of present and practical importance. They also belong to the same great Indo European branch of the human family."29 According to the version of this speech in the "Morton Papers" he added, "They are Anglo Saxons toasted in the Indian sun." By contrast MacKay's comments on the black population of Guyana are hardly complimentary. When Jugmohun arrived in Georgetown, he saw black people for the first time. "They were poorly dressed in ragged European clothes, and spoke the 'Augrezi' speech. Many of them were engaged as labourers and porters, and as many others were indifferently loafing. These men, the 'Kaffir Tog' as he heard them called, Jugmohun felt would be his rivals in the struggle for employment. Rivals, but not formidable ones, for the black man was evidently lazy, careless and good natured, although strong and fit for hard labour. "3° One of MacKay's favourite adjectives for black men is "lubberly." I hesitate to make too much of this point because the Canadians worked almost exclusively with the Indians and had little to do with the black population. But given the caution their contemporaries expressed about Melanesians, this smacks of a low-grade racism. This is true regarding people with dark skins, but the high-caste Hindus who were the first converts were a different matter. Lai Bihari, a Kshastriya, became a close and trusted colleague of Kenneth J. Grant in Princestown, and the first East Indian minister. Sarah Morton commented in 1913 that neither the recent immigrants nor the Trinidadianborn Indians were cut from the same cloth as the older generation of Indians, "A religious Hindoo with a knowledge of his own language affords more hopeful material."31 The Mortons were somewhat more cautious about their converts than many of their colleagues. But the West Indian missionaries agreed entirely about their empire. Their situation was radically different from their colleagues in

2O4

Missions

the Pacific. Koreans and Vanuatuans were indigenous populations who had been looking after their own affairs for centuries. But the West Indies were inhabited by people who had come there as slaves or as contract labour. Once the Amerindians were eliminated Europeans rebuilt the West Indies from the ground up, combining their own capital and expertise with foreign labour and Antillean soil. The Canadians took the plantation system for granted; MacKay describes the system from recruitment to independent settlement with hardly a hint of criticism. When indenture came under fire in the Nova Scotian press the Trinidadian missionaries defended it with enthusiasm. "If they come voluntarily, are paid fair wages, and cannot be ill treated, are they slaves any more than Her Majesty's soldiers and sailors, and apprentices generally throughout the world?"32 The missionaries were equally enthusiastic about East Indian settlement. Morton was hesitant at first, unsure whether the East Indians were industrious enough to be pioneers. But he was soon persuaded and henceforth became an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme. MacKay clearly prefers Jugmohun's house at Huist t'Dieren to the barracks at Lucri Causa. MacKay's colleague, Cropper, was "Superintendent of East Indian Settlements" from 1899 to 1905. He believed in the potential of East Indians as settlers to the point that he was prepared to put six years of his life into ensuring that the settlements succeeded. West Indian prosperity, whether in plantations or settlements, was possible because a just empire gave scope for the creative energies of the sugar barons on the one hand and the Indian farmers on the other. In the Pacific the Canadians were cautious about the empire because it did not do what they thought it should; it did not protect the Vanuatuans from the predatory Europeans. In the Caribbean they were enthusiastic about the empire because, in their view, it provided just and progressive government. CONCLUSION

Thus even though the missionaries came from a remarkably uniform background, their descriptions of the world varied as much as the world they described. It is hard to find common themes in all this welter of detail, but I think two can be suggested. First is the caution with which they approached political questions. In the West Indies there weren't many, but MacKay did describe a labour riot in which several people were killed. Jugmohun's part was to argue against violence. The Vanuatuans tried hard to separate their personal views from their official position. The Koreans, at least in

2O5 Presbyterian Missionaries from the Maritimes

public, felt that the relations between the Japanese and the Koreans would have to be settled between the principals. The missionary objection was not to the Japanese empire but to Japanese brutality. They did not ask, at least in public, whether empires should exist; they judged empires by the justice of the regime. Second, and following from this point, I referred earlier to a lowgrade racism. Certainly the missionaries in Korea had every confidence in their converts. The West Indians were a little more cautious. The first generation accepted high-caste colleagues like Lai Behari without difficulty. Their successors were less welcoming, and the movement for an indigenous church did not begin until the late 19203, and only because the Indians pushed for it. The Vanuatuan missionaries were the most cautious of all. There is an odd correlation between optimism and skin colour; the lighter the skin the more confident the missionaries seemed to be. Jugmohun, after all, was a Brahman. Two factors confuse the issue. The first is that Victorians did not distinguish clearly between race and culture.33 They could speak of a degraded race where we might speak of a degraded society. Language which appears racist is not quite what it seems. The second factor, closely related to the first, is that there is also a close correlation between skin colour and literacy. Literate societies tend to be fairskinned: Europe, Islam, Brahmin India, China, Japan, and Korea. Dark-skinned people in Africa or Melanesia, and the lower Indian castes tend to be non-literate tribal societies. People who read can relate easily to other people who read. Until the rise of anthropology in the 19205, literate missionaries had no real way of appreciating how tribal societies worked. To refer to low-grade racism among these missionaries is probably misleading. They did have more confidence in the people who looked most like them, the Koreans, and less in the people who looked least like them, the Vanuatuans. But I suspect that we are dealing, not with racism, but with "culturism." The problem with the Vanuatuans was not that they looked different, but that they thought differently.

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Notes

The following abbreviations are employed in the notes: D c B Dictionary of Canadian Biography GCS Glasgow Colonial Society PANS Public Archives of Nova Scotia PW Presbyterian Witness CHAPTER ONE

1 See Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons, ed. Richard H. Tawney (London: Allen and Unwin 1930); Richard H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1938); and Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, 2 vols., trans. O. Wyon (London: Allen and Unwin 1931). 2 George Elder Davie, The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1961), xiv. 3 Callum G. Brown, "Religion and Social Change," in Thomas M. Devine and Rosalind Murchison, eds., People and Society in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd 1988), 1:147. It has been estimated that lawyers accounted for between fifty and sixty per cent of Assembly lay commissioners during the first part of the nineteenth century. 4 To this number must be added some 40,000 Loyalists who came from the United States in 1783-84. 5 These figures come from J.M. Bumsted, The Scots in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association 1982), 10-11.

ao8

Notes to pages 4-7

6 Bernard Bailyn, with assistance of Barbara DeWolfe, Voyagers to the West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1986), 202. 7 Marianne McLean, The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition, 17451820 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1991), 6. 8 Donald Campbell and Raymond A. MacLean, Beyond the Atlantic Roar: A Study of the Nova Scotia Scots (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited 1974), 193. 9 Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 1991), 15; see also 227, 231, 240-2, 261, 264-5. 10 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Experience," in The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library 1940), 345-6. 11 John Knox, "Letter to Mrs. Anna Locke," 9 December 1556 in The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing (Edinburgh: James Thin 1895), 4:240. 12 Sydney Smith, A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith by his Daughter Lady Holland (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1855), 1:17. 13 Arthur C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the i6th Century (Philadelphia: Westminster 1966), 166. 14 Thomas McCulloch, Calvinism, The Doctrine of the Scriptures (Glasgow: William Collins, n.d.). 15 T. Christopher Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830 (London: Fontana Press 1985), 55. 16 See Alexander D. Lindsay, The Essentials of Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon 1967), 18, where he speaks of the "small democracy of the Christian congregation," and 36 where he refers to the Presbyterian congregation as "the original unit of democratic church government." 17 Peter Hume Brown, History of Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1911), 2:59. 18 Anne Gordon, Candiefor the Foundling (Edinburgh: The Pentland Press 1992). 35719 Callum G. Brown, The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 (London: Methuen 1987), 94. 20 Henry T. Buckle, Introduction to the History of Civilization in England, ed. John M. Robertson (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd 1904), 790. 21 Alex C. Cheyne, The Transforming of the Kirk: Victorian Scotland's Religious Revolution (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press 1983), 4. 22 W. Croft Dickinson, John Knox's History of the Reformation (London: Nelson 1949), i:4523 John C.L. Gibson, "The Bible in Scotland Today: Retrospect and Prospect," in David F. Wright, ed., The Bible in Scottish Life and Literature (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press 1988), 214.

209 Notes to pages 7-14 24 George D. Henderson, The Claims of the Church of Scotland (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1951), 20. 25 Knox, Works, 4:135. 26 George Johnston, "Scripture in the Scottish Reformation: I. Historical Statement," Canadian Journal of Theology 8(1962): 250. 27 Daniel C. Harvey, "The Intellectual Awakening of Nova Scotia," Dalhousie Review 13(1933-34): 6. 28 George Patterson, A History of the County ofPictou, Nova Scotia (Belleville, Ontario: Mika Studio 1972), 69. 29 Gwendolyn Davies, "Editor's Introduction," The Mephibosheth Stepsure Letters (Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1990), xxxiii. 30 Robertson Davies, "Keeping Faith," Saturday Night 102, no. i (1987): 190. 31 John Watson, The Scot of the Eighteenth Century (London: Hodder and Stoughton n.d.), 24-5. 32 James Walker, The Theology and Theologians of Scotland (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1872), 60. 33 Robert Gaston Hall, Archibald Bruce ofWhitburn (1746-1816) With Special Reference to His View of Church and State (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh 1954), 39. 34 Davie, The Democratic Intellect, 336. 35 George D. Henderson, Presbyterianism (Aberdeen: University Press 1955), 104. 36 Knox, Works, 2:296,395-7,405-6. 37 James Melville, Autobiography and Diary of James Melville (Edinburgh: Printed for Wodrow Society), 370, quoted by John H.S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London: Oxford University Press 1960), 204-5. 38 See David Stevenson and David C. Lachman, "Killing Times," in Nigel M. de S. Cameron, ed., Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, (Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press 1993), 458; and Ian B. Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters, 1660-88 (London: Victor Gollancz 1976). 39 For the above paragraph I have depended on Callum G. Brown, "Protest in the Pews," in Thomas M. Devine, ed., Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700-1850 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd 1990), 97-8. 40 Brown, "Protest in the Pews," 98. 41 Henry Grey Graham, The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (London: Adam & Charles Black 1950), 380. 42 Ibid., 362. 43 Ibid., 366-7. 44 David Daiches, "The Scottish Enlightenment," in David Daiches, Peter Jones, and Jean Jones, eds., A Hotbed of Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment 1730-1790 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1986), 14. 45 See Stewart J. Brown and Michael Fry, eds., Scotland in the Age of the Disruption (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1993), viii.

2io Notes to pages 14-18 46 Letter to Andrew Rutherfurd, 24 June 1839, quoted by Karl Miller, Cockburn's Millennium (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd 1975), 255. 47 James Begg, Proceedings of the Free General Assembly, Thursday, 28 May 1846 (Edinburgh: W.P. Kennedy 1846), 125. 48 Ibid., 128. 49 George Lewis, Impressions of America and the American Churches: From Journal (Edinburgh: W.P. Kennedy 1845), 361. 50 Ibid., 359. 51 Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Scottish Enlightenment," in Theodore Besterman, ed., Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Geneve: Institut et Musee Voltaire Les Delices 1967), 58:1636. 52 Daiches, "The Scottish Enlightenment," 5, 53 Alexander Broadie, The Circle of John Mair: Logic and Logicians in Pre-Reformation Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985); and The Shadow of Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-Reformation Scotland (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1995). 54 Stewart S. Sutherland, "The Presbyterian Inheritance of Hume and Reid," in Roy H. Campbell and Andrew S. Skinner, eds., The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd 1982), 134-555 Norman Kemp Smith, ed., Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Oxford: Clarendon 1935), 1-16. 56 Brown, History of Scotland, 3:265. 57 David Allan, Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1993), 1-16. 58 William Smellie, Literary and Characteristic Lives of Gregory, Kames, Hume and Smith (Edinburgh 1800), 161-2, quoted by Daiches, "The Scottish Enlightenment," i. 59 Voltaire, Philosophical Letters, 25, quoted by Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985), 3. 60 Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 155. 61 Hugh Watt, Thomas Chalmers and the Disruption (Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons 1943), 5, quoted by Sydney Ahlstrom, "The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology," Church History 24(1995): 259. 62 Anand C. Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment (London: Croom Helm 1976), 60-1. 63 Brown, History of Scotland, 3:299. 64 See W. Innes Addison, The Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow from 1728 to 1858 (Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons 1913), xi-xii, 167. The logic class was taught by George Jardine, whom Francis Jeffrey regarded as the most important intellectual influence in his life. 65 Harvey, "The Intellectual Awakening of Nova Scotia," 15.

211 Notes to pages 18-20 66 John McKerrow, History of the Secession Church (Glasgow: A. Fullarton and Co. 1841), 413-15. CHAPTER TWO

1 Rev. George Lewis, Impressions of America and the American Churches (Edinburgh: W.P. Kennedy 1848), 389. For an excellent summary of the background to the Disruption see Stewart J. Brown's introductory chapter in Stewart J. Brown and M. Fry, eds., Scotland in the Age of the Disruption (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1993). 2 Report presented to the Free Church Colonial Committee, on Canada and Nova Scotia, by Rev. Dr Burns (Paisley: Free Church of Scotland 1844) (hereafter Burns Report), 34, 32. 3 Macphail's Edinburgh Ecclesiastical Journal and Literary Review 1(1846): 426, 428. 4 Home and Foreign Missionary Record of the Church of Scotland (hereafter Missionary Record - Kirk) October 1845:147. 5 Description of reception at Miramichi, New Brunswick, 28 July 1845, Missionary Record - Kirk October 1845:149. See also the descriptions of a "densely crowded congregation" in Pictou and the "delighted and crowded" congregations in Charlottetown, 147,134. 6 Report of the Public Meeting in Edinburgh, 10 November 1845, Missionary Record - Kirk December 1845:182,177; for editorial, see 175. 7 Free Church Magazine 3 (1846): 204, 251. 8 It should be noted that the Disruption affected only one section of the Presbyterian community directly, the Kirk, although appeals for support were made by both sides to Secessionist congregations. While the statistical evidence is incomplete and open to varying interpretation, it does appear that the Church of Scotland congregations in the Maritimes, largely as the result of the efforts of the Glasgow Colonial Society, outnumbered their Secessionist rivals, especially in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. 9 No detailed study exists of the deputation visits; the Kirk deputation has been particularly neglected. The general assumption has been that the Free Church visit was by far the more influential; see, for example, John S. Moir, Enduring Witness: A History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Hamilton: Bryant Press 1975), 103-4. 10 Report of the Colonial Committee, Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, 1845,166. 11 See, for example, the text used in St Andrew's Church, New Glasgow, Pictou: "Awake, O sword against my shepherd"; Rev. Robert Grant, East River Worthies (New Glasgow, NS: Scotia Printers 1895), 57. Burns noted his sermon texts in a brief diary of his visit; Robert Ferrier Burns, The Life

212 Notes to pages 20-2 and Times of the Rev. Robert Burns (Toronto: J. Campbell & Son 1873), 195-7. On the approach taken by Burns see also the report "The Free Church of Scotland" in The Islander (Charlottetown), 31 May 1844. 12 Burns Report, 9. 13 On Simpson see Stewart J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982), 255,264, 326. On John Macleod see Hew Scott, fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, rev. ed., (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd 1915-28) 4:118. Norman Macleod's most famous pamphlet at this time was "A Crack aboot the Kirk for Kintra Folk" (1843), which went through eight editions. All three deputies later served as Moderators of the General Assembly. 14 Donald Macleod, Memoir of Norman Macleod, D.D. (Toronto: Belford Bros 1876) 161; report by Simpson to a public meeting in Edinburgh, 10 November 1845, Missionary Record - Kirk December 1845:176. 15 It is worth noting the statistical background. On the eve of the Disruption, there were twenty-two Kirk ministers in Nova Scotia, three in Prince Edward island, sixteen in New Brunswick, and one in Newfoundland: see "Schedule of Statistics of the Synod of Nova Scotia" (which included Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland), 1842-43, and the letter from the Moderator of the New Brunswick Synod, in Missionary Record - Kirk 1843: 245, 270. These statistics slightly underestimate the total number of Kirk ministers in the Maritimes, since there were a handful of missionaries and licentiates and one or two ministers who refused to join any church court. 16 Reverend John Martin to the Reverend Robert Burns, 22 August 1825, 23 May 1828, in Elizabeth A.K. McDougall and John S. Moir, eds., Selected Correspondence of the Glasgow Colonial Society 1825-1840 (Toronto: Champlain Society 1994), 150, xxxvii. Gregg calls Martin "indefatigable"; William Gregg, History of the Presbyterian Church in the Dominion of Canada (Toronto: Presbyterian Printing and Publishing Co. 1885), 270. 17 United Church Archives (hereafter UCA), Presbytery of Halifax minutes, 10 January 1844. 18 For Martin's emphasis on the Church of Scotland's "prospect of influence and patronage" and his insistence that the Glasgow Colonial Society should send out only Kirk ministers, see Martin to Burns, 22 August 1825, McDougall and Moir, Glasgow Colonial Society, 150. 19 Statistical account of his pastoral charge, UCA, Minutes of the Synod of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in connection with the Church of Scotland, 1837, 30,32,36. Martin estimated that about 1,400 people were connected with the congregation, approximately 10 percent of the total population of Halifax. St Andrew's had initially been the Relief Church; in 1820 it became connected with the Church of Scotland, ironically through the advice of the brother of Robert Burns, the Reverend

213 Notes to pages 22-4

20

21

22 23

24 25

26

27 28

29

30 31

32

Dr George B. Burns, who at that time was visiting Halifax from his charge as minister of St Andrew's Church, Saint John, New Brunswick. Burns Report, 22. Martin receives one mention later, in the Pictou section of Burns Report, 25, where he is referred to as the "Rev. John Martin of Halifax, Agent for the Established Church of Scotland," and accused of offering £50 bribes to ministers to remain within it. Walter C. Murray, "History of St Matthew's Church, Halifax," Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society 16 (1912): 158; The Presbyterian 28 (1875): 216. See UCA, Presbytery of Halifax minutes, October 1841, for the addition of his name to the roll of the presbytery. Session minutes of St Matthew's Church, 17 April, 30 May 1844 (PANS, Presbyterian Congregational records Mg4, no. 57). A collection taken for the Free Church Building Fund amounted to £27-9-4. "Arrival of Dr Burns - Free Protesting Church of Scotland," Novascotian, 20 May 1844; Burns, Life of the Rev. Robert Burns, 197. UCA, Presbytery of Halifax minutes, January 1844. Scott was a reserved and austere individual whose influence over his congregation is open to question: see the 1833 incident cited above and the session minutes for 17 September 1844, when Scott is pressed to absent himself from any future presbytery meetings in order to prevent "unnecessary divisions in the congregation." This was a congregation which had only recently expressed a desire to be connected with the Church of Scotland; the Kirk city missionary, Mr Duff, had preached there prior to his call to Shelburne. UCA, Presbytery of Halifax minutes, 5 September 1843. Burns Report, 22. The Novascotian for 10 June 1844 printed an address to Burns from the Young Men's Religious Association, signed by the office bearers, thirty-one members, and the session of St John's. Burns Report, 34. For the thriving nature of St Andrew's under Martin, see Reverend George W. Sprott, ed., Memorials of the Rev. John Sprott (Edinburgh: G.A. Morton 1906), 202. On the social impact of the Disruption in a Scottish context see Peter L.M. Hillis, "The Sociology of the Disruption," in Brown and Fry, Scotland in the Age of the Disruption, 44-62; and A. Allan McLaren, Religion and Social Class. The Disruption Years in Aberdeen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1974). Burns Report, 24; Lewis, Impressions of America, 377. Burns Report, 23, suggested that union between Free Church and Secession Presbyterians was a probability in the near future. McCulloch had fulminated long and loud about the activities of the Glasgow Colonial Society in Nova Scotia. See Burns's journal, in Burns, Life of the Rev. Robert Burns, 197. The full and friendly coverage of Burns's visit in the Novascotian is partly explained by

214 Notes to pages 24-5

33

34

35 36 37 38 39

40

41 42 43

44 45

the fact that Howe had resumed its editorship during May; see DCB 10:365. The departure, in the space of a year, of six ministers friendly to the Kirk, and the arrival of four others hostile to it, were also significant; see the editorial in Missionary Record - Kirk September 1844, and the letter from three ministers from the Pictou area who had attempted to avert the schism. Report of the Colonial Committee, Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1846,11. Divine service was also held at the penitentiary. The Novascotian managed nine lines of coverage of the deputation's visit in its 7 July edition. Mr A. Scott to the editor of Missionary Record - Kirk 17 July 1845, printed September 1845,134. On Keith see DCB 10:395-6. Missionary Record - Kirk December 1845:177. Martin to Burns, 4 March 1831, quoted in John S. Moir, "To Fertilize the Wilderness," Canadian Society of Presbyterian History Papers 1992: 80. See, for example, the case of Mr Watt, elder of St Matthew's; session minutes, 16,19 July 1845 (PANS, Presbyterian Congregational records M94, no. 57). Burns Report, 25. On the connections between religion and politics in the Pictou area see Brian Cuthbertson, Johnny Bluenose at the Polls (Halifax: Formac Publishing Company 1994), chap. 9. For Burns's opinions of Highlanders, see his comments on the Glengarry area of Canada, Burns Report, 14. Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, May 1844, 6. The Disruption had, of course, revolutionized the Church of Scotland job market. Chalmers had noted in 1827 in his evidence to the Royal Commission on Scottish universities that five times as many young men trained for the ministry as there were jobs for them to fill; all this now changed. The minimum Kirk stipend in Scotland in 1843 was £150 p.a., while the minister of a wealthy parish might receive as much as £600 p.a.; moreover, the payment of stipends and the provision and repair of manses were matters enforceable at law. See Brown, Thomas Chalmers, 211, 341, 52, 60. The colonial minister, on the other hand, would be lucky to receive the local equivalent of £150 sterling (ca. £200) and was mainly dependent on pew rents and congregational generosity. These stipends were not assured and promissory bonds sent home to entice ministers sometimes turned out to be studded with false signatures. Williamson was admitted to a charge in Sutherlandshire in December 1843; see Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 7:16,619. There are serious doubts regarding the delightful prospects suggested by Burns; Dr Macleod of Morven noted that it was impossible to praise

215 Notes to pages 25-7

46 47

48 49

50

51

52 53

54 55

56

57

Pictou Highlanders for their exertions in maintaining ministers; speech on his return, Missionary Record - Kirk December 1845:180. John McRae, Dugald McKichan, and Alexander McGillivray, 12 July 1844, Missionary Record - Kirk September 1844:462. On the grant, April 1842:37. Burns Report, 24. Trustees were invariably men of some wealth and status in the local community. On types of church organization and property control see the various answers to the "Queries addressed to the clergy" in Synod of Nova Scotia minutes, 1837, (UCA). Letter of Norman Macleod, in Macleod, Memoir of Norman Macleod, 157. The estimate of congregational loss was that of a prominent local layman, John McKay; see Missionary Record - Kirk April 1846: 245. On the history of this congregation see also The Presbyterian 28 (1875): 242; the vacancy was finally filled in 1849. Burns Report, 25. It was thus a Kirk minister for whom the congregation built a handsome manse (costing $3000 and commanding one of the finest views in Nova Scotia, according to The Presbyterian, 28 (1875): 242.). On Stewart's evangelical background and previous career in Cape Breton see Laurie C.C. Stanley, The Well-Watered Garden: The Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 1798-1860 (Sydney, NS: University of Cape Breton Press 1983), 78-82. The people of this congregation were "the best payers" in the area, according to John Mackay; Missionary Record - Kirk April 1846: 245. The Presbyterian 28 (1875): 240. In January 1845, Stewart reported that he was promised support to the amount of £110 in local currency, but was being deprived of the church and manse admired by Burns; Missionary Record - Free Church March 1845: 48. The splits at Pictou and New Glasgow provide further evidence that richer, better established individuals remained loyal to the Church of Scotland. He was to sail from Prince Edward Island for Dublin in August; see Missionary Record - Kirk September 1844: 463. Diary jottings, in Burns, Life of the Rev. Robert Burns, 197. McLennan, the first Church of Scotland minister in Prince Edward Island, had been there since 1823, and had been responsible for the formation of the Kirk congregation at Charlottetown; see DCB 8:569-70. On Ross, a graduate of Pictou Academy, see, in particular, DCB 8:769-70 and Frank H. Patterson, History ofTatamagouche, Nova Scotia (Belleville: Mika Publishers 1973), iO7ff. Burns made no mention of him in Burns Report or in his diary, but he received favourable mention from later Free Church deputies. According to the census of 1841, Prince Edward Island had 10,006 people adhering to the Church of Scotland and 5,089 in connection with the United Secession; figures quoted in Report of the Colonial Committee, Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1846,15.

216 Notes to pages 27-9 58 And without any advice or encouragement from colonial ministers or parent church, according to the Reverend John Martin; letter of 17 May 1845, Missionary Record — Kirk August 1845:116. A minister was sent out in 1847. 59 Reverend John McMillan to the convenor of the Free Church colonial committee, 21 November 1844, Missionary Record - Free Church January 1845: 8. 60 This church was recently vacant because of the death of McLennan's old friend, the Reverend Donald Allan Fraser. 61 Report of the Colonial Committee, Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1846,15. Mr Burney of Charlottetown came to Pictou to escort the party, and from Pictou, Crerar, Crichton, and Blackadar sailed with them to Prince Edward Island. 62 See letter of Norman Macleod in Macleod, Memoir of Norman Macleod, 160. 63 The Presbyterian 28 (1875): 267; on the later history of the Georgetown and Belfast congregations see 266, 269. For the St James address, see Missionary Record - Kirk November 1845:162. 64 McDonald's addresses were "incoherent and wild," producing "convulsive fits" among his audience and he held 'the grossest Antinomian principles' "; report from the Reverend John McMillan, Missionary Record Free Church October 1845,221. On McDonald, see DCB 9:480-1. The figures on McDonald's following are those of Norman Macleod; see Macleod, Memoir of Norman Macleod, 161-2. 65 See Burns's diary jottings in Burns, Life of the Rev. Robert Burns, 197. 66 Burns Report, 33. The government of New Brunswick had set aside 500 acres of glebe land for each church: see the chart in Report of the Colonial Committee, Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1846,17. 67 "Proceedings of the Synod of New Brunswick," Halifax Guardian, 20 September 1844. 68 It was late. McMaster eventually withdrew from the Church of Scotland in the latter part of 1845; the majority of his congregation remained loyal to the Kirk. See A. W. Macdougall, "Sale of the Black River Presbyterian Church Property, 1862," New Brunswick Historical Society Collections no. 17 (1961): 94; and Rev. William Henderson to Dr Simpson, 24 January 1846, Missionary Record - Kirk April 1846: 244. 69 Letter from Rev. J.M. McGregor, Missionary Record - Free Church January 1845: 9. Henderson ultimately stayed firm for the Church of Scotland. Only a brave man would have dared defy the power of the strong Kirk supporter Alexander Rankin, a leading timber baron in this area; he was chairman of the board of trustees of Henderson's church in 1846. 70 UCA, Minutes of the Presbytery of Miramichi, 24 January, 3 April 1844. 71 Ibid., 3 August 1840. The presbytery had preferred to apply to the Glasgow Colonial Society; perhaps disillusioned by this, McGregor threw his

217 Notes to pages 29-31

72 73

74

75

76 77 78 79 80

81

support behind the Free Church and maintained an enthusiastic correspondence with its colonial committee throughout 1844. Reverend Patrick Miller to the convenor of the Free Church colonial committee, 27 March 1845, Missionary Record - Free Church May 1845: 89. UCA, Minutes of the Presbytery of Saint John, 5 September 1844 and 18 August 1845. Wishart was deposed from the ministry shortly after the visit of the Kirk deputation to Saint John, and the church was sold to cover the debt on the building, thus confirming the fear of elders and trustees that the case would "ruin the temporalities of St Stephen's church, and disperse its congregation." Donald had recently arrived to minister to three stations in the Presbytery of Saint John. He had left his charge at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, acting with what the Halifax Presbytery called "great irregularity" and in "violation of Presbyterian order"; UCA Minutes of the Presbytery of Halifax, 22 November 1841, 3 July 1844. Stevens was at this time minister of St James and St Stephen in the county of Charlotte. See Reverend George McDonnell to William Young, esq., 22 May 1845, Missionary Record - Kirk August 1845:118. As McDonnell, minister at St Luke's, Bathurst, resentfully noted, the Free Church deputies had also attempted to persuade members of his congregation to join in submitting a bond to the Free Church colonial committee. Extract of a letter from Dr Simpson to a friend in Halifax, Missionary Record - Kirk November 1845:162. On Rankin, see DCB 8:736-40. "Public Meeting of the Members of the Established Church of Scotland," The Morning News, Saint John, New Brunswick, 13 August 1845. See, for example, the letter from the Reverend John McMillan regarding his visit to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island in Missionary Record - Free Church October 1845: 220-1. See, for example, Moir, Enduring Witness, 104; and MacDougall and Moir, eds., Glasgow Colonial Society, L. Ministers saw themselves as operating "purely on the voluntary system" in the matter of their stipends; the Reverend Alexander Maclean of Greenock Church, Saint Andrew's, explained that he was entirely dependent on the pewholders, who needed to give only three months notice to stop their support. Letter of 28 September 1843, Missionary Record - Kirk March 1844: 365. "Communications," New Brunswick Reporter and Fredericton Advertiser, 22 August 1845. CHAPTER THREE

Research for this essay has been funded in part by grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council's "Aid to Small Universities

218 Notes to pages 35-41 Programme" at Mount Allison University and a Crake Foundation Humanities Fellowship. I would like to thank Richard Jarrell, Suzanne Zeller, and the editors for their valuable comments and advice while the essay was being revised for publication. 1 Much of the role both McCulloch and Dawson played in Nova Scotia secondary education is detailed in the essay by B. Anne Wood in this volume. 2 Sources for McCulloch's story in more detail include the Reverend William D.D. McCulloch, Life of Thomas McCulloch, D.D. (Truro, NS: privately printed, 1920); William B. Hamilton, "Education, politics and reform in Nova Scotia 1800-1848," (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Ontario 1970); Gwendolyn Davies, "Editor's Introduction," The Mephibosheth Stepsure Letters (Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1990); and Marjory Whitelaw, Thomas McCulloch: His Life and Times (Halifax: The Nova Scotia Museum, 1985). 3 For fuller accounts of Dawson's story see Peter and Jean Eakins, "Dawson, Sir John William," in DCB 12:234; & Anne Wood, God, Science and Schooling: John William Dawson's Pictou Years, 1820-1855 (Truro, NS: Nova Scotia Teacher's College 1991); Susan Sheets-Pyenson, "Sir William Dawson: the Nova Scotia Roots of a Geologist's Worldview," in Paul A. Bogaard, ed., Profiles of Science and Society in the Maritimes prior to 1914 (Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press & Mount Allison Centre for Canadian Studies 1990), 83-99; and Charles F. O'Brien, Sir William Dawson, A Life in Science and Religion (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Association 1971). 4 For a sense of how science had gripped the popular imagination in the 18305 and 18405 see Martin Hewitt, "Science, Popular Culture, and the Producer Alliance in Saint John, N.B," in Bogaard, Science and Society in the Maritimes, 243-75; and "Science as Spectacle: Popular Science Culture in Saint John, New Brunswick," Acadiensis 18, no. i (1988): 91-119. 5 Suzanne Zeller, Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987), 8. 6 Ibid., 6. 7 See my "Introduction: Establishing Science in the Maritimes," in Bogaard, Science and Society in the Maritimes. 8 Michael Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1991), 90. 9 Ibid., 99. For this Gauvreau argues persuasively that "The thought and experience of the clergymen-professors in the Methodist and Presbyterian church colleges provide an ideal point of entry" (9). 10 See Richard A. Jarrell, "Science Education at the University of New Brunswick in the Nineteenth Century," Acadiensis 2, no. 2 (1973): 53-79.

219 Notes to pages 41 -8 11 E. Jacob, then acting as principal at King's, received a response dated 4 May 1836 from the professor at Oxford that read in part: "There is very little prospect of finding any individual in this university as variously qualified as you wish your professor to be. Scotland is I think the only place likely to support your wants and you would do well to make your applications directly in that quarter ..."; UNB Archives, UA RG 38 box i, file 5. 12 George Patterson, A History of the County ofPictou, Nova Scotia (Montreal: Dawson Bros 1877), 33off. 13 B. Anne Wood, "Thomas McCulloch's Use of Science in Promoting a Liberal Education," Acadiensis 17, no. i (1987): 65. 14 Ibid., 70. 15 From "Joseph Howe Visits Pictou Academy in 1830," in George MacLaren, The Pictou Book (New Glasgow, NS: Hector Pub. 1954), 158-9. 16 Peter Waite, The Lives ofDalhousie University, Vol. One, 1818-1925: Lord Dalhousie's College (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1994), 83. 17 Ibid., 54-5. 18 Zeller, Inventing Canada, 52. 19 From the Return of Saint Mary's College for the year 1859, PANS, MGI?, vol. 17, no. 110-15. 20 SYNOPSIS of the System of Education established by the University of King's College, Fredericton, New Brunswick (by Royal Charter, A.D. 1828), (1838), 7; University of New Brunswick (UNB) Archives, UA RG 109 Case i, H. Irving Library. 21 William B. Jack to "My Lord & Honorable Gentlemen," 10 February 1853, UNB Archives, UA RG 109 Case 2. 22 James Robb to "My Lord & Honorable Gentlemen," 9 February 1853, UNB Archives, UA RG 109. 23 Henry How, "A Discourse on the Natural Sciences," Encaenia, King's College, 1857; and "Discourse on the History of Applied Chemistry," Encaenia, 1861; both in the University of King's College Archives, Halifax. 24 See Daniel C. Harvey's An Introduction to the History ofDalhousie University (Halifax: McCurdy Printing 1938), 47-54. 25 William Elder, "Reply to the Students of Acadia College," The Christian Messenger 17, no. 45 (1872). 26 Editorial in the Provincial Wesleyan, 20 February 1861; see John Reid, Mount Allison University: A History, 7:1843-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1984), 81-7. 27 Harvey, An Introduction to the History ofDalhousie University, 88. 28 Death of Prof. Lawson, The Dalhousie Gazette 27, no. 3 (1895): 76-7. 29 See Suzanne Zeller, "George Lawson: Victorian Botany, the Origin of Species and the Case of Nova Scotian Heather," in Bogaard, Science and Society in the Maritimes, 50-62.

220 Notes to pages 48-57 30 For the importance of the Gilchrist Scholarships and the transformation of natural philosophy into physics, see Ives Gingras, Physics and the Rise of Scientific Research in Canada, trans. P. Keating (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1991). 31 Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century, 40. 32 Brian McKillop, Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario, 1791-1951 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994), 122. 33 Ibid., 117. CHAPTER FOUR

I would like to thank Dr Eric Sager and Connla Wood for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1 See Randall Collins, Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (New York: Academic Press 1979), 94. 2 The inscription on certificates before 1885 read: "This is to certify that the Bearer ..., whose name is [inscribed] is enrolled and in attendance at the Pictou Academy during the present term." It was signed by Alexander H. MacKay and dated. See PANS, Micro: Places, Pictou Academy, Reel 2. 3 Fred Yorston, "Academy Memories," The Pictou Advocate, 25 December, 1896. 4 "Pictou Academy," newspaper excerpt (1884), PANS, RG14, vol. 54, no. 78. It was estimated in 1895 that the examination system and scholarships/ bursaries netted Academy students admitted to Dalhousie University $20,000 in a fifteen-year period. 5 48 Victoria, chapter 11, passed 24 April 1885. 6 David Allison, "Appendix No. 5: Annual Report on the Common, Academic and Normal and Model Schools of Nova Scotia [AR] 1885," Journals of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly [JHA] 1886: xxiii-xxv. 7 Allison, "Appendix No. 5: AR 1886-7," 'JHA 1888: xxiii. 8 Lefferts A. Loetscher, A Brief History of Presbyterianism, The Broadening Church: A Study of Theological Issues in the Presbyterian Church since 1869 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1978). 9 Thomas W. Heyck, The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England (London: Croom Helm 1982), 20-1. The Reverend Thomas McCulloch demonstrated his ambition to be recognized as a man of letters, considered "gentry" at that time, in his polemical writings on behalf of Protestants (Popery condemned by scripture and the fathers and Popery again condemned), in his educational addresses and writings, especially The Nature and Uses of a Liberal Education (1819), in his published sermons (Words of peace, 1817, and Calvinism, published posthumously in 1846), in his satirical "Mephibosheth Stepsure Letters," and in his covenanting novels, William and Melville (1826) and "Auld Eppie's Tales" (unpublished).

221 Notes to pages 57-9 10 In the mid-eighteenth century the Secession Church broke away from the Church of Scotland (or Kirk) over the question of church patronage and the role of the congregation in the selection of ministers. No doctrinal matters of faith were involved with the dispute. In Nova Scotia Secessionist Presbyterians (primarily located in the north-eastern part of the province, excluding Cape Breton Island), under the leadership of the Reverend James MacGregor and McCulloch, in the 18203 allied themselves politically with Dissenters, members of Protestant sects that had separated from the established Churches of England and of Scotland. Secessionist Presbyterians and Dissenters in Nova Scotia were denied a number of rights, such as the issuance of marriage licences. The struggle of Pictou Academy to win degree-granting status and a permanent grant became identified with the political struggle of these Dissenters to win increased rights. 11 "Memorial of Edward Mortimer, Duncan Ross, Thomas McCulloch ... to the Honourable Representatives of Nova Scotia now convened at Halifax," Pictou, 13 February 1815, PANS, RG14, School Papers, vols. 51 & 52, no. 3. And see Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (London: Routledge 1989). 12 These graduates, John McLean, John Murdoch, and Robert S. Patterson were among the first seven students to graduate from McCulloch's divinity class, established by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia in 1820. And see B. Anne Wood, "Schooling for Presbyterian Leaders: The College Years of Pictou Academy, 1816-1832," in William Klempa, edv The Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow: The Presbyterian Contribution to Canadian Life and Literature (Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1994), 19-37. 13 Thomas McCulloch, The Nature and Uses of a Liberal Education (Halifax: Holland, i8i9),i314 Hugh Ross to T. McCulloch, Tatamagouche, 20 December 1826, PANS, MGI, vol. 553, no. 131. And see Laurie Stanley, The Well-Watered Garden: The Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 1798-1860 (Sydney: University College of Cape Breton 1983), 47, "Cape Breton Presbyterianism would henceforth be relatively homogeneous, free from the polarities of Kirkman and Secessionist which bedevilled the religious scene in Pictou." 15 The Scottish Kirk/ccs leaders during the early nineteenth century mirrored what Robert D. Gidney and Winnifred P.J. Millar describe as the Georgian "gentlemanly" character of Ontario's liberal professional ideal. In contrast McCulloch argued in 1819 that gentry status for professionals could be earned through rigorous schooling and thorough training in disciplined practices by any meritorious Nova Scotian male after attendance at such institutions as Pictou Academy. See Robert D. Gidney and Winnifred P.J. Millar, Professional Gentlemen: The Professions in Nineteenth Century

222

16

17 18

19

20 21 22

23 24

Notes to pages 60-3

Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994). This scholarly work was published after my paper was written. The Reverend Robert Burns, Report presented to the Colonial Committee of the Free Church of Scotland, on Canada and Nova Scotia (Paisley: Colonial Committee 1844), 25. Burns's Free Church College in Toronto, like McCulloch's academy, emphasized philosophy and gave it a strong moral interpretation, described as an "evangelical creed"; Michael Gauvreau, The Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1991), 34. George Young to Father, Pictou, 2 December 1821, PANS, MG2, vol. 719, Fi/io, George Young Papers. Thomas McCulloch, "A Writing on Epistemology of Mind," MSS, PANS, MGI, vol. 555, no. 32; and "A Lecture on Moral Philosophy," PANS, no. 33. And see B. Anne Wood, "Thomas McCulloch's Use of Science in Promoting a Liberal Education," Acadiensis 17, no. i (1987): 56-73; and Stanley McMullin, "In Search of the Liberal Mind: Thomas McCulloch and the Impulse to Action," Journal of Canadian Studies 23, nos. i & 2 (1988): 71. "By science, McCulloch referred to technique rather than subject matter: his concern was with the process of categorization and definition which leads to the formulation of 'an abstract truth or principle.'" Thus McCulloch was more of a Newtonian than a Baconian in his approach to science. Jerry N. Pittman, "Darwinism and Evolution: Three Nova Scotia Religious Newspapers Respond, 1860-1900," Acadiensis 22, no. 2 (1993): 42-4 and footnotes 6 and 11. And see B. Anne Wood, "The Significance of Calvinism in The Educational Vision of Thomas McCulloch," Vitae Scholasticae 4, nos. i & 2 (1985): 15-30. McCulloch, Nature of Liberal Education, 23. Petition of Jotham Blanchard to the Right Honourable Viscount Goderich, London, 20 May 1831, "Appendix i," JHA 1832: 5. T.W. Acheson, Saint John: The Making of a Colonial Urban Community (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 120. The leader of the Saint John Presbyterians was George Burns, brother of Robert, the GCS and Free Church leader in Scotland and in Canada. Alex McDougall et al, Report of the Trustees of Antigonish Academy, Antigonish, 20 January 1843, 2, PANS, RG14, vol. 45, ant., no. 108. Rev. Mr Joseph Forsythe to Hon. Mather Byles Almon, Albion Mines, June 10,1853, PANS, vol. 70,1853. In Pictou Town the year that McCulloch left for Dalhousie College (1838), Charles Elliott, the Anglican minister on the three-member Pictou Board of School Commissioners, reported that as a result of the feuds of Pictou, this was the only institution in town that operated in a unanimous manner. "In most matters when the interests of the two parties are brought to bear the decision rests with myself, as a casting vote, and I have happily succeeded in obtaining the confidence of

223 Notes to pages 63-5

25

26

27

28

29

30 31

both"; Charles Elliott to Rupert D. George, Pictou, 5 July 1838, PANS, vol. 70, no. 317: 2. William Westfall, Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1989), 182-3. And see Daniel MacDonald to the Superintendent of Education, Durham, 1852, PANS, RG14, vol. 49-50, no. 392. David J. Hogan, "Modes of Discipline: Affective Individualism and Pedagogical Reform in New England, 1820-1850," American Journal of Education 99 (November 1990): 14-15; "The New England pedagogy organized the classroom around the principles of what I will call 'affective individualism': the engagement of children's interest, the intensification of pleasure, the development of loving and affectionate relationships between teachers and students (affectionate authority), and the internalization of authority." I have traced this new pedagogy to its evangelical roots in Scotland in "The Significance of Evangelical Presbyterian Politics in the Construction of State Schooling: A Case Study of the Pictou District, 1817-1866," Acadiensis 20, no. 2 (1991): 62-85. And see B. Anne Wood, God, Science and Schooling: John William Dawson's Pictou Years, 1820-1855 (Truro: Nova Scotia Teachers College 1991). Thomas Chalmers, who was the Scottish evangelical leader dynamically influencing Stow, Burns, Forrester, and the young Dawson studying at Edinburgh University in the early 18405, claimed that Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was his favourite text; see Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 17951865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1988), 67. Collins, Credential Society, 91. The U.S. educational system, in contrast to the European-sponsored mobility system, has no sharp divisions among different types of secondary school. The main pattern is one of continuous attrition from high school on to professional training. Final professional identification does not occur until the very end of the school sequence, whereas in the European system, branches direct students into various training programs. John William Dawson, "Report of the Geological Survey of Canada, 185355," 37-8, cited in Suzanne Zeller, Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987), 99. Ibid., 111. Grant would be succeeded by another Pictou Academy graduate, Daniel Miner Gordon, in 1903. A. Ross Hill in 1916 became the president of the University of Missouri, Dr Archibald Oswald MacRae, principal of Western Canada College, 1903-22, and Frank Parker Day, president of Union College, Schenectady, New York, between 1928 and 1933. Norman MacKenzie was president of the University of New Brunswick from 1940 to

224

32

33

34

35 36

37

38

Notes to pages 66-8

1944 and president of the University of British Columbia from 1944 to 1962. Eight university presidents graduated from Pictou Academy. Aside from the above they included Thomas McCulloch, James Ross, and William Dawson. And see Peter B.Waite, The Lives ofDalhousie University, Vol. One: 1818-1825, Lord Dalhousie's College (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen's University Press 1994), 88; "The Dalhousie Act was clever for what it did not say. The word Presbyterian was not mentioned ... The other denominations would never give up their own colleges; hence the Presbyterians, knowing that, could found their own college, using public money by calling it a non-denominational university." Margaret Conrad, " 'An Abiding Conviction of the Paramount Importance of Christian Education': Theodore Harding Rand as Educator, 18601900," in Robert S. Wilson, ed., An Abiding Conviction: Maritime Baptists and Their World (Hantsport, NS: Lancelot Press 1988), 162. List of students 1883; PANS, RG14, vol. 54, no. 121. And see prize list in Ibid., no. 100, and, "Pictou Academy and Education," Colonial Standard 14 March 1882. "Cecil," The Morning Herald (Halifax) 25 November 1882. He suggested that the withdrawal of Yarmouth Seminary's $1400 grant may have been in retaliation against "the late member of Yarmouth, for his violent opposition to their College Bill." "Pictou Academy and Other Academies," Ibid., 26 October 1884. Robert Anderson, Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983), 15, 249; and see "Education and the State in Nineteenth-Century Scotland," The Economic History Review, second series, 37, no. 4 (1983): 518-34; "In search of the 'Lad of Parts': the Mythical History of Scottish Education," History Workshop, Issue 19 (Spring 1985): 82-104; "Secondary Schools and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth Century," Past and Present 109 (November 1985): 176-202. "Catalogue 1890-91," Pictou Academy Course of Study for the Year 1891-2 (n.p., n.d.): 9-13; and "Catalogue 1891-92," Pictou Academy Course of Study for the Year 1892-3 (n.p., n.d.): 11-15; and/ "Pictou Academy, School Registers," PANS, Micro: 1888-1932, RG14, Series R-i. These levels of schooling and examination were tied to the teachers' certificates, introduced by Superintendent MacKay in 1893 in a new high school grading system, as follows: Grade 9 corresponded to scholastic work required for a Grade D certificate, Grade 10 to Grade C, Grade 11 to Grade B, and Grade 12 to Grade A. Fred Clarke, "Education in Canada - an impression," Queen's Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1935): 313, 321. And see B. Anne Wood, " The right ordering of our several loyalties,' Canadian Citizenship for a Progressive State," in Keith A. McLeod, ed., Canada and Citizenship Education (Toronto: Canadian Education Association 1989), 19-26.

225 Notes to pages 69-78 39 As George Geddes Patterson noted, however, in 1943 to President Stanley of Dalhousie University, "We have lost control of High School and Academy. Never before in my time was the Principal of Pictou Academy or the Principal of the High School here other than a Dalhousian until now." He was complaining about the growing attraction of Acadia College for Pictou Academy students and for potential Presbyterian clergy. He urged President Stanley and his faculty to "advertise ... there ought to be some way of making your staff alive to the fact that their duties do not begin and end with the classroom - that they are employed by the year and owe something more to the College than three hours a day for six or seven months." See PANS Daniel C. Harvey Papers, MGI, vol. 438, folder 40,1-2. My thanks to Allan Dunlop for drawing this letter to my attention. CHAPTER FIVE

1 Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (London: Faber and Faber 1993), 11-12. 2 Ibid., 27. 3 Northrop Frye, "Introduction" to Thomas McCulloch, The Stepsure Letters (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1960), ix. 4 Thomas McCulloch to James Mitchell, A.L.S., Pictou, 18 May 1829, PANS, Thomas McCulloch Papers, MGI, vol. 553, no. 39. 5 Thomas McCulloch, Colonial Gleanings: William and Melville (Edinburgh: William Oliphant 1826), preface. 6 James R. Mellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1980), 11. 7 McCulloch, Colonial Gleanings, 91-2. 8 Thomas McCulloch, Untitled MS, PANS, Thomas McCulloch Papers, MGI, vol. 555, no. 77, n.p. 9 McCulloch, Colonial Gleanings, 114. See also B. Anne Wood, "The Significance of Calvinism in the Educational Vision of Thomas McCulloch," Vitae Scholasticae 4, nos i and 2 (1985): 19-20. 10 Thomas McCulloch to Dear Father, A.L.S., Newcastle, 6 April 1826, F & I, 82 (f), no. 7, Maritime Conference Archives. 11 Thomas McCulloch to James Mitchell, A.L.S., Pictou, 29 December 1833, PANS, Thomas McCulloch Papers, MGI, vol. 553, no. 58. 12 Thomas McCulloch, Untitled MS, PANS, Thomas McCulloch Papers, MGI, vol. 555, no. 78, n.p. Punctuation and capitalization have been quietly emended in this passage. McCulloch's manuscripts often do not have periods. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., no. 79. 15 Ibid., no. 81.

226 Notes to pages 79-82 CHAPTER SIX

1 For the Patterson family see Frank Patterson, John Patterson: The Founder of Pictou (Truro, NS: Truro Printing & Publishing Co. 1955); Robert Stewart, Colonel John Stewart, and his wife, Margaret Harris: Their Ancestors and Descendents with Appendixes of Related Families (Lahore, India: "Civil and Military Gazette" Press 1907). Other sources concerning Patterson's life not cited in this paper include: "George Patterson," DCB, 12:828-30; Allan C. Dunlop, "George Patterson: a Pictou historian," Collections of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society, 42:81-92; Allan C. Dunlop, "George Patterson: A Pioneer Oral Historian," in Dorothy E. Moore and James H. Morrison, eds., Work, Ethnicity and Oral History (Halifax: St Mary's University, International Education Centre 1988), 137-42; Eric Ross, "A Canadian Abroad in Edinburgh, 1847/48," University of Edinburgh Bulletin (January 1986): 11-14. 2 His first son and second child was named John McKinlay Patterson. Stewart, Colonel John Stewart, 422. 3 Peter B. Waite, The Lives ofDalhousie College, Volume One, 1818-1925. Lord Dalhousie's College (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1994), 14. 4 He resigned on 30 October 1876. 5 George Patterson to Rev. P.G. McGregor, Stewiacke, 19 April 1878. National Archives of Canada, George Grant Papers, MG 29, 0-38,543-4. 6 The Missionary Register of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia (hereafter MR), 4, no. 11 (1853): 164. 7 PANS, Biography (microfilm no. 10,952), Patterson Papers, John Campbell to George Patterson, Glenelg, St Mary's, 11 May 1851, i. 8 DCB 10:302-3, entry for John Geddie. 9 PANS, Patterson Papers, MG i, vol. 744, no. 2. 10 PANS, George Young Papers, MG 2, vol. 722, F2, no. 671, George Patterson to George Young, Pictou, 12 May 1849. 11 PANS, MG 100, vol. 251, no. 5, William Young to George Patterson, Halifax, 23 May 1849. 12 PANS, MG 1OO, vol. 251, no. 5-5^

13 See Frank Baird, "The Total John Geddie," in The Geddie Centennial Addresses, Delivered at Pictou, N.S., Oct. 1-3,1946 (Toronto: 1947), 29-83. Also Minutes of Board of Foreign Missions (hereafter BFM), 1844-59, Maritime Conference Archives of the United Church of Canada, box 82, no. 3. 14 MR, 6, no. 6 (1855): 81-4. 15 PANS, Churches: Presbyterian (microfilm no. 11,799) Synod Minutes, 2 July 1849. 16 BFM, Minutes, 9, 30 October 1849. 17 Ibid., 21 November 1849.

227 Notes to pages 82-8 18 The Maritime Conference Archives of the United Church of Canada holds vol. i, no. i of MR in which each article has a "JD" or "GP" beside it indicating who prepared the article. 19 PANS, Churches: Presbyterian (microfilm no. 11, 799), Synod Minutes, 26 June 1850. 20 BFM, Minutes, 20 May 1851. 21 Ibid., 6 October 1852. 22 Ibid., 16 November 1852. 23 PANS, (O/S - AK/Fgo/Pg, vol. 2, no. 24). Prospectus of "The Monthly Record of the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia" (hereafter MRCS); Monthly Record of the Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia and the adjoining Provinces, i, no. 5 (1855). 24 MR, 6, no. 11, (1855): 174-5. 25 PANS, Churches: Presbyterian (microfilm no. 11,799) Synod Minutes, 4 July 1855; BFM, Minutes, 15 November 1855. 26 The Christian Instructor and Missionary Register of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia (hereafter ci), 4, no. 12, (1859): 379-80. 27 MR, 9, no. 7, (1858): 331. 28 PANS, Churches: Presbyterian (microfilm no. 11,799) Synod Minutes, 2 July 1859. 29 George Patterson, A Brief Sketch of the Life and Labors of the late Rev. John Keir (Pictou, NS: E.M. MacDonald, Eastern Chronicle Office 1859), i. 30 MR, 4, no. 8, (1853): 120. 31 MR, 3, no. 10, (1852): 154. 32 MR, 5, no. 5, (1854): 70. 33 ci, 4, no. 12, (1859): 376. 34 MRCS, 7, no. 12, (1861): 176. 35 All quotes are from the book review which appears in MRCS, 6, no. 4, (1860): 77-81 and 6, no. 5, (1860): 105-9. 36 The Geddie Centennial Addresses, 66. 37 MR, 8, no. i, (1857): 33-5. 38 MR, 3, no. i, (1852): 3. 39 Allan C. Dunlop, "Salem Church and Dr George Patterson," Presbyterian History (Toronto: Committee on History, The Presbyterian Church in Canada), 29, no. 2, (1985). CHAPTER SEVEN

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the following people: Ona Bjornson, John Blackwell, Irving H. Blifford, Ron Caplan, Hugh Cameron, Carolyn Earle (Maritime Conference Archives), Kathryn Hilder (Archives and Special Collections, University of New Brunswick), Shirley Home, Catherine MacAskill, Norma MacAdam, Mervyn MacAulay, Annie

228 Notes to pages 93-4 MacAulay, Jean MacAulay, Charles H. MacDonald, Rev. Ewen MacDougall, Prof. A.A. MacKenzie, Rev. Angus MacKinnon, Jessie MacLean, Rev. Neil J. McLean, Dr Jean MacLennan, Donald Macleod, John MacLoed (Public Archives of Nova Scotia), Robert McLeod, Annie Macmillan, Clara Macmillan, Flora Macmillan, Marion MacNeil, Very Rev. Angus MacQueen, Charles Mac Vicar, Dr Robert Morgan (Beaton Institute Archives), Jessie Morrison, Father Bernie O'Connor, Rev. Ritchie Robinson, Rev. Dr Cecil H. Rose, Jim St Clair, Dr Leigh Schmidt, Alexander Smith, Evelyn Smith, Karen Smith (Special Collections, Dalhousie University), Drs George and Ruth Stanley, Norma Strickland, Enid L. Stuart, and Rev. Donald Sutherland. Special mention should also be made of my able research assistants, Mary Jane Lamond (who translated excerpts from MacTalla) and Cindy McPherson. 1 See Gwen Neville, Kinship and Pilgrimage (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1987), 131. For a more detailed account of the communion tradition in Scotland, see George B. Burnet, The Holy Communion in the Reformed Church of Scotland, 1560-1960 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd 1960); James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, Ltd 1976); A. Mitchell Hunter, "The Celebration of Communion in Scotland since the Reformation," Records of the Scottish Church History Society 3 (1929): 161-73; David A. Ramsay and R. Craig Koedel, "The Communion Season An i8th Century Model," Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 203-16; Trefor M. Owen, "The 'Communion Season' and Presbyterianism in a Hebridean Community," Gwerin 1(1956): 53-66; Susan Parman, "Orduighean: A Dominant Symbol in the Free Church of the Scottish Highlands," American Anthropologist 92 (1990): 295-305. 2 Leigh Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989). 3 Ibid., 95. 4 PW, 27 September 1890, 305; 24 September 1892, 305. 5 PW, 29 October 1853, 346-7. Some estimates are even more generous. At least two PW articles, published more than forty years after the event, cite the figure of 10,000. See PW, 30 April 1898,137; 14 October 1899, 322. 6 Donald N. MacMillan, The Kirk in Glengarry (Finch, ON: D.N. MacMillan 1984), 410. 7 Angus H. MacLean, God and the Devil at Seal Cove (Halifax, NS: Petheric Press 1987), 131. 8 PW, 8 August 1891, 249. 9 Maritime Conference Archives [henceforth MCA] pc-ioo2#i4, Session Minutes, Port Morien, St John's 1870-1927: i October 1887,49; 17 October 1888, 60. 10 Marilyn J. Westerkamp, The Triumph of Laity (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980), 33.

229 Notes to pages 95-7 11 A View of the Whycocomagh Congregation (n.p. 1956), 26. 12 James Watson and Ellison Robertson, eds., Sealladh Gu Taobh (Sydney: UCCB Art Gallery 1987), 14. 13 Peter Gumming et al, The Story of Framboise (St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Framboise, NS: 1984), 113. 14 MacLean, God and the Devil, 49-50. 15 PW, 21 October 1865, 329. 16 Charles Farnham, "Cape Breton Folk," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 72 (1885/1886): 624. 17 PW, 31 July 1897, 242. 18 M.D. Morrison, "The Early Scotch Settlers of Cape Breton," Blue Banner (June, 1904): no pagination. There is no evidence that this "fast" was dogmatically observed even in early nineteenth-century Cape Breton. Furthermore there is no evidence that failure to comply ever resulted in the suspension of communion privileges. 19 PW, 24 September 1864,154. 20 Keith and Pat MacMillan, eds., Reminiscences of the Reverend Alexander Ross (Private printing 1988), "Book B", 59; PW, 26 December 1874. 21 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 59. 22 PW, 2 November 1878, 352; "Out door Sacrament," Blue Banner (September 1903): no pagination. 23 PW, 24 September 1864,154. 24 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 59. 25 Morrison, "The Early Scotch Settlers." See also "La na Ceist air an Eilean Mhor," Blue Banner (September 1905): no pagination. 26 Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record of Free Church of Nova-Scotia (December, 1855): 187. 27 PW, 9 August 1890, 249. 28 PW, 27 September 1890,305. 29 John Maclnnes, "The Origin and Early Development of the 'Men/ " Records of the Scottish Church History Society 8 (1942): 16-41; Alexander T. Innes, "The Religion of the Highlands," The British and Foreign Evangelical Review 21 (July 1872): 413-46; John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire (Pictou, NS: James Paterson 1867), 73-105; Donald Beaton, Some Noted Ministers of the Northern Highlands (Inverness: Northern Counties Newspapers and Printing and Publishing Co., Ltd 1929); Steve Bruce, "Social change and collective behaviour: the revival in eighteenth century Ross-shire," The British Journal of Sociology 34, no. 4 (1983): 567-8. 30 John Murray, The History of the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton (Truro, NS: News Publishing Company 1921), 268. 31 John Murray to Malcolm Campbell, 22 October 1920, quoted in Malcolm Campbell, Cape Breton Worthies (Sydney, NS: Don Mackinnon 1913), 29. 32 PW, 8 September 1900, 282.

230 Notes to pages 97-101 33 Ibid. See also PW, 18 May 1901,154. 34 PW, 8 September 1900, 282. 35 M.D. Morrison, "Religion in Old Cape Breton," Dalhousie Review, 20 (1940): 189. 36 Margaret MacPhail, Loch Bras D'Or (Windsor, NS: Lancelot Press 1970), 45. 37 Ibid. 38 PW, 27 September 1890, 306. 39 MCA, pc-ioo2#i4, Session Minutes, St John's, Port Morien 1870-1927, 13 June 1891, 74. Despite stereotypical accounts of the severity of the Sessions, my sampling of nineteenth-century Sessions records in Cape Breton indicates that the normal course was one of forbearance towards lapsed communicants. Even in cases of moral turpitude a public statement before the Sessions expressing repentance for transgressions and assurances to "live a life becoming the Gospel" was sufficient for reinstatement. See MCA, PC-3O5#3, Session Minutes, West Bay 1898-1959, 9 July 1898, 6. 40 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B", 59. 41 PW, 21 October 1865,329. 42 "OutdoorSacrament." 43 Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 95. 44 PW, 9 October 1852,322. 45 PW, 17 August 1889,257. 46 PW, i October 1864,158. 47 Beaton Institute Archives [henceforth BIA] Vertical File, "Presbyterian Church and Clergy," Cape Bretoner, 5 April 1958, 3. 48 Mrs Catherine MacAskill of Boularderie recalls that there was a tin offering plate nailed on a stump outside St James "for some years"; Rev. Ritchie Robinson to author, 18 October 1994. 49 Guardian (Halifax), 13 January 1841, 233. According to Gwen Neville the use of a natural setting and the emphasis on nature as an aspect of religious experience was deeply embedded in the Celtic tradition of the sacred grove. See Gwen Neville and John H. Westerhoff, Learning through Liturgy (New York: Seabury Press 1978), 3-4. 50 PW, 11 March 1865, 73. 51 PW, 27 August 1853,274. 52 The Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record of the Free Church of Nova-Scotia (September, 1855): 165. 53 PW, 21 October 1865, 329. 54 PW, 17 August 1889,257. 55 PW, 18 December 1858, 202-3; 28 July 1894, 233; Robert F. Burns, The Life and Times of the Rev. Robert Burns (Toronto: James Campbell & Son 1873), 32356 PW, 22 September 1860,151; i October 1864,158; 27 August 1853, 274. 57 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 59.

231 Notes to pages 101-4 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80

Morrison, "Religion in Old Cape Breton," 189. PW, 18 May 1901,153. PW, i October 1864,158. Ibid. Farnham, "Cape Breton Folk," 625. Ibid. MCA, pc-305#3, Session Minutes, West Bay 1898-1959, 26 June 1914,48. This is in marked contrast with the attire of African-Nova Scotian women at mid-nineteenth-century summer baptisms in Dartmouth, Preston, and Lawrencetown townships. There the dress code sanctioned "parasols, hoopskirts, sash-ribbons, veils and fans." See Janet Guildford's "The Role of Women in the Urban Middle Class Household Economy, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1840-1880," (paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Calgary, July 1994), 14. Anglican church-going attire was dramatically different judging from Burrows W. Sleigh's description of the gaily-dressed parishioners at a mid-nineteenth-century Sunday service in Sydney, Cape Breton. The congregation, he observed, "presented a vista of young and elderly ladies, very flashily dressed, with airs of considerable pride and conceit." See Brian Tennyson, ed., Impressions of Cape Breton (Sydney: UCCB Press 1986), 129. PW, i October 1864,158. According to cultural historian Philippe Perrot the abandonment of display and colour in fashion, essentially an act of negation, signifies a value system with propriety, reserve, self-control, conformity, self-denial, thrift, and merit as its main ethical components. See Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994), 30-2. Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 89. Farnham, "Cape Breton Folk," 632. PW, 21 August 1858,134; 27 January 1894,24; MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 10-11. Morrison, "Religion in Old Cape Breton," 188. PW, 16 September 1865,290, 9 July 1870, 220. The Presbyterian Record, January 1896: 7-8. PW, 10 September 1853, 290. PW, 4 March 1871, 65. Morrison, "The Early Scotch Settlers of Cape Breton." PW, 16 April 1904,128. The Edinburgh Christian Instructor and Colonial Religious Register, n.s. (March 1840), 3:116; Home and Foreign Missionary Record (July i839-December 1841): 167. "Statistics," Blue Banner (June 1904): no pagination. MacPhail, Loch Bras D'Or, 46.

232 Notes to pages 105-7 81 PW, 9 May 1863, 74; 10 March 1888, 73; James Ross, An Address to The Members of The Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia (Pictou, NS: E.M. McDonald 1847), 4, 6-7. This situation diverges dramatically from Schmidt's findings that the average age of first-time communicants in late eighteenth-century Scotland and America was generally fifteen or sixteen years. Even then there was considerable flexibility, for it was not uncommon for children as young as twelve years to seek admission to the Lord's table. See Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 84. 82 PW, 18 May 1901,153. 83 BIA, Rev. Hugh McLeod's sermons, 1797-1877, MG 13,100. 84 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 13. 85 Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 100. 86 PW, i October 1864,158. 87 MacMillan, Reminiscences, 59. 88 MacLean, God and the Devil, 46. 89 Alexander MacLean, The Story of the Kirk in Nova Scotia (Pictou, NS: Pictou Advocate 1911), 77. 90 BIA, Rev. Hugh McLeod's sermons, 1797-1877, MG 13,100. 91 Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 86. 92 Gumming, The Story of Framboise, 114. 93 Wilma Ferguson et al., Pride in the Past; Faith in the Future, A History of the Stewart United Church 1893-1993 (Pictou, NS: Advocate Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd 1993), 43. 94 Cumming, The Story of Framboise, 113.

95 96 97 98 99 100 101

MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 60. PW, 6 October 1866,313. MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 58. Neville and Westerhoff, Learning through Liturgy, 4. MacPhail, Loch Bras D'Or, 47. Neville, Kinship and Pilgrimage, 130. Gwen Neville, "Kinfolks and the Covenants: Ethnic Community among Southern Presbyterians," in John W. Bennett, ed., The New Ethnicity: Perspectives from Ethnology (St Paul: West Publishing Co. 1975), 104-5. 102 Although the "Sacramaid" had communal power the participants did not melt into a single homogeneous mass. After all even though the entire community attended, very few people actually took communion. The open-air communion in Cape Breton was not highly subversive, challenging norms, overturning values, and reversing social ordering. In the Highlands the outdoor sacramental gathering was much more explicitly political as a critique of the land-owning and ruling class. According to Schmidt the American counterpart of the Scottish communion had potential for "equality and inversion"; however more typically this tradition was a field of tension and ambiguity where

233 Notes to pages 107-9

103 104

105 106

107

108 109 no

111 112 113 114

115 116 117 118 119 120

gender and class lines were blurred but seldom dissolved. See Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community, 106; Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 104-5. PW, 21 August 1858,134. Jonathan Stayer, "An Interpretation of Some Ritual and Food Elements of the Brethren Love Feast," Pennsylvania Life 34 (1984-5): 67; Linda T. Humphrey, "Small Group Festive Gatherings," Journal of the Folklore Institute 16 (1979): 191. Charles D. Warner, Baddeck and that Sort of Thing (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1874), 128. Martha J. MacDonald, "Group Identity in Social Gatherings, Tradition and Community on the lona Peninsula," (master's thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland 1986) 181,185,190. A View of the Whycocomagh Congregation, 42; John W. Grant, "Brands from Blazing Heather: Canadian Religious Revival in the Highland Tradition," The Canadian Society of Presbyterian History Papers (1991): 63. PW, 27 August 1853,274. Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 153,158,183, 212, 216. According to James M. Cameron the last outdoor communion services in Pictou County were held at Hopewell and Gairloch in the i88os. See James M. Cameron, Enduring Trust, First Presbyterian Church New Glasgow Nova Scotia 1786-1986 (New Glasgow, NS: s.n., 1986), 18. Schmidt documents the decline of open-air sacramental gatherings in the Scottish lowlands and the United States and concludes that by the 18505 this tradition had been pushed to the periphery. It should be noted that Schmidt neglects to discuss the vibrant persistence of this institution in the Scottish Highlands. See Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 206. "Pre-Communion Service," Blue Banner (December 1905): no pagination. The Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America (December 1862): 329. Ibid., (June 1875): 175. MCA, pc-ioo2#i4, Session Minutes, Port Morien, St John's Presbyterian Church 1870-1927,19 March 1904,19 August 1908,109,124. By 1908 Port Morien celebrated quarterly communions. PW, 3 August 1889, 241. PW, 3 October 1896,313. George Lavery, A History of the United Church at Marion Bridge, Cape Breton (Sydney, NS: Lynk Printing Office 1971), 60. "Ingonish," Blue Banner (October 1903): no pagination; Interview with Clara Macmillan, Baddeck, 25 May 1995. BIA, Vertical File, "Presbyterian Church & Clergy," Cape Bretoner, 5 April 1958, 3. MacTalla, i September 1894, 7.

234

Notes to pages 109-11

121 Blue Banner, (October 1903): no pagination. According to "Cape North/' Blue Banner (September 1903), this same pattern emerged in Cape North. 122 Mervyn MacAulay to author, 11 September 1994; Rev. Ritchie Robinson to author, 6 October 1994. These details were extracted from Minutes of Meetings of Session of Boularderie Congregation from July 2ist, 1905 to April 6th, 1969. 123 PW, 4 August 1888, 241. 124 "The Pre-Communion Service," Blue Banner, (December 1905): no pagination. 125 PW, 14 September 1895, 289; 20 July 1895, 229. 126 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 59. 127 MCA, PC-3OO#2, Session Minutes, Margaree, 24 August 1907, 39. 128 MCA, pc-ioo2#i4, Session Minutes, Port Morien, St John's Presbyterian Church 1870-1927, 5 July 1911,132; Robert McLeod, telephone interview, 16 October 1994. The information about St Ann's was gleaned from the Session Records, Ephraim Scott Memorial Church, South Haven, 1894-1942. See also PW, 14 August 1915, i; 27 September 1919, i. 129 Mervyn MacAulay to author, 11 September 1994; Isabel Carmichael et al., History of Boularderie Presbyterian Congregation (1972), 8. 130 La very, A History of the United Church, 60. 131 Leslie I. Laughlin, "The Pewter Communion Services of the Presbyterian Historical Society," Journal of Presbyterian History 44 (June 1955): 81. 132 MCA, PC-ioo2#i4, Session Minutes, Port Morien, St John's Presbyterian Church 1870-1927, 2 April 1911,131; Mervyn MacAulay to author, 11 September 1994. 133 PW, 17 August 1912, 8; 24 August 1912, i. 134 Cumming, The Story of Framboise, 118. 135 MCA, PC-3O5#3, Session Minutes, West Bay 1898-1959, 26 June 1915. These records indicate that the open-air tradition in Black River started to peter out in 1916. In 1919 communion tables were installed indoors, although in July 1920 it was agreed that services would be "in the open air" if the weather was "favorable." 136 MacMillan, Reminiscences, "Book B," 60. 137 Warner, Baddeck, and that Sort of Thing, 129. 138 PW, 23 September 1876, 301. 139 Ibid. 140 Farnham, "Cape Breton Folk," 625. 141 PW, 17 August 1889, 257. 142 Schmidt claims that sexual licence and impious behaviour were the bane of eighteenth-century communion seasons. See Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 124. The Reverend Angus McQueen, one-time moderator of the United Church, claims that some Cape Breton communion season romances were consummated. He states plainly: "I am told that occasionally the

235 Notes to pages 111-14

143 144

145 146 147 148 149 150 151

152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164

emotional pitch and sociability got out of hand, and a number of babies were born nine months later." See Angus MacQueen, Memory is my Diary (Hantsport, NS: Lancelot Press 1992), 1:48. Similar allegations were made by the Reverend Charles "Holy Malcolm" MacDonald during recorded conversations with Cape Breton's Magazine in April, 1984. A copy of this interview has been deposited at PANS, AR 3513-AR 3514. However, it should be noted that extant Session records for Cape Breton are silent on the issue of sexual impropriety during open-air communions. Farnham, "Cape Breton Folk," 620. Morrison, "The Early Scottish Settlers." Rev. John Murray, who attended a communion at Cape North in July 1910, observed that the men in the congregation "dress as neatly and fashionably as anywhere else." The women, he added, "wear more modern headgear and the girls wear hats of the latest style"; PW, 20 August 1910, 2. MCA, pc-iooo7#9, Peter Clarke to Presbytery of Sydney, 8 January 1879. In his memoirs, Angus H. MacLean states categorically: "The outdoor ones were much more fun." See MacLean, God and the Devil, 49. MacTalla, 13 September 1901,85. Ibid. MacLean, God and the Devil, 49. Charles Dunn, Highland Settler (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1968), 99. Stephen Hornsby, Nineteenth-Century Cape Breton, A Historical Geography (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1992), 144,186-200; Kenneth Donovan, "Reflections on Cape Breton Culture" in Kenneth Donovan, ed., The Island, New Perspectives on Cape Breton History 1713-1990 (Sydney: UCCB Press, 1990), 21. See for example MCA, PC-3O5#i, Register of Communicants, West Bay, 1871-1925. "Highland Communions," Blue Banner (June 1903): no pagination. PW, 24 August 1878, 265. PW, 5 October 1878, 313. Ibid. PW, 24 August 1878, 265. PW, 27 April 1889,129; 3 August 1889, 241; MCA, PP-3OO, Minutes of the Presbytery of Richmond and Victoria 1886-1899, 9 April 1889,104. PW, 7 August 1897,249. Neville, Kinship and Pilgrimage, 41. John Maclnnes, The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland 1688 to 1800 (Aberdeen: University Press, 1951), 214. PW, 26 December 1874,409. MCA, PC-305 #3, Session Minutes, West Bay 1898-1959,11 April 1915,52. Murray, The History of the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 267.

236 Notes to pages 114-16 165 166 167 168

169 170 171 172 173

174

175 176

177

178

179

Ibid. Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 194. Donovan, "Reflections on Cape Breton Culture," 23. This response parallels the situation in Scotland, where in the i86os there was a strong undercurrent of opposition among religious leaders to revivals and evangelists. See Alexander MacRae, Revivals in the Highlands and Islands in the igth Century (Stirling: Eneas Mackay 1906), 12-14. PW, 17 August 1889,257. PW, 26 July 1884,234. MacTalla, 25 August 1894, i. MacTalla, i September 1894, 7. See for example, MCA, PP-IOOO, Minutes of Cape Breton Presbytery 1875-1896, 31 January 1883, 214. The temperance movement became a potent force of social change, gaining momentum as organizations sprang up throughout Cape Breton. The cause figured prominently in MacTalla, where the editor gave almost "equal space" to his commentaries on Gaelic and "stuamachd" (sobriety). See Mary J. Lamond, "A Gaelic Perspective on the Temperance Movement in Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia" (undergraduate essay, St F.X. University, March 1995) 3,5. PW, 7 November 1885, 360; 21 September 1901, 297; The Maritime Presbyterian, 15 November 1885. See also MCA, PP 301, Records of the Presbytery of Inverness 1899-1917. In 1913 the Session in River Denys discountenanced church members participating in "dancing parties" and threatened to strike their names from the church roll. See Rita H. Farrell, Our Mountains and Glens, The History of River Denys, Big Brook and Lime Hill (North Side), Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Truro, NS: R. Heuser Farrell, 1993), 302. Robert S. Latimer, Local History ofOrangedale and Surrounding Area (1957, reprinted in 1990): no pagination. This phenomenon is skilfully dissected in Bonnie L. Hoskins, "Public Celebrations in Victorian Saint John and Halifax" (Ph.D. diss., Dalhousie University 1991). The Home and Foreign Record (March 1869): 71; PW, 26 June 1858,103; 14 December 1895,393; 12 October 1895,326; 21 May 1904,165; MacTalla, 2 May 1896,4; MCA, PP-IOOO, Minutes of the Cape Breton Presbytery, vol. i, 13 May 1867. Pronounced language differences created a substantial gulf within the Presbyterian Church. This situation was exemplified by the Reverend Robert Burns's decision in 1844 to omit Cape Breton from his Maritime tour. He pleaded "want of time" and "want of Gaelic." See Donovan, "Reflections on Cape Breton Culture," 21. MacTalla, 2 May 1896,4.

237 Notes to pages 116-17 180 PW, 26 December 1874,409. One journalist writing for Toronto's Week in June 1885 was struck by the irony of clergymen preaching in a language foreign to their parishioners. See Shirley B. Elliott, "A Nineteenth Century Tourist in Cape Breton" Journal of Education 20 (Summer 1971): 25181 MacTalla, 22 September 1894,3. 182 See Lori V. Cox, "Gaelic and the Schools in Cape Breton," Nova Scotia Historical Review 14 (1994): 20-40; Elizabeth E. Mertz, " 'No Burden to Carry': Cape Breton Pragmatics and Metapragmatics" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University 1982). Mertz concludes that the role of both the Presbyterian and Catholic Churches in the preservation of the Gaelic language in Cape Breton was neither clearly negative nor positive. She does, however, discern a higher rate of fluency in Protestant areas, but this phenomenon is not fully explored save for the observation that Gaelic services continued on the North Shore into the 19405. In fact the ministers in that region continued the nineteenth-century practice of giving equal time to both Gaelic and English. See 121,125,163. 183 Hornsby, Nineteenth-Century Cape Breton, 152. 184 Ibid., 180. 185 "Out door Sacrament"; Morrison, "The Early Scottish Settlers." 186 "Out door Sacrament"; Morrison, "The Early Scottish Settlers." 187 MacLean, God and the Devil, 48. 188 PW, 14 August 1897, 258. 189 George A. Rawlyk, The Canada Fire, Radical Evangelicalism in British North America 1775-1812 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1994), 204. 190 "Out door Sacrament." 191 PW, 20 August 1910, 2. 192 Mervyn MacAulay to author, 11 September 1994. It should be noted that Carmichael's booklet History of Boularderie Presbyterian Congregation cites 1932 as the terminal date for Boularderie's outdoor communion. The traditional long communion, even after it was relocated indoors, continued to be celebrated in Boularderie until 1942. 193 "Out door Sacrament"; "The Pre-Communion Service." In September 1950, and again in August 1957, Mira Ferry held traditional celebratory religious gatherings in the open air. In both cases they were commemorative re-enactments. See Cape Breton Post, 10 August 1957; PANS, V/F 70 no. 16, Women's Institute, "A Brief History of Mira Gut (1745-1968)." 194 Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 100-1. According to Clara Macmillan the Ceist persisted in Whycocomagh until 1951. In Black River this custom continued into the late 19305. However attendance at these events was woefully small. For example in 1937 the Session minutes referred to "few people" at the Friday service. The following year there was the same refrain:

238 Notes to pages 118-21 "Few were present at the service ..." See MCA, pc-3O5#3, Session Minutes, West Bay 1898-1959, 2 July 1937, 2 July 1938, 98,101. CHAPTER EIGHT

1 The Home and Foreign (after March 1854 Ecclesiastical and Missionary) Record of the Free Church of Nova Scotia (EMF) (October 1855): 169. 2 PW, 5 December 1968, 386. 3 PW, 15 June 1874,185. 4 PW, 25 August 1883, 265. 5 PW, 25 November 1854,186. 6 George W. Sprott, ed., Memorials of the Reverend John Sprott (Edinburgh: George A. Morton 1896), 163. 7 Ibid., 16. 8 Home and Foreign Missionary Record of the Church of Scotland (HFK) (3 January 1845 - December 1856): 147,150, 324. 9 Home and Foreign Record of the Free Church of Scotland (HFF) (January 1853): 159; John Murray, History of the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton (Truro, NS: News Publishing Co. 1921), 41-2. 10 PW, 24 April 1875,133; HFF (November 1875): 511; William L. Grant and Frederick Hamilton, Principal Grant (Toronto: Morang and Co. Ltd 1904), 171-2. 11 HFF (August 1850): 15-17; (November 1860): 92; (December 1860): 113; PW, 7 July 1860,107. 12 EMF (November 1860): 23. 13 PW, 19 May 1875,169. 14 PW, 24 July 1875,236. 15 PW, 2 October 1875, 313. 16 PW, 25 January 1874, 235; also at Mira, 9 October 1852, 322. 17 Murray, Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 60. 18 George Patterson, Life of James MacGregor, D.D. (Philadephia: Joseph M. Wilson 1859), 242. 19 Thomas McCulloch, The Stepsure Letters, (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1960), 87. The Seceders had been the product of an evangelical movement, arising in protest against the moderatism of the Church of Scotland. They had been greatly offended when the evangelical leader George Whitefield preached under the auspices of the Kirk, however, and the resulting estrangement can scarcely have been eased in Nova Scotia by the activities of Henry Alline and his cohorts. 20 Laurie Stanley, The Well-Watered Garden: The Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 1798-1860 (Sydney: University College of Cape Breton Press 1983), 64. 21 Murray, Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 60; Gordon E. MacDermid, "The Religious and Ecclesiastical Life of the Northwest Highlands,

239 Notes to pages 121-4

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

39 40

41 42 43

1750-1843: The Background of the Emigration to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia," (Ph.D. diss., Aberdeen 1967), 306. PW, 7 March 1891, 65. EMF (October 1855): 170. PW, 4 March 1871, 65. Samples of obituaries are in EMF (April 1854): 27; PW, 11 February 1854, 21; 25 December 1869,418; 31 August 1878, 280; 3 February 1884,40. (London: Religious Tract Society n.d.) PW, 11 February 1854,21; cf. Stanley, The Well-Watered Garden, chap. 6. John Murray traced the decline of the Cape Breton tradition of awakenings to the dying out of the "men"; Murray, Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 266. MacDermid, "The Religious and Ecclesiastical Life of the Northwest Highlands," 304; Stanley, The Well-Watered Garden, 33. Grant and Hamilton, Principal Grant, 126. J. Edwin Orr, The Fervent Hope: The Worldwide Impact of the Great Awakening 0/1858 (Chicago: Moody Press 1974), chap. 7. HFF (August 1860): 15; (November 1860): 92-3. HFF (December 1852 - March 1853); EMF (July 1853 - September 1854). Charlottetown: PW, 11 April 1874 - 10 July 1875; Georgetown: PW, 11 March 1875; Alberton: PW, 19 June 1875. Antigonish: PW, 30 January - i May 1875; Lochaber: PW, 6 May 1875 14 June 1876. New Glasgow, Pictou: PW, 6 February - 24 July 1875; River John: HFK (August 1874 - December 1875); PW, 17 February 1875 - 27 May 1876; Hopewell: PW, 12 June 1875. Also on Grant, PW, 14 April 1876, 97. Sherbrooke: PW, 6 February, 29 May 1875; Glenelg: PW, 13 November 1875; Tatamagouche, Wallace, Pugwash: PW, i April 1875; Springhill: PW, 24 April 1875. Truro: PW, 13 March - 20 May 1875; Brookfield, Stewiacke, Springside: PW, 3-17 April 1875; Windsor, St Croix, Ellershouse: PW, 22 January - 16 May 1876. Murray, Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 119,143; PW, 5 November 1870 - 4 March 1871. For this later period I content myself with a sampling of revivals. West Bay Points: PW, 26 July 1884; Elmsdale: PW, 25 April 1885; Moncton: PW, 19 May 1885; Vale Colliery (Thorburn): PW, 9 December 1885; Port Morien: PW, 3 April 1886; Glenelg: PW, 30 January 1886; Wallace: PW, 8 May 1886. PW, 16 October 1869,329; PW, 4 December 1869,385. PW, 30 June 1883 - 13 February 1886, with almost weekly entries for many periods; Murray, Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 291. PW, 14 March 1885 - 15 May 1886.

240 Notes to pages 124-31 44 PW, 10 February 1883 - 13 September 1884. 45 PW, 11 July 1885, 217. A new tent erected for communion at Whycocomagh was described as the "best tent in Cape Breton" (PW, 8 September 1885). 46 Duncan Macfarlan, The Revivals of the Eighteenth Century, Particularly at Cambuslang (Edinburgh: Johnston & Hunter 1847); John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, fourth ed. (Toronto: Campbell & Son 1867); Arthur Fawcett, The Cambuslang Revival (London: Banner of Truth Trust 1971); Robert F. Burns, The Life and Times of the Rev. Robert Burns (Toronto: James Campbell & Son 1872), 7-31. 47 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton, NJ: University Press 1989), chap. 3; Michael J. Crawford, Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England's Revival Tradition in the British Context (New York: Oxford University Press 1991), chap. 8. 48 PW, 4 March 1871, 65. 49 PW, 22 November 1884, 369. 50 PW, 13 October 1849, 324; 27 October 1849, 340. 51 Westminster Confession of Faith, 14:1. 52 HFF (August 1860): 15. 53 PW, 2 November 1872, 344. 54 PW, 27 September 1874, 306. 55 PW, 17 October 1885, 330. 56 Elizabeth A. McCully, A Corn of Wheat, or, the Life of Rev. W.J. MacKenzie of Korea (Toronto: The Westminster Co. Ltd 1903), 65-7. CHAPTER NINE

The author gratefully acknowledges a valuable critique by Dr Eldon Hay of the Department of Religious Studies, Mount Allison University, i James W. St G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870 (1976; reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1992), 40; cf. T. Watson Smith, "The Slave in Canada," in Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, 10 (1899), 16. Walker, whose magnum opus admittedly is about freedmen, not slaves, nevertheless deals with the English abolitionists Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, and William Wilberforce, while ignoring a contemporary Scottish clerical abolitionist in Loyalist Nova Scotia, ante-exodus. It will appear below that while MacGregor 's antislavery pamphlet is comparable with Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African; .... (London: J. Phillips 1788), its inspiration derives from Granville Sharp, The Just Limitation of Slavery in the Laws of Cod .... (London: B. White, and E. and C. Dilly 1776). Its closest analogue in the

241 Notes to pages 131-2 clerical antislavery pamphlet literature of early republican America is Alexander McLeod, Negro Slavery Unjustifiable. A Discourse, by Alexander Mcleod .... (New York: T. & R Swords 1802), which went through eleven editions in the United States and was also reprinted in Scotland. Its author, the Reverend Alexander McLeod (1774-1833), was a Reformed Presbyterian minister in New York City. 2 Robert Small, History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church from 1733 to 1900 (Edinburgh: David M. Small 1904), 2:610-11. 3 See generally Susan Buggey, "MacGregor (McGregor), James Drummond," DCB 6:457-62. 4 See C. Duncan Rice, "The Scottish Factor in the Fight against American Slavery, 1830-1870" (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh 1969); David Brion Davis, "New Sidelights on Early Antislavery Radicalism," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 28 (1971): 585-94 [a study of the Scottish advocate (barrister), George Wallace, 1727-1805]; and Thomas B. Smith, "Master and Servant," in [The Stair Society], An Introduction to Scottish Legal History (Edinburgh: Robert Cunningham & Sons 1958), 137-8. 5 Nan Wilson, "Legal Attitudes to Slavery in Eighteenth Century Britain: English Myth, Scottish Social Realism and their Wider Comparative Context," Race, 11 (1970): 463-75, which supports the view that "the contribution of Scottish law to the repudiation of slavery in Britain has been underestimated"; Peter C. Hogg, The African Slave Trade and its Suppression (London: Frank Cass 1973), 312. The eighteenth-century Scottish locus classicus is chapter 6 ("The authority of a Master over his Servants") of "Millar on Ranks," which reached its third edition the same year MacGregor matriculated at Glasgow: John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, ist ed., 1771. Millar (1735-1801), better known simply as "Professor Millar," epitomized the Scottish Enlightenment. An advocate by profession he was a liberal Whig who had favoured American independence, was sympathetic to the aims of the French Revolution, and was ardently opposed to the slavetrade. He assumed the chair of law at Glasgow in 1761 and held it for forty years. Ideologically Millar may be regarded as the mentor of James MacGregor, whose antislavery polemic may have been influenced by the critique contained in "Millar on Ranks." The definitive study of Millar is William C. Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow 1735-1801: His Life and Thought and his Contributions to Sociological Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1960). On the central role of the Scottish Enlightenment in AngloAmerican antislavery thought, see C. Duncan Rice, The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery (London: Macmillan 1975), 163-76. See also Barry Cahill, "Mediating a Scottish Enlightenment Ideal: The Presbyterian Attack on AfricanAmerican Slavery in Late Eighteenth-Century Nova Scotia" (paper presented at "Scotia and Nova Scotia: A Multidisciplinary Conference," Saint Mary's University, Halifax, NS, September 1996).

242 Notes to page 132 6 MacGregor was thus described in an advertisement placed in the Glasgow Advertiser in 1791; George Patterson, Memoir of the Rev. James MacGregor, D.D., Missionary of the General Associate [Antiburgher] Synod of Scotland to Pictou, Nova Scotia (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson 1859), 152-3. (The General Associate Synod [Antiburgher] was founded in May 1788.) 7 Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (Montreal/New Haven/ London: McGill-Queen's University Press and Yale University Press 1971), 102-5. The only other authors who have written positively of MacGregor's "concern for Negroes" are William H. Elgee, The Social Teachings of the Canadian Churches: Protestant: The Early Period, before 1850 (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1964), 173-4; and Sylvia Hamilton, "Naming Names, Naming Ourselves: A Survey of Early Black Women in Nova Scotia," in Peggy Bristow et al., comp., 'We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up'; Essays in African Canadian Women's History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994), 17-8. 8 James Robertson, History of the Mission of the Secession Church to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, from its Commencement in 1765 (Edinburgh: John Johnstone 1847), 75. The holograph is in United Church of Canada, Maritime Conference Archives (Halifax) [MCA], James MacGregor fonds, L.i8: 'Diary' [sic]; (mfm at PANS). Published for the first time by Robertson (chapters 6-8, 76-180), the work was fully discussed by Patterson in the preface to his Memoir (iii, v-vi). Winks's summary dismissal of Patterson's work as "admittedly biased sources" for the study of his grandfather MacGregor's career was obviously not based on any serious perusal, and did not deter him from quoting the Memoir (112) without acknowledgement; Blacks in Canada, 103 n. 14,104 n. 16. Hamilton ("Naming Names," 18) rightly criticizes Winks for assuming that the sources of information about MacGregor's antislavery are biased, whereas the principal bias in the historiography is gender; "After all, it must be asked, what defence (Christian or otherwise) can there be for enslaving women and their children?" MacGregor's antislavery zealotry may have originated in "a spirit from which several Antiburgher congregations suffered in early times [ca. 1747-1788]. Unless the minister gave prominence to corruptions in Church and State he was branded as 'a general preacher.' It was a spirit which we might expect to reveal itself among the rigid Antiburghers ... who had separated from their brethren at the Breach of 1747": Small, United Presbyterian Church, 2:172. The Breach (1747-1820) over taking the burgess oath split the Secession Church of Scotland into Burgher and Anti-Burgher factions and led eventually to the formation of associate synods, of which Glasgow was one. 9 John S. Moir, Enduring Witness: A History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto: Presbyterian Publications 1974), 38-9,127; cf. Neil Gregor

243 Notes to pages 133-4 Smith, "James MacGregor and the Church in the Maritimes," in The Centennial Committee of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, comp., Enkindled by the Word: Essays on Presbyterianism in Canada: A Biographical History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto: Presbyterian Publications 1966), 9-18. Likewise left out of consideration are the Reformed Presbyterians or Covenanters, whose extreme, almost Quakerish antislavery position in America reaches back beyond 1800, when the Reformed Presbytery solemnly declared that no slaveholder could be in communion with the Church; Eldon Hay, The Chignecto Covenanters: A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827 to 1905 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1996), see chapter 2, note 18. Rawlyk views antislavery as an integral part of MacGregor's eucharistic "evangelical ritualism"; George A. Rawlyk, The Canada Fire: Radical Evangelicalism in British North America, 1775-1812 (Kingston & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 1994), 193. In general, however, the principle of selection in the historiography appears to have been not that a Presbyterian minister inaugurated the attack on slavery in British North America, but that the immediate focus and subject of the attack was another Presbyterian minister. 10 Buggey, "MacGregor," 458. 11 James E. Candow, "Graham, Hugh," DCB 6:294. 12 Marie Tremaine, comp., A Bibliography of Canadian Imprints 1751-1800 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1952), 258. 13 Charles W. Vernon, "The Deed of Sale of a Slave Sold at Windsor, N. S., in 1779," Acadiensis, 3, no. 3 (1904): 254. 14 "Millar on Ranks"; Lehmann, John Millar, 322. 15 Tremaine, Canadian Imprints, 258. All citations are to the copy examined by Tremaine, which is available on microfilm at the Killam Library, Dalhousie University and which is the only complete copy known to be extant. (I am grateful to the staff of Special Collections for allowing me to view the original.) The reprint by Rev. George Patterson is both incomplete and defective, and useful only as a convenience copy; Patterson, ed., A Few Remains of the Life of the Reverend James MacGregor, D.D. (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson 1859), [1671-88. MacGregor's antislavery Letter has been republished in a microfiche edition by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM #94371). 16 [J. Sterns & W. Taylor, comp.], Collection of all the Publications relating to the Impeachment of the Judges of His Majestsy's [sic] Supreme Court of the Province of Nova-Scotia (Halifax: John Howe 1788), 34. 17 The most detailed account of Cock's ministerial career is to be found in Robertson, Secession Church, chapter 3, passim; see Thomas Miller, Historical and Genealogical Record of the First Settlers of Colchester County .... (1873; reprint, Belleville, ON: Mika Studio 1972), 146-51.

244 Notes to pages 134-6 18 The oral tradition holds that Parson Cock (as he was invariably known) employed a Roman Catholic manservant, whom he tried unsuccessfully to convert to Presbyterianism; "There will be nae preaching in Hell, John," - "Sure, then, Sir, it will not be for the want of ministers": Israel Longworth fonds (PANS, Micro. Biography. Longworth, Israel. Papers). 19 MacGregor, Letter, 6. 20 Letter, R. Kidston to J. MacGregor, 14 July 1788, acknowledging receipt of a letter from MacGregor enclosing the print copy; James MacGregor fonds, file N.i (mfm at PANS). Richard Kidston Sr (1736-1816), MacGregor 's agent in town, was an emigre Scottish merchant who escaped from Maine to Halifax via New York during the war, and re-established himself successfully in business. 21 Winks, Blacks in Canada, 103. As Kidston was also a bookseller it may be that MacGregor's pamphlet retailed there: Royal Gazette & Nova Scotia Advertiser (Halifax), 23 June 1789. 22 Pace Tremaine, "[t]he typographic style, especially the heavy rows of floral ornaments on the title page" are not only not "peculiar to Henry's work in Canadian printing of the period," but are in fact characteristic of John Howe's work at the same time: Canadian Imprints, 258. Elsewhere Tremaine points out that before he became king's printer in 1801, Howe published "non-official works" such as "pamphlets"; ibid., 662. It is germane to the question that Howe, one of the so-called "Boston Tories" of 1776, was an adherent of the Sandemanian Church, a primitivist Presbyterian sect opposed to slavery. 23 Margaret Ells, "The Development of Nova Scotia 1782-1812" (Ph.D. diss., King's College, London 1948 [draft]), 292 n. i. Ells points out in the accompanying text that "abolition had many influential advocates" among the official and mercantile elite of Halifax. 24 Patterson, Memoir, 154. 25 Namely Cock (moderator), the Reverends Smith (clerk), Hugh Graham, and George Gillmore; it was Smith who was subsequently to enter the lists as Cock's champion against the challenger MacGregor. Murdoch, being an Anti-Burgher and residing at a distance, was presumably not invited to become a member of presbytery. 26 Patterson, Memoir, 154 note. 27 Concerning Buist (1738-96), the first Anti-Burgher minister of Greenock, Greenbank, see Small, United Presbyterian Church, 2:171-2. His nineteen extant letters to MacGregor, 1787-96, form an important source for MacGregor's passionate commitment to antislavery: MCA James MacGregor fonds, file 8.1-19. 28 Buggey, "MacGregor," 458. 29 Patterson, Memoir, 15iff.

245 Notes to pages 136-7 30 Ibid., 153; George Patterson, History of the County ofPictou, Nova Scotia (1877; reprint, Belleville ON: Mika Studio 1972), 108. 31 See Raymond A. MacLean, "Harris, John," DCB 5:408-9. Nothing is said here about Harris's keeping slaves, though the "six servants or labourers living with him" in 1770 would almost certainly have been Black slaves. By 1777 Harris found it advisable to relocate to Truro, the most "patriotic" of the Cobequid townships, where technically nonjuring slaveholders such as Cock also felt very much at home. In August 1786, the very month of MacGregor 's arrival in Pictou, Harris accepted a Black slave as collateral for a mortgage; this registered deed is reproduced as "Appendix D" in Patterson, Memoir, 517. Cf. Colchester County Deeds, book i, 468,1779 (mfm at PANS), for the sale to Matthew Archibald of Truro of a Black slave boy whom Harris had brought with him from Maryland to Nova Scotia. 32 Patterson, Memoir, 154. On the ministry of Cock and Smith in Kings County, where slavery was rife among the New England Planter founders of Cornwallis and Horton Townships, see Arthur W.H. Eaton, The History of Kings County, Nova Scotia: Heart of the Acadian Land (1910; reprint, Belleville ON: Mika Studio 1972), 272, 233-7; see also Smith, "Slave in Canada," 16-17, 74- Eaton cites the example of a Congregational elder in Newport, Rhode Island, who viewed the transatlantic slave-trade, in which he was commercially involved, as integral to Christian evangelism. 33 MacGregor, Letter, 6. 34 Patterson, Memoir, 164. 35 Moir, Enduring Witness, 38. 36 Smith, "Slave in Canada," 56 n. i. Winks, following Smith, observes of this incident, "Cock already had been attacked as a slave-owner by an itinerant American Baptist preacher, but as a Scot and a Presbyterian, MacGregor would be heard where others were not"; Blacks in Canada, 103. (Dr John Harris had moved to Truro in 1777.) 37 James Beverley and Barry Moody, eds., The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline (Hantsport, NS: Lancelot 1982), 201-3,262 nn. 232-9. The New Light evangelist is generally considered to have been the founder of Baptism in Colchester; Herman D. Levy, "Baptist Work in the Truro Area 1782-1955: An historical sketch," in Proceedings, Reports and Program Summaries 1954-1957 (Truro: Colchester Historical Society 1957), 28. 38 Though Alline preached in Pictou en route to Cobequid, his and MacGregor 's paths never crossed, the tubercular Alline dying in New Hampshire two years before MacGregor's arrival in Nova Scotia. Whatever residual knowledge MacGregor may have possessed of Alline's theology derived from New Light Baptists he encountered during his missionary tour of the Saint John River Valley in the summer of 1805. Their principles were "a mixture of Calvinism, Antinomianism and Enthusiasm"; letter, J. MacGregor to S. Gilfillan, 31 Oct. 1805, in Patterson, Memoir, 350-1;

246 Notes to pages 137-40

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52

53

54

55

quoted by William Klempa, "History of Presbyterian Theology in Canada to 1875," in idem, ed., The Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow: The Presbyterian Contribution to Canadian Life and Culture (Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1994), 197; though in the excerpt quoted MacGregor was not "describing Alline's theology." Patterson, History, 112-13, *49Patterson, Memoir, 171. Tremaine, Canadian Imprints, 258. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 103. Patterson, Memoir, 155. Patterson, ibid; MacGregor, Letter, 4-5. On this subject generally see D.G. Bell, "Slavery and the Judges of Loyalist New Brunswick," in University of New Brunswick Law Journal, 31(1982): 36ff. The only occurrence of "slaves" in the entire New Testament of the Authorized Version is Revelation 18:13, a gloss on the original which read "bodies and souls of men," while the allegorical context plainly requires the slave market of BabyIon/Rome. MacGregor, Letter, 6. In biblical Hebrew (ebed '^badjm) a periphrastic euphemism for "slave." MacGregor, Letter, n. David Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. E.E Millar (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics 1987), 383-94,427-31 and especially 384 n. 7. MacGregor, Letter, ^^. R. v. Agnew, ex parte Hopewell (Supreme Court of New Brunswick, 1805): Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, RS 42. "In the case of his Brief in defense of slavery Chipman commenced with a series of fifteen quotations from the Old Testament and six from the New"; Bell, "Slavery and the Judges," 36. Concerning France see Edward D. Seeber, Anti-Slavery Opinion in France during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1937). A royal decree of 1777 prohibited the immigration of Blacks or mulattos, whether slave or free. The year 1788 saw the formation of the Societe des Amis des Noirs, but it is doubtful whether MacGregor knew of this important development when drafting his letter to Cock. 10 Pennsylvania. Statutes at Large. Vol. i, 567. A supplemental act explanatory of its predecessor was passed eight years later; 13 Pennsylvania. Statutes at Large. Vol. 54,56. On American Presbyterian antislavery see Clarkson, Slavery and Commerce, xi. See also Andrew E. Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro - A History (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society 1966), 3-28. The definitive study remains Edward R. Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania: Slavery - Servitude - Freedom, 1639-1861 (1911; reprint, New York: Arno

247 Notes to pages 140-5

56

57 58 59

60 61

62 63 64 65 66

Press 1969); see especially chapter 5, "The Destruction of Slavery Abolition." MacGregor's attitude towards the new American republic, where neither slavery nor the slave-trade were to be abolished during his lifetime, attests the residual influence of his intellectual mentor, Professor Millar. "Whoever considers, upon the one hand, the rapid progress that Philosophy, the fair harbinger of Liberty, now makes in the popish or despotic kingdoms of Europe, and, upon the unavoidable consequences of the late memorable revolution in America must see that Providence is making haste, to overturn forever the pillars of tyranny, and to restore the world to its liberty"; MacGregor, Letter, 6. Ibid., 157-8. Buggey, "MacGregor," 462. Thomas C. Haliburton, An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova-Scotia (Halifax: Joseph Howe 1829), 2:280; quoted and cited in Patterson, Memoir, 153. Rawlyk, Canada Fire, i85ff. Frank Baird, ed., Addresses at the Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Arrival in Nova Scotia of Rev. James Drummond MacGregor, D.D. by the Synod of the Maritime Provinces of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto: Presbyterian Publications 1937), 49. Baird, quondam moderator of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, was the author of a "fictional valorization" (the locution belongs to Gwendolyn Davies) of MacGregor ["James Drummond"], in which his antislavery plays no part; Rob Macnab: A Story of Old Pictou (Halifax: Royal Print & Litho Ltd 1923). See generally Barry Cahill, " 'Nowhere to be Seen': Blacks as an Invisible Minority at the Reverend James MacGregor Sesquicentenary Celebration of 1936" (paper presented at the conference "Religion, Culture and Society in Atlantic Canada in the Twentieth Century," University of New Brunswick, October 1995). Baird, MacGregor Celebration Addresses, 117; the moderator was the Reverend Norman D. Kennedy. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 102. Blowers succeeded Strange as chief justice in 1797, having served the preceding thirteen years as attorney-general. Barry Cahill, "Slavery and the Judges of Loyalist Nova Scotia," University of New Brunswick Law Journal, 43 (1994): 128-9. Rawlyk, Canada Fire, 193. CHAPTER TEN

i Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 175-6. My sincere

248 Notes to pages 145-6 thanks to the late George Rawlyk and Ian McKay who supervised the master's thesis entitled "The Emergence of the Social Gospel in Nova Scotia: The Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist Churches and the Working Class, 1880-1914" (Queen's University 1991), from which this chapter is derived. I would also like to acknowledge the generous financial support, in the form of a Conference Travel Grant, provided by the School of Graduate Studies and Research, Queen's University, which enabled me to present a version of this chapter at the conference "The Contribution of Presbyterianism to Atlantic Canada," Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, November 18-20,1994. 2 William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1978), 163. 3 Michael Gauvreau, "Beyond the Half-Way House: Evangelicalism and the Shaping of English Canadian Culture", Acadiensis 20, no. 2 (1991): 174. 4 John S. Moir, Enduring Witness: A History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, 2nd ed. (Canada: Eagle Press Printers 1987), 192-3. 5 Ernest R. Forbes, "Prohibition and the Social Gospel in Nova Scotia", Acadiensis i, no. i (1971): 11-36. For an examination of the Nova Scotia Baptists' involvement with the social gospel in the 1880 to 1914 period see Michael Boudreau, " 'There is ... no pernicious dualism between sacred and secular': Nova Scotia Baptists and the Social Gospel, 1880-1914," Nova Scotia Historical Review 16, no. i (i996):io9-3i. 6 This distinction between conservative and progressive social gospellers is taken in part from the work of William G. McLoughlin who argues that progressive social gospellers in the United States were more prepared than the conservatives to champion the cause of unions as long as they were not socialist or anarchistic; McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, 173-4. m Nova Scotia, however, as this chapter will argue, a few progressive social gospellers in the Presbyterian Church embraced some of the tenets of socialism. 7 Richard Allen, The Social Passion: Religion and Social Reform in Canada, 1914-1928 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1973), 17, 299,301. 8 Ramsay Cook, "Ambiguous Heritage: Wesley College and the Social Gospel Re-considered", Manitoba History no. 19 (1990): 6. 9 McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, 176. 10 Census of Canada, 1880-1881, Volume I (Ottawa: Queen's Printer 1882), 114-15; Fifth Census of Canada, 1911, Volume II (Ottawa: King's Printer 1913), 156-7. 11 The figure 22.3 percent excludes members of the "Professional class" (1.5 percent), which included doctors and lawyers; Census of Canada, Bulletin XI (Ottawa: King's Printer 1910), 2. The percentage of people occupying the category "Agricultural class" was 11.8.

249 Notes to pages 146-50 12 The total number of workers in 1911, excluding "professionals," was 166,392, an increase from 1901 of 9,730; Fifth Census of Canada, 1911, Volume VI (Ottawa: King's Printer 1915), 12. For an overview of the extent of industrialization and its concomitant influence on the growth of the working class in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes in general, see Colin Howell, "The 19005: Industry, Urbanization, and Reform," in Ernest R. Forbes and Delphin A. Muise, eds., The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1993), 155-91. 13 PW, 6 March 1880. Widely regarded as "one of the very best advertising mediums in Eastern Canada," the Presbyterian Witness was an established public voice in Nova Scotia; Gertrude E.N. Tratt, A Survey and Listing of Nova Scotia Newspapers, 1752-1957 (Halifax: Dalhousie University Libraries and School of Library Service 1979), 93-4. 14 PW, 5 March 1887. 15 Provincial Workmen's Association of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick: Minutes of Proceedings of the Grand Council, 1879-1889, Volume I, April i, 1887,141. Personal files of Ian McKay, Department of History, Queen's University. My thanks to Professor McKay for allowing me to consult these records. 16 PW, 23 August 1890. 17 Provincial Workmen's Association of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick: Minutes of Proceedings of the Grand Council, 1890-1901, Volume II, September 5,1895, 289. 18 John Webster Grant, The Church in the Canadian Era (Burlington, ON: Welch Publishing Company 1988), 75. 19 John Macintosh, The Theologue, 3, no. i (1895): 117. 20 Ibid., 119. 21 Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1980), 176-7. 22 John Macintosh, The Theologue, 3, no. i (1895): 117. 23 Between 1901 and 1911 Amherst's population rose by 80.1 percent, Glace Bay's by 138 percent, and Halifax's by 14.2 percent. This pattern of urban growth was repeated across the Maritimes as thirty new towns were incorporated in the region from 1880 to 1920; Howell, "The 19005: Industry, Urbanization, and Reform," 164-5; The Carleton University History Collaborative, Urban and Community Development in Atlantic Canada, 1867-1991 (Hull, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization 1993), 32, no. 24 John MacDougall, Rural Life in Canada: Its Trend and Tasks (1913; reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1973), ix. For an analysis of the Protestant Churches' attempts at rural planning in Canada in the early decades of the twentieth century see Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in

250 Notes to pages 150-2

25

26

27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38

Canada, 1900-1940 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 1996), 165-96. The Acts and Proceedings of the Fortieth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, June 3-10,1914, Daniel Gordon Papers, collection 1023 (volumes 20-22), 321, Queen's University Archives [hereafter QUA]. The Canada Yearbook: 1915 (Ottawa: King's Printer 1916), 77; The Pictou District: Report on a Limited Survey of Both Rural and Urban Conditions, 1915,42. Prepared by the Pictou Survey Committee by the Departments of Social Service and Evangelism of the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches; Bell Collection of Acadiana, Ralph Pickard Bell Library, Mount Allison University. PW, 9 August 1913. For more on the out-migration phenomenon see Patricia A. Thornton, "The Problem of Out-Migration from Atlantic Canada, 1871-1921: A New Look," Acadiensis 15, no. i (1985): 3-34. A nuanced account of the socio-economic conditions in rural Nova Scotia during this period may be found in Daniel Samson, ed., Contested Countryside: Rural Workers and Modern Society in Atlantic Canada, 1800-1950 (Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press 1994). John Murray, The History of the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton (Truro, NS: News Publishing Co. Ltd 1921), 237-9. The Pictou District-iyi^, 37-9. The number of Presbyterians in New Glasgow, Stellarton, Trenton, and Westville for 1911 was 8,686, comprising 53 percent of the towns' total population. In the rural districts of Pictou County, the figures for the Presbyterians were 2,939 and 76 percent respectively. PW, 9 August 1913; MacDougall, Rural Life in Canada, 52; The Pictou District-1915, 42,46-7. PW, 15 November 1913. PW, 29 November 1913. PW, 8 November 1913. PW, 16 March 1912. These fears were echoed across North America by religious and secular reform organizations; MacDougall, Rural Life in Canada, 47; Ernest A. Bell, ed., War on the White Slave Trade (ca. 1911; reprint, Toronto: Coles Publishing Company Limited 1980); Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1991). PW, 9 August 1913. PW, 8 November 1913. PW, 30 September 1905. David Frank and Nolan Reilly, "The Emergence of the Socialist Movement in the Maritimes, 1899-1916", in Robert J. Brym and R. James Sacouman, eds., Underdevelopment and Social Movements in Atlantic Canada (Toronto: New Hogtown Press 1979), 81; Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity, 16-17.

251 Notes to pages 152-7 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48

49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60

61 62

PW, 30 September 1905. The Halifax Herald, 18 February 1907. The Eastern Labor News, 4 December 1909. Ibid. R.A. Watson, The Theologue, 21, no. 5 (1910): 119. Ibid., 125. PW, 3 October 1908. Ibid. Cook, "Ambiguous Heritage", 6,10. For more on the attempts of Canadian Protestant clergy to make Christianity relevant to Canadian society see David B. Marshall, Secularizing the Faith: Canadian Protestant Clergy and the Crisis of Belief, 1850-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1992), and Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity. For an excellent synthesis of the socio-economic milieu of Cape Breton in the early part of the twentieth century see Forbes and Muise, The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 155-271. PW, 24 February 1912. During his tenure at the Falmouth St Church from 1904 to 1908, Smith rendered "splendid service to the city as well as to the church"; Murray, The History of the Presbyterian Church in Cape Breton, 1556. Smith displayed his solidarity with labour by marching alongside Sydney steelworkers in a demonstration during their 1904 strike to protest a wage reduction; The Halifax Herald, 20 July 1904. PW, 12 December 1908. Ibid. PW, 5 December 1908. The Halifax Herald, 16 December 1908. PW, 12 December 1908. PW, 2 March 1912. Thomas Stewart, The Theologue, 23, nos. 1-2 (1911): 13. Ibid., 15. Ibid., 16. See Nicholson's obituary in Records of the Thirty-Eighth Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada, June 5-10,1962, 37, Maritime Conference Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia [hereafter MCA]. Ibid. Later in his career Nicholson ran as a candidate for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), both federally and provincially, but never won; Obituary, 1961 (6-158), MCA. John W.A. Nicholson, The Theologue, 24, no. 3 (1913): 57. Minutes of the Thirty-Fifth Synod of the Maritime Provinces of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1908, 25, MCA. It is important to note that while the board comprised representatives from the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, Nova Scotia consistently held the highest number of representatives. Thus it may be argued

252 Notes to pages 157-62

63 64

65

66 67

that the board reflected a prevailing mood within the church in Nova Scotia. Minutes of the Thirty-Eighth Synod of the Maritime Provinces of the United Church in Canada, 1911, 26-7, MCA. The Acts and Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, June 4-11,1913, 285-6, QUA. They also opened a small mission for non-British immigrants in Sydney; Michael Owen, " 'Making decent, law abiding, Canadian citizens': Presbyterian Missions to Cape Breton's Foreigners, 1900-1915," in Kenneth Donovan, ed., The Island: New Perspectives on Cape Breton's History, 1713-1990 (Fredericton, NB and Sydney, NS: Acadiensis and University College of Cape Breton Press 1990), 113-28. Sydney, Nova Scotia: The Report of a Brief Investigation of social conditions in the city which indicate the need of an intensive social survey, the lines of which are herein suggested, 1913; the Board of Temperance and Moral Reform of the Methodist Church and the Board of Social Service and Evangelism of the Presbyterian Church, V/F, volume 268, no. 32, PANS. The Halifax Herald, 6 October 1908. Ibid., 30 April 1909. CHAPTER ELEVEN

1 PW, 29 June 1867. 2 John Webster Grant, "Canadian Confederation and the Protestant Churches," Church History, 38, no. 3 (1969): 327-37. 3 PW, i January 1868. 4 William D. Grant, "Canada," in Christendom Anno Domini mdcccci (Toronto: William Briggs 1902), 1:91-2. 5 Peter Bush, "James Drummond MacGregor," in John S. Moir, ed., Called to Witness; Profiles of Canadian Presbyterians (Hamilton, ON: Committee on History, Presbyterian Church in Canada 1991), 3:6-7; John S. Moir, " To Fertilize the Wilderness': Problems and Progress of the Synod of Nova Scotia in its first Quarter-Century," Canadian Society of Presbyterian History, Papers, 1992, 67-86. 6 Alexander Maclean, The Story of the Kirk in Nova Scotia (Pictou, NS: Pictou Advocate 1911), 94. 7 Morning Chronicle, 16 August 1864, quoted in J. Murray Beck, ed., Joseph Howe: Voice of Nova Scotia (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1964), 272. 8 Thomas C. Haliburton, The Old Judge (London: n.p. 1849), 2:228. 9 See his letter in the Colonial Standard (Pictou), 11 April 1865. 10 Grant, "Canadian Confederation and the Protestant Churches," 327-37. In August 1857, the Christian Instructor and Missionary Register (Halifax) informed its readers regarding a proposal to unite the Kirk and Free

253 Notes to pages 162-8 Church in a single body "independent of any foreign body," that the Kirk was not attitudinally ready for union, and that in Nova Scotia politics impinged on many aspects of religious life. 11 The Presbyterian, October 1866. 12 PW, 19 June 1875. 13 Wilhelmina Gordon, Daniel M. Gordon: His Life (Toronto: Ryerson 1941), 42, 46; see also Barry Mack, "George Monro Grant: Evangelical Prophet" (Ph.D. diss., Queen's University 1992), 66-7; and Mack, "Grant, George Monro," DCB 13:403-8. 14 Halifax Herald, z January 1907. 15 Grant, "Canada," 92, 93. 16 Grant Papers, (MS, Queen's University Archives; microfilm National Archives of Canada C-iS/i-4 [hereafter Grant Papers]) J. Melville, Nashwaak, NB, to G.M. Grant, 31 July and 29 December 1879. 17 William L. Grant and Frederick Hamilton, Principal Grant (Toronto: Morang 1902), 363. 18 Grant Papers, 28 July 1876. 19 Mack, "George Monro Grant," i. 20 Grant and Hamilton, Principal Grant, 372, 250. 21 Grant Papers, 3 June 1882, MS "Election Musings," Charles Mair to G.M. Grant, 27 April 1881. 22 The Pictou News, 30 November 1883. 23 Carl Berger, The Sense of Power (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press 1970), 229, 218. 24 Grant and Hamilton, Principal Grant, 514. 25 Proceedings of the Alliance of Reformed Churches, at Philadelphia, 1880,238-9, 231, 298-300. 26 Proceedings of the Alliance of Reformed Churches, at Toronto, 1892, 351-62. 27 Mack, "George Monro Grant," i86ff. 28 George M. Grant, Ocean to Ocean (Toronto: J. Campbell 1873), i, 367, 366. 29 Grant Papers, "Editor Scribner" to G.M. Grant, 29 October, 20 November 1879. 30 Ibid., H. Belden to G.M. Grant, 8 December 1880. 31 Ibid., W.D. Grant to G.M. Grant, 19 October 1898. 32 Gordon, Daniel M. Gordon, viii. 33 Ibid., 97. 34 Clarence Mackinnon, Reminiscences (Toronto: Ryerson 1938), i38ff. 35 James G. Greenlee, Sir Robert Falconer: A Biography (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press 1988), 157. 36 John S. Moir, "James Frederick McCurdy: Father of Canadian Biblical Studies," in J.S. Moir, Called to Witness, 3:45-54. 37 Greenlee, Falconer, 46, 79. 38 The Theologue, 17, no. 3 (1906): 59-63.

254

Notes to pages 168-76

39 For example, The Theologue, 6, no. 5 (1895): 133-8, calling for a more openminded approach to the findings of science. Currie's lengthy article appeared in 7, no. i (1895): 1-14. 40 The Theologue, 10, no. 4 (1899): 109-16,115. 41 The Theologue, 16, no. 3 (1905): 59-63. 42 See his biography by Joan M. Payzant in DCB 13:755-7. 43 PW, 23 September 1893,2 May 1903. 44 PW, 5 April 1902, 28 February 1903. 45 Grant Papers, D.J. Macdonnell to G.M. Grant, 8 December 1879. 46 Donald G. Creighton, Canada's First Century (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada 1970), 77. 47 Frank Underhill, Images of Confederation, The Massey Lectures, 1963 (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 1964), 30,31. 48 Grant Papers,? to W.L. Grant, 26 February 1903. 49 Ibid., Goldwin Smith to G.M. Grant, 19 August 1896. 50 Ibid., resolution of the Kingston Board of Trade, 14 May 1902. 51 Ibid., copy of a resolution, May 1902. 52 Underhill, Images of Confederation, 30-1. CHAPTER TWELVE

1 John Garrett, To Live Among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania (Geneva: wcc Publications 1982), 178. 2 Cencratus, no. 21 (1985). 3 Graham Walker and Tom Gallagher, eds., Sermons and Battle Hymns: Protestant Popular Culture in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1990). 4 Ibid., 3. 5 George Patterson, Missionary Life Among the Cannibals: The Life of the Rev. John Geddie D.D., First Missionary to the New Hebrides (Toronto: James Campbell & Son 1882); James W. Falconer, John Geddie, Hero of the New Hebrides (Toronto: Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in Canada 1915); Robert Steel, New Hebrides and Christian Missions (London: Nisbet & Co. 1880); Robert S. Miller, Misi Gete: John Geddie Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides (Launceston, Tasmania: The Presbyterian Church of Tasmania 1975). 6 See David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London: Unwin and Hyman Ltd 1989) for general background. Arthur Fawcett, Cambuslang Revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth 1971) deals specifically with the 1742 revival. Critical analyses include Ian A. Muirhead, "The Revival Dimension of Scottish History," Records of the Scottish Church History Society 20(1980). For the way in which Scottish "revival traditions" were transferred overseas see Leigh E. Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions

255 Notes to pages 177-83 and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989). 7 Quoted in Andrew L. Drummond and James Bulloch, The Scottish Church, 1688-1843 (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press 1981), 153. 8 Frank H. Patterson, John Patterson: The Founder ofPictou Town (Truro, NS: Truro Printing and Publishing Co. 1955), 72-3. 9 McCulloch (1776-1843) was a pioneer in the Presbyterian Church and in the development of non-sectarian education in Nova Scotia. 10 Patterson, Missionary Life Among the Cannibals, 23-4. 11 Pedro F. de Quiros, Account of a Memorial Presented to His Majesty by Captain Fernandez de Quiros, trans. William Augustine Duncan, (Sydney: T. Richards 1874), 23. 12 John C. Beaglehole, ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook in his Voyages of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1969), 2:77. 13 Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895 (London: Henry Frowde 1899), 1:134. 14 Peter Barnes, " Aneityum, 'The lona of the New Hebrides': The Coming of Christianity to Aneityum, 1848-1876" (master's thesis, University of Sydney 1985), 14. 15 Ebenezer Prout, Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. John Williams (London: John Snow 1846). 16 George Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia (London: John Snow 1861), 486. 17 Naseve, "An Address," 1866, Sydney. Copy in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, ML MSS 1893 2(16), 2. 18 See Patterson, Missionary Life Among the Cannibals, 47; Garrett, To Live Among the Stars, 168. 19 Garrett, To Live Among the Stars, 168. 20 Malcolm H. Campbell, "A Century of Presbyterian Mission Education in the New Hebrides. 1848-1948" (master's thesis, University of Melbourne 1974)/ 421 John Inglis, In the New Hebrides: Reminiscences of Missionary Life and Work Especially on the Island of Aneityum from 1850 till 1877 (London: Nelson and Sons 1887), 50. 22 Graeme Kent, Company of Heaven (Wellington: A.H. and A.W Reed 1972), 105. 23 Day spring Report, 1870,16. 24 Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America (November, 1862): 296. 25 Ibid. (February 1862): 40. 26 Minutes of the New Hebrides Presbyterian Mission Synod 1857-1938, Aneitum (sic) 31 October 1861. 27 Roland Allen, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1982), 26-7.

256 Notes to pages 183-95 28 John Inglis, A Dictionary of the Aneityumese Language (London: Williams and Norgate 1882), xviii. 29 Reformed Presbyterian Magazine, October 1861, 344. 30 John Inglis, Bible Illustrations in the New Hebrides (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons 1887), 219. 31 Day spring Report, 1875, 20. 32 Alexander Don, Light in Dark Isles (Dunedin: Foreign Missions Committee of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand 1918), 140-1. 33 See David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books 1991), 294-5. 34 Julien Thomas, Cannibals and Convicts (London: Cassell and Co. 1886), 204, 253. 35 Prout, Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. John Williams, 53. 36 Miller, Misi Gete, 59, 61, 85, 90, 95,116,159. 37 Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag (Leicester: Apollos 1990), 12. For a critique of Marxism and the modern liberation theology movement see Bosch, Transforming Mission, 440-2. 38 Miller, Misi Gete, 72. 39 Neil Gunson, "The Theology of Imperialism and the Missionary History of the Pacific," Journal of Religious History 5, no. 3 (1969): 264. 40 Garrett, To Live Among the Stars, 177. 41 John Macgillivray, "Voyage of HMS Herald under the Command of Captain H. Mangles Denham RN being Private Journal Kept by John MacGillarney Naturalist" (sic), Admiralty Library, London, Microfilm Library of Manuscripts, Admiralty Reference no. 23, film no. 7, 2 volumes, facing p. 96. 42 Minutes of the New Hebrides Presbyterian Mission Synod 1857-1938,Aneitum (sic), 14 June 1870. 43 Quoted in Falconer, John Geddie: Hero of the New Hebrides, 96. 44 Geelong Advertiser, 16 December 1872. 45 Minutes of the New Hebrides Presbyterian Mission Synod 1857-1938,Aneitum (sic) 15 July 1873. CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1 Sarah Morton, John Morton of Trinidad (Toronto: Westminster 1916), 6. 2 PW, 9 February 1861. The letter is dated June 1860 and was originally sent to "a gentleman in Baddeck," who passed it on to the Witness. 3 PW, 16 December 1854. See also PW, 14 May 1853,3 September 1864, 10 September 1864, and 10 November 1864. Similar passages are scattered throughout George Patterson, Missionary Life Among the Cannibals: Being the Life of the Rev. John Geddie, D.D. (Toronto: J. Campbell & Son 1882), 3945,405-6.

257 Notes to pages 196-203 4 PW, 4 November 1854. 5 PW, 3 September 1864. See also Patterson, Missionary Life Among the Cannibals, 152-4. 6 PW, 26 December 1868; Christina Morrison, writing from Queensland, 26 October 1868. 7 Robert Steel, The New Hebrides and Christian Missions, with a sketch of the labour traffic and notes of a cruise through the group in the mission vessel (London: J. Nisbet 1880), 385. 8 Hugh A. Robertson in The Record, April 1880, cited in Geoffrey Johnston, "Vanuatu for the Record," Bulletin of the Scottish Institute of Missionary Studies, 6-7 (1990-91): 80. See references for other examples. 9 Johnston, "Vanuatu for the Record," 80. 10 James D. Gordon, The Last Martyrs ofErromanga: being a memoir of the Rev. George N. Gordon and Ellen Catherine Powell, his wife (Halifax, NS: Macnab and Shaffer 1863), 262-4. 11 The Record, January 1892, cited in Johnston, "Vanuatu for the Record," 80. 12 PW, 3 February 1855. 13 PW, 3 February 1866. 14 Patterson, Missionary Life Among the Cannibals, 478-82. 15 Johnston, "Vanuatu for the Record," 81. 16 The Record, June 1901, 248. 17 The Record, March 1914,100. 18 The Record, October 1903,452-3. 19 Ibid. 20 The Record, January 1911,13. 21 Alexander Robb in The Record, November 1913,502. 22 See for example, Edith McRae in The Record, April 1905, 153-4. 23 Geoffrey Johnston and Hamish Ion, Canadian Missionaries and Korea: Two Case Studies in Public Opinion (Toronto: University of Toronto-York University Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies 1988). 24 The Record, December 1920, 372-3. 25 The Record, February 1917, 41. See also W.R. Foote in The Record for February 1918, 43. 26 J.D. MacKay, "Under the Southern Cross", PW, 10 September to 26 November 1904. An edited text with an introduction comparing MacKay to the Canadian missionary body as a whole, is available from the author. 27 PW, 10 September 1904, 298. 28 Ibid., 44. 29 Ibid., vi. 30 Ibid., 16. 31 Cited in Geoffrey Johnston, The Canadian Mission in Trinidad, Studies in a Colonial Church, (Th.D. diss., University of Toronto 1976), 137.

258 Notes to pages 204-5 32 John Morton, cited in S.E. Morton, John Morton of Trinidad (Toronto: Westminster 1916), 156-7. 33 Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London and Toronto: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1971), 9.

List of Contributors

PAUL A. BOGAARD is professor and head, Department of Philosophy, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick. MICHAEL BOUDREAU is adjunct professor, Department of History, St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. BARRY CAHILL is archivist, Government Archives Division, Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia. GWENDOLYN DAViES is professor and head, Department of English, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia. ALLAN c. DUNLOP is associate provincial archivist, Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia. STEWART D. GILL is head, Church History, Ridley College, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. JOHN WEBSTER GRANT is emeritus professor of Church History, Emmanuel College, Toronto, Ontario. GEOFFREY D. JOHNSTON is director of Pastoral Studies, The Presbyterian College, Montreal, Quebec. WILLIAM KLEMPA is principal, The Presbyterian College, Montreal, Quebec. JOHN s. MOIR is emeritus professor of History, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario.

260 List of Contributors

BARBARA c. MURisoN is assistant professor, Department of History, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. GEORGE A. RAWLYK was professor, Department of History, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. CHARLES H.H. SCOBIE is Cowan Professor of Religious Studies, Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick. LAURIE STANLEY-BLACKWELL is associate professor, Department of History, St Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. B. ANNE WOOD is adjunct associate professor, School of Education, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Index

Aberdeen, Lord, 170 Acadia University, 44, 467, 50, 65, 67 Acheson, T.W., 62 Act of Union (1707), 3 Addison, Joseph, 138 Albion Mines, NS, 63 Alexander, Sir William, 4 Allan, David, 16 Allen, Roland, 183 Alline, Henry, 137,143 Allison, David, 56 Amherst, NS, 150 Anderson, Robert, 67 Anderson, Rufus, 183 Aneityum, 179,181-8,190, 195 Anglicans, 46-7,124,169, 176 Anti-Burghers, xv, xix, 12, 13, 25, 58,132-3,135-6, 140,161,178 Antigonish, NS, 123 Archibald, Adams, 65 Archibald, Adella, 194 Archibald, Isaac, 83,182, 190 Archibald, Samuel George William, 137 Arminianism, 126,161

Audubon, John J., 42 Bacon, Francis, 60 Baconianism, 39, 40-2,44, 46-9, 51-2; definition of, 40 Baddeck, NS, 109,113 Bailyn, Bernard, 4 Baptists, 23-4,44,46-7,51, 65-6,109,115,118,1234,137,141,143,177 Barker, A.H., 202 Barnes, James, 84 Barney's River, NS, 103 Bathurst, NB, 30 Bayne, Herbert, 66 Begg, James, 14 Belden, H.R., 166 Bell, Hugh, 24 Bible, 8, 9,183; interpretation of, 63, 86,138-9, 168,188 Black, Joseph, 17 Blackadder, Annie, 193 Black River, NB, 28 Black River, NS, 102, no Blackwood, William, 74 Blair, Duncan B., 103 Blair, Hugh, 17 Blake, William, 74

Blanchard, Jotham, 62, 79 Blowers, Sampson Salter, 142 Board of Social Service and Evangelism, 157 Board of Temperance and Moral and Social Reform, 156-7 Bosch, David, 184 Boston, Thomas, 9,121; Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, 121; Marrow of Modern Divinity, 9 Bougainville, Louis, 179 Boularderie, NS, 100-1, 103,105,109-11,117 Bowell, Sir MacKenzie, 170 Broad Cove, NS, 113 Broadie, Alexander, 16 Brown, Callum, 7, n Brown, Peter Hume, 6,17 Brown University, 47, 51 Bruce, Archibald, 9,13 Buchanan, George, 7 Buckle, Henry T, 7,13,16 Buggey, Susan, 135,141 Buist, John, 135 Burghers, xv, xix, n, 12,25, 132-3,135-7, M0/1^1' 178

262 Index Burns, Robert, 8,111,175 Burns, Rev. Dr Robert, 2031; Burns Report, 30,59 Burnt Church, NB, 29 Byron, Lord, 175 Calder, Angus, 175 Calder, William, 99 Calvin, John, 5, 6, 56; Institutes of the Christian Religion, 5 Calvin Church, Loch Lomond, 109 Calvinism, 3, 5-7,9,13, 16-17, 58/125,161,175 Cambuslang revival, 124, 176 Campbell, George, 17 Campbell, John, 80 Campbell, Malcolm H., 181 Campbellton, NB, 192 Cape North, NS, 114,116 Carlyle, Thomas, 175 Carruthers, James, 153 Catalone, NS, no catechists, 96,114 Cavendish, PEI, 178 Ceist, the. See Men's Day Chalmers, Thomas, 17 Charlottetown, PEI, 26-7, 29 Chatham, NB, 28-9 Cheyne, Alex C., 7 Chipman, Ward, 138-9 Christian Instructor and Missionary Register of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia, 84, 87 Christian Messenger, 47 church government: Presbyterian, 6,10, 56, 58, 178 Church of Scotland: in Scotland, xiv-xvi, xix, 317,19-31 passim 59,1767,189; in Maritimes, xvxvi, 15,19-31 passim, 119-20,161-2,178 Church Union (1925), xiii, 160,168 Clarke, Fred, 68 Cock, Daniel, 134-41,143

Cockburn, Lord Henry, 14 Colby College, 47, 51 Collins, Randall, 54 Colonial Patriot, 79 Columba, St, 4 Confederation (1867), 1602,170 Congregationalists, 65,137, 177 Connolly, Thomas, 164 Conrad, Margaret, 66 Cook, James, 179 Cook, John, 15 Cook, Ramsey, 146 Cornwallis, NS, 136 Cosh, James, 188 Council of Public Instruction, 55-6, 65 Covenanters, 10-11, 75-7, 107,120,175 Crawley, E.A., 46, 51 credentialism, 54-69 passim Creighton, Donald, 170 Cropper, James B., 191,193, 204 Cullen, William, 17 Currie, John, 168 Daiches, David, 13,16 Dalhousie, Lord, 39, 43,59 Dalhousie College/University, 18, 35-6,39,41, 43, 46-9, 51, 59, 64-7, 192; curriculum, 44-5, 50,65 Dalhousie Gazette, 48 Davidson, James, 8 Davie, George Elder, 3,10 Davies, Gwendolyn, 8 Davies, Robertson, 9 Dawson, James W, 82 Dawson, Sir William, xiv, 35, 37,41,63-4, 66,161; Acadian Geology, 37, 38 Devonshire, Lord, 170 Disruption, the (1843), xv, xix, 13-14,19-31 passim, 59,120-1,161 Don, Alexander, 184 Donald, Andrew, 29 Duff, Alexander, xvii

Earl town, NS, 169 Eastern Chronicle, 81-2 Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record of the Free Church of Nova Scotia, 84 Edinburgh Bible Society, 8 Edinburgh Ladies' Association, 121 Edinburgh Review, 14 education, xvi, 6, 33-69. See also under various institutions Elder, William, 47 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 5 emigration: from Scotland, 4 Emmanuel College, Toronto, 168 Enlightenment, 74; Scottish, 16-17, 58,131 Erskine, Ebenezer, xv, 9,12, 131 Erskine, Ralph, 9 established church. See Church of Scotland: in Scotland Evangelicals: in England, 176,179; in Scotland, 12, 20 Falconer, James, 168 Falconer, Robert, 167-8, 171 Fall River, NS, 125 Falmouth Street Church, Sydney, 154 Farnham, Charles H., 95, 102, in fasting, 95-6,109,117 Ferguson, Adam, 17 Ferguson, Hugh, 97 Fleming, Sir Sandford, 165-7 Forbes, Ernest R., 145 Forrester, Alexander, 63,66 Forsythe, Joseph, 63 Fox, Miriam, 194 Framboise, NS, 95,106,109, 110, 115 Franklin, Benjamin, 74, 140 Fredericton, NB, 30

263 Index Free Church College, Halifax, 169 Free Church of Scotland, xv-xvi, xix, 13-14,19-31 passim, 60 Free Synod of New Brunswick, xv-xvi, xix, 29 Free Synod of Nova Scotia, xv-xvi, xix, 15, 27, 65, 84 Gabarus, NS, 109 Gaelic, 8,21, 25-6, 59, 96, 98,102-3,1O5/ 1O7> 1O9~ 11,113-4; demise of, 115-6 Gallagher, Tom, 175 Gandier, Alfred, 167-8 Garrett, John, 175 Gauvreau, Michael, 39-42, 47,49, 51,145 Geddie, Charlotte Leonora Harrington (MacDonald), 179,183 Geddie, Elizabeth, 188 Geddie, John, 81-3,17589,190,193-6,198; and Australia, 175-6,187-8; Scottish background, 176-7 Geddie, John, Sr, 176-7 Geertz, Clifford, 93 Georgetown, PEI, 27 Gerrior, John, 123 Gibbon, Grassic, 175 Gillespie, Thomas, 12 Gillies, Donald M., 154-5 Gipps, Sir George, 180 Glace Bay, NS, 108-9, ^5°' 153 Glasgow Bible Society, 8 Glasgow Colonial Society, xv, 20-1, 59,161 Gordon, Anne, 6 Gordon, Daniel Miner, xiv, 163,167-8,171; Mountain and Prairie, 167 Gordon, George and Ellen, 186 Gordon, James D., 188,197 Graham, Henry Grey, 13 Graham, Hugh, 136 Grand River, NS, 96, no

Grant, George Monro, xiv, 15, 43, 65,119,123,161, 1.63-71; Ocean to Ocean, 166-7; Picturesque Canada, 166 Grant, John Webster, 161 Grant, Kenneth }., 203 Grant of Ferintosh, 121 Grant, William D., 166 Great Village, NS, 123 Gregory, James, 15 Gregory, John, 15 Grierson, John, 192 Gunson, Neil, 185 Guyana, 191,193-4, 202-3

How, Henry, 46 Howe, John, 135 Howe, Joseph, 24, 31, 42, 81,161 Huguenots, xiv, 124 Hume, David, 16-17,175; Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations, 139 Hunter, John, 17 Huntly, Sir Henry Vere, 27 Hutcheson, Francis, 16-17 Hutton, James, 17

Haldane, James and Robert, 176-7,188 Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 136,141,161 Halifax, NS, 14,18, 21-5, 36, 42-4, 74-5, 79, 81,

Jack, Milton, 193 Jack, William Bryden, 45 James VI and 1,10 Jeffrey, Francis, 14 Johnston, James William, 81 Johnston, Samuel F., 194-5

83-4, Il6, 121,

132, 134-

5,137,142,150,152-3, 155,160,164,166-9,171, 179,190,192-3 Halifax Medical College, 48 Halifax Technical Institute, 48 Halket, Andrew, 29 Harbour Presbyterian Church, 57 Harris, James, 180 Harris, John, 136-7 Harris, Matthew, 79, 136 Harvey, Daniel C., 8 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 75 Henderson, George D., 10 Henderson, William, 28 Henry, Anthony, 135 Heyck, Thomas W, 57 Hogan, David, 63 Holmes, Simon, 67 Home, John, 17 Home and Foreign Missionary Record of the Church of Scotland, 19, 24 Home and foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America, 84

Inglis, John, 182-4,186,195 Ingonish, NS, 109

Kames, Lord, 17 Keith, Alexander, 24, 31 Kent, Graeme, 182 King's College, Fredericton, 36,41,44-5, 50 King's College, Windsor, 36,43-4,46, 50, 57,60, 65,67 Kirk, the. See Church of Scotland Knox, John, 5, 6, 8,10, 56; Book of Discipline, 6 Knox College, Toronto, n, 167-8,171 Korea, 126,190-4,199-202, 204-5 Lafayette, Marquis de, 139 Lasch, Christopher, 5 Laurier, Sir Wilfred, 170 Lawson, George, 48 Leslie, John, 17 Lewis, George, 15 Lindsay, Alexander D., 6 Little Narrows, NS, 100, 109,115 Loch Lomond, NS, 100, 109-10

264 Index McGregor, J.M., 29 McMillan, John, 28 MacGregor, James, xiv-xv, MacMillan, Kate, 200 MacOdrum, Donald, 97 66, 75-8, 79, 86-7,120, 131-43,161; A Letter to a MacOdrum, Neil, 105 Clergyman Urging him to MacPhail, Margaret, 97, set free a Black Girl he held 107 in Slavery, 134,139-40, Macrae, Duncan M., 201-2 MacTalla, 109,112,115-16 142 MacGregor, James GorMair, Catherine, 194 Mabou, NS, 113 don, 48-9,66 Maitland, William, 10 MacAulay, Donald, 97 MacGregor, Peter Gordon, Manitoba College, 39 McCarthy, D'Alton, 170 McCulloch, Thomas, xivMargaree, NS, 109-10 80 Marion Bridge, NS, 109-10 MacGregor, Roderick, 86 xv, 5, 9,17, 23, 35-8, 51, Maritime Presbyterian, 166 Mclntosh, James, 42 57-61, 64-5, 73-8,178, "Marrow men," 9 Macintosh, John, 149 192; and Dalhousie, 18, Martin, John, 21-2 Mclntosh, Neil, 106 35,41-4, 59; and Pictou Academy, 18, 35-6,41, Meikle, William, 123-5 Mclntyre, Angus, 26 MacKay, Alexander H., 54- Melville, Andrew, 10 79; Auld Eppie, 74; Cal"Men, the," 96-7,104,114, 6, 66-8 vinism, the Doctrine of the 122 Mackay, Isabella Gordon, Scriptures, 5; Colonial 121 Gleanings: William and "Men's Day, the," (the Melville, 74-6; Days of the MacKay, J.D., 202, 204 Ceist), 96-7,104,114, Covenant, 74, 77; Mephib- Mackenzie, Henry, 17 116-17 osheth Stepsure Letters, 8, MacKenzie, John J., 48-9, Methodists, 23-4, 27,40-1, 44,47,51,58,65,115,118, 74,120; Morton/Robert, 66 McKenzie, Kenneth, 113 74-8 120,123-4,141' 157/ *99 Middle Musquodoboit, McCulloch, Thomas, Jr, 48, MacKenzie, William John, NS, 86 126,191 65 Middle River, NS, 101,109 McCulloch, William, 84 MacKerras, J.H., 103 Millar, John, 17 McKillop, Brian 52 McCurdy, James FrederMcKinlay, John, 79, 82 Millar, Patrick, 28 ick, 168 Mackinnon, Clarence, 167- Milne, Peter, 188 McCurdy, John, 82 Mira, NS, 94,96,100,103-5, MacDermid, Gordon, 122 8,171 108,112,121,123; photoMcLean, Angus, 97 MacDiarmid, Hugh, 175 graph, 99 MacLean, Angus Hector, MacDonald, Charles, 95 Missionary Register of the 95,112,116 MacDonald, Daniel, 63, Presbyterian Church of MacLean, John, 113 188 Nova Scotia, 82-6, 88 McLean, Marianne, 4 McDonald, Donald, xiv Moderates, xv, 12-13,15McDonald, Rev. Donald, 27, McLean, Peter, 103,120-1 McLean, Peter (Storno119; and McDonaldites, 17 Moir, John, ix, 145 way), 106 28,120,122 Monthly Record of the McLennan, John, 27 MacDonald, Edward M., Church of Scotland in McLeod, Angus, 97 82 Nova Scotia, 83, 87 McLeod, Hugh, 103,105, Macdonald, Sir John A., Montreal Standard, 54 115,121,124 165 Moody, Dwight L., 124 Macdonnell, Daniel James, Macleod, John, 21, 24, 26Morgan, Robert, 180 164,167,170 7' 3° Morning Herald (Halifax), Macleod, Norman, 21, 24, MacDougall, Donald, 115 67 26-7, 29-30 McGill College/UniverMorning News (Saint McLoughlin, William G., sity, 36-7, 41, 64,193 John), 30 Macgillivray, John, 185 145 Morrison, M.D., 97 McMaster, Angus, 28,122 MacGregor, Duncan, 124 Londonderry, NS, 135 London Missionary Society (LMS), 178-9,181-2 Lome, Lord, 170 Luther, Martin, 7 Lyon, James, 131 Lyons Brook, NS, 8

265 Index Morton, Arthur Silver, 167-8,171 Morton, Harry, 192 Morton, John, 191-2,203-4 Morton, Sarah, 203 Mount Allison Academy/ University, 44, 47, 50-1, 65, 67,193 Mowat, Sir Oliver, 170 Munro, George, 66 Munro, Henry, 68 Munro, James, 135 Murdoch, James, 132 Murray, John, 97,114,150 Murray, Robert, 121,125, 160-2,166,168-9; "From Ocean unto Ocean," 169 Murray, Walter, 167 Musquodoboit, NS, 119 National Review, 170 Neil, John, 103 New Glasgow, NS, 63, 80, 86,120,123 New Hebrides (since 1980, Vanuatu), 80, 82,175-89 passim, 190,192-9, 2045; location of, 179 New London, PEI, 178 New Mills, NB, 119,122,125 Newtonianism, 40, 42, 4452; definition of, 40 Nicholson, John W.A., 1557/159 Nicholson, Thomas, 125 Ninian, St, 4 North River, NS, 95 North Sydney Herald, 111 Nova-Scotia Magazine, 135 Novascotian, 22 Onslow, NS, 131 open-air communion tradition, 93-117 Orangedale, NS, 115 Outhit, Marion, 192-3 Paton, John G., 185-7, J9^ patronage, xiv-xvi, 11 Patterson, Abraham, 79 Patterson, Christina Ann (MacGregor), 79

Patterson, George, 8, 42, 79-88,134-8,140-1, 178; photograph of, 85; A Few Remains of the Life of the Reverend James Macgregor, D.D., 86, 140; Memoir of the Rev. James MacGregor, D.D., 86,141; Missionary Life Among the Cannibals: The Life of the Reverend John Geddie D.D., 178 Patterson, George Geddie, 141 Patterson, John, 79 Patterson, Mary and Nelena, 106 Pelagianism, 126 Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, 140 Pickard, Humphrey, 47 Pictou, NS, 8,14,18, 25-6, 36, 66-9, 75-7> 79> 81-2, 86-7,119,132,134-7, 141,161,163,167,177, 191,199; Literary and Scientific Society, 79 Pictou Academy, xvi, 18, 35-7> 39/41/43/51/54-68 passim, 79,167,178,192; description of, 42 Pilgrim's Progress, 183 Pine Hill Divinity Hall, 167,192 Pittman, Jerry, 61 Pomare II, King (Tahiti), 179 Porteous Riot, 12-13 Port Morien, NS, 108-10, 123 Powell, Thomas, Mr and Mrs, 182 precentor, 100 Presbyterian Church in Canada, xiii, xvi, xix, 118,126,132,144 Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America, xvi, xix, 65, 84, 160

Presbyterian College, Halifax, 149,153,155,157, 168,171 Presbyterian College, Montreal, 193 Presbyterian Record, 190, 197,199, 201 Presbyterian Seminary, Truro, 43 Presbyterian Witness, 64, 84,113,121-4, H7-8, 151-2,154,160,162, 168-9,190,194-5, J-98 Presbytery of Halifax, 21-3 Presbytery of Inverness, 157 Presbytery of Miramichi, 28 Presbytery of Pictou, xv, xix, 133,178 Presbytery of Prince Edward Island, 178 Presbytery of Richmond and Victoria, 113 Presbytery of Sydney, 104 Presbytery of Truro, xv, xix, 133,135,140,142,178 Prince Street Church, Pictou, 177 Provincial Wesleyan, 47 Provincial Workmen's Association, 147-8 Quarterly Jottings, 199 Queen's College/University, 39' 43, 48, 65,103, 167,170-1 Quiros, Pedro Fernandes de, 179 Raikes, Robert, 8 Rand, Theodore H., 66 Rankin, Alexander, 29-31 Rawlyk, George, 141,143 Red Bank, NB, 125 Redpath, John, 15 Reformation: in Scotland, 4-8,10 Reid, Thomas, 16 revivalism, 115,118-27 Richibucto, NB, 30 Riel rebellion, 167

a66 Index Ritschlianism, 168 River Denys, NS, 109 River Inhabitants, NS, 109 River John, NS, 123 Robb, Alexander E, 192 Robb, Bessie, 199-200 Robb, James, 41,45-6, 51 Robb, Jennie, 192 Robb, Ralph, 23 Robertson, Hugh, 197 Robertson, James, 132,167 Robertson, William, 12-13, i? Roman Catholics, 44, 63, 65,134,164,179,185,196 Romanticism, 73-4, 76, 78 Rose, John, 103 Ross, Alexander, 106 Ross, Alexander R., 193 Ross, Duncan, 9 Ross, Hugh, 27 Ross, James, 60, 65 rural depopulation, 112, 116,150-2,158 Rutherford, Ernst, 37 Sacramaid (sacramental season), 93-117 passim St Andrew's Church, Halifax, 21-2, 24-5 St Andrew's Church, New Glasgow, 26 St Andrew's Church, Pictou,25-6 St Andrew's Church, Saint John, 29 St Ann's, NS, 94,100-1, 109-10 St Francis Xavier University, 50, 65 St James' Church, Charlottetown, 26-7 St James' Church, Dartmouth, 155 St James' Church, Newcastle, 28 Saint John, NB, 20, 29-30, 192 St John's, 27,192 St John's Church, Halifax, 21, 23-4 St Mary's, NS, 123

St Mary's College, Halifax, 44, 65; curriculum, 45 St Matthew's Church, Halifax, 21-2, 24-5, 65

St Paul's Church, Glace Bay, 154 St Stephen's Church, Saint John, 29 Salem Presbyterian Church, Greenhill, 80,88 Sankey, Ira D., 124 Schmidt, Leigh, 93,106 science, 17-18, 35-53 passim; and religion, 61 Scots Confession, 5, 9 Scott, Ephraim, 199 Scott, John, 22 Scott, Sir Walter, 8, 74 Scribner's Magazine, 166 Seal Cove, NS, 95 Secession Synod of Nova Scotia, xv-xvi, xix, 65, 81, 84,161,181 Secessionists, xiv-xv, 9, 12-13, 23, 25,43,46, 58, 75,177-8 Sharp, Granville, 138 Sherbrooke, NS, 123 Shorter Catechism, 7,177, 183 Sibbald, Sir Robert, 15 Simpson, Alexander, 20, 24, 27, 29-30 Sin, Cho Young, 201 singing school, 151 Smellie, William, 16 Smith, Adam, 17, 64 Smith, David, 135 Smith, Goldwin, 169-70; Canada and the Canadian

Question, 169 Smith, Norman Kemp, 16 Smith, Sydney, 5 Smith, William H., 154, 156-7,159 Smout, Christopher, 16 social gospel, 144-59 passim, 166

socialism, 152-8 passim Spark, Alexander, 15 Springville, NS, 120 Sprott, John, 86

Stair, Viscount, 15 Stanley, Brian, 184 Stanley, Lord, 170 Stanley-Blackwell, Laurie, 122 Steel, Robert, 196-7 Stevens, Andrew, 29 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 175 Stewart, Dugald, 17 Stewart, John, 26 Stewart, Murdoch, 113 Stewart, Thomas, 155-7, 159

Stewiacke, NS, 123 Stoppard, Tom, 73 Strange, Thomas A.L., 142 Strathlorne, NS, 103,109 Sutherland, Stewart S., 16 Swift, Dean, 74 Sydney, NS, 108,152,157, 192 Sydney Mines, NS, 103, 108-9,123 Synod of New Brunswick Church of Scotland, xv, xix, 28 Synod of Nova Scotia Church of Scotland, xv, xix, 15, 21, 24, 83 Synod of Presbyterian Church of Maritime Provinces, xix, 161 Tabisintac, NB, 30 Tamatoa, King (Raiatea), 179 Tatamagouche, NS, 27,123 Tawney, Richard, 3 temperance movement, no "tent," 100,101,105,109, 124 Theologue, 149,153,155, 167,168 Thompson, Alexander E, 113,153-4 tokens, communion, 98 Towns, Robert, 196 Treaty of Union (1707), 11 Tremaine, Marie, 138 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 15

267 Index Trinidad, 190-4, 203 Troeltsch, Ernst, 3 Trotter, Thomas, 81 Truro, NS, 43,48,119,134, 136-7,147,193 Tupper, Sir Charles, 66,170 Turnbull, John, 28-9 Underhill, Frank, 170-1 United Church of Canada, xiii, 118,126 United Free Church, xvi, xix United Presbyterian Church, xvi, xix United Secession Church, xix University of Edinburgh, 12,17, 36-7,39,48, 81, 131,168 University of Glasgow, 16i7/ 35' 51' 58, i3i/167 University of New Brunswick, 41,45, 51 University of Oxford, 39, 41, 46-7, 60,170

University of Saskatchewan, 171 University of Toronto, 38, 168,171 Vans, Robert G., 123 Vanuatu. See New Hebrides Voltaire, 17 Waddell, John, 82 Waite, Peter, 43-4 Walker, Graham, 175 Walker, James, 9,131-2 Wallace, NS, 123 Warner, Charles Dudley, 111 Watson, John, 9 Watson, R.A., 153-4 Watt, James, 17 Wayland, Francis, 51 Weber, Max, 3 Wesleyan College, Connecticut, 51 West Bay, NS, 100, no, 115 West Indies, 202-5

West River Theological Seminary, 60, 86 Westminster Confession of Faith, 7, 9,125,165 Whycocomagh, NS, 94,100, 103-4,1Q6/ !O9,113,120 Williams, John, 179-80, 184; Narrative of Missionary Enterprises, 180 Williamson, Robert, 25 Wilson, Margaret, 11 Wilson, Nan, 132 Winks, Robin, 132,138,142 Wishart, William, 29 Wood, Anne, 42 Wordsworth, William, 74 YMCA, 123,153 Yorston, Fred, 54, 68 Young, Constance, 193 Young, George, 24, 60, 81 Young, Luther, 194 Young, William, 24, 64-5, 81 Zeller, Suzanne, 38,44, 64